Tags for this video have been changed from 'george bush, afghanistan, mass grave' to 'george bush, afghanistan, mass grave, dasht e leili' - edited by xxovercastxx

oh hang on let me preempt and diffuse QM.. he'll like this:

Let me remind you, poopsy, you're the little gremlin who called me out FIRST, so you reap what you sow.

I don't disavow your enthusiasm. The SSD remark was shorthand to suggest that there is no technology or amount of "truth", education, whatever to create a socialist utopia, which will never be real until AI-machines take over, and at which point life won't be worth living anyway.

Transparency is no ultimate solution. It just means we can all look through the bay window of the U.S. Treasury and watch Obamarx and Geithner sneak around wearing black eyemasks as they loot the place. There is already tons of information about this lawless Administration and the incompetence and waste of government at all levels, but without a real media in place to challenge them, it makes little difference. The truth never set anyone free.

Liberty is what allows the toleration of fools, especially the ignorant-of-history, power-hungry fools running the schools, government and Hollywood. The very free market that created all this wealth they want to redistribute, they're not grateful for that, nor for the right to spout off at people too polite to kill them, but as the Big Government noose tightens, these tyrants are going to find out how much Revolution there is in real patriots.

If liberty is in its death throes, moonbats will soon find themselves flopping into mass graves right behind it. The commies always kill the so-called smartest first, teachers and intellectuals and other "big thinkers" are the first to go. Ever read 1984? In some ways, the quarter-aged of this generation are very much like Syme, an over-educated Big Bro Believer who delighted in thinking about the future of Thoughtcrime. His very intelligence made him a target and he got disappeared.

Tubes, you're desperate to have me banned? You don't even see the irony in that: a peace-loving, freedom-liking liberal like yourself demanding voices of opposition be silenced? Is it you're not used to being challenged or having your dogma challenged? I don't fear you or your ideas, I've outgrown them. Don't you know the internets is where everyone doesn't agree with you all the time?

Attacking me on a personal level reveals your immaturity. Either you'll outgrow it or you'll become another Noam Chumpsky, that charming fascist fraud.

--------------------

I'm fed-up with these America-hating pissants. Not their beloved fey, patty ass, NPR, reality-challenged Wimpmerican dream, the REAL America where not everyone has a happy ending and life is risk, and people own and shoot guns, smoke, drink and eat junk food. The Libertarians are right 90% of the time. They're not for anarchy, they're for CHOICE, and they reasonably accept that there are some people who are too stupid to live and no matter what you do FOR them, no matter how many government programs you create, they're just dumb and will kill themselves with bad decisions. Just like they do now in Obamarx' socialist prison.

There are also lots of intelligent people who ruin their lives with ONE bad decision, but that's what FREEDOM is: the freedom to fail and to fuck up. Socialists want a safe, predictable world (that they run). Maybe that works for Europe (dying and turning Muslim) but not for the USA.

The 2008 (P)resident IMO is an affirmative action asshole who sneaks smokes, kisses the asses of tyrants and complains about the price of arugula to his Teleprompter. I'm ashamed of the United States being led by these cowardly pukes. They're not America, they're some marxist kollij professor's wet dream of a sterile, safe America that does nothing, is nothing. There are no pioneers, explorers, daredevils in this bunch. This gang of sniveling bureaucrats would never have the guts to board the Mayflower or drive a covered wagon out West. Fuck 'em.

The libertarian and his cousin the conservative are NOT anarchists. They demand what the Constitution created: a limited government that is answerable to its own laws and to the people, and a federal government with power checked by the power of the States. Perfection doesn't exist.

Enjoy your safe, timid and guaranteed brief time running the show, moonbats. Your America is not the real America.

I'll be waiting for a reboot of the present unsustainable Lie that has replaced liberty. The Russians could only bear 80 years of bullshit. May America put up with only 3 more.

>> ^rougy:
>> ^bcglorf:
The Middle East has nearly 60% of the planet's oil reserves. If none of them have privatized their oil, wouldn't that make the privatized oil companies the underdogs?
Oh, nevermind, that just detracts from the simple answers people seem to want.
Iraq has oil. America is a corporation run by oil companies. America invaded Iraq to steal it's oil. Thank goodness it's that simple and no more thinking or complexity needs to be considered. baa, baa, baa.
No, we did it to save the 6.5 million Kurds out of the kindness of our hearts. And we only had to kill a million Iraqi's and turn another three million into refugees to do it.
And now we're only telling Iraq to either sign very long term leases with private oil companies who expect over ten times the going rate for extracting that oil, or we won't give them the $120 billion dollars we promised them to help rebuild their country after we bombed it back to the stone ages.
Oil companies the underdogs? Keep clutching at straws you racist war monger.



Whats ironic is that you and others who make comments like this seem not to have cared a whit about what was happening to Iraqis and Kurds whilst under Saddam. Aside from the issue of "stealing" oil or whatever the case may be I challenge anyone to say that Iraqis and Kurds lived great lives under Saddam. Americans went in there stirred the Hornets nest and now are trying to make lemonade out of lemons. If it works (still a long road) then it will be one of the greatest things ever but if it doesnt (with the help of people who are blinded by their indignance) then it will be a disaster. Point is....no saddam is good stuff. But perhaps people like you are removed and immersed enough in your pacifist dreamland to not have cared about the wives, sisters and daughters who were regularly stolen and raped while their siginficant others were fed feet first into wood-chipers by Saddams sons. I suppose the gasing of thousands of Kurds was awesome too so long as we weren't "stealing" oil. As long as its not close to home right? Maybe Neville Chamberlain was right in how he handled Hitler and to follow that example we should have just let Saddam take Kuwait as well.

Well I guess Americans could have just sanctioned Saddam into compliance. Seems to work great so long as the UN gets involved right? Maybe he would have slowed down with the mass graves, the torturing of families and other potential non-compliants and the utilization of what was the 3rd largest army in the world. I agree with your thought-process....as long as the slaughtering of thousands is kept in house and perpetrated by the local tyrant then we should never...under any circumstances....interfere. The loss of lives is never acceptable especially when made in the name of other less fortunate people. And asking for any sort of compesation in return, in whatever form, is always a big no-no as well.

>> ^moodonia:
This is pretty much the last nail in the present Irish governments coffin, the present bunch (Fianna Fail as mentioned in the video) pushed through a sweet deal with the religous orders which left those responsible for torture, rape, slavery, suicide, neglect and I dont doubt, murder (theres a hell of a lot of anonymous mass graves linked to these places), paying only €128 million in compensation.
The tax payer however has to pay the other € BILLION and counting.
To put that in context, some nuns recently sold a single property in Dublin and got €105 million for it.
-Edit-
I cant recommend this video enough, its Christine Buckley speaking about her life in Goldenbridge Orphanage in Dublin:
http://www.tv3.ie/shows.php?request=nightlynew
swithvincentbrowne&tv3_preview=&video=9205
I cant find an embeddable version, but its very powerful, be warned.


I just finished watching this video... Near the end a woman who was abused as a child at an institution said they had a dog that would run around biting off pieces of the kids legs and a monkey that would ride around on someone's shoulders masturbating while they ate rabbit feces.

... what the hell!

Thanks very much for the info. I hadn't heard about this deal, but found some interesting articles about it in the Irish Times amongst others. Is it true that the bloke who pushed it, the former Minister of Education, did it on his very last day in office? Deeply troubling, if you ask me.

I'd gladly welcome any background articles about these and related religious issues in Ireland, if you have any at hand.

>> ^moodonia:
This is pretty much the last nail in the present Irish governments coffin, the present bunch (Fianna Fail as mentioned in the video) pushed through a sweet deal with the religous orders which left those responsible for torture, rape, slavery, suicide, neglect and I dont doubt, murder (theres a hell of a lot of anonymous mass graves linked to these places), paying only €128 million in compensation.
The tax payer however has to pay the other € BILLION and counting.

This is pretty much the last nail in the present Irish governments coffin, the present bunch (Fianna Fail as mentioned in the video) pushed through a sweet deal with the religous orders which left those responsible for torture, rape, slavery, suicide, neglect and I dont doubt, murder (theres a hell of a lot of anonymous mass graves linked to these places), paying only €128 million in compensation.

The tax payer however has to pay the other € BILLION and counting.

To put that in context, some nuns recently sold a single property in Dublin and got €105 million for it.

-Edit-

I cant recommend this video enough, its Christine Buckley speaking about her life in Goldenbridge Orphanage in Dublin:
http://www.tv3.ie/shows.php?request=nightlynewswithvincentbrowne&tv3_preview=&video=9205

I cant find an embeddable version, but its very powerful, be warned.

I just can't agree with you there. Because if it wasn't the US we wouldn't be having this line of debate, say Russia attacked Afghanistan in 2001 after having fought with it in 1970s claiming to remove the oppressive Taliban government.

Everyone would be against that.


That's a fair enough point. If you want to take the position that there is no difference to be expected between how America would try and rebuild Afghanistan and how Russia would do the same, you are absolutely right.

Personally, I'm convinced that NATO will take the concerns of the Afghan people a lot more seriously than the Russians would. I don't think that's an entirely ridiculous notion either, it seems pretty fair to say that human rights are valued greater by the American and British governments than by Russia, even if only because their citizens demand it. I don't think that refusing to take any sides because everyone's hands are dirty is a great approach anymore.

An American administration that allowed the concentration camps and mass graves that Saddam used to be built would be run out of office by the American public. Regardless of America's many crimes, they stop short of Saddam's and I'm glad to trade one for the other even while I try and push for more from America as well.

Saddam never had concentration camps. I have no idea where exactly you pulled that one from.


I got the idea from many sources, two good sources are Human Rights Watch and this documentary I linked earlier that nobody can be bothered to watch. Both have countless first hand sources and accounts of the concentration camps from both survivors and captured official Iraqi government documents. The mass graves existed too, and they are further proven because they still exist and are being dug up where they are able to be found, many are over 2 decades old though in the middle of a lot of desert.


I understand what you are trying to say, and I would have agreed with you had this war been carried out with international support, with a realistic time table instead of pushing invasion as soon as possible

And I would agree with you about waiting for international support, but I dare say I don't believe it was EVER coming. After Saddam's genocide of the Kurds the world couldn't agree on removing him(even the Americans<spits>), even after he invaded Kuwait the world could only manage enough agreement to remove him from Kuwait. I'm sorry, but I am convinced waiting for international agreement absolutely meant never doing anything.

>> ^rougy:
It's bullshit saying that the world is better off without Saddam.
Total fucking bullshit.
He was a paper tiger by the time we invaded, and his crimes pale in comparison to what Bushco has done to that country.
You're an apologist.
You will always sugar coat our invasion to suit your contrived conclusions.


Then I must be ignorant of the crimes that Bushco has done that make the following crimes described by Human Rights Watch pale by comparison:

With only minor variations ... the standard pattern for sorting new arrivals [at Topzawa was as follows]. Men and women were segregated on the spot as soon as the trucks had rolled to a halt in the base's large central courtyard or parade ground. The process was brutal ... A little later, the men were further divided by age, small children were kept with their mothers, and the elderly and infirm were shunted off to separate quarters. Men and teenage boys considered to be of an age to use a weapon were herded together. Roughly speaking, this meant males of between fifteen and fifty, but there was no rigorous check of identity documents, and strict chronological age seems to have been less of a criterion than size and appearance. A strapping twelve-year-old might fail to make the cut; an undersized sixteen-year-old might be told to remain with his female relatives. ... It was then time to process the younger males. They were split into smaller groups. ... Once duly registered, the prisoners were hustled into large rooms, or halls, each filled with the residents of a single area. ... Although the conditions at Topzawa were appalling for everyone, the most grossly overcrowded quarter seem to have been those where the male detainees were held. ... For the men, beatings were routine.

After a few days in the camp, without a single known exception, the men were sent out and executed:

Some groups of prisoners were lined up, shot from the front, and dragged into predug mass graves; others were made to lie down in pairs, sardine-style, next to mounds of fresh corpses, before being killed; still others were tied together, made to stand on the lip of the pit, and shot in the back so that they would fall forward into it -- a method that was presumably more efficient from the point of view of the killers. Bulldozers then pushed earth or sand loosely over the heaps of corpses. Some of the grave sites contained dozens of separate pits and obviously contained the bodies of millions of victims. (Iraq's Crime of Genocide, p. 12.)


If you'd like to enlighten me on what exactly it is Bush has done since the invasion that matches that please tell me, I'd hate to be defending something that horrific.

>> ^mentality:
>> ^bcglorf:
Actually, no. If the British and Americans weren't there, Saddam(not Iraqi's) would be killing Kurds and Shia quicker than you can say genocide. Yeah, he might off some Al-Qaeda chaps at the same time too, but I consider the current situation the lesser evil myself. Go read about Saddam's Al-Anfal campaign before pining for the days that Saddam 'kept the peace'.

Lesser evil my ass considering the death toll of the iraqi war is higher than the deaths caused by Saddam during his entire reign.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Iraq_War
Bush has the blood of a million Iraqis and thousands of American soldiers on his hands. The road to hell is paved with good intentions. Don't condone and make excuses for what he has done.


I think Bush,Cheney and Rumsfeld should all be impeached and tried for war crimes for ever defending the use of torture. I feel no need nor inclination to defend them. I do feel a strong need to condemn Saddam and the even more horrific evil he inflicted on the world. If you want to compare body counts for Saddam you should include the Iran/Iraq war, Kuwait invasion, and an unknown number of internally executed Iraqi's buried in mass graves that are still being dug up. You're blissful ignorance of that count wouldn't be offensive if you weren't so keen to stay informed about the costs of ending that nightmare.

Go look at Saddam's Al-Anfal Campaign before talking about how much 'worse' Iraq is today. You might be surprised just how nice the today's horror show in Iraq is compared to yesterday's. Be warned though, it's hard to watch the stories about something that makes 100,000 casualties the lesser evil.

>> ^rougy:
>> ^bcglorf:
...too bad the entire lead up to the invasion was full of statements that contradicted or ignored all of this.

Which is a very sanitized way of saying that he lied to the American public and tricked them into starting a war that they didn't need, couldn't afford, and can never win.


It doesn't need to be sanitized, and your right and I'd even agree. I'd also still say in spite of all that, Saddam was a great enough evil the world is better off as a whole for the war having taken place. I don't care if it made America any better/worse off, I'm just glad the world has one less sadistic, genocidal dictator terrorizing those under him. As bad as Iraq looks today, it is an improvement on the concentration camps and mass graves that characterized the Saddam-era.

Killing over 1,000,000 Iraqi civilians and creating 3,000,000 Iraqi refugees does not really seem like a fair trade for saving "Kurdistan" which America never meant to do in the first place and still doesn't really give a fuck about.


I'd like to see the source for your numbers, the Iraqi Ministry of Health estimates less than 200-300 thousand violence related deaths since the war began. Even the Lancet survey covering ALL deaths since the invasion estimates under 700,000 deaths.


For starters, lets assume your numbers are bang on. 3 million refugees since the war began is an improvement, as the entire Kurdish population were fighting for their lives to maintain even a refugee like lifestyle. That's 4-6 million right there alone. So the refugee situation in Iraq is better now than under Saddam.

1 million civilian deaths simply has to include ALL deaths and is the highest estimate that anyone has made. If you want to assume the highest estimates are right, at least 1.3 million were killed under Saddam. The numbers of course don't tell the whole story. The deaths attributed to Saddam are of direct executions, many of them buried in mass graves that are still being dug up. From the Lancet study(the highest reported deaths I can find at 700-800 thousand) includes "the number of excess deaths caused by the occupation, both direct (combatants plus non-combatants) and indirect (due to increased lawlessness, degraded infrastructure, poor healthcare, etc.)." I really needn't point out the importance that difference should make.

Lastly, the majority of deaths in Iraq now are a direct result of the sectarian hatred and resulting violence. Can you in good conscience tell me that hatred wasn't worsening every day under Saddam far more than it has since his removal? Saddam used that hatred to his advantage throughout his entire reign, and the American contribution to it has been through incompetent efforts to lessen it.

Hitchens is blowing off his fucking gin.

Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, none of them attacked us on 9/11.
...
The USA is STILL doing business with "Al Qaeda."

The Iraq war is a war of opportunity for the profiteers.


Amazing, in the same post you say Afghanistan had nothing to do with 9/11 and that the USA is still doing business with "Al Qaeda". Your burden of proof seems to vary rather wildly to fit your pre-determined point of view.

For the record, Hitchens was probably one of the most prominent opponents of the first Gulf War. After though, he spent time with the Kurds and came back demanding the immediate removal of Saddam ever since. People seem really keen to reject the war declaring how no WMD's where found and that his arsenal was over estimated. They also seem to content to ignore the estimated 1.3 million dead bodies found in mass graves, the extent of Saddam's genocides seem to have been underestimated as well.

As far as I'm concerned, and I've seen Hitchens say pretty much the same, is the hell with American intentions. Argue until your blue in the face about Cheney and Rumsfeld and their agendas, you need to stop and look at the argument that the Kurds have been making for over a decade. Unilateral American action(irregardless of intention) is the only thing that has ever stayed Saddam's hand in the most brutal campaign of extermination one can imagine.

If you really think Hitchens is that cool, try to find anything that supports his 10 points of "positive accounting" in the article Cole responds to:
...
Actually, I can agree (a little bit) with his # 7: the immense gains made by the largest stateless minority in the region--the Kurds--and the spread of this example to other states.


"a little bit"
Go look at Saddam's Al-Anfal Campaign and see what he did to the Kurds.

Dropping mustar,sarin and VX gas on villages like Halabja wasn't the worst that he did. He just used that to push back the Peshmerga so his troops could round up more Kurds. Every Kurd his army could find was sent to be sorted, males age 15-50 where separated from the rest. The women, children and elderly were sent to concentration camps. There they were regularly beaten and raped, and many died of starvation and neglect, mother's lost virtually every child under age 3 to starvation and disease, while being raped and beaten. Life in the camps also sometimes ended in being executed or gassed. For the men, they only stayed in the camps a few short days before, without a single known exception, they were bussed to pre-dug mass graves to be executed and buried by bulldozer.

If you can only agree "a little bit" with the gains of the Kurdish people as justification for Saddam's removal I'm thinking you've set the bar for intervention too high.

edit:
and thanks for all the down votes, I'll stick to posts that only show the pro-war side in a bad light in the future. If he was owning Palin or McCain instead...

>> ^rougy:
"We're never leaving Iraq and if we did, it would be an even bigger disaster."
That's a conventional bit of wisdom that is often repeated but has little basis in reality.


Really? So your saying Sunnis and Shias will stop trying to kill each other if only the Americans leave the country? I think I'd go further than Ryjkyj and say that leaving Saddam in power was also a bigger disaster.

He without question fueled the sectarian violence far worse than the Americans have because that was in many ways his goal. And that isn't even talking about his campaign to entirely eliminate the Kurdish people. I think that the mass graves of Northern Iraq are now being dug up in stead of filled up is justification enough for Saddam's removal. How much responsibility the US had in removing him is debatable, but doing it was for the greater good of humanity. To claim otherwise is to be ignorant of Saddam's Al-Anfal campaign and countless other atrocities.