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Originally posted by ctembreull
But that's exactly what this war was. With the Bush Administration's justifications for this war falling like a hard rain, it becomes increasingly clear that whatever other supposed reasons we had to go to war, political and economic gain ranked highly among them. After all, the WMD argument has gotten hazier and hazier with each passing week, the nuclear weapons argument has been quite thoroughly debunked, and the al-Quaeda connection theory has been essentially gutted.
It's called a "jaundiced eye." I note with some amusement, however, your staunch reliance upon one and only one valid argument: liberation. This might serve quite well for you, but it does not serve well for the international community or for the facts of the case laid by the United States before the United Nations. Our case was based entirely upon the putative existence of weapons of mass destruction; a case which has since been proven to be more ideology than substantive fact. Where was Colin Powell standing before the General Assembly pleading for the liberation of Iraq? Where were the impassioned appeals to the U.N. Commission on Human Rights? They were nowhere, which tells me that if liberation was among the reasons for this invasion, it was pretty damned far down the totem pole.
Why do I bring this point up? Because you consistently play the "liberation card." But this war and the public support behind it was never, not ever based upon the prospective liberation of Iraq. It was all about the weapons of mass destruction. With that justification having been revealed as deeply flawed with an increasing likelihood of deliberate deceit, the evidence clearly and increasingly weighs in favor of the attempted gain of political and economic capital by the Bush Administration.
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To *me*, it was about liberation; ignoring UN resolutions; blaming the US for starving Iraqi kids, while at the same time spending tons of money that should have been used for food on building palaces everywhere... well, the list goes on and on, but I won't bore you with it. You seem to imply that each and every person that supported this war *only* did it because of the WMD issue. That's simply incorrect, if only because your talking about a large group of people, each with their own thoughts. Likewise, the US case was not *only* about the WMDs. The WMDs were highlighted because they seemed like a good way to get popular support. The rest of the arguments were still there for everyone to see.
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And we killed between 6087 and 7798 (the most well-researched estimates I'm aware of), in three months. And those are just the confirmed dead. There are also estimated to be more than 20,000 wounded. That's an overall casualty rate approaching 30,000 in three months. Would you like me to help you with the math? Your other statistics, by the way, do nothing whatsoever to exculpate the United States for these deaths and injuries.
What an absolutely repugnant attempt at justification. Tell me: how, exactly, does that make the ones we killed any less dead?
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Wrong. WE didn't kill some 6000 to 8000 civilians. A total of 6000 to 8000 were killed by BOTH SIDES. Quite a difference. If you want to know *why* it is different, I suggest you read back a bit, and look at my statements regarding the Iraqis shooting their own people.
And the fact that we saved 20,000 a year does not make anyone less dead. I never claimed that, nor would I ever claim that. I already stated that I feel sorry for the families of the victims. However, how do *you* justify not invading Iraq? How do *you* justify standing at the side-line watching Saddam kill 20,000 a year? How exactly would you explain to the families of *those* victims that you oppose intervention because of international law or "sovereignty"?
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To balance out your consistent lowballing, that's why.
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Funny - my consistent lowballing was designed to balance out your consistent exaggeration.
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You've still not addressed my central point. We declared that Saddam Hussein possessed several hundred tons in total of multiple, specific types of weapons of mass destruction, including VX, sarin, and botulinum toxin, as well as the means to fabricate and deploy nuclear weapons. We required him to prove that he did not, in fact, possess them. Given that we did not actually know what we claimed to know, how is our demand that Saddam Hussein produce evidence of the destruction of these materials anything less than a logical fallacy? After all, if he didn't actually have it, if we were in fact incorrect as the current preponderance of evidence would suggest, then he couldn't bloody well prove that he'd destroyed it, now, could he?
Nobody can prove a negative. Saddam Hussein cannot prove something has been destroyed if it never existed in the first place. I'm not saying this isn't the case, but I am saying that it very well may be, given the revelations of the weakness in and erroneousness of our WMD arguments.
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I did address that. You see, the UN had a list of weapons that Saddam had after the Gulf War. Shortly before the war, we had a list of what was destroyed. The two lists do not match - there are items that were there to begin with, which might not have been destroyed, because Saddam couldn't prove it. That is something the US knew, the UN knew, Hans Blix knew, and Saddam knew. It was up to Saddam to prove that he had indeed destroyed those remaining WMDs, because the UN had *no* reason whatsoever to trust him on his word.
And there you go again: the "logical fallacy" card... it's simply not true!
Let me restate my counter-argument:
We know he had certain amounts of certain WMDs. He has *proven* he destroyed some of it. Therefore, he still had to prove the destruction of the remainder of those WMDs. There is not one bit of "proving a negative" in there. It's in fact proving a positive: Saddam has to prove that he destroyed *everything* that he had.
Now, if the US suddenly demands that Saddam destroys "the uranium he bought from country X", it is up to the US to prove that he actually bought that. It turned out to be false, therefore Saddam didn't have to prove that. If he *was* supposed to prove that, *then* we would have a logical fallacy. As it stands, we don't.