The Long War: Rethinking American Options in the War on Terror

hamidm writes <<< ................. it has nothing to do with masadi`s love of the culture of death - for god`s sake, the man is one stick of dynamite short of blowing himself up !............... >>>

Meaningless rhetoric, using bs and fox newsesque caricatures to cover up the fact that he has been stumped in every claim he has brought forth from the intellectual whorehouse of shock-troop republicanism.

tahmed, I didn`t claim moral superiority for anyone, you claim that for your colonial (and now neo-colonial) masters (note here that when I condemn them, I am not talking about the vast majority of the masses of the Western world), and I use YOUR criteria to prove that no such claim of moral superiority is justified. It has nothing to do with being God appointed. Don`t hide behind slogans. They are the worst barbarians and hypocrites that have lived to date. Whether you worship them or don`t worship them does not alter this fact.

masadi #113 I am a free man and it is you who is the slave.

I am a free man because I use my eyes and brains to reach my conclusions and so can rationally present by views, and by the same token I can change my views on specific issues (as I have sometimes done on chowk) if I am presented with additional evidence.

You are a slave because you are incapable of reflection, and therefore incapable of changing your views on anything. This is the worst form of slavery: Your slavish mentality makes you one step worse than slaves who were forced into slavery by Arabs. You are a slave because you are a prisoner not of your own mental limitations. So, go lick the feet of your Arab masters.

the last but one sentence in #114 to masadi should read `` You are a slave because you are a prisoner not because you are bound by physical chains, but because of your own mental limitations.``

Now you can go an lick the feet of your Arab masters.

Re: # 104

yes tahmed that hyperthyroid-eyed poiso-spitting turkey-necked cobra beauty -- there are times one would like to simply wring that turkey neck....for the venoms she spews -- like the one you quoted.....:)

tahmed writes <<< You are a slave because you are incapable of reflection, and therefore incapable of changing your views on anything. >>>

And yet my posts are full of logical analysis and yours full of slogans and ad nauseum repititon. You follow mainstream bs, I challenge that bs using reason and that makes me a slave and you a free thinker? As always, your reasoning is lop sided. I don`t have any ``Arab`` masters, neither do I defend ethnicities like you defend the `Anglo Saxon`` ethos. You wont even condemn the worst barbarism of these elite, you support colonization and brush aside the mass slaughter of the Atlantic Slave Trade, and I have not said a single word to support the Arab practice of slavery, just pointed the BS in your argument assigning morality to the British colonials~ that my ignorant friend makes YOU a slave not I.

`Wash Post` Obtains Shocking Memo from U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, Details Increasing Danger and Hardship

By Greg Mitchell

Published: June 18, 2006 6:20 PM ET
NEW YORK The Washington Post has obtained a cable, marked ``sensitive,`` that it says show that just before President Bush left on a surprise trip last Monday to the Green Zone in Baghdad for an upbeat assessment of the situation there, ``the U.S. Embassy in Iraq painted a starkly different portrait of increasing danger and hardship faced by its Iraqi employees.``

This cable outlines, the Post reported Sunday, ``the daily-worsening conditions for those who live outside the heavily guarded international zone: harassment, threats and the employees` constant fears that their neighbors will discover they work for the U.S. government.``

It`s actually far worse than that, as the details published below indicate, which include references to abductions, threats to women`s rights, and ``ethnic cleansing.``

A PDF copy of the cable shows that it was sent to the SecState in Washington, D.C. from ``AMEmbassy Baghdad`` on June 6. The typed name at the very bottom is Khalilzad -- the name of the U.S. Ambassador, though it is not known if this means he wrote the memo or merely approved it.

The subject of the memo is: ``Snapshots from the Office -- Public Affairs Staff Show Strains of Social Discord.``

As a footnote in one of the 23 sections, the embassy relates, ``An Arab newspaper editor told us he is preparing an extensive survey of ethnic cleansing, which he said is taking place in almost every Iraqi province, as political parties and their militiast are seemingly engaged in tit-for-tat reprisals all over Iraq.``

Among the other troubling reports:

-- ``Personal safety depends on good relations with the `neighborhood` governments, who barricade streets and ward off outsiders. The central government, our staff says, is not relevant; even local mukhtars have been displaced or coopted by militias. People no longer trust most neighbors.``

-- One embassy employee had a brother-in-law kidnapped. Another received a death threat, and then fled the country with her family.

-- Iraqi staff at the embassy, beginning in March and picking up in May, report ``pervasive`` harassment from Islamist and/or militia groups. Cuts in power and rising fuel prices ``have diminished the quality of life.`` Conditions vary but even upscale neighborhoods ``have visibly deteriorated`` and one of them is now described as a ``ghost town.``

-- Two of the three female Iraqis in the public affairs office reported stepped-up harassment since mid-May....``some groups are pushing women to cover even their face, a step not taken in Iran even at its most conservative.`` One of the women is now wearing a full abaya after receiving direct threats.

-- It has also become ``dangerous`` for men to wear shorts in public and ``they no longer allow their children to play outside in shorts.`` People who wear jeans in public have also come under attack.

-- Embassy employees are held in such low esteem their work must remain a secret and they live with constant fear that their cover will be blown. Of nine staffers, only four have told their families where they work. They all plan for their possible abductions. No one takes home their cell phones as this gives them away. One employee said criticism of the U.S. had grown so severe that most of her family believes the U.S. ``is punishing populations as Saddam did.``

-- Since April, the ``demeanor`` of guards in the Green Zone has changed, becoming more ``militia-like,`` and some are now ``taunting`` embassy personnel or holding up their credentials and saying loudly that they work in the embassy: ``Such information is a death sentence if overheard by the wrong people.`` For this reason, some have asked for press instead of embassy credentials.

-- ``For at least six months, we have not been able to use any local staff members for translation at on-camera press events....We cannot call employees in on weekends or holidays without blowing their `cover.```

-- ``More recently, we have begun shredding documents printed out that show local staff surnames. In March, a few staff members approached us to ask what provisions would we make for them if we evacuate.``

-- The overall environment is one of ``frayed social networks,`` with frequent actual or perceived insults. None of this is helped by lack of electricity. ``One colleague told us he feels `defeated` by circumstances, citing his example of being unable to help his two-year-old son who has asthma and cannot sleep in stifling heat,`` which is now reaching 115 degrees.

-- ``Another employee tell us that life outside the Green Zone has become `emotionally draining.` He lives in a mostly Shiite area and claims to attend a funeral `every evening.```

-- Fuel lines have grown so long that one staffer spent 12 hours in line on his day off. ``Employees all confirm that by the last week of May, they were getting one hour of power for every six hours without.....One staff member reported that a friend lives in a building that houses a new minister; within 24 hours of his appointment, her building had city power 24 hours a day.``

-- The cable concludes that employees` ``personal fears are reinforcing divisive sectarian or ethnic channels, despite talk of reconciliation by officials.``

The final line of the Cable is: KHALILZAD``


Anyone rememebr the flypaper theory?

HP`s post #118 <<< Fuel lines have grown so long that one staffer spent 12 hours in line on his day off. ``Employees all confirm that by the last week of May, they were getting one hour of power for every six hours without.....One staff member reported that a friend lives in a building that houses a new minister; within 24 hours of his appointment, her building had city power 24 hours a day.`` >>>

The brave people of Iraq are going through a very tough period in their history. They are at the forefront of the resistance against the mutual tyranny of both the petty barbarians and the higher barbarians, fueled by the US elite~ look how they`ve destroyed an entire nation and still strutt around justifying it with BS, claiming to be ``civilization``. The struggle of the people of Iraq is the struggle of oppressed folk around the globe. Inshallah they will prevail and this war will mark the beginning of the end of the Empire and its enslaving of humanity. A new day will dawn soon.

Masadi`s Rules of Discussion:

Rule 1: When unable to provide a rational response, change the subject.

Examples: I point to the fact that mullahs opposed the abolition of slavery in the ottoman empire in the early 19th century on the grounds that this was part of their ``Islam``, while the brits put pressure on the ottoman caliph to abolish slavery. Unable to respond, Masadi ignores that and instead changes the subject to start talking about ``Atlantic Slavery``.

Rule 2: When the other individual brings up the point again, call the other individual an idiot and/or a hypocrite and/or a ``full of slogans`` and/or accuse him of not being rational.

End of Discussion.

Tahmed writes in #120 <<< End of Discussion >>>

End of discussion because tahmed has been stumped. He brought out the point of British opposition to slavery to show their moral superiority, saying that the Mullah`s opposed ending it at that time, so I asked him if in his selective presentation of history detached from economic and historical contexts,

1. He had forgotten about the Atlantic Slave Trade where when their economic benefit from slavery was profitable they took trade in human flesh to levels never before seen in human history

2. I provided academic references to that effect, that prove that the so called Islamic slavery never approached in numbers the Atlantic Slave Trade and the racism that linked slavery and its trade was a European endeavour.

3. I asked him to explain to me his ``morality`` claim when the cause of this oppositon was economic and why it wasn`t extended to indentured servants and factory workers who were brutalized in a similar manner by these colonial elite.

As usual he had no answers because he has taken an oath to unconditionally worship the colonial elite and their successors, the US elite.

``The Russian public has a generally negative view of the United States’ foreign policy at the present time. Clear majorities feel that the United States has a mainly negative influence in the world (61% and 25% positive), view America’s use of military force and the threat of force unfavorably (74% and 13% favorable), and judge the effect of U.S. foreign policy over the past few years as negative for Russian interests (56% and 22% positive). Most Russians also have an unfavorable view of President Bush (59% and 25% favorable). Many other countries share the view that the United States has a mainly negative influence in the world, according to global polls.`` (WORLDPUBLICOPINION.ORG)

#121 Masadi Logic: ``He brought out the point of British opposition to slavery to show their moral superiority``

This is not the point I was making. The point I was making is provided in the example to Rule 1 in #120. Are you having trouble understanding plain English?? or are you merely reading selectively hoping no one will notice?

The rest of your post is an illustration of Rule 2 in #120.

Two soldiers of our Haditha army in Iraq have disappeared in thin air -- captured by the insurgents in broad day light -- and carried away -- and we can`t find them -- no clues -- no leads --

no Iraqis -- like that Panchtantra famous Rishi Muni -- ``my eyes may have seen it but they they can`t talk, my tongue can talk but it hasn`t seen it -- are telling us -- if they have seen anybody with the two american captives --

this pretty much sums up how good our `intelligence` is -- and how liked we are in Iraq.....

.......Khalilzad memo or no Khalilzad`s memo....

tahmed writes in #123 <<<#121 Masadi Logic: ``He brought out the point of British opposition to slavery to show their moral superiority``

This is not the point I was making >>>>

That was exactly the point you were trying to make, you never lose an opportunity to do sajood to your ``gods``, the US elite. I reject them, you want me to submit to them, I do not.

Tahmed wrote in # 50 <<< this begs the question, of course, of what is the ``greater good``. from everything i have seen, there is no question that things coming from west have been for the greater good while things coming from muslim countries lately (i.e. in the past few centuries) have been for the greater bad.
in the 19th century , the west ended human slavery and put pressure on the ottomans to do the same - while the mullahs opposed it tooth... >>>

There, stumped again.

In the pre-9/11 world, an Islamist`s most dreaded nightmare was America`s potential to emerge as the moral torch bearer of the world; a Godless moral torch bearer if I might add.

#121 I wrote ``The point I was making is provided in the example to Rule 1 in #120.``

Mr. Masadi goes looking into #50. I see you have trouble not just with understanding plain english, but with comprehending simple numbers as well.

#115, Tahmed4 {``the last but one sentence in #114 to masadi should read `` You are a slave because you are a prisoner not because you are bound by physical chains, but because of your own mental limitations.``
Now you can go an lick the feet of your Arab masters.``}

This piece of nonsense is coming from a Paki Punjoo racist who is adamant on denying the repatriation of hundreds of thousands of ``stranded`` Pakis in BD. This charlatan is a prisoner of his own provincial and ethnic bigotry and has the nerve to call others to lick feet. People of his flavor of hypocrisy have no business in telling others to lick anyone`s feet, especially his own - unless they relish the prospect of having athelete`s tongue.