Is Something Big About to Happen?

[MachShot]

In Iraq I mean. I'm sure you all heard of the recent internet ban of US soldiers. They now have no access to websites such as YouTube and MySpace, websites which are really efficient at getting a soldiers perspective of the war to a large audience.

The pentagon says it’s for two reasons. One being that it takes too much bandwidth on military servers. Two being that is posses a 'security threat'.
Okay then.... For one, considering what military servers are capable of with their large scale privatized Intranet, I am sure that every website in existence could function on a military server. Uploaded videos about kitties playing pianos are not going to constrain server space. And two, what security risk is there now that didn't exist for the past four years in the War on Terror? Troop morale? It seems to be an attempt to censor the war to the people.

Well okay then, but also at the same time the Iraqi government has just declared it illegal to photograph or record bomb sites. So now it looks like the Iraqi government is blocking us a view into the war and the United States government blocking the soldiers say out of the war.

On top of that, CNN today gave their monthly death census of the war. This May was a significant escalation of deaths of troops and citizens and this May is now the third deadliest month of the entire war in the Middle East. The deaths of troops of last March and April was about 80, this month was closer to 120. On top of that it is predicted that this year there will be over 1000 troop deaths. The average for each previous full year was 800 or so.



Is something big about to happen that both governments don't want us to see? Or is it a Republican ploy to make the war in Iraq a less of an issue in the upcoming presidential debates to give conservatives less to worry about and to take away some of the land democrats stand on. Republicans lost both the House and the Senate in '06 because of American resentment of the war. And if there was something horrible that happened in Iraq, pulling out seems likely to happen.

Many people have compared the Iraq war to Vietnam. Is there a Tet Offensive on the horizon?



And just so you know, I don't really have a side in for or against the war. There is so much supporting statements and an equal amount of opposing reasons to make me choose a definite side.

[Anjin-San]

Soldiers have been uploading videos of their exploits on Youtube that end in craploads of people being killed. This didn't exactly come as a surprise.

[MachShot]

Really? I haven't heard of such happening.

[Anjin-San]

It's been going on for a while. This is the logical conclusion of that.

[steelcobra]

In Iraq I mean. I'm sure you all heard of the recent internet ban of US soldiers. They now have no access to websites such as YouTube and MySpace, websites which are really efficient at getting a soldiers perspective of the war to a large audience.

The pentagon says it’s for two reasons. One being that it takes too much bandwidth on military servers. Two being that is posses a 'security threat'.
Okay then.... For one, considering what military servers are capable of with their large scale privatized Intranet, I am sure that every website in existence could function on a military server. Uploaded videos about kitties playing pianos are not going to constrain server space. And two, what security risk is there now that didn't exist for the past four years in the War on Terror? Troop morale? It seems to be an attempt to censor the war to the people.

Well okay then, but also at the same time the Iraqi government has just declared it illegal to photograph or record bomb sites. So now it looks like the Iraqi government is blocking us a view into the war and the United States government blocking the soldiers say out of the war.

On top of that, CNN today gave their monthly death census of the war. This May was a significant escalation of deaths of troops and citizens and this May is now the third deadliest month of the entire war in the Middle East. The deaths of troops of last March and April was about 80, this month was closer to 120. On top of that it is predicted that this year there will be over 1000 troop deaths. The average for each previous full year was 800 or so.



Is something big about to happen that both governments don't want us to see? Or is it a Republican ploy to make the war in Iraq a less of an issue in the upcoming presidential debates to give conservatives less to worry about and to take away some of the land democrats stand on. Republicans lost both the House and the Senate in '06 because of American resentment of the war. And if there was something horrible that happened in Iraq, pulling out seems likely to happen.

Many people have compared the Iraq war to Vietnam. Is there a Tet Offensive on the horizon?



And just so you know, I don't really have a side in for or against the war. There is so much supporting statements and an equal amount of opposing reasons to make me choose a definite side.

OK, I just have to clarify on the new ban:
1: Soldiers are only blocked from WORK computers, not from net cafe or their own satellite connections.
2: Most of those sites were already blocked by filtering software on the official networks anyways.

This really doesn't change much at all, just makes it a DOD-wide official policy.

[MachShot]

Great. Now I feel like an alarmist.:(

Well, exempting that, the Iraqi ban on photographing bomb sites still seems suspitious and I'm concerned about the death escalation of this month.

[steelcobra]

The thing is, you post a bomb aftermath image online and the cell that deployed it gets to see exactly how effective it was and how they can improve positioning the next time.

It's over 110 degrees there in summer. My theory is that they get more pissed off than usual because of the heat, which is why the summer death tolls are higher than the rainy season's.

[Tollwutig]

My personal conspiracy theory is that Iraq serves two purposes.

1) To allow Jr. to accomplish something Daddy and Jeb didn't already do, and better than him.

2) To create a huge bullseye target for would be Muslim extremists who to flock to attack the great Satan.

You see while we have troops in Iraq, and nice open borders with Syria & Iran any terrorist itching to fight the great oppressors can easily get in and set off a bomb in Iraq. The brains behind it all know some human psychology in that we're inherently lazy.

Why go through months of training, an elaborate planning, even more elaborate hurdles to get into the country, to more than likely get arrested before pulling off whatever it is you planned in the first place? It's easier to go to Iran or Syria, meet up with a "resistance" cell, get some training & a gun. Catch a ride to Iraq with a good chance of killing a U.S. Soldier.

While the Military stays in Iraq they provide and easier target than the continental U.S. which means civilians are safer from a terrorist attack.

Afghanistan was not a good option for this because of location and the populace. The Taliban needed to be overthrown or else an organized threat would have been able to attack the U.S., but the populace was more likely to form a stable government, and request real U.S. assistance. Also Afghanistan is not centrally located or easily accessible by Naval & Air support.


Iraq was much better suited and served multiple goals.
It had an easily toppled dictator which most of the world would not complain if he lost power.
It had a severely divided ethnic population which would not easily form a cohesive government.
It is centrally located, and shares borders with two of the biggest governmental supporters of terrorist organizations.
Both of these governments have poor diplomatic (actually no diplomatic) ties with the United States.
These give the Government two scapegoats for why terrorists flock to Iraq.
The borders are in areas difficult to secure.
Persian Gulf easily accessible to provide Naval & Air support.

[Grahamr]

Perhaps. By the way, Al Qaeda is coming back.


*Going to post more later*

[ZippyDSMlee]

In Iraq I mean. I'm sure you all heard of the recent internet ban of US soldiers. They now have no access to websites such as YouTube and MySpace, websites which are really efficient at getting a soldiers perspective of the war to a large audience.

The pentagon says it’s for two reasons. One being that it takes too much bandwidth on military servers. Two being that is posses a 'security threat'.
Okay then.... For one, considering what military servers are capable of with their large scale privatized Intranet, I am sure that every website in existence could function on a military server. Uploaded videos about kitties playing pianos are not going to constrain server space. And two, what security risk is there now that didn't exist for the past four years in the War on Terror? Troop morale? It seems to be an attempt to censor the war to the people.

Well okay then, but also at the same time the Iraqi government has just declared it illegal to photograph or record bomb sites. So now it looks like the Iraqi government is blocking us a view into the war and the United States government blocking the soldiers say out of the war.

On top of that, CNN today gave their monthly death census of the war. This May was a significant escalation of deaths of troops and citizens and this May is now the third deadliest month of the entire war in the Middle East. The deaths of troops of last March and April was about 80, this month was closer to 120. On top of that it is predicted that this year there will be over 1000 troop deaths. The average for each previous full year was 800 or so.



Is something big about to happen that both governments don't want us to see? Or is it a Republican ploy to make the war in Iraq a less of an issue in the upcoming presidential debates to give conservatives less to worry about and to take away some of the land democrats stand on. Republicans lost both the House and the Senate in '06 because of American resentment of the war. And if there was something horrible that happened in Iraq, pulling out seems likely to happen.

Many people have compared the Iraq war to Vietnam. Is there a Tet Offensive on the horizon?



And just so you know, I don't really have a side in for or against the war. There is so much supporting statements and an equal amount of opposing reasons to make me choose a definite side.

Bush and co seem disgusted with it and cant get support to make it a state of the US so we will be leaving or at least starting full width drawl in the next year or so...least this is the vibe I am getting.

I dont think it will be like Tet Offensive we will leave under quite (for iraq) trems and it will degraded into chaos like it was meant to be since the whole thing was poorly executed from the start.

[Grahamr]

Why the hell can't we just fight Al Qaeda????:mad:

Why does there have to even be an Iraq war??:confused:

[Jabrwock]

Why the hell can't we just fight Al Qaeda????:mad:

Why does there have to even be an Iraq war??:confused:
Because. Duh.

Besides, with Iraq, they didn't even need to do any planning, they just pulled out ye olde plans from last time.

That and it's easier to fight an enemy who kindly builds palaces and Information Ministries you can bomb, instead of playing cheeky and hiding in caves...

[weatherlight]

My personal conspiracy theory is ...

w00t! I love conspiracy theories. Do I get to wear a tin hat if I believe in this one?
.....

Awww, no tin hat :(

[ZippyDSMlee]

Why the hell can't we just fight Al Qaeda????:mad:

Why does there have to even be an Iraq war??:confused:

Iraq is one of thos gray suit wet dreams we can gain so much rep from this its easy lets do it 2 weeks later their out on the street begging for money.

But really Iraq is one of thos mindless things goverment dose to prove how discombobulated goverment is.

[Tollwutig]

Why the hell can't we just fight Al Qaeda????:mad:

Why does there have to even be an Iraq war??:confused:


Well the main reason we can't fight Al Qaeda is that it isn't a country, it's a group, and that group is spread out globally in many different nations, and we don't know exactly who the members are.

So fighting them directly would be like fighting a shadow.


On the other end we could have bankrupted the sons of bitches, all we'd have to do is dry up all of the Middle Eastern Oil wealth.

[ZippyDSMlee]

w00t! I love conspiracy theories. Do I get to wear a tin hat if I believe in this one?

Awww, no tin hat :(

so you are saying the its not another Vietnam? :eek:
LOL

because of what we did and where we are going Iraq has only wasted time and lives it will take decades for the US to recover from it so we then can fix our own bloody country its about time health care is dealt with.

[weatherlight]

so you are saying the its not another Vietnam? :eek:
LOL

because of what we did and where we are going Iraq has only wasted time and lives it will take decades for the US to recover from it so we then can fix our own bloody country its about time health care is dealt with.
I said nothing of the sort, I just wanted an excuse to wear my tin hat.

I will not start debating your poor choice in wording, about "wasted lives" again.

[MachShot]

On the other end we could have bankrupted the sons of bitches, all we'd have to do is dry up all of the Middle Eastern Oil wealth.

I'm not sure that idea is logical or posible. Europe is highly dependent on Middle Eastern oil and only about 10 percent of all Muslims pose a significant threat to America. We would be pinching the terrorists while simutaniously strangling the world economy.

[Grahamr]

http://memri.org/bin/latestnews.cgi?ID=SD160207

See, these are the real enemies......

[Tollwutig]

I'm not sure that idea is logical or posible. Europe is highly dependent on Middle Eastern oil and only about 10 percent of all Muslims pose a significant threat to America. We would be pinching the terrorists while simutaniously strangling the world economy.

And since when has the U.S. actually cared about the World economy? Seriously the U.S. is rather self centered and doesn't play well with others especially under the current administration. IF the administration had wanted to actually shut down Al Qaeda they could have done so economically. And considering how much this President has fingered his nose at just about every nation out there at some point I don't seriously see him caring if it caused another country economic hardship.

[ZippyDSMlee]

I said nothing of the sort, I just wanted an excuse to wear my tin hat.

I will not start debating your poor choice in wording, about "wasted lives" again.

*bites toung and it runs off from me* 0-o
I apologize for the rude pot shot I took I cant seem to sort thought,typeing and proofing all at once ><

I still think Iraq is a waste on many levels if it recreated itself into something like jordan only minus the crown it could be worth it but since perfection is not in the plans its been a disaster and has shown how well the goverment can not manage itself.....

[MachShot]

And since when has the U.S. actually cared about the World economy? Seriously the U.S. is rather self centered and doesn't play well with others especially under the current administration. IF the administration had wanted to actually shut down Al Qaeda they could have done so economically. And considering how much this President has fingered his nose at just about every nation out there at some point I don't seriously see him caring if it caused another country economic hardship.

Hey, I wouldn't exactly nominate Bush for man of the year either. I'd be for impeaching him too if it were not for who would take charge then. I'm just saying you initialy made it sound as if that was your idea of how to improve the situation. Sorry if I read you first comment incorectly.

[KN]

http://memri.org/bin/latestnews.cgi?ID=SD160207

See, these are the real enemies......

No, that's what we call a troll. They've been putting out this "BIGGAR THAN 9/11" **** for 6 ****ing years.