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Talking about ignorant. Last few weeks has seen a significant rise in bombings and random violence with a lot of casualties. It has become bad enough for several European governments to stop the extradition of refugees back to Iraq. If random violence in all major cities isn't 'dire', then I don't know what is.



Because the US combat troops left, and Al Qaeda being the dangerous people they are, they figure this is the time to test their strength. People thought the violence would spike again earlier than it did. But, the violence is still way below earlier levels. Here's some little independent web site that tallies Iraqi casualties. That bar chart with the red lines in the middle gives you an idea: Click. That Surge thing I was talking about was early '07.


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Different how, exactly? It's an illegal occupation. There's been no declaration of war or anything similar.



This is nice, the guy who thinks if the oil supply disappears tomorrow, his big problem will be that he has to ride his bicycle to work has an official legal opinion on the validity of the Iraq War...

The UN charter that whole "legality" argument saying that the US broke it, also says the UN Security Council is the ruling party over whether or not war crimes have been committed. And because both the US and the UK have veto powers there and have both said they don't believe the war was illegal, I think it's fairly safe to say that according to that charter, the war was in fact not illegal.

The US (and the UK) didn't even think that one UN resolution they did get just before going to war was necessary. They both thought there was language in the 15-some previous resolutions since the first Gulf War that was enough to justify "legality" according to the UN charter. Going back to the UN was a move Bush wanted to make to support Blair in his domestic political affairs that Blair needed to respond to and maybe they could garner support from more countries. It also served to emphasize that diplomatic efforts were being exhausted. At the point where you've got a resolution that was passed 15-0 in the Security Council which says "prove you don't have weapons or face serious consequences!", Saddam doesn't, and then the UN starts going, "well, wait, wait, wait, he did cooperate some...", it's pretty clear you're not getting anywhere else diplomatically.


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Al Qaeda (or what it's made to be) has never ruled Afghanistan and it's not likely they ever will. The Taliban regime has ruled a part of the country for a period of time, but don't think it's the same thing. They don't have too many things in common.



The Mujahadin were the one fought the Soviets in Afghanistant. After the Soviets left, The Mujahadin broke up into factions. One of those factions was led by Osama. At some point after the Soviets left, the Taliban came out of Pakistan and made some power sharing deal with Al Qaeda. It happened something like that. Al Qaeda is a military force, they didn't want to govern. So no, Al Qaeda didn't govern Afghanistan, but nobody thinks in a failed state where they have military power are they going to partner with a loving, peaceful governing body.

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Two-state solution? Yeah, sounds nice enough. Maybe the US can invade Israel and make it adhere to some UN resolutions. This has little to do with the earlier subject of your lecture, though.



The only way I can imagine getting rid of Israel is when Iran gets a nuclear bomb. Which they very well might with Obama in charge. That'll be their first line of provoking aggression is with Israel. Then after that gets settled, they'll find something to anatogonize things with the oil supply and make the prices sky-rocket to enrich themselves. Unless we fuck up badly, there's no way we're getting rid of Israel.