2000 American Soldier deaths

Saying it was illegal for Iraq to buy something under sanctions is irrelevant. For the majority of the decade of sanctions, it was illegal for Iraq to buy anything - including food.

Regardless, it is completely askance to ask any middle-eastern country to de-arm while Israel still possesses nuclear weapons.

 

"Quote:

Originally Posted by Balbus

By "they" do you just mean US troops, also you don’t say if you thought the fighting in the region would stop?

It is my partial belief that if there were no U.S. troops, most of the fighting would stop.

Ideally though it'd be nice if every single soldier over there were killed, regardless of the country they are serving for."

So you have gone from wanting all US combatants dead to all combatants dead?

But many of the people fighting the US occupation are just volunteers like many of the people that fought in the American war of independence and US civil war. Are you honestly saying that you wish for people even the ones fighting for their own freedom to be killed?

**

Quote:

Soul we are taking about peoples lives here? I hate the Bush Admin but in my opinion the US and the American people still have a responsibility to put right what they have so royally fucked up.

and you believe that keeping the U.S. soldiers over there not as peacekeepers but as soldiers will fix what is wrong?

Peacekeepers are usually soldiers of one type or another.

I’ve already said and am on record many times as saying I think the US presence in Iraq is not helping.




Quote:

If something turns to shit, it is blamed on the President and administration that began it, oh no it is not the fault of the American people, oh no there is no such thing as collective responsibility.

I did not want there to be war, how in the hell is it my fault?


The thing is what do you as a citizen of a country take responsibility for?

I also was against the war and campaigned against it but it was still carried out in ‘my name’ it was an act of the British government and I’m a citizen of that country, I might not be personally responsible but I share a collective responsibility.

It is something I’ve noticed about the US and I see it mainly as a elite controlling device and is based in the American myths I talked about earlier.

There is a lot about personal responsibility but little about collective responsibility in US society. This means that the individual is blamed for their situation when in many cases it is in fact a deficiency of collective responsibility. So for example is someone cannot afford healthcare it is their fault for not working hard not the responsibility of a society that prefers tax cuts over a universal healthcare system.

In my view it can lead people to shrug of a communal decision as being nothing to do with them.


**

To me these people are as much victims of a system than products of it. These people have often been taken in by myths perpetrated by a ruling elite or are in need of help that shouldn’t involve them signing a pact with the devil in the guise of a recruiting sergeant. [/quote]

but they still joined, no matter how you look at it.
tell me, what do you think of when you hear or read the word "military?" you think of wars and fighting, do you not?
i actually did a poll of this in my school a couple of weeks ago -- the only people to answer "defense" were the history teachers.


It is how it is presented

George Washington - insurgent leader or military leader

Nelson Mandela – freedom fighter or terrorist

Che Guevara – romantic rebel or cold blooded murderer

Where the left wingers that went to fight in the Spanish civil war heroes fighting fascism or dangerous fanatics meddling in things that didn’t concern them? What about those that signed up to fight Hitler?

It is what an armed force is used for that dictates if it is defensive, aggressive, or seen as a force for good or ill.

**

Are you saying they should get out of the US? Where are they meant to go?

somewhere else... it doesn't matter where. in vietnam and still today, the popular place seems to be Canada.

Look back at my original words again and think about them.

People that have signed up because of the myths, my find out later (as many do) that they were just being used but the trick is to get them before they sign up and that is difficult in a country that seems to have little opposing the ruling myth’s, of America as the guardian of truth justice and freedom.

The others that have signed up to get an education, training or the other benefits are not going to be helped by leaving in fact they are likely to be in a worse situation, as immigrants in a foreign country.

Soul stop thinking in black and white and begin thinking about the complexities of the real world.

(I think the US has plugged the legal hole with regards to Canada)

 

You do understand what irrelevant means don't you? The fact that GPS systems we're illegal means nothing when everything is illegal. No imports/exports.

 

Yet, you ignore the point that Iraq (a hostile nation at the time) had purchased GPS software that is capable to "produce sophisticated mapping of eastern US cities."

Please acknowledge why Iraq would need a sophisticated map of eastern US cities?

 

To quote Reagan: Peace through Strength.

I just don't see the problem, even if Iraq did possess WMD's. America does. And has as bad a track record of starting illegal wars as Iraq.

So even if Iraq did possess the means to attack the US, they didn't use them. America did. Iraq has any and all moral high ground here.

 

we can vaporize iraq in 2 shots..... I really doubt they ever have had the money to build weapons that can get to american cities faster than we can turn mesopotamia into a glossy crater......



now that said, MAD is a horrible idea, but no matter what kind of sophisticated mapping can they have that google can't do better <half joking....>


things like that could certainly help terrorists, but come on, al queada is hardly trying right now, if they really wanted to there are all sorts of pourous things they could have exploited by now and taken advantage of free with membership AAA maps to do it...

not to mention google satelite images...


Iraq wasn't going to fuck us up, if they had we would have fucked them up FAR worse, it wouldn't be pretty, but is anything war related?


the route we went we have more than 10,000 civilians dead, at least 2,000 soldiers dead, and billions of dollars spent....


geez, we would have been better to buy off some ayatollah's and eat saddam from the inside.....


oh, but bribery is wrong, we have to maintain our high morals and manufacture a whole generation of people who hate america.....

 

Nevermind that Washington itself has repeatedly demonstrated its selective adherence, and often outright contravention, of international law. Moreover, the clearly tv-fed, misinformed warmongers ignore the fact that the majority of all oil for food criminality was carried out on US soil by US firms (many with direct links to the present administration).

Same old double standard from the hypcoritical apologists of US empire building.

The lessons of decades of overt aggressivistic militarism (the very evil used as a pretext by Washington for attacking one weaker nation after another - often to install yet another authoritarian regime in place of the previous) go ignored or entirely unlearned by each decade's budding new "patriotic" sycophants.

The rest of the world, however, is neither so smugly and arrogantly oblivious to the countless hypocrisies of those who make proclamations against the evils of others whilst perpetrating the very same atrocities.

Time for the warmongers to look in the mirror of cold hard truth.

 

Always an excuse by the ill-informed warmongers for disregarding the very concepts of legality and the "rule of law" which are so often touted as justification for what is none other than war of aggression and conquest.

I suggest Gilligan, that you consider Article 6 of our own US Consitution, which you seemingly claim to hold so dear. You'll find that our actions are not only morally indefensible and illegal in a trans-national context, but also un-Constitutional according to our own foundational principles.

But then, for those who evince little better than the rational of 19th century colonialist mindsets, consistent application of principle has always proven harder to swallow than exceptionalistic sloganeering about "exporting democracy" or "liberation". Nevermind that these terms as employed by our Washington elites are nothing more than political doublespeak for military enforced corporate and strategic hegemony over weaker nations which dare refuse to do their bidding.

Once again, the hypocrisy and criminality of recent years is lost only on the insulated, PR-indoctrinated, hyper-nationalist rank and file of our domestic populace. The bulk of the world sees our crimes and our justifications for the longrunning presumptiveness they have always been.

The real threat to the world and to world peace are our own leaders and their rabid Pentagon war machine.

 

Are you talking about Gillian ? or just making a statement ?..It is difficult to relate what your saying to anybody above you ???.

 

Oh... it still seems like your not addressing anybodys points >>

 

When I'm speaking to you matthew, I'll let you know. The exchange above is recognisable enough to the parties involved.

 

well excuse me for wanting to clear things up... nice to have you back by the way.. i guess

 

Just as what I've been reading from you of late still seems as patently regurgitated from "official" moutpieces and apologists as it has been from the start.

 

*looks around* where did that come from...... i said i was reading the thread, could not work out who you're adressing..doh' figured it out ..but still failed to see how it related.. apologised for asking a simple question.. Got the usual 'abuse' back.. charming.

 

I considered it a measured response to your somewhat abusive, and dare say uninvited, comment that I wasn't addressing anyone's points.

Playing the poor innocent martyr doesnt become you matthew.

 

I ...... oh never mind your clearly just going to bite my head off..


*hopes things become clear*

 

Thats what i was thinking, and why i asked...*moves on*

 

You can delude yourself, gilligan, by believing that, but if you refer to those posts of yours which preceed my response, youll find I indeed address your hypocritical presumptions.

The UN is the convenient whipping boy, but if you bother actually researching the truth behind all the neocon revisionistic blamemongering and diversionary rhetoric, youll find that the lion's share of culpability and profiteering falls squarely upon our own country and our own oil companies/traders. That the Bush admin has made every attempt to bury any damning references to that truth only further demonstrates the wanton criminality of the entire cabal and their cronies.

As for talking points, you yourself have once again, as expected, faithfully regurgitated the decontextualised and historically revised talking points which pass for mainstream news and analysis by "official" spokesmen. A load of myopic claptrap that aims to denigrate any and all possible opposition to PNAC-led foreign policy objectives.

Moreover, you do your comprehension of our own national history a great disservice by equating unilateralist war of aggression and domination (an oft repeated actuality of Washington's application of militarism since the end of WWII) to the far lesser assistance given by foreign powers to our American Revolutionaries.

Notwithstanding the fact that our revolution arose from indigenous desire for independence from empire, you clearly fail to appreciate that neither the French nor even Hessians invaded our shores, occupied our cities and towns and dictated both whom would govern us or the process by which any choice would made.

No, Iraq was not liberated, nor assisted in liberating themselves, but rather illegally invaded against all consistent norms of international law (and thereby in contravention of Article 6 of our own Constitution) in the vain political delusion that the ends would justify the means.

What has become painfully clear is that our administration which disregarded international law from the outset, has sanctioned the continuance of such disregard by excusing and whitewashing their own advocacy (and that of the highest echelons of our own Pentagon) of the very same barbarous practices.

It is indeed shameful that you should claim the UN was created to prevent the repetition of dictators (although this is another historic fallacy on your part) with one breath and then make excusatory remarks about wars being some natural state of man. Like our founders, I reject your moral relativism and remind you that our nation was founded to be an example for others, not to adopt the same smug national exceptionalism that presumes itself justified in using military might to impose its culturally relative assumptions of "goodness" or "democracy" on other nations or peoples. All the less so when our own system has fallen prey, through widespread public complacency and misinformation, to deep-seated corruption and fraud at all levels of government.

This latest intervention in the region along with its accompanying slogans and OSP-crafted PR may be new to you, but rest assured it is merely the same myopic repetition of previous US backed manipulations which have themselves led to further justifications for militant interventions decades later. The cycle is intentionally self perpetuating for the greater profit of our MIC.

For you to make any excuse for it and to believe that our militarism has achieved any of its pretended aims, demonstrates to me a mind to taken in by the ideological agenda of demagogues. Demagogues, mind you, who have betrayed our nation, foresworn their oaths to uphold the Constitution, promised to restore integrity and delivered nothing but wanton corruption and sought to hide their crimes behind the fraud of "national security" and a bogus "War on Terror".

If you do not agree with the setting up of puppets, then best you take a long hard look behind the rhetoric and media spin of what we have done and are doing in Iraq/Afghanistan now. I submit that a thorough examination of US/UK history in the region and the rhetoric used in each instance will reveal the consistency of this present aggression with its precursors.

 

Give it 9 more years and maybe the naysayers will finally admit it is, skip.