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Originally Posted by Newt
In your opinion! Lets assume that the government honestly thought Iraq had weapons of mass destruction (and a good reason to think so). Would they then be justified in invading?
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I really don't think that's a safe assumption heh.
Obviously there a lot of mistakes made (by western governments) that actually led up to that question being one we can actually ask. Were there no other alternatives to invasion? Iraq was attempting to develop nuclear weapons in the 80s and Israel just
blew the shit out of them. Slightly further down the scale could Saddam have been removed surgically? Could pro-democracy groups have been supported to the extent that he would have been deposed? Could Western governments have extended a helping hand publically to the Iraqi people and/or appealed to Saddam Hussein's self-interest in order to change the situation in Iraq?
Surely if we have enormously well funded foreign relations departments we should expect them to offer us a wide range of alternatives instead of 'INVADE IRAQ' vs 'LET YOUR KIDS GET NUKED BY TOWELHEADS'.
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Do you think we'd be justified in doing something about North Korea at the moment? (assuming such an action wouldn't trigger a nuclear war - so aye, totally hypothetical). And if so why? USA has nuclear weapons too, why aren't we invading them? Probably because we're all racists 
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"Something" is pretty broad. Do I think an invasion of North Korea is a good idea? No.
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I totally disagree there... do you honestly think the people should know every inner most political secret of our country? I mean I know I live with a 24/spooks view on things, but still... must be a lot of shit going on which would horrify people.
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If something is being carried out in my name that under any circumstances I wouldn't support I'd like to know about it. If something horrifies people maybe there's a reason for that? I mean, you're the one talking about what the people want and democracy here.
I wasn't saying I'd like to know everything though. But if you're sending off your armed forces to invade another country that's a pretty big something. 5000 US troops have died in Iraq, 140 or something from the UK and smaller numbers for elsewhere. There are 90000 documented Iraqi deaths and many estimates run above a million now. I can live with not knowing the name of every spy living in Pyongang. I would like to found out precisely what reasons a government might have for killing hundreds of thousands of people.