Yeah, ho-ho, people killed, war, ho-ho it is to laugh. :rolleyes:
The record of “credible” infromation on this whole war is highly doubtful, I´m noot wiling to just trust on what one side says.
Yeah, so what… I guess you have the same casual attitude regarding the civilians killed on 9/11, don´t you? and if not, why?
Oh, I get it, so since bad things where done in the past it means that one is free of any moral concerns when dealing with present situations; brilliant.
We´re certainly not bitching about the dead, bad guys, rather to use air power on a residential area to kill an alleged group of bad guys which ends on a massacre.
I´d really like to reply to this, but I´m not in the mood to opena Pit thread.
I don´t quite get what you´re saying there, and I won´t venture supositions.
Or an awfull lot of innocent people wouldn´t have died there. We can´t take those risks, because Iraqi civilians are worth less than American troops, correct?
Seems to me that American’s policy is begining to mirror Israel’s, that is being full of war crimes and brash actions, and we as americans need to take back the white house and keep our country from becoming brutal conquerers.
As for the safehouse, I am not sure, as you probably are not, if the house contained weapons or not, the information from several sources is conflicting. One thing is for sure however, that this kind of action was not acceptable. I consider it terrorism.
That being said each person who is killed no matter what nationality or allegiance in Iraq is definitely not a good thing, and it hurts to know so much bloodshed is being caused. But we all know that this mess was Bush’s fault, and we must remember that at the voting consoles.
Massacre? How exactly is it a massacre? If one innocent guy dies then it’s a massacre? Typical liberal BS. How can you fight a war without a few innocent people dying? You can’t. If you go in with manpower innocent people would still die, so there’s no solution, other than “go home”. Since we don’t want to do that, you’re just being ridiculous and childish.
You don’t want to take the US word for it? OK, well they what exactly is the real story? They really didn’t think it was a safe house. They just felt like blowing it up for the hell of it. That doesn’t seem too likely. Again, compared to the firebombing of Dresden we haven’t exactly killed alot of innocent Iraqis there. You can’t argue that. Hundreds of thousands of innocents were killed in WWII. Does that make us the same as Hitler? Why don’t you answer that. If they blew up the whole town because they wanted to get a few people, I think you’d have a point, but they didn’t, and you don’t.
For all you know the people who cut that guys head off and the people that have set off dozens of bombs killing hundreds of people were taken out. And yeah, maybe a few innocent people were taken out too. So what? Suppose we kill a few innocents and because we also killed bombers we saved the lives of a few hundred. Does that make is worth it?
You remind me of this girl I knew. We gave her a hypothetical. Hostage situation. You’re the police. You can save 30 lives but you’ll kill 3. Or you can do nothing and everyone will die. What do you do? She said she’d wet her pants.
How is it different than 9/11? This is an example of the dumbed down educational system and “anything the US does is bad” belief system. 9/11 was a purposeful attack on innocent people, no military significance, at a time when we weren’t even at war. This was an attack on bad guys who were not civilians which MAY have killed a few (as in one or two) innocent people. Big difference. If you can’t see that, then you’re just lost.
People like you like to morally pontificate even though, given the situation, they have no solutions. If YOU were in charge, oh no, we’d never kill any civilians. Everything would be just peachy. They wouldn’t bomb us at all, everything would be like the summer of love '69. We are in Iraq. Like it or not. They are people killing us, killing Iraqis, and killing government officials, putting the country in chaos. What do you do? Try to kill them? Or sit back and wet your pants.
I haven’t heard that there was “conflicting information”. Who are you to decide what is acceptable in times of war? The other side kills scores of people deliberately. But that’s “Bush’s fault”. We kill some bad guys and if even one “innocent” person dies, well then it’s a WAR CRIME!! Absolutely ridiculous.
OK, Bush is to blame for all deaths. And yes, the deaths of people who cut other people’s heads off is very sad.
But Saddam had killed hundreds of thousands. Hundreds of thousands of Kurds alone. And now he isn’t killing anyone. ANd the only way to get him to stop was to do what Bush did. Asking him nicely to stop killing people, just didn’t work. I know it SHOULD have worked, and maybe if everyone got together at a big peace rally and chanted, hummed, and prayed, he’d stop killing people, but somehow that just never happened.
So Bush gets credit for all the hundreds of thousands, millions of people even, who will not be killed by Saddam Hussein. Bush is the biggest saver of lives since Penicillin!!
I know what you’re going to say. “I’m all in favor of Saddam being gone, but not the way we did it.” Really? ??? And how, pray tell, would you have done it? As mentioned, asking him nicely, didn’t seem to work. Seemed to get alot of people killed who said even word one against him. But in your perfect world, you would have found a way. OK.
I’m not the biggest fan of Bush, but I’m going to vote for him just to piss off people like you.
A couple more things. First, I didn’t laugh at people being killed. I noted that in a war, it’s unrealistic to expect that people won’t get killed. Noting reality and enjoying it are not the same thing. I know, in the perfect liberal world, no one dies, health care is free, there is no pollution, etc. etc.
And are you a military expert? Who are you to say they could have gotten their mission accomplished with less risk to civilians and to themselves? Somehow, in their calculus, they decided that this was the best way. You have no information to the contrary. Again, just “I would have done it better.” Yeah, right.
And as to the risk of Iraqi civilians vs. our military, again I think the record show that our military has had extraordinary restraint in trying to avoid civilian casualties. Given that there is a war, some are simply unavoidable. My reference to Dresden was to note that if people like you were around in WWII, they would be having fits every day. By the standard you are using we are war criminals. We bombed whole cities to get a few factories here and there. When a B-17 drops boms, those bombs weren’t guided. They’d have to drop a very lot of them to make sure it did the job. It wasn’t “if” innocent people were killed, it was how many. And the number of people killed was not considered in any way into target picking. It was irrelevent. So the standards you are using are very different than they’ve been historically.
There must be some calculation somewhere that says, OK if we do this we have a 50% chance of accomplishing the goal and we’ll probably lose 10-20 guys and maybe a few civilians will be killed, vs. OK this will be more likely to be effective, we won’t lose anyone and 5-10 civilians will be killed. How they determine that, I don’t know. Neither do you. All you can say is “I would have done better.” That’s easy talk. Given how ready the Fedayeen were willing to use civilians as shields and what not, to expect to go into Fallujah and take out bad guys and not have any civilians die is just unrealistic.
Just because I´m feeling generous I´ll obviate the latest batch of strawmen and say just one thing.
Look, pal; the only standing excuse for the whole war is the humanitarian intervention, bringing democracyto Iraq; but when what they see are summary executions ala Israel the least the Iraqis are going to see is a system of law in the works, it´s just another totalitarian act of repression.
Now, neither you or I know wheter in that house there was an Al Qaeda franchise or a family of farmers, you know why?, because there was no due process.
Enter Kennybath: But it´s a WAR!, whaaaa!!! Screw due process!
The war is already won, now it´s time to win the peace, the Iraqi people should learn to embrace a democratic society, such a society is built around a base of civil structures, law and order to summarize. If what they see from the ruling authority are summary executions of alleged terrorist then how do you expect them to trust on the impossed system of justice?. If there´s no justice how can they trust the goverment?
What they have been seen are appointed politicians, handled contracts and a fire first ask questions later attitude; that´s the perfect method to lose the peace, to cause unrest on the society, increase resistance, terrorism, et.
My criticism is not the result of recent, it´s motivated by the desperating feeling that things are going to hell in a handbasket with actions like the one descrived on the OP.
Secondly… Sam, I have trouble believing you’re serious here. Surely the U.S. has no credibility left in the eyes of any sane, intelligent person on these matters? What possible reason would anyone have to trust their word, after almost two years of non-stop lies? You seem to be operating on the assumption that the current U.S. administration is more trustworthy than Iraqi eyewitnesses. I see no reason to believe that.
Which is no more than a restatement of the bias Sam has been talking about all along. Most of the SDMB is so fanatically anti-Bush that they are willing to accept the word of anyone who bashes the US as gospel. No examination of the evidence, no withholding of judgement - someone says something bad about the US in Iraq, gotta be true, no questions asked, all sales final.
Which begs kennybath’s question. If you don’t believe the battlefield commanders because you think BushliedBushliedBushliedBushliedBushliedBushlied[sup]TM[/sup], then what really happened? The US just felt like killing some people, so they picked a house at random and opened fire? And was it just a coincidence that the house was so full of ordnance that it went off like the Fourth of July for twenty minutes afterwards? Then the US soldiers spitted the bodies of babies on their bayonets and toasted them over the flames like marshmallows?
You state nothing more - nothing - but your conviction that anyone who fails to agree with you must be either blindly stupid or willfully treasonous. Based on what?
Is it your contention that we have no basis for our skepticism? Well, then, you must be of the opinion that the Bushivik Admin has been nothing but a font of utter candor and straight truth? Do you so contend? That would be rather a tough case to make, don’t you agree? With all of the half-truths, innuendoes, and bald-faced lies we have been served?
And if we have good reason to be skeptical of our own, how could we fail to be skeptical of “Vlad the Impaler” Putin? Nothing about this strikes you as odd? Really? Nothing? Not the remarkably convenient timing of the revelation? No question in your mind as to why, exactly, Saddam should so unreservedly trust the Russians that he would let them in on his dastardly scheme, for no reason whatsoever? What could have been his motivation? Was he trying to recruit the Russians connivance in his scheme? Why would he have expected to be successful?
I point out again: if there were anyone who had solid evidence of such a thing, the Bushiviks would shower him with money and goodies. Anything he wanted could be his. Saddam is gone, there is no threat of retribution. So what is it that you purport? That no one in Iraq is left alive who knew about this? Not one? How very odd.
And note as well the reluctance of the Bushiviks to trumpet this glorious revelation from the rooftops. This would seem to be political manna from Heaven, as good news as John Kerry caught in bed with a live boy or a dead woman. And yet, they are strangely silent on this. Can you explain this uncommon reluctance? Other than the obvious, that it is a load of horseshit that they want no part of?
You stridently accuse your political opponents of refusing to accept evidence, of blind partisan hatred. And yet you cannot offer so much as a shred of evidence that Mr. Putin’s contention has merit. Yet you insist that we are biased for not accepting it at face value. You gotta be kidding.
Actually, it wouldn’t be my own military, but their military, and anyway it doesn’t change a thing. I tend to suspect for some reason that US militaries are quite likely sympathizers with the US army, too, hence that their statements are likely to be biased. An Iraki doctor or police officer might be or might not be a terrorist sympathizer, but he’s still not so obviously biased as an army spokeperson.
Anyway, I’m not going to take the words of “my own military” on any issue they’re involved in just because they’re my “own military” (and they aren’t mine, they’re "my country’s military). Let alone the word of the US military, given, as I already mentionned, the extremely low current reliability of Washington statements.
Half clearer. The part about “now that we’re involved there, it would be worst to turn tail” I can understand, but the part about “my country has decided to wage this war I was oposed to, so now, I can’t deride them” I can’t. Democracy or not, if I were opposed to a military action at the first place and noticed that it resulted in “bad things” done by my country’s army, I would certainly use these acts as further arguments against this military action, rather than try to excuse them. If the choice was bad at the first place, it remains so, even the if president or 75% of the population disagree with me. And bad consequences resulting from a bad original choice just made the choice even worst…
Let’s assume that my brothers decide to rob a bank. I’m opposed to this action at the first place. While they rob the bank, they found themselves “obligated” to kill a bank teller and a lost bullet kills also a bystander. Should I then excuse the death of these two people on the basis that when one robs a bank, such things can happen? Don’t think so. It just makes an action which was criminal at the first place even worst.
I think the same about military actions. If they’re ill-founded at the first place, then each unintended or unavoidable death makes this military action even worst. And whether this action was decided by a democratically elected president or a dictator, by my country or another doesn’t change a thing, and has no bearing about my opinion or judgment. Something bad doesn’t becomes OK when it’s decided by a democratic leader, by my own country, or by my family.
Wild. Just wild.
Wake me when there’s any evidence, at all, that Saddam was in substantial noncompliance with any UN resolution, that he had anything at all to do with 9/11, that he had any sort of relationship, real, that is, rather than in the fantasy that festers in the fetid swamp of Cheney’s corrupted, putrescent cranium, with Osama, or that Saudi Arabia and Pakistan offered less support to al Qaeda than Iraq, but of course we had no reason to invade either of those countries (not to mention that Pakistan passed nuclear secrets to both North Korea and Libya, but we can’t go invading them, oh no).
'Til then, these accusations of bias against the left - who have been proven overwhelmingly right on every single one of these points - are just too stupid for words.
Believing Putin is such a grasping for straws that I can’t believe anyone with any sense of shame at all would allow himself to do it in public.
For shame.
Police suspect some bank robbers are hoeld up in a house, where they have their children and wives. They know that the leader isn’t there, but they suspect that they have some weapons.
Do they
Surround the house and begin a standoff
Raid the house and attempt to arrest the robbers
Call in a F-16 to blow the house to tiny bitty pieces