I'm basically with kluya in that I can't read past headlines now. I stopped giving a crap so I wouldn't be either angry or scared all the time. lol

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Some stories can't be told with words, some legends are meant to die

You do realize that radical islam has hated us, and pretty much everyone else, for a lot longer than 2003, yes?

I don't support the war in the least, but claiming that it is the cause of them having the views that they have now is giving the U.S. a lot more credit than they deserve, even if it is negative credit. If anything, it just helped foster their opinions.

They've been sour on us, and everyone else, for some time now.

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If it were just the pre-established, radical Islamic fundamentalists that made up the insurgency, we wouldn't have had nearly the problems we do now. Whereas early it was merely the Fedayeen who made up the insurgency, it is now comprised of a much larger percentage of the population who is "disenfranchised" (for lack of a stronger term) by the United States because our needless invasion crippled the social order and structure they relied on. See my point? I guess I wasn't so much talking about radical groups but the insurgency. I just don't think that those who are joining the insurgency lack the reason to join.

Not everyone there is islamic extremists lol. A common enemy always brings the people together. And in that case Americans have made themselves the common enemy. We should have seen we needed to change our pace the moment people started robbing themselves like crazy. The people of iraq are growing sick of american influence, and with continued opposition all we are going to do is inspire more hate, and young people fighting against our people. Even with good intentions, though i doubt that ( considering some of the horrible things we've done to them) these people do not want us there anymore, and they are willing to make other people's lives harder to live to prove it.

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Job 10: 20
The mikey's have a plan. Djay isn't all powerful.

Oh, sorry if my words were misleading. I'm not trying to imply a blanket statement for all of the middle east. I'm sure there's a majority of which who do not agree with what the more radical people are doing.

It's just a shame that those ones aren't the ones in a position to make a difference.

And we can play the blame game all day long. I think the US made some major mistakes (The least of which not being electing a monkey to the white house), but I don't think that it's the United States to blame for dictating how they choose to act out their aggression.

If you ask me, there are far better ways at showing your distaste for something than blowing up innocent people in religious buildings.

The U.S.S. Cole being hit with that boat bomb may have been sad, but at least it was a military target.

There are nutjobs in every country, but I just think there's some heavy brainwashing/stifling of free thought going on in some of those places, which helps keep people doing those crazy things.

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hmm, just curious, could the hundreds of billions we spent on all this have technoligically advanced us enough to a point where our own country could have created more jobs, better secured our own defense systems, increased an airtight homeland security, fixed public education, found a more abundent alternative fuel thus governmentally changing the auto industry altogether and probably have eradicated homelessness? I mean, could all that money we spent have a better outcome if it was used elsewhere, perhaps on its own citizens...maybe?

No because we don't spend money we don't have domestically. Only in wars.

And now the Pentagon is requesting $100 billion more for the wars this year.

...yay.

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R.I.P.
Purity - April 2004 ~+> November 2005
[size=0]God, Im such a fag and god yarr is so bloody cool. =P[/size]

what we need to do is
1. Regime change (with accompanying mindset change i.e. democrat)
2. Let USA know we will focus more on domestic affairs
3. Repair international relations by acknowleding UN, issuing some kind of statement that both offers an apology but stands strong against terror. it's hard to write but i'm sure we can do it. Basically we don't want to sound like wussy apologizers but want the world to know we plan to do the right thing from now on
4. Devise swift and efficient exit strategy from Iraq with defined dates
5. Sadly we have no choice to provide tons of aid to iraq in the coming years, even though I don't think they've shown that they even deserve it

0. in the meantime, Bush can and will do whatever the hell he wants. his reputation as a retard is cemented, and inked into the eternal pages of history.

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RIP Shiloh - I'll never forget ya

Bush pisses me off.

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Getting out of Iraq will be interesting that is for sure. I really don't trust those people to do anything good with that area. With the Middle East it comes down to the US support of Israel. If we didn't support Israel supposedly Al-queda wouldn't attempt to attack us and the rest of the countries that aid Israel. I expect the Muslim extremist world to force the issue within the next 20 years. Eventually it will come down to this:

1. Give Palestine the land that is now Israel.
or
2. Allow the terrorists to attack Israel and attempt to take it over (basically support neither side).
or
3. Kill all the terrorists (basically 50% of the Middle East will die in the process).

Sadly it isn't even that simple as those choices. Number 2 of course sounds the best, too bad it won't happen. What is certain is that many innocent lives will be lost and same with shitloads of money. That is common with every war though lol. This shit will happen no matter who is president. Its all a matter of time until this area resolves this issue as it has existed since the end of WW2. Basically remaking Israel is the reason this continues. Britian owned that land before WW2 and had the Palestinians living there, they moved the Israeli Jews there after WW2.

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Why can't we just sit back and watch them all just kill each other like we do with other poorer nations?

I think it's hilarious that you think that 50% of the Middle East's population is terrorists.

Oil

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Stray bullets can kill. 50% of the population will die in an attempt to kill the terrorists who decide to hide in the midst of innocents. The 50% isn't all terrorists duh lol.

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but...wasn't gas cheaper before we went there?

I'm not being a smartass here I'm serious, think about it, I mean I have to laugh on this one.

We can't because the US supports the Jews in Israel, so does the British and the French to lesser degrees. Israel doesn't export anything of value to the US. Plenty of conspiracy theories out there as to why we support the Jewish agenda in Israel. I could give a rats ass about Israel personally. Some think it is purely just Christians who want to still have pilgrimages to the Holy Land, but that is idiotic. Really I have no clue why we would support either side. We felt sorry for the Jews after WW2 so we gave them Israel.

We gave Israel tons of weapons, including nukes (France sponsored Israel's nuclear program). They could fuck up alot of the richer Oil nations who are without such technology. I wish we could just sit back and watch them fuck eachother up, but I doubt it will happen.

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I'd be very content with that. I don't understand why USA supports Isreal so much. Like several of you said, that's a big part of why the majority of the middle east hates us. We will be a terrorist target forever if we keep supporting Isreal.

The terrorists will never back off. We will never win the "war on terror". I don't see us bringing peace to Iraq either. I don't know wtf is going to happen with Iraq. A lot more young Americans are going to die horrible deaths for NOTHING. Just thinking about it pisses me off. I don't see any positive outcome. Especially if we invade Iran...that would be a bigger fucking disaster. We don't have the ground forces to win 3 wars at once. I feel Iran would be much nastier than Iraq. I think conscription would be possible then, which would be another big disaster and waste of $$$.

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Of course since we will use just ground troops after the initial invasion and not brutally massacre their entire population with bombs. We could easily bomb every nation in the Middle East until they are nothing but ash. Ground troops are for cleaning up the mess afterwards. Instead we make them police the streets and die to guerrilla warfare tactics. We know the region that houses the majority of the insurgency, we should just kill everything in that area. Civillian casualities be damned.

I would rather watch them fight it out amongst themselves. We have Jews and others with pro-Israel agendas high up in the government. That is why it is unlikely that we will do nothing to help Israel. I would love to be wrong lol. If the Muslim nations massacred all the Jews in Israel and took it over again, it would be no sweat off my back. Afterwards we would have to trust that the Islamic extremists would stop attacking us. Even with the return of Palestine to its previous state, there is no guarantees that Al-queda (or any other terrorist organization) would stop attacking. They still will have extremists that believe the entire world must be converted to Islam or die.

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Therein lies the biggest problem... what if they don't stop attacking us? A lot probably won't after how much damage we've done to the region overall. They'll feel that we're still "influencing" them somehow and some might find other reasons to attack. After the damage we've done these past 5 years, enough resentment has built up towards us. Pulling out of the region altogether would be a step in the right direction, but we can't trust the very people who would blow themselves up to kill innocent civilians.

I hate that we're so deep in this freakin' war that no matter what we do at this point, we're going to feel some negative backlash. If we pull out of Iraq right now, attacks would slow down a bit, yes. But at this point, Iraq is pretty much in a state of civil war and then whoever wins that gains control of the country. And for all we know, they'll harbor resentment still and another dictatorship will arise and blah blah blah. Pretty much we're in a lose-lose situation and I would've preferred America stick with the isolationist policies of the past.

And if we're gonna attack nations harboring terrorists, we may as well attack Saudi Arabia too, but noooo.... the Bush family has too much of a stake in that nation to do anything about them -.-;

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R.I.P.
Purity - April 2004 ~+> November 2005
[size=0]God, Im such a fag and god yarr is so bloody cool. =P[/size]

Other way around. Saudi Arabia controls a significant portion of our economy.

I thought the Bush family had stakes in Saudi Arabian oil companies and because of that our economy is pretty much dependent on their oil?

I'm not disagreeing with you, but I thought that because of our government's own stake, our economy is dependent?

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R.I.P.
Purity - April 2004 ~+> November 2005
[size=0]God, Im such a fag and god yarr is so bloody cool. =P[/size]

They have no stake in Saudia Arabia. Bush Sr. made money off of the Gulf of Mexico and Texas, Dubya failed at making any money off of oil and stopped in the 80s. So yeah not attacking Saudi Arabia has to do with something more than just the interest of the Bush family.

The Saudi family is the richest family in the world, they make the money off of the oil in that country. Also all but one of the terrorists from 9/11 were Saudis, and so is Osama and the majority of the leaders of Al-queda. Osama is a member of the Saudi family of course, thats why he is so fucking rich. If we waged war against Saudi Arabia we would have to attack Mecca at some point. Attacking Mecca would instantly start a Jihad from basically all of the Islamic world.

We were in this war the second we supported Israel in their becoming a nation. That is why Iran took hostages in the late 70s and released them as soon as Reagan was elected. We gave Iran weapons for the hostages. We also gave weapons stupidly to the Iraqis to counter the Iranians in hopes they would kill eachother off. We were already waist deep in this shit before we hit the 1990s.

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And now we're in over our heads...

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R.I.P.
Purity - April 2004 ~+> November 2005
[size=0]God, Im such a fag and god yarr is so bloody cool. =P[/size]

Quote


So far we have spent over 350billion

Instead, we could have paid for
46,624,942
children to attend a year of pre-school

Instead, we could have insured
210,789,480
children for one year.

Instead, we could have hired
6,100,523
additional public school teachers for one year.

Instead, we could have built
3,169,596
additional housing units.

Instead, we could have provided
17,065,084
students four-year scholarships at public universities.


Here is a neat calculator
http://database.nationalpriorities.org/cgi-bin/WebObjects/nppdatabase.woa/2/wo/Xc2btLASlJsg7etp7TtdIM/2.0.1.1.6.1

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"My dreams are all dead & buried. Sometimes I wish the sun would just explode. When God comes and calls me to his kingdom, I'll take all you sonsabitches when I go"