|
The whole "Axis of Evil" thing basically got a huge chunk of America thinking (although I'm sure they thought it before that also) that terrorists attack America because
A. They hate freedom
B. America is the absolute good, the epitome of righteousness, so of course the bad guys will attack
Before we discuss what is right, what is wrong, what should be done, what should not have happened, this fucked up mindset needs to go.
On April 26 2011 08:30 catamorphist wrote:Show nested quote +On April 26 2011 06:22 Envy01 wrote:
People ask, why are we in these wars still? Or why are we in these wars at all?
Well, the Afghanistan war is obvious: 9/11. If anyone believes we should not be fighting the Taliban then please remember the thousands of innocent people who were slaughtered in the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and in Pennsylvania. Remember those families who were shattered with the news that a loved one was killed at work, or when flying home to see them...
Why do the documents surrounding these wars, and THE ALLIES of the United States need to be revealed? What purpose does it serve? ![[image loading]](http://is200.imagesocket.com/images/2011/04/25/civiliancasualtiesira5h.png) Is the best way to remember those thousands of innocent people to drown them out with a few million more? We inflict a 9/11 on Afghanistan every year.
This I think captures the picture well. I find this so illuminating to the point where I think that any time anyone brings up anything about the war, this should be put on the table first before any further discussion.
|
On April 26 2011 12:37 Envy01 wrote:
I honestly couldn't tell you what i would support in the sense of torture. I will admit that I am not 100% sure of what all went on, to how many and to what extent. (I DO know that it occurred, I know a few specific names etc...)
I came across wrong in the "if its taliban its okay" thing, I was simply bringing to light the reason these soldiers fight. I read an excellent book written by Omar Nasiri (i believe thats right name, its an alias anyways) called Inside the Jihad. If anyone is interested in the reasoning behind the attacks, or why these people fight in general i would suggest they read it.
There's a lot of reasons why the various groups and insurgencies collectively named "The Taliban" by the western media fight on. Boiling down all these reasons to "religious calling" or "wanting to die" or "Jihad" is...well, incorrect.
And I seriously doubt you don't have an opinion on restitution to tortured innocent people, you have access to Wikipedia and Google news. If you really don't have an opinion...I really don't know what to say :\ It's been almost a decade...
|
Wikileaks drops the bomb
Shit just got real
|
Holy shit, it's been shown time and time again that torture creates REALLY UNRELIABLE INFORMATION. People with the actual information being looked for can still lie, people with NO information will make something up just to make the torture stop.
It's funny that you say torture is ok in the name of freedom. What if the FBI started capturing people in the US without due process (the court system) and tortured them on suspicion of some kind of law-breaking?
What you pro-torturers are essentially saying is that it is OK to completely break someone else's freedom in order to protect your own.... which is entirely hypocritical... stop pretending that you are 'pro freedom' and more or less just admit that you are scared shitless of life and want to abuse your status/power over others to further keep your status/power.
I never said I am pro-freedom etc, what the hell that is?... I even said one post back that torture, although an option, should allways be done when some one with real power like a judge or something allows it. And torture does work, although you can get the random guy to say something stupid, you will not base you decision making in one guy words...
|
On April 26 2011 10:16 catamorphist wrote:Show nested quote +On April 26 2011 09:04 Elegy wrote:On April 26 2011 08:54 catamorphist wrote:On April 26 2011 08:31 Elegy wrote:On April 26 2011 08:30 catamorphist wrote:On April 26 2011 06:22 Envy01 wrote:
People ask, why are we in these wars still? Or why are we in these wars at all?
Well, the Afghanistan war is obvious: 9/11. If anyone believes we should not be fighting the Taliban then please remember the thousands of innocent people who were slaughtered in the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and in Pennsylvania. Remember those families who were shattered with the news that a loved one was killed at work, or when flying home to see them...
Why do the documents surrounding these wars, and THE ALLIES of the United States need to be revealed? What purpose does it serve? Is the best way to remember those thousands of innocent people to drown them out with a few million more? A few million? Don't be foolish. So, speaking of foolishness, your suggestion is apparently that the appropriate response for patriotic Americans upon experiencing 9/11 is to pursue Al-Qaeda by occupying Afghanistan and Iraq, causing this chart. Bearing that in mind, what do you think a patriotic Iraqi or Afghani's appropriate response towards America is after experiencing the casualties depicted on this chart? Feel free to take your best guess. Perhaps he should write an angry forum post, or vote in an election? Huh? All I said, or clearly implied, was that nowhere near a "few million" have died, unless you are using ridiculous sensationalist figures with little or no basis in fact. I'm just asking you about your position.
lol I have seen people avoiding the embarassing question by answering completely beside the point, but in the case of Elegy it's just really comical.
On April 26 2011 17:13 chickenhawk wrote:Show nested quote +Holy shit, it's been shown time and time again that torture creates REALLY UNRELIABLE INFORMATION. People with the actual information being looked for can still lie, people with NO information will make something up just to make the torture stop.
It's funny that you say torture is ok in the name of freedom. What if the FBI started capturing people in the US without due process (the court system) and tortured them on suspicion of some kind of law-breaking?
What you pro-torturers are essentially saying is that it is OK to completely break someone else's freedom in order to protect your own.... which is entirely hypocritical... stop pretending that you are 'pro freedom' and more or less just admit that you are scared shitless of life and want to abuse your status/power over others to further keep your status/power. I never said I am pro-freedom etc, what the hell that is?... I even said one post back that torture, although an option, should allways be done when some one with real power like a judge or something allows it. And torture does work, although you can get the random guy to say something stupid, you will not base you decision making in one guy words...
Problem is not wether torture is efficient or not. Problem is that we are not animals. Problem is that we have a humanistic ineheritage that worths much more than efficiency of Intelligence Agencies.
The problem with torture is that it brings us back to time which are behind, for the best. You know, the good old time when we were boiling people alive, impaling our neighbours of cutting hand of thiefs.
|
thats evil man - 'its ok to torture someone if a judge allows it' !!??
|
On April 26 2011 03:48 leakingpear wrote:Show nested quote +On April 26 2011 03:36 Rabiator wrote:On April 26 2011 03:25 DragonDefonce wrote:
Scouting overlord/// almost trolled me buddy. Almost. Pretty sure you got at least a handful of people though. You dont troll in such a serious topic ... you just dont, because it is impossible to be 100% sure that your sarcasm / trolling is recognized for what it is. I didnt get it and I think anyone who jokes about torture is an idiot. People who are serious about it are totally evil ... more evil than terrorists who blow up other people, because they are hiding behind law and try to sell those things as "good". Modern torture doesnt end after the subject leaves Guantanamo. Many of the INNOCENT people have long term side effects but no one of the US government cares. Torture is wrong, whatever the reason. He attributed ridiculous quotes about the TV show 24 to a supreme court judge on the subject of torture, if you can't recognise that as sarcasm and a joke you really need to stop being such a sourpuss. Also what the hell are you doing trying to tell people what they "JUST DON'T DO" in a thread on the internet, I mean ignoring the fact that it wasn't trolling as much as pretty good satire on pro-torture proponents (and thus supporting your view as if that matters), you tell people not to do something and they'll do it more. And seriously if stupid people misinterpret satire as truth, then that's a mark of quality of the satire and it's not like you can change their views if they're that remarkably stupid. Their views are formed by mediocre propagandists who sell shitty ideas to reactionaries who can't or don't want to ever actually think about anything.
The guy actually wrote that in his book...
|
On April 26 2011 17:28 oldgregg wrote:
thats evil man - 'its ok to torture someone if a judge allows it' !!??
Hey, if an authority say it's right, it has to be right, right? Where this kind of thinking has lead us, I don't want to go back.
Is it really that hard to use your own brain? No wonder the world goes down the drain.
|
On April 26 2011 08:30 catamorphist wrote:
Just like to point out that numbers say very little unless they are explained. I dug a little (as in glancing at this wikipedia page), and also did a quick calculation of the numbers in the diagram. In the diagram, the Iraqi civilian count is just over 1,000,000 civilians dead or injured, if one counts WTC to be 3000. The Iraq Body Count project reports 98,170 — 107,152 civilian deaths, so it seems that for every death, there's 9 people injured. But who's responsible for these deaths? Kinda hard to find out, but the Iraq Body Count project has released this info (from the same wikipedia page) :
The IBC project released a report detailing the deaths it recorded between March 2003 and March 2005[72] in which it recorded 24,865 civilian deaths. The report says the U.S. and its allies were responsible for the largest share (37%) of the 24,865 deaths. The remaining deaths were attributed to anti-occupations forces (9%), crime (36%) and unknown agents (11%). It also lists the primary sources used by the media — mortuaries, medics, Iraqi officials, eyewitnesses, police, relatives, U.S.-coalition, journalists, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), friends/associates and other.
So while your diagram makes it look like the US invaded Iraq and killed or injured 1,000,000 people as revenge for those 3000 who died, if we assume that the percentage from 2003-2005 has stayed the same all years, and looking at deaths only, it seems the US invaded Iraq and killed ~37,000 civilians. In that same timespan, the Iraqis themselves kill ~45,000 of their own population (if one attributes all crime reports to Iraqis), which is slightly more than the US troops. Another way to put it is:
Look what happens if the US didn't intervene:
![[image loading]](http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v617/iMAniaC/NoUSIraqCivilians.jpg)
And more representative numbers from the real world where the US did in fact intervene:
![[image loading]](http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v617/iMAniaC/AttributedDeathsIraq.jpg)
Notice, too, how I skewed those numbers to undermine the validity of the previous diagram. By excluding injuries and counting deaths only, the WTC suddenly isn't just barely noticable in the diagram. Instead, it's a clearly visible chunk. And that is, in fact, what I'm trying to tell. Statistics show you exactly what the one who made it wants you to see.
As an additional point of propaganda, notice how I left our the word "kill" in the WTC chunk. This was in fact an unconscious decision on my part, because (I think) I was thinking in terms of killings in Iraq, into which Al-Qaida doesn't factor in. For a more neutral statement, it should have read something along the lines of "Al-Qaidas killing Americans in WTC". But if I did that, the picture would suddenly show how the US takes revenge on the Iraqis for something the Afghans did, which is even worse, I think. I think any attempt to break down the entire last decade into a single diagram would be misleading in so many ways...
Bear in mind, though, that this post is not a statement either way in regards to the war in Iraq (or Afghanistan). It's very easy to think that someone who disputes information showing how the wars are a bad thing, is a proponent for the wars, but I'm not trying to justify it in any way with these numbers. If anything, one should notice that even when the numbers are dwindled down, the US killed more than 10 Iraqis for every American who died in WTC. Still, I don't like it when numbers are presented out of context with the express purpose of telling a specific story, so that's what I wanted to say with this post.
|
julian assange deserved to be man of the year last year, not fucking obama!
|
*U.S. soldier whips out a pie chart to show to an Iraqi farmer*
"Well you see, Iraqis kill more Iraqis than we do so it's alright. Stop hitting yourself nerd, hahah
*Apache helicopter strafes everyone in the vicinity*
|
On April 26 2011 20:16 scouting overlord wrote:
*U.S. soldier whips out a pie chart to show to an Iraqi farmer*
"Well you see, Iraqis kill more Iraqis than we do so it's alright. Stop hitting yourself nerd, hahah
*Apache helicopter strafes everyone in the vicinity*
You should get an achivement like "making people lulz three consecutive times" or something like that.
|
On April 26 2011 19:46 iMAniaC wrote:
Just like to point out that numbers say very little unless they are explained.
You just forgot to do this yourself, by ignoring the consequences of armed occupation - crime (directly linked to the death, your diagram is flawed), empoverishment (long-lasting sequels), the spread of extremism (as it is some's only refuge), a coventrized economy, long-lasting hatred, the halt of all develloppment, black-market growth, etc, etc.
So, yes, numbers without explanation are meaningless; but numbers without a thought are stupid.
Edit: BTW you're also suggesting that if the US had not invaded Iraq, the situation would be the same. This is... kind of odd, to say the least.
|
Actually the chart ignores one of the worst atrocities the world committed against Iraq, which were the "UN" sanctions. At one time it was estimated that 1/2 million kids had died due to the effect on sanctions blocking the import of water sanitization equipment, food, medicine etc.
Lesley Stahl on U.S. sanctions against Iraq: We have heard that a half million children have died. I mean, that's more children than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price worth it?
Secretary of State Madeleine Albright: I think this is a very hard choice, but the price--we think the price is worth it.
--60 Minutes (5/12/96)
http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=1084
Read the rest of the article, then go the nearest newspaper and spit on it.
|
Guys...what has Wikileaks done that is so important? From what I saw, they seem to be just a small annoyance.
|
Problem is that we are not animals. Problem is that we have a humanistic ineheritage that worths much more than efficiency of Intelligence Agencies.
Yes we are animals. The worst kind of animals
The problem with torture is that it brings us back to time which are behind, for the best. You know, the good old time when we were boiling people alive, impaling our neighbours of cutting hand of thiefs.
We have evolve... we know just press a button and some one dies far far way. We luch bombs that kills thousands, we cut supplies that starve more thousands, etc etc... Get out of the bumble, people are cruel, they defend there believe and there morals no matter what.
|
I want to start debating.. but i think my views on America and its politics are slightly slanted, and my arguments will be bias based on those views. Not saying I hate America or anything of that nature. I have been there 2 times in the last 2 years for holidays and will be going again (and also mexico yay) at the end of this year.
SO, in saying that, i'll keep it short.
WIKILEAKS GOOD! TRANSPARENT GOVERMENT GOOD!
The more we 'the people' know the more feared our leaders are.. which I know sounds ominous, but in truth, knowledge is power. And the more 'power' the people have, the better society will be.
|
On April 26 2011 21:14 ayababa wrote:
I want to start debating.. but i think my views on America and its politics are slightly slanted, and my arguments will be bias based on those views. Not saying I hate America or anything of that nature. I have been there 2 times in the last 2 years for holidays and will be going again (and also mexico yay) at the end of this year.
SO, in saying that, i'll keep it short.
WIKILEAKS GOOD! TRANSPARENT GOVERMENT GOOD!
The more we 'the people' know the more feared our leaders are.. which I know sounds ominous, but in truth, knowledge is power. And the more 'power' the people have, the better society will be.
The more we know...I think we knew everything before Wikileaks released them. When we have hundreds of thousands of troops in another nation, it is not surprising that an incident such as the Apache going Rambo on civilians. It is not surprising that the US Government is lying about casualties in war, it happened during World War II and Vietnam and the Diplomatic Cable leaks is basically celebrity gossip.
But my favorite was the Critical Foreign Dependencies. It does not take a rocket scientist to figure out that blowing up a pipeline in Africa and the Middle East would destroy American interests but it is really interesting to see what parts of the world we trade with for what resources. Sadly, that document seems to prove that we are way too dependent on corporations and foreign trade.
|
|
|
Why even watch the news anyways??? why let yourself be brain washed
|
|
|
|
|
|
EPT![[image loading]](http://www.prosebeforehos.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/civilian-casualties-iraq-afghanistan-911.png)
