Geez... seems like the NYT want the public opinion to be that we Belgians (being a small nation) are praying to the Americans to come and liberate us from 'evil imperialist Germany and France' and are cheering for them to bomb Iraq. Like they're in the position to call anyone imperious!
What a pile of crap...

Damn! They uncovered our conspiracy to take over and oppress the world

It's getting even more funny. Somebody in a blog coined yesterday the French-German alliance in this issue as "The Axis of Weasles", and today every major news TV has adopted the name. Reminds me on good old-fashioned communist propaganda...

Why have a new term when they could just have added France & Germany to the good old "Axis of Evil"? I would love to belong to that

(note to Tuss: your post has been lost in the server move - people repost)

Basically what I remember saying was that I think the people that want a war here are just bored and want to see something on the news, they'll say stuff like 'Iraq has weapons of mass destruction!' but I can't believe anybody REALLY thinks Iraq could launch nukes over here or even have somebody bring one in...

I'm getting a large feeling a helplessness as this country spirals into war. I've found anti-war movements that are brewing but they probably won't do one bit of good, unfortunately. Everyone seems to be cheering on the war effort just on the basis of 'patriotism'.

Anyway, Bush held his State of the Nation speech yesterday, and it wasn't really surprising. Basically, the US will decide whether to go to war or not on its own, without the UN. Also, we should all get better healthcare, lower taxes and drive hydrogen-powered cars in the future. Just the same old stuff...

Meanwhile, Iraq has been named to head the UN Commission on Disarmament. Can't say the UN surprised me, either...

In addition, Bush announced to present "evidence" that Iraq has weapons soon. It seems to me I heard this announcement several months agoa already.

I saw this in the paper today too.

We have our own problems, the amount of Jews (Israeli's if you will) coming to New Zealand is going overboard, and most people feel we will become the next target after the Bali bombing.

Also, the price of gas masks are going through the roof, I wonder why? A shit load they will do against a bio weapon.

hello to everybody....

i have something to say:

the sentence about the "old europe" from Mr.Rumsfeld has only one goal: to seperate Europe. What happened in the last hours ? GB, Spain, Italy, Denmark etc. said, that they are the same opinion like the USA. Now the big idea of one Europe is destroyed.
Germany (+ perhaps France) vs. GB + Spain + Italy
Europe became too important, too strong and the USA frightened to lose the first position of economic and power.

________________
itsMe
ihaveno1@gmx.net
no signature here

I've heard people speculating in the papers etc that Iraq have the means to blow up the entire world three times or something stupid like that. But if you look at the facts they may have these chemical missles but only have the means to fire them about as far as israel.

And whilst the Americans can whinge and say they have proof, the fact is that they sold the missles to iraq in the first place.

itsme: True, Europe may become less unified now, but is it the fault of Americans? Bush had one statement: "You are either with us, or against us." I don't see any reason why Europe could not be unified by either accepting or rejecting the war on Iraq. Instead, Germany and France, without consulting other EU members, declared that they were against the war on Iraq, and gave the rest of the European countries the same choice than Mr. Bush, only from the opposite perspective. Mr. Rumsfeld only stated the fact; Mr. Schroder was the one who split Europe.

If Schröder split Europe concerning this question, but would be able to prevent murdering humans by this means, I'm willing to accept this split...

(of course he/the gouvernment isn't able to; just wanted to make clear my priorities)

I'd say that Mr. Chamberlain showed the same sentiment when he signed the Munich Treaty.

(Sorry for the cheap shot, Tapuak, but I'd have to say it sooner or later, because that's exactly how I feel about the whole issue.)

If you like to make false historical comparisons, here we go: "When Hitler attacked Russia and slaughtered people there, he did the same thing Bush does now; he attacked a country before this country was going attacking himself, so he was only doing this for preventive reasons".

No, this bullshit in not my opinion. The comparison of these situations lacks of equal facts everywhere. Other than Garmany in the 1930s, Iraq is a totally destroyed and poor country, which is definitely as harmless as it never was before.

Yeah. So harmless that it's got several hundred liters of anthrax unaccounted for, a few thousand chemical warheads, and as of 1997, nuclear weapons. Why? Because the international community allowed it (just like in Germany in 1930s). The only difference is that Iraq is far enough from the traditional European battlefield to change your perception, but Saddam is as much a danger for his neighbors as Hitler was for his.

No, because if he even tried to invade another country, it would be guarenteed that the US would blow the crap out of him, very unlike Germany in the late 1930s, where it took a long time for the other countries to jump in because they really didn't feel like another war since WWI happened.

If Saddam showed any aggression, it would be the beginning of his end.

What about Mr Blair then, who publically stated he'll support Mr Bush in any way, no matter what his decision will be (without consulting the other Europeans)? That happened way before the joint statement by Germany and France. You know, if you're trying an argument, you should at least make sure you get it right, otherwise, it might backfire at you
(edit: the same can be said about the USA making decisions without consulting their 'NATO friends' by the way)

I can't help the feeling you're only bringing all this up for the sake of an argument - at least I doubt that's what you actually think. You're much too educated not to know there aren't any similarities between the situations of Germany in the 30s and Iraq nowadays. I'll only say one thing: Germany didn't have the same regime after the first world war and it changed again in 1933, i.e. before the second world war. The Iraq has the same government since more than 20 years. You know the rest as well as I do, so I'll stop here.

Edited by Mr Creosote at 00:14 on January, 30th 2003

Okay, some more points as I'm really tired of this everlasting comparison to nazi Germany.

Germany in World War II, unfortunately, had one of the most powerful armies in the world. That means this country had millions of soldiers and some of the most "up to date" weapons. It was able to conquer huge parts of the European continent and committed genocide to millions of jews. Hitler never tried to hide that his war was based on racist reasons ("master race" and all this shit).

Now compare this to Iraq. This a country which had been equipped with modern weapons by "western" countries like the US, France, Germany etc., beginning in the early Eighties. Iraq, with Hussein as the "leader", fights against Iran as the Western country's darling. Some years later, Iraq occupies Kuwait and suddenly becomes the incarnation of the evil. Iraq is destroyed by a coalition led by the US and financed by Western countries including Germany. Hussein is deliberately kept in his position after the war. People suffer from the trade restictions caused by the UN resolutions. Weapon inspectors come in and destroy the most of the weapons. The country is in terrible condition, people hardly have enough food to survive. Weapon insectors are chased away in 1998; Iraq is bombed permanently by US and British airplanes until today. 2001: weapon inspectors come in again; they find nothing but some rusty, disarmed old missiles so far.

So again: Where are the parallels? Germany in the 1930s broke the Versailles contract which was supposed to limit the amount of weapons, and it was visible for anybody they had such a powerful army and Hitler wouldn't hesitate to seize the neighbour countries. The army was certainly in its most equipped situation ever. And Iraq? Hussein continues dreaming of a "panarabic state"; most of the neighbour countries respect him for some reason. The last time Iraq got new weapons in a signifying amount was when the Western countries gave them. The Iraq army is not even closely to its power it had in 1991. The weapons it possibly still has are nothing in comparison to the arsenals of dozens of other countires in this world.

Now I tried to describe the two cases, limited to the "military" situations in the two countries, leaving out the global strategic situation, which would not give Iraq the slightest possibility to seize a continent and murder millions of people. I hope it's enough to show that the two situations are not comparable.

This definition might be of interest to you

I'd be glad if this law could be applied to discussions outside Usenet/WWW, too.