Hard Light Productions Forums
Off-Topic Discussion => General Discussion => Topic started by: jdjtcagle on May 27, 2004, 10:29:37 am
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U.S. Clerk's Terror Camp (http://tulsa.cox.net/cci/portal/_pagr/130/_pa.130/744?view=article&id=D82R03400)
This is getting out of hand.
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Wrong title there buddy.
though Ashcroft is very quickly turning into Big Brother, I think this may actually be a legitimate case.
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ya, I realized that, sorry
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Why has every American compound got to be a 'camp'. Why not a Terror Base or a Terror Cave?
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because its a euphimism. as in we didn't fire the tank at them, we "opened up". its not a military base, its a "forward staging area". Because camp is unconsciously associated with summer camp or something along those lines, and there is a little sub-conscious voice that says "oh well, its a camp, it can't really be all that bad".
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Hopefully Hamza's your problem now rather than ours :)
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Why did he need a camp in the first place? surely there's more than enough gun shops, shooting ranges and shooting instructors in the US to kit out your average terrorist?
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Originally posted by diamondgeezer
Hopefully Hamza's your problem now rather than ours :)
If Hamza was ever that big of a problem he'd have been arrested a long time ago, fact is he's been very useful to the government (they've been watching him for years).
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Well, as Winston Churchill said of sympathisers...
'Id rather have them in the tent pissing out than vice versa.'
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Churchill kicked ass.
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Incidentally, the UK will only extradite him if the death penalty is off the table.
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We have Fundamentalists Christian terrorist training camps, and yet we ignore them.
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Because they don't have brown skin Kazan, haven't you realised that all terrorists have brown skin, the white man is good and the black man is bad?
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Originally posted by aldo_14
Incidentally, the UK will only extradite him if the death penalty is off the table.
The UK will only extradite him for the specified offences if the death penalty is off the table for the specified offences.
Once he's there they'll just go "Oh, we're charging him with....err....treason. Yeah, treason. That sounds about right."
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Originally posted by 01010
Because they don't have brown skin Kazan, haven't you realised that all terrorists have brown skin, the white man is good and the black man is bad?
That's enough of that, it isn't about race.
Besides, the American White Man is the most hated individual in the world right now.
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How isn't this about race?
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Yes liberator, it's true... most people hates a white man
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Every major political group(with a few exceptions), even the ones composed of primarilly of white men take positions that attack white men for either being white, or male, or some other thing that they can't help.
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You'll get me started on the 'discrimination' laws of the UK.
Please, don't get me started on the 'discrimination' laws of the UK.
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I sense something bad (http://216.127.90.17/~admin1/Medium_WMP8/Endless_Love.wmv)
...:nervous:
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Originally posted by Liberator
Every major political group(with a few exceptions), even the ones composed of primarilly of white men take positions that attack white men for either being white, or male, or some other thing that they can't help.
Yeah. Cause white males are so put upon :rolleyes: For f**ks sake Liberator when you have racist names called at you by strangers on the street THEN you can give me this bull****.
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Ever went walking in the Ghetto part of town and been white... But, it's usually ok for me since I'm with a friend that is well known around there
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When you're not white, any part of the country can be a ghetto.
Sure there is racism against whites but when people like Lib start claiming that they have it worst it really shows what a cloud-cuckoo land they are living in.
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I grew up in the [RELATIVE] ghetto of my town
i've had black men pick fights with me just for being white
i've know white men to pick fights with people just for being non-white
i've known asian guys to go bruce lee on peoples asses for being stupid
liberator = naive
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liberator = definately not naive, just speaking a truth that's awfully hard to sell.
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he is correct that we do get the short end of the stick about somethings
but he is also naive about others -- saying that the fact hte govt ignores the White (often Supremecist) Fundie Christian Militants here in the US isn't about race and religion is naive
Hell BUSH AGREES with a great deal of the Fundie Christian Militant's objectives!
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Originally posted by Kazan
I grew up in the [RELATIVE] ghetto of my town
i've had black men pick fights with me just for being white
i've know white men to pick fights with people just for being non-white
i've known asian guys to go bruce lee on peoples asses for being stupid
liberator = naive
All true...
my belief on the subject is that man will make fun of someone different because they feel superior just because there different.
But the fact is, under that very, VERY, VERY small part of that skin we're all teh same color, trust me.
Not accusing anybody here of such a thing, just making a point
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where, in America? Don't think so, but I've never seen so it might very well be true. Its probably different from area to area.
but there is no denying that brown people have been demonized by Hollywood. What the proportion of movies in which whites are the bad guys (or Americans for that matter) versus the movies in which creepy, brown foreigners are the bad guys. Its a subconscious association for most people. You say "terrorist", and people imagine Ahmed al-Assad al-Hosein, with a beard, a turban and an AK.
I'de like to see Ashcroft proof for this case. Just recently, a man suspected in the Madrid bombings was released, when the Justice Department conceeded that he was not their man. Most of the evidence used to hold him was entirely circumstantial, I'll post more about this in a bit.
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jdjcagle: underneath that outer skin color - all pussies are the same color...
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Originally posted by Rictor
where, in America? Don't think so, but I've never seen so it might very well be true. Its probably different from area to area.
You've never seen any kind of discrimination or racism where you live?!? Where do you live??
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Originally posted by Kazan
jdjcagle: underneath that outer skin color - all pussies are the same color...
Riiighht, well good luck with that Kazan :wtf:
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hahaha pussies as in female genitalia
i've done more than just white girls before you know
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Toronto, Canada. The city is like 60% (guesstimate, not an actual figure) immigrants, usually first or second generation. All my best friends, past and present have all been immigrants. The worst I've ever seen was when my brother got into a fight with someone and called him a nigger (can I say that), but he was a kid and didn't know the implications. The school made a big deal out of it.
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Originally posted by Kazan
hahaha pussies as in female genitalia
i've done more than just white girls before you know
Ahhh... Thought you were name calling
Rictor: I've seen many fights over that word being thrown around, so I guess its more common over here :nod:
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I was at a US Terror Camp once, a long time ago.
My mission was to infultrate the facility and gather intel. For years, we had suspected that such camps were being secretly run by the Galacktoids, but never had any proof. My job was to find such proof.
Using the youth serum I stole from the Nazis back in '42, I signed up as just another helpless brat sent off by their parents so they could get a few weeks of freedom from the little beasts.
And what beasts they were! The screaming and crying were only the tip of the iceberg, further down the line came the true horrors of food fights, and midnight water balloon assualts. I slept under my bed most nights. Unless I was sneaking around, searching for the underground facility what little information we had said was there. I found nothing for nearly a week, and still had to deal with swims and making wallets.
I doubt I would have found anything if it hadn't been for that camping trip.
The children and I were gathered together by the various counselors, all of whom smelled of Galacktoid mating hormones, and were led into the deep woods. At first, things went well. The children sang songs and we trudged through the undergrowth.
As night began to fall, I began to get nervous. It's hard enough to see in the dark, but through all the trees it was next to impossible. No way to spot any potential dangers. Yet the counselors marched on, urging us to continue with promises of smores and hot dogs once we reached our destination.
We arrived shortly thereafter, and found the horrible truth: There was nothing there! We would be forced to put up tents and make fires. I should have made my run for it then, offering to go gather sticks for the fire and disappearing forever, but I stuck it out, for the children at least. The tents were up in less than half an hour, a feat I must say for a bunch of kids, and the fire going slightly after that.
We then gathered around the fire and began chatting and eating. Well, the kids ate, I was more reserved, claiming I wasn't hungry. Smores never appealed to me to begin with, but I wasn't about to eat anything that might be tainted by Galacktoid slavers. This whole time I had been living off hyper rations my superiors had sent with me, and whatever I could catch in the woods. I'm afraid it made me suspious, but I had to keep my head.
Then they started singing. Camp songs led by the head couselor on an old guitar. Silly songs that even I got into singing for a bit. Then he started:
"Kum ba yah, my Lord, kum ba yah!
Kum ba yah, my Lord, kum ba yah!"
My blood ran cold. A Galacktoid summoning song! I looked around violently, waiting for the first one to leap out of the bushes. Nothing happened, but the couselor noticed my sudden, fearful movements.
"Something wrong?"
I had to think of something, anything to throw him off. "I was just wondering what Kum ba yah meant." Wrong answer. No kid would ask such a question. My cover was blown. Before the head couselor could order his minons to strike, I was on my feet. I kicked at the fire and killed it, shunting the campsite into darkeness and ran.
I could hear the children screaming, I could only imagine what the Galacktoids were doing to them, but I tried to block it out. The mission was more important. That's when I heard the giant mosquitoes. The decended upon me, trying their harderest to rip me apart. I knocked one right in the face with my fist, stunning it for a moment, just long enough for me to pick a large stick and beat the bastard to death. The rats came next, and my only hope was to run faster.
Then the road appeared and I was safe, or at least I thought. There were the couselors, waiting for me. They had me, there was no escape. My fate seemed sealed.
Then two of the kids from the camp lept out of the woods, armed with machine guns and guts of steel. In seconds, the couselors were dead.
"Damn it," the first yelled at me. "You blew our cover!"
"What?" They were with the children's resistance, and I had, inadvertantly, blown their plans to infultrate the Galacktoid base. I would have *****ed at them for not informing us of their operation, but I was too tired and scared. I left a few hours later, the youth serum counteracted for the flight home.
I never went back to the camp site. The children's resistance eventually got into the base, but it was our giant space gun that saved the Earth and the moon landings of '69.
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WTF Eishtmo
are you tryting to trivialize the threat of fundamentalists?
Go read "The Fundamentals of Extremism" please
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:lol:
Eish rules. :D
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normally i would find that funny... but this subject is too deadly serious to trivilize - maybe AFTER the threat is eliminated
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fundamentalism is way down on the Big Ol' List of worls problems. Believe it or not, however much the fundies may appear to be in charge (Bush, Islamic fundamentalists etc), they are only figureheads. They are useless without their financial backers, who are driven not by religions but rather pure, good old fashioned greed, for money and power.
This is true in the States, in Israel and in Saudi Arabia. All three are financed by money from sources with no interest in religion. I think those (in addition to maybe Iran) are the big three nations of which fundies are in charge.
Taking into account that the Western world is moving swiftly towards secularism, and fundamentalism should be gone, even in the States, in a few decades. The fundies (at least the Christian one) no longer have the power they once had, and they're mighty pissed. They see the world leaving them behind, and obviously they're going to make alot of noise on their way out, as we're seeing now.
Not to mention that only a small portion of the threats to world peace are even overtly religious. Take Putin for example, or China.
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Rictor: "fundamentalism is way down on the Big Ol' List of Worlds Problems" statistically it is not - it is growing in the US
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Originally posted by jdjtcagle
I sense something bad (http://216.127.90.17/~admin1/Medium_WMP8/Endless_Love.wmv)
...:nervous:
:lol:
And Rictor, I'm going to disagree. Fundamentalism is a major problem and it's only getting bigger, especially these days where the fundamentalists are in charge.
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nah, don't mitake a temporary relapse for a full blown comeback.
If you look, you'll notice than even though Dubya is a religious fundamentalist, he has to keep it in check becuase if he really gave it his all, he would lose many, many voters.
he can't outright ban gay marriage (I'm talking about the Constitutional ammendment), he has to play all nice nice to Muslims. He has to publicly recognize feminism and all that as valid. He can't implement a truly fundamentalist agenda becuase if he did, he'd lose all his voters except for a small minority of zealots.
Just look at the incident with General Boykin. The guys spits on Islam, and Bush has to distance himself from the man, because he can't be seen to be religiously intolerant. Or how Dubya is always repeating "Islam is our friend, this is not a war on Islam, we looove Islam, these terrorists are perverting the good religioun of Islam". I mean, the guy prayed to Japanese idols, and he had to do it for the PR.
Click the "whats wrong with Dubya" link, cause if I put the URL in here, the filter will mess it up, it contains the word B-U-S-H.
http://www.formoore.com/
George W. Bush betrayed Roy Moore. When Justice Roy Moore and his supporters declared that the Ten Commandments have a place in the America's courts of law, George W. Bush cut and run. Bush pretended that he didn't even know us, like Peter denying Jesus.
George W. Bush betrayed Lieutenant General William Boykin. When Boykin told the truth about America's war against terror, saying that it is really a war against Satan, Bush denied knowing anything about it. We know very well that Bush and Boykin have talked about this very thing in the White House together, but again Bush pretended that he didn't even know about it.
After September 11, 2001, George W. Bush has engaged in a silly ecumenical project to try to pretend that all religions are really the same and equally valid. General Boykin is courageous enough to say that "America is a Christian nation". Bush tries to pretend that he does not think so. We need a President who will be honest about these things, and not try to cover up the real differences between Christianity and Islam.
George W. Bush campaigned as a responsible fiscal conservative, but he has created the largest budget deficits in history. As Pastor William Baldwin points out, under Bush's leadership, the Republican Congress has outspent their Democratic predecessors. Bush's policies raise our local taxes, and George W. Bush has yet to veto a single spending bill.
Under George W. Bush, the Republican Party has become the party of big government. The government has grown bigger and bigger, with more agencies and bureaucracies and enforcement programs.
George W. Bush seems to have a problem being honest. Bush has been caught in many lies. He's lied about September 11. He's lied about Iraq. He's lied about his budget. The sad fact is that George W. Bush has lost all the moral authority that a President of the United States must have. Bush is a poor example for our children, who we try to teach to be honest.
America is supposed to be the land of freedom, not the land of spies. Yet, George W. Bush has created new programs for the government to spy on ordinary, law-abiding Americans. Through the Patriot Act and Total Information Awareness, Bush has made America the land of Big Brother.
We criticized Bill Clinton for having his donors sleep in the Lincoln Bedroom of the White House. Now George W. Bush is doing the same, arranging for his big fundraisers to sleep overnight in the White House. That's a shame.
Just like Bill Clinton, the Bush Administration uses focus groups to set its policy and its speeches. Judge Roy Moore has more integrity than that.
George W. Bush promised that he would promote a pro-life agenda, but now both George W. Bush and his wife say that they oppose overturning Roe v. Wade, because George W. Bush is really pro-Choice!
Bush is two-faced and insincere about homosexuality. He says he opposes gay marriage, but then refuses to oppose civil unions for homosexuals. He also refuses to be consistent on hiring gays in the government, allowing for other offices to fire gays because of their sexual orientation, but he hires several homosexuals himself! Either Bush should be pro-gay or anti-gay. Make a decision, Bush!
Bush has taken part in Shinto ceremonies, bowing down to idols at a Shinto temple in Japan. Blasphemy and idolatry is not Christian behavior. Judge Roy Moore would never do such a thing.
George W. Bush has actually increased the funding for the National Endowment for the Arts, which funds blasphemy!
Bush has allowed for experimentation on human embryos.
Bush has sent American soldiers to serve under United Nations authority.
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When are you morons going to get over yourselves and realize that there are mountains of difference between Fundamentalist Christians and Fundamentalist Muslims.
The reason that everybody assumes a terrorist is from the Arabic regions is most International Terror comes from there. Sure you can show example of other hotbeds, but 90% of International Terror come from the Arab Bloc.
BTW Kazan, TOO MUCH INFORMATION!
Talking about relationships is one thing, but keep the intimate details of your sex life to yourself, THIS GOES FOR EVERYONE.
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that depends as what you define international terrorism to be.
ok, I would honestly like to hear your definition Lib. I'm genuinly interested to know how you are able to define it in such as a way as to exclude the actions of your own government. Every once in a while, I like to see how the other side think, so I'de be greatful if you could oblige me.
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Okay, since you asked in the spirit of gaining knowledge.
I define International Terrorism as violent actions of a small(compared to the populations they target), nationally-unaffiliated group against generallized, civilian targets designed to affect social or political change in a nation they dislike for whatever reason. This includes such groups as Al Queda and Hamas. There are also Western groups, but the only one that springs to mind is the IRA.
I should add, now that I think of National powers, such as the United States of America or Great Britain cannot engage in Terrorism. Nations can engage in Guerilla Warfare(spec ops, black ops, ect), which can be misconstrued as Terrorism by the uninformed or anti-* outside observer.
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liberator:saying that i've had intercourse with girls that are both white and are not white qualifies under the category of TMI _HOW_
it's not like I gave yuo a play-by-play of the intercourse
you=prude
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Originally posted by Kazan
you=prude
Perhaps, while I don't mind the topic of sex in general, the specifics are not considered part of polite conversation. I put it in the same category as talking about the diarrhea I had last week.
The topic itself is fine, whys and whos should, if nothing else, should be left for more intimate personal conversations, not the general public.
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Quote from Rictor's post :-
'George W. Bush cut and run. Bush pretended that he didn't even know us, like Peter denying Jesus.'
Mr Roy Moore obviously has a massively inflated image of himself then ;)
Well, it appears that Abu Hamza may well be looking at either 100 years or Death, though Britain are trying to get a promise of no Death Penalty, though no promises he won't mysteriously fall down a flight of stairs repeatedly or anything ;)
One thing actually confused me about Abu anyway, he started shouting about Muslim law when the Mosque in Finsbury Park was raided with sniffer dogs. I can understand this to a certain degree, but dogs aren't allowed in Christian churches either, but if the Police were looking for explosives in one, they would have acted in exactly the same manner. However, when Abu's sons were arrested for attempting to break into Finsbury Park Mosque, which is also a defilement of the Mosque, not one word.... It must be wonderful to be a selective fanatic ;)
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All fanatics are selective...............
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Originally posted by Liberator
the specifics are not considered part of polite conversation.
A) I didn't go into specifics
B) "polite conversation" among prudes
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Originally posted by Liberator
Okay, since you asked in the spirit of gaining knowledge.
I define International Terrorism as violent actions of a small(compared to the populations they target), nationally-unaffiliated group against generallized, civilian targets designed to affect social or political change in a nation they dislike for whatever reason. This includes such groups as Al Queda and Hamas. There are also Western groups, but the only one that springs to mind is the IRA.
I should add, now that I think of National powers, such as the United States of America or Great Britain cannot engage in Terrorism. Nations can engage in Guerilla Warfare(spec ops, black ops, ect), which can be misconstrued as Terrorism by the uninformed or anti-* outside observer.
OK, thanks for answering. alright, so first things first.
Private military mercs, from the likes of Titan, CACI and Blackwater, currently operating in Iraq, make up the third largest force, beside the US and the UK. They are nationally unaffiliated, small (compared to 25 millions Iraqis), and entered Iraq with the intention of affecting political change, namely the ousting of Saddam and the Baath Party. They have killed civilians, that much is documented, whether or not this was their intention is impossible to prove. They contiue to operate in the interest of political change, to prevent a theocracy from being established in Iraq (think al-Sadr).
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Now, second, and more importantly, do you acknowledge the existence of a phenomenon known as State Sponsored Terrorism? If you agree with Dubya, then such a thing certainly exists, and is being perpetrated by the likes of Syria, Iran, and formerly Afghanistan and Iraq (though Iraq was not in fact, but it was Dubya's assertion).
Now, if such a phenomenon exists, how would you define it?
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Third, do you believe that "Spec Ops warfare" is morally superior to traditional terrorism, even if the exact same acts are commited by both groups. Whether or not both groups have in the past commited identical acts is another question. Assuming that they have, would one group be "better" morally than the other, and if so, why?
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Kaz: drop it. it pertains in no way whatsoever to the current discussion. If you want, please go ahead and make a seperate thread about it. Thanks.
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I was under the impression most mercenaries (aka 'security contractors') were in Iraq hired as protection for the various firms hired to rebuilt the infrastructure.
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not necessarily. though it is true that many private corporations have their own security detail, the US government is employing a large number of mercs to fill in the gaps, due to the shortage of troops. Take Abu Ghraib for example. Lots of "private contractors" there.
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Their is no "shortage of troops", we have over 130,000 people on the ground in Iraq. The Private Security firms that have people in country are being used to guard key locations and personel to allow the real soldiers to go out and do what they were trained for.
The key difference between "spec ops" and terrorism is this:
Terrorism, by it's definition, targets random, typically civilian groups are a rule. Spec Ops units are utilized on specific, usually military targets.
The so-called "State Sponsored Terrorism" refers to terrorist acts that can be shown to have ties to an organized government. It's still terrorism because of the target.
"Is Spec Ops warfare morally superior to Terrorism, assuming that the same acts are carried out?"
Well, this assumes that a Spec Ops unit are going to go around randomly killing people and destroying things in a way similar to Terroists. Spec Ops isn't about that, it's about gaining intel, destroying specific targets to reduce enemy capability, and sometime SAR.
Terrorism is specifically about making as large a number of people as possible scared of you so you have power over them.
@Kazan
"polite conversation" among prudes
No, polite conversation among civilized people.
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just thought I'de post this up, quite amusing
(http://www.antiwar.com/photos/hamza.jpg)
YARRR! I am Hamza the Fearsome, greatest pirate on the Seven Seas. Beware, ye scurvy dogs, I don't take kindly to having my stump insulted!
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Originally posted by Anaz
:lol:
Eish rules. :D
The sad part is that it would have been better if that thunderstorm hadn't come through and threatened to kill the power. I had to hurry because of that.
Originally posted by Kazan
WTF Eishtmo
are you tryting to trivialize the threat of fundamentalists?
Go read "The Fundamentals of Extremism" please
No, I'm trying to be funny and possibly interesting, neither of which is your strong suit. Just making up for your slack.
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eishtmo: some things i find it inappropriate to be funny about until the threat of them is eliminated - this is one of them
Liberator: then your definition of "civilized" is prude and I want nothing to do with it.
Why don't I drag you into the current millenia - it's the 21st century not the 17th.
Welcome to the 21st cenury where you can say "I've slept with someone before" without having people gasp and be all agast that you acknolwedge reality. Welcome to the century where some of the population has grown up enough to realize that rationalism is the only way to know what's indeed true. Welcome to the 21st century, where people who act like sex is never to be talked about are now backwards prudes who are living in the dark ages.
[thunder: sorry, but symptoms of fundamentalism rub me the wrong way - especially when they're dosed with arrogance]
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Ah. It's about this guy. I had thought it was going to be a post on the School of the Americas, where the US trains Latin American guerillas and strongmen.
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oh no, haven't you heard, they've totally mended their ways. its no longer the School of Asassins anymore, they're called the Western Hemisphere International Security Cooperative now. they have a petting zoo, and a library to teach the young'ins to read, and they hand out free hot chocolate on thursdays and help little old ladies cross the street.
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Kazan, he acts like he's Victorian.
He probably puts table cloths on his tables because table legs remind him of legs, which in turn remind him of sex. :rolleyes:
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Kaz, I think you need to read a little more Emily Post and a little less Penthouse/Playboy. As I said, the topic in and of itself doesn't bother me that much. But, you are being crude and reveling in it and acting in general like a total neanderthal. Come to think of it, you've been acting this way for several weeks now.
At any rate, Rictor has already asked you to stop and now I'm asking you not to bring it up again, unless you want to start a new thread. Admins, I ask you to please keep an eye on it, thanks.
edit:
Ace, I didn't ask for your input. I believe in modesty and general moral behavior. I believe sex is an act reserved for a married couple. I like bikinis, halter tops, ect. but people who act like low class sluts will be labeled as such.
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OK Lib, fair enough. For the sake of conversation, I'll limit the arguement to current events, and not say, Vietnam, in which cases of terrorism quite clearly took place.
Is the aim of terrorism only to terrorize, or also to kill. It would seem to me that the killing is a part of it too. So, shall we say that terrorism is the deliberate killing of civilians by a group with no national ties, with a political motivation. But then however you have state sponsored terrorism which takes away the "no national ties" provision.
Now, the next question is: does the *intent* actually mean anything? If I kill someone accidentally, or if I kill them on purpose, is there a difference? And if so, how much?
Here's are two scenarios:
1) I walk in to a convenience store with the intention of robbing it. I have a gun, loaded, but I have no intention to use it. Its there just in case. I ask the clerk to give me his money. There are several customers in the store. One of them makes a move which I percieve to be threatinging, and shoot him. I didn't mean to kill him, its just sort of happened.
2) I walk into a convenience store with the intention of killing one of the customers, in an effort to force the other customers, as well as the clerck, to comply.
Essentially, Case 2 is your definition of terrorism. Now Case 1, thats the interesting bit. The robber is there to do a job, and wants to do so with the minimum force and casualties. But he is there to do a job, and he will see that it gets done. This is more important than the safety of the people in the store. So, in order to accomplish the goal, he feels *forced* to shoot one of the customers.
I would argue that Case 1 is as much terrorism as Case 2. The fact that civilians died is the important part. The intent matters, but very little. It would seem obvious that the robber can not claim he is blameless, because he has quite evidently killed civilians. He didn't mean to, but he had a pretty good idea that it would happen. He knows this from past robberies.
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All this is an attempt to find out how you can justify certain actions, but not others, when the results are the same. Everything else might be different, the weapons used, the motivation, the intent to kill, but the results are the same.
Here's a question for you (yes I know, I'm asking alot of questions)
If, in 2002, China decided to invade America, would you view that as justified. So, they invade because they claim that America has WMD, and is a threat to world peace. Nevermind that China also has WMD, for some reason they claim that you should not have them. They land on the West Coast, and promptly begin the invasion. The bomb the cities, in which thousands of innocents Americans die. They bomb the infrastructure, which kills many more innocnents.
The question here is, do you have a right to fault China for this invasion?
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Yes, we do have a right, as your theorized invasion is an act of war by one national power against another national power.
We've been over this already, but here we go again.
Iraq is a special case, the country was ruled by a despot almost as bad as Hitler. We know he had WMDs at one point, he used them against his own citizens. What the conflict in Iraq has been about is this, Saddam was funding a myriad of terrorist groups, call it State Sponsored if you wish. But more than that, and they should have been forthwith about this from the beginning, but I believe that the main purpose of the Iraq War was firstly, to draw out the Terrorists(militant Islamo-Theocratic Fascists and their like) and force them into an open conflict, which simoultaneously ties up their assetts and reduces their numbers, and secondly, establish a Secular Republican nation in the Middle East to further destabilize the other Theocratic governments of the region and force a paradigm shift in regional politics, toward a more Western friendly enviroment.
You see, the Terrorists have so many willing volunteers because, since most of the populace are fairly ignorant and thus very religious, they can say the "Allah has said to do X" and the populace will do their utmost to carry out "Allah's" commands. By shifting the governace to a Secular Republic we are helping to free the minds of the populace. We aren't taking away their religion, not by any means, but we are showing them that they cannot live by religion alone in the modern world.
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Originally posted by Liberator
Their is no "shortage of troops", we have over 130,000 people on the ground in Iraq. The Private Security firms that have people in country are being used to guard key locations and personel to allow the real soldiers to go out and do what they were trained for.
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130,000 troops is far too few troops to effectively police a country the size of Iraq. I believe the Pentagon actually wanted something around 250,000 or such (rough guess....I've heard estimates of 300-400,000 troops being the required number to succesfully secure the country), but rumsfeld wanted to actually scale down the force to even less than the current number. The US strategy was alwas fatally flawed, because it assumed that Iraqis would immediately turn on Saddam and start co-operating. As it happened, they didn;t - at best they stood aside, having been ;let down by the US in the past (namely the past uprising after the first Gulf War*).
*i.e. the war over Kuwait, not the Iraq-Iran war
Originally posted by Liberator
Yes, we do have a right, as your theorized invasion is an act of war by one national power against another national power.
We've been over this already, but here we go again.
Iraq is a special case, the country was ruled by a despot almost as bad as Hitler. We know he had WMDs at one point, he used them against his own citizens. What the conflict in Iraq has been about is this, Saddam was funding a myriad of terrorist groups, call it State Sponsored if you wish. But more than that, and they should have been forthwith about this from the beginning, but I believe that the main purpose of the Iraq War was firstly, to draw out the Terrorists(militant Islamo-Theocratic Fascists and their like) and force them into an open conflict, which simoultaneously ties up their assetts and reduces their numbers, and secondly, establish a Secular Republican nation in the Middle East to further destabilize the other Theocratic governments of the region and force a paradigm shift in regional politics, toward a more Western friendly enviroment.
You see, the Terrorists have so many willing volunteers because, since most of the populace are fairly ignorant and thus very religious, they can say the "Allah has said to do X" and the populace will do their utmost to carry out "Allah's" commands. By shifting the governace to a Secular Republic we are helping to free the minds of the populace. We aren't taking away their religion, not by any means, but we are showing them that they cannot live by religion alone in the modern world.
Now, there's several very flaky points you have here.... firstly, there's no evidence I know of which links Saddam to actively initiating or funding terrorist actions - only payments to Palestinians after the facts. whilst this is still pretty reprehensible, it's hardly constituting being a major player in world terrorism.
So far, there's been no evidence of WMD in Iraq found - including the stuff the Us sold to Saddam in the first place. there has been one Sarin gas shell, which could have been as old as the Iran-Iraq war, and which wasn;t even used as a chemical weapon (bnut in the manner of a secondary roadside bomb).
Now, the imapct of the Iraq war in the Middle East has been 2 things I can see - firstly, it has massively increased supported for Islamic terror organisations and generally antagonised most Muslims towards the 'West'. the atrocities (which they are, let's not beat about the bush here) at Abu-Graib and at least 4 other prisons in Iraq have further damaged asny hope the Us had of redeeming its image through Iraq, as has the cack-handed attack on Falluja.
The war has drawn out terrorist groups to a degree - but not into fighting openly, but rather into destabilising attacks upon the civillian population - both in Iraq and abroad. Not to mention that there is a strong grass-roots uprising from various sources, not just former Baathists (who are now apparently welcome in Iraq, anyways).
There is also the obvious moral iossue of 'forcing' a secular government upon Iraqis. For a truly free - and thus respected - Iraqi government to be elected, the populaityon has to be given every option - including a clerical theocracy. It's not the US' job to decide what the government is, only to make sure the people can choose it fairly.
In short - the whole essence of this war was suppossedly to be to free the Iraqi people (after the WMD claims were truly shown up, this was the fallback). To do that, you need to give them complete freedom to do whatever they want in terms of rebuilding their couintry. As it is, this truly ****ed-up occupation is doing more to boost grass roots support for the likes of Al-Queda than it is to actually rebuild the country of Iraq.
Bluntly, it's been an abject failure and waste of time. We have achieved nothing beyond replace one unelected dictator who is happy to bomb his own citizens, with a foreign force happy to bomb Irai civillians and an unuelected government with very little in the way of power.
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Originally posted by Liberator
Kaz, I think you need to read a little more Emily Post and a little less Penthouse/Playboy. As I said, the topic in and of itself doesn't bother me that much. But, you are being crude and reveling in it and acting in general like a total neanderthal. Come to think of it, you've been acting this way for several weeks now.
A) I don't need to read some backwards victorian
B) I don't read Penthouse and Playboy
C) "crude and reveling" - keep proving my point about you being a backwards victorian brainwashed by your fundamentalism into believing sexuality is bad. Are you aware that views such as this are psychologically damaging.
D) The belief that the neanderthals were any less intelligence that the homo sapeins sapeins at the time is completely false. They were roughly equal in intelligence. However the Neanderthals were less adaptive, less creative, than H. S. S. and thats why H.S.S. survived and the Neanderthals are not.
Views such as yours (sexual repression) have been long shown to be dangerous. The pyschosis rate in a population is directly proportional to the ammount of sexual repression (infact repression in general). This is mostly due to cognitive dissonance ("they told me this is bad! but my instincts tell me this is good! The church tells me this is bad but modern post-conventional/post-modern society tells me it's ok")
Your views are extremely damaging to people. Even if you personally have brainwashed yourself enough to not realize you have the C.D. it's there. You're lashing out at me is an example of the fact that it is there, you're trying to avoid thinking about it.
Get out of the 1600s, your 'polite society' has the highest rates of demestic abuse, divorce, racism, homophobia, limitations of free thought. Your "polite society" is a cancer in post-conventional society.
At any rate, Rictor has already asked you to stop and now I'm asking you not to bring it up again, unless you want to start a new thread. Admins, I ask you to please keep an eye on it, thanks.
So long as you spew ignorance I will call you for it. Wherever the cancer of repression rears it's head I will be there like a laser scalpel to remove it.
Running crying to the admins because you want the final word when you know the post coming now was going to be a total owning of you is just an example of the C.D. manifestation. You don't want to think about it because it makes you unconfortable, you would rather remain ignorance and repressed because at this point your ignorance is making it confortable for you to think.
I find this a mix between saddening and disgustinga.
edit:
Ace, I didn't ask for your input. I believe in modesty and general moral behavior. I believe sex is an act reserved for a married couple. I like bikinis, halter tops, ect. but people who act like low class sluts will be labeled as such.
There is a differences between modesty and repression, there is a difference between morality and repression. Beleiving that "sex is an act reserved for married couples" leads to higher divorce rates, extreme axiety on the wedding night.
Saying "I've slept with someone" is not "acting like low class sluts". Being comfortable with sexuality is infact evidence that the person has grown up past "convetional morality" (black and white moral thinking) to "post-convetional morality" (relativistic thinking, do-no-harm when-possible thinking).
Sorry Libby, but you are a classic example of what's wrong with repression.
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Originally posted by Kazan
Running crying to the admins because you want the final word when you know the post coming now was going to be a total owning of you is just an example of the C.D. manifestation.
The amount of times I've seen someone post a huge inaccuracy-filled post about something and then say that they are sick of the subject :D
Gotta agree with you there Kazan. If Lib didn't want the conversation to go off-topic he could have just kept his mouth shut and not said anything. Posting a reply which demands answering and then saying no one should reply to it cause it would be off-topic is a rather underhanded trick.
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I think it's official, Kazan has gone stark raving mad.
Relitavistic Morality is what has destroyed much of Western Civilization.
The Idea that there are no limits to behavior flies in the face of the very Idea of moral, ethical and reasonable thought.
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"Oh no. The sky is falling in on us. Save us Liberator!" :rolleyes:
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Originally posted by Liberator
I think it's official, Kazan has gone stark raving mad.
A) No, I'm stark RAVING SANE
I've had my brain poked with more tests than you know exist
Relitavistic Morality is what has destroyed much of Western Civilization.
Way to spew blazing bull****
What destruction of wester civilization? There HAS been no destruction of western civilizaiton.
I doubt you even understand what relativistic morality IS, way to spew a conditioned respones. Wow you're a great study in how far manipulation can go in humans.
The Idea that there are no limits to behavior flies in the face of the very Idea of moral, ethical and reasonable thought.
rotfl - if you think relativistic morality is the idea that there are no limits than that is the finest example of your ignorance.
Post-conventionalist / relativistic morality is "grey thinking" - ie acknowleding that the world is shades of grey. IT is also the abandonment of authoritarian morality.
Authoritarian moral (conventional) systems have lead to almost all the wars in the history of mankind. Post-conventionalist morality creates an atmosphere that inhibits wars.
Post-conventionalist morality is the "Do no harm" principle. If something you do harms something, then it is wrong. However sometimes things conflict - say the needs of the many over the needs of the few. A embyrio vs it's mother, etc.
Liberator, please post again, I am having a lot of fun performing psychological analysis on you.
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Originally posted by Liberator
Yes, we do have a right, as your theorized invasion is an act of war by one national power against another national power.
We've been over this already, but here we go again.
Iraq is a special case, the country was ruled by a despot almost as bad as Hitler. We know he had WMDs at one point, he used them against his own citizens. What the conflict in Iraq has been about is this, Saddam was funding a myriad of terrorist groups, call it State Sponsored if you wish. But more than that, and they should have been forthwith about this from the beginning, but I believe that the main purpose of the Iraq War was firstly, to draw out the Terrorists(militant Islamo-Theocratic Fascists and their like) and force them into an open conflict, which simoultaneously ties up their assetts and reduces their numbers, and secondly, establish a Secular Republican nation in the Middle East to further destabilize the other Theocratic governments of the region and force a paradigm shift in regional politics, toward a more Western friendly enviroment.
You see, the Terrorists have so many willing volunteers because, since most of the populace are fairly ignorant and thus very religious, they can say the "Allah has said to do X" and the populace will do their utmost to carry out "Allah's" commands. By shifting the governace to a Secular Republic we are helping to free the minds of the populace. We aren't taking away their religion, not by any means, but we are showing them that they cannot live by religion alone in the modern world.
You can't be serious. Hitler killed 6 million Jews, hundreds of thousands of others groups (gays, gypsies, cimmunists etc). He started a war that cost, all in all, something like 15 millions lives.
Just add up the numbers man. The scale of Saddam:Hitler is off by a factor of several hundred.
Its funny how Saddam was best buddies with the West, and everyone loves him, until he went against orders and invaded Kuwait (which wasn't entirely against orders even, he was told he could take a small piece). And since then he has been demonized. I'm not saying he was a nice guy, far from it, but you should be aware that there has been a very systemic and effective campaign to turn Saddam in to a monster disproportionate to what he has actually done.
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Some facts for you on the whole theocracy issue:
During all of Saddam's rule, up to and including the invasion, Iraq was a secular nation. Saddam feared that an Islamic uprising like the one in Iran could overthrow him, so he actively suppresed religion. He is known for killing many prominent clerics, including al-Sadr's father.
It might be that you just make no distinction between the various Middle-Eastern nations, but you really should. There isnt this one big, homogenous area called "the MIddle East" home of the fundamentlist brown people.
There are stark differences between each nations, which I think you should maybe learn. In matters of politics, economy, religion and so forth.
-more to come-
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Don't your people's fingers hurt!? :confused:
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Originally posted by Rictor
You can't be serious. Hitler killed 6 million Jews, hundreds of thousands of others groups (gays, gypsies, cimmunists etc). He started a war that cost, all in all, something like 15 millions lives.
Just add up the numbers man. The scale of Saddam:Hitler is off by a factor of several hundred.
Its funny how Saddam was best buddies with the West, and everyone loves him, until he went against orders and invaded Kuwait (which wasn't entirely against orders even, he was told he could take a small piece). And since then he has been demonized. I'm not saying he was a nice guy, far from it, but you should be aware that there has been a very systemic and effective campaign to turn Saddam in to a monster disproportionate to what he has actually done.
___________________________
Some facts for you on the whole theocracy issue:
During all of Saddam's rule, up to and including the invasion, Iraq was a secular nation. Saddam feared that an Islamic uprising like the one in Iran could overthrow him, so he actively suppresed religion. He is known for killing many prominent clerics, including al-Sadr's father.
It might be that you just make no distinction between the various Middle-Eastern nations, but you really should. There isnt this one big, homogenous area called "the MIddle East" home of the fundamentlist brown people.
There are stark differences between each nations, which I think you should maybe learn. In matters of politics, economy, religion and so forth.
-more to come-
This post makes the most sense to me. Its good to be patriotic and all, but not to the point of defending your nation even when its wrong. Its ok to say your leaders are making mistakes and its ok to try and make up for them. We gain nothing from ignorance at all.
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Originally posted by Lonestar
This post makes the most sense to me. Its good to be patriotic and all, but not to the point of defending your nation even when its wrong. Its ok to say your leaders are making mistakes and its ok to try and make up for them. We gain nothing from ignorance at all.
Some would say patriotism is having the courage to stand up and say when your country is going wrong.