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Funds for Iraq run low

Discussion in 'Serious' started by Cthippo, 16 Jun 2006.

  1. Cthippo

    Cthippo Can't mod my way out of a paper bag

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  2. Nexxo

    Nexxo * Prefab Sprout – The King of Rock 'n' Roll

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    Hey, at least the Iraqis can now vote, right? :p

    Just blame it all on the insurgents. Let's forget about the fact that foreign business is allowed to completely privately own Iraq's economy without restrictions, export all the resulting profits without investing anything back into Iraq and is not obliged to preferentially contract local Iraqi companies over foreign companies. Let's also forget that all this money was sent over in cash U.S. dollar bills. The best way to lose track of where it goes and make sure that anyone literally can just dip in the kitty and stuff their pockets. There have been cases of U.S. officials leaving Iraq with $2million in their pockets --literally.

    The whole thing is an exploitation, asset-stripping and U.S. government contract profiteering exercise for Bush administration associated/friendly businesses.
     
    Last edited: 16 Jun 2006
  3. Monkeyboy

    Monkeyboy Minimodder

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    for iraq: wads of untraceable cash.
    for katrina victims: debit cards.

    are they assuming that katrina victims are less trustworthy than a bunch of foreign businesses, contractors and the local folks? it's just stupid....
     
  4. specofdust

    specofdust Banned

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    To be honest the more I read the more I become neutral with the whole terrorists Vs. US thing. It used to be that I would say, yeah, the US sucks, but they don't deserve to be attacked. But I read more and more, a massacre here, a corrupt official there, a belligerent comment on Iran, or two. It all just adds together to make me think that the terrorists have just as much right to be fighting the US as the US does them.

    edit: I should say, apoligies if it offends any Americans on a personal level, I understand that the US has a large population, I'm really just talking about leaderships here, mostly.
     
  5. Sherk

    Sherk What's a Dremel?

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    But you have to admit that there are some of us Americans that are good people. Yeah, there's been a fair share of shoddy stuff happening, but there are so many good things that go unreported. The news industry thrives on the bad and the evil, and hardly bothers with reporting the good news. We've been taught since we were children in school to look at the big picture, not a selective view. What about all the soldiers in Iraq passing out the candy and goodies from their MREs to the children? News like that quickly gets tossed to the side and forgotten. Humans, by nature, focus on the grisly, horrible things. How many times have you driven past an accident and everyone is slowing as they pass to stare at what happened? The world is a sad enough place without terrorists (and before I get flamed, I also mean the US, because I don't agree with a lot of the stuff we're doing either), killing other people for any reason. Maybe one day, things will be better. I hope for the fate of the earth that we can learn to get along...
     
  6. cpemma

    cpemma Ecky thump

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    That's rather at odds with a Washington Post report from July 2004
    That should make American tax-payers much happier. :sigh:

    And where the (largely Iraqi) money has gone. (July 2005).
    Self-financing foreign aid, maybe the idea could be used for birthday presents...give me $100 and I'll buy you a $2 gift. :idea:
     
  7. Nexxo

    Nexxo * Prefab Sprout – The King of Rock 'n' Roll

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    Thanks for that second link, cpemma. I was looking for that one... :thumb:

    The Americans, as a whole, are good people. The ones I have met have consistently been friendly, genuine (almost naive) and polite. They are "can do" people who believe that what can be imagined, can be achieved. Only the Americans could have put a man on the moon.

    But then again, only the Americans could have built Disneyland. The problem is, as I said, their genuineness bordering on naivite. Americans come from an ancestry of dream chasers (the American Dream, in fact). They still have a vision of "how things ought to be"; they believe in Good Guys and Bad Guys, and that if you work hard enough, long enough, and relentlessy enough and never give up, that you can achieve that dream, no matter how impossible or far away.

    The flip-side of this is that they believe in Good Guys and Bad Guys, and that they relentlessy follow naive dreams no matter how simplistic or destructive, and will try to make things "how things ought to be" wherever they go; they'll merrily impose their vision and values on other countries, other cultures, other beliefs, genuinely wanting people's best in doing so, and genuinely believing that they are doing the right thing by them, even if they inevitably are not.

    Because psychologically, Americans, as I have said before, often function at a childlike level. Sometimes this works --they succeed in great things because they have not yet stopped believing in fairytales and become cynical like the "grown-ups". Sometimes it doesn't work however, and they pursue their naive imaginations of how the world should be and people ought to live with disasterous consequences, like a child taking goldfish from their bowl and putting them in front of a fireplace to "warm up". It works both ways...

    The brighter, more cynical Americans who go into politics of course, know that. Only in America could moviestars become Presidents and Governors (and in Italy, but arguably, that was a protest vote and at least Chicholina got her tits out). They promise a dream and use the child's unbound, naive enthusiasm in chasing it for their own cynical ends. Yes, soldiers did hand out candy to the children of Iraq. They were just good, decent guys (often still children, really... n-n-n-n-nineteen, remember?) acting out the dream that their president had served up. But then they found out that they had been conned. The dream shattered along with bones and shopwindows in the first bomb blast... Dreams took them there, but they will take nightmares home.
     
  8. RotoSequence

    RotoSequence Lazy Lurker

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    That is the embittered cynicism many of you europeans exist under at work, Nexxo; many soldiers think theyre conned, many others, maybe many more, will analyze the end result and look for the good in it - and look at what they themselves worked to achieve under their morale living. People wont just take nightmares home. They will, when all is said and done, providing we dont half assedly pull out like we did with vietnam, be proud that they did work to create something better, even if the leadership in charge of it were a bunch of bungling idiots.
     
  9. cpemma

    cpemma Ecky thump

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    In Europe, it's a consequence of everyone seeing the effects of warfare up close. There's nothing romantic about it. That's the Hollywood version. In black and white, good guys (us) and bad guys (them). The American public have never experienced warfare on their own soil in living memory. Never experienced "collateral damage".

    We have Remembrance Sunday is to honour the dead, not to glorify licensed killing for political motives. We don't have 'Vets Day'.
     
  10. Ab$olut

    Ab$olut What's a Dremel?

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    This is the problem :rolleyes:
     
  11. Nexxo

    Nexxo * Prefab Sprout – The King of Rock 'n' Roll

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    cpemma is right. In Holland, our grandparents (and in some cases, our parents, even) still remember being occupied by the nazis. This was not just uptight looking blonds in rather smartly tailored uniforms marching around going "Sieg Heil". People could be rounded up on their way to work, put against a wall and summarily shot in retaliation for some offence they never even got told about. They remember bodies left lying in the street still clutching their lunch packets...

    And being bombed. Holland, like the UK, remembers the blitz all too well. We can still see the shrapnel damage on our older buildings to help us do so. People lived in terror. In Holland, during the harsher winters, people starved. Yet that is still nothing compared to what went on in Eastern Europe and Russia.

    My dad saw war up close as a child. My grandparents did as adults. They told me all about it. When I see those pictures of Iraqi kids being handed out candy, I remember how my father told me how, at age 7, the first orange he ever ate was given to him by a friendly German soldier.
     
  12. RotoSequence

    RotoSequence Lazy Lurker

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    No offense to your predecessors and family, but I was referring to US Soldiers, not the people who suffer the atrocities on a daily basis when I made my previous statement.
     
  13. Nexxo

    Nexxo * Prefab Sprout – The King of Rock 'n' Roll

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    No offense taken. We're just trying to explain the embittered cynicism many of us Europeans have. :)
     

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