horrific images of unbelievable cruelty

[mvpel]

Yes.  I really am.  It's not so much that I don't see it.  It's just that I don't have any right to go in and play God.

"Gee, buddy, what tough luck to find yourself hanging by your ankles in a government torture chamber with your blood dripping up your nose! I feel bad for you. I hope you can figure out a way to overthrow your own brutal dictator.  Meanwhile I'll be refraining from playing God."

On the contrary, your callous disregard for the suffering of the iraqi people under two bombing campaigns separated in time by years of sanctions which brought suffering and death to untold millions is demonstrated by your trivializing said suffering by clapping your hands in glee at the anticlimactic opening of a stupid stock exchange.  "Praise Allah!  We can finally buy stocks on the open market.  And I only had to sacrifice seven of my children to American bombing and starvation campaigns!" 

The reason the "millions" are "untold" is because you're swallowing a big long line of bullcrap, Caleb.  If you even bothered to do the math on some of these death claims you'd instantly see the splitting seams struggling to hold the propaganda together.

The sanctions were designed to spare the Iraqi people, but they brought suffering to the precise extent that they were used as a tool by the leaders of a corrupt and brutal regime and its corrupt and venal enablers in France and elsewhere to enrich themselves.

Pointing to the rapid growth of the Iraqi economy is not trivializing the dire difficulties they faced in the past under Ba'athist brutality, any more than marveling at the beauty of the Mohegan Sun casino in Connecticut means trivializing the brutality and treachery that natives faced under Democrat President Andrew Jackson and others.

And what does any of this have to do with freedom in New Hampshire, really?

[d_goddard]

If you do in fact see all immigration as a good thing, and wish to see open borders, I can agree with you, provided that schools are first funded in the same way that grocery stores are - through individual purchasing decisions and private and limited, means-tested public charity - rather than through unlimited withdrawals from my pockets by force.

We're in 100% agreement. Open borders with Soviet-style education (or any other such social services) amounts to theft on a massive scale.

And what does any of this have to do with freedom in New Hampshire, really?

Exactly!
Unless (or until NH) secedes from the union, the opinion of any legislator in the NH State House is just a fart in the wind -- the Feds control that border, and set the policy on how it will be handled. What we can usefully affect here in FSNH is that the schools remain locally funded. That in itself will be a mother-of-all-battles.

[Caleb]

yawn

so now we're having a contest to see who can post the most horrific images?  ok ... but I warn you, I'm fighting the team with the greatest atrocities in the history of mankind.  I'll start with a little abu ghraib to warm up.  Or ... am I just succumbing to the Democrat noise machine on this photo, mike?


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[Quantrill]

C'mon guys.  Do we really need those pics?

[David]

Why did'nt the US assasinate the bastard, his sons, and all of or as many as possible top gov't officials?  Then open the US to the innoscent persons wanting to leave that hell hole? 
My guess is the chickenhawks and the legacy building generals are afraid of tit for tat, aka what comes around goes around. 
Yeah, it is easier to send a bunch of guys who agreed to "defend", and start a war.  Collateral damage is murder.  If they were'nt dead, the japanese that were nuked when they had no airforce, and almost no navy, could vouch for that. 

[Braddogg]

C'mon guys.  Do we really need those pics?

I understand where you're coming from, but at some point we have to see what we're talking about.  It's sometimes a little too easy, I think, to distance ourselves from what we're actually talking about when we talk foreign policy; that is, it's easy to talk about whether or not the US should invade Iraq when we're removed from the human consequences.  Graphic images like this help envoke empathy for the real, live humans who are suffering through US foreign policy decisions (in either direction).

[Lloyd Danforth]

Yes.....if you have no imagination

[Braddogg]

Yes.....if you have no imagination

If you've never seen real photos of bad things, then you have no basis for imagining what it looks like.  It'd be like trying to get someone to envision a cow when they had never seen one -- it's not a unique failure of that peron's imagination if they don't get it right.  Going back to the photos, even seeing gory stuff in movies is different than seeing a photo of a real torture.  That scene from Reservoir Dogs is what pops into mind, where the guy gets his ear cut off.  It's very graphic, but it's not the same as seeing Daniel Perl's beheading.

[mvpel]

so now we're having a contest to see who can post the most horrific images?  ok ... but I warn you, I'm fighting the team with the greatest atrocities in the history of mankind.  I'll start with a little abu ghraib to warm up.  Or ... am I just succumbing to the Democrat noise machine on this photo, mike?

So the guy was shot in the head.  Unlike being strung up by one's ankles and brutally beaten, there are a large number of reasons why someone might have been shot in the head.

And unlike atrocities committed by Americans, which are normally punished under the law, the atrocities committed by the Ba'athist regime were sanctioned under the law, and the government rapists had "Official Rapist" badges.

If you can't see the difference, you're really not thinking rationally.

[Tom Sawyer]

Why don't we invade every country in the world that does bad things?

All this talk of how bad Iraq was are just rationalizations for "staying the course". We didn't seem to care about them torturing their people when we had Saddam on our side. The same nonsense happens over and over again. It all goes back to trying to run the world...

We supported the Shah of Iran, pissing off their people and that lead to Iran having a revolution where they lost ground to the zealots. We end up creating the opposite of our intended goals.

[error]

I didn't support the Shah of Iran or Saddam Hussein. You probably didn't either.

Free your mind: Stop using "We" when you mean "the jokers in Washington who style themselves the U.S. government."

[aries]

if this actually is a contest for disgusting images i can win hands down... i do spend half my day on 4chan...

[aries]

Why did'nt the US assasinate the bastard, his sons, and all of or as many as possible top gov't officials?  Then open the US to the innoscent persons wanting to leave that hell hole? 

Because we have two parties with conflicting interests almost equally in power, so there have to be "comprimises" and "bipartisanship" which equals the worst of both worlds.

[CNHT]

chickenhawks

Child molestors? I think you mean 'warhawks'. LOL

A 'chicken hawk' is an adult who preys on minors for sex.

[anthonybpugh]

I thought this was a chicken hawk.