Bush vs Benedict

[Matt25]

KathleenElsie:

And with all humility may I ask what the UN’s excuses were prior to the war? Also is giving control to the UN going to amke thing better for Iraq or worse. We need to remember the lessons learned in the Food for Oil situation.

UN excuses for what? It was UN inspectors who dismantled Iraq’s WMD capability thus allowing the Anglo-American invaders to overrun the country so easily.

The UN was responsible for a brutal murderous sanctions regime which was roundly condemned by the Saintly John Paul II and the worldwide Catholic Church but I don’t suppose that was the UN role you had difficulties with.

 

[thestickman]

Matt25:

UN excuses for what? It was UN inspectors who dismantled Iraq’s WMD capability thus allowing the Anglo-American invaders to overrun the country so easily.

Proof, please?

 

[Ani_Ibi]

kelso:

Perhaps it is. Hopefully it’ll inflame THOUGHT, and quality responses, rather than accusations.

Perhaps you could lead the way then in refraining from accusations?

kelso:

I was questioning the questioner’s ability to deal with such an open-ended question. I was literally asking what the poster new and what the poster was asking, since the question left a lot, again, open.

You posed a series of rhetorical questions; pre-emptive strikes on the ability of other posters to respond cogently.

kelso:

My response was NOT addressed to you.

Your response was posted on a public forum of which I am a part.

A simple apology would have sufficed.

 

[Sirach14]

kelso:

GREAT THREAD.

Was Lincoln wrong? Was he wrong about WHAT? How much do you know about the Civil War and Mr. Lincoln’s prosecution of it? Would slavery have faded away, as it did in EVERY OTHER PART OF THE WORLD, without the American life-costliest war to date? Would it shock you to know the Pope at the time sent a crown of thorns to the leader of the SOUTH? Catholics fought on both sides, of course, and have always served in disproportionate numbers to their percentage of Americans, but Rome cautioned against Mr. Lincoln’s more aggressive side. Mr. Lincoln was brutal in many ways.

Was Roosevelt wrong? I can only assume you mean FDR. Was he wrong about WHAT? How much do you know about WWII? A contrary view, one not buffered by quaint songs and notions about American benevolence, suggests that war led empowering the most wicked regime EVER conceived, Soviet Russia. Once again, Rome cautioned and was ignored.

Was Truman wrong? Was he wrong about WHAT? How much do you know about THE ONLY NATION IN HISTORY TO HAVE EVER DROPPPED two nuclear weapons? Some say Mr. Truman solidified the killing of massive amounts of civilians AND the nightmare scenarios we’re now contemplating with terrorists getting their hands on such weaponry.

Where do you start and end your arguments? While Americans look at things in spans of fives years, in-between congratulating themselves with parades and back-slapping, Holy Mother Church thinks in centuries.

Isn’t it time we dropped our foolish pride?

I’m glad our foolish pride won WW1, WWll, so you have the right to rave on.

 

[kelso]

My apology is offered to anyone who MISUNDERSTOOD I was posting in response to an open-ened question asked.

Reading the POSTS PRIOR might go a long way is lessoning confusion in the future.

 

[Ani_Ibi]

Matt25:

The reason that the UN cannot shoulder the burden in Iraq is that the US prefers to keep total control of the situation in that country.

That’s one of the reasons. The other reason is that the UN is ineffectual and corrupt. Viz Rwanda.

 

[Sirach14]

MORE FOOLIS PRIDE

wbal.com/stories/templates/show_elliott.asp?articleid=34352

 

[kelso]

Sirach14:

I’m glad our foolish pride won WW1, WWll, so you have the right to rave on.

Okay.

Was it ONLY WE who ‘won’ those wars? Come now.

What was the result of WWI? WORLD WAR II.

What was the result of WWII? BEEFING OF THE SOVIET UNION – killers the likes of which Hitler could only imagine – and the Cold War which itself spawned God knows how more many deaths and little wars.

Foolish pride is just that without historical knowledge, foolish.

Isn’t the substantive point that we’re CONSTANTLY at war, CONSTANTLY rumbling around for an elusive peace?

Can you honestly say the World Wars were worth the price, considering what they produced? Uncontroversial would be saving what remained of European Jewry, for sure. But HOW MANY MORE JEWS DIED under Stalin?

I know a SUPER MAJORITY OF AMERICANS will say, Heck Yes it was worth it, but I wonder if we’re still capable of linking historical events?

Maybe you’ve never thought of history like that before, huh?

 

[geezerbob]

Kelso, if we had stayed out of WWII, which we didn’t start in the first place, all of Europe would have been under either Soviet or Nazi domination. Did you ever think of it that way?

 

[Matt25]

thestickman:

Proof, please?

washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A12115-2004Oct6.html

U.S. ‘Almost All Wrong’ on Weapons

**Report on Iraq Contradicts  Bush Administration Claims**

   By Dana Priest and Walter Pincus

Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, October 7, 2004;

The 1991 Persian Gulf War and subsequent U.N. inspections destroyed Iraq’s illicit weapons capability and, for the most part, Saddam Hussein did not try to rebuild it, according to an extensive report by the chief U.S. weapons inspector in Iraq that contradicts nearly every prewar assertion made by top administration officials about Iraq.

Charles A. Duelfer, whom the Bush administration chose to complete the U.S. investigation of Iraq’s weapons programs, said Hussein’s ability to produce nuclear weapons had “progressively decayed” since 1991. Inspectors, he said, found no evidence of “concerted efforts to restart the program.”

The Inspectors of UNSCOM summarised their activities thus un.org/Depts/unscom/Achievements/achievements.html

1. UNSCOM has uncovered significant undeclared proscribed weapons programmes, destroyed elements of these programmes so far identified, including equipment, facilities and materials, and has been attempting to map out and verify the full extent of these programmes in the face of Iraq’s serious efforts to deceive and conceal. UNSCOM also continues to try to verify Iraq’s illegal unilateral destruction activities. The investigation of such undeclared activities is crucial to the verification of Iraq’s declarations on its proscribed weapons programmes.

1. Examples of what has been uncovered since 1991 include: the existence of Iraq’s offensive biological warfare programme; the chemical nerve agent VX and other advanced chemical weapons capabilities; and Iraq’s indigenous production of proscribed missiles engines. Following these discoveries, UNSCOM has directed and supervised the destruction or rendering harmless of several identified facilities and large quantities of equipment for the production of chemical and biological weapons as well as proscribed long-range missiles.

1. UNSCOM has supervised the destruction of the following proscribed items.

MISSILE AREA:

• 48 operational long-range missiles

• 14 conventional missile warheads

• 6 operational mobile launchers

• 28 operational fixed launch pads

• 32 fixed launch pads (under construction)

• 30 missile chemical warheads

• other missile support equipment and materials

• supervision of the destruction of a variety of assembled and non-

assembled “super-gun” components

CHEMICAL AREA:

• 38,537 filled and empty chemical munitions

• 690 tonnes of chemical weapons agent

• more than 3,000 tonnes of precursors chemicals

• 426 pieces of chemical weapons production equipment

• 91 pieces of related analytical instruments

BIOLOGICAL AREA:

• the entire Al-Hakam, the main biological weapons production facility

• a variety of biological weapons production equipment and materials

 

[Matt25]

Ani Ibi:

That’s one of the reasons. The other reason is that the UN is ineffectual and corrupt. Viz Rwanda.

What intervention in Rwanda did the USA propose that the UN blocked?

 

[Syn_kobiety]

Ani Ibi:

That’s one of the reasons. The other reason is that the UN is ineffectual and corrupt. Viz Rwanda.

You’re off topic.

 

[aimee]

Syn kobiety:

You’re off topic.

Why not add your prayers for those in the path of the hurrcaine…

 

[Matt25]

The Holy Father in Cologne recently said these words. I wonder if George W Bush would agree with them.
vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/speeches/2005/august/documents/hf_ben-xvi_spe_20050820_vigil-wyd_en.html

In our pilgrimage with the mysterious Magi from the East, we have arrived at the moment which St Matthew describes in his Gospel with these words: “Going into the house (over which the star had halted), they saw the child with Mary his mother, and they fell down and worshipped him” (Mt 2: 11). Outwardly, their journey was now over. They had reached their goal.

But at this point a new journey began for them, an inner pilgrimage which changed their whole lives. Their mental picture of the infant King they were expecting to find must have been very different. They had stopped at Jerusalem specifically in order to ask the King who lived there for news of the promised King who had been born. They knew that the world was in disorder, and for that reason their hearts were troubled. 

They were sure that God existed and that he was a just and gentle God. And perhaps they also knew of the great prophecies of Israel foretelling a King who would be intimately united with God, a King who would restore order to the world, acting for God and in his Name. 

It was in order to seek this King that they had set off on their journey: deep within themselves they felt prompted to go in search of the true justice that can only come from God, and they wanted to serve this King, to fall prostrate at his feet and so play their part in the renewal of the world. They were among those "who hunger and thirst for justice" (Mt 5: 6). This hunger and thirst had spurred them on in their pilgrimage - they had become pilgrims in search of the justice that they expected from God, intending to devote themselves to its service. 

Even if those who had stayed at home may have considered them Utopian dreamers, they were actually people with their feet on the ground, and they knew that in order to change the world it is necessary to have power. Hence, they were hardly likely to seek the promised child anywhere but in the King's palace. Yet now they were bowing down before the child of poor people, and they soon came to realize that Herod, the King they had consulted, intended to use his power to lay a trap for him, forcing the family to flee into exile. 

The new King, to whom they now paid homage, was quite unlike what they were expecting. In this way they had to learn that God is not as we usually imagine him to be. This was where their inner journey began. It started at the very moment when they knelt down before this child and recognized him as the promised King. But they still had to assimilate these joyful gestures internally. 

They had to change their ideas about power, about God and about man, and in so doing, they also had to change themselves. Now they were able to see that God's power is not like that of the powerful of this world. God's ways are not as we imagine them or as we might wish them to be. 

**God does not enter into competition with earthly powers in this world. He does not marshal his divisions alongside other divisions. God did not send 12 legions of angels to assist Jesus in the Garden of Olives (cf. Mt 26: 53). He contrasts the noisy and ostentatious power of this world with the defenceless power of love, which succumbs to death on the Cross and dies ever anew throughout history; yet it is this same love which constitutes the new divine intervention that opposes injustice and ushers in the Kingdom of God.** 

God is different - this is what they now come to realize. And it means that they themselves must now become different, they must learn God's ways....

There are many who speak of God; some even preach hatred and perpetrate violence in God’s Name. So it is important to discover the true face of God. The Magi from the East found it when they knelt down before the Child of Bethlehem. “Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father”, said Jesus to Philip (Jn 14: 9). In Jesus Christ, who allowed his heart to be pierced for us, the true face of God is seen. We will follow him together with the great multitude of those who went before us. Then we will be travelling along the right path

 

[aimee]

Matt25:

The Holy Father in Cologne recently said these words. I wonder if George W Bush would agree with them.
vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/speeches/2005/august/documents/hf_ben-xvi_spe_20050820_vigil-wyd_en.html

So I guess thats a no…

 

[Writer]

geezerbob:

Kelso, if we had stayed out of WWII, which we didn’t start in the first place, all of Europe would have been under either Soviet or Nazi domination. Did you ever think of it that way?

That’s true… As a matter of fact, the Catholic author of Salvation is from the Jews points out that Hitler’s eugenic campaigns were only just in their infancy. There were actually a number of offices setup across Germany for the express purpose of killing those children deemed inferior due to handicaps or ethnic ties. If Hitler had won the war due to US non-participation, we can only guess that he would have taken it as a supernatural endorsement of his plans of ethnic cleansing. Thank goodness we will never know, but failure to act in regards to WWII would have likely resulted in many, many thousands of times more deaths in the aftermath of a Nazi victory. Failure to act as we did would have been the most cowardly and destructive act of omission in the world’s history, and we’d all be speaking German. It’s also worth noting that Church attitude in pre-WWII Europe did not necessarily make it harder for the Nazis to gain a foothold. (See Father Martin Rhonheimer’s “The Holocaust: What Was Not Said” from *First Things, *November 2003 issue.)

While the argument can be made that mistakes in reparations, etc, helped lead to WWII, the bottom line is that we were given the hand we were dealt at that time. Going back in time was not really an option. This hits at another problem with some of the Church’s opposition to the present involvement in Iraq: it pre-supposes the same level of knowledge that the administration has, and I just don’t think that’s the case. Until the Vatican suffers an act of terrorism perhaps, I don’t think the leadership outside the US is necessarily going to understand the US’ sense of urgency with regards to the present state of affairs, and I certainly don’t think that Vatican has the same grip on the state of national affairs. As a govt emplyoyee myself who used to have a degree of regular interactions with members of federal law enforcement, the average Joe doesn’t know everything that is going on–the threats which never make the newspapers. If the US government continues to do its job correctly, the public won’t know the whole story for years to come. It’s those events which never come to the attention of the national media–or the Vatican–which may also be influencing national policy.

 

[kelso]

geezerbob:

Kelso, if we had stayed out of WWII, which we didn’t start in the first place, all of Europe would have been under either Soviet or Nazi domination. Did you ever think of it that way?

I have, indeed, geeze.

It is certainly the way I was taught. SHOOT, even Peter Jennings agreed with you. Yours is the dominant position.

Again, it all depends WHERE in history you start your analysis. If you begin as if the world hadn’t existed prior to WWII, then yes, America saved the Europe and all that (though I’d still be able to argue reasonably otherwise). Hooray for us. Shish boom bah!

Who was our friend in Germany PRIOR to World War II’s start?

I’ll give you a minute to google that.

Give up?

Adolph Hitler, that’s who. At the time, we’d rather go with him than the dirty Commies, according to the US Dept. of State. Just think of the historical implications.

Who were our BESTEST BUDDIES in the Middle East prior to their getting out of line?

Give up?

Osama ‘gonna kill your mamma’ and Saddam.

We’re not nearly the Golly-gee-shucks innocents we pretend.

Weird parallels, no?

 

[gilliam]

That’s all well and good, Matt. Iraq has asked for UN help. Where is it? How do you get them moving? If they continue to do nothing the burden of restoring Iraq will fall on the volunteer countries which are currently there.

Iraq’s Sunnis asked for UN help again today, let’s see if they get it.

 

[gilliam]

kelso:

I have, indeed, geeze.

It is certainly the way I was taught. SHOOT, even Peter Jennings agreed with you. Yours is the dominant position.

Again, it all depends WHERE in history you start your analysis. If you begin as if the world hadn’t existed prior to WWII, then yes, America saved the Europe and all that (though I’d still be able to argue reasonably otherwise). Hooray for us. Shish boom bah!

Who was our friend in Germany PRIOR to World War II’s start?

I’ll give you a minute to google that.

Give up?

Adolph Hitler, that’s who. At the time, we’d rather go with him than the dirty Commies, according to the US Dept. of State. Just think of the historical implications.

Who were our BESTEST BUDDIES in the Middle East prior to their getting out of line?

Give up?

Osama ‘gonna kill your mamma’ and Saddam.

We’re not nearly the Golly-gee-shucks innocents we pretend.

Weird parallels, no?

Joseph Kennedy, Henry Ford and a numer of power brokers tought Hitler was harmless and since they hated the Jews and Hitler hated the Jewish communists, fine. That all changed when the US declared war. The difference today, is many who were on the side of the fascists in the middle east (e.g., Baathists), and against the US getting them out of the middle east, are still siding with the fascists. Many of them are still saying this war is about protecting a Zionist State and being run by a Jewish Cabal in Washington.

 

[kelso]

gilliam:

Joseph Kennedy, Henry Ford and a numer of power brokers tought Hitler was harmless and since they hated the Jews and Hitler hated the Jewish communists, fine. That all changed when the US declared war. The difference today, is many who were on the side of the fascists in the middle east (e.g., Baathists), and against the US getting them out of the middle east, are still siding with the fascists. Many of them are still saying this war is about protecting a Zionist State and being run by a Jewish Cabal in Washington.

Not me. Not anything I’ve written. Re-read my post and maybe what I am writing will become clearer.