[Ralph]

But NOW Iraq wants to be free from America and they won’t leave.
And who in the first place asked America to go into Iraq?

I say FREE IRAQ!

I have already lived through a war where America went in and “FREED” the people
And set up a government that did what the U.S. wanted.
The trouble with the Americans is they start very unpopular wars and don’t know when to leave.

[UglyYank]

Ralph,

Where is your proof that "Iraq" wants America to leave? Are you saying the Iraqi insurgents make up the popular opinion that America has to go? Pardon me, isn't those the same people that kept Saddam in power? So are you saying we ought to leave because a handful of die hard Saddam loyalist want to regain control of the country?

Isn't that rather arrogant of you to assume "Iraq" ought to be enslaved once again because you don't like the idea of an American presence? What makes you so elite that you believe those people do not deserve at least a snowball's chance at a new beginning?

[Rev_Blair]

$1:

No, I didn't misunderstand. In your world things suck.

Since I already corrected you, I'll have to assume you are being purposely obtuse because you don't have a real argument.

$1:

On one hand you speak of how evil the US is, but let us free a nation from the likes of Saddam, and you cry imperialism.

US imperialism put Saddam in power and helped him to gain such a position that he could not be removed from within. The US did not go into Iraq to free the Iraqi people...if you even pretend to believe that you obviously have no grasp of history or world politics. The US did, however, oppose condemnation of Saddam when he gassed the Kurds and they fought against any changes to sanctions that were hurting the Iraqi people but doing nothing to remove Saddam from power.

The stated reason your government invaded Iraq was because WMD posed a real and immediate threat to US security. It is the only reason that your country could legally invade. Those weapons weren't there. The invasion was illegal. Your president and his cabinet are war criminals.

While illegally invading Iraq and the ensuing occupation, your soldiers, military commanders, and the politicians that control them broke US military law and international law. Your leaders are war criminals.

One of your country's many crimes was to allow looting and pillaging to take place. That's very telling. Not trying to stop such actions is against US military and international laws. While hospitals and historic treasures were being looted your army was guarding the Ministry of Oil. Your leaders, the ones that ordered that the Ministry of Oil be guarded while the musuems were emptied of treasures and the hospitals were emptied of life saving drugs and supplies, are greedy war criminals who would trade a gallon of gas for a human life at the first chance...no better than Saddam.

Your government has continually sought to install Iraqi leaders that will serve them in the future, even while undermining (or trying to undermine) the authority of Iraqis who would support democracy without kow-towing to US interests. Your government is planning to have huge permanent military installations in place to keep the Iraqis in line and provide a base for controlling the rest of the Middle East. Your leaders continue to support the leaders of Saudi Arabia, where most of the 9-11 terrorists came from, even though that country is also ruled by an undemocratic and despotic regime.

I've said it before and I just know you'll make me repeat it again, Ugly Yank...if you don't want your country to be criticised, then quit acting in ways that invite criticism. Don't try to feed us this crap about how we all just hate your little country. Instead quit using your head as a butt plug and use it for thinking instead...cause and effect, action and reaction.

If there was no oil in Iraq...if the Middle East was just a desert full of people who spoke another language and raised goats...the US would never have invaded. US interests in the area consist largely of oil fields and your country's apparent need to supply its citizenry with huge SUVs that require cheap gasoline to make any sense at all.

If you want to be a good American, why don't you spend some time doing some reading. Then stand up like a man and support candidates who want to make the world a better place instead of support a half-witted rich kid from New England who is so addled by cocaine use that he thinks he's from Texas. That isn't a drawl George Bush has...it's a speech impediment caused by the loss of brain cells due to drug and alcohol abuse.

[norad]

Rev, that was beautiful! Well put!

[norad]

Rev, that was beautiful! Well put! Double posted on me...must be because it was so beautifully put, Rev!

[Rev_Blair]

Thanks, Norad...I'm inspired by the words of the USA's founding fathers and the arguments put forth by US citizens who still bother to read and understand those words.

I expect to be called anti-American again soon.

[Johnnybgoodaaaaa]

Bush is actually from New Haven, Connecticut, not New England, for your information

Also, Ugly Yank, I would suggest reading "A peoples history of the united states" by Howard Zinn, because it can really shed a different light on our leaders and our countries history. We aren't that perfect country alot of us would like to believe, although I still love the US geographically, culturely and because we have created our own "tribe" from our melting pot

[Robair]

The United States is full of good people with good intentions, no doubt.

There is, however, a wealthy and influencial ruling class in this country that is steering it in the wrong direction.

Back to the original topic? Missle defense system.

These missles do not work. Even if they did work, they are built for a totally different threat than the ones north america currently faces.

Building these systems, however, IS going to generate a lot of jobs in the U.S.. So as far as I can see, America is asking Canada to help pay for this make-work program? I can't see any other good coming from it.

[Zenfisher]

I thought New England was a region ..not a state. I'm pretty sure that would include Connecticut.

[Rev_Blair]

That's the impression I was under too, Zen.

[Ralph]

Here ask your own people about the war



What We've Really Lost in this Indefensible War
By Jimmy Breslin
Aug 26, 2004, 07:11

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There were four Marines and an Army soldier killed in Iraq in one 24-hour period over the weekend.

George Bush, who does not like people who go to war, probably will say that they are not dead.

As of Aug. 20, we list 952 of our troops killed in fighting.

That is the Defense Department figure. When the figure goes over 1,000, that can be devastating in an election.

But the figure of 1,000, so easily remembered, already has been reached. That was on July 7, when a rocket-propelled grenade killed Pfc. Samuel Bowen of Cleveland. The people keeping track at the Army Times newspaper, which has given the best, and often the only, coverage of the war, made Bowen the 1,000th. The Army Times, with no election to effect, properly includes deaths in Afghanistan.

The names of the dead in Iraq over the weekend have not been released yet, except for Army Pfc. Kevin A. Cuming, 22, of White Plains. And so you sat yesterday with all these Department of Defense death notices for the last weeks covering the desk and you glanced at them, with the ages of the dead reaching up from the paper to grab your throat. Now and then you called one of their homes to get a small idea of what they were like when they lived, and what we have lost in a war that now pleases only the mentally unbalanced.

Printing as many names and as often as possible is a gloomy task. These are the deaths that the president and his people try to sneak past the country. The dead were brave men. The president is craven. He buries the war, and the news reporters, indolent and in fear of authority, follow like cattle going into pens. For so long, the public believed the news it was given. Saddam Hussein was going to blow us up with an atom bomb! The Muslims of Iraq love us!

Herewith are some of the names we went through yesterday. It is taken here as an obligation that we print the rest in following columns.

Spc. Anthony J. Dixon, 20. 1st Squadron, 4th Cavalry, 1st Infantry Division, Schweinfurt, Germany. Killed on Aug. 1 at Samarra when improvised explosive device detonated near his guard post. Home, Lindenwold, N.J. Killed with him was Spc. Armando Hernandez, 22. Home, Hesparia, Calif.

"He lived every day like it was his last day," Spc. Anthony J. Dixon's sister, Mary, said yesterday. "If something came up, he did it right then. We have a 100-foot cell-phone tower in the back yard. Somebody dared them to climb it. Anthony didn't say a word. He and Jay, the two of them climbed right to the top. They came down and my brother said, 'There. I did that.'

"His best friend, Adam Froehlich, was killed in Iraq. In March. He was 21. He and my brother enlisted together. Anthony already was in Iraq. Someone in his troop told him everything about Adam.

"On Sunday afternoon, somewhere between 1:30 and 2 o'clock, on August 1st, there was somebody at the door and my mother opened it. There were two officers, a sergeant and a chaplain. My mother knew what they were here for. She started crying. The two officers couldn't say anything. My mother threw them out."

Sgt. Juan Calderon Jr., 26, of 3rd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment, 1st Marine Division, I Marine Expeditionary Force, Camp Pendleton, Calif. Killed on Aug. 4 due to enemy action in Al Ambar Province, Iraq. Home, Weslaco, Texas.

Spc. Brandon T. Titus, 20, of 2nd Battalion, 14th Infantry Regiment, 2nd Brigade, 10th Mountain Division (Light Infantry), Fort Drum, Watertown, N.Y. Killed on Aug. 17 in Baghdad when an improvised device exploded near his checkpoint. Home, Boise, Idaho.

Pfc. Fernando B. Hannon, 19, of 3rd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment, 1st Marine Division, I Marine Expeditionary Force, Camp Pendleton, Calif. Died Aug. 15 due to enemy action in Al Anbar Province. Home, Wildomar, Calif.

And Pfc. Geoffrey, Perez, 24, of same unit and died on same day, Aug. 15, of wounds in Anbar Province. Home, Los Angles, Calif.

Spc. Jacob D. Martir, 21, of 2nd Battalion, 5th Cavalry Regiment, 1st Cavalry Division, Fort Hood, Texas. Killed on Aug. 18 in Sadr City when his patrol came under enemy small arms fire. Home, Norwich, Conn.

First Lt. Neil Anthony Santoriello, 24, of 1st Battalion, 34th Armor, 1st Brigade, 1st Infantry Division, Fort Riley, Kan. Died on Aug. 13 in Khalidiyah when improvised explosive device detonated near his mounted reconnaissance patrol vehicle. Home, Verrona, Pa.

"He lived for oatmeal cookies," his sister, Amy, said yesterday. "He was an Eagle Scout. He took children hiking, swimming. He went to Penn Hills High School and Dickinson College. What did he do after college? He went right into the Army. He had no time in between. He's only 24."

Capt. Michael Yury Tarlavsky, 30, of 1st Battalion, 5th Special Forces Group, Fort Campbell, Ky. Died Aug. 12 in Najaf when his unit came under small arms fire and a grenade attack. Home, Passaic, N.J.

Gunnery Sgt. Elia P. Fontecchio, 30, 3rd Battalion, 7th Marines, 1st Marine Division, I Marine Expeditionary Force, Marine Corps Air Ground Control Center, Twentynine Palms, Calif. Killed by enemy action in Al Anbar Province. Home, Milford, Mass.

His uncle, Dana Fontecchio, says that when Elia told them he was being sent back to Iraq for a second tour, "None of us moaned about it. He's a Marine. The gunnery sergeant. They need him."

The surgeon at the forward hospital where they operated on Fontecchio said a helicopter was waiting to fly him to Baghdad when he died.

Pfc. Raymond J. Faulstich Jr., 89th Transportation Company, 6th Transportation Battalion, 7th Transportation Group, Fort Eustis, Va. Died Aug. 5 in Najaf when enemy using small arms fire and rocket-propelled grenades attacked his convoy. Home, Leonardtown, Md.

"He had a problem with drugs and alcohol and went one place to the other," his mother, Linda, was saying last night. "Then he met a girl he loved. Her family said she couldn't see him unless he straightened out. He did. For her love. He joined the Army, and they married.

"When the two Army men came to the house to tell us, I was inside cleaning. I started to scream. 'Oh, my God! My son is dead!' He had his rosary beads in his pocket when he was killed. His wife, Crystal, had been out, and when she came over and saw the crowd in the yard she thought he was home on his two-week leave that he was supposed to be on. She's 19. She was going to go to college but she just can't do it now.

"My son was a beautiful young man. Everybody speaks about his smile. He had such a beautiful smile. My husband's

[pillowyoureyes]

Gonzo Gonzo:

Didn't one patriot missile accedently go off and shoot down a british fighter jet? I think that was the only thing it shot down.

I'm glad somebody mentioned that! Stupid Americans. We seemed to suffer most casualties from "friendly fire", although I call any casualty in Iraq a direct result of the states. It makes me angry enough to vote for some british nationalist to take our country back from the states, even if it meant isolating us from europe.

[GreatBriton]

Johnnybgoodaaaaa Johnnybgoodaaaaa:

Gonzo Gonzo:

The missile defence program would be a waste of money. First it wouldn't work. Never has anything shot down a missile. George Bush the first lied to his people when he said that they shot down missiles in Iraq. When they showed videos they were off Iraqi missiles breaking apart. Imagine that, a Bush lying to the American people. The technology doesn't exist. Secondly, no one has shot a missile here, so why build defence for it? This remindes me of the nuclear arms race. Building these weapons just for the sake of building them. Creating work for companies that leaders have shares in. They are not needed.

Never say never. You know there was a time when people thought the planet was flat and that you couldn't fly, but they didn't give up trying and finding out new things....

It's now the 21st Century, and there are still some Americans (including some American politicians) who think that Global Warming is a myth.

[GreatBriton]

$1:

I have no problems if they build weapons that can be used offensively in space, as long as it's the United States who has them

Not when Bush has his finger on the trigger.

You have to remember that he's a guy who falls off bicycles and chokes on pretzels, so can you imagine trusting Bush with space weapons?

[Gonzo]

Again, the only thing those patriot missiles shot down was a British fighter jet. I wouldn't feel safe traveling on a plane with those things around. I live on the west coast, where they would probably be installed. I think I'll take the train if it ever passes.