So You Think You Know Whats Really Going On In Iraq?

[jimmoyer]

First of all, "no1important," what you said exemplifies the insulated bubble of your own personal experience.

You've never been a soldier.

There are certain universal truths that will defy any liberal or conservative view points, because it isn't political what I'm going to say, but rather psychologically true for anyone thrust in an impossible situation.

Forget the politics.

Think if you were a soldier as you watch an unidentified car coming towards you.

You have a decision to make.

Pause for a moment.

Really give it a chance.

Think.

Now wait a musical beat.

One two. One two.

Now pause again, slow down, and imagine something closer to home, something you know about.

You know as well as I do that if someone were to to be so stupid as to not know the rules of behavior and were to come up to you and punch you in the face, wouldn't it occur to you that if they were so surprised by what you would do back to them that you would find it amazing how stupid they are?

If you were to tell a cop who gave you a speeding ticket that he was a moron, would you be surprised that he would get a little bit mean towards you and possibly go beyond his allowed limits to impress you how stupid you are?

There is the universal behavior regarding mankind for all ages and it is all about how far you risk your own self in threatening another or angering another.

Ya feel lucky kid?

Well, do ya?

This ain't politics.

It's gravity, a law of our universe.

Fprget about the myth that soldiers are taught to handle such a tightrope. Many of them are handling that tightrope.

If you were a citizen of Iraq knowing what you know, would you challenge a risky situation and bet your life on it?

The older generations know this, while they watch they younger ones manipulated by the calculating brainwashers to throw their lives away.

You don't think there are those who wouldn't waste their lives on a cause but tell the innocent young to waste their lives on a cause?

 

[no1important]

RE: So You Think You Know

Once again diferent rules for Americans than anyone else. Thats always been the American mantra shoot first and worry about fall out later.

 

[mrmom2]

The real story of what Iraq is really like right now here

 

[jimmoyer]

I'm not sure anyone is honest enough to answer the questions a soldier has to when an unknown car is approaching them.

It is appropriate and also convenient for you to say that soldier wouldn't have that problem if he wasn't there in the first place.

No one has really given adequate analysis to what the whole middle east would be like today if Saddam was still in power and France, Russia and Germany got the embargo lifted and were still doing quite a winning business with Saddam and pals.

Or what the world would be like 5-10 years later waiting for Saddam to die of natural causes.

Many of the arguments against American presumption are good, but hollow in the sense that the above points are never considered.

Or discussed thoroughly on this board.

Don't we also notice that no one around the world is protesting in the streets against Sunni terrorism killing their fellow Iraqis or neighboring Saudis and Syrians coming over to make sure nothing good happens in Iraq ?

No one is protesting an equally mortal sin---- that of a manipulating older genius who searches for the tabula rasa out there among the young to give up their lives when the manipulator himself will not give up his own?

Believe me, older generations in Palestine and Iraq are watching all those 20-somethings get manipulated.

They just watch.

Meanwhile the intelligentsia of the world does not concern themselves with some of these truths.

They prefer instead to focus on the current outrage that America so rightfully deserves.

Terrorism does well by this, as it does well by American bungling, and knowing it has the tacit acceptance of the world invigorates it more.

No one can look at these things.

Maybe if we corrected the American sin, they would.

 

[mrmom2]

Just trying to get some truth out there Jim instead of main stream spin news.I'm not judging anyone because I don't know whats really going on over there :? The crap that comes out of TV is a lie I know thats a fact :wink:

 

[jimmoyer]

I do respect your skepticism, mrmom2.

I joked about Death to the reader in some other thread, however, because I believe we readers have a responsibility to search, to read between the lines, to compare different reports.

And so back to the original idea of this thread is making sense of what is going on and balancing what we see and hear reported to us.

If you look through the long span of history, the reporting media has always been full of bias and that is just not going to change.

What we can change is ourselves.

And we, being the readers, should abide by certain rules we scream at the reporters for not doing.

1. If the report enhances your own bias, be skeptical still.

2. Read between the lines of both conservative and liberal newspapers.

And so some of the points I've mentioned about Iraq do not get thoroughly get discussed by either side.

 

[peapod]

Pretty much what happens when you send childern to war, while fat old men sit in big comfy chairs. Worse is when they send the childern and they know nothing about the culture or history of the country. There have been many many studies done on the effects of war, and the herd mentality.

 

[jimmoyer]

True, Peapod.

Your point begets one big dichotomy, however.

On the one hand, as you say, most countries, especially including America lately, have never really really understood the culture of the country they are invading or even doing business with.

On the other hand, many people do have the soft bigotry of low expectations that presume a foreign land contains people who know nothing of inalienable rights and universal hopes to be free to realize their own potential.

How they can do so in the midst of war is beyond us all, except you must know that the older ones in that war have to watch teenagers and 20-somethings brandish an AK-47 in Palestine or wear a vest-bomb manufactured by their local friendly manipulators in Iraq ---- all tacitly countenanced by intelligent people around the world.

 

[peapod]

Well I was speaking more of the your childern that you send to fight your wars. Its interesting how many of those childern are from the southern states, you send your childern into killing fields. Please do not try to sell me the demoracy idea. Your not wanted in that country, its not your country, and you would not be there if it was not for the oil. You have only created another vietnam, only this one will be worse.

Bin laden must be dancing a jig, you have become the very thing he was, religious zealots. I don't think he expected that.

 

[jimmoyer]

There does come a time for war.

One happened in Europe's own backyard, and the peace protesters in all of their glory did not want to get involved in stopping the genocidal ethnic cleansing in Yugoslavia, now Croatia, Slovenia, Bosnia, Serbia (including the wantabee breakaways of Montenegro and Kosovo) and Macedonia.

Europe watched for almost 8-9 years.

There was no imminent danger, just a festering one much like Iraq.

Europe after WWII promised Never Again.

But it did.

In their own continental backyard.

You are still right, Peapod, of what you say, but it is a moral vacuum, rigidly refusing to accept all of the ramifications in taking what you believe to be the only decent decision.

You need to watch an airplane fly over the mass burial graves in Bosnia, and Serbia and Iraq
to show you the comforts of staying home and doing nothing.

I need to watch the carnage of doing something.

We both have something to watch.

And to stay home or to go abroad --- both contains great sin.

 

[peapod]

Jimmy why do you have such huge gaps in your post?? I gotta a rugrat here and he wants to know??

 

[Reverend Blair]

RE: So You Think You Know

In other words don't criticize the US for the blood on its hands or you'll be jumped on by war pigs.

 

[jimmoyer]

I only brought up an example of staying home or making war --- both containing great sin.

They stayed home, very comfortably so in Europe while 8 years of war, ethnic cleansing raged and festered in their own continental backyard.

You can't see the evil if you stay home, and so it seems less evil, but it is the evil of literally doing nothing that is a great sin.

And so is invading.

Reverend?

You're only tuning into one channel.

I've talked to you on other matters non-political and you are extremely interesting and intelligent, but every horse I ever rode eventually wanted a rest.

 

[Reverend Blair]

Reverend?

You're only tuning into one channel.

Sorry Jimmy, but I'm sick and god damned tired of people dying to make a few rich men in suits rich. I never said a thing about staying home, but I'll bloody well talk back when I see one country invading another for oil. Forget all this harping about how terrible Saddam was, you put him there. You refused to listen to other solutions and possibilities. Just like you protected that bastard in Uzbekistan who is killing his own people now. Just like you put Pinochet and dozens of others in power and propped them up even while they were killing their own people.

And what is your country's big answer. To try to destroy the UN and kill anybody who talks back to you. To export as much pain an misery as you can as long as it turns a profit. That's reality, Jimmy.

 

[Vanni Fucci]

Re: RE: So You Think You Know Whats Really Going On In Iraq?

No one has really given adequate analysis to what the whole middle east would be like today if Saddam was still in power and France, Russia and Germany got the embargo lifted and were still doing quite a winning business with Saddam and pals.

Or what the world would be like 5-10 years later waiting for Saddam to die of natural causes.

Many of the arguments against American presumption are good, but hollow in the sense that the above points are never considered.

Or discussed thoroughly on this board.

Well then, let's discuss them adaquately, Jimmy:

Firstly, the US did not invade Iraq because of the human rights offences attributed to Saddam's regime. The "evidence" they presented before the UN Security Council was that Iraq was developing weapons of mass distruction, and that due to this, they had a legitimate concern for their national security. Were this to be true, it would have been one of only two possible legal reasons for invading Iraq, the other being that the US was attacked by Iraqi forces. Under international conventions regarding circumstances for legally invading a country, invasion for the purpose of regime change due to human rights offences are not permissible. They Security Council refused to authorize the use of force based upon the "evidence" that was presented, and insisted that a second resolution would be required for such action. The US effectively said "to Hell with the UN"...

Now to my beliefs as to the reason for the abruptness of the invasion.

I believe that the US did in fact invade Iraq because of the oil reserves. However, the rationale behind that decision may differ from what other people may have stated. I believe that the US needed the Iraqi oil reserves to effectively wage their global war on terror. In depriving Saddam Hussein's regime access to those reserves, they believed that they would be able to keep the oil from being sold to countries that were friendly to the terrorists' cause...however, stealing oil from a country, no matter how corrupt or reprehensible their government may be, is illegal by international conventions, hence the drummed up threat to national security and the "evidence" of weapons of mass destruction, and also an attempt to link Iraq to the events of 911...

That Saddam was a horrible leader, and murdered many of his own citizens is not in dispute, or condoned by anyone on this board...but neither is spinning the war in Iraq to read that the US removed Saddam from power to help the Iraqi people in their bid for freedom...the informed among us will reject that notion, because that is not the tune that was sung in the weeks and hours before the "shock and awe" began...

 

[Reverend Blair]

RE: So You Think You Know

I don't think it had anything to do with the war on terror, Vanni...that's just an excuse. The US has openly stated that they consider their oil supply a matter on national security since the 1970s. PNAC, with all of its connections to the Bush regime, was clearly urging the invasion of Iraq even before Bush took office. The first traces of that policy go back to Bush Sr.'s time in office. Ties within the Bush White House to the oil industry are well known. It is also a fact of psychology that people will stick with what they are familiar with. Saddam was pushing all of OPEC to switch to the Euro, which would have destroyed the US dollar.

Put it all together and Iraq was invaded for its oil. If 9-11 never happened, they would have trumped up something else. If there was absolutly no chance that Saddam had a weapon bigger than a slingshot, they would have found another reason. If the streets of Baghdad were paved with gold and the Iraqi people all lived like kings while Saddam took a vow of poverty and ruled from mud hut, some other reason would have been found.

The USA wanted the oil. They thought it would be easy. They invaded.

 

[Vanni Fucci]

True enough, and I concede on all points... :wink:

 

[mrmom2]

Congress is starting to think they can't win the war in Iraq 8O

Read here

 

[mrmom2]

I fixed the link something is screwy with my mouse :?

 

[no1important]

RE: So You Think You Know

I know what else is going on in Iraq- Saddam picture being taken while he is in his underwear. ha ha sorry I could not resist.

On a serious note though, I wonder who took that picture, I also wonder if the newspaper who published picture will be charged. Even though Saddam is a creep, I believe it violates the Geneva Convention. Any thoughts?