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Re: A different Point of View ....
Hmmm, should I take the bait or pass on this one? Okay, I'll man-up and add my two cents.
Liberal media. Yeah, there's liberals in the media--that idiot Dan Rather comes to mind and his predecessor Walter Cronkite was too, but Cronkite was a Franklin Roosevelt liberal and not a Janis Joplin/hairy-armpits/stinky '60s San Francisco hippie liberal (who wants to take all of our wealth and give it to poor non-white people). Anyway, the New York Times is certainly left-leaning but wasn't it their own Judith Miller who sounded the war alarms on the NYT front pages in late 2002 and early 2003? Scooter Libby schmoozed her and wooed her and then fed her the "inside info" and she, being AMBITIOUS and DESPERATE to further her career (remember that), plastered the NYT front page day after day with the coming doom unless we attacked Saddam. So, the liberal New York Times got in lock-step with the administration and helped sell the idea of pre-emptive war with Iraq. But I see your point. Let's just assume that the liberal media is only as liberal as it's corporate ownership allows it to be . When it's safe to be liberal, like now that the war is dragging on and on and on with little real progress*, they will go against an unpopular president. But that's the media's natural pack-mentality: they all follow the same story since none of them want to be left behind if it's a big one. Here's where a media reporter's ambition comes into play. Reporters like Miller want to get rich and famous (like Bob Woodward, et al) and they'll jump on any scoop they can get their ambitious back-stabbing greedy little hands on. Judy Miller realized that Libby was inviting her into the Bush administration inner sanctum and she took the bait. She was greedy and ambitious, not liberal. She saw her chance and went for it. In 2003 the liberal media dared not stand in the way of the war drummers so Judith Miller was allowed by NYT corporate managers to post her dire warnings of Iraqi mushroom clouds over New York City. Yeah, she went to jail over it and so will Libby but the liberal media collapsed under the pressure of the beating war drums and the clamoring public who wanted to go kick someone's ass big-time after 9/11. *War progress. Yes, I am sure there are schools being built and little Iraqi kids singing the star-spangled banner every morning but the Iraqi government is completely unable to come to terms with what they need to do to save that country. Bush can push on them all he wants to but those tribal Iraqis know damn-well that they are all marked men and dare not stick their necks out too far lest they get their heads cut-off by their Muslim brothers. (We do that in America too but we don't actually cut people's heads off--we sick special prosecutors on them.) That part of the world has always been run by tribal factions (us too in a sense) and not central governments and trying to whip a little democracy (small-d democracy) on them will only allow them to elect their own tribesmen. Look at Lebanon--they held elections in 2005 and they democratically elected Hezbollah! Ooops! That's not what we meant when we said we wanted a democratic Middle East! OH SH*T! We pushed them toward democracy and they elected the the terrorists! Too bad nobody stood up and warned us of the folly of trying to convert ancient and deeply religious fundamentalist Arab Islamic tribes into embracing democracy and embracing their fellow Arab tribes. Well, Colin Powell made a half-hearted attempt to warn Bush not to "break" Iraq but Powell didn't have the balls to resign because America was frothing at the lips to go kill some Arabs so he shut his mouth after one weak warning not to do this. And the American army is mired right in the middle because that's where the oil is! How many times has President Bush changed his rationale (reasons) for going into Iraq? Is that the liberal media's fault or is that Bush's fault? Guess what? We are in Iraq for 50 years. As long as there's extractable oil in the ground we will be there and our kids will die there. F_ck the politics of this, we are there for the LONG haul. Our little sons and daughters, many of them not yet born, will go there and die for the rest of us, just as young people always have. Yeah, we can rant about the media, both liberal (controls everything--yeah, sure it does) and FOX/right-wing media. You know what? It's really not the media's fault, although they always share the blame, it's OUR fault for sitting on the couch and flipping away from the news--FOX or CNN or whatever you like--to watch baseball or Barrett-Jackson or Survivor. (I prefer baseball with B-J a close second.) We're in deep, deep sh*t in the Middle East and the media will report the failures because that's what the ratings dictate--we want to see the bad news, not good news. "If it bleeds it leads" is the media manager/editor's motto because we love the bloody stuff. Some of us don't but most of us do. Last thing before I go out and drive deck screws in my new back deck. (The Home Depot plastic Trek stuff. It looks great.) Our next president will not pull us out of Iraq. I'll say that again. Our next president will not pull us out of Iraq. Americans may be 70% against the war in polls but they are 99% FOR affordable gasoline. Our next president will not pull us out of Iraq because the price of gas will go well over $5 a gallon and maybe much higher. Talk about committing suicide. No president will commit suicide by allowing the price of gas to go wildly out of control upon a pullout of Iraq. We built 14 PERMANENT BASES in Iraq since we went in and we are there for the "long hard slog," as Don Rumsfeld put it. Relax, the media really doesn't control things, especially if we Americans aren't watching or reading anything they are putting out. Now I'm going to go drive-in a hundred deck screws and then go for a ride in my Camaro and put some Trick pump 101 in it at the 76 station. Yeah, it's $6.25 a gallon but I don't care as long as I can just pull up to the pump and put it in. All of this is just my two cents and I could be wrong. |
Re: A different Point of View ....
Bill, I take it you don't think we need to be in Iraq? Why?
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Re: A different Point of View ....
427TJ,i agree with everything you said,except to watch the news,that's just snippets of non-info.
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Re: A different Point of View ....
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Bill, I take it you don't think we need to be in Iraq? Why? [/ QUOTE ] Because Muslim men will never let us take their oil without a long, bloody fight for it. We should have just bought it from them the way we do from the Saudis. We could have dealt with Saddam differently than we did. Yes, there have been long-standing war plans to invade and secure the Middle East oil fields but they are a last-chance deal, much the same way that Mutually-Assured Destruction was a war plan during the Cold War. Yes, we could have nuked the Soviets and that was (probably still is a war plan inside a Pentagon computer for that one) always an option--a last-chance option, not a pre-emptive war option. We had Saddam so boxed-in he couldn't take a dump without an AWACS plane or spy satellite knowing he was in the crapper but we got greedy and let the war drums beat us into a hysteria and the oil men probably pushed Bush to go for it. I think the oil men resent dealing with Arabs and decided to finally go in and show them who's the boss and just take the oil--f_ck'em. Well, they seem to be fighting us for it. Yes, al Queda is a big problem for America and those bastards need killing but there isn't one informed person on earth who doesn't clearly see that we knocked-off Saddam to get his oil (before China went in there and bought it from him), we just don't talk about it in polite company. (Now China is deep into African oil drilling and they're having problems with African nationalist rebels so we're not alone in having our people die for oil.) Don't make the mistake of assuming that I think we should coddle terrorists. We should kill them and hastily. The sight of B-52 contrails over Afghanistan during the post 9/11 Tora Bora fight brought tears to my eyes as a former USAF aircrew member with Gulf War experience. Those mother------s were scared s-itless in those caves because America was responding WITH RIGHTEOUS INDIGNATION to the horrific 9/11 attacks and killing the f---ers who did it and I think the Middle East respected our al Queda Afghanistan fight--for the most part. Punch us and we'll kill you--they sure as hell understand that and have for centuries. But we should have kept Saddam pinned to the rug and bought his oil from him rather than steal it, which is how all Muslim men see it now. If Muslim men invaded America to take over our forests for the wood we would ALL take up arms and kill all of them as fast as we could. Good thing we don't have real gun control because we'll cut down any invading army on the shores or wherever they've landed. That's what Muslim men are doing in Iraq. Again, that's just how it looks to me and I could have it all wrong. Note on Saddam the terrible dictator who killed his own people. The Chinese government killed a few thousand pro-democracy Chinese in the Tienanman Square massacre in 1989 and America barely made a peep. Our software companies even today help the Communist Chinese government seek-out and identify dissident Chinese pro-America writers on the Internet and the government kills them. So why don't we topple the evil Communist Chinese government and free the oppressed people? 1. Because China has nukes and several million soldiers in their armed forces. (They might be able to kick our ass right off the Asian continent in a conventional fight.) 2. They are our business partner now. (This might be better placed as reason number 1.) (I thought Communism was bad?) 3. They ain't got no oil. Saddam was weak and easy to knock over and we all cheered. Now we look like assholes for doing so and our reasoning falls flat on most of the world. We look like the bully and Saddam went to his hanging with his head held high, which actually made Muslim men feel proud of his courage and honor as he went to the gallows like a man. He didn't scream, he didn't fight, he knew this would come and he took it like a man. Saddam was a bad, bad guy but we knocked him over because it was easy and America needed an easy victory--politically--to help us feel better for looking weak, lazy, and unprepared on 9/11. The aftermath, as we see day after day in Iraq, is not so easy is it? |
Re: A different Point of View ....
Bill, first thanks for your service to our country. My Dad is an ex USAF pilot.
The one point I have to disagree with you on is the Oil issue. Everyone who is critical of the war can easily place the blame on the US for wanting to get our hands on the oil and, for me, that couldn't be further from the truth. National Geographic ran a special a week or so ago on their channel that was all about Saddam. The man was a brutal dictator who knew nothing about human rights. The country he created was based on fear. He had family members spying and reporting on other family members. If you said anything bad about him, a crew of his thugs were sent to your home or work and you were picked up, taken to cell and beaten mercilessly. If your voice of opposition was loud enough and you really ticked him off you or your family members were picked up and never to be heard from again. How do we know this, because Saddam had video tape shot of the beatings, dismemberment or death and made sure everyone associated with you saw them. His idea was to control the populace by fear and oppression. It worked for a long long time. The day Saddam took power of the Bath Party, there was a meeting held of all party members. There was 300-400 people there. In his speech, he called the names of 66 party members and asked them to stand up. Once they did, they were all escorted out of the meeting and were called traitors. He then proceeded to execute each of them, right outside of the meeting hall. For those remaining, it showed them what Saddam was capable of doing. Word spread fast, oppose Saddam and you will be killed. Remember he was in a war with Iran? He lost that war and countless soldiers. His much highly regarded army return to Iraq defeated, humbled and humiliated. His country was once cash rich but now cash poor so what does he decide to do, invade Kuwait which brought you, Bill, into his conflict. We all know what happened next thanks to your efforts and the efforts of hundreds of thousands brave members of the Armed Forces of the US and allied powers. The US urged people of Iraq to overthrow Saddam. The time was right and we knew we were not moving into Bagdad at that time so we did our best to convince the people of Iraq to over throw and topple his regime. Well, once Saddam saw what was going to happen, he went after his own people in the North and the South with quite a bloody vengeance, hence the no fly zones. Saddam and his regime could only operate in the central part of the country but the fear and intimidation tactics used for many years before still quitted a very upset and troubled populace. Any attempt to over throw him was now gone because the people were too afraid and no one in the outside world, including the US, would take part and help support the people trying to win their country back. Thousands upon thousands of people died. Then there is the whole issue of the violations of the Surrender Treaty from the first Gulf War he signed as well as the whole fiasco with the UN Weapons inspectors. He had weapons he was not supposed to have. There is no mistake about that. You don't hear about that in the news but HE DID HAVE WEAPONS he was not supposed to have. He continued to turn his nose to the UN and prevent the weapons inspectors from doing their jobs. He played a game of pokers Bluff and it back fired on him. Can you honestly tell me that each time he refused these people to do their job that any of us thought he did not have something he did not want us to see or know about. At the time Saddam was ousted from power, well over 300,000 of his countrymen were brutally killed because they opposed him. It was men, women and yes children. He wiped out 4000 Kurdish villages in the north alone. Entire villages that had been around for centuries were wiped out and the land left ruined so no one could farm it. His military exploits cost him another 800K to 1 million of his country's men. I am sorry sir, but with all due respect this war is not about oil. This war is about removing terrorist threats so we don't have another 911. Saddam was a terrorist. He turned brutally on his own people. He vowed his hatred of the US repeatedly and praised Osama for what he was able to inflict on the US. Many peoples families, in his country and outside of it, lost family members, or had family members raped and tortured because of his actions. The man was a coward and his own people will remember him for what he did to them. Sure some people might view him as a martyr, much like some people still think Hitler was right, but those are the people we need to remove from this land and send them to hell where they belong. So many people really don't know the whole story and when they are told, they look at things in a different light. That's the reason I wanted to share the article I received this morning. I, for one, am sick and tired of hearing nothing but negative crap being spewed out by the media.......if it bleeds it leads.....that approach has to stop. During WWII how many times did you get a daily body count. How many times did people openly criticize the government for the handling of the war. If WWII happened today and Britain was getting bombed like they did back then, how many people would say this is a war we can't win? I am sure there were people who at the time might of advocated that but as history will show they were wrong. In 50 years when we all are geezers, I am sure the events of today will be looked on in a much different light than what we are seeing currently. We see a daily body count of the soldiers who die in Iraq but hundreds of people die across the US each day as victims of violence. We have a "war" on crime here in the US but how often do you see the body count of those people whose life was taken away from them in South Central LA, New York, Dallas, Miami, DC or any other city or town in the US? War is something I have never personally experienced other than speaking to my family members and relatives who were in it. My Dad was a SAC pilot in USAF during the Cold War and took off from the flight deck with a nuclear bomb in the bomb bays. To this day he will never forget the feeling of flying around with that bomb on board knowing the destruction it was capable of producing. War is something I have studied. War is not pretty. War is brutal. Innocent people die in wars. Soldiers die in wars. Families are for ever effected by war. In a perfect world we would be free of all wars but this is not a perfect world is it? Wars happen and people die, that is fact. War should avoided as much as possible but we did not start this. We need to finish it though and thank each and every person for doing what they are doing or have done. For those who have been injured and those who gave the ultimate sacrifice, I offer my gratitude and my appreciation for what you have done. I will never forget it and as long as I am around I will make certain it is never forgotten. |
Re: A different Point of View ....
[quote... The Chinese government killed a few thousand pro-democracy Chinese in the Tienanman Square massacre in 1989 and America barely made a peep. Our software companies even today help the Communist Chinese government seek-out and identify dissident Chinese pro-America writers on the Internet and the government kills them. So why don't we topple the evil Communist Chinese government and free the oppressed people?
1. Because China has nukes and several million soldiers in their armed forces. (They might be able to kick our ass right off the Asian continent in a conventional fight.) 2. They are our business partner now. (This might be better placed as reason number 1.) (I thought Communism was bad?) 3. They ain't got no oil..... [/ QUOTE ] Bill, The Chinese manace is another very real problem we are facing as a nation. Unfair labor practices are killing the American workers dream. We simply can't compete with a $2.00 per day ( whatever it actually is https://www.yenko.net/ubbthreads/imag...lins/crazy.gif ) labor rate. Some fine day we will realize this and stop going to Walmart for items. Perhaps too late though..... This country was built on a manufacturing base, not a service provider base. Sooner or later, we will zoom in on the Chinese too. But you are right, they've got us beat via. attrition alone. https://www.yenko.net/ubbthreads/imag...emlins/eek.gif However, this is another argument for another day. Let's focus on this one for now....... Steve |
Re: A different Point of View ....
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I am sorry sir, but with all due respect this war is not about oil. This war is about removing terrorist threats so we don't have another 911. Saddam was a terrorist. [/ QUOTE ] Respectfully Tom, and thank you for your thoughtful writing, this war is most assuredly about oil and we'll just have to disagree on that point. And rule by fear? Saddam sure as hell did it but so has the Bush administration. Terror this, terror that, "mushroom clouds." As for "The War on Terror," how will we know we've won? No more terror? The "War on Drugs" = no more drugs? "The War on Poverty" = no more poverty? I said in my earlier post that Saddam was a bad guy and we all agree on that. He was clearly a terrorist to his own people. A cynic would point out that Saddam knew how to run a country in that part of the world--by brutal repression, fear, and ruthless bloodshed. But, just as Republicans dislike and distrust Democrats, Saddam was very wary of people like bin Laden and the Islamic fundamentalists in Iran and elsewhere (how's that for a comparison). As you point out, he went to war with the fundamentalist Iranian regime for ten years in the '80s (back when Saddam was our buddy). Saddam probably thought of bin Laden much the same way that Dale Earnhart fans think of Jeff Gordon or Rush Limbaugh fans think of Michael Moore. (Similar-looking American men would kill one another given the opportunity! Just joking there to make my point.) Saddam was smart enough to keep an eye on people like bin Laden but he wanted nothing to do with his kind of radical Jihad. Saddam was 100% for the preservation of Saddam and nothing else. If Saddam paid money to families for having their members blow themselves up in suicide attacks, then that was for Saddam's own purposes and not for the greater Jihad against the west. Saddam made a mistake when he went against Kuwait in 1990 and he thus opened the door to a future take-over of his country by America. Had Saddam played his cards smarter after 1991, or even before, he would probably still be in power and selling us all the oil we could consume and he might even be our ally in the Middle East, as he was in a way in the 1980s. Saddam, one could argue, could be seen as a victim of 9/11 and our thirst for revenge and for oil. The Bush administration was faced with an almost impossible political problem after 9/11 and faced an enemy, al Queda, which was not a uniform-wearing standing army in a geographically defined country where we could just go bomb the s-hit out of the place and score an easy and popular victory, although the Tora Bora campaign was working well until we ran over to Iraq to have our revenge orgy there--and thus let bin Laden go. Saddam became a target on 9/11 (maybe the day Bush took office if you believe that crowd) because the United States had a political problem and has an almost unquenchable thirst for oil. Saddam's gone and his victims have been avenged but at what price to the rest of us? Again, by your rationale we should go into China and knock-off that repressive government and then North Korea and knock-off that fat bastard, and then...and then....and then... I guess we're going to need that military draft after all. |
Re: A different Point of View ....
Bill brings up some good points. I am a republican, also a gulf war vet, and voted for bush both times. BUT, anyone with half a brain can see that there are some obvious issues first, with George W, and secondly with this war.
The problem is that alot of us cannot see further than our affiliations, for the same fear of being wrong that we attrib to the news media. Let's take a simple, but relevent example. If I come on here or another chevy oriented board and start talking about the 67 GTA Mustang Cvt that we have, everyone wants to give us a hard time, some joking, some more serious! If I go to a mustang board where I have my 05Gt at, and show some pics of the 69 Hugger X66 car, they get up in arms. Why? Both sites are into cool cars. Both sites are into helping others with those cars. Let's face it, the mustang is the ONLY muscle car on the market and has been since 05. And it KILLS many of us to admit it, and the ford guys love it. Same point here. Trust me, we will NEVER get ANY middle east country to be a successful democracy, at least in out lifetime. Bill brought up a good point with Lebanon, and I will add Palestine where they elected Hamas into control of parlament. That turned out real well, right? They will always be tribal. They only way we can force peace on <insert ME county here> will be as a brutal dictator. Period. Unless we are willing to do that, then we ought to get out. Saddam is gone, we rebuilt your schools and marshes (when we have not for New Orleans and the marsh land of Louisiana, but that's a different story), now govern yourselves or not! Secondly, the world is full of tyrants: castro, chavez, warlords in Somalia. In fact, if we are strictly looking at human suffering, then Somalia is in much more trouble than Iraq, and that whole region is turning more and more to the muslim faith everyday. We simply cannot force the world to be nice, and we can't buy their actions into civilized society. Furthermore, do we even have the right to demand that countries like Iraq be democratic, when we are more socialist than democratic as a country? I am with Bill, if you are going to attack this country, we need to strike, hard and fast. Even Nukes should be an option. It works for Israel. They target the leaders, in their homes, with their children. Cold, yes. Hard, yes. But it is the only thing they understand. Do you think that we would ever as a country, in this day and age, even consider an atomic bomb like Heroshima? I really don't think we have it in us. Finally, before you PM me about how I am a republican turncoat, remember how you felt when the democrats defended Bill Clinton no matter what, how stupid they looked? That's how you look as a republican when you defend George Bush when he is wrong. The only winners in his administration is Big Business. So, love the chevy guy that drives a mustang, and admit the new camaro looks like crap. https://www.yenko.net/ubbthreads/imag...lins/smile.gif Group Hug............... Rich |
Re: A different Point of View ....
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The Chinese manace is another very real problem we are facing as a nation. Unfair labor practices are killing the American workers dream. We simply can't compete with $2.00 per day [/ QUOTE ] The Chinese often lure workers in and then don't pay them. If the workers complain their lives could be in danger so they either keep working or walk away quietly. Roughly $160 a month is a typical wage for workers in China's new factories and there is NO protection whatsoever nor is there time off or adequate rest between shifts. American business looks at that and just drools uncontrollably. American business has climbed into bed with Communist China and our political leaders are in bed with business for election campaign contribution money* so American workers will be the losers. I'm afraid America will never have the inclination to take on China because we love their near-slave labor and Communist dictatorship government that keeps the workers on the job basically at gunpoint. *Our system now works like this: If you want to be elected to high office you have to court corporate money. If a corporation is going to fund your election then the payback is corporate tax cuts and tax cuts for the rich (corporate leaders). Therefore, the American wage earner/tax payer shall be the big loser. Mexican illegal immigration into this country figures into this too, as you might imagine. American workers have gotten too expensive as the global economy heats up and fences come down. Too expensive to provide health care to also! (Oh yeah, that discussion!) I admit it, I really screwed up when I didn't get rich! Rats! Maybe I'll be like the writer Hunter S. Thompson who kept a loaded .45 in the drawer for the day when he would end it. He got an uncurable illness that was slowly taking his life so he put the .45 in his mouth and that was that. Thompson didn't have to sell everything he owned to stay alive either. An HMO CEO would call that a cost-effective solution. |
Re: A different Point of View ....
Well said Rich. https://www.yenko.net/ubbthreads/imag...ns/scholar.gif
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