Iraq (or the mistakes thereof)

Barry Aldwell

[EDIT] Some people don't seem to like any attempts to start conversation [/EDIT]

mentalimplosion

free uniform? i'm there!!!

*leaves*

Raphael

EDITED VERSION


I take it back. Sorry barry, neil

oq4v3ht0u76kf2

Lads, if you can't argue based on the facts / subject then don't show yourself to be an eejit by attacking the poster. This is a fairly passionate topic but keep the posts about the subject, not the poster.

For what it's worth, I'm a strong believer in capitalism and the theory of suvival of the fittest so I see America as the strongest. They aren't evil, they aren't stupid, bloodthirsty or anything else... they are doing what everyone has to do in the end and that is look after number one.

At the moment, they may be seen to be taking advantage of their position as world leader and such but surely anyone can understand that they are the world leader for a very good reason.

Like I said; capitalism, consumerism and survival of the fittest.

Crash

you all have a choice. Abusive pieces and posts from above can be edited out of your posts by yourselves PDQ, or they will be edited out by me and a few days worth of a ban with it. Grow the fuck up.

On the original discussion i have to disagree with your noble idea point. tbh there are two or three reasons that the USA started all this (in no particular order)
1) oil.
2) finishing what they should've gotten up off their asses and done during the original gulf war
and
3) wanting to feel vindicated. after the **** up that was afghanistan they needed to feel like they'd done one right thing.

i'll post more of my views when i've decided what to do with the above posts.

Crash

Alim banned. anyway theres no point in keeping this thread open as barry seems to have decided to delete his first post. :rolleyes:

shep the malevolent pixie

hee, i'm so glad i didn't see this thread sooner or i may well have been banned too... or not (seeing as how one of my best friends is sleeping with the moderator...heh, i loveid you neil ).

to argue or not to argue...

capitalism is the root of all evil as far as i'm concerned. it's just selfishness and greed applied to a global level. i mean, seriously, do you think it's right that people all over the world can't afford a place to live or enough food to keep themselves alive when there's others who have enough wealth to cancel world debt, feed entire countries and still have enough left to look after themselves adequetly? i'm sorry, maybe i'm just an idiot but it seems so obvious to me that the current system isn't working. IF CAPITALISM WORKED THEN PEOPLE WOULDN'T DIE OF STARVATION.

if america has a good reason to have seized control of the rest of the world then i've obviously missed it. could somebody please inform me? and what's this crap about looking after number one? they can't even look after themselves, how the hell do they think they're going to sort out everywhere else?! if they cared about number one, they would have spent the money that they spent on this war on "terror" (how can you have a war on an abstract noun anyway?) on improving their grossly insufficient healthcare system. anyway, there shouldn't be just one big "world power"- the UN was set up for a reason you know *cough*WWII*cough*.

one rogue nation can do a hell of a lot of damage as we've seen throughout the years and going against the UN was a big mistake of america's. if they undermine the world government they run the risk of revolution on all sides and i have a feeling that that's what it's going to come down to in the end. the people are becoming restless and they are not going to let their governments ignore them any longer...

[/RANT] for now...

cHloe :cool:

on a somewhat lighter note, this be my 400th post! YAAY!! three years on this bloody thing and i'm only on 400 posts...

Crash

oh god. no no no. i will not let this turn into a capatilism vs. communism debate. No no no. /me shakes head repeatedly. can we settle on something? that the pure version of both of them doesnt work?

lets just settle on a mixed political system and settle with that? please?

Shep The Malevolent Pixie banned btw.




Only kidding.

Green Hand Guy

Why not make me king of the world? I'd sort the damn place out. Equally distribute the wealth, send all criminals to live in a colony on the moon and spend whatever money is left hunting down right wing americans with laser cannons.

lordsippa

Capitalism is founded on greed, yes. How and ever, greed is merely human nature and the idea that greed is bad is an ethical debate and has no place in politics. Governments are formed to help THEIR people and not some eejits halfway across the world.

The problem with governments of today is that they have lost sight of what they are, becoming institutions in themselves as opposed to representations of the state. The American government is a perfect example of this with a homelessness rate in the millions (nobody's sure because there are so many hobos out there that have never even had their births registered). There are people starving on the streets of their major cities, suffering incredible poverty. If the government was a representative of the people under it, this would not be tolerated. Instead money is funelled into wars. However, wars DO provide employment and opportunities for money making if you're the victor. The war on Iraq, would therefore be justified (ignoring all this moral crap) by the fact that it allowed America to use it's army and hence justify it's huge budget, and also to give America opportunities to exploit vast oil reserves. If the American people benefit properly from this and not just the fat cats, if this increased American revenue gets pumped into healthcare and used to create employment, then this war may well be justified. If it doesn't then it was a horrible mistake.

Morally though it's just a matter of how much good you think they did in deposing Saddam, and how much harm they did to Iraq, and how much they're screwing up. Balance it out and make up your own mind. The fact that they overstepped their boundaries has nothing to do with it if you think they were correct in deposing Saddam's reign. If you don't think that then the fact that they did go outside of their supposed boundaries to do it shouldn't matter.

Finally, I only wish I could've seen the crap you'd all posted just so I could've justly screamed "IDIOTS" at you. Hell, this rambling bs post is just to confuse and shut most people up. It's 4am, excuse me if I'm a wee bit cranky.

[just a little edit...] Iraqi war? That is SO 2003 :rolleyes: [/]
<troll> :ninja:

shep the malevolent pixie

i'm more of a socialist really...

you ban me, i break-a your legs.

It wasn't me!

American government should not be about waging and wining more wars than everyone else but that seems to be what it has deteriorated to. George W. was just out to try and do properly what his father failed to do originally, with the ulterior motive of procuring some of the world's last sources of oil for American control. Being the world's wealthiest and most powerful nation does not give them the right to go against the general opinion of the world and defy the UN. In fact, it gives them the responsibility to adhere to its decisions and support and enforce them to solve the problems facing the world. American capitalism is a system whereby, if things go as they will at this rate, we will experience massive global inflation to the point where only a small number of wealthy American bureaucrats (And I think we can guess who most of them are) will be able to live in a first world situation.

This cannot occur however as I would anticipate a global revolution in such an event and I cannot see the world as a whole surviving an event like that. My outlook hasn't really been decided yet, but I'm leaning towards socialism and it's easy to see the world can't safely continue the way it is. My two cents.

lordsippa

I voted for anarchy.

It wasn't me!

I kinda go socialist, with a view to anarchy, with a view to empathy. That makes no sense what so ever but that's my messed up political outlook. Needless to say, if I ever bother to vote, oprobably Sinn Fein. (I've decided I have a view to comedy as well:D )

article6

Originally posted by It wasn't me!
I kinda go socialist, with a view to anarchy, with a view to empathy. That makes no sense what so ever but that's my messed up political outlook. Needless to say, if I ever bother to vote, oprobably Sinn Fein. (I've decided I have a view to comedy as well:D )

If you're thinking of voting Sinn Féin, listen to some of the rubbish they spout out first. They're the masters of doublethink, much more than Fianna Fáil could ever be. Vote for your local Independent instead - they're often the ones who stand for reform.

RE Iraq, there were a lot of factors involved, and it really is a moral grey area. I was and remain against the war, because all peaceful avenues were not explored, etc., etc. I certainly hope the culprits in the UN bugging scandal and the dodgy dossier authors on both sides of the Atlantic are brought to justice with just as much "shock and awe" as Hussein was. (As if.) Suffice it to say this is one of those things where it's quite difficult to find a cut-and-dry solution.

RE capitalism v. Communism: Can't we all just get along? Neither system works on its own. The mod is right Although I lean a lot more towards capitalism.

shep the malevolent pixie

i'd just like to point out that i wasn't raising a debate about capitalism v communism, i was merely giving out about capitalism and its wrongness (don't get me started again... ).

i don't pretend to have any solutions as to how the world should be run, all i know is that the way it's going now, if something isn't changed, in a short while there won't be anything left to run.

in my opinion the war was morally wrong because they didn't go into iraq to help the people, they went in because of greed, because they wanted the money from the contracts to rebuild the country that they destroyed in the first place.

...even thinking about this is making me SO angry... :mad: (that's what i look like right now)

lordsippa

Originally posted by shep the malevolent pixie
:mad: (that's what i look like right now)

Chloe, m'dear, we've gotta do something bout that yellow complexion.

(yes I'm bored enough to post this kinda crap)

<troll> :ninja:

shep the malevolent pixie

i was thinking if i got a good base makeup we could work on it from there. the triangular eyebrows are becoming something of a hindrance as well... have you any suggestions?

URGENT MESSAGE

if anyone has any suggestions on how to fix my yellow, triangular eybrowed, circular bodied condition (not to mention the fact that i have no limbs) please post them here. i want to go from this- :mad: to this- in three easy steps (if possible). so please, help me to help myself, it is imperative that i find the answer soon, or my disgustingly jaundiced facade will consume us all.


<oh such trolling we had, it was delicious> :ninja:

lordsippa

Trolling?

<troll> :ninja:

freakydeadgirl

Originally posted by lordsippa
I voted for anarchy.

easiest way out. people get hurt. fires, guns and mass chaos. we all have fun. sounds good to me . where do i sign up.
speaking from an american view. i hate bush. he has f-ed over the whole economy so when my generation takes over we will be takeing it up the ass. the national debt is something like 4 trillion+ dollars. we can give money away to random little countries half-way across the world all willy-nilly and not have the grey matter between the ears to look in wards and fix thing internally. my state, arizona. is the second lowest in dollars spent per student in public education, barely above mississippi. arizona use to be third lowest, but then alabama got its act together.
my solution would be for the u.s. to practice isolationism like what happened in the early twenith century to get its self straightend out and to start asking for the debts to be repaided.
----end of my political rant for thr next few years

---

oh and....
shep- just put a paper bag over your head
remember to put eye holes in it

nosmo

Originally posted by freakydeadgirl
speaking from an american view. i hate bush. he has f-ed over the whole economy so when my generation takes over we will be takeing it up the ass. the national debt is something like 4 trillion+ dollars. we can give money away to random little countries half-way across the world all willy-nilly and not have the grey matter between the ears to look in wards and fix thing internally. my state, arizona. is the second lowest in dollars spent per student in public education, barely above mississippi. arizona use to be third lowest, but then alabama got its act together.
my solution would be for the u.s. to practice isolationism like what happened in the early twenith century to get its self straightend out and to start asking for the debts to be repaided.

That sounds disturbingly like a KKK message I heard once.. "Take care of America first".

This horrible big deficit could easily be taken care of if America decided to pour some money from it's bloated army and space budgets. (Yes, I will get criticism for saying that. I think space exploration is a great thing, but I think the huge amount of money being poured is a bit excessive)

Crash

em....you do realise that deficit is the cause of your past 5 or 10 presidents, not just one right? they've been slowly building it up just as they hit their last term, the sly bastids.

ll=llannah

yup, the debt's a-been snowballing.
and the republican's amount of funds is frightening me.
but go kerry. here's to hoping.
/sigh

freakydeadgirl

oh i know that
you can trace the start of the national debt to when everyone had to start paying income taxes back in the post depression years, if my history knowledge serves me right.
but you see i pretty shure that they have already cut back on the space program and army funding. and any way funding in those areas has for most of the time been strung out thin.
and also if bush had kept one of his early promisses to help with the nationl debt .but you can't do that when you cut back on taxes for the wealthy and start making the workers pay an arm and a leg to stay up.
frankly, i'm just counting down the days till i can get out of this f-ed up country( about 700 days left)

one more thing i am not a kkk sheet head.
just a teenager who's pissed at the world

lordsippa

Actually, if I was living in America I wouldn't mind Bush half as much. It's been obvious from day one that he was FAR more interested in putting America first than Clinton for example. Ol' Bill just had the charisma to make him popular in Europe. That and the cheating and sax playing and you gotta love the guy

But yeah, Bush's administration have attempted to actually act (in some ways) on the environmental issues by their heavy funding into Hydrogen Fuel Cell research <something I was quite privy to the depth of before people start doubting>, and the attempted extra tax on SUV's (or maybe that was just California... did that get passed btw?) trying to curb use of unneccessarily large vehicles. But of course there's a deeper political motive to this - if America gets its cheap mass produced Hydrogen Fuel Cell cars* and cuts down its oil usage it relies less on the middle east and becomes much more insular. (*think Volkswagon... I shit you not, or so I heard from someone involved in official research in that field)

Bush's "war on terror" serves not only to keep America's army going but also to build up allies with which it can hope to have strong trading links after this whole fiasco's over. Keeping the army going btw is a GOOD thing as it provides employment for big mean men who like to fight. But yeah... it provides employment so is an economically sound idea.

OK, it's not all towards isolation and until they can get all this technology going they're gonna be dipping their fingers into the worlds oil reserves through "just wars" etc. But overall I can't say Bush's administration have been bad for America. Education funding was always balls there, and isn't that more a state thing? Although their gay marriage thing... wtf??!!

<incidentally, I'm not a big Bush fan but people are so quick to demonize everything he's done. Don't like the guy, but gotta admit he's building America up nicely... if riskily>

Aliminator

Originally posted by freakydeadgirl
speaking from an american view. i hate bush. he has f-ed over the whole economy so when my generation takes over we will be takeing it up the ass. the national debt is something like 4 trillion+ dollars. we can give money away to random little countries half-way across the world all willy-nilly and not have the grey matter between the ears to look in wards and fix thing internally. my state, arizona. is the second lowest in dollars spent per student in public education, barely above mississippi. arizona use to be third lowest, but then alabama got its act together.
my solution would be for the u.s. to practice isolationism like what happened in the early twenith century to get its self straightend out and to start asking for the debts to be repaided.

---

i honestly wonder why you are so worried about your national debt. america owns the IMF and World Bank. the provide a lot of campaign funding too. everyone gives each other the nice brown envelopes. just think how bad it would be if you had a national Pension fund.
while i do'nt like bush, he hasn't really f-ed over the whole economy. 90% of the 'boom' of the past decade or two just lined the pockets of less than 500indviduals at the head of hte big MNCs or corporations. the serious state of your economy has been in jeopardy for a while, but was hidden.
in the end, Capitalism will destroy most of hte economy. no MNC or other giant corporation has ANY allegiances or commitments to your country. with the far-superiorly educated CHEAP workforce of the far-east (EDZs of china for example), and less restrictively legislated countries, no wonder hte capitalist driven corporate leaders will leave you all jobless. wouldn't u in that position?
for once y'all are getting hte backend of globalisation.

just wait 20years. China is off it's opium addiction, it took fifty years, but they are off it. now we're all going be f-ed over by the chinese, we lazy westerners.


on a side note to sven's post: wasn't the SUV tax only present along with the fuel tax to help the state debt problem.

freakydeadgirl

bush's enviroment views are very entertaining. he has added to the funding to alternative fuel sources, but didn't he take the u.s. off one of those enviromental pacts that clinton came up with.

the suv tax was passed and enforced in california until the "governator" got into office. it was one of the first thing he repealed. ( only in california could an austrian, three time mr. universe, actor who got started in such great b-movies as "conan" and the moved on to "the terminator". i was hoping for the lap dancer or the owner of " hustler " magazine.)

and the gay marriage thing is getting really old. various cities have given the middle finger to the government and have started to marry gay couples following all the regulations. why not call it a union and give them the same rights as a married couple. also i think the government is trying to pass a consitutional admenment to say that a marriage can only happen between a man and a woman and something against gay marriages ( if i' ve got this wrong tell me)

education is both on a national and state government level. see how great bush's "no child left behind" act has worked out.

and thank's to this country's messed over government and the ever mounting reasons i'm getting out in 698 days

side note on whole national debt thing:
bush is respondisable for a trillion

lordsippa

This conversation bores me now.

Raphael

amazing how this thread has gone so far without an opening post...

Barry Aldwell

I had expected it to wither and die. Instead it turns into spam. Such is the topsy-turvy world of the ctyi board, where nothing is as it seems, and hamburgers eat people.

Raphael

Yes....

the hamburgers eat people...

It wasnt me at all....

honest...

hey look over there!

HADOKEN!