Scott Ferrin wrote in message . ..
On Mon, 19 Apr 2004 20:08:15 +1000, John Cook
wrote:


Quick question, what exactly are we teaching them?.

Cheers

John Cook


Do you watch the news much? Spain gets a huge terrorist incident
right before an election so they vote in a terrorist sympithizer (may
as well be) and his first order of business is to have any Spanish
troops in Iraq leave so fast all you see is the cloud of dust. I was
being sracrastic when I said "that'll teach 'em". Incidents like this
only encourage the terrorists. Next time they want something in
Spain they'll just blow something up to make sure they get it. And I
thought the French were bad.

i know you were being sarcastic, I was just wondering what we are
teaching Iraqi's.

The Iraqi situation is a **** up, the whole premise of the invasion
was based on lies or at best stage managed intellegence, then despite
warnings that without international support it would quickly turn into
a **** fight, The US decided to 'save' the Iraqi's from Saddam (I
can't find any good reference to Saddams links with Al Queda).

Ask yourself a couple of questions,
Why are we in Iraq?.
Why don't the people in Iraq want us there?.

Then look at what other countries fit into the reasons why we went to
war, China, North korea, virtually the whole middle east, Russia.

Its beginning to look like the 'war on terrorism' is just an excuse
for some really terrible political decisions.

How do you think the US has managed to turn the overwhelming
international support and outrage of the Sept 11th attack into a
minority of 'hard core' countries that now find it difficult to
disengage from the whole sorry mess.

People are calling the French cowards (and I'm not a great fan of the
french) but all they did was say that it was a bad idea to invade on
the flaky intellegence available and they wouldn't support such an
action (now they have been proved correct), the UN said wait till the
weapons inspectors have finished their work because they were
exausting all possible avenues, The US decided to give Saddam an
ultimatum, produce the WMD in 10 days or else. (Well the US has had a
year wheres the WMD?, 'oops we made a mistake' seems a little thin.)

Preemptive attacks are a pretty stupid idea especially when the
reasons for the attack evaporate, and It certainly hasn't helped the
US now, In fact the whole Iraq fiasco has helped the extremist anti
western elements hugely, uniting diverse factions against western
interests, splitting western allies, and destroying US international
credability especially its Integellence agencies.

Now ask yourself what positives have been achieved?.

The Iraqi's are now being 'helped' by the US, they are spending the
Iraqi Oil money with mainly American companies to rebuild the war torn
country.
Thats rather like having a mugger break into your house, and you pay
him to fix the damage he's done..


All in All the war on terrorism seems to be acheiving the extremists
aims more that western interests, its not a question of cowardice.
Whats required is common sense and sensible foreign policys to stop a
crusader type new holy war breaking out either through stupidity or
the perception that is a christian v muslim thing..


Just My 2 pennys worth

Cheers