September 11th was nothing compared to the Iraq Invasion

[Rattie]

i remember watching the plane crash into the towers a thousand times on tv that day

[cattdann]

Originally Posted by Rattie

i remember watching the plane crash into the towers a thousand times on tv that day

and each time i felt sicker!

[Kellog_G8]

Originally Posted by Doc

Yet Iraq is a better place now, and surrounding countries have had the fear of SCUD missle attacks removed.

US has only made it worse.

[mart8480]

Originally Posted by I_Hate_Errors

This two events are both a very big lie...

and an example of what people can do for GAZ...

I feel very sorry for the people that died in 9/11, because they were "sacrificed" by "US governement" (the mother lalalalalala bin laden got billions of dollars to say that these attacks are made by him.. I know it's hard to believe but it's what's going in mah head...) and I feel sorry for Iraqians that died because of one lalalalalalala that have been found hiding in a well..

*shakes head in disbelief*

[BarakatTreka]

Well over 1 million Iraqi deaths have been caused by the invasion of Iraq. Those deaths don't justify the means of 9/11. While we are on the subject, what does Iraq have to do with 9/11? (Let's see Bush answer that question: YouTube - Bush Says Iraq Had Nothing to Do With Sept 11) The target should be Taliban and Osama Bin Laden in Afghanistan/Pakistan. How has anything gotten better due to the war? Let's see...

1) The Taliban has grown in strength and is currently taking over Pakistan.
2) Terrorism and violence has grown tremendously in Iraq.
3) More animosity towards Americans and the government (which was the main reason 9/11 happened!)
4) We are letting a corrupt leader rule Afghanistan (so much for democracy).

I can go on, but I will stop there. I would like for someone to name one positive outcome from the war and see if it's worth all the trouble that we have been through. I believe the US wanted a war with Iraq long before and just used 9/11 as a scapegoat.

And let's assume the US government had the right intentions of removing an evil dictator and bringing "democracy" to the Iraqis, why only Iraq? Why not go fight North Korea and remove their leader? North Korea is the real threat, not some Arab country ruled by a puppet and dependent on American aid.

My reasoning as to why the US government went in to fight in Iraq is not for democracy, freedom, or weapons of mass destruction. It's for Israel's personal interest. And it's sad to see the hard working Americans' taxes being spent on a foreign nation for their personal interests. I feel like the US government has slightly a little more sense this time and will not follow Israel's intention of getting in a conflict with Iran. Here is a good, small interview about the US's foreign policy:
YouTube - Noam Chomsky Interview on CBC (Part 1 of 2)
YouTube - Noam Chomsky Interview on CBC (Part 2 of 2)

Originally Posted by Doc

Yet Iraq is a better place now, and surrounding countries have had the fear of SCUD missle attacks removed.

Joke of the decade!!

[Wexicoish]

yep i have to agree with you on this one

[BarakatTreka]

Originally Posted by Nutter

Did you know that Aladdin is set in the middle east? So why doesn't Disney have "Aladdin - Terrorist on Ice" as it's next performance?

Actually the story of Aladdin from Arabian Nights is set in China.

[King-Osgood-1690]

Originally Posted by BarakatTreka

I feel like the US government has slightly a little more sense this time

So you've brought into the Obama hype too?

George Bush's third term as president? You're living it now

It sounds like the plot for the latest summer horror movie. Imagine, for a moment, that George W. Bush had been allowed a third term as president, had run and had won or stolen it, and that we were all now living (and dying) through it. With the Democrats in control of Congress but Bush still in the Oval Office, the media would certainly be talking endlessly about a mandate for bipartisanship and the importance of taking into account the concerns of Republicans. Can't you just picture it?

There's Dubya now, still rewriting laws via signing statements. Still creating and destroying laws with executive orders. And still violating laws at his whim. Imagine Bush continuing his policy of extraordinary rendition, sending prisoners off to other countries with grim interrogation reputations to be held and tortured.

I can even picture him formalizing his policy of preventive detention, sprucing it up with some "due process" even as he permanently removes habeas corpus from our culture.

I picture this demonic president still swearing he doesn't torture, still insisting that he wants to close Guantanamo, but assuring his subordinates that the commander-in-chief has the power to torture "if needed," and maintaining a prison at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan that makes Guantanamo look like summer camp.

I can imagine him continuing to keep secret his warrantless spying programs while protecting the corporations and government officials involved.

War budget

If Bush were in his third term, we would already have seen him propose, yet again, the largest military budget in the history of the world. We might well have seen him pretend he was including war funding in the standard budget, and then claim that one final supplemental war budget was still needed, immediately after which he would surely announce that yet another war supplemental bill would be needed down the road. And of course, he would have held onto his Secretary of Defense from his second term, Robert Gates, to run the Pentagon, keep our ongoing wars rolling along, and oversee the better part of our public budget.

Bush would undoubtedly be following through on the agreement he signed with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki for all U.S. troops to leave Iraq by the end of 2011 (except where he chose not to follow through).

His generals would, in the meantime, be leaking word that the United States never intended to actually leave. He'd surely be maintaining current levels of troops in Iraq, while sending thousands more troops to Afghanistan and talking about a new "surge" there. He'd probably also be escalating the campaign he launched late in his second term to use drone aircraft to illegally and repeatedly strike into Pakistan's tribal borderlands with Afghanistan.

Mercenaries

If Bush were still "the decider" he'd be employing mercenaries like Blackwater and propagandists like the Rendon Group and he might even be expanding the number of private security contractors in Afghanistan.

In fact, the whole executive branch would be packed with disreputable corporate executive types. You'd have somebody like John ("May I torture this one some more, please?") Rizzo still serving, at least for a while, as general counsel at the CIA. The White House and Justice Department would be crawling with corporate cronies, people like John Brennan, Greg Craig, James Jones, and Eric Holder. Most of the top prosecutors hired at the Department of Justice for political purposes would still be on the job. And political prisoners, like former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman and former top Democratic donor Paul Minor would still be abandoned to their fate.

In addition, the bank bailouts Bush and his economic team initiated in his second term would still be rolling along -- with a similar crowd of people running the show. Ben Bernanke, for instance, would certainly have been reappointed to run the Fed. And Bush's third term would have guaranteed that there would be none of the monkeying around with the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) that the Democrats proposed or promised in their losing presidential campaign. At this point in Bush's third term, no significant new effort would have begun to restore Katrina-decimated New Orleans either.

If the Democrats in Congress attempted to pass any set of needed reforms like, to take an example, new healthcare legislation, Bush, the third termer, would have held secret meetings in the White House with insurance and drug company executives to devise a means to turn such proposals to their advantage. And he would have refused to release the visitor logs so that the American public would have no way of knowing just whom he'd been talking to.

Torture

During Bush's second term, some of the lowest ranking torturers from Abu Ghraib were prosecuted as bad apples, while those officials responsible for the policies that led to Abu Ghraib remained untouched. If the public continued to push for justice for torturers during the early months of Bush's third term, he would certainly have gone with another bad apple approach, perhaps targeting only low-ranking CIA interrogators and CIA contractors for prosecution.

Bush would undoubtedly have decreed that any higher-ups would not be touched, that we should now be looking forward, not backward. And he would thereby have cemented in place the power of presidents to grant immunity for crimes they themselves authorized.

If Bush were in his third term, some of his first and second term secrets might, by now, have been forced out into the open by lawsuits, but what Americans actually read wouldn't be significantly worse than what we'd already known. What documents saw the light of day would surely have had large portions of their pages redacted, and the vast bulk of documentation that might prove threatening would remain hidden from the public eye. Bush's lawyers would be fighting in court, with ever grander claims of executive power, to keep his wrongdoing out of sight.

Funny

Now, here's the funny part. This dark fantasy of a third Bush term is also an accurate portrait of Obama's first term to date. In following Bush, Obama was given the opportunity either to restore the rule of law and the balance of powers or to firmly establish in place what were otherwise aberrant abuses of power. Thus far, President Obama has, in all the areas mentioned above, chosen the latter course. Everything described, from the continuation of crimes to the efforts to hide them away, from the corruption of corporate power to the assertion of the executive power to legislate, is Obama's presidency in its first seven months.

Which doesn't mean there aren't differences in the two moments. For one thing, Democrats have now joined Republicans in approving expanded presidential powers and even -- in the case of wars, military strikes, lawless detention and rendition, warrantless spying, and the obstruction of justice -- presidential crimes. In addition, in the new Democratic era of goodwill, peace and justice movements have been strikingly defunded and, in some cases, even shut down. Many progressive groups now, in fact, take their signals from the president and his team, rather than bringing the public's demands to his doorstep.

If we really were in Bush's third term, people would be far more active and outraged. There would already be a major push to really end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan/Pakistan. Undoubtedly, the Democrats still wouldn't impeach Bush, especially since they'd be able to vote him out before his fourth term, and surely four more years of him wouldn't make all that much difference.

stopwar.org.uk

[BarakatTreka]

Originally Posted by King-Osgood-1690

So you've brought into the Obama hype too?

No, I didn't mention Obama. Anyone in office right now would have most likely avoided military confrontation with Iran. They sort have learned their lesson from Afghanistan and Iraq. Fighting in 3 wars at the same time is not easy especially when one of those countries is Iran. You have no idea how bloody it would get if that happens.

[el_chico_che]

I could never take anything serious that has this in the article.

[King-Osgood-1690]

Originally Posted by BarakatTreka

No, I didn't mention Obama. Anyone in office right now would have most likely avoided military confrontation with Iran. They sort have learned their lesson from Afghanistan and Iraq. Fighting in 3 wars at the same time is not easy especially when one of those countries is Iran. You have no idea how bloody it would get if that happens.

The amount of collusion within the American government means that there is essentially no difference between either party, the only major one being the fact that the emergence of the Obama cult of personality means that they can push through legislation without a whimper of objection from the general public who don't want to look politically incorrect by critiquing the black president.

Originally Posted by el_chico_che

I could never take anything serious that has this in the article.

So you don't believe that Obama is simply the face of the same establishment that Bush was running? The government is still going down the same route in truth, but killing "terrorists" is socially acceptable if you've got a hip "new" leader telling the public that it's necessary.

[AnfieldG8]

Originally Posted by Rattie

i remember watching the plane crash into the towers a thousand times on tv that day

I remember being woken up at like 1am because Dad got a call from his work boss and we watched it on the telly. That was way back when i was in grade 5... Remember it like it was yesterday.

Why does every government have to be corrupt? Monkeys are running this world when the average joe could do a FAR better job.

[Radz]

It's sad but at the same time the Ulalalala back big time in Iraq to compensate their own losses.

[BarakatTreka]

Originally Posted by Radical_Aeon

It's sad but at the same time the US hit back big time in Iraq to compensate their own losses.

Ummm, and can you refresh my memory as to what Iraq had to do with 9/11?

[BarakatTreka]

Originally Posted by AnfieldG8

I remember being woken up at like 1am because Dad got a call from his work boss and we watched it on the telly. That was way back when i was in grade 5... Remember it like it was yesterday.

Why does every government have to be corrupt? Monkeys are running this world when the average joe could do a FAR better job.

Easier said then done.

[Radz]

Originally Posted by BarakatTreka

Ummm, and can you refresh my memory as to what Iraq had to do with 9/11?

Not Iraq but the terrorists on that plane were from Iraq and Afghanistan.

[BarakatTreka]

Originally Posted by Radical_Aeon

Not Iraq but the terrorists on that plane were from Iraq.

YouTube - Family Guy - Visiting Ground Zero

I never thought I would actually have to use this clip.

[dena]

Edited.

[Froggy22]

Originally Posted by AnfieldG8

Why does every government have to be corrupt? Monkeys are running this world when the average joe could do a FAR better job.

reminds me of all the idiots that phone into 606 five live after a football match at the weekend, to moan about how they could run their club better than the current manager.............

[United4Lyf]

Originally Posted by ShioriAkino

More of a rant tbh.

If we held a minutes silence for the 11th, we should have had like a weeks silence for all the civilians killed in Iraq

ahahaha ye right

[Bourbons3]

Originally Posted by AnfieldG8

Why does every government have to be corrupt? Monkeys are running this world when the average joe could do a FAR better job.

No they couldn't. The average Joe is the first person to panic buy petrol when there's a shortage, causing an even bigger shortage. The average Joe is the sort of person to queue up outside Northern Rock to withdraw his £500 in savings, and then blame the government for the bank going in to administration. The average Joe reads 'newspapers' like The Sun and The Daily Mail and believes every word of it, without question.

The average Joe wants everything from their government, and expects to pay nothing for it. The average Joe doesn't have a clue on what goes in to running a country.

[AyrshireDon]

Originally Posted by Bourbons3

No they couldn't. The average Joe is the first person to panic buy petrol when there's a shortage, causing an even bigger shortage. The average Joe is the sort of person to queue up outside Northern Rock to withdraw his £500 in savings, and then blame the government for the bank going in to administration. The average Joe reads 'newspapers' like The Sun and The Daily Mail and believes every word of it, without question.

The average Joe wants everything from their government, and expects to pay nothing for it. The average Joe doesn't have a clue on what goes in to running a country.

well put.

[AnfieldG8]

Wow people taking my comment WAY too seriously. Relax people...lalalala

[Doc]

Originally Posted by BarakatTreka

Joke of the decade!!

Like it has already been mentioned, the Iraqi's only have a problem with the american occupation of their country.

The areas where the UK forces have been stationed are far better places and improvements have been made.