SirRiff

i'm not sure what you mean by the 300B. but for the last line, americans do not live better then me as far as i know. our nation is better in a number of ways. in everyday life money isnt the only measure of happiness. in fact, money is just a method to get at what you really want. our country is run better then the US and canadians i believe live in most areas better lives. i have been all over the states and never have i seen some national divide of things they have and we dont. it just doesnt exist. they are certainly far richer as a nation, but that is an absolute measure, and when you look at average americans you see the wealth is not spread evenly at all. there is still alot of crime, and poverty, and exploitation down south, even with thier massive wealth. having seen both countries, i am certain i am not missing anything. else i would move there if i wanted to. SirRiff

let me just make on point untill i read the rest of teh arctile david kay is NOT an independant observer. the grop that he leads is the Iraq survey group. it is made up of mainly american specialists, that took over the search from the US military. this is not some impartial UN team or anything. so everything they say are baised, the only way for the search to have open would have to had the UN take over immediately and take charge of the WMD hunt. this is an american group specifically looking for weapons to justify the war. its not like they can come back with an answer, uh, no, we didnt find anything guys. one other thing, you cannot read a few words in isolation of reality. if teh US thinks the UN resolution is the word of god, maybe they should respond to why they keep vetoing resolutions against isreal? or why there was no resolution against the US when they funnel weapons to terrorists in afganistan, or iran, or iraq? where did all the UN resolutions against the USs secret wars go? if the US is going to cite UN resolution as the undeniable truth why dont they join the international criminal court? or other international projects? because it seems the US likes the UN resolutions when they need it for PR, but when its against isreal, or when it hampers their style its not imporant. and of course, when you want to send weapons to terrorists and dictators, teh best way to avoid a UN resolution is to do it in secret right? so what i am saying, is that IF iraq was treated the same as the US, there would have been a resolution against the US for sending weapons to afganistan. thus when the US sent weapons to iraq later, it would have beer justification for invastion and occupation too if read literally. the truth is that an undeclared lab that is completly empty of WMDs is NOT a reasonable justification for war. else every nation could be invaded. this is really the important part. if they were not making WMDs you cannot invade them. simple that. EVEN if they had intent to make WMDs later, you cannot invade a sovereign nation. else the US could have been invaded several times already. even if they have empty labs that isn teh same has having a huge WMD stockpile. its just not. when saddam was gassing iranians in teh 80s the CIA gave him intelligene information on iranian front lines so he could gas them better. if the US really felt WMDs were so bad, that would have been the time to complain to the UN. but they actually helped him, so they are just as guilty in the US of WMDs as him. in 2003, any decent country will have labs and industrial capabilites to make chemicals. empty labs cannot justify war on every third world nation. even a high school lab can make simple toxic chemicals. so if iraq has no WMDs, and all they have is empty labs and even if they dont tell the UN they have empty labs, that cannot be reasonably grounds for war. the US has dont much worse and has not been cited by resolution or invaded. kay says things like well duh, working to develop missles? which country isnt? and there were no missles built. no missles half built. no warheads laying around. just the intent to develop the technolgy, which can never be isolated away from teh many other applications of military technology. all the crimes are of intent. you cannot invade and start a war because of intent. there has to be the proof that something was imminent. that they started teh actions to kill large numbers of people. otherwise you are claiming that you can predict that intent of their development of some common technology. the world cannot operate that way. kays report is a magic ball saying that they were obviously bad guys, and we think that they were working on the same stuff as everyone else, adn they wanted to have weapons when nobody was looking, and eventually, not yet, but maybe in a really long time when nobody was looking, they can make the weapons that we have, adn just like us, they could be capable of using them- although saddam had sat in iraq for 12 years doing nothing after he had been defeated- he was a survivor not a suicide bomber. the reality of iraq is so far away from a reasonable justification for war its pathetic. they had a much more ethical and strong case on humanitarian grounds which they ignored untill the WMDS didnt appear. SirRiff

the US is also the largest reaper of dictators. the US freely gave $3 BILLION in arms and training to osama bin ladens rebels to fight the russians. you think that was a humanitarian gesture? no, it was to make sure the US would get the stable oil flow from the middle east. how did they meddle in the middle east? they gave weapons to saddam to kill iranians, and gave weapons to iran to kill iraqis. gee that doesnt sound humanitarian. so the US gave billions of $$ worth of weapons to get tens of billions in oil. you want a medal for that? and now giving a few billon to the US makes them heroes? what about the nations they helped to destroy? afganistan didnt just get leveled by itself. russia and the US played thier little game over it and kills millions and destroyed the nation. so giving a few billion here and there is nothing compared to the suffering they were involved with. at least Russia doesnt pretend to be some moral humanitarian nation. as for the 87$ billion, it doesnt take a genius to figure out the US has bombed iraq twice, and been the main defending of devestating sanctions on iraq. so yeah it makes sense they put forth the most money considering they are occupying it. not to mention in the first gulf war Japan wrote a 10B$ check for its part and it wasnt even on the ground. actually if it wasnt for britian or russia or any number of men dying in that war germany would have won. the war raged while the US sat on the sidelines protected. if germany had been beside teh US they too would have been blitzkreiged into submission. europe did not have the luxory of oceans and were faced with a superior and fanatical enemy. without britian or russia germany might have held all of europe without america even getting involved letting them rebuild and become a modern superpower. who knows. but one thing if for sure, but because the US came in last does not mean they were the only crucial nation. not by far. war if different when its on your own soil. americans saw that on 9/11 and that was only 3000 people and 19 enemies. imagine what europe saw when armies raped and pillaged their countries one by one. no country alone could have stopped them. SirRiff

i think you are underestimating modern organized terrorism. if you are looking at historical examples, like the formation of isreael, or northern ireland or chechnya or whatever, i think they are outdated. first of all, modern technology has made it much easier to organize and carry out an attack. just look at travel, 19 middle eastern guys can all assemble in north america on a specific day to carrry out an attack. that means that local terrorists are not restricted to local targets. al queda is a perfect example of a global terror organization, and becaues of that, ALL potential targets must spend huge resources defending themselves. this also means that raw information, water systems, nuclear plants, buidling designs are all available, so instead of having "secret" targets that you try to hide in mountains like NORAD or area 51, you have almost every civilian target right out in the open, easily open to full scruty by terrorists. you never know which one and thus need a homeland security department to secure the entire nation, even small towns are spending time and money defending themselves on teh remote possibility they are attacked. this means that the traditional might of a nation is wasted as it must be spread over a inefficient range of area. obviously the lethality of weapons has increased too, as the nerve attacks of the japanese subway prove. its not hard to make toxic chemicals and release them, and the proliferation of military grade munitions mean that even high grade explosives and heat seeking missles are aviailable globally for the first time in recent history. you also have the amplified hysteria effect, we are more accutely aware that the end of the world may actualy be coming. on 9/11 everyone just keep wondering what was next? its instantly on every TV, radio and internet site so the entire nation is gripped with fear as well. imagine what would happen if it was published that small pox had been reased in chicago last night. the entire US would decend into chaos in one day, all forms of travel to and from illinois would need to be cut off, not to metnion everyone that came out of there for the past day or two, which could be a million people. why would you go to school in LA is you new chicago had just been hit? and with 9/11, we know that its not just simple bombs, but complex sophistocated attacks. i think another factor is the middle class effect. when you are well off like we are in industrialized nations, you dont hold up as well. you arent willing to suffer as much. the trauma of fear hits those i rich nations very badly, we dont deal with stress that well. and if we were under regluar attacks like israel i'm sure the economy and man parts of society would crumble under the stress. that is really the best thing to attack for terrorists. the comfort of middle class america. why fight and suffer and sacrifice when you can just give in a little (relatively), let the terrorists do what they want to, and you can go back to your life? if some guys in the middle of nowhere want thier own country, just give it to them so i dont have to be scared anymore. if they want some prisoner released or they will attack, release the damn prisoner. i really think we dont have the willpower to win the fight in the long run, the terrorists are far more desperate and willing to suffer for thier cause then a middle class western citizen is for his. actually that was the fatal mistake of 9/11. by coming to america alqueda forced the US to responded to a high degree. they were too successfull too fast. i think other terrorists will not take the US on directly, but keep hitting thier allies and interests overseas and america will not be able to keep armies runing around the world. the world is getting worse and worse every day and civilized nations will withdraw more and more into thier borders to remain seperate. no middle class kid is going to sign up to patrol downtown africa with 14 kids firing RPGs at them. and no nation is going to bankrol that. i think this generation of terrorism was just started on 9/11, and not through raw destruction, but wearing down resolve by unconventional mental stress, terrorists will accomplish alot of their goals against western nations. SirRiff

you know that is the greatest crime of teh rest of the world, while the US is guilty of abusing its power supporting dictators for geo-political gain, the rest of the world is guilty of not supplying the muscle to do things in the democray way they preach. in truth an organization of democratic nations each that contribute some % of their GDP to a international defense force is the only way these things can occur. of course that provokes the left out nations to make thier own pacts and become hostile, so the remedy is to include all nations like the UN so as not to create a more volatile situation. since when do only nice nations get to play? the US has troops in saudi arabia protecting their oil. the US has sent weapons to osamas crew, iran and iraq. sorry, but its a bit late to pretend that there is some moral requirement for military alliances. the US wrote the book on secret dealings with tyrants. which iraq are you talking about? democracy is about representative government. there are no elections in the near future, so there is no democacy. for all we know the whole nation may fall into civil war. when the US stabolizes the nation and completes democratic elections in a year or two, THEN you get to celebrate. anything before that is premature. hell what if americans demand the withdrawal of their troops? they dont seem to have a particularly long attention span these days. SirRiff

america is despised largely for its policies on sept 11th 1973 the CIA assisted a coup in chile in which lists of opposition leaders were drawn up and they were summerly exectuted. thousands and thousands died. that is terrorism. that is one of many examples of american police. that is why america deserves all the bashing it gets. america buys billions in oil from saudi arabia, but lectures iran on democracy? the same iran the CIA supported a british coup in 1953 for oil rights and the same iran that the US sold weapons to for killing iraqis. yet continue to support the corrupt saudi dictators in exchange for the power of their energy. america has engaged in just as much terrorism as any other nation, only they hide it better. if they want to be treated with the respect their think they deserve, they should act like it and act in true humanitarian and democatic interests, not just pay lip service and photo ops. SirRiff

there has been no proof of ungoing programs. it doesnt exist. there is "aplenty" of nothing excect old trailers and a 12 yr old gasket buried under a rose garden. iraq was a third world nation with no conventional or WMD capability to affect its neighbors. if saddam was a madman he would have attacked already. the truth is he was a toothless tiger and no threat to the US. the fact that bush hasnt mented WMD in months shows how nothing has materialized on that front. if they knew all about them like they claimed they should have been able to find something by now. 12 yr old documents are meaningless. in the last 12 years the US has secretly done more evil then iraq. SirRiff

BHAHAHAHA anybody else notice how the first statement undermines the other? oh god, so funny. i feel sorry for people who cant choose between rational though and fanatical rantings and end up doing both badly. whoops...not adhering to the strict political content..but it was just too easy to pass up. SirRiff

what they did is ignore the "none" and "other" responses which made up 37% of the responses. of the remaining 5 choices, the US made up 37% of the choices. you can tell by the raw data very misleading as 15% chose nations not listed and 22% chose none of the nations listed. thats like saying, what do you think should happen to gay people? 1. burn to death 20% 2. die slow deaths 10% 3. dont know 22% 4. other 17% 5. be left alone 31% and you claim that "given the option of methods for dealing with gays 66% of people choose burning to death over dieing slow deaths given the option between the two." talk about false information. and people dont even notice it because nobody knows cares about the methods. ahh, but just enough case of a scientific thought and critical reasoning causing trouble i suppose SirRiff

the first paragraph of the article specfically states they are assessing responsibility for their lapses. nobody has the security of the nation is absolutely the responsibilty of the US regardless of teh UNs security. the UN isn not responsible for stopping the bombings, teh US is, they are just responsible for reducing the casualties. the UN definately needs to do better, but this isnt anythig close to a vindication for teh US. actually it proves that the UN cannot rely on US protection as the occupying force. actually the US SHOULD turn it over to the UN so teh world can so how hard it is to maintain order. then the US would get some respect in that regard. SirRIff

why pretend to draw up a list when you dont care about the record anyways? glossing over a balanced budget like its nothing, but claiming that he soured relations with the US and he caused corruption? a reasonable person would realize he is just like every guy before him and every guy after him. not particularly responsible for the good or bad because its beyond the scope of one man even the PM. the US screwed itself over, corruption is ubiquitous in history uncontrollable by any gov, and canadians arent willing to bankroll an expensive military right now. an unreasonable person just lists everything in the the last 10 years that is inconvienent and attributes to some concept they dislike. might as well just blame communists and gays to complete the fanatical mental masterbation. SirRiff

one blog is just as useless as one attack. it would be reasonable to say that a small # want the US there, a small # are attacking the US, but most just want them to leave and are happy to be rid of saddam. incidently, ABC news said that prewar violent deaths in bahgdad were 16 month. now its 660. i cant imagine why they are pissed. SirRiff

QUOTE]-Asked to name one country they would most like Iraq to model its new government on from five possibilities--neighboring, Baathist Syria; neighbor and Islamic monarchy Saudi Arabia; neighbor and Islamist republic Iran; Arab lodestar Egypt; or the U.S.--the most popular model by far was the U.S. The U.S. was preferred as a model by 37 percent of Iraqis selecting from those five--more than Syria, Iran and Egypt put together. Younger adults are especially favorable toward the U.S., and Shiites are more admiring than Sunnis. Interestingly, Iraqi Shiites, coreligionists with Iranians, do not admire Iran's Islamist government; the U.S. is six times as popular with them as a model for governance. if you go directly to the study http://www.taemag.com/docLib/20030905_Iraq...Frequencies.pdf i found the answer to which country to model your gov after the US came in at 23% not 37%. SirRiff

so you are implying that socialist philosophies killed millions but the racial and religous polices of the right wing didnt? uh, no. its not likely the NDP will start WWIII either and lets not confuse justification of evil with the value of the philosophy itself. else christianity would be just as indictable as socialism. Sirriff

well this is the important point. the child has another parent, equally imporant i would assume, and its not good parenting to demean this other women, who has a great deal of importance in teh childs life. just like a man telling her child that his black mother doesnt love her because she is black. its obviously harmfull to the child and could needlessly traumatize her relations with her other parent. any parent that teaches hate is really doing a disservice to their child. its not like every children is perfectly educated, and perfectly feed, and perfectly attended to. teaching hate just shows you are willing to waste time instead of helping your child in many other areas. there are so many obese kids these days, or under-educated kids taht you gotta wonder what it more important to that childs quality of life. SirRiff

i'm sure craig has a good reason why the social elites of canada forced him to post in this forum. personally i dont see how religion enters into politics anyways, since it all boils down to a spectrum of philosophies about right and wrong anyways. its all relative morality. would jesus cut taxes? sirRiff

wow, you just proved your own level of intelligence far beyond anything i could have said craig. Sirriff

the actress is Canadian isnt she? HA must be insulting to the men who actually FOUGHT the war instad of running away and crashing into a truck. just another example of how war gets twisted and corrupted into whatever people want to see. SirRiff

i'm interested too, i dont know if its right, but why is it more credible then any other poll? SirRiff

easy to say when you have oceans surrounding you. americans almost died of shock when psuedo-war on 9/11 was brought to their shores. europeans still know what war is like on your own soil, so does the middle east and africa. americans dont even care enough to be interested in who they are bombing for what reason. SirRiff

1. Iraq had many programs in train to build on past WMD potential. All parties including the UNO were being duped. not true. all iraqi officals to date have independantly said under interrogation there were no WMD programs active recently. only some ideas about extending the range of their missles to be able to hit thier neighbors just like they were able to be hit. no american gov official has ever said they have found programs, they skirt the issue and use vauge words and never claim they found anything. wonder why? because blix, and kay, and the current WMD search team have found NOTHING of interest. 2. 3rd party countries were involved in aiding the Iraqi's in delivery and weapons development [including France, Serbia, Russia, China and Germany. the US sent 3 billion worth of weapons and training to osamas crew who helped to rape and pillage an entire nation for decades. the US is among the worst supporter of dictators so there is no argument to be made they can go around fixing the evils of the world. 3. Iraq sponsored attacks on US and Israeli citizens and assets. on sept 11 1973 the CIA assisted a military coup in chile, in which lists were made of thousands of people who were executed. i woudl say that qualifies as attacking other nations citizens. lets not forget the US supported saddam while he killed innocents, so once again, no credability on anything here. 4. Iraq sponsored training camps for terrorists. no, actually thats saudi arabia. just because a guy with a gun is in iraq and you dont like him doesnt make him a terrorist. remeber osama was a "rebel" when he killed russians, then a 'terrorist' when he killed americans. with such a hypocritical and arbitrary label, there were no terrorists in iraqi, just militants who never attacked the US or any other nation for that matter. they were pretty much useless. al queda and hamas are the active ones. 5. Iraq was searching for material and 3rd country support, to rebuild its WMD raw material supplies . why dont we get some nice proof out in public like some nation supporting all these claims? aluminum tubes, niger yellow cake, and so on and so on, all just exxagerations of what ALL nations do, arm themselves. its certainly does not invalidate the sovereignty of a nation. by that defintion the US could be bombed and occupied because of iran-contra or something. it cant be a scandal when teh US does it but a war when someone else does. again, nothing here. 6. Iraq was a humanitarian disaster. well the US supported iraq against iran which everyone knows helped to bankrupt iraq. then hussain went after his creditors, kuwait and saudi arabia, then the US couldnt risk its oiil so it went it. then 12 years of sanctions starved innocents because the US didnt have the balls to finish the job then. iraq is no more a disaster then most of africa, and you will NEVER see american troops there. the US only notices disasters when there is oil invovled it seems. so all in all, there is no real truth to any of the arguments made for war by the US. it was all lies told by one of teh most violent nations on earth, then when it all failed, they pretend it was about the welfare of iraqis. um, no. nobody really cares about the iraqis. SirRiff

thats not an example its a justification. its an immoral justification, because inevitably, the US uses the same means to fight its enemies that it accusses it enemies of using in the first place. so that justification cannot be considered moral or ethical and invalidates all the actions that come from it. most americans have NO clue about he world around this. this is refected by any one of a number of polls or surveys or testing done. most americans are also clueless about thier own history. this in itself is not unique as most of us are generally ignorant, however when its the wars and deaths your nation has caused, it cannot be dismissed the same as not knowing your MPs name. additionally, considering the propaganda of moral supremacy that penetrates the public justification of obviously immoral actions like shaking hands with murderers, this sort of ignorance cannot be ignored. every american is just as responsible for the secret violence of its own country as any middle east thug, and has neither the insight or credability to claim to be concerned with selflessly making the world better. SirRiff

God i love it when people say that. as if there is some complex subdued nuance about american culture that nobody else removed from a line on map cant understand. so funny my friend worked for an MCI call center up here in canada that serviced the southeast US. before the war people started calling in to cancel thier service because danny glover, who did commercials for MCI, was anti-war. and two different women asked to speak to someone who spoke "american". funny! i'll refrain from expanding on this, except to point out most people are equally proud of thier nations but just dont mention it for no reason. basicly your justifying the horrible actions of the US by pointing out the horrible actions of others. which makes the US just as bad scumbags. the US armed and funded the pre-taliban rebels, who violently raped and maimed thier entire nation. that makes the US scumy. the US supported saddam while he terrorized his people, and gassed iranians. that makes the US scumy. the US sold weapons to iran so they could in tern kill iraqis (And then later pathetically try to feign concern for iraqis). that makes the US scumy. The US assisted a setp 11 coup in Chile which installed a dictator in a reign of oppression that killed untold thousands. that makes the US scumy. the list goes on and on with all the coups and dictators and arms funneling, but i think i got the more relavent ones. i cant grasp how you can attempt to justify the USs involvement in teh death and destruction of so much just by pointing out others did it. by that logic sept 11th could itself be justifed. in reality, the actions of the US closely mirror the worst dictators, they just hide it better, spin it better, and have more money. but the end result and morality is the same, needless death and destruction. SirRiff

just because you continue to live does not mean you are not doing harm. any doctor will tell you that. smokers harm themselves in a steady slow process, not at all once. so the error in logic is thinking that because they are alive they are not doing harm, which is untrue. so once again i restate you cannot smoke without doing harm. you can have sex without doing harm. billions of people do it all the time, its how the species survives. so there can never be an argument saying that sex is unethical if it is done without harm. that would be like saying eating is unethical. we realize that done to extremes or in hazardous manners both sex and eating can be harmfull, but there are many many reasons why making this the prevailing judgement is not only extreme, but nonsense. the first of which would be it is unfair for some to accurately juge what is harmfull for others. because in some manner, many behaviors could be judged by some people as so undesirable to be harmfull. this sort of tyranny by the few is counterproductive. the only acceptable situation would probobly be what we see in civilized democracies. that the thresehold for the behaviors risk be very high (drinking and driving) and the thresecold of majority agreement against it be exceedingly high (elected gov making criminal law) so as to prevent abuse of the process (WWI internment camps or Nazi germany as extreme cases) i'm not sure what you define proof as, but citing my scientific background, nothing posted here has been proof that gays live abnormal lives. several of numbers you posted were obviously fake, some were completely not repeatable because of this biased procedures (looking for dead gays in newspapers), and most were from obviously religious baised sources, none of whom have a good track record with science. once again, if the CDC put out a study saying the average lifespan of a gay man was 42 and he one average would get 3 diseases, then yes, that is a reliable source. but to date small religous groups citing third hand studies done by other small religous groups who clearly post on thier sites a hatred of gays is not impartial. science must be indpendantly peer reviewed. that means the procedures and methods must be open for crtique from uninvested and removed experts. so like i said, there is no reputable organization like the UN or CDC that claims that being gay is a death sentance and will cause harm to society. but any reasonable person can tell that just by looking around. guns, alcohol, and tobacco do far more harm then gays ever could. so if you want to protect society, there are probably 50,000 lives a year in north america you could save right there. SirRiff

how does this differ from the insitution of slavery in the US or the internment camps of WWII? its been what, 200 years since the slaves were free and black men still get arrested more and make less money? if the us hasnt finally cleansed itself of slavery in 200 years how can you expect the poorest nations on earth to act civilized? poverty will cause ignorance and violence completely independantly of religion. if religion isnt there the problems will be over race, or tribes, or culture, or politics. the number of reasons that humans kill each other is endless. but one thing is certain, if you have a healthy family, a house, a job, and a decent life, you are far less likely to want to go to war. so you saw a terrorist attack, then saw what, a 10 second video clip of a group of people celebrating? so that 10 second clip is what you are basing this on? ALL the terror attcks in israel, saudi arabia, iraq, afganistan, were carried out by what, maybe 200 people? it doesnt take an army to carry out a suicide attack. and then we have the citizens. lets take iraq. these people have been terrorized by saddam for 30 years i think. saddam sold the world oil, america had no problem dealing with him, rumsfeld even shook his hand and smiled, when iraq fought iran the US even helped him with intelligence on iranian front lines and also chemicals and weapons so he could gas them. how friendly. so you have these iraqis who unfortunately have been under a world supported dictator, been through numberous wars, then under 12 years of sanctions, then being occupied by american forces. do you really think ANY country would be different? hell even in the US the most 'advanced' country, when there was a blackout the first thing that happens is riots. right back in the 70s in new york to a few months ago. perfectly normal people will start looting adn killing and raping if the power is out for a few days. so in truth, when you look at africa they are killing each other, in palestine they are killing each other, in northern ireland they used to kill each other, the civil war they killed each other, and so on and so on. there is no religous theme that is common to all the wars. there is however desperation, usually by poverty. why the hell do africa tribes war? becuase they are religous? nope, they are dirt poor and stuck in a violent land. if north america was founded by muslims escaping persectution in europe, they would have developed just as well as the settlers, they would have been moderate, and isolated adn able to prosper and grow. if you had grown up in iraq these last 30 years, i doubt you have had any chance to escape teh desperation they feel. and you too would act as desperate as them, however irrational as it may seem to us. SirRiff