It all began at the age of four, when I learned the alphabet. Literacy is a beautiful thing.
I would suggest that if you are claiming Collounsbury is a lying sack of shit, you might want to provide some solid evidence to that effect. Because personally, I’m pretty convinced that all those news stories he cited are damned good evidence that the nation of Iraq is, by and large, in pretty terrible condition.
As for his recounting of personal conversations with people who have personal knowledge of these matters, I have no reason to believe that they are fabricated or otherwise unreliable. Again, provide some fucking evidence if you’re going to cast such aspersions. Otherwise, you’re back to the jealous schoolgirl paradigm.
[nitpick]
Goddamit milroyj, if you’re going to get all fawny and sycophanty over december, at least learn to spell his name correctly. It’s december, not December.
[/nitpick]
So that would really suggest that if your POV is wrong, you are NEVER going to accept it, right?
You are NEVER going to learn anything, because anything that doesn’t support your POV you will just dismiss.
december - once and for all, why don’t you come to this region and see for yourself? I will even shout you a fucking airticket (economy if that is OK because I am not that loaded) and hotel. You can email me your acceptance via my profile.
Then - once you’ve been here a week, met a few muslims and Arabs, and the “white” people that actually count themselves friends of these muslims and Arabs, and even some jewish people that live here quite happily and regard muslims and Arabs as their friends and colleagues, then if you really want to, you can go back to spewing your bigoted shit.
OR: you might just feel so disgusted with your own attitude over the last few months/years that you just decide never to post again.
Millroy, even if you think minty’s posting style sucks eggs, or that he’s factually wrong, or whatever, people should argue his points, not just mindlessly bash him.
Hang on. So if you make repeated poorly informed, illogical or stupid statements about a region then you get offers of a free trip there?
In that case can I just say that the people of Hawaii are all fanatical terrorists, whilst at the same time poor innocents dominated by a tyranical regime. They’re also prime ringleaders in the United Nations plot to create a new world order.
Two tickets would be nice, as the missus shares my views on this issue, and has just bought a new bikini.
Hey! At least pick some area near the subject at hand.
Perhaps you could go to Indonesia. I understand there’s a large number of Muslims there whose culture you can soak in. At least it’s close to Hawaii.
I wanted to go to Istanbul myself, but likely won’t be able to for years to come due to the politics at hand. However, I profoundly doubt anyone on an internet message board is going to follow up on any offer of free air tickets.
I never posted about it on this Board, but I was (indirectly) asked by the US Gov to go to Iraq myself to help out on certain power restoration issues. I declined due to health, lack of applicable knowledge that would make a difference, poor compensation (20% uplift? Ummm…let me think…no. I need that much to go to Houston, let alone Iraq.), and simply not wanting to go. Several of my colleagues are currently in Iraq, at the ground level, restoring or trying to restore power infrastructure. I could speak on what they do, and their success and lack thereof, but watching threads like this makes me supremely reluctant to do so.
You know, I heard about these sorts of threads, but never wanted to read one. Now that I have, I don’t ever want to read one again. Threads like these are not what the SDMB is supposed to be about, and Pit or no Pit, it doesn’t really seem like it should be allowed to stand. IMHO, YMMV, FWDIK, and all those other silly things, I guess.
I’d love to visit Dubai. I have been to Israel a couple of times. I met Arabs who were friendly and also encountered Arabs who seethed with hatred. Next time I go to the Middle East I may just accept your invitation to visit Dubai.
I’m sorry you think I’m bigoted. I’m not. The religion or race of people doesn’t interest me. I oppose people who commit acts of terrorism and mass murder, especially when my relatives and friends are their targets.
But, hatred of Israel and of Jews isn’t caused by people being Arabs or being Muslims. The hatred is promoted by institutions within some of the Arab countries. Mistreatment of gays and women isn’t intrinsic to Islam or to being an Arab. These are unfortunately in the culture of some of the ME. I believe the culture can change.
BTW there are Arabs who believe the Palestinian leadership is entirely in the wrong. E.g., from a recent column by Joseph Farah:
I don’t see the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians in racial or religious terms. Israel wants to exist as a Jewish homeland, and I want them to exist.
Unfortunately some of the Palestinians and other Arabs do see this conflict in religious terms. Antisemitic material is presented in some Arab countries. Anti-semitic attacks by Arabs are on the rise in many parts of the world. The attackers don’t distinguish between fighting Israel and fighting Jews. I have nothing against Arabs or Muslims. I don’t bomb mosques or attack Islamic religious leaders. I just want to be left alone.
Ah come on, the connection is obvious…erm…lemme see…got one! Iraq has sand, Hawaii has sand. Just how much more proof do I have to provide before you’ll see this threat for what it is?
[sub]Back me up on this one and I’ll push for 4 tickets and get yourself and Fierra on the “inspection team”. Waddya say?[/sub]
Maybe. I almost took her to Hawaii a few weeks ago, but had work conflicts. It will happen in the future, though. Both of us would like to see the ruins of the Eastern Roman empire, which is why I thought Istanbul. Indonesia is the first Muslim country near Hawaii which came to mind outside of Bali, which doesn’t seem like a happy place to be right now (co-worker just returned from there, woke up to “death to america!” written on his hotel room door). Of course, I was personally confronted with “Yankee go home!” in Italy, so who knows where one can go without having this happen?
I’ve been reading about some interesting ancient engineering works in Iraq that would be fascinating to see (including an incredibly old sewer tunnel), as well as artifacts in their museum. Too bad I won’t be going there in this lifetime. I think for the near term all my holidays will be in the UK. Cool Britannia!
I would be very interested to hear from anyone who has such direct contacts with the actual situation on the ground. If not in this thread, may I suggest posting your info in Collounsbury’s current GD thread, titled someting like “Reconstruction of Iraq”?
Indonesia is safe enough - been there twice this year and planning to go back in a couple of weeks. While such experiences as your co-workers do happen they are pretty rare, fortunately. I do sympathise on your Italy story - Milan has certainly seen a rise in anti US/UK sentiment. On a similar note in France a few weeks back I ended up having to laugh off drunken threats from an idiot who felt that swinging at me was a good solution to the Iraq situation, rather than a fairly swift way to get his head kicked in.
I wouldn’t write off Iraq yet. 15 years after he’d taken part in invading Germany my grandfather was holidaying there, which is a nice example of how radically things can change in a fairly short time. I must also point out that Iraq’s loss is the UK’s gain.
Tonight I met an Iraqi guy who has just flown to Dubai from Baghdad.
He said it’s shit there. He also said - I only have his word for it though - that the security situation for troops is far worse than is revealed to the media, he says for every one US soldier we hear about killed at least another five have been killed.
This may well be an exaggeration, I don’t know how the US army would be able to get away with it (the family has to be told after all, how do you hide five extra sets of grieving relatives?) Perhaps there have been more injuries or “near misses” than have reached the TV and newspapers? I thought it was a rather odd and unusual thing for him to come out with, it was prompted by a CNN report on the latest US casualty that we were watching at the time.
This was quite a “westernised” and very educated Iraqi, btw. And certainly not a Saddam supporter - the very opposite, in fact.
