Those French!

h squared wrote:
now after the junior fatties thread, i suppose i have to add that i have
no wish to see innocent children slapped down for my amusement. just my
bf...

Your bf is an innocent child and you haven't done anything to help him
lose his innocence ?

ilanpi wrote:
I watched some D-Day documentaries this year and I finally realised
that without the USA, France would have been under German occupation
not for decades, but for centuries.
Any French person who doesn't continually appreciate the fact that
thousands of kids from farms in Kansas or Georgia (who had hardly
a clue about France) died so they could be free

benjo maso wrote:
Don't you forget the role of the USSR? The turning point of WW II wasn't
D-day, but the battle of Kursk in the summer of 1943. From that moment on,
at the eastern front the German Army wasn't capable anymore to attack, and
forced to retreat continually. In fact, Germany had lost the war and there
was no way that it could continue its occupation of Europa for many years.
Of course, the French were very happy to be liberated by the British,
Americans, Canadians, etc and not by the Russians, but that is another
matter.

And the Russians suffered some 9 million military and 19 million civilian
deaths.

wrote in message
oups.com...

Andre wrote:
Bush killed women and children in Iraq.

You've fallen for leftist propaganda.

Human casualties are not propaganda. They are a crime, regardless of what
political viewpoint you have. Whatever viewpoint we hold, we are capable of
recognizing when someone is innocently killed. Trying to bring the issue
back to left vs. right is unfair to the actual issue - people dying.

Ewoud Dronkert a =E9crit :

On Fri, 29 Jul 2005 18:46:12 +1200, Stewart Fleming wrote:
This happened to me at my sister's (hi Ewoud) wedding,

What, you married your sister?! Damn French speaking kiwi's.

Maybe he's a catholic priest (they're allowed to marry their sister).

-ilan

in 477288 20050728 233756 Dan Gregory wrote:
Bob Martin wrote:

in 477103 20050728 180815 wrote:


Any French person who doesn't continually appreciate the fact that
thousands of kids from farms in Kansas or Georgia (who had hardly
a clue about France) died so they could
be free


Not to mention the kids from Australia, New Zealand, Canada, South Africa ...
and the millions from the Soviet Union ...

I most certainly was not forgetting the forces from the Soviet Union, but they
did not directly liberate France.

Bob Martin wrote:

in 477288 20050728 233756 Dan Gregory wrote:

Bob Martin wrote:


in 477103 20050728 180815 wrote:



Any French person who doesn't continually appreciate the fact that
thousands of kids from farms in Kansas or Georgia (who had hardly
a clue about France) died so they could
be free


Not to mention the kids from Australia, New Zealand, Canada, South Africa ...

and the millions from the Soviet Union ...


I most certainly was not forgetting the forces from the Soviet Union, but they
did not directly liberate France.

Without the Eastern Front it is unlikely France would have been liberated.
Bonne Route
Dan Gregory

On 27 Jul 2005 13:10:54 -0700, "Andre" wrote:

Which never happened before the Bush invasion. And yes the 20 thousand
dead are innocent. Insurgent is the word the media uses instead of the
resistance. It helps to dull the masses senses. But they can not be
called insurgents just as the French resistance against the Nazis can
not be called insurgents either.

Worst Analogy Ever...

Yeah, everyone remembers how Belgium and Spanish "freedom fighters"
used to sneak into occupied France and drive suicide car bombs into
French Cathedrals, killing and maiming hundreds of Vichy women and
children "collaborators", to help expel the Nazi menace.

wrote:
wrote:
Well, that seems questionable from what I've generally heard and read.
Seems like most of the insurgents' acts are aimed at those they would
probably consider collaborators- Iraqi police, army, recruits, the
puppet government, along with US forces. They don't seem to care much
about collateral damage that causes the deaths of innocents, but from a
policy (as opposed to the grunts who I think mostly do care a lot in
general) standpoint, I'm not sure that the US does either.

I'd suggest you talk to the folks who have served over there, as I
have, or at least take a look at some of the various military blogs on
the web....the problem for US soldiers is they care deeply about
collateral damage, and are intimately aware that if a single stray
bullet fired by a US soldier injures or kills an innocent...

I'd suggest you re-read my post. I said "from a policy (as opposed to
the grunts who I think mostly do care a lot in general) standpoint, I'm
not sure that the US does (care about collateral damage) either." To
emphasize the relevant part, again, I said, "the grunts who I think
mostly do care a lot in general". I don't know how much plainer I could
be about it.

But, I think that Rumsfeld, Cheney and Bush could give a ****. And I
don't think Cheney and Bush give much of a **** about you either. You
are a political tool, and that's all- they don't care what they are
doing to you personally, or our national military preparedness, if it
can get them re-elected or help their pals in business get their hands
on multi-billion dollar war profiteering contracts. Furthermore, I
think that the vast majority of incidents where US troops _have_ acted
questionably are the results of being placed in an utterly intolerable,
extremely stressful military situation for which the civilian
leadership bears complete and total responsibility through its
nonexistent planning for the occupation of Iraq.

nancy1 wrote:
wrote:

...will
they never get over WWII? They need to move on, already!

Well, they "got over" WWII enough not to roll over for Uncle Sugar
concerning more recent military actions.

Of course, that is very recent. But by "will they never get over
WWII?," I was asking if they will ever forgive themselves (and stop
resenting us) for needing our military power during WWII. It is one
thing not to have the ability to take a stand against the Germans, and
quite another, during peace-time, to take a stand against us
(especially in that their attitude about us and Iraq is rather
popular). The two really cannot be compared.

In 1939 it was the British and French who took a stand against Germany
for its invasion of Poland, not the US. The French Army was actually
fairly strong at the time but unfortunately suffered from poor
leadership and was relatively quickly defeated. In the process, though,
the French sustained enough casualties that, per capita, they lost more
troops fighting the Germans in WWII than the US lost fighting Japan and
Germany combined.

And you had better believe that the entire US Army, had it all been
plopped down on the continent in 1939, would not have been able to put
up the fight that the French did against the Germans.

Eventually the US was forced into war with Japan after Pearl Harbor,
but we never did make the decision to declare war on Germany UNTIL
AFTER GERMANY DECLARED WAR ON US. FDR's aid to Britain prior to our
entering the war was over the objections of many Americans. And of
course, our president's granddaddy, Prescott Bush, was actually
involved in providing banking services to the Nazis.

Sure, five years later it was ultimately the US that was mostly
responsible for the liberation of France, but it is a complete crock of
**** to suggest that the French did not oppose Nazi Germany. They did
it more than two years before we did, and at much greater cost.

On Thu, 28 Jul 2005 11:13:12 -0700, wrote:



Last2Know wrote:
On Tue, 26 Jul 2005 12:15:18 -0700, wrote:

Actually, the hunting of WMD didn't cause their deaths - their deaths
have been largely caused by insurgents and other terrorists who
continue to fight honorably and bravely for their cause by driving up
to a crowds of innocent women and children in bomb-laden cars and
blowing themselves and the innocents to smithereens in the name of
Allah and Islam - the religion of "peace".

The above is the impression that one would tend to get from
casual observation of U.S. based media, but people who actually
studied the casualties systematically paint a different
picture. By a number of different estimates, the number of
civilians directly killed since the war started is around
30,000 while the number of overall fatalities as measured
by differences in death rate before and after the war is
over 100,000 (the latter number would include, for example
people who had died because of increased disease and
malnutrition). Among the 30,000 direct deaths, they
estimate that 30% were killed by coalition forces - mostly
by explosions at the time of the invasion, 9% were killed
by insurgents after invasion, and 36% were killed by
unaffiliated criminal violence that occurs in a unorganized,
chaotic society. So while it is true that insurgents
in Iraq have killed a huge number of innocents, it is also
true that a huge and probably greater number were killed
by coalition forces and an even greater number than that
seem to have died directly or indirectly as a result of general
destruction and chaos in the country that followed from
war.

The terrorist/insurgents, as a matter of policy, seek out and kill
innocent civilians. As a matter of policy, the US military does not.
Accidents and death in war happen, civilians do die, and it is always
tragic. It's important, however, to keep things in context - US
soldiers aren't driving up to groups of school children asking for
candy and blowing themselves and the children up. Insurgents/terrorists
are.


I agree that the distinctions you are making above are important.
But it's also important to recognize that when the U.S. govt.
decides to carry out a "shock and awe" bombing campaign to
start a war or when they decide to fight a major military
campaign inside of Falluja, they are making decisions where
there is, statistically speaking, 100% chance of high
civilian casualties. It's hypocritical for the U.S. president
to veto stem cell research that ends the life process of
a fertilized embryo because "it kills life" and then turn
around and take decisions that lead directly to loss of life
for tens of thousand of actual adults and children with
histories, consciousness, and families.

And, they are doing this to discourage the democracy that clearly
is on the march in Iraq, as evidenced by the 8 million blued middle
fingers we saw last january pointed directly at the insurgents and the
terrorists.

Of course we all hope that some sort of viable Democracy eventually
stabilizes in Iraq. Because the U.S. govt. has intentionally spread
misleading propaganda about Iraq since before the war began and up
to the present day, it's better to draw your conclusions about what
is going on there from news sources that are not relying on U.S.
govt. sources for their info. In general, those
reports are less optimistic in their assessment of the political
and military situation on the ground there.

As you know, the justification for why we are fighting in Iraq
has shifted several times since the lead up to and start of the
war. First it was to enforce the U.N. orders, then it was to
stop WMD, then it was to stop terrorism, then it was to spread
Democracy in the Middle East, and now it is just something like
because we owe it to the Iraqis to fix the mess we started.

I find it ironic that spreading democracy has been mentioned
so frequently because it obviously undermines U.S. democracy
when the Executive branch of govt. repeatedly and purposely
gives false information and misleading reasons for the actions
it takes, particularly when those actions involve massive loss
of life as well as financial resources. If the case for and
costs of the war had been presented honestly to the American
people and their elected representatives and they were in favor
of it then that would be different. But the reality is that
various officials in the Executive branch deliberately deceived
Congress and the electorate in order to further their own
agenda and schemes. Those actions should be judged and
treasonous and impeachable offenses and I believe that will
be the ultimate verdict of history.