response 102 of 122:

Jul 31 11:39 UTC 2003

In war, everything is legal. Regardless of what the laws say. When someone
is trying to kill you or you want something that your enemies have, laws are
of no relevance. 

response 104 of 122:

Jul 31 13:07 UTC 2003

They used a surgical anesthetic, which wasn't safe in that situation.

response 106 of 122:

Jul 31 16:25 UTC 2003

I admit they didn't have a lot of options, since the Chechens had the theater
wired with explosives and would have been hard to talk down.  It's hard to
second-guess them from here, but I do wonder whether the situation was urgent
enough that they had to go in right then, and whether they could have found
a gas that would have done the job with less health risks.

response 108 of 122:

Jul 31 17:25 UTC 2003

the same arguements were used at Waco, could they not have waited?  There
comes a point where the depletion of resources may merit the use of a specific
weapon in an attempt to end it the threat.  Sich decision are always more
clear in hind-sight.

response 110 of 122:

Jul 31 18:41 UTC 2003

Re #102: haven't you heard of the Geneva Convention?

It is said "all is fair in love and war" but, of course, that is nonsense.
Do you have no problem with torturing captive soldiers to obtain information,
or even just revenge?

Re #108: they are pretty clear at the time, too. We spend huge amounts
of both time and money in trying, convicting and punishing criminals: much
more than *any* waiting to outlast the Waco crowd, or the Hussein
brothers, would consume. It is a "false economy" to rush to judgement -
unless of course the only purpose is to avoid going through the "trouble"
of our system of justice. 

response 112 of 122:

Aug 1 06:55 UTC 2003

Read it again.

response 114 of 122:

Aug 2 10:09 UTC 2003

John, the funny thing about Jan's #10 is that I didn't view it as Bush
bashing. It was a good point which I hadn't considered, and I think it
condemns not Bush but the American people. (A $3 Million reward isn't
enough to impress us that Bush is being tough? (That's less than Federov
gets per game, right?)

Having said that, I totally disagree with Jan's #30, the part where he
states that ransoms (rewards) undermine the position of the US as a
friend in that we have to "bribe" people to assist us.

What Jan might be missing is that the millions of Iraqis who would be
happy to assist us (even for free) just don't have the info we need.
We're trying to convince the dozens who do have inside information, at
potential risk to themselves, to come forward.  Similarly, rewards
offered for the capture of domestic criminals or for finding lost
pets don't mean that we don't want criminals captured or puppies found.


Rane actually lost the "military intelligence/idiots" argument when
he asked John to prove that not everyone in the military was stupid.
(See #79)

As for "assassination", obviously this was not one, as Rane himself
later cites the Geneva Conventions. The option of surrender was given
and refused. There was no reason to believe (even after the fact) that
those inside would surrender rather than fight to the death. Even if
you attempt to starve them out, ignoring potential threats from outside
the building, they might choose to go out in a hail of gunfire. Indeed,
consider their decision tree. Faced with a vastly superior fighting
force, they refused surrender. Why? 1. They were not going to be taken
alive or 2. they believed they could extricate themselves.

Sure, they may have changed their minds (unlikely), but in any event,
the question becomes one of whether the lives of American soldiers should
be risked to capture rather than kill these butchers in battle.

response 116 of 122:

Aug 2 20:18 UTC 2003

I agree that there is a very plausible justification for the high ransom
- we are trying to tempt people Saddam trusts to turn on him.  But I
still think that it is susceptable to spinning in a way that undermines
the American mission.

response 118 of 122:

Aug 4 13:30 UTC 2003

If we were talking about an action that would have the potential to be
spun so negatively to the American public, Bush wouldn't have choosen
that course of action.  He wouldn't trust that he could control the spin
in the US.  I'm sure he's even less confident of his ability to control
the spin in the middle east.  If this were a question of how something
would be received by Americans, he'd have found another solution to the
problem that would spin better.  (I don't know what that would be in
this case.  maybe you set up an Iraqi police force, give them a huge
funding grant to help them catch Sadam (which they use largely to bribe
people).  I don't know exactly.  Our politicians are so much better at
inventing these devices than I am.)

If Bush really wanted to convince the middle east that he was in Iraq
for the good of the Iraqis, then he'd have to be doing a lot of things
differently.  This bribe is one.  Another thing that would make a huge
difference would be if you threw a lot of effort into getting sewage and
electrical systems up quickly in the major cities.  (No illusions about
this - it would be extremely hard to do - things were a mess long before
we arrived.)  Doing that would be an obvious good to many Iraqis.  It
would be a convincing demonstration that we are there to bring a higher
quality of life to Iraq.  Hey, give Halliburton the contract - they can
export a barrel of oil for each Iraqi they supply with adequate sewage,
water and electricity.

I think Bush and his gang have a vision of the future which is basically
an American Global Economic Empire.  A world where American can freely
exercise it's military power to ensure that things go the American way,
and where America need answer to no other nation.  That sounds good to
many Americans.  Not to me.  Bush's father started on a different course
when he went out of his way to bring the whole world in on the first
Iraq war.  He took a big step to establishing a world view where
American was a leader in a community of nations, but where other nations
were treated with respect.  In that sense, this second Bush war in Iraq
isn't a continuation of the first, but an erasure of the first.

If you have the power for it, acting the petty tyrant is a lot easier
than acting as a community leader.  It would certainly have been a great
deal harder to get anything done in Iraq if we had to coordinate with
the UN.  Too hard for the younger Bush, apparantly.  But in the long
term, working with the world would pay off.  Each time you do the job
that way, nations get more used to working with each other and trusting
each other.  You get slowly better at getting things done in that mode.
You build up credibility.  Which has all been flushed down the toilet
now, for the sake of being able to efficiently pursue Bush's objectives
in Iraq.

And why?  Where was the pressing national interest that demanded that we
trash our international crediability?  There was never any evidence that
Saddam was a imminent threat to the USA.  If there had been, as there
was in Afghanistan, there would be some excuse for unilateral action. 
But there isn't and never was.

They did it this way because they want the American Empire, not the
Community of Nations.  Lots of Americans agree.  I don't.

Add that to the "Patriot Act" kind of business, where American's rights
are restricted to concentrate more power in the government (is this a
Republican ideal?) and you have the two faces of why I hate Bush.  His
response to 9/11 has been to try to concentrate power in his own hands.
To do this he has actually been playing up the threat of terrorism,
making people even more scared than they legitimately need to be. 
That's not a "show of leadership in the face of terrorism", that's
"exploitation of the fear caused by terrorism for your own ends".

response 120 of 122:

Aug 4 16:20 UTC 2003

Opinionjournal.com  (8/1/03)

Meanwhile, the Associated Press reports that allied search teams 
have "found dozens of fighter jets from Iraq's air force buried beneath 
the sands." This took four months--and airplanes are a lot bigger than 
vials of gas or germs.


And, just for fun (or maybe they're serious):

Left Coast Quagmire
California is a desert land roughly the size of Iraq. It is also an 
object lesson in the dangers of trying to impose democracy in a culture 
that is not ready for it. California "is degenerating into a banana 
republic," writes former Enron adviser Paul Krugman in his New York 
Times column. Leon Panetta, himself a Californian, writes in the Los 
Angeles Times that California is undergoing a "breakdown in [the] trust 
that is essential to governing in a democracy." Newsday quotes Bob 
Mulholland, another California political activist, as warning of "a 
coup attempt by the Taliban element." Others say a move is under way 
to "hijack" California's government.
What isn't widely known is that the U.S. has a large military presence 
in California. And our troops are coming under attack from angry 
locals. "Two off-duty Marines were stabbed, one critically, when they 
and two companions were attacked by more than a dozen alleged gang 
members early Thursday," KSND-TV reports from San Diego, a city in 
California's south.
How many young American men and women will have to make the ultimate 
sacrifice before we realize it isn't worth it? Is the Bush 
administration too proud to ask the U.N. for help in pacifying 
California? Plainly California has turned into a quagmire, and the 
sooner we bring our troops back home, the better.

response 122 of 122:

Aug 12 19:11 UTC 2003

Re #118: What you describe is basically the neo-conservative agenda when
it comes to foreign policy.  Even a lot of people on the right have
started to question the wisdom of it.  Unfortunately the damage that's
been done will take a long time to correct.