Acyl, when there's absolutely no evidence a guy can attack you, and you attack him anyway just cause you can, that's preemptive declaration of war. You should be familiar with it, because it's the exact same case the White House is making to justify attacking Iran. It's also the exact same case every country in the world could make to justify attacking every other country in the world. Because if the richest, most powerful nation in the world is so terrified of random Third World pissholes that it must unilaterally attack them to safeguard themselves, EVERYBODY can justify attacking whoever they want.
You have set a precedent that allows China to nuke any country they want, because "they might attack us". If North Korea blows up Tokyo, "they might have attacked us". If Turkey swallows up Northern Iraq when nobody's looking, "we needed a buffer because they were going to attack us". If Germany invades Poland... wait, sorry, too late.
60 years of a world united on the front that "attackers in war are the bad guys", ended by the Bush administration. And for what, precisely? On a "maybe" that turned out to be a "what were you smoking"? That was sure worth it. Those dead 2000 Americans... sure worth it. Those dead 100,000+ Iraqis... sure worth it, huh? The fact that a once-secularised country that allowed women to walk freely in the streets is now run by religious fundamentalists who don't... sure worth it, right?
Will you swallow the Kool-Aid about Iran, too, if they actually manage to push that through? And when that goes disastrously wrong, as everybody in the world except you knows it will, will you be rushing up to say it wasn't their fault then, either?
Actions have consequences. What is happening in Iraq was an easily foreseeable consequence of what the US did. That you clearly chose not to believe the people saying this was going to happen at the time doesn't make it okay. There were people that knew what they were talking about, and then there was the Bush administration. You, and a small majority of other Americans at the time, chose to believe the latter. Everything that has happened since is a direct and foreseeable consequence of that choice. It's not like you couldn't have known this was going to happen, because lots of people did. Take responsibility for it. And then consider carefully what choice you're going to make this time around.
(Oh, and by the way - every single reputable scientific study that hasn't been paid for by a biased party has concluded that global warming is a fact. There is no debate upon this in the legitimate scientific community. None. There is about as much attention paid to people who say it doesn't exist as there is to Creationists. There's a giant hole in the ozone layer over Antarctica, the polar caps are melting, every new hurricane seems to be setting a new record, temperatures are setting new records every year, the coral reefs in the Caribbean are dying en masse... but there's "not enough scientific evidence", huh? It's amazing when laymen think that they somehow know better than people who have actually studied scientific subjects all their lives. Would you go up to a rocket scientist and tell him how a spacecraft's engines ought to be built and expect him to give a flying rat's arse about your uninformed opinion? No? So I wonder why so many people do essentially the same thing to biologists and climatologists?)
You have set a precedent that allows China to nuke any country they want, because "they might attack us". If North Korea blows up Tokyo, "they might have attacked us". If Turkey swallows up Northern Iraq when nobody's looking, "we needed a buffer because they were going to attack us". If Germany invades Poland... wait, sorry, too late.
60 years of a world united on the front that "attackers in war are the bad guys", ended by the Bush administration. And for what, precisely? On a "maybe" that turned out to be a "what were you smoking"? That was sure worth it. Those dead 2000 Americans... sure worth it. Those dead 100,000+ Iraqis... sure worth it, huh? The fact that a once-secularised country that allowed women to walk freely in the streets is now run by religious fundamentalists who don't... sure worth it, right?
Will you swallow the Kool-Aid about Iran, too, if they actually manage to push that through? And when that goes disastrously wrong, as everybody in the world except you knows it will, will you be rushing up to say it wasn't their fault then, either?
Actions have consequences. What is happening in Iraq was an easily foreseeable consequence of what the US did. That you clearly chose not to believe the people saying this was going to happen at the time doesn't make it okay. There were people that knew what they were talking about, and then there was the Bush administration. You, and a small majority of other Americans at the time, chose to believe the latter. Everything that has happened since is a direct and foreseeable consequence of that choice. It's not like you couldn't have known this was going to happen, because lots of people did. Take responsibility for it. And then consider carefully what choice you're going to make this time around.
(Oh, and by the way - every single reputable scientific study that hasn't been paid for by a biased party has concluded that global warming is a fact. There is no debate upon this in the legitimate scientific community. None. There is about as much attention paid to people who say it doesn't exist as there is to Creationists. There's a giant hole in the ozone layer over Antarctica, the polar caps are melting, every new hurricane seems to be setting a new record, temperatures are setting new records every year, the coral reefs in the Caribbean are dying en masse... but there's "not enough scientific evidence", huh? It's amazing when laymen think that they somehow know better than people who have actually studied scientific subjects all their lives. Would you go up to a rocket scientist and tell him how a spacecraft's engines ought to be built and expect him to give a flying rat's arse about your uninformed opinion? No? So I wonder why so many people do essentially the same thing to biologists and climatologists?)