News Why is the US/UK at war with Iraq?

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AI Thread Summary
The discussion centers on the justification for the war in Iraq, with participants expressing a range of views on the motivations and implications of military action. Key points include the belief that Saddam Hussein's brutal dictatorship warranted intervention, with some arguing that the U.S. had a moral imperative to act against tyranny. Critics highlight the lack of evidence for weapons of mass destruction and question the legitimacy of bypassing the United Nations, suggesting that the war is driven by imperialistic motives and oil interests. The conversation also touches on the potential for increased terrorism as a consequence of military action, with some asserting that removing Saddam could ultimately stabilize the region. The debate reflects deep divisions over the ethics of intervention, the effectiveness of diplomacy, and the consequences of military engagement in a complex geopolitical landscape.
  • #251
There is no mention of bin Laden anywhere in the article.

Find a link that tells me something I didn't already know.
 
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  • #252
well I appologise if I wasted your time.

I thought it was interesting..
 
  • #253
JohnDubYa said:
Adam, I am going to ask you a loaded question... loaded with truth. I suppose this question will be painful and frustrating for you because of your personal sense of order relies on clinging to falsehoods.

Are you ready? Here goes...

Why are you stupid?

Wow. More ad hominem garbage. Instead of resorting (as usual) to these personal attacks, why don't you (for once) try answering the questions posed in these threads? You know, that whole "on-topic" thing?
 
  • #254
JohnDubYa said:
What did they train him do? How do you know this? Be specific.

Haven't we covered this extensively in other threads?
 
  • #255
Yes Several times, and I've posted many links to it in one of these iraq threads.

And WTF is a 'loaded' question anyhow?
 
  • #256
JohnDubYa said:
You missed the point completely --- that loaded questions cannot be answered and should not be answered. The fact that Adam would look upon such a question as an insult displays the inherent fallacy of a loaded question. After all, I was just asking a question, right? After all, he should be able to just answer the question, right? What's the harm in just merely asking a question?

Actually you're presenting a false comparison here. I didn't insult anyone here. You did. I asked questions directly related to the topic, with no lies, misdirections, or unsupported assumptions. You didn't.

When you feel capable of posting on-topic, please do come back and try again.
 
  • #257
Smurf said:
And WTF is a 'loaded' question anyhow?

It's the Dubya label for any question he feels threatened by, any question which, if answered honestly, might perforate his otherwise ironclad support of a ridiculous mockery of a government.
 
  • #258
A little lesson in Logic for Adam (and Prometheus).

A loaded question is negatively presumptous. For example:

"Why are you so stupid?"

In order to answer the question, the respondent has to assume the negative connotation embedded in the question.

Now, "Are you stupid?" is not loaded. The question does not assume stupidity on part of the respondent.

YOu asked:

So which part was good?

* The thousands of corpses?
* The destruction of Iraq's infrastructure?
* The theft of Iraqi oil?
* The massive profits for Bush, Cheney, and their friends?
* The dead US troops?
* The complete loss of international trust of the US administration?
* The global impression that the US administration has turned governing a nation, going to war, and killing thousands of people into nothing more than a business opportunity?

Your question presumes that those seven bulleted items are the only possible outcomes of the Iraq War, for which I am to pick just one. So not only did you ask a loaded question, you employed the Fallacy of Limited Options as well.

We all ask loaded questions, but you phrased yours in such a way that it would have taken me too much contortion to sift out the assumptions. Rather than that, I asked you to ask me honest questions.
 
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  • #259
Sorry, you're wrong (or deliberately misleading) yet again, Dubya. My question does not present those options as the only possible outcomes of the invasion of Iraq. You are able to pick one or more of the items. You are able to pick the last item, not grouped with the rest. Heck, I'd be overjoyed if you provided your own item, something new to add to teh list, which shows why the invasion was good.

All I wanted was one thing which shows why you think the invasion of Iraq was good. That was the entirety of the question. There was nothing "loaded" about it, nothing misleading or tricky. No cards up any sleaves. Your misuse of the logical fallacies, and erroneous assertions of their occurrence, has not gone unnoticed.

Then I asked a simple question yet again: Would that "good reason" still be worth it if your own family was splattered all over the neighbourhood as a result?
 
  • #260
well.. saddam WAS caught and he wasnt very nice...

next target: George W Bush.
 
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  • #261
Adam, quit screwing around and read the following:

So which part was good?

* The thousands of corpses?
* The destruction of Iraq's infrastructure?
* The theft of Iraqi oil?
* The massive profits for Bush, Cheney, and their friends?
* The dead US troops?
* The complete loss of international trust of the US administration?
* The global impression that the US administration has turned governing a nation, going to war, and killing thousands of people into nothing more than a business opportunity?

You couldn't find a better example of the Fallacy of Limited Options if you tried. It is OBVIOUS that your question is loaded. So why are you trying to defend it?
 
  • #262
He did say he'd be over joyed if you came up with your own reason why the war was a good idea.
 
  • #263
Good things coming from this war:

Saddam will face justice.

Saddam will no longer kill hundreds of thousands of Iraqis.

Thousands of Iraqi families now know what happened to their relatives that previously disappeared.

Shi'ite Muslims can now worship freely.

There is a good chance the Kurds will finally be able to live in peace.

Democracy has a chance of taking root in an Arabic country. (How good of a chance is anyone's guess, but the chance is undeniable.)

The Iraqi people have a chance to be truly free.

Saddam's sons are dead.

We no longer need to wonder about Saddam's capability of using WMDs. (We didn't know for sure before, now we do.)

Now for military matters...

We now have the best trained and experienced troops in the world. (Can't buy that kind of training for any amount of money.)

Our military weaponry has been tested in extreme conditions.

We have managed to filter out those in our military who have no stomach for fighting.

We have learned a great deal about logistic support.

We now know what we could face in the future in terms of Islamic fundamentalist fighting tactics.

Those are just a few.
 
  • #264
Can you imagine an Iraqi who lost his family to Saddam, or is the best you can do an Iraqi which is killed by American bombs? I can tell you for a fact, there are several hundred thousand less of the latter. I think that about defeats any arguments against this war.
 
  • #265
Right, studentx. Those who oppose the war simply do not fathom how nasty Saddam's regime really was. What Saddam did to hundreds of thousands of people was unspeakably cruel.
 
  • #266
I've always told people that Saddam's attack on Khabul (i think) was much worse than 9/11. 5000 people died emediatly, and twice that in the aftermath of chemical and biological weapons. Theres no doubt Saddam was a bad man.
 
  • #267
JohnDubYa said:
Good things coming from this war:

Saddam will face justice.

Saddam will no longer kill hundreds of thousands of Iraqis.

Thousands of Iraqi families now know what happened to their relatives that previously disappeared.

Shi'ite Muslims can now worship freely.

There is a good chance the Kurds will finally be able to live in peace.

Democracy has a chance of taking root in an Arabic country. (How good of a chance is anyone's guess, but the chance is undeniable.)

The Iraqi people have a chance to be truly free.

Saddam's sons are dead.

We no longer need to wonder about Saddam's capability of using WMDs. (We didn't know for sure before, now we do.)
First, thanks for finally attempting to answer the first question.

Now answer the second: Would those things be worth the splattering of your family all over the neighbourhood?


And now on to the funny stuff...
Saddam will face justice.
If they allow those who have lost relatives and spouses to his rule the honour of executing him, sure. I hope they do.

Saddam will no longer kill hundreds of thousands of Iraqis.
Has there yet been any reliable estimate for the numbers he killed?

But yes, this is good.

Thousands of Iraqi families now know what happened to their relatives that previously disappeared.
I hope so. I hope the effort is made.

Shi'ite Muslims can now worship freely.
They always did. Iraq under Saddam was a secular state, meaning the state itself was not governed by a religious group, or the state did not espouse anyone religion over others. However, they allowed people to worship in different ways. This is why the country has such a huge unmber of Shi'ites. If Saddam, who apparently killed people by the hundreds of thousands, wanted to oppress any form of worship, he would have killed them. This is one of the common misconceptions about Iraq under Saddam. He didn't give a damn about how people worshipped. They had all sorts. People had free education all the way through to university and post-grad studies. You just couldn't say anything bad about Saddam or the state, or they'd cane your feet.

There is a good chance the Kurds will finally be able to live in peace.
Are you aware that the Kurds were attacked more by Turkey than by Saddam?

Democracy has a chance of taking root in an Arabic country. (How good of a chance is anyone's guess, but the chance is undeniable.)
It has been established in many Arabic countries for a very long time.

The Iraqi people have a chance to be truly free.
The survivors?

Saddam's sons are dead.
They were complete bastiches, yes. However, I will never approve of people cheering and celebrating deaths, nor of the parading of corpses on TV for PR value.

We no longer need to wonder about Saddam's capability of using WMDs. (We didn't know for sure before, now we do.)
Yep. Go kill some innocent man, then say "On the good side, we'll never have to worry about that guy's plans to steal my car, whether he had such plans or not!" No, I'm not saying Saddam was a nice guy. It's an analogy. Look it up.

We now have the best trained and experienced troops in the world. (Can't buy that kind of training for any amount of money.)
No. Too easy.

Our military weaponry has been tested in extreme conditions.
Yes it has. You're right.

We have managed to filter out those in our military who have no stomach for fighting.
I'm not quite sure what you mean by this.

We have learned a great deal about logistic support.
Very true.

We now know what we could face in the future in terms of Islamic fundamentalist fighting tactics.
Very bigoted and insane.
 
  • #268
studentx said:
Can you imagine an Iraqi who lost his family to Saddam, or is the best you can do an Iraqi which is killed by American bombs? I can tell you for a fact, there are several hundred thousand less of the latter. I think that about defeats any arguments against this war.

It does? How?
 
  • #269
JohnDubYa said:
Right, studentx. Those who oppose the war simply do not fathom how nasty Saddam's regime really was. What Saddam did to hundreds of thousands of people was unspeakably cruel.

Now (for your educational benefit) this is a logical fallacy. You state that those who disagree are merely ignorant, and you don't bother addressing any actual points.

I, and no doubt everyone else here, realizes perfectly how brutal Saddam Hussein was. That is not at all in question (at least not that I have seen). What is in question is law, justice, motivation, even more deaths at the hands of the invader, and other matters.
 
  • #270
Smurf said:
I've always told people that Saddam's attack on Khabul (i think) was much worse than 9/11. 5000 people died emediatly, and twice that in the aftermath of chemical and biological weapons. Theres no doubt Saddam was a bad man.
Do you mean Halabja?
A War Crime or an Act of War?

It was no surprise that President Bush, lacking smoking-gun evidence of Iraq's weapons programs, used his State of the Union address to re-emphasize the moral case for an invasion: "The dictator who is assembling the world's most dangerous weapons has already used them on whole villages, leaving thousands of his own citizens dead, blind or disfigured."

The accusation that Iraq has used chemical weapons against its citizens is a familiar part of the debate. The piece of hard evidence most frequently brought up concerns the gassing of Iraqi Kurds at the town of Halabja in March 1988, near the end of the eight-year Iran-Iraq war. President Bush himself has cited Iraq's "gassing its own people," specifically at Halabja, as a reason to topple Saddam Hussein.

But the truth is, all we know for certain is that Kurds were bombarded with poison gas that day at Halabja. We cannot say with any certainty that Iraqi chemical weapons killed the Kurds. This is not the only distortion in the Halabja story.

I am in a position to know because, as the Central Intelligence Agency's senior political analyst on Iraq during the Iran-Iraq war, and as a professor at the Army War College from 1988 to 2000, I was privy to much of the classified material that flowed through Washington having to do with the Persian Gulf. In addition, I headed a 1991 Army investigation into how the Iraqis would fight a war against the United States; the classified version of the report went into great detail on the Halabja affair.

This much about the gassing at Halabja we undoubtedly know: it came about in the course of a battle between Iraqis and Iranians. Iraq used chemical weapons to try to kill Iranians who had seized the town, which is in northern Iraq not far from the Iranian border. The Kurdish civilians who died had the misfortune to be caught up in that exchange. But they were not Iraq's main target.

And the story gets murkier: immediately after the battle the United States Defense Intelligence Agency investigated and produced a classified report, which it circulated within the intelligence community on a need-to-know basis. That study asserted that it was Iranian gas that killed the Kurds, not Iraqi gas.

The agency did find that each side used gas against the other in the battle around Halabja. The condition of the dead Kurds' bodies, however, indicated they had been killed with a blood agent � that is, a cyanide-based gas � which Iran was known to use. The Iraqis, who are thought to have used mustard gas in the battle, are not known to have possessed blood agents at the time.

These facts have long been in the public domain but, extraordinarily, as often as the Halabja affair is cited, they are rarely mentioned. A much-discussed article in The New Yorker last March did not make reference to the Defense Intelligence Agency report or consider that Iranian gas might have killed the Kurds. On the rare occasions the report is brought up, there is usually speculation, with no proof, that it was skewed out of American political favoritism toward Iraq in its war against Iran.

I am not trying to rehabilitate the character of Saddam Hussein. He has much to answer for in the area of human rights abuses. But accusing him of gassing his own people at Halabja as an act of genocide is not correct, because as far as the information we have goes, all of the cases where gas was used involved battles. These were tragedies of war. There may be justifications for invading Iraq, but Halabja is not one of them.

In fact, those who really feel that the disaster at Halabja has bearing on today might want to consider a different question: Why was Iran so keen on taking the town? A closer look may shed light on America's impetus to invade Iraq.

We are constantly reminded that Iraq has perhaps the world's largest reserves of oil. But in a regional and perhaps even geopolitical sense, it may be more important that Iraq has the most extensive river system in the Middle East. In addition to the Tigris and Euphrates, there are the Greater Zab and Lesser Zab rivers in the north of the country. Iraq was covered with irrigation works by the sixth century A.D., and was a granary for the region.

Before the Persian Gulf war, Iraq had built an impressive system of dams and river control projects, the largest being the Darbandikhan dam in the Kurdish area. And it was this dam the Iranians were aiming to take control of when they seized Halabja. In the 1990's there was much discussion over the construction of a so-called Peace Pipeline that would bring the waters of the Tigris and Euphrates south to the parched Gulf states and, by extension, Israel. No progress has been made on this, largely because of Iraqi intransigence. With Iraq in American hands, of course, all that could change.

Thus America could alter the destiny of the Middle East in a way that probably could not be challenged for decades � not solely by controlling Iraq's oil, but by controlling its water. Even if America didn't occupy the country, once Mr. Hussein's Baath Party is driven from power, many lucrative opportunities would open up for American companies.

All that is needed to get us into war is one clear reason for acting, one that would be generally persuasive. But efforts to link the Iraqis directly to Osama bin Laden have proved inconclusive. Assertions that Iraq threatens its neighbors have also failed to create much resolve; in its present debilitated condition � thanks to United Nations sanctions � Iraq's conventional forces threaten no one.

Perhaps the strongest argument left for taking us to war quickly is that Saddam Hussein has committed human rights atrocities against his people. And the most dramatic case are the accusations about Halabja.

Before we go to war over Halabja, the administration owes the American people the full facts. And if it has other examples of Saddam Hussein gassing Kurds, it must show that they were not pro-Iranian Kurdish guerrillas who died fighting alongside Iranian Revolutionary Guards. Until Washington gives us proof of Saddam Hussein's supposed atrocities, why are we picking on Iraq on human rights grounds, particularly when there are so many other repressive regimes Washington supports?
(Stephen C. Pelletiere, The New York Times, January 31, 2003)

Stephen C. Pelletiere is author of "Iraq and the International Oil System: Why America Went to War in the Persian Gulf."
 
  • #271
Adam said:
They were complete bastiches, yes. However, I will never approve of people cheering and celebrating deaths, nor of the parading of corpses on TV for PR value.

HA! You ARE against advirtising violence.
 
  • #272
I'm against anything on Channel 7.
 
  • #273
Where I live channel 7 is ESPN.. please elaborate
 
  • #274
War is Over Energy

Energy is Power. Of course it's over energy. Oil is the life blood of the America infrastructure engine.

But, since Bush Administration didn't convince us of this, which would be real easy to do if we actually needed the oil, it's probably not the for good of Americans. It's probably for the good of a few who'll benefit while Iraqis are murdered for the energy.
 
  • #275
Smurf said:
Where I live channel 7 is ESPN.. please elaborate

It was just a silly joke.
 
  • #276
The ratio of Iraqis actively helping the americans and Iraqis fighting them is close to 100:1. The ratio of Iraqis not fighting the Americans to Iraqis fighting the Americans is close to 10.000:1 . You can't defeat these numbers Adam.
Parts of Iraq are a mess, absolutely. But 90% of Iraq isnt. The parts of Iraq that are a mess have hundreds of thousands of Iraqis risking their lifes to help the Americans. There are different opinions of the US in these parts, and an overwhelming majority does NOT want the Americans to leave. You betray millions and gamble with the lifes of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis when argueing against the continuation of US presence in Iraq.
And i have suggested this before, try to discover the truth about what Iraqis want before you pretend to voice their opinion.
 
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  • #277
Smurf said:
Where I live channel 7 is ESPN.. please elaborate

Aussie TV has stations called Channel 9, Channel 10, Channel 31 and Channel 7 - don't know if there are others like that.

I'm guessing Ch 7 is owned by ol' Rupert (judging from Adam's pronouncement).



Oops...just noticed Adam already replied to this question, so ignore this.
 
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  • #278
They always did. Iraq under Saddam was a secular state, meaning the state itself was not governed by a religious group, or the state did not espouse anyone religion over others. However, they allowed people to worship in different ways. This is why the country has such a huge unmber of Shi'ites. If Saddam, who apparently killed people by the hundreds of thousands, wanted to oppress any form of worship, he would have killed them. This is one of the common misconceptions about Iraq under Saddam. He didn't give a damn about how people worshipped. They had all sorts. People had free education all the way through to university and post-grad studies. You just couldn't say anything bad about Saddam or the state, or they'd cane your feet.

Saddam's oppression of the Shi'ites and their religious activities is well known and documented. Just do a Google search using "Saddam oppressed Shiite" and you will find page after page (some more credible than others).
 
  • #279
Adam, would you have celebrated the death of Hitler? Just curious.
 
  • #280
JohnDubYa said:
Adam, would you have celebrated the death of Hitler? Just curious.

Did you celebrate the bombs dropped on Japan?

studentx said:
The ratio of Iraqis actively helping the americans and Iraqis fighting them is close to 100:1. The ratio of Iraqis not fighting the Americans to Iraqis fighting the Americans is close to 10.000:1 . You can't defeat these numbers Adam.
Parts of Iraq are a mess, absolutely. But 90% of Iraq isnt. The parts of Iraq that are a mess have hundreds of thousands of Iraqis risking their lifes to help the Americans. There are different opinions of the US in these parts, and an overwhelming majority does NOT want the Americans to leave. You betray millions and gamble with the lifes of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis when argueing against the continuation of US presence in Iraq.
And i have suggested this before, try to discover the truth about what Iraqis want before you pretend to voice their opinion.

:cry: this just makes me sad
 
  • #281
studentx said:
The ratio of Iraqis actively helping the americans and Iraqis fighting them is close to 100:1. The ratio of Iraqis not fighting the Americans to Iraqis fighting the Americans is close to 10.000:1 . You can't defeat these numbers Adam.
The ratio of red ants to black outside my kitchen door is 100:1. You can't defeat these numbers. But it's entirely irrelevent, isn't it? Think about it.

Parts of Iraq are a mess, absolutely. But 90% of Iraq isnt.
So what exactly are you basing these numbers on?
 
  • #282
Gokul43201 said:
I'm guessing Ch 7 is owned by ol' Rupert (judging from Adam's pronouncement).
Everything here is owned either by Rupert Murdoch or Kerry Packer. Packer is mostly domestic though. He's also the one you wouldn't want to meet in a dark alley.
 
  • #283
JohnDubYa said:
Saddam's oppression of the Shi'ites and their religious activities is well known and documented. Just do a Google search using "Saddam oppressed Shiite" and you will find page after page (some more credible than others).

1) Shi'a Muslims make up about 60-65% of Iraq's population.

2) Saddam was secular and fair; he oppressed them all equally.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saddam_Hussein#Saddam_Hussein_as_a_secular_leader
 
  • #284
Did you celebrate the bombs dropped on Japan?

No. But that was mainly because I was born in 1960.
 
  • #285
JohnDubYa said:
Adam, would you have celebrated the death of Hitler? Just curious.

No. I celebrate no deaths.
 
  • #286
Adam,

Shia Muslims were oppressed by Iraq's Baathist regime for more than 30 years and excluded from the highest ranks of power...


Under his rule, Shia opposition groups were fiercely oppressed and political and religious leaders murdered.


http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/2931903.stm

The notion that he oppressed all groups equally is absurd. Given that the Shia were a majority in the country, they should have been well-represented in higher government. They were not.

And ask the Kurds if Saddam treated them like he did his own Sunni Muslims.

Here is another article from Iraq.net

Hundreds of thousands of Shia Muslims are in the Iraqi town of Karbala to mark the festival of Ashura for the first time in more than 30 years.
The festival was severely restricted by Saddam Hussein.

Ashura is the climax of a 10-day period of mourning for Shias commemorating the martyrdom of Imam Hussain,
who was killed in Karbala in 680 AD.

His death is being marked by rhythmic chanting and ritual self-flagellation from devotees clad in black.

Over 2 million people are expected in Karbala in time for the festival's climax on Tuesday.

Many of the devotees this year have come illegally from neighbouring Iran, which, like Iraq, has a majority Shia population.

Years of suppression

Shias were repressed under Saddam Hussein's Sunni-dominated regime.

Observation of Ashura was hampered by a ban on the practice of ritually beating themselves and - among some Shia groups - of cutting wounds in their skin.


Pilgrims from Iran - a wartime enemy of Saddam Hussein's Iraq - were also not welcome at Karbala, one of Shia Islam's holiest sites.

The death of Hussein, the grandson of the Prophet Mohammad, cemented the split between Sunni and Shia Islam over who should inherit lead the faith.

The BBC's Barbara Plett says the Ashura processions were tightly controlled not only by Saddam Hussein but by the Sunni rulers of Baghdad who preceded him - all saw them as dangerous rallying points for resistance.

Security fears

"We have been waiting for this ceremony for 30 years. I can't begin to describe my feelings. This is total freedom," said Saad al-Masoudi, a Karbala resident.

But other mourners in the procession felt things had changed for the worse.

"Today is not a good day," said Mohammed Hussein Fadel. "I would have preferred Saddam over the American conquerors... At least Saddam was a Muslim." [nice display of religious bigotry]

The focus of the celebrations is the gold-domed shrine of Imam Hussein in the centre of Karbala.

This year's event coincides with the growing dominance of Shias in post-Saddam Iraq - leading to fears that disgruntled Sunni militants may target the celebrations.

To prevent this, Karbala has been ringed by security forces - with Polish soldiers policing the town's entry points and Shia militias guarding its streets and shrines.
 
  • #287
Leaders of all sorts of religious and other groups were killed or disappeared throughout Saddam's reign. Like I said, they were oppressed equally.
 
  • #288
If you are saying that the Sunni were oppressed to the same extent as the Shia, then you are dead wrong.
 
  • #289
There are more Shi'a than Sunni.
 
  • #290
Adam said:
The ratio of red ants to black outside my kitchen door is 100:1. You can't defeat these numbers. But it's entirely irrelevent, isn't it? Think about it.

Im not following you here. How is it irrelevant that there are 100 times more Iraqis helping the americans than fighting them? Please answer this one Adam.
 
  • #291
The question is not "How is it irrelevent?" but "How is it relevent?" What was your purpose in bringing it up (and it was you who brought it up)?
 
  • #292
There are more Shi'a than Sunni.

Yeah, so what? You keep bringing this point up. Why is it relevant to this argument?
 
  • #293
Good grief. If someone likes squashing fruits, and is equally violent toward all fruits, and there are twice as many oranges as lemons, then the number of orangse squashes will be double the number of lemons squashed.
 
  • #294
That may be one of the dumbest posts you have presented so far.
 
  • #295
Adam said:
The question is not "How is it irrelevent?" but "How is it relevent?" What was your purpose in bringing it up (and it was you who brought it up)?

The question is not "What was your purpose in bringing it up" but "What was your purpose in not bringing it up?".
Yes Adam, we can all evade questions.
 
  • #296
JohnDubYa said:
That may be one of the dumbest posts you have presented so far.
It's called an analogy. One day you might understand such things. Maybe.
 
  • #297
studentx said:
The question is not "What was your purpose in bringing it up" but "What was your purpose in not bringing it up?".
Yes Adam, we can all evade questions.

You're amazing. And I'm sure you don't even know why.

Watch closely:

Your post dated 7:21 AM yesterday, #277:
The ratio of Iraqis actively helping the americans and Iraqis fighting them is close to 100:1. The ratio of Iraqis not fighting the Americans to Iraqis fighting the Americans is close to 10.000:1 . You can't defeat these numbers Adam.

My post dated 3:10 PM yesterday, #282:
The ratio of red ants to black outside my kitchen door is 100:1. You can't defeat these numbers. But it's entirely irrelevent, isn't it? Think about it.

Your post dated 10:25 PM yesterday, #291:
Im not following you here. How is it irrelevant that there are 100 times more Iraqis helping the americans than fighting them? Please answer this one Adam.

My post dated 12:59 AM today, #292:
The question is not "How is it irrelevent?" but "How is it relevent?" What was your purpose in bringing it up (and it was you who brought it up)?

And finally, your post dated 3:42 AM today, #296:
The question is not "What was your purpose in bringing it up" but "What was your purpose in not bringing it up?".
Yes Adam, we can all evade questions.

Now, as is quite clear from this debacle, this thread of conversation begins with some utter piffle you posted (#277). You brought it up. You brought up irrelevant garbage. Again. And I asked you what the relevence was. You have yet to answer.
 
  • #298
Well, it was a BAD analogy.

The idea that Saddam treated Shias and Kurds equally to Sunnis is laughable and unsupportable. Saddam's blatant suppression of the Sunnis and their religious ceremonies is well-documented. Besides, your analogy falls apart with his treatment of Kurds.
 
  • #299
Wait, no, I get it - if there are twice as many oranges than lemons but you only have two fists, squashing the same percentage of oranges as lemons takes twice as much effort!

Ugh, I feel dumber for understanding Adam's line of reasoning.
 
  • #300
this article is from the USA today on the opinions of iraqis on US presence in Iraq...

Poll: Iraqis out of patience
USA TODAY
BAGHDAD — Only a third of the Iraqi people now believe that the American-led occupation of their country is doing more good than harm, and a solid majority support an immediate military pullout even though they fear that could put them in greater danger, according to a new USA TODAY/CNN/Gallup Pol
 
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