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So petition your government to bring him up on war crimes
Get real. My entire country (the Netherlands) was against the war. What makes you think our government would listen to us this time?
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Your use of illegal, I suspect,
you meant to say, immoral in your eyes.
Guess again. I repeat, it was an illegal war because it was not sanctioned by the UN.
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It was certainly legal in the US, they followed the constitution, everything all legal like. So, on what do you base the word illegal on?
Are you serious? So any dumb ass nation can make an constitution and make it legal to attack their neighbor on the basis of, let say ethnicity... "Oh, it's okay to attack this country because, look, it is legal be our standards. Its written so in the constitution WE wrote" Again, get real.
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I fully support any country, anywhere in the world, for whatever excuse, or any reason, removes vile people like Saddam from power.
Okay, so let me ask you; what then do you feel about the country who helped him get there in the first place? Guess three times what country that was....
And may I ask what made Saddam so special? Why not that bastard who rules North Korea? Or that of Cuba? Or that of Lybia?
Please don't get moral on me. The US of A has helped more dictators in power then they have removed from power. Go do your history.
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in your eyes ONLY
Excuse me, but I have to ask; what planet have you been living on the last year and a half?? MY EYES ONLY?! So I guess those millions of people all over the world protesting was my hallucination.. right?
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over his reign, 4,000 people were raped/tortured and killed EVERY MONTH.
From which source did you get that figure from? I agree that Saddam Hussain was a son of a b**** and killed alot of innocent people. But don't go talking bs.
Originally posted by schatoor And may I ask what made Saddam so special? Why not that bastard who rules North Korea? Or that of Cuba? Or that of Lybia?
Originally posted by dadepfan Did Bush get a fair shake.
As far as I'm concerned, a dictator who was NOT legally elected, but rather used corrupt Justices on the USSC to get appointed, does not deserve a fair shake - and his record since the 2000 election has been atrocious.
\
You are an Idiot! you have no Idea how the election process works in your own country.
Al ( i invented the internet) Gore lost fair and square.
Originally posted by 320mb You are an Idiot! you have no Idea how the election process works in your own country.
Al ( i invented the internet) Gore lost fair and square.
Here we go with the insults - always the last resort of those without the truth.
I know exactly how the process works in this country, and it does NOT include stopping the counting of legal and valid votes, and throwing out enough so that Bush retains his win. Want the facts? Visit my forum... Read the threads in the "2000 election" folder (from the beginning of each).
Here is something someone else posted in my forum - if is primarily factual:
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Here is something I wrote about the stolen election. It's been posted in four different forums and so far, no one has even tried to refute it. Here it is:
One needs to understand what a legal vote is according to Florida law. According to Florida law, a legal vote is one where the intent of the voter is clear. It has nothing to do with whether or not a machine can count a vote and in some cases, it doesn't even matter if the voter followed instructions. All that matters is whether or not the intent of the voter is clear. For example, In 1998, there was a case in Florida where voters were instructed to use a number two pencil when voting. If they used a different kind of pencil or pen, the machine couldn't record the vote. It wasn't the machine's fault because the machine was doing what it was designed to do. It was the voters who goofed. According Bush and his supporters, those votes would be no good but the ruling was that they would count because even though the people used the wrong pencil, the intent of the voters was still clear and that's all that matters. That's the Florida law. If a machine spits out a vote, the only way to determine if the intent of the voter is clear is to examine the ballot. That's what a handcount is about. There were thousands of legal votes that were never counted.
One might ask what clear intent means. It's really simple. If there's no mark on the ballot, there's no vote. If two or more names are marked, it's not a legal vote because the intent of the voter isn't clear. If one and only one name is marked, BINGO! That's a legal vote and it doesn't matter what kind of chad it is. Says who? Says Bush. He himself signed into law in Texas for handcounts where ALL chads are counted. Not only that but what it said was “A manual recount shall be conducted IN PREFERENCE TO an electronic recount.” In Florida, when he saw that this could cost him the presidency, he made like handcounts were unheard of, illegitimate, etc. He did everything he could to sabotage and prevent a handcount.
There were a lot of hassles involving the courts. What it basically came down to is that there’s a law about a handcount and a law about a deadline. Bush was saying that the law about the deadline is what counts and the hell the law about a candidate being entitled to a handcount. That's not the way it works. If there are conflicting laws or conflicting interpretations about laws, the state supreme court sorts it all out. In other words, the state legislature writes the laws and the state supreme court decides what the laws mean if there's a disagreement. The law about a deadline is not designed to cheat the candidate out of his handcount. It's to prevent a losing candidate from demanding one handcount after another forever. The Florida Supreme Court correctly said to count all the legal votes that weren't yet counted. The U.S. Supreme Court said the hell with all of that and simply handed the election to Bush without counting thousands of legal votes.
While the handcount ordered by the FSC was in progress, the USSC stepped in and stopped it. They needed to come up with a reason for doing that. The best that they could come up with was that if the handcount was finished, it would do irreparable harm to Bush’s claim of being the winner.
Here is what Alan Dershowitz says about it in his book, Supreme Injustice:
“Realizing that there would be an outcry against stopping the count before any argument, Justice Scalia decided to write an unusual opinion explaining why he voted for the stay. Scalia wrote: “The counting of votes of questionable legality does, in my view, threaten irreparable harm to petitioner (Bush) and to the country, by casting a cloud upon what he claims to be the legality of his election. Count first, and rule upon legality afterwards, is not a recipe for producing election results that have the public acceptance democratic stability requires.” But disputed ballots are generally counted before they are challenged and their legality is ruled upon. Indeed, that chronology is explicitly mandated by Florida law—enacted by the very state legislature that Scalia believes has the power to make these decisions.”
Here is what Vincent Bugliosi says about it in his book, The Betrayal of America:
“Scalia, in trying to justify the Court’s shutting down of the vote counting, wrote, unbelievably, that counting these votes would “threaten irreparable harm to petitioner (Bush)…by casting a cloud upon what he claims to be the legitimacy of his election.” In other words, although the election had not yet been decided, the absolutely incredible Scalia, was presupposing that Bush had won the election—indeed, had a right to win it—and any recount that showed Gore got more votes in Florida than Bush could “cloud” Bush’s presidency.”
Well, yes, if a handcount showed that Gore won the election, it certainly would do irreparable harm to Bush’s claim of being the winner but what about Gore’s claim of being the winner and what makes the USSC think that Bush had the divine right to be the winner without having all the legal votes counted? The handcount was stopped on Dec. 9 and Dec. 12 was supposedly a deadline but it wasn’t a deadline for counting votes. It was a deadline for “safe harbor of electors,” meaning that the electors can’t be questioned as if the Republican House of Representatives was ever going to question or challenge the Bush electors.
The USSC never said that there was anything wrong with the idea of a handcount. They said that there wasn’t a proper method for counting the votes. If they had any integrity at all, they would have made up a standard that satisfied them and then had the handcount. Instead, at past 10 PM on Dec. 12, they said to Gore that if he can come up with a standard that satisfies them and also get the state handcount done, all of that within two hours, then everything is all right.
This was outrageous insanity, but the USSC needed to come up with a reason for doing this. What they came up with was a ridiculous interpretation of “equal protection.” On election day, different people used different ballots and different machines. Where was the equal protection there? In equal protection cases in the past, Scalia and the other conservative judges always demanded that a victim step forward and that the victim had to show that harm was done and that the harm was intentional. In this case no victim stepped forward or was named except that Bush, not a resident of the state, was trying to say that he was the victim and that it was somehow unfair to him if the rest of the legal votes were counted.
To make it simple, let’s suppose that it was only 100 votes involved instead of many thousands. Out of that 100, maybe there was a vote or two that shouldn’t have counted. In order to make sure that that vote or two wasn’t counted, the USSC decided to take away the votes of the other 98 or 99 people and called that equal protection. In other words, the best way to protect your vote is to take your vote away. Equal protection was designed to protect the votes of people but it was now being used to disenfranchise the very voters it was designed to protect. The reason no victim was named was because the victims were the thousands of people who were being screwed out of their legal votes.
It actually didn't matter what the Florida Supreme Court or U.S. Supreme Court said because the Florida game was rigged the whole time so that Gore had no chance to become the President even though he won the election. This is because the Florida legislature was going to give the electors to Bush no matter what, knowing that the Republican House of Representatives would decide for Bush no matter what.
Originally posted by schatoor Okay, so let me ask you; what then do you feel about the country who helped him get there in the first place? Guess three times what country that was....
And may I ask what made Saddam so special? Why not that bastard who rules North Korea? Or that of Cuba? Or that of Lybia?
Please don't get moral on me.
I am not getting moral on you vis-a-vis the US VS the world, just by my own moral standards, and right now, Bush lines up nicely. Anyway, let's rock, start a fund, lets build a country, start lobbying everyone. Like I said, I am IN, right there. Lets take the whole shootin match out. Should cost about 2 Trillion dollars, so it might take a while, but I am there. I also know, from history, (I was worried about pimples in the early 80s, and the 70s, gettin that extra popsicle). Anyway, I already conceded that the US has made a huge mess funding the enemy of it's enemies, has certainly been WRONG and done some dastardly things, but again, this thread is about the current president, and you can't hold him accountable for what all his successors did. Rate him on what he has done.
B.T.W. the UN doesn't have to sanction a war for it to be legal. If they had passed a resolution stating that the US had no right to go to war, yes, then illegal. They didn't do that. They refused to help and BACK the war, but DID NOT declare it illegal. What the US WANTED was a UN war, with them as a partner, the UN said, no, if you do this, you do it alone. Do you really think the other 32 coalition countries would willingly support an illegal war? No, the US presented it's reasons for goint to war, and wanted the UN to join.
Serious question. Was it a UN war over the Falklands? or just Argentina and Britian duking it out?
but again, this thread is about the current president, and you can't hold him accountable for what all his successors did. Rate him on what he has done.
No need to blame the sins of the fathers on the sons. Donald Rumsfeld for one was strongly supportive of Saddam in the 80s and early 90s.
Actually, I was going to mention some things about that exact post and "The Punch Ballots & Votmatic System" threads on the forum (I haven't read them all yet).
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The USSC never said that there was anything wrong with the idea of a handcount. They said that there wasn’t a proper method for counting the votes. If they had any integrity at all, they would have made up a standard that satisfied them and then had the handcount.
It is not the place of the Supreme Court (or any other court for that matter), to create or define policy of any sort. Courts are intended to be interpreters of the law and to determine whether law or agreement was violated. They are passive; not active players in questions of legality. Creating "a standard" is nowhere within their abilities. It is up to the parties involved to come up with a reasonable standard for counting votes, which is what the court told Gore's team to do. If there is disagreement about the standard, then a court determines whether the standard falls within the guidelines of the law. The post also states
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The law about a deadline is not designed to cheat the candidate out of his handcount. It's to prevent a losing candidate from demanding one handcount after another forever.
The Gore team had a recount in the hotly contested counties So how does this not apply since his team was asking for more recounts?
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According to Florida law, a legal vote is one where the intent of the voter is clear.
Ten years earlier (1990) a vote for punch cards was considered valid if the chad was missing or hanging by two or less corners. Using this definition, Gore only acquired three more votes in Palm Beach County. The fact that the definition of a vote began to change to include "smudged" or "indented" chads is extremely suspicious to me. Simply handling the punch cards in the process of a recount can smudge or indent them.
And how many of the undervotes necessarily had a vote for president? I don't know how Florida does it, but I would assume their ballot probably has more than one election per punch card. In other words, the voters don't get a punch card for president, one punch card for governor, one punch card for tax collector, etc. In that case, Isn't it likely that a good portion of these undervotes were intentional? Given the statistics of voter apathy in the US, I find it hard to believe that every voter voted in every possible race on every ballot.
That also influences the math given in the "Punch Ballots" thread. It no longer a statistical extrapolation if there is the potential for a third, uncounted party (the non-voters).
I would also have to research how Florida determines how their electors vote: by popular vote or by a county basis. If it's by a county basis, then that can weaken the statistical extrapolation as well. In the table to CNN you link to, there are two counties with undervote values greater than 10,000; both were won by Gore, and both were punch cards. If the electors are based on county wins, then Gore could not have gained any more electoral votes from Florida even if all 20,000 votes were intended for him; he won the counties, and they were his to lose in a recount.
EDIT: I couldn't find an explicit statement saying it, but I found a reference implicitly saying it's the popular votes that determine electoral votes for Florida...
Last edited by Dark_Helmet; 07-27-2004 at 06:06 PM.
"It was not a legal war becuase it was not sanctioned by the UN"
That has got to be the most rediculous statement I have ever heard
Since when does the UN decide what wars are legal or not? Where is the Global law that says which war is legal or not? I am totally against the war in iraq but there is no such thing as a legal war or an illegal war and the day that any country has to get permission from some international beauracracy to defend itself (whether the threat is real or not) is the day that hell freezes over. Was it legal when hitler invaded france or was it legal for england to attack argentina when argntina was just trying to claim what was stolen from it , was it legal for milosevic to be abducted, kidnapped then jailed for nothing, was it legal for the U.S. to steal all the land it did from Mexico or from the native americans or was it legal for the natives of charko to invade pico, was it legal when the Romans invaded the south pole?
The Falkland war was different. British territory was under attack
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Was it legal when hitler invaded france or was it legal for england to attack argentina when argntina was just trying to claim what was stolen from it , was it legal for milosevic to be abducted, kidnapped then jailed for nothing, was it legal for the U.S. to steal all the land it did from Mexico or from the native americans or was it legal for the natives of charko to invade pico, was it legal when the Romans invaded the south pole?
Me not getting it!! When did I suggest those wars were legal?
This is why it was an illegal invasion;
Under the Charter of the United Nations, force is only authorized if sanctioned by the UN Security Council, or under Article 51 of the Charter of the United Nations which affirms:
…the inherent right of individual or collective self-defense if an armed attack occurs against a Member of the United Nations, until the Security Council has taken measures necessary to maintain international peace and security (Article 51)
I feel that the United States of America has to be role model to the rest of the world. What kind of example is the US giving right now? It's ok to ignore the UN. It's ok to break international law. The UN and the international law was setup for a very good reason. To prevent another world war. To prevent nations just attacking one an other. To prevent abuse of human rights. And by systemically ignoring the UN, the US is underming the authority of the UN.
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