Perhaps you need to look up approval. The US and Britain attempted to get the UN to approve their military action against Iraq. The UN didn't, so they decided to go ahead anyway. Regardless of whether you're going to try and point to existing requirements, treaties, etc. etc. that you feel justified the invasion, it doesn't get around the fact that the US and UK failed to get the approval they wanted from the UN. It's why instead of a UN force in Iraq atm you have a coalition of governments (predominantly the US) who decided to go ahead with the invasion, while others such as France chose not to.

Well it depends if you accept everything you hear from government as gospel or not. For example the 'sexed up' part for the UK is referring to a bbc reporter who claimed the government "sexed up" the case for war in a now infamous dossier they produced which included a 45 minute claim (something like 'saddam can launch a wmd in 45 minutes!!!'. If you go through the various stages this document went through, and in particular the advice the government received from the intelligence community, you wouldn't be seeing this claim. It was included+phrased in order to make it easier to sell the idea (IIRC it might have in reality been that there was some unreliable intel that suggested certain short-range missiles could be launched within 45 minutes or something like that, but it's so long ago now I can't remember the full details). The government went and launched an inquiry that whitewashed them and found the journalist guilty of some offense or other, but given the information that came out both then and over the following years, it's become blindingly obvious to everyone save those who remain oblivious to the truth that yes, the government did overstate the case. The UK government even tried another enquiry, only this time the enquiry ended up basically saying that on the very technical point they were asked to look into by the government, the government wasn't at fault, but they were unable to actually look into the wider issue of whether the government did 'sex up' the case for war, which is as close as you can come to saying 'the governments guilty but doesn't want to admit it' as you can really.

Nice circular logic there - we're justified in going to war with this country due to their inhumanity because we're at war with them! So if we're at war with zimbabwe it'd be ok to justify that war based on their human rights record because we're at war with them, but if we're not at war with them then we can't justify being at war with them based on their human rights record because we're not at war?!

Um...just now! Been following the news lately, what with the russian invasion of georgia? I don't know about you, but if one country invades another, to me that means they're at war.

 

You write like I think thanks!

Perhaps you need to look up rules of engagement, rules of land warfare, and international conventions for the prosecution of war. Without that context you can’t hope to understand what happened. Instead you rely on political talking points as if they are facts. Those talking points are designed to muddy the waters so the opposition can have a chance at election and have nothing to do with what actually happened.

Well it depends if you want to believe people that don’t have access to classified information and get their hands on one report and publish it as if that is all there is.

 

After 9/11 both Briton and America received a lot of intelligence reports. We got them from Iran, Libya, Germany, France, Spain, Russia, Poland and a host of other nations wanting to help or hurt us. All wanting to show their support for us or fear of us. They all knew we were going to hammer someone and everyone but Afghanistan and Iraq was saying not me! Germany Russia provided information on Iraq’s WMD program. They would know since they helped build the parts we did not. We knew from our records what he had from America. We knew from the armistice what Iraq had that was not destroyed by the UN. So we knew he had several thousand tons of WMD unaccounted for.

 

We knew he had missiles that could be launched in a short time because we were not able to find and destroy all the SCUD missiles and it does not take much to put WMD on them. He violated the 1000 KM range limit with a missile test so we knew he could reach areas that were forbidden by the armistice but Mr. Clinton did nothing but talk. So long before 9/11 we had justification to go in and wipe him out. Only after 9/11 did Iraq become a possible threat to us because of its support of terrorists.  

 

Nice circular logic there - we're justified in going to war with this country due to their inhumanity because we're at war with them!

 

 Not circular at all. We are currently at war with Iraq, that war started in the 90’s the armistice dictated how Iraq will act and any failure to comply resumes the war at the discretion of the winning parties. There is no further action needed, we don’t have to do it right now we can wait a decade if we choose.

 

We were at war at the time and the Iraqis had to do as told or resume the war. Instead of attacking right away they had a decade of last chances, warnings from two administrations. And finally we went in.

 

Please show the same happening with Russia and Georgia.

 

And still you blithely seem to refuse what is irrefutable - the US and UK went to the UN to get approval for their war. They failed to do so, but went ahead with it anyway. They claimed it was for WMD, but such 'intelligence' has since emerged to have been heavily politicised. Neither germany or russia, who you mentioned, seem to have provided intel that confirmed the existence of WMD. You had hans blix (sp?) and the weapon inspectors saying they could find no evidence of WMD, and still had the US etc. clamouring for a war. You then had post-invasion reports also mentioning that the WMD programs had ended over a decade prior to the invasion. Far more damning, you have had numerous people point to examples of where those in power have deliberately sought to ignore or hide the intelligence that was saying Iraq didn't have WMD, so that they could press ahead with their war. As one british meeting put it IIRC, the war was the goal, and so all 'facts' and intelligence were built around this (i.e. those that could be used in some way to support a war would be used, those which wouldn't would be ignored/discarded). Despite all this, you're trying to claim it is all "democratic talking points". Talk about living in denial...

It's hardly one report, and it's not exactly from people with no knowledge of classified information. You've had people from all over the intelligence community come out and say the government ignored their intel, or selectively chose parts of it which they then sexed up, etc., and numerous reports, memos, meetings etc.. Unfortunately the feeble argument of 'well you haven't seen what they saw, so you can't say they're wrong' doesn't work when you've had so many different sources contradicting what has been said. It also shows a disturbing level of blind faith in the government.

As with the case of UN approval (where you tried changing the argument to be about the justification for war once you realised you couldn't hope to argue that the UN fully sanctioned the invasion of Iraq by the US+coalition), you seem desperate to try and twist the argument. I'm not arguing that the situation with russia+georgia is identical to that of the US+Iraq, simply that there are similarities - such as invading another country (without UN approval) - The US went ahead and ignored the UN and invaded Iraq, and then lecture russia when they go ahead+invade georgia. It's hilariously hypocritical really, and shows just one of the many problems that invading Iraq has caused for the US.

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=38213

 

http://www.defenselink.mil/news/newsarticle.aspx?id=15918

 

http://righttruth.typepad.com/right_truth/2007/08/wmd-phosgene-fr.html

 

http://twinklebones.blogspot.com/2006/06/more-wmds-discovered-in-iraq-more-to.html

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1520691/posts

You have no understanding of intelligence reports but I understand how you can misunderstand how it works you don’t have any experience with them. The way they are written is pro and con. Half of a report will give all the evidence proving a case and the other half will provide reasons against the case, this leaves the choice to the reader. The reports rarely give an answer of yes or no. It is not cherry picking it is weighing the evidence and going with what you think is best.

 

Going to war in Iraq meant looking at the evidence and then deciding

How we can best protect ourselves. Saddam destroyed most of his WMD before we attacked but did so secretly, we did not find this out until after we invaded. Had he not been so smart he could have avoided the war and death.

 

Once again you harp on getting permission to invade from the UN. This was not needed, the war started and was called the Gulf War. We stopped fighting but the war was not over.

 

We were faced with an attack on our soil and Iraq providing help to the attackers, add to that the fact that there were tons of unaccounted for WMD in Iraq and the choice was simple. Invade or wait till we get attacked again. The right choice was to invade.

 

I don't think moving around missiles and expanding our alliances is a bad thing, but facilitating and recognizing Kosovo's unilateral declaration of sovereignty probably is. Don't forget that is the birthplace of world conflict and the same pan nationalistic sentiments still exist in the region.

 

Once again you failed to deal with the context. It is true we tried to get additional approval to restart the war. What you choose to ignore it the fact that France, Germany, and Russia opposed this move. All had veto power making it moot. You also choose to ignore the fact that the leaders of France and Germany were being paid by Iraq to oppose this move. The anti American feelings that the left screamed of and pointed to these three countries as proof that we were wrong in going into Iraq. Once those leaders were rejected by the peoples of those nations they elected pro-American leaders. This would make one believe that the people on the take were not representing their nation’s feelings but their pockets.

 The former president of France so crossed the line that he is on trial for this corruption. It is suspected that Russia was also on the take for this but since he is still in power it can’t be proved, although some documents captured in Iraq suggest this.

 

The purpose of going to the UN was for local politics not any international legal requirement. In order for your beliefs to work you need to be very selective in your fact finding, as shown in your selective use of words.

 

Yes, extremely selective in your fact finding. You left out the little fact that the UN declared Iraq in violation of the cease fire agreement, which is automatic justification for resuming the war.  

Lol, my reliance comes on my knowledge of events that happened at the time, and the bbc rather than wiki is usually my main first source on news information, because while they are not perfect, generally they're seen as one of the most impartial news agencies. Wiki meanwhile prides itself on it's generally independent nature. Yes, anyone can post information there, but on such contentious issues it will need to be supported by proper references, or else it is liable to be removed. Something as controversial as the Iraq war is therefore going to be more reliable than a small article on something no-one really cares about and hence won't be so bothered to check up on. Regardless I'm fascinated to hear that you're now disputing the various events that were mentioned in wiki, seeing as almost every major news agency also reported them (although I'm not certain that would include fox 'news')!

 

So if a terrorist from say Pakistan ends up in the UK (maybe even on the NHS!), does that mean we're formally colluding with terrorists and should prepare for an imminent US invasion?

I'm not sure whether to take that as sarcasm/a joke, or a statement from someone incredibly divorced from reality. Regardless the BBC's reputation for impartiality is generally seen as better than any of the main US broadcasters, especially Fox 'news' (which tbh is a bit of an oxymoron at times!). It's not just perception though, there are clear reasons why they should be - since they're not reliant on advertising+other sources of funding, there are far fewer conflicts of interest arising with them than with other broadcasters, and they are banned from accepting money in many situations. Instead they're reliant on a licence fee (in effect a ring-marked tax) for revenue, meaning the only cause for concern would be that they are slightly biased towards the government. However governments generally know not to try and use the licence fee as a bargaining chip since it would be very unpopular with the general public, and the bbc has shown numerous times that they are prepared to attack the government and not show them any special favours compared with other news agencies (the most famous example being in their criticism of the governments case for war). In fact it's usually a good sign that you're reasonably close to impartiality when both the main political parties complain that you are biased in favour of the opponent (and even this doesn't happen that often). They're not perfect (I'd probably guage them to have an ever so slightly left wing bias), but they're still one of the most reliable of the major broadcasters out there.

Too true, feel sorry for those among us who have to listen to the BBCs anti-conservative propaganda day in day out, while all their friends and neighbours still believe them to be the most unbiased news source in the world.

Maudlin27: The BBC is definitely less openly biased than the American media, but that's really not saying much. The BBC blankly ignores the stories which they don't want to portray while they scare-monger about everything from the environment, to Iraq. They generally commentate in terms of Labour = God (except Brown because he is the British equivalent of George Bush in terms of competence, funnily sharing the initials).

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-411846/We-biased-admit-stars-BBC-News.html

The above link is about a leaked outcome of an 'impartiality summit' called by the BBC itself. Some of the text reads:

"It was the day that a host of BBC executives and star presenters admitted what critics have been telling them for years: the BBC is dominated by trendy, Left-leaning liberals who are biased against Christianity and in favour of multiculturalism.

A leaked account of an 'impartiality summit' called by BBC chairman Michael Grade, is certain to lead to a new row about the BBC and its reporting on key issues, especially concerning Muslims and the war on terror.

It reveals that executives would let the Bible be thrown into a dustbin on a TV comedy show, but not the Koran, and that they would broadcast an interview with Osama Bin Laden if given the opportunity. Further, it discloses that the BBC's 'diversity tsar', wants Muslim women newsreaders to be allowed to wear veils when on air."

"On the show, celebrities are invited to throw their pet hates into a dustbin and it was imagined that Baron Cohen chose some kosher food, the Archbishop of Canterbury, a Bible and the Koran.
Nearly everyone at the summit, including the show's actual producer and the BBC's head of drama, Alan Yentob, agreed they could all be thrown into the bin, except the Koran for fear of offending Muslims."

The BBC had a reputation of impartiality in the 1960s, the myth lives on but everybody who knows even vaguely about the British media knows that it is a left-wing propaganda machine. Seriously, you should see the coverage of the 'war on terror' in which Afghanistan is pretty much ignored and the successful troop surge in Iraq (which even Obama has admitted) is genuinely skirted around in favour of reporting on any and all deaths in Iraq. The kind of reports which open your eyes to the real Iraq are found in an equally biased news from 'Channel 4' in which they show things such as Iraqi playboys getting stopped at checkpoints because their car's so weighed down, to find out that it's weighed down by ice for a huge party he's throwing. You'd never see this on the BBC because it doesn't show Iraq as impoverished sheep-herders whose lives have been destroyed by America and Britain.

Wikipedia is completely unreliable. It's nice for basic reading and introducing yourself to a subject, but errors include Richard II losing the Battle of Bosworth to Henry VII, the city of Leeds being in the county of 'gay' and German unification occurring in 1961, along with the fact that Turkish agents continuously try to change the pages on the Armenian genocide because they wage a propaganda war to cleanse them of the guilt of mass-murder of Europeans (which is a considerable stumbling block to their entry to the EU). Those are merely the errors and flaws I remember off the top of my head.

Also, as previously shown, the BBC is about as reliable as CNN/MSNBC.

The idea that Iraq and Al Qaeda were linked is completely laughable. The reason for war was that the Middle East is a melting point of uprisings, dictatorships and... oil. The main threat to the U.S. Is (and has been for a long time) Iran, just as Joe Biden admits. By invading Iraq, a potential puppet for Iran is taken away and (in theory) Iraq would be an oil-rich ally from which to pressure the Iranians.

 

I would challenge that with a simple request to look at their reporting of the middle east.  Not even the moonbats at MSNBC are that biased.

Nobody can really claim the BBC and FOXNews are in the same league. Even taking a look at FOX's sister-channel SkyNews shows a huge gulf between FOX and itself. The simple answer is that FOX doesn't try to formalise its news to the extent of most channels, while it also doesn't seem to hide it's bias unlike just about every other news channel. The BBC isn't as biased as FOXNews when reporting on issues, but how about when it ignores news? Britain is sending a fleet with America in the vacinity of Israel/Syria etc. Yet this hasn't been reported on the BBC whatsoever from what i've seen of it, whereas SkyNews and FOXNews have both mentioned this. Isn't that slightly more news-worthy than 'Skin Deep: The Human Body as Canvas'?

 

Have you ever watched BBC News? Because judging by your comments you haven't.

There is nothing wrong with quoting the Daily Mail when what the Daily Mail is doing is quoting leaked minutes. Or would you like to speculate that they lied about the minutes and that it never happened?

If you really want a major news source, here you go:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2006/10/27/do2701.xml&sSheet=/opinion/2006/10/27/ixopinion.html

What? no BBC news? Well of course not, when a story criticising the BBC comes out, the BBC never covers it objectively.

 

Okay, 10/09/2007 - BBC reports over 70% of Iraqis believe the surge hasn't worked

However, 10/09/2007 - ABC Australia runs an article on the PM of Iraq declaring that the surge has worked

 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/6987305.stm

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2007/09/10/2029195.htm?section=justin

 

The BBC ran an article on what citizens who haven't got knowledge on the exact happenings in the country saying they would rather go back to Hussain's time, as opposed to what is clearly a more news-worthy article of the Iraqi PM, who knows the situation in the country (it's his job, after all) who portrays an entirely inverted image.

 

Yes, that's just one article. Yes, you can construe this as me being 'selective' with my articles, but then i'm hardly going to waste half an hour trudging through twenty BBC articles just to prove you wrong. So I will leave it there.

 

 

The BBC doesn't have pages

The Afghan operations have scarcely been covered to the extent of Iraq. Because Iraq is a controversial point, they are covering it more. Again, short of trudging through tens of articles this cannot be proven either way, so I will agree to differ with you on this point.

Relying on opinion pieces as news sources is not reliable at all - these are the parts of the paper designed to be more provocative, and will often arise from the editor/whoevers in charge of them going 'write an [argumentative/persuasive] piece in [favour of/against] X', or simply a person being invited to give their personal opinion/take on various issues. By all means use them as a starting point, but due to their nature you have to make sure to check most things contained in them and look at them in context before you can rely on what is said. For comparison it would be a bit like me pointing to the BBC blogs as a valuable news source, since those are opinion pieces too. In some cases they can contain useful information (e.g. Northern Rock/Robert Peston), but you will have bias with them due to their nature.

Quite - picking one article selectively and using that to claim bias while ignoring all the others doesn't prove anything. Here's a series the bbc did on the surge itself, every week (go part-way down the link to access the previous reports):

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/6993516.stm

What is given pride of place? The casualty figures. What is noted specifically? That they are falling, along with a mention of Patraeus's comments about how objectives are largely being met. Now that's just a quick example, there are others as well - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_depth/629/629/7036331.stm gives you various figures on Iraq deaths (civilian+military) over a much greater timescale. Both shining examples of the BBC's bias and shameful reporting

Pam anderson is prettier and as intelligent.