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Petit Soleil
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Message 47065 - Posted: 16 Nov 2004, 13:12:06 UTC
Last modified: 16 Nov 2004, 13:13:45 UTC

U.S. to Probe Shooting of Wounded Iraqi
God dam Journalists ! Always there when we don't need them.

U.S., Iraqi Troops Launch Mosul Offensive
And the commander in chief said, now boys when you shoot at an unarmed and
wounded arabs, be sure that there's no god dam journalists arround first !


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Guido Alexander Waldenmeier
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Message 47067 - Posted: 16 Nov 2004, 13:22:58 UTC
Last modified: 16 Nov 2004, 13:23:56 UTC

11.15.04
Military Families Against the War is an organization of people directly affected by the war in Iraq. Our relatives and loved ones are members of the British Armed Services.
We are opposed to the continuing involvement of UK soldiers in a war that is based on lies. We call on Tony Blair to withdraw our troops immediately.
The soldiers in Iraq and their families at home have the most at stake in this conflict. For some of us, our loved ones have been killed in Iraq.
Our brave men and women risk injury and death while our government continues an unjust war for political ends. We say quite simply this is wrong.
Bring our Troops Home Now!
We want your comments, letters, photos and links - please email us at: contact@mfaw.org.uk

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Message 47069 - Posted: 16 Nov 2004, 13:30:58 UTC

Yeah, saw the Video of the Marines shooting the wounded Iraqi at breakfast this morning on the BBC.. i think the Marines will use the evidence that some wounded people have been boby trapped and killed Marines trying to help them but i think the casual manor in which the injured man/men (who were all unarmed according the NBC reporter who was embedded and filmed this ) were killed will only lead to more blood shed in iraqi and ill feeling towards the west in arab states (hell i am from the west and do not feel to great about it!). i think it is against laws of ?engagement/war? to shoot unarmed man who is injured.. any lawyers in the house?
Also on BBC yesterday it was reported that Powells' iraqi rebuilding plan made at the state department was thown out by bush and Rumsfelds defence departments plans used instead.... and Powell was unhappy about that...I think Colin Powell left at the right time, because who ever gets his job (Rice still favorite?) has a hell of a big job ahead of them. i just hope we find a (?semi peaceful?)way of this rather large S**T storm thats brewing...
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Message 47070 - Posted: 16 Nov 2004, 13:33:32 UTC - in response to Message 46972.  
Last modified: 16 Nov 2004, 13:33:52 UTC

> > Please! Does Montesquieu sounds to you??

Tom did not answer, so I guess not.

Baron de Montesquieu French, Ideological Co-Founder of the American Constitution.

Montesquieu loved knowledge, science, law, toleration.
Montesquieu hated armies, conquests, tyrants, priests.


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Message 47117 - Posted: 16 Nov 2004, 18:01:10 UTC

Here is the real Bush state of the union speech !!!
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Message 47158 - Posted: 16 Nov 2004, 22:11:55 UTC

Gwynne Dyer
November 16, 2004 DYER1116

"We're going to raise the Iraqi flag over Fallujah and give it back to the Fallujans," Maj. Gen. Richard Natonski told the First Marine Division at the start of the battle for the western Iraqi city. After six days of one-sided fighting (38 U.S. troops killed, and about 1,200 Iraqi resistance fighters), what's left of the city has indeed been captured, but most Fallujans left weeks ago. So did most of the resistance fighters who were making it their base.

An estimated 30,000 to 50,000 of the city's 300,000 people did stay, not realizing how devastating U.S. firepower would be in the final assault. Many of them are now dead or injured, though we will never know how many because the U.S. forces refuse to count the civilians killed in their operations and forbid Iraqi official organizations to do so either. But nothing has been accomplished.

Even as Fallujah was being reduced to ruins, rebels were seizing the center of Mosul, Iraq's third-largest city, and a third of the U.S. blocking force around Fallujah had to be sent north to deal with it. Car bombs blew up in Baghdad, mortar rounds landed in the Green Zone, and there was heavy fighting in the town of Yusufiyah south of the capital. It's like the fairground game of Whack-a-Mole: Bash down one mole and up pops another elsewhere. And the United States has just not got enough troops in Iraq to whack all the centers of the resistance at once.

This was the main issue from the start for the U.S. Army, which was deeply opposed to the invasion plan that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld foisted on the professional soldiers. As Army Chief of Staff General Eric Shinseki (forced into retirement by Rumsfeld) told a Senate committee in February of last year, a force "on the order of several hundred thousand soldiers" would be needed to control Iraq after the war.

Rumsfeld retorted publicly that Shinseki's figure was "far from the mark," and his neo-conservative ally, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, said: "It's hard to conceive that it would take more forces to provide stability in post-Saddam Iraq than it would take to conduct the war itself ... ." But that's exactly what the professional soldiers did foresee.

Anybody could have invaded Iraq. With a little help on sealift and air support, Belgium could have done it. The Iraqi army was comprehensively smashed in the 1991 Gulf War, and due to U.N. sanctions it had neither repaired its losses nor acquired any new weapons for 12 years. Only the toadies in the upper ranks of Western intelligence services managed to persuade themselves that Iraq had functioning "weapons of mass destruction"; working-level analysts overwhelmingly doubted it. The problem wasn't the war; it was the occupation.

"All of us in the Army felt ... that the defeat of the Iraqi military would be a relatively straightforward operation of fairly limited duration, but that the securing of the peace and security of a country of 25 million people spread out over an enormous geographic area would be a tremendous challenge that would take a lot of people, a lot of labor, to be done right," said Thomas White, secretary of the Army in 2001-03, in the Public Broadcasting System's recent "Frontline" documentary "Rumsfeld's War."

If there had been 300,000 U.S. troops in Iraq when the war ended, the orgy of looting, the collapse of public order and public services, and all the consequent crime and privation that alienated the Iraqi public might have been averted. The U.S. armed forces could have come up with that many soldiers for a year -- and if order had been maintained in Iraq and elections had been held there a year ago, it would all have been over by now. But on Rumsfeld's insistence, there were only 138,000 U.S. troops in Iraq.

Why did he insist on that? Because proving that he could successfully invade foreign countries on short notice with relatively small forces, and without demanding major sacrifices from the U.S. public, was key to making President Bush's new strategic doctrine of "preemptive war" credible. It was also essential to the neoconservatives' dream of a lasting "Pax Americana" (which could easily involve an Iraq-sized war every couple of years). So the generals were told to shut up and follow orders.

It's too late to fix Iraq by pumping more U.S. troop numbers in now. The resistance has grown so widespread that it would take half a million American soldiers to win at this game of Whack-a-Mole and install an Iraqi government that would last long enough for the United States to walk away from the country without humiliation. Such numbers simply aren't available without bringing back the draft, and even the present troop level in Iraq cannot be maintained for more than another year without drastic new measures.

In any case, these might-have-beens are irrelevant since the Bush administration never intended to withdraw fully from Iraq (those 14 "enduring bases"), and twice rejected serious proposals for early elections, in late April 2003 and again last February, because it could not control the outcome. The security situation is now far worse, and even deputy prime minister Barham Salih of the U.S.-appointed interim government admits that the promised January elections may have to be postponed.

As Rumsfeld used to say sarcastically at his press conferences back when he was sure that he was right and the media and the professional soldiers were all wrong: "All together now: 'quagmire.' "

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Luca Pacioli
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Message 47191 - Posted: 16 Nov 2004, 23:22:33 UTC - in response to Message 46972.  

> Luca, why don't you say that you don't like what Bush does, and you don't like
> what America does? That is very different from saying you don't like Bush and
> you don't like America.

Perhaps you are right. I don´t like Bush killing people or anybody else. I hope your phrase doesn´t have a subliminal sense because I wouldn´t understand it.

> Anyway, on the single issue that you see as the key, the War in Iraq, the two
> principal candidates were not that different: they both supported the war,
> only differing in how they would conduct the war. Kerry did argue about the
> economy, but the American economy is doing pretty well, considering what we
> have been through. And Bush has made progress in education.
>
> So, even if most Americans did not support the war (I don't think that's true,
> but I may be wrong), what choice would they have had to protest the war?
> Which candidate would they have voted for? And even if John Kerry had opposed
> the war, many Americans have learned not to decide how to vote based on a
> single issue (unless it's the economy).

Regarding the single issue...I think killing is an issue important enoguh to be single. I wouldn´t (and I haven´t) vote a killer, I just don´t care about he´s other abilities.
I´m sure you are right about Bush and Kerry similitudes and the consequent american´s lack of options...thanks for according with me at least one time! I have posted this fact in the last thread [4]. But this argument doesn´t invalidate the hole process. I mean yes, it invalidates the democracy since you don´t have real options so you don´t make a real election (as you critisize in Cuba). But it invalidates it since you don´t realize about that. And that´s my biggest critic to American´s. When American´s began to wake up (as you Tom have done, since your writing coincides now with most of my arguments) they could make a real choice...because if you don´t do so you would be confirming that your candidates came from heaven: that would be the only explanation to your post about only Bush and Kerry and your question "and who can I vote now?". You are more that 250 millions...find anyone!
(if you imagine me writing this with an ironic smile in my face, your are right)
"Raggio spezza, amista lunga"
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Message 47213 - Posted: 17 Nov 2004, 1:02:46 UTC - in response to Message 47191.  


> . . . Bush and Kerry and your question "and
> who can I vote now?". You are more that 250 millions...find anyone!
> (if you imagine me writing this with an ironic smile in my face, your are
> right)

Kerry's party did everything they could to keep Ralph Nader, a third-party candidate, off the ballot in as many states as possible. This is not my view, it is the view of Ralph Nader himself.

I wrote in this thread (#33169, Oct. 6, 2004) about how un-democratic it is to prevent a candidate from running, but I got the response that Nader was the reason Al Gore lost in 2000, so he should not be allowed to run this time and spoil Kerry's chances. You, Luca, seem to have a better understanding of democracy than some of those who believe it was right to keep Nader off the ballot.
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Message 47225 - Posted: 17 Nov 2004, 1:43:54 UTC - in response to Message 47117.  
Last modified: 17 Nov 2004, 1:47:18 UTC

I saw that movie within a week of the State of the Union on e-baum's something-or-other. It lost its punch and edge half-way through.

Good to see that nothing ever disappears from the internet...

[ADDENDUM] I don't think Nader "stole" votes from Gore or anyone else for that matter - I think he earned his votes more than anyone else. I didn't vote for him, though.
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Message 47228 - Posted: 17 Nov 2004, 1:51:28 UTC
Last modified: 17 Nov 2004, 1:57:29 UTC

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Message 47233 - Posted: 17 Nov 2004, 1:57:33 UTC - in response to Message 47213.  

> Kerry's party did everything they could to keep Ralph Nader, a third-party
> candidate, off the ballot in as many states as possible. This is not my view,
> it is the view of Ralph Nader himself.
>
> I wrote in this thread (#33169, Oct. 6, 2004) about how un-democratic it is to
> prevent a candidate from running, but I got the response that Nader was the
> reason Al Gore lost in 2000, so he should not be allowed to run this time and
> spoil Kerry's chances. You, Luca, seem to have a better understanding of
> democracy than some of those who believe it was right to keep Nader off the
> ballot.

Than you (I think)(I don´t know when you are fooling me). If it´s true, thank you again!
"Raggio spezza, amista lunga"
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Message 47287 - Posted: 17 Nov 2004, 6:47:48 UTC

John Dvorak worte an excellent article that talks about what has been happening here, and apparently all over the internet.

The Zeros vs. Ones

This could be posted as well in the Religious Thread or in a number of others. It talks about the polarization found too often in the arguments we have been engagin in--that so many see these issues as Black/White, Yes/No, My Way/Wrong Way. I thought it would be of interest.
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Message 47294 - Posted: 17 Nov 2004, 7:49:24 UTC - in response to Message 47228.  
Last modified: 17 Nov 2004, 7:49:36 UTC

> Aid worker Hassan Believed Slain in Video

That's very sad. A woman !!! who where there to "REALLY"
help the Irakis. It's beyond understanding.
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Message 47296 - Posted: 17 Nov 2004, 8:04:32 UTC - in response to Message 47294.  

I get the impression that the Iraqi resistance forces (For lack of a better term) need to do such things more for the Arab psyche than as being a message for Americans, Britons, and collaborators. What I find disturbing is the choice of victims. The same applies to 9/11: The Pentagon was a bona fide target; WTC was not.

In a morbid way, I can understand the need for brutality, but I can't fathom why non-combatants are being slaughtered.
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Message 47315 - Posted: 17 Nov 2004, 9:44:46 UTC - in response to Message 47287.  
Last modified: 17 Nov 2004, 9:47:51 UTC

John Dvorak worte an excellent article that talks about what has been happening here, and apparently all over the internet.
The Zeros vs. Ones


It's correct, but Dvorak missed a major point that is relevant: Information saturation.

Nobody's figured out the magic algorithm to interpret the content of a file (HTML, TXT, PDF, JPEG, etc) for its accuracy. There's no instant way to corroborate a claim or statement by cross-referencing the referrer, hard-copy publication sources, and at least three threads in a newsgroup and/or forum (Like this one) for debate activity in order to show that something is the straight information, it's up to the individual to make a decision based on what little information he/she already knows (Which is often zip).

When I was working in the computer lab as a student aide, I remember one case in particular. A student wanted to find the periodic table of elements - a pretty simple deal. But he forgot the word "periodic" and just put "elements" into 10^100. He concluded that the whole list of elements were F, W, Er, and Ar.

Fire, Water, Earth, and Air.

The same applies to opinion. While facts are verifiable with little effort, opinions are made based on the assumption that someone's site somewhere has been Googified, and that misinformation will validate anything. Don't forget that the FCC can't touch anyone here online - The internet is for the most part an unadulterated anarchy run by the consensus of its users. So it's easy to get away with almost anything out here.

So in essence, if you've got 2^32 possible IP addresses all offering 128MB of info, you're going to get lazy and just wail your opinions all over the place (Like I am now) without having to care about what you say (let alone its truth) because there's too much information to check up on first.

Besides, you can take sex, violence, hatred, and whining off the streets, but where are you going to put it?
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Message 47365 - Posted: 17 Nov 2004, 14:31:05 UTC - in response to Message 47287.  

> John Dvorak worte an excellent article that talks about what has been
> happening here, and apparently all over the internet.
>
> The Zeros vs.
> Ones

>
> This could be posted as well in the Religious Thread or in a number of others.
> It talks about the polarization found too often in the arguments we have been
> engagin in--that so many see these issues as Black/White, Yes/No, My Way/Wrong
> Way. I thought it would be of interest.

This a dispute that comes since the years of Descartes and because of him. Our thoughts are always polarized. We never use inclusive logic, but exclusive: if you say "I have a dolar" nobody will understand that you have a dolar or more x>=1, they will understand that you have only a dolar x=1. That´s not what you´ve said.
Cartesian thought is another problem to communicate ourselves. (I won´t let to recognize cartesian thought utility, but it is utile when you know you are thinking that way, but after 3 centuries it has been assimilated by our brain so, it´s now more a problem than a solution, since we don´t kno it´s there)
"Raggio spezza, amista lunga"
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Message 47379 - Posted: 17 Nov 2004, 15:26:08 UTC - in response to Message 47296.  
Last modified: 17 Dec 2004, 4:57:21 UTC

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Message 47505 - Posted: 18 Nov 2004, 6:05:49 UTC

Russia tests new missile systems
Russian President Vladimir Putin announced Wednesday that his country's armed forces will soon have access to advanced nuclear missile systems unavailable in any other country.

"We are conducting research and are testing the most up-to-date nuclear missile systems, which, I'm sure, will be supplied to the armed forces in the near future," Putin told a conference of high-ranking military officials, according to a translation from Russia's Interfax News Agency.

"What is even more important, these systems will have no analogues in the other nuclear powers during the next few years."
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Message 47758 - Posted: 19 Nov 2004, 5:07:14 UTC
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Message 47760 - Posted: 19 Nov 2004, 5:22:00 UTC

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