[Pez]

http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/message/index.php



Dear Governor Bush:

So today is what you call "the moment of truth," the day that "France and the rest of world have to show their cards on the table." I'm glad to hear that this day has finally arrived. Because, I gotta tell ya, having survived 440 days of your lying and conniving, I wasn't sure if I could take much more. So I'm glad to hear that today is Truth Day, 'cause I got a few truths I would like to share with you:

1. There is virtually NO ONE in America (talk radio nutters and Fox News aside) who is gung-ho to go to war. Trust me on this one. Walk out of the White House and on to any street in America and try to find five people who are PASSIONATE about wanting to kill Iraqis. YOU WON'T FIND THEM! Why? 'Cause NO Iraqis have ever come here and killed any of us! No Iraqi has even threatened to do that. You see, this is how we average Americans think: If a certain so-and-so is not perceived as a threat to our lives, then, believe it or not, we don't want to kill him! Funny how that works!

2. The majority of Americans -- the ones who never elected you -- are not fooled by your weapons of mass distraction. We know what the real issues are that affect our daily lives -- and none of them begin with I or end in Q. Here's what threatens us: two and a half million jobs lost since you took office, the stock market having become a cruel joke, no one knowing if their retirement funds are going to be there, gas now costs almost two dollars -- the list goes on and on. Bombing Iraq will not make any of this go away. Only you need to go away for things to improve.

3. As Bill Maher said last week, how bad do you have to suck to lose a popularity contest with Saddam Hussein? The whole world is against you, Mr. Bush. Count your fellow Americans among them.

4. The Pope has said this war is wrong, that it is a SIN. The Pope! But even worse, the Dixie Chicks have now come out against you! How bad does it have to get before you realize that you are an army of one on this war? Of course, this is a war you personally won't have to fight. Just like when you went AWOL while the poor were shipped to Vietnam in your place.

5. Of the 535 members of Congress, only ONE (Sen. Johnson of South Dakota) has an enlisted son or daughter in the armed forces! If you really want to stand up for America, please send your twin daughters over to Kuwait right now and let them don their chemical warfare suits. And let's see every member of Congress with a child of military age also sacrifice their kids for this war effort. What's that you say? You don't THINK so? Well, hey, guess what -- we don't think so either!

6. Finally, we love France. Yes, they have pulled some royal screw-ups. Yes, some of them can be pretty damn annoying. But have you forgotten we wouldn't even have this country known as America if it weren't for the French? That it was their help in the Revolutionary War that won it for us? That our greatest thinkers and founding fathers -- Thomas Jefferson, Ben Franklin, etc. -- spent many years in Paris where they refined the concepts that lead to our Declaration of Independence and our Constitution? That it was France who gave us our Statue of Liberty, a Frenchman who built the Chevrolet, and a pair of French brothers who invented the movies? And now they are doing what only a good friend can do -- tell you the truth about yourself, straight, no b.s. Quit pissing on the French and thank them for getting it right for once. You know, you really should have traveled more (like once) before you took over. Your ignorance of the world has not only made you look stupid, it has painted you into a corner you can't get out of.

Well, cheer up -- there IS good news. If you do go through with this war, more than likely it will be over soon because I'm guessing there aren't a lot of Iraqis willing to lay down their lives to protect Saddam Hussein. After you "win" the war, you will enjoy a huge bump in the popularity polls as everyone loves a winner -- and who doesn't like to see a good ass-whoopin' every now and then (especially when it 's some third world ass!). So try your best to ride this victory all the way to next year's election. Of course, that's still a long ways away, so we'll all get to have a good hardy-har-har while we watch the economy sink even further down the toilet!

But, hey, who knows -- maybe you'll find Osama a few days before the election! See, start thinking like THAT! Keep hope alive! Kill Iraqis -- they got our oil!!

Yours,

Michael Moore

[JC Denton]

Meh.  It was a thought...

[Stryke 9]

Warlock: Exactly. You're repeating what your dad told you. What he probably didn't tell you was that the same happened in every unpopular military action. It wasn't because people were finally exposed the particular brutality and sadism of soldiers fighting a civilian army- that merely shocked people into liking the war less. Look at some of the **** we pulled in South America, against huge popular dissent, and look at what happened to the soldiers who came home.


Hell, it's not like some people aren't saying the same things about Afghanistan, or that people aren't accusing the Army and government of doing that **** in Iraq in advance.


See, this is the danger of accepting someone else's biased view of something, particularly when they're trying to convince you that things are exactly one way. They tend to leave out stuff.

[Warlock]

Is that guy 4 .... or,.... 5 ?

[Stryke 9]

He's extremely naive, but is being no less mature than anyone else still arguing in this lame-ass thread.

[Warlock]

Well that would account for 80% of the members here then

[vyper]

I said War, good God, what is it good for....

On the flipside:
*points to signature and second quote*

[Zeronet]

http://abcnews.go.com/sections/ThisWeek/Politics/george_will_030316.html

For those people who think Saddamn is a nice man that we shouldnt remove.

[Pez]

Originally posted by Zeronet
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/ThisWeek/Politics/george_will_030316.html

For those people who think Saddamn is a nice man that we shouldnt remove.

I don't think anyone has said that Saddam is a nice man. The question is if the US and UK have the right to remove a leader of an supreme country.

[vyper]

They have bigger guns and economies. Of course they have the right :wink: .

[Goober5000]

Look at it this way.  If you see a certain place where there are egregious human rights violations every day, and you had the ability and opportunity to do something about it, would it be morally appropriate to refrain from intervening?

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3284-614607,00.html

[Sandwich]

Interesting read here, let's see if it peters out:

Jerusalem Post
Mar. 18, 2003
Analysis: Baghdad's 'hang-on' strategy
By AMIR TAHERI
 
Sometime last Saturday, Saddam Hussein was finally convinced that his French friends could not buy him some extra time and that war was coming.
 
And he acted the way he always has, by unveiling a war plan based on his favorite tactic of "cheat and retreat."
 
Saddam's war plan has three aims.
 
The first is to slow down the advance of coalition forces as much as possible.
 
He hopes to do this by creating a tidal wave of refugees, including large numbers of army deserters, in the densely populated southern provinces bordering Kuwait.
 
Over the weekend, elements of the Fourth Army Corps, "Saladin," were moved close to the border with Iran, although there is no threat of an attack from that direction.
 
By sealing that border, Saddam wants to leave the would-be refugees no escape route except toward the south, that is to say in the direction of the coalition forces.
 
At some point, he may use the threat of chemical weapons, or even such weapons themselves, to foment panic among the population and thus force it to flee toward Kuwait.
 
The idea is that the coalition forces would be swamped by hundreds of thousands of panic-stricken Iraqi civilians who need to be cared for.
 
The second goal of Saddam's war plan is to hide his best and most loyal forces behind units of the regular army.
 
In a sense, he is using the Iraqi Army as cannon fodder. His hope is that the regular army will bear the brunt of the inevitable sacrifices, but will succeed in inflicting significant casualties on the coalition forces.
 
The third goal of the plan is to maximize civilian casualties in the hope of shocking world public opinion, especially in the US, into even stiffer opposition to the war.
 
This is why Saddam has positioned almost all of his best assets in densely populated areas. Anti-aircraft guns, heavy artillery pieces, and tanks are stationed inside cities, including in mosques, hospital courtyards, and school playgrounds.
 
Saddam's address to his commanders Sunday included this ominous phrase: "We shall see how many Iraqis the aggressors are prepared to kill." Saddam has divided the country into four military sectors, each headed by one of his relatives or confidants.
 
Although two of the four bear the title of "general," none has had a military career, even as an army conscript. They are there to ensure political control and make sure that the regular army has no room for any independent maneuver, including a move to topple the regime. Even the defense minister, the chief of the army staff, and the nation's 20 most senior generals are excluded from the chain of command announced by Saddam.
 
The arrangements highlight the narrowness of Saddam's support base: He emerges as the leader of a clan, not of a state.
 
The northern part that includes the Kurdish areas and the oil fields of Mosul and Kirkuk was put under the command of Izzat Ibrahim al-Duri, the regime's No. 2.
 
Duri owes his rise in the Ba'athist regime to his mediocrity. He has survived more than three decades of intraparty purges largely because no one ever thought he could pose a threat.
 
"Duri is alive because he is stupid," says Saad Bazzaz, a former Ba'athist official now in exile.

Because Turkey has refused to allow US and allied forces rights of passage through its territory, Saddam does not expect a major attack from the north.
 
This is why most of the Iraqi elite units, including the Adnan Division of the Republican Guards, have just been withdrawn from Kirkuk and ordered to move south to Baghdad.
 
The southern area, where most of the initial fighting could take place, is under the command of Ali-Hassan al-Majid, Saddam's cousin. Majid is known as "Chemical Ali" because of his role in organizing the massacre of thousands of Kurds with chemical weapons.
 
Most Iraqis regard him as a psychopath who is capable of killing large numbers of civilians and blaming it on the coalition forces. He will have his headquarters at Nassrriyah, a city where he crushed a popular revolt in April 1991, while Gen. Norman Schwartzkopf's forces watched from a safe distance.
 
The Shi'ite heartland of Iraq, south of Baghdad, is under the command of Mazban Khader Hadi, a brother-in-law of Saddam. He will have his headquarters in Karbala, where he has placed some of his weapons inside the holy shrines of Imam Hussein and Hazrat Abbas.
 
Once the coalition forces have extricated themselves from the chaos of the south, they will have to pas through Hadi's area to reach Baghdad. Hadi's mission is clear: to slow down the coalition advance by creating as big a humanitarian disaster as possible.
 
The central area, including Baghdad and Saddam's hometown of Tikrit to its north, is under the command of Saddam's younger son, Qusai. This is an area of around 5,000 square kilometers. But it will be defended by virtually the entire Republican Guard, some 200,000 men.
 
According to Iraqi sources, Saddam has moved most of his estimated 4,000 French and Soviet-built tanks into that area. He has also installed more than 3,000 anti-aircraft guns and various powerful machine guns to create what is known in military jargon as a hornet's nest. The most vulnerable edges of the protected area are marked by a string of deep trenches designed to slow down the coalition advance.
 
Saddam remains in overall command and will have sole authority in the use of surface-to-surface missiles and combat aircraft.
 
He hopes that his tactics will slow the coalition advance toward Baghdad for several weeks, during which his European friends could go to the UN Security Council and ask for an immediate cease-fire followed by negotiations between the coalition and who else President Saddam Hussein al-Tikriti, under the auspices of the Security Council.
 
All this may sound fanciful. But US President George W. Bush should beware. He has already been duped once by the "unanimous" victory he won with Resolution 1441 and should remember that French President Jacques Chirac has vowed to do all he can to prevent Saddam's overthrow.
 
One scenario that Saddam is likely to pursue is to offer to resign at the last minute and hand over power to Qusai, who would immediately call for a cease-fire and full cooperation with the coalition forces.
 
"The world is on our side," Saddam told his commanders on Sunday. "We can win this war as we won the last one."
 
This is no empty boast. Saddam may have no supporters inside Iraq itself, but he does enjoy widespread support in many countries, because he has come to symbolize all the strands of anti-Americanism. All those who hate the US for whatever reason will do all they can to make sure that Saddam is not toppled.
 
George Galloway, a British Labor MP and one of Saddam's most ardent supporters, puts it starkly: "If Bush and Blair start their war, we in the peace movement shall bring the war to them. Our message is: Start the war, we stop your country!"
 
In one of our meetings in the 1970s, Saddam told us a story about his childhood. He said that he and other boys had great fun jumping on trucks passing through Tikrit, then a sleepy mud village.
 
The truck drivers' assistants would whip the boys, even crush their fingers, to force them to jump off. Most did, but not Saddam.
 
"I learned that what mattered was to hang on," Saddam said. "Injuries to my hands because of the whips would son disappear. But the feeling that I had managed to hang on would last a long time."

The author is editor of the Paris-based Politique Internationale.

[Stryke 9]

Blah, if one more person equates being against a bloody war of aggression waged entirely as a popularity device or hating Bush with loving Saddam I'm gonna personally come to their front door and explain the difference through a sixty-gague piece of steel pipe rammed an inch into their ear canal.

[TheVirtu]

Well...Saddam ignored Bush's demand...war should be happening anytime now. I'd say this war will be a month or two long...

I'm just urged to post this here too to go along with the time... http://parcelfarce.linux.theplanet.co.uk/~jmr/saddam.swf

[Thorn]

4 minutes past the deadline.. means we should hear about anything in an hour or so...

[Ulundel]

*switches to BBC News*

[CODEDOG ND]

two weeks tops

[silverwolf]

eh i don't think he'd give up to bush's commands even if all he loved died(don't ask because i can't think of any1)

[Bobboau]

[Bobboau]

so you are denying that all the people in the world who hate america are not just useing this an excuse to do something, even if it means suport for Sadam?
you don't think that the left wing thinks that the lives of the Iraqis are anything other than something that can be used to curb popular opinion agains Bush?
you don't think the French and there frends would like nothing more than to kill two birds with one stone by keeping there oil safe and weakening america's power around the world?

now granted the suporters of this war have much the _exact_ opposite goals in mind (giveing US an excuse to shoot something, strengthening Bush and american power) but you can not deny the conections that do exsist on your side any more than I can on mine