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Steve, I guess it depends on who's doing the looking. We, Americans, feel justified in killing thousands of innocent people. So does your country.
Maybe it depends on the goal?
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Steve, I guess it depends on who's doing the looking. We, Americans, feel justified in killing thousands of innocent people. So does your country.
Maybe it depends on the goal?
For Al Qaeda, killing thousands of innocent people IS the goal.
And that is what makes their terrorism so horrific and at the same time possibly effective.
I'm afraid people will want to agree to applease the terrorists and hope that Al Qaeda will just leave them alone. But almost never do such tactics work, the bullies and terrorists will just demand more.
We can never forget that the radical Islamic fractions want to their religious rules to control the world as they interpret them and they're willing to kill everyone that disagrees.
RogerNC
click here to email semods4@yahoo.com
While I agree that terrorists and their networks need to be snuffed out, we also must recognize the need to examine the roots of terrorism and attack it before it begins.
Well part of it at least is the systems of government in many of the Arab countries, in which the poor are fated to remain that way. If you look at the breeding grounds for Al Qaeda terrorists (the "foot soldiers" as opposed to the leaders), they're usually in poorer sections of these countries. Mix a little poverty with a bit of anti-Israel and anti-US propaganda (make sure you blame the US and Israel for their poverty) and you've got some of the ingredients. Radical Islam teaches them that it's not their fault.
I'm no authority on this stuff and of course there's more to it than that, but that's some of it.
NT
hell let them all become martyrs cant kill you![]()
NT
Hi, Steve.
We (and you) are to be commended for doing our best to minimize collateral damage -- it's certainly much less than in other recent campaigns (including Bosnia). But that doesn't mean it's zero -- some weapons go astray, some important targets are intentionally positioned in civilian areas, and some secondary explosions occur that planners hadn't counted on. As of September, nearly 40,000 Iraqi civilians had died (that's from all war-related causes, including terrorism), according to the link contained here. But in a very real sense, most of the Iraqi military causualties were of innocents, too (I'm excluding the security and Republican Guard forces), because most were conscripts caught at the wrong place and the wrong time. And if our invasion was in fact unjustified, their deaths are also on our hands.
-- Dave K.
Speakeasy Moderator
click here to email semods4@yahoo.com
The opinions expressed above are my own,
and do not necessarily reflect those of CNET!
And when nuclear bombs start going off we will be speaking of millions of dead, not thousands.
I hope to God it doesn't happen, but things look worse everyday ![]()
Hi, Steve.
Let's look at Iran and North Korea. When Bush took over, relations with both countries were improving. We were giving food aid to a starving NK, and they'd suspended their nuclear program as a result. In Iran, a relatively liberal President was enjoying increasing popular support, and while the hard-liners were still pressing for nuclear weapons, their position was weakening. Now enter Dubya. First of all, shortly after election he made saber-rattling statements directed at NK's (admittedly unstable) leader, for whom he's previously admitted a dislike. US-NK relations started deteriorating. Then in last year's State of the Union address he named Iran and North Korea (and Iraq) as members of the "axis of evil." North Korea somehow felt threatened (gee, I wonder why!) and immediately resumed their nuclear program; relations with them have been steadily deteriorating ever since. That same statement also undercut the liberal President's position in Iran, and the invasion of Iraq increased dislike of the US there to the point that the hard-liners were able to regain enough pupularity to oust most of the more liberal reformers from their Assembly (or whatever it's called) by fiat, not allowing them even to run in the recent elections. Bottom line, Bush badly mangled and worsened our position with both countries, and now we also have very little military option in case things get even worse, because our forces are bogged down in Iraq and both the fighting capabilities and morale of our reserves, most of whom recently rotated home from there (or soon will), have been substantially degraded. I know y'all think this is just partisan blamestorming, but it's just part of the factual basis for my contention that GWB is the worst American President since Calvin Coolidge, whose horrific policies set the stage for the great Depression.
-- Dave K, Speakeasy Moderator
click here to email semods4@yahoo.com
The opinions expressed above are my own,
and do not necessarily reflect those of CNET!
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As it said in the link - $5 billion in food aid and they continued to process elsewhere.
Please keep to the question.
Dave said that Bush has destroyed any friendship with North Korea, or words to that effect, and as the link clearly shows, they really hate the U.S, and that was even when you had a democratic government.
It's a total falsehood to try and pretend that North Korea has any love at all for the U.S.
I always appreciate a link to an informative site. And I didn't mean to butt-in. I'm just making the point, that as the biggest producer of WMDs the world has ever seen, the US should speak a bit softly. Diplomacy, you know? Consensus? UN type stuff. Air it out is what I say. If the so called EVIL ones have a legit gripe, let's hear it. If they're just nuts, let's hear that too.
If you're asking me why NK kept on working on the bomb I'd have to say that there's a certain immunity form preemptive, unilateral attack connected with having it. I don't know what flavor of communism NK practices. It seems to range widely, from true sharing to state slavery. Either way, NK has been under unbelievable sanctions for a long time now. I'm sure that when the crunch comes the little guy takes up the slack. Just as here. It's got to have been tough. 5 billion dollars worth of twinkies and mars bars bought us a little "Hi Howdy" and a small look-see. It's yet to be seen what "Axis-Of-EVIL" will bring other than openly refining the plutonium.
And of course, practically every nation we used to think of as friendly in the world has gone from huge sympathy after 9/11 to open hostility in very short order.
"Yee Haw"
One thing for sure, with all these dodgy bombs being developed all over the world, I guess we are on borrowed time ![]()
It is such a sad situation
Howdy
Steve
Well, we'd better stop kicking the ant-mounds all over the planet. A-bombs, gas and viruses ain't so tough to figure out that we'll ever be safe from them, ever again. The world may very well be headed for a purge. I for one, don't see a replacement for oil. And there isn't a whole lot of, as the Boy Scouts say: "Be Prepared" going on, or even contemplated, as far as I can see.
As individuals, we've always been on borrowed time. The sad thing is that the sure certainty of individual death has had so little positive effect for the planet on greed and the lust for power. Either we work together on a road map for the survival of future generations (including present sacrifices) or, as individuals, we fall back on the old ways of robing, cheating, mass-distraction and bullying in hopes of increasing the likelihood of our own individual kids seeing their way through, what looks to me to be, a very troubled time headed our way.
It's not up to the US alone to tell peoples and governments that "you just can't do that". When it does become necessary for us to make a move it needs to be sparkling clean and all diplomacy exhausted. Otherwise we appear to have gone down the second path.
The assertion is incomprehensible unless you identify what you're talking about. It could range from the American Indian to WW II, Korea, or Vietnam.
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This was a link posted several weeks ago:
http://www.worldrevolution.org/article/1021
And I think this is how the count was documented:
I think this is dated October
I'm sure the count is much higher now that the terrorist have taken their own bite out of the Iraqi people.
Reading at that second link is an eye opener.
How many deaths have been caused by unfortunate circumstances. The Iraqi army hid themselves among the population at one stage, according to news reports, so civilian casualties would have been unavoidable.
The only way to avoid these horrible deaths of the civilians is by not having a war in the first place.
If the war was carried out in open fields then there would have been zero deaths of civilians, but with this type of war . . . . . . . . . . .