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2003-02-04 Axis of Evil

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Posted by Steve 2003-02-04 08:06 am|| || Front Page|| [2 views since 2007-05-07] Top

#1 Scooter is right: There's probably 2 to 3 billion UNTOUCHED dollars in the humanitarian relief fund set up as part of the Food for Oil Program. Saddam and his supporters complain about the effects of the sanctions on the population, but it is up to SADDAM to ask for the supplies that the money will buy. It's been rigged so he can't RESELL the food and medicines (as he's done before) for hard cash to buy weapons, which is WHY he doesn't bother to ask.

Besides, carpet bombing of civilians is so, so 40's. JDAMs are THE IN THING in the 21st century. Shoot, ANYBODY with a fleet of B52s can drop thousands of bombs over a two square mile area to kill a building, but it takes high tech (and is a damn lot more exciting and satisfying) to take it out with ONE BOMB. Cheaper too, and avoids killing The Children (C) (Pat. Pend.) (TM).

*shakes head*, Sorry Murat, but when we americans see our tax dollars going to buy high precision and expensive doodads to attach to bombs so that it takes only one to destroy a target with little to no damage to the building next door, then your accusation of Impending Indiscrimiate Killing just doesn't make sense. It does not compute. It does not add up. Sorry, must be a cultural thing, so DO try to be multicultural about all this and TRY to understand us for a change, hmmm?

I would like to make a request of you: Please read the following sentence:

If Saddam Hussein uses his biological, chemical, or nuclear weapons of mass destruction, the United States will use nuclear weapons.

Does the above sentence read the same and have the same meaning as:

****unintelligible, incomprehensible phrase*** the United States will use Nuclear Weapons.

Do the two sentences convery EXACTLY the same meaning? I would very much also appreciate it if you could get a native Arab speaker also fluent in English to read the above and answer the same question.

This is very important: I need to know if you are capable of processing conditional phrases. Conditional phrases are required to formulate the majority of physical laws, and make up a good number of logic rules required to process and manipulate those physical laws (also known as technology).

An inability to cognitively process conditional phrases would be a truly serious impediment to a people or culture so afflicted when trying to communicate with a people or culture that IS capable of phrasing, processing, and understanding conditional phrases.

(Translations from the Arabic into english that embody conditional phrases don't prove that the phrases exist in the original: They may have been supplied by the translator as an artifact of English. For instance, the French language does not have indefinite nouns. In a UN Resolution, the English version calls for Israel to return "Occupied lands" in return for peace. The FRENCH version adds "les", making it read "THE OCCUPIED LANDS" when translated back into English. The original english version implies that Israel can keep SOME land, but the French version implies that Israel has to return ALL the land for peace. Israel stands by the English version of the resolution, while the Arabs stand by the French Version, both of whom do so for obvious reasons.)

Posted by Ptah 2/4/2003 10:57:28 AM|| 2/4/2003 10:57:28 AM|| Front Page Top

#2 In my opinion, Bush should provide some proof before attacking Iraq. That Saddam is a dictator is not enough, the middle east is full of dictators included the US allies Saudi and the kuwaiti Arabs. Killing thousands of innocent children just to get rid of Saddam, would make the US a bigger monster than Saddam himself.

Regards

Posted by Murat 2003-02-04 08:48:11|| 2003-02-04 08:48:11|| Front Page Top

#3 Murat, the only way thousands of children are killed is if Saddam or his Generals do it - either directly, or by trying to hide like cowards in the civilian populace. Either way it's a war crime. Do you support war criminals?

Posted by Frank G 2003-02-04 09:43:25|| 2003-02-04 09:43:25|| Front Page Top

#4 Thank you for asking Frank, no I am not in support of war criminals, nor do I support Saddam if thatâs what you mean. I am just not convinced that the only way of saving those children can be achieved by bombing them straight to walhala with the heaviest air raids the world has ever seen, including the possibility of using nuclear arms.

Posted by Murat 2003-02-04 09:52:39|| 2003-02-04 09:52:39|| Front Page Top

#5 Murat, the only children killed so far are the ones dead of starvation or disease due to Saddam's failure to live up to any agreement he ever made. We're not planning to bomb kids for fun. We're planning to bomb the Iraqi military to *liberate* the kids.

Please Murat, won't you think about the children??? Do you really favor just leaving them as they are - sick and starving?

Posted by Scooter McGruder 2003-02-04 10:15:53|| 2003-02-04 10:15:53|| Front Page Top

#6 Scooter is right: There's probably 2 to 3 billion UNTOUCHED dollars in the humanitarian relief fund set up as part of the Food for Oil Program. Saddam and his supporters complain about the effects of the sanctions on the population, but it is up to SADDAM to ask for the supplies that the money will buy. It's been rigged so he can't RESELL the food and medicines (as he's done before) for hard cash to buy weapons, which is WHY he doesn't bother to ask.

Besides, carpet bombing of civilians is so, so 40's. JDAMs are THE IN THING in the 21st century. Shoot, ANYBODY with a fleet of B52s can drop thousands of bombs over a two square mile area to kill a building, but it takes high tech (and is a damn lot more exciting and satisfying) to take it out with ONE BOMB. Cheaper too, and avoids killing The Children (C) (Pat. Pend.) (TM).

*shakes head*, Sorry Murat, but when we americans see our tax dollars going to buy high precision and expensive doodads to attach to bombs so that it takes only one to destroy a target with little to no damage to the building next door, then your accusation of Impending Indiscrimiate Killing just doesn't make sense. It does not compute. It does not add up. Sorry, must be a cultural thing, so DO try to be multicultural about all this and TRY to understand us for a change, hmmm?

I would like to make a request of you: Please read the following sentence:

If Saddam Hussein uses his biological, chemical, or nuclear weapons of mass destruction, the United States will use nuclear weapons.

Does the above sentence read the same and have the same meaning as:

****unintelligible, incomprehensible phrase*** the United States will use Nuclear Weapons.

Do the two sentences convery EXACTLY the same meaning? I would very much also appreciate it if you could get a native Arab speaker also fluent in English to read the above and answer the same question.

This is very important: I need to know if you are capable of processing conditional phrases. Conditional phrases are required to formulate the majority of physical laws, and make up a good number of logic rules required to process and manipulate those physical laws (also known as technology).

An inability to cognitively process conditional phrases would be a truly serious impediment to a people or culture so afflicted when trying to communicate with a people or culture that IS capable of phrasing, processing, and understanding conditional phrases.

(Translations from the Arabic into english that embody conditional phrases don't prove that the phrases exist in the original: They may have been supplied by the translator as an artifact of English. For instance, the French language does not have indefinite nouns. In a UN Resolution, the English version calls for Israel to return "Occupied lands" in return for peace. The FRENCH version adds "les", making it read "THE OCCUPIED LANDS" when translated back into English. The original english version implies that Israel can keep SOME land, but the French version implies that Israel has to return ALL the land for peace. Israel stands by the English version of the resolution, while the Arabs stand by the French Version, both of whom do so for obvious reasons.)

Posted by Ptah 2003-02-04 10:57:28|| 2003-02-04 10:57:28|| Front Page Top

#7 Murat: no proof will ever suffice, no matter how evident.
If Saddam uses chemical weapons during the war, will you then believe that he was hiding them and the US was right all along, or will you say it was the Americans who used the gas and not Saddam? See, the problem is, if anyone hates America for the sake of hating America, then no proof will ever convince them of anything. It's always the CIA.

Posted by Rw 2003-02-04 11:51:04|| 2003-02-04 11:51:04|| Front Page Top

#8 Anyone engaged in research towards offensive biological weapons is a hazard. Even bio-war counter-measures are dangerous to research, though less so. It's playing with fire.

Our counter-measure research is conducted with enourmous safeguards, including extreme measures like isolating the researchers and permitting them to die if a serious enough accident occurs. The Iraqis are allegedly conducting bio-war research in TRAILERS. This means that they cannot possibly be taking the appropriate protective measures. Even if they never develop weaponized bio-war, just by conducting unsafe research they are jeapardizing the entire human race.

In the event of an accident, it becomes a question of how many 9s we (the human race) roll on "fatality".

This is not acceptable.

Posted by Dishman 2003-02-04 12:27:35|| 2003-02-04 12:27:35|| Front Page Top

#9 A Level Four Portable Biohazard Containment Facility? These Iraqis have incredible technology! See, the madrassas are working!

Posted by john 2003-02-04 19:42:56|| 2003-02-04 19:42:56|| Front Page Top

#10 Ptah, that was beautiful.

Posted by Bman 2003-02-04 20:40:56|| 2003-02-04 20:40:56|| Front Page Top

#11 Ptah, seriously, does Arabic not have conditional (if, then) phrases? I've heard some things to that effect, but never stated that clearly.

Thanks

Posted by 11A5S 2003-02-04 21:32:34|| 2003-02-04 21:32:34|| Front Page Top

#12
Scooter McGruder, if Iraqi children are sick and starving this is because of the embargo put on Iraq and not because of Saddam, let us not fool each other, before the embargo there were no starving people in Iraq. If the justification of flattening Iraq is mass destruction weapons, then I am afraid the US should oblige herself of bombing halve of the world, including Britain and the US itself (which has the biggest contingent of mass destruction weapons).

We all know that the Bush policy is based on controlling the world energy sources. I am in no way in defence of Saddam or any other dictator of the middle east, but unleashing a massacre on a nation for own political reasons doesnât make Bush look any better than Saddam himself.

And sorry for not buying that talk of high precision bombs to justify a war, none of you would like to see your own child being in Iraq hoping that a high precision bomb would discriminate her from a soldier. I am anti Saddam, but I am more anti war that sacrifices children and the innocent.

Regards,

Posted by Murat 2003-02-05 07:08:15|| 2003-02-05 07:08:15|| Front Page Top

#13 Thanks Bman!

11A5S: That's the question I honestly wanted Murat to answer. I knew about the limitations of the French language because I actually took it and pursued it for quite a ways (still read it). I mean, it may be HARD to imagine a language without conditional phrases, but the fact that it is HARD for US to imagine such a language is, in itself, a cultural artifact. You'd be amazed at how our language limits us, which is why the hard sciences use mathematics as an additional mezzanine of communications.

I wasn't being facetious when I asked for an bilingual arabic speaker to read the sentence: IF there are important constructs in the English language that CANNOT be reliably translated into the Arabic language, THEN we definitely have a damn big problem that urgently needs to be addressed.

Posted by Ptah 2003-02-05 08:15:15|| 2003-02-05 08:15:15|| Front Page Top

08:17 liberalhawk
08:15 Ptah
07:29 Chuck
07:08 Murat
01:10 Michael Lonie
00:34 John Anderson
00:19 John Anderson
23:51 John Anderson
21:54 Anonymous
21:48 Paul
21:32 11A5S
20:58 Anonymous
20:49 Anonymous
20:42 Anonymous
20:42 Alaska Paul
20:40 Bman
20:15 paj
20:11 flash91
19:42 john
19:20 john
19:09 Ptah
18:59 Rw
18:59 Frank G
17:56 Alaska Paul