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Originally Posted by willravel
I forgot to thank you for starting a new thread.
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You are welcome, my apologies for forgetting about this for so long.
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If the UN rules it so, yes. They didn't. We didn't follow the procedures of the security council that we are a part of. We tried to get the UN to support us, but they didn't. The US had the right to say, "They broke the rules, so we need to do something", and Poewll said as much to the security council....right before they voted no.
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The UN already ruled it so. That was SC 687. It laid down the specific conditions under which the Iraqi government could expect to survive without the continuation of hostilities.
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It suggests the use of misinformation to characterize Iraq as a threat so that they could try to squeak through on the second UN Charter situation, the imminent threat thing.
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The misinformation is a moot point, any reasonable person would agree that the Iraqis were not adhering to the strictures of 687. Again, legal but ill-advised.
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That's not how resolutions work. Resolutions are put in place, and if tyhey are broken, then the security council determines what response is appropriate. They didn't, and the US doesn't have the power to legally bypass the security council unless we are threatened.
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The appropriate response is built into the resolution itself, read the full text of any of the SC resoultions I have posted. For example:
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Originally Posted by UNSC678
Authorizes Member States co-operating with the Government of Kuwait, unless Iraq on or before 15 January 1991 fully implements, as set forth in paragraph 1 above, the above-mentioned resolutions, to use all necessary means to uphold and implement resolution 660 (1990) and all subsequent relevant resolutions and to restore international peace and security in the area;
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Bold supplied by me.
This is the way it works:
UN 660 - Tells Iraq to get out of Kuwait.
UN 678 - Authorizes force.
UN 687 - Ceasefire. This suspends, not reovkes, the right of member states to use force based upon certain requirements of Iraq.
UN1441 - States that the requirements have not been met, therefor the suspension of use of force is lifted.
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Exactly, so the UN security council was trying to figure out what action was the best. Invasion was not the decision of the council, only a minority of it's members.
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The security council decided that in 1991, and have offered no superceding resolutions since.
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Hitler didn't have to cheat to win. Not seeing the similarities, though obviously at different levels, doesn't make sense to me. No, no genocide (outside of Darfur and Iraq) is going on, but habeas corpus is gone, the Patriot act reads like an updated version of the Enabling Act, and we're acting unilaterally placing or military where it doesn't belong. No, we're not Nazi Germany, but we're closer to it now than we were 10 years ago.
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Gimme a break, we have no part in the genocide in Darfur (other than our passive acceptance, and the use of the word is innapropriate for Iraq. If you wish to use inaction as a benchmark, the Clintons administraion is obviously a bunch of brownshirts for allowing the Rwandan genocide to proceed unnopposed.
Habeas corpus is alive and well, the judicial branch is sorting that out right now. The Patriot Act reads nothing like the enabling act, and will soon be history at any rate. The US has always acted unilateraly when it served our interests (or the interests of the administration in power). China, Vietnam, Iran, Grenada, and Libya have all felt the brunt of our unilateral action (and those just since the founding of the League of Nations). Of course, if you will refer to my arguments above you will see that the attack on Iraq was not unilateral.
So again, your comparison of the United States with Nazi Germany is as distastful as it is insulting. The Germans put the Nazi party into power, allowed themselves to be duped by the Riechstag fire, and then either actively participated in or turned a blind eye to the military conquest, rape, and pillage of the continent of Europe, including the systematic murder of as many as 11 million people. The United States invaded Iraq under the authority of UN678 and UN1441.
If you can draw a parrallel there, more power to you.