I can't stand Frackal, Liberala and Celebrity views anymore.

[lincoln]

bumping for some very good debating..

i cant make any sort of reasonable/educated input... but it seems like too many people are against what we're doing, if so, does that mean we should do the opposite?

War is pretty serious and there are real stakes involved here and for a lot of people it seems like its a pissing contest for bush and the country hes in charge of.

I am pretty ignorant with politics so flame me all you want, but I dont want my friends dying for what they believe is right if no one here agrees with what they're doing. It seems like these days if you're not in the army fighting , you cant have pride in your country, you have to nitpick at every little thing we do wrong. Keep in mind all of this debate is going on a web site devoted to bodybuilding and steroid information. the lifestyle most of us lead would be seen as vain and evil by all the people in the world that hate us. they havent got shit like we got, and all we seem to be doing is sitting on our computers with all our freedoms saying how bad we are.

I cant comment on anything thats going on really, except I see interviews of iraqi people who say we got what we deserved in the WTC bombings, like our country or not if you like watching innocent people die in an act of terrorism somethings not right. if we let that country go the way its going with the weapons they have or supposedly have, and the type of leader leading them, i cant see anything good coming from there.

sorry im simple minded when it comes to this shit, i have lots of love and pride for my country, and i enjoy the life im allowed to lead because of my being an america. Lots of issues concerning laws and such im opposed to but i respect as a free man i can leave this country and go elsewhere if i think i have it so bad.

sorry to ramble, thanks for any input you can lend

The fact that you would comment at all says a lot.

FYI - More people were against the first war with Iraq and at the point people in Kuwait were being slaughtered. They even tortured the animals, they destroyed and starved all the animals in the Kuwaity zoo. When I say tortured I mean starved burned and cut apart everything.

I wont even get into the pillaging of the humans.

 

[got big?]

FYI - More people were against the first war with Iraq and at the point people in Kuwait were being slaughtered. They even tortured the animals, they destroyed and starved all the animals in the Kuwaity zoo. When I say tortured I mean starved burned and cut apart everything.

I wont even get into the pillaging of the humans.

Yeah, I was only 11 when that war went on so theres still much I have to learn.

It seems like even if you hear a horrible truth like that, someones gonna step up and say "Its CNN propoganda started so we would support the country in what its doing..."

"Thats all i have to say about that"

Ill let you guys back to your debate, seems like any further discussion should go under a thread titled: "We're damned if we do we're damned if we dont"

 

[FreakMonster]

"I fucked your Mom"


I am with Lincoln on this.

As Bush Sr. would say, "Saddam is bad, baaad"

For those who are worried about Iraqi civillians being hurt from collateral damage- THEY ARE STARVING OVER THERE ANYWAY!!!!!

What does that leave us with?

SADDAM HUSSEIN

So we will go over there, kill him, buy the oil from the country of Iraq, and do the following:
-build an infrastructure of public services
-supply the over 50,000 empty food dispensaries with food
-establish an election system

What is the alternative?

If we do nothing, please paint a picture of the world 5 years from now with the most despotic leader since Adolf, only now with nukes.

And Freak Monster, Israel knocked out Iraq's last Nucular program in 1982. You can go ahead and thank them for that.

Your plan is fine and dandy but my question to you and all you war mongers out there is if this war is going to cost us $90 billion dollars how much is it going to cost to rebuild Iraq and who's going to pay for it? Also why is bush proposing a tax plan before an uncertain war?

I won't thank Israel for anything. The US denounced the 1981 Israeli attack on Iraq’s Osirak nuclear reactor, because Israel could not prove that there was an ‘instant, overwhelming’ necessity for action. Even Reagan condemning Israel for bombing the Iraqi nuclear reactor and so did I.

 

[musclebrains]

For you, Mr. Lincoln, to argue your contention about Eisenhower, who, I guess was just another pussy Republican after all, eh?

From the NY Times:

February 25, 2003
Hitler on the Nile
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF


here's so much chest-thumping, so many alarums about Iraqi menace, that I sometimes feel that the only patriotic thing to do is to invade Iraq and plow salt into its soil.

So it's useful to conjure a conservative war hero like Dwight Eisenhower and consider what he would do if he were president today. After his experience with Hitler, Ike would stand up to the lily-livered pussy-footing peaceniks and squish Saddam Hussein like a bug, right?

No, probably not.

Eisenhower, who led the European Allies to victory in World War II and was president from 1953 to 1961, faced a crisis in Egypt similar to today's and effectively chose containment rather than invasion. Likewise, even when faced with the threat of weapons of mass destruction, President John F. Kennedy chose to contain Cuba rather than invade it, and President Ronald Reagan chose to contain Libya rather than invade it. I hope we have the courage and discipline to emulate such restraint by Eisenhower, Kennedy and Reagan today and choose containment over war for Iraq.

In Ike's case, he faced a man perceived in the West as a far greater menace than Saddam is today — Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt.

Nasser had the potential to upset the globe in a way that Saddam doesn't. Nasser was idolized by the Arab masses and aggressively intervened abroad. He helped the Algerians fight the French, forged close ties with Russia and infiltrated terrorists into Israel. (Israel also ran terrorist operations in Egypt, blowing up American libraries and cultural targets in an attempt to tarnish Nasser.) When Nasser nationalized the Suez Canal in 1956, the West was sure that the canal would fall apart and disrupt global trade. Cairo Radio once boasted: "Millions of Arabs are . . . preparing to blow up all of America's interests, all of America's installations, and your entire existence, America."

Oh, the hawks will protest: Nasser didn't have weapons of mass destruction. Actually he did. Nasser's troops used mustard gas in Yemen.

European leaders were determined not to appease this "Hitler on the Nile." France, Israel and Britain conspired to invade Egypt and oust Nasser. "It was too risky to allow this adventurer, this miniature Hitler, to develop," Prime Minister Guy Mollet of France later told Nasser's biographer Jean Lacouture.

Ike was outraged and did to the Europeans what they are trying to do to us now: He forced the invaders to retreat and solve the crisis peacefully. "The United States is committed to a peaceful solution," he declared.

Thank God for Ike. If the hawks had been running the show then, we might still have troops in Egypt.

The hawks, to their credit, have a good recent record in their military forecasts. They correctly saw that the first gulf war and the Afghanistan invasion would go easily, while doves worried about quagmires. But the Nasser hysteria also reminds us that the hawks have a consistent track record of shrieking obsessively and seeing one minor country after another as global threats — in an eye-bulging, alarmist way that in retrospect looks hysterical.

In the 1950's and 1960's, the hawks magnified the threat from Vietnam and Cuba. In the 1980's they obsessed about Nicaragua (only a one-week bus ride from Texas!). None of these threats were imagined, but they were exaggerated.

Now the focus is on Saddam, and it's true that he has been brutal and threatening for 25 years — particularly in the 1980's when Don Rumsfeld was cozying up to him in Baghdad and the U.S. was shipping him seven strains of anthrax. The last 10 years have been the best behaved of Saddam's career (not saying much), and he's now 65, controlling an army only one-third its peak strength, and in the twilight of his menace.

The arguments against containment of Saddam were also made about Nasser: It will not work; Western credibility will vanish if we back off; if we do not invade now, we will have to fight him in a few years when he is stronger. And yet Nasser faded away, as Saddam is already fading.

So one can accept that Saddam is a threat and that Iraq would be far better off without him, and yet prefer the Eisenhower approach of containment. We might remember that Eisenhower warned Britain in 1956 that its insistence on ousting Nasser was leading to sweeping anti-British sentiment, and that while "initial military successes might be easy . . . the eventual price might become far too heavy."



Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

 

[Testosterone boy]

For you, Mr. Lincoln, to argue your contention about Eisenhower, who, I guess was just another pussy Republican after all, eh?

From the NY Times:

February 25, 2003
Hitler on the Nile
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF


here's so much chest-thumping, so many alarums about Iraqi menace, that I sometimes feel that the only patriotic thing to do is to invade Iraq and plow salt into its soil.

So it's useful to conjure a conservative war hero like Dwight Eisenhower and consider what he would do if he were president today. After his experience with Hitler, Ike would stand up to the lily-livered pussy-footing peaceniks and squish Saddam Hussein like a bug, right?

No, probably not.

Eisenhower, who led the European Allies to victory in World War II and was president from 1953 to 1961, faced a crisis in Egypt similar to today's and effectively chose containment rather than invasion. Likewise, even when faced with the threat of weapons of mass destruction, President John F. Kennedy chose to contain Cuba rather than invade it, and President Ronald Reagan chose to contain Libya rather than invade it. I hope we have the courage and discipline to emulate such restraint by Eisenhower, Kennedy and Reagan today and choose containment over war for Iraq.

In Ike's case, he faced a man perceived in the West as a far greater menace than Saddam is today — Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt.

Nasser had the potential to upset the globe in a way that Saddam doesn't. Nasser was idolized by the Arab masses and aggressively intervened abroad. He helped the Algerians fight the French, forged close ties with Russia and infiltrated terrorists into Israel. (Israel also ran terrorist operations in Egypt, blowing up American libraries and cultural targets in an attempt to tarnish Nasser.) When Nasser nationalized the Suez Canal in 1956, the West was sure that the canal would fall apart and disrupt global trade. Cairo Radio once boasted: "Millions of Arabs are . . . preparing to blow up all of America's interests, all of America's installations, and your entire existence, America."

Oh, the hawks will protest: Nasser didn't have weapons of mass destruction. Actually he did. Nasser's troops used mustard gas in Yemen.

European leaders were determined not to appease this "Hitler on the Nile." France, Israel and Britain conspired to invade Egypt and oust Nasser. "It was too risky to allow this adventurer, this miniature Hitler, to develop," Prime Minister Guy Mollet of France later told Nasser's biographer Jean Lacouture.

Ike was outraged and did to the Europeans what they are trying to do to us now: He forced the invaders to retreat and solve the crisis peacefully. "The United States is committed to a peaceful solution," he declared.

Thank God for Ike. If the hawks had been running the show then, we might still have troops in Egypt.

The hawks, to their credit, have a good recent record in their military forecasts. They correctly saw that the first gulf war and the Afghanistan invasion would go easily, while doves worried about quagmires. But the Nasser hysteria also reminds us that the hawks have a consistent track record of shrieking obsessively and seeing one minor country after another as global threats — in an eye-bulging, alarmist way that in retrospect looks hysterical.

In the 1950's and 1960's, the hawks magnified the threat from Vietnam and Cuba. In the 1980's they obsessed about Nicaragua (only a one-week bus ride from Texas!). None of these threats were imagined, but they were exaggerated.

Now the focus is on Saddam, and it's true that he has been brutal and threatening for 25 years — particularly in the 1980's when Don Rumsfeld was cozying up to him in Baghdad and the U.S. was shipping him seven strains of anthrax. The last 10 years have been the best behaved of Saddam's career (not saying much), and he's now 65, controlling an army only one-third its peak strength, and in the twilight of his menace.

The arguments against containment of Saddam were also made about Nasser: It will not work; Western credibility will vanish if we back off; if we do not invade now, we will have to fight him in a few years when he is stronger. And yet Nasser faded away, as Saddam is already fading.

So one can accept that Saddam is a threat and that Iraq would be far better off without him, and yet prefer the Eisenhower approach of containment. We might remember that Eisenhower warned Britain in 1956 that its insistence on ousting Nasser was leading to sweeping anti-British sentiment, and that while "initial military successes might be easy . . . the eventual price might become far too heavy."



Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

Funny how some of the greatest peaceniks have actually seen blood spilled in battle.