What I learned from the debates

[Tydd]

WTF...

[Caohmin]

" And I'll even keep healing you poor, misinformed people "

You can heal? I did not know that.

[Lifesbane]

<3 tydd

jk bro

[Zutroy]

Bolldar's ignorance continues to astound, Bravo!

Let's hear the stuff about Cheney, Halliburton and the Saudis next please.

[Bolldar Bloodaxe]

Zutroy, your ignorance doesnt astound me at all. Nor does your comment.

Americas media has been anything but liberal or done a good job in this instance, the American idea of a liberal would be a conservative in most other countries. The job of the journalists is to find out the truth expose the lies etc and with there pussy footing around this is something that they have clearly not done in the US. BBC coverage and other international news media coverage has been far more impartial in there coverage of these events. There was a wealth of evidence available that Iraq wasn't a threat, and it came from a range of sources far more crediable than Bush and his cronies.

Ill admit that surveys are not always accurate, but in these cases they were both consistent over multiple instances and i believe reflected the views of the majority of people I met in my own country. They at least who for the most part didnt support the war and still dont. They have continued to reflect exactly the same biases on the same questions since the war began. In the case of the Spanish it was supposedly a major platform for the opposition to take power when they were voted in so I think they were fairly accurate in reflecting public opinion there also. In Blairs first election post his decision to go to war he was decisively defeated. Even though it was only a byelection it gave a good indication of public feeling. Polls are not always accurate of course but they are not so inaccurate as to reflect 70% opinion one way and for true feelings to run in the opposite direction. They are also the only tool we have to indicate public feeling outside of a referendum or election (I would suggest even an election blurs the issues since it is seldom a single issue which decides it though it may well be a significant factor) The UN in most of these countries and certainly in Australia enjoys a much better reputation than the USA does and the vast majority of people were willing to go only with UN.

Ross you make the point of  Iraq resisting the inspection teams, while it is true that they did this, the final rejection of inspection attempts in Gulf War 1 was actualy engineered to provide an excuse for attack. Basically, certain protocols had been agreed with regard to conducting inspections which meant that the inspection teams to certain sensitive areas were limited to specific numbers. While these had been adhered to the Iraqies had generally been co operative but under orders from Richard Butler (an Australian) who is widely believed to have been co operating with the US on this matter (unproveable I know but a number of the inspectors believed this to be the case) the whole inspection team arrived at one of these sensitive sites which caused the Iraqies to promptly close it to inspection. The inspectors on the ground knew this would happen as did Richard Butler, it was at this point that Butler pulled the inspection teams. All this is documented in several books by the inspectors including one by a republican ex marine inspector. In Gulf War II, Hans Blix has stated that the US leaned on him, conducted a smear campaign and did everything possible to discredit the inspeciton process and refused to listen to the wealth of evidence that there was little or no threat posed by WMD's. Blix who is very impartial and comes accross as extremely honest has stated this in interviews which ive seen. And he was right of course.

There is some evidence that Iraq did pay monies to the families of suicide bombers, specifically those targetting Isreal. There is no evidence that it was ever targetted at the USA and Iraq's opposition to the state of Isreal has been long and constant. The Isreali/Palestinian problems are an even bigger and more difficult to resolve problem then the Iraqi one and one with a lot of fault on both sides. Percieved and real support of Isreal by the US even when they are in the wrong has long been a slap in the face to most Arab nations.

"I'm guessing your reaction was the same when Clinton rained Tomahawks down on the empty Al-Qaeda camp, right?  I mean, after all, what could a bunch of backwoods extremists POSSIBLY do to the big, bad, U.S.A., right?  You may want to ask someone in NYC that question, or better yet I'll hook you up w/ my cousin who had to be helped out of the Pentagon after the offices just down the hall from him exploded.  I mean, there's no way that anyone could strike at the heart of the world's most fearsome military, right?"

No, Im no admirer of Clinton actually, while he was undoubtably more charming and intelligent than Bush his record on many different matters was bad though his abilities to deal with foreign relations shines by comparision with Bush. Most of Clintons reforms were enacted to come into being at the end of his term or when Bush was in power. 

If the US knew positively that there were terrorists that were harbouring ill intentions to the US then I would support strikes against them only in circumstances where the goverment of the country they lived in refused to arrest them themselves or was seen to be actively supporting them. None of that was true in Iraq. The only real terrorists in Iraq were Kurds fighting for a free Kurdistan, now there is a real bucket of worms since neither Iraq, Iran, Turkey or Russia want it to exist. My brother in law is btw from New York and I had friends there, what I did notice is that no one pretty much in America asked why they attacked you there (other than a few students of the middle east who already had a good idea why) and a breif study of US actions in the middle east gives you a lot of the reasons.

But none of that gave the US any reason to attack Iraq, terrorism is constantly brought up by apologists for Bushs actions but the truth is and this has been stated by the US administration for quite some time that there is no evidence that Iraq had anything what so ever to do with anything that happened in NY. Most of those people were Saudis so why not attack them? Killing in excess of 35,000 innocent Iraqis is actually helping foster terrorism not suppress it, im sure that figure is much higher by now. Back when  US casualties were about 650 dead over 13,000 wounded US troops had passed through the major German evacuation hospital and many with very serious injuries, I find it strange that this figure is seldom mentioned in the US media as they too are victims of Bush's misguided policies.

Just quickly on the Kerry, Bush information thing, Intelligence officials at least at the levels below the director have never agreed with what Bush is saying, Bush tends to take a rumour and blow it out of all proportion to make a point. Information was widely available on all these matters but unfortunately one thing Bush is good at is pounding disjointed ideas such as Al Queada, WMDs and 9/11 to the point that people begin to associate them.

Ive got a question, a little while back I watched a news telecast with a Palestinian reporter who was probably about 50 yards from a burning and abandoned Bradley IFV.  A large crowd of unarmed civilians (prob somewhere around 100 people) was standing around the burning vehicle and I think prob some of them were trying to loot gear off it thought the majority were just watching. As the reporter turned to face the crowd behind him there was an explosion which killed the reporter and wounded the Reuters cameraman splattering blood over his lens. A large proportion of the crowd had to have been killed and wounded and it was a pretty horrific bit of viewing. An American apache helicopter had fired into the crowd to stop them looting, later claiming that they were shot at which is pure BS since none of these people were armed and plainly none were shooting. What im interested in is was that ever reported??? It ran here as headline news but when i asked Emme if she had seen it she heard nothing on the news there. This has nothing to do with this discussion btw im just interested if it was shown there as Emmes news was undestandably pre occupied with hurricanes.

Well my American bride to be is calling me off my soap box so I had better go.

BTW I dont hate Americans as someone in guild speak said a moment ago, lol im marrying one and my brother in law is one and Jewish to boot and I have a lot of dear friends there. But I sure as hell dont agree with what your country is doing.

(Edited by Bolldar Bloodaxe at 12:38 am on Oct. 5, 2004)

[Lifesbane]

be decent guys.

i personally dont think anything ignorant has been said here. this has been a friendly discussion, coming from people with many differant oppinions, and i think its been a constructive forum of idea exchange. Boldar's thoughts arent any less legitimate then anyone else's, especially considering he has a very differant prospective then most of us (not being from the US).

being extremely liberal (i used agrue anarchistic and anarcho-syndicalistic views against a couple of my more conservative teachers in school whenever political descussions came up for example...we're talking liberal here ) i get frustrated at people's more conservative ideas a lot. dont have to agree with them, dont even have to respec their ideas, but being willing to voice your oppinion is something worth respecting.

dont mean to lecture, just saying what i think. this is an open forum for us vengies, lets keep it a positive descussion, if we want arguments there are certainly other places we could go.

$.02

(Edited by Lifesbane at 9:50 pm on Oct. 4, 2004)

[Amberryl]

Quote: from Rosslyn on 3:08 pm on Oct. 4, 2004
Maybe I can give you enough free crap salvage loot later to persuade you to change it to "At least my title isn't The Meggenizer"

fuckin' a ---

I agree with Ross on a lot of the issues here, and i'm trying to be as much of the middle man as possible- i think everyone in this election is a middle man because its not about republican/democrat anymore but more of which president do you think would do a worse job.

Everyone at my EXTREMLY liberal school thinks i'm crazy that i'm still undecided who to vote for this election, but i honestly think this is a tough election for me not to mention this is my first election ever- btw, a vote for nader isn't a vote for bush, not in massachusetts at least so don't even bother me about that-

lemme just say that one thing i learned from the debates is not only is john kerry gonna increase our taxes, but he's gonna spend them on an unneccesary war with north korea too

[Bolldar Bloodaxe]

I didnt actually watch the debate though i did watch an analysis of it which was fairly comprehensive and did cover all the major points made. I didnt see anything about attacking North Korea though. Nor was it commented on by any of the analysts which im sure it would have been had it been said so wondering what gave you that idea? My apologies if he did say that btw.

I got to admit it boggles my imagination that anyone who knew anything about Bush would vote for him but ive read a lot about what he has and hasnt done and the plethora of lies and half truths he has uttered. I know im gonna do my best to kick my ass of a prime minister out of office for supporting him though.

[Axecleaver]

I missed the part where Kerry said he was going to raise taxes more than Bush. It seems to me that Republicans are the fiscally irresponsible ones who give huge tax breaks to the wealthy and corp. America at the expense of the middle and working class.

When Bush talks about tax cuts, it's not for people like you and I. It's an aggregate amount that goes directly to the people making $200k or more, which (the theory goes) will then be "reinvested in America" and "trickle down" to us regular folk.

To me Iraq isn't even the biggest issue in this election. I'm more interested in voting out Bush due to:

* religiously motivated opposition to stem cell research. Other countries will fund this but it's retarded that we aren't doing it too.
* Poor foreign policy. ffs when did the republicans become the "we suck at foreign policy" team? If Nixon were running this year, I'd vote for him.
* Poor domestic economic policies. I don't agree the president has no control over the economy. NAFTA, Cuban embargo, oil prices for example.
* Only president to lose jobs during his administration since... Johnson was it? It was pretty frickin long ago.
* Big one - supreme court - you do not want a Scalia court -- really you don't, unless you are truly right of pretty much everything. You want a liberal court, a fiscally conservative Senate and a diplomatic executive. FFS this isn't rocket science. Take a look at the liberal justices that will have to hang on another 4 years if Bush is elected -- that's bad news right there.
* DMCA
* Patriot Act. Ludicrous abuse of prevailing fear to push Orwellian reforms.

[Bolldar Bloodaxe]

Isn't Amber rich tho

Of course domestic issues dont matter as much to me but I know Bush certainly has got one of the biggest deficits on record. And I know more and more Americans who seem to be out of work these days or finding it hard to get work. With regard to the environment Bush is a bit of a disaster also thought strangely I understand his ranch if a model of environmentally friendly design.

I would pretty much agree with most of what you said there Axe in particular the supreme court which has handed down some pretty dreadful decisions none more so than Florida

[Nari]

I recall reading an article about that US Army vehicle that was destroyed Boll.  It was posted on a new site that gathers from multiple sources.  I don't, however, remember seeing it on CNN or any major US new channel.

[Sodom]

And when did taxes become such a big deal? Speaking as a member of the bourgeois, I have never worried about taxes in my life. Not one night of lost sleep. If I ever looked at my paycheck and said "I can't pay my bills now that they've taken this money out of my paycheck!", you know what I would do? I would get a better job. If your financial responsibilities require you to pay out more per month than you bring in, there are probably better people to blame than the government.

[Bolldar Bloodaxe]

Yeah i got the impression it wasnt from Emme, this was pretty horrific stuff and the people killed were clearly not doing anything warranting having a missile lobbed into there midst nor were they armed as the US army claimed. My general impression has been that US media while perhaps not censored officially has not been showing America the full story either.

I agree with you Sodom, you get what you pay for and a lot of the US problems are to do with a passion for low taxes. We all like that of course but you get what you pay for.

I kind of feel sorry for you guys since it seems to me that your government is pretty much bought by major companies, you can pretty much identify which senator represents which company, so the people dont seem to be getting much representation at all Your pharmateuticals are a good example i think, something they are trying to do to us in Australia though we are resisting it.

(Edited by Bolldar Bloodaxe at 6:49 am on Oct. 5, 2004)

[Bolldar Bloodaxe]

Im posting a lot to look at my avatar

[Sodom]

I have to laugh when the U.S. has to import U.S.-produced pharmacuticals from Canada just to get a price break. The fact that the government is looking at this as a solution to "Health Care Reform," as opposed to attempting to regulate the pharmacutical industry, is pure absurdist comedy.