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Time:
13:44 EST/18:44 GMT | News Source:
E-Mail |
Posted By: Byron Hinson |
British and American troops were involved in fierce fighting near Iraq's main port today as the war to topple Saddam Hussein began. The firefight broke out near Basra as men of the Special Boat Service targeted the strategically vital city and the oilfields in southern Iraq. At the same time allied troops were flooding into the demilitarised zone on the Iraqi border with Kuwait 40 miles away to take up positions for an all-out invasion.
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#1 By
135 (209.180.28.6)
at
3/19/2003 2:02:29 PM
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Hmm, I'm not getting confirmation on this from other news sources. Neither CNN or the BBC is reporting fighting, they are only saying that troops have moved forward towards the DMZ line.
Although I guess I would not be surprised to see Basra taken first and turned into a supply depot.
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#2 By
135 (209.180.28.6)
at
3/19/2003 2:03:09 PM
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I find post #1 to be highly offensive.
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#3 By
7390 (198.246.16.251)
at
3/19/2003 2:34:03 PM
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monkeydog, on some basic level we share each other's pain and joy. Deep down we all want the same things. Deep down there is a love for humanity that must exist on some basic level. Please edit your comments, where or not you are for or against the war you must repect human life.
I hope that you are some kid and not an adult, that would mean that there is hope for you yet.
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#4 By
2 (12.226.195.102)
at
3/19/2003 2:54:52 PM
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Soda....its on CNN.
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#5 By
6859 (206.156.242.36)
at
3/19/2003 3:03:53 PM
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We've barely done anything and 15 Iraqi soldiers have already surrendered. This would be funny if it wasn't war.
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#6 By
15406 (216.191.227.90)
at
3/19/2003 3:08:47 PM
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I didn't get to read the comment before it was censored, but was it nasty or just anti-war statements?
The US gov't and its policy really makes me laugh. Free speech, democracy - you think you have these things when you don't. Your gov't is using the war on terror to take away the basic rights of the people in the name of security, the so-called iron fist in the velvet glove. Different opinions are attacked with great ferocity. Anyone not parroting the party line (Bush and his cabal) is instantly crushed as being 'anti-American' and unpatriotic. Unfortunately, most people are spoon-fed the daily CNN pro-war propaganda and believe that this is a just war, when it is about oil.
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#7 By
6859 (206.156.242.36)
at
3/19/2003 3:39:16 PM
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Latch, it's not about oil. Here's why: 48% of Iraqi oil exports goes to the USA, which makes up 17% of the total oil importation the US does each year.
Yes, you read that right, 17%. This amount, which isn't much, can be made up with extreme ease by going to Canada, Mexico, Venezuela, Saudi Arabia, or darn near anywhere else that has oil. Heck, we could even import from Russia if we wanted to and still make up the difference without blinking. Saudi Arabia has said that in the event of war, they would increase production and exportation to cover what Iraq wouldn't be able to send out, for obvious reasons. So, the "price at the pump" shouldn't go up--but it will because the gas companies are price-gouging losers who deserve to get litigated because of it.
Oil is not what this is about. It's about removing a man who should have ben ousted 12 years ago by, strangely, another President with the same last name as the current occupant of the White House.
And before you begin, let me say this: I did not vote for this current President. Nor did I support, not do I currently support, the Department of Homeland Security, which to me is a big freakin' joke. $40B a year waste of taxpayer money.
Your lack of understanding of the complete situation is what leads you (and others) to the statement that it's about oil, but that is off base in so many ways. If it was only about oil, one could expect the end result of this war to reduce oil prices; but sadly it will only increase them. In the end, we'll be paying more for oil than we are now, and gas will go up...and the whole vicious cycle of the economics of the situation continues.
It's about ending a valid threat to the region and the national security of every nation on Earth. Do you doubt that Saddam has attempted to make nuclear, biological, and chemical weaponry? Has there ever been a time that Saddam has had a weapon that he has not used?
To sum up: peacenik hippies are Saddam's allies.
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#8 By
15406 (216.191.227.90)
at
3/19/2003 4:01:59 PM
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Cthulhu,
Thanks for the rational response. I was waiting for the knee-jerk "nuke everything, you commie bastard" rednecks to come out in full force.
I'm not so sure about your reasoning. One thing history has taught is that no country does anything unless it's in their interests. Since when has the US given a rat's ass about the plight of the Iraqi people? If it's about nasty regimes, then I guess Iraq is the first of 20+ countries that the US military plans on 'liberating'. It can't be about weapons, since Iraq doesn't have any. US intelligence has admitted that a) Iraq doesn't have any nukes, and b) Saddam doesn't have a way to deliver them any farther than Israel. So how is he a threat to the US? Ah yes, he'll no doubt get a nuke and then sell it to bin Laden. So how then do they reconcile N. Korea? 'Dear Leader' Kim Jong-Il has already sold weapons to anyone who has the cash, and they already have several nukes and missiles that could drop one in the middle of Anywhere, USA. Yet N. Korea, which is getting more and more belligerent, can be dismissed while Bush goes after Saddam. Sounds a little bogus to me. Wait, it sounds a LOT bogus to me. As for your oil argument, why buy it from other countries when the world's second largest proven reserve can be had easily? I don't if it's true (the same can be said about everything you read & hear these days), but I think I read on Drudge that the day-to-day management of Iraq's oil business will be placed in the safe arms of Haliburton Oil, or whatever the company was that Dick "undisclosed location" Cheney was CEO of before he got into the White House. Sounds awfully convenient if true. And no, I'm not typically a card-carrying conspiracy theorist.
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#9 By
6859 (206.156.242.36)
at
3/19/2003 4:27:46 PM
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Latch, I'm sure that there are several US oil companies that would dearly love to get their hands on the Iraqi supplies. My opinion is that they shouldn't get to touch one damn drop. Any company that had a current administration official as a past employee shouldn't even be allowed to talk about Iraq and its oil without the red flag of conflict of interest going way up.
The US is "ignoring" N.Korea because all NK want's is to be thrown a bone and be able to sit at the big table. NK doesn't want to sell nuke tech, they do to irk the west to get concessions they want/need. Plus NK's leadership is stable compared to the Middle-East so they figure they can postpone talking to NK for a bit, hoping Kim Jong-Il will stew in his britches. Frankly, nobody is that worried yet.
Saddam does have MWDs, they lost several tons of the stuff and can't "find it", nor can they prove they disposed of it. Ergo: it is still in a warehouse someplace, or hidden under on of the bazilion Presidential palaces. Either way, they have it and have failed to disclose it.
Plus Saddam's own former munitions leader said one of Saddam's plans was a "chemical belt" around Baghdad in the event of attack he'd surround the city with so much toxin that nothing could get in or out without going through that soup. That's a nightmarish idea, but definitely very Saddam-like.
Saddam wouldn't need to deliver any weapon (nuke, chem, bio, whatever) farther than Tel-Aviv, since by attacking them directly that would draw in the Israeli army's response, which in turn would draw in the remaining surrounding arab nations who would attack Israel once Israel attacked Iraq. Kind of like kick-starting the Armegeddon. The US would get sucked into that vortex quicker than anyone can imagine.
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#10 By
15406 (216.191.227.90)
at
3/19/2003 4:45:23 PM
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"...surrounding arab nations who would attack Israel once Israel attacked Iraq."
I doubt that would ever happen. The US has spent the last 50 years arming Israel and working as best it can to make sure that Israel is the only nuclear power in the Middle East. If any Arab nation attacked Israel, they'd be a smoking pile of debris in short order. Based on what I've seen from the Israeli gov't in the past few years and their treatment of those nasty Palestinians that had the lack of foresight to be living where the US and England decided Israel should be, all it would take is one Arab attack and the response would be ten-fold.
At any rate, regardless of my "lack of understanding" of the situation as you put it, I doubt that very many people know what the real agenda is. We all watch CNN and read our newspapers, so we feel informed. Crap. Everything is smoke & mirrors and spin. I guess what I'm trying to say is don't be too comfortable in your interpretation of what's going on. It may not necessarily be correct, no matter how often Bush, Rumsfield, et al say it.
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#11 By
135 (209.180.28.6)
at
3/19/2003 5:24:49 PM
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Latch - The comment was of the "nuke everything, you commie bastard" type. :(
Cthulhu - No, once again this is clearly about oil. Only in the sense that Hussein is a destabilizing force to the middle east. It's critical to our economy for the oil to flow, and Hussein threatens Saudi Arabia and other nations.
If it was about WMD's and human rights violations, we would have hit North Korea first, as they are a far greater threat and under no control, considering they are now test launching missiles that could hit Japan.
Although I do suspect if the Iraq war goes quickly, we'll be into North Korea by 2004, because they are destabilizing to the eastern asia economies.
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#12 By
6859 (206.156.242.36)
at
3/19/2003 5:48:56 PM
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Again, it's not about what these nations have that we want (oil or otherwise), if that were entirely true then why did we go into Somalia which has nothing? Why did we get involved in El Salvador all those years ago? (They have nothing, too... well, except that's where my fiancee came from, but that doesn't count.)
I doubt that "we'll be into North Korea by 2004," for a few reasons, but mainly by then I bet NK will have been on the short stick long enough that they'll stop playing games and start listening. I expect them to remain Communist only so long as their leaders aren't threatened by the uprising of the populace. Once they have something like that, I expect them to fall under their own civil war (which does scare me.) I predict that once the Iraq problem is over with, NK will become a priority only so much as they are fiesty. If they keep a relatively low profile (regardless of what missles they test--I really doubt they'd ever actually launch against Japan) nobody will care. Like I said, NK just want's to be treated like a big boy and get to sit at the adult's table. Right now, they're at the fold up, feeding on scraps from China.
I don't expect the Iraq war to go quickly, no less than 10 days. And that's not quick, if you ask me.
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#13 By
135 (209.180.28.6)
at
3/19/2003 6:35:03 PM
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Cthulhu - Somalia was supposed to be about feeding people suffering through a famine... that was a UN sanctioned undertaking.
El Salvador was about "stopping Communism".
Iraq is about conquest, it's something the US has never really done before.
As for North Korea, based on the positions the Bush administration is taking, we'll be talking invasion by 2004. If I were cynical, I'd even say it'll come up in the summer of 2004 right during election campaign season, depends on whether Karl Rove thinks he can pull that off.
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#14 By
8589 (67.65.84.255)
at
3/19/2003 6:59:28 PM
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What I am having probems with is how quickly we dismiss France and Germany. France has been our ally from the beginning. We are taught in the U.S. that we won the war against England with some help from France. But the truth is, France won that war, with a little help from us.
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#15 By
7711 (68.45.63.108)
at
3/19/2003 8:48:16 PM
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#19:
Somewhat ancient history(200 years+), even though correct.
I'm looking at what have you (France) done lately....
...capitulating to Germany in WWII
...leaving NATO in 1966
I once heard a quote...
Going to war without France is like going hunting without an accordion...you are leaving the useless noisy baggage behind.
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#16 By
3653 (209.149.57.116)
at
3/19/2003 8:51:24 PM
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Its a shame the world (the US included) let these rogue states go so far. FINALLY, someone has the balls to stand up and speak it like it is. Thank you President Bush.
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#17 By
135 (208.50.204.91)
at
3/19/2003 11:20:07 PM
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jimlat - Well, not sure about capitulating to the Germans... they did try to fight, but were really stupid about it initially, and many French did resist. Besides that, when France fell in 1940... uhh, hello but where were the Americans?
Oh yeah... we were running around claiming it wasn't our war to fight. Just a bunch of Jews and Democrats whining...
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/lindbergh/filmmore/reference/primary/desmoinesspeech.html
But yeah, France was pretty much never going to go along with this. The diplomatic failure was not getting even 9 votes. If they'd had 9, and France vetoed... their argument would have been more legitimate that France was noisy baggage.
mooresa56 - Do you need a kleenex for your nose?
parker - LOL! Thanks for giving me my daily chuckle!
This post was edited by sodablue on Wednesday, March 19, 2003 at 23:24.
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#18 By
135 (208.50.204.91)
at
3/20/2003 1:09:17 AM
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parker - LOL! As obtuse as ever.
Is that my daily chuckle for Thursday?
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#19 By
135 (209.180.28.6)
at
3/20/2003 10:39:31 AM
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parker - No more LOL's! You're over your limit for the day.
Last weekend you defended Iraqi genocide. This week you claim the US is an Imperial Nation, confirming the complaints of our enemies.
It's not that I'm ignorant, I'm just not as obtuse.
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#20 By
135 (208.50.204.91)
at
3/20/2003 10:14:17 PM
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parker - My meagre[sic] brainpower is obviously no match for your exiguous intellect!
No more lol's for you, you've reached your daily limit.
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#21 By
3653 (209.149.57.116)
at
3/22/2003 4:24:05 PM
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gotta admit it... parker shut him down.
Isn't it great to see so many Iraqis welcoming the US coalition and the freedom it brings with it. Thank you Mr. President for having the guts to stand up to a murderer/bully. Theres new hope for oppressed people everywhere.
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