Who's Not Protesting The War This Weekend?

[xkingchangox]

I Pledge Allegiance to the flag of the United States of America

and to the Republic for which it stands, one Nation under God,

indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

[mangos]

Preach on brotha! Some people need to stop living in the Alice in Wonderland, fairy-tail life and realize they need to support America under all circumstances.

[donvito]

Exacly. The sad truth is Iraq and terrorism arent going to just go away. We cant stop them by lighting candles, holding hands and siging songs. Unfortunatly, force is in order. So knock off that hippy crap unless you clowns have a better solution.

[hotcheme]

Originally posted by donvito

Exacly. The sad truth is Iraq and terrorism arent going to just go away. We cant stop them by lighting candles, holding hands and siging songs. Unfortunatly, force is in order. So knock off that hippy crap unless you clowns have a better solution.

yeah i am a lot more comfortable with war then the idea that they could attack us when chemical weapons.

[phuturephunk]

Originally posted by mangos

Preach on brotha! Some people need to stop living in the Alice in Wonderland, fairy-tail life and realize they need to support America under all circumstances.

You're a fucking moron lemming. I'm glad the Pentegon can count on cannon fodder like you, it allows me the luxury of not having to worry about them knocking on my door.

[bigpoppanils]

Originally posted by mangos

Preach on brotha! Some people need to stop living in the Alice in Wonderland, fairy-tail life and realize they need to support America under all circumstances.

this nation was founded through dissent....dissent is patriotic!

[kramadas]

Originally posted by bigpoppanils

this nation was founded through dissent....dissent is patriotic!

Ditto!

I don't think this nation's foundations were built upon following your leader blindly!

[igloo]

Originally posted by bigpoppanils

this nation was founded through dissent....dissent is patriotic!

Let's keep things in perspective......honest debate, public voice, and "dissent" based on honest conviction is patriotic

Comparing Bush to Hitler, support of Mandela-like ridiculous ramblings, and blatant, shameful hypocrisy is not the TRUE spirit of patriotism, but an abuse of its underlying meaning, and an abuse of freedom of speech

[bigpoppanils]

Originally posted by igloo

Let's keep things in perspective......honest debate, public voice, and "dissent" based on honest conviction is patriotic

Comparing Bush to Hitler, support of Mandela-like ridiculous ramblings, and blatant, shameful hypocrisy is not the TRUE spirit of patriotism, but an abuse of its underlying meaning, and an abuse of freedom of speech

not the entire antiwar movement...just the fringe

part of this problem is that too many people are worried about a repeat of Seattle's G8 convention. the violence that erupted was due to a very small minority of the total protesters there.

and youre accusing them of hyporcisy? the hateful things you spew towards other board members are abuse of free speech as well. No wait...when a conservative says hateful things...thats ok..

[normalnoises]

I'm protesting this war this weekend!! And Igloo... Too bad not everyone can be like a carbon copy like you obvioulsy think everyone should be.

And the shit you spew on this board... THAT IS ABUSE OF FREE SPEECH, HYPOCRITE!!

[normalnoises]

Dear VoteNoWar Member:

Colin Powell's presentation to the United Nations was an example of Alice in Wonderland-type propaganda. Reality has been turned upside down. At the very moment that Iraq, hobbled by 12 years of devastating sanctions and ongoing U.S. bombing, is surrounded by a heavily-armed invasion force of more than 100,000 troops, fighter aircraft, warships and high tech conventional missiles, and is threatened with a nuclear strike, Powell argued that Iraq poses a great threat to "peace."

The Pentagon has disclosed its plan to maintain peace by carrying out an opening blitzkrieg on Iraq of more than 3000 bombs and missiles in the first 48 hours. This plan is titled "Shock and Awe" by the administration. 300 to 400 Tomahawk cruise missiles will rip through Iraq on the first day of a U.S. assault, which is more than the number that were launched during the entire 40 days of the first Gulf War. On the second day, another 300 to 400 cruise missiles will be sent. "There will not be a safe place in Baghdad," said one Pentagon official. "The sheer size of this has never been seen before, never been contemplated before," the official said. One of the authors of the Shock and Awe plan stated the intent is, "So that you have this simultaneous effect, rather like the nuclear weapons at Hiroshima, not taking days or weeks but in minutes.'" (CBS News January 27, 2003, New York Times, February 2, 2003)

General Powell is routinely referred to in the media as the moderate or "dove" inside the Bush administration. It is important to remember that it is the same Colin Powell who, at a press briefing shortly after the conclusion of the 1991 Gulf War when asked his assessment of the number of Iraqi soldiers and civilians killed, which had been put at over 100,000, answered, "It's really not a number I'm terribly interested in."

Is there justification for war? What Bush's war places in jeopardy is enormous. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis may be slaughtered. Tens of thousands of service members will be sent to risk their lives. The economic cost, estimated between $200 billion to $2 trillion will loot the U.S. treasury and mortgage future generations, depleting funds that could provide essential human needs such as education, healthcare, childcare and jobs.

What circumstances could justify these certain risks and losses? None that were presented by Powell. Laying out his case, Powell presented no threat issued by Iraq against the U.S. or anyone else. Powell's presentation had a two-fold purpose. It was not merely to "make the case" for war, it was also intended to redirect the attention of the people of the U.S. away from the Bush administration's real objectives in recolonizing the Middle East. Using smoke and mirrors and misdirection, Powell engaged in dramatic fear-mongering, even going so far as to reference the anthrax attacks that originated in the U.S. from U.S. stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction, to suggest that bombing Iraq will make the U.S. safer.

During his entire presentation Powell never mentioned the word "oil," and yet the whole world knows that Bush and his corporate clients are already drawing up plans for the seizure of Iraq's oil reserves. For public consumption the talk is disarmament or democracy, but behind closed doors, the administration is meeting with oil industry executives to divide up Iraq's oil fields. (Wall Street Journal, January 16, 2003). Far from democracy, Bush intends to install a U.S. military dictatorship under General Tommy Franks to rule Iraq. In his column of February 5th, Thomas Friedman, Iraq invasion cheerleader, approvingly laid out the future for Iraq, "Iraq will be controlled by the iron fist of the U.S. Army and its allies, with an Iraqi civilian 'advisory' administration gradually emerging behind this iron fist to run daily life..."(New York Times, February 5, 2003)

Powell has presented no threat, no plan, no capability. Is there justification for waging a first strike war of aggression, for bombarding the people of Iraq with massive firepower? Who really poses the greatest threat to world peace?

Powell's presentation was much about Iraq's hypothetical and in any case much diminished weaponry, while the Pentagon is preparing to launch a devastating attack on Iraq using very real weapons of mass destruction - possibly including nuclear weapons. On the issue of weapons of mass destruction, Powell asserts that the Iraqi government may hope to possess nuclear weapons someday. It has not been lost on the whole world though that in recent weeks, the Bush administration has left open the option of actually using nuclear weapons against Iraq in the coming conflict and reserves for itself the right to carry out first strike nuclear war against even non-nuclear countries as part of a new military doctrine recently announced by the Pentagon.

Powell claims that if the U.N. does not support U.S. military aggression and conquest of Iraq, in violation of its Charter, that it will lose its "relevancy." History will remember with great irony Colin Powell's statement that we must stop the leader who "has pursued his ambition to dominate Iraq and the broader Middle East using the only means he knows, intimidation, coercion and annihilation of all those who might stand in his way."

The Bush Administration is not racing to deter an imminent danger posed by Iraq. They are racing to prevent our movement from becoming an insurmountable obstacle to war. Let's all pledge to intensify our work in these crucial coming days and weeks.

In solidarity,

All of us at VoteNoWar.org

So Igloo.. do you seriously support a military government?

[igloo]

Originally posted by bigpoppanils

not the entire antiwar movement...just the fringe

the hateful things you spew towards other board members are abuse of free speech as well. No wait...when a conservative says hateful things...thats ok..

(1) No, the majority of the anit-war movement

(2) Just Sassa (clear anti-American) and normalnoises (social misfit).......keeps things in perspective, son

[normalnoises]

Originally posted by igloo

(1) No, the majority of the anit-war movement

(2) Just Sassa (clear anti-American) and normalnoises (social misfit).......keeps things in perspective, son

Tho only anti-Americans and social misfits are people like you who abuse free speech. And it's ANTI, not ANIT. Spell it right next time.

[igloo]

Why do you always repeat back what everyone else posts?....are you incapable of original thought?.....

Misfit....

I told you--it's OK if you were one of Michael Jackson's "bed buddies"....it is not too late.....

There are professionals who can help people with social disorders

[bigpoppanils]

Originally posted by normalnoises

Tho only anti-Americans and social misfits are people like you who abuse free speech. And it's ANTI, not ANIT. Spell it right next time.

erm...he did spell it right

and Igloo...if that is true (which it isnt), it still doesnt make it right

[normalnoises]

Originally posted by igloo

There are professionals who can help people with social disorders

^There are professionals who can help people with social disorders.^

[normalnoises]

Originally posted by bigpoppanils

erm...he did spell it right

and Igloo...if that is true (which it isnt), it still doesnt make it right

Originally posted by igloo

(1) No, the majority of the anit-war movement

Did he??^^ I hope you were being sarcastic.

[gym13c]

The war is completely necessary, I'm not protesting in fact I support it very strongly.

[mrmatas2277]

Originally posted by gym13c

The war is completely necessary, I'm not protesting in fact I support it very strongly.

[igloo]

Charles Krauthammer

February 13, 2003

Bracing for the Apocalypse

WASHINGTON--The domestic terror alert jumps to 9/11 levels. Heathrow Airport is ringed by tanks. Duct tape and plastic sheeting disappear from Washington store shelves. Osama resurfaces. North Korea reopens its plutonium processing plant and threatens pre-emptive attack. The Second Gulf War is about to begin. This is not the Apocalypse. But it is excellent preparation for it.

You don't get to a place like this overnight. It takes at least, oh, a decade. We are now paying the wages of the 1990s, our holiday from history. During that decade, every major challenge to America was deferred. The chief aim of the Clinton administration was to make sure that nothing terrible happened on its watch. Accordingly, every can was kicked down the road:

--Iraq: Saddam continued defying the world and building his arsenal, even as the United States acquiesced to the progressive weakening of U.N. sanctions and then to the expulsion of all weapons inspectors.

--North Korea: When it threatened to go nuclear in 1993, Clinton managed to put off the reckoning with an agreement to freeze Pyongyang's program. The agreement--surprise!--was a fraud. All the time, the North Koreans were clandestinely enriching uranium. They are now in full nuclear breakout.

--Terrorism: The first World Trade Center attack occurred in 1993, followed by the blowing up of two embassies in Africa and the attack on the USS Cole. Treating terrorism as a problem of law enforcement, Clinton dispatched the FBI--and the odd cruise missile to ostentatiously kick up some desert sand. Osama was offered up by Sudan in 1996. We turned him away for lack of legal justification.

That is how one acts on holiday: Mortal enemies are dealt with not as combatants, but as defendants. Clinton flattered himself as looking beyond such mundane problems to a grander transnational vision (global warming, migration and the like), while dispatching American military might to quell ``teacup wars'' in places like Bosnia. On June 19, 2000, the Clinton administration solved the rogue-state problem by abolishing the term and replacing it with ``states of concern.'' Unconcerned, the rogues prospered, arming and girding themselves for big wars.

Which are now upon us. On Sept. 11, the cozy illusions and stupid pretensions died. We now recognize the central problem of the 21st century: the conjunction of terrorism, rogue states and weapons of mass destruction.

True, weapons of mass destruction are not new. What is new is that the knowledge required to make them is no longer esoteric. Anyone with a reasonable education in modern physics, chemistry or biology can brew them. Doomsday has been democratized.

There is no avoiding the danger any longer. Last year, President Bush's axis-of-evil speech was met with eye-rolling disdain by the sophisticates. One year later, the warning has been vindicated in all its parts. Even the United Nations says Iraq must be disarmed. The International Atomic Energy Agency has just (politely) declared North Korea a nuclear outlaw. Iran has announced plans to mine uranium and reprocess spent nuclear fuel; we have recently discovered two secret Iranian nuclear complexes.

We are in a race against time. Once such hostile states establish arsenals, we become self-deterred and they become invulnerable. North Korea may already have crossed that threshold.

There is a real question whether we can win the race. Year One of the new era, 2002, passed rather peaceably. Year Two will not: 2003 could be as cataclysmic as 1914 or 1939.

Carl Sagan invented a famous formula for calculating the probability of intelligent life in the universe. Estimate the number of planets in the universe and calculate the tiny fraction that might support life and that have had enough evolution to produce intelligence. He prudently added one other factor, however: the odds of extinction. The existence of intelligent life depends not just on creation, but on continuity. What is the probability that a civilization will not destroy itself once its very intelligence grants it the means of self-destruction?

This planet has been around for 4 billion years, intelligent life for perhaps 200,000, weapons of mass destruction for less than 100. A hundred--in the eye of the universe, less than a blink. And yet we already find ourselves on the brink. What are the odds that our species will manage to contain this awful knowledge without self-destruction--not for a billion years or a million or even a thousand, but just through the lifetime of our children?

Those are the stakes today. Before our eyes, in a flash, politics has gone cosmic. The question before us is very large and very simple: Can--and will--the civilized part of humanity disarm the barbarians who would use the ultimate knowledge for the ultimate destruction? Within months, we will have a good idea whether the answer is yes or no.

[bigmahs]

LET'S ROLL!!!!

[brickhouse]

Originally posted by bigpoppanils

this nation was founded through dissent....dissent is patriotic!

Yeah, that's why the founding fathers also passed the Alien + Sedition Acts....

I'm not protesting, but mostly because I have other things to do, it's fucking cold outside, and it isn't going to get jack shit accomplished...