yep.

agreed

You have some valid points 3d60. I don't understand why we (the US) still have troops in Europe, Korea, Japan, (name everywhere else around the globe)... spending money to "protect" people that don't need or want it. I'd much rather sepnd that money here in the states.

really? you don't understand why we want to keep military presence near our allies? does helping them really seem taht obscure to you?

europe: we have them there because germany can not have a military, so we have to help protect it, and in the rest of the countries, because we need a presence in that part of the world, because we're so far away.

korea: the WAR IS NOT OVER in north korea you idiot. we're simply in the longest truce in military history, we're mainly there because someone has to be intimidating enough to keep the NCs from crossing the DMZ.

japan: they can not have a military, same as germany we are the ONLY protection they have. find me ONE country official that would protest our presence in those countries

Germany does have a military and has sent forces to Afghanistan. I'm older then you I'm sure, but I remember the protests all around Europe when we installed theater nucs in Germany back in the 80's.

You are right that the Korean War ended in a stalemate truce, much like the first Iraq war did. I don't really think the North is going to invade the south though: they depend on them for aid. Also, the south has an army and the resources to spend more to enlarge it if they choose to. Their people don't want us there.

Japan does have a military although its constitution limits it to defensive puposes. They certainly have the resources to defend themselves. I will say that at least they pay 75% of the cost of having our troops there.

I really don't think we are helping our allies by having permanent bases in their countries. I think we have them there to make it convient to project force around the globe. I'm not anti-military, but I don't think it serves us well to be the world's policemen. One of the reasons I voted for Bush for his first term is that he said he would not do that; in reference to our action in Bosnia.

We have to ask ourselves if this interventionist policy of maintaining hundreds of thousands of troops in over 100 countries, in many cases to defend foreign borders, is worth the trillion-dollar drain on our economy. How much security for the American citizen does that really boil down to? Especially when the real threats to us come from non-state entities anyhow.
-AQ

I'm loving this debate...Its not security its trade thats being protected, afghanistan is in the middle of a projected oil pipeline....its has nothing to do with security, its about oil, Iran will be next then who knows

I'm genuinely curious to know what the U.S. gains specifically from maintaining these borders across the globe. My guess is that it's very little.

Oil and other interests are definitely involved. As are trade relationships and monetary policy (I fucking shiver when I hear that phrase, just a newspeak way of saying charity in most cases).

I really think that most of our foreign bases are there to project authority. Waving our dick in the wind.
AQ

i think it's a benefit for the us to still have them, i mean, we are sort of at a disadvantage because we're so far removed from europe/asia/africa, we kind of need bases around there, otherwise if we needed to take action against someone, it would take much more recources to set up a base, and whatnot.

although i agree with 3d when he says we only have them in iraq and afgan for oil

It's a net loss. The economic and political drain is not worth the possible military advantage.

The theory that we need bases on foreign soil so it's easier to attack foreign countries is insane. That's like keeping a loaded gun trained on your friend's head in case he someday becomes your enemy. The cold war proved this tactic is terribly ineffective and unsustainable.
AQ

and why the state keeps the populace ignorant, to become supplicant cannon fodder......mobile debt instigators.

hobbes agrees with me......ace

I see what you're saying, Erick, and although they are legitimately doing douchey things and still totally responsible for these antics, they're mostly pawns in the most fucked up game of chess ever. I'd go nuts at a certain point, and certainly go froggy style for sure. Shoot, i do that before I brush my teeth in the morning. Big picture, though, this war is bonkers, and the puppeteers behind it are disgusting and deserve to be ridiculed.

the puppeteers deserve ridicule and so do the asshole soldiers but i'm not sure about all the others depicted here who are clearly just fucking around.

This has nothing to do with the topic, but I just noticed that you referenced a specific point in the video, 1:30, and now I can just click on it and it shows me that point in the video. That's cool, how'd you do that?

Oh, nevermind, I see that I have the same special power you do! That's a really cool feature.

:)

Fucking around in the middle of nowhere, blowing off some steam: Totally fine.

But I'm sorry, man, but they're still accountable for taunting little kids with hand grenades, asking them if they fuck donkeys, threatening to rob their parents. 2:00 Those guys are dicks.

yes is the answer, the terms and conditions of this site are much the same....it could be argued that any site that stores user generated content has to have some right to that content to be accountable to it..... but it would seem that this still allows content and data to be farmed out to any other third party they see fit, as well as allowing creative cherry picking, recent creative competitions use the naivety of the entrant to to gain exclusive and never ending world wide rights to profit or trade with any submitted work. If your work is a winning submission you should expect that, this is how a lot of rights free content is gathered and it's very profitable for them..

3d60-
that's a slightly different issue than i'm addressing.
i'm not at the moment quite as concerned with commercial rights... but rather the possible consequences down the line for expressing our 1st amendment ones.

this is true..... rights are rights tho.......Your 1st amendment rights are being eroded daily..... we have no constitution, but we did have habeous corpus? or you are innocent until proved guilty, this is now you are guilty as prescribed by the state until you prove your innocence against the state. This fundamental shift in law was passed unnoticed or unchallenged....it nullifies centuries of struggle and law making in one fell swoop. I can now be arrested and held up to 60 days without charge or reason other than suspicion of potential wrong doing. This is a very comfortable uniformed prison were all in, and it sickens me that we have allowed it to happen under the auspices of protecting our liberty. My liberty has gone has yours?

there is this ringing in my ears,
could be a cracked bell in philly
or just the din of a well amplified life...

in milan kunderas novel "the unbearable lightness of being" the citizens of prague were reacting to the communist take over...
holding protests...taking pictures, shooting films, making art about their struggle so that they could gather support from the rest of the world to the injustice. but then what ended up happening is that all the pictures and films got confiscated by the ruling powers and used as evidence of individuals noncompliance with the "party".
if things keep going the way they have been here... if the new laws and executive orders (that 3d60
is referring to) are put into effect, creating works like wreck and salvage do could be "legal" cause to label and arrest them as "domestic terrorists".

these laws only hold power as long as there are people who enforce them... and people normally only enforce bad laws when their own family income depends
on it...

all public officials swear an oath to defend the constitution of the united states... police, soldiers, congressional reps, presidents... their jobs are to defend the constitution from enemies foreign and DOMESTIC. we need to start enforcing the oaths that these people have taken... A bunch of vets just issued a citizens arrest warrant for bush and cheney to the national archives in d.c. ... some small towns in new england have said they would detain them for war crimes the next time they enter the area...

Do not trust or believe Fema....they have the most fascist and far reaching executive orders ever procured to control and enslave people.... you/ me / everybody is / are / will be fucked if you let this status quo go on.

On the one hand, I was really appalled by the soldiers' behavior. However, early in the clip I thought, "Well, they need to have fun, too, and they are young men, after all..." So the clips of the soldiers goofing off with fellow soldiers don't really bother or offend me... but the "Fuck Iraq" and the little girls, and the soldiers offering the young boy a grenade... that made me sick.

I hate and love this clip. Thanks to Nelson for making it, and you for posting it.

The good soldiers are represented literally everywhere else.

I have two cousins in the military, so I could not bring this issue up at a family gathering for fear of offending them. I couldn't bring it up in my group of friends back in Indiana because so many of them are conservative republicans, and believe that if you criticize the government, or god forbid, the military, you are supporting the terrorists. I am not exaggerating this.

My dad and I talked about this topic when he was driving me to the airport a while back, but it felt like we were talking under our breath even when we were the only two people in the car.
-AQ

It's increasingly hard to have a conversation about anything these days. It's not just conservative republicans who resort to knee jerk platitudes when discussing things that have no easy solutions.

Very true.

True! We've been polarized!

A bunch of vets just issued a citizens arrest warrant for bush and cheney to the national archives in d.c. ... some small towns in new england have said they would detain them for war crimes the next time they enter the area...

might be a good place to start?

Civil action is going through the courts to instigate a public enquirery in to 911.... join the widows fight for justice, truth and honesty.

cooperativeresearch.org/project.jsp?project=lossofcivilliberties

check it out check what you all have given up...without your express knowledge or VOTE!!!

oh jesus, you're one of those 9/11 pigeons? figures.

cracked.com/article_15740_was-911-inside-job.html

Maybe just maybe you are being lied too, just maybe the evidence and facts are just that and should be, examined and debated in an open court..maybe your country wants you ignorant stupid and compliant.....

I'm with the widows of those fireman, workers, employees all of whom fought tooth and nail to secure the right to open trial of what you bandy as conspiracy theories.

why don't you take the time examine what those most closely affected by this complex event, have to say, before passing judgement

I'll take the word, of Historians, scientists, firemen, eye witnesses, any number of clear proven pieces of evidence against your ignorance any day.

and i'll take the side of the men and women who cleaned up the pentagon, who found the bodies of the dead people, who picked up chunks of airplane

i'll take the side of american society of civil engineers, of the family and friends of the passangers on the planes who said their loved ones called them during the hijacking, explaining that they could see the new york skyline aproacing, and DC.

i'll take the side of every credible journalist, republican, democrat, scientist, fireman, poliecemen, and witness who saw what happened that day, before i belive what your tryign to sputter out.

i will not take your side

i won't take the side of some punk with an imac who admits that he set out to make a FICTIONAL STORY, about 9/11 being a conspiricy

i won't take the side of a man who searched the web for photos of the pentagon ignoring the many with wrekage, just to promote his missle idea

i won't take the side of a man who was wiling to take money from Phillip Jayhan, who believes that the world is run by a satanic cult that enslaves prominent politicians by delivering kidnapped boys for them to molest, and then blackmailing them about it.

i won't take the side of a man who uses the american free press as his source for his video:
americanfreepress.net/html/

i won't take the word of a man who used "killtown" as his source, and man who belives that the holocaust was a con
s15.invisionfree.com/Loose_Change_Forum/index.php?showtopic=7618

i will never be like you.

Oh for fuck's sake. Why can't people have a discussion without bringing 9/11 conspiracy theory to the table?

I'm all for the notion of taking nothing for granted, and seeking truth through research, but god damn, how much evidence do you need?

My theory is that 9/11 conspiracy theorists are planted by Karl Rove to undercut the credibility of anti-neocons.

3d60, I love your videos, and I always appreciate your comments and insights, but man. You gotta focus your energy on the shit that is actually happening, not the shit that could have possibly but actually probably didn't happen.
-AQ

As I stated before I'm on the side of the widows they alone, have reason to the continued pursuance of action for a clearer debate and case for 911. It may be in the past, in fact it took me four years to wake up to it. The issue to me is that daily its used as a precedent for limiting all our freedoms all over the globe, it acted as a catalyst for the global war and has blinded so many people in to forsaking their liberty for short term security that no one knows what is the truth anymore!

All I know is that all the evidence and I mean evidence not hearsay not conjecture, but fact gathered by professionals Indicates way too many flaws and out right lies by the 911 commission as to make it a worthless sham. This was an international crime site that was violated from day one, in any other instance all concerned would be tried and convicted on the evidence that stands.

I have been campaigning for years, but it never fails to impress me the ignorance and hate that is engendered by this one day in our collective lives. Its so much easier to toe the line and not research for yourself, its so much more pleasant to be polarised in to good and evil, you can criticise me and insult me and others hard work, but you will not stop the process of finding the truth or that truth coming out.

The war on terror is false, based on a false flag operation designed to push public opinion towards TOTAL WAR! to produce debt for banks and private shareholders to profit from...period

Well, I agree that the war on terror is false, and designed to keep the military-industrial complex cranking out bags of cash in high gear. But the false flag operation premise is impossible to believe.

You honestly think that a large number of top-ranking Bush administration officials could pull off a massacre of this level with absolutely no leaks, and absolute efficiency? Are you on drugs? Have you seen their resume?
AQ

"911 commission as to make it a worthless sham"

I would agree but probably for different reasons. It was a big CYA effort by all levels of government to hide how they let us down for years.

Hitler said the biggest lie is the best.... and he burned his own parliament to get power.....how outrageously obvious does this have to be , to be noticed. WTC 7 is such an obvious inside job but still the emperors clothes still apply... glad this is still a debate... its needed

Initially I had a gut feeling that the government was involved in 9/11. I reasoned that if someone wanted to pull that off, they would need a massively important reason. Complete power over the most powerful nation on Earth would be a big enough reason. And that is what the neocons have accomplished.

All that aside, the physical evidence just does not stack up. 12 years of Catholic school made me realize that you can't trust what anyone tells you, even if they are an authority figure. So even when a scientist says something is undeniably true, I usually try to fact-check it if the issue is important to me. The facts here are stacked up pretty high in the corner of respected scientists.

As much sympathy you may feel for the widows of firemen that were killed, you have to understand that they are not experts in the field of building demolition, and their missions are skewed by their emotions.

The positive note to all of this is that there is no endgame. Regardless of how restrictive our laws are, how malicious our government becomes, who wins an election, the people who live here will always have the upper hand, for obvious reasons.

-AQ

theonion.com/content/video/9_11_conspiracy_theories

wack wack oops

The ducks was the one thing I felt actually good about from this video
your joke is now the second thing.
The rest makes me sad and angry.

at least I made someone happy..temporarily

LOL again

I saw the ducks

Possibly something like this:
my.break.com/content/view.aspx?ContentID=480484

Hahahahahaha.