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@vckay

You make statements yet do not back them up with qualatative arguments. India is indeed surrounde dby enemies, Pakistan for one and China the other, however, India has been militarily superior to Pakistan ever since the two modern nations were create din 1947 and India has been little behind, if not the equal of China for much of the past fifty or so years. There are no other nations in that part of the world with the military capability to launch a sustained and protracted war against India and expect to win, or at the very least inflict sufficient damage as to render an Indian counter-attack inneffective.
Israel, on the other hand, is surrounded by several enemy nations with the capability to, at least, inflict serious damage, if not defeat Israel in a conventional war e.g. Syria, Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia. In addition to this, Iraq, before the Coalition occupation, was also a serious threat to Israeli security for many years as Iran still is, even more so in fact when one considers that Iran may not be too far off building nuclear weapons of its own.
I did not suggest that killing children was defensible or in keeping with American values, in fact I believe I made quite the opposite point. Both Israelies and Palestinians have done some very nasty things to each othe rover the years so I don't think that eithe rof them can take the moral high ground; the point I was making was that Israel has had to resort to some very desperate measures that no Western democratic nation in recent times, would even consider using in order to ensure its survival. This isn't to say that that akes such methods acceptable, merely that it is a historical fact.
The U.S. has indeed defended democracy, without the U.S. the West would have had very litte chance of winning the Cold War and communism would no doubt have dominated the planet. I'm not quite sure what you think India could have done to stand against communism, even if it could raise an army of hundreds of millions, but I can assure you that the U.S.S.R. with its thouand sof nuclear missiles would have been quite able to obliterate India from the face of the planet. Interestingly Stalin had hoped of spreading communism to India during the Second World War; his idea was that if Indian rebels should topple the British Raj then he would be able to install a communist government. Thankfully the Raj didn't fall, India gained her independence and communism was defeated.
What the U.S. did was present the U.S.S.R. with an opponent just as strong as themselves, hence the stand-off, no other nation on Earth would have been able to do that, the French no longer had the capability to hold onto their empire and were engaged in bloody colonial conflicts throughout the Cold War whilst the British had very mcuh sacarficed their empire to defeat the Axis in WWII. Having said that there were no communist nations other than the U.S.S.R. with the capability to spread communism, the only other serious contender, China, can be discounted when one realises that China was very much inderior to U.S. militarily during the Cold War. The U.S. defeated the U.S.S.R. by outspending it, the communist bloc simply could not match the Western nations economically and found themselves trying to keep pace with an enormous military build-up that they knew would propel the U.S. ahead of them.
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Posted: 2004-08-10 22:40:25
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But my argument is indeed based on substantial facts.both pakistan and china are nuclear powers and conventional superiority fails to make a difference.moreover pakistan is fighting a low cost war involving religious fundamentalists which is difficult to counter.as for the us policy on israel, i never suggested that america move lock, stock and barrel to the palestine camp. I merely said that neutrality would help the issue more and probably allow the muslims to see america in a better light. This message was posted from a T610
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Posted: 2004-08-11 00:32:41
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I understand if you delete this masseur .

I won't go into much detail about my views on the war and politics as a whole, as much as i'd like to, but every nice government out there has become corrupt to a point, where I'm sorry to say, it has proven democracy DOES NOT work. First, let me be the first to say, IMO 9-11 was NOT committed by Al-Queda. I'll get tons and tons of hate mails and hate pm's for this but I'm sorry it wasn't. Think about it, when a terrorist organisation commits a deed (such as Al-Queda) they do it for a purpose, whatever that purpose may be. They will confess to having done the deed to have THEIR purpose attributed to THE DEED. If the U.S. hadn't said anything then no-one will have known what the terrorist attack was for (no purpose), so the deed will have been like nothing. The U.S. were the ones who attributed Al-Queda to the deed applying their purpose to it. Now stay with me here. Al-Queda denied the allegation which brings 2 possibilities:

1) They did it, regretted it denied it.

If this were the case they wouldn't have "bravoed" the deed.

2) They didn't do it.

Most likely this scenario.

Because noone ever did confess it was either a rogue group of people who lost everything in their life because of the US, some terrorist organistion who felt bad for what they did so just hid in shame, OR...

IF you are a big supporter of the American Government I urge you not to read this


The U.S. government committed the deed themselves, not realising how bad or underestimating the damage it would cause, using it as an excuse to

a.) Promote the Bush Administration. Remember he actually LOST the popular vote, so they needed the support.

b.) Go into the middle-east for the power the geographic location and oil brings.

c.) Creating a common enemy for the U.S. people and U.S. Government to bring them together.

d.) To be able to create and strike fear and terror into it's own people with unknown threats to be able to control them into submission (sounds like terrorism to me).

Now I'm not supporting terrorism, it's wrong in all shape, form and size (which is why I hate the American Government so much), but as "Al-Queda commiting this deed" was the U.S.'s primary and almost only reason to go into the middle-east it brings everything into perspective. It was america's greatest excuse! (I'm not even going to begin to say why they would want to be there. Oil. Geographic Power. Putting their own people into office (which they will do election or not). Helping their buddy countries.) whatever. Anyway, America killed countless Irawi's, strikes fear into every country every day, inflicts terror. Went to a country to make it better and made it infinitely worse, (WOW! THEY CAN WATCH TV! Too bad they are dead or are in prison or are in a war zone). They went into a country to find WMD's which were never there. Don't care about North Korea even though they claim to havbe WMD capabilities (because they have Japan for geographic power and North Korea has no oil). They will eventually plant WMD's in Iraq or on some other poor country to invade it. They obviously knew where Saddam was from the start, and took him in to boost early Bush campaign efforts (COME ON IF HE WAS HIDING IN A HOLE somewhere IN IRAQ how the hell did they come across it). They will take in Osama at the last second to boost campaign efforts (they probably have his body, will find him, or will pretend to have him). The U.S. goes through alot of trouble to trick it's people, but some of us are not impressed.


Even if this is all for real, the U.S. can't just go around bossing countries around and playing policeman.
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Posted: 2004-08-11 05:12:54
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Umm sage... I recommend a nice long vacation in a non democratic country like china where the shouting of catch-words like 'Free Tibet' and 'Taiwan independence' will evoke an instant response from the friendly local gestapo who will urge you to stay in their local equivalen of Abu Ghraib for some more eventful weekends. This message was posted from a WAP device
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Posted: 2004-08-11 09:19:07
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@vckay

I never mentioned that the U.S. should move to supporting the Palestinians, I would agree with you that objectivity is the key.
In mentioning China and Pakistan as nuclear powers one must also remember that both India and Pakistan have very small nuclear capabilities when compared with China; China itself has approximately the same nuclear capability as the U.K., which has a smaller nuclear capability than France, which has a smaller nuclear capability than Russia, which has a smaller nuclear capability than the U.S.A. Conventional arms do count for a lot, because two nuclear powers facing each other means of backing up threats save for nuclear weapons, which would result in both nations taking heavy casualties, so nuclear powers invest heavily in their conventional armed forces too.
I would like to agree with the points you made regarding sage, well aid old man.

@sage

I don't even know where to begin in responding to your post; you are of course perfectly entitled to your view because of the democracy, which apparently doesn't work, but I will have to disagree with you.
You offer very little hard evidence to back up your theory apart from claiming that the U.S. would benefit from oil and the creation of a common enemy to bolster U.S. power. Both of these claims are paper thin and can be quite easily countered when one considers the facts.
For the U.S. government to commit the 9/11 terror attacks and blame it on Al Qaeda would have required a conspiracy of Herculean proportions. Hundreds, if not thousands of people would have needed to be involved and each one of them would have had to keep quiet knowing that they were aiding a project to kill thousands of their countrymen and allies. The CIA, the FBI, the NSA and scores of other intelligence services would have needed to have been manipulated and fooled to ensure that none of them picked up on such a conspiracy and that they all beloved that it was Al Qaeda; in addition to this dozens of foreign intelligence services would have needed to have been fooled to make sure that Al Qaeda was blamed for the attacks. The U.S. government would then have needed to find suitably qualified Arabs to hijack the planes and commit suicide for the U.S. government by crashing the planes. The conspiracy would then have had to be maintained for the past three years with false intelligence being fed to U.S. and foreign intelligence agencies to maintain the idea that Al Qaeda committed the attacks, such false intelligence would have to be exceptional to fool every major intelligence agency in the world.
George Bush and his Administration would need to put measures in place to ensure that whoever became President after him would never find out about such a conspiracy, as you know the U.S. democratic system means that there will be a different President at least once every eight years, a measure designed to stop any one man from having that power too long. Such a cover-up would mean that the intelligence agencies in the U.S. would need to support President Bush in doing so, yet the heads of these agencies can be removed from office and new heads appointed, so some sort of method would need to be found to ensure that the current agency heads as well as their successors for the next fifty or sixty years at least would help keep such a conspiracy secret.
As I hope you can see, such a conspiracy would be almost certainly doomed to failure. The U.S. already had several enemies it could have cast in the role of the 'common enemy e.g. Iran, Iraq, North Korea, China, etc China would have made a much better enemy as the U.S. would have been able to direct a massive military build-up against China creating massive contracts for defence, much larger than those being issued at the moment. By invading the Middle East the U.S. has done very little to help its economic position as uncertainties push up the price of oil, which has a knock on effect across the whole economy. If the U.S. really wanted control of more oil so desperately then it could have set up new oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico, or drilling stations in Alaska; both options come without having to commit thousands of troops to a war, maintain a conspiracy, suffer backlash of world opinion or see President Bush's approval ratings sliding. If anything the U.S. War On Terror has made it more difficult to obtain oil, certainly Iraq won't be producing oil at anywhere near the levels the U.S. needs for years yet, the infrastructure of the country has been wrecked and will need to be rebuilt, that is after an insurrection claiming the lives of hundreds of U.S. and Coalition troops has been put down.
Your statement regarding the fact that democracy apparently doesn't work isn't actually backed up with any form of evidence to say why you feel this way, perhaps your conspiracy theory is that evidence, if so it would seem rather flimsy evidence, but if not then I shall await your reply.
I would be interested to know, which form of government you would like to see in place of democracy; presumably one where freedom of speech is allowed, the leaders are chosen by the people to prevent tyranny and everyone is allowed a say in how their lives are run ... that sounds rather familiar to me.
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Posted: 2004-08-11 16:52:56
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Some claim that terrorism is growing because the US is in Iraq

yeah thats true.
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Posted: 2004-08-11 22:31:43
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Quote:
On 2004-08-11 22:31:43, boto43 wrote:
Some claim that terrorism is growing because the US is in Iraq

yeah thats true.



I would disagree with that statement for the following reasons:

Those willing to commit acts of terrorism against the U.S. already hate America, the fact that the U.S. invaded Iraq would almost certainly have had little influence in their decision to oppose the U.S.

The insurgency in Iraq not breeding international terrorism by Iraqis, the insurgency is confined to Iraq. The acts of terrorism we have seen abroad i.e. Madrid, were committed by Al Qaeda, not Iraqi based terror groups.

The main cause of Islamic terrorism is the continued support given to Israel by the U.S.

Saddam's government had very few links with Osama bin Laden and indeed turned him away.

If anything the U.S. presence in Iraq is actually reducing terrorism by concentrating Al Qaeda's resources and fighters against American troops in Iraq and not Western targets. I suspect that Al Qaeda would have launched several more attacks against Western targets if they were not preoccupied with directing attacks against Coalition forces in both Iraq and Afghanistan.

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Posted: 2004-08-11 23:14:14
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@scotsboy - just a thought - the Iraq situation is perhaps giving all those who hate the US a reason to hate them and to shoot at US troops?
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Posted: 2004-08-12 00:54:23
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Those who hate the U.S. don't need Iraq as an excuse, those willing to die fighting the U.S. don't need Iraq as an excuse and they certainly don't need Iraq as an excuse to shoot at U.S. troops or civilians. The fundamental problem is the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, that situation has done more than anything else to foster hatred towards the West and to promote terrorism as a legitimate means of opposing both the U.S. and Israel.
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Posted: 2004-08-13 00:31:06
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And on a completely different note......

OJ Simpson joins WMD hunt

Los Angeles, Saturday - Controversial former football star and actor OJ Simpson has announced that he has volunteered to travel to Iraq to join in the hunt for Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMDs), allegedly stockpiled by the deposed Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.

Simpson said that he was perfectly qualified for this mission because of the dogged persistence he had shown in hunting for the "real killers" of his estranged wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ronald Goldman, and the detective skills that he had honed during the nine-year search for the murderers.

After his acquittal in 1995 on charges of murdering Brown and Goldman, the former star running back pledged to devote the rest of his life to tracking down and catching the "real killers". Yesterday, Simpson declared it was his patriotic duty to interrupt that search to help US intelligence services locate Saddam Hussein's hitherto elusive WMDs. Eighteen months after the US-led coalition invaded Iraq, no WMD stockpiles have been found. OJ Simpson declared himself undaunted by the task.

"I know they're out there, they've got to be", Simpson explained. "Just like Nicole's killers. George Bush says the WMDs were there, and that's good enough for me. If you can't trust a fellow golfer, who can you trust?"

Simpson said he was unfazed by the possible dangers of the mission, despite renewed outbreaks of armed conflict in Iraq. "I can handle myself in dangerous situations: look at me in Killer Force and The Klansman", Simpson stated, referring to movies in which he featured in the 1970s. "The real downside is there aren't any good golf courses in Iraq yet. That's a bummer", Simpson continued, identifying a key priority for US reconstruction efforts in the ravaged country. "Bottom line is, though, I think my President really needs me now."


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[ This Message was edited by: axxxr on 2004-08-15 14:22 ]
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Posted: 2004-08-15 15:22:01
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