Don't fly Malaysia Airlines!

ARE there any Malaysian Airlines frequent fliers?

I don't know. Was just channeling a has-been actor.

http://us.cnn.com/2014/07/17/showbiz/jason-biggs-malaysian-air-tweet/index.html

http://news.yahoo.com/putins-statement-ukraine-plane-crash-222104216.html

So, is he acknowledging Ukrainian sovereignty? Or is he admitting that Russian forces shot down the plane?

Burned.

With the frequeny of fliers falling freely from fesses in Malaysian skies, there has to be some frequency.

Sounds like he's blaming Ukraine. Had they rolled over to Russia, there wouldn't have been anyone shooting missiles at anyone. Makes perfect sense.....

Ah, so it's Ukraine's fault that Russia shot down the plane. Should have recognized the obvious subtext!

There are two takeaways from all of this: Don't fly over Ukraine, and don't ever, never, fly Malaysian Airlines. They have really bad juju.

Is "gobshite" some Irish term for codependent?

It's British slang for idiot.

And Irish too. It's really not that hard to figure out. Gob=mouth, shite=shit.

Only two out of 8 paragraphs even addresses anything I asked you. What about questions about whether Iraq was a just war in line with Christian teachings, whether your argument falls down because of American's support for Iraq during the time in which Saddam was murdering all the people you cite, both at home and in Iran, and whether or not the fact that death toll of the US led invasion represents only a 25% reduction in war dead on a deaths to years ratio? You've still avoided those points, and you have done so because they do not accord with your simplistic view of these issues. Easier to bury one's head in the sand, eh?

I do not recall anything in the New Testament about "just wars". I could be wrong. Feel free to correct me.

As for U.S. "support" (pretty loosely by the way, virtually all weapons the Iraqi military used were of Soviet manufacture with some French thrown in), for Iraq while Saddam Hussein killed some portion of those people, that is entirely irrelevant as to Hussein's responsibility.

Hope that addresses a couple of more of your points sufficiently El Chup.

Shit on a stick. This can't end well, no matter who did it. But I'm sure it's good fodder for the conspiracy nuts (the CIA! To make Putin look bad!) Yet maybe the lives weren't lost in vain. Maybe, just maybe, the west will decide to end this once and for all.

Ah, naive hope

They are part of oneworld alliance. I am an AA frequent flier and if I am flying around SE Asia and Oceania, I'll fly either with Malaysia or Cathay pacific for the mileage accumulation.

Another golden statement. Diplomatically and financially supporting Saddam in his offense against Iran and the reinfircement of his sovereign state is irrelevant? Are you pretending that we didn't know what was going on in Iraq when Rummy was shaking his hand while Saddam bombed the shit out of Tehran? Laughable. Absolutely laughable.

Two points.

1) Who cares? The U.S. did not even have diplomatic relations with Iran (thanks to their earlier seizure of our embassy).

2) Saddam never "bombed the shit out of Tehran". Tehran is way too far from the border to sustain heavy attacks from Iraq. Both wikipedia and GlobalSecurity.org have described the attacks on Tehran as being relatively minor. I believe GlobalSecurity.org estimated the number killed in Tehran (a city of millions) to be about 200 or so.

Who cares? Wow, more mind numbing stupidity. So you argue that Saddam killed two million people and therefore needed to be toppled by the US, but we shouldn't care that the US as backing Saddam while he was in the process of killing those two million people? Wow, just wow.

Unlike you, I know people who lived through it. You're absolutely talking out of your arse (as usual).

globalsecurity.org look up the Iran-Iraq War if you don't believe me.

I don't need to believe you. I know people who had to live with the bombs dropping around their homes. Imagine that sort of an experience, an experience you've certainly never had since you're a coward who has stayed very far from warzones.

The number of bombs per city is irrelevant anyhow. The fact is that 750,000 Iranians died in that war, along with 500,000 Iraqis, and it was an entirely offensive war started and prosecuted by Saddam, which your country supported both financially and with weapons and training. So don't come on here and give me a load of guff about the Iraq war being just because of the death toll during his regime, when you were patting him on the back when he killed 1.25 million and then caused another 461,000 war deaths through the 2003 invasion. That, my friend, is hypocrisy at it's worst. But you don't really care do you, because war to you is like a game. A comicbook adventure from those warm summer evenings reading Armchair General in the chicken coop.

Incidentally, on the thread topic itself, I see Obama has announced that the plane was downed by a missile fired by the Russian back rebels. Looks like our suspicions were correct.

Really? Please provide some evidence like a link from an unbiased source.

Financial I'll fully concede that Saudi Arabia who were allies of the U.S. financially supported Saddam Hussein and Iraq.

but please tell me who that fought for Iraq was trained by the United States?

and what weapons did the U.S. provide him? Tanks? Fighters? What.

I've seen this debated for years and all anyone ever came up with was some cluster bombs originally built in the U.S. that were late sold by some other country to Iraq (South American nation IIRC, Brazil perhaps).

and at any rate, we didn't tell Saddam Hussein to invade Iran. Supporting Iraq as the "lesser of two evils" in comparison to Iran in no way makes the U.S. responsible for his atrocities.

Just as the U.S. supporting Stalin's Soviet Union (who we gave ACTUAL WEAPONS) against Hitler's Nazi Germany doesn't make us responsible for Stalin's staggering crimes against humanity.

The South African's developed nuclear weapons. They used Buccannear low level attack bombers as their method of delivering nuclear weapons (had they ever done so).

Those bombers were sold by the British to South Africa. Would the British be responsible for the South Africans having deliverable nuclear weapons?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_support_for_Iraq_during_the_Iran–Iraq_war

http://www.iranchamber.com/history/articles/arming_iraq.php

http://www.nytimes.com/1992/01/26/w...id-to-iraq-early-in-its-war-against-iran.html

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articl...prove_america_helped_saddam_as_he_gassed_iran

https://www.globalpolicy.org/iraq-c...-/us-and-british-support-for-huss-regime.html



Well, that's a start.

Read the links. Iraqi personnel were trained at For Bragg.

Material for the regime's chemical weapons.

Then you've either seen it debated by idiots or you are simply plain lying.

No, but you patted him on the back and helped him do it, which, as I have already said, destroys the merit in your claim that you waded in to stop him killing.

Save that Iran wasn't the greater of two evils. It was a country that hadn't (and still hasn't) attacked anyone for over a century. I don't for a minute see how you can argue that it is the country that starts an aggressive war designed to defeat and colonise it's neighbour that is the lesser evil. That's bonkers.

Any entirely different situation. Iran was the country being invaded, it was not a power sweeping across the globe. To put it crude, Iraq was the Germany in this case, not Iran and you backed the Germany - an invader who commited war crimes, for which you contributed materials.

Funny, but I don't think we've invaded South Africa recently and chimed on about how many lives we've saved.....

The Russian government is arguing about who's responsible on Wikipedia.

I've read through your links El Chup.

Most of the materials mentioned were dual use which had fully legitimate civilian uses and could not be used as weapons without extensive modifications by Iraq.

Overall, the U.S. support of Iraq was negligible.

The Iraqi's fought with Soviet planes and helicopters (Migs & Hinds) plus a few French Mirage's. The Iraqi army fought with Soviet tanks and Soviet artillery pieces and for that matter Soviet rifles and sidearms.

Those missiles you claim a person you know cowered from in terror? Modified Soviet SCUDs.

You cannot find a single American weapons system that came from the United States.

And yet, things like aluminum tubes were claimed by the Bush Administration to be "dual use" items and cited as a justification for the '03 invasion of Iraq. The Iraqis claimed that the tubes were for the oil industry, while the US claimed they were for nuclear weapons production. We know who turned out to be right in that instance.

The Iraqi army was largely built on Soviet weaponry, while the Iranians relied (and still do) largely on US weaponry. It was one of many ironies about that war. The US did tilt slightly toward supporting Iraq, but on occasion turned the tables (cfe tanker war). Mainly, our strategy was to keep both countries pre-occupied with each other, while protecting the Gulf Arabs and oil supply. It was the correct strategy.

Indeed, remember Henry Kissinger's comment about the Iran-Iraq War, echoing Winston Churchill's comment after Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union.

"Pity they both can't lose".

In retrospect, our big sin was not that we supported Saddam Hussein. It was not arming him sufficiently to bring down the Islamic regime in Iran.