Kerry; “You don’t invade another country on phony pretexts”

You can criticize the US all you want concerning the invasion of Iraq, hell the war was started on false pretenses. However that has no bearing on Russia violating a recent treaty with Ukraine and placing troops on foreign soil. Just because the US was wrong doesn't mean that Russia should be able to get away with it. BOTH ARE/WERE WRONG.

Is the US hypocritical? Of course. Are they wrong in saying that Russia has no business invading their neighbor? No.

Everybody wants to jump on@vfibsux and say he is some crazy Tea Party nut who is too "blind" to see that Bush made up the WMD story to get troops into Iraq so they can steal their oil and make their Big Oil CEO friends richer. The problem with that theory, besides the fact that Iraqi oil isn't powering your car of choice, is President Barack Obama.

Obama refused to vote for authorization to go into Iraq and made it a major factor in his campaign against McCain in 2008. Once he was in office by his authority as the President of the United States he has access to any American classified information he wants to look at. The whole rumor that agencies can deny him access because of "plausible deniability" doesn't fly if he demands it as the head of government.

With that authority, he could have demanded any and all classified information related to the war in Iraq and used that information to push for charges against the Bush Administration if anything there shows that they explicitly lied about WMDs for the purpose of stealing Iraqi oil and/or "killing Sand N*****s" like some people accuse Bush of on a daily basis.

In case anybody says Obama would sweep it under the rug, why would he? It would be a huge victory for the Democratic Party to put a former Republican president in jail for conspiracy and it would almost ensure that at a minimum his next two or three successors would be Democrats.

@HoolaHoopMan: Thank you. Someone who understands.

One injustice does not justify another injustice. Yes, Iraq was an unjust war, but that doesn't make this a justifiable one.

It's incredibly obvious.....

No it's not. At least it's not if one doesn't put blinders on....

@sonicare: @HoolaHoopMan: I agree with you guys.

sounds good on paper, but my guess is that trying to put Bush behind bars would make Obama look like a massive asshole. Even now people say Bush is a decent fellow who they would like to get a beer with (despite not being a drinker).

Well, so do I. I simply have an issue with Kerry making a principled argument regarding aggression by another state. He is in no moral position to do that. It makes him look like a damn fool.

@thebest31406: Well then he fits right in.

They have plenty of moral ground. Russia has, without a single reason, taken over part of another sovereign nation.

@sherman-tank1: Yeah, it kinda goes without saying. It's a bit aggravating still.

For blocking posts from individual users? No, it does not. Unless someone has found a new way to do it. All of my custom filters for this site stopped working as soon as they launched the re-design.

@Serraph105 said:

@ad1x2 said: Everybody wants to jump on @vfibsux and say he is some crazy Tea Party nut who is too "blind" to see that Bush made up the WMD story to get troops into Iraq so they can steal their oil and make their Big Oil CEO friends richer. The problem with that theory, besides the fact that Iraqi oil isn't powering your car of choice, is President Barack Obama.

Obama refused to vote for authorization to go into Iraq and made it a major factor in his campaign against McCain in 2008. Once he was in office by his authority as the President of the United States he has access to any American classified information he wants to look at. The whole rumor that agencies can deny him access because of "plausible deniability" doesn't fly if he demands it as the head of government.

With that authority, he could have demanded any and all classified information related to the war in Iraq and used that information to push for charges against the Bush Administration if anything there shows that they explicitly lied about WMDs for the purpose of stealing Iraqi oil and/or "killing Sand N*****s" like some people accuse Bush of on a daily basis.

In case anybody says Obama would sweep it under the rug, why would he? It would be a huge victory for the Democratic Party to put a former Republican president in jail for conspiracy and it would almost ensure that at a minimum his next two or three successors would be Democrats.

sounds good on paper, but my guess is that trying to put Bush behind bars would make Obama look like a massive asshole. Even now people say Bush is a decent fellow who they would like to get a beer with (despite not being a drinker).

It doesn't matter how "decent" of a guy people think Bush was. If Obama had solid proof the Bush Administration blatantly misled Congress and the country about WMDs in Iraq so they could invade to steal oil very few people would be against him taking action. There would be a paper trail because for it to work the top commanders in control on the ground would have had to know something about it so they could adjust their forces accordingly for control of the oil fields.

After all, the lives of over 5,000 US troops and billions of dollars were put into the war and billions more will will be spent for at least the next 60-80 years for the medical pensions of the tens of thousands of troops who were wounded there. Timothy McVeigh was a Gulf War veteran who earned a Bronze Star and was rumored to have performed life-saving techniques one of his fellow troops. Nobody talks about that part of his life, they only talk about what he did on April 19, 1995.

Would you call the DOJ assholes for charging him for his actions in light of his previous military service?

They have plenty of reasons (protecting Russian nationals, protecting their Black Sea Fleet naval bases, taking back historically important land, etc), just not reasons you agree with. I'm not saying it's right, just that we are massive hypocrites for calling them out on it.

What's your point? During the Clinton era we had the Rwandan genocide which was largely ignored by everybody.. During the Bush Jr administration while Iraq and Afghanistan were be focused upon, we had the crisis in Darfur which was largely ignored.. The major powers condone or ignore major humanitarian crisis's like this all the time, what makes this any more special or different? Hell during Cold War Era we had presidents like Reagan supporting people like Pinochet who were killing all sorts of people in South America..

@ad1x2: That's borderline fantasy. There isn't a single state in existent that actually practices this level of transparency and accountability in today's world. Its even more impossible for a huge hegemonic state like the U.S to operate in such a manner, given its foreign and security policies. Besides, its not like the presidency in the American political and governmental system is actually the top authority of the state. Advanced states are "states of institutions", meaning the strategic and long term policies that shape the state and control its relations with the outside world are all in the hands of the state's institutions, which is the reason why these states maintain a consistent political and economic system and foreign and security policies and strategies. Presidents of course do have authority during their terms of presidency, but its vastly limited. The U.S isn't an autocracy so the state doesn't change shape with every new president.

Besides, if Obama would go about doing this, republicans will definitely have some dirt on another democrat president. Like for example, just like, in essence, democrats have been waving since the end of Iraq's war how those WMD turned out to be imaginary and how the U.S lost thousands of soldiers, killed thousands of people and lost billions of dollars, the republicans have been screaming at the top of their lungs about Benghazi "cover up". In any state at least in today's world, there's a very real and tangible limit to transparency and accountability, an informal limit that is most likely agreed on among the major political factions of the state.

It takes quite a bit of jingoism to not be able to appreciate the irony of Kerry's comments

We're all in agreement on this, no one is really saying "GO RUSSIA". The whole point concerns the validity and the moral ground of retaliation proponents. Obviously the U.S was neither sanctioned nor bombed for its Iraq war. Why is that? And why should the western world now attempt to do either of these things? This is the point here, its very very very simple and clear.

Agreed my friend. 100%.

And a whole lot of hypocrisy and possibly intellectual/ideological degradation.

Long time no see.

Scare tactics I call a bluff

Kerry is not worth anyone's time defending. Can we just all agree on that?

Btw in a forum debate when you get all upset and tempered your emotions get the better of you and then rants, exclamations points, and CAPS lock start spewing out.

Your credibility comes into check and you lose automatically whether you were wrong right to begin with in most cases.

Rwanda nor Darfur were strategically significant to the US.

lol @ protecting Russian Nationals. Russians live in almost every country in the world. Using that excuse, Putin can invade anyone at any time.

Ukraine is unstable and Russia is coming in to grab some land. Any excuses used to justify it are just that: excuses and poor apologetics.

It's ok for the USA to be hypocritical in regards to invading other countries because they're still right.

I think Kerry is pretty funny. I mean, only a couple of years ago he was ragging on Palin and Romney for calling Russia a threat. Now, what do you know, they actually are a threat that he has to deal with. Not even an apology...what a scum bag.

Same goes for Obama, b.t. dubs.

HE HAS ARISEN

Which is exactly why Russia would have an interest in protecting the Russian majority in Crimea, a region of the world that has historically been a part of Russia and only became part of Ukraine in the 1950's.

You're fooling yourself if you think Russia did this to "protect Russian people." The only thing they are protecting is their naval base in Crimea. They feared that an anti-Russia Ukrainian government wouldn't allow them to continue operating in Crimea so they invaded Ukraine to take it over. Russia doesn't give a shit about the people, only their military positioning.

@GazaAli: Assuming Bush really did lie about WMDs so we could invade Iraq for their oil, you shouldn't assume that fears of retaliation from Republicans are what's stopping President Obama from pushing for charges against the Bush Administration. Also, Benghazi happened in 2012, while Obama has been in office since 2009. Don't think for a second that if Mitt Romney won the election he wouldn't have started an investigation to see if there really was a "stand down" order given or some other misconduct that cost the ambassador and his fellow workers their lives.

Besides, if there was evidence the war in Iraq was started for the sole purpose of stealing Iraqi oil (which we still don't have) sooner or later a whistleblower would have came forward. Iraq cost the country a lot of money and more troops died there than the amount of people who died from the 9/11 attacks, so somebody feeling guilty would have came forward with evidence it was all a scam by now. The government couldn't even keep Bill Clinton getting a blowjob from his intern secret and we had two men come forward with classified information within the past five years that made the news.

@ad1x2: Its not really "fear of retaliation" per say, or at least its not that alone. Its just how the American governmental system works. Its not possible to have full accountability and transparency within a hegemon like the U.S. It would make it impossible for it to implement and further its foreign and security policies. Statesmen would be too terrified to do anything really, and the U.S would go nowhere with its agenda and strategies. Instances like Monica Lewinsky and Watergate have nothing to do with the U.S as a political and economic system, they're of exclusive personal nature so from the point of view of the American political machine, there's no "greater good" or national interest in covering it up. On the contrary, it could be argued that exposing such violations and misconduct is in favor of the U.S as a whole as it would serve the purpose of protecting the integrity of the political system.

Also regarding the possibility of exposure of any alleged fabrication of evidence or feeding security agencies false information, it still depends on the chain of command. I don't think anyone would disagree that there exists certain information within any state, let alone the U.S as a superpower, that only a handful are aware of it. Those handful that make it far enough in that said chain of command and gain access to the most sensitive information don't get there by chance and I'm sure the system has sufficient checks and balances to ensure such information remains classified in all possible scenarios. For example, USAID, which isn't really anywhere near the top of the list of American governmental agencies that deal with national interest and sensitive security and foreign policies, has an absolutely imperative and vital requirement in all of its aid programs and of any of its affiliates regarding aid's recipients: the subgrantee or an individual must pass the CIA's vetting process, even if an individual would to benefit from 1$ worth of American aid as a trainee in a moronic civil engagement project. That goes to show how vigilant and selectively rigorous the U.S is with its foreign and security policies.

All of what I said is one possibility. The other one is what you champion which states that the U.S with all its intelligence and security might obtained false intel that Iraq had WMD. Come on now...
And by the way, even if this was true, its still complete hogwash. People and states alike should be held accountable for their mistakes its really simple. You don't kill someone and say "gee sorry I didn't mean to". So even if we were to agree that the U.S was really fed bad intel and acted accordingly, that doesn't exempt it and anyone that was involved in the decision to go to war with Iraq from accountability. For **** sake you don't get thousands of people killed and destroy an entire country and then say "lol sorry, my bad".
Besides how do you mistake a country for having WMD? I would under the right circumstances be willing to accept a scenario where a state FAILED to realize the existence of such a thing within another country, even though its exceedingly hard to believe that a state can enrich Uranium and build a nuclear silo without anyone noticing. But how do you obtain knowledge of something only to find out it didn't exist? What is this sorcery?

If only it were that simple.

We should let the world sort out its own. Before somebody says "Well if Russia takes over Crimea what will stop them from taking more territory?", well first and foremost this was given to them in the 60s by the Soviet Union, and if anything it's none of our business.

We're in the post WWII era where major countries are more economically tied to one another, and depend on each other. It's practically suicide going to war with other industrial countries in this modern age.

We don't live in the past anymore, and the problem is many still have that particular mindset. Europe, Asia, the Middle East they need to sort out their own issues by themselves.

Oh God, the irony.

Team America World Police please stop.

There is no way I support what Russia is doing - and Russia is a pretty shitty country for a number of reasons, but I wish America stopped trying to police the world. It's really annoying.

Tu quoque. If a drug dealer says drugs are bad while he snorts coke and looks at you, he's a hypocrite, but he isn't wrong.

Are you trying to justify Russia's decision? Or just stating your opinion?

Not justifying Russia's decision nor am I stating my opinion. Just stating facts.

Truth be told as an America I am extremely apathetic to Russia's activity in Ukraine, and I think apathy is the only reasonable position for the US to take on this matter.

Oh the irony of it all.

i was gobsmacked when he came out with that comment, the word irony just doesnt do it justice at all

like I explained in my previous comment, Kerry, under presidential system, citizens do not involve in day to day affairs.They only have indirect power over the president, which can be practiced in a form of re-elections, emergency elections and referendums. Therefore new government of ukraine, is not legit, simply because opposition seized power in a way, which is not supported by presidential system. So eat is Kerry.

lol.

classic.

maybe putin should say they are terrorists and we will help them invade.

How did America and other countries do "nothing" in bosnia?

My friend, probably wise next time to read the entire thread before replying to a single post.

Proud to be American really?

I'm from the uk, and I'am disgusted with my Government.

Pretty damn ironic he would say this while taking part in one of the most aggressive governments on the planet.

Thanks to America's terrible habit of invading countries at the drop of a hat, Russia now has all the fuel it needs to do some of its own invading.

You didn't answer my question though.

It looks like Russia's ultimate goal might be to reinstate the ousted pro-Russian government in Ukraine.... much like the US-led conflicts which aimed to install pro-US governments in countries like Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, etc.