Things little Twitter facilitate information and opinion exchange
Well, no, they don't. Twitter's 140 character straightjacket means that you can't post anything more than reinforcements to people's prejudices and mindless slogans. Twitter most likely would've *encouraged* the Iraq war.
I've always thought that they should have a 7 character limit on tweets. That's all you need for "me too!"
Anyone with the faintest knowledge of US political history knows damn well that protests don't change anything
Yes, the civil rights and anti-Vietnam war protests in the 1960s made no difference to anything. The US is still embroiled in Vietnam, and black people in the South still have to use different restaurants.
That's real social pressure of a sort that is far more real and tangible (and persuasive to politicians) than chatter on an internet microblogging site. There was nothing but hostility to the war here, and we still went.
What would have been needed to influence the politicians were widespread and prolonged riots on the level of the poll tax riots. But then the government would just have said that the demonstrators were led by a bunch of anarchistd/terrorists, and ignored them anyway after arresting a few ringleaders.
The war with Afghanistan at least made sense, the country had been taken over by guys who were very happily sheltering the guys who had just perpetrated the biggest acts of terrorism in modern US history.
The Taliban no doubt enjoyed sticking up two fingers to the US over these alleged terrorists, but that could surely have been got round in some other way than invading the country. I seem to remember that the Taliban were actually getting quite fed up with the Al Qaeda people. In simple truth, the US needed someone to hit out at after 9/11.
They were also being huge jerks to their own people (destroying the countries heritage, oppressing women and minorities
This is similar to the "Saddam Hussein was an evil dictator and the world's a better place without him" argument for the Iraq war. It is a post-war justification, not the original reason for invading.
and there were a few hundred million who did not protest because they believed that getting rid of a bloodthirsty dictator is a) a darn good thing to do, and b) never a clean, straightforward process
But that was not the reason given for the Iraq war at the time. So it would have been a pretty stupid argument for not protesting about the war.
Even the crazy overexcited Guradian is better when taken with a grain of salt.
The traditional Private Eye name for the Guardian is the Grauniad, but thanks for playing.
The Guardian is a liberal (and therefore by US standards extreme left wing) newspaper, and one of the soberest and most sensible news outlets in the UK. Unless you're a right winger who thinks the Daily Mail is a bit soft on immigrants and lefties.
Well said. The sad thing is that the anti-war voices and demonstrators were, in fact, the minority, albeit a vocal and not insignificant one.
I remember in the preparation for the war how the media were whipping up a frenzy about Saddam Hussein's mighty military and the need to pulverize Iraq to stop the battery of WMDs that would be unleashed against our poor troops.
Were you 5 at the time or something? There were massive anti-war demonstrations, but because they were peceived as being anti-American, and we were all supposed to be grieving over 9/11 as though it was the beginning of Armageddon rather than an unusually bloody terrorist attack, Western governments broadly ignored them.
On reflection, nothing short of a mass violent uprising would have worked here in the UK, and that wasn't going to happen.
So did I. I was angry at a level I'd not experienced before in my life. My family was nearby, one had been in the WTC just shortly before, a personal friend died there, and my feeling was, if a state actor has been identified, nuke them. Nuke them till they glow, and let the world know that attacking us is not a fucking option. Ever.
Whatever people said then or say now to justify the Iraq war, it comes down to being primarily an emotional response by the US to 9/11. As such, it remains baffling to those of us outside the US, for whom 9/11 is just one of an apparently never-ending series of terrorist attacks (albeit on a larger scale than usual) and not the apocalyptic event it clearly was for US citizens.
Similarly, the US could have performed a limited police/intelligence operation in Afghanistan find Osama bin Laden if that was really what they were concerned about. In fact, they wanted to teach the Taliban a lesson for supporting OBL, and for the world to see the consequences of that nose-thumbing to the US from a country with no possible military threat to the US whatsoever.
What does 9/11 have to do with Iraq? Nothing. So why are you bringing it up? No one said it did. No one thinks it did. You could maybe, MAYBE, make an argument about something for oil. But 9/11? You're off in LaLa Land.
Wow, you have a short memory. Iraq was presented as part of the whole War On Terror unleashed after 9/11.
Obviously, this was subsequently downplayed, like the whole embarrassing "oops, we didn't find any WMD" thing. But before and in the early stages of the war, a LOT of people would have agreed that Iraq was responsible for 9/11 in some way.
we damned sure need to answer the question of would Iraq be better off now if the US hadn't gone there
That is begging the question of whether it was the US's problem in the first place.
Would the people of Zimbabwe, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, and Belarus be better off if the US unleashed its military might on those countries' rulers and introduced democracy and prosperity?
That's why the war happened - because of the left's intellectual inbreeding and inability to make a coherent argument against it.
That is one of the most disgusting right wing arguments I have ever seen. When people moan here about Microsoft or whoever having paid shills, it makes me wonder why they get so upset about pieces of fucking software and yet can allow total bollocks like this to go unchallenged.
The war happened because (a) the US wanted to wave its dick after the humiliation of 9/11 (b) Saddam Hussein needed to be taught a lesson as he wasn't playing ball and (c) Bush and the oil companies (as well as the military-industrial complex generally) DID do well out of the war.
The "left wing" anti-war movement encompassed a huge variety of opinions, and to pretend that it was somehow hijacked by an evil group of dedicated communist spies for their own agenda is sheer McCarthyite, reactionary nonsense. Most normal people oppose unnecessary wars, and they especially oppose wars on a palpably false pretext.
the world really is a better place without Saddam in it
Then Bush and Blair should just have said that at the time instead of lying.
There are a lot of unpleasant rulers and regimes in the world. If the UN wants to get rid of Robert Mugabe or the ruling house in Saudi Arabia, they should say so and get everyone to join in.
The point remains that it was up to the US/coalition to prove that Saddam Hussein had WMDs that were a clear and present danger to their national interests. If they couldn't, then that justification for war was invalid. Hans Blix's job was impossible because it's impossible to prove a negative.
What they did of course was to grab hold of the flimsiest intelligence, ignore any contra-indications and go to war anyway because the Iraq war was never about WMDs in the first place.
It was a combination of securing Iraq for US oil interests, and showing the Middle East that the US was still a tough guy after 9/11. Shock and awe was political theatre, not military tactics.
the usefulness of the Google Docs suite, for my purposes, is the online storage on Google Drive
Really? For me it's the rich feature set, agile development model and lightning-fast application speed that has made it a paradigm-shifter to rival Lotus Notes or MySpace.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, no, they don't. Twitter's 140 character straightjacket means that you can't post anything more than reinforcements to people's prejudices and mindless slogans. Twitter most likely would've *encouraged* the Iraq war.
I've always thought that they should have a 7 character limit on tweets. That's all you need for "me too!"
Anyone with the faintest knowledge of US political history knows damn well that protests don't change anything
Yes, the civil rights and anti-Vietnam war protests in the 1960s made no difference to anything. The US is still embroiled in Vietnam, and black people in the South still have to use different restaurants.
That's real social pressure of a sort that is far more real and tangible (and persuasive to politicians) than chatter on an internet microblogging site. There was nothing but hostility to the war here, and we still went.
What would have been needed to influence the politicians were widespread and prolonged riots on the level of the poll tax riots. But then the government would just have said that the demonstrators were led by a bunch of anarchistd/terrorists, and ignored them anyway after arresting a few ringleaders.
The war with Afghanistan at least made sense, the country had been taken over by guys who were very happily sheltering the guys who had just perpetrated the biggest acts of terrorism in modern US history.
The Taliban no doubt enjoyed sticking up two fingers to the US over these alleged terrorists, but that could surely have been got round in some other way than invading the country. I seem to remember that the Taliban were actually getting quite fed up with the Al Qaeda people. In simple truth, the US needed someone to hit out at after 9/11.
They were also being huge jerks to their own people (destroying the countries heritage, oppressing women and minorities
This is similar to the "Saddam Hussein was an evil dictator and the world's a better place without him" argument for the Iraq war. It is a post-war justification, not the original reason for invading.
Since I'm a pedantic asshole, yes Iraq was aiding terrorists. They were just aiding terrorists killing people in Israel, not in the US.
That applies to pretty much everywhere in the Middle East apart from Israel though.
and there were a few hundred million who did not protest because they believed that getting rid of a bloodthirsty dictator is a) a darn good thing to do, and b) never a clean, straightforward process
But that was not the reason given for the Iraq war at the time. So it would have been a pretty stupid argument for not protesting about the war.
Even the crazy overexcited Guradian is better when taken with a grain of salt.
The traditional Private Eye name for the Guardian is the Grauniad, but thanks for playing.
The Guardian is a liberal (and therefore by US standards extreme left wing) newspaper, and one of the soberest and most sensible news outlets in the UK. Unless you're a right winger who thinks the Daily Mail is a bit soft on immigrants and lefties.
I remember in the preparation for the war how the media were whipping up a frenzy about Saddam Hussein's mighty military and the need to pulverize Iraq to stop the battery of WMDs that would be unleashed against our poor troops.
Unbelievable.
Don't remember any of that.
Were you 5 at the time or something? There were massive anti-war demonstrations, but because they were peceived as being anti-American, and we were all supposed to be grieving over 9/11 as though it was the beginning of Armageddon rather than an unusually bloody terrorist attack, Western governments broadly ignored them.
On reflection, nothing short of a mass violent uprising would have worked here in the UK, and that wasn't going to happen.
Did you ever notice that the invasion of Iraq convinced Libya to give up its WMD programme?
That would be its WMD programme like Iraq didn't have?
Were the Taliban not harboring many Al Queda operations and people connected to the attack?
Even if true, that is still a law enforcement and diplomatic problem, not an excuse for invading a sovereign country.
The fact is, the US needed someone or something to hit after 9/11and the Taliban were foolish enough to provide them with a target.
So did I. I was angry at a level I'd not experienced before in my life. My family was nearby, one had been in the WTC just shortly before, a personal friend died there, and my feeling was, if a state actor has been identified, nuke them. Nuke them till they glow, and let the world know that attacking us is not a fucking option. Ever.
Whatever people said then or say now to justify the Iraq war, it comes down to being primarily an emotional response by the US to 9/11. As such, it remains baffling to those of us outside the US, for whom 9/11 is just one of an apparently never-ending series of terrorist attacks (albeit on a larger scale than usual) and not the apocalyptic event it clearly was for US citizens.
Similarly, the US could have performed a limited police/intelligence operation in Afghanistan find Osama bin Laden if that was really what they were concerned about. In fact, they wanted to teach the Taliban a lesson for supporting OBL, and for the world to see the consequences of that nose-thumbing to the US from a country with no possible military threat to the US whatsoever.
What does 9/11 have to do with Iraq? Nothing. So why are you bringing it up? No one said it did. No one thinks it did. You could maybe, MAYBE, make an argument about something for oil. But 9/11? You're off in LaLa Land.
Wow, you have a short memory. Iraq was presented as part of the whole War On Terror unleashed after 9/11.
Obviously, this was subsequently downplayed, like the whole embarrassing "oops, we didn't find any WMD" thing. But before and in the early stages of the war, a LOT of people would have agreed that Iraq was responsible for 9/11 in some way.
Iran has two dozen soon-to-be-upgraded Shahab-3 ballistic missiles in Venezuela, and these are just waiting for nuclear warheads
So you're saying that Venezuela deserves the shock and awe treatment, a bit of the old ultra violence?
we damned sure need to answer the question of would Iraq be better off now if the US hadn't gone there
That is begging the question of whether it was the US's problem in the first place.
Would the people of Zimbabwe, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, and Belarus be better off if the US unleashed its military might on those countries' rulers and introduced democracy and prosperity?
That's why the war happened - because of the left's intellectual inbreeding and inability to make a coherent argument against it.
That is one of the most disgusting right wing arguments I have ever seen. When people moan here about Microsoft or whoever having paid shills, it makes me wonder why they get so upset about pieces of fucking software and yet can allow total bollocks like this to go unchallenged.
The war happened because (a) the US wanted to wave its dick after the humiliation of 9/11 (b) Saddam Hussein needed to be taught a lesson as he wasn't playing ball and (c) Bush and the oil companies (as well as the military-industrial complex generally) DID do well out of the war.
The "left wing" anti-war movement encompassed a huge variety of opinions, and to pretend that it was somehow hijacked by an evil group of dedicated communist spies for their own agenda is sheer McCarthyite, reactionary nonsense. Most normal people oppose unnecessary wars, and they especially oppose wars on a palpably false pretext.
However, I maintain that Saddam had already used WMDs on his Kurdish population - it would have been immoral to let that evil man stay
Fine, if you want regime change, just fucking say so. Why lie about how the evil Saddam was just about to nuke us into oblivion?
the world really is a better place without Saddam in it
Then Bush and Blair should just have said that at the time instead of lying.
There are a lot of unpleasant rulers and regimes in the world. If the UN wants to get rid of Robert Mugabe or the ruling house in Saudi Arabia, they should say so and get everyone to join in.
What they did of course was to grab hold of the flimsiest intelligence, ignore any contra-indications and go to war anyway because the Iraq war was never about WMDs in the first place.
It was a combination of securing Iraq for US oil interests, and showing the Middle East that the US was still a tough guy after 9/11. Shock and awe was political theatre, not military tactics.
"What can you do with 1 Gigabit Google Fibre that you can't do with 20Mbps DSL or 50Mbps Cable internet? "
Do you know how big these HD Porn Siterips are?
Brazzers is 443.08 GB, it would be ages before you can jack off with 20MB/s.
Yes, because obviously you can only masturbate when you have a 100% complete copy of every piece of porn ever made.
You can fit a micro SD drive under your foreskin. So I've been told.
What they are really worried about is having enough food to eat and other financial issues. Communism doesn't work very well for stuff like that.
Cuba's economic situation would be a lot better if they hadn't been economically blockaded by the US for the last fifty years.
You cannot be that stupid. I refuse to believe that you can learn to operate a computer and still be that stupid.
You really must be new here.
I can see a time when some really crazy performance artist replaces his/her skull with a transparent one.
You appear to have misspelled "retard".
the usefulness of the Google Docs suite, for my purposes, is the online storage on Google Drive
Really? For me it's the rich feature set, agile development model and lightning-fast application speed that has made it a paradigm-shifter to rival Lotus Notes or MySpace.