quote:I think NK demonstrates what happens when evil regimes are left alone UNTIL they do something.
Then why not deal with that, which is a much more immediate problem, before even THINKING about what other people are going to go insane and be evil dictators and start shooting missles willy-nilly?
-pH
How do you suggest the US could have dealt with NK and not had anybody screaming "Aggression with no cause!" before they aquired nuclear weapons?
Posts: 14316 | Registered: Jul 2005
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posted
If we had stopped dragging our feet on our treaty obligations to them we would have had significant leverage to force the removal of the nuclear material they had under seal (which they removed from seal after declaring the treaty void).
NK was still playing mostly by the rules for years after that axis of evil comment. Only when we essentially dropped diplomatic contact despite still being under obligation to provide assistance in constructing light water reactors to provide electricity did NK break the seals on their existing weapons grade material and their reactors and restart their weapons program.
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
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posted
So its something of self-fulfilling prophecy: we think they are developing a nuke program, so they have no choice but to go ahead and develop one. Or rather, there is now no reason whatsoever to put off developing one.
Are we all seriously this stupid? I mean, this whole world situation, haven't we seen the SAME thing going on for a thousand years of history? Don't we recognize how these things start, how they progress, how they turn into bigger problems before they get better? ARG- the world is a vampire.
Posts: 9912 | Registered: Nov 2005
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posted
I believed that Saddam was trying to make WMDs. I am conservative and I voted for Bush--the second election. I thought Saddam lied. He broke...what was it?...14 resolutions/agreements?
He was playing with the international community on a very sensitive subject post 9/11. Legally I felt we were justified to invade. I never heard about AQ being a reason to go to Iraq. I don't quite understand the rabid "Bush lied to us about WMD" sentiment.
Maybe I haven't looked at the sources close enough. It seemed the international community agreed he was a threat and had weapons based on Saddam's actions and their intelligence.
That being said...
I never thought for a moment that WMD, AQ, or broken resolutions were the reasons we went to war. I never thought it was about oil--at least not about immediately controlling or stealing Iraqi oil.
I think it is about Bush's Roadmap to Peace--an American presence in the Middle East. A line of countries we can use for support and bases for whatever military/economic reason the administration sees fit. Saddam's stuborness, ego, and shady past gave the administration an excuse to act.
We still have bases in Germany and Korea. There was not exit strategy Iraq because we have no plan to exit. I don't think Iraq is a mistake--as in a heaping pile of consequences the administration couldn't/didn't foresee.
I think, with the exception of prison scandals and the horrific actions of a few soldiers, everything is going according to plan. I am not sure where it is leading us.
I am now deciding if I regret how I voted, not that it would make a difference. I feel lied to, not about the intelligence but about the motive. I am not sure if we are trying to create a democratic streak in the Middle East that favors America and democracy, or if we are trying to destabilize the region. Let it blow to hell and then move in and help with rebuilding a "better" Middle East.
I just don't know. A lot of people have died and a lot more will die. I believe they know what they are doing. I just wish I could be convinced I agree with it.
Posts: 2445 | Registered: Oct 2004
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quote:fugu: If we had stopped dragging our feet on our treaty obligations to them we would have had significant leverage to force the removal of the nuclear material they had under seal (which they removed from seal after declaring the treaty void).
NK was still playing mostly by the rules for years after that axis of evil comment. Only when we essentially dropped diplomatic contact despite still being under obligation to provide assistance in constructing light water reactors to provide electricity did NK break the seals on their existing weapons grade material and their reactors and restart their weapons program.
We have the same obligation to Iran now. They are also a signatory to the NPT, which gives them the right to nuclear power sources. If we try to deny them that we are in breach of the treaty. How then would we have the right to enforce the other provisions of the treaty?
Posts: 1592 | Registered: Jan 2001
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quote: I think it is about Bush's Roadmap to Peace--an American presence in the Middle East.
Oddly, you capitalize this despite the fact that Bush has never articulated a roadmap to peace, nor explained this plan to us. You do him too much credit, I believe, by assuming that he has such a sensible plan, when he has completely failed to actually describe one.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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posted
Nato: no, we don't. The NPT only means a country is eligible to buy certain technologies; nobody is required to sell them. Furthermore, nobody (except the select few) is allowed to use them as part of weapons programs, and Iran is investing in technologies that are only cost effective if one either has dozens of nuclear power plants or is working on a weapons program. Iran does not have dozens of nuclear power plants, nor any plans to build them in the foreseeable future.
The treaty we had with NK required the provision of light water reactors by the US and South Korea (two LWRs, iirc). This was entirely separate from the NPT, and was in exchange for them sealing their other reactors (that produced higher quantities of weapons grade material) and all extant weapons grade material. On a side note, NK is unable to produce sufficient electricity by itself without nuclear power.
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
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quote:Originally posted by Lyrhawn: Bush's road map to peace, as you state it, sounds frighteningly close to outright American imperialism in that part of the world.
That's just as scary as any of the other reasons I've heard for the war, maybe even more so.
SSSSHHHHH!!! Don't break down the euphamisms!!!!
A roadmap to peace which includes 200,000 deaths. Lovely. Also a roadmap to peace which involves agitating against foreign government until they break off relations with us, then using that as an excuse for attacking them. Also lovely.
Posts: 9912 | Registered: Nov 2005
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quote: believe it is part of 45,000 pages of Arabic translated documents that are being released Via Fox news
"Released via Fox News"? So they really *have* given up any premise of being an impartial media outlet, and taken up the mantle of being a full-time propaganda outfit?
Sarcasm aside, if there were verifiable facts here, why release it by way of the one agency that would run with something like this without an ounce of skepticism? And why now, if it was uncovered in 1999?
2. Is Bean Counter going to continue to put up this kind of inflammatory subject, avoid reply on the, shall we say, contraversy of the claims on which the post is based, lather, rinse, and repeat? And if so, is there any reason anyone should continue to treat this kind of behavior with the seriousness one normally accords to discussion?
Posts: 3826 | Registered: May 2005
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quote:2. Is Bean Counter going to continue to put up this kind of inflammatory subject, avoid reply on the, shall we say, contraversy of the claims on which the post is based, lather, rinse, and repeat? And if so, is there any reason anyone should continue to treat this kind of behavior with the seriousness one normally accords to discussion?
The art of managing a forum involves making a lot of calls based on preserving the health of online discussion. There's plenty of hedge-trimming based on a macro analysis of a forum community.
People who have run forums for a time begin to understand that individuals such as Bean Counter represent more than just a controversial position; instead, they are an out-and-out threat towards productive debate.
They often end up getting removed before they can enervate a community. Usually, it happens right around the time that people are realizing that the individual in question is really only interested in hashing out a vitriolic position, without necessarily being interested -- or able -- to handle reasonable charges against their standpoint.
Fits with BC: in but a single post, he can derail an erstwhile reasonable controversy into a contentious debate against him alone. Walking meta syndrome.
In many cases, though, moderation is unnecessary. The messy side effect of acting like a Bean Counter is that one becomes incessantly badgered and will often become hounded, naturally, off the forum.
Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
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posted
Your in luck, today I am a liberal! What we need to do is pull our troops in and cut our losses. After all we cannot hold South Korea against the North, we should put our troops too work evacuating Isreal and take away the reason the Arab's are so mad at us. If we let them have the Middle East they can work out a better way for themselves to live then we know, it will be fair for everyone. Their's is a religion of peace after all.
With all of our shinny eggs in one basket we can last forever, keep our population under control with enforced birth permits and temporary fertillity blocking for teens and free abortions on demand. We can tap into the wind and water flow and the sun and get in tune with the world around us, we will eat less and live longer because we will give up smoking and drinking and turn our Weapons of Mass Destruction into atttractive paper weights. Yeah... I can feel it...
Awe, c'mon! Don't tell me smoking and drinking have political affiliations now too! Well, I'm not willing to give them up, so I guess I'm a conservative now.
Hmm, all of a sudden there's a strange clenching sensation in my hind-regions.
Posts: 2596 | Registered: Jan 2006
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posted
It is your dormant homophobia, you must work it out by putting ever larger objects in your rectum until you are at peace with all of Gaia's Children.
posted
I'm beginning to suspect that Bean Counter is a liberal, and that the parody above is actually a smaller, opposite-day version of his entire posting history.
Posts: 1539 | Registered: Jul 2004
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I'm an Ultra Right-Wing Conservative now! I support pulling out the troops, but only so that they're not in the path of our nukes when we decide to turn the entire middle east into one gigantic, dune-shaped sheet of glass.
Then, when we're done, we can establish English as the primary language of the US and abolish all other religions and place Baptist Christianity as the one and only religion taught in schools.
Once complete, we will start a campaign of "small government" that actually includes removing all sorts of social welfare and funnelling that money into the first company to bribe us the most.
Posts: 4753 | Registered: May 2002
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quote:Originally posted by Bean Counter: With all of our shinny eggs in one basket we can last forever, keep our population under control with enforced birth permits and temporary fertillity blocking for teens and free abortions on demand.
Um...how about education about and availability of birth control and the morning-after pill?
Posts: 3852 | Registered: Feb 2002
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posted
Why put our children under that kind of time pressure? They have basic competence tests to pass, Middle School teachers to have sex with and the new Grand Theft Auto to play. Our teachers need paid seminars on bringing up abortion rights in class, preferably someplace warm with lots of drunk coeds.
posted
Quick! Someone schedule an election while Bean is in "opposite mode" so we can get him to vote for someone decent!
Posts: 22497 | Registered: Sep 2000
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quote:Originally posted by Puppy: I'm beginning to suspect that Bean Counter is a liberal, and that the parody above is actually a smaller, opposite-day version of his entire posting history.
So he is Stephen Colbert to the Neo-cons? And this is a reverse-reverse lampoon?
Posts: 9912 | Registered: Nov 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Bean Counter: Why put our children under that kind of time pressure? They have basic competence tests to pass, Middle School teachers to have sex with and the new Grand Theft Auto to play. Our teachers need paid seminars on bringing up abortion rights in class, preferably someplace warm with lots of drunk coeds.
BC
Because the liberals are pushing the competence tests? Are you high? That's not a rhetorical question like I sometimes use it... I mean, are you Bean Counter, stoned? Or do you think that everyone here is stoned and will somehow appreciate your absurdly twisted lack of a sense of humor?
Posts: 9912 | Registered: Nov 2005
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A strange phenom occurs in individuals who are generally considered to be 'overly' partisan. It's similar to zealotry, but I don't know if it has any perfect word to describe it. The closest I have come is to call it 'ideological horseblinding.'
It's a strange mental landscape, where information is divided into camps, and becomes accepted or rejected based on convenience and conviction.
Information that supports or originates from one's own ideological 'camp' is accepted without reasonable critique. It does not have to pass any hurdles. It is accepted as Writ. It is propagated as fact. If a mistaken principle or untrue fact is ever once personally established as fact, it is a back-breaking endeavor for a burden of proof to force mental retraction of that 'fact.' It requires overwhelming -- overwhelming -- rebuttal, on a consistent basis, and yet these errant beliefs are liable to continue indefinitely at the whim of trusted ideological sources. The right sort of Austrian economist will believe something forever and ever as long as lewrockwell.com continues preaching it as truth. The right sort of Conservative will trust in any portrayal of national affairs that comes from the mouth or pen of Ann Coulter. As long as the accepted source holds the belief, they are nigh assured to accept it and share it, without any operable internal contention or review.
On the other side of the coin, any information or positions originating from those that one has been essentially conditioned to regard as The Ideological Enemy (Liberals for Conservatives, Conservatives for Liberals, Statists for Libertarians, etc) is automatically assumed to be wrong and bad and terrible and totally misguided, perhaps even evil under the right circumstances. Automatically. There's no real questioning, nor critical thought or appraisal. The disparity of one's willingness to accept or reject information based on ideological convenience creates a self-managed environment of indoctrination. It's downright fascinating, because it quickly accumulates and solidifies a completely warped worldview.
The acid test for ideological horseblinding is to ask someone how they, personally, would imagine advocating the gestalt position of their political opponents. "Imagine yourself to be a run-of-the-mill Liberal today, Bean Counter. How would you define your position? What social and economic systems do you trust?" etc etc.
Since the worldview of an ideologically horseblinded individual will without fail have no capacity to create anything remotely approximating a real-life portrayal of The Enemy, you will be allowed a peek into true and partisan delusion. You will receive a hideous amalgamation of the broad, warped strawmen and negative stereotypes that the ideological fringe quite literally assumes to be the truth of their opponents. What's really amazing about it is that it will bear a comically potent nonresemblance to reality, and if you mention this, they won't believe you at all. They quite literally assume that they know the opponent better than their opponent could possibly know themselves.
Brilliant, isn't it? For a brief, shining second, you are allowed a terrifying glimpse into a void of axiom and invection which is principally and violently opposed to the world of empirical reason and critical thought. The only question left is as to whether you are witnessing true indoctrination or genius parody.
Anyway, great job on portraying the liberals as pacifist eugenicists. Why, before your enlightening and piercing portrayal of the Left, I would have personally thought that the combination was assuredly impossible. I'm sure it works out fascinatingly in your head, however.
Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
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