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Strike on Iraq
According to CNN and various other news sources, Iraq is now under attack by
the US. Here is a link to the current story running at CNN right now, but there's really not much except that it has started. CT Cruise missiles launched against "Target of Opportunity". The full assault has not begun. CT The attack was specifically intended to take out Saddam. CT Saddam appeared on iraqi TV to condemn the US, and Iraqi missiles have been fired at Kuwait.
Got this in Email this morning, passing it along:
Published on Monday, March 17, 2003 by Michael Moore
A Letter from Michael Moore to George W. Bush on the Eve of War
by Michael Moore
George W. Bush
1600 Pennsylvania Ave.
Washington, DC
Dear Governor Bush:
So today is what you call "the moment of truth," the day that "France and the rest of world have to show their cards on the table." I'm glad to hear that this day has finally arrived. Because, I gotta tell ya, having survived 440 days of your lying and conniving, I wasn't sure if I could take much more. So I'm glad to hear that today is Truth Day, 'cause I got a few truths I would like to share with you:
1. There is virtually NO ONE in America (talk radio nutters and Fox News aside) who is gung-ho to go to war. Trust me on this one. Walk out of the White House and on to any street in America and try to find five people who are PASSIONATE about wanting to kill Iraqis. YOU WON'T FIND THEM! Why? 'Cause NO Iraqis have ever come here and killed any of us! No Iraqi has even threatened to do that. You see, this is how we average Americans think: If a certain so-and-so is not perceived as a threat to our lives, then, believe it or not, we don't want to kill him! Funny how that works!
2. The majority of Americans -- the ones who never elected you -- are not fooled by your weapons of mass distraction. We know what the real issues are that affect our daily lives -- and none of them begin with I or end in Q. Here's what threatens us: two and a half million jobs lost since you took office, the stock market having become a cruel joke, no one knowing if their retirement funds are going to be there, gas now costs almost two dollars -- the list goes on and on. Bombing Iraq will not make any of this go away. Only you need to go away for things to improve.
3. As Bill Maher said last week, how bad do you have to suck to lose a popularity contest with Saddam Hussein? The whole world is against you, Mr. Bush. Count your fellow Americans among them.
4. The Pope has said this war is wrong, that it is a SIN. The Pope! But even worse, the Dixie Chicks have now come out against you! How bad does it have to get before you realize that you are an army of one on this war? Of course, this is a war you personally won't have to fight. Just like when you went AWOL while the poor were shipped to Vietnam in your place.
5. Of the 535 members of Congress, only ONE (Sen. Johnson of South Dakota) has an enlisted son or daughter in the armed forces! If you really want to stand up for America, please send your twin daughters over to Kuwait right now and let them don their chemical warfare suits. And let's see every member of Congress with a child of military age also sacrifice their kids for this war effort. What's that you say? You don't THINK so? Well, hey, guess what -- we don't think so either!
6. Finally, we love France. Yes, they have pulled some royal screw-ups. Yes, some of them can pretty damn annoying. But have you forgotten we wouldn't even have this country known as America if it weren't for the French? That it was their help in the Revolutionary War that won it for us? That our greatest thinkers and founding fathers -- Thomas Jefferson, Ben Franklin, etc. -- spent many years in Paris where they refined the concepts that lead to our Declaration of Independence and our Constitution? That it was France who gave us our Statue of Liberty, a Frenchman who built the Chevrolet, and a pair of French brothers who invented the movies? And now they are doing what only a good friend can do -- tell you the truth about yourself, straight, no b.s. Quit pissing on the French and thank them for getting it right for once. You know, you really should have traveled more (like once) before you took over. Your ignorance of the world has not only made you look stupid, it has painted you into a corner you can't get out of.
Well, cheer up -- there IS good news. If you do go through with this war, more than likely it will be
Regardless of whether you agree with the war or not (I sure as hell do not) we all have to support our troops.
But I feel bad for the United States troops in this ordeal, as well as the Iraqi people. Yeah, Saddam might be a dick, but Bush is being no better at this point.
Yes, the situation at hand sucks.
That's why I like Slashdot. I was hoping it could be avoided here.
So, unless these cruise-missiles are sporting some new build of BSD, or are hosting an Apache webserver or SOMETHING, I really would rather not hear about it.
Just my $.02.
Informatus Technologicus
Islam says that this is a choice that we all will face. In conflict or in crisis, will we choose what we know to be ethical, or will we choose that which we know will benefit us.
I think that Bush chose material considerations over ethics. It seems to me that he sacrificed his ethics because the Pope himself declared that war with Iraq is a sin, and Bush is publicly Christian. But it is possible that Bush really thinks that he is doing the right thing. Only God and Bush know for sure why Bush is doing this apparently unethical thing.
Anyway, it's a choice we all will have to make before we die, and reflects what kind of person we are. That's life.
I am going to say this once and I am not going to respond to anyone. I still keeps me awake at night.
I was in the US Army durining the 1st gulf war.
We went in to Kuwait City early. As the Iraq Army was leaving. There was this orphanage. The soldiers had raped all the girls. Some as young as 8. They killed the workers from the Red Cresent that were there. There was this room in the hotel in downtown. There was a bed frame - metal. On it was a body of a man. Next to it was a bucket of water and a set of car batteries. We found over 50 people that had be killed like that.
I hope Sadam burns in hell.
I believe that peace is a noble cause and I wish that I still can still be as idealist as the rest that are outraged by this war. But I cannot. You seeI have seen the evil that men can do. The only way to a true and lasting peace is for good men to take a stand and fight evil when it appears - period.
What makes Canada, France and Germany great is the courage shown while resisting American pressure to join this war and implicitly toss the UN in the dustbin.
Shame on the American political leadership for not respecting an institution they helped design, and a principle their nation helped define.
A Canadian.
Right now as we read these posts, people are fucking dying. I mean, they are fucking dead. Can we stop posting stupid witty posts for 2 seconds? Just stop and think. Right now, some one else is dead. Stop with the goddamn pro-war rhetoric for just a brief moment, and really stop and think about what it means to be alive. Wake up from your psuedo-intellectual rantings, and really think about what it means to be alive.
Who wants to bet the stock on this comapny is about to skyrocket when they get all the contracts to rebuild Iraq. Hey, they've grabbed billions of dollars of tax funded contracts already.
r ticles/halliburtonprimer.html
http://chart.forbes.com/graph.asp?symbol1=HAL
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/onpolitics/a
Who wants to be Cheney and Bush have a whole lot of stock in that company? I love it when war profiteers are in charge... wait... No... no I don't. Those are my tax dollars and my friends going to war.
I hope the Iraqi troops surrender, the UN survives and now that he's being cornered and offered no way out, I hope Saddam doesn't unleash any weapons of mass destruction that he might have.
-Derick
This is such a bullshit statement. There is seldom honor in doing what you're trained to do. Many of the atrocities in history were made possible because of people like you, who justified their actions as duty.
Shame on you. Shame on my brother who is over there now. And shame on any other soldier who takes part in this.
Unprovoked attack=War crime in my book.
So the 1991 war was a war crime? You remember, the one called for by the UN, which the United States led? Even though the United States hadn't been attacked, or even threatened?
You have a very naive view of what constitutes a legal war, my friend.
There is no evidence that Saddam gassed his own people.
Okay. I don't agree, but for sake of argument, okay. So?
How do the US know he has these weapons? They checked the receipts. UK and US are who sold them to him.
Again, okay. I don't agree-- in point of fact, many countries, including France and Russia, have provided Iraq with weapons and weapon precursors that are now proscribed; Iraq got their first weapons-related nuclear reactor from France, and all those fancy-schmancy Scud missiles that Iraq had in 1991 came from the USSR. But okay. Again, so? You have successfuly demonstrated that the United States of America is not perfect. Whoopty-shit.
The attack is without UN backing.
As a matter of fact, it isn't. The United States, along with all the other members of the UN Security Council, is authorized explicitly under UNSCR 678 to use "all necessary means" to resolve the conflict between Iraq and Kuwait. Because Iraq has never, not even for a split second, been in compliance with the terms of the cease-fire that temporarily ended hostilities in 1991, the Security Council members are fully authorized by the UN to use whatever means they see fit, including war, to achieve Iraqi compliance.
I write in my journal