is there anyone... (off topic)

... around my age (17) that is keeping up with the talk about iraq correctly?

we had a large discussion in my history class today and i was appalled at some of the things my classmates said:

"we should kill them because sept 11 killed the stock market"
"let's bomb their mecca"
"their camels will attack us" ????
"we did nothing to provoke this"

i mean honestly, i was dying of laughter at the stupidity. the fact that there are people who find it justified to bomb a person's deity, and who doesn't realize that not only did our threats of war cause the oil prices to jack up (hence the REAL reason for this war), but that america hasn't been bombing pretty much EVERYONE for YEARS is kind of disturbing. and the fact that i, a teenager, can equate that if the REAL motive is behind saddam's potential weaponry, then shouldn't we be attacking every country with the potential (especially north korea who has shown more of a threat)? the logic is that this is 90% about the oil, making this one of the silliest wars ever.

i watched what bush had to say for all of 5min because that's really all you need. he answers no negatively based questions, says things like "they have weapons of mass destruction that they plan on using for mass destruction", and is completely disregarding the UN in the entire matter. he wreaks of being an amateur which isn't all that comforting to me.

so yeah, back to the original question.. anyone my age keeping up with this?

p.s. i talked to my grandma about this and she called me a communist. aha.



Post Edited (03-07-03 15:26)

i am keeping up with this and i can and will speak my mind on this topic, but not right now...

dont feel too good


sleep=good



I wonder what its like to be remembered- John Hampson

my history class is chattin' about that stuff too... when I commented on teh fact states has weapons jsut like iraq.. and have bush leading them.... they decided I was a tree hugger for not wanting to go off and die in a war... arg... but yeah, I can chat about it...

clearlycanadian69@hotmail.com is my msn if you wanna discuss it...



"How far you go just to destroy yourself. Tuck in your self esteem, it's falling out"

My history class last semester tried to talk about it. Well, my teacher, a few other students, and myself did at least. But nobody in my school cares about anything outside their own little bubble. It aggrivates me that people don't care.

Kat



"The Password is..."

you think this is 90% about oil?


We only import about 15% of our oil from the Middle East. So considerably less than that is from Iraq. We get most of our oil from the Far East. The reason that prices have gone through the roof is because they CAN. They use the pending war as an excuse. Its all BS.

I have no desire to debate any matter regarding this because I can't control it.


I don't know if I am for or against this pending war. All I know is that if Bush wanted to declare war on a suspected country who supports terrorists on Sept 12, 2001, there wouldn't be one person against him. Get off the White House lawn and get a fuckin job.

ok, so north korea and iraq are supposed to be allies. n.k. is developing and testing bombs, and nuclear atomic bombs or something of the sort. according to the article i read on one of our spy planes being caught by n.k. i think, once we go into war with iraq or n.k. (cuz they both seem to want it) the other will strike, and completely anihilate us. am i the only one who sees this? maybe im just paranoid...but if they ARE allies, doesnt this seem like a good plan? yes. it does. so hopefully, the govt. conciders this. even tho i think theyre just one big consiracy. hehe...i think too much. its bad for me.



-Emily

"forever bored and outside from the in-crowd..."

I'm near your age (18)...but not talking about it in any classes...anyway, I don't agree with attacking iraq right now at all...



BEN

ok scott i rephrase.

from what ive been learning in class, we have gotten "85% of our oil from ::circles map around iraq/saudia arabia:: here".

blame the teacher, not me

merely venting...not blaming!!!!

I didnt mean for it to come off like that!

scott where are you? you're not on aim...come back, i haven't talked to you in like 203948098 years



~lori~

my sister and i had this same conversation. she was telling me about a debate in her college sociology (or something) class, and i called her a communist. because she was being one, not to insult her. it was just a matter-of-fact observation. well she got all huffy and insulted, but then she conceded that she was being borderline communist.

and some communist principles arent so bad...

its just that on paper communism is a stellar idea, but when you implement it into a real society all of the hideous flaws become loudly apparent. and since our generation has had such little experience with communism in action, we tend to not see the problems that arise in a communist society, so its easy for some ideas and opinions to fall towards the communist category.

now, im not calling anyone a communist, just stating an observation about "kids these days."

anyway, the point im trying to make is that you and my sister are both against the war for various reasons and your grandmother and i both related that to communism. and i just thought that was funny.

anybody read THE FOUNTAINHEAD? i think its sort of relevant in this discussion. it has nothing to do with war, but ayn rand has some really interesting ideas regarding society/government/personal drive. agree with her or not, its interesting.



Post Edited (03-08-03 04:15)

oh, i just wanted to add that since that day we decided that "communist" was a pretty extreme term for me to use. she is more of a really liberal democrat.


AND, my last post made it sound like i am in support of a war, but i wanted to stress that i am severly AGAINST WAR.

maybe its me who is the communist.



Post Edited (03-08-03 04:17)

No war is a great moral concept....everyone wants peace. But what are the other options? Do you really think Sadam is going to say ok. here are all my weapons?? It's not going to work. Unfortunetly there will always be war unless someone comes up with a better idea to settle world conflict. If you are opposed to this war....come up with something better.

Don't get me wrong....peace is great. I am extremly into buddhism, but there is religion in the air and on the ground. Which basically means there are morals then there is real world. This is dealing with the real world and sometimes in the real world life sux.



~MeLiSsA

i understand you completely melissa, its just that if he is a threat to us merely based on the fact that someday he will have these capabilities (he's only so far advanced now), then we have to attack every single other country who has them. and we aren't. and n. korea poses more of a threat to us than anything, and yet nothing is being done about that.

on the surface it looks like war is ok but (call me a hippy for it if you will..) how do you get peace with more and more and more violence? i know the war will prob happen but that underlying factor never changes. i could quote lennon, i just ain't that cheesay.

and it's all goooood scott. i appreciate you correcting me.

scott, to clear up steph, the most oil we are buying right now is FROM iraq. (but that is right now, this year) i was different. but because of the strikes and the civil unrest in venezuela, currently most of our oil is bought from iraq.

oh and the weapons of mass disctruction? donald rumsfeld SOLD sadam the weapons and nuclear technology to help the US defeat iran in the 80s. yes, the US "preteneded" not to notice that sadam was the genocidal maniac dictator he was and always has been (at the time he was bombing the kurds, and the US knew about it and acknowlaged that it wasn't a big deal because we needed them to help us defeat iran). so the fact that "he has weapons of mass destruction to destruct the masses" is just a cover. we want iraq as our little oil colony. regime change? ew. we created that regime and no one knows that.

thats US foreign policy, we sell weapons to terrorists and dictators and genocidal maniacs b/c they help us defeat our enemy at the time and then in retrospect we realize they are terrorists/dictators/genocidal maniacs and then we try and bomb them b/c we don't currently have a crisis, so we make one up to raise polls and have our military do something b/c we spend so much money on them anyway, why have them sit around?

and has anyone heard our plan for iraq once we win the war? we are going to set up a military government with an american leader. if that isn't imperialistic conlinzation i don't know what is...

and i haven't even gone into the fact that the world does not want this war.

maybe its just the pacifist in me talking, but from the history of it, this seems pretty clear that this isn't the best idea right now. especially when our economy sucks and the bush administration really has no plan for it.

that's exactly it!!! MOST AMERICAN CITIZENS ARE AGAINST THIS WAR. all the protests made me shed a tear of joy, and had i known about the nyc one farther than a day in advance i would have been there! but turning back now will ruin bush's political career because the republicans want this war, and he knowwwwws it.

p.s. christina i love you. i better see you tonight or i will cry and ****.

i think Im just going to have a beer.

steph. we gotta do something over the summer. AND next year if philly is the place where i'll be from then you have to come down and visit me and sof. ok?

north korea isn't a threat now and won't be for a while. all they're doing is using that card to try and get more relief from us

north korea and iraq aren't shooting missles over here any time soon, either. the fear is that they would give such weapons (a low grade nuke, perhaps) to a rogue terrorist group

pacifism on your part is a weakness

if you'd look at the polls, the majority of americans are in favor of taking out saddam. and, as a matter of fact, the UN said iraq had to disarm or he'd be disarmed using force. only now that he hasn't made progress, they're not going to do anything. that's like telling your child they have to stop jumping on the bed, and them not listening, and you saying "ok, this is the LAST time i'm telling you..." and just repeating that phrase. it loses meaning. and of course you didn't see it all over the news about the tens of thousands of people who were at pro-war, pro-bush demonstrations. and it's better for an iraqi to live under american imperial rule than living under the rule of a malevolent dictator who brutalizes his civilians for looking at him the wrong way. did you see about how he has purchased military uniforms identical to american and british uniforms so that he can brutalize his own people and pass it off as somebody else's handywork? he uses his people as human shields.

iraqi weapons are soviet made, by the way.

the tree of liberty grows from the blood of patriots and tyrants alike

long live america and the right you have to degrade the country that has given you more freedoms than any other country in the history of the world

you know its really interesting to see that all yous guys are so against it, when all we see on our bristish tv is bush talking about how good it'll be for you.

the way i see it is this is all about oil, but also bush is just scared shitless of n.korea!


so make tea not war!!!!(this is a banner that is being used in engalnd at the mo.)(oh dear, the british are offically crazy)

surely "make love not war"? A lot more productive.

and certainly much more fun

CHR*ST*NA,
WoW....You are totally off base....The rhetoric that you are spewing is absurd. Oil imports from Iraq may have increased due to the unrest in Venezuela but if it weren?t for all the bleeding heart liberals and the environmentalist wackos we would be self sufficient and drilling in Alaska. The fact of the matter is it was the Clinton Administration who screwed us. He could have taken care of this a long time ago and even more so taken care of Osama Bin-laden. It seems almost impossible for some one to think that we are "making up" this crisis to raise polls. If you don't see the crisis in Iraq its not even worth discussing because you'll never understand. To comment on "our plan" for Iraq, WOW, you are wayyy off there. If we have to go to war with Iraq, we are most definitely not going to set up a military government with an American leader. After we liberate the people of iraq they will vote, the people will have a say, you know the liberty you enjoy and most likely take for granted, in the United States. After Iraq is liberated we hope to set up a democratic system and not one run by and American. Its pretty funny when you think about the anti-war protest in NYC, that protest didn't even carry the weight of a non-mainstream band playing in central park. Yea wow the media made it look huge, the "world" was protesting. What about the pro-war protests did you see any of them, no, did they happen, Yes. That?s the liberal bias in the media for ya.
?In 1991 Saddam killed 500,000 people when they rose against him. Nobody demonstrated against him then. But now the United States wants to get rid of the dictator, people are demonstrating against it.?
-one of the Iraqi liberation soldiers the U.S. is training at "Camp Freedom" in Hungary.
Absurd...



Post Edited (03-09-03 11:13)

adistantlight,
Communist?? Maybe more likely misinformed. Your right North Korea is a threat, but they already have the technology for weapons of mass destruction( Thank Bill Clinton for that one) Now Bush is doing to Iraq what Clinton should have done with North Korea years ago. We wouldn't be in the situation we are in today if it wasn't for Bill. You know its pretty funny I don't remember seeing any one protest when clinton was bombing everyone. Did he start the bombing of Yugoslavia, and keep it going for 80 days despite several good opportunities to end it (such as Jesse Jackson's successful mission to bring home our POWs), in order to distract attention from the transfers of U.S. missile technology to Communist China and the Clinton Administration's cover-up? Was it mere coincidence that Clinton started bombing Yugoslavia just as the bad publicity started coming out about the Chinese espionage at Los Alamos, and that he kept the bombs falling as the news, day after day, re-confirmed that it happened on Clinton's watch?
Clinton bombed a remote camp in Afghanistan and an aspirin factory in the Sudan just three days after his non-apology about the Monica scandal was such a public relations flop.

I really didn't want to get involved in this thread as, well, i just hate arguing over this kind of ****, but anywho...

Whilst i am undecided about the legitimacy of a war, i really wish people would stop going on about the "humanitarian" part of it. If we are going to start a war because of human rights violations then why are we not fighting China, Burma, Zimbabwe and countless asian and south american countries? We've got to know the real reasons for any war. It really can't be based on the fact that Saddam may or will sell weapons to terrorists. Terrorists don't need weapons. As long as they have suicide bombers, they have the ultimate weapon. There were no weapons of mass desctruction involved in any recent terrorist attack.

And the whole Bill taking care of Bin-Laden? He wouldn't have been a problem if he hadn't been trained by the CIA!! It seems whenever one "problem" is solved, it creates more for the future. Iran is a problem so we help arm Iraq and train Bin laden and his people. Now we have problems with them!
We need to address why some people hate western society so much. Only once we address issues like Israel and general poverty and inequality in the developing world will we be able to have some realistic peace.

stepside, you obviously haven't been listening to what your president is saying.

i'm way more informed than you know and i will not be treated like a child.

You really need to elaborate on that a little. I listen to everything my president is saying, and by no means did he or the administration say we are going to set up a government with an american leader. That sound Like something that you may have heard on CNN or the Communist News Network. ohh by the way I have no doubt you are informed, your just mis-informed. I'm sorry you feel like i'm treating you like a child but by no means am i doing so, i don't care if your 14 or 40, makes no difference to me.

misinformation is a funny a thing. i am enjoying how everyone here thinks they are 100% correct, and are willing to fight over the internet for it.

i was corrected, i was ok with it. it's not the end of the world, kids.

In person or typed, it's still your words. If someone responds then they certainly must carry some weight to it right? Maybe that's why a lot of you have felt love or anger when someone typed something to you during instant messaging. Oh wait; we all have.

Now of course this is all opinion but it's a damn good one. I liked, I believe Melissa had to say and Rorshach(spelling) and adistan I think. I think we all could agree they made some great and intelligent points. Now the least thing we need to do is call each other idiots or "laugh at the stupidity" of others. Anyway, it's just like after September 11th how a small group of middle eastern people were jumping up and down praising the bombings. However, the close up angle made it seem like half of the country came down. It's just like the other guy/ girl said about the anti-war protests.

N. Korea.

Bush isn't scared shitless of anything and he wouldn't be preparing for a large scale assault with 300,000+ troops if he was. N. Korea is a lot more powerful then Iraq, if nothing else, then because it's a peninsula and it more then likely has one, two, or more nukes. That alone red-flags to bide your time and try to have some sort of political resolution to their insurgence. Even if it's tougher then overrunning Iraq, it can ALMOST as easily be overrun as Iraq. When the debate dust settles we have the guns, the people, and the power and we are pretty much unstoppable. Yes there can be X-factors like a bunch of countries attacking us but seeing as how everyone debates so much about war, I really don't see that happening. Anyway, you get the point about that. On top of that, it will be easier to stage an assault from Iraq to N. Korea then USA to N. Korea. Besides, N. Korea isn't gonna do anything and just let Iraq get "pillaged." Why would they risk flopping with help only to get their asses handed to them and their country taken over. The only way they might "really" threaten with nuclear attack and attack in general is if we invade their country. That is the only time a small island is with considerably less might then us (just like everyone else) is gonna do anything. Potentially having nukes and activating a reactor makes you want to talk first then act; having a lot of people pissed off with you, murdering etc. and having no nukes makes you a much easier target i.e. Iraq.

Iraq

Yes that is true that we put Saddam there in the first place and it's not really a secret. Now it's true people should put their beer and/ or pot down sometimes or just read more in general. If nothing else then open up your ears because listening to actual facts from your proffessor instead of a debate between a bunch of kids will make you learn and you don't even have to read! Basically it's no secret that we put them there and gave him weapons etc. But it's kind of like duh. It's always easier to have your deputy, assistant, or whoever get something for you as opposed to doing it yourself. That's why we "switched" out leaders in Central America instead of doing a full assault ourselves because it's just easier. Besides they are much more likely to listen to one of their own then a US man. Anyway, so we put them there to quiet down Iran and it worked. But like all other humans, including you peeps reading this, not everything goes according to plan and mistakes are made. In fact people that cry about the war being about oil and saying there is some sort of mass cover up that we are gonna control Iraq for a while just doesn't give you people credit but it also points out that a lot of you shot out opinions but don't read worth a damn into it. Pick a copy of US News World and Report and it will rectify the issue about oil and how little we get from Iraq and what is MOST LIKELY going to be done in Iraq post war. The truth is out there and readily available for those of you ready to read instead of.. well just talk and drink... sorry, but for a lot of you that's true.. Of course it was a mistake putting him there because he ended up doing a lot of other bad **** we didn't count on. And then we tried to take care of it in 91 and we fucked up again. I'm not here to deny anything; just setting the record straight on some things that were said "as best" as I can. Yeah the problem should have been "finalized" in 91 but it was not. But so what? Do you do everything right your whole lives? Of course not. Collectively, because I take it we are all grateful to be Americans, we fucked up but now we have a chance to finalize an old mistake. Also it's no secret that the US will overrun Iraq in a couple of weeks and put a US man in charge for roughly a year give or take the actual final plan. Now there might be some barking from the masses about this. But think about it for a second. We came, we saw, we conquered in 91, slapped Saddam and said cut it out and that didn't work. Are we going to kill him now and say, ok bad guy is gone folks, talk amongst yourself and have a good time with your new free country.. shhhhiiiieeeet.. moron college grads are gonna be yelling at the top of their lungs 10 years from now at the condition of Iraq and why we didn't do a "better job" in Iraq. So logically we kill the problem in Iraq, stabalize the situation with our own people.. duh it's our mission of freedom... and then allow the people of Iraq to vote on who they collectively want as president and then pretty much get the hell out of there. But the war will be quick and an ass kicking for sure but if you want us just to get out and leave it up to them then that is childish thinking. Despite our problems our country is pretty damn good you have to admit even if you are a hater of any kind, so I think we know best when we come to democracy. Australia for example compares the value of their currency to ours and not the other way around. Just food for thought.

And lastly, saying the war is just for oil is just a quick and easy way to oppose the war. This wasn't what I was gonna say originally but I'm tired so I think you all will enjoy this more anyway... anyway.. is that really so bad? Despite any bitching on the topic pretty much everyone wants to have their own car and drive by themselves. Sure some of them took buses but a lot of people drove to their anti-war protests. In other words cheap gas, that everyone uses, especially all you "of age" kids that reading this are learning considering I'm sure a lot of you are getting a car now etc. isn't such a bad thing after all. Anyway, that's just by little sinsister take on the oil thing... if we take over the area at least I'll get my gas for under a dollar and what's anyone really gonna do about it? There's always gonna be evil and all and once terrorism is gone years from now there will be some other terror. Aliens maybe? Long live America and all of it's glorious power..so much power...

Well I'm curious to hear the responses to my post and I hope I covered all the important points made.



I absolutely love her when she smiles

Yea Wha He Said



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