The propaganda keeps on coming...

[DaBeeeenster]

As I said I agree'd in principle to regime change. However, the problem that has arisen is one that has been repeated throughout history over and over. I.e. the US acting with their own interests at heart whilst playing their own real live version of Risk. They would not be in Iraq if they did not have interests there. All this "freeing the Iraqi people" is 100% pure BS. The US were complicit in the support of Saddam that enslaved them in the first plalce. Who was it that said you dont have permanent allies, just permanent interests.

If you look at the recent history of US foriegn policy, the same game is being played out yet again in Iraq. I am happy to take bets with anyone that the US will not allow a fundamentalist muslim government win the "democratic" elections in Iraq, whenever they happen. It just wont be allowed, as it wont be endearing to US interest.

This very same scenario happened 20 years ago in Iran with the Shah. The fact that most Americans are too ignorant to realise this does not help. They just keep watching Fox news.

Paying Turkey hundreds of millions of dollars in order to make use of their military bases so that they can bomb poor people is not helping the people being persecuted is it? If it was some serious international contract (like entry into the EU) that ensured certain levels of human rights and freedoms for the turks and the kurdish turks, then I would accept it. Taking backhanders from Bush so he can play his games is not helping the Kurds.

Edit: Btw, what dont you agree with?

[Zathras]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/3251731.stm

Condemned by their very own. How quick until she's attacked as a commie-lover or told that she should shut up and be pleased she's still alive and pay her debt to the US army by being used for propagan-oops I mean promotional exercises.

[wasabi]

DaBeeeenster - like I said - I can see where you're coming from - how you interpret things is up to you and I respect that. I just happen to not agree with it and think this thread would just go on for ever.

[DaBeeeenster]

Originally posted by robertirwin
DaBeeeenster - like I said - I can see where you're coming from - how you interpret things is up to you and I respect that. I just happen to not agree with it and think this thread would just go on for ever.

That's the whole point of this forum!

What dont you agree with? Really, I'm interested to know?

[RocketmanX]

I don't intend to be inflamatory but why is it that when the subject of Iraq comes up all comments are about the US?
Seems GB is a mature country able to make it's own desicions and yet I see only US bashinggoing on here? And BTW, if you would like to go into history to dig up dirt then you might want to check your own closet

The "assumption thaqt you have been lied to is just that. Obviously inteligence info was that these weapons were present. In any type of situation like this, war or otherwise, intelligence isn't 100%. So you assume you have been lied to.
Also, it's so damn easy to point out the negative in anything. What about some opinions on what SHOULD have been done? Andhow about what MIGHT have happened if nothing was done at all. Some good questions I think and more constructive than bashing what's already been done. I don't disagree that a better plan could have been made but what a better plan would have been I can't say. I and you also are not privvey to the type of info our governments had.

Another comment, if we had gone into a country with NO resources at all, would it still have to have been about money? Hell, you guys bash us when a President does nothing and feeds us vague nothings (Clinton) and then bash us when we take action??? Huh? Seems as if we aren't alone here, don't blame everything on us, what was GB's motives?

The US were complicit in the support of Saddam that enslaved them in the first plalce.

Do you guys even realize that the Administration in power then is long gone????
I'm afraid it's a little hard to compare a presidents Cabinet's interest and politics to ones currently in office. I't's like saying Clinton's Administration is responsible for what JFK did. Fortuantely policy changes with each President, why re-elected Clinton I'll never know. Unfortunately though, what's said during there campaigns and the policies we elect them on aren't always what happens after taking office.

I think if you asked what the US people want, most would say peace and a better life for the Iraqi people. I don't think anyone will argue the fact that Hussein was an evil ruler on the scale of Hitler. No peoples deserve to live that way.
It would be nice to say ther was peaceful way to end that but I'm sure Hussein would have never let that happen.

So, where do you guys think the US SHOULD step in then? Anywhere? Or should we leave the whole world to itself? How does the US policy change to be better?
I want to know what you guys think.

[Saracen]

Originally posted by RocketmanX
The "assumption thaqt you have been lied to is just that.

I can only speak for myself, and do not seek to represent anyone else in this forum, or country, in my response to that. Personally, I would not (yet) go so far as to say we have been lied to - but I would go so far as to say the population of this country (UK) have been misled - and deliberately. However, it is not the US that I would claim has been doing the misleading.

RocketmanX, I don't know how much you have seen from Indiana of the way the situation in Iraq was presented to us by our own government. But our government have come under a large spotlight, and an increasingly bright one, for 'spin' for some time now. This is not just about Iraq. It is about the widely-held belief that our government present things to us in such a way that people hear what the government intended them to hear, despite the fact that it wasn't what the government actually said.

A case in point - a lot of people still claim that our Labour (Democrat) government said before the election that put them in power (some 6 years ago), that they would not raise taxes. I've seen people state, as recently as the last few weeks, that this was a Labour election promise. It was not. What they said (and I could look up the exact words but cannot be bothered) was that that they would not raise the basic or higher rates of income tax. Most people hear "will not raise" and "income tax" in that statement and interpet it as meaning "will not raise taxes".

In fact, Labour have been raising taxes all overthe bloody place - except for the one they said they would not raise. However, at the end of the day, the tax burden has gone UP, and when the government pick my pocket like that, I don't much care what name they put on it and how they spin it. Tax is tax. People feel aggrieved, not because Labour actually lied, but because we feel that Labour were VERY careful in exactly what they said, knowing full well how it would be interpreted - yet they can (and subsequently did) refer back to their exact words and say, hand on bible, that they kept their word. They kept the letter of it all right (on most things) but did not keep to the spirit of what they convinced the people they meant, even if it was not what they said.

There are countless examples of this kind of antics, and the government's presentation of the Iraq situation is simply the latest, and most offensive, example, in that it involves lots of people getting killed, not just taxed. In short - they are snake oil salesman. Con artists.

So when you see British people saying they were lied to, check carefully to see who it is they are asserting lied to them - because in many cases, it will not be the US government they are talking about.

Having said that, there are also a number of people here (this country, and even this forum) that are definitely not fans of the US government, and that believe (with perhaps some justification) that George W and co indulged in some spin of their own, and that perhaps the motivation for the conflict was not entirely what they claimed it was. There is an element here that hold this, and previous, US governments in considerable contempt. There are people that will argue anti-US lines every chance they get. They are, in my view, a minority. But even among the less hard-line, there is considerable scepticism about the motives of the US Administration. Personally, I share some of that scepticism, but would like to point out that in my case at least, my scepticism is reserved for the administration of the US, not the population. Whether we be referring to the US administration or the UK government, these are politicians we are talking about, and I'm convinced that most politicians wouldn't know the truth if it bit them on the arse and couldn't find justice if their lives depended on it.

George W is, in particlular, an easy target. He is, at best, a person who's speeches usually come across as inept, and has the astonishing property, for a leading politican, of making himself sound stupid almost every time he opens his mouth. He cannot possibly be as thick as he sometimes appears or he couldn't (I hope) have got himself elected dog-catcher, let alone President.

What it boils down to is that a lot of people in this country do not trust their own government one iota, and furthermore believe that Blair is Bush's poodle. Bush says "jump" and Blair is in the air before he remembers to ask "how high, and in which direction?"

It doesn't help, therefore, that Bush's election process was the way it was, especially with the fiasco in Florida, and that George W himself is regarded as the puppet of commercial (mainly oil) interests.

I hope that puts a perspective on the issue you referred to. It is, at least, my take on it.

[spazman]

The first time i ever saw tony blair on TV i though that he looked like a dodgy bastard. How my first impression has come true. Im so badly voting conservative now that they have a proper leader and not a brainless idiot in charge. Anyways, at first i genuinley though that going to war with iraq was good thing to get rid of these supposed WMD they had. Seeing as they still havent found not even the tinyest hint of any i feel that it was Bush's attempt at getting in the good books of his people (playing on the americans almost manic patriotism) and a way of getting his hands on the Oil that iraq has. France and Germany had the correct idea!

[tonicblue]

stupid faulse patriotic (for all the wrong reasons) idiots.
yuk.
Im cringing now. I hardly looked at it. I havent even looked at the second one you posted.