To your first question:

To your second:

They can also be allowed to reach a dynamic equilibrium between themselves. Natural mechanisms work well when allowed to function. When we intervene there are usually unintended consequences.

On another level I feel you would be sympathetic with, Leauki... please read this LINK. I leave it in link form as I do not wish to offend anyone (המלבין פני חברו ברבים אין מקום בעולם הבא).

Most of my feelings about this topic have to do with צער בעלי חיים   and   אובדן צלם אנוש

Our news people obviously don't think Biden is very newsworthy.  Now it's a different matter when it comes to Obama.  All things Obama are considered newsworthy here... like if he had an ingrown toenail, they might even consider it important enough to break into a prime time show with a special news bulletin.

No, that didn't occur to me.  My explanation was offerred to let you (and others) know that I'm just fooling around for the most part... and joking for most of the rest of it.  Life is too short to be so darned serious about everything all the time, right?

Natural mechanisms can also cause situations that are equilibrium but that we don't want. That's why governments regulate these things.

As I said above, I cannot hunt. But I really don't see it as much worse than slaughtering animals. Palin is not Jewish, so while I do not like her hobby, I don't think I can judge her as long as she eats what she hunts or hunts predators that have to be controlled.

So we come back to motive. Hers are suspect to me. Always have been, and always will be. Just like every politician's.

Beyond that? You don't have to be Jewish to have compassion, Leauki, and that is fundamentally what it's about to me.

If one/one's family hungers? PLEASE hunt to feed them if there is no better alternative. If one hunts for the pleasure of killing a living animal? That's a wholly different matter. And it is distasteful to me. Any suffering that gives another being pleasure, is.

As for slaughtering penned animals raised to be food? Is that different from hunting? No, not really in my view as both involve suffering for the animals. I suppose we agree there as well. It would reflect better on us if we cared for animals and if necessary to end their lives, to do so in a manner which would not sicken one to contemplate.

As for governments helping? Oh yeahhhh.... Please let me survive, somehow, without their "help".

Take a look at how they've "helped" the world up until now.

Bush 41 went to war with Iraq in 91.  The war never ended.  Bush 43 did not start the war, he ended it.  Learn the difference.

As Daiwa said, Magine that.  The media coverng for a liberal politician!  Magine that.  However, media not covering an idiot in power in today's world is hardly an excuse for ignorance.  There is Google and Bing.  Your friends that shy away from the censorshtip the MSM denies it does.  If you want to be taken seriously on your pontification on issues in the colonies, then it would be best to at least be aware of them, instead of just repeating what the International herald tribune prosetlysizes.

I find it amazing that some people today have such a weak grasp of history that they cannot differentiate between a war and an invasion.

Iraq and the US were at war since Iraq invaded Kuwait. (That was an invasion that STARTED a war.)

Iraq broke the cease-fire agreement several times.

Hence Clinton 42 bombed Iraq a few times and Bush 43 invaded. (That was the invasion that ENDED the war.)

Today Iraq is an ally of the US. Under Clinton Iraq was an enemy of the US. (I am not blaming Clinton for that.)

Bush Senior may have gone to war with Iraq to assist Kuwait, but there was a ceasefire between the US and Iraq. So, with the cessation of hostilities,  the war in essence had ended, if not officially/on paper.  Hence, Bush Junior's invasion of Iraq was a resumption of hostilities that turned out to be overkill based on a pack of lies and, according to the international community, illegal without UN sanction.

Anyway, that is all beside the point!  I made a tongue-in-cheek comment to suggest Bush Junior over-stepped the mark, and it'll profit neither of us to debate the subject further... what's done is done.

Hey Dr G, again, let's not get too in depth here...

So the last thing I want is to be taken seriously when commenting with tongue-in-cheek on politicians... yours, ours or anybody elses.  Politicians of all political persuasions worldwide are self-serving, lying, cheating sleazy scumbags, including all of ours, so until one commands respect by earning respect, they're ALL fair game to me.

Oh, and while I've served it up to Sarah Palin, it is not because she is a Republican or any other political flavour.  It's simply because I saw/see her as an airhead who would be dangerous in any position of high power, that's it and nothing more... and certainly not because she's so-say a conservative.  Clinton was/is a liberal, and I served it up to him over his dallyances in the Oval Office.... cos he deserved it, as does Palin.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DQCwnoMMqtA

I dont know if this will post as a link or if you'll have to cut and paste but this one's for you starkers.  I'm not very computer literate but it's hilarious reguardless.

Yeah, Clarkie and Dawe have been making us laugh with politician parodies for years... brilliant, absolutely brilliant.BTW, thanks for the link, I hadn't seen that episode.

Again, Iraq broke the cease-fire, several times.

The invasion was not "a resumption of hostilities" and it didn't turn out to be overkill.

As for the illegality, in my experience it is always "against international law" to act against dictators while it is perfectly legal to slaughter one's own population. So please forgive me for not caring about "international law".

I am assuming that if there is a case to be made against the invasion it should be possible to make that case without changing the facts. Explain why the invasion is wrong while acknowledging that firing at US aircraft is a violation of the cease-fire and acknowleding that a majority of Iraqis just voted for the very man who gave the US and UK the information about the WMDs (Iyad Allawi) and we can talk.

What Iraq did under Saddam Hussein to break the ceasefire was little more than annoyance value in terms of warfare... and the response was over the top.  Hundereds of thousands of Iraqis died during the initial invasion, and with the balance of power destroyed, thousands have died since.  Whether you liked Saddam Hussein or not, agreed with his methods or not, he knew what was required to rule a people divided by religious/cultural divides.... and Bush, being ignorant of the country's cultural demographics, signed the death warrants of thousands of Iraqis by interfering in that which he did not understand and had no business meddling with.

Does this mean I agree with what Saddam Hussein did?  No!!!  Absolutely not!!!  I just disagree with an invasion that was based on lies that killed as many if not more innocent Iraqis.   And what WMDs???   They were never found... and Bush's premise for invasion was total bullshit. As for Iyad Allawi, how friggin' convenient.... he gives the US and UK WMD info and ends up Iraqi PM, and there's nothing sus about that???

Anyhow, life's too friggin' short..... orright?

Who cares whether YOU consider it an annoyance?

That's a lie.

Yes. And thousands have died under Saddam.

The point is that most of the "anti-war" crowd don't count Saddam's victims. Plus they made up the lie about the "hundreds of thousands" of victims that is simply not true.

If it were true (and you can do the maths and find out how many bodies they would have had to deal with to find out that it cannot be true) do you think Iraqis would now vote for exactly the parties that supported and invited the invasion?

Yes. He simply slaughtered those who weren't Arab and Sunni.

He knew.

He had a solution. I have seen it:

http://gallery.me.com/ajbrehm#100025&bgcolor=black&view=grid

Whether you agreed with Saddam's methods or not, I cried when I saw the cells the Kurds were kept in before they were transported to Abu Ghraib.

Actually, Bush was not at all ignorant of the country's demographics. He knew exactly that he could count on the Kurds and Shiites to support the invasion (which they did) and hew knew exactly where Saddam's supporters lived. American troops landed in Kurdistan before the invasion and helped the Peshmerga (Kurdish militia) with their final push against Kiruk and Tikrit.

Shortly after the invasion the Peshmerga (with American air support) also took out Al-Qaeda's base in Halabja. (Yes, Al-Qaeda had a base in Iraq and Saddam did protect them. You might think it was a lie that Saddam had links to Al-Qaeda but he did.)

The fact that you disagree with the invasion does not make George W. Bush "ignorant of the country's cultural demographics".

No, there isn't. His party got a majority and it will take a big conspiracy theory to explain that away, especially since the previous government was more pro-Iranian than pro-American.

At some point liberals will just have to get used to the fact that the invasion was a success and that the Iraqis supported it.

Give it up.

Assumption is the mother of all fuck ups.  A cease fire is not an end, but an interlude.  And the cease fire was not universally followed (by either Clinton or Saddam).  IN YOUR OPINION (not shared by any other diplomats) the war was over.  in reality, it was put on hold pending compliance with agreed upon conditions.  Those conditions were never met, Bush 43 finished the job.

The issue was did Bush 43 start a war.  The clear answer is no.  If the question was did Bush 43 resume hostilities, the answer could be yes, or could be no based upon one's viewpoint of what constitutes hostilities.  i.e. is Bombing considered hostilities? 

if the question was did Bush 43 resume the invasion, then the answer is clearly yes.

Before Bush 43 the US were at war with Iraq.

After Bush 43 the US are allied with Iraq.

Despite what the sensationalist media claim (and in fact the worst lies do not even come from them but from conspiracy Web sites), the invasion went fairly well, certainly not worse than any other invasion of the magnitude.

It's easy to blame Bush and the invasion for terror attacks after the invasion. It's also easy to pretend that those same terror attacks didn't happen under Saddam, where the Iraqi government supported such attacks and the media certainly didn't report them.

But the fact is that Iraq is now an ally of the US and that Iraqis just elected a very pro-American government.

Incidentally, under Bush 43 the post-invasion government of Aghanistan was also completely loyal to the US. How long did it take Obama to change that?

Just days after meeting with Obama, Karzai, who has increasingly distanced himself from his U.S. backers, said that U.S. and NATO troops risked being seen as invaders rather than saviors of the country. In the speech, Karzai also delivered extraordinarily harsh criticism of the Western governments fighting in his country, the United Nations and the British and U.S. news media, accusing them of perpetrating a fraud that denied him an outright victory in last summer's presidential elections.

And Karzai has met with leaders of China and Iran, showing he has options for support from other countries.

http://www.startribune.com/world/89958247.html?elr=KArksLckD8EQDUoaEyqyP4O:DW3ckUiD3aPc:_Yyc:aUUsZ

One year.

And no, this is not because Obama is more hawkish than Bush 43 and violence in Afghanistan has increased because of that. It's because the US are no longer perceived as a trustworthy ally. Middle-eastern allies have to look elsewhere for protection.

The same happened in Lebanon a short time ago when the Druze leader, Walid Jumblatt, switched sides and now supports Hizbullah. Under Bush 43 he perceived the US and Saudi-Arabia as Lebanon's most trusted allies.

Meanwhile, the King of Jordan is trying to repair Obama's mess in Jerusalem:

"The economic challenges have also not helped in prioritizing the peace process," he noted. "Having said that, I know very well that Obama and his administration are extremely committed to the two-state solution and moving the process forward. But they've had other things to deal with."

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3871919,00.html

Not that the King doesn't also lie a lot:

King Abdullah of Jordan on Wednesday urged the international community to intervene in order to prevent "Israel's provocative actions in the occupied Palestinian territories, which are intended to change Jerusalem's identity."

Abdullah met Wednesday afternoon with EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton, after which the royal palace issued a harsh condemnation against Israel.
 
"We cannot keep quiet in face of the Israeli steps that are meant to change the status quo in Jerusalem and cleanse it from its Arab citizens – both Muslims and Christian," the statement read.

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3864228,00.html

He doesn't seem to remember that Jerusalem was a Jewish city before Jordan invaded it in 1948 or that the issue is not Israel cleansing Jerusalem of Arabs but the PLO's demand to cleanse the city of Jews.

But this is the usual strategy of the Arabs, I'm afraid. Try something and then accuse Israel of trying it.