Shodan, bravo, and thanks. In Bolar’s alterna-world, the Taliban are still in power and sheltering al-Qaeda terrorists, and Saddam Hussein is adding more bodies to the mass graves of 300,000 that have disappeared under his regime. Oh sure, they’re bad, but for heaven’s sakes, don’t do anything that would actually change those regimes.
The moral relevance of European opinion recedes daily.
In my alterna-world, the U.S. gave Saddam all his Weapons Of Mass destruction, looked the other way as he gassed his own people. We gave Saddam the go-ahead to invade Kuwait. We encouraged the uprising after the Golf War I, then abandoned the Iraqi’s to be mass slaughtered. We, along with the ISI, supported Bin Laden, supported the Taliban until they refused to bend to our wills. We let 9/11 happen, in order to justify two illegal wars that were planned well before 9/11.
Oh… wait a minute… That’s not an alterna-world… Sorry, my bad.
Here’s a link to one of my favorite pics on the net. Rumsfeld and Saddam chummin it up in '83.
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB82/
Balor, I think your problem is one of understanding of numbers…possibly you have a math difficiency? For the sake of arguement, lets put the total number of dead from Bush’s various adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan at…oh, lets just say 30,000 (just a WAG on my part for the sake of arguement). Thats a nice round number (and probably high at that). Now, even assuming all your arguements are true and Bush did these two adventures for the worst possible reasons, lets compare him to the winner from the rational people in this thread: Lil’ Kim. From what I recall reading, the deaths due to starvation in North Korea (btw, starvation is a pretty grim way to go) are estimated by some at something like 3 million. So, we have 30 thousand vs 3 million. Thats two orders of magnitude. You see the difference? Can you comprehend the vast scales involved here?
A similar look at numbers will reveal that the runner up, Mugabe, you’d also find a similar disparity in the pure numbers. And this doesn’t even count the summary executions and odd torture and such from both men. And how many summary executions and tortures has Bush authorized lately? At a guess, its far less to say the least. Frankly it amazes me that there are actually folks so out of touch with reality that they think that GW, as bad as he is, is even in the same league as some of these monsters. Amazing…and quite informative. It really shows some insites into some of the folks in this thread to be honest.
-XT
According to the International Center for Prison Studies, Cuba has a prison population of 297 per 100,000.
http://www.kcl.ac.uk/depsta/rel/icps/worldbrief/caribbean_records.php
That’s not to say there aren’t more undocumented, of course.
No, it only frightens us when we understand what you are shouting. And it is tin-foil hat stuff like -
It’s one thing to care about world opinion. It is quite another to indulge lurid conspiracy theories, as if they should be taken seriously.
Walloon - 
Regards,
Shodan
So for the people that name Bush, please answer this question then :
Kim Jong II, Fiedel Castro and George W. Bush are running for "head" of your country (hypothetically...I know some of you probably have PM....obviously hypothetical here). WHo do you vote for? Can you honestly say you'd vote AGAINST Bush in this scenario?Sorry for the double post, but, for akrako…
Of the things you theoretically mentioned, 90% of them have absolutely nothing to do wtih George W. Bush and were going on long before he came into office, including during 8 years of a Democratic president, so I don't see how even if true it has enything to do with how Bush is the most evil ruler on earth.Yet another vote for Kim Jong-Il.
A slight hijack: did anyone see the 60-minutes episode where they interviewed young North Korean students? They were asked questions about the United States, how they feel about it and such, and they all replied along similar lines saying things like (I’m paraphrasing here): “Americans are the new Nazis of the world… They are killing people by the thousands in underground concentration camps… Our Dear Leader Kim is the greatest… When we take over the world we will kill all Americans” and so on. It was pretty scary. You can’t help but shake your head and feel sorry for how these kids have been brainwashed like that.
Very snide of you but perhaps you can name an Asian Communist leader from Mao on down who has been any good whatsover. It is hardly a race thing though since the dispossession, the submission of the individual to the “greater good” of the State is a feature of Stalinism also. I don’t doubt that a centralist government built on this model in Old Blighty or the US would be just as harmful, repressive and destructive. Hitler was a white man and his policies of National Socialism were of the same kind. Ditto Mussolini. Caucescu. Franco. And the Patriot Act is the first piece of legislation eminating from the US that has that same scary connotations of citizens being taken from their homes in the dead of night; it’s that frightening.
Unlike some of the anti-Bush opinions here, my point is not that Bush is the out-and-out worst leader. That is bound to go to the leader with the largest body count or the guy who happens to be in power when you wander the streets and you’re not safe from anyone there, least of all the officials. But, at a time when we’re trying to win an idealogical battle against the likes of al-Qai’da we need a contrast
For all the right wing attacks on ‘tinfoil hatwearing lefties’, nobody on the Right has yet addressed the damage the West causes when it is unable to say with a straight face “We do not launch pre-emptive attacks on sovereign states”, “we do not discriminate over which repressive regime we tacitly support and which we condemn”, “we do not lock people up without trial” and so forth. Brute force won’t win this ‘war on terror’; we have to show that we are better than the kind of people who plant bombs on commuter transport. How do we do that? By moral example. Always by moral example.
As for Mugabe; he is fuel for the sort of colonialist mentality that my father had (he was born in the Dutch East Indies and not enlightened enough to recognize that Indonesia would become a great democracy when it gained it’s independence), and his opinion that former colonies ended up being led by leaders who, rather than liberating their people, salted the money away in Swiss bank accounts and built monuments to themselves. Or, as in Mugabe’s case, dispossessed the colonialists of not only the land but the capital they had built up. Having always found this repellant I can only say “Thank the gods for Nelson Mandela” - my choice of one of the three greatest leaders of modern times (the other two are Gorbachev and Vaclev Havel)
There haven’t been many, and your point seems to have been that this shouldn’t count because we can’t expect anything different from those benighted Asians. They’re not civilized, after all, not like us white folks, and therefore should not be judged too harshly. Likewise with Mugabe. Who expects civilized behavior from those savages, right?
The characteristic you mentioned to distinguish them was racial, so it seems to be one standard for Asians and blacks, and another for everyone else, and I was wondering why.
So when you said that Bush “is worse than Kim”, were you trolling?
Regards,
Shodan
Thanks, jjimm. She’s an honest-to-god hero. I wanted to go to Burma when I was in Thailand in '99 but didn’t because I knew how she felt about tourism. I would have felt pretty dumb, too, if I met her there and she chided me.
Well, Shodan, it’s easy to misread my intentions here so I won’t take umbrage. I’m no White Supremacist. In fact it’s an untenable position since, as one author said, the Chinese were building great walled cities when my ancestors were still living in mud huts. And who knows how long it would have taken us to invent paper or gunpowder etc. The Arab world beat us to mathematics and so forth.
I think a lot of problems in countries like China and the African nations are not caused by the people being ‘savages’ but the fact that they were under the rule of a colonial oppressor and this made them susceptible to tyranny from within. Communism was the perfect blueprint for this since it promised power to be delivered into the hands of the people themselves but, as we have seen, this has proven to be lie since it gives them less power than other systems of government. Nonetheless there is something within the Asian temperament that makes them prone to this kind of reverence for government as non-Communist nations like Singapore and Malaysia would seem to indicate. It’s hardly a lack of civilization or a tendency toward ‘savagery’ and, for that matter, Americans have a dangerous ‘my country right or wrong’ mentality that blinds them to the facts otherwise a leader like Nixon or Bush would not be possible.
And, for the record, I wasn’t trolling: I was explaining how - while Kim may be the worse leader overall (as I think he is), Bush is terrible because he is worse than circumstances or precedent dictate.
Kim-Jong gets my vote, with Yassir Arafat as veep.
[QUOTE=Vote Bakunin]
Brute force won’t win this ‘war on terror’; we have to show that we are better than the kind of people who plant bombs on commuter transport. How do we do that? By moral example. Always by moral example.
[QUOTE]
So far, brute force has been and continues to be effective in winning the war on terror. Terrorist leaders form the “deck” (top 52 most wanted) have been captured during raids, and Iraq (which, by the way, harbored Al Qaeda ) no longer has a leader that promotes acts of terror against the U.S.
And trying to show “moral example” will not be effective in stopping these terrorists, because they believe that they themselves have moral superiority. They believe, based on their twisted view of the Koran, that if they kill a nonbeliever (i.e. a Christian), then they will receive 70 (or whatever the number is) virgins in Paradise. Because of this belief, the mere fact that we exist is what makes them kill us, and no “moral example” we provide will ever stop them.
No mention yet of Islom Karimov of Uzbekistan, whose habit of boiling political opponents alive surely should help him into the top ten. Mind you, he’s part of the “Coalition of the Willing”, so perhaps we should ignore his transgressions :rolleyes:
Where to start…
First, the whole ‘brute force’ notion. Brute force does not work in the long run. Because of the methods we use, for every ‘terrorist’ we kill, there are a multitude to take their place. The oppressive nature with which we conduct raids, detain innocents, and torture them basically ensures that there are more to take their place. Read the accounts of some of our released prisoners, their story repeated to their relatives and neighbors is surely enough to rile up some reighteous support against us.
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/allnews/content_objectid=14042696_method=full_siteid=50143_headline=-MY-HELL-IN-CAMP-X-RAY-name_page.html
I think you’re a little biased against Islam. Christianity is similarly perverted and used by the fundamentalists for their own gains. Heard of the crusades? The commonly excepted expression that ‘more people have died in the name of religion than all other wars combined’ is surely true, and applies most to Christian wars.
I want to clear something up for you. There was ABSOLUTELY NO AL-QUEDA/IRAQ CONNECTION prior to our invasion. The Bush cabal had the CIA, FBI, and every organization they could find desperately looking for a connection between Iraq and Al-Queda(9/11). They took to inventing intelligence to justify the war. Was does that tell you? There was no connection! The Congressional 9/11 Investigation report stated that there was no connection with Iraq. Bin Laden hates Hussein. Notice how Iraqi women work and are educated? Do you think Bin Laden would be down with such an ‘infedel’? Let’s jump to now. Iraq is a freekin terrorist haven. Al Queda is there now, as are other groups. Why? Because we give them a reason. Flouting internation law and illegally invading a soverign country gives them the opportunity. We refuse to even count how many civilians died in our ‘liberation’. Now they’re killing an American nearly every day.
Want to know how to truly defeat terrorism? First, totally re-examine U.S. foreign policy. They ‘hate our freedom’ is total tripe. They hate us for arming Israel, hate us for using Saudi soil to attack muslims, hate us for killing civilians with cluster bombs and DU contamination, hate us for supporting oppressive rulers when politically or monetarily adventageous, hate us for supporting coups against democratically elected governments that don’t agree with us, hate us for using dictator-like responses to civil unrest (shooting protesters, locking down entire towns, seizing entire families, etc). Try and address these issues, and there might be a chance to change opinoins of us. Take every opportunity to bomb or terrorize the entire community to get one possible target, and there are plenty more to take their place.
I want to clear something up for you: President Bush did not say there was a connection between Al-Qaeda and Iraq.
Ummm…
National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice on Al-Qaeda:
“QUESTION: Do you believe, because this is continually a subject of debate, that there was a link between al Qaeda and the regime of Saddam Hussein before the war? MS. RICE: Absolutely. . . . But we know that there was training of al Qaeda in chemical and perhaps biological warfare. We know that the Zarqawi was network out of there, this poisons network that was trying to spread poisons throughout . . . . And there was an Ansar al-Islam, which appears also to try to be operating in Iraq. So yes, the al Qaeda link was there.”
Source: Fox News Sunday, Fox News (9/7/2003).
President George W. Bush on Al-Qaeda:
“The liberation of Iraq is a crucial advance in the campaign against terror. We’ve removed an ally of al Qaeda, and cut off a source of terrorist funding. And this much is certain: No terrorist network will gain weapons of mass destruction from the Iraqi regime, because the regime is no more.”
Source: President Bush Announces Major Combat Operations in Iraq Have Ended, White House (5/1/2003).
You can find 25 more examples at this cool site thanks to Rep. Waxman:
Enjoy!
So, in other words, you could not find any statements by President Bush before the invasion of Iraq.
Sorry, I forgot how lazy Republicans can be. From the site I gave you:
President George W. Bush on Al-Qaeda:
“The regime . . . has aided, trained and harbored terrorists, including operatives of al Qaeda. The danger is clear: using chemical, biological or, one day, nuclear weapons, obtained with the help of Iraq, the terrorists could fulfill their stated ambitions and kill thousands or hundreds of thousands of innocent people in our country, or any other.”
Source: President Says Saddam Hussein Must Leave Iraq Within 48 Hours, White House (3/17/2003).
President George W. Bush on Al-Qaeda:
“He has trained and financed al Qaeda-type organizations before, al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations.”
Source: President George Bush Discusses Iraq in National Press Conference, White House (3/6/2003).
President George W. Bush on Al-Qaeda:
“One of the greatest dangers we face is that weapons of mass destruction might be passed to terrorists who would not hesitate to use those weapons. Saddam Hussein has longstanding, direct and continuing ties to terrorist networks. Senior members of Iraq intelligence and al Qaeda have met at least eight times since the early 1990s. Iraq has sent bomb-making and document forgery experts to work with al Qaeda. Iraq has also provided al Qaeda with chemical and biological weapons training. And an al Qaeda operative was sent to Iraq several times in the late 1990s for help in aquiring poisons and gases. We also know that Iraq is harboring a terrorist network headed by a senior al Qaeda terrorist planner.”
Source: President’s Radio Address, White House (2/8/2003).
President George W. Bush on Al-Qaeda:
“Saddam Hussein has longstanding, direct and continuing ties to terrorist networks. Senior members of Iraqi intelligence and al Qaeda have met at least eight times since the early 1990s. Iraq has sent bomb-making and document forgery experts to work with al Qaeda. Iraq has also provided al Qaeda with chemical and biological weapons training. We also know that Iraq is harboring a terrorist network, headed by a senior al Qaeda terrorist planner.”
Source: President Bush: “World Can Rise to This Moment”, White House (2/6/2003).
President George W. Bush on Al-Qaeda:
“And the United States, along with a growing coalition of nations, is resolved to take whatever action is necessary to defend ourselves and disarm the Iraqi regime. September the 11th, 2001, the American people saw what terrorists could do by turning four airplanes into weapons. We will not wait to see what terrorists or terrorist states could do with chemical, biological, radiological or nuclear weapons.”
Source: President Bush: “World Can Rise to This Moment”, White House (2/6/2003).
President George W. Bush on Al-Qaeda:
“Evidence from intelligence sources, secret communications, and statements by people now in custody reveal that Saddam Hussein aids and protects terrorists, including members of al Qaeda. Secretly, and without fingerprints, he could provide one of his hidden weapons to terrorists, or help develop their own.”
Source: President Delivers “State of the Union”, White House (1/28/2003).
…a few more but I’m not a sadist.