Russia is fighting to keep it's own state. Iraq does not belong to the USA, much as their government would like it to be.

The USA invaded Iraq on a lie - the pretense of WMDs. The leaders of some of the USA's traditional allies strongly opposed the invasion, saying that invading Iraq was not justified in the context of UNMOVIC's February 12, 2003 report. But then, it's likely that US government's english leads to a different interpretation of that report.

You guys are fucking stupid. You are completely ignorant of the facts, or willfully refuse to accept there are things you don't understand. Simply reading wikipedia about any of this stuff will prove you are wrong, or only presenting a small fraction of the actual history.

I propose a test. From now on, before posting about international affairs, you must first prove you are not a fucking dumb shit moron loser.

I'm not reading wikipedia about this. I use our not-so-biased media. And I remember damn rigt that in the first days the UN was strongly against invasion to the Iraq.

What is more I'm not advocating what's happening in the South Ossetia. I'm just saying that if the USA "has" the right to invade a foreing country, they shouldn't be the ones, who throw a first stone at Russia for doing so. That is just an act of plain hypocrisy.

And last, but not least - ossetians consider themselves as russians, they have russian passports, they had russian "peace force" stationed in their region. So when georgians came killing "russian" people and soldiers, the natural reaction was to protect them. Period.

Right, it's as wrong as USA invading Iraq or Afghanistan, but then again it's not like USA can do anything in this world and others are forbidden to do the same.

Well I know that anything that UN does are resolution and no actions. Sure somebody should clean a mess. But a) should have a mandate to do it, b) shouldn't say they had it if it ain't true.

On the other hand Saddam was holding situation there pretty tigth - no problems with Kurdi, no civil war. Do you even know some reasons why the first Gulf War ended shortly after freeing Kuvait?

Who asked you? In Afghanistan you cleared your own mess - you were the ones who gave them weapons to fight russians in the eighties.

The UN decided not to pass a new resolution declaring war.

However, Resolution 1441 held that Iraq was in material breach of Resolution 687, which was the ceasefire resolution following the 1990/91 Gulf War. Resolution 678 had authorised force against Iraq upon its failure to withdraw troops from Kuwait.

The US argument was, therefore, that 678 made war with Iraq legal. 687 set the terms on which it ceased to be legal, but required the Iraqi state to act in a certain way. 1441 held that Iraq wasn't acting in that way. Therefore 687 was no longer in force. However, 678 was.

There's some debate as to what 678 (and the others close to it) actually authorise force for, but the US and UK had been interpretting them pretty widely since 1991 — it wasn't a sudden Bush (Jnr) about face.

[disclaimer: my five-year memory isn't that good, I've looked up all the resolution numbers just now, please forgive me if I got any wrong]

Oh well if 10+ year resolution can authorise a war, maybe Germany should look up if the treaty of Versailles is still valid...

Vanneto: the situation out there is more complicated and basically it's a russian own problem they have to resolve after decades of overlooking it. In the past Stalin drew the borders in a way that Ossetia was cut in the half into south and north Ossetia. It was a sovereign contry which was absorbed into Soviet Union. After it fell apart Georgia was left as sovereign country and North Ossetia as a part of Russian federation.

And if somebody would like it to legalise, and if it's possible to use a decade old resolutions to rationalize government overthrow, then we can remember and blame your president Wilson, who wrote something along the lines that every nation has a right to have it's own state.

EDIT:

I highly doubt those US soldiers that were shot down from the skies by Stinger voted them either. But it was your (american) mess.

The original plan was to take down Saddam after Kuwait is liberated - why on Earth would the allied units cross the Iraqi border? However shortly after the army began it's run for Baghdad and order from high places came to withdraw. Somebody up there recognised that Saddam is important to keep the region stable.

So US gov. screwed Kurdis who were helping allies by making an uprising. All that because there won't be a civil war if Saddam is w/o power and the Iran won't take the opportunity.

To be fair, the US and UK had policed no-fly zones in Iraq for the decade inbetween, and the entire UN had been involved in weapons inspection, etc. So the whole saga didn't really end and then begin again.

Don't misunderstand me though: I'm just explaining why I understand the invasion to have been legal. I don't mean to make any comment on whether it was moral and/or justified and/or appropriate. But bodies like the UN are really legal bodies; nations don't sign up to them because they agree to a common morality.

Honestly, a large percentage of one of Canada's provinces, Quebec, wants to separate and I think it's bullshit. I personally wouldn't want to let them. They're not really "French". No more than I'm "English"... They're Canadian! The only real ties they have to France anymore is the language they speak, and as I've heard they sort of butcher it anyway. IMO, Canada should just switch to English as the "official" language nation-wide. I have no problem allowing them to learn French, which has its uses, but I think the nation would be more unified if everybody spoke the same language. As it is, you get "Quebecuers" and other Canadians or Americans in an online game on the mic and it doesn't take long for people to be telling them to STFU or speak English and making homosexual jokes. Not only can we not understand them, but their accents are SO fucking annoying. I'll take a deep deep American South accent any day over that of a Quebecuer. And some of my family is French from both sides... I don't care. It's still annoying.

I honestly don't know why they want to separate, but it sounds like they're just being stupid to me.

It was a rhetorical question in response to OICW's comment. Saying that invading Afganistan to stop the Taliban was unjustified is like saying no one has a right to kill bus bombers.

And no, I don't condone all the weapon peddling that goes on. As OICW said, it was a problem of our past government that helped bring them to power.

It's "Al-Qaida". HTH, HAND... This thread has derailed from an interesting subject to a very old and pointless one (that has been done to death already). A shame :/

The reason for this war is people like Bamccaig... Well, not really. It's about Russian penis waving... but anyway.

Nah, if we let all bullshitters have their countries, soon, the world will consist entirely of a million small countries. We must destroy separatists.