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Please remember to exercise respect, responsbility when you are expressing your opinions.
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Please remember to exercise respect, responsbility when you are expressing your opinions.
Adopt the PEEL format when you are arguing.
Use your real name when you are expressing your argument
Remember your expository style when you are writing your argument.
What if FDR had stuck to fighting the Japanese in the Pacific?During World War II, then President Franklin Roosevelt chose to initially dedicate the bulk of American resources to the European theater, believing that destroying Hitler's Reich was the most urgent task and that Imperial Japan could be dealt with in turn; history proved him right. Yet, under the Obama-Biden playbook, FDR blundered by getting distracted from the "real" war -- in the Pacific, where America had been attacked.
Please remember to exercise respect, responsbility when you are expressing your opinions.
Adopt the PEEL format when you are arguing.
Use your real name when you are expressing your argument
Remember your expository style when you are writing your argument.
Please remember to exercise respect, responsbility when you are expressing your opinions.
Adopt the PEEL format when you are arguing.
Use your real name when you are expressing your argument
Remember your expository style when you are writing your argument.
The Secretary General of the organisation responsible for establishing and enforcing international law outright stated that it was illegal. Saddam had no WMDs, and Hans Blix (the UN's Chief Weapon Inspector) was also against the invasion.The Americans cut the electricity and water supplies of millions, over a hundred thousand civilians were killed as a result of the war, Iraq quickly became a sectarian warzone in the aftermath, and yet ask almost any Conservative American and they will still claim they "liberated" Iraq rather than invaded it. Absolutely textbook Nazi logic.Furthermore, when the crooks in the Bush Administration were looking for excuses they could use for invading Iraq, they decided to make up an egregious lie about Saddam's son purchasing yellowcake uranium in Africa. They tried to convince former US diplomat Joe Wilson to go along with the lie and, when he outright refused, in retaliation Dick Cheney's Chief of Staff leaked that Wilson's wife was a CIA agent to the press -- an action which quite realistically could have ended in her murder. Cheney's Chief of Staff was convicted of lying about his role in court and sentenced to prison, except -- surprise, surprise -- his sentence was commuted by George W Bush.
I don't normally do debates like this, but I might as well venture into the unkown. Which event is worse, the terrorist attacks of 9/11. Or the consequent US invasion of Iraq? By "worse", I don't just mean death count. I mean motives, psychological impact, morality. Numbers are still welcome though.
Malcolm Shaw QCProfessor of international law, Leicester UniversityWas the war in Iraq legal? "On the basis of the intelligence we had at the time and the publicly available knowledge, there was a credible and reasonable argument in favour of the legality of the war. The authorisation to use force in [UN resolution] 678 included the restoration of international peace and security as well as the liberation of Kuwait. Resolution 687, after the 1991 ceasefire, included getting rid of... weapons of mass destruction. The run of resolutions after that shows there was still backing for it in the security council. The possession of such weapons constituted a threat to international peace and security. Resolution 1441 [in 2002] reiterated that. It was the common belief of the security council that Iraq had such weapons, and that they constituted a breach of binding resolutions. We know [from the Blix report] that Iraq did not fully cooperate. Through that period there was a long series of security council resolutions condemning the Iraqis for what was believed to be their possession of WMD."
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