traptunderice wrote:
cry of the banshee wrote:
Does that make him a criminal? I don't know. Maybe it does.
Actually, that is not at all what makes him a criminal. What makes him a criminal is that we consented to certain international laws and he violated those. Numerous, numerous times. What did Osama bin Laden do violate international laws. One may be malicious, the other a puppet for the corporate interests he solidified through cabinet appoitnments yet that malice has not resulted in nearly a comparable amount of destruction to the bumbling wars of Bush. If we write Bush off as simply being manipulated by his cohorts, then why can't we write bin Laden off as a misguided zealot. Misguided zealots are almost more forgivable than the person who is the leader of the free world who let's his inner circle manipulate him. I don't know if Bush should be compared to bin Laden but I don't think Chomsky's claim was as inane as you claimed it to be.
Well, don't hold your breath waiting for me to defend W or the Iraq invasion, because it ain't gonna happen.
But...
Without going into the dynamics that led to the Iraq invasion (I am not going to defend the indefensible. On the other hand, the day that Saddam Hussein took power, a clash between Iraq and the US was almost inevitable, given the dictators penchant for invading other countries in the region and our vetted interest there), there is a huge difference between deliberately sneak-attacking and killing civilians going about their daily business and launching a war, which based on previous conditions and circumstances, leaves too many grey areas.
The Iraq war was not an intentional attack on the civilian population.
9/11 was.
Beyond that, I can see how the distinctions can get a little blurry, but I just don't see the equivalency.
Iraq and Saddam were our allies the entire time up until the gulf war. We were against Iran and so was he. We gave him a lot of weapons.
