Holy Ghost

shrek

it appears that some people in this country have no desire to protect themselves and their way of life.

quite bizarre. darwin awards anyone?

P130J

Not wishing to get too involved in the bunfight but I noticed someone bought up the "Israel-has-broken-more-resolutions-than-Iraq" blah.

Quick word on UN resolutions......(courtesy of The Economist)

2 types of Security council resolution.

Those passed under Chapter Six deal with the peaceful resolution of disputes and entitle the council to make non-binding recommendations

Those under Chapter Seven give the council broad powers to take action, including warlike action, to deal with “threats to the peace, breaches of the peace, or acts of aggression”. Such resolutions, binding on all UN members, were rare during the cold war. But they were used against Iraq after its invasion of Kuwait.

None of the resolutions relating to the Israeli-Arab conflict comes under Chapter Seven.

Basically the Chapter 6 UN Resolutions made concerning Israel are all non-binding recommendations. The ones against Iraq are Chapter 7.

Luke

US would like a little plot of land to call their own in the middle east.

rayman_2

I guess holy ghost you seen this with your own eyes when the taliban regime was in place.

Funny how the people I talked to who have visited and lived there for last several years have a slightly different opinion.

Its strange how eye witness account differs so much from media. I always like to hear the other story and just the one pushed in your face.

e.g It must be easy to tell a victim why the reason for his family to die is because it was in the best interests for the future generations and to forget.

Holy Ghost

well hello high horse. don't be a pompous ***.

did you the see the undercover documentary "life under the taliban" shown on channel 4 in 2001?

it was all there. secretly filmed. so you could say i have seen it with my own eyes, once removed.

the abuse of individuals was happily admitted to in secretly filmed and taped interviews with the taliban militia. executions at the kabul national stadium were filmed.

the footage was taken at great personal risk and smuggled out of the country. it was a fine piece of investigative reporting.

call me old fashioned but seeing someone shot in the centre circle of the football pitch is pretty convincing.

i'm not saying that people you talked to are wrong. they just may not have been aware.

remember, plenty of people in germany - germans and foreign nationals alike - were unaware of the death camps and are on historical record as saying as much.

you, like me, do not have all the answers.

Luke

That film was excellent. But one hell of a lot of them are made to measure.

Holy Ghost

quite.

but you can't make to measure a bullet in the head. or a mullah boasting to camera how he crushes miscreants under a boulder-loaded door.

those ridiculous, medieval, cruel, extremist barbarian buffoons got what they deserved. they backed a butcher and paid.

i hope there won't now be a spirited defence of the merits of the taliban by the more loopy amongst us...

matty01

Sti and Holy Ghost etc ,you tell 'em mate. They do your head in don't they.

[Edited by matty01 - 2/27/2003 9:18:31 PM]

StiShrek

It is bizarre HolyGhost. There is no room for complacency in this day and age of apocalyptic weaponry.

This country seems more intent on stopping the war against some demonic mass murderer than protecting itself from serious attacks from potential mass murderers?????

rayman2 - i have heard it all now .

Defending the taliban regime????

You go to Tony Benn's seminars?

Wake up and smell the sh*t you are shovelling.

Every culture has its bad sides but some are worse than others and the taliban is one of them.

Next thing you will be saying that Saddham is actually the new messiah!

Case dismissed as always.

Popeye P1

Do u rememeber those religious nutters who stood on that building in Independence Day chanting 'Peace Man' to the Aliens. Then they got obliterated!!! LOL
Well they remind me of those stupid tree huggers in that peace Bus going to Iraq. Brainwashed freaks. Even Saddam will be thinking WTF when they arrive on his border. LOL

I_dont_giveafvk

Telboy you wanna wait til he uses them first??? before taking him out

bit of a **** up if you were one of the peeple who got hit

wake up mate

Makalu

Opinions vary....

I agree - Saddam is not a nice guy and the planet might be better off without him.

I agree - The chances of Saddam using WOMD is increased the longer he stays in power.

I agree - Everything should be done to make the world a safer and happier place.

But...

As I have gotten older, my views have moved from being as radical and aggresive as others that have posted on this thread to be somewhat more considered.

I have kids - and to me, that makes a huge difference to how I view the idea of going and killing other people and their kids - which is probably what will end up happening. Isnt it better to have a crappy life under a dictater than no life at all because of some 'liberator's' stray bullet or bomb?

Sure I would like to put Saddam down for good - but do we (ie. Europe, USA, Christianity etc...) REALLY know what the effect of invading Iraq will be in 6 months time?

I cannot help thinking that we are just lighting the blue touch paper but have no where to stand back.

Mak.

Popeye P1

'I cannot help thinking that we are just lighting the blue touch paper but have no where to stand back.'

The blue touch paper is already lit. Regardless of Iraq we have to protect ourselves from extremists hellbent on destroying our way of life. Even if we don't take on Iraq Al Quaeda still want to make trouble. Iraq is a 'cornerstone' for terrorism. Remove that and they'll feel the squeeze.

Makalu

Sorry Popeye but I disagree....

The 'terrorists' have been living amongst us for years. Do you really think sorting Iraq out will have any effect on world terrorism other than to add fuel to an already hot fire?

How exactly can you protect yourself from terrorists?
You dont know who they are, you dont know what they are prepared to do, you cannot defend against people prepared to lay down their own lives in the name of ideology. Who could possibly have foreseen 9/11. Even when warned, the USA still didnt believe it was going to happen.

If you believe you can protect yourself - then share with me how. Because I want to be a safe as you...

Mak.

(For all we know, a Nuke could have been placed in an underground car park in London months ago in preparation for 'the right time'... What im saying is 'you just dont know')

Edited to add that - as a country - we are totally unprepared for ANY kind of major terrorist retaliation.

Anyone here had their booklet on surviving the aftermath of a Nuclear bomb yet? No, Me neither...

Sorry to sound so alarmist but, this is scary stuff our politicians are dealing with.

[Edited by Makalu - 2/28/2003 10:00:27 AM]

Nimbus

Isn't this a bit insulting to all the millions who have died defending our freedom over the years?

Makalu

The only times that the British have defended the freedom of British people was during the Battle of Britain and in the Falklands. Other than that we spend our time fighting battles to protect other countries or protecting British settlements in foreign countries that we stole from them anyway.

BUT... read my threads - I am the last person to wish to upset anyone who has laid down their lives in a war - and that goes for all sides. War does not solve problems - people solve problems.

Mak.

Popeye P1

1.For a start kick people like Abdu Hamza out of this country that want a Jihad against the west. Anyone who incites religious/anti-western hatred should be deported.

2.Much tighter immigration.

I take it you're going down the appeasement route Makulu.

'War does not solve problems - people solve problems'

Thats abit Ironic as Saddam started all this dam affair in the first place.

TelBoy

So, back to China for a second.

One of the worst records on human rights in the world.

But they have nuclear capability. So the world turns a blind eye.

Why is that morally correct, and blitzing Iraq morally right? I'll tell you why. Because the atrocities in China aren't splashed all over The Sun every day, so they can be conveniently swept to the back of everybody's minds. Tell me i'm wrong.

Iraq is just the "here and now" subject. We've all been convinced that Saddam-without-an-h is going to get a nuke and use it. If 09/11 hadn't happened, he'd just be another mad dictator in a dusty part of the world left alone to get on with whatever he was doing. Like Mugabe and many others.

So if this isn't about oil, as has been suggested, and i'm prepared to go along with that theory, where does this leave the world?

Will the US have to step in every time somebody they don't like looks like they'll obtain nuclear capability? As has been asked already, what right does the US have to take that mantle, other than "just because it can"?

And afterwards, who's going to pay for the clean-up and maintenance of a new government/regime? Who asked me if i'd be happy to pay my taxes to support that? A minority US and UK government? Great. And do they even know what the after-game strategy is? Why has nobody here asked? Because The Sun hasn't asked this as a question? This is a dangerous, dangerous situation to get into, and again has been said, nobody knows what the outcome will be.

I_dont_giveafvk

Telboy

if you get hit first you wont give a **** then

you wanna wait til you get chemic'd nukes bio'd fried

all very well sitting on your high horse there, its ok for someone else to get fecked over before acting, different story if you or your family get hit first then youz be the furst to say wede shoud ave taken him first

TelBoy

And why should the UK be hit first?

Oh yes, because we're the US' lap dogs so have made ourselves unwitting targets.

That was bright, wasn't it? This isn't a case of being on a high horse, please don't patronise me like that, i'm just questioning the herd mentality, that's all.

Holy Ghost

makalu,

the british have defended the british from direct threat on the following additional occasions ...

- against caesar and the romans in 50BC plus sporadic guerilla warfare up to around 300AD.

- against william the conqueror (1066 & all that)

- against the spanish invasion armada of 1588

- against france & napoleon in the napoleonic wars

- against the direct, but never materialised, threat from the USSR during the cold war.

worryingly you seem utterly defeated already by the prospect of terrorism on these shores. so your answer is to defuse the situation by non-aggression and stick your head in the sand.

non-aggression doesn't work. terrorism is not invincible. it's just problematic.

you effectively say these people are amongst us and it's too late.

they say shariah law. i say shania twain.

- tightened immigration controls with quotas for economic migrants and asylum seekers.

- detain all asylum seekers upon entry while their applications are proven/disproven with instant deportation for the latter.

- watch, phonetap and infiltrate all known extremist islamic fundamentalist ("mentalist?" ha that's ironic...) organisations. where appropriate, deport the trouble makers like abu hamza and mohammed el faisal. (imprison them & you just give their scummy compadres a reason for hijack to bargain their release).

etc. etc.

it's all been done before in other circumstances. and we've learned a lot from northern ireland. you can't eradicate the threat, but you can contain it.

if you think something can't be done, it won't be.

lastly, i'm actually quite proud of the fact that we make a habit of standing up for others. like we stuck by the poles in 1939 when we could have bartered a peace with hitler and sold them down the river. like we stood up for the (south) koreans in 1951, like the kuwaitis in 1991 (sorry, that was all about oil then as well, wasn't it?). shame we tried, and failed, to stand up for the kurds better in 1991, but john major's 'safe havens' were better than nothing. like we did as much as the UN would allow us to in former yugoslavia through the early/mid 90s. like we intervened in kosovo in 1998 (hello, no oil there!) to help put milosovic and his unsavoury cronies in the dock today. oh then there's sierra leone in 1999 ...

for all the stains on our national conscience, they are outweighed by the occasions when we have acted whilst others have not.

where's your backbone gone? or perhaps your sympathies lie elsewhere?

I_dont_giveafvk

Telboy no offence intended just that i lerned an important lesson while at school

I was bullied along with another boy for a while ya see and one day I got fedup with, I was at breaking point, I heard that one guy had got 3 or 4 others and was planning to jump either me or both outside school and beat the **** out of me or him

i thougth **** this ive had enough so regardless of whether it was me to get it or not i got the ringleader on his own and lost it, i beat the living crap out of him, just went mental no idea where i got it from

the bullying stopped right there

my motto hit first ask questions later, it might not have been me that was gonna get it but i werent gonna wait to find out , interesting enough the other guy never got bullied again either

Sadamm aint no different to that ******* that bullied me at school he needs sorting and sorting now

teachers couldtn stop the bullying , no amount of words or pathetic punishement could stop it, ultimeately bullies understand onlt one thing force

TelBoy

I hear you, and you're right, aggression can sometimes stop the bullying. But what about when the big brother comes round and kicks merry hell out of the kid? How do we know that will not happen this time? This is potentially the most dangerous situation the world has ever faced. If Hussein really does have everything Bush/Blair seem convinced that he does, he'll almost certainly use them this time, he'll have nothing to lose.

But why just Iraq? That's my point. If he was the only tyrant in the world i could understand it. But he's not. So why are we focusing on Iraq?

I_dont_giveafvk

spose you cant take on everyone at once and using the bullying thing the other guys in the gang once they saw what happend to there 'leader' wimped out

sadamm will be an example

I_dont_giveafvk

interstingly enough my scooby name comes from those days when i was told 'tell the teacher' and they will deal with it and not to take matters in my hands or id be in trouble

i thought 'i dont give a ****' and did what i believed was the right thing to do, its now my motto if i think something is right i go ahead and do it

Holy Ghost

telboy,

why are we focussing on iraq?

prioritised threat my friend.

here's a short but useful aide memoire ...

- saddam despises us.
- saddam despises the west.
- bin laden despises us.
- bin laden despises the west.
- saddam is an arab.
- bin laden is an arab.
- saddam has a confection of chemical and biological weapons.
- saddam has a fledgling nuclear programme, slowly being re-built.
- saddam has aggressive intentions toward his arab and jewish neighbours.
- saddam sponsors state terrorism overseas.
- bin laden is a terrorist.
- bin laden is actively pursuing the 'destruction' of the west and the establishment of islam fundamentalism worldwide.
- bin laden needs weaponry.
- bin laden is very rich.
- saddam has got what bin laden wants.
- if the price is right, saddam may well sell them to him.

that's the risk and that's why now. al qaeda opened the box with 9/11. it's down to us to start closing it again. by diplomacy or by force. or both.

no other state on the planet poses this threat to us. not china, not north korea. not syria. not iran.

I_dont_giveafvk

holy ghost

the voice of reason

brickboy

HG -- there seems to be an obvious point you're missing. The west armed Al-Qaida and Iraq -- see today's papers about the cover-ups of the Thatcher years.

If any terrorist organisation wants serious weaponry, Iraq is not the only shop in town. Lots of other countries would be sources of fissile material or bio / chem stock -- e.g. Turkmenistan or a number of other unstable former Soviet states. Not as policy, but on the black market.

Just my opinion -- but I'm waiting to be called an appeaser, liberal softie, etc

I_dont_giveafvk

Brick Boy

tree hugger

just kiddin

at the end of that day the only opinon that matters is Bush, for tree huggers id suggest shipping ulgly bint glend@ j@ckson over to the white house and frighten the **** out of him, she scares me she's so ****in ugly

Holy Ghost

brickboy,

yes we (and i include the US here) did supply iraq with chemical weapons and the recipes/technology transfer for their biological relations.

however, you *must must must* put these actions in the political context of the 1980s. iraq was fighting iran and the big fear over here was that iraq - as secular arabs - might be beaten by the fiercely fundamentalist iran under khomeini. the feared result was the creation of a fundamentalist islamic superstate, a new persia. hence we helped him out, as the lesser of two perceived evils. for better, for worse, that was the wisdom of the day.

the great irony is that all of this should ever have happened - but somewhere along the line, saddam stepped over the border between marginal acceptability and ruthless tyranny.

i would add that it was the french, despite british and american attempts to block it, that supplied saddam with the two nuclear reactors at osirak. that thankfully the israelis successfully bombed in 1981 and set right back saddam's ambitions to become the first arab nuclear state. an ambition he still holds today, as evidenced by his recent attempt (last year) to buy the all-important calutrons for the separation of nuclear isotopes.

also, it is worth remembering that it was the former-USSR that tooled up his entire army and air force, all part of the geopolitical power wrangles of the cold war.

you're absolutely right about the international black market for arms. bin laden could go elsewhere.

however, there is only one place he can get it from another arab, one place whose fate is inextricably linked to his own and one place that has the motivation to stick one on us by the back door.

take out of this what you will. i just say it like i see it.