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And why would the USA do that when Israel could do it themselves and just as well?

Because of ideological reasons. Common sense is not a forte of the current government.

Carcass wrote:

And why would the USA do that when Israel could do it themselves and just as well?

Because of ideological reasons.

Or, just plain 'ol Ego reasons.

Many, many people think GW went into Iraq just to finish what his Dad started. So, there ya go.

Haha, yeah, remember when GWB said "after all, this is the man who tried to kill my dad"? Coming from him it sounds so innocent... "dad"

OH NO!!! WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE

WE'RE DOOOOOOMED

AAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH

WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE!!!!!

(thought I'd get that out of the way)

NeonVomit wrote:OH NO!!! WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE

WE'RE DOOOOOOMED

AAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH

WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE!!!!!

(thought I'd get that out of the way)

Actually, those are really bad news, if it's true. It says that they either have a capability to launch rockets to really great distances or they can launch spy satellites, which is just as bad.

Shurik wrote:

NeonVomit wrote:OH NO!!! WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE

WE'RE DOOOOOOMED

AAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH

WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE!!!!!

(thought I'd get that out of the way)

Actually, those are really bad news, if it's true. It says that they either have a capability to launch rockets to really great distances or they can launch spy satellites, which is just as bad.

It still doesn't change anything. If they try something, they'll be just as finished.

Didn't see this one coming.

"News Anaylsis: U.S. suddenly and puzzlingly begins talking to Iran and Syria

WASHINGTON: In the span of two weeks, the United States has agreed to high-level contacts with Iran and Syria and to start down the path toward formal diplomatic recognition of North Korea."

http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/03/01/news/diplo.php

Carcass wrote:Didn't see this one coming.

"News Anaylsis: U.S. suddenly and puzzlingly begins talking to Iran and Syria

WASHINGTON: In the span of two weeks, the United States has agreed to high-level contacts with Iran and Syria and to start down the path toward formal diplomatic recognition of North Korea."

http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/03/01/news/diplo.php

Neither did I, and I can't say that I'm exactly excited about it. It positively reeks of Munich; appeasement and capitulation.

Wanting to sit down&talk with these nations is a good sign, isn't it? At least for a while it may calm things down. Its a first step anyway. Or am I missing the point?

browneyedgirl wrote:Wanting to sit down&talk with these nations is a good sign, isn't it? At least for a while it may calm things down. Its a first step anyway. Or am I missing the point?

My point is that these regimes cannot be trusted. My Syrian friends here in the states have told me all sorts of horror stories about the current and former Assad regimes. They remain dedicated Muslims, but have said in no uncertain terms that Damascus is anything but moderate or trustworthy.

One of which was the massacre at Hama, in 1982. Tens of thousands were butchered by the Syrian army, although the exact body count is unknown.

As I'd mentioned before, my cousin is married to and his kids with a Persian (as many Iranian expatriates prefer to be referred as), that positively despises the regime in Tehran, as does the rest of his family here in the states.

None of the Persians or Syrians that I know are very friendly towards Israel, but the stories of the secret police and the regimes in their homelands are shocking.

Negotiations with despots bent on either the conquest or the destruction of their neighbors would rarely, if ever, bear any fruit. I mentioned the Munich accords as a classic case of those that talk peace publicly, while clandestinely are preparing for war.

These regimes hate the US, Israel, as well as the rest of the West. I know some people in France that are very worried about the upcoming elections, particularly with Mdm. Royal, who was just quoted as saying to the Muslim "youths" that torched tens of thousands of cars, "you are not part of the problem, but are part of the solution."

The French that I have spoken with were shocked by this sentiment. Hopefully, France is beginning to finally see the danger that the entire West is facing.


If you knew as many Arabs and Persians as I do, it might be a bit clearer for you. I do not hate all Arabs or Persians, as I have said many times before, in fact, what I have learned about them is that they some can actually be your best friend, while others can be your worst enemy.

I respect their devotion to family and faith, and the good work and study ethics of many, although I despise the recruiters of suicide bombers and insurgents. The radical imams in western countries should be either indefinitely detained, deported, or preferably shot. Otherwise, the West will have generation after generation of fanatics to deal with.

Recently, there was an imam (in of all places, the small town of Rome, Georgia) that was recently given a fairly lengthy prison sentence by the Feds due to the fact that he was using his mosque to collect and launder funds that went to Hamas.

Talking is always better than another war. Who wants another Iraq?

The current course is not get Iraq anywhere. Or if it is, it's to the worse. Getting to the table is the least bad alternative, I think. And it seems like the US Government seems to agree and taking heed of the Iraq Study Group's report.

This is not an easy pill to swallow. There are those who say the original plan was to invade and democratise Syria and Iran too.

I put my bet on that this was the plan. If Iraq would've turned out to be a walk in the park, US tanks would've rolled across the border to Iran.

Carcass wrote:The current course is not get Iraq anywhere. Or if it is, it's to the worse. Getting to the table is the least bad alternative, I think. And it seems like the US Government seems to agree and taking heed of the Iraq Study Group's report.

This is not an easy pill to swallow. There are those who say the original plan was to invade and democratise Syria and Iran too.

I put my bet on that this was the plan. If Iraq would've turned out to be a walk in the park, US tanks would've rolled across the border to Iran.

But again, Iran is an entirely different situation.

Iraq:
Area
438,317 km²
169,234 sq mi

Population
2006 estimate
26,783,383

Iran
Area
1,648,195 km²
636,372 sq mi

Population
2006 census
70,049,262

These figures are aside from any political or social differences (of which there are many) between the two countries.

@miditek, "Get some napalm on the tree line over there, I need some room to breathe!"

Perhaps the best film ever.

Carcass wrote:@miditek, "Get some napalm on the tree line over there, I need some room to breathe!"

Perhaps the best film ever.

Hehe- here's of my favorite lines from Col. Kilgore-

"Outstanding, Red Team.Get you a case of beer for that one!"

and not to mention, "Charlie don't surf!"

That first line is the best. The scene wouldn't be the same without the coffe mug, though.

Apocalypse Now takes absurdity to a whole new level. A brilliant film.

Carcass wrote:That first line is the best. The scene wouldn't be the same without the coffe mug, though.

Apocalypse Now takes absurdity to a whole new level. A brilliant film.

Exactly. No other film quite captures the bizzareness and the utter horror of man's inhumanity to man. As well as making the cutting suggestion that perhaps the reason Vietnam was lost, was due to the US not being brutal enough. It captures the surreality, pointlessness and pure, mind-numbing horror of war.

Horror has a face... and you must make a friend of horror. Horror and moral terror are your friends. If they are not then they are enemies to be feared. They are truly enemies.

I remember when I was with Special Forces. Seems a thousand centuries ago. We went into a camp to inoculate the children. We left the camp after we had inoculated the children for Polio, and this old man came running after us and he was crying. He couldn't see. We went back there and they had come and hacked off every inoculated arm. There they were in a pile. A pile of little arms. And I remember... I... I... I cried. I wept like some grandmother. I wanted to tear my teeth out. I didn't know what I wanted to do. And I want to remember it. I never want to forget it. I never want to forget.

And then I realized... like I was shot... like I was shot with a diamond... a diamond bullet right through my forehead. And I thought: My God... the genius of that. The genius. The will to do that. Perfect, genuine, complete, crystalline, pure. And then I realized they were stronger than we. Because they could stand that these were not monsters. These were men... trained cadres. These men who fought with their hearts, who had families, who had children, who were filled with love... but they had the strength... the strength... to do that. If I had ten divisions of those men our troubles here would be over very quickly. You have to have men who are moral... and at the same time who are able to utilize their primordial instincts to kill without feeling... without passion... without judgment... without judgment. Because it's judgment that defeats us.

A horrible, frighteningly true analysis of what war is.

For all its bizzareness, the film captures war far better than almost any other.

Apocalypse Now borrows quite a lot from Werner Herzog's classic Aguirre, The Wrath of God. Check it out.

I never saw this film as a Vietnam War film, to me this is more of a case study on what war is, what we will find if we dig deep in the bottom mud of our brains. Frightening, but at the same time extremely fascinating.

Carcass wrote:That first line is the best. The scene wouldn't be the same without the coffe mug, though.

Apocalypse Now takes absurdity to a whole new level. A brilliant film.

NeonVomit wrote:Exactly. No other film quite captures the bizzareness and the utter horror of man's inhumanity to man. As well as making the cutting suggestion that perhaps the reason Vietnam was lost, was due to the US not being brutal enough. It captures the surreality, pointlessness and pure, mind-numbing horror of war.

If North Vietnam could be considered that they obtained victory, it was a Pyhrric one at best, as the majority of the country was in a ruined state. General Giap (of the NVA) has said many times in interviews that his forces lacked the strength to dislodge the US from their country. He was a clever commander, and certainly a patriot as far as his own countrymen were concerned.

The battle that he won was on the televisions of many American families that saw report after report on the war; many of which were not true. I remember seeing some of these reports on the news when I was a little kid, and during the de-escalation phase of the war during the Nixon administration.

Add one part lying propagandists like Dan Rather and Walter Cronkite to spin a major US victory, such as the utter destruction of VC insurgents during Tet, into a political defeat, add one part gullible American public, and you have a cocktail called "disaster".


What the character of Colonel Kurtz hated the most was what he saw as a breakdown in discipline as well as incompetent leadership.

Did you see the Redux version of the film @NV? The French rubber plantation owner tells Captain Willard; "With your military power, my God, you could actually win this war, if your country wanted to!"

The successful prosecution of any war demands competent and despotic leadership, so there is a degree of truth to the US "not being brutal enough", but I'm convinced that it was much more complex than that single factor.

Johnson and McNamara micromanaged the war to the point to where company commanders had to ask battalion level commanders to contact regimental level commanders to call divisional level commanders, who had to contact the Corps level commanders, who in turn, often had to call the White House for permission to launch fire missions. (And whoever said that shit doesn't roll up hill, rather than shit rolling down hill?)

Johnson would also cherry pick strategic bombing targets in order to minimize damage to the North, with the hope of peace accords. (Nixon escalated the war with the Rolling Thunder campaigns in the North, which was what actually brought Hanoi back to the negotiations.)

A completely stupid situation, aggravated by the fact that the three major news networks were deeply involved in the spreading of propaganda and misinformation of their own.

How does Vietnam parallel to Iraq and/or Iran today? The leftist elements in the US and other governments and populaces are often sympathetic towards dictatorships, and frequently lack the will to confront them, and actually win.

For instance, dhimmicrats in Congress claim to "support the troops", yet at every opportunity claim that the same troops are being wasted, their efforts are for naught, that they are killers (Really? Soldiers killing? What a fucking concept!), and also attack their commander-in-chief at every opportunity. This is borderline treason, and the line gets crossed every day by the media, as well as celebrities with an increasing frequency!

I think the Iraq war is/was even more pointless than the Vietnam war. And I think the American public has finally grasped this.

The US could have won the Vienam war? Most probably. And gained what exactly for it?

What were they fighting for? 'Freedom'? It was simply a move in the game against the Red Scare. What would the soldiers on the ground feel like? It's one thing to defend your country against a direct threat, and another to be dying in the jungles of some godforsaken hellhole for a mere political ideal. Moreover, to have been drafted to die for an idea, and not joined on a voluntary basis. That is why morale and therefore discipline was so poor in the Vietnam war.

Faced against fighters like the ones Kurtz described, who would do the most horrible atrocious things for what they saw as defending their country against foreign intervention, how could someone who didn't even WANT to be in the military, let alone Vietnam, hope to compete?

It was a matter of will. Will, from the soldiers on the ground and will from the political leadership, and will from the population at home.

They say he who wants it most wins. The US didn't want victory as much as the VC did.

Overall, American strategy in the Vietnam war was appalling (and I'm not talking about military strategy, US forces convincingly won most direct engagements, and VC forces learned to avoid them at all costs). Many lessons were learned from that, but then the Iraq war happened.

Plenty of parallels with Iraq today, and that's reflected in dwindling recruitment numbers. The US supposedly intervened due to a WMD threat. None were found. Selling the 'to remove a brutal dictator' line is a joke, if that were even remotely true the US would have to be charging into many other countries to do the same 'good'. I imagine soldiers there are fed up with just being attacked, and being there when they feel they're not achieving anything. The first war against Saddam was different. He invaded a neighbouring country, and there was an international outcry. The US and other coalition forces knew they were going in to liberate Kuwait, and that objective was achieved with clarity and efficiancy. In my mind, they should've finished off the job there and then, with world opinion on their side and clear provocative action from Saddam.

Soldiers are not stupid, blind automons, much as people may imagine to the contrary. They're people who think and feel. They are bound to follow the orders they're given, but when they are not sure what they're even fighting for, there's a lot less motivation to even bother or care.

Actually, I heard a very interesting theory last night from a half Iraqi/half Iranian friend of mine. Her dad had been exiled from Iraq under Saddam, but after his fall he returned and started a radio station in Baghdad. She claims the US forces could easily sort out the situation if they wanted to, but don't, simply to have an excuse to maintain a presence in the region. She's been there quite a bit recently, and dislikes the Americans for not doing enough to clear up the mess and letting the status quo perpetuate. I didn't get that deep into it because it's a sensitive subject and the time and place were all wrong, but it is an interesting concept, and food for thought. I'll have another chat to her soon about it and let you know more.

And the whole 'press conspiracy anti-government propaganda' theory is a stretch. Or maybe it's like the OPEC conspiracy to destroy the US economy you mentioned?

Are you saying the press should blindly support the government no matter what, and anything other is treason? Rubbish. The press should attack, question, probe. A free, critical press is what keeps democracy alive and breathing, and the government and politicians should be terrified of the press and the people. If it's the other way round, then you have a dictatorship. Unless you have a population made up of complete sheep-like idiots, people will come to their own conclusions (and filter out the tabloid nonsense in the process).

Are you saying the American public are sheep?

Edit: Aaaaand the plot thickens: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle ... 446163.stm

A new sanctions package by the Security Council.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6457415.stm

Carcass wrote:A new sanctions package by the Security Council.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6457415.stm

Well, it may be OK for awhile, but don't sanctions usually just breed more resentment? Nobody likes to be controlled by an unseen force.
What happened to the discussions that were supposed to take place?

Yes, but let's hope the resentment of the people is directed towards Ahmadinejad.

Carcass wrote:Yes, but let's hope the resentment of the people is directed towards Ahmadinejad.

People are already tired of him. Candidates in recent local council elections linked to him lost badly. Most ordinary people are fed up of the grandstanding and sabre-rattling and consequential international alienation, as well as so much of the country's GDP going towards defence instead of schools, hospitals and infrastructure. Sort of a similar situation that Bush faces in the USA, paradoxically...

Exactly, this is why I'm positive about the sanctions.

Carcass wrote:Exactly, this is why I'm positive about the sanctions.

I'll check the BBC article out in just a minute. In the meantime, here's another one to check out.

The Coming War with Islam
frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=27385

The interviewer, a Dachau survivor, interviews an Israeli Arab who is a former history instructor.

miditek wrote:

Carcass wrote:Exactly, this is why I'm positive about the sanctions.

I'll check the BBC article out in just a minute. In the meantime, here's another one to check out.

The Coming War with Islam
frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=27385

The interviewer, a Dachau survivor, interviews an Israeli Arab who is a former history instructor.

(DISCLAIMER: I am very, very, VERY drunk while writing this, so please do NOT take offence miditek/shurik/anyone else who may disagree with me)


The fact that the article is entitled 'The Coming War With Islam' is purely islamophobic (and consequentially) xenophopic... even racist? Israelis are scared of anything muslim (perhaps rightfullyso) and take the misguided biblical view of the final battle and all that rubbish that that idiotic book has given to the world. I wish i could destroy every copy of that. There is much wisodm in it, but a far greater amount of utter total trash that stupid fools have taken as an excuse to exercise intolerance, hatred, greed, anger and death on the world, many of whom would rather just get along with their daily lives trying to find their own vision of happiness than follow some outdated archaic rubbish. Even more, the retards who FOLLOW, BLIDnDLY, like SHEEP, whatever some preacher/imam/rabbi/whatever says and thinks 'yeah,we're justified in KILLING ANOTHER HUMAN BEING' for a belief.

I hate religion, with a passion. Not just Christianity, not just Islam, not just Judaism, but all religion. It is the true root of all evil in this world.

I dislike Islam as much as I do every other religion (in fact, probably MORE reasons to dislike Islam than Christianity or Bhuddism or whatever) but not every muslim in the world is out to kill everyone, despite what you may want to believe. If the whole situation that is going on right now was going on 20 years ago, there would be articles entitled 'The Coming War With Communism'. In fact, ther probably WERE articles entitled that back them. Am i right!? of course Iam.

The 'good' people need an Enemy. It was Nazism, then it was Communism, now it's Islam. Simple.

People, open your eyes. We are all human beings. Throw off the shackles of politics, religion, despair, hate and greed.

Wake up. We can get along. Why? W?HY WHY?!?

WHY must there be hatered, death and fear in the world?! Why when we ARE ALL THE SAME?! We have the same hopes and dreams and needs and fears and joys. What is preventing us from achieving this?

1) Politics
2) Religion.

Nothing more. I will go to bed now.

Edit: miditek, I posed a number of questions in my post-before-last that you did not answer. I am curious, that's all.

Oh, God. I'm gonna "pop-another-top" right now.
Life is so serious&so heartbreaking. I'm just thankful I do live in USA. Thinking about what possibly folks in Mid-East&other countries live through every day breaks my heart! Seriously!
I'm not one who dwells in the possible, maybe end-of-days But, I think there are going to be very bad times in the future.
And, NV, don't be depressed---I am fucking drunk, too.
Being half-assed drunk is the only way most of us can seriously put up with reality&the world these days!!!!

Hi, I'm drunk too .

Off to bed with me...

I just saw something on the front page of my Webtv homepage from MSN&I don't know if I read it right.
It said North Korea might scrap its nuclear program, or something to that effect.
I got to get that link today&read that article.