Thanks Aussies, for voting to get out of Iraq

[mcewanw]

nojoy

I couldn't help but laugh at that cut!

The canadian civil war continues.

[jonyo]

[jonyo]

2 new peas need to get a life..

[Dougal]

The problem with conservative people is that they'd rather spend their lives getting screwed the way they're used to, rather than give someone new a chance --

Ha! That's funny. But we seem to give someone new a chance frequently, and they don't disappoint.

But that's exactly my point: you always vote the same people!
It's always the same Democrat/Republican, rich, conservative people, devout Christians, etc.

Your candidates talk about whether the US Armed Forces should be in Iraq or not -- how about one that talks about whether there should be a US Armed Forces?
Instead of talking about "fighting terror" they should talk about fighting poverty and ignorance in your country -- the US has plenty of such problems, but they seem to be ignored.

That's why I say you need some real freak to get things moving a little... someone who isn't friends with the military-industry folk.

[PaulBx1]

The draft end in 1973. The US military is all volunteer. Everyone in the US military has enlisted or re-enlisted after the start of the war in Iraq. The US military has about 1.4 million on active duty and 1.2 million in reserves. There's only about 140k in Iraq.

All you have to do is google things like "stop loss" and "backdoor draft" to realize that this is not the whole picture. The smaller percentage of the army that are combat troops are being forced into multiple tours of duty in Iraq. Here are some stories:

http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/2462/
http://www.newsday.com/news/local/longi ... re_utility

There is no official draft now, but with Bush's hard-on for Iran (and Hillary's/Obama's/Giuliani's/Romney's concurrence on Middle East empire-building) it's whistling past the graveyard to imagine there is no draft in the works. If you see a bright light down the tracks and hear a loud noise, there's probably a train coming.

Ron Paul is going to surprise a lot of people. He's the only candidate generating any enthusiasm; the rest have support "a mile wide and an inch deep". The mainstream media used to have a blackout on him but he's pulling so many rabbits out of the hat that they have to cover his candidacy now; they have switched to trying to smear him. People are so fed up with Bush's war-mongering and incipient police state that they are looking outside the establishment-vetted candidates for something different, and Ron Paul is their man. He raised the most money in one day of any candidate except Hillary, $4.2 million, and it all was small contributions unlike Hillary's big contributions from the military-industrial complex. There is a new "money-bomb" for him coming up Dec. 16, the anniversary of the Boston Tea Party: http://teaparty07.com/

BTW if you non-Americans are tired of US imperialism, you can contribute to many of the informal efforts going on to support Ron Paul: http://ronpaulgraphs.com/chipin.html

Ron Paul believes that government is the problem and we will all be better off when we are completely rid of it.

Kucinich is pretty good, better than the rest of the D's. Either Paul or Kucinich should be supported I think. Your characterisation of Paul's position is not quite correct. He simply wants to conform to the US Constitution. And even he recognizes that is impossible in the short term, but he at least wants to go in that direction rather than away from it as has been the trend recently. Paul's bottom line is that he supports the Constitution and freedom, and that's why he's my hero.

[kirk]

The chance of there being a draft is about the same as Ron Paul being elected, pretty close to zero. I'm not a gambling man, but If Vegas was giving probable odds on ether, I'd have to get some of that action.

I agree with Ron Paul on most issues, notable exception being the whole withdrawal from the world idea. We tried that between the first and second world wars. We stayed out of the 2nd world war for a few years and If Japan had not attacked, perhaps would not have entered. Germany never attacked the US, yet we declared war on them. Had that not happened, Germany could have taken control of Europe and north Africa. After consolidating their power who knows what would have been next. The Soviet Union took control of half of Europe, without the presence of the military in western Europe, would they have stopped? I'm not saying this in defense of the Iraq policy, only to point out that evil exist in the world, and if you leave it alone to grow, it could demand a high price.

[darrelljon]

Neutrality's great and reduces terrorism, but lets not forget without the sacrifices of Soviet Russian soldiers, the allies wouldn't have defeated the fascists.

[PaulBx1]

Well, I don't believe we first declared war on Germany; instead they declared war on us.

The problem was, we didn't stay out of the world enough. Many historians now place much of the cause of WWII at Wilson's feet with his intervention into WWI leading to the disastrous Versailles treaty. We clearly had no business whatever in WWI and later paid the price for our meddling.

As to WWII, it didn't make that much sense to work to defeat one murderous dictator by allying with an even more murderous dictator, Stalin. We thus enabled the iron curtain and the enslavement of Eastern Europe for decades.

Nope, I think our most successful wars have been the ones we never got into. BTW, Ron Paul does not want to withdraw from the world. He just wants to stop warring on it.

I'm not a gambling man, but If Vegas was giving probable odds on ether, I'd have to get some of that action.

There are any number of online betting sites, e.g. http://www.gambling911.com/Political-Betting.html

Back in August Ron Paul was down to 8 to 1 odds from previous very long odds. I don't know the current odds but I vaguely recall hearing 6 to 1 or 4 to 1. They will be happy to take your bet.

[BarryK]

PaulBx1, yes, that's an interesting line of thought. I don't want to take a position in this thread, given the "hat" I wear, but it's a very interesting viewpoint. I was reading on Ron Paul's site how the situation in Afghanistan is caused by the US training and arming the people they are now fighting. Ditto, the situation in Iraq is a deep trench that the US has itself dug then jumped into.

It reminds me of another fiasco -- the Vietnam war. A little while ago there was a US politician, can't recall if it was George Bush, putting a spin on the history that the US did not actually lose the war, just withdrew prematurely. Which amused me, as it's not how I recall the war. Maybe you got censored news in the US, but from here, the US was losing the war and hurting really badly. As the Vietcong were taking over the South, the US had to make a run for it. Perhaps in the US you see it differently, but that's not how we saw it. We used to get really honest documentaries on the war, without political interference. We also used to get a lot of news about how 'dirty' the US was fighting -- for example Agent Orange.

[cb88]

no barry we know what happened ... the "war" got turned into a "police action" and our men lost the ability to get the job done.

vietnam was a disgrace as is the war in iraq just another police action right now.

I have experienced censorship ot the media however (I saw through it though). Some things they say on the news are pretty easy to see through but sometimes not so much...

The worst thing i have see on TV was communist propagansda on GloboTV in Brazil... much of Brazil doen't understand about the world wars and how they happened... so communist films of cuba look good to them of course they didn't show modern footage of the same cuba with the same cars they were driving 40+ years ago....

The lady that was reporting at the time.... you could actually tell that she had probably been threatened with her job or her life if she didn't do the story

I don't think it is too far fetched to say that the same thing happens in the US....

as to agent orange ...that is old school we have pain rays now...SCARY STUFF.... anything branded with RAYTHEON is probably scary:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_Denial_System

[kirk]

As to WWII, it didn't make that much sense to work to defeat one murderous dictator by allying with an even more murderous dictator, Stalin. We thus enabled the iron curtain and the enslavement of Eastern Europe for decades.

As opposed to allowing Hitler to enslave all of Europe?

Back in August Ron Paul was down to 8 to 1 odds from previous very long odds.

Yes that seems to be the odds of winning the Republican nomination. But in a field that only has maybe 4 candidates that the average person could name, 8 to 1 odds seem very poor.

Maybe you got censored news in the US, but from here, the US was losing the war and hurting really badly. As the Vietcong were taking over the South, the US had to make a run for it.

That's pretty much the same propaganda that was spread here. The fall of Saigon happened April 30 1975, two years AFTER the American military left Vietnam. The last American troops departed in their entirety March 29 1973. The embassy guard detail was evacuated when South fell.

.. the "war" got turned into a "police action" and our men lost the ability to get the job done.

The military is good at killing people and breaking things. When it tries to do something else, it's not very effective. The US won every battle, but lost the war.

[BarryK]

Maybe you got censored news in the US, but from here, the US was losing the war and hurting really badly. As the Vietcong were taking over the South, the US had to make a run for it.

That's pretty much the same propaganda that was spread here. The fall of Saigon happened April 30 1975, two years AFTER the American military left Vietnam. The last American troops departed in their entirety March 29 1973. The embassy guard detail was evacuated when South fell.

Well, I was a young fellow when all that happened. The war started when I was in high school and in Australia we had national service (compulsory callup) by ballot, and fortunately I didn't get called up, besides, I went on to university and anyone going onto further study was exempt.

Regarding the US pulling out well before the fall of Saigon, yes, I remember that, but what I do recall is the US kept up heavy bombardment from the air, which slowed down the invasion from the North. The Vietcong took over most of the South, but they needed an army to really invade Saigon, and it took them awhile to get that together, considering that they were getting pounded from the air.
Your statement is putting a spin on history that seems to me like what George Bush has done. The South fell quickly, in fact large chunks of it were already lost before the US troops pulled out. it was Saigon that held on for awhile.
That's how I recall it anyway.

My recall is somewhat simplistic I think, due to my age at the time, and it happened about 40 years ago. For anyone who wants all the details:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnam_War
....the statistics are horrible, about 2 million civilians killed. The US had massive involvement, 550,000 troops, and just about bombed the North back to the stone age, but they still kept coming. Scanning through that page, it seems that the US had given up providing air support in 1974, so it was just a matter of time before the North sent an army to Saigon and a couple of other cities that were still holding out.
See that URL about the affect of the Agent Orange and other defoliants -- US citizens, if you're not ashamed of that, I don't know what to say. They even poisoned large areas of the South -- it's just outright disgusting.

Aargh! I didn't want to get involved in this thread, now look what has happened. Well, this is my last post.

[Flash]

My memory of those times agrees pretty well with Barry's. I can add that U.S. soldiers who were involved with spraying agent orange, along with the soldiers who were beneath them when it was sprayed, have been trying for many years to get the government to pay for disabilities they claim it caused.

In my opinion, spraying herbicide over such a large area of forest was a crime against nature of such proportions that it deserves to be ranked with the Holocaust. Fortunately the forest appears to have recovered, but nobody really knows if it did any lasting damage.

[kirk]

Well I wasn't trying to put a spin on anything, just pointing out that the US army didn't have to make a run for it. The US lost the will to fight the war. Also, the US could have bombed the North back to the stone age, but didn't.

Don't misunderstand, I'm not a supporter of the tactics used in Vietnam, nor am I proud of the loss of life that occurred during the war or the million who died as a result of our sudden departure.

[Pizzasgood]

War sucks. Even life in general has a lot of tough decisions. I grew up reading Animorphs by K.A. Applegate, and she managed to have a heck of a lot of gray areas for a series targeted at young readers. War, genocide, slavery, prejudice, manipulation, fighting your family, nasty weapons, pacifism, torture, greed, corruption, traitors, divorce, killing your own food, it's all there. Simplistic sometimes so kids can grasp it, but it gets the point across. Often the characters' biggest issues weren't with how to defeat the enemy, but with how to defeat the enemy without destroying their own souls. Also, it didn't usually have the "happy ending". More often, they accomplished about half of what they set out to do, and were lucky to survive their hasty retreat. Other times, they "succeed", but at a price. Especially near the end.

[rant]
Those books do a heck of a lot more for you than the garbage we have to read in school. Throw Shakespeare and both Bronte's out the window and replace them with Applegate. Teach kids about honor and corruption, not idiotic puns that nobody this side of 1492 would understand. Perhaps more significantly: teach them to see both sides of an issue! Too many people only see their side, and never stop to think that maybe the other guy has a right to be happy too.

Sure, it's wrong for the Yeerks to enslave other creatures (which involves wrapping themselves around the brain and taking control of the body, while the owner is trapped inside his own mind, helpless). But does that mean they shouldn't be allowed to experience vision and taste? To be able to physically manipulate things? How do you find a compromise there? Would it be ethical to genetically engineer a symbiote they could use, that would benefit from having a Yeerk in its head? Or are you just designing a creature specifically to be enslaved? These are things that would make good essays. Not crap like "Write about the use of colors as symbolism in the Great Gatsby."

OTOH, that would involve making people actually think, and besides, a book with the word "enslavement" might offend someone.
[/rant]


Yes, I'm ashamed about what other Americans have done, even some things I myself have done. And about what everyone else in the world has done too. Seems like we're all a bunch of stupid people that don't know how to just get along.

One of the reasons I like Linux is that we may have our stupid little arguments sometimes, but for the most part, we actually cooperate. People come togeather, but instead of breaking stuff, they create things.

Long live Tux.

[BarryK]

I have to post one more time!

Well I wasn't trying to put a spin on anything, just pointing out that the US army didn't have to make a run for it. The US lost the will to fight the war. Also, the US could have bombed the North back to the stone age, but didn't.

Yeah, there was a lot of political interference in the bombing campaign, that lessened its effectiveness. Even so, a million tons of missiles is a lot, and much of the North's infrastructure was destroyed (and about 2 million civilians). To quote from the wikipedia:

The bombing campaign, which ultimately lasted three years, was intended to force North Vietnam to cease its support for the NLF by threatening to destroy North Vietnam's air defenses and industrial infrastructure. As well, it was aimed at bolstering the morale of the South Vietnamese.[86] Between March 1965 and November 1968, "Rolling Thunder" deluged the north with a million tons of missiles, rockets and bombs.[87] Bombing was not restricted to North Vietnam. Other aerial campaigns, such as Operation Commando Hunt, targeted different parts of the NLF and PAVN infrastructure. These included the Ho Chi Minh Trail, which ran through Laos and Cambodia. The objective of forcing North Vietnam to stop its support for the NLF, however, was never reached. As one officer noted "this is a political war and it calls for discriminate killing. The best weapon … would be a knife … The worst is an airplane."[88] The Chief of Staff of the United States Air Force Curtis LeMay, however, had long advocated saturation bombing in Vietnam and wrote of the Communists that "we're going to bomb them back into the Stone Age".

The wikipedia even has a page on Operation Rolling Thunder:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Rolling_Thunder
The death statistics are incredible, it was about 12% of the civilian population of North and South:

Documents declassified by the Vietnamese government in 1995 revealed that 5.1 million people died during the Hanoi's conflict with the United States. Four million civilians died in the North and South. Total military casualties were put at 1.1 million and 600,000 wounded. Hanoi concealed the figures during the war to avoid demoralizing the population.

And this shows the extent of the damage caused by defoliation:

In 1961–1962, the Kennedy administration authorized the use of chemicals to destroy rice crops. Between 1961 and 1967, the U.S. Air Force sprayed 20 million U.S. gallons (75 700 000 L) of concentrated herbicides over 6 million acres (24 000 km²) of crops and trees, affecting an estimated 13% of South Vietnam's land. A 1967 study by the Agronomy Section of the Japanese Science Council concluded that 3.8 million acres (15 000 km²) of foliage had been destroyed, possibly also leading to the deaths of 1,000 peasants and 13,000 head of livestock.

As of 2006, the Vietnamese government estimates that there are over 4,000,000 victims of dioxin poisoning in Vietnam, although the United States government denies any conclusive scientific links between Agent Orange and the Vietnamese victims of dioxin poisoning. In some areas of southern Vietnam dioxin levels remain at over 100 times the accepted international standard.[148]

[jonyo]

Here's the Yank rational (for those inclined..) to stay.
http://dissimulationexposed.blogspot.com/

"You [an insurgent] once said to me [Michael Ware] if the Americans left, your war was over. What now, if the Americans leave, what will you do?" He [the insurgent] looked at me straight back and said, "If the Americans leave now, I must follow them wherever they go."

But...

I do, however, agree with the crux of your argument. Radical Islamists have long been split in their approach to confronting the West. Many argue that the West is too powerful to be defeated militarily and that instead they should use the their so-called "demographic weapon" and the West's own liberal political system to defeat it. In the opposing camp, bin Laden and his fellow violent Islamists argue (somewhat convincingly) that the West -- and the US in particular -- is a 'paper tiger', too politically correct and cowardly to stand against the mujahideen.

Abandoning Iraq or Afghanistan would essentially hand both military and ideological victory to bin Laden, proving that those in the 'peaceful' Islamist camp should join him. It is thus more important than ever to demonstrate to these warring camps that the West's resolve is steeled; that we will never cow to the forces of evil and violence that are so determined to crush our spirits.

[kirk]

Last post for me too! I guess there's still a misunderstanding.

I'm not a supporter of the Vietnam war. I'm not proud of the loss of life during the Vietnam war: Not when the French where fighting it. Not When the US was fighting it. Not the disaster after the US departed. I was only correcting the "US had to make a run for it" comment. As far as the Bombing back to the stone age, of course that could have been done in a matter of minutes.

I'm also not a supporter of the restart of the Iraq war. However, at this point, I think leaving would cause a huge human disaster. Though one could argue that's inevitable.

[noprob]

I would have never thought that I would be posting politics and or history about America on my favorite linux distro forum,but this looks like as good a place as any.

Here goes and I truely hope all that I post is not true,but I'm sure it is and I wonder why no one else knows of this information here in the U.S.of A.

#1 No Habeas Corpus for “Any Person

[jonyo]

Perhaps more significantly:
teach them to see both sides of an issue! Too many people only see their side, and never stop to think..

Good point!

Sure, it's wrong for the Yeerks to enslave other creatures (which involves wrapping themselves around the brain and taking control of the body, while the owner is trapped inside his own mind, helpless). But does that mean they shouldn't be allowed to experience vision and taste? To be able to physically manipulate things? How do you find a compromise there? Would it be ethical to genetically engineer a symbiote they could use, that would benefit from having a Yeerk in its head? Or are you just designing a creature specifically to be enslaved? These are things that would make good essays. Not crap like "Write about the use of colors as symbolism in the Great Gatsby."

Huh..

OTOH, that would involve making people actually think, and besides, a book with the word "enslavement" might offend someone.
[/rant]

I'm gonna be looking into this Animorphs stuff..

series targeted at young readers. War, genocide, slavery, prejudice, manipulation, fighting your family, nasty weapons, pacifism, torture, greed, corruption, traitors, divorce, killing your own food, it's all there. Simplistic sometimes so kids can grasp it, but it gets the point across.

That should work for me..

One of the reasons I like Linux is that we may have our stupid little arguments sometimes, but for the most part, we actually cooperate. People come togeather, but instead of breaking, stuff they create things.

Nice Conclusion.. mind you, I'm still pretty good at breaking linux stuff, or at least figuring it out..