RE: War or no war?

In all seriousness you’re somewhat missing the point guys. This war isn’t about Sadam Hussein, nor about WMD, nor about human rights abuses (past, present or future). Neither is is about oil or Bush’s revenge or about anything like that. Its about spheres of influence. in the same way that Allied Force had nothing whatsoever to do with Kosovo or mass graves or Milosevic but was about the US’s expansion of it’s sh=phere of influence. Ok, Iraq has a lot of oil and it’s ability to defend itself is limited so its a prime target. Sure the US would rather do this without a war but there fact that SH is a dictator means that you can’t just wait for him to lose an election.

Any talk of WMD or threats to world peace is about as much utter bull sh!t as pictures of Hun soldiers bayonetting Belgian babies in 1914.

RE: War on Iraq……Northern Iraq…..OIL RICH!!!

The US, the world’s most often praised democracy doesn’t have a directly elected head of state, nor does it have universally representetive government. The amount of corruption in US politics is often surprising (especially when in some other democratic nations large corporations are not allowed to fund election campaigns) etc etc. Democracy is, scientifically speaking, quite a vague term. The Soviet Communist party was democratic in that party members vote for a leader. It’s a buzz-word, thrown about by the press and politicians to signify western leaning, global-capitalist values and political systems. The fact is that the US/Europe don’t give a sh!t if a country is “democratic” or “free” so long as it does what they want. Look at Saudi Arabia, Kuwait etc.

RE: Go On….Ask Me Anything!

[updated:LAST EDITED ON 05-12-02 AT 03:15 PM (GMT)]A chicken and an egg are lying next to each other in bed. The chicken has a big grin on it’s face and is smoking a cigarette while the egg looks very grumpy. The egg says, “Well I guess that answers that question then!”.Edit: Utoipa used to be a shoddy night club in south east London but now its closed down – hard luck for anyone trying to get there!

RE: Whats the speed of Dark ?

Coanda,

So if a man with a torch is travelling at the speed of light past the earth and I’m standing on it watching him switch the torch on – do i see it emit a beam of light? Surely the speed of light is a constant and can never be increased? The light emited by the landing-lights on plane doesn’t travel at: 3×10^8 m/s + a bit, does it? It still travels at the speed of light.

RE: Good strike

Apologies for going off topic for a while here guys.

SOC,

“Regarding Yugoslavia-the US is not to blame for any targeting errors. Each and every target had to be approved by a NATO committee. Fact of the matter is, we wanted to go after military targets but NATO veto’d them on a regular basis. NATO says put a bomb here, we put a bomb here. You want to blame someone when one of them is wrong, its nice and convenient for you to blame us since we have to provide the majority of the muscle to clean up your mess. Personally I didn’t support the operations when they came about. Europe should have been able to handle the situation on its own, or why waste millions on defense spending?”

Apart from the fact that the US flew all of it’s stealth planes (B2s and F-117s) on routes and to targets it chose there is also the small matter of who commanded the entire operation. Not to mention the fact that when specific missions were flown it was mostly by US pilots directed by US AWACS and controlled by either the USAF or the USN.

Anyway, back to Yemen,

The point you’re missing is that it was the CIA who decided if these gys were terrorists – they may well have got it wrong. If you were charged with a crime would you like your case to be decided by a jury or by the CIA?

Now, as I stated, chances are the guys were terrorists and the CIA killed six perfectly nasty characters but the argument isn’t just about this incident. Its about the precedent that was set here – the CIA shouldn’t be allowed to be judge, jurer and executioner of anybody around the world. How are you going to explain to the families, wives or children if they get it wrong next time?

“Sorry madam, your son was killed by our armed UAV last night even though he wasn’t a terrorist. This kind of operation has been done before and we got it right – I guess this time it was just a case of mistaken identity. I hope you’ll take some comfort from the fact that all military operations carry a certain risk of collateral damage.” – I’m sorry but that just doesn’t cut it.

RE: AFM Forum

No point complaining too much about it – it’ll be fixed when it gets fixed. Besides, the service the forum provides is free and of a high standard – it’s not like you’re paying for it…

RE: Good strike

>I have a lot of respect for you especially because of
>Yugoslavia. But I think you are wasting your tears on the
>wrong people. I’m not all broken up about those poor slobs
>in the car. They became a target when they got into that
>line of work. Too bad.

elp,

I agree. I’m not losing sleep over a few dead terrorists. However, you and I see this in different ways. You’re assuming that the six killed were in fact “in that line of work”. All I’m saying is that we can’t be sure that they were. If they weren’t (i.e. if they were innocent Yemenis) then we’d never know because the CIA isn’t above lying a bit in order to hide it’s mistakes. Chances are that they were six nasty bastards intent on killing people but letting the CIA decide who’s guilty and who’s innocent and then sentence them to death is a dangerous precedent to set.

RE: For those of you condoning the assasination

If the CIA blew up a car in the middle of the desert and upon examining the remains discovered that they’d just killed six innocent Yemeni men out on sunday drive do you think they’d own upto it? No way. Considering the lenghts the US govt. went to in order to cover up various convoy and bridge+train bombings in ’99 I would easily beleive that they’d fabricate some evidence in order to avoid an internationsal scandal.

The fact is, we’ll never know. The only evidence against these guys is from the CIA and they never get anything wrong do they? I always thought that in America you were innocent until proven guilty – in which case these guys were definitely innocent because they can never now be proven guilty.

“There is clearly a disconnect between the US and the rest of the world on this issue. As an American I can tell you there is real fear in this country that something like Sept11 can happen again”

Thats a lot of sh*te. In Yugoslavia we saw the US as our main threat and the very real fear of a massive bombing campaign against our country actually materialised itself. Does that give Yugoslavs the right to act like terrorists? No. Of course not.

The plain fact of the matter is that the US can do this if it wants, nobody can stop them and very few will try. That doesn’t make it right and it doesn’t mean we have to like it. Is it any wonder that the US should be a target for terrorism when it arbitrarily bombs people around the world?