NationStates Jolt Archive

While I lived in England I got into the habit of watching the BBC News. Interesting that the BBC take on the progress of the war is radically different than that of the President, Rumsfeld, Fox, ABC, CBS, CNN, or NBC.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/4145585.stm


The head of Iraq's intelligence service Gen Muhammad Shahwani now puts the number of insurgents at 200,000, of which 40,000 are said to be the hard core and the rest active supporters.

These figures do not represent an insurgency. They represent a war.


Oh, and this bit at the end.


The level of attacks is now so intense and sophisticated that it is not surprising that the former British representative to the former Coalition Authority, Sir Jeremy Greenstock, said recently that the insurgency was "irremediable" and "ineradicable" by US and other foreign troops alone.

"It depends on the Iraqis. We have lost the primary control," he said.

Recent events indicate that Iraqis have lost the primary control as well.


"Irremediable" and "Ineradicable" means you can't remedy it or eradicate it.

And?

You must understand that Americans are used to right-wing propaganda on all their news networks. When they see the BBC telling it like it is, they assume that it is some sort of communist news service.

You must understand that Americans are used to right-wing propaganda on all their news networks. When they see the BBC telling it like it is, they assume that it is some sort of communist news service.
British Broadcasting Communists. :D

Yeah, I saw this too. Lucky me, I've got almost a brand new war waiting for me in a few months :)

Bah, that's exactly what the media is now - propaganda and commerce. It's bad on all sides - and thats how it is all over the world. The States take the cake though, as a Canadian not too far from the border I get to watch our news stories and theres, and I'm pretty sure there's a huge difference in the approaches American media takes versus Canadian media.

20,000 Iaqi insurgents...

In other news this week:
The Pope admits to Catholic leanings
A bear says "Ok once or twice I have shat in the woods"

O and to any American BBC bashers:

The reason our news service seems different to yours is that it actually tells the truth (or as close to the truth as it is possible for the sensationalist media to get). Unlike in America, Britain has been a (relatively) free country for a very long time and as such will long live out any War on Terror. Our press has been relatively free for a very long time: look at the Times in 1789. The Time's motto should be "Critising the government since 1789"

I'm very surprised that nobody trotted out the old line :"Yeah, but a lot of the so-called insurgents are foreigners".

This was one that has always amused me, as I can't help wondering whether they regard the American, British etc troops as somehow "native".

There are no insurgents in Iraq. Certainly not in those numbers.

Everyone knows that the Iraqi people are unanimous in embracing peace, freedom and democracy. It's how it was supposed to be all along. That many people rejecting western-style democracy? Such widespread popular support for an insurgency? What an absurd suggestion! They have no reason to do so.

I really don't see what the provisional government and Coalition forces are whining about. :rolleyes:

There are no insurgents in Iraq. Certainly not in those numbers.

Everyone knows that the Iraqi people are unanimous in embracing peace, freedom and democracy. It's how it was supposed to be all along. That many people rejecting western-style democracy? Such widespread popular support for an insurgency? What an absurd suggestion! They have no reason to do so.

I really don't see what the provisional government and Coalition forces are whining about. :rolleyes:

Cannot understand how they could possibly be so ungrateful.

We removed a dreadful tyrant from them.

So what if he hasn't been tried, and doesn't really look like he will be.
So what if the Coalition forces are still in the country.
So what if the reports of torture, murder and mistreatment of the people continue.
So what if the "contracts" for "reconstruction" have gone to the well-connected US firms.
So what if unfriendly news sources have been forcibly closed down.
So what if the seperate ambitions and ideals of the Kurds, Shite and Sunni cannot all possibly be met in a "new" Iraq.
So what if there is no democratic tradition in Iraq.

How they could possibly be so ungrateful.

You must understand that Americans are used to right-wing propaganda on all their news networks. When they see the BBC telling it like it is, they assume that it is some sort of communist news service.

How do you know who's right? Who's got the real info?

I remember people having the same arguments during the Cold War.

Is there a missile gap? Is there a bomber gap? Does the USSR have gulags?

I seem to recall that the BBC was not always right.

I'm sure that the total number of insurgents can't be known. Did the BBC or the US government call them all into the street to be counted?

It is certainly possible to win a war against insurgency. Or do you think the Malayan campaign by the British was a failure? Or Aden? You just have to be willing to kill them.

If your own population at home, far from the war, decides that it's lost, then it's lost. No matter how many insurgents there are. If they decide that it's ok to kill as many insurgents (and anyone who happens to be standing nearby) as it takes, then they'll win.

Wars are not without cost. Human costs. Not money. You have to be willing to pay in blood. Right or left, US government or BBC, you have to be willing.

I would bet that the UK population and the BBC employees are already of a mind that they're not willing to do that. So I believe that colors their assessment and count as much as the US government's willingness to fight.

Tell me, how in the world do you think we could get an honest count? Do you think the insurgents would actually report a real number? Or do you think they would inflate it to look good? If the US is deflating the numbers, everyone else with an opinion on the issue is massaging the numbers as well.

Because these numbers came out of someone's ass.

Oh yeah, they just came out of someone's ass, the Head of Iraqi Intelligence. They are nowhere near as good as the numbers Bush pulls out of his ass.

Oh yeah, they just came out of someone's ass, the Head of Iraqi Intelligence. They are nowhere near as good as the numbers Bush pulls out of his ass.

That's what I'm saying. Everyone is pulling numbers out of their ass - whatever numbers will support their opinion.

There's no way anyone can tell me any of those numbers are accurate.

That's what I'm saying. Everyone is pulling numbers out of their ass - whatever numbers will support their opinion.

There's no way anyone can tell me any of those numbers are accurate.


Well true, but the numbers from the Iraqi intelligence chief and the concerns of the former British representative to the former Coalition Authority, Sir Jeremy Greenstock appear to be more of the "Oh Shit! What do we do now!" category. Whereas the Bush numbers seem to be of the "Wishful thinking" variety.

As apposed to bringing peace to Iraq the coming election is likely to spark a civil war.

Since other nations have declared that they're not willing to help, they shouldn't be shouting advice from the sidelines.

The British are there, so they have a right to make criticisms.

As for whether or not the US is doing the right thing at this point (considering the mess it appears to be), I would do something a little different.

1. Break up Iraq into three nations. Kurdish north, Sunni central, Shiite south.
2. Tell each one that as soon as they have a constitution (which they will write without my assistance), and can hold an election (using their own security), that the US will leave.

I bet that the Kurds and Shiites get their affairs in order in just a few months.

The Sunnis, if they really want the US to leave, would also get their affairs in order.

I see no reason to keep the boundaries of a country whose imaginary yet historical borders were drawn by some British person years ago.

British Broadcasting Communists. :D

Badger Baiting Conspirators.

duh

Since other nations have declared that they're not willing to help, they shouldn't be shouting advice from the sidelines.

The British are there, so they have a right to make criticisms.

As for whether or not the US is doing the right thing at this point (considering the mess it appears to be), I would do something a little different.

1. Break up Iraq into three nations. Kurdish north, Sunni central, Shiite south.
2. Tell each one that as soon as they have a constitution (which they will write without my assistance), and can hold an election (using their own security), that the US will leave.

I bet that the Kurds and Shiites get their affairs in order in just a few months.

The Sunnis, if they really want the US to leave, would also get their affairs in order.

I see no reason to keep the boundaries of a country whose imaginary yet historical borders were drawn by some British person years ago.


I agree with the provision that the oil resources of the Iraqi area get split between the three. An independent Kurdistan will mean the EU and NATO must assert influence on Turkey to accept the idea. Perhaps a Kurdistan discount on oil as well as pipelining and refinery profits will smooth the matter over. With just a few years of fast paced development Turkey and Iraq could be the inexpensive fast paced conduit of oil to the EU from the Middle East.

I agree with the provision that the oil resources of the Iraqi area get split between the three. An independent Kurdistan will mean the EU and NATO must assert influence on Turkey to accept the idea. Perhaps a Kurdistan discount on oil as well as pipelining and refinery profits will smooth the matter over. With just a few years of fast paced development Turkey and Iraq could be the inexpensive fast paced conduit of oil to the EU from the Middle East.

Now who did you say wanted to loot Iraq?

and I'm pretty sure there's a huge difference in the approaches American media takes versus Canadian media.

the buffalo station that my parents like to watch for their news had this whole thing last year about how it was satanists who killed lacy peterson.


...wtf?


you'll never hear that kind of shit on the new vr or city tv or other news stations that are for local area news.

1. Break up Iraq into three nations. Kurdish north, Sunni central, Shiite south.
wont' happen. the kurds will never get their own country because then turkey will be all over them. you see, turkey has its own problem with kurds wanting indepedance... if the iraqi kurds are freed, then the turkish kurds will start to get ideas (or so the theory goes) and want to separate. since turkey has also horribly treated their kurds, yet like their land, they don't want this. thus if a kurdish state is born, you can bet that turkey will kick its ass within a month.

Dakini, I suppose you have a better idea? Then let's hear it. I'm not sure the Turks would be all over it, because they probably value being in the EU more than being total dicks.

Dakini, I suppose you have a better idea? Then let's hear it. I'm not sure the Turks would be all over it, because they probably value being in the EU more than being total dicks.

Holy shit I hate you.

Yeah, everything's just that simple. Turkey will have no problem with the Kurds, because no more than 1 idea can ever enter the mind of the entire country of Turkey at one time. And never at any time is it possible for any country to exist with any conflicts of interests.

Not that you actually beleive it, but hey, lets make rediculous assumptions and stand by our own point, rather than attempt to ever learn anything from a discussion, right

You must understand that Americans are used to right-wing propaganda on all their news networks. When they see the BBC telling it like it is, they assume that it is some sort of communist news service.


Yes, Americans don't use the internet to read other news sources(BBC, Canada Online, North Korean News Service(the ONLY truth in this world), al-jazeera, etc)....they just live in caves and believe everything Pope Bush tells them.
[/sarcasm]


So the next time I read(from the BBC) that the French government has stated it's troops did murder 20+ protesting Ivorian civilians(after spending the previous month categorically denying it), I'll know it's just propaganda.
[/extreme sarcasm]

Don't panic...

I've been following this, along with all the estimates anyone else release, and a bit of math of my own. I think the middle-of-the-road numbers are that there are some 5-7,000 people who have insurgency as their full-time occupation, plus another 15-20,000 part-timers (who may be full-time criminals/bandits, and often they are getting paid for their work for the insurgency). There are probably ten to fifteen times as many people who would shelter insurgents, but will not participate actively. So, how many people is that? 5000? 27,000? 250,000? It depends on what group you're talking about.

In terms of a stand-up fight, the insurgents now would be able to field five to fifteen companies (or equivalent), although they usually only concentrate in company strength for major attacks. The recent excitement in Mosul and Baquba was probably two companies and one company respectively. They are considerably weaker after the loss of roughly five companies in Fallujah and ten in Najaf last summer. So as a field army they are probably half as strong as they were at their peak. A vast quantity of ammo and weapons has been lost, destroyed or used up.

As a covert organization, they are doing ok but not great. There are areas where they cannot operate at all, and they are being pushed by agressive raids by the new security forces. The total weight of IED attacks has remained constant or decreased slightly, ditto assasinations and kidnappings (however they go for higher-profile targets now, which may be a sign of desperation).

Politically they are doing very badly. They have not managed to produce the kind of American and government over-reaction that would bring more people over to them. Instead this is now widely perceived as a Sunni vs Shia fight. The Sunni boycott of the elections, if it happens, will confirm that view, and whatever the outcry about "illegitimate elections" in the west, domestically it will result in Sunnis being marginalized... I think there will be very little Shia support for what is turning into an all-Sunni insurgency at this point. The Shia will certainly not forget that over 600 people have already been killed in terrorist bombings of Shia mosques.

"Irremediable" and "Ineradicable" means you can't remedy it or eradicate it.
Actually we could do it alone, but it would require us to kill at least 50% of the population. However the idea is to make the Iraqi people responsible for themselves. The faster they fight the people under Zarqawi as well, the faster the situation will be resolved. Most of the "insurgents" at this point are actually invaders. I don't see why this is a surprise. The only way this will work is if the Iraqi people get behind it. As more and more Iraqis and iraqi children are killed by the supposed "insurgents" the greater the following our side will have.

That's what I'm saying. Everyone is pulling numbers out of their ass - whatever numbers will support their opinion.

There's no way anyone can tell me any of those numbers are accurate.

True, true. However, one can estimate, person-hours per attack times number of attacks equals people for example.

Are there more than a half million insurgents? (people who actively work at it) No way. Are there more than a thousand? Yes, certainly. More than five thousand? Probably. Less than fifty thousand? Probably. I think we can reasonably narrow it down to 10-20 thousand. Is that accurate? No, but it's better than running around screaming ;) Especially since on the scale of Iraq that is a very small number. Still very dangerous, but not overwhelming.

I don't see why people are still talking about an insurgency. The natural superiority of the Western way of doing things is by now self-evident. Any trouble the Coalition forces are having there can only be the result of carelessness.

2. Tell each one that as soon as they have a constitution (which they will write without my assistance), and can hold an election (using their own security), that the US will leave.
That would be an outright lie. The US has absolutely NO plans whatsoever to leave Iraq anytime in the near future, or at least until oil is no longer a viable reason to stay.

How many US bases are being built in Iraq???????

I'm sure that the total number of insurgents can't be known. Did the BBC or the US government call them all into the street to be counted?
Hahaha. I was thinking the same thing. Any number of account that ends with a lot of zeros is clearly made up.
Because these numbers came out of someone's ass.
Right, but an altogether different ass that shat out the WMD crap, I mean - statistics, don't you agree?

I don't see why people are still talking about an insurgency. The natural superiority of the Western way of doing things is by now self-evident. Any trouble the Coalition forces are having there can only be the result of carelessness.
Are you out of your mind? Or am I mistaking sarcasm for geniune thought?

That would be an outright lie. The US has absolutely NO plans whatsoever to leave Iraq anytime in the near future, or at least until oil is no longer a viable reason to stay.

How many US bases are being built in Iraq???????
Calm down a bit. He was talking about what his plan would be if he were running things.

I think there will be very little Shia support for what is turning into an all-Sunni insurgency at this point. The Shia will certainly not forget that over 600 people have already been killed in terrorist bombings of Shia mosques.
Okay, but wouldn't it be helpful for the Shi'ia majority to help quell the disruption of Sunni insurgency? Wouldn't it make the slightest bit of sense for them to help break up this "little band of foreign terrorists" for their own good? Any evidence of that going on in your research?

Okay, but wouldn't it be helpful for the Shi'ia majority to help quell the disruption of Sunni insurgency? Wouldn't it make the slightest bit of sense for them to help break up this "little band of foreign terrorists" for their own good? Any evidence of that going on in your research?
The different religious factions are mostly seperated by area. The biggest exception to the rule is Baghdad but most of the terrorists are not actually stationed in Baghdad itself, they come there from other places in the Sunni Triangle, so named because it is composed mainly of Sunnis.

Okay, but wouldn't it be helpful for the Shi'ia majority to help quell the disruption of Sunni insurgency? Wouldn't it make the slightest bit of sense for them to help break up this "little band of foreign terrorists" for their own good?

Of course, but that's applying a standard of logic which is an inapplicable concept in that country right now. Put yourself in their shoes; how would you feel about ratting out your countrymen to foreign invaders, (even if these "countrymen" of yours were killing the real countrymen of yours and trying to destroy their conversion to self-sovereignty), especially given the infidelic light most Arabs hold outsiders in? Even more important is that most people are terrified of the insurgents. They bitch slap the Iraqi police around, they blow up people who try to work with us, they show videos of IED's taking out Hummers. It's easy to say that Iraqis should be stalwart and ignore all the violence, but it's different when it's a matter of you having a good chance of being gunned down for working with us, not to mention the inherent guilt (regardless of being for a good cause). They definitely should, given the intentions of each side (freedom/fundamentalist islamic nationalist state), but their cowardice and selling out of the futures of their children is somewhat understandable when considering the general weakness of most people (of all nations).

(Yes, I was being sarcastic with my earlier comments.)

Both sides show a willingness to fight each other, but as Aryanis says, neither side is going to use a foreign invading force as a proxy. In spite of the sectarian violence also taking place right now, and the attacks on the civil and legal institutions of the fledgling state, the fight against the occupation has priority. The Coalition is correct in saying that if it leaves, Iraq will slide into civil war. But until the Iraqis are free to get on with their civil war, they will direct their energies towards eliminating the greater problem.

Rock, hard place.

Kind of like Jewish extremist groups fighting the Roman occupation instead of each other...

Maybe we should do the Diaspora thing on them. Just like the Romans did in 73.

Everybody here seems to be talking about how to defeat the Iraqi resistance... doesn't anybody on this board take the position that the Iraqis have the RIGHT to resist the occupation?

Everybody here seems to be talking about how to defeat the Iraqi resistance... doesn't anybody on this board take the position that the Iraqis have the RIGHT to resist the occupation?

Well, I'm all for resistance. But, if you resist, and you legitimize resistance, you also legitimize the other side attempting to eliminate the resistance.

What's good for the goose is good for the gander.

So if you're Johnny Jihadi, and you get your head blown off in the street, don't come crying to the BBC about the bad, bad Americans. You asked for it, just as they asked for armed resistance by invading.

Small point - it doesn't help your public relations index to slit the throats of terrified civilians on TV while gloating about your cause.

I think it's a fair bet to say that it harms public relations being pictured forcing people to form naked human pyramids or threatening them with dogs, or having them photographed with bags over their heads and the size of their penises ridiculed and gloating about it.

Thus if you are a US Soldier involved with that, and you get your head blown off in the street, you should not go running complaining about those bad, bad "Jihadists" either.

Well, I think you're making the mistake of creating moral equivalency between the violence of the oppressor and the violence of the oppressed against their oppressor. People fighting for freedom are not the same as the people fighting to take it away.. one's cause is just, and the other's is not, even is both sides sometimes use less than just means to get their way. Certain elements of the Iraqi resistance who may not be representative of the whole commit atrocities, while the Americans level entire cities. Who's the bigger killer in that regard?

More importantly, what is each side objectively fighting for?

Sometimes people will fight for the freedom to have a dictatorship, because it is their dictatorship.

For example, Nazi Germany vs USSR. Both were oppressive genocidal dictatorships. Whose cause was just? Instinctively we may say one, but that aligns us with the other.

France vs Algeria. The colonial oppressor, or the warring fascist dictatorship and Islamic fundamentalist movement? Do I really need to pick one?

This is why I do not see any side as being inherently right or wrong in a war. The Americans in Iraq, and the insurgents, I view as morally equivalent. No right or wrong side, only one and the other.

Sometimes people will fight for the freedom to have a dictatorship, because it is their dictatorship.

For example, Nazi Germany vs USSR. Both were oppressive genocidal dictatorships. Whose cause was just? Instinctively we may say one, but that aligns us with the other.

France vs Algeria. The colonial oppressor, or the warring fascist dictatorship and Islamic fundamentalist movement? Do I really need to pick one?

This is why I do not see any side as being inherently right or wrong in a war. The Americans in Iraq, and the insurgents, I view as morally equivalent. No right or wrong side, only one and the other.The attacker usually has the moral lower ground because they create war where there need not.

I think it's a fair bet to say that it harms public relations being pictured forcing people to form naked human pyramids or threatening them with dogs, or having them photographed with bags over their heads and the size of their penises ridiculed and gloating about it.

Thus if you are a US Soldier involved with that, and you get your head blown off in the street, you should not go running complaining about those bad, bad "Jihadists" either.

I'm saying that no one in Iraq should be complaining. Soldier or insurgent, you knew the job was dangerous when you took it.

And frat boy stunts, while hardly comparable in Western eyes to throat slitting of civilians, may be equally inciteful to Iraqis. So be careful how you offend.

I'm saying that no one in Iraq should be complaining. Soldier or insurgent, you knew the job was dangerous when you took it.

And frat boy stunts, while hardly comparable in Western eyes to throat slitting of civilians, may be equally inciteful to Iraqis. So be careful how you offend.
insurgents were forced into fighting though.

insurgents were forced into fighting though.
[Sarcasm mode]

But you see, there are no native insurgents, because all Iraqis want freedom and American-style democracy. There's only a few hundred foreign fighters there by choice, and I don't see how the entire US army could be having so much trouble with just a few people. :confused:

I'm saying that no one in Iraq should be complaining. Soldier or insurgent, you knew the job was dangerous when you took it.

And frat boy stunts, while hardly comparable in Western eyes to throat slitting of civilians, may be equally inciteful to Iraqis. So be careful how you offend.

But the civillians are caught in it all, and are taking casualties. They did not as for this.

The frat boy stunts were certainly offensive to Iraq civillians. As you say about being careful who you offend, it offended the majority of Iraqis and other muslims who saw it, and indeed the world population as a whole.

Insurgents, whether they are native or not, are not forced to fight.

They could just as well stay home. Just like soldiers who volunteered to join the military - they could have stayed home and worked for Wal Mart.

Insurgents, whether they are native or not, are not forced to fight.

They could just as well stay home. Just like soldiers who volunteered to join the military - they could have stayed home and worked for Wal Mart.lol. Indeed but they have the right to complain if they are forced to work for wall mart when someone is stealing their oil. They have the right to fight and to complain.

How do you know the resistance is fighting for dictatorship? Have you taken a poll to see how many are Baathists, Islamic fundamentalists, or just patriotic Iraqis who want to be free of American imperialism? it's a pretty goddamn big assumption. If anything, they're fighting AGAINST dictatorship opposed from above by American guns. And even though as an American it sucks to see so many young, working class people suckered into dieing for an idiotic cause, it doesn't change who's right and who's wrong in this situation.

Having the right to do something is not the same as being forced to do something.

I have the right to vote, but I don't have to (there's no mandatory voting in the US).

Yes, they have the right to resist, but they don't have to.

How do you know the resistance is fighting for dictatorship? Have you taken a poll to see how many are Baathists, Islamic fundamentalists, or just patriotic Iraqis who want to be free of American imperialism? it's a pretty goddamn big assumption. If anything, they're fighting AGAINST dictatorship opposed from above by American guns. And even though as an American it sucks to see so many young, working class people suckered into dieing for an idiotic cause, it doesn't change who's right and who's wrong in this situation.

And who is right? And who is wrong? And what is right? And what is wrong?

In the end, history will be written by the winners. So we'll have to wait for that one.

Having the right to do something is not the same as being forced to do something.

I have the right to vote, but I don't have to (there's no mandatory voting in the US).

Yes, they have the right to resist, but they don't have to.
And you're not forced into paying your taxes. It's just that they'll send you in jail. You can stop paying if you want.

And you're not forced into paying your taxes. It's just that they'll send you in jail. You can stop paying if you want.

Wrong comparison. You don't have a right to pay taxes, and you don't have the right to stop paying them.

Wrong comparison. You don't have a right to pay taxes, and you don't have the right to stop paying them.
OK you're not forced into eating food. It's just that you will starve to death if you don't.

But will insurgents be killed if they all stopped fighting today?

I hardly think so. They could just as well buy into the whole thing, and run for office, and take part in the system.

Raise kids, keep a job in the new Iraqi oil company, sit at home in the evenings and smoke and hold their wives.

I bet the US military would leave sooner, too, if all the insurgents stacked their weapons in the street and went home to their mothers.

But will insurgents be killed if they all stopped fighting today?

I hardly think so. They could just as well buy into the whole thing, and run for office, and take part in the system.

Raise kids, keep a job in the new Iraqi oil company, sit at home in the evenings and smoke and hold their wives.

I bet the US military would leave sooner, too, if all the insurgents stacked their weapons in the street and went home to their mothers.On which planet are you living? The iraqi oil company is Halliburton.
The US is here to stay. Look at Saudi Arabia.
They'll have a capitalist dictatorship and they'll have to sell their country to the US and they'll sell it in US dollars and they'll elect their capitalist puppets.

On which planet are you living? The iraqi oil company is Halliburton.
The US is here to stay. Look at Saudi Arabia.

I guess that explains why there are no US military forces in Saudi Arabia, and haven't been for a year.

There is an Iraqi national oil company. Halliburton may have massive contracts in Iraq, but they aren't making money from oil - they are making money from support services such as pipeline maintenance and government contracting.

It's likely that the US military would drastically reduce its presence in Iraq compared to what it is now if the insurgency stopped completely.

Too bad there's not a Gandhi equivalent in Islam. Gandhi was far more successful than any insurgency ever was. And he didn't fire a shot.

That's the choice they could make as well. Massive, non-violent protest. But it's not in their blood, now, is it?

That's the choice they could make as well. Massive, non-violent protest. But it's not in their blood, now, is it?
Heh, but first they'd still be killed in their thousands, just like the British did in India.

"Non-violent protester, eh? Taste my club!"

I guess that explains why there are no US military forces in Saudi Arabia, and haven't been for a year.

There is an Iraqi national oil company. Halliburton may have massive contracts in Iraq, but they aren't making money from oil - they are making money from support services such as pipeline maintenance and government contracting.

It's likely that the US military would drastically reduce its presence in Iraq compared to what it is now if the insurgency stopped completely.

Too bad there's not a Gandhi equivalent in Islam. Gandhi was far more successful than any insurgency ever was. And he didn't fire a shot.

That's the choice they could make as well. Massive, non-violent protest. But it's not in their blood, now, is it?Look at the saudi royal family. They all eat at Bush's table. Don't try to sell me your iraqi national oil company stuff. Do they sell their oil in iraqi dinars? Come on you can do better propaganda than that.

Heh, but first they'd still be killed in their thousands, just like the British did in India.

"Non-violent protester, eh? Taste my club!"


I'm not sure the US would fire on an unarmed crowd. Can you post a link to a news story where the US fired on a crowd of civilians where they were definitely NOT fired on by anyone first?

And how long ago would that be?

Something tells me that the non-violent protest thing would work far more effectively now. If you think the US gets bad press for killing insurgents who slit the throats of civilians on TV, think what would happen if the US merely "detained" non-violent protesters.

It would be a three-ring media circus, complete with corn dogs and cotton candy.

I'm not sure the US would fire on an unarmed crowd. Can you post a link to a news story where the US fired on a crowd of civilians where they were definitely NOT fired on by anyone first?

And how long ago would that be?

Something tells me that the non-violent protest thing would work far more effectively now. If you think the US gets bad press for killing insurgents who slit the throats of civilians on TV, think what would happen if the US merely "detained" non-violent protesters.

It would be a three-ring media circus, complete with corn dogs and cotton candy.Do you remember the millions who walked all other the world in protest against the war? At the end of the day, the gun talks louder than words.

Do you remember the millions who walked all other the world in protest against the war?

I was on the Mall in DC, and I didn't see anyone there walking in protest against the war. So, no, I don't remember it.

Pretty familiar with the protest scene here. If it's a significant protest in the US, the Metro is packed with protesters on their way to the Mall downtown.

think what would happen if the US merely "detained" non-violent protesters.
Every time there's a trade conference, a bunch of white middle-class kids chain themselves to railings and get hauled off, in the US itself. Not too many people give a damn. Poor black people far, far away being hit with a truncheon and arrested? I honestly don't see the compliant media making much of a fuss.

So, I suppose you think that the insurgents are better off from a PR perspective by slitting throats, and could not possibly get a better street rep amongst the world population by doing non-violent protest?

In other words, you believe that Gandhi would have gotten better results by leading an armed insurrection that involved beheadings?

I was on the Mall in DC, and I didn't see anyone there walking in protest against the war. So, no, I don't remember it.

Pretty familiar with the protest scene here. If it's a significant protest in the US, the Metro is packed with protesters on their way to the Mall downtown.
Ah because if it is not in the US it doesn't count?
So you say the iraqis should walk peacefully in Washington to get heard?
How many of them can afford a flight? How many of them can even have a visa to come to protest in Washington?

So, I suppose you think that the insurgents are better off from a PR perspective by slitting throats, and could not possibly get a better street rep amongst the world population by doing non-violent protest?

In other words, you believe that Gandhi would have gotten better results by leading an armed insurrection that involved beheadings?
Ghandi was fighting for a country of 1 billion people against a decadent country of 50 million. He actually had the means to block the trade routes and stuff. The US doesn't give a damn about a few people blocking roads in Iraq.

Ah because if it is not in the US it doesn't count?
So you say the iraqis should walk peacefully in Washington to get heard?
How many of them can afford a flight? How many of them can even have a visa to come to protest in Washington?

No, I'm not saying that I didn't know about the millions who walked.

But, they don't keep walking now, do they? So they must not really believe in the cause, as the people in India did, who kept protesting in vast numbers that dwarf any protest you've talked about.

It would be hard to argue with making changes in Iraq and leaving Iraq if 90 percent of the people there suddenly put down their work and walked to Baghdad and sat in the streets.
Can you imagine the international reaction?

Even if the Americans just sat there in shocked silence?

But no, you would rather see Margaret Hassan take a bullet in the head on al-Jazeera.

Ghandi was fighting for a country of 1 billion people against a decadent country of 50 million. He actually had the means to block the trade routes and stuff. The US doesn't give a damn about a few people blocking roads in Iraq.

Wow. Then the numbers would even favor doing the violent thing even more. We could get results faster by killing.

In other words, you believe that Gandhi would have gotten better results by leading an armed insurrection that involved beheadings?
Considering how weak the UK was during the inter-war period, in all likelihood, he would have gotten results faster. The UK would simply not have been able to contain a widespread uprising.

Wow. Then the numbers would even favor doing the violent thing even more. We could get results faster by killing.Indeed but he was a great man and he valued life above getting results fast. Ghandi is propably the man of the last century.

I'm not sure the US would fire on an unarmed crowd.
Can you post a link to a news story where the US fired on a crowd of civilians where they were definitely NOT fired on by anyone first?.
Maybe you'll believe the official line of "they fired on us first, though only they got injured" which is trotted out regardless of the actual circumstances, so here's a video of that happening:
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/articlee6896.htm

think what would happen if the US merely "detained" non-violent protesters.
By our army's own estimates, at least 3/4 of those in Abu Ghraib are innocent of any criminal infraction. We sweep through whole neighborhoods and pickup every able-bodied male and some not, and MAYBE the innocents get released a year later.

Hell, during the republican convention the police did that in New York - they took giant nets and swept up every protestor, tourist, and delivery boy on whole blocks of the city and shipped them off to a warehouse.

frat boy stunts.
You're swallowing Bushie propaganda calling torture and murder "frat boy stunts". Fraternities which engaged in sexual abuse and other felonies would be de-chartered very quickly.

Indeed but he was a great man and he valued life above getting results fast. Ghandi is propably the man of the last century.


So why should that be? Why should there not be a Gandhi of this century? Are you not capable?

Hell, during the republican convention the police did that in New York - they took giant nets and swept up every protestor, tourist, and delivery boy on whole blocks of the city and shipped them off to a warehouse.
Yep, and the same thing happened at the DNC as well, but nobody cared.

Yep, and the same thing happened at the DNC as well, but nobody cared.
From the tone of your post, that's clearly not true - you care and I would too if you provided details or evidence.

So why should that be? Why should there not be a Gandhi of this century? Are you not capable?
Well the US is not decadent and it's got more money in it's military than the whole iraqi budget. I don't think something like that can work in this case. It only works when the opposing side is vastly inferior and dependant on you.

You're swallowing Bushie propaganda calling torture and murder "frat boy stunts". Fraternities which engaged in sexual abuse and other felonies would be de-chartered very quickly.

In 1978, I was taken blindfolded to a field in the middle of the night and told to urinate.

Little did I know until it was too late that I was urinating on an electric fence.

The fraternity was never punished - hell, no one ever told anyone about it - it was a frat boy stunt.

valued life above getting results fast.
He also said that the British committed a horrible crime against humanity by disarming the local populace ('gun control'), so there really was no violent option

In 1978, I was taken blindfolded to a field in the middle of the night and told to urinate.

Little did I know until it was too late that I was urinating on an electric fence.

The fraternity was never punished - hell, no one ever told anyone about it - it was a frat boy stunt.
Oh...were you kidnapped from your home in the middle of the night for this? Did some inbred redneck skank play with your dick on camera, and did they beat you to death when you were done, or keep it up for a year before saying "oopsie" and setting you loose?

Well the US is not decadent and it's got more money in it's military than the whole iraqi budget. I don't think something like that can work in this case. It only works when the opposing side is vastly inferior and dependant on you.

If you believe that, then you do not believe in the rightness of your cause, and the truth of your cause. You believe in the strength of your oppressor.

If you believe that, then you do not believe in the rightness of your cause, and the truth of your cause. You believe in the strength of your oppressor.
Can't you believe in both?

inbred redneck skank play with your dick on camera
Not that that couldn't be nice under the right circumstances :-p

From the tone of your post, that's clearly not true - you care and I would too if you provided details or evidence.
Evidence is a bit hard to come by although looking at it it seems the culprit for both instances was the city involved in the respective conventions. It also seems the Free Speech Zones were instituted by Clinton "officially" but there are various accounts of it happening "unofficially" for a while. Which thinking about the way politics work in this country is probably true.

Oh...were you kidnapped from your home in the middle of the night for this? Did some inbred redneck skank play with your dick on camera, and did they beat you to death when you were done, or keep it up for a year before saying "oopsie" and setting you loose?

Well, I was tied up. They did beat me. And they did pull my dick out and order me to urinate.

The people you've seen in the widely circulated photos of prisoner abuse at Abu Gharaib were all alive to testify about the abuse later. They weren't beaten to death.

Well, I was tied up. They did beat me. And they did pull my dick out and order me to urinate.
Being so desperate for acceptance that you *let* people beat and electrocute you is different from being a father kidnapped from his home at 3am simply for being in the wrong neighborhood, taken away for a year, beaten, made to eat rotten food, then released without much of an apology.

These examples are all from US government reports, btw.

The people you've seen in the widely circulated photos of prisoner abuse at Abu Gharaib were all alive to testify about the abuse later. They weren't beaten to death.
This guy might disagree:
http://www.antiwar.com/photos/perm/dead-iraqi2.jpg
...as would the many other corpses coming out of those prisons.

It's not like I was told what was going to happen.

As for what happened to the Iraqi prisoners, you'll notice that people are being prosecuted for it.

Can you say the same of the insurgents who killed Margaret Hassan on television after making her grovel for her life?

Evidence is a bit hard to come by.
Nothing happens at a demonstartion these days without a million flashbulbs going off...if it happened, someone took photos.

Heck, we even had video from inside the internment camp they set up here!

I'm not disputing your assertion though - cops today are no longer Clancy from the hood, they are paramilitaries who consider regular citizens to be below them, so I'm sure there were similar abuses in Boston.

It's not like I was told what was going to happen.

As for what happened to the Iraqi prisoners, you'll notice that people are being prosecuted for it.

Can you say the same of the insurgents who killed Margaret Hassan on television after making her grovel for her life?
I assume you have a point? Mine was that torture and abuse of prisoners is uncivilized behavior...and what happened there was approved, no, PLANNED, from the top. Rumsfeld and Gonzalez should be the ones on trial, not the unlucky few grunts who got caught.

I assume you have a point? Mine was that torture and abuse of prisoners is uncivilized behavior...and what happened there was approved, no, PLANNED, from the top. Rumsfeld and Gonzalez should be the ones on trial, not the unlucky few grunts who got caught.

Gonzales was not the one who formulated the opinion on torture. He was merely passing on what someone else formulated. So it would be difficult to try him, as the Democrats themselves have pointed out. So they're voting to confirm him.

The original policies were written for Guantanamo, ostensibly for people who are technically not entitled to Geneva protections. Right or wrong, those same policies were unofficially carried over to Iraq, where the abuses occurred. You can't point to an official policy document that says, "Do This To Them In Iraq".

And then, you'll have to define torture.

I'll ask about my hypothetical scenario again, which I was informed is perfectly legal and does not constitute torture:

You and your fellow soldiers are captured alive by enemy forces. They blindfold you and put you aboard a helicopter, which flies around for 30 minutes. During the flight, they ask you and your companions questions, which you all refuse to answer.

Then they say, "we're going to get serious now, and to prove how serious, we're going to start throwing you out of the helicopter"

Then to prove it, you hear one of your fellows being thrown from the helicopter. You hear a scream, and then nothing.

One of your fellow soldiers cracks, and begins telling everything he knows.

The helicopter lands, the blindfolds are removed, and you discover that your friend thrown from the helicopter was thrown out at an altitude of 5 feet, and is completely unharmed.

Not torture.

Okay, but wouldn't it be helpful for the Shi'ia majority to help quell the disruption of Sunni insurgency? Wouldn't it make the slightest bit of sense for them to help break up this "little band of foreign terrorists" for their own good? Any evidence of that going on in your research?

Yes, it would make sense for them. However, they have been rather brutally oppressed by Sunnis for over a decade, so I wouldn't expect them to stand up and fight openly. Many do help by providing information, our HUMINT (human intel) has been very good this past year. Also there is no shortage of enlistees for the army and police. The street sentiment is in favor of harsh measures, believe it or not right now the Iraqis want to kick ass and the Americans are the voice of moderation.

I rate the insurgence forces numbers between 800,000 and 1 million.

There I pulled some figures out my ass, mine seem better btw, ya know the more the better as they say. ;)

Calm down a bit. He was talking about what his plan would be if he were running things.
Well you see the problem is that I can spot a Bush apologist from a long way off!!

Well you see the problem is that I can spot a Bush apologist from a long way off!!

There's a difference between a Bush apologist and someone who tries to come up with a solution to the problem - a problem that the Democratic Party didn't have a solution to - it would have been "stay the course" according to Kerry.

So anything different as a proposed solution would be something better than doing nothing. That, and it's a "fact" that none of the numbers that people are coming up with are accurate. If I'm Bush and I give a low number, and some other person gives a higher number, both numbers came out of someone's ass. There wasn't a moment in time when all the insurgents assembled in the street, lined up in ranks, and held a head count so that everyone would know that there were really "this number" of insurgents.

If you say that the low number estimate is affected by Bush's desire to say that things are going well, it's equally logical to assume that a much higher number is the result of a desire to say that things are going badly.

I find the guessing of numbers to be counterproductive. What should be going on is planning to find a peaceable, realistic solution.

I find the guessing of numbers to be counterproductive. What should be going on is planning to find a peaceable, realistic solution.
Obviously Bush has to go first. His hate speech are dangerous and his oil interests are explosive. He is deaf also. There is no peaceful solution while Bush is in power because even if there was one Bush wouldn't want to listen.
I think an important milestone has been missed in november 2004. There is a big problem that is Bush is backed at home by a big share of the isolationist US population. They back Bush because of internal politics and they're not interested in international politics. In this context there is no possible peaceful solution as the iraqis will have to make their problem US problems.

Or maybe the solution would be to spread propaganda in the US making the population believe that the problems in Iraq will have consequences at home. That may make them care about the situation. Talking about millions of insurgents may work. Spreading news about americans dead in Iraq may work as well. Spreading information about the cost of stealing iraqi oil and the impact on the US tax payer ... that sort of things.

Obviously Bush has to go first. His hate speech are dangerous and his oil interests are explosive. He is deaf also. There is no peaceful solution while Bush is in power because even if there was one Bush wouldn't want to listen.
I think an important milestone has been missed in november 2004. There is a big problem that is Bush is backed at home by a big share of the isolationist US population. They back Bush because of internal politics and they're not interested in international politics. In this context there is no possible peaceful solution as the iraqis will have to make their problem US problems.

Or maybe another solution would be to spread propaganda in the US making the population believe that the problems in Iraq will have consequences at home. That may make they care about the situation. Talking about millions of insurgents may work. Spreading news about americans dead in Iraq may work as well. Spreading information about the cost of stealing iraqi oil and the impact on the US tax payer ... that sort of things.


The problem is that most Americans (and I bet Keruvalia can verify this) believe that *all* Arabs and *all* Muslims are responsible for 9-11. Not that Iraq had anything to do with 9-11, but most Americans believe that any Arab or Muslim that so much as defies the US is worthy of having their collective asses kicked. Not that this is the right thing to do. But think about this.

I remember polls before the election. 60 percent of Americans thought that the President was not doing the "right thing" in Iraq. So Kerry took that to mean that the population wanted a more peaceable solution.

He was wrong. What 60 percent of the American people meant was that we weren't being *mean* enough. Americans liked the first Gulf War, the initial Afghanistan campaign, and the initial invasion of Iraq, because we were kicking ass on a grand scale on CNN. Bombs, high tech stuff, etc. And although our current casualty rate against an insurgency is very light compared to any other similar conflict in history, it's not evident that we're kicking a lot of ass (well, Fallujah maybe).

What the Americans wanted was more revenge for 9-11. More kicking ass on Arabs and Muslims. More scenes of high tech annihilation of feeble forces on the television. I think that poll was the most accurate one taken - it's the one that comes closest to Bush's actual margin of victory.

It's just that the Democrats didn't realize that when people meant "wrong direction", they took it to mean what they themselves were thinking, instead of what a deeply seething US population is still thinking.

Bush scarcely needs to fan those flames with hate speech. In fact, people probably think he's being soft on Arabs and Muslims (in fact, I've heard this quite a bit). If anything, there's a large, angry portion of our population who don't want to hear it from anyone about how to run the war, or who we may attack, or whether we should torture them or not.

And it didn't help that Bin Laden got on TV and made threats just days before the election. In fact, I think that mobilized the angriest of Americans to go to the polls. Those huge turnouts that people saw were not the product of Democratic mobilization. Those were angry Americans casting a "f**k you" vote.

The problem is that most Americans (and I bet Keruvalia can verify this) believe that *all* Arabs and *all* Muslims are responsible for 9-11.
If this is truly the case, then this does not reflect well on America? All Muslims and Arabs are guilty by classification, or association? What kind of democracy is that?


Not that Iraq had anything to do with 9-11,
BINGO!!!

but most Americans believe that any Arab or Muslim that so much as defies the US is worthy of having their collective asses kicked. Not that this is the right thing to do. But think about this.[/quote}
So because Bush and Company do not like Saddam, the US gets to kick the butts of innocent men, women and children in Iraq?

I remember polls before the election. 60 percent of Americans thought that the President was not doing the "right thing" in Iraq. So Kerry took that to mean that the population wanted a more peaceable solution.

He was wrong. What 60 percent of the American people meant was that we weren't being *mean* enough.
I don't think you are right there. I think most Americans were questioning why the US was in Iraq since there had been no discovery of WMD and the so called links to Al Queda were non existent.

Americans liked the first Gulf War, the initial Afghanistan campaign, and the initial invasion of Iraq, because we were kicking ass on a grand scale on CNN. Bombs, high tech stuff, etc.
Ok Martha, get the popcorn out, it is time for the "Shock and Awe Show". SAD!!!

And although our current casualty rate against an insurgency is very light compared to any other similar conflict in history, it's not evident that we're kicking a lot of ass (well, Fallujah maybe).
Yeah, there is not much left of Fallujah. WTG America.

What the Americans wanted was more revenge for 9-11. More kicking ass on Arabs and Muslims. More scenes of high tech annihilation of feeble forces on the television. I think that poll was the most accurate one taken - it's the one that comes closest to Bush's actual margin of victory.
Looking for blood thirsty revenge on innocent people who had nothing to do with 9/11 is just asking for the kind of problems that the US currently has and creating even more problems.

Bush scarcely needs to fan those flames with hate speech. In fact, people probably think he's being soft on Arabs and Muslims (in fact, I've heard this quite a bit). If anything, there's a large, angry portion of our population who don't want to hear it from anyone about how to run the war, or who we may attack, or whether we should torture them or not.
I think you are wrong on this or should I say that I hope you are wrong on this matter.

And it didn't help that Bin Laden got on TV and made threats just days before the election. In fact, I think that mobilized the angriest of Americans to go to the polls. Those huge turnouts that people saw were not the product of Democratic mobilization. Those were angry Americans casting a "f**k you" vote.
WOW!!! Angry Americans going to the polls to elect a revengeful President, even though the revenge might not be against the people who caused the anger in the first place. That is sick thinking to say the least!!

There's a difference between a Bush apologist and someone who tries to come up with a solution to the problem - a problem that the Democratic Party didn't have a solution to - it would have been "stay the course" according to Kerry.
I do believe that Kerry did have a viable solution and it wasn't "staying the course". The plan was to gradually reduce US troops in Iraq and seek restoring damaged alliances to help offset the US involvement.

The Bush plan to build so many bases in Iraq (I believe the number is 14), sends a warning note to Iraqis that the US will be there for a long, long time.

http://www.globalsecurity.org/org/news/2004/040323-enduring-bases.htm

This measure alone, I am sure contributes to increasing the number of insurgents who are determined to get US troops off "their" soil.

20,000 Iaqi insurgents...

In other news this week:
The Pope admits to Catholic leanings
A bear says "Ok once or twice I have shat in the woods"

O and to any American BBC bashers:

The reason our news service seems different to yours is that it actually tells the truth (or as close to the truth as it is possible for the sensationalist media to get). Unlike in America, Britain has been a (relatively) free country for a very long time and as such will long live out any War on Terror. Our press has been relatively free for a very long time: look at the Times in 1789. The Time's motto should be "Critising the government since 1789"
So a government controlled media is free?

So a government controlled media is free?
Well from my point of view yes.
In the american culture, free means free of the government but in other cultures this is not the case.
In my country we say an hospital is free when it is public (public means it belongs to the state), school is free when it is public and a channel is free when it is public. When it is private (or corporately owned) we say it is unfree.
All this is a matter of point of view. In USA, your biggest enemy is your government so anything related to the government must be bad.

JB said:

"I'm not sure the US would fire on an unarmed crowd. Can you post a link to a news story where the US fired on a crowd of civilians where they were definitely NOT fired on by anyone first?"

I dunno if anyone has addressed that yet, but they already HAVE. 18 people were killed in Fallujah in nonviolent demonstrations long before the city exploded...

Is it any wonder why it did?

Obviously Bush has to go first. His hate speech are dangerous and his oil interests are explosive. He is deaf also. There is no peaceful solution while Bush is in power because even if there was one Bush wouldn't want to listen.

Not that you would ever engage in such blind hatered eh? :rolleyes:

I think an important milestone has been missed in november 2004. There is a big problem that is Bush is backed at home by a big share of the isolationist US population. They back Bush because of internal politics and they're not interested in international politics. In this context there is no possible peaceful solution as the iraqis will have to make their problem US problems.

As to that their problems are to a great extent,already our problems

Or maybe the solution would be to spread propaganda in the US making the population believe that the problems in Iraq will have consequences at home. That may make them care about the situation. Talking about millions of insurgents may work. Spreading news about americans dead in Iraq may work as well. Spreading information about the cost of stealing iraqi oil and the impact on the US tax payer ... that sort of things.

Are you Dan Rather? After all Dan showed how willing he is to spread any propaganda about Bush as long as it hurts Bush...

Then again the main stream media has been portraying that exact picture for a long time now. Oddly enough its nothing like the story you hear from the military guys coming home is it? Wonder why

200k insurgents, damn, why wern't they shooting them after they counted them ?

Dear Bush supporters:

Welcome to the next level. Please don't act surprised, and don't even consider shifting or asking anyone to share the blame. This is entirely your fault. You are the ones who supported him and his invasion. When you re-elected him, you marched boldly into the voting booth and put your stamp of approval on the deaths of a thousand US soldiers alone, and you deserve none of Hell's mercy. You are scum of the worst sort and worse than murderers. Murderers usually have some mental abberation or some justice in their actions. You have no such excuse. Your actions were entirely cold-blooded and commited against many of our nation's finest and against many thousands of innocents, and your callus behaviour deserves no forgiveness. There can be no restitution. You have crossed the Rubicon and have become as walking dead in my eyes, largely because there is no doubt in my mind that you will continue to take imbecilic pride in your actions no matter their consequences. If you ever wake up to the horror of what you have done, your hands will never again feel clean, for the blood with which you have gleefully steeped them with the abandon that a child plays in the mud has become as part of you and cannot be scrubbed off. I have every right to judge you because no qualification other than my humanity is required to stand in judgement of the lowest of worms. Moreover, you have no right to ask for the reconciliation and compromise that you once sneered at with all the scorn and insolence that you could muster. You deserve nothing other than my full and uncompromising hatred and that of everyone whose name you spat as a curse.

Not that you would ever engage in such blind hatered eh? :rolleyes:
I don't think so, but anyway we're not talking about me. I was not elected president of the USA and no matter how much hate I have I'm not going to blow up myself in a restaurant or bomb a country.

As to that their problems are to a great extent,already our problems
When you read US news they talk about the dead US soldiers. They never talk about the iraqis. More than 100 000 iraqis have lost their life in this madness. But the US public doesn't care. They only care about the 1000 US soldiers.

Are you Dan Rather? After all Dan showed how willing he is to spread any propaganda about Bush as long as it hurts Bush...

Then again the main stream media has been portraying that exact picture for a long time now. Oddly enough its nothing like the story you hear from the military guys coming home is it? Wonder why
I don't know who this Dan Rather is. I don't care about hurting Bush. All I want is him out of office and peace in Iraq.

In 1978, I was taken blindfolded to a field in the middle of the night and told to urinate.

Little did I know until it was too late that I was urinating on an electric fence.

The fraternity was never punished - hell, no one ever told anyone about it - it was a frat boy stunt.
Well, if no one ever knew about it, you can't really expect it to be punished can you? I think that perhaps if you had told someone in the administration (not saying that you should have, just theoretically), it might not have been to them just a "frat boy stunt," as you put it.

I don't advocate the some of the insurgency's methods of fighting, no one does, I'm more concerned about the fact that we're fighting a seemingly endless battle against them. There is no viable moral, civil, or economic basis for this war whatsoever, it just is there. Part of me would rather let them have their civil war than implicate us into it anymore, it's just resuling in alot more deaths for the US. We can stay as long as we want, it won't change the deep-seated hatred of these groups for each other. The insurgency has done terrible things, and will proabably continue to, but it won't be stopped by our means, and our guise of democracy will undoubtedly do very little to stem the coming wars. I hate to say it but we should really get out of this mess while and if we still can.

Bush is an idiot. It is not as if the events which are happening couldn't have been expected.

I don't think so, but anyway we're not talking about me. I was not elected president of the USA and no matter how much hate I have I'm not going to blow up myself in a restaurant or bomb a country.

:) Well thats good to know, the not blowing yourself up bit.

As for the other bit I just found it a bit strange that you could speak so spitfully ( or so it appreared to me, might just have been my perceiption ) of how hateful another human being was.

If my perception of this is wrong please accept my appologizes
When you read US news they talk about the dead US soldiers. They never talk about the iraqis. More than 100 000 iraqis have lost their life in this madness. But the US public doesn't care. They only care about the 1000 US soldiers.

Do you have a reference for this number? I have heard it bandied about but as yet can not find a solid figure for it, or even one that claims to be solid.

Questions that come to mind are:

How many of these casualties are caused by Occupational Forces?

How many were soldiers in the Iraqi army?

How many were caused by insurgents / terrorists?

How many are actually insurgents / terrorists?

What was the methodology used to obtain this figure?

I don't know who this Dan Rather is. I don't care about hurting Bush. All I want is him out of office and peace in Iraq.

If I had thought that Kerry would have made a difference and saved lives I might have voted for him. But his promise to "Stay The Course" in Iraq did not seem substancially different that Bush's promise to "Stay The Course"

And truthfully after reviewing his 25 year senate record I found little that made me think he had the ability, the fortitude or the intellectual integrety to be worthy of the office of President.

While Bush has made mistakes for me it was "Better the devil you know than the one you dont"

If you dont agree with me thats fine, its just my own opinion and it was just my own vote.

Respectfully

AAhhzz

Dear Bush supporters:

Welcome to the next level.
<snip of rant>
name you spat as a curse.

You dont happen to post on Democratic Undergound do you? The style is very familiar

I just wonder if you hold such virulent hated for those who killed 3000 people in one morning

JB said:

"I'm not sure the US would fire on an unarmed crowd. Can you post a link to a news story where the US fired on a crowd of civilians where they were definitely NOT fired on by anyone first?"

I dunno if anyone has addressed that yet, but they already HAVE. 18 people were killed in Fallujah in nonviolent demonstrations long before the city exploded...

Is it any wonder why it did?

Do you have a refenrence or link we could follow. I may have missed this story but I do not recall hearing of 18 civilian casualties in such circumstances, in Fallujah or anywhere else for that matter.

Not doubting you are telling the truth as you know or have heard it but the story seems somewhat fragmentary.

It should at least address what happened to the soldeirs. These soldeirs should face a Court Martial under the Uniform Code of Military Justice for firing upon unarmed civilians. A clear violation of the rules of engagement.

This can result in anything from a Dishonorable Discharge to Death

After all, there was that Army major who was interrogating a captive in the field and fired his pistol into the ground? Was not he court martialed and drummed out of the service with a dishonorable discharge? (thats what I was told yesterday but I can not find a reference for it. Anyone know more information?)

Deplorable tactic, no question, but it did result in the captive talking about a planned ambush, an ambush that would have resulted in Occupational force's casualties. And the Major didnt even wound the captive.

If shooting near a captive prisoner will get you a Dishonorable Discharge, equivelent to a felony charge, lose of voting rights in many states, loss of right to bear arms, loss of any chance at a government job or government grant.

Imagine what shooting into a civilian crowd would do.

Because during 22 years of service it was repeatedly drummed into us that firing on the civilian population was a violation of the Laws of Armed Conflict and would bring disgrace upon the service, would endanger our fellow soldiers and indeed the entire mission if such an act turned public opinon in the occupied area against the US forces.

Furthermore such an act would be prosecuted to the full extent of the UCMJ and could conveivably result in a death sentence for those found guilty

Makes you wonder if there is more to this story, were the soldiers Court Martialed? What sentence were they given?

Or were they exonerated by something not told in this fragement of a story?

Hope to hear back from you with a link to the story.

Thanks

AAhhzz

Bush is an idiot. It is not as if the events which are happening couldn't have been expected.

You could say that of any world leader who ever got into a conflict.

It's 9AM here and I just woke up, but I haven't found it yet. I will though. Problem is, the story is at least a year old and was rarely reported under that headline. The soldiers SAID they saw weapons in the crowd, but reports from ostensibly neutral Iraqis at the scene said this was total balderdash.

Problem is, despite what you've been taught, the military and police operates under a culture of impunity. Sometimes people may be prosecuted in a tokenistic way to make people think that something is being done, but the majority of abuses are never, ever punished. Torture at Abu Ghraib goes on terribly frequently and no one's ever been tried for it; you had My Lai where an outright massacre earned truly pathetic sentances for the participants, while the generals and bomber pilots who ordered and carried out the wholesale annihilation of villages with Napalm and cluster bombs are today regarded as heroes.

This is not to mention Korea where total war policies were carried out, entire cities literally wiped off the map, rape, torture and extrajudicial executions commonplace and top commanders were seriously considering nuking the DMZ with radioactive cobalt-scattering nukes. (read "North Korea" by Bruce Cummings for accounts of American and ROK atrocities under their watch).

Don't even get me started on the cops. The outright murder of Fred Hampton, comrade Damian Garcia, and the beating of Rodney King have yet to be punished.

This is not to say you werent taught what you were taught or that you, personally, had any part in this sort of thing. But when its in the military's best interests to commit horrific human rights abuses, they will: and its often ordered by people at the top.

I don't suppose you've heard of the Salvador Option?

:) Well thats good to know, the not blowing yourself up bit.

As for the other bit I just found it a bit strange that you could speak so spitfully ( or so it appreared to me, might just have been my perceiption ) of how hateful another human being was.

If my perception of this is wrong please accept my appologizes
Well I expect the president of the USA to keep his hate for himself and to talk respectfully when he is talking as the president of the USA. when he talks to his wife or to his friends, it doesn't matter, he is just a human being. This is the same with me. I can say he is a serious asshole, because I only talk my mind. But when you hear the president of the USA naming the axis of evil, and talking about foreign leaders the way he does, this is outright provokation and it is totally inappropriate. At least the most basic diplomatic skills is expected from a president, since this is his core job.
Do you have a reference for this number? I have heard it bandied about but as yet can not find a solid figure for it, or even one that claims to be solid.

Questions that come to mind are:

How many of these casualties are caused by Occupational Forces?

How many were soldiers in the Iraqi army?

How many were caused by insurgents / terrorists?

How many are actually insurgents / terrorists?

What was the methodology used to obtain this figure?
It doesn't matter what those numbers are and how they were found. Don't divert from the original point please. Look at the posts from americans. They all talk about the 1000+ soldiers killed like it was the most serious problem this war had caused. Whatever the numbers, it is obvious that at least 10 times more iraqis have died (perhaps 100 or even 200 times more).
This shows that US citizens are more conserned about their own country than anything else. This is a big problem.

If I had thought that Kerry would have made a difference and saved lives I might have voted for him. But his promise to "Stay The Course" in Iraq did not seem substancially different that Bush's promise to "Stay The Course"

And truthfully after reviewing his 25 year senate record I found little that made me think he had the ability, the fortitude or the intellectual integrety to be worthy of the office of President.

While Bush has made mistakes for me it was "Better the devil you know than the one you dont"

If you dont agree with me thats fine, its just my own opinion and it was just my own vote.

Respectfully

AAhhzz
And I agree with you, Kerry was not any better than Bush.
I think there is a much deeper problem than Bush. Maybe it is 2-party system or maybe it is the whole US citizens who are the problem. Perhaps it is the education system.

Psylos, it's not the 2-party system or the education system.

Let's boil it down. We had a poll right before the election that said that 60 percent of the American public thought the war in Iraq was going the "wrong direction".

Kerry, and Democrats, and perhaps even you, took this to mean that we should leave Iraq, or somehow be kinder and gentler, or somehow try to sooth the insurgency and so reduce the violence. Something along those lines.

This was a serious misinterpretation of the poll results. Americans, not because of insufficient education, but out of sheer basic humanity, are very angry people. Maybe not on the surface, but definitely underneath. Because of this anger, they lump all Arabs and Muslims into the same pot - the pot that's going to receive the heat.

So if we're going the "wrong direction" in Iraq, it's because the US isn't kicking enough ass. I would read that as 60 percent of Americans don't care if we lay waste to Iraq and kill innocent civilians wholesale.

You can say that's a lack of education all you like. You aren't going to undo 9-11 with some classes and cheery commercials and a leader who isn't willing to do what the American people seem to want.

That poll, BTW, coincides closely with Bush's overall numbers across the country.

I think that is lack of education. If the US population knew some foreign languages and if they had contact with the foreign world they would not think all arabs are muslim are evil.

I think that is lack of education. If the US population knew some foreign languages and if they had contact with the foreign world they would not think all arabs are muslim are evil.

I thought that 9-11 couldn't have been a more perfect PR stunt to prove to the average American that at least some Arabs and Muslims are completely evil.

Cost effective, too. Americans need to spend 100 billion a year on a war to get that kind of reputation.

Arabs and Muslims need only fly someone else's planes into a building, or kill a handful of innocent civilians on al-Jazeera.

They should have considered careers in marketing - they're obviously much better at selling a brand name than anyone else.

I thought that 9-11 couldn't have been a more perfect PR stunt to prove to the average American that at least some Arabs and Muslims are completely evil.

Cost effective, too. Americans need to spend 100 billion a year on a war to get that kind of reputation.

Arabs and Muslims need only fly someone else's planes into a building, or kill a handful of innocent civilians on al-Jazeera.

They should have considered careers in marketing - they're obviously much better at selling a brand name than anyone else.
You know terrorism is happening everywhere in the world and few countries react like this. If every people acted like this, the muslims would have annihilated both the US and Israel by now. In my country (France), when there was algerian terrorism in Paris, the population knew it was just a few extremists because we have a big muslim population and we know they are mostly cool.
So why do you think americans are so self-centered if it is not lack of education?

You know terrorism is happening everywhere in the world and few countries react like this. If every people acted like this, the muslims would have annihilated both the US and Israel by now.

Compared to the US, Israel has exercised far more restraint. But that is because they live amongst them. They see them every day, and know that they have to live with them tomorrow. They know that their future is intertwined.

Americans are far from Arab lands. They do not care if they live or die. You can educate people all you like, but small group dynamics dictates that you only care about the people you can see.

That's why a President can get a war, and actually be encouraged to be rougher than he's been. That's why the French could pass a headscarf ban. And the Germans could raid mosques and Muslim homes. And why people in the Netherlands could burn mosques.

Because there are so few Arabs and Muslims in America, and the rest are so far away, all we know is "the war isn't going our way". So, the answer is to be more ruthless.

Had Bush annihilated the population of Iraq using nuclear weapons, and marched in after the glowing stopped (about six months), he would have been hailed as a hero in the US - a hero unmatched in our history. Europeans and other would have cringed, but if he had done so after Europe had experienced its own rise in Muslim fanaticism, they would have stayed fairly quiet.

I don't see any EU member moving to economically boycott the US for its war in Iraq. I don't see any Security Council measures (even if the US would veto, it would send a signal of disapproval).

You see? The world is quietly going along with Bush. Yes, it says, "oh, that Bush. Such a bad man." But I believe it secretly and quietly approves, especially the EU governments. We're doing the horrible things they would like to do, but don't have the political will to accomplish.

I don't see any Security Council measures (even if the US would veto, it would send a signal of disapproval).Don't tell me the US ignores that the security council is against the US occupation.
They just can't do a fucking thing about it because the US has the biggest military around.

You see? The world is quietly going along with Bush. Yes, it says, "oh, that Bush. Such a bad man." But I believe it secretly and quietly approves, especially the EU governments. We're doing the horrible things they would like to do, but don't have the political will to accomplish.
The world is not the EU. Anyway the EU political landscape is not the same as the US one. Politicians are much more tied to the population because there is less patriotism and more will to get down the street when something's wrong.
Everytime Bush has came to Europe there was people on the street to protest, but we can't do anything more than that can we?

Don't tell me the US ignores that the security council is against the US occupation.
They just can't do a fucking thing about it because the US has the biggest military around.

The world is not the EU. Anyway the EU political landscape is not the same as the US one. Politicians are much more tied to the population because there is less patriotism and more will to get down the street when something's wrong.
Everytime Bush has came to Europe there was people on the street to protest, but we can't do anything more than that can we?

It will be. Consider the rapidity with which the people of the Netherlands reacted to a single murder. And how rapidly they resorted to burning mosques.

If there are further terrorist attacks in Europe, it's going to happen.

Ever ask yourself why the EU doesn't do an economic embargo of the US?

Well I expect the president of the USA to keep his hate for himself and to talk respectfully when he is talking as the president of the USA. when he talks to his wife or to his friends, it doesn't matter, he is just a human being. This is the same with me. I can say he is a serious asshole, because I only talk my mind. But when you hear the president of the USA naming the axis of evil, and talking about foreign leaders the way he does, this is outright provokation and it is totally inappropriate. At least the most basic diplomatic skills is expected from a president, since this is his core job..

Actually its called rhetoric and all politicians use it.

In the Speech where he named the Axis of Evil did you hear him call for complete and utter destruction of those countries?

No, you didnt.

Did you hear him call for a million martyrs to kill all of the citizens of those countries.

No you didnt. ( Very likely cause we Americans would have laughed our asses off at him if he said something so preposterous )

In that speech did he call for the death of any of the citizens or the leadership of those countries.

No, he didnt.

What you did hear was an American president making a statement utterly lacking in ambiguaty and platitudes that are so cherished by diplomates.

You heard an American President actually say what he meant.

We often find that refreshing, if sometimes alarming.

It doesn't matter what those numbers are and how they were found. Don't divert from the original point please. Look at the posts from americans. They all talk about the 1000+ soldiers killed like it was the most serious problem this war had caused. Whatever the numbers, it is obvious that at least 10 times more iraqis have died (perhaps 100 or even 200 times more).
This shows that US citizens are more conserned about their own country than anything else. This is a big problem..

If the numbers dont matter why bring them up?

The reason I asked for the origin of those numbers is because the numbers I have seen count the Soldiers, they count the victims of the terrorists, they count the terrorists themselves.

Shall I cry over the death of a terrorist? Over the death of someone who would be delighted to kill me and my family? - Not in this lifetime.

Shall I cry ofer the death of soldiers that fought for Iraq? - No, because I have been in that posistion of fighting for my county. I HONOR their service to Iraq because they died defending their country ( irregaurdless weather they were willing or not )

Shall I cry over civilians killed by terrorist actions? - Yes, I feel for their families and their friends. I also feel the best way of to react is to find their killers and deliver them to justice.

And I agree with you, Kerry was not any better than Bush.
I think there is a much deeper problem than Bush. Maybe it is 2-party system or maybe it is the whole US citizens who are the problem. Perhaps it is the education system.

Maybe it is just a difference of perspective.

After all who is to say your right and we are wrong? You?

The American people re-elected Bush for a variety of reasons. Some prefered his "moral" stance ( though since he is a politician I find that to be somewhat less than important to me ). Some prefered his willingness to pursue the war on terror no matter where it lead, feeling that this conflict is a defining moment in history and that we have the right to an aggressive self defense (No thats not any oxymoron, just perhaps a uniquely American perspective)

And considering the response of the Netherlands (?) over the murder of the movie director Picaso, it hardly seems we are the only people who react in such a manner

Perhaps it is mearly human.

Consider the vast history of the human race, harldy a peaceful one is it? It appears upon reflection that we are an aggressive species does it not??

A sad fact to be sure, but it seems it is a very human one.

Respctfully

AAhhzz

You dont happen to post on Democratic Undergound do you? The style is very familiarNever heard of them.

I just wonder if you hold such virulent hated for those who killed 3000 people in one morningVery much so. Why do you ask?

You know terrorism is happening everywhere in the world and few countries react like this. If every people acted like this, the muslims would have annihilated both the US and Israel by now. In my country (France), when there was algerian terrorism in Paris, the population knew it was just a few extremists because we have a big muslim population and we know they are mostly cool.
So why do you think americans are so self-centered if it is not lack of education?


Odd, from where I sit a few of them do react like this.

The Israeli Defense Force reacts to a mortor/rocket/small arms fire attack by shooting back. An Iman, or a Palestienian politician calls for the people to attack back and "die the Glorious death of a Martyr"

The Rwandans murder 800,000 of their fellow citizens over the acts of their ancestors

The Serbians and Coations both have blood on their hands do they not?

The Neatherlands recently reacted to the murder of a single man ( Picaso ) by burning down a mosque

And does not Hezbola (spelling?) and a few other terrorist groups have as their objective the utter destruction of the Iraeli state? If not the deaths of all Jews everywhere?

Did not Al Qeada call for the descrution of Israel and the US and the deaths of all of their people? Did they not actually say that such killings would be rewarded by Allah?

And did not the French government call for the outlawing of the head scarfs called for by the preceipts of the Musilum faith? Hardly what you would call understanding of their religious obligations, particularly when they didnt outlaw the wearing of the Cross?

How could the French be so blind to the religious obligations of 20% of their citizens?

Maybe its an education thing. Perhaps they just didnt realize how important that it was for the Musilum people to obey the preceipts of thier religion.

Perhaps some additional classes in multiculturalism would help, and some sensitivity training.

AAhhzz

Never heard of them.

Check them out you might find them to be sympathetic to your views www.democraticunderground.com
Very much so. Why do you ask?

Because truthfully the times I have seen such statements it is usually accompanied by an "explaination" of how America deserved the attacks of 9/11 and that the terrorists were just acting out of righteous anger and understandable causes.

Glad to hear that you have a more balanced outlook on the situation

Check them out you might find them to be sympathetic to your views www.democraticunderground.comNot likely, but I'll take a look.


Because truthfully the times I have seen such statements it is usually accompanied by an "explaination" of how America deserved the attacks of 9/11 and that the terrorists were just acting out of righteous anger and understandable causes.It's the kind of thing that happens when people start taking religion too seriously.

Glad to hear that you have a more balanced outlook on the situationIt seems that I misunderstood your question. No, I do not have any difficulty seeing the difference between a run-of-the-mill Arab and a pseudo-Islamic religious extremist, and I certainly have the three braincells required to realize that Saddam, a secular dictator, probably liked the terrorists a little less than Ramses loved the Hebrews.

Odd, from where I sit a few of them do react like this.

The Israeli Defense Force reacts to a mortor/rocket/small arms fire attack by shooting back. An Iman, or a Palestienian politician calls for the people to attack back and "die the Glorious death of a Martyr"

The Rwandans murder 800,000 of their fellow citizens over the acts of their ancestors

The Serbians and Coations both have blood on their hands do they not?

The Neatherlands recently reacted to the murder of a single man ( Picaso ) by burning down a mosque

And does not Hezbola (spelling?) and a few other terrorist groups have as their objective the utter destruction of the Iraeli state? If not the deaths of all Jews everywhere?

Did not Al Qeada call for the descrution of Israel and the US and the deaths of all of their people? Did they not actually say that such killings would be rewarded by Allah?

And did not the French government call for the outlawing of the head scarfs called for by the preceipts of the Musilum faith? Hardly what you would call understanding of their religious obligations, particularly when they didnt outlaw the wearing of the Cross?

How could the French be so blind to the religious obligations of 20% of their citizens?

Maybe its an education thing. Perhaps they just didnt realize how important that it was for the Musilum people to obey the preceipts of thier religion.

Perhaps some additional classes in multiculturalism would help, and some sensitivity training.

AAhhzz

The french banned the use of ostensive religious symbols in all public grounds, crosses included.

It's 9AM here and I just woke up, but I haven't found it yet. I will though. Problem is, the story is at least a year old and was rarely reported under that headline. The soldiers SAID they saw weapons in the crowd, but reports from ostensibly neutral Iraqis at the scene said this was total balderdash.

Problem is, despite what you've been taught, the military and police operates under a culture of impunity. Sometimes people may be prosecuted in a tokenistic way to make people think that something is being done, but the majority of abuses are never, ever punished. Torture at Abu Ghraib goes on terribly frequently and no one's ever been tried for it; you had My Lai where an outright massacre earned truly pathetic sentances for the participants, while the generals and bomber pilots who ordered and carried out the wholesale annihilation of villages with Napalm and cluster bombs are today regarded as heroes.

*nods*

Thanks, I would truely appreciate it if you could find a link but can understand how a single story can become buried in the vast internet.

As to Abu Ghraib, didnt you see that Specialist Graner was convicted for his actions?

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4286673
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4286083
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4283206

And that 3 others have already been convicted?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4155375.stm

Additionally, you did know that Abu Ghraib had been turned over to the Iraqi's several months ago didnt you?

Whatever is happening at Abu Ghraib now is the bussiness of the Iraqi people wouldnt you say?

This is not to mention Korea where total war policies were carried out, entire cities literally wiped off the map, rape, torture and extrajudicial executions commonplace and top commanders were seriously considering nuking the DMZ with radioactive cobalt-scattering nukes. (read "North Korea" by Bruce Cummings for accounts of American and ROK atrocities under their watch).

Don't even get me started on the cops. The outright murder of Fred Hampton, comrade Damian Garcia, and the beating of Rodney King have yet to be punished.

*nods* That was a vicious war 50 years ago wasnt it? I wonder how it compares to the conquests of the Romans and Attila the Hun, or the conquests of the British Empire, or the battles of WWI and WWII

or the actions of the UN peacekeepers
http://www.freedomdomain.com/un/disturbpeace.html
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1287926/posts
http://www.womenagainstrape.net/dark_side_of_peacekeeping.htm

I was thinking of disputing you on this since my own personal experience is in direct contridiction with the statement.

But upon reflection of the historical preceidents and the illeagal actions of ( lets call them ) rougue soldiers I have to conceed this point

Touche *nodding respectfully*

I would have to add though with such a long history of such actions and with how widespread they seem to be that perhaps such actions are the result of humans being placed in stressful situations.

In other words not the actions of a healthy mind.

Would you agree with this Kanendru?

This is not to say you werent taught what you were taught or that you, personally, had any part in this sort of thing. But when its in the military's best interests to commit horrific human rights abuses, they will: and its often ordered by people at the top.

Thank you, perhaps I have just been lucky and have not been where such actions could be considered, or perhaps I just happened to have the best of people in charge of the units I was in. Peoplewho would not cave in to the pressures to accomplish the mission at all costs.

Under either case I am gratefull that I was never placed in such a situation.

I don't suppose you've heard of the Salvador Option?

Is this not fighting fire with fire? You often have to meet the enemy on their own terms.

Not something I would advocate or support but I can understand the desire to attack the enemy in a manner that mirrors their actions.

Even the article I found about it
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6802629/site/newsweek/
seems to indicate that this is a measure of how desperate the commanders are to make some headway against the insurgents

I can olny hope they do not stoop to such an action

Respectfully

AAhhzz

*nods*

Thanks, I would truely appreciate it if you could find a link but can understand how a single story can become buried in the vast internet.

AAhhzz

Curiously, It is extremely hard to find a reference of such events, but they indeed happened:

Events are refered here:

http://www.thedesertsun.com/news/stories2004/national/20050112000120.shtml

"U.S. forces got off to a bad start in Fallujah and the surrounding Anbar province. In April, 2003, U.S. troops opened fire on angry protesters in Fallujah, killing 13 and injuring 75. The city seethed. "

More here

http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/iraq/2005-01-11-cover-usat_x.htm

And here

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&u=/usatoday/20050112/ts_usatoday/twoiraqcitiesawaitelections

Veterans for peace got a complete story here, it is the most complete, but i dont know if they are unbiased:

http://www.veteransforpeace.org/US_Iraqis_at_odds_043003.htm

Want more?

The french banned the use of ostensive religious symbols in all public grounds, crosses included.

http://www.rte.ie/news/2004/0210/france.html

10 Feb 2004

"Drafted in response to a rise in religious radicalism among the country's estimated five million Muslims, the bill makes it illegal to wear clothes or signs that 'conspicuously' display affiliation to a faith.

Experts say the Jewish skullcap and 'large' Christian crosses will be banned in addition to the Islamic headscarf; Sikh turbans are also likely to be included, and Education Minister Luc Ferry has said bandanas and even beards could be banned.

How Large is Large?

And if you ban all the outer displays of the Musilum and Jewish faith how can you in fairness allow even small crosses to remain?

Question,

Did the French Government place a ban on beards? If they did does that mean that all French Citizens are required to shave? How often?

What if Christians started wearing white button up shirts all the time?? Would this be considered coincidence or to be an act that 'conspicuously' display affiliation to a faith?

A small minority of French deputies have expressed their doubts about the law, calling it unnecessary, unworkable and liable to inflame sentiment among a section of the population that already feels victimised by society.

Was there an outcry against this law?

AAhhzz

British Broadcasting Communists. :D
Gah! You fool! It's the Bolshevik Broadcasting Commission. Don't you know anything? ;)

Curiously, It is extremely hard to find a reference of such events, but they indeed happened:

Events are refered here:

<first three references repeat the same story but verify that such actions took place> Thank You

Veterans for peace got a complete story here, it is the most complete, but i dont know if they are unbiased:

http://www.veteransforpeace.org/US_Iraqis_at_odds_043003.htm

Thank you for your efforts, I will conceed that such an event took place and deserves closer scrutiny by the Military Justice system than it appears to have been give.

Both sides of course gave their own side of the story. Weather either side is coloring the story or shading the truth should be investigated

However, the last paragraph of the story made me take notice

Some residents said that armed protesters, possibly drunk, did mingle with the demonstrators. But they ''shot into the air, yelling `we support you Saddam,''' said Adnan al Timimi, a 20-year-old student. Protesters did not fire at US soldiers, he said.

If in a crowd of 200 protecters one armed man was not shooting up in the air but at the soldiers would this not validate the soldeirs claims that they were fired upon?

And in a crowd of 200 would every participant see one person ( possibly at the back of the crowd ) firing at the school?

Both sides would be telling the absolute truth as they knew it, but would have a set of conflicting stories would they not?

But as to the actions of the soldiers? I would agree that the use of grenades in this situation was totally uncalled for. Smoke grenades perhaps, Tear gass sure, but that does not seem to be the case here does it?

Want more?

Thank you but its not nessicary, I conceed the point that this event happened, just wish someone at the time had looked at the school and remarked on weather or not there was evidence of small arms fire impacting the structure.

Now of course it is irrelevent, the attacks from the insurgents and the counter attacks of the occupational forces and the Iraqi Gaurd makes it highly likely that the building has a fair amount of damange. Sorting out the new from the two year old would likely be difficult if not impossible.

Once more thank you for finding this.

Respectfully

AAhhzz

http://www.rte.ie/news/2004/0210/france.html

10 Feb 2004

"Drafted in response to a rise in religious radicalism among the country's estimated five million Muslims, the bill makes it illegal to wear clothes or signs that 'conspicuously' display affiliation to a faith.

Experts say the Jewish skullcap and 'large' Christian crosses will be banned in addition to the Islamic headscarf; Sikh turbans are also likely to be included, and Education Minister Luc Ferry has said bandanas and even beards could be banned.

How Large is Large?

And if you ban all the outer displays of the Musilum and Jewish faith how can you in fairness allow even small crosses to remain?

Question,

Did the French Government place a ban on beards? If they did does that mean that all French Citizens are required to shave? How often?

What if Christians started wearing white button up shirts all the time?? Would this be considered coincidence or to be an act that 'conspicuously' display affiliation to a faith?

A small minority of French deputies have expressed their doubts about the law, calling it unnecessary, unworkable and liable to inflame sentiment among a section of the population that already feels victimised by society.

Was there an outcry against this law?

AAhhzz


It would be indeed unfair if "small" crosses were left out of the ban, but without the text of the law, i can not be shure, and since that could constitute positive descrimination against one religion, i bet that law would be unconstitutional according to french law, if passed. So i bet that they banned all symbols, but this is just a guess.

Frenchy males arent required to shave their beards. Some of their women should be forced to shave their armpits, in my opinion.

This law.. lets face it, it is a measure of forced integration. Many conservative muslims protested, they are not stupid, they knew this law (though i bet the lawmakers made it very asseptic and against all religions) was against them. The protest wasnt that widespread, since there are also alot of moderate muslims that accepted the law.

The main target of the law, was religious symbols in schools. This was to make shure that muslim boys and girls mingled properly with the rest of the French, assimilating their clothing, and the rest. Now, despite that this is cleary a measure against personall freedoms, it had (and has an intention): To integrate the descendents of foreign citizens in the French society. This may seem quite harsh, and it is, but consider this: Those that bombed the Spanish train in march 11th, were not poor, uneducated muslims, on the contrary. They were educated, working muslims, whose integration on the European culture was not completed. Despite living here, they were outsiders. This french law is a measure to try to curb this. If it is mean and intrusive, hell yes. If it is well intentioned, i would say yes. If it will be successful, only time will tell.

It would be indeed unfair if "small" crosses were left out of the ban, but without the text of the law, i can not be shure, and since that could constitute positive descrimination against one religion, i bet that law would be unconstitutional according to french law, if passed. So i bet that they banned all symbols, but this is just a guess.

Well every reference I could find made mention of the exclusion for small crosses, however I will admit that I didnt find anything within the past few months.

Frenchy males arent required to shave their beards. Some of their women should be forced to shave their armpits, in my opinion.

*Stiffling Laughter*

This law.. lets face it, it is a measure of forced integration. Many conservative muslims protested, they are not stupid, they knew this law (though i bet the lawmakers made it very asseptic and against all religions) was against them. The protest wasnt that widespread, since there are also alot of moderate muslims that accepted the law.


*nods* I have had little chance to interact on a personal basis with Arabic Musilums, but the few times I have the people I spoke with seemed very Courteous, Gentle, Proud and kind hearted.

I am willing to believe that these are the type of people that compromise 99% of Arabic Musilums. Just a guess on my part but it seems reasonable, if not scientific

I would thus be willing to believe that the vast majority did not protest, though they may have felt a certain amount of resentment

The main target of the law, was religious symbols in schools. This was to make shure that muslim boys and girls mingled properly with the rest of the French, assimilating their clothing, and the rest. Now, despite that this is cleary a measure against personall freedoms, it had (and has an intention): To integrate the descendents of foreign citizens in the French society. This may seem quite harsh, and it is, but consider this: Those that bombed the Spanish train in march 11th, were not poor, uneducated muslims, on the contrary. They were educated, working muslims, whose integration on the European culture was not completed. Despite living here, they were outsiders. This french law is a measure to try to curb this. If it is mean and intrusive, hell yes. If it is well intentioned, i would say yes. If it will be successful, only time will tell.

I wish them well, both the French and the Musilums.

Respctfully

AAhhzz

*nods* That was a vicious war 50 years ago wasnt it? I wonder how it compares to the conquests of the Romans and Attila the Hun, or the conquests of the British Empire, or the battles of WWI and WWII

How is this a valid defense of this sort of thing? "Well, it wasn't as bad as.." If I walked up to somebody and shot them in the face for no reason, could I get away with it by saying that "hey, at least I'm not Jeffrey Dahlmer?" Rome and Atilla are ancient history and hardly relevant to this discussion.

Yes these things were in the past, but my point is that there's a double standard being applied across the board. The people who carried out these atrocities are revered today in history textbooks as men of courage and duty, not as the criminals that they were - whereas, when lets say, Communists do things not even vaguely close to being on this scale, they're war criminals and terrorists.

The ruling classes almost never punish their own, especially at the upper levels, and when they do, only in a tokenistic manner at the lower ones. When have you ever heard of an american General being tried for the war crimes that person ordered? Has Bush, Gonzales, or Rumsfeld been put on trial for encouraging torture?


I would have to add though with such a long history of such actions and with how widespread they seem to be that perhaps such actions are the result of humans being placed in stressful situations.

In other words not the actions of a healthy mind.

Tell me, how is our commander in chief and his war council, sitting in an air conditioned board room ordering that this sort of thing be carried out, the result of "stressful situations" and "unhealthy minds?" Garner, for instance, I can accept was probably seriously fucked in the head, but Eisenhower? Reagan? Ollie North?

Look, i understand that you served in this military and I have no reason to believe you were directly responsible for murder or genocide or anything like that, and I understand the need to defend the institution you were once part of. But i think your feelings are in contradiction with the objective reality of the situation.



Is this not fighting fire with fire? You often have to meet the enemy on their own terms.

Not something I would advocate or support but I can understand the desire to attack the enemy in a manner that mirrors their actions.

OK, here's where we diverge significantly. As a communist, and a supporter of genuine struggles for national liberation, I believe what the resistance is doing is RIGHT in a very basic sense: fighting to end the occupation. There have been specific actions I haven't agreed with, but I operate under the understanding that A) these people are fundamentally fighting for something just, and B) they can't be judged wholly by the actions of a few. Take margaret hassan, for instance: the resistance is highly disunified and most of the larger groups denounced that particular execution.

Whereas what the united states is doing, regardless of whether or not they operate inside or outside the rules of war, is fundamentally wrong: imposing their will on an oppressed, exploited people by force of arms in order to further cement their geopolitical hegemony and ensure access to natural resources, not to mention bullying the rest of the region into the administration's line. Even if the US could have pulled off the invasion/occupation without a single civilian casualty... it would still, in a very fundamental sense, be WRONG.

How is this a valid defense of this sort of thing? "Well, it wasn't as bad as.." If I walked up to somebody and shot them in the face for no reason, could I get away with it by saying that "hey, at least I'm not Jeffrey Dahlmer?" Rome and Atilla are ancient history and hardly relevant to this discussion..

Actually if you had read the entire paragraph as a whole instead of partitioning it out perhaps you would have had a better understanting of it

But since you didnt, lets do the same for you

As far as walking up and shooting someone, it depends, did they just kill your Mother? I would think in that instance you could probably get away with it.

If you want to bring it down to the personal level with your "shoot them in the face" comment I wil courtiously oblige you

The entire war on terror is a reaction to 9/11 is it not?

Those 19 men murdered more than 3000 people one bright September morning didnt they?

Shall we ignore the people who supported those 19 men? Funded, trained and sheltered them? Because they were not in the plane with them?

If, as a reasonable human being. you realize that for the sake of our own survival, we can not leave the organization intact to fund train and shelter 19 more men, then please illucidate how you would seperate the wheat from the chaff.

Do it quickly, because the longer you allow them time to plan and gather strenght the harder they will eventually strike again.

And if you dont capture or kill them they will strike again. These are very honorable men that have sworn oaths of loyalty to Osama, and Osama has made it quite clear that nothing less than the utter destruction of Israel and the dismantling of western civilization will satisfy him. For the sake of their oaths they will have to do anything to achieve those aims. Even killing fellow Musilums is acceptable as long as they kill some of the infidels.

So quick, you have 300 million folks depending on you, what do you do? In detail, and you had better make it foolproof too, because if you fail every death will be your fault

Yes these things were in the past, but my point is that there's a double standard being applied across the board. The people who carried out these atrocities are revered today in history textbooks as men of courage and duty, not as the criminals that they were - whereas, when lets say, Communists do things not even vaguely close to being on this scale, they're war criminals and terrorists. .

I dont know, lets see if we can make a comparison.

http://www.endgenocide.org/genocide/soviet.html

STALIN

Who: Jews; Ukrainians, Farmers, and General Population
When: 1918-21; 1930-38 (highest numbers from 1932-33)
Where: Soviet Republic of Ukraine and throughout the Soviet Empire
Estimated Numbers: Approx. 100-200,000 Jews; 5 million Ukrainians killed 1932-33, 14-15 million Soviet peasants 1930-37, and at least 3 million "enemies of the people" 1937-38

The Soviet Purges

The Great Purge was another of Stalin's excesses to dominate the country. The Purges included all perceived "enemies of the state" including intellectuals and government officials of the original Bolshevik Revolution. Liquidations included old Bolsheviks, Communist party bosses, military leaders, and government officials. An estimated 12 million people were imprisoned or sent to Siberian camps, and at least 20 million were killed during the 25 years of Stalin's reign.

http://www.religioustolerance.org/genocide4.htm

MAO

1949 to 1987 China Communists Chinese Public 35.2 million

"From 1949 onwards, through a succession of failed economic experiments, notably the calamitous 'Great Leap Forward,' and ever more Byzantine political campaigns to suppress 'counter-revolutionaries' - code for anyone perceived to be against the Chairman [Mao Ze Dong]- the citizens of the People's Republic of China went to their deaths in their millions, by execution, starvation or despairingly by their own hands in repeated waves of suicide." About half starved to death during 1959 and 1960

In addition, Mao Ze Dong "launched the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution in 1966, in what appeared to be a massive cleansing policy to ensure the final victory of Mao and his clique over the rest of the Chinese Communist party. Over the next decade, literally millions of people were sacked, imprisoned and otherwise reviled for hitherto hidden 'bourgeois tendencies' while tens of thousands were executed


I figure you would accept Berkley as a reliable source, seeing how far to the left it is, so here you go
http://econ161.berkeley.edu/TCEH/Slouch_power4.html

Civilians Killed by Governments in the Twentieth Century: Top Twenty Regimes

Location (Regime) Deaths Era

Soviet Union (Communists) 61,900,000 1917-1990
China (Communists) 35,200,000 1949-present

Germany (Nazi Third Reich) 20,900,000 1933-1945
China (Kuomintang) 10,400,000 1928-1949
Japan (Imperial-Fascist) 6,000,000 1936-1945

China (Communist Guerrillas) 3,500,000 1923-1948
Cambodia (Communists) 2,000,000 1975-1979

Turkey ("Young Turks") 1,900,000 1909-1917

Vietnam (Communists) 1,700,000 1945-present
North Korea (Communists) 1,700,000 1948-present
Poland (Communists) 1,600,000 1945-1948

Pakistan (Yahya Khan) 1,500,000 1971
Mexico (Porfiriato) 1,400,000 1900-1920

Yugoslavia (Communists) 1,100,000 1944-1990
Russia (Czarist) 1,100,000 1900-1917
Turkey (Mustafa Kemal) 900,000 1918-1923
United Kingdom (Constitutional) 800,000 1900-present
Portugal (Fascist) 700,000 1926-1975
Croatia (Fascists) 700,000 1941-1945
Indonesia (Suharto) 600,000 1965-present

Let us call those leaders whose regimes have slaughtered more than ten million of their fellow humans "members of the Ten-Million Club." All pre-twentieth century history may (but may not) have seen two members of the Ten-Million Club: Chingis (Ghengis) Khan, the ruler of the twelfth century Mongols, the launcher of tremendously bloody invasions of Central Asia and China, and the founder of China's ruling Yuan Dynasty (Marco Polo's travels were to the court of the Yuan Emperor Kubulai Khan); and Hong Xiuquan, the mid-nineteenth-century Chinese intellectual who declared himself Jesus Christ's younger brother and launched the Taiping Rebellion. No single individual played a significant role in the creation and growth of the early modern Atlantic slave trade, or in the disease-and-exploitation-driven decimation of the pre-Columbian populations of the Americas. The first of these two historical episodes was on a super-genocidal scale; the second is uncertain--it may only have been genocidal.

By contrast, the twentieth century has seen perhaps five members join the Ten Million Club: in alphabetical order, Adolf Hitler, Chiang Kaishek, Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Stalin, and Mao Zedong. Hitler, Stalin, and Mao have credentials that may well make them the charter members of the Thirty Million Club as well--perhaps even the Fifty Million Club: our knowledge of what went on inside China, the Soviet Union, and the Third Reich is very imperfect. A regime whose hands are as bloody as those of the Suharto regime in Indonesia-with the blood on its hands of perhaps 450,000 communists, suspected communists, and others who simply were in the wrong place at the wrong time at its creation in 1965, and perhaps 150,000 inhabitants of East Timor since the Indonesian takeover in the mid-1970s--such a regime barely makes the twentieth century's top twenty list as far as the massacre of civilians is concerned.

WHOOOOAAAA!

Your right, there isnt even a comparision, the Romans and Atilla the Hun were SLACKERS compared to Stalin and Mao,

oh wait werent they two of those angelic communists you mentioned?

Heck, China's comunists made the top 6 Twice!!! Now thats what I call a Work Ethic! :p

Actually China made it 3 times in the top 6, but if you add up the communists score it dwarfs the puny Kuomintang total of only ten million

Your absolutely right, Nobody is even close to the scale of the communists are they? Those guys are in a Class by themselves

Heck Mao, nearly doubled Hitlers score and look how reviled Hitler ( rightly of course ) is, while Stalin TRIPLED Hitlers score.

After all those wre your words were they not? Didnt you say...

- whereas, when lets say, Communists do things not even vaguely close to being on this scale, they're war criminals and terrorists. .

Stalin and Mao dusted everyone didnt they.

Hell, the US didnt even make the top 20

But you know, if Osama gets a Biological or nuclear weapon he could enter the top 5 all by himself couldnt he??

So we are still waiting on your answer, how do you seperate the wheat from the chaff? The terrorists from the bystander, the guilty from the innocent.

Imagine that the life of everyone you know or have ever even met depends on you getting the answers before the terrorists get their hands on such a weapon

After all, its not what you THINK that matters its what you dont KNOW that matters.

And the horrible truth is You Dont Know if they are close to getting their hands on such a weapon do you?

So to save the lives of everyone you know what do you do?

Oh and remember there is an extensive network of criminal and terrorists organizations that are, if not eager to help, willing to help for enough cash.

Also there are countries that blatently harbor and protect the terrorists. (Aghanistan) So what do you do, let them sit there and plan more such attacks?

Now add to that you have been being warned of certain countries that are planning to attack you on their own,
http://edition.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/europe/06/18/russia.warning/index.html ( <---Former Communist, utterly trustable correct Kanendru?? )

A country that you know has used Chemical Weapons on their own citizens
http://www.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/meast/03/16/sprj.irq.massacre.memory.ap/
http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/rls/18714.htm
http://www.kdp.pp.se/chemical.html

What do you do Kanendru?

Remember the lives of everyone you ever knew is resting on your shoulders.

Millions of innocents well die if you fail.

Clocks ticking Dude

Oh wait, Communists dont seem to care about the deaths of millions

Silly me.

Are you sure you want to try and portray communists as being innocent?

God bless what an error.


The ruling classes almost never punish their own, especially at the upper levels, and when they do, only in a tokenistic manner at the lower ones. When have you ever heard of an american General being tried for the war crimes that person ordered? Has Bush, Gonzales, or Rumsfeld been put on trial for encouraging torture?.

So with this as the historical precident you expected things to be different now?

Why?

Are you that dense?

And encouraging, odd word for you to use isnt it?

Means they didnt exactly order it did they?

They didnt come outright and say, skin the captives alive did they?

They didnt actually tell anyone to burn out the prisoners eyes with red hot pokers did they?

Or to burn off their hands and feet.

They didnt actually tell anyone to tear a prisoner apart on the rack did they?

They didnt tell them to tie them to a post and beat them to death and rape them with police batons did they?

Oh wait, that was UN Peacekeepers wasnt it?
http://www.freedomdomain.com/un/disturbpeace.html

Or rape thier women
http://www.womenagainstrape.net/dark_side_of_peacekeeping.htm

Whoops, UN peacekeepers again,

Or kill everyone in their village,
http://www.kdp.pp.se/chemical.html

Oh wait that was Saddam, sorry, I keep looking for all these outrages and just cant seem to find relevent articles amoung all the other atrocities

I really shouldnt bring up Saddam, he was such a Slacker compared to Mao or Stalin.

* Sam Kineson laughter* AHHHH HA HA HA HA HA HA, I still cant believe you brought up the communists of all people and tried to protray them as innocent victims, Oh! oh! oh!....Whew, oh boy I have to catch my breath, Thanks! I really needed a laugh

I mean if we are talking Tourture lets actually talk about tourture.

Any fingernail less Abu Ghaibi prisoners?

Any mutillated?

How about burn scars over half of thier body?

Or had their tongues torn out, Oh wait Saddam again

So lets look at this again,

There is information received ( from a former communist no less so you have to trust him ) and it says that Saddam is making plans to strike at the US, either on our soil or perhaps an Embassy overseas

You know he had used chemical weapons before.

Would he hesitate to use them again??

So how big is one of those Suitcase Nuclear bombs Kanendru?

How virulent is the smallpox virus?

How much VX gas does it take to be fatal?

You know he has world class biological research facilities, he says he is using them for medical research, but can you be Positive?

You know he has fertillizer plants, you also know they can be converted to chemical weapons production inside of days, as long as Saddam doesnt mind having a few casualties.

And you know Saddam doesnt mind that at all

Heck he hides a few petri dishes and you will never find a biological weapon will you?

Remember all of your cousins are counting on you to save their lives

Whoops, your taking too much time Kanendru whats your answer?

Your Mothers life is on the line, your daughters too.

Come on, whats your answer?

Make it foolproof. Make it absolutely positively 100% without fail EVER. Or their deaths are on your hands

Times ticking by quick

Oh and by the way,

http://www.unhchr.ch/html/menu3/b/91.htm

PART I

GENERAL PROVISIONS

Article 4

A. Prisoners of war, in the sense of the present Convention, are persons belonging to one of the following categories, who have fallen into the power of the enemy:

1. Members of the armed forces of a Party to the conflict as well as members of militias or volunteer corps forming part of such armed forces.

2. Members of other militias and members of other volunteer corps, including those of organized resistance movements, belonging to a Party to the conflict and operating in or outside their own territory, even if this territory is occupied, provided that such militias or volunteer corps, including such organized resistance movements, fulfill the following conditions:

(a) That of being commanded by a person responsible for his subordinates;

(b) That of having a fixed distinctive sign recognizable at a distance;

(c) That of carrying arms openly;

(d) That of conducting their operations in accordance with the laws and customs of war.

Since they have violated ever section of Article 4 A 2, parts a through d they have forfeited their rights under the Geneva Convention to the protections as a prisoner of war.

You have No legal requirement to treat them as prisoners of war

You do however have an absolute moral requirement to do everything in your power to protect your citizens

Hurry up, your children are hoping you can save thier lives


Tell me, how is our commander in chief and his war council, sitting in an air conditioned board room ordering that this sort of thing be carried out, the result of "stressful situations" and "unhealthy minds?" Garner, for instance, I can accept was probably seriously fucked in the head, but Eisenhower? Reagan? Ollie North? .

How familare are you with the chain of command ?

Do you actually think Bush knew Garner existed before reading the breif?

Maybe Donald Rumsfeild?

How does Sleep deprivation stack up against tearing out fingernails?>

Or humiliation tactics stack up against castration??

Or how does scaring the hell out of a guy with a military police dog on a leash compare to feeding one into a chipper shreader in front of a bunch of others just on the off chance one of them will talk?

And why did you use the word Encourage anyway? Maybe because while the memo points out that such and such tactics are approved those tactics are really rather mild compared to what happens routinely in the world arent they?

Oh phycologically devistating, oh yes, but crippling? No I dont think so.

Name me a middle eastern country that does not use physical abuse on prisoners.

Name one.

Once you do I will go and check them out on Amnesty International and post the report here.

That is after all the culture that the terrorists are from is it not?

Just like your from the pampered lap of America.

No matter how terrible your life is your sitting at a computer arent you?

You have the leasure to read this far didnt you? Well maybe not.

But you are pampered, so am I for that matter compared to most of the people in the world.

Look, i understand that you served in this military and I have no reason to believe you were directly responsible for murder or genocide or anything like that, and I understand the need to defend the institution you were once part of. But i think your feelings are in contradiction with the objective reality of the situation..

LOLOLOL

Thank you for your generousity. Your faith in me is touching.

But it isnt feelings, it is 22 years of training, 22 years of observation, 22 years of working with decent, honest human beings.

Were there assholes like Garner?

Sure there was, I would be willing to bet you know a few jerks too, even if your not friendly with them.

So tell me Kanendru how many US military personel have you known for at least ten years?

50? 100? 1?

Times ticking away Friends of yours are praying you can save their lives

Whats your absolutely positively, 100% foolproof plan to save everyone?

Hurry!

Do you know what Osama is buying right now ?

Is he in contact with the Russian Mafia?

Maybe he is talking with Kim Jhong-il? Maybe asking to borrow just a couple of nukes?


OK, here's where we diverge significantly. As a communist, and a supporter of genuine struggles for national liberation, I believe what the resistance is doing is RIGHT in a very basic sense: fighting to end the occupation. There have been specific actions I haven't agreed with, but I operate under the understanding that A) these people are fundamentally fighting for something just, and B) they can't be judged wholly by the actions of a few. Take margaret hassan, for instance: the resistance is highly disunified and most of the larger groups denounced that particular execution..

I am glad to know you dont agree with every action taken by the terrorists

How do you acount for the presence of foreign nationals though?

Its not like Iraq was well loved throughout the region, though I guess considering the class of folks we are talking about maybe Saddam and his chipper shreader were admired.

You are correct that we diverge there.

After all with 300,000 to 400,000 dead at Saddam's orders and dropped into mass graves like so many bags of garbage I find myself strangely unsympathetic to Saddam's plight.

And since there was no other way to oust him from power we had to go in there to get it done.

After all we have information that he was planning his own attacks on US interests if not US soil.

Or perhaps you believe we should have waited for an attack from Saddam before doing anything? Just hope that his attack is something small like 9/11 so that too many dont die while we do nothing.

Speaking of people striking what your plan? Your one true love waits for you to save them

Remember if it ever fails your damned and everyone you know is dead.


Ever wonder if that's the kind of pressure that President Bush operates under Kanendru?




Whereas what the united states is doing, regardless of whether or not they operate inside or outside the rules of war, is fundamentally wrong: imposing their will on an oppressed, exploited people by force of arms in order to further cement their geopolitical hegemony and ensure access to natural resources, not to mention bullying the rest of the region into the administration's line. Even if the US could have pulled off the invasion/occupation without a single civilian casualty... it would still, in a very fundamental sense, be WRONG.


Yeah we sure have a strangle hold on Kuwaite dont we? Hell we are sucking the oil out of that country and not paying a dime for it are we? Must be massive starvation there eh?

By the way,

Why are we paying 50 dollars a barrel anyway if we can suck Iraq and Kuwaite dry Kanendru?

After all isnt Oil for Blood the only reason we ever go over there?

And damn, How many Billions do you think we will spend on Iraq before we can suck it dry??

At this rate it might have actually been cheaper to have PAID for the oil in the first place

And your right the Iraqis were opprested and exploited, it was just happening under Saddam.

What supposed to happen Jan 30?

Elections? Why the heck would we bother to let them have elections? They might get uppity if they think they are in charge of their own country

Whats your answer Kanendru?

This is a longass post and my time is limited, so I'll answer each thing point by point without quoting.

On Bin laden: What in the world does he have to do with anything this thread is about? Iraq had nothing to do with Al-Qaeda and 9/11. Even the administration acknowledges this openly. On that point, I think you seriously need to check your facts before using him and 9/11 to try and justify Iraq.

On the crimes of Communism: The bourgoise media take every effort and every expense to demonize and discredit the Communist movement and its leaders. This does not mean that some of these charges are not without merit; Stalin did make the ideological error of assuming every piece of opposition to his policies meant the opposser was an agent of the enemy, and many people suffered because of this. Trotsky's ideas may have been totally out of whack, but he didn't deserve an icepick to the head. Also, while his economic planning may have been generally in keeping with socialist principles, the way it was implemented did not allow for the expression of the conscious initiative of the masses, and the atmosphere created by the purges left little room for political expression either; people were content to leave politics in the realm of party beuracrats and stay out of the whole thing altogether.

these are errors that the communist movement must call out and repudiate. No one wants a repetition of Stalin, save for the loons in Progressive Labor. It should be noted that recent evidence, published in the Village Voice, seems to lend credence to the theory that the Ukrainian Holocaust never happened; there was famine, but it was not a result of deliberate government policies towards the Ukrainians, and the scale was much smaller.

Mao, on the other hand, was different. Under his leadership political expression was allowed and even encouraged. Read some of his writings and primary documents from the period; you'll see that Mao struggled with his opponents in the realm of ideology, through principled debate. Frequently he has to address within his OWN PARTY not just minor criticisms, but the implementation of policies totally contradictory with his political line. None of these people were shot or sent to a gulag somewhere, because Mao did not have or claim absolute power.

For the cultural revolution, I suggest reading Jean Daubier's "A History of the Chinese Cultural Revolution" to get ALL the facts related to this set of incidents. It's worth noting that if you look at what Mao wrote, he repudiated using violence in the political struggle that was going on even when the groups aligned with him used it. He did not have control over the Red Guards or any of the worker's headquarters in his camp, other than influence.

It's an extremely complicated set of events to summarize because there aren't two sides to this story: it's more like 6 or 7, and often it's difficult to tell where everybody stood because even the anti-Maoists, who engaged in violence and persecution of the people on a frequent basis, were led by capitalist-roaders who CLAIMED on paper to be upholding Mao's line; of course, until Mao told them to bugger off.

the Great Leap Forward is more straightforward. Collectivisation was by and large voluntary. the reasons for its failure could be summized as follows:

-Severe weather conditions such as draught or flood occuring from 61-63
-Abrupt withdrawl of Soviet agricultural and industrial aid
-the leadership understandably not forseeing any of these things and launching a campaign in 58-59 to make villages self sufficient in industry; alot of effort was put into iron smelting and away from agricultural production, which would have been OK had the above not been a factor.

The death toll for this is actually unknown; REPUTABLE sources say China experianced a net population decrease of 20 million which, if you know anything about demographic studies, doesn't translate into "20 million dead". The toll for the cultural revolution is put between 40,000 to 400,000 after many years of political upheaval and streetfighting; few if any of these deaths occured at government hands.

I don't support the Eastern Bloc, Pol Pot, or Vietnam, so I fail to see the relevance. I also question the Vietnamese number; frankly, that looks more like the total number of civilians killed by the US during the war than the government.

Just because the author is from Berkely doesn't mean he is a leftist, or that he doesn't have an ax to grind.

Now that that's settled...


On who ordered what and UN "Peacekeepers":

Your stories about UN forces are probably true. then again, the UN is dominated by the US and the other "small imperialist" powers of Europe, so I have no doubt these things actually happened. Fuck the UN.

On the other hand, no, the Bush Gang didn't order the individual acts of torture carried out against civilians but they knew about it and never took action to stop it; they also implemented policies that pretty much said torture was "OK". Have you ever looked at what Alberto Gonzales, the archietech of these policies, wrote about what does and does not constitue torture? He basically said that if it doesn't inflict SEVERE bodily injury that could possibly lead to death, it doesn't count. That sounds like tactit support to me.


And for Christ's sake, stop rambling about Saddam's weapons. They weren't there, or haven't you been told? And they never, ever had the delivery systems necessary to use them against you or I. EVER. No long range missiles, no suitcase nukes, nothing. And nobody denies Saddam was an imperialist dictator, but that doesn't give other imperialists carte blanche to oppress Iraqis in his stead; in a conflict between two imperialist powers, I choose NEITHER and stand on the side of the people of Iraq, who are not served under either system.

(You do know we're killing Iraqis faster than Saddam ever could, right? 100,000 due to combat and suffering related to infrastructure damage.. i.e. starvation, lack of potable water, etc in two years compared to 300,000 in decades.)

"So tell me Kanendru how many US military personel have you known for at least ten years?"

There's my father for one, and several of my friends, though they don't meet the arbitrary ten year cutoff point. And one of them basically repudiated his military career and joined a socialist party I used to be part of. Fair enough?

Though still, do you really have to experiance something personally to get a sense of its conceptual reality? On this basis, you can't really talk about Stalin's gulags because you've "never been there" and "haven't known a KGB agent for at least 10 years".



Yeah we sure have a strangle hold on Kuwaite dont we? Hell we are sucking the oil out of that country and not paying a dime for it are we? Must be massive starvation there eh?

By the way,

Why are we paying 50 dollars a barrel anyway if we can suck Iraq and Kuwaite dry Kanendru?

After all isnt Oil for Blood the only reason we ever go over there?

And damn, How many Billions do you think we will spend on Iraq before we can suck it dry??

At this rate it might have actually been cheaper to have PAID for the oil in the first place

And your right the Iraqis were opprested and exploited, it was just happening under Saddam.

What supposed to happen Jan 30?

Elections? Why the heck would we bother to let them have elections? They might get uppity if they think they are in charge of their own country

Whats your answer Kanendru?

Well, for one thing just sucking the oil out and shipping it to America wouldn't look very good, would it? Read the Iraqi interim constitution though, and read the part about where it explicitely states up to %100 of iraqi businesses can be FOREIGN OWNED AND OPERATED and have no obligation to put anything back into the economy. They can't even slap a decent tax on them for fuck's sake.

Control of oil is different from possession, and frankly more useful. It is one thing to have a patch of oil under your possession, expending your own resources to get it out of the ground, it is another thing to have control and be able to dictate, through a puppet regime or corporate control, who gets what and when.

So, there's control of oil resources and a need to marginalize OPEC, plus permanent military bases that can be used as staging grounds for future interventions; in other words, bases in Iraq provide a useful platform to slap around anybody who gets "out of line".

If you want to know more about how imperialism functions, read Lenin's "Imperialism: the highest stage of Capitalism", which explains how capitalism is no longer about just buying and selling goods but the export of CAPITAL abroad, especially in underdeveloped countries where resources can be easily controlled and labor sources are cheap.

Oil prices are spiking because resistance attacks on pipelines make it harder to get out the Iraqi crude, and simple supply and demand: China is industrializing so rapidly that it's demanding a greater and greater supply, thus jacking up prices. That's the simple answer.

As for foreign nationals, there are few. Even American commanders admit as much, that the vast majority of fighters are from Iraq proper, born and raised. Though that does raise the question, what's wrong with going abroad to fight with a people against oppression from without, in and of itself, leaving aside whose side these particular fellows are on? American volunteers fought in spain against the Fascists; French army officers helped train American revolutionaries, and America itself has backed dozens of coups with special forces troops and CIA assistance. What's your point?

I'm sure Bush did not anticipate having the war cost this much this soon, and I hope the resistance makes it as expensive for him as possible.

*WHEW* Ok, that's enough for one post. Damn.

Good. This means there are more insurgents to kill. Those bitches can come to us, and we can make sure that they are burning in the oil wells they just lit on fire.

Just a note, this story was on NPR's "All Things Considered" this evening. I listen to it on the way home from work.

This is a longass post and my time is limited, so I'll answer each thing point by point without quoting.

*smiles*

Yep long assed post. Thanks for taking the time to reply :)

As to Bin Laden and Co. I didnt say there was a direct link did I?

What I was trying to point out was that 9/11 was the start of this whole situation. After 9/11 we received warnings from the Russian intellegence services that Saddam was planning his own strikes against US interests.

The link I provided starts with these 5 paragraphs

MOSCOW, Russia (CNN) -- Russian intelligence services warned Washington several times that Saddam Hussein's regime planned terrorist attacks against the United States, President Vladimir Putin has said.

The warnings were provided after September 11, 2001 and before the start of the Iraqi war, Putin said Friday.

The planned attacks were targeted both inside and outside the United States, said Putin, who made the remarks during a visit to Kazakhstan.

However, Putin said there was no evidence that Saddam's regime was involved in any terrorist attacks.

"I can confirm that after the events of September 11, 2001, and up to the military operation in Iraq, Russian special services and Russian intelligence several times received ... information that official organs of Saddam's regime were preparing terrorist acts on the territory of the United States and beyond its borders, at U.S. military and civilian locations," Putin said.

Now add this bit

http://www.townhall.com/columnists/robertnovak/printrn20040715.shtml

Bottom 4 paragraphs tells the story,

Appearently Joe Wilsons Senate Committee testimony refutes his own strident claims to the press in which he claimed over and over again that the President lied in his claims about the Niger Yellowcake.

http://www.cia.gov/cia/reports/iraq_wmd/Iraq_Oct_2002.htm#04

Add to this the CIA's report of October 2002.

Yeah its long but read it through, after all your asking me to research on Mao in an effort to exonerate him for crimes he is accused of isnt he?

The CIA has streniously denied that any pressure was placed on analysist to color the report. Then again weather or not it was pressured they would have to say this wouldnt they? So take it with a grain of salt and this bit of advice.

When gauging the potential of an enemy force its not what you know but what you dont know that that must guide your precautions. In other words you ALWAYS assume that the enemy has a bit of knowledge, capabilities and assests that you dont know about. Better by far to be prepared for the worst than to be not be prepared at all

Dont you agree?

You already know of Saddam's use of chemical weapons on his own people so we dont have to belabor the point

So lets put this all in context.

Your country has been attacked by terrorists and has set out on a war to eliminate the threat posed by terrorists.

You recieve information from an old enemy that states that Saddam is planning to launch his own terrorist attacks.

Your intellegence agency tells you that while they can not state catagorically that he has weapons available they do state catagorically that he has the capability to produce chemical weapons. Biologicals can not be ruled out in fact your intellegence agency states he might already be in production of biologicals. Nuclear is thought to be within his capabilities but not in the near term, unless he procures enriched uranium from a foriegn source. The worlds nuclear inventory is a bit short according to some sources.

The Russian stockpiles of enriched unranium is not addequately protected

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/1859560.stm

http://www.nuclearfiles.org/hinonproliferationtreaty/fm-theft.html < this is whats admitted publically, do you think there may be more theifs that have not been owned up to? Or even went unnoticed? As I said it's what you dont know that can kill you

The UN IEAE has concerns about Iraq's capabilities.

Add those up and you have the ruler of a country that is hostile to you, (rightfully so or not is irrelevent, the fact that it's hostile is) has used chemical weapons, that your old enemy is saying wants to launch strikes against you, has chemical and biological capability and has a long history of attempting to aquire nuclear assets.

Put yourself in the shoes of the president, can you honestly say you would ignore these facts and risk your citizens after 3000 people have already been killed??

Remember millions are depending on you.

Remember that you must assume that you dont know everything about Saddam's capabilities.

So what do you do?? Wait for an attack?

Thats how those two are linked. Not by a direct link but by the fact that for what we knew directly and what we were being told their intentions were simular.

And is it not an old Arab proverb that states "The Enemy of my Enemy is my friend?"

Saddam and Osama may have hated each others guts, but its possible that they hated us even more, do you know Saddams and Osama heart?

After all Saddam was the only Arab political leader to openly praise the 9/11 attacks wasnt he?

Kind of a worrisome fact dont you think?

As to a delivery system, what is a major concern these days for Homeland security? Think Ports. Think of tens of millions of cargo containers entering the US every year. Hide a bomb Chemical/Biological or even just a dirty bomb exploded in a cargo container set to detonate when the container is open.

Or think of the movie, Day after Tomorrow from the 1980's where a Eco terrorist group brings a nuke into the Boston harbor on a tug and demands the US comply with their demands, then accidently detonate the bomb

I am pretty sure Iraq had boats, or could get someone to give them one.

And Hans Blixx did manage to find this
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F10B15FC3F5E0C708DDDAB0894DB404482

Now admittedly it wouldnt reach the US, but what about our allies?


As to the Communists, I didnt think you were a supporter of any of the atrocities there, weather by Stalin, Mao or anyone else. Just found it increadibly hillarious that you used communists in your post as ones portrayed as war criminals and terrorists. We can leave it at that I think.

And yeah I will read a bit on Mao just to see if I have been fed a line

I doubt all the media, most lean left, some lean right, all lean torward the sensationalistic, thus all the views are distorted.

UN? Yeah they are a pretty sad lot. As to being US dominated it seems like we are missing a UN mandate to invade Iraq.

Of course it now seems that France had a few Billion reasons to block any change of the situation in Iraq didnt they? *sigh*

As to the tourture? The Geneva Convention states severe pain or harm. The comments by Gonzoles were just a straight forward legal reading of those conventions. Nothing more nothing less. Thats beside the fact that terrorists have forfeited their protections by the Geneva conventions by their actions. The duress and stress situations are within the Geneva conventions, sleep depreivation is within the Geneva Conventions.

The Humiliation situation is NOT.

However, who do you think first started investigating the Abu Ghrabi prison? Thats right the DoD, and while the DoD would have doubtlessly liked to keep the situation quiet they were the ones investigating

http://news.findlaw.com/hdocs/docs/iraq/tagubarpt.html#ThR1.2

1. (U) On 19 January 2004, Lieutenant General (LTG) Ricardo S. Sanchez, Commander, Combined Joint Task Force Seven (CJTF-7) requested that the Commander, US Central Command, appoint an Investigating Officer (IO) in the grade of Major General (MG) or above to investigate the conduct of operations within the 800th Military Police (MP) Brigade. LTG Sanchez requested an investigation of detention and internment operations by the Brigade from 1 November 2003 to present. LTG Sanchez cited recent reports of detainee abuse, escapes from confinement facilities, and accountability lapses, which indicated systemic problems within the brigade and suggested a lack of clear standards, proficiency, and leadership.

The military also broke the story to the public in its usual understated way in January

http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/news/2004/01/mil-040116-centcom02a.htm

The fact is that the Military shut it down and brought it out into the open.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A26401-2004Jun8.html

The Gonzoles memo stated that Sever "must be equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death." For a psychological technique to rise to the level of mental torture, the Justice Department argued, the psychological harm must last "months or even years."

Now according to the Third Convention article 130

Article 130

Grave breaches to which the preceding Article relates shall be those involving any of the following acts, if committed against persons or property protected by the Convention: wilful killing, torture or inhuman treatment, including biological experiments, wilfully causing great suffering or serious injury to body or health, compelling a prisoner of war to serve in the forces of the hostile Power, or wilfully depriving a prisoner of war of the rights of fair and regular trial prescribed in this Convention.

Sounds like they were talking about very sever actions there in the Geneva Conventions doesnt it?

So there was wiggle room for the lawyers to contest the point wasnt there?

But anyway the Geneva Conventions also says this,

http://www.ohchr.org/english/law/civilianpersons.htm

Article 2

In addition to the provisions which shall be implemented in peacetime, the present Convention shall apply to all cases of declared war or of any other armed conflict which may arise between two or more of the High Contracting Parties, even if the state of war is not recognized by one of them.

The Convention shall also apply to all cases of partial or total occupation of the territory of a High Contracting Party, even if the said occupation meets with no armed resistance.

Although one of the Powers in conflict may not be a party to the present Convention, the Powers who are parties thereto shall remain bound by it in their mutual relations. They shall furthermore be bound by the Convention in relation to the said Power, if the latter accepts and applies the provisions thereof.

This seems to read that if the said Power, ( those resistance groups you refer to ), will "accept and applies the provisions ( of the Geneva Convention )" only then shall the occuping forces be obligated to recognize the Convention in relation to these groups

Please let me know if this is your interpretation as well.

and
http://www.unhchr.ch/html/menu3/b/93.htm

Article 44.-Combatants and prisoners of war

1. Any combatant, as defined in Article 43, who falls into the power of an adverse Party shall be a prisoner of war.

2. While all combatants are obliged to comply with the rules of international law applicable in armed conflict, violations of these rules shall not deprive a combatant of his right to be a combatant or, if he falls into the power of an adverse Party, of his right to be a prisoner of war, except as provided in paragraphs 3 and 4.

3. In order to promote the protection of the civilian population from the effects of hostilities, combatants are obliged to distinguish themselves from the civilian population while they are engaged in an attack or in a military operation preparatory to an attack. Recognizing, however, that there are situations in armed conflicts where, owing to the nature of the hostilities an armed combatant cannot so distinguish himself, he shall retain his status as a combatant, provided that, in such situations, he carries his arms openly:

(a) During each military engagement, and

(b) During such time as he is visible to the adversary while he is engaged in a military deployment preceding the launching of an attack in which he is to participate.

Acts which comply with the requirements of this paragraph shall not be considered as perfidious within the meaning of Article 37, paragraph 1 (c).

4. A combatant who falls into the power of an adverse Party while failing to meet the requirements set forth in the second sentence of paragraph 3 shall forfeit his right to be a prisoner of war, but he shall, nevertheless, be given protections equivalent in all respects to those accorded to prisoners of war by the Third Convention and by this Protocol. This protection includes protections equivalent to those accorded to prisoners of war by the Third Convention in the case where such a person is tried and punished for any offences he has committed.

So persons not openly carrying thier weapons are considered to have "forefited his right to be a Prisoner of War"...how interesting. They are entitled to the protections equivelent to those accorded a prisoner of war that has been tried and punished for any offenses he has commited.

Interesting, so what does this mean?

Third Convention

Art. 68. Protected persons who commit an offence which is solely intended to harm the Occupying Power, but which does not constitute an attempt on the life or limb of members of the occupying forces or administration, nor a grave collective danger, nor seriously damage the property of the occupying forces or administration or the installations used by them, shall be liable to internment or simple imprisonment, provided the duration of such internment or imprisonment is proportionate to the offence committed. Furthermore, internment or imprisonment shall, for such offences, be the only measure adopted for depriving protected persons of liberty. The courts provided for under Article 66 of the present Convention may at their discretion convert a sentence of imprisonment to one of internment for the same period.

The penal provisions promulgated by the Occupying Power in accordance with Articles 64 and 65 may impose the death penalty against a protected person only in cases where the person is guilty of espionage, of serious acts of sabotage against the military installations of the Occupying Power or of intentional offences which have caused the death of one or more persons, provided that such offences were punishable by death under the law of the occupied territory in force before the occupation began.

Lets see, You could be given the death sentence in Afganistan or Iraq prior to the occupation for doing what exactly?
Stealing?
Adaultry?
Blasphomy?
Speaking out against the government ( must less taking up arms against them) ?
Objecting to the rape of your children?
Being of the wrong ethnicity?
Being of the wrong religion?
Advocating free elections?
Protesting in any form or fashion?

My pont is that they dont have any protections under Geneva, so the prohibitions against torture doesnt apply

Lastly the military was the one to start the investigation and they stopped the abuses, credit them that at least


As to knowing military persons
:)

I think your Father is good enough to qualify as a military person. I hope he is one of the really good ones!


As to the new Iraq constitution I will have to admit I had not read the whole thing, I will have to look and see what it does say about foriegn ownership and not having to pay anything for the oil. Truthfully that doesnt seem right, I seem to recall hearing that as the oil feilds opened the money was starting to flow into Iraqi coffers

But you may right, if so I will publiclly acknowledge it. Ask East Canuck, I argue my points passionately, but if I am wrong I do admit it, *chuckles* Not the usual behaviour around here I will admit, but then again I am not usual.

And as to wanting the war to cost Bush as much as possible.

You do realize that it is the Iraqis that are taking the brunt of the terrorist attacks dont you? Are you hoping more Iraqis die?

The US forces do take the occasional hit, but not on the order that the Iraqis are getting harmed.

Are you sure thats what you want?

Be well

AAhhzz