Anti-Balistic-Missile-Defense


  • Nah, nukes aren’t mere toys to be played with. I, too, wouldn’t want to be known as the President that killed 100,000s (maybe even millions) of civilians just to get one man. It’s not worth it. At least Truman had a valid reason, Bush really doesn’t. Convential weapons still work just as well. Give me this here sniper rifle, a ticket to Iraq, a 6-pack, clear shot of Saddam, and I’ll get rid of him for you).


  • @HortenFlyingWing:

    @F_alk:

    And if i was Horten, i would now be very very very upset, that you say that every single citizen of North Korea, Iran and Iraque is a rogue :) :) :)

    I don’t get it! Why would I be upset?

    Well, you get upset when i talk of “most americans”, which is clearly allowing for exemptions. You should then of course get upset, when someone states that there are rogue states, which does not allow that explicitly for exemptions :)


  • Well you have to look at how the words are used. I said the Rouge Regimes (ie Iraq and the others I mentioned). However, that doesn’t mean all of the citizens or even most of them were rouges. Take Nazi Germany for instance. We all knew that most of the high ranking Nazi regime was bad (ie Hitler, Gobbles, Herman Goering, Rudolph Hess, ect). However does this mean all or even most of the German people were bad? Of course not. Same goes with Iraq (just because Saddam is a bad), doesn’t mean the people are.


  • @TG:

    Yeah, Iran and North Korea are slowly begining to realize (like the Russians and the Chinese) how much better it is for them to support us then to be against us. But Bush calling them the Axis of Evil, that just worsens the situation between the countries. (Well, except for Iraq Regime that’s wants us dead after Desert Storm. But Saddam can only live so long).

    Exactly…you don’t make a statement like that! Especially one so carefully constructed to invoke hate.


  • @TG:

    Well you have to look at how the words are used. I said the Rouge Regimes (ie Iraq and the others I mentioned). However, that doesn’t mean all of the citizens or even most of them were rouges. Take Nazi Germany for instance. We all knew that most of the high ranking Nazi regime was bad (ie Hitler, Gobbles, Herman Goering, Rudolph Hess, ect). However does this mean all or even most of the German people were bad? Of course not. Same goes with Iraq (just because Saddam is a bad), doesn’t mean the people are.

    nods
    Hmhmmm,
    that is my stand as well, and to be more precise on my stand:
    you can’t avoid prejudices, but you can give each and every individuum the chance to show that your prejudice is wrong. Especially when officially sanctioned, you have to be careful: there, even if statistics say you are right, the sanctions can be abused by prejudical hatred (like mentioned in the racial profiling thread). The way along a road always begins with the first step, so make sure that the road is not the road of hate, ignorance and violence (for officially sanctioned “racism” (<- in the lack of a better word))

    And even though it doesn’t fit well into this thread, but better into …which one was it… shrug one of the others where i post more often, a small anekdote which happened to me:
    We went to a local pub, to see the match Germany-USA. I convinced some of my colleagues to come with me and watch it. I sat down and watched, fevering for my team. Behind me there were some “natives”, one of them occasionally shouting “Deutschland” and raising his arm to the Hitler greet (sp?). I was really annoyed by that and close to telling him that i take that as a personal attack/insult.
    Even though that probably was a joke, that’s were i am really sensitive.
    (that is some of the occasions were he didn’t know of the bad feelings he caused in me, towards him, and still he did quite massively!)


  • I can agree on you. Lets take a look at Iraq. A lot of economic sanctions (some of it based on Western racism) that the UN imposed on Iraq after Desert Storm served as a crippling blow. To make matters worst, you have Saddam running around spending the peoples’ money to rebuild his shattered army, research NBC, and build palaces and publics arts (mostly Mosaics of him and “Satan” [ie George Bush]). What does this lead to? Massive starvation of the people. Already thousands of children die in Iraq each month (not sure of the exact numbers, can anyone clarify?) due to lack of sufficient food, clean water, and even the most basic hospital necessities. What does this breed? Even more hatred and prejudice toward the United States (Saddam is good at manipulating the masses).

    PS: About you’re little soccer gathering, I wish we had some Germans half as fevered as the ones over there. The ones I know are like, “So we made it into the semi-finals, no biggie.” (And this is really an insult to the US team, who’s appearance in the semi-finials would’ve been a major biggie no doubt). Just no Hitler signs, okay?


  • @TG:

    I can agree on you. Lets take a look at Iraq. A lot of economic sanctions (some of it based on Western racism) that the UN imposed on Iraq after Desert Storm served as a crippling blow. To make matters worst, you have Saddam running around spending the peoples’ money to rebuild his shattered army, research NBC, and build palaces and publics arts (mostly Mosaics of him and “Satan” [ie George Bush]). What does this lead to? Massive starvation of the people. Already thousands of children die in Iraq each month (not sure of the exact numbers, can anyone clarify?) due to lack of sufficient food, clean water, and even the most basic hospital necessities. What does this breed? Even more hatred and prejudice toward the United States (Saddam is good at manipulating the masses).

    PS: About you’re little soccer gathering, I wish we had some Germans half as fevered as the ones over there. The ones I know are like, “So we made it into the semi-finals, no biggie.” (And this is really an insult to the US team, who’s appearance in the semi-finials would’ve been a major biggie no doubt). Just no Hitler signs, okay?

    Iraq’s economy is recovering thoguh, so i’m not sure if so many are dying.


  • True, but it’s already been a decade (an a decade of slow improvement for Iraq). I think it’s time to completely remove such sanctions.

    Anyways, I did a bit researching and here’s what I found:

    More than 250 people, mostly children under 5, die each day because of sanctions, according to a UNICEF report released in April 1998 (Each month 5,000 to 6,000 children die as a result of the sanctions). More than one-and-a- half million faceless, nameless, and relatively unreported brown people have been killed by the sanctions imposed in 1990. That’s about 5 percent of Iraq’s pre-sanctions population. In percentage terms, that is equivalent to about 13 million dead Americans. The World Food Programme says more than 1.2 million Iraqi children died due to the embargo between August 1990 and August 1997 – a generation sanctioned into nonexistence.

    The per capita income of Iraq has gone from $2,900 a year to $60 a year. A can of powdered milk costs as much as one month of a doctor’s salary. Surgery is conducted routinely without anesthesia. Sanitation facilities are abysmal. Fifty percent of the rural population does not have access to potable water, compared to a 92 percent access rate in 1990. The majority of Iraqis has been on a semi-starvation diet for the last few years, according to the World Health Organization. Infant mortality has increased six-fold since 1990. The once exemplary and free public health system has been decimated. Inflation has increased astronomically. According to the Food and Agricultural Organization, the price of wheat flour in August 1995 was 11,677 times higher (1.16 million percent) than in July 1990. Crime has skyrocketed.

    “In a small grocery store in a poor area of Baghdad early one morning I watched a child of perhaps five…proudly doing a terribly important errand: he bought one egg. A tray of 30 eggs exceeds a university professor’s monthly salary… As he left, the child dropped the egg. He fell to the floor, frantically trying to pick the shell, yolk and white, with his small hands, tears streaming down his face.”

    Seems sad, doesn’t it? Even in present day still thousands are starving to death each month.

    “History! Read it and weep!” - Bokonon


  • 1998 is way different from 2002. one can now easily buy computers and printers in Iraq, and people are seeming to forget that Iraq started a war, lost it, and doesn’t allow arms inspections.

    The sanctions should end the moment Saddam is out of power…one could only hope we accelerate the process, but his sons aren’t any better. Someone outside of Saddam’s family should be put in power.


  • “1998 is way different from 2002. one can now easily buy computers and printers in Iraq”

    Lets take a look at this shall we?

    (March of 2001)
    Adrian Dominican Sisters and Associates challenge economic restrictions and travel to Iraq under the Bush Administration. The purpose of the trip was to offer aid and to show love and support for the Iraqi people who are suffering under the international sanctions imposed at the close of the Gulf War. Ten years of economic sanctions against Iraq have created death and misery among the most vulnerable members of Iraqi society - the poor, elderly, newborn, sick and young. Before the sanctions were imposed, obesity was a primary health concern for children in Iraq. Since the sanctions, however, 30 percent of Iraqi children suffer from either acute or chronic malnutrition, according to UNICEF. This organization also estimates that 5,000 to 6,000 Iraqi children die every month from malnutrition and starvation. Looks like the numbers still haven’t changed very much lately?

    (April 2001)
    It would seem like the Pope is for end sanctions. St. John Paul II told the Iraqi ambassador in his opening remarks of his “esteem for the Iraqi people, whom I remember daily in my prayers, especially in light of the continuing difficulties which they face. As the embargo in your country continues to claim victims, I renew my appeal to the international community that innocent people should not be made to pay the consequences of a destructive war whose effects are still being felt by those who are weakest and most vulnerable.”

    (March 2002)
    For the period 1990 to 2000, UNICEF found that of 188 countries surveyed, Iraq suffered the worst change in mortality levels amongst children under five years old. Child mortality rates in Iraq actually more than doubled during the decade. The ‘smart sanctions’ proposed by the governments of the United Kingdom and the United States, and the latest Security Council resolution on Iraq, are still economic sanctions. Although they are claimed to ease restrictions on humanitarian imports, they do not allow the economic revival so desperately needed. No foreign loans, no foreign investment, no access to foreign exchange, and no Iraqi exports other than oil are permitted under the resolution. Nor will resources become available for teachers and civil servants, or for the rehabilitation and upkeep of the shattered infrastructure, hospitals and schools. The proposed ‘smart sanctions’ are not the solution to the economic and social catastrophe facing ordinary Iraqi citizens, but a grim perpetuation of a failed policy. - Campaign Against Sanctions on Iraq.

    Even then we have to deal with 500,000+ Iraqi children dead. Just because things are now starting to imrpove, should we turn a blind eye into what happened within the past decade.

    Do the economic sanctions work?
    Well, in 432 BC, officials in Athens denied traders from the state of Megara access to Athens’ harbor and its marketplace. That first recorded use of economic sanctions didn’t work, and instead helped precipitate the Peloponnesian War, a horrific and lengthy conflict that brought an end to the fledgling Greek democracy.
    Like the Athenians, the United States uses sanctions in an effort to dissuade nations from taking undesirable actions – supporting terrorism, proliferating weapons of mass destruction, violating human rights, trafficking in drugs or despoiling the environment.
    But like the Megarians, many of the targets of U.S. sanctions (ex. Iraq, Iran and Cuba) do not change their behavior in the face of sanctions, according to numerous studies.
    The pressure to change sanctions policy has come largely from business interests, including The Boeing Co. and Washington state’s agricultural industry, who complain that they are losing export markets all over the world because Congress and the president are too quick to impose sanctions. Sanctions are imposed or threatened against 75 countries, ranging from Angola to Zaire, for behaviors ranging from support for terrorism to failure to adequately protect sea turtles, according to a study by the President’s Export Council.
    But the business community and human rights activists argue that economic sanctions often hurt innocent civilians, most notably in Iraq. The activists have struck a chord in Seattle, leading to anti-sanctions protests and vigils. Activists have led groups of physicians and others to Iraq with medicine, equipment and medical texts, which are not allowed without State Department approval.
    “Sanctions have become a cheap way of doing foreign policy, except the costs are often really quite terrible,” says John Mueller, a political scientist at the University of Rochester, who argues that sanctions should be narrowly focused on technologies usable by the military, and should not include food and medicine. “It’s not like blowing up a building, where you can count corpses, but it’s much worse,” said Mueller, referring to estimates that tens of thousands of Iraqi children have died from malnutrition-related diseases because of a lack of food and medicine. “Numerically, the deaths in Iraq are worse than Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined.”
    A 1997 study by the Institute for International Economics found that since 1970, unilateral U.S. sanctions had achieved foreign policy goals only 13 percent of the time. The study also concluded that sanctions are costing the United States $15 billion to $19 billion annually in potential exports.
    Sanctions have not led to democratic changes in Cuba, Iraq or Iran, and the unambiguous threat of sanctions did not deter India and Pakistan from testing nuclear weapons. According to the Congressional Research Service, by the end of 1997 there were 191 different sanctions being imposed by the United States.
    “people are seeming to forget that Iraq started a war, lost it, and doesn’t allow arms inspections.”
    Of course Saddam is just as responsible (and probably more so) for the terrible conditions in Iraq. Saddam leaves billions of dollars unspent or to equip and train his army. Could it be that starvation is occurring in populations not loyal to Saddam or to show how America ruined the economy (ex Baghdad)? Engineered by the well-fed Mr. Hussein and his generals in a cynical “two-birds-with-one-stone” propaganda ploy? These sanctions serve as the perfect scapegoat for Saddam to cover up his true intentions from the public.

    What Bush doesn’t understand is how Saddam can bend the will of the people. Do you think Saddam is intentionally going to say, “Whoops. My bad. I started the whole war and we lost it. It’s my fault for these terrible conditions.” Or will he say, “This is all the work of the Great Satan, George Bush! America is responsible for our suffering and imposing these harsh conditions! We must resist those infidels and show we’re right!” And since Saddam controls the media and the propaganda machine, which statement are the Iraqi people more willing to believe?


  • What right do we have to deny Iraq to have Nuclear Weapons, or Biological weapons? We have them, we used them (WWI, WWII), and we continue to mass produce them.


  • In a nutshell, it’s because we can’t trust them to have any. Similarly, would you trust a “social drinker” to own a car fearing he might one day drink and drive due to his habits? And I wouldn’t exactly call Saddam one of the most trustworthy and responsible guys out there. But provided that Iraq was governed by strong, good rulers (though one questions what a “good” ruler be doing researching NBC’s), I wouldn’t mind them having such programs.


  • We shouldn’t have to build the shield because we shouldn’t ever hesitate to take out rogues like Saddam…


  • So? I wouldn’t call the Israeli’s we gave nukes to responsible. I wouldn’t call the Pakistanis and Indians responsible. If we were in a major conflict, that we might lose, we would surely use our Nuclear and Biological weapons.


  • First, I don’t agree with those three countries having nukes. Hell, Pakistan and India are almost at war with each other! You’re talking about the death of BILLIONS (imagine the fallout all across the Asian border) should nuclear weapons be used. And if I remember correctly, USA actually slapped on sanctions of the two for testing nukes. As for Israel, it’s bad, but not as much. They have to defend their home country from attack (remember all the previous conflicts). However, I think Israel lacks the clear minded leadership in order to have the responsibility of having nukes. USA’s presidents weren’t the best, but at least they knew the consequences of what they were doing.


  • I don’t agree with sanctions, we need to take Saddam out, not sit back while he starves his people.

    “So? I wouldn’t call the Israeli’s we gave nukes to responsible. I wouldn’t call the Pakistanis and Indians responsible. If we were in a major conflict, that we might lose, we would surely use our Nuclear and Biological weapons.”

    We gave the Israelis nukes? I heard an American jet crashed with a nuke and they “developed” one, but I heard that by a pro palestinian british guy.

    Israel isn’t like Iraq when it comes to stability…but pakistan and india???i trust them more than Iraq!

    BTW Yanyy, what you said sounds like it was purposely imbedded in your brain. No offense, but you don’t know how many people I heard say, “But the uS was the only country ever to use Nuclear weaponry”! The atomic bomb that saved lives in japan is different from the ones of today.


  • “The atomic bomb that saved lives in japan is different from the ones of today.”

    In the fact that they are much, much more powerful.

    “I don’t agree with sanctions, we need to take Saddam out, not sit back while he starves his people.”

    I can agree. What we should’ve done in the first place was oust Saddam right after Desert Strom. I think the charges of the wholesale murder of thousands of Kurds, political opponents, religious, and ethnic groups should be more than enough to fill the crimes against humanity list.


  • “I can agree. What we should’ve done in the first place was oust Saddam right after Desert Strom. I think the charges of the wholesale murder of thousands of Kurds, political opponents, religious, and ethnic groups should be more than enough to fill the crimes against humanity list.”

    European Allies I believe pressured America to not press ahead. But that is only an impression I have, and i wasn’t old enough to understand how serious george hw was.


  • Offically, the Nuclear technology was “stolen”. But of course, offically, Delta force doesn’t exist. Ask any historian who is an expert in the field and you’ll learn that it was secretely given to the Israelis (kinda like how we sold weapons to the Iranians).


  • Offically, the Nuclear technology was “stolen”. But of course, offically, Delta force doesn’t exist. Ask any historian who is an expert in the field and you’ll learn that it was secretely given to the Israelis (kinda like how we sold weapons to the Iranians).

    I am one of those people who is 100% against Nukes. We dropped the Bomb, that drop was justified, it saved Millions of lives on both sides. But, we do not have a right to say who can and cannot develope Nuclear weapons. What if Saddam Hussien said “Your not aloud to have Nuclear Weapons”, Horten how would you answer that?

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