Mi: MoonTroll - I directed nothing away from the point being made. The proposition being put forth was that Iraq wasn't a threat at all, not just to the USA but to the region as well. I answered that question and it must have been in a way that caused discomfort because the typical responses all came flowing out.
Mo: Monkael, MoonTroll here. You are right, I see not that Sandorski said Iraq wasn't a threat to anybody so you were on topic there. Your answer, however, like etech's fails to address the different ways we use the word threat. As I said, there is no country where threats cannot exist. Your application of the term means we have a legitimate right to destroy all life on earth living outside our borders. It is an irrational and fear filled definition of threat. So while on topic, I now agree, your examples do not rise to the level of threat needed to justify preemptive war.
Mi: As for your babble about acting on fears, I would point out that the same argument can be made on the other side - ignoring reality and doing nothing. Hitler was appeased and world leaders tried to pretend that the threat went away.
Mo: As for your example on my babble about fears, you might read the first part of my Sig. As for ignoring reality and doing nothing, irrational fear is ignoring reality too. The opposite of non paranoid thinking isn't having your head in the sand in some other part of the spectrum in which fear operates, fight or flight, it's seeing objectively and acting accordingly. In this case it's analyzing the level of threat and acting appropriately to that level.
Mi: Just about every country in the world believed that Iraq had WMD before the war. The arguments in the UN were not if he had them but the best way to deal with it - a war or continued sanctions and monitoring. Given that the belief was that there were WMD - a belief shared by the previous administration so it wasn't like Bush's administration just made it up - then the justification was still there.
Mo: Hehe, you fail to include a vital fact here that changes everything. The debate wasn't about war vs continued sanctions and monitoring as it had gone on before. The inspectors were back in Iraq and weren't finding anything. There were no WMD being discovered and there was growing evidence they were not there. That is why Bush was in such a rush. There was mounting evidence that his rational for war was a lie. Only after the attack and the presence of 130 thousand troop inspectors did the pleas start coming that we need more time to find the WMD. You pretend the war was about threats when it is obvious that it was about PNAC conquest now being justified as a humanitarian effort. This is the real reality, my friend.
Mi: You, once again, are trying in your typical insulting manner to claim that you have some sort of higher insight and that you're delving to the heart of the psychological disease that drives us poor blighted souls. Screw you. You would be a Vichy French sending Jews off to be gassed because the possibility that they're not just going to an internment camp is just an irrational fear.
Mo: Hehe, talk about irrational fear and insulting. Now in theory I'm a Jew killer. Are you Jewish? For some reason I get the impression you are. Part of my higher insight, I guess. Again, this sort of charge is one that I'm totally used to having seen it a million times. If you know anything at all, all you have to do is look at your own life. When anybody who knows anything gets around those who don't they always get charged with being elite. It is the nature of fools to ridicule the wise. By the way I learned all this from a Jew.
Mi: You can continue to blind yourself to the fact that Iraq had access to billions and had are ready made and used chemical weapons in the past. I have no problem at all seeing Iraq using that capability to make an attack o a US city. You wouldn't need a missile to do that.
Mo: This is true of many many countries but we aren't going to war with them. The war was not about WMD. Had Iraq used a chemical weapon on US soil they would have been obliterated. That is why we have terrorism as an enemy and not nations. The only way an enemy can survive against us today is to hide among the innocent. Only a nut case is willing to kill everybody to get to a few.
Terrorism is a disease of the soul, the feeling of worthlessness so deep that your rage creates an entitlement that you have the right to kill others. As soon as it is expresses it creates more of the exact same kind of hate, the feeling that you have a right to do anything to get even. Humanity is caught in an endless cycle of insanity and will be till the time comes when hearts become large enough to say stop, this is not what it means to love, I was not born with this hate. I do not have to feed this hate all the thoughts of my mind. The sun is warm and shining just as it was the first day.