Another day, another mass grave found. (Yawn!)

Yes they are bad, but the world remembers the timing. The graves were mostly filled from 1979-1992. In the early phases when the US looked away while Saddam killed and gassed because Iran was our bigger enemy. Then joined the Euroweenies in "deploring, extra hand-wringing deploring" Saddams butchery against the Shiites and Kurds after we encouraged them to rise against Saddam then stood by as the slaughter happened.

The existence of the old mass graves was well known. Big deal. Not a cause for war in 2003, decades later. War was predicated on honestly judging if Saddam was a threat to us, not that he "gassed his own people" 20 years ago. War was in fact justified because he was a danger to the US, outside the WMD fiasco - not to correct decades old global moral neglect.

The Chinese mass graves were far fresher, and far far bigger, when Nixon toasted Mao. The mass graves of Tibetans fresh when Clinton and rich Republican industrialists signed free trade agreements with the culprits that seem destined to weaken America and allow China to pass us as the #1 economic power.

Ditto with the mass graves of Somalia and Vietnam.

My brother in law didn't like being in Iraq (no soldier WANTS to be deployed in a war zone), but he knew we had to get rid of Saddam, and that the Iraq war was the right thing to do.

How?

Because he found the body of a 4 year old girl with a bullet in her head.

That experience really changed him, and it should give all the lefties pause to think about what it means to say "we shouldn't have ousted Saddam".

That muderous, evil stain on humanity.

"Big deal"

You cocksucking piece of shit.

I'm not kidding one bit, cedarford, you asshole.

If you're ever up Oregon way, let me know and I'll be happy to pound your face into mush.

You are filth.

Oh, I'm soooooo fucking scared Hobgoblin! Are you writing that all attired in your Chinese-made clothes despite what is going on in Tibet, and perhaps are you on your way down to enlist in the Army so you can go to the Sudan and save the Black Muslims there from the Arab Muslims??? Yeah, sure...

No doubt, big tough guy, you also railed at your Republican and Democratic reps in Congress for failing to draft you and send you to to Rwanda, where you could have prevented the mass graves of 400,000.

And before that, you were among the people demanding Bush I's impeachment for encouraging the Kurdish and Shiite uprising, then offering no support as 100,000+ were slaughtered. But then surely you loved Bill Clinton and fought his impeachment, because he got us into Bosnia and Kosovo, because mass graves in Europe were more unacceptable than mass graves in Rwanda or East Timor to him.

And no doubt you spent the last 15-20 years crying for the Kurds, Iranians and writing letters demanding we go to war...

I'm not kidding either. Clueless hypocrites like you sit around all but sucking your thumbs this very day as Nigerian, Iranian, Sudanese, and Indonesian mass graves continue to be filled -without demanding the Draft be restarted so a bigger US Army can be dispatched to at least 6-7 countries currently now needing it, to "rescue all of humanity".

While at the same time you are the same dumb fuck who thinks War is somehow urgently needed in a country 10-20 years after the butchery actually happened. By your logic, we also need to go to war with Cambodia and Vietnam over their old mass graves.

The sorry truth is you and I are gonna let the Tibet cleansing go on because you like cheap Chinese stuff, and you are not going to get off your lazy boy & voluntarily go off on your own to risk your ass to save Darfurian Muslims from Khartoum Muslims and you are not going to demand the US Army invade Indonesia, Iran, and the Sudan to stop the present day butchery - because you know we have enough to chew on in Iraq.

To go beyond that would involve serious sacrifice and inconvenience to you, and we know that won't happen to inconvenience a big talker. And we also know the only thing you're planning on pounding into mush is another donut in your slobbering mouth, you fat bastard - not me or the Chinese or anyone else.

The US is only going to risk significant American lives and treasure in war when it involves our national interests. Not break up 3rd World ethnic machete` melees. Iraq qualified, and the old mass graves had nothing to do with it. Few Americans cared about it before the war - the real concern was the menace Saddam posed to the living, particularly "US". America does enough. Unless other nations start stepping up and doing half as much as us, more mass graves get filled. And you are going to accept that by your personal actions, even while you squawk ineffectually about how "other Americans" should be doing more.

No you pusillanimous "fancy roses" jackass, I'm not saying we should right the world's wrongs. and I don't "feel" for the world's oppressed. We kicked Saddams ass for our own reasons, but dion't act like he didn't need an ass kicking.

And not all those graves were 20 years old, half-wit. (the ones in the story were, but don't be so utterly retarded as to pretend that the killing stopped after the Gulf War)

Your logical fallacy of the need to right all wrongs or right none is quite simply infantile. If my leg wasn't torn in half as a kid (which wouldn't even slow me down in wiping the floor with your face, and my 180#s can bench press your pale heroin-chic queerbait ass, pal), I probably would've been in Somalia (or at least Kosovo), and for all your blithering talk of "Republican industrialists," the political Right wouldn't have put me there.

Your cocksucking little comment of "Big deal" is the problem, not the inability and political unwillingness of the US to right every wrong.

If you weren't such a self-absorbed, guilt-laden liberal fuck, maybe you'd understand you can do the right thing even when it helps yourself.

But that would take independent thought, which you seem to be lacking.

Go back to living off your trust fund (or Soros' money), asslick.

But the offer of a pounding is still open, and given your pussy-ass response, I'd say that my USA-made threads wouldn't even get dirty.

Dickless moron.

Sorry, ace. It seems that Johnny Coldcuts took over for a bit there.

hobgoblin,

Cedarford, I've found, is not the jerk you think he is. His point is well made that, through various administrations we have "turned a blind eye" to atrocities for our own sake. I don't wholeheartedly agree with every word he says but he gives an honest evaluation most of the time. I've also found him to make convincing arguments for right of center also. Let Ace do the "pounding" if deemed necessary.

Ron,

I'll let Ace tell me what Ace should do, thanks.

And if you think about 4 year olds (and younger) with bullets in their heads and say "Big deal," I say fuck off.

Its whole post was one long example of the "liberal completeness fallacy," wherein we can't do anything---especially if it's in our interest---unless we do EVERYTHING. It just doesn't logically or morally follow, and compounding that asshattery with saying executed children don't matter is frankly repulsive.

Of course if you believe the US is the source of all evil, you might like Noam Chumpsky's site a bit better.

Well Hobgoblin - if the old mass graves in one country half way around the world are a "big deal" warranting action including war and 8,000 American casualties so far - then presumably you consider mass graves being filled today are an even bigger "big deal".

Something you will personally sacrifice for by arguing for increased taxes, a return to the Draft???

Now, don't try to wriggle off the hook by saying we can't be everywhere. Where else should we be? Sudan? Indonesia? Do we abandon free trade with China?

Ah, no place at all?

It seems you have 2 sorts of "big deals"....one that you can piss and moan and feel good about complaining about while hoping nothing is done that costs you somehow, like your sudden love after 10 years passed and 25 years after it began - for the innocent Kurds, Shiites, and Iranians........something that I doubt occupied your thoughts in any significant way before 2003.

The second sort of "big deal" such as 9/11, on the other hand, was proved a "big deal" because we did something about it, same with us considering Saddam's regime a menace to us - we actually did something about it.

Which tells me that you also don't consider other regime's mass graves a "big deal" because you and other Americans won't sacrifice a thing to rectify the situation or risk lives and treasure to go after the present-day perps. Just as you didn't when Iraq's mass graves were being filled and we knew about it - from 1979-1992.

The truth is that few times will others act outside their self-interests to fight and die for others.

"Never Again!", the Holocaust slogan, is similarly empty. It really only means, "never again for my people". Talk, deploration, even sanctions arise - but dying for others? Not in human nature. How many times did Israel offer to dispatch even token troops to help stop post-WWII mass graves from being filled? Zero times. Liberal Jewish intellectual outrage over the Communist Holocausts in China, Vietnam, Cambodia, the Soviet Union? Virtually non-existent. Not singling out Israel or Jews on this - but if they don't think butcheries elsewhere are worth dying for, even condemning if it doesn't serve their interests - it makes sense that other nations and peoples feel the same way. The Neocons have written a lot of propaganda lately on the need for America to attack other nations where "crimes against humanity transpire" - but Neocons who know they never went in harm's way to fight such evil, nor will their children. That's for other Americans...

Where mass graves matter is in the collective memory - that it is good to have created a nation that follows an ideology not dedicated to filling them anymore, and other nations avoid the pitfalls of such "democide" in conducting their own affairs with an eye to avoiding those institutions and beliefs that led "democide" to occur elsewhere.

Hey Cedarford. Put me down as being ready to kick your ass, too, you miserable excuse for humanity. If you can't feel outrage over infants in graves, and consider it proper justification to depose a government, then fuck you and the jackasses that rode your mother into town, you pathetic little needledick.

If you're going to waste electrons typing your driveling rationalisation, then you can just as easily waste electrons for a good cause, like knocking down the next dictator.

Fuckhead.

Such a pity the US refuses to use its omnscience and omnipotence for good rather than evil, right, Cedarford? Unlike yourself, of course.

Oh, I feel the same outrage as you Mr. Bowen, but it's of the same sort of self-indulgent, feel-good, moral outrage clucking you are engaging in.

Just like you happily buy tons of Chinese-made stuff. While sorta feeling bad about the 20 million the ChiComs stuffed in mass graves before they learned that Communism can accomodate Party Leader's families getting rich along with American business owners capitalizing on labor cost differentials.

A big deal is something you do something about - not just whining about while buying a 799.99 Guangdong 34" diagonal Plasma TV, Bowen.

Glad you feel so much outrage over the long-dead wee folks of Iraq --an outrage I suspect you only felt quite recently despite the world knowing for 25 years about such graves, and their discovery coming as no surprise. We didn't rescue them while it happened under Reagan and Bush I, and shock of shocks - Clinton didn't give a crap about the Rwandan Tutsis nor did anyone else - and we didn't give a crap about "women in Burquas" and Taliban atrocities enough to do anything about it 'till 9/11 made us invade for more compelling reasons. And I frankly don't care enough about the Darfur tragedy, the Nigerian civil war, the N Korean famines enough to advocate sacrificing American lives and treasure to improve some 3rd world mess we didn't create.

You're not going to kick anyone's ass, Bowen. That would interfere with your comfy life. You are going to suck down your beer, bitch and carp, and let thousands of little kiddies in the Sudan be killed every week because you don't want to jeopardize your fucking tax cuts and your cheap imported stuff - or inconvenience anyone you know by advocating a Draft so we can be the world's cop and stop all killings globally. But you will rant on about our always being justified to go to war with anyone if they are involved in "human rights" violations if it suits us - the Neocon-designated "Hyperpower" and crusader state.

Democrats don't care either. They just say that Kofi and the UN must stop the killings...knowing full well that the UN won't do a thing, but discharging their Democratic moral obligation to say something about their outrage.

No doubt you will be clucking and moaning when some Sudanese mass graves are dug up 15-20 years later and you give a heartfelt "Awwwwww" as the bones of some black Muslim baby killed by Arab Muslims is unearthed. Yep, right on TV, so you can bathe in the heartfelt emotions and be "blood and gore" entertained at the same time. Just like after Rwanda.

Let's hope the Chinese don't show you one of big bonepiles they conceal. Why, you might get huffy enough not to buy Chinese consumer goods for a whole week!!!

If you get past your two-faced hypocrisy, you will admit you have no interest in invading Nigeria and half the rest of Africa, Indonesia, Vietnam, Iran, N Korea and all the other bad guys if it costs you or puts you and those you care about at risk. Sacrifice all that nice Chinese stuff? No way, says Mr Bowen, privately to himself.....

Pity, Kerry, that you are deluded enough to try and foist a global moral obligation on America to right all wrongs when you know full well the American public has no interest in the prospects of being in a state of perpetual war to fix a series 3rd World cesspits.

cf,

For all your love of "nuance" and "complexity" you can't seem to get it in your head that we can do things for more than one reason, huh cocksmoker?

Once China decides to step ugly, ending their human rights violations will be just one MORE good part about knocking them flat.

You just don't seem to get it, do you? Saddam did about 50 different things that effected American security and were worthy of taking him out. Violating the terms of the cease fire is #1. Shooting infants in the head isn't even on that list. Why? Because it's not in our security interest.

Here's where you need to folllow along closely now, dipshit. Just because Saddam's murders weren't a REASON to go to war, stopping his smurders by war WAS STILL the right thing to do.

See, halfwit? We can do something that's morally right EVEN THOUGH we are doing it for natiaonl security reasons?

And Iraq almost cost me a brother in law whom I love as dearly as if he were my own blood. American SOLDIERS fight and die for others freely ALL THE TIME. So you can shove you smarmy condesension right back up your ass next to Michael Moore's fat cock.

Can your muddled little nerve bundle follow that?

Idiot.

PS - and your ignorance of Jewish reaction to the killing fields of Pol Pot and others just shows how myopic and coccooned in your little idealistic world you are. Why do you think a lot of Jews (of which I'm admittedly not one) left the Left (of which I was never a member and thus cannot be "neocon")? You're as historically ignorant as you are morally equivalent.

Seriously, go back to kos' where your friends are.

Cedarford brings up a good point regarding China. Why don't we throw down with China over Tibet and their own atrocious human rights record? A billion Chinese and thermonuclear war, that's why. If the United States goes to war with China, it'd have to be a life-or-death affair, because while I may joke about the benefits, I wouldn't want to lose Los Angeles in a mushroom cloud over anything short of that.

Let's keep in mind the relics who run China are the same people, or from the same mold, as the guys who ordered flamethrower-armed police to crack down on the pro-democracy protesters in one of their most infamous moments. If they are looking at war with the United States, they aren't going to take the same amount of care as the Coalition is in trying to avoid unnecessary casualties. If we consider our last war with China (Korea) it is a pretty good guess we would be fight a war of attrition against human wave assaults of poorly armed peasants acting as bullet sponges for their regular troops. If you think the thousand dead Americans in Iraq is a tragedy, you'll need a whole new word for the body count, military and civilian, of the Main Event with China.

I am not a fan of Communist regimes, and I dislike the fact that we are "selling the rope that will be used to hang us" to the top Communist regime in the world, but I believe the idea was to subvert the Communists with that Capitalism. Do I agree with it? Not really, but gee, it would have been nice if our president of the time was not in the Chinese pocket (and by the way, I heard a lot more Republicans oppose the economic deals on moral grounds than I did Democrats).

I am not sure why Cedarford is so adamant on needing the draft, since as far as I can see, his opinion is only shared with two Democrats in Congress. An all volunteer force is preferred to a conscript army by everyone I've heard of involved in the military. Really, if we want more troops, all we have to do is reactivate deactivated divisions and increase the military budget for that purpose, we are certainly getting enough volunteers to do it, the only bottleneck I see is the time for training the troops (which conscription would not solve, in fact, would be worse).

There are other points I can make, but I don't want to eat up any more of Ace's site

Hobby - thanks for admitting that 3rd world killing fields aren't enough to get us into a war, unless it is sure not to lose us more than a handful of our own, and the costs are low.

And for fessing up you are a gimp who never served, but is a strong advocate of sending other Americans in harm's way to do "good deeds" - rather than defend America. That makes it easier, no doubt, to be so jingoistic.

You seem to live in a foul-mouthed fatasy world on how diplomacy and war really work. We didn't fight the Japanese because they were spitting babies on bayonets in China for 10 years, or the Nazis because they killed gays, slavs. jews & gypsies. We did it because they threatened us, attacked us, declared war on us. We fought in Korea and Vietnam not to extend freedom and democracy - but to prevent the spread of global Communism. We fought in the Gulf not to rescue our swell pals the Kuwaiti monarchy, but to prevent Saddam from seizing 2/3rds of the global oil reserves.

It's "nice" that women are now burqua-optional in Afghanistan, that Iraq has decent sewers and can collect old bones out of the graves made 1979-1992 - and that our spilled blood will allow both countries a 2nd chance to get the crappy countries their citizens created right - but that's not why we went into those countries. Its......just.....nice..

Sputter and thump your "never-served your nation" chest all you want.

We are not going to invade the Sudan. Nor N Korea. Etc, etc. To spend 10,000+ American casualties to save 100K even a million foreigners lives. Even though it would be so "nice" to help them and we'd feel soooo good about ourselves. But, I assume you have a lick of brains - you know thats impossible. Therefore, you feel free to thunder about it being bad with no cost to you, so you're safe to vent about long-dead Shiite children.

All your puffed up affrontery is mere showmanship.

I fear I side with Cedarford on this. And I can add another example: In the `67 Israeli war, note the planes flown by Israelis were French Mirages. The US had imposed an embargo on selling military supplies to Israel.

I had a good sized post ready, but for some bizarre reason the comment thing wouldn't let it through, though I could not find the objectionable content they mentioned. Ah well.

I summarized why the United States wasn't going to stomp North Korea without South Korea's go ahead. Unless it was my life-or-death scenario because while US forces might be nuked, you can pretty much bet the South Korean civilan population would be hammered, and the South Koreans should have a say in that.

That I consider setting up a free, decent, reasonably democratic country unlikely to be a threat or aid threats against the US in the place of a thugocracy worth several thousand lives, even if one of those lives could be my own.

That the folks here are not generally the people shouting that no American troops should die to benefit little brown people. Those paragons of compassion can be found at ANSWER rallies and on the Left in general.

I also expressed my skepticism that Saddam Hussein filled mass graves up until the Shiite uprising then lost interest in that past time. Sure, it was the last opportunity he had to bury 10,000 people in one day in one hole, but I am sure he was executing baseball team-sized groups of Iraqis all over the country every day. It just comes down to what your threshold is for a ditch full or corpses to reach mass grave status.

I am not sure what point you are making about Israel relying on Mirages during '67. It is true that President Johnson imposed an arms embargo on the region at the start of the war. In fact, so did France. Yes, the Israelis did fly Mirages during the war, since the F-4 Phantom and A-4 Skyhawks did not enter IAF service until the late sixties. The United States was, after all, using those planes in Vietnam at the time and probably felt that war came first.

However, the US did give Israel the Hawk anti-aircraft missile system two years before the war started, and flew nonstop military aid for a month into Israel during the Yom Kippur War, so I don't think any great injustice was done there.

By the way, three guesses as to what superpower did not impose any arms trade embargoes on the region, and in fact sent over even more military equipment to the Arab nations during the fighting. It is nigh impossible to properly understand the last half of the 20th century's history without keeping in mind the Soviet Union and its actions and effects during that period.

Alex - you loop back into my point. Yes it is worth expending the lives of several thousand of our best Americans if it ends a thugocracy that is also a threat, a danger to US - US - not it's own citizens.

We learned that after Lebanon when we inserted ourselves in the middle of a civil war with no vital interests of the USA at stake, chose sides, hit the other side, and paid for it.

So we will do small humanitarian interventions only - ones that promise low casualties, low expenses, and a fast exit for a while to come.

For all the moral posturing after the 1991 Kurd and Shia massacres, the Somalia debacle, the 1994 Rwandan tragedy - American leadership understood public sentiment and took a pass. With our military now stretched and other dangers out there that may need our reserves - there is no way we are going to intervene to stop the present day genocide in Sudan, the massacres underway in Indonesia, Nigeria, Zimbabwe, Ivory Coast - or topple other thugocracies like Burma using military force. Our war is with the Islamists, and our resources and energies must be placed there - not with waging war to separate rival ethnic faction's bloodshed and drain more of our troops into occupation/garrison duty.

Sure Saddam was offing people after 1992, but not at a huge clip. UN sanctions killed vastly more people. Were the 2,000 or less deaths a year Saddam was inflicting on Iraqis worth 8,000 American casualties to fix in the absence of his being a real threat? No. No more than Burma or Mali currently is considered a target for US intervention though they are killing people at the same clip.

Frankly, with all the heavy lifting we are doing elsewhere, it's high time for nations sitting on the sidelines like Canada, Sweden, France, Brazil, and Turkey to shed a little blood and treasure doing their share....and handle some of the humanitarian tragedies and current fillers of mass graves. The burden is not all on us.

you, cf, are an Ass. With a capital A.

You're too stupid to catch on to my first point, instead spouting off a bunch of Amnesty International gnashing of your teeth and rending of your hair.

And the point remains, you said that dead infants were no big deal.

And you can hide the fact that you now understand my point and agree with it overall (we can do right and do what's right for us at the same time).

The bottom line remains that your a limp-dick punk bitch with no moral fiber or ability to understand even the basics of foreign policy.

Hell, Saddam was "worth" more troops than we've lost on a national interest measure alone. And I very nearly lost my brother, got friends and acquaintenances wounded, and friends of theirs (admittedly not mine) have died. So don't give me ANY of your flip shit about "costing me nothing." You have no fucking clue.

You're a pathetic, whiny loser who, realizing that he's beat, moves his goalposts and doesn't admit his mistake. (How's that for ad hominem that you so gleefully participated in until you realized you couldn't keep up? )

I on the other hand, will admit my mistake in even wasting electrons on your loser ass.

Tell me, how long did you serve? (what, you're not old enough yet?) How many people did you know that have been wounded or killed in Iraq? (what, you don't know any?) How about anyone even in 9/11, which made Saddam a threat beyond his borders by his practice of openly providing money and a place to crash for international terrorists? (what, you have no friends and your mom and you live together in Wisconsin (but you get the basement)?)

Kiss my jigoistic ass, douchebag.

Hobgoblin - You reveal yourself as a rabid caricature of a Neocon arguing (in the neocon's case from the safety of class privilege and a non-military social background) that America's military must shoulder the world's burden to bring love, democracy and tranquility to all corners of the Earth. No matter what the price to other Americans. In your case, you say that you would gladly have gone anywhere and sacrificed your life if it meant less Ubangis were killed by the Whatzatuzis....if it just wasn't for that gimp leg of yours.

Yeah right. Big talking blowhard.

You would be more credible if you were arguing for the US to stop the current slaughters happening. Not the need to go to war to exhume long ago mass graves that we did nothing about as they were being filled.

The good news is if we start going in and occupying a series of countries, we will need a lot more soldiers, and standards will be lowered. One cohort being the well-trained, able, first class soldiers that fought and won wars. The other cohort being the lame, the dull, the less well-trained but suitable for occupation or garrison assignments. The Brits had a system like that, so did the Romans.

It could be your chance to serve, Hobby!

You're still too stupid to get it, and you continue to misrepresent my point. I give up. You''re the caracture of the internet Blockhead.

You would be more credible if you stuck a funnel on your head and danced in circles. Oh, wait, you already have.

You haven't said how you've served the country, how you can say anything about anyone sacrificing ANYTHING for the country (again, how many friends of yours are in the service?), and you have not yet apologized for being morbidly flippant about dead infants.

You are a pathetic, weak fuck who just can't take responsibility for his statemennts. I'm guessing you ccan't take responsibility for much else, either. And my gimp leg (with its cadaver tissue) could kick your ass from here to next month, pushole.

Piss off, queerbait.

I see our Neo-con inspired Chicken Hawk is still squawking.

Despite not being good enough to serve, he wishes others who are, to fight and die for decades-old mass graves.

But somehow he isn't worked up about present-day slaughters that might require risk or sacrifice on his part. How 'bout it, 1 million killed in the Sudan, a couple thousand more every week. Worth getting out of your chair and dragging your lame ass over their to stop? No? Of course not! For you to give up your fucking tax cuts to end a "Big Deal"? No, that would mean sacrifice on your part!

There are few things in life more pathetic than a mean drunk cripple who is a coward inside unable to risk what he demands of others. The more he threatens other people, the more they laugh at him, and the angrier he gets.

It's been fun, knob-gobblin', but this thread is getting old.

Man did this thread get hijacked!

My only question is, why let the word "fetus" enter the conversation. It dehumanizes the unborn babies.
These are dead children, not "fetuses."

No, I'm not for abolishing legal abortion. As much as someone reading my comment might think. But let's call them what they are. Yup, I hijacked the thread too.

What a deliberately myopic little 12 year old you are, cf.

Again, how old are you? Have you ever served? Have you know anyone---anyone---who served in Iraq?

Until you can answer these questions, you're just a chickenshit with a keyboard and zero moral authority.

Being insulted by you is like being called names by a third grader---mildly irritating by its persistence, but of no consequence.

And I don't see any evidence of your service to anything except your mother's sexual needs.

Piss off assmuncher.