Americans, get out your draft cards

[kroner]

@10087

2) This is a joke. Not only have you failed to consider that party platforms changed over time, and that each president, from either party, finds themselves in a unique situation which you can't consider out of context, but you also should realize that the actions of past presidents in no way indicates the probable actions of future ones. What's more important than fellow party members is a candidates own platform.

3) This is more of a joke. Yes, Michael Moore will tell you there's no connection between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda. So will every other person in the world besides the Bush administration. The FBI and CIA have practically admitted that they made up all the evidence that pointed to a connection, the UN specifically declared that their own investigation showed no connection. What does Bush do after all this? "I firmly believe that there's a connection between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda." No evidence provided to back it up. Nothing at all. Al Qaeda is an Islamic fundamentalist organization. Saddam Hussein was a secular dictator who hated Muslim extremists. Bush is talking out of his ass and suckers like you eat it up.

[jeslange]

Regarding Kroner's response to Pirog's disgust over western bombing practices:

While non-combatants are sure to be affected by war, Pirog's comments would be ill-served to be written off simply as an inevitable aspect of conflict and not given further analysis.

Attckers are supposed to do a number of things to eliminate/severely limit the negative effects on the civilian members of the victim state.

Some general examples:
-if a bridge is targeted to restrict movement of host country military, it is supposed to only be damaged to such an extent that it's inaccessibility is short-lived. (One way to do this would be to take out a small enough portion of the bridge that boards could be put across the gap for people to walk across, but would still keep tanks, etc. from crossing.

-If a targeted area is in or near a non-combatant population, leaflets are supposed to be dropped warning of an imminent attack, or some other such way of communicating the impending threat is supposed to be achieved.

-If "dual use" facilities are targeted, the damage is supposed to be only temporary and not too severe. So, you're not supposed to completely obliterate a dual use facility.

-Devestating the morale of a civilian population is a big no-no nowadays, due in large part to the lessons learned from kicking Germany's people while they were down, and the subsequent arise of new and nastier problems. Affecting food and water supplies is against the modern conduct of war. (Going after food and water supplies of combatants is ok, but not if it is determined that civilians depend on those same caches.

I'm not implying that I took your comment to mean that you're "not concerned" or "shrugging it off" or anything, but rather suggesting that while war and negative impact on civilians go hand in hand enough that the terms could almost be used interchangeably, there is alot of room to look at the topic further from either a legal, moral, or other stnadpoint.

[Pirog]

jeslange>

Yes, and therefore it's disgusting that the West doesn't respect those conducts of war. They bombed both the civilian power plants and their water station, according to the documentary because they hoped that the people would revolt against Saddam when their ordinary functions of life broke down.

I knew that the clinical war wasn't as effective as the military claimed, but the documentary was a real shock. They talked to an American "human shield" that said that she had dug out "pellets" (lack of better words) from cluster bombs dropped over their residental area and so on.

One of the most interesting parts was that much evidence pointed towards that western politicians urged Saddam Hussein to start scramble his weapons along the border of Kuwait because they lowered their prices for oil, threatening western oil companies and countries like Saudi Arabia.
The ambassador of Britain or America (I forgot) publically said that border conflicts in the Middle East was of no concern to the Western world...but instead of a borde conflict Saddam invaded the whole country.

I guess he thought he had just a bit to much support from the West...

[jeslange]

Would you please restate the third paragraph more clearly, and also provide some examples that you can recall from the documentary? I didn't understand what you meant very well. The rest was clear to me.

[Pirog]

Well...I'm not very good on econimical matters, but according to the documentary Kuwait suddenly claimed to have about 50 % more oil resources than they had admitted earlier and started dumping the prices to compete with other oil countries like Saudi Arabia and Iraq, overstepping the quota agreed upon by Opec.

Apparently this also hurt western oil companies, who according to the documentary more or less asked Saddam Hussein to start scrambling his weapons along the Kuwait border to make them cut down on their production. They publically said that "middle eastern border conflicts" of lower scale was of no concern of the western world, thus making it possible for Saddam to start scrambling...but instead he invaded the whole country.

As I said...I'm far from an expert on oil matters or economy, so I'm afraid I can't explain in better detail...but you can look it up for yourself if you like.

The person in the documentary was Colin Campbell, former oil executive (FINA) an founder of the Association for the Study of Peak Oil (ASPO)

Here are som links I found:

http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/w ... pbell.html
http://www.safehaven.com/article-1561.htm
http://www.btinternet.com/~nlpwessex/Do ... 003why.htm
http://www.crestonepeaceworkers.org/new ... riraq.html

(I haven't really checked the links out that carefully...only parts of them...and I haven't looked if the sources are believable.)

[ephiroll]

Guess the last head was indeed one two many...

http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/meast/07/ ... index.html