Searching "comments":
| # | Comment | Survey |
|---|---|---|
| 461 | Unless I noticed it right away, I would probably keep it. I wouldn't spend it though, because probably they would notice the error eventually and hunt me down. | Ooops, the bank mis-counted... |
| 462 | They are not mutually exclusive. I guess I don't think they're either. They're independent. | Do you believe that attractiveness and sexiness are mutually inclusive, or mutually exclusive? |
| 463 | I like "employee" best, even though the word seems to be unpopular in the computer industry legalese and PR-speak. I think they want us to think of ourselves as "co-prosperity mutual contributors" or something but in fact I just do my job and they just pay me. | When referring to people who work in a company, which name do you like the best? |
| 464 | Somewhat. Six months is a long time, I guess. I might answer "very likely" if the time were extended to a year or maybe 18 months. | How likely do you think it is that the U.S. will attack Iraq in the next six months? |
| 465 | Uh... run that by me again? The only reason we went into Kuwait was the oil. Saddam Hussein at no time posed a serious threat to Israel. He would have had to march all the way across Jordan to get his ass kicked. And we certainly couldn't care less about Kuwait. What we cared about was a general destabilization of the region, which could have dramatically increased oil prices. A secondary worry was that if Hussein gained control over those oil reserves he could cause the price to go up. It really was about "the price of a gallon of gas". I only wish Bush Sr. had made the effort to explain that to the American people. I for one think the price of a gallon of gas is a sufficient reason to start killing people for. Well, maybe not by itself but if you consider that US industry and society would collapse without oil, you start to realize that it is a resource that require protection. But that doesn't make for a good speech so we stuck with the Kuwait angle. | How likely do you think it is that the U.S. will attack Iraq in the next six months? |
| 466 | You continue to provide humorous amusement to everyone here at Survey Central and for that I thank you. To your first point, about which I do not believe there was "enough said", your statement that Iraq launched SCUD missiles at Israel does not contradict my statement that at no time did Iraq pose a significant military threat to Israel. Of course the Israelis would have responded to the attacks had we not prevented them from doing so. Clearly your understanding of the econonics and politics of the global energy market is far superior to my own. Now that I have read your essay it is clear to me that the real reason the United States rushed to the defense of Kuwait is precisely the same reason we rushed a massive army into East Timor and spent $100 billion to protect the rights of the people there. Clearly the United States is motivated solely by a desire to protect small nations from being harrassed by large ones. I hope I understood your article correctly. The nice thing about taking over a country that already produces oil is that you don't have to change the global production rate at all to make more money. The danger to oil prices (and oil availability) did not stem from some imagined OPEC summit, it stemmed from the prospect of a complete political destabilization of the region. Just as the Gulf War temporarily reduced oil production in Kuwait, so could an inter-Arab war or, in its aftermath, a monopoly on oil production by one nation. The strategic national interests of the United States were threatened by the events in Kuwait and that's why we went in there. We did not do it out of the goodness of our hearts or to follow some nebulous ideal as you have suggested. I find it amusing that you are complaining that the oil theory is "vague". What do you call your theory? I call it unlikely. | How likely do you think it is that the U.S. will attack Iraq in the next six months? |
| 467 | I don't recall how many missiles Iraq launched at Israel during the war. It wasn't many - a few dozens, maybe? Anyway despite the fact that the Patriot missile system failed to provably shoot down even one SCUD, the damage was pretty minimal. If you told me Egypt or even perhaps Syria could be a threat to Israel, I'd agree, but Iraq was a nuisance at worst. I'm actually surprised that you claim such general consensus about your theory that America rescued Kuwait because we love our Arab brothers. I have yet to hear anyone espouse that theory who wasn't making a speech at the UN. | How likely do you think it is that the U.S. will attack Iraq in the next six months? |
| 468 | What's your opinion on this article: http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/91jul/nye.htm It was written not too long after the Gulf War and discusses the motivations. It seemed quite fair to me and seemed also to take a fairly reasonable position which I believe is between yours and mine. | How likely do you think it is that the U.S. will attack Iraq in the next six months? |
| 469 | Cosovo is definitely worth some thought. I believe the issue there was that certain European nations, including Italy and Germany, were worried about what might happen to them if that country experienced a severe political upheaval. That being said, I do believe that the Kosovo operation was motivated by good will to a much larger extent than the Gulf War. It was also smaller, and it was also a NATO operation rather than a US (or UN) op. I don't question the fact that Iraq had a powerful army, but only that they had the ability to deploy that army into Israel (especially without being detected). Israeli air power, augmented no doubt by American planes, would have crippled a land assault. As for the missile thing, I don't know as much about that. I never got the impression that Iraq had a large number of SCUD missiles, and I certainly know that SCUDs of that vintage do not frequently hit their targets. My guesstimate on the missile launch problem? Hundreds of Israelis dead, which in wartime terms is a nuisance. | How likely do you think it is that the U.S. will attack Iraq in the next six months? |
| 470 | I wouldn't really disagree with anything you said here (!) but any expansion of the type you're discussing would have taken several years if not decades. I think the nearer-term threat was to the global economy. I do wonder what would have happened had we left them alone. I'm not sure an invasion of neighboring arab states would have been high on Hussein's agenda, but I imagine he would have tried to bully them into some sort of anti-Israeli military coalition. Hm. | How likely do you think it is that the U.S. will attack Iraq in the next six months? |
