Well, lets just take a look at one of your earlier links that you claim is the truth. "Likewise, the record-breaking Federal defense budget, along with an extra $20 billion for fighting terrorism, was approved by December 8, 2001. The shares of the defense industry began rising sharply and are rising still." You know why a statement like this is totally specious? It looks like "Uh oh, the US is gearing up to attack again... and the those nasty defense contractors have it rigged to make profits..." The facts are that even after your $20 billion increase, the U.S. defense budget was more than the combined budgets of Russia, Japan, China, France, UK, Germany, and the next seven countries. You think we increase defense spending for the contractors sake or somehow they influence it? These "big" increases are nothing, relative to the overall defense budget. Hell, that $20 bilion increase is about what Italy spends on its entire defense budget. So the "war mongering" bent of quotes such as the one above are ludicrous. This amount of spending on defense has been around for decades, if not the most of the last century.
Don't know why you're so upset at me. I am after all a reformed warmongering conservative. And didn't I invite you on the Brotherhood to Baghdad Tour? And I'm even further enlightened that our President doesn't really want to catch Bin Laden because doing so would be bad for his personal fortune. You've convinced me - I'm putting the Carlyle Group together with that cabal of Jewish bankers! Is it possible they're one and the same???!!?? This just in from my dad: Saddam is also a secret member of the Knesset and, along with his pal and fellow CIA assassin Chuck Barris, knocked off Abe Lincoln, no, not the president, but Abe Lincoln the Dayton, Ohio, used car dealer cum airline magnate and storm door wizard. Abe knew far too much about Bush 41's oil deals, that's canola, not petroleum. Slowly but surely trader, you're uncovering the Truth. Keep up the good work!
The algebra of infinite justice As the US prepares to wage a new kind of war, Arundhati Roy challenges the instinct for vengeance Saturday September 29, 2001 The Guardian In the aftermath of the unconscionable September 11 suicide attacks on the Pentagon and the World Trade Centre, an American newscaster said: "Good and evil rarely manifest themselves as clearly as they did last Tuesday. People who we don't know massacred people who we do. And they did so with contemptuous glee." Then he broke down and wept. Here's the rub: America is at war against people it doesn't know, because they don't appear much on TV. Before it has properly identified or even begun to comprehend the nature of its enemy, the US government has, in a rush of publicity and embarrassing rhetoric, cobbled together an "international coalition against terror", mobilised its army, its air force, its navy and its media, and committed them to battle. The trouble is that once Amer ica goes off to war, it can't very well return without having fought one. If it doesn't find its enemy, for the sake of the enraged folks back home, it will have to manufacture one. Once war begins, it will develop a momentum, a logic and a justification of its own, and we'll lose sight of why it's being fought in the first place. What we're witnessing here is the spectacle of the world's most powerful country reaching reflexively, angrily, for an old instinct to fight a new kind of war. Suddenly, when it comes to defending itself, America's streamlined warships, cruise missiles and F-16 jets look like obsolete, lumbering things. As deterrence, its arsenal of nuclear bombs is no longer worth its weight in scrap. Box-cutters, penknives, and cold anger are the weapons with which the wars of the new century will be waged. Anger is the lock pick. It slips through customs unnoticed. Doesn't show up in baggage checks. Who is America fighting? On September 20, the FBI said that it had doubts about the identities of some of the hijackers. On the same day President George Bush said, "We know exactly who these people are and which governments are supporting them." It sounds as though the president knows something that the FBI and the American public don't. In his September 20 address to the US Congress, President Bush called the enemies of America "enemies of freedom". "Americans are asking, 'Why do they hate us?' " he said. "They hate our freedoms - our freedom of religion, our freedom of speech, our freedom to vote and assemble and disagree with each other." People are being asked to make two leaps of faith here. First, to assume that The Enemy is who the US government says it is, even though it has no substantial evidence to support that claim. And second, to assume that The Enemy's motives are what the US government says they are, and there's nothing to support that either. more at http://www.guardian.co.uk/saturday_review/story/0,3605,559756,00.html regards wild
no substantial evidence??? lol. what more did this idiot (article writer) want??? wild at his ver... oh forget it. hapaboy, how does kumbaya go again?
Dan, I was going to ask Saddam and Bin Laden when the Brotherhood Tour gets to Baghdad.... This just in: Hanoi Jane will be joining us!! Yippee!
Act now against war Those against an attack on Iraq must do more than shake their heads at the television George Monbiot Tuesday January 7, 2003 The Guardian The rest of Europe must be wondering whether Britain has gone into hibernation. At the end of this month our prime minister is likely to announce the decision he made months ago, that Britain will follow the US into Iraq. If so, then two or three weeks later, the war will begin. Unless the UN inspectors find something before January 27, this will be a war without even the flimsiest of pretexts: an unprovoked attack whose purpose is to enhance the wealth and power of an American kleptocracy. Far from promoting peace, it could be the first in a series of imperial wars. The gravest global crisis since the end of the cold war is three weeks away, and most of us seem to be asking why someone else doesn't do something about it. more at http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,869832,00.html http://www.stopwar.org.uk/ regards wild
excellent, hapaboy - very entertaining essay. however it doesn't answer the question - exactly what did happen? I've heard different interpretations - from the neocon iraqi-as-babykiller/serialrapist/incarnation-of-satan extreme to the other extreme of iraq's own claim that they had a border dispute with Kuwait and were defending their own borders. Reality I suppose is somewhere in between. Is saddam a bad guy? undoubtedly. the question is whether that justifies a preemptive war and incurring further terrorist retaliation against innocent US taxpayers. Although it seems pointless, I'll reiterate that I am neither a pacifist nor a warmonger. I am not a 'conspiracy nut' or whatever simplistic label you wish to attach. I am only trying to understand the situation from all sides, in light of the obvious profit motives, special interest politics, and historical record of government lying. That you, and others, have responded with such frantic hostility to those requesting proof or rational examination only raises suspicion. Also, I don't know what prompted the anti-semitic references in your essay, but I do not appreciate being associated with them. Please do not relate me to such things, even in jest.
Why I Oppose the US War on Terror: an ex-Marine Sergeant Speaks Out by CHRIS WHITE The more I juxtapose logical world opinion with the Bush administration's actions in the war on terror, I realize one overwhelming theme: hypocrisy. No one in any of the branches of government runs a physical risk to themselves by entering a war with Iraq, and we can bet that none of their family members are at risk, either. That is, until the next "terrorist" attack. I put "terrorist" in quotes because its definition is subjective, and I myself used to be in the Marine Corps, part of the most powerful "terrorist" organization on the planet: the U.S. government. Of course, we never call our operations "terrorism" because every operation is considered legitimate to us. When found guilty by the World Court for violence in Nicaragua, we ignore the decision. Too bad the nations we hurt can't just ignore what we do to them. When the planet condemns us for killing between 2,500-4,000 people in Panama, we're too busy planning the next invasion of a country that can't fight back. I oppose this war as a U.S. citizen, a veteran, and a doctoral student in history. While my military experience is what first made me skeptical about our government's motives in the developing world, it wasn't until I went to college and began reading hundreds of books and thousands of articles that I was able to truly grasp the profundity of our leadership's contempt for the freedoms they claim to protect. As a rule, we have worked hard to prevent the rise of democracy in the developing world, all the while claiming legitimacy as "the world's police force" because of our so-called "democratic" values. The hypocrisy is astounding. When one investigates our complicity in death squads, torture, massacres, rape, and mass destruction, one realizes that freedom often threatens the current power structure in this country. I used to consider those incidents as anomalistic in comparison to the "protection" we offered the planet at seemingly no charge. But then I joined the Marines, and I realized why I had believed in the government: they were experts in manipulation. Barely out of high school, the Corps broke us down and built us up in order to shape us into machines, willing to defend the ideals of the power elites in Washington and corporate America. Just look at the companies, which are funding political campaigns, and benefiting from war: weapons producers, technologies, food, clothing, munitions, oil, pharmaceuticals, etc U.S. interventions since WWII have not been done in the name of the world's people (although that is always the claim), but for the preservation of concentrated power. The fact that they have been carried out against the tenets of international law (i.e. the rights of non-intervention and self-determination), in itself deflates their validity. If the U.S. government were held to the FBI's official definition of terrorism ("the unlawful use of force or violence against persons or property to intimidate or coerce a government, the civilian population, or any segment thereof, in furtherance of political or social objectives"), their list of victims since WWII alone would include: Cuba, Haiti, Dominican Republic, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, Panama, Mexico, Chile, Granada, Colombia, Bolivia, Venezuela, Uruguay, Paraguay, Ecuador, Zaire, Namibia, Lebanon, Egypt, Greece, Cyprus, Bangladesh, Iran, South Africa, the Philippines, Korea, Vietnam, Laos, Iraq, Cambodia, Libya, Israel, Palestine, China, Afghanistan, Sudan, Indonesia, East Timor, Turkey, Angola, and Somalia. more at http://www.counterpunch.org/white1023.html regards wild
But you posted this prior to my essay: Hmmmm....implying that I consider all arabs to be evil is a rather broad and incorrect assumption itself, wouldn't you say? Madison, in my old warmongering conservative time, prior to my conversion to The Truth that you, Candle, Wild, Kicking et. al. initiated and that I am truly grateful for, I would have replied to you as follows: Honestly, I find it rather amusing that you can take offense at my essay yet state what you do about our government at large and the individuals in it with nary the bat of an eyelash. Time for a hypocrisy check, my friend. Furthermore, I urge you to get a thicker skin old boy. If you cannot see the difference, you truly are a hopeless dreamer and as naive as I thought. Um, perhaps to prevent another 9/11 or WORSE. Yeah, goals like keeping your ass safe and secure from those who would gladly deprive you of them by eliminating you from the face of the earth. You can argue all you want and conjure any theory out of thin air to satisfy your need for appeasement. At the end of the day, our country and its leaders will do what is necessary to preserve your freedom while you cry and rail against it. For all your whining you have yet to present an agenda to handle this crisis other than deep reflections a la Jack Handy by our government and people on the effects our actions have on the world. Whoops, I forgot the one about asking Iran, Saudi Arabia, and even Al Queda (!) to help us! Oh my goodness, that was CLASSIC!! Worry not, we can shake hands and hug on the Brotherhood Tour to Baghdad! I am a tad worried, however, as Hamas and the Al Aqsa Brigades are going to be our escorts...sure hope they remove those explosives around their waists first! Golly gee whiz, I must be getting paranoid or something...