Good news from Baghdad

These pictures show Iraqi civilians & US forces pulling down a huge statue of Saddam:







History in the making...

...Semper Fi!

That M88 recovery vehicle sure stands proud!

very nice!

i watched this being roped on good morning america as i was getting ready for school...glad they got it down /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif

This is what I'd call awesome.

where are the whiney liberals now? the ones who said the iraqi's don't want us to same them, that saddam is not that bad? yep.........that's what i thought.

hopefully we'll get $.89 a gallon gas again! /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif

Over here they are still handing out leaflets for some peace rally.

I just don't get it.

Abe.

Sure you get it Abe... I know you do.

90% of the people protesting aren't really about loving peace. It is about hating President Bush and/or hating America.

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Silviron said:
Sure you get it Abe... I know you do.

90% of the people protesting aren't really about loving peace. It is about hating President Bush and/or hating America.

[/ QUOTE ]

That is so right. We have peace-protests and "USA out of Iraq" rallies coming up this week too. It has become fashionable and PC, in some circles, over here. The sad thing is these people actually believe they are right, failing completely to see that they're just as narrow-minded, arrogant and naïve as they accuse the Americans of being. They don't seem to grasp the complex and difficult situation that Irag now faces after the war, or else they would not be so quick to want the US to leave. More importantly, just as Silviron points out they don't really care about the Iraqi people as much as they care about finding a cause, any cause, against USA, its alleged "imperialism" and the Bush administration. It's political fanaticism just as scary as communism or religious fundamentalism, only acceptable.

Given yesterday's important outcome of the Iraqi Freedom campaign many European politicians are bound to wish they hadn't been so openly against it, although the disgustingly hipocritical Jaques Chirac will continue to look after his own personal interests, in politics as in life. A hopeless case.

I vote for putting up a [edit]WTC memorial in that square. And over in Afghanistan's capital too for that matter. Just as a reminder.

I'm sorry but I'm still recovering from glancing at the NYT front page this morning. "aggressive U.S. foreign policies" and "Bush facing problems of perilous peace in the region". My freakin' clavicle. I just shouldn't even look at that rag. (In stark contrast, have you noticed Fox news' rather giddy style? From Shepard Smith during show of video of one of Saddam's palaces: "Maybe he's watching right now... Hey Saddam look! There's a tank on your front lawn!" /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif)

"hopefully we'll get $.89 a gallon gas again!"

Disgusting.

What is disgusting about something that would be wonderful for the whole world's economy, including Iraq's????

Though I don't necessarily think that fox news is being very professional with those kind of remarks, I do think they are being honest. They wear their thoughts and spin on their sleeves as it were and it's obvious. The NYT on the other hand is hiding their spin under a cloak of professional journalism when in reality they are farther from the truth than the fox news guys. I think it's you're going to support one side over the other then the least you can do is to do so openly rather than try to pretend that your view is more correct like the NYT.

Gents,

What's so disgusting about the $.89 remark is that it helps reinforce what so many people are afraid of. Coalition action in Iraq cannot, and should not be about oil. Would I like cheaper gas prices? Sure, who wouldn't. Will I continue to buy gas at $1.80 per gallon? Sure, but I won't like it. Will the war in Iraq result in cheaper gas? I'm not an economist. We just have to make sure that our actions are honorable. If our actions ARE honorable, we don't have anything to worry about. Don't get me wrong. I hope Saddam, his sons, and his cohorts are dead or soon to be dead, and I hope Iraq's former government is replaced by a government that is willing to cooperate with the rest of the planet. Just my opinion.

If it had anything to do with oil prices we would have done it 2 years ago when the price was over $2.50 a gallon.

The fact that we're doing it now when it's only $1.30 is proof that oil is only periphery to the issue and not the main reason.

what's wrong with hoping some good will come out of the war? isn't that the point? don't be so touchy. i never said it was about oil.

hopefully the iraqi people will remember who ther friend.

Actually I do think it is about oil… these guys running our country are pretty knowledgeable about oil and fully understand what disruptions in supplies can do to the world economy. Naturally they can't say that but here's the deal… only one country has significant excess production capacity and it happens to be our good buddies, the Saudis. Even they were not able to make up the recent production short falls which resulted from the internal problems within Venezuela.

I suspect that the Bush people understand that Saudi Arabia is entering a period of increasing political instability as the result of a swelling population of largely unemployable youth (9/11 proved that Saudis make crummy pilots and flight attendants). And that has been accompanied by a large drop in the per capita income (I think that it's down to around $7000). I wouldn't be surprised if the House of Saud falls by the wayside in the near future. And the people in the wings are the same nuts that thought that the Taliban was the expression of the perfect utopian Islamic society.

So go back to the first Gulf War. Here's Saddam, with a bunch of armored divisions on the Kuwait / Iraq border. He's clearly signaling his intent. But first he sticks a toe in the water and asks our ambassador to Iraq, April Glaspie, for the U.S. position on the border dispute. April replies, "…we have no opinion on the Arab-Arab conflicts, like your border disagreement with Kuwait." Apparently Saddam took this as a 'green light' and the rest, as they say, is history.

Why would have Glaspie made such a statement? Since these folks aren't idiots I have to assume that we did want to establish a strong military presence in the Gulf and Saddam provided us with an excuse. Unfortunately after the war the Saudis got freaked and kicked us (mostly) out. And this foreign presence on 'sacred Saudi soil' was what really set bin Laden off. Good grief… it's a friggin desert... it's not like we're squatting in Mecca or Medina.

Okay, so Saudi Arabia is out. But there's always Iraq! After all they've got the world's second biggest known petroleum reserves (roughly 113 billion barrels). You can bet that we intend to stick around in Qatar and Iraq until the wells run dry. Oh, and guess which company has the inside track for rebuilding the Iraqi oil industry infrastructure. Haliburton. Anyone here lucky enough to have bought Haliburton last year when it was down to $9 a share? BTW, Mr Cheney was running that company up till he became VP.

In this context cheap oil is a myth. We pay with blood, bullets, bombs, and tax dollars. And that is a good enough reason for me for war with Iraq. Hell, if Canada had that much oil I'd be all for attacking them as well. What's handy here is/was that Saddam is/was a particularly nasty guy and the Iraqi people now have a chance for something else. But forget about democracy for a couple of generations. Right now that country needs a Saddam lite, an autocrat with a velvet fist who can establish institutions to enforce the rule of law, stimulate economic activity, protect ethnic and religious minorities, share the oil wealth, and resist the outside agitators (Syria, Iran, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia).

I was against the war for the reasons stated by this administration (i.e., WoMD and links to terrorism) but I knew we could *****-slap SH all day. The tough part is starting now. Just watch the fun. And what really sucks is that those seven POWs haven't turned up alive.

I think you're right. The issue with oil is one of production more than supply, but it won't be too long before reserves come to play as well. The last thing we want is for the production of Iraq to stay low, such that they're the last country left with oil. If total production goes up, then price goes down, and all or most producing countries are forced to produce more to maintain their economies. As a country that consumes more than it produces, this is of course good for us. It also lets us leave all that oil in northern Alaska untapped, hopefully until things run out in the mideast.

What many people have trouble with is the concept that there are numerous reasons for any given policital action. These same people would never try to bake a cake with just one ingredient. Do they think mideast politics is as simple as baking a cake?

It's true, it's all about oil, but not in the same sense that you might be thinking.

There is a reason that those oil producing countries give the rest of the world so much pain, and it has nothing to do with religion or culture and everything to do with oil. I've posted this before, the idea doesn't originate with me.

If you want to have an army and go attack your neighbors or others out in the world, then you have to pay for it. You have to develop an economy that you can tax to pay for it. You need a large base of industry that you can tap to build it. You need to trade with your neighbors to get the tools and raw materials necessary to build it. Long before you've built a huge military you've become part of the global marketplace, connected to your neighbors through trade and through them to the rest of the world. After that you become part of the global culture. You learn how to do politics and trade and all of a sudden your people have more important things to do than waging war.

These folks have more money than they know what to do with because of oil and don't have to be nice to or trade with anybody to get it. Therefor their governments don't operate by the same set of rules and assumptions that ours does. Thats why the French and the Germans and even the Russians just can't believe that he would do the kind of things that we think him capable of. They are so much a part of the assumptions that they make about the other EU members that it's unthinkable to them that someone else might not HAVE or WANT to play by those rules. And it's when you rely on comfortable assumptions rather than reality that it's going to bite you. If everyone had the same goals then it would make sense to trust that they wouldn't do things that would be negative to those goals. But those governments don't have to share the same goals as us.

[ QUOTE ]
Silviron said:
Sure you get it Abe... I know you do.

90% of the people protesting aren't really about loving peace. It is about hating President Bush and/or hating America.

[/ QUOTE ]

Over here , I have the suspicion that it may have something to do with the socialist movement, and thay are trying to cause anarchy in an attempt to overthrow democracy.

Abe.