Might wanna do some reading matey, without the saudis the US economy would pretty much collapse, then theres the oil ,then theres the 200million the chinese are lending you every day. Few nations can survive on their own, and none do it very well.
.308AR... i don't know and I won't pretend to know you well.. but you are sounding awfully like the 'typical' americans the rest of the world despises... may want to rethink you words... patriotism is a good thing, but not at when you start sounding 'full of yourself' so to speak and boasting.
Where would you be without the $8 trillion that the US has borrowed off the rest of the world to keep the country going.The US trade deficit this year is $59 billion and is rising every year so you would be in a hell of a predicament if the rest of the world stopped lending, which they would never do, as they make lotsa money lending you money.If you put the price of gas up to $100 a gallon you could easily pay the debt off in 100yrs or so,but I can't see you making that sacrifice. If you were isolated and stopped importing you would have no clothes,no steel,no computer parts and electronic equipment for the home or your armed forces and worst of all no french vino. As for foreign aid ,the US and Britain and other countries give aid not as an altruistic gesture but as a means of securing contracts and safeguarding other interests abroad .Nothing is for nothing! The $ figures quoted were extracted from the US treasury using minimal force.
Most of the things we buy that aren't made here were designed here. It is not a matter of not being able to make something it is just cheaper to have it made some place else. If we disbanded unions and dropped minimum wage that is taken care of. Loosened EPA regulations would allow our oilfields to be used. Arms and ammunition are not a problem. Edit_------_ We DO have wmd's . Now that I have offended your sensibilities I'm off to clean a rifle.
So, to recap: - Torture is evil; but: - people who commit torture can be functional, balanced individuals; - Torture doesn't work; but: - Torture should be applied on suspected terrorists as a way of gaining information that could save lives; - Torture is an acceptable means of interrogation; but: - Torture should not be applied to US citizens. OK... Sometimes I think democracy is just wasted on those who are priviliged to enjoy it. People died to drag our civilisation from barbaric tyranny into a relatively free and empowered society. People suffered for freedom of speech and equality for all. They made sacrifices. They knew that such things come at a price; that there are risks involved in having a free society. And now everybody is ready to throw it all away in a fit of paranoia, and to endorse the opening moves towards the establishment of a police state that we so criticise and abhor in other countries. If that is true, then the terrosists have already won.
I'm only advocating the use of torture in extreme circumstances if it is deemed the only way to get information in a timely manner. If you are suggesting I don't have the utmost respect for those who have died to keep my countrymen and I free you're flat wrong. This is a ####### war. It is not a game.
Sadly, .308AR, your views do not express the solemnity that you assure you have. As one of your own countrymen (so you don't have to filter the foreigners, as may be happening), even if your views are as noble as you think them to honestly be, they do not come across as such. Perhaps that's part of our country's REAL failing...why you sound like the average (I really didn't like that term by the way, I think J-Pepper may have a point but missed it's target...AVERAGE american is not what your media or mine sells) american that the rest of the world doesn't like. As a whole, we've grown so complacent that everyone knows we're 'doing the right thing' that we've forgotten how to express why, as a nation, we choose the things we do. And when we're questioned on it, we are so indignant for having been asked based on all that we've done in the past...we feel the rest of the world should just 'know'. Miscommunication and misrepresentation are very dangerous things. If you believe we are doing the right thing, .308AR, it is best to find a way to illustrate that point in an articulate manner. Because the reality is, we've flattened the world. We're not on top anymore. And the rest of the world is now watching, some of them forgetting the heroics of 50 and 100 years ago because the world is now a much different place. We fight for world democracy, but that also means that we can't be in charge anymore if we're part of one. We have to trade our swords for plowshares, and go back to our fields like Cincinnatus. A LOT has changed in the last 30 years, including our role. We'd now best re-learn to communicate as a part of something greater, or it will be the death of us one day. Emperors are always killed by the next in line to the throne.
To the terrorists, it is exactly that. A sick game, a serious game in which people get hurt and killed, but a "game" of cat-and-mouse nonetheless. And as I have said many times before: as long as you conceptualise this situation as a "war", you have already lost. The objective of evil people is not to "win" any "war". Their objective is to keep in business --to keep "playing the game". You do not defeat terrorists by going to war with them, by playing the game on their terms. Because in that game, no-one can ever win. Instead the objective is to keep playing, forever. When they blew up the London Underground on 07.07.05, did commuters demand armed riot police at every gate? Did they demand that they pin down and frisk at gunpoint anyone who looked vaguely Asian? Did they cower in paranoia ready to attack anyone who stepped on board with a backpack? No they did not. They simply said: "We are not afraid", and went back on to the Underground the next day. Some people even started defiant actions of exchanging smiles, handshakes and flowers on the Tube. They refused to play the terrosists' game. They demonstrated that although they can make a brief impact with their violence, in the end, it would not change the spirit of a democratic nation. The commuters showed that they understood that freedom and democracy inevitably come with risks, and that these are worth accepting. Every time they defiantly stepped on the tube, they risked destruction to preserve who we are. Like anyone else in history who made sacrifices for a vision of the relative freedom we now enjoy so confidently. Why can't we accept that risk? Why do you feel the need to sacrifice the very tenets of who we are, for a misplaced illusion of safety?
(taken from firedoglake.blogspot.com) Shocking many of us who have long argued against the use of torture under any circumstances, noted liberal blogger TBogg has come out in support of Vice President Dick Cheney and his plea to Republican senators to allow CIA exemptions to a proposed ban on the torture of terror suspects in US custody. As he says: There is nothing less than our precious freedoms at stake here, and when push comes to shove, we shouldn't let quaint antiquainted notions about human rights take precedence over our freedom from fear and harm when it comes to those who would attack us or who pose a danger to our men and women in uniform or the others who serve our country in covert ways through our intelligence services. Therefore I think we should torture Scooter Libby. TBogg leaves the rest of us weak-kneed sob sisters in his wake with the power of his logic: f we are going to get to the bottom of who put an American CIA agent in jeopardy, it is incumbent upon us to torture Scooter. Water board him, strip him naked and smear him with his own faeces and walk him on a leash down the mall, beat him with rolled-up copies of Condolezza Rice's unread National Intelligence Estimates, keep him awake for hours on end while reading to him from James Lilek's new book, Cute Things Gnat Said While I Was Lurking Around the Bra Department At Target, until he tells us who tipped him off about Valerie Plame. A secure America demands no less. We might want to smack Karl Rove around too. That fat p#**k knows something.
CIA interrogators tried to cover up the death of an Iraqi man who died while being interrogated at Abu Ghraib prison, Time magazine has reported, after obtaining hundreds of pages of documents, including an autopsy report, about the case. The death of secret detainee Manadel al-Jamadi was ruled a homicide in a Defence Department autopsy, Time reported, adding that documents it recently obtained included photographs of his battered body, which had been kept on ice to keep it from decomposing, apparently to conceal the circumstances of his death. The details about his death emerge as US officials continue to debate congressional legislation to ban torture of foreign detainees by US troops overseas, and efforts by the George W. Bush administration to obtain an exemption for the CIA from any future torture ban. Jamadi was abducted by US Navy Seals on November 4, 2003, on suspicion of posessing explosives and involvement in the bombing of a Red Cross centre in Baghdad that killed 12 people, and was placed in Abu Ghraib as an unregistered detainee. After some 90 minutes of interrogation by CIA officials, he died of "blunt force injuries" and "asphyxiation," according to the autopsy documents obtained by Time. Yeah, torture's always used correctly and in the right circumstances under controlled conditions More CIA Flubs.
It was so much easier fighting wars without so many reporters running around...and the few that were there weren't mouth pieces for the enemy. Damn technology...
Telling the truth isn't being a mouthpiece for the enemy, its just telling the truth, thats what reporters are meant to do.
It isn't the whole story and never will be. They hardly ever talk about those *******s blowing up children...just the latest "victim" of "torture" at the hands of the evil Americans. No commies are being defended so the US media turns traitor.
Lol, you couldn't make this stuff up..."US media turns traitor". You really ought to try watching some non-US news some time---the US media is about as traitorous as a small shrew. Sam
