Support your Troops

I'm not anti-military. I'm anti-bad government, who tell the military what to do.

Just so we're understood here.


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Cheers :cheers2:

 

I respect your service in the military, and your opinions.

His arguments have all the depth of a Chinese-made yellow magnet stuck to the back of a broken-down car. He doesn't have even the English skills of the typical 12 year old. And though he is supposedly here to ask that we "support the troops," but he has yet to post an address of a worthy organization to which to donate. His goal, clearly, is to provoke, not discuss, and I still think he's an adolescent in mama's basement.

 

I am betting on adolescent girl trying to win her true love's respect by speaking out for the good cause.

 

How do you know this individual ever served? You need to learn to ask the right questions, and demand direct answers before conferring honors on individuals that don't deserve them. You need to ask John McCain why he issued anti-war statements, and radio broadcasts while in Vietnam.

Heros don't just put on a uniform.

 

Have you served in the military? I haven't. If you think he is lying ask him questions a military veteran would be expected to know.

Having been flamed by those who could not answer my arguments on another site, I do not like to see anyone flamed, even though U.S. Army, Retired is the kind of person who used to flame me.

 

Sorry US army but I read the first three of your posts and I just thought – this is a crib sheet

It doesn’t sound real.

It’s as if a student had been given a list of things to say in an exam essay but the student doesn’t know how to write an essay so they’ve just repeated the list. Or the check list of a viral advertiser – ‘say how much you like the product, say it is really good’ etc.

I mean just break the sentences up and they just become bullet points

It makes me wonder if you are for real or just someone with a list?

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So lets see, can you think for yourself or are you simply some elses puppet?

The fight for freedom is big for you, but you also mention ‘the interests of the USA’

The problem is that too often US government's have put what they have seen as the interests of the USA well above the championing of freedom.

And often the ‘interests of the USA’ has actually meant American commercial and corporate interests not those of the American people at large.

US involvement in Latin America is instructive; here is a list

http://www.zompist.com/latam.html

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As to Iraq, was it about freeing people from the bloody handed Saddam?

Thing is I was supporting campaigns against Saddam when the US was supporting his viscous, murderous regime, and a smiling Rumsfeld got to shake the bloody hand of the tyrant himself.

And do you want to know something? That was the time when Saddam was at his most bloodthirsty when the most number of ‘his own people’ were being imprisoned, murdered and mutilated. And that by the time of the US invasion and occupation Saddam was at his least bloodthirsty, oh people were still getting tortured and executed but not on the scale of when Saddam was the US’s friend.

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As to the ‘gassing of his own people’ which was often cited by the Bush admin to back up their claim to be freeing the Iraqis from tyranny. Well that happened when Saddam was the US’s friend and was receiving US help in his war against Iran. The people that Saddam gassed were Kurds, who at the time were rebelling against Saddam with the aid of Iran, to the Saddam regime they were insurgents who had illegally rested control of Iraqi territory.
http://www.massviolence.org/The-1988-Anfal-Campaign-in-Iraqi-Kurdistan?artpage=2-11

I’m not justifying what Saddam then did, the things he did in his campaign against them were to me war crime but then I think many of the things the US has done in Iraq are war crimes and it’s wanton negligence has cost the innocent lives of literally thousands of Iraqis.

(And do you want to know something more – in 1996 less than ten years after the murderous gassings of Kurds by Saddam – a large faction of Kurds the KDP asks Saddam for help in their fight against the other main Kurdish faction the PUK so kurds ended up fighting alongside Saddam's army)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/country_profiles/2893067.stm

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So why did the Bush admin want to invade Iraq?

Saddam had nothing to do with 9/11 and al queada hated him as much as they hated the US.

Well the letter sent to Clinton by the Project for a new American century (PNAC) and signed by amongst other's Donald Rumsfeld, John Bolton, Paul Wolfowitz, and Richard Perle, (Cheney was also a member of PNAC) cites as the reason for attacking iraq, the possibility of Saddam getting WMD that he could be use to upset American interests in the area, especially the flow of oil.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article5527.htm

The Iraqi people are not mentioned; in other PNAC papers it is clear that little thought is given to the Iraq people the PNAC members are more interested in acquiring Iraq as a strategic position from which to guard and spread US interests in the area.

The freedom or interests of the Iraq people seem to be secondary if thought about at all. And it seems clear that the neo-cons believed that they could just set up a puppet government of exiles in Baghdad while they got on with setting up the permanent US military bases that were to take over from those in Saudi Arabia, and from which they would begin operations against Syria and Iran.

While that same puppet government would hand over effect control of the Iraqi oil supply to US companies (as happenened in Iran under the Shah).

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As it was the architects of the invasion and occupation had given little or no thought to the Iraqi people, in their eyes they were meant to supply the back ground of cheering happy people throwing flowers.

What Iraqis need was assistance on the ground, but instead the Bush Admin was handing out fat contracts to companies many of which didn’t have the ability to actually help.

What the Iraqi people needed was experts, instead the Bush Admin was hiring political hacks with little or no expertise that either messed up or wasted precious time on irrelivances.

(All well documented – try reading ‘Imperial life in the Emerald City’ – by Rajiv Chandrasekaran)
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Imperial-Life-Emerald-City-Baghdads/dp/0747591687

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I think you would have to be very naive to think that US forces were sent to Iraq with the interests of the Iraqi people foremost in the posters minds.


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Shouldn't that say US-led forces, somehow the UK "and others" dont get mentioned much.

 

Blair and others were well paid for their role in the whole thing. What job does Tony Blair now have?

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/sfgate/detail?blogid=15&entry_id=17972

And what did the media have to say about it? He's been well paid.

 

Anyone remember the Teapot Dome Scandal from their college days? Or were you partying so much you missed the significance:

http://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/minute/Senate_Investigates_the_Teapot_Dome_Scandal.htm

Yeah we should let them drill in ANWR. NOT!

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAteapot.htm

Not without protections and oversight securely put into place and any profits reaped protected and guarranteed for the American consumer.

 

So, Exxon(as an example) should invest billions of $$ in ANWR for pro-bono?

Or, are you and (American consumers) thinking of starting your own drilling company?

I guess you could always buy stock in which ever company gets to drill there.

Could you name one other company (still in business) that practices this ?

 

Why allow multi-national companies the ability to profit from national land without a provision for protecting the interests of those that own the land, the American people.

Oh I forgot only the American taxpayers are expected to invest without any reasonable expectation or guarrantee of return.

 

Oh Cad, please…

Of course I haven’t forgotten the hangers on but we were talking specifically here about US forces by a poste4r called US Army Retired.

Actually as was very much reminded at the time of the invasion in the media over here it was sickly ironic that the UK was part of the invasion force given our history in the area.

Here is a quote – “our armies do not come into your cities and lands as conquerors or enemies, but as liberators... Your citizens have been subject to the tyranny of strangers”

Not 2003 but 1917, not Bush but Lieutenant-General Sir Stanley Maude commander of the invasion force that had entered Iraq that year.

By 1920 the British were dealing with a wide scale insurgency and bombing Iraqis with every type of munitions up to and including poisoned gas.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2003/apr/19/iraq.arts
http://www.robert-fisk.com/articles403.htm

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Thing is that Tony Blair was a great believer and promoter of the idea of humanitarian military intervention, as happened in Sierra Leone and the Balkans. But he was a fool if he thought the Washington neo-cons thought the same way. He tied himself to a bunch of incompetent fantasists and it wasn’t a surprise he and his party have paid the price.

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I know about all that stuff. The CIA returned the Shah of Iran to power in 1953 after he had been overthrown in a popular uprising. That was both evil, and against our long term national interest. It explains why so many Iranians, and the Iranian government hate us.

During the Iran Iraq war the United States gave military support to both sides. We supported whichever side was losing at the time. The idea was to prolong the war so that more people would be killed on both sides.

I am glad that we helped the Afghans defeat the Soviet Army. Osama bin Lauden is a turn coat.

 

Sorry, but i cant do that. What Bush did was wrong. He is now the terrorist, and i intend to rebel against him.