Science Undecided on Room Temperature Superconductors

[Forty Two]

Oh, o.k., well. You brought it up. You said that if someone is worried about the Kurds, then better start calling for an invasion of Turkey. The Kurds must be in a terrible situation in Turkey right now. What's happening to them there?

Does the rock you live under not get internet news??[/quote]

You brought it up, Rev. Just wondering if you were talking out your arse again.

[Seth]

As I said, if you'd just read the thread, you'd understand what is being discussed. With you and Pisci I was discussing legality, and with Pisci and Jim they were making the argument that illegality is specious coz Saddam was a cunt. You responded to the latter thread most recently, and that is what we are discussing. Anything else is the usual red herring nonsense from you.

I believe the "Saddam was a cunt" comment was little more than shorthand sarcasm that you took as gospel. More likely you are trying to argue that they genuinely meant that the only reason we deposed Saddam was because he was a "cunt." This of course is, as I said, nothing more than a diversionary tactic you often use to get your nut-sack out of the cleft stick you've put it in.

That's exactly what they said. They never referred to any threat to the outside world. They only brought up the well known atrocities of Saddam against his own people.

Oh please, you're being mendaciously literal by trying to excise and exclude the overall context of the discussion. Many people feel that such actions in and of themselves are a mandate for "legal" intervention in the interests of human rights and I don't happen to feel that's necessarily either wrong or "illegal" to invade a country merely to depose a murderous dictator and free the people from such tyranny. We've done it before and I'm sure we'll do it again and it's neither illegal nor immoral for us to do so because no matter what the UN Security Council might say, we have a perfect right, both morally and legally, to protect human life whenever and wherever we choose to do so. What Saddam was doing to his own people absolutely falls under the classification as "crimes against humanity" which happens to be one of the legal justifications for the use of force against a despotic regime.

Their statements were clearly not exclusive arguments they were additive to the overall issue of Saddam's belligerence and the threat he constituted to everybody else. Someone who does such things to his own people shows a fundamental and psychotic disrespect for human life and rights that weighs heavily in favor of taking such people out when deciding whether or not there is justification to do so. We didn't need his barbaric acts towards his own people as the sole excuse to depose him, but those very evident facts need not be ignored, nor is it inappropriate to highlight them to the rest of the world in order to gain political support for deposing him. It really doesn't matter what he did or did not do to his own people, all that matters is that he violated the cease fire agreement, but it certainly helps to support our cause that he was such a cunt, just as it helps our cause that Kim Jong Un is such an utter psychotic and psychopathic cunt should we decide to glassify Pyongyang.

As I said, you're just trying to turn the argument away from the direction where you lose it, which is what you do.

They explicitly said that "legality" was not well defined (to outright bollocks, according to Pisci) and it was immaterial to whether the US should kick some sand nigger arse.

He's right. "Legality" is indeed not well defined with respect to the deposing of murderous dictators insofar as the UN is concerned. This is because the UN is not the source of either domestic or international law, and it is not a judicial body that enforces either domestic or international law, nor is it a legislative body that makes international law. You need to figure that out. The UN has no authority to interfere with the decisions of its member states with respect to their protecting their individual sovereignty or coming to the aid of their allies, which is exactly what Iraq was always about. It can post all the resolutions it wants, but that doesn't make ignoring them "illegal" because UN resolutions are neither law nor are they binding on anyone.

Instead of badly inferring what everyone's intentions were, why don't you READ THE FUCKING THREAD FOR A CHANGE, and you can see for yourself exactly what everyone's intentions were?

I've read every post and you're still full of crap rEv.

You want the US invasion of Iraq to be "illegal" so that's what you argue it is, and when it's demonstrated that you're wrong, you go off on irrational tangents while attempting to evade the fundamental fact that the Coalition was fully authorized by international law to take out Saddam for his violations of the cease fire agreement he and the Iraqi government signed in 1991. End of story.

[Seth]

What does matter, is the outcome. In my opinion the net result globally is worse than if Saddam Hussein, regardless of the wars he initiated, the thousands of Kurds he killed, the personal and political opponents he executed et cetera, had been left in place. Looking at you, JimC.

Hypothetical. Next question please.

Has anyone wondered why germanium based superconductors have never really shown the promise of working at room temperature?

Not really. I've never thought geraniums were particularly pretty and I see no reason why they should be superconductors either.

[Seth]

I don't know what this has to do with the legality of Iraq: The Sequel. Or the fact that the world is full of cuntbag dictators and you (and our) lot fucked up and took the wrong one down. We've created the conditions for ISIS to flourish. Yay us!

So now we deal with ISIS. That's not an argument for not dealing with Saddam 13 years ago. Your Chamberlainesque analysis suggests that nobody should ever take action against any murderous despot because it might make things worse. Imagine what the result would have been had we heeded your advice with respect to Hitler.

Nations go to war when they need to go to war. Sometimes things don't go as planned and shit happens afterwards that were either unavoidable (like the rise of the Soviet Union...in retrospect we should have let Hitler wipe out Russia and its leadership before taking him out) or unpredictable. That's just how it is, but that's not a valid reason to not go to war when one is morally and legally compelled to do so.

[Seth]

Well, basically I agree that the net result was a bad one, with the proviso that it may have been difficult at the time to predict the mess that would follow. Hindsight is a wonderful thing, but...

It was predicted by the CIA no less, two months before the war in a 40 page report. President Bush read it, and it was widely circulated in his administration. He just ignored it for reasons best known to himself. Don't mention Halliburton.

And is Halliburton pumping free oil out of Iraq at the moment...or ever?

... the CIA warned the administration of the risk and consequences of a conflict in the Middle East.

Among other things, the 40-page Senate report reveals that two intelligence assessments before the war accurately predicted that toppling Saddam could lead to a dangerous period of internal violence and provide a boost to terrorists. But those warnings were seemingly ignored.

In January 2003, two months before the invasion, the intelligence community's think tank — the National Intelligence Council — issued an assessment warning that after Saddam was toppled, there was “a significant chance that domestic groups would engage in violent conflict with each other and that rogue Saddam loyalists would wage guerilla warfare either by themselves or in alliance with terrorists.”

It also warned that “many angry young recruits” would fuel the rank of Islamic extremists and "Iraqi political culture is so embued with mores (opposed) to the democratic experience … that it may resist the most rigorous and prolonged democratic tutorials."

The CIA repeated in a follow up report a few weeks before the war that the war also could be "exploited by terrorists and extremists outside Iraq."

There were even earlier warnings. One of them was a briefing book titled 'The Perfect Storm: Planning for the Negative Consequences of Invading Iraq', Delivered in September 2002, it included the following prognosis by the CIA:

The United States will face negative consequences with Iraq, the region and beyond which would include:

• Anarchy and the territorial breakup of Iraq;
  
  Region-threatening instability in key Arab states;
  
  A surge of global terrorism against US interests fueled by (militant) Islamism;

(Link)

And all of that emanated despite Wolfowitz's best efforts to plug such information emanating from the CIA. He need not have bothered. The chickenhawks had oil fever. Nothing would stop them from getting at that black gold.[/quote]

And did they manage to do so? Nope. It's silly to assert that Bush and Co. went after Saddam to get at the "black gold" because nothing of the sort actually happened and Iraqi oil has been embargoed for a long, long time. If it was about the oil we would have left Saddam in power.

It wasn't, it was about Saddam's violations of the cease fire agreement. Everything else is simply a side issue.

Besides, if we're going to go all hypothetical it's probable that Saddam would have eventually been deposed by the Islamic fundamentalists anyway, after a protracted chemical and possibly biological and nuclear war between Iraq and Iran, who, in case you've forgotten, have been at each other's throats for a very, very long time. The desert between the two is littered with the bones of those sent to fight that conflict. So much so that the Ayatolla Kohmeni (however the fuck you spell it) sent out a directive that people were not supposed to wipe their asses "with the bones of martyrs," but rather should use a smooth stone or pebble.

Nobody gave a fuck about deposing Saddam until he invaded Kuwait, at which point we were OBLIGATED to defend Kuwait, which is exactly why Bush the Elder stopped short of leveling Baghdad and killing Saddam the first time around. Bush I stopped when the Iraqi army was defeated because that was what he felt was the limit of his mandate to protect Kuwait was. In retrospect he should have completed the job at that time, but as ought to be obvious, hindsight is always 20/20.

Then Saddam didn't play nice so we had to go back in and spank him in 2003. That's just how it went and it's all Saddam's fault.

What's happened since then is not at all relevant because we did what we needed to do at the time. The consequences are the consequences and now we deal with them. That's how international geopolitics works.

[Seth]

We've been over this before. There are two(?) scenarios in which war can be declared outside of a UN resolution.

Oh fuck off rEv, we have been over this before, interminably. You're just simply wrong in every respect. The UN is NOT a legislative or judicial body. Never has been. That's why they are called "resolutions" and not "laws." They are group suggestions and nothing more. They have no legal force or effect in fact, they are just advisories from the group of nations that participates about what those nations feel is the proper course of action.

Neither of those two applied to Iraq 2003.

Actually both did, as if it matters.

I'm not sure if invading other countries is specifically illegal outside of the conditions and a UN resolution, I'd have to look into that.

You should have done so long ago to avoid making the fundamental error you keep making. Here's a clue: it's not.

But it should be considered exactly the same way that Iraq was considered when it invaded Kuwait.

Your opinion is noted...as an opinion.

If the UN was actually a fair and just organisation, it would be the same.

Not only has the UN never been a "fair and just organisation" the UN has no legislative or judicial powers whatsoever. It's a completely voluntary organization. No one is compelled to join it and anyone can leave it or ignore it whenever they like. It's resolutions are not law, international or otherwise, they are merely a declaration of the consensus of the member states which, it is suggested, should guide other member states in their actions and relationships with other members. The UN has absolutely no legal authority whatsoever to intervene in the domestic or foreign affairs of any non-member nation without an invitation from both of the belligerents to provide peace-keeping forces pursuant to a negotiated agreement to cease hostilities between the two warring nations.

The UN is NOT a "world police force" that has jurisdiction to storm into a country and impose a cease fire sua sponte. In fact it is explicitly prohibited from doing so precisely because the member states of the UN, every single one of them would never agree to make their national sovereignty subservient to the authority and control of the UN.

You need to go read the fucking UN charter dude. It's nothing more than a bunch of representatives from various member nations who get together to talk over international geopolitical problems and try to suggest RESOLUTIONS to such issues that will be satisfactory to ALL members. That's precisely why the UNSC members each have veto power over any resolution. That's why Putin's representatives veto things the US proposes that would interfere with Russia's sovereignty and why we do exactly the same thing to Russia, and why we keep dipshit banana republics OUT of the Security Council.

You are operating under the delusion that the UN has legal authority to compel any nation to do anything at all. It doesn't. It's just exactly that simple.

[Seth]

Second Google hit. Not sure how accurate this is, but it aligns with what I've read about the issue before:

As a matter of international law, use or threat of force against the territorial integrity or political sovereignty of another State is illegal. Force may be used for the purpose of self defense and within the confines of necessity and proportionality. This prohibition on use of force is one of the norms that international lawyers call 'jus cogens' (peremptory norms) and has been codified in Article 2(4) of the UN Charter. Customary international law also prohibits States from acquiring territory through aggression or recognising such acquisitions made by other States.

https://www.quora.com/How-can-a-country ... de-another

"International law" and the UN are two different things. The UN is neither the legislative body that creates international law nor the judicial body that enforces it. The "norms" of international relations being "codified" by the UN is meaningless if the nations involved choose to ignore the UN. One need look no further than Somalia for proof of that.

What enforces the norms of the international laws of war are the individual nations involved and how they choose to ally with other nations to put a stop to "illegal" belligerence by some nation against another. The UN is nothing more than an advisory body made up of a number of nations who have agreed to get together to discuss such problems and try to resolve them. But the use of force against a belligerent such as Saddam Hussein during his "use or threat of force against the territorial integrity or political sovereignty" of Kuwait was not applied by the UN, it was applied by Kuwait's allies pursuant to a completely independent and non-UN mutual defense treaty, which is how nations actually agree to protect one another.

Whatever the "norms" of international law may be, the UN is NOT the legislative, judicial, executive or police authority over any nation on earth.

It's just a debate club that has a few entirely ineffectual and worthless troops it occasionally puts in harm's way but forbids to use force, even in self-defense, as a political sop to whirled peas.

The real work is usually done by the US, at great cost to our lives and treasure that we ought not be sacrificing any more. It's long past time to require that Europe be tasked with keeping the peace...and fucking well paying for it. So fuck the UN, and fuck all the rest of y'all, Islamic terrorism in Europe is your tar-baby this time and I hope you fucking beggar your entire economy fighting it because it's about time you did.

I find it extremely revealing and more than a little amusing that the citizens of Europe are clamoring for guns so that they can protect themselves against the Islamic hegira that they themselves let happen. I laughed my ass off at the events of New Year's in Cologne and the asinine "solution" proposed by the burgermeisters in Germany. Women should dress modestly and not go out in public without a male protector. Sounds like Sharia to me.

I think women in Germany should go out whenever the fuck they want to go out, armed with a lovely HK concealed handgun with which to shoot to kill any immigrant fuck that tries to lay hands on them until those camel-fuckers learn to behave themselves or are deported back to where they came from.

[Hermit]

And is Halliburton pumping free oil out of Iraq at the moment...or ever?

I see you are angling at the "It wasn't about the oil" line. You'll be pushing shit up hill trying to do that, because you'll have to deal with these guys:

"Of course it's about oil; we can't really deny that," said Gen. John Abizaid, former head of U.S. Central Command and Military Operations in Iraq, in 2007. Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan agreed, writing in his memoir, "I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil." Then-Sen. and now Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said the same in 2007: "People say we're not fighting for oil. Of course we are."

(Link)

Furthermore, not only is Halliburton in Iraq right now, but so are ExxonMobil, Chevron, BP and Shell. Before the invasion the Iraqi oil industry was fully nationalised.

[piscator]

...By Saddam and Chemical Ali.

[Seth]

And is Halliburton pumping free oil out of Iraq at the moment...or ever?

I see you are angling at the "It wasn't about the oil" line. You'll be pushing shit up hill trying to do that, because you'll have to deal with these guys:

"Of course it's about oil; we can't really deny that," said Gen. John Abizaid, former head of U.S. Central Command and Military Operations in Iraq, in 2007. Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan agreed, writing in his memoir, "I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil." Then-Sen. and now Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said the same in 2007: "People say we're not fighting for oil. Of course we are."

(Link)

Furthermore, not only is Halliburton in Iraq right now, but so are ExxonMobil, Chevron, BP and Shell. Before the invasion the Iraqi oil industry was fully nationalised.

And are we simply taking the oil for ourselves or are we buying it from Iraq and are providing them with the technology, infrastructure and expertise to extract it at a free-market price for those services and products?

If we were fighting for oil, it wasn't just Iraqi oil, it was Kuwaiti oil and oil from everywhere else in the region, the availability of which on the market was seriously jeopardized by Saddam's actions.

Your implication is that we went to war for the oil in Iraq, and for no other reason, which is simply false. We went to war to defend Kuwait and yes, it's oil reserves, to which we had access because Kuwait is an ally of ours. Therefore, in addition to our obligation to defend Kuwait pursuant to treaty we were indeed protecting American strategic interests in the region which were being threatened by Saddam. That's a perfectly reasonable and legal justification to go to war by the way. Everybody does it.

Saddam provided the justification by invading Kuwait because he thought we wouldn't be able to get UN permission to kick him out. He was wrong, wasn't he? That ipso facto proves that the US is not a vassal state of the UN.

[Seth]

...By Saddam and Chemical Ali.

And the oil is still "fully nationalized" in that Iraq owns it, and always has owned it. Iraq hires Halliburton et al to extract it for them and then sells it to the oil companies at a free-market price.

The implication that the US invaded Iraq merely in order to steal Iraq's oil is completely specious and false.

[Hermit]

Your implication is that we went to war for the oil in Iraq, and for no other reason

I did not address the issue concerning other reasons at all. My claim was that the invasion was about the oil, and I quoted statements made to that effect by people who are very well qualified to comment on that. Your turn.

[piscator]

[pErvinalia]

And is Halliburton pumping free oil out of Iraq at the moment...or ever?

I see you are angling at the "It wasn't about the oil" line. You'll be pushing shit up hill trying to do that, because you'll have to deal with these guys:

"Of course it's about oil; we can't really deny that," said Gen. John Abizaid, former head of U.S. Central Command and Military Operations in Iraq, in 2007. Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan agreed, writing in his memoir, "I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil." Then-Sen. and now Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said the same in 2007: "People say we're not fighting for oil. Of course we are."

(Link)

Marxists.

[Seth]

Your implication is that we went to war for the oil in Iraq, and for no other reason

I did not address the issue concerning other reasons at all. My claim was that the invasion was about the oil, and I quoted statements made to that effect by people who are very well qualified to comment on that. Your turn.

Well, I suppose it was "about the oil" in the sense that we were defending Kuwait's oil fields, but so the fuck what? In the first place we had a treaty obligation to do so and in the second place what's wrong with going to war over oil? It's a necessary strategic resource for every nation and defending access to it is a natural and ordinary part of any nation's national interests abroad (or at home).

But the most important thing is that it was Saddam Hussein who made it about the oil, not us.