before WW2, the US had many allies in the Middle East!

since WW2, the US has had only one ally in the Middle East, the other allies turned against the US!


before the Iraq war, the US was paying Saddam $30 a barrel for Oil from Iraq, and no US soliders were being killed.

since the US invasion of Iraq, the US has been paying on average $50 - $60 dollars a barrel of Oil, and it's cost over 2,000 soldiers lives, and 20,000 injured soliders.

many Americans still believe the Iraq war is a war for Oil!

amazing!

Everyone knows it was for freeing the Iraqi people because our government has a big heart.

If it wasn't for oil, and it wasnt for freeing the Iraqi people, and Iraq wasn't a threat to us then what was it for?

For all any one knows its possible that this administration really thought that they were going to march in and take over and there would be no strong resistance. In that case it was for oil.. they probably just really botched the plan now that oils expensive and people are dying.

I think it was just a show of force to tell possible terrorist nations that we don't fuck around.

Unfortunately we then got our asses kicked and the terrorists pointed and laughed and bombed London.

Not because we have a big heart, but for our own long term protection. The theory is that if we impose democracy on them, and introduce the idea of more personal freedom and rights, then eventually the region won't produce so many violent fanatics. It's going to take a long time, and it might fail miserably, but it is worth a try. It is unacceptable for that many people to be living in a 12th century mindset in 2005, and something has to be done about it.

And on an unrelated note, everytime I see Synikul's avatar i hear in my head "Where all the white women at?"

Edit: And I just noticed it says that above the picture, I'm slow.

Unfortunately, the people who won their elections are in favor of sharia law which is worse than what secular saddam had.

Attacking, killing, destroying seems like a very 12th century thing to me. And here we are trying to teach them how to get out of a 12th century mindset.

I believe it takes time for a culture to grow and bombing it doesn't act like a catalyst. It does the exact opposite. They were pushed further back ... The level of civilized living that they were just getting accustomed to was destroyed again. This will cause more fanatics with an excuse to avenge their friends and families.

Afghanistan is the result of the last war in that region. Russia is the reason for that mess and then later the US ditched it and pakistani fanatics took over driving it into the stone age. Hopefully, Iraq will have a better fate than what happened to Afghanistan.

the real question is why has that region produced so many anti-US 'fanatics'?


back in 1947, someone put a snake into the gorilla cage, and people since then have been calling the gorilla a 'fanatic', even when the snake bites the gorilla!

Not that I disagree, but there's more to this phrase than you know (or letting on that you know.) There's more than just political motives behind all of this. For many of the citizens, they'll never want to understand the changes that are going on -- politically, that is. It's seemingly (and in many ways, it is) on a hierarchal scale of power to them. In some ways, it can be summarized that their perception is a comparitive view of "Outsider vs. Homeland" or, Blut und Boden (blood and soil).

"Fanatics" is a strong word, don't you think? The disaster in New Orleans brought out the "fanatics" in many people for various reasons (psychological, emotional, etc, etc...all in all, dramatic/survival reasons)...and I should add that in a lot of middle eastern areas, their system of beliefs (you should know this garg, you're brown, hehe) is based on balanced reciprocity. Killing someone for the right of honour or 'rights of ownership' is completely normal to them. It's just blown way out of context by the ignorant media and so blindly digested by us outsiders (especially the so called 'intellects with opinions'...or 'intellects with an agenda'.. -- depends on how much power/authority you carry....)

Governments can institute change and suppress (or in 12th Century, a good culling was in order) the masses but they can't change the history (and in that, the spirit) of what the people are.

The recent "democratic" election that took place in the East was a turning point, sure, but it was still dubbed "crude democracy" and it's still pushed by these ethnocentric (uneducated) views fueled by the impatient and urgent need for progress and modernization.

You can't say that you're really surprised at all the turmoil and kinks that their government and people go through. It's a process like any other and what bothers me is the quick fixes that everyone tries to impose on the dilemma. Both internally and externally.

I really question the motives of people in all of this.

-- Excuse me while I go eat a cow.

EDIT:

I just saw this and really liked this. Culllllllture shock. Shazam.

When the United States was founded, it was legal to own another human being, and illegal for women to vote. Through a process driven by people having the freedom to speak their minds without being thrown in prison, those things were later corrected. It is hoped that after forcing them to adopt the same process, the problems they have will eventually be worked out.


Have you forgotten 9/11? Everything changed after that. We can't sit around and hope they change on their own, they need a kick in the right direction.

Things get broken in a war, sad but true, but then it was followed by the entire civilised world pouring money into those nations to restore what was there, and improve it in some ways.

The fanatics will be killed. That's why Rumsfeld called them "dead-enders".

Afghanistan had nowhere to go but up, and that's what is happening there. The reason there isn't much news coming out of that country is because there aren't too many bad things to report.

The white women are here...
When D&D geeks grow up

what a wonderfully vague analogy...

i love how your connection earlier was that: if the war was for oil, why's it more expensive?

oh, i dunno... maybe because Haliburton and friends are charging out the ass to harvest/refine/transport it?

honestly, what do you think the average salary of an Iraqi working those oilfields were pre-war... probably not much... then you've got all the graff going all the way to the top... and we ended upn with $30 a barrel (what the market would seem to bear).

now you've got 'mericans roughnecking and truckdriving that oil to us with hugh salaries and bonuses (and their only risking death every day to do it), probably with the same graff going all the way up to a NEW top (GWB: "well lookie here folks... we're gonna make eye-rack the 52nd state"... though, to be honest, Bush is probably just a figurehead for someone else)... and there are many valid or convienient excuses to jack up prices... like Hurricanes... or roadside bombs on pipelines... enough to make a conspiracy theorist cream his jeans... and we're at $60 bucks a barrel.

go figure.

some of what you say here I would not disagree with!

However, it dosn't make economic sense to spend $300 billion and countless numbers of soliders lives, and Iraq civilians lives to change the price of oil from $30 a barrel to $60 a barrel. Because, even if your'e trying to make a profit from this, youv'e not even broken even, have you?

certain private (halliburton) individuals may be stuffing their pockets, however......

the Iraqi war needed congress approval!

Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld are not congress!

Halliburton is not congress!

The board of Halliburton is not congress!

so why would congress sign a declaration of war to go to Iraq?

what's in it for congress?

Congress, like everybody else, thought Iraq had WMDs.

it's not Bush Dynasty money that's paying for the war... its mainly defecit spending now... promises upon promises to our debtors.

i doubt most of the legislative branch went as they did because they thought saddam was a threat... i think they went as they did because there was a big media blitz to MAKE saddam a threat, pushed by the administration. the common folk of america wanted more blood, or were ready to take more blood if given reason enough to...

Most senator's I've heard who switched sides said it was because of the WMD issue, you can believe what you'd like, however.

i always will...

This is why we did it.

America, fuck yeah!

That's better than the usual sermon on the moral high ground...

The more I have to drink, the better those sermons are.