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Originally posted by bozden

Thanks, they are all released now . We will read his reasons tomorrow, but as far as we know now, he had a family problem and he did not want to join the army...

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Originally posted by Alfred

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Originally posted by bozden

Thanks, they are all released now . We will read his reasons tomorrow, but as far as we know now, he had a family problem and he did not want to join the army...

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Happy for you and your family, and the passengers.
By the way,I guess he was successful - I doubt the army will want him!

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Originally posted by Pi
My comments are not meant to denigrate (the military) but to
respectfully challenge "We" and "Our" as in "We are just showing our support"
We = We the Forum Administrators, not We = the snitz community.

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Originally posted by bozden


I don't think so. The military task is compulsory in Turkey, they will actually "want" him... We don't have wide spread professional army as you have...

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Originally posted by bozdenI don't think so. The military task is compulsory in Turkey, they will actually "want" him... We don't have wide spread professional army as you have...

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Originally posted by Pi

Reply to davye
WOW - everyones's kinda gettin low down and dirty here...
I'll see your anti-war cartoon and raise you
a gassed Kurd photo??? What next? Links to Chechen execution videos on ogrish.com?

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Originally posted by dayve

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Originally posted by Nathan

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Originally posted by Pi

Reply to davye
WOW - everyones's kinda gettin low down and dirty here...

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Originally posted by dayve


http://kurdistan.org/Multimedia/Iraq.jpg

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The U.S. also weighed in heavily on Iraq's side in the war with Iran, a process that had begun even before diplomatic relations were restored. In the ensuing years, the U.S. led a campaign to cut off the flow of Western arms to Iran (while at the same time secretly providing sophisticated weaponry to Tehran), reportedly gave Iraq access to intelligence on Iranian military dispositions, spearheaded the drive for a U.N. Security Council resolution ordering a halt to the fighting, and provided naval escort for tankers of Iraq's neighbor and ally Kuwait. The naval escort operation led to clashes between U.S. and Iranian forces in the Gulf in l987 and l988.

With the warming of relations, the United States began providing Iraq billions of dollars in credits to purchase agricultural and industrial products. The war with Iran caused Iraq to borrow on a massive scale, which in turn caused Iraq's credit rating to drop. U.S. and other Western banks, concerned over Iraq's mounting foreign debt and increasingly uncertain whether the government in Baghdad would be able to withstand Iran's onslaught, became reluctant to loan to Iraq. In l983, the U.S. government stepped in to ease Iraq's burden by providing credits through the United States Commodity Credit Corporation ("CCC") credit-guarantee program, for the purchase of U.S. agricultural products. Through l988, Iraq acquired more than $2.8 billion in U.S. agricultural products under the CCC credit-guarantee program. In l989, the year following the Reagan administration's public rebuke of Iraq for using chemical weapons against its Kurdish population, the Bush administration doubled the CCC program for Iraq, raising credits to a level exceeding one billion dollars in 1989. In addition to credit guarantees, the CCC program has also included some interest-free loans and some direct sales at prices subsidized by the U.S. government, according to U.S. Department of Agriculture officials.

...

Despite the abuses described in the country reports on Iraq, the Reagan and Bush administrations have fallen disappointingly short when it comes to matching words with action. It is almost as though, having issued its annual report on Iraq, the administration considers its duty done and the matter dropped for the rest of the year, unless particularly egregious new violations take place.

...

Iraq's use of poison gas against its Kurdish citizens in late August and early September l988 drew a vigorous protest from then Secretary of State George Shultz. During a visit to Washington on September 8 by Iraqi Minister of State Saadoun Hammadi, a member of President Saddam Hussein's inner circle, Shultz made known publicly, in extraordinarily candid and undiplomatic terms, his and the Reagan administration's dismay over Iraq's action. In the end, however, Shultz acceded to pressure from the State Department's Middle East professionals and approved a recommendation that the administration oppose Congressionally mandated sanctions against Iraq. A sanctions bill, which at first seemed assured of passage, died in the House.>

The U.S. took no other concrete step to manifest displeasure. The administration did not recall the newly arrived U.S. ambassador in Baghdad, By contrast, on August 29, l989, the State Department recalled Ambassador Sol Polansky from Sofia in protest of Bulgaria's mistreatment of its ethnic Turkish minority. and U.S.-government trade credits and guarantees were not eliminated or reduced, but instead were doubled the following year.

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Until such time as the Iraqi government takes steps to show sincere and meaningful progress toward respect of the fundamental rights of its citizens, the Bush administration should publicly condemn serious Iraqi abuses. The administration should sponsor, speak out for, actively support and lobby for resolutions in the United Nations, particularly in the Commission on Human Rights and, to the extent appropriate, in the General Assembly, of resolutions censuring Iraq for its consistent gross violations of human rights. The State Department should seek to engage the Iraqi government in a dialogue on human rights, including discussing with Iraqi officials the findings of the annual country report. All Commodity Credit Corporation and Export-Import Bank credits should be terminated. And U.S. exports to Iraq of any product or technology that could contribute to Iraq's military capabilities, or to the maintenance or strengthening of Iraq's internal security forces, should be banned.

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When it comes to demonising Saddam Hussein, nothing captures the popular imagination in America better than the statement that 'he gassed his own people'. ...

...

As Iraq's use of poison gases in war and in peace was public knowledge, the question arises: what did the United States administration do about it then? Absolutely nothing. Indeed, so powerful was the grip of the pro-Baghdad lobby on the administration of Republican President Ronald Reagan that it got the White House to foil the Senate's attempt to penalise Iraq for its violation of the Geneva Protocol on Chemical Weapons to which it was a signatory. This made Saddam believe that the US was his firm ally - a deduction that paved the way for his brutal invasion and occupation of Kuwait and the 1991 Gulf war, the outcomes of which have not yet fully played themselves out.

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That the Pentagon had first-hand knowledge of Iraq's use of chemical agents during these offensives was confirmed by the New York Times two weeks ago. 'After the Iraqi army, with American planning assistance, retook the Fao peninsula, a Defense Intelligence Agency officer, Lt Col Rick Francona, now retired, was sent to tour the battlefield with Iraqi officers,' wrote Patrick Tyler of the Times. 'Francona saw zones marked off for chemical contamination, and containers for the drug atropine scattered around, indicating that Iraqi soldiers had taken injections to protect themselves from the effects of gas that might blow back over their positions.'

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... Instead of condemning Baghdad for this, the Security Council, dominated by Washington and Moscow, both pro-Iraq, coupled its condemnation of Baghdad with its disapproval of 'the prolongation of the war' by Tehran for refusing a truce until the council had named Iraq the aggressor.

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Starting in July 1986, aided by the Pentagon, which clandestinely seconded its air force officers to work with their Iraqi counterparts, Saddam's air force greatly improved its targeting accuracy, striking relentlessly the enemy's power plants, factories and bridges, and extending the range of its strikes to Iran's oil terminals in the lower Gulf. ...

...

Against this background, Iraq started hitting Tehran with its upgraded Scud ground-to-ground missiles in late February 1988. To retake Halabja from Iran and its Kurdish allies, who had captured it in March, Iraq's air force attacked it with poison gas bombs. The objective was to take out the occupying Iranian troops (who had by then left the town); instead, the assault killed 3,200 to 5,000 civilians. The images of men, woman and children, frozen in instant death, relayed by the Iranian media, shocked the world. Yet no condemnation came from Washington. ...

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That was the end of the story - until the hawks in the Bush administration recently began bandying about the revolting phrase of 'gassing his own people' for their partisan ends.

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"In the late afternoon of 16 March the first wave of Iraqi planes appeared over the town to drop their bomb-loads of mustard gas, nerve gas and cyanide. Within a few hours as many as 5,000 people were dead and as many again lay burned and gasping for breath from the effects of the chemical attack. . . Men, women and children lay dead with no visible marks of injury, but with faces distorted by asphyxiation. . . Despite the scale of the massacre and the fact that Western journalists were on the scene within days, the international reaction to the bombing was muted. . . The eight-year Iran-Iraq war had entered its end game, and the world powers were unwilling to take action against Iraq for its use of illegal weapons in such a way as to appear to be siding with Iran. . . The Arab states stayed firmly on Iraq's side, although they were in no doubt as to what had happened. When a Kurdish delegation appealed to Kuwait to protest against innocent civilians being sprayed with poison gas, the were asked by a Kuwaiti official: 'What did you expect to be sprayed with, rose-water?' "(73)

After the U.S.-led allied air offense against Iraq, Kurdish people revolted again against the Iraqi regime. Operation Provide Comfort created safe havens for the Kurdish population against IraqÔs air-force. Enticed by the encouragement and promises of the C.I.A. and the Bush administration that American air-forces will protect them from Iraqi helicopters, Iraqi Kurds organized a campaign against Baghdad.(74) They were betrayed by the American government once again. In desperation, one Kurdish faction betrayed the other and Saddam's tanks moved in Kurdistan killing and arresting hundreds of Kurdish dissidents.(75)

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(73) No Friends But the Mountains, John Bulloch & Harvey Morris, Viking, pp. 142-143,

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Did the US make war on the tyrant then? The US press has confirmed that, at the time, about 60 US officers had secretly given the Iraqi army "detailed information on Iranian deployments" and were discussing battle plans. US advisors, told of the use of gas, did not object to it "because they considered Iraq to be struggling for its survival" (2).

In 1984 the Reagan administration re-established diplomatic relations with Baghdad (interrupted by the 1967 war), deleted it from its list of countries supporting terrorism and promoted it to the rank of bastion against the "Islamic revolution". When George Bush Senior became president in January 1989, he made a statement both stupid and cynical: "Normal relations between the United States and Iraq would serve our longer term interests and promote stability in both the Gulf and the Middle East. The United States government should propose economic and political incentives for Iraq to moderate its behaviour and to increase our influence."

At this time US companies, with the backing of the State Department, were exporting to Iraq products that could be used to make biological weapons (3). The "international community", so keen during the 1990s to uncover the history of Iraq's programme of weapons of mass destruction, never investigated foreign companies that helped Iraq. Many western governments - including the US, Germany and France - had been involved.

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(2) The New York Times, 18 August 2002.

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• Use images that are universally recognized. For example, use an envelope to represent mail, but don't use a mailbox because it's not a universal symbol.


• Don't Use culturally sensitive images. For example, avoid using images of religious symbols, or animals.


• Avoid jargon, slang, humor, extravagant language, or ethnic stereotypes.


• If you portray men and women, ensure that their gender roles are suitable, and that gestures and images of the human body are appropriate in the target culture.


• Use color appropriately. For example, avoid using color combinations associated with national flags or political movements.


• If you're not sure whether an icon or bitmap is appropriate, consult someone in the locale for which you're designing the application.

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Avoid Political Symbols

When it comes to governments and politics, it is very important to realize that your product's distribution in a local market is often dependent upon the local government's approval. Thus when localizing for a specific market, you must take into account the local government's expectations for content. As much as possible, it's important to avoid including content that could offend the local government-either by challenging its authority or by criticizing it through support of a rival government or faction.

Software has been banned in some countries and regions simply because a map showed that a disputed piece of land belonged to another country. Maps are very graphic and obvious statements about a government's sovereignty, so a user associated with the disputed piece of land would know very quickly if the maps are accurate or not. In addition to maps, flags can be a very sensitive piece of content. For example, a flag in a UI that represented an unrecognized country was very upsetting to a nearby government, causing that government to ban a product on the basis of the unrecognized national flag. Both of the incidents just mentioned emphasize one of the most misused group of graphics: political symbols, maps, and flags. Most unknowing developers use flags as a graphical way to display a particular language, country, or region, but that is not what a flag represents. Flags are nationalistic; they represent ideals, boundaries, and political beliefs, but they do not represent a language. For instance, which flag do you use to represent the English language-the American flag, the British flag, the Canadian flag, or the Australian flag? All of these countries speak English. In the process of selecting the most appropriate flag, you will inevitably offend someone because you left them out. The best practice with all flags, national symbols, maps, and so forth is to avoid them as much as possible.

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Originally posted by bozden


On the other hand, knowing that US Gov and other western countries also played their roles in the massacre does not make me better. Please take your time and read these (non-readers are also invited).

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