Oh, man.

[thebitterguy]

I just realized that, barring a miracle on the scale of the resurrection, next month, no matter what happens, we'll have a PM who thinks that invading Iraq was a great idea.

Just great.

Comments

[kynn.livejournal.com]

Hahahaha

Next month we get President B. Hussein Obama.

Hahahaha

U.S.A. 1, Canada 0

Hahahaha

[thebitterguy]

Showoff.

[kynn.livejournal.com]

It's been a long eight years since we were able to feel superior to our neighbors to the north, a long eight years indeed.

AMERICA FUCK YEAH

[robin-d-laws.livejournal.com]

He originally thought it was a good idea, but climbed down from that view later.

[thebitterguy]

It's still worrisome. Admittedly, I don't think Harper has ever changed his mind on the conflict, but I think he's waiting for a majority to do anything about it.

It, and so many other things.

[skaiser.livejournal.com]

Ignatieff's view on the Iraq war has substantially changed. Once it became clear that the Bush administration had made the evidence up, he said it was a mistake to advocate the invasion. He was also speaking as a private citizen at the time. In a position of power and responsibility with access to more information, I am not so sure the decision making process would be the same.

I would call that a non-issue at this point.

[thebitterguy]

I view it as a significant problem with judgement, even if he has recanted.

[pyat.livejournal.com]

Nah, he thought it was a lesser evil than the status quo of "Okay, Saddam, you're so evil, we'll let you stay in power, and we'll bankrupt your country, but not do anything about it except buy your oil in exchange for food."

And he recanted in the New York Times a while later saying that the regime change had been so badly mishandled, it had turned into a greater evil.

His views on "coercive interrogation" are worrisome to me, though!

[thebitterguy]

Yeah, his policy on Lesser Evils is not aided any by his ability to pick them.

[pyat.livejournal.com]

Yeah.... sigh.

Maybe Baron Harkonnen is already talking to him?

[absinthe-dot-ca.livejournal.com]

You forgot to mention that, if this goes through, we'll have a leader who no private citizens actually voted for in a leadership capacity. I'm pretty sure that's the definition of a "coup"...

[absinthe-dot-ca.livejournal.com]

And, to reply to my own comment, his views on the Quebec separatist movement are somewhat more "accommodating" than most of our federal-level politicians... Wonder how he'll feel about Western separatists? (From what I hear out here, there's a lot of talk about that if the coalition wrests control from the Conservatives. Not sure how much of it is just talk, but it's interesting nonetheless.)

[thebitterguy]

Only if you can be killed by blue kryptonite.

Cascadia

[saltedlithium.wordpress.com (from livejournal.com)]

1. We're not sending troops to Iraq or Iran so the point is moot in so many ways.

2. The "Canadian coalition of the weird" was totally within its rights to try and change the official government... they failed miserably because Iggy decided on the first day it wasn't a good idea.

3. Iggy voted to keep troops in Afghanistan.

4. The idea of "Western Separation" has been around as long as Quebec nationalism, Google "Cascadia".

(I posted this already, but forgot to log into the "Open ID" thing. But it's cool, my ego can handle it and my super-ego wasn't paying attention.)

[gurudata.livejournal.com]

Hiho,

Meh. No less than 13 time in Canada's history, Canada got a new leader witout private citizens voting for them. If that's the definition of a "coup", we seem to have a lot of them in our history, so why stop now? :)

CU,
Andrew

[absinthe-dot-ca.livejournal.com]

You're not mistaking the normal transition of one leader to another, keeping the rest of the government in place, for the wholesale replacement of the government by a party who got less votes, led by somebody who wasn't actually leading the party in the election, are you? Didn't think so. Neither am I.

My "coup" comment may have been a bit over-the-top, but please don't compare apples to oranges and attempt to condescend me. Thanks.

[gurudata.livejournal.com]

Hiho,

My goal was not to condescend, my goal was in fact to compare apples to apples - where "apples" = "features of a parliamentary democracy".

Because the reality is that we have a system where nobody in this country "votes for a party", we all vote for "an individual to represent us and our riding - who happens to be a member of a party", and then we all send all those people off to Ottawa with the directive to figure out between them (and the governor general) who's gonnna to take the steering wheel for now.

If we had a system wher the concept "party winning the vote" was paramount, then things like my former MP Wajid Khan crossing the floor, now that would be "a coup"... "Hey, we voted for a Liberal, and now he's representing the Conservatives and represeting us! Light the torches, drive him out!!!" But that ain't the way our parliamentary representational democracy works - we voted for a person to represent us, not a party, and if he flipped parties and we have a problem with that, we can let him know next election - but meanwhile, he's still the person we voted for, so he gets to keep the job.

That's the spirit of our parliamentary representational democracy And in that exact same spirit, if the majority of the people we voted for happen to decide that the person who should be given the wheel is NOT the person whose party has the most seats, well, that's all part of the way our system of democracy works too. The party ain't the thing. Never has been.

CU,
Andrew

[hilson.livejournal.com]

You might want to read up on Mr. Ignatieff's views before forming an opinion.

From my readings so far, my understanding is that his desire to see Western countries get involved in other countries affairs is driven by the desire to stop human rights abuses.

He believed (at the time anyway) that the Iraq government's treatment of Kurds and the Shia was reason enough for Western countries to invade Iraq.

I'm not saying I support this fellow, but at least he's a lot more worldly than Harper and his writings are easily available to read before making knee-jerk reactions.

[absinthe-dot-ca.livejournal.com]

One thing that seems to get lost in the criticism of the US invasion of Iraq was that Iraq was not a nice place, that it did have chemical weapons, and that it used them at least twice that I know of - once in the Iran-Iraq war, and once against its own citizens.

[thebitterguy]

Yeah, but A) it had destroyed them all, and was running tours to show it had, and B) It's Gotten Worse.

[absinthe-dot-ca.livejournal.com]

it had destroyed them all

You do know that, since the fall of the Saddam Hussein government, over 500 chemical artillery warheads containing degraded chemical munitions have been recovered from various caches, right? This information is publicly available...

Was it grape, or cherry?

[thebitterguy]

Old shells that had remnants in them were found.

So they had old crap lying around, and you think that's good enough to kill a million people? Hey, fine. Whatever helps you sleep at night.

Re: Was it grape, or cherry?

[absinthe-dot-ca.livejournal.com]

A couple of things about that:

1. Iraqi Sarin (their chemical weapon of choice in the past) typically had a shelf-life measured in weeks, due to impurities in manufacture. I don't know how old the warheads found were.
2. A single 155-mm shell will hold several gallons of Sarin. I don't know the caliber of the shells found.
3. Exposure to 0.01mg of Sarin per kilogram of body weight will kill a person if not treated.

So theoretically, yes, those 500 degraded chemical warhead shells (which were likely reported as destroyed by the Iraqi government but were obviously not - nobody "loses" or "forgets" chemical weapons) could have killed at least thousands of people, if not a million.

My point is, saying that Iraq had destroyed all its chemical weapons prior to 2002 is not factually correct. Whether or not that was sufficient reason to invade is a different argument, and not actually one that I'm making.

[thebitterguy]

Doing it to help the Kurds? That's another strike!

[anidada.livejournal.com]

How so?

[thebitterguy]

Because he wants to support one of the states that is actually supporting terrorism against democracies in the area.