This is a test of my offensive Avatar Image

[vegetablebelay]

[mtnrgr]

This is gettin' nutty!

 

This is how I see it: War is a terrible, but nessecary evil. People (like me) die, however some nation-states and their leaders do not have the American fear of innocent deaths. They want only power. Not everyone in the world is a product of westen thought and the Enlightenment. They don't not believe in inalienable rights, and consent of the govern. They did not have a tradition of civil liberties. Some people in the world still believe in Divine Rights of Kings and the tentants of totalitarinism.

 

Now, we are dealing both with nation-states and independent organizations that want to KILL AMERICANS, ALL americans. Why? Because we are the big boys on the block. They feel that we have invaded the holy land. And they feel like Coca Cola, Levis, and MTV are replacing their culture.

 

Osama and his buddies will not stop until: american oil companies stop drilling for oil in Saudi Arabia, and all muslims live by a outdated moral and legal code.

 

Saddam is not overly religious. He wants only to stay in power, the US is a threat to that. He will use the fury of muslim extermist (who, by the way, are still pissed off about the crusades) to attack the US (that means YOU).

 

He has chemical, biological, and probablly nuclear weapons. Saddam will not overtly attack the US, he has no Navy or Air Force to speak of. But, if you think that a small group of people can't get inside the US, and relase a viral agent into a crowed place, you are niave.

 

The US is not conduct a first strike into Iraq. How quickly does the public forget: The Barracks bombings in Saudi Arbia, the embassy bombings in Africa, the attack on the USS Cole, and 9/11. We have been under attack for the better part of 3 decades. I think we've wished for peace enough.

 

We as a nation can not just sit around on the couch and wait for the next attack. It is time we act.

 

I'm all for us invading Iraq. I can say that with authority, because I'll be one with my ass on the line.

 

You can call me a war monguler, if you want, from the comfort of your home. If you want to help poor Iraqi children join the Peace Corps, International Red Cross, or some other NGO. Instead of buying your cheap gas, drinking your coke, watching MTV, and otherwise enjoying our world domination.

 

Remeber you have the privallege to bitch about Bush's money-grubbing military-industrial complex, because of people like me and those served and died before me.

[MtnGoat]

"Or is it that you pay enough taxes for someone else to do your deed?"

 

That's very clever. Shall we discuss wether you feel paying your taxes means *your* deeds shall be done by others as well? Which social goals do you support imposition of onto others with laws you pay for and oppression you support? I'm sure there's one or two.

 

The difference is, everyone in the military now is a volunteer and they know when they join they are risking their lives, by choice, for the likes of us taxpayers. They choose to sign up for those "deeds".

 

Conversely, those folks you pay to oppress, simply live here as citizens, and other than those who beat, rob, or steal from other citizens, are oppressed for no other reason than you feel their lives and wants are less important than your plan for society. Wether all of "society" agrees or not, because of your willingness to threaten these other citizens with jail or fines.

 

Something to condsider while you take the tack on someone else that they are paying a third party to do their deeds. So do you.

 

[ 09-19-2002, 03:51 PM: Message edited by: MtnGoat ]

[Dr_Flash_Amazing]

quote:

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Originally posted by vegetablebelay:

---

 

The hell is that shit?

[allthumbs]

 

.... great post man. You got my vote.

[Dru]

quote:

---

Originally posted by mtnrgr:

This is gettin' nutty!

 

This is how I see it: War is a terrible, but nessecary evil. People (like me) die, however some nation-states and their leaders do not have the American fear of innocent deaths. They want only power. Not everyone in the world is a product of westen thought and the Enlightenment. They don't not believe in inalienable rights, and consent of the govern. They did not have a tradition of civil liberties. Some people in the world still believe in Divine Rights of Kings and the tentants of totalitarinism.

 

Now, we are dealing both with nation-states and independent organizations that want to KILL AMERICANS, ALL americans. Why? Because we are the big boys on the block. They feel that we have invaded the holy land. And they feel like Coca Cola, Levis, and MTV are replacing their culture.

 

Osama and his buddies will not stop until: american oil companies stop drilling for oil in Saudi Arabia, and all muslims live by a outdated moral and legal code.

 

Saddam is not overly religious. He wants only to stay in power, the US is a threat to that. He will use the fury of muslim extermist (who, by the way, are still pissed off about the crusades) to attack the US (that means YOU).

 

He has chemical, biological, and probablly nuclear weapons. Saddam will not overtly attack the US, he has no Navy or Air Force to speak of. But, if you think that a small group of people can't get inside the US, and relase a viral agent into a crowed place, you are niave.

 

The US is not conduct a first strike into Iraq. How quickly does the public forget: The Barracks bombings in Saudi Arbia, the embassy bombings in Africa, the attack on the USS Cole, and 9/11. We have been under attack for the better part of 3 decades. I think we've wished for peace enough.

 

We as a nation can not just sit around on the couch and wait for the next attack. It is time we act.

 

I'm all for us invading Iraq. I can say that with authority, because I'll be one with my ass on the line.

 

You can call me a war monguler, if you want, from the comfort of your home. If you want to help poor Iraqi children join the Peace Corps, International Red Cross, or some other NGO. Instead of buying your cheap gas, drinking your coke, watching MTV, and otherwise enjoying our world domination.

 

Remeber you have the privallege to bitch about Bush's money-grubbing military-industrial complex, because of people like me and those served and died before me.

---

So where is the 9/11 and Iraq connection? Seems to me if there was some strong evidence we would have heard about it by now?

[MtnGoat]

"They are free to speak as they wish and yet, you reserve yourself the right to submit them to an ordeal and potentially worse."

 

Yes, that's called life. One is responsible for ones actions, are we not? Are we not supposed to listen to what people say and hold them at their word? If I go up to a cop and tell him I'm going to shoot someone at the restauarant, do they have to wait until I do? Don't I have free speech?

 

Every single citizen is subject to the risk of an "ordeal" depending on our words, depending on our situation. If I discuss bombs at the airport, I am subject to an ordeal. If I threaten an elected official, I am subject to an ordeal.

 

There is any number of things that could make me subject to an ordeal, because civil society is a mix of people and situations and it is up to each of us to judge what we call humor and decide if it can be construed as threatening. If we wish to risk such speech in public, even if harmless, we also risk the attendant ordeal we have justified against ourselves by making comments others can construe as immediate harm.

 

As for the "potentially worse", I am not sure what is potentially worse, unless they are actually doing something dangerous to others in which case they *should* be subject to something worse.

 

"the issue is not whether you should use your sense of observation to spot trouble but whether you use incomplete information before you take counter action"

 

how much more information is this woman supposed to get? Hindsight is perfect, in real life it is considerably more messy. Waiting for complete information is harmless if the situation is harmless, considerably more dangerous if that completeness is turning out to show a real threat.

 

How is she supposed to get complete information? ...

"Excuse me sir, I think you are a terrorist who is about to slaughter unknown numbers of people, can you give me some background to make a decision"?

 

Is she supposed to do this? What are you suggesting completes information when she heard what she heard? As it turns out today, these harmless fellows told the police two or three stories, and the first one was admission that they *had* done this with the intention of messing with her.

 

Playing a joke is not illegal, they are not charged, but they have reaped what they set in motion. Go to the airport, excercise your free speech, and declare you have plastique in your shoes as a joke. And enjoy the process of the authorities getting complete information based on the little you volunteered.

 

"and how this reflect on little steadfastness in sustaining the values you claim to have (freedom, free speech, etc ...)."

 

These fellows excercised all these and maintain freedom to this day. Freedom does not imply freedom from responsibility from your actions, nor freedom from investigation if you threaten people with harm.

 

Your assertion of my lack of steadfastness does not take this into account.

 

"Why is it that we acknowledge our wrong w.r.t. Japanese Americans and appear to be ready to repeat them toward another ethnic group?"

 

Do we appear so? I see nothing about resettlement camps, nothing about mass deportations.

 

As for judging by appearances in leiu of complete information, I am curious how you conduct your personal behaviour downtown alone on a late night. Do you simply assume everyone you meet, no matter what their appearance, is just the same as everyone else, or excercise a modicum of caution? I suspect it's the latter, maybe not.

 

[ 09-19-2002, 04:12 PM: Message edited by: MtnGoat ]

[Dr_Flash_Amazing]

Now, we are dealing both with nation-states and independent organizations that want to KILL AMERICANS, ALL americans. Why? Because we are the big boys on the block. They feel that we have invaded the holy land. And they feel like Coca Cola, Levis, and MTV are replacing their culture.

 

So if they feel we're replacing their culture with a bunch of vapid, prefab, plastic American pseudoculture crap that is wholly counter to their values, couldn't we head off this whole issue by not shipping our shit into their countries?

 

God forbid companies like Coke and MTV should make a few million fewer dollars per year.

 

The US is not conduct a first strike into Iraq. How quickly does the public forget: The Barracks bombings in Saudi Arbia, the embassy bombings in Africa, the attack on the USS Cole, and 9/11. We have been under attack for the better part of 3 decades. I think we've wished for peace enough.

 

With the exception of 9/11, we'll probably get a higher Iraqi death toll with one bomb than the rest of those incidents combined. We've already gotten our body count's worth out of Afghanistan to rival the 9/11 death toll. Is this a just way of solving our beef with Iraq? Or anyone else?

 

Bah, this argument has gone around in circles about seventeen times already. God only knows why DFA is diving in for another round.

[allthumbs]

quote:

---

Originally posted by Dru:

So where is the 9/11 and Iraq connection? Seems to me if there was some strong evidence we would have heard about it by now?

---

come on Dru, don't be so naive. The democrats uttered the same words and the had so much evidence thrown at them they had to go hide. The evidence is everywhere.

[Dru]

quote:

---

Originally posted by trask:

quote:

---

Originally posted by Dru:

So where is the 9/11 and Iraq connection? Seems to me if there was some strong evidence we would have heard about it by now?

---

come on Dru, don't be so naive. The democrats uttered the same words and the had so much evidence thrown at them they had to go hide. The evidence is everywhere.

---

but you can't show me any of it.

 

I got to go study some Scripture now: Blunts 4:20

[allthumbs]

Nor would I bother. You've already made up your mind. Have fun man.

[Dru]

guess what comes after this post?

[Dru]

quote:

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Originally posted by Dru:

guess what comes after this post?

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stupid 60 second delay thingy

 

A NEW PAGE TOP

 

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[allthumbs]

"Bend your knees and touch your toes .... and I'll show you where the WILD GOOSE goes. "

 

[ 09-19-2002, 05:25 PM: Message edited by: trask ]

[MtnGoat]

"So if they feel we're replacing their culture with a bunch of vapid, prefab, plastic American pseudoculture crap that is wholly counter to their values, couldn't we head off this whole issue by not shipping our shit into their countries?"

 

They could head it off perfectly if they didn't want it. Since little of our advertising culture is permitted in these nations and the sales of jeans, coke, and other items continues unabated, it's clear the demand is driven by people simply deciding they like this stuff. I know it's popular and all to go on about vapid this and plastic that, but as long as people like it, that's all that matters.

 

I'll repeat one more time, the fact that the culture which supposedly tricks and bamboozles people here into buying these things is not present in many of these nations, the idea that media drives consumption instead of consumers deciding what they value, is shown for the crock that it is.

 

They are perfectly capable of deciding what is counter to their values and not buying it. What I see is someone *other* than these consumers *claiming* these products don't meet their personal values, which they may not, but they obviously do not speak for those purchasing them.

 

This is like the greens at the earth conference complaining that indigenous cultures are destroyed when they have access to electricity. That may be the case, but those people, being human, own the right to decide what they value more, their culture and dying in the mud at 30, or electricity and vapid plastic coke, not western moralists infatuated with the romance of tribalism they don't have to live in. And a "connection" to the earth that sounds great and all except it means subsistence farming, disease, malnutrition, oppression by tribal structure and all the rest.

 

"God forbid companies like Coke and MTV should make a few million fewer dollars per year."

 

If they do so because some third party injects itself into the free decisions between them and those who want their products, yes god forbid. Humans are not the tools of others who decide they should get to figure who wants what in civil exchange of goods by choice.

 

[ 09-19-2002, 04:34 PM: Message edited by: MtnGoat ]

[lizard_brain]

quote:

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Originally posted by vegetablebelay:

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[allthumbs]

Cool pictures guys!

 

"It is better to have lived one day as a lion, than one thousand days as a sheep."

 

Charles G. Clinger, Arlington National Cemetery

via J.B. Wood, Corydon, Kentucky

[j_b]

quote:

---

That's very clever. Shall we discuss wether you feel paying your taxes means *your* deeds shall be done by others as well? Which social goals do you support imposition of onto others with laws you pay for and oppression you support? I'm sure there's one or two.

---

this in turn is not very clever. Why don't you humor us and explain how say, the social impact of affirmative action (or whatever you prefer) is comparable to that of waging war?

 

quote:

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The difference is, everyone in the military now is a volunteer and they know when they join they are risking their lives, by choice, for the likes of us taxpayers.

---

are you sure that volunteerism is the only thing in play here? funny how our military is not representative of all socio-economic strata of society.

 

quote:

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If I go up to a cop and tell him I'm going to shoot someone at the restauarant, do they have to wait until I do? Don't I have free speech?

---

if you really think this is what they said you have problems with reading but it is more likely a nasty habit in hyperbolic thinking instead of step-by-step logic.

 

quote:

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nor freedom from investigation if you threaten people with harm

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again do you have evidence of this? you keep making my case about your lack of steadfastness in sustaining your proclaimed values

 

quote:

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Do you simply assume everyone you meet, no matter what their appearance, is just the same as everyone else, or excercise a modicum of caution?

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you mean calling the cops whenever a strange character approches me amounts to "a modicum of caution".

 

quote:

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I know it's popular and all to go on about vapid this and plastic that, but as long as people like it, that's all that matters

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yeah right, we all know kids want to go to McD because they like the food (sarcasm). That's also why they give away toys, have playrooms and market their product with a clown.

[Thinker]

[j_b]

quote:

---

Saddam is not overly religious. He wants only to stay in power, the US is a threat to that. He will use the fury of muslim extermist (who, by the way, are still pissed off about the crusades) to attack the US (that means YOU).

 

He has chemical, biological, and probablly nuclear weapons. Saddam will not overtly attack the US, he has no Navy or Air Force to speak of. But, if you think that a small group of people can't get inside the US, and relase a viral agent into a crowed place, you are niave.

---

so if I follow your argument, invading Iraq to take out Saddam (and killing 1000's of muslims in the process) will diminish the threat of having a small group of muslim extremists (who are still pissed off about the crusades) getting inside the US?

[Fence_Sitter]

if they are still pissed about the crusades...they really jjust need to smoke a hookah and chill the fuck out...sheesh....

[allthumbs]

hey, the chika in the cowgurl outfit has no hooters.

[Fence_Sitter]

she amkes up for i by carrying a colt!

 

actually i guess that is just a pump shoty...nevermind...

 

[ 09-19-2002, 07:15 PM: Message edited by: Fence Sitter ]

[Necronomicon]

How do you like my new, offensive avatar image? I fell out of George W. Pretzelchokes gaping mouth, along with a large lump of turd he was about to say.

[Necronomicon]

Part of a refutement of George W. Stainonhumanhistory's fervent war mongering, from a liberal publication . You GOP types, let me know if you need help with the big words...

 

1. Iraq is providing support for Al Qaeda and is a center for anti-American terrorism.

 

The Bush Administration has failed to produce credible evidence that the Iraqi regime has any links whatsoever with Al Qaeda. None of the September 11 hijackers were Iraqi, no major figure in Al Qaeda is Iraqi, nor has any part of Al Qaeda's money trail been traced to Iraq. Investigations by the FBI, the CIA and Czech intelligence have found no substance to rumors of a meeting in spring 2001 between one of the September 11 hijackers and an Iraqi intelligence operative in Prague. It is highly unlikely that the decidedly secular Baathist regime--which has savagely suppressed Islamists within Iraq--would be able to maintain close links with Osama bin Laden and his followers. Saudi Prince Turki bin Faisal, his country's former intelligence chief, has noted that bin Laden views Saddam Hussein "as an apostate, an infidel, or someone who is not worthy of being a fellow Muslim." In fact, bin Laden offered in 1990 to raise an army of thousands of mujahedeen fighters to liberate Kuwait from Iraqi occupation.

 

There have been credible reports of extremist Islamist groups operating in northern Iraq, but these are exclusively within Kurdish areas, which have been outside Baghdad's control since the end of the Gulf War. Iraq's past terrorist links are limited to such secular groups as the one led by Abu Nidal, a now largely defunct Palestinian faction opposed to Yasir Arafat's Palestine Liberation Organization. Ironically, at the height of Iraq's support of Abu Nidal in the early 1980s, Washington dropped Iraq from its list of terrorism-sponsoring countries so the United States could bolster Iraq's war effort against Iran. Baghdad was reinstated to the list only after the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990, even though US officials were unable to cite increased Iraqi ties to terrorism.

 

The State Department's own annual study, Patterns of Global Terrorism, could not list any serious act of international terrorism connected to the government of Iraq. A recent CIA report indicates that the Iraqis have been consciously avoiding any actions against the United States or its facilities abroad, presumably to deny Washington any excuse to engage in further military strikes against their country. The last clear example that American officials can cite of Iraqi-backed terrorism was an alleged plot by Iraqi agents to assassinate former President George Bush when he visited Kuwait in 1993. (In response, President Bill Clinton ordered the bombing of Baghdad, hitting an Iraqi intelligence headquarters as well as a nearby civilian neighborhood.)

 

An American invasion of Iraq would not only distract from the more immediate threat posed by Al Qaeda but would likely result in an anti-American backlash that would substantially reduce the level of cooperation from Islamic countries in tracking down and neutralizing the remaining Al Qaeda cells. Indeed, the struggle against terrorism is too important to be sabotaged by ideologues obsessed with settling old scores.