IRAQ has a president. Woah!

[floydian slip]

http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.j...toryID=8099036

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraq's parliament elected Kurdish leader Jalal Talabani as the country's new president on Wednesday, breaking a political impasse and paving the way for a new government more than nine weeks after historic elections.

He is the first Kurd to be Iraq's president, underlining the new clout of the minority that backed the U.S.-led invasion in 2003.

The two vice presidents were named as Adel Abdul Mahdi, a Shi'ite who was finance minister in the outgoing government, and Sunni Arab tribal leader Ghazi Yawar, the previous president.


could things be getting good in Iraq? Is peace at hand in the middle east?


Or will 10,000 religious extremests strom the Temple Mount and spoil the whole thing?

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/ar...TICLE_ID=43321

[multi]

sure as hell the turks wont be too pleased about this..

[theknife]

Originally Posted by floydian slip

IRAQ has a president, Woah

so do we and look where it got us. hopefully it will work out better for them than it did for us.

[Mazer]

Originally Posted by theknife

so do we and look where it got us. hopefully it will work out better for them than it did for us.

I guess we'll have to wait until they've also had 43 presidents before we know for certain.

[schmooky007]

Originally Posted by floydian slip

could things be getting good in Iraq? Is peace at hand in the middle east?

good for iraq, they're on the path of creating an arab democracy and spitting in the face of all the countries predominantly run by the ever so humanist liberals who supported saddam's regime to the last minute.

Or will 10,000 religious extremests strom the Temple Mount and spoil the whole thing?

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/ar...TICLE_ID=43321

they're not extremists. they're perfectly entitled to be there. it is the racist muslims who want nobody else at the site except themselves, which is kinda funny considering the land doesn't even belong to them.

sure as hell the turks wont be too pleased about this..

much like how the germans aren't too pleased about the backward culture that muslim turks brought to their country.

[floydian slip]

Originally Posted by schmooky007

they're not extremists. they're perfectly entitled to be there. it is the racist muslims who want nobody else at the site except themselves, which is kinda funny considering the land doesn't even belong to them.

shall we call them troublemakers then?

according to biblical prophecies, when the third temple gets built, bad things will happen.

[Sinner]

Mene mene tekel upharshin

[multi]

2,520 years from October 13, 539 BC - Since this period of 2,520 years expired in 1982, we can expect to see the rise of modern Babylon in this present generation


1982 ..eh ?

[Sinner]

Wha???

[multi]

Each of the words the fingers inscribed on the wall is a measure of weight (like our ounce, pound, and ton, or milligram, gram, and kilogram). The basic Babylonian unit of weight was the gold shekel (tekel in this verse). The mena equalled 50 shekels; the upharsin (half a mena) equalled 25.
The four words, therefore, stood for: mena, 50 shekels; mena, tekel, 1 shekel; upharsin, 25 shekels. The total equalled 126 shekels.
In addition, each shekel can be divided into even smaller units (as a pound can be divided into ounces, for example). The shekel was equal to 20 gerahs
The 126 shekels is equivalent to 2,520 gerahs.

so..i am not totaly sure
but supposedly the words of the handwriting on the wall symbolize that God had "weighed" Belshazzar's kingdom and found it wanting. The empire would be given to the Medes and the Persians, who entered and captured the city of Babylon that same night. God was about to punish Belshazzar's realm for 2,520 years.

maybe i got a bad
translation..

[Sinner]

Originally Posted by multi

maybe i got a bad
translation..

Na, Translation is ok.....Iraq must try to keep corrupt officials from entering high government positions, (mostly Sunni Arabs), although it will be had to do, Here in Canada we can not do it. But the bright side is there is a very good chance a Conservitive Government will win the next Federal Election. The Liberals- (Thats their Party Name) - have been caught steeling $250 milliion dollars from the Tax payers. Gave away to all their French Businessmen Freinds in Quebec for doing no work. Here in Canada we are Taxed to death and people are getting fed up with it. Bye Bye Liberals --

[multi]

Originally Posted by schmooky007

much like how the germans aren't too pleased about the backward culture that muslim turks brought to their country.

turkey has no patience with the kurds

kurds have control over the north of iraq
and now the new president is kurd as well..ffs

[theknife]

Originally Posted by Sinner

Na, Translation is ok.....Iraq must try to keep corrupt officials from entering high government positions, (mostly Sunni Arabs), although it will be had to do, Here in Canada we can not do it. But the bright side is there is a very good chance a Conservitive Government will win the next Federal Election. The Liberals- (Thats their Party Name) - have been caught steeling $250 milliion dollars from the Tax payers. Gave away to all their French Businessmen Freinds in Quebec for doing no work. Here in Canada we are Taxed to death and people are getting fed up with it. Bye Bye Liberals --

careful what you wish for...our "Conservatives" have given us bigger, more intrusive government, out-of-control spending, record budget deficits, increased the national debt to 7 trillion dollars, assaulted state's rights, and increased welfare. pretty much exactly the opposite of what conservatives are supposed to stand for, eh?

[Mazer]

Conservatism has a different meaning in every nation.

[theknife]

Originally Posted by floydian slip

could things be getting good in Iraq?

depends on who you ask....here's one blogger's comprehensive recap, along with the following conclusions:

* Rumsfeld's eagerness to use Iraq as a test bed for his transformation of the military was a disaster. While the US handled stage one capably, his indifferent to disorder set the stage for stage two.

* Leaving open the ammo dumps set the bed for the resistance. The Iraqi resistance is the most lavishly equipped in history. Every unit well armed with modern weapons.

*Poor planning left the US without their Third World auxillary armies to provide basic security. Without the large Pakistani and Nigerian units to patrol towns and provide basic area denial, US units have had to do two jobs, security and quick reaction.

* Disbanding the Army set the stage for the resistance to have trained people running it. These men didn't learn war from textbooks. The senior folks learned in combat and passed those lessons down

* US forces have adapted to tactics only to have those tactics shift.

* The Iraqis have minimized the use of helicopter units and limited them to observation and attack.

* The Iraqi resistance has also limited the use of the roadnet. Without convoys, resupply is impposible. This control is so dominant that US units now get some supplies by air.

* They have also thoroughly penetrated US assets in Iraq. No Iraqi unit can move without the guerrilas eventually finding out.

* US units are unable to leave their bases except on patrol. During the Vietnam War, Americans could frequent bars and live in the cities. No American can live in Iraq without security at the risk of kidnapping and death.

* The lack of infantry leaves the US unable to sustain military successes when they do occur. The scarest military resource is not armor, but trained combat infantry. Sure, you can send artillerymen out on patrol and get tankers on foot. But infantry is irreplacable for guerrilla warfare.

Every day, US forces go out, take casualities and go back to their bases, trying to survive yet another attack that night. The US, in two years, have lost lives and material, but gained little. There is not one area the US can say that guerrillas cannot operate. And that is the most important fact. After two years and 1500 dead, the guerrillas control the highway to the airport, Baghdad's main drags and the country's highways.

This is not winning.

so here we are three years later, $300 billion dollars down the drain and not a f*cking thing to show for it.

thanks, W

[Mazer]

Don't thank W. Do as the patriotic citizens of Iraq are doing, and thank America.

[theknife]

Originally Posted by Mazer

Don't thank W. Do as the patriotic citizens of Iraq are doing, and thank America.

actually, at least some of the patriotic citizens of Iraq seem to be providing ongoing cover and support for the insurgency...which is probably what you or i would be doing, were it our country under occupation.

[Mazer]

If that were the that case, I don't think the foreign military presence that not only allows but encourages us to elect a new government could be called an occupying force anymore.

[multi]

Originally Posted by Mazer

Conservatism has a different meaning in every nation.

ConsevatismAsMotivatedSocialCognition.pdf(620k)

[Mazer]

Good find multi.

Conservative ideologies, like virtually all other belief systems, are adopted in part because they satisfy various psychological needs. To say that ideological belief systems have a strong motivational basis is not to say that they are unprincipled, unwarranted, or unresponsive to reason or evidence. Although the (partial) causes of ideological beliefs may be motivational, the reasons (and rationalizations) whereby individuals justify those beliefs to themselves and others are assessed according to informational criteria.

Wow, I've never felt so in touch with my feelings as I do after reading this.

Variables significantly associated with conservatism, we now know, include fear and aggression, dogmatism and intolerance of ambiguity, uncertainty avoidance, need for cognitive closure, personal need for structure, terror management, group-based dominance, and system justification.

Not to mention the sloping forehead and the lack of opposable thumbs. I thought this was an article about people.

We regard political conservatism as an ideological belief system that is significantly (but not completely) related to motivational concerns having to do with the psychological management of uncertainty and fear. Specifically, the avoidance of uncertainty (and the striving for certainty) may be particularly tied to one core dimension of conservative thought, resistance to change.

It follows that Liberals on the other end of the political spectrum enjoy feelings of fear and uncertainty. Can this be right?