BHS

Not a problem. Did you want to start a different thread? PM me if you do and I'll jump in.

Yeah, but I believe he probably saved 1,000,000 refugees from ethnic cleansing in the process. From http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_...5/ai_101861609: "In Kosovo...the Clinton administration worked through NATO, keeping its shaky coalition together in the Western alliance's first war. Clinton's war brought Europe and America closer together and invested NATO and trans-Atlantic relations with a renewed sense of purpose. That unity of purpose proved invaluable in post-war Kosovo, where U.S. and European troops secured the peace and U.N. administrators sponsored a difficult, but so far reasonably successful, transition to democracy." Seems to me it was worth it. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> I didn't say that it wasn't, though that's a whole different argument that we should maybe start a thread for (though it's no doubt been argued to death). The Kosovo example was only meant to bolster my ongoing argument with eureka, not pass judgement on the legitimacy of that war.

Nice work, shady. Good luck convincing the lefties, thought. I'm sure that if they bother with this tread at all, it will be to point out that your stories are a little out of date and other such inanities. Of course, if these stories backed up their arguments, some people would have been linking to them incessantly a long time ago.

You seem to have missed my point. Not since 1941 has the US ever formally declared war on another country. They don't do it any more. Instead, both parties have tacitly agreed to let the sitting president send in troops as he or she sees fit. Congress maintains control of the situation by dint of their power to reign in defense spending. With the formal declaration of war proviso out of the way and ignored, a Congressional bill approving the war is a nice gesture but is not legally necessary. Case in point: Congress specifically forbade Clinton from sending the US armed forces into Kosovo, but he went ahead and did it anyway, without political or legal repercussions.

So, which were those other countries that made the effort to obtain legal authority again? That little questions seems to have slipped through your righteous net.

WTF?? Actually, I don't feel safer since September 2001. But what're you gonna do? From now on I'm not going to bother explaining myself when I reply to your posts on this issue, I'm just going to follow your lead and plow right ahead with my opinion unexplained: The war in Iraq has everything to do with the war on terror, and very little to do with oil. The US hasn't spent 200 billion dollars on Iraq. There haven't been 1700 troops lost. Any price paid in blood and treasure so far is cheap when compared to the inveitable benefits the Iraq invasion will bring to the world.

Holy crap. LICO is not an accepted measure of poverty. If you and all of the loony lefty think tanks and socialist political parties and poverty pests in the world choose to ignore the caveat that Stats Canada includes, and the fact that LICO is not a logically consistent way of determining poverty, that's your perogative. But it doesn't make your statement any more correct.

Woo hoo! An NDP slap-fight! Keep it going! UPDATE: not you, Shady.

.So I guess I won't be seeing and arguments from you that the war in Iraq is taking resources away from the real war on terror in Afghanistan. You are apparently unaware that the bulk of insurgent activity is carried out by non-Iraqis. So much for the jihadis being scattered across the lawn, or whatever. This is true. It's not fair of me to assume events in a timeline that doesn't exist. My speculation is based on the previous growth of Al-Qaeda during the years when America wasn't repsonding to their attacks, being 1993 to 2000, when jihad-sympathisers globally were encouraged by perceived American weakness. My mooting statement was based on the premise that my speculation was correct, that Al-Qaeda would have continued to grow apace if America hadn't gone into Afghanistan to route them out. So you insist that we argue from present realities, and then switch to suppositions at the end of your argument. Very nice. And how, pray tell, would the US "decrease foreign entanglements" post 911 without giving the terrorists an even bigger boost? You are assuming that the terrorists can somehow be placated, now that we've earned their ire. I disagree. I don't thing there's a way in the world to go back to the days before terrorism was a fact of life. To suggest that it's possible is like saying you can unspeak a word.

Your premise is, that LICO is an acceptable measurement of poverty, which you justify by saying that many governments use it. Which I have argued is an example of the ad populum fallacy. I love that I ask a legitimate question about the meaning of your post, and rather than just leaving it hanging in the air, you go to the trouble of making it clear that the question doesn't justify a proper answer. I guess your opinion is that the question was meaningless. In which case, I'll have to assume that the post was meaningless as well.

It does not declare war before going into battle, not since FDR. Here's an article from some peace outfit in the states that will fill in the details for you. Google around for more info, but trust me, I've looked at this a lot. Veterans for Peace As for defying the UN, find me another member of the UN who has ever gone to the Security Council for permission to go to war. And then think about all of the wars that have happened anyway. And while you're at it, take a look at the language of the seventeen resolutions passed after the 1991 ceasefire and explain to me how they don't mean that the US has the right to send troops back into Iraq to rectify the situation.

Ad populum fallacy: the logical error of assuming that a premise is correct because it is accepted by a large number of people. Without the apostrophe "neighbours" loses significant meaning. Are you referring only to the US, or also to Russia and Mexico and Greenland?

Interesting. You conveniently failed to mention that the British government rejects the conclusions of the report, or that your "experts" were researchers from left-leaning British think-tanks with a history of opposing the war for political reasons. Your post read like the expert opinions were not in dispute. As for the report's primary conclusion (at least I assume it's primary, having only read the CBC story) is that the war in Iraq has given Al Qaeda a fundraising and recruitment boost. But that's a moot point. ANYTHING the Americans might have done in response to 911, from frying the entire Middle East to cowering in abject terror, would have given Al Qaeda a boost. That was apparently one of the reasons Osama was pushing for the operation to go forward, against the advice of his lieutenants.

Since this thread has degenerated into trolling tactics, I'm out. I'm leaving my subscription up in case anything new breaks in the story.

I fail to see how merely being wealthy equates to feudalism or inherent political/social privilege.It does if wealth disparities get so large that social mobility disappears. Then you have a situation where the only way to be wealthy is to be born wealthy. No different than the old feudal systems. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Except for the inherent entitlements, droit de seigneur, place in the House Of Lords, permission to raise taxes and private armies, etc. etc. etc. being rich and being a lord are exactly the same. I'm never going to be in the top 1%. I probably won't ever make the aquaintence of those people. But I probably won't ever associate with Portuguese fishermen or Australian aborigines or Czeck countesses either. What do I care, if my life is as good as I want it to be?

Could be that he's an admitted and unapologetic former terrorist. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> What? Can you please provide a link or a book title where I can read more on this? I must admit I have never heard this about Mandela.... <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Terrorism Knowledge Base This is a great website for information about terrorism from all over the world. The article I've linked to does not mention the murders of civilians and ANC members who opposed the terrorism strategy. It's unlikely Mandela would have participated in murder himself, but Winnie on the other hand... Necklacing

I fail to see the problem with this. It took about 4000 years to free human society from feudalism. You sound like you are nostalgic for the 'good old days' of hereditary monarchs and 'droit du seigneur'. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> I fail to see how merely being wealthy equates to feudalism or inherent political/social privilege.

In other words, the rich getting rich faster than the poor is a sign that something is wrong in society. The economist magazine seems to feel that the fact that social mobility has declined is unrelated to the increase in wealth disparties. I disagree - I feel the increase in wealth disparties leads to less social mobility as the wealthy are able to use their money and influence to buy better education and politicians than than the middle class and lower class can afford. Eventually the gap will be so large that social mobility will disappear (unless you count the middle class drifting in poverty as 'social mobility'). <{POST_SNAPBACK}> I fail to see the problem with this.

Ha! Agreed. It's almost like the Peace Prize is becoming a kind of code for who the worst kooks are. Jimmy Carter has one too. No comment.

Could be that he's an admitted and unapologetic former terrorist.

A couple of more points to add: -The NDP are also just as keen to spend our money outside of Canada. They just really like spending money, deficits or no. -All of the items listed that the NDP are proposing to spend federal money on are provincial jurisdictions. Which is typical - spend money on things that aren't your concern, by cutting spending on items that are your concern (eg. Defense).

You appear to be emloying the ad populum fallacy. I'm not criticizing LICO per se, just it's employment as a measurement of poverty for political purposes, which is surely the reason why parliament has so abused it. The reason you see criticisms of this practice so regularly is because it's wrong, but it remains popular among poverty activists because it "proves" that poverty is a growing problem. That the difference between the wealth of rich and poor is widening is inevitable given the effect of inflation alone. It is also irrelevant. The rich getting richer is not related to the poor getting poorer. Wealth creation is not a zero sum game. Information about the gap does nothing to illustrate the condition of the poorest people, or if there is in fact "deepening poverty".

Well, in my opinion, Wilson's lies should be included in any investigation. He provided a number of inaccurate statements to the Senate Intelligence Committee as well as to the news media. If it were illegal to tell lies all politicians and most senior bureacrats would be in prison. Nobody cares about the he-says/she-says interpreations of what Wilson did or didn't say. The question is whether the White House deliberately leaked information about his wife being a CIA agent. In addition to being seriously sleazy that's a serious federal crime. If Rove, or Cheney himself was behind that then they need to spend some time in prison. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Again, under the very narrow conditions set out by the law you are referring to, no crime has been committed. It's not against the law to say that someone works for the CIA, unless that person is currently or has been recently under cover, which is not the case here. Furthermore you have to have gotten your information from a classified source, and the prosecution has to prove you knowingly intended to "out" a covert agent.

The US is most assuredly at war. However, for technical reasons involving the constitutionally mandated seperation of powers the US no longer formally declares war before going into battle. As to your second paragraph, it's a pity Rove went to the bother trying to discredit Wilson, as Wilson has done such an excellent job of discrediting himself.

One of the problems with the goal of ridding the world of poverty (a worthwhile goal to be sure) is the definition of poverty itself. I often see posts on internet forums where a poster is complaining about the widening gap between rich and poor, and the increase in the number of people who live in poverty. And it occurs to me, "this guy is using LICO statistics to define poverty". Which happens all of the time, despite the fact that Statistics Canada specifically states that Low Income Cut Off is not a measurement of poverty: LICO (read the first paragraph of the introduction) The problem with using LICO as a measurement of poverty is that LICO is a ratio and will always exist, no matter what the lowest income in the country is. This leads to the absurd potential situation where everyone could be a millionaire living in luxury, and yet a set portion of the population would still have a sub-par income. Anyone using LICO to measure poverty would consider these people "poor". A second problem of poverty activism is that it often conflicts with the concurrent goal of maintaining indigenous cultural purity in impoverished regions. What we in the West consider conditions of abject poverty are often the cultural norms of the society we are examining. That disease and malnutrition go hand in hand with these cultural traditions, is the traditional condition of those cultures. Trying to bring tribal peoples out of their "poverty" will inevitably mean forever changing huge swathes of their way of life.