Iraq is a political subject.
Iraq, again
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Did you hear about the MI 6 dossier, the one that was explicitly praised by Colin Powell in fron t of the security council?
These 19 pages?
10 of them have been copied (identically!) from free available scientific work….
That is maybe not so bad… but:
(1)The works copied are up to 12 years old
(2) One of the copied authors (Ibrahim Al-Marashi from California) said (in the Times of Friday) that they even copied his mistakes!
(3) They pretended it was all tehir work (and porbably the best they could do)…
and (4), important only for scientists: they didn’t mark the citations as such!Makes it hard to trust “your own” secret service…
but probably not hard enough for liars like Rumsfeld, who now declared that “diplomacy has failed”. -
@cystic:
But, all in all: i think SH is a man without respect for lives, with a major sense for power… you could call that evil… but then, many CEOs are “evil” by that definition, if to a lesser degree.
Touche, but not really. If a CEO does not make the difficult decisions to meet the bottom lines of the stock-holders. If they do not make the cuts where needed for many reasons, then the board of directors will find a CEO who will. (i realize that many CEO’s are making blah-million dollars whereas their workers are making less, but i’d equate this to a selfish hubris, rather than to some underlying evil that would require them to invade a country, gas millions of people, bomb Israel, etc.).
Exactly… they will find a CEO who will…
This selfish hybris is what i would call the underlying evil. It’s an excuse (and a very cheap and cowardous one) for yourself only. It does not at all justify any actions you take.
The people who gassed millions of people, shot innocent civilians etc…
from '33 to '45 they often enough were perfectly “ordinary” people.
There are reports about these brigades, one of them, the Hamburg Police Batallion, were “mostly older family fathers”…
And you will hear often enough “if i hadn’t done it…someone else would have… and they would have had me as a target as well” (which is questionable, as there was a german army captain who just did not follow his orders to “execute” some “partisans” 8which would have been women and children… and his superior asked him (after hearing that this order had not been followed" “when will you become harder?”… his answer was “never!”.So, this “if i didn’t do it” is the worst excuse ever! This is the one excuse that allows regimes like the Nazi regime to exist!
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but i don’t see that Powell presented anything new
You’re not alone
They weren’t asking for anything “new.” They were asking for proof. And that’s exactly what Powell gave them. Excellently I might add. :P
Did you hear about the MI 6 dossier, the one that was explicitly praised by Colin Powell in fron t of the security council?
These 19 pages?
10 of them have been copied (identically!) from free available scientific work….
That is maybe not so bad… but:
(1)The works copied are up to 12 years old
(2) One of the copied authors (Ibrahim Al-Marashi from California) said (in the Times of Friday) that they even copied his mistakes!
(3) They pretended it was all tehir work (and porbably the best they could do)…
and (4), important only for scientists: they didn’t mark the citations as such!Makes it hard to trust “your own” secret service…
but probably not hard enough for liars like Rumsfeld, who now declared that “diplomacy has failed”.Look at the more important part…was the information true? Okay, so they copied it, big deal. I could really care less. Punish them for it if you want. There’s more important things out there to consider. Look at the information that was presented, was it true or wasn’t it?
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@F_alk:
@cystic:
But, all in all: i think SH is a man without respect for lives, with a major sense for power… you could call that evil… but then, many CEOs are “evil” by that definition, if to a lesser degree.
Touche, but not really. If a CEO does not make the difficult decisions to meet the bottom lines of the stock-holders. If they do not make the cuts where needed for many reasons, then the board of directors will find a CEO who will. (i realize that many CEO’s are making blah-million dollars whereas their workers are making less, but i’d equate this to a selfish hubris, rather than to some underlying evil that would require them to invade a country, gas millions of people, bomb Israel, etc.).
Exactly… they will find a CEO who will…
This selfish hybris is what i would call the underlying evil. It’s an excuse (and a very cheap and cowardous one) for yourself only. It does not at all justify any actions you take.
The people who gassed millions of people, shot innocent civilians etc…
from '33 to '45 they often enough were perfectly “ordinary” people.
There are reports about these brigades, one of them, the Hamburg Police Batallion, were “mostly older family fathers”…
And you will hear often enough “if i hadn’t done it…someone else would have… and they would have had me as a target as well” (which is questionable, as there was a german army captain who just did not follow his orders to “execute” some “partisans” 8which would have been women and children… and his superior asked him (after hearing that this order had not been followed" “when will you become harder?”… his answer was “never!”.So, this “if i didn’t do it” is the worst excuse ever! This is the one excuse that allows regimes like the Nazi regime to exist!
:cry: F_alk has degenerated into the hyperbolic, irrelevent rhetoric that has plagued so many on this forum’s right. You seem to consider that because people are evil, and because CEO’s have to make difficult decisions, that these people are evil and capable of Nazi-like crimes. If i worked very hard, i might see a connection, but a tenuous one. These people are hired to balance books, to increase stock value and profits, and to make decisions relating to both of these. Because of this they are like Nazi’s? Certainly people lose their jobs secondary to decisions made by CEO’s, however this is not done for the sake of starving out a family, however because much of the time it is the fiscally necessary thing to do. Also a person is being very naive to assume that they have any job security in this day and age. I have always accepted the fact that my job was less secure than the Canadian dollar. Laying off a group of employees and letting them drop into the social net for the sake of balancing the books, maintaining stability, and increasing profits looks rude, however many times it is necessary (as the company would capsize later killing even more jobs), and hardly equates to killing people for the sake of killing people. (Granted, taking multi-million dollar salaries is selfish, however that is more an issue of supply and demand anyway - performers command the higher salaries. If the salary is to high, then the CEO will not be hired, or filled by a substandard CEO).
In medicine we make decisions daily - who lives and who dies, based on a group of studies, available resources, estimates and probablilties. These decisions suck. Telling someone “i’m sorry, you’re going to die” is the suckiest part of my job. If i don’t, someone else will do it. Does this equate me with someone who would kill for the sake of killing someone? Of course not - you would never consider it. At the same time, you are doing the same with business people. This is unfair. -
CC, I think what Falk was trying to say is different. He was trying to say CEOs will screw over 50 people to increase their own paychecks. Comparing them to Nazis I admit is a bit harsh.
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CC, I think what Falk was trying to say is different. He was trying to say CEOs will screw over 50 people to increase their own paychecks. Comparing them to Nazis I admit is a bit harsh.
that’s usually the decision of the board of directors (CEO salaries). The better the CEO/reputation, the better the salary.
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Yanny, the U.S.could deter them with it’s great diplomatic power backe d up economically and militarilly.
And no, I am not neccessarilly proud of our history in S. America, it was just a point, that the U.S. is the only country which can balance out regional powers in the regional power’s region.
Falk, Fisternis, CC, schroder’s opponent disagreed with the U.S., Schroeder was anti-U.S.
I think that what we need to do to get the Germans and French on board is to point out that the Iraqis are Semites. :)
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British pro-war policy has a long way to go . . .
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/08/international/europe/08BRIT.htmlthey actually included errors in magazine articles in their cut and paste jobs!!!
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THIS HAS NOT BEEN POSTED BY ME !!
Therefore i
In medicine we make decisions daily - who lives and who dies, based on a group of studies, available resources, estimates and probablilties. These decisions suck. Telling someone “i’m sorry, you’re going to die” is the suckiest part of my job. If i don’t, someone else will do it. Does this equate me with someone who would kill for the sake of killing someone? Of course not - you would never consider it. At the same time, you are doing the same with business people. This is unfair.
No, there is a difference. The person is going to die regardless of what you do, regardless of who tells it. You mix up things here. There are things “noone” can change and things “you” can’t change. But if you don’t try on those “you” things, and noone else does try… then they look like “noone” things, even though they are not, even though “together” you might succeed.
Well, that’s not true. For that matter, everyone is going to die, it’s just a question of when. Physicians decide daily when to discontinue a procedure that may well give a person months of life (admittedly not a great life) in the names of “dignity” and “cost-savings”.
But what we started from is that CEOs and SH have things in common: they are selfish, have to be selfish to be successful, and both have to disregard others…
again not necessarily true. Great CEO’s may be unselfish and successful. Of course we may have to address the question of what “selfishness” is. Is it selfish to want to keep one’s job? Is it selfish to do what your board of directors demands (i.e. increase profits, maintain long-term feasibility etc.)? Many corporations are a few hundred jobs away from unprofitibility - this, long-term, equals death of a corporation, and several thousands of jobs. SH is different. He crosses the line from selfish/successful to evil/hubristic/gonna-die-ism. For him to be successful would require him to be not only less selfish, but to appear to act more rationally. He once did great things for Iraq in spite of the war with Iran, however his attitude and actions are only serving to impoverish his country, and they are doing nothing for his own personal success (unless we measure success by a different bar, of course).
i wonder how far can a simple misunderstanding go :) …. if you read the first post to that, then (from my point) we can stop this part of the thread…
true - this is quite off kilter from the thread. I just spotted a humorous inaccuracy based on leftist ideology with only occassional anecdotal basis in reality and ran with it. Excuse me if this was in appropriate.
with the one thing: I do not accept “If i don’t do it, then someone else will do it” as a personal excuse for anybody for anything. This is submitting to the brainless mass around you, and “proven” to be wrong: Elections wouldn’t work at all if everybody thought like that, environmentalists would never have been so successful. Etc.
This is fair, however again only occassionally. True, we would like people to take the more creative none “employee-liquidation-y” routes, and it would be nice if hardline Americans took a less “let’s blow stuff up today” approach. At the same time, there is the occassion when the lesser of 2 evils is the only apparent “choice”. Let’s not confuse this with choosing evil for evil’s sake.
(and yes - i am using the word “evil” both because it is appropriate in my country, and because i’m all about aggrivating Fin before my next trip to Europe - kind of a 2 for 1 deal, and bonsoir Fin)As well, i posted an answer to YBs post (asking what he thinks is “balance”, how the one candidate for chancellorship who thought of closing the airspace for US warplanes is “pro peace” and the other one who allows that is “anti-US”, asking what the notion about semites should mean)…. this has vanished.
Has it been deleted? And if yes, why? -
Never been much of a Catholic, however i am happy with how far the church as come:
War never inevitable, says Pope
Last Updated Sat, 08 Feb 2003 19:39:21
VATICAN CITY - With talk of a U.S.-led war against Iraq intensifying, Pope John Paul pleaded with the world Saturday to find peaceful solutions to disputes.He said humanity must never give up on diplomacy and fall into the trap of preferring weapons to words.
“We have to multiply efforts. We can’t stop when faced with either terror attacks or the threats that are on the horizon,” the Pontiff said.“We should never resign ourselves, almost as if war is inevitable.”
“Tensions and winds of war” are swirling around the planet, he said, and people are being tempted by “hate and violence.”
Addressing members of an Italian peace group that helped end a civil war in Mozambique 10 years ago, the Pope emphasized that hope and dialogue are always the answer.
Saturday’s remarks were made as the Vatican prepared to step up its own efforts to avoid a war in Iraq.
The pope is scheduled to meet Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tareq Aziz on Friday. There are also reports that UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan will fly to Rome in the next few weeks.
The Roman Catholic Church is opposed to the use of force against Iraq, and has said it would not consider any attack a “just war.”
On Friday, the Pope sat down with German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer before issuing a joint appeal for peace. Germany is one of the leading critics of the White House’s threats to launch a unilateral attack against Baghdad. It wants UN arms inspectors to have more time to assess the threat that Iraq poses to the world.
The head of the Vatican’s justice and peace division, Archbishop Renato Martino, has said the church is unswayed by Washington’s allegations that Iraq poses weapons of mass destruction. He called the claims too vague. Martino has also warned that bombs dropped on Baghdad would undoubtedly spark terrorist reprisals that would kill civilians.
- by the way, does it piss people off when i copy and paste stuff? If it does, then SCREW YOU :evil: :evil: :evil:
:D
- by the way, does it piss people off when i copy and paste stuff? If it does, then SCREW YOU :evil: :evil: :evil:
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I respect the church for speaking out and saying that war is not always supported by the church. However, I don’t think it’s the church’s business to get involved in political affairs. They need to stick to what they do best, and that’s educating people about Catholic morality. Stay away from the Iraq situation, and just maintain their stance as being “pro-peace”, and that’d be the appropriate position for the church. (In my humble opinion, of course.)
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Actually, the church also like feeds starving people and stuff.
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@Deviant:Scripter:
I respect the church for speaking out and saying that war is not always supported by the church. However, I don’t think it’s the church’s business to get involved in political affairs. They need to stick to what they do best, and that’s educating people about Catholic morality. Stay away from the Iraq situation, and just maintain their stance as being “pro-peace”, and that’d be the appropriate position for the church. (In my humble opinion, of course.)
right. Because we know taht this war, rather than being a moral war, is more of a politico-economic war . . . . :-?
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with the one thing: I do not accept “If i don’t do it, then someone else will do it” as a personal excuse for anybody for anything. This is submitting to the brainless mass around you, and “proven” to be wrong: Elections wouldn’t work at all if everybody thought like that, environmentalists would never have been so successful. Etc.
This is fair, however again only occassionally. True, we would like people to take the more creative none “employee-liquidation-y” routes, and it would be nice if hardline Americans took a less “let’s blow stuff up today” approach. At the same time, there is the occassion when the lesser of 2 evils is the only apparent “choice”. Let’s not confuse this with choosing evil for evil’s sake.
Even if you have to decide for the “lesser evil” you are still responsible for your deeds…. am i more american than the US’s neighbor if i insist on each persons own responsibility for their deeds?
And saying “if i didn’t do it…” is nothing but putting that responsibility onto “the other’s” shoulders. It’s like saying “if i had had the choice, then i would have acted differently”. IMO, you always have the choice, but you conciously decide against it (for whatever reasons, maybe because you don’t want to lose your job, maybe you don’t want to be called traitor, whatever).
If you have to decide in a lose-lose situation, you can complain that the world is bad, because there is no good way out, but whatever you decide, you must stand for it. If you choose the lesser evil, you can always say “hey, at least i made the best out of it…”
everything else would be worse than communism :) -
!!!UPDATE!!!UPDATE!!!UPDATE!!!
U.N. weapons inspectors have found a missile program in Iraq which violates the U.N. resolution.
!!!END!!!END!!!END!!!
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U.N. weapons inspectors have found a missile program in Iraq which violates the U.N. resolution.
You are lying.
They found a (one) missile, which probably has a reach of more than 150 km.
I read about a week ago (!)of the two main rocket programs of the Iraq (Al Samoud II and Al Fatah).
In tests, Al Samoud II rocket(s) have flown up to (!, not all of them) 183 km, at least one flew Al Fatah 161 km. Both rocket types don’t have an active steering, and the above data have been mentioned in the weapons declaration (which i thought contained nothing new, if i believed the US and UK). Al Samoud II also has a calibre (possibly the wrong word) of 76 cm, that is more than the 60 cm that the UNSCOM-inspectors prompted/requested (right word?) in 1994 of the Iraq as a limit for their rockets.Now YB, seriously:
If you develop something, can you expect that all you ever do will be less than you expect it to do?
If you build a car that is allowed to go 100 km/h max…. and someone takes it and tests it… and sometimes this car goes faster (for whatever reasons, wind, downhill, good roads), is that a breach?It turns out to be a breach when you start to examine how you can employ these reasons why your rockets go further, your car faster.
If you find something illegal by chance, is that the crime?
I would say it is a crime when you start to look for where this illegal came from and how you can get more of that source. -
Something to think over……
(before someone here mentions the tape as a “proof” for the connection between Bin Ladin and the “socialist”, “infidel”, “Iraqi hypocrit” Saddam)have a look at: http://www.swinke.com/postgraduate/2003/articles/0003_agare.htm
and for those who can speak german :):
http://www.spiegel.de/politik/ausland/0,1518,234863,00.htmlFor those who can’t is summarize that article:
Richard Goldstone, former UN chief prosecutor of the Den Haag Tribunal for war crimes said on the australian TV network ABC, that you US could not call an attack on the Iraq self-defence or, therefore any military action without backing of the UN would be illegal. -
Something to think over……
(before someone here mentions the tape as a “proof” for the connection between Bin Ladin and the “socialist”, “infidel”, “Iraqi hypocrit” Saddam)have a look at: http://www.swinke.com/postgraduate/2003/articles/0003_agare.htm
and for those who can speak german :
http://www.spiegel.de/politik/ausland/0,1518,234863,00.htmlFor those who can’t is summarize that article:
Richard Goldstone, former UN chief prosecutor of the Den Haag Tribunal for war crimes said on the australian TV network ABC, that you US could not call an attack on the Iraq self-defence or, therefore any military action without backing of the UN would be illegal.Wow, some left-wing nutcase thinks America is responsible for breeding terrorism. Big surpise. :roll:
You are lying.
They found a (one) missile, which probably has a reach of more than 150 km.
I read about a week ago (!)of the two main rocket programs of the Iraq (Al Samoud II and Al Fatah).
In tests, Al Samoud II rocket(s) have flown up to (!, not all of them) 183 km, at least one flew Al Fatah 161 km. Both rocket types don’t have an active steering, and the above data have been mentioned in the weapons declaration (which i thought contained nothing new, if i believed the US and UK). Al Samoud II also has a calibre (possibly the wrong word) of 76 cm, that is more than the 60 cm that the UNSCOM-inspectors prompted/requested (right word?) in 1994 of the Iraq as a limit for their rockets.Why are you trying to explain and justify Saddam doing something wrong?
Now YB, seriously:
If you develop something, can you expect that all you ever do will be less than you expect it to do?
If you build a car that is allowed to go 100 km/h max…. and someone takes it and tests it… and sometimes this car goes faster (for whatever reasons, wind, downhill, good roads), is that a breach?It turns out to be a breach when you start to examine how you can employ these reasons why your rockets go further, your car faster.
Oh pleeeeease…why are you being so naive? :roll:
Like Yanny has said repeatedly, Saddam is not stupid. He knows damn straight that putting a rocket with an X size engine in it will make it go X distance.If you find something illegal by chance, is that the crime?
I would say it is a crime when you start to look for where this illegal came from and how you can get more of that source.You’re D A M N straight it’s the crime. :evil:
So now we can’t arrest a guy who possess 100 lbs. of marijuana in his car? We have to catch him getting more of it…? That’s rediculous. -
Falk how could you have read about something that happened yesterday a week ago?
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Falk how could you have read about something that happened yesterday a week ago?
As you might have read, it was in the report. So, it seems that some news agency here brought that news before yesterday.
That’s why i am quite surprised about the waves that Blair makes about it.@D:S:
For those who can’t is summarize that article:
Richard Goldstone …said … military action without backing of the UN would be illegal.Wow, some left-wing nutcase thinks America is responsible for breeding terrorism. Big surpise.
So, first i read from your statement:
Everyone who is not agreeing is “some left-wing nutcase”. Good way to argue, you never can be wrong then, can you?
Did you notice which country i took those news from?
Australia: the country with a government more eager to lick your boots than any other in the world.…the above data have been mentioned in the weapons declaration (which i thought contained nothing new, if i believed the US and UK).
Why are you trying to explain and justify Saddam doing something wrong?
No, i am not. I am am pointing out that the UK and US contradict themselves.
They said the weapons declaration was useless. And now they make up something that was declared there as a news like “Saddam has said nothing about those rockets, we found them…” (with these inefficient inspections? I thought they canÄt find anything, and that’s why we need the war?)
That’s actually two contradictions.
Wasn’t it you who said i should trust their (US/UK) secret agencies? For what reasons? The US has some hidden aims, working towards them, and i have no idea what they could be. All i can do is look what happens and how they behave. And from the moment, it all looks like “get more influence, a strategic base, and oil”. That is not worth being supported by any means.Oh pleeeeease…why are you being so naive?
Like Yanny has said repeatedly, Saddam is not stupid. He knows damn straight that putting a rocket with an X size engine in it will make it go X distance.Oh pleeeeease…why are you being so ignorant of how R&D works?
You know damn staight that putting a rocket with and X+delta size engine in it will make it go X+Delta distance.How many rockets flew further than the 150 km? What is the mean distance of the rockets? What is the spread, what is the standard deviation of the mean distance flown?
If the mean value is more than 150 km, that is a breach (still has been in the report). If more than 1/3 flew more than 150 km, we need to discuss wether it can be counted as a breach or not.
If you find something illegal by chance, is that the crime?
I would say it is a crime when you start to look for where this illegal came from and how you can get more of that source.You’re D A M N straight it’s the crime.
So now we can’t arrest a guy who possess 100 lbs. of marijuana in his car? We have to catch him getting more of it…? That’s rediculousSeems like i didn’t make my point clear.
Assume the following: You yourself by chance find something illegal, you pick it up to examine it.
Wether you commit a crime or not depends on what you decide then:
If you drop it, you are safe.
Think of you find a knife full of blood on the floor. You pick it up, does that make you a murderer?
If on the other hand you follow that illegal thing (say: you try to find out how to make those rockets fly more than 150 km with every try, or take the knife to commit a murder on your own or find the marihuana and go to look where you could get more of it), then you commit a crime.
The purpose behind is of importance.
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