Al Qaqaa

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Al Qaqaa

Post by mkilly »

I'm not very pleased right now.

We go into Iraq, ostensibly because Saddam's no good, because Saddam is trying to get sanctions lifted, because Saddam wants a nuclear weapons program and is looking into it or already has it, because Saddam used chemical weapons on "his own people" (code for "an insurgent uprising that George H. W. Bush encouraged him to do, ten years after Donald Rumsfeld shook hands with Saddam and American money and troops trained Iraqis to fight against Iran), and now 340-380 tons of the most powerful conventional explosives, just a notch under nuclear weapons, this site that was on an International Atomic Energy Agency watchlist and they explicitly told us to make sure we guarded on the eve of war (they were watching it until we started bombing the country and all that), 340-380 tons of this shit has gone missing.

ny times link

Great. Fuckin' great. The same shit we went to war for, and then didn't guard, is now being used to kill our soldiers, Iraqi civilians, and God knows who else it's going to be shipped off to. Bush is just batting a thousand on protecting us from terrorists, huh.

I know it's easy to play armchair general but lordy. This is just absurd. How can anybody endorse Bush over Kerry for the single issue of military power and responsibility? Does "accountability" only matter if you're a Democrat?

(p.s., I watched Three Kings last night. Great film.)
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Post by Hoblit »

Yeah, I read that this morning.

First of all, this is a Military blunder and not a presidential one. I mean, yeah... if not for him calling the war in the first place then those explosives wouldn't be up for grabs...they'd still be in the wrong hands but not up for grabs to more volitile hands. However, this is the military dropping the ball. It's not like the president said..eh..don't worry about that site for now. (Unless I'm missing something)

Just want to make sure we are blaming the right people.

With that said...yeah, this whole thing is turning into a great big mess and it needs to be handled better. We need to gain back that control..and we need to secure the weapons cache a lot more authoritively. This falls on the generals and post war planners. (of the military kind)

I doubt those explosives will be used against our military as much as they will take down a building or two (read hotel) before all is said and done. I mean, why waste that on folks who are firing back and can kill you when you can make a much larger statement for all the world to see.
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Post by jb »

Well Hobs, he did send them over there without enough people to take care of the situation, and I'm pretty sure it was a presidential directive to secure the oilfields as a primary objective.

And you can't make a case, if you're running for election, that you are the bees knees when it comes to counter-terrorism when you aren't on top of things like this.

AND AND AND they suppressed this information for over a year! A YEAR! Why would they do that?
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Post by mkilly »

Hoblit wrote:YFirst of all, this is a Military blunder and not a presidential one.
The President is the commander-in-chief, you'll recall. The President appointed Donald Rumsfeld as Secretary of Defense, you'll recall. President Bush has an MBA, you'll recall. Who fucked up?
Hoblit wrote:I doubt those explosives will be used against our military as much as they will take down a building or two (read hotel) before all is said and done. I mean, why waste that on folks who are firing back and can kill you when you can make a much larger statement for all the world to see.
There's certainly the possibility that this stuff is what's being used to bomb US supply trucks on Iraqi highways, or it's being used for car bombs, including the one that bombed the heavily-armed, so-called Green Zone last week. I don't think that Iraqi civilian deaths, or US civilian or journalist deaths, are any more important or less mournful than US army deaths.
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Post by Hoblit »

<b>I don't think that Iraqi civilian deaths, or US civilian or journalist deaths, are any more important or less mournful than US army deaths.</b>

dude, this is where you start to rub me wrong. I would NEVER ... NEVER EVER suggest this.* It's borderline offensive that you'd assume that I would. Nothing I said should draw you to that conclusion unless you think I'm a total @$$hole.

I was simply stating that they would probably be used for more of a DRAMATIC EFFECT. I'd say the bombing in the green zone would be a great example. I think creating a dramatic effect would cause more exposure to their cause. I don't think using it against the mililtary would necessarily create the buzz they are shooting for. (forgive the pun) TV and world opinion is their target audience.

Sure, the logic of holding the president responsible by chain of command is valid but thats beside the actual point of who actually screwed this up. As it turns out it is <a href="http://edition.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/meast ... xplosives/" target="resource window">now being reported</a> that the explosives were gone before we got to them. That furthers secures your point.

However, Military planners have priorities and if there are not enough troops to secure all the sites they should have at least made it a point to secure THAT site and a few others of HUGE interest.

IMO, they should have secured that site before 'shock and awe'. I don't know how possible that is. I'm sure securing a perimeter in someone else's country would be nearly impossible...but it's coming back to haunt them now and was clearly not handled in the best interest of their own troops or post war public safety.

*I have family stationed in Kuwait
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Post by mkilly »

"It is really true what philosophy tells us, that life must be understood backwards. But with this, one forgets the second proposition, that it must be lived forwards." Søren Kierkegaard
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I wish I could get worked up about it...

Post by adjuster »

It really doesn't matter which Republicrat we elect-- the two-party political system exists only to perpetuate itself. We are where we are now-- it'd be nice to stop the bleeding, develop a coherent exit strategy for Iraq that leaves it in a less fucked-up state than prior to our invasion and occupation, and try to develop some foreign policy that is geared toward getting the fuck along with the rest of the world.

Goddamn, I'd like off this fucking planet...
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Post by Caravan Ray »

saw a good t-shirt last week for sale in Brisbane. It shows a picture of George W Bush next to a picture of Hitler with the caption:
...same shit, different arsehole
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Post by c hack »

Caravan Ray wrote:saw a good t-shirt last week for sale in Brisbane. It shows a picture of George W Bush next to a picture of Hitler with the caption:
...same shit, different arsehole
Stuff like that pisses me off, and I'm not a Jew or a Gypsy. I imagine if I was, it'd piss me off even more.
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Post by Caravan Ray »

c hack wrote:
Caravan Ray wrote:saw a good t-shirt last week for sale in Brisbane. It shows a picture of George W Bush next to a picture of Hitler with the caption:
...same shit, different arsehole
Stuff like that pisses me off, and I'm not a Jew or a Gypsy. I imagine if I was, it'd piss me off even more.
Why? (I'm assuming you're not a supporter of the policies of Bush or Hitler)
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Post by Hoblit »

Caravan Ray wrote:
c hack wrote:
Caravan Ray wrote:saw a good t-shirt last week for sale in Brisbane. It shows a picture of George W Bush next to a picture of Hitler with the caption:
...same shit, different arsehole
Stuff like that pisses me off, and I'm not a Jew or a Gypsy. I imagine if I was, it'd piss me off even more.
Why? (I'm assuming you're not a supporter of the policies of Bush or Hitler)
probably because it's over the top and George W. Bush is nowhere near the same ballpark as Hitler. It's just ridiculous. I'm not a Bush fan and I'm paranoid he'll do something to stay in power...but he's no Hitler.
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Post by Eric Y. »

right... people actually liked hitler during his rise to power.
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Post by fodroy »

oohhh....snap! :lol:
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Post by Mogosagatai »

Aah, a double-case of "missed the point."

I hope no one brings up the point that I myself have compared Bush to Hitler. My comparison was in a perfectly valid way, as a counterexample to a potential counterpoint to my point, which was that just because a guy has balls doesn't make him a good leader.

I get a little annoyed when conservatives are compared to Nazis in higher intellectual circles. Most modern conservatives, I think, don't want to kill anybody. I think a more accurate comparison is to pre-Revolution French aristocrats--people who have it their way and wanna keep it like that, without too much interference from other people and their troubles.
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Post by j$ »

user wrote:I get a little annoyed when conservatives are compared to Nazis in higher intellectual circles.
Comparisions to Hitler and the Nazis are, almost always, completely inaccurate, thankfully. There are very few people or groups to whom it would be apt. In the same way there are very few liberals to whom communist / Trotsky applies.

However I think you'll find that conservatives are compared to nazis by more than just "higher intellectual circles." That sounds like a little bit of reverse snobbery to me :)


PS this would have been my 2,000th post, had the year zero communists of songfight.net not burnt the records :)
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Post by Caravan Ray »

user wrote:
I get a little annoyed when conservatives are compared to Nazis in higher intellectual circles. .
I think the comparison is quite reasonable.

A group of ignorant racist thugs use lies and fear to consolidate power in an otherwise democratic and well-educated nation. Same shit, different arsehole

In order to draw attention away from Germanys economic problems Hitler falsely blamed and persecuted Jews. In order to draw attention away from USA’s security problems Bush falsely blamed and persecuted Iraq. Same shit, different arsehole

Bush’s speeches are full of “Us vs. Them” garbage – Simplistic rhetoric full of ‘Good’, ‘Evil’, ‘God’ and ‘Freedom’. He would have played well at a Nuremburg rally. And Goebbels would have been delighted with Fox News. From an outsider’s viewpoint, your nation appears to be becoming more and more fervorantly nationalist (Bush calls it Patriotism) and increasingly insular. Same shit, different arsehole

International laws and international standards of justice are ignored; torture at Abu Ghraib prison, foreign nationals held without charge for over 2 years at Guantanamo Bay. Some may call them concentration camps. Same shit, different arsehole.

Hitler developed a program of genocide and killed 6 million people. OK – here the comparison falls down – I wouldn’t suggest that the US government is on track to do this. However in 1937, 4 years after Hilter took power, I think most Germans would have also believed that such an outcome would have been pure fantasty. Plenty of blood on Mr Bush’s hands already though. How many people executed while he was Governor of Texas? Add to that some 15 000 civilians killed in Iraq so far – that’s quite a tally.

Anyway, as mentioned, of course GWB has not committed atrocities on the scale of Hitler (or Stalin or Mao or other assorted pieces of filth like these) – and as yet there is no reason to believe he ever will. But history does have an unpleasant habit of repeating itself.

He is however, like Hitler, an ignorant racist thug who will lie to his people, manufacture fear, ignore international standards of human rights and wage war to achieve his ends. Same shit, different arsehole

And to avoid claims of USA-bashing – I would add that this all applies to Australia too. On 9 October the Australian people re-elected a government that has aided and abetted all the above. Apparently the price of home-loans is of more importance to the Australian voter. The slippery slope to barbarism begins….
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Post by Hoblit »

Thank God the English government doesn't support Bush...geez...that'd be a *REAL* travesty. That might complete the Axis power comparison of Japan, Italy, and Germany.

Don't forget Poland!


Anyways, I completely disagree with you Mr. Ray. I'm not sure how openly racist Bush is. Remembering Hitler's propaganda, he was a teensy weensy less PC about it :D That and he made them wear stars.

I know I jest a bit..but really...in the end...I think there is no comparison and I think any connection is hugely exageratted. Even if there are SOME similarities.
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Post by Mogosagatai »

<b>j$ said:</b>
However I think you'll find that conservatives are compared to nazis by more than just "higher intellectual circles." That sounds like a little bit of reverse snobbery to me
It is reverse snobbery. I (usually) consider SongFight! a higher intellectual circle, at least some threads of it. I don't mind when conservatives are compared to Nazis amongst common folk--that's where words don't carry much impact, so wild, empty exaggerations don't really bother me.
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Post by Eric Y. »

so today for the first time ever, i got some political crap in the mail. at least, for the first time i can remember. i think i registered to vote something like five years ago? or maybe six or seven, i don't know. i know the only time i actually voted was about five years ago. anyway.

#1.
i am writing today to ask you to join me in supporting president george w. bush. for the past four years, president bush has shown his respect for veterans across our state and worked for our needs. he has expanded va healthcare [etc etc etc ...] in pennsylvania alone, he built our sixth veterans nursing home and a new veterans cemetery. president bush is standing up for veterans. we need to support him on tuesday, november 2nd.
i'm not really sure what they think i am a veteran OF... but i find the image of me going to vote for president bush because "he built ... a new cemetery" hilarious.

#2.
why is john kerry's betrayal relevant today? because character and trust are essential to leadership, especially in a time of war. a man who so grossly distorts his military record, who betrays his fellow soldiers, who endangers our soldiers and sailors held captive, who secretly conspires with the enemy, who so brazenly mocks the symbols of sacrifice for our servicemen, all for his own political goals, has neither the character nor the trust for such leadership. john kerry cannot be trusted.
the funniest thing about this is that it's "paid for by swift vets and POWs for truth" ...
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Post by Me$$iah »

I dont really want to get started here neither, but

For a start America is not and never has been a democracy, and the thought of speading such terrifies me.
Jefferson refered to democracy as "tyranny of the masses"
America was founded as a Constitutional Republic, which is way different from a democracy. Within a republic there are certain rights that are afforded to the citizens that are forever, whislt within a democracy the majority can vote in or out any rights or privellidges it sees fit. No individual is protected.
Over the years Americans and the rest of the world has been lied to by polititions and the media to such an extent where most people think that America is the Land of the Free, the greatest democracy of em all, protector of the little guy. How wrong is that

America is the Land of the Free, well it used to be any way before it was allowed to be corrupted and destroyed by the hidden 1 party system.

Americans are the luckiest people in the world, with the freedoms ensured to them by the constitution - but this freedom has bred laziness, disinterest and ignorance. And the freedoms there are slowly being usurped by an overbearing Fascist dictatorship (party is irrelevant)

But to the poiunt of the thread Al Queda-

a thread about Al Queda and instantly mention of Iraq ......Why?

Al Queda doesnt exist as most people think it does niether.
Bin Laden isnt some super villain in a mountain cave fortress with maps coming up from the floors and sexy kung fu afgan women bodyguards,
who sits around stroking a white cat plotting the overthow of the evil imperielist capitolists.
Most of what has come to be called Al Queda are the moslems who volunteered in the early eighties to become mujahadeen and fight against the Soviet invasion of Afganistan. Trained in camps, usually by Americans, who after the war was over returned home biterr and twisted by the fundamenalist indoctrination thats was fed to them during their training. Bearing in mind a zealot is more likely to thorw away their life fighting an overwhelming force than a conscript, so religion would have been a major part of the 'training'
So after returning home many to western countries like america or germany etc. many to others like yugoslavia (we all know what became of there- what with moslem and non-moslem genocides)
The leftovers of Afganistan maybe???? And eventually it came back to bite America too

any way like i say i really dont want to start
so im just gonna stop there, or else this is gonna become a novel

just a note to Americans-
My country almost no longer exists........
Fight to keep yours free!!!
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Post by Leaf »

Me$$iah wrote:I dont really want to get started here neither, but

For a start


You need to work on your rhetoric.
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Post by mkilly »

Me$$iah wrote: But to the poiunt of the thread Al Queda- a thread about Al Queda and instantly mention of Iraq ......Why?
One, it's "Al Qaeda," and two, the thread is about "Al Qaqaa," which is a facility where conventional weapons were stored in Iraq. Al Qaqaa is not Al Qaeda. "Al" is the Arabic article, like our "the" or the French "La," and Qaqaa and Qaeda are different words, like our "mouse" and "house" are different (even though they look similar).
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