Democractic IraqFollow

Oh Drac, how cynical can you be?

The Iraqi people are now governed by Iraqis, hand picked for their loyalty to. . . erm. . . Bush & Bliar. Never mind.

Give it 5 years and the Shi'ite majority will have control and we'll have yet another fundamentalist theocracy in the middle east.

We can play the same game we've played with Iran/Syria/Iraq for the last 30 years.
Sell em weapons for 5 years, then ostracize them for another 5, then invade, stablilise, sell weapons. . . Rinse and repeat!

At the moment africa has lots of tinpot dictators happily killing off their citizens on the slightest excuse. It's hard enough getting a few observers over there to report on it let alone invading them to make the people safer.

So why wasn't the same true for Iraq ?

Hmm .. even I can spell "oil".

Face it - whatever you put in place after the war - the arabs were going to hate the US / UK for it. So pick anyone you don't like and put them in charge - everybody wins. You get rid of them and the iraqi insurgents get their next volunteer for "adventures with a home video camera and a bread knife".

The one problem with the glass car park theory is that you wouldn't be able to suck the oil out of the ground to run Arnies SUV at 4 gallons per mile.

I myself vote for a big wall and let them out in 10 years when they've killed each other enough to get sick of it. It took europe WW2 - it's only fair the middle east got the chance to learn and nuture their own future the same way.

edit: spelling is eveil

Edited, Thu Jul 29 07:44:46 2004 by palimpset

Going to yank your chain on that one.... historically speaking the majority of stable societies have been based on power held by a small group of people who had sucessors chosen from the same pool.

Even if you're blunt about it - modern free societies aren't really free as two or three party systems do not actually allow a free vote - only a selection between two groups who have a broad selection of views that you probably agree with in part at best.

Modern democracy is a best worst scenario.

I will allow that democracy is - on a PR basis - the free-est form of government determined to date.

And I'm not an advocate of proportional representation with multiple parties. They try that in germany - it ends up with a mess that is indecisive and not capable of anything. Maybe we need to eveolve culturally befoe we can evolve our power systems to somewhere more agreeable.


edit: I can't spell - so sue me



Edited, Thu Jul 29 08:22:18 2004 by palimpset

Yeah - true. Maybe I should have added the rider "and had no shame wandering around killing anyone who said they weren't in charge".

But if I had - you could still have said that.

edit: neither can I use quote marks - so sue me again

Edited, Thu Jul 29 08:26:23 2004 by palimpset

And there's more oil under Siberia than the middle east, by a lot of estimates. Untapped reserves.

But I could stand tightening my belt a bit on energy consumption.....for a purpose.


Who here would be willing to cut their electric and gasoline/diesel energy consumption by 50% or more if it meant we could have cleaner hydrogen power in this country after 10 years of rationing?

Keep in mind, this may mean that you pay MORE for the energy you still use after the cuts than you're paying for what you use now.

I could and would do it. The gasoline part would be HARD for me because I only go through a tank every 3 weeks or so. But I'm not scared of my bicycle.

Aw poor liberal commies don't like the fact that we're instituting a democracy instead of a communist society. Get over it losers they are free and figthing for their country against the terrorists. And on a side note america didn't gain its independence from britain all by itself they had the help of a little country called france.

Varus

Aw poor liberal commies don't like the fact that we're instituting a democracy instead of a communist society. Get over it losers they are free and figthing for their country against the terrorists. And on a side note america didn't gain its independence from britain all by itself they had the help of a little country called france.


Oddly I don't recal France invading the colonies and bombing the sh[b][/b]it out of Boston and Philidelphia, quartering troops all over the place and having a show trial for King George.

But, we all knew you were in love with France.

Typical. You'd probbaly hand over our government to them if you had the chance.

altered wrote



We have shut down al jazeera which was inciting violence. The same as we would shut down the new york times if they were calling on citizens to bomb the white house. They have more newspapers open there now than they ever have And I'm guessing you'd much rather have moved to Iraq before America liberated it hugh?

Varus

What the hell are you talking about? Al Jazeera is very much alive and well. Don't you think that if you are going to make statements, that you should at least do a little research first? It took me 5 seconds after I read that to do a quick google search.

The newspaper you are referring to was
Al Hawsa. You know how I found that out? I entered the words "US shut down iraq newspaper" into google, and look what came up!

If you want to learn more about Al Jazeera, you might want to watch the documentary Control Room.

Do you know why the Bushies despise Al Jazeera? It's because they don't filter their media to please the Bush administration. They report on the things that the US news sources are afraid to report on, like you know, civilian casualties.

This is not remotely close to "shutting down".

You lose.

"Iraqi officials have previously temporarily limited operations of the Qatar-based channel and its competitor, Dubai-based Al Arabiya, accusing them of inciting violence."

"The U.S. administration has repeatedly criticized Al Jazeera"

So, by "we shut down Al-Jazeera" you mean that Iraqi officials have limited operation of the channel and U.S. administration has merely criticized the channel. Nice evidence to back up your statement.

Jesus man, if you were in my grade 7 English class, I'd fail you.

Varus, did you actually read the article? It said

The first line there


This is what you said again



Do you notice the difference there? The first line there "hinted Iraq might stop Al Jazeera operating in the country." It would not be shutting down Al Jazeera since it is not owned by Iraqis - what they are implying is that the US might basically prevent Al Jazeera from reporting there.

You finished high school right? Do you remember a little thing called reading comprehension?

*Sigh* Is that all you got? That's pathetic. But, I guess since you are pretty ignorant of the world, and can't admit that you are wrong, I suppose that is all you can say - right?