Prez Gush announced that there is no link between the 9/11 attacks and Saddam Hussein. However in a recent poll 70% americans believed so!!! http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/3118262.stm This is after backtracking on the WMD issue. From possessing WMDs to having a programme for WMDs. Whats next?35 responses total.
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for treh knee-jerk, single-strut-lock-steppers this might be news. for teh congniscenti who see beyond their erudite nostrils, this is not news.
By "knee-jerk, single-strut-lock-steppers" I assume you mean G.W. Bush & company.
Re #1: Since your gut seems to tell you that all Muslims are out to get America, I wouldn't be too sure about trusting your gut instinct. As a friend of the USA, I am willing to convert to Islam to prove my point.
Ahh!! The usual suspects :-) Islam == Terrorism. A very convenient and saleable theory.
From day one I heard he had "programs to develop WMD" and knew he had used WMD against the kurds and Iran. I also knew that terrorists were operating out of his country. So putting together the idea that he has weapons of mass destruction and that he may bewilling to pass them on to terrorists is not a giant leap. one of the least known and most violent groups of terrorists is from northern Iraq and is Kurdish in origin.
US's friend in its *war* on terror also matches the description. So when are your troops invading Pakistan?
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Btw, India too has WMDs and terrorists operate out of India and on India. When do we get liberated?? <sarcasm> Re #1, I totally forgot that Imperial powers can act on gut instinct alone. They do not need to give any evidence to the world. So it was gut instinct or gut pressure?? </sarcasm>
Bru - even if Saddam Hussein collaborated with terrorists, it doesn't necessarily follow that those terrorists were from Al Qaeda. They might well be from Hamas or Islamic Jihad. Anyway, last I heard, CNN refused to brand the IRA as terrorists, instead naming them "guerillas" or "freedom fighers" or some such rubbish.
bummer for you, eh?
Al-queda, islamic hjihad, and hamas are not the only terroris roganizations on the US hit list. This is not a one shot fix.
You've a point there. I should have said "from Hamas or Islamnic Jihad, for example".
re ^: The Curds? NO whey! ,
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In more news, a drunken US soldier kills a rare Bengal tiger in the Baghdad zoo: http://in.rediff.com/news/2003/sep/20iraq1.htm "Musa also added that US soldiers often held parties in the zoo in the evenings. "We have no way of stopping them," he added." And woman threatened with jail for travelling to Iraq: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/3126220.stm "For travelling to Iraq Faith Fippinger will now probably lose her house, her pension and go to jail. "
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re #16 - not very good pr.
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"the doggie's"? [sic]
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(Right; "dogfaces.")
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This is older news: Several caught trying to smuggle Iraqi loot http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/special/iraq/1880300 And there was another one about US troops looting and rampaging the Baghdad airport (permanently damaged 2-3 Iraq-Air Boeing crafts). Can't find a link to the BBC story though. The most shocking one is this: Troops' anger over US 'friendly fire' http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/2901515.stm "They said the US pilot apparently failed to recognise that their tanks were a British make, with special coalition identification aids and even a large Union flag on another machine in the five-vehicle convoy." I am not trying to say that the US Army as a whole deliberately did any of this (as against the US government) but this certainly makes very bad PR and raises other questions.
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Nice pics Todd. Heh, to piss you off, I'll say I wonder if they are real ;) Ofcourse, they have to be doing good stuff too there but unfortunately good deeds don't compensate for evil ones. And I know that the British Army occupies is supervising a smaller area but still there are very rare such stories against the British. In the first pic, replace the small cat with a bigger one and you get a picture of what must've happened!! :) and Re#17, burgers?? The tiger chewed off the soldier's arm.
The woman being prosecuted was in violation of the economic embargo against Iraq. She went to Iraq to act as a human shield. I'm undecided as to whether I think it is a more practical response for the government to prosecute these people after the fact for violation of the embargo, or to prosecute them, as they're discovered, for treason (giving aid and comfort to the enemy in a time of war). There is no doubt that the propaganda use Saddam's Iraq made of these people is a strong basis for charges of treason, despite the best intentions of the shields themselves. If the shields entered Iraq as observers under official UN auspices, or as journalists representing and regularly reporting to legitimate news outlets, then I would say they ought to be immune from prosecution, but otherwise, let 'em have it.
Treason for playing human shield in an air war??? What's next, making it treason to vote against Bush in '04? Or maybe there just won't be an election in '04?
Walter, as fervently as I oppose the Shrub, I still think that there is a clear line between actively opposing a foreign military action from within domestic borders and going to the foreign nation and giving its despotic ruler both a willing hostage and a propaganda bonanza to use in a battle largely on the field of public opinion. #28 suggests that you are either unwilling or unable to draw such a distinction, and I think that is patently false. I think you responded to #27 without giving it a fair reading and weighing its merits. Certainly, the leap of logic from your first question to your second is indefensible, though under current circumstances, it seems that the second question presents a not-so-entirely remote possibility, taken on its own. Question three is really not even worth a response, except to point out that even as rhetorical ballast, it is so lightweight as to diminish rather than enhance the effect of the response as a whole.
Eric, i have very low opinion of both the current administration's behavior (from its "and then Santa comes and takes Iraq off our hands" war plan to its sicko attempts to equate free speach with treason) and the <cough> moral <gag> standards of the peace movement (non-European foreigners may freely practice genocide on each other, but burn the flag if we try to stop 'em). As i think you recognize, a human shield for an air war target is of no direct military utility whatever. If the target is favored with a bomb, a "shield" dies without any reduction in the intended damage. I would view a human shield who got into infantry-level ground combat or started piling sandbags around himself (& target) quite differently. That a human shield is a "willing hostage" means little to me. If i was picking targets for bombs, a target with a human shield (who had clearly volunteered for high risk of death) would seem to me a better pick than one with an Iraqi Army draftee guard (who'd have been tortured if he failed to serve). Saddam had an effectively unlimited supply of potential hostages in any case. But i believe in a right to suicide, so i may see this differently than you. Yes, human shields had a propoganda value to Iraq. So did everyone who show up an anti-war rally. So did a Senator speaking eloquently against the war. So would a Buddhist immolating himself. These all strike me as clear example of political free speach. I don't know if you noticed, but i also saw the human shields a having definite political value FOR Pres. Bush - in the view of many pro-war and centrist Americans, they were bold examples of left-wing and anti- war Americans being idiots, disloyal to America, out of touch with reality, freaks, etc. This identification may well help Bush to win re-election next year. (If i was working for him, i'd advise to let the human shields off with polite words to the effect that they meant well, but were utterly blind to and useless against evil...a sadly common failing of liberal and Democratic politicians...).
I think the news story mentioned the female as working in hospitals in Iraq. Is that treason?
It seems that more clarification is appropriate. If charges are to be filed at all, they should not be applicable to people who go to essentially function as aid workers, as sj2 suggests. I'm somewhat of the mind that civilians who go and camp out on military target sites to oppose the war deserve whatever comes, but I couldn't come up with the eloquent logic Walter uses to justify it. So, I resorted to legal prosecution, or the threat thereof, as an alternative to discourage this sort of behavior. As for the propaganda value of different activities, I feel the effect of manipulation of naive human shields is so much potentially greater (than the propaganda potential of any sort of domestic dissent activities) as to be a difference of type rather than degree. That's why I differentiate between the two.
I am sure the female's lawyers will argue on the basis of right to freedom, expression etc etc and keep her out of jail. But at a time when Bush's asking the UN and US Congress for money and troops, this looks like bad PR.
Re: #32 If the propoganda value of a few well-manipulated fools appears to be that high, Mr. President, then either (a) we should have cleaned the Democrats out of our PR office and put somebody with brains and drive in charge weeks ago, or (b) too much of the press is blatently working against us, and their CEO's need some quick reminders of the natural business risks of backing the Hitler of Iraq against the forces of freedom and democracy.
(The purpose of the "human shield" appears to have been overlooked: to prevent the bomb being dropped in the first place, not to reduce the damage of that bomb once dropped. It was all about public relations: get 'friendly fire' casaulties early and often.)
You have several choices: