Ahh, I feel all warm and fuzzy. The War Criminals running this gig need to be booted out and fast.

Down, down, Boosh....down, down Boosh!

Uh oh, lot’s of opportunities for me to be attacked with this one.  I don’t think I’ll comment………………….well upon further reflection, yes I will.

Let’s get a few things straight.  I do not support the administration’s invasion of Iraq.  That doesn’t mean I’m not willing to give them benefit of the doubt about the WMDs and Iraq’s intent to distribute them.  That benefit of the doubt is waning fast, real fast!  When I was in the military, I much preferred friendly visits to interesting, far away places, over invasion.  In fact our main objective during most of our travels was to attempt to drink all the booze in any place we were.  We accomplished that in Corsica once, where we drank all the beer on the base!  Now that was a French base (or would it be Freedom base) and the French aren’t the world’s greatest beer drinkers.  On the other hand, our attempts at drinking all the wine in Italy and Spain were dismal military failures.

Ooops, I digressed…

First, by what measure did this reporter determine that opposition against the US is growing?  Did he use scientifically verifiable methods?  Did he correct the lambda of the mew of the population standard deviation?  (Sorry, that’s all I remember from stats class).  Much of what he said sounds like opinion.  You could get another reporter to go in and find that the vast majority of Iraqis love us to death and want to wash our cars and mow our lawns for free.

Second, we ARE foreign occupiers of the country!  It’s quite ridiculous to imply otherwise.  Just as we were occupiers in Germany and Japan following WWII.  Curiously, I couldn’t find any historical data where American reporters interviewed the Germans or the Japanese about their characterization of the foreign occupation of their country.

If you recall, there was a coup attempt in Russia after the fall of the Soviet Union, initiated by communists who longed for the good old days of bread lines and gulags.  I guess we screwed up by taking the Soviets out…curiously I never saw any headlines that read:

“America Wrong, Russians Want to Restore Soviet Union”

My goodness, some people act like they don’t want anything positive to come out of the Iraq operations.  It’s a shitty mess over there and I personally think it would be good if something positive came from it.  Ideologues in action yet again.  They put their dislike for Dubya ahead of all else.  And I don’t think any military operation has ever been planned with the assumption that the people we were attacking have to “like us”.

Earth to ideologues…Earth to ideologues…come in ideologues, over……..goodness, nothing but static!

Bring it on!

Seriously, I would love for something good to come out of Iraq, but other than putting Saddam’s Man-Meat Butcher Shop out of business (and let me stress again for the record that I do think that’s a good thing) there has been precious little in the way of good coming out of Iraq.

My attitude now can be summed up as follows: Right or wrong, we’re there now and we’ve made quite a mess of things. It’s clear that the forces and resources we’ve committed to getting the country back up and running in a timely manner are insufficient and it’s contributing to a growing unease among the Iraqi populace. If we’re going to insist on staying and trying to “help” with rebuilding then get serious about it and devote the forces and resources needed to the project to get it done as quickly as possible and remove that source of discontent among the Iraqis. If we’re not serious about it then get the hell out before we lose any more service men and do any more damage.

This half-assed approach to the situation is doing more harm than good.

I concur; half-assed approach ungood.  They (we) should be in there cutting lawns and helping little old ladies across the street if that’s what it takes.  They really do need to expedite the rebuilding of the infrastructure…it’s amazing what a little clean drinking water and electricity will do for your morale.

Oh and I didn’t mean to imply you were an ideologue…you know who I’m talking about…

(Instead of a smiley face, I wish you had a little Dr Evil icon, with his trademark pinky to the corner of the mouth.  That would have worked well here)

If I was running the show, I would not have invaded Iraq preemptively.  I would have simply stepped up security measures here, monitored potential adversaries, and responded to specific attacks or provocations.  That may mean waiting for another 9-11 style attack, but it may be better from a moral standpoint (as long as no one we knew personally was killed in the attack!)

I’ll see what I can do about coming up with an appropriate smilie.

Firstly, let me congradulate Bill on his years-long global pub-crawl for national security!  Maybe that’s why we are so eager to take on the Islamic world - those selfish mullahs won’t let our servicepeople get snot-flying :drunk: .

Secondly, any objections to the persistent anti-American sentiment in Iraq should not center so much on our current efforts over there, but instead should be focused on the patently bullshit promises and predictions made by the administration cheerleaders prior to the invasion.  We’re over there now, and are honor-bound to eat the rebuilding turd, however many hundreds of billions it ends up costing.

However, if we realy want to reduce Islamic terrorism, we should demonstrate good faith and get American companies out of there as quickly as possible.

...they fought not only for the red, white, and blue of the flag, but also for the red, white, and blue of the Budweiser can!

Great site, too bad this is the first I’ve heard of it! Seems a rather comical forum.. Okay, now to my ranting…

Where has the love gone? Sorry fellas & fellettes, it was never there. Allow a quote from John le Carre from the Times/UK: “How Bush and his junta succeeded in deflecting America’s anger from bin Laden to Saddem Hussein is one of the great public relations conjuring tricks of history. But they swung it. A recent poll tells us that one in two Americans now believe Saddam was responsible for the attack on the World Trade Centre. But the American public is not merely being misled. It is being browbeaten and kept in a state of ignorance and fear. The carefully orchestrated neurosis should carry Bush and his fellow conspirators nicely into the next election”

Would it be wrong then to assume that the Iraqis are likewise being fed the biased, propaganda cookie aswell? Probably. Pardon my linguistic manners/spelling and bear with me for a moment. Propaganda ofcourse is not always false, but rather lacking many truths, or angles. I wouldn’t be surprised to find that Iraqis, or better still, Arabs abroad are PROBABLY more educated in American foreign policy and history than us (the majority of North Americans), believe them to be. Where are the polls and surveys questioning the average arab man’s knowledge of American history? Now I could be wrong, I am part of a Canadian-Lebanese community, and therefore, makes my opionion biased, but just the same I was not surprised in the slightest bit to find out that most Arabs in my community know:
- the US gave Osama bin Laden BILLIONS and gave him expert CIA training on how to bring oppresors to their knees
- the US unoffically gave Saddam financial and military aid to help aid him on his war against the Iranians
- only a few years later, the US gives Iran weopons and the means to help murder Iraqis
-George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Condoleezza Rice and so on were at one point or another senior execs. at oil companies.

The point I’m trying to make is this, if we are going to solve this problem as diplomatically as possible, it is absurd to assume that Iraqis dispise the Americans merely for their way of life and/or occupation. I assume that at one point the majority of Iraqis might’ve felt liberated, might have even felt respect for their invaders, more or less, but as Les implied, this is quickly diminishing. The absence of power, water, and jobs can really change one’s view on the whole scene. We need to accept our past shortcomings as acknowledge them. Think of the political power a simple offical apology or voice of regret of the US’s not so secert past w/Iran and Iraq might have? Rather we will stick by our word and subsequent mission: Iraqi freedom, at any costs, so long as that freedom means the placement of yet another US political puppet such as Noriega or Shan (think I got it right, the old dictator implanted by the US in Iran, pls tell me if I got it wrong . But making note of old mistakes isn’t proper, and maybe even, un-American.

So until we see a complete 180 change in foreign policy and media slandering on both sides, we can assume it will only get worse and worse. Furthermore, it may come as little surprise that a militia Shia army is already in the making with a self-appointed young cleric at the head of it. Offically, they are an army of patriots,dedicated to the rebuilding of Iraq. Unoffically, you can bet their motive is to remove American pressence or simply bleed them out. This is the US army however, and even with its supposed 1 million volunteers, this arising miltia has quite the task ahead of them. If the US doesn’t commit to the seriousness of this situation and take the proper measures needed to get things done correctly and quickly, we are likely to see more hatred, more unrest in the Mid-east, and ofcourse, more death. This half-assed operation will bite Bush and Blair in this ass if they don’t smarten up and give it everything they’ve got, and I have every reason to believe that they won’t. I pity Bush, for history will not look on him as favorably as the majority of us do right now. Some big mistakes are being made, and I fear this “war on terror” is truly just beginning.

Whadda you think? Be critical and honest, I would find it intresting to get a better understanding of how much the Americans think they know of the Arabs, and vice versa.

So long for now, and no matter what ANYONE says, never, ever, eat the waxed tadpole.
MSA

Well, what a wonderful situation. Afghanistan is in ruins: the oil pipeline is being established. Kids play in rubble infested with un-exploded cluster bombs. War lords are systematically kidnapping women and children to do what they damn well please with them. 60% of the population is in severe poverty. Bush thinks that ‘they have been liberated’.
Iraq is turning into another Vietnam and so long as American soldiers keep returning in body bags, our only hope is that that fascist bastard of an excuse for an American president may be voted out of office. Great, how many lives on both sides of the Atlantic have to die before the blinkers are removed?
As a non-American, it seems that the American public are not being informed of the truth. They are being kept from it because it would be an immediate threat to the present government. We have (the UK) dailly programs illustrating the global intereference by the US government, past and present. The vast majority of the British public was against the invasion of Iraq - we saw the biggest demonstrations in British history and yet our leader did not listen.
The hatred towards the west from Islamic countries is probably at an all time high - millions are signing up to be martyrs for the anti west cause. I as a free speaking westener have been dragged into a long term hatred of us without my consent or preventative power. We should have left the middle east alone, instead we are in an intractible quagmire that has been caused by power hungry politicians who have a moral self righteousness equal to those responsible for 9/11. The only difference between our terrorism and theirs is that ours is delivered through armies, flags and vested interest clouded in a mist of propaganda and lies.
I wish you luck my American friends (those who see the reality) in awaking the blind and hypocritical imperialists.

You are all blind morons who believe you see something that others do not, and yet you are still bound by the lies and coercive feats of these Imperial bastards.

Hi, if you receive HML format you’ll get the pictures and they help tell the story, if not oh well.

[A whole bunch of random nonsense deleted]

Count Nine, your post is an excellent reminder to us all to be thankful for lucidity.

I just knew Tom Ridge would drop by eventually.

Wonder if Bush calls him ‘The Count’?

<objecting to what I have to say.

Few replies, well who’da thunk it? Most anyone who invested the time to read the whole thing (I myself only scanned it) are probably still trying to figure out how the father fucking homosexual wiccans, the outdoor masturbaters, strange weather patterns and electronic televised brainwashing have to do with each other. I imagine it is probably a masonic plot or maybe funded by the Illuminati but since I have missed the last three meetings of Satanists in the Bohemian Grove I am a little out of the loop. Please let me know when the made for electronic brainwashing movie comes out.

I’ve edited that response down to the only sentence which made any sense purely for my own sanity. That was just ridiculous.

goddammit, I missed it!  I could have used a good laugh tonight too…

Believe me, you didn’t miss out on much.

OK, that’s not entirely true. You missed out on a LOT, but a lot that didn’t add up to much.