| Author | Message | | Guest-43f8 | | Posted: Sat Jan 25, 2003 1:48 am Post subject: |
| | Guest-3e40 wrote: | | No, your a wannabe, I can tell a forces wanabee with me nightscope, and your a wannabe. |
Better clean those lenses then... | |  | | Guest-3e40 | | Posted: Sat Jan 25, 2003 12:14 pm Post subject: |
| No there clean, so are my eyes, and from reading your posts under your own alias and the others you create at times, I think I can spot a wannabe.
Ive seen many servicemen and ex servicemen hit this forum and others, and Ive yet to see one who glorifies war as you do.
Could be that you were a short timer who saw nothing and serviced rear areas, that much Ill admit, I could be wrong. But a soldier? or at the tip as Top woud say... No I m quite certain you were not that. | | | | Top | | Posted: Sun Jan 26, 2003 11:00 pm Post subject: |
| World Rebels Against America
by Haroon Siddiqui
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Having positioned enough U.S. troops and equipment all around this Persian Gulf neighborhood, George W. Bush can launch a war on Iraq any time, with or without United Nations' approval. But he has already lost the political war.
That came through loud and clear in my journey through Europe, the Middle East and Asia in the last three weeks. It should become evident to North Americans in the days ahead.
Tomorrow, the United Nations arms inspectors will call for a continuation of their work to disarm Iraq peacefully.
On Tuesday, Bush will deliver his State of the Union address and be applauded on Capitol Hill and in the obeisant American and copycat neo-con Canadian media. But around the world, his words likely will bring public derision, so eroded is American credibility. A similar fate awaits the promised American "evidence" against Iraq.
On Wednesday, when the Security Council meets, France, assisted by Germany, will lead Russia, China and others in resisting American calls for a U.N. mandate for war. For the first time in its history, the council may be confronted with an anti-American resolution.
On Friday, British PM Tony Blair will go to Camp David. He will pledge his fidelity but hedge it, in deference to opposition brewing in his cabinet and caucus.
There already is a global rebellion against America, separate and apart from the recent terrorist attacks on U.S. civilians and soldiers in Yemen, Pakistan and Kuwait.
Governments everywhere are dreading the dawn of American imperial unilateralism. They are even more scared of their riled-up citizenries.
Most Muslims are characterizing American designs on Iraq as racist. Others are calling it a colonial endeavor— the return of the Ugly American.
From Europe through Africa and Asia to the Far East, public opinion is solidly ranged against America. The dissidents include the Pope, the archbishop of Canterbury and Nelson Mandela.
This anti-war movement may be more potent than the one against the Vietnam War. It is worldwide and it has gelled before the war has even begun.
North American pundits have it that Bush has a small window of opportunity for war because a delay would push it into the unbearable heat of the Middle East summer. The greater truth, as seen from here, may be that his options are closing because of growing people power, even in America.
The president's poll numbers are dropping. Public skepticism is rising, as is a chorus of influential voices, including those of Senator Ted Kennedy ("This is the wrong war at the wrong time"), Jimmy Carter, Gulf War veterans, stalwart Republicans, Hollywood celebrities and unions.
The longer Bush delays the war, the more difficult it will be to launch it. But the only way he can go quickly is to abandon the fig leaf of the United Nations, proving that his enlisting of the U.N. was a sham all along.
But with 150,000 troops and equipment lined up and so much rhetorical capital invested, how can he not proceed?
Bush is in a box of his own making.
His biggest mistake has been to try to undermine the U.N. inspectors every step of the way.
Chief inspector Hans Blix, a seasoned Swiss diplomat seeped in U.N. culture, wasn't going to blink under American bullying.
When Americans and Britons charged that their intelligence showed Saddam had weapons of mass destruction, Blix said: "Show me."
When Bush called the discovery of a dozen empty Iraqi warheads "troubling and serious," Blix said: "It's no big deal." (Anyone who covered Saddam's 1980-'90 war on Iran would have seen dozens of such spent Iraqi shells all along the border.)
America has been clutching at other straws, such as looking for an Iraqi scientist or two to supply a plausible excuse for U.S. action — in return for immigration to America or, in one reported case, a bribe of free medical care for an ailing wife.
But with no smoking gun, no proof of any Iraqi terrorist links, no weapons of mass destruction, Washington changed its tack. The issue was no longer weapons but Iraqi deception. (When was the last time a war was launched over a lie?) Or Saddam himself.
American commentators duly obliged with essays on the benefits of bringing democracy to Iraq. But people across the Atlantic just laughed.
Aren't America's best allies in the region autocrats, monarchs and assorted potentates? Didn't Donald Rumsfeld, now defense secretary, meet Saddam in 1983 to convey American moral and material support in the jihad against Iran? Didn't America acquiesce when Saddam used Western-supplied chemicals to kill Iranians and his own Kurds?
Circumstances change, of course. But the American track record at nation-building is not good, either, as witnessed in Afghanistan twice: post-Soviet occupation and post-Taliban.
Nor, as noted recently by Human Rights Watch, is its record in protecting the most fundamental human rights of Arabs and other Muslims on American soil since Sept. 11.
The harassment of Muslim Americans hasn't helped. Nor have the recent horror stories of returning Afghans, Pakistanis and Indians after spending a year in American jails on suspicions of terrorism while being guilty of no more than petty immigration violations.
In promising democracy to Iraq, Bush is dealing with devalued American moral currency.
Most inconveniently, regime change in Baghdad is not part of U.N. Resolution 1441, the ostensible basis of all the current American activity.
Even if it were, the idea of killing Iraqis to give them democracy does not hold much appeal.
People in the Mideast have noticed that, in the plethora of Pentagon war scenarios, there is none on how many Iraqis are likely to become collateral damage when B-52s start bombing.
Arabs are not the only ones to flinch at the thought of more pain and death on a people already suffering under American-led economic sanctions. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees envisages "a human disaster," with about 1 million refugees spilling into neighboring nations and between 4.5 and 9.5 million Iraqis inside the country needing emergency food rations.
Complicating the Bush-Blair mission have been two unforeseen events since Nov. 8 — the Israeli election and the defiant nuclearization of North Korea.
Bush had to bench a proposed American plan for Palestinian statehood until after the election. Blair was embarrassed by Israel PM Ariel Sharon's refusal to let Palestinians go to a peace conference in London. Meanwhile, suicide bombings and counter-measures continue, with Palestinians by far the bigger victims.
Bush's conciliatory approach to North Korea raised cries of double standards. "Why is the U.S. dealing with them differently?" asked Al Sharq newspaper in Qatar, one of the more pro-American emirates and, in fact, a key staging area for an American attack on Iraq.
Such is the sad backdrop of the fateful days ahead.
Should Americans fail to swing Security Council support, Bush may proceed with "a coalition of the willing" — reluctant allies who cannot afford to anger America, including Canada perhaps. What would follow is anybody's guess.
A surgical war that topples Saddam quickly and liberates the Iraqi people would nullify all the naysayers and make a hero of Bush.
The nightmare scenario is of heavy Iraqi civilian casualties and a long siege around Baghdad, with Saddam ordering people on to bridges and other infrastructure as human shields.
Reports out of London speak of Whitehall being inundated with cables from British missions abroad warning of widespread fury. European diplomats I spoke to talk of "long-lasting enmity in the Arab, Asian and African world against the Western model," in the words of one.
And over at the staid Davos conference in Switzerland, Malaysian Prime Minister Mohammed Mahatir told the corporate and political elite of the world Thursday: "People want revenge. You kill our people, we will kill you."
He was not issuing a threat.
Haroon Siddiqui is The Star's editorial page editor emeritus. His column appears Sundays and Thursdays.
Copyright 1996-2003. Toronto Star Newspapers Limited | | | | Top | | Posted: Sun Jan 26, 2003 11:13 pm Post subject: |
| | Guest-3e40 wrote: | No there clean, so are my eyes, and from reading your posts under your own alias and the others you create at times, I think I can spot a wannabe.
Ive seen many servicemen and ex servicemen hit this forum and others, and Ive yet to see one who glorifies war as you do.
Could be that you were a short timer who saw nothing and serviced rear areas, that much Ill admit, I could be wrong. But a soldier? or at the tip as Top woud say... No I m quite certain you were not that. |
Mutt has forgetten his oath, and he swore it at least once, "to support and defend the constitution of the United States, against all enemies, foreign and domestic" and "to obey the orders of the officers apointed over me".
MUTT, I say it again, where is your allegiance to the US? AMERICA COMES FIRST! Shame on you...biting the hand that feeds you. | | | | Top | | Posted: Mon Jan 27, 2003 9:03 pm Post subject: |
| Latest US POLL...houston, we have a problem....
Ipsos-Reid/Cook Political Report Poll. Latest: Jan. 21-23, 2003. N=1,008 adults nationwide. MoE ± 3.1.
"Generally speaking, would you say things in this country are heading in the right direction, or are they off on the wrong track?"
Right Direction 36%
Wrong Track 52%
Not Sure 12% | | | | Jefferson Davis | | Posted: Tue Jan 28, 2003 8:46 am Post subject: |
| | God Bless the REMF's, they make the frozen custard machine work. | | | | Guest-3e40 | | Posted: Tue Jan 28, 2003 5:34 pm Post subject: |
| | We have an REME over here JD, they cant be the same thing, this lot dont touch custard machines....WHAT ..you have machines to keep custard frozen? WHAT? you have frozen custard? Must be lots of REMF in the dessert then, sorry desert? | | | | JD | | Posted: Fri Jan 31, 2003 6:10 am Post subject: |
| | I was playing golf at the Konuahoe NAS with my old Marine buddy M and he and his CO were trying to figure out how to get the frozen custard machine ashore for some manuevers. I started laughing when I heard it and M's CO told me in a most serious tone that where his Marines go, so does the frozen custard machine. I wouldn't doubt one was there. | | | | Guest-c651 | | | | Guest-c651 | | Posted: Tue Feb 04, 2003 12:20 pm Post subject: America: Wake Up! |
| America: Wake Up!
by William Hughes
John Podhoretz is at it again! The Tel Aviv-friendly pundit, crowed in
his column, (NY Post, 01/29/03), about the landslide victory of Ariel
Sharons Likud gang in the recent Israeli election. This was bad enough,
but, there was more torture to come.
Podhoretz roared on, Israel has been forced by historical circumstances
to lead the way for America, especially when it comes to militant
Islamic terror and the kinds of hard choices a democracy has to make in
combatting it. This is where I wanted to throw up.
What a sad state we are in, when an Israeli shill, like Podhoretz, can
prophesy that America will follow the lead of Zionist Israel. For a
translation to the politically challenged, this will mean that America
will be deferring to the oppressive policies of Sharon, whose name will
forever be linked to the deaths of the innocent at Deir Yassin; in
Lebanon, as a result of Israels 1982 invasion; at Sabra and Shatila;
and, finally, at Jenin.
The notion that America will be minicking Sharon, a man who exists just
one step ahead of the War Crimes prosecutors in Belgiums Justice
Ministry, fills me with outrage. Now, I wonder: Was our Revolutionary
War and other battles, too, fought and won to bring us to this point of
national humiliation? Where are our true patriots? God knows, there are
only a handful in the complicit Congress or the Establishment-controlled
media.
As for Israel being a democracy, dont believe it! It stands in
violation of over 66 Resolutions of the United Nations, including
Resolution 242, unanimously adopted on Nov. 22, 1967, which mandated it
to vacate the Occupied Territories that belong to the Palestinians.
But, Podhoretz, wasnt finished yet. Without showing any mercy, he
forecasted that, Israel may be leading the way politically as well. He
added, Yesterday, the Israeli electorate delivered its verdict on its
leaders in the first parliamentary election since the beginning of the
suicide-bomb war launched by the Palestinians. He further insisted,
The tough tactics (read gross human rights violations) adopted by
right-wing Premier Ariel Sharon to fight the terror war, were almost
universally accepted. What universe does this guy live in? In Star Treks?
Podhoretz, ranting on under a Jerusalem dateline, bragged how the
Israeli electorate had decimated the Left. Looking into his crystal
ball, he predicted the loser fate of the Labor Party in Israel, will be
the destiny, too, of the Democrats, unless they glue themselves to
George W. Bushs side on matters of war and terror. What a frightening
thought! The only thing that could have been worse is if Podhoretz had
also announced that his beloved Sharon had been cloned!
Sometimes, you can see yourself better through the eyes of others.
Podhoretz may have, unintentionally, done us a huge favor by holding up
a mirror that reads: America will follow Israel! This could be a wake
up call for those that love our country more than any dubious
relationship with a so-called ally, that viciously attacked the USS
Liberty, on June 8, 1967, murdering 34 of our finest sons (Ken Ringle,
Attack on the Liberty, Washington Post, 02/01/03). If U.S. foreign
policy patterns itself after Sharons, it will be a sure prescription
for national suicide.
Thankfully, we can learn important lessons from our history, especially
during the founding of this nation. By December, 1776, General George
Washingtons demoralized Continental Army had been pushed off Long
Island and Manhattan, too, out of the state of New Jersey, across the
Delaware River, and into Pennsylvania, by the seasoned military British
forces under Lord William Howe. In a moment of deep despair, Washington,
writing to his brother, had said: The game is pretty near up.
On the brink of defeat, the immortal Washington could have called it
quits. Instead, putting his duty to his countrymen first, he
courageously led his army to stunning victories over the British, at
Trenton, (12/25/1776), and Princeton, (01/03/1777), that were hailed as
a turning point in that eight and one half year conflict (see, Richard
M. Ketchums compelling The Winter Soldiers ).
Americans, today, need to remember who they are, where they have come
from, and that they live in a Republic that depends on their fully
participating in it, in order to reach the common good. An attachment
to Israels ideals is asking for endless, costly wars, including the
phony one looming ahead with Iraq, and also for more terrorist attacks
on this country. The people must demand that our national interest come
first, instead of following Sharons lead into Armageddon. If they dont
do so, the game may, indeed, be pretty near up.
America: Wake Up!
© William Hughes 2003
William Hughes is the author of Andrew Jackson vs. New World Order
(Authors Choice Press) and Baltimore Iconoclast (Writers Showcase),
which are available online. He can be reached at liamhughes@mindspring.com.
Published, The Palestine Chronicle, Feb. 4, 2003, at:
http://palestinechronicle.com/article.php?story=20030204100555699 | | | | | ©2002-2009 WarWithoutEnd.co.uk |
