Newgrounds.com — Everything, By Everyone.

At 11/19/13 12:51 AM, King-Duckford wrote:

Once the last vestiges of what Newgrounds ever meant are gone, the last of us will go with it, and there will be no Newgrounds.

From one bitter vet to another, I salute o7

Hey Tom, I have been here for a long time, and I have to say, I played the game on POG.com and it's really good. Artistically anyway. So I think you made the wrong decision, though I would have made the same in your place. Cheers.

Why don't you just make Castle Crashers 2, which will make a gigacock of money, and use the money to re-open the store/smoke crack rocks.

MOSTAR, Bosnia-Hercegovina (AFP) - A new statue honouring late martial arts legend Bruce Lee was vandalised hours after it was unveiled in this southern Bosnian city, police and witnesses said.

Earlier Sunday a bronze statue to the late martial arts legend was unveiled in Hong Kong in a ceremony on what would have been Lee's 65th birthday.

One more reason to hate Bosnia.

What is the name of the first fad your most recent AFD destroyed. The one where they say DEF CON 1,000! I want to watch that one : P.

This is a tricky one. And by tricky I mean nearly impossible. If you guys can get it i'll give you a cookie.

The song from the Big O anime series called "Stand a Chance"

Hahaha. Hilarious.

http://www.sanluisobispo.com/m...ages/sun_bulletin/11045328.htm

58,000 dead and rising coupled with Iraq and nuclear proliferation. Wow. Unless someone cures cancer or AIDS or sadness 2005 is going to be very unpleasant.

Thomas L. Friedman writes for the New York Times. He has analyzed the situation in Iraq perfectly, including the historical significance of the battle being fought there, and the reasons for the Coalition’s tragic and inevitable defeat.

Republicans and Democrats, DON’T LET POLITICS BLIND YOU

OP-ED COLUMNIST
Worth a Thousand Words
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

There has been so much violence in Iraq that it's become hard to distinguish one senseless act from another. But there was a picture that ran on the front page of this newspaper on Monday that really got to me. It showed several Iraqi gunmen, in broad daylight and without masks, murdering two Iraqi election workers. The murder scene was a busy street in the heart of Baghdad. The two election workers had been dragged from their car into the middle of the street. They looked young, the sort of young people you'd see doing election canvassing in America or Ukraine or El Salvador.

One was kneeling with his arms behind his back, waiting to be shot in the head. Another was lying on his side. The gunman had either just pumped a bullet into him or was about to. I first saw the picture on the Internet, and I did something I've never done before - I blew it up so it covered my whole screen. I wanted to look at it more closely. You don't often get to see the face of pure evil.

There is much to dislike about this war in Iraq, but there is no denying the stakes. And that picture really framed them: this is a war between some people in the heart of the Arab-Muslim world who - for the first time ever in their region - are trying to organize an election to choose their own leaders and write their own constitution versus all the forces arrayed against them.

Do not be fooled into thinking that the Iraqi gunmen in this picture are really defending their country and have no alternative. The Sunni-Baathist minority that ruled Iraq for so many years has been invited, indeed begged, to join in this election and to share in the design and wealth of post-Saddam Iraq.

As the Johns Hopkins foreign policy expert Michael Mandelbaum so rightly pointed out to me, "These so-called insurgents in Iraq are the real fascists, the real colonialists, the real imperialists of our age." They are a tiny minority who want to rule Iraq by force and rip off its oil wealth for themselves. It's time we called them by their real names.

However this war started, however badly it has been managed, however much you wish we were not there, do not kid yourself that this is not what it is about: people who want to hold a free and fair election to determine their own future, opposed by a virulent nihilistic minority that wants to prevent that. That is all that the insurgents stand for.

Indeed, they haven't even bothered to tell us otherwise. They have counted on the fact that the Bush administration is so hated around the world that any opponents will be seen as having justice on their side. Well, they do not. They are murdering Iraqis every day for the sole purpose of preventing them from exercising that thing so many on the political left and so many Europeans have demanded for the Palestinians: "the right of self-determination."

What is terrifying is that the noble sacrifice of our soldiers, while never in vain, may not be enough. We may actually lose in Iraq. The vitally important may turn out to be the effectively impossible.

We may lose because of the defiantly wrong way that Donald Rumsfeld has managed this war and the cynical manner in which Dick Cheney, George Bush and - with some honorable exceptions - the whole Republican right have tolerated it. Many conservatives would rather fail in Iraq than give liberals the satisfaction of seeing Mr. Rumsfeld sacked. We may lose because our Arab allies won't lift a finger to support an election in Iraq - either because they fear they'll be next to face such pressures, or because the thought of democratically elected Shiites holding power in a country once led by Sunnis is anathema to them.

We may lose because most Europeans, having been made stupid by their own weakness, would rather see America fail in Iraq than lift a finger for free and fair elections there.

As is so often the case, the statesman who framed the stakes best is the British prime minister, Tony Blair. Count me a "Blair Democrat." Mr. Blair, who was in Iraq this week, said: "Whatever people's feelings or beliefs about the removal of Saddam Hussein and the wisdom of that, there surely is only one side to be on in what is now very clearly a battle between democracy and terror. On the one side you have people who desperately want to make the democratic process work, and want to have the same type of democratic freedoms other parts of the world enjoy, and on the other side people who are killing and intimidating and trying to destroy a better future for Iraq."

Locke you make several logical points

To pull out now before there is anything even resembling a stable goverment that is respected by the people. As much as I hate to say it if we pull out now "the terrorists will win"

Yes, they will win, and it will be demoralizing. But Iraq is only one battle in a long-term war on terror. Pulling out would give them that victory, but we could reconsolidate our forces in a place where the battle is still very winnable, like Afghanistan. We could refit our relatively undamaged army to deal with future Iraq-like engagements. And remember, everyone believed in the "domino effect" during the Cold War that stated if one country fell to communism, they all would, and that if we pulled out of Vietnam, the country would self-destruct. Well, we pulled out, and the country did fall to communism, but no other countries fell with it. So, even if Iraq becomes a haven for terrorism, don’t be so quick to believe it will spread like a virus. It might just as easily reduce terrorism, because by leaving their holy land, we remove a reason for them to fight us. Pulling out of Iraq will hurt, but we will survive, and doing so expediently will allow America's military to learn from its mistakes, rather than be crippled by them, and launch a fresh attack in the war on terror in the future.

You go on to talk about three possible outcomes for Iraq.

This leaves three options for the war in Iraq. The first is that we have a total withdrawal and leave Iraq to its fate. The second is we somehow regain heavy multinational military support from just about everyone. Third is we reinstate the draft and bring in enough cannon fodder to pacify the country.

The first is what we have been discussing. The second, somehow regaining multinational military support from just about everyone. Good, except that's a pretty big somehow, the war has shot our international credibility to pieces, and major players like France and Germany (yes France is our ally and one of strategic importance in these dangerous times you French hating isolationists out there) have already entrenched themselves against sending troops. A first step in regaining the support of the whole of Europe could be pulling out of Iraq, allowing us to provide pressure and security in more winnable battles.

The third would be employing the draft. Crush the insurgency with a relatively untrained but massive ground force. A great idea, and it would have probably worked if it had been employed at the beginning of the invasion. Unfortunately, the war is rapidly losing public support, and any force pulled from a draft would simply be unwilling or too demoralized to fight. You attest to this common knowledge.

Unfortunately nobody is willing to take any of these paths so we are reduced to bleeding ourselves dry as we try and make do with what we have in a situation where that is not nearly enough.

But then again, can you really expect civilians to want to throw themselves into what is starting to look more and more like the next Vietnam. It's a bad situation, but remember, it isn't Vietnam yet. We've only lost 1,300, not ten's of thousands. We'll international face, but we'll be able to rebuild our army and regain it, unlike after Vietnam, when it took over a decade to repair our smashed forces. Iraq will sink into chaos, but then again, isn't the capital and one third of the country already uncontrollable. And who knows, maybe this country, a hodgepodge of ethnic backgrounds thrown together by the rapidly departing British in the early 1900's was simply never meant to be.

In closing, your desire to not let Iraq collapse is admirable Locke, but let's face the facts on the ground, it’s collapsing already. It's a tragedy, but if we pull out now, our troops (and the government) will learn from their mistakes remain functional to fight in winnable battles in the future, perhaps rebuilding Iraq years from now.

Oh by the way, here's an interesting blogg/newsite maintained by troops stationed in Iraq. Some of it is just the day-to-day monotony of the military in Iraq, but there are also some pretty heart wrenching accounts from soldiers in the battlefield. The managers also suggest ways that you common citizens can help out your men in uniform, either through donations or online lobbying aimed at politicians. Check it out if you have the time.

optruth.com

It seems strange, but there doesn’t seem to be a...I don't know, a great unified outcry against this administration's handling of the war in Iraq. We lose 15 men to a suicide bomber who infiltrated a heavily fortified base, and Congress doesn’t raise hell and there are no protests in the streets.

I supported the war. I even supported it after there were no weapons of mass destruction, because Bush didn't know they weren't there and freeing Iraq from Saddam seems justifiable morally.

But this war has been miscalculated tactically. Vietnam level miscalculated. The troops simply don't have enough manpower to hold the country, forget hold elections. Security is disintegrating in the third largest city, Mosul, (as evidenced by that internal suicide attack and scores of other attacks) and the Coalition is hunkered down in the Green Zone in the capital. As Bush himself admits, the Iraqi troops are not performing well, and Iraqi confidence in the Coalition has dropped from frustration to disgust to simmering rage.

These are facts complied from the military on the ground and CIA reporting and from the Interim Iraqi government and dozens of other sources. Not political viewpoints. Not partisanship. Facts . Embrace ignorance by all means, but it would be great for our country if you accept them.

In any case. What is the tipping point in Iraq? Do a parade of mangled soldiers have to crawl up to the White House lawn? Do the terrorists have to dangle 1000 heads of marines in front of Al-Jaziera before America realizes that this war cannot be won? Wake up! This is not post-WWII Germany! We do not have the support of the Iraqis! We are losing!

George Bush must pull out now. He was right morally, but the tactics of the war were 100 percent wrong. If you want to believe we are winning in Iraq, fine. I can't stop you. But by every rule of engagement we are losing. We are killing the enemy but with every death 10 more insurgents rise up. Please, don't let political ideology blind you to the facts. Start opposing this war now! I know that pulling out means losing Iraq but the fact of the matter is it's already lost, so let's bite the bullet and do it now. It won't be so bad, we can save the bulk of our army and reconsolidate in Afghanistan

Don't sacrifice the heart of the army and billions in resources in a quagmire. For if we do, then America will truly be vulnerable.

Oh, and hi. I'm Paideia, and I've stated this because, well, I don't think its getting the attention it deserves :P