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Thank you very much. Nice to see people remember me in spite of my rare posting this year. Again, thank you.
Olaf
I still have a lot to say about Michael Moore and especially the Columbine shooting, but I agree with you, let’s stick to the iraq war.
"king of carrot flowers" wrote:war is only justified when a country presents a clear and present danger to another.Now this is an interesting point. A lot of people nowadays feel that war is also justified when you want to protect the people of that country from its leader(s). I think many Americans felt that the war would justified even if there were no WMD, because Saddam was a dictator. I wonder if these people want to keep starting wars until all countries are democracies. Or: How many (western) lives are we willing to sacrifice for World Peace?
I think I heard someone say that the war on terrorism would last at least 50 years. That is the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard. So, in 2054 George W. Bush’s grandson is going to state that from then on, there will be no more terrorist attacks?
There should be an international intelligence agency fighting terrorism, but this will go on forever. We have to get used to the fact that we can’t beat terrorism, as scary as that may sound.Olaf
This is something I really don’t get: a 2 party system? 2?!!!! So there’s only two opinions in the US? Come on, that can’t be true. How can you have serious politics if you’re forced to choose between 2 parties. It’s time to change politics in the United States. Ever since the television debate Kennedy vs. Nixon, politics in the US have been about personality.
That can’t be right.Did you know that in the US there is a law that says it’s legal for companies to donate money to the political parties? Can’t you see what that means? Your country is being governed by the same people who pay your salary. Your government should be protecting you!
And to make it worse, these companies include the ones making the big bombs you’ve been throwing at Iraqi’s.
In the year 2000, the average manager was making 531 times as much as the average working man. (numbers are from Fortune Magazine 25th of June 2001). That’s what politics should be about.Ok, back to Iraq, or the UN. Why did Powell use the weapons of mass destruction argument to convince the Security Council? Every sane person could see that was never going to be a problem. Never. So why did he use it? I don’t mean this as criticism, I really don’t have a clue why.. I mean, if you want to get rid of a Dictator, just say so and then we can have a normal discussion about it.
The UN is not perfect, we all know. But for now, it’s the best we’ve got. If we want to create a safe world, the UN is the only option. If you would see the world as one big state, democracy in this big state seems reasonable. The best solution even. There shouldn’t be just one country telling us all what to do. There should be talking, arguments, compromise.Quote:I’m sorry that many Muslims feel that this is an attack on Islam, when it is not.I don’t necessarily think they see it as a war against Islam, but the US army are in the heart of their part of the world. How would you feel if Europeans take over Illinois? Outraged, offended?
Quote:If the nations of the world had enforced the rules of the Versailles Treaty, instead of letting Germany build up a huge armament of weapons and troops, WWII may have never happened.Please, please, stop comparing this war to WWII. Germany at the time was the 2nd biggest economy in the world and the largest country of Europe. France and the UK were reluctant to go to war, because of WWI. The lessons they learned from WWI is that war sucks. It’s horrible, it’s death and destruction. It kills and destroys people’s lifes. This is why I am so opposed to war of any kind, this is why Wilson and the presidents after him wanted to create a world order with an organization like the UN. And this is the exact world order the Bush administration is ruining.
I sometimes feel the only way to get world peace is an attack by Aliens. And have Will Smith save us all….
Olaf
http://www.freep.com/news/latestnews/pm17601_20031216.htm
looks like Jack can punch…..
Allison, I don’t mean to offend you, but you have to know the image of Saddam getting checked for lice was not received well in the Middle-East. We, as citizens of the Western world, see this as humiliation of a horrible dictator. People in the Middle-East see it as humiliation of a Muslim by Americans. As horrible a dictator Saddam Hussein was, he was a symbol of the fight against the USA, especially for Palestinians. This is why there have been mixed feelings about the arrest of Saddam in the Arabic world.
Which brings us to the biggest problem unresolved in the world today. It’s not North-Korea and it certainly wasn’t Saddam. It was and is the Israel-Palestinia conflict. Until this problem is solved there is no way the hostility against the USA and the rest of the Western world will disappear.There is no such thing as good vs. bad. People like to see the world in a simple way, preferably black and white. President Bush is one of those simple minded people. That’s why he came up with the "you’re either for or against us". I hate to break it to ya, George, but the world doesn’t work that way. There is no "Axis of Evil". The world is a complex mixture of states and different sorts of people. The only way to create a save world in which all people live together in peace is to use a democratic organization like the UN (which, granted, is not democratic enough). If the USA are going to use their power to create a world as they like to see it, then yes, they are the biggest threat to worldpeace.
Got this from Michael Moore’s website (http://www.michaelmoore.com). He, once again, points out the facts that need to be taken into account after the arrest of Saddam Hussein:
We Finally Got Our Frankenstein… and He Was In a Spider Hole! — by Michael Moore
December 14, 2003
Thank God Saddam is finally back in American hands! He must have really missed us. Man, he sure looked bad! But, at least he got a free dental exam today. That’s something most Americans can’t get.
America used to like Saddam. We LOVED Saddam. We funded him. We armed him. We helped him gas Iranian troops.
But then he screwed up. He invaded the dictatorship of Kuwait and, in doing so, did the worst thing imaginable — he threatened an even BETTER friend of ours: the dictatorship of Saudi Arabia, and its vast oil reserves. The Bushes and the Saudi royal family were and are close business partners, and Saddam, back in 1990, committed a royal blunder by getting a little too close to their wealthy holdings. Things went downhill for Saddam from there.
But it wasn’t always that way. Saddam was our good friend and ally. We supported his regime. It wasn?t the first time we had helped a murderer. We liked playing Dr. Frankenstein. We created a lot of monsters — the Shah of Iran, Somoza of Nicaragua, Pinochet of Chile — and then we expressed ignorance or shock when they ran amok and massacred people. We liked Saddam because he was willing to fight the Ayatollah. So we made sure that he got billions of dollars to purchase weapons. Weapons of mass destruction. That’s right, he had them. We should know — we gave them to him!
We allowed and encouraged American corporations to do business with Saddam in the 1980s. That’s how he got chemical and biological agents so he could use them in chemical and biological weapons. Here’s the list of some of the stuff we sent him (according to a 1994 U.S. Senate report):
* Bacillus Anthracis, cause of anthrax.
* Clostridium Botulinum, a source of botulinum toxin.
* Histoplasma Capsulatam, cause of a disease attacking lungs, brain, spinal cord, and heart.
* Brucella Melitensis, a bacteria that can damage major organs.
* Clostridium Perfringens, a highly toxic bacteria causing systemic illness.
* Clostridium tetani, a highly toxigenic substance.
And here are some of the American corporations who helped to prop Saddam up by doing business with him: AT&T, Bechtel, Caterpillar, Dow Chemical, Dupont, Kodak, Hewlett-Packard, and IBM (for a full list of companies and descriptions of how they helped Saddam, go here).
We were so cozy with dear old Saddam that we decided to feed him satellite images so he could locate where the Iranian troops were. We pretty much knew how he would use the information, and sure enough, as soon as we sent him the spy photos, he gassed those troops. And we kept quiet. Because he was our friend, and the Iranians were the "enemy." A year after he first gassed the Iranians, we reestablished full diplomatic relations with him!
Later he gassed his own people, the Kurds. You would think that would force us to disassociate ourselves from him. Congress tried to impose economic sanctions on Saddam, but the Reagan White House quickly rejected that idea — they wouldn?t let anything derail their good buddy Saddam. We had a virtual love fest with this Frankenstein whom we (in part) created.
And, just like the mythical Frankenstein, Saddam eventually spun out of control. He would no longer do what he was told by his master. Saddam had to be caught. And now that he has been brought back from the wilderness, perhaps he will have something to say about his creators. Maybe we can learn something… interesting. Maybe Don Rumsfeld could smile and shake Saddam’s hand again. Just like he did when he went to see him in 1983 (see the photo here).
Maybe we never would have been in the situation we’re in if Rumsfeld, Bush, Sr., and company hadn’t been so excited back in the 80s about their friendly monster in the desert.
Meanwhile, anybody know where the guy is who killed 3,000 people on 9/11? Our other Frankenstein?? Maybe he’s in a mouse hole.
So many of our little monsters, so little time before the next election.
Stay strong, Democratic candidates. Quit sounding like a bunch of wusses. These bastards sent us to war on a lie, the killing will not stop, the Arab world hates us with a passion, and we will pay for this out of our pockets for years to come. Nothing that happened today (or in the past 9 months) has made us ONE BIT safer in our post-9/11 world. Saddam was never a threat to our national security.
Only our desire to play Dr. Frankenstein dooms us all.
Yours,
Michael Moore
Sean Paul and Fifty Cent are the worst "musicians" the industry has given us in the last few years. The way the PIMP song totally praises money making as the ‘meaning of life’ ("money makes the world go round, so let’s get more" and of course 50 cents album title: Get Rich or Die Trying) annoyes the hell out of me
And, in the Netherlands, we’ve got a bunch of stupid DJ’s (Tiesto and whatever their names are) on top of it. One of these I’m going to get me a T-shirt that says: I HATE TECHNO!!!!!
Are Busted the guys who wrote: ‘I’ve been to the year 3000. Not much has changed, but we live under water’
People who write lines like that should be imprisoned
1: Whatever’s Cool With Me
2: Thumb
3: The Wagon
4: Alone
5: Raisans
6: They Always Come
7: Water
8: Not u Again01: They Always Come
02: Little Fury Things
03: Not The Same
04: Whatever’s Cool With Me
05: Drawerings
06: Out There
07: Blowing It/I Live For That Look
08: Water
09: If That’s How It’s Gotta Be
10: Not you Again
11: Raisins
12: Alone
13: The Wagon
14: FreakScene
15: Thumb
16: Severed Lips01: Tarpit
02: The Lung
03: What Else Is New
04: Over Yr Shoulder
05: Can I Tell U Stories
06: They Always Come
07: Whatever’s Cool With Me
08: If That’s How It’s Gotta Be
09: Tell The Truth
10: Alone
11: Thumb
12: I Know Yr Insane
13: Everybody Lets Me Down
14: Puke + Cry
15: Bulbs of Passion
16: FreakScene
17: Drawerings
18: Where’d You Go
19: Out There
20: The Wagon
21: Severed Lips
22: Water
23: Quest
24: Outside
25: Little Fury Things
26: I Ain’t Sayin’
27: Going Home
28: Loaded
29: Get Out Of This
30: Raisins
31: Get Me
32: MickDamn, it’s so hard to compare, they’re all good in different ways.
