purplecthulhu

I said it was "provocative and unwise". As to "wrong"... I think there's a spectrum of wrongness, and Israel's actions by no means define the breadth of that spectrum.

Yes, there is a spectrum of wrongness. When terms like 'evil' get used we forget that there are scales of wrongness. The likely death of thousands of civilians in any attack on Iraq is wrong. And we should not forget that.

Because any resolutions blocked by the US on Israel have been of a radically different character than what's going on in the current situation. Israel does not routinely disregard Security Council resolutions calling on it to give up WMD obtained in violation of treaty, nor does it threaten the world's economy through attempting to gain control over critical resources by attacking other countries. It is willing to live in peace with its neighbors, and it does not make a habit of being one of the worst violators of human rights in the entire world -- if you think that Israel's human rights record, imperfect though it may be, is in the same league as Iraq, Iran, Syria, or Egypt, just to name a few examples, you are sadly mistaken.

Nobody has pushed for severe sanctions on Israel for various of its actions because they know there is no hope of getting them past the US. I'm unsure whether Israel has signed the non-proliferation treaty, but I am sure they have nuclear weapons, which would violate that treaty. Nobody has ever suggested that they should be disarmed because, again, they are protected by the US. There are numerous other countires with WMD, including Pakistan, India and South Africa, and probably North Korea now as well -and that's just the nuclear ones. Chemical and biological weapons are likely to be much more common. And yet the US is not going after any of these countires. Is there a double standard here? It might be claimed that there is not because Saddam has used chemical weapons on his own population. But that was in 1988, and the US was supporting Iraq at the time. Donald Rumsfeld was even in Baghdad at the time, as Reagan's special envoy to Iraq, and he refused to comment on the act. Why is that use now justification for attack while it was ignored at the time by the very same people?

[Arguments before congress]

And how does this make it incorrect? There are many places in the world where this conflict is seen in terms of power-politics, in terms of "what can we get out of it". Having these people twist the wording and meaning of previous UNSC resolutions is not only venal and shortsighted, but deeply offensive to anyone who believes in the ultimate goals of the United Nations.

And this goes to the heart of the matter. Why do you believe that those who interpret resolutions differently from the US are looking for what they can get while the US is not doing just the same thing? Yes, it is all about power politics, wherever these decisions are made. The US government is looking for a number of things. Securing oil supplies is one of them. But also, there's a lot of internal US politics going on here. Bush wants to look good for re-election. Being a war president will distract from the mess he's making of the economy (which is at least partly the war's fault!). Its also distracting people from domestic politics and allowing him to put extrteme fundamentalists into various positions of influence. For an example see here. And, above all, these distractions are keeping people away from the fact that he has no electoral mandate, and is only in power because of his father's friends in the Supreme Court. All the evidence suggests that he only won Florida because of widespread electoral malpractice. But if he's a war president, then it would be unpatriotic to say this.

While I have some respect for the folks over at CIA, their analysis may not be correct, nor will it hold true indefinitely. If the current situation were to go on for another year, and US forces backed off, would Saddam still find it hard to resist if someone made him a tempting offer? His current behavior casts doubt on him actually being a rational actor, and he also has a significant history of strategic miscalculation.

The CIA are not the only intelligence agency that thinks that Saddam will only use, or have his WMDs used if attacked. The British security services are so incensed at having these views ignored that they've leaked high level briefing documents to this effect. Meanwhile the best the prime minister can do by way of support for the US position is to plagiarise and doctor an old PhD thesis. The religious and political ideologies of Saddam and al Quaida are so far apart that they are unlikely to ever make him an offer. He is likely only to use them if he sees himself falling in the immediate future. Removing the invading force from his borders will remove that threat, and make us all safer while the inspectors actually get the job done and disarm him as much as possible.