In article
,
American wrote:
On Mar 21, 10:32*am, Neolibertarian wrote:
In article
,
*Siobhan Medeiros wrote:
This isn't even a coherent straw man argument, dummy.
It's not an argument, it's a threat.
The Constitution reads "We the People..."
Right. President Bush/Cheney became obsessed with Iraq
and forgot about the American people.
The Khobar Towers attack was in response to the sanctions against Iraq.
Surrreeeee....
It's pretty easy to look up.
"On 25 June 1996, a terrorist truck bomb exploded outside the northern
perimeter of the US portion of the Khobar Towers housing complex,
Dhahran, Saudi Arabia. The US controlled portion of Khobar Towers was a
facility housing US Air Force, US Army and British and French allied
forces supporting the coalition air operation over Iraq, Operation
SOUTHERN WATCH. The explosion killed 19 Air Force service members and
injured hundreds more. It also injured many Saudi Arabian citizens and
third country nationals."
http://www.fas.org/irp/threat/khobar_af/part1.htm
The dead were all serving in the US Air Force 4404th Air Wing.
The target wasn't chosen at random.
The personnel attacked were in Saudi Arabia enforcing the No-Fly zones
in Iraq.
I see, let Saddam massacre from the air all the Kurds and Shiites he
wants.
The sanctions imposed on Iraq in 1991 were, perhaps, the most severe in
history, especially given their length.
In 1995, the Food & Agriculture Organization of the UN released a study
claiming as many as 500,000 Iraqi children had died as a direct result
of the sanctions.
In 1998 three UN officials responsible for coordinating the sanctions
resigned in as many months, claiming that the sanctions were a "totally
bankrupt concept."
Enforcement of the "no-fly zones" didn't really stop Saddam's actions
against the Kurds. His security police, along with elements of HAMAS,
were active in the Kurdish territories throughout the sanctions period,
only ending with the 2003 invasion.
Sanctions are not an alternative to war. Sometimes they can be a
deliberate march to war.
This was the case when they were first tried by Athens in 432 BC, this
was true with the Treaty of Versailles in 1919, and it was still
painfully evident with UN Security Council Resolution 687 in 1991.
Bin Laden explained that the 1998 African Embassy bombings were in
response to the intractable situation in Iraq. He compared the sanctions
in Iraq to the terrible, intractable situation in the Occupied
Territories.
I call bull****. *Cite?
This is even easier to look up--how is it you haven't done so?
Your nation has been at war for 9 years, you've lost almost 8,000
citizens to it, spent nearly $1 trillion, yet you've never looked into
it? Shame on you.
"Second, despite the great devastation inflicted on the Iraqi people by
the Crusader-Zionist alliance, and despite the huge number of those
killed, which has exceeded 1 million... despite all this, the Americans
are once against trying to repeat the horrific massacres, as though they
are not content with the protracted blockade imposed after the ferocious
war or the fragmentation and devastation.
"So here they come to annihilate what is left of this people and to
humiliate their Muslim neighbors. Third, if the Americans' aims behind
these wars are religious and economic, the aim is also to serve the
Jews' petty state and divert attention from its occupation of Jerusalem
and murder of Muslims there. The best proof of this is their eagerness
to destroy Iraq, the strongest neighboring Arab state, and their
endeavor to fragment all the states of the region such as Iraq..."
* * * * * * * ---Osama bin Laden
* * * * * * * * *Fatwa of War, 1998
In 2000, the USS Cole was attacked. She was in the Gulf as part of the
task force charged with enforcing the sanctions against Iraq.
Uh huh.
"On August 8, 2000 the USS Cole departed the Norfolk Naval Station for a
five-month deployment to the Persian Gulf to participate in the US-led
operation enforcing UN sanctions against Iraq. It was scheduled to
return to the United States on December 21, 2000."
* *http://www.answers.com/topic/uss-cole
The target wasn't chosen at random.
When America was attacked on 9/11, Osama bin Laden made it clear the
jihadis had attacked America in response to the suffering of the Iraqis.
I call bull**** on you. *OBL despised Saddam Hussein.
Salafist jihadis despise all rulers who claim to be secular. While the
pall of secularism continued for a time to surround Saddam's regime, the
last time the Iraqi Revolutionary Council would declare itself secular
was way back in 1990. In 1991, as he faced down the west over his
invasion of Kuwait, he would assume the mantle of Islamic King. This was
viewed with suspicion at the time, of course. Many observers believed
his change only cosmetic.
By 1993, Saddam had fully converted to Salafism. He instituted the
famous "Return to Faith Campaign" inside Iraq, which required all
Ba'athist party members to pass periodic exams on the Qu'ran. Meetings
were begun and ended with prayers. From that point on, it is well known
(to everyone but Americans) that Iraq was no longer secular.
"Bin Ladin was also willing to explore possibilities for cooperation
with Iraq, even though Iraq's dictator, Saddam Hussein, had never had an
Islamist agenda-save for his opportunistic pose as a defender of the
faithful against "Crusaders" during the Gulf War of 1991. Moreover, Bin
Ladin had in fact been sponsoring anti-Saddam Islamists in Iraqi
Kurdistan, and sought to attract them into his Islamic army.
"To protect his own ties with Iraq, Turabi reportedly brokered an
agreement that Bin Ladin would stop supporting activities against
Saddam."
No coincidence that all this occurred in 1993. Saddam also used his new
"born-again" credentials to broker rapprochement with Syria. Iraq and
Syria would reopen their borders to each other in 1997, and they
reopened an old oil pipeline that they used to circumvent the UN "Oil
for Food" restrictions.
No coincidence that by 1998, Saddam felt secure enough to end all
cooperation with the UN inspectors.
Sooooooo....let me get this straight...sanctions are bad, but invading
for nonexistent reasons is just ducky.
The statement being responded to is this:
"President Bush/Cheney became obsessed with Iraq and forgot about the
American people."
I was merely pointing out that the American people were only mystified
by the "obsession" with Iraq, because they mostly let "experts" do all
their thinking for them.
Sooner or later, the "experts" understand this all too well.
--
Neolibertarian
"[The American People] know that we don't have deficits
because people are taxed too little; we have deficits
because big government spends too much."
* * * * * * * * * ---Ronald Reagan
Sooner or later, the "experts" understand this all too well.
Picture former president Bush holding hands with Sheik Abdullah,
Photographs are emotional things.
Some people think that US military forces skedaddled out of Vietnam
because they saw a picture of helicopters being pushed off the deck of
an Aircraft Carrier.
Because of a video, some people think the LA police were brutalizing a
black guy a couple of decades ago.
Some people think the US Marines were planting a flag on Sirubachi
because they'd just won the Island of Iwo Jima--just because of a silly
photograph.
Some people think the Exxon Valdez at Prince William must have been the
worst ecological disaster in the history of mankind because they saw a
picture of an oil drenched seal.
The point is, don't argue feelings. Don't let your feelings about a
photograph color your intellectual understanding.
That photograph of Abdullah and Dubya was placed before you because some
people anticipated how you would feel about it.
and
anyone can come to understand why the "U.N. "food for oil" program
seemed to bleed itself through to the states - we seemed to have had
our oil market upset a bit in the world oil scene, in contrast to
being a perpetual world supplier.
Oil for food.
"Our" oil market wasn't upset. By far, the US gets most of its imported
oil from Canada.
The US never really pretended to be a "perpetual world supplier." Now it
forbids itself to be anything but an importer.
Capitalism must die. It's just too damn embarrassing to keep around any
longer.
To admit that oil (particularly gasoline, derivatives) and oil
producing technology is still under the sole proprietorship of western
"technocracy" is patently absurd.
To admit to anything so patently false would be equally absurd.
The whole world now wants to duplicate it and mass produce it for
their own use - price controls and markets seem to fluctuate with day-
to-day, international and diplomatic maneuvering, with a little
geopolitics mixed in.
Best thing that could happen. Type One Markets.
What we need are revolutionary technologies that self-destruct upon
examination - if no one's interested in how the thing works, then
don't give either the image-maker or duplicator an opportunity to
mechanically or electronically copy the patent-protected idea!
Naw. Sorry. Capitalism must die. That's already been firmly established.
No personal property of any real value is acceptable any longer.
Certainly not INTELLECTUAL property, which is the most valuable of all.
If a personal property becomes valuable, it turns out that all of
society owns it. Hence, the Health Care Reform Act.
Protect the inventor and you protect the nation - smear the inventor's
idea to the four winds of transnationalism, "meter" the technology,
and you ruin the whole nation in the process.
Look chum, it's not "transnationalism" you're decrying. It's corporatism.
Get your terms straight.
--
Neolibertarian
"[The American People] know that we don't have deficits
because people are taxed too little; we have deficits
because big government spends too much."
---Ronald Reagan