I've attached a 'scan' of a newspaper editorial titled...
"We must not waver" This is what the war on terror's about, says Peter Worthington
Mr. Worthington is a WWII Canadian Veteran who, in my opinion, is about as conservative and morally straightfoward as one can find. He's not afraid to voice unpopular and politically-incorrect statements and opinions.
I think you'll enjoy the 'read' as much as I did.
It definitly got me thinking about a lot more issues regarding Iraq, the middle-east in general and the royal/tyrannical regimes in the middle-east.
Lowtech...
Ballistic Software is kinda' like bore sighting...
'Gets you on paper' for you to fine tune at the range...
Small and fast? Big and slow? Whatever... Just spin a high SD bullet real fast to make it work.
Lowtech, Which Canadian paper ran this? The last paragraph is the one I hope your country men will give careful thought to. BTW is Fox news now widely available, and if so are many Canadians watching it?
In today's world, my view is that any country that does not take race, religion & political affiliation into consideration are blind and ignorant fools. Politically correct concerned over the race card issue, to me is simply unacceptable.
A retrospective example would have been for the United States to require any Sicilians wishing to emigrate to the United States during the Great Depression to pass through a much finer net than say, an Englishman. English immigrants, just weren't remotely as likely to have ties to organized crime in this country. Profiling? Yes, please spend my tax dollars to do so in the most effective way possible.
I posted a news link a few days ago about a Sikh-Canadian-politician-woman-drug dealer-public death threat maker..... I knew virtually nothing about Sikhism when I read that article. What did strike me however, was that this woman felt cheeky enough about her political/criminal network of support to make death threats while she was being held on felony charges in a foreign country.
The seemingly outrageous nature of the above got my curiosity up about Sikhism. A thumbnail sketch of what I've found so far is that:
A Hindu fellow named Nanak was born into the warrior caste, about 500 years ago. While taking his morning river bath he reported that he received a revelation that neither Hinduism nor Islam had it right, and came up with what I would call a kind of a Universalist Unitarian version of those two religions.
After the first guy passed the way. There was a succession of 10 Sikh gurus who were believed to be enlightened Masters that were not reborn under the law of karma, but returned to earth directly as god's enlightened messengers.
A fast forward to modern history shows that in June of 1984, the Indian army invaded their Golden Temple to apprehend someone they described as a Sikh militant leader. They trashed the temple, while they were there. Then in October of 1984, Indira Gandhi was assassinated by two of her own bodyguards. Both of these men were sheiks and both are now viewed as martyrs for having given their lives in carrying out the assassination.
Sikhism is currently ranked as the fifth largest and youngest of the world religions. 80% still lives in India, with about 500,000 living in Britain, 225,000 living in Canada and about 100,000 living in the USA.
I'm sure that some posters here will be offended by my request for more racial/religious/political profiling. Perhaps I will offend a few of our Canadian members when I plea with you to consider the possibility that your "progressive" immigration laws may be a sort of Achilles heel in the armor of Western civilization. John
Do you think that large parts of the world's population are ready to declare thkat "Islamists do not play well with others"? And having done so, move to terminate them with extreme prejudice?
The world wonders.
jim
LCDR Jim Dodd, USN (Ret.) "If you're too busy to hunt, you're too busy."
All you Canadians, be careful the speech control,gun control people ie (government) maybe listening. Think liberal thoughts or go to jail or lose permission to possess a rifle AH life in a free country. God bless Canadians like Peter Worthington.
If it doesn't have fin, fur, feathers or go bang, I just ain't interested.
Well Jim, I must say that my judgment in this area is a tad clouded. 20 some years ago, one of the professors in my graduate program was a black guy that had converted to Islam. His main goal appear to be attempting to have sex with every white girl who came through the program and then converting them, not necessarily in that order. When he began hitting on a woman that I was dating at the time, I went to the administration to complain.
The spineless administration at the State University of New York at Brockport basically said, "Sorry kid he's black, we are not touching this one with a 10 foot pole". An addition I should make to my own list of things that tick me off is, any type of political correctness that involves becoming excepting of unacceptable behaviors, simply because the perpetrators are a member of some perceived minority within the greater population.
To answer your question, I would have to say no. The various talking heads continue to tell us that the vast majority of Muslims are moderate....which reminds me of things like Bigfoot unicorns and UFOs. Everybody's heard of them, but how about confirmed sightings? John
Iraq was a big mistake. Saddam had a price on his head - put out by Osama bin Laden. He was a secular leader who the Islamisist's hated. He had nothing to do with 9/11.
Now - want to combat the real terrorists? Target the ones who are doing it (17 of the 9/11 terrorists) and almost all the finance behind the rest of them - the Saudi's! Remember the Saudi's - the ones that were all allowed to fly home in the day's after 9/11 while everyone else was stuck on the ground.
America's friendly (but brutal) dictatorship in Saudi Arabia is the real money behind almost all of the terrorism today. But then, they have oil...
Brian
Vernon BC Canada
"Nothing in life - can compare to seeing smiles on your children's faces."
When the war on Iraq started most polls showed about 75% of Canadians thought it was a bad idea to go there for the reasons given. Our government listened to the people (shouldn't they always?) and we didn't go. I thought we, as a country - were right on that one.
On the other hand, Canada went to Afghanistan to fight the Taliban (who were responsible for 9/11) and the government's decision was supported in poll after poll taken - as being in line with what the public wanted. I supported that decision.
The American government decided that invading Iraq was the right thing to do. So they did it. When they did, poll after poll of Americans showed they had the support of the majority of Americans - so it can be argued that as a democracy - the US did the right thing for it's people.
Lately, it appears the American public has swung the other way - and wants it's troops out. Eventually it will be public pressure that will bring the American troops home - just as happened in the Viet Nam conflict.
I'm sad to say, I think that when the American troops come home, the world will indeed be a more dangerous place than before that war, when Saddam was being held in check with the no-fly zones and the sanctions.
Intelligent people can disagree on what's the right thing to do.
Countries can too.
I hope you can agree that governments are not in power to dictate their own wishes to the people - but rather, are put in power to serve their country's people.
My country's people spoke loud and clear to our government about not thinking that an Iraq invasion - was right for us.
Kutenay, for a man with your memory - you forgot? I don't toke - ever...I make all my own beer and wine, and except for all of my daily aspirin's for my "boxer's hands" those are the only drugs I take on a regular basis. But, if it makes you happy, you can think otherwise.
Last edited by BCBrian; 07/11/05.
Brian
Vernon BC Canada
"Nothing in life - can compare to seeing smiles on your children's faces."
I know Bri', I just like to kid you a bit, it helps to keep you mentally sharp! How did you come to have "boxers hands"....punching out too many "dinosaurs" like me????
Seriously, although I no longer trust any government, I support the most thorough military "clean out" of EVERY nation in the world that has terrorist groups in it, i.e., I supported the British in Ulster and I favour a state-of-the-art Canadian Armed Forces which would be fighting alongside our Yank and Brit brothers.
Maybe, when a "suitcase nuke" devastates a large part of Vancouver, after being planted at the docks by some "person of colour", and this can happen easily, you will come to see just how vulnerable we are.....and who the enemy really is.
BTW, as a loyal union man, do you realize that being a home brewer and vintner actually conflicts with your social democrat brother and sister workers who must make these beverages to earn their living? Fie on you, BCB, you are not in "solidarity" with the agenda and may face expulsion from the B.C.T.F., the best thing that could happen to a dedicated teacher, IMNSHO!
Brain, I agree with Canada's postion. I supported the Afghanistan operation... that was self evident. I never supported the Iraq operation, believed the American people were being lied to and manipulated and predicted the mess we are now in, including the man/material drain from Afghanistan. The Canadian government may be dead wrong about many things but this was not one of them.
You're mistaken sir if you refer to the "weapons of mass destruction lie" that has been repeated ad nauseum.
There's a whole list of "bright lights" from the Democratic Party that viewed the same intelligence (including other than American) that Bush made his descision on that also obviously believed and stated openly that Saddam Hussein had the stuff.
GWB was wrong about WMDs but so was everybody else (even though older warheads were found that were designed to carry chemical agents and arrtillary shells filled with mustard gas and sarin were found) so it is certainly clear he didn't lie about it.
George, if you read my post I never mention WMD... I just said we were "lied to." The war was a foregone conclusion long before the PR campaign and the sharade at the UN. The "evidence" we went to Iraq with was so thin as to be laughable. Colin Powell has tarnished his reputation for ultimately signing off on something he knew was wrong. It was the idealog's like Rumsfeld, Cheany and Wolfowitz that wanted this assanine war. I personally didn't raise my kids to be cannon fodder for oil interests, etc... this is not a war about "democracy" nor is it a war about terrorism. Those are the pretext's for a much broader agenda.
“Perfection is Achieved Not When There Is Nothing More to Add, But When There Is Nothing Left to Take Away” Antoine de Saint-Exupery
You're right about that; their acknowledgement that Saddam must go and action taken against Saddam preceded the "campaign by many years; in fact, it had garnered bipartisan support way back to at least '91, since the Gulf War.
I disagree about it being a "Cheney, Rumsfeld, wolfowitz war". The spin is/was they concocted this in a '98 think tank meeting when in truth as I alluded to above we had been trying to get shed of Hussein by several different methods since '91 - with Democratic Party involvment also.
And the spin that terroism (Al-Quida et others) and Irag are not connected is easily disproven.
I don't want your sons to be "cannon fodder" and I'm not saying this lightheartedly at all but nobody who has ever died for this country or freedom wished to be.
Good intentions will always be pleaded for every assumption of authority. It is hardly too strong to say that the Constitution was made to guard the people against the dangers of good intentions. -- Daniel Webster
Some of the above posts remind me of the script of Fahrenheit 911. People forget that we have been attacked numerous times by terrorists in the past 20 to 40 years and basically nothing was done about it until 911. There are over 3 billion Muslims on this earth. Let�s just say that around 10 percent of them are extremists who would kill an American if they got a chance. That equals around 300 million extremists that we must kill, stifle, or change.
What is the best way to ensure our long-term security? The only answer is to spread freedom throughout the world. We are starting in Iraq � and doing a good job of it. We have taken over a country the size of California with less than 2000 of our bravest men and women�s lives lost. We have built schools across the nation and inoculated almost every child in Iraq. You can find story after story of all the good things we have done and are doing. Of course, you won�t find these stories on the BBC, NBC, ABC, CBS, or Al Jazeera.
I have not seen one poll that said Americans want to get the troops out before the job is done. Of course we all want the troops to come home � but the vast majority of Americans want our troops to stay until Iraq can take care of itself. This will not be another Viet Nam. Re-electing Pres. Bush proved that we do have the resolve.
