@Bubba613
I cannot even begin to describe how much your logic is flawed and frankly your assumptions are quite laughable. Normally I would not even deem this worthy of an answer. Honestly, I feel like I need to educate a 14 year old. But if I do not reply, obviously you will start yelling “In your face!” Now, we cannot let that happen eh? So, I will be going through line after line and correct when necessary.
1. So you do believe all of Europe are leftist, socialistic mindless bums in clothes made of goat hair? Please wake up sir.
2. I do not really get your logic about the NY Times and Pravda thing. Isn’t the Pravda pro-government? Than that would mean, the NY Times is pro-government, and that would result in the NY Times screaming about WMD’s rather than about an oil deal. If you however meant that the NY Times is biased in its reporting, I must admit I wouldn’t know about that. That’s why I added another newspaper, and if you would care enough to make the effort, typing in the words “Iraq oil deal”, will always result in (recent) articles about senior executives from mayor oil companies being a member of an Iraqi advisory council on the development/production of the Iraqi oil fields.
3. You are saying you will not mention “the various UN resolutions” . However, although this sounds very impressive, you failed to give which UN resolutions, thus stating this, is like an officer taking you into custody and while doing so, says “I’m arresting you on criminal charges” without mentioning what you actually did wrong. So please enlighten me here as to which resolution.
4. “All we had to do was relax sanctions” Yeah right, the US was, as was the rest of the world, condemning and criticising Saddam’s reign, by placing an embargo, but because the US needs some oil they should just have lifted that embargo and embraced that tyrant. How exactly do you think the world would have reacted then? Doesn’t this sound awfully opportunistic to you, something a proper government tries to steer clear off?
5. “If we wanted their oil, we could have staged a coup and gone home” So what you are saying is:
They stage a coup and put a new tyrant in place, who will pump out their oil for them, no questions asked. (This obviously has the merit to be sure to receive applause from the other world leaders
) Honestly, don’t you think it would be a much better strategy, to conquer and secure the country (what they did), bring down Saddam’s government (they did), and continue to provide security until the Iraqi government can take over (what they are doing), while placing some of their own in “advisory roles” as to guarantee that oil supply (which they evidently did)
6. “The reason the Euros opposed the war”: Well, since there is no such thing as the Euros, in the sense of a single united government, controlling the national/regional governments, like for example the United States, this just doesn’t make sense. There is no such thing as “the Euros”. There is a European Union, that’s correct, however this functions not at all like the federal government in the US. In the European Union, all member states get to vote and it only takes one veto to wipe a proposal of sending troops to Iraq off the table. And stating that they were all against it is also utter bullsh*t. What about Italy, Estonia, the UK, Denmark, Lithuania and Latvia, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Spain and Portugal? They are all members of the European Union, however they do have troops in Iraq. Granted not as much as the US, but still they are helping out as well.
7. “They are just counting on the US to fight the wars they are unable to fight.” This is the first remark you made, that makes sense. This is absolutely true, since most European countries, either have very small military forces or they do not have the capabilities (nor the funding for that matter) to project power overseas, as the US does. This is however something that will continue as long as there is not something like a United States of Europe. But that is a different discussion altogether.
8. “The Belgian Army in particular was unmasked recently (in the WSJ) as filled with incompetents, used by the government as a substitute jobs program, and not mission ready for anything more than a band concert.” Although this is very true and I seriously regret that the Belgian government does not take any action to enhance its armed forces, this has absolutely nothing to do with the discussion and this does not even affect in the slightest bit the reasons the US had for invading Iraq.
9. “As to resources, a given resource might be finite but resources in general are not due to substitution and other reasons.”
Substitution and other reasons? Unless you are talking about the law of conservation of energy (which I highly doubt), there is no such thing as limitless resources. Because resources are always limited to what you can extract from it. For example, some might say solar power is a limitless resource. Although this is virtually true (stars do die, I know) in the everyday loosened-up vocabulary of Joe Nobody, this is not true in an economical (which is its true meaning) sense: Solar power is still limited in such a way that we can only extract so much from it, and that it costs a heck of a lot to do so. If this weren’t true, then the indigenous people of “wherever”, wouldn’t need an electric company setting up a power grid between their huts. They could just use the sun... obviously you must see the flaw in your logic here and admit that you were wrong about resources being limitless.
This is the last I will say about this topic, because frankly I think I already put too much effort into this, compared with the value of your words. However, if anyone else wishes to discuss further in a more reasonable fashion I would be delighted to do so.
Greetz to all, Out.
V.
