Yes we possess more WMD, but we don't glee and wee about them, and use them against a group of our own citizens... Mass killing in a war is a travesty, but a byproduct of the dynamic nature of war in itself...comparing mass killings to wartime versus not wartime towards citizens or subjects is wrong and inclinistic towards terroristic deeds... Rape and torture...ummm...? Saddam's son's...A governmental leader's son raped and tortured people, innocent people...and this was allowed...and if you didn't like it, you are maimed and tortured,...for fun governmental allowances made way for innocent people's rectum to be hooked and yanked out for sadistic motives...Where is the outcry? No where for years...That is terroristic, Macbeth...there is no based founding which you are trying to either blow off or imply... Invading others...triple ummm...? Let's see a tyrannical governmental process open to terroristic deeds and open to the vocal and financial support of terror...Open to the the worst torture and conventional mass killings available...Open to the use of WMD against his own subjects, and willing to unprovokingly invade a weaker country...a triple threat indeed. You said it right! You obviously don't believe in the concept of our country, or our constitution because you cite nothing in our governmental system or processes would seem to prevent us from doing what they did as I have stated above...Your stance is incoherent, and disillusioned hogwash...Maybe I should stash away half a million rounds and more guns, but I really do believe our government is capable of stopping atrocities as I have listed because of our defined rights...because of our triangular system of governmental processes...a government by the people for the people...Believe it or not...
just re-read it- what exactly is your problem w/ it, save the "mission accomplished" banner. i couldn't find a word in it that isn't still true today.
I don't think it would be fair. I don't think it would assure a favorable outcome. I just think it would be theirs, and it seems increasingly probable that that's the best they can hope for out of this. Ultimately I would envision the US acknowledging our error, and turning this over to a real international organization, and I also mean really turning it over; not worrying about our prestige, or citing medieval phrases like " We're the ones who suffered the most casualities, it's ours!" , but getting an American face off of this, and getting an international community behind it with the express purpose, not of ensuring favorable oil negotiations or a governmnet style of our choosing, but a turnover of power to whatever the form of government Iraqis as a whole feel suits them. Yes, there will be oppression. Sadly, that is the norm for human beings, particularly when coming out of violent, oppressive regimes. As an international community, we can do what we can to try and prevent that or hold them accountable if it happens, but there is no way, short of direct dictatorial power to ensure that it cannot happen. The options are direct control like Saddam had, colonialisation, or allowing for self-determination in a way we can neither control nor accurately predict. The fact is, it's their country. If we had shown an ability or even a willingness to either be true caretakers instead of overlords, or to have accomplishing our goals as a greater priority than having absolute control over this, we could possibly have pulled this off, with help from the UN, etc. We couldn't do the former and wouldn't do the latter, and now most Iraqis view us as establishing essentially what the Israelis have with the Palestinians. Essentially, I think it's too late to win the hearts and minds. Do you disagree? And if it is, as an occupying power, our presence will only incur increasing anger, rebellion, and hatred, and will only put off what is seemingly inevitable at this point. They're not going to hate us, suspect us, rebel against us, but follow our direction on how they should run their own country. If that was ever possible, which I doubt, it's not now.
I don't know exactly what glee and wee is, but we used WMD's to more effect than any nation in history. Aside from a qualifier to exonerate us, what difference does it make whether it happens within or without our borders? Uh...the gassing of the kurds occured during an armed rebellion...ie, wartime. Does that make it better? No. Doesn't work for us, either. That wasn't the direction of my "ummm"... Again, not the direction of my umm.. You realize that you are citing invading another country, for example, as something our government doesn't do...in a discussion about how best to handle a country we've just invaded...or about torture, etc. during a time when we are dealing with tortures we have comittied...
MacB, you seem to view the Iraqis as a homogeneous group, free to 'choose' to have a tyrannical leader, or otherwise. I tend to disagree. If a tyrannical leader seizes power after the US leaves a vacuum, i'm not so sure i'd call that a choice -- or accept it as merely them sorting it out for themselves. We would have created a vulnerability, and then abandoned them. Nothing noble in that! I tend to agree with you that the US's window to run this alone has pretty much slammed shut. I just think we're so far into this now, the worst thing we could do would be to leave them to fend for themselves. Should we get out of Iraq? Yes. But not before we've secured a process for them to recover.
I see you stopped reading once you got your quote -- and missed the point entirely. Actually, Juan Valdez, I did like your elegant language and was reacting to it , so I did use it. Others seemed to have been drawn to your excellent phrases. Though somewhat nuanced, I still see your post as basically regretting that we can't get away with we do not have sufficient lattitude for oppression to achieve "democracy-through-occupation " ofr other noble or valuable goals.. I basically don't believe in democracy through ocupation and oppression, especially in this case given the lack of necessity for this war. I don't believe the spin that we started the war because of a love of Iraqi freedom, democracy or an actual belief that we were defending ourselves, so I don't have much patience with scenarios that all assume noble intentions on our part. I think the facts are bearing me out, though my post was more more sarcastic than your actual post meritted.
Credibility? No, my friend, you've mistaken being a willing dupe (the UN) with credibility. The only thing that has currency to that bunch over in Iraq is brute force, plain and simple. Anything else shows weakness. The UN is just like those Arab nations, corrupt, hateful of Israel and no friend of America.
What's interesting is that, if you look, in the midst of this kind of hateful, bigoted rhetoric, you will see an almost childlike desire to have the world be easily delineated, to resolve itself into easily defined good and bad guys, with simply if not easy solutions. Black hats, white hats, "you'd better smile when you say that, mister!", Nazis stormtrooper vs. good old Indiana Jones, "the Ents have come to Isengard!", it goes on and on...and it would be a much easier world, if not a nicer one, if things really worked that way. They don't, though, and when you try and make them, well....we've seen the results already.
Hateful? Bigoted? I hate the UN and the anti-American, socialist values it stands for. It is an enemy of our interests, our sovereignty and something we do not need to be a part of. Any international organization that has LIBYA!!! as the head of the human rights council has absolutely zero credibility. The UN is just a way for these tinhorn, hellholes to unite together against the U.S. So why be part of something that is out to get you? If the UN is what a one-world govt would be like, God help us all. We are always good. Being good does not mean being perfect. If you don't think we are the good guys, what do you think of the fact that when we could carpet-bomb, we attempt to reduce civilian casualties? What do you think of all the foreign aid we send to the starving? We are the most generous and benevolent people ever (not the vile conquerers and "imperialist" the left tries to paint the U.S. as) to have global hegemony. I know you and your ilk would love for the U.S. to lose and be humbled before a world shouting "nyah-nyah," but personally, I pray that we are able to win this war and leave a prosperous, free Iraq. It is in the best interests of us all. So quit b****ing and moaning about why we went to war and get behind the effort to win it.
Originally posted by bamaslammer Er...yes... And, for you, this was relatively statesmanlike and even-handed.
And you, my friend, are mistaking fantasy with reality, again. All available evidence indicates that the UN has more credibility than we do in Iraq; to wit: Please note, all of these surveys were done BEFORE the April uprising and reprisals and the infamous Abu Ghraib prison photographs were done: http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/iraq/2004-04-29-gallup-poll-identity-full.htm Iraqi opinion all Iraqis (non Kurds) U.N. Favorable 33 (29) Unfavorable 23 (36) Neither favorable nor unfavorable 37 (27) U.S. Favorable 23 (12) Unfavorable 55 (63) Neither favorable nor unfavorable 17 (20) Proof. You're the one who has a problem understanding anything but force. Of course, according to your tautological system of morality ("Anything that the US does is morally correct because it was the US that did it") these concerns don't even register, and it's possible to justify any and all self -gratifying exercises without even having to think about it. Thank god you're not in a position to do any damage to anybody because of it.
Originally posted by MacBeth [/i] I don't know exactly what glee and wee is, but we used WMD's to more effect than any nation in history. Aside from a qualifier to exonerate us, what difference does it make whether it happens within or without our borders? The only time we (the United States) have used WMD is in response to absolute aggression which lends itself as an imminent threat... Uh...the gassing of the kurds occured during an armed rebellion...ie, wartime. Does that make it better? No. Doesn't work for us, either. When have we used WMD unprovoked by an aggressor? When have we unprovokingly gassed anyone. The fact he used them within the populace suggests uncontrollable tyrannical utilization...Of course, it doesn't work for us because we wouldn't commit terroristic acts like this. An armed rebellion isn't reason to gas everyone in the region of the country...A responsible governmental process like us would have handled this better... That wasn't the direction of my "ummm"... Again, not the direction of my umm.. You realize that you are citing invading another country, for example, as something our government doesn't do...in a discussion about how best to handle a country we've just invaded...or about torture, etc. during a time when we are dealing with tortures we have comittied... We didn't invade just because of the heck of it,...and to the disbelief of many not for resources either...Why we invaded was the result of the culmination of terror and terroristic actions from them, the exhaustion of non-combative means for them to comply to international actions...all DUE to Iraq's unprovoked own invasion to begin with...Saddam was uncontrolled fury as evidenced by all the international agreements he laughed at for years...As far as the "torture", we have dealt with it, and the actions of the 7 out of 205,578 troops will be punished...We have a governmental process which completely, absolutely DISALLOWS this...The terroristic governmental process led by Saddam encouraged this to the severest manner...Not only that, Saddam himself has taken an active role in the torture...There is a difference, and the difference I am talking about is clear unless you are so blinded by anti-American governmental processes...
The US used WMD on it's own people and other innocents before it knew it any better. In a weird way, that's possibly what led to the early death of John Wayne. http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a2_016.html . . . Cecil replies: I'm horrified to have to report this, John, but your girlfriend's claim is only slightly exaggerated. Of the 220 persons who worked on The Conqueror on location in Utah in 1955, 91 had contracted cancer as of the early 1980s and 46 died of it, including stars John Wayne, Susan Hayward, and Agnes Moorehead and director Dick Powell. Experts say under ordinary circumstances only 30 people out of a group of that size should have gotten cancer. The cause? No one can say for sure, but many attribute the cancers to radioactive fallout from U.S. atom bomb tests in nearby Nevada. The whole ghastly story is told in The Hollywood Hall of Shame by Harry and Michael Medved. But let's start at the beginning. . . . Now we have been using Uranium depleted tank shells that most folks not working for the US government say are pretty potent once they are shot in chemical and radiological ways and these tiny particles are dispersed indiscriminately every which way once they hit their target. http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99993627 Depleted uranium casts shadow over peace in Iraq 19:00 15 April 03 Wrecked tanks and vehicles litter the Iraqi countryside. Ruined buildings dominate towns and cities. Many were blown to pieces by shells tipped with depleted uranium, a material that the US and Britain say poses no long-term health or environmental risks. But many Iraqis, and a growing band of scientists, are not so sure. Last week, the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) announced it wanted to send a scientific team into Iraq as soon as possible to examine the effects of depleted uranium (DU). People's fears that DU leaves a deadly legacy must be addressed, says UNEP. Some scientists go further. Evidence is emerging that DU affects our bodies in ways we do not fully understand, they say, and the legacy could be real. DU is both radioactive and toxic. Past studies of DU in the environment have concluded that neither of these effects poses a significant risk. But some researchers are beginning to suspect that in combination, the two effects could do significant harm. Nobody has taken a hard look at the combined effect of both, says Alexandra Miller, a radiobiologist with the Armed Forces Radiobiology Research Institute in Bethesda, Maryland. "The bottom line is it might contribute to the risk." . . . During the Gulf war in 1991, the US and Britain fired an estimated 350 tonnes of DU at Iraqi tanks, a figure likely to be matched in the course of the current conflict. In the years since then, doctors in southern Iraq have reported a marked increase in cancers and birth defects, and suspicion has grown that they were caused by DU contamination from tank battles on farmland west of Basra. . . .
Woofer, you've be kidding me with this crap. Uh...we kind of need DU rounds to blow up tanks. They're inexpensive and are the most effective type of anti-tank round. They are not radioactive and I don't buy for a minute this research that they are harmful. Did you get this off a Greenpeace b.s. press release or some other anti-American left-wing looney site? Besides...it's war, not fiddlesticks! War is simple. You kill more of the enemy than they kill of you. But apparently, you'd like us to do it "humanely." Trust me, there is no "humane" way to kill the enemy. All ways are equally horrifying. When you are placed in the position when you have to do so in the name of your country, come and talk to me about it and let me see if you'd still consider that there are actually "humane" ways of killing the enemy. When are you little leftist whiners going to quit wringing your hands? The answer is simple.....never.
God, you are one twisted SOB. Glad you're not running our country, because if you were, we'd have already clutched our ankles and yelled to the terrorist hordes "do your worst." It's internationalist weasels like yourself who cry and whine about some humiliation of prisoners and how our war was "illegitimate" and "unilateralist" who need a serious reality check. I don't give a flying rusty **** if we have "credibility" over an organization (the UN) that has done absolutely nothing but act as an impediment to the interests and sovereignty of our nation.
bamaslammer, let me go over what just happened: I claimed that, no matter what you say about the UN, it has more crediblity among Iraqis, arabs & the rest of the world than we do. You claimed that I was wrong. I backed it up with empirical evidence, showing that the UN was PERCEIVED among Iraqis (and several other countries) to have more crediblity/trustworthiness or more favorably than the US. You respond with nothing on point. Instead you respond with an ill informed, profanity filled, hyperbolic tangent about how my UN worshipping ass is, blah blah blah I did not express any personal view of the UN or its effectivness. I was arguing about perception abroad, and in Iraq in particular. If you would like to know my personal view of the UN, you may do so in the following thread, which I posted yesterday: http://bbs.clutchcity.net/showthread.php?s=&threadid=77200&perpage=30&pagenumber=3 So, on that subject, no I do not favor a policy of capitulation to terrorists. We witnessed the folly of that when Ronald Reagan hiked up his skirt and ran away after Iranian backed terrorists murdered 287 marines in Lebanon in 1982, and then continued to negotiate with their government backers (while they tortured and murdered American hostages) and sold them arms for their release. (yes, I know, you in the past defended this policy by saying "We shouldn't have been there anyway." What kind of awful strategy is that? I'm glad you weren't in charge after September 11, we would have just pulled our troops out of Saudi Arabia and run!)
If you don't think we are the good guys, what do you think of the fact that when we could carpet-bomb, we attempt to reduce civilian casualties? What do you think of all the foreign aid we send to the starving? We are the most generous and benevolent people ever Bama I don't know if you were around when I proved once and for all without challenge that this is not true. The US is actually quite selfish and contributes little percentage wise compared to other wealthy countries. THIS IS JUST AN URBAN LEGEND TYPE THING. Now if you include the money spent on foreign wars and invasions and weapons sales-- at times to both sides-- at great corporate profit) we might be pretty high. The $200 billion we have spent so far on Iraq is not really "foreign aid". In terms of humanitarian aid per capita the US is quite stingy for a wealthy developed country. I guess I should have saved that research to trot out every 6 months or so.
Guess the names of the top two beneficiaries of US foreign aid. Most people except bama know the answer is Israel and Egypt. Last I checked about fifty percent of US grants and *forgiven* loans went to Israel and to prop up Egypt after 1979 ( so in essence it's going to support Israel.). The Jewish state is a permanent welfare colony of the US. As a percentage of GDP, the US ranks near last among developed nations in foreign aid, even including all the military aid we send out. For the current price of the Iraq War we could have doubled our foreign aid dollars. The irony of the DU thing is you missed that that is almost exactly the justification used for testing the nukes on our own soldiers and inadvertantly on Pacific Islanders until we knew better, and then kept on doing it a bit longer.
