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Post by kk on May 12, 2004 11:49:57 GMT -5
I am fed up with the way the US military is being portrayed by the liberal media. IRAQIs have shot us for months while we rebuild their country. I am NOT supporting US miltary defying the Geneva Accords. But at the same time, there is SO MUCH shock toward these prisoners and SO LITTLE outrage at the bloody behavior of Islamic terrorists.
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Post by Guest on May 14, 2004 22:48:28 GMT -5
It is horrible what the American soldiers did in part because it hurts our efforts to win any kind of peace over there, if it's possible at all which I think is questionable. Don't you see how this makes our country look even more evil than it already does (hard to imagine) in the Middle East? It spawns more hatred toward us, and new terrorists are hatched, way more than we can arrest or torture in an ill-conceived, poorly planned, dishonestly presented war. Yes it's terrible when they kill our soldiers, and especially the beheading of the American was atrocious and I'm not saying they shouldn't be brought to justice. But we are over there telling them we're bringing peace and democracy, then we treat them like that and many of them are just kids themselves. They think it's a religious war, I think it's about oil myself. What a sad mess. And also, why do people call the media "liberal" just because they report things that reflect negatively on the so-called conservatives? Didn't they report negative actions during the Clinton administration too? I seem to remember something about a blue dress....
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Post by inatent on May 15, 2004 0:03:34 GMT -5
. . . . They think it's a religious war, I think it's about oil myself. . . . . For some, it is about oil, for some it is about religion, for some it is about power and money. Among all the possible reasons, oil is the least prominent simply because the war is having exactly the opposite effect on the oil market to what would be desired by those who might want to fight a war to obtain it. One exception would be those invested in the US market who stand to gain as supplies diminish and it becomes profitable again to drill in this country. - just my observation inatent
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Post by ha on May 15, 2004 2:36:24 GMT -5
Iraq has the second largest oil reserves in the world. And increases in oil prices profit the oil companies - almost all of them american. In fact the first Gulf war was financed (with a huge profit) through the increase in oil prices.
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Post by no name on May 15, 2004 10:45:18 GMT -5
For some, it is about oil, for some it is about religion, for some it is about power and money. Among all the possible reasons, oil is the least prominent simply because the war is having exactly the opposite effect on the oil market to what would be desired by those who might want to fight a war to obtain it. One exception would be those invested in the US market who stand to gain as supplies diminish and it becomes profitable again to drill in this country. - just my observation inatent I guess it's easy for people to make the "war for oil" accusation, but in reality it doesn't make a lot sense and is generally a comment thrown out to cast doubt on U.S. intentions -- those black helicopters, you know . . . . Something I posted on another thread that addresses this particular accusation: If the U.S. simply wanted to use war to get free or cheaper oil, we could have kept Kuwait’s oil fields for ourselves back in 1991. Heck, in 1991, the U.S. could have moved its 500,000+ troops on the ground into Iraq itself to capture the oil fields; after all, Iraq had no army left to oppose us. Who could have stopped us? Why have we been paying market prices for Kuwaiti and Iraqi oil ever since?
If America wants to use its military might just to conquer or steal oil, they why don’t we move southward and seize the Mexican or Venezuelan oil fields? It would certainly be a whole lot cheaper to take oil fields south of the border than to go halfway around the world! Besides, if all we wanted was cheaper oil, the U.S. would have given into French and German demands to lift the economic sanctions on Iraq in the 1990s.And oil companies aren't so "outrageously" profitable, in reality, when compared to other industries. A Business Week analysis of the data from the five-year period 1998-2002, shows that the profitability of oil, gas and related companies (4.7 cents per dollar of sales)2 has been lower than the average of all industries combined (5.2 cents per dollar of sales). Results in 2002 showed oil and companies lagging all industry generally, with an average profit margin of 2.3 cents per dollar of sales versus 4 cents per dollar for all industry. www.conocophillips.com/news/energy/oil_profits.aspAnd after all, there's nothing wrong with making profit -- that's what Capitalism is all about . . . it would kind of defeat the purpose to go into business with the intention of making a loss . . .
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Post by botany on May 15, 2004 11:02:29 GMT -5
Maybe this is all part of Bush's grand scheme to make drilling for oil in the ANWR seem like a good idea?? Oil prices go up, and then people will say, "let's drill for our [6 month] oil supply in ANWR!" About the oil bit... I personally believe that we would be much better off globally, nationally, and individually, if there is a serious effort made to research and develop new fuels, such as renewable fuels and such. We can send a spacecraft to mars and send back incredible pictures and data, and another spacecraft to explore the planets and travel outside of our solar system. So, why is it that we are still stuck with such a limited and politically volitile fuel supply? Kinda makes you wonder what people are thinking. andy
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Post by CIA agent on May 15, 2004 12:29:33 GMT -5
The US war against Iraq has been going on now since 1990, essentially driven as a means to reduce in size a former agent, Saddam. Saddam had been on the CIA payroll since the 50's and had behaved exactly as ordered from Langley. Saddam, through US financing and arming in the war against Iran, had grown too strong for the region and was a threat to not only Israel but also Saudia Arabia & Kuwait. the events of 1990 were meant to lure Saddam into a quick war through which to destroy most of his arms, and it succeded. The sanctions of the 90's ensured that Iraq, the most advanced arab state in many respects, could not regain its military prominance. The 2003 attacks by the master on the student was driven by many rational. The most important is entrenched geo-political control of the Gulf to deter rising regional powers with growing energy needs (china). The US's prominent puppet government in the gulf since 1979, Saudia Arabia, is currently incredibly unstable, and oil fields & oil refineries most likely will go off line with the increases in civil unrest as a result of attacks. The loss of Saudi Arabia as puppet regime for the US would be incredible, so the need for insurance presents us with Iraq.
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Post by no name on May 15, 2004 18:24:28 GMT -5
About the oil bit... I personally believe that we would be much better off globally, nationally, and individually, if there is a serious effort made to research and develop new fuels, such as renewable fuels and such. I agree with this. Hopefully that day will come in the not too distant future . . .
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Post by no name on May 15, 2004 18:45:08 GMT -5
THE IMAGE WAR COVER STORY: Only in tandem with words can images tell the truth By Gene Edward Veith
A picture is worth a thousand swords.
If anyone doubts that, they should ask Vice President Richard Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Richard Myers. All were summoned to the Pentagon on May 10 to review with President Bush a sampling of hundreds of amateur photos from Abu Ghraib prison-images, the president admitted later to the cameras, with "harm that goes beyond the walls of a prison."
At least that is true in contemporary warfare, when pictures can inspire or disillusion the people back home, either rallying them behind a cause or convincing them that the cause is not worth it. The public's support is essential when modern democracies go to war, and without that, it doesn't matter how dominant their military is on the battlefield. A picture can unify a nation, or it can turn victory into defeat.
Mr. Rumsfeld admitted the power of the Abu Ghraib images in May 7 Senate testimony: "Words don't do it. The words that there were abuses, that it was cruel, that it was inhumane, all of which is true, that it was blatant, you read that and it's one thing. You see the photographs, and you get a sense of it, and you cannot help but be outraged."
The War against Terrorism and its theaters in Afghanistan and Iraq have been seared into our imaginations with a series of unforgettable visual images: Those planes crashing into the World Trade Center. The firefighters raising the Stars and Stripes over the rubble. Shots of precision-guided weaponry finding their targets in Afghanistan. Women in their burqas rejoicing at the fall of the Taliban. Footage from embedded reporters putting us with the troops in Iraq. Iraqis celebrating in the streets. Iraqis looting in the streets. A dirty, bedraggled Saddam just pulled out of his hole. Burned bodies of Americans dragged in the streets and hung on a bridge.
And now, naked Iraqis with hoods on their heads being tormented and abused by American guards.
Visual images have an emotional impact that goes beyond mere words, but words are necessary to think about what the images mean. This is especially true when war is photographed. A photograph gives us truth, but it is not always the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Visual images have an emotional impact that goes beyond mere words, but words are necessary to think about what the images mean. This is especially true when war is photographed.
Losing Vietnam
The Vietnam War was started as an idealistic venture, saving a defenseless land from invasion by the communists. It was a Democratic war, the brainchild of John F. Kennedy, with his James Bond novels and his Green Berets. It was a liberal war, waged by Lyndon Johnson, architect of the Great Society.
But it was the first televised war, and pictures from the war wore the country down: That photograph of the little girl, napalmed, naked, and running in panic. What ideals were worth that? The photograph of the South Vietnam officer executing a Viet Cong captive, shooting him in the head as the young guerrilla grimaced at the moment of his death. Why were we defending people like this?
And then there was the relentless TV coverage, night after night of enemy body counts and American casualties, all brought into our living rooms. Then the Vietnam Veterans Against the War came out with stories of atrocities. The story of the My Lai massacre broke. Our young people didn't want to go. Many protested, some dodged the draft. We felt ashamed. Even our troops' victories seemed futile, in light of the pictures from the front. The "silent majority" turned against a war that the politicians refused to win. Republicans Nixon and Ford promised to end it. The final picture was of helicopters flying off the embassy roof, as crowds of panicked Americans struggled to climb aboard, as the North Vietnamese overran Saigon.
Then we felt better. No pictures came through of what the North Vietnamese did to the people we left to their mercy. The television networks stopped covering the dominos as they fell: the communists' killing fields in Cambodia, the Laotian refugee camps, the boat people desperately trying to escape. We knew about these things, in general, but what we didn't see couldn't hurt us.
The Abu Ghraib photos
At first the pictures from Iraq helped the war effort. TV worked in favor of the troops, unlike in Vietnam, as the embedded reporters showed the point of view of those who fought and performed magnificently. Not only did they defeat the enemy; they were seen as benevolent in victory-helping the enemy wounded, playing with Iraqi children, fixing up schools and hospitals. What fine young people. They volunteered for this-they weren't draftees-and they behaved with professionalism, patriotism, and honor.
Then these pictures came out from a prison camp. If TV cameras thwarted the war in Vietnam, this war might be lost because of the digital camera. Naked men, hooded and bound, piled on top of each other and posed in sexual ways, as women guards smirked and vogued. Yes, it's likely these were terrorists. And yes, we had to "break them" for interrogation. But these pictures-illustrating other accounts of prisoners sodomized and even killed-were shameful.
It wasn't just that we pitied these abused prisoners. These pictures showed a dark side of our own culture. We had convinced ourselves that we were the good guys, and yet look how some of us acted. Here was the pornographic imagination, the sexual perversion that our culture has come to tolerate and even approve. One of the women in the photos reportedly was sent home because she got pregnant and a captain was reprimanded for sneaking pictures of the female troops taking showers. Some who apparently know about such things are saying that the very poses the prisoners were forced into were modeled after pornographic films, the ones featuring sado-masochism and homosexual fantasies.
And what are these women doing there? Even our military is kowtowing to the feminists, assigning men and women equally as prison guards over men? Women were not supposed to be assigned to combat, but in a guerrilla war, everyone is in a combat zone. Women have been dying, no less than men, and while we honor their sacrifice, it seems wrong. Now in these pictures we see women as equal-opportunity sadists.
Is this the culture, the liberation, we want to give the Iraqis? The radical Muslims, of course, see us as godless. We have no morals. Could they be right?
The limits of pictures
Of course, those pictures prove no such thing. They show some men and women doing shameful things. But they show nothing about the hundreds of thousands of other troops in Iraq who have behaved honorably. They show nothing about context or purpose or meaning.
Although these pictures are being used to demonize our military and its chain of command up to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, they don't show that it was the military itself that uncovered this wrongdoing. It was the military that first learned about some guards abusing prisoners. It was the military that investigated the abuses and initiated action against the perpetrators. This was not uncovered by investigative reporters or dissidents smuggling photos to al-Jazeera, but by the very military now being criticized.
The late media scholar Neil Postman has said that visual images are irrefutable. They are not something that you can prove wrong or even argue with. You can only do that with ideas, and ideas can only be conveyed by language. Visual images, he says, appeal not to the mind (the realm of ideas and language) but to the emotions. They create an immediate visceral, nonreflective response.
And, although they are irrefutable, seemingly showing something tangible and real, this is not always the case. Images can be selected, posed, even-especially with today's technology-faked. In fact, there is good unbiased evidence that the corresponding pictures of British troops abusing their prisoners were faked (the uniforms, weapons, and vehicles shown are not the ones used in Iraq). And yet, visual images are powerful manipulators, especially of people who have conditioned themselves with a nonstop diet of visual images and in a culture that has come to minimize language and, thus, thinking.
There is no reason to doubt what these pictures show. Christians, in particular, should never be surprised to see examples of human depravity. They are just more evidence to prove that what the Bible says about sin is true. And Christians are well aware of the dark side of American culture-sexual permissiveness and perversion, cruelty as entertainment-having denounced for years the very trends that the rest of the culture now sees as so horrible in these photos.
But they are not the whole story. In that very prison camp, Saddam Hussein tortured prisoners to death. When he and his sons had their critics tossed into plastic shredders, though, there were no pictures.
Now, many Americans are so shocked at these photographs -taken by the very people doing the abusing-that they think we should leave Iraq. And what do they think will happen then? Whatever Saddam sympathizers do to his people, whatever the Sunnis and Shiites will do to each other, will it bother us if at least we don't have to see it?
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Post by no name on May 15, 2004 20:44:30 GMT -5
The Beheading of an Innocent
By Walid Phares FrontPageMagazine.com | May 12, 2004
The slaughtering of Nick Berg is one small step for terrorists and a major leap for the West’s encounter with Jihadism. The videotape, posted on the Ansar website, is one of many horrifying acts perpetrated by the followers of Osama bin Laden. It has also become a shameful benchmark in the West’s liberal media reporting.
The Abu Ghraib disaster, the behavior of few bad apples within the U.S. armed forces, triggered this major development that will influence the way citizens look at al-Qaeda's war on Americans. September 11 brought Mohammad Atta into the collective memory of this country and the international community, but May 11 will keep Abu Musab al Zarqawi in that same memory as one of the most cruel enemies of innocent civilians anywhere. The terrorist fugitive’s name is the title of the horrendous video showing Berg’s beheading.
Nick Berg's life was simple. Out of Philadelphia, he sought a job in a liberated Iraq, or so he thought. He trusted his government, and trusted the politicians of his country. He traveled to help Iraqis and establish a personal link with Iraq's civil society. But he was obstructing the spread of Jihad. He became a lonely Kafir (infidel), and found himself on the wrong side of dar el Harb (the war zone as conceived by the Islamists). And as such, he was slaughtered by the long sword of al Zarqawi. The pictures of his murder will circle the world – and they deserve to overshadow the Abu Ghraib photos.
In the American detention center that grabbed world attention and ignited a self-whipping crusade in the U.S., men were shown naked, piled up and humiliated. But because American is a free and democratic society, such acts of humiliation and abuse are abhorrent to American people everywhere and come to be quickly judged and condemned. This is because Americans value life and live in an open society which exposes its own injustices. The rights of detainees are sacred in America, even if these detainees are terrorists and have taken innocent lives.
At the Abu Ghraib of jihad, however, innocents are slaughtered at will at the discretion of unholy warriors. In the al Zarqawi "detention centers," there are no laws, there are no codes, and there is no humanity; only a cult of death exists that demands the slaughter of innocents and perpetuates itself without justice or reflection.
Unfortunately, some among us may have fuelled the blood fiesta that was shown on the website. While Abu Ghraib has now become another way in which terrorists can legitimize killing innocent people, liberal and anti-American voices from this end of the world re-perpetrate this horrid logic, excessively assessing the so-called impact of the Iraqi soldiers abuse by their guards and declaring that the "reactions will be violent and bloody." In other words, they morally legitimized these bloody acts by seeing them as mere responses, not actions that are in line with a culture of death and hatred. So when the slaughter of Berg took place and was posted online, these same voices rushed to establish a moral equality between Abu Ghraib and the savage beheading of an innocent young man. But no such equality exists.
To start with, the assessment that all people in the Middle East misunderstood America and despised its image as result of the photos was wrong. At a media summit at the State Department last Friday, and while Secretary Rumsfeld was under heavy shelling in Congress, U.S. officials learned from two dozen Arab and Mideast media people that "many opinions in many segments had different concerns in the region."
Those who are anti-American - including al-Qaeda sympathizers - will take the pictures to the zenith of exploiting hatred. One Mideast participant told the Foreign policy officers "if you tell those radicals that the Arab world will react violently, the Jihadists will react on behalf of Arabs and Muslims, but without their consent." Many participants, from different religious and ethnic background, warned U.S. officials not to give the terrorists meat for their diet.
In reality, many people in the Middle East understand that American values vanished in the Abu Ghraib detention center, but that this does not reflect the U.S. initiative in the greater Middle East. Apart from al Jazeera and the Jihadi web sites, the people of Iraq generally felt embarrassed for the US.
For Kurds, mainstream Shiites and democratic Sunnis, it remained clear: the weakening of the U.S. role would be a catalyst for the return of Baathism and the surge of Wahhabism. For them, Abu Ghraib is a passage in a much wider chapter: the transition to sovereignty. Iraqis understood that, but the carriers of petite politics on these shores did not and refuse to. By developing a crisis of so-called immorality in the American military, leftists try to make the American public believe in a widespread systemic problem that is being responded to by Jihadists.
But the beheading of Nick Berg cannot be understood as something that America caused. Abu Musab al Zarqawi ordered the kidnappings of Americans and others months ago. Before and after Fallujah’s last episode, the terrorists resorted to "collect" the victims. On one of their audio websites, they called them "assembled sheep" (Tajmeeh al khawareef) who were to be "sacrificed" at will.
Thus, whether Abu Ghraib happened or not, al-Qaeda was building its human ammunition depot. Berg's ordeal was not a direct result of Abu Ghraib. Al-Qaeda does not care when prisoners are mistreated. For them, the big picture is to weaken and humiliate the U.S. and to prevent the rise of an Arab democracy. This is why al Zarqawi stops at nothing to create chaos and fear in the region so as to undermine American efforts. But the Western Left ignores this dynamic and, as a result, steps into al-Qaeda's trap - and helps to cause additional bloodshed in Iraq.
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Post by inatent on May 15, 2004 22:10:00 GMT -5
. . . . About the oil bit... I personally believe that we would be much better off globally, nationally, and individually, if there is a serious effort made to research and develop new fuels, such as renewable fuels and such. . . . .So, why is it that we are still stuck with such a limited and politically volitile fuel supply? Kinda makes you wonder what people are thinking. andy I agree, but the simple answer is the fact that alternative energy sources are not yet profitable; if they were, businesses would develop them. The parallel that I know best is in the paper industry. Recycled paper with the properties that people want is much more difficult and expensive to produce than most people know about. They like the idea of saving trees and landfill space, but they don't understand how much oil is consumed in additional power and chemicals in order to produce the paper. Industry will adapt to market demand, but they will not do so at a loss. Adherents to well publicized ideas do not generally calculate accurately. inatent
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Post by no name on May 16, 2004 18:48:39 GMT -5
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Deleted
Deleted Member
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Post by Deleted on May 16, 2004 19:59:47 GMT -5
It's true that developing alternative energy sources aren't as profitable as relying on conventional sources (oil) yet, but can't the administration make efforts to change this? In the interests of future world peace, the environment, and world economic stability, the government could provide major incentives for alternative energy development, and disinsentives for reliance on the status quo. The sooner we get to it, the better for all, and it'll be a powerful economic engine once it gets going, won't it?
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Post by inatent on May 16, 2004 20:32:00 GMT -5
It's true that developing alternative energy sources aren't as profitable as relying on conventional sources (oil) yet, but can't the administration make efforts to change this? In the interests of future world peace, the environment, and world economic stability, the government could provide major incentives for alternative energy development, and disinsentives for reliance on the status quo. The sooner we get to it, the better for all, and it'll be a powerful economic engine once it gets going, won't it? I absolutely agree that this is the only practical solution. I have often said that I support the addition of one dollar to the tax on each gallon of gasoline if it can be put 100% into a good public transportation system . . . to get other people off the road so I can drive on them more easily! inatent
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Post by botany on May 16, 2004 20:48:37 GMT -5
I absolutely agree that this is the only practical solution. I have often said that I support the addition of one dollar to the tax on each gallon of gasoline if it can be put 100% into a good public transportation system . . . to get other people off the road so I can drive on them more easily! inatent Get off the road so I can get on it. LOL!! ;D People are complaining about gas prices getting above $2/gallon. Yeah, I don't like it either. But, you know what i can do? Write to my congressmen, etc. and ask them to do something about promoting alternative fuels on the political level. I haven't done that yet, but I fully intend to very soon. Unfortunately the people that the higher gas prices will affect the most right away are the lower and middle class people. They can't afford to fill up $20+ in their fuel efficient cars to go to work. (I have little pity for the people with SUVs and big cars with huge, gas-guzzling engines). So, they are the ones that need to speak up and make some noise. Public transportation, developing alternative fuels, bicycling, car pooling... All excellent solutions for the rising gas prices. andy
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