Support the troops?

...and thousands of innocent civilians, but you were just "liberating" them from their mortal coil, werent you? Saddam should have been gotten rid of, but not in 2003. He was more of a danger to the world 15 years ago then he was in 2003. He was a fascist bastard, which brings me to my next point, America shouldnt have been the ones to do it, the UN, with approval of other Arab states, should have taken him out long years ago. America isnt guarding the Iraqi people (fascinating how you folks swallow that lie so quickly that you forgot about the complete lack of WMD's or love notes from Usama), and Corporate America has quite the history of setting up fascist regimes to vanguard their own interests. We have seen it all before in Chile and Argentina, now this imperial evil seems to be switching from Latin America to the mid-east. And another thing, if you are pro-war, why not volunteer and put your money where your mouth is. I am anti-war, and I am not volunteering....everything adds up for me, and all other anti-war folks who dont want/need guns or wars.

Why are you not fighting with your beloved troops?


Oh I suppose you think its all jolly good of them to go and die for something the news tells you is right.

Tell me, have you ever heard of Phil Ochs? there are a slew of his songs which pertain to this discussion. Two in particular are "draft-dodger rag" and "is there anybody here?". Listen to them.

 

I also dont think that Iraq will be an Islamist state for one good reason, there is too much of a divide between Sunni and Shi'a, and most likely they will have a civil war, and some military strong-man will take charge and be instant friends with President Schwarzenegger. Of course, the civil war will benefit the US.....civil strife in such countries certainly does, because if the Iraqi people are given self-determination, they will kick the US out and stand strong against them. This would be good.


There also seems to be a strong strain of people who think that the Iraqi's are stupid and incapable of building their own nation. This is wrong wrong WRONG! Baghdad was once the greatest city in the world, brimming with wealth and culture. Then some jackass mongols invaded it and halted the Islamic golden age, but Islamic culture wasnt finished. under the early Ottoman's, Islam and Iraq flourished once again, until the Ottomans became increasingly racist against non-Turks like the Arab Iraqi's. Then WWI ended the Ottoman Empire, and the British Empire came into control of Iraq. There we have it, Iraq is a victim of European colonialism, and it is still poor because colonialism isnt done, it has just transformed into something new (not nessisarily better, in all likelyhood far far worse). Iraq, and all the developing countries are poor because it serves the west to keep them poor. Not you or me in the west, we are kept under the thumb of the oppressors as well, but our chains are our engineered desires and the cards of plastic we think will satisfy them. The wealthy make much off the war in Iraq. Gas prices rise higher and higher for we, the people, but never in human history have the rich been so rich as they are now, nor the poor so poor as they are now. This is the system. Capitalism is very much alive, and unless we realize this and stand against it, it will, like the hungry leviathan it is, consume the world with consumerism and disparity.

 

I demand that all other countries must adopt my form of government no matter what how many people must be killed. Cultures different from mine are stupid and it is MY responsibility to change them for the better!

Oh, and while were at it, my government is corrupt. We are losing our freedoms, people are being spied on and terrorised. People are starving, there are no jobs, and you can be thrown in jail for wearing the wrong tee shirt. Our politicians lie, cheat, and watch your every move. So I WISH some other country that has figured out the RIGHT way to live would come and attack us and destroy our livlyhoods and culture and infrastructure so we can be liberated...

 

I don't think 'deluded' just a knee jerk reaction.. Somewhat eluded to by those apposed.. ''oh look the goverment are making simplistic connections for a excuse to invade''.. As happy as some would be to go up and down round and round the little trail of thought, it is just like saying ''this war was for oil'' based on such misconstrued comments like

Blair has consistently rubbished any notion that the war was motivated by oil. In February, Blair said:

"No, let me just deal with the oil thing because this is one of the - we may be right or we may be wrong - I mean people have their different views about why we're doing this thing. But the oil conspiracy theory is honestly one of the most absurd when you analyse it." (Blair On Iraq - A Newsnight Special, BBC2, February 6, 2003)

By contrast, when asked why a nuclear power such as North Korea was being treated differently from Iraq, where no weapons of mass destruction have been found, US deputy defence secretary, Paul Wolfowitz, said this week:

"Let's look at it simply. The most important difference between North Korea and Iraq is that economically, we just had no choice in Iraq. The country swims on a sea of oil." ('Wolfowitz: Iraq war was about oil', George Wright, The Guardian, June 4, 2003)

http://www.medialens.org/alerts/03/030606_Mass_Deception.html

people would happily believe that this was a indication it WAS 'all about oil'

But.. 'clarify' and you end up with

Editors Note
The Guardian has removed this article from their website and has posted the following:
A report which was posted on our website on June 4 under the heading "Wolfowitz: Iraq war was about oil" misconstrued remarks made by the US deputy defence secretary, Paul Wolfowitz, making it appear that he had said that oil was the main reason for going to war in Iraq. He did not say that. He said, according to the Department of Defence website, "The ... difference between North Korea and Iraq is that we had virtually no economic options with Iraq because the country floats on a sea of oil. In the case of North Korea, the country is teetering on the edge of economic collapse and that I believe is a major point of leverage whereas the military picture with North Korea is very different from that with Iraq."

The sense was clearly that the US had no economic options by means of which to achieve its objectives, not that the economic value of the oil motivated the war. The report appeared only on the website and has now been removed.
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/0604-10.htm

It was never implied he had anything to do with 9/11 [anybody wish to pull up a press release to the contary-i would be happy to be proven wrong]

Not quite true..

Arms control status

Use of white phosphorus against military targets (outside civilian areas) is not specifically banned by any treaty. However, there is a debate on whether white phosphorus should be considered a chemical weapon and thus be outlawed by the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) which went into effect in April of 1997. The Convention is meant to prohibit weapons that are "dependent on the use of the toxic properties of chemicals as a method of warfare" (Article II, Definitions, 9, "Purposes not Prohibited" c.). The Convention defines a "toxic chemical" as a chemical "which through its chemical action on life processes can cause death, temporary incapacitation or permanent harm to humans or animals".(CWC, II). WP was not included in the CWC's original annex listing chemicals that fell under this definition for purposes of verification.[10]

However, in 2005, interviewed by the RAI, Peter Kaiser, spokesman for the UN Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, which oversees the CWC, publicly questioned whether the weapon should fall under the convention's provisions: "No it's not forbidden by the CWC if it is used within the context of a military application which does not require or does not intend to use the toxic properties of white phosphorus. White phosphorus is normally used to produce smoke, to camouflage movement. If that is the purpose for which the white phosphorus is used, then that is considered under the Convention legitimate use. If on the other hand the toxic properties of white phosphorus... are specifically intended to be used as a weapon, that of course is prohibited, because the way the Convention is structured or the way it is in fact applied, any chemicals used against humans or animals that cause harm or death through the toxic properties of the chemical are considered chemical weapons." [11]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_phosphorus

I won't get into ''was it used against civilians'' because i don't know.. i doubt it though [but i would say that, right ?]... well with the same token people within this thread will say 'yes it was' .. just to support a opinion [just like i COULD]..but i won't.


I DO THINK IT SHOULD BE BANNED

 

Well we're in agreement that the stuff should be banned, but the article states that White Phosphorous can be used legally to create a smokescreen rather than for its toxic properties. Hence, the use of White Phosphorous as a chemical weapon (in, I might add, a civilian area: Falujah) is not legal.

 

yesterday i was with my younger sister and her boyfriend and there was a car in frount of me and it said 'support are troops' and i told them that was bull shit and they asked me why and i told them that why should we support someone who go's and kill other people? i dont think its right, they made the choice to go over there and kill there brothers and sisters. why would someone want to do that?

 

ok but then again you kiss the goverment ass every day in your everday life in the states but all you do is blah your mouth off just like im doing right now but at least i try to pass some information they might be use against our formidable enime

 

America invades Iraq and takes out their former puppet dictator to inevitably install a new one and snatch some oil while they are at it.



Boy, George Washington didnt see that one comming...

 

Civilian area taken over by insurgents.. i added i can't honestly say it was not inadvertantly used near civillians as the city still had civillians within.. some supporting the insurgents and hiding them.. some unable to move out before the offensive.. I do think some innocent civillians [not the same as civillians] got caugt up in it all.. But your premise is that it was actively used as a 'chemical weapon' against innocent civillians.. I don't think so. Basicaly i think many were familys of the insurgents..and could have moved to the camps on the outskirts [they had 60 days to move out].
Soldiers did not just stroll into the city and start throwing the stuff around..

On November 7, 2004, the Iraq interim government declared a 60 day state of emergency in preparation for the assault, as insurgents carried out several car bomb attacks in the Fallujah area which killed Iraqi army and police, U.S. soldiers and Iraqi civilians. The next day Prime Minister Iyad Allawi publicly authorized an offensive in Fallujah and Ramadi to "liberate the people" and "clean Fallujah from the terrorists". U.S. Marines and allied Iraqi soldiers stormed into Fallujah's western outskirts, secured two bridges across the Euphrates, seized a hospital on the outskirts of the city and arrested about 50 men in the hospital. About half the arrested men were later released. A hospital doctor reported that 15 Iraqis were killed and 20 wounded during the overnight incursions. The US armed forces have designated the offensive as Operation Phantom Fury.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/US_occupation_of_Fallujah#Counter-insurgency.2C_May_-_November_2004

Again i don't believe it was used as a 'chemical weapon' against civilians BUT like i said earlier:

I won't get into ''was it used against civilians'' because i don't know.. i doubt it though [but i would say that, right ?]... well with the same token people within this thread will say 'yes it was' .. just to support a opinion [just like i COULD]..but i won't.

I think it should be banned, because it is to extreme a material for what it is supposedly used for.. it might be the most effective in its use as 'smokescreen' but i believe the stuff is over 60 years old.. we should have moved on by now.

 

I read the wikipedia article before I made my first post on the subject of WP. The article states that it cannot be used as a weapon for its toxic properties, but can be used as a smokescreen and one other example that I cannot remember. Whether this is against civilians or enemy combatants, the point is still the same. When the toxic properties of white phosphorous are used for military purposes, it is illegal.



I once saw a link to a documentary on white phosphorous use in Falujah, in another thread on Hipforums. I've no idea where it is now, but may try to track it down. It clearly showed the bodies of civilians killed by white phosphorous, including infants. It wasn't pretty, and nor was the explanation of just what it does to you once it gets on your skin or in your airways. Not a pleasant way to die.

 

This is another reason it should be banned.. those apposed to the 'war' in the first place will argue one way and those not apposed will argue the other way.. I read http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4440664.stm and could come to YOUR conclusion.. i won't deny that.
Reading that it does seem your turn of events is correct.. Though it is basicaly a technicality because i read this http://www.rainews24.rai.it/ran24/inchiesta/en/us_emb.asp

and it seems to it was not illegal..

In the end i think it is a little like the 'War for oil'' comment i made earlier.. what you add or remove from the picture .. thus makes either point.


The video below i will have to view again.. but remember who posted it and what was the agenda for posting it.. It was NOT a balanced reasoned POV.. It was imho used to imply what you are and perpetuate the POV you share...

I agree with this comment

Sir Menzies Campbell, Member of the British Parliament (Liberal Democrat), says: "The use of this weapon may technically have been legal, but its effects are such that it will hand a propaganda victory to the insurgency. The denial of use followed by the admission will simply convince the doubters that there was something to hide."

http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/US_use_of_white_phosphorus_in_Iraq_might_constitute_a_war_crime

I remember it.. i think Pressed Rat posted it.

http://www.rainews24.rai.it/ran24/inchiesta/en/body.asp

 

i personaly think that it is good to support the troops. of corse, you should nto support them to kill "enemys" because everyone is in this together, but you should support them to help them along. mabe the troops font actually want to be there. maybe its the only way that their life could have changed. i think verry few troops actually go to war because they enjoy it, because that would be fucking stupid... support the poeple in the fight, but not the cause. support the two sides of the battle equally too, and not just the side of your country. there are other people out there suffering, and just because they are not american or whatever nationality you are does nto meen that they should haev any less support.

 

ARE YOU MAD ?.

 

Absolutely! All we hear is the troops this and the troops that, why you would think that the troops are the only humans over there! Those of us who do not support the war (majority, remember?) ARE concerned with the people on the other side!!! Those things they call insurgents are US if we were to be attacked by another country. Because if another country came here and attacked us just because they dont like the way George B. does things, an awful lot of my friends would pick up their guns and start shooting back. Then WE would be called insurgents.

If our government is out of control, it is on US, the citizens, to take responsibility, NOT some other countrys troops. If we don't, shame on us. So, if some other country decided to stick their nose in where it doesn't belong, all they have done is cause more trouble and more confusion than we already had, making it harder to fix things, and you can bet your booty that people would start shooting at them.

So, now "we've" REALLY got things screwed up! "We" have torn apart the country of Iraq and shredded their way of life, and made it where they CAN'T really take care of them selves very well. "We've" killed countless thousands of civillians, "we've" polluted the land AND the earth's atmosphere with Depleated Uranium. "We" have opened the door for criminals to gain power and cause even more suffering. For what? OIL? WMD? MONEY? The end does not justify the means. And if I have to hear George say one more time, "the American people....." as if I were a part of his fiasco, I'm gonna hurl.

Anyhow, what happens if George gets impeached for all his lies and criminal behavior? And he very well could. Sort of takes away any incentive to keep working for him don't it?

Matthew, you can get all caught up in details, diagrams, propaganda, what ifs and who said whats all you want. The devil's in the details, but theTRUTH is that alot of people are dying for nothing. There is no honor in it no matter how you want to look at it.

But, I have agreat idea. How about if ONLY the people who think the war is necessary, and ONLY the ones who support it, get right over there and get to it, AND foot the entire bill, AND live with the consequences. The rest of us will then be able to sleep at night knowing that we are not a part of all this BS, and everything will be fair and "right"......

 

The details is what it is all about.. hiding behind falsehoods just perpetuates the excuse to kill..

I appreciate that many people ar being killed for nothing... i see it everyday.
What honour is in killing your fellow countryman woman and child on a lack of will to understand the details.. even ignoring the details because if you were to aknowledge them you would not have the 'justification' to do so... http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/4795678.stm did this person die beacuse it was 'our fault' ?..
I have no issue with the TRUTH and if certain realities that i may hold to be correct are borne out by the details turn out to be false.. i can and do say ''I am wrong'' but you get people excuseing the behaviour of these insurgents [on both sides] as 'reasonable bahaviour'.. I won't skirt around it YOU are making excuses for some of their actions..whats that all about ?.

If my country was 'invaded' i would not think ''oh let me kill my fellow countrymen because they do not believe what i do..'' as half the buggers on the HPs would be dead right now.. It is not rational to think car bombs go off for rational and pragmatic reasons.. it just is not a reality.

I do actually understand your anger..but i do feel it is slightly misplaced .. but think when you hear constant reminders of something you HATE it has to make you feel ANGER..i DO understand that very well.

I am never trying to make excuses for anything..but just try and put out a few 'truths' take it or leave it or prove me wrong .... not that it is a contest or anything.. i hope you understand what i mean ?.

I have asked if you think any war is necessary.. do you ?.. We happen to be in the middle of a conflict and you are calling it all unnecessary .. heavens would you say anything else ?.

If only ONE iraqi citizen agreed with me.. any Tax i pay is alright with me.

 

bush personaly admited in public that the war was a mistake. hear that? he said it himself! if you are truly defending your own country, then fight. i dont think it is right to go and invade other countrys for oil, as stated higher up this page... the thing is, if there was no government, would there still be big wars like the one in iraq, over stupid reasons? the politicians are involved in their own bullshit, and their in so deep that they cant see what it is about anymore. war is not necessary. its just like jihad, dying for a cause. do you think the americans in iraq are really there because they believe in the cause to "set iraq free" and bullshit like that? if they were truly trying to set iraq free, they would have not gone to war. war is only faught out of greed, and in this case it is the presidents greed. support the troops on both sides, because neither of the honest citizens on either side want to die. when we hear "4 iraqi men were shot this morning" on the news, we dont give a shit because their the enemy. btu when we hear "2 americans were killed by a bomb going off" everyone suddenly hates the iraqis more... do you really think its their fault that the 2 americans died? blame the government. neither of the sides wanted to go to war, im sure... but its politics... support them as much as you can because im sure its not verry nice living each day knowing it might end by a bullet.

 

you know what... fuck this. obviously ur not going to change ur arguement or ur point ov view... so i giv up.

 

I could say the same about yourself... though it should not be about that.

I am NOT closeing my opinion off from being altered.. just give a better explanation thats all...

Think what you like.. but if you express it, it maybe nice for you to 'convince' me with a bit of additional source material...thats all.

e.g..

Point to a source please ?.


Was my question THAT unreasonable ?.

 

You know how absurd the founding fathers would have thought a war in Iraq is, right? Right now, I can think of little use for America's troops, nobody is going to invade America, and as long as she stops oppressing everyone, nobody will attack america. The army should disband, and that money should go to the people.