Okay so I changed my mind about the war

Bush #1 should have had him and his sons killed in '91.

mike, im with you.

if you look back on my post history, im not typically pro war. im still not pro war, but every set of circumstances should be measured individually. i dont think even someone like spliffdaddy wants to see people go to war.

by how i see it, if we leave this guy in power, worse things will happen and more importantly CONTINUE to happen than if we went in and cleaned house. i think this is the path of least misery.

this image, which ive posted in a couple different threads now, really helped me to feel this way. we arent over there to kill innocents and rape the children. hell, we're treating their soldiers with respect and care.



i just hope it all comes to an efficient, safe and successful end as soon as humanly possible.

agreed


now the time to protest is long gone. get saddam outta there for everybody's sake

I' glad that you have seen the light. It takes a thinking person to be on the side of the war. Likerals can't think ex debate, they only feel.

Bush '41 didn't have a mandate from the UN to invade Iraq. The coalition that he commanded was only to liberate Kwait. His mission was successful!

I will never support a war.

You are indeed lucky, Iceland has never been atacked. You might feel differently if you were invaded or had a terrorist attack. Without that experience there is no way of understanding.

I will never support war either.

OK, brief history lesson.

Germans attacked in WWII, dropped a few bombs. Many Icelanders were in the convoys in WWII and many lost their lives. We were invaded in the WWII and have had a terrorist attack. The terrorist attack didn't cost any lives but it was an terrorist attack. Then we have the "cod wars" against the brits.

So you still think we do not understand?

Yes, I am lucky in that regard. But don't get me wrong. I'd fight a war if I had to (what is war?). But I could never take any delight out of it. That is key.

But like almost *any* other nation on the face of the Earth, Iceland has been attacked in the past.

Okay I'm stumped.

For months now I've been trying to figure out if you are a Republican Forum Bot or just severely medicated.

Which is it?

giimme a break dude


iceland is one of the safest places on earth because it's so distant from any major human hubs


what the hell is the US supposed to do - keep a "orange alert" in NYC for 15 years?

we need to eliminate the threat now and make our cities safe again



nobody enjoys war but we need to get this finished otherwise we'll be on high security forever. when has the last time Iceland went on "orange alert"

Bush #1 gave him the benefit of the doubt that he would straighten up. By the time we saw he wasn't, Clinton was in office, and well you know how the rest of the story goes.

We don't have color coded general alerts. But the security here is very high. Probably better than in the US. Iceland is now a target for idiot terrorists just because our idiot prime minister supports the US/UK war.

You didn't just blame the current Iraqi crisis on Clinton.

That would have been so unlike Zimph /sarcasm

I personally feel Bush has misjudged the amount of anti-american animosity this war will create with the Middle East. I have a feeling that the threat of terrorism from Saddam was far lower than the threat of terrorism that will exist as a result of this war. Terrorism does not require high-tech nor chemical weapons. Terrorists have all the time they need and nearly limitless "volunteers" who can more than likely find a weakness sooner or later in a free society like ours. They don't need nukes or anything, we have enough dangerous infrastructure that exists on its own and they already know it. Heck, they don't even need to think up any ideas for terrorism, just buy a few Clancy novels and think outside the box. Scary.. I think possibly the short term consequences might be better (no Saddam, no chemical weapons given to terrorists-- unless he's already given them away..) but the long term consequences are likely to haunt us. Was war the ONLY possible way to rid Saddam? I thought the beginning of the war was interesting with the targetted strike. Why could they not just wait until the intelligence panned out for that initial attack, wait until intelligence figured where he was next, then hit that, wait, and repeat, and repeat. They'd get him eventually without all the collateral damage. If the point is to kill him and the top brass, they could most certainly do it entirely without the shock and awe. I'm sure Bush has a better view of all this than I do but it just doesn't make sense to me. I guess I just don't get the war thing-- it just seems like cracking an egg by dropping a piano on it (there are much better ways).

terrorists attack the US and so we should just have better security?


dude - terrorism affects the entire world. saddam and iraq is all about giving weapons to osama and osama loves killing americans!


nah - neutralize the threat instead

this is a ridiculous post. "i agree with you, we are smart". hahahaha

Glad you wisened up. It's difficult to put certain views aside and look at a situation objectively, but no matter what the rest of the world thinks, we are doing the right thing.

Just out of curiosity, what made you change your mind?

Yes.

Edit: If terrorists had slammed a loaded jet into Iceland, I'm sure that public opinion in Iceland would be different. If millions of people chanted "Death to Iceland" in the streets, you would feel differently.

Please elaborate.

We knew back in '91 that Soddom was a scumbagg, but he was the lesser of evils, or so we thought. The overriding fear of the time was that if we eliminated him and his Bath party lost power the new rulers would be Muslim fundamentalist like in Iran. It was a case of "the devil you know vs. the devil you don't." We should have an easier time dealing with one man than with a collection of ruling Mullahs.

I recall a lecture at Yale about middle east politics back in late '91. One of the fears many folks had, including this lecturer was of a united Iran/Iraq under the flag of Fundamentalist Islam. This possibility was a worst case scenario and probably contributed to our inaction against SH. So now we have to deal with this sh!tbag today instead of 12 years ago. In retrospect it would have been better to whack him then. Schwarzkopf and Powell wanted to buy they were reined in and told "mission accomplished."

Iran and Iraq loath each other, they fought an 8 year war and a million people on each side died. An alliance between them would be the last thing to ever happen. Powell was not reinged in, rather he and others determined that there was no point in continuing to fight because Kuwait was the objective.

Yeah, I remember that all the top scholars and think tanks spent years coming up with this scenario, mainly based on historical and religious ties going back even before the ascension of Islam. Then there were the shortsighted morons who thought that it couldn't happen just because the two countries had been at war with one another.

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Iceland attacked!

That explains a lot. I was trying to find any sense in his post as well - but failed miserably.

Making your cities safe again?

When has Hussein ever theatened the safety of a US city? Feel free to elaborate.

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I usually stay far away from these kinds of debates but here is an image I saw tonight that made me think...

Except of course that it hasn't.

War didn't end slavery.

War has not ended fascism.

Last time I looked communism was going pretty strong in China.

Wtf is Nazism?

Pure communism has never been practiced on a national scale. What they have in china is more like socio-fascism.

There is nothing wrong with the idea of communism. It has never been given a fair trial.

Dr. Leo Alexander, who studied the Nuremberg trials after World War Two, stated that Fascism and Nazism can be detected in a nation who, "thinks in terms of destruction as the solution of all problems is today the best way to tell a Nazi from a non-Nazi.".

What do you think ended slavery then(in the US)? People just got tired of it?

I think that list was a little short on what the benifits of war have been... what about freedom itself?

Remind me again what Saddam Hussein had to do with 9/11?

Nothing, right?

Move along, everybody - it's just another ugly victim of propaganda. Nothing to see here...

-s*

No.. of course not. I blame it on Saddam.

Actually, no. He didn't give him the benefit of the doubt nor did he think Saddam would straighten up. He was very confident that the regime was destabilized enough to allow the Shia (south) and kurd (north) uprising to remove him from power.

Stormin' Norman made a tactical error in the cease fire agreement that allowed Iraq to use military helicopters. This was supposed to be to allow for travel since all the roads and bridges were taken out, but Saddam immediately supressed the Shia uprising ... killing close to 10K Shia in the processes. Same in the north with the Kurds. As soon as we realized what was going on we started the no-fly zones. but by then, it was too late. Saddam had regained his hold over the state.

Bush 41 really thought Saddam was done-for and so we didn't need to do anything else.

Yeah, I understand, I saw the cod wars on "The Goodies".

Now, that's just frightening.

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A "classic", elementary definition of communism:

From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs.

What has this to do with the former Soviet Union, China, etc...?

Little or nothing, if you examine their history.

Of course, if (libertarian) communism isn't "sustained" by individual freedom, etc., it cannot exist - and vice versa...

P.S.: The "usual" definition of "communism" (especially in the US) is sooooo evidently wrong - but, as always, good enough to incute fear in "the people" and accustom them to their daily dose of panem et circenses, almost in a (neo-) Roman/imperial way.

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When i'm not busy planting flowers and making sure nobody says anything mean about anybody, i do find a few seconds a day to think.

And i think the world of our armed forces, they are by and large fine people doing a somewhat thankless job.

That said, i think they are being grossly misused right now. Saddam is a Bad Man, and should be gotten rid of, but bombs are not the way to do it. Since we have so demonstrably achieved air superiority in Iraq for the past 10 years, why not use that ability to land a C-130 in a town, dump off a crate of food, and leave a note that says something to the effect of "America loves you. Saddam does not." ? Why not back off the sanctions and let western economic development raise their standard of living, and curtail Saddam's ability to control the flow of information? We're saying that we care now, mind you, but i can't blame the Iraqi people for thinking we're talking out of both sides of our mouth given the whole 'shock and awe' festivities. War is a lazy solution here, in my opinion. Saddam could have been ousted with clever acts of kindness, a little patience, and oh yeah, inspections. This is a war of choice, not of neccessity, and unfortunately it now becomes clear that it will have a cost in american and british lives as well. this whole thing may end relatively well, and may free the iraqi people, but at the cost of many lives immediately which needn't have been squandered, to say nothing of the enmity of future bin Ladens that are being spawned right now.

Regardless of whether or not the military operation succeeds, this war has already cost too much.

Wha? Dood, I don�t get it.

Slavery? Dood, WTF is that? Wasn�t that where someone tried to tell some brothas what to do and they said �Hey man, lay off,� and so whitey said, �yo, that�s cool.�

Nazis? Dood, WTF are you talkin� about man? What war? WTF man, I mean, it was like, there was this really uncool Hitler guy, and he like, I dunno, he like tried to act all tough and take over half the world an� stuff and like, these peace protestors got together and had like this really big rally and so like this Hitler dood got really bummed out and said like, �hey you cats are really harshin� my gig� and so he went downstairs to like this big rec-room deal, like where he had one of those old time stereos with the big mushroom for a speaker and I think he didn�t even have a TV nor nothin� and he like, took a dirt nap man.

Then there were those Japanese cats, man, they were really being uncool, like flyin� around an� crashin� planes on people �n stuff, but like, the peace protestors said, �doods, cut it out man!� and so those cats said, �hey, ya know what? Anyway, we�d like rather draw these really cool cartoons with robots n� stuff than do this �take over the world� deal.� And so that was cool.

Communism? Dood, what�s wrong with that? Ya mean like, where everybody has everything they want and they all just sit around and nobody harshes their gigs nor nothin�? Dood, I mean like, sure, I heard that like some doods might�a got, like, killed or somethin� once, but ya know, it�s all good.

I think that is why it is so popular with students- it sounds so fair and wonderful. But it doesn't work in real life, except maybe on a very small scale, such as villages, because it doesn't have enough checks and balances and is painfully easy to pervert. Witness China and the Soviet Union, where the ones in power had lots of goodies and the others didn't and had no chance for it.

Pure democracy doesn't work well either. Human nature doesn't permit it.

"Human nature": another oxymoron...

bullshyt!

Logistics doesn't permit it.