Black Dog

Again: your own source contradicts your previous statement that he was in Baghdad at the start of the war: Another lie: Allies Were Not Persuaded By U.S. Assertions on Iraq WMD Why? Do Saddam's crimes then justify any action against him?

In the context of the illegality of the no fly zones, shooting at enemy aircraft are justifiable acts of self-defence. Your source tells a different story: Given that the Bush administration can't keep its story straight, I'm not surprised you can't either. Nope: No-Fly zones: the legal position Yes, until then, I'm glad we agree So: Saddam kills a known terrorist and somehow that makes him a sponsor of terror?

Apparently neither does anyone else. I'd be surprised if you had a clue yourself. You said: Which seems to indicate that the minute impact gay marriage will have on the population is sufficient grounds to prohibit it. Your subsequent clarification: Seems to indicate that you're talking about procreation and how gay marriage, since standard issue procreation is not an option, is the equivilant of...what? Abortion? Infanticide? By the same logic, then, masturbation has the same consequenses as murder. Or it could just be that your premise is both poorly expressed and fundamentally incorrect.

Morton doesn't have a snowball's chance in hell of getting the nod. Dinning, Oberg, Hancock and even Norris are better bets.

Non-sequiter. We're talking broad terms and teh LCBO, since it is govenment-owned is not suibject to the market forces we're discussing. You've already acknowledged that choices are limited, so why pretend then that those limitations theselves are products of choice? Also, the idea that low wage jobs are the sole domain of pimply high school students are a myth. Take a look at the folks working at WalMart and you're far more likely to see senior citizens or immigrants working for sustenance wages. As for low-wage jobs meeting individual needs, sure: low wage jobs prevent people from starving to death. that doesn't mean they wouldn't like a better gig.

Not neccisarily. Sure tehre are examples of people taking low wage work and gradually (usually thanks to other factors such as the accessability of education) work their way up. But many also get stuck in the low wage cycle, a cycle which perpetuates poverty and want. Sometiems the choices people are forced to make ultimately limit the choices. What's acceptable? Sure peopel can find acceptable jobs that pay them enough to scrape by each month, but where doe sthat leave them? Mired in a cycle of crap job after crap job with no opportunity for advancement. The free market notion that anyone with enough gumption and good ol' fashioned elbow grease can work their way up become CEO is a cruel joke.

But if the market provides choices, how can you say that there is no choice? Something doesn't add up. Hmm. Could it be that market explanations don't account for things like social inequalities, class etc. In other words, despite the market rhetoric, there are other forces which act to limit individual's choices.

Isn't that unecessary government interference in the free market? Surely employers, and not some bureaucrat, are in the best position to determine whether workplaces are safe and wages adequate compensation for the work performed. The problem with free market analysis of labour as a commodity is that it neglects the basic reality that labour=people. And people will not always behave as the market dictates they should. For instance people will take jobs that are dangerous or low-paying out of necessity. Taken to its logical conclusion, then, the free market analysis of labour is a recipe for indentured servitude (the term "wage-slave" was coined for that reason).

I do have to wonder if, as some here have alleged, Plame was not an undercover operative, why hasn't that been the focus of the counter attack? Surelyu that simple "fact" would be enough to stop the grand jury investigation. Becasue if her identity was not protected, then no foul was committed. That doesn't seem to be the case: Link.

The bombing with only a tenuous link to Iraq (in that one of the bombers traveled on a phony Iraqi passport.) Which the Clinton administration responded to with a cruise missile attack against a building housing the Iraqi Intelligence Service in Baghdad. The unilateraly declared no-fly zones? The one's imposed without authorisation by the UN and not specifically sanctioned by any Security Council resolution? Until Saddam's IIS put four bullets in his head. Lie. Uh...given that we were right and you were wrong on WMD, it's hard to see how we got played. Saddam was contained, weakened and impotent. No threat to his neighbours and certainly no threat to the west. So, given that reality which was so recognizable before the war, its hard to see how saddam suddenly became an intolerable threat in the 8 months between this: and 9-11. No. Again, all the intelligence on Iraq was anything but clear cut. Most of the U.S.'s work was manipulated, re-written and cherry picked to support their allegations. Saddam lied, no doubt. But the Bush administration lied from day one. And their lies haven't stopped and won't stop as long as there are willing dupes around to soak them up and regurgitate them.

Well, I'm sure that would come as a surprise to my girlfriend, unless you mean that I support gay individuals' in their struggle for equality. In which case I'll proudly say it: I <3 Queers. Have any "traditional" marriages ceased to exist on account of the advent of gay marriage?

Posting an endorsement and implied threat of violence towards gays puts a lie to your statement that you are not a homophobe. Sure you do. It's called the Stampede. Every day is straight pride day. Straight people have done mor eharm to traditional marriag ethan some queer radical revolutionary ever could. Anyway the whole SSM thing is just classic misdirection designed to keep the gullible prole's attention focused away from meaty economic issues.

That's an interesting spin. From the memo: As for this: It seem that is a reference to a conversation with Rumsfeld. So it appears in this case that the Brits were basing their assesment of Saddam's WMD capability on U.S. information, information we know know was manipulated. It certainly doesn't square with the earlier assesment in the memo that Sadam's There clearly was not. If anything, we know they knew Saddam was weak and contained. That's what made him such a tempting target over Iran or North Korea: he was easy pickings. We know they knew Saddam's WMD capacity was diminished beyond hope of reconsruction. As for terrorism, I don't think anyone took that angle seriously, given the lack of an Iraqi connection to 9-11. inspectors returned in 2002 and, while their findings were critical of the regime, they indicated that slight progress had been made in Iraq's cooperation. There's nothing in the memo or in any other bit of evidence unveiled before, during or after the invasion, thet there wa sa pressing need to undertake regime change. History also indicates this was not to disguse WMD, but to conceal the lack thereof. Sanctions that were championed by the Anglo-American coalition. And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?

I didn't say it was the way to go, did I? I simply pointed out the Alberta model hasn't delivered. The provincial government has micromanaged the marketplace, retaining the right to tax booze, setting the rules as to who can open liquor stores and placing arbitrary restrictions on grocery stores. It's superficial privatization, poltically motivated (I recall the first people to get the OK to open private liquor outlets were Tory affiliates-such is crony capitalism in Alberta) and ultimately pointless.

I've been mulling this over and have figured out a cdouple of issues I have with it. One: the whole notion that U.S. withdrawl will lead to civil war is based on the assumption that the US presence is a stabilizing factor there. It's not. We're seeing fewer attacks on Americans (as they revert to force protection mode) and more attacks on Iraqis. I would postulate that we're already seeing a civil war in miniature. The big problem with your scenario specifically is that you say a withdrawl will lead to civil war, yet your analysis points to civil war as an inevitability. You've just cloaked the Shia faction in the veneer of legitimacy brought on by their dominance of the government. Your "bringing the insurgency under control" is just another word for a "hot" civil war, no? I've said before that the reason this Iraq experiment will end in a failure is because Iraq itself is fundamentally damaged. The political arrangements to date simply don't match the realities on the ground. The religious and tribal divides are too deep to support the kind of unified, democratic Iraq the neocon bubbleheads envisioned. the way things are going, Iraq is headed towards becoming a theocracy with the dominant Shia majority exerting its will against unwilling and weakened Sunni and Kurdish populations. A sure recipe for a prolonged and bloody future. The only way this situation can be salvaged is if we dispense with the idea of Iraq as a unit and instead think of it in terms of a loose confederation in which each of Iraq's communities governs itself, and is capable of defending itself.

Calgary economist Greg Flanagan did a study in 2003 of Alberta's liquor privatization. Now, according to the free market model, wages should have gone down as the number of retailers went up, while prices should have shrunk. But prices haven't changed. So the resuly has been, more liquor stores, higher prices and lower wages. Where's the benefit?

Even if you strip away those advanced weapons systems, the U.S.A is stillthe globe's top supplier of small arms. That doesn't include the vast majority of small arms arms exported from the United States through direct commercial sales negotiated between U.S. companies or brokers and foreign buyers. Intent is in the eye of the beholder. It's flexible. Few crimes of war are committed without first being draped in noble intentions. The Rape of Nanking, Dresden, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the bloody Latin American dirty wars of the '70s and '80s etc etc. are all examples of horrific, immoral actions perpetrated in the name of good intentions. Because intentions are so indefinable, we must judge actions soely on their impact. A cop shooting a violent, gun toting assailant is morally justifiable in terms of self defense. A cop spraying a crowd of people with gunfire to hit a gun toting assailant is reckles and irresponsible. The US is not innocent of perpetrating violence, though your second assertion is correct. Right, hence the talk of building permenant bases in iraq. If you think the U.S. would pull out wholesale from a country they shed so much blood and lucre on and one in such a vital strategic location, you're soft in the head. And how does this view square with the U.S.'s own admission that foreign ighters such as Zarqawi and his followers make up but a small percentage of the insurgency? How many people does Zarqawi have under his control? How do we know he's anything but a vocal, small time thug quick to claim credit for others' work? How do we know, given multiple reports of his death or severe injury, if he's even alive or just a bogeyman? The way I see it, global circumstances will necessitate such changes anyway. It's a question of choosing to adjust now or being forced to adjust later. The alternative, as I said before, s the status quo. Are you suggesting the status quo is working? That's not what I claimed. Arms sales are but one way the U.S. and otehr western nations like the UK, France and Australia support corrupt regiems. Those corrupt regimes lead to increased radicalism, which increases the danger of blowback (the Shah's Iran is a textbook exmple of this phenomenon). You are trying to draw strict linear connections. It doesn't work that way. Link I think that's a fallacy because I haven't really seen the latter viewpoint expressed. But I'l leave this out for now.

Uhm...I 've not seen any analysis of the Iraq situation that neglects religion altogether. Pape, f'r instance, mentions religion as a recruiting tool, a rallying point. But the goal is always temporal: that is, political. You can't not talk about religion when you talk of the current/coming civil war in Iraq.

Frankly, I don't think the Sunni insurgency gives a tinker's damn about Iran's blessing of Al-Jaafari's government: to them it probably looks like the Shiites are getting together, which, if I were in their shoes, would only make me fight harder. But I think the core of this is that Iran is trying to put the new Iraq in its pocket. As the article points out, there's plenty of reason for a Shiite Muslim regime in Baghdad to cozy up to Tehran and all the more reason for the Iranian mullahs to welcome them aboard. How would it look to the Shiite Iraq majority if, say the US (or its proxies) decided to start bombing Iran.

But in order for Iraq to reach bastion status, the security situation (to name but one facet of an completely shattered society) needs to drastically improve. According to you guys, the security situation can only improve through the continued prescence of US and UK troops in Iraq (pulling out, the conventional wisdom goes, will lead to civil war). However, the US has so far been unable to make any significant improvements to the security situation, and seems to make matters worse by stirring up more resentment and presenting a target for insurgents. As long as there is violence, Iraq's chances of becoming a viable independant democracy are significantly diminished and, as long as the US stays, there's little chance the violence will abate. As long as the US stays, the more resentment they'll create, the more recruits they'll send to Al Qaeda's way and the more likely it becomes that we'll get hit with more terrorism.

Stated, but never supported.

But since, clearly, invading Iraq (regardless of whether the intentions were pure or not) as not made both Iraqis and westerners less safe. Therefore it stands to reason that the longer the occupation (and the accompanying degredation of the people of Iraq-we may like to ignore Gitmo or Abu Ghriab, but they have not forgoten) continues, the less safe we'll all be. So how is that a winning strategy? Why the scare quotes around Palestinian? As for the rest of your gibberish (its worth reminding you that without the UN, there would be no Israel), I can't help but point out that Arab integration is antithetical to the Zionist vision. If Israel had wanted to "integrate" the Palestinians into a binational state, they could have done so regardless of the UN(really: what power does the UN have, particularily when ever single UN resolution critical of Israel has been vetoed?) However, since such a move would mean an end to the Jewish majority, Israel's leadership has never been interested in a one-state solution.

I don't think a turban in any way affects a Mounties' ability to his do his job.

What I was saying is that the elections were billed as a turning point, after which the insurgency would just wither away. Instead, the violence has increased and the Iraqi government has been plagued by infighting (the Sunnis walked off the constitutional drafting committee this week) and ineffectiveness. Now, we're seeing the same sunshine-and-raindbows sentiment about the constitution. Fool me once... It may be a little presumptuous to say that democracy in the Middle East is a write-off (though I'd be quick to make the distinction between democracy obtained freely and democracy brought from the barrel of a gun), based on the track record of events, I'm having a hard time being optimistic. In other words, the whole thing has been such a SNAFU from the get-go that I'd be very surprised if anyone could make a silk purse out of the sow's ear of the Anglo American intervention.

The civil servant is entitled to his own beliefs, but if those beliefs interfere with his or her ability to perform their job, they should find a job where their sensebilities won't be threatened. Again: no one is saying these individuals can't have their beliefs or express them in any way, only that if those beliefs interfere with their ability to perform their job. If these individuals want to perform marriages in a way that is consistent with their personal religious beliefs, they should go out and get ordained. Here's the deal: these people are public servants: that means there job is to perform certain tasks for the public. Their own personal beliefs shouldn't trump the basic requirements of their job. If you have a cop who believes in the legalization of drugs, you'd still expect him to bust up a crack house.