MERGED: All About RP-US Mutual Defense Treaty/ VFA-MLSA and Related Issues

[grovestreet]

---

Then which FACT of UNDERLYING MESSAGE would that be ? Point it out since you cant point out the ad hominems you think we throw at you , we'll change course instead and head to the core of the message . Its not even about making people feel guilty for not supporting wars , its about people who will be there no matter what for the price of freedom .

Have you seen the movie The Guardian ? If you did , it should not be that hard for you to logically say that analyzing a piece is a matter of a convcition if its a PROPAGANDA or a mere TRIBUTE with no strings attach and unconditional service .

Point it out since you cant point out the ad hominems you think we throw at you.
calling somebody a racist without knowing or asking where they stand on all this may not be considered ad hominem by your standards.

let me point it out for you...

when the conflict is over.
be thankful that we go chose to go through hell.

this is a classic example of an evangelists' method of manipulating people. It's parallel to religious folks saying "Jesus died for your sins. so be thankful and be good." This is basically making people feel guilty of themselves to further an organizations interest.

Besides it's not like the people wanted armies to go to war for them, in fact reading through most of US history it's their LEADERS that demand they should to go to war and most of the time the reasons are ambiguous and suppressed. So this piece that you have presented should be directed to their leaders. Perhaps maybe, just maybe they would feel little remorse of sending others' children, fathers, uncles to die.

[SPRINGFIELD_XD_40]

calling somebody a racist without knowing or asking where they stand on all this may not be considered ad hominem by your standards.

To you maybe but when that statement was addressed , it was based on the very statement and choice of words you also addressed .

let me point it out for you...

when the conflict is over.
be thankful that we go chose to go through hell.

You deciphered it based on the 2 sentences and not as the whole poem where it will mislead you because it will be categorized as LITERAL since you limit yourself to the statement .

this is a classic example of an evangelists' method of manipulating people. It's parallel to religious folks saying "Jesus died for your sins. so be thankful and be good." This is basically making people feel guilty of themselves to further an organizations interest.

By choosing to go through hell was a nobodies choice but a mere fact that its a passage . SImilar to the logic or the difference of " RIGHT and PREVILEDGE " . Back then when I joined the service , I joined because its work for me and an experience but I did not join because I want to see combat action during conflict times but I knew when I listed that its part of the package .

Besides it's not like the people wanted armies to go to war for them, in fact reading through most of US history it's their LEADERS that demand they should to go to war and most of the time the reasons are ambiguous and suppressed. So this piece that you have presented should be directed to their leaders. Perhaps maybe, just maybe they would feel little remorse of sending others' children, fathers, uncles to die.

Lol ... wrong concept ! There will always be BAD and GOOD , LIGHT and DARK , the YIN and the YANG . Heard of the term PROBABALE CAUSE ? Things happen for a reason , its the same as the so called leaders of yours that they send people to war so the civilians will be at ease .

COnsidering your in the US , staring from the CIVIL WARS , dont you think youd be enjoying this freedom if the leaders did not send their soldiers to war ? In the Philippines , dont you think youd be having a good life compared to the lives those who has come before us and gaged war to the colonizers ? You tell me how AMBIGUOUS and SUPPRESSED it is .

[Tarmac]

Although I welcome the presence of US forces in the Philippines, I still believe the Iraq invasion was done under a false pretext. I don't pretend to know for a fact that Dubya's real motive for invading Iraq was to control its vast oil reserves, or to neutralize the growing Iranian influence in the region, or because he thought Saddam was in bed with bin Laden, or indeed because he truly believed intelligence reports that pointed to Saddam gleefully stockpiling WMDs. Whatever went on in bull sessions in the White House is now lost to history.

The American public will support a war only when it is cloaked in the cloth of moral ascendancy. In Iraq's case, it was to stop Saddam from stockpiling WMDs (which have yet to materialize) and to fight terror (notwithstanding the fact that war against Al Qaeda was already being waged along its true front--Afghanistan; and that until the 2003 invasion, Al Qaeda was largely absent from Iraq). When the search for WMDs turned up nothing, focus quickly shifted to the need to liberate the Iraqis from a brutal and repressive regime.

If that was the primary justification for invading Iraq, then the United States should also invade countries, like North Korea, Myanmar or Zimbabwe.

But wait. They should start with their biggest ally in the Middle East, Saudi Arabia. The oppressive grip of Wahabi fundamentalist thought denies basic freedoms and rights to its citizens. It is a state with no freedom of speech, no freedom of religion. A state with no political freedom. Where arbitrary arrest and detention are made, brutal torture--including mutilation--freely facilitated in its prisons; where women are treated as second-class citizens and 8-year old girls are married off to 50-year old men.

Indeed, in Saudi Arabia every democratic ideal espoused by the United States is flouted.

Many people seem to forget that the financial and support base of Al Qaeda is in Saudi Arabia. Wahabi fundamentalism, which is inextricably intertwined with Saudi society and which has in its clutches the royal House of Saud, fuels the radical Islamist movement and seeks the destruction of Western society, the wiping out of the state of Israel and the establishment of a global caliphate.

And there's the rub. How ironic is it that the United States' self-avowed missions of spreading democratic ideals and fighting the war on terror has yet to take hold, or cannot take hold, in the very state on which it relies so much to maintain the balance of power in the Middle East? That the state that is its biggest ally in the region is also the very state that originated and helps stoke the flame of its mortal enemy, Al Qaeda.

[Visual C#]

The United States has never been interested in spreading 'democracy' and 'freedom from oppression'. Sure, they'd want that to be the official statement, but the underlying reasons are different. The war in Iraq, Afghanistan, and a whole lot other places were just ways to create instability, to prevent a regional hegemon from challenging US dominance in the region. So far, the US has succeeded; the Arab world is as fragmented and chaotic as ever.

'Liberating' Saudi Arabia would be tantamount to waging war with Islam. The US wouldn't do something that foolish. Also, they prefer the status quo of Saudi right now. The more oppressive and traditional their way of governing the country, the more stagnant and unstable it becomes. This helps the US control the Saudi royal family and the Saudi economy. Saudi is already too reliant on the US for not only its economy, but for its security.

[Jeffrey]

I used to get red pissed at America's intervention in the Philippines. I was once part of a left wing organization back in my teenage years in college. It was like America was the only imperial evil.

Now, i think there are more important things than these trivialities. American military in the Philippines can do more good than harm. There maybe a bit of harm things done, we could not avoid this. Nicole anyone?

--

[SPRINGFIELD_XD_40]

OFFTOPIC @ TARMAC and VISUAL C .... I will point out some facts that contradicts what you guys posted .

- Saddam is due for the the lives he owes when he committed genocide .
- Saddam is a coward SOB who unlike OBL embraced the islamic radical ideals .
- Saddam supported the Al Qaeda's cell based in Iraq headed by no other than is OBL's #2 , Zawahiri .
- No WMD's found , not yet materialized ... whatever in a sense we put it out , it will end up NOTHING was FOUND . Of course WMD is serious shyt , its far more compared than playing grenades or even C4's .
- Sum this all up and let me know that these are not probable causes for the BUTHCHER to be tried and executed .
- Do you think his fellow countrymen can do what was achieved withiut the soldiers at war against the Iraqi government specially the administration ?
- War in Afghanistan was waged because the Talibans harbored Al Qaeda , its not that Al Qaeda was purely based in there . They ended up there that became a stronghold before it was crushed . Prior to Afghanistan , they were based in Sudan .
- The House of Saud condemns OBL ... there is in no way OBL nor AL Qaeda gets its finances and resources from Saudi Arabia ... he himself ( OBL ) was even disown by the Bin Ladens and his sons .
- Saudi Arabia needs no LIBERATION , though the presence of the westerners triggered the JIHAD to make terrorist acts because they think that the westerners presence in Saudi Arabia is the biggest insult of them all , by desecrating the hub of Islam .

[giddyboy]

i don't even want to call it an American military intervention in the Phils. i want to call it cooperation instead...the presence of US military in Phils, to me, is no big deal.

aguy, U.S. imperialism ek ek nasab ning isyuha? well, i am Mickey Mouse...wala gayud ni kahangturan nga debate...mura ranig lalis sa relihiyon, di gyud mag abot...LOLs

[Tarmac]

OFFTOPIC @ TARMAC and VISUAL C .... I will point out some facts that contradicts what you guys posted .

- Saddam is due for the the lives he owes when he committed genocide .
- Saddam is a coward SOB who unlike OBL embraced the islamic radical ideals .
- Saddam supported the Al Qaeda's cell based in Iraq headed by no other than is OBL's #2 , Zawahiri .
- No WMD's found , not yet materialized ... whatever in a sense we put it out , it will end up NOTHING was FOUND . Of course WMD is serious shyt , its far more compared than playing grenades or even C4's .
- Sum this all up and let me know that these are not probable causes for the BUTHCHER to be tried and executed .
- Do you think his fellow countrymen can do what was achieved withiut the soldiers at war against the Iraqi government specially the administration ?
- War in Afghanistan was waged because the Talibans harbored Al Qaeda , its not that Al Qaeda was purely based in there . They ended up there that became a stronghold before it was crushed . Prior to Afghanistan , they were based in Sudan .
- The House of Saud condemns OBL ... there is in no way OBL nor AL Qaeda gets its finances and resources from Saudi Arabia ... he himself ( OBL ) was even disown by the Bin Ladens and his sons .
- Saudi Arabia needs no LIBERATION , though the presence of the westerners triggered the JIHAD to make terrorist acts because they think that the westerners presence in Saudi Arabia is the biggest insult of them all , by desecrating the hub of Islam .

I never said Saddam was a martyr unjustly crucified by the United States. Saddam was a sadistic, bloodthirsty madman no doubt about that. He was a modern-day incarnation of Caligula, Vlad the Impaler, Josef Stalin and Adolf Hitler. Combined.

Let's grant for a moment that the overriding pretext for invading Iraq was to take down an oppressive regime. Has it become the United States' mission to take down oppressive regimes the world over? If Saddam deserved to die because he was such an asshole, and that his being an asshole was enough reason to invade Iraq, then by extension the United States should take down all those dictators out there by invading their countries, putting them on trial for all the people they've killed or starved to death and hanging them.

And if the suspicion of presence of serious-shyt WMDs is enough reason to invade a sovereign country, we can deduce that Kim Jong Il should rate highest on the list because not only does he starve his own people, he actually admits to running a nuclear program that is close to producing weapons grade plutonium and lobs missiles over Japan. That's even more serious shyt. Yet the United States chooses to take a diplomatic tack backed by economic sanctions and has done so for years.

And why not invade Myanmar, which has a ruling junta that brutally suppresses dissent and which prefers its people die like flies rather than allow foreign aid after the country is ravaged by a typhoon?

What made Iraq so different?

-----------------

The Saddam Hussein-Al Qaeda link is one of the unfortunate pseudo-facts perpetrated by proponents of the Iraq invasion. Al-Zawahiri, as you say, may have established an Al Qaeda cell in Iraq with Saddam's knowledge. However, reports of a strong and mature Iraqi-Al Qaeda partnership were debunked by no less than the Pentagon itself. In a 2005 report to the Senate Armed Services Committee, the Pentagon's Inspector General himself revealed that assessments made by ex-Pentagon official Douglas Feith stating that Iraq and Al Qaeda had a symbiotic relationship was an "alternative assessment" inconsistent with all available intelligence and the consensus of the intelligence community. Despite deep misgivings expressed by the CIA itself and others in the intelligence circles, Feith's assessment alone was used to bolster America's case for invading Iraq.

Reports of Iraqi intelligence meeting with Mohammad Atta have not conclusively been proven to have been linked to 9/11, if they even occurred at all. Ironically, it was only in 2004 that Al Qaeda in Iraq became active under the Jordanian-born bandit Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Zarqawi, prior to the invasion, was not affiliated with Al Qaeda. Bush and Cheney, not surprisingly, will have the world believe otherwise despite all evidence to the contrary.

To summarize, two major reasons for invading Iraq, WMD and the Iraq-Al Qaeda link, have now been largely discredited. The liberation of the Iraqi people from the yoke of oppression was a secondary reason, one that ticked off the required "high moral ground" box required to sell the idea to the American public. That soon became the primary reason and it now begs the question, "If that's the case, why stop at Iraq?"

In the cold, dispassionate light of day, the whole world knows now that the invasion of Iraq was carried out under a false pretext. Was it simply a case of faulty intelligence or something more sinister? I don't know. I don't want to assign motives because like I said earlier, I don't want to pretend to know.

----------

That the House of Saud and the Bin Laden family condemn Al Qaeda and Osama is fact, but I never said that they supported OBL themselves. It is a host of moneyed private Saudi citizens and non-government organizations that continue to support Al Qaeda precisely because they see the Saudi royal family to be repressive, corrupt and given to excess. And the fact still stands that the country is dominated not so much by the Saudi royal family as by clerics of a highly intolerant Wahabi sect (the ascendancy of the House of Saud in the 1930's is owed largely to the support of Wahabi fundamentalists). Do you not see the irony of Saudi Arabia being America's biggest ally on one hand and dominated by a sect that espouses the destruction of Western ideals, and through its madrassahs (religious schools) continues to turn out young men steeped in anti-Western jihadist thinking on the other?

----------

I never said Al Qaeda was purely based in Afghanistan. I simply said the true front for the War on Terror, if there ever was a geographical front for it, happens to be Afghanistan and not Iraq. Yet the majority of forces were committed to Iraq, much of it to fight a homegrown insurgency that had very little to do with Al Qaeda in the first place (remembering that al-Zarqawi's brutal tactics turned off a large portion of the Sunni insurgency). President Obama got it right when he said military efforts to combat terrorism should now be shifted to Afghanistan and Pakistan.

As for Sudan, Osama bin Laden left the country a penniless and disheartened man after a string of failed investments, his money largely stolen by corrupt Sudanese government officials and dishonest business partners and employees. He could barely afford passage to Afghanistan for himself and his family. He may be the world's arch-terrorist now, but at one time he was a businessman (and not much of one at that).

[winnie]

basta makaayu sa atong lugar ok na ko ana

[Tarmac]

The War on Terror is also a war of hearts and minds. Dili lang pinusilay pirmi. Perhaps this is the most important aspect of the whole enterprise. Kabalo man sila ana, mao na ang mga Americano nag concentrate pud ug civic projects, dili lang training para giyera.

And where they're stationed, i.e. south Mindanao, the locals seem to welcome their presence.