cambodia is so poor because the red khmers killed half the population, mainly the smart half.
half the world is poor, cambodia gets aid etc. like the rest of the poor world.
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Anonymous2007-12-03 15:53
The fact that it got bombed the fuck out of in the seventies didn't hurt either.
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Anonymous2007-12-03 17:37
They are one of the nigger races of Asia.
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Anonymous2007-12-04 2:38
WHY IS IT OUR FUCKING PROBLEM THAT THEY ARE POOR?
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Anonymous2007-12-04 23:42
Because we bombed the fuck out of them in the seventies and never bothered paying them reparations.
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Anonymous2007-12-05 2:09
No one really cares about them exept hippies
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Anonymous2007-12-05 16:12
Also people dont realise Pol Pot was an ally of the USA. Kissinger gave him his suport, and basicly told Pol Pot he could do what the fuck he wanted in his country, as long as he was anti veitnamise.
though that doesn't really surprise me. Kissinger is even more of a war criminal than Bush.
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Anonymous2007-12-06 8:36
>>9
You're more of a war criminal than Kissinger. You want us to lose the Iraq war just so the democrats get elected and are willing to risk the lives of American servicemen and women to achieve this.
>>10
parody or self-paradoy? I can't tell the difference
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Anonymous2007-12-07 9:33
>>11 >>12
My claim has as much basis as your claim that Bush is a war criminal. I'm just using your logic, if there is something wrong with it please admit your fault.
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Anonymous2007-12-07 22:06
>>12 No it doesn't. Try reading the Geneva Conventions sometime.
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Anonymous2007-12-07 22:15
We should leave the damn country alone entirely. Negotiate a trade embargo on the damn country and forget about them. We gave them tech too fast and now they are just a bunch of niggers with guns. If life was so bad there then they would just die rather than live or reproduce over there.
>>16 As a matter of fact, our government's unwillingness to follow the Geneva Conventions only strengthens the terrorists' position, as several prominent specialists in the subject have concluded.
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Anonymous2007-12-08 18:45
>>17
Do they chop people's heads off in Guantanamo?
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Anonymous2007-12-08 21:04
No, as far as I know they just waterboard them. However, Guantánamo is hardly the most egregious violation of the Geneva Conventions by the U.S. in recent history; the attack on Fallujah directly targeted hospitals, for example, and, as I am by no means a partisan who attacks only Republicans, there was also the illegal bombing of a pharmaceutical plant in Sudan during Clinton's administration, which has been estimated to have resulted in tens of thousands of deaths.
It doesn't help, either, that we've illegally invaded and occupied a country which, with the exception of its Kurdish regions, wants all our troops out as soon as possible. It's worth noting that invasion and occupation were precisely the crimes that Nazi leaders were tried and convicted for at Nuremberg (since there apparently wasn't enough evidence to convict them of genocide, and had they convicted them for the concentration camps they'd also have had to have tried people for the U.S.'s internment camps for Japanese-Americans, which they obviously didn't want to do). Thus hearing our leaders claim to care about the spread of freedom and democracy is rife with irony of the richest form.
As for the claim that I want to risk American servicemen's lives to further the Democrats' political agenda, I find that simply absurd, since it is the war in Iraq that is putting those people's lives in danger in the first place, and I happen to disagree with the mainstream of the Democratic Party on several substantive policy issues. I want nothing less than the war in Iraq ended as quickly as possible, as virtually every credible source on the subject suggests that it is only worsening American security on all fronts in virtually every way. In fact, I would contend that anyone who does not want our troops brought home as quickly as possible does not truly support them. Because I do not believe in making unfounded assertions, I will proceed to present the opinions of several learned professionals in the field of counterterrorism.
Terrorism specialist Peter Bergen, for example, reports that Bush "is right that Iraq is a main front in the war on terrorism, but this is a front we created. The Iraq war has expanded the terrorists' ranks: the year 2003 saw the highest incidence of significant terrorist attacks in two decades, and then, in 2004, astonishingly, that number tripled. (Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld famously complained in October 2003 that 'we lack metrics to know if we are winning or losing the global war on terror.' An exponentially rising number of terrorist attacks is one metric that seems relevant)."
Fawaz Gerges concludes that in the wake of 9/11, "the dominant response to Al Qaeda in the Muslim world was very hostile, and few activists, let alone ordinary Muslims, embraced its global jihad. Al Qaeda faced a two-front war, internally and externally, with the interior front threatening its very existence.... [It was] a tiny fringe organization with no viable entrenched constituency." Washington, instead of recognizing that that "the internal defeat of Al Qaeda on its home front – the Muslim world – was and is the most effective way to drive a deadly nail into its coffin" and finding "intelligent means to nourish and support the internal forces that were opposed to militant ideologies like the bin Laden network," Bush did "exactly what bin Laden and his senior associates had hoped the United States would do – lash out militarily against the ummah." Or, as al-Qaeda military commander Seif al-Adal put it, "The Americans took the bait and fell into our trap." Reactions were predictable. The 2003 invasion of Iraq, Gerges writes, "alienated most of the important political and religious Muslim groups that barred and opposed Al Qaeda’s global jihad. It also blurred the lines among mainstream, liberal, and radical politics and squandered much of the empathy felt by Muslims for American victims and America itself after September 11. Liberal Arab writers often maligned for their pro-Western stances denounced American 'imperial hegemony.'" It also created strong support for the fatwa that Cairo’s al-Azhar, "the oldest religious learning institution in the world of Islam," issued advising "all Muslims in the world to make jihad against invading American forces." Al-Azhar’s Sheikh Tantawi, "one of the first Muslim scholars to condemn Al Qaeda [and] often criticized by ultraconservative clerics as a pro-Western reformer... ruled that efforts to stop the American invasion are a 'binding Islamic duty.'"
Michael Scheuer, formerly the senior CIA analyst responsible for tracking Osama bin Laden since 1996, concludes that "bin Laden has been precise in telling America the reasons he is waging war on us. None of the reasons have anything to do with our freedom, liberty, and democracy, but have everything to do with U.S. policies and actions in the Muslim world.... [which] are completing the radicalization of the Islamic world, something Osama bin Laden has been trying to do with substantial but incomplete success since the early 1990s. He could not have his current -- and increasing -- level of success if Muslims did not believe their faith, brethren, resources, and lands to be under attack by the United States and, more generally, the West. Indeed, the United States and its policies and actions are bin Laden's only indispensable allies." Similarly, Jason Burke concludes that "every use of force is another small victory for bin Laden" which creates "a whole new cadre of terrorists" for a "cosmic struggle between good and evil," a vision shared by bin Laden and Bush.
Reports by Saudi intelligence and an Israeli think tank concluded that "the vast majority" of foreign fighters in Iraq "are not former terrorists [but] became radicalized by the war itself" and are responding "to calls to defend their fellow Muslims from 'crusaders' and 'infidels'" who are said to be mounting "an attack on the Muslim religion and Arab culture." The Center for Strategic and International Studies conducted a study that concluded that "85 percent of Saudi militants who went to Iraq were not on any government watch list, al-Qaeda members or terrorist sympathizers," but rather became "radicalized almost exclusively by the Coalition invasion." The report confirms that Iraq has become a global hub for conscription and training of extremist Islamist terrorists, many of whom will subsequently return to their countries of origin with radicalised world views and terrorism skills, where they will gain "publicity and credibility among the angry and alienated in the Islamic world." French intelligence similarly concludes that "what the war in Iraq has done is radicalise these people and make some of them prepared to support terrorism. Iraq is a great recruiting sergeant" that provides a new and "enormous jihad zone to train people to fight people in their country of origin," much as once existed "in Afghanistan, in Bosnia, in Kosovo." Robert Pape, whom Noam Chomsky cites as having conducted "the most extensive studies of suicide bombers" ever performed, writes that "Al Qaeda is today less a product of Islamic fundamentalism than of a simple strategic goal: to compel the United States and its Western allies to withdraw combat forces from the Arabian peninsula and other Muslim countries," which happens to be precisely bin Laden's stated intention.
It has hardly been only in the Middle East that the Iraq war has damaged the United States' credibility; similar effects have been seen all over the Islamic world. Alan Richards writes that there is little doubt that the Iraqi invasion has resulted in "greatly strengthening the popular appeal of anti-democratic radicals such as those of al-Qaeda and other jihadi salafis" throughout the Islamic world. Take as an example Indonesia, which at five hundred million inhabitants is the world's third-largest country and by far its largest predominantly Muslim state. In 2000, 75 percent of Indonesians viewed Americans favourably. By 2002 this number had already fallen to 61 percent; after the invasion of Iraq in 2003, it sank to a meagre 15 percent, with 80 percent of Indonesians expressing fears of a United States attack. Scott Atran, a specialist on terrorism in the country, writes that "these sentiments correlate with readiness by over 80 percent of Indonesians to have Islam play an increasing role in personal and national life, but are also associated with tolerance for a broader spectrum of co-religionists, including militant radicals, and readiness to amplify any slight against an Islamic leader or nation into a perceived attack on the whole Muslim world."