9/11

[lollynoob]

Could someone please explain to me what is wrong with my post since apparently everyone hates it?

[xyjamepa]

...the second and third were an act of preserving national freedom...

I put this as a result of strong country occupy another weak(army) country
and I think this is the law of forest,if you remember back in the beginning
of 2003,most of the peopel around the world made hundreds of manifestation
against the war on Iraq even in USA itself,so the war wasn't because America
wanted neithr to preserve national freedom,nor making the world more safe,
the old Iraqin government had nothing to do with neither 9/11 nor it threatend America(as Solar said)
back in 1980s the same government was govern Iraq,America did support it and gave it
weapons to fight Iran.

Also America said before the war that Iraq has nuclear weapons,and this is a serious threat
for all the countries around the world,and after US army entered to Iraq, it turns out that
this is all was lying to justify the war which I think the main goal of it was to control
the sources of oil in the middle east.

what do you guys think about the real goal of the war?

Also do you think national freedom means taking freedom from small countries???
and occupying them against there well,don't you remember aboghareeb prison
and the abuse that happened there,I live in a country next to Iraq
and in my building there is two Iraqian Immigrants families,who told me
that aboghareeb wasn't neither the only case nor the last,and there is alot of secret
prisons around Iraq where the abuse happening all the time.
and I don't think this is the concept democracy

@lollynoob:you don't worth replying.

[piranha]

Do you honestly think that I support the war?
It's a stupid war that should end (which is why I would vote for Obama if I could)

-JL

[01000101]

A: We are not in the middle east fighting for oil. That is a silly notion spawned from current oil shortages in the US.
B: I am not 'pro-war' but I am all for attacking scum that give pathetic low-blows instead of trying to actually fight with at least a hair of dignity.

When I was younger (~7-8 years ago) I would have been all for voting in favor of a hardcore democrat, but times have changed me, and reality has set in. After 9/11 happened, we (the US) took action against the most likely attacker and sent out a message. This has most definitely led to the past 7 years being free from any further cheap-shots to US soil as we have shown the attackers that we do not crumble when tested. I'm actually glad that someone like Bush was in office when this tragedy happened as he did not hesitate to react in a strong manner to both reassure the US and to show no fear to the attackers. Had we had a weaker president in office, things would be much worse in the US as uncertainty would set in amongst the people and the rest of the world would see the weakness brought forth from the attacks.

[xyjamepa]

so you are not sorry for all the innocent people who has been killed from this wars,
by the way Alqaida never been in Iraq.

Also Bin ladin said: 98% of ALqaida leaders are alive , working and planning,
so the war never made America more safe than it was before 9/11,

the whole 9/11 attacks cost less than half million dollars,and most of the attackers
never been in Afghanistan,so by starting a war against Afghanistan or Iraq won't end
Alqaida because it has many bases around the world including Europ.

Also you should ask your self why did they attack America and they didn't attack
another country such as Sweden or Japan...
I'll tell you why ,because America did attack alot of muslims countries before
and killed alot of innocent muslims people.

I don't believe in violence at all,and I like some stuff about America,and I think
America , maybe (whole west world) and muslims world should discuss and understand
each other,this way we can solve our problems,not by starting none end wars

Also I want to know ,what the others think ?,why did America went to Iraq?

Thanx.

[Solar]

B: I am not 'pro-war' but I am all for attacking scum that give pathetic low-blows instead of trying to actually fight with at least a hair of dignity.

That sounded different when that "scum" gave "pathetic low-blows" to the USSR back in the Afghanistan war. They were freedom fighters then...

So you blame them for not fighting it out in the open? They don't have tanks, helicopters, gunships, recon satelites, or even modern firearms. Do you really blame them for not fighting "with dignity"? Would you think better of them if they were technically superior and fighting you on your own soil? Or would you rather cheer every redneck who attacks them with a shotgun or blow up their pickup in the midst of one of their patrols?

[pcmattman]

Could someone please explain to me what is wrong with my post since apparently everyone hates it?

Just because they're the "enemy" (for now) doesn't mean that they deserve death.

From your post (and those before it) I can pick up that you're really quite insensitive and some social skills wouldn't hurt either.

[Cognition]

B: I am not 'pro-war' but I am all for attacking scum that give pathetic low-blows instead of trying to actually fight with at least a hair of dignity.

That sounded different when that "scum" gave "pathetic low-blows" to the USSR back in the Afghanistan war. They were freedom fighters then...

So you blame them for not fighting it out in the open? They don't have tanks, helicopters, gunships, recon satelites, or even modern firearms. Do you really blame them for not fighting "with dignity"? Would you think better of them if they were technically superior and fighting you on your own soil? Or would you rather cheer every redneck who attacks them with a shotgun or blow up their pickup in the midst of one of their patrols?

Let's be fair here, there's a massive difference from guerilla warfare or sabotage compared what terrorists and insurgents do. There's a huge middle ground between covert warfare and blowing up a bomb in a crowded marketplace. I understand your point, but even given their military abilities the way in which they conduct themselves would be considered cowardly. Likewise I don't think during the Afghan war there was really any record of these groups being terrorists, that came afterwards.

There is however, a very long list of weird/extermist factions we provided aid to at least in terms of weapon and funding during the cold war on various fronts. This was a bad policy motivated by the politics of the time and it's caused a lot of anger towards us in many nations. Two of the major reasons Iran doesn't care for the US goes directly back to such decisions, one that's been mentioned is the support of Saddam Hussein during the Iran-Iraq war. The other was the support of the Shah before the revolution. These were once again, very bad decisions, but I do sympathize somewhat with the people who made them as I think the expansion of Russian interests/territory into the region was a real threat. Afghanistan pretty much proved this for me personally.

We've made a lot of mistakes in recent times though too, the invasion of Iraq and many subsequent military/policy decisions post invasion were based on President Bush pretty much selectively ignoring large amounts of intelligence data that didn't agree with what he thought was happening. Bob Woodward recently released a huge book full of examples of this. You can really go back even further then that to the early 90's after the cold war was over though. We really failed as a superpower to establish good diplomatic connections in the region at a time when we easily could have. Syria's government actually called the FBI and offered to apprehend and extradite Bin Laden at one point, but we basically snubbed them for of all things failing to control terrorist factions in their country well enough. Likewise we could have done a lot more to forge better relations with Jordan, Baharain and the UAE. We missed a crucial opportunity to forge some friendly mutually beneficial relationships, likewise it created a lot of resentment and made it seem like these countries weren't "good enough" to be partenered with us. There was a great documentary on this a while ago that I forgot the name of, but a lot of people in these regions don't hate us so much as they do we conduct ourselves totally indifferently to them being there. Most of the wealth families send their kids to U.S/British colleges, they buy movies and music we produce and so forth. The whole collision of cultures stuff is greatly exaggeratted beyond perhaps women's rights.

@abuashraf:
Freedom isn't the right word for what we ignored in Iraq, there was not very much freedom there for anyone during Saddam's reign. We did ignore the nation's sovereignty, but I'd argue that even in it's unstable state now Iraq is more of a free state then it was. We did create a power vacuum which led to a massive amount of in fighting and sectarian violence. As it was said earlier I think it'd be interesting to see how many of those casualty numbers actually come from sectarian violence, indiscriminate suicide bombings and civilians being used by insurgents as human shields. The number one thing that stabilized Iraq recently for us wasn't the surge, it was that Sunni and Shiite factions stopped aggressively fighting each other. There's definetly been some innocent deaths from US military actions and some isolated incidents like Abu Graib, but I'm willing to wager a greater amount were being killed on a near daily basis by infighting and insurgents. Likewise it's pretty much been proven that Iran was providing weapons to many of those same groups as many of them could be tracked back to the IRG. The US invasion might have provided an opportunity for these groups to take such actions, but it certainly didn't necessitate it.

@mods:
How exactly hasn't lollynoob been banned yet? I've seen Combuster "declare" him a troll like 3 times now, but he still comes on here and flamebaits in just about everything he posts.

[Solar]

Very, very reflected and insightful comment there. I might mildly disagree at some points, but overall I'm so impressed I will leave this uncommented, except for a quick remark:

There's definetly been some innocent deaths from US military actions and some isolated incidents like Abu Graib, but I'm willing to wager a greater amount were being killed on a near daily basis by infighting and insurgents.

But just as killed US soldiers make it into the newspaper headlines in the US while traffic deaths don't, it's the bombing-the-wedding and Abu Ghuraib that gets talked about and not the infighting and terrorists hitting their own people.

[Cognition]

You're absolutely correct there Solar. Just about everytime I hear about the military mishandling something it's at the time of the trial and even then for only a day or two. Likewise I think the image of someone burning a US flag is shown too frequently. US news can be extremely biased, especially on the cable news networks where a lot of opinion shows are run.

[xyjamepa]

The US invasion might have provided an opportunity for these groups to take such actions, but it certainly didn't necessitate it.

I understand that...

A weak ago I was watching the famous prog 60 minutes
and they were investigating how US army do thier air strikes in Afghanistan and Iraq,so
60 minutes went to some secret command center and started talking to the people there.

a man in charge said that every month there's Thousands of air strikes in the two countries,
but most of the time this attacks are canceled in the last minute,Also he said they are
allowed to kill 30 innocent persons for one wanted leader,so if this man was between 30
persons in one house ,the army are allowed to bomb the whole house,and killing every
person there.

But the same man said that till now this air strikes didn't kill a single wanted man,during
the whole war,while it killed alot of innocent people.

and what I understand of all of this ,that America really don't care about people's life,
all it cares about is to achive its goals regardless of,how many people it kills during that.

30 people is a big number,we are talking about alot of families here,(five to six)

Also guys why do you think America went to Iraq?
most of people in the middle east (including me) think,they went there
to control the sources of the oil.

[lollynoob]

and what I understand of all of this ,that America really don't care about people's life,
all it cares about is to achive its goals regardless of,how many people it kills during that.

What's wrong with this? It's only natural for a powerful country to do what it wants to; to suggest that it do otherwise would be silly and naive.

Also guys why do you think America went to Iraq?
most of people in the middle east (including me) think,they went there
to control the sources of the oil.

This seems reasonable; why is it a problem?

[Cognition]

The US invasion might have provided an opportunity for these groups to take such actions, but it certainly didn't necessitate it.

I understand that...

A weak ago I was watching the famous prog 60 minutes
and they were investigating how US army do thier air strikes in Afghanistan and Iraq,so
60 minutes went to some secret command center and started talking to the people there.

a man in charge said that every month there's Thousands of air strikes in the two countries,
but most of the time this attacks are canceled in the last minute,Also he said they are
allowed to kill 30 innocent persons for one wanted leader,so if this man was between 30
persons in one house ,the army are allowed to bomb the whole house,and killing every
person there.

But the same man said that till now this air strikes didn't kill a single wanted man,during
the whole war,while it killed alot of innocent people.

and what I understand of all of this ,that America really don't care about people's life,
all it cares about is to achive its goals regardless of,how many people it kills during that.

30 people is a big number,we are talking about alot of families here,(five to six)

Also guys why do you think America went to Iraq?
most of people in the middle east (including me) think,they went there
to control the sources of the oil.

This indeed is a disturbing development.... I think the same report basically states that prior policy is to avoid civilian casualties if they were known to be present. Generally air strikes were sort of a last resort measure, but it sounds like there's a huge lack of ground forces which are being compensated for by what should be unnecessarily risky air strikes. They did a very poor job of explaining the factors that go into calculating this too, I really can't see using this kind of mentality for anything besides a head commander, and even then I think 30 people is far too many. I'm not sure how much it's changed or if those numbers were specifically for that set of people during the initial invasion of Iraq (which seems to be the time frame quoted). It's really rough to even try to weigh these things out, it's like wether or not dropping the atomic bomb was really a good call. I'd imagine for Iraq specifically they would have had to fell that the casualties would be higher if those targets were left alive and shelling or a firefight began. The fact that out of 50 targets they didn't get any shows extremely poor intelligence though. In Afghanistan and Pakistan they're flat out being used too frequently and we need to shift troops from Iraq to Afghanistan to deal with that really. I don't think it's a pretty practice... but it's suppose to be designed to lower potential casualties, not just get a target at any cost. From the numbers I've seen as of 2007 it was something like 250 civilian casualties from U.S airstrikes compared to 800+ from the Taliban, it's a very cold kind of reasoning but it comes with good intentions. However I think the lack of ground troops and increasing Taliban activity is stressing ground forces there to call for increasingly risky and indiscriminate as strongly (or at all) to the idea of reducing overall deaths of both troops and civilians. I'll also note that the commanders there are calling for more ground troops: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26740046 which will hopefully allieviate this problem.

Regarding why we went into Iraq, I don't think it was oil as we have yet to see any from it. The basic idea according to some of the Neocon philosophy that's been published was nationbuilding. Basically putting in a friendly democratic power that they felt would stabilize the region as a whole and draw more US support. It failed miserably, but the President/VP were of the opinion you could basically could go in there, topple a dictator and have the nation up and running in a no time greatly indebted to you for freeing them. Oil trade was however given as a factor that would make the war "pay for itself" afterwards. Wanting regional stability was likely to keep oil supplies/production steady though. Still if it were just for oil I think Bush would have already manuvered Exxon in there and had it pumping though.

[01000101]

60 minutes went to some secret command center

Are you aware of how obviously fake that sounds. If not fake, then insanely biased to no return.

allowed to kill 30 innocent persons for one wanted leader

... I'll definitely stick with insanely biased.

Maybe some variety of information sources would prove useful. First off, how secret would a facility/operation be if it were open to such garbage as 60 Minutes. I have also never heard of an acceptable death to target death ratio instated by the military.

[xyjamepa]

60 minutes went to some secret command center

Are you aware of how obviously fake that sounds. If not fake, then insanely biased to no return.

allowed to kill 30 innocent persons for one wanted leader

... I'll definitely stick with insanely biased.

Maybe some variety of information sources would prove useful. First off, how secret would a facility/operation be if it were open to such garbage as 60 Minutes. I have also never heard of an acceptable death to target death ratio instated by the military.

just take a look
the story continue here
and here
and tell me what do you think

@Cognition:

I'm not sure how much it's changed or if those numbers were specifically for that set of people during the initial invasion of Iraq (which seems to be the time frame quoted

No,it didn't changed a bit,almost everyday I hear about air strikes both in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Basically putting in a friendly democratic power that they felt would stabilize the region as a whole and draw more US support.

the problem is, US troops don't act based on this,you remember Abu Graib?right...?
maybe US media don't mention that,but here(local media)I heared alot of stories about American soldiers raped Iraqian and Afghani women,and I don't think this is closed to the democracy.
take a looks
some other crimes made by US soldiers

I do respect your viewpoint about democracy and freedom,and I would love to see
democracy here in the middel east,but you cannot enforce democracy,it should came from the People themselves.

I'm not trying to make Iraqian and Afghani people looks like a victims but,this is whats
happening there.