Micheal Moore and 9/11

[Vautrin]

The same argument about money can be made about Bush, Randomskater. If you want to debate seriously, quote at least full sentences. Or full paragraphs.

Otherwise discussion can and probably will progress like:

ofcourse losing a soldier is really a sad thought

Being dead is a factual state. Soldier or civilian it does not matter. For soldiers it is part of the job. For civilians, it is part of the war.

Nationality does not matter. As it stands for every dead soldier, there are about 50 Iraqi casualties.

[Merika]

Yes....it's factual and not to be minimized. HOWEVER.....out of the 1500 killed.....only 886 are combat related. That is 2 years. In Nebraska alone....we lost 700 kids between the ages of 19-25 in various accidents and deaths. The military easily loses some 1000 a year anyway..due to various accidents which are job related.....more often than not....drunk related due to car accidents.

Remember Cindy on here. Her son served in the military....then died in a car accident while at home on leave. He was NOT DRUNK...it was an accident.

Again...I'm not MINIMIZING deaths.....but playing the death number card isn't the big issue with people who have knowledge of the military. That only works as propaganda for other countries and silly college kids. (NOT counting DA....who knows the difference.)

People hear stuff which sounds one way.....but just doesn't represent the truth. To add to that....I'd gladly give my life for the people of another country to be able to be free from tyranny. Perhaps that's a personal call. But...I suspect most soldiers feel the same way. WHY? Cause we grow up valuing freedom.....more than life.

[darkangelism]

more people have died in Washington DC from gun related deaths then in Iraq in the last two years

[RandomSkater]

Originally Posted by Vautrin

The same argument about money can be made about Bush, Randomskater. If you want to debate seriously, quote at least full sentences. Or full paragraphs.

Otherwise discussion can and probably will progress like:

Being dead is a factual state. Soldier or civilian it does not matter. For soldiers it is part of the job. For civilians, it is part of the war.

Nationality does not matter. As it stands for every dead soldier, there are about 50 Iraqi casualties.

I'm not aware of Bush making that much money telling lies about other people and accusing people of being "part of the system" when they prove him wrong. I never mentioned that I was fond of Bush.
I'm going to the library on thursday and I'm going to get that book if they have it in.
Also I'm sorry if I can't resite full paragraphs from what I read, but I have other things that are more important than remember that to me.

By what I said about losing soldiers I meant that it is sad but that's what happens to soldiers and civilians in a war. What I was trying to get at by talking about that was people make too big of a deal when soldiers or civilians die as opposed to in past wars.

[Paul]

Originally Posted by RandomSkater

What I was trying to get at by talking about that was people make too big of a deal when soldiers or civilians die as opposed to in past wars.

Death is a big deal to a lot of people, especially when many people think it's needless and based on lies. These are people who've died, not in vain and not without honor, perhaps not even for a cause they didn't believe in, but that doesn't make it right. Many countries have followed charismatic leaders throughout history into battles to kill and died based on someones word, that doesn't make it right. The fact remains, there still aren't any weapons of mass destruction and no evidence, in fact (as I posted in the other thread) the government is getting a lashing now for the dissemination of bad intel. How long can you go on telling yourself that it was right to invade a country when the panel set up to review the governments actions states "This was a major intelligence failure, ...inability to collect good information about Iraq WMD programs, serious errors in analyzing what information it could gather and a failure to make clear just how much of its analysis was based on assumptions rather than good evidence."

I hope you understand where I'm coming from with that. This is a personal issue for me and because of that I will back off from this topic a bit, all I ask is just forget all your preconceptions and what friends/family think, take an unbiased second to see how it could be viewed from someone elses eyes.

[Vautrin]

DA: If you can show me the stats that 50.000 people are killed in Washington DC annually, I will believe you. Iraqis are people too.
And from a military standpoint civilians become more and more important. Every dead civilian will inspire the insurgency. One solution to deal with the insurgency would be to install a dictator, who rules with an iron fist. I don't think that was the solution anyone prefers. Another solution would be to leave the place and let the Iraqis find out themselves.

Originally Posted by RandomSkater

I'm not aware of Bush making that much money telling lies about other people and accusing people of being "part of the system" when they prove him wrong.

He told a decent amount of lies about Saddam Hussein. Saddam was a dictator. Where were the WMD? Where is the connection between Iraq and Al-Qaida? As for making money in Iraq, we have already seen a few scandals involving Cheney, and only because the scandals became uncovered the extra money was refunded.

Consider Mr. Musharraf in Pakistan. Could he possibly have WMD? The countrty tested nukes in 1998. You don't need the whole intelligence service to find out the answer to that one. Musharraf got promotion from the western media from "dictator" to "president", after helping out the Western forces a bit in the Afghanistan war.

Of course Bush has no need to accuse people. It is not difficult for him to get his way, as he has the power.

I am from Europe, and surely a lot of the German soldiers in the second World War, were feeling similar things about their nation and their roles in history. They were no occupators, but liberating forces from the Jews and the Slavonic people, in their ideology. We now know what that resulted in.

That did not make the agenda of Hitler right. These so called terrorists in Iraq are, what we call now 60 years after the events, the legitimate resistance against the occupying forces of Germany.
It does not mean that the resistance was unified, or did not have its problems relating to the various underground organizations.

As for making too big a deal out of the deaths of soldiers and civilians, I don't think you are right. As Paul pointed out, for what cause are they dying? I am not glad if anybody dies. Soldier or civilian. Especially when I don't believe in the war in the first place.

Originally Posted by Merika

Cause we grow up valuing freedom.....more than life.

But what does this freedom consist of?

And what does this war cost, the US citizens itself? Billions of dollars, which could have been used for instance, to repair some flaws in the US Healthcare. Remember the situation of Stone, for instance, and like Stone there must be a lot of women in similar positions. The prescriptions for large groups of the population.
To quote one former US President:
"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed." - Dwight Eisenhower

[darkangelism]

i never said 50,000 people were killed annually, i said more died from guns(around a thouand) then in iraq( around a hundred) most of the deaths have been from explosions.

[Merika]

The battles going on now are being caused by the US limiting the power of the minority Sunni Arabs, who dominated Iraq under Saddam Hussein's rule and make up most of the rebellion. The US turned authority over to the Shiites, who represent a majority of Iraqis, and a lesser share to the Kurds (I think they represent about 1/5 of the population there). The Sunni's DO NOT want to share power with the Shiites and the Kurds.

If we pulled out now...there would be a major blood bath.

Bush didn't lie. Granted, he was given some bad information.....along with the rest of Congress....who voted unanimously to go ahead with the 1997 plan, under the Clinton Administration, to remove Saddam from office. Only when the election began and the Democrats didn't have a platform....did they resort to FORGETTING it was on record that THEY TOO voted for the war and tried to make it an issue. It didn't fly in the US....most people knew the truth.

The UN should have handled it. However, with Annan and a couple of other European countries making money off of the 'Oil For Food' scandal....they certainly didn't want the US stopping what was going on. The money was supposed to be helping the people of Iraq...not lining people's pockets. The US stepped in and did the right thing. I don't care if Saddam had WMD found or not. (History will prove he did)

Please remember in the US....we don't follow our government....our government follows what the majority wants. If the majority didn't want Bush to do what he was doing....they wouldn't have overwhelmingly voted him back in office.

[Vautrin]

Originally Posted by Merika

Please remember in the US....we don't follow our government....our government follows what the majority wants.

Yes, and that is what makes democracy so fragile. The majority is not simply right, because they are a majority. Majorities can be bought.

How can the people know if they want a war in Iraq, which costs 100s of billions of dollar, if they are not even given all the information? Or even presented with false information? Let alone be presented with a few alternatives to spend these billions of dollars.

[darkangelism]

Annan is a criminal, all the people involved in oil for food are, they made millions off of it.


I dont support the UN, i dont think the US should be a part of it, the UN wouldnt exist if it wasnt for the US. Annan is a hyprocrite anyway, he hates the US, but he lives here.

[Vautrin]

Why did the US then go to the UN for support for this illegal war, if we look at it from the perspective of international law?

And what is wrong with the UN?

And pre-emptive wars are ridiculous.
We can't apply that principle to civil society can we? I am not allowed to shoot you, because you might shoot me, right?

[darkangelism]

Using the information at the time the war wasnt illegal. The US tries to involve the UN to make it seem legitimate, but we proved that we do what we want no matter what.

The problem with the UN is that is doesnt really have any power, it doesnt have its own military, it relies on member nations( mostly the US) it hasnt accomplished what it is supposed to do, just look at the genocides in rawanda and other african nations, the UN was supposed to stop that sort of stuff, but instead they all get rich from oil for food.

Im not against a group of nations working together, just not in the form of the UN(which is a barely improved version of the league of nations)

In certain states in the US(such as NY) premptive self defense is legal, if i feel somebody poses an imminent threat to me i am allowed to strike first to defend myself...now this is hard to prove in court and is rarely a good defense but it is on the books.

[RandomSkater]

As for making too big a deal out of the deaths of soldiers and civilians, I don't think you are right. As Paul pointed out, for what cause are they dying? I am not glad if anybody dies. Soldier or civilian. Especially when I don't believe in the war in the first place.

I still believe I am being misunderstood on this topic.
I don't think it's good for people to be dying at all and I think war is a horrible thing. But sometimes wars do take place and sometimes they are inevitable.

I'm not saying that it's ok for people(especially civillians) to die becuase of a war but I'm trying to say that becuase of modern technology armed forces no longer have to send in hundreds of bombers and thousands of pounds in bombs to hit one building, sucha s in the last world war. No longer are an entire cities populous at risk of being killed for one target. I'm not happy for the few civilians who still get caught up in a war, but I'm thankful for all of the people who weren't harmed becuase of technology...

As for bush lying about Hussein, well I just don't believe that.
I don't believe so many iraqi people would be thankful for the U.S. armed forces being there if Saddam was a good guy.

[Star]

Ok