22 April 2004 23:38
i'm hanging out with a bunch of people from work. we're sitting here watching "survivor." this is the most consecutive minutes of the show i've seen in my life, and so far it hasn't been improving all that much. to be truly worthy of the title, the cast wouldn't be able to leave the island to have dinner at a local panamanian resturant like they're currently doing. whooptedo. actually, to be fully worthy of the title, all but one member of the cast would come back from the island in individual pine boxes.how's this for news?
“Sometimes a guy will go down, and I'll let him scream a bit to destroy the morale of his buddies,” a Marine corporal said, “then I'll use a second shot.” (‘For Marine snipers, war is up close and personal’, Tony Perry, Los Angeles Times, April 19, 2004)
sounds like the US is finally getting in gear to really crack down in iraq. if you're going to use war to bring peace, you need to go all the way. we got started in afghanistan and did things halfway, we're still dribbling along over there, we'll be there til the end of time. if you really want to get things settled down, you need to use the example of stalin and lenin. give the lesser peoples something that they can understand...fear. that's why we went over there, to instill fear of the US. we didn't do a good job of it, Saddam laughed us off, and even now that we've caught him, iran still hasn't kowtowed to us. if we're going to be a superpower, we need to act like one. it's about time the marines in Falluja started instilling some fear in the dissidents.
“Screaming women come in, praying, slapping their chests and faces. Maki, a consultant and acting director of the clinic, takes me to the bed where a child of about 10 is lying with a bullet wound to the head. A smaller child is being treated for a similar injury in the next bed. A US sniper hit them and their grandmother as they left their home to flee Fallujah... Snipers are causing not just carnage but also the paralysis of the ambulance and evacuation services. The biggest hospital after the main one was bombed is in US territory and cut off from the clinic by snipers. The ambulance has been repaired four times after bullet damage. Bodies are lying in the streets because nobody can go to collect them without being shot.” (Wilding, "Eyewitness in Fallujah," Sunday Herald, April 18, 2004.)
see, that's more like it.. it's a good wake up call to the iraquis that we are superior to them and they should do what we tell them to. if only we didn't have all these softies back home who don't realize what it really takes to mop of a rebellious population. that's what got us in trouble in vietnam, the stupid public. here's an interesting article.. dissidentvoice.org.
...something that's always confused me. why does a nation that denies God in favor of evolutionary theory not live by the mantra of evolution: "survival of the fittest." if the US think's it's so much better than everyone, why don't we get a little more agressive about it? like nazi germany, except exclusively aimed at other nations, not aimed at the local jewish population as well as every other nation.
{sigh}. i was never much in favor of the iraqi war in the first place--i just find it extremely irksome when the US doesn't live up to its intentions. if you're going to do something.. Do it. all or nothing. what is fast becoming my most quoted verse: "I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either one or the other! So, because you are lukewarm--neither hot nor cold--I am about to spit you out of my mouth." (rev 3.16)
from dissidentvoice.org,
Hari again quotes polls, this time suggesting “56 per cent of Iraqis say their lives are better than before the war”. Still, no one has thought to ask Iraqis if their lives are better now than before the West began demolishing their country with sanctions in 1990 and war in 1991. Referring to the 1980s, a December 1999 report by the International Committee of the Red Cross noted:
"Iraq boasted one of the most modern infrastructures and highest standards of living in the Middle East", with a "modern, complex health care system" and "sophisticated water-treatment and pumping facilities." (ICRC, 'Iraq: A Decade of Sanctions', December 1999)
According to an Economist Intelligence Unit Country Report, prior to the imposition of sanctions the Iraqi welfare state was "among the most comprehensive and generous in the Arab world". (‘Iraq: Country Report 1995-96’)
Unbeknownst to pollsters, it seems, this was all changed by the 88,500 tons of bombs of Desert Storm, and more than a decade of vicious sanctions.
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