you're preaching to the choir, jtt. i don't want anyone bombing anyone.
Quote:Guantanamo military lawyer breaks ranks to condemn 'unconscionable' detention
you're supposed to break ranks when it's required to defend the constitution.
in a just world, he'd get a medal.
Part of it's from eating snails. I'd eat a crow before I'd eat a snail.
gungasnake wrote:Part of it's from eating snails. I'd eat a crow before I'd eat a snail.
And a lucky thing, too. Feast on way.
Crow is still eaten, if uncommonly. Recipes concentrate on crow breast meat with preparations similar to those used to cook dove or other birds with limited useable meat. Shiksa probably has recipes. I'm sure foxfyre does as well but unfortunately she seems to be off eating hot-wings at the moment.
Though it might come as some surprise given the bullying nature of the bird, crow has a delicate flavor with lingering notes of almond and blackberry. But the aesthetics of presentation really recommend the stellar bluejay.
gungasnake wrote: I'd eat a crow before I'd eat a snail.
You have to eat crow all the time.
"I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism...... General Smedley Butler Commandant USMC
That's been the case since the late 1800s and the rape and pillaging continues in Iraq.
A fuller excerpt sheds even more light on the evil that is US foreign policy.
Quote:
"War is just a racket. A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of people. Only a small inside group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few at the expense of the masses.
I believe in adequate defense at the coastline and nothing else. If a nation comes over here to fight, then we'll fight. The trouble with America is that when the dollar only earns 6 percent over here, then it gets restless and goes overseas to get 100 percent. Then the flag follows the dollar and the soldiers follow the flag.
I wouldn't go to war again as I have done to protect some lousy investment of the bankers. There are only two things we should fight for. One is the defense of our homes and the other is the Bill of Rights. War for any other reason is simply a racket.
There isn't a trick in the racketeering bag that the military gang is blind to. It has its "finger men" to point out enemies, its "muscle men" to destroy enemies, its "brain men" to plan war preparations, and a "Big Boss" Super-Nationalistic-Capitalism.
It may seem odd for me, a military man to adopt such a comparison. Truthfulness compels me to. I spent thirty-three years and four months in active military service as a member of this country's most agile military force, the Marine Corps. I served in all commissioned ranks from Second Lieutenant to Major-General. And during that period, I spent most of my time being a high class muscle-man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the Bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism.
I suspected I was just part of a racket at the time. Now I am sure of it. Like all the members of the military profession, I never had a thought of my own until I left the service. My mental faculties remained in suspended animation while I obeyed the orders of higher-ups. This is typical with everyone in the military service.
I helped make Mexico, especially Tampico, safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefits of Wall Street. The record of racketeering is long. I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912 (where have I heard that name before?). I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. In China I helped to see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested.
During those years, I had, as the boys in the back room would say, a swell racket. Looking back on it, I feel that I could have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents."
-- Excerpt from a speech delivered in 1933 by Major General Smedley Butler, USMC
JTT wrote:The US was responsible for orchestrating a complete sham in the Tokyo Trials after the second world war, TG. The USA is not in any position to hold themselves out as moral arbiters of what's right and wrong. At least not without a complete purge of all the war criminals that now reside, retired from government, in the USA.
The USA was responsible for terror attacks on Japanese civilians throughout WWII.
Hiroshima was a major center of military activity. Nagasaki was a center of war industry, and so was the section of Tokyo destroyed by incendiaries.
Civilians were hardly targeted (at least by the US).
land mines kill farmers and peasants in horrible ways, decades after "targeting" soldiers.
and d.u. shells "target" the land as much as the vehicles they go through, helping to render the soil unusable. but somehow, that's not terrorism.
tinygiraffe wrote:and d.u. shells "target" the land as much as the vehicles they go through, helping to render the soil unusable. but somehow, that's not terrorism.
I'm not sure how it renders it unusable, but it would be a small matter to clean up the soil in the vicinity of destroyed tanks.
a small matter to remove the contamination from residual soil poisoning from radioactive shells embedded all over the desert?
my god, the resources you must have that you're not telling us about. is it also a small matter to bring those hundreds of thousands of civilians back to life, or is that what you do on your weekends?
tinygiraffe wrote:a small matter to remove the contamination from residual soil poisoning from radioactive shells embedded all over the desert?
A small matter to clean up the lightly-contaminated soil in the immediate vicinity of a destroyed tank.
tinygiraffe wrote:my god, the resources you must have that you're not telling us about. is it also a small matter to bring those hundreds of thousands of civilians back to life, or is that what you do on your weekends?
I do not accept the proposition that America has killed more than 20,000 civilians in Iraq.
oralloy wrote:
I do not accept the proposition that America has killed more than 20,000 civilians in Iraq.
Way more than 20,000, oralboy.
+++++++++++
Documented civilian deaths from violence
76,075 - 82,883
http://www.iraqbodycount.org/database/
+++++++++++++
JTT wrote:oralloy wrote:
I do not accept the proposition that America has killed more than 20,000 civilians in Iraq.
Way more than 20,000, oralboy.
+++++++++++
Documented civilian deaths from violence
76,075 - 82,883
http://www.iraqbodycount.org/database/
+++++++++++++
Hey, way to show you can't read. Again.
JTT wrote:oralloy wrote:
I do not accept the proposition that America has killed more than 20,000 civilians in Iraq.
Way more than 20,000
I doubt it.
"from violence" does not necessarily translate into "killed by America".
And I do not accept IBC's methodology as valid. They count any death that was widely reported in the media, so every time Saddam's government (and later the insurgency) made a bogus claim of a lot of people killed, and the media picked up on it, the bogus numbers got added to IBC's tally.
Quote:"from violence" does not necessarily translate into "killed by America".
that's true, i wouldn't rule out some unknown species of iraqi moose, or possibly one of those god-like "particles" from star trek: the next generation. with all my mixed feelings about him, i think james randi would be the best gulf war correspondent ever!
tinygiraffe wrote:Quote:"from violence" does not necessarily translate into "killed by America".
that's true, i wouldn't rule out some unknown species of iraqi moose, or possibly one of those god-like "particles" from star trek: the next generation. with all my mixed feelings about him, i think james randi would be the best gulf war correspondent ever!
Do you rule out Iraqis killing each other?
Or foreign Muslim extremists coming into Iraq and killing Iraqis in order to provoke them into killing each other?
no, but since it's your claim and obvious area of expertise, i thought you might back it up with some numbers.
i'll stand by my "hundreds of thousands" as an inside number (from the bbc, a figure years old by now, i'm afraid) until some expert can sort out the pie chart for me. i think before we took out saddam, there were more people in iraq united against him. i imagine they're more united against us now, at least, what i hear in the news would suggest it.
