Yes, Just like “a fly in your soup”

“off the hook”. . .

solutions to the “hussein problem” huh?

Just a point here, you provided reasons that he is not as much of a
problem as he was made out to be… but no solutions.

reasons saddam is no good: he’s oppressive, he gives nothing to
the people of iraq, and keeps plenty for himself.

He also actively tortures and disappears people and leaves most of his
population starving and uneducated.

ok, threat to american safety? i don’t really thing so.

There have been PLF and training camps linked directly to Al Qaeda
found in Iraq. Al Qaeda are the guys who flew planes into the WTC and
Pentagon. I’d say that Hussein posed a threat. Moreover, Hussein
funded Martyrs to blow themselves up in Israel.

and given the extremely quick defeat he suffered

Was this defeat the result of his army “not being a threat” or was it
because of the coalition skill and technology? From a military
perspective, and you can ask just about anyone with military
experienced, this war was fucking extraordinary in how effectively the
Special Operations Forces, Regular Army, Navy, and Airforce
cooperated. The “easy defeat” was the result of meticulous planning
and the leveraging of amazing amounts of covert operations and
intelligence. Most of the units that surrended had already been
approached beforehand. The token resistance that they put up was to
save face.

i don’t think he was a big threat to any of his neighbors

That does not jive with history.

The fact that he was conquered so easily compared to last time

You misunderstand the nature of the two wars. In Gulf War I, the
mission was to knock Hussein out of Kuwait. Not topple the regime.
In that war, it was won in 100 hours. This war’s mission was
different; the complete anhilation of the regime. Much more
difficult. This war took 3 weeks and counting. Easier? Nope.

shows that the UN sanctions certainly weren’t being ineffective

If Hussein starving his population in order to build palaces, statues, and
WMD, then yeah, I guess you could say the sanctions were effective.

they haven’t found any WOMD yet.

BM-21 Missiles loaded with mustard gas and sarin were found in Albu
Mahawish. 20 of them. 300 mile range. Direct violation of UN
constraints.

all of these things, both the ones cited by bush, and the ones we
all knew about saddam, even though bush wasn’t smart enough to cite
them have one thing in common

He did cite them. Over and over.

there are plenty of countries with healthy economies and no
sanctions that are committing these acts to a far worse degree than
Iraq

North Korea’s economy is not healthy. Neither is Cuba’s.

WOMD: N. Korea who is aggressive

Yes, they apparently already have nuclear devices. That makes them
near impossible to pre-emptively take out. Iraq was different because
they only have chemical and biological weapons. Nukes are a whole
different diplomatic ballgame. Why do you thing we never got into a
major tangle with the USSR? Moreover, in touching N. Korea, you also
deal with China. And China, for all it wants to do business with the
United States, will not stand for agression against one of its only
two remaining ideologically communist allies (The other being Cuba,
which has been acting up recently too). China would also probably use
that opportunity as an excuse to take Taiwan.

Oppression: Israel - where the right to vote is based on religion
and race

Well, what are your solutions then? You’ve given lots of criticisms,
which I’ve rebutted, but no alternative solutions.

while saddam certainly didn’t care that his people were starving and uneducated, i think what played a major role in this was the fact that they were isolated so much from the world, economically.

What about the torture and disappearing?

So maybe you are technically correct, that if someone is muslim and arab and a citizen of israel they can vote.

Thanks.

are you on crack?

J, Please refrain from statements like this. I haven’t made similar
comments in your direction.

the only camps that were found were training camps for palestinian rebels.

http://www.news24.com/News24/World/Iraq/0,,2-10-1460_1348640,00.html
http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/0418/p01s04-woiq.html
http://www.chronwatch.com/featured/contentDisplay.asp?aid=2344

Its been well known that saddam contributed lots of money to the palestinian cause, and while i don’t endorse the things these groups do, its a slippery slope to label as terrorism the act of fighthing because your land was taken from you.

Terrorism is intentionally attacking civilians with the purpose of
inflicting the maximum amount of death. By this rubric, the PLF
suicide attacks in civilian areas of Israel to be terrorist attacks.

there is absolutely no evidence what so ever that saddam had anything to do with al qaeda, in fact there is evidence to the contrary.

See above.

When the british were coming to try to take the USA back from us, and the french came and saved our asses, (thats right all you people who have been knocking the french saying they never did anything good) would you say that they were linked to terrorists?

The fighters in the revolutionary war directed their actions against
the British military. That’s not terrorism. They fought
unconventionally, but their targets were almost always military in
nature. As for the French, yes, they did help us, but that doesn’t
mean that we can or should overlook their recent or future actions
against us for the same reason that we shouldn’t still consider the
British our enemy because they have been staunch allies of ours.

when i say he was not a big threat to any of his neighbors, and you say that this does not jive with history, you are commiting a faux pas.

we were discussing how the sanctions and previous military defeat had
altered iraqs physical and psychological capabilities. to say that he
was a threat before those sanctions and battles took place so he must
still be a threat is non sequetar.

No, it’s not, because you and I disagree on what the Iraqi Army’s
military capabilities were after the Gulf War.

if you think this war was easier, you need to look at all the
facts. First, there were so many more countries contributing real
assets to the first gulf war, and saddams troops were not defending,
they were in the middle of an offensive against kuwait and getting
ready for saudi arabia.

I didn’t say that. If you read what I wrote, then it is clear that I
was saying this recent war was harder than Gulf War I.

the first war took 100 hours, exactly because of the nature of the war, which was to push him out of kuwait. Don’t fool yourself into thinking that they didn’t plan to get rid of him in the first war. it was all set up to finish the job, but we backed down, to prevent a negative image of us crushing them so badly.

Getting rid of Saddam was suggested but never acted on because the
main mission had been accomplished. To call it a setup from the
beginning is speculation and borders on conspiratorial thinking.

the fact that we were able to just ask so many of saddams generals or whatever they call them to back down shows how much of a difference there is between iraq:2003 and iraq:1991

Actually, it was mostly Colonels and below that we negotiated with.
And it’s not like it was a 1 hour meeting and a couple of handshakes.
This covert work has been going on for months if not years. Most of the
Generals were too loyal to backstab Saddam.

i’d like to know where you get your facts. every finding i have read about has been something like this: “found suspcicious containers of white powder” which turn out to be antidotes to chemical weapons. or “we found a missle with some minute traces of nerve gas, but there’s no nerve gas in it”

http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/098/nation/Cache_being_tested_for_chemical_agents+.shtml
http://www.etaiwannews.com/World/2003/04/09/1049869579.htm
http://www.nypost.com/news/worldnews/72975.htm
http://www.theherald.co.uk/news/archive/8-4-19103-0-52-13.html

There was also been mustard gas etc dumped into the Euphrates.

bush’s official reason for war was WOMD. thats what he took to the UN, thats what his main conversation peice in the states was.

Right. Which he cited over and over. Along with Hussein’s brutality
and links to terrorist groups.

maybe not compared to ours, but compared to iraqs is what i meant.

North Koreans have been experiencing a famine of biblical proportions
for the past few years. That’s not the sign of a healthy economy.

Did you know that cuba has one of the highest literacy rates, somewhere in the 90% range (i think 93 or so)

We’re talking about economy. Not literacy.

what does it mean exactly to say they have a bad economy? that they aren’t trading goods? no shit, they are a communist country.

China trades goods with the world. They are a communist country.
Cuba trades goods with the world (not the US), they are a communist
country. China’s economy is one of the fastest growing in the world
now and is very healthy (if on shakey ground). Cuba’s isn’t.

thats such a hawkish thing to say. dissagreeing with the US, or even insulting the US openly is not “acting up”

I wasn’t talking about disagreeing with or insulting the US.
I was talking about the jailing and treatment of dissidents living
in Cuba.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A48195-2003Apr17.html

well, there is this thing called diplomacy. there is this other thing
called weapon’s inspections. who cares if saddam did it kicking and
screaming and slowly. the lack of WOMD being found shows that the
inspections were working.

Diplomacy was tried for 6 months, 12 years if you count all the
resolutions enacted by the UN. It failed because France, Germany, and
to a lesser extent Russia, would not stand by and put teeth into the
resolution. The reason Saddam took so long was that he knew that he
could continue stringing along the UN without any real repercussions.
He thought he could get away with it, and he did. For 12 years.
Also, there have been missles that violated UN resolutions found. I
noted those above. Not to mention the scuds (that Iraq didn’t have)
that were fired into Kuwait.

more countries are declaring they are ready for and preparing for war. that certainly is not a good thing.

Which countries are these?

I enjoy the discussions too, but you also seem to ignore the meat of my arguments. I admit that I only quote the stuff that I’m about to rebut. So I guess you can interpret the parts I exclude as either something I don’t have an answer to or something that I agree in part with. I don’t think I played the semantic game too much here, although there is some.

You gotta read the articles for the info about the BM-21 missles… the headlines don’t allude to that… I originally got the article from Washington Post, but I have since lost the link and can’t find it.

yeah. i know i’m certainly not the best at expressing my thoughts clearly, and i certainly don’t have all the facts. i think we’d be more productive in person.

i mean i’m glad that saddam is gone, but i’m worried that the US is going to be forwarding their agenda too much in the rebuilding of iraq.

as far as the scuds that he fired, its pretty interesting that he didn’t fire them until after we invaded. he was actually starting to destroy them before we invaded.

so we had 6 months (and maybe even 12 years, but i’m not confident i have all the facts) of no aggression coming out of iraq, then we attack, and he fires missiles at kuwait.

you asked what countries i was referring too at the end of my last comment, and that just frustrates me, because the post that started all this was the one where i listed two important examples of exactly that. and those are just the ones I know about. little american computer programmer. i’m sure there are many more examples of countries in the middle east that are getting their defenses up.

Just 2 points

I read the Christian science monitor you ref’d for the Al Queda - IRaq link.

“The letters, whose authenticity couldn’t be verified by the Monitor, retain cover sheets imprinted with the Mukhabarat’s eagle insignia - a symbol also stamped liberally throughout the documents themselves.

There is nothing in the letters that documents Iraqi payments, weapons shipments, or other material support. No operations, past or planned, are discussed. But they contain an interesting air of implied fellowship.”

SO i think they are propoganda or hypeness.

2nd
The Geneva convention states that the laws of War don’t limit the rights of an occupied population to wage war in any way. So What you call Palestinian Terrorists, I say they are an occupied population waging war the only way they can. Israel must obey the rules of engagment, becuase they have an official military. Palestinians have no such restrictions.

Why is this crazy rule there for an occupied populace? France WWII. The resistance fighters during WWII in France showed the writers that an occupied civilian populace should be covered in the rules of War.

Interesting. My previous post is missing.

As to addressing your points, I’d say they were salient. India contemplating pre-emptive strike against Pakistan is worrisome, but then again, the two countries have been butting heads for decades now. I doubt India also would be that stupid since Pakistan has nukes. As for Syria, I don’t support military action with them yet. It would behoove them, though, to adopt Iran’s stance of not admitting Iraqi Ba’athist leaders fleeing the country. There is not clear indication that they have done so or will do so. Moreover, their shipment of equipment and fighters to Iraq during the war was troublesome, at least diplomatically.

Now that I’ve address those points, I’m going to reiterate my question to be more clear.

What are your solutions that do not use military force? There are problems that need to be dealt with and saying “The US should play more nicely” is a cop-out answer. Specifically, how would you have dealt with Iraq differently? How would you address the very real point that the UN was failing to enforce its own resolutions? How would you address the fact that sanctions and the “food-for-oil” program were an unarguable failure in terms of diplomacy? Note that the US was not in violation of international law until the invasion started, meanwhile, Iraq’s former regime had been in violation of international law for 12 years. How would you provide a solution for the change of regime in Iraq without the use of military force?

Those are the solutions I seek. I have not heard of ANY viable solutions to the Hussein problem from the anti-war side.

What are your solutions then?

(flamebait)
Apple makes computers?
(/flamebait)

y’all need to learn to put angled brackets in comments.

Actually, I was considering buying a mac for my next laptop… but that plan is on hold for a while…

Yeah, I haven’t played WC3 in a while… two reasons, (1) MIT’s network in the graduate residence halls sucks… I assume this is to induce you to show up at the lab everyonce in a while. (2) I realized that I suck at the game compared to people who apparently have mucho time to learn all the nuances of it.

heheh. i feel so lame for enjoying that post =P

I run maya on my poserbook G4 500 and it performs ok. So your machine must be tearing it up. I’m jealous.

If you’re looking for a good book that isn’t too hard to follow, Mastering Maya Complete is a good book. It retails for 60 bucks. These books usually follow the versions of maya. So I’d get the latest one.

http://btobsearch.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbnInquiry.asp?userid=37DJUB0NKZ&btob=Y&isbn=0782128351&itm=7

np- let me know if you find any good references besides that book