'm not saying that.
I'm saying that if you function in Gaza you have to do what Hamas tells you to. Not that that means membership in Hamas. (Although there's quite an overlap between UN and Hamas.) There are no independent journalists there. Journalists either are actually Hamas, or are reporting what Hamas tells them to report. Not obeying is liable to get you killed.
Then you’re still making the same fundamental error—just with a softer label.
Saying that journalists or UN workers “have to do what Hamas tells them to” is not a rebuttal. It’s an assumption dressed up as analysis. You’re asserting that every report, every photo, every statement from Gaza is compromised unless it comes from Israeli sources or aligns with your narrative. That’s not discernment. That’s blanket dismissal.
We have several reports from reporters who told the truth. And they all tell very similar stories of the tactics used. Why in the world should we assume they're all making it up?
Yes, Hamas exerts control. No one is denying that the environment is dangerous and restrictive. But that’s precisely why multiple independent agencies—including those with no ties to Gaza or Hamas—use verification mechanisms: satellite imagery, eyewitness triangulation, cross-border interviews, third-party audits. These aren’t just “Hamas press releases.” They’re vetted, cross-referenced reports by international bodies whose credibility doesn’t vanish just because the context is complex.
You continue to assert vetting that shows no evidence of existence. How did none of them catch the 4k obviously bad entries?? Nobody who was vetting would have overlooked the fact that more than 10% of the data was wrong. Why should I assume they are vetting any better now?
This comes down to credibility. I favor that which has a track record of being right. I do not trust that which has a track record of being wrong.
If Hamas truly controls all information, then the moral burden falls even heavier on those with access, resources, and power to verify and report—because they have the tools to act transparently. But instead, you’re using the fog of war to dismiss every inconvenient truth as “propaganda,” while treating every unverified assertion of military success as gospel.
That’s not a double standard. It’s the abandonment of standards entirely.
You assume the inconvenient stuff is truth.
And I don't treat unverified assertion of military success as gospel.
Hamas names the dead commander, that was a successful operation.
Substantial secondaries from hitting something, that was a successful operation.
A line of collapse radiating out from a ground penetrating bomb, that was a successful strike on a tunnel.
Or look at that video of supposedly bombing tents. You notice those of us who looked at it with a critical eye saw the rocket launcher center frame?
Yes—thousands.
According to the World Health Organization, as of spring 2024, over 400 health workers in Gaza had been confirmed killed. But that’s just confirmed staff—many more unregistered volunteers, paramedics, and support staff are included in broader counts. The Gaza Health Ministry (whose raw casualty numbers have often been corroborated by UN agencies and independent human rights monitors) reported that well over 1,000 healthcare workers had been killed by that point. And that number has since grown.
Ok, not confirmed. The Ministry of Health is reporting Hamas numbers. There was a period where Hamas was claiming 10,000 buried in the rubble that the MoH was not counting, but it stayed 10,000 for ages. Nobody found?!
Moreover, dozens of hospitals and clinics have been bombed, raided, or rendered inoperable due to direct strikes, siege conditions, or lack of fuel. These are not just buildings—they’re protected medical zones under international law. Their destruction, and the killing of doctors and nurses, cannot simply be brushed aside unless you believe medical personnel lose their protected status by default just for being in Gaza.
So yes—thousands, when you include doctors, nurses, ambulance drivers, paramedics, technicians, and all medical staff killed in or around hospitals and ambulances, many of which were targeted or hit repeatedly. And if you’re surprised by that number, it only shows how effective the minimization effort has been.
None of that proves your point.
I'm saying duress, not guilt.
Then you’ve admitted something crucial—because duress doesn’t undermine the legitimacy of a role. It underscores the urgency of protecting it.
If journalists, aid workers, and medical staff are operating under duress, that doesn’t invalidate their status—it makes it even more important that they not be treated as combatants by default. You don’t solve coercion by removing protections; you reinforce them to prevent exactly the abuse you’re describing.
I'm saying the independent ones are under duress. And you're not establishing that they have been hit.
And if duress is the norm in Gaza—as you suggest—then you’re not just arguing against Hamas. You’re implicitly acknowledging that civilians are trapped in a system they didn’t choose, with no safe exit, no real autonomy, and no way to meet your standards of innocence. That doesn’t absolve Hamas. But it also doesn’t justify treating every civilian and civil servant as expendable collateral. That’s not justice. That’s surrendering to the logic of siege warfare—where everyone becomes a target because no one can escape.
Yeah, they're trapped. I can't fix that. Blame Hamas for setting up the situation with the intent of getting them killed.
And you have still not established that they failed in those precautions.
But that’s not how the burden works under international law. The obligation to demonstrate that all feasible precautions were taken—and that the anticipated military gain justified the foreseeable harm—rests with the actor conducting the strike, not the observer questioning it.
And when thousands of civilians are killed in densely populated areas, including in designated safe zones, refugee camps, schools, and hospitals, the question isn’t whether I can “prove” they failed. The scale and recurrence of harm demand justification—not blind trust. Repeated patterns of high civilian death, lack of transparency in target assessment, and post-strike silence don’t suggest due care. They raise serious red flags.
You’re treating absence of evidence as evidence of absence. That’s not a legal standard. That’s a loophole for impunity.
You are setting an impossible burden of proof, no way Israel is going to reveal the details.
You were critical of my pointing out that it's less than one dead per bomb, yet that makes it very clear that warning and evacuation was happening.
No, it doesn’t. A statistic like “less than one dead per bomb” is not a substitute for evidence of effective warnings or lawful precautions. It’s an average—an abstraction—pulled from a battlefield where reality plays out in specific, devastating incidents. You can drop a bomb that kills no one and another that kills 50, and still have your average look clean. That doesn’t prove compliance with the law. It hides what the law is designed to examine: proportionality, distinction, and foreseeability on a case-by-case basis.
Of course it's an average. That doesn't mean it doesn't reflect the care that is being taken.
If you want to prove legal and ethical conduct, cite evidence of the precautions taken before the bomb was dropped—not the body count after.
We showed the notice was given with that rocket launcher. Didn't change your position.
And if my aunt had balls she would be my uncle.
And that response is exactly the problem—it dismisses serious legal obligations and humanitarian consequences with a joke. But war crimes aren’t hypothetical. They’re documented, investigated, and prosecuted based on patterns of conduct, not witty deflections.
The point is you keep demanding the impossible.
You don’t get to brush aside civilian deaths, hospital bombings, and refugee camp strikes as rhetorical fluff. These aren’t punchlines—they’re matters of international law, human suffering, and moral responsibility. If the argument you’re making can’t be defended without mockery, maybe it’s not the civilians who should be questioned.
It was fabricated--by Saddam's people, not by us. There was some stuff we managed to capture early on and beyond that we had report after report after report from commanders who managed to keep the stuff away from the inspectors. We didn't realize the stuff had never existed in the first place other than on paper.
And that doesn't change the fact that had Iran not been able to subvert the country the end result of our invasion would be better for the people overall after only a year.
Then let’s take your framing seriously: if Saddam’s regime fabricated WMD capabilities, and the U.S. acted on that disinformation, the conclusion doesn’t shift from “fabricated justification” to “justified war.” It only changes who crafted the fiction. And it still indicts the decision to launch a full-scale invasion based on unverified intelligence, without a functioning international consensus, and despite massive civilian risk.
That’s not hindsight bias—it’s what weapons inspectors on the ground, like Hans Blix, were saying in real time. And if the argument becomes “we thought it was true,” then the threshold for war has been lowered to suspicion—something international law was specifically designed to prevent.
He said nothing had been found. False--stuff had been found and destroyed.
As for the claim that the invasion would have worked “but for Iran,” that collapses under the weight of history. The U.S. dismantled the Iraqi state apparatus, disbanded the army, and imposed a sectarian interim government—inviting the very instability that Iran later exploited. Blaming Iran for chaos after the U.S. created a vacuum isn’t accountability. It’s deflection.
If we want to learn anything from Iraq, it’s not that better post-war management would have saved it—it’s that wars launched on shaky intelligence, with no clear exit strategy and no local legitimacy, do not lead to peace. They lead to exactly what we saw: death, displacement, and the birth of new extremisms.
None of your factors are relevant. We royally screwed the pooch in pretending that Iraq could become a functioning democracy.
Part of the requirement of the cease fire of the first round of the turkey shoot would be that he would hand over all WMD. Failure to comply with the terms of a cease fire means the shooting can resume. And Saddam sure waddled and quacked non-compliance--because he believed he still had WMD. Threaten a cop with an empty gun and see how it goes.
That analogy fails for one key reason: international law is not governed by the same logic as a cop responding to a perceived threat. The ceasefire terms after the Gulf War required Iraq to disarm and submit to inspections—terms that, while repeatedly contentious, were being enforced through the UN inspection regime. By 2003, those inspectors were active, and Hans Blix was publicly requesting more time because they had found no evidence of active WMD programs. The process was working.
It was impossible for the process to work, thus a claim that it was working is garbage.
The stuff existed only in reports to Saddam. We can't find what doesn't exist. Nobody's going to admit it because that would get them killed.
Yes, Saddam bluffed. But bluffing is not the same as violating in a way that justifies war. That’s why the U.S. didn’t get UN Security Council authorization for the invasion. The legal threshold for resuming hostilities wasn’t met. You can’t claim legal justification while bypassing the very mechanisms designed to determine compliance.
No, Saddam didn't bluff. He knew we couldn't stay at a ready-to-invade position for a long time. Thus he would behave when we were in a ready to invade position and go back to defiance as soon as we weren't.
Saddam’s own misunderstanding of his arsenal doesn’t retroactively create a legitimate casus belli. That’s not how ceasefire enforcement—or just war theory—works. The standard isn’t “he looked suspicious” or “he acted guilty.” It’s verified breach. And when the inspectors on the ground were saying the opposite, the U.S. chose war anyway.
It's not that he looked suspicious. It's that his commanders kept reporting having successfully evaded the inspectors.
The inspectors were saying they didn't find anything. True, but that in no way rebuts the notion that Saddam's people were successful in shuffling things around. You keep presenting arguments that do not rebut what you are addressing!
