Mesopotamia. Babylon. The Tigris and Euphrates, by Arundhati Roy
 

Mesopotamia. Babylon. The Tigris and Euphrates
By Arundhati Roy

On the steel torsos of their missiles, adolescent American soldiers
scrawl colourful messages in childish handwriting: For Saddam, from the
Fat Boy Posse. A building goes down. A marketplace. A home. A girl who
loves a boy. A child who only ever wanted to play with his older
brother's marbles.

On March 21, the day after American and British troops began their
illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq, an "embedded" CNN correspondent
interviewed an American soldier. "I wanna get in there and get my nose
dirty," Private AJ said. "I wanna take revenge for 9/11."

To be fair to the correspondent, even though he was "embedded" he did
sort of weakly suggest that so far there was no real evidence that
linked the Iraqi government to the September 11 attacks. Private AJ
stuck his teenage tongue out all the way down to the end of his chin.
"Yeah, well that stuff's way over my head," he said.

According to a New York Times/CBS News survey, 42 per cent of the
American public believes that Saddam Hussein is directly responsible for
the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon. And
an ABC news poll says that 55 per cent of Americans believe that Saddam
Hussein directly supports al-Qaida. What percentage of America's armed
forces believe these fabrications is anybody's guess.

It is unlikely that British and American troops fighting in Iraq are
aware that their governments supported Saddam Hussein both politically
and financially through his worst excesses.

But why should poor AJ and his fellow soldiers be burdened with these
details? It does not matter any more, does it? Hundreds of thousands of
men, tanks, ships, choppers, bombs, ammunition, gas masks, high-protein
food, whole aircrafts ferrying toilet paper, insect repellent, vitamins
and bottled mineral water, are on the move. The phenomenal logistics of
Operation Iraqi Freedom make it a universe unto itself. It doesn't need
to justify its existence any more. It exists. It is.

President George W Bush, commander in chief of the US army, navy,
airforce and marines has issued clear instructions: "Iraq. Will. Be.
Liberated." (Perhaps he means that even if Iraqi people's bodies are
killed, their souls will be liberated.) American and British citizens
owe it to the supreme commander to forsake thought and rally behind
their troops. Their countries are at war. And what a war it is.

After using the "good offices" of UN diplomacy (economic sanctions and
weapons inspections) to ensure that Iraq was brought to its knees, its
people starved, half a million of its children killed, its
infrastructure severely damaged, after making sure that most of its
weapons have been destroyed, in an act of cowardice that must surely be
unrivalled in history, the "Allies"/"Coalition of the Willing"(better
known as the Coalition of the Bullied and Bought) - sent in an invading
army!

Operation Iraqi Freedom? I don't think so. It's more like Operation
Let's Run a Race, but First Let Me Break Your Knees.

So far the Iraqi army, with its hungry, ill-equipped soldiers, its old
guns and ageing tanks, has somehow managed to temporarily confound and
occasionally even outmanoeuvre the "Allies". Faced with the richest,
best-equipped, most powerful armed forces the world has ever seen, Iraq
has shown spectacular courage and has even managed to put up what
actually amounts to a defence. A defence which the Bush/Blair Pair have
immediately denounced as deceitful and cowardly. (But then deceit is an
old tradition with us natives. When we are invaded/ colonised/occupied
and stripped of all dignity, we turn to guile and opportunism.)

Even allowing for the fact that Iraq and the "Allies" are at war, the
extent to which the "Allies" and their media cohorts are prepared to go
is astounding to the point of being counterproductive to their own
objectives.

When Saddam Hussein appeared on national TV to address the Iraqi people
after the failure of the most elaborate assassination attempt in history
- "Operation Decapitation" - we had Geoff Hoon, the British defence
secretary, deriding him for not having the courage to stand up and be
killed, calling him a coward who hides in trenches. We then had a flurry
of Coalition speculation - Was it really Saddam, was it his double? Or
was it Osama with a shave? Was it pre-recorded? Was it a speech? Was it
black magic? Will it turn into a pumpkin if we really, really want it
to?

After dropping not hundreds, but thousands of bombs on Baghdad, when a
marketplace was mistakenly blown up and civilians killed - a US army
spokesman implied that the Iraqis were blowing themselves up! "They're
using very old stock. Their missiles go up and come down."

If so, may we ask how this squares with the accusation that the Iraqi
regime is a paid-up member of the Axis of Evil and a threat to world
peace?

When the Arab TV station al-Jazeera shows civilian casualties it's
denounced as "emotive" Arab propaganda aimed at orchestrating hostility
towards the "Allies", as though Iraqis are dying only in order to make
the "Allies" look bad. Even French television has come in for some stick
for similar reasons. But the awed, breathless footage of aircraft
carriers, stealth bombers and cruise missiles arcing across the desert
sky on American and British TV is described as the "terrible beauty" of
war.

When invading American soldiers (from the army "that's only here to
help") are taken prisoner and shown on Iraqi TV, George Bush says it
violates the Geneva convention and "exposes the evil at the heart of the
regime". But it is entirely acceptable for US television stations to
show the hundreds of prisoners being held by the US government in
Guantanamo Bay, kneeling on the ground with their hands tied behind
their backs, blinded with opaque goggles and with earphones clamped on
their ears, to ensure complete visual and aural deprivation. When
questioned about the treatment of these prisoners, US Government
officials don't deny that they're being being ill-treated. They deny
that they're "prisoners of war"! They call them "unlawful combatants",
implying that their ill-treatment is legitimate! (So what's the party
line on the massacre of prisoners in Mazar-e-Sharif, Afghanistan?
Forgive and forget? And what of the prisoner tortured to death by the
special forces at the Bagram airforce base? Doctors have formally called
it homicide.)

When the "Allies" bombed the Iraqi television station (also,
incidentally, a contravention of the Geneva convention), there was
vulgar jubilation in the American media. In fact Fox TV had been
lobbying for the attack for a while. It was seen as a righteous blow
against Arab propaganda. But mainstream American and British TV continue
to advertise themselves as "balanced" when their propaganda has achieved
hallucinatory levels.

Why should propaganda be the exclusive preserve of the western media?
Just because they do it better? Western journalists "embedded" with

troops are given the status of heroes reporting from the frontlines of
war. Non-"embedded" journalists (such as the BBC's Rageh Omaar,
reporting from besieged and bombed Baghdad, witnessing, and clearly
affected by the sight of bodies of burned children and wounded people)
are undermined even before they begin their reportage: "We have to tell
you that he is being monitored by the Iraqi authorities."

Increasingly, on British and American TV, Iraqi soldiers are being
referred to as "militia" (ie: rabble). One BBC correspondent
portentously referred to them as "quasi-terrorists". Iraqi defence is
"resistance" or worse still, "pockets of resistance", Iraqi military
strategy is deceit. (The US government bugging the phone lines of UN
security council delegates, reported by the Observer, is hard-headed
pragmatism.) Clearly for the "Allies", the only morally acceptable
strategy the Iraqi army can pursue is to march out into the desert and
be bombed by B-52s or be mowed down by machine-gun fire. Anything short
of that is cheating.

And now we have the siege of Basra. About a million and a half people,
40 per cent of them children. Without clean water, and with very little
food. We're still waiting for the legendary Shia "uprising", for the
happy hordes to stream out of the city and rain roses and hosannahs on
the "liberating" army. Where are the hordes? Don't they know that
television productions work to tight schedules? (It may well be that if
Saddam's regime falls there will be dancing on the streets of Basra. But
then, if the Bush regime were to fall, there would be dancing on the
streets the world over.)

After days of enforcing hunger and thirst on the citizens of Basra, the
"Allies" have brought in a few trucks of food and water and positioned
them tantalisingly on the outskirts of the city. Desperate people flock
to the trucks and fight each other for food. (The water we hear, is
being sold. To revitalise the dying economy, you understand.) On top of
the trucks, desperate photographers fought each other to get pictures of
desperate people fighting each other for food. Those pictures will go
out through photo agencies to newspapers and glossy magazines that pay
extremely well. Their message: The messiahs are at hand, distributing
fishes and loaves.

As of July last year the delivery of $5.4bn worth of supplies to Iraq
was blocked by the Bush/Blair Pair. It didn't really make the news. But
now under the loving caress of live TV, 450 tonnes of humanitarian aid -
a minuscule fraction of what's actually needed (call it a script prop) -
arrived on a British ship, the "Sir Galahad". Its arrival in the port of
Umm Qasr merited a whole day of live TV broadcasts. Barf bag, anyone?

Nick Guttmann, head of emergencies for Christian Aid, writing for the
Independent on Sunday said that it would take 32 Sir Galahad's a day to
match the amount of food Iraq was receiving before the bombing began.

We oughtn't to be surprised though. It's old tactics. They've been at it
for years. Consider this moderate proposal by John McNaughton from the
Pentagon Papers, published during the Vietnam war: "Strikes at
population targets (per se) are likely not only to create a
counterproductive wave of revulsion abroad and at home, but greatly to
increase the risk of enlarging the war with China or the Soviet Union.
Destruction of locks and dams, however - if handled right - might ...
offer promise. It should be studied. Such destruction does not kill or
drown people. By shallow-flooding the rice, it leads after time to
widespread starvation (more than a million?) unless food is provided -
which we could offer to do 'at the conference table'."

Times haven't changed very much. The technique has evolved into a
doctrine. It's called "Winning Hearts and Minds".

So, here's the moral maths as it stands: 200,000 Iraqis estimated to
have been killed in the first Gulf war. Hundreds of thousands dead
because of the economic sanctions. (At least that lot has been saved
from Saddam Hussein.) More being killed every day. Tens of thousands of
US soldiers who fought the 1991 war officially declared "disabled" by a
disease called the Gulf war syndrome, believed in part to be caused by
exposure to depleted uranium. It hasn't stopped the "Allies" from
continuing to use depleted uranium.

And now this talk of bringing the UN back into the picture. But that old
UN girl - it turns out that she just ain't what she was cracked up to
be. She's been demoted (although she retains her high salary). Now she's
the world's janitor. She's the Philippino cleaning lady, the Indian
jamadarni, the postal bride from Thailand, the Mexican household help,
the Jamaican au pair. She's employed to clean other peoples' shit. She's
used and abused at will.

Despite Blair's earnest submissions, and all his fawning, Bush has made
it clear that the UN will play no independent part in the administration
of postwar Iraq. The US will decide who gets those juicy
"reconstruction" contracts. But Bush has appealed to the international
community not to "politicise" the issue of humanitarian aid. On the
March 28, after Bush called for the immediate resumption of the UN's oil
for food programme, the UN security council voted unanimously for the
resolution. This means that everybody agrees that Iraqi money (from the
sale of Iraqi oil) should be used to feed Iraqi people who are starving
because of US led sanctions and the illegal US-led war.

Contracts for the "reconstruction" of Iraq we're told, in discussions on
the business news, could jump-start the world economy. It's funny how
the interests of American corporations are so often, so successfully and
so deliberately confused with the interests of the world economy. While
the American people will end up paying for the war, oil companies,
weapons manufacturers, arms dealers, and corporations involved in
"reconstruction" work will make direct gains from the war. Many of them
are old friends and former employers of the Bush/ Cheney/Rumsfeld/Rice
cabal. Bush has already asked Congress for $75bn. Contracts for
"re-construction" are already being negotiated. The news doesn't hit the
stands because much of the US corporate media is owned and managed by
the same interests.

Operation Iraqi Freedom, Tony Blair assures us is about returning Iraqi
oil to the Iraqi people. That is, returning Iraqi oil to the Iraqi
people via corporate multinationals. Like Shell, like Chevron, like
Halliburton. Or are we missing the plot here? Perhaps Halliburton is
actually an Iraqi company? Perhaps US vice-president Dick Cheney (who is
a former director of Halliburton) is a closet Iraqi?

As the rift between Europe and America deepens, there are signs that the
world could be entering a new era of economic boycotts. CNN reported
that Americans are emptying French wine into gutters, chanting, "We
don't want your stinking wine." We've heard about the re-baptism of
French fries. Freedom fries they're called now. There's news trickling
in about Americans boycotting German goods. The thing is that if the
fallout of the war takes this turn, it is the US who will suffer the
most. Its homeland may be defended by border patrols and nuclear
weapons, but its economy is strung out across the globe. Its economic
outposts are exposed and vulnerable to attack in every direction.
Already the internet is buzzing with elaborate lists of American and
British government products and companies that should be boycotted.
Apart from the usual targets, Coke, Pepsi and McDonald's - government
agencies such as USAID, the British department for international
development, British and American banks, Arthur Anderson, Merrill Lynch,
American Express, corporations such as Bechtel, General Electric, and
companies such as Reebok, Nike and Gap - could find themselves under
siege. These lists are being honed and re fined by activists across the
world. They could become a practical guide that directs and channels the
amorphous, but growing fury in the world. Suddenly, the "inevitability"
of the project of corporate globalisation is beginning to seem more than
a little evitable.

It's become clear that the war against terror is not really about
terror, and the war on Iraq not only about oil. It's about a
superpower's self-destructive impulse towards supremacy, stranglehold,
global hegemony. The argument is being made that the people of Argentina
and Iraq have both been decimated by the same process. Only the weapons
used against them differ: In one case it's an IMF chequebook. In the
other, cruise missiles.

Finally, there's the matter of Saddam's arsenal of weapons of mass
destruction. (Oops, nearly forgot about those!)

In the fog of war - one thing's for sure - if Saddam 's regime indeed
has weapons of mass destruction, it is showing an astonishing degree of
responsibility and restraint in the teeth of extreme provocation. Under
similar circumstances, (say if Iraqi troops were bombing New York and
laying siege to Washington DC) could we expect the same of the Bush
regime? Would it keep its thousands of nuclear warheads in their
wrapping paper? What about its chemical and biological weapons? Its
stocks of anthrax, smallpox and nerve gas? Would it?

Excuse me while I laugh.

In the fog of war we're forced to speculate: Either Saddam is an
extremely responsible tyrant. Or - he simply does not possess weapons of
mass destruction. Either way, regardless of what happens next, Iraq
comes out of the argument smelling sweeter than the US government.

So here's Iraq - rogue state, grave threat to world peace, paid-up
member of the Axis of Evil. Here's Iraq, invaded, bombed, besieged,
bullied, its sovereignty shat upon, its children killed by cancers, its
people blown up on the streets. And here's all of us watching. CNN-BBC,
BBC-CNN late into the night. Here's all of us, enduring the horror of
the war, enduring the horror of the propaganda and enduring the
slaughter of language as we know and understand it. Freedom now means
mass murder (or, in the US, fried potatoes). When someone says
"humanitarian aid" we automatically go looking for induced starvation.
"Embedded" I have to admit, is a great find. It's what it sounds like.
And what about "arsenal of tactics?" Nice!

In most parts of the world, the invasion of Iraq is being seen as a
racist war. The real danger of a racist war unleashed by racist regimes
is that it engenders racism in everybody - perpetrators, victims,
spectators. It sets the parameters for the debate, it lays out a grid
for a particular way of thinking. There is a tidal wave of hatred for
the US rising from the ancient heart of the world. In Africa, Latin
America, Asia, Europe, Australia. I encounter it every day. Sometimes it
comes from the most unlikely sources. Bankers, businessmen, yuppie
students, and they bring to it all the crassness of their conservative,
illiberal politics. That absurd inability to separate governments from
people: America is a nation of morons, a nation of murderers, they say,
(with the same carelessness with which they say, "All Muslims are
terrorists"). Even in the grotesque universe of racist insult, the
British make their entry as add-ons. Arse-lickers, they're called.

Suddenly, I, who have been vilified for being "anti-American" and
"anti-west", find myself in the extraordinary position of defending the
people of America. And Britain.

[continued below]

[continuation]
 

Those who descend so easily into the pit of racist abuse would do well
to remember the hundreds of thousands of American and British citizens
who protested against their country's stockpile of nuclear weapons. And
the thousands of American war resisters who forced their government to
withdraw from Vietnam. They should know that the most scholarly,
scathing, hilarious critiques of the US government and the "American way
of life" comes from American citizens. And that the funniest, most
bitter condemnation of their prime minister comes from the British
media. Finally they should remember that right now, hundreds of
thousands of British and American citizens are on the streets protesting
the war. The Coalition of the Bullied and Bought consists of
governments, not people. More than one third of America's citizens have
survived the relentless propaganda they've been subjected to, and many
thousands are actively fighting their own government. In the
ultra-patriotic climate that prevails in the US, that's as brave as any
Iraqi fighting for his or her homeland.

While the "Allies" wait in the desert for an uprising of Shia Muslims on
the streets of Basra, the real uprising is taking place in hundreds of
cities across the world. It has been the most spectacular display of
public morality ever seen.

Most courageous of all, are the hundreds of thousands of American people
on the streets of America's great cities - Washington, New York,
Chicago, San Francisco. The fact is that the only institution in the
world today that is more powerful than the American government, is
American civil society. American citizens have a huge responsibility
riding on their shoulders. How can we not salute and support those who
not only acknowledge but act upon that responsibility? They are our
allies, our friends.

At the end of it all, it remains to be said that dictators like Saddam
Hussein, and all the other despots in the Middle East, in the central
Asian republics, in Africa and Latin America, many of them installed,
supported and financed by the US government, are a menace to their own
people. Other than strengthening the hand of civil society (instead of
weakening it as has been done in the case of Iraq), there is no easy,
pristine way of dealing with them. (It's odd how those who dismiss the
peace movement as utopian, don't hesitate to proffer the most absurdly
dreamy reasons for going to war: to stamp out terrorism, install
democracy, eliminate fascism, and most entertainingly, to "rid the world
of evil-doers".)

Regardless of what the propaganda machine tells us, these tin-pot
dictators are not the greatest threat to the world. The real and
pressing danger, the greatest threat of all is the locomotive force that
drives the political and economic engine of the US government, currently
piloted by George Bush. Bush-bashing is fun, because he makes such an
easy, sumptuous target. It's true that he is a dangerous, almost
suicidal pilot, but the machine he handles is far more dangerous than
the man himself.

Despite the pall of gloom that hangs over us today, I'd like to file a
cautious plea for hope: in times of war, one wants one's weakest enemy
at the helm of his forces. And President George W Bush is certainly
that. Any other even averagely intelligent US president would have
probably done the very same things, but would have managed to smoke-up
the glass and confuse the opposition. Perhaps even carry the UN with
him. Bush's tactless imprudence and his brazen belief that he can run
the world with his riot squad, has done the opposite. He has achieved
what writers, activists and scholars have striven to achieve for
decades. He has exposed the ducts. He has placed on full public view the
working parts, the nuts and bolts of the apocalyptic apparatus of the
American empire.

Now that the blueprint (The Ordinary Person's Guide to Empire) has been
put into mass circulation, it could be disabled quicker than the pundits
predicted.

Bring on the spanners.

Ahh, a great time to resurrect one of mine own favorites
 

Mesopotamia, by the B-52s

Turn your watch
Turn your watch back
About a hundred thousand years
A hundred thousand years
I'll meet you by the third pyramid
I'll meet you by the third pyramid
Ah come on, that's right, I want
For me in Mesopotamia

We're going down to meet it
I ain't no student
Feel those vibrations
Of ancient culture
I know a neat excavation
Before I talk I should read a book
But there's one thing That I do know
There's a lot of ruins In Mesopotamia

Six or eight thousand years ago
They laid down the law
They laid down the law
aa aa aa aa aa aaa
Six or eight thousand years ago
They laid down the law
aa aa aa aa aa aaa

I'll meet you by the third pyramid
I'll meet you by the third pyramid
Ah come on, that's right, I want
For me in Mesopotamia

We're going down to meet it
Now I ain't no student
Hear those vibrations
Of ancient culture
I know a neat excavation
Before I talk I should read a book
Mesopotamia that's where I wanna go
But there's one thing that I do know
Mesopotamia that's where I wanna go
There's a lot of ruins in Mesopotamia

Six or eight thousand years ago
They laid down the law
They laid down the law
aa aa aa aa aa aaa
Six or eight thousand years ago
They laid down the law
aa aa aa aa aa aaa
In Mesopotamia
aa aa aa aa aa aaa
They laid down the law
aa aa aa aa aa aaa
In Mesopotamia
aa aa aa aa aa aaa

You know, it's not the five minutes of government commercials at the start of every show. It's the patriotic songs they make us sing. They're so boring!

Mebbe for the next round of songs they can get someone like Elton John and Tim Rice to write 'em? They put together some catchy ditties for Disney ... real toe tappers.

:)
Hey, look what I found in the dictionary :

Denial \De*ni"al\, n. [See Deny.]
1: the act of refusing a request; "it resulted in a complete denial of his privileges"
2: an assertion that something alleged is not true
3: (psychiatry) a defense mechanism that denies painful thoughts
4: renunciation of your own interests in favor of the interests of others [syn: abnegation, self-abnegation, self-denial, self-renunciation]
5: a defendant's answer or plea denying the truth of the charges against him; "he gave evidence for the defense" [syn: defense, defence, demurrer] [ant: prosecution]

Iteresting, isn't it ?

That's just plain scary. I do find media reporting of the nec-con doocterine behind this that pre-dates anything to do with S-11 encouraging though, the more people that know that this is a war driven by a few people's personal grudges the better.

mo·ron ( P ) Pronunciation Key (môrn, mr-)

n. 1. A stupid person; a dolt.
2. Psychology. A person of mild mental retardation having a mental age of from 7 to 12 years and generally having communication and social skills enabling some degree of academic or vocational education. The term belongs to a classification system no longer in use and is now considered offensive.

Fact: The US may have created Sadam Hussein in the early 1960's when is supported the Baath party's rise to power.
Fact: The US supported Sadam Hussein during the 80's.
Fact: The US supported and armed the Mujahadeen in the 80's against the Soviet-backed Afghan government.
Fact: The US backed out of Afghanistan when the Soviets left, and years of turmoil followed.

Fact: They have turned those weapons on us, and on their own people, commiting horrible atrocities.

What no one will say, or refuses to see is an ugly concept: Do not aid third world nations militarily; offer them little aid in anything save humanitarian.

If we strictly adhere to the French idea that the younger a 'civilized' nation is, the more irresponsible it is, we conclude that third world nations will act irresponsibly with support and materiel.

People often speak of haves and have-nots, but it's very important to make the have-nots realize that most of what the haves have is complete, utter, extraneous, non-essential bullshit. They should not accept aid from first-world countries, and should politely tell any businesses from them "no".

This is an incomplete thought process, but I just wanted to stir the anthill, and see what comes pouring out.

That's President Moron mister, fight nice. :)

Uryoces you have an interesting, underrecognised point when it comes to aid. I recently an economics lecture of an esteemed economics researcher during which he made a series of interesting points about this.

A: First world nations spending on aid is dwarfed by the damage their trade tarrrifs do to 3rd world economies.

B: Aid itself also can retard growth in third world economies.

C: Globalisation stands to benifit third world nations - look at the new IT market in India as a random example.

     Ooh, it's sweet to give us such an image so we know how much AJ's girlfriend must miss him. Oh wait, I missed it didn't I? Tongue to his chin, kind of like all the old paintings of devils? Ok, AJ is the Devil, got it, I'm caught up now.
     Umm, I went looking for these polls he mentions next and couldn't find them... Somebody give me a hand? It's hard to respond to things I can't find. I suck at web surfing...      It is? Huh, I wonder why it's unlikely that soldiers would have info that was pretty common knowledge... Hell, I knew that when I was 16. Oh wait, how familiar is the author with the idea of "Freedom of the Press?"     Yup, which is why we all need to support our troops.      Nah, I figure if he meant that then we'd be talking about the great Iraqi glass sheet by now. But yeah, we should rally behind our troops. The thinking part is actually continuous though. The doing something is for election day. You see we can actually vote on wether or not to keep him, cool huh?      Would it have been preferable to just level the country from the air?      Heh, well as long as we all know who's going to win...      Yeah, that sandstorm they put up really slowed us down. Oh wait, that was nature? Sorry, my bad. So yeah, they've done pretty well surrendering and then shooting us when we accept the surrender. Pehaps we should shoot everyone we see? That might keep us from being "outmanoeuvred." Just a thought.
     Actually, this is kinda fun. Maybe I'll do more later but for now I think this post has gone way to long and I've got some other threads I wanted to check.

Instead of documenting what's wrong with the essay, try to find things that are accurate and correct that she doesn't say by accident.

Let's see...

Nope. Not one thing. The whole thing is a big ol' stinking steaming turd.

     Oops, you're right UT. Sorry, it really was fun though...
     On to other stuff.
     Ok, I can see that but without the tariffs third world countries undercut our cost's on everything and nothing would get made here. This means unemployment goes through the roof and the economy tanks. Now everybody's third world, who was helped?
     What I'm trying to say is that I think people are overestimating what we can do. Especialy if your talking about the US by itself. We're just one country and hey, we're in debt. If you add some of the other nations into it we can do a little more but it's still going to come down to these countries doing what Uryoces suggested and saying "no" and doing it themselves. Here's hoping they get some leadership that can find a path that let's them do that.

Found one!
 

     See? There was something accurate in there. Let's face it making fun of the Pres, no matter who's in office, is fun. Bush has given us several good laughs. Not as many as Quayle though, and Quayle was only a vice.

Golden Oldie
 

If from the heights, you watch the sea,
O little darky, slave among slaves,
You’ll see, dreamlike, many ships approach,
And a flag that billows o’er the waves.

Little black face, wait and hope,
For the hour nears, beautiful Abyssinian,
Once we have reached you and stand at your side,
A new law you’ll have, and a brand-new king.

We are merely the slaves of love,
And our watchwords are Duty and Freedom!
Our Pillars of Righteousness we shall avenge,
Which falling, have freed you from serfdom.

Little black face, petite Abyssinian,
We’ll bring you, free at last, to Rome;
Then you too shall wear our homeland’s garb,
You too shall be kissed by our golden sun.

Little black face, you’ll Roman be,
And our proud flag your own will be.
And proudly together we’ll march and sing,
Before the Duce, before the King!

Fascist Italy's conquest of Ethiopia in 1935-36

I kept having this Kiplingesque phrase run through my head: "White man's burden", but I shook it off and went with a Star Trek metaphor: Non-interference. Do not interfere in the growth process of a less-techincally advanced culture. Don't intervene unless invited, and even then ever-mindful of screwing things up.

My job will end up in India. They will provide my replacement with a house and a car, pay him $3.50/hr, and he'll live better than I do. However, I'm not sure who's getting screwed in this exchange.

Quote found on Slashdot: --My name is George W. Bush. You tried to kill my father. Prepare to die.

Wow, that's certainly convenient for you.

Try debunking this then:

While you're at it, try debunking the rest of the text :

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarti...15&ItemID=3369

And good luck !

I'm not usually a fan of Chomsky but he has a pretty damn good point.

I would not have thought anyone would pay attention to the man after he was so completely wrong about Afghanistan. I would have thought anyone paying attention would find him to be consistently contrarian and unable to speak or think in any other terms. But it would seem that consistency is not a requirement to be king of the lost anti crowd.

If one needs to disprove Chomsky, one need only wait for the pages of history to repeatedly show him to be wrong. In the meantime, we can scold him for not displaying a pinch of original thought in these remarks. He's supposed to be a serious thinker, a Big Man of Academia, and he's repeating the same old crapola, albeit in Ivory Tower terminology.

Frankly I don't know how anyone can stand to read shit like this:

No one knows -- that is, except for the logistics experts offloading shipping containers of food and medicine on the docks that haven't seen food or medicine despite years of UN programs allegedly meant to deliver nothing else.

But at least ol Noam is effectively shown to have been reduced to his component parts: 99% babbling nihilism coated with 1% academic schlock. Think about that quote, people. You don't resort to violence, because you simply do not know what will happen. What the fucking fuck?

You can be absolutely, positively certain that Saddam Hussein and his thugs won't be in charge. Chomsky may not know that. But you and I do, because we're smarter than he is.

Quod erat demonstrandum, Chomsky remains a dolt.

Hey, let's all speculate, precede it with the phrase "Fact:", and then pass it off as irrefutable truth!

Jesus, is it really that easy? I'm adding this technique to my repertoire.

Yeah, that does sound goofy; not contructed well...
Lemme start that over: Some folks have suggested that we created the situation which allowed Sadam to rise to power by supporting the Baath Party. I personally view that as an unintended consequence.

No I don't think you wanna add that one. I was going for more of a bullet-point or little star effect, kind of Power-pointy.

No "Fact:"'s for you!!!

     Debunking??? Oh boy! Let's go with the whole thing from the beginning shall we?      This is kinda neat, the interviewee get's top billing for writing the interview? I like this, let me try.
Me: This seems like a ridiculously one sided conversation to everyone capable of thought, would you agree?
Myself: Of course, by asking questions with a ludicrous slant I can sound much more reasonable with silly-ass responses.
     Hey, I like this... Oops, I haven't actually gotten to the, heh,"interview" yet.      Go us! Um, by the by, has anyone actually heard any references to the "new Norm" or is it just him? Seriously though, bare with me on this one.      Really? Let's see this explicit "doctrine of preventive war." In fact, here's a quote from it. Quote taken from here: http://www.whitehouse.gov/nsc/nss5.html      Ah but Chomsky read that, see?      Hey, that's virtually a direct quote of the same words... Oh wait no it's not...It's virtually the opposite.      Rule the world? But wasn't the point of what did get posted directly onto the Celler amount to "The U.S. doesn't have the nut's to attack people with nukes or effective terrorism, so you better get 'em quick?" Maybe I misread, because that contradicts. Run with one or the other, but we can't be intending world domination and be to afraid to attack these other country's. So which is it?      Approximating?I like this too. Hey, didn't UT say that the original piece was aromatic and warm? Or words that approximated that? Hmm, stinking and steaming, that's close enough.      That's the statement? Where? Damn, I must be getting old 'cause I just read that boring ass paper and I didn't see that. Wow, official policy. I guess it's been openly claimed though, since it's official. I wonder where?
     Holy morning sunshine, it almost 3:30 am here. I need to get some sleep. I could go on if anybody wants to read more of these stupidly long posts though.
     Oh yeah, one more thing. Sorry, UT, I know what you said about how to handle this kind of thing earlier, but please forgive me on the grounds that I really did have fun doing this.

I have. I watched a frontline episode just recently that described the security strategy views of the people in Bush's cabinet. Here.

You've taken this quote completely out of context. Did you happen to catch the pages of material that came before it, or maybe the stuff that came after?

The thing is, both Chomsky and Roy fail to offer any suggestions on how to manage Hussein otherwise. They prefer the status quo:

http://www.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/meast/...lex/index.html

US/UK forces found a UN complex that was bulging with undistributed food - in Basra, the very city in which Roy claims a humanitarian disaster created by 4 days of US/UK "siege", which has in fact been starving for ages.

CZ, you paying attention? Every morning's news disproves these numbnuts further. Or is it all just more propaganda?

Undertoad, this is not dialog. You act like everything you say it's pretty obvious and people that say otherwise are dolts and numbnuts.

You're turning what could be a good debate into a flamewar, and that's pretty useless.

Both texts I posted contain some very serious and interesting points, and the fact that you, being obviously pro war and pro US government, chose to make ridicule of it and react in a very angry way suggests that It must have hit a nerve.

Know only one thing (and this I can tell you from experience): The great majority of the world disproves the war and US policy in general.

Simply ignoring that with such an obnoxious attitude doesn't improve things. What Bush is managing to do is amazing. He's singlehandedly uniting the world against the US. That alone shows that his principal motive is not stopping foreign terrorism (American and American-supported terrorism was always OK. Keep in mind I come from a country where the elected president was deposed by the CIA, and the following dictatorship killed many people in my parent's generation).

So go ahead and call me a dolt, a moron, whatever you like. It doesn't mean much coming from you. I just hope you wise up eventually.

"What's right is not always popular; what's popular is not always right."

Damn, the war AND U.S. policy have both been disproven? And I was so sure of their existence!

(I know, I know. You meant 'disapproves of'. Just having a little fun. :) )

Independently re-invented several times. My own contribution (on Usenet, not /. ) was

"My name is George W. Bush. You took a shot at my daddy. Prepare to die."

     Juju, okay perhaps I should have said, "Has anyone heard of this from a different source?" Both are frontline. I also didn't hear the term "New Norm." But it might be there as I only listened to the fourth and fifth parts because I'm on an archaic dial up connection ... during the middle of the day...
     I now know from an IM with you that you thought I meant the idea, not the phrase, sorry if I was unclear. My point was to illustrate that Chomsky seems to have made it up, since it wasn't in the doctrine that I could find, and applied it directly to the administration. As if it were their words not his. I joked last night about using this kind of misrepresentative slanting techniques but it's not really funny. If you only read this article would there be any question that this was the Bush Administration's name for it's policies? I really doubt it. I was asking to see if maybe someone in the admin did use it before I accused Chomsky of putting words in their mouth.
     Yup, sure did. Now, consider the context of my posting. I was responding to the idea Chomsky was putting forth that this is a US doctrine of world domination. Was the rest of the doctrine more aggressive than this quote suggest, yes. I just think that this line was in the doctrine to address people like Chomsky that would take it to the extreme. Therefore, it's not only not out of context, but present to make this very point.

     CZ, have you considered the approach you chose is no different? That initial essay was propaganda. He responded with the same basic feelings that went into the essay, he was just more open about it. More to the point as well.
     You say he's "turning what could be a good debate into a flamewar" but where is your debate? I've tried to engage and I've been ignored while you focus on griping at UT.
     Also you talk about Bush turning the world against us, is this new? I thought he'd been pissing the world off since he was elected? Trust me, we are very much aware of it. I'm sure it will cost him some votes, even if it's impossible to say how many. What other response would you expect?

CZ, I have a deep interest in having a real discussion of all of the issues. I really wish your essayist had a similar take, but she's ignorant, ill-informed, and when she isn't sure she makes stuff up. But don't take my word on that, read the news item.

Meanwhile, look: you're a Brazilian activist quoting an Indian novelist working in a British medium to claim that Americans are led by their noses by propaganda. And when the American challenges that notion on its lack of merits, you say he's in denial.

The irony really could not be thicker.

By the way, not only is the argument patently ridiculous on its face, it's also offensive as hell.

And frankly, if I'm simply led and propagandist, I'm not sure why an honest examination of the facts would be what you want from me. I'm just gonna parrot the usual ill-considered non-arguments, like "stop the torture" and "end nuclear proliferation" and "international terrorism is bad", you know, stuff like that.

I read the thing, and seriously I don't know what's your point. It talks about some food warehouse that was taken. It contained "tons of supplies". Those being "vast amounts of food staples, tea, sugar, tires, car batteries and sewing machines". How much of it was actually food? Is it good food? Would it be enough to stop the need? They don't say.

And in the end they have this warning:
"EDITOR'S NOTE: This report was written in accordance with Pentagon ground rules allowing so-called embedded reporting, in which journalists join deployed troops. Among the rules accepted by all participating news organizations is an agreement not to disclose sensitive operational details."

How can you trust news sources that are directly censored by the pentagon ?



I tried, but I can't see the irony really. I said you're in denial not because you challenged it, but because you did so in such a childish and unsubstantial way.



You say it's ridiculous but you fail to elaborate on it. So only people who already agree with you share the same opinion.

And how do you find it offensive? Please give me an example.



Because I want to know how far it goes.

Funny, that's normally part of my argumentation against the US government's policy.




It's very different. The text is elaborate on its discussions. It's not just "saddam is bad, m'okey".



I haven't really tried to start it. I don't feel like going into a crusade here where obviously everyone already has his mind made. There's no ambient for a comfortable discussion on this.



It's very new. He's been pissing people off even _before_ he got "elected", but since he started to want to go to war the world public opinion on him, and on the US, reached a configuration _never_ seen before.

In the US ? None.

Internationally, I don't know what to expect, but none of it is good. Increase in terrorism toward the US is probably going to happen.

If you don't trust my sources, I don't trust Roy's.

Fact: the whole depleted uranium scare nonsense has been so thoroughly debunked that anyone still using it is either outright lying or not paying attention.

Fact: if you want to fact-check her "blowing up in the streets" gas, just take a look at spaceimaging.com. You can look at the damage yourself, at 1-meter resolution. You can see the vast areas of residential neighborhoods, completely untouched by the war... and the presidential palace blown to bits.

Common sense: If the US military wanted to kill Iraqi civilians, the number of dead would be in the millions.

If you believe I'm affected by propaganda, AND you believe you can determine "how far it goes", then you must assume that you have perfect knowledge of truth - otherwise you'd not know what was right and what wrong, so as to compare it to my beliefs.

Have you ever been wrong?

     It's different only in the sense that it's "US is bad m'okey." I responded to it remember? The only point I remember thinking was valid was that Bush is fun to make fun of. Please share with us it's validity elsewhere in the piece. I'd be happy to discuss any part of it. By the by, the author clearly has no idea, but do you have any idea how much the US is holding back? I wasn't joking about the 'Great Iraqi Glass Sheet' line. I'm not talking nukes either, so I don't want to hear anything about radioactive fallout.
     As far as Bush goes other than voting him out next election I can't seem to figure out what you'd have us do. Also I've talked to many people in person that say Bush's policies will assure that they vote against him, so unless you assume all US citizens are complete liars then saying "none" is flat wrong. If you are saying this there's no point talking to us here, it would mean most of us are complete liars.
     One more thing, have you been reading this site for the last couple of years? If you had I'd think that you'd have read plenty of anti-Bush sentiment. Yet, you act like all US citizens worship Bush and eagerly serve his every whim. To tell the truth, that's really offensive. I just won't let being offended get in the way of trying to see another viewpoint.

She bases a lot of her opinions on figures and news from mainstream media. So does Chomsky. They just don't trust them blindly as you seem to do.



What exactly are you talking about? About it causing or not causing diseases? About the US using them or not? About the soldiers in the past gulf war suffering or not from them?



That site doesn't even come close to showing the whole "theater of operations". I think that pretty much would be classified information.



Very true. Even though Iraqi civilians are not the primary targets, they'll be trod upon if they get in the way. There's no such thing as a surgical war. The primary targets are more important than the lives of those people.

And if you consider the effects the war will have in the long run, and all the people that will die of things like hunger and diseases because of the destruction of the country's infrastructure, which is necessary to win a war, then what you have is mass murder. Just like all the deaths due to the last war.

There's a professor in my university whose family is from Iraq. He said that he went there last year and brought school material for his nieces (paper, pencil, textbooks, etc.). They didn't let him in with that stuff because of the sanctions. That's the type of thing the US government is willing to do to "bring democracy to Iraq".

Quote:

If you believe I'm affected by propaganda, AND you believe you can determine "how far it goes", then you must assume that you have perfect knowledge of truth - otherwise you'd not know what was right and what wrong, so as to compare it to my beliefs.

I meant to say that I wanted to know how far your opinion goes into the matter, and if there's any region of convergence of ideas between us. I guess not.

Several times. But I don't think assuming that a government that produced people like Henry Kissinger and supported dictators like Pinochet is up to no good is a very far-fetched idea.

OK, here it goes:

Since the sources are mainstream, I guess you people trust it.

Do you think it's OK for the government to go ahead with this war thinking it has full popular support when the people are so uninformed? Do you think it's a coincidence that only the American population believes in this and they're the only ones that support (in majority) the war?

Quote:

By the by, the author clearly has no idea, but do you have any idea how much the US is holding back? I wasn't joking about the 'Great Iraqi Glass Sheet' line. I'm not talking nukes either, so I don't want to hear anything about radioactive fallout.

The only reason they don't do that is because it's not their best interest. It means much more to them to take over the region and use it instead of destroying it. The US wanted Iraq for quite some time. It has nothing to do with Saddam. In fact there was no Saddam, he only appeared because US intervention put him there.

Quote:

As far as Bush goes other than voting him out next election I can't seem to figure out what you'd have us do.

We impeached our president here once. It should be even easier to do it with Bush there since he lost the popular elections. The reason why this is not going to happen is because he is posing as the defender of America, and somehow people got to trust him.

If you don't like Bush it's not enough simply not voting for him the next time. Hell, that didn't work the first time! :) You have to show your dislike so it becomes very obvious to everyone else. You know, make an issue out of it. There are several ways to do this: Public protest, letters to congressmen, creative work, etc.

Quote:

Also I've talked to many people in person that say Bush's policies will assure that they vote against him, so unless you assume all US citizens are complete liars then saying "none" is flat wrong. If you are saying this there's no point talking to us here, it would mean most of us are complete liars.

I was wrong to say 'none' because there's already a lot of protests in the US against the whole thing. The protests have begun even before the war, which is unprecedented. But the way the government got the public opinion by it's leach doesn't fill me with high hopes. But maybe I'm wrong and everything will turn around.

That's certainly not what I think. I know that it's unanimous that Bush is a nimrod. That's why I find the whole situation absurd. Even though people don't like him, they support him because he's the government, and the government representes their country and they support their country. This, in my view, is pseudo-patriotism and is upside down.

I think real patriotism would be separating the government from the country itself, and being in favor of the country. If the government is messing things up, as it usually does everywhere, then the patriot thing to do would be to criticize it.

(I really hate quoting text in this particular way so I'm just going to not quote what you said. I think it'll flow better that way. People remember what you wrote.)

A good summary of why DU is not the hazard the progressives make it out to be (scroll way down):
http://denbeste.nu/cd_log_entries/20...ustrated.shtml

Okay, so you don't like using war on Saddam, and you didn't like sanctions at all... again, what would have been your approach to the guy?

Kissinger and Pinochet: hey, mistakes were made. But that was the 70s! Does this mean some sort of "original sin" applies where it's impossible to do anything right from here on out? Is there no time limit on this stuff?

Private AJ thinks that Saddam was responsible for 9/11: that's okay, because you see, in this country the military acts as a representative of the people, and it truly does not matter what Private AJ thinks. His role in casting judgement on the matter ended on the day he became a soldier.

He understands that, too; it's part of the soldier's burden. And, in fact, not looking too deeply at the big picture may well be part of Private AJ's reasoning. Nobody will ask him if it's a good idea; they'll just order him to fire, and fire he must.

To write about Private AJ without understanding that dilemma is truly to not understand, and that is part of Roy's problem.

NY Times says 42% of US thinks Hussein was responsible for 9/11: Sparky, if you review the record I think you'll find that I've often said I don't trust the NY Times on anything. Often.

(Which is one of the really amazingly stupid things about this conversation: your rabid insistence that I as an American blindly follow and swallow the mass media, cast against my fierce dislike of how the Times frames issues.)

I don't trust the Times and you do. Enough said! I've seen the Times use polls in exactly this way. The tiniest of indiscretions makes a huge difference. You can introduce bias in a poll very easily. Cast one poll against another taken six months apart. In this case you introduce the numbers as if they had anything to do with each other. It just doesn't work that way; you'll have to call each of that supposedly dim 42% and ask whether they want to go to war or not. Otherwise you're making an assumption, simply indulging in a fantasy about how the numbers are connected, creating a dopey American pro-war stereotype.

"55 percent of Americans believe that Saddam Hussein directly supports al-Qaida" is similar. The correct answer for most of us would be "Don't Know" -- which means you can't expect any reason from poll answers, especially if "Don't Know" wasn't one of the choices.

Well, until this morning, anyway. Here's MSNBC's story today of how shoes from a terrorist training camp in Northern Iraq tested positive tests for Botulinum and Ricin, and considered linked to al-Qaida.

http://msnbc.com/news/895185.asp

See I don't have to write a big long message here to prove Roy wrong. History will do that for us -- and look, it's already started.

Well yes there are well known groups with links to Al Queda in Northern Iraq, your point? The kurds are in Northern Iraq too i don't think Saddam supports them either.

Well-known since March 5; well-denied before that.

Known well before march 5, does it make a difference? They're a local group for starters, secondly their war is with the kurds, your enemy's enemy is your friend, thirdly the US trained Bin Laden.

You don't know and I don't know. It's just another point of information.

     Ah, good. Let's get started. I would certainly accept what the polls say if I could find them. I'm hesitant because I can't seem to confirm these numbers. Watch this, "CNN, MSNBC, NPR, and Reuters polls say 95% of the earths population think Whit is one cool bastard." You'll notice that Roy and I both gave the dates of these polls and some other specifics so that it's easy to check. Oh wait, no we didn't. But since we cited popular sources it must be acceptable. Until, we can verify these numbers I see no reason to accept them. Here's the closest thing I could find, http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/...in540574.shtml
     You should check it out, it might clarify some actual American opinions, but UT's right I wouldn't swear by any of these. Please note the date's though.
     The Pres doesn't take a popular vote to declare war, he goes to Congress. Am I happy about it? Nope, but our men are there now. Would you suggest Viet Nam style protests and calling our soldiers names and spitting on them when they return? Screw that, they are doing their jobs. Doing them well from what I can tell. They are the one's I support, not Bush. Does he get supported by proxy? Yes. Is that good enough reason to not give support, not in my book.
     As far as taking over instead of destroying goes, you don't think we can destroy everything but the oil wells, and refineries? Or perhaps you think Americans are clamoring for a vacation in one of the palaces? Sorry, that was cheap. Point stands though, the only real value for the US offered in Iraq is the oil. Can we agree on that?

     Back to Bush then. So we should impeach him? For being unpopular? We actually have rules that say he's got to be accused of breaking our laws before he can be impeached. We call it 'Grounds for Impeachment.' 'Youthful indiscretions' and insider trading aside, because those issues have been dropped, what US laws has Bush broken? Also, is their anyone reading this that regularly reads the politics forum that is unaware that I dislike Bush? Seems unlikely, the same is true in person. I'd like to think I've made others think about how much they like Bush as well. Free speech at it's most basic.
     As for public opinion on a leash goes, you just doubled the standard. You say we went to war against public opinion and protests, but now it controls public opinion. In fact you did it in the space of two sentences back to back. That's a bit askew. I can't really respond directly so I'll say that people don't have to like or believe in the war to believe in the men fighting it. I think this applies to your last couple of paragraphs too.

     Aw, c'mon UT. I'm a nice guy, forgive a little will ya? Can't I be long-winded in an attempt to make someone understand my position? I do try to be brief but there's lots of idividual points I'm trying to get too... :angel:

That text on depleted uranium was way, way wrong. U-238 _does_ emit other types of radiation other than alpha. It emits beta, x-rays and gamma. It _decays_ through alpha, but it emits all the rest before that. He even says that it's half-life is huge, therefore it almost never decays and emits alpha radiation.

There's no reason to speculate on it, just check a table of nuclides:

http://t2.lanl.gov/cgi-bin/decay?200,9237

The author says then that U-238 is not very radioactive because a Geiger counter doesn't show a lot of activity. His knowledge of physics that he boasts in the text is really lacking, because Geiger counters only detect gamma and x-ray radiation (he himself said that alpha can't penetrate paper, much less enter the detector).

So that doesn't hold.

And about Saddam Hussein, well I don't think there would be a simple solution. Certainly nothing that involves sanctions that hurt the people or unilateral invasion without the consent of the world community is acceptable. Perhaps giving support for opposition movements inside Iraq? Give the means for the _people_ to fix things up? As in democracy? It would not be easy, but it would be right.

You don't have to go back to the seventies to find harmful US intervention. What about Hugo Chavez? The US supported the coup against him. It doesn't matter if you like him or not (I don't), he was democratically elected (by a wide majority). How would you feel if some other country supported a coup against Bush?

And what about the Kurdish massacre with US weapons? What about the on-going embargo on Cuba? Hey, what about Bin Laden? It's easy to continue.

The chances that both New York Times/CBS and ABC are rigged the same way on a poll which the result is unfavorable to their editorial bodies is pretty slim. But even if the figures are half as big in reality, that's still a problem, since it's possible those people would not be in favor of the war if they were informed correctly, and that could make a difference.

I find this argument quite bizarre. Protesting against the war means wanting for the soldiers to stop fighting, go home and not get killed. It's not quite against them.

No, the US doesn't want only the oil. It wants control over the whole region. Israel didn't quite work out for that matter, and the US has historically craved for the middle east. Iraq is going to be it's major incision.

And about Bush, yes it's improbable there's a way to impeach him unless a really big scandal happens. But I wouldn't know.

But I certainly think that taking a passive action against him is not the right choice. That seat he's taking is too damn important. If you can't get to him directly, get to the congress.

The number of protests is unprecedented but it hardly amounts to the majority of the population. The so called "silent majority" (oddly enough) is the one that is currently representing the public opinion.

     It'd would be devastating to morale. Morale sinks and it will effect the troops abilities. In the end more would die than would otherwise.
     On the subject of protests, it's not like if we have 'x' number of protests the war will end. We're in it and that's not going to change because I carry a sign around saying, "No blood for oil" or the like.
     We've craved the middle east? News to me. I thought we craved the oil underneath it...
     As to making inroads into it, wouldn't it still be easier to level the cities leaving the airports as intact as possible and just building military bases near the refineries and/or airports? That way we wouldn't have nearly as much trouble with those pesky suicide bombers and the like. The population would be mostly dead. I think that this would be a far more appropriate strategy for the US as you propose our intentions to be.
     Go after congress if we can't get to Bush? Um, maybe you don't realize this but the midterm election is done. So the next time we vote on congress we'll be voting on the presidency as well.
     Okay, the meaning of the term, "silent majority" is that while most of the population has a given opinion it goes unrepresented in public opinion forums. It can't be the opinion getting the all the attention, by definition.
     On the subject of supporting factions inside Iraq, that's how Sadam came to power in the first place. He was the supported faction way back when. Two points there: one; yeah, that really works well doesn't it? and two; Sadam knows that drill and pitches people in a plastic shredder (or some equivalent) if he thinks they might be able to get that kind of support.
     On the subject of rigging polls, I still haven't been able to verify those numbers. Also anybody that doesn't know that info hasn't read a newspaper in this country yet. That's why it seems rigged. They don't watch Letterman, the Tonight Show, or the Daily Show either, since it's become common for these shows to reference such info during the monologue. I say this to show how common the knowledge actually is. If we are to assume these polls are legit I think we'd also have to assume the polling audience came from the guest list of the Jerry Springer show.

The polls that Whit linked to only have a sample size of around 1000 people. That's hardly representative of the entire country. The poll in question isn't on the list, of course. But, sadly, I think that sample size is probably about the same for all major news polls. Therefore, most polls have high potential to be wildly inaccurate. Especially when you consider that the questions can be deceptively worded, and the multiple choice answers limited.

Everyone says the long-term plan is to transition the Iraqis to a government of their own choosing. If one wanted control over the country, wouldn't it be much simpler and more predictable to install the dictator of one's choice?

One often-quoted progressive argument is that the Arabic area is incapable of supporting Democracy, why make such a historical gamble by leaving everything in the hands of the people?

Supporting opposition movements: a lot of people say our failure to do that in 91 was the real mistake. But they say the regime at its current level wouldn't fall, due to how harshly dissidents have been treated. The kind of things we're seeing now reinforce that - a woman was hanged for just waving at coalition troops, for example. Stories that talk about how people welcome incoming troops say that the first thing villagers say is "welcome" and the second is a paranoid "uh, you guys are *really* gonna get rid of him this time, right?"

DU decay: the guy I linked to was actually asked about that point, and he covers it here:

http://denbeste.nu/cd_log_entries/20...duranium.shtml

So that holds.

US supported the coup on Chavez: I await the links. No Indymedia or NY Times please.

But Indymedia is a bastion of objectivity!

Disclaimer
 

     Ahem, I would like to point out that was prefaced by "the closest thing I could find" to the polls in the essay. I in no way support these polls. Also you will note that I did not reference any of them in any post I made. Thank you.
     And I'm still banking on the Springer guests/sample group theory...

I know you don't give credence to polls. :) It's just that I wanted to discredit all polls, and you're the only one who's polls' source I could locate.

Your rep, sir, is just collateral damage.

No man, the info on DU doesn't hold. You know, I'm in my last semester in college and I'm a physics student. He's knowledge on nuclear physics isn't up to squat.

No element decays through gamma. They only change internal energy states through gamma. And since the half-line on U-238 is huge, it barely decays at all! _That_ is what half-life means. The guy has no idea of what he's talking about. He didn't even know what a Becquerel was....

If the chart on the webpage is correct, 1 kilogram of U-238 has an activity of around 12 MBq (megabecquerels), that's in the order of milicuries, and _will_ cause you cancer (as I said, all that stuff is gamma or x-rays). And that's a whole lot more than the radioactive isotopes found normally in the human body as he suggested in the other text.

Seriously Undertoad, you should review your sources. Some guy ranting on a website is not enough to debunk something like that. If DU wasn't harmful all they had to do is put some physicist saying so on TV.

About Hugo Chavez, here's some things I found quickly:

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines02/0416-03.htm
http://www.fair.org/press-releases/v...ditorials.html
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/ar...TICLE_ID=27302
http://www.observer.co.uk/internatio...688071,00.html

And if you don't trust any of it, keep in mind that all the stuff happening here on South America in the seventies wasn't acknowledged in the US until the CIA papers leaked some decades later.



Then why the hell is Bush doing all this in the name of democracy?

By the way, that's one of the most stupid and racist comments I've heard from you. Iraq was enjoying democracy before Saddam was put into power by the US. Same is true for other countries in the region.

And about taking Saddam out, the reasons why supporting popular movements didn't work was because they never tried it. The reasons for that is that a democratic government in Iraq that reflects the people's interest wouldn't reflect the interests of the US. That's why Saddam was there in the first place, and he would continue to be there hadn't him taken a mind of his own and gone against the US.

To Whit:

The morale of the soldiers isn't a justification for war. And saying that backing off would kill more soldiers than advancing is ridiculous. With the type of equipment they have, they could back out and the Iraqis wouldn't be able to follow them even if they wanted to.

You can stop the war with public pressure. If congress, even after the elections, knows that the public is against it, they'll comply with the wishes of the population.

About wiping out the whole population, doing that while everyone is looking would look pretty bad. And why even bother with them? They wouldn't gain much by wiping them out. All I'm saying is that they're certainly not doing this _for_ the people. And if they get in the way, they'll be killed. There's no such thing as "humanitarian war".

About the silent majority, they're the ones that are being polled. They're not silent when speaking on the phone.

Saddam came into power through a coup, and not through popular movements. I'm saying the world community should support _popular_ movements. It's much harder than bombing the whole place, but it's ethically correct.

On the rigging of the polls, suppose you're correct and both ABC and NYTimes rigged them. Why? They're generally pro-war.

Hmmm...I guess that qualifies your home as a target for our anti-prolifeation forces.

Oh goodness, they sanctioned the coup. Wow. Damning stuff there dude.

In your first link, the NY Times sanctioned it too. Enemies everywhere?

DU: I found another reference that said 1 g of U-238 = 12,420 Bq. The next question is, how much DU are you likely to have, and for how long? I'm gonna go ahead and guess that if you have a kilogram of it (2.2 lbs), you're not storing it under your pillow.

Meanwhile This guy has 15 BB-sized pieces of DU shrap IN his body, and after 11 years so far he's OK. I know, radiation affects people differently, but this stuff is IN him.

That stupid and racist comment certainly WAS stupid and racist, but it was the "progressive community's" comment, not mine. THEY say that as an argument against the possibility of Democracy working in Iraq. I say they're full of crap, and I'm happy to see you and I agree on that.

Since the government saw the coup against Hugo Chavez with such good eyes, and only regretted it after it failed, it's not unreasonable to think they may have some involvement. They have done it before for much more nonsensical reasons. This is much more believable than, say, Saddam Hussein having nuclear weapons. But that's not saying much...

What mass of uranium the guy has in his body? Is it concentrated in one part or is it scattered? If the guy is resisting it, well good for him. You can't judge the whole thing just from one incident. I knew a guy who used to work at Chernobyl. He's fine. Would you like to live there? You can find cases like this everywhere.

This is like saying HIV doesn't cause AIDS because some HIV-positive people don't develop the disease.

And what exactly is the "progressive community"? That's just prejudice. I've never heard this argument before, certainly not from "dolts" like Chomsky. The first time I heard it was from you.

I guess "progressive" is more a local term. The subtitle of the Common Dreams site, which you've linked to, is "Breaking news and views for the progressive community." It's a political category.

In the US, it's made up mostly of people who feel that the US is responsible for everything bad that happens in the world. You can see how I figured you were one of them.

     I'm very tired so I'm going to do this as quickly as possible.
     Ok look, you're really twisting things here to get that out of what I said. Let me speak more plainly. We, the US citizens, cannot stop this war. We have no veto power. It is beyond our control. Our representatives chose this action and all we can do about it is get new representatives. We cannot do that until the next election. Assuming that the war will still be going in next election, (not likely) we could vote for the an antiwar candidate. That's it. That's all the US citizen can do. I am extremely fucking offended that you flat say here that I suggest that making our soldiers kill, and die is just a morale booster.      Now to reiterate the point, our men are there, we can't do anything about it and for us to attack our soldiers actions would devastate morale. I don't think I was vague on this. If I was then I apologize.
     Please explain, in detail. It seems myself and everyone else in this entire country that doesn't approve of the war does not know how to do what you seem to think is simple and obvious. After all the "unprecedented protests" had no effect whatsoever. We await your instructions.
Not to be redundant or anything but, to my knowledge all individual citizens can do is vote against Bush next election.
     Tell this to Roy. She was the source here:      But thank you for pointing out how friggin' silly this line from the essay you posted is.      Back this up. I say this because you're almost certainly wrong. I will do you the courtesy of backing up my statement. The polls I linked to were CBS, a TV network. When a TV network polls, especially in the ridiculously low numbers Juju pointed out it typically means they are doing what we call "The Man on the Street." This means they send out several crews that film people answering these questions. People that don't wish to get mouthy about their views don't walk up to the crew. This makes for great soundbytes but does not mean the average viewpoint was spoken. Ever. The most likely people to jump in front of the camera are people that think their views are uncommon and wish to spread them. However since you say these were phone polls I'm sure you can show me where CBS says they were.
     Now about your conviction concerning popular movements. Could you name for me the people that have been working in the country that are opposed to Sadam and have been working peacefully to remove him? Oh wait, those people are shredder bits. Sorry, that is my opinion and I stated it as a fact. I'm sorry, as I said I'm tired. Now, back to the matter at hand, who are these people we could support in popular movements? Without any names I must assume there isn't anybody, so your point is moot. Names please?

     Let's try this one more time. As Juju said the number of people polled is insufficient. Also, you completely ignored my point about Roy's numbers. That the only poll numbers clearly referenced on this entire thread, were not verified. She says they said it. I looked, couldn't find, I then asked for help finding it. At this point I have no reason to believe these polls ever occurred. I do not accept Roy's word for it. I posted the closest thing I could find in a good faith gesture. To show that I was willing to do you the courtesy of giving it a chance. Can you find these polls? This is not the first time I've asked. I was just nicer before.
     For the record, and since I now feel I must explain everything so that we don't conclude that I suggest poor polling is a reason for war. The Springer/polling group was meant to remind that with small polling groups drawing a string of idiots becomes more likely. It was meant as a joke. I was agreeing that the numbers were too small. This is all meaningless though since, to the best of my knowledge, the only polls referenced are fabrications.