Iraq and legality again Re: [extropy-chat] Professor Being Sued Over Anti-Aging Comments

[Brett Paatsch]

Joseph Bloch wrote:

> *sigh*
>
> Brett Paatsch wrote:
>
>> The body count in Iraq of innocent
>> civilians is probably around 20,000 or so based on a UN estimate
>> I read about in the Australian. Thats about five times the amount
>> of 'innocent' bystanders that were killed on September 11.
>
>
> That number includes (indeed, by a vast majority) those innocent civilians 
> killed by the Islamist and Baathist insurgents. 
> (http://www.iraqbodycount.net/database/)
>
> Your statement makes it appear as if the 20,000 Iraqi civilians were all 
> killed by coalition forces, when in fact the truth is that the vast 
> majority were killed by the very terrorists who we are fighting against. 
> BUT EVEN SO...

I didn't mean to imply that 20,000 were killed by coalition forces.

Whether the Iraq war was legal or not IS something determineable by
investigation between fair minded reasonable people with some
understanding of law.  I am not sure how many people could pass
through the caveats in that sentence however. Those that think they
can may be right in thinking so.

I would be *very* interested in seeing the best possible argument from
the American side, indeed from the Bush administration, that it was legal
(not amateur hour stuff but the real thing from a lawyer or legally savvy
person who knows the case) because I have seen the arguments from
the Australians and during the recent election in the UK more came out
about the basis of the British decision under Goldsmith. The Brits and
Blair allowed themselves to be persuaded but not by any legal argument
I have seen nor that I am aware of that any US citizen has seen or has
inquired into.

I am 100% genuine on this. If there is any US citizen reading this list
that honestly feels qualified and can place their hand on or refer me
to a link that they personally find legally persuasive that shows that the
Iraq invasion was not illegal then I would really like to hear from them.
(Mike, with respect, I don't regard you as qualified so you would need
to have excellent sources or I'd think I'd be wasting my time).

I know Greg Burch is a lawyer and I understand that he disagrees
with me but I don't know if he took a good look at the legality of
the Iraq war and concluded that it was legal or not. If he did I'd
respect him enough to take a look at his case and to be pursuaded
on the evidence. I can change my mind.

But I suspect what happened is that Greg didn't look. Perhaps
I am being unfair to Greg and if I am I will owe him an apology
but I think the US legal savvy extropes were asleep or focussed
elsewhere when the legalities of the Iraq invasion was being
worked through. That did disappoint me a bit. On this list way before
the invasion took place I posted about the possibility of two hoaxes,
one being that clonaid had a clone, the other being that Iraq had
weapons of mass destruction - a check of the archives will bear me
out on this. We on this list were in a position to discuss the game
theoretic implications and we did not do it. I tried but there were
not enough takers.

If it was an illegal invasion and the sovereignty of a UN country was
violated against a US oath, (and an Australian and a United Kingdom
one) then to my mind a fairly large part of the consequences of
resistance to illegal force sheets back to the US regardless and the
Bush administration regardless (and the Howard government regardless)
of whether those resisting are bathists or people otherwise objectionable
to the current power in fashion that labels their opponents terrorists.


> During Saddam's 20-year reign, around 750,000 Iraqi civilians were killed. 
> That's an average of 3,125 per month. Even if you lay all of the deaths of 
> civilians (mostly caused by suicide bombers, insurgent mortar attacks, and 
> drive-by-shootings by terrorists), at the coalition's doorstep since the 
> end of major combat operations (May, 2003 - June 2005), you get 769 per 
> month.

I am not even slightly defending anything that Saddam Hussein did. What
he did is beside the legal point. And the law is what must matter to us if
we are going to have a rule that is not a rule of faith or a rule of power.


> Hmmm.
>
> During Saddam's regime, 3,125 a month killed.
>
> After his ouster, 769 a month killed (mostly by Islamic and Baathist 
> terrorists).
>
> Of course, it would be better if no one was killed by Islamic terrorists. 
> But we don't live in a perfect world, and must perforce make incremental 
> progress. You think this is a BAD thing? Saving 2,356 lives a month on 
> average?
>
> Pardon my bluntness, but Sweet Reason, man! We're SAVING lives every day 
> that we're there! If Saddam had been left in power, some 61,000 people 
> would be dead right now that are alive.

Your missing my point Joseph. And I am not missing yours. I did take a quick
look at the site reference you provided and it looks like a fairly 
reasonably
source so far I could tell quickly. I can freely see that some good can come
of actions even illegal actions.

I do understand what Spike means when he asks "are we not on the eve of
construction?" with respect to Iraq.

Please don't make the mistake of miss characterising me as anti-American
(if anything I'm pro - although I'm Australian), or anti-Repulican, (I'm 
neither
Republican nor Democrat by sympathy), nor am I a passivist. (I thought
the invasion of Afganistan *was* legal, and I thought George H W Bush's
conduct in the first Gulf War was very creditable and moral and legal and
upright. I say these things only to try and get you to see that I am not
someone that is going to be easily classified into the nut job, disaffected
or disillusioned opponent category.

I was and am a largely disinterested observer with the exception that I
want progress to be real and I recognize that we need to uphold some
rule of law, some decency for that to happen, otherwise all that changes
is which particular group dies.

The dying can slow down, all the way across the board, when the critical
thinking picks up. The tragedy of Iraq was that it shows the level of 
thinking
that we (humans) were capable of through our institutions.

We (humans) need to do a lot better. Or the whole transhumanist thing
is going to continue to look like pie in the sky.

Sorry, I didn't mean to rant at you ;-)

And the transhumanist thing *may* be pie in the sky anyway.

Regards,
Brett Paatsch