wouldnt that be driving out the shah under chomenin in the late 70s?
which ties in nicely with the whole iraq issue since the last choice the middle eastern people made against oppression (by following a religious leader - imagine how desperate youd have to be to march against bush and blair lead by the pope) lead to the armament of iraq
flymike01, I see only a person who personally attacked someone else for his nationality, and that's you. Thank you for qualifying yourself for what you are.
I'm sure that in the other band (islamo-fascists) there are people saying same things that you are. In fact the more you can apply the term "fascist" to them the more close to that type of thoughts they will be
But yeah... you must have the truth cause you live at the US
I was very tempted to point out that Italy and all Italians have surrendered already for the next 3 world wars, and the next 20 national (non-"worldwide") wars.
But I couldn't be bothered, because I'd only get a load of emotional latin abuse in return, and get showered in bits of pizza/pasta or olive oil.
Edit: It appears this would have touched a nerve had I written as I originally intended yesterday. Good job I didn't, but it has made you make the remarks like "Sometimes a single person is enough to lower the average dramatically." which you said you weren't going to do.
And you may be related to those that fought for their country. But you're also related to those first to run away quivering, rather than sticking it out for what they believe in. But you did end up with Ferrari, which we ended up with British Leyland, so it's probably us in the wrong.
You wouldn't have achieved anything, I'm the grandson of people who fought for their country. That means: against fascism. So I don't feel like I ever lost a war.
Edit: quality of food is good here, thanks. Quality of humour seems to be declining in Britain, anyway. Sometimes a single person is enough to lower the average dramatically.
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(xaotik)
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by xaotik : fuck it - enough political crap
I tried to avoid answering since I'm pretty much fed up with this sort of discussions, but I'm compelled once more.
GONK! Wrong answer - time to hit the history books again and follow the stink trail and all the events that lead up to that... specifically see the players in the Iranian oil nationalization scheme and the collapse of the Anglo-Persian agreement which was made before the British Mandate of Mesopotamia that basically created Iraq.
Colonial territories, piss poor and under military regime were easy to manhandle - trying to get hands on the Iranian territories was harder - and not to mention that the Ottoman empire had basically handed over some prime real-estate to the Persians. The great chance to get into the Iranian oil game came in the 50s.
Anyhow, all that is available online to be read by those who care without relying on my poor memory's renditions of them - if I try to get into any sort of detail I'll surely fail.
Oh, please. Just because I think you're using stupid commonplaces about Italians as part of your usual trolling it doesn't mean that I'm anti-British, no matter how much you try to manipulate or misread my words. There's an interesting old book called How to Lie with Statistics, it explains pretty well how including you in a survey about quality of humour would give botched results. Most intimidating forum personality, you? That's good humour!
As for running away, I'm here. I have a tradition to defend, and that's not about running away.
Is there something being lost in translation here?
I've never said you were anti-British. I've never suggested I am amusing. I never put myself forward for the intimidating stuff, and nor do I try to be intimidating. And I've said that you are running away, or that Italians in generally shy away from internet arguments.
I can see you're getting stressed and emotional in this topic, being one of the many xenophobes. But try not to let your original sense of humour get lost - this is a game forum, and who really cares HERE whether or not some polititian gets convicted of petty human rights bollocks. If you want to care, go care somewhere else on a political forum.
Again? Point me in the right direction please since I'm tired of defending myself from something that I don't feel I did. You'll have my apologies then as will have anyone I offended with my supposed xenophobia.
Emotional? Nah, just slightly irritated of having to defend from both personal and xenophobic attacks. I'd be able to ignore you as usual, but I like seeing your baseless insults. You're amusing... or laughable? You know, sometimes my English isn't perfect.
And if someone has something against political posts he can act, provided he's a moderator or administrator. You're not. So stop telling me what to do, you're not the right person, not even one with a particularly recognised moral authority...
Edit: And don't misunderstand me: if this thread was closed, I'd understand perfectly. Blame the xenophobes and the trolls.
Thank you very much for bringing a bit of civilisation to this thread. If you were talking about cars maybe I'd read your opinion again in a few months. In this case I won't, and I won't feel a particular sense of loss.
Tristan, you dig a big hole for yourself by just trying to be a "plain speaker" (word to the wise, anyone who claims to be a plainspeaker is most likely not worth listening to...)
To speak of all Italians in such a manner is to indulge an ignorant national stereotype. It may sound funny in conversation, with the mates that will indulge your pecadillos, but here in a public place it just makes you look thick.
Not only the partisan resistance, but many working-class Italians, risked their lives (organising strikes and sabotage), and lost their lives fighting the fascists in WW2.
The invasion itself has nothing to do with human rights, and I am totally in favour of the 'invasion' by 'allied' forces. Only bad things were going to come out of Iraq, regardless of whether the public were informed of every reason or not.
Yeah screw these xenophobic ice cream eaters and the brainwashed islamo-fascists who are jealous of our freedoms.
I think it's just that you're a much more enthusiastic consumer of nationalism than Albeig. Maybe you should look up xenophobia and make sure you're using the term correctly.
+1 on that. Only I really don't think it was handled correctly. I should have been in control dammit!
Someone posted that the US propped up Saddam to power in Iraq. Nope, for one, Hussein was a thug that shot his way to the top. Another thing, was he came to power during the height of the cold war. The Shah of Iran was our boy over there. Hussein leaned more towards the Soviets. But he played both sides to get what he wanted at times.
I still would like to know what the world would like for us to do once Iran gets it's bomb.. Are they still going to criticize the big bad xenophobic states of America (probably)? Are they going to whine for us to do something (again probably)? Will the peaceniks still demand only dialogue and "tough" sanctions when there's a mushroom cloud on the Iranian frontier?
You know alot of people on this forum think that America and the United Kingdom should stop meddling in the affairs of other nations.
I think they'reright. we shouldn't stop there though. We should cut it completely. No foriegn aid packages no Stimulus packages, no free trade agreements... nothing. let the damn world truly have to sort it's own problems out. I mean we're so bad with regime changing and with putting conditions on these aid packages - it should be a win win deal - right? It's all our fault that the middle east is in the shape it's in, so if we left, all those people would be free and no longer oppressed. Iran wouldn't have to build a bomb if we wasn't in the Persian Gulf - right?
but I won't argue with you on this, I'll let someone writing a history on a certain Mr R Helms, ex head of the CIA at the time do it for me
The book, A Brutal Friendship: The West and the Arab Elite (1997), sets out the details not only of how the CIA closely controlled the planning stages but also how it played a central role in the subsequent purge of suspected leftists after the coup.
The author reckons that 5,000 were killed, giving the names of 600 of them--including many doctors, lawyers, teachers and professors who formed Iraq's educated elite. The massacre was carried out on the basis of death lists provided by the CIA.
The lists were compiled in CIA stations throughout the Middle East with the assistance of Iraqi exiles like Saddam, who was based in Egypt. An Egyptian intelligence officer, who obtained a good deal of his information from Saddam, helped the Cairo CIA station draw up its list. According to Aburish, however, the American agent who produced the longest list was William McHale, who operated under the cover of a news correspondent for the Beirut bureau of Time magazine.
The butchery began as soon as the lists reached Baghdad. No-one was spared. Even pregnant women and elderly men were killed. Some were tortured in front of their children. According to the author, Saddam who 'had rushed back to Iraq from exile in Cairo to join the victors, was personally involved in the torture of leftists in the separate detention centres for fellaheen [peasants] and the Muthaqafeen or educated classes.'
King Hussain of Jordan, who maintained close links with the CIA, says the death lists were relayed by radio to Baghdad from Kuwait, the foreign base for the Iraqi coup. According to him, a secret radio broadcast was made from Kuwait on the day of the coup, February 8, 'that relayed to those carrying out the coup the names and addresses of communists there, so they could be seized and executed.'
The CIA's royal collaborator also gives an insight into how closely the Ba'athist party and American intelligence operators worked together during the planning stages. 'Many meetings were held between the Ba'ath party and American intelligence--the most critical ones in Kuwait,' he says.
At the time the Ba'ath party was a small nationalist movement with only 850 members. But the CIA decided to use it because of its close relations with the army. One of its members tried to assassinate Kassim as early as 1959. Saddam, then 22, was wounded in the leg, later fleeing the country.
According to Aburish, the Ba'ath party leaders--in return for CIA support--agreed to 'undertake a cleansing programme to get rid of the communists and their leftist allies.' Hani Fkaiki, a Ba'ath party leader, says that the party's contact man who orchestrated the coup was William Lakeland, the US assistant military attache in Baghdad.
One of the coup leaders, colonel Saleh Mahdi Ammash, former Iraqi assistant military attache in Washington, was in fact arrested for being in touch with Lakeland in Baghdad. His arrest caused the conspirators to move earlier than they had planned.
Aburish's book shows that the Ba'ath leaders did not deny plotting with the CIA ro overthrow Kassim. When Syrian Ba'ath party officials demanded to know why they were in cahoots with the US agency, the Iraqis tried to justify it in terms of ideology comparing their collusion to 'Lenin arriving in a German train to carry out his revolution.' Ali Saleh, the minister of interior of the regime which had replaced Kassim, said: 'We came to power on a CIA train.'
Richard Helms: CIA Assassination, Regime Change, Mass Murder and Saddam
By Richard Sanders, Coordinator, Coalition to Oppose the Arms Trade and editor, of COAT's quarterly magazine Press for Conversion!
PS - If you think this is false then just google for the details, it's available from a number of sources.
And as for people like Tristan and co who feel that it's all the Iraqis fault and invading their country and taking their oil was best for them I feel that a read of Iraqi history post the CIA sponsored coup putting the Baath party into power may do them good.
And before you say it's wrong, try actually doing some research.
Over 1 million murdered people deserve it......
Saddam and his Ba'ath Party were brought to power by the west. Indeed, the west is deeply complicit in the vast majority of the heinous crimes against humanity he perpetrated during his iron fisted rule. We seem to have forgotten that Saddam himself was hired by the Americans in 1963, as confirmed by former Ba'athist leader Hani Fkaiki, when he helped to compile black-lists of Iraqis to be killed in the pursuit of the Ba'athist rise to power. He was one of many exiles working at CIA stations throughout the Middle East. The ensuing bloodbath, orchestrated by the CIA, resulted in the deaths of 5,000 Iraqis, including doctors, teachers, lawyers and professors. Saddam himself participated in the massacres.
After coming to power, Saddam was considered a great friend of the United States in its strategic vision of Middle East "order." A National Security directive issued by President Bush in October 1989 described Saddam as the "West's policeman in the region." Such statements were backed by consistent and massive financial--and of course military--support to his regime. The problem is that western sponsorship of Saddam meant, inevitably, the sponsorship of his crimes. Take the notorious Anfal campaign in 1988 killing nearly 190,000 Kurds, where Saddam's forces used mustard gas and nerve agents at Halabja. Approximately 5,000 Kurds died due to the chemical attack, and another 12,000 were seriously injured.
After the massacres, despite urgent concerns raised at government level by the Senate, NGOs and other international observers, the US was granting new licenses for dual-use technology exports--materials that could be used to develop chemical, biological and nuclear weapons - at a rate more than 50 per cent greater than before Saddam's gassing of the Kurds. At around the same time, US Customs Service inspectors had "detected a marked increase in the activity levels of Iraq's procurement networks. These increased levels of activity were particularly noticeable in the areas of missile technology, chemical-biological warfare and fuze technology."
All of this grim history has not been lost on the Americans, who have controlled the trial process from the beginning, and see it as a way of convincing the world of moral and humanitarian principles behind US aims in Iraq. They have ensured that the case against Saddam is limited to his having ordered the killings of approximately 145 people from the Shi'ite town of Dujail in 1982. While certainly a heinious atrocity in itself, it barely scratches the surface of Saddam's massive record of repression, largely achieved with unwavering green lights from the west. These include crushing the 1991 Shi'ite uprising in southern Iraq, the 1990 invasion of Kuwait (remember April Glaspie?), as well as the genocidal Anfal campaign.
Court officials say that the 1982 incident was the easiest and quickest case to put together. Wrong. As Noah Leavitt, a professor of law at Whitman College, observes, the Anfal atrocities are far better known, involving "much larger numbers of victims, more witnesses and more documentation." So why, after two years of waiting around with ample time to construct a powerful case against Saddam for all his crimes, the exclusive focus on one mass killing in 1982?
The answer is simple. It simply would not do for the United States to have the Saddam trial collapse into a gore-filled revelation of precisely how the west connived in Saddam's rise to power, jockeyed to supply him with financial and military assistance, and actively supported him throughout his blood-soaked career.
Such a spectacle would reveal the ironic fiction that unforunately pervades the entire trial proceedings: the fact that Saddam is now being tried in a court made by the very governments most complicit in his crimes.
Gee if that's all so true, then why did the Iraqis buy their military hardware from the Soviets? LOL as a Cover?
Don't believe everything you read on the internet.
Here, inform yourself with declassified US documents. Your question is answered thoroughly. Mind you, it might hurt your knowledge of history, or lack thereof.
Danger - information may be hazardous to previous media programming.
Do check Albieg's link, It is after all the National Security Archive, George Washington Universty. http://www.gwu.edu/%7Ensarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB82/
Great post mate, although I still fully expect people to argue that it's still all lies.
Despite the fact that most of my/our information in fact comes from US govt or Brit govt declassified sources for some strange reason the mainstream media continue to ignore it.
Unfortunately then, the bulk of the US population continues to think that black is white and it was a war of liberation ( Well, it is, only not of the people, of the oil. )
They are also completely unaware of just how much western culpability there is for Saddams crimes.
Or even the massive crimes and murders committed by certain powers in putting and mantaining their puppet leaders into power. The real face of 'regime change' is usually mass murder followed by repression. Strangely enough, these points also seem to be missed by the mainstream media.
The reason Saddam was never charged for anything involving chemical or biological weapons is that it wouldn't look good to have the receipts produced in court. Because it was the American's, Brit's, and other western nations who gave them to him. And that makes them equally guilty of these crimes.
This is the reason that this thread was started, If people were aware of the massive crimes these people commit, and it's not just Blair & Bush, there are a number of others, and stop them, then we could get closer to living in a free, fair, and just world.
Be nice if that could be an aim of the 21st century.
I posted earlier of the 925 seperate lies the Bush admin told to get the population ready for war with Iraq.
And the vast majority of the mainstream media just repeated them verbatum. There were a few voices trying to tell the truth but the major media outlets generally refused to repeat what was being said.
Anyone want a guess why they might have done this ?
Although, I guess if people try hard enough to remain uninformed, all your hard work will go unnoticed I encounter it all the time: a lot of people would take it as a slight on their ego or intelligence if they were to admit they may have been wrong or misled. I say there's no crime in being wrong as long as you can admit it - or just admit the possibility of it. There's certainly no crime in being misled by the most powerful concentration of political, media & corporate power money can buy either. The real crimes lie in (a) inexplicably choosing to stay misled when there are numerous other sources of reliable information and differing viewpoints available and (b) accepting the mainstream view that anything that isn't mainstream is a leftwing conspiracy theory that can't be trusted. If you're not going to trust non-mainstream sources, why is it any better to trust CNN/Washington Post/FOX/NBC? They've done nothing to earn it!
I encounter it all the time: a lot of people would take it as a slight on their ego or intelligence if they were to admit they may have been wrong or misled. I say there's no crime in being wrong as long as you can admit it - or just admit the possibility of it. There's certainly no crime in being misled by the most powerful concentration of political, media & corporate power money can buy either. The real crimes lie in (a) inexplicably choosing to stay misled when there are numerous other sources of reliable information and differing viewpoints available and (b) accepting the mainstream view that anything that isn't mainstream is a leftwing conspiracy theory that can't be trusted. If you're not going to trust non-mainstream sources, why is it any better to trust CNN/Washington Post/FOX/NBC? They've done nothing to earn it!