shakran

But if you still believe in the Easter bunny and you're a legal adult, then there are issues here.

Politics, like other grown up subjects, is not something where you can just decide that whatever you would like to believe is, in fact, what really is. If you don't have at least some sort of fact to back up your opinion then, yes, politics is not the forum for you, because no one's going to be impressed with groundless supposition.


See, here it's better because you're taking an actual fact (this is what Bush said) and interpreting it.

But you're wrong

1.4 million Americans have joined up voluntarilly. The population of the USA is around 273 million. So a statistically insignificant half-a-percent of the country has decided the war is a good thing. Now here's my counter-fact. The latest poll shows that 56% of Americans think the war in iraq was a mistake.
http://www.pollingreport.com/iraq.htm

host

Shani, I appreciate your reaction to my post....I'm glad that you reacted to it in the spirit that was intended, when I wrote it.

If you only read one more thing, ever....in this politics forum, I hope that it is my latest:
http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showthr...24#post2120124

Note how many diverse sources, from all over the world....have reported the same facts, for four years. Read what Cheney said on TV on sunday, about al-Zarqawi and the camp at "Kermal", as his justification fof a Saddam al-Qaeda "connection"....a justification for invading and occupying another country.

The "reasons" have all been exposed, Shani. How do you trust these guys to lead us....to command our military. Can you see how I can think that Bush and Cheney should be tried, convicted, and jailed? I showed you why I think that....why do you believe anything that they say, anymore? I don't "feel" a certain way. I checked out what "they" said....what they claimed, and a myriad of reporting from a wide number or sources, over four years, indicate strongly, that it was all BS, that they told us, and that they do. Our kids are dead and maimed, fighting in Iraq, because of lies. They die for no reason.

ShaniFaye

Who said I dont have facts? I just said I dont need to quote bible chapter and verse in bibliography form every single time I want to discuss why I dont like Clinton and why I might be a Bush supporter.

I know its just *me* but even that post host made to me right up above gave me a friggin headache trying to follow it.

dc_dux posted in a way that MADE me want to read what he was trying to tell me.

Maybe its cause I grew up with reader's digest in the bathroom and liked cliff notes....who knows.

my point is...I am not intellectual enough to talk *politcs* the way ya'll do, and even if I was...quite frankly, ya'lls way is boring thats why I asked for someone, anyone to give me their belief in a way that was not migraine inducing to read. Maybe we could have a politcs forum for *dummies*

yeah and monkies might fly out of my but into the pet forum

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JustJess

Definition
stu·pid (stpd, sty-)
adj. stu·pid·er, stu·pid·est

1. Slow to learn or understand; obtuse.
2. Tending to make poor decisions or careless mistakes.
3. Marked by a lack of intelligence or care; foolish or careless: a stupid mistake.
4. Dazed, stunned, or stupefied.
5. Pointless; worthless: a stupid job.

Actually, I find all 5 points rather salient to any discussion of Bush's abilities.

Shani - I'm disappointed. You responded to host's post, but skipped any discussion brought up by everyone here. You wanted to know why people only blame Bush, and we all explained how we don't think it's just his fault that 9/11 happened. We all explained why he's getting so much flak about all of his actions since then. Did any of those arguments make sense? Make things clearer? Change your view on anything?

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Deltona Couple

Your analogy, while colourful, is still not a good comparison. While I am not saying his policies ARE preventing attacks, 100%, YOU in turn cannot say that they are NOT preventing attacks, because you are not a member of congress or the Deputy director of the FBI or the President himself. NONE OF US KNOW is my point.





I think you completely misunderstood what I was saying. There we no WMD that were found, but Bush was responding to intel that he was given by other people in other contries, informants if you will.

True, you can sit there and say that you donot know that me or Ustwo or Halx are not out to get you...but if you were told my say 3 or 4 of your friends that you trusted, that I was stockpiling a couple of handgrenades and were planning of attacking you, wouldn't you want to come check me out? OK, so you found I didn't have any, should we now crucify you and call you a bad person because of it?

__________________
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ShaniFaye

Im sorry Jess....Im still recovering from reading everything.

yes, what people have said makes sense....and it was honestly refreshing to read most of it, I cant honestly say that it changed my view on anything, I still think the same things I did (but since I didnt really define just exactly HOW I viewed it you wouldnt know that)

I agree with several things ya'll have said....and I was not saying that there was no fault in the Bush Admin, I just said it seemed like anytime I read anything here, that the Dems put ALL the blame on them. My getting ya'll to explain to me what you thought the way I did was an exercise in a way. I wanted to see if it was possible to get a clear cut understandable opinion.

See....when somebody tells me what they think, I do my own research my own way and try to see ALL sides of the opinion before I make up my own mind. Reading what I call *your proof* of why I should think that doesnt work with me.

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ratbastid

Only if you promise to enjoy it.

shakran

You may not be saying that, but my comment was a response to a statement that Ustwo made.

This is true to an extent. However, if someone lies to me repeatedly, I tend to call into question anything he says. Bush told me that he was going to get bin Laden. That was a lie, because later he said he wasn't all that interested in bin Laden.

Bush told me Iraq definitely had WMD's. That was a lie.

Bush's henchman Rumsfeld told me that he knew exactly where the WMD's were - between Baghdad and Tikrit. That was obviously a lie since there were no WMD's.

Bush told me he cares about jobs, but then supported policies that encourage companies to export jobs overseas.

In other words, Bush has lied through his teeth enough times that when Bush tells me his actions are preventing terrorist attacks, I cannot take that statement at face value.


Yes, he was responding to very convenient intel that went against what the CIA was telling him - that Saddam didn't have WMD.

He also in his state of the union address said Iraq was buying yellowcake uranium even though he had already been told that was not true.


Hold on - we didn't go check Iraq out. We annihilated them. If I were to copy the actions of the USA in your grenade analogy, I wouldn't just check you out to find out whether or not you had the grenades. I'd walk up, blow your head off, and THEN look for the grenades.


If I killed you for it, hell yes. That's called murder.

The iraq war is nothing but murder writ large.

ratbastid

With an element of suicide thrown in. As of today, 9/13/06, more Americans have died in Iraq than died in teh 9/11 attacks. Think about that.

shakran

Nope. That's not suicide. Bush murdered our soldiers as well as the Iraqis.

JustJess

Thanks! That's all I was looking for.

__________________
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Marvelous Marv

http://www.factmonster.com/ipka/A0001454.html

If Bush murdered Iraqis, by definition, our military members are the hitmen he hired.

Nice that you think so highly of them.

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Margaret Thatcher

aberkok

Marvelous Marv - do you realize, based on the chart you posted, that we desperately need to bring president Woodrow Wilson back from the dead!!!??

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Willravel

I'll do you one better: President George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, and Sec. Def. Donald Rumsfeld are responsible for the deaths of tens of tousands to hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians, the same people that each of those three people said they were trying to protect. They are murderes in the same way that Saddam Husain is a murderer, in that they didn't actually pull the trigger, but they gave the orders that directly resulted in the deaths of innocent people that they should be protecting.

How do you like them liberal apples?

As for the military members: any military member that obeys an illegal order is a criminal.

Ustwo

I like them quite a bit.

And may I add.....

PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE!!!!

Let that be part of the DNC platform.

Oh dear lordy lordy please.

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Willravel

It'd be interesting, but I don't see it happening. The DNC doesn't have the balls to go full anti-Bush they way their constituants want. They are their own worst enemy. They suffer from Alan Colmes syndrome.

ratbastid

Let me underscore: the way their constituants want.

Justified or not, Ustwo, America wants blood, and the blood it wants is Bush's.

Seaver

Sounds like 2004. If I recall correctly I remember quite a few people stating that a monkey could beat Bush, that it was a sure fire Kerry win. Don't count your eggs quite yet.

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Willravel

You're going to vote for Bush in 2008, aren't you. Be honest.

host

willravel, you can tell now, that one party "rule" and the corruption that is called the "war on terror", is imploding of it's own volution, before the midterm election has even taken place. The "tell" is that the "news" is looking remarkably similar to what you and I have written, discussed, and documented on these threads, for some time now.

Bush's and Rove's "special assistant", Susan Ralston, who worked for Jack Abaramoff as his "key" assistant, at the last two lobbying firms that he worked at, before he "copped a plea" and sang like a canary to federal prosecutors, against the thugs in "the one party" who sold the influence of their elected offices, to him....was in charge of Abramoff's "sky box" seats that he doled out to these politicians and their staffs. She determined policy and priority in the distribution of these small bribes....choice seats to sporting events. It is fitting that Ralston went directly from working for Abramoff for several years at Greenberg Traurig, to working on the white house staff since 2001. She is still there....employed these many years by a succession of corrupt, partisan thugs, who were all once "young republicans":
Ralston is still at the white house, even as more Abramoff tainted republicans plead guilty to corruption....the list is getting longer; remember Abramoffs cohort and former Tom Delay staffer, Michael Scanlon and his jilted fiancee, who blew the whistle on his corrupt lobbying/bribery, to the "Feds"? Emily was Colin Powell's assistant, and below, we see Powell "acting up"...writing uncannily similarly to the pronouncements of TFP's willravel, or "host":
<img src="http://www.apfn.org/apfn/emily-miller.jpg">
<b>Emily Miller</b>
Given this pathetic, incestuous, arrangement, it's increasingly hard to fathom that this bunch of misfit, incompetent, war criminals, bribesters, and political whores, could be the core of the "deterent" that Cheney takes credit for preventing us from getting "hit", again !

How do these affiliations, exposures, investigations, condemnations, and convictions, reflect on the folks who still su7pport the "leaders" and the ruling party?

Ustwo

Remember Bill Clinton in 1994.
Now remember him in 1996.

Bush's rating right now is at the same level as Clinton in 1994. This bodes well for the democrats in the upcomming elections (you recall the republican revolution of 1994) but means very little long term. If the democrats don't get DRAMATIC gains in November then they might as well throw in the towel. Bush has already beaten the usual preditions in 2002 and 2004, if it happens in 2006 despite the constant wave of negative press such as the leak lies, then something is seriously wrong with the democrats.

ShaniFaye quite selling youself short. There is NOTHING intellectual about using google and posting only the articles that you think support your cause, or worse, getting your propaganda spoon fed to you by the various partisan sites and rehashing it here. If anything the problem with politics is there is very little in the way of intellectual discussion where ideas are discussed.

Part of 'surviving' the politics board is learning how to use your scroll button liberally.

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ratbastid

While I generally agree with your analysis, this simply isn't true.

In a poll released earlier this week, 30% of Americans favor impeachment. At the height of the Clinton impeachment circus, 25% favored, and when impeachment actually happened, it was 12% in favor of it. Clinton's impeachment--a transparently partisan manouver performed largely by men who hadn't admitted the illicit blowjobs they'd gotten--never had widespread public support. Impeachment proceedings against Bush would be supported by nearly a third of Americans. Considering he was elected by about that same percentage of all Americans, I think that says a lot.

This is a different statistic than the vaunted "approval rating", but as a higher bar, I think it's even more telling. "Do you disapprove" versus "do you want the guy out of there".

Incidentally, in a Zogby poll at the beginning of the year, 52% agreed with the statement, "If President Bush wiretapped American citizens without the approval of a judge, do you agree or disagree that Congress should consider holding him accountable through impeachment."

I don't think Bush can bluster his way out at this point. The tide is fixing to turn in congress and--at the VERY least--he'll have to seriously watch his step for the rest of his term.

Ustwo

If you think any large number of people who wats to impeach Bush were supporters in 2000 or 2004 you need to start to hang out with more conservatives. Who votes against you doesn't matter as long as more vote for you. Obviously the demonization of Bush is working with the left, but who cares?

Really the more frothy and screaming they become, they more they turn off moderate voters who don't see Bush as evil.

I hope they nominate someone all frothy for 2008 too, because any semi-sane democrat will win by default. Liberman getting ousted was a very good sign, though I think when it comes to the president the DNC will be more practical.

__________________
Agents of the enemies who hold office in our own government, who attempt to eliminate our "freedoms" and our "right to know" are posting among us, I fear.....on this very forum. - host

Obama - Know a Man by the friends he keeps.

Deltona Couple

In all this thread so far, I continue to read about how horrible of a job Bush has done, and he should be impeached, etc. But there are two things that I still have trouble with here. Again, as I have said before, anyone can be an armchair quarterback, looking BACK at things that have been done, and then complaining about the way it was done is easy. Who here is a member of the CIA? The FBI? Attorney General's office? So how do you know for a fact that the information Bush received was incorrect? You know this by what you have been TOLD by other people, whether by news, other offices, other cabinet members who are trying to cover THEIR asses. So who do we believe? I just can't blindly accept everything that is being said here. I don't agree with everything Bush has done, of course not. But in turn, I also do not sit here and blindly call him a murderer. War sucks, people die, history shows this. As far as I am concerned, they have no problem killing our civilians, so SCREW theirs!

I think you are taking this a little out of context. You have to define an illegal order. You are an officer in command of a unit. You are ordered by YOUR superiors to attack a building that is housing "terrorists". You go attack it, because that is what you are ordered to do. Then later you find that the information was incorrect. Were you a criminal? OF COURSE NOT! You didn't know what intel was given, and as a unit leader, you follow orders, you don't do your own research. You don't ask your superiors to send YOU the intel to review it. You do what you are told. THAT is how it works. If every unit commander did their own checking, then nothing would EVER get done in time. When you are at war, sometimes you do not have the LUXURY of time to do a large amount of research on the intel.
Another example: Lets assume for this equasion that Ustwo (hehe...random pick...lol) is a knows terrorist. Now lets put him in a house in Miami on say the corner of First and Grand. Now Operative 1 sees him enter the house. He calls his boss, who notifies the CIA, and the CIA says "blow up the buiding". Recon 1 jumps into their jet, takes off, and bombs the house....Ustwo is inside, and is eliminated. Now what if we were to question the order? Recon 1 gets into their jet, and then says, MAYBE the information is wrong, so he calls back...Cia calls Operative 1's boss, who contacts Operative 1, who says, "You were too slow, he left, and I lost him"

This happens. It's not just a story. Sometimes we can't take the time to verify EVERYTHING. We decide to trust the intel, and act as fast as we can. SOMETIMES it turns out bad, other times it doesn't. It's the way war is.
I'm not saying that the current Administration is perfect, hell, show me one that is!


My other point is this, and it is more a question for everyone. If it were up to you, and you were in his place(Bush) what WOULD you do. Instead of rip him for his bad decisions, what would you do to FIX things? I am curious to hear everyone's ideas.

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Willravel

The problem is that we were saying the war on Iraq is wrong before we went in. That isn't hindsight, it's foresight. We can go back through TFP and find a lot of people who were against the Iraq War in 2002 and 2003.
I had no context. My statement is correct, and it is up to the reader to decide whether an order is illegal or not. The context lies with the reader.

For example, someone could read what I said and think, well, there are a lot of innocent (innocent meaning they have committed no crime) people being taken from their homes in Iraq to an American prison in Cuba and turtured and not given a trial. That would be a good context for my statement.

Deltona Couple

And we can ALSO look back and see many SUPPORTERS of the war.

My question to you is this then, what do YOU expect a leader to do as far as deciding if an order is illegal? Please give an example.

I fail to see the corelation between your claim of content above, and your earlier statement that
what illegal orders are you refering to? If I am ordered to capture someone suspected of war-crimes or whatever, It is NOT up to ME to decide if they are innocent civilians, or criminals. It is my job to capture them, and deliver them to my superiors. It is My SUPERIORS job to decide what is done at that point, not mine. How does THAT make me a criminal??? I am doing my job, as ordered. I Guarantee that if I were to tell them that I wasn't going to go into that town and capture that person, that I would be quickly replaced by someone who would, and THEN I would be summarily courts-martialed.

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roachboy

deltona: i'm sorry but i really do not see anything like a coherent defense of the war debacle in your posts--i see a number of pretty meaningless swipes--the "monday morning quarterback" one is particularly delightful in that it would effectively rule out any criticism whatsoever of this or any other administration--and that fits into the tenor of your posts in general, which seems little more than an extended justification for the following of orders.

the last bit in your post 66 even goes so far as to mount a nuremburg defense for the commission of war crimes--the argument is that you (hypothetically speaking, one would hope) would exempt yourself from asking rudimentary questions about right and wrong of a particulr action because you were simply following orders.

this is what is called compartmentalization--the separation of actions from consequences justified via a conception of one's professional duty--which leads to the erasure of any and all ethical questions, when taken to the limit, and is the kind of thinking that enabled perfectly nice people in everyday life who happened to find themselves administering a genocide in germany to see no particular problem with what they were doing. ethical questions were for higher-ups. we were just following orders. the problem is that everyone said the same thing: ethical questions were always for higher-ups, even when there wern't any. and everyone was just following orders.

it is alarming to see this kind of separation working in your posts, particularly given your affection for talking army-like in your posts. i assume that you have or have had some intimate contact with the military then. i would hope that this kind of compartmentalized thinking is not general in that context--if it is, that would explain many of the lovely actions carried out by folk who were simply following orders--you know, those nice folk in the basement of an old iraqi prison, the guys who saw that nice sign "no blood no foul" before they would torture some iraqi---who was obviously, following the degenerate legal logic of the bush administration, be guilty because he was arrested.

__________________
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it make you sick.

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Ustwo

While the obvious thing to look at here is that in the past the 'I was ordered to' doesn't wash at a war crimes trial, war crimes trials are only for the losing side.

I'm sure in a reality where Japan came back and won WWII, Truman would have been on trial for war crimes for bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

But Deltona thats not really the issue here. You are dealing with people from the political spectrum which think, by default, the US is no better than the Nazi's. The Bushitler people therefore are very quick to call anything a war crime. Civilians die in war, accidental or not, but thats a war crime. Unsubstantiated claims of brutality? Thats a war crime. 9/11 happened? Its a war crime (by the US).

They also claim to the laughable concept of legality in war. Iraq was an 'illegal war' to them, and if their are intellectually honest, so was Bosnia. This odd concept of legality shows just how out of touch with reality this line of thinking is. Law is only as strong as the body enforcing it. If the law is set by a clan headman or the supreme court its only an issue as far as they have reach. Illegal orders even more silly. Illegal to who? The winner decides what orders were illegal and what was legal.

Your problem in this is you are viewing this, which to me, is a more rational view point. You don't see war crimes in our actions, therefore this talk seems like crazy talk.

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Agents of the enemies who hold office in our own government, who attempt to eliminate our "freedoms" and our "right to know" are posting among us, I fear.....on this very forum. - host

Obama - Know a Man by the friends he keeps.

Willravel

Well we are talking about specific people in this thread, and I know I can go back and find that host, roach, and I were against. I *think* rat was against. I'm not sure about everyone else (we are talking about 3 years ago).
A car drivin by a child is headed towards a checkpoint outside of Bagdad (real americans spell feneticly). A guard at the checkpoint goes on his bullhorn and yells, "STOP OR WE WILL OPEN FIRE". The boy, who obviosuly doesn't speak english, keeps going. The commanding officer orders you to open fire.

That's illegal. You have the same intelligence as the CO on this situation, and based on that intelligence there is no reason to think this kid is an enemy combatent.
If you were ordered to rape a priosoner, would you? I mean it's your superior's job to decide if something is illegal or not, you're just a yes man.

Godwin in 3....2....1....

The Nazi soldiers at the prison camps and gas chambers were following orders.

And Ustwo, of course Bosnia was an illegal war.

roachboy

just to clear up yet another misunderstanding of what i wrote from comrade ustwo--my favorite trotskyite theme poster---i mentioned the nuremberg defense to characterize the position outlined in deltona's post 66--i made it clear that the reason i did it was to set up comments about compartmentalization as a problem--and not to make the analogy that ustwo managed, somehow, to see in it.

it is always strange to see you mangle fairly straightforward posts in order to jam them into your ideological universe, ustwo...
geez....

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it make you sick.

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ShaniFaye

can I ask a question? just to clarify in my mind what I may be under a misconception about.

Can't you be court marshalled (sp?) for going against a superiors orders if you are in the military?

__________________
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dc_dux

The "war on terrorism" is so different from any war or enemy we have faced before, we absolutely have to reassess how we fight and win.

But our leaders should never lose the moral high ground, ignore the Constitution or violate our international treaty obligations, or we become what we have spent two centuries fighting against.

Since 9/11, this administration has used the pretext of terrorism for dozens of actions it has taken domestically and internationally and many people across the political spectrum have questioned the morality and/or legality of those actions. That doesnt make them terrorist appeasers or less committed to winning.

The greatest danger we face in a free society is when cititzens feel threatened, or even worse, are threatened, for questioning our leaders.

I, for one, believe we have headed down that road since 9/11 and the buck stops in the Oval Office.
ShaniFaye...absolutely, you can and should be court martialed for not following orders, even if you are morally opposed to the order. Otherwise, we would have chaos in the military. The one exception, I believe (but Im no expert on military law) is if you know with a high degree of certainty that the order is illegal.

The latest issue goes beyond that. Bush, in effect, wants to exempt the CIA from the same standards of treatment of prisoners as the military must follow. There is strong opposition to this, led by John McCain, who knows firsthand about torture, and has an alternative bill with bi-partisan support:

Responding to Bush, McCain rejected the president's assertion that an alternative bill approved by the Senate Armed Services Committee dealing with the trial and interrogation of terror suspects would require the closure of the CIA's detainee program.

McCain said his alternative bill would protect agents from criminal and civil liability and, by not reinterpreting the meaning of the Geneva Conventions, uphold the nation's obligations.

"To do any less risks our reputation, our moral standing and the lives of those Americans who risk everything to defend our country," the senator said.

And as Host noted, Colin Powell has a similar assessment:

Powell said Bush's plan to redefine the Geneva Conventions would cause the world "to doubt the moral basis" of the fight against terror and "put our own troops at risk.

Skirting the law and treaty obligations, no matter how well intended, is another step down that slippery slope that Bush seems intent on taking.

__________________
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~ Voltaire

pan6467

Actually, if it is an illegal order you are supposed to refuse or at the very least you do not have to follow it.

Now proving you were given an illegal order is nearly impossible.

Say for instance, if you know that torture is illegal, yet your superiors tell you to degrade and basically mind fuck a prisoner (among other things) and a picture is leaked out...... have fun trying to tell people it was an order.

Yet, had you not done as told how do you prove that you were told to do that, and since you didn't you were put on forward patrol in a vehicle whose armor hadn't been updated?

__________________
I just love people who use the excuse "I use/do this because I LOVE the feeling/joy/happiness it brings me" and expect you to be ok with that as you watch them destroy their life blindly following. My response is, "I like to put forks in an eletrical socket, just LOVE that feeling, can't ever get enough of it, so will you let me put this copper fork in that electric socket?"

ratbastid

Really? So it's only crazy liberals who disapprove of Bush? Interesting... So you're saying that 67% of the US is made up members of the radical left. Where's the "moderate base", in that political cosmology? In the 32% that supports Bush?

(Note that I'm using "approval rating" here because it's less volatile language than "see Bush as evil." Last I looked, there are no polls asking about people's perception of Bush as "evil". To get a complete picture of public opinion, you have to look at both the approval rating and the polls about impeachment.)

Consider a more statistically supportable explanation: only those who are locked into their rightist views still support Bush, and the rest of the country at least disapproves, and at most is extremely pissed off.

That's right, Ustwo: YOU'RE part of the fringe.

Incidentally, I don't think Bush is evil. I don't believe in the concept of evil--I'm sure in his mind he had good intentions. But if Clinton was guilty of high crimes and misdemeanors, the for DAMN sure Bush is too.

Willravel

Maybe you missed the cats that look like Hitler thread.

host

I thought of this post, when I read this, tonight:
If it is true that American troops' lives are being sacrificed "to give the GOP a chance to retain control of Congress", in November, these disgusting, traitorous f**cks that pretend to be "our leaders", must be approaching the midterm elections, and the holidays that follow, secure in the knowledge, that, unlike in our family, where we have a son serving in the military, who is about to be deployed to a GWOT "combat zone" by this criminal "CIC", while the "leaders' " families will fill all of the chairs at their own holiday dinner tables. The males in their families, all have "other priorities".

It isn't even disclosed if Bush's two daughters, both college graduates now, for more than a year, even have jobs, let alone whether they serve the country in the GWOT.

Deltona Couple

I may miss a few things, because I haven't been back to this thread for a bit. Yes I HAVE spent time in the military. 8 years in the Marine Corps, including Desert Shield and Desert Storm. Maybe because of the atrocities that I have seen it leaves me jaded....maybe. However I have a deep love for all things military, in concept, theory, AND aplication. Yes, If you are given an order, and you can PROVE that it is an illegal order, you CAN disobey it. But my analogy was different that yours. At the checkpoint locations and I do mean EVERY checkpoint, the phrase "STOP, all persons must stop at this location" is written in Arabic on a sign that must be visible from 200 feet. ALSO the commander of said check point is taught to SPEAK that same phrase is Arabic, so that he may warn those approaching.
If the driver, who was 16 years old did not stop, would I shoot? simple answer... HELL YES! I am not there to pick and chose who MIGHT be wanting to kill us, and who won't. My job is simple, stop all vehicles, and search them for weapons or contraband. If they don't stop, shoot. Now this might upset some of you, and I am sorry, but considering some of the things that I have seen over there, it is a necessary evil. Unless you have spent time in combat, and dealt with some of the bastards over there who have killed our soldiers, then I am sorry, but you have no basis in condoning my actions. There is a video floating around on the internet, posted by terrorists that shows our soldiers being shot by a sniper. The entire video is sidelined with phrases saying that all persons who are not Muslim, or are in support of America, and the UN, NEED to be killed. Not accepted in their own contries, and left in peace, but killed. These people want to come to America and KILL you, me, your family...SIMPLY because we are not Muslims. Sorry, but I have no sympathy for ANYONE that has that mindset.

Should we end the war on terror? yea. that WOULD be nice, but do you HONESTLY think that if we just pulled out, and brought all our troops home, that they would stop, and leave us be? No. Why do I think this? because THEY have said it. THEY have said that even if we leave, they will contine to attack us. Not because we attacked them, or that we interfered, but because we are not MUSLIM. THAT is their words, not mine!

I will post the link to the video if the Moderators say that it is ok, but I will warn you...it is VERY graphic. These are the soldiers that lived down the street from you....went to church with you.... spent your kids birthdays with your kids as well.

__________________
"It is not that I have failed, but that I have found 10,000 ways that it DOESN'T work!" --Thomas Edison

roachboy

interesting. thanks deltona.

let's pull this apart, though.

1. it is pretty obvious that no narrative about the "war on terror" is complete.

2. it is pretty obvious that the war in iraq has nothing to do with the "war on terror"--but it is also obvious that the actions of this administration have not only put lives needlessly in danger, subjected many many people to appalling situations for no bloody reason etc.---but further that the action in iraq has generated its own internal dynamic which is really not a good thing.
this internal dynamic apparently involves an appropriation of nationalist-style terminology in order to mobilize against a colonial invasion.
from a distance, this is not surprising and further is just another variant of the self-defeating logic of the bushwar.

however: i am not in the least suprised to see that if your viewpoint is shaped by your life having been in danger within the conflict itself, your view of what is happening is going to be shaped by what you encountered and not by the logic of debates about policy happening amongst people who have not been in the same position.

problem:

(a) it will appear, then, that arguments concerning policy logic invalidate the narrative of someone who was on the ground in iraq, and vice versa.

and

(b) the affect that one brings to bear on this matter will be affected by this.

so.

groundrule question before this goes any further:

i am entirely opposed to the war in iraq. period.
BUT
i am interested nonetheless in information about how this is playing out on the ground.

it has been quite difficult to get anything approaching reliable information about the situation being endured by the folk who simply by doing their jobs have found themselves in very considerable danger. this as a function of marketing the war, of the "lessons" the right apparently drew from their fucked-up version of the history of the vietnam war--which links the widespread opposition to that debacle to 2 factors above all: "excess information" particularly on television concerning the reality of war and the draft.

notice the centrality of these two issues in shaping the policies around iraq: pooled press, constant marketing on the one hand, and a refusal to institute the draft no matter what on the other.

anyway, the groundrule question is basically one of arriving at some kind of understanding about how the different types of narratives can co-exist within a debate about the "war on terror" and all its ramifications.

for whatever it's worth, i accept the incompleteness of information as given and would welcome more about what is endured in iraq: but i wonder how you, deltona, will deal with political dissent concerning the policies themselves.

any conversation involving your experience and political opposition to the policies that shaped your experience is going to involve problems of talking past each other.

the groundrule would then be some kind of agreement or understanding that such talking-past does not involve an invalidation of your perceptions of what happened to you.

if you can accept the inevitable talking-past-each-other matter, i for one would be interested in hearing more about your experiences---but i am not sure that anything positive can come of your sharing that information if there is not some kind of prior understanding about this.

keep in mind that a significant aspect of the marketing of this war in iraq has hinged on this talking-past issue--conservatives routinely tried to argue that any opposition to the war in iraq invalidated the experience of those who were there--this as a mean of trying to stifle dissent. while i might think this argument idiotic--and i do--it is nonetheless part of the sad political climate within which we operate, like it or not, and this motivates the gorundrule question that i am trying to pose to you.

so there we are for the moment.

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

Deltona Couple

I hope that it was not your intention to come across as you did, but your statement above makes me feel like you are assuming that my opinions are based on emotions, and not logic; which is untrue. I just have a different basis of where my information for my own logical opinions come from. And lets agree, that a large percentage of people opinions are basically that, opinions.

That being said, you are more than welcome to ask anything that you would like to know about some of what has happened overthere. Bear in mind that MY experiences are somewhat different than those currently serving, due to the fact that my time served was durring Desert Shield/Desert Storm, and not the current War in Iraq. However my supervisor here at my job just recently returned from Iraq, with a few stories of his own!...lol.

Some of what bothers me in where some people form their opinions and decisions from, is where they get it. Of course I cannot say for certain where you get your information from, but a large percentage of the poeple in my community who oppose the war say they read about it in the papers, and watch it on the evening news.
The problem with this is simple, the news is no longer what it used to be: A service to let people know the facts. It now is more based on what gets them ratings, and what is new and exciting at the time....Read this SENSATIONALISM JOURNAISM. Its a fact. I read about how a group of Marines went into a home of a suspected terrorist in Afganistan, and "brutally murdered" the entire family, "a mother, a father, and a young child" as it was published in the New York Times back in 1994. It was a horrific event as they said, and the public was outraged. What the news DIDN'T tell you, was that the "young child" was a 17 year old who was sitting at a table building a small explosive device with his dad helping, while the mother was sitting at the door with a Russian AK-47 keeping watch. So by the news given out in America, the Marines that killed them were shunned and talked badly about. But in reality, they most likely saved some lives. Do we Marines go out there and yell at the press and tell them they are wrong? No, sorry, we don't. We let the press do what they will, why? because we are out there fighting for their right to freedom of the press, freedom of their religion, freedom to make their own decisions. It is not our job to tell THEM right from wrong. We simply do a job. We do it, and continue on to the next one. We don't ask for anyones thank you's, we don't ask for you to tell us we have done a good job. We only ask that you appreciate what we are fighting for. Is it backed sometimes by personal political gain? Yea, I think for some of it, yes. But remember; WE are the ones in the field. WE are the ones who protect ourselves, and those that we are ordered to protect. WE are the ones who must answer to God for our actions, so that America might be able to enjoy one more day of freedom of LIFE.

Yes I do watch the political aspects. I do believe that it is not just our right, but our DUTY to question our government. But by putting on that uniform, we also give up the right to question our orders. We do what we are told, or other people may die. It is a sad, sad truth.

Do I agree with the Bush political situation? I might supprise you by saying no, I do not agree. Do I think the current campaign is only involved in politics though? No I do not. Politics is a big factor, but not the only factor. Should we end the war? No. But we should have a better sight on the objective, and the means. I would continue, but I am out of time for now. Any other questions PLEASE feel free to ask. Thank you for your insights ladies and gentlemen....Until next time.....

__________________
"It is not that I have failed, but that I have found 10,000 ways that it DOESN'T work!" --Thomas Edison

roachboy

deltona:

i didnt mean based on emotion--quite the opposite--i meant based on context, on situation----i am just waking up-- it is too early in the coffee rounds for anything more....

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite