Ahhhhh....more Iraq news

[TheAnvil 0]

Clicky

Vinny the Anvil
Post Traumatic Didn't Make The Lakers Syndrome is REAL
JACKASS POWER!!!!!!

[nacmacfeegle 0]

"The archbishop has this wish for the international bystanders: "Europe is absent, it's not out there; the United States is on its own. . . ."

Thats nice to know, I'll bet our guys feel appreciated so much more now.

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He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. Thomas Jefferson

[TheAnvil 0]

He did seem to forget the British, didn't he? Perhaps he doesn't consider the UK part of Europe.

Vinny the Anvil
Post Traumatic Didn't Make The Lakers Syndrome is REAL
JACKASS POWER!!!!!!

[kallend 2,150]

Hmmm - WSJ been taken over by Pollyanna Press?

...

The only sure way to survive a canopy collision is not to have one.

[nacmacfeegle 0]

Somebody send him the list of coalition countries, as follows, somebody else can count the European countries..........
Afghanistan, Albania, Angola, Australia, Azerbaijan, Bulgaria, Colombia, Costa Rica, Czech Republic, Denmark, Dominican Republic, Egypt, El Salvador, Eritrea, Estonia, Ethiopia, Georgia, Honduras, Hungary, Iceland, Iraq, Italy, Japan, Jordan, Kazakhstan ,Kuwait, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Moldova, Mongolia, Morocco, Netherlands, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Norway, Oman, Palau, Panama, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Qatar, Romania, Rwanda, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Slovakia, Solomon Islands, South Korea, Spain, Thailand, Tonga, Turkey, UAE, Uganda, Ukraine, United Kingdom, United States, Uzbekistan.

I got the list from those approved to bid on reconstruction works, so Spain for example is listed even though they withdrew their troops.

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He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. Thomas Jefferson

[billvon 3,120]

Thank god we have religious extremists to give us real news! That way we don't have to rely on unreliable liars like Musharraf and al-Yawar, not to mention senators on both sides of the aisle. I'm sure we can look forward to more good news from extremists eager to get the unbiased word of the lord (or allah) out to us.

Good news for the economy, too. Perhaps they can someday rival our last success, Afghanistan, which now produces 80% of the world's opium. They are rebuilding Fallujah again, which is also good news. Residents can look forward to quicker resumption of water supplies after periodic re-takings of that city.

There was also a heartwarming story about toys being shipped overseas to "brighten youngster's lives." I'm sure they will help mitigate the pain of dead parents.

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Nothing new here. Some good things happened on 9/11/01 here in the US too, but when people talk about that day, no one mentions that someone planted a tree or that someone donated toys to charity. Why? Because you'd have to be insane to think that that was newsworthy on a day that 3000 americans died. And if someone said "everyone complains about 9/11, but on that day we opened 10 schools! It wasn't so bad" you'd come down on him like a ton of bricks for trying to minimize a national tragedy.

Now we have people spinning madly to try to make Iraq out to be a peaceful, safe, prosperous country. The reality is that people are dying by the truckload, being killed both by the US and by the very people we went there to protect the world from. We are causing a 9/11 every six months there. Comparing the donation of 10 computers to the deaths of Iraqis (and the US soldiers trying to protect them) is insulting to the people who are paying the price for our war.

[freethefly 6]

***Somebody send him the list of coalition countries, as follows, somebody else can count the European countries..........
Afghanistan, Albania, Angola, Australia, Azerbaijan, Bulgaria, Colombia, Costa Rica, Czech Republic, Denmark, Dominican Republic, Egypt, El Salvador, Eritrea, Estonia, Ethiopia, Georgia, Honduras, Hungary, Iceland, Iraq, Italy, Japan, Jordan, Kazakhstan ,Kuwait, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Moldova, Mongolia, Morocco, Netherlands, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Norway, Oman, Palau, Panama, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Qatar, Romania, Rwanda, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Slovakia, Solomon Islands, South Korea, Spain, Thailand, Tonga, Turkey, UAE, Uganda, Ukraine, United Kingdom, United States, Uzbekistan.

These are members of the coalition? What a joke. What in hell do these little dirt countries have to offer to bring about real peace? Nothing at all. For them it is a ticket on the money train that will roll from Iraq when the building boom starts, if it ever does. Unless those countries listed are in the actual fighting and losing bodies they have no right to jump on board. Furthermore, the US is owed everything. Though I do not agree with war and believe that we should not have entered into this, the US did however do what the Iraqi people themselves were not capable of doing, took out Saddam. For that they should be forever thankful.
So what, someone built a school or sent toys for christmas (is not this a christian holiday?). The people of Iraq are in much greater need of stability than they are a few computers. To read the WSJ article one would think life is just rosey in Iraq.

"...And once you're gone, you can't come back
When you're out of the blue and into the black."
Neil Young

[billvon 3,120]

Also interesting to compare that list to the list of countries sending troops.

Italy: 3,169
South Korea: 2,800 (will increase to 3,600)
Poland: 2,400 (pulling out)
Ukraine: 1,400 (pulling out)
Netherlands: 1,345 (pulling out)
Romania: 700
Japan: 750
Denmark: 496
Bulgaria: 485 (partial pullout)
El Salvador: 380
Hungary: 300 (complete pullout by March 2005)
Australia: 920
Mongolia: 180
Georgia: 159 (adding troops to 850)
Azerbajian: 151
Portugal: 128
Latvia: 122
Czech: 110 (pulling out)
Lithuania: 105
Slovakia: 105
Albania: 71
Estonia: 55
Tonga: 45
Kazakhstan: 29
Macedonia: 28
Moldova: 12
Norway: 10

[CornishChris 5]

WTF! Do you have any idea what you are saying?

Quote

These are members of the coalition? What a joke. What in hell do these little dirt countries have to offer to bring about real peace? Nothing at all

One of the tin pot countries in the list was the US. Another the UK. Well read and absorbed.

I cannot fathom what makes you believe that the US is going to bring about peace in the world in some crazed unilateral strike against the rest of us. What these 'dirt countries' do is make what the US Coalition has done have some substance. If they were not in a coalition with you then the act of invading Iraq would be an act of aggression from one country against another placing the US squarely in the cross hairs. You were unable to act alone and so you rallied for the support of, as GWB puts it "The coalition of the willing". A fine way of sidelining the UN and basically rallying countries too scared of the US to your sides, to make them do what you want to do. Don't then disparrage these very countries. They are the only reason this war was able to happen. It doesn't matter that some of these countries have only a few hundred troops stationed in Iraq. They were not the drivers behind this action.

***Furthermore, the US is owed everything.***

Please elaborate? I don't see how the US is owed anything in particular from their recent actions. Have they made the workld a safer place? No. Have they been responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of Civilians? Yes. What does the world owe you exactly? Surely not thanks?

It is views like yours, expressed in the manner you did, that anger non US citizens and taint their views of what is undoubtedly a great country that is struggling to do the right thing.

CJP

Gods don't kill people. People with Gods kill people

[TheAnvil 0]

My my my. What an interesting set of responses my posting of this article has generated. It seems to have tweaked a nerve with some folks. T'would seem a testament to the weakness of one's own position on an issue should mere prose such as this elicit such a response. But that's just my own personal opinion.

Did you read the article in its entirety Bill or become so perturbed that you didn't finish it? It was quite lengthy, I'll admit. The last paragraph...
"It would be dangerous and very unwise to ignore or downplay all the bad things happening in Iraq right now; but it would be equally dangerous if without hearing other voices and other stories from inside the country we were to give up and walk away, leaving Iraqis alone to try to secure their future. The bombs are deadly, but the perception that in Iraq today there is nothing else but the bombs could prove even deadlier in the long run--for the Iraqis, the Middle East, and the West. "

The opening paragraph quoting the 'religious extremeist' - are all men of the cloth religious extremists? - acknowledges the violence and terror occurring almost daily over there, as does the closing paragraph. The point of this Aussie's blog was to illustrate that not all things happening in Iraq are bad. This apparently aggravates some people so much that they concoct comparisons of computer donations to deaths of Iraqi's - such as you have done - and created another thread in response to my own detailing purported US atrocities.

The blogger - and I - acknowledge that horrid things are happening in Iraq every day. Is it really too much to ask that anti-war folks admit that good things happen there on a daily basis as well? The answer to that question is obviously 'yes' - and I consider that answer a testament to the hollowness of certain portions of their arguments when they bash the Bush administration's foreign policy.

Vinny the Anvil
Post Traumatic Didn't Make The Lakers Syndrome is REAL
JACKASS POWER!!!!!!

[billvon 3,120]

>Did you read the article in its entirety Bill . . .

Yes I did, and the last paragraph was one of the few parts of the article that DID make sense. The last sentence is interesting:

"The bombs are deadly, but the perception that in Iraq today there is nothing else but the bombs could prove even deadlier in the long run--for the Iraqis, the Middle East, and the West. "

Another deadly mistake would be to assume that the Iraqis love us for our fixing their electricity and can easily forgive our (purely accidental) killing of their children. There is surely far more than bombs in Iraq, but they are a very very big deal as long as they keep killing dozens of people in a country we occupy - and especially as long as some of the bombs are ours.

I find it funny that some of the same people who were outraged - outraged! - that Michael Moore suggested there were children playing happily in Iraq before we invaded are now adamant that we not overlook that someone donated ten computers to Iraq, and that's a really good sign. Indeed, there were good things in Iraq under Saddam Hussein, and there are good things in Iraq under US occupation - and no doubt with time, such things as infrastructure will improve. But as I mentioned before, even hundreds of new schools here in the US would not make the news on 9/11, nor should they. Is this an indictment of how focused our media is on tragedy? Perhaps - but I am glad that we find human lives (and their loss) more important, and more newsworthy, than those ten new computers. As you've proven, you can always find out about the computers if you wish.

[nacmacfeegle 0]

"It is views like yours, expressed in the manner you did, that anger non US citizens and taint their views of what is undoubtedly a great country that is struggling to do the right thing."

Indeed.

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He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. Thomas Jefferson

[SkyDekker 1,465]

Quote

T'would seem a testament to the weakness of one's own position on an issue should mere prose such as this elicit such a response.

That is quite possibly bigger bullshit than anything else written on SC.

Since you are responding to the responses, by your own opinion it would indicate the weakness in your own position.