??? Umm, ok. I dare you to go to your local synagogue and repeat that.Originally Posted by 99Flake
Actually I do praise Hitler for that, he didn't just create a strong economy, he turned round a failing depressed country.
If it wasn't for Hitler we wouldn't have had the Beetle and therefore no Porsche 911Now that needs praise!
Actually as much that was tongue in cheak Hitler did do an awful lot for the country before the war. Motorways, cars, health etc. Stopped the economic crash and made the currency worth something again. If it wasn't for him Germany would have crumbled.
Now obviously he used this to get so high into power he could carry out such atrocities but he did do some good to begin with and you can't deny it.
And what would that achieve?
Well I was just wondering if the Jewish people would see the sacrifice of millions of Jews as a fair trade for the Beetle and the Porsche 911.
Actually Agent, I think me and Flake were both of the understanding that the conversation we were having was not to be taken entirely literally. See his previous post.
Re: "Tongue in cheek"
Well, gosh, thanks; I was having trouble trying to see how the phrase "Saddam was scum" could be read as praise...
I think the point is that they didn't just "rise" spontaneously from the Iraqi populace; the security vacuum allowed foreign extremists to flood in.
If you're talking about deposing a nasty dictator because he was a nasty dictator, fine, but there are a lot of other places which we should probably have dealt with first, and we were told specifically that the invasion was to remove the threat of WMDs.
Now, see, I can buy Afghanistan; the Taleban régime were actively supporting organisations like Al Qaeda and were consequently an ongoing threat. The only way to address that was to remove the Taleban. Iraq wasn't.
Errrr...anyone who actually believed that we were going to war for that reason? Look, there are a LOT of nasty dictators in the world who do far worse things to their own population. We were told that the justification for war was removing the threat of WMDs, and that THAT'S what made this war necessary. It's now been established that not only were there none, there wasn't even any solid and credible intelligence that there were. So absent that, what distinguishes Iraq, from, say, Zimbabwe? Or North Korea? Aside from the ocean of oil that it's sitting on, I mean.
I'm sure that there are LOTS of people who'd like to nuke London or Washington. Absent the capability, however, they are not a threat, certainly not a WMD-based threat. It's the capacity that creates the threat, not the desire, and Iraq didn't have the capacity.
Well, mathew, they weren't running around doing that in Iraq BEFORE we invaded; indeed a lot of them weren't even physically IN Iraq at that point. They would have been very nasty people wherever they were, but the removal of the Ba'athists and the subsequent security vacuum gave them the perfect environment in which to flourish, as well as a ready-made pool of volunteers. Denying any responsibility for the massive security hole we created and the inevitable consequences for the people of Iraq is simply hypocrisy of the first water.
Incidentally, the point about burning oilfields being an act of war as opposed to terrorism having been dealt with more than adequately above, on the use of chemical weapons, firstly, that was in the late '80s, and secondly - where do you think he got them from, eh?
Last edited by nichomach; 28-03-2007 at 05:22 PM.
Nichomach, Your posts dissemenating another individual point by point is a little boring. Its almost child-like tit-for-tat arguing. I know you've been here much longer than me but i think your responses sometimes inflame the argument.
Most of your points I agree with however. People still fail to see there was not one single reason why we went to war in the end it was whatever fitted. We had three main reasons, Saddam was a threat, WMD and Al-Qaeda, none of which stand up today. However whether it was on purpose that none of these are true we will never know. Now we are there now purely on the basis that we destroyed an infastructure and now it needs rebuilding from the ground up.
Stealth Geek - And Proud!
I made this statement because it is what I believe, the France bit was just to make a point. We are British, we go to war with other countries, it is what we do.
George, you mean dissecting. That said, some posts in this thread contain a number of distinct assertions; where possible, I deal with those in turn, deal with them substantively, and make it clear which assertions I'm dealing with. Where the posts don't contain such a portmanteau, I respond in continuous text. Bluntly, your attention span isn't my problem. As for "tit-for-tat arguing", it's precisely to avoid that sort of thing that I make clear detailed responses.
And once again in English for us Mancunians
You owe it to yourself to click here really.
Well, you can see where I am...
As someone who often disects posts in my replies (like nicho), I have to strongly disagree. Replying to specific elements of someone else's argument keeps the debate pertinent and on track. It's very difficult to achieve anything if the whole debate is a series of opposing essays- the same points get made over and over again, and the only conclusion reached is that everyone still disagrees with each other. If, however, I disagree with something in in your argument, be it a fact, a piece of logic or whatever, then by quoting just that point and then replying it's obvious where I disagree. You can then provide a counter argument, or cede the point.
The downside is that the argument can very quickly fragment- and eventually become unmanageable, whereapon people get outfaced and give up. I'd rather have that though, than an interminable series of rambling posts with one side never getting any closer to the other.
In a thread a couple of years ago, someone really took exception to me disecting their posts, and reckoned I was disrupting the flow of their argument, and that it wasn't meant to be examined line by line. For the whole argument to stand up though, its constituent points must stand up in their own right. If I can damage the validity of your argument by disecting it line by line, then I'd say it isn't a very good argument.
OK fair points by you and nicomach, I just don't like reading those kind of posts but I do like a good debate so I'll forget it!
Anyway good news (I hope)... http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6505453.stm
Seems we might get access to the captives, I think with this move we are in for a prolonged incident, as a previous poster said the US had to wait 444 days for a release.
Last edited by GeorgeTuk; 29-03-2007 at 08:51 AM.
Stealth Geek - And Proud!
Fingers crossed, George; apparently there are rumbles that consular access will be granted IF the UK admits that they were in Iranian waters. I'm hoping that the UK gets a Security Council resolution through, though. There needs to be an unequivocal condemnation by the international community of the unlawful seizure of our personnel in Iraqi waters. Aside from anything else that opens more options to us, legally.
I think it's hard to be rigid about that approach.
On the one hand, if you dissect an argument bit by bit, and can refute specific points, it can be both a perfectly valid approach and devastatingly effective.
On the other hand, it can miss the overall context to take individual points bit by bit, because a point may mean one thing in a wider context and appear to suggest something else when extracted from that context.
Much depends on the nature of the arguments made. But overall, I agree with you.
I had a discussion with some friends about the death penalty, a while back. The dissection technique worked well, because it narrowed us down to WHY some of those that objected did object.
Many reasons for objecting were given, such as that miscarriages of justice can occur and that the innocent could be executed mistakenly. Fair point, but even when there's categorically NO doubt about guilt, they still objected. So, while it was a valid objection, it wasn't the root of their objection. What it came down to, in the end, was that they believed it was just plain wrong, and everything else was a debating point.
Again, it's a fair point of view, and it's hard to claim that they're wrong, because there's no actual categoric arbiter of what is right and wrong. It comes down to a belief system. But it's also perfectly fair to disagree with that stance.
In that case, the dissection technique isolated WHY we disagreed. It also resolved the debate ..... by agreeing to disagree.
We won't admit that we were in Iranian waters though (probably because in all likelyhood we weren't - as the first co-ordinates of the ship that the Iranians gave was in Iraqi waters until we pointed it out)
The wont get a UN security council resolution either. I suspect there will be a deal done through the backdoor that will allow both sides to come out looking okay to their relevant domestic audiences
Agreed on the position thing, absolutely, no question. We HAVE got a SC resolution, though it's watered down from what the government (and I) would have liked to have seen (thank you China and Russia).
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