colin wrote: > I understand your objection to anti American sentiment. I don;t undertsand your > obnjection to the reporting of Bush's statement that he is prepared to use > nukes. He said ti. It is not a lie. To reprot it is not fearmongering. it is > something we all need to know.
To report it fourth hand, embellished, before Bush made his own statement, from a classified Pentagon report leak given to a commentary writer at the L.A. Times is what I objected to. > On BBC's question time tonight, this subject came up. I leanred some stuff I > didn't know. Like how the USA(and I assume the UK) were friends with Saddam and > helped him invade Iran and supplied him with the technology and weapons. The > fell out over his invading of Kuwait. Right. I want to learn more about the why the U.S. has been involved in the middle east, at great expense of lives, money and political fall-out all these years. Has it really been primarily to protect Europe's access to the oil and shelter Israel? About supporting regimes in the past that are now enemies - lots of people in Europe and around the world supported Hitler, too, or looked the other way in the beginning, until they saw the light. > The anti American sentiment is widespread and it is real and it is there for > good reasons. Stating this fact is not an attack on you personally or anyone > else, except those people that have the power in your country. The UK too has > equally stained hands. The UK or former British Empire controlled a lot of the Middle East and set up a lot of the countries where there are problems today. However, do the Americans rant and rave about this and put it all on them to this day? I find a lot of the anti-American sentiment in the U.K. and Europe just mindboggling. As if they can just ignore the fact that it is their national corporations that are some of the most largest and powerful in the U.S. The biggest oil corporations in the U.S. are not named "Bush" but rather British Petroleum and (Dutch) Shell Oil Company. Most of the major record companies are foreign-owned. The German and British have the lock on the luxury car market in the U.S. The largest pharmaceutical company is German and several of the largest scientific concerns are also German. I heard at one time that the largest personal landholder in the U.S. is Queen Elizabeth. Yet their newspapers and citizens spit in our faces and we are suppose to be intellectually above it all and demur cooperatively. I cannot help but react to some of this at times - at other times, I wonder why do I even care at all. Kakki
