I find it interesting that people who have said "no lets not war" have made no point about why we shouldnt go to war. Other than war is bad.

Sure we could let saddam sit back and build a large cache of weapons or we could stop it from the get go before he has the chance to do that, before he has the chance to sell them to fundamentalists, before he has the chance to threaten anyone with them.

Some people argue that is purely for the oil. This is a half truth, yes bush would love to get his grubby little hands on the oil. But if it were purely for the oil, then there are other countries he could, and would go after since they have more oil reserves (such as the saudi's).

Dowls, you cant 100% believe powells speech. While it does have some merit, i think a lot of the points he made were hugely over exagurated and he was simply trying to get some UN support.

I dont think that war is necessary. But, I think that we should fight the easier war now, with much less casualities, than wait 5 or 10 years until iraq has built its forces up and actually trained them.

In response to radicools point, people join the armed forces with (hopefully) the idea that one day they may have to fight. So saying its not the politicians that have to fight and thats why they do it is wrong. Any person in the armed forces today could have chosen a different path and been a politician, but they didnt. I dont think that we would have to worry about conscription either. Americas army prides its self on being the best trained army in the world. I doubt they would want some inexperienced Australians among their ranks.

I would also like to that I fully support a war on judge jules.


This has been an escee production spoken by escee for the tranceaddicts party canberra

there's a political discussion thread for this kind of essay writing!

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quote:

Originally posted by Teknoscaper. there's a political discussion thread for this kind of essay writing!

So true!!!

BTW, if you want to watch Colin's hour and half presentation, you can view it on bbc world

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"To that guy, who asked me to sign this piece of paper saying that I’m number one… thumbs up to you man!!!" - Ferry Corsten

australia and usa = allies

when your allies need your help, you goto their aid. when we need theirs, they will come to us.

i believe we have something similar in the australian society, it's called 'mateship', some of you should look it up.

"Americas army prides its self on being the best trained army in the world. I doubt they would want some inexperienced Australians among their ranks."

you will actually find that the australian army, in particular our special forces, are among THE best trained in the world. Ever wonder why the SASR are always being deployed? cos the yankee's are always asking for the best, and that's exactly what we give em.

im proud to support a war against iraq with or without the fagets from the UN condoning it, and make no mistake, the sassys are ready to play their part.


side issue:

what is really bugging me currently and in the more recent past, is the fact that the aus media is so 'anti-war'. they may not come outright and say 'we are anti-war', but i've noticed the amount of stories they run of anti-war statements/sentiments/demonstrations/etc are numerous every night on the news, as opposed to the pro-war or even support-war/the US in which the total number of stories usually tally 0 minutes. so what happens is, if the only thing people hear or see is anti-war, then eventually, whether they know it or not, become anti-war themselves.
i just wish there could be some sort of balance, so that people could make up their own mind, instead of regurgitating the popular anti-war rhetoric that they saw on last nights tv.

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quote:

Originally posted by sifntj0r you will actually find that the australian army, in particular our special forces, are among THE best trained in the world. Ever wonder why the SASR are always being deployed? cos the yankee's are always asking for the best, and that's exactly what we give em.

well duuuuhhhhhh, but he wasn't talkin bout them, he was talkin bout conscription, i dunno bout u but the only experience i have with this stuff comes from Counter-strike and Rogue Spear, hence the inexperienced part


on the whole war thing, all i have to go on is the crap the media feeds us, but i do think war is somewhat justified purely because it'll save a lot more bloodshed in the future, esp if bush & co are right

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War on Terror ? America is promoting terror by attacking Iraq, this is only adding Fuel to the fire to a situation which will become out of control. Another key issue to remember is the underlying fact that the American economy is on the brink of major recession and its only resolution to solve this problem seems to be the rich oil resource we all know exists in Iraq.

Innocent people all around the world are not responsible for any wrong doing I think terrorism is committing any crime against the peoples of ANY nation. Peace Out and long live the beautiful creation of TRANCE. if everyone in the world appreciated Trance as much as us TA's do then I think this world would be a much brighter place

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cbf

quote:

Originally posted by DJ_Ballistic well duuuuhhhhhh, but he wasn't talkin bout them, he was talkin bout conscription, i dunno bout u but the only experience i have with this stuff comes from Counter-strike and Rogue Spear, hence the inexperienced part

rogue spear eh, clan/alias? :P

there's really nothing to fear from conscription, it simply isnt going to happen with this war, and i doubt ever in the future unless it was a major world war. there would be just too much public outcry, society is far different today than it was back in the first half of last century. the aus army isnt looking for soldiers, i know, because i've been waiting since july last year. now they're saying they might open up applications in june/july this year, who knows :\

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quote:

im proud to support a war against iraq with or without the fagets from the UN condoning it, and make no mistake, the sassys are ready to play their part.

i wouldnt call the un a bunch of fagots. i dunno but it seems that without a governing body such as this there would be alot more trouble round the place. the americans influence the un so much i doubt they give a crap whether or not the un bless it
im making an unjustified comment here but around times of conscription the population would have been alot less than it is today so it shouldnt happen again..and with conscription you put at lives the risk of men that die needlessly because they have no skills
imo that is why so many ppl died in the other wars

side note: anyone ever play paintball skirmish? its mad fun but think about it....if its so easy to get hit in games like this, you come to realise that it can be so easy to get shot by a real gun

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i like you

i agree theres a threat but wtf
why now if the threat is so serious why not 5 years ago.

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and while all this crap is going on you know
there is serious issues with korea..... that could end up being the worst of the lost... especially cause the us is tied up with iraq
crazy shit

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quote:

Originally posted by sifntj0r rogue spear eh, clan/alias? :P there's really nothing to fear from conscription, it simply isnt going to happen with this war, and i doubt ever in the future unless it was a major world war. there would be just too much public outcry, society is far different today than it was back in the first half of last century. the aus army isnt looking for soldiers, i know, because i've been waiting since july last year. now they're saying they might open up applications in june/july this year, who knows :\

Umm, dude, say this war gets really bad, which is likely, the media will be pumping out so much war propaganda that most, normal people will think we have to send more troops, to defend australia. I mean look at Vietnam. Why did we send Conscripts? Because we were afraid that communism would follow the domino theory and come down and eventually take over Australia. Looking back now that is a totally ridiculous theory. Communism could not take over Aus, as the deographic stats of this country do not work with those needed for communism.

It doesn't matter what's actually happening, it's what your being told that's happening. If people think that Australia is under threat in any way they will do anything they could to defend it eg. Conscription.

Basically if it ever looks like coming in I'll have to get some desperate chick and get married til the war is ever then divorce her. Married men don't have to go (Or I'll just go to prison )

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Personally, I think that the way Bush has deflected the world's anger from Osama bin Laden to Saddam Hussein has been one of the greatest public relations efforts in history.

I agree that Saddam isn't the nicest bloke in the world, and if he is found to be producing/selling WOMD then he probably should be ousted. However, I haven't seen any evidence of this.

Remember that British intelligence "dossier" that they released a few months back? Colin Powell said it was a "fine paper" and "describe[d] in equisite detail Iraqi deception activities." Trouble is, more than half of the text was stolen straight out of the pages of magazines. (See here if you don't believe me).

Also, the US came straight out a few weeks ago and said "this factory is making chemical weapons." Satellite photos and all. Iraqi officials took Western media to the factory - the damn thing was destroyed and had been nothing but crumbling concrete for several years.

In 1998 the US launched a cruise missile attack on a factory in Sudan, claiming it was chemical weapons and had links to Osama bin Laden. The factory was hit by several Tomahawk missiles and destroyed. It turns out the factory was making aspirin, not weapons, and that there was no connection bin Laden at all. (Again, click here for evidence).

My point is that you cannot believe everything the US (or indeed Australian) government says.

Also, alliances are (or rather should be) symbiotic relationships. Co-dependance. I don't see our alliance with the US in this fashion. If we were as an important an ally as they say we are (or as important as we'd like to believe), then surely they would take our opinions into consideration, which I don't see happening. To bastardise networking terminology, it's a client/server relationship, not a peer-to-peer relationship.

And from their perspective, why not? What do we have to offer them that isn't an actress or dangerous animal? Very little. I'm not suggesting we should end the US alliance, far from it, but the position we are in at the moment doesn't exactly scream strength.

We stand on the brink of war in Iraq (because war will happen in the next month or two, however much we argue and debate). Australian servicemen and women are going to die, so the US populace can feel slightly safer until the next public enemy is announced.

Personally I see this as a conflict that has nothing to do with us. We are a long way out of the range of the WOMD that Saddam supposedly possesses (of which there is still no solid proof). Even if the Saddam/al-Qaeda link is proven (which it still isn't), regional terrorist groups like Jemaah Islamiah pose a much greater threat to us.

So to sum up a long post (sorry about that ), we shouldn't go to war in Iraq because:

- Iraq has nothing to do with us, we should worry about our own region

- Being a part of what is seen in the Muslim world as a war against Islam will increase the likelihood of terrorist acts in and against Australia exponentially (I might remind everyone that the world's largest Muslim country is just to our north)

- Bush has still left the big questions unanswered. Why is Saddam a much graver threat now than he was five years ago? Why can't we take several months to carry out thorough weapons inspections in Iraq (which ironically could help the US if the inspectors find the "smoking gun" Bush so desperately needs)?

Looking in a different light, this whole debate doesn't really matter. We can argue the ins and the outs of war until we are blue in the fingers from typing, but the world is going to be plunged into war anyway for one simple reason - America can do what it likes and there is nobody to stop them. I find the whole "single superpower" world to be quite terrifying, in that Bush really can do what he likes, so long as the American people are on his side. During the cold war, the USSR acted as a counter-balance, ensuring that the US didn't always (or often) get its own way, eg Vietnam, Korea, Afghanistan, Berlin etc. That counter-balance is now gone. I'll leave you all to ponder that

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