With Liberty and Justice??

Originally posted by Agent Elrond
Very few terrorists? Iraq's full of them. Serrin was detected in a warshell. The difference between us killing civilians and Saddam was we kill them by accident.

Last ten years official "accidents" from official independent sources.

You had untill now only in Iraq "only" about 11.000 civilian accidents.
plus 3.500 civilian accidents in Afghanistan
plus 2.000 civilian accidents in Servia

Just multiply for about 4 and add the wounded civilians by "accident" if it pls you.

No to mention USA support to supposed democratic governments who kill everyday cents of civilians who are not important enough to be on your TV. And they are not terrorist, just civilians.

I would like to see if someone from your family was kill by accident only for economical, egoistical and political purposes.

you're all entitled to your opinions, but when ppl start dising the US, it ticks me off. It's not perfect, but it's a hell of a lot better than some of the hell-holds of other countries. No one is randomly taken from their homes and tortured, you're allowed to be whatever u want to be, hell, your even aloud to say this gov't sucks ass.

Well not here, no, but obviously the government isn't opposed to doing so. And I can't think of another country where people are "randomly" taken from their homes and tortured for literally no reason. Other than Iraq at the moment. In fact, with this Patriot act thing, you can be taken out of your home and jailed without being told why, or where you're going, or being able to contact your family. Probably not entirely without reason, but it's still stupid and it goes against everything this country once stood for.

In the UK you can now be arrested for words spoken within the confines of your own home (ie it is lawful to eavesdrop...)

damn... that sucks...

Look up the Macpherson report if you doubt me.

No, I believe you... but that really does suck...

Originally posted by Darth Revan
Well not here, no, but obviously the government isn't opposed to doing so. And I can't think of another country where people are "randomly" taken from their homes and tortured for literally no reason. Other than Iraq at the moment. In fact, with this Patriot act thing, you can be taken out of your home and jailed without being told why, or where you're going, or being able to contact your family. Probably not entirely without reason, but it's still stupid and it goes against everything this country once stood for.

Desperate times call for desperate measures. I'm sure u or anybody has nothing to fear about the Patriot Act. So they know your health record. Big deal. What are they going to do with it?

I don't care if I have anything to worry about, I don't want some gov't official to be able to watch me whenever he damn well pleases and have it be perfectly legal. What, pray tell, makes the present time "desperate"? We got attacked once, almost three years ago. Yes, a lot of people died. Yes, it was very tragic. Yes, we all wish it hadn't happened. But it's not like things like this haven't happened before. Look at the Oklahoma City bombings, that was just as bad, and they didn't make nearly as big a deal out of it. Nobody went out to fight a war against the people who did that. 'Course, we're not even fighting the people who caused 9/11.

Finally, it is NEVER, IMO, acceptable to do what we are doing right now in Iraq. If some American guy commited a terrorist act in another country, and they invaded us, and were dragging people out of their homes on a random basis... You would do the same thing the insurgents in the Middle East are doing. Or if you didn't actually do it, chances are, you would be damn pissed and rightfully so. Imagine all the little kids who were orphaned by American bombs (accidentally or not), all the people who got their legs blown off... Picture yourself in their position, then tell me that "desperate times call for desperate measures".

The differnce is we don't support terrorism, Afganistan and in some ways Iraq. I won't say Saddam supported terrorism, but I bet $1000000000 he was partying on 9/11. Imagine all the kids orphaned by Saddam. Image all the times children have been orphaned in all wars. It happens. Deal with it. We're not in Iraq intentionally killing innocent people. How many innocent ppl died because of terrorist attacks by Iraqis or Al-Queda? Iraqis are killing Iraqis

Saddam didn't kill any of "his own people", he was a Sunni and he was killing Shi'ites and Kurds. Not that it makes it ok, but it bugs me when people say he killed his own people because that's not how he saw it. Ya know what? We don't need to be in Iraq, we haven't accomplished anything there except catching Saddam and some other Baath party guys. What makes you so sure he was part of 9/11? As I said before, he hated Al-Qaeda, and you know how dictators are about holding grudges. He would never have helped Osama carry out one of his dirty little plans. War sucks, yes sometimes it is necessary, but it wasn't in this case.

I never said Saddam supported Al-Queada.

Capturing Saddam and killing his sons was a great advancement.
The problem is every time we do something to fix Iraq, some terrorist blows it up. We're in Iraq now be/c we're finishing off were the UN left off. After Desert Storm, we should have finished off Saddam. But, we didn't, so now we are. It's a just war, just not for the reasons Bush gave. And I would like to view all Iraqis as one people, otherwise, there'll never be a stable gov't

See, it should never have been mushed together into one country after WWI. Under the Ottoman Empire, it was three separate millets, and it worked out relatively well. But I don't understand what the big deal about Saddam is, he never attacked us, and there are bigger problems in the world. IMO we really should take care of our own problems before we go blowing billions of dollars on smartbombs for some damn war.

Saddam used chemical weapons on Iran and on the Kurds. He invaded Kuwait to control more oil. He launched Skuds at Israel for no reason, other than he hated it. Saddam had to go. The UN didn't have the balls to do so in 91.
And yes, there are other things we should be worrying about in our own borders.

Oh you wanna get into oil??
You really dont wanna get into oil.

I heard this on the radio the other day, its not exact but it went something like this.

Imagine the middle east to be a cruise ship thats broken.
Iraq is like the Top-deck and Isreal and Palistine are like the engine room. if we wanna go somewhere with this cruise ship why are we trying to fix the top-deck instead of the Engine no matter how messed up the top-deck may be.

The point is if the US really wants to fix the Middle East (And I suspect that the Administration really doesnt) we've got our prioritys seriously screwed up.

Palestine is a lost cause. The entire ME is a lost cause. The only reason we even care about is b/c off oil. In 50 years, we should have a different fuel source and we wouldn't care about the Mid East anymore

Well what do you think we should do? We can't abandon them. It's our fault that they are messed up like that!

Israel/Palestine is not a lost cause... Clinton had the problem almost solved. As I said before, Saddam is not the only tyrannical dictator in the world. There are quite a few other (albeit possibly slightly less evil) messed up gov'ts in the world that we actually support.

That's right about us caring because of the oil... And funny that it doesn't seem to bother you in the least.

Tpt, that comparison of a cruise ship is really interesting, and true...

Thank you free speech radio!
I just did a huge entry on this in my site. (See profile) (Its just a xanga its not forum spamming!)

Originally posted by Tptmanno1
Well what do you think we should do? We can't abandon them. It's our fault that they are messed up like that!

How's it our fault? We're not responsible for the hatred in there.

Clinton didn't do much, but what he did with the Palestine/Israeli crisis was good. However, now there is no one in charge of the Palestinians, so negotiating with them is impossible. Best thing to do is to use force.

And about the oil. That wasn't our primary concern. Image if Iraq control Kuwait and nabbed part of Saudi Arabia, Iraq would control a large part of the world's oil supply. Now that China's modernizing, it's demand for oil has shot up. If Iraq doesn't release that oil, prices go up and tension between us and China will increase. That's one reason Desert Storm was launched. OIl isn't too important in this war as none is getting to us