Operation Iraqi Freedom: The Aftermath

[texasbumpkin]

Are we not a little of topic here?? What does vocabulary have to do with Operation Iraqi Freedom. This is not a spelling bee or english composition class.

[j-turbo2002]

I am non-plussed! I haven't used a thesaurus in at least 5 years. One of the many reasons the English language enjoys such widespread use is its' marvelous "ability" to explore the many nuanced meanings that can be expressed in a simple sentence, merely by the use of the many synonyms available for most words.

invective: such a nice word for "NO SHIT YOU ACT WITH YOUR FEELINGS!", or "Its just that when you ask a stupid question, you are going to get a stupid answer", or even "you cannot handle your emotions because you are still writing stupid, illogical, and irrelevant arguments".

stercoraceous: a nice word for "of or relating to feces" e.g. "full of shit"!

Is this a crystal moment?

No, this is not a crystal moment. First of all, I do believe you when you say that you haven’t used a thesaurus in five years because you "screwed-up" the uses of the words INVECTIVE and STERCORACOUS. Secondly, your definitions are all wrong and the following is the reason why. By definition a synonym is a word that has the same or nearly the same meaning as the other that it takes the place of. The following are not words but rather phrases:

1) “NO SHIT YOU ACT WITH YOUR FEELINGS!"

2) "Its just that when you ask a stupid question, you are going to get a stupid answer"

3) "you cannot handle your emotions because you are still writing stupid, illogical, and irrelevant arguments".

and of course,

4) "full of shit"!

Since all of the above are phrases, the words INVECTIVE and STERCORACOUS do not apply to these situations. Here are the correct uses of these words:

1) J-Turbo’s comments were very INVECTIVE.

Notice that I have used the word INVECTIVE in place of the word INSULTING.

2) J-Turbo can sometimes have a STERCORACOUS mouth.

Notice, that I have used the word STERCORACEOUS instead of the word FILTHY. Although to this very day I have never used the F-Word. I would never stoop that low!

Do you see what I am getting at here? Do you see the point that I am trying to make? You cannot substitute words for phrases. You cannot do that, or, at least that is what they told me in grammar school.

jt

[j-turbo2002]

Are we not a little of topic here?? What does vocabulary have to do with Operation Iraqi Freedom. This is not a spelling bee or english composition class.

Yes we are off of the topic here but this always happens. It is unavoidable! Yes this is not a English composition class but I just had to set Azraelle straight on a few issues - that is all. I hope that you don't mind.

[azraelle]

I picked this up off my webmail today:

Phil Lucas, Panama City, Florida News Herald Executive Editor, wrote this article published in the Sunday April 4, 2004 edition. His email address is plucas@pcnh.com. The News Herald web site is found at http://www.newsherald.com/

Up Against Fanaticism

If straight talk of savagery offends you, if you believe in ethnic and gender diversity but not diversity of thought, or if you think there is an acceptable gray area between good and evil, then turn to the funny pages, and take the children, too. This piece is not for you.

We published pictures Thursday [April 1] of burnt American corpses hanging from

an Iraqi bridge behind a mob of grinning Muslims. Some readers didn't like it. Mothers said it frightened their children. A woman who works with Muslim physicians thought it might offend or endanger them.

Well, we sure don't want to frighten, offend or endanger anybody, do we? That's just too much diversity to handle. I mean, somebody might get hurt. We could fill the newspaper every morning with mobs of fanatical Muslims. They can't get along with their neighbors on much of the planet: France, Chechnya, Bosnia, Indonesia, Spain, Morocco, India, Tunisia, Somalia, etc. etc. etc. Can anybody name three ongoing world conflicts in which Muslims are not involved? Today, where there is war, there are fanatical Muslims.

We might quibble about who started what conflicts, but look at the sheer number of them. One thing is sure. Muslim killers started the one we are in now when they slaughtered more than 3,000 people, including fellow Muslims, in New York City. Madeleine Albright, the former secretary of state and feckless appeaser who helped get us into this mess, said last week Muslims still resent the Crusades. Well, Madam Albright, if westerners were not such a forgiving people, we might resent them too.

Let's recap the Crusades. Muslims invaded Europe, and when they reached sufficient

numbers, they imposed their intolerant religion upon Westerners by force. Christian monarchs drove them back and took the battle to their homeland. The fight lasted a couple of centuries, and we bottled them up for 1,000 years. [not entirely accurate, but it will probably suffice]

Now, a millennium later, Muslims have expanded forth again. Ask France. Ask England. Ask Manhattan. Two-and-a-half years ago fanatical Muslims laid siege to us. We woke up to the obvious. Our president announced it would be a very long war, then took the battle to the Islamic homeland. Sound Familiar?

Let's consider the concept of a "long war." Last time it was 200 years, give or take. Anybody catch Lord of the Rings? You know, the good part, the part that wasn't fiction, the part that drew us to the books and movies because it was the truest part: the titanic struggle between good and evil, between freedom and enslavement, between the individual and the state, between the celebration of life and the worshipping of death.

That's the fight we are in, and it never ends. It just has peaks and valleys. There may be a silent majority of peaceful Muslims - some live here - but that did not save 3,000 people in the World Trade Center, the million gassed and butchered in the Middle East, the tens of thousands slain in Eastern Europe and Asia, the hundreds blown to bits in the West Bank and Spain, or the four Americans shot, burned and hung like sausages over the Euphrates as a fanatical minority of Muslims did the joyful dance of death.

Maybe we are so tolerant, we are so bent on "diversity," we are so nonjudgmental, we are so wrapped up in our six-packs and ballgames that our brains have drained to our bulbous behinds. Maybe we're so addled on Ritalin we wouldn't know which end of a gun to hold. Maybe we need a new drug advertised on TV every three minutes, one that would help us grow a backbone.

It doesn't take a Darwin to figure out that in this world the smartest, the fastest, the strongest, and the most committed always win. No exceptions.

Look at your spouse and children. Look at yourself in the mirror. Then look at the pictures from the paper last Thursday. You better look at them. Those are the people out to kill you. Who do you think will win? You? Or them? Think you can take your

ball and go home and they will leave you alone? Read a little history. Start with last week, last month, last year, and every other year back for half a century. Then go back a thousand years. Nobody hides from this fight.

Like it or not, that's the way it was and that's the way it is. But many Americans don't get it. That's why we published those pictures. If they jarred you off the sofa, if they offended you, if they scared your children and sent you into a rage at mass murderers or heartless editors, then I say, it's a start.

[azraelle]

I posted this on another forum, but it may bear repeating here... There was an economist from India that wrote a book in the mid-80's--Ravi Batra, don't remember the name of the book. He said that all civilizations have fallen, usually by civil war, when the top 1% gain control of 50% of the wealth. At least I believe that was the figure. At the time the US was edging at around 47%. His thesis was that if something drastic wasn't done to change it that America was heading for a social collapse sometime early in the 21st century. His suggestion was to replace income tax with an "inherited wealth tax", then institute a wage structure based somewhat on the Japanese system. In Japan at the time, the highest paid executive was the CEO of Matsushita, making about $230,000 annually, while in America, it was Lee Iacocca of Chrysler, making in excess of $10,000,000 per year. His suggestion was to not pay the highest paid worker of a company (presumably the CEO) more than 10 times what the lowest paid worker received. Of course, his suggestions fell on deaf ears! One of my roommates and I were having a heated discussion about this when he said something that had never occurred to me, the jist of which is that the powers-that-be are very much aware of the crisis of the haves vs the have-nots, and have been trying to "solve" it for years by attempting to remove the weapons from most Americans (who coincidentally happen to be the have-nots) through ever-more stringent gun control. This plan backfired on them, recently, when statistics caught up with them as to the fact that in all states where "shall-issue" concealed weapons carying permit laws have been enacted, the violent crime rate actually went down, in some cases rather drastically. Therefore, the "establishment" have more-or-less come to the conclusion that they may have to put down a well-armed insurrection (as opposed to the preferred disarmed insurrection) some time in the near future. Which explains the real reason why we are in Iraq right now--to train the Army soldiers (whom they figure to use to put down said insurrection) in urban warfare, it being a foregone conclusion that since the vast majority of the REALLY poverty-stricken have-nots are in the urban, inner-city areas of the US. Twas, and is, food for thought. It would explain much in regards to why we are still over there, and haven't just pulled out and left the place to the shiites and their shite(!)._

[Bubba136]

Azzzzz! That's quite a stretch.

[azraelle]

Not really. Sherlock Holmes said that if all other possible answers are exhausted then the one that remains, however implausible, must be the truth, or words to that effect. No one, anywhere, on the net can figure out a plausible or really compelling reason for why we ar still there other than some vague "political expediency" which fades into non-believability when one asks the question "whose political expediency?" So then you have to ask "Well, what other agenda is it serving?"

[Dr. Shoe]

The reason we're still there is one little three letter word: Oil. OPEC have just restricted oil supply forcing the price of crude to an all time high, the "coalition" is just waiting for the right time when they can justify going against OPEC and supplying the world's second largest oil consumer and the UK with an exclusive supply of cheap fuel from military run oil wells. There's another reason why were still there: Fanatacism. The Bush and Blair administrations are so scared of leaving the kind of vaccum that was left in Afghanistan after the Soviets left that they cannot withdraw. Ever. Even if they manage to install a moderate democratic west-friendly government it will be overthrown in a matter of months and bang goes our cheap petrol. Iraq was never about evil regimes or weapons of mass destruction is was about oil.

[Bubba136]

Dr. Shoe! How's your Arabic? With an attitude like that, you'd better brush up. And, while you're at it, start studying the Koran. The Mullahs will be around before you know it to test you. Particularly the one that was just arrested in London.

[Firefox]

Yes the war was about oil. They thought they'd be welcomed with open arms by the "freed" Iraqis. How wrong Bush and Bliar were. It was so obvious. Any "democratic" Gov they foister upon a culture which is dominated by tribal influence and religious fanaticism will be overthrown as soon as they leave. It's like trying to impose an Islamic state on the USA or the UK. It just isn't going to happen, and the sooner Bush gets kicked out for his errors and they get their troops out of there, the better.

[Dr. Shoe]

Dr. Shoe! How's your Arabic? With an attitude like that, you'd better brush up. And, while you're at it, start studying the Koran. The Mullahs will be around before you know it to test you. Particularly the one that was just arrested in London.

With all due respect Bubba, this war has nothing to do with Arabic, the Koran, Fanaticism or even Al Qaida if it comes to that, Iraq has long been a secular country where many mosques were closed down and the remaining ones closely supervised by the state. It's just that GWB and (probably) Bliar had been dying to get rid of Sadman Insane for years and get their grubby little mitts on all that oil.

Tell me, if the UN invaded the US in order to effect a regime change and then started to take over all the factories and businesses, I'd say it would be a 99% probability that the people would want to fight back whether they liked the former regime or not. I know I'd want to and probably would. It is a shame that the Iraqi people are focused around a fundamentalist and not someone more in keeping with what the Americans want.

Yes, the militant Iraqis are a minority but so were the Ba'aths when they took over in the 70s.

This has nothing to do with attitude it's just common sense.

[Bubba136]

With all due respect, this isn't really a subject that should be discussed in this forum. There are better places (like moveon.org) for your comments where you can trash Bush and Blair to your hearts content to an audience that will salivate with every word. Dr. Shoe....This actually has to do with a highly skewed view of the facts that no amount of factual evidence will ever get in the way of trumping your regurgitated talking points rhetoric. Believe what you want to believe and when it happens, I, for one, will celebrate as gleefully as the people in the UK did when your equivilant of 9/11 occurs in your home town. And, after all of the criticism thrown our way by people with your mindset in the UK, don't expect any sympathy or help from me. You people can bail yourselves out. (And, should the UN ever gather the military strength to attack the US, I strongly believe you, and others like you, will be at the forefront of the charge until we start fighting back. And then, in typical UN fashion, you'll be amomg the first to turn tail and run for cover). :argue:

[Dr. Shoe]

With all due respect, this isn't really a subject that should be discussed in this forum. There are better places (like moveon.org) for your comments where you can trash Bush and Blair to your hearts content to an audience that will salivate with every word.

Firstly, I was a supporter of Blair when he first got elected because I really thought that the UK and perhaps the rest of the world would be a better place for it. I was wrong.

Secondly, I am not trashing either Bush or Blair, just their policy over Iraq.

Dr. Shoe....This actually has to do with a highly skewed view of the facts that no amount of factual evidence will ever get in the way of trumping your regurgitated talking points rhetoric. Believe what you want to believe and when it happens, I, for one, will celebrate as gleefully as the people in the UK did when your equivilant of 9/11 occurs in your home town. And, after all of the criticism thrown our way by people with your mindset in the UK, don't expect any sympathy or help from me. You people can bail yourselves out.

What like we did during the blitz in 1940 when a sizeable group of Americans were trying to lobby the president to side with Germany? Or perhaps when Americans were buying guns and ammunition so that the IRA could murder British women and children? Or when the US government were selling arms to Iran to finance a secret war in South America?

I find your comments very offensive considering the tangible support (including a sizeable donation) I gave the people of the US after 9/11. And when I'm on the subject: Putting a LOL after an offensive personal remark doesn't make it any less offensive.

Also, where are your "facts"? Are mine so skewed or not? I base my post on a personal opinion which seems to match the opinion of every rational person I speak to (and my father who is an American citizen says the same other there). Where are the weapons of Mass Destruction? where are the Al qaida training camps?

We are all entitled to our opinions and if yours don't match mine so be it, there is no need to offend. After all, I never seek to offend people because they don't agree with me.

(And, should the UN ever gather the military strength to attack the US, I strongly believe you, and others like you, will be at the forefront of the charge until we start fighting back. And then, in typical UN fashion, you'll be amomg the first to turn tail and run for cover).

I doubt if I could be there even in the unlikely event that I would want to because we'd probably be on the receiving end of it too.

Look, I don't know you and you don't know me. We obviously don't agree with the motives of the US invasion of Iraq so let's just leave it at that. You can have the last word if you like but this is the last I will say on the subject.

[azraelle]

Dr. Shoe: first of all, try this for a little levity. Go to google.com, type in "weapons of mass destruction" and then click on "I feel lucky".

Now for something that I posted on another forum.

To answer you, I ask you to step back, apparently a LONG way, to look at the bigger picture for a moment. Concentrate not on Al Qaida, or the terrorists who, FINALLY, decided to carry the Muslim fanatics' long-term threats to America's shores, but instead on those threats themselves, on how many years that America has been the target of a general Muslim Jihad, and on ALL those various groups AND GOVERNMENTS who have been mouthing the threat, and listen to the words of African-American columnist Thomas Sowell last year:

"The greatest curse of the 20th Century was the inability of decent people to realize that what was unthinkable to them was both thinkable and doable to others--like Hitler, Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot. Are we to wait until Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction and we wake up one morning to find a couple of American cities obliterated?"

As someone else has pointed out, the fact that we haven't found the WMD doesn't mean they don't exist. Saddam had 12 years to hide them. He had several months to move them to other countries. Which ones?

The technology to produce organophosphate insecticides is in the hands of many countries who have sworn ill towards America. This same technology can be used with very little modification to produce the nerve agents in our chemical weapons stockpile. Heck, why modify it at all? TEMIK, an organophosphate insecticide works the same way. Granted it is only ~1/4 as lethal as VX, but when you're talking 0.4 milligrams per KiloGram of bodyweight to kill, you don't need a huge amount of it to contaminate the water supply (or the bevereges of, say, some local bottling company) to cause widespread sickness. Or better yet, since it is oil-based, why not contaminate the meat at some beef packing plant? The FDA doesn't routinely check raw beef for that sort of thing, to my knowlege--only bacteriological contamination. Or incorporate into the permanent press treatment applied to newly-manufactured (overseas) cotton-blend clothing? The possibilities are practically endless to a dedicated, imaginative, and well-financed terrorist organization or government.

I forgot to mention something that apparently most people do not realize about organophosphates (and nerve agents) is that the lethal dose figure stated above for TEMIK applies for SKIN TRANSMISSION, e.g. the oily nature causes the normally protective barrier of the skin to be fooled into "thinking" that this is a friend, instead of a foe, and it ACTIVELY transports it throught the skin into the bloodstream. Taken orally, or worse yet breathing it in, has the effect of reducing the amount needed to cause death by a factor of 100 to 1000 or so, so the figure would then be ~ 4 micrograms for oral transmission, perhaps as little as 400 nanograms for breathing it in. And that is for a legal insecticide. The least lethal nerve agent, VX, has, as I recall, a skin Lethal dose of less than 0.1 milligrams per Killogram of body weight.

This is just CHEMICAL WMDs. Biological WMDs are even easier to hide. Or transfer across the border. Or send through the mail. Why bother with high-tech Nuclear WMD?? Perhaps the rumours of Saddam posessing them were, in fact, rumours. Only a megalomaniac idiot, which Saddam was not, would have failed to put together WMDs of a Biological or Chemical nature--indeed we KNOW that he posessed Chemical WMDs becaused he used them, both against Iran, and again against his own people, the Kurds. I believe, as mr. Sowell pointed out, that it was only a matter of time before Saddam used them against us--or the UK, for that matter.

[j-turbo2002]

Well, look at this!

I leave for a rather long vacation and all hell breaks loose.

This war is not about oil.

This war is about one little word that those who are ruled by a Monarch and the socialists/communists in Europe don't want to hear: FREEDOM

Besides, to this very day there is absolutely NO HARD MATHMATICAL EVIDENCE to support the claim that this is a war for oil.

The war for oil claim is only made by those who are unmoral and weak minded.

[j-turbo2002]

What is going on with oil prices these days you might ask?

Here is a good article from TheStreet.com:

http://209.67.12.134/funds/jubak/10162123.html

This way, I don't have to do a lot of typing.

[Trolldeg]

Well, look at this!

I leave for a rather long vacation and all hell breaks loose.

This war is not about oil.

This war is about one little word that those who are ruled by a Monarch and the socialists/communists in Europe don't want to hear: FREEDOM

This is what watching Fox News will do to you. Watch out kids!

Besides, to this very day there is absolutely NO HARD MATHMATICAL EVIDENCE to support the claim that this is a war for oil.

The war for oil claim is only made by those who are unmoral and weak minded.

do you really believe what you are writing?

if this war was about freedom and not oil, why aren't USA rushing to free the oppressed people of north korea? a country which is a bigger threat to it's neighbours and world stability than Iraq ever was.

two reasons: no oil, and the fact that N.K spends 25% of it's GNP on it's military, and it highly probable that they actually HAVE the bomb. and they would not be afraid to use it.

[Bubba136]

TD wrote:

why aren't USA rushing to free the oppressed people of north korea? a country which is a bigger threat to it's neighbours and world stability than Iraq ever was.

One really good reason, TD. North Korea has a significant ally in it's corner - The Peoples Republic of China. The USA and China are working well together towards solving that problem. And I am sure in a few years you will see a complete transformation of the PDRK without major military confrontation.

[j-turbo2002]

Well said Bubba. It takes an intelligent person to figure that out. It is too bad that Trolldeg is not one of those intelligent people. Although I do enjoy it when he makes himself look like an idiot.

and the fact that N.K spends 25% of it's GNP on it's military

25%? I don't think so.

According to the CIA, North Korea spends about 33.9% of its GDP on military spending. This is a FY 2002 figure. Since then, there is speculation that it has risen by 10% to 12%.

My source for this information comes from the CIA World Factbook:

http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/kn.html#Military

[j-turbo2002]

This is what watching Fox News will do to you.

Believe-it-or-not, you just re-enforced my statement.

You don't want to hear the word freedom and so you falsely accuse those who do use the word of watching too much Fox News.

[chris100575]

My biggest gripe about the UK's involvement in the war is not so much that we got involved, although I'm far from convinced that it was justified, but that we got involved because George Bush told us to. Tony Blair was quite prepared to ignore the wishes of the majority of the UK population, and go to war because as far as he's concerned we're the 51st state and must obey the almighty USA. Before I'm accused of it, I'm not being anti-American. It's just that if I wanted to live in a country ruled by your president I'd move to the US. Bubba, I found your statement that we "celebrated gleefully" when 9/11 occurred highly offensive. If you really believe that that's how people in the UK felt then you have serious problems. Believe it or not, everyone I know was shocked and upset at the deaths of so many people who had just been going about their daily lives. We certainly didn't celebrate it. Lastly, if the war is about freedom why are our (British and US) troops still over there, with more being sent regularly? Surely now that Saddam has been removed we should let the Iraqi people go back to running their own country? How long is it before a liberation force becomes an invasion force? Chris

[Trolldeg]

Believe-it-or-not, you just re-enforced my statement.

You don't want to hear the word freedom and so you falsely accuse those who do use the word of watching too much Fox News.

:rofl:

..and YOU just reinforced mine!

wake up, please.

[Bubba136]

In the almost 4 years that I've known Trolldeg on the internet, I've found him to be very intelligent, straight forward and to the point. Although he harbors Swedish views on how societies are structured and should behave, I've found that he is one of the few left-leaning thinkers that you can actually hold a discussion with. Although I disagree with his views most of the time, I am appreciative that he is here and willing to add his thinking to this site.

[Trolldeg]

The thing is, the USA is the only place in the world where my views would be considered "left-leaning", everywhere else in the world I'd be right-wing. now back to the issue at hand. If this war was always about giving freedom to the iraqi people, why did GWB need all that false evidence about WMDs to storm in there? Why didn't he just say "We're going to free the oppressed people of Iraq, who's with us?".

[Firefox]

Yes the war was about freedom. Freedom of the USA to do what the hell it likes to act in its own self interests. They may have effected regime change but they'll fail to replace it with a puppet "democratic" regime. I hope they get kicked out of there by the will of the Iraqi people, the sooner the better. And the Iraqis will most likely chose some tribal/religious dictator who wont be interested in giving the USA cheap oil. They'll be left with a nothng but a bloody nose which may teach them it's pointless messing in other country's affairs.

[j-turbo2002]

The Iraqi people finally have freedom from a horrid barbaric regime. We Americans are very persistant, determined, and hard working people. We will prevail. We always have and we always will - no matter the costs! In Vietnam, we showed the world that we would fight the threat of communism even if it meant loosing the battle and 50,000 lives. History would later show that by loosing that battle we would eventually win the war - the Soviet Union collapsed. We are going to show the world that we can bring a stable self governing democracy to those who have never in their lifetime had it. We Americans belive that everyone has the right to life, liberty, and the persuit of happiness. Sadly, there are people in the "rest of the world" who do not share this view. They think that the world is a better place when there are others suffering. They think that we "should not get involved". We enforced UN Resolution 1441 and all of the 14 amendments that went along with it. The UN sadly did not want to follow its own resolution but the US did. If it were not for the US the UN would be a much bigger laughing stock than it is today. We will also find Weapons of Mass Destruction someday. Remember, the US has to search an area the size of California with no hints as to where to look. We have found out that most of the people who worked in the former Iraqi weapons program have been either been killed or they are afraid to talk for fear that their lives might be in danger. Also, we have found out that most of the much needed supporing documents that chronicled the Iraqi weapons program were destroyed by the former Iraqi regime. Just look at what the US is digging out of that desert. I am sure that most of you have seen the images of the US Army digging up the Iraqi Mig fighters and T-72 tanks from the desert floor. What else is buried out in that desert? Only time will tell. So, in the end, I strongly suggest that all of you irrational, nonlogical, and emotional "touchy feely" people just calm down and take a deep breath. Everything is going to be okay. You just need to keep a positive outlook on the issues at hand. Believe me being positive will take you a long way in life. I am living proof of this. Being a positive person has helped me to become one of the most successful, well respected Professional/Chartered Mechanical Engineers in my industry. However, for those of you who choose not to be positive............... To those of you who choose to be envious of those who are better than you, pessimistic, and negative about everything - watch out! You will soon find all of you hopes, dreams, and everything that you thought that you were quickly being flushed down the toilet.

[azraelle]

If this war was always about giving freedom to the iraqi people, why did GWB need all that false evidence about WMDs to storm in there? Why didn't he just say "We're going to free the oppressed people of Iraq, who's with us?".

Personally I believe that the WMD will eventually turn up, but in the hypothetical case that they do not, the answer to your question is the same as the answer to the question of "why didn't FDR do anything about the foreknowledge that he had that Japan was going to attact the US?". And that is simply that neither president could have convinced either Congress, or the American people generally, to go to war, because, contrary to popular belief, both inside and outside the US, when it comes to world politics, Americans in general prefer not to get involved, especially for altruistic "it will make the world a better place to live in" reasons.

[Firefox]

Oh well, since you enforced UN 1441, no doubt you'll be enforcing the UN resolutions which call for Israeli withdrawal from certain areas. Oh... hold on, there's no oil in those areas is there? And there's a big Jewish influence in USA money markets. Maybe it's best to let that one lie.

[j-turbo2002]

As far as I know President Bush has been very supportive of the current Israeli withdrawl. Mr. Bush has repeatedly been quoted as saying that he wants to see the establishment of a Palestinian state that is at peace with Israel.

There is a dirty little secret that lies behind the, "UN resolutions which call for Israeli withdrawal from certain areas." The secret is that Great Brittan has been absent during the voting on most of those resolutions. This is typical of the UK, they talk big about those resolutions but when it comes down to voting on them they are no where to be found. Perhaps it is best to let this one die? During the past year the US has only vetoed one of those resolutions. Since the year 2000, it has only vetoed three. My source for this information comes from the U.S. State Department:

http://www.state.gov/

Bush has caused a lot of controversy by saying that Israel has the absolute right to defend itself.

The US money markets are influenced by a vast range of people and cultures. This is what makes the United States so great. It is not all influenced by the Jewish people. The people who make this kind of statement usually have something against Jewish people and their culture. They are usually filled with hate for the Jewish and so they go on and make these false and ridiculous accusations just to reinforce themselves and add fuel to their burning hate fire.

[Firefox]

I'm not one of the people that applies to. I've many Jewish friends and one of my best mates and business partner is Jewish. As far as Britain's stance on the Palestinian issue goes, I think it is as bad as the USA's. I don't support the British Government and I'm completely against the policy of both Bush and Blair in the middle east. You say "Bush is very supportive" etc but that was not my point. Bush may also have been "very supportive" of regime change in Iraq, but he went much further. The talks of road maps and other measures are just empty rhetoric. He is choosing which UN resolutions to enforce, and which to let lie. Therefore, using 1441 as a justification for the war in Iraq is a hollow argument. The whole point is, that to win a war against terrorism, you have to fight on two fronts. Apprehend the terrorists themselves and chip away at any issues or injustice which is fuelling new recruits to their cause. The Palestinian issue is a major thing which is helping Al Qaeda to get new resources. The war in Iraq did nothing to help the war against terror. In fact it reinforced the terrorsist in two ways. Al Qaeda now has a bigger power base in Iraq than it did before the war, and it also has further opportunity to recruit new blood on the basis of "agression against Arab states by the USA". This has meant greater threat to Western countries eg The Madrid Bombings. On account of these reasons, and the total lack of any WMD, most people have seen the light in that the war in Iraq was not based on anything else other than greed for control of oil.