I just want to add that on the list of innocent people I believe Bush has killed for no good reason, I include US military personel who were put in harm’s way without just cause.
Actually, before the second gulf war, Kurdistan wasn’t controlled by Saddam anymore. So those Kurds who were dying were being killed by other Kurds, in the strife between the two main rival Kurd organizations.
So, we’re at a point where such an idiocy could be considered as a more palatable alternative? :dubious:
So, we’re at a point where such an idiocy could be considered as a more palatable explanation? :dubious:
In order to be clear : the “let’s bomb Al-Jazeera” concept seems so utterly stupid that I have a hard time believing this story could be true.
But I’m left quite speechless reading the various hypothesis made on this issue. Roughly, people are calmy debatting about whether the US president is totally incompetent or a complete moron or a souless mass-murderer…
To which I should add: To suggest, seriously or in jest, bombing the al-J HQ, Bush had to have been aware that al-J has a headquarters whose existence and location are publicly known; which would be inconceivable if he were confusing it with al-Q.
It’s a perplexing debate, I grant you. It’ll probably take historians several decades to sort this question out. 
Don’t you worry about us. We believe in the cause.
Maybe when you debate the quality of France’s president, your alternatives are not quite so depressing; but we’ve got to work with the material we’ve got. Is there not a French proverb, “What cannot be cured must be endured”? 
Or, rather, 
How skillfully you evade the point! Have you considered a career in bull fighting?
Let me bring this down a notch. Combat corrodes humanity. There are people who can endure fear and stress for interminable lengths of time and keep thier humanity and compassion intact. They are, regretably, rare.
So whether it is Iraq, Viet Nam, Panama, or Bosnia…the essential facts remain. Erich Maria Remarque, James Jones and Tim O’Brien wrote about different wars. There is much in their narratives unique, but more than is entirely the same.
And, point of fact, you didn’t “question”, you sneered.
You speak for the entirety of the US Armed Forces, do you? :dubious:
Tell me…what was the good reason to sacrifice troops in Iraq.
If you are sufficiently omnipotent that you “know [Bush] he has no conscience” than I’ll speak for the military.
The point of contention was the assertion the military does not try “particularly hard not to kill civilians.” Your rebuttal was a conversation with sensitive, gentle as a lamb cousin Clay. That was a pretty soft argument, don’t you think? I didn’t need to be a bullfighter to dodge that softball.
Your current assertions that all wars and actions in war are fundamentally same in the last 90 years is flawed. If you were talking about how men treat fellow combatants, I might have seen some logic, but even that doesn’t hold water. How the Japanese and Americans treated each other and how the Germans and Americans treated each other was fundamentally different. Just looking at the POW death rates would tell one that. The actions of the American fighting man (and woman) toady cannot be readily compared to the fighting men in WWI. Remarque writes about men hardened by four years of war in the trenches, almost without relief, with no sense of hope. Americans in Iraq are usually there for only one year at a time. They are in constant contact with loved one back home. They have access to the news. The two are not comparable.
But we aren’t discussing Military-to-military relations are we. We were discussing how the American fighting man relates the civilians in country. The history of occupation is a brutal and ugly one. I’d state that American relations with the populace in Iraq, including collateral damage compare favorably to almost any other in history. The Americans know that in this war, maybe more than any other, we have to win the “hearts and minds.” And we do this by protecting them as best we can. I know you won’t see this on the CBS new (gee, why not???) but outside of Baghdad, Iraqis will approach you , talk to you and thank you for helping them. They are appreciative of the opportunity that they are receiving. I don’t see that we’d get that response if we didn’t try particularly hard not to kill civilians." And that was the assertion that I took exception with.
How about all three ? Plus I think he’s probably crazy.
So you’re fine with using napalm, cluster bombs and torture for Haliburton and the neocons ? That’s the cause, after all.
Nitpick : It’s “omniscient”, not “omnipotent”. Also, all one needs to do is look at his actions; the man is a monster. Killing thousands for no good reason, torture, child rape, lies, corruption - if this creature and his gang have a single virtue, I’m unaware of it. Bush and friends leave a trail of misery and death in the world, and it doesn’t seem to bother them; therefore, they have no conscience.
President Bush signed an executive order to the rape of childen? Sorry that I missed that one.
It happened at Abu Ghraib. You are welcome to tell us that the abuses of prisoners in Iraq (most off whom the military now acknowledges were innocent civilians) happened without the knowledge and consent of the civilian leadership. In turn, we are welcome to scoff and to point at stuff like the torture memo and Dick Cheney’s recent impassioned plea to congress to allow the administration to keep torturing people. I certainly haven’t seen any indication that Bush et al have been personally aggrieved by the rape of children in US prison camps.
Thanks for he laugh about how much Iraqi civilians love the occupation, by the way.
Spifflog, I’m genuinely interested in a current member of the US military’s answer to this question:
What exactly is the cause you see yourself as fighting for?
So, do you have some figure to disclose in support of this statement? Because, given that the USA refuses to provide any estimate of the Iraki casualties, how could we compare them with other conflicts?
If that were the case, it would still be inexcusable. One of the unspoken rules of war is, you try not to wipe out your allies. If after all these years as president, Bush still can’t keep his friends and enemies straight, it’s pathetic. Just like during the debates he kept confusing and confaliting Iraq/Iran/Afghanistan. It’s usually important to know who you are planning to blow up.
What is/was the cause again?? Sorry, it kept changing so much and so often I got confused. I have a list somewhere.