So there you have it. We're not with you, we're against you. So go ahead, declare war on the country you hate the most. We'll defend it with all the Molson beer we can get our hands on. Posted by Grokca (Member # 722) on :
Keiths, we will defend it with Keiths.
Posted by Harry (Member # 265) on :
I think most of Europe agrees with the Canadians on this one. Of course the attacks had to do with the way America deals with the Middle East (that's the whole reason they attacked America.. D'OH!).
And the war Iraq is not very popular here either. The German government won't get involved, polls in several countries show that the population is against it. Especially if the Bush and Blair attack without a UN resolution.
Posted by Veers (Member # 661) on :
All you people not with us are lucky...you're not gonna get your butt kicked by Iraqis and the Arab world come late this year/early next year, or whenever we go into Iraq.
Posted by Mucus (Member # 24) on :
Heh
quote: Americans won't be offended because they're used to political leaders who garble their messages.
But seriously, someone should find a streaming video version of his remarks. This whole thing is really absurd. In my opinion, in the actual interview, he was being rather careful not to step on any toes, and even if the "average" American watched the interview rather than a paraphrased version off their media, they would just shrug and walk away.
Poverty breeds extremism. Duh. The Western world is rich and arrogant. Duh. Welcome to the real world.
Posted by Ritten (Member # 417) on :
For the love, comparing our world policies to fucking hockey.... That is what disturbs me the most...
Posted by E. Cartman (Member # 256) on :
Shall. We. Play. A. Game?
Posted by TSN (Member # 31) on :
"For the love, comparing our world policies to fucking hockey.... That is what disturbs me the most..."
It's Canada. What do you expect?
"...polls in several countries show that the population is against it."
Including the US, probably, if they were to conduct such a poll here.
Posted by PsyLiam (Member # 73) on :
It seems to me though that it's harder to be "against it" in the US. The patriotism card keeps being played. And it doesn't help that people keep describing the whole thing in film tag-lines.
"They have awoken a sleeping giant."
"They will feel a mother's fury when her children are hurt."
"Bush 2: This time it's about oil. Or terrorism. One of them".
Posted by Free ThoughtCrime America (Member # 480) on :
I had a pretty long and pissy response for all this written up, but then I remembered that anything I say in this venue is next to pointless, so i deleted it.
But the point can be summed up quite nicely for you if you want to read it anyway...It goes something like this: Fucking Republicans.
Posted by The_Tom (Member # 38) on :
quote:Originally posted by Mucus: Heh
quote: Americans won't be offended because they're used to political leaders who garble their messages.
But seriously, someone should find a streaming video version of his remarks. This whole thing is really absurd. In my opinion, in the actual interview, he was being rather careful not to step on any toes, and even if the "average" American watched the interview rather than a paraphrased version off their media, they would just shrug and walk away.
Poverty breeds extremism. Duh. The Western world is rich and arrogant. Duh. Welcome to the real world.
This is apparently it, though being on a computer without RealPlayer I can't verify that the interview in question is contained within. Canadian-politics-virgins, be warned: Chr�tien speaks neither "Canadian" nor "American" nor English, really.
Posted by Bernd (Member # 6) on :
I think we have to separate September 11th from the Iraq issue. The vast majority of all people in the free world were with the USA and with Bush's policy towards the terrorists and the government that had given them shelter (well, maybe except for Chretien ). It was absolutely justified, and is confirmed by the success of the whole operation. But the connection between Iraq and terrorism is indirect at best. It's a whole different situation.
11 years ago, I was in favor of Desert Storm, as Hussein had taken Kuwait with force (with weapons delivered by many Western countries), was suppressing any opposition with brute force, had poisoned thousands of innocent people and was developing even more mass destruction weapons. But what did Bush's father do after they had retaken Kuwait and destroyed his infrastructure? He withdrew his forces because people in the US wanted the boys to come home. With Iraq's opposition slaughtered, the people of Iraq starving and a certain moral victory on his side, Hussein is now stronger in his own country than ever, thanks to Bush Senior. But at the same time, he is not the threat by far for anyone than he was 11 years ago. A tiger without teeth. Many Americans may think "better attack late than never". But I say "don't cause all this pain and grief again"!
Posted by First of Two (Member # 16) on :
quote:But at the same time, he is not the threat by far for anyone than he was 11 years ago. A tiger without teeth.
Although much of what you say is true, why do you believe this particular part?
Especially when his own former top weaponsmaker, and at least one of his former generals, have said otherwise?
What about those aluminum centrifuge parts that were intercepted being smuggled into Iraq? They have only one purpose - to enrich uranium for nukemaking. Conventional wisdom tells us that more smuggled materials get by than get interdicted. If this is what we caught, what got past? Does this sound like a regime that has given up on producing nuclear weapons?
Posted by Capped In Mic (Member # 709) on :
i just watched that whole show.. it was a 20 minute retrospective fo what the top officials of Canada's gov't were doing on the morning 9-11-01, that cut off in the middle (is there a second part?) The PM doesnt have any sound bites except as a narrative of what he was doing that day, meeting with some farm-business-guy.
had that rarely seen bottom angle shot of the first hit though, as well as the closest shot of the second hit ive seen yet. after i had already not wanted to watch it again.
Posted by EdipisReks (Member # 510) on :
i think it is pretty funny that anyone could blame the problems in the middle east with the divide between the wealthy and the poor "caused" by the "greed in the US (western world)". the sheikh's in saudia arabia and the nouveau riche in kuwait can share the wealth with their own poor countrymen anytime they want. and i say lets get saddam. anyone who thinks he's been spending his time sitting around being all nice and stopping being a threat to anyone is a damn fool.
Posted by Mucus (Member # 24) on :
quote:Originally posted by EdipisReks: i think it is pretty funny that anyone could blame the problems in the middle east with the divide between the wealthy and the poor "caused" by the "greed in the US (western world)". the sheikh's in saudia arabia and the nouveau riche in kuwait can share the wealth with their own poor countrymen anytime they want. and i say lets get saddam. anyone who thinks he's been spending his time sitting around being all nice and stopping being a threat to anyone is a damn fool.
Do your research. Since you're an undergrad history student and should understand the value of good research, I find your remarks particularly sad. You can even do a search on the word "caused" or "greed in the US" or Saddam on that transcipt, and you're not going to find a damn thing. I don't have a clue what you're referencing.
Posted by Ritten (Member # 417) on :
I think that was posted in the wrong thread, since the financial disparity was brought up else where....
Posted by Bernd (Member # 6) on :
quote:
quote:But at the same time, he is not the threat by far for anyone than he was 11 years ago. A tiger without teeth.
Although much of what you say is true, why do you believe this particular part?
A simple assessment. 11 years ago, Saddam had all the weapons he had been provided by certain Western governments the Soviet Union, many of them quite modern. We can assume that much of it has been destroyed. An Iraqi Air Force, as far as I know, is quasi non-existent to date. We can't be sure which ways may have been used to smuggle new weapons into Iraq (maybe Iran), but compared to the time before 1991, that must have been extremely hard, even if Saddam can still pay for it.
I too think that he is still dangerous and may use whatever he has left for a suicide attack, but it is probably a rather poor threat compared to 1991. I don't think people in Israel have to be afraid this time. At least not more than usual when suicide assassins are running around who are obviously more dangerous than a guided missile. And that's something we may never exclude and we can't eliminate by eliminating Hussein.
Posted by First of Two (Member # 16) on :
quote:We can assume that much of it has been destroyed
We can assume that a great deal of his conventional warfare equipment was destroyed. This is true. However, there is a rather large black-market arms supplier in the area, called China.
This also does not apply to his unconventional weapons, the WMD, because the inspectors were consistently hindered from inspecting "sensitive" areas even during those years they were 'permitted' inside Iraq. Being shown a few blown-up missile bits and being told "we blew up all those missiles you wanted to look at" would not engender confidence -- at least not in anyone who was doing his job properly.
Since we KNOW that Hussein has been importing or trying to import banned articles which have as their sole purpose the facilitation of the production of WMD, since he has maintained a base for training terrorists, as well as being a known financier of terrorist activities, since he has a known and demonstrated hatred for the US, and since he has repeatedly acted in violation of his promises up to and including repeated "suicidal" firing on coalition aircraft, I'm afraid my estimate of his threat level must remain much higher than yours.
Posted by Mucus (Member # 24) on :
quote:Originally posted by First of Two: We can assume that a great deal of his conventional warfare equipment was destroyed. This is true. However, there is a rather large black-market arms supplier in the area, called China.
Get off the high horse. You're going to complain that China is selling too many weapons. Here's a dose of reality from your own state department. Arms Sales Statistics
The US sells more than a hundred times what China sells. 33.0 billion vs. 0.3 billion. I mean bloody hell, Canada sells more than what China sells. If Bush tried to tell China to stop selling arms while the US sells 64% of arms sales in the world compared to all of East Asia at 1.3%...China would laugh at him, and from an objective point of view, they'd be right.
Maybe you should be more concerned that the largest American arms customer is Saudi Arabia.....home of the majority of the terrorist hijackers. Just a thought.
Posted by First of Two (Member # 16) on :
quote:You're going to complain that China is selling too many weapons
HEY! EVERYONE! MUCUS IS TELEPATHIC! He can predict the future course of conversations!
Next time, read my post.
#1 Part you missed: Black Market. You presume to tell me that you know the extent of China's black market sales?
(Although I should have added that the arms black market in the former USSR's Central Asian Republics [And likely, that of central Russia itself] does a fair amount of business as well.)
The rest is raving. Save it for an argument it fits in, rather than a smokescreen.
Posted by First of Two (Member # 16) on :
An update on Hussein's invitation for "Unconditional inspections":
quote: Iraq made a surprise offer late last night to provide "unconditional access" to United Nations inspectors, raising hopes of a peaceful outcome to the Gulf crisis.
But today it emerged that the offer only applied to military bases - which could let Saddam hide chemical and biological arms stockpiles elsewhere.
quote:Ali Muhsen Hamid claimed Iraq was being sincere, but he stipulated that civilian sites would not be available to the inspectors. "We support anywhere, any military site (for inspections), but not as some people have suggested for inspections against hospitals, against schools."
Hospitals are among key sites for inspections because of evidence that Saddam uses health laboratories to manufacture viruses for biological weapons.
quote:No10 pointed out that during the last, failed, round of inspections, the Iraqi president redesignated about half of his most secret military installations as " presidential palaces", ruling them out of bounds to inspectors.
Iraq capitalised on the disarray to mount a propaganda offensive. Tariq Aziz, Saddam's deputy prime minister, said the offer "thwarted" any reasons for a military attack.
Of course, regardless of the facts surrounding the "offer", the Russians, Germans, and French are practically stumbling over themselves to be the ones who pull back first.
Posted by Mucus (Member # 24) on :
Whoa dude, down with the unchanneled hostility. One might think that you have some serious issues to work out with your mother....or just cut back on the caffeine.
All I was simply pointing out was that your complaint,
quote: However, there is a rather large black-market arms supplier in the area, called China.
is perhaps a bit misplaced. While China has black market sales, I rather doubt they'd be 100 times what they report. That would be something....oh...I dunno....your US State Department might be complaining about.
quote: Even worse, in 1997 the New York Daily News reported that Iraq had deployed Israeli-developed, Chinese PL-8 missiles in the no-fly zones, endangering American pilots...
I think the Bush administration should attack Israel to prevent its distribution of weapons to "terrorists."
In your own words from "Happy Sept. 11th":
quote: Of course, I'm just being a bastard
Oh whoops, lets try that again.
quote: Of course, I'm just being a bastard... But it's funny how, when you expand ideals that seem applicable to ONE situation, they don't always seem applicable to similar ones.
OHMYGOD!!! We're doing it again!!! Invade us now before it's too late!!!!
Posted by Ritten (Member # 417) on :
mmmm, let's see, invade Canada, then give it to Mexico in trade for the south-western US....
That means we can still have ripped them off....
Posted by Grokca (Member # 722) on :
Don't give us to Mexico, the Quebecois will have a fit if they have to learn Spanish too.
Posted by Ritten (Member # 417) on :
Canadian-Spanish...
Posted by Grokca (Member # 722) on :
"Yo quiero taco bell, eh"
Posted by First of Two (Member # 16) on :
Canadian-Spanish...
Canish?
Caspish?
Capish?
Canaspan?
Canadish?
Spanadian?
Spanican?
El-eh?
Los igloos?
No me gusta los Estados Unidos!
Posted by Grokca (Member # 722) on :
quote:No me gusta los Estados Unidos!
Sorry to hear that FOT, when will you be leaving.
Posted by First of Two (Member # 16) on :
I was just speaking a traditional Spanadian greeting.
Posted by Capped In Mic (Member # 709) on :
oh you mean 'No me gusta les Etats-Unis, eh'
Posted by Ritten (Member # 417) on :
Those Arms Sales Statistics, are they for registered arms sales, or the black market sales? I ask because I don't see China letting everyone know that they are going against the UN resoltion banning arms sales to Iraq. This may impede the "Most Favored Nation" trade with the US, human rights aside.
Maybe China hasn't been caught in their Iran-Contra scandle, which doesn't mean that it isn't happening....
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