Thoughts on Jihad

Here’s the Message of Jihad, “America Is an Evil Empire and must be destroyed”

Here’s what’s Happening “America Is Becoming an evil Empire”

Look into the statement released by the department of defense last week. It states that they plan to build death chambers at Guantanamo bay. Already, many terrorists are being held there without Tribunal, now I know that the rest of the world hates us, but if they are truly terrorists, than it shouldn’t make a difference if we take them to international tribunal, and present hard evidence that these men really are terrorists. Further more, there’s another Act In congress that states that the federal government can withhold people without officially charging them, and that they are no longer required to have a judges signature for a search warrant, that means they can raid anyone’s home and arrest them without charge. I don’t know about you, but that sounds a lot like Martial Law, and does little to stop terrorism, if anything it helps spread it, by re-enforcing the thought in their mind that we are evil. We are proving them right.

The Bush Administration is using the excuse that because the terrorists are not being held on U.S Soil, they do not have the right to be tried in our leagle system, further more, we are taking these people to muslim countries like Saudi Arabia and tourchering them for information. Yet, we still want to “stop dangerous madmen from tourchering and killing people” If this Martial Law bill passes, then we’re all in trouble, because then the Bush administration can say that any one who doesn’t agree with them is a terrorist, arest them and hold them without charge, ship them off to cuba for tourcher, and then death.

This sounds like some Gestapo, S.S secret police crap, and in our own democracy. It’s scary stuff, and if you look at history, Hitler came to power in a democracy modeled after our own. Bone chilling.

And so Buck claims Democracy is thriving,
is this what democracy looks like?
Is this what so many people have fought and died for?
is this what our faunding fathers had in mind when they wrote the declaration of Indpendance?
Have We Become the very thing we have swarn to stop?

This has been my thought on Jihad.

Mr. Jack

Posted by Jack Antilla on May 26th, 2005 in Articles, Commentary |

113 Responses to “Thoughts on Jihad”

  1. Sriram Says: May 26th, 2005 at 4:49 pm

    Well. Most people detained at Guantanamo Bay were captured on the battle field in Afghanistan or identified by intelligence. Even assuming they are innocent, it takes time debrief and interrogate them. In the meanwhile they cannot be let free because they’d join the Jihad again. Valuable resources are needed for the capture of enemy combatants, who by the way, swore to kill Americans and destroy America. They do not have the moral eligibility to be put thru the American legal system to determine guilt. Ofcourse, if found guilty they have to be put to death (i’d prefer torture but to appease our liberal friends, let’em just die).

    I can’t believe liberals are arguing for the so-called rights of the people who wanna kill American women and children. Prisoners of war or enemy combatants do not qualify for the rights and previliges of the host country. This has been the universal law. Atleast, the United States Army treats them with humanity and fairness, unlike other countries.

    The 1986 Reagan Directive allows the United States exclusive rights to indefinitely detain, kill or do whatever it wants with people plotting against murder of Americans. So the Bush administration does not even need excuses to imprison mass murderers. Reagan 86 is essential to protect America against retarded liberals and their loony ideas. By the way, when Janet Reno and Clinton captured Elain Gonzalez after intruding upon the rights and property of law abiding Americans, where was all this outrage about the rights of the victims? And the real victims in this case are the Americans killed on 9/11 and other Islamic murders.

  2. Richard Cranium Says: May 26th, 2005 at 6:47 pm

    You are sounding like a hysterical Liberal.

  3. Richard Cranium Says: May 26th, 2005 at 6:48 pm

    You are sounding like a hysterical Liberal

  4. Anna Says: May 27th, 2005 at 3:37 am

    Without due process you can be sure that many of the people tortured are innocents who were swept up because they were in the path of the military. It could have just as easily have been you, Sriram, if fate had put you in the wrong place at the right time. The moral thing to do is to treat everyone as you would wish to be treated. The immoral thing to do is to do otherwise.

  5. Anna Says: May 27th, 2005 at 3:40 am

    Sriram,
    YOU are the sort of terrorist that is the biggest threat to America.

  6. Anna Says: May 27th, 2005 at 3:41 am

    Straight to Guantanamo for Sriram! He is a danger to us all.

  7. General Tonic Says: May 27th, 2005 at 6:22 pm

    Think about the implications of the “Real ID” act, combined with the Supreme Court ruling that you MUST identify yourself to a police officer whenever he asks, even if you haven’t committed a crime. Something very bad is happening here, and it should deeply disturb honest freedom loving people on either side of the aisle.

    Watch out for Bush Co.

    Their words do not match their deeds. Never have.

  8. bonniem Says: May 29th, 2005 at 2:10 am

    See, Gen. Tonic, I don’t mind identifying myself to a police officer, particularly since I have done nothing wrong. Why would you?

  9. piz Says: May 29th, 2005 at 7:34 am

    Sriram is absolutely right, technically and ethically. These detainees do not deserve the same rights as American citizens or even POW’s (because they’re not). Unfortunately they are being treated too well. I just finished reading an article in the National Review which had former detainees explaining how well they were treated. Good food, very good medical care, and clean rooms. Most of them get 7-9 hours of excercise/activities and get to pray 5 times a day.
    Unfortunately, liberals will only believe a story that’s anti-American

  10. pizz Says: May 29th, 2005 at 8:02 am

    Couldn’t find anything on the department of defense web site about death chambers being built at Guantanamo Bay.
    I find that liberals are very good researchers, especially if it’s anti-American. If they can’t find it, they’ll just make it up.

  11. bonniem Says: May 29th, 2005 at 10:10 pm

    Or they will just go to any ol’ website, not knowing who or what or where it came from and then throw it out for fodder.

  12. Anna Says: May 29th, 2005 at 11:41 pm

    Pizz,
    I have never seen a conservative on this site provide a source for the information they present. Come to think of it, they rarely present information, opting instead to just blab the same tired, uninformed opinion.

  13. Circe Says: May 29th, 2005 at 11:55 pm

    Jack,
    I think the message of Jihad is a little different. According to the jihadists, America has no right to occupy or support dictators in Islamic countries. The jihad against the US is on, according to the jihadists, until we stop occupying their countries and supporting dictators (like the House of Saud, the King of the UAE, and the brutal tyrants who rule Kuwait, for example). But as long as we want cheap oil we must accept perpetual war.

  14. bonniem Says: May 30th, 2005 at 1:56 pm

    Anna, I guess, according to comment #12, you don’t find this site very interesting, so why are you still here?

  15. Paul Says: May 30th, 2005 at 3:08 pm

    If I had it my way, we would take all the prisoners we take and wrap them in pig meat (as according to their religion they will go to their version of Hell) then kill them and bury them with it. I think that would stop the Jihad pretty quickly. Who would want to fight for their religion if it means going to Hell?

  16. Mr. Jack Says: May 30th, 2005 at 7:02 pm

    Even so, circe, our tactics at fighting the war on terror are only strenghtining hatred towards america, and encouraging more people to rally against us, not with us.

    If America wants to be the shining light that bush claims it to be, then we seriously need to reconcider what we’re doing.

  17. Circe Says: May 30th, 2005 at 9:37 pm

    Mr. Jack,
    I should clarify my previous comment. I agree with your main point; violence always begets greater violence. I think that we may need to face a painful fact. We are engaged , now and forever more, in a perpetual war. We can look back now and see many of the ways that we participated in causing it. And we can look forward and see that it has no possible end. It will grow faster because of the way that our leaders have chosen to fight it. Iraq is a proving ground for jihadists and each death creates scores more jihadists. In our life times I expect that we will see the sort of violence that we have unleashed in Iraq spread around the world and come to our own streets. We, like the jihadists, are a violent people. When I hear people talk about the violent roots of Islam I wonder if they know that the dominant religion in our country, judeochristianity, has its roots in the most grotesque violence and irrationality that one can imagine. See Exodus 17, chapter 8 of the book of Joshua, for example. With such ideas as premises, is it not a wonder that our culture has lasted this long? We are destroyers of worlds. The battle that we are engaged in shares nothing in common with any war that humans have fought before. Ironically, in this war the faster we kill them, the sooner we will die.

  18. Mr. Jack Says: May 31st, 2005 at 12:53 am

    Sriram, if these people were truly terrorists, than the tribunal would show that, and they could be properly dealt with, but Touturer, and murder with out trial, makes us no better then them.

    We go around saying ” SUDDAM was a mad man that tortured people and put them to death without trial!? yet that’s exactly what WE are doing, now doesn’t that seem just a little hypocritical?

    While yes, most of them were captured on the field of battle, and they are mass murderers, they are still human beings and therefore should have the right to tribunal. When you say that mass murderers don’t deserve trial, are you saying any American serial killer has no right to trial, that if they’re suspected of doing something, then they should die?

    What happens when all these acts in congress pass, things like the real ID act that requires national drivers licenses, that contain all your personal information, and track you wherever you go? Things like the act that says federal investigators no longer have to have a warrant to hold you, and without charge? Then they can claim any one who speaks out against them is a terrorist, and lock them up, and execute them without trial, it undermines our system of checks and balances, and renders the judicial branch useless.

  19. Mr. Jack Says: May 31st, 2005 at 1:13 am

    Let me tell you all a story about the American Revolution.

    During the war, British Soldiers had a policy towards prisoners of war, that they are no more then rats. Some had a policy of being able to not recognize an Americans’ surrender, and kill them on the spot, point blank. The ones they did capture were tortured in horrible ways.

    But General Washington had a different policy, When he captured British soldiers, he treated them with Respect, no, this doesn’t mean he pampered them, he merely recognized that they were soldiers following orders just as he was, and so, when captured, they were locked up and interrogated, but never shot, and never tortured, his kindness to these soldiers was unprecedented, and even persuaded several British P.O.W’s to join his side.

    Now look at WWII

    Germany:
    When Germans captured P.O.W’s, they often hung many of them, or sent them to concentration camps to be used as slave labor, when the Russians finally broke threw and advanced the German line, they found many of their comrades butchered like animals, many shot at point blank.

    When the Allies sunk the Bismarck, Germany’s ultimate Weapon in the Atlantic, did they just sit there and let it’s crew drown? No, they brought them aboard their ships, and gave them dry cloths, I remember watching a program that had an interview of a German sailor who served on that ship who said, “I couldn’t believe the kindness they were showing”

    Now look at what we’re doing today, we have people like Paul who want to torture Islamic soldiers but enacting their version of hell, you have Bush sending P.O.W’s to Cuba And Saudi Arabia to be tortured, meanwhile he claims that “torture is Inhumane!” blah blah blah

    You have U.S soldiers in Iraq celebrating the fact that they killed an unarmed Iraqi soldier.

    The Fact of the mater is, that just because some one may be evil, doesn’t mean that they deserve to be treated in such a manner, the respect that America and It’s allies showed captured soldiers In WWII, and That General Washington showed the British, is what separates US from THEM, how can you claim to be good fighting evil, when you go and do the exact same things THEY do?

  20. Mr. Jack Says: May 31st, 2005 at 1:26 am

    Here are several scorces for you Pizz, since you only went to one site looking for information, I guess I’ll have to do it for you, I have several web journals, information from the BBC News site, etc… enjoy

    http://brilliantatbreakfast.blogspot.com/2005/05/guantanamo-bay-americas-first.html

    http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/2979076.stm

    http://www.truthout.org/docs_03/052703B.shtml

    http://www.utne.com/web_special/web_specials_2003-05/articles/10572-1.html

    http://www.sundaymirror.co.uk/news/content_objectid=13147613_method=full_siteid=106694_headline=-SCANDAL-OF-THE-CAMP-X-RAY-TRIALS-name_page.html

    also check out some editorials from newspapers such as the New York Times, or The Washington post, there’s bound to be an artical about it in one of those.

  21. pizz Says: May 31st, 2005 at 4:26 am

    Thanks for the sources ann. Although the ones you list are the most liberally biased media outlets I will not even hold that against you.
    On the BBC (well known anyi-American) web page they state that the “death rooms” are for terrorists that have been found guilty by a military tribunal. That’s just a little different than the context used in the article. If it was worded properly in the article I wouldn’t even have commented on it because it’s a no-brainer. Of course they should be executed. And for anyone who doesn’t think so, I suggest taking one of those nice terrorists home and raising it as their own.

  22. DerCossack Says: May 31st, 2005 at 11:42 am

    I want to comment on item #20. Mr. Jack, all the articals that you had listed except for one (http://brilliantatbreakfast.blogspot.com/2005/05/guantanamo-bay-americas-first.html) are from 2003. They obviously weren’t true when printed and are not true now. I agree with PIZZ and SRIRAM about the people detained in Cuba. They are not soldiers and never were. If Osama had asked them to go to America and and blow up “anything” along with themselves they would have done it. Maybe your idea of a soldier is different but then you would be going against the Geneva Convetion. ” The Geneva Convention’s “letter of the law” excludes fighters who are not in uniform”. They would as soon cut your head off on the “internet” as they would mine. Mr. Jack bid you good day.
    DERCOSSACK

  23. Lefty Says: May 31st, 2005 at 2:45 pm

    Pizz,
    I say this most sincerely. Do not fall into the trap of dismissing information as liberal media or anti-american. It is ashamed that many people are enclosing themselves in a self-imposed prison of ignorance by labeling the media as “liberal” and those who challenge the status quo as “anti-american.” Frankly I think that such a head-in-the-sand approach is a major reason why many (perhaps most) Americans are woefully underinformed about world events. For example, one of the most important events to occur in Iraq in the past year happened yesterday. I have seen far less reporting on it than it deserves. Yesterday american troops arrested Muhsin Abd al-Hamid. He is a professor at the University of Baghdad. He was hooded and taken away after US troops broke windows in his home and allegedly mistreated him and his sons, who were also taken away. His wife, who has leukemia, said that the US troops “scattered the contents of their house and took our money, jewellery and our ID cards and passports.” President Talabani was of course outraged and demanded his immediate release because al-Hamid is the only Sunni in the Iraqi government and as Talabani put it “treating a political personality of this level in such an arbitrary way is unacceptable.” After Talabani’s demand al-Hamid was released and the US military admitted that they did make a mistake. It leaves one wondering, however, what happens to people who are “mistakenly” arrested but who do not have high level political positions that can be used to bail them out. This was a new low point in the US occupation of Iraq for several reasons. It demonstrates that US troops are arresting people in a nearly random fashion. They simply don’t know who they are rounding up. Also, now Iraqi politicians are starting to point out to the US military the fact that under the provisional Iriaqi constitution it is not LEGAL for US troops to arrest people in Iraq. You wouldn’t know if from the media because the story of Iraq is carefully sanitized before it is delivered to the American public, but Iraqis are outraged over their situation. And with good reason. Even if we gave Bush and company the benefit of the doubt and said that they had nobel reasons for invading Iraq, certainly it is clear that they had no earthly idea what they were getting us into.

  24. Julian Says: May 31st, 2005 at 5:53 pm

    Former FBI second in command, W. Mark Felt, was deepthroat.

  25. josh Says: May 31st, 2005 at 11:36 pm

    Pizz is right, the articles speak abiut what “could” happen to the terrorists if found guilty. But the headlines are spun so that a typical non reader aka liberial will easily jump to conclusions.

    However, lets jump back to # 7 and 8. I don’t think that many of you are from a small town, why?
    Well being from a small town I know that police have far to much extra time and power. I say this from experiances like my 28 in a 25(mph) speeding ticket. Then being pulled over 3 days later because he “remembered” that my insurance had expired the day before(2nd day) and he wanted to make sure I had renewed. (i had but its not leagel to be pulled for that) Or the numerous drug searches of my car. All of which turned up nothing. I could go on but I’m only going to become angry.

    I hate to agree with a hippy but cops don’t need more power.

  26. pizz Says: June 1st, 2005 at 2:02 am

    Left, I truely appreciate your sincerity and respect your opinions but I couldn’t agree less. There are just too many issues with your comment. Let’s just say we disagree.

  27. Circe Says: June 1st, 2005 at 3:46 am

    The problem comes from assuming the guilt of every individual detainee. It seems to me that the justice system that DerCossack and Pizz favor is likely to produce unacceptable numbers of errant convictions. If we remove justice from the cornerstone of our system, it WILL collapse. Justice is a value we should cherish and cultivate. Can you imagine a worse nightmare than an unjust superpower? Much of the world believes that is what we are already. Will Gitmo, Abu Ghraib and Afghanistan prove the world right or wrong about us?

  28. DerCossack Says: June 1st, 2005 at 5:14 am

    Circe, Yes justice is a value we should hold dear. What is more important though? Justice for the suspected terrorists or lives of Americans and even the lives of other Muslims? This is gonna take a long time to figure out. We are in uncharted territory. We need to be cautious. Are we to believe that all that are being held captive are innocent till proven guilty? I’m pretty sure our soldiers did not run around Afghanistan just picking up people walking down the sreet and say “That one over there will meet our quota.” They were more than likely caught in battle, therefore they were Al Queda. And shouldn’t justice go both ways. They [Al Queda] were not just to anyone in there own country. They did after all butcher people in some of the soccer staduims. they killed women for speaking up, also if they showed to much skin. And don’t even let them see you playing soccer in the “Soccer Stadium” because that was just cause for a beheading. Do they treat our soldiers who are captured with any “Justice”? No they do not. I heard one quote I liked, forgot who said it but it went something like this. “If hooking up a battery to a terrorist is going to save more lives, than I have this to say, red is positive and black is negative.
    DerCossack

  29. Lefty Says: June 1st, 2005 at 1:16 pm

    To any participant interested in the Global War on Terror:
    Dr. Steven Biddle’s monograph entitled “American Grand Strategy” is on the Strategic Studies Institute or the US Army War College web site this morning. It can be found in pdf form at http://www.carlisle.army.mil/ssi/pubs/display.cfm?PubID=603. To summarize the report, “Bush hasn’t told us (and may not know himself) who the enemy is and has not developed a strategy for defeating the enemy without shooting our own feet off.”

  30. Lefty Says: June 2nd, 2005 at 2:21 am

    According to an AP report today which quotes CIA officials who confirmed what I am about to tell you, many the of detainees at Guantanemo Bay were turned in by Afghan tribal warlords who were paid a total of over 3.5 million dollars to hand over “suspects” to the Americans during the invasion of Afghanistan. How would you like to be in Gitmo, uncharged, and interogated via waterboarding etc all because the US paid millions of dollars to some of the most corrupt people on the face of the Earth who said that you were an enemy combatant? Do you think the word of Afghan war lords should be trusted? Do you think they might turn you in for the money? It would just be your word against theirs. Think about it. Warlords were paid to produce “suspects.” We also learned last week, if you read the news, that one of the individuals who died during an interogation at Guantanemo Bay was believed by the CIA to be entirely innocent and unrelated to any terrorist, military, or anti-US activity. He was a taxi driver. The interogators who killed him apparently where not informed by their superiors that the man was just a law abiding Afghan who was a victim of the warlords. It is just nuts to support such behavior under any circumstances.

  31. Circe Says: June 2nd, 2005 at 1:23 pm

    DerCossack,
    The issue is not “how they treat us.” That is irrelevant. What is important is whether WE practice the highest possible standards of justice. Only by doing so can we acheive the highest good. Our goal is to uphold and spread the values of justice and democracy, right? The practice of justice can’t harm us. It can only improve us.

  32. Leroidavid Says: June 3rd, 2005 at 1:15 am

    A short response to Circe message #17

    How can someone says in year 2005 that “violence always begets greater violence” ?
    How where the Nazi regime destroyed ? By sending flowers to the Nazis, or by fighting them and killing them ?
    The truth is that the violence of bad people begets the violence of good people, and that, at the end, the violence of good people ends the violence of bad people and restore democracy, justice and freedom.
    Tyrants and dictators and terrorists are destroyed by a just violence to protect innocent men women and children from their violence.

  33. Circe Says: June 3rd, 2005 at 3:10 am

    Leroidavid,
    Of course the Nazis and Bin Laden undoubtedly operated according to the same principle that you are promoting. They thought that their violence was justified because they thought that they were on the side of good. Good and bad are in the eyes of the beholder. It is always the other guy who starts it, right?

  34. Circe Says: June 3rd, 2005 at 3:18 am

    Leroidavid,
    Let me recommend an alternative perspective on this topic in the form of a wonderful book, Jonathon Schell’s ‘The Unconquerable World.’ After you have read it you may still disagree but I promise you, it will stimulate some interesting new thoughts.

  35. Circe Says: June 3rd, 2005 at 3:30 am

    Leroidavid,
    In the present case, do you think we can really defeat terrorism by killing terrorists? The faster you kill them, the faster they are produced. It is violence and hatred that spawns terrorism and their belief that we want to dominate them. When you give them a reason to believe that we want to dominate them you reinforce bin Laden’s message to his recruits. Bush’s approach to the terrorism problem is the best recruiting tool Bin Laden could wish for. Terrorists aren’t anything like our enemies of the past. They do not lust for power, property, or empire. Wars are won by breaking the will of the enemy. People who are willing to blow themselves up to kill you are not likely to have their wills broken by violence. The question, then, is what can we do to affect their wills?

  36. pizz Says: June 3rd, 2005 at 6:43 am

    I agree Leroidavid. Good job!

  37. pizz Says: June 3rd, 2005 at 6:50 am

    Circe, I’m gonna check out that book, sounds good. I also have a couple of books if your interested: Radical Islam and the American Left by David Horowitz and Holy War on the Homefront by by Harry Kushner.

  38. Circe Says: June 3rd, 2005 at 10:06 pm

    pizz,
    I will read the books you suggested. Perhaps we can have a LAL book club. Cheers

  39. Leroidavid Says: June 4th, 2005 at 6:07 am

    Response to Circe #33

    If you have difficulties to find whether the Nazis and Bin Laden are good or bad, I can do nothing for you.
    If the extermination of 6 millions of Jews, that realized the Nazis, and the extermination of all non-Muslims, that want to realize Bin Laden and the islamofascists, are not bad, then nothing has never and will never be bad.
    Good and bad are objective values, not subjective.

  40. Leroidavid Says: June 4th, 2005 at 6:43 am

    Response to Circe #35

    One terrorist killed is one terrorist less.
    Killing terrorists is reducing terrorists, not producing terrorists.
    It is not violence and hatred that spawns terrorism, but terrorism that spawns violence and hatred.
    The war on terror is the result of the crimes against humanity perpetrated in 2001 in New York and Washington; it has nothing to do with the will to dominate anybody.
    The best recruiting tool for Bin Laden was Clinton refusal to fight terrorism after the first attack against the World Trade Center and the bombings of the US embassies in Africa.
    The islamo-terrorists have the biggest lust for empire and power, their aim being the creation of a global islamic empire on all earth, and the power over all mankind.
    Wars are not won by breaking the will of the enemy, but by breaking the enemy. The Nazis were broken, but not their will. After WWII, the Nazis remained Nazis, and those who still live are still Nazis and have still their nazi will.
    Normal people shall not bother about what terrorists think, but shall punish them, as well as they don’t bother about what serial killers think, but punish them. The terrorists are not above the law.

  41. Circe Says: June 4th, 2005 at 1:44 pm

    Leroidavid,
    SO you think Hitler, Bin Laden,and Bush (all bad people to me) see (or saw) themselves as bad people. They are, but since good and bad are subjective, I doubt they see themselves that way. I may think you are bad, but I bet that you think that you are good. Who gets to decide?

    And you really do not understand the roots of terrorism at all. You are very superficial in your analysis. The thin talking points your cited don’t reflect much deep analysis.

  42. Mr. Jack Says: June 4th, 2005 at 6:32 pm

    Leroidavid, to say Clinton never fought terrorism is a lie. He met with the head of the N.S.A every morning to discuss Intel, read into an attempted bombing at L.A.X, and several other catastrophes the Clinton stopped.

    And where in Gods name did you get the information on the Islamic lust for Power? It’s absolute bullshit, had you ever been to the Middle East you would understand that these people don’t want to rule the world, they want to rule their holy land without Americans telling them how to live.

    My advice to you is, join the service, preferable an Infantry service like the army or the marines, and serve a tour of duty of 6 months in the Middle east like I did, then come back and tell me that 1, our presence isn’t giving them the idea we’re dominating them, and 2, that they lust for empire. Oh, and learn to speak Arabic so that when they shoot at your ass, you can understand what they’re shouting at you, I’m pretty sure it won’t be “all hail the empire!”

  43. pizz Says: June 4th, 2005 at 7:46 pm

    Leroidavid, I’ve worked in the middle east for a little while and I couldn’t agree more

  44. Suzanne Says: June 5th, 2005 at 6:38 am

    I was almost begining to belive that I had or have gone a bit overboard on main topic in commentaries.
    Then I read Mr Jacks commentary above and read all of the comments. Especiallly number 4.
    All in all, sum it up and all of you (most all of you) are saying exactly what I have been yacking about just you say it in a different way.
    Suzanne

  45. leroidavid Says: June 6th, 2005 at 2:19 am

    Response to Circe #41

    Well, to put Hitler, Bin Laden and Bush in the same basket reveals a terrifying incapability to make a distinction between bad and good.
    Killing innocent people like did Hitler and like is doing Bin Laden is bad; killing people who are killing and want to kill innocent people, like is doing Bush, is good. That’s very simple.
    Good and bad are objective, as are life and death.
    The roots of terrorism are well known, hundreds of books have been published on this topic by specialists, in the US and in Europe. You should read them.

  46. leroidavid Says: June 6th, 2005 at 2:57 am

    Response to Mr. Jack # 42

    Clinton continued the same routinely antiterrorism work. After the bombing of the World Trade Center in 1994, he did nothing special. After the bombing of the US Embassies in Africa in 1998 (more than 200 civilian casualties), he did nothing special. This weakness encouraged the recruitment of new terrorists. The terrorists are cowards: weakness excite them, strength frightens them.
    Where in God’s name did I get the information on the Islamic lust for power? Well, I just watch what the islamists are doing, and read what they are saying openly, day after day.
    Some examples:
    1) After the Madrid bombings in 2004 (200 civilian casualties), Al Qaida press release stated that those bombings had been committed because Spain, which was partly a muslim colony before 1492 AD, had to be ruled again by Muslims.
    2) Recently, during a demonstration in central London, Muslims shouted that they wanted the destruction of Great Britain and the States, and their replacement by islamist regimes based on Chariah.
    3) In France, more and more islamists are wanting to impose the hideous Chariah to french people, Muslims and non-Muslims, and an islamist center in Burgundy wants France to become an islamist regime, as stated during a recent conference in their building.
    4) In Europe, there is a global islamist organization called ‘European Committee for the Fatwah’ (translation from its french name) to which are affiliated most of european islamist organizations, and whose aim is ‘to replace all european democracies by islamist regimes’.
    I could add thousands of such examples.
    Nothing is more obvious than the islamist lust for empire and power.
    As I said to Circe, hundreds of books have been written on this matter, which is one of the most documented one can find.

  47. leroidavid Says: June 6th, 2005 at 3:08 am

    To Mr. Jack:

    Concerning the ‘domination’, the vast majority of Iraqi people are grateful to the US people who liberated them from one of the most ugly and bloody dictator of all human history.
    In 1991, the Kuwaitis and the Saudis called the US to liberate Kuwait and thanked them after the job had been done.
    In the 1990’s, the US protected the Muslims of Bosnia and Kosovo, and they are very grateful too.

  48. Circe Says: June 6th, 2005 at 3:23 am

    Leriodavid,
    So you think that only Hitler and Bin Laden get to be included in your “Bad” category? Apparently we form the “Bad” category differently from one another. But who is right and who is wrong. You think that goodness and badness are absolutes? I would wager that you can’t even tell me what features constitute the essentials of concrete objects like a cup or a chair or a flag or anything else, much less abstract concepts like “bad” and “good”. These are human made categories and they, like humans, are ever-changing and idiosynchratic to the individual using them. You have to get beyond good and evil before you can’t start getting any where with complex issues like the war on terror.

  49. leroidavid Says: June 6th, 2005 at 4:39 am

    Response to Mr.Jack #42

    Clinton continued to fight terrorism in a routinely way. After the bombings of the World Trade Centre in 1994, Clinton did nothing special. After the bombings of the American embassies in Africa in 1998 (200 civilian casualties), Clinton did nothing special. This weakness was the best recruitment tool for the terrorist organizations. The terrorists are cowards: weakness excites them, and strength frightens them.
    Where in God’s name did I get the informations on the Islamic lust for power? Well, I just watch what they are doing, and listen to what they are saying openly, day after day.
    Some examples:
    1) After the bombings in Madrid in March 2004 (200 civilian casualties), Al-Qaida press release stated that those bombings had been committed because Spain was a muslim colony before 1492 AD and therefore shall become again an islamic regime.
    2) Recently, during a demonstration in London, Islamists shouted that Great Britain and the States shall be destroyed, and replaced by islamic regimes based on Chariah.
    3) In France, more and more islamists are calling for the adoption of the islamist law (Chariah) for all french citizens, Muslims and non-Muslims, and recently an islamist center in Burgundy stated in a conference hold in its building that it wanted France to become an islamic regime.
    4) In Europe, there is a general organization called ‘European Committee for the Fatwah’ (translation from its french name), to which most of the european islamist organizations are affiliated, and whose purpose is ‘to replace all european democracies by islamic regimes’.
    There are thousands of such examples.
    Nothing is more documented than the islamist lust for empire and power.
    As I said to Circe, hundreds of books have been written on this topic, which is one of the most studied one can find.

  50. Lefty Says: June 6th, 2005 at 12:38 pm

    Leroidavid,
    Comment #45 suggests that you are unaware, or have forgotten, that the invasion of Iraq resulted in the deaths of perhaps as many as 100,000 innocent iraqis, so far. So the slaughter of innocents is also characterizes Bush’s effect on the world just as Hitler’s did and Bin Laden’s has.

  51. Joy Says: June 6th, 2005 at 5:04 pm

    Circe,
    What do you see as a standard for good and bad?
    Are they truly relative, or is there a standard?
    Regarding Hitler and Bin Laden, I wouldn’t begin to fool myself into thinking that they thought/think they are good. Like every evil leader, they look(ed) for ways to make their evil desires look acceptable to those following them. The masses won’t follow evil unless it’s made to look good or worthy. If Hitler thought he was good, he would not have killed himself, but faced up to his actions. Show me one suicide where someone did it because they thought they were good.

  52. Antilla The Hun Says: June 7th, 2005 at 5:35 am

    Leroidavid, about your comment on Hitler and Bin Laden, Hitler, in the beginning rounded up many communists who were killing people, and actively killed them. Bin Laden also went on a campaign to kill the U.S.S.R troops, that were actively killing people in the Middle East, and now that The Soviet Union has fallen, he’s turned his attention to taking on the other superpower that seeks to conquer the world, America. You see, Both Hitler and Bin Laden were seen as heroes when they first took power.

    And killing people who kill, makes you no better than them, it’s like a serial killer that kills other serial killers. It’s Illogical.

  53. kevin Says: June 7th, 2005 at 5:38 am

    Oh sure, lets protect all these poor denizens that currently inhabit the prison camps, they are innocents swept up in the path of the military…..Give me a break. It must be nice to sit at home and pass judgement on a war that you know nothing about. How long did you spend here? How many of your buddies died…….and how many of them had families? You are ignorant as to anything that actually goes on over here, we don’t detain innocents, we detain or kill people who are trying to kill us. I’m not some psycho who hates muslims and wants for the destruction of there entire race, but to hear you all tell it I am. I am simply an American soldier doing my best to defend my country and the protect the way of life for my children and theres, and if in doing so i make life better for a few million Muslims so be it, even they understand that we are not the enemy any more, we have wives turning in husbands, men turning n brothers, they don’t care they understand that we are on the side of good and they are finally starting to be more proactive.

    Before you pass judgement from the safety of your living room, spend some time talking to the people that were there, Don’t take your simple life for granted, as WE are the reason you have it.

  54. kevin Says: June 7th, 2005 at 5:49 am

    And one more….

    A tribunal for these people is ridiculous. Seriously, do you think that people captured in the chaos of war ( yes it is still a war, whether you want to believe it or not ) Are going to have files upon files of evidence against them? Do you honestly expect Myself and my fellow soldiers so capture a man who was shooting at us, and then hope to find his weapon before his buddies, and then hope to get prints and the like? And do believe that we shold take troops off the battlefield, from units that are already under strength and stretched thin, to testify against a single Iraqi insurget or a foreign fighter? It’s happened a few times but only at a General’s request. While this soldier is gone, a budyd of his may die, you can’t ask any good soldier to leave his buddies and testify, we’d rather set these men free so that they may try to kill us again……..when they do atleast we’ll make sure to kill them before he realises it’s time to surrender.

    Anyone, ANYONE who fires a weapon on me has given up his right to fair treatment. I’m going to kill him, if he has a weapon, if he has surrendered then i will ofcourse detain him. But one thing holds true, my duty is to my mission first, my buddies second, and the Iraqi’s last. Simple as that, if you can’t see that then you should consider Canada.

    Find something to fight for, stand up for your cause, but never disrespect a soldier who has sacrificed his life to make yours a little safer and a little more confortable, you have no right.

  55. Antilla The Hun Says: June 7th, 2005 at 6:02 am

    And Joy, I minor in behavioral psychology, and I have come to the conclusion that it is impossible for the human mind to do something it views as evil, because the human mind always sides with what it feels is right. Now on to Hitler, he killed himself because he knew he’d lost. He was a coward, and took the cowardly rout of suicide rather than accept defeat at the hands of his enemy.

    For suggested reading on Hitler And Stalin, who were by far the TURE worst dictators in human history, I suggest the following books

    The Origins of totalitarianism:
    By Hannah Arendt

    Mein Kamph: Adolf Hitler (to get in the mindset of one of these fascists)

    Also look for the sequel to Mein Kamph, I saw a thing about it on the History channel, but I forgot its name.

    The Rise and fall of the third Reich:
    William L. Shirer

  56. Circe Says: June 7th, 2005 at 1:45 pm

    Kevin,
    Regarding comment #53. First, it is obvious that my eariler comments were not meant to address how one defends oneself on the battlefield when under fire. My comment was about the problems that arise when we take shortcuts with justice. CIA and Special Ops personnel have revealed that people taken into custody in Afghanastan by the US were turned over to the US by Afghan warlords for a bounty. If these people we are detaining are dirty terrorist, and terrorism is a crimal activity, they need to be tried as criminals. I strongly support trials for the accused. My point is that someone needs to defend the principle of justice. Do you not believe that if we defend the principle of justice that things have a better chance of working out for the good in the end? That’s is the fundamental premise of our constitution, the one that you are sworn to defend. If we betray justice, what else is worth defending? Nothing. So you do what you must do to defend yourself on the battlefield where ever you are and I will do what I can to defend justice here at home. I understand that you have no say in your ordeal because you can only follow orders. I do have a choice and I choose to defend justice, freedom, and truth. Finally, I believe that the invasion of Iraq endangers our freedom at home, feeds terrorism, and has destablized the middle east. Therefore, I do indeed have a right to be critical of it and to debate the actions and policies of my government. If you don’t believe that, you are fighting on the wrong side in this war.

    btw, your point about the US military being stretched too thin already is well taken. Someone should speak to Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz about their lite invasion and occupation model. Apparently it isn’t working but they don’t seem to get it.

  57. Circe Says: June 7th, 2005 at 1:57 pm

    Joy,
    My standard for good versus bad is this: treat everyone (I mean everyone) as I wish to be treated. Behave the way that I would want everyone to behave. When I do this, I am being good. When I fail to do this, I am being bad. I am open to suggestions for improvement.

  58. Joy Says: June 7th, 2005 at 6:28 pm

    Circe,
    I understand the basic idea of what you’re saying, and agree with it.
    I’m curious if treating others the way we want to be treated also places our value system on how they want to be treated…or does it go deeper to how they actually want to be treated according to their value system?
    What about the mindset the terrorists seem to have of dying for their cause? Should we go ahead and kill them (without torture), to go along with their idea of ‘good’ and ‘bad’(the way they want to be treated) or treat them humanely, according to our idea of ‘good’ and ‘bad’? What is the standard for ‘good’ and ‘bad’here?

  59. Mr. Jack Says: June 8th, 2005 at 1:48 am

    Kevin, I too am a soldier, I have fought on the field, and I believe you misinterpret the article.

    The point is not disrespecting our troops, it’s respecting those captured and put to death without proper justice being done, if anything, THAT disrespects the soldier fighting for freedom.

    A soldier is fighting for the American way, for Freedom, liberty, and justice, but what’s happening to our common enemy is not justice, therefore it disrespects what we are doing.

  60. Circe Says: June 8th, 2005 at 12:58 pm

    Joy,
    you asked me to show you 1 suicide in which the person thought they were good. Does the death of Socrates count?

  61. Circe Says: June 8th, 2005 at 1:12 pm

    Joy,
    When you think about it, many examples of suicides by people who probably thought they were good come to mind (although speculating about what other people think is always just that, speculation). I think of the buddhist monk who set himself on fire to bring attention to the attrocities of the Vietnam war, the kamikaze pilots, the 9/11 terrorist probably thought they were doing good, and Jesus’s death was something of a suicide (remember, according to biblical accounts, he could have avoided death on a number of occasions. My reading is that he chose death [i.e., suicide] to make a political statement). As for Hitler (a very bad dude by my reckoning), I see no reason why his suicide conflicts with my belief that Hitler thought he was a very good person. He knew that he was a goner anyway once the Allies had him cornered. It’s a decent bet that Churchill would have committed suicide if Hitler’s troops had come marching up Downing Street.

  62. Circe Says: June 10th, 2005 at 2:39 am

    Regarding #58, I believe it is important to use a system that minimizes errors. I really hate to think about innocent people being punished for things that they didn’t do. So I favor a system that carefully, thoroughly, and publicly evaluates the evidence against the accused. It we can publicly demonstrate that someone is a terrorist, or has committed any other crime for that matter, I am comfortable with severely punishing them. But the current system that Bush is using keeps too much secret. Secrets are the enemy of democracy and justice. Democracy is based on citizens being fully informed of what their government is doing at all times. People elected or appointed to offices are not more important than we are. Nor should we be kept in the dark about matters pertaining to justice and punishment.

  63. Leroidavid Says: June 18th, 2005 at 6:20 am

    Response to Lefty #50

    During the liberation of Iraq, no more than a few thousands of Iraqis civilians were killed. The 100,000 you cite is a well known example of disinformation. The liberation of Iraq was made using the most precise weapons of all human history. Some civilians were killed during the battles between the US led forces and the Iraqi Army, and most of them by the Iraqi Army, which didn’t use precise weapons and didn’t care about human life.

    There wasn’t any ‘slaughter of innocents’ committed by the US Army. The REAL slaughter of innocents was made by Saddam Hussein and his Army, who raped, tortured, killed, exterminated, more than 1,000,000 of Iraqis innocent civilians. Sad to see that you don’t care about them.

    If, when liberating a country of an ugly barbaric dictator, the liberators shall harm no civilians, then it is for ever impossible to liberate a country.

    During the liberation of Europe in 1944 and 1945, a lot of innocent European civilians were killed by the Allies. So, according to your brilliant thoughts, it was bad to liberate Europe and to destroy the Nazi regime. Had Roosevelt and Churchill listened to you, Hitler would still rule Europe. Everyone has his own sympathies.

  64. Leroidavid Says: June 18th, 2005 at 6:37 am

    Response to Circe #48

    Very remarkable reasoning.
    Bad and good are completely subjective and abstract concepts : for example, if someone kills your parents or your children, it is not clear whether it’s a bad or a good action - and to decide if the murderer of your parents or your children has to be pursued and punished, we have to ‘get beyond good and evil’ and study deeply this ‘complex issue’ in numerous symposiums with hundred of broad minded specialists. Cheers.

  65. Leroidavid Says: June 18th, 2005 at 6:53 am

    Response to Antilla The Hun #52

    Hitler was seen as hero when he took power, but only by the Nazis and pro-Nazis. Even before 1933 did Churchill denounce the extreme danger of this criminal dictator postulant.

    Killing people who kill and want to kill more innocent people is not illogical : it’s what the laws of all democratic countries call ‘the right of self-defense’.

    If the democratic countries have no right to kill the islamo-terrorists who want to kill more and more innocent civilians, then those innocent civilians have no right to live, you have no right to live, I have no right to live, and so on…

    Let me recall what John Kerry himself said that he would do, if elected : “I will kill, kill, kill, the terrorists”.

  66. Leroidavid Says: June 18th, 2005 at 6:56 am

    Kevin #53 and #54 :

    Great comments.

  67. Leroidavid Says: June 18th, 2005 at 7:05 am

    Response to Circe #56

    The people taken into custody in Afghanistan by the US were arrested in terrorist training camps : but, of course, they are innocent : in fact, they were collecting mushrooms. Their presence in those terrorist training camps was just bad luck.

  68. Leroidavid Says: June 18th, 2005 at 7:15 am

    Response to Circe #56

    The invasion of Iraq, which, by the way, was not an invasion, but a liberation, has resulted in these horrible things: the Iraqi people has been freed, the Iraqi women are no more beheaded with axes in front of their husbands and children by the death squads of Saddams’s mad sons (more than 200 cases in year 2001), and so on… Syria has gone out of Lebanon after 30 years of occupation, from fear of US reprisal… Khaddafi has handed over his WMD program, from fear of US reprisal… But, of course, those achievements have no importance at all for the very clever people who know that liberty, justice, democracy, bad and good are just abstract and subjective categories.

  69. Leroidavid Says: June 18th, 2005 at 7:23 am

    Remark to Circe #60

    Socrates’s death wasn’t a suicide : he was condemned to death, and drunk the poison that was given to him.

  70. Leroidavid Says: June 18th, 2005 at 7:42 am

    Response to Circe #62

    Democracy is not based on citizens being fully informed of what their government is doing at all times. Otherwise, the British people would have been informed, during WWII, that their spies had cracked the Enigma code used by the Nazis – the German spies in Great Britain would have alerted their chiefs in Berlin – the Enigma code would have been changed by the Nazis – the US and British would have been forced to postpone indefinitely the liberation of Europe… And that’s only one example…
    Secrecy is necessary to all democracies, to protect the State which protects the citizens. That’s why all democracies have at least 3 secret services : the domestic secret service, the foreign secret service, the military secret service.
    Someone who loves ‘complex issues’ as much as you do should know that.

  71. Circe Says: June 18th, 2005 at 2:38 pm

    Leroidavid,
    US intelligence sources recently revealed that tribal warlords are paid bounties for delivering “bad guys”. Of course we now know that many of the warlords are actually the bad guys and they delivered innocent people they had beefs against. Also, the information that our military calls “intelligence on the ground” is largely just rumor and hearsay being delivered by questionable characters and interpreted by kids with little intel training who should be freshmen or sophmores in college. Second, the invasion of iraq hasn’t delivered freedom or security. The iraqis live under much more adverse circumstances now than they did under Saddam. Now that civil war is breaking out there, noone knows just how horrible it will get. Saddam was in his last throes before we invaded and Iraq would have liberated itself within a decade with much less death and destruction that Bush caused (we have killed over 100,000 innocent iraqis in the invasion). Socrates did kill himself - read Plato’s account of it in Phaedo. He was offered many opportunities to avoid the death penalty and to escape. He chose death as a political and philosophical statement. Finally, what you describe in #70 are anti-democratic activities carried out by countries that, in general, follow other democratic principles. The more secrecy a government practices, the farther the country strays from the ideal democracy. Bush and the republicans in congress are running one of the most secret governments in the history of the US. Thus, our government is falling farther away from an ideal democracy.

  72. Emory Says: June 18th, 2005 at 3:35 pm

    I love some of Circe’s statements:

    “The iraqis live under much more adverse circumstances now than they did under Saddam.”

    “we have killed over 100,000 innocent iraqis in the invasion”

  73. Circe Says: June 18th, 2005 at 3:58 pm

    Emory,
    Iraqis have little access to electricity (daily temps reach over 120 degrees, by the way), little clean water, 30% of children are suffering from malnutrion and many have starved to death and, indeed, according to the John’s Hopkins School of Public health more than 100,000 Iraqi citizens who were not involved in the war were killed as a direct result of the invasion. Initially, our bombs missed most of their targets (according to the pentagon itself, the first 100 cruise missles launched, during the first wave of the attack, all missed their targets. Many hit buildings full of women and children (also known as collaterals to the military - I prefer to call them what they are - innocent civilians). If you look into what your government has done in your name, you will be ashamed.

  74. Circe Says: June 18th, 2005 at 4:05 pm

    Emory,
    It is the Iraqis themselves who are saying that it is more dangerous to live in Iraq now than it was under Saddam. Everytime they leave their homes, they risk death. Every piece of trash is a potential IED. If you don’t know for a fact that things are worse in Iraq now than they were before, you are totally out of touch. The country is just a big trash heap now - literally - there has been no trash pick up service so trash is just accumulating everywhere. Disease is rampant, schools are disfunctional, and several hundred university professors have been murdered. It is ABSOLUTE CHAOS there, Emory.

  75. Circe Says: June 18th, 2005 at 4:22 pm

    Emory,
    The reference to the 100,000 dead innocent Iraqis is from Lancet, the world’s most highly respected medical journal and was based on a study done by a survey group that visited Iraq from the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, one of the finest programs in the world. But it was published over a year ago, so the numbers are no doubt much higher now than they were then. The sanitized version of the war that is reported by our sleepy media avoids offending our sensibilities by reporting the facts about the war because they want you to hang around for the commercials.

  76. Emory Says: June 18th, 2005 at 5:06 pm

    They just lost my respect, then.

  77. Lefty Says: June 18th, 2005 at 7:36 pm

    Leroidavid,
    The Lebanese people ran the Syrians out with absolutely no help from the US and without firing a shot. That is an example of how the people can mount their own revolution and a perfect counter-example to what the US did in Iraq. It actually scores against your case, not in favor of it.

  78. Mr. Jack Says: June 18th, 2005 at 11:56 pm

    Leroidavid, it’s good and all that we took down Sudam, but he wasn’t the worst dictator. Kim Jo-Il of North Korea is by far much worse. He not only kills those he disagrees with, he murders every one in their family, all the way down to their grand children. So why aren’t we taking on the True evil dictator? I’ll tell you, because Bush is a bully. He creates the Image of toughness by destroying an enemy that didn’t have a snowballs chance in hell of defeating us. But, when it comes to someone truly a match for us, Like North Korea, he makes a comment about them here and there, but never truly stands up to them. That’s why Vladimir Puten Of Russia supported Bush, because he knew bush would do little to stop his fascist ways, just look under my previous article ‘The BIGGEST ISSUE NO ONE IS TALKING ABOUT” and you’ll see what I mean.

  79. Leroidavid Says: June 19th, 2005 at 3:06 am

    Response to Circe #71

    I know perfectly well the Apology of Socrates by Plato… Socrates was condemned to death by the Athaenians, and had to drink the hemlock poison… Hadn’t he done so, he would have been killed another way by those Greeks… He decided not to escape and to drink the hemlock to show the athaenian elite by which he had been condemned to death that he despised them… When someone is forced to drink poison by people who have condemend him to death, and will anyway kill him if he doesn’t drink their poison, he isn’t commiting suicide…

  80. Emory Says: June 19th, 2005 at 3:55 am

    Well said, Leroidavid.

  81. Leroidavid Says: June 19th, 2005 at 4:07 am

    Response to Circe #71

    When I read you, I am really wondering on which planet you are living…
    Everything you say about Iraq is so outrageously falsified that I am wondering whether you believe yourself those marvelous lies you accumulate…
    I will answer to them now, but for the last time, because I think that your hate for Bush drives you blind, and that you do not want to see the reality on the ground, and the facts…

    1) ‘The US intelligence is interpreted by kids’(nice joke, by the way): why, then, do you believe the supposed US intelligence sources that “recently revealed that tribal warlords are paid bounties for delivering ‘bad guys’” ? Those supposed US intelligence sources are reliable, but only them ? So, the US intelligence sources are reliable only if they say what you want them to say, not if they say the contrary ? And don’t you know that this supposed revelation is “largely just rumor” ? Don’t forget that a lot of terrorist organizations want the Guantanamo terrorists released, so that they can return to the killings and massacres they adore. That’s why there are so many rumors, false as all rumors, about Guantanamo. Read the ‘Al-Qaida manual’ found in Manchester and available on Internet, to see that those terrorists and the people who support them perfectly know how to conduct the disinformation war and to spread rumors.

    2) ‘The Iraqis live under much more adverse circumstances now than they did under Saddam’ : the Iraqis are free, they are no more raped, tortured and killed by Saddam’s death squads that killed more than 1,000,000 innocent iraqi civilians, I repeat, more than 1,000,000 innocent iraqi civilians. Those massacres committed by Saddam are obvioulsy nothing for you, but they aren’t nothing for the Iraqi people who each day thanks the US troops for their liberation (sorry, that’s a fact).

    3) ‘Now that civil war is breaking out’ : there is no civil war at all. The terrorists who are committing suicide bombings are half foreign islamo-fascists (Chechenians, Yemenites, Saudis, Sudaneses, and even some Italians and Frenchies…) and half Saddam’s officers. Those terrorists are supported by less than 5% of the Iraqi people, and this figure is diminishing each day. The Iraqi men are enlisting massively in the new Iraqi army, to fight those ugly terrorists they hate.

    4) Secrecy isn’t anti-democratic : secrecy is necessary to all democracies, to protect them and their citizens against the various dictators and terrorists who want to destroy them. And the use of this secrecy is controlled by diverse administrations, according to democratic laws, to make sure it is used in accordance with its aim : protecting the democracy and the people.

    5) The ‘ideal democracy’ could exist only in an ideal world with ideal people as disembodied as Holy Saints. It’s a nice dream, but we are living in the REAL world : and, in the real world, there are criminals, murderers, serial killers, dictators, terrorists, and so on. So, the REAL democracy has to protect itself from this disgusting scum.

  82. Leroidavid Says: June 19th, 2005 at 4:21 am

    Response to Lefty #77

    The Lebanese people didn’t ran the Syrians out : the Security Council of the UN, under intense US presure, voted a resolution (n°1559) urging Syria to withdraw from Lebanon, and menacing it with sanctions if it didn’t obey. Having seen what happened to the iraqi dictator who hadn’t obeyed the UN resolutions, Assad declared ‘I am not Saddam Hussein’ and withdrawed the syrian army from Lebanon.
    In Lebanon, a lot of intellectual arabs are grateful to the US for this result, because they know the truth.

  83. Leroidavid Says: June 19th, 2005 at 4:29 am

    Response to Mr Jack #78

    Kim Jo-Il is, for sure, a barbarian dictator. But he never invaded another country as did Saddam (invasion of Kuweit) ; he never attacked a big country as did Saddam (Attack of Iran, during more than 10 years, with more than 1,000,000 casualties) ; he never used nerve gas to exterminate a part of its country’s population, as did Saddam (more than 100,000 Kurdish gased) ; he never ordered bombings against distant foreign countries as did Saddam (World Trade Center attack of 1993 were masterminded by Saddam as it’s well known nowadays) ; and so on. So, Kim Jo-Il is less dangerous to the world than was Saddam. He destroys his own people, and should be punished for this, of course ; but he doesn’t attack foreign people. Even in the Evil, there is a scale. The worst shall be destroyed first.

  84. Leroidavid Says: June 19th, 2005 at 4:56 am

    Response to Circe #73

    1) ‘Iraqis have little access to electricity, little clean water, 30% of children are suffering from malnutrion’ : this is the result of more than 30 years of Saddam’s dictatorship over Iraq. Since its liberation, Iraq is, day after day, rebuilt : Iraqis have more water, more electricity, more fuel, and so on, than they had under Saddam. Universities, schools, hospitals, are beginning to work again. Of course, there is still a lot of work to do, because Saddam reign was so destructive. Don’t forget that, after WWII, most of the french people were suffering from malnutrition, and that, till 1950, the food was rationed in France, for example. This malnutrition and this rationing were not the result of the US liberation of Europe, but of the destruction of the european countries by the nazi regime. Don’t accuse the liberators of the sins of the dictator they have overthrowed.

    2)’Our bombs missed most of their targets’ : well, I would like to see this Pentagon report… if it weren’t another rumor… You really should verify your sources.

    3) ‘All missed their targets - Many hit buildings full of women and children’ : during the bombings, all iraqi civilians were hiding in underground facilities and basements of their buildings, as do all civilians under such circumstances. And how convenient, those ‘buildings full of women and children’ : where were the men ? Didn’t those ugly US guys invent a bomb that destroys specificaly women and children and not men ? This kind of disgusting disinformation reminds me of the european thousand-year-old anti-semitic propaganda accusing Jews of killing non-jews children…

  85. Leroidavid Says: June 19th, 2005 at 5:11 am

    Response to Circe #74

    1) What the Iraqis themselves are saying, is that they are happy to be free : did you see them in January, when they went massively to vote for their first election ?

    2) ‘There is no trash pick-up service so trash is just accumulating everywhere’ : well, yes, Iraq isn’t a 5 stars residence for wealthy people : when a country starts from almost nothing (because, I remind you again, Saddam’s regime has destroyed Iraq), it can not achieve wealth and richness in the twinkling of an eye. After WWII, in liberated France, there was trash everywhere even in the 1950’s, and, in some part of France, even in the 1960’s. It’s a big work to rebuild a country.

    3) There is no ‘absolute chaos’ in Iraq : the Iraqis are working hard, because they want to rebuild their country and enjoy a better life than the life of almost-slaves they had under Saddam. I don’t understand why you so hardly want Iraq to be an ‘absolute chaos’.

  86. Leroidavid Says: June 19th, 2005 at 5:34 am

    Response to Circe #75

    ‘The reference to the 100,000 dead innocent Iraqis is from Lancet, the world’s most highly respected medical journal and was based on a study done by a survey group that visited Iraq from the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health’ : that’s true, but the figure of 100,000 isn’t true. One has to remind that a lot of so-called ‘humanitarian’ organizations and the people working for them very often exagerate the reproaches to people they don’t like. The guys from Lancet and Johns Hopkins School are anti-Bush, as most of the universities’ ‘elite’, so they needed to show big figures in their report. Why don’t talk about the Iraqi president who said that Blair’s declaration (’The Lancet report figure is largely exaggerated’) was right ? The Iraqi people better know whats going on in their country, than the Lancet guys.

    We could easily find many examples of humanitarian exagerations by renowned Human Rights Organizations, like Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and so on.

    For example, recently, the General Secretary of Amnesty International called Guantanamo ‘the gulag of our time’ : how funny a declaration, and how sad. In the REAL gulag, the soviet gulag, were imprisonned 100 millions innocent civilians, and more than 24 millions of them died there. - In Guantanamo are imprisonned 700 terrorists, who are well fed, have books, can do sports, and so on. No comment.

  87. Mr. Jack Says: June 19th, 2005 at 5:57 am

    Kim Jon Il is by far the greater threat! He actively parades his 6 nuclear warheads down the streets of North Korea, as well as his extremely large military force. He actively threatens his neighbors, China, South Korea, Japan, etc.. to gain political leverage. He has created a Pacific cold war with Russia and China. He has the potential to destabilize the entire pacific region. Sudam was weakened by over 10 years of UN sanctions and restrictions, His military was militia grade quality at best, and we destroyed his forces in 3 DAYS! After the gulf war, Sudam was reduced to Dictatorial bullying, nothing else, any further attack he could have tried on neighboring countries would have resulted in not only humiliation, but possibly the conquest of Iraq by Iran. It’s been proved that he had NO W.M.D’s at the time of the invasion, need I spell it out for you, KIM JON IL IS THE GREATER THREAT!!!!

  88. Mr. Jack Says: June 19th, 2005 at 6:08 am

    and Leroidavid, The people blowing them selves up, aren’t terrorists, they’re insurgents, there is a difference, Terrorists attack innocent civilians with the goal of spreading fear amongst a population, Insurgents, are militants that fight a guerilla war with limited resources with the goal of demoralizing the enemy through unconventional warfare. Now, they seem to take in interest in attacking the Iraqi National Guard, which to me sounds like civil war.

    with that said now on to the next issue. The Iraqis are free, but their quality of life has gone down significantly. when we invaded, we used a style of information warfare that crippled the Iraqi power grid. They only get electricity for a few hours a day, as compared to electrical freedom before the war began. also, their access to clean water is limited, children lie dead in the street from mal nutrition. Because of the insurgency, many buildings lie in rubble, making many homeless

    These poor conditions make disease spread much faster, and because medical care is hard to come by, man more die then should.

  89. Circe Says: June 19th, 2005 at 9:06 am

    Leroidavid,
    1. Bounties are paid to tribal warlords who turn over people who THEY claim are enemies of the US. You trust them? We have problems if that’s the way we are going to do things. Many people being held in our prison camps are no doubt guilty of the crimes that they are accused of. Don’t get me wrong, I want to see them punished. But we also have to work hard to make sure we don’t hurt ourselves by detaining people wrongfully. Why be sloppy and use unreliable methods?
    2. Intel specialists in the field are often young, inexperienced, and just operate on gut feelings about situations.
    3. Saddam was horrible. But the war was about non-existent WMDs. The original plan that was sold to the US as justification for the war was phoney and now you few hold-outs who still support the war are grasping for any delusional straw you can reach to try to justify it. You supported the murder of the Kurds in the 1980s. Now you use murders from the 1980s, that you supported, to justify your current failing invasion. The Kurds, by the way, were perfectly safe from Saddam after 1991. So an invasion on their behalf was wasted.
    4. Civil war IS breaking out and there is complete chaos in Iraq. The sectarian councils favor having sectarian militias rather than a national army. The Kurds are ready to declare independence from Iraq. The Sunni’s are killing every Shia they encounter. This is a civil war. You must watch Foxnews and read the conservative propaganda if you still don’t get it. Also, are you following the growing ties between Iran and Iraq’s Shia political leaders? Strong alliances are forming. Al-Hakim thinks well of Iran and was publicly praising its system just this week. Don’t you know that steams Bush! But what can he do, Iraq is out of control now.
    5. Secrecy is anti-democratic. Your version of democracy is more like totalitarianism. You like secret plans for invading soveriegn nations? You approve of secret energy commision meetings that exclude all members of the democratic party? Even former Nixon staffers have said that Bush’s secret government is pathological.
    5. We could do a lot to reduce and weaken dictatorships, abuse, and crimes against humanity. If our government stopped particpating in it that would be a good start.
    6. Only about 10% of the insurgency is non-Iraqi. Most of it is comprised of Sunni Iraqis. It has tripled in size this year. Last US military officials admitted that they expect that the worst of the insurgency is yet to come over the next several years. They are trying to prepare us for the really bad news to come. Dick Cheney is in the last throes of his delusion.
    7. Bush helped Iranian hardiners in their election last week. The surprisingly big turn out by antiamerican iranians was seen as a slap in the face to Bush. See http://www.juancole.com for more details.
    8. You are also off track about Lebanon. As you know, the US originally sanctioned the Syrian’s control of Lebanon. The Lebanese people have been shedding that burden for years and it all came to a head with the murder of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. The Lebanese people themselves took to the streets and without firing a shot initiated the withdrawal of the Syrian troops. Slick, that’s just the way it is whether you like it or not.

    Now with only about 30% of Americans still supporting the war, people are starting to get it. My thoughts about you hangers oners - never have so many been so wrong about so much for so long.

  90. Circe Says: June 19th, 2005 at 9:59 am

    Leroidavid,
    Do you really believe the right-wing propaganda machine? They feed you a steady diet of lies and deception and you spread it to other gullible folks. Stop and think for yourself. Take some time to look beyond the lies and search for the truth.

  91. Anna Says: June 19th, 2005 at 10:34 am

    One of the most obvious problems with Leroidavid’s position is that since the invasion (or liberation) of Iraq, the insurgency has taken over the beheadings and torture of innocent iraqis and is doing it at a much faster rate than Saddam did. So we got ride of on evil beast and unleashed thousands of evil beasts on the Iraqis. Seems like the situation is much worse there now. Today’s NY Times reports on torture houses that are being discovered in Iraq that are at least as bad as those Saddam had. If you consider that progress, heaven protect us from Leroidavid’s concept of progress.

  92. kc Says: June 19th, 2005 at 10:46 am

    83 - Saddam attacked Iran with full US support, political and technological. Hence the classic pic of Donnie Rumsfeld grinning ear to ear while he shakes hands with the dictator.

  93. Lefty Says: June 19th, 2005 at 11:19 am

    Leroidavid,
    Are you not like a doctor who kills his patients to spare them from the disease?

  94. Lefty Says: June 19th, 2005 at 3:36 pm

    I haved looked over the training manual Leriodavid mentioned. It could have been written by Rove and the neo-con operatives. I suspect that they are envious or borrow from it liberally.

  95. Anna Says: June 20th, 2005 at 12:18 am

    And now a message from a fellow conservative republican:
    Nebraska Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel is angry. He’s upset about the more than 1,700 U.S. soldiers killed and nearly 13,000 wounded in Iraq. He’s also aggravated by the continued string of sunny assessments from the Bush administration, such as Vice President Dick Cheney’s recent remark that the insurgency is in its “last throes.” “Things aren’t getting better; they’re getting worse. The White House is completely disconnected from reality,” Hagel tells U.S. News. “It’s like they’re just making it up as they go along. The reality is that we’re losing in Iraq.”

  96. Circe Says: June 20th, 2005 at 1:59 am

    I was just reading a Newsweek article entitled “Iraq’s Sunnis say things have never been worse.” The Sunnis make up a large part of the Iraqi population you know. Here’s one quote for you: Worse under new government
    As bad as conditions became after Saddam fell from power and the Americans were running things, many Sunni Arab leaders claim conditions have only become worse under the government of Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari.

    An ongoing security sweep in Baghdad, they say, has singled them out for random arrests. They also complain of brutal and high-handed treatment during raids of their homes by forces of the Iraqi police and army.

    Shiite militiamen, they insist, are killing their clerics and hounding them out of government jobs to make way for supporters of ruling coalition parties.

    Doesn’t sound as peachy keen as the picture that you paint of Iraq. You need to face reality - it is chaos there. We have turned it into a total hell for every Iraqi. Every day is 9/11 for the Iraqi people, thanks to Bush. I must say, however, I don’t think that Bush ever dreamed it would go this badly. I bet he doesn’t sleep at night, if he still has a soul.

  97. Lefty Says: June 20th, 2005 at 2:25 pm

    The only thing that could save the Bush presidency now is another terrorist attack. Such an event would produce a “rally around the president effect”, like the first one did and like the Iraq invasion did (for a while). But barring such an event, he appears to be in the last throes of his power. The Republicans are demonstrating with absolute clarity that they can’t govern effectively as the majority party - even with control of all three branches of the government (and virtually all of the commercial media too!).

  98. Lefty Says: June 20th, 2005 at 6:35 pm

    As for the notion that “everyone believed that Saddam had WMDs”, I give you a quote from today’s edition of the Guardian: A key Foreign Office diplomat responsible for liaising with UN inspectors says today that claims the government made about Iraq’s weapons programme were “totally implausible”.
    He tells the Guardian: “I’d read the intelligence on WMD for four and a half years, and there’s no way that it could sustain the case that the government was presenting. All of my colleagues knew that, too”.

  99. Circe Says: June 20th, 2005 at 8:43 pm

    Leroidavid,
    You will like this. This is what the arab world is reading in newspapers. Abd-al-Khaliq al-Rawi, the person quoted below, is an Iraqi government official, by the way.
    “On 18 June, Abd-al-Khaliq al-Rawi, director of telecommunications in Al-Qa’im, said that the town’s residents had begun acts of “civil disobedience” in protest at the killings.

    Al-Rawi told the channel that US snipers were killing people every day in the town’s market.

    “These actions have increased in the past week. There are innocent victims on a daily basis,” he said.

    Commenting further on the strike by the residents, Al-Rawi said that “all government departments and commercial shops” were closed today in protest against the “US occupation troops’ occupation and destruction of 10 government departments and blowing up of houses and shops”.

    Al-Rawi said that “almost half” of Al-Qa’im’s residents had left the city a week ago as a result of the US snipers’ “indiscriminate killing”.

    Responding to US statements that 50 militants have been killed in its current operations in western Iraq, Al-Rawi said that the injured who had arrived at the hospital in Al-Karabilah, where “Operation Spear” is currently taking place, were mostly civilians.

    “Fifteen people, mostly civilians, were wounded and taken to hospital in Al-Karabilah yesterday,” Al-Rawi said. He added that he had seen no gunmen or militants in the streets.

  100. Lefty Says: June 21st, 2005 at 1:36 am

    The cost to the american taxpayers of the invasion of Iraq has, as of today, has surpassed $350 billion. Before the war, Wolfowitz said that the war would be paid for by the rich oil resources of Iraq and it wouldn’t cost the american taxpayers anything at all. Unfortunately, the Bush administration failed to consider the possibility that oil production would be limeted by the insurgency (it’s easier to blow oil pipe lines up than it is to build and protect them). I would wager that the cost will exceed a trillion dollars before we get our troops out and it will still be chaos there, or worse, when we finally leave.

  101. Anna Says: June 21st, 2005 at 3:35 am

    I am curious about how Bush could spend a couple of hundred million on his presidential campaign and not address any of the issues that he campaigned on. Yet he never mentioned privatizing social security during his campaign and he gets obsessed with it right after he is elected. His first term was disconnected from his first campaign too. He was dead set against nation building during his first campaign and after 9/11 suddenly nation invading and nation building were all that his presidency was about. He talked about fiscal discipline and reducing government. Then he runs up the biggest debt in history and creates the largest government we have ever had. Does he think that every day is opposite day?

  102. Mr. Jack Says: June 21st, 2005 at 6:44 pm

    Anna, a few million to Bush is nothing, he has hundreds of millions more.
    And what do you expect? He’s a politician, that’s all they do is lie, it’s sad really what leadership in this country has come to, who ever controls the media and can spill out the most bologna.

  103. Lefty Says: June 22nd, 2005 at 1:12 am

    Over 8 billion dollars that the US paid to contractors in Iraq last year cannot be accounted for. Cheney’s old company is also cited for more fraud that now amounts to hundred’s of millions. This was has been a cash cow to many of Bush & Cheney Inc.’s clients to the tune of 100s of billions of tax payer dollars.
    For more details see news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20050621/ts_nm/iraq_cash_dc_1

  104. Lefty Says: June 22nd, 2005 at 11:34 am

    According to an article in today’s New York Times, “the CIA is growing increasingly alarmed about Bush’s Iraq as an incubator of terrorists, and the probability that at some point they will target the US at home.” Are they finally starting to get it?

  105. Circe Says: June 22nd, 2005 at 3:27 pm

    For Leriodavid,
    Just read this in an international newspaper.

    ‘Horrified’ US Ambassador Warns of Iraq Civil War

    The new US ambassador to Iraq expressed horror at the violence wracking the country and said Islamic extremists and Saddam Hussein loyalists are trying to start a civil war.

    US Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad, who arrived from Afghanistan, said yesterday that militants are using Iraqis as “cannon fodder” in a quest to dominate the Islamic world.

    “I will work with Iraqis and others to break the back of the insurgency,” Khalilzad promised on a day that saw more than a dozen gunmen launch an assault on a Baghdad police station, wounding two policemen.

    A roadside bomb also killed a US soldier on patrol in western Iraq, officials said, while a mortar attack killed a woman and a child in their home in Tal Afar, 95 miles east of the Syrian border.

    “I am horrified by the daily suffering of the Iraqi people. The terrorists attack ordinary people, teachers, doctors, newly trained police and others who are assisting the people of Iraq,” Khalilzad added.

    “Foreign terrorists and hard-line Baathists want Iraq to descend into civil war. Foreign terrorists are using the Iraqi people as cannon fodder,” said Khalilzad, who previously served as US ambassador to his native Afghanistan.

    The number of attacks blamed on Islamic extremists has escalated since Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari announced his Shiite-led government on April 28. Nearly 1,200 people have been killed since then.

    Leriodavid, your picture of “Pleasantville” in Iraq is an illusion.

  106. Circe Says: June 23rd, 2005 at 2:57 am

    Leriodavid, You will dig this.
    Press Release Source: Newsweek

    NEWSWEEK: Intelligence Officials in Baghdad Fear Hundreds of ‘Ghost Soldiers’ are Working for the Insurgency While Keeping Up Their Ties in Uniform
    Sunday June 19, 10:03 am ET
    Iraq Security Minister Al-Inizi Says Insurgents Who’ve Been Caught Represent Only a Fraction of the Total Number of Infiltrators
    according to the article, there are over 500,000 insurgents and direct supporters (i.e., folks waiting to join up) of the insurgency in Iraq.

  107. Anna Says: June 23rd, 2005 at 9:39 pm

    Thought this was interesing.

    The Chauffeur’s Dilemma

    By Arlie Hochschild
    Let’s consider our political moment through a story. Suppose a chauffeur drives a sleek limousine through the streets of New York, a millionaire in the backseat. Through the window, the millionaire spots a homeless woman and her two children huddling in the cold, sharing a loaf of bread. He orders the chauffeur to stop the car. The chauffeur opens the passenger door for the millionaire, who walks over to the mother and snatches the loaf. He slips back into the car and they drive on, leaving behind an even poorer family and a baffled crowd of sidewalk witnesses. For his part, the chauffeur feels real qualms about what his master has done, because unlike his employer, he has recently known hard times himself. But he drives on nonetheless. Let’s call this the Chauffeur’s Dilemma.

    Absurd as it seems, we are actually witnessing this scene right now. At first blush, we might imagine that this story exaggerates our situation, but let us take a moment to count the loaves of bread that have recently changed hands and those that soon will. Then, let’s ask why so many people are letting this happen.

    *On average, the 2003 tax cut has already given $93,500 to every millionaire. It is estimated that 52% of the benefits of George W. Bush’s 2001–03 tax cuts have enriched the wealthiest 1% of Americans (those with an average annual income of $1,491,000).

    *On average, the 2003 tax cut gave $217 to every middle-income person. By 2010, it is estimated that just 1% of the benefits of the tax cut will go to the bottom 20% of Americans (those with an average annual income of $12,200).

    *During at least one year since 2000, 82 of the largest American corporations — including General Motors, El Paso Energy, and, before the scandal broke, Enron — paid no income tax.

  108. Circe Says: June 23rd, 2005 at 11:00 pm

    Leroidavid,
    Here are some nice summaries of CIA reports on the Iraq Blowback that were published in the CSM today. Enjoy.
    http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0623/dailyUpdate.html

  109. Anna Says: June 23rd, 2005 at 11:14 pm

    A question for “Twisted Dick” Cheney. If 60 insurgent attacks represents an insurgency that is “in its last throes” what would a stable or strengthening insurgency be like? The VP’s logic is would fit right in in Alice in Wonderland.

  110. Lefty Says: June 25th, 2005 at 3:55 pm

    Anna,
    Regarding comment 107, I think you are right on the money (so to speak).

  111. Circe Says: June 28th, 2005 at 1:15 pm

    For Leroidavid,
    ‘ A 1966 article in the Chicago Tribune quoted Rumsfeld as saying the following: “The administration should clarify its intent in Viet Nam,’ he said. ‘People lack confidence in the credibility of our government.’ Even our allies are beginning to suspect what we say, he charged. ‘It’s a difficult thing today to be informed about our government even without all the secrecy,’ he said. ‘With the secrecy, it’s impossible. The American people will do what’s right when they have the information they need.” [Chicago Tribune, 4/13/66] ‘

  112. Anna Says: June 29th, 2005 at 5:41 pm

    what about a tax to pay for the war as we go? Now we are borrowing the 200 + billion to cover the tab. As Powell said, “you break it, you own it.” We broke it. Now we must pay.

  113. Antilla