On June 21st, President Bush appeared before the press in Vienna, Austria, during his meeting with EU leaders. The President’s remarks resulted in at least four curious media headlines. The following quotes are from the White House transcript of the event.
1. On Gitmo:
I’d like to end Guantanamo. I’d like it to be over with. One of the things we will do is we’ll send people back to their home countries…. Of course, there’s international pressure not to send them back. But, hopefully, we’ll be able to resolve that when they go back to their own country.
There are some who need to be tried in U.S. courts. They’re cold-blooded killers. They will murder somebody if they’re let out on the street. And yet, we believe there’s a — there ought to be a way forward in a court of law, and I’m waiting for the Supreme Court of the United States to determine the proper venue in which these people can be tried.
So I understand the concerns of… the European leaders and the European people about what Guantanamo says. I also shared with them my deep desire to end this program, but also I assured them that we will — I’m not going to let people out on the street that will do you harm. And so we’re working through the issue.
Interesting, the President apparently has been briefed by someone about “what Guantanamo says.” So if not for the right reasons, he wants to close Gitmo. But he can’t send them back to their homes, because of “international pressure” – e.g., the concerns that they might be treated even worse in the tender care of our “friends” in Saudi Arabia, Yemen, and Egypt. I’m delighted that the President, for once, seems to give a hoot about international opinion. (but see below, #4)
As for those we must detain for trial, he’s not going to do so until the American Courts tell him how? Say again?He’s trying to share the blame for a policy and public relations disaster of his own making on the Courts? This is rich. Best of all, he won’t hurry the process to close Gitmo because he’s concerned the released may cause our allies harm. How considerate.
2. Elsewhere, the President stated that he “fully understood” that America and Europe had “our differences on Iraq, and I can understand the differences. People have strong opinions on the subject. But what’s past is past, and what’s ahead is a hopeful democracy in the Middle East.”
I remember a day when traditional conservatives routinely would trot out George Santayana’s famous quote about the past. “Those who cannot remember the past are doomed to repeat it.”
But for this George, the past is an undiscovered country, one too difficult to even bother fighting anymore – at least before foreign audiences.
3. In the question and answer session, President Bush also made headlines when he chided the Iranian President for saying that Iran would respond to the present US/EU3 offer to Iran by mid-August: “It seems like an awful long time for a reasonable answer — for a reasonable proposal, a long time for an answer…. it shouldn’t take the Iranians that long to analyze what is a reasonable deal.”
Instead, the President was back to one-liners: “We’ll come to the table when they verifiably suspend. Period.” And within a few weeks, not months. Alas, that sort of blunt talk had Iranian sources taking umbrage at the President going back to the “path of extremism, threat and bullying.”
As one Iranian commentator, Piruz Mojtahedzadeh, told Tehran Radio yesterday (June 22), “the issue of ordering, dictating and commanding is one of the problems which is responsible for the dispute and misunderstanding between the two sides.” So if the Bush Administration’s objective is to reach a negotiated understanding,” then it ought to be reminded “that one cannot order or set preconditions in the process of reaching an understanding.”
4. Finally, President Bush was “flummoxed” by two questions about recent public opinion polls on America’s reputation in the world. The first noted, “you’ve got Iran’s nuclear program, you’ve got North Korea, yet, most Europeans consider the United States the biggest threat to global stability. Do you have any regrets about that?”
Apparently unbriefed about the polls, Bush reacted sharply: “That’s absurd. The United States is — we’ll defend ourselves, but at the same time, we’re actively working with our partners to spread peace and democracy. So whoever says that is — it’s an absurd statement.”
Undaunted, an Austrian reporter asked the question again, this time alerting the President that it was poll results, not just isolated individuals, who thought America had become a threat.
The President’s answer wandered from the defensive to angry defiance:
Well, yes, I thought it was absurd for people to think that we’re more dangerous than Iran. It’s a — we’re a transparent democracy. People know exactly what’s on our mind. We debate things in the open…. I don’t govern by polls, you know. I just do what I think is right. And I understand some of the decisions I made are controversial. But I made them in the best interest of our country, and I think in the best interest of the world. I believe when you look back at this moment, people will say, it was right to encourage democracy in the Middle East. I understand some people think that it can’t work. I believe in the universality of freedom; some don’t. I’m going to act on my beliefs so long as I’m the President of the United States.
That line mayplay well on Faux News and CNN w/ Blitzer. It won’t fly in Europe. So much for “giving a hoot” about international opinion. Bush will govern according to his own beliefs; it seems the rest of the world is, in the end, still irrelevant to Bush. Jefferson just turned over in his grave — again.
——————
Footnote, the two recent polls about global attitudes towards the US, Iran, and other pressing world issues were issued in the run-up to the US-EU Summit, by the Pew and Harris organizations. Here’s the full Pew report.
The June 19th Financial Times contains only a short report on the Harris Poll that it sponsored. The headliner quote there was: “In a Harris opinion poll,… 36 per cent of respondents identify the US as the greatest threat to global stability…. Thirty per cent of respondents named Iran as the greatest threat to global stability, with 18 per cent selecting China…. The poll questioned a representative sample of 5,000 people in the UK, France, Germany, Italy and Spain.
Finally, here’s an interesting, and I think, rather “balanced’ take on these polls from France’s LeMonde newspaper. IFor the original in French, click here. And here’s a translation, courtesy OSC (open source center):
French Commentary Alleges ‘Failure’ of US Public Diplomacy Efforts
Commentary by Sylvie Kauffmann: “United States Loses Image War”
Le Monde (Internet Version-WWW)
Wednesday, June 21, 2006 T12:33:41Z
OSC Translated Text
The Bush administration calls it “public diplomacy,” and the least that we can say is that it does not excel in it. Public diplomacy, according to the White House and the State Department, which serves this noble mission, involves improving the United States’ image around the world. The need to make this a priority emerged after 11September: this mission was initially confided to a leading representative of the advertising world, who fairly promptly abandoned it. Since matters did not improve, a year ago George W. Bush summoned Karen Hughes, a very close aide with a proven record of efficiency, from Texas.
But Karen Hughes’ efforts — and above all those of Condoleezza Rice, who, since her accession to the State Department has reoriented US foreign policy toward diplomacy — have not changed anything: the United States’ image in the world continues to deteriorate. On the eve of the EU-US summit, in Vienna Wednesday 21 June, two studies provide an alarming illustration of this.
An opinion poll, in which 17,000 people were interviewed in 15 countries by a highly respected independent US institution, the Pew Research Center, revealed, for the fourth year running since the start of the war in Iraq, the deterioration in the situation, even in countries regarded as sure allies. Turkey, a NATO member on which the
United States has relied on several occasions, is now the country where it is the most unpopular (12 percent of favorable opinions.)
Still in Europe, only 23 percent of Spaniards now form a positive opinion of the United States, as against 41 percent in 2005. Worse, in this country, which was also hard hit by Islamist terrorism two years ago, 76 percent of the people interviewed oppose the “war on terrorism” as conceived in Washington, and only 19 percent of them
approve of it. The only two countries where there is still a majority in favor of the concept of the war on terrorism are Russia and India, two countries where anti-Americanism has nevertheless considerably increased.
The impact of the pursuit of the war in Iraq is disastrous. In the 10 countries examined, a majority of interviewees believes that the world is more dangerous as a result of the Iraqi conflict. This is in particular the opinion of 60 percent of Britons, despite the fact that their troops are fighting in Iraq alongside the Americans; only 30
percent of them believe that the world is safer thanks to the offensive of the coalition in Iraq. Abu-Ghurayb and Guantanamo are now familiar words to nine out of 10 people in Europe and Japan — more than in the United States itself, where only three-fourths of Americans say they have heard any mention of the excesses perpetrated in those prisons.
On Monday 19 June a Harris poll carried out for the confirmed these trends: according to 36 percent of Europeans (Britons, Germans, French, Italians, and Spaniards,) the United States is now the main threat to world stability, ahead of Iran (30 percent) and China (18 percent.)
The United States more dangerous than Iran! This should provide food for thought for Mr Bush as he travels to the Vienna summit on board Air Force One. In Vienna there will of course be talk about the aid that Europe is slow to allocate to Iraq and Afghanistan. There will also be discussion of energy and Europe’s hope for a genuine dialogue
with the United States on climate change — another topic that is helping to tarnish the United States’ image around the world. But Mr Bush and Mrs Rice were not escape increasingly pressing questions about Guantanamo camp, where the suicide of three prisoners 10 June put the US Administration in an even more untenable position.
Senior US officials no longer hesitate to describe as “unfortunate” the initial response from the camp commandant and a “public diplomacy” expert, who described the suicides as “acts of terrorism” and “publicity stunts.” M. Bush, these same officials stress, displayed greater sensitivity by voicing his “concern” and the wish for the prisoners’ remains to be treated with respect.
The influence of Mrs Rice — who was with the President at Camp David when the suicides were discovered — is indeed, in terms of communication, much more positive than that of Vice President DickCheney or Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. But the United States’ image problems and the failure of its “public diplomacy” hardly
conceal the fundamental problem: what is to be done about Guantanamo?
The Bush administration is under no illusions: this question and all the excesses in the war on terrorism will never again be absent from European-US diplomatic meetings, so much have they affected public opinion on this side of the Atlantic.
Until the United States has regained its international reputation as regards observance of the rule of law, and until it makes a spectacular gesture openly to demonstrate that which is being discreetly stated by diplomats sent out by Mrs Rice to the European capitals (“Yes, we have a problem. Yes, we want to resolve it. Let us work on a solution together,”) it will continue to appear as the major loser in the war of ideas on terrorism.
Mr Bush will nevertheless find some consolation in the aforementioned opinion polls. There is at least one field of convergence between Europe and the United States — Iran. In the United States, Germany, France, and Japan, nine out of 10 people are opposed to the Iranian regime’s acquiring nuclear weapons. Following HAMAS’ victory in the
Palestinian territories, the rift over the Near East conflict seems to be narrowing: French and German opinion of Israel seems to be growing more positive. And above all, France is one of the few countries where the United States’ image has not suffered too badly during the past year.
It must be said that France itself has plenty to do. According to the Pew Research Center, France’s image in the Muslim countries has sharply declined: 61 percent of Turks form a bad opinion of France, which is 10 percent more than last year. The poll reveals that French people, 85 percent of whom believe that that country has taken a wrong
turning, are the most pessimistic Europeans. And while their president is setting records for unpopularity, German Chancellor Angela Merkel enjoys 80 percent of positive opinions in France.
This article is off topic, but likely of interest to readers here:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-2239088,00.html
It describes the development of a concrete plan by the Iraqi government’s for an amnesty to end the insurgency and the occupation. This is potentially very significant.
-Closing Gitmo won’t end the existence of countless secret CIA prisons in former Soviet gulags in Eastern Europe and the policy of firing anybody who blows the whistle about them.
– Closing Gitmo won’t aid the plight of 70-90% of Iraqis who are arrested, hooded, and thrown into prison camps for the crime of not showing their papers at checkpoints.
– Closing Gitmo doesn’t answer why the US government has a penchant for torturing innocents while releasing known terrorists.
– Closing Gitmo will not stop an estimated 1000 detainees a month who are being tortured to death in Iraq, according to former UN human rights chief dropped John Pace.
– Closing Gitmo won’t bring to justice the architects of the worldwide Copper Green torture policy immediately following the war on Afghanistan.
– Closing Gitmo won’t put a stop to the global rendition policy whereby the US government uses European countries as a halfway house before shipping accused terrorists to countries where torture is commonplace.
http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/june2006/220606closinggitmo.htm
Absolutely. Send every Saudi in Gitmo back to the kingdom! To the clowns that said they didn’t have a terrorism problem. Where justice involves severing limbs and stoning. To the country that didn’t even want the remains of their 9/11 hijackers back.
Send them all to the place where every corrupt employee is called a prince, and whose envoys to the US have to be addressed as your excellency or your highness,
My apologies for dual postings, but this BBC survey is a gem in terms of what Gitmo and terror is doing to perceptions on both sides.
It is hard data for all those that keep saying that my positions are just bias. Here is the beef:
Survey highlights Islam-West rift
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_depth/5110364.stm
” To the country that didn’t even want the remains of their 9/11 hijackers back.”
Is there remains? Like Atta’s passport fly from the plan down on the street of NY.
Is there remains? Like Atta’s passport fly from the plan down on the street of NY.
Yes Salah, there were remains identified in the plane that crashed in Pennsylvania, they were offered to their countries and families, and declined. Maybe part of the prevalent denial in the Arab world, you know the usual mofos arguing it was done by somebody else, maybe martians.
Thanks Davis for that I did know.
But please could you explain to us in your view how this crises that you are much concerns and continually posted how can be solved? What you need from Muslim/Arab/Islam?
What the tools and what the approach that you think that can changing hart and mind of 1.2Billions?
We are all ears love to hear from you….
You’re labouring under a massive misapprehension – perhaps more than one in the circumstances – if you think it’s just the Arab world that’s got its doubts about the togs the 911 Emperor is disporting himself in.
Was it Santayana or Freud who said: “The past is not dead. Sometimes it isn’t even past.”
In my experience, Americans tend to be a very short-memoried people with little understanding or appreciation of the thrust of history… Perhaps it has to do with the weight of the immigrantist narrative, whereby the inter-continental migrants who created the US were all people who had shucked off their own personal histories and ties to ancestral homelands and ancestral narratives, etc…
“Americans tend to be a very short-memoried people with little understanding or appreciation of the thrust of history”
Americans in general do not remember last week’s history. That is one reason they are so easily manipulated.
Bush’s comments are not surprising.
He says these thinks all the time, when he is talking to us Europeans:
http://atlanticreview.org/archives/315-guide.html
Helena,
Neither Santayana nor Freud. William Faulkner, actually.
Americans in general do not remember last week’s history. That is one reason they are so easily manipulated.
Shirin the generalizations whinner…Don’t like us? The door is open.
Salah, the number is irrelevant. The 1.x Billion have very little to show for. It is not our duty to understand you anymore than it is yours to understand us. The BBC piece suggests the misunderstanding thesis to be correct. But if you are bent on destruction, you should know that destruction does not require understanding, just requires a mortal enemy. I think we have a mortal enemy.
“Americans tend to be a very short-memoried people with little understanding or appreciation of the thrust of history”
Helena, there is no need to memorise or memories, THE PAST IT’S PAST that’s it leave things behind don’t hold it and bother, read your President what he said…
President Bush EU Summit
President Bush EU Summit
Zeremoniensaal Hall
Hofburg Palace
Vienna, Austria
“We talked about democracy and new democracies, and I want to thank the European Union for its strong support of Afghanistan and Iraq. Look, I fully understand we’ve had our differences on Iraq, and I can understand the differences. People have strong opinions on the subject. But what’s past is past, and what’s ahead is a hopeful democracy in the Middle East.”
It seems then it was Faulkner, via his Gavin Stevens :-}
“The past is never dead; it’s not even past.”
http://www.mcsr.olemiss.edu/~egjbp/faulkner/r_n_rfan.html
Speaking of even more “relevant” quotes :-}
“I wonder why we hate the past so.”
-W.D. Howells to Mark Twain
”It’s so damned humiliating.”
-Twain’s reply
“The Past is a foreign country; they do things differently here.”
-L.P. Hartley
“We learn from history that we do not learn from history.”
-Hegel
“We cannot escape history.”
-Abraham Lincoln in Annual Message to Congress, 12/1/1862.
“Honest history is the weapon of freedom.”
-Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.
“When the past no longer illuminates the future, the spirit walks in darkness.”
-Alexis de Tocqueville
By the way, for you triva buffs, my reference to Bush, the past, and “the undiscovered country” is a pale spoof of Klingon Chancellor Gorkan’s reference (and that of James Tiberius Kirk) to “Peace as the undiscovered country.” (Star Trek VI) Of course, the phrase “The Undiscovered Country” aludes in turn to Shakespeare’s Hamlet third Soliloquy.
Yet as Hamlet was referencing the dread of death, I’ll stick with the immortal Kirk. :-}
Helena,
We Americans may have indeed a short memory, or care more about the future than the past. Our main cultural detractors, the muslims, go to the extent of attempting to change the past. The following piece by AP summarizes the Muslim Virginity Ploys in Europe. The ultimate in attempting to change the past and deceiving our families and partners. Sickening to the bone. No wonder young muslims males cannot count on finding virgins on earth and resort to suicide bombings and bona fide heavenly virgins.
Read and defend, I know you can defend the indefensible, Helena, Shirin, Salah, Upharsin, let’s hear your spin.
http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/world/wire/sns-ap-restoring-virginity,0,616910.story?coll=sns-ap-world-headlines
Davis,
Millions of American kids zombied up on Thorazine and Ritalin.
Widespread steroid use amongst American high school athletes.
Breast enlargements.
Liposuction.
3,000 Americans a month dying of gunshot wounds.
Something like ten million Americans in prison.
Homelessness. Alcolholism. Domestic violence. Hopelessness. Unparalleled urban blight and decay and degradation and ugliness.
Malnutrition.
Obesity epidemic.
Stratospheric levels of personal and national indebtedness.
The greatest industrial base in the world a distant memory.
The U.S. middle class being herded onto the same conveyor belt to extinction that has already “taken care of” blue collar America.
Literacy levels that would shame India or Pakistan.
Ditto health care provision.
A breathtaking scale of electoral fraud.
Breathtaking levels of ignorance.
Now what was it you were saying about changing the past and defending the indefensible?
And when your grandkids will count themselves lucky if they can score a job as a houseboy with one of the Chinese executives sent over there to wind up the asset stripping operation…well, you can blame those infernal muslims and Ayerabs.
Final thought. How much you personally in for now? For the “war on dandruff”, as Gore Vidal calls it. Eight thousand bucks is it?
here’s my favorite part of the quotes above:
“We debate things in the open…. I don’t govern by polls, you know. I just do what I think is right.”
Yep, we debate things, then Bush does exactly what he likes, and everyone else can like it or lump it!
He does not care what anybody else thinks, even if they are the majority or a very sizable minority. He does what “he thinks is right” and has no clue just how stupid and ignorant he is!
here’s my favorite part of the quotes above:
“We debate things in the open…. I don’t govern by polls, you know. I just do what I think is right.”
Yep, we debate things, then Bush does exactly what he likes, and everyone else can like it or lump it!
He does not care what anybody else thinks, even if they are the majority or a very sizable minority. He does what “he thinks is right” and has no clue just how stupid and ignorant he is!
If I had to pick between spending the rest of my life with Davis or any random Muslim or Arab (or both) – I would pick the later.
Davis just sounds so full of hate and anger, and he already has his mind completely made up.
Actually, he comes across as a lot like the people he keeps complaining about……
“But you will say: what is the point of stirring up all this trash of which the universe has grown so heartily sick?…Fine, I tell you, be good, calm down, for the transition from madness to a life of reason can be effected only by drawing up an inventory of the dark deliberations that unleashed the dark urges which, in their turn, breaking the bonds of every custom and fleeing into the day and the century, thought themselves able to adorn with the plumage of others and the pomp of their own lies the very light of life, yet all was twilight and ruin.”
–Carlo Emilio Gadda, Eros and Priapus,
Translated from Italian by Christopher Woodall
Now what was it you were saying about changing the past and defending the indefensible?
Tupharsin, if it is that bad how come we have a US immigration problem? Don’t know where you are but even Shirin, Salah, and Helena live here? People vote with their feet.
Final thought. How much you personally in for now? For the “war on dandruff”, as Gore Vidal calls it. Eight thousand bucks is it?
I don’t understand the question. What are you asking.
If I had to pick between spending the rest of my life with Davis or any random Muslim or Arab (or both) – I would pick the later.
Susan, I think you are caring and sensitive but I never made any offers…
BTW, Helena made the same choice early on and didn’t work for her. You may want to check with her before your final decision.
Don’t know where you are but even Shirin, Salah, and Helena live here?
We are in same boat Davis, why you did not go to your beloved Promised Land? Why you didn’t stayed in your home country there in East Europe Formally commonest country?
You don’t know the half of it, old son. Yes, you, the gallant one.
Word has it the Ottawa immigration office has been absolutely swamped with applications from south of the border in the era of the Burning Bush. Well into seven figures.
And as long as we’ve come this far, well why not take a little jog through the maths. Come on, Davis…I got something to show you.
Nobody under, say, 18 will be applying to go to Canada. Nobody over, say, 50 or 55 will be applying. None of the millions in the American “underclass” will be applying. None of eight million or so in american prisons will be applying. None of the several million in uniform. None of the terminally ill. Or mentally handicapped. None of the million or so super rich. In short, we’re talking about the backbone of the country: well educated middle class people in the most productive years of their life. It’s what’s called a brain drain. Any country that’s haemorrhaging its well educated professionals is a country that’s in big trouble.
As for the other…in the nicest possible way I was simply enquiring after what your personal financial share of the War on Dandruff is now up to. No matter how hard you party down – no matter how many tequilas get drunk to “kicking enemy ass” – the bill in that restaurant does eventually pitch up. It’ll take several forms of course. Tax rises. Cuts in benefits and services. I should think part of your social security “entitlement” will go toward it. And of course the weak dollar will push the cost of those tequilas and dvd players up. And as for a trip to Europe…ouch. But hey, a man with enemies has gotta do what a man with enemies has gotta do. Well, my hunch is you won’t be donning a uniform…but there’s no end of Fighting 101st Keyboarders walking tall to be done…and no question but letting it all hang out and indeed marinate in some of those financial juices should get the eye in a fine frenzy rolling. Hee hup, hoo haw.
Boy oh boy. I didn’t know the Friends countenanced such Wild West brawling. The Orbis Pacem gang is about to hurl Dirty Davis through the saloon window. How dare say that Arabs flew them 767s? Yo! Somebody call al-Sharif.
Some proposals (courtesy of a camera review site called dpreview):
Be civil – anyone being abusive, calling names or generally trying to stir up trouble will not be tolerated. If you think someone is wrong it may be because they are new, don’t jump on them, think first. If you are repeatedly abusive you will be banned from these forums.
Flame / Attacks – We do not tolerate abusive, malicious, personal attacks or self-promoting messages.
Trolls – Anyone deliberately antagonizing other forum users by posting ‘flame bait’ type messages are not welcome.
Bashing – Deliberately and repeatedly bashing the same brand, product or company will get you banned. If you have a complaint or comment to make then make it once and make sure you have facts to support it.
Another idea: propose things that might be done to alleviate this or that, rather than simply let loose with rants. There are mroe therapeutic ways to blow steam.
tekel, not to interrupt a good rant, but many more Canadians apply for US citizenship each year than the converse. The trend is most obvious in high paying technical and financial jobs. If there’s a brain drain, it most definitely runs north to south.
vadim:
there you go…confusing us with the facts again!
“In my experience, Americans tend to be a very short-memoried people with little understanding or appreciation of the thrust of history.”
This is priceless.
Tupharsin,
I like your new and colorful writing style. Thanks for the clarifications. My opinions in reverse order are:
1) Yes, I am paying for this war. I am grateful that the burden has been less disruptive than when we fought other wars. I am grateful to our military. If it means working 20 hours a day I will gladly do so, because unlike other observers, I do not have the freedom to chose sides. The die is cast for me, just like when we fought Nazism.
2) Weak knees leaving for Canada? Nah. I am a lot in Ottawa. Ottawa is empty, less than a million people, no night life. And by the way, we are on the same boat with Canada. They are great people and I’d love to have them on our side of the border if they want. Now let’s talk about the immigration balance with our detractors? Pakistanis, Iranians, Lebanese, are we moving there or they coming here?
Salah, the US is a great place, and whatever isn’t great we should work to fix. The old fashioned fixing, rolling up our sleeves, not with car bombs and beheadings like in your place.
whatever isn’t great we should work to fix. The old fashioned fixing, rolling up our sleeves, not with car bombs and beheadings like in your place.
We should work to fix. The new fashioned fixing, rolling up our sleeves and Distraction of state, Privatising Oil industry (96% to US Companies share agreement) Assassinated the Scientists and Doctors Engineers, PhD Academic Stuff, Distraction of all Public Services, Tanks and HAMVIES running wiled on the streets around the clock in residential areas losing control of their guns shooting the civilians without care of human life, Prisoner Abuses, Sweeping towns using WPH &DU to kill and polluted the country for thousands coming years, Looting the Heritage of state and Looting the assets of that state which frozen in your country (Ask Sheikh Bremer where US$9Billions vanished when he is for one years in power, ask him about the Mercury he took with him what he did with it) Well done
whatever isn’t great we should work to fix. The old fashioned fixing, rolling up our sleeves, not with car bombs and beheadings like in your place.
We should work to fix. The new fashioned fixing, rolling up our sleeves and Distraction of state, Privatising Oil industry (96% to US Companies share agreement) Assassinated the Scientists and Doctors Engineers, PhD Academic Stuff, Distraction of all Public Services, Tanks and HAMVIES running wiled on the streets around the clock in residential areas losing control of their guns shooting the civilians without care of human life, Prisoner Abuses, Sweeping towns using WPH &DU to kill and polluted the country for thousands coming years, Looting the Heritage of state and Looting the assets of that state which frozen in your country (Ask Sheikh Bremer where US$9Billions vanished when he is for one years in power, ask him about the Mercury he took with him what he did with it) Well done
Davis or David
Sorry for my last double posting, and pelologies of been out of topic I will shut up after this.
One question Davis what made you changing your Name from David to Davis, what happened?
Can you tell us and rich or discussion to say more about you here since you insisted to be breaking all the security doors and jump here from time to time with you “valuable” comments?
Davis,
If – big if I know – you ever do figure out what’s been done to you you’re not going to be a happy bunny.
How many days of the year is it you’re working gratis for Cheney’s fat cat friends at Haliburton, Bechtel, Lockheed, etc. etc.? They gotta love guys like you: “got our hands in his pockets up to our elbows and he’s cheering us on.”
It’s absolutely feudal. They shake you down for six months of the year. And you’re grateful.
They fill your head and empty your pockets…that’s how serfhood works in the United States of Amnesia.
But as you say, you don’t have the freedom…
car bombs are the poor man’s air force.
what’s worse. …. state killing by beheading or state killing by electrocution? killing by air bombs or beheading? I won’t know, but I condemn them all.
And Friends have always be into non-violent brawling, long history actually. But anyone who proposes a violent solution to any problem is not a Friend.
One question Davis what made you changing your Name from David to Davis, what happened?
Thanks for asking Salah, I prefer to use my original handle “David”, but Helena, the champion of free speech and conflict resolution through dialogue, disagreed with my opinions and censored my name and my IP address. Any attempt to post under the name of David was rejected by the server. I modified just one letter to make it clear to all of you my friends that I am the same poster, and be able to resume or dialogue.
But that is fine, a minor inconvenience reminiscent of the French Partisan song:
J’ai changé cent fois de nom
J’ai perdu femme et enfants
Mais j’ai tant d’amis
Et j’ai la France entière.
http://www.leonardcohensite.com/partisaneng.htm
Tupharsin,
There may be truth in what you say, but even then there is little I can do. I cannot fight a nation and a class war at the same time. If I survive the first I’ll worry about the second. Do you live here in the US as well? If you do you may agree that there is social mobility here, and if you cannot win the class war you can try to join the winning side…
Yep, we debate things, then Bush does exactly what he likes, and everyone else can like it or lump it!
He does not care what anybody else thinks, even if they are the majority or a very sizable minority. He does what “he thinks is right” and has no clue just how stupid and ignorant he is!
Yep, we debate things, then Bush does exactly what he likes, and everyone else can like it or lump it!
He does not care what anybody else thinks, even if they are the majority or a very sizable minority. He does what “he thinks is right” and has no clue just how stupid and ignorant he is!