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Post by wdmundt on Jan 17, 2008 18:02:13 GMT -4
Al Qaeda was a threat and actually did attack us. So comparing it to Iraq is not logical and does not help your case. Iraq was not a threat. Iraq did not attack us.
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Jason
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Post by Jason on Jan 17, 2008 18:26:50 GMT -4
Oh, right. It only appears that the White House is encouraging that false impression. And how exactly was the White House encouraging this? The piece is very vague on that particular point. It says that the White House is doing it, and that the public seem to believe it, but examples of how this transfer of blame was actually accomplished are absent. No quotes from the President, no quotes from his staff. How exactly was this impression created? Was anything actually done by the President to create this impression, or did it exist in spite of the President and his efforts?
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Jason
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Post by Jason on Jan 17, 2008 18:28:02 GMT -4
Al Qaeda was a threat and actually did attack us. So comparing it to Iraq is not logical and does not help your case. Iraq was not a threat. Iraq did not attack us. Which is a nice way of dodging my question. If you can't know of a surety if someone is an actual threat is it better to wait and find out only after they've actually struck you, or should you act on the best information you have, knowing lives may be lost if you don't act?
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Al Johnston
"Cheer up!" they said, "It could be worse!" So I did, and it was.
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Post by Al Johnston on Jan 17, 2008 18:50:32 GMT -4
If you can't know of a surety if someone is an actual threat is it better to wait and find out only after they've actually struck you, or should you act on the best information you have, knowing lives may be lost if you don't act? Not when lives will certainly be lost if you do act.
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Post by PhantomWolf on Jan 17, 2008 18:53:04 GMT -4
If you can't know of a surety if someone is an actual threat is it better to wait and find out only after they've actually struck you, or should you act on the best information you have, knowing lives may be lost if you don't act? Not when lives will certainly be lost if you do act. Which is perferable, the loss of 5,000 lives by acting, or the loss of 10 million by not?
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Jason
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Post by Jason on Jan 17, 2008 19:21:37 GMT -4
I should have phrased that better. "Knowing that many lives - the lives of people you have taken an oath to protect and who trust you with their protection - may be lost if you don't act, and that fewer lives - precious lives indeed, but the lives of people who have not entrusted you with a special responsibility to protect them beyond basic human decency - will be lost if you do."
Assume you are at home with your family asleep in the house. You hear a noise downstairs and take your gun with you to investigate. From behind you see a burglar has broken in a window and is now looking about your family room. In the dark you can't see if he is armed, but he definitely is a burglar. Do you wait to confirm that the burglar has a gun before you shoot him yourself, or do you fire first, knowing you will likely kill him but protecting your family from any harm he could do, and protecting your property as well?
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Post by Ginnie on Jan 17, 2008 19:56:20 GMT -4
If you can't know of a surety if someone is an actual threat is it better to wait and find out only after they've actually struck you, or should you act on the best information you have, knowing lives may be lost if you don't act? What lives may have been lost if the U.S. hadn't attacked Iraq again?
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Al Johnston
"Cheer up!" they said, "It could be worse!" So I did, and it was.
Posts: 1,453
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Post by Al Johnston on Jan 17, 2008 20:10:06 GMT -4
I don't have a gun, nor any need for one.
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Jason
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Post by Jason on Jan 18, 2008 0:02:47 GMT -4
I don't have a gun, nor any need for one. Another excellent way of dodging a question. If you were in the situation I described, would you have liked to have a gun?
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Jason
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Post by Jason on Jan 18, 2008 0:03:42 GMT -4
If you can't know of a surety if someone is an actual threat is it better to wait and find out only after they've actually struck you, or should you act on the best information you have, knowing lives may be lost if you don't act?What lives may have been lost if the U.S. hadn't attacked Iraq again? If Iraq had WMDs and had given them to terrorists to use against the U.S. - thousands. Tens of thousands.
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Post by Ginnie on Jan 18, 2008 0:14:04 GMT -4
if? More than the 85,000 civilian casualties so far? www.iraqbodycount.org/database/plus the 4200 Coalition casualties? What would you consider to be the probability that Iraq had WMD in 2003 - 50%? 80%? Wasn't the real reason the war started was to get rid of Sadaam?
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Post by Ginnie on Jan 18, 2008 0:27:06 GMT -4
Assume you are at home with your family asleep in the house. You hear a noise downstairs and take your gun with you to investigate. From behind you see a burglar has broken in a window and is now looking about your family room. In the dark you can't see if he is armed, but he definitely is a burglar. Do you wait to confirm that the burglar has a gun before you shoot him yourself, or do you fire first, knowing you will likely kill him but protecting your family from any harm he could do, and protecting your property as well? Good question. Being in Canada, I would assume he wasn't armed. That might sound risky to you, but I guess you'd have to live here to understand. I don't have a gun, so I couldn't shoot him. I do however have some good metal baseball bats. I might just react without thinking and clobber him with it and ask questions later. On the other hand, maybe the best thing to do would be to take my bat back upstairs, gather my family together in a room, bar the door and call the police. But this kind of situation require quick action without the benefit of pause, examination or determination of events. If I resorted to the bat I would hope I didn't kill him, he would probably be some young kid doing stupid things. But, if I seen someone outside my house on the sidewalk at night that looked suspicious I wouldn't run outside with my bat and clobber him. I'd observe him and maybe call the police if he hung around too long or indicated somehow that he was up to no good. Either way, the U.S. didn't have to make a split decision like in your analogy, they had the benefit of years of observation and intelligence.
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Jason
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Post by Jason on Jan 18, 2008 0:30:42 GMT -4
Well at least you didn't use the over-inflated numbers a lot of critics of the war use. Of those 85,000 civilians, how many were killed by direct US action? Can the US be blamed for terrorists killing Iraqis? (Alright, we can, obviously. But should we be?) How many civilians did Saddam kill over the time of his reign? Estimates I've seen show between 60,000 to 150,000 Shia Muslims, about 1,000 Kuwaitis, more than 100,000 Kurds. And of course he killed a whole bunch of Iranian combatants in the Iran Iraq war - around 730,000 Iranians along with 450,000 of his own troops. That's a lot of people. Granted he had around 25 years to do it in, and the Iraq invasion has only taken 5 so far, but looking at those death tolls leaves no question that getting rid of him was a good thing. Well, since the CIA said it was a "slam dunk" I would say upwards of 80%. Of course - but it probably would not have been fought if the world hadn't believed he had WMDs.
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Jason
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Post by Jason on Jan 18, 2008 0:36:14 GMT -4
Good question. Being in Canada, I would assume he wasn't armed. That does sound risky. He might have a knife or a club of his own, for one thing, and guns are around in Canada. Clobbering him with a baseball bat hard enough to knock him out probably would kill him too. So you turn around and go upstairs, he sees you, knows you've seen him, and decides he can't leave any witnesses. He burns the house down before the police get there and you all die. At least, that's one possibility. Neither would I, but that's not the situation the US was faced with. We knew Saddam was a burglar and a murderer. He wasn't some random passerby on the street. It wasn't a split decision, but it was one made on short terms. If Saddam did have WMDs he was in a position to parcel them out to terrorists at any moment. He was effectively in our house and ready to do damage if we didn't stop him (and if he had had WMDs).
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Post by Ginnie on Jan 18, 2008 0:43:25 GMT -4
Jason, regardless of what Sadaam did, it was still a foreign country. What about other dictators in the world that don't have oil? Or anything else of value...they are left alone so it seems. I'm sure you are well aware of the U.S. governments attempts to topple many, many regimes over the last hundred years. How many of them were justified?
What's weird though is that sometimes the U.S. doesn't get involved and are criticized for that too! Tough spot to be in, isn't it? Hard to say what's right and wrong sometimes? (no, no, let's stay away from that question!)
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