I would thank her for her son’s (assuming male) service.
Did you ever consider that you and your ilk are the ones who make it feel like her son gave his life for naught? You see no good about removing a murderous dictator, nor ending a corrupt oil for food trade which just enriches countries like France and props up Sadam.
You want to really help the mothers? Well stop calling them useless dead and acknowledge the good that has come out of it - this is insulting to all our service people.
We removed a dictator, and are replacing him with anarchy, theocracy, and warlordism. Bangup job, eh?
The fact of the matter is we didn’t need to wage this war, it was never about Iraqi civilians, and it is a breach of international law and a travesty.
Our soldiers are dying for nothing. The blame lies at the adminstration’s feet. And the people you should be angry at are those in the administration who spent human lives so cheapy, not those who realize that a shell game has been played.
Well I linked to a story about Fallujan earlier in this thread that says
I saw this report and the men did look like they were just shot while sleeping. Most of the bodies were still covered by blankets. A couple of arms that were basically bone due to the dogs were sticking out from under the blankets. Ahh I hear you say ‘the US troops most likely took the guns from the house so nobody else could use them’ but look just after the bit I quoted and you see
http://www.channel4.com/news/2005/01/week_2/11_iraq.html
This board has had threads about children being killed, videos of wounded men being basically executed while lying on the ground. If you don’t know about these things then you haven’t being paying attention or you just couldn’t give a shit.
This has already been addressed above, by mhendo and others, but it’s still worth pointing out that this argument is just complete and absolute bullshit.
a) there ain’t many people at all who disagree that removing a murderous dictator is a good thing.
b) the oil for food thing is just a distraction. Everyone knew that Saddam was still getting money. The France thing is just nonsense. You still taking Chalabi’s word, after all the lies that he fed you about WMDs? Huh?
c) the whole problem is with the price of removing the murderous dictator, and who pays it. There are a lot of dead Iraqi civilians who have paid the price already, and who had no say in whether they wanted to be killed in order to free them from the murderous dictator. Their families and friends also had no say in this, and are rightly pissed off at what the US has done to them. US servicemen got sent into this thing, mostly willingly, but based on a bunch of bullshit that your lying president told them. Quite a few of them have paid the ultimate price.
Look, 9/11 proved that militant muslim extremists, e.g. Al Qaeda, are a bunch of bloodthirty assholes who think nothing of slaughtering large numbers of civilians to make a political point and gain personal “street cred” and the accompanying political clout within their target demographic. They don’t show much respect for the lives of their own people, when they use them in suicide attacks, either. This Iraq thing has proved that the current US administration is hardly any different.
Just wanna support yojimbo here. I saw the report on Channel 4 too and it looked very much that these 4 unarmed people were shot while asleep, in bed.
For what its worth i never believed a word that came out of Downing St since 11/9/01. It was completely fucking obvious that the US was gonna make someone pay, and it was probably gonna be SH. Everything else was just a sales job.
Blair has made the UK more dangerous for perhaps the next 10 -15 years - not for any terrorist reasons, but because if a situation arrises where were ARE actually threatened by another country, no-one is going to believe a word the gov says.
You only get one chance to bollocks up the trust relationship a population has with it’s leaders. Between them, Bush and Blair fucked it. I hope for all our sakes we still believe them when it really, really matters.
Just in case you missed it - SH was telling the truth and France was totaly correct in not supporting the war. That must really stick in some neo-con hawks throats. Ha !
Sin
That might be the worst of it right there, Sinical. One of the biggest balls of slime to wear shoes was telling the truth, and we were the ones who were bullshitting. Sticks in my craw, I feel like a cat trying to hack up a hairball made of fish hooks.
More Fallujah fun here .
The doctor who had to treat the surviving ** men, women and children** of this attack said that they all told him they were running from a firefight that broke out between the US and insurgents. Please note the lack of checking and how quick the decision is made to kill this people.
There are many more things like this but I’m sick and tired of looking at them and having people like you say they don’t exist.
Deal with it. Your country has done disgraceful things in your name while removing a fucker from power without any consideration for the pain inflicted on the people they say they were “liberating” or for international law.
The message on a mirror in one house left for the returning family was also very pleasant wasn’t it? “Fuck Iraq and all Iraqis”. Charming.
Anybody notice that the most vocal Bush apologists have avoided this thread like the plague? Where is Shodan, Sam Stone, Bricker, Debaser et al now? Could it be that even they find this turn of events shameful and indefensible?
Which is exactly what her son did.
Did it ever occur to you and your ilk that your uncritical belief in the exaggerations and lies regarding Saddam’s WMD’s lead you to support a war for which no adequate justification existed, and when that finally became clear, you grabbed onto the pleasant illusion that you did it because you loved ‘spreading freedom’?
Sure, there is ‘good’ in removing a murderous dictator, but is there enough good to justify the expense?
When Wolfowitz expounded on the administration’s case for war, he described weapons of mass destruction as "the one reason everyone could agree on”:
Wolfowitz also mentioned the good that could come from US withdrawal from Saudi Arabia. But no one has argued that alone gave sufficient cause to conquer Iraq.
So what are we down to today? The WMD issue is gone. The Iraqi link with terror has grown stronger with the occupation, and the administration itself admits that the criminal treatment of the Iraqi people was not enough to justify the putting American kids at risk on such a massive scale.
Your justification for the war is gone, and switching to an inadequate justification after the fact doesn’t fix anything. Those young men and women will still die to no worthwhile purpose.
That might make you feel bad, but tough shit, you and your ilk brought this on, and running into the arms of another illusion of noble purpose will only serve to increase the likelihood of further senseless death and destruction.
Speaking of the march of freedom, have you started to lower your expectations for the election yet? The administration suggests that you begin to do so now in order to lessen the shock to your warm fuzzy system when reality hits:
Before the war, we weren’t supposed to protest because we might weaken Bush’s negotiating position against Saddam by not presenting a united front. During the war, we weren’t supposed to protest because there was a war on and we all needed to support the troops. Now we aren’t supposed to protest because we might make the dead soldiers’ families believe the war wasn’t worth losing their loved ones over.
By this logic, all wars must be supported and justified indefinitely out of respect for the dead. Fuck that. This administration was reckless and careless about putting our troops in harm’s way and thus bear the full and complete responsibility for sacrificing the lives of the soldiers who have died in Iraq. If it turns out to have been a mistake, the blame lies them and them alone.
I hate the pain some of our soldiers’ families are in right now. But if we all pretend these deaths instantly validate the past blunders of those in charge, then more soldiers and civilians are going to die in future reckless adventures.
Tell this to the people having their tours extended against their will, or being dragged into the service even though they’ve finished their obligations years ago.
That’s pretty much how they treated the elections in the U.S., too. What was that that happened in Florida or Ohio? Eh, doesn’t matter, as long as Bush wins.
,
Not if he’s replaced with something worse.
Everybody has their hand in the pie. I bet if you dig deep enough, we were getting some of that action too. You do know that some of our very own US oil companies have been dealing with Iran right? Before you start busting on the French, take a look in the mirror.
Attention all chickens!
The fox that Farmer Bob shot in the southern woods far away never presented a danger to our coop. Also, that fox didn’t have super-sharp and extra-long fangs. Farmer Bob disseminated this rumor to justify his hunting expedition and bring home a new pelt for his greedy wife. Regarding rumors that this fox actually did kill and eat some other chickens far away, even if true, what do we care?
Let us all cluck together to condemn voracious predatory exploits of Farmer Bob!
Evidence shows, my fellow chickens, that the best way to do this is to retort to facts with dissembling information, denigration, and sneering condescension.
Stone gets no respect from me.
What threat did Iraq pose to the US?
Feel free to use facts.
“Bob, there’s a fox in the henhouse.”
“There is?”
“I got photographic evidence. Take a gander.”
“In that henhouse?”
“It’s a henhouse. Why do you ask?”
“Where’s the fox?”
“Right there.”
“Where, behind the rabbit?”
“It is the rabbit! I mean, the fox.”
“Whah?”
“It’s got a mean streak a mile wide, lad! We must destroy it!”
“I…”
“If you don’t destroy this rabbit…er, fox, it will eat the entire farm.”
“What, the cows?”
“Yes.”
“Are you serious?”
“Deadly.”
“Tell you what, if you can show me that ra…fox is eating the hens at least, blast away.”
“What, you say it didn’t?”
“Well, where are the dead hens?”
“It ate them. How many hens were there?”
“Uhhh…”
“You don’t know how many hens are there?”
“Shit.”
“I’ll say. That little son-of-a-bitch is fixin to eat 'em all, you’ve got to stop him!”
“Look, if I lost a couple hens at this point, I can live with that. But you gotta show me somehow this… animal is a threat.”
“Look at that!”
“What?”
“It’s planning something.”
“How can you tell, it’s a picture!”
“Look at it’s beady little eye.”
“Can we please stop looking at the picture and concentrate on the hen house?”
“Come out you damn fox, or else!”
“I don’t see anything.”
“Oh he’s in there…he’s sly.”
“Uhhh…”
“You hear that?”
“What?”
“He’s scroungin’ around!”
“I don’t hear anything.”
“I got good ears, Bob, and I’m tellin’ you, that fox is in there, and he’s hungry as hell!”
“I…buh…”
“We’re runnin’ outta time! Bob! Hurry! Let me get the little fucker!”
“But the hens…”
“Bob, thank you…the hens must be saved, as you said! I’m going in!”
“Oh boy…”
BLAM BLAM BLAM BLAM BLAM BLAM BLAM BLAM!
“Holeee shit!”
“Whooooheeee!”
“Uh…did you get the fox?”
“I got the little bastard!”
“It’s a rabbit.”
“I told you there was a fox!”
“It’s a rabbit.”
“Look, he’s been eatin’ your chicken feed for years. He’s a menace.”
“Say, that was a lot of rounds you shot off with your, uh, assault rifle there…it’s kind of a ‘target rich’ environment in the hen house, you know.”
“We have to make sacrifices, Bob.”
“My chickens!”
“Aw, I only got a few of them.”
“A FEW? How many?”
“You don’t need to know that. All you need to know is this damn rabbit is dead.”
“But I wanted you to get the fox! Where the hell is the fox?”
“Look, the fox is in the past. What we got here, sir, is one dead rabbit. And that’s a good thing.”
“I think you blew a hole in the side of the henhouse.”
“Oh? What makes you say that?”
“Because there are foxes running, you idiot.”
“Foxes? FOXES? You see? Lookit’ that! There are foxes in there!”
“Yeah, no shit.”
“Well we gotta get 'em!”
“Yes. Yes we do.”
“Well it’s a damn good thing I’m here, or those foxes would eat the rest of the hens, we’d get no more eggs, and pretty soon it’s the whole damn barnyard!”
“Right.”
“My friends are on their way, Bob. Good friends of mine. They’ll patch it all up, no sweat, and you’ll be sittin’ pretty. Trust me. They’ll charge you a fair price, so you don’t have to bother with all that contractual legalese bullshit.”
“What do they want?”
“Eggs.”