The Iraq thread 4

[Balschoiw 0]

Last time I checked UN was in Iraq but had to leave because some low-flying cruise missiles screamed over their heads and their headquarter was blown up by some US-cheering Iraqis.

You can turn it like you want, but you got fooled into a war. Hell the whole world got fooled into this. The difference between US people and the rest of the world seems to be that we knew from the scratch that it was a made-up case while some US people still ride the TBA bandwagon of ignoring the facts and praising the great Bush and his neocon pile of lies.

You were the ones screaming: "Wait ! We know he has WMD´s and that´s why we attack ! Wait ! We know he has ties to AQ and that´s why we attack ! Wait ! He´s tried to get material for nukes and that´s why we attack !"

Shall I dig it up ?

Well, NONE of that turned out to be true. And still you try to sell that as a justified war... furthermore you try to sell it as a big sucess. I fail to see the sucess.

I can´t help, but you make the US look like a country full of mindless drones. That´s the impression everyone has to get if he listens to all that nonsense that comes from your direction.

You´re running out of justifications for a war that cannot be justified. The TBA has tried a lot of versions but still none turned out to be true or honest. In the end it´s all lies. That´s what G.W Bush will be remembered as.

The big liar who was responsible for ten´s of thousand people who got killed because of his lies.

Maybe there are wars someone can be proud of, but the Iraq war should make every thinking citizen of the USA ashamed. It´s a shame that so many people had to die for nothing but some ego-tripping president and some made up power-point presentations. Yes, you can be very proud of that.

[Homefry 0]

Quote[/b] ]Maybe there are wars someone can be proud of, but the Iraq war should make every thinking citizen of the USA ashamed. It´s a shame that so many people had to die for nothing but some ego-tripping president and some made up power-point presentations. Yes, you can be very proud of that.

They did have elections recently... and before you say they are unimportant and a sham.... think about how much freedom they had before the war.

It wasn't safe then... and your fooling yourself if you think it was. At least now they have some say in what happens in their country, and they won't be locked up for saying they disagree with the current government. And at least a woman can walk the streets alone without worrying about being raped. Things aren't perfect there, but the entire thing isn't totally negative.

Surely that isn't a thing to say justifies the war, being the original motives and reasons were clearly different. But the talk that things aren't better, at least in certain aspects, is complete rubbish.

[bn880 5]

Quote[/b] ]Maybe there are wars someone can be proud of, but the Iraq war should make every thinking citizen of the USA ashamed. It´s a shame that so many people had to die for nothing but some ego-tripping president and some made up power-point presentations. Yes, you can be very proud of that.

They did have elections recently... and before you say they are unimportant and a sham.... think about how much freedom they had before the war.

Well unfortunately there is a great chance of all this tumbling and turning Iraq into another Afghanistan type of problem. This is all nice and fun, but who knows when the Iraqis will be able to keep order in such an "elected" government.

You think it is freedom to be able to go outside and die? Well if that's freedom then maybe you are right. If there is insurgency for 15 more years in Iraq, you think that's freedom? Seriously?

Damn.

Right now, as of this moment, if the US forces leave, the same govermnet type (or worse) will take control in about two months tops. These Iraqi troops will be annihilated or simple decide not to fight.

So I don't know what the success is, maybe in 5 years of occupation or more...?

[Tovarish 0]

Marine uses up nine lives

Quote[/b] ]ASKAN, Iraq (AP) -- The first time Lance Cpl. Tony Stevens was bombed in Iraq, a car packed with 155 mm shells exploded next to his Humvee just as a device containing five more shells detonated beneath it.

By bomb No. 9, the former baseball minor league shortstop had become a good luck-bad luck icon and the awe of his 1st Battalion, 2nd Marine Regiment patrolling the so-called "triangle of death" south of Baghdad.

With a couple of weeks remaining in his second tour of duty in Iraq, the 26-year-old might be counting the days a little more closely than most and has become a seasoned, battle-hardened veteran of the laws of physics.

"When you hear the explosion, that's actually good," Stevens said, pointing out that because sound travels relatively slowly, hearing the blast means you have survived it. "It means you're still in the game."

Stevens' deployment landed him in an area known for insurgents' use of what the U.S. military calls improvised explosive devices, or IEDs. Some of those are vehicle-borne improvised explosive devices, or VBIEDs -- military-speak for car bombs.

It is not unusual for Marine patrols on the two-lane roads through towns and gray-and-brown fields to encounter three or four bombs a day. Sometimes, there are more -- many more.

The bombs contribute to an injury rate of one-in-five Marines during their 6-month-old deployment here. The bombs also kill U.S.-allied Iraqi police and Iraqi National Guardsmen patrolling in unarmored pickups and cars.

Many Marines here have been bombed two or three times, and a couple seven or eight.

Stevens, at nine, appears to hold the record that no one wants to break.

His streak started August 8.

His unit was going to check on a mortar attack when it rolled next to the one bomb and on top of the second.

Marines tended the wounded in what they later realized was a field of undetonated bombs. "We were pretty much walking on top of them," Stevens says.

Bomb No. 2 was August 9 -- the next morning. That bomb was a freezer filled with five 155mm shells and set off by a detonating cord left on the road. It cost a fellow Marine some fingers.

Bomb No. 3 exploded on a security patrol. It injured a Marine riding in the turret of Stevens' vehicle.

That was October.

"October to Thanksgiving we were pretty much hitting one every time we went out," Stevens says.

Bomb No. 4 hit his vehicle. No wounded.

Bomb No. 5 hit his vehicle, and sheared off a live power line overhead, sending it sparking on top of the neck collar of Stevens' flak jacket. He shows the ripped, burned material. "Two-in-one on that one," he says.

Bomb No. 6 through 9 hit his convoys.

In factory-armored Humvees -- the vehicles of choice for patrols -- Marines know they can survive all but the biggest bombs and the unluckiest hits. None has been killed in any of the bombings Stevens has survived. "It's not that we laugh about it, but we joke a lot, once we know it's all right," he says.

What saves his life, Stevens doesn't know. He doesn't do anything special. "Just pray. That's all you can do in this place."

What saves his spirits are the Internet and phones, put in not long ago at the Marines' forward operating base. "That way you can call the wife, say it's been an easy day, even though you've just got hit with an IED."

Home is Jacksonville, Florida., and he played for the New Britain, Connecticut, Rock Cats, before joining the military. He was also the Florida high school basketball player of year in 1997, said Rock Cats President William Dowling.

Despite all the bombings, Stevens says he would sign up again. He speaks against a backdrop of explosions as his company sets off cratering blasts, destroying a dirt road to keep it from being used by insurgents for election-day attacks.

"We came here and accomplished our mission," Stevens says. The triangle of death has seen attacks drop sharply. Local security forces have more confidence. Crowds are friendlier.

"Ow!" the Marine standing next to Stevens shouts. The man grabs a wrist slapped numb by a stinging chunk of dirt from the cratering blast a quarter-mile-plus away.

"I told you not to be around me," Stevens says, going after the hunched-over Marine. "How many days we got left?"

[Balschoiw 0]

Quote[/b] ]It wasn't safe then... and your fooling yourself if you think it was.

Let numbers speak.

The risk of getting killed for a civillian is 58 times higher since the US invaded. I wouldn´t say that´s especially an improvement.

And for the elections. Read about the mood within Iraq about the elections. Even read the articles posted here. It gives you somehow an overview on the mood within Iraq today. The election split the country. It did not unite it.

[theavonlady 2]

Let numbers speak.

The risk of getting killed for a civillian rose by 58 percent since the US invaded. I wouldn´t say that´s especially an improvement.

That and your saying:

Quote[/b] ]Even read the articles posted here.

So I'll post this again.

Quote[/b] ]Overthrow of Saddam Already Saving Lives in Iraq

Special from Hawaii Free Press

By Andrew Walden, 1/24/2005 9:58:04 AM

Opponents of Iraqi liberation make the count of civilians killed in Iraq a central theme of their arguments. They blame every death on U.S. action. At demonstrations they wave photos of Iraqis injured or killed in the fighting. But they ignore the lives that are not being lost in Iraq because Saddam's regime is no longer around to kill them.

This omission is a form of childish magical thinking that supposes the evils of Saddam's dictatorship would simply go away on their own and therefore need not be accounted for when considering the effect of the war. Rather than costing lives, the liberation of Iraq has already saved thousands of lives. Saddam's regime, on average, killed far more Iraqis -- in the same amount of time-- than even the largest realistic estimates of Iraqi civilian casualties from anti-war sources.

The most prominent recent effort to estimate Iraqi deaths after liberation came in a survey published just days before the November election by the Lancet, a medical journal. The authors, three American academics and two Iraqi professors of medicine claim 100,000 "excess deaths". But their methods do not stand up to examination.

The survey is based on interviews of geographically selected Iraqis by two live interview teams one led by Riyadh Lafti and the other by Jamal Khudhairi both of Al-Mustansiriya University in Baghdad. To trust the results one must not only trust the objectivity of these two individuals and the unidentified Iraqi members of their teams, but also trust the responses of Iraqi interviewees who may feel that "wrong‚" answers would bring down punishment on them and their family from the al-Qaeda/Baathist insurgents. The three American academics did not directly participate in the interviews and therefore cannot lend their reputation to the point in the study where the rubber meets the road.

If that creates doubt, the other, unpublicized, conclusion of the survey seals its fate. When the interviewers were asked about deaths since March, 2003, they were also asked about violent deaths in the last fifteen months of Saddam's rule. Out of the 988 households containing 7868 residents, interviewers found only one report of a violent death in these fifteen months. Extrapolated into Iraq's population of 25 million, the conclusion would be that Saddam's regime -- plus violent crime -- cost only 3175 Iraqi lives in that 15 month period or 2540 in a year.

If we presume Iraq to have a homicide rate similar to that of the United States which had 5.6 deaths per 100,000 in the year 2002 and extrapolate that number to Iraq's population, that results in a count of 1400 normal‚ criminal homicides in Iraq in a year. This leaves 1140 excess homicides‚ in a year under Saddam. If that is multiplied by Saddam's 24 year dictatorship, the result is only 27,360 deaths at the hands of Saddam's regime. Since it is well established that Saddam's regime filled mass graves with 300,000 bodies and estimates range as high as 1 million Iraqis killed -- it is clear that the survey contains a bias toward low estimates of mortality under the dictatorship. From this it is reasonable to dismiss the claim of 100,000 "excess deaths‚" since March, 2003 as entirely unreliable.

The next anti-war source of information on Iraqi deaths is Iraqbodycount.net (IBC), which keeps a running count of what it calls Iraqi civilian casualties. In the first 16 months -- March 21, 2003 through July 21, 2004 -- IBC says between 11600 and 13574 died. But no effort is made to distinguish those killed by US action from those killed by the Iraqi army, or by the various Baathist, al-Qaeda, Ansar al-Islam, or Mehdi Army groups. There is no separate accounting of Iraqi military dead, nor terrorist dead. In fact the individual entries in the IBC database show that many military dead are included in the civilian‚ count. IBC's "civilian" dead include targets such as, "Iraqi soldiers (and) military truck" or "enemy tanks and tracked vehicles, (and) Republican Guards." Since terrorist tactics involve civilian disguise and taking cover in civilian populations, many more of the "civilian" casualties could easily be military. All these flaws in IBC's methodology artificially drive its count higher--but still not as high as Saddam‚s averaged death toll.

There are 260 Saddam-era mass graves in Iraq, containing the bodies of at least 300,000 people. Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3253783.stm

Before Iraqis dug them up -- often bare handed -- these graves contained the bodies of mostly Shia and Kurdish opponents of Saddam. If you average the death toll out over the 24 years‚ of Saddam's rule, from 1979 to 2003, the result is 16667 murders per any 16 month period.

Using Iraqbodycount's high figure of 13,574 civilian dead killed by all sides in Iraq, the toll is 3093 fewer than the number killed by Saddam's regime in a comparable period of time. Using the low figure of 11600 killed, 5067 fewer have been killed. Based on the war protesters own numbers, 3000 to 5000 more Iraqis are alive today because of the overthrow of Saddam. Iraq may appear more chaotic than it did under Saddam -- but Saddam's smoothly operating, non-chaotic killing machines, beyond the view of the media, were more deadly than the fighting we have seen -- even using the highest figures coming from an anti-war source.

The 300,000 mass graves include only Iraqi civilian dead. Saddam attacked Iran in an effort to prevent the spread of the Islamic revolution to Iraq and then later attacked Kuwait in a naked grab for oil and territory. According to the Encyclopaedia of the Orient, in the Iran-Iraq war, 400,000 Iraqi soldiers are estimated killed. In the Kuwait war estimates run from 60,000 to 100,000. Those numbers average out to about 27,000 per 16 months under Saddam.

Since IBC includes both Iraqi military and civilian dead in its totals, as well as dead terrorists, it is fair to include Iraqi military dead from Iran and Kuwait in a count of Saddam's victims and compare the totals. Including Iraqi military dead, between 30,000 and 32,000 Iraqis have been saved by the overthrow of Saddam's dictatorship -- in just the first 16 months. And this makes no account for the thousands of Iraqis who will not be killed, and the millions whose health and life will improve, in each successive year without Saddam.

It should be noted that IBC also rejects the Lancet's methodology, saying, "the (Lancet) researchers did not ask relatives whether the male deaths were military or civilian the civilian proportion in the sample is unknown (despite the Lancet website‚s front-page headline "100,000 excess civilian deaths after Iraq invasion"), the authors clearly state that "many" of the dead in their sample may have been combatants [P.7].

The past is the best predictor of the future. To presume that Saddam would suddenly stop killing his domestic opponents and stop invading neighboring countries is to foolishly place trust in a murderous dictator. If 2002 was a slow year for Saddam's murder machine that does not lead to a conclusion that 2003 would also be a slow year. The fact Saddam's regime did much of its killing after the First Gulf War left him in power shows the fallacy of an immediate or phased withdrawal of US forces from Iraq without stabilizing the new Iraqi government. It shows that leniency inspires evil to new outrages. Premature withdrawal would be a recipe for a new Baathist or al-Qaeda bloodbath as their remnants rise from spider holes and try to reestablish dominance over the Iraqi people. Anti-war campaigners shout, "let the Iraqi people live." Their true slogan should be, "let the Iraqi people die."

Reach Andrew Walden, editor and founder of Hawaii Free Press, via email at mailto:andrewwalden@email.com

[Balschoiw 0]

So ?

It´s still HAWAIIREPORTER vs Lancet (leading british medical journal) and the Herald Tribune

Guess what is my choice is when it comes to credibility...

Quote[/b] ]More than 100,000 civilians have probably died as direct or indirect consequences of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, according to a study by a research team at Johns Hopkins University's Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore.

.

The report was published on the Internet by The Lancet, the British medical journal. The figure is far higher than previous mortality estimates. Editors of the journal decided not to wait for The Lancet's normal publication date next week, but instead to place the research online Friday, apparently so it could circulate before the U.S. presidential election.

.

The finding is certain to generate intense controversy, since the Bush administration has not estimated civilian casualties from the conflict, and independent groups have put the number at most in the tens of thousands.

.

In the study, teams of researchers fanned out across Iraq in mid-September to interview nearly 1,000 families in 33 previously selected locations. Families were interviewed about births and deaths in the household before and after the invasion.

.

Although the paper's authors acknowledge that thorough data collection was difficult in what is effectively still a war zone, the data they managed to collect are extensive: Iraqis were 2.5 times more likely to die in the 17 months following the invasion than in the 14 months before it. Before the invasion, the most common causes of death in Iraq were heart attacks, strokes and chronic diseases. Afterward, violent death was far ahead of all other causes.

.

"We were shocked at the magnitude but we're quite sure that the estimate of 100,000 is a conservative estimate," said Dr. Gilbert Burnham of the Johns Hopkins study team. He said the team had excluded deaths in Falluja in making their estimate, since that city was the site of unusually intense violence.

.

In 15 of the 33 communities visited, residents reported violent deaths in the family since the conflict started in March 2003. They attributed many of those deaths to attacks by coalition forces - mostly airstrikes - and most of the reported deaths were of women and children.

.

The risk of violent death was 58 times higher than before the war, the researchers found.

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"The fact that more than half of the deaths caused by the occupation forces were women and children is a cause for concern," the authors wrote.

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The team included researchers from the Johns Hopkins Center for International Emergency, Disaster and Refugee Studies as well as doctors from Al Mustansiriya University Medical School in Baghdad.

.

There is bound to be skepticism about the estimate of 100,000 excess deaths, which translates into an average of 166 excess deaths a day since the invasion. But some were not surprised.

.

"I am emotionally shocked, but I have no trouble in believing that this many people have been killed," said Scott Lipscomb, an associate professor at Northwestern University.

.

Lipscomb works on a Web site called www.iraqbodycount.net. That project, which collates only media-reported deaths, currently puts the death toll at just under 17,000. "We've always maintained that the actual count must be much higher," Lipscomb said.

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The researchers were highly technical in their selection of interview sites and data analysis, although interview locations were limited somewhat by the researchers' decision to cut down driving time when statistically possible to minimize risk to the interviewers.

.

Edit: You´re kidding me Avon, right ?

I just checked the "Freedom to Report Real News, Hawaiireporter" webpage. If I should ever need "Andy´s poolservice" or want to read a paer spread to 20.000 people only I will give it a try, but unless I´m forced to read it, I will stay with the papers that have at least some kind of reputation...

[theavonlady 2]

Guess what is my choice is when it comes to credibility...

Not the Brookings Institute, which means:

Not the Iraq Index.

Not the Iraq Body Count.

Not Jack Straw.

Not the Sheik Omar Clinic, Baghdad.

Not Amnesty International.

Not The Human Rights Organization, Iraq.

Enjoy your Herald Tribune.

[Balschoiw 0]

Lost direction ?

[theavonlady 2]

Lost direction ?

Yes. Left.

[Balschoiw 0]

Ok let´s take some numbers from your report.

Has the coaltion invasion done more harm than good or more good than harm ?

Answer: More harm than good. 46 percent

Would you prefer the US and Brit forces leave the county immedeatly ?

Answer: Leave immedeately (in the next months) 57 percent

Do you think of the coaltion troops mostly as occupiers or liberators ?

Answer: Mostly as occupiers 71 percent

Over the past three months, have conditions for creating peace and stability in Iraq improved or worsened ?

Answer: Worsened 54 percent

And for the numbers of killed Iraqis from the report:

17,900 - 35 400

So according to this report the chances for Ali Iraq to be killed may not be 52 times higher but maybe 20 - 30 times higher.

Yeah that makes a real difference. Mission accomplished.

[quicksand 0]

Quote[/b] ]17,900 - 35 400

The numbers are extremly flawed.They are based on tallying news agencies quoting morgues numbers.Not only news agencies lack the capability to get a full picture of the violence occuring around the country due to lack of security but the other major problem is that muslim tradition require a swift burrial and the reality is many bodies never reach the morgue.

In Fallujah bodies were spreaded alll over the streets in both sieges and after the first one a football field was turned into a mass grave for those killed by the US marines to be burried.

So in the end 100,000 civillians killed during the US occupation and war is not at all an absurd figure.

Any person who would promovate the concept that this never ending blood bath in Iraq where dozens of Iraqis are dieing on a daily basis and where there was no pre-war risk of a humanitarian catastrophy as there is now needs a sanity check for beliving such hogwash.

[Balschoiw 0]

Fallujah was excluded from the report Avon posted, as there were no detailed figures available. And yes, I also do believe the 100,000 number. People who got ripped apart by bombs or big calibers are not delivered to hospitals. Morgues are not countrywide available in Iraq. Same with governmental institutions who register people.

I know that Afghanistan is a different country, but we found a hell lot of dead people while on mission there. They were not buried, they just got shot or bombed to bits and were left in the open. Same has to be expected in Iraq. First we buried them if possible but after a while we just passed them as it would have been just to time consuming and dangerous to bury them as some of the corpses were booby trapped or lying within remains of cluster bombs or in minefields.

[DracoPaladore 0]

Quote[/b] ]'It's fun to shoot people,' U.S. general says

ASSOCIATED PRESS

WASHINGTON — A U.S. Marine Corps general with battle awards is being counselled to watch his words more carefully after publicly observing that "it's fun to shoot some people."

Lt.-Gen. James Mattis, a career infantry office now in charge of developing ways to better train and equip marines, also made fun of the manhood of Afghans during comments he made this week while speaking at a forum in San Diego.

Gen. Mike Hagee, the commandant of the U.S. Marine Corps, issued a statement of regret about Mattis's remarks yesterday, saying they reflected "the unfortunate and harsh realities of war."

According to an audio recording, Mattis had said: "Actually, it's a lot of fun to fight. You know, it's a hell of a hoot . . . It's fun to shoot some people. I'll be right up front with you, I like brawling."

He added, "You go into Afghanistan, you got guys who slap women around for five years because they didn't wear a veil. You know, guys like that ain't got no manhood left anyway. So it's a hell of a lot of fun to shoot them."

His comments evoked laughter and applause from the audience. Mattis was speaking during a panel discussion hosted by the Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Association, a spokeswoman for the general said.

Gen. Hagee's statement said: "Lt.-Gen. Mattis often speaks with a great deal of candour. I have counselled him concerning his remarks and he agrees he should have chosen his words more carefully."

"While I understand that some people may take issue with the comments made by him, I also know he intended to reflect the unfortunate and harsh realities of war," Hagee's statement added.

Among marines, Mattis is regarded as a fighting general and an expert in the art of warfare. Among his decorations are the Bronze Star and a combat action ribbon, awarded for close-quarters fighting.

He is currently the commanding general of the Marine Corps Combat Development Command in Quantico, Va., and deputy commandant for combat development.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations, a Muslim civil liberties group, called on the Pentagon to discipline Mattis for the remarks.

"We do not need generals who treat the grim business of war as a sporting event," said the council's executive director, Nihad Awad. ``These disturbing remarks are indicative of an apparent indifference to the value of human life."

Star

BugMeNot

[Tovarish 0]

Been posted before by Ralph in the USA politics thread, and later by me in the War against Terrorism thread . I would say it fits into all three threads, but then again this was Afghanistan and not Iraq.

[DracoPaladore 0]

Been posted before by Ralph in the USA politics thread, and later by me in the War against Terrorism thread  . I would say it fits into all three threads, but then again this was Afghanistan and not Iraq.

Ah, my mistake then. I will remove if a moderator finds this uneccesary.

[miles teg 1]

If violence was the simple solution to terrorism, then Iraq would have been pacified by now and Israel would be the safest country in the world.

1. No one said it's a simple solution but it's a major part of the solution.

2. One of the reasons Israel is not the safest country in the world because Israel has not been determined to win the war here.

Let me guess... Kill all the terrorists then everyone sleeps safe at night right?

Yeah...Americans/Israelies killing Joe Mohammed's Brother/father/son is going to scare him and make him cry for mercy. Maybe in the movies, but in real life when you're dealing with extremists who believe that their deaths and sacrifice will gain them entrance into paradise, then they will fight, and their children will fight, and their children's children will fight to the death to avenge their fallen loved ones. For them its a win-win situation and if you take the path of violence with them, only genocide will solve it. You are right... Israel can win against the Palistinians militarily...easily. It would mean eliminating the Palistinians completely by driving them out and killing all who do not leave...however then you will have new borders...and new attacks across the borders...and more conflict that would revive conflict with Jordan, Egypt, and Lebanon.

Eventually you will get a nuclear standoff as many Middle East countries are secretly working on nuclear programs...Egypt being the latest caught in the act...although strangely enough the media quietly quit reporting about the International Atomic Energy Agency's findings on Egypt's secret nuclear weapons program.

But back to Iraq... we face a similar problem... you can not stop terrorism in the manner in which we are fighting in Iraq at least not with a democracy. By necessity, it will need to become a brutal police state where everyone spies on each other. That is how Saddam stayed in power.... by using a cell system.

Israel has tried something like this with some success. But its limited.

It would be VERY difficult for Iraq to implement such a program, and it would no longer be a democratic nation as almost certainly the secret police would be used to terrorise ALL political opposition to the ruling party.

History shows this pattern in many nations.

But if you have a clear roadplan to how violence will be the solution in Iraq, then please Al, lay the plan out because so far I have not heard anyone explain how violence works to solve these kinds of insurgencies.

Chris G.

aka-Miles Teg<GD>

[SM_Azazel 0]

um genocide does not even work look at russia and chechinya.

they do geonicde there and it ends up making things worse.

the only way to solve anything is to just leave them alone but that was screwed up when we gave iraq AND iran money and weapons along with all those other arab countries that are only powerful due to the rotted flesh called oil. if we did nto need oil the middle east would become very poor and fall back intot he darkages just like the "good" muslims like it but once they have that then what is the point of thier lives? besides beatign and opressing their women..

so let's just stop using oil and make the middle east an dark rotten hell so it is an win win..

[miles teg 1]

Edit... damn it... he edited... his post after I said "amen". Um...no "Good Muslims" don't beat their women...only ignorant ones who don't read the Hadiths and scholarly writings associated with the verses that concern disciplining a wife. But nevertheless, it is true that those verses all their and that wife beating is allowed under certain circumstances.

But like others said, wife beating is extremely commonplace in the United States and in most countries for that matter.

Chris G.

aka-Miles Teg<GD>

[python3 0]

then what is the point of thier lives? besides beatign and opressing their women..

the beating and oppression of women is unfortunately something that is widespread around the world. Id ont quite remember but in the US every 3 minutes a woman is beaten.

Keep your ignorant and stupid remarks to your self if you are not educated on ME society and the islamic religion. You'd be surprised to find that most muslim women dont wish to be the "free" women of the west. Oppression has many forms. Just because western women dont wear veils doesnt mean they are not oppressed and just because muslim women do, doesnt mean they are oppressed. As for beatings, its a worldwide epidemic.

[Acecombat 0]

Python save your breath , your telling that to a guy who substitutes being 'poor' to the 'darkages' (a backward and uneducated society , right?).

I'll pass on that message to all the 'poor' people on your behalf who've lost their wealth due to one reason or the other.

I am poor myself dont even have a good enough Gf card for my PC so i must be living in the darkages too , right?   .

P.S: I also feel like beating a woman , Sm_Azazel are you free?

[Scrub 0]

War is hell.  The Killing your own people is hell.  Going against the grain of what many in the world think is right is hell.  Having your liberators AND the so called holy warriors killing your people is hell.

But, everybody judging from the sidelines 'pro-con' as if they have the only proper information, AND as if their country is perfect, has a spotless record, and knows the only solution - is just plain assinine, naive, and arrogant (on the person's part, not their country's)

If anyone knows the whole truth- that is, what to do, what the consequences of that action will be, if it's worth it for the world and how to do it without the region falling back to killing themselves in the typical tribalesque scuffles that have been a plague for thousands of years. (whew)  Please let the Coalition commanders know, and have data to back up your presumptions.  Lets just say the situation sucks, but ~60% turnout for voting for whomever isn't to be scoffed at, especally under threat of death.  That's a damn sight better than most soft 'developed' nations (yes, counting my own too) would EVER do.

@acecombat: I hope you mean 'shooting' Azazel? or bombing? or crushing under a tank? (sheesh, what a complex, twisted virtual life we lead...)  

[python3 0]

i honestly think the only reason all the shi'ites voted was because they were under a fatwa to do so. Sistani made it a religious obligation to vote. Its not really a "success" for democracy.

If he had issued a religious declaration that it is forbidden to vote, most would not have voted.

If anything it proves the power of the clerics in the ME and the power & rise of the religious parties. If all ME countries were to hold elections, it would be the religious parties that would win cuz the people have tried secular rulers etc.

[Scrub 0]

I (yes, just my opionion) don't care why or who voted for what.  IMHO the important point is that THEY ALL had the chance and the majority opted to vote instead of shoot each other.  They chose to talk and reason, instead of kill as usual.  Just as the installed government wasn't -COULDN't be anything but barely functional, the vote was a placeholder.  It was nothing more than a rough change for a people who possibly don't understand it's value or function, but they will in time.  If they voted for a fanatic, they have a bit of time to realize the result, and vote differently next time if they so choose.  That is the great thing about a well thought out constitiution, and a well represented populace.  It will be hard to subvert without notice.  When the people start feeling their individual rights and abilities, they will then start taking ownership of their lives, then Iraq will bloom.  When the Clerics come to a common understanding (because they do fight between themselves) and stop trying to rule the individuals life, and just guide it, then a reasonable freedom of expression, of life- can begin.

p.s. 'Success for democracy'? I don't think it's measured so frikin' quickly. Give it 20-30 years, consider the direction the people have put their country in, and then attempt to judge it. IMO your statement is one polititicians use for their own prideful benefit, to try and 'win' an "I'm right" debate between partisans. I believe it has little short term significance.

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p.s. 'Success for democracy'? I don't think it's measured so frikin' quickly.  Give it 20-30 years, consider the direction the people have put their country in, and then attempt to judge it.  IMO your statement is one polititicians use for their own prideful benefit, to try and 'win' an "I'm right" debate between partisans.  I believe it has little short term significance.

yeah i agree it cant be measured so quickly, but so many news organizations and people on many boards do seem to think so without thinking about the fact that many people might not have voted if it wasnt a religious obligation or if it was forbidden.

Frankly i dont think it will survive 20-30 yrs. that is my opinion. I also would not want it to survive. I am not for democracies in the ME. but thats just me.

No prideful benefit here, because i never mentioned being right and never engaged in a discussion here about the elections.

i dont think it has too much short term significance either, in fact i really dont see too much significance in i at all as a result of sistani's fatwa.