Propaganda

GoldenWords

prop·a·gan·da
n.
1-The systematic propagation of a doctrine or cause or of information
reflecting the views and interests of those advocating such a doctrine or
cause.
2- Material disseminated by the advocates or opponents of a doctrine or cause: wartime propaganda.
3 -Propaganda Roman Catholic Church. A division of the Roman Curia that has authority in the matter of preaching the gospel, of establishing the Church in non-Christian countries, and of administering Church missions in territories where there is no properly organized hierarchy.

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I am a little behind on current events concerning the war in Iraqi. When it first started - I was of the opinion that if another country was to pass judgement on the USofA for stock piling weapons of mass distruction -- and lead an Army across our boarders to remove our leaders from power - I would be lined up on the roof tops shooting what ever foriegner who was stupid enough to come into my country and tell me how to live my life.

If the shoe was on the other foot. Would we be called Patriots or insurgents? Guess it all depends on who is telling the story.

Any thoughts?

GoldenWords

polaris

i think double standard would be a more fitting subject heading ... but yeah - so many can sit here and rage about "terrorism" and suicide bombers yet do not give a rats ass that there are people occupying other people's lands - making them go thru checkpoints or the legacy of damage they will leave behind ...

smobeepj

Very well put.

rebornFixer

polaris wrote:

i think double standard would be a more fitting subject heading ... but yeah - so many can sit here and rage about "terrorism" and suicide bombers yet do not give a rats ass that there are people occupying other people's lands - making them go thru checkpoints or the legacy of damage they will leave behind ...

I will quit sitting and raging when certain groups of people realize that there are other ways ... Non-violent methods that really do work.

polaris

reborncareerist wrote:

I will quit sitting and raging when certain groups of people realize that there are other ways ... Non-violent methods that really do work.

like what works?? ... and if you were being oppressed - how long would you wait for that to work?

rebornFixer

polaris wrote:

like what works?? ... and if you were being oppressed - how long would you wait for that to work?

I don't know ... Peaceful means helped India to throw off the shackles of British rule. Black people in the U.S. used relatively peaceful means to reduce the racial gap in the U.S. ...
As for me, well. I'd fight if I was oppressed, probably, if peaceful means were doomed to fail. That's my personality, for better or for worse ... I am a tad high-strung. But I would not try to kill non-combatants. I just don't think I'd make a very good terrorist.

jsand

GoldenWords wrote:

prop·a·gan·da
n.
1-The systematic propagation of a doctrine or cause or of information
reflecting the views and interests of those advocating such a doctrine or
cause.
2- Material disseminated by the advocates or opponents of a doctrine or cause: wartime propaganda.
3 -Propaganda Roman Catholic Church. A division of the Roman Curia that has authority in the matter of preaching the gospel, of establishing the Church in non-Christian countries, and of administering Church missions in territories where there is no properly organized hierarchy.

---

I am a little behind on current events concerning the war in Iraqi. When it first started - I was of the opinion that if another country was to pass judgement on the USofA for stock piling weapons of mass distruction -- and lead an Army across our boarders to remove our leaders from power - I would be lined up on the roof tops shooting what ever foriegner who was stupid enough to come into my country and tell me how to live my life.

If the shoe was on the other foot. Would we be called Patriots or insurgents? Guess it all depends on who is telling the story.

Any thoughts?

GoldenWords

So you would shoot at people trying to save you from a madman who uses chemical weapns on your own people? That's pretty moronic.

jsand

polaris wrote:

like what works?? ... and if you were being oppressed - how long would you wait for that to work?

Who's oppressing? Did the US army come in and "oppress" the Iraqi people? The violent atrocities being committed daily have not been on the part of the US - it's been "insurgent" (read: Iranian and Syrian terrorists), in addition to sectarian.

I honestly don't understand your point - "how long would you wait for that to work"? They didn't wait one single day - they've been suicide bombing for a long time now.

Cosmo

jsand wrote:

So you would shoot at people trying to save you from a madman who uses chemical weapns on your own people? That's pretty moronic.

...
If an Islamic army occupied America on their unilateral decision that we needed a regime change because our lives were being wasted away on sexual decadence and we were too far away from God... and they wanted to install a Theocracy that made all of us go to church on Sunday and make daily affirmations to God to save ourselves from the filth that our government had allowed us to wallow in... you wouldn't have a problem with that?
Shouldn't we be the ones to decide on the regime change? Who put them in charge of our well being?

polaris

reborncareerist wrote:

I don't know ... Peaceful means helped India to throw off the shackles of British rule. Black people in the U.S. used relatively peaceful means to reduce the racial gap in the U.S. ...
As for me, well. I'd fight if I was oppressed, probably, if peaceful means were doomed to fail. That's my personality, for better or for worse ... I am a tad high-strung. But I would not try to kill non-combatants. I just don't think I'd make a very good terrorist.

well ... i think some people have reached their point ... when the UN tries to impose resolutions against your oppressor and they get vetoed every time ... you start to lose that faith ...

jsand

polaris wrote:

well ... i think some people have reached their point ... when the UN tries to impose resolutions against your oppressor and they get vetoed every time ... you start to lose that faith ...

Oh...you're trying to take hijack this thread on behalf of the world's greatest perennial victims...

jsand

Cosmo wrote:

...
If an Islamic army occupied America on their unilateral decision that we needed a regime change because our lives were being wasted away on sexual decadence and we were too far away from God... and they wanted to install a Theocracy that made all of us go to church on Sunday and make daily affirmations to God to save ourselves from the filth that our government had allowed us to wallow in... you wouldn't have a problem with that?
Shouldn't we be the ones to decide on the regime change? Who put them in charge of our well being?

Too bad that anaology is inapposite. Remember, Saddam was committing mass muder - gassing the Iraqui people and burying them in mass graves. He was an oppressor.

sourdough

jsand wrote:

Too bad that anaology is inapposite. Remember, Saddam was committing mass muder - gassing the Iraqui people and burying them in mass graves. He was an oppressor.

Saddam's gov't was no theocracy.

truroute

I find it funny that alot of ppl on this board are so sure that the reason they are blowing each other up over there is solely because the US is there.

Cosmo

jsand wrote:

Too bad that anaology is inapposite. Remember, Saddam was committing mass muder - gassing the Iraqui people and burying them in mass graves. He was an oppressor.

...
You only see what you want to see, don't you? You completely miss the point. You are apparently incapable of even glancing at the other side of the coin and will only see one side.

GoldenWords

jsand wrote:

So you would shoot at people trying to save you from a madman who uses chemical weapns on your own people? That's pretty moronic.

Hmmmm ---- Lets look at the facts.


On March 16, 1988, the Kurdish town of Halabja was attacked with a mix of mustard gas and nerve agents, killing 5,000 civilians, and maiming, disfiguring, or seriously debilitating 10,000 more. (see Halabja poison gas attack) [16]. The attack occurred in conjunction with the 1988 al-Anfal campaign designed to reassert central control of the mostly Kurdish population of areas of northern Iraq and defeat the Kurdish peshmerga rebel forces. The United States maintains that Saddam ordered the attack to terrorize the Kurdish population in northern Iraq, but Saddam's regime claimed at the time that Iran was responsible for the attack.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saddam_Hussein


Iraqi civilians have suffered the bulk of fatalities in this conflict. Estimates of the number of civilian deaths are better documented than the estimates of Iraqi military casualties, but they still reveal significant uncertainty.

One study done by public health experts from Johns Hopkins University and published on 29 October 2004 in the Lancet medical journal, estimated that 100,000 "excess" Iraqi deaths from all causes had occurred since the US invasion began. The study did not attempt to measure how many of these were civilian, but the study's authors have said they believe that the "vast majority" were noncombatants, based on 7% of the casualties being women and 46% being children under the age of 15 (including Falluja data).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2003_invasion_of_Iraq_casualties

5,000 civilian deaths versus 100,000 civilian deaths during a military campaign.

Who is the madman again?

Propaganda ---

GoldenWords

jsand

Cosmo wrote:

...
You only see what you want to see, don't you? You completely miss the point. You are apparently incapable of even glancing at the other side of the coin and will only see one side.

When in doubt, attack the poster. What a clever trick.

GoldenWords

jsand wrote:

So you would shoot at people trying to save you from a madman who uses chemical weapns on your own people? That's pretty moronic.

The number of coalition wounded in combat seems to have been less than 1,000. However, as of the year 2000, 183,000 U.S. veterans of the Gulf War, more than a quarter of the U.S. troops who participated in the War, have been declared permanently disabled by the Department of Veterans Affairs (National Gulf War Resource Center May 31, 2000 [2]; See also, Gulf War syndrome and U.S. use of Depleted Uranium). About 30% of the 700,000 men and women who served in U.S. forces in the Gulf War still suffer an array of serious symptoms whose causes are not fully understood (Associated Press, August 12, 2006, free archived version: http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/0812-06.htm, last visited August 14, 2006).

United States Veterans Affairs Secretary Anthony Principi's panel found that pre-2005 studies suggested the veterans' illnesses are neurological and apparently are linked to exposure to neurotoxins, such as the nerve gas sarin, the anti-nerve gas drug pyridostigmine bromide, and pesticides that affect the nervous system.

"Research studies conducted since the war have consistently indicated that psychiatric illness, combat experience or other deployment-related stressors do not explain Gulf War veterans illnesses in the large majority of ill veterans," the review committee said.

In November, 2004, the anonymously-funded British inquiry headed by Lord Lloyd ([53]) concluded, for the first time, that thousands of UK and US Gulf War veterans were made ill by their service. The report claimed that Gulf veterans were twice as likely to suffer from ill health than if they had been deployed elsewhere, and that the illnesses suffered were the result of a combination of causes. These included multiple injections of vaccines, the use of organophosphate pesticides to spray tents, low level exposure to nerve gas, and the inhalation of depleted uranium dust.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulf_War_syndrome

jsand

GoldenWords wrote:

Hmmmm ---- Lets look at the facts.


On March 16, 1988, the Kurdish town of Halabja was attacked with a mix of mustard gas and nerve agents, killing 5,000 civilians, and maiming, disfiguring, or seriously debilitating 10,000 more. (see Halabja poison gas attack) [16]. The attack occurred in conjunction with the 1988 al-Anfal campaign designed to reassert central control of the mostly Kurdish population of areas of northern Iraq and defeat the Kurdish peshmerga rebel forces. The United States maintains that Saddam ordered the attack to terrorize the Kurdish population in northern Iraq, but Saddam's regime claimed at the time that Iran was responsible for the attack.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saddam_Hussein


Iraqi civilians have suffered the bulk of fatalities in this conflict. Estimates of the number of civilian deaths are better documented than the estimates of Iraqi military casualties, but they still reveal significant uncertainty.

One study done by public health experts from Johns Hopkins University and published on 29 October 2004 in the Lancet medical journal, estimated that 100,000 "excess" Iraqi deaths from all causes had occurred since the US invasion began. The study did not attempt to measure how many of these were civilian, but the study's authors have said they believe that the "vast majority" were noncombatants, based on 7% of the casualties being women and 46% being children under the age of 15 (including Falluja data).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2003_invasion_of_Iraq_casualties

5,000 civilian deaths versus 100,000 civilian deaths during a military campaign.

Who is the madman again?

Propaganda ---

GoldenWords

You post this information as if the purported 100,000 civilian deaths were caused by the US - like the US is systematically murdering civilians, which couldn't be further from the truth.

rebornFixer

I don't know if its even possible to obtain an accurate breakdown, but the majority of Iraqi civilian deaths have been inflicted by other Iraqis. This is even more true if you look only at the time period after the initial U.S. capture of Baghdad. One could argue that the U.S. presence lead to destabilization, which in turn enabled the sectarian violence to flare up ...

jsand

reborncareerist wrote:

One could argue that the U.S. presence lead to destabilization, which in turn enabled the sectarian violence to flare up ...

That is a legitimate argument. Arguing that America's presence there is akin to an Islamic army invading America because of sexual decadence, or that the number of Iraqi civilian deaths indicates that America (or GWB) is a madman, as opposed to Saddam, is just plain silly.