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Deleted
deleted
4116 Posts |
 Posted - 20 February 2003 : 20:36:05
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quote:
Originally posted by airilm
I'm glad the Snitz community can talk about this subject rationally... The message boards on Yahoo are something else...
I don't think so. This topic is not a dialogue, it is merely worth to be called monoloque!
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Nikkol
Forum Moderator
USA
6907 Posts |
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seahorse
Senior Member
USA
1075 Posts |
Posted - 20 February 2003 : 20:43:36
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North Korea takes a hardline bargaining position. They take extreme positions in order to get better terms in negotiations.
Common tactic in negotiating. Studies show that it tends to get better results than a more cooperative approach. One of the problems is that you have to be ready to back your extreme position if someone calls your bluff, which in North Korea's case is building a nuclear weapon and going to war.
Unfortunately for North Korea, George Bush seems to be the kind of person who will call a bluff.
In Saddam's case, he knows he doomed if the US decides to go to war. He's trying to play the cooperation game long enough to get world opinion to force George Bush to back down.
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Ken
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Worldwide Partner Group
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Deleted
deleted
4116 Posts |
Posted - 20 February 2003 : 20:52:11
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quote:
Originally posted by Nikkol
so provide us with some constructive perspective.
Do you know the story of naked king? I think my comments will not be constructive in the short term.
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Nikkol
Forum Moderator
USA
6907 Posts |
Posted - 20 February 2003 : 20:53:36
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| forget the US for a moment ... what are your thoughts about Sadaam? |
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Deleted
deleted
4116 Posts |
Posted - 20 February 2003 : 21:11:19
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It is not Saddam who causes current problems. Here is an article to read. I copy-pasted it from thesea.org. Also in that discussion lots of US citizens offended me and my country so that I refused to continue.
Opinion
January 15, 2003
The United States of America has gone mad
John le Carré
America has entered one of its periods of historical madness, but this is the worst I can remember: worse than McCarthyism, worse than the Bay of Pigs and in the long term potentially more disastrous than the Vietnam War.
The reaction to 9/11 is beyond anything Osama bin Laden could have hoped for in his nastiest dreams. As in McCarthy times, the freedoms that have made America the envy of the world are being systematically eroded. The combination of compliant US media and vested corporate interests is once more ensuring that a debate that should be ringing out in every town square is confined to the loftier columns of the East Coast press.
The imminent war was planned years before bin Laden struck, but it was he who made it possible. Without bin Laden, the Bush junta would still be trying to explain such tricky matters as how it came to be elected in the first place; Enron; its shameless favouring of the already-too-rich; its reckless disregard for the world’s poor, the ecology and a raft of unilaterally abrogated international treaties. They might also have to be telling us why they support Israel in its continuing disregard for UN resolutions.
But bin Laden conveniently swept all that under the carpet. The Bushies are riding high. Now 88 per cent of Americans want the war, we are told. The US defence budget has been raised by another $60 billion to around $360 billion. A splendid new generation of nuclear weapons is in the pipeline, so we can all breathe easy. Quite what war 88 per cent of Americans think they are supporting is a lot less clear. A war for how long, please? At what cost in American lives? At what cost to the American taxpayer’s pocket? At what cost — because most of those 88 per cent are thoroughly decent and humane people — in Iraqi lives?
How Bush and his junta succeeded in deflecting America’s anger from bin Laden to Saddam Hussein is one of the great public relations conjuring tricks of history. But they swung it. A recent poll tells us that one in two Americans now believe Saddam was responsible for the attack on the World Trade Centre. But the American public is not merely being misled. It is being browbeaten and kept in a state of ignorance and fear. The carefully orchestrated neurosis should carry Bush and his fellow conspirators nicely into the next election.
Those who are not with Mr Bush are against him. Worse, they are with the enemy. Which is odd, because I’m dead against Bush, but I would love to see Saddam’s downfall — just not on Bush’s terms and not by his methods. And not under the banner of such outrageous hypocrisy.
The religious cant that will send American troops into battle is perhaps the most sickening aspect of this surreal war-to-be. Bush has an arm-lock on God. And God has very particular political opinions. God appointed America to save the world in any way that suits America. God appointed Israel to be the nexus of America’s Middle Eastern policy, and anyone who wants to mess with that idea is a) anti-Semitic, b) anti-American, c) with the enemy, and d) a terrorist.
God also has pretty scary connections. In America, where all men are equal in His sight, if not in one another’s, the Bush family numbers one President, one ex-President, one ex-head of the CIA, the Governor of Florida and the ex-Governor of Texas.
Care for a few pointers? George W. Bush, 1978-84: senior executive, Arbusto Energy/Bush Exploration, an oil company; 1986-90: senior executive of the Harken oil company.***** Cheney, 1995-2000: chief executive of the Halliburton oil company. Condoleezza Rice, 1991-2000: senior executive with the Chevron oil company, which named an oil tanker after her. And so on. But none of these trifling associations affects the integrity of God’s work.
In 1993, while ex-President George Bush was visiting the ever-democratic Kingdom of Kuwait to receive thanks for liberating them, somebody tried to kill him. The CIA believes that “somebody” was Saddam. Hence Bush Jr’s cry: “That man tried to kill my Daddy.” But it’s still not personal, this war. It’s still necessary. It’s still God’s work. It’s still about bringing freedom and democracy to oppressed Iraqi people.
To be a member of the team you must also believe in Absolute Good and Absolute Evil, and Bush, with a lot of help from his friends, family and God, is there to tell us which is which. What Bush won’t tell us is the truth about why we’re going to war. What is at stake is not an Axis of Evil — but oil, money and people’s lives. Saddam’s misfortune is to sit on the second biggest oilfield in the world. Bush wants it, and who helps him get it will receive a piece of the cake. And who doesn’t, won’t.
If Saddam didn’t have the oil, he could torture his citizens to his heart’s content. Other leaders do it every day — think Saudi Arabia, think Pakistan, think Turkey, think Syria, think Egypt.
Baghdad represents no clear and present danger to its neighbours, and none to the US or Britain. Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction, if he’s still got them, will be peanuts by comparison with the stuff Israel or America could hurl at him at five minutes’ notice. What is at stake is not an imminent military or terrorist threat, but the economic imperative of US growth. What is at stake is America’s need to demonstrate its military power to all of us — to Europe and Russia and China, and poor mad little North Korea, as well as the Middle East; to show who rules America at home, and who is to be ruled by America abroad.
The most charitable interpretation of Tony Blair’s part in all this is that he believed that, by riding the tiger, he could steer it. He can’t. Instead, he gave it a phoney legitimacy, and a smooth voice. Now I fear, the same tiger has him penned into a corner, and he can’t get out.
It is utterly laughable that, at a time when Blair has talked himself against the ropes, neither of Britain’s opposition leaders can lay a glove on him. But that’s Britain’s tragedy, as it is America’s: as our Governments spin, lie and lose their credibility, the electorate simply shrugs and looks the other way. Blair’s best chance of personal survival must be that, at the eleventh hour, world protest and an improbably emboldened UN will force Bush to put his gun back in his holster unfired. But what happens when the world’s greatest cowboy rides back into town without a tyrant’s head to wave at the boys?
Blair’s worst chance is that, with or without the UN, he will drag us into a war that, if the will to negotiate energetically had ever been there, could have been avoided; a war that has been no more democratically debated in Britain than it has in America or at the UN. By doing so, Blair will have set back our relations with Europe and the Middle East for decades to come. He will have helped to provoke unforeseeable retaliation, great domestic unrest, and regional chaos in the Middle East. Welcome to the party of the ethical foreign policy.
There is a middle way, but it’s a tough one: Bush dives in without UN approval and Blair stays on the bank. Goodbye to the special relationship.
I cringe when I hear my Prime Minister lend his head prefect’s sophistries to this colonialist adventure. His very real anxieties about terror are shared by all sane men. What he can’t explain is how he reconciles a global assault on al-Qaeda with a territorial assault on Iraq. We are in this war, if it takes place, to secure the fig leaf of our special relationship, to grab our share of the oil pot, and because, after all the public hand-holding in Washington and Camp David, Blair has to show up at the altar.
“But will we win, Daddy?”
“Of course, child. It will all be over while you’re still in bed.”
“Why?”
“Because otherwise Mr Bush’s voters will get terribly impatient and may decide not to vote for him.”
“But will people be killed, Daddy?”
“Nobody you know, darling. Just foreign people.”
“Can I watch it on television?”
“Only if Mr Bush says you can.”
“And afterwards, will everything be normal again? Nobody will do anything horrid any more?”
“Hush child, and go to sleep.”
Last Friday a friend of mine in California drove to his local supermarket with a sticker on his car saying: “Peace is also Patriotic”. It was gone by the time he’d finished shopping.
The author has also contributed to an openDemocracy debate on Iraq at www.openDemocracy.net
Be in peace! Do it!
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HarshReality
Junior Member
USA
128 Posts |
Posted - 20 February 2003 : 21:19:34
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quote:
Originally posted by Nikkol
quote:
Originally posted by bozden
Nobody wants war except Bush
 It's not like war is something he hungers for.
quote:
Yeah, sure. You think normal talk can (past tense already) stop Bush? The protests are just beginning, so does the US nightmare.
What do you mean US nightmare? It's not normal or hateful or any kind of talk that is going to "stop Bush" as you put it. It's seeing good faith actions that Bush and the US citizens want.
Its a known historical fact, War is followed by a time of prosperity. Look at all the leaders who are commonly mentioned in history and every one of them is mentioned in reference to war. Bush on the other hand has 2 things going against him, his heritage and his predacessor. The earlier Bush did the Gulf and made a name for himself (contrary to what some believe). Clinton had his words with terrorism and constantly made the statement "We'll get them". Those 2 factors put bush into a corner he has no choice but to act.
As far as support for other countries, I myself am all for it BUT rather than talking about giving it to "Saddam" I think any country we help we should at least be able to set foot in without getting our******blown off.
But I digress, war is inevitable its going to happen no matter what your good intentions. I dont hate either way but instead I will make a historical reference.
Once not so long ago there was a political nobody who cried about how everyone around them was doing them injustice and wrong. He was overlooked for a time and then he rather suddenly came into a position of power and began shoving neighbors, again over looked. Then before anyone really understood what was happening it got out of control and he spread death unlike any man before him. If everyone had not joined together he most likely would have succeeded and completely dominated the world.
The gents name was HITLER, do I blame germany today for him.. no
Do I blame the M.E. for Saddam.. no
Rather than play the game, send 3 or 4 seals over there to camp out with a scope and rifle and put it all out of the picture with a single shot.
Screw me once.. shame on you, Screw me twice.. shame on ME!
If he wants a spotlight so bad then by all means give him a redlight, there have been to many lives lost already and I recall a saying about the Islam and pity the man who inspires there wrath or something to that effect. I know the US is far from perfect, IU know on paper we are a top world power but everybody knows there is a peaceful solution ecept these guys, so maybe they need to be taught to talk before dshooting off guns, biological weapons and thier mouth. |
Anti Social Personality |
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Nikkol
Forum Moderator
USA
6907 Posts |
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Deleted
deleted
4116 Posts |
Posted - 20 February 2003 : 21:25:05
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quote:
Originally posted by VodkaFish
So I guess I'm not really asking for a personal opinion on the situation (feel free to give yours anyway, not saying "don't"), but I'd like to know what was the true feel of some protests that were held by you. I'm sure many were fine and I just saw a bad picture or two, but others just seemed like they were inundated with just as much hate as what they claim they were protesting against. Seemed weird to me (hence why I'm asking).
VodkaFish, returning to your original inquiry... I don't think I can give non-personal opinion on this. Politics is something you feel, believe in. I'm was not physically active in the last few months, but supported the organization of some of those protests held in Turkey. I have some friends who went to Iraq as part of "Live Armor" (I don't know how you name it). I feld upset that I could not.
Actually you DO understand what they protest!
About the hatred: Yes, they feel it. But I think it is mutual. Action leads reaction, defect leads effect. This is why US must start to think about what is going on and why.
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ruirib
Snitz Forums Admin
Portugal
26364 Posts |
Posted - 20 February 2003 : 21:26:10
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quote:
Originally posted by bozden
quote:
Originally posted by airilm
I'm glad the Snitz community can talk about this subject rationally... The message boards on Yahoo are something else...
I don't think so. This topic is not a dialogue, it is merely worth to be called monoloque!
So this is only good if we agree with you? C'mon, you know better than that. |
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Nathan
Help Moderator
USA
7664 Posts |
Posted - 20 February 2003 : 21:30:14
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| I don't think anyone outside of Iraq can really judge Sadaam (not that they should anyway) because of the nice thick layer of media censorship and propaganda between us and reality. |
 Nathan Bales
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Nikkol
Forum Moderator
USA
6907 Posts |
Posted - 20 February 2003 : 21:37:26
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quote:
Originally posted by Nathan
I don't think anyone outside of Iraq can really judge Sadaam
The problem with thinking that way is that we all live on the same planet. |
Nikkol ~ Help Us Help You | ReadMe | 3.4.03 fixes | security fixes ~ |
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Deleted
deleted
4116 Posts |
Posted - 20 February 2003 : 21:40:54
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quote:
Originally posted by ruirib
So this is only good if we agree with you? C'mon, you know better than that.
How come? My country is full of nationalists and militarists and I learned that it is no use to discuss. It is like religion topic... What will come out from a discussion between an atheist and a radical religionist?
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Deleted
deleted
4116 Posts |
Posted - 20 February 2003 : 21:43:44
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quote:
Originally posted by Nathan
I don't think anyone outside of Iraq can really judge Sadaam (not that they should anyway) because of the nice thick layer of media censorship and propaganda between us and reality.
At last another point of view  |
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ruirib
Snitz Forums Admin
Portugal
26364 Posts |
Posted - 20 February 2003 : 21:52:05
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quote:
Originally posted by bozden
quote:
Originally posted by ruirib
So this is only good if we agree with you? C'mon, you know better than that.
How come? My country is full of nationalists and militarists and I learned that it is no use to discuss. It is like religion topic... What will come out from a discussion between an atheist and a radical religionist?
If you're not willing to accept that people think differently, why post? Do you want to impose your view on others? Can't you recognize any value to other people's thoughts if they disagree with you?
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