The Shining Source

You are very welcome, sir.

God now I hate the U.S. even more, I myself am irish and that was one thing I loved about it. Damn U.s. the I.R.A. should come over and kill the president.

Kyoto basically pushes forward the reduction of greenhouse emmisions -CO2 and soforth.

I am sure it will pop up with Google

Suprisingly "Cleaning our Air" was one of GWB's policies in his run with Gore... (Watch Testify Video by RATM)

I truely hope you mean the country and not the people.  A lot of us aren't as retarded as some may think.

*eats things from garbage*

Something I read in "The Book of Facts: 2005 edition, revision 2.3"

"Whenever someone states "I hate America", they are speaking about its government or, most likely, GWB"

also I read:

"UKIP are evil"

I don't think anybody here hates anybody else, particularly not a whole country's worth of people.

UKIP are evil, though the BNP are worse.

Bush:-
1) green vegitation
2) president of the U.S.
3) something you need to shave once in a while

Let''s either shave him or chop him down, cuz he sure as hell aint the 2nd.

I can understand that this kind of discussion gets even harder when your a soldier yourself. I mean it is your job to fight and things look even more different when people start to shoot at you.

Maybe I'll try to break things down a bit:

Since the end of the cold war US is trying to find the right behavior as the most powerful nation. Till now IMHO they failed to do it because they tend to do things at the wrong time out of the wrong reasons:

I mean conquering Iraq is a good thing. But it was done at the wrong time (Hussein actually being in a weak position giving in to the united nations), out of the wrong reasons (WMD never exist) against the law of the united nations (an unjustified attack war) and without the necessary preparations considering many of the vids from short after the wars end till now the forces weren't prepared to take police authorites and weren't accustomed to local customs. All of these things increased the already existing hate against Americans especially in the arabian world which again will increase terrorism.

On the other hand nowadays we are waiting for the next war - against Iran while North Korea may do whatever they want to do because of the fact that they have atomic bombs.

A bunch of other issues had also a negative impact on the image of the US like
- Gun laws (anybody who saw bowling for columbine will notice that many insane persons in the US carry even automatic guns)
- lack of democracy (unbalanced media, first election of GWB,...)
- there is the UN court for war crimes in the netherlands and GWB even warned them not to accuse any American citizen or else they would invade the netherlands.... insane but true

So it's no wonder that even non-fanatic people start to have problems with the US.

Well Kusgam and to answer you're first post:
THEY COULD AVOID ALL OF THIS IF AND ONLY IF THEY WOULD STICK TO THE UN CHARTA
Simple as this - a organisation which was even founded by the US and which is always abandoned if it doesn't act like the US wants it act (like war against Iraq) and which is always reclaimed once they need it (like nowadays for rebuilding Iraq). I mean  if a friend of you would be have this way you would tell him to go fuck himself. But if they would stick to the UN as "THE" world organisation - who can doubt what the entire world decided?
Even if one would say that the UN is too big for fast decision it is quite weird that even the NATO couldn't agree onto the war on Iraq. Why do we have such organisations if they aren't used....

The reason why the US is "suddenly" interested in the IRA is really simple if you ask me. The last bunch of month the Bush Administration has been doing nothing but charming and pleasing Europe.

He knows very well that the relations were damaged by his rash invasion in Iraq, but without continuing support from Europe, America will face a very dire economical situation. The trade gap is widening further and further, which means more and more money is drained out of the country, especially by Eastern Asia. If America loses economical support from Europe (by means of having a strong euro/pund) then the money will flow out from America towards Europe as well.

It doesn't take an economist to figure out what that will do . The American Administration is aware of this as well, so they try to strengthen their bonds with Europe. Of course, we Europeans don't necessarily care. We don't have a ballooning budget deficit or a trade gap the size of Jupiter, so we don't have that much to fear at all .

see for the trade gap stuff: http://money.cnn.com/2005/03/11/news/economy/trade/

As for Kusgam:


I'll start with the last statement. It may be interesting to check out this page, especially the table a little bit further down.

Basically it states that the US delivers 0.14% of its GNP to foreign aid, while Holland delivers 0.81% of its GNP.  I wouldn't consider that to be one-third, but rather nearly 6 times as much .

I personally measure "help" by the amount of foreign aid that is spent by a country, not by the amount of men that are sent to it to occupy it though...

America was a powerful nation, and therefore they were expected to treat the rest of the world with responsibility. They did good things, and they still do some good things (for example, their help in the Israel matter) but the war in Iraq did prove to the world that the US cannot be trusted as a sole Superpower. That is a disappointing thing to find out, and certainly worth whining and complaining about.

Now Europe knows, and so does China. They are already adapting to the new situation. It's only a matter of time (give it 10-20 years) until America will no longer be the world leading nation, but instead just another country like France or Japan.

By 2020 GDP rankings:

1. China
2. India
3. USA
4. Japan
5. UK

From the independent

But, it does rely on many factors, and might not happen!

Nice to see I was right about the %GDP of charioty spending

omg bNp

GDP doens't mean crap if your currency exchange doesn't mean anything.

We gave 15 Million dollars, which country even came close?

It takes Europe as a whole to beat our currency, and that's a good thing. I agree we can't be the lone superpower, but remeber the cold war? I don't want to stand at the ready to be wiped out because someone else doesn't like us.

Alot of griping doesn't help. I don't see why people are complaining about this, Saddam was a bad man, even though he may not have WMDs, he still killed so many people and tourtured countless more. What's the big deal? Yes, we're a super power, we may have too much power, but we try to give people what they want.

How would you feel if a bastard dictator took over your country and killed your family because they didn't like him and said something, and the most free and powerful nation turned a blind eye.

Godddamn it we're not bad people, now please, can we close this thread and leave issues like these alone. I, as a member of the US military, hate to see people trash my country.

Please.

It means a lot. If America would stick to the international recommendation for foreign aid, they would be donating not 15, but over 80 Billion dollars. Enough money to practically solve World poverty with, while it's only a minimal strain on their country budget.

Here in Holland we provide foreign aid to the best of our ability. On a budget of 160 billion euros, 4 billion of foreign aid is a significant portion. Can you say that about the 15 billion foreign aid on a 2 trillion+ budget?

America could do so much more here with practically no sacrifices. Yet they don't, while other countries do.

America does not solely consist of bad people. 48% of the population never supported this administration and many who are stationed in Iraq really do their best to fix things up there.

Also, they performed very good work in past conflicts, and their attack on Afghanistan was a highly justified move. Moreover, they are a big frontrunner in the world economy.

But the American government does make mistakes. They made mistakes in Vietnam, in Nicaragua, and now also in Iraq. But there's no use in looking back to that. What happened, happened. No soldiers are to blame for that, the people who are responsible for sending them are.

But the Bush Administration shouldn't expect the world to just forgive and forget an unjustified invasion and excessive losses of civilian lives. It takes more than a round trip and flattering words.

You haven't checked out our deficet have you?

Oh, I have, but that's a trivial issue to solve. You take away some money from the army funding, undo the 400 Billion+ costing Bush Tax Reforms (which favour only those who don't need it anyway) and you have a least 5 times the money needed to provide proper foreign aid.

You could use the rest of the earnings to reduce the ballooning deficit, or improve the circumstances for the very poor in America.

Most of that money going to the military is going to repay those who bought bullet-proof gear. As well as more death benefits for dying in combat.

Trust me, I've looked over the money going to the military, and its justified, sure there are things that aren't needed, but 98.9% of it is.

I can't say much about the tax cuts other than my parents got a pretty good deal out of it, we're a middle class family, and were able to pay off thier third mortage with it. All I can say is, thank god for the tax cut because they would probibly be stuggling like crazy to pay those off.

Foreign aid is a problem, but everyone can't rely on the U.S. to provide for everyone. We do have our own problems, we deal with those as we try to help out the rest of the world.

Why not start a thread about countrys that flaunt nukes around? Why not start a thread on recent advances combating aids?

There are bigger problems in the world than what we did to Iraq, we're trying to fix that problem.

I'm not scared about going to war aganst terror, what I am scared of is going to war aganst nukes. You can't deny what would happen to the world if one of those goes off.

If nukes wiped out the U.S., what would happen then? I know China doesn't care about taking over countries, peacful or not. N. Korea sure wouldn't mind either.

Long story short, We're trying, and thats all that matters.