Making Baby Jesus Cry

[Mmmm, Burger (C.J.)]

Originally posted by greatwhitenorthchick
It always reads in my mind as "Making Baby Jesus Hard." Which is really fucking disturbing.

What's disturbing is your estimation of your (admittedly high) fellatio skills. You could get even baby jesus hard? What's next, you're more popular than god?

[baltassoc]

Originally posted by Replaced_Texan
How is it progress and overall success if women have fewer rights than they did two years ago?

Well, they no longer have to run from the Hussien boys. It was always such a burden to keep an eye out for those two. Now it's much easier; they can just avoid all the roving lawless gangs instead.

They no longer have to bother with that whole work thing and can keep at home to avoid the above mentioned roving gangs.

Plus, they now have cute American soldiers to oogle.

That's progress.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by Penske_Account

Non-responsive. Calling something horseshite doesn't make it so. Explain to me why the Gorelick Wall was not problematic? Why Clinton is not responsible for Gorelick? Able Danger?

Run a search re the Gorelick Wall here, and you will find that I posted on it several times while you were gone. It's like the Syria thing, or Hank's belief that the inspectors thought there were WMD -- no matter how many times it's debunked, you will keep trotting it out.

As for Able Danger, please explain to me why Clinton "is responsible for" Able Danger.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by Penske_Account
Why is it when Bush relied on intelligence re: WMDs and then you later ascertained that intelligence flawed that Bush is liar, but intelligence you like, that is not absolutely empirical and may yet prove flawed is dispositive proof?

Most obviously, because there is a real difference between ordinary intelligence (e.g., satellite pictures, human sources) and the sort of information you have when you occupy another country for several months.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by Hank Chinaski
If that's the type of decisions parents make with their daughters, what real hope is there in a Constitution? Maybe people think differently in the larger cities?

Are you saying the Iraqis are incapable of democracy?

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by Hank Chinaski
Rather than acknowledging this, the act here is to cite to an article like Ty does as if it is proof. This act is either stupid or intellectually dishonest.

If you'd look into it, you'd find out that the Iraqi Search Group (I think that's its name -- David Kay ran it) was run by our government. So relying on its findings is not exactly like just finding something in some article.

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
Are you saying the Iraqis are incapable of democracy?

I meant hope for women having equal rights, not that there is no hope there will be a constitution.

[Not Bob]

Originally posted by Hank Chinaski
There's also no evidence that the tons of weapons were destroyed. So something happened for which no evidence exists.

Rather than acknowledging this, the act here is to cite to an article like Ty does as if it is proof. This act is either stupid or intellectually dishonest.

I could be wrong, but I thought that the US/UN destroyed tons of chemical and biological weapons in 1991, and that the existing known weapon sites were under inspection from then until 1998 (?), when the inspectors were kicked out.

I think that it was assumed that Hussein was trying to rebuild his program after he lost the first Gulf War, but I don't think that it was established that he did and that he therefore had tons of weapons in 2002.

FWIW, I don't think that Bush lied about WMD. As noted by lots of people here, everyone from Clinton to Kofi Annan to my friend Big Ed at the Fina station next door thought that Hussein was trying to get back into the WMD business. I do think that Bush and his admin exaggerated what evidence there was because they were convinced that they would find the proof after the invasion. I also think that they wanted to take him out so badly that they misled the country by linking him to 9/11 to get support for the war. I do agree that the world is a better place with him in jail, but I'm not sure that it is worth the price we paid and continue to pay, and there are lots of worse people running around that are more of a direct threat to us that we don't have the time or resources to deal with because our entire army is tied up in Iraq.

I also think that Powell was right, that we can't leave a country after breaking it. But I have a real problem with that being simply the end of the debate -- not one single person has been held accountable for all of the mistakes and goofs and errors in judgment. And these are not things or problems that were not predicted; instead, they were blithely dismissed when raised.

And we still are having problems getting our troops the equipment that they need -- did those of you who dismissed my Liberty Ship analogy last week see the stories about the production problems with the kevlar/ceramic vests for the troops? Why aren't those of you who are so outaged that a mother of a dead soldier dare question the president raising a ruckus over the continuing incompetence of a defense secretary who allows these problems to continue?

[Replaced_Texan]

Originally posted by Spanky
So let me gets this straight. If this constitution brings peace but women women's rights are restricted then Iraq is worse off than it was under Saddam? That is just absurd.

No one had any rights under Saddam Hussein. So any rights are a step in a positive direction.

That's not true. Iraq, even under Sadaam, was one of the better places to be a woman in the Middle East. Women could drive, they could go to school, they could work. Sadaam's Iraq was a secular nation, and the Islamic rules regarding women were not the law of the land.

I can't imagine having had rights of equality and then suddenly having them taken away. That's almost worse than not ever having had them in the first place.

ETA: Article on the erosion of women's rights since the American liberation:

Women in Iraq Decry Decision To Curb Rights
Council Backs Islamic Law on Families

By Pamela Constable
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, January 16, 2004; Page A12

BAGHDAD, Jan. 15 -- For the past four decades, Iraqi women have enjoyed some of the most modern legal protections in the Muslim world, under a civil code that prohibits marriage below the age of 18, arbitrary divorce and male favoritism in child custody and property inheritance disputes.

Saddam Hussein's dictatorship did not touch those rights. But the U.S.-backed Iraqi Governing Council has voted to wipe them out, ordering in late December that family laws shall be "canceled" and such issues placed under the jurisdiction of strict Islamic legal doctrine known as sharia.

This week, outraged Iraqi women -- from judges to cabinet ministers -- denounced the decision in street protests and at conferences, saying it would set back their legal status by centuries and could unleash emotional clashes among various Islamic strains that have differing rules for marriage, divorce and other family issues.

"This will send us home and shut the door, just like what happened to women in Afghanistan," said Amira Hassan Abdullah, a Kurdish lawyer who spoke at a protest meeting Thursday. Some Islamic laws, she noted, allow men to divorce their wives on the spot.

"The old law wasn't perfect, but this one would make Iraq a jungle," she said. "Iraqi women will accept it over their dead bodies."

But I guess so long as the free market is going, it doesn't matter what happens to the women. Plus, all those 12 year olds can get married now.

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally posted by Not Bob
I could be wrong, but I thought that the US/UN destroyed tons of chemical and biological weapons in 1991, and that the existing known weapon sites were under inspection from then until 1998 (?), when the inspectors were kicked out.

I think that it was assumed that Hussein was trying to rebuild his program after he lost the first Gulf War, but I don't think that it was established that he did and that he therefore had tons of weapons in 2002.

the main failing in the 10000 page report that Iraq gave the UN was it did not have proof of the destruction of the weapons. we knew the weapons were there in the early 90s. iraq said they'd been destroyed but had no evidence. Hence my "no evidence" of any disposition of the weapons to Syria- up in smoke. But something happened to it, right?

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally posted by Replaced_Texan
That's not true. Iraq, even under Sadaam, was one of the better places to be a woman in the Middle East. Women could drive, they could go to school, they could work. Sadaam's Iraq was a secular nation, and the Islamic rules regarding women were not the law of the land.

Lots of them couldn't enjoy sex.

[Not Bob]

Originally posted by Replaced_Texan
But I guess so long as the free market is going, it doesn't matter what happens to the women.

Relax, sweetie, and don't worrry your pretty little head about it. In a perfect society, you'd get to vote, but we men know that important things like lower tarriffs and Adam Smith's invisible hand trump your silly little "rights" in the real world.

[sgtclub]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
Both sides can bear their share of blame, and there's really no point in trying to fight over who is more at fault. It takes two to tango. Lasting peace is only going to come when both sides agree to it. Anyone who pins the blame on one side or the other is just trying to prolong the misery.

I was right, you were pulling that moral relativity shit.

[sgtclub]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
There already is a civil war going on, but because the country's military and police forces are so non-existent, we are doing the fighting for the government.

Your ability to find some shred of happy news in Iraq is amazing -- it's Chicken Little in reverse.

There just is zero reason for Sunnis to buy into a Shi'ite led government. The Kurds and Shi'ites have the oil, and without control of the national government and the military -- like they've had for decades -- the Sunnis are sitting in some shitty real estate and watching their neighbors get rich.

What? Ty, you just had a brain fart. There is every reason for the Sunnis to buy into to a 1 Iraq, precisely because they are sitting on shitty real estate and no oil.

[sgtclub]

Originally posted by Replaced_Texan
How is it progress and overall success if women have fewer rights than they did two years ago?

Not progress for women, but progress in the nation building effort.