THE US, THE UN AND THE IRAQIS THEMSELVES, V. 7.0

I started to try and translate, but then I realized I couldn't figure out what the hell he meant, and I gave up.

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Foxfyre wrote:

... Most--not all but most--of the left here are pretty solid in putting out the Democrat talking point of the day. Don't believe me? Just listen in on some of the opening minutes in the House or some of the impromptu speeches given by Dems who can snag a microphone for a minute and then compare to many of the posts here.

Oh, I believe you all right! But usually I am confident about my interpretation of what the Democ talking point of the day is. In the case of Gelisgestri's recent exchanges with Bill, the best I can do is guess, because I cannot confidently relate any of that to any Democ talking point. Perhaps I'm trying to read in to that more than is actually there.

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It's a real mystery, rapped in a riddle inside an enigma and he's guarding the answer like the family jewels. Maybe if I read the Da Vinci Code again...

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It reminds me more of Beowulf that I had to translate in English class. I'm not sure, but don't think I got a very good grade on that assignment.

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Foxfyre wrote:

It reminds me more of Beowulf that I had to translate in English class. I'm not sure, but don't think I got a very good grade on that assignment.

Couldn't you use the English version? :wink:

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"twisted poison steel" refers to what?

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If the key to the translation of Gelisgestri isn't to be found in either a Gelisgestri post, the Da Vinci Code, or Beowulf, then I suggest we follow the advice of Richard Carlson in his book, "Don't Sweat the Small Stuff." Laughing

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blatham wrote:

"twisted poison steel" refers to what?

Is this a new game where we just throw out gibberish phrases?

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That's too obvious to answer Blatham. A better question would be why do deer does that do in the first place? Hello? The cemetery! Aren't you listening?

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obill at one time or another:

Quote:

No need for traffic stats Joe. The horror is real. Click here. Now go ahead and revert back to your "but that's not why he said" mantra... and feign concern for thousands of dead Iraqis but know in you heart that the bastard starved well over a million people to death by 1998 when your boy wagged the dog for 4 days. Know it Joe. Know that over 500,000 of those dead were children aged 5 or under. Know that too. Sad.

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Joe, every country is a weakling compared to the US. Does that somehow diminish the crime of starving over a million people to death? Wasn't that the thrust of you challenge? Does it mean nothing to you that the horror you doubted is true? Or, like so many of your comrades here, is it just cause to shift gears into some other anti-Bush screed. 1,000,000 people, Joe. Think. 1,000,000 non-partisan dead people. 500,000 dead children, 5 and under. Nothing partisan about that.

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Amazing Joe. First you doubt the deed and ask for proof. Why ask for proof if the crime, once proven, is too trivial to register on your radar anyway? I'm all for continuing to knock heads until all the mass-murderers are rounded up... but somehow I don't think you mean it. Or is this the old can't stop all the crime so why stop any BS? Rolling Eyes When a million murders don't matter anymore because you don't like the politics of the arresting officer, it's time to check yourself, Joe. That's a sh!tty thing to politicize.

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It amazes me that people out there that will trivialize a million murders in hopes of scoring political points because they weren't the main thrust of the president's argument.

Newsflash to the terminally obtuse: it makes no difference to the million dead people why George Bush decided to attack Iraq. The FACT that Saddam is responsible for over a million murders is all the justification I needed.

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All this led to this:
GE

Quote:

You piss and moan about a million people murdered ...... is that number a breaking point for you or did you pull it out of the air?

Which led to this:

OCCOM BILL wrote:

revel wrote:
Furthermore, this was out of line:

Quote:
Carry on feigning concern for the victims of collateral damage while pretending you don't know Saddam averaged a like number of innocents murdered throughout his rule.

You cannot divine into our minds and know if we are feigning or not over an impersonal internet message board.
Do the math on Saddam's average murder rate including starvation (which has to be about 1 rung above being tortured to death on the worst-ways-to-go scale), compared to even the less conservative estimates on collateral damage and you'll see that the net result is almost guaranteed to end up less Iraqi dead. Now I know a million dead is such a big number it's hard to get your head around so compare it to your hometown. Use your calculator. You are correct in assuming Saddam wasn't the worst out there (Kim is) but he's a contender you wouldn't switch hands if you were ranking them. Anyway you slice it; downplaying a million murders while whimpering about thousands of accidental deaths is disingenuous at best. I was NOT out of line. Want proof? Look at Gel's last idiotic post.

Ps. Dennis Miller was hilarious tonight and they're replaying it on CNBC now.

At which point I said 'oh, he wants to play' .... so I got carried away ....you crawfished back into a defensive posture .... game over.... you were too slow anyhow.

Twisted Evil

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Gelisgesti wrote:

At which point I said 'oh, he wants to play' .... so I got carried away ....you crawfished back into a defensive posture .... game over.... you were too slow anyhow.

Bill, can you translate this for me? What does Gelisgesti mean? Does he mean anything? Rolling Eyes

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ican711nm wrote:

Gelisgesti wrote:
At which point I said 'oh, he wants to play' .... so I got carried away ....you crawfished back into a defensive posture .... game over.... you were too slow anyhow.

Bill, can you translate this for me? What does Gelisgesti mean? Does he mean anything?

Wish I could Ican. If there was anything to be gained by rereading the old posts I'd have picked it up when I tried it. My best guess is that Gel is seeing some intended meaning in his posts that simply isn't there... and for some bizarre reason he's refusing to simply rephrase it into something coherent. Your guess is as good as mine until he does.

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Does anyone want to actually discuss foreign policy?

Assuming that the spreading of democracy is a bedrock principle of the USA, has the US Foreign Policy in the Middle East since World War II, especially in regard to it's relations with Islamic countries and the Palestinians, fostered or hindered the spread of democracy in the region?

For extra credit: Assume that you are a citizen of Iran, the Arab Emirates, Yemen, Jordan, Syria or any other Middle Eastern country including the Gaza Strip and see if that changes your answer.

Joe (I know she means well.) Nation

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See

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Well, Joe, since you brought up Yemen.....the Christian Science Monitor is impressed .......

Yemen also sees success with dialogue

When Judge Hamoud al-Hitar announced that he and four other Islamic scholars would challenge Yemen's Al Qaeda prisoners to a theological contest, Western antiterrorism experts warned that this high-stakes gamble would end in disaster. Nervous as he faced five captured, yet defiant, Al Qaeda members in a Sanaa prison, Judge Hitar was inclined to agree. But banishing his doubts, the youthful cleric threw down the gauntlet, in the hope of bringing peace to his troubled homeland. "If you can convince us that your ideas are justified by the Koran, then we will join you in your struggle," Hitar told the militants. "But if we succeed in convincing you of our ideas, then you must agree to renounce violence." The prisoners eagerly agreed. Now, two years later, not only have those prisoners been released, but a relative peace reigns in Yemen. And the same Western experts who doubted this experiment are courting Hitar, eager to hear how his "theological dialogues" with captured Islamic militants have helped pacify this wild and mountainous country, previously seen by the US as a failed state, like Iraq and Afghanistan.

"Since December 2002, when the first round of the dialogues ended, there have been no terrorist attacks here, even though many people thought that Yemen would become terror's capital," says Hitar, eyes glinting shrewdly from beneath his emerald-green turban. "Three hundred and sixty-four young men have been released after going through the dialogues and none of these have left Yemen to fight anywhere else." To be sure, the prisoner-release program is not solely responsible for the absence of attacks in Yemen. The government has undertaken a range of measures to combat terrorism from closing down extreme madrassahs, the Islamic schools sometimes accused of breeding hate, to deporting foreign militants.

Seated amid stacks of Korans and religious texts, Hitar explains that his system is simple. He invites militants to use the Koran to justify attacks on innocent civilians and when they cannot, he shows them numerous passages commanding Muslims not to attack civilians, to respect other religions, and fight only in self-defense. If, after weeks of debate, the prisoners renounce violence they are released and offered vocational training courses and help to find jobs. Hitar's belief that hardened militants trained by Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan could change their stripes was initially dismissed by US diplomats in Sanaa as dangerously naive, but the methods of the scholarly cleric have little in common with the other methods of fighting extremism. Instead of lecturing or threatening the battle-hardened militants, he listens to them. Only after winning the militants' trust does Hitar gradually begin to correct their beliefs. He says that most militants are ordinary people who have been led astray. Just as they were taught Al Qaeda's doctrines, he says, so too can they be taught more- moderate ideas. Yet despite the apparent success in Yemen, some US diplomats have criticized it for apparently letting Islamic militants off the hook with little guarantee that they won't revert to their old ways once released from prison

..US diplomats have also approached the cleric to see if his methods can be applied in Iraq, says Hitar. "Before the dialogues began, there was only one way to fight terrorism, and that was through force," he says. "Now there is another way: dialogue."

http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0204/p01s04-wome.html

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Joe Nation wrote:

Does anyone want to actually discuss foreign policy?
Assuming that the spreading of democracy is a bedrock principle of the USA, has the US Foreign Policy in the Middle East since World War II, especially in regard to it's relations with Islamic countries and the Palestinians, fostered or hindered the spread of democracy in the region?

US Foreign Policy in the Middle East since World War II, especially in regard to it's relations with Islamic countries and the Palestinians, has not fostered and has hindered the spread of democracy in the region.

Joe Nation wrote:

For extra credit: Assume that you are a citizen of Iran, the Arab Emirates, Yemen, Jordan, Syria or any other Middle Eastern country including the Gaza Strip and see if that changes your answer.

It doesn't change my answer.

Bush addressed this point directly when he said:

Quote:

For decades, free nations tolerated oppression in the Middle East for the sake of stability. In practice, this approach brought little stability and much oppression, so I have changed this policy.

...

Some who call themselves realists question whether the spread of democracy in the Middle East should be any concern of ours. But the realists in this case have lost contact with a fundamental reality: America has always been less secure when freedom is in retreat; America is always more secure when freedom is on the march.

The most pertinent foreign policy issue now is how to best rectify the consequences of our and other nations' past behavior in the middle east. I think enabling the people of the middle east, in general, and the people of Afghanistan and Iraq, in particular to establish democracies of their own design is the best way to accomplish that rectification.

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Just Wonders: I hope you or someone will forward your posted article to the commandant at Guantanamo or perhaps to Atty Gen. Gonzalez or maybe even to Don Rumsfeld. Imagine: results without torture.

Islam is a philosophy dedicated to truth and virtue though it's not presented that way to us in the west, perhaps that why, although we have offered a 50 million dollar reward for turning in Osama bin Ladin, no one has come forward. All Muslims know, and the US officials offering the reward could have checked with any Islamic scholar, that no Muslim can accept a reward for doing the right thing, doing the right thing is the reward.

We haven't a clue what we are doing.

Quote:

The most pertinent foreign policy issue now is how to best rectify the consequences of our and other nations' past behavior in the middle east. I think enabling the people of the middle east, in general, and the people of Afghanistan and Iraq, in particular to establish democracies of their own design is the best way to accomplish that rectification.

"...to establish democracies of their own design...." Yes, my brother, may we have the wisdom to realize that all democracies are not images of our own, hopefully they will be better there is plenty of room for improvement.

How do you think the GW Bush will accomplish this when many of his own party have been reluctant to enter any foreign engagements except when the US is under immediate threat?

Joe(beginnings are seldom easy or predictors of results)Nation

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Good evening everyone.

Here we go.

Bill, if you wanted an explanation as to what I wrote, why didn't you just ask for one, and forgo the inane accusations that only gummed-up the debate and exchange of ideas? Overreaction begets overreaction. If you want to avoid other's overreaction, it would be wise to not overreact yourself, with tone, asinine assumptions, or whatever. If there's a question you have, simply write it, and leave the inanities in your head. Don't you think that would be a more efficient means of communicating?

Now, I didn't know what you meant by:

Quote:

Don't be ashamed to admit you blame America first without rhyme, reason or any hint of justification.

That is why I asked. You then said,

Quote:

It was you who suggested you a 30 year old sin provided some insight into the US' motivation today.

I didn't know that you were saying that "blaming America first" meant "suggesting a 30 year old sin provided some insight into the US' motivation today."

I'm still at a loss as to how you tie "suggesting a 30 year old sin provided some insight into the US' motivation today" with "blaming America first."

So, then you clarified that what you really meant to say is that you "defined the 'blaming' as suggesting a 30-year-old wrong on another continent by another administration without a reasonable explanation."

Whew! Ok, I think I got you now. Couldn't you have just said so to begin with?

When I wrote that pointing out our support of tyrants isn't about providing insight into Bush's motivation today, it's about providing insight into the US's motivation today, therefor it is relevant, I was referring to what McTag had written:

Quote:

Pinochet was a bad and murderous dictator, but he was supported by the US.

I do not agree with Bill that the Cold War applied to South America, and I am wondering perhaps maybe the aim in Iraq is not as stated, or maybe it will change fast if the "wrong kind" of democracy develops.

Bill, I'm not seeking to blame the US for everything, don't say that. I'm only seeking to open up your mind a crack.

You responded with:

Quote:

That would be easier to believe if you weren't trying to saddle Bush with sins that took place before he entered politics, in a place he probably couldn't point out on a globe.

Again, and I don't mean to speak for McTag, but this is how I interpret what he is saying, and what you don't seem to get:

Pointing out our support of tyrants isn't about providing insight into Bush's motivation today, per se, it's about providing insight into the US' motivation today.

Bush and his administration are but one in the long line of US administrations, and his is not the last. Throughout its history the US has acted in accordance to what it believes is in its own best interests. That has meant, like in the illustration of our actions in Chile, thwarting democracy itself if we deemed it fit to our interests. We've done that not only in the continent of South America, we've done that all over the world, from South America, to Africa, to Asia, and that includes the Middle East.

So, in light of this long history of actions that I think you yourself wouldn't defend--judging by the fact that you don't defend our actions in Chile--actions by any administration, Bush's included, inspire skepticism, at the very least, and, more likely, they inspire cynicism, especially when those actions involve war.

It is the actions of the US and it's past administrations themselves that have saddled Bush with their indefensible actions, and the subsequent skepticism and cynicism that those actions have affected.

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ican wrote:

The most pertinent foreign policy issue now is how to best rectify the consequences of our and other nations' past behavior in the middle east. I think enabling the people of the middle east, in general, and the people of Afghanistan and Iraq, in particular to establish democracies of their own design is the best way to accomplish that rectification.

I agree.

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Gell's point was easy to get. It was merely that he was saying that in order to save people we had to kill people which sort of defeats the purpose. All Bill had to do was say something like, "Yes, but if saddam continued on he would have killed more whereas we have an objective and once it is met, we won't kill anymore." (or whatever words to that effect or another arugment.)

He understood gell's point because he went on talk about the millions of murders that saddam commited verses the smaller amount of accidental killings that we committed. And then went so far as to say that he knew we were faking concern over any deaths at all. (which led to my post asking how in the world you can read inside our minds)

Then gell asked him, how did he arrive at a "million" did he just pull that out of thin air. Which is a logical saying that is not hard to understand. Instead bill just kept asking him to rewrord his question because it don't make any sense rather than just saying that his million number was just used as an estimated number.

Gell pointed out plenty of smart elect responses of bill's to others here as well. Personally I have given up, again, on him. Along with some others who are equally as patronizing just so not out in the open. How can we have reasonable discussions when one side treats the other as though they are either idiots or just lefty loonies rather than discussing the merits of the arguments or point of views of the post as they come up?

It is just hard to ignore people that go to the same boards I have found out.

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THE US, THE UN AND THE IRAQIS THEMSELVES, V. 7.0

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