[OT] Photos from Brother Bush's Rape Room

[John S. Dyson]

In article <20040513174046.11161.00001312@mb-m14.aol.com>,
rolavine@aol.com (Rolavine) writes:

With such precise orders of magnitude, you really need some

unbiased sources (e.g. those whose funding isn't dependent
upon agendas.) For example, those who benefitted from
Saddams recent rule like French, Russians or the Germans need
not apply....

Oh yeah, didn't we accidently blow about a thousand Iraqi children to bits
during shock and awe?

Rhetorical claim: cite unbiased sources. Please explain why so many

Iraqi children were residing at government and military installations
(if your claim might be technically true?) (Shock and awe was mostly
targeted at known government installations and rebuildable
infrastructure.)

Yeah, but that isn't barbaric, right? Estimates of Iraqi
dead during the miltary operation are between 20 and 50 thousand,

Rhetorical and obviously political claim: cite unbiased resources.

It is a bad thing to have to deal with the French/Germans and Russias
good friend like Saddam, without their cooperation. With more cooperation
and fewer Saddamist payoffs, the 'war' might have been almost
unnecessary. This really shows how replaceable that old-Europe is --
it just costs more lives because of their payoffs.

even have a count. Since the great liberation about 1000 people are killed
every week in Iraq by each other.

Yes, you help to prove the idea that policing savages is a dirty business.

Not all Iraqis are savages, just like not all people of your nationality
are simply evil and possess your agenda based psuedo-knowledge that
dyseducates more than informs (I understand what you know -- but it is
very biased towards the AlQueda/Saddam types -- refer to your wonderful
images of Nicks' death.) Those perps might as well be you -- but you
are too old.

John

 

[John S. Dyson]

In article <7c584d27.0405131435.60b50ae8@posting.google.com>,
bill.sloman@ieee.org (Bill Sloman) writes:

Fred Bloggs <nospam@nospam.com> wrote in message news:<40A37F24.8070304@nospam.com>...
you have permanently lost any information that you might have missed
extracting in the first round of interrogation. Describing such
incompetence as "justified" is an idiocy at several levels.

You are just not thinking clearly.

On the contrary, you aren't thinking at all.

Please try to show how you think clearly -- I have seen NO evidence

of your political statments being realistic and rational. Fred goes
too far sometimes (instead of being far off in left field like you
are), but he is generally approximately correct.

The immorality would be any treatment
short of ruthless and brutal when dealing with would-be mass murderers-
they deserve no mercy. Brutalizing and killing one detainee will induce
the others to cooperate- so information has not been lost necessarily - a
common interrogation technique.

Common, but none-the-less stupid. How do you know which detainee you
can afford to waste until you have interrogaed them all, repeatedly?

Bingo -- now you understand, but you wont' open your mind to reality:

the extreme methods used by the incompetent children who many are being
charged with crimes don't work (and the CIA/MI knows this!!!) The
fact is that the misbehavior wasn't sanctioned, and the actually
intense interrogation is usually used quickly after capture and generally
the 'privilege system' is often used.

Ruthless and brutal sounds good, until you start thinking about what
the interrogators are supposed to be doing, which is extracting
information, not playing god.

That is why the US doesn't often do it. Firstly, it is generally only

effective immediately after capture. Secondly, the interrogated person
will usually say anything to get the punishment to stop. The US has
had many victims of torture, and understands the limitations very well.

Of course, the brain dead propaganda that you seem to be invested will
misinform you about reality. Perhaps if you spent a few hours with
the savages (especially when they are informed that your name might
be Berg), then you would wish that you were wearing womens underwear,
and watching sex acts. Well, you wouldn't be worrying very long, as
your last images of your head being detached from your body, and all
you can do is gurgle. Alas, you are more likely to support the
murderers (as you obviously do.)

John

 

[Fred Bloggs]

Bill Sloman wrote:

Rubbish. There are merely effective ways of extracting information,
and stupid ways of losing it forever.

The validity of the information starts to fade the moment the terrorist
is captured. The loosely knit organization of resistance cells should be
organized so that no one person can compromise the entire operation. You
might get a clue in that naive and thick head of yours that this is so
precisely because it is well-known the information will be obtained
through successful interrogation techniques.

There are 16 major detainee facilities in Iraq- the run-of-the-mill
prisoners are treated just like that- there are no instances of abuse-
this one in the news was reserved for the especially serious captives. I
could care less about the Communist infested *Red* Cross or Amnesty
International- they are pathetic idiots and will have no say in anything.


So you are as silly and ideology-blinkered as Rumsfeld himself. How do
you know who are the "especially serious captives"?

Damn!- You're friggin dumb! Well-one giveaway would be a Sunni who was
in possession of several thousand pounds of HE and RPGs. Another might
be an identification match with captured Iraqi personnel records showing
the individual to be a former military officer.

It is all about striking a balance- the US will be exculpated because of
the nature of the prisoners- Geneva Convention does not apply - and even
if it did, there is no legal dogma, international or otherwise, that
does not make allowance for legal non-compliance on grounds of necessity.


Necessity? Your brutal treatment of your prisoners in pursuit of the
the perpetrators of occasional low level reistance seems to have
ignited massive armed insurrection. The only real necessity in the
case is for your guys to understand what they are actually trying to
achieve.

Nah- that's bull- and the insurrection is no where near massive- just a
mob of unskilled religious fanatics who are using a civilian population
as shields- and that particular mess began long before any of this
trumped up prison abuse propaganda nonsense hit the streets.

Whereas your retarded garbage interrogation system doesn't seem to
have thought at all about what it was were supposed to be doing, and
the consequences are anything but laughable.

You are not getting your timeline of events straight as usual. Here are
the facts:
1) US interrogation techniques are the world's best;

2) the prison abuse scandal is a trumped up non-event that never occurred;

3) Iraqi insurrection is a failure and ineffective, it is all about turf
wars between Iraqi theocrats and not the US occupation;

4) the former Baathists are exhaling their last gasp of death, and the
fanatic Jihadis have been suckered into the world's biggest death trap
and will all be killed.

 

[Richard Henry]

"Fred Bloggs" <nospam@nospam.com> wrote in message
news:40A604E5.60403@nospam.com...

Nah- that's bull- and the insurrection is no where near massive- just a
mob of unskilled religious fanatics who are using a civilian population
as shields- and that particular mess began long before any of this
trumped up prison abuse propaganda nonsense hit the streets.

You should contact Bush adn Rumsfeld immediately before they embarrass
themseleves any more by apologizing for this fraud.

 

[Fred Bloggs]

Richard Henry wrote:

"Fred Bloggs" <nospam@nospam.com> wrote in message
news:40A604E5.60403@nospam.com...

Nah- that's bull- and the insurrection is no where near massive- just a
mob of unskilled religious fanatics who are using a civilian population
as shields- and that particular mess began long before any of this
trumped up prison abuse propaganda nonsense hit the streets.


You should contact Bush adn Rumsfeld immediately before they embarrass
themseleves any more by apologizing for this fraud.

And do we have a serious case of dyslexia this AM? Who are they
apologizing to? The same group of people who, but for our heavy military
maintenance of some form of civil order, would yank these particular
detainees into the street, cut their throats, and set them on fire?

 

[Jan Panteltje]

On a sunny day (Fri, 14 May 2004 23:00:21 +0000 (UTC)) it happened
toor@iquest.net (John S. Dyson) wrote in <c83j25$1r69$1@news.iquest.net>:

It is too small to be worth worrying about, even smaller when you
subtract out the subsidised arms sales to the right-wing dictators you
seem to be so fond of.

In the middle east, most of the US money probably goes to Egypt and
Israel anyway. Israel is the only democracy in the middle east,
In my view Israel is controlled by black hat religious fanatics.

It has been for 2000 years or more, even when it was occupied by the Romans.

 

[Jan Panteltje]

On a sunny day (Fri, 14 May 2004 23:00:21 +0000 (UTC)) it happened
toor@iquest.net (John S. Dyson) wrote in <c83j25$1r69$1@news.iquest.net>:

In article <7c584d27.0405141404.84ba86c@posting.google.com>,
bill.sloman@ieee.org (Bill Sloman) writes:
Mark Fergerson <nunya@biz.ness> wrote in message news:<jy3pc.682$Yg.520@fed1read05>...
Bill Sloman wrote:

"Mark Fergerson" <nunya@biz.ness> wrote in message
news:VGroc.17841$k24.16765@fed1read01...

Bill Sloman wrote:


toor@iquest.net (John S. Dyson) wrote in message

news:<c7s6h5$2lli$1@news.iquest.net>...

In article <7c584d27.0405111733.177c8235@posting.google.com>,
bill.sloman@ieee.org (Bill Sloman) writes:


Scott Stephens <scottxs@comcast.net> wrote in message

news:<zm9oc.27672$iF6.2845737@attbi_s02>...

Bill Sloman wrote:



So we are to forgive the Republican administration, who invaded Irak
for reasons that turn out to be have been inadequate,

Hussein never complied with the terms of the cease-fire from the first
gulf war HE STARTED.

So what.



He had it coming, he needed to get it, sooner or
later, one way or another.

A little later, with a proper UN-mandated coalition, would have been a
lot better.


No UN mandate would have happened due to the graft and
corruption.


On the contrary, the only thing that blocked the UN mandate was that
the U.S. wasn't prepared to spend the time and money on the graft and
corruption required to get such a mandate

What, Spain was easier bought until their Socialists took
over? I thought Mordida was a New World invention.


Nah. Spain didn't need to be bribed. Aznar was the same sort of right-wing
nitwit as Dubbya, and 86% of the Spanish electorate though he was wrong to
support the invasion.

You don't keep track of U.S. Foreign Aid funding?

It is too small to be worth worrying about, even smaller when you
subtract out the subsidised arms sales to the right-wing dictators you
seem to be so fond of.

In the middle east, most of the US money probably goes to Egypt and
Israel anyway. Israel is the only democracy in the middle east, and
Egypt was one of the first Arab nations to tolerate Israel to a
limited extent.


for the rest of the world to stay "hands off" and let the
locals kill each other off until only the most vicious
remain for the rest of the world to deal with?

Clearly you haven't been paying attention. My preference was for a
U.N.-mandated ocupation force in Irak

The UN tends to cut and run too quickly to finish the job. Geesh,
they recently did so after some 'bombing' incedents, and their
own security people (AFAIR) got in trouble for their incompetency.



Works for me. We all need to reduce our nuke inventories;
might as well use 'em.

As simple idea, that even you can understand. Not a good idea, for
reasons that you probably couldn't understand.

The US tends not to grossly oversize its use of weapons and spends
LOTS of money on attempted accurate targeting. A nuke would undo
that philosophy. There are very few practical uses for nukes in war.
Geesh, the US doesn't even use as many 2000lb bombs as it could.


Which group, the Shiites? The Sunnis? The recently
imported Al Qaeda sympathizers? Do you really hold the
illusion that they're any more homogenous philosophically
than the inhabitants of what was Yugoslavia?

The Shi'ites and the Sunnis seem to be united on one point at the
moment - they both want the U.S. occupiers to go home.
Congratulations.

The US intends to leave -- any claim that the US wanted to long term
manage Iraq as a province in the sense of an empire is incompetent
and without any evidence.


And what drives that, other than targeting by Al Qaeda?

Probably ignorance and arrogance - most American soldiers are
convinced that their way of doing things is the only way of doing
things, and don't realise that behavior that is tolerated in the U.S.
can be totally unacceptable for other cultures.

Remember: the admitted errant behaviors of the immature children
running amok in the specific Abu Gherhib 'prison' weren't typical AT ALL of
American practices. In fact, recent testimony shows that they
were trying to keep their hijinks secret from their higher level
commanders (information exists in the mainstream media, look it up.)
(You might have to look at copies of the original sources, rather than
the filtered media, which too often in Europe doesn't tell the whole
truth.)

The most extreme practices are appropriate ONLY with agreement from
the president, and such 'findings' and equivalent documents create
a paper trail. There is ABSOLUTELY no indication of anyone above
the level of the MI Colonel who knew about the extreme abuses. Even
some of the info about 'Red Cross' reports is apparently trying to
cause confusion between 'mundane' abuses and the totally non-existant
Red Cross info about the childish and idiotic abuses in the Abu
Gherhib prison.

Ignorant and anti-American biased propaganda has indeed caused damage
to benefit your apparent position: the side of the Al Queda murderers
of Nicolas Berg. I have wondered the various reasons for the private
apparent European and Arab cheering and lack of outrage about
Nicholas's death, and it might
be the European/Arab anti-Jew attitides, and also might be that some
people in Europe are truly supporting the murderous terrorists.
Some people in Europe are indeed still supporting the murderous US terrorists,

but it is a minority in any country.
We just wonder how long Blair with only 27%? and in the Netherlands a minority
government can keep playing.
If elections were now, I think perhaps the US would be very very alone in Iraq.
That leaves Denmark? And Japan?
Why would not the Japanese - considering Hirosjima and Nagasaki - also want to
leave.
US has threatened to nuke before (after ww2) when they knew they were losing.
This was in Vietnam, thousands were leaving the cities.. But it did not happen.
But no US leader has been so dumb as Bush facista, so who knows.
Or just a defective chip in a submarine....
As far as beheading goes, US started that war, you get what you ask for.
So now still the heads of Bush and Cheney, and clear up a bit, and maybe we
can move on to more fun things then destroying civilisations.
All this nuking, why not nuke the white house?
JP

 

[Fred Bloggs]

Jan Panteltje wrote:

All this nuking, why not nuke the white house?

It may be the Yellow House if Kerry is elected.

 

[Bill Sloman]

Fred Bloggs <nospam@nospam.com> wrote in message news:<40A604E5.60403@nospam.com>...

Bill Sloman wrote:


Rubbish. There are merely effective ways of extracting information,
and stupid ways of losing it forever.

The validity of the information starts to fade the moment the terrorist
is captured. The loosely knit organization of resistance cells should be
organized so that no one person can compromise the entire operation. You
might get a clue in that naive and thick head of yours that this is so
precisely because it is well-known the information will be obtained
through successful interrogation techniques.

Cell-organisation is old news. You're just throwing up a smoke screen
to avoid addressing the fact that your interrogators are brutal
incompetents.

There are 16 major detainee facilities in Iraq- the run-of-the-mill
prisoners are treated just like that- there are no instances of abuse-
this one in the news was reserved for the especially serious captives. I
could care less about the Communist infested *Red* Cross or Amnesty
International- they are pathetic idiots and will have no say in anything.


So you are as silly and ideology-blinkered as Rumsfeld himself. How do
you know who are the "especially serious captives"?

Damn!- You're friggin dumb! Well-one giveaway would be a Sunni who was
in possession of several thousand pounds of HE and RPGs. Another might
be an identification match with captured Iraqi personnel records showing
the individual to be a former military officer.

Right. The first one example is obvious enough that even your
intelligence services could work it out. The second does embody a
number of assumptions that might not be true. In most cases, the
situation is even more obscure, and you have to interrogate a lot of
possibles in order to home in on the occasional probable.

It is all about striking a balance- the US will be exculpated because of
the nature of the prisoners- Geneva Convention does not apply - and even
if it did, there is no legal dogma, international or otherwise, that
does not make allowance for legal non-compliance on grounds of necessity.


Necessity? Your brutal treatment of your prisoners in pursuit of the
the perpetrators of occasional low level reistance seems to have
ignited massive armed insurrection. The only real necessity in the
case is for your guys to understand what they are actually trying to
achieve.

Nah- that's bull- and the insurrection is no where near massive- just a
mob of unskilled religious fanatics who are using a civilian population
as shields- and that particular mess began long before any of this
trumped up prison abuse propaganda nonsense hit the streets.

The prisoners and their friends and relatives will have been in a
priviliged position as far as getting information about the abuses -
they could have gotten quite upset long before the American press had
managed to get around to revealing the scandal. That should have been
obvious to even your naive and thick head.

Whereas your retarded garbage interrogation system doesn't seem to
have thought at all about what it was were supposed to be doing, and
the consequences are anything but laughable.

You are not getting your timeline of events straight as usual. Here are
the facts:
1) US interrogation techniques are the world's best;

As any American interrogator ...

2) the prison abuse scandal is a trumped up non-event that never occurred;

Which is why Dubbya, Rumsfeld and Rice have all apologised for it.

3) Iraqi insurrection is a failure and ineffective, it is all about turf
wars between Iraqi theocrats and not the US occupation;

But a considerable inconvenience to the U.S. occupiers, and their
sub-contractors, notably those who ended up dead and whose corpses
were paraded around by the Iraki theocrats in order to establish some
point of theology of purely Iraki interest.

4) the former Baathists are exhaling their last gasp of death, and the
fanatic Jihadis have been suckered into the world's biggest death trap
and will all be killed.

Sure. And Father Christmas really exists.

--------
Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

 

[Bill Sloman]

toor@iquest.net (John S. Dyson) wrote in message news:<c83mdg$1ru0$2@news.iquest.net>...

In article <7c584d27.0405131435.60b50ae8@posting.google.com>,
bill.sloman@ieee.org (Bill Sloman) writes:
Fred Bloggs <nospam@nospam.com> wrote in message news:<40A37F24.8070304@nospam.com>...
you have permanently lost any information that you might have missed
extracting in the first round of interrogation. Describing such
incompetence as "justified" is an idiocy at several levels.

You are just not thinking clearly.

On the contrary, you aren't thinking at all.

Please try to show how you think clearly -- I have seen NO evidence
of your political statments being realistic and rational. Fred goes
too far sometimes (instead of being far off in left field like you
are), but he is generally approximately correct.

Your opinion on clear thinking is worth about a much as blind man's
judgment of colour values. You've never produced a coherent argument,
nor shown any sign of following anyody elses. In this case, Fred is
acting like a besotted Rumsfeld groupie, which aligns his opinions
with your mindless enthusiasm for all things Republican, and thus you
approve of his position.

There is no element of thought involved - unlike you, Fred can think,
but not about subjects involving his infatuation with Rumsfeld.

--------
Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

 

[Bill Sloman]

"Kevin Carney" <carneyke@us.ibm.combo> wrote in message news:<c82vjl$6l2$1@news.btv.ibm.com>...

Rich,
You are a toad ! I'm with Fred....

That is, you are another loose cannon with a psychopathic streak. Do
you sincerely want Dubbya to make a pre-emptive strike to take out the
entire Muslim population because Al Q'iada use the Koran to justify
their own particular variety of psychopathology?

If you do, stroll over to the nearest secure psychiatric hospital and
have yourself committed before you lose your temper with your family
or your colleagues and implement a final solution to a transient
domestic problem.

---------
Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

"Rich Grise" <null@example.net> wrote in message
news:Mr5pc.194815$L31.187163@nwrddc01.gnilink.net...
"Fred Bloggs" <nospam@nospam.com> wrote in message
news:40A4C499.6060702@nospam.com...


You are an idiot. The Muslim religion/political dogma commands them to
kill the "mushrikeen"- and that is most of the free west. The answer to
this clear and present danger is called nuclear-annihilation.

I guess I'll add Bloggs to my mass murderer list.

WHich religious dogma are you using that makes you think that
murder is OK as long as you're the one doing it?

Get off my planet, murderer.

feh.
Rich

 

[Bill Sloman]

toor@iquest.net (John S. Dyson) wrote in message news:<c83j25$1r69$1@news.iquest.net>...

In article <7c584d27.0405141404.84ba86c@posting.google.com>,
bill.sloman@ieee.org (Bill Sloman) writes:
Mark Fergerson <nunya@biz.ness> wrote in message news:<jy3pc.682$Yg.520@fed1read05>...
Bill Sloman wrote:

"Mark Fergerson" <nunya@biz.ness> wrote in message
news:VGroc.17841$k24.16765@fed1read01...

Bill Sloman wrote:


toor@iquest.net (John S. Dyson) wrote in message

news:<c7s6h5$2lli$1@news.iquest.net>...

In article <7c584d27.0405111733.177c8235@posting.google.com>,
bill.sloman@ieee.org (Bill Sloman) writes:


Scott Stephens <scottxs@comcast.net> wrote in message

news:<zm9oc.27672$iF6.2845737@attbi_s02>...

Bill Sloman wrote:

<snipped most ot the content>

And what drives that, other than targeting by Al Qaeda?

Probably ignorance and arrogance - most American soldiers are
convinced that their way of doing things is the only way of doing
things, and don't realise that behavior that is tolerated in the U.S.
can be totally unacceptable for other cultures.

Remember: the admitted errant behaviors of the immature children
running amok in the specific Abu Gherhib 'prison' weren't typical AT ALL of
American practices. In fact, recent testimony shows that they
were trying to keep their hijinks secret from their higher level
commanders (information exists in the mainstream media, look it up.)

You claim to have seen it - post a URL, so we can all see exactly how
you misinterpret the news to sustain your ill-informed opinions

(You might have to look at copies of the original sources, rather than
the filtered media, which too often in Europe doesn't tell the whole
truth.)

And the original sources can be accessed via what URL?

It would be interesting to see what John S. Dyson considers to be an
"original source". His opinions seem to be based on stuff one only
sees on web sites set up by rapid supporters of the Republican party.

-------
Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

 

[Rich Grise]

"John S. Dyson" <toor@iquest.net> wrote in message
news:c83j25$1r69$1@news.iquest.net...

The UN tends to cut and run too quickly to finish the job.

Everybody seems to talk about "finishing the job" or
"accomplishing their mission" or whatever, but nobody
seems to have ever asked:

Just what exactly _is_ the "job"?

What, exactly, in, say, one declarative sentence, is
the US trying to accomplish?

"We"[0] got Saddam Hussein.
They've got homeland security strip-searching people for
fingernail clippers.
They're getting $3.00/gal. for gasoline.
They've got occupation forces in yet another defenseless
country.

When will they be satiated? When will it end? What, exactly
are they trying to do over and above that?[1]

Thanks,
Rich

[0] well, I know I didn't have a fscking thing to do with it!
[1] NB by "they," in this context, of course, I'm referring
to the US military/administration cabal. Anyone who didn't
know that has obviously not been paying attention.

 

[Rich Grise]

"Fred Bloggs" <nospam@nospam.com> wrote in message
news:40A637C6.80203@nospam.com...

Jan Panteltje wrote:

All this nuking, why not nuke the white house?

It may be the Yellow House if Kerry is elected.

As it stands today, it should be renamed the red house.

 

[Reg Edwards]

What, exactly, in, say, one declarative sentence, is
the US trying to accomplish?
=========================

The act of piracy has been highly successfull.

We've got the oil!

Now for central Asia.

 

[normanstrong]

"John S. Dyson" <toor@iquest.net> wrote in message
news:c83j25$1r69$1@news.iquest.net...

In article <7c584d27.0405141404.84ba86c@posting.google.com>,

The US intends to leave -- any claim that the US wanted to long term
manage Iraq as a province in the sense of an empire is incompetent
and without any evidence.

Really? Yes, I'm sure the US 'intends' to leave--just as soon as we
can assure a compliant Iraqi government that will do more or less what
we want them to do.

Do you really think that we'd leave if the first Iraq government tells
us to? We are presently building the largest embassy in the world in
Baghdad. We intend to maintain military bases in Iraq for the
forseeable future. It will take a puppet government to give us that
right.

We're not going anywhere. Believe it.

Norm Strong

 

[Mark Fergerson]

Bill Sloman wrote:

Mark Fergerson <nunya@biz.ness> wrote in message news:<jy3pc.682$Yg.520@fed1read05>...

Bill Sloman wrote:


"Mark Fergerson" <nunya@biz.ness> wrote in message
news:VGroc.17841$k24.16765@fed1read01...


Bill Sloman wrote:



toor@iquest.net (John S. Dyson) wrote in message

news:<c7s6h5$2lli$1@news.iquest.net>...


In article <7c584d27.0405111733.177c8235@posting.google.com>,
bill.sloman@ieee.org (Bill Sloman) writes:



Scott Stephens <scottxs@comcast.net> wrote in message

news:<zm9oc.27672$iF6.2845737@attbi_s02>...


Bill Sloman wrote:




So we are to forgive the Republican administration, who invaded Irak
for reasons that turn out to be have been inadequate,

Hussein never complied with the terms of the cease-fire from the first
gulf war HE STARTED.

So what.




He had it coming, he needed to get it, sooner or
later, one way or another.

A little later, with a proper UN-mandated coalition, would have been a
lot better.


No UN mandate would have happened due to the graft and
corruption.


On the contrary, the only thing that blocked the UN mandate was that
the U.S. wasn't prepared to spend the time and money on the graft and
corruption required to get such a mandate

What, Spain was easier bought until their Socialists took
over? I thought Mordida was a New World invention.


Nah. Spain didn't need to be bribed. Aznar was the same sort of right-wing
nitwit as Dubbya, and 86% of the Spanish electorate though he was wrong to
support the invasion.

You don't keep track of U.S. Foreign Aid funding?


It is too small to be worth worrying about, even smaller when you
subtract out the subsidised arms sales to the right-wing dictators you
seem to be so fond of.

My point, which you blissfully ignored, is that we haven't sent Spain any
money in quite a while. That ties in nicely with _your_ point about "bribes and
corruption". How long do you thing will it be until Spain sticks its
"collective" hand out?

that's how you got your



mandate for the first Gulf War, and it was time and money well-spent.

I see; it's a "moral war" if Euros get their cut of the
action. You could have said so earlier and prevented much
name-calling. What's _your_ price for a favorable opinion on
U.S. action overseas? Taking bids? I can't wait for you to
put it up on Ebay.


No war is ever moral. They cost too much.

So, your "solution" to the Middle East situation is what,
for the rest of the world to stay "hands off" and let the
locals kill each other off until only the most vicious
remain for the rest of the world to deal with?


Clearly you haven't been paying attention. My preference was for a
U.N.-mandated ocupation force in Irak, with enough Muslim paricipants
to let the Irakis think that they were being liberated, rather than
occupied.

"Think" being the operative word. Clearly you prefer a U.N. occupation.

The latest Guardian Weekly was pretty rude about Rumsfeld's
unwillingness to take advantage of the U.S. foreign service's
expertise on foreign cultures, and a few more Arab-speaking Muslim's
in the occupying force might well have fooled enough of the people
enough of the time to have prevented the current rash of
insurrections.

It would be better to have "insurrections" against a nice, homogenous bunch
of Euros and Arabs wearing blue helmets? Do you really believe no such
"insurrections" would occur in that scenario? You cannot possibly be that naive.

Works for me. We all need to reduce our nuke inventories;
might as well use 'em.


As simple idea, that even you can understand. Not a good idea, for
reasons that you probably couldn't understand.

If all that's left are the serious whackos (as would be the case after they
saw through a hypothetical U.N./Arab occupation), how else to deal with them?

My price for supporting U.S. action overseas would depend on the action,
but in most cases it would be higher than my support would be worth (about > > $0.10 at a guess).

Why am I not surprised.


Your current administration was simply too gung-ho to worry about the
problems of holding down Irak once they had invaded it - one more
example of their short-sighted attitudes.

So, you're admitting that World Public Opinion is driven
by graft among leaders?


I don't believe that I said anything about World Public Opinion - the U.N.
mandate was the subject under discussion, which isn't quite the same thing
at all.

Sigh. "World Public Opinion" is indeed driven by leaders,
and their preferences are driven by the levels of bribes
offered, right?


Aznar was right behind Dubbya, but his enthusiasm only persuaded 14%
of the Spanish electorate. Sometimes the most energetic leaders can't
influence public opinion in the way that they'd like.

Wait till Socialist Spain sticks its hand out.

You make a difference without distinction.

So you claim, because you haven't got the wit to read the papers or
remember what actually happens when some leader tries to persuade the
electorate that black is white.

Name one that hasn't. Ever.

BTW, you _have_ noticed who's running the U.N. recently,
haven't you?


Somebody called Koffi Anan

http://www.un.org/News/ossg/sg/

Yes, I know, thank you just the same. He's a native of Ghana. Now, just for
giggles, do you know the history of U.S. aid to Ghana vs. his opinion of the U.S.?

He seems to be doing pretty well, within the limits of the job.

Right. A dandy job in the former S.S.R.'s

The only opinion that matters in Irak at the moment is
the opinion of the Irakis as a group

Which group, the Shiites? The Sunnis? The recently
imported Al Qaeda sympathizers? Do you really hold the
illusion that they're any more homogenous philosophically
than the inhabitants of what was Yugoslavia?


The Shi'ites and the Sunnis seem to be united on one point at the
moment - they both want the U.S. occupiers to go home.

"Seem". All they're united on is the few points of Islam they agree on.
Everything else they kill each other over.

Congratulations.

Tito managed to keep Yugoslavia in one piece as long as he lived, and
you may yet get lucky and find the Iraki Tito, though your nitwit
prison guards have probably spoiled his (or maybe her) disposition by
ill-chosen "softening-up" procedures.

When Tito's iron grip relaxed, what happened? All those smoldering
centuries-old hatreds erupted into full flame, that's what. Nothing was resolved.

An "Iraki Tito" already existed in Iraq; his name was Saddam Hussein. Same
thing happened when he was deposed.

Oh, and please accentuate the actions of a few ill-trained, ill-supervised
idiots some more.

and a U.N. mandate might have helped that - most

likely not directly, but by diluting the US content in the army of
occupation. It is noticeable that the U.S. troops do seem to be seeing
rather more armed insurrection than the other coalition forces in Irak.

And what drives that, other than targeting by Al Qaeda?

Probably ignorance and arrogance - most American soldiers are
convinced that their way of doing things is the only way of doing
things, and don't realise that behavior that is tolerated in the U.S.
can be totally unacceptable for other cultures.

You really hate the U.S. What's the matter, not getting enough Foreign Aid
(bribes and corruption) to suit you?

While we're speaking of "tolerated behavior", what about using power tools to
extract confessions, as was "tolerated" in Saddam-era Iraq?

If opinion has a price, it isn't worth buying.


Tell that to your presidential candidates, who are planning on spending
millions on TV ads to try and shift public opinion their way.

Oh, I see; you believe that bullshit. Never mind.

Not having millions to spend, I don't have to have an opinion on the
effectiveness of TV ads. U.S. politicians who do have millions to
spend do seem to think that TV advertising is worth the money, as you
should have noticed.

You have absolutely no understanding of U.S. politics. Take it from a native;
believe _nothing_ you see on TV or read in the papers. That goes double for
political ads; the one thing you can assume is that when one accuses another of
something, they're trying to distract you from noticing that _they_ did it.

Mark L. Fergerson

 

[Jan Panteltje]

On a sunny day (Sun, 16 May 2004 12:32:14 -0700) it happened Mark Fergerson
<nunya@biz.ness> wrote in <olPpc.65908$Fl5.51177@okepread04>:

The Shi'ites and the Sunnis seem to be united on one point at the
moment - they both want the U.S. occupiers to go home.

"Seem". All they're united on is the few points of Islam they agree on.
Everything else they kill each other over.
Not really, they were not killing each other under Saddam.

Was he not a great leader?
JP

 

[Richard Henry]

"Jan Panteltje" <pNaonStpealmtje@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:c88l5d$gku$1@news.epidc.co.kr...

On a sunny day (Sun, 16 May 2004 12:32:14 -0700) it happened Mark
Fergerson
nunya@biz.ness> wrote in <olPpc.65908$Fl5.51177@okepread04>:

The Shi'ites and the Sunnis seem to be united on one point at the
moment - they both want the U.S. occupiers to go home.

"Seem". All they're united on is the few points of Islam they agree
on.
Everything else they kill each other over.
Not really, they were not killing each other under Saddam.
Was he not a great leader?

Wha was killing them, then?

 

[Bill Sloman]

Mark Fergerson <nunya@biz.ness> wrote in message
news:<olPpc.65908$Fl5.51177@okepread04>...

Bill Sloman wrote:

Mark Fergerson <nunya@biz.ness> wrote in message
news:<jy3pc.682$Yg.520@fed1read05>...

Bill Sloman wrote:


"Mark Fergerson" <nunya@biz.ness> wrote in message
news:VGroc.17841$k24.16765@fed1read01...


Bill Sloman wrote:



toor@iquest.net (John S. Dyson) wrote in message

news:<c7s6h5$2lli$1@news.iquest.net>...


In article <7c584d27.0405111733.177c8235@posting.google.com>,
bill.sloman@ieee.org (Bill Sloman) writes:



Scott Stephens <scottxs@comcast.net> wrote in message

news:<zm9oc.27672$iF6.2845737@attbi_s02>...


Bill Sloman wrote:

<snip>

What, Spain was easier bought until their Socialists took
over? I thought Mordida was a New World invention.


Nah. Spain didn't need to be bribed. Aznar was the same sort of
right-wing
nitwit as Dubbya, and 86% of the Spanish electorate though he was wrong
to
support the invasion.

You don't keep track of U.S. Foreign Aid funding?


It is too small to be worth worrying about, even smaller when you
subtract out the subsidised arms sales to the right-wing dictators you
seem to be so fond of.

My point, which you blissfully ignored, is that we haven't sent Spain
any
money in quite a while.

Not everybody needs to be bribed to do the right thing, or the wrong thing -
Spain was a bad example for you to pick, because Aznar's ideological
blinkers more or less lined up with Dubbya's.

Spain does do business with the U.S., like practically everybody else, and
Aznar could well have figured that Spanish sherry sales in the U.S. would
not have been hurt by a little collaboration.

That ties in nicely with _your_ point about "bribes and corruption". How
long do you thing will it be until Spain sticks its
"collective" hand out?

It would seek regional support from the rest of the E.U. before it bothered
approaching the U.S. - Spain, like Ireland, did very well out of its E.U.
membership when its economy first started catching up with the more advanced
European countries, while the days of Marsahll Plan aid are long past.

that's how you got your
mandate for the first Gulf War, and it was time and money well-spent.

I see; it's a "moral war" if Euros get their cut of the
action. You could have said so earlier and prevented much
name-calling. What's _your_ price for a favorable opinion on
U.S. action overseas? Taking bids? I can't wait for you to
put it up on Ebay.


No war is ever moral. They cost too much.

So, your "solution" to the Middle East situation is what,
for the rest of the world to stay "hands off" and let the
locals kill each other off until only the most vicious
remain for the rest of the world to deal with?


Clearly you haven't been paying attention. My preference was for a
U.N.-mandated ocupation force in Irak, with enough Muslim paricipants
to let the Irakis think that they were being liberated, rather than
occupied.

"Think" being the operative word. Clearly you prefer a U.N. occupation.

I suspect that the Iraki's would have preferred a U.N. occupation - they do
seem to be (marginally) less upset by the non-US members of the present
occupation force.

The latest Guardian Weekly was pretty rude about Rumsfeld's
unwillingness to take advantage of the U.S. foreign service's
expertise on foreign cultures, and a few more Arab-speaking Muslim's
in the occupying force might well have fooled enough of the people
enough of the time to have prevented the current rash of
insurrections.

It would be better to have "insurrections" against a nice, homogenous
bunch of Euros and Arabs wearing blue helmets? Do you really believe no
such
"insurrections" would occur in that scenario? You cannot possibly be that
naive.

UN occupation forces wouldn't have been homogenous, any more than the
current occupation forces are - each nationality supplies complete units,
who occupy specific areas. During the earlier months of the current
occupation, resistance was confined to isolated incidents, and the current
crop of insurrections, involving a significant proportion of the populations
of specific cities, is not only new but also pretty much confined to U.S.
occupied areas, which does suggest that ham-handed U.S. tactics are
contributing to the problem.

Works for me. We all need to reduce our nuke inventories;
might as well use 'em.


As simple idea, that even you can understand. Not a good idea, for
reasons that you probably couldn't understand.

If all that's left are the serious whackos (as would be the case after
they saw through a hypothetical U.N./Arab occupation), how else to deal
with > them?

If the bulk of the population believed that the occupying forces were really
going to leave as soon as order had been restored, you could fool enough of
the people for long enough to avoid any serious insurrections.

My price for supporting U.S. action overseas would depend on the
action,
but in most cases it would be higher than my support would be worth
(about > > $0.10 at a guess).

Why am I not surprised.


Your current administration was simply too gung-ho to worry about the
problems of holding down Irak once they had invaded it - one more
example of their short-sighted attitudes.

So, you're admitting that World Public Opinion is driven
by graft among leaders?


I don't believe that I said anything about World Public Opinion - the
U.N.
mandate was the subject under discussion, which isn't quite the same
thing
at all.

Sigh. "World Public Opinion" is indeed driven by leaders,
and their preferences are driven by the levels of bribes
offered, right?


Aznar was right behind Dubbya, but his enthusiasm only persuaded 14%
of the Spanish electorate. Sometimes the most energetic leaders can't
influence public opinion in the way that they'd like.

Wait till Socialist Spain sticks its hand out.

To the EU, if anybody - the U.S. is much less generous.

You make a difference without distinction.

So you claim, because you haven't got the wit to read the papers or
remember what actually happens when some leader tries to persuade the
electorate that black is white.

Name one that hasn't. Ever.

I already did - Aznar in Spain - who thought that the US-led invasion of
Irak was a good idea, when 86% of the Spanish electorate didn't, and failed
to persuade them to change their minds after the event, which meant that he
stopped theing their leader at the next election. Why can't you pay
attention?

BTW, you _have_ noticed who's running the U.N. recently,
haven't you?


Somebody called Koffi Anan

http://www.un.org/News/ossg/sg/

Yes, I know, thank you just the same. He's a native of Ghana. Now, just
for giggles, do you know the history of U.S. aid to Ghana vs. his opinion
of > the U.S.?

No. Tell me about it, preferrably by a URL pointing to some non-US
historian's account of the events.

He seems to be doing pretty well, within the limits of the job.

Right. A dandy job in the former S.S.R.'s

He seems to know what needs to be done. Persuading politicians to do the
right thing can be more difficult. Putin and Dubbya both have their own
agendas and their own none-too-well-informed electorates.

The only opinion that matters in Irak at the moment is
the opinion of the Irakis as a group

Which group, the Shiites? The Sunnis? The recently
imported Al Qaeda sympathizers? Do you really hold the
illusion that they're any more homogenous philosophically
than the inhabitants of what was Yugoslavia?


The Shi'ites and the Sunnis seem to be united on one point at the
moment - they both want the U.S. occupiers to go home.

"Seem". All they're united on is the few points of Islam they agree on.
Everything else they kill each other over.

Congratulations.

Tito managed to keep Yugoslavia in one piece as long as he lived, and
you may yet get lucky and find the Iraki Tito, though your nitwit
prison guards have probably spoiled his (or maybe her) disposition by
ill-chosen "softening-up" procedures.

When Tito's iron grip relaxed, what happened? All those smoldering
centuries-old hatreds erupted into full flame, that's what. Nothing was
resolved.

That is not the way it looked to the refugees from former Yugoslavia who
were learning Dutch when I was, back in 1994/5.

Slobodan Milosevic deliberately revived all those century-old hatreds for
his own political advantage, and undid all that Tito had achieved in short
order, in a manner painfully reminiscent of Hitler's exploitation of
Germany's residual anti-Semitism. Milosevic is now answering for his crimes
before International War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague.

http://www.cco.caltech.edu/~bosnia/criminal/criminals.html

An "Iraki Tito" already existed in Iraq; his name was Saddam Hussein.
Same thing happened when he was deposed.

A totally false analogy. Tito was the leader of all the Yugoslavs.

Saddam Hussein was a Sunni Muslim who oppressed the Shi'ites and the Kurds,
and who ran the country for his own benefit and the benefit of his extended
family (who held most of the senior jobs). He came to power as the head of
political party, more like Stalin than Tito (whose history looks more like
George Washington's).

Oh, and please accentuate the actions of a few ill-trained, ill-
supervised idiots some more.

Well, I am replying to your posting ....

and a U.N. mandate might have helped that - most
likely not directly, but by diluting the US content in the army of
occupation. It is noticeable that the U.S. troops do seem to be seeing
rather more armed insurrection than the other coalition forces in Irak.

And what drives that, other than targeting by Al Qaeda?

Probably ignorance and arrogance - most American soldiers are
convinced that their way of doing things is the only way of doing
things, and don't realise that behavior that is tolerated in the U.S.
can be totally unacceptable for other cultures.

You really hate the U.S.

I don't. I am aware that U.S. newspapers don't publish much in the way of
foreign news, and that U.S. citizens tend to regard the U.S. as not only
God's Own Country, but also God's Only Country. This is a tolerable cultural
preference, but it makes your citizens somewhat insensitive to cultural
differences, and correspondingly unsuitable for the roles of occupiers and
administrators in foreign countries. There are plenty of Americans who do
transcend their background, but there don't seem to be enough of them in
Irak at the moment, in part because of a stuoid turf war between Rumsfeld
and Powell.

What's the matter, not getting enough Foreign Aid
(bribes and corruption) to suit you?

As far as I know, I don't get any. I'd prefer to earn my money doing
electronic design, but since I'm between jobs at the moment, I'm open to
offers.

While we're speaking of "tolerated behavior", what about using power
tools to extract confessions, as was "tolerated" in Saddam-era Iraq?

Saddam's behaviour wasn't tolerated, but endured. Getting rid of a dictator
who controls the armed forces and has a large and active secret police force
is not eay. If you had wanted to run Irak on that basis, you'd have needed
to install a much larger security apparatus. As it is, you've taken a little
too much of the brutal oppressor approach, without installing enough brutal
oppressors to make it work.

If opinion has a price, it isn't worth buying.


Tell that to your presidential candidates, who are planning on spending
millions on TV ads to try and shift public opinion their way.

Oh, I see; you believe that bullshit. Never mind.

Not having millions to spend, I don't have to have an opinion on the
effectiveness of TV ads. U.S. politicians who do have millions to
spend do seem to think that TV advertising is worth the money, as you
should have noticed.

You have absolutely no understanding of U.S. politics. Take it from a
native; believe _nothing_ you see on TV or read in the papers. That goes
double for political ads; the one thing you can assume is that when one
accuses another of something, they're trying to distract you from noticing
that _they_ did it.

Obviously a minority opinion. Your presidental candidates would be spending
their money in other ways if your opinion was widely shared. In fact, I
suspect that your scepticism is confined to the party political propaganda
coming from the side you don't support. Your silly ideas about the U.N.
sound exactly like the party line of the isolationist idiots of the right
wing of the Republican Party.

-------
Bill Sloman, Nijmegen