2000...discuss (Iraq related)
roisto
881 Posts
2000 US soldiers, 199 UK and other soldiers, tens of THOUSANDS of innocent civilians have died, over 15,000 soldier have been wounded in Iraq since 05/01/03.And the future is not looking bright, despite a semi-positive outcome in the elections last week.Shit is messed up.
Comments
I do not believe outrage is something many Americans feel.
Only when they see titties during the Superbowl....
Another sad milestone....
2000 less brothers, sisters, fathers, mothers, sons, daughters.....
What hit me when I saw that number on the headlines today, was how close we are getting to how many were killed in the attacks on 9/11.....and how that tragedy still is an open wound for Americans, but this 2000 dead is like a malignant tumor we don't want to admit we have.
And what will it benefit? How much of our resources in lives, money and good will will we expend before the war is over? What will happen when we pull out (sonner or later) and our efforts there are seen as tragic at worst, hollow at best? What then for Americans who believe that these young men and women are dying for a just cause? This is why I resent this president and his administration so much. They have doomed the future leaders to a legacy of unmanageable expectations and doomed the American people to wonder for years what price we have paid and for what? And they will just sail off into the sunset, write books and maintain their story in the face of all facts.
If you can forge a connection between the WTC and Iraq then you must be a Bush cabinet member.
And lets not forget the average of 50 Iraqis that die everyday (today???s NY Times). Freedom comes with an awfully heavy price.
There are people on here who support the 'War in Iraq? Which I thought was supposed to be a liberation, not an invasion.
We are part of the Coalition of the Willing & have fortunately only had one fatality (in Afghanistan) since our troops have been deployed in that region. Our soldiers keep their heads down & have a very low profile. Mostly SAS regiments who go about thier business tactfully.. It's not in our nature to roam the streets with Metallica blaring from trucks & calling people camel jockeys.
Terrorism is CONSTANTLY on the news down here, especially with the 3 terrorist incidents in Indonesia that have alarmed many.
We are now incessantly told that we are a target. And new laws have just been enacted that are making our local Muslim community very worried. They were going to pass the bill without any space between it's release & its implementation. So people had no idea if it was all kosher & legit. It was basically enforcing the deprivement of any individuals freedom & the enforcement of detention without question for up to 2 weeks without an explanation. This means that in theory I could ring the cops, tell them that my nieghbour is shonky & I think that he is making bombs. He could then be imprisoned & questioned on that flimsy basis. This is eroding peoples civil liberties & all the bullshit that surrounds the rhetoric is one of scaremongering. That sneaky tactic of using friendly paternalism as a veiled threat. 'We are protecting your best interests'.
One of our own Ministers (A.C.T. & Environment) was so appalled that he actually leaked the new draft & posted a PDF up of the bill on his own website because he wanted the public to be privy to what was about to be implemented. Naturally that didn't go down to well with the big guys, but they couldn't do anything because it would then look twice as bad as if the Govt was up to some seriously questionable shenanigans.
Aussie? I'll bet the bombings in Bali spur a lot of "look out we're next" paranoia down your way.
simple mindedabada
You Aussies are wimps - in the UK they want to lock up the
90days, 180days, 10years its not going to stop the war
So then all Americans are lunatics according to that conclusion.
David Koresh was.
Timothy McVeigh was.
Jim Jones was.
HH Holmes was.
Ed Gein was.
Lashuan Harris is.
Peggy Jo Conner is.
So everyone is crazy over there.. Dude c'mon. Of course it was fucked what happened.
But the US isn't entirely guilt free. Wasn't that long ago that Bush snr cosied up with Sadaam & that the CIA helped out Osama against the Russians.
Small minded logic shouldn't cloud the truth.
Blaming Islam or even it's followers for the actions of some warped thinking extreme fundamentalists is lame.
Yaeh man. Shit is in overdrive down here at the monment. It was a few days short of 2 years when the last 3 explosions went off in Bali. Fortunately only 12 Australian were killed in the last attacks. Mostly Indonesians suffered. And for the first time we've now seen the peaceful Balinese go apeshit at the terrorists for fucking up their society & killing more of them than foreigners. Whom they rely on for economic reasons. Just 2 weeks ago the Balinese people protested in the streets & tried to break into a prison that had one of the members of Jemiah Islamiah (Al Qaeda associated). They fear that he is being protectedby teh govt for fear of an Islamic backlash. The Indo govt is afraid that if shit goes down, many fundamentalists from other countries will stir shit up there & things might go berko. Like in Iraq & Afghanistan. Most of teh trouble is caused by outside forces with ulterior motives. Most of the people in charge of theterrible beheadings etc, aren't Iraqis. People like the Al Qaeda leader al-Zarqawi are Jordanian. Wierd thing is that Osama despised Sadaam. So they are just using Iraq as a convienent recruitment arena. Oh & the the bomb makers who made the bombs in Bali were Malaysians.
Our relationship with Indonesia has always been very sketchy & on tenterhooks At this point in time we have several high profile drug couriering situations going on as well. 9 of our people, mostly young stupid kids, are pretty much very close to being executed for drug smuggling into Indo. We don't have the death penalty so everythjng is being treated with kid gloves. It's actually quite complicated. Indonesia has over 200 million people. 88% of them are Islamic.
So yes, some people fear that shit could spread here quite easily. I'm not entirely convinced it will, but the powers that be are emphasing the possibilty with TV ads & such.
If Saddam had played nice with the US we would have turned a blind eye to all of his crimes against humanity as we have done all over the world. Saddam kept radicals at bay in Iraq because they threatened his power. Toppling Saddam opened the flood gates for terrorists in Iraq, and as we have seen our government is not good at dealing with floods of any kind.
This is true, and the Bush Administration pushed aside a complex reality in favor of peddling a pushover regime change that clearly was NOT what happened. They either lied about what they knew the outcome would be, or they were so blinded by incompetence that they failed to understand what the situation would turn into. Either way, their 'plan' is a complete disaster.
90 days!! Geez. That's a bit Guantanamo-ish.
It probably has more to do with the fact that all of this is extremely new to us down here. We've never ever had any major threat. Only World War 2 when some Japanese Mini-subs came into our harbour & they also bombed Darwin. But that was war. We haven't had anything to do with terrorist situations.
The UK has had to deal with the IRA so I'm sure they have been a bit more on the lookout from experience. And being closer to an open borderless Europe might be unnerving as well.
I think we'd rather be a bunch of pussies & live in a free society than be some hard-core motherfuckers living in a police state or a totalatarian society..
Our convict history is much like the Scandinavians ruthless Viking history. Look at us now, both regions are relatively safe & peaceful these days. It'd be nice if it stayed that way.
Canadian & New Zealand troops are only in Afghanistan & I think thier govts refused to be part of the Iraqi situation. So they aren't targets. Not really sure how their countries are dealing with all of this.
"I think we'd rather be a bunch of pussies & live in a free society than be some hard-core motherfuckers living in a police state or a totalatarian society..
Our convict history is much like the Scandinavians ruthless Viking history. Look at us now, both regions are relatively safe & peaceful these days. It'd be nice if it stayed that way. "[/b]
Truth...
Ha, brilliant. Very observant. But that is what a lot of people outside of the US think all Americans are like when you have a Republican govt.
It majestically points out the deep hypocrisy that is the Republican way of thinking. Scary shit.
Like George Bush snr's classic answer to an Australian journalists question on his solution to lowering the US crime rate..
'We're building more prisons'...
Huh?
we didnt have an island to send them to.
Tell that to the people we have locked up down here...
Except they forgot to include a profile for the OCD Republican who feverishly tries to convince himself that his collection of brazillian records is important enough that he's excused from thinking consequentially about the ideology to which he arbitrarily subscribes.
But, no, I thought it was pretty clever too.
Oh very funny. Ha ha ha. Smarty pants...
What's Hawaii then..?
and fatty16corners beat you to it with a much better retort.
Boy you never fail to come back with the sophisticated repartee. Since you obviously know what I look like, next time I'm spinning in the city why don't you fall by and tell me how fat I am to my face....
...Republican sucker of cocks....