[Spliffdaddy]

The Islamic fundamentalist extremists got their collective butts handed to them by Simey.

*WIDESCALE SMACKDOWN*

[budakhan mp]

Originally posted by Cody Dawg:
You're a terrorist sympathizer is what you are.

Are you posting from Fallujah or something?

My God, I can't believe that I read half of this crud. It doesn't even deserve a logical reply, or decent one.

[budakhan mp]

Originally posted by SimeyTheLimey:
Whenever someone resorts to these kinds of comments, it's a sure sign they have reached the bottom of their ability to justify their position.

Get off the high ground, dude, you're talking as much sh!t as the next person. So stop acting stupid and foolish.

[Spliffdaddy]

wow. ya'll just got your butts kicked by a Christian.

That seems to be the norm, lately.

[budakhan mp]

Originally posted by Millennium:
No one is trying to excuse anything -good, bad, or otherwise- that the US is doing in Iraq.

He is, that guy Simey, all his posts are full of apologetic crud, hence my wording in that post. It al serves to point blame firmly in one drection, the Iraqis, BS.

[budakhan mp]

Originally posted by Spliffdaddy:
wow. ya'll just got your butts kicked by a Christian.

That seems to be the norm, lately.

Because he resorted to low-brow BS? LOL The guy is as clueles as the next hick in Kansas, never come across such stupidity in al my life, he'd make a good lawyer.

[SimeyTheLimey]

Originally posted by budakhan mp:
Because he resorted to low-brow BS? LOL The guy is as clueles as the next hick in Kansas, never come across such stupidity in al my life, he'd make a good lawyer.

You realize I am enjoying watching you melt down, don't you?

[Spliffdaddy]

Originally posted by budakhan mp:
He is, that guy Simey, all his posts are full of apologetic crud, hence my wording in that post. It al serves to point blame firmly in one drection, the Iraqis, BS.

LMFAO

dude. It couldn't be more obvious that you lost this discussion.

I'm laughing so hard I can't breathe.

You are the epitome of a smackdown victim.

Keep posting. I need the humor.

[nath]

Originally posted by SimeyTheLimey:
Whenever someone resorts to these kinds of comments, it's a sure sign they have reached the bottom of their ability to justify their position.

I condemn the killers yet you say I am excusing/justifying them. It's not even a subtle lie, so why bother trying to reason with it? I thought you were a bit better to be honest, but shouldn't have let my disappointment show so much.

BTW, I've restated my position several times in very plain language, and you haven't put a dent in it.

Originally posted by nath:

Just to recap, your initial post was in response was to my statement

"The point, which you have failed to answer, is whether Margaret Hassan and many other innocent people would still be alive had invasion not occured"

I still say that in all probability she would, and you've failed to convince me otherwise, or even bother to try, really.

[budakhan mp]

Originally posted by SimeyTheLimey:


You realize I am enjoying watching you melt down, don't you?

I'm glad, because I've a funny feeling we aren't the ones melting. Oh wait, you're getting off on a net forum, thinking it's the real world, lmao. You're quite the sad minority, and that pleases me no end.

[budakhan mp]

Originally posted by Spliffdaddy:
LMFAO

dude. It couldn't be more obvious that you lost this discussion.

I'm laughing so hard I can't breathe.

You are the epitome of a smackdown victim.

Keep posting. I need the humor.

In your sad little mind, but hey, let's see what the world opinion is, couldn't be further from your warped minds.

So, um, smackdown to you overall.

[Spliffdaddy]

I'm glad my side isn't full of pre-teen fundamentalist Islamics. Because then we'd lose every battle.

[nath]

Originally posted by Cody Dawg:
You're a terrorist sympathizer is what you are.

Are you posting from Fallujah or something?

leave it to the professionals, son.



(the thinking thing)

[nath]

Originally posted by Spliffdaddy:
I'm glad my side isn't full of pre-teen fundamentalist Islamics. Because then we'd lose every battle.

Oh god, here he is, MacNN's answer to the Doobie Bros..


I thought of you when I was in Amsterdam last weekend funnily enough.

[budakhan mp]

Look, how dumb do you have to be. Country A invades country B, opens the jails up, let's thousands of foreign fighters into the country. Country B then produces violent episodes of opposition to invasion, resulting in such acts as these.

Who is to blame ultimately? I laughed, really hard, at Simey's desperate attemppt at dragging up the Ottoman Empire.

Clueless monkeys.

[Spliffdaddy]

I'm gonna go get some lunch while I wait on your 'professionals' to arrive.

The amateur dolts you're using now are getting owned.

[budakhan mp]

Originally posted by Spliffdaddy:
I'm glad my side isn't full of pre-teen fundamentalist Islamics. Because then we'd lose every battle.

Yeah, but I bet you jerk-of in your log cabin to the thought of your 'boys' killing all these pre-teen Islamic fighters. Must feel great to be the strongest arsehole$ in the world.


LOL

[budakhan mp]

Originally posted by Spliffdaddy:
I'm gonna go get some lunch while I wait on your 'professionals' to arrive.

The amateur dolts you're using now are getting owned.

What, exactly, do you contribute to these discussions, except to hand out your troll awards?

[budakhan mp]

Originally posted by SimeyTheLimey:
Whenever someone resorts to these kinds of comments, it's a sure sign they have reached the bottom of their ability to justify their position.

Yeah, go take a look at your replies to some guy in another thread here, something about him being stupid? That tells me a lot.

What a hypocrite.

[Joshua]

Originally posted by budakhan mp:
What, exactly, do you contribute to these discussions, except to hand out your troll awards?

Are you really in any position to complain about the worth of other posters contributions after this gem?

Yeah, but I bet you jerk-of in your log cabin to the thought of your 'boys' killing all these pre-teen Islamic fighters. Must feel great to be the strongest arsehole$ in the world.

[budakhan mp]

Originally posted by Joshua:
Are you really in any position to complain about the worth other posters contributions after this gem?

Yes, at least mine contain some element of discussion, not just reacting to what other say, like spliff's do. Check out the difference.

Oh, and it's also a case of pointing out that these dudes are just as bad as those they complain about.

[SimeyTheLimey]

Originally posted by budakhan mp:
Who is to blame ultimately? I laughed, really hard, at Simey's desperate attemppt at dragging up the Ottoman Empire.

Because you can't cope with historical analogies, I will put it more abstractly. Your argument strips the murderer of all volition, you want to trace the sequence of events back so you can pin blame on someone else -- apparently because you have some sympathy with the people who actually did it. In law this is called following the chain of causation. Every event has a chain of causation and in theory you can follow it back infinitely.

But because we assume that free actors have volition, we draw the line of legal culpability at roughly the last actor who made the final decision that lead to the injury. In civil tort law, that's the concept concept called proximate cause. Legal liability only attaches to the actor who proximately causes the injury. It doesn't matter what sequence of events lead up to the proximate cause because all of them could be negated by the proximate actor simply making a different decision.

In criminal law, the test is even stricter. In order to be found guilty of a murder (for example), you have to be actually involved, and intend to do what you did. The murderer can't escape responsibility by pointing back at the chain of incidental circumstances that lead him to draw the knife across the throat. He did what he did, and he is fully responsible for his actions.

And by the way, your potty mouth doesn't make your argument any more convincing.

[lil'babykitten]

Originally posted by SimeyTheLimey:
Your argument strips the murderer of all volition...

No - but you're attempting to make it look like it does.

Fact: The murderers are responsible for Margaret's death. Fact: The situation that provides her murderers with an environment to conduct this sort of thing is a direct result of the instability caused by the war.

Nobody is trying to shift the blame here. Seems there's only a few people that are able to grasp what is happening in the wider realm of things.

[nath]

Originally posted by lil'babykitten:
No - but you're attempting to make it look like it does.

Fact: The murderers are responsible for Margaret's death. Fact: The situation that provides her murderers with an environment to conduct this sort of thing is a direct result of the instability caused by the war.

Nobody is trying to shift the blame here. Seems there's only a few people that are able to grasp what is happening in the wider realm of things.

[nath]

Originally posted by SimeyTheLimey:
Legal liability only attaches to the actor who proximately causes the injury.

Another straw man. Nobody has mentioned legal liability.

[aberdeenwriter]

VO: One of the most powerful of these newcomers was Ayman Zawahiri. He was the leader of a radical faction from Egypt called Islamic Jihad. And he was convinced that they, not the moderates, were the true Islamists.

[...]

Dr AZZAM TAMIMI , Institute of Islamic Political Thought: Ayman Zawahiri came to the conclusion that because you have what you believe to be a sublime objective, then the means can be as ugly as they can get. You can kill as many people as you wish, because the end means is noble. The logic is that �we are the vanguards, we are the correct Muslims, everybody else is wrong. Not only wrong, but everybody else is not a Muslim, and the only means available to us today is just to kill our way to perfection.�

[...]

OSAMA BIN-LADEN (speaking in Arabic, subtitled): The only way to eradicate the humiliation and Kufr that has overcome the land of Islam is Jihad, bullets, and martyrdom operations.

[...]

Democracy, Zawahiri believed, encouraged politicians to set themselves up as the source of all authority, and by doing this, they were rejecting the higher authority of the Koran. This meant they were no longer true Muslims, and so they, and those who supported them, could legitimately be killed. The terror this created, he said, would shock the masses into seeing the truth behind the corrupt fa�ade of democracy.

[...]

ANAS : ...anybody participating in any parliament, or any political party, or going to elect, or call people for the election, and sort of these activities, is totally rejecting the Koran. So when you say that, it means when a Muslim is rejecting the Koran, simply must be killed. And should be killed, must be killed! And that�s what happened.

[...]

ABDULLAH ANAS , Member of the Political Council, Islamic Salvation Front, Algeria 1993: �They must die!� Not only �must die,� they DID kill. They did kill people. Not just any�it�s not just an idea from far, it became true. People were killed.

ANAS : Many many rulers; many many holy men; many many scholars; many many politicians in Islamic world have been killed because of these ideas. Why? Because simply they are against the Koran. They rejected the Koran. Why they rejected the Koran? Because they did elect.

[...]

Faced by this, the Islamists widened their terror. Their logic was brutal: it was not just those who were involved with politics who should be killed, but the ordinary people who supported it. Their refusal to rise up showed that they, too, had become corrupted, and so had condemned themselves to death.

[...]

Dr. AZZAM TAMIMI , Institute of Islamic Political Thought: There was definitely a logic. The logic is that you assault the leaders, you assault those who are associated with them, and eventually you assault the people who have consented to the presence of such a despotic leader, even if they are passively supportive through their silence. And then you start attacking economic institutions, you start attacking the tourists, because the tourists bring money to the country, and that money goes into the pockets of the corrupt �lite. So, it is an endless process.

VO: In Algeria, this logic went completely out of control. The Islamist revolutionary groups killed thousands of civilians, because they believed that all these people had become corrupted.

MAN (speaking in Arabic, subtitled): All these innocents, what did they ever do? Legs blown off! Such horror! Even the French extremists never did things like this. Why? What have we done? What have our children done? Leave me alone! I want to die!

[...]

MAN WITH GUN (speaking in French, subtitled): Today they kill, they kill everybody: innocent people, children, old people. They have even cut up their victims. Who will trust them if tomorrow they take power?

DEMONSTRATORS (shouting in French, subtitled): Down with fundamentalism! Down with fundamentalism!

[Millennium]

Originally posted by budakhan mp:
He is, that guy Simey, all his posts are full of apologetic crud, hence my wording in that post. It al serves to point blame firmly in one drection, the Iraqis, BS.

For this murder, the responsibility lies completely, totally, and solely with the murderers themselves (who happen to identify themselves with Iraq, but are not by any means representative of Iraqis as a whole). The US has done many things in Iraq, many of them bad, but as far as this is concerned they are blameless.

[nath]

Originally posted by Millennium:
For this murder, the responsibility lies completely, totally, and solely with the murderers themselves (who happen to identify themselves with Iraq, but are not by any means representative of Iraqis as a whole). The US has done many things in Iraq, many of them bad, but as far as this is concerned they are blameless.

That makes the assumption that this kidnapping would have happened if there had been no invasion. It's a bit of a stretch, to be honest.

[Joshua]

Originally posted by lil'babykitten:
Fact: The murderers are responsible for Margaret's death. Fact: The situation that provides her murderers with an environment to conduct this sort of thing is a direct result of the instability caused by the war.

The "environment to conduct this sort of thing" is more directly a result of insurgency than the US invasion. The US forces and their "collaborators" are attempting to restore peace and order to the country; the insurgents are the ones trying to prevent that from happening.

[Spliffdaddy]

Originally posted by nath:
That makes the assumption that this kidnapping would have happened if there had been no invasion. It's a bit of a stretch, to be honest.

Which makes the assumption that there would have been no invasion if it weren't for the fact that French officials took bribes in the Food for Oil scandal - negating any positive effects a 'real' sanction may have had on Saddam's government - in the UN's effort to gain compliance from Iraq with their resolutions.

[gerbnl]

Originally posted by Joshua:
The US forces and their "collaborators" are attempting to restore peace and order to the country;

Oh, how altruistic! maybe they shouldn't have broken the peace and the order in the first place. they should have read arabian nights instead, then they would have appreciated the problems of getting the damn genie back in the bottle.

[SubGeniux]

So, does anyone know who actually murdered her? Is it the usual suspects, guys in masks (who could be anyone), or Zarqawi's mob?

I forgot, Zarqawi asked for her to be released, so can't be him.

[gerbnl]

Originally posted by Spliffdaddy:
The Islamic fundamentalist extremists got their collective butts handed to them by Simey.

*WIDESCALE SMACKDOWN*

Originally posted by Spliffdaddy:
wow. ya'll just got your butts kicked by a Christian.

That seems to be the norm, lately.

Originally posted by Spliffdaddy:
LMFAO

dude. It couldn't be more obvious that you lost this discussion.

I'm laughing so hard I can't breathe.

You are the epitome of a smackdown victim.

Keep posting. I need the humor.

Originally posted by Spliffdaddy:
I'm gonna go get some lunch while I wait on your 'professionals' to arrive.

The amateur dolts you're using now are getting owned.

so what are you trying to do here? That smackdown you hope for won't become true, even if you repeat it yet another 4 times. The only thing even remotely resembling a smackdown in this thread was the limeyguy goin' flat on his kisser, that's about it.

[SubGeniux]

Originally posted by gerbnl:
so what are you trying to do here? That smackdown you hope for won't become true, even if you repeat it yet another 4 times. The only smackdown i noticed in this thread was the limeyguy goin' flat on his kisser, that's about it.

Yes, the ones who scream at the top of their lungs that they have actually 'won' something, are more often than not the ones who lost in a spectacular fasion.

Chest pounding at its worst.

[aberdeenwriter]

Unfortunately, it seems that Margaret Hassan has died for you and me.

This Islamic woman who worked in a charitable organization for the betterment of living conditions in the Middle East and most recently in Iraq, was not a combatant. She was not connected to the war. She was not in support of the war.

Her murder is a signal we should pay close attention to.

If the Iraqi people had somehow miraculously toppled Saddam on their own, the same fate would have befallen Iraq that the US led invasion is fighting to protect.
A takeover by fundamentalist Islamic forces who have declared their philosophy and intent in word and deed throughout the world.

If you are democratic, you are not a TRUE Muslim. If you are a moderate, you are not a TRUE Muslim.

Margaret Hassan was a reasonable, compassionate, moderate Muslim.

Her murder shows us what happens to terrible people like that.

They will be killed.

And the extremist Islamics will do to ALL moderate Muslims interested in democracy what they did to Margaret Hassan...whether the US was there or not.

[SubGeniux]

Originally posted by aberdeenwriter:
Unfortunately, it seems that Margaret Hassan has died for you and me.

Sounds too much like Jesus for my liking.

[Joshua]

Originally posted by gerbnl:
Oh, how altruistic! maybe they shouldn't have broken the peace and the order in the first place. they should have read arabian nights instead, then they would have appreciated the problems of getting the damn genie back in the bottle.

Unless you've mastered the art of time travel, I'm not sure how that argument is relevant right now.

[aberdeenwriter]

Originally posted by SubGeniux:
So, does anyone know who actually murdered her? Is it the usual suspects, guys in masks (who could be anyone), or Zarqawi's mob?

I forgot, Zarqawi asked for her to be released, so can't be him.

Like I said in a previous post, I haven't figured it all out quite yet, but if Zarqawi was playing the "good terrorist/bad terrorist" routine, he could benefit by showing the world a kinder & gentler facade, while below the surface or behind the scenes ordering Hassan's murder.

It is a tactic reminscent of Arafat's technique of saying one thing for the western press and quite another for Arab consumption.

When the violence is quelled to the point where elections are possible, perhaps Zarqawi (or some of the guys he might "endorse") will attempt to get themselves voted into the new government.

Then, we'll see a repeat of the Algerian fiasco.

The Iraqi people will say to themselves, "No, we don't want any of Zarqawi's candidates!' Then someone will say, 'well he isn't that bad. Remember, HE suggested the release of Margaret Hassan!"

"And besides, it isn't Zarqawi who's running for election. It is one of OUR homegrown Iraqi resistance fighters. Zarqawi merely endorsed him."

Then, IF Zarqawi's guy(s) win, they will move to abolish any further elections. There goes democracy. And here comes civil war.

Just a possibility. I haven't figured it all out yet.

[aberdeenwriter]

Originally posted by SubGeniux:
Sounds too much like Jesus for my liking.

Oh, don't get all Jesu-phobic on us!

Besides, I think of Hassan's death more like the Miner's Canary.

When the air gets bad in the mine, the canary keels over and the miners know it's time to take appropriate actions.

If the air isn't good enough to support the life of a canary, then...

The "political climate" in Iraq has gotten REALLY bad when someone like Hassan is killed. We can see her death as an indication we can't give up the fight.

If the climate in Iraq isn't 'good enough' to support the existence of a generous, good hearted, selfless MUSLIM woman like Hassan, then...

[gerbnl]

Originally posted by Joshua:
Unless you've mastered the art of time travel, I'm not sure how that argument is relevant right now.

At least I am sure, that my mastery of the time travel art is irrelevant for your capacity to figure it out... i wouldn't tell you if i did anyway.

enough with the silly jokes however, the murder of margaret hassan is bad enough without them.

At least it will keep a healthy gap between the extremists and the iraqi people. if her death has some value let that be it.

[aberdeenwriter]

Originally posted by SubGeniux:
So, does anyone know who actually murdered her? Is it the usual suspects, guys in masks (who could be anyone), or Zarqawi's mob?

I forgot, Zarqawi asked for her to be released, so can't be him.

Then again, it might just be some stupid Iraqi kids who saw the OTHER terrorist kidnappers getting lots of respect and so they took Hassan and killed her thinking they could get themselves some street 'credibility.'

Very few of the insurgents seem to be all that bright.

[slow moe]

If man never walked upright, Margaret Hassan would still be alive today.

Damn Bipeds!!

[Taliesin]

Originally posted by Joshua:
Even if this murder isn't directly supported (or carried out) by the mainline Iraqi insurgency, I'm not sure how you can deny that they're indirectly responsible. The insurgents have been working to develop an atmosphere of lawlessness in Iraq over the last few months: they deliberately target Iraqi police stations and training facilities; they've massacred Iraqi soldiers; they murder anyone they deem a "collaborator;" and they've forced the US to use troops to neutralize insurgent strongholds like Fallujah rather than focusing on day-to-day peacekeeping and rebuilding.

I don't understand why the people around here that profess the strongest commitment to the people of the Middle East support an insurgency that's absolutely contrary to the interests of those people. The US would like nothing better than to restore order, hold free elections, and get most of their troops the hell out of there as quickly as possible. The insurgents, on the other hand, seek a protracted struggle. The US isn't going to withdraw as long as that struggle continues, so all the insurgents can hope to achieve is violence and chaos for years to come.

I agree, that's what the insurgents want to achieve. They obviously want to prevent that the US achieves peace in Iraq, because then the US would build and man permanent US-bases in Iraq and would forever support a puppet-regime. Instead the insurgents are imho trying to make Iraq a quagmire for the US so that the US withdraws completely and under fire sometime in the future , be it in 10 or 20 years.

Taliesin

[nath]

Originally posted by aberdeenwriter:
If the climate in Iraq isn't 'good enough' to support the existence of a generous, good hearted, selfless MUSLIM woman like Hassan, then...

She seemed to thrive in the climate for the previous 12 years. She also told the UK Parliament that she thought the war was a terrible idea.

Originally posted by aberdeenwriter:
I haven't figured it all out yet.

really? you think?

[Taliesin]

Originally posted by SimeyTheLimey:
That's a neat trick: blame all atrocities committed by the so-called insurgents on the US on the theory that but for the war, they wouldn't have gutted her. By doing so you shift all responsibility to Americans and leave the actual killers blame free.

If you want to play that "but for" game, how about remembering that but for the invasion, Saddam's torture chambers would still be operating? How many have the Coalition's troops saved?

We'll never know the answer to that because it is inherently counterfactual and speculative. So how about this: everyone is reponsible for their actions. If someone deliberatly commits and act of barbarism, they should bear the responsibility for it. No excuses.

I agree, everyone should bear responsibility for acts of barbarism. So, let's sum up, the US installed and supported a brutal dictator so that a country with vital ressources could serve the interests of the US for decades, while oppressing and killing its own rebellious population and being supported in that regard with training, equipment and even chemical weapons.

After a while the US instructs Saddam Hussein to invade Iran and to use WMD's for that purpose...

Then after coldwar, meaning the collapse of the Soviet-Union-empire, the US-empire wanted to enjoy the fruits of victory by building up direct military presence in the middle-east by manipulating Saddam Hussein to invade Kuwait, so that the US could convince the UN to act, which served the purpose to build and man US-military-bases in Saudi-Arabia and other smaller gulf-states.

Then unforunately for the neo-cons democrats stopped for eight years the development, and then another republican continues with invading and building US-militarybases in Iraq, and securing Afghanistan for an oil-gas-transfer-route for the ressources in the kaspic sea.

Off course for the installment of Saddam Hussein and the support for him in oppressing his own people and in invading Iran, and the many dead people that costed and for the sanctions and the many dead and ill people that costed, and for the two invasions the US led into Iraq and the 200,000+ killed civilians that costed, the US are not responsible.

No excuses.

If I sum up all the civilians the insurgents are killing, I would probably come up with about 10,000 killed civilians, including police, recruits and collaborateurs. Without them it would probably be about 1,000, including collateral damage due to bystanders that were hit simultaneously with US-forces, and including the kidnappings and killing of hostages.

For all that those killed civilians the insurgents must be rightfully made responsible and even condemned but compared to the millions of killed civilians the US are responsible for, with more than 200,000 just in the last two years...

Ok, enough US-bashing, it's time to analyse, criticize and even condemn the iraqi-insurgency. I'm well aware that the true insurgency hasn't yet started in Iraq, what is now going on and espescially the actions that make it into news-stories are carried out by extremists, secular as well as islamistic extremists.

Margaret Hassan was a british (irish to be exact) woman that came to Iraq to help the civilians that suffered under the sanctions and married an Iraqi and converted to Islam.

She was abducted by insurgents that tried to blackmail Britain into withdrawing its troops. As Britain refused, she was shot dead by the insurgents. That's standard procedure for insurgents, guerillias, terrorists, to try to intimidate and terrorise the civilians at home in Britain, in order to create a public opinion in Britain that would sometime in the future force the government to withdraw its troops..

The insurgents operate under the objective that the ends justify any means, the ends meaning the freedom of Iraq from "crusaders".

While that is understandable from a secular point of view, it is only condemnable from a religious, in this case islamic (since parts of the insurgents are not only muslims but also islamists) point of view. From the islamic point of view, ends never justify the means, otherwise it would show a lack of faith in God and fate. The Quran clearly states not to harm prisoners of war, be they civilians or soldiers, and instead either to set them free in a safe place or to use them for exchange against prisoners the enemy has made.

Unfortunately parts of the islamistic movement, espescially Al-Kaida, believes in the "the ends justify any means"-philosophy that was co-developed with the US for the purpose of battling the Soviets in Afghanistan. Therefore it's the duty of every islamic or even islamistic scholar to counter that wrong philosophy, as, like already said, it clearly shows a lack of faith in God and fate, and clearly denies the quranic message and rules, and anyone operating under that objective would only gain hell in after-life and misery in this life.

No excuses.

Taliesin

[Millennium]

Originally posted by nath:
That makes the assumption that this kidnapping would have happened if there had been no invasion. It's a bit of a stretch, to be honest.

It's a bit of a stretch, but it doesn't matter anyway. If you want to play the indirect-blame game, then let's play: what about the cause for the invasion? Without that, there would have been no invasion, hence no killing, so we can blame Saddam (who was at the root of it whether you believe that this was over oil, WMD, or anything else) for the murder, can we not?

[nath]

Originally posted by Millennium:
It's a bit of a stretch, but it doesn't matter anyway. If you want to play the indirect-blame game, then let's play: what about the cause for the invasion? Without that, there would have been no invasion, hence no killing, so we can blame Saddam (who was at the root of it whether you believe that this was over oil, WMD, or anything else) for the murder, can we not?

Not really. As I said up there somewhere, I didn't think that invasion was the right way to deal with Saddam Hussein. Neither did most of the rest of the world, and neither did Margaret Hassan. So for me, and many others, the blame chain ends there, with the most ignorant foreign policy decision of modern times.

Even if I did think as you do, using your logic would lead to the inevitable conclusion that Hussein and his regime probably wouldn't have survived the 70s or 80s (or possibly even succeeded in his initial coup) without strong support from the US, along with supplies of chemical weapons to use against his own people and his neighbours along the way.

I remember watching the news with an American friend when Hussein was captured and that PR soldier said 'Leddies and Genlmen....we gaht him! My friend just laughed and said 'well, we've always had him...'

[SimeyTheLimey]

Originally posted by nath:
Even if I did think as you do, using your logic would lead to the inevitable conclusion that Hussein and his regime probably wouldn't have survived the 70s or 80s (or possibly even succeeded in his initial coup) without strong support from the US, along with supplies of chemical weapons to use against his own people and his neighbours along the way.

And always the anti-American European's myth. Only the US traded components of WMD with Saddam. Not West Germany, France, the UK, the USSR, China, Pakistan, . . .

[nath]

Originally posted by SimeyTheLimey:
And always the anti-American European's myth. Only the US traded components of WMD with Saddam. Not West Germany, France, the UK, the USSR, China, Pakistan, . . .

Not at all. This thread has specifically revolved around US involvement in Iraq, in case you hadn't noticed.

I am against arms dealing of any kind, from any source.

[SimeyTheLimey]

Originally posted by nath:
Not at all. This thread has specifically revolved around US involvement in Iraq, in case you hadn't noticed.

I am against arms dealing of any kind, from any source.

Then be honest about it.

And by the way, the title of the thread is about the murder of the Charity worker, Margaret Hassan. It only revolves around the US (but stragely not UK, Danish, Polish, etc) involvement in Iraq because some of you keep trying to change the subject.