"I made this while stationed
in Kuwait for Op. Iraqi
Freedom, just to let you know
what your boared soldiers are
doing. Thanks tax payers!" /break./

i think its the song, knowing the setting, and the use of plastic toys when you know the real deal is right there on the base... you know what i mean... suck it!

Sorry to hear this, brother. As always, I hope you a safe return.

And, if you have the chance would you mind bombing the shit out of Kuwait? I don't think there's anyone there we would miss. Not anyone cool anyway.

If you are coming through Kuwait we should meet up and discuss possible drug and weapon runs acros... have a good time.

It's all an illusion. It's not showing me online from Kuwait. Your reality is false. Exit the matrix.

Honestly I don't know why its not showing me but it looks really neat otherwise.

A recommitment by the few that understand the Constitution is great, but it's likely the rest of these authorities probably don't know what purpose the Constitution serves and see it as an "obstacle" in their day-to-day jobs.

In a true revolt, perhaps only a third of the military would refuse to follow illegal orders.

Do they mean states as in "the fifty states" or do they mean states like Iraq and Afghanistan?

Tyrant Sadddam was asserting his sovereignty, not Iraq's. In addition to murdering his own people by the truckload, he also forfeited his right to any moral defense by invading Kuwait.

>> ^Offsajdh:
^So, because Mr.Galloway happens to have a different point of view about a conflict thousands of miles from Canadas shores, and happens to be quite skilled in making good points about why he has these beliefs through debates, the constructive solution to the problem is to ban him from ever entering the country, try to supress his oppinions in anyway possible, and add to that, threaten to monitor and investigate any Canadian who would have the audacity to want to listen to what the other side has to say about the issue?


He was kept out of Canada for providing material support to a terrorist organization. He donated 30 or 40 thousand dollars of his own money directly to the president of Hamas. That is enough under Canadian law to deny a person entry to the country.

As for your description of his 'opinions', you'd do well to better educate yourself on what he has both said and done.

He opposed both Gulf wars, in itself I'm fine with that whether I disagree or not, it's nothing special. Galloway goes much, much further though, and on Saddam's annexation of Kuwait Galloway stated that he himself believed Kuwait rightly was always a part of the Iraqi motherland. I find that far more despicable, but it still pales in comparison to even worse things he has said and done. He has declared that in spite of his opposition to both Gulf wars and statements regarding Kuwait, he still has always been the only one to consistently condemn Saddam, he just doesn't support a war to remove Saddam in spite of his own contempt for Saddam. That still is a consistent position, and aught to be respected as free speech and I do. The turn to it all is that Galloway went to Iraq to visit Saddam in person after the first gulf war and greeted him with the following speech:
"Sir, I salute your courage, your strength, your indefatigability. I can honestly say that of all the people I spoke to before coming here, hoping to meet with yourself, that every one of them wished my to express to you heartfelt support and fraternal greetings."
That speech turns all his prior statements on Iraq and Saddam into a giant charade and lie in which Galloway deliberately tried to defend Saddam not out of concern for the Iraqi people, but because of his support for Saddam himself. That is beyond my contempt. And lest you only do a surface search on Galloway's defense of that speech, he to this day defends it declaring that he was addressing the Iraqi people, and not Saddam himself. The video and words he spoke make it absolutely clear though that he was addressing Saddam himself. Unfortunately a great many people are fooled into discovering that everything he's said about Saddam is a lie because they believe the additional lies he's told to hide his first.

We been pumpin' Skinny for years in Kuwait (how hilarious is that?)

Especially this song http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=telSP8E6jsk

Oh god it's such a shit comic. They are were almost given out for free during a promotional period here in Kuwait. Usually you can find them in the coops and shit.

>> ^Ickster:
Absolutely. I can't believe that piece of shit actually said "how can we take the chance that Saddam might not strike again?" in the context of 9/11.

indeed, when did Saddam strike? That's perpetuating a very harmful myth that some retards still believe. Or did he mean Kuwait, that was quite some time ago.

In my country we mostly drink tea, the best stuff is actual tea leaves dried and shredded, then you get the paper ones, Lipton seems awfully popular in our country with added slice of lemon and sugar. Very nice.

In Kuwait, its mostly strong Turkish coffee. Which essentially cracks you out allowing you to stay up all night every easily.

I am a veteran of the Gulf War and I traveled extensively inside Iraq and Kuwait while I was active. My experience is that it is not the "horrors of war" that are mind boggling, but the fact that the horrors are so quickly forgotten and then made normal. This constantly ups the possibility of abuse, and ethics are thrown out the window. In fact it is true "freedom" from ethics, in a very scary sense. People become what they truly are, and it is usually not pretty.

While in Iraq, we played cards with dead Iraqis laying just a few meters away, guys placed water bottles on bodies where their heads used to be (just to be funny), and some even shot dogs for fun. I heard first hand stories of guys using 50 cals on surrendering, white flag waving, Iraqis. We saw little children with their legs blown off from cluster-bombs (note: children where all over the battlefield). Extreme stuff by any standard, but normal during a war. Even after seeing the "Highway of Death" (google it) the most scaring thing for me was the fact that so much effort could go towards pure destruction. Travel to Mars, eliminate world hunger, cure cancer, NO. Destroy the people and infrastructure of a captive nation. YES!

WAR = TERROR!

>> ^Pprt:
It's a good thing they have so many excellent universities and trained all those MBAs and engineers.

Actually Dubai has alot of good universities like Al Ghurair University, American University in Dubai, British University in Dubai, Canadian University of Dubai, Dubai Polytechnic and Middlesex University. Education is an important policy in most GCC states because they have very young populations.

Foreign labor however is used on either contractual basis from the West, or as large labor for construction from South East Asia. However when contracting work Dubai has been good in learning from their contractors and applying those lessons locally themselves unlike Kuwait where they just contract everything to foreigners.

I don't really have any negative feelings about you either way, I met alot of troops like you in Kuwait already, they were all pissed they weren't fighting a conventional military force under a very vague mission statement of bringing Freedom and Democracy. Its hard to do anything when you have no definitive objective or exit strategy. Surprisingly to me a lot of them fell in love with the place and went native, but that happened in Vietnam and other conflicts as well.

The drug problem in Afghanistan is economical, when the Taliban took over they banned the drug trade with their usual heavy hand tactics, when chaos began the drug trade began all again. Culturally alot of people cultivated it for medicinal use, which explains my own rather liberal views towards drugs. But now mostly its a cash crop, for most its a means of survival though there are farms that are solely created to feed back funds into the Taliban movement and other warring factions. The old "its okay to grow this because it only destroys the infidel" ignoring the large drug abuse levels in the local population, Pakistan, Uzbekistan and many other nations through which it makes its way.

In terms of imposing culture I think alot of US military and political planners, coming from the top down Bush belief that "democracy will simply flourish given the chance" implemented alot of very silly political and economical ideas. I remember reading about the imposition of democratic elections in Iraq in rural tribal areas, the US civies where then shocked to find that everyone voted by tribal alliances and background. It's again a failure to read the human terrain of the battlefield in the same way we had occur in Vietnam.

This aspect is covered very well in several chapters of Dexter Filkins The Forever War - http://www.amazon.com/Forever-War-Dexter-Filkins/dp/0307266397
Showing the disparity of understanding between coalition forces and the local population, I recommend it as unlike many books it stays politically neutral with no preaching on either side but rather an account of a journalist who went through Afghanistan and Iraq during the opening stages of the war.

In reply to this comment by smooman:
As per our last "discussion" you probably dont like me much but I think i just found some common ground =)

In reply to this comment by Farhad2000:

Given the last 8 years, I believe the Western world needs to engage the Arab world in dialog but it must respect the cultural background of the region and not just think that it can westernize ideas through brute force and seemingly endless criticism of it's religion.

I, for one, absolutely HATE the idea of westernizing Arab and Persian nations (namely Iraq and Trashgan....I mean Afghanistan). One of the platoons in my unit, while we were in Afghanistan, went out on a mission with the objective of demolishing a cannabis field. I was livid when I found out. These are a people who have been a nation far, far longer than we (the USA) and here we are telling them, forcing them even, to be like us while completely disregarding centuries of culture and history. Fuck that!

I pay 105.798 USD for a 2MB connection in Kuwait. That's actually cheap compared to the 250 USD I used to pay.

Right now it's all fucked up because they did a huge promotional event and signed on a billion more users without expanding their available bandwidth, so I can't play MMOs and I can't download my filthy Cambodian por... artsy foreign films ignored by the Oscars.

This why habibi in Kuwait valentines is simply haram, an extract from the local paper:

KUWAIT: The Umma Party political bloc slammed upcoming Valentine's Day and warned residents of celebrating it in Kuwait.

The bloc warned the media against portraying the day as a festive occasion which misleads many Muslims.

Umma part representatives said that Valentine's Day celebrations can be considered backward practices since they date back to thousands of centuries.

They questioned some people's inclination towards imitating the West and warned against blindly imitating western constructs.

Celebrating Valentine's Day violates Islamic code of conduct even though some Christians trace the tradition back to the ancient Romans.

Islam emphasizes that there is only one Almighty God that's Allah, therefore, the Party said that celebrating Valentine's Day violates Islamic way of life.