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Do you reckon he drives a little 3 wheel reliant van and lives in a Peckham high rise with his handwringing leftie younger brother and senile old Uncle(Marcus?) I can just imagine him sitting at his computer on the 17th floor ranting about lentil eaters from Islington and thanking Mrs Thatcher for getting him where he is today with her groovy capitalism.

Whats wrong with lentils Dibs? Have you never had a chicken dansak? Its the lentils that maketh it taste so cushty.

Magoo - Not A Handwringer But Quite Partial To Currys With Lentils In

Well, I did always wonder where Sullivan got the idea from..........

Jack Torrence wrote:

"They (the USA) have looked at the list and started at the top."


Really?? So Iraq is a greater threat to world peace than North Korea? One of them has nuclear weapons... and guess what... it's not Iraq!

They looked at the list and decided that Iraq would be an easy victory to set the ball rolling... only Rumsfeld forgot quite how many weapons he sold Saddam 20 odd years ago, and with the typical big-headed swagger of the playground bully over-ruled his military advisors as to how many troops would be needed to do the job and has therefore placed even more young men and women at risk than need be.

The greatest threat to world peace is actually the USA and its need for oil. 60% of the USA's annual petroleum needs are supplied from abroad. Most of that from Venezuala and Saudi Arabia. Iraq has the second largest oil reserves in the world, that thanks to sanctions havn't been touched for the last 12-15 years. With a strike at the Venezualan refineries and the Saudi regime looking more and more unstable (and payrolling Al-Queda by the way!), the Americans HAVE to ensure a secure source of oil from somewhere.

Even if, for the sake of not wanting to look greedy, no American oil companies are involved, the freeing up of such reserves onto the world market will help stabilise oil prices for a few more years. The sad thing is, this is just a short term solution... 4 to 7 years max. Until the early 80's we were discovering more barrels of oil than were being produced. Now it's the other way round. New oil field discoveries lag way behind our needs and consumption. Anyone who says this war is not about oil is either a bare-faced liar or incredibly stupid and naive.

You are right to chastise those who said nothing whilst Saddam gassed millions of his own people... and that INCLUDES the USA. But back then the USA didn't depend on outside sources for its oil as it does today. Yes getting rid of Saddam will in the long term be good for Iraq and its people, as well as for its neighbours, but especially good for the American economy and its thirst for oil.

If the USA is really so worried about "weapons of mass destruction" why is it the largest producer of such things? And why has it broken virtually every treaty it has ever signed, starting with the Hague Convention and going through all the various SALT and SALT II treaties? How come the USA can declare an Iraqi missile that travels 120 miles instead of 90 miles a weapon of mass destruction, but not the cluster bombs or the 5000lb bombs it's been dropping recently?

When it suits the USA to use the international rule of law, it uses it as its excuse to do what it feels is necessary. But when necessary it breaks the international rule of law anyway.

The Bush administration was all het up about maybe France using its veto in the UN Security Council... were you aware that the USA has used its veto more times than all the other permanent members put together? Usually to save Israel's arse.

Mugabe is just as evil a man as Saddam, but there's no oil in Zimbabwe, so the West does precious little. But you can bet your life if ever they stopped imports of Coca-Cola or Nike into the country, the Americans would be in there like a shot to "protect democracy"!

The only thing that surprised me about 11th September 2001 was that something like it hadn't happened sooner, and the sheer scale and (hollywood-like) bravado of the operation. But in every other the way American society had it comming.

By the way Jack, I don't normally reply to posts from those who don't have the guts to show who they are, but your misinformed small mindedness needed to be corrected.

Bob S
www.fullservice.org.uk

This has all been said before: but rarely as eloquently.
But you can't MAKE people listen....even though some people would like to be able to !!

Excellent reply Bob. Very well put. It would have taken me three pages to say all that and I wouldnt have managed to make it flow so well. Even when sober.

Also I would like to mention the depleted uranium anti tank shells the USA use which cause radiation poisoning. Sounds like a chemical weapon to me.

No, they don't count radiation-producing weapons as a chemical ones.
Legalistic, I know, and the effects are equally devastating, but that's The Law for you.
And it would have taken you at least EIGHT pages........

Its not the law though is it? Its just how they decide to catagorise the types of weapons for thier own convenience. Are you talking about international law or US law? International law means nothing, the USA and Isreal break it all the time. And obviously US law is hardly going to class them as chemical if the US likes using them. That would be as absurd as the US Supreme Court ruling that guns are dangerous in family homes.

Would you care to tell me which specific piece of legislation you refer to? As you are well aware I know fuck all about legal matters.

Anyway I am going. I am sick of all this crap.

PS I seem to remember a couple of years ago the US saying if landmines were banned they would just ignore the ban because Uncle Sam knows whats best.

Hmm.....I've obviously touched a nerve. Some points:

'They have looked at the list and started at the top...' Yup. Their list. Their top. Not yours, obviously. Not mine either, as it happens. But that's not my concern.

Not once in any of my postings have I mentioned the oil issue that you and others have so exhaustingly covered. I dare say there's a lot of truth in what you say. But that's not my concern.

If something as innocuous as a pseudonym on a message forum sends you into a funk, then I'm sorry. It must be awful for you. And that's an interesting and possibly telling use of the word 'bravado', by the way. Terribly clever the way Osama Bin Laden knew that everyone who worked at the Twin Towers was so vehemently in favour of all of America's foreign policies, wasn't it. But that's not my concern.

My concern - if I hadn't spelt it out clearly enough for you - lies with the Hussein regime and the subsequent suffering, and with hi-jacking of the situation by those feigning concern for their own personal ends. Bolshy, shouty, egoistic, pub-bore displays of is-that-a-fact?-spewing being one of them, of course.

I'm glad America is in Iraq because something, at last, is actually being done. For better or worse. There is no way of knowing and seemingly no way back. All we know is that there will be a result, and that has to be better than another ten years of tyranny and UN impotent dithering, during which Hussein grows more affluent, more armed, and, like many Tyrants who realise the clock is ticking, makes sure things go as planned should he come to pass (though I presume he has already). He may well also, like all other Tyrants, start to look further affield. Common thoughts, common fears. But hey, at least another ten years of this would allow Iraq to be put in what many of the faux-protesters no doubt regard to be its proper place; back in the world news section, between the gardening and share prices. So casually dismissed of a sunday morning, and a return to their comfortable, western-consumer existence.

You wouldn't want that now, would you, Bob, eh?

Your concern? Tunnel-vision, by the sound of it. You simply can't decouple Iraq from the rest of geopolitics just to suit your argument.
'At least something is being done'....well, that's alright then, even if that something actually makes a satisfactory resolution of this mess even more vanishingly improbable than it is now. Can US armed might defend several militarised oil-enclaves, with impracticably-long supply-lines, in a post-Sadaam Iraq against the entire Arab world, and in the face of opposition from other every nation with an interest, indefinitely? Because that's the outcome Bush seems hell-bent on creating.....
And from some of the remarks you've made in that post, and from the stereotypical setting-up of straw men (or straw Grauniad-readers), it seems you're the one who's had a nerve touched........

Yes, very nicely written Bob. But so what? We all know the US and Britain are not doing this out of their hand wringing concern for the Iraqi people (but that it is at least a small component.) Who could walk by on the other side of the road while Saddam murders and tortures his own people?

It is the job of our leaders to protect our interests, to protect our lifestyle. The lifestyle that you and I take for granted might be put in jeopardy if we let third world nutmegs fuck us and the rest of the planet around. That is what our leaders are doing, they are doing protecting our collective interests, ensuring our nations remain prosperous. OK, there may be some bad calls - but so what? We all make mistakes - we can all say after the event. "Well, if I'd have know Saddam was going to mature into a vile repressive dictator I would never have sold him so much as a catapult." Yes, we can all say that.

There's been much rambling on about why America is so awful. But it's all negative whinging and whining - not one of the wingers has proposed an alternative solution, they just seem to delight in putting the boot in. They seem to have got a problem within themselves; a left of centre anti-American poison festering deep within their souls.

OK, so America might use it's muscle to get it's own way. But so what? I don't mind. America's interests are broadly the interests of the whole western world. I can hear them now, slagging off America, down at the 'Vegan Vigilante' cafe' over a hearty bowl of lentils. "Oh, what an awful colonialist bully America is Jeremy." "Yes, Charlotte I just can't sleep at night worrying that America might put it's own interests first."

But let me leave you with this chilling thought. What if America wasn't the dominant world power? What if Saddam or similar had huge flocks of ICBM's, B52's Cruise Missiles, Neutron Bombs etc. What if someone as crazy as Saddam who wouldn't have the slightest compunction about pressing 'the button? were a nation to displease him was in charge of the mightiest army in the world? None of us would get decent nights sleep again. The anti-Americans are so full of shite.

Dibble.