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

[Count Zero]

Originally posted by Undertoad
If you don't trust my sources, I don't trust Roy's.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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

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

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".

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.

Have you ever been wrong?

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.

Originally posted by Whit
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.

OK, here it goes:

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."

[...]

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.