WAR: 300,000 Iraqis Protest US Occupation

[edit on 11-4-2005 by astrocreep]

Insurgent:

1. Rising in revolt against established authority, especially a government.
2. Rebelling against the leadership of a political party.

There is nothing in the definition of the word insurgent to suggest they "come from outside." Also the US Army has reported that something less than 2% of the insurgents they've detained come from outside the country.

Why is it so hard to imagine that people don't like having their country invaded and bombed, even if they weren't fans of Saddam Hussein? Should a guy whose family gets shredded by a cluster bomb be grateful to us somehow? There's no running water and electricity half the time, massive unemployment, and an epidemic of violence and mayhem. And they're suppposed to thank us for this?

How deluded and skilled in self-deception does one have to be to support this damn war?

If these so called freedom fighters were so concerned with the Iraqi people, why are their suicide bombers targeting civilians?

Its one thing to, and bad enough I might add, to see civilians killed because these so called moral people run and hide behind them but its another to purposely target the innocent.

I don't support the war anymore. I now support the shift of power back to the Iraqis and the full withdrawel of US troops. So do the troops, so do the Iraqis. It seems there are just some people who cannot get on the same page but progress waits for no one. Saddam isn't coming back. Sorry.

Oh, and sorry if I didn't quote your favored definition. I was refering to the root; surge meaning to come in. So, I guess insurgence can be Iraqis too. Since they are building a government of their own people, I fail to see what they are insurging against...themselves? because the US is leaving. Their actions only serve to delay that which they are saying they want. Stop the violence and we can get out of there faster.

How does the U.S. intend to leave if they are building fourteen military bases on Iraqi soil? Any claims of a complete pullout of U.S. troops by anybody in authority is disingenuous at best. There will be a coalition pullout, but no U.S. military pullout.

Well, if the US remains of friendly terms with the Iraqi Government, I'd say that would be between them. If the people do not like it, they can elect leaders who will not do it. Its that simple. However, I think what we're doing is placing more emphasis on the wants of the few over the needs of the majority. I've often heard it said that the squeeky wheel gets the grease but sometimes it just gets replaced.

Hey, not everyone in the US supports a representative repulic either but they live under it day by day. The fact is, the majority do and until they can sway that, I'm afraid their S.O.L. so to speak. The same over there. I agree saddam was good for some...very few but some. I don't think they would make the best role model for new leadership but you all might.

If these so called freedom fighters were so concerned with the Iraqi people, why are their suicide bombers targeting civilians?

I think the answer is that the insurgency is not one monolithic entity, there are a bunch of different factions. Some of them are religious fanatics, some are disgruntled regime left overs, some just pissed off nationalists & people who resent the US occupation.

I suspect most of the mass casualty attacks are coming from the Sunni religious fanatics like Zarqawi. Nothing increases one's willingness to kill like the conviction that one is doing God's bidding.

And it's not my "favored definition" of insurgent, it's the dictionary definition.
As to the etiology of the word, it comes from the Latin nsurgere, meaning "to rise up."

[edit on 11-4-2005 by xmotex]

I stand corrected on the defintion, however I still think there is substancial evidence to support the largest part of these terrorist attacks come from foreign "insurgence". I appreciate the correction as I would rather be correct than proud any day.

We had he same case in Afghanistan where the taliban came from neighboring Pakistan and Bin Laden from Saudi Arabia. Basically, they hi-jacked the country in the name of defending them. The US needs to withdrawel or risk facing the same stigma. I hope it can come about soon. However, the multitude of people are not going to elect a leader favored by those who kept them oppressed. I think thats the drawback and the fly in the oinment. Not all Iraqis want a free Iraq because, well I guess they got a kick out of torturing people.

Originally posted by xmotex
How deluded and skilled in self-deception does one have to be to support this damn war?

Well, there are pros and cons to everything. Anyone on the fence in America can pluck from a garden of overripe propaganda for "either side" and adopt the standard issue, ready made arguements as their own - surely we've seen enough of that happen here on ATS.

Maybe some kind of giant reverse-psychology experiment is being engineered through America's feeding-tube media. Maybe television anti-war propaganda intends to spark viewers into artificially seeking alternative views, views that they can feel ownership of, on the war, leading them directly into the car dealership to buy more SUVs for the corporate-pharmaceutical-military-industrial war machine.

In any case, it's not a war. It's not a war on terror, it's not a war against Iraq, and it's not a war on drugs.

It's a run-of-the-mill invasion and occupation, as old as tribal warfare. In a real war, both sides have something to lose.

Zipdot

why when I say that the insurgents are iraqi do you thing I see these people as freedom fighters astrocreep? I know they aren't freedom fighters because they aren't fighting for freedom they are fighting because we killed alot of iraqi people when we invaded, destroyed alot of families these people don't understand freedom because they have never had it.

Originally posted by ServoHahn

Initially posted by MaskedAvatar
of the same order of quality as used by the US to enable Colin Powell to pinpoint with 100% accuracy the location of the major WMD stashes in Iraq prior to the US-led invasion

I'm sorry... help me out... I'm a little slow... Which WMD's were these again? I seemed to have missed them.

[edit on 11-4-2005 by ServoHahn]

Alacrity has no place in this truth.

My analogy was expressed with such an excess of verbosity that you could not fail to try to dissect it in a serious fashion.

Put more simply:

* The US intelligence on WMDs was ALL FAKE, compiled by the OSP, and as useful as the accurate protestor count in my post
* Colin Powell and every member of the Bush administration LIED about the stashes of imminently deployable WMDs in Iraq
* The people who led the invasion are criminal, no matter what scapegoats they line up in a row now.

Setting the record straight a little more ...

The WMD Cult

Beware of 'insurgents' in that topic looking to obfuscate the truth.

BTW didn't the major caches of deadly, immediately deployable, posing a threat to the national security of the mainland USA, "WMDs"merely get shipped to Syria, while no-one was looking? LOL.

the liberal/Democratic hate machine will *never* be satisfied. If 300K people supported the US, they'd say it was propaganda nd we'd forced it. 300K anti-US protestors, pf course, goes along with their need to buttress their political standing for the next election, and of course such a thing could *never* be forced by influences outside the people of Iraq.

No matter what happens, if it can be interpreted or spun as anti-American or anti-Bush, it must be true, honest expression and fact. Anything for the current administration, well, that's puppet government, or meaningless, or propaganda.

And a man setting a bomb, or firing a rifle, or stashing grenades in his house, is not a "civilian". Why do you folks keep bringing out this sort of crap? If a man hides behind people to commit a crime, how is it the victim's fault if those people are hurt in an arrest? If a crowd surrounds someone who throws a bomb, to protect him, they're not "civilians" by any definition other than the liberal/Democratic definition.

Originally posted by MaskedAvatar
Alacrity has no place in this truth.

My analogy was expressed with such an excess of verbosity that you could not fail to try to dissect it in a serious fashion.

Put more simply:

* The US intelligence on WMDs was ALL FAKE, compiled by the OSP, and as useful as the accurate protestor count in my post
* Colin Powell and every member of the Bush administration LIED about the stashes of imminently deployable WMDs in Iraq
* The people who led the invasion are criminal, no matter what scapegoats they line up in a row now.

Setting the record straight a little more ...

The WMD Cult...

Man, even when we agree, we wind up fighting. Hey, MA... I was trying to add to what you were saying, not subtract... sarcasm doesn't go over the board very well. Sorry about the miscommunication! Keep up the fight
-S

[edit on 11-4-2005 by ServoHahn]