George "W"

[Australis]

Can anyone verify what i have read in another thread recently about footage of US soldiers being executed? i have looked at tons of articles on news sites online... checked out the national papers and news broadcasts on tv and nothing... ??? [img]confused.gif[/img] ... if this footage exists i wonder why the networks in australia never aired it... after all, they aired all the other footage of POW's etc.
As for Donald Rumsfeld's comments about the POW's and Blair's comments condemning the 2 UK servicemen being shown on tv... didn't the networks in their own countries show dead & captured Iraqi's first???? [img]redface.gif[/img] To be completely fair here... we have all seen captured & dead Iraqi soldiers... we have all seen captured & dead coalition forces... we have however only seen Iraqi civilians dead & injured.... there's the difference. In an ideal world NO soldiers would be shown on tv on either side... but this isn't an ideal world is it??... just ask the Iraqi woman crying hysterically over the body of her dead child... ask the man helpless with rage over the death of his wife if he feels liberated yet... to them i'm sure the world seems far from ideal and very very unfair. Liberated? [img]graemlins/thumbs_down.gif[/img] no, they see themselves as being annihilated.

[heidi!]

Or ask the wife of the American soldier brought home to be buried last week..Or perhaps..we should ask the 6 year old son that has no father now...
Maybe the Female POW ...I bet she has some views on that...Im pretty sure everyone does...There's no "fair" when it comes to war..and there's certainly no one person that has all the right idea's or answer..However there is a war...and some amount of respect has to be shown for the men and women fighting it.

As for pictures...On Canadian T.V..they showed American soldiers piled up like garbage over each other .....They didnt show their faces...Out of respect. Apparently the whole thing was given to the news network by Al-Jazeera ...and apparently the whole thing was shown on their network
Now I say "apparently" because I dont believe everything I hear and only half of what I see when it comes to any news agencies...

There are women and children being used as human shields....innocent cilvians are being killed...American and British men and women are losing their lives.....There's no fair in any of this...

[Moby]

Or perhaps explain to the families of the British service men why their allies killed them...Or explain to the families of the civilian casualities the wonders of the strategic bombings that the American military so tirelessly show us.

I don't hate the troops...I pity them..they have to obey orders...however when they signed up to join whichever branch of the military they are part of they and their families understood that if they were involved in a war there is a risk that G.I Joe or Jane will perhaps come home wrapped in black plastic. The civilians caught up in this war...what of them...those who are being (rather grudgingly it would seem) liberated. They were trying to exist under a regime when along comes the coalition and bombs the shit out of them.

This war will go down in history as the most fucked up and corrupt of all time.

Bush is relying on this to get the U.S economy back on its feet...they are taking the country oil well, by oil well...the contracts to help rebuild the country are all going American companies.

Bush has done one thing though...It's thanks to him the Arab world is now united...against the west...The next time there is a terrorist attack in any western nation...you can thank George W Bush.

[minnow]

I wasn't aware that the contracts to rebuild have actually gone to US companies. I know it was proposed but the legalities of that are being questioned here in the media and as far as I understand it, nothing has been officially decided yet. Personally, I don't think Tony Blair will stand fot it, but I'd be interested in some proof that there are signed contracts somewhere.

And just a quick note about the loss of life. My heart goes out to all the families who have lost loved ones on both sides.

One thing to bear in mind about the loss of Iraqi civilians tho is that some of those people may have been shot by the Iraqi military as well. The reports we are getting here is that many Iraqi civilians were shot in cities like Basra for trying to escape or when they showed support for coalition troops.

Like heidi, I am guardedly skeptical about most of what I hear and see, but after listening to several "expert" opinions the other night (including the man who founded Saddam's elite fighting forces and a man who was tortured in front of his father in Iraq when he was 7 and later at the age of 10 watched as his father was murdered because he refused to say a prayer for Saddam)I think the possibility does exsist that some of the killing going on over there is by the Iraqi military against the Iraqi people.

Another note to hopefully help put things into perspective, American soldiers are recovering in Germany now due to "friendly" fire too. It's a tragic but all too real consequence of any war.

And as for video footage of executions, I certainly hope I don't see that broadcast anywhere. I am furious enough with American media across the board for repeatedly showing footage of the POWs looking terrified.

That's it. I try very hard to limit my exposure to the coverage of this war and refuse to sit glued to my television taking in all of what is being put out there. I think it is unhealthy, but if anyone has anything they can verify with some evidence that they feel they really think should be brought to my attention...I welcome it *s

[heidi!]

I have seen no coverage either where the Americans were awarded any contracts.....So until there is proof of that you cant be sure.

and there has been friendly fire on both sides...
And Sadam has been killing his own people for years..
They have lived in fear of simply looking the wrong way on any given day..
His son considers himself a "professional rapist"

This man had to be taken down....I regret that its at the expense of lives on both sides..I just hope this time the job gets done right.

and minnow I agree with everything you said...and Im glad you said it...Cause you summed it up for me too.

[Australis]

I believe Moby maybe was referring to the contract for the management of the captured port of Uum Qasr. The British started drawing up plans (which they intend to go ahead with at this point) for an Iraqi director and staff to continue running of the port. However, it has come to light that the US Agency for International Development recently awarded a US$4.8m contract to manage the port to a Seattle-based company called Stevedoring Services of America.

Makes me wonder if this Stevedoring services has any connection to the Carlyle Group.

[rotten]

Well the company that was awarded the contract for helping to clean up the oil well (93million dollar contract with the U.S. government) was awarded to none other than cheney(sp???) ex company.

They said he divested all interest in the company when he became vice president but thats like bill gates will give up interest in microsoft. His name may not be as one of the companies main vp's but he's still involved.

I was amazed to hear this news on CNN and surprised as hell there weren't more comments on the government giving the contract to the vice presidents company.

For those who will say he has no interest in this company save it. We haven't seen this type of outright profiting off of war since FDR and his railroads.

[rotten]

Its amazing to me how bush is just outright showing he'll do wahtever the fuck he wants and theres nothing anyone can do about it.

Its getting to be so disgusting i think people are just in shock.

Oh and all these polls saying 60 percent of americans are pro war. They are done by the magazines and papers filled with war stories and its been shown people against the war aren't reading or watching as much coverage. Meaning those polls aren't very accurate the ones answering them are mostly the ones pro war to begin with.

I sometimes get completely disgusted and although yes i feel for the troops, it doesn't change this is bush's war and he's saying fuck anyone who doesn't agree with him.

Him awarding the contract to cheney's company just proves they'll do what they want and no one has a say. fuck the voters didnt even have a say getting him elected.

(had to vent.)

[Australis]

You pretty much summed up my feelings there Rotten. I also think Bush's attitude is a "fuck you, i'll do what i please" kind of attitude and i find it morally disgusting too. Thanks also for confirming what i suspected about the vested interest involved with that contract. I had a gut feeling that might be the case.
To put yet another slant on the "liberation of Iraq" i don't know much about what the American media is reporting but i personally found the following news report on March 29, VERY interesting indeed.

FROZEN IRAQI ASSETS TO REBUILD COUNTRY.

The Bush administration has seized $US1.62 billion in Iraqi assets already frozen in the United States and will use the money to help rebuild the country once Saddam Hussein is ousted, a top Treasury Department official said yesterday.
The department's general counsel, David Aufhauser, provided updated figures that follow up an initiative from President George W Bush last week.
Aufhauser said the money has been transferred to an account at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. An additional $US77 million is expected to be transferred soon.

Now my questions here are:

1. If these frozen & now confiscated funds are the investments of ordinary Iraqi civilians, isn't it a bit like adding insult to injury and nothing short of common theft to now take their hard earned investment dollars?

2. If the funds in fact belong to the Iraqi Government and therefore Saddam's regime. What was the US government doing carrying out business transactions with them in the first place?? considering that according to the US government he's such an evil dictator and.. ahem.... weren't there supposed to be sanctions against Iraq?? [img]redface.gif[/img] oops... maybe we weren't supposed to remember that... *L*

And one more thing to consider...
Not one of the casualties of this war, either military or civilian would be dead or injured right now if this war had not gone ahead.
But it had to go ahead the US government claimed because Saddam has weapons of mass destruction.
Well so far they have failed to eventuate and if they find nothing..... what then?? what justification will the US government use then to try to save face?
The reality of it is that Iraq does NOT pose a DIRECT threat to either the US, UK or Australia.
The simple fact is that he does NOT have weapons with anywhere near that kind of range, as the governments of the "coalition of the hypocritical" very well know and have even admitted.

[Moby]

Washington Post...28.03.03

KBR, the company the U.S. government picked this week to put out oil-field fires in Iraq, has a long history of working for the military on big projects in foreign hot spots. The former Kellogg Brown & Root -- a subsidiary of Houston-based energy services firm Halliburton Co., which Vice President Cheney headed from 1995 until 2000
Some government contract experts said the latest KBR award shows how companies with long-standing ties to the military get dibs on new work. The company has been building ships , mess halls and toilets at base camps around the world for six decades, originally as Brown & Root. Over the past decade it has won contracts to provide logistical support to troops, most recently in Somalia, Haiti and the Balkans.

But the experts said the problem is that not putting the contracts out for bid allows critics to question the fairness of the process and whether the most politically connected companies have an edge in getting the awards.

"The administration has made potential use of shortcuts and exceptions that let it put literally billions of taxpayer dollars in the hands of selected contractors," said Charles Tiefer, a law professor at the University of Baltimore and the author of a casebook on government contracting. "Naturally, a large credibility gap looms between the administration's plausible excuses that tight deadlines and exceptional security needs compelled it to forgo the usual competitive safeguards and the critics' observations that it is awfully convenient for juicy plums to land in the lap of the vice president's former company."

The BBC....31.03.03

Contract questions

"There has been no final decision made on who will be awarded the capital construction contract," the spokeswoman said.
The other companies bidding - which was restricted to US firms - include Bechtel, Fluor, Parsons and Louis Berger.
The USAID official did not say whether Halliburton's bid was uncompetitive, if it withdrew voluntarily or was asked by the government to do so.
Halliburton's subsidiary Kellogg Brown and Root (KBR) was last week awarded a US government contract, without a competitive tender, to put out oil well fires in Iraq.
Mr Cheney ran Halliburton for five years until 2000.

Foreign lockout

The US policy of awarding contracts only to US companies has drawn sharp criticism from overseas governments and companies.
Differences have even emerged between the British and US allies over who should rebuild the Iraqi port of Umm Qasr.
USAID has awarded a $4.8m to rebuild Iraq's only deep water port, which is under British military control, to US company Stevedoring Services of America.
The British would like it returned to Iraqi control as a goodwill gesture.

The full articles can be found here...legalday