War Crimes?

Toro

Senate Member
May 24, 2005
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Ok, knowing there is millions of americans are working for those coorporations, no war would put them at risk to loose their job one day, since there is no bomb to sell to the us military anymore.

Or let's put it this way, war isnt good for the US economy, but it is still good for bush campaign contributors, that is something that you can't refute.

But its bad for all the other corporations who give to the GOP. Defense and energy companies probably don't give more than 5% or even 10% to the Republican Party. To hurt the other 90%-95% to pay off that small slice doesn't make much sense.

Besides, one of the lessons of the 1990s was that the Peace Dividend which occurred after the fall of the Berlin Wall and American military expenditure was cut contributed to one of the longest economic expansions in American history.
 

Toro

Senate Member
May 24, 2005
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Sure, after you debunk my claims which you haven't done.

Your assumption was that the Iraq war caused the recession, I dissagree.

I didn't say it "caused" the recession. I said soaring oil prices "pushed" the economy into a recession. I also said there were other factors at play. That's not me speaking. That's economic analysis, and was very well known at the time. I was living in London during the Gulf War and saw the UK go into its worst recession since the 1930s.

It was conventional wisdom in 1990 that a 100% rise in oil prices would push the global economy into recession. Soaring oil prices 17 years earlier was the most visible cause for the worst economic period for the US since the Depression, though again, there were other reasons.

It was also conventional wisdom earlier in this decade that a rise to $40 - not many saw $75 - would also hamper growth, though the government knew it was less of a factor because the energy input per unit of economic growth is something like 30-40% less than it was 30 years ago. OPEC thought that too. That is one reason why Bush ran deficits, to stimulate the economy as an offset to rising energy prices.
 

Avro

Time Out
Feb 12, 2007
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Oshawa
I didn't say it "caused" the recession. .

Really?

you said...

Why would it be in the US interests to allow for the invasion of an oil producing state, sending the region into chaos, the price of oil higher, and the economy into a recession which ultimately cost the President his job?
I don't see any other blame there.
 

Toro

Senate Member
May 24, 2005
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I expanded on page 4

The differences are exactly what occurred. In 1991, the economy went into a recession. It did not in 2003.

The economy is somewhat different today than it was back then as it is less fuel intensive. Also, you didn't have China in the world economy like you do today, which has made an enormous difference. Finally, fiscal policy was quite different as the US government was a drag on growth and interest rates were high. That was the complete opposite at the beginning of this decade.

Of course, other factors are at play. But the conventional thinking up until even a few years ago was that oil above $40-$50 would push the US and global economy into recession. In fact, OPEC believe that up until five years ago. The reason why they didn't ramp capacity was because they were observing consumer spending in the US. If consumer spending had shown hints of slowing, OPEC would have turned on the taps. (As it turns out, they probably couldn't have done anything anyways.)
 

Avro

Time Out
Feb 12, 2007
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Oshawa
I expanded on page 4


Still dosen't debunk what I said now does it?

Many factors invloved, now the real question is did the war cause the recession on it's own?

Keep in mind I have never said it was the intention of the U.S. to cause a war.
 

Toro

Senate Member
May 24, 2005
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Still dosen't debunk what I said now does it?

Many factors invloved, now the real question is did the war cause the recession on it's own?

Keep in mind I have never said it was the intention of the U.S. to cause a war.

No, rising oil prices wasn't the sole purpose of the recession. For example, when I said "other factors were at play," one of the main reasons was the tightening monetary policy, with the Fed eventually pushing the funds rate up to nearly 10% a year earlier whereas in the earlier part of this decade, the Fed was cutting it to 1%, a 60 year low.

However, war and rising oil prices were a big part, and especially burned in the minds of politicians. The public blamed the 1973-1974 recession on rising oil prices, which is partially correct though there were other factors then at play as well. For a politician to risk soaring oil prices was to risk his political career at the time.

That is still true today to some extent. We just don't know what that level is yet. It may be $70.
 

Avro

Time Out
Feb 12, 2007
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No, rising oil prices wasn't the sole purpose of the recession. For example, when I said "other factors were at play," one of the main reasons was the tightening monetary policy, with the Fed eventually pushing the funds rate up to nearly 10% a year earlier whereas in the earlier part of this decade, the Fed was cutting it to 1%, a 60 year low.

However, war and rising oil prices were a big part, and especially burned in the minds of politicians. The public blamed the 1973-1974 recession on rising oil prices, which is partially correct though there were other factors then at play as well. For a politician to risk soaring oil prices was to risk his political career at the time.

That is still true today to some extent. We just don't know what that level is yet. It may be $70.

Sorry, still don't buy it.

Debunk what I said. It should be childs paly for a money guy like you.

Oil prices leveled out shortly after the war so having an effect bigger than the fall of the USSR and the demise of the strong Japaneese economy just dosen't cut it.

This of course is still rhetorical if you assume I beleive the U.S. wanted the 1991 war in Iraq.

Got to go, the bass are calling me.

I'll be back after I gut the little buggers.;-)
 

Toro

Senate Member
May 24, 2005
5,468
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Sorry, still don't buy it.

Debunk what I said. It should be childs paly for a money guy like you.

That's why I linked the Fed study, which confirms what I stated.

Oil prices leveled out shortly after the war so having an effect bigger than the fall of the USSR and the demise of the strong Japaneese economy just dosen't cut it.

Actually, oil prices collapsed.

This of course is still rhetorical if you assume I beleive the U.S. wanted the 1991 war in Iraq.
No, I believe you. The US didn't want the war.

Got to go, the bass are calling me.

I'll be back after I gut the little buggers.;-)
Good fishing!
 

Curiosity

Senate Member
Jul 30, 2005
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Toro I love it when you talk money hehe

Avro seems to spend his life in some kind of Socialist Gulag - maybe the Democratic Underground website - they are all a bit dark there.... not a smile on any of them.
 

Zzarchov

House Member
Aug 28, 2006
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The funny thing is people assumed the government should be involved in New Orleans at all. Such a 180 on the founding principles of America that made it great.

"You wanna live somewhere that needs levies, you deal with it" has become "You wanna live BELOW SEA LEVEL NEXT TO THE OCEAN? No problem, we'll foot the bill.
 

Blackleaf

Hall of Fame Member
Oct 9, 2004
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I've run across several stories about poor water services in Bagdad, as well as with stories about how the power grid is getting worse. What some of the press are saying is that under Saddam these services were allowed to deteriorate. BULL! Both the water purification plants and the power grid were bombed to hell in the first Gulf War. Sanctions prevented the acquisition of the parts necessary to rebuild them, indirectly causing a million deaths in Iraq. If that wasn't a war crime, I don't know what is.

Do some research before spurting off about how Bush and Blair are evil and Saddam was a nice man who should have been allowed to stay in power.

Kuwait, the country invaded by Saddam in 1990 which led to the First Gulf War, has sent 8 water purification plants to Iraq, and Saudi Arabia is building 10 of them in Iraq.

Not only that but Saddam himself blocked access to water for his people. He purposefully drained river and wetlands. These drained areas were largely in the same places as the Shi'ite Muslims that stood up against the president in the first war. This punishment damaged farmers' crop yields and people could no longer catch fish.

Now, with the downfall of Saddam, the Coalition is bringing water back to these drained areas.
 

Blackleaf

Hall of Fame Member
Oct 9, 2004
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Don't be fooled by propaganda from a madman..........


Yeah, especially when he says there are WMD all throughout Iraq along with 45 minute attack capability and is an imminent threat of danger.

There must have been WMD in Iraq at some point, otherwise what did Chemical Ali use to gas Kurds in Halabja?

In fact, the UN finally admitted in 2004 that Saddam DID have WMD:


"The UN Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC) -- that group of Inspector Clouseaus who were stumbling around Iraq before the war while losing the game of hide-and-seek with Saddam's henchmen -- gave a briefing to the U.N. Security Council about the movement of Iraqi WMD out of the country before, during and after the war."



Demetrius Perricos told the Council, "The removal of these materials from Iraq raises concerns with regard to proliferation risks," and said inspectors found Iraqi WMD and missile components shipped abroad that still contained UN inspection tags. The World Tribune reported on Perricos's briefing. "He said the Iraqi facilities were dismantled and sent both to Europe and around the Middle East at the rate of about 1,000 tons of metal a month... The Baghdad missile site contained a range of WMD and dual-use components, UN officials said. They included missile components, reactor vessel and fermenters ... required for the production of chemical and biological warheads. 'It raises the question of what happened to the dual-use equipment, where is it now and what is it being used for,' Perricos's spokesman, said. 'You can make all kinds of pharmaceutical and medicinal products with a fermenter. You can also use it to breed anthrax.'"​

Finally, the U.N. admits what the rest of the world (minus the loony left) has known for a year. Prohibited missiles, equipment that would make a bio-terrorist's heart leap, and yellow cake. Tons of yellowcake.


Summing up:
  • We know that the infamous "16 words" were true, verified by both British and French intelligence.
  • The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence's report declared that the administration did not seek to "coerce, influence or pressure analysts to change their judgments related to Iraq's weapons of mass destruction capabilities."
  • We know that Iraq had at least 1.77 metric tons of low-enriched uranium and roughly 1,000 highly radioactive sources -- because we now have them stored in Tennessee! Materials that could have been used to manufacture a �dirty� radiological bomb or even support a nuclear weapons program.
  • Way back in January, another U.N. entity, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), discovered 5 pounds of radioactive uranium oxide in a shipment of scrap metal at Rotterdam harbor. The metal came from Iraq via a dealer in Jordan.
  • Last month, an IAEA spokesman said the IAEA had work to do in Iraqbecause we know they still have the know-how� to make weapons of mass destruction.
  • In May, Candian Prime Minister Paul Martin told a crowd of about 700 university researchers and business leaders in Montreal, "The fact is that there is now, we know well, a proliferation of nuclear weapons, and that many weapons that Saddam Hussein had, we don't know where they are. That means terrorists have access to all of that."
  • The UNMOVIC report admits that there were "a number of sites in Iraq containing equipment and materials that could be used to produce illicit weapons. Further, �recent satellite imagery� from commercial sources (i.e., it doesn't take super-secret high-tech CIA spy satellites to see the obvious) shows that some of these sites �have been either cleaned out or destroyed�; and that there has been �extensive removal of equipment and, in some instances�entire buildings� from Iraqi nuclear facilities.
  • We know that missile engines used in both Iraq�s SA-2 surface-to-air missiles and its prohibited surface-to-surface al Samoud missiles have been discovered in Europe.
  • Inspectors believe at least some of these engines have also reached Turkey and hope to search Turkish ports in the near future.
  • Twenty engines from banned Iraqi missiles [SA-2] were found in a Jordanian scrap yard with other equipment ["dual use"] that could be used for weapons of mass destruction.
  • The report said the U.N. inspectors also found papers showing illegal contracts by Iraq for a missile guidance system, laser ring gyroscopes and a variety of production and testing equipment not previously disclosed (there's a shocker).
  • Additionally, Iraq acquired �a variety of dual-use� items and materials for possible use in biological or chemical weapons programs, but there is �no evidence� that Iraq actually used the materials for weapons purposes. Although some of these items were acquired through illicit channels, Iraq eventually declared most of them to UNMOVIC. Some of these declarations, however, were �misleading,� the report says. [Please remember that Resolution 1441 gave Iraq a "final opportunity" to produce "a currently accurate, full, and complete declaration of all aspects of its programmes to develop chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons, ballistic missiles, and other delivery systems".]
  • The U.N. team also discovered some processing equipment with U.N. tags � which show that it was being monitored � including heat exchangers, and a solid propellant mixer bowl to make missile fuel, he said. It also discovered "a large number of other processing equipment without tags, in very good condition." [Without tags, i.e., hidden from inspectors, secreted about the country, undeclared, undisclosed, and in violation of 1441!]
  • The New York Times admits that while many of the items "bear tags placed by United Nations inspectors as suspect dual-use materials having capabilities for creating harmless consumer products as well as unconventional weapons" [unconventional weapons is the new PC way of not saying chemical and bio weapons], some items were not known to the U.N. (i.e., undisclosed, in violation of 1441).
    This equipment included fermenters, a freeze drier, distillation columns, parts of missiles and a reactor vessel - all tools suitable for making biological or chemical weapons. "It raises the question of what happened to the dual-use equipment, where is it now and what is it being used for," Mr. Buchanan said. He said that a fermenter was a good example of a dual-use item that was potentially dangerous if it fell into the wrong hands. "You can make all kinds of pharmaceutical and medicinal products with a fermenter," he said. "You can also use it to breed anthrax." [That's right -- undisclosed, hidden equipment capable of breeding anthrax!]
  • We know that 20 tons of chemicals that were to be used in an attack on Jordan, and that although they were coming across the Syria-Jordan border, Syria does not have the capability to produce chemical weapons on that kind of scale. But they took money from Saddam to hide WMD.
  • And of course, everyone knows about the ammo cannisters that contain mustard and sarin gas. You know, the cannisters they couldn't account for destroying -- because they didn't destroy them!
If Saddam was still in power and this information were released today, it would be a solid case for going to war, liberating Iraq, and removing these materials from the control of an America-hating madman.

Once again, although the mainstream media is reporting this story in bits and pieces, it refuses to connect the dots.

Too busy connecting dots to show that Kerry's foul-mouthed Hollywood friends are "the heart and soul of America". Or that polls show a nation more divided than ever (which is bull -- study up on Rosevelt. Or the Civil War.).

Just like they are too busy showing the bad in Iraq and ignoring the many successes.

And strangely enough, this briefing is not on the UNMOVIC web site. Huh! I wonder why? Afraid it will be one more proof that America was right and that the U.N. was protecting the largest corruption ring in history?

One last point. Many on the left are no doubt lambasting the U.S. for not protecting this geographically dispersed nuclear compounds, missile sites and ammo dumps. Yet no one seems to be lambasting the U.N. for not stepping up and helping us out by providing troops that didn't have to do anything except sit on their butts protecting these sites [the one duty they seem to do well] while coalition solders were off quelling hot-spots and hunting foreign terrorists.

http://www.alphapatriot.com/home/archives/2004/07/13/un_admits_saddam_had_wmd.php
 

Logic 7

Council Member
Jul 17, 2006
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Do some research before spurting off about how Bush and Blair are evil and Saddam was a nice man who should have been allowed to stay in power.

Kuwait, the country invaded by Saddam in 1990 which led to the First Gulf War, has sent 8 water purification plants to Iraq, and Saudi Arabia is building 10 of them in Iraq.

Not only that but Saddam himself blocked access to water for his people. He purposefully drained river and wetlands. These drained areas were largely in the same places as the Shi'ite Muslims that stood up against the president in the first war. This punishment damaged farmers' crop yields and people could no longer catch fish.

Now, with the downfall of Saddam, the Coalition is bringing water back to these drained areas.



Where did he say, saddam is a nice man? you guys are so out of argument, that you gave some to others and play with it, there is no word describing this idiocy.


The waterpurification plant was destroyed by the coalition, to fasten the sanctions. get your fact straignt peter pan.

"People say, 'You didn't recognize that it was going to have an effect on water or sewage,'" said the planning officer. "Well, what were we trying to do with [United Nations-approved economic] sanctions --- help out the Iraqi people? No. What we were doing with the attacks on infrastructure was to accelerate the effect of sanctions."

Col. John Warden III, deputy director of strategy, doctrine and plans for the Air Force, agreed that one purpose of destroying Iraq's electrical grid was that "you have imposed a long-term problem on the leadership that it has to deal with sometime."



http://www.scn.org/ccpi/infrastructure.html

Show us where saddam blocked access to water for his peoples?
 

Logic 7

Council Member
Jul 17, 2006
1,382
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There must have been WMD in Iraq at some point, otherwise what did Chemical Ali use to gas Kurds in Halabja?

In fact, the UN finally admitted in 2004 that Saddam DID have WMD:


"The UN Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC) -- that group of Inspector Clouseaus who were stumbling around Iraq before the war while losing the game of hide-and-seek with Saddam's henchmen -- gave a briefing to the U.N. Security Council about the movement of Iraqi WMD out of the country before, during and after the war."

[/URL]


UN knows since the mid 90s, that saddam doesnt have wmd anymore, and here is the proof. Scott RItter a UN inspector, he will tell you exactly what blair and bush are, a bunch retarded liars.

Video showing RItter making fun of blair and bush
 

Zzarchov

House Member
Aug 28, 2006
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Not to point fingers:

But since when has the UN had any moral Authority at all? IT was designed to let the UK, America, France and her colonies, Fascist China and the Soviet Union divy up the world into their own spheres of influence.

Since then China has become communist and France has lost her colonies but in the end it some kind of world government.
 
May 28, 2007
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Honour our Fallen
Not to point fingers:

But since when has the UN had any moral Authority at all? IT was designed to let the UK, America, France and her colonies, Fascist China and the Soviet Union divy up the world into their own spheres of influence.

Since then China has become communist and France has lost her colonies but in the end it some kind of world government.

I agree on it being bereft of morality....look at Tibet...I believe it was the now defunct device league of nations when it occured...but what has the UN done to bring tibet freedom from the Chinnese govt. butchers....

It wasn't until Peter Gabriel sang Biko and artists followed that the UN finnally decided to put sanctions on Sout Africa....it let aparthied rule unscathed, until muscians made their stand......
 

Logic 7

Council Member
Jul 17, 2006
1,382
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Not to point fingers:

But since when has the UN had any moral Authority at all? IT was designed to let the UK, America, France and her colonies, Fascist China and the Soviet Union divy up the world into their own spheres of influence.

Since then China has become communist and France has lost her colonies but in the end it some kind of world government.





Sibouaire, wow for the first time ever WE AGREE.