Look here Umar, you do not like the Iraq war ok I get it, but the 100K death implies that our soldiers are guilty of the deaths of the 100K people, I say fuck you and anyone that implies that. We sure killed a few thousand civilians, most we killed them by incompetence or by mistake, sure some we did kill some on purpose by bad soldiers, it happens and is bad. But most civilians were killed by other civilians, you can blame us in the military (well I was out by the time of Iraq, but still) for not doing enough to protect the civilians from the civil war and ethnic conflict. You can argue that if not for the invasion many of those 100K would be still alive. But please share the blame between our troops, Iraqi ethnic conflict and Al Qaeda.
Most people I know blame Bush and Cheney, rather than the military, for setting up the situation in which all of those people would be killed. I personally believe that our troops are victims of stupidity and arrogance as much as the civilians who died. Who are still dying.
I am iffy, I would have preferred no war for sure, but I am happy Saddam is gone, I am especially glad Uday Never became leader (oldest son) that dude was a sick bastard that would go around rapping women when he felt like it. But believe me people blame all Americans for civilian deaths in Afghanistan and other wars. That is why I called CP - Umar Edit: Shit they blame us for people dying when we don't do anything, like say Uganda.
i would completely agree with you if it were not the case that Saddam was killing Iraqis on a wholesale scale. you can argue that the cost hasn't been worth it, and that may be true; you can argue that it isn't America's place to take action against every evil dictator who commits the same kinds of atrocities as Saddam; but you cannot argue that there was no reason whatsoever to make the decision to invade. whether it was arrogance, i don't know. i don't buy the idea that Saddam wasn't pursuing/had not pursued a program that would have escalated the problems in the area, whether we call it WMDs or not. had it not been for the USA's entry into WWII, this would be a very different world. Saddam was no Hitler, but until the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, we were, as a nation, content to let the British deal with the eventual invasion of the Isles, except for supplying their war effort, which never would have been enough. decisions are made that, in retrospect, are clearly not the best choice, and anyone who has suffered a loss as a result of American involvement has reason to rue the decision, but it's also probable that many thousands of other lives were saved, just not the lives most of us care more about.
Pretty sure that's never been a serious argument. It was always a matter of the level of threat/atrocities vs cost, coupled with Bush's spending in other areas and tax cuts. Again, this wasn't the argument. Of course Saddam was pursuing mass weapons program. What tinpot dictator with a grudge against the west isn't looking amass some serious weaponry? No one doubts that Saddam wanted to build WMDs, or that he tried to. It was that he couldn't. He could buy all the uranium on the market and it wouldn't have mattered because he couldn't transport them, let alone somehow use them to build a bomb. You know how hard it is to build a workable WMD program? Iran actually has its shit together and their progress gets set back 5 years because Israel infects their system with a virus. Which is why the US drove Iraq out of Kuwait. Oh, sorry, I found a better analog for WWII. No, not in retrospect. It was apparent to me that it was a stupid decision at the time. The intelligence folks knew it. The military knew it. Shrill, whiny liberals knew it. It was just that neocons in the White House needed to justify a war, and they were enabled by politicians who were afraid of not appearing gung-ho enough in the post 9/11 climate. Let's not rewrite history and pretend the decision made sense at the time. People Should we call this collateral benefit? Yay?
I never said or implied that US soldiers alone were responsible for all the civilian deaths in Iraq. You made that leap. And when we were shoveling $ and weapons to Saddam in the 80s as he was merrily killing his internal opponents, how many Americans even knew and if they did, gave 2 shits? It's happening as we type in Syria. We're not doing anything because it's politically not worth the cost. We do this constantly. So don't dress up Iraq as some "freedom mission" because it wasn't. By M.E. dictator standards, Iraq was a pretty functional country. Now it's a shithole trying to dig itself out with billions more of our tax dollars. What a great job we did - tore it down at a high cost to life & money and build it back up at a high cost.
Burning Cheerios guy didn't eat enough Cheerios apparently: The Minnesota man who gained Internet notoriety by torching a box of Honey Nut Cheerios in a failed stunt against gay marriage has died, according to reports. Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/cereal-arsonist-michael-leisner-burned-cheerios-anti-gay-marriage-protest-dies-heart-attack-article-1.1137510#ixzz23iLgxVII
nah. if you know scripture, "to live is Christ, to die is gain..." so the cereal arsonist is spared the horror of watching the world spinning into oblivion.
http://www.cnn.com/2012/08/16/us/dc-shooting/index.html?hpt=hp_t2 Mass shooting thread merge averted.
Good work by the guard who took a bullet in the line of duty. And I suspect the suspect wasn't thinking too clearly if, in his violent and unasked for defense of gays, he stopped and bought 15 CFA sandwiches.
If you give your kid the middle name "Lee", there's probably a disproportionate chance he's going to try to shoot some place up. Unless the first name is "Stagger", don't do it.
Umm not even then-- the song goes: "Stagger Lee," said Billy, "Oh, please don't take my life! "I've got three hungry children, "And a very sickly wife." Stagger Lee shot Billy Oh, he shot that poor boy so hard That a bullet went through Billy And broke the bartender's bar.
we can bring this page full circle if you look at the lyrics to nick cave's version of stagger lee which do not conform to BS's TOS so as a mod i cannot paste them here and will not even give a link to NICK CAVE - STAGGER LEE LYRICS edit: not on purpose anyway, but what's done is done.
Well, the symmetry is impressive. But I would listen to Ray Conniff every day if it would protect me from ever having to hear Nick Cave again...
Wrong Em Boyo version: Stagger Lee met Billy and they go down to gambling Stagger Lee throwed seven Billy said that he throwed eight So Billy said, hey Stagger! I'm gonna make my big attack I'm gonna have to leave my knife in your back
Back to the CFA-related Family Research Counsel attempted mass shooting in DC: http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/2012/0...ck-fil-A-A-shooting-suspect-s-unusual-profile First, some unsurprising condemnation of the attempt: David Mariner, executive director of a Washington community center for gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transgendered people, told the local media Corkins was a volunteer there for six months. “No matter the circumstances, we condemn such violence in the strongest terms possible,” Mr. Mariner said. And now, for some irony: If the shooting at the Family Research Council is ultimately defined in the trial as a hate crime, it would contradict the organization’s own policy on the issue. On its website, the organization condemns the hate crime designation as a “penalty for the politically incorrect thoughts that allegedly” motivate violent actions. It says no such laws are needed because violence is already illegal. “We oppose all Thought Crime (sic) laws in principle, because penalizing people specifically for their thoughts, beliefs, or attitudes – even ones abhorrent to us and to the vast majority of Americans, such as racism – would undermine the freedom of speech and thought at the heart of our democracy,” the website reads.