h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

They only protest against wars involving America. How many of the whingers protested against the Iran/Iraq war? Or what is happening in Zimbabwe? The list goes on, and they remain silent on these issues. Under my regime the self-satisfied perrenially indignant will be exiled to the "Margaret Thatcher Asylum for the Criminally Indignant". Naturally enough, it will be in France. That'll teach them. Just to make it worse, I'll put all boybands there too, and have them 'sing' to sooth the savage breast. Oh, yes, its cummupance time boys...

I agree with your points on ignorance and self-satisfaction, but the US was involved in the Iran/Iraq by supplying weapons and egging both sides on. And the Zimbabwe situation is domestic and not an armed conflict as of yet.

As for the Boy Bands...you vicious, cruel monster!

Nooooooo!!!! I beg you... don't send the boy bands over here!!! We'll take all your anti war protesters, no problem (We'll just stick them all in a concentration refugee camp right next door to the channel tunnel and leave the doors open again ) But please, please, don't send us the boy bands

What else are we supposed to do with them? Couldn't you have the farmers burn them like they did the UK livestock riddled with BSE?

Hmmm, I suppose that's an idea... it might actually be the first time in history that France and England actually agreed on something

Amen to that, I'd rather agree with you guys that the crackpot yanks right now!

I'd rather agree with you as well. Unfourtunantly I'm a Yank. When is the next flight over?

I had an interesting conversation with a friend. He maintains that the protests did more harm than good in that they actually blocked talks for peace. The skewing of policies and public opinion gave pause to those who were ready to talk and permitted Iraq to gain sympathy, thereby opening up a whole new round of negotiations. The theory goes that Hussein, bouyed by 6 million *supporters* knows that he can negotiate from power. That is opposed to a few weeks ago when the only options were surrender with conditions.

Interesting.

Don't be concerned about the protests blocking peace talks. The madman that is sitting in our White House isn't interested in peace talks. Every time a "condition of compliance" is met by Iraq this administration raises the bar. This president will have his war in spite of what anyone says or does. And the tragic part of it is we are responsible for Saddam being in power, as well as numerous other interferences with the governments of other countries.

There are people here who are frustrated beyond belief. We call our Representatives and Senators, write op-ed pieces in our papers, take to the streets in protest and it doesn't seem to make a difference. The majority of Americans are content to suckle at the media teat believing that the government knows what it's doing. After all, CNN and Fox News say the Bush administration is protecting America and Bush is a good Christian. That should be good enough for anyone, right?

I've thought about the idea of leaving for another country, but if all of the people like me did that we'd be left with an America completely full of rednecks and Weapons of Mass Destruction. What a frightening thought.

I'd like to get rid of most of our politicians. They barely have an original thought between them. Our Prime Minister is so busy sucking up to Bush he can't see anything else. It seems like he wants war at any cost.
They are doing their best to strike fear into the hearts of the people. "Boat people are 'illegals' and they are really terrorists and you better be scared of them, so we need to lock them all up and scatter them around the Pacific so we are safe. Oh, and don't forget they are so horrible they would throw their babies into the sea so the navy will have to save them all." As if! Sure terrorists are going to take such a risky way to get here and then end up in a detention centre anyway. And these people are so different to us that they don't actually feel the same way about their children as we do. These politicians are evil and manipulative.

The worst thing about it is that people were actually willing to believe them.

Trazeus, thank you. It is such a relief that people are still out there and using their brains. Bush scares me to death, far more than Saddam 'look at my bushy moustache girls' Hussein.

They all lie. Our goal should be an attempt to decide which is the lesser lie.

I hope some of the peace protesters will realize that the peaceful handling of N. Korea 10 years ago has resulted in them developing nuclear weapons, and they are now threatening to blow up Asia. Do you take any lesson away from that?

Lesson: You can't be nice to madmen and expect them to do what you want.

You mistake the hard liners as being pro-war; that's not the case at all. The difference is that you can only solve this peacefully if we all acknowledge the need to resort to force when dealing with maniacs, and present a united front that says, "Disarm, or we will bomb you back to the stone age." It's a bluff, like in poker. Until you show your cards, and you have ace high. Well, I guess France and Germany either don't like the USA, or don't know how to bluff. But we're holding a royal flush, so we can still do what needs to be done.

The really sad thing is that a bluff probably would have worked. If France and Germany just said, "Yeah, we'll bomb you, too", then Saddam may well have realized he couldn't play this game. And he might have run away, or been killed by somebody inside. But he knew France wouldn't stand up and agree to the use of force, so he's off the hook.

Kudos to Bush for showing backbone. I'm really disheartened that we may have to use force, and I'm heartbroken that some of our allies weren't strong enough to stand with us on this one. And it kills me that soldiers and Iraqi civilians will die because of allied cowardice. We had a chance to present a united front. We had a chance to avoid the use of force. Thanks to France and Germany, that chance is gone.

Saddam may well be a madman, but he is by far not the only one. And he may be the one least connected to terrorism. And be one of the least armed.

Do you know any different? Notice I didn't say think any different.

This isn't a card game it's people lives. France, Germany and the rest of the U.N. Council are aware of the possibility of having to resort to force with Iraq. It is Bush that has created a chink in the armor of a united front. He claims that the U.N. is irrelevant because they aren't moving fast enough for him. He is set on the overthrow of Saddam even though there are more pressing dangers in the world. Saddam is an evil man and a danger to his own people, but is not an immediate danger to his neighbors and certainly not to the U.S. If Bush wanted to show real leadership he would be following his campaign promise to be "a uniter, not a divider." I suppose from a certain point of view that's true. He is fast uniting the world against us.

I don't expect to change your mind, but I want to let others know that there are rational voices trying to be heard in the States.

My natural instinct is to avert violence, and in that War is included! However, I am finding it hard to determine what's right and what isn't in the situation. I'm even confused as to whether this is a 'War on Terrorism' effort or it is all leading to a coup d'état of the Iraqi Government. The whole facts are obviously not being presented. The majority of people are not stupid to believe that there is complete 'independent' journalism. I also find it extremely irritating for 'pop' singers and alike (or is it 'artists') to force their political views on others, as this in my view is exploitation of their position. So, to make a decision and commitment based on information that is incomplete, distorted, etc, would in my view be brave if not naive. Instead of insignificant efforts on 'yes to war' or 'no to war', energy should be spent to get all the information, for once. Who knows if Blair and Bush are right or even wrong? Who is really holding the 'stop watch' controlling the countdown to possible conflict? Or is it "Al Rubbish"?

Ok, you aksed if I know any different--and I agree completely. He's not the only madman, nor the best-armed.

He's what you might call "low-hanging fruit". It will be easy to make sure he doesn't become one of the best armed, if we move now. If we let him develop additional biological/nuclear weapons, that won't be the case.

I'd rather be facing JUST Kim Jong-Il than both Kim AND Saddam.

RE: War on terrorism

I think this is a weaker argument for war. Saddam is not a Shiite Muslim, he is not traditionally affiliated with the extremist Muslim groups such as Al-Qaida. I think this is a more calculated PR move by the white house to garner popular support for the war.

My belief is that there was no link between Iraq and Al-Qaida pre 9/11. I don't necessarily think that's as true today as it was then.

RE: Peace

How do you propose to handle Saddam peacefully, in a world where he knows force won't be used against him?

I'd like to make an additional point about Bush--you say he's causing problems because the inspections aren't moving fast enough for him.

May I remind everyone here that the UN Security council's resolutions from both 12 years ago and more recently in November have been ignored by Iraq.

Twelve years is a long time. It wasn't until Bush got aggressive about this that Iraq felt any need to comply. Saddam knew that he could continue to flout the UN resolution until US military forces started showing up at his door. The longer France, Germany, and Russia hold us back, the better prepared Saddam will be, and the longer any campaign will take, and the more soldiers and civilians will die.

I would genuinely be interested in hearing anyone's arguments that Saddam, or the UN, did not have time, in 12 years, to enforce the disarmament resolutions peacefully.

?

I don't recall anyone on any forum I've read saying that we should not deal with Iraq. There are some people opposed to war under any conditions, but most realize that sometimes there is no choice. What is being said now is that choices are still available. You're right. It's been 12 years that Saddam has been dancing with the U.N. You would be mistaken (or misled) if you think that nothing positive has happened in that time.

Saddam has been contained. The last of his nuclear capability was destroyed in 1998. The aluminum tubes that had so much made of them in the press are not of the quality for a collider. They are also not the same type or material used by Iraq's nuclear program in the 80's and one usually sticks with what one knows. So your comment about not letting him "develop additional biological/nuclear weapons" shows fuzziness about the facts.

Powell believes that Saddam isn't telling the inspectors about all of his cached weapons. Could it be that the Bush administration does have information unavailable to the rest of the world about Saddam's biological weapons? Perhaps there are some items that the U.S. sold to Saddam during the Iran/Iraq War that haven't been accounted. It is known that the U.S. supported Iraq, The Taliban, even al-Qaida when it suited its agenda. They were the same crazy bastards then as later, but that didn't seem to matter. Yes, we need to act. We need not only to support the U.N. in creating an allied front in settling with Saddam, but we also need to stop buying thugs behind closed doors to do for us what diplomacy won't do fast enough to satisfy the impatient dolts in Washington.

"we also need to stop buying thugs behind closed doors "

I agree with this 100%. Unfortunately, foreign policy got very ugly towards the end of the Cold War. Now, we're dealing with the repercussions of many of our bad decisions back then.

"The last of his nuclear capability was destroyed in 1998."

I don't completely agree that all of Saddam's nuclear capability was destroyed in 1998. All we had proof of may have been, but whatever he's got hidden, we just don't know about. Inspections only confirm that the weapons reported by the enemy are handled--if Iraq is not fully cooperating, we have no way to verify the claims that they do not have nuclear arms.

It is not even necessary for the WMD to be nuclear to be a problem. Any biological or chemical agents can be deadly enough to warrant serious concern.

It sounds like the anti-war folks approve of the current approach to disarming Saddam. Here's why I think that viewpoint is in error:

Keeping half the US military in the gulf to baby-sit the UN inspectors puts the US at a strategic disadvantage in case of any new situations, costs the US alone a great deal of money, and thus is not a viable long-term option for containment.

The resolution passed by the UN was for full disarmament. We should not allow the US military to be used as a threat for long-term inspections if the goal is mere containment. If that's what they want, let the UN put a "peacekeeping force" in place and see what happens. I guarantee that Saddam will not take it seriously, and we'll be back where we were in 1999.