From: "Mark" 

Except that the bees were not going placidly about their business, they
were plotting and attacking with ever increasing frequency and
effectiveness - as soon as the pressure is off, they'll be back to ever
more grandiose plotting and planning. Bush will not let the pressure wane.

"John Beamish"  wrote in
message news:4130cf67{at}w3.nls.net...
> The action was to invade Iraq and eliminate WMD but the best available
> evidence came from Blix who was in the country, on site, and unable to
> find
> anything indicating the presence of WMD in spite of numerous inspections.
> As it turned out, of course, he was unable to find any WMD because there
> were no WMD to find.  The position that the invasion was based on the
> "information available at the time" was then (and is seen even more
> clearly
> now) as a decision made in spite of, not because of, factual evidence.
>
> As further support, one needs only read Woodward's book.  He was given
> extraordinary access to the participants and (having read the book) it is
> an
> inescapable conclusion that the invasion was planned and the WMD were a
> handy pretext on to which they could attach the invasion.
>
> The decision not to invade a country could hardly be called appeasement
> since there were no concessions being made by the US.  If anything, the
> appeasement was on the part of the Iraqi government who acquiesced and let
> the UN inspectors in.
>
> Your final point about "liking the US", terrorism and
"getting back to a
> world that Spain is searching for" is the strongest of your arguments yet
> it
> is also very weak.  The premise is that invading a secular state which
> neither aided nor harboured Islamic terrorists will reduce terrorism.  At
> the very least, that's highly questionable.  Considering the impact that
> the
> invasion has had on millions of Iraqi Muslims and the tens of millions of
> Muslims outside the country, it is difficult to conclude that the actions
> of
> the US have resulted in any net reduction of the number of terrorists.
>
> An imperfect analogy but it describes the current situation well:  killing
> one or two bees kills those bees; killing them by hitting a part of the
> nest
> simply angers the bees who were quite placidly going about their daily
> business beforehand.  At the end of the episode, a few bees are dead, the
> killer has endured quite a few bee stings.  But when the killer retreats
> the
> bees will resume their placid behaviour.
>
>
>
> "Mark"  wrote in message
news:4130bea5$1{at}w3.nls.net...
>>
>>
>> I believe that, based on the information available at the time, that Bush
>> would have been irresponsible not to take action. I believe further that
> it
>> is vitally necessary that we continue to operate from a mind-set of
>> action
>> and offense, not from one of appeasement and defense. There are hundreds
> of
>> covert operations going on all over the world with the assistance of all
> the
>> world (including those that opposed the action in Iraq), it is, after
>> all,
>> in their best interests to drain all the swamps.
>>
>> Prior to our adopting the Bush Doctrine some of these countries were
>> satisfied to hope that they weren't targeted by Bin Laden and others, so
>> allowed the growing terrorist problem to fester under the surface - it
>> has
>> bubbled through now, and sitting back and hoping is no longer an option.
> The
>> leaders of the world - again including France, Germany, and now,
> especially,
>> Russia - know this (Spain, unfortunately, has chosen to try and revert to
> a
>> pre-9/11 world that no longer exists). They see that we are not going to
>> merely lob a few missiles here and there and make empty threats during
> prime
>> time and they know they're better off throwing in their lot with us now -
>> before they were probably right in keeping their heads in the sand vis a
> vis
>> terrorism, not anymore.
>>
>> How much any given citizen of any given country "likes"
the US is not
>> relevant to the job at hand (nor do any fewer appear to be trying to get
>> here despite that supposed lack of likeability) - back when they
> supposedly
>> "liked" us terrorism was growing rapidly, culminating in
9/11 - a fat lot
> of
>> good that illusion of love did us - or them. So, the bottom-line remains,
> if
>> Bush is not reelected these countries will be tossed into uncertainty and
>> may be tempted to try and get back to that world that Spain is searching
>> for, ultimately without success and almost certainly with more dire
>> consequences in the long run.
>>
>>
>
>

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