Anti-war people don't want to hear from actual Iraqi people

[Coyote]

It was, after all, 12 million or so total, many Homosexuals, Gypsies, Communists, Jehova's Witnesses, and Slavs also went; supposedly captured GIs that were Jewish or Black were sometimes sent although I have only heard tales of this...

I myself am sometimes guilty of seing only the 6 million Jews; all I can say in defense of my ignorance is that the Jewish situation strikes closer to home for me and I see it as an immediate attention-grabber... but in the long run, probably most of us on this board, for one reason or another, would have ended up on the trains. Gays, ethnic groups... hell, I'm in good company...

[Nathan F]

No wonder the personell in the USAF are so ridiculed and made fun of, you actually DO live up to the jokes about you.

Alright, pal, I know that I have come in late in this debate, but I am taking that personally.

If you will notice, more jokes are made about the idiot protestors who refuse to look at any side other than their own (I.E., YOU).

You, my friend, are more ridiculed than any personell in the USAF have ever been. And you are deserving of it.

This recent banter about the Holocaust proves anything that has ever been said about you...

[Enlightenment]

You, my friend, are more ridiculed than any personell in the USAF have ever been. And you are deserving of it.

Let's compare.

Ted: posts obnoxious comments on the Internet.

USAF: allows its pilots to kill allied troops and civilians through negligence, reckless disregard for human life, or simple insitutional failure.

Looks to me like the USAF is orders of magnitude worse than Ted.

[Nathan F]

You, my friend, are more ridiculed than any personell in the USAF have ever been. And you are deserving of it.

Let's compare.

Ted: posts obnoxious comments on the Internet.

USAF: allows its pilots to kill allied troops and civilians through negligence, reckless disregard for human life, or simple insitutional failure.

Looks to me like the USAF is orders of magnitude worse than Ted.

Allows its pilots to kill allied troops?

WTF?

Last time I checked, these guys were courtmarshalled.

Again I point out, friendly fire is going to happen. It just happens more to the US, seeing that the US does most of the fighting. Once the other forces start doing 80% of the fighting for the UN or NATO, and if the US still makes the same number of screw ups, then I will see something wrong.

[Knife]

Then tell me why ships full of jews fleeing from Germany were turned back from EVERYWHERE and ended back in Germany?

They could've done something, but no-one in power cared.

The average citizen didn't know about the holocaust, hell, my grandmother who was a teacher in England during the war never found out about it until post-war, when the news reels showed clips of the death camps.

*snort* You answered your own question, Ted. First paragraph is the question, second paragraph is a continuation of the question and the last paragraph is the answer.

[Rob Wilson]

Ok I'll just tackle the points raised rather than answering the individual posters, as I'm late hitting this rapidly wandering thread.

The march in London
Was a purely politically motivated event. It had little to do with stopping the war, it had nothing to do with peace. It was purely created as leverage to bring Tony Blair into check, and set him up for a fall if he doesn't start toeing the politically nice line that gets votes. Labour spent a lot of time sorting out the econmy and making ther Voter friendly advances, and then Tony goes and follows Bushes arse striaght into a war the Voters don't want and that is bad if your party wants to get elected!
The quoted Iraqi's had a lot of things to say, but they also have an agenda to get Saddam out. Though this is commendable because of his conduct, they do have a demonstrable bias.

War In Iraq
Well, as most of you know, As Iraq is member of the UN, The US and UK cannot just go in there and remove Saddam because they think they have to. They do that and every other nation in the UN must declare War on the US and UK and that's very bad for the Economy. [yes I realise that's the simplified version, but I shouldn't have to explain it in detail, as you all should know them by now... after all you are all speaking with such authority on the War in this and other threads. ]
Unfortunately, every UN based hoop produced has seen Saddam jumping through and then pointing and laughing. This means that pretty soon Bush and Blair are going to be very, very stuck for something to do. They Need Saddam to 'blink' first and do something stupid that will allow them to roll the troops in there and turf him out. The chances of that happening are slim.
There is a need to remove Saddam, and every other dictator out there, but Bush is watching his window of opportunity slip away (and i seriously hope he doesn't do anything stupid). Both he and Blair gambled on WOMD being found in Iraq and when that failed to happen, well ooops.

I do feel we should remove Saddam, but the way the US and UK have handled this so far is like a Keystone Kops version of International Politics.

Peace Protesters
have every right to protest and say what they think. Many of the genuinely don't want wars, and to be honest it would be a wonderful things if wars ended tomorrow. Unfortunately, that's not really likely.
Calling them idiots simply because they don;t hold the same views as you, only shows your own level of ignorance, not patriotism. Calling them idiots if they think that, in face of all evidence, shipping themselves to Iraq as volunteer human shields will stop a war, is stating an obvious fact.

The holocaust
Yes, a lot of people only know about the Jewish deaths, but then a lot of people don't know about the Death Marches! It's a fault of the edusation system not highlighting the true depths of cruelty inherent in wars, and what it can produce. Simply spouting bullshit about it being a Jewish Conspiracy gets you nowhere, doesn't address the real root of the problem and shows your own bigotry and lack of knowledge on the subject in general.

Dictators
Yep, there are a whole lot of them, and Saddam isn't that big a player on the one-hit, large-scale slaughter of his own people. Of course the fact that he prefers the long term, small groups/towns at a time approach means that over the years he's accrued himself a respectable total of Citizens killed. Yes, it's doubtless true that we're concentrating on him right now, because Iraq has oil and he humiliated Shrubs dad (in shrubs eyes anyway), but he is still a Dictator, he still has killed Millions of his own people and he still needs to be removed.

Civilian Casualties
where the hell did these figures come from?? How many people in Afghanistan died because it was liberated? How many of them died from Starvation or lack of medicine, who would have anyway from the same things without the war? Do you really think the Iraqi internal Superstructure is such that a small disruption will lead to the deaths of 10's of thousands of people? Who was the last dictator to be overthrown without civilian casualties?

Enlightenment
Mike asked if we had ever seen him say nice things about other people. Well yes, in the Photo and Artwork Forum. I don't know what his issues are about Muslims and, well apparently everyone else, but he's entitled to his views and stating them (he's also entitled to getting his errors shoved in his face, but that's another story )

And lastly
Friendly Fire
It happens, and yes the US has more than it's fair share of blame in the past few years, but they are hardly the only people in the world who mistakenly kill allies in warfare. I've gone off before, on the Fuckwit, moron pilots that killed my friends in the Gulf War, and deservedly so, but I draw the line at blaming the entire USAAF!
If they were as incompetent as some would have you believe then the Friendly fire totals of both the Gulf and Afghanistan would have been much higher, but hey, why let thought and logic get in the way of your agenda's and diatribes, right? Heaven forbid you actually keep your focus on the individual pilots that fucked up, when you can make sweeping generalisations about the entire organisation!
You want to complain about friendly fire? Join up, share the risks, learn what combat's really like, then talk from a position of knowledge. You have a personal problem with the Military/US/whatever, then have the balls to just say so, and don't try to run off at the mouth using something you don't know about as a cover!
It's war, shit happens, deal with it, we do!

[Xisiqomelir]

A little off-topic, but I think your new avatar is fantastic, 3rd impact