quote:

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Six Canadian soldiers serving with the Nato-led force in south Afghanistan have been killed, while another Nato soldier died in a separate incident.

The Canadians were killed when the vehicle they were travelling in hit an explosive device, Nato's International Security Assistance Force (Isaf) said. [...]

It is the worst single incident for the Nato-led force since 2005. [...]

An Isaf spokeswoman told the BBC there had been no civilian casualties in the blast that killed the Canadians and that all signs pointed to the Taleban.

"Certainly it lends itself to the type of tactic that Taleban extremists use," Lt Col Angela Billings said.

"Because they cannot beat us conventionally or tactically, they resort to this type of tactic in order to hide in the shadows."

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Too bad - it would make Canada's job a lot easier if the Taliban resorted to losing tactics. How unsporting of them.

[ 11 April 2007: Message edited by: unionist ]

quote:

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Too bad - it would make Canada's job a lot easier if the Taliban resorted to losing tactics. How unsporting of them.

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quote:

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Date: April 8, 2007

For Release: Immediate

Statement by the Honourable Stéphane Dion, Leader of the Opposition, on the death of Six Canadian Soldiers in Afghanistan

Ottawa - On behalf of the Liberal Party of Canada and our Parliamentary caucus, I would like to express my sincere sorrow at the news of the deaths of six brave Canadian soldiers in a roadside bombing near Kandahar. We send our deepest sympathies to their family, friends and comrades as they cope with this terrible tragedy.

Our thoughts and prayers are also with the other two soldiers injured in the incident. We wish them a full and quick recovery.

We owe a tremendous debt of gratitude to the men and women of the Canadian Forces, who risk their lives to create a safer and more secure world for Canadians and people the world over.

We remain steadfast in our support for the Canadian Forces personnel stationed in Afghanistan as they work toward the noble goal of bringing peace and stability to this troubled region.

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What bumf. Dion forgets to mention that if the government hadn't made the mistake of sending troops in the first place none of them would be dying there.

He should have said:

We owe a tremendous debt of gratitude to the men and women of the Canadian Forces, who needlessly risk their lives for the political fortunes of chickenhawks and for greater prosperity for the defense industries.

Bringing peace and stability is a laugh, particularly when it was more peaceful and stable prior to the western invasion.

quote:

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Originally posted by Khimia:
This comment was uncalled for.

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How so? It was an ironic response to the abominable Lt Col Angela Billings, who criticized the "enemy" for killing Canadian soldiers in the wrong fashion.

How come the "enemy" are always described, in one way or another, as "cowardly"?

What's wrong with: "Well, mark up one for them - we'll have to try harder next time?"

Don't you find it a bit odd that Canadians are still driving around and getting blown up, after all this time? What are they - stupid?

quote:

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What if we had to fight a real war, to defend Canada against real enemies? Don't you actually care about the fighting ability of our forces, the competence of their commanders, and the deeply insulting and childish "spin" placed by their spokespersons?

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quote:

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Originally posted by Jerry West:

A politician with guts and unafraid of the truth would call the deaths of these soldiers what it is, a shameful waste of life and a betrayal of our troops by the government that sent them on this unnecessary mission and by the ones that keep them there.

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Exactly.

This shameful statement by Dion further exposes his treacherous nature. He voted against the extension of the "mission" last May, not because he disagreed with it, but (as he said) because the government had inadequately explained it.

Now, like any two-bit jingoistic warmonger, he has come up with his own "explanation": we're bringing "peace and stability". No need for any change.

Dion represents no change whatsoever from the party of Paul Martin, whether on this front or any other that I can see.

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Lt Col Angela Billings said:

"Because they cannot beat us conventionally or tactically, they resort to this type of tactic in order to hide in the shadows."

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Well, Col Billings isn't much of a soldier. It certainly appears that she hasn't studied much military history, or if she has not much sank in.

Hiding in the shadows is a pretty good tactic sometimes, nothing cowardly about it unless one equates cowardliness with intelligence. Fighting in a manner that is sure to get you killed and result in defeat as Col Billings wishes that the Taliban would do is called stupid.

quote:

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Originally posted by Jerry West:
Well, Col Billings isn't much of a soldier. It certainly appears that she hasn't studied much military history, or if she has not much sank in.

Hiding in the shadows is a pretty good tactic sometimes, nothing cowardly about it unless one equates cowardliness with intelligence. Fighting in a manner that is sure to get you killed and result in defeat as Col Billings wishes that the Taliban would do is called stupid.

If Col. Billings or anyone else in the Forces thinks that they are fighting a conventional war they should be busted down to private and put somewhere that they can't do undue harm to our troops.

---

I would imagine the same type of whining of "unfair" went on when the British, with their reds coats, were trying to conduct a war in formation with FN's warriors.

Canadians who are not appalled, at these military personnel deaths, and who are not calling for the immediate return of all, are willfully wrong. And are supporters of the further deaths of Canadians and Afghans alike.

[ 08 April 2007: Message edited by: remind ]

We can bicker whether to blame Paul Martin, Stephanie Dion or Stevie Harper.

The fact is that the Libs started this mess then turned their backs on the troops. The cons continued the mess.

Bottom line is that as we remember those who gave their lives close to a century ago we remember those die today.

At the going down of the sun we will remember them

ETA: I spoke with a great uncle today who has a DFC amongst other medals from WW2 service in the RAF. His comment as a vet was the most telling.

Uncle Sam said, we are lucky that we are alive to call the politicians onto the carpet.

[ 08 April 2007: Message edited by: miles ]

quote:

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Originally posted by miles:

Bottom line is that as we remember those who gave their lives close to a century ago we remember those die today.

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Ninety years ago, 66,000 Canadians (and countless others) died for nothing. That is, they died in a foreign war in the service of the imperial aims of Britain, in its complex rivalries with Germany, Austria and others, and its tenuous alliance with France and Russia.

Their deaths were in vain, unless we honour their memories by pledging never again to commit our youth to be cannon fodder in unjust wars.

quote:

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unionist:
Ninety years ago, 66,000 Canadians (and countless others) died for nothing.

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It could be worse than that, even. The world might have been better off had Germany not been beaten to the point that it had to accept the blame for the war and the unjust surrender terms. Maybe if Canada, certainly the US, had stayed out we might have had something like a no-fault settlement of the war.

quote:

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Originally posted by Jerry West:

Maybe 66,000 Canadians died so we could have WWII?

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That's an important point. It's hard to follow hypothetical historical threads retrospectively, but the rise of Hitler, the NSDAP, the revanchists in the officers' corps and among industrial barons, etc., are difficult to imagine in the absence of Versailles.

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It is a sad day for Canada. It is a sad day for Afghanistan.

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It's not a sad day for Canada. And every day is a sad day for Afghanistan as long as this dirty little colonial occupation continues. Or are Afghaniis supposed to be extra sad when the white man dies?

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Bottom line is that as we remember those who gave their lives close to a century ago we remember those die today.

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Jingles it is disgusting to speak of the dead soldiers the way you did.

No Politician from any party would jump for joy on hearing the news.

[ 08 April 2007: Message edited by: miles ]

[ 08 April 2007: Message edited by: Stephen Gordon ]

quote:

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Originally posted by Stephen Gordon:
Um, yeah. To the same extent that those who oppose the Afghanistan mission are jumping for joy for the political gift six dead Canadians provide to those in search of a propoganda cudgel to oppose the occupation.

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I hope you being "tongue in cheek"!

But in case you are not, there is no more jumping for joy, over these six soldiers deaths, on the part of those against the occupation of Afghanistan, than there are over those 6 people, across Canada, who die daily in accidents caused caused by drunk drivers, or negilent drivers, or over women who die at the hands of someone who professes to love them. There has been 4 in BC so far this year.

It is ridiculous to perceive, that women who get enraged over this, and want changes made so this does not happen, are jumping for joy so they have a bandwagon to stand on.

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Jingles:
Just don't try to bullshit anyone with sentimental nonsense like "a sad day for Canada".

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I disagree. Every day that we are engaged in that unnecessary war is a sad day for Canada, it is even sadder when soldiers lives are wasted like this because of the political decisions of our government.

quote:

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Originally posted by Stephen Gordon:
Well, it's good to hear that you have no intention of using their deaths to push your agenda. Because only creepy right-wingers would do that.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Stephen Gordon:
Well, it's good to hear that you have no intention of using their deaths to push your agenda. Because only creepy right-wingers would do that.

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Are you having fun?

Six more dead Canadians is six more reasons why we should get out of Afghanistan.

The next deaths, of Canadians or of Afghans, will provide even more reasons. I personally intend to use every death, every atrocity, every blunder, every blessed event, to push the agenda of ending Canada's intervention.

All of the identified ones are from Atlantic Canada. They range in age from 20 to 31.

quote:

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Originally posted by unionist:
...I personally intend to use every death, every atrocity, every blunder, every blessed event, to push the agenda of ending Canada's intervention.

Was there something wrong with that?

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quote:

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Originally posted by unionist:
Also - I might have had the opportunity to meet my father's father. He was drafted into Kaiser Franz Josef's army in 1914, and died in a Tsarist Russian POW camp of typhus in 1915.

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That's awful. My own grandfather Al was mustard gassed somewhere in Europe. He's buried in a pauper's grave ... somewhere in England.

quote:

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About a month before he died in the deadliest day of fighting for Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan, Pte. Kevin Kennedy spoke about the excitement of being part of Operation Achilles, a major offensive to drive the Taliban out of Helmand province.

Kennedy, of St. Lawrence, Nfld., could barely contain the rush of adrenaline as he was interviewed by the Canadian Press in early March.

"Everyone is really pumped here this morning," Kennedy said.

"We came here. We've trained for years, and we are finally going to go out and do our job, and we are ready to do it."

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quote:

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The troops are victims of a criminal foreign policy.

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I have to disagree. When soldiers are sprayed with unknown toxins in Gagetown, they are victims. But troops are not victims when they willingly participate in such a war as Operation 9/11 Revenge. The people of Afghanistan, which has never done Canada harm, are the victims.

In the 1980s, the Americans were very successful turning Vietnam from a shameful episode to a heroic struggle for freedom largely because they consciously set about to recast the Vietnam veterans as the victims. Liberals were especially grateful and gladly embraced the idea (like John Kerry as a "war hero" in a war against which he spoke out against, then denied doing so). The 2-3 million and counting dead Vietnamese, Cambodians, Laotians, etc, are completely ignored, or dismissed as deserving of their fate because they resisted the heroic and selfless American intervention. Then, the right wing was behind the transformation, but today it is the liberals who are desperately trying to cast the Iraqis as the aggressor, the child-raping Marines and Army as the victims of an ungrateful, backwards, violent Iraqi people.

quote:

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Writing in last Friday's Post, Charles Krauthammer summoned the proverbial "man from Mars" to make the case that Iraq, not Afghanistan, was the central front in the war on terror. Krauthammer argued that while Afghanistan was a "totally just war," Iraq was strategically the more important.

Krauthammer's argument however is myopic. One reason is his failure even to mention NATO. For the first time in its history, NATO is engaged in a ground war, not against a massive Soviet attack across the northern plains of Germany or in Iraq against insurgents and al Qaeda, but in Afghanistan. In committing the alliance to sustained ground combat operations in Afghanistan (unlike Kosovo in 1999), NATO has bet its future. If NATO fails, alliance cohesion will be at grave risk. A moribund or unraveled NATO will have profoundly negative geostrategic impact.

Defeat in Iraq or Afghanistan obviously will have dire consequences. In both places, political not military solutions will bring success...

Whether any well-meaning Martian would choose Iraq as the more important war or not is unimportant. What is important is that to prevail in Afghanistan, more than military force is needed. Until Washington, Brussels and Kabul address these glaring deficiencies, as in Iraq, the outcome will be too close to call.

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quote:

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"We came here. We've trained for years, and we are finally going to go out and do our job, and we are ready to do it."

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This, to me, seems perfectly reasonable, and a very human reaction. In this sense, soldiering is much like most other human endeavours. When one is trained to do something, it is gratifying to get the chance to actually do it - be it neurosurgery, firefighting, performing one's art, what-have-you.

Although it is easy to see how some may question the value and purpose of the profession of arms, and perhaps even the validity of an individual's choice to pursue that profession, it is hard to fault its practioners for displaying enthusiasm for the opportunity to do that which they have trained for.

quote:

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Jingles:
But troops are not victims when they willingly participate in such a war as Operation 9/11 Revenge.

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But what really constitutes willingly? I think that it was Jesus that said forgive, for they know not what they do. The fact that those they trust lie to them about what they are doing and encourage them to do it, an encouragement that they take in good faith, does not remove the fact that they are victims. They are also victims if the only choices that they have are participate or be punished.

quote:

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In the 1980s, the Americans were very successful turning Vietnam from a shameful episode to a heroic struggle for freedom largely because they consciously set about to recast the Vietnam veterans as the victims.

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That is a highly debatable thesis. I may be much closer to the issue than you are, and I certainly would not generalize it that way. Only right-wing nutbars would see the American part of the Vietnam War as a heroic struggle for freedom, even today, and certainly not many of the veterans that I know. For the victorious Vietnamese it was a heroic struggle for freedom.

quote:

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The 2-3 million and counting dead Vietnamese, Cambodians, Laotians, etc, are completely ignored, or dismissed as deserving of their fate because they resisted the heroic and selfless American intervention.

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Again, only in the minds of right-wing nutbars and those gullible enough to fall for their BS. Have you done that? A great many of the Americans that I know certainly do not believe this. It is only one viewpoint, a politically motivated viewpoint, and its veracity is questionable.

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....but today it is the liberals who are desperately trying to cast the Iraqis as the aggressor, the child-raping Marines and Army as the victims of an ungrateful, backwards, violent Iraqi people.

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Really depends on how you define liberal. This isn't universally true. As for the Marines and Army, they are victims and a whole lot of them are fed up with it. And characterizing them as child-rapers is grossly unfair to the 99.9% who are not. It is like generally characterizing gay men as pedophiles.

There seems to be little difference between your modus operandi and that of the right-wing nutbars except for the object of your hatred.

quote:

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Now, Canadians are supposed to follow that same script about Afghanistan.

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Our troops are victims. Putting them in Afghanistan for the purpose that they were makes them victims. The victimizers are those who made the decisions to put them there. They should be brought home and the victimizers punished. The Afghans are also victims, and the Taliban and warlords, too, are victimizers.

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"We came here. We've trained for years, and we are finally going to go out and do our job, and we are ready to do it."

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Ignorance is bliss. It is perfectly understandable that people want to do what they are trained for. Been there, done that. The fault lies with the system that needs these people and misleads them, which is what is happening in Afghanistan. Some of them may be mercenaries who truly like using force against other people regardless of the reason, but many of them are only doing what they think is right because they are being told that it is and they believe the lie. There are also other reasons, but few if any of them as malicious as some would have us believe.

quote:

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Grizzled Wolf:
The true tragedy in the loss of a soldier, who dies doing his job, lies with those who are left behind.

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quote:

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Originally posted by remind:

I would imagine the same type of whining of "unfair" went on when the British, with their reds coats, were trying to conduct a war in formation with FN's warriors.

Canadians who are not appalled, at these military personnel deaths, and who are not calling for the immediate return of all, are willfully wrong. And are supporters of the further deaths of Canadians and Afghans alike.

[ 08 April 2007: Message edited by: remind ]

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quote:

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Originally posted by scribblet:

We are part of NATO, and if I were a woman in Afghanistan I would wish that NATO continues to support them.

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If you were a woman in Afghanistan, or a man for that matter, you would be within your rights to wish for NATO to remain.

quote:

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Originally posted by Jerry West:

Well, Col Billings isn't much of a soldier. It certainly appears that she hasn't studied much military history, or if she has not much sank in.

Hiding in the shadows is a pretty good tactic sometimes, nothing cowardly about it unless one equates cowardliness with intelligence. Fighting in a manner that is sure to get you killed and result in defeat as Col Billings wishes that the Taliban would do is called stupid.

If Col. Billings or anyone else in the Forces thinks that they are fighting a conventional war they should be busted down to private and put somewhere that they can't do undue harm to our troops.

---

I notice Canadian soldiers are disguising themselves in camouflage in order to make it harder to be seen. Would Billings think it more sporting of Canadian soldiers to go into combat wearing dayglo orange?

Not likely. In fact I think Billings is perfectly well aware that hiding in the shadows is an essential element of modern war. She just happens to think that the Canadian public is stupid enough to fall for this trite little bit of propoganda.

quote:

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Originally posted by unionist:

If you were a woman in Afghanistan, or a man for that matter, you would be within your rights to wish for NATO to remain.

If (as I suspect) you are neither of the above, then your support for NATO is wrong, because the affairs of Afghanistan are none of your business. The Afghans will wipe out these invaders (as they always have in the past), then they will decide, on their very own, how to run their society. You and I may not like their decisions.

---

quote:

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Originally posted by scribblet:
Do we care about human rights or don't we?

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quote:

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Originally posted by scribblet:
I am one of the above (female) and shrivel up inside at the thought of how the women were treated by the Taliban. Do we care about human rights or don't we?

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Unfortunately, we are not helping the women of Afghanistan achieve human rights.

quote:

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Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA)

8th March 2007 - Kabul

RAWA statement on the International Women's Day

As long as the fundamentalists are in power,
there will be no end to the oppressions and crimes against Afghan women.

The world came into motion in the name of "liberating Afghan woman" and our country was invaded, but the sorrows and deprivations of Afghan women has not just failed to reduce, but actually increased the level of oppression and brutality day by day on this most ruined population of our society.

The corrupt and mafia government of Mr. Karzai and its international guardians, are playing shamelessly with the intolerable suffering of Afghan women and misuse it as their propaganda tool for deceiving the people of the world. They have placed some women into official posts in the government who are favored by the warlords and then proclaim it as symbol of "women's liberation" in the country. But the presence of a number of women in high posts is not important unless they touch the depth of our people's adversities and sufferings, like the parliamentarian Malalai Joya, and uncompromisingly struggle against the bloody enemies of woman's rights and democracy and consider women's emancipation as an integral part of the liberation of our whole country from the filthy shackles of the fundamentalists and their foreign masters.

The government and Western media trumpet the presence of 68 women in the parliament as a huge achievement for Afghanistan and a sign of democracy and women's rights. But almost all of these women themselves are the most horrible enemies of woman's rights and democracy and are acting as little crank dolls in the hand of the warlords. In this odious reactionary parliament, with the exception of the glorious and suffocated voice of Joya, no voice from the remaining 68 has been raised against the Khalqi, Parchami, Jehadi or Talibi vultures. A number of these women members of parliament like Safora Niazi, Noorzia Atmar, Parveen Durani, Shakeela Hashmi, Malalai Isaqzai etc. are so shameless that they clearly overtook blood suckers like Sayyaf, Rabbani, Alam Seya, Farooqi and others in physically attacking Malalai Joya inside the parliament.

..................

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quote:

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I am one of the above (female) and shrivel up inside at the thought of how the women were treated by the Taliban. Do we care about human rights or don't we?

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The Taliban treatment of women, human rights and the war in Afghanistan are not related other than our presence their probably makes the Taliban stronger and lessens the human rights of many who are not under direct NATO control.

The problem with Afghanistan is cultural and short of committing genocide this problem won't be fixed by military aggression, even if that was the purpose of it, which it is not.

Those who believe that we are in Afghanistan to improve the lives of the Afghans, regardless of what motions we make to show that we are, are buying into a fairytale.

Of course if one is a true believer in multi-culturalism, then Taliban culture, too, is entitled to be tolerated.

quote:

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are you actually celebrating these deaths, how sick can one get with comments like that.

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Celebrate? No, I wouldn't call it that. I have the same reaction when I hear about base jumpers who die jumping from buildings, or when snowmobilers or extreme skiers are killed by the avalanches they cause. Or racecar drivers. It just isn't tragic when someone dies doing something stupid that they know carries a high risk of mortality. And Canadians running around Afghanistan playing soldier is certainly a stupid thing.

quote:

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As for the Marines and Army, they are victims and a whole lot of them are fed up with it. And characterizing them as child-rapers is grossly unfair to the 99.9% who are not.

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No US service member is a victim four years after this goddamn crime took place. Ignorance is no excuse, and willful ignorance is even worse. There is no excuse, none whatsoever, to not know what the hell is going on. If they are indeed fed up with it, why aren't these poor victims standing up and telling their President to go fuck himself? Why aren't they shooting their officers? Why aren't they deserting en masse? Why aren't they monkeywrenching the whole machine?

quote:

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Really depends on how you define liberal.

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The peculiarly American species of liberal that despises Bush because his Iraq adventure didn't allow them to "finish the job in Afghanistan", or because Iraq "distracts from real threats like Iran". In other words, those liberal Americans who have no problem with Pax Americana, but just don't call it that.

quote:

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s for the Marines and Army, they are victims and a whole lot of them are fed up with it. And characterizing them as child-rapers is grossly unfair to the 99.9% who are not.

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quote:

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Originally posted by scribblet:
'Willfully wrong' because you think so!

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No, because it is fact, and you are not arming your self with facts before you choose to be willfully wrong in ignorance. I see the RAWA link to real Afghan women has already been posted so I will not bother. So, how about you grab a read and then get back to us? Unless of course you want to be willfully wrong by keeping yourself in ignorance.

quote:

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What is willfully wrong is to wish to see the return of the subjugation of women and loss of rights and schools which they have gained.

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Well, if you have a read around the RAWA site, though it seems not, perhaps you now realize the subjugation of woman has not ended. Nor have rights be gained other than the right to accept colonial occupation being forced upon them as their families and innocent Afghans die.

quote:

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We are part of NATO, and if I were a woman in Afghanistan I would wish that NATO continues to support them.

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You cannot know this, so stop imposing your ideals upon others.

quote:

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...are you actually celebrating these deaths, how sick can one get with comments like that.

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[ 11 April 2007: Message edited by: remind ]

"The US government keeps promising not to repeat its past mistakes ... but the US is making the same mistake, she is generously supporting the fundamentalists more than ever ... Human dignity has no price and it as easy as killing a bird ... No country can deliver liberation to another country." Malalai Jirga

Afghanistan: Women still under attack - a systematic failure to protect - Amnesty International

Pain of Afghan suicide women - BBC News

Afghan Women: Used by the Taliban, Used by Us - redjenny

AFGHANISTAN: Women’s hopes for equality fade - IRIN

Shame of War: a new book on sexual violence against women and girls in conflict - IRIN

PDF: Uncounted and Discounted UNIFEM

quote:

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The situation for many women in Afghanistan is dire. They face multiple constraints in the social, economic and political spheres. Statistical recording and analysis on violence against women has not been undertaken in Afghanistan, despite anecdotal evidence of its prevalence throughout the country. With restrictions due to insecurity, lack of communication and transportation infrastructure, and low funding priority, reporting on violence against women invariably relies on a limited number of case studies and the opinions of field workers.

Research conducted in Afghanistan has nonetheless identified a range of issues of violence against women nationwide, including forced marriage, child marriage, domestic violence, sexual harassment, trafficking of women and children, and honour killing. Such violence not only results in serious physical, mental hardships and sometimes death, but can also lead to self-immolation, suicide, forced prostitution, addiction to narcotics, and violent behaviour towards children.

... In regard to the type of violence committed against women, both physical violence (30.7%) and psychological violence (30.1%) factored the highest in our sample. Sexual violence was the third highest at 25.2%. The chart below reveals the levels of incidence of physical, sexual and psychological violence recorded in the sample.

... In our study, domestic violence is the most predominant form of violence committed against women, accounting for 82.0% of the cases.

... In Afghanistan, the government is still not able to meet its obligations to protect, promote, and fulfil the human rights of its citizens, whether violations are committed by private or public actors. Although ongoing initiatives to strengthen and improve the security and justice systems within Afghanistan are under way they are as of yet insufficient for ensuring women’s physical safety and their social and economic security. There are also documented cases in which the State acts as the perpetrator of violence against women. This study includes reports of women who are physically or verbally abused, suffer sexual mistreatment and have died at the hands of State employees.

---

[ 10 April 2007: Message edited by: writer ]

quote:

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Well, it's good to hear that you have no intention of using their deaths to push your agenda. Because only creepy right-wingers would do that.

---

Oh, not just creepy right-wingers, Prof. Gordon, but also the pushers and beneficiaries of stupid backward-ass corporate capitalist trickle-down economics--like those that dominate our economies and major super-powers, and that are underlying the reasons for this whole atrocious adventure.

That way they can finally get their Trans-Afghanistan Pipeline and once again insult us all by saying that all those hundreds of thousands of people--combatants and civilians alike--died for "good reason."

quote:

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Originally posted by remind:

How sick can one get making comments like your own, based upon ignorance and cultural bias, and thinking they are valid?

You cannot know this, so stop imposing your ideals upon others.

---

Canada is the principal architect and advocate of the "responsibility to protect" doctrine and some people are advocating that Canada should play a key role in helping in Sudan/Darfur. I suppose stopping genocide is imposing our culture on others also.

[ 11 April 2007: Message edited by: scribblet ]

quote:

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Originally posted by scribblet:
I would say the same of you.

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Unfortunately, again you would be wtong. I see you never read the RAWA site, nor the links that writer gave above. And from this I note you are continuing to keep yourself in blself-imposed ignorant bias, and supporting further violence against Afghan women who are not being helped at all by the Canadian military.

quote:

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...but I'm glad to see that you have exposed yourself by admitting that wanting to improve the lives of women is 'imposing my ideals'.

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Exposed myself as what? An informed person, who understands that we have no business in Afghanistan and that our military presence there is doing more harm than good to Afghan women?

If you really wanted to improve the lives of Afghan women, you would have read their voices and other infoprmation provided instead of being willfully ignorant.

quote:

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Originally posted by remind:

Exposed myself as what? An informed person, who understands that we have no business in Afghanistan and that our military presence there is doing more harm than good to Afghan women?

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Calling people willfully ignorant because they disagree with you does not add to your credibility nor the debate.

quote:

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Originally posted by scribblet:

Should we go into Darfur and impose our culture of freedom there, or let them go on killing?

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I vote for: Let them go on killing.

quote:

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Notice how some members of this forum will support and defend the right of the Taliban to conduct its extreme misogynistic practices so long as the Taliban remain anti-American. I guess "the enemy of my enemy" doctrine applies here.

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quote:

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Exposed yourself as extremely biased at best , and as a woman you should be ashamed for not wanting to help Afghan women keep their hard gotten gains.

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Wow, these mass-murder-loving corporate brown-nosing liars sure come up with he dandiest excuses to justify the unjustifiable!

This turkey wants us all to believe the BS that Canadian troops are over there fighting for women's rights.

This lie is easy to dismiss. Four points on this:

First, if these frauds are so concerned about the horrors the Taliban regime committed against women, why did they so religiously support the Taliban when it was set up, trained, funded, armed and put into power in Afghanistan by the US government 1992?

Where were the scribblets of the world on women's rights when the Taliban was slaughtering them with the approval of the US government while it was in their good books?

Second, if the scribblets around here really think the Taliban is so bad, why are they applauding the military's efforts to support the new fraudulently "elected" regime of ex-Taliban leaders and assorted sleazy murdering drug lords who cut their own sweetheart deals with the invading US military in order to stay in power?

Third, while there's no underestimating the brutality of the former Taliban regime, including against women, just how much better are women in general faring today? Not much, according to one of the more outspoken and established women's organizations in that country, and verified by various eye-witness accounts and verified by the local labour unions and human rights organizations.

SO if our troops are failing to protect and improve the lives of women there, then the scribblets have no argument.

Fourth, and finally, if the scribblets are so concerned about the well-being of women, why are they not condemning, instead of apologizing for, the Hitleresque agenda of the federal Conservative regime in this country, which has already gutted all kinds of funding for programs and initiatives focused on creating opportunities for working class women to improve themselves--everything from workforce re-entry, to child care, to non-traditional trades training, etc. have been hit.

The most effective way to fight for women's rights is to focus your efforts in this country. Yet we don't see the scribblets doing this, do we.

The fact is, buddy, this slaughter campaign in Afghanistan is nothing more than our democracy-hating prime minister's efforts to suck hole to the US Corporate America dictatorship an its mass murdering puppet in the White House.

This thread is about six more Canadian soldiers being murdered in Afghanistan while chickenhawk brown-nosers like you sit on your duffs and sing Ra Ra.

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Originally posted by scribblet:
as a woman you should be ashamed for not wanting to help Afghan women keep their hard gotten gains.

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Notice how some members of this forum will support and defend the right of the Taliban to conduct its extreme misogynistic practices so long as the Taliban remain anti-American. I guess "the enemy of my enemy" doctrine applies here.
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All too true sadly.

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Notice how these lying corporate-brown-nosing murder-loving George Bush blow-hards can be so easily exposed with a few facts?

I just proved that in the last post I submitted here.

THe fact is this war-loving filth gutlessly sits on their comfy fat butts cheering on soldiers who have been murdered in a completely unjust and un-called for mass-murder spree so the US government/Corporate America dictatorship can finally get its Trans-Afghanistan Pipeline .

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Originally posted by Steppenwolf Allende:
First, if these frauds are so concerned about the horrors the Taliban regime committed against women, why did they so religiously support the Taliban when it was set up, trained, funded, armed and put into power in Afghanistan by the US government 1992?

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Originally posted by Bobolink:
Notice how some members of this forum will support and defend the right of the Taliban to conduct its extreme misogynistic practices so long as the Taliban remain anti-American. I guess "the enemy of my enemy" doctrine applies here.

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Funny.
You're claiming one thing, and the article you link to states the complete opposite.

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Funny.

You are such a liar.

Here is that article in its etirety, a long boast by a US Republicanazi about all the scum the US government and many of its oppressive allies (Suadi Arabia, etc.) bankrolled, including the Taliban.

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Was U.S. Aiding the Taliban?
Editor's Note: A must read; you will be livid over the level of incompetency in our intelligence agencies
The Honorable Dana Rohrabacher

I worked in the White House during the years when Ronald Reagan brought an end to the Cold War, culminating with the dismantling of the communist dictatorship that controlled Russia and its puppet states. Essential to that great victory was President Reagan's support for various people who were fighting to free themselves from communist tyranny.

The bravest and most fierce of these anti-Soviet insurgents were in Afghanistan. The American people can be proud that we provided the Afghan people the weapons they needed to win their own freedom and independence. That Cold War battle was a major factor in breaking the will of the communist bosses in Moscow, thus ending the Cold War, making almost everyone on this planet in these last 10 years, especially in the Western democracies, safer and more prosperous.

This, however, is where we must begin to understand the grotesque crime that has now been committed against us. One of the common errors found in news reports in these last few days has been the suggestion that those holding power in Afghanistan today are the same people who we supported in the war against Soviet occupation in Afghanistan back in the 1980s. This, by and large, is wrong.

Yes, some of those currently in power in Kabul also fought the Russians. But, by and large, we are talking about two different groups, two different sets of people. Those who fought the Soviet occupation were called the Mujahedin. During my time at the White House during the 1980s, I had the opportunity to meet and get to know most of their leaders. The current Taliban leadership does not include any of those wartime leaders.

After I left the White House and was elected to Congress, but before I was sworn into Congress, I knew I had that two months between November and January to do things that I could never do once I was elected to Congress. I chose to hike into Afghanistan as part of a small Mujahedin unit and to engage in a battle against the Russian and communist forces near and around the city of Jalalabad.

After the collapse of the Communist regime in Afghanistan, the Mujahedin factions who fought the Russians, but with no direction from the United States, began bickering and fighting among themselves. This went on for several years. Then, in 1996, a new force appeared, seemingly out of nowhere: the Taliban. These were fresh, well-equipped forces who had, by and large, sat out the war in Pakistan. They had been in Pakistan in what they called schools.

"Taliban," by the way, means student, even though most of these are older men who are totally illiterate. All of the money America provided the Mujahedin during the war had to be sent through; that is, the war against Soviet Union occupation, had to be sent through the equivalent of the Pakistani CIA, which is called the ISI. But apparently, the Pakistanis had siphoned enough off to create a third force, and since the war was over and the other factions had been bled white, they could use this third force to dominate Afghanistan.

Also behind the Taliban is and was Saudi Arabia. During the war against the Russians, the Saudis provided the Afghan resistance with hundreds of millions of dollars. For that we can be grateful. They are one of the few countries that stepped up to the plate during the Cold War to actually confront the Soviet Union aggression. Unfortunately, however, the Saudis were financing anti-Western as well as Anti-Communist Muslims, and one of those who they financed was bin Laden.

I cannot forget also as I marched with that Mujahedin unit to the battle of Jalalabad and, by the way, that battle was a long-time siege that had been taking place around the city, we at one point in that march came across a camp of tents. They were white tents and you could see them in the distance, and I was told at that point I must not speak English for at least another 3 hours, because the people in those tents were Saudi Arabians under a crazy commander named bin Laden, and that bin Laden was so crazy that he wanted to kill Americans as much as he wanted to kill Russians. Thus, I must keep my mouth shut or we would be attacked by those forces, by those forces under bin Laden.

Later, much later, after I had become a Congressman, I met with the head of Saudi intelligence, the man responsible for providing that money to the Afghans during the war, the $200 million or so, or whatever it was that the Saudis provided to the Afghans. His name was General Turkey. I suggested to General Turkey that what we needed to do now that the Russians had left Afghanistan was to bring back to Afghanistan the exiled king of Afghanistan. It was King Zahir Shah who was overthrown in 1972. It was that overthrow of this king who had been a very good person and a good man, it was his overthrow that started the bloody cycle of events which eventually led to the Soviet Union invasion of 1979 and the subsequent war against Soviet Union occupation.

I suggested to bring back the king of Afghanistan because he was a wonderful person and beloved by his people. He was a person who was a moderate in his approach and never killed other people. He, in fact, was truly a moderate and, I might say, pro-western or western oriented, although a devout Muslim. But the Saudis wanted nothing to do with bringing back a moderate good-hearted king from exile. They and their Pakistani allies were in the process of creating a secret third force that I did not know anything about: the Taliban. But during my conversation, it was mentioned that a third force was being created, one that could take over Afghanistan and bring stability, but, of course, one that would do the bidding of their Pakistani and Saudi handlers.

One must wonder why the Saudi Arabians and the Pakistanis are even to this day so involved in Afghanistan. This is an important fact of history that we need to understand. Number one, the type of religious fervor they have and the type of Islam they have in Saudi Arabia is very similar to that in Afghanistan. It is unbending and intolerant and they do not permit any other faith in their country. Also, the Pakistanis, a large number of the Pakistanis, especially those who were the Pastuns up near the border of Afghanistan, they too share the same type of extremist and fanatic branch of Islam, even though that has nothing to do, it is an aberration, with the rest of Islam throughout the world. So that is number one. They have that in common.

But the Pakistanis and the Saudis have two other things in common. As long as chaos was able to reign and continues in Afghanistan, there will never be a pipeline built through Afghanistan that permits the oil from central Asia. This vast quantity of oil that we know exists in central Asia, it cannot be brought to market because a pipeline will never be built through Afghanistan while the Taliban is in power and while chaos reins. What does that mean? That means oil prices have been much higher, maybe $5 a barrel higher, than they would have been had Afghanistan been under a good king and a stable government and a pipeline built that would have brought that oil out into the world market; and there are vast quantities of oil in central Asia waiting, just waiting to come to market.

The other factor is drugs. Unfortunately, there are many corrupt people and there are corrupt people all over the world, but there are many corrupt people in the Pakistani intelligence system, people who have been involved with drugs right up to their eyeballs. And what has Afghanistan produced in these last 10 years? Sixty percent of the world's heroin. Sixty percent of the world's heroin comes from Afghanistan. That huge amount of money, I knew, would bring down the government of Pakistan, the democracy of Pakistan.

Today, instead of a democracy, Pakistan has a military government because of the instability that is created by a Taliban regime of fanatics right next door. But there were people in Pakistan that profited by that regime.

When the Taliban fist arrived on the scene, people believed that they would be a force for stability. So, by and large, they were welcomed by many Afghan people, except in the northern provinces. And let me note that when the Taliban first arrived on the scene, they were carrying pictures of the old exiled king, Zahir Shah, claiming they were going to bring back the king, as I say, a much beloved figure. Well, the people in the northern provinces were not fooled, and the Taliban, they did not want the Taliban to take over their areas; and the Taliban were blocked by local commanders unwilling to permit these unfamiliar troops, as I say, many of whom totally sat out the war against the Russians. They were not going to let them just come in and take over their territory. And all too soon, the people of Afghanistan and the rest of the world were to discover that the Pakistanis and the Saudis had created a monster.

The Taliban were and are medieval in their words, in their world view, and their religious view. They are violent, they are intolerant, they are fanatics that are totally out of sync with Muslims throughout the world, even Muslims in their own country, and they are especially out of sync with Muslims living in the western democracies.

The Taliban are best known for their horrific treatment of women, but they are violators of human rights across the board. They have jailed and threatened to execute Christian aid workers. And let us not forget those Christian aid workers who are in Afghanistan being held under arrest as we speak. In fact, they have jailed and threatened to execute these Christian aid workers, people who came there to help their people, for allegedly, allegedly daring to espouse a belief in Jesus Christ. That is enough to get them executed in Afghanistan.

The Taliban have ended all personal freedoms. Freedom of speech and press are not even under consideration. And the Taliban ruled by fear and force and when they were asked, and I challenged them to have an election so the people of Afghanistan could choose their government and if they chose the Taliban, so be it, the Taliban only laughed and stonewalled and refused to even consider permitting the Afghan people to have an election and choose their leaders. ...

The Taliban are as big an enemy of the United States and, yes, as big an enemy to the Afghan people as they are to the people of the United States. The Talibans believe they have a private line to God, and the rest of us, with our religious constrictions are, according to the Taliban, we are not only wrong, but we are evil. That is why they have been willing to give safe haven to the likes of bin Laden, the Saudi terrorist who has been now in Afghanistan for several years. About 5 years he has been in Afghanistan, we have known he has been there, he has been visible. And while he has been there, he has been clearly training terrorists and planning out his attacks. This is nothing new. We have known about that. And oh, yes, bin Laden has an army of several thousand gunmen who he has brought in from various parts of the world, so they are foreigners to the people of Afghanistan, and this group of gunmen have been running around Afghanistan like a pack of mad dogs killing anyone who is an enemy to Taliban power. These foreign religious fanatics have killed thousands of Afghans, so the Taliban and bin Laden are as despised in that country as they are in our country today.

For these last few years, the Taliban, with the support of Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, have captured control of all but a small portion of Afghanistan. Only the Panjshir Valley territory in northeastern Afghanistan and the Shamali Plains north of Kabul are under the control and have been under the control of a legendary and dashing leader named Commander Massoud and they remain free of Taliban domination.

The day before the attack on the world trade towers and the Pentagon, there was an attempt to kill Commander Massoud. Many of us thought he was dead, he was reported dead, but he struggled for life for another 5 days and just died 2 days ago.

However, the attack on Commander Massoud; and I knew him, I had met him in Afghanistan. By the way, I will just say that I have been in and out of Afghanistan several times in these last few years.

The last time I went in was to see Commander Massoud. The attack on the commander told me something terrible was about to happen, something terrible was about to happen, because Massoud was someone that bin Laden understood that if he did something that would make the United States or someone else very angry at him, that Massoud was someone that would be turned to immediately by our side to ally with.

So before the attack on the World Trade Towers and on the Pentagon, bin Laden and his terrorists attacked Commander Massoud and, unfortunately, succeeded in killing him and eliminating Commander Massoud from the equation today.

I was so concerned about this, understanding that this was telling us that something horrible was going to happen, that I made an appointment to see the top officials in the White House in the National Security Council. My appointment with the National Security Council at the White House was to warn them that this attack on Massoud obviously meant something big was about to happen. My appointment was for 2:30 that afternoon. Unfortunately, at 8:45 that morning, the first plane slammed into the World Trade Center.

But the Taliban domination of Afghanistan was something that we could have ended long ago. Commander Massoud and the Northern Alliance were fighting the Taliban unsupported, with no help from the outside for years.

As a Member of Congress, for years I pleaded with the previous administration, I pleaded with them at the highest levels to provide some kind of help for the Northern Alliance, which was then fighting almost without bullets and weapons against the Taliban. They could have done something, and no one in that administration was willing to do it. So I believe that in many ways the previous administration was responsible for keeping the Taliban in power, even though during this very same time period, this very same time period, bin Laden was openly declaring war in the United States, planning attacks against us and building a terrorist network.

Every time I suggest that the last administration was in some way acquiescing to the Taliban being in power, there are those who just go ballistic because they believe I am being partisan at a moment when national unity is obviously the order of the day.

Let me emphasize that I am not being partisan. As a senior member of the Committee on International Relations, I officially requested State Department documents that would prove or disprove my suspicion that the last administration was secretly supporting the Taliban, and I was stonewalled in that request.

Let me make this clear. I am a senior member of the Committee on International Relations. It is my job to oversee the State Department. Other people have other committees, and they oversee those agencies and departments. As a member of that committee, that is part of my job.

Rep. Benjamin Gilman joined me in a request for these. Madeleine Albright, Secretary of State, promised I would have the documents. I wanted the documents pertaining to the development of our government's policy toward the Taliban. Yet, as an elected official, I had unelected officials, executives at the State Department, refusing to grant me the access to understand what our policy was toward the Taliban. I was instead given meaningless documents.

Members will hear in answer to this charge: "We gave the gentleman from California documents," but these were meaningless documents that had nothing to do with the development of the Taliban strategy. I never saw any of the documents about how we should approach the Taliban.

The State Department made a joke out of Congress' right to oversee America's foreign policy, especially towards Afghanistan. I pleaded with my colleagues to back me up in that demand. I will say that several Democrats did back me up in demanding that the previous administration provide me with that documentation.

But why? Why is it that I was stonewalled? Why is it that they never gave me those documents? I have to believe because those documents would show that the previous administration did consciously acquiesce to having the Taliban in power, probably as some kind of agreement with Saudi Arabia and Pakistan that they would be permitted to dominate this country, even though it was clear that a terrorist network was being set up there and that America was the target of that terrorist network. Americans had already been murdered by that time, in Saudi Arabia, with barracks blown up and such.

By the way, in Afghanistan and in that region, it is commonly believed by the people that the United States created the Taliban and that we support the Taliban. There are reasons that they believe that we supported the Taliban.

In 1996, for example, and this is a very poignant example, and I hope people will look at this example very closely, in 1996, the Taliban overextended their forces and thousands of their best fighters were captured in northern Afghanistan. The Taliban regime was vulnerable as never before and never since. It was a tremendous opportunity. The Northern Alliance could easily have dealt a knock-out punch to the Taliban.

At that time, I was in personal contact with the leader of the Northern Alliance, and I recommended to them a quick attack and that they bring back the old king, Zahir Shah, and he is in exile in Rome, and that they bring him back until some form of democratic process could be established. Thus, they would have a figurehead government with the old king for a period of time, and then they could establish a democratic process.

This was a turning point. That was doable. It could have been easily accomplished. The Taliban were vulnerable. Who saved the Taliban? Again, please, I am not being partisan when I say this, who saved the Taliban when they were vulnerable? It is my belief that President Bill Clinton saved the Taliban when they were the most vulnerable.

I beg Members, do not dismiss what I say as being partisan. I would never sink to that level at a time like this, when American lives have been taken.

What happened was at this moment, when the Taliban could have been eliminated, President Clinton dispatched Assistant Secretary of State Inderfurth and Bill Richardson, our United Nations Ambassador, to convince the leader of the Northern Alliance not to go on the offensive. That was when they were the most vulnerable. Our top leaders, our United Nations Ambassador, was dispatched, along with the top leader in the State Department, to go and tell them not to attack the Taliban.

These two high-level American officials were sent by President Clinton to propose a cease-fire and a supposed arms embargo on all sides. Of course, the minute that the cease-fire went into effect, and of course the Northern Alliance agreed to that, because they thought we were being sincere and they could trust the United States, but the minute that cease-fire went into effect, the Saudis and Pakistanis began a massive rearming and resupply effort to rebuild the Taliban forces in an equivalent to the Berlin airlift, and that was easy to spot.

It was easy to see that tons and tons, airplane after airplane was landing at Kabul Airport with military supplies from Saudi Arabia and from Pakistan. I knew about it. Our intelligence services had to know about it. But guess what, the Northern Alliance was kept in the dark until the Taliban were totally restored to their strength. When they were, the Taliban went on the offensive. They drove the Northern Alliance, which had had an arms embargo against them during this time period, which we enforced, and we convinced people not to give them weapons, they drove the Taliban, drove them out of the country.

For years, I begged the previous administration, our government, to support those resisting the Taliban regime, to support the former King Zahir Shah, and to let him head an interim government until a more democratic process could be put in place. This was an alternative we had. Instead, the only response that I got from the previous administration was stonewalling, stonewalling that and stonewalling my request to find out what the government's real policies were.

All the while, bin Laden, had killed American military personnel at that time, had declared war on the United States, and was running around Afghanistan openly, using it as a base of operations, a safe haven for terrorists. This man even tried to organize an attack on the Pope in the Philippines. His terrorists are responsible for the kidnapping there in the southern Philippines, and we have given him a safe haven all these years. We did nothing.

We were, in fact, I believe, acquiescing to Taliban control because I believe it was an understanding, as I say, between Saudi Arabia and Pakistan to let them dominate Afghanistan. This understanding was obviously turning into a nightmare. Even if it made sense in the beginning to have such an understanding, we should have seen what was going on, but our leaders lacked the will to change that situation.

Over and over again, I warned that our policy toward the Taliban would come back to hurt us. I was ignored and at times belittled. ...

I have an example of 7 times, and of the many, by the way, not just 7, not just 14, but many, many more times that I stood either on the House floor or in subcommittee warning that if we did not do something about the Taliban, that it would come back and dramatically hurt the United States of America. These warnings that were ignored over and over again, even while the State Department stonewalled my efforts to get the information. ...
September 9, 1999 - IR Committee Hearing: "I would again alert my fellow members of this committee that what is going on in Afghanistan is as important to America's National security as what is going on in Iran, because we have a terrorist base camp."

August 11, 1998 - Letter to Nawaz Sharif, Prime Minister Pakistan: "International Terrorists like Osama bin Laden will become the deans of terrorism schools in Afghanistan. For example, the recent bombings of U.S. embassies in Africa are tied to Osama bin Laden and his thugs."

May 21, 1998 - Letter to Newt Gingrich, Speaker of the House: "As you may know, Afghanistan has become the world's largest source of heroin. It is also one of the key terrorist training and staging areas in the world. Further, instability in Afghanistan limits the economic and democratic development of Central Asian states and negatively impacts U.S. Policy toward Iran. In short events in Afghanistan affect the lives of more than 200 million people in the Central and South Asian region."

August 10, 1998 - Letter to Karl Indefurth: "I have been preparing serious alternatives for Afghan policy for the past six years. I have found no willingness on the part of this administration to even try the alternatives that I have suggested. I have come to the conclusion that our goals are different. But for the time being I will give you the benefit of the doubt. The stakes go far beyond Afghanistan. There will be no peace in central Asia, or on the subcontinent between India and Pakistan until the U.S. decides that there will be no peace on this region or elsewhere with a policy that is not based on the fundamental principles of representative government and opposition to tyranny."

June 29, 2001 - IR Committee Hearing: "This regime has permitted terrorists to use Afghanistan as a base of operations from which their country has been used as a springboard for operations that have cost the lives of people throughout the Middle East, as well as targeted Americans. That alone should giveaways a message about the regime and our commitment and what ultimately should have been done."

July 19, 1999 - Floor Debate on the American Embassy Security Act of 1999: "As Rep. Gilman has stated, among the greatest threats to the security of American diplomatic missions and personnel is by Osama bin Laden and his legion of terrorists who train and operate out of Afghanistan. The primary benefactors of bin Laden's terrorists are elements in Pakistan and the extremist Taliban militia, who not only host and protect bin Laden but have imposed a reign of terror on the people of Afghanistan and especially on the women of Afghanistan."

October 30, 2000 - Floor Debate on State Department authorization: "This member and anyone who is in the Committee on International Relations will testify, for years I have been warning what results of this administration's policy towards Afghanistan would be. For years, I predicted over and over again that, unless we did something in Afghanistan to change the situation, that we would end up with Afghanistan as the center of terrorism, a base for terrorism not only in Central Asia but for the world."

November 9, 1999 - House Floor Debate on Afghanistan: "A terrorist trained in Afghanistan helped blow up a building which housed our military people in Saudi Arabia. There was an assassination attempt on the Pope. They found out that the terrorist who was going to assassinate the Pope was trained in Afghanistan. We can not let this go on, because not only is it immoral to let this go on, but practically speaking, if we do, it will come back and hurt us."
But why were we not warned then? It was clear something was going on in Afghanistan. Why were we not warned by others of the horrific attack that was about to be launched on us, the American people?

There was a headline in the Washington Post on September 14 suggesting that America's intelligence services have been conducting a secret war against bin Laden for several years. If that is true, then we need to fire all of the incompetent leaders of that covert war, because they were responsible for protecting us from this heinous and cowardly gang; and they obviously have dramatically failed.

Instead, there was no warning. Yet, we were told the heads of our intelligence organizations were focused on bin Laden. There is a war being conducted against bin Laden, we were focused on him, and he was able to attack us and slaughter thousands of our people without any warning from these people who were supposedly focused on him?

We spend tens of billions of dollars annually for good intelligence, and we have tens of thousands of people committed to this endeavor. And they totally missed a terrorist operation of this magnitude run by their number one targeted terrorist. This was clearly the worst failure of American intelligence in our history.

I cannot help but remember, in another poignant story, I cannot help but remember a few years ago I was called by a friend who had worked in Afghanistan during the war against the Russians. This man has thousands of friends in Afghanistan because he had been there, and he had helped thousands of Afghans who were his friends and looked at him as a wonderful person. He had kept in touch with them.

He indicated to me that he could pinpoint bin Laden's location. I passed on his phone number to the CIA. After a week, he had yet to be contacted, so I called them again. For another week there was no response. When I gave them this man's credentials, I told them, "This is a man who knows about Afghanistan. He has sources that you do not have." They did not call him for 2 weeks. Another week, no response.

Finally, I contacted Rep. Porter Goss, the chairman of the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence here in the Congress. He set up a meeting with me and the bin Laden task force. There they were, the CIA, the NSA, the FBI. Guess what? They, too, left my friend waiting by his phone and did not follow up.

After weeks, finally, a second time when Rep. Goss had to call them on the carpet, my friend was at last contacted. He described the agents who talked to him as being somewhat disinterested. That may have been because by the time they got to him, over a month had passed and perhaps the tip-off was a little stale. Or perhaps, as we are learning in the paper today, or not today but yesterday, when there were reports in the paper, that our intelligence services knew about the location of bin Laden several times but were not permitted to attack him. So there are people in the intelligence services that wanted to go forward and did not end and could not because of decisions made by people higher up, or perhaps in their own agencies, people who were incompetent.

My friends, the slaughter of these thousands of Americans must be avenged, there is no doubt about it; and we must see to it that such a monstrous crime can never happen again. To accomplish this, we must be strong and we must be smart. Now, we do not need our troops, the worst thing we could do is just try to send an army into Afghanistan. If there are two rules of modern warfare it is you do not march on Moscow and you do not invade Afghanistan. That does not mean, however, that we cannot commit military action. I think this calls for military action.

We should already be dispatching special forces teams and rangers to those countries on the northern border of Afghanistan. Those teams and other military units should establish a system of supply and equip those Afghans friendly to the United States so that they can free themselves, with our help, from Taliban rule. We can then join them. Once Taliban rule has been eliminated in Afghanistan, we can join them in hunting down and killing every member of bin Laden's terrorist gang and hanging their bodies from the gate.

But revenge is not an end in itself. We cannot permit ourselves to strike out blindly, to hurt people who have nothing to do with this. Some people have said, oh, let us bomb Kabul. Kabul is filled with people who hate the Taliban. Afghanistan is filled with people who hate the Taliban. We cannot make enemies out of people who will be our allies.

We must be smart and not just strong. Revenge in itself is not the answer, even though revenge is called for. By killing bin Laden and his gang, it is not just revenge; it is an act also of deterrence, of saving lives. We must keep in mind that our motive is to prevent further terrorist attacks slaughtering our own citizens, and especially by making sure we work with other people in the Muslim world and elsewhere who will join us in this effort, and not just the Muslim world and not just others who are on the periphery.

We need to lead this world, as our President, George W. Bush, is doing, to set a new moral standard. We have to keep to that moral standard as we proceed to seek justice and vengeance for the death of our people. That new moral standard has got to be that noncombatants will not be attacked. We will not kill unarmed innocent people in order to achieve a political objective.

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Taliban, Al Qaeda Created by US to Challenge Russians

US Aided, Empowered Taliban in 80s and 90s

US Helped Taliban Slaughter Opponents

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Originally posted by scribblet:
Exposed yourself as extremely biased at best , and as a woman you should be ashamed for not wanting to help Afghan women keep their hard gotten gains.

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No, as a woman, I am ashamed of our occupying military force that is making Afghan women's plight harder. Again had you read and informed yourself you would've ralized they have NO gains.

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Calling people willfully ignorant because they disagree with you does not add to your credibility nor the debate.

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Of course it does, especially as it is true, of you and others who refuse to arm yourself with truth in order to feel good about yourselves, in heinious support of our government use of young Canadian women and men lives by using them as the private army of Oil. Say notyhing of the using them to destroy innocent Afghans lives, which is by far worse, as they did not have a choice.

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Should we go into Darfur and impose our culture of freedom there, or let them go on killing?

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Originally posted by Steppenwolf Allende:
First, if these frauds are so concerned about the horrors the Taliban regime committed against women, why did they so religiously support the Taliban when it was set up, trained, funded, armed and put into power in Afghanistan by the US government 1992?

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"Those who fought the Soviet occupation were called the Mujahedin. During my time at the White House during the 1980s, I had the opportunity to meet and get to know most of their leaders. The current Taliban leadership does not include any of those wartime leaders."

"After the collapse of the Communist regime in Afghanistan, the Mujahedin factions who fought the Russians, but with no direction from the United States, began bickering and fighting among themselves. This went on for several years. Then, in 1996, a new force appeared, seemingly out of nowhere: the Taliban."

"All of the money America provided the Mujahedin during the war had to be sent through; that is, the war against Soviet Union occupation, had to be sent through the equivalent of the Pakistani CIA, which is called the ISI. But apparently, the Pakistanis had siphoned enough off to create a third force, and since the war was over and the other factions had been bled white, they could use this third force to dominate Afghanistan."

"Also behind the Taliban is and was Saudi Arabia."

"The Taliban are as big an enemy of the United States and, yes, as big an enemy to the Afghan people as they are to the people of the United States."

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Originally posted by Steppenwolf Allende:
You are such a liar.

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It would appear in Steppenwolfs lengthy and fully quoted article that the auther is accusing the Clinton administration of supporting the Taliban, and as a Republican in an immediately post 911 world, he is trying to provide cover for his own party.

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Originally posted by Free_Radical:
Who is?

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Jingles:
No US service member is a victim four years after this goddamn crime took place.

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Then you could say that no one is a victim four years after they were victimized. By your reasoning women who have been abused and children that fell prey to priests cease to be victims after the event.

Historically I guess one can cease being a victim, but one can never change the fact that they were a victim. In the case of past wars many soldiers were victims, in the case of ongoing wars they are still being victimized. Whether they may also be victimizers at the same time is beside the point.

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Ignorance is no excuse, and willful ignorance is even worse.

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BS. Whether one knows what they are doing is wrong or not or not makes a big difference in how they should be judged. And the veracity of what they know also comes into play.

quote:

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There is no excuse, none whatsoever, to not know what the hell is going on.

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You expect everyone to know everything, then? This is crap. People know what they are told, some are more inquisitive than others and know more, and what they know more of is dependent upon what sources are available to them.

You discount entirely the role of the education and information distribution systems, social pressure and peer pressure.

quote:

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If they are indeed fed up with it, why aren't these poor victims standing up and telling their President to go fuck himself? Why aren't they shooting their officers? Why aren't they deserting en masse? Why aren't they monkeywrenching the whole machine?

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Some of them have, others will, if it gets bad enough for them there will be a snowball effect. I don't know your background, but it is apparent that you either really don't understand people and what soldiers face, or your as radically blinded or more than the Taliban and Pat Robertson.

quote:

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Watch the videos of the soldiers there. Watch them scream with delight as they shoot Iraqis for sport, and keep telling me that those psychotic murderous thugs are a few bad apples, that they are victims.

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quote:

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Notice how some members of this forum will support and defend the right of the Taliban to conduct its extreme misogynistic practices so long as the Taliban remain anti-American. I guess "the enemy of my enemy" doctrine applies here.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
All too true sadly.

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Notice how these lying corporate-brown-nosing murder-loving George Bush blow-hards can be so easily exposed with a few facts?

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Well, once again the left demonstrates that its impotence is caused by its proclivity to eat its own. I haven't read every last post of Bobolink, Free Radical, or Kronstadt, but I would hope that their fellow posters were inclined to at least grant them innocence until proven guilty. I would hope that their fellow posters would be inclined to educate and persuade them away from their current positions rather than belittle and insult them with empty headed terms like "murder-lovers." The first inclination here is always to dehumanize the other poster, to reduce them to a cartoon nazi, woman hating, muslim hating, poor hating, secret fascist, corporatist, tory operative. But what is one to expect? The posters with the most tenure here are also the ones who engage in this incessant baiting, and it is the explicitly, and endlessly, repeated, policy of the mods to grant those with such tenure more leeway and credibility than posters of more recent vintage, no matter how often they bait and insult and deride others. Some posters, clearly, are not even to be responded to when they engage in this behaviour.

Not quite democratic, methinks.

Gee whiz. Why are we at 13-16%. Could it be our outreach program? Certainly not, no.

----------------------------------

Either they know what's going on, and want to join in the slaughter. Or they know what's going on and are too cowardly to free themselves. Or they don't know what's happening, and they are the stupidest bunch of brain damaged Gomer Piles that has ever drawn breath.

quote:

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Then you could say that no one is a victim four years after they were victimized.

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???...That is a...strange way to interpret. In case you missed it, the Iraq war is still on. And on. And on. And on. Perhaps my wording wasn't clear. I should have said "No US service member is a victim four years after this continuing crime first began."

To argue today that the volunteer American soldier is ignorant of the facts of Iraq four years into the war is the same line of thinking that argues that Hillary Clinton voted for the war because she didn't know the Whitehouse was lying. Every other sentient being on earth new, but somehow, those confused democrats were just plum snookered. I don't believe spineless democrats, and I don't believe the US military.

As for the child raping, how despicable does the institution have to be when your defense of them is "they aren't all child rapists"? That's true, and I'll grant you the point. There are many other US soldiers and Marines who prefer to rape their fellow soldiers rather than the locals.

quote:

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I don't know your background, but it is apparent that you either really don't understand people and what soldiers face, or your as radically blinded or more than the Taliban and Pat Robertson.

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Is this the "you don't know, 'cause you weren't there argument? Please.

[ 11 April 2007: Message edited by: Bobolink ]

quote:

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Originally posted by Steppenwolf Allende:

First, if these frauds are so concerned about the horrors the Taliban regime committed against women, why did they so religiously support the Taliban when it was set up, trained, funded, armed and put into power in Afghanistan by the US government 1992?

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quote:

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Originally posted by Webgear:
CTV is confirming the deaths from CFB Gagetown.

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Oh, this is so sad for the families, but nevertheless, people need to be aware that we should NOT be there, that this would not have happened had our young men and women been pulled out, as soon as the US stopped looking for Bin Laden. And if not then, when the time was up, and not renewed.

Best wishes for those 3 injured on their speedy recovery.

It is time everyone in Canada, started respecting Afghan wishes, lives and rights and insist that our young people come home.

quote:

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Originally posted by minkepants:

Well, once again the left demonstrates that its impotence is caused by its proclivity to eat its own. I haven't read every last post of Bobolink, Free Radical, or Kronstadt, but I would hope that their fellow posters were inclined to at least grant them innocence until proven guilty.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Boom Boom:
A military analyst on CTV NewsNet just said this was to be expected, that the CF recognise they are in a war zone, and will carry on.

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Liars. If they expected it, they'd announce it beforehand.

quote:

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Originally posted by Bobolink:

You will see that I have actually written very little since I joined.

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re Bobo posts:

Well, the first few i read didn't seem completely loony, although I don't know what's in the rest.

but, again, within the first three i checked there was a thread where you asked whether another poster was being facetious about the UK bombing Iran (she was) and someone used your asking of the question as a definitive basis to decide you lusted for a nuclear holocaust in the middle east, so, *SIGH*, see my statement above.

Speaking of questions, is it ever ok to invade another country? How about Germany when they went after Poland? How about when they went after Czechoslavakia? How about Pol Pot? East Timor? Is it ever, under any circumstance, ok? Do you let Hitler work his atrocities and do nothing?

Unfortunately no one likes to answer that one directly, instead sidestepping the question by saying that to merely pose the question, (a question which was the focus of months of debate at my international law and international relations courses) is reactionary, wehich, conveniently, leaves the question unanswered.

[ 11 April 2007: Message edited by: minkepants ]

quote:

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Originally posted by minkepants:

Speaking of questions, is it ever ok to invade another country?

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Yes, it's ok when the U.N. Security Council says so - as a general rule. There may be a few exceptions (such as the Korean War, voted on while the Soviets were boycotting the S.C. sessions). And of course, if the invasion is "defensive" (i.e. preceded by aggression against the invader), that's fine too.

The military did notice that each Canadian rotation would have about 10 causalities for each six month unit rotation in the spring of 2003.

This story was reported by the CBC, it focused on the 3RCR BG in Kabul.

Sorry I did can provide a link.

quote:

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Yes, it's ok when the U.N. Security Council says so - as a general rule. There may be a few exceptions (such as the Korean War, voted on while the Soviets were boycotting the S.C. sessions). And of course, if the invasion is "defensive" (i.e. preceded by aggression against the invader), that's fine too.

Sorry, I didn't have months to debate the issue.

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OK, fair answer, although the months to debate the issue comment is a little odd. is that also a dig?

So, what about if the country is committing genocide within its own borders? Was it OK for Vietnam to go in to depose Pol Pot for instance?

[ 11 April 2007: Message edited by: minkepants ]

quote:

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Originally posted by Jerry West:
Shooting people isn't remotely the same as child-raping...

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Minor quibble: shooting people is worse then raping children. Raped children, although emotionally scarred for life, get to live. People shot to death do not. And not a small portion of those shot (blown up, torn apart, maimed etc) to death by the US troops are children. And slowly but surely instances of fire directed at passing rikshah, cars, motorcycles by Canadian troops are piling up. Along with dead children.

quote:

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Originally posted by minkepants:

OK, fair answer, although the months to debate the issue comment is a little odd. is that also a dig?

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No - you're the one who said your international law and international relations courses debated it for months. I was just trying to apologize for giving a very brief answer, and not an academic one, because I'm not an academic and I may not have the tools to reference and prove every position I present. Mostly my positions are based on my feelings and beliefs, unfortunately.

quote:

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So, what about if the country is committing genocide within its own borders?

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Master Cpl. Allan Stewart, 30
Trooper Patrick James Pentland, 23

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Jingles:
Either they know what's going on, and want to join in the slaughter. Or they know what's going on and are too cowardly to free themselves. Or they don't know what's happening, and they are the stupidest bunch of brain damaged Gomer Piles that has ever drawn breath.

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There are some of each and also some who choose not to go to prison or become a fugitive. My argument with you is that choices and motivations are not as simple as you want to make them out to be. You are on much better ground when directing your anger at the leaders and system responsible for these messes than the people at the bottom of the pile who wind up doing the dirty work.

quote:

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That is a...strange way to interpret.... Perhaps my wording wasn't clear.

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Not strange at all given your wording.

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To argue today that the volunteer American soldier is ignorant of the facts of Iraq four years into the war....

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There are facts, then there are facts. Some peoples facts are different than others and bring different conclusions. Granted some may be ignorant of my facts or your facts. then there are those who know our facts and choose not to tangle with the legal system. You may not keep up on the US military, but there is tremendous dissatisfaction with the wars and the repeated tours of duty. If Iraq and Afghanistan depended on people who volunteered to go there the wars would probably be over.

quote:

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I don't believe spineless democrats, and I don't believe the US military.

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Me either, but I make a distinction between the official military line and the troops.

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There are many other US soldiers and Marines who prefer to rape their fellow soldiers rather than the locals.

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Many being a small number. Most do not, so why a blanket smear? You could just as well argue that because one is gay or a priest one prefers to have sex with little children. Would you argue that too? It makes as much sense as the other smear.

quote:

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Is this the "you don't know, 'cause you weren't there argument?

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It sure sounds like you either have a very limited understanding of what it is like in the military, or you just tend to extreme views.

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But we're sidetracking this thread with our little pissing match, so if you want the last word, give 'er.

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I couldn't resist.

quote:

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Just so we are clear on that point.

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quote:

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No - you're the one who said your international law and international relations courses debated it for months. I was just trying to apologize for giving a very brief answer, and not an academic one, because I'm not an academic and I may not have the tools to reference and prove every position I present. Mostly my positions are based on my feelings and beliefs, unfortunately.

quote:
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So, what about if the country is committing genocide within its own borders?

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I already answered that: The U.N. Security Council. Nations of the world have constructed these imperfect forums and instruments for a reason - to avoid anarchy and the law of the jungle.

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Oops, my bad. Sorry. And it was a concice and cogent response. Thanks for clarifying the UN point. Has the UN ever approved an intervention due to the internal affairs of a single country (I, uhhh, despite my courses, can't recall), Korea being 2 countries, kinda, sorta.

Which brings me to what I'm getting at. I loath(ed) the Taliban. Even in the absence of 9/11 could there have been a justifiable intervention on the basis of it's policies towards women?

The secondary question gets into the looking-glass world question of what the hell happened on 9/11. To transpose a quote about OJ, I'm of the mind that the Tliban "were guilty and they were framed," ie- 9/11 was known about by the Bush administration beforehand, they stood their fighters down, and they let it happen. And they built and financed the taliban and al quaeda. But I'm not convinced, at least not yet, that the taliban and al quaeda weren't involved at all, and, as another poster noted, that they aren't as much a product of Pakistani and Saudi imperialism as much as a the US's.

So...... if we accept that rather asteroid sized "if," then we meet the requirement for "prior agression." If so, could the invasion of Afghanistan have been justified? I mean if our glorious leaders had k'know, maybe actually spent some money on infrastructure and put in a government that wasn't a thieving inept subsidiary of the Carlysle Group.

[ 11 April 2007: Message edited by: minkepants ]

quote:

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Originally posted by minkepants:

I loath(ed) the Taliban. Even in the absence of 9/11 could there have been a justifiable intervention on the basis of it's policies towards women?

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Of course not. Saudi Arabia punishes homosexuality by death. Kuwait didn't allow women to vote until recently, and that right is still truncated, as are all other rights of women there. The Vatican state doesn't permit divorce or birth control or female priests or abortion or homosexuality or...

The U.S. doesn't allow open LGBT people to join the armed forces. The U.S. is racist and sexist and classist in too many ways to mention. It executes large numbers of people who are really the victims of their oppressive circumstances.

I hate these - and the thousands of other examples you and I could easily construct - as much as you and I hate the Taliban. Remember what I said about the law of the jungle? We are humanity, and we've moved beyond that. We respect national sovereignty as the lesser of evils.

quote:

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Your second question is too complicated for me.

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quote:

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One has to wonder if you even bother to read your own sources? This link directly contradicts what you say.

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One has to wonder whether you patently lie for the fun of it, or if you actually have serious mental problems.

That article I posted was part of a whole series of links I have repeatedly provided here over the course of many months, only to have twits like you ignore them or put your own dishonest spin on them in order to keep supporting this atrocity.

That article quotes a Republican boasting about his regime's support for the Mujahedin, which was based on extreme right-wing Islamic cult dogma, and from which the Taliban evolved.

He also points out the continued support for the Taliban by the Clinton Administration, which is also well-documented and which the Democrats have never denied. These are the only reasons why I offered this article: to show the US government long-time involvement in funding and creating these types of groups (and therefore should stand in contempt with them, not as a hero fighting them).

Now, obviously, as a typical Republican, he lies through his teeth in order to absolve his party's involvement in spearheading these elite groups.

For example, when he claims “Then, in 1996, a new force appeared, seemingly out of nowhere: the Taliban.” or the “The current Taliban leadership does not include any of those wartime leaders," he is lying.

The truth, according to these reports is:

Taliban, Al Qaeda Created by US to Challenge Russians, and many of those players back then, are still players today.

And

US Helped Taliban Slaughter Opponents

When he says, “But apparently, the Pakistanis had siphoned enough off to create a third force, and since the war was over and the other factions had been bled white, they could use this third force to dominate Afghanistan," he is refusing to admit that from then up until today, this has been done with the knowledge and support of the US Republican government.

US lets Pakistan Dictatorship fund Taliban, despite War

The fact the he admits he knows that the Pakistani and Saudi dictatorships, both clients states of the US, are and have been Taliban and Al Qaeda supporters proves that he, as a ranking US government figure is, to at least some degree, complicit in this happening and going on for so many years.

quote:

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Across this country ordinary Canadians are deeply saddened by the loss of six Canadian soldiers in a roadside bombing near Kandahar. These are very brave individuals who do whatever our country asks them to do, and that's the reason that Canadians are so supportive of all of those who are on the front lines.

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- Jack Layton, April 8, 2007.

[ 11 April 2007: Message edited by: unionist ]

Hey Purity. FYI, my posts here are not about "the left" and nor are they an outreach strategy or campaign to work with anyone.

They are outright fact-based condemnations of people on this thread who suddenly wimp out and attack their supposed friends here in order to stick up for one of the biggest atrocities this country has been involved in in recent times--and they do this by slandering other posters with the usual shit of supposedly being "anti-American," "sympathizing with Islamic extremists," “not caring about the Canadian troops” and, the real goodie, "supporting the Taliban."

Gutless lies like this have no place here, and I'm sick of seeing them crop up by alleged "progressives" against other people here every time a discussion like this arises.

From people like the Free_Radical, who suddenly develops huge comprehension problems reading reports I post showing the US government, along with its puppet dictatorships in the Middle East, set up and funded murdering scum like the Taliban and Al Qaeda and similar groups to do their dirty work for Corporate America, to people like scribblets, who comes up with fairy fabrications about the US invading Afghanistan to defend women's rights, these types just don't see how pathetic they collectively look.

Outreach? Here? To these pro-slaughter idiots? Bin there; done that—repeatedly. On too many threads to count. I have posted articles and quotes from documents from both the US government and other sources. I have tried to show the differences between the BS being told to us by the Liberal and Conservative regimes here vs what’s actually going on. I have linked to informed commentaries to counteract the garbage pushed in the corporate media about this mission.

It’s all been ignored or laughed off by these same idiots who are still pushing the mindless pro-government crap and hurling the pre-determined insults and slander at anyone who tries to tell the truth and speak out against this atrocity.

Outreach is something I do all the time on various matters and engage in respectful debate with working class people who may be under some serious misconceptions about various things, thanks to the corporate media being their only source of info, but who still have their own feelings, values and personal integrity to get more info.

We’re way, way, way past that here. All can say now to tell these TV war jockeys who love this Afghanistan slaughter and the powers that initiated it so much, that maybe they should get off their chickenhawk asses and go enlist in the forces and push to be sent to Afghanistan themselves. That way at least they can put their own butts on the line instead of expecting others to do it for them.

quote:

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Originally posted by Webgear:
Unionist

That was an excellent post, very nice.

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Oh God Webgear, thanks for your note - I forgot to cite the source!

Since I thought you wrote it and not some public relations person for Mr. Layton.

I hope that it is in good way.

Send me a PM if you want.

[ 11 April 2007: Message edited by: Webgear ]

quote:

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Originally posted by Webgear:
Why?

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quote:

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"British soldiers, if ordered, ride up to the cannons mouth, but it is a shame to waste such men."

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quote:

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Well, ain't the fluff post by minkepants just warm your heart, even if it insults your intelligence.

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Hardly, and if I even gave that impression then that is due to the poverty of my prose, not condescension. I was replying to U's comment of not being an academic, as well as my own hypersensitivity to imaginary sleights.

You can hurl the accusation, but it has no basis.

Ergo, you prove my point

quote:

---

Hey Purity. FYI, my posts here are not about "the left" and nor are they an outreach strategy or campaign to work with anyone.

They are outright fact-based condemnations of people on this thread who suddenly wimp out and attack their supposed friends here in order to stick up for one of the biggest atrocities this country has been involved in in recent times--and they do this by slandering other posters with the usual shit of supposedly being "anti-American," "sympathizing with Islamic extremists," “not caring about the Canadian troops” and, the real goodie, "supporting the Taliban."

---

So I breezed through some of Scribblet's threads, of which there are only 8 over 4 years. Despite a huuuuuge bias towards israel, I don't see any of the quotes/ sentiments you attribute to scrib actually coming out of their keyboard.

Ergo you prove my point.

umm, I'm just gonna distill the essence of the rest of your post in the interests of concision, OK?

quote:

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Gutless... idiots... idiots ...mindless ...crap ...TV war jockeys who love this Afghanistan slaughter ...chickenhawk asses ...You should die in their place.

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I don't even need to get into this. You flamed yourself.

Ergo, you prove my point.

I appreciate the links to important history you have provided. Thank-you.

[ 11 April 2007: Message edited by: minkepants ]

quote:

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Originally posted by unionist:

Webgear, even I know the answer (I think). Every time I hear about Canadians being injured or killed, your name comes to mind. While we may not all agree on the justness of the cause, I think almost all of us worry about our friends, neighbours and relatives - and you are kind of all three to us here.

---

quote:

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Originally posted by scribblet:

Exposed yourself as extremely biased at best , and as a woman you should be ashamed for not wanting to help Afghan women keep their hard gotten gains.

Calling people willfully ignorant because they disagree with you does not add to your credibility nor the debate.

Should we go into Darfur and impose our culture of freedom there, or let them go on killing?

---

quote:

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Originally posted by unionist:
The names and photos of 5 of the 6 dead are here.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Steppenwolf Allende:
That article quotes a Republican boasting about his regime's support for the Mujahedin, which was based on extreme right-wing Islamic cult dogma, and from which the Taliban evolved.

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This Mujahideen=Taliban analysis betrays a real over-simplification and, frankly, downright ignorance of a very complex situation.

quote:

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Originally posted by Legless-Marine:

Please stop posting porno to this froup.

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You apparently believe it is droll to accuse me of posting pornography.

quote:

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Across this country ordinary Canadians are deeply saddened by the loss of six Canadian soldiers in a roadside bombing near Kandahar. These are very brave individuals who do whatever our country asks them to do, and that's the reason that Canadians are so supportive of all of those who are on the front lines.

- Jack Layton, April 8, 2007.

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What a spineless twit. His opposition comes down to "support the troops". Bra-vo. Clap. Clap. Clap.

quote:

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I don't even need to get into this. You flamed yourself.

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Your efforts to twist what I say are certainly a laugh.

But just to put you back on track, no, I didn't flame myself. I flamed you and yours on this thread, and I meant it.

Once again, if you think it's worth killing tens or hundreds of thousands of people in Afghanistan to support yet another US-backed totalitarian regime so Corporate America can get its pipeline, then by all means get off your war wimp ass, pack yours bags and head over there and put yourself on the front lines.

Otherwise, shut up and go away.

quote:

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This Mujahideen=Taliban analysis betrays a real over-simplification and, frankly, downright ignorance of a very complex situation.

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Ah yes, Free_Radical--the wimp-out apologies to let the US government off the hook. The fact is many of the same players in the old group are players in the new group, and both groups got support and funding and, in the case of the Taliban were put into power by the US government and are still getting support from US-back dictatorships like Pakistan and Saudi Arabia with full US government knowledge and tacit approval.

quote:

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I would suggest you do some more reading about Afghanistan in the future. Steve Coll's Ghost Wars ("The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001") would be a good place for you to start gaining a better understanding of the issues here.

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And where do think some of the links and info I have posted on these threads in the past months come from? Take your own advice and start reading some of it yourself since you seem pretty clued out to me.

quote:

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SA: this is a friendly suggestion. Go back and delete that long sickening article by that right-wing Republican hack.

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