Briney wrote
Maybe so, maybe not. It is a counter-factual argument and unknown how many would or wouldn't have perished, Bogan. Time you realised that something that never happened can never be assessed for accuracy.
Yeah? Well, how's this for a prediction. If Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin and Mao tse Tung had all been assassinated, WW2 might never have happened. And 70-80 million people would not have died horrible deaths at the orders of these psychopaths.
Briney wrote
There are legal and moral reasons why the removal of Saddam Hussein could have been accomplished far better than what the Americans/British/Australian government did.
That looks like a counter factual argument to me, Briney. And no matter what the yanks, Brits and Aussies do, they are still largely white societies and so you and your comrades will always criticise them.
The first people to destroy Iraqi nuclear weapons manufacturing was the Israelis, who took out the Osirak nuclear facility without permission from the UN. Hussein wanted the Frogs to sell him a nuclear reactor capable of producing fissile material for a bomb, and the idiotic French did just that. So if you want to blame anybody for Saddam's nuclear ambitions, turn your bile on the French. And the Israelis did not need a "cassus beli" from the UN to bomb the Osirak reactor and reduce it to rubble. By doing so without one, the Israelis did more for nuclear disarmament in five minutes than all of the UN resolutions have done in the past 70 years.
And what sanctions were going to stop Hussein's nuclear ambitions? The illegal sale of iraqi oil was even being done by UN secretary Kofi Annan's son, who made sqillions out of breaking the UN sanctions his father imposed (probably with his tongue in his cheek).
Briney wrote
Those actions had ramifications that we still live with today. Because the Americans/British/Australians removed needed troops from Afghanistan to undertake their "crusade" against Saddam Hussein, the Taliban and al Q'aeda leadership escaped from Afghanistan.
If we had kept Muslims out of western societies, we would never needed to worry much about Al Qaida. While I supported bleeding the Ivans in Afghanistan as payback for Vietnam, I knew that in a way even international socialism was better for the Afghans than Islam. As a card carrying Socialist, even you should be able to figure out that Islam is toxic.
Briney wrote
Well done, Mr. Bush/Mr. Blair/Mr. Howard. Are you proud of their accomplishments, Mmmm?
What 'accomplishments" did Australia "accomplish" in Iraq and Afghanistan? In Iraq, our infantry only "Army" with it's obsolete tanks was an embarrassment to our allies. In Afghanistan, our token force could not even field an attack helicopter, because your public service mates made such a monumental stuff up of the purchase.
Briney wrote
Now, if Mr. Bush/Mr. Blair/Mr. Howard had decided to actively seek a UN decision to remove Saddam, they wouldn't have needed to create a casus belli, which consisted of lies and bullshit. They wouldn't have needed to remove as many troops from Afghanistan. They might have caught the Taliban and al Q'aeda leadership.
Time you realised that something that never happened can never be assessed for accuracy.
Briney wrote
They might even have caught Saddam Hussein, in Baghdad.
Time you realised that something that never happened can never be assessed for accuracy.
Briney wrote
The US Government even told us, later that the reason why they resorted to the Weapons of Massed Distraction story was because that was the only one which all their varied departments could agree on using. It had no reality. Something the UN report proved. Tsk, tsk.
Oh rubbish. The USA had no problem with Hussein remaining in power, all he had to do was behave himself and stop being a problem to the yanks, and stop being a threat to the flow of oil through the Persian Gulf. If he had done that, he would still be alive today. Nobody is to blame for the allied invasion except that prize idiot, Saddam Hussein.
Briney wrote
Very mild "personal abuse" compared to what I wear everyday from posters like reboot and others, Bogan, including yourself occasionally. Tsk, tsk.
As you once wrote, Brian (I am sorry that I never cut and pasted it into your "clangers" file), if you propose a moral position and then break your own moral code, you are doubly damned.
No, of course not. What, you think you can get a free pass on your style of mud-flinging because you dress it up in politically correct dialogue? 
whenever somebody states an opinion you don't agree with, you get on your high horse and insult people.