Lawyers' panel indicts Bush, Blair

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You say "our populations". Which population do you belong to? I'm curious because the link was to an Aljazeera website and you use the phrase "mass murderers" when referring to Bush and Blair.

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I live in the UK, demonstrated against the illegal and immoral war, and have signed the petition calling for the impeachment of Blair. Please see: Impeach Prime Minister Tony Blair for a Bang BrosI agree entirely with Holmes that patriotism and mass murder are not mutually exclusive. In fact, I would say they are frequently linked, in that patriotism necessairly overlooks the flaws of your own state and demonises members of other states - this makes mass murder easy.

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With regards to "patriotic", I do believe the term fits these two gentlemen as individuals who care deeply for, and are intent on defending, their respective countries.

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No, they are both cowards and traitors who have undermined the very freedoms they claim to be protecting; they are most certainly not intent on defending their countries IMO, only their reputations.Our citizens still remain in illegal detention in US bases without charge, represenation or trial. Habeus Corpus has been suspended in the US and may very soon be in the UK. These two "gentlemen" are enemies of their states.Syamsu wrote:

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I would call Bush and Blair both surprisingly courageous. It would have been very easy to let Saddam Hussein's regime get away with bending the rules one more time.

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Except Saddams regime had not been bending the rules, had they? The only reason anyone thinks that is because American intelligence lied about its facts.

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And again let's not forget the obvious, that Saddam Hussein and his regime were the ones primarily responsible for leading people to believe Iraq had weapons of mass-destruction.

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No thats false - the people primarily responsible for that were those who claimed, falsely, to certainly know that Iraq had WMD. Saddam and Iraq told the truth - their weapons had been destroyed.

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Most of the people that were killed, were supporting a cruel dictatorship. I think the tragedy in their lives is more that they supported a cruel dictatorship, rather then that they were prematurely killed.

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Thats a hideous and inhumane, possibly racist, application of corporate responsibility. Who are you to say that the 98,000 CIVILIANS killed by this illegal invasion were NECESSARILY supporters of the Iraqi regime? Are American bombs equipped with special B'aathist-seeking warheads that swerve to avoid normal Iraqis? No, they are not. You are just blaming the victim, and excusing the immoral perpetrators of their crimes.

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Although I must say that the bombing of the Iraqi army by the coalition, seems to have been extremely savage. The Iraqi army didn't have any chance whatsoever. I think therein lies the most guilt.

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You forget - the Iraqi army in most respects did not stand and fight, but disbanded. There were a couple of clashes against conscripts, but even that incident may have been an accident rather than a deliberate act. You may be confusing the present conquest with the cruel and savage bombing of a trapped column of largely unarmed Iraqi consripts on the Basra road attempting to retreat during the first gulf war, who were helplessly chopped to burnt mincemeat by the allegedly moral west.This message has been edited by contracycle, 03-11-2005 07:08 AM

Well of course everyone is entitled to an opinion and there are certainly many people in the US and around the world who equate Bush to Hitler and describe him as a mass murderer.

You should be a little more careful with your quotes. You have replied to my post and have quoted me, but also mixed in quotes from Syamsu without reference.

Not without reference - above it reads:

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Syamsu wrote:

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Ok, there it is, I didn't see it on the first read through

Saddam had been bending the rules, which is why he had constant riffs with the UN weapons inspection commission.I don't know where you got the 98,000 number. I am only talking about the people killed by Americans and British. You had better look elsewhere for guilt for others killed. For all I know you are including hundreds or thousands of Shi-ites killed by Sunni extremists after the invasion.During the war the standard army was extremely heavily bombed as far as I know, and decimated, which is why they much disbanded, and did not much engage in man to man combat. I think this explains some of the support for the insurgency. The region's largest welltrained army were ruthlessly slaughtered without much of any battle honor whatsoever, so they went and got their battle-honor later in the insurgency.For as far as habeus corpus goes. The rules are being rearranged so to deal with the new phenomenon of massive ammounts of terrorists who share a stated intention of killing millions of civillians, and have already shown to be capable of massmurder in many places. I'm not saying that the new rules are right, just that the rules are in the process of being rearranged, and you should take account of that.regards,
Mohammad Nor Syamsu

...or perhaps, defending their respective countrys' access to Middle-east oil.Or perhaps Bush senior and his mates settling an old score with an old thorn in their side.

Wow, is that all you saw in my post? I was simply comparing Bush to Hitler? Let me try again and see if I can make it clearer.Bush is being called a massmurderer because his actions resulted in the killing of many thousands, perhaps tens of thousands, of individuals... many of them were also wholly innocent people.When asked what you would call a person who did such a thing, with the hidden proposition that his actions were unjustified, you answered "patriot".What I was pointing out is that patriot and massmurderer are apples and oranges. You could be a patriot and a massmurderer, one of the two, or neither. I gave as an example Hitler who was both.Thus whether Bush is a patriot or not, you didn't really answer the question as it is beside the point. You can either argue that his reasons justified the killings, in which case I guess the correct term would be "person who was justified killing in self-national-defense", or you can explain what you would call a person who did not have reasonable argument for the killings yet not be a "massmurderer".The only comparison between people that I did make was between Bush and Napoleon, and that is because Bush's current stated reason for war in Iraq is the same stated reason Napoleon gave for his campaigns through Europe and Africa/the midEast. They both declared war was necessary against nations that had not actually warred or declared war against them, because of future possible threats they posed because they were not democratic and he would spread freedom throughout the world. This is not an opinion. If I have my facts wrong you can correct me, otherwise deal with the facts.I don't enjoy having people dismiss my posts in single sentences which have no relevance to what I said.

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holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)"...don't believe I'm taken in by stories I have heard, I just read the Daily News and swear by every word.."(Steely Dan)

---sigh--- As I stated upthread, I have no desire to entire into a debate regarding the validity and justification of the Iraq war. Positions on both sides are deeply entrenched and civil discourse is unlikely given the volatility of the subject matter. Civilians are killed during war, that’s why it’s a nasty business. It has been the nature of war that civilians are killed since hominids first picked up stones against each other.If you subscribe to the notion that leaders of nations during wartime are mass murderers because civilians are killed, then your supposition leads to the premise that all wartime leaders are mass murderers. From Bush to Bush Sr to Nixon, Johnson, Kennedy, Roosevelt, and on back to all of our founding fathers who served as leaders of this country during wartime.Now you will no doubt dispute the above as you have previously posted. That the difference being preemption on the part of Bush and other coalition leaders. Or that mass murder is a suitable description given the numbers of civilians killed, or the manner of death imposed. That is the entree into the long drawn out discussion that I’m not interested in. I was being dismissive because I wish to avoid discussion on a topic that does not interest me. You obviously feel slighted that I am unwilling to partake in a debate whose discourse, in my estimation, will not change the opinions of those involved, could potentially cause grief on the part of some readers around the world, and will consume a significant portion of my time.If it is your intent to vent deeply held beliefs, then have at with Syamsu or contracycle or anyone else reading this post and being so inclined to engage.I was asked what I would call Bush and Blair and I have delivered my opinion. I consider them to be patriots which you obviously disagree with. Unless I am mistaken, everyone on this board is entitled to an opinion and I have rendered mine.
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I am a firm supporter of the military. Although I feel war (as well as violence on a personal level) should be avoided to the extent that it can, I am not a utopian pacifist.I was not labelling Bush anything, nor was I labelling all leaders that go to war as massmurderers. Hell, I wasn't even comparing him to Hitler, which was your first error.You keep projecting some position or intent on my words which are just not there. I was only pointing out patriot and massmurder are apples and oranges. You can have both or some or neither, one has no relation to the other. Thus I was only arguing that your answer did not address the question put to you. No, but perhaps the strawman you keep attacking will show up to dispute your position. I didn't say you had to. All you have to do is acknowledge is that whether one is a patriot has no bearing on whether one is a massmurderer. No, and please stop pretending that I am. If someone asked me if mrX was a football player, and I responded mrX is very strong, you might point out that one has nothing to do with the other. That does not mean you dispute that he is a football player or believe that he is weak.Essentially you were asked if mrX was a massmurderer, and responded that he was a patriot. I am pointing out that one has nothing to do with the other. That does not mean I dispute that mrX is a massmurderer nor believe that he is not a patriot.If you must know, and it seems that way because you keep forcing the question on me, I don't know if Bush is a patriot or not. I would think he is patriotic, but can't really know for sure. I guess I'll give him the benefit of the doubt.Whether he is a massmurderer or something else (nomenclature regarding the killing of many people) is a whole other question... the one that was put to you.Third times the charm or three strikes your out? Given that you totally whiffed on the first two swings (the last pitch slow and right over the plate), I'm not exactly confident, but maybe you can surprise me.

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holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)"...don't believe I'm taken in by stories I have heard, I just read the Daily News and swear by every word.."(Steely Dan)

Responding to my own post:Actually, why not arrange some boxing or wrestling matches between US and Saddam military, to restore battle honor of Saddam's military, after they had no chance in the real war. I think that might be well appreciated.regards,
Mohammad Nor Syamsu

awol from texas air national guard, using strings to get in when normal people were being turned away so that he could stay and party in the us instead of being drafted to go to nam, using strings to get out when he was bored with it ....without even getting into the issue of whether he really filled his "tour" of dutythat's a patriot?wow.

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we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand RebelAAmerican.Zen[Deist
{{{Buddha walks off laughing with joy}}}

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Saddam had been bending the rules, which is why he had constant riffs with the UN weapons inspection commission.

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Yes - becuase they kept saying "we know you have weapons, show them to us", and the Iraqi's were saying "no we don't".

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I don't know where you got the 98,000 number. I am only talking about the people killed by Americans and British. You had better look elsewhere for guilt for others killed. For all I know you are including hundreds or thousands of Shi-ites killed by Sunni extremists after the invasion.

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I doidn;t claim they were all specifivcally killoed by coalition troops, but that is the death toll as a result of the war. If we had not had a war, those people would still be alive. Furthermore, there are the additional 1.5 million Iraqi's who died iuinder sanctions, now also known to have died unecessarily becuase Iraq did not have the weapons it was accused of having.

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For as far as habeus corpus goes. The rules are being rearranged so to deal with the new phenomenon of massive ammounts of terrorists who share a stated intention of killing millions of civillians, and have already shown to be capable of massmurder in many places. I'm not saying that the new rules are right, just that the rules are in the process of being rearranged, and you should take account of that.

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The ALLEGED phenomenon, which is observed mostly in the breach - that is, the eveil glovbal conspiracy has so far not turned out to be very effectivem nor widespread, nor capable of much resistance. You are throwing away your most fundamental civil liberties on the basis of one event - and an event that only killed a third of the number of people you are happy to lose every year to industrial accidents.This is NOT about protecting people. It is NOT about islamic terrorism. It is about controlling the state and its populace.

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I was asked what I would call Bush and Blair and I have delivered my opinion. I consider them to be patriots which you obviously disagree with. Unless I am mistaken, everyone on this board is entitled to an opinion and I have rendered mine.

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So, you are quite happy having a mass-murderer as a president, as long as he only kills feoreigners, eh? As long as he's a good patriot, he can wade in a pool of gore to his armpits, but if he's holding the bloody flag aloft its OK.Thus the accusation against America stands - America's pretension to ideas of human rights and democracy are completely facetious, as Americans themselves agree. The only deaths America is concerned with are the deaths of "patriots" or fellow nationals. No other human being is anything other than an actual or potential enemy.

Because mymonkey said something? He doesn't speak for me, much less for all americans. Clearly 49% of voting americans would disagree with him too. Methinks someone else is helping themselves to some pretension.

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holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)"...don't believe I'm taken in by stories I have heard, I just read the Daily News and swear by every word.."(Steely Dan)