MIssion Accomplished in Iraq?

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MIssion Accomplished in Iraq?

Post by spot »

Far Rider wrote: Hmmm, from arab terrorists or fascists?Fascists, of course. Some of my best friends worship at the local mosque down the road. I am not now, and never have been, in contact with terrorists, Arab or otherwise. I have no desire to ever talk with any terrorists. I doubt whether any terrorists I find myself unwillingly talking to in the future will be Arab, either.
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MIssion Accomplished in Iraq?

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spot wrote: Ah, A response, I do hope it's reasoned. I do hope it doesn't rubbish the author instead of critiquing the content.



You know, that was written in the first person as a factual account of her personal experiences in Iraq. How does that make it fact-free? " no reference to 'facts' " ? Justify that, just once. Tell me how it isn't rubbishing. The opinion in the piece is based on the facts of the piece, whether they're a good or fair analysis of them or not. The piece is flooded with facts! I've rarely seen so many facts in one article.
dear sir, you are once again parsing so tightly that clarity eludes you. i didn't say the article was fact-free or that there was no reference to facts. she provided quite a number of facts. try and follow along now, maybe if i use smaller words, or less complex sentences, you'll understand.



i wrote:

there's a tremendous thread of vitriol in the article, written in the first person, with no reference to 'facts' - merely the authors beliefs about what the information means.

now, to my mind, and perhaps i'm warped, "in the article" is not the same as "the article" or "all of the article". perhaps it might have been clearer, admittedly, if i'd said "within", rather than "in". nevertheless, what i meant, and what i thought would be understandable, is that while the article presents quite a many tidbits of fact, there are large portions which are little more than vitriol spinning off so far from those facts as to detach them from their source. she presents a fact - then commits to the page circumlocutions that would dizzy a whirling dervish.





I think you misuse "left" to be honest, but many Capitalists tend to. Her position, in my opinion, stems from Ernst Schumacher's 1973 essay on Buddhist Economics, "Small is Beautiful". Perhaps, in the days before your mindset froze, you enjoyed that?
sorry, never read it. remember, i'm just a dumb redneck.







She reported a number of interesting things in the article? How can she have managed that, in an "article, written in the first person, with no reference to 'facts' "? This is why discussing matters with you, in this area, is like flapping at a fog hoping to disperse it. You've said nothing.
as above. bear in mind, in this post, you've said nothing as well. other than saying that i've said nothing. are we at parity yet for inanity?
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MIssion Accomplished in Iraq?

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spot wrote:

The politics of the author seem, to me, moderately right-wing and pro-capitalist, but that's perspective and viewpoint intruding again.



Kind of a no-brainer there.
ay yi yi. you see a right-wing pro capitalist in naomi klein? and people accuse me of living in bizarro world. or negative world. or contrary world. or 'everything you know is wrong' world. or 1984-newspeak world.
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MIssion Accomplished in Iraq?

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"you are once again parsing so tightly that clarity eludes you. i didn't say the article was fact-free or that there was no reference to facts."? I think I can rely on "with no reference to 'facts' ". You are once again parsing so tightly that clarity eludes you.

"remember, i'm just a dumb redneck."? I've never called you a redneck. By all means identify yourself as one if you wish - I have no opinion on the matter. You do, admittedly, come across as lacking in self-confidence, but I'm not sure "redneck" is a good explanation for that.

"bear in mind, in this post, you've said nothing as well. other than saying that i've said nothing. are we at parity yet for inanity?" - we don't, at all. The thread suggested that the Liberation of Iraq was a war over oil. I offered the Harpers article as an argument against that view. What else need I say? If you diagree with the gist of the article, or the specifics of the article, do please say why. Or not, of course.
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MIssion Accomplished in Iraq?

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spot wrote: Purely for completeness:



"the LA times of course is a cheerleader of the anti-american sentiment, so at least you're staying consistent in your choice of news sources."



"of course, if you go by the L.A. Times, every single iraqi hates us. that you're swayed by anti-american propoganda promulgated by americans certainly doesn't surprise me. that you don't recognize that you're falling for propoganda doesn't suprise me either."



"that's because your sources are far-left anti-america wild-eyed loonies."



"i have no opinion about the source of the information in the citation, because i haven't read it. i don't know whether to believe or disbelieve a report from a newspaper that will take any and every opportunity to paint anything that isn't far left in a bad light against what decorated military officers stated publicly."

seriously. be sure to never mind these facts. they're inconvenient to the blinkered life.
likewise. but i doubt you see that.





You do froth with righteous indignation, anastrophe. "Back up your trashing of me" is far too emotive. Your bilious attacks would impress people far more if you weren't so often inaccurate in what you say. A little effort on your part would be very welcome. I rarely give my opinion without giving an external basis for it and an attempt at reasoning to support it. Your opinions, while doubtless of great interest to yourself personally, seem incoherent since they have so little apparent justification. Faith, fear, and fanatical devotion, but somewhat weak on reasoning and - it would seem from this list - truth.
i shall proceed to slit my wrists. i am not living up to spots expectations.



i of course, am "so often inaccurate in what i say".

spot, of course, "rarely gives an opinion without [...] reasoning to support it".

i, of course, host opinions that are 'incoherent since they have so little apparent justification".

i, of course, am slave to "faith, fear, and fanatical devotion."



spot, of course, is merely reporting the facts.



look, pal, we have both gone down this road if personal attacks, of trashing each other in every manner imaginable. your trashing above is nicely done, a fair turn of phrase. i certainly admit to writing intemperately, and lashing out. i tend to wear my heart on my sleeve, and as everyone reading knows, i have 'big bright shiny buttons' that just beg to be pushed. you work from a colder center - as you've presented yourself before, you're merely a wide-eyed pupil of existence, supplicating for truth in this troubled world.



hopefully, the interested reader can see through your act as well as through my own.
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MIssion Accomplished in Iraq?

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anastrophe wrote: as you've presented yourself before, you're merely a wide-eyed pupil of existence, supplicating for truth in this troubled world. care to provide an actual citation to prove i have this habit?

nah. why waste time. you won't be able to, nor would it get above the level of personal attack since I started posting on Forum Garden.

Actually, you're living up to my expectations quite well.
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MIssion Accomplished in Iraq?

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Jika wrote: spot you seem to be well read and versed in this ongoing nightmare of a war so i ask you in all sincerity.....do you know of, or can you cite some credible sources for/of how many iraqi civilians have been killed in this war so far?



this question worries me greatly and is not commented/reported on generally in the media. is this b/c the figures are hard to, or almost impossible to attain, or is it b/c it's too horrible to deal with.



many, many must have perished under that loathsome banner of "collatoral damage" what with the thousands of bombs dropped, and i find it odd, if not remarkable that main stream media is not asking the question....what price freedom? how many innocent dead in the cause of democracy and liberty from tyranny?



was there a reputable census of iraq population pre-war? and how many exist now?



is the loss of life (iraqi) comparable to ethnic losses during WWII?



these are just questions i'd like answered with *real*, *hard*, *cold* facts.
there are no real, hard, cold, facts on the matter. there are only estimates, which vary widely.



google.
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spot wrote: care to provide an actual citation to prove i have this habit?



nah. why waste time. you won't be able to, nor would it get above the level of personal attack since I started posting on Forum Garden.



Actually, you're living up to my expectations quite well.
touche. i was presenting my opinion of how you present yourself.



any material i would cite would be from our email exchanges, in fact, your opening letter to me. yes, posting the sequence of letters got lost in other matters. i haven't gotten around to it, which may mean i'm no longer interested, not looking forward to the effort (reformatting for FG posting will be a pain, i'm certain of that), or the popular speculation, i have something to hide.
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MIssion Accomplished in Iraq?

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Far Rider wrote: is there a real threat to your safety today from terrorists. Or is it that you percieve fear irrationally. There is no more threat to my safety today from terrorists than there was all the time I lived in Central London while the IRA mainland cells were letting off bombs. Which is to say, far less of a threat than being struck by lightning. None to speak of.

There is a real threat to my safety from the rising wave of neo-fascists in the UK and USA. I have had them at my house threatening physical violence against me and mine. They have made it explicitly clear to me that neither the streets of my home town nor the local campus are safe territory for me any longer. They are political. They are not, to date, locally, terrorists in terms of bombings or physical violence. My fear, which is a real and legitimate one, is that they may become so in the future.
Nullius in verba ... ☎||||||||||| ... To Fate I sue, of other means bereft, the only refuge for the wretched left.
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Jika wrote: WWI and WWII diggers
what's a 'digger'? is that a british colloquialism?
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anastrophe wrote: there are no real, hard, cold, facts on the matter. there are only estimates, which vary widely. Should there not be? And if, as I'm sure there are, they exist within the corridors of power, should they not be released for public consumption?
Nullius in verba ... ☎||||||||||| ... To Fate I sue, of other means bereft, the only refuge for the wretched left.
When flower power came along I stood for Human Rights, marched around for peace and freedom, had some nooky every night - we took it serious.
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MIssion Accomplished in Iraq?

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anastrophe wrote: what's a 'digger'? is that a british colloquialism?google is your friend.

I'll let you off... digger - Australian soldier, although the term may be archaic. Probably, I'm guessing, dates from the Gallipoli campaign.
Nullius in verba ... ☎||||||||||| ... To Fate I sue, of other means bereft, the only refuge for the wretched left.
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spot wrote: And that's how the press push the war, by comparing Saddam with those two. By demonizing the Baathist regime that ran Iraq, even though it ran Iraq as an American satrapy for decades against Iran.
"decades" is a bit of a stretch, considering that the baathist regime came into power under saddam hussein in 1979, and the US can't be considered to have been supporting hussein's regime beyond the persian gulf war of 1990.



so, sure, stretch it - it spanned three decades! sounds much better than 'eleven years', at most.
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anastrophe wrote: "decades" is a bit of a stretch, considering that the baathist regime came into power under saddam hussein in 1979, and the US can't be considered to have been supporting hussein's regime beyond the persian gulf war of 1990.



so, sure, stretch it - it spanned three decades! sounds much better than 'eleven years', at most.It's the same period of time as that destroyer of civil society in this country, Margaret Thatcher, was in power. You may call it three decades; I tell you, it felt far longer than that at the time.
Nullius in verba ... ☎||||||||||| ... To Fate I sue, of other means bereft, the only refuge for the wretched left.
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spot wrote: What's an ilk, Clint?



"Your hate for the U.S. is obvious" is the standard tar-brush for anyone who argues against American Imperialism, I've seen it on here more often than most. It is unjust, it is not necessarily true, and in the case of Koan I believe it to be utterly mistaken.
but "american imperialism" isn't a tar-brush. heavens no.
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anastrophe wrote: "decades" is a bit of a stretch, considering that the baathist regime came into power under saddam hussein in 1979, and the US can't be considered to have been supporting hussein's regime beyond the persian gulf war of 1990.Actually, looking at my words and considering my meaning, it has nothing to do with when Saddam Hussein took personal control in Iraq. The CIA-sponsored Baathist coup which brought them to a controlling interest of Iraqi political power was in 1963, and Saddam Hussein has been said, for a long time, to have been recruited by the CIA in 1959. Three decades doesn't seem an unreasonable interpretation of my original post.
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anastrophe wrote: but "american imperialism" isn't a tar-brush. heavens no.Perfect use of English. It's American. It's Imperialist. I call a spade a spade - though I'm told that term may have lost favor in the USA in recent years.
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spot wrote: I'm sorry, Princess, I thought it was reasonable to call George W Bush "Boy George" to distinguish him from his father, George Bush, who was also Commander in Chief of an invasion of Iraq while Saddam Hussein was Head of State there. "Boy George" is intended to sound insulting, suggesting a lack of experience, a clouded mentality and a questionable sexual bias. How a clown like him could be shoe-horned into the Presidency, by a party less and less concerned with credibility, astounds me. They seem to need no cloak of respectability whatever.
the answer to how a clown like him became president is easy. you need merely look at the pig-in-a-poke the left tendered as the alternative.



neither man is or was fit for the job. sometimes that happens - in a free society, sometimes the choice is between 'bad' and 'worse'. it would be much easier in a totalitarian regime - we'd be 'freed' of the burden of choosing who would run our country. thus the popularity of totalitarianism.



oh - wait. darnit. there i go again, trashing anything that is anti-administration.





The words were obliterated. And now the Americans and their obedient, Shia-led government, are acting out the same Saddamite line. that's a great bit of word play there. saddamite. funny!
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Far Rider wrote: And these groups are local authorties or are they just political groups?I'd call them a gang, myself. I'd have called the National Socialist Party a gang too, in the 1920s.
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spot wrote: "you are once again parsing so tightly that clarity eludes you. i didn't say the article was fact-free or that there was no reference to facts."? I think I can rely on "with no reference to 'facts' ". You are once again parsing so tightly that clarity eludes you.
a sentence is a sentence, the whole world round, unless you break the sentence apart for expediency. oh well.







"remember, i'm just a dumb redneck."? I've never called you a redneck. By all means identify yourself as one if you wish - I have no opinion on the matter. You do, admittedly, come across as lacking in self-confidence, but I'm not sure "redneck" is a good explanation for that.
yes, as a matter of fact, i have extremely little self-confidence. it is part of my pathology, a manifestation of the clinical depression which i've battled most of my adult life. the depression is controlled with drugs, which is lovely, but i'm left with the lack of self-confidence. one of the corrupting aspects of lack of self-confidence is that it is circular. i lack the self-confidence to try to remedy my lack of self-confidence.



i'm rather less than perfect, i think we can all agree.





"bear in mind, in this post, you've said nothing as well. other than saying that i've said nothing. are we at parity yet for inanity?" - we don't, at all. The thread suggested that the Liberation of Iraq was a war over oil. I offered the Harpers article as an argument against that view. What else need I say? If you diagree with the gist of the article, or the specifics of the article, do please say why. Or not, of course.
i provided my overall opinion of the article - my disagreement with 'the gist of the article'. it would take me the better part of the day to generate a point by point rebuttal of the article. who knows, perhaps the day may turn in such a way that i can do so.



would be lovely to hear your thoughts on my post 51 at some point.

http://www.forumgarden.com/forums/showp ... stcount=51
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spot wrote: would you defend the rapist living next door? and demand he had a fair trial? Anybody? maybe that's a fair summary of the problem.



an evil man doing evil things has been stopped and thats the most important thing? Would that he had, would it were so. At the moment he's pressing for large chunks of the Patriot Act to be made permanent, and crippling the capacity of the economy long-term to support even basic social services.
since you mention the patriot act, i take it you aren't referring to blair.



your concern for the economic and social well-being of the US citizenry is touching.
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spot wrote:

There is a real threat to my safety from the rising wave of neo-fascists in the UK and USA. I have had them at my house threatening physical violence against me and mine. They have made it explicitly clear to me that neither the streets of my home town nor the local campus are safe territory for me any longer. They are political. They are not, to date, locally, terrorists in terms of bombings or physical violence. My fear, which is a real and legitimate one, is that they may become so in the future.
clarify, please: who are "they"? jihadists? neo-fascists? americans? (oops, sorry, latter two are synonymous).
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spot wrote: Should there not be? And if, as I'm sure there are, they exist within the corridors of power, should they not be released for public consumption?
to provide accurate details requires valid census data from before the invasion, adequate identification that can be attached to any who have died, a cause of death, and cooperation at all levels from the local citizenry.



there is still a war going on. i don't know if there is valid census data from before the invasion. the borders of iraq are completely porous.



in time there will likely be less vague estimates of the loss of life in this war. unlike you, i don't see it as a conspiracy to hide the details from the public. it is a lack of accurate data.
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spot wrote: It's the same period of time as that destroyer of civil society in this country, Margaret Thatcher, was in power. You may call it three decades; I tell you, it felt far longer than that at the time.
thanks for your personal observations about ms. thatcher. so, is that a retraction or correction of "By demonizing the Baathist regime that ran Iraq, even though it ran Iraq as an American satrapy for decades against Iran."



?
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Far Rider wrote: You know spot for a brit you got a lot of guts.

First your Boy George comment is offensive. I don't agree with my President very often, but his office is to be respected. I hated Clinton but when he was President I refered to him as Mr. President. And My Commander and Chief.

Second, I am absolutley positive the CIA never said they helped Saddam get to power, so prove your sources there.I respect the office of President of the United States of America, Far Rider. I despise the current incumbent, as do many Americans.

I am absolutely positive the CIA never said they helped Saddam get to power, too. What I said was that Saddam Hussein has been said, for a long time, to have been recruited by the CIA in 1959. Not "has been said by the CIA to have been recruited in 1959", that would be rather against their protocols, I imagine. Personally, I have no opinion at all as to whether what has been said for a long time about this is true or not, I have far too little information. The original claim was made by Richard Sale, Intelligence Correspondent for UPI, and it's at http://www.upi.com/view.cfm?StoryID=200 ... 0214-6557r
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anastrophe wrote: clarify, please: who are "they"? jihadists? neo-fascists? americans? (oops, sorry, latter two are synonymous).Neo-fascists. I don't think my English is so convoluted that it's not apparent.
Nullius in verba ... ☎||||||||||| ... To Fate I sue, of other means bereft, the only refuge for the wretched left.
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spot wrote: Actually, looking at my words and considering my meaning, it has nothing to do with when Saddam Hussein took personal control in Iraq. The CIA-sponsored Baathist coup which brought them to a controlling interest of Iraqi political power was in 1963, and Saddam Hussein has been said, for a long time, to have been recruited by the CIA in 1959. Three decades doesn't seem an unreasonable interpretation of my original post.
you're still stretching it.



how about the much longer interval during which iraq was a british satrapy? oh, never mind. that doesn't demonstrate the inherent evil of america. so it's a moot point.
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anastrophe wrote: thanks for your personal observations about ms. thatcher. so, is that a retraction or correction of "By demonizing the Baathist regime that ran Iraq, even though it ran Iraq as an American satrapy for decades against Iran."?Let's not lose the context:

And that's how the press push the war, by comparing Saddam with those two [Hitler and Stalin]. By demonizing the Baathist regime that ran Iraq, even though it ran Iraq as an American satrapy for decades against Iran.No correction, no retraction, it's fair comment as it stands.
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anastrophe wrote: would be lovely to hear your thoughts on my post 51 at some point.

http://www.forumgarden.com/forums/showp ... count=51Ah. Yes, I remember seeing that. "so, which is it, i wonder?" - she has her notion, I have mine. Why should she and I agree on that point? Time may tell.
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MIssion Accomplished in Iraq?

Post by spot »

anastrophe wrote: you're still stretching it.



how about the much longer interval during which iraq was a british satrapy? oh, never mind. that doesn't demonstrate the inherent evil of america. so it's a moot point.You do know that Iraq was Turkish until the end of World War 1? Even if we count all of the 20s to some time in the 50s, I don't see the "much longer interval".
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MIssion Accomplished in Iraq?

Post by anastrophe »

spot wrote: Ah. Yes, I remember seeing that. "so, which is it, i wonder?" - she has her notion, I have mine. Why should she and I agree on that point? Time may tell.
it is a rather critical point, in my opinion. if her interpretation is correct, your conspiracy crumbles - the foundation is gone. if your interpretation is correct, her conspiracy crumbles - the foundation is also gone.



i'm quite sure you disagree of course.
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MIssion Accomplished in Iraq?

Post by spot »

anastrophe wrote: it is a rather critical point, in my opinion. if her interpretation is correct, your conspiracy crumbles - the foundation is gone. if your interpretation is correct, her conspiracy crumbles - the foundation is also gone.



i'm quite sure you disagree of course.Of course I do. You can take her reference to the event out of her article and it stands without it. You can substitute another of the hostages and her article stands despite the replacement. Were she writing today instead of last summer, she might have worded things differently. Information available now wasn't necessarily available then.
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MIssion Accomplished in Iraq?

Post by anastrophe »

spot wrote: You do know that Iraq was Turkish until the end of World War 1? Even if we count all of the 20s to some time in the 50s, I don't see the "much longer interval".
we are talking about shadow control, not overt control. if iraq was a US satrapy through the 1960's and 1970's, then iraq was a british satrapy - off and on, with varying degrees of facility - from shortly after world war I to the end of the 1950's - at least according to

http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/war/iraq/b ... q_01.shtml



forty some-odd years strikes me as a much longer interval than - even by your most broad standards - from 1959 to 1990, at most 31 years.

but what's a decade between friends?



i would quibble with staking the beginning of US 'colonial' backing of the baathists at 1959, but i don't know the history or depth of US involvement with iraq through the 1960's well enough to quibble reasonably. and since my powers of reasoning are very poor to begin with, it would probably just waste everyone's time.
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spot wrote: Of course I do. You can take her reference to the event out of her article and it stands without it. You can substitute another of the hostages and her article stands despite the replacement. Were she writing today instead of last summer, she might have worded things differently. Information available now wasn't necessarily available then.
you mention 'information available'. have you some reliable source for your contention that agents of the US either beheaded - or staged the beheading - of nicholas berg?



information, to me, suggests cold, hard, facts. not conspiracy theory websites, speculation, or 'it's obvious, just look at the cabal' (my own paraphrasing, i'll save you challenging me to support where you've stated that, blah blah blah blah blah).
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MIssion Accomplished in Iraq?

Post by spot »

anastrophe wrote: but what's a decade between friends?



i would quibble with staking the beginning of US 'colonial' backing of the baathists at 1959, but i don't know the history or depth of US involvement with iraq through the 1960's well enough to quibble reasonably. and since my powers of reasoning are very poor to begin with, it would probably just waste everyone's time.What indeed. Just so. My very point.

I didn't set it at 1959, I set it at 1963, if you read accurately. I'd agree with you that there might have been a preceeding period of discussion, but not any substantive action.
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MIssion Accomplished in Iraq?

Post by spot »

anastrophe wrote: you mention 'information available'. have you some reliable source for your contention that agents of the US either beheaded - or staged the beheading - of nicholas berg?Have you any notion how obviously stupid that question is? You're discussing the internal activity of a US government agency, and asking me whether I'm privy to any of its paperwork? You believe I can have no opinion without such first-hand source material? Grow up, anastrophe, back away and consider where my weak points are. They don't exist at the level of "what Agency documentation can you produce to substantiate that allegation"!
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MIssion Accomplished in Iraq?

Post by anastrophe »

well, i've had a lovely time this morning going back and forth with boy spot, to what end, little, as this is just the Nth iteration of our pissing matches here in FG. the spotster will of course take the opportunity to wring his hands about how the tragedy in iraq is far too important and serious to be reduced to such a boorish pissing match, and how ashamed he is for trivializing it by his participation, with the implication being that 'the better man' has shown his humility and is sad for being drawn in to this distraction, leaving boy anastrophe as the crude instigator of this childish digression, the feeble minded american who will suffer no criticism of his administration in his blinkered state, a hard-hearted little buffoon who does not realize that the wool is being pulled over his eyes by the bush-cheney-rove-rumsfeld-wolfowitz-rice new american century neocon cabal.

did i overlook anything? hopefully that covered it all.
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spot wrote: Have you any notion how obviously stupid that question is? You're discussing the internal activity of a US government agency, and asking me whether I'm privy to any of its paperwork? You believe I can have no opinion without such first-hand source material? Grow up, anastrophe, back away and consider where my weak points are. They don't exist at the level of "what Agency documentation can you produce to substantiate that allegation"!
just so. non-responsive to the query. your reliance on wild-eyed loonies on conspiracy websites betrays precisely your 'weak points'.



i'll grow up when you do. nyah, nyah, nyah.
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Post by spot »

If anyone would like to knit me a "Mission Accomplished" scarf, I'd be very happy to wear it.
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beam me up, spotty!
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MIssion Accomplished in Iraq?

Post by koan »

Clint wrote: What a bunch of bunk. I know the U.S. military and how it is trained. You and your ilk are frustrated to the point you would say anything. You haven’t been able to prevail with socialism so you strike out blindly with false, even unbelievable accusations. Canada is a target just like the U.S. If they are able to take us down you are standing in line. Your hate for the U.S. is obvious. Now at least, the Koan I suspected to be lurking behind those honey soaked posts of the past is in the open.


I almost didn't bother replying to this. What a bunch of bunk is right.

Me and my "ilk": you know nothing about me or what my "ilk" might be. If you ever asked...

frustrated: this seems to describe your post not mine. I understand how offensive it must be to hear one's government accused of crimes.

socialism: I hate it

strike out blindly: I've held no opinion on the war for since the towers fell until I felt I had enough information to have an opinion at all. I've been researching and reading everything I can get my hands on for some time now.

My hate for the US: Absolutely false. It is unprovable whether I hate something or not. You only have my testimony. I think the US has a lot of great ideals. I also think the people are being abused and lied to. I separate the American public from the American government. How is a vote democratic when all the information is not available?

Let's avoid talking about each others personalities. It only takes away from the real issues. You are killing the messenger. I don't have a false persona on the net. I write what I think. If you believed me to be "honey coated" (which is definately not anything I ever intended to be) and now believe that I am something else...that's your perception. I'm not interested in what you think of me, sorry. Keep it to yourself.

The only reason I responded to this is because it is a typical "last resort" reaction to avoid dealing with the issue at hand. Dare I say, the facts at hand. Attack the source (leftist, socialist, liberal) then attack the poster...anything but actually considering that the website's info comes from actual documents. Hell, who cares about the document? A LEFTY quoted it.

If it turns out that the US government duped the people of it's own country into supporting an illegal war, shame on them. If you allow them to continue abusing the power you vested in them, shame on you.

I don't sit in judgement on the United States. I'm not some socialist Canadian who thinks they are better than the US. Who gives a crap what you think about me or what I think about you? All I care about is political sanctioned slaughter, genocide and WWIII. How are we going to stop it?
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MIssion Accomplished in Iraq?

Post by koan »

One of the sources I have based some statements on is Phil Agee. Heard of him? He's a former CIA Case Officer.

A little sample from a speech he gave in 1991:

I go back to the CIA, for just a moment because its worth recalling that the agency, from the very beginning in the 1940’s, was used not only to collect intelligence from around the world, process it and present it to policy makers like the president for their decisions, to help them in their decisions, obviously that’s what an intelligence service should do. But the CIA was used all through these years to subvert the democratic processes of other countries. At the very first meeting of the National Security Council which was set up in the same law that established the CIA as the national intelligence service. This was October of 1947, one month after Truman signed this bill into law establishing the CIA and the National Security Council as the highest policy making body in national security and foreign affairs. At their very first meeting in October 1947 the decision was taken to set aside ten million dollars for the CIA to intervene secretly in the Italian elections coming up about six months later. The CIA was not just used in these electoral operations, you know the media operations were vast and I’m sure they still are. Media operations basically means that the CIA pays a foreign journalist to publish the CIA’s material as if it were the journalist’s own.

There were CIA interventions of all sorts. But one area I want to mention of special importance are what are known as liaison operations. Liaison operations are all those activities that the CIA undertakes with the intelligence and security services of other countries. Early on the CIA began to set up security and intelligence services in other countries for purposes of internal security. One of the first places was Greece. There was a civil war you know in Greece from 1947 to 1949. The U.S. intervened on the side of the far right in Greece and the U.S. side won. In the aftermath the CIA set up a security service known as the KYP, KYP being the Greek initials for CIA. They gave it the same name. This security service was used to keep the far right in power in Greece for nearly 20 years. But when that power was threatened with upcoming elections in 1967 the CIA and this service, this KYP organized a military coup in Greece which was successful leading to seven years of military dictatorship in Greece of neo-fascist stripe. During that period torture became an institution in Greece. Thousands of Greeks were forced into exile.

I could give you many, many examples of this. In Iran for example in 1953 the CIA undermined the democratically elected civil government of the day of Mohammed Mossadech, overthrew that government, installed the Shah as military dictator and in the aftermath set up the service called the SAVACK. This service over the 25 years of the Shah’s regime became famous for its torture chambers and its assassinations of the Shah’s political opponents.

In 1954 the U.S., the CIA, intervenes in Guatemala, undermines the civilian government, the government is overthrown and from 1954 on Guatemala has had one succession of military rulers after another, military dictatorship. In the aftermath of this operation in 1954 the CIA set up an internal security service and then others. But from these services, set up and supported by the CIA all through the years came the death squads. In other words the services established by the CIA then spawned these death squads in Guatemala. The very same thing in El Salvador. You can be as sure as you are of your own name that for the last 10 or 11 years the CIA has been working in there day and night with those Salvadorian security services and military, collecting information, giving it to those services which in turn are the same things as the death squads. Information on activists in the human rights field, the student leadership, the trade unions and so forth and those have constituted the 75,000 or so people who have been murdered over 10 or 11 years in El Salvador. Disappeared, many of them others tortured to death, their bodies thrown on along the sides of the roads. Nobody knows how many have been killed in Guatemala by the military regimes started by the CIA. Some say 100,000, some say 125,000, some say 150,000. Who knows? Nobody will ever really know the exact number who’ve been killed.
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MIssion Accomplished in Iraq?

Post by starlight »

I don't know if accomplished anything in Iraq because the only thing I see that we accomplished is showing that we as American want what we want and will do anything to get it even if it means killing our soldiers along the way. You might not agree but who gave us the right to go into another country and tell them what to do? Before the war; I gave Americans every doubt of every chance but when in hind sight; the president just lied from the beginning saying that the Iraq is the terrorist of 9/11 when the truth is that the Osam Bin Laden was the master mind behind the whole thing. Instead of going after the man who started this whole war; we went after someone else because we thought we could take them over in a couple of years plus a few thousands dead doing so.

Accomplished? Don't make me laugh because there is nothing we accomplished in this war. In my belief; I believe that the President made this a personal thing while using us to do his dirty work. I can't see how this whole war of Iraq has anything to do with the American other than that the Iraquis having oil that we want or to say that most of the American wants.
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MIssion Accomplished in Iraq?

Post by koan »

Far Rider wrote: Next time you see Phil you can tell him Sgt. Rock said to stick it up his a**.

:D


I doubt that would change his testimony, Mr Rock.
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MIssion Accomplished in Iraq?

Post by koan »

Far Rider wrote: Well I'm sure he would not remember me anyway. But he would remember Sgt. Rock. And I am not Sgt Rock. hehehe.... But I appreciate the compliment.

Koan take a chill pill.

Why do you as a Canadian need to be so much in the business of the United States anyway? You already said you don't want or appreciate the protection afforded you already.


Sorry the threat of global war does not warrant the prescription of chill pills.

I'm not speaking as a Canadian. I'm speaking as a fellow human. A member of the world. The goal is supposed to be world peace not world war. How do we accomplish that? By communicating with each other...for a start.

I have a great respect for American citizens. I actually think they can stop this war through protest.

edit: glad you pointed out that this is US business. Business being the operative word.
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