<p>Hereshopping: We’ve already given them a killing field over there, in the sense that we invaded, deposed Saddam who had a tyrannical grasp of the situation and kept it under control, and loosed the forces of civil war. And if you read mainstream media you can see the stories of bombings and killings everyday – and those are the ones that make it into the press. Yes, it may get worse on a per day basis if we leave. But staying won’t get it to the point that it won’t happen when, inevitably, we leave the country to its own devices. So staying and surging only means more Americans are dying for no long-term purpose. Why would you trust a government that claimed we would be greeted as liberators and, a long time ago, that the insurgency is in its last throes? At best, the Administration is just consistently wrong. And that is the best you could say.</p>
<p>Seven American soldiers were killed in Iraq today. More than 150 Iraqis–mostly civilians–died this week. Imagine if Philadelphia’s 300 murders last year had occurred in the span of two weeks? I bet the populace would be demanding some changes, and fast.</p>
<p>An administration that said the occupation would only take six months.</p>
<p>An administration that mandated incompetence by threatening to fire any staffer who even suggested planning for a longer duration.</p>
<p>It’s one thing to refuse to educate yourself about Iraq because it would shake your blind trust in your party. But it’s another to expect that others–who HAVE troubled their pretty little heads with the responsibilities of citizenship–be silent.</p>
<p>Enough with the “Jane” nonsense. She’s apologized repeatedly for her “youthful indiscretion” in Hanoi. (To borrow a phrase from a Republican congressman, explaining his adulterous affair at age 40.) My brother-in-law was a fighter pilot in Vietnam, and nobody hated Jane Fonda more than he did. He would have shot her out of the sky if he’d known were to find her–well, maybe not, but his anger was very real. All these years later, he still has little fondness for “Jane,” but detests Bush and his evil cronies far more.</p>
<p>Funny how the same people who tell us we should let bygones be bygones about the lies that got us into Iraq and the bungling that’s occured since–even those things are still costing American lives today and there is not the least sign of any real change in Washington–dwell constantly on a decade old blowjob and a movie star travel itinerary almost 30 years in the past.</p>
<p>Sauce for the goose is never sauce for the gander, in their world, where it’s always Opposite Day.</p>
<p>A proud segment of the American population seems to love that tabloid trash. I’m wondering if that’s all they’re capable of comprehending.</p>
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<p>Maybe we should adopt his method of keeping things under control:</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.usaid.gov/iraq/legacyofterror.html[/url]”>http://www.usaid.gov/iraq/legacyofterror.html</a></p>
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<p>There is a lot you can do to make a change in Washington: quit whining about Bush, get off your computer and protest the war (big rallies today in D.C. and L.A.), work to get your candidate elected (I think Giuliani has a good chance to beat Hillary–so get to work!), petition your Congressman to cut funding for the war, work to keep military recruiters out of schools, work against those end timers intent on turning our country into a Christian theocracy to take over the world, join Kerry in badmouthing the U.S. on foreign soil–the list is endless! No one is stopping you. Hopefully you’ll admit that’s at least ONE good thing about this country.</p>
<p>“The United Nations, the U.S. State Dept., Amnesty International, and Human Rights Watch (HRW) all estimate that Saddam Hussein’s regime murdered hundreds of thousands of innocent people.”
And now we’re going to do the same? Isn’t our country supposed to be better than that? … And what makes you think many of us haven’t been protesting the war and petitioning our Congressmen? As for whining about Bush, yeah, I’ll admit I’m doing plenty of that. … Can you believe there are STILL people who haven’t stopped whining about Bill Clinton?</p>
<p>HH, don’t you find it ironic that someone who brags that she doesn’t even bother to read, much less engage her cerebral cortex, about what’s happening in our country is condemning others for not doing more? </p>
<p>Some of your suggestions are very insulting. I guess they’re intended that way. It’s already been explained why Congress can’t cut funding for the war, for one. Because the soldiers are ALREADY in harm’s way, and cutting the funding would mean stranding them. I have seen enough Americans stranded in my day without adding to it. </p>
<p>It’s incredibly insulting that you would ask me to support cutting off funding for the troops in danger just so that you and your fellow travellers can make a public spectacle of their deaths from neglect. </p>
<p>Don’t you ever put country before party?</p>
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<p>I love my country. I am working to preserve this Union for our children, grand-children and great-grandchildren. You, on the other hand. How can I put it? Oh yeah. You’re the person who tried in another thread to pervert the Consitution so that “freedom of speech” meant that no one who disagreed with a fundamentalist could quote anything the fundamentalist said in the past that might discredit him. “Freedom of speech” meant that this information was to be suppressed, lest the fundamentalist in question find it uncomfortable to have to be accountable for his own words. </p>
<p>Some love of America it is, to try to destroy the Bill of Rights–or to create a two-tiered system where non-fundamentalists have only second-hand, inferior rights. If you hate the separation of church and state so much, why not go found your own country somewhere, where you can have all the state religion you want?</p>
<p>BTW, Hereshoping, I do realise that you’re just playing out of the evangelical rulebook. If someone is citing facts you don’t want anyone to know, and you have no facts to counter them, try to demonize them so no one will listen. </p>
<p>“Billy Graham is the chief servant of Satan in America” – Jerry Falwell.</p>
<p>I guess between Obama and Billy, I’m in good company, all demons of you and your friends. But I think you’ll find that the posters here at CC are a lot smarter than the other people you’ve pulled this kind of dishonest, immoral charade on.</p>
<p>There is nothing wrong with your television set, do not attempt to adjust the picture
We will control the transmission
If we wish to make it louder we will bring up the volume
If we wish to make it softer we will turn it to a whisper
We will control the horizontal
We will control the vertical…</p>
<p>Again with the personal attacks. It’s very sad. Especially when you choose to bear false witness to do them.</p>
<p>Are you that incapable of discussing facts or issues?</p>
<p>“Are you that incapable of discussing facts or issues?”</p>
<p>Bingo. That was what I was trying to explain in my previous post.</p>
<p>“There is nothing wrong with your television set, do not attempt to adjust the picture. We will control the transmission. If we wish to make it louder we will bring up the volume. If we wish to make it softer we will turn it to a whisper. We will control the horizontal. We will control the vertical…”
This is so funny! It reminds me of when I was 5 or 6 years old and not swift enough to come up with an intelligent rebuttal to my older sister’s side of a debate. So, I’d say something inane, or clap my hands over my ears and go “hoooooooooo!” Either way, it was rude, obnoxious, and I wasn’t required to think or discuss.</p>
<p>Hereshoping: You really crossed a line. How DARE you say I don’t love my country because I never agreed with the plan to invade Iraq. You make you sick. You are scum of the earth. In your world, people who don’t believe in what you think are not rightful, or proud, Americans. I have friends who have served in the army and government (US) at high levels in Iraq, and while I never agree with their missions (and told them so), I never once wished their missions wouldn’t succeed. We were already over there; I wanted us to win. I wanted the world to be safer. I protested this war from before we started it. I marched side-by-side with people who think that we should not fight any wars, and while I totally disagreed with the premise that war is unnecessary and that there aren’t wars worth fighting, I never said I didn’t love my country or that I thought my country was evil or wrong fundamentally. You claimed, in and off-hand way, that maybe I can admit there is ONE good thing about this country, in that we have freedom of speech. You have no right to claim whether or not I am a good patriot or whether I have been on my ass doing nothing. You have no idea. There are a million wonderful things about this country. Free speech is one of the most important. It’s people like you that want to squelch it because you want to claim people like me are inadequate patriots. I pay attention nearly every day to the number of Americans that have died for a war that I think was an idiotic misadventure. I pay attention to articles about the deaths of Iraqis. I have lived in a country that had martial law, and I don’t take my freedoms for granted. You make me sick. But I am not going to say you are an inadequate patriot.</p>
<p>And yes, Saddam was an evil tyrant. But you know what? A majority of Iraqis are on record now wishing they could go back to his times. Why? Because the tyranny was predictable. For people trying to keep their families safe and survive predictable tyranny, on the whole, turns out to be better. Sorry, we’re not the calvary in this situation. We’re not the good guys. We had good intentions, but there’s that old adage about the road to hell being paved with good intentions. The lives of Iraqis are hell. Unfortunately, now, we share some blame for that.</p>
<p>You owe me and everyone of us an apology.</p>
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<p>??? I do not see the bearing of the above to the discussion (it makes no sense to me, since I advocate none of it), hence my lame attempt at humor. I have no other response.</p>
<p>I thought it might be appropriate at this juncture to point out some of the evil committed by Saddam, since it is something we rarely hear on these threads.</p>
<p>I never called anyone the scum of the earth, I never said anyone made me sick, and I never said anyone didn’t love their country. conyat said there was nothing to be done to affect change, and I pointed out things she could do. The fact that I do not agree with them is my right.</p>
<p>There is nothing to discuss here.</p>
<p>“If those numbers prove accurate, they represent a crime against humanity surpassed only by the Rwandan genocide of 1994, Pol Pot’s Cambodian killing fields of the 1970’s and the Nazi Holocaust of World War II.”</p>
<p>Not accurate. More in the Congo today. More in Armenia in 1918. More by Bill Clinton in Iraq prior to Oil for Food (more children than the Rwandan genocide, though). Most of Saddam Hussein’s killings took place under the auspices of the Rumsfeld Handshake. The Iranians who had family members who were gassed remember. So do the Kurds. But it has been well arranged that there will never be a trial.</p>
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<p>You really don’t remember telling curmudgeon it was a violation of freedom of speech for him to quote something negative a fundamentalist said about women because it might make the fundamentalist look bad? I guess it’s Opposite Day again.</p>
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<p>Why are you bearing false witness about me yet again?</p>
<p>I never said that there was nothing that could be done to affect change in the occupation of Iraq. It’s pretty insulting to the other posters for you to try to justify your actions by putting words in my mouth. Do you really think they can’t read the thread?</p>
<p>"I never called anyone the scum of the earth, I never said anyone made me sick, and I never said anyone didn’t love their country. conyat said there was nothing to be done to affect change, and I pointed out things she could do. The fact that I do not agree with them is my right.</p>
<p>There is nothing to discuss here."</p>
<p>You did something much worse. You impugned my patriotism. You said that MAYBE I could at least agree that there was one good thing about my nation, as if I hold my nose with respect to my America. You can try to rewrite what you said here or in your mind, but no one’s fooled. That’s what earned you my derision. And yes, you still make me sick.</p>
<p>Saddam Hussein was a horrible, killing dictator when we fought the first Gulf War and he was our enemy. And he was a horrible killing dictator 10 years before that when he was our ally. Don’t comfort yourself in thinking that people ignore these facts or don’t know them. Bush Senior showed admirable wisdom in the First Gulf War in not marching on Bag. or across the border of Iraq. </p>
<p>The wrong of Saddam Hussein, which is ample and for which he deserved to die, is not made right by our well-intentioned, but wrong-headed invasion. It’s the old adage: two wrongs don’t make a right. Or another way of putting it: their problem has now become our problem, and the problem is now much worse. Because, in my experience, its people like you who play fast and loose with the lives of our soldiers, in terms of not questioning whether the errand they are risking their neck for is or is not a fool’s.</p>
<p>We will have spent over a trillion to put Iraq effectively in the hands of the Iranians, a country that has exclaimed it wants to rid the world through nuclear arms of one of our allies. Two wrongs don’t make a right. Their problem is now our problem. Would that Bush II inherited more of his father’s wisdom. Because a lot of people foresaw this and warned that what has happened would.</p>