What a load of crap. Say what you want about the little guy from Shawinigan, but he didn’t let himself get suckered into W’s little fiasco in Iraq like John Howard and the Poodle. Chretien left the country in good fiscal shape — the best of the G8 countries. He wasn’t slick like Mulroney (Hi! How ya doin’) singing with Nancy and Ronnie — (When Irish Eyes are Smiling) but he saw right through the bullshit that is George W. Sure there was the Sponsorship scandal, but they only got caught because they weren’t as slick as the boys in Conservative Blue. I think Mark Steyn should ge back to being Sir Connie’s water boy. Why is Macleans printing this crap?

Remember the Northern Front through Turkey?

I blame TV.

I think it’s worth repeating that even if Iraq had had nukes, that wouldn’t have been a legitimate casus belli anyway, ownership of NBC weapons are in themselves not enough to justify war under internationl law, and also under rationality since otherwise every country with NBC weapons could be attacked at any time with that rationale.

France sold weapons to Iraq, but Iraq destroyed its “weapons of mass destruction” in the 90s in wane hope that the US would ease off the pressure. Everyone knew that before the war started, essentially.

Sheesh, haven’t these people got any sense of history?

Never mind the WMDs themselves; I’m still waiting for any evidence of the kind of infrastructure you need to produce, store, distribute and use WMDs. No factories, no storage bunkers, no delivery systems, no research labs, no scientific libraries…

Also, I ‘totally dig’ (in the parlance of today’s youths) Clintoblathering schmoozeroo. That sounds HAWT!11

Being a wingnut can’t be easy.

Lack of Hell, it’s probably the easiest thing in the world. If you are the kind that can keep up fear and hate for long periods, and don’t get bored, I bet nothing could be easier.

That’s chapter 1 verse 5 in the new King George Bible.

“And lo, George cameforth and said and said and said and said and said and said Iraq had Nukes and so it was true.”

Clintoblathering Schmoozeroo is a lock for next year’s Nobel, mark my words.

No factories, no storage bunkers, no delivery systems, no research labs, no scientific libraries…

Silly other-ubu, Baghdad Bob stuffed all that in a suitcase and snuck it over the border into Iran where he exchanged it for a handful of magic beans and some of those improvised explosive devices that, apparently, could only be improvised in Ahmadinejad’s basement.

Steyn writes:

But the larger point is that every calculation made by either man was purely political.

Good thing our current leaders don’t think that way otherwise they might use traditionally neutral beaurcratic agencies to punish political opponents and reward synchophants. Damn glad I don’t live in THAT world anymore.

Now, please pass the cheese curd.

Even Chrétien’s chum Chirac, who opposed the war, never disputed the fact that Saddam had WMDs, if only because he had a big bunch of the relevant receipts.

So, wait, in light of the fact that there were no WMDs, Chretien is hence more wrong for asserting this?

“Clintoblathering”? Is that like an interrobang‽

If you are the kind that can keep up fear and hate for long periods, and don’t get bored, I bet nothing could be easier.

Sure, maybe if you’re the type, but speaking for myself, being afraid for any reason for more than about 30 seconds is an extremely tiring business. Anger I can manage for slightly longer periods.

“Clintoblathering”? Is that like an interrobang?

Now that’s just silly. It’ll be at LEAST Unicode version six before we have a sixteen bit characterization for “Clintoblathering”…

mikey

but speaking for myself, being afraid for any reason for more than about 30 seconds is an extremely tiring business. Anger I can manage for slightly longer periods.

That’s a good point. I’ve become well acquainted with both emotions in the past six years. Still I think the hardest part for me might be the boredom it would likely entail.

if only because he had a big bunch of the relevant receipts.

Y’know, there’s only one vacancy for bad Bill Hicks steals, and Denis Leary already took it. Sorry, Shit Steyn.

If you are the kind that can keep up fear and hate for long periods, and don’t get bored, I bet nothing could be easier.

Um. Excuse me. Marita? Sidhe? Somebody? Isn’t that pretty much the whole idea about PTSD? Fear and hate for long periods of time. Exposed to the necessary outcomes of a policy built on fear and hate? What do they think you get? You get people with weapons in other people’s places, and killing at eyeball range and on an industrial scale.

The very basic premise of the policy is brutality, dehumanization on a very large scale, hatred and fear sustained over generations, and genocide the the necessary outcome of the quaking, tweaking, shattered sad people who have been tossed onto the shore of the structure built on hate and fear and not knowing another solution.

The result is a sad, crippled population who lack the reference points to adequately analyze the policy and address the way it relates to them as individuals.

It’s criminal on at least three levels. But hey, what do I know. I’m drinking quite heavily…

mikey

“Being a wingnut can’t be easy.”

I’m not so sure. We’re still waiting on the lab results to definitively determine whether or not stupid hurts.

Clintoblathering schmoozeroo.

Nice one, Steyn. I mean feel free to just type a bunch of literal gibberish anytime you’re feeling too lazy to finish a sentence in English. It’s not like any of your crackhead readers will know the difference.

Clintoblathering schmoozeroo
I believe that the Schmoozeroo is a rare marsupial, found only in parts of central Australia around the old Woomera nuclear-testing ground. Qetesh the Abyssinian may be able to clarify things.

Reports are scant, that still being a no-go area. There are stories, though…

The Slick Willie endorsement need not detain us long: that’s just standard sentimentalized Clintoblathering schmoozeroo.

Isn’t…isn’t the purpose of written language to convey ideas and meaning to the readers? Because this sentence fails to do both.

I was a bit interested in the substance of Steyn’s critique of Chretien.

A distintly lesser compaint was that Chretien did not have values of his own. Rather that approve gay marriage and fight for it, and loose a valiant fight to Conservatives, or to disapprove gay marriage and fight the court order tooth and nail, Chretien was so devoid of value as to notice that so few gays marry when they can that it really does not matter this way or another.

Thus is so distatesful indeed. A politician looks into consequences of a political decision and concludes that they do not amount to much merely because they do not amount to much. And apparently the real tragedy of it was that the people of Canada got convinced that they do not amount to much for the same reason. Politics of a nation dictated by mundane considerations, this is just disgusting.

And this leads to the major complaint. Chretien did not lead Canada to greatness, and forget the sentimentalized Clintoblathering schmoozeroo that claims the opposite (I see this rhetorical pearl as the key point of the article). Perhaps back in 1945 Canada was bestriding the world scene like a colossus, but no more, alas. Lead by small minded people like Chretien, who were driven by mundane considerations (checking facts! how petty one can get?!) forsake chances of making the benighted nations dread (or adore) the name “Canada”.

How that could be achieved, apparently matters little. Getting rid the world and Zimbabwe of one of the most cruel and least competent dictators could do in a pinch, as Steyn refers “approvingly” to a Chretien’s proposal (what he disapproves is that it was a “proposal” meant to discomfort the Poodle and not a real proposal). But the most assured way would be for UK, Australia and Canada to be for USA what horses Flame and Terror were to war god Ares, pulling his charriot and raising panic among the enemies.

Pere Ubu said,

October 23, 2007 at 1:44

“Never mind the WMDs themselves; I’m still waiting for any evidence of the kind of infrastructure you need to produce, store, distribute and use WMDs. No factories, no storage bunkers, no delivery systems, no research labs, no scientific libraries…”

Riiiiiight..No use of massive amounts of chemical weapons during the Iran-Iraq war. No 5,000 dead men, women and children gassed in Halabja.

Riiiiight. Instead of dead bodies grimacing from a horrible death, we need “infrastructure” evidence.

Snork!

All the stupid people, where do they all come from?
All the stupid people, where do they all belong?
Oooo, all the stupid people…

At least the question “where do they all belong” seems tractable. [Are references to the Beatles still clear with the young people?] fulldroolcup, true to the spirit of his handle, somehow confuses the notion of time. Wars are not waged on the basis of threats to non-allied states made 10 years earlier. In old days one could start a war on the basis of a violated clause of a 300 years old pre-nuptial agreement, but UN Charter requires to have something more fresh and compeling.

fulldroolcup perhaps (but perhaps not) may recall that State Secretary Powell in his speach to UN did not allege that Iraq had chemical weapons 10 years earlier, but at the time of the speech. President Bush on the eve of the war urged Sadam to disarm, presumably from weapons existing at the time of the speech.

A propos dead bodies grimacing from horrible death, US forces incinerated a column of Iraqi troops AFTER ceasefire agreement as they were moving north away from Kuweit. Pictures of soldiers who were burned alive were quite haunting.

Piotr violates a number of basic rules of argumentation by not acknowledging that his initial premise was demolished, and that he is changing the subject.

piotr can’t escape the fact that he demanded to know where “infrastructure” for WMD are, rather than the fact that Saddam had an used WMD both against Iran and his own subjects —which means the infrastructure existed at one time.

Piotr can’t escape the fact that the onus was on Saddam to demonstrate that he had destroyed all his WMD, a condition of the earlier ceasefire. He further cannot escape the fact that the UN and not just the United States placed those demands on Saddam, and that Saddam thumbed his nose at them for 11 years.

Piotr cannot escape the fact that he clearly thinks it OK that Saddam ignored the lawful demands made on him , and “bad” that we went to war to remove Saddam from power for not meeting those demands.

Piotr offers without a shred of evidence an alleged atrocity on the part of US soldiers.

Piotr is an effing FOOL.

If I had a ruble for every brain that piotr doesn’t have, I would have ONE ruble.

I think pitor’s last comment relates to the “Highway of Death” incident.

That occurred on February 26 – February 27, 1991.

The ceasefire agreement was signed February 28, 1991.

If piotr thinks fleeing soldiers are not fair game, he is even more of a fool.

Try reading “The Forgotten Soldier” and learn what the Soviets did to fleeing German soldiers at the Dneiper river.

War is hell.

QED.