MonteZuma

There are countless images that mock jesus. http://exchristian.net/art/albums/funny/normal_Watering_Jesus.jpg http://pressurecooker.phil.cmu.edu/Jesus/jesuseaster.jpg Do they get published in newspapers?

I challenged the arguments that Aileron used to prove that the Hussein 'dynasty' would last for hundreds of years. That is all. Soviet communists were not toppled by a US invasion and occupation. US and European involvement in the Iraqi situation was very important. The US and Europe WERE involved. What was not needed was an invasion and a US occupation.

It passes the time

Yeah. It was offensive. We both agree on that score. But the cartoons didn't give Islam a bad reputation. Umm. No. You're joking right? Trolling? It isn't human to kill people and destroy property because someone published an offensive set of cartoons. Civilised people don't erupt with violence. I don't think the christian world would respond with violence if Jesus was drawn in an offensive way. A better response might be to write a letter of complaint to the editor or boycott the paper. Setting fire to an emb!@#$%^&*y does not exactly make Islam look 'good'. That is an ignorant generalisation. Yes. They do. But so what? This doesn't make you a better person in my eyes. But there are plenty of Christians that have memorised the bible. You probably have a fair point here, but using this to excuse violence is just plain wrong. Senseless violence maddens me and creates hatred of muslims.

So?

Yeah. Islam did earn the reputation. Even though it is a minority that is involved in the violence. The religion as a whole needs to take more responsibility for reigning in aberrant behaviour. I heard on the radio that an 8yo was killed in the latest round of cartoon related violence. This is just deplorable. Ffs. Its a cartoon.

Communism was set up to prevent revolution at least as well as the Iraqi regime - and it didn't work. There is no evidence to suggest that the Hussein 'dynasty' would have lasted 500 or so years if it were not for an invasion and occupation.

What makes you think that?

Jim? The Toothbrush Family? It is very strange that this set of cartoons started such an outcry. I wonder why?

Well. Yeah. But Iraq was a dictatorship, not a monarchy or a democracy. Maybe. But so what? That is Iraq's affair and this has been going on in Iraq since 1958. All we need to concern ourselves with is wheher or not the leadership is a security risk. Dictators need either public approval or ambivalence to survive too. Saddam is one man. Let me replace 'Baathist' with 'communist' and see what happens to your next paragraph.... Well. Isn't that intersting. And yet the communist party only lasted 70 years.

If they !@#$%^&* up (and become a credible threat rather than a pretend threat), annihilate them. It isn't a matter of crying wolf. It is a matter of maintaining the pressure. Obviously maintaining the necessary pressure in the face of someone that waivered like Saddam did is problematic, but as we've seen, it can be more expensive and problematic to maintain an occupation force. The evidence that Bush and Blair used was weak and over-hyped. The evidence that Hans Blix used was understated and grounded in reality. The fact that Europe backed Blix isn't the result of dumb luck. Its the result of objective decision-making.

Dunno. I agree with Aileron in the sense that there is a gap between random chemical reactions and the complexity !@#$%^&*ociated with even the simplest forms of life. I disagree though that this missing link is in any way evidence of an intelligent designer. As for the argument about life being more like machines than other objects in nature - well - is that really surprising? Machines are basically extensions of ourselves. They are created by living things to perform tasks for living things. Given that the job of an automobile is to replace our legs (to move us) and our backs (to carry things), wheels replace legs, roof racks and bootspace replace shoulders and backs, combustion engines replace our lungs and our heart. Machines are like people because we want them to do the job of people. If we wanted to build something that did the job of a rock, it would probably have more in common with a rock than a living thing, but it would still have a human stamp on it. The same can be said for a brain/computer. As for a building, even though parts of it might resemble a skeleton, buildings are certainly more like caves than they are like living things. I guess they become a little like living systems when you add water and electricity and put people in them, but this goes back to my original argument. Machines are like people because they are designed by people do do work for people. Humans evolved from ape-like creatures that knew nothing about machines and yet we now build machines everyday. Why can't life evolve from something that doesn't 'know' how to 'build' life?

Aileron, Lighten up, and don't be so sadistic

Are you Danish Pernille? I think the western world is getting reasonably accurate (although simplified) coverage of this story. I heard about the pig fiasco. This certainly is a mountain made out of a molehill. Btw, Princess Mary is sexay.

Castro was never interested in attacking the US, and neither was Hussein. No. He has planned for his younger brother to take over. But I don't see why this is 'most important'? We could wait forever, but we wouldn't need to with sanctions crushing the Iraqi economy. No. It doesn't fit. But I don't think for a minute that Iraq would be a Baathist 'monarchy' for 500 years. You may not like them, but they certainly do belong in this time and place. Europe has a number of popular monarchies. Australia voted to keep its monarchy in a recent referendum. Disease and crime? Huh? The main economic barrier for Iraq was the sanctions - not the Baath party. If you want to tackle problems related to poverty and arrested development, you should concentrate on Africa. The trillions of dollars that have been wasted on military action in Iraq could have done a lot to improve life for millions of people in Africa.

Oopsie. Mortality is not a word I'd expect to see in that context.

Combined with the threat of annihilation by the US military - yes. Hans Blix led the inspection team and he has always said he thought he was making good progress. He also said that he thought that they had found or destroyed virtually all of the remaining WMDs. He was right. I believed Hans Blix and Hans Blix was right. Much (most?) of the free world did not think the threat was as great as the US and British governments imagined or pretended it to be - that is why GWB had trouble rounding up his coalition of the willing. You can think that, but you have no evidence. If time is our judge, then it certainly does look like there are no WMDs. If by 'we' you mean the US then maybe. I NEVER thought there was a connection and neither did a majority of people I know. In fact I'm not convinced that anybody really thought there was a connection between Al Qaida and Saddam Hussein. The connection was implied by GWB and others to confuse the two issues and bring the public on board. Yes. If this works out then there will be a tactical win. But to me, this looks like a pipe dream. In any case, a government friendly to the west does not become a safe haven from terrorism. Plenty of terrorists come from Saudi Arabia and Egypt. This is a war on terror. Not a war on the middle east. I can't think of any, unless you mean Israel, but that includes the Palestinian territories. A puupet government in Iraq will not counter those kinds of feelings or that kind of violence. Because he was nutty too? he was a megalomaniac. He never had an opportunity because he was under the thumb of the US and to a lesser extent the UN ever since the first gulf war. He really stuffed up when he invaded Kuwait. Megalomania. Perhaps. I hope that in the washup we both agree that Iraq and Iraqis are better off and that the western world is a better place. Its got some way to go before I say that.

Paines sig has an embedded movie or something. Are your sigs turned on? Maybe your browser is filtering them? Are your speakers plugged in?

Saddam didn't have WMDs and Iraq wasn't a breeding ground for terrorists. Therefore it worked. We both agree that the leadership in Iran is nutty and untrustworthy. That doesn't mean that the best strategy for manageing the problem is to rattle your sabre and shout insults. So what if he was buying himself time? If Bush took advantage of that time he might have come up with a better strategy than the 'lets kick his !@#$%^&* on our own now and worry about the fallout later' strategy. The facts fly in the face of this. Saddam had less WMD capacity in 2002/3 than he did shortly after the first gulf war. Saddam might have been waiting for the pressure to ease up, but most thinking people, even those that were against war, were in favour of maintaining the pressure. I was always in favour of sanctions, no fly zones, strategic attacks, inspections, etc, etc, etc. Nobody trusted Saddam. Not even Hans Blix. He was not acquiring weapons at the time of the invasion. He was destroying them. As evil as he was, that is what he was doing. This is now proven fact. Thousands of Americans have died in Iraq. Countless thousands of innocent Iraqis are also dead. And Iraq and Saddam had nothing to do with 9/11. Another proven fact. We can both agree that he wasn't seriously interested in negotiation and that he was giving the world the bird, but so what? He was a lame duck? Treat him like Castro and Cuba. There was no need to invade. Saddam never planned, organised, supported or perpetrated an attack on US soil. Al Qaida is not Saddam Hussein.

Agreed. Signatures now disabled Yeah. But, the analogy is flawed. The cartoons were posted in a different forum (A Danish newspaper !@#$%^&*it). If you aren't a member of the community or even a subscriber to the forum, and if you aren't personally disadvantaged or maligned by the posting then you have no right whatever to demand that the post be deleted or that the author be banned. Burning buildings, destroying property and threatening and killing people is not a sign of morality. I know that I am not deluded when I say that I would not destroy property or kill people if someone draws a cartoon that I don't approve of. I expect other people not to react with violence over religious mockery. Actually we are debating every aspect of this issue. gerbils summed it up. Its ok to draw satirical cartoons and its ok to be pissed off about them, but it isn't ok to be violent. If the cartoon was discriminatory then it should not have been published, but I don't think anybody is seriously saying that it was discriminatory. Rubbish. The cartoon would be legal in any free and democratic country, including the US. I'm sure we all agree about that. No contest. Probably not.

I'm not sure that there would have been more innocent Iraqis killed if Saddam was left in place than there have been as a reult of the invasion and the aftermath. But the most important issue to me is the safety and security of the world as a whole. I believe that removing Saddam from power using US forces has made the world a more dangerous place. Russia became a capitalist democracy after 75 years of communist propaganda. This sounds to me as though you knew your argument was flawed so you tried your darndest to find some difference between the viability of the Iraqi system and the communist system. I'm not convinced. Communism was not inherently more unstable than Iraq's system of government. Communists had more control over the distribution of wealth than the Iraqis. Most of the people in the Iraqi army were not comparatively wealthy. The Baathist system of rule was no more or less elegant than the ideology of communism. Really. Your argument here is weak. Hans Blix seemed to have found a way. I use 'negotiation' in the loosest sense. The important thing is to avoid a counter-productive war and still achieve your political goals - which at the time was preventing Saddam from having the power to attack the west using terrorism or WMDs. It was working.

Calling the guy at the other side of the table 'evil' is not a good start to the negotiation process. Telling everyone else at the table that they either support me or they are also evil is also a bad way to bring about mutually satisfactory outcomes. So what if it was a decade of negotiation with Iraq? So what if it was 50 years of negotiation? The objective should be safety and security - time is irrelevant. What Bush and his supporters strive for are quick and dirty 'solutions' that always seem to leave a vacuum that can only be filled with human lives, cash and hatred. So Bush has avoided another decade of negotiation, but at what cost? Thousands of dead civilians, a decade of instability in Iraq, and another generation of anti-US terrorists that think they are fighting a war against christian crusaders. GG Bush. The tortoise and the hare springs to mind. Fwiw. I actually believe that the UN would have failed to get Iraq to destroy its WMD capability if it were not for the threat of US military intervention. The US has a vital role in bringing rogue states to heel. The only problem is that with the present US government, the power isn't backed up by tact and timing and empathy. A US that is respected worldwide would be 10 times more powerful than a US that thinks and acts unilaterally.

That is the most obvious example of GWBs jingoistic gung ho crap. This may come as a surprise, but a majority of people outside of the US think GWB is a warmonger, not a negotiater. All I am saying is that the matter is complicated. Iran are permitted to develop nuclear technology under the NPT. Iran is friendly with Russia and China - which makes it hard for them to support the US in the Security Council. If this is managed badly, Iran could be seen as a third world freedom-rider. Not to mention the possibility of increasing the perception that the west is anti-Islam. The involvement of the Security Council might be necessary. Military intervention might be necessary. But rushing head-long towards yet another destabilising war or military strike is not the best way to manage this situation.

We are all Danes now...

There is nothing half-!@#$%^&*ed about it. GWB made a big mistake with his 'axis of evil remark'. He effectively shut down any opportunity for dialogue. Who negotiates with evil people? He should cut out the gung-ho jingo crap. How did the UN fail? Iraq had no WMDs when the US decided to attack. You left off the rest of the sentence. Bush has done a lot - but mostly he has screwed things up. Referring the issue to the Security Council is less than ideal. The best way to resolve this issue is with dialogue, using the IAEA and within the framework of the NPT. If Iran feels that those fora are unavailable and withdraws, the consequences could be ugly. Governments like India, China and Russia could be useful to mediate the dispute because they don't want Iran to have nukes either. They have much less room to manoeuver if they are put in a situation where they must choose to support the US or support Iran. I'm "one of those "unilateral action is bad" people. Yes. This isn't a metter of taking care of Iran. This is a matter of avoiding war and avoiding proliferation of nuclear weapons and making the world a safer place. Yeah. Some nutty things have been said. I don't want Iran to have nuclear weapons any more than you do. The disagreement that we have is about methodology.