If America were Iraq, What Would It be Like?

[Olivier]

two threads of mine have been edited of late, apparently by a moderator




the titles that have been altered are

"the real cause of the death of Arafat"

as been changed to
"Politicizing the Yasser Arafat's cause of death; or, what we don't know can hurt you.
http://www.israelforum.com/board/sho...1&postcount=70

I do not see what the added insinuation means... or what value added it brings

Bombing of French soldiers : Israelis involved

to

Bombing of French soldiers : Israelis involved, Satan unavailable for comment
http://www.israelforum.com/board/sho...&postcount=126

I had not into of putting any satanic reference in the discussion

Overall, the objective of this person is harassment.
Arbitrary harassment because he does not share my opinions. Why leave intact threads which are either pure provocation of plain false and modify titles respecting forum rule? Why choose to distord the name of the threads I started?

let's see one example on naming a thread :

France: we will use the UN-mandate to continue the occupation of the Ivory Coast => this is plain lie, no french declaration was made about "occupating ivory coast".

and guess what, the guy who created the thread has been promoted moderator ! Now he can toy with what I say in total impunity...

Now If you want to see delirant threads titles just browse the forum..



Now what should I do ?
- I have first protested to the forum owner (newsguy), who answered that moderators are fully allowed change thread titles. This practice is discretionary and completely arbitrary. Any moderator can change a thread name to what he wants. Just because he feels like it.

Ok, now what do I do ? I can either
=========================
solution #1 - accept that the thread I start have a title perverting what the idea I defend.

solution #2 - stop posting and conceide victory to the harasser. This will also overjoy all here that do not share my opinions.


Now although it is certainly not good to give in to harassment, I have choose solution #2. As I wrote to the forum owner "you might as well have the guts to ask me to leave politely and I certainly would not insist".
But the idea that someone can pull strings and make me say what I do not want to say, just because he finds it fun is completely disgusting to me.

I do not know for you, maybe some of you find it fantastic to read a forum like this, but for me this is more than just hindering freedom of expression, this is plain pervert.

So bye all !


Overall I hope I have contributed adding value to the forum and interest to the reader.
I tried to start threads worthy of real debate and to documents my posts as well as I could! I tried not to answer provocation by avoiding the most aggressive of hateful posters.

On the statistic side, I started no less than 113 threads and wrote 1250 posts, which means I easily dedicated two hundred hours to the forum.

these are some of the threads I am the most proud of , Bush is elected, what can we expect in the next years?
• Good news for the Saudis and the iranians: Crude prices hit 21 year high
• Fight against Global warming : Kyoto Protocol becomes international treaty.
• teaching democracy (it's a picture !)
• If America were Iraq, What Would It be Like?
• Another legend down the drain : Iraq's Disappearing Elections (this one is likely to make a comeback)
• a no-win war against 1.3 billion Muslims
• Israel Has Long Spied on U.S alleges Counterpunch (I think this thread title has been manipulated as well)
• Moore's anti-Bush film wins top Cannes award
• Arab-Israeli Retaliation Tragic, Unhelpful
• Europe must not define itself against America
• about the dangers of blurring the lines between humanitarians workers and armies
• French troops deployed on Sudan border
• Military Draft in the US?
• Reaction in France on Sharon calling french jews to "leave immediately
• Torture by US forces is Iraq is not just isolated incidents (that thread is probably the one with the longuest debate : 481 posts)
• How can the damage of the torture photos be repaired? (with now a variant with the shooting of an unarmed wounded insurged in a mosque)
• Are we de-Baathifying or re-Baathifying this week? (that one was not a success, by it was fun)
• Rebirth at Ground Zero (don’t start optimistics threads here : no success)
• Real politics starting inside iraq? (ditto)
• U.S. Drops Effort to Gain Immunity for Its Troops
• 9/11 panel says there was ‘‘no credible evidence’’ that Saddam had ties with al-Qaida
• Big demonstration in Paris today against anti-Semitism
• europe grows : Israelis rush on europeans passport
• hostilities ending in Falluja? (lucky I put an interrogation mark on that one.. that was started in june)
• France to expel Muslim cleric over abuse

And it makes me extremely sad to realize all these titles can be perverted anytime…



…. So I have decided, that I prefer to remove some of my posts than to have what I mean manipulated against my will, it’s a bit sad, but it seems reasonable to withdraw from a debate when the debate turns out to be a fake. And of course I do not approve of the hatred shown by the people who manipulate this forum to their ends.

[KettleWhistle]

good one !

Nope, just another stupid one.

What if, from time to time, the US Army besieged Virginia Beach, killing hundreds of armed members of the Christian Soldiers? What if entire platoons of the Christian Soldiers militia holed up in Arlington National Cemetery, and were bombarded by US Air Force warplanes daily, destroying thousands of graves and pulverizing the Vietnam Memorial? What if the National Council of Churches had to call for a popular march of thousands of believers to converge on the National Cathedral to stop the US Army from demolishing it to get at a rogue band of the Timothy McVeigh Memorial Brigades?

We'd ask them not to forget the Michigan Millitia, and to take care of the KKK headquaters down in Indiana while they are at it.

[andak01]

Olivier, that one is a bit out there. But there are some things we should ask ourselves. How would we fair if 75% of our jobs and our police force disappeared within a week. Would there be rioting? Would the worst elements of society (i.e. the best armed) become vigilantes in the face of that? And how long would that kind of semi-anarchy have to rule before we would hope for some structure, anything to replace it. A lot of people in Iraq prior to the war were living fairly normal (lower middle class by our standards) existences. Iraq was never as poor as Afghanistan. Many college educated people did their jobs as accountants, doctors and engineers. I don't know what the statute of limitations would be for making things better, but we must be nearing it. I hope I'm wrong, but I don't see a bright future.

[TheyAre]

Uh, yeah, right, Andak. After all, it only took the United States 12 years to form an effective government after the rebellion against England started in 1775, and 90 years until we became truly a single country after the North defeated the South in the Civil War.

It hasn't even been two years in Iraq, and despite the problems and the silliness of the laughable gallery - Juan Cole is really quite amusing when you consider that people actually take him seriously - it is on the path of success, especially when you consider that insurgents have now focused their more spectacular attacks on Iraqis rather than Americans. They can't militarily stand up to the Americans anymore, so they've moved on to weaker targets that don't garner them support for attacking. The insurgents are killing their popular base by attacking Iraqis.

[Olivier]

especially when you consider that insurgents have now focused their more spectacular attacks on Iraqis rather than Americans. They can't militarily stand up to the Americans anymore, so they've moved on to weaker targets that don't garner them support for attacking.

try to get some info on the situation.

If americans are less attacked than iraqis, it is simply because the US forces are not active out on the street anymore ...they are spending more time in their bunker and leaving the country into lawlessness.
The latest hostage-taking show anyone now can go shopping for western hostages .... even the ministry of oil (which for whatever reason is one of the building the US really want to protect got shelled, not to mention the green zone..

The insurgents are killing their popular base by attacking Iraqis

Lebanonization. Civil war. When the US finally leave that's what we'll get 'till they are there, US forces have a use : they gather all the country against them. When they leave, factions will turn against one another like they already do.



That's the Pandora's box effect the whole world was trying to explain to Bush before the invasion ..... and many in the US still don't get it.

"Bubble Boy" effect.


The Bubble Boy
By Sidney Blumenthal
Salon.com

Thursday 23 September 2004

Bush lives in a world immune from the realities of Iraq.

The news is grim, but the president is "optimistic." The intelligence is sobering, but he tosses aside "pessimistic predictions." His opponent says he has "no credibility," but the president replies that it is his rival who is "twisting in the wind." The secretary general of the United Nations speaks of the "rule of law," but Bush talks before a mute General Assembly of "a new definition of security." Between the rhetoric and the reality lies the campaign.

A reliable source who has just returned after assessing the facts on the ground for U.S. intelligence services told me that in Iraq, U.S. commanders have plans for this week and the next, but that there is "no overarching strategy." The New York Times reports an offensive is in the works to capture the insurgent stronghold of Fallujah - after the election. In the meantime, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and other al-Qaida-linked terrorists operate from there at will, as they have for more than a year. The president speaks of new Iraqi security forces, but not even half of the U.S. personnel have been assigned to the headquarters of the Multinational Security Transition Command.

Bush's vision of the liberation of Iraq as the restaging of the liberation of France - justified by his unearthing of Saddam Hussein's fearful weapons of mass destruction; paid for by the flow of cheap oil; and leading to the establishment of democracy, regime change in Iran and Syria, and the quiescence of stunned Palestinians - has melted before harsh facts. But reality cannot be permitted to obscure the image. The liberation is "succeeding," he insists, and only pessimists cannot see it.

In July, the CIA delivered to the president a new National Intelligence Estimate that details three gloomy scenarios of the future of Iraq ranging up to civil war. Perhaps it was his reading of the NIE that prompted Bush to remark in August that the war on terrorism could not be won, a judgment he swiftly reversed. But at the United Nations, Bush held a press conference at which he rebuffed the latest intelligence: "The CIA laid out a - several scenarios that said life could be lousy, life could be OK, life could be better. And they were just guessing as to what the conditions might be like."

With that, Bush explained that for him intelligence is not to be used to inform decision making but to be accepted or rejected to advance an ideological and political agenda. His dismissal is an affirmation of the politicization and corruption of intelligence that rationalized the war.

In his stump speech, repeated word for word across the country, Bush says that he invaded Iraq because of "the lesson of September the 11th." WMD go unmentioned; now the only reason Bush offers is Saddam Hussein as an agent of terrorism. "He was a sworn enemy of the United States of America; he had ties to terrorist networks. Do you remember Abu Nidal? He's the guy that killed Leon Klinghoffer. Leon Klinghoffer was murdered because of his religion. Abu Nidal was in Baghdad, as was his organization."

The period of Klinghoffer's murder in 1985 on the Achille Lauro by Abu Abbas, in fact, coincided with the period of U.S. courtship of Saddam, marked by the celebrated visits of Donald Rumsfeld, then Middle East envoy. The United States actively collaborated with Iraq in intelligence exchanges and materially supported Saddam in his decade-long war with Iran (which ended in 1988), including authorizing the sale of biological agents for Saddam's laboratories, a diversification of his WMD capability.

The reason was not out of idealism but necessity: the threat of an expansive, Iranian-controlled Shiite fundamentalism to the entire Gulf.

The policy of courting Saddam continued until his invasion of Kuwait. But the policy of realpolitik prevailed when U.S. forces held back from capturing Baghdad for larger geostrategic reasons. The first Bush administration grasped that in potential future wars after the Cold War, the United States required ad hoc coalitions to share the military burden and financial cost. Going to Baghdad would have violated the U.N.-sanctioning resolution that gave legitimacy to the first Gulf War as well as created a nightmare of "Lebanonization," as then-Secretary of State James Baker called it.

Realism prevailed; Saddam's power was subdued and drastically reduced. It was the greatest accomplishment of the first President Bush. When he honored the U.N. resolution, the credibility of the United States in the region was enormously enhanced, enabling serious movement on the languishing Middle East peace process. Now the second President Bush has undone the foundation of his father's work, which was built upon by President Clinton.

The success of Bush's campaign depends on the containment of any contrary perception of reality. He must evade, deny and suppress it. His true opponent is not his Democratic foe - called unpatriotic and the candidate of al-Qaida by the vice president - but events. Bush's latest vision is his shield against them. He invokes the power of positive thinking, as taught by Emile Coue, guru of cheerful auto-suggestion in the giddy 1920s, before the crash, who urged mental improvement through the constant repetition of "Every day in every way I am getting better and better."

[KettleWhistle]

Salon.com

Any good articles from Cosmo? Or Cosmo Girl perhaps?


Was it Chris Rock who talked once or twice about how all the news channels have same misleading on, but if you flip though the channels, you just might get a bit of what's really going on?

[Olivier]

Any good articles from Cosmo? Or Cosmo Girl perhaps?

yes it might look a bit strange, but Sidney Blumenthal is a former senior adviser to President Clinton, so whatever the magazine, if the author is worth listening to...

[TheyAre]

try to get some info on the situation.

If americans are less attacked than iraqis, it is simply because the US forces are not active out on the street anymore ...they are spending more time in their bunker and leaving the country into lawlessness. The latest hostage-taking show anyone now can go shopping for western hostages .... even the ministry of oil (which for whatever reason is one of the building the US really want to protect got shelled, not to mention the green zone..

...You're telling me to get information on the situation?

Where's your proof that Americans are spending their time in their bases because they're too scared to come out?

Wait, only your own opinion.

Every government building is protected.

Sorry.

Lebanonization. Civil war. When the US finally leave that's what we'll get 'till they are there, US forces have a use : they gather all the country against them. When they leave, factions will turn against one another like they already do.

That's the Pandora's box effect the whole world was trying to explain to Bush before the invasion ..... and many in the US still don't get it.

When we leave with a united functioning country behind us, do remember to beg the US to ask Iraq to give you your old oil contracts... the French economy really can't take not having Iraqi black gold flowing into TotaFinaElf.

[andak01]

Uh, yeah, right, Andak. After all, it only took the United States 12 years to form an effective government after the rebellion against England started in 1775, and 90 years until we became truly a single country after the North defeated the South in the Civil War.

Yep. And that was from a self motivated homoginous group of people, not three separate cultures bound by an artificial boundary. So help me with the math, how much would 90 years of occupation cost us?

They can't militarily stand up to the Americans anymore, so they've moved on to weaker targets that don't garner them support for attacking. The insurgents are killing their popular base by attacking Iraqis.

Of course you are right. Especially after the taking of Fallujah. Or the taking of Fallujah. Or the taking of Fallujah.

http://www.gulf-news.com/Articles/ne...rticleID=86109
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/i...ary-usat_x.htm
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/w...1653-iraq.html

[Gabriel]

Of course you are right. Especially after the taking of Fallujah. Or the taking of Fallujah. Or the taking of Fallujah.

Not quite, the US worries about the PR campaign mid-war, DUMB MOVE. PR, politicially correctness, and all that junk is good for peace time, but while in war, that should be on the sidelines. If we wanted to take Fallujah we would, and it would never be taken again, because it would be one big smoldering crator. So I stand by TheyAre's remarks no one can take the US militarly, but the US certainlly can be beat as long as we cator to PC-BS and have strict rules of engagment.

[KettleWhistle]

Of course you are right. Especially after the taking of Fallujah. Or the taking of Fallujah. Or the taking of Fallujah.

The taking of Fallujah so reminds me of the first Gulf War... why can't they just go in and finish it...

[takeo]

The problem is that either you have to choose the overall destructive approach, scrw the wives, kill the men, burn the houses, bomb the cities entirely, desacrifice the death bodies, use the children to cover your tanks, use poison gas, in one sentence destroy Iraq (more or less the Russian approach in chechnia or the Saddam approach to his ennemies). OR you have to listen to the Iraqi people and leave Iraq. What you're doing is ennoying them, torturing them a bit, shooting someone but not his family his family (vowing to take revenge), this is the worst approach, they are still able to resist and are angry enough to do so.
Problem with the first approach is that you came to Iraq officially to "liberate" Iraq and "bring democracy" and because "saddam tortured his ennemies", not as ennemies of the Iraqi people (which is the way Iraqi's look at you anyhow).

[Gabriel]

The problem is that either you have to choose the overall destructive approach, scrw the wives, kill the men, burn the houses, bomb the cities entirely, use poison gas, in one sentence destroy Iraq (more or less the Russian approach in chechnia or the Saddam approach to his ennemies). OR you have to listen to the Iraqi people and leave Iraq.

NEWS FLASH: foriegn policy isn't allways this black and white.

If the US pulled out right now Iraq would be a giant cess-pool. It's only logical and sensiable for them to stay, despite Iraqi's wanting them to leave to make sure we don't have to have Gulf War 3.

[takeo]

If the US pulled out right now Iraq would be a giant cess-pool. It's only logical and sensiable for them to stay, despite Iraqi's wanting them to leave to make sure we don't have to have Gulf War 3.

If Americans leave sure the regime of allawi will fall in a matter of days but I think iraqi's will sort out themselves. Probably some coalition government of shiite and sunnite insurgeants, who have already come closer to eachother during the latest months. If it's possible in Libanon it will certainly be possible in iraq as well. The only problem might be the Kurds, who will have to pay dearly for their collaboration with the uS, and other collaborators who would be wise to ask political asylum in the US. Perhaps some US-troops can stay there to protect the Kurds against Arab revenge.

[Olivier]

If we wanted to take Fallujah we would, and it would never be taken again, because it would be one big smoldering crator.

Indeed and some posters here would love to see Fallujah turned into a "big smoldering crator", they would like to see many arabs capitals turned into a "big smoldering crator" too.

I think this will never happen, at least not with the USA we know.




Alternative : stop thinking you can fight terrorism by invading a country like iraq and then dropping bombs on every "probable terrorist hideouts". These simple methods are tempting, but they create forty times more terrorism than they destroy.