IRAQ IS A DISASTER

[villain]

Originally posted by BobTheBuilder.@May 25 2005, 12:35 PM

If you are looking for something to complain about, complain on the soldiers behalf about pay... where haliburton employees make 90k to 150k a year and people who HAVE TO PROTECT THEM and DO THE FIGHTING get 16k a year.

Quoted post

 

 

Oh yeah I've been complaining about this from the get go...

 

http://www.democrats.reform.house.gov/inve...+Reconstruction

 

Lotta, lotta bullshit...

[villain]

Here's an interesting article.

 

 

 

Iraq is a bloody no man's land. America has failed to win the war. But has it lost it?

 

Ten US troops were killed in action across Iraq last week. The fighting is now sustained and ferocious.

 

By Patrick Cockburn

The Independent

15 May 2005

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle...sp?story=638525

 

In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.

 

Iraq is a bloody no man's land. America has failed to win the war. But has it lost it?

 

And in Afghanistan, the Taliban rises again for fighting season

 

"The battlefield is a great place for liars," Stonewall Jackson once said on viewing the aftermath of a battle in the American civil war.

 

The great general meant that the confusion of battle is such that anybody can claim anything during a war and hope to get away with it. But even by the standards of other conflicts, Iraq has been particularly fertile in lies. Going by the claims of President George Bush, the war should long be over since his infamous "Mission Accomplished" speech on 1 May 2003. In fact most of the 1,600 US dead and 12,000 wounded have become casualties in the following two years.

 

The ferocious resistance encountered last week by the 1,000-strong US marine task force trying to fight its way into villages around the towns of Qaim and Obeidi in western Iraq shows that the war is far from over. So far nine marines have been killed in the week-long campaign, while another US soldier was killed and four wounded in central Iraq on Friday. Meanwhile, a car bomb targeting a police patrol exploded in central Baghdad yesterday, killing at least five Iraqis and injuring 12.

 

Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, the leader of one of the Kurdish parties, confidently told a meeting in Brasilia last week that there is war in only three or four out of 18 Iraqi provinces. Back in Baghdad Mr Talabani, an experienced guerrilla leader, has deployed no fewer than 3,000 Kurdish soldiers or peshmerga around his residence in case of attack. One visitor was amused to hear the newly elected President interrupt his own relentlessly upbeat account of government achievements to snap orders to his aides on the correct positioning of troops and heavy weapons around his house.

 

There is no doubt that the US has failed to win the war. Much of Iraq is a bloody no man's land. The army has not been able to secure the short highway to the airport, though it is the most important road in the country, linking the US civil headquarters in the Green Zone with its military HQ at Camp Victory.

 

Ironically, the extent of US failure to control Iraq is masked by the fact that it is too dangerous for the foreign media to venture out of central Baghdad. Some have retreated to the supposed safety of the Green Zone. Mr Bush can claim that no news is good news, though in fact the precise opposite is true.

 

Embedded journalism fosters false optimism. It means reporters are only present where American troops are active, though US forces seldom venture into much of Iraq. Embedded correspondents bravely covered the storming of Fallujah by US marines last November and rightly portrayed it as a US military success. But the outside world remained largely unaware, because no reporters were present with US forces, that at the same moment an insurgent offensive had captured most of Mosul, a city five times larger than Fallujah.

 

Why has the vastly expensive and heavily equipped US army failed militarily in Iraq? After the crescendo of violence over the past month there should be no doubts that the US has not quashed the insurgents whom for two years American military spokesmen have portrayed as a hunted remnant of Saddam Hussein's regime assisted by foreign fighters.

 

The failure was in part political. Immediately after the fall of Saddam Hussein polls showed that Iraqis were evenly divided on whether they had been liberated or occupied. Eighteen months later the great majority both of Sunni and Shia said they had been occupied, and they did not like it. Every time I visited a spot where an American soldier had been killed or a US vehicle destroyed there were crowds of young men and children screaming their delight. "I am a poor man but I am going home to cook a chicken to celebrate," said one man as he stood by the spot marked with the blood of an American soldier who had just been shot to death.

 

Many of the resistance groups are bigoted Sunni Arab fanatics who see Shia as well as US soldiers as infidels whom it is a religious duty to kill. Others are led by officers from Saddam's brutal security forces. But Washington never appreciated the fact that the US occupation was so unpopular that even the most unsavoury groups received popular support.

 

From the start, there was something dysfunctional about the American armed forces. They could not adapt themselves to Iraq. Their massive firepower meant they won any set-piece battle, but it also meant that they accidentally killed so many Iraqi civilians that they were the recruiting sergeants of the resistance. The army denied counting Iraqi civilian dead, which might be helpful in dealing with American public opinion. But Iraqis knew how many of their people were dying.

 

The US war machine was over-armed. I once saw a unit trying to restore order at a petrol station where there was a fist fight between Iraqi drivers over queue-jumping (given that people sometimes sleep two nights in their cars waiting to fill a tank, tempers were understandably frayed). In one corner was a massive howitzer, its barrel capable of hurling a shell 30km, which the soldiers had brought along for this minor policing exercise.

 

The US army was designed to fight a high-technology blitzkrieg, but not much else. It required large quantities of supplies and its supply lines were vulnerable to roadside bombs. Combat engineers, essentially sappers, lamented that they had received absolutely no training in doing this. Even conventional mine detectors did not work. Roadsides in Iraq are full of metal because Iraqi drivers normally dispose of soft drink cans out the window. Sappers were reduced to prodding the soil nervously with titanium rods like wizards' wands. Because of poor intelligence and excessive firepower, American operations all became exercises in collective punishment. At first the US did not realise that all Iraqi men have guns and they considered possession of a weapon a sign of hostile intention towards the occupation. They confiscated as suspicious large quantities of cash in farmers' houses, not realising that Iraqis often keep the family fortune at home in $100 bills ever since Saddam Hussein closed the banks before the Gulf war and, when they reopened, Iraqi dinar deposits were almost worthless.

 

The US army was also too thin on the ground. It has 145,000 men in Iraq, but reportedly only half of these are combat troops. During the heavily publicised assault on Fallujah the US forces drained the rest of Iraq of its soldiers. "We discovered the US troops had suddenly abandoned the main road between Kirkuk and Baghdad without telling anybody," said one indignant observer. "It promptly fell under the control of the insurgents."

 

The army acts as a sort of fire brigade, briefly effective in dousing the flames, but always moving on before they are fully extinguished. There are only about 6,000 US soldiers in Nineveh province, of which Mosul is the capital and which has a population of three million. For the election on 30 January, US reserves arriving in Iraq were all sent to Mosul to raise the level to 15,000 to prevent any uprising in the city. They succeeded in doing so but were then promptly withdrawn.

 

The shortage of US forces has a political explanation. Before the war Donald Rumsfeld, the Secretary of Defence, and his neo-conservative allies derided generals who said an occupation force numbering hundreds of thousands would be necessary to hold Iraq. When they were proved wrong they dealt with failure by denying it had taken place.

 

There is a sense of bitterness among many US National Guardsmen that they have been shanghaied into fighting in a dangerous war. I was leaving the Green Zone one day when one came up to me and said he noticed that I had a limp and kindly offered to show me a quicker way to the main gate. As we walked along he politely asked the cause of my disability. I explained I had had polio many years ago. He sighed and said he too had had his share of bad luck. Since he looked hale and hearty this surprised me. "Yes," he said bitterly. "My bad luck was that I joined the Washington State National Guard which had not been called up since 1945. Two months later they sent me here where I stand good chance of being killed."

 

The solution for the White House has been to build up an Iraqi force to take the place of US soldiers. This has been the policy since the autumn of 2003 and it has repeatedly failed. In April 2004, during the first fight for Fallujah, the Iraqi army battalions either mutinied before going to the city or refused to fight against fellow Iraqis once there. In Mosul in November 2004 the 14,000 police force melted away during the insurgent offensive, abandoning 30 police stations and $40m in equipment. Now the US is trying again. By the end of next year an Iraqi army and police force totalling 300,000 should be trained and ready to fight. Already they are much more evident in the streets of Baghdad and other cities.

 

The problem is that the troops are often based on militias which have a sectarian or ethnic base. The best troops are Kurdish peshmerga. Shia units are often connected with the Badr Brigade which fought on the side of Iran in the Iran-Iraq war. When 14 Sunni farmers from the Dulaimi tribe were found executed in Baghdad a week ago the Interior Ministry had to deny what was widely believed, that they had been killed by a Shia police unit.

 

The greatest failure of the US in Iraq is not that mistakes were made but that its political system has proved incapable of redressing them. Neither Mr Rumsfeld nor his lieutenants have been sacked. Paul Wolfowitz, under-secretary of defence and architect of the war, has been promoted to the World Bank.

 

Almost exactly a century ago the Russian empire fought a war with Japan in the belief that a swift victory would strengthen the powers-that-be in St Petersburg. Instead the Tsar's armies met defeat. Russian generals, who said that their tactic of charging Japanese machine guns with sabre-wielding cavalry had failed only because their men had attacked with insufficient brio, held their jobs. In Iraq, American generals and their political masters of demonstrable incompetence are not fired. The US is turning out to be much less of a military and political superpower than the rest of the world had supposed.

[KaBar2]

Bob the Builder is pretty much on the beam with his comment about soldiers being sent to war and fighting for one another. There may be a few people who are ideologues, but most grunts are more-or-less serving for a paycheck. It's sort of a combination of things--partially patriotism, partially their self-image as a "soldier," partially macho whistling-in-the-dark, but at the end of the day, the All-Volunteer Army fights for a paycheck. It's what they do, much like a police officer. Most cops are not fanatics about enforcing the law, but it's their job. Same thing with soldiers.

 

When you sign those enlistment papers, you are making that choice. "If the shit hits the fan, send me, Gunny!" Put-me-in-Coach.

 

It's a war. People get killed, they get wounded, they get seriously injured. If you aren't ready for that possibility, don't enlist. It's kind of like riding motorcycles. Every time you put your leg over that scooter, there exists the possibility that you won't be coming home, or will be coming home fucked up. Either deal with it, or "don't ride."

[villain]

yeah that's true kabar... not a whole lot of genuine boy scouts in the military these days.

[Salafi_Zahrah]

Astaghfirallah, I didn't think this was my going to be my first post but when I saw this post, I just couldn't let this go.

 

Originally posted by BobTheBuilder.@May 24 2005, 10:41 PM

Based on my knowledge, that statment is correct. But let me go into more detail.. The Kurds want their own government and country ak. "Kurdsitan" . Problem resides in the fact that they wanna take some oil fields with em... anywho this won't be relevant till the sunnis are made the imperial bitches.

 

The Kurds are nomads and have always wanted their own government and indenpdent state but ancient "Kurdistan" they claim contains part of Iraq, Iran, Syria and Turkey. And some of them leaving in those areas have been quite brutal in trying to get it.

 

A civil war in Iraq would bring support from mmmmmaaaannny ME countries... for example since Iran is like 98% Shitte, they will support the Shittes... While im on that, if some of you guys don't klnow why the Sunnis are killing the Shittes its because the new Shitte gov is heavily influenced by Iran- or at least they think it is... right now its influenced by the US but once we leave then Iran will take that spot.

 

If you look at the first part of my name you will see I am a Salafi aka a Wahhabi (Sunni sect) and to Western Media we are called the Islamist, Fundamentalist, Extremist, or Terrorist (which is a pack of lies by the way) cause Osama and his boys are Qutbists. As far as Iran backing the Iraqi Shia you might want to think again the Persians and Arabs are not the best of friends. But Sunni will have the support of other Sunni Arab countries especially those who actually follow their religion. There has been tention between the Sunnis and the Shia before you and I were even born and it is a religious issue.

 

The Shia is the worst enemy of the US than the Sunnis they are only playing along thinking they are going to get power. Believe me they haven't forgot who encouraged them to take over Saddam and got them slathered.

 

Anyways back on track, since the countries will all wanna kill each other, we will not be involved in the fighting but we will support the Kurds no matter what- they have been our Iraqi friends for the longest. (For the followers of MERO: They are the Realest Niggas on the Block.) But we won't have to support them individually they are on the Shittes side.

 

The Kurds have been under US protection for sometime now interesting the ones protected them is the ones who supplied the weapons to gas them humm....the Kurds are not US friends nor or they on the Shi'ites side cause they want POWER too. So, stop the victum card with the Kurds.

 

The only ones I support in this war is the Muhjahadeen (Muslim fighters who happened to be some Sunni Arabs and Sunni Iraqis (mostly), Sunni Kurds and even a few Iraqi Shia ) that are fighting for true freedom which is Islam. True freedom, from the Islamic perspective, does not mean aimlessly following all of your human desires for food, drink, wealth and sex. On the contrary, freedom means being able to control one's base desires and fulfilling them in a proper and legal way. This brings one's desires in tune with what God wants for us --- only then is a person truly free.

 

While all of this is happening, we will be securing the oil pipelines.

 

Of course that was the one (if not) the key reason for going in. And I feel sorry for the US soldiers who have been deceived by their leader.

 

Salaam

[KaBar2]

I don't think anybody on here has argued that the "real reason" for overturning the Saddam government is the fact that Iraq is sitting on an ocean of oil. That oil means power, money, influence. Saddam and all of his cronies had it, and wanted to keep it. The U.S. did not want Saddam to have it, because he was using it in ways against the interests of the United States. Now that power, money and influence will be in the hands of people who (if they are smart) will not use it in ways inimical to the interests of the United States, and will choose to be allies of the United States. Either we can be one's greatest friend, or worst enemy.

 

I do not believe that the average American citizen, or our government, has any animosity towards Islam whatsoever. Contrary to popular anti-American beliefs, we freely allow people in the U.S. to build mosques, to disseminate Islamic religious literature, to hold large religious gatherings and so forth. Can the same be said of ANY ISLAMIC COUNTRY? No, it cannot. Saudi Arabia, a country supposedly allied with the U.S., routinely confiscates Christian Bibles, and prohibits any official religious worship other than the Muslim faith within their country. Iraq persecutes it's Christian minority, even today. If the United States conducted itself like this, the world's Muslims would be screaming and crying about religious persecution.

 

Muslims have every right to conduct themselves in a pious and chaste fashion, according to their religious beliefs, but they have NO RIGHT WHATSOEVER to force anyone else to join their faith or keep it's tenets, or to prevent others from worshipping as their own conscience dictates. People who believe in the Christian faith, or Judaism or Buddhism or whatever should be able to freely practice those faiths in every country of the world.

 

I would defend Muslims here, if anyone tried to oppress them. I would defend their religious rights. But I will not tolerate Muslims using force and violence to force their religion and their moral beliefs on me, or on anybody else. If you wish to pray five times a day, to refuse alcohol, to fast for Ramadan and all the rest, that is just wonderful for you. Just don't try to tell me I must do the same. "True freedom" from my point of view means making these decisions for myself, in accordance with the law, in a free country ruled by the will of the people. I recognize your rights to do the same FOR YOURSELF, but not for anyone else. If my next-door neighbor wishes to worship Allah, or Buddha, or Krishna, or Jesus, or Yaweh, or whomever, that is completely and totally up to him as an individual. The minute he starts telling me I MUST do the same, is the minute I start preparing for war.

[CACashRefund]

^^Well put.

[Salafi_Zahrah]

Originally posted by KaBar2@May 29 2005, 09:55 PM

I don't think anybody on here has argued that the "real reason" for overturning the Saddam government is the fact that Iraq is sitting on an ocean of oil.  That oil means power, money, influence.  Saddam and all of his cronies had it, and wanted to keep it.  The U.S. did not want Saddam to have it, because he was using it in ways against the interests of the United States.  Now that power, money and influence will be in the hands of people who (if they are smart) will not use it in ways inimical to the interests of the United States, and will choose to be allies of the United States.  Either we can be one's greatest friend, or worst enemy.

 

I didn't argue with that I agreed. Saddam also wanted the Euro instead to the US dollar anymore there is one of your reasons.

 

I do not believe that the average American citizen, or our government, has any animosity towards Islam whatsoever.  Contrary to popular anti-American beliefs, we freely allow people in the U.S. to build mosques, to disseminate Islamic religious literature, to hold large religious gatherings and so forth.  Can the same be said of ANY ISLAMIC COUNTRY?  No, it cannot.  Saudi Arabia, a country supposedly allied with the U.S.,  routinely confiscates Christian Bibles, and prohibits any official religious worship other than the Muslim faith within their country.  Iraq persecutes it's Christian minority, even today.  If the United States conducted itself like this, the world's Muslims would be screaming and crying about religious persecution. Muslims have every right to conduct themselves in a pious and chaste fashion, according to their religious beliefs, but they have NO RIGHT WHATSOEVER to force anyone else to join their faith or keep it's tenets, or to prevent others from worshipping as their own conscience dictates.  People who believe in the Christian faith, or Judaism or Buddhism or whatever should be able to freely practice those faiths in every country of the world.

 

I use to say that until I and the other Muslims began to notice it happening here. Just recently the masjid I attend was pressured to get rid of their Salafi Imam and I don't have tell you who they were pressured by. They allow us to build masjids but they want to controll what goes on inside. They routinely check masjids activity. And they have stop Muslims from praying at the air port here in Ohio. It's even document that Nixon said "the real enemy of democracy is not communism, it is fundamentalist Islam". Why is it only bad to in the west to be a fundamentalist thats what I am I follow the fundamentals of Islam thats a true Muslim (not an extremist).

 

Interesting the Saudi Arabia is the ony one you mention. That's because it is the "ONLY" Muslim country that doesn't allow churches to be built there and that's because it is the birth place of Islam and the Phophet (pbuh) and we wish to have it to ourselves. And why would they confiscates Christian Bibles when we believe in the holy books of Torah, Bible, the Psalm of David, and the Qur'an. They just don't allow the churches built but they can read their Bible, pray, etc. In the other Muslim countries non-Muslims are free to practice their religion as they please churches and everything. And to not let them practice their religion is against Shari'ah (Islamic Law). "Iraq persecutes it's Christian minority, even today." Wrong, the Jew and Christian community in Iraq were safer under Saddam (but still a bad Muslim) cause if Shia are put in power they will be persecuted. Also according to the Shia it is allowed from them to persecute the Sunnis.

 

 

I would defend Muslims here, if anyone tried to oppress them.  I would defend their religious rights.  But I will not tolerate Muslims using force and violence to force their religion and their moral beliefs on me, or on anybody else.  If you wish to pray five times a day, to refuse alcohol, to fast for Ramadan and all the rest, that is just wonderful for you.  Just don't try to tell me I must do the same.  "True freedom" from my point of view means making these decisions for myself, in accordance with the law, in a free country ruled by the will of the people.  I recognize your rights to do the same FOR YOURSELF, but not for anyone else.  If my next-door neighbor wishes to worship Allah, or Buddha, or Krishna, or Jesus, or Yaweh, or whomever, that is completely and totally up to him as an individual.  The minute he starts telling me I MUST do the same, is the minute I start preparing for war.

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I'm not saying there aren't any bad Muslims cause there are but they do not rep Islam they are innovators cause only Allah can guide we can not convert you to Islam it is not forced. The largest Muslim country in the world today is Indonesia --- and there were never any battles fought there. Islam is fastest growing religion in the US even without it being on TV like church services are.

 

This is the difference Muslims believe "True Freedom" is from Allah cause people don't really know what they want thats why there is contant law changes and until the US and anyone else involved realizes this they will never understand why we keep fighting and why they don't want them out of Iraq.

 

And some of this is a little personal to me cause my ex-husband is a retired military police man who was stationed in Iraq and other parts of the Middle East during most of his time. He was one of the many US soldiers that were involved in the killing of millions of Iraqis under the UN sactions before this war. He also suffers from Gulf War syndrome. And because he is Muslim now the government has been watching him like a hawk and the FBI even paid him visit. And guessed what they asked him, "Are you Salafi?"

 

Salam

[POIESIS]

"they have NO RIGHT WHATSOEVER to force anyone else to join their faith or keep it's tenets"-kabar

 

this is dripping with irony.

[villain]

Welcome Salafi. Good to hear from someone who knows. I appreciate a diversity of opinion.

There does seem to be a confusion of fundamentalist and extremist.... and even with wahabbi and sunni.

I must admit that even I thought wahabbi was a faction of extremists within the Sunni population. I had no idea it was a term generally refering to Sunni.

Thank you for clarifying that.

[Salafi_Zahrah]

If you would like to more about it here is a great link http://www.thewahhabimyth.com

[!@#$%]

Originally posted by KaBar2@May 29 2005, 09:55 PM

I do not believe that the average American citizen, or our government, has any animosity towards Islam whatsoever. Contrary to popular anti-American beliefs, we freely allow people in the U.S. to build mosques, to disseminate Islamic religious literature, to hold large religious gatherings and so forth. Can the same be said of ANY ISLAMIC COUNTRY? No, it cannot.

 

Muslims have every right to conduct themselves in a pious and chaste fashion, according to their religious beliefs, but they have NO RIGHT WHATSOEVER to force anyone else to join their faith or keep it's tenets, or to prevent others from worshipping as their own conscience dictates. People who believe in the Christian faith, or Judaism or Buddhism or whatever should be able to freely practice those faiths in every country of the world.

 

I would defend Muslims here, if anyone tried to oppress them. I would defend their religious rights. But I will not tolerate Muslims using force and violence to force their religion and their moral beliefs on me, or on anybody else.

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are you living in a dream world?

the united states government hates islam.

it is obvious that many people in power are afraid of it.

 

mosques and islamic organizations are constantly under scrutiny.

can this be said of the catholic church? who perpetrated vicious crimes against who knows how many children? what about our own religious zealots?

constantly trying to undermine the islamic faith.

these people are not preaching the message of acceptance.

they are pro-war, anti-science, ant-women's rights.

look around at the fucking political climate iin the u.s.

there are shitloads of christians in office RIGHT NOW trying to IMPOSE thier views upon the american people.

haven't you noticed that gay people still cannot get married bacause of religion?

 

for example:

ACLU Challenges Misuse of Taxpayer Dollars to Fund Religion in Nationwide Abstinence-Only-Until-Marriage Program

May 16, 2005

http://www.aclu.org/ReproductiveRights/Rep...m?ID=18240&c=30

 

and as far as hating islam

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/834...85EFE28FF97.htm

'mosques vandalized"

and "construction of new mosque PROTESTED"

 

and from AMNESTY INTL

Amnesty's 50-page report documents cases of people pulled over by police and treated as suspects solely based on their looks, as well as people of Middle Eastern and south Asian descent who do not call police or the fire department because they fear they will be targeted based on their race.

Many of the seven-million-estimated Muslims in the United States have complained of racial profiling by the national authorities since 9/11.

In its ninth annual Muslim civil rights report, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) documented an unprecedented increase of 70 percent of anti-Muslim violence over the previous year.

Nearly 57 percent of American Muslims polled by CAIR in 2002 complained of having experienced bias or discrimination since the September 11 attacks and 87 percent know of a fellow Muslim who experienced discrimination.

 

http://islamonline.net/English/News/2004-0...article01.shtml

 

http://web.amnesty.org/report2005/usa-summary-eng

 

wake up kabar.

you are living in a fantasy.

[villain]

Originally posted by Salafi_Zahrah@Jun 1 2005, 08:01 AM

If you would like to more about it here is a great link http://www.thewahhabimyth.com

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Alright, thanks for sharing that.

It's disturbing to think that such a gross overgeneralization of wahhabism could become so prevalent in the mainstream media and thus in the american mind.

[POIESIS]

i don't think you can make a full argument that the US gov't 'hates islam'.

for one, they are aligned with 2 of the most hardcore islamist states on the

planet and have been for some time, including and after 9/11. or maybe they

do and national/corporate interests trump everything else.

i don't know, seems like an odd assertion.

[villain]

I'm pretty sure in government, national/corporate interests trump everything else, but a strong case of racism could be made for a significant portion of the population I would say. And sometimes this can translate to government functionaries.

[POIESIS]

oh, i have no doubt there is racism in the ruling class, but to

cohere it to policy concerns...it's obviously more complicated.

[!@#$%]

haha

you make an excellent point.

[KaBar2]

Symbols----

 

No, I am not living in a dream world, but I am living in Houston, Texas, supposedly a hotbed of right-wing conservatism and Christian fundamentalism, with about six or seven masjids and mosques within a five-minute drive of my home. Not to mention several Buddhist temples, etc., etc. I can't see that they are being molested in the slightest--they have large signs that say things like "_____ MASJID, ISLAMIC WOMEN'S SCHOOL," and "_____ MOSQUE" in large letters outside. The Buddhist temple has a sixty-foot tall golden statue of Buddha or somebody that dominates the entire area around the temple. As far as the FBI visiting the Muslims, give me a break. I live in Texas, where the BATFE and the FBI burned to death eighty Christian men, women and children to test the waters for a series of BATFE raids to confiscate guns, and damned near set off a civil war. When the Muslims can report that the FBI has been crashing tanks through the mosque and injecting tear gas and flammable dry cleaning fluid into living quarters, then I'll think they are getting treatment as bad as the FBI gave the Branch Davidian Christians at Waco.

 

Nobody is harming any mosques in my neighborhood. So what are you telling me, that the supposedly redneck Texans are more tolerant than the people wherever you live? People here understand that the Muslims here have no nefarious intentions against the people or the government of the U.S. They are just hard working immigrants who happen to be Muslim. But I do wonder where the mass demonstrations of outraged American Muslims were after 9/11. Why were they not in the front lines of the demonstrations, loudly remonstrating against the real terrorists of Taliban and Al-Quaida, and saying "SEND ME, MR. PRESIDENT! I speak the language of the terrorists, and I'll just be more than glads to DEFEND MY COUNTRY! Do our armed forces need interpreters? I volunteer! Do our intelligence services need interrogators? I volunteer! SEND ME, so I can demonstrate for the whole world to see that American Muslims are just as patriotic and determined to defend our nation as anybody else!"

 

We have millions of Muslim immigrants in the U.S. WHY ARE THEY NOT FLOODING THE RECRUITING STATIONS? You know, during WWII, the U.S. government interned thousands and thousands of Japanese-Americans. In their camps, they saluted the U.S. flag every morning. The kids joined Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts. The young men volunteered for front-line combat duty in the European Theatre. Despite the fact that their mothers and fathers and grandparents were sitting in an internment camp, the military-age men volunteered to fight fascism.

 

So where are the Muslim volunteers?

[villain]

Branch Davidian Christians? That's news to me. The media and everyone were saying they were some weirdo cult where the leader (their god) gets to molest all the womens and children.

 

We've had muslim volunteers. But it's easy to become disillusioned with this war. You know this. Our credibility has been in jeapordy. The reasons for this war are not even clear.

Not only that but I happen to know that attacks on muslims, verbal physical or whatever, is fairly common in the military. And yes, terms like raghead are thrown about quite casually. I would like to see a study on the treatment of muslims in the military. I don't think I've seen one. But I think the results would show that all have suffered at least verbal abuse at some point, with some suffering more than that, depending on the atmosphere of the particular unit.

Krauts, Japs, Gooks, and now ragheads... You've been in the marines Kabar... you know what it's like. The hatred can become blinding.

 

*Here's a story about a couple of national guard units. One from east PA, one from west PA. The one from east PA was placed under the command of the one from west PA. Well the one from east PA as you would imagine was primarily black and even some muslims, while the one from west PA was mostly white, and was rife with KKK members. Needless to say the west PA unit ran the east PA unit ragged... and they could not do a damn thing about it.

Yeah... it's not supposed to be that way. But that's the reality of it. Despite all our regulations and EO representatives, things never quite work out they way they are supposed to.

[hobo knife]

Originally posted by KaBar2@Jun 3 2005, 02:43 AM

Why were they not in the front lines of the demonstrations, loudly remonstrating against the real terrorists of Taliban and Al-Quaida, and saying "SEND ME, MR. PRESIDENT! I speak the language of the terrorists, and I'll just be more than glads to DEFEND MY COUNTRY! Do our armed forces need interpreters? I volunteer!

So where are the Muslim volunteers?

Quoted post

 

Seeing that they are muslim, they are probably educated about what is really going on in the middle east and understand that 9-11 was retaliation for even more heinous crimes! And therefore they don't want to volunteer to fight in a war based on lies...

 

...or they were illegaly arrested for little or no reason and tortured in cuba!

 

you see, it was only the DUMB americans that volunteered after 9/11....to fight in bush's war.

[CACashRefund]

Originally posted by villain@Jun 3 2005, 05:36 AM

Branch Davidian Christians? That's news to me. The media and everyone were saying they were some weirdo cult where the leader (their god) gets to molest all the womens and children.

Quoted post

 

They were christian, David Koresh was suppose to be the reincarnation of christ, some sort of new messiah and they were stocking up all those weapons to prepare for the end of the world or something.

[POIESIS]

whoa, the assertion that muslims should have been on the 'front lines'

demonstrating after 9/11...please..

for one, right after 9/11 the meme warfare had started and islamic

terrorism was on everyone's lips. two, any middle easterner

with a brain was inside their home, with their family, with the blinds shut

and the doors locked. three, ignorance is healthy in america, and while

a huge chunk of the population has the mental faculties to process 9/11

in a historical and contextual manner, many don't, and have, and in fact

did, go after middle eastern looking people. several were killed, untold more

harrassed and shit kicked, and it continues today.

[!@#$%]

kabar, i offer you news coverage of muslim intolerance and anti-muslim rhetoric in america

and you ask me why they are not flooding recruiting stations.

well how the fuck should i know?

 

you said you would defend any persecuted muslims, and that isn't happening in this country.

well, actually it is.

last time i checked, texas was part of the united states.

 

time to get out there and defend your muslim brethren's rights kabar, just like you said you would ! although you are backpedaling nicely as usual.

now you say they have to come under the same treatment as branch davidians, THEN you will think they are living under tough times in the u.s.

hahaha.

 

just because it isn't happening within five miles of your home does not mean it isn't happening, talk about living with some blinders on.

[!@#$%]

REAL FACTS on WWII japanese internment camps

 

The evacuation order commenced the round-up of 120,000 Americans of Japanese heritage to one of 10 internment camps...

 

Conditions in the U.S. Camps

 

The U.S. internment camps were overcrowded and provided poor living conditions. According to a 1943 report published by the War Relocation Authority (the administering agency), Japanese Americans were housed in "tarpaper-covered barracks of simple frame construction without plumbing or cooking facilities of any kind."

 

Coal was hard to come by, and internees slept under as many blankets as they were alloted.

Food was rationed out at an expense of 48 cents per internee, and served by fellow internees in a mess hall of 250-300 people.

 

Leadership positions within the camps were only offered to the Nisei, or American-born, Japanese. The older generation, or the Issei, were forced to watch as the government promoted their children and ignored them.

 

Eventually the government allowed internees to leave the concentration camps if they enlisted in the U.S. Army. This offer was not well received. Only 1,200 internees chose to do so.

 

http://www.infoplease.com/spot/internment1.html

 

wake up from the dream.

[SPORTO]

Quote Hobo Knife

 

"you see, it was only the DUMB americans that volunteered after 9/11....to fight in bush's war."

 

DUMB as in, Deluded

DUMB as in, Uninformed

DUMB as in, Misguided

DUMB as in, Bastards

[Stereotype V.001]

"Seeing that they are muslim, they are probably educated about what is really going on in the middle east and understand that 9-11 was retaliation for even more heinous crimes! And therefore they don't want to volunteer to fight in a war based on lies...

 

...or they were illegaly arrested for little or no reason and tortured in cuba!

 

you see, it was only the DUMB americans that volunteered after 9/11....to fight in bush's war. "

 

 

YO DUDE I 2TALY FEEL U!!!! I WATCHED FARENHEIT 911 AFTER I HERD NELLY ND P DADY DNT LIKE BUSH ETHER ND I WUZ ALL LIEK "FUCK THAT NIGGA!!"

 

THE HEINZOUS (NOT THE CONDIMENT FOUND ON HOTDOGSS,C LOLZ!) CRIMES WE COMMITED WERE 2TALY WACK 2!!! LOLZ!!!! I HATE US!!(Note: no crimes were mentioned. This makes it foolish for me to jump on the bandwagon. Maybe it's in reference to our support of Israel, or maybe the CIA and SF involvment in the region in the past 30 years. I don't give a shit.)

 

 

YEA THE ARMY IS WICKERD GHAY, LOL, THOSE IDIOTS R LIKE ALL GUINNA DIE ND STUFF!!! DUMBYS1!!! I AM GOING TO PENALIZE(LOLZ IT SOUNDS LIKE PENIS KINDA) THE ARMED COMMUNITY EVEN THOUGH THEY DONT DECIDE ONE WHAT CONFLICTS THEY GO INTOfb BECAUSE I AM AN IGNORANT PIECE OF HUMAN EXCREMENT!!! LOLZ1!@BBL IM GOING TO LIZTEN 2 MAD UNDAHGROUND RAP!!!!

[Guest KING BLING]

1) Kabar, David Koresh was a cult leader whose religion of choice was Christianity - He slept with little girls, he amassed guns - 2 things my neighborhood pastor doesn't do. Apparently yours does...also this wasn't going to lead to a civil war, I don't agree with how the U.S handled it, but come on, you and your guns buddies talking about war is not "almost"...

 

2) Kabar (your mention of your Housston experience), and really anyone here: When someone presents stats from credible sources, you can not use your limited, passive observations to counter them. These fallacies are everywhere here, you have to present a seperate credible source for the info. The logic you guys rely on would be like me saying there is no Iraq because I haven't seen it...

 

3) Hobo Knife, I think you're right - most Muslims with ties to other countries probably get the real dirt from sources other than the main stream media and thus don't agree with the war. I would take it one step further and say that it's likely a combo of not wanting to betray there own kind and being a believer of Islam means living peacefully, going to war only when you have to, and doing so under the right reasons and behaving well...but also there is no evidence given by any of you that Muslims don't serve, do any of you know the stats? Can you show wether they serve, proportionate to their numbers, any less than white christians who already serve proportionately less than there percentage of the population?

 

4) A new memo just was released regarding the lies set up to justify this war...

http://michaelmoore.com/words/index.php?id=2974

 

The document said the only way the allies could justify military action was to place Saddam Hussein in a position where he ignored or rejected a United Nations ultimatum ordering him to co-operate with the weapons inspectors. But it warned this would be difficult.

 

“It is just possible that an ultimatum could be cast in terms which Saddam would reject,” the document says. But if he accepted it and did not attack the allies, they would be “most unlikely” to obtain the legal justification they needed.

[dumy]

Originally posted by Stereotype V.001@Jun 9 2005, 06:05 PM

"Seeing that they are muslim, they are probably educated about what is really going on in the middle east and understand that 9-11 was retaliation for even more heinous crimes! And therefore they don't want to volunteer to fight in a war based on lies...

 

...or they were illegaly arrested for little or no reason and tortured in cuba!

 

you see, it was only the DUMB americans that volunteered after 9/11....to fight in bush's war. "

 

 

YO DUDE I 2TALY FEEL U!!!! I WATCHED FARENHEIT 911 AFTER I HERD NELLY ND P DADY DNT LIKE BUSH ETHER ND I WUZ ALL LIEK "FUCK THAT NIGGA!!"

 

THE HEINZOUS (NOT THE CONDIMENT FOUND ON HOTDOGSS,C LOLZ!) CRIMES WE COMMITED WERE 2TALY WACK 2!!! LOLZ!!!! I HATE US!!(Note: no crimes were mentioned. This makes it foolish for me to jump on the bandwagon. Maybe it's in reference to our support of Israel, or maybe the CIA and SF involvment in the region in the past 30 years. I don't give a shit.)

 

 

YEA THE ARMY IS WICKERD GHAY, LOL, THOSE IDIOTS R LIKE ALL GUINNA DIE ND STUFF!!! DUMBYS1!!! I AM GOING TO PENALIZE(LOLZ IT SOUNDS LIKE PENIS KINDA) THE ARMED COMMUNITY EVEN THOUGH THEY DONT DECIDE ONE WHAT CONFLICTS THEY GO INTOfb BECAUSE I AM AN IGNORANT PIECE OF HUMAN EXCREMENT!!! LOLZ1!@BBL IM GOING TO LIZTEN 2 MAD UNDAHGROUND RAP!!!!

Quoted post

 

stop being a problem..

[mentor]

patriotism's for people who dont read

[KaBar2]

Whatever harrassment the Muslims are receiving at this point is minimal. We have mass meetings of Muslims in football stadiums here without even any protestors at all. No mosques have been harmed by anything more than petty vandalism. Back during the immediate post 9/11 period there were a few incidences like kids hitting up the signs outside of the mosques with things like "USA," or "Go home," but that was it. There may have been more serious vandalism in other parts of the U.S., but not in Houston.

 

I live in a racially mixed neighborhood. All around me are neighbors from the Middle East, China, Vietnam, Latin America, etc. The nearby high school has only 15% white students. The largest racial group is Latinos, then blacks, then whites, then Asians. There are mosques and Islamic schools all around here. NONE of them have been vandalized. There have been quite a few convenience store clerks who are Middle Eastern or Vietnamese who have been murdered in robberies, all by black armed robbers.

This neighborhood is rapidly becoming majority Asian. Last weekend on Bellaire Blvd., the Vietnamese-American community unveiled a large, privately funded war memorial to the men who fought in the Vietnam War: a statue of an American soldier and an ARVN soldier, side-by-side. Asian businesses are proliferating at a very rapid pace. Bellaire Blvd. is becoming "Little Vietnam." The percentage of the population that is black is decreasing, because in this area, they tended to rent or lease homes, rather than buy. The absentee (white) landlords are selling the homes to the Chinese- and Vietnamese-Americans, and the black renters are leaving the area. As the black residents move out, and the Asians move in, there is a palpable change in the atmosphere of gang violence, gang tags, etc., etc.

 

The bottom line is that different cultures have different values and different behaviors. When a mostly white neighborhood begins to become multi-racial, it results in "white flight." That has definately happened in this neighborhood. The people that sold out and left sold their homes at a bargain price. The newcomers got their homes at a great discount. They remodeled, they upgraded. Now the neighborhood is improving. When I sell my home, I'll probably get twice what I paid for it, and more. I'll probably move to the country, out west of San Antonio. Eventually.

 

If you have never seen "Waco: The Rules of Engagement," you should watch it. It is a documentary film made about the Federal attack on the Branch Davidians. The Davidians are Christians--they are a branch of the Seventh-Day Adventist Church. Yes, David Koresh was a nut case. So what? Supposedly, he married polygamously and had underage wives. The state of Texas has an agency to deal with that sort of problem, called Child Protective Services. They investigated, and interviewed all the children. The kids denied it.

 

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (BATFE) had (and still has) NO JURISDICTION in child abuse cases. Their unprovoked attack on the Branch Davidians was totally unnecessary. Their inside informant, a guy named Rodriguez, called the BATFE command post and TOLD them that the Davidians knew the BATFE was coming. They did it anyway.

 

They could have walked up there to Mount Carmel and arrested David Koresh any old time they wanted to do so. The Sheriff had arrested all the Branch Davidian leaders before, on murder charges stemming from a fight within the group a couple of years before. Nobody resisted. It was self defense, and Koresh and his guys were found 'not guilty."

 

The BATFE wanted a big grandstanding "TV bust" for the news media, because they were coming up for budget hearings in Congress, and wanted to bolster their image, more like the FBI. In fact, they don't put "BATFE" on their raid jackets. It says "ATF", like "FBI."

 

When they attacked the Davidians (the bullet holes in the steel front doors were all "incoming," no "outgoing") the Davidians defended themselves. Four BATFE agents were killed, eleven seriously wounded. The BATFE force ran out of ammunition and had to retreat with their hands raised in surrender, dragging their wounded and dead.

 

The BATFE is damned lucky that they were facing a bunch of Bible students and not some group like the Texas Constitutional Militia, which is filled with well-trained and well-armed Army and Marine Corps veterans, as well as sailors, airmen and civilians who were trained by the vets. Had the Branch Davidian compound been held by the TCM, they would have immediately counter-attacked when the BATFE ran out of ammunition, and there would have been no retreat back to safety for the Federal murderers. However, the Branch Davidians, being Christians, held their fire and allowed the BATFE to retreat, even though several women and children had been cut down by the initial BATFE fusillade. I tell you right now, had I been inside there, and had my wife or my daughter been wounded or killed, I would have shown the BATFE absolutely no mercy. NONE.

 

The FBI stand-off lasted 51 days. It wouldn't have lasted 51 minutes except that the Davidians were well armed. In then end, the FBI lied, broke Federal laws and violated the rights of the people within Mt. Carmel.

 

The FBI eventually used combat engineer vehicles (CMV's---they look just like tanks) and crushed large parts of the building. They punched numerous air holes all over the building, and injected CS gas inside with long, boom-like pipes on the CMV's. The CS gas was dissolved in a flammable liquid used in dry-cleaning. The building was basically turned into a huge incinerator. When it caught fire, it burned so rapidly than only a few people managed to escape at all, and the ones that did were horribly burned. None of the children survived, they all burned to death, along with most of the women.

 

The Texas Rangers were so angry at the BATFE and FBI, that they told them to get out of Texas and not come back. The FBI lied, they falsified evidence, they removed evidence from the state without permission, they ignored Texas state law, they ignored basic principles of evidence gathering, they deliberately compromised the crime scene, and then they bulldozed the whole mess up so that nobody could ever find out the whole story.

 

If you have any desire to understand the militia movement and how and why it developed, rather than just sticking with the same old lies told by the Clinton Administration, watch "Waco: The Rules of Engagement," and research the Waco massacre online.

 

I was in the militia movement for years, but the militia organizations themselves "stood down" after the Oklahoma City bombing (which had NOTHING to do with the militia movement, and everything to do with a racist, white supremacist group at a place called Elohim City in Oklahoma), and especially after George W. Bush was elected.

 

Racism was not tolerated in any of the militia functions I attended. There were some black people present and participating in many of the gatherings, as well as many Latinos, but mostly whites, of course.

 

Sorry about the long post. It's not a subject that lends itself easily to a one or two-sentence post.