the outcome of the election

[Armin]

The Saudis have never been our friends. 
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Never claimed otherwise. Said "most important allies"... and probably implied "big business partners" (after all, they own 6-8% of the US economy)

a potential 100.000 civilian deaths

Based on what math?

On the math in the lancet article I quoted in an earlier post. And as I have no ways of checking those numbers I said "potential". One can only hope that the statistics of those Johns Hopkins doctors are skewed...
(well, ok... my general trust in M.D.s doing proper statistics is... not limitless :P )

Right.  Failure to present a United Front sent Saddam the signal that he could once again work between the seams and pull off yet another nose thumbing versus "The Western Powers."  France, Germany, and USSR, by publically splitting with the US/UK on this guaranteed that multilateral pressure would not work.  (That does not excuse the decision to go into Iraq, however, it was one of many contributing factors.)

There was never a fundamental disagreement on disarming Iraq, just on the means used to do so. We wanted to keep using UN inspectors, the US and British were determined to go to war.
And the one thing shown in hindsight was that the UN weapon inspections HAD worked. Or were any WMD's found left in Iraq?

PS:  The Phillipines is on that list as well.  Malaysia's PM has been, for the past decade or so, unapologetically anti Western. 

Yep, I know. the Phillipine and Malaysian rebel groups have gained a lot of publicity here when they kidnapped a group of tourists, among them 3 Germans in 2000.

I see, it is a crime against humanity to support Israel. 

BS. But it's a liability to continuously turn a blind eye to their treatment of Palestinians or to their situation in the refugee camps. Things that a significant faction of *Israeli* citizens criticize, btw..

Once again, we see deep seated European anti Semitism at work,

I won't even coment on that...

So, how do you feel about the Islamic goal to undo the Reconquista in Spain?  Check out some of the Islamicist rhetoric on that score.  It's spooky.

Oh, I LOVE Arab rhetorics. In fact I practised some of it as I played an Arab Sorcerer in a GURPS Fantasy campaign a few years ago. No one flourishes threats better and exaggerates more. I'd take those with a pound of salt ;)
Oh, and I DID bury the streets under the ashes of my enemies in that campaign... :P

Gee, last I checked, the Islamicists have not been willing to negotiate,

It's not the crazy fanatics that should be negotiated with, but governments, political parties, companies and NGOs in the countries they develop in. And yes, those willing to commit criminal acts or acts of terrorism should very much be caught or dealt with, but NOT by the invading the entire country. Well, perhaps with the exception of Afghanistan, where the crazy fanatics had pretty much BEEN the government...
But even there some people claim other solutions might have been possible. I have no way, again, to know if anything in that article is valid:

http://www.counterpunch.org/cockburn11012004.html

It's an interesting read though...

What is "waging war against weakness?"  Could you please elaborate on that thought?  It's not clicking for me.   

As I wrote before I find the whole concept of "war on terror" to be, well... absurd. Terrorism is not the means of someone strong and powerful. It's the way of those too weak to hurt you significantly in any other way.
Waging war can achieve to break (military) strength, but how do you break weakness? Bombing them into submission can't work.
Terrorists have no army, air force, navy, no production facilities, and pretty little infrastructure (apart from the occasional training camp). Military might does not make much sense.
Intelligence work, police work, and mainly politics. But all these are long-term and require patience. And might fail, too, but WAR is certain to do.