From: Grant Callaghan (grantc4@hotmail.com)
Date: Thu 21 Nov 2002 - 19:47:05 GMT
>I'll deal with Grant and Joe's comments together if I may.
>
>First Grant's comment:
>
>< It is NOT a plot by the American government against
>Great Britain. To imply that it is and to equate personal feelings with
>national policy is disengenuous to say the least.>
>
>The point is that there is no more evidence that Iraq is directly or
>indirectly behind 9/11 than there is for US governmental involvement in
>Northern Ireland. So attacking Iraq now as part of the war or terror is
>just as misplaced as blaming the US goverment for Omagh, which of course I
>as not seriously doing.
>
I don't believe Bush has placed any blame for 9/11 on either Iraq or North
Korea. What he has been saying is that they are beating the drums of war
and they are armed with nuclear weapons and have demonstrated a
predisposition to use them for real or imagined offenses by others. Rather
than let them drop an atomic bomb first and then go in and fight a war with
them, Bush says it would be better to go in now and remove such weapons
before they can be used. I don't necessarily believe either Bush's
rationalization nor Iraqi and Korean propensity to drop atomic weapons, but
If you're going to complain about him, at least complain about what he is
really doing. The war on terror did not begin and end with 9/11 and al
Quaeda. It's been going on for some time now and we've done precious little
to put an end to it until 9/11. The invasion of Kuait was an act of
aggression and terror on the Kuaiti people. The gassing of Kurds in Iraq
was the same kind of act. The continued torture of political enemies in
Iraq are also acts of torture. These are what depeict the mind set of
Saddam Husein and his willingness to use such weapons and to use acts of war
to carry out political desires.
When he surrendered after the last war, brought on by what he did to Kuait,
he made certain promises to the United Nations which he has not carried out.
The U.N has neither the will nor the armed might to make him keep those
promises. That provides the excuse for Bush's actions. The weapons of mass
destruction provide the rationale. Neither of these have much of anything
to do with 9/11. Bush has never pretended that they do. He just wants to
take away the weapon of a madman who is waving it around in many directions
before it goes off and somebody, including the U.S. and its allies, gets
hurt.
In the U.S., when the cops come on some crazy guy in the streets waving a
gun around and refusing to put it down, they shoot him. The only people who
complain much about it are his relatives who usually say something like, you
shoud have shot him in the leg instead of the heart or the head. They
seldom if ever argue that the cops should have let the guy go until he
killed someone.
It's the same with Iraq. Are we going to wait until Saddam kills a bunch of
people or attacks a country before we do something to stop him? That's the
question that needs to be answered. Not "What did he have to do with 9/11?"
Cheers,
Grant
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