[pbleighton]

"Korea is still in a state of war as far as I know. At least my relatives get combat pay there."

There are now two separate countries, Mike, who are very unfriendly but not at war. It no longer qualifies as a civil war.

"I think if we get involved in any Civil War, being a target and making numerous mistakes must be taken as a 100% given."

An excellent rationale for avoiding them.

Peter

[pbleighton]

"Hmm sounds like a vote of confidence in Iraq if I ever heard one, perhaps our leaders in Congress will flee to Iran also?"

Perhaps in January 2009 Bush will take a time capsule to an era which better suits his moral and intellectual outlook.

The Crusades sounds about right.

Peter

[BebopKid]

Okay get ready to be shocked.

If Congress doesn't believe that the Administration has a good plan to stop the civil war in Iraq and Congress doesn't want suggest another plan, then Congress should force the Administration to pull out.

IMO, if we can't make things better then get out. If we can make things better then do it and get out.

[pbleighton]

"Okay get ready to be shocked.

If Congress doesn't believe that the Administration has a good plan to stop the civil war in Iraq and Congress doesn't want suggest another plan, then Congress should force the Administration to pull out.

IMO, if we can't make things better then get out. If we can make things better then do it and get out."

IMO the election and the "surge" (an obvious result of the election) has hastened this. It now looks like we may not have to wait for the next President to get out. Both parties are taking the bull by the tailo and looking the facts in the face, and at least as important, Republican loytaly is being quickly eroded by fear of November 2008.

A majority of the country supported this war (sadly), and it will take a majority who want to get out NOW to get us out.

Peter

[Winstonm]

I am going to try to speak to your original question - the media.

This to me is a quite complex question to try to answer. First off, the media is not what it was 30-40 year ago. At that time newsprint was cheap and newpapers had adequate staffing. The major networks were NBC, CBS, and ABC and they dominated the airways, allowing their news departments to lose money - hence, much more in depth reporting.

Flash forward to now - media itself must be redefined - major news organizations do not spend what they use to and hence rely on feeds for news and end up with talking heads reading headlines. Newprint has soared and newspapers all over the country have been consolidated to a handful of owners - with newspapers it is about getting the owner's slant protrayed than actual reporting.

The internet has become an important, although unreliable, source of news - much of the real in depth reporting is now done on blogs and websites - problem is which are accurate and which are opinion.

So when you say you aren't seeing anything in the media, how can you be surprised - if you are talking MSM (mainstream media) you are simply getting the information that is being fed to these networks. To find out anything of real importance now takes a lot of digging - mostly on your own.

[helene_t]

As I see it (correct me if I'm wrong, I'm nor particularely well informed on Iraq). the problem in Iraq (as well as Afghanistan) is that while it's somewhat clear whom the U.S. are fighting against (namely whoever attacks U.S. soldiers or the Iraqi governement) it's not so clear whom they are fighgting for. The Iraqi government (as well as the Afghani one) is weak, so even if it was possible to kill all insurgents it would just leave a power vacuum, waiting to be filled up with the next generation of insurgents.

In Bosnia, Kosova and Darfur, an alian pest terrozies/terrorized the local population so the situation was/is less hopeless: one could aim at getting the alian pest out of the country.

[Winstonm]

Helene, I am surprised at you. It is simple. We are fighting for good Muslims. We are fighting against evil Muslims.

In fact, Bush has written a song about it.

This is for all the Muslim people,
thinkin that life has passed them by
well, don't give up until you
drink from the silver cup
the U.S.A. is on your side

Well I'm on my way,
well I'm on my way
to your home.

[mike777]

Well I think we need to fight for none of the above.

I think we should only fight if it is in our best national interest. Yes, this is extremely broad and vague. All the more reason to debate it before we get involved in a civil war. In fact our national interest may be one thing in one decade and quite another a few years later.

Peter, again I may be wrong but as far as I know Korea is in a state of war, yes there is a truce, but they are still at war. If you have link that says they are not at war ok. In any event we got involved when they were still shooting at us and we made numerous mistakes and 50 years later we are still there.

[Winstonm]

Quote

I think we should only fight if it is in our best national interest. Yes, this is extremely broad and vague. All the more reason to debate it before we get involved in a civil war. In fact our national interest may be one thing in one decade and quite another a few years later.

I agree in part with this, but I would be inclined to say in the defense of our national interests - a subtle difference. It could be argued that to invade Venzuela and take over that country and its oil would be in our national interest - but it wouldn't do much for the freedom of choice of Venzuela to determine their own destiny.

Always weighed against the U.S. national interest must be the right of self-determination of other countries and peoples. It's not all about the U.S.A. - we all share this small planet, breath the same air......

[luke warm]

jtfanclub, on Feb 14 2007, 02:45 PM, said:

luke warm, on Feb 14 2007, 01:21 PM, said:

freedom fighters? puppet regime? these are terrorists and they're attempting to bring down a democratically elected gov't... but i do find it interesting that you'd refer to terrorists as freedom fighters

Do you seriously believe most of the people shooting at us are terrorists?

it depends on how you define a terrorist, an exercise we attempted here not too long ago... i posted a definition then, and nobody offered a better one (imo)

i'm still not sure how people who indiscriminately kill women and children by means designed to horrify can be called freedom fighters... i can't understand how the iraqi gov't can be called a puppet regime...

[mike777]

Well Winston we started the Mexican War because it was in our national interest, hardly because it was a defense. We wanted a land bridge to Calif before the English or Spain took it and kept it. Indians,self determination uhhhh I think not. National Interest, yes...defense...I doubt it...

[pbleighton]

"Peter, again I may be wrong but as far as I know Korea is in a state of war, yes there is a truce, but they are still at war."

"The Korean War, occurring between June 25, 1950 and a ceasefire on July 27, 1953, was a civil war between the states of North Korea and South Korea that were created out of the post-World War II Soviet and American occupation zones in Korea, with large-scale participation by other countries."

Note "was".

http://en.wikipedia....wiki/Korean_War

Peter

[jtfanclub]

luke warm, on Feb 14 2007, 08:18 PM, said:

i'm still not sure how people who indiscriminately kill women and children by means designed to horrify can be called freedom fighters...

And how many people do you think are doing that? It doesn't take much manpower to turn high explosives into a bomb, and there was a lot of high explosives looted right after Saddam went into hiding. The person selling them the high explosives isn't a terrorist- he's just doing it for the money. The people hiding them are doing it out of fear. Most of the terrorist bombings aren't even suicide attacks. A few hundred terrorists could have done all that, possibly even less.

In contrast, Sadr's army alone is estimated in the hundreds of thousands. They aren't terrorists. The guys building the devastating remote controlled IEDs aren't terrorists. The snipers in Anbar aren't terrorists. The Sunni gangs taking territory and shooting at anybody who tries to take it back aren't terrorists. Most of them would kill a terrorist on sight if they saw one....in fact, the terrorists have been targeting these people in order to incite the civil war. God knows they'd love some payback.

You can't just lump everybody working against us into one giant blob. Well, you can, but you kind of lose the meaning of the words.

[Winstonm]

Quote

You can't just lump everybody working against us into one giant blob.

Sure you can. Just keep reciting this passage until your brain goes numb:
You are either with us or with the terrorists.....
You are either with us or with the terrorists.....

[Al_U_Card]

The U.S. created, IMO, the greatest form of government in the history of humanity.

The (European stock) U.S. people flourished under this form of government.

U.S. society represents the high point in the social evolution on the planet.

Despite this, we still have dick-heads trying to run things into the ground because of ignorance, narrow-mindedness, prejudice, avarice and stupidity. Such an odd combination of factors.....how does this sort of thing come about? What kind of punishment are we to ourselves and what did we do to deserve this?

I am sure I know what Bebopkid would suggest, but who needs original sin when we have continual sin.....???

[luke warm]

jtfanclub, on Feb 14 2007, 08:50 PM, said:

The person selling them the high explosives isn't a terrorist-

In contrast, Sadr's army alone is estimated in the hundreds of thousands. They aren't terrorists.

The guys building the devastating remote controlled IEDs aren't terrorists.

The snipers in Anbar aren't terrorists. T

he Sunni gangs taking territory and shooting at anybody who tries to take it back aren't terrorists.

what is your definition of a terrorist? i don't recall you giving one when we discussed this a few weeks ago... mine is on record

[jtfanclub]

luke warm, on Feb 15 2007, 04:57 PM, said:

jtfanclub, on Feb 14 2007, 08:50 PM, said:

The person selling them the high explosives isn't a terrorist- 

In contrast, Sadr's army alone is estimated in the hundreds of thousands.  They aren't terrorists. 

The guys building the devastating remote controlled IEDs aren't terrorists. 

The snipers in Anbar aren't terrorists.  T

he Sunni gangs taking territory and shooting at anybody who tries to take it back aren't terrorists.

what is your definition of a terrorist? i don't recall you giving one when we discussed this a few weeks ago... mine is on record

If two groups are in conflict, a person on one side who kills or tortures people uninvolved in the conflict in order to convince the other side is a terrorist. I make an exception for surival situations "Let me live or these other people will die with me" but perhaps I shouldn't.

Two classic terrorism strategies are "We will kill one random person per hour until the culprits give themselves up" and "Give me ten dollars or I drown these kittens". Blowing up civillians in hopes of having the government change its mind is also an example.

I no doubt missed your definition, but if it involves defining people shooting at troops coming into their house to arrest them, I doubt I'll agree with it.

[mike777]

As I have noted, as cold and cruel as it sounds, defining terrorists this way is tough.

We blew up Berlin and Germany killing many civilians, we firebombed Japan. This sounds like blowing up people in order to force the government to change.

If civilians elect or support or do not change their government, I think they bear responsibility. Granted this is easy for me to say when my life is not on the line but civilians do have a choice. One Grandmother lived and fought Japan out of caves for years. A terrible option, but still a choice as a civilian.

[jtfanclub]

mike777, on Feb 15 2007, 05:25 PM, said:

We blew up Berlin and Germany killing many civilians, we firebombed Japan. This sounds like blowing up people in order to force the government to change.

The logic was, we were attacking materiel (particularly in Dresden, which was a manufacturing center). We were trying to destroy Germany's ability to fight war, not trying to convince them to stop fighting because we were killing civillians.

Firebombing Tokyo I don't know- did we target 'legitimate targets' or were we just trying to strike terror into the enemy? Certanly Hiroshima was the largest, and most successful, terrorist attack in history.

[Al_U_Card]

Terror is a state of great fear. A terrorist is a person who choses to subject his intended victims to great fear in order to dominate them or as a means to an end.

When the bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, the victims were not terrorized but perhaps the next potential victims were indirectly? It appears that a threat of action is the least requirement to qualify someone as a terrorist.

Are the "individuals" blowing up Iraqi civilians by the score every day terrorizing the populace? Are they doing it to bring an end to occupation etc.? The people still keep going to the markets and have yet to persuade their rulers to change the situation (were that possible).

Kim Jong Il may be terrorizing elements of the international diplomatic corps but he certainly seems to be amusing the citizenry of north america. Perhaps because so far he has only threatened to defend his country against aggressors....

Without doubt Saddam terrorized elements of resistance to his regime (including his own family) but he seemed to have no interest in the "international" terrorists which may have had a lot to do with Sunni vs Shia.

Find the terrorized and then determine who is terrorizing them.....that may help.