Muzzies, Godwin's, and Liberal Media BiasFollow

Oh, whew! I was on the verge of apologizing.

I dunno, but it can be brought to bear in any debate and is fearsome indeed.

Hey! "Trenchant" was yesterday's word of the day. Today you need to use "confabulation"!

Nexa

I get the same thing when I see Sophie Marceau's face on Anna Karenina.

Though, she is cuter than Will Smith, I'll give you that.

Can we get "kakistocracy" as one of the weekday's words? Maybe Thursdays?

Or Wednesday, I'm not really picky...

Kind of ironic since Tolstoy deliberately elided any detailed description of Anna Karenina, except to say she was beautiful. He wanted the reader to supply the details based on his/her definition of beauty.

Smart man, Tolstoy. Too bad he didn't anticipate the effect of films and paperbacks on the public consciousness.

I don't believe that 687(or 678,1205 and 1411 for that matter) are the end of the argument, as you put it. France and Russia (go figure) thought the wording was ambiguous enough that they fought to have it altered to counter the revivalist position held by the US, who obviously saw the ambiguousness of it and wanted it left as is for their purposes to not be bound by further SC habitual delaying, and to have a viable "legal war" position if needed.

The first argument

15. The first argument is based on the following steps:

(a) OP1, by stating that Iraq "has been and remains in material breach" of its
obligations under relevant resolutions, including resolution 687 amounts to a
determination by the Council that Iraq's violations of resolution 687 are
sufficiently serious to destroy the basis of the cease-fire and therefore, in
principle, to revive the authorisation to use force in resolution 678;

(b) the Council decided, however, to give Iraq "a final opportunity" (OP 2) but
because of the clear warning that it faced "serious consequences as a result of
its continued violations" (OP 13) was warning that a failure to take that "final
opportunity" would lead to such consequences;

(c) further, by OP 4, the Council decided in advance that false statements or
omissions in its declaration and "failure by Iraq at any time to comply with, and
cooperate fully in the implementation of, this resolution" would constitute "a
further material breach"; the argument is that the Council's determination in
advance that particular conduct would constitute a material breach (thus
reviving the authorisation to use force) is as good as its determination after the
event;

(d) in either event, the Council must meet (OP 12) "to consider the situation
and the need for full compliance with all of the relevant Council resolutions in
order to secure international peace and security'; but the resolution singularly
does not say that the Council must decide what action to take. The Council
knew full well, it is argued, the difference between "consider" and "decide" and
so the omission is highly significant. Indeed, the omission is especially
important as the French and Russians made proposals to include an express
requirement for a further decision, but these were rejected precisely to avoid
being tied to the need to obtain a second resolution. On this view, therefore,
while the Council has the opportunity to take a further decision, the
determinations of material breach in OPs 1 and 4 remain valid even if the
Council does not act.

Which means you've been sufficiently brainwashed to a particular view of international law. Doesn't mean you have an ounce of brainpower. Just that you're wiling and able to parrot back to the professors what they want you to say. Bully for you though.

I'm not impressed by degrees.



I'm smarter then you. I know how to think. I've been trained in critical thinking instead of blindly parroting what I've been told. Any monkey can get a degree. All he needs is time and funding. It is in no way a measurement of his ability to actually understand any given topic.



Nice. You can quote what other people wrote. Do you understand what this actually means?




Um... You're deliberately employing your own, intentionally false, interpretation of what you think Bush's reasoning is. The only people I've ever heard actually use the "pre-emptive self defense" argument are people like yourself when attempting to argue *against* it. That's a strawman. While I'm sure Bush has made comments like "we need to attack them before they attack us", that's a political argument, not a legal one. As I pointed out before, there's a difference between why you *can* do something, and why you actually choose to do that thing. You're arguing the latter as though it is the former.


By definition, a cease fire means that all the member states are still at a "state of war" with the nation(s) in question. That is inherent in the definition of "cease fire". It's not a peace treaty. The mere fact of being at war with another state means that the "self defense" argument applies to all nations involved all the time.

The UN does not have the power to eternally keep member states in a state of war against their wishes. Had the UN negotiated a peace agreement, that would be perfectly ok, and the US would have abided by the terms of that agreement (as they are required). But the UN did not do this. It had ample opportunity to do so, but failed.

The sections you are quoting assume that we're starting from a condition of peace and the potential for war occurs. But that's *not* the situation here. Here we are already at war, and the UN is holding us in a state of war even when it becomes abundantly clear that the terms of the cease fire will not be met. The UN *should* have chosen to either resume the conflict until a resolution was reached, or crafted a peace treaty to resolve the state of war (with the potential for then imposing new, but non cease-fire related sanctions against Iraq). It choose not to do either of those things.

Thus. The US had the right to resume hostilites. Nothing in the UN charter specifies that a nation in an existing state of war can be prevented from from resolving that conflict in which it is already engaged via the use of military force.

In fact, the closest case to this situation present in the charter are the numerous exceptions placed for those states currently engaged in WW2 (the UN charter was signed prior to the end of that conflict). Clearly, the intent was *not* for the UN to be empowered to prevent nations from fighting wars they are already engaged in, but to mediate and attempt to prevent new wars from starting going forward.


You've read the charter, but you clearly don't understand what it means, nor how it must be applied in the situation we're discussing.




Again. You read, but don't understand. The UN SC is empowered to make decisions regarding the UNs actions on this (they "remain seized of the matter"). This still does not in anyway remove the right of any nation already in a state of war to resolve that conflict via the use of military force.

Also. The "current resolution" is the cease fire agreement. See, there's an odd bit of illogic going on here. A cease fire agreement by definition is non-binding. The resolution is a list of demands that Iraq must meet in order to qualify for a peace agreement (or at least to move on to the next stage towards one). You cannot argue that the resolution itself binds us to a cease fire with the conditions within since that's contrary to what a cease fire is. The cease fire is an agreement not to fire while those agreements are being reached. The UN is welcome to remain seized of the terms and enforcement of the peace agreement it's trying to negotiate, but that in no way removes the inherent right of any participant nation to a conflict to fight in that conflict if it feels that that is the appropriate action it needs to take.


If the UN truely wanted to put itself in the position of fully being seized of the matter, they should have resolved a peace agreement (purely to end the state of war), and then resolved new sanctions and terms to deal with Iraq. It could have done this, but didn't. Thus, it choose to keep the nations involved in a state of war, thus it did *not* remove their own rights with regard to that conflict.


Again. The UN as an entity does not have the power to keep member nations in a state of war indefinately. In fact, this runs counter to the entire stated purpose of the UN itself. But the only way your interpretation works is if this is the case. Clearly, it's not. Thus, clearly you are wrong. The UN is empowered to determine if/when the terms of that agreement have been reached, but it is *not* empowered to prevent any participant in the war from continuing it if they choose.



It doesn't apply because there's no treaty involved. See the difference? We were in a state of "cease fire". By definition that is *not* a treaty of any sort. There's nothing to violate here. By assumption a cease fire is non-binding to the parties involved. They get to choose whether to fire or not at their own whims, and with no need for anyone else's permission.

Look up the definition of a cease fire sometime. It might help you with your legal interpretation.



Yes. A cease fire. Not a peace treaty. Get it yet?


The UN's rules for nations instigating military action apply only to nations currently at a state of peace. We weren't at a state of peace with Iraq.

Again: find me where in the UN charter it says that it has the power to authorize (or not authorize) nations currently at a state of war from fighting. It's not there... Thus, it's not a violation of the UN charter. Thus, it's not illegal.

It really is *that* simple...

Um. We may have *also* been there for those reasons, but if there was no need to impose sanctions on Iraq, those soldiers would not have been there. The reason they were there was to protect SA from attack from Iraq and to enforce the UN sanctions on Iraq. We can rattle off a list of other reasons why SA was specifically chosen for that task, but none of them remove the primary reason *why* we needed soldiers in that area in the first place.



What have I said that is factually in error here?

It's really simple. The 9/11 attacks occured because OBL called for attacks on the US. OBL called for those attacks against Americans because there were US soldiers stationed in his home country of Saudi Arabia. Those soldiers were there because they were enforcing the UN sanctions on Iraq. Thus, 9/11 occured because of the US enforcement of the UN sanctions on Iraq.


What part of that is false? We can debate the choice of SA as a base for those soldiers, but we *did* choose to put them there, and that choice arose out of the need to enforce those UN sanctions against Iraq (and to potentially protect SA from Iraqi attack as well). The fact that other determining factors may have been present does not change any of this, nor make it any less true.

And once again Joph gets caught up bickering over semantics and ignoring the point.

I don't freaking care Joph. I can make arguments that SA was the best location to impose the sanctions on Iraq. You can make arguments that we "could" have done it in other ways. None of that changes the fact that we *did* use SA as the location for the purpose of imposing sanctions on Iraq.




Wow! You must have been the "I'm rubber, you're glue" champ back in school...

Ok. To get back on the legality issue. I missed this part of your post Red:



Glen Rangwala is an idiot then. Him saying that does not magically make it so. Maybe in the mushyheaded Liberal world that kind of redefinition makes sense, but it's not how cease-fires have traditionally been used. If that were true, there would be no need for things like peace treaties, now would there?

Here's a quote from a review of a book on the subject by Yoram Dinstein (the book, not the review):




Agree or disagree, I'm not the only person who believes that this is the correct way to interpret a cease-fire agreement. Doing it any other way places far too many restrictions on the party who "follows the rules", and makes it far too easy for a nation like Iraq to play games and get away with it.

If you'd like, I can link dozens of other sources stating more or less the same thing. Interstingly enough (and as I pointed out earlier), the easily debunked arguments about why Bush pushed for the war in Iraq inevitably come from those who are debunking them (shocker!). When you ask experts who agree with the wars legality why they agree, they provide completely different supporting arguments.


If all you do is listen to the legal arguments *against* the war, you'll only ever know half the issue.

How many years has it taken you to figure that out?

Sheesh! ;)