Pragnosis

Let's assume this 'war on terror' with Iraq is happening so that 'democracy and freedom' can be implemented. Forget oil, gas and the military industrial complex. If this were the case, that they want the people of Iraq to be free and have the right to vote, why kill so many civillians? I'll tell you why, because they couldn't give a sh!t about the people of Iraq, the soldiers are trained to view everybody as a target and a potential enemy. The majority of the military are totally indoctrinated into doing whatever they are told. Now, for all of you people claiming that I am a supporter of the left-ist ideology, this isn't entirely true because if it were the democrats that were ordering the military to invade Iraq, I would still oppose it with a passion.

Just face it, you (and I) live in a country that is greedy for power and economic growth. It is in the United States' interest to invade Iraq, to have ultimate control over Iraq will be hugely beneficial for the US economy. The biggest EVER terrorist attack killed 3,000 people on 9/11. This ridiculous invasion of Iraq has cost the lives of 200+ times that amount. It would take at least 200 terrorist attacks the size of 9/11 to come anywhere near the atrocity caused by the coalitions troop deployment. 48 Countries are part of this coalition but it may as well be 2 countries. Bush and Blair, husband and wife!!! The reasons given to us through the media have been:

1) Weapons of Mass Destruction (Mistake, or more accurately A LIE!)
2) To Decrease Terrorism (Totally ludicrous considering the amount of deaths)

Just to show that I'm not making figures up:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,,1892888,00.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...101001442.html

How many of you actually support this war and think it was justified?

gunnut

Fair enough.

Who do you think is the puppet master? What do they have to gain? How do they operate? What else have they done? Is this a recent pheonomenon?

You know sometimes the simplest explanation is the correct explanation. Sometimes it seems too simple and people need to manufacture some complicated theory behind it.

Who came up with this number? How was the number arrived at? Has there been independent confirmation of this number by neutral organizations?

__________________
"Only Nixon can go to China." -- Old Vulcan proverb.

gunnut

Many as in how many? The American military can absolutely crush the country if it wants to, without even touching our nuclear stockpile. Do you actually believe our military is out to kill people for no good reason at all and only came away with (exaggerated) 655,000 body count in almost 4 years, by your numbers?

On the contrary, our military cares a great deal about civilians. It's those "civilians" with guns pointed at our guys that upset them.

Yes, that's how they stay alive there.

Yes, and that's how we control a bunch of people trained to kill. Military training is the way it is for a good reason. You don't want to let loose a bunch of trained professional killers into the general population without instilling some kind of dicipline and sense of honor and duty into them.

Good for you.

Do you also oppose Operation Desert Fox and Operation Allied Force? Do you also believe that we should pull our guys out of former Yugoslavia as it serves no purpose whatsoever to our national security?

Show me a country that isn't.

Yes and no. We do want Iraq to be our ally. But not for immediate financial gains. If Iraq becomes a democracy and friendly to the west, we can do business with them.

Source? Proof? Verification?

Ah so the Bush hater comes out. That took a few posts but I got the result I wanted. A leftist socialist commie hippie tree hugger like you act too much on emotion and too little on logic. Sooner or later you slip up and the hatred comes out.

How many of you actually believe socialism is a good idea?

Confed999

Didn't happen. Approx. 55,000 civilians confirmed killed. A high percentage of those were killed by bad guys, and some were bad guys. If you cared about people, if that was your real concern, you would have been more worried about the hundreds of thosands being pulled from mass graves, the millions forced to live in slavery, the political and prison cleansings, the enforced starvations, all common and predictable durring Saddam's reign. That's why I supported the war, regardless of anyone else's reasonings, because I care about people.

__________________
No man is free until all men are free - John Hossack
I agree completely with this Administration’s goal of a regime change in Iraq-John Kerry
even if that enforcement is mostly at the hands of the United States, a right we retain even if the Security Council fails to act-John Kerry
He may even miscalculate and slide these weapons off to terrorist groups to invite them to be a surrogate to use them against the United States. It’s the miscalculation that poses the greatest threat-John Kerry

Pragnosis

Gunnut,

Some good questions there. To be perfectly honest, I'm not entirely sure about who the 'puppet master' is. I'd have a guess that George Bush Senior has a huge hand in decision making although I don't have any evidence of this. In the UK, we have a constitutional monarchy of which Queen Elizabeth is the head of state, I think that she's far more powerful than we are aware of. Skull & Bones is an interesting organisation of which George Bush I & II are members, or at least were. I don't buy into any professional conspiracy theorists views that the world is ruled by satanists who sacrifice humans at Bohemian Grove, this seems hugely far fetched and ridiculous. I do however believe that organisations such as the Free Masons, Skull & Bones, Trilateral Commission, Council on Foreign Relations and the Bilderberg Group are very powerful. Mainly because many of the members are CEO's of major transnational corporations and high ranking politicians.

It is my belief that the main goal of these organisations is to create 'The New World Order', with the US at the forefront of events, mainly because all of the worlds major corporations are based in the US. I believe that they want to turn every single country (eventually) into a democracy and basically create hundred's of mini America's. Obviously the US will eventually be concerned about China because China is predicted to be a ruled by a democratic government by the year 2015 and will probably end up being the worlds second superpower (or third if you count the European Union). This, I am sure will concern the United States as they obviously will want to retain the title of the premier hyperpower. China has the potential to become the worlds most powerful nation as it has a population of 1.25 Billion compared to the US of which has a population of around 300 million. This is why I believe that the US must gain control of Iraq's wealth to help sustain their global economic supremacy. The US dollar is exceptionally weak at present. It's almost $2 to every £1.

With regards to the source of 655,000 killed in Iraq, here are the links:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,,1892888,00.html
http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/meast/10/11/iraq.deaths/
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...101001442.html

I don't particularly agree with your notion that soldiers are too concerned about the welfare of the Iraqi civillians. The soldiers are very well indoctrinated and totally believe that they are 'helping' the civillians. I personally believe that they are of average intelligence and are unable to see the big picture of how much of a disaster this is.

With regards to Operation Desert Fox, again, I think this was a bit weird. A former UNSCOM official (Butler) claimed that the United States ordered the retreat of UN Weapons inspections in 1998. Although Saddam had failed to comply with UN Security Council Resolutions originally, he did let them back in after pressure from (once again), the US and the UK. Therefore, this suggests that the bombings were again an unprovoked attack. I don't know too much about NATO's occupation in Yugoslavia.

Your comments, stating that I must be a 'leftist socialist commie hippie tree hugger' were quite funny. It's fairly obvious that you are a far right greedy capitalist burger eating fat f*ck... Haha. No, I'm not a hippy or a tree hugger. You're obsessed with the idea that I'm a bush hate, this is simply not true, he seems a fairly nice guy. I just believe that people have the right to get on with life. The US and UK try far too much to impose their capitalist ideologies on every single nation. If you look at the media in the UK and US, they are subtly creating hatred for Islam and are creating the perception that all muslims are potential terrorists and this is utter bullsh!t.

You haven't answered my questions yet!

Confed999

Read the articals. It's a poll. They confirmed less than 700 deaths...

gunnut

And no one does. Do you know why? They don't see eye to eye. Jr. doesn't like dad to mess with his foreign policies. Contrary to popular belief, GWB is not a daddy's boy. In fact, he likes to do things opposite of his dad's wishes. Or so I've heard.

You forgot about the Illuminati.

And what's wrong with people being free? Or perhaps we should oppress the islamic world since that's what they prefer.

Yes, we are concerned about China.

No, China will not be able to challenge us for at least 30 to 40 years, and that maybe generous. Astralis can fill you in more on this topic.

Yes, dollar is weak. But that's actually a good thing. It's good for export business and it attracts foreign tourists here to spend their money on our services. Weak dollar is good for our current economy.

If our soldiers aren't concerned with their welfare, why do the insugents like to hide in mosques? If we didn't give a rat's ass bout people's lives, why do we even care about some old and ugly buildings?

Neither Desert Fox and Allied Force had specific UN resolution to authorise the use of military power. It was infered in past UN resolutions.

We ordered out the inspectors because they were forbidden from entering certain sites. We wanted to bomb those sites. Get them out before the Iraqis do something bad to them.

Hey I'm not fat.

I'm only "getting fat."

Have you seen the media in US? They are about as leftwing as possible with the exception of a few. For every Fox News I can show you 5 channels like the CNN that goes out of their way to portray muslims as the victims.

Fox is biased. So is every single other news outlet. The difference is Fox leans to the right while 90% of the media is left.

Did you know 89% of the reporters based in Washington DC voted for Gore in 2000? Why do you thing that is? Do you think it could affect their reporting? Doesn't matter how fair a person is, his biases will creep into his objective opinion, even subconciously.

I admit I'm biased. The difference is I disclose my biases upfront. The news media pretends to be objective and then subtly inject their biases into the reporting.

Trooth

I don't think Iraq was invaded for Oil. Actually i will slightly amend that. One thing i think most people can agree on about the Iraqi invasion is that there was no single driving reason. There were lots. I mean the official reason changed almost daily! Therefore i would be naiive to think that some people were not keen to get close to the oil.

However i don't believe that the US invaded for Oil (i gave what i believe to be the moitvating factors in my first post in this thread). I do believe, however that pricing oil in Euros is likely. I do believe it will have an impact on the economy of the US and other countries and i do believe some countries will take that view politically as much as economically. I don't think it will cripple any economy, but i think there will be an effect.

Do I have an axe to grind? I deal in sterling so either way its holding a foreign currency.

__________________
The world as it should be at surrealscoop.blogspot.com

Confed999

Every person who voted for it in our legislature had their own reasons. There are hundreds right there.

Shek

Trooth,
I fully agree with you on Iraq. I think it is a fool's errand to try and boil down OIF to a single reason.

There is a whole host of reasons. I think the WMD reason was played up because it had some legal traction to it for the international crowd and some fear traction from 9/11 for the domestic audience. Democracy was on the mind of the Bush administration, and you can trace this line of thought through the Roadmap to Peace and Bush 43's AEI speech in February prior to the war. There was the fact that success in Iraq would allow the US to eliminate some of the "casus belli" for OBL - success would allow the removal of the remaining US forces from Saudi Arabia. Oil played a small factor in the sense that a stable Middle East would allow for a stable supply that would not be at the mercy of some Middle Eastern cartel. Iraq would allow for a physical isolation of Iran and put a forward presence at the doorstep of Syria.

You could build the list much bigger than the above, but that's enough to drive home the point that no single point can capture the strategic calculations. One thing is sure; however, in my mind - our failure to fully resource the execution end of the deal has not reaped us the strategic benefits that could have accrued, and in fact, have left us with a weakened position vis a vis Iran and Syria.

__________________
"So little pains do the vulgar take in the investigation of truth, accepting readily the first story that comes to hand." Thucydides 1.20.3

Parihaka

Saddam may have wished to be paid in Euros but that would not have meant that payment for Iraqi crude was purchased by the international community in Euros.
The UN dictated the Iraq oil exports and all the major bourses traded, and still do, in dollars. All that the UN agreed to was to convert the dollar payments to Euros for payment to Iraq.
The closest anyone has come to actually trading in anything other than Dollars is Iran which sought to establish its own bourse (with Russia expressing an interest in trading its oil through that bourse) and those plans are on indefinite hold.

Shek

I am curious as to where you read this prediction, as I have never heard this. However, accepting this prediction prima faccia, this is the dream of the current US administration. The whole premise of democracy in the Middle East is the "democratic peace" theory, which finds its roots in Kant's Perpetual Peace, and has been forwarded by several scholars in the recent decades. Under these theory, democracies don't fight one another.

These numbers are based on a flawed study. Look up the thread "Debunking the Lancet Report" in this same forum to read about why it is flawed.

Actually, the demographics of the US military indicates that it is of above average intelligence based on the fact that it holds a higher rate of high school degrees than the general population. Not a perfect proxy, but certainly one that is useful.

In terms of indoctrination, this is a load of BS. While you are trained to follow orders, every soldier has a conscience (outside of a troubled few who somehow pass through all the filters) and the ability to determine whether they are doing good or not. They can see the looks on the faces of the adults and kids that they interact with and form an opinion based on something solid. They may not have the whole picture, as you term it, but the reality is that the whole picture is made up of thousands of little micro pictures, and the soldiers have a solid grasp on this.

zraver

I will not feed the troll.... 9busy feeding the other one)

but...

Prognosis, in your exhaustive research you have of course unearthed the startling fac tthat there is no oil shortage and the US now has more domestic oil the the entire ME combined? What can't be... well it is. once oil went past $50 a barrel things like oil sands and oil shale became economically viable.

Currently the US has jsut over 1.2 barrels worth of oil in oil shale deposits. The world also has Alberta's oil sands. Ther eis no oil shortage and a permament price above $50 benifits the west by freeing us from the whims of the mullahs.

So why would we want Iraq's oil?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_shale

Pragnosis

Take a look at these videos:

http://video.google.co.uk/videoplay?...522549547050&q
http://video.google.co.uk/videoplay?...663660134068&q
http://video.google.co.uk/videoplay?...798465373582&q

I know it's only three guys but they have first hand experience of what's going on and actually DO have a conscience.

As for Chinese Domacracy, here is just one of the links stating this prediction:
http://www.findarticles.com/p/articl...45/ai_18827113

Bluesman

Talk about indoctrination. Guys we're going NOwhere on this journey into the center of Pragnosis's mind; it just ain't changeable. He's as thoroughly convinced his error-laden 'facts' are the truth as any GI he's been insulting.

Oh, and by the way: Iraq War supporter, 20-year veteran, senior NCO, MENSAn, 4.0GPA, and a Dubya voter.

My wife: Iraq War supporter, 16 years-in-waiting to re-enter the military,