Padawan???
And why do I have alot to learn? Enlighten me oh genius

They will fight for months if they take the fight into Baghdad, it would be better to just seige the city.

A siege will last the same amount of time, kill the same amount of people, if not more.



Hahahaha.

A seige will, kill more Iraquis than allied troops, but only works if you have the stomach to watch people starve to death.

Yes? Did somebody call?

Now, to remain a little bit on topic (like that's a req on this board ), my views on the entire difference between military and civilian casualties: it's all a matter of choice. When oe joins the army they sign up knowing their are certain occupational hazards (eg. being shot by foreign or friendly bullets). They choose to accept that risk. So when they are shot in a gunfight, of course it's still a human being losing his life but he knew that was a risk and accepted it.
A civilian however, never made the choice to risk life and limb for country and <insert current madman claiming to be leader here>. Instead, war is forced upon them and if they die, it was without any form of choice in the matter so that's why I find their deaths more regrettable (but not worse as a soldiers death, since as you already pointed out, they are both human beings and their lives are equal in value).

Of course, this means that any soldier who was coerced or tricked into signing up is in my eyes a civilian and every bloke who willingly picks up a weapon and starts shooting at the enemy is military personel...

On antoher note: WTF is up with the expression friendly fire? I mean, as soon as gunfire hits you, I wouldn't exactly call it friendly no matter who is firing the gun... Just a thought...

Nice...

That is not my train of thought.
Yes, all wars are equally bad.
No, it wouldn't. His ideas will live on. He'll be misused for pro-war propaganda. He'll become a martyr for one side and a trophy for the other. All that supports and strengthens the war again.

When someone joins the communist party, it was his choice, too. When someone decides to kill his wife, it's his choice, too. If someone decides to like Star Trek better than Star Wars, it's his choice, too. Are any of these excuses to kill him?
What about the 'civilians' who support war then? Following your logic, they'd be more like 'soldiers' than 'civilians'...

On a seperate issue to the war, what do people think of the upcoming - largest ever - expansion of the EU thats about to go ahead?

There has been almost no media coverage of it here in England because all the news channels are obsessed with Iraq. Id like to know more about the implications of it and if it wasnt for this war then I'm sure it would have been 24 hour rolling coverage of this, in Europe at least.

I think Germany, Britain and France are going to lose out big from this, so are other smaller countries who farm using the same methods as us, i,e, modern methods. We have industrialised agriculture that generally only employs 2-5% of our population, a lot of the new member states have entire economies dependant on agriculture with anything upto 50% of the workforce being employed in farming.

If these new countries are going to be brought into the common agricultural policy at the same time as they join the EU then who's going to pay for all the subsadies that the 'big 3' can barely afford to pay now?

Free trade = Yes!
Want us to pay your farmers wages = Fuck Off! we struggle paying our own!

Thats what I think.

Edited by fretz at 16:09 on April, 07th 2003

The problem with basically everything concerning the EU is that it's not democratic and not transparant to the people. Everything is done by a bunch of bureaucrats (not even politicians)! How are 'we' supposed to be positive about these developments if we aren't even asked or even only told what's happening? There is still a long way to go until this 'institution' is becoming acceptable...

The problem arising with these new members is not so much the joining countries, but (again) the structure of the EU. Most of the money goes into agriculture - that's the problem! We already have the 'butter mountain', because the EU guarantees certain prices. This structure is only artificially keeping something alive which nobody needs. If all this crap was cleaned up, there wouldn't be the slightest problem resulting from new members...

Excuse my ignorance, I know countries had joined the EU, but I have no idea which ones. I tried to find out by listening to "news" for 2 hours, but everytime that story was due to be broadcasted, it got interrupted by "Breaking War News".

Cyprus ,Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia.

Turkey wanted to join as well but got refused for invading and stealing territory from Cyprus, and human rights abuses.

Off the record I think the main reason they got rejected is because they are a muslim country and upto now the EU has strictly been a christian club.

Thats a clear reason why Germany, Britain and France are going to get shafted.

I wonder if there will be an explosion of - perfectly legal - economic migrants?

About Turkey: I think they shouldn't be accepted into the EU for a simple reason: only a tiny part of their country is in Europe

I agree. Or else we should rename the European Union to the Eurasian Union...

But even then, you're just asking for conflict with Eastasia.

Back to the old war subject, who thinks so far its all been a walk in the park and only now is the shit really going to start hitting the fan

Iraq - a country so free from tyranny its people just kill one another for the fun of it, because there is no-one around to act like a tyrant.

They need some law and order and damn fast.

I guess the USA should prepare for a few decades of being forced to station military in that region... one of the least stable regions of the world, and they drop some bombs right into it. Smart.

Actually, the US does not always stay in the latest country they attacked. Take Afghanistan: Go in, throw bombs, go out. And nothing has changed there. The "warlords" who are in power in Afghanistan can be glad they don't live on some billion tons of oil.

Is anyone else thinking the Kurds will turn into a 'problem' later by the way? Now, they've been armed by the USA because they were 'useful' to them in some way - just like it happened with the Taleban, with the Baath party and this 'Northern Alliance' in Afghanistan. Wasn't one of the points pro-war fanatics always used "the USA might have made mistakes in the past (concerning giving arms to bad people), but they've learned from that"? It doesn't look like it to me...

Yes they will become a problem, but they wont be a problem to the US, they will be a problem to Iraq and Turkey.

Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia all over again. Turkey will lose 50% of their population and land, so will Iraq.

In 2 or 3 years time the borders will be redrawn like they were redrawn by The League Of Nations after the Ottoman Empire collapsed and the British took over Messopatamia in around 1917.

Turkey and Iraq will become Turkey, Kurdistan and Iraq.

I agree, just like we've been in Korea for around 50 years.



That's a definite. I'm not sure in which way though, but right away Iraq and Turkey are going to be not to happy with them (the Iraqi people, not the puppet government that is going to be installed). There is going to be considerably more amount of strife there than before. I think we just ripped open a whole bag of war that was precariously contained before.

And we spell it Taliban in Imperialistic