News from the Colonies - America's War in Iraq

[Nickelodeon]

And let the Iraqis kill the other Iraqis until one or the other dominates? Or kills all of the other group? Is that what you want to see happen?

Baron Max

Thats gonna happen even while you're there, and there 'aint a damn thing y'all can do about it.

But regrets about past actions don't solve any of the present problems, does it.

It's relevant if you keep repeating the same moronic mistakes over and over agian. Why do you think the retards that got you into this mess are the ones who can get you out of it?

 

[iceaura]

But regrets about past actions don't solve any of the present problems, does it. One can condemn the actions of the past from now 'til the cows come home, but it does no good in solving the present.

On the other hand, if the mistake was digging yourself into a hole, you should probably stop digging.

If we had just had enough sense to put a timeline on this invasion four years ago, three years ago, two years ago, or last year, we could leave now with less dishonor. Let's make sure we don't have this regret next year.

Meanwhile, the US is building a wall around a Sunni ghetto - a place into which the US-backed Shia militia and death squads have been herding the Sunni of Baghdad. The entrances to the ghetto will be controlled by Shia military. Why are the Americans doing this?

Was the tactic borrowed, as so many have been in Iraq, from the Israelis with their greater experience in dealing with Palestinians etc ?

Is it intended to bring the Saudis more openly into Iraq against the Iranians, by threatening their fellow Sunni ?

Is it simple incompetence on the part of strategists who regard the Israeli, South African, Russian, and Nazi German implementations of such strategies as successes ?

Is it farsighted and subtle gamesmanship on the part of domestic US political strategists, intended to create a horror after the US is forced to withdraw that will rehabilitate the Republican Party's image in electoral politics?

The current nominal head of the Iraqi "government", Maliki, has registered a protest against this wall. That may, or may not, prevent the Americans from completing the project. It did not help against the American strategy of detainment and murder of Iranian guests and diplomats in Iraq, or the American adoption of various "surge" strategies without notice or consultation, but Maliki is not completely powerless.

 

[paucorumhominum]

Liberal Nonsense

"Hey you liberals out there, how's this for left-wing "intellectualism":

Hypewaders, I don't understand why [SIC] you are so upset about? US position is clear. US will give Iraq democracy if Iraq does not select any religious leader or instill any islamic [SIC] laws and agree to whatever leader and rules the US and Israel will recommend....Untill [SIC] all those detailed are worked out, all dead are to be considered collateral damage.....It's clear as mud, comeon [SIC] now...

hey you conservatives out there, preferabally [SIC] Jerrek, what [SIC] the latest detail on enduring freedom operation in Afghanistan....Has [SIC] the Afghani people started experiencing some enduring freedom yet....?

What Hypewaders' Kool Aid Drinkers' Diatribe makes abundantly clear is that the Left's claim of intellectual superiority is terribly misplaced.

1. The US doesn't "give Iraq democracy." We've already done that, and Israel wasn't involved in it.

2. Liberals love to side with the terrorists. Why does the Left despise democracy and support terrorism all the time? Democrats adore Fidel Castro, and crap on Israel. Why aren't more liberals moving to Habana? ole!

3. Operation Enduring Freedom is the name of the military effort. Get a clue.

4. Since Hypewaders thinks the Afghan people, and to be sure, even the Iraqi people, were better off under the terrorists, he has to explain Hussein's murder of "five to seven million Iraqis, the majority of them Shiites." (National Geographic Magazine, June 2004, page 28)

How about those Taliban beating women and treating them like cattle, huh!
That was much more like it, to hear Democrats talk. Hell, the Taliban treated their women about like Bill Clinton does. And those feminists (sic) sure aren't complaining. After all, Bubba is an "alpha male."

 

[Tiassa]

Ten to one?

Via Reuters and Yahoo! comes the story of our latest attempt to restore dignity to Iraq:

Angered that a beloved member of his squad had been killed in an explosion, a U.S. Marine urinated on one of the 24 dead Iraqi civilians killed by his unit in Haditha, the Marine testified on Wednesday.

Sgt. Sanick Dela Cruz, who has immunity from prosecution after murder charges against him were dismissed, also said he watched his squad leader shoot down five Iraqi civilians who were trying to surrender.

In dramatic testimony in a pretrial hearing for one of the seven Marines charged in the November 2005 Haditha killings and alleged cover-up, Dela Cruz described his bitterness after a roadside bomb ripped Lance Cpl. Miguel Terrazas, known as T.J., into two bloody pieces.

"I know it was a bad thing what I've done, but I done it because I was angry T.J. was dead and I pissed on one Iraqi's head," said an unemotional Dela Cruz in a military courtroom in Camp Pendleton, north of San Diego, California. (Graham)​

One of the strange assertions of the 1980s came from psychologists, who had somehow determined that people's emotional responses resulted in a ratio wherein 10 positive compliments equaled one insult or hard criticism.

I cannot speak for the 10:1 ratio specifically, but it is observationally valid that people require greater reinforcement for each proportional blow against them. Considering that we don't have ten pieces of good news to come from the Iraqi Bush War for each piece of bad news, is it any wonder people are so pissed off at the whole thing?

 

[iceaura]

In less dramatic news, but with no better implications, Maliki's protest has not stopped the wall: The US has returned to construction, and completion is due within a couple of weeks.

We will then have a walled-in Sunni ghetto in Baghdad, with all exits controlled by the Shia military. This, coupled with ethnic cleansing of Sunni outside the ghetto, is intended to reduce Sunni violence in Baghdad. It may work, for that purpose. And others.

Courtesy of the United States.

So when we get good news about the "surge", we can temper it with knowledge.

 

[terryoh]

No one hasn't posted the 3 captured US soldiers from a couple of days ago? OK, I will then.

Terror Group: U.S. Soldiers Are Captives

An al Qaeda front group said Sunday that it had captured three U.S. soldiers in the attack a day earlier south of Baghdad that killed five and left three missing.

In a statement posted on an Islamic Web site, the Islamic State in Iraq claimed responsibility for the attack in Mahmoudiya on Saturday and said it held an unspecified number of U.S. soldiers. The group offered no proof to back up its claim.

The U.S. said 4,000 troops were searching for the three American soldiers who were missing after their patrol came under attack in an explosion that killed four other U.S. soldiers and an Iraqi army translator.

On Sunday, U.S. spokesman Maj. Gen. William Caldwell confirmed that the Iraqi interpreter was among the dead — and that all the missing were Americans.

Last week, the top U.S. commander in the north, Maj. Gen. Benjamin Mixon, said the U.S. didn't have enough troops to restore order in Diyala but more had been promised.

Man, I hope those soldiers are OK.

Serious question here, folks. Remember how people were saying (and still say) that the terrorists don't fall under the Geneva Conventions and are allowed to be tortured? Does that case still hold now?

Now that the roles have been reversed, do the terrorists, who don't fall under Geneva Conventions, have to adhere to the Geneva Conventions in terms of torture? I'm asking this sincerely to spur on some debate.

If the terrorists were smart, they wouldn't do anything to harm the soldiers.

 

[Mr. G]

Considering that we don't have ten pieces of good news to come from the Iraqi Bush War for each piece of bad news, is it any wonder people are so pissed off at the whole thing?

Your own selection bias is showing.

Not that that fact surprises either one of us.

But you do do the play-the-numbers whoring quite nicely.

You have talent.

Minor as it is.

 

[Tiassa]

Yes, G. My bias is showing. I confess without reservation that I find this war a strategic and conceptual disaster.

In the meantime, have you any contribution other than the Insult Crusade?

 

[Mr. G]

Yes, G. My bias is showing. I confess without reservation that I find this war a strategic and conceptual disaster.

In the meantime, have you any contribution other than the Insult Crusade?

Yes. I sell idiocy off-sets.

You do know that Neuronic Cooling is disasterously rampant on Planet SciFor?

And I also do humor. Some people need more humor in their lives. Especially self-deprecating humor.

You know, laughing at yourself--just like everyone else is.

 

[Tiassa]

And I also do humor.

Keep working on it. Some day you might do it well.

 

[Mr. G]

Keep working on it. Some day you might do it well.

Thank you. I will.

Practice, practice, practice.

 

[Tiassa]

Getting back to the point at your interruption, Mr. G, I'm sure you can provide good news from Iraq at a 10:1 ratio?

What? Of course not? Well, I can't say I'm surprised. In addition to your meager posting style, there is the fact that it is really hard to construe even a majority representation in the news, speak nothing of a 10:1 supermajority.

 

[Mr. G]

Getting back to the point at your interruption, Mr. G, I'm sure you can provide good news from Iraq at a 10:1 ratio?

I'm not a news aggregator.

And you're not as informed as you want us to believe.

Two facts. No homework.

...I can't say I'm surprised. In addition to your meager posting style,..

I've never found verbosity necessary to the making of self-evident points.

 

[Tiassa]

I'm not a news aggregator.

It's not so much that as the notion that you don't appear to be paying attention at all. One need not be a news aggregator to have some idea of what is in the news.

I've never found verbosity necessary to the making of self-evident points.

When your only point is being rude and irrelevant, G, it's no wonder you don't see the necessity of reasonable communication.

 

[iceaura]

I've never found verbosity necessary to the making of self-evident points.

"Self-evident" : adj Evident to oneself, and to nobody else.

 

[Mr. G]

It's not so much that as the notion that you don't appear to be paying attention at all. One need not be a news aggregator to have some idea of what is in the news.

News is for people who drink reality through a straw.

Some folks like the twisty straws, others the straight ones.

You never seem to wonder exactly why the universe brings forth into existence folks who don't see reality your (news') way.

When your only point is being rude and irrelevant, G, it's no wonder you don't see the necessity of reasonable communication.

So, to reason is to agree. To be reasonable is to agree with tiassa. No other point can exist if it isn't rude, irrelevant or agrees with tiasssa.

The symmetry of serendipitous synonyms.

Reflections in a mud puddle.

 

[Mr. G]

"Self-evident" : adj Evident to oneself, and to nobody else.

Self-evident points: axiomatic points

Points evident to all without need for further proof or argument.

 

[S.A.M.]

.:shrug:
New White House plan: Keep US troops in Iraq permanently.

 

[Mr. G]

.:shrug:
New White House plan: Keep US troops in Iraq permanently.

Old Samcdkey plan: Permanent deployment to SciForums.

Funny how outsiders impose themselves on others for their own good. Eh?

 

[Nickelodeon]

.:shrug:
New White House plan: Keep US troops in Iraq permanently.

This isnt a new plan.....is it.