On Mar 20, 12:03*pm, nestork wrote:
[_2_ Wrote:

;3032750']
WARNING!
I just looked at this thread for the first time and clicked on the
reuters link.
Norton blocked it and came back saying it blocked an attack by
Malicious Rootkit Website 33

Well, by now everyone has heard that the Cypriot parliament has rejected
that idea and is now looking for another way to finance their bail out
plans.

But, if they'd gone ahead with it, I'd have said that would be the 2nd
extremely dangerous precedent that a government has set in my lifetime.

The first woulda been George Bush's "Let's build a coalition of the
willing to attack Iraq before they attack us" plan. *That, effectively
set a precedent saying that you could justify starting a war with
another country on the grounds that their intentions toward you are
hostile.

That indeed is enough justification for starting a war. But it
sure was not the justification for going to war with Iraq. Iraq
invaded Kuwait with no provocation whatever. A whole coalition
of countries went to war to drive Iraq out. One very important
part of the agreement that ended that war was Iraq agreeing to
full cooperation with UN weapons inspectors. Iraq agreed to
account for all their WMDs which they had at time. They agreed
to open access for the UN inspectors and to destroy all their
WMDs and WMD programs. Iraq never complied with that
agreement. Even on the eve of the war, with 400,000 troops
ready to attack, in his last report to the UN, Hans Blix said they
still were not cooperating.

They were given every opportunity to do so and refused. More
than enough justification for military action.




*Unfortunately, I don't have enough fingers and toes to count
off all the hostile relationships that have existed for years on this
Good Earth... Argentina vs. Britain over the Falklands, Israel vs.
everyone else over the Palestinians, China vs. Tibet, India vs. Pakistan
over the Kashmir, Venezuela vs. Columbia, Turkey vs. Greece over Cyprus,
Russia vs. Chechnya over who knows what, China vs. Japan over those
rocks sticking out of the Sea of Japan, Malaysia vs. East Timor over
independance, India vs. Sri Lanka over independance, Canada vs. Denmark
over Hans Island, which isn't large enough to even play a game of soccer
on, the USA vs. Cuba over the right to be communist, North Korea vs.
South Korea over ideology, etc.

--
nestork

One essential difference is that now we have countries run by
unstable, total nut jobs that are rapidly developing WMDs that
will be able to directly hit major cities in the USA. Some of
those nut case ideologies, driven by religous fanaticism, have
demonstrated over and over that they are very willing to die
as long as they take as many innocents with them as possible.
You may be OK living with that threat, but most of us are not.