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No... it's in better left in the hands of the politicians who are responsible for the civilians who have been killed in Iraq in the name of freedom.

1000+ lives so far with no end in sight

What? Today, or this week? I asume you know this, but in a war there are most of the time more then one side and both sides loose lives. http://www.iraqbodycount.org/

Use the "F" word: Fraud. Every time an employee quits, it costs the rebate company a lot to hire and train someone new. Minimum wage people don't like to think they are helping break the law. Ask the employee how she or he can justify working for a dishonest company. Tell the employee he or she has the worst job in the world.

Call the manager of the store where you bought the rebate item. Use the "F" word again. Managers have a special number. The rebate company will listen to them. Store managers don't like the word fraud applied to their store; that could cost them hundreds of thousands, if the word gets around. If you don't get satisfaction from the store manager, get his or her name and call the store's main office. The people who work in main offices don't want fraud calls; and they definitely don't like fraud calls in which the name of a store manager is mentioned.

Never let them steal from you. If you ever accept that once, they will know they can do it again. Remember, there are a limited number of rebate companies, and they keep databases on those who apply for rebates.

Apparently almost all rebate companies are involved in fraud. They try to concentrate on the customers that will accept excuses. The stores will tell you they know nothing about the fraud, but that is not true; they know very well.

Be sure to tell the rebate company that you will file a complaint with the Better Business Bureau, and with your state's consumer fraud department, and do it. Tell the store that sold the rebate item the same thing, and do it.

Stay away from stores that hate their customers. My experience with Best Buy has been very negative.

Stay away from stores that offer big rebates on items that have defects that aren't obvious.

It has been my experience that Netgear is by far the worst in failing to send rebates. We have had bad experiences with Netgear equipment being buggy, too. Maybe there are companies who can only stay in business because they fail to sent rebates.

Always be kind and gentle with rebate company employees, but very firm. Remember, the employee is not getting any of the stolen money.

Always keep copies of everything you sent when you apply for a rebate. The rebate companies will exploit any weakness they find.

Remember, if you let them steal from you once, you will be in the database as someone who accepts abuse.

I got a Sony rebate 1 1/2 years after it was denied. I would never buy anything from Sony again, of course, even though I eventually got the rebate. Generally, companies that are abusive in one way are abusive in others. Generally, abuse is part of the corporate culture.

The United States is a country that thinks nothing of killing Iraqis to prevent a fall in value of the dollar and make money for weapons and oil company investors; routinely stealing from customers seems mild by comparison.

A Brazilian was telling me that Lula, the president of Brazil, is corrupt. I asked him, "How many innocent civilians did Lula kill?

Not to get too far off your point or be an argumentative dick, but I guess this depends upon your definition of "hardly even get killed"

So about 2000 americans have been killed in the iraq war. Iraq Body Count says roughly 30,000 Iraqi civilians have been killed in the iraq war. And that's not even counting enemy troops. Less than 10% of the deaths in iraq have been American. So, it really doesn't depend on your definition of "hardly even get killed"

You can bitch and whine all you want, but I sleep more comfortably at night knowing that our military machine is actively trying to kill everyone who beheads westerners for the glory of their god.

The execution of westerners in Iraq started only after the USA invaded Iraq for no good reason. Confirmed counts of Iraqi civilian deaths due the invasion range from 27,000 to over 30,000. Estimates of the total number of Iraqi civilians killed are over 100,000.

If foreigners invaded the USA for no good reason and kept the USA under military occupation and killed tens or hundreds of thousands of innocent US civilians, don't you think there would be some reprisals against the invaders?

I am not saying that the executions in Iraq are justified. All deliberate killing is terrible. But are the executions of westerners any worse than the killing of Iraqi civilians?

And your answer to all this killing that makes you sleep more comfortably at night is to kill more Iraqis? Thank goodness only a few Iraqis (the ones committing the executions) think like you do and feel more comfortable knowing people are trying to kill Americans.

Here is a radical idea. The USA has undisputed military dominance over the rest of the world. We spend way more, we have way more nukes, we are better at killing than any other country on Earth. This means we are in a better position to stop killing. So let's just stop killing. Today, or more fitting (depending on your timezone), tomorrow.

Let's pull out of the countries we are occupying as quickly as we can without being foolish about it. Let's remove our military bases from the Middle East. Let's divert some of our military budget (say 10% for starters) to helping provide basic necessities to the poorer parts of the world. While we're at it, let's stop torturing people and stop jailing people indefinitely without charge or recourse to the court system.

If people getting killed is the problem then killing people is not the solution. Killing people is never the solution.

And studies argue ... that so many more people have died on the roads because they switched from flying due to the extra inconvenience, cost and sheer paranoia, that the number of extra road deaths in the USA alone may exceed the number of people killed at the World Trade Centre.

<rant>
Apart from the loss of civil liberties and the loss of billions of dollars, this is just another pointer to the fact that the so-called war on terror is costing many, many more lives than its ostensible targets. Up next, after two thousand dead American troops and literally countless dead Iraqi civilians: ... a civil war? ethnic cleansing? militant theocracy? more terror? all of the above?
</rant>

The problem is, as has been highlighted by a recent report by Iraq Bodycount, 6% of the deaths caused by small arms fire in Iraq are children, 25% of deaths caused by explosives are children, but 48%(!) of the deaths caused by aircraft (American bombs) are children.

http://reports.iraqbodycount.org/a_dossier_of_civi lian_casualties_2003-2005.pdf

You can point guns very specifically at individuals, or even blow yourself up within a group of men who are your enemy. You cannot point a bomb at an individual from the air, so you don't, you just call it collateral damage when "extra" people die. But, still the aircraft pilot knows that he will kill children by dropping the bomb, so why does he do it?

My big question is: Why is the pilot not as evil as the terrorists?

Why do people not count Hussein as a terrorist?
Because, rightly or wrongly, he was the government. Bush is also responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths, torture and murder yet I don't see you calling him a terrorist.

How many hundreds of thousands of murders do you have to commit before people think you're a bad guy these days?
Depends I suppose. 22000 might be a good start.

invading a neighboring country then burning the oil fields as he left
Exercise for the reader. Did Iraq have a valid reason for invading Kuwait and burning their oil fields? ...the list goes on and on.
It does? Enlighten me.

And if the polls are showing people thinking Bush is "evil" I'm losing faith in the mindset of the left even more than ever.

Anyone that will spend billions of public dollars, the political goodwill of his country and hundreds of thousands of lives to make sure that his family and personal friends can continue to enjoy their incredibly high standard of living (compared to the average American) is pretty bad in my books. The "left" (presumably by "left" you mean anyone on the left, center, moderate right, an increasing number of Christian churches and every other nation on Earth) said, upon seeing Bush's actions following 9/11 "What he's doing is not right...here's what he's saying that's false, here's what he's doing that is wrong and here are the forseeable consequences." I would suggest that, since they are being proven right every day, that your "faith" in the left is more of an opinion of what you think they should be saying or doing regardless of the facts.

Just because you're not under attack on home ground and don't hear people running and screaming is no reason to get so content that you call the guy who kept the attacks from happening for 4 years evil.

Who would that be? Bush? He couldn't prevent a terrorist act if he wanted to and there's no reason to think that he would even want to (he's already proven on several occasions that he is a coward and that he is willing to spend American lives for his own personal profit).

The "biased media" card plays both ways. Despite my fervent belief that there are far more neoconservative biases in major news stories than liberal biases, but my view itself is influenced by reading these biased stories in the Chicago Tribune (a rather conservative but mostly balanced paper).

reliable Iraqi civilians feeding them information...

I would ask, who better to ask? If you're in Iraq, and you want unbiased information about who is dead, you have to ask the people who were there... Iraqis. Asking military folk will probably get you only a limited perspective.

Reality even locally in Chicago is in the eye of the beholder. Some facts can be checked, though. Iraqbodycount.org is counting actual names of people killed in Iraq as well as verified news reports. Poll after poll of people in other countries show they hate our policies of go-it-alone empire building, stomping on downtrodden peoples and blowing up civilians. When will it stop? When we do something about it. Vote, please?

2500 people killed in WTC.

Launch War on Terrorism


Civilians reported killed by military intervention in Iraq 15033
http://www.iraqbodycount.org/

plus

Deaths due to kidnapping and beheading of citizens of countries [ some that have noting to do with war ] - Kenya,Egypt,India,Australia,Britain,France..etc etc.

plus death of military persona of USA,Britain and other countries whose soldiers are present in Iraq.

At least MS can send out a statement saying that the public was misinformed, whereas the army can't do the same.

The correct website is http://www.iraqbodycount.net or http://www.iraqbodycount.org. When I was linked from iraqbodycount.com to the current count page, I was greeted with a notice (probably checking referrer tags) that said "WARNING: You may have been sent to this page by iraqbodycount.com, a website that is illegally masquerading as the Iraq Body Count Project for commercial gain. To visit the true Iraq Body Count site, please Follow this link to iraqbodycount.org (and .net). (And then close this window and the one that sent you here!)"
Their claim appears to be supported by fact: iraqbodycount.com brings up two pop-up windows on visit (which my hosts file blocks: both are from media.popuptraffic.com); and all of the "news" links are on www.interestalert.com, a web site which hosts free (and questionably reliable/plagiarized "news"--most of it copyright United Press International) and has banner ads. Nasty.
The .net and .org versions do not suffer this same problem.