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You don't need to know every detail to be against war. A lot of people simply think that war is never the answer and its wrong because people will ALWAYS die. And I can see where they're coming from when they say that.
And as for the kids looking for a day off school.... When I organised the protest at my school it was far from looking for time out of lessons. I worked my ass off for about 20hrs a day for 3 days to organise a 15 minute peaceful protest. A hell of a lot of thought and work goes into some protests, and before you say I know nothing about the Iraq situaton - do you really think I'd have stood up infront of 1,800 people in 2 days and spoken about it if I knew nothing? Ahh the humiliation if I had known nothing.
I'm just against the protests that aren't like that - and to be honest they're sadly probably in the majority.
Don't agree with your point about people always dying though - that seems kinda irrevelent when people die there anyway without us invading - but hey, at least you know your facts and you're not some stupid hippy.
It's the fact that more people are dying, being killed by our troops. And that our troops are dying. Have you looked up/heard the stats for the friendly/enemy ratio deaths? These are generalisations btw, not actually Iraq war stats...
For every 10 dead Navy Seals, only 5 of the enemy will have been killed.
Over half the war casualties and deaths of our troops will be due to friendly fire or accidents.
But, for every 16 enemy killed, only 1 SAS officer will die.
How many of our soldiers have died so far from Iraqi fire? Then how many have died from friendly fire or accients? A hell of a lot more are dead from accidents and 'friendly' fire (can they please find another name for that?) than from actual enemy fire.
I think its sick. How can we go to war and stage a decent, strategic battle, when we kill off more of our own men than the enemy does?
I don't really see how those facts could have any revelence to if you're for or against the war - what so war wouldn't be sick if we killed more of them than our own?
It's hard to justify this war, but then its hard to justify any war - at first hand war seems like the totally wrong thing to do, I mean what good will killing so many innocent people do?
Quite possibly a lot of good. It's not like we're trying to kill the innocent, they don't fire at civillians on purpose do they? Of course, on the whole most of the Iraqi soldiers will be innocent - but then most of them surrendered - the majority of the Iraqi deaths have been Saddams elitist followers who have nothing to lose. So in reality, not that many innocent people are dying. Besides, if you think about it, in the long term we'll be saving lives by going to War - getting rid of a ruthless dictator who kills thousands of his own people does tend to decrease the average death rate you know.
However I think most people are behind the Armed Forces now that they are at war, we should all want them to return home safe and hopefully not too many innocent people die. Innocent are bound to be caught up in this but I strongly hope our soldiers (who are only doing their job) do return home........SOON.
i've read this bit. i haven't bothered to read one single answer and have no intentions of doing so. this topic is being hotly debated in the polotics forum.
i'll just have to say this though. you obviously haven't a fucking clue what this war is about and why it's being fought.
People are protesting because they disagree with the situation, its hypocrisy and the negative reverberations it will have in the future. We have the freedom of speech that people around the world die for.
As for the problem of inconvenience. If there is no damage caused to property or person then what's the harm? People late for work? Late going home? Going out? Impatience breeds in our society. If we were to take a few moments and realise how lucky we are compared to so many people in the world, we wouldn't be complaining about being held up by protests.
They believe that this war is illegal
Thousands of men women and children will die because they have no food, no water and no homes
They think it is wrong to wage war and it continues to be wrong even though it has begun
There are people in Iraq who have no electricity, no food, no water, no homes, their families are being killed and injured, they do not know where to go , when to go, who to trust.
meanwhile.... In the UK none of us have experienced such conditions, we are happy at home with our TV's, skateboards, fashion, the copy of heat magazine we can buy on Tuesday, being able to pop to the shop and buy a bottle of wine, easy access to a cashpoint to get some money to meet our friends, knowing where our parents are, having the time to think about mothers day, having the time to buy a card, being able to pop to tescos for a loaf of bread, knowing if our teeth hurt we can call the dentist, being able to buy the white stripes album on mondey etc etc etc...in other words our lives are cosy and un-troubled.
Some of us are aware of the shit that the Iraqi civilians are going through but we will never really know quite how it feels.
There would have been better and legal ways to deal with the issue of Saddam and his regime.. War in any country means the deaths of thousands of innocent people..
THAT is why people should carry on protesting and why we should not winge about our cosy lives being disrupted for half an hour on the way to work.
Imagine you had to leave your home in 5 minutes. What would YOU take with you!!???????????????????
My point is, that what is the fucking point of going to war, if we kill off half our troops? If we can't kill the enemy, but we're killing ourselves, surely we need to be re-thinking something here?
Uh but we CAN kill the enemy and we ARE killing them - and the reason we've killed more of our own troops than they've killed of ours is simply because they're so weak/outnumbered and haven't been able to kill many of them.
Also we're not even trying to kill that many of them, we're going in slowly with precision and care to make sure that as few as civilians as possible, and that enemy soldiers are taken prisoner rather than killed.
Would you prefered it with we followed the examples set by WW2 and pulled a Dresdon on the City of Baghdad killing 500,000 people in one night instead?
so the peace protesters slowed down your important life a little ...
i won't be weeping for.
I was refering to the friendly fire incidents.... not soldiers wounded or killed by Iraqis... Soldiers killed by their own side.
And no, I'd just rather we weren't 'solving' this with war. No bombs. No guns. No more war.
You think if there was another solution to the problem that we wouldn't be using it? Why would Tony Blair and George Bush put themselves in such precarious positions and (especialy for Blair) make themselves even more unpopular amongst there people by going to War, if there was some other way to go about things. If you've got a better way of solving the Worlds problems, lets hear it.
No. Because this is America's war... America are gonna take the easy way because Bush has been hungry for this war since September 11th. Do I really need to launch into a whole speech about how America is ....well... America? Self righteous cunts, who claim they're a democratic country, when really they seem to be more right-wing than they claim.
If I had a better solution, of course I'd be broadcasting that. But seeing as our government hides so much from us, we don't know the ins and outs of it all, so I can't accuratley suggest anything. But surely, there is always a better way to handle this than jumping in and murdering people?
Why would you think that? There probably isn't. The guy kills his own people, has committed thousands of attrocities, he has... well there's no point listing all the things he's done, we both know hes an evil piece of shit who is screwing up the lives of his people. We've been trying for TWELVE YEARS using diplomacy to get him to stop, yet he still continues. War is the last and only option.
That's not true, noone tried calling the A-Team.
You know you're right... and whaddabout Superman, eh?
I think you will find that there has never been any attempt to monitor the iraqi regime for human rights abuses as a matter of fact.....
The French suggested it but the US and UK trampled all over it and went to war anyway........
Yes, but in all likelyhood that wouldn't have worked anyway, and it'd have just prolonged the waiting for war and allowed Saddam to kill even more of his people. We've had enough timewasting, 12 years of it.
Enough time waiting around? Why the rush?
The US kills hundreds of its own citizensanmd homosexual sex is illegal in many states. These are human rights abuses (at least in my mind). Is Blair likely to ask Bush or put pressure on him to stop?
we had inspectors on the ground making slow but sure progress.
WE not saddam have wasted the last twelve years. with our supposedly superior politics, education and morals, we have deprived iraqi sick iraqi children of the most basic painkillers and medicines. we have deprived hospitals of antibiotics and disenfectants. now we are going to blow the shit out of their land, their towns villages and cities. our poiticians are that fucking stupid they believed the iraqi people were going to welcome us with open arms! throw flowers at the troops.
how dumb and trusting do they think the iraqi people can be after the way WE ...yes WE have failed the last twelve yrs to even be decent enough to allow their children to have access to an aspirin? the british gassed the same kurds in 1926 ...you want these people to think we're wonderful. don't make me fucking cry!
Why aren't the Iraqi people surrendering like the Americans thought they would?
Because when George Bush Sr promised them he would help them last time he allowed Saddam to stay and left the people to suffer the regime...therefore the Iraqi people do not believe that the Americans will do as they say they will, they do not believe in the supposed might of the American administration. They do not trust them (like many people don't)
It really pisses me off that we are expected to believe that the USA is doing this because of the humanitarian and human right issues - if that were the whole truth they would have dealt with Saddam properly the last time.
There are many reasons that the US are getting involved and time will show those reasons, not least when they build little America in Iraq.
Here, here. Loads of the wee shites walked out of the secondary school that I work in the other week without being given permission from the Head. Letters were sent home to all of their parents and each was given a 2 hour detention after school on Friday during which time they were expected to write a letter to the government explaining why they were so against going to war. The theory behind this being, that those who genuinely wished to protest could do so in a sensible and dignified manner and those who were just skiving were suitably punished.
This brings me on to the reason that I am posting. I personally do not have a problem with anybody who protests peacefully. Unfortunately in this modern society there are many people who just jump on the bandwagon (to coin an old phrase). I'm sure that some of the school children that protest have very strong reasons for not wanting our country to go to war but many merely used this as an excuse to cause some trouble and get out of school. Adults are also not perfect and many just get swept along with the tide. So many people do not know anything about the war but they will protest against it anyway. If people actually bothered to find out about the war and the reasons that we've gone into it then I wouldn't mind them holding these 'peaceful' protests. As I have already stated though there are many narrow minded people who know nothing about the situation and are just against war for the sake of it.
Anyway, there goes my attempt at getting this topic back to what it was originally about ...
Uh well at first most of them did. Infact at first almost ALL the soldiers our forces encountered surrendered. It's only been since the small but powerful group of Saddam fanatics who have nothing to lose started to join them and force them to fight - that is they CAN'T surrender cause the few really devoted people would be with them and probably kill them themselves or something.
And we're not expected to believe anything. I don't care what the government or America or anybody says the reasons for invading Iraq are, cause they're most likely going to be complete lies or at least a dumbed down version of the truth. Yes its annoying the way the Government lie so often, but that doesn't necessarily mean they're wrong.
Beyond the lost lives...I'm concerned about the lost jobs worldwide.
But regarding the peace marchers...if the US and UK pulled out now we'd be seen as countries any creep could do anything to. Remember what Osama Bin Laden said: just hit them hard and they'll go home. There's no reason for the US and UK to live in fear.
most of you probable aren't old enough to remember the soviet union invading afghanistan. russia demanded that the cia left afghanistan and stopped meddling on the russian border there.
this was cold war days when the two super powers distrust was hair trigger. america were planning an oil pipe line across asia. it meant having control of afghanistan. the white house way back then reffered to afghanistan as the prize and iraq as the jewel.
the russians invaded and the americans poured weapons and money into ...osama bin laden ...to fight the russians. all this is open in your history books. not theory. osama and his mujahadeen eventualy drove the russians out.
not long after, donald rumsfeld ...was having meetings with saddam hussien, old pictures in the press recently about it. he was conning saddam into believing the americans would look the other way if he invaded kuwait. the americans had armed saddam with everything he asked for including chemical and biological weapons to fight the yanks then enemy, iran. saddam used chemicals on the iranians in a horryfying manner. the u.s and uk looked the other way.
the rest they say is history.
but ...a couple of months before sept the 11th happened, the head of pakistani inteligence was being interviewed on radio 4.
he said he had it on good authority that america was about to invade afghanistan....so this invasion had sod all to do with 9/11.
so america have the prize and are at this moment going for the jewel. this has been planned for nearly 30yrs. it has nothing to do with freeing anyone.
the man they have put in charge of afghanistan is and has been for over twenty yrs, a leading share holder in unacol. george bush senior is it's main shareholder. one of the next biggest shareholders is the binladen construction company. yes osamas dad! osamas dad is not only a major partner of george senior but has been a very close friend of the bush family for over thirty yrs.
unacol are the company who will build and run the pipeline.
look at how the kings of the earth have behaved throughout history. it never changes.
the white house is being run by crooks.
ALL ...the rebuilding of iraq contracts will be going only to american companies who support this dreadful regieme. openly stated by cheney.
the rebuilding and running of the basra docks that our troops just stole for these people has already been contracted out to ...the constuction company owned by ...the vice president of america! theres loads more. please don't tell me there are any honest motives in this criminal fucking carnage!!!!!
People like that piss me off.
So we'll go in and kill those people for him? Save him the time won't it?
Yes 12 years. 12 years people have had to suffer. I recently went to a stop the war meeting and there was an Iraqi man speaking. What he said was poignant and honest. He left Iraq in exile in the mid 90's and was a teenager during the Gulf War. He spoke about how at the end of the Gulf War enough anti-Saddam sentiment had been cultivated within the Iraqi people, so many people wanted him overthrown but they could only do so with help from the forces. Where was that help? It was obvious back then that Saddam needed to be expelled from power. He talked about the horrors of the war and what he felt it would do to his country. He was asked by one man "Once the was is over what do the Iraqi people want?" he replied saying they don't want help and they do not want to be controlled. He was interrupted but returned to his answer, he felt he has been too harsh. He said that Iraq wanted relations with Britain, that we were all related really because we're all human beings, we share the same blood. They just didn't want our dirt - and by that I think he meant our greed and our lies. It was truly compelling what he said and at times I was close to tears. He has family over there and even his 70 year old father was called up to fight.
Why should people have to go through that? People in this country can say how this War will liberate them but without being there how can we tell how liberated they feel?
Essemm:
When Engalnd invades Scotland, i will do as you wish and not protest because i may delay some traffic and that would be tragic and I could never forgive myself............:rolleyes: