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Well, chemical weapons are a little easier to deliver in a terrorist attack than large amounts of explosives.

Its easier to effect more people with chemicals than with high explosives. You can also make some very nasty things with very common household cleaning/pool chemicals.

A nuke is the 800 lb gorilla in the room, but ultimately its not easy to build one or sneak it in somewhere. Its easier to get some nasty, but much easier to acquire, chemicals/poisons and deliver those.

Thus a focus on weapons such as this is understandable.

Well. You can carry Anthrax powder in a metal pencil or pen. Disperse it in stores around Holidays and everyone think they have the onset of a cold after a couple days

 sebster wrote:


Fair point, the desire to send a political message flows in to other prizes as well. But then you could say the same about most any prize, the Booker has its favourites too (what's that, you're an Indian who's written a book about magical realism, please take all our Booker).

I say the same thing about how the only reason the Academy didn't give The Dark Knight film of the year is simply because it was based on a comic book, which apparently isn't artsy enough EDIT: And the only reason Hurt Locker won was because the Academy has a long standing grudge against James Cameron and just wanted to spite him

 Grey Templar wrote:
Well, chemical weapons are a little easier to deliver in a terrorist attack than large amounts of explosives.

That's untrue.

Unless you're talking about a small amount of a chemical/biological agent aimed at a specific target you will need a fairly complex, and heavy, delivery mechanism; probably an explosive charge inside a large container of the compound you wish to distribute. And even then a ground detonation would severely limit the effects of a chemical agent like mustard gas.

 dogma wrote:
Or any governing body that is competent.

Those are headlines reserved for media outlets like The Onion.

Fair point. Parallels between the UN and governments are always a little problematic (much of the reason people get bothered about the General Assembly is that they think it is a government and expect it to act like one, when it isn't), but in this case the analogy is bang on.

 sebster wrote:


Fair point. Parallels between the UN and governments are always a little problematic (much of the reason people get bothered about the General Assembly is that they think it is a government and expect it to act like one, when it isn't), but in this case the analogy is bang on.

That's basically my point Earlier in the thread a poster spoke of the UN as though they existed in some special authority, when behaviorally and structurally they lack the capacity to be anything other than collective voice of opinion (and even then, its usually a heavily slanted opinion in favor of the US and its allies). What few decisions the UN actually has the power to make become sort of bunk in the grand scheme of things since it's few decision making bodies tend to just be mechanisms for bizarre decision making.

If anything I'd prefer the UN became more of a goverment-like body. But that's not going to happen.

 dogma wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:
Well, chemical weapons are a little easier to deliver in a terrorist attack than large amounts of explosives.

That's untrue.

Unless you're talking about a small amount of a chemical/biological agent aimed at a specific target you will need a fairly complex, and heavy, delivery mechanism; probably an explosive charge inside a large container of the compound you wish to distribute. And even then a ground detonation would severely limit the effects of a chemical agent like mustard gas.

I think I agree with GT. You don't need a lot of fatalities to get the desired effect, so you also don't need a lot of whatever agent you are using. The Tokyo subway sarin attacks used no explosives, spread tons of fear and only killed what, like a dozen people iirc?

 LordofHats wrote:
I say the same thing about how the only reason the Academy didn't give The Dark Knight film of the year is simply because it was based on a comic book, which apparently isn't artsy enough EDIT: And the only reason Hurt Locker won was because the Academy has a long standing grudge against James Cameron and just wanted to spite him

The snubbing of comic book movies is part of it, but mostly it comes down to the behind the scenes marketing and positioning by the studios. And that stuff is expensive, in both dollars and social capital, and I don't think Warner Bros really needed to chase that for The Dark Knight because it really wouldn't have impacted the box office.

The films that year that really needed statues were Benjamin Button and Slumdog Millionaire, which really needed to appear artistically strong to draw a crowd. So their studios poured money in to delivering statues.

Oh and Milk, of course, that needed Penn to get a best actor gong to draw crowds.


The Hurt Locker and Avatar is a classic example. Because early on there was this push to drive a narrative of 'will it be the big budget spectable piece Avatar by the ex-husband, or the small budget Hurt Locker topical war movie by the ex-wife?', which cleverly made the question just about those two movies, and wiped all the actually good movies that were made that year. I knew the scam was in that year when they announced best screenplay and Hurt Locker somehow won out over Inglorious Basterds.


I mean, I'm overstating the case somewhat in claiming it is that deterministic, but it is certainly powerful. And of course The Dark Knight did win like 6 oscars, for Ledger's performance (which was absolutely deserved, and kind of inevitable after his death) and a bunch of technical things.


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 LordofHats wrote:
That's basically my point Earlier in the thread a poster spoke of the UN as though they existed in some special authority, when behaviorally and structurally they lack the capacity to be anything other than collective voice of opinion (and even then, its usually a heavily slanted opinion in favor of the US and its allies). What few decisions the UN actually has the power to make become sort of bunk in the grand scheme of things since it's few decision making bodies tend to just be mechanisms for bizarre decision making.

Well, it has a special authority in that it can authorise military activity in a non-defensive measure, and that is the only legal way of doing so. Whether that authority has any real meaning is a whole other thing, of course. And I get your point in that sense.

My point though, was really just about how the UN is actually a really big organisation, and does a whole lot more than what people commonly think of it as, just the General Assembly.

If anything I'd prefer the UN became more of a goverment-like body. But that's not going to happen.

In an ideal world I'd agree. But I think it's a bad idea for any kind of government organisation to assume a level of authority that people don't assume it ought to have. That is, as long as people don't really think of the UN as having some kind of higher authority, it would be a disaster to grant it that authority.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Grey Templar wrote:
Well, chemical weapons are a little easier to deliver in a terrorist attack than large amounts of explosives.

Hence the move to worrying about them more in the wake of 9/11.

A nuke is the 800 lb gorilla in the room, but ultimately its not easy to build one or sneak it in somewhere.

That's why they were referred to as WMDs, and were thought of as a unique component of international relations. Because when a country got the bomb it really did change how you could interact with them, in a way that a stockpile of some chemical weapon just didn't.

Thus a focus on weapons such as this is understandable.

As a focus, sure. As a reason to go about invading other countries, it's completely insane. I mean, do you think chemical weapon stockpiles are more likely to go missing under a stable government, or in the midst of a war and a collapsing government?



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 Ouze wrote:
I think I agree with GT. You don't need a lot of fatalities to get the desired effect, so you also don't need a lot of whatever agent you are using. The Tokyo subway sarin attacks used no explosives, spread tons of fear and only killed what, like a dozen people iirc?

Boston Marathon bombing?

 Grey Templar wrote:
Even if our given pretext for invading Iraq was wrong, it was still the right thing to do.

If anything, complain that we didn't use any of the laundry list of "legitimate" reasons for invasion.

We did, though. The resolution authorizing force against Iraq didn't solely consist of the line, "They have WMDs."

There were, if memory serves, seven or eight separate reasons cited. Everyone - administration, opposition, media - shorthanded the entire thing down to WMDs, because it was the sexiest and the easiest to talk about.

 Seaward wrote:
The resolution authorizing force against Iraq

Humour me, what Resolution was that again?

 dæl wrote:

 Seaward wrote:
The resolution authorizing force against Iraq

Humour me, what Resolution was that again?

This one.

 Seaward wrote:
We did, though. The resolution authorizing force against Iraq didn't solely consist of the line, "They have WMDs."

There were, if memory serves, seven or eight separate reasons cited. Everyone - administration, opposition, media - shorthanded the entire thing down to WMDs, because it was the sexiest and the easiest to talk about.

Not so much the sexiest, as the one Colin Powell convinced the rest of the administration would be the best sell to the American people and the international community.

He was right on that as well, because talking about human rights violations was a complete nonsense when Mugabe was actively doing far worse at that time without anyone even hinting that the US and UK were going to try and overthrow him. The thing that actually differentiated Hussein from the rest was agreement to remove his stockpile of weapons, and his breach of that agreement. It was the only coherent cassus belli.

On the other hand, Powell was wrong because once you make it about WMDs, you actually have to find some once you've invaded. Whoopsie doopsie.

 Seaward wrote:

 dæl wrote:

 Seaward wrote:
The resolution authorizing force against Iraq

Humour me, what Resolution was that again?

This one.

Cheers, was any evidence ever found linking al qaeda to Iraq? Or any of the terrorist groups mentioned? And what do Turkey, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia have to do with anything? You surely can't use that as a justification for an invasion?

 dæl wrote:
Cheers, was any evidence ever found linking al qaeda to Iraq? Or any of the terrorist groups mentioned? And what do Turkey, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia have to do with anything? You surely can't use that as a justification for an invasion?

You can use anything you want as a justification for invasion.

 Seaward wrote:

 dæl wrote:
Cheers, was any evidence ever found linking al qaeda to Iraq? Or any of the terrorist groups mentioned? And what do Turkey, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia have to do with anything? You surely can't use that as a justification for an invasion?

You can use anything you want as a justification for invasion.

So would you admit that the justification was a series of baseless accusations about terrorism combined with some nod to chemical weapons given to Saddam by the US and human rights abuses, that were mostly carried out while Saddam had US backing?

 dæl wrote:
So would you admit that the justification was a series of baseless accusations about terrorism combined with some nod to chemical weapons given to Saddam by the US and human rights abuses, that were mostly carried out while Saddam had US backing?

No, but that's because I read my own link.

 Seaward wrote:

 dæl wrote:
So would you admit that the justification was a series of baseless accusations about terrorism combined with some nod to chemical weapons given to Saddam by the US and human rights abuses, that were mostly carried out while Saddam had US backing?

No, but that's because I read my own link.

As did I, hence my asking whether there was any base to the accusations regarding terrorism. I took your silence on the matter to mean there wasn't any, but if there was then please refer me to the evidence of such.

The chemical weapons that Iraq had were given to them by the US. Iraq used chemical weapons to "brutally oppress" its own people in the late 80s, when it had the support of the US. What does that leave? Some other countries didn't like them, and if that counts then that would give Iran justification to invade Israel. And then some nonsense about US policy on terrorism, which as you failed to provide any evidence of links to terrorism doesn't really cut the mustard.

Notice the money for families of suicide bombers dried up in Israel?

Congressional investigators say Saddam Hussein diverted money from the U.N. oil-for-food program to pay millions of dollars to families of Palestinian suicide bombers who carried out attacks on Israel.

Investigators who have been following a money trail say the former Iraqi president tapped secret bank accounts in Jordan - where he collected bribes from foreign companies and individuals doing illicit business under the humanitarian program - to reward the families up to $25,000 each.

Documents prepared for a Wednesday hearing by the House International Relations Committee outline the new findings about how Saddam funneled money to the Palestinian families.

Investigators examining the oil-for-food program felt it was "important for us to determine whether the profits from his corruption were put toward terrorist purposes," committee chairman Henry Hyde, R-Ill., said of Saddam's well-known financial support of suicide bombers.

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/saddams-suicide-bomb-funds/