What is Digg?Warning: The Content in this Article May be Inaccurate
Readers have reported that this story contains information that may not be accurate.Sponsored by Dragon Age: Origins
Join the Dragon Age: Origins development team on Facebook view!
facebook.com/DragonAgeOrigins - EA presents BioWare's new dark fantasy epic Dragon Age: Origins. '9/10' from Game Informer.
148 Comments
- Gregd, on 10/12/2007, -14/+91I know in the internet age, this is considered an "old" article (from 2003) but it highlights the point I want to make.
In the POTUS' speech a few days ago, he said that the reason we don't send special forces into Pakistan to hunt Bin Laden is because Pakistan is a sovereign nation. What I haven't heard a lot of people talk about is that Iraq was a sovereign nation under the U.N. under Saddam's rule, yet we invaded them and overthrew is government, under false pretenses no less. - djpearman, on 10/12/2007, -22/+43@Tenlow:
Saddam had WMD? I can't remember any being found.
If you go down the WMD route for arguing the invasion of Iraq, then what about North Korea? They're not making much of a secret of attempting to attain nuclear capabilities. Therefore, we must invade North Korea, too?
Oh wait, they're not sitting on top of the world's largest oil fields.... - dukeinlondon, on 10/12/2007, -5/+26I wonder how long it'll take before this is reported as innacurate. It seems to be the common fate of all articles critical of US foreign policy on digg....
Dugg. - thiver, on 10/12/2007, -35/+54@ Tenlow
You are joking right ?
Sadam had WMD ????? Only proven WMD were in hands of US soldiers when they commited Faludja masacre. Your whole administration should be in Haag for illegal Iraq invasion which resulted in more than 100.000 deaths. - stonecipher, on 10/12/2007, -1/+19@CaptUnderpants
- North Korea has been in violation of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty since 1985.
http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/bgn/2792.htm
- Regimes all over to world, including North Korea, kill/maim/imprison their own people.
http://www.amnesty.org/
- During the period between 1967 and 2000, Iraq was the subject of 69 Security Council resolutions. By comparison, Israel, our closest "ally" in the Middle East, has been the subject of 138 resolutions.
http://www.middleeastnews.com/unresolutionslist.html - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+17How about "Impeach Bush"? I like that one
- fantasticFlan, on 10/12/2007, -3/+18@Tenlow
It doesn't matter how obvious you think you're being with your sarcasm, you have to label it or someone will miss it. - gummih, on 10/12/2007, -6/+20Very good find. He raises many points worth considering.
Here is just one of those points.
"Indeed, we may have sparked a new international arms race as countries move ahead to develop WMD as a last ditch attempt to ward off a possible preemptive strike from a newly belligerent U.S. which claims the right to hit where it wants. In fact, there is little to constrain this President. This Congress, in what will go down in history as its most unfortunate act, gave away its power to declare war for the foreseeable future and empowered this President to wage war at will." - rickcarson, on 10/12/2007, -5/+19@theSpace: The EU pays most of the UN's bills.
The US has habitually been way behind on their payments to the UN.
And compared to Japan, you guys are just a bunch of freeloading bums.
From:
http://www.globalpolicy.org/finance/tables/reg-budget/large06.htm
(Numbers in millions)
We see that the US has the top spot at 425, with 252 still outstanding from previous years.
Japan is in second, with 332 and 0 outstanding from previous years.
Lets consider that on a per capita basis.
According to the World Fact Book:
https://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/rankorder/2119rank.html
The US has 298 people, vs Japan's 127.
So that means that the US pays $1.42 per person (less than your Northern neighbours btw), whereas Japan pays $2.61 per person.
Anyway... according to the Factbook the EU has 457 people, and if we add up the dues for Germany, UK, France, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands and Switzerland (not sure if they are in the EU?) we get $531 with 0 outstanding from previous years.
So therefore the EU pays for the UN. - coolmos, on 10/12/2007, -8/+21@CaptUnderpants
Yeah, somebody did something. That somebody has a higher killrate then Saddam. - mgbuddy, on 10/12/2007, -4/+14Madrid "Train Bombings" -> All terrorist plot dismantled by police in about one week. All the terrorists would have been arrested if they didn't suicide in group just before police raided over them. The bombing planner where identified and arrested in Italy short after. No other people died in the works.
London "Metro Bombings" -> All plot discovered also in about one week, almost all terrorist arrested or identified and in pursuit by Interpol. One civilian killed by error.
9/11 -> Two country occupations and thousands of arrested men, thousands of American soldiers killed, hundreds of civilian people killed. The only terrorists arrested of the plot where mere two or three, and all of them where cached after following German and Spanish investigations. The only name known apart of the ones in the planes, has been Osama Bin Laden.
Great work!! - jutl, on 10/12/2007, -2/+11The UN has to enforce UN resolutions by explicitly granting member states the right to act in their name. In this case the UN had not granted this right to the coalition, and the coalition didn't ask because they knew they would be turned down. In the UK, at least, it has since emerged that the Attorney General Lord Goldsmith gave legal advice to Tony Blair that warned strongly that the coalition's actions would be open to challenge under international law.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+9Believe me Israel got screwed on this deal cause when all is said and done they have two Irans now.
- nocountries, on 10/12/2007, -5/+13The lies over WMD have eventually cost Tony Blair his job. All those poor families who have lost sons and daughters. And for what? Iraq is much more dangerous now than before. Of course Saddam was a dictator, but you can't impose democracy with bombs any more than you can impose socialism with tanks.
- UnderLoK, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8Any government official who now claims that the people were mislead is only looking for votes. They all knew FULL WELL what was going on. It's just sad that so many Americans claim to be just as ignorant as to what was going on in the first place. Unlike many Americans claim now, from the start I knew why we were going into Iraq, didn't and don't claim ignorance and Saddam even gave us the excuse we needed to do it. Right or wrong isn't the point, the point is that Americans by and large seem to be under the impression that our nation has always been the good guy. The bottom line is this, we can be just as evil as the next guy and have been. The US never has been the nice guy people and I hate to break the news to you, but it sure as hell didn't start with Bush.
- rickcarson, on 10/12/2007, -2/+9My bad. According to the map in the CIA world fact book:
https://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/ee.html
Switzerland isn't part of the EU. Okay, knock $20 mil off the total for the EU. But note that of the 6 (of 20+) nations in the EU that were listed in the table, their combined contributions of 511 million still beats the US handily, and the other 16 or so nations not listed on that table would make that higher not lower.
Also: the only other large nation which owes back dues to the UN other than the US was... Brazil.
On the other hand, I think you guys used to owe a lot more. So good for you for paying off most of that debt. Please keep it up. - Tenlow, on 10/12/2007, -16/+23Not one single person knows what sarcasm is?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarcasm
Read that, then re-read my comment. It will make sense, honest. - Arancaytar, on 10/12/2007, -11/+17You people need a new sarcasm sensor. By the time you read "I wouldnt expect a little thing like the constitution to stop him from trying to run again", you should have noticed it.
So Pakistan is a sovereign nation, but Iraq was not. What is more, to hear Bush tell it, now it is.
I do wonder about the logic... - Chupatumama, on 10/12/2007, -2/+8This is so pathetic in so many ways, its not even funny.
The US has invaded, bombed over 30 countries since WW2. Thats not counting the ones they helped overthrow. So Iraq is NOT an exception. Hell, we just have to ask taht Byrd nitwit to go back just 4 years when the democrats committed the previous war crimes when the bombed Yugoslavia in 1999 and that was to support what the CIA had called in 1998, the LARGEST, best armed (US of course) terrorist organization in the world, the KLA, which controls 60-90% of the european heroin trade. Israel was supported recently because two soldiers were kidnapped. The KLA had killed over 350 police just the previous year. Obviously, it helps when you kill cops and the US supports you.
And just like Iraq, you need a cover story: here is was the Rambouillet peace accords failure (!) where US diplomats where having croissants with criminals wanted by INTERPOL and the media flash point was the Racak massacre (!) which was highlighted by US envoy WIlliam Walker who is best known for the great work he did with the south american death squads. The 'massacre' was quickly shown by Finnish forensics specialists to have been a setup using the dead from a previous firefight and putting on civilians clothing only accentuated the fact that the clothes found didnt have matching bullet holes. But hey, these things dont have to be brilliant, you just have to find the mouth pieces to promote the lies.
The Balkans lies were ever worse than Iraq because the US used the presence of tens ot thousands of muhajeddins to their use (the US refused to have the nice muslims sign the first 4 peace plans that were signed by 2 of the 3 warring factions.) Bin Laden was active and present in the balkans having even received a bosnian muslim passport and the US helped them install two bases in europe.
Many of the 9/11 planners we found out had bosnians connections (as well as the dozen or so Guantanamo residents we picked up there), the only serious arrest for the Madrid bombing was caught travelling from Bosnia and and three of the last Al Quaeda leaders in Saudi Arabia were bosnian holy war veterans including one of the latter ones who came back home on a bosnian passport and bosnian muslim wife.
For that reason, what was done in 1999 was an even bigger crime because of the blowback. If we had any justice, the democrats who were in charge then would be marched on the white house lawn and shot on national TV.
If you lived in countries were the US supports Bin Laden's work, how much do you think now that they cry over our cries of terrorism? After suffering through hordes of these maniacal killers, you think people have compassion for our dead?
Under the cover of the nice muslim story (the muslim president of Bosnia was jailed not even a decade earlier for writing his Islamic Declaration in which he stated that islam cannot live in parralel to any religious or civil structure, that IT must be overruling law that controls society. How freaking charming, non?), we supported the use of Bin Laden and his headchoppers because it served US policies but like in communist countries, we get this collective amnesia which tends to overlook such things.
Hell, in the last democratic convention, the old Clintonistas even brought in old KLA terrorists to show off. Imagine if the republicans had invited Arafat.
Everywhere in europe, the name Gen. Wesley Clark is known for his incompetence...here in this country, he is lauded by democrats as a man of peace.
With over a million gypsies, turks, serbs and others chases from their ancestral homelands since the 1980's, the US has supported throughout the decades these thugs because of stategic importance, nothing else.
So please, excuse me while I piss on Byrd.
Iraq WAS NOT an exception but a continuation of US politics...no matter which party is in power. (as much as Bush is a moron, he bombed LESS countries than Clinton did)
But that's what we like to believe: that one party is good while the other is bad when in reality there is no difference. We saw the sad reality during the last elections when you couldnt tell the difference between Bush or Kerry's foreign policy. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7I seem to remember we were assured by Iraqi dissident refugees that Saddam had WMDs etc and that our governments (US, UK) seemed to enthusiastically accept their claims. What became of these people? I have heard nothing about them since the disastrous invasion. And what of our incompetent "intelligence" agencies? I have heard of no one getting fired or even reprimanded.
- ioral, on 10/12/2007, -5/+11@Tenlow
> we couldnt be bothered with such things as international law and the truth
that was amusing... we do pretty well without our /sarcasm tags, don't we?
I, for one, welcome our buried sarcastic overlords ;-) - frednofr, on 10/12/2007, -19/+25It wasn't unprovoked. US plane enforcing the UN mandated north and south no-fly zone were getting shot at. The cease fire from 1991 was broken and legally, the US or any member of the coalition from 1991 had the right to kick Saddam out of his palaces.
So, headline not only terribly biased, and not in "political opinion" caterogy, and plain simple inaccurate.
now, mod me down... - AhmedOmran, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6We're talking about the biggest and stupidest political blunder in recent history.
- norrin, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5These replies are making my point for me. They're just more detracting of the Bush policy, which I'm stipulating may not be the right course of action. I don't want to talk about oil, or how the deaths of 45,000 Iraqi people is wrong. Again, I'm just asking for someone to propose an alternate solution to problems in the Middle East.
- Mosatii, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6...
You just reafirmed why it can't possibly be innacurate. Its an opinion. - sokz, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Nice comment. Now that I think about it, it SURE is pretty ridiculous for the politics section to be heavy on one of the biggest incidents in recent history.. ridiculous..
- Jadey, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5"may have been lured"? It seemed like most of the American public were chomping at the bit to go kick "towelhead's" ass. Bush's ratings were still high back then- most Americans didn't need to be lured. They just needed extremely questionable evidence that most of the rest of the world discounted as non-substantial in order to justify their warmongering. Then when American soldiers started dying, the public starting changing their tunes. Soldier's dying in war?! Say it ain't so! The U.S. media doesn't focus nearly as much on how many innnocent Iraqi's have been killed.
Any objective American wasn't fooled. You went in, you're in a war now for the right reasons or the wrong. At least try and leave the place in better shape than you found it. - sokz, on 10/12/2007, -6/+10It's pretty scary, again, when people say things like "your own movement." Just because someone opposes the Iraq "situation" does not make them part of the Lib "movement."
Again, more of the WITH US OR AGAINST US ***** which is doing nothing but dividing everybody to ridiculous extremes. - fantasticFlan, on 10/12/2007, -3/+7"Regarding WMDs, I find it hilarious that all you Libs seem to forget how leaders of your own movement were saying that they were there too... convenient memory loss."
Yeah, it's very convenient when people believe a president who turns out to be lying. - 60days, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4A few thousand dollars in political manuevering vs. tens of thousands of lives and direct destabilisation of the region. Good call.
- JackHererUK, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4All this, "he obviously had WMDs but then got rid of all trace of them cos he knew he was going to be invaded" rhetoric is funny because all the politicians maintained that when the invasion of Iraq had taken place, they would find WMDs and they would be vindicated. They also said that the state of the WMDs were such that they presented a immediate and real danger and we had to invade because Saddam could unleash them at any time. The politicians did not stand up and make statements like "we know he has had WMDs cos he used them against the Kurds but we fully expect him to have gotten rid of all trace of them by the time we invade cos he obviously know swe are coming". The assertion that he had WMDs and they presented a real and present danger and that he miraculously got rid of them as soon as he realised invasion was inevitable is simply ridiculous.
- fantasticFlan, on 10/12/2007, -3/+6If you see a guy with some drugs, wait 10 years, send in the police who thoroughly search his house and find no drugs, can you invade his house and expect to find drugs?
- Waredgo, on 10/12/2007, -3/+6Oh, here is a novel thought....
Isn't this what the majority of the American public has been saying all along? - Koosebane, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5From an article in 2001:
"Last year, the Pentagon recorded 366 violations or provocations by the Iraqis in the two no-fly zones -- 221 in the south and 145 in the north."
"U.S. and British forces track attacks against Iraqi targets in the zones as "strike days" and count them separately in the two zones. In 2000, they recorded 80 strike days -- 32 in the south and 48 in the north."
"In 1999, 557 violations and provocations were recorded in the south and 143 in the north. Coalition warplanes struck on 61 days in the south and 102 days in the north."
http://archives.cnn.com/2001/WORLD/meast/02/16/no.fly.zones/
Congress specifically mentions the "thousands of attacks" against the USA committed by Iraq in the bipartisan Joint Resolution that authorized the use of force.
Another blast from the past from the CNN archives:
~ The Unfinished War: A Decade Since Desert Storm ~
http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2001/gulf.war/
http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2001/gulf.war/unfinished/war/index.html
I'm not sure why anyone would expect learned people who've been following world affairs for more than a decade to buy the whole "Saddam never provoked us" story. It is undeniably false. - GMorgan, on 10/12/2007, -3/+6It's just a case of incompetance then.
- GopherChucks, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Indeed. People who might be questioned by someone outside of our government about their precise knowledge of the location and ownership of WMD? That'd be absurd! Everyone's failing here.
- Koosebane, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3"No WMD were found, so a new reason had to be found."
Actually, Congress spelled out every single reason for authorizing force in Iraq in their bipartisan Joint Resolution. It was immediately made available to the public by PBS.
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/middle_east/july-dec02/joint_resolution_10-11-02.html
It is the definitive legal document that specifically spells out every reason. The humanitarian crisis, every broken treaty, the attempted assassination of a US President, the thousands of attacks on US servicemen and women, the prior use of WMD on his own people, the unprovoked invasion of Kuwait, the ties to terrorist organizations other than al Qaeda, and the presence of members of al Qaeda in Iraq.
The reasons anyone heard on the nightly news are NOT the only ones given. - xutopia, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Then go out and vote!
- gnomicide, on 10/12/2007, -5/+7The assertion that, since Iraq had no WMD's, the invasion was conducted under false pretenses is a logical fallacy called a "red herring".
To prove that the war was conducted under false pretenses, you would need to prove that the Bush administration was aware that no WMDs were present in Iraq when they pressed for war. There is no evidence that they believed this to be the case. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -11/+13@CaptUnderpants - ummm, last time I checked the UN WAS the U.S. Who do you think pays most of the bills? And fortunately the world doesn't operate according to U.S. demands. The UN is actually more of a check and balance of US domination in the world anymore. So of course alot of hawkish Republicans wanting more control over the Middle East and its vast oil riches would love the American public to think that the UN is worthless, especially when it tries to keep the U.S. from brandishing its sword at everyone that pisses it off.
- washingtonydc, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I was and am very much against the war and how it has been waged, but I do not buy into the sovereignty argument. One can argue, perhaps in a Jeffersonian model of sovereignty, that when a ruler or government objectively acts against his own people by perpetuating internationally recognized crimes against the public, then the leader has ceded the shield of sovereignty.
Not saying this justifies the war. - HarryBauzonia, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3Left-wing propaganda site.
...and they even misppelled Senator Byrd's name. Marked as inaccurate. - counterplex, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4@socokoolaid,
You might want to point the POTUS to certain African dictatorships or the Apartheid government of Israel or any number of South American or South-East Asian nations next. Looks like there are a lot of leaders that, in your view, would lead any reasonable person to believe the said leaders have WMD. Heck it would probably have been cheaper to attack e.g. Venezuela which has oil _and_ is closer than Iraq and I'm sure we can find something wrong with Hugo Chavez.
And please remember that while bringing up Hitler is one of the "tips" for winning an argument, it doesn't work if the other side knows about those argument winning tips too. - omaryak, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2He used them in 1988 during the Iran-Iraq war. Bush used misleading rhetoric in his 2003 State of the Union when he said "he gasses his own people." It was a one-time occurrence, and that was back when we were still friends with him. To say that Saddam had weapons in 1988 to mean that he had them when we invaded is to ignore the years of inspections and destroyed weapons capacity during the Gulf War that the Saddam regime endured. The question should not have been turned to 1988; it should have been turned to the five-year period between 1998 and 2003 that inspectors were not in Iraq. It's pretty clear now that wasn't nearly enough time to reconstitute a weapons program of any kind.
On a side note, that Newsweek article incorrectly stated that 50,000 people died from the use of chemical weapons in Iraq. The magazine issued a correction next issue stating that the correct number was 5,000, but by then most people already believed the hype. - AhmedOmran, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4@esko:
And then nobody will give a ***** about us middle easterners having lost one major source of income then sinking into more poverty that we're already in. - TheSak, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2That's really great that you think of the US as the world's parent. Thank you for showing us the sort of thought process that's really going on.
- omaryak, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2"The point was Saddam was a murderous toarcher of his own people on the scale of Hitler."
And to make that point is to diminish the memory of the Holocaust. 6 million Jews vs. 400,000 Iraqis. Take your pick. There is also a difference between racial and political persecution. If Saddam had an analogue it was Stalin – not very palatable, but we worked with him to win World War II. For some reason we have no problem working with a military dictator in Pakistan when he serves our own needs either. - mbeckfl, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Source: Nuclear Age Peace Foundation
enough said... - matrixarchitect, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2The enduring and classic counter to this argument of illegal invasion is that the United States and NATO (including those who choked at the thought of freeing Iraq) also "illegally" invaded Bosnia-Hertzegovina (sp) to save about ten thousand muslims there. No UN resolution = illegal right? I don't see even the most leftist reactionaries at this forum posting stories about that little invasion's "illegality".
- dswinscoe, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2@norrin: perhaps we could finally just do what the world demands: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UN_Security_Council_Resolution_242 - "withdrawal of Israeli armed forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict."
UN delegates have known what needs to be done since 1967, so I'd like to suggest that we ponder less on "what," since the more pertinent and pressing question should be, "when." As in:
When will Israel and its protector, the US, finally begin to take responsibility for treaties signed and reneged?
When will the US and Israel honor the international laws touted and then blatantly broken?
When will the US and Israel finally set an "honorable" course to correct the decades of flagrant subjugation of the Palestinians, and instead press for justice?
The list is long, so long in fact that US-Israel and Palestine rhetoric sounds more like a playground argument: "Resolution 242 Now, Palestinians demand. "You didn't say 'all,'" Israel banters. "Then we'll fight you, " they say. "Not without weapons," we drone, screeching, "Resolution 1559 Now." And back and forth it goes, from one resolution to another; meanwhile, the list has grown ad nauseum: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_UN_resolutions_concerning_Israel_and_Palestine
So, if you're still unsure what the proper steps in the Middle East should be, just read through the list of US-ignored/vetoed and blocked resolutions over the last 6 decades. Any more questions?
Well ... maybe just one or two more: do you think that the Bush New World Order Operations in Iraq have made any progress toward a resolution of the Middle East dilemma? Or have the last 3 years just been another grand distraction, as the US overthrows it's 14th sovereign state in the last century, all in the name of Democracy? -
Show 51 - 100 of 148 discussions
© Digg Inc. 2009
— Content created and posted by Digg users is