The grand-fishsticks are getting a bit upset about the lack of birthday presents. Some tiny tubular sweaters would be appreciated, since my freezer gets pretty chilly this time of year.
I must have missed the part where Japanese aid workers bombed Iraq, invaded it, and killed a whole lot of people.
Exactly milroyj. Nor any of the other foreign civilians helping to rebuild Iraq.
Yes, I know. The war shouldn’t have happened. But it did. Can we please take a sober look now at the “people” threatening aid workers, to ** burn alive**?
Good rant, TeaElle
It did? In the past? No, it is not in the past. American forces are still killing Iraqis by the hundreds these days. It’s not over.
I did no such thing. My comments were specifically addressed to the Mujahadeen whoever whatevers who have decided that the proper way to express their displeasure over the invasion is to terrorize and murder civilian aid workers and journalists.
Didja see that part? Yeah, of course you did. :rolleyes:
Reading for comprehension is fun!
Perhaps “subhuman” was not the best choice of words. But I’ll stick by savage and idiot. And selfish, brutal, tribal and feudal. If the Mujawhatthehells want to be viewed as honorable and noble and having a just cause by any decent peoples on the planet, they’ll think twice before they intentionally murder innocents (or abuse them and threaten murder) in a blackmail stunt.
originally posted by sailor
- Yes, that’s war. War is bad. Burning aid workers alive is worse
Kidnapping’s a good strategy just now. It keeps their enemies off balance by widening the number and type of threats the coalition has to repond to.
So what exactly do you think happened to a lot of people living in Baghdad last year when our little “shock and awe” campaign turned it into a firestorm? Because we dropped the bombs out of airplanes do you think it was more humane when innocent citizens of Baghdad were burned alive? Was it God’s cleansing fire that only took the bad people and left the innocent sleeping children untouched? I doubt it.
Yes, that’s war. War is bad. Remember who started it. Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11.
AFAIK, nobody has been burnt alive yet.
Now, burning a handful of people alive is a terrible thing to do and there is excuse for that. But killing innocent people by the hundreds is much worse and calling it “war” does not excuse it either.
A handful of American “contractors” get killed and threads pop up calling the Iraqis all sorts of names. In the meanwhile Iraqis are getting killed by the thousands and life goes on for the rest of us. I do not recall any pit threads especifically decrying the killings by Americans (there might have been but I don’t remember them).
Now a bunch of Iraqis threaten to kill another bunch of people and another pit thread pops up. Not that they are not well deserved but where are the pit threads decrying the women and children killed by the US and whose bodies I saw lined up on the floor just yesterday? Where is the outrage?
It is an unjust war which has been imposed on the iraqi people who did not ask for it.
Some Iraqis may be behaving like monsters and it may be unjustifiable but who has painted them into a corner? Who has imposed the war on them? Who is killing more than anybody? And where is the outrage for that?
If the Americans were not killing Iraqis the Iraqis would not be threatening to kill the Japanese.
And if it makes no sense to you that the Iraqis threaten Japanese, just think that the USA has attacked Iraq in response for 9/11 for which they have no responsibility.
At least they are hostages(read alive). Have you seen the photo’s on the Al-Jazeera web page of the dead iraqi children? Pretty gruesome stuff, but the american soldiers or americans are never called subhuman savages.
Sailor, you are a moron.
i am sorry to say i supported this war. i thought we would see some fucking oil, i should have known better - cheney would pocket everything personally.
but now that we’ve made the mistake of going in we should finish the job imho. we already killed so many people that to quit now would seem kinda blasphemous.
i wonder though, if anybody is really trying to ensure peace over there or are they just guarding the oil itself ?
No sailor is a rational, logical, compassionate human being.
I have no idea what the fuck you are. I just hope you don’t breed.
No one has been burnt alive yet. We ALL hope know one is burnt alive but people are inhumane and arseholes frequently during war. It doesn’t make it right. It just means it will happen. Iraqi’s didn’t make this war happen.
Imagine how Americans would feel if their churches were being bombed.
I saw an old man in Fallujah (sp?) say, after the attacks on the contractors, “We have got rid of the horror of sadam and now we have a new horror”
No single American, Japanese, British, Australian, New Zealand etc life is more valuable then any single Iraqi life. They have the greatest value to those who care about them. And all those who are left behind suffer wherever they are from.
NO ONE wants to see these hostages suffer but some of us can see the anger that is making that possible.
No, he is in the moron club, with you. He, and people like him, will wring their hands and equivocate to no end about ‘understanding’ the poor bedraggled foe. Sure, they are intentionally attacking noncombatants. But we need to see what pushed them to such terrible deeds! Give me a fucking break. Like the sort of person that would burn some chick alive needs a lot of goading. :rolleyes:
It takes very little searching to find that ANY nationality can commit atrocities when in unusual and intense situations. http://www.toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll/section?Category=SRTIGERFORCE
No one is excusing inhumane acts. Is there a point where someone needs to stop taking an eye for an eye though? Surely “someone” needs to recognise they fucked up and get the hell out of dodge before a whole lot more on both sides are dead.
And the Iraqi civilians are really impressed that they have been killed unintentionaly…it means the world to them that you care Brutus, truly it does.
I have to hit the shower and go to work, so I’ll write more later, but I have a couple of thoughts:
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No matter how badly the US has behaved in this debacle, torturing and burning alive three Japanese aid workers is inexcusable barbaric, as are the the people here who think it’s some sort of equitable retribution.
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Given the foul behavior of the Iraqis during the Iran war and when they devastated Kuwait, why are the Iraqis painted as doe-eyed innocents?
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Why is the US painted as evil invaders, when the war could have been avoided if Saddam Hussein had simply cooperarted with the UN?
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Can we ship Sailor to Iraq? He’s made it clear which side he is on.
Why are you putting “contractors” in quotes? What is your implication?
I wonder how many people here on the SDMB actually knew any of the contractors who have been killed?
I did. I’ve not posted about it but I knew two of them. They went to Iraq because they wanted to go and help to rebuild the country and get power stable and flowing to places such as hospitals and schools and businesses and homes. They didn’t go out of charity - people with mortgages and kids can rarely afford to take off work for a year out of the kindness of their hearts. Nor were their jobs threatened if they turned it down - there was actually a list of people who volunteered to go. And they certainly didn’t go over acting like they were “conquering heros”.
They were engineers who wanted to fix things and help people. A feeling all real engineers understand.
I haven’t really posted about this either, but I’ll say I have been asked numerous times to go to Iraq - once on a gas turbine team, another time on an infrastructure planning team, and yes another time for work I can’t discuss. I wanted to go all three times, so I could go over and try to help, any way I can. The only reasons I didn’t go to help is because my health is so incredibly poor lately and there are people who rely on me being alive here.
The civilian contractors going over there are not part of Bush’s Evil Empire, nor do they as a rule have evil motives. What would you say if I had gone over to help start up a plant to return power to a city there and had been killed? Would you put my name in quotes too, implying I went over purely for personal gain or to further US hegemony?
Are you serious, sailor? The outrage has been smeared across this Board, in every forum, every day, including drive-by posts in GQ that should be getting more people warned and banned than are right now.
As an aside: some keep saying “no one has been burnt alive yet”, while others refer to foreigners being burnt alive. Which is it? If two men say they’re Jesus, one of them must be wrong.
Ooops sorry the only reason I put the word in quotes is because it is not a word I am familar with and didn’t know if I had the right word. I’m not entirely convinced I know what a contractor is having only heard it in the context of the news/movies/tv shows before.
I am sorry this has hit you so personaly. I know there are many people in Iraq trying their very hardest to make a bad thing better. Civilains should never be intentionaly in the line of fire.
I just can’t see how this is going to get better anytime soon.
Well, that’s fair, but I didn’t see where you did such a thing in this thread. Only sailor did in here, so I’m puzzled why you thought I was referring to you, especially when I quoted sailor.
And I don’t mean to pick on sailor, as he’s a guy I like personally (although I disagree with him politically), but for some reason I was made especially cranky this morning by “contractors” and in the context it was used.