You don't think that the US gov't is going to let a little thing like international law or national sovereignty slow them down, do you?
Remember, this is the same US gov't that runs torture camps all across the world, which punishes non-US corporations for doing business in Cuba because those corporations are violating the American embargo law, which has a publicly stated policy of invading any country it feels like, and which truly believes it can do anything it wants to in the world.
While I understand your position and theory, sorry, the Netherlands doesn't hold much water in the imperial scheme of things -- your country can and will be bullied and/or bought like so many others...
Are you saying Hussein was justfied in invading Kuwait and threatening his other neighbors?
No, I don't think Iraq was justified in invading the Kuwaiti dictatorship. Iraq did tell the US envoy April Glaspie that they solve their border problems with Kuwait and stop Kuwait's cross-border slant oil drilling, but that's no excuse or justification for invading.
As to Iraq threatening its other neighbors, what threats? Citations please.
The only supposed threat that comes to mind is the US lie that Iraq was massing troops on the Saudi border. That was exposed as a lie by commercial satellite photos. It was later revealed that the US presented fake satellite photos to Saudi Arabia's semi-literate dictator in order to get the green light to base US troops in Saudi Arabia (and then, of course, highly upsetting Islamic militants in Saudi Arabia).
Or maybe you're talking about when Iraq kicked out inspectors back in '98?
You're spouting propaganda.
Saddam Hussein never kicked the weapons inspectors out during the 1990s (even though since the US was spying on Iraq via the weapons inspectors -- confirmed by US Marine Scott Ritter and others -- he had the right to).
The weapons inspectors were ordered out of Iraq by Bill Clinton just before Clinton launched cruise missile strikes on Iraq.
As an aside, given what we know for certain now about Iraq's WMD programs, the entire history of US-Iraqi relations during the 1990s needs to be rewritten. The no-fly zones were illegal, the US-imposed UN sanctions were immoral, Saddam Hussein was telling the truth, and it was clearly the US which was the aggressor nation.
But as long as we're talking about stupid presidents, how about Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter giving them the freaking reactors?
The arrangement worked out by Clinton, using Carter as the go-between, was to build light water reactors in exchange for the DPRK doing away with their heavy water reactors. It was a good deal.
Light water reactors (the kind the Russians are building in Iran, BTW) use fuel that is much, much harder to enrich into weapons-grade material, and they are easier for inspectors to monitor.
In short, the Clinton deal engaged North Korea and would have worked to stop or slow their weapons programs. Bush stopped the Clinton deal's funding and changed to a hard-line approach, and now we see ourselves in the present situation.
I'd recommend really going back and looking at this. The Taliban ruled Afghanistan. Bin Laden merely paid the Taliban to keep good relations while he operated his training camps in Afghanistan.
As an aside, Al Queda doesn't really have an "infrastructure". The entire myth of Al Queda's structure has been overblown by the US which wants to make it out to be some sort of sinister, worldwide operation.
Quick -- who gave Al Queda its name? Answer -- The US gov't, back in the late 90s, when they were seeking to prosecute Bin Laden for the attacks in East Africa. Under the RICO (organized crime) statutes, the Justice Dept. could only indict if there was a corrupt organization. Since Bin Laden's group was not organized and consisted mainly of Bin Laden handing out cash grants to others, the Justice Dept. had to give Bin Laden's group a name to make up an organization -- voila! Al Queda.
Even today, after Bin Laden accepts the name (why not, since after 9/11 the "brand" Al Queda was famous) the US gave his "organization", Al Queda is nothing more than a grouping of a few dozen very loosely affiliated local terrorist groups scattered around the world.
I don't see how that refutes my point, other than the fact that the Taliban also accepted money from Bin Laden.
Nowhere does the Infoplease article (itself a compilation of who-knows-what sources) state that the Taliban had prior knowledge of the 9/11 attacks.
It does point out, however, that the UN did demand Bin Laden's turnover prior to 9/11 so one can certainly fault the Taliban for that (as they can the US administration for not accepting Bin Laden when the Sudan offered him up). But that still does not alter the fact that the Taliban were willing to give up Bin Laden after the 9/11 attacks but it was clear that the US at that time was more interested in going to war.
No country would protect and train people that would fly planes into our buildings either? Right? Afghanistan did.
Wrong. Afghanistan never trained the people who the US gov't claims attacked the WTC and Pentagon. In fact, if you recall (easily Googleable), the Taliban did agree to offer to turn over Bin Laden before the US attacked, only the US gov't kept adding demands which ultimately caused the Taliban to not agree to turn Bin Laden over.
Let's get this straight: the only thing the Taliban did was to give up some of their land to allow Islamic nationalists to be trained on their soil by the former US-supported rebel leader (Bin Laden). There has never been any evidence that the Taliban knew of the plot to attack the WTC and Pentagon (if you think that's wrong, please cite references).
There is, however, one country which DID provide bases and training (including training at the Naval Air Station in Pensacola Flordia) to some of the hijackers which are claimed to have attacked the WTC and Pentagon on 9/11. That country was the United States.
Perhaps if US foreign policy was based on international law, the UN Charter, respect for human rights, and principles of democracy fewer people in the world would hate us.
Or, we can continue the real-politik, immoral, short-sighted polices of the past 50+ years which has caused untold suffering for millions.
How about the money "wasted" in developing the nuclear weapon?
The Manhattan Project wasted a lot of money. Sorry, I don't have the total amount handy.
One would wonder, what have those nukes done for us -- besides threaten the planet with extinction?
I do have number for current nuke spending handy though. To put it into a guns versus butter choice, more money is spent in the U.S. on nuclear weaponry in one year than was spent on housing from 1980-1992.
I think you would find some of the articles and speeches of the "moral" resistance fighters interesting.
That's a weak propaganda tactic -- I never called the resistance fighters moral. One can state that killing is never a moral act, or at least that's what we learn from Christ's words.
What I said was the resistance holds the moral position of defending their own country against an unprovoked invasion by a foreign aggressor.
I'm just not sure where you can access them on the unclassified web.
Am I supposed to be wowed because you claim to have access to some classified web? Wow. How 3733t.
Collateral damage is regrettable.
Please spare me your CNN spin-speak. Talk English. Don't use language to obfuscate, use language to describe things accurately. Call it what it is. It is not "collateral damage", it's dead and wounded civilians that we're talking about.
We'll again conveniently ignore the strict rules of engagement that we operate under
I'm sure, at some times, some soldiers do have strict rules of engagement. But that certainly isn't the case all the time.
For example, this SF Chronicle article cites a lieutenant giving his soldiers rules of engagement before a patrol of "Shoot to kill. No questions asked."
Or as this British Guardian newspaper article reported about the US attack on an Iraqi wedding party, as one woman stated of her firsthand experience, "We went out of the house and the American soldiers started to shoot us. They were shooting low on the ground and targeting us one by one....I fell into the mud and an American soldier came and kicked me. I pretended to be dead so he wouldn't kill me." The Guardian confirmed this with multiple eyewitnesses and among the 42 dead were many women and children. While the US military claimed that the wedding party was a military target, video taken during the party and afterwards proved otherwise. No one was ever prosecuted for those murders, though the military claimed to be "investigating" the matter.
Or how about the military's rules of engagement that shooting looters was fine? Or the current rules of engagement that anyone out after curfew can be shot on sight?
Or what about the military's actions in Fallujah? In Australia, the Sydney Morning Herald notes a few war crimes of the US military. The US attacked hospitals (to keep them from being used as propaganda -- another words, to keep the doctors from saying how many civilians are being killed) which is a clear violation of the Geneva Conventions. There are many reports that inside Fallujah the rules of engagement allowed for free fire zones. The US purposely did not allow any males from teenagers to old men to leave Fallujah, instead preferring to slaughter them inside the city. The US deliberately cut off water and electricity to a city of 300,000+ for weeks -- impacting both resistance fighters and mothers and children alike.
But of course, thanks to a neutered US corporate mass media, few people know the extent of the war crimes of the US military. What gets reported is the mere execution of one prisoner because it was caught on video. And like the Abu Ghraib torture, the military is allowed to claim it was just a "bad apple."
Rules of engagement, please.
>"But the bottom line is that the US/UK invasion is illegal and without justification."
In your opinion.
No, not just in my opinion. Let's get this straight: The vast majority of the people of the world consider the US/UK invasion to be illegal and immoral.
Even large majorities of people in the UK oppose (and opposed) the invasion.
Everyone from the Pope to the Dali Lama to the UN Secretary General has declared the invasion illegal and immora
are you seriously suggesting that Iraq is *less* stable now than it was under the previous regime?
According to the Iraqis that live there, western public opinion polls report they say that life was better before the invasion.
Public opinion polls of Iraqis also say that huge majorities of Iraqis want the occupation forces to leave ASAP.
Before the illegal US/UK invasion, Iraqi infant mortality was brutally high, thanks to the decade-plus of UN sanctions that we now know were not only immoral but unjustified because Saddam Hussein really did disarm after the 1991 Gulf War just like he said so.
Yet today after the illegal US/UK invasion, Iraqi infant mortality is even higher than before the war because, in part, instead of supplying hospitals and funding the health care system, the US is doing things like seizing hospitals during the Fallujah assault, and then -- against the Geneva Conventions -- keeping people from using those facilities.
Whether we like it or not, the resistance fighters in Iraq have the moral position.
Yes, the resistance are brutal thugs who bomb and terrorize the occupation forces and collaborators, but then again, the US Army with its track record of torture, firing into crowds of civilians, and indiscriminate use of firepower in heavily populated urban areas isn't anything to brag about either.
But the bottom line is that the US/UK invasion is illegal and without justification. This makes Iraqis fighting against the occupation forces as just another group of outgunned people doing anything they can to resist a foreign invader. The people of Mesopotamia have been doing that for thousands of years; to them, the Americans are little different from the Persian or British empires, and if history and the current situation is any guide, the current invaders will likely suffer the same fate.
This has to be the Pentagon's dream come true: a remote controlled war.
Now the US can slaughter people in developing countries without the fear that some of our own soldiers -- fighting for "freedom", of course -- will be killed or injured. I suspect we'll see the number of "Operation Freedoms" increase dramatically.
How come I don't think this is progress?
Re:All you know is nothing...
on
The Jobs Crunch
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· Score: 1
Note the smiley:-) following the line.
A smiley used like that denotes humor, sarcastic humor in this case.
It might even require some mass civilian casualties. Drop a BLU-82 or MOAB on Tikrit and Fallujah.
Yeah, that will show them the meaning of "freedom!":-(
Let them know that these little kidnappings and chicken-shit roadside bombings
I'm sure that they would happily kill American GIs with Apache gunships and Bradley IFVs if we would be kind enough to give them the weapons. But since we don't, should we be criticizing them for resisting a foreign occupier with whatever tools they have?
If you really want to stop the killing, take the US troops out of Iraq and send them halfway around the world back to Kansas -- that would do the trick.
You mean over 12,000 dead civillians are not enough to get our point across?
Please note that the dead cited by Iraq Body Count are by no means the total. The Iraq Body Count is only dead which are cited in the mass media -- it does not count the civilians who have the audacity to die without getting into the newspapers.
Re:And the wheels go on..
on
The Jobs Crunch
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Your comments are premised on the notion that there is a distinct difference in the fundamental worldviews of the Demopublican and Republocratic parties; that's a big mistake.
Those two factions of our single party are both funded by the wealthy and corporations, and are both beholden to their funders. They employ different rhetoric to try to rally the populace, but there is no significant difference in their worldviews.
Compared to the range of parties and political choice that a citizen of most any European country has, there is no political freedom in the US -- we're a one-party state.
Re:We WANT high labor costs! It's a Good Thing!
on
The Jobs Crunch
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· Score: 2, Interesting
It is always amazing how people bash high labor costs. You're right, high labor costs are good for the US.
Economic historians often point out that throughout the latter 1800s the US had very high labor costs (and strong tariffs) compared to most European countries. Those high labor costs were a key to attracting immigrants from Europe, and those high labor costs also played a key role in automating American industry.
Fortunately, over 90% of Americans are WORKERS. Your problem is that you have been tricked by investor/corporate propaganda into thinking that YOU are an INVESTOR.
This is quite true. See www.inequality.org for some illuminating stats about what percentage of the stock market is owned by the ultra-rich.
What always amazes me is how the corporate mass media report "productivity" increases. Productivity increases, like the gains in productivity by using computers, are great. But the mass media never talks about who benefits from those productivity increases. Look at the percentages of corporate profits over the past 20 years -- the gap between the rich and poor or the gap between the rich and middle-income workers is not increasing for nothing!
If those productivity increases are so great, how come I'm working over 40 hours a week?!
Unquestioningly accepting these loaded definitions and phrases that the media subtlely forces down people's throats are a way to bias discussions and restrict the terms of debate.
Re:All you know is nothing...
on
The Jobs Crunch
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
"He [FDR] not only turned a routine recession into the great depression..."
When FDR entered office the unemployment rate was 25%, with an underemployment rate of 50%. [...] calling the economy of 1933 "a routine recession" is idiocy.
No it's NOT! I heard it on Rush Limbaugh and again on Fox News so it MUST be true!:-)
When my girlfriend had to go to emergency here in Gatineau, QC for an ultrasound after having constant, severe abdominal cramping, we had to wait ten hours(!!!) to see a doctor. Things aren't ok.
And in the US people never have to wait to see a doctor!:-)
It's generally agreed that Quebec's provincial health care is the worst of the various Canadian provinces. While there's no doubt that Canadian health care has some problems, a few facts should be kept in mind:
(1) Before Canada adopted national health care, the average life expectancy of Americans exceeded the average life expectancy of Canadians.
(2) Now, the average life expectancy of Canadians exceeds that of Americans by more than 4 years.
(3) Canadians, as a whole, pay significantly less for health care than Americans do.
But the Russians weren't so happy with us that day.
The Russians were still pissed that while they were fighting over 200 German divisions on the Russian front, the US and UK were fighting as few as 4 German divisions in Italy, in what the Russians considered a broken promise to open a second front as soon as possible.
Think about what a typical encyclopedia says about a state in the first paragraph or two.
Typical entries are the state size/population, maybe when it came into the union, the state flower and/or nickname, things like that -- right?
Isn't rather odd that the Wikipedia includes in the very first paragraph about New Hampshire the sentence "There are no general sales or individual income taxes in New Hampshire, though the state does have meals, lodging, and other taxes"?
To me, that seems highly out of place for an encyclopedia's first paragraph.
I just made an edit to NH's entry and the only change I did was to cut that sentence out and to move it down to the bulleted list of other information, labelled "Miscellaneous information."
I think the tax line is much better to go down there, where they list such things as NH does not have a motorcycle helmet law, nor seatbelt law, nor mandatory kindergarden for children.
I won't bother questioning whether pointing out that NH doesn't have these laws is itself an indication of a libertarian leaning. Myself, I would point out NH's high average income or that many towns are still run on a true democratic basis via town meetings or something like that as misc. information. But after all, the lack of those laws is "miscellaneous information."
One of the reasons I asked was that I detected some distinct anti-tax/libertarian tones in the site. In particular, in the article entry about New Hampshire, the state where I live, I thought their initial paragraphs were quite biased and moreover, an odd way to "introduce" someone to the state.
I put in an edit on the entry. I made sure that the edit was so neutral and factual that it could offend no one, but I was surprised that the original article was put back into place. Nothing big, just a one-time edit; but it did make me wonder...
However, after reading some of the links that the Anonymous Coward posted in response to this thread, it is crystal clear that libertarian bias has been an issue for quite some time with the Wikipedia. Sadly, it's just not me.
As the links point out, there is a struggle about content from both the user-side of the wiki and internally within the wiki editors' group itself.
Slashdot Mirror
Someone should really moderate the entire article and its summary as a "troll".
/. article?
Seriously, if Linus were using a Linux Sparc box or Transmeta CPUed box or any other non-x86 machine which can run Linux, would that rate a
You don't think that the US gov't is going to let a little thing like international law or national sovereignty slow them down, do you?
Remember, this is the same US gov't that runs torture camps all across the world, which punishes non-US corporations for doing business in Cuba because those corporations are violating the American embargo law, which has a publicly stated policy of invading any country it feels like, and which truly believes it can do anything it wants to in the world.
While I understand your position and theory, sorry, the Netherlands doesn't hold much water in the imperial scheme of things -- your country can and will be bullied and/or bought like so many others...
Are you saying Hussein was justfied in invading Kuwait and threatening his other neighbors?
No, I don't think Iraq was justified in invading the Kuwaiti dictatorship. Iraq did tell the US envoy April Glaspie that they solve their border problems with Kuwait and stop Kuwait's cross-border slant oil drilling, but that's no excuse or justification for invading.
As to Iraq threatening its other neighbors, what threats? Citations please.
The only supposed threat that comes to mind is the US lie that Iraq was massing troops on the Saudi border. That was exposed as a lie by commercial satellite photos. It was later revealed that the US presented fake satellite photos to Saudi Arabia's semi-literate dictator in order to get the green light to base US troops in Saudi Arabia (and then, of course, highly upsetting Islamic militants in Saudi Arabia).
Or maybe you're talking about when Iraq kicked out inspectors back in '98?
You're spouting propaganda.
Saddam Hussein never kicked the weapons inspectors out during the 1990s (even though since the US was spying on Iraq via the weapons inspectors -- confirmed by US Marine Scott Ritter and others -- he had the right to).
The weapons inspectors were ordered out of Iraq by Bill Clinton just before Clinton launched cruise missile strikes on Iraq.
As an aside, given what we know for certain now about Iraq's WMD programs, the entire history of US-Iraqi relations during the 1990s needs to be rewritten. The no-fly zones were illegal, the US-imposed UN sanctions were immoral, Saddam Hussein was telling the truth, and it was clearly the US which was the aggressor nation.
but South Korea -- our ally over there -- prefers its "sunshine" (a.k.a. "give peace a chance") policy...
Yeah, how dare those Koreans have a say in how their own country is run and how they interact with their fellow countrymen -- the nerve of them!
But as long as we're talking about stupid presidents, how about Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter giving them the freaking reactors?
The arrangement worked out by Clinton, using Carter as the go-between, was to build light water reactors in exchange for the DPRK doing away with their heavy water reactors. It was a good deal.
Light water reactors (the kind the Russians are building in Iran, BTW) use fuel that is much, much harder to enrich into weapons-grade material, and they are easier for inspectors to monitor.
In short, the Clinton deal engaged North Korea and would have worked to stop or slow their weapons programs. Bush stopped the Clinton deal's funding and changed to a hard-line approach, and now we see ourselves in the present situation.
Says who?
I'd recommend really going back and looking at this. The Taliban ruled Afghanistan. Bin Laden merely paid the Taliban to keep good relations while he operated his training camps in Afghanistan.
As an aside, Al Queda doesn't really have an "infrastructure". The entire myth of Al Queda's structure has been overblown by the US which wants to make it out to be some sort of sinister, worldwide operation.
Quick -- who gave Al Queda its name? Answer -- The US gov't, back in the late 90s, when they were seeking to prosecute Bin Laden for the attacks in East Africa. Under the RICO (organized crime) statutes, the Justice Dept. could only indict if there was a corrupt organization. Since Bin Laden's group was not organized and consisted mainly of Bin Laden handing out cash grants to others, the Justice Dept. had to give Bin Laden's group a name to make up an organization -- voila! Al Queda.
Even today, after Bin Laden accepts the name (why not, since after 9/11 the "brand" Al Queda was famous) the US gave his "organization", Al Queda is nothing more than a grouping of a few dozen very loosely affiliated local terrorist groups scattered around the world.
I don't see how that refutes my point, other than the fact that the Taliban also accepted money from Bin Laden.
Nowhere does the Infoplease article (itself a compilation of who-knows-what sources) state that the Taliban had prior knowledge of the 9/11 attacks.
It does point out, however, that the UN did demand Bin Laden's turnover prior to 9/11 so one can certainly fault the Taliban for that (as they can the US administration for not accepting Bin Laden when the Sudan offered him up). But that still does not alter the fact that the Taliban were willing to give up Bin Laden after the 9/11 attacks but it was clear that the US at that time was more interested in going to war.
No country would protect and train people that would fly planes into our buildings either? Right? Afghanistan did.
Wrong. Afghanistan never trained the people who the US gov't claims attacked the WTC and Pentagon. In fact, if you recall (easily Googleable), the Taliban did agree to offer to turn over Bin Laden before the US attacked, only the US gov't kept adding demands which ultimately caused the Taliban to not agree to turn Bin Laden over.
Let's get this straight: the only thing the Taliban did was to give up some of their land to allow Islamic nationalists to be trained on their soil by the former US-supported rebel leader (Bin Laden). There has never been any evidence that the Taliban knew of the plot to attack the WTC and Pentagon (if you think that's wrong, please cite references).
There is, however, one country which DID provide bases and training (including training at the Naval Air Station in Pensacola Flordia) to some of the hijackers which are claimed to have attacked the WTC and Pentagon on 9/11. That country was the United States.
Perhaps if US foreign policy was based on international law, the UN Charter, respect for human rights, and principles of democracy fewer people in the world would hate us.
Or, we can continue the real-politik, immoral, short-sighted polices of the past 50+ years which has caused untold suffering for millions.
How about the money "wasted" in developing the nuclear weapon?
The Manhattan Project wasted a lot of money. Sorry, I don't have the total amount handy.
One would wonder, what have those nukes done for us -- besides threaten the planet with extinction?
I do have number for current nuke spending handy though. To put it into a guns versus butter choice, more money is spent in the U.S. on nuclear weaponry in one year than was spent on housing from 1980-1992.
Obviously, the power of free speech on the Internet is something for gov'ts to fear. This has been predicted by many.
This is just the first step in limiting people's free speech rights on the 'net and turning it into a bland, corporate organ, similar to today's TV.
I think you would find some of the articles and speeches of the "moral" resistance fighters interesting.
That's a weak propaganda tactic -- I never called the resistance fighters moral. One can state that killing is never a moral act, or at least that's what we learn from Christ's words.
What I said was the resistance holds the moral position of defending their own country against an unprovoked invasion by a foreign aggressor.
I'm just not sure where you can access them on the unclassified web.
Am I supposed to be wowed because you claim to have access to some classified web? Wow. How 3733t.
Collateral damage is regrettable.
Please spare me your CNN spin-speak. Talk English. Don't use language to obfuscate, use language to describe things accurately. Call it what it is. It is not "collateral damage", it's dead and wounded civilians that we're talking about.
We'll again conveniently ignore the strict rules of engagement that we operate under
I'm sure, at some times, some soldiers do have strict rules of engagement. But that certainly isn't the case all the time.
For example, this SF Chronicle article cites a lieutenant giving his soldiers rules of engagement before a patrol of "Shoot to kill. No questions asked."
Or as this British Guardian newspaper article reported about the US attack on an Iraqi wedding party, as one woman stated of her firsthand experience, "We went out of the house and the American soldiers started to shoot us. They were shooting low on the ground and targeting us one by one....I fell into the mud and an American soldier came and kicked me. I pretended to be dead so he wouldn't kill me." The Guardian confirmed this with multiple eyewitnesses and among the 42 dead were many women and children. While the US military claimed that the wedding party was a military target, video taken during the party and afterwards proved otherwise. No one was ever prosecuted for those murders, though the military claimed to be "investigating" the matter.
Or how about the military's rules of engagement that shooting looters was fine? Or the current rules of engagement that anyone out after curfew can be shot on sight?
Or what about the military's actions in Fallujah? In Australia, the Sydney Morning Herald notes a few war crimes of the US military. The US attacked hospitals (to keep them from being used as propaganda -- another words, to keep the doctors from saying how many civilians are being killed) which is a clear violation of the Geneva Conventions. There are many reports that inside Fallujah the rules of engagement allowed for free fire zones. The US purposely did not allow any males from teenagers to old men to leave Fallujah, instead preferring to slaughter them inside the city. The US deliberately cut off water and electricity to a city of 300,000+ for weeks -- impacting both resistance fighters and mothers and children alike.
But of course, thanks to a neutered US corporate mass media, few people know the extent of the war crimes of the US military. What gets reported is the mere execution of one prisoner because it was caught on video. And like the Abu Ghraib torture, the military is allowed to claim it was just a "bad apple."
Rules of engagement, please.
>"But the bottom line is that the US/UK invasion is illegal and without justification."
In your opinion.
No, not just in my opinion. Let's get this straight: The vast majority of the people of the world consider the US/UK invasion to be illegal and immoral.
Even large majorities of people in the UK oppose (and opposed) the invasion.
Everyone from the Pope to the Dali Lama to the UN Secretary General has declared the invasion illegal and immora
are you seriously suggesting that Iraq is *less* stable now than it was under the previous regime?
According to the Iraqis that live there, western public opinion polls report they say that life was better before the invasion.
Public opinion polls of Iraqis also say that huge majorities of Iraqis want the occupation forces to leave ASAP.
Before the illegal US/UK invasion, Iraqi infant mortality was brutally high, thanks to the decade-plus of UN sanctions that we now know were not only immoral but unjustified because Saddam Hussein really did disarm after the 1991 Gulf War just like he said so.
Yet today after the illegal US/UK invasion, Iraqi infant mortality is even higher than before the war because, in part, instead of supplying hospitals and funding the health care system, the US is doing things like seizing hospitals during the Fallujah assault, and then -- against the Geneva Conventions -- keeping people from using those facilities.
Whether we like it or not, the resistance fighters in Iraq have the moral position.
Yes, the resistance are brutal thugs who bomb and terrorize the occupation forces and collaborators, but then again, the US Army with its track record of torture, firing into crowds of civilians, and indiscriminate use of firepower in heavily populated urban areas isn't anything to brag about either.
But the bottom line is that the US/UK invasion is illegal and without justification. This makes Iraqis fighting against the occupation forces as just another group of outgunned people doing anything they can to resist a foreign invader. The people of Mesopotamia have been doing that for thousands of years; to them, the Americans are little different from the Persian or British empires, and if history and the current situation is any guide, the current invaders will likely suffer the same fate.
This has to be the Pentagon's dream come true: a remote controlled war.
Now the US can slaughter people in developing countries without the fear that some of our own soldiers -- fighting for "freedom", of course -- will be killed or injured. I suspect we'll see the number of "Operation Freedoms" increase dramatically.
How come I don't think this is progress?
Note the smiley :-) following the line.
A smiley used like that denotes humor, sarcastic humor in this case.
It might even require some mass civilian casualties. Drop a BLU-82 or MOAB on Tikrit and Fallujah.
:-(
Yeah, that will show them the meaning of "freedom!"
Let them know that these little kidnappings and chicken-shit roadside bombings
I'm sure that they would happily kill American GIs with Apache gunships and Bradley IFVs if we would be kind enough to give them the weapons. But since we don't, should we be criticizing them for resisting a foreign occupier with whatever tools they have?
If you really want to stop the killing, take the US troops out of Iraq and send them halfway around the world back to Kansas -- that would do the trick.
You mean over 12,000 dead civillians are not enough to get our point across?
Please note that the dead cited by Iraq Body Count are by no means the total. The Iraq Body Count is only dead which are cited in the mass media -- it does not count the civilians who have the audacity to die without getting into the newspapers.
Your comments are premised on the notion that there is a distinct difference in the fundamental worldviews of the Demopublican and Republocratic parties; that's a big mistake.
Those two factions of our single party are both funded by the wealthy and corporations, and are both beholden to their funders. They employ different rhetoric to try to rally the populace, but there is no significant difference in their worldviews.
Compared to the range of parties and political choice that a citizen of most any European country has, there is no political freedom in the US -- we're a one-party state.
It is always amazing how people bash high labor costs. You're right, high labor costs are good for the US.
Economic historians often point out that throughout the latter 1800s the US had very high labor costs (and strong tariffs) compared to most European countries. Those high labor costs were a key to attracting immigrants from Europe, and those high labor costs also played a key role in automating American industry.
Fortunately, over 90% of Americans are WORKERS. Your problem is that you have been tricked by investor/corporate propaganda into thinking that YOU are an INVESTOR.
This is quite true. See www.inequality.org for some illuminating stats about what percentage of the stock market is owned by the ultra-rich.
What always amazes me is how the corporate mass media report "productivity" increases. Productivity increases, like the gains in productivity by using computers, are great. But the mass media never talks about who benefits from those productivity increases. Look at the percentages of corporate profits over the past 20 years -- the gap between the rich and poor or the gap between the rich and middle-income workers is not increasing for nothing!
If those productivity increases are so great, how come I'm working over 40 hours a week?!
Thank you, THANK YOU for that comment!
Unquestioningly accepting these loaded definitions and phrases that the media subtlely forces down people's throats are a way to bias discussions and restrict the terms of debate.
"He [FDR] not only turned a routine recession into the great depression..."
:-)
When FDR entered office the unemployment rate was 25%, with an underemployment rate of 50%. [...] calling the economy of 1933 "a routine recession" is idiocy.
No it's NOT! I heard it on Rush Limbaugh and again on Fox News so it MUST be true!
When my girlfriend had to go to emergency here in Gatineau, QC for an ultrasound after having constant, severe abdominal cramping, we had to wait ten hours(!!!) to see a doctor. Things aren't ok.
:-)
And in the US people never have to wait to see a doctor!
It's generally agreed that Quebec's provincial health care is the worst of the various Canadian provinces. While there's no doubt that Canadian health care has some problems, a few facts should be kept in mind:
(1) Before Canada adopted national health care, the average life expectancy of Americans exceeded the average life expectancy of Canadians.
(2) Now, the average life expectancy of Canadians exceeds that of Americans by more than 4 years.
(3) Canadians, as a whole, pay significantly less for health care than Americans do.
But the Russians weren't so happy with us that day.
The Russians were still pissed that while they were fighting over 200 German divisions on the Russian front, the US and UK were fighting as few as 4 German divisions in Italy, in what the Russians considered a broken promise to open a second front as soon as possible.
Think about what a typical encyclopedia says about a state in the first paragraph or two.
Typical entries are the state size/population, maybe when it came into the union, the state flower and/or nickname, things like that -- right?
Isn't rather odd that the Wikipedia includes in the very first paragraph about New Hampshire the sentence "There are no general sales or individual income taxes in New Hampshire, though the state does have meals, lodging, and other taxes"?
To me, that seems highly out of place for an encyclopedia's first paragraph.
I just made an edit to NH's entry and the only change I did was to cut that sentence out and to move it down to the bulleted list of other information, labelled "Miscellaneous information."
I think the tax line is much better to go down there, where they list such things as NH does not have a motorcycle helmet law, nor seatbelt law, nor mandatory kindergarden for children.
I won't bother questioning whether pointing out that NH doesn't have these laws is itself an indication of a libertarian leaning. Myself, I would point out NH's high average income or that many towns are still run on a true democratic basis via town meetings or something like that as misc. information. But after all, the lack of those laws is "miscellaneous information."
One of the reasons I asked was that I detected some distinct anti-tax/libertarian tones in the site. In particular, in the article entry about New Hampshire, the state where I live, I thought their initial paragraphs were quite biased and moreover, an odd way to "introduce" someone to the state.
I put in an edit on the entry. I made sure that the edit was so neutral and factual that it could offend no one, but I was surprised that the original article was put back into place. Nothing big, just a one-time edit; but it did make me wonder...
However, after reading some of the links that the Anonymous Coward posted in response to this thread, it is crystal clear that libertarian bias has been an issue for quite some time with the Wikipedia. Sadly, it's just not me.
As the links point out, there is a struggle about content from both the user-side of the wiki and internally within the wiki editors' group itself.
How long can an expanding resource like wikipedia depend on donations?
Quite some time, actually. (See below thread on Wiki's libertarian backer.)