Making Baby Jesus Cry

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by Spanky
So let me gets this straight. If this constitution brings peace but women women's rights are restricted then Iraq is worse off than it was under Saddam? That is just absurd.

I didn't say that (is there an echo in here?), and the question is absurdly hypothetical because if and when they reach some consensus on a constitution, it's not bringing peace, anymore than the elections did. Remember those glorious inkprints on everyone's thumbs?

No one had any rights under Saddam Hussein. So any rights are a step in a positive direction.

No one has any rights now, either, in important senses that you seem to be ignoring. It's not like the government has any real capacity to enforce the law. The police are targets. At least there was a measure of order under Hussein. I'm not defending him, but it's unclear to me why you are so convinced that the war zone that we've created is a huge step up.

[Spanky]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
It's a big heap of fun to have you pick through my posts to bicker over semantics while you ignore the basic points. I stand corrected. Maybe his particular brand of brutality wasn't necessary, but brutality of that more general sort was, as we now can tell.

If any sort of brutality is necessary to keep the country together then it shouldn't be kept together. Keeping the country together is no justification for opression.

However, I don't think any brutality is necessary to keep the country together.

[Spanky]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
I didn't say that (is there an echo in here?), and the question is absurdly hypothetical because if and when they reach some consensus on a constitution, it's not bringing peace, anymore than the elections did. Remember those glorious inkprints on everyone's thumbs?



No one has any rights now, either, in important senses that you seem to be ignoring. It's not like the government has any real capacity to enforce the law. The police are targets. At least there was a measure of order under Hussein. I'm not defending him, but it's unclear to me why you are so convinced that the war zone that we've created is a huge step up.

You make it sound like Bahgdad is like Beirut was in the 1980s. Yes there are bombings but this is a city of millions of people. Tens of thousands of Iraqis have moved back to Iraq since the war. All people did was flee when Saddam Hussein was in power. That is pretty much the bottom line isn't it? People vote with their feet. If things were so awful there would be a mass exodus from Iraq (like there was under Saddam) but there is not.

People can now speak freely about the government. People got to vote. How can you say that the current situation is even close to the opression that existed under Saddam.

[Penske_Account]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
This is unmitigated horseshit.



Likewise, unmitigated horseshit. You are working so hard to pin 9/11 on a Democrat that you have announced that the Pentagon (the Rumsfeld Pentagon) was tracking Mohammed Atta before 9/11, without thinking about who this means is responsible for what.



No, they could not have been, and the fact that you bothered to frame this as a question is a solid indicator that you understand that this, at least, is unmitigated horseshit.



Thank you for putting the above horseshit in context of your particular brand of lunacy.
.

[/QUOTE]


Non-responsive. Calling something horseshite doesn't make it so. Explain to me why the Gorelick Wall was not problematic? Why Clinton is not responsible for Gorelick? Able Danger?

[Penske_Account]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
Pretty clever of them -- knowing that we'd occupy the country, they moved not only the WMD, but the tools and equipment used to make them, and all of the documentary evidence of their very existence. And they managed to do this while the country was under wartime surveillance and while our airpower was bombing anything that moved on the highways.

eta: The Iraq Survey Group ruled out your Syria nonsense, as I've previously pointed out when you spouted this crap before.

Why is it when Bush relied on intelligence re: WMDs and then you later ascertained that intelligence flawed that Bush is liar, but intelligence you like, that is not absolutely empirical and may yet prove flawed is dispositive proof? Your desire to embrace treason concerns me. You need some time out of the blogosphere to get some real life perpsective. Again.

[Penske_Account]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
Both sides can bear their share of blame, and there's really no point in trying to fight over who is more at fault. It takes two to tango. Lasting peace is only going to come when both sides agree to it. Anyone who pins the blame on one side or the other is just trying to prolong the misery.

Interesting note for all of you Palestinian supporters here. While extremist Leader Sharon presides over a historic withdrawal of territory that Israel has held for 30 years, Palestine MODERATE leader Hanan Ashrawi was on Nightline tonite and despite the desperately leading (almost begging) line of questioning from liberal MSMer Ted Koppel, she refused to admit that the Israeli government deserved any credit for the pull out, instead noting that until there is territorial linkage between Gaza and the West Bank nothing meaningful has been done.

I wonder if 50 years from now when such linkage has been achieved and after which Israel has been "cleansed" from the world map by the Palestinian "freedom fighters", if the Democratic party of the US, the French and Bill Clinton will be viewed in the same light as history now views Hitler, Goering and Goebbels? While it will be little comfort to the 3 million dead jews and their survivors, perhaps it will be cold comfort to those of us who supported the right side of humanity on this issue.

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally posted by Penske_Account
Why is it when Bush relied on intelligence re: WMDs and then you later ascertained that intelligence flawed that Bush is liar, but intelligence you like, that is not absolutely empirical and may yet prove flawed is dispositive proof? Your desire to embrace treason concerns me. You need some time out of the blogosphere to get some real life perpsective. Again.

2.

This style is what has driven me away from trying to post real here. What's the point? The above captures in a nutshell why anyone who has any training in logic just can't engage here. I'm serious, and of course not the treason part.

But let me try again:

I hope Iraq works out a constitution that puts women on equal footing with men. Of course, some of you don't believe it matters as the country will never come together.

Here's a shocker, though, about the prior state of women's rights in at least a part of Iraq:
http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0810/p06s01-woiq.htm

• Female circumcision surfaces in Iraq
  A German aid group finds the first solid proof of the practice, thought to be prevalent in the Middle East.
  
  KIRKUK, IRAQ - Set on an arid plain southeast of Kirkuk, Hasira looks like a place forsaken by time. Sheep amble past mud-brick houses and the odd sickly palm tree shades children's games. There is no electricity.
  
  Yet along with 39 other villages in this region that Iraq's Kurds have named Germian (meaning hot place), Hasira and its people have become noted for presenting the first statistical evidence in Iraq of the existence of female circumcision, or female genital mutilation (FGM), as critics call it.
  
  "We knew Germian was one of the areas most affected by the practice," says Thomas von der Osten-Sacken, director of a German nongovernmental organization called WADI, which has been based in Iraq for more than a decade.
  
  Of 1,554 women and girls over 10 years old interviewed by WADI's local medical team, 907, or more than 60 percent, said they had had the operation. The practice is known to exist throughout the Middle East, particularly in northern Saudi Arabia, southern Jordan, and Iraq. There is also circumstantial evidence to suggest it is present in Syria, western Iran, and southern Turkey.

If that's the type of decisions parents make with their daughters, what real hope is there in a Constitution? Maybe people think differently in the larger cities?

[baltassoc]

Originally posted by Spanky No government that has every nationalized all industry has been able to achieve sustained economic growth.

...the Soviet Union employment force was over 50% women, same as India) both countries went no where.

Changing the subject a bit, I suppose it really depends on what you mean by "sustained," but this really isn't true.

I'm not fan of the Soviets, and probably with better reason than most on this board, but one does have to give credit where credit is due. In 1917 Russia was a backwards, almost completely agrarian society. Their indusrial capacity was roughly 100 years behind the US and Western Europe. 40 years later, they beat us into space. Things really didn't start to go completely to hell until the 70s.

I'm not saying that Communism made the USSR the land of milk and honey, but it was probably the only way Russia was going to rapidly modernize itself. It eventually collapsed under the inefficiencies that such a system must eventually develop, but that first 50 years was impressive enough to scare the crap out of the entire world.

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally posted by sgtclub
Nope. The wisdom I impart on this board is done efficiently. My record here is 99-2-1, with the two losses and the tie coming when I was shitfaced. Sober, I'm 98-0. Drunk, I"m 1-2-1, albeit, the one drunk win was against SS, so that really shouldn't count.

the notme controversy extended over weeks so you couldn't have been drunk. Do you consider that exhibition?

[dtb]

Originally posted by Penske_Account
Sarbannes-Oxley, what a disasterous waste of resources. But at least they were able to convict that evil Scrushy under it. that makes all bureaucratic inefficiency it has caused worthwhile.

Lucky for him that his trial was in Alabama.

Ebbers -- not so much.

[Not Bob]

Originally posted by sgtclub
Club wasn't involved in that discussion.

Sorry. Thought you had replied to RT's post about the Iraqi constitution's treatment of women.

[greatwhitenorthchick]

I never read the title of this board properly. It always reads in my mind as "Making Baby Jesus Hard." Which is really fucking disturbing. Please, people, post a lot so you can change the board title.

Many thanks.

[Not Bob]

Originally posted by Penske_Account
Why is it when Bush relied on intelligence re: WMDs and then you later ascertained that intelligence flawed that Bush is liar, but intelligence you like, that is not absolutely empirical and may yet prove flawed is dispositive proof?

I'm Not Ty, but one reason that we can probably rely upon our WMD experts now is because they've actually now had two plus years to physically search the country, anywhere and everywhere. Before the war, we didn't have that ability.

So, are you saying that our fine men and women in the military who are actually over there right now looking very hard for WMD or evidence thereof are incompetent? Or that when the war started, they allowed all the evidence to be trucked overland to Syria, even though getting rid of WMD was one of the reasons for the war?

Why do you hate America so?

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally posted by Not Bob
I'm Not Ty, but one reason that we can probably rely upon our WMD experts now is because they've actually now had two plus years to physically search the country, anywhere and everywhere. Before the war, we didn't have that ability.

So, are you saying that our fine men and women in the military who are actually over there right now looking very hard for WMD or evidence thereof are incompetent? Or that when the war started, they allowed all the evidence to be trucked overland to Syria, even though getting rid of WMD was one of the reasons for the war?

Why do you hate America so?

There's also no evidence that the tons of weapons were destroyed. So something happened for which no evidence exists.

Rather than acknowledging this, the act here is to cite to an article like Ty does as if it is proof. This act is either stupid or intellectually dishonest.

[Replaced_Texan]

Originally posted by sgtclub
2. I will be severely disappointed if women are not granted equal rights, and frankly, I don't think the US will let it happen. However, even if it does, I still would still view the process as an overall success. Change comes slowly, and we must remember that even in a country as advanced as ours, women really didn't have equal rights till arguably 30ish years ago, over 200 years after our founding. The most important thing now is to have all factions agree on a constitution, unite as 1 nation, kick AQ out of the country, and begin building institutions that willl allow democracy and free markets to prosper. Equal rights and other "western" advancements will come with time.

How is it progress and overall success if women have fewer rights than they did two years ago?