Some interesting "warring" facts

[nyc_spotter]

Yeah, but some stations report the way they want YOU to see it!

Regards,
Peter

Name one that doesn't.

[iceman]

Peter. I’m somewhat new to these forums and only participate when I have time, like today. I don’t know many of the members who post here and what their views are on certain issues. But in my limited participation, I have noticed a few strong personalities on both sides of debate and you appear to be one of them. You are entitled to your beliefs and your views, as I am to mine. I’m glad you have presented them in a somewhat civil manner that promotes fruitful debate rather than anti-whatever triads that are plaguing airliners.net.

Still, I don’t think it is right to paint coalition actions as “unilateral” when there are more than a handful of other nations participating in them. From my dictionary, the word “unilateral” means “independent and one-sided”. The fact that the US isn’t the only country participating in this war proves that this is not a unilateral campaign. Take this how you want, but it isn’t “unilateral” to me. If you disagree, then we’d be arguing about word semantics and this is not a debate about grammar in the English language.

Furthermore, by your definition of “multilateral”, you are justifying military conflict only through the auspices of the UN. But I have presented several examples of military conflicts (virtually all of them that have occurred in recent history) that have taken place without the UN’s approval. Whether those wars in the past were dealing with direct threats or not is moot, especially since they were not under the UN umbrella. It’s awfully convenient to bring about the UN argument for in one instance, but neglect it in the other. The fact remains that most past conflicts, justified or not, have not gone through UN authority. So, by your definition, they deserve like and equal scrutiny. Anything less would be hypocritical.

Finally, I’m glad you’re being honest about the basis of your anti-war opinion. Yes, Swiss neutrality has served your country well since the 16th century. I have no objections to that and I think it has been a smart policy for them. Nonetheless -- and going back to semantics – it is a form of isolationism. You can call it “cleverness”, and it many ways it is, but it doesn’t make it any less unilateral. Not to say that it is a bad thing…

[aerpix]

Peter. I’m somewhat new to these forums and only participate when I have time, like today. I don’t know many of the members who post here and what their views are on certain issues. But in my limited participation, I have noticed a few strong personalities on both sides of debate and you appear to be one of them. You are entitled to your beliefs and your views, as I am to mine. I’m glad you have presented them in a somewhat civil manner that promotes fruitful debate rather than anti-whatever triads that are plaguing airliners.net.

Thank you.

Still, I don’t think it is right to paint coalition actions as “unilateral” when there are more than a handful of other nations participating in them. From my dictionary, the word “unilateral” means “independent and one-sided”. The fact that the US isn’t the only country participating in this war proves that this is not a unilateral campaign. Take this how you want, but it isn’t “unilateral” to me. If you disagree, then we’d be arguing about word semantics and this is not a debate about grammar in the English language.

This is certainly not about grammar of the English language, which is not my mother tongue, but yet I guess I can make myself clear quite well. If we have, roughly, 180 countries in this world, and 40 are pro, and 140 are anti-war, then a war started by those 40 is unilateral, because it is not in consent with the MAJORITY of the countries.

Furthermore, by your definition of “multilateral”, you are justifying military conflict only through the auspices of the UN. But I have presented several examples of military conflicts (virtually all of them that have occurred in recent history) that have taken place without the UN’s approval. Whether those wars in the past were dealing with direct threats or not is moot, especially since they were not under the UN umbrella. It’s awfully convenient to bring about the UN argument for in one instance, but neglect it in the other. The fact remains that most past conflicts, justified or not, have not gone through UN authority. So, by your definition, they deserve like and equal scrutiny. Anything less would be hypocritical.

Not quite true. I am supporting no kind of war, be it via UN or not, but I have a certain understanding when a country gets invaded by another, when it then starts to fight to regain control over its territory. that's what I said is a direct threat. And if any such country is too small to successfully fight, it is quite okay to get help from, let's say the USA, or a coaltion force. I thought I made clear that I accepted the wars to liberate Kuwait and to regain the Falklands. However, all other wars mentioned by you I can not support because they were not started with the majority of countries expressively wanting them.

Regards,
Peter

[iceman]

This is certainly not about grammar of the English language, which is not my mother tongue, but yet I guess I can make myself clear quite well. If we have, roughly, 180 countries in this world, and 40 are pro, and 140 are anti-war, then a war started by those 40 is unilateral, because it is not in consent with the MAJORITY of the countries.


Not quite true. I am supporting no kind of war, be it via UN or not, but I have a certain understanding when a country gets invaded by another, when it then starts to fight to regain control over its territory. that's what I said is a direct threat. And if any such country is too small to successfully fight, it is quite okay to get help from, let's say the USA, or a coaltion force. I thought I made clear that I accepted the wars to liberate Kuwait and to regain the Falklands. However, all other wars mentioned by you I can not support because they were not started with the majority of countries expressively wanting them.

We could argue this day in and day out, but unilateral means “alone”, not two, not 40 and not 180. Whether two, 40 or even all 180 of the nations support a war, it is not unilateral. Don’t stretch the meaning of the word to something it is not.

Your last point clarifies things, however. You just don’t like war period, and there’s nothing wrong with that, but there is nothing wrong with people supporting a war either. Each is entitled to their opinion, no matter how crazy it may seem to be. People just have to do a better job of accepting it.

[indian airlines]

Iceman, just to clarify here, i'm not chinese, i'm an expat too!

[iceman]

Iceman, just to clarify here, i'm not chinese, i'm an expat too!

With a name like Indian Airlines...well, duh!

[RJP]

Sorry if the formatting gets messed up.....

To all,

First of all, that post is not something i just came up with one day. I have copied word to word from the Sunday Young post, a special supplement of the South China Morning Post. So by saying that my post shows naivety, you are achieving nothing at all. Go tell that to the editor.

I didn't / don't dispute the source of the text within your message but given the fact that you've propogated it & evidently hold a high opinion of it I stand by my comments.

Second, why are all you pro-war people only commenting on a few of those facts. Is it because you know that the other's are true, but will weaken your stance?

Nope, I think it's because the rest of them are even more inane. I'll comment on the one's I havn't though to keep you happy;

1) Which country has the worlds largest oil reserves?
Ans: Saudi Arabia

As NYC Spotter said;

Has the US attacked Saudia Arabia? No.

So I'm unsure of the relevance of stating a widely known & inane fact.

2) Which country has the worlds second largest oil reserves?
Ans: Iraq

Your point being what? According to the EIA, Iraq has the ability to produce 2.3 ~ 2.5 million barrels of oil per day.

According to OPEC that's less than any of Iran, Saudi Arabia & Venezuela or Kuwait & Qatar so, to counter the War for Oil bias of the SCMP, Why didn't the US invade Kuwait & Qatar? Might not have been difficult as they had huge numbers of troops in both locations.

3) Are there any proven links between Iraq and the September 11 terrorist attacks?
Ans: No.

Have any links between Iraq & The September 11th attacks been disproven? Links between Iraq & other terrorist organisations have been proven, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/mid...st/2951615.stm.

4) How many countries have nuclear weapons?
Ans: Eight

The point of stating that being what? How many countries are suspected of seeking a nuclear weapon capability? According to
http://www.isis-online.org/mapproject/introduction.html Iran, Iraq & possibly Libya.

5) Which is the only country to have used its nuclear weapons?
Ans: USA

http://oror.essortment.com/presidenttruman_rywp.htm refers

6) How many nuclear warheads does USA have?
Ans: Over 10,000

At the end of 2002 the USA had 10,640, Russia had 8,600, the UK had 200, France had 350 & China had 400. RSA dismantled 6 weapons in the early 90's (I couldn't find out what happened to the components), Israel is estimated to have 100~200, India 30~35 & Pakistan 24~48.

So???

7) How long has Iraq had chemical and biological weapons?
Ans: Since the early 1980's.

The phrase 'better late than never' comes to mind. If I were to find out that a country which saw fit to harbour an organisation which held over 400 people hostage & shot one of them, a 69 year old wheelchair bound man, had these weapons I'd want them to be disarmed, no matter how long they'd had them. Having had them since the early 1980s doesn't make it right does it?

Did Iraq develop these chemical and biological weapons on their own?
Ans: No. Materials and technology were supplied by USA, along with Britain and other private corporations.

http://www.janes.com/defence/news/jc...0417_1_n.shtml, http://www.sundayherald.com/29454,
http://www.isis-online.org/publicati...a/indiraq.html, refer.

9) Is there any proof that Iraq plans to use its weapons for anything other than deterrence and self defence?
Ans: No.

Does Iraq have a prior record of using its weapons offensively against its own people & others?

Ans: Yes

http://www.angelfire.com/nt/Gilgamesh/halabja.html,
http://www.sky.com/skynews/article/0...265723,00.html,
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/mid...st/1877161.stm,
http://www.oneworld.org/ips2/mar98/iraq2.html, http://www.kdp.pp.se/chemical.html,
http://www.fas.org/irp/gulf/cia/960702/73922_01.htm,
http://www.hrw.org/campaigns/iraq/chemicalali.htm,

http://projects.sipri.se/cbw/research/factsheet-1984.html

10) Does Iraq present more of a threat to world peace now than 10 years ago?
Ans: No.

How can that be gauged??? A more relevant question might be

Does Iraq currently pose a threat to world peace?
Ans: Yes

http://image.guardian.co.uk/sys-file...24/dossier.pdf refer page 19, paragraph no 13 which quotes information from (IIRC) UNSCOM which I think is probably a little more knowledgeable on this subject than the SCMP.

When I said there you have it folks, what I meant was, "there you have the facts, from a newspaper run by a neutral country." Sorry for any misunderstanding there.

How can you refer to the points in your initial post as the facts? Some of them are of course but many are opinions, not neccessarily facts.

Also, yes Saddam was a bad guy. Infact I call, or rather a few of us here call him Scumball. Nobody, except perhaps he himself, liked him. . All that was trying to say is that Scumball had nothing to do with 9/11. Also, there is no proof that he supported 9/11.

I'm sure I'm not the only one who would be intrigued to see your proof of that.

Who says Russia has over 26500 nuclear warheads. I'd rather believe the newspaper, until you back up your stats with some proof

Their stockpile peaked at approx 26,500 but many have since been decommisoned. As of the end of 2002 they have approx 8,600.

I gave you some facts that I got, you gave me some of yours. Both of them contradict each other. I'm not saying that one is true and one is false. Each person is free to interpret whatever they want from them.

Contradiction. You say "I gave you some facts that I got" & then you say "I'm not saying that one is true..".

The question was not for how long he has had them, or who sold them to it. The question was if there were any left of them. And there is still no proof that any are/were left.

Quite right. However, it would be laughably easy to hide..... Put whatever you want in a shipping container, drive into the desert, dig a hole, put shipping container in hole & cover it, mark position with a $150 gps. Voila. I've seen a couple of locations in Afghanistan where this had been done & once the wind etc had been at work for a couple of hours you could've stood on top of the container & never realised it was there.

There is no proof, but since there were no such weapons anymore, they could hardly have been used, not even for self-defence.

In 1999 an UNSCOM report to the UNSC listed the following as being outstanding within Iraq;

●up to 360 tonnes of bulk chemical warfare agent,including 1.5 tonnes of VX nerve agent;
●up to 3,000 tonnes of precursor chemicals,including approximately 300 tonnes which,in the Iraqi chemical warfare
programme,were unique to the production of VX;
●growth media procured for biological agent production (enough to produce over three times the 8,500 litres of anthrax spores
Iraq admits to having manufactured);
●over 30,000 special munitions for delivery of chemical and biological agents.

So it -may- not be accurate to say "there were no such weapons anymore".

Yes, there you have it, but still the 'folks' rather tend to believe FOX News, which we all know is extremely biased.

I havn't watched Fox an awful lot so wouldn't know if its biased or not but what did strike me was that it seemed somewhat childish. Disney News I call it

But it is not so important who really sold them to Iraq, the fact is that it was okay at that time, but today, one single country says it is not okay anymore, thereby having a large arsenal of such weapons itself.

It's not one single country.

http://www.house.gov/pryce/Issues/support.htm includes quotes of messages of support from Afghanistan, Albania, Australia, Azerbaijan, Bulgaria, Colombia, Costa Rica, Czech Republic, Denmark, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Eritrea, Estonia, Georgia, Honduras, Hungary, Iceland, Italy, Japan, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, Mongolia, The Netherlands, Nicaragua, Panama, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Rwanda, Singapore, Slovakia, South Korea, Spain, Turkey, Uganda, Ukraine, United Kingdom, United States, Uzbekistan.

Those countries represent approx 1,137,000,000 people.

Congatulations, but why the hell did it take three weeks to push-over this little, unarmed, poor country by such a heavily armed coaltion force like the US and the Brits. Shame on you. Given your big mouths one could think this could have been done on the way back home from the movie!

Little?? 437,072 sq km (To put it into context that's about 10.58 times the size of Switzerland)

Unarmed?? 350,000~400,000 troops, 2,200 main battle tanks, 1,000 armoured reconnaisance vehicles, 80 light tanks / infantry fighting vehicles, 2,000 armoured personnel carriers, 200 self propelled artillery guns, 1,500 towed artillery guns, 200~300 fixed wing combat ac & 100 combat helicopters, 400 surface to air missile launchers, 1,000 portable surface to air missiles, 6,000 anti aircraft guns, ? short range surface to surface missiles, 2~20 scud missile launchers & missiles.

That was from http://www.kxxv.com/category.cfm?ID=184 which is apparantly an amalgamation of information from Janes, 'Periscope' and the Centre for Strategic and International Studies.

Also, I’m all for weapons inspections in the US, but only if we have weapons inspections in China, France (they’ve got nukes too, remember? They even violated the test-ban treaty to test them out in the South Pacific. No wonder why they have a poor relationship with the Aussies), Russia, UK, India, Pakistan or any other country that possesses WMD. It’s only fair, right?

IIRC There is a program of verification in most of those countries. Depends what you want to call 'inspections' I guess.

PS, well done on the message that the above was included in.

That's what we all wanted, that the USA took the 'wait and see' approach, instead of unilaterally declaring war on Iraq. The UN was in the middle of their weapons inspections, yet the USA had no patience to 'wait and see'. So with your suggestion that 'others' do the same, you can only have meant the US government, can't you?

It wasn't unilateral...

Unilateral action is by a single party..... This was action in varying forms by 40+ countries.

then the coaltion made an unilateral advance on Iraq

I'm sorry but I laughed at that. How can a coalition do something unilaterally?????

And, the rest of the world includes the United Nations, for me the only body with the authority to decide on a war.

&

Of those you mention above, only two were justified, the British fight to re-gain control over their territory of the Falklands, and Gulf War I to free Kuwait.

There were no UN (the organisation which you consider as the only body with the authority to decide on a war) resolutions authorising the UK to take military action to retake the Falkland Islands, yet you said you consider it justified. I can't quite fit your two quotes (the ones immediately above) together.

Can I suggest to everyone taking part in this thread that, given there obviously isn't going to be a consensus, let's not keep it going any longer. Further argument will only serve to drive a wedge between friends here.

RJP

[indian airlines]

Ok, lets stop it right here, thought there are so many things in your post I would so dearly loved to have replied to. Anyway........

[RJP]

Ok, lets stop it right here, thought there are so many things in your post I would so dearly loved to have replied to. Anyway........

I'm sure

However, I then wouldn't be able to resist replying again & it'd go on & on & on. There's no chance of everyone agreeing to anything in this thread apart from disagreeing so it is I think better to stop.

RJP

[indian airlines]

Yeah, i agree....

It may just blow up into something like the 1500 replies thread.

[Airigami]

I've been away all weekend, and I apologize for replying to something mentioned a couple of pages ago, but I think it is an interesting philosophical question:

I just want to know something... why is it that when anyone criticises the US or US Foreign policy, they are so readily branded "Anti-Amerian", "un-patriotic" or are accused of "Hating America"?

I am STRONGLY against the campaign in Iraq. I am an Australian ex-pat and have been living in Washington, D.C. for a few years now. I *love* my adopted country. It really is an amazing place to live. I also *love* Americans (after all, my wife is one!) and the greatest friends I have ever had are American.

But that does not preclude me from disagreeing with US foreign policy or wanting to (if I had the right) vote Democrat at the next election. (Or for that matter, disagreeing with Australian foreign policy, as after all, the Howard administration sent troops to the Gulf!)

Stating that "Bush is wrong" or "Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz are an insane pair of cowboys" does not make me anti-American. Just as when Indian Airlines posts an article from an Asian newspaper, which is, shall we say, not sympathetic to the war, it does not make Indian Airlines automatically anti-American.

One [minor] reason the coalition (and I use that word reservedly) liberated Iraq was so that Iraqi people would be free - free to speak out, free to disagree with their government.

And yet, it is becoming less and less acceptable for Americans or even friends of America to disagree with the American government.

Just a thought.