The truth about life in Iraq

So was Saddam Hussein.

There was more than one party to vote for you know.

Please enlighten me.

We''re a country of a whopping five million. We haven''t the power to do jack sh*t, other than participate in UN peacekeeping operations. What''s your point?

*wonders if the above qualifies for Goodwins law*

Nothing much to say at the moment as my GWJ session must come to a close, but bravo Lawyeron. Your long post above was excellent, and there should probably be a thread or two devoted to analyzing and applying it to the various characters in these forums

"Lawyeron" wrote:
the Sandinists *were* an elected goverment

So was Saddam Hussein.

Yeah, but that didn''t mean we should have replaced the Latino Mao with the Latino Hitler.

Yeah, but that didn''t mean we should have replaced the Latino Mao with the Latino Hitler.

It''s controlled by liberals now. Shudder.

http://www.encyclopedia.com/html/sec...

We haven''t the power to do jack sh*t

No argument here. . .

other than participate in UN peacekeeping operations

Than get on down to Liberia. Or are you waiting for us?

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmp...

What''s your point?

My point is that you reside in just another foo foo lollie scandivanian country with a lot to say but not much to do. Don''t worry, we''ll continue to make the world safe and free for citizens of countries such as yours to criticize our efforts.

My point is that you reside in just another foo foo lollie scandivanian country with a lot to say but not much to do. Don''t worry, we''ll continue to make the world safe and free for citizens of countries such as yours to criticize our efforts.

Free speech surrenders.

http://www.heise.de/tp/foren/go.shtm...

above linke is a guy from a well known german forum who had a chat with an Iraqi in Badgad. I think it speaks for itself. Even if only half of what he writes is correct, this still shows what the people in Iraq think of us.

And that babble about a growing democracy in Afghanistan: You couldn''t be more wrong. The only stable area is around Kabhul. The rest of the country is under the reign of the warlords. Maybe your newschannels should send some journalists in the area to keep you up to date, but then there is no market share to gain with such news so who cares.

EDIT: The quote from the link above is in english, so you can read it.

My point is that you reside in just another foo foo lollie scandivanian country with a lot to say but not much to do. Don''t worry, we''ll continue to make the world safe and free for citizens of countries such as yours to criticize our efforts.

So I live in a small country. So what? Does this somehow remove my right to point out that the US conduct in Latin America is not a very good place to find evidence of Republican Excellence? Am I supposed to stand back in awe because your country''s bigger than mine?
Just shut up if you''ve got nothing better to say than that. Don''t be such an arrogant tosser.

Does this somehow remove my right to point out that the US conduct in Latin America is not a very good place to find evidence of Republican Excellence?

Actually, I don''t think Lawyeron was implying you don''t have the right to criticize US poilicy. But you should thank us for keeping you from having to do it in German or Russian...

And Chrisg:
Talk to me about the state of Iraq when hostilities are over and there is a stable government. Until then, second-hand, anecdotal man-on-the-street conversations can be found for both sides. Plenty of Iraqis love the Americans and are thankful for what we did and our presence.

What the US did was basically take a secular government (not based on
any religion) and install a mainly Muslim fundamentalist government
similar to the one in Iran.

There is absolutely no reason to think this. I for one have no fear that the US will let a fundamentalist governement take hold. As usual, the person who made that statement is fundamentally confused. Religious people in government doesn''t make a country a theocracy.

What we really did was take a tyranny, and replace it with the beginnings of representative government, giving Muslims their first voice in Iraq in decades.

Actually, I don''t think Lawyeron was implying you don''t have the right to criticize US poilicy. But you should thank us for keeping you from having to do it in German or Russian...

I f*cking well hope not. I''d prefer arrogance to the damn WWII argument that seems to infect every messageboard ever like a particularily devious fungus that''s really itchy between the toes.

Actually, I don''t think Lawyeron was implying you don''t have the right to criticize US poilicy. But you should thank us for keeping you from having to do it in German or Russian...

Hay guys, anyone interested in some 60 year old street cred? It''s for sale right now!!!

It could be worse...you could be in France and have to listen to surrendering jokes....

Seriously...do you guys make fun of France?

Q: Why do all the roads in France have trees lining them?
A: The Germans like to march in the shade.

Good stuff. Good stuff.

And before anyone gets pissy, there are at least as many redneck jokes as anything else, so my part of the US is not exempt from being made fun of...

We make fun of Belgium and Germany, France is already too far away.

What the US did was basically take a secular government (not based on any religion) and install a mainly Muslim fundamentalist government similar to the one in Iran.

Actually, the council of 25 Iraqis were, in fact, chosen by religious affiliation, I assume because that is the way Iraqis divide up the population. The Shiites, who form 60 per cent of the population, have their demographic strength reflected for the first time with 13 out of the 25 seats on the council. The Kurds have five seats. Sunni Arabs get five seats, slightly higher than their demographic strength, reflecting their long tradition of ruling Iraq. The Christians, accounting for three per cent of the population, get one seat just as ethnic Turcomans with one per cent of the population.

As Ral said, this is the beginnings of representative government, not the installation of a theocracy.

We make fun of noone. We are so cuddly, especially when wearing uniforms :\\.

Talk to me about the state of Iraq when hostilities are over and there is a stable government.

Like the flourishing, stable, rich and prospering Afghanistan? *SCNR*

We make fun of noone.

http://www.ihrseidnichtdabei.de/

National trauma *shudder*

*cough* well erm that is football and does not count :D. See you in the half finals in Dortmund...

I f*cking well hope not. I''d prefer arrogance to the damn WWII argument that seems to infect every messageboard ever like a particularily devious fungus that''s really itchy between the toes.
Hay guys, anyone interested in some 60 year old street cred? It''s for sale right now !!!

Actually, that''s 60 years worth of street cred. And it''s really longer than 60 years. From 1917 to today, America has been the black sheep of the world who nonetheless keeps bailing out ingrates. It wasn''t the threat of the Netherlands'' military that kept the Red Army from rolling into West Germany all those years.

Just because something is older than I am doesn''t mean I shouldn''t learn from it and appreciate it. If it weren''t for the sacrifices of my countrymen in the Revolutionary War and Civil Wars, I wouldn''t have the liberty and prosperity I enjoy today. And without the noble actions of Americans, neither Germany nor the Netherlands would be free, sovereign nations with the US Army-given right to Female Doggo and moan.

It would be one thing if the world said: ""Let''s give America the benefit of the doubt, but debate issues reasonably."" They don''t. We are called war-mongering imperialists. The reason it pisses us off is that Europeans should know war-mogering imperialists well enough to know we don''t qualify.

Heck, the Germans perfected the war-mongering Empire, with a dash of genocide for flavor. And Holland has rolled over to enough invaders to know that if the US was an imperialist country, we would have installed a Texan governor in Amsterdam while we were passing through on the way to Berlin.

The last time I checked the US said in the sec council that they would do as they please anyway, but if the sec council agrees to their view the help is appreciated. <- I fail to see the reasonable debate here.

Also while we are at Germany as an example. Ever considered that after 2 World wars and years of terrorism in the post WW2 germany we learned that you cannot solve all conflicts with brute force or at least see brute force as the last resort? Every single country in Europe knows what it means to rebuild a country from the ground up after a big scale war. I sure as hell want to know the right motives before I go into another war or send fellow citizens into one.

EDIT: whoops typo. After WW3 we won''t need another rebuild

The last time I checked the US said in the sec council that they would do as they please anyway

The last time I checked, the Security Council voted unanimously that Saddam ""has been and remains in material breach of its obligations under relevant resolutions, including resolution 687 [the Gulf War cease fire].""

They also required that the government of Iraq ""provide to UNMOVIC, the IAEA, and the council, not later than 30 days from the date of this resolution [1441], a currently accurate, full, and complete declaration of all aspects of its programs to develop chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons"".

The UN also stated ""that false statements or omissions in the declarations submitted by Iraq pursuant to this resolution [1441] and failure by Iraq at any time to comply with, and cooperate fully in the implementation of, this resolution shall constitute a further material breach of Iraq''s obligations""

The UN gave Iraq ""a final opportunity to comply with its disarmament obligations.""

And the UN warned Iraq that ""that it will face serious consequences as a result of its continued violations of its obligations""

We didn''t tell the UN we would do as we pleased. We told the UN we would fulfill its own words. Which we did. Iraq buried its nuclear program, which has been unearthed since the end of the war. In that alone, Iraq violated every single obligation placed on it by the UN. I have no doubt that more evidence of Iraq''s wrongdoing will come forward.

The UN promised ""serious consequences."" The US delivered.

Thanks ralcydan, I could never have guessed that a single line of intended bad pun could trigger such a rantful avalanche of misplaced words and sentances.

Loosen up, visit the other two forums some time and primarily, stop preaching around when no-one asked to be preached to. Maybe you want to prove your right and arrow the bleeding heart liberals to death and you know what? Good for you. It just takes the ''fun'' portion out of my daily dose of Politics and Controversy.

</reason>

Sorry. I''ll try to discuss ""Politics"" without taking a political point of view, and offer some non-controversial ""Controversy""...

It certainly is more fun to read a bunch of posts that are unfounded, ignorant, and America-bashing. Sorry if my ""preaching"" with silly things like facts and sources brings the forum down...

Remember, every country has different methods for releasing stress. Holland has hookers and hash. Finland has skiing. Germany invades Holland and Finland. In America, we use politics and take them pretty seriously. But we still manage to have fun with it...

I''m out, I find no reason to resort to insulting here.

Holland has hookers and hash.

I think that if GWJ had a ''Hookers and Hash'' message board, this one would be rather empty.

Sorry. I didn''t mean to imply Finland has skiing.

"ralcydan" wrote:
The last time I checked the US said in the sec council that they would do as they please anyway

The last time I checked, the Security Council voted unanimously that Saddam ""has been and remains in material breach of its obligations under relevant resolutions, including resolution 687 [the Gulf War cease fire].""

They also required that the government of Iraq ""provide to UNMOVIC, the IAEA, and the council, not later than 30 days from the date of this resolution [1441], a currently accurate, full, and complete declaration of all aspects of its programs to develop chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons"".

The UN also stated ""that false statements or omissions in the declarations submitted by Iraq pursuant to this resolution [1441] and failure by Iraq at any time to comply with, and cooperate fully in the implementation of, this resolution shall constitute a further material breach of Iraq''s obligations""

The UN gave Iraq ""a final opportunity to comply with its disarmament obligations.""

And the UN warned Iraq that ""that it will face serious consequences as a result of its continued violations of its obligations""

We didn''t tell the UN we would do as we pleased. We told the UN we would fulfill its own words. Which we did. Iraq buried its nuclear program, which has been unearthed since the end of the war. In that alone, Iraq violated every single obligation placed on it by the UN. I have no doubt that more evidence of Iraq''s wrongdoing will come forward.

The UN promised ""serious consequences."" The US delivered.

You forgot to mention that it took weeks to get the US back to the table and that Bush said beforehand he doesn''t need that solution anyways which he proved true later on.

Bush said beforehand he doesn''t need that solution anyways

What solution is that?

If you are trying to imply that Bush planned to invade no matter what, it''s hard to say. He probably knew it was inevitable. He certainly knew Saddam hadn''t disarmed and was lying about it. He also knew that the UN would never take the steps to disarm Iraq.

He was correct on both points. France and Russia stated before the war that they would never support a new resolution authorizing force to disarm Iraq. And we proved Saddam lied about disarming with the discovery of his hidden nuclear weapons program.

Again, what''s your point? The UN declared Saddam must disarm and he didn''t. He obviously didn''t plan to disarm, since he hid his nuclear weapons program, continued to deny that it existed, and planned to reconstitute it in the future. Why shouldn''t we have invaded?

"ralcydan" wrote:

If you are trying to imply that Bush planned to invade no matter what, it''s hard to say.

Not really:

""f*ck Saddam, we''re taking him out!"" - President Bush, March 2002

""A return of inspectors would provide no assurance whatsoever of his compliance with UN resolutions. On the contrary, there is a danger that it would provide false comfort that Saddam was somehow ''back in his box.''"" - Vice President Cheney, August 26, 2002

""The risks of inaction are fare greater than the risk of action."" - VP Cheney, August 26, 2002

""I don''t know how many countries will participate in the event the president does decide that the risks of not acting are greater than the risks of acting."" - Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld, August 27, 2002

These are but a few quotes indicating that war was inevitable in the eyes of the controlling members of Administration. The UN, the inspectors, just concessions to pave the way to war, albeit later than the principals wanted it.

Alien Loves Gardener said: ""Just shut up if you''ve got nothing better to say than that.""

Why is it always the liberals that throw free speech in my face and then tell me to shut up?

No offense Alien, you gave me your opinion about my country and I returned in kind.

Your right to have and express your opinion is as valid and important as mine is which is why so many of my countryman have died and continue to do so to protect that right. The European Union can be sensitive and touchy about World War 2, but do you really think the world would be as stable as it is without America at the helm?

I guess what set me off is you made an unsupported offhand demeaning comment about our efforts in Central America. You used small type hoping my poor vision wouldn''t detect it. I would venture to guess you know nothing of the subject matter other than your resentment of this country. My professor in college monitored the polls and so did that pinko commie liberal Jimmy Carter. Are you suggesting that he participated in a procedure where people had guns held to their head?

I know it''s fashionable to despise America now, because we are the big dog on the block. I probably would resent this country too if I owed my existence to it. I can''t even imagine what that would feel like.

Just remember there''s ""freedom of speech"" not ""freedom from speech"". If you say something provacative, expect a reaction. For instance, from time to time when you make a flippant comment about my country, I''ll make a comment regarding the significance of yours. That''s what freedom of speech is all about.

It sucks doesn''t it?

Define ''flippant comment about my country''.

Attacking an administrations policy, critisizing government officials, questioning the emphasizing of ''goals'' over ''means'' or plain and simply not agreeing with majority opinions doesn''t equal a flippant comment about a country does it?

How''s everyone doing today? Good?