skyscan

The truth is this, war is a horrible thing. It must be avoided at great costs. It should NEVER become acceptable for countries to wage war again and again. I am and always will be an American. However, I will never support the loss of my friends and family to a war without a just cause. The question to me never was "Is Sadamm a good person?" it was always "Is the loss of life worth the potential reward for the people of Iraq and the world?" Never forget the horror that is war.

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Media Stew

Tholo

wow.

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"I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence or insanity to anyone, but they've always worked for me."

pan6467

I just don't understand if these photos are real how a "soldier" got a camera in to take night vision (the green photos) or some maybe from classified areas. I think this is a true false website. It doesn't say war is bad or good the pics don't help left or right but one has to question authenticity.

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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?"

hammer4all

Your right. All those photos are faked. Damn Hollywood propaganda!

Here are more civilian victims of Anglo-American aggression:

http://www.robert-fisk.com/iraqwarvictims_mar2003.htm

AngelicVampire

Zeld, we cannot decide to just sit out the future unfortunately. I would love to say "Just go do what you want to do to yourselves." however that leads to evil happening, sure it might be around the corner from us right now and not affect us however some time in the future we may very well be the target of that evil.

Saddam was not the worst guy ever to rule a country, heck our history ain't sweetness and light either however we are trying to do the right thing, we are trying to be good.

However we will get blamed either way, either we did not step in to help people and so "killed them" (see Oxfam shops where they continually try to pressure you that the problems in this world are your fault), or you step in and stop the problems (try to) and get told that its for purely selfish reasons and that you are a bad country (see Iraq).

We need to attempt to keep the peace world wide as we are capable of this and we are "civilised?" enough to do it. Ok we have problems in our countires and could probably survive without the rest of the world however its still there and sometimes problems can come back and annoy you again. George Bush Jr is not my favourite politician, however he did stand up and go to war for a valid reason, his policies may be coloured by the prospect of less oil however if that was all he wanted we did not need to take most of Iraq... just roll in take the oil fields and kill anyone who is approaching them (say 2kilometers (1.2 milesish) as a no walk zone around them?). However we did go to Basra and other cities, which is suicide for our troops as ambushes and suchlike are far easier in cities as is hiding troops.

Well just 0.02 of the local currency

pan6467

I am just implying that Lebell said these came from a soldier's website thereby implying a soldier took these. I am simply saying I find it hard to believe a soldier took these.

I am not denying the pictures are real, I am just questioning the authenticity of the website and of saying a soldier took all of these. Having been in the military I can tell you right now you do not carry a camera around in classified areas, let alone posted on the internet (I would assume at the very least the soldier's night vision would be classified).

The pictures themselves, as a whole, I see as saying war is hell but not condemning or supporting this war. But there are ways to spin them on both sides of the aisle.

Is that a little more clearer for you Hammer?

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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?"

Robb@EPE

I remember hearing, right at the end of the war, that American soldiers were in a firefight with the enemy, and were forced to shoot children that the Iraqis were sending out on the battlefield to recover dropped weapons. The American soldiers were screaming across the battlefield, telling the Iraqis NOT to do it, but they did it anyway.

The Iraqis know that Americans don't want to kill women and children. They also know that if the Americans DO kill women and children there will be a HUGE public outcry AGAINST the war in Iraq. So they hide behind the women and children. Who is responsible for their deaths then ...?

Weigh it like this. Our soldiers are trained PROFESSIONALS fighting untrained civilians who just picked up a rifle yesterday. Want to wager a guess at whose bullets are going all over the place and killing innocent civilians?

As someone mentioned, the US gets blamed for EVERYTHING that goes wrong. In the eyes of her critics, she can do no right. To those that think there is no strategic gain for our moves in Iraq, all I can say is, look at a map of the region. It's pretty obvious the strategic importance of holding Iraq and making it a 'friendly' nation in the Middle East.

As always though, you're all entitled to your opinions

Fireshiru1

no matter what, war is never pretty, it is never nice and playful, it is death, it is chaos, it is human primalism at it's quentisential essence.

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No matter how hard you try, you can't baptize a cat.

Scipio

There are plenty of poignant anecdotes about soldiers doing good things for Iraqis. There are also lots of good stories about how much better life has become in some ways. However, our project in that country is much bigger than that, and it seems that all those small helpful acts aren't adding up to a good outcome for the country as a whole. The ethnic and religious divisions in the country are very deep. For better or for worse, images like the ones that have recently come out are having a much greater impact that the ones that show "the truth" about the occupation. They have very real consequences, and we have to react strongly to deal with them.

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sonikeko

The is no such thing as a justified death...the US bombed schools and hospitals because there were weapons there...we could have just gone in there and taken them.

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"Adolescence is short, maturity is forever"

Robb@EPE

Yes, we could have just gone in and taken them. Only, it's very likely that American soldiers would have lost their lives in the process, and militarily, that's not the smart move.

The realy problem is that people these days have no concept of how ugly war is. They have been prepared for it by all the movies and video games they've seen. Now, when the bodies start piling up, and there is no reset or do over, they just don't get it.

ironman

MAN!!! PLEASE!!!! Don't come and try to convince us and yourself that US government hands are clean in this matter, or in any other all around the world, when it has all its 10 little fingers, palms, arms... covered in dirt and blood.
Obviously you don't live south the border and hasn't had a 30 years civil war with over 300,000 deaths, payed by the US and the Soviet Union (Yeah! the cold war was yours, but the deaths were ours!!!, believe me, the cold war was pretty hot down here), you haven't had your governments taken up and down by US's political and economical interests, you haven't had to take the humiliation of been filed and treated like a criminal every time you go to Europe or Jamaica or every other place, just because your plane must go trough the US.
You need information on whether what i'm saying is true or false? go and take a look to the desclasified files of the CIA on Latin American Affairs.
Don't take me wrong, i'm not against the US or it's people, i'm a TFPer after all, i'm against US's exterior politics that has caused hundred of thousands of deaths all around the world.
You know, is funny how sometimes we want to cover the sun with one finger, is time for the US to rectify it's way.

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If I agreed with you we´d both be wrong

charlesesl

Why are you guys critizing Bush. He is sparring some Iraqis the pain he will inflict on them in the future. If you have two choices. One being slowly stave to death or possibly tortured by American soldiers. The other being a quick painless death by getting blown to peiced by the American bombs. Which will you choice?

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It did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us.
Dr. Viktor E. Frankl

irateplatypus

ahh... forgive me if i doubt your tactical expertise and give the mission planners the benefit of the doubt. no one here on TFP is even remotely qualified to make that judgement on a tactical level from behind their computers while sitting comfortably at home.

ironman,

uhh... i'm not even sure you know what i was referring to, none of the issues i was posting about were even in latin america. you didn't even tell us where you're from (i'm guessing chile or columbia), you don't even know what i think about what you're talking about. if you want to debate something different than what this thread is intended for... go right ahead and start your own. i'll be happy to debate ya or even take your side. just don't go blasting me for saying something unrelated to your situation in order to have a soapbox to stand on.

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If you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not too costly, you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance for survival. There may even be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves.

~ Winston Churchill

almostaugust

When will humanity learn? War is fucking horrible. There is nothing noble about it. Its never black and white and clean cut, as much as governments would like us to believe. I wish people would study history a little more closely.

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'And it's been a long December and there's reason to believe
Maybe this year will be better than the last
I can't remember all the times I tried to tell my myself
To hold on to these moments as they pass'

Sparhawk

ironman,

i'm guessing Guatemala. which i too wouldn't mind talking about (in another thread).

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"In Iraq, no doubt about it, it's tough. It's hard work. It's incredibly hard. It's - and it's hard work. I understand how hard it is. I get the casualty reports every day. I see on the TV screens how hard it is. But it's necessary work. We're making progress. It is hard work."

pig

After reading all the comments thus far, saying the "war is hell" bit is probably a waste of time. I think that such pics might change public opinion, regardless of whether people are aware of this kind of reality in a tangental sort of way. Seeing it is different, which is why we don't normally see it.

As for the standard Iraq Flame / Arguement stuff : I would agree with the position that we can't afford to sit in perpetual isolationism, but when looking at how we're (the US) involved in Iraq right now, I have to wonder why we had to go in NOW.

I think it should be obvious that securing (Operation) Iraqi Freedom wasn't the main reason. We just don't go around liberating countries because it's the right thing to do. It might be a sideline benefit of the operation eventually, but we really can't even be sure of that. Nobody knows what Iraq will be like in five years, and I'd say it's not a good bet that we're going to bring peace and Democracy to the area this way.

The WMD thing didn't pan out, and personally, I always thought that was a stretch. I think it's a little hypocritical for us to cite violation of UN 1441, and then turn around an "enforce" that resolution in violation of UN sentiments...and if we had let the matter come to another vote just prior to the war, we didn't have the votes of the Security Council to get consensus to go in.

It's obvious that war is never pretty, and it seems to me that in order to set this kind of pre-empitive strike precedent, we should have pretty obvious, clear reasons to go in. The kind that you can make a five slide power point presentation out of. As people always like to talk about 9/11 - after that horror, no one in the world was against us going in and getting sideways the the Taliban in Afganistan. The main reason is that the reason to go in was clear.

I can imagine all kinds of reasons why we might have needed to go into Iraq, but nothing that's being sold now makes any sense. We're spending an assload of (our) money, and losing a lot of lives, to be involved in this situation. Exactly what are we getting out of it? I'd like to see clear evidence that a major, immediate threat to the US was eliminated (not some slippery slope Weapons of Mass Desctruction Related Programs bullshit, or that two Iraqis in clownsuits were thought to have maybe been seen talking to the brother of a maid of a suspected Al Quaida operative in New Westphalia kind of crap), or that we're about to start bringing back a crap load of something really valuable really soon. If this war WAS about oil, it's disparaging, but if someone wants my support for this war, then I really wish someone would present an argument for it that is simple, clear, and isn't covered in propaganda boo-hoo and obfuscated interpreations. Otherwise, quit expectinig me to support it. I don't give the benefit of the doubt to my government - not when the stakes are this high.

"Before man was, war waited for him. The ultimate trade awating the ultimate practitioner." Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian

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You don't love me, you just love my piggy style

ironman

I'm surprised you got it only by the facts i gave. Yeah i'm talking Guatemala, but i didn't wanted to mention it because it pretty much sums up all latin america history. There is too much to discuss about Guatemala, i don't know what would u like to talk about.

I know latin america has nothing to do with what u were talking about. I just wanted to point out that sometimes it takes to be outside the border to realize that US government actually CAN has its hands dirty in theese events (as it has had in other events), but it seems to me (by what you've bee saying in this thread) that you believe the US is incapable of it. If this is not what u think, excuse me, i got you wrong. But in my experience, usually when you talk to a US citizen (i'm sorry to break your heart but America is the hole continent, not only the US) about their government's atrocities, they always deny them and defend the government's reputation as if they were defending their mother's or sister's.

pigglet
i couldn't agree with you more.

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If I agreed with you we´d both be wrong