Spain rewards Al Qaida: Bomb The Vote! (Neville Chamberlain speaks Spanish)

Re: Re: Re: Let's lighten things up a bit...

I wouldn't say your sense of humor is irreverent or even irrelevant.

I have no sense of humor has been blatantly obivious from my attempts at wit and humor on here.

Perhaps this explans my proclivity for humor of bygone days (Three Stooges, Laurel and Hardy, Amos 'n' Andy).

And no, I am not a racist. I've had plenty of friends named Amos and Andy. See, I have not sense of humor at all.

Take care, Carl, and, by the way, Ann Coulter is GREAT!

But, admittedly, Nancy Skinner is better looking, ha!

 

Re: He said neither of these things

I don't have a liberal bias. I have a libertarian bias. Big difference. But thanks for being so patronizing, just the same.

By the way, Warren's comments about democracy and women's rights in Iraq was in refutation of comments by noted liberal Paul Bremmer.

And yes, it is going to be hard to impose democracy and human rights. But we don't do that, and we just allow another dictatorship to form (of course, one that will kiss our ass) then how exactly have we "liberated the Iraqi" people.

With your prominently displayed conservative bias you would choose to read it that way.

Here's the quote:

"How do you build up democracy in Iraq when it's falling apart in the United States?"

http://www.davidwarrenonline.com/Comment/Feb04/index197.shtml

He does go on to say that this is "perhaps" an overstatement, but then he gives every indication that he thinks it is not.

I certainly know what a fascist is. I would say that Saddam's regime was closer to National Socialsim (Nazism) than fascism. But either is a good description.

If you are looking for someone to support Saddam, you are looking in the wrong place.

Saddam is evil and I am, ultimately, glad that we took him out. But I do not believe the ends always justify the means.

I do not believe that it was right to mislead the American people about the true nature of this war.

Perhaps I'm just to simplistic too understand this.

Could someone who agrees with Warren's "screw democracy" sentiments please explain to me exactly what we are fighting for?

 

Once again, and this for the final time

I said on article obviously posted in anger does not a Fascist make. His first two articles were positive concerning his believe that Spanish voters would not vote for a reversal of course. When they did, he overreacted and wrote a very heated column. I read all of his articles not just a couple. He is no fascist.

We have rehashed what the true nature of the war is so many times it is obvious that you will never believe that someone didn't lie about WMD. This in spite of the one common sense answer to that question. If they would lie about such a thing why would they then order an invasion for all the world to have the opportunity to see if WMD was actually there? If they knew that it wasn't there and lied about it they had to know that would not be found after the invasion. Doesn't pass the old common sense test. Wrongful belief does not make a lie. And, once again, every major country in the world though they had it they only disagreed on how to handle it. As far as the Iraq - Al Qaeda connection that has been neither proven nor disproved.

Well that is my final contribution to this thread. Cheers all.

 

Re: Once again, and this for the final time

IT's interesting that Richard Clarke apparently believes Al Qaida had a hand in the Oklahoma City bombing in 1997.

Proven or not, the Muslim preference for bombs over guns is, er, disconcerting - is it not?

--Orson

PS As for the title of this thread, does any body know WHICH EU country has an election next? Or is it US?

If no threat materializes, will the assertion I made to begin this thread be falsified?

 

DOES ISLAM MAKE PEACE WITH SPAIN NOW?

Answer: apparently not!

Blogger at the libertarian htpp://samidata.net/blog writes:

Antoine Clarke (London)_

French TV is running a story about explosives found along the high-speed railway link between Madrid and Seville today.

The explosives with copper wiring similar to that used in the 11 March attacks on Madrid appear to have been abandoned when a routine track patrol was made near Toledo.

N.B. Toledo was the site of two decisive battles: the first confirmed the Moorish conquest of Spain in 712, and the second was the launchpad of the Spanish Reconquistada with the Moorish defeat there in 1212. If this is the work of an Islamist cell, we have an answer to the question: "Did voting for the PSOE appease Al-Qaeda?"

The report adds that the new (Socialist) Interior Minister - responsible for law enforcement and internal security - is having a meeting today with the outgoing (conservative) Defence Minister. Bi-partisanship in Spain is about as frequent as Bible rallies in Riyadh. Nice one!

 

Using google, I just checked a half dozen reports in the press. None mentioned either Toledo or its historical symbolism.

Of course, Muslim terrorists love symbolic terrorism. Isn't anybody in the media aware of these things?!?!

--Orson

 

No, Orson, Toledo wasn´t the place of any *decisive* battle between Spanish and the Moors. Nevertheless, it owes its fame, amomng many other things, to the fact that for a long while the three major cultures, Christians, Jewish and Muslims dwelled together peacefully within its walls, something it didn´t happen since then. In 1492 Spain expulsed both Moors and Jews out of Spanish territory.

Thus no surprise international press didn´t mentioned its historical symbolism as it doesn´t exist.

My gues is that the perpetrators work in some of the agricultural explotations of the area and that was the easiest place they found. No other connection exists.

I encourage you (and ell degreeinfoers) to visit Toledo, famous for its sword production (back then),and considered a Humanity Patrimony nowadays. It has been kept unmodified for almost a milennium. To walk through its streets is a unique experience; one has the feeling he or she has retroceded several hundred years in time. A I said, it is a spectacular city to visit. Only 70 Km south of Madrid.

Cordial greetings

 

Also famous for the Mud Hens.

 

Re: Once again, and this for the final time

What has gone right in Iraq

With all the news coming out of the Middle East, here is a detail you might have missed: A few weeks ago, the United Nations shut down the Ashrafi refugee camp in southwestern Iran. For years Ashrafi had been the largest facility in the world housing displaced Iraqis, tens of thousands of whom had been driven from their homes by Saddam Hussein's brutality. But with Saddam behind bars and his Baathist dictatorship crushed, Iraqi exiles have been flocking home. By mid-February the camp had literally emptied out. Now, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees reports, "nothing remains of Ashrafi but rubble and a few stones."

Refugees surging to Iraq? That isn't what the antiwar legions told us would happen if George Bush made good on his vow to end Saddam's reign of terror. Over and over they warned that a US invasion would trigger a humanitarian cataclysm, including a flood of refugees from Iraq. This, for instance, was Martin Sheen at a Los Angeles news conference a month before the war began:

"As the dogs of war slouch towards Baghdad, we need to be reminded that as many as 2 million refugees could become a reality, as well as half a million fatalities."

Writing on the left-wing website AlterNet last March, senior editor Tai Moses dreaded the coming of a war that "could create more than a million refugees in Iraq and neighboring countries." The BBC, citing a "confidential" UN document, predicted that up to 500,000 Iraqis would be seriously injured during the first phase of an American attack, while 1 million would flee the country and 2 million more would be internally displaced -- all compounded by an "outbreak of diseases in epidemic if not pandemic proportions." The Organization of the Islamic Conference foresaw the "displacement of hundreds of thousands of refugees," plus "total destruction and a humanitarian tragedy whose scale cannot be predicted."

Wrong, every one of them, along with all the other doomsayers, Bush-haters, "Not In Our Name" fanatics, and sundry "peace" activists who flooded the streets and the airwaves to warn of onrushing disaster. How many have had the integrity to admit that their visions of catastrophe were wildly off the mark? Or that if they had gotten their way, the foremost killer of Muslims alive today -- Saddam -- would still be torturing children before their parents' eyes? Instead they chant, "Bush lied, people died," and seize on every setback in Iraq as proof that they were right all along.

But they were wrong all along. Operation Iraqi Freedom stands as one of the great humanitarian achievements of modern times. For all the Bush administration's mistakes and miscalculations, for all the monumental challenges that remain, Iraq is vastly better off today than it was before the war.

And the Iraqi people know it.

In a nationwide survey conducted for ABC and the BBC by Britain's Oxford Research International, 56 percent of Iraqis say their lives are better now than before the war; only 19 percent say things are worse. Asked how things are going for them personally, seven out of 10 Iraqis say that life is good. Because of "Bush's war," Iraqis today brim with optimism. Fully 71 percent expect their lives to be even better a year from now; less than 7 percent say they'll be worse. Iraq today may just be the most upbeat, forward-looking country in the Arab world.

With hard work and a little luck, it may soon be the best governed as well. The interim constitution approved by the Iraqi Governing Council last month protects freedom of speech and assembly, guarantees the right to privacy, ensures equality for women, and subordinates the military to civilian control. It is, hands down, the most progressive constitution in the Arab Middle East.

Nearly a year after the fall of Baghdad, Iraq is hugely improved. Unemployment has been cut in half. Wages are climbing. The devastated southern marshlands are being restored. More Iraqis own cars and telephones than before Saddam was ousted. Some 2,500 schools have been rehabbed by the US-headed coalition. Spending on health care has soared thirtyfold, and millions of Iraqi children have been vaccinated. Iraqi athletes, no longer terrorized by Saddam's sadistic son Uday, are training for the summer Olympics in Greece.

Above all, Iraq's people are free. The horror and cruelty of the Saddam era are gone forever. In the 12 months since the American and British troops arrived, not one body has been added to a secret mass grave. Not one woman has been raped on government orders. Not one dissident has been mauled to death by trained killer dogs. Not one Kurdish village has been gassed.

Is everything rosy? Of course not. Could the transition to constitutional democracy still fail? Yes. Do innocent victims continue to die in horrific terror attacks, or at the hands of lynch mobs like the one that dragged the corpses of four Americans through the streets of Falluja this week? They do.

But none of that changes the bottom line: In the ancient land that America liberated, life is more beautiful and hopeful than it has been in many decades. Bush's foes may loudly deny it, but the refugees streaming homeward know better.

 

WRONG

WRONG!

"After its conquest (712) by the Moors, the [Toledo] became an important Moorish center"
http://www.aimjewelry.com/history.htm
("Travel To Toledo and Go Back In TIme")

To quote just one web site.

--Orson

PS Why does no one address my observation?