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Indybay Feature

Stone-throwing Iraqi children put troops on edge

by Anarchist
"It`s frustrating. They`re like little gnats that you can`t get away," said Captain James McGahey, a company commander of the 101st Airborne Division who says almost every one of the patrols he sends out in the northern city of Mosul gets stoned.
fallujah_april30.jpg
U.S. Army Shoots and Kills Iraqi Protesters Again

April 30, 2003

About 1,000 people marched down the city's main street Wednesday to protest the U.S. shooting of Iraqi demonstrators two days earlier, stopping in front of a battalion headquarters of the U.S. Army's 82nd Airborne Division — a former office of Saddam's Baath Party.

American officers at the scene, and U.S. Central Command in Qatar, said U.S soldiers in the compound and in a passing convoy opened fire in response to rock-throwing and gunfire.

U.S. Apache attack helicopters circled the site throughout the march and for hours afterward. U.S. officers met with the mayor and leading area sheiks in hopes of reducing the tensions, while several dozen demonstrators clustered angrily outside the town hall.

"Get out, get out!" one protester shouted at soldiers guarding the meeting.

"We will keep this up, we will keep them on edge," said another protester, 29-year-old Abdul Adim Mohammed Hussein.

The gunfire came less than 48 hours after a shooting during a demonstration Monday night that hospital officials said killed 13 Iraqis.

Dr. Ahmed Ghandim al-Ali, director of Fallujah's general hospital, said the clash Monday killed 13 Iraqis — including three young boys — and injured about 75. Some residents put the death toll higher, at 15.

---

Stone-throwing children put troops on edge

By Kieran Murray

Sat April 26, 2003 05:37 PM ET

MOSUL, Iraq (Reuters) - The love affair between U.S. troops and Iraqi children is turning sour.

As the invading troops pushed north towards Baghdad in the first weeks of the war, it was always the children in every town that came out first to smile, wave, give the thumbs-up and shout the same greeting: "Good, good, good!"

Happy to see a friendly face, the soldiers waved back and many handed out candies from their field rations.

But this correspondent, who has travelled with U.S. troops since the start of the war, has seen more and more of the encounters ending with some children, usually the older ones in their early teens, hurling stones at the soldiers.

It can be a Catch-22 situation for the troops. If they let the children swarm around them, they expose themselves to possible attack from adults who can use the cover to get close and throw in a hand grenade.

But if they push them back, it hurts their efforts to win over the civilian population, and can spark the stone throwing.

"It`s frustrating. They`re like little gnats that you can`t get away," said Captain James McGahey, a company commander of the 101st Airborne Division who says almost every one of the patrols he sends out in the northern city of Mosul gets stoned.

"Everybody loves kids but it`s impossible to love 300 of them when they all want to touch you, talk to you and grab you, especially when there are a few out there who want to chuck stones."

RAINING STONES

In one typical incident this weekend, a group of soldiers on foot patrol attracted an ever-increasing posse of children as they moved past a local fire station and on through a rough neighbourhood of Mosul.

By the time they reached a school building, at least 200 children and a small group of adults were around them, and the stones came raining in from about a dozen of the older kids.

"They were throwing them like they were pitching a baseball," said Sgt John McLean, who was hit on the helmet, in the back and on the heel.

The troops pulled away and took up a defensive position but even then the children and adults only dispersed when a warning shot was fired over their heads.

"Everyone tries to be as nice as we can with them but it does get difficult. They definitely impede the job we`re trying to do because you have to put half your guys on keeping the children away," McLean said.

ROCKS AND PUPPIES

The problem is not confined to Mosul.

Crowds of 250-300 Iraqi teenagers hurled stones at U.S. Marines patrolling the holy city of Najaf in southern Iraq on Thursday and Friday, officers said.

In Kerbala earlier this month, a group of children threw rocks and then kicked puppies over a wall and into a compound where U.S. troops were camped. When the soldiers handed the puppies back with a warning, it was only a few minutes before they were kicked back over the wall.

The problems arise once a crowd grows too large. When troops walk through quieter neighbourhoods, the mood is usually good and some soldiers still take pictures of their buddies posing with young children.

When the crowds get bigger, army-hired interpreters ask adults to keep the children at a distance for their own safety. If trouble starts, the soldiers try to pull out of the area by truck and resume foot patrols once the crowd disperses.

And there is much less sharing of sweets or pencils because it encourages more children to swarm in.

"We call them seagulls because if you give one seagull a piece of bread, the next minute you`ll have a whole flock of them," one soldier said.




§Iraqis throw stones at U.S. troops
by Anarchist
fallujah2_april30.jpg
§protest against the U.S. occupation
by Anarchist
fallujah3_april30.jpg
§protest against the U.S. occupation
by Anarchist
fallujah4_april30.jpg
§protest against the U.S. occupation
by Anarchist
fallujah5_april30.jpg
Add Your Comments

Comments (Hide Comments)
by Barry
It must be hard for the americans to finally get into iraq and then find out that they are not welcome,they were only following orders when they killed and maimed thousands of men,women and children,it is good to see that not all the iraqi,s were fooled by the lollies and smiles and started to think about the fallen fellow iraqis that died to defend what they now have.
I feel and hope the rest of Iraq will wake up to themselves and realy kick the US out.Suicide bombing and sneak attacks are a great weapon for the civilian with a quiet grudge.Remember,your worst enemy is your best friend,befriend them and then kill them when they are close.
by Zroom
Barbarian Barry says that suicide bombing is alright. If this is the case then you can only expect more civilian deaths. Anyone that looks out of place or carrying more than just there cloths face being shot. You expect the Americans to give up and go home and you are completely wrong. There administration will not allow them to.
It is people like you that lend credibility to those that say the Moslim religion is an evil religion. Only when people like you learn to live together with all religions will we truly have peace.

by ME
Why are the childern here? Why have the "adults" in the crowds allowed them to be exposed to such a dangerous situation? Who really is in control of the crowd? What are ther real intentions of the leaders of the crowd/protesters? Is it to protest the occupation or insite a riot? Only the innocent will be hurt here not those that choose to hide behind childeren. Only COWARDS hide behind the innocent!!!!!
by Adam Roufberg (radmanx [at] thefourreasons.org)
Before we throw stones and pass judgement on others it may serve a great justice to all if we take the time to walk in other people's shoes. Who would protest the destruction, killing and occupation of their land by a foreign imperial force? Who would go to a foreign land and kill innocent civilians? Who would go against the world view to carry out a hegemonic end? Some information on this is available at http://www.thefourreasons.org.
by phaedra
The US soldiers were occupying an elementary school and using it for their military offices and part of their base . The children took part in a protest to get their school back, - the Iraqi townspeople have sworn that the protesters were unarmed- the question I would ask is not why were the children in the crowd (at their own school in their own village ) but why would the US military supposedly pledged to get things running again,be occupying an elementary school?Surely there are more appropriate venues for their operations ,and if not then pitch a tent ,remember the coalition is just visiting - it's not an occupation, it's a liberation.
by JC
They are here because they live there.

Why are armed US soldiers in Iraq killing children?
Maybe that should be the question.

Why are 12 year old children being helf in Cuba?
Maybe that chould be the question.
And please do not give that sorry ass excuse - thay are "illegal combattants".

Rumsfield, Woosley they deserve the name (fictitous as it is) more than anyone.

by bov
"almost every one of the patrols he sends out in the northern city of Mosul gets stoned."

Beautiful.
by WS (Vikings107@aol >com)
Now the war starts, well the war the Iraq's can at least fight back and hit somebody. A little David & Golihta! Those stones are some WMD's, Bush must be proud?

OUT
by bob
Re: "Hello if Iraq had not killed innocent americans then some of there people would be alive today."

This is absolute horse shit. Iraqi's didn't kill innocent Americans. Where do you come up with this crap. FOX News? Rush Limbaugh? Get a clue.

The only innocent civilians dead are Iraqis. Today the total is up to: at least 2180
http://www.iraqbodycount.net

Why did we occupy their country? WMDs? no can't find any. Links to Osama, no couldn't make any legit connections. Was Iraq responsible for 9/11? No, most of the terrorists were Saudi nationals.

So why did we go?

Well if Iraq's major export was artichokes do you think we would have felt the need to "liberate" them?

Perhaps we were lied to all along.


Revealed: How the road to war was paved with lies
Intelligence agencies accuse Bush and Blair of distorting and fabricating evidence in rush to war
By Raymond Whitaker
27 April 2003 - UK Independent
http://news.independent.co.uk/low_res/story.jsp?story=400805&host=3&dir=508
by Jean
The way those marines are standing reminds me of the way the cops control our peace demonstrations. They practically dare demonstrators to cross their line. The cops in L.A. looked as if they were just itching to beat someone up. They wanted to have someone cross their line. Others looked like they wouldn't mind shooting off their rubber bullets. I imagine those marines in the photos are the same, some are eager to take over Iraq. Others must be shivering in their boots.
by Caleb Hayes (Caleb [at] adjicent.com)
How is shooting protesters any defferent than what Saddam was doing? Look at my website!! www.anti-bush.com Caleb Hayes, 12 years old
by Richard (rcd [at] cableone.net)
I think if we cannot find the wmd's fast enough
for the neighsayers we will be forced to do the old fashion routine of just " planting them." Lets give 'em time and you know they (wmds) will materialize. Anyways, its more important to stabilize this area than to go on a forced hunt to find these wmd's at the expense of the media.
by Linda
I am an American who is appalled at the scenes I see coming from Iraq. Americans ought to be ashamed of the terror we are creating in Iraq and around the world - like sending our young men to kill innocent men, women and children whose only defense against our occupation is to throw stones. WE are the terrorists of this world. Bush has hijaked our country and our soul.
Linda
by Dean Mosher (Deanmosher [at] comcast.net)
Everyone must get stoned!
by Frank
Protesters getting bullets for stones. This is exactly what happened in Israel years ago, before the *real* intifada started.
by Robert
I agree Linda, but are you ready for the shocking truth?

The US will probably never leave Iraq, or at least not for many years. You don't spend 80billion on a war unless you have some purpose. WMD was never the purpose of the invasion, only a ruse. Scott Ritter has openly discredited his own bosses. Western intelligence agencies knew very well what was going on in the country and its military capabilities. The country has been under very close surveilance since Gulf War1.

The US wants to deny increased Russia Oil production, since it fears a Eurasian alliance based on Russian minerals, European industry and Chinese markets. Russian politicians have been openly pushing the Eurasian concepts for years. Alliances are based on oil politics: who provides your oil and at what price, such economic issues underpin geo-political alliances the world over.

For example, the US can now exert huge diplomatic pressure on Syria since Iraqi oil in now being denied to Syria. In fact, this is really a form of economic warfare, and quite illegal. North korea, for example, will launch an attack on the US should an embargo be placed on their country, such is the importance of commerce.

All this has happened before, see Napoleon's'Continental system'.

Fidel Castro says openly that we are seeing 'Neo-Fascism'. A leader of a Nation does not use such an expression lightly. However, if it really is true that MOSAD (Israeli secret service) was responsible for 9/11, that is quite possibly the terrible reality we have to deal with. Fascism thrives best in a climate of fear.

US war crimes in Afghanistan futher indicate the brutal and Fascist nature of US military and 'special forces'. Since when do US soldiers cut peoples tongues out and promote the murder of POWs?



by Anarchist (jnelson17 [at] earthlink.net)
T Frank,

I heard, saw, read several different accounts of what caused this event. I have heard that only shoes & stones were thrown. I've heard that people in the crowd fired guns into the air, I heard people in the crowd fired at the Marines. I saw a Marine interviewed stating that they were caught in a crossfire etc...

Why do you choose to believe that only stones were thrown? Why are you so sure?

I am constantly amazed at the level of ignorance that this website brings out.

Jeff Nelson
by redd (redd7669 [at] yahoo.com)
we send our troops in on a freedom mission and unseat sadaams power so these people wont have to live in fear anymore ,and now that we are trying to restore order these assholes want to throw rocks at the same people who are there to see that they remain free..
a rock in my book is a weapon ,so if they want to cast stones ,we should be allowed to cast stones back at them or shoot the bastards.
an eye for an eye .
by oh, please
If you believe that, I can get you a great deal on a bridge. Those troops are there to seize control of the oil and to protect Israel. The whole world can see that, and says so. Why can’t you see it too? Have you been that brainwashed, or are you just plain stupid?

Those troops are foreign invaders. The people who are resisting them are patriots, defending their country. If a foreign army invaded your country, you’d do same.
by rosa 14 years old
you forgot the rest of the saying. its "an eye for an eye MAKES THE WHOLE WORLD BLIND"
Do you want the whole world blind?
by Henah
Why are all the people who want this war always use the attack on 9/11 an excuse? Iraq has no WMD and has no links to Osama. The amount of iraqis that have died is like triple the amunt of american that died on 9/11. This war is a lie and a scam so it is time for everyone to get up and let bush and blair know what we think. After all we are the majority.
by phaedra
A journalist filing the story with the Daily Mirror On 05/01/03 gives an eye witness account. I read this story on the Information Clearing House site, the story was written by Chris Hughes and the pictures are by Julian Andrews. Well worth the read.
by skeeb
It is obvious to most of the world that the U.S. is in violation of numerous international laws and has committed war crimes against civilians. It also used massive bombs 2000# ones and cluster bombs on civilian areas with information that was so clearly misinformation it is abominable. It is also obvious that Israel is heavily involved in the misinformation and was involved in the 9-11 attacks on the U.S. - Israelis were caught filming the fall of the World Trade Center in NY, they were laughing and clapping and were arrested as spies, then deported. Had they been Arabs, they would still be in jail. There is something horribly wrong with that picture. Also, in the first Trade Center attack a few years ago, the security system was controlled by Israelis and there was a Josie Hadass, an Israeli woman, involved with one of the Arab men accused, and she "disappeared" and likely went back to Israel under an assumed name. This info came out of one of the US magazines like Newsweek. Then nothing.
Mr. Bush is surrounded by Jewish people with obviousl conflicts of interest. Israel is much more dangerous to world peace and security than Iraq has ever been.
It is also interesting that Iraq's secular system of government is hardly mentioned. Especially that there are Jews there as well as Christians and Muslims, protected by the Saddam Hussein government. In a book "Ben Gurion's Scandals" by an Iraqi Jew, M. Giladi, he tells of how Jews sabataged Jewish synagues in Iraq some years ago in order to make Jews leave Iraq to pad the population of the Jewish state - many of them stayed and are still in Iraq. Recently some Muslims protected a Jewish community center from being looted.
This war has solved nothing. Mr. Bush, being a weak man, whose ego is easily inflated by those around him who use him for their own gains, could have created peace between Israel and Palestine when he first took office, when people counted on him to do just that. But he did nothing and because he had promised he would, he further damaged the peace process possibility, showing that there was no intention for the US to push for peace. Instead, billions more dollars went to Israel, Mr. Bush ignored the murders of Palestinian civilians and blamed those who fought back with suicide attacks - he called the war criminal Ariel Mad Dog Sharon his "friend" like a silly little boy wanting to appease a bully to protect himself.
In this case protecting himself from the U.S. Jewish lobby.
If Bush had moved toward peace and forced Israel out of the illegally occupied zones, there would have been NO 9-11. In fact, without 9-11, Mr. Bush would have continued to be hated by U.S. Jews. Instead, because he has done just about everything Mr. Sharon wanted, including the destruction of an entire nation (Iraq). And still, having done that, Mr. Sharon is not backing down and will not without force.
Bombing is primitive, just an extention of the cave man. Peace is mature, something Mr. Bush has yet to achieve.
by yesenia avila
it hurts me to see the deaths of young protesters in iraq.
our troops were sent over to stop that type of distruction, but it seems like their doing the same. also it is wrong to throw rocks at troops, in a way their helping in the killing of young protesters.
its even harder to go an not want to retaliate against those who help in the killing of thousands of your brothers and sisters in such a wrong and sad way.
its like they feel like they have to do something about the americans that took so much pride in killing and dis-amring little children (that got no media attention whats so ever) and then calling it a victory.
myhearts broken in two. i dont know who to feel for
the thousands who hurt for the litte children they had to see die and those who hate me because i carry the american title or the poor soldiers who were put in a such bad position, by some one who was backed by men who new what they wanted.
we all have to remember that were all one race, the human race. help eachother not your self.
by John D (jed459 [at] supernet.com)
If there were a handful of criminals, evil murderers and torturers of the very worst kind in American cities, would the US military bomb those cities which also have thousands of innocent people in them?

No matter how bad some criminals are in those cities would they drop cluster bombs, if there was also thousands of innocent men women and children living there too? Would they use the toxic and radio-active depleted uranium, with a half life of 4.5 billion years on American cities?

Then why do the US military expect a welcome when they have rained down thousands of bombs and missiles on Iraqi cities?? Why do the US military expect a welcome when they have murdered innocent people who happened to be in the way of them getting Saddam, who apparently got away?

It’s obvious that Bush is a racist and in his eyes, an Iraqi life does not have the same value as an American one.

If someone paid you a soldier’s wage to bomb American cities would you? I trust that most would not. Yet this is exactly what the US forces and the ‘coalition’ have done.

So how could they do it? How could they bomb the people of Iraq? Or if we want to argue about who or what the target was supposed be, how could they drop bombs on Iraq, knowing full well it would kill innocent people?

The answer is simple. They have lost something that would have prevented them doing it.

They have been USED, not to liberate Iraq but trained to destroy, murder and kill, for the commercial and power interests of Bush, and for a show of US military might. The only way people can do this, is by them having their compassion and humanity taken away and this is what military training is for, and what it does.
http://pathos.spyd.net/military.html

(This is also done through propaganda that we are brought up with from childhood, even our language is used that way.)

Then what the governments or the military won’t tell us is that when the troops come home, many of them will suffer from serious mental problems and thousands of them end up on the streets and become homeless, because they can no longer relate properly… and many of these will commit suicide.

“More Falklands veterans have committed suicide than were killed during the conflict. More than five times the number of British troops killed in the last Gulf war have also committed suicide. Research by Shelter reveals that one in four homeless people are ex-armed services personnel. Thousands live rough or in sheltered accommodation. Many also suffer from drug and alcohol abuse. Returning armed services personnel often end up in rehab, on the streets or with severe mental health problems.” says a British report.

So Bush and Blair destroy Iraqi and American and British lives, yes, they even kill their “own people”… Yet in reality “own people” should be the same as the people of any land, because the life of an Iraqi is worth the same as that of any country.

Yes, “only cowards hide behind the innocent” and the common enemy of us all are the leaders, not the ordinary people who are misled and sacrificed for the leaders on either side. Most of us recognise this fact but now that the whole world is in danger, it’s urgent that we start objecting and refuse to be used.. and this needs to be done world-wide, which I believe is now possible through education and modern communication. Call me a dreamer if you like but without vision humankind would not have made any progress at all.

John
by Hanibal (aschrafayoub [at] hotmail.com)
the time is coming, for a new thinking from making resistance against the forreign politics from the usa. the aime is light to understanding: full controll over the middle east and the oil ressources in this area and full controll worldwide.
Why are those children there? It is their country! Why are those US soldiers there, is a better question. First the US drops thousands of cluster and other bombs on the cities, and then you blame Iraqis for putting their children at risk for not keeping them inside? How many kids have been killed in the bombing? How many kids have seen their playmates maimed or killed? How many have lost friends, relatives, neighbours thanks to these soldiers? These kids are at war, and it is the US government which has forced war upon them, not the other way around. Who's bloody country is it anyaway? Should all Iraqi now stay inside their homes in their "liberated" country? The whole world protested against the Coalition of the killing. The Iraqi themselves have every right, tall or small, to protest against the occupation and showt the world that they never invited the US bombs and soldiers. Your concern for the innocent Iraqi kids comes a bit too late, don't you think so?
by American by birth
Henah, since you know Irag has no WMD's and no links to Osama maybe the Feds need to be talking to you. And by the way, you are not the majority. The polls during the war proved it!
God bless America and President Bush!
the USA are a crazy bunch of evil doers they act like the powers of evil they should not be name calling the word say whatsoever a man speekth so is he.bush need to pray for the sins he has committedagnist the iraq people.killing them trying to steal the OIL that belong to them.trying to take over the middle east the main reason he went to war was OILOIL.he and all the people of the USA,went crazy on SEPT.11when things happen.that"s another reason for war but the lord said that vengeance mine i will repay.bush say he know the lord well i hope it"s not the one i know.
by Scottie
Why do international laws have any moral authority?
Usually laws are backed up by force. Ie the reason why we obey a law is because if the police. We obey USA laws because the USA has USA police.
International law has no policeman except possibly for the USA.
Then the next reason is because it is for the good of everyone. Well not all that many people seem to view individual international laws to be for the good of everyone. Even human rights laws, many countries view this as "western cultural hegemony".
So it loks like international laws are just words and nothing more.
by Mona Attarchi (s05.mattarchi [at] wittenberg.edu)
Hello, I am originally from Iran, and my parents moved here when I was three because of the Iran Iraq war. I am in the US now, in the state of Ohio. So many people around me live in a state of fantasy, thinking their government is doing something good. I reelly think they should wake up. Me and three of my friends pitched a tent outside on our campus with a sign, and we fasted for seven days with just water to get our congressional representative, David Hobson, to pledge his support to find out how many civilian casualities there were. Thanks for your information. I wish they would do an official count, there is a big difference from 2100 something to 2960.
-Mona Attarchi
by Donald McGarry (donmacgar [at] yahoo.com)
If demonstrators were firing automatic weapons at US soldiers at close range, why were no US soldiers shot? They can't all be that poor marksmen! What about using tear gas to disperse the crowd first or rubbere bullets?
by True American
In response to the article about how U.S. cluster bombs have killed so many Iraqi children and basically that our soldiers are murderers, how many Iraqi civilians and children do you think Saddam Hussein "murdered" while in power? War is never good because people die, even innocent civilians. But when Saddam was given every opportunity to disarm, he put his own personal conquest of tyrannic power above the interests and safety of his own people and then hid like a coward. I would also like to remind every American that we are only able to express our opinions openly because of our dedicated troops over in the Middle East fighting for our rights this very moment. Remember, these men and women are on the other side of the earth, away from their familes, tired, hungry, and ready to come home. What keeps them over there is their dedication to their country and its people. Aparently whoever wrote the other artcile only started keeping up with the crisis in the Middle East since the U.S. took an active role. Before the times of the Gulf War, Suddam lauched chemical weapons against his own people, built monuments of himself when his people were starving and sick, and tortured even more. I hate to see any opinion from my fellow Americans that says anything against our country or our dedicated soldiers. Now I don't neccessarily agree with our government or our President on a lot of issues, but I'm not about to go against our troops. Whoever does, needs to think about how they are able to express their opinions. It's because we have such brave soldiers, If you don't like it, you can always move to another country and see how so many other unfortunate people around the world live.
by Disgusted American
For True American - Don't hide behind the troops, come out in the open. Cluster bombs should be described exactly as they are - hideous, cowardly, and illegal. If the American Army lacks the moral guidance to ban their use, the American people must lead them back to sanity and humanity. The same goes for all other "True Americans", no matter what their walk of life or persuasion. Finally, this applies in the broader sense to this entire dubious conflict. Stop believing the propaganda, think for yourself and not as you are told! This "Victory" is really a yoke of shame your leaders hung around your neck.
by good for the gander
invade your country, you have the right and the duty to fire upon them with any weapons you have, be they full auto or flintlock. This is particularly true of civilians whose army has run away, abandoning to the tender mercies of the invaders. These people are patriots, defending their country. If foreign aggressors invaded your country, wouldn’t you do the same?

Well, wouldn’t you?
by Ms. Delete
Why do these Iraqi's use their children as human shields?

Why do my comments get deleted? Truth hurts?
by Paul (luaprelkniw [at] netscape.net)
The last time I recall there being officially-sanctioned US gunfire directed at a large group of civilians who were making difficult the maintenance of order, the was a roar of anger that continues to echo down the decades. That was on the campus of Ohio State University.

I wonder if we'll remember these Iraqi civilians, exercising their civil right to protest, for as long. Probably not. The Army is allowed to murder in the name of freedom and oil (oops, sorry I mean democracy) whereas National Guard aren't allowed to kill. Plus, these Iraqis were just ungodly foreigners, not real American people with families who love them.

Does something smell here?
by aaron
sad to say, but you are a true american--a pious ignoramus.

<In response to the article about how U.S. cluster bombs have killed so many Iraqi children and basically that our soldiers are murderers, how many Iraqi civilians and children do you think Saddam Hussein "murdered" while in power?>

The problem with that formulation, True American, is that Hussein was to a large extent a creation of the US. To condemn Hussein necessarily entails--if you're gonna be at all intellectually honest-- condemning the US government (and, yes, the governments of France and Russia as well).
The US' relationship with Hussein goes all the way back to 1959 when he was contracted by the CIA to kill Kassem, then the President of Iraq (democratically elected, for what that's worth). It was a botched job, but in 1963 the B'aathists launched a successful coup against Kassim with assistance from the CIA, which, among other things, delivered to the B'aathists lists of leftists and other "subversives" who were summarily executed.

During the 80s the US, under Reagan, forged a close relationship with Hussein, assisting his government with weapons (including chemical and biological agents), advanced intelligence, and agricultural credits. The US assistance continued UP UNTIL AND AFTER Hussein gassed the Kurds. Next time you think to get righteous about Hussein's barbarism, True American, remember that the red-white-and-blue was there aiding and abetting.

It wasn't until Hussein invaded the Kuwaiti Corporation that the US, conveniently, became scandalized by Hussein's human rights record.

In the Gulf War 1 the US killed thousands of Iraqi civilians with bombs, deliberately destroyed Iraq's water treatment facilities, dropped uranium-depleted armaments in civilian areas, and massacred retreating conscripts while giving Hussein's elite forces carte blanche to smash uprisings against his rule.

In the 90s, the US/UN sanctions regime against Iraq killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqi's who were deprived of basic medical equipment and infrastructural technologies.

As is almost always the case in these American jihads, the vast majority of civilian deaths didn't come directly from bombs and guns (although, of course, there were many of those), but instead, from conditions that the war created or exacerbated. The US' destruction of Iraq's water treatment facilities caused huge numbers of civilian deaths from water-born diseases--the very old and very young being the main victims. Likewise, the use of depleted-uranium munitions has been linked to a massive upswell in cases of leukemia in Iraq.

Today in Iraq people are dying for lack of adequate medicines and proper equipment. Everyday people die of cluster bombs dropped by US forces

"We're taking every opportunity to avoid civilian casualties"--HA!! What a fucking joke!!

<But when Saddam was given every opportunity to disarm....>

and you have proof that he didn't? perhaps you could forward it to George and Donald, they'd be grateful i'm sure.

<I would also like to remind every American that we are only able to express our opinions openly because of our dedicated troops over in the Middle East fighting for our rights this very moment.>

why would you want to "remind every American" of something that is patently untrue, True American? It seems like the opposite is case: the more the US wages imperialist war, the less rights the average American is afforded.

<What keeps them [the US armed forces] over there is their dedication to their country and its people.>

what keeps them there is a contractural obligation that they're not smart or courageous enough to abrogate. one of the biggest lies about these wars is that the average grunt is there out of great patriotic feeling. they're mercenaries, TA.

<Aparently whoever wrote the other artcile only started keeping up with the crisis in the Middle East since the U.S. took an active role.>

sounds like a good description of your typical "true american."

<Before the times of the Gulf War, Suddam lauched chemical weapons against his own people, built monuments of himself when his people were starving and sick, and tortured even more.>

you forgot to give a proper ending to that sentence: "...with US assistance."

<I hate to see any opinion from my fellow Americans that says anything against our country or our dedicated soldiers.>

get used to it, bub.

by xerxes (eurocan03 [at] aol.com)
if we are such "liberators" of Iraqis' then why do they throw stones at our soldiers and call for Saddam to return? This war was wrong right from the beginning: bush broke int'l laws and showed entire world his contempt. most of the world view us now as an arrogant empire and we have now more enemies than ever. Iraqis' on the other hand have more reason to mourn for their relatives that were killed by the "liberators".
by WS
What, you can do anything when you have God on your side?

Why count the dead when you have God on your side!

Blessed are the peace makers, NOT THE WAR HAWKES Stop using our tax money for unjustfied wars

OVER $1,000,000,000.00 Thats a Billion w/ a B per day, Satan (LOL) Spreads his wings, GOD BLESS the Peacful people of the EARTH,

OUT
by Uncle Tim
I would like to thank those whoa re responsible for this website. This is a valuable service. We cannot simply buy the propaganda and avoid the ugly truth. Please don't stop.

This war was a bad policy and we see, very clearly, the foul harvest. I hate it that our fine young people are put into this terrible position.

War must always be a last resort.
by Luis
they are protesting the ilegal ocupation of their home land. They were not humanshields....This is a legitimated protest shadow by American Bullets.
by SFC
You all should run for office since you all are "great politicians" and read the situations so well. My word to you all that left comments:
" ij you are not on the ground with us then you have no right to judge our actions by what the media is reporting!" I don't remember seeing any of you in the fox hole in Mosul, Nasiriah or Najaf so do us a favor and stop interpreting everything you see and hear on TV. Get off your asses and join the Army or Marines and we'll see how your opinion changes then.
Semper Gumbi
1st Marine Division the killer of many Iraquis
by Another soldier out in middle of nowhere
My sarge told about you guys and I was trully surprized on how many ignorant and stupid people are out there. I read all the comments and left and the best one is SFC's since he is right. These people that we freed from ignorance are not worth it your are all right. I'd rather be home with my family, but I am here, and see every day that these people are nothing but a bunch of goat herders that justify their barbaric acts with the koran. They have killed each other, they have robbed people all in the the name of Allah! Where do you people get off..........Linda you are probably a fat house wife with no life...except to watch tv! you probably never been out of town much out of country and the only thing you come up with is BS! And proving that every country has their 10% if idiots you can proudly call yourself a member of!
Let me see right now is 4:14 in the morning Bagdad so if you really what to see Iraq for what it is come on out.........as a matter of fact All are invited to this paradise!
Another soldier fed up with ignorant people!
by Knowledge is power
No one argues that Saddam ruled with an iron fist. His government did deplorable things. Yet, the US wants to bring democracy via the iron fist. Is this a dictatorship of the world?

Does the means justify the ends? Or was there a more diplomatic way of achieving this? Wait... what were we trying to achieve again???

Which government intentionally gave its people blankets infected with disease? How many American Indians died?

You talk about freedom of speech but now the government can tap into any phone. They hold people in custody without evidence... and justify it by saying they are not prisoners of war. Pharmaceutical companies are given the green light to develop new drugs (vaccines) without proper testing and the governemt passes laws that protects them against legal action even when these drugs are linked with an increase in physical and mental problems.

You know not what I am talking about? Then you should research and read and educate yourself.

The majority of the world was not against the war merely on the basis that they had nothing else to care about at the time.

Now the WMDs were hidden so well that the Iraqis themselves couldn't even find them to use against the invaders. But the US does not want the help of the UN to discover these WMDs. They will be found by the US and the US alone. Wow.... and we all know we can trust the US government... whose sole justification for war was the belief that WMDs were available and ready for use in Iraq.

Heck, lets just make stuff up... forge it...

Does the use of depleted uranium in US weapons, to strengthen the metal so as to penetrate deeper into bunkers, constitute a weapon of mass destruction?

Are we limiting what is a WMD to something, which causes immediate death and short-term health effects?

Or can the depleted uranium, which will be in the soil for years to come ... which will cause birth defects and other health issues for generations, be termed as a WMD?

Did you know that in Australia kangaroos have been known to travel at speeds of up to 60 miles per hour. Females tend to be a little slower than males for two reasons...they are generally smaller and, secondly, their pouches catch air during their hops. Now, are you going to take my word for it? I have proof.

Ignorance is bliss...
by aaron
two bright mercenaries really broke it down for us. thanks fellas.

first, there was a cementhead signing himself 'Semper Gumbi, 1st Marine Division, the killer of many Iraquis' (i'm sure Iraqi's find him a real charmer) who proclaims that unless you're in Iraq you don't get a right to form an opinion. We're apparently just supposed to believe whatever the pathological liars and killers want us to believe. HA! That's never gonna happen shit-boy!

And then another winner calling himself 'Another soldier out in middle of nowhere', who actually listens to what his "sarge" has to say (a sure sign of imbecilism) has listened to all the posts and likes his friend's the best while failing to contradict anything he finds objectionable. (Surprise surprise!). It says he's fed-up with ignorant people while drooling that Iraqi's are nothing but a bunch of barbaric goat-herders.

Iraqi's who hadn't already learned to hate America as of month ago are now taking a crash course. Thanks guys!




by SFC
Hey they "wiseone" my signature was as such since you dumbass civilians already made up your minds without having all the facts........I know I know you saw it on tv.....but to sink down to name calling that is bellow all! You really showed me what a BIG MAN you are. Since you are so good at interpreting everything I thought that you would have no problems understanding the point being made..........but obviously "it" passed you at 150mph.....so get a life and stop being an idiot! Saddly your lines mean nothing and to judge somebody without all the facts........well your are not GOD! or maybe you think you are.......as for your statements, well they live a lot to be wanted........no sense.......just empty sentences....you are trully an educated man! I just hope you are not American!....but one can only hpe!
by bro. john damian (orderofstjohnthebaptist [at] hotmail.com)
white trash get out of iraq.
The US hardly got a welcome-mat from the Shi'ites when it invaded southern Iraq. The Shi'ite's have been sold out enough times by the United States--and they aren't stupid. Calls for the US to get the fuck out are already heard loud and clear from the Shi'ite population, and they will only get louder as the betrayals and brutality of the occupation become more glaringly evident. If you jingoist idiots cared, you'd know that in Shi'ite cities like Basra and Umm Qasr (sic) there is an incipient medical crisis/disaster due to lack of adequate medical supplies, black-outs, untreated water, and poor relief assistance--all brought to them by the liberators. Added to this, of course, is the fact that many Shi'ites died in the US invasion and more continue to die from cluster bombs that the US benevolently dropped all over the country.

The Kurds have been sold-out numerous times by the US and we can be sure that when push comes to shove the US will sell them down the river to satiate its desire to control the oil fields in Northern Iraq and appease Turkey.

The US' main man, Chalabi, is Shi'ite and has negligible support in Iraq. Why, you might ask, did the US choose to throw it's support behind a huckster like Chalabi and not someone who actually has real support in Iraq? Because nobody who has real support in Iraq is willing to do the US' bidding, that's why! Or put another way: nobody willing to do the US' bidding in Iraq has, or will ever have, real support!

Lastly, i notice not one of you bothers to address the long-term relationship that the US government maintained with Hussein; a long-term relationship that, by the way, spanned the years in which he committed his worst human rights abuses. Why don't one of you duds address that fact? Tell us what it says about the US' interests in Iraq, particularly in light of the fact that NONE of the "weapons of mass destruction", which were the stated reason for the war, have been found. And also, while you're at it, tell us something about the human rights record of US ally's such as Uzbekistan, Pakistan, Egypt, Jordan, and Morocco.





add your comments






Hey they "wiseone" my signature was as such since you dumbass civilians already made up your minds without having all the facts........I know I know you saw it on tv.....but to sink down to name calling that is bellow all! You really showed me what a BIG MAN you are. Since you are so good at interpreting everything I thought that you would have no problems understanding the point being made..........but obviously "it" passed you at 150mph.....so get a life and stop being an idiot! Saddly your lines mean nothing and to judge somebody without all the facts........well your are not GOD! or maybe you think you are.......as for your statements, well they live a lot to be wanted........no sense.......just empty sentences....you are trully an educated man! I just hope you are not American!....but one can only hpe!






Aaron,

Get your head out. I suspect you are a teen-ager or at best a young college student with delusions of an wonderful, peacefilled world. Funny how you have failed to keep pace with the REST of the news, you know, the mass graves, missing family members, starvation, etc.....

Maybe you should pull your head out of the sand and see that this regime was not a nice, peaceful Mayberry street (do you REMEMBER Mayberry?) This guy was sick, killing his own people, not just in the rebellious north and south, but in downtown Bahgdad, where many family members just disappeared, and amongst his military, where those on leave without papers were taken, tortured and/or killed.....

No, I think a few head in the sand demonstrators in Iraq, like you, didn't pay attention to what was going on. It didn't affect them directly (maybe it would tomorrow, but not today) but those MEAN OLD AMERICANS.....whoa, now THEY are terrible. Maybe you would want to go live under a similar regime?

Oh well, I have rambled enough, I just know that I am thankful every day that I live under a "regime" that is mindful of its citizens, its human rights and don't mind, as Randy Travis says in a song you may want to listen to "Standing up for what he thought was right" The song, should you wish to expand your sand filled head, "You've got to stand for something"




by aaron
shit howdy, i've been ganged-up upon by a gaggle of geniuses!
by aaron Wednesday May 07, 2003 at 11:32 PM



The US hardly got a welcome-mat from the Shi'ites when it invaded southern Iraq. The Shi'ite's have been sold out enough times by the United States--and they aren't stupid. Calls for the US to get the fuck out are already heard loud and clear from the Shi'ite population, and they will only get louder as the betrayals and brutality of the occupation become more glaringly evident. If you jingoist idiots cared, you'd know that in Shi'ite cities like Basra and Umm Qasr (sic) there is an incipient medical crisis/disaster due to lack of adequate medical supplies, black-outs, untreated water, and poor relief assistance--all brought to them by the liberators. Added to this, of course, is the fact that many Shi'ites died in the US invasion and more continue to die from cluster bombs that the US benevolently dropped all over the country.

The Kurds have been sold-out numerous times by the US and we can be sure that when push comes to shove the US will sell them down the river to satiate its desire to control the oil fields in Northern Iraq and appease Turkey.

The US' main man, Chalabi, is Shi'ite and has negligible support in Iraq. Why, you might ask, did the US choose to throw it's support behind a huckster like Chalabi and not someone who actually has real support in Iraq? Because nobody who has real support in Iraq is willing to do the US' bidding, that's why! Or put another way: nobody willing to do the US' bidding in Iraq has, or will ever have, real support!

Lastly, i notice not one of you bothers to address the long-term relationship that the US government maintained with Hussein; a long-term relationship that, by the way, spanned the years in which he committed his worst human rights abuses. Why don't one of you duds address that fact? Tell us what it says about the US' interests in Iraq, particularly in light of the fact that NONE of the "weapons of mass destruction", which were the stated reason for the war, have been found. And also, while you're at it, tell us something about the human rights record of US ally's such as Uzbekistan, Pakistan, Egypt, Jordan, and Morocco.


The following peice in the USA Today (yuk!) describes how loved the US is in Baghdad these days:

Hostility toward U.S. troops is running high in Baghdad Casualties, crime and lack of services breed anger
By Paul Wiseman and Vivienne Walt
USA TODAY 5/7/03


BAGHDAD -- Having easily won the war for Iraq, the United States has yet to win the peace.

Iraqis say they view the U.S. military occupation with suspicion, anger and frustration. Many even say life was in some ways better under the regime of Saddam Hussein: The streets, they say, were safer, jobs more secure, food more plentiful and electricity and water supplies reliable.

The U.S. military -- and the civilian administration led for now by retired lieutenant general Jay Garner -- have barely begun to fill the vacuum left by the collapse of Saddam's government. U.S. troops have been reluctant to get dragged into civil affairs and local disputes. Garner's administration hasn't made much of an impact yet. A new Iraqi government seems a distant dream. As a result, many Iraqis feel they are adrift, their destination uncertain and their future bleak.

''I'm sitting here without money, without a job, without electrical power,'' says Hussein Mohammed Ali, 52, who held a variety of jobs with state-run Iraqi companies. ''How can I believe in anything the USA tells me?''

''The Americans made promises, but we have seen nothing,'' says Kamaran Abdullah, 35, a once-prosperous Kurdish merchant. His Baghdad shop was ransacked and looted when Saddam's government fell and hasn't reopened. ''Everybody's afraid to go shopping. People have weapons. They take your pocket money and threaten to kill you.''

The hopelessness is breeding rage and raising fears that frustrated Iraqis could take up arms against U.S. troops. ''We are angry,'' civil servant Mohammed Brahim, 32, says. ''All Iraqis will become bombs if we don't see something from the United States.''

U.S. officials say it will take time to restore order and government services in Baghdad and the rest of the country.

Already, however, local Muslim clerics, tribal leaders and would-be politicians are assuming power across Iraq. The slow start of the post-war effort has allowed such power grabs in many towns -- and might be difficult to undo.

''Whoever was there at the time became the administrator of that town,'' says Joanne Giordano, the spokeswoman for Garner's Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance.

Garner's aides defend the pace. They say Baghdad was only recently safe enough for them to move operations from Kuwait. ''Governance is a long-term process,'' says Chris Milligan, deputy reconstruction coordinator for Garner.

The process also is evolving. President Bush on Tuesday named a special envoy, L. Paul Bremer, to supervise Garner, making it clear that civilians, not the U.S. military, are in control. Bremer, who formerly headed the State Department's counterterrorism office, will oversee Iraq's transition to democratic rule.


Americans considered remote

In interviews, Baghdad residents say they regard the U.S. officials here as remote. The Americans -- military and civilian alike -- are barracked behind barbed wire inside Saddam's Republican Palace. About one mile inside the vast presidential compound, the Americans sleep on camp beds behind the palace's gold-plated doors.

With Garner's operation inaccessible to almost all Iraqis, most people see only the military side of the U.S. occupation. Dozens have tales of being shouted at by nervous young soldiers at checkpoints in a language they don't understand. A soldier pointing a gun at residents whom he suspects of either looting or perhaps planning an attack is a common sight.

''Iraqis see everything in black and white. They love and they hate, both intensely,'' says Wamid Nadhme, senior political science professor at Baghdad University. ''For years they have had to love Saddam or they hated him. Now he is gone. They see only the U.S., whom they hate.''

Nadhme says he expected anger and hatred to emerge against the war's victors. ''The thing that's surprised me is that it's taken only a few weeks. That can be put down to one thing largely: (the lack of) electricity.''

Giordano and other officials say the U.S. authority is only now shifting from a military operation to a civil government.

Garner's aides met for the first time Monday with second-tier bureaucrats (the top officials fled) from the old Baghdad city government. Most are specialists in the problems currently plaguing residents and fueling the emotions against the USA, such as lack of water, electricity and security.

To show some concrete progress, the U.S. administration pushed for schools to reopen last Saturday and called on Iraqi police officers to return to their jobs last Sunday. There was some cooperation, but not full compliance.

Taking longer than expected

Americans admit they could have moved faster. U.S. Army Capt. Todd Clark, 30, of Fort Hood, Texas, and the 2nd Armored Calvary Regiment, says the U.S. military underestimated the amount of looting and lawlessness that would follow Saddam's fall. The anarchy left schools, government offices and utilities badly damaged.

Fixing them is taking longer than expected.

Meanwhile, distrust of the United States seems to be running high. Last week, for instance, a U.S. military helicopter dropped leaflets over the Zafaraniya neighborhood in south Baghdad. Most blew away before anyone could retrieve them. So few people actually saw what they said. But that didn't stop the local rumor mill from churning out theories about the mysterious missive. Soon many Zafaraniya residents had convinced themselves that they were about to be thrown out of their homes by the U.S. military -- a striking example of their willingness to assume the worst about American intentions.

Zafaraniya is a working-class neighborhood with a wide, well-integrated ethnic mix. Sunni and Shiite Muslims interact and intermarry and live side by side with Christians, Kurds and other minorities. The streets are unpaved and dusty. Stone walls surround dust-colored two-story homes made of concrete and conceal well-tended courtyards with flower gardens.

Over cups of thick Turkish coffee, Zafaraniya residents are eager to discuss the U.S. occupation and share their more fanciful theories.

Among the theories rampant in Baghdad and Zafaraniya:

* That Saddam was an American agent all along and is now safely in CIA custody. Or, alternatively, that he's still in hiding and preparing to return to power.

* That Kuwaitis, in cahoots with the United States, were behind the widespread looting and the fires that swept through Iraqi government offices this month. Many believe the alleged arson was revenge for the destruction Iraqis visited on Kuwait in 1990.

* That the United States plans to steal Iraq's oil.

* That U.S. troops are allowing criminals to run free and withholding food and medical supplies in a deliberate attempt to terrorize or even exterminate Iraqi citizens.

The residents of Zafaraniya have particular reason to distrust Americans. U.S. troops had assembled an ammunition dump in the fields a few hundred yards outside the densely packed neighborhood and were detonating old Iraqi munitions there. Residents say the explosions were rattling their walls, shattering their windows and frightening their children, and that U.S. officials were unresponsive to their complaints.

''I told the Americans, 'If this doesn't stop, we might have a revolution,' '' says Sheikh Abdul Rahman Abdul Jabbar, 30, the imam (cleric) at a local Sunni mosque.

Then, April 26, a fire broke out in the ammo dump, igniting a missile that slammed into the neighborhood, destroying four houses and killing at least six people. U.S. officials say the fire started when unknown attackers fired a flare into the ammo dump.

Fatin Khalid, 18, a student, lost a teacher and one of her best friends in the blast. ''I don't want to go back to school,'' she says.

Sanaa Jasim, 28, is bitter and worried, too. Marines shot and wounded her husband in an apparent misunderstanding after he went outside to join the crowds welcoming them to Baghdad April 9, the day the capital fell to U.S. forces. The U.S. flew him to Kuwait for medical treatment. He is expected back soon.

Word is that her husband, who had been a welder in an Iraqi government workshop, won't be able to walk for two years.

Jasim wonders how they will support their two young boys. Already, they've sold furniture for money to live on. ''We hate Americans,'' Jasim says. ''We lost our living. They destroyed our life, our happiness. Saddam Hussein was an unjust man, but he never did this.''

Saddam's regime did provide basics: rations of rice, vegetable oil, tea, sugar and other necessities. His government dominated the economy, providing steady work (usually with miserly wages) to millions. It also policed the streets and kept traffic running smoothly.

Now Iraqis must find their own food. Most workplaces and government offices have shut down indefinitely. Criminals prey on those foolish enough to venture out at night. And, without street lights, traffic is anarchic.

''Saddam made many mistakes,'' Kamaran Abdullah says. ''But in his time, I could live in safety.''Cover storyCover story
by Person
Public opinion is a fickle thing.. whatever they might be saying its just an atempt to make sense of how events are effecting their individual lives and standards of living. since this is a period of disruptuion some people will be unhappy with any leader. (unless he kills peopel who oppose him). some peopel will be happy with any leader (because they want a strong leader or they think its smart to side with the biggest guy on the block).
Anyway just raise their standard of living.
by hagi
If terrow is supported by the majority of a people or country then they will at some point have to be delt with as part of a military operation lest the entire Arab world be lost.
by Halliburtontman
I'm in agreement that we should bring democracy to the rest of the world. How else could I get the oppportunity to buy a Big Mac in downtown Baghdad (forget the fact that it might cost a months worth of wages for the indigenous population)? How else could I get a chance to set up a big business and bring jobs to the region (and only have to pay them substandard wages and not have to worry about environmental issue or workers rights)? If another country is not a client state it's a rogue state and should be dealt with the upmost severity. We need to bring democracy to the world! We need to send our sons and daughters to foreign lands to die for our freedoms! The freedom to have my stock portfolio can get fat from lucrative contracts as a result of war. The freedom to get cheap gas at the pump so I can drive my Hummer back and forth to work. Why don't we just all admit that our way of life is the best way and that it should enforced upon the world. We did it to the American Indians so why stop there. Those who don't question authority are cattle being lead to big corporate/government slaughter. And those who oppose criticism, call me un-patriotic for not supporting this war, are no different from the fascists racist pigs of Hitler's Nazi regime. The only threat to my freedom are from the laws that get passed here in this country that infringe upon my constitutional rights as an American citizen. One example is the Patriot Act. Take a look at it and see for yourself.....
by Halliburtontman
Good soldier! Nice soldier! Roll over soldier! That's a good soldier.

Now here's your measly paycheck. Those of us here that have invested in this war and get a good price at the gas station thank you.

I think Metallica put it the best ...." you coward, you servant you blind man...back to the front!"
by Bill Elliott
I believe the freedom of all voices should be heard, that is the American way. I however have a hard time listenening to ignorance. To condemn a soldier who puts his life on the line for Americans and other nationalities is disgusting. If you feel the need to bash someone bash the politians and the people we put into office. While we are talking about politians and our elected officials we should in return look at ourselves the people who voted for these descion makers into office. It is real easy to blame the people on the front line the ones giving you the right to run your uneducated mouths. Soldiers who defend us should not come under scutiny again that lies in the people we elect. So, on that if you are to cowardly to serve your country I suggest you shut your mouth or go serve your country. Or better yet run for office maybe you can make some changes there. Nonetheless, support our young adults who sacrifice greatly to defend a great and compationate country as we are.
by Halliburtontman
If you're refering to me. I was in the military. And no I'm not bashing my American military brothers and sisters. I'm playing the role of the greedy Sales Executive. I'm playing devils advocate to the unholy alliance between big corporations and the pentagon. I would've supported this war if it were put forward truthfully to the American people but it hasn't. I would've been behind Bush if he said this war was to show to the rest of the world that we are not going to take it any more and there was irrefutable evidence that Saddam was connected to 9/11. If this were a war to bring "freedom" to the Iraqi people then why do we support the Saudi monarchy? Or any middle east nation that oppresses it's own people? Or any nation in the world for that matter? Why? Because it has been and always will be about BIG BUSINESS. We've turned our military into a mercenary organization. If I were to truly believe that this was a war to free the Iraqi people then why haven't we freed the Cubans, North Koreans, the Chinese? Why? It's because of these unanswered questions that I have serious doubts as to the sincerity of Bush's administration and his foreign policy. Just look at where Bush comes from. He's an oil man and he's in bed with big business as well as others in his administration. Can a tiger change it's stripes? We all know the answer to that. We no longer live in a true democracy. It has evolved into a Corpocracy and the sooner people wake up to this fact and get involved in government, before we lose more of our freedoms, the sooner we can turn this country around and bring it back from the brink of self destruction. It's funny, Bill, that you mention I should get involved in politics but I have to work 40+ hours just to make ends meet so where do I get the time to raise a familly and get involved in politics. But if I were rich I bet you I could get involved. The more I'm taxed the more I have to work to make ends meet so the more I have to work to make more money to pay the bills. Meanwhile all the rich folk get to galavant about and play with people's lives. I'm not a Democrat. I'm not a Republican. I'm not Libertarian. I'm not a Liberal. I'm not a Communist. I'm not a Socialist. I'm better than that. I'm an American. This country once stood for something great but the greedy politicians and corporations have perverted that. Shame on us.
by Bill Elliott
Sorry, I'm much too simpleminded to understand your post. I am a conservative.
by Halliburtontman
I don't care what anybody's political affilitation is. I don't care if somebody calls me uneducated (of course education is relative). I care about my fellow Americans dying on foreign lands for causes that are not clear. At least in WWI and WW2 we knew who the enemy was. Can someone honestly say that terrorists or unjust/defunct dictatorships are a threat to our freedoms? If so then how? Can someone, in there heart of hearts justify the use of our military might against a SOVEREIGN nation in the name of protecting our freedoms? If so, please explain. Also, I'm having a real hard time understanding much less accepting, collateral damage (politically correct term for killing civilians) in the name of protecting American freedoms. I'll conclude with this: "What we sow today our children will reap tomorrow".
by Bill
Mr Halliburtonman,

My comments are directed at people in protest of our soldiers, that think our soldiers have no minds. I also served for this great country and felt that desire again at the begining of the war after watching some of my brothers fall.

Not all the time do I agree with the descions made by our government but, I beleive in this country and the freedoms that come with it. I also beleive that the people (all people) should be heard whether peolple beleive in what is being said or not. That is what seperates us from most. I do have a family with small children and I too pay hefty taxes and I am as middle class as it gets but, I am the richest man when it comes to family and friends.

I have a nephew over in Bagdad as we converse now. I have a hard time feeling sorry for the people that are throwing stones or taking shots are our fellow Americans. Sadaam has shown what type of person he is, how can you say that there is no link between 911 and Iraq ? He is everything we are not !!

Also, wasn't Halliburton just awarded a huge contract in Iraq ? I do beleive so ! So I know our government has motives that we can not justify but having awarded a multi-billion $ contract from our VP former company is just another example of not wanting to try and understand the motives, but supporting the future and our young adults there in Iraq are definetly that (our future).
by aaron
<Sadaam has shown what type of person he is, how can you say that there is no link between 911 and Iraq ?>

Oh, i see: anyone who's shown himself to be a bad "type of person" is implicated in 911. Wow, why even bother to investigate!

Listen, Bill, there is no evidence of a link between Hussein and 911. None! There have been all sorts of
allegations, but everyone when followed up upon has lead nowhere! The reason that you think that there is a connection is that every time the US gov't claims to have conclusive evidence the lackeys in the mass media report it in bold print, but when this same "evidence" is shown to be bogus the same media report it as a fine-printed aside. You've been had by the Big Lie, Bill. You've been manipulated and bamboozled.

<He is everything we are not !!>

If you mean that Hussein is everything the US capitalist state is not, all I can say is: how wrong you are! If he's everything "we" aren't then why did "we" support Hussein for so many years? Most who bother to pay attention know that in the 80s the US gov't supplied Hussein's regime with weapons (including chemical and biological agents), advanced military intelligence, and agricultural credits; most people paying attention know that this aid continued up until AND AFTER Hussein gassed the Kurds and that in 1989 the US opposed censoring Hussein in the UN for human rights abuses.

Many people, though, don't know that the US' relationship with Hussein goes all the way back to 1959:

Exclusive: Saddam key in early CIA plot
By Richard Sale
UPI Intelligence Correspondent
From the International Desk
Published 4/10/2003

U.S. forces in Baghdad might now be searching high and low for Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, but in the past Saddam was seen by U.S. intelligence services as a bulwark of anti-communism and they used him as their instrument for more than 40 years, according to former U.S. intelligence diplomats and intelligence officials.

United Press International has interviewed almost a dozen former U.S. diplomats, British scholars and former U.S. intelligence officials to piece together the following account. The CIA declined to comment on the report.

While many have thought that Saddam first became involved with U.S. intelligence agencies at the start of the September 1980 Iran-Iraq war, his first contacts with U.S. officials date back to 1959, when he was part of a CIA-authorized six-man squad tasked with assassinating then Iraqi Prime Minister Gen. Abd al-Karim Qasim.

In July 1958, Qasim had overthrown the Iraqi monarchy in what one former U.S. diplomat, who asked not to be identified, described as "a horrible orgy of bloodshed."

According to current and former U.S. officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, Iraq was then regarded as a key buffer and strategic asset in the Cold War with the Soviet Union. For example, in the mid-1950s, Iraq was quick to join the anti-Soviet Baghdad Pact which was to defend the region and whose members included Turkey, Britain, Iran and Pakistan.

Little attention was paid to Qasim's bloody and conspiratorial regime until his sudden decision to withdraw from the pact in 1959, an act that "freaked everybody out" according to a former senior U.S. State Department official.

Washington watched in marked dismay as Qasim began to buy arms from the Soviet Union and put his own domestic communists into ministry positions of "real power," according to this official.

The domestic instability of the country prompted CIA Director Allan Dulles to say publicly that Iraq was "the most dangerous spot in the world."

In the mid-1980s, Miles Copeland, a veteran CIA operative, told UPI the CIA had enjoyed "close ties" with Qasim's ruling Baath Party, just as it had close connections with the intelligence service of Egyptian leader Gamel Abd Nassar. In a recent public statement, Roger Morris, a former National Security Council staffer in the 1970s, confirmed this claim, saying that the CIA had chosen the authoritarian and anti-communist Baath Party "as its instrument."

According to another former senior State Department official, Saddam, while only in his early 20s, became a part of a U.S. plot to get rid of Qasim. According to this source, Saddam was installed in an apartment in Baghdad on al-Rashid Street directly opposite Qasim's office in Iraq's Ministry of Defense, to observe Qasim's movements.

Adel Darwish, Middle East expert and author of "Unholy Babylon," said the move was done "with full knowledge of the CIA," and that Saddam's CIA handler was an Iraqi dentist working for CIA and Egyptian intelligence. U.S. officials separately confirmed Darwish's account.
Darwish said that Saddam's paymaster was Capt. Abdel Maquid Farid, the assistant military attaché at the Egyptian Embassy who paid for the apartment from his own personal account. Three former senior U.S. officials have confirmed that this is accurate.

The assassination was set for Oct. 7, 1959, but it was completely botched. Accounts differ. One former CIA official said that the 22-year-old Saddam lost his nerve and began firing too soon, killing Qasim's driver and only wounding Qasim in the shoulder and arm. Darwish told UPI that one of the assassins had bullets that did not fit his gun and that another had a hand grenade that got stuck in the lining of his coat.

"It bordered on farce," a former senior U.S. intelligence official said. But Qasim, hiding on the floor of his car, escaped death, and Saddam, whose calf had been grazed by a fellow would-be assassin, escaped to Tikrit, thanks to CIA and Egyptian intelligence agents, several U.S. government officials said.

Saddam then crossed into Syria and was transferred by Egyptian intelligence agents to Beirut, according to Darwish and former senior CIA officials. While Saddam was in Beirut, the CIA paid for Saddam's apartment and put him through a brief training course, former CIA officials said. The agency then helped him get to Cairo, they said.

One former U.S. government official, who knew Saddam at the time, said that even then Saddam "was known as having no class. He was a thug -- a cutthroat."

In Cairo, Saddam was installed in an apartment in the upper class neighborhood of Dukki and spent his time playing dominos in the Indiana Café, watched over by CIA and Egyptian intelligence operatives, according to Darwish and former U.S. intelligence officials.
One former senior U.S. government official said: "In Cairo, I often went to Groppie Café at Emad Eldine Pasha Street, which was very posh, very upper class. Saddam would not have fit in there. The Indiana was your basic dive."

But during this time Saddam was making frequent visits to the American Embassy where CIA specialists such as Miles Copeland and CIA station chief Jim Eichelberger were in residence and knew Saddam, former U.S. intelligence officials said.

Saddam's U.S. handlers even pushed Saddam to get his Egyptian handlers to raise his monthly allowance, a gesture not appreciated by Egyptian officials since they knew of Saddam's American connection, according to Darwish. His assertion was confirmed by former U.S. diplomat in Egypt at the time.

In February 1963 Qasim was killed in a Baath Party coup. Morris claimed recently that the CIA was behind the coup, which was sanctioned by President John F. Kennedy, but a former very senior CIA official strongly denied this.

"We were absolutely stunned. We had guys running around asking what the hell had happened," this official said.

But the agency quickly moved into action. Noting that the Baath Party was hunting down Iraq's communists, the CIA provided the submachine gun-toting Iraqi National Guardsmen with lists of suspected communists who were then jailed, interrogated, and summarily gunned down, according to former U.S. intelligence officials with intimate knowledge of the executions.

Many suspected communists were killed outright, these sources said. Darwish told UPI that the mass killings, presided over by Saddam, took place at Qasr al-Nehayat, literally, the Palace of the End.

A former senior U.S. State Department official told UPI: "We were frankly glad to be rid of them. You ask that they get a fair trial? You have to get kidding. This was serious business."
A former senior CIA official said: "It was a bit like the mysterious killings of Iran's communists just after Ayatollah Khomeini came to power in 1979. All 4,000 of his communists suddenly got killed."

British scholar Con Coughlin, author of "Saddam: King of Terror," quotes Jim Critchfield, then a senior Middle East agency official, as saying the killing of Qasim and the communists was regarded "as a great victory." A former long-time covert U.S. intelligence operative and friend of Critchfield said: "Jim was an old Middle East hand. He wasn't sorry to see the communists go at all. Hey, we were playing for keeps."

Saddam, in the meantime, became head of al-Jihaz a-Khas, the secret intelligence apparatus of the Baath Party.

The CIA/Defense Intelligence Agency relation with Saddam intensified after the start of the Iran-
Iraq war in September of 1980. During the war, the CIA regularly sent a team to Saddam to deliver battlefield intelligence obtained from Saudi AWACS surveillance aircraft to aid the effectiveness of Iraq's armed forces, according to a former DIA official, part of a U.S. interagency intelligence group.

This former official said that he personally had signed off on a document that shared U.S. satellite intelligence with both Iraq and Iran in an attempt to produce a military stalemate. "When I signed it, I thought I was losing my mind," the former official told UPI.

A former CIA official said that Saddam had assigned a top team of three senior officers from the Estikhbarat, Iraq's military intelligence, to meet with the Americans.
According to Darwish, the CIA and DIA provided military assistance to Saddam's ferocious February 1988 assault on Iranian positions in the al-Fao peninsula by blinding Iranian radars for three days.

The Saddam-U.S. intelligence alliance of convenience came to an end at 2 a.m. Aug. 2, 1990, when 100,000 Iraqi troops, backed by 300 tanks, invaded its neighbor, Kuwait. America's one-time ally had become its bitterest enemy.
Copyright © 2001-2003 United Press International





by Halliburtontman
Excellent synopsis aaron. I knew there was previous history between us and Saddam but I didn't know to what extent. It's information like this that people need to know about. I just find it hard to understand how people like Bill can say "Saddam's a bad guy so let's go get him" without know ALL the facts. I consider Bill and those like minded individuals brainwashed/conditioned by our federal government. It scares me that people don't think or don't want to think, that don't question authority. I used to think like him. During the 80's. But I finally awakened to the fact that our government doesn't give a damn about the men in uniform. The Vietnam War is a perfect example of that. My allegience is not to the federal governent it's to this land that I live on. When we said the "Pledge of Allegience" as a child I didn't know what I was saying. All I knew it was something that was required of us. This sowed the seeds of my conditioning. To hate everything else that wasn't American or an ally of America. Growing up during the cold war reenforced this. Finally I opened my eyes after I saw what the Viet Nam war did to my father and when I worked in a VA hospital. Our government doesn't give a damn about us. It rewards the obedient and punishes those who would speak out against it (can anybody say the McCarthy hearings?). I will defend my freedoms and the freedom of others when we are attacked and the enemy is KNOWN. We are not here to do the bidding of the government. We don't owe allegiance to the government. We owe allegiance to our Country and our people. The federal government is not the Country. We have entrusted the federal government to run things here and answer to US. But it has evolved into something less than a democracy and more like a corporation. You don't question corporate rules and ethics. You do as your told if you're just an underling. And we do so like good little citizens. Question authority, get involved, lest we lose all we hold dear to us ---> our freedoms.
by Bill
Aaron,

Wow ! you have way to much time on your hands to go into all that. All I have to say is it's a CONSPIRACY man. I think you and Halliburtonman watched way to many episodes of the X-files, or you get your information from your pastor. Nonetheless, get your own opinion, (or should someone else tell you how to think) by investigating the FACTS.

Yes, we helped Sadaam get into power and even helped him with weapons, but why ? Maybe we weighed are options at that time and took the lesser of evil's, and maybe that's why we had to fix the problem we created many many years ago.

I am so tired of you people that think you have all the answers and look for something to protest about. I have a suggestion to you, go live in Iraq ! or some other third world country where you don't even have the chance to have your own thoughts or beliefs.

Go to the Dr. that gives abortions and protest there or go to the courts and protest the Death penalty but, if you are to cowardly to to fight for the country that gives you these rights then STFU. (Let's see if you can figure that one out !) It is all you pussy's that have all the answers but do nothing about it. Go run for a local office, go represent the people, and quit thinking that you know what you are talking about. Better yet, go read some more articles from bitter X- government agents.

I started this because I did not like the fact that Mr Oil man (who claims he was in the military, more like high school ROTC) was talking out his lower end about OUR soldiers. The same soldiers who give you and oil dude the right to be completely ingnorant, and you talk about me being brainwashed (hah).

I think that the best quality in a person is to KNOW that you DON'T KNOW everything. But I'm sure you and oil dude can come up with some more conspiracy scenarios about our government. If it that you are looking to debate go debate with the priest that molested children not about OUR soldiers who fight for OUR every right.

Yes, I too just wasted a whole lot of time responding to ignorance but, maybe you and all the other protesters that might read this can understand that we all have the right to think and say what we want to. You should embrass that, not protest against it !

One last thing, who killed JFK ? hah, hah, hah you bloody rats ! Go figure that one out, obvisouly you have the time.

by Halliburtontman
Spoken like a true feddie --> Bill
by SFC
aaron you are to talk about free time..........look at your "article".........looks to me like you have way to much time clipping quotes from the paper and CIA "cook-books".......wow it is amazing, maybe you should come and replace Gen. Garner and tells us all what to do since you obviously "know" it all........I think YOU have watched a tad to many episodes of x-files.....may I recommend X-men for a change!.......looks like the paper and tv gave you your opinion........like I said if you want facts and it seems you do come one down we are at the palace and I am sure we can find some room for you and let you come on patrols with us and decide for yourself the rightesneous of this mission: is it about oil is it about wmd..........obviously you know jack about NBC warfare and the real reason we are here!!
by Halliburtontman
If we are to try the Iraqis for war crimes. I hope General Tommy Franks is held accountable for using cluster bombs in populated areas knowing full well the collateral damage they would cause. I hope we make war reparations to those civilians we killed or maimed during our shelling and bombing of the cities. Are we above international law? Does might make right? Do you expect them to love us after we've ripped the arms off their children and say this was done in the name of protecting American freedoms?

Does might make right?
by Bill
Mr oil boy,

Who is Freddie, your boyfriend ?
by Anti-fascist
It's "FEDDIE." Please learn how to read.
by Momma
Again, is feddie your boyfriend ?

Sounds like I struck a nerve... sweety
by Daddy
You couldn't strike a nerve with an icepick. Keep trying, though. You're quite amusing.
by Gary
I am saddened by the fact that cluster bombs had to be used and that tensions are high. That the Iraqi people are protesting the way they are and causing our soldiers to have to react with deadly force. Unfortunately, this needs to be. I very sorry to all those who think war is faught with "nerf" toys but war is very violent and people die. I lost some good friends while i was over in Iraq with the 3rd Infantry Division (3ID), but that is war. Sorry, but if someone is going to die I prefer that it be the enemy other than my own soldiers. It sickens me that the Iraqi people are treating soldiers like this, they were thrilled and happy when we liberated them. Don't think so? Well, oncce again I was there, I saw the reaction. And now that they have got what they want we have become the bad guys. Well, then leave them to fend for themselves, because without the US forces there to stabilize right now the whole country would fall apart. And I know this how? Like I said, I was there. And I wasn't on a ship or in a plane or in the rear... I was on the front lines with an army infantry unit. I wish it was different but war is hell
They are doing exactly what Americans would do if our country was taken over by a foreign invader. If you want some idea of what comes next, after they figure out peaceful protests are useless, rent "Red Dawn."
by SFC
you are pretty funny with the rent "Red Dawn" ....but to compare us to them well they got a long way to go to get where we are and that is on every level.........Iraq might have been the birth place of civilization but they are still stuck in that age....because looking around nothing changed since then.......everything they have was built by someone else ie France, Romania, Germany, Russia but nothing home made........hell the palaces were built by serb companies......so you think these people have the spirit to fight.........well they proved it during the ground war.....they might have done ok agains the 507th Maint. but did very poorly against the infantry........so let me assure you there will be no "Iraqui Dawn".........
by history buff
That's what the British though in 1919. Don't count your chickens before they'e hatched. You're stuck in the mother of tar babies. Good luck getting home.
by Aussie
Arron, If I knew who you were, I'd shake your hand. You wrote a very passionate and strong letter, which I wish you would post on the following site...http:/peoples-voice.com/hollywood.....and click on the 'Wear Red' comments. Those people with their heads in the clouds, wearing rose coloured glasses, and smelling the roses, need an honest wake up call. They need to come down to earth, take off the glasses, smell the death & destruction, get better informed, and hang their heads in shame. Good on you mate. Aussie.
by SFC
ok the british did not have the equipment and capabilities we have now: ie you take a dump and 2s later I know what you had for dinner.........so to compare 1919 to 2003 is well a little outdated don't you think?
by Lonnie Clark (ciru8673 [at] yahoo.com)
I say use the pictures of these guys throwing rocks to hunt them down and punish them severely. We just pulled them from hell and now they spit on us. Pull out our troops and let Saddam have the worthless rubbage back.
by Forsaken Willy
Yeah, the "good guys" which only want to rescue a nation. But why try theyy to rescue a lucky nation? In africa the countrys are ruled by the iron fists of some large-penis imerators, but there the troops don't o that. I think if you occupy a country, this is a logical result. I suppose there'll come more.
by John F. Bishop
The US refuses to recognize that to the Iraqi people the INFIDEL has taken over their country. Why do Americans think that the whole world wants to live under our rule? This system we adhere to only provides benefits and opportunity to the top 10-20% of the nation. The rest struggle between insufficient paychecks. If I had a choice I certainly would not want to see the same diseased system in my country that ignores the needs of the majority to serve the needs or rich special interest groups. US must wake up and realize that our system truly SUCKS!
by John F. Bishop
The US refuses to recognize that to the Iraqi people the INFIDEL has taken over their country. Why do Americans think that the whole world wants to live under our rule? This system we adhere to only provides benefits and opportunity to the top 10-20% of the nation. The rest struggle between insufficient paychecks. If I had a choice I certainly would not want to see the same diseased system in my country that ignores the needs of the majority to serve the needs or rich special interest groups. US must wake up and realize that our system truly SUCKS!
by Scottie
Who has a better system?
by ocean
The idea that "we" pulled them out of hell, is nothing more than the CNN capitalist owned big business news media talking. You've clearly done your lessons and believe the balony they are feeding you.
by SFC
I didn't see you in Iraq........YOU obviously got your info from the NEW but from Al-Jazeera........same s--t different network....so unless you are in Iraq and speek from first hand experience do us a favor and shut up!
by gian
If we haven't yet learned from President Bush, protestors would be better off "picking up garbage and helping the needy." Why should they worry themselves with self-governing? We got that under control for them. Saddam out, Bush in. Oil out, Halliburton in. It's for the Iraqi people's good. Stop the protesting, let us rebuild, Big Brother knows what's best.
link
by SFC
Sounds great!
by Bright
"It is also obvious that Israel is heavily involved in the misinformation and was involved in the 9-11 attacks on the U.S. - Israelis were caught filming the fall of the World Trade Center in NY, they were laughing and clapping and were arrested as spies, then deported"

Where is your source for this? While I agree with some of your article it seems odd to say on the one hand that Israel was involved with 9/11 and on the other that if Bush had opposed Sharon it wouldn't have happened. If Israel was behind 9/11, a more pro-Palestinian US policy would have made it *more* likely. Looks like the same old anti-semitic conspiracy theories to me.
by cb
If the alleged US troops contributing here are so disgusted by the "ungrateful Iraqis" why don't they pack up and come home? If you're really out there, guys, tell us why you haven't found the chemical & biological weapons. It sounds like"freeing the Iraqis" was a bit of a bum steer too - SO TELL US WHY YOU'RE THERE. We'd love to hear.
by cb
Halliburtontman, the US govt has *always* been about big business. The US/Spanish war over Cuba (basically started by WR Hearst) and the routine interventions in Lati America over the years ought to show us that. The only difference is now the US govt thinks the WORLD is its backyard.
by CB
How about Sweden?
by SFC
well CB, I can not pack my shit and come home because I am not in charge of this goat fuck, I am here because I was ordered to be here and do a job....as far as the Iraquis go not all of them are ungratefull.......the ones you see pissed off were doing quite well under Saddam and now all the priviledges are gone.......so yes they are pissed, but the "joe average Iraquis" are happy to see us ........God knows how many times we got invited to stay for dinner or offered water while on patrol.......so we can not judge all by the actions of a few extremists and hooligans who are running around steeling........because they are not steeling from us they are steeling from their own country men, but the rules of engagement have changed since wed, so now is open season on thieves........I think things are going to calm down in the coming week.........we had the same issue when we were in Somalia they fucked with us until the CG got tired of it and in 2 weeks the Somalis that were shooting at us were dead or left town to Udor where the Legion took care of them.....anyway I firmly believe things are going to get back to normal, gas is flowing, busses are running, light are up in 85% of the city, support is putting new post and running wire, phones are starting to work.......by the end of the week I believe the sewer system will be up....so things are moving ahead.......here things moved slower than in the west.....you have to talk a lot and then maybe something will get done so patience people....
by anti-SFC
<the ones you see pissed off were doing quite well under Saddam and now all the priviledges are gone>

yea, all those Shi'ites calling for the US to go the fuck home were sooo privileged under the US' former allies' regime.

<so yes they are pissed, but the "joe average Iraquis" are happy to see us>

it's time for you to learn how to spell 'Iraqi'. it's also time for you to learn to stop lying.

<so we can not judge all by the actions of a few extremists and hooligans who are running around steeling>

you mean all the "extremists and hooligans" that the US allowed to loot and pillage museums and hospitals and universities (etc etc), while it protected the Iraqi Oil Ministry? the actions of those "extremists and hooligans" were the closest thing to a pro-US uprising that's occured in Iraq.

<I think things are going to calm down in the coming week>

yes, but you've already proven that you "think" not very well.....Iraqi hospitals are overwhelmed, millions are still not going to work or school, water-born illnesses are spreading, electricity and potable water are erratic at best, and the US' Iraqi allies/goons (Chalabi et al.) have about as much support as Hussein had. no matter how you try to spin it, SFC, shit ain't going well.

and now, the US is calling for Iraqis to give up their guns. i wonder why?:

“US tells Iraqis to turn in all guns or face arrest”
May 15, 2003
Baghdad, Iraq-AP -- The US military is now telling Iraqis they cannot own or sell guns. Any Iraqi who does faces arrest, according to a new radio spot running in the country.
Lieutenant General David McKiernan, who is commanding U-S forces on the ground, says a new set of laws in Iraq are aimed at rebuilding law and order.
One problem U-S forces have is the tens of thousands of weapons Saddam Hussein's government gave out in its final days in power. Many ended up in the hands of looters or criminals.
McKiernan has issued a statement saying coalition forces will hunt down those people -- whom he calls a threat to everyone in Iraq. He is urging any Iraqi who owns a firearm to turn it in to coalition forces.
Copyright 2003 Associated Press.



by SFC
Shit "buddy" you should come on over and take over the mission so we can go home.........since YOU have all the answers..."stop lying?" I did not see you this morning at roll-call so do me a favor and keep you opinions to yourself .........YOU are not here, I am so untill you have spent a day with us on the ground do me and everybody a favor and get your "FACTS" straight and not from the TV.........did you notice that the shiite calling for us to leave came home from Iran.......imagine that, a shite from Iran calling for the infidel to leave, hmmm that definetly took rocket scientist to figure out.........yep you sure got a good grip on the situation!!!..........shit "buddy" are you sure you are not related on Einstein??
by CB
It was your colleagues who were saying the US should get out and leave the Iraqis to Saddam's tender mercies cause they were so ungrateful. Now you say the average Iraqi isn't ungrateful, just the ones who profited under Saddam. Seems to demonstrate that even being there doesn't make things too clear. I think we'll have to wait and see what the average Iraqi thinks. Perhaps your occupation will end up like in Germany or Japan but I think history suggests otherwise. BTW you still haven't said what you think you are doing there, except for following orders. Or where the WMD's are. Do you think it's not a problem if none are found? That's what the politicians here are starting to say.
by Common Sense revisited
I've read the entire thread, and this one stuck out like a sore thumb...
The US soldiers were occupying an elementary school and using it for their military offices and part of their base . The children took part in a protest to get their school back, - the Iraqi townspeople have sworn that the protesters were unarmed- the question I would ask is not why were the children in the crowd (at their own school in their own village ) but why would the US military supposedly pledged to get things running again,be occupying an elementary school?Surely there are more appropriate venues for their operations ,and if not then pitch a tent ,remember the coalition is just visiting - it's not an occupation, it's a liberation.

First...do children really start a protest without prodding from adults? I think not...Second would children really rather go to school, or hang out all day?
We all know "Children" do not just start a protest on their own. Second...we all know children would rather not go to school in first place.

Last but not least, all the schools before the war started were used to store weapons, ammo, guns, bombs etc...by Saddam's men.
They couldn't protest that, but now they can!

Before you try to garner the "tear jerker" award, you really should use some common sense before you post.
by United my ASS
The soldier should get back to doing what he's trained to do .... shut up and kill!!

Great job btw, you're up to nearly 5,000 innocent Iraqi civilians and thousands more Iraqi soldiers that you are resposible for murdering.
by SFC
Well, to my educated friend that posted this marvelous piece of "comment"........first I have no idea who keeps track of the innocent Iraquis killed by us but how come there is no track of iraqi killing iraqi in this page.....somehow I find it ironic that the thousands and thousands killed by saddam is of no issue except the ones killed by us.........hhmmm I am sure if you are familiar with our rules of engagement but let me tell that they are "fucking strict" and before a soldiers engages there will be a lot of radio traffic before permisision is given to engage...unless it is obvious and the peacefull iraqi just opens up on us and well then he gets killed plain and simple........so I'd like to know where you get your facts from .....our unit is in Bagdad and what I write is in regards to what is happenning here in town........I am a grunt and not part of the WMD hunt.......our job is to patrol the city and maintain the peace....so to my iluminated "friend" you have and invitation from me to come on down and see how you react when your ass is on the line?! probably it would be a good idea a fresh change of underwear to be brought along!.........and lastly these soldiers that you call "dumbass" are by far brighter than you are.......get of your fat ass and hit the gym because it is hot around here and I don't want you to become a heat casualty on the first day!!!!........
by United my TIGHT ASS
Thought I should keep my comments short and simple so you could understand.

http://www.iraqbodycount.net is my source - you may want to check it out before you discount it.

And, no, you would never find this tight ass out there killing and occupying a foreign country in order promote Bush's sick agenda.
by United my TIGHT ASS
You're right - we would spend our time to be brainwashed by the government and made into killers. That's too easy. Men have been running around for thousands of years with their guns and sword (now, of course those brave guys just drop big bombs) conquering and killing for power and greed.

Why don't you try something MUCH HARDER, like learning how to live on this small planet together and solve world problems through SMART AND PEACEFUL solutions .... oh, what liberal rubbish ... Naw, let's continue the on the path of world destruction, after all, we're so damn good at it!!
by Barbara Strisand
Now THERE'S a guy who has definitely reached his full potential.
by United my Ass
Re: my comments ... I appologize for my derogatory remarks. I hope you all get back to your homes safely, and in one piece. Nobody deserves to die for this president's ill agenda.

Hopefully, people like myself will work to find better solutions in the future so you don't have to lay your tight ass on the line either!! ;)
by circus dog
If you actually believe what you write, then you are a coward. If I believed that the United States had been taken over by an illegal coup bent on world domination, I would be up in the hills, fighting with the resistance. Your claims are laughable, and the proof lies in your own innaction in the face of this fascist and warmongering" regime."
by That's MISS Tight Ass!
Yes, I deeply believe what I say, but it would be pointless and a waste of time to even attempt this sort of discussion with all the bantering and name calling. You boys have fun!!
by Scottie
The problem is that the people of the left use this as their moral compass.
As long as We or our government did not do somthing it is not a moral problem for us.
(oddly they seem to use this argument only where convenient)

That means it is ok to stand by while a million people get killed but it is not ok to shoot one man that might stop the killing because you would then be responsible for the death of that man, or you might be responsible for the acidental shooting of an innocent.

people like myself - take the other angle which says we are just interested in providing the best end state. and that you can commit a sin of inaction just as bad as a sin of action.
by Tight Ass
The problem is, that you DID kill thousands of innocent lives in Iraq and Afghanistan, and you did NOT kill the "one man" - in both cases - that you were going after. So what has this accomplished? Free Iraqis? - the only ones free there are the criminals -I have a friend in Baghdad who hasn't been able to write me since the war started, but who knows, maybe he'll thank me when he can, but I doubt it.

And I want to know who's keeping track of the thousands of deaths that Bush is now responsible for?
by Allah the loser
"That means it is ok to stand by while a million people get killed but it is not ok to shoot one man"

You really hit the nail on the head with that statement.
How else can you explain why the so called "anti-war" movement is no longer interested in stopping any of the dozen or so of active wars?

Anyway, I the great Allah (0-11 since 1526) would like you to stop picking on my people. It is not their fault they haven't won a war in 300 years. They need charity and pity to survive, in your more challenging "modern" world, with women drivers and all!
by Allah the loser
"That means it is ok to stand by while a million people get killed but it is not ok to shoot one man"

You really hit the nail on the head with that statement.
How else can you explain why the so called "anti-war" movement is no longer interested in stopping any of the dozen or so of active wars?

Anyway, I the great Allah (0-11 since 1526) would like you to stop picking on my people. It is not their fault they haven't won a war in 300 years. They need charity and pity to survive, in your more challenging "modern" world, with women drivers and all!
We're counting the civilian dead, take a look at
http://www.iraqbodycount.org/
by Valery
Women could drive and be educated in Iraq. Many were doctors and teachers etc. Unlike women in Saudi Arabia and many Arab countries. Iraq's illiteracy rate is better that here in the USA. And they had national healthcare, while millions of people in the USA have no health care. They had a dictator, we just have a president that lost the popular vote and was placed in the white house.
World Peace not world domination should be our goal.
PEACE AND LOVE FOR ALL PEOPLE,
RADICAL REVOLUTION FAMILY STYLE,
Valery
by aaron
you imply, scotty, that the US attack on Iraq was a moral crusade taken by those whose "moral compass" is tuned correctly.

how do you reconcile this "moral compass" argument with the fact that a good portion of those who pushed for an invasion cuddled up to Hussein in the 80s--supplying his regime with weapons, including biological and chemical agents, and military intelligence while opposing attempts to censure Hussein in the UN in 1989 for his use of chemical weapons against the Kurds?

the US' relationship with Hussein goes all the way back to the late 50s, when he was just one of many brutes doing the bidding for the CIA. This is documented. The CIA funneled lists of subversives and leftists to the B'aathists when they took power in a coup against Kassim in 1963.

So please, spare us the santimonious horseshit, okay?

by read the record
Go to homas.loc.gov and lookup the congressional record, particularly search for keyword "Iraq" for 1988-89 session. You'll find many conservatives wanted to label Saddam a war criminal and impose sanctions on him and anyone who sold him weapons, particularly France and Russia.

So much for YOUR sanctimonious crap.
by Real Mothers wear flannel
Women could drive and be educated in Iraq. Many were doctors and teachers etc. Unlike women in Saudi Arabia and many Arab countries. Iraq's illiteracy rate is better that here in the USA. And they had national healthcare, while millions of people in the USA have no health care. They had a dictator, we just have a president that lost the popular vote and was placed in the white house.
World Peace not world domination should be our goal.
PEACE AND LOVE FOR ALL PEOPLE,
RADICAL REVOLUTION FAMILY STYLE,
Valery

Women in Iraq had all of that before Saddam, now they can have it again. Women under Saddam, did not get the best medical attention, nor did the children.
That had nothing to do with the sanctions, one Iraqi women with a sick child gave her to Iraqi officals, who were to take her to get medical attention. They instead gave the child to hungry dogs.

Saddam's son Uday has been known to rape women, then take them to be tortured, one very pretty Iraqi was tortured for days, then he watched her be torn apart by dogs.

Your entire outlook on the plight of the Iraqi people goes against the word "Peace". Peace in my mind means...no fear, to live in peace.
Yet you are willing to turn a blind eye, and make excuses for pure evil.

Would you do the same if you knew your neighbor was abusing, and torturing their children?

So in short you must think everything was A OK in Iraq just as long as they all had FREE medical, and "OH well", so they had a murdering, raping, dictator, after all he did win the popular vote...even if they had to, or else.

Castro must be the worlds best dictator to you also, he gives his people free medical, free education and a get out of jail free card, with a bullet between the eyes.

by aaron
Whatever a few conservatives may have said on the Congressional Record (a great place to "stand up for freedom" for posterity's sake, while running no risk of intruding on strategic imperatives), this fact is clear as day: The United States government, under Bush and Reagan, backed Hussein until he invaded the Kuwaiti Corporation--when, suddenly and oh so coincidentally, it became scandalized by Hussein's human rights record.

A 1994 investigation by the Senate Bank Committee found that U.S. companies had been licensed by the Commerce Department to export a "witch's brew" of biological and chemical materials, including precursors of anthrax and botulism. The report also noted the exports included plans for chemical and biolgical warfare facilities and chemical warhead filling equipment.
Yet even after Saddam began gassing his own people in Northern Iraq, the flow of goods continued. In November 1989, Bush approved $1 billion in loan guarantees for Iraq in 1990, and from July 18, 1989, to Aug. 1, 1990, the U.S. approved $4.8 million in advanced technology sales.
"Only on Aug. 2, 1990, did the Agriculture Department officially suspend the (loan) guarantees to Iraq -- the same day that Hussein's tanks and troops swept into Kuwait," a Los Angeles Times expose on Feb. 23, 1992, noted.

Of course, there's nothing unusual about the US ruling class aiding despots that further its interests. Fools like Scotty never seem to care about the despots that the US allies itself with--unless, post facto, they're commanded to "care" as a means of garnering support for a new bombing campaign. Tell us about the US' relationship with the House of Saud, Scotty. Or its alliance with the tyranny in Uzbekistan or Pakistan or Morocco or Egypt or....i'm waiting foolie.

Anyway, here's a peice that lays out how the Bush Sr. et al REFUSED to condemn Hussein in the UN in 1989--AFTER HE GASSED THE KURDS.


Flashback to 1989
When Rumsfeld and Bush Sr. Refused to Back a UN Resolution to Investigate Saddam for Human Rights Abuses"
by JASON LEOPOLD

In 1989, the State Department released a report that described in gruesome detail Iraq's violation of human rights, specifically how Iraq's President Saddam Hussein tortured his own people for allegedly being disloyal.
But despite the atrocities outlined in the report, which President Bush now refers to when speaking about his desire to remove Hussein from power, the United States, under the first Bush Administration, refused to vote in favor of a United Nations resolution calling for an inquiry into Iraq's treatment of its population and possibly indicting Hussein for war crimes and human rights abuses.
The two people most vocal about refusing to go along with the U.N. investigation are now lobbying for a U.N. resolution authorizing an invasion of Iraq and are highly critical of the countries that refuse to back a U.S. led coalition to use military force to remove Hussein from power. Those men are Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage.
But in 1989, the first Bush administration refused to join the U.N. in publicly protesting the forced relocation of at least half a million ethnic Kurds and Syrians in the late 1980s, even though the act violated principles of the 1948 Genocide Convention, according to Middle East Watch, a human rights organization.
The Bush and Reagan administrations also declined to punish Iraq when it used poison gas against Iranian soldiers in 1984 and Kurdish citizens in 1988. Moreover, the U.S. did not oppose the fact that Hussein bought 45 American helicopters, worth about $200 million, with assurances they were for civilian use, then transferred them to his military.
Armitage said in 1990 that that "in retrospect, it would have been much better at the time of their use of gas if we'd put our foot down," according to an August 1990 story in the Los Angeles Daily News.
Despite U.S. intelligence reports that showed Iraq's capability of building weapons of mass destruction and its inhumane treatment of its own civilians, the Bush Administration turned a blind eye and instead focused on improving U.S. relations with Hussein. The U.S. removed Iraq from its list of countries supporting terrorism in 1983, which reopened the door to federal subsidies and loans to Iraq.
Saddam Hussein "made it clear that Iraq was not interested in making mischief in the world," Rumsfeld said, who, as a Middle East envoy for the Regan Administration, reopened discussions with Saddam in 1983, according to the Daily News story. "It struck us as useful to have a relationship with him."
The current Bush Administration, many of whom served in the Reagan and the first Bush administrations, refuse to acknowledge that their policies toward Iraq at the time backfired and we may be paying a price for it now. But at this point, Iraq does not pose a threat to the U.S. and threats against the nation appear to be purely personal.
Under former Rumsfeld's watch during his years in the Reagan and Bush administrations, he and the former presidents allowed Hussein to build his army and a cache of chemical and nuclear weapons. In fact, many of the hawks that serve in the current Bush Administration assisted Hussein's regime in reaching these goals during the late 1980s and early 1990s.
For example, Judicial Watch said, according to the Daily News story, "that the U.S. extended $270 million in government-guaranteed credit from the Export-Import Bank to buy other American goods, despite repeated failures to make loan repayments on time. Since 1982, Baghdad has become one of the biggest buyers of U.S. rice and wheat, purchasing $5.5 billion in crops and livestock with federally guaranteed loans and agricultural subsidies and its own hard cash."
"Iraq benefited from a thriving grain trade with American farmers, cooperation with U.S. intelligence agencies, oil sales to American refiners that helped finance its military, and muted White House criticism of its human rights and war atrocities," the Daily News story said.
Armitage admitted in 1990 that the Reagan and Bush administrations were well aware of Hussein's brutality, but still, the U.S. was more interested in maintaining a healthy relationship with Iraq because the country's vast oil reserves was beneficial to U.S. interests.
"We knew this wasn't the League of Women Voters," Armitage said, referring to Hussein's regime, according to the Daily News story.
Jason Leopold is a regular columnist for CounterPunch. He can be reached at: jasonleopold [at] hotmail.com
by f
Aaron, you and Angie are a testament that not all amerikans are stupid & ignorant.

Thanks for the educational and relevant contributions.

Continue on this Path.
by SFC
I see that you are back to clipping from the papers again!!.......PEOPLE get a grip...whether you like it or not we are in Iraq so I really don't know how your little comments help the "poor Iraqi" people here........may I suggest you sell everything you have and donate to the RED CROSS.......and then YOU can say that YOU made a difference, but this armchair BS that you run well you are no better than the people you bad mouth.......
by none profits do NOT exist
The redcross has yet to give away the 911 charity fund it collected from the working people.

This charity is making a ton of business, earning interest on every buck that legitimately should be sent to the victims of 911.

Business as usual, sfc

do you make comminsion raising donations for the 4profit redcross?
by aaron
it's one thing to be ignorant, but to be willfully ignorant, and proud of it, as you are SFC, is contemptible.

i take your lack of a reponse (once again) as a concession that you've been overwhelmed by an argument that you're unable to refute.

thanks.
by SFC
as a concession that you've been overwhelmed by an argument -aaron
you pompous, self-indulged, quazi-educated excuse for a primate,if you stopped looking in the mirror for one moment you will see my point. and that I am correct...which in and of its self needs no defense.

Save Your Breath ... You'll need it to blow up your date!
by and how many administrations
Have gone through Washington since the 80s? Since the 50s?

You gonna give Carter credit for the dot com boom? Or Nixon blame for Gulf War 1?
by aaron
<if you stopped looking in the mirror for one moment you will see my point. and that I am correct...which in and of its self needs no defense.>

and your point is........ that you're gonna kiss the brasses' ass until you come wee wee weee all the way home?
by Vash
"Government is not reason, it is not eloquence, it is force; like fire, a troublesome servant and a fearful master. Never for a moment should it be left to irresponsible action."
-George Washington

"War does not determine who is right - only who is left."
-Bertrand Russell

I would like to thank SFC, Gary, and the and the rest of the military, for it's strength has deterred leaders whom would otherwise have invaded and occupied America.

When is war ever "right"? Why is anyone so surprised that civilians die when you invade a country?
You’re fighting where innocent people are in the line of fire. Is there any other way to fight? Not until we can fight on the moon. Why is anyone so surprised that some of the Iraqis are beginning to resent us? To the best of my knowledge, there has not been one occupation in the history of the USA that did not eventually meet with some resentment. Despite differing cultures, humans are humans anywhere you go.

I am sickened by the fact that some people will resort to name-calling to achieve their ends. If you have a problem with what someone does, attack their actions, not them. I support my president in many ways, but calling countries "evil" will not solve anything, Mr. Bush. Sure I joke around with my friends, but I try to practice what I preach.

Anyway, I feel rather wary about America's role in Iraq.
Does anyone else here feel like America's real goal in Iraq is power? I'm sure America has strong interests in how much oil it has access to, and of course they have an interest in national security, but it seems like controlling Middle Eastern oil would offer America a lot of power over Europe and Asia. After all, in order for countries to remain running the way they are now, they need to burn massive amounts of oil, and to the best of my knowledge, much of the oil that Europe and Asia depends on comes from the Middle East. If America was able to control the oil supply in the Middle East, then it'd have some control over Europe and Asia. Don't agree with me? Then tell me why.

Does anyone else think that America should totally hand over the rebuilding of Iraq to the UN? Even though I'm sitting comfortably at home enjoying the luxury of a home computer and eating grilled cheese with a glass of CLEAN water, all provided for by America's material wealth( all procured by America's military might), I feel wary that any additional power gained by America will be used unwisely. Granted, the UN isn't perfect, either, but a least any power will be divided up by all the cat fighting between different camps.

After 9/11 many people proudly proclaimed that sacrifices must be made for liberty. Yes they should, and ALL people should make those sacrifices. It's a sacrifice to grit your teeth and bear with views totally against yours, it's a sacrifice to not demonize any whom oppose what you view as truth, it's a sacrifice that some security must be given up in order for liberty to happen. Remember that no matter how many times you, or America, or anything makes mistakes you always have an opportunity to do what's "right", and remember that you can't change what you don't acknowledge. Stay awake.
by SFC
First I'd like to thank whoever answered you in my name...well said........number one, I am a Ranger, with more miles than all your cars added up together so before you attempt to overwhelm me with your paper clippings you need to get your FACTS........FACT number one is that you are not here on the ground with us, you do not see what we see so for you to attempt to "qoute" CNN or some Washington politician is useless..........why/ because we both know, or hope so, that they both twist the truth to fit their preticular agenda........we have sattelite tv here and we watch CNN International, DW, Euronews, Al-Jazeera, Abu-Dabi, and it is amazing how the same news has so many spinoffs..........you see it one way, other see it in other ways.........but what tells me that you are not really all there upstairs is when you start with the "...wee wee" and such.......very childish for someone who is "supposed' to be so much more educated than me........I extend you the same invitation I extended to all the "armchair commentators".....come one down and see for yourself what is going on here.....and you will be amazed how your opinion changes when some "inocent" Iraqi shoots at you....like I said there are some good people here who are not selfish and what Iraq to be free but there are a lot of people with their own agenda and we see it every day.........Lastly I know for a FACT that you have never served in the armed forces.......how? because than you would know that a soldier does not fight for a political agenda but for the soldier on his left and right!.........I know I know I kept you long enough and the Twinky is waiting for you in the kitchen!!!. until next time.......
by Barnacle Bill the Sailor



SFC,
I extend you the same invitation I extended to all the "armchair commentators".....come one down and see for yourself what is going on here.....and you will be amazed how your opinion changes

point taken.....


RE: Aaron

yes how about the direct approach. Why protest here, when the problem is in the middle east. I suggest we send a contingent of protesters to Iran and Iraq. Let's see how many volunteers we can muster up to remove the tens of thousands of landmines that have been deployed in this region over the past years by Sadam, all these people walking around with signs can NOW DO SOME GOOD
join the united nations (volunteer)landmine disposal team today.

as for Aaron"s ..wee-wee!
I see you have set aside this special time to humiliate your self in public...
by Doreen
I want you to know that most Americans very much appreciate the sacrifices you and all the troops have made while being in harm's way. I have travelled all over the country, and there are many yellow ribbons up in every town I visited.

Unfortunately, you probably won't hear much of that on this site - this site does pander to ultra-left wing radicals. (I do find it facinating how much it bothers these 'intellectual elitists' that Bush meant what he said and was right about it - and wouldn't back down to the very vocal minority of Americans that love to hate Bush.)

And I know that many Iraqis appreciate the end of the nightmare they have lived under for the past thirty years. The mass graves with thousands of victims that are being unearthed daily only attest to the horror they had to endure until they were liberated by the Americans & British.

I wish you a safe and speedy return home to your loved ones!
by aaron
first, vash says:

<I would like to thank SFC, Gary, and the and the rest of the military, for it's strength has deterred leaders whom would otherwise have invaded and occupied America.>

that's hysterical. you're kidding, right? Hussein's military was 3/10 of 1% of the US'. The US attacked Iraq, not because it was a threat, but because it was no threat at all. Now that it has smashed a degraded military-state (and former ally), the US is placing Iraq's oil under its control, planning to re-route pipelines, and announcing that it will be more than a year before a "democratic" (puppet) government will be installed. Meanwhile, whatever SFC would like us to believe, anti-US sentiment is growing by the day.

this great "defensive" war was allegedly about disarming Hussein's massive military capabilities and ousting an ally of al-Qaeda. Well, no biological or chemical or nuclear weapons have been uncovered and most of the inspectors have given up the "search." And al-Qaeda, which views Hussein as an enemy and an apostate, has used the US invasion as a recruiting tool and engineered several attacks in the past week alone.

And, then, there is Afghanistan. We don’t hear right-wing gas-bags talking about that “victory” anymore. Murderous war-lords are in control of most of the country (paid-off by the US) and the Taliban and other guerilla forces are strengthening. And as for al-Qaeda, the bombings killed some, yes, but the rest scattered and decentralized--sort of like agitating a bee-hive, not always the best course of action, to say the least.

<Why is anyone so surprised that some of the Iraqis are beginning to resent us?>

The US has been tormenting the Iraqi people for decades--assisting the B’aathists to power, funneling weapons to Hussein, bombing and sanctioning the country…. Resentment, I would bet, doesn’t begin to capture the feelings millions of Iraqi’s have for the US.

<Does anyone else here feel like America's real goal in Iraq is power?>

No, we anarchists-communists always accept at face the US ruling classes’ justifications for killing large numbers of people.


And now, SFC:

<I am a Ranger with more miles than all your cars added up together>

Huh?

<so before you attempt to overwhelm me with your paper clippings you need to get your FACTS…..FACT number one is that you are not here on the ground with us>

Okay SFC, here goes: you’re “on the ground” and I’m not. There. Are you now willing to be overwhelmed? You realize this is a forum for debate, and not Stars and Stripes Magazine, right?

<you do not see what we see so for you to attempt to "qoute" CNN or some Washington politician is useless>

I haven’t quoted CNN or any Washington politician. I have augmented my arguments with pieces that demonstrate conclusively that the US played a key role in the B’aathists ascent to power in the late 50s and early 60s--and aided Hussein in the 80s up until AND AFTER his regime gassed the Kurds. SFC’s response? “don’t overwhelm me with facts!”

<...why/ because we both know, or hope so, that they both twist the truth to fit their preticular agenda…>

Listen, the “particular agenda” of CNN, ABC, NBC, CBS, and Fox is to sell advertising and convey a world-view in accord with the US capitalist class and its government flunkies. The corporate media has acted as little more than an arm of the Pentagon throughout this whole Iraq invasion. Most Americans don’t know ANYTHING about the US’ decades-old relationship with Hussein; most think that Hussein and bin-Laden are good buddies; most don’t know that Colin Powell presented FORGED documents in his effort to prove that Hussein had nuclear capacity; most have seen few or no pictures of the carnage of this latest killing campaign….

<but what tells me that you are not really all there upstairs is when you start with the "...wee wee" and such>

This from a guy who tells me to go “blow-up” my girl-friend!

<you will be amazed how your opinion changes when some "innocent" Iraqi shoots at you>

Cry me a river. Occupying powers always meet resistance. The fact that the US occupation is being resisted wouldn’t make me support the occupation. Why would it?

<Lastly I know for a FACT that you have never served in the armed forces.......how? because than you would know that a soldier does not fight for a political agenda but for the soldier on his left and right!>

Tell it to Bush. I’m sure Russian soldiers in Afghanistan said something similar.

<I know I know I kept you long enough and the Twinky is waiting for you in the kitchen!!!>

I only eat organic.


And Barnacle Bill the Sailor:

<Why protest here, when the problem is in the middle east.>

The policy is formulated here in the US, by US ruling elites. I’d prefer to cause problems for them here in the good ol’ USA, and not leave the country to the devices of conformist clods like Doreen.

<I suggest we send a contingent of protesters to Iran and Iraq.>

I suggest you stop listening to Rush Limbaugh.

<Let's see how many volunteers we can muster up to remove the tens of thousands of landmines that have been deployed in this region over the past years by Sadam>

Let’ s see how many fat-heads like Barnacle Bill we can muster up to pick cluster bombs in Iraq and assist the victims of US wars (proxy and otherwise) in El Salvador, Vietnam, Cambodia, Colombia, Angola, Afghanistan, Nicaragua…..
by a legend in his own mind
aaron

as usual your endless rhetoric has no point what so ever. so you hate every one, ok we get it. you want to
make problems for the ruling elite?? (snicker) ok, fine, if you say so. some how I do not think the ruling elite
will have much worry over you.
by aaron
i don't hate everyone or everything. how wrong you are.

i suspect you're one of those smart guys who cheers every time the US goes on a killing spree, coats himself in the american flag like an utter jack-ass, but, when called to, couldn't defend his views to save his life.
by SFC
Well aaron again back to your usuall rethoric.....first you need to look up what a ranger is? second by "more miles than your...." meant that I have been to more countries and have traveled the world a hell a lot more than you, I am not going to expand, you are good in reading between the lines so figure it out........you eat organic? well good for you..I am sure your shit doesn't stink, but your comments do! .........again you continue you ramble on about Afghanistan.....what would you like to know? it is obvious that we accomplished a feat that the russians could not, and not because WE were better,but because our intel and tactics were better....never bring a knife to a gun fight.....but I am sure you have never heard of that.........you failed to answer my invitation!...ye I know it is hard to live the comforts of home for the hot dusty Iraqi country.....but you seem so dedicated to this cause.......ever thought about running for office?.....you have all the answers.....maybe you are the Mesiah?

to everyone else thank you for your support and we look forward to going home as much as we look forward to a good homecooked meal! again if your are interested in anything in particular that is happening in Bagdad feel free to ask! I can not comment on what is going in other cities because I am not there! R/S SFC
by innocent civilian
Yes, I consider myself to be an innocent civilian ...
And I know I would hate to live what so many Iraqis are experiencing this very minute. Not being able to give my kid a clean glass of water and seeing it die of cholera. I would hate to be a Palestinian as well. Being suppressed by an American sponsored military force and seeing my brother blow himself up because he knows he has no future.
And I would hate to be an American, being misinformed and used for a cause that isn't mine. You're all talking about facts, well the beginning of this war was based on lies to begin with and that 's so clear by now you can't tell me that you don't know that.
I'm sure the Iraqi people are better off without Saddam (those that are still alive, at least and didn't have any relatives killed or are permanently impaired or will die in the months/years to come or ...) but I'm also sure America would be better off without Bush and that doesn't mean I would support a war on America.

I'm relieved to see that some Americans still use their heads despite the obvious encouragment not to.

PS It's a "funny" thought that most of the Iraqi military force that were killed were just as misinformed as some of you are. And some of you apparently think that's a good reason to die...
by SFC
Ok now that I see that nobody understands why the muslim armies are not worth very much.....there are many reason but the main one is this:
" they do not TRAIN! why? because if they train it means that they are no good which if you are a muslim it looks bad on you" and that is the reason why people have been winning against them. I have worked with many armies and believe me they have the means (ie weapons and man) but no drive.........suicide attacks takes no training, strap some dynamite to you and push a button.....but to what means? what have they accomplished.......you said nothing about the Innocent people that get killed in these bombings! Why is that? are they not innocent? what is your definition of innocent?....again you seem to be unable to get past the "innocent"........they(hamas, jihad) have a political agenda just like we do.......who is right? if you ask palestinian they will say they are right .....if you ask a jew he will say he is right..........ever since man put his foot on this planet there has been war, innocent people have died and will continue to die, and that is a FACT! The only reason we have these comment sections like this one is because now the media makes it available on tv..........but wait a minute you said nothing about the poor columbians getting killed, about the innocent people in africa getting killed..........hmmm could it be that because they are not muslim? so they do not count!.....you are entitled to your opinion but that does not make YOU right!......my grandpa used ot have a saying: " if the man lives in darkness don't turn on the light, it will cause you only problems!"..........
by Doreen
You know there are many realities, based on various perceptions.

As we all know, the Arab world was SHOCKED by the historic speed & success of the Iraqi campaign; and perhaps the lack of drive by the Iraqi's to fight would seem to indicate how much the Iraqi military wanted Hussein's rule gone. Al Jazz flat out lied (as much as the Iraqi Minister of Disinformation - their employer) about the progress of the war - and for good reason - they were on Hussein's payroll. But for some reason - perhaps their consuming hatred of the US & Bush - the Arab world fell for Al Jazz's story, hook, line and sinker. Why this ready acceptance by the Arab world? Perceptions, perceptions - that lead to a warped reality - perhaps based on faulty thinking and blaming others for their own problems. Well, the Saudis have altered their perception about terrorism and now see who the real enemy is.

What I still don't understand, is why the same people who protested vainly about the war now are left moaning about "all" the Iraqi casualties - around 2800 I believe (and of course any loss of life is regretable) without acknowledging that number is unbelivably low for the take-over of a country...as a matter of fact, is less than most mass graves that are being uncovered daily in Iraq. How could you possably justify NOT removing that "Butcher of Baghdad" the man who killed millions of his own people? When you remove a cancerous tumor, sometimes you have to sacrifice healthy tissue - unfortunate, but best in the long run.

Back to the perceptions - I find it most interesting that no one has noted that a member of the US Military has joined in the debate regarding the morality of his current actions - where else could you get such a freedom of speech, not just for civilians, but for the military? Surely not prewar Iraq; because telling a joke about Hussein would get your tongue cut out plus!!!

Again, I thank SPC for his role in allowing us to have this discussion where we all can express our own opinions without fear of retribution - even though I might be just a conventional clod :-)

And I would appreciate information about Baghdad - my son is a Cavalry Scout with the 3rd Brigade, 3rd ID. I heard they were going home soon, but that was halted due to security issues. I last spoke to him about 6 weeks ago, when an Aussie reporter kindly let him use his satellite phone. Thanks!
by kayobee (kayobee [at] earthlink.net)
Re perception -- I wouldn't characterize Ranger's comments as "debate", and it would be more noteworthy if they were in disparagement of the war, support of one's boss's actions being generally recognized as politically advantageous, rather than dangerous.

Here's my take on perception: this discussion keeps being restated terms of false dualities. Hey, after all, "if you're not with us you're against us, " right? If you don't upport armed intervention, it means you support Hussein; if you don't support Bush, it means you support terrorists; ad nauseum.

But that's dead wrong. I DON'T support US intervention in Iraq but I DO support I troops (and would like to see them home and out of danger); I don't support Bush AND I don't support Hussein AND I don't support terrorists.

What I wish you could consider is that this false dualism is *precisely* the cause of most of the atrocities the world has seen, from the Inquisition to the Holocaust to the present. You refer to the mass graves found in Iraq -- do you think Hussein had these people killed just for his pleasure? He was most likely never even present. But he held power by insisting that those who weren't for him were against him, and deserved to be destroyed.

A final word to Ranger, if you're reading: at what point did incivility and abusiveness become military virtues? My late father, who was an officer *and* a gentleman, and who would undoubtedly have supported this military action, would have had you confined to quarters for your tone. Soldiers may be heroic (which is precisely why civilians owe them the duty of ensuring that their heroism is in support of a cause worthy of it), but their heroism lies in public service and sacrifice, which you trivialize with your boorish behavior.
by Barnacle Bill
My late father, who was an officer........and..........****

well I wonder why the pentigon didn't call for your opinion!

I find it way-too funny when individuals up root the family tree in a misguided attempt to endow them selves with undeserved authority on ANY given subject IMAGINABLE!

(MY...grate,grate,grandfather was a math teacher so................when I say 2+2= 7 and that's final!)

Amazing!!!
EXPERIENCE IS NOT INHERITED
by aaron
I agree with Kayobee--the fact that SFC weighs into a debate forum to chest-thump and deflect criticism of US imperialism (albeit poorly) hardly vindicates American democracy. If he were to speak candidly of his experiences "on the ground" and criticized US policy with intelligence and acuity--that would be another matter altogether. But if he did dispense with the ignorant bravado and got down to the "nitty-gritty" I'm sure he'd be told in no uncertain terms to shut the hell up--or worse. The freedom to conform isn't freedom at all.

I also second the sentiments of Kayobee regarding US troops. Most are working class kids
that were sold a bill of goods and joined the armed forces for lack of other readily available options. I don't consider them my enemies, and certainly don't wish them ill.

I am sure there are immense pressures, especially once the war (or slaughter) begins, to adopt SFC's "we're the fucking best and they're all crap" persona and suppress any and all critical faculties. Beneath the surface bravado, it isn't unusual for there to be deep ambivalence and even opposition among the troops for the policies they're called upon to perform. The prideful, gung-ho mercenary (a la SFC), when all is said and done, isn't necessarily respected or liked by all his "fellows" (in particular, the grunts)--even if there's a lot of pressure to tolerate and appear to approve of their brain-dead bullshit.

One last thing: Doreen charmingly equates dead Iraqi civilians with "healthy tissue" and says that there were only around 2,800 killed during the US invasion. Well, that number's been revised upwards recently. The latest estimates are between 5,000 and 10,000 civilians killed (and possibly more), not to mention many many injured and maimed.

http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/0522/p01s02-woiq.html






by history buff
>How could you possably justify NOT removing that "Butcher of Baghdad"

If you think this was about removing a brutal dictator, you haven't read enough history. America has *always* supported brutal dictators, as long as they were willing to take orders.

by tyrone
I don't consider them my enemies, and certainly don't wish them ill. - aaron

THEN WHY ARE YOU THUMBING YOU NOSE AT THEM
(in each post..)
The freedom to conform isn't freedom at all
and if the majority of the population declines to "conform" to your doctrine of. "aaron knows everything" then what, we have to put up with your nonsensical rants and tantrums. as usual. the fact is some of you white people have some real problems
what a buster
by SFC
to kayoobe: it is obvious that your dad was and you aren't?....If I would have stated:" we should have nuked the place and then repopulated!" than you would have the right to say whatever you wanted about me....however I never did, what I stated was why the arab armies have done so poorly against western tactics. Hey anybody can pick up Rommel's "Infantry attacks" or Guderian's "Achtung Panzer!" and there is your bible for modern warfare! It is painfully obvious that neither kayoobe or aaron was in saudi, kuwait, egypt or turkey to train their armies, well I was so listen up!. What I am relating to you is first hand experience and frustration when you are there to teach and he prefers to pray........well I have nothing against praying but in war you tell Allah" buddy I got to take five until the conflict is over and then I will make it up to you when it is over!" but in realtiy what happens is that they end up meeting the "man" in person and news flash "no virgins for him!".........I am not pounding my chest that we are the best.........what I know is that my man are well trained and have done very well under fire! Are the Rangers the Army's premier light infantry unit? yes they are. They train hard and when you are in combat it pays off because you all come home, and that is where the satisfaction comes in. These are some of the finest soldiers anywhere in the world! Why? because they are my soldiers. Am I proud of them? you betcha. There isn't a platoon sergeant that doen't think his soldiers are the best! This is part of business. But results speak louder than words! Right now we are second to none! And that "my friend" is a FACT!.........
But calling us mercenary and then trying to come around with " us the working folks...we support the troops ......blah blah blah!" .......like I said you have issues with Washington fine but for YOU to tell ME what is going on in Iraq, kind of hypocrittical don't you think?.....My invitation still stands.....come on down and join us in the sand box ........but no organic food for you here, only MRE's so bring your own.......lastly I am half german and half jewish .......so that would make me.......hmmm.........part of the master race and part of the chosen people.........how could I be wrong???

Doreen, .......we have some scouts(bradleys) here with us in the compound, so if you could give me your sons initiials I should be able to locate him and have him write a few lines.......if the initials fail to produce results I will need his rank but for now I will try initials.
I have purchased a sattelite phone before going with a $400/month rate and I can hook it up to my laptop and this way I can keep in touch with the wife and kids at home. and of course this ...
by tawni
I DON'T support US intervention in Iraq but I DO support I troops I don't support Bush AND I don't support Hussein AND I don't support terrorists.


and on with this line of thought .....what else do you not support, you have shown distain for anything connected with this country, and you expect us to believe that you would grant your approval to the us military. but the rest of the country can go to hell??
well I guess this is another one of those
"false dualities" (this must be the word for the day at starbucks) you keep referring to. well just sit back and order another biscotti, pause to reflect...
....
and hear your "inner child"
by aaron
<It is painfully obvious that neither kayoobe or aaron was in saudi, kuwait, egypt or turkey to train their armies, well I was so listen up!.....>

So, your only complaint about the US' brutal client regimes is that they aren't composed of sufficiently robotic killers! Damn.

It's at this point in the discussion that you were supposed to tell us how the US stands for freedom and human self-determination and all these wonderful and ennobling things. But instead you reminded us of what, in the real world, away from talk-radio fantasy land, US policy consists of: Buttressing massively-repressive governments that do the US ruling classes' bidding. The ONLY problem the US elites had with Hussein was that he had ambitions independent of US interests. Shit, if he hadn't, perhaps you'd now be training his troops (and complaining that they're not good enough fighters)!

In the spirit of overwhelming you with "paper clippings"
i'll leave with this fine quote, still completely relevant today, by Former U.S. Major General Smedley Butler, in 1933, reflecting on his many years in the US military, "fighting for freedom":

“War is just a racket. A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of people. Only a small inside group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few at the expense of the masses.

There isn’t a trick in the racketeering bag that the military gang is blind to. It has its “finger men” to point out enemies, it’s “muscle men” to destroy enemies, it’s “brain men” to plan war preparations, and a “big boss” super-nationalistic-capitalism.

It may be seem odd for me, a military man, to adopt such comparisons. Truthfulness compels me to. I spent thirty three years and four months in active military service as a member of this countries most agile military force, the Marine Corps. I served in all commissioned ranks from 2nd Lieutenant to Major-General. And during that period, I spent most of my time being a high-class muscle-man for Big Business, for Wall Street, and the Bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism.

I suspected I was just part of a racket at the time. Now I am sure of it. Like all the members of the military profession, I never had a thought of my own until I left the service. My mental faculties remained in suspended animation while I obeyed the orders of higher-ups. This is typical with everyone in the military service.

I helped make Mexico, especially Tampico, safe for oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank Boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. The record of racketeering is long. I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. In China I helped to see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested.

During those years I had, as the boys in the back room would say, a swell racket. Looking back on it, I feel that I could have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated in three continents.”











by SFC
you had to read the general's comments to figure this out? Where have you been until now?...........like I said before, you have issues with our poicies? than run for office and change them...........your paper clipping might pay off.........new flash: you are not making a bit of differnece on this forum!!
YOU are slow.........the comment with "....robot killers".......was to let you know WHY they were beaten so fast.........in war you have to kill, it is the nature of the beast. You would be surprised to what you can do for survival. I don't know about you but my life comes at a high price and ultimately better him than me.
You obviously have no concept whatsoever of military operations or war in itself! It would take to long for me to explain to you!...........
by Smedley Butler
http://www.lexrex.com/enlightened/articles/warisaracket.htm

WAR IS A RACKET

Smedley Darlington Butler

Major General - United States Marine Corps [Retired]

Born West Chester, Pa., July 30, 1881

Educated Haverford School

Married Ethel C. Peters, of Philadelphia, June 30, 1905

Awarded two congressional medals of honor, for capture of Vera Cruz, Mexico, 1914,

and for capture of Ft. Riviere, Haiti, 1917

Distinguished service medal, 1919

Retired Oct. 1, 1931

On leave of absence to act as director of Department of Safety, Philadelphia, 1932

Lecturer - 1930's

Republican Candidate for Senate, 1932

Died at Naval Hospital, Philadelphia, June 21, 1940

For more information about Major General Smedley Butler, contact the United States Marine Corps.

Chapter One

WAR IS A RACKET

WAR is a racket. It always has been.

It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.

A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small "inside" group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes.

In the World War [I] a mere handful garnered the profits of the conflict. At least 21,000 new millionaires and billionaires were made in the United States during the World War. That many admitted their huge blood gains in their income tax returns. How many other war millionaires falsified their tax returns no one knows.

How many of these war millionaires shouldered a rifle? How many of them dug a trench? How many of them knew what it meant to go hungry in a rat-infested dug-out? How many of them spent sleepless, frightened nights, ducking shells and shrapnel and machine gun bullets? How many of them parried a bayonet thrust of an enemy? How many of them were wounded or killed in battle?

Out of war nations acquire additional territory, if they are victorious. They just take it. This newly acquired territory promptly is exploited by the few – the selfsame few who wrung dollars out of blood in the war. The general public shoulders the bill.

And what is this bill?

This bill renders a horrible accounting. Newly placed gravestones. Mangled bodies. Shattered minds. Broken hearts and homes. Economic instability. Depression and all its attendant miseries. Back-breaking taxation for generations and generations.

For a great many years, as a soldier, I had a suspicion that war was a racket; not until I retired to civil life did I fully realize it. Now that I see the international war clouds gathering, as they are today, I must face it and speak out.

Again they are choosing sides. France and Russia met and agreed to stand side by side. Italy and Austria hurried to make a similar agreement. Poland and Germany cast sheep's eyes at each other, forgetting for the nonce [one unique occasion], their dispute over the Polish Corridor.

The assassination of King Alexander of Jugoslavia [Yugoslavia] complicated matters. Jugoslavia and Hungary, long bitter enemies, were almost at each other's throats. Italy was ready to jump in. But France was waiting. So was Czechoslovakia. All of them are looking ahead to war. Not the people – not those who fight and pay and die – only those who foment wars and remain safely at home to profit.

There are 40,000,000 men under arms in the world today, and our statesmen and diplomats have the temerity to say that war is not in the making.

Hell's bells! Are these 40,000,000 men being trained to be dancers?

Not in Italy, to be sure. Premier Mussolini knows what they are being trained for. He, at least, is frank enough to speak out. Only the other day, Il Duce in "International Conciliation," the publication of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said:

"And above all, Fascism, the more it considers and observes the future and the development of humanity quite apart from political considerations of the moment, believes neither in the possibility nor the utility of perpetual peace... War alone brings up to its highest tension all human energy and puts the stamp of nobility upon the people who have the courage to meet it."

Undoubtedly Mussolini means exactly what he says. His well-trained army, his great fleet of planes, and even his navy are ready for war – anxious for it, apparently. His recent stand at the side of Hungary in the latter's dispute with Jugoslavia showed that. And the hurried mobilization of his troops on the Austrian border after the assassination of Dollfuss showed it too. There are others in Europe too whose sabre rattling presages war, sooner or later.

Herr Hitler, with his rearming Germany and his constant demands for more and more arms, is an equal if not greater menace to peace. France only recently increased the term of military service for its youth from a year to eighteen months.

Yes, all over, nations are camping in their arms. The mad dogs of Europe are on the loose. In the Orient the maneuvering is more adroit. Back in 1904, when Russia and Japan fought, we kicked out our old friends the Russians and backed Japan. Then our very generous international bankers were financing Japan. Now the trend is to poison us against the Japanese. What does the "open door" policy to China mean to us? Our trade with China is about $90,000,000 a year. Or the Philippine Islands? We have spent about $600,000,000 in the Philippines in thirty-five years and we (our bankers and industrialists and speculators) have private investments there of less than $200,000,000.

Then, to save that China trade of about $90,000,000, or to protect these private investments of less than $200,000,000 in the Philippines, we would be all stirred up to hate Japan and go to war – a war that might well cost us tens of billions of dollars, hundreds of thousands of lives of Americans, and many more hundreds of thousands of physically maimed and mentally unbalanced men.

Of course, for this loss, there would be a compensating profit – fortunes would be made. Millions and billions of dollars would be piled up. By a few. Munitions makers. Bankers. Ship builders. Manufacturers. Meat packers. Speculators. They would fare well.

Yes, they are getting ready for another war. Why shouldn't they? It pays high dividends.

But what does it profit the men who are killed? What does it profit their mothers and sisters, their wives and their sweethearts? What does it profit their children?

What does it profit anyone except the very few to whom war means huge profits?

Yes, and what does it profit the nation?

Take our own case. Until 1898 we didn't own a bit of territory outside the mainland of North America. At that time our national debt was a little more than $1,000,000,000. Then we became "internationally minded." We forgot, or shunted aside, the advice of the Father of our country. We forgot George Washington's warning about "entangling alliances." We went to war. We acquired outside territory. At the end of the World War period, as a direct result of our fiddling in international affairs, our national debt had jumped to over $25,000,000,000. Our total favorable trade balance during the twenty-five-year period was about $24,000,000,000. Therefore, on a purely bookkeeping basis, we ran a little behind year for year, and that foreign trade might well have been ours without the wars.

It would have been far cheaper (not to say safer) for the average American who pays the bills to stay out of foreign entanglements. For a very few this racket, like bootlegging and other underworld rackets, brings fancy profits, but the cost of operations is always transferred to the people – who do not profit.

 

CHAPTER TWO

WHO MAKES THE PROFITS?

The World War, rather our brief participation in it, has cost the United States some $52,000,000,000. Figure it out. That means $400 to every American man, woman, and child. And we haven't paid the debt yet. We are paying it, our children will pay it, and our children's children probably still will be paying the cost of that war.

The normal profits of a business concern in the United States are six, eight, ten, and sometimes twelve percent. But war-time profits – ah! that is another matter – twenty, sixty, one hundred, three hundred, and even eighteen hundred per cent – the sky is the limit. All that traffic will bear. Uncle Sam has the money. Let's get it.

Of course, it isn't put that crudely in war time. It is dressed into speeches about patriotism, love of country, and "we must all put our shoulders to the wheel," but the profits jump and leap and skyrocket – and are safely pocketed. Let's just take a few examples:

Take our friends the du Ponts, the powder people – didn't one of them testify before a Senate committee recently that their powder won the war? Or saved the world for democracy? Or something? How did they do in the war? They were a patriotic corporation. Well, the average earnings of the du Ponts for the period 1910 to 1914 were $6,000,000 a year. It wasn't much, but the du Ponts managed to get along on it. Now let's look at their average yearly profit during the war years, 1914 to 1918. Fifty-eight million dollars a year profit we find! Nearly ten times that of normal times, and the profits of normal times were pretty good. An increase in profits of more than 950 per cent.

Take one of our little steel companies that patriotically shunted aside the making of rails and girders and bridges to manufacture war materials. Well, their 1910-1914 yearly earnings averaged $6,000,000. Then came the war. And, like loyal citizens, Bethlehem Steel promptly turned to munitions making. Did their profits jump – or did they let Uncle Sam in for a bargain? Well, their 1914-1918 average was $49,000,000 a year!

Or, let's take United States Steel. The normal earnings during the five-year period prior to the war were $105,000,000 a year. Not bad. Then along came the war and up went the profits. The average yearly profit for the period 1914-1918 was $240,000,000. Not bad.

There you have some of the steel and powder earnings. Let's look at something else. A little copper, perhaps. That always does well in war times.

Anaconda, for instance. Average yearly earnings during the pre-war years 1910-1914 of $10,000,000. During the war years 1914-1918 profits leaped to $34,000,000 per year.

Or Utah Copper. Average of $5,000,000 per year during the 1910-1914 period. Jumped to an average of $21,000,000 yearly profits for the war period.

Let's group these five, with three smaller companies. The total yearly average profits of the pre-war period 1910-1914 were $137,480,000. Then along came the war. The average yearly profits for this group skyrocketed to $408,300,000.

A little increase in profits of approximately 200 per cent.

Does war pay? It paid them. But they aren't the only ones. There are still others. Let's take leather.

For the three-year period before the war the total profits of Central Leather Company were $3,500,000. That was approximately $1,167,000 a year. Well, in 1916 Central Leather returned a profit of $15,000,000, a small increase of 1,100 per cent. That's all. The General Chemical Company averaged a profit for the three years before the war of a little over $800,000 a year. Came the war, and the profits jumped to $12,000,000. a leap of 1,400 per cent.

International Nickel Company – and you can't have a war without nickel – showed an increase in profits from a mere average of $4,000,000 a year to $73,000,000 yearly. Not bad? An increase of more than 1,700 per cent.

American Sugar Refining Company averaged $2,000,000 a year for the three years before the war. In 1916 a profit of $6,000,000 was recorded.

Listen to Senate Document No. 259. The Sixty-Fifth Congress, reporting on corporate earnings and government revenues. Considering the profits of 122 meat packers, 153 cotton manufacturers, 299 garment makers, 49 steel plants, and 340 coal producers during the war. Profits under 25 per cent were exceptional. For instance the coal companies made between 100 per cent and 7,856 per cent on their capital stock during the war. The Chicago packers doubled and tripled their earnings.

And let us not forget the bankers who financed the great war. If anyone had the cream of the profits it was the bankers. Being partnerships rather than incorporated organizations, they do not have to report to stockholders. And their profits were as secret as they were immense. How the bankers made their millions and their billions I do not know, because those little secrets never become public – even before a Senate investigatory body.

But here's how some of the other patriotic industrialists and speculators chiseled their way into war profits.

Take the shoe people. They like war. It brings business with abnormal profits. They made huge profits on sales abroad to our allies. Perhaps, like the munitions manufacturers and armament makers, they also sold to the enemy. For a dollar is a dollar whether it comes from Germany or from France. But they did well by Uncle Sam too. For instance, they sold Uncle Sam 35,000,000 pairs of hobnailed service shoes. There were 4,000,000 soldiers. Eight pairs, and more, to a soldier. My regiment during the war had only one pair to a soldier. Some of these shoes probably are still in existence. They were good shoes. But when the war was over Uncle Sam has a matter of 25,000,000 pairs left over. Bought – and paid for. Profits recorded and pocketed.

There was still lots of leather left. So the leather people sold your Uncle Sam hundreds of thousands of McClellan saddles for the cavalry. But there wasn't any American cavalry overseas! Somebody had to get rid of this leather, however. Somebody had to make a profit in it – so we had a lot of McClellan saddles. And we probably have those yet.

Also somebody had a lot of mosquito netting. They sold your Uncle Sam 20,000,000 mosquito nets for the use of the soldiers overseas. I suppose the boys were expected to put it over them as they tried to sleep in muddy trenches – one hand scratching cooties on their backs and the other making passes at scurrying rats. Well, not one of these mosquito nets ever got to France!

Anyhow, these thoughtful manufacturers wanted to make sure that no soldier would be without his mosquito net, so 40,000,000 additional yards of mosquito netting were sold to Uncle Sam.

There were pretty good profits in mosquito netting in those days, even if there were no mosquitoes in France. I suppose, if the war had lasted just a little longer, the enterprising mosquito netting manufacturers would have sold your Uncle Sam a couple of consignments of mosquitoes to plant in France so that more mosquito netting would be in order.

Airplane and engine manufacturers felt they, too, should get their just profits out of this war. Why not? Everybody else was getting theirs. So $1,000,000,000 – count them if you live long enough – was spent by Uncle Sam in building airplane engines that never left the ground! Not one plane, or motor, out of the billion dollars worth ordered, ever got into a battle in France. Just the same the manufacturers made their little profit of 30, 100, or perhaps 300 per cent.

Undershirts for soldiers cost 14¢ [cents] to make and uncle Sam paid 30¢ to 40¢ each for them – a nice little profit for the undershirt manufacturer. And the stocking manufacturer and the uniform manufacturers and the cap manufacturers and the steel helmet manufacturers – all got theirs.

Why, when the war was over some 4,000,000 sets of equipment – knapsacks and the things that go to fill them – crammed warehouses on this side. Now they are being scrapped because the regulations have changed the contents. But the manufacturers collected their wartime profits on them – and they will do it all over again the next time.

There were lots of brilliant ideas for profit making during the war.

One very versatile patriot sold Uncle Sam twelve dozen 48-inch wrenches. Oh, they were very nice wrenches. The only trouble was that there was only one nut ever made that was large enough for these wrenches. That is the one that holds the turbines at Niagara Falls. Well, after Uncle Sam had bought them and the manufacturer had pocketed the profit, the wrenches were put on freight cars and shunted all around the United States in an effort to find a use for them. When the Armistice was signed it was indeed a sad blow to the wrench manufacturer. He was just about to make some nuts to fit the wrenches. Then he planned to sell these, too, to your Uncle Sam.

Still another had the brilliant idea that colonels shouldn't ride in automobiles, nor should they even ride on horseback. One has probably seen a picture of Andy Jackson riding in a buckboard. Well, some 6,000 buckboards were sold to Uncle Sam for the use of colonels! Not one of them was used. But the buckboard manufacturer got his war profit.

The shipbuilders felt they should come in on some of it, too. They built a lot of ships that made a lot of profit. More than $3,000,000,000 worth. Some of the ships were all right. But $635,000,000 worth of them were made of wood and wouldn't float! The seams opened up – and they sank. We paid for them, though. And somebody pocketed the profits.

It has been estimated by statisticians and economists and researchers that the war cost your Uncle Sam $52,000,000,000. Of this sum, $39,000,000,000 was expended in the actual war itself. This expenditure yielded $16,000,000,000 in profits. That is how the 21,000 billionaires and millionaires got that way. This $16,000,000,000 profits is not to be sneezed at. It is quite a tidy sum. And it went to a very few.

The Senate (Nye) committee probe of the munitions industry and its wartime profits, despite its sensational disclosures, hardly has scratched the surface.

Even so, it has had some effect. The State Department has been studying "for some time" methods of keeping out of war. The War Department suddenly decides it has a wonderful plan to spring. The Administration names a committee – with the War and Navy Departments ably represented under the chairmanship of a Wall Street speculator – to limit profits in war time. To what extent isn't suggested. Hmmm. Possibly the profits of 300 and 600 and 1,600 per cent of those who turned blood into gold in the World War would be limited to some smaller figure.

Apparently, however, the plan does not call for any limitation of losses – that is, the losses of those who fight the war. As far as I have been able to ascertain there is nothing in the scheme to limit a soldier to the loss of but one eye, or one arm, or to limit his wounds to one or two or three. Or to limit the loss of life.

There is nothing in this scheme, apparently, that says not more than 12 per cent of a regiment shall be wounded in battle, or that not more than 7 per cent in a division shall be killed.

Of course, the committee cannot be bothered with such trifling matters.

 

CHAPTER THREE

WHO PAYS THE BILLS?

Who provides the profits – these nice little profits of 20, 100, 300, 1,500 and 1,800 per cent? We all pay them – in taxation. We paid the bankers their profits when we bought Liberty Bonds at $100.00 and sold them back at $84 or $86 to the bankers. These bankers collected $100 plus. It was a simple manipulation. The bankers control the security marts. It was easy for them to depress the price of these bonds. Then all of us – the people – got frightened and sold the bonds at $84 or $86. The bankers bought them. Then these same bankers stimulated a boom and government bonds went to par – and above. Then the bankers collected their profits.

But the soldier pays the biggest part of the bill.

If you don't believe this, visit the American cemeteries on the battlefields abroad. Or visit any of the veteran's hospitals in the United States. On a tour of the country, in the midst of which I am at the time of this writing, I have visited eighteen government hospitals for veterans. In them are a total of about 50,000 destroyed men – men who were the pick of the nation eighteen years ago. The very able chief surgeon at the government hospital; at Milwaukee, where there are 3,800 of the living dead, told me that mortality among veterans is three times as great as among those who stayed at home.

Boys with a normal viewpoint were taken out of the fields and offices and factories and classrooms and put into the ranks. There they were remolded; they were made over; they were made to "about face"; to regard murder as the order of the day. They were put shoulder to shoulder and, through mass psychology, they were entirely changed. We used them for a couple of years and trained them to think nothing at all of killing or of being killed.

Then, suddenly, we discharged them and told them to make another "about face" ! This time they had to do their own readjustment, sans [without] mass psychology, sans officers' aid and advice and sans nation-wide propaganda. We didn't need them any more. So we scattered them about without any "three-minute" or "Liberty Loan" speeches or parades. Many, too many, of these fine young boys are eventually destroyed, mentally, because they could not make that final "about face" alone.

In the government hospital in Marion, Indiana, 1,800 of these boys are in pens! Five hundred of them in a barracks with steel bars and wires all around outside the buildings and on the porches. These already have been mentally destroyed. These boys don't even look like human beings. Oh, the looks on their faces! Physically, they are in good shape; mentally, they are gone.

There are thousands and thousands of these cases, and more and more are coming in all the time. The tremendous excitement of the war, the sudden cutting off of that excitement – the young boys couldn't stand it.

That's a part of the bill. So much for the dead – they have paid their part of the war profits. So much for the mentally and physically wounded – they are paying now their share of the war profits. But the others paid, too – they paid with heartbreaks when they tore themselves away from their firesides and their families to don the uniform of Uncle Sam – on which a profit had been made. They paid another part in the training camps where they were regimented and drilled while others took their jobs and their places in the lives of their communities. The paid for it in the trenches where they shot and were shot; where they were hungry for days at a time; where they slept in the mud and the cold and in the rain – with the moans and shrieks of the dying for a horrible lullaby.

But don't forget – the soldier paid part of the dollars and cents bill too.

Up to and including the Spanish-American War, we had a prize system, and soldiers and sailors fought for money. During the Civil War they were paid bonuses, in many instances, before they went into service. The government, or states, paid as high as $1,200 for an enlistment. In the Spanish-American War they gave prize money. When we captured any vessels, the soldiers all got their share – at least, they were supposed to. Then it was found that we could reduce the cost of wars by taking all the prize money and keeping it, but conscripting [drafting] the soldier anyway. Then soldiers couldn't bargain for their labor, Everyone else could bargain, but the soldier couldn't.

Napoleon once said,

"All men are enamored of decorations...they positively hunger for them."

So by developing the Napoleonic system – the medal business – the government learned it could get soldiers for less money, because the boys liked to be decorated. Until the Civil War there were no medals. Then the Congressional Medal of Honor was handed out. It made enlistments easier. After the Civil War no new medals were issued until the Spanish-American War.

In the World War, we used propaganda to make the boys accept conscription. They were made to feel ashamed if they didn't join the army.

So vicious was this war propaganda that even God was brought into it. With few exceptions our clergymen joined in the clamor to kill, kill, kill. To kill the Germans. God is on our side...it is His will that the Germans be killed.

And in Germany, the good pastors called upon the Germans to kill the allies...to please the same God. That was a part of the general propaganda, built up to make people war conscious and murder conscious.

Beautiful ideals were painted for our boys who were sent out to die. This was the "war to end all wars." This was the "war to make the world safe for democracy." No one mentioned to them, as they marched away, that their going and their dying would mean huge war profits. No one told these American soldiers that they might be shot down by bullets made by their own brothers here. No one told them that the ships on which they were going to cross might be torpedoed by submarines built with United States patents. They were just told it was to be a "glorious adventure."

Thus, having stuffed patriotism down their throats, it was decided to make them help pay for the war, too. So, we gave them the large salary of $30 a month.

All they had to do for this munificent sum was to leave their dear ones behind, give up their jobs, lie in swampy trenches, eat canned willy (when they could get it) and kill and kill and kill...and be killed.

But wait!

Half of that wage (just a little more than a riveter in a shipyard or a laborer in a munitions factory safe at home made in a day) was promptly taken from him to support his dependents, so that they would not become a charge upon his community. Then we made him pay what amounted to accident insurance – something the employer pays for in an enlightened state – and that cost him $6 a month. He had less than $9 a month left.

Then, the most crowning insolence of all – he was virtually blackjacked into paying for his own ammunition, clothing, and food by being made to buy Liberty Bonds. Most soldiers got no money at all on pay days.

We made them buy Liberty Bonds at $100 and then we bought them back – when they came back from the war and couldn't find work – at $84 and $86. And the soldiers bought about $2,000,000,000 worth of these bonds!

Yes, the soldier pays the greater part of the bill. His family pays too. They pay it in the same heart-break that he does. As he suffers, they suffer. At nights, as he lay in the trenches and watched shrapnel burst about him, they lay home in their beds and tossed sleeplessly – his father, his mother, his wife, his sisters, his brothers, his sons, and his daughters.

When he returned home minus an eye, or minus a leg or with his mind broken, they suffered too – as much as and even sometimes more than he. Yes, and they, too, contributed their dollars to the profits of the munitions makers and bankers and shipbuilders and the manufacturers and the speculators made. They, too, bought Liberty Bonds and contributed to the profit of the bankers after the Armistice in the hocus-pocus of manipulated Liberty Bond prices.

And even now the families of the wounded men and of the mentally broken and those who never were able to readjust themselves are still suffering and still paying.

 

CHAPTER FOUR

HOW TO SMASH THIS RACKET!

WELL, it's a racket, all right.

A few profit – and the many pay. But there is a way to stop it. You can't end it by disarmament conferences. You can't eliminate it by peace parleys at Geneva. Well-meaning but impractical groups can't wipe it out by resolutions. It can be smashed effectively only by taking the profit out of war.

The only way to smash this racket is to conscript capital and industry and labor before the nations manhood can be conscripted. One month before the Government can conscript the young men of the nation – it must conscript capital and industry and labor. Let the officers and the directors and the high-powered executives of our armament factories and our munitions makers and our shipbuilders and our airplane builders and the manufacturers of all the other things that provide profit in war time as well as the bankers and the speculators, be conscripted – to get $30 a month, the same wage as the lads in the trenches get.

Let the workers in these plants get the same wages – all the workers, all presidents, all executives, all directors, all managers, all bankers –

yes, and all generals and all admirals and all officers and all politicians and all government office holders – everyone in the nation be restricted to a total monthly income not to exceed that paid to the soldier in the trenches!

Let all these kings and tycoons and masters of business and all those workers in industry and all our senators and governors and majors pay half of their monthly $30 wage to their families and pay war risk insurance and buy Liberty Bonds.

Why shouldn't they?

They aren't running any risk of being killed or of having their bodies mangled or their minds shattered. They aren't sleeping in muddy trenches. They aren't hungry. The soldiers are!

Give capital and industry and labor thirty days to think it over and you will find, by that time, there will be no war. That will smash the war racket – that and nothing else.

Maybe I am a little too optimistic. Capital still has some say. So capital won't permit the taking of the profit out of war until the people – those who do the suffering and still pay the price – make up their minds that those they elect to office shall do their bidding, and not that of the profiteers.

Another step necessary in this fight to smash the war racket is the limited plebiscite to determine whether a war should be declared. A plebiscite not of all the voters but merely of those who would be called upon to do the fighting and dying. There wouldn't be very much sense in having a 76-year-old president of a munitions factory or the flat-footed head of an international banking firm or the cross-eyed manager of a uniform manufacturing plant – all of whom see visions of tremendous profits in the event of war – voting on whether the nation should go to war or not. They never would be called upon to shoulder arms – to sleep in a trench and to be shot. Only those who would be called upon to risk their lives for their country should have the privilege of voting to determine whether the nation should go to war.

There is ample precedent for restricting the voting to those affected. Many of our states have restrictions on those permitted to vote. In most, it is necessary to be able to read and write before you may vote. In some, you must own property. It would be a simple matter each year for the men coming of military age to register in their communities as they did in the draft during the World War and be examined physically. Those who could pass and who would therefore be called upon to bear arms in the event of war would be eligible to vote in a limited plebiscite. They should be the ones to have the power to decide – and not a Congress few of whose members are within the age limit and fewer still of whom are in physical condition to bear arms. Only those who must suffer should have the right to vote.

A third step in this business of smashing the war racket is to make certain that our military forces are truly forces for defense only.

At each session of Congress the question of further naval appropriations comes up. The swivel-chair admirals of Washington (and there are always a lot of them) are very adroit lobbyists. And they are smart. They don't shout that "We need a lot of battleships to war on this nation or that nation." Oh no. First of all, they let it be known that America is menaced by a great naval power. Almost any day, these admirals will tell you, the great fleet of this supposed enemy will strike suddenly and annihilate 125,000,000 people. Just like that. Then they begin to cry for a larger navy. For what? To fight the enemy? Oh my, no. Oh, no. For defense purposes only.

Then, incidentally, they announce maneuvers in the Pacific. For defense. Uh, huh.

The Pacific is a great big ocean. We have a tremendous coastline on the Pacific. Will the maneuvers be off the coast, two or three hundred miles? Oh, no. The maneuvers will be two thousand, yes, perhaps even thirty-five hundred miles, off the coast.

The Japanese, a proud people, of course will be pleased beyond expression to see the united States fleet so close to Nippon's shores. Even as pleased as would be the residents of California were they to dimly discern through the morning mist, the Japanese fleet playing at war games off Los Angeles.

The ships of our navy, it can be seen, should be specifically limited, by law, to within 200 miles of our coastline. Had that been the law in 1898 the Maine would never have gone to Havana Harbor. She never would have been blown up. There would have been no war with Spain with its attendant loss of life. Two hundred miles is ample, in the opinion of experts, for defense purposes. Our nation cannot start an offensive war if its ships can't go further than 200 miles from the coastline. Planes might be permitted to go as far as 500 miles from the coast for purposes of reconnaissance. And the army should never leave the territorial limits of our nation.

To summarize: Three steps must be taken to smash the war racket.

We must take the profit out of war.

We must permit the youth of the land who would bear arms to decide whether or not there should be war.

We must limit our military forces to home defense purposes.

 

CHAPTER FIVE

TO HELL WITH WAR!

I am not a fool as to believe that war is a thing of the past. I know the people do not want war, but there is no use in saying we cannot be pushed into another war.

Looking back, Woodrow Wilson was re-elected president in 1916 on a platform that he had "kept us out of war" and on the implied promise that he would "keep us out of war." Yet, five months later he asked Congress to declare war on Germany.

In that five-month interval the people had not been asked whether they had changed their minds. The 4,000,000 young men who put on uniforms and marched or sailed away were not asked whether they wanted to go forth to suffer and die.

Then what caused our government to change its mind so suddenly?

Money.

An allied commission, it may be recalled, came over shortly before the war declaration and called on the President. The President summoned a group of advisers. The head of the commission spoke. Stripped of its diplomatic language, this is what he told the President and his group:

 

"There is no use kidding ourselves any longer. The cause of the allies is lost. We now owe you (American bankers, American munitions makers, American manufacturers, American speculators, American exporters) five or six billion dollars.

If we lose (and without the help of the United States we must lose) we, England, France and Italy, cannot pay back this money...and Germany won't.

So..."

Had secrecy been outlawed as far as war negotiations were concerned, and had the press been invited to be present at that conference, or had radio been available to broadcast the proceedings, America never would have entered the World War. But this conference, like all war discussions, was shrouded in utmost secrecy. When our boys were sent off to war they were told it was a "war to make the world safe for democracy" and a "war to end all wars."

Well, eighteen years after, the world has less of democracy than it had then. Besides, what business is it of ours whether Russia or Germany or England or France or Italy or Austria live under democracies or monarchies? Whether they are Fascists or Communists? Our problem is to preserve our own democracy.

And very little, if anything, has been accomplished to assure us that the World War was really the war to end all wars.

Yes, we have had disarmament conferences and limitations of arms conferences. They don't mean a thing. One has just failed; the results of another have been nullified. We send our professional soldiers and our sailors and our politicians and our diplomats to these conferences. And what happens?

The professional soldiers and sailors don't want to disarm. No admiral wants to be without a ship. No general wants to be without a command. Both mean men without jobs. They are not for disarmament. They cannot be for limitations of arms. And at all these conferences, lurking in the background but all-powerful, just the same, are the sinister agents of those who profit by war. They see to it that these conferences do not disarm or seriously limit armaments.

The chief aim of any power at any of these conferences has not been to achieve disarmament to prevent war but rather to get more armament for itself and less for any potential foe.

There is only one way to disarm with any semblance of practicability. That is for all nations to get together and scrap every ship, every gun, every rifle, every tank, every war plane. Even this, if it were possible, would not be enough.

The next war, according to experts, will be fought not with battleships, not by artillery, not with rifles and not with machine guns. It will be fought with deadly chemicals and gases.

Secretly each nation is studying and perfecting newer and ghastlier means of annihilating its foes wholesale. Yes, ships will continue to be built, for the shipbuilders must make their profits. And guns still will be manufactured and powder and rifles will be made, for the munitions makers must make their huge profits. And the soldiers, of course, must wear uniforms, for the manufacturer must make their war profits too.

But victory or defeat will be determined by the skill and ingenuity of our scientists.

If we put them to work making poison gas and more and more fiendish mechanical and explosive instruments of destruction, they will have no time for the constructive job of building greater prosperity for all peoples. By putting them to this useful job, we can all make more money out of peace than we can out of war – even the munitions makers.

So...I say,

TO HELL WITH WAR!

by Doreen
Thanks for your kind offer. My son's initials are BLM;
he's a PFC with the Colt Scout Unit.
§?
by ?
as you can plainly see in the pictures, we in Iraq consider anyone under the age of forty a child! this makes it easier to produce propaganda
by Stupid ass Fuckin doritos (fuck [at] ira.com)
You are nothing, you are on the fuckin internet arguing, you dumb fuckin losers.
by aaron
To SFC, the United States Ranger, based in Baghdad, who proudly calls himself the "killer of many Iraqis":

So, you don't disagree with Smedley Butler's assessment that US imperialist war's are a racket, yet you proudly hail the fighting prowess of the racketeer's forces.

Talk about a morally untenable position.

Why you think that the racketeer's will be swayed by me (or others) petitioning "our" government for a change of policy is beyond me. Real power in this society is wielded outside the purview of meaningfully democratic processes and scrutiny: in the boardrooms of interlocking corporations and banks, bond and stock markets, and government agencies structurally committed to the preservation and extension of American capitalism.

This ship only sails in one direction and I'm not getting on board.





by SFC
Aaron before starting to read this comment, could youf or once read the whole thing and sit and think about he point being made. I am getting tired of spelling out everything to you and below is the answere why!
1. when I signed off with the"killer of many iraqis" I thought you would read between the lines.........you obviously can not so I will spell it out........YOU are the one who called me a killer, murderer of innocent people and a mercenary so I thought I would make you happy......but I thought I have answered this before.......you forget very easily or maybe you chose to forget on purpose....hhhmm............or you only read and comprehend what YOU want to and NOT what is being written..........
2. I do not sink to name name calling and it was not ME who told you " to go blow up your doll"........so it looks like you are fabricating stuff now........maybe you have memory issues........my 5 and 7 year olds do that.............and IF I were to sink down to your level and start the name calling I would have by far more "choice" words than that...........
3' you "are not going in that direction" well good for you, move to Syria or somewhere in the middle east, I am sure that you, and your views will be welcomed........maybe hamas will make you an honorary member, you never know.............
What you have proven was that you do not have your own opinion you have to quote x, y and z to justify why you are .....well the way you are..........and besides name calling and paper clipping you do not have any other skills.........if you are a realist than I am MIckey Mouse...........you are a person who lives in his own bubble and thinks that by rambling on in this forum he is making a difference ..........and ultimately this forum is about Iraq and the "innocent people getting killed my the US" which is complete BS.........nobody from this website or you, aaron, are here! so to quote 3,4,5the parties is completely ridiculous........so to you or anyone out there give the name of the doctor that you say this info came from and I would like check this out! But please don't tell me that the infor came from Al-Jazeera, because to them every dead Iraqi regardless on how he died (old, sick, killed by neighbor for stealing, car crash, killed by iraqi police) is "killed by the infidel".......
for the info of the "military experts on this forum" cluster bombs where used in the field only and not on cities so the statements of the sort "that kid picks up cluter bomb in bagdad and blows his hands", well are just not true.........possibly kid picked upt rpg and played with it and it went off........ I have not seen any in town.........I have seen them where there was a military engagement and wrecked vehicles litter the sides of the road but all where outside the city........everything inside the city limits were hit by precision guided ammunition and not cluster bombs.

Doreen, got your message mam, I know that they are spread around town especially on the roads leading into town.....give me a couple of days and I should be able to find him and pass on your message. R/S SFC
by Doreen
He might now be with the HHB 1-10 FA; I just got a letter from him and his address changed; if that helps.
I believe he is now accompling trucks in and out of Baghdad - but that could be changed, since it takes a couple of weeks to get a letter from Iraq.

Interesting, I had a couple of my posts deleted where I was answering some misconceptions - my response is deleted, but Aaron's book remains....hmmm.

Sounds like some on this site have a problem with free speech, especially if the opinion differs from theirs. Surprise, surprise. Perhaps they find it hard to say or hear anything bad against Hussein. Perhaps they prefer his style of government to ours.

Oh well, at least we don't have to worry about our tongues being cut out.
by ?
and now some words from the lunatic fringe...
(The trouble with ignorance is that it picks up confidence as it goes along.)

Fuck You Idiots
by Stupid ass Fuckin doritos Sunday May 25, 2003 at 03:36 AM
fuck [at] ira.com
You are nothing, you are on the fuckin internet arguing, you dumb fuckin losers.


SO WHAT YOU ARE SAYING IS THAT THE ANTI-AMERICAN PROTESTERS ARE INDEED MANIPULATING THE TRUTH.
WHAT REASON DO YOU HAVE TO LIE????
by aaron

<when I signed off with the"killer of many iraqis" I thought you would read between the lines...>

you signed off with that on your first post on this thread. in that post, instead of addressing criticism's of US policy in Iraq since the late-50s's you simply dismissed them out-of-hand and proclaimed that "none of us" are in Iraq so we can't talk--as if being in Iraq now gives you special insight into US policies going back decades.
in light of the huge numbers of Iraqi people that the US is implicated in killing over the years (a fact that you don't even bother denying), your signing off as "killer of many Iraqis" is too close to the truth to be funny and comes across as blood-thirsty bluster, not irony, as you'd now like to suggest.

<I do not sink to name name calling and it was not ME who told you " to go blow up your doll"........so it looks like you are fabricating stuff now........maybe you have memory issues>

it's interesting that coming on the heals of a back-and-forth between you and I someone calling himself SFC and sounding just like you posted this:

"aaron is not self centered"
by SFC Wednesday May 21, 2003 at 03:06 AM

"...if you stopped looking in the mirror for one moment you will see my point. and that I am correct...which in and of its self needs no defense.
Save Your Breath ... You'll need it to blow up your date!"

<you "are not going in that direction" well good for you, move to Syria or somewhere in the middle east, I am sure that you, and your views will be welcomed.....>

this, coming from someone who trains the military's of some of the most repressive regimes in the Middle East. What a joke.

<What you have proven was that you do not have your own opinion you have to quote x, y and z to justify why you are .....well the way you are..........and besides name calling and paper clipping you do not have any other skills...>

most of what I have written here are my own words. i have augmented them with clippings that are highly relevant to the discussion at hand. it's your problem that you can't synthesize more than two bytes of (gov't vetted) information at a time. and remember: i don't post here simply to speak to you. others are listening--many of whom aren't "overwhelmed" by pertinent information and analysis, even if it takes a few minutes to injest.

<..if you are a realist than I am MIckey Mouse>

what's up mr. mouse?

<...you are a person who lives in his own bubble and thinks that by rambling on in this forum he is making a difference..>

it seems like i've been tying you in knots for some time now, mickey.......
this isn't, by far, the only thing I do to "make a difference", but parrying with you gives me some insights and to the extent that others' are listening, well, that's all to the good.

<cluster bombs where used in the field only and not on cities .......everything inside the city limits were hit by precision guided ammunition and not cluster bombs.>

that's a bald faced lie. what happened in Hilla? US Central Command even admits to the use of cluster bombs in Baghdad. anyone interested in this matter should do a google and write Baghdad "cluster bombs" and you'll see that SFC is lying. here's one link:

http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/iraq/ny-woclus153221366apr15,0,2518032.story?coll=ny-iraq-headlines

and, then, of course, we could talk about the use of depleted-uranium munitions dropped by the US/UK "coalition". "Experts at the Pentagon and the United Nations estimate that 1,100-2,200 tons of depleted uranium were used by U.S.-led coalition forces during their attack on Iraq in March and April.":

http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280,-2710049,00.html


by free thinker
Here is another point of view about the Us soldiers in Iraq

The Men Who Won the War
An “embed” looks at our soldiers.

By Jim Lacey

Since returning from Iraq a short time ago I have been answering a lot of questions about the war from friends, family, and strangers. When they ask me how it was over there I find myself glossing over the fighting, the heat, the sandstorms, and the flies (these last could have taught the Iraqi army a thing or two about staying power). Instead, I talk about the soldiers I met, and how they reflected the best of America. A lot of people are going to tell the story of how this war was fought; I would rather say something about the men who won the war.

War came early for the 1st Brigade of the 101st Airborne when an otherwise quiet night in the Kuwaiti desert was shattered by thunderous close-quarters grenade blasts. Sgt. Hasan Akbar, a U.S. soldier, had thrown grenades into an officers' tent, killing two and wounding a dozen others. Adding to the immediate confusion was the piercing scream of SCUD alarms, which kicked in the second Akbar's grenade exploded. For a moment, it was a scene of near panic and total chaos.

Just minutes after the explosions, a perimeter was established around the area of the attack, medics were treating the wounded, and calls for evacuation vehicles and helicopters were already being sent out. Remarkably, the very people who should have been organizing all of this were the ones lying on the stretchers, seriously wounded. It fell to junior officers and untested sergeants to take charge and lead. Without hesitation everyone stepped up and unfalteringly did just that. I stood in amazement as two captains (Townlee Hendrick and Tony Jones) directed the evacuation of the wounded, established a hasty defense, and helped to organize a search for the culprit. They did all this despite bleeding heavily from their wounds. For over six hours, these two men ran things while refusing to be evacuated until they were sure all of the men in their command were safe.

Two days later Capt. Jones left the hospital and hitchhiked back to the unit: He had heard a rumor that it was about to move into Iraq and he wanted to be there. As Jones — dressed only in boots, a hospital gown, and a flak vest — limped toward headquarters, Col. Hodges, the 1st Brigade's commander, announced, "I see that Captain Jones has returned to us in full martial splendor." The colonel later said that he was tempted to send Jones to the unit surgeon for further evaluation, but that he didn't feel he had the right to tell another man not to fight: Hodges himself had elected to leave two grenade fragments in his arm so that he could return to his command as quickly as possible.

The war had not even begun and already I was aware that I had fallen in with a special breed of men. Over the next four weeks, nothing I saw would alter this impression. A military historian once told me that soldiers could forgive their officers any fault save cowardice. After the grenade attack I knew these men were not cowards, but I had yet to learn that the brigade's leaders had made a cult of bravery. A few examples will suffice.

While out on what he called "battlefield circulation," Col. Hodges was surveying suspected enemy positions with one of his battalion commanders (Lt. Col. Chris Hughes) when a soldier yelled "Incoming" to alert everyone that mortar shells were headed our way. A few soldiers moved closer to a wall, but Hodges and Hughes never budged and only briefly glanced up when the rounds hit a few hundred yards away. As Hodges completed his review and prepared to leave, another young soldier asked him when they would get to kill whoever was firing the mortar. Hodges smiled and said, "Don't be in a hurry to kill him. They might replace that guy with someone who can shoot."

The next day, a convoy Col. Hodges was traveling in was ambushed by several Iraqi paramilitary soldiers. A ferocious firefight ensued, but Hodges never left the side of his vehicle. Puffing on a cigar as he directed the action, Hodges remained constantly exposed to fire. When two Kiowa helicopters swooped in to pulverize the enemy strongpoint with rocket fire, he turned to some journalists watching the action and quipped, "That's your tax dollars at work."

Bravery inspires men, but brains and quick thinking win wars. In one particularly tense moment, a company of U.S. soldiers was preparing to guard the Mosque of Ali — one of the most sacred Muslim sites — when agitators in what had been a friendly crowd started shouting that they were going to storm the mosque. In an instant, the Iraqis began to chant and a riot seemed imminent. A couple of nervous soldiers slid their weapons into fire mode, and I thought we were only moments away from a slaughter. These soldiers had just fought an all-night battle. They were exhausted, tense, and prepared to crush any riot with violence of their own. But they were also professionals, and so, when their battalion commander, Chris Hughes, ordered them to take a knee, point their weapons to the ground, and start smiling, that is exactly what they did. Calm returned. By placing his men in the most non-threatening posture possible, Hughes had sapped the crowd of its aggression. Quick thinking and iron discipline had reversed an ugly situation and averted disaster.

Since then, I have often wondered how we created an army of men who could fight with ruthless savagery all night and then respond so easily to an order to "smile" while under impending threat. Historian Stephen Ambrose said of the American soldier: "When soldiers from any other army, even our allies, entered a town, the people hid in the cellars. When Americans came in, even into German towns, it meant smiles, chocolate bars and C-rations." Ours has always been an army like no other, because our soldiers reflect a society unlike any other. They are pitiless when confronted by armed enemy fighters and yet full of compassion for civilians and even defeated enemies.

American soldiers immediately began saving Iraqi lives at the conclusion of any fight. Medics later said that the Iraqi wounded they treated were astounded by our compassion. They expected they would be left to suffer or die. I witnessed Iraqi paramilitary troops using women and children as human shields, turning grade schools into fortresses, and defiling their own holy sites. Time and again, I saw Americans taking unnecessary risks to clear buildings without firing or using grenades, because it might injure civilians. I stood in awe as 19-year-olds refused to return enemy fire because it was coming from a mosque.

It was American soldiers who handed over food to hungry Iraqis, who gave their own medical supplies to Iraqi doctors, and who brought water to the thirsty. It was American soldiers who went door-to-door in a slum because a girl was rumored to have been injured in the fighting; when they found her, they called in a helicopter to take her to an Army hospital. It was American soldiers who wept when a three-year-old was carried out of the rubble where she had been killed by Iraqi mortar fire. It was American soldiers who cleaned up houses they had been fighting over and later occupied — they wanted the places to look at least somewhat tidy when the residents returned.

It was these same soldiers who stormed to Baghdad in only a couple of weeks, accepted the surrender of three Iraqi Army divisions, massacred any Republican Guard unit that stood and fought, and disposed of a dictator and a regime with ruthless efficiency. There is no other army — and there are no other soldiers — in the world capable of such merciless fighting and possessed of such compassion for their fellow man. No society except America could have produced them.

Before I end this I want to point out one other quality of the American soldier: his sense of justice. After a grueling fight, a company of infantrymen was resting and opening their first mail delivery of the war. One of the young soldiers had received a care package and was sharing the home-baked cookies with his friends. A photographer with a heavy French accent asked if he could have one. The soldier looked him over and said there would be no cookies for Frenchmen. The photographer then protested that he was half Italian. Without missing a beat, the soldier broke a cookie in half and gave it to him. It was a perfect moment and a perfect reflection of the American soldier.

— Jim Lacey, a New York-based writer, was a war correspondent for Time magazine embedded with the 101st Airborne Division during Operation Iraqi Freedom.
by Fiddlestix
Wow ! I am an rather ''uneducated" American white male. Less than two years collegiate. I always realized that when the economy was down, "war is good". I just never realized how good it is; for the privledged few. I am still against Socialism,taking my hard-earned monies to support a class elite. I always vote Republican and am a moral Christian. Your extensive expose` makes me want to rethink my political stand.
I suppose I should say " Thank You" ?
by Emma
Thanks for your time and energy, aaron. I'm one of those people watching but not typically contributing to this thread of discussion. I'm happy to see you holding it down for the team.

You are making clear, articulate, and intelligent comments. You are 100% on point - unlike the pro-war dittoheads here who can't even string a few words together sensibly, but drool all over themselves trying. Thank you.

These nationalists keep repeating the same bullshit:
(1) support for foreign aggression = support for "our" troops,
(2) you're not in iraq so therefore you don't know anything about US foreign policy - we should listen only to the people who are being paid to go with a massive armed force into iraq and take it over,
(3) their ramblings about you "rambling on," their calling you the name of "name caller," their ridiculous deflection of all your solid points with airy substance-free bullshit and hypocrisy,
(4) accusations that you're thoroughly "anti-american" because you oppose the system and policy currently ruling america,
(5) you supposedly being a "know it all" or "oh so educated" because you make solid points and back them up with sources instead of doing what they do: namely, bleat out repetitions of the same ill-thought, non-supported arguments they've heard on the US nationalist capitalist news without any sources at all and without bothering to make a convincing argument,
(6) they rant and wail about your "rants" and "tantrums" - one can only assume they mean your on-target analysis which they apparently can't even read, much less respond to, and of course,
(7) they talk about the "defense" of iraq (from refugee shiites returning from iran, from hussein, from particular parties of iraqis, from stone throwing local kids) when they are supporting the invasion of iraq by foreign aggressors - the united states.

Stupid fuckers.

You continue to make solid arguments that make solid sense, with evidence - in the face of baseless accusations, mudslinging, name calling, and everything but even the barest excuse for an argument as to why the US should have its military in any country but its own. Good job.

I don't know if your time here is well spent, but it warms my heart to see that, as usual, anarchist-communists hold it down when it comes to debate and discourse, while red-white-and-blue nazi wannabes seig'ing heil to Fuhrer Bush can only appeal to brute force: "whether you like it or not we are in Iraq," so "shut up."

I would be privileged to stand next to you, aaron, when the time comes to charge the last barricades of these fascist fucks, and take freedom in america.

love, bread, and roses,
Emma

p.s. Fuck you, SFC, you halfwit murderous piece of shit. You gave away that you're an officer, not a rank and file soldier. I support my troops - they're the ones defending their own countries from invaders like you. Let's hear it for a big comeback of fragging - too long out of fashion since vietnam!

by Emma
Thanks for your time and energy, aaron. I'm one of those people watching but not typically contributing to this thread of discussion. I'm happy to see you holding it down for the team.

You are making clear, articulate, and intelligent comments. You are 100% on point - unlike the pro-war dittoheads here who can't even string a few words together sensibly, but drool all over themselves trying. Thank you.

These nationalists keep repeating the same bullshit:
(1) support for foreign aggression = support for "our" troops,
(2) you're not in iraq so therefore you don't know anything about US foreign policy - we should listen only to the people who are being paid to go with a massive armed force into iraq and take it over,
(3) their ramblings about you "rambling on," their calling you the name of "name caller," their ridiculous deflection of all your solid points with airy substance-free bullshit and hypocrisy,
(4) accusations that you're thoroughly "anti-american" because you oppose the system and policy currently ruling america,
(5) you supposedly being a "know it all" or "oh so educated" because you make solid points and back them up with sources instead of doing what they do: namely, bleat out repetitions of the same ill-thought, non-supported arguments they've heard on the US nationalist capitalist news without any sources at all and without bothering to make a convincing argument,
(6) they rant and wail about your "rants" and "tantrums" - one can only assume they mean your on-target analysis which they apparently can't even read, much less respond to, and of course,
(7) they talk about the "defense" of iraq (from refugee shiites returning from iran, from hussein, from particular parties of iraqis, from stone throwing local kids) when they are supporting the invasion of iraq by foreign aggressors - the united states.

Stupid fuckers.

You continue to make solid arguments that make solid sense, with evidence - in the face of baseless accusations, mudslinging, name calling, and everything but even the barest excuse for an argument as to why the US should have its military in any country but its own. Good job.

I don't know if your time here is well spent, but it warms my heart to see that, as usual, anarchist-communists hold it down when it comes to debate and discourse, while red-white-and-blue nazi wannabes seig'ing heil to Fuhrer Bush can only appeal to brute force: "whether you like it or not we are in Iraq," so "shut up."

I would be privileged to stand next to you, aaron, when the time comes to charge the last barricades of these fascist fucks, and take freedom in america.

love, bread, and roses,
Emma

p.s. Fuck you, SFC, you halfwit murderous piece of shit. You gave away that you're an officer, not a rank and file soldier. I support my troops - they're the ones defending their own countries from invaders like you. Let's hear it for a big comeback of fragging - too long out of fashion since vietnam!

by Emma
love, bread, and roses,
Emma =Aaron Fan Club= Aaron in drag?






by the real Emma

Well, the real Emma (me) does equal the Aaron Fan Club. That's clear enough, as I wrote the above post titled "Aaron Fan Club." Others are, of course, welcome to join. I've seen several people post here who I think would join - some from other parts of the world. It could become the Aaron International Fan Club.

But me, aaron in drag? Bitch please!

Do you think everyone else on here who has thanked aaron is him, in or out of drag? If so, you are one deluded, drooling moron. In drag.

If everyone of a very similar point of view (or anyone who might appreciate aaron's efforts here against stupidity and nationalist bloodlust) is aaron, then Doreen = SFC in drag = free thinker in drag = Stupid ass Fuckin doritos in drag = "?" in drag = tawni = tyrone in drag = Barnacle Bill in drag = a legend in his own mind in drag = the other SFC in drag = read the record in drag = Real Mothers wear flannel = Allah the loser in drag = Scottie in drag = circus dog in drag = Lonnie Clark = Gary in drag = Momma = Bill Elliott in drag = Another soldier out in middle of nowhere in drag = Ms. Delete = True American in drag = American by birth in drag = redd in drag = Jeff Nelson in drag = Richard in drag = "ME" in drag = Zroom in drag = the other Emma (who posted above) in drag.

No, I'm not aaron, with or without drag. I'm just someone with a mind and a heart. It seems all of the above-listed war clones (who I'm too pessimistic and realistic to hope are all one person) lack at least one of the two.

I have neither the eloquence nor the persistence to post so many reasonable, politically on point, well thought out replies to so many stupid people. Aaron is a pearl cast before swine.


@}-,-`---
Emma



by the real Emma

Well, the real Emma (me) does equal the Aaron Fan Club. That's clear enough, as I wrote the above post titled "Aaron Fan Club." Others are, of course, welcome to join. I've seen several people post here who I think would join - some from other parts of the world. It could become the Aaron International Fan Club.

But me, aaron in drag? Bitch please!

Do you think everyone else on here who has thanked aaron is him, in or out of drag? If so, you are one deluded, drooling moron. In drag.

If everyone of a very similar point of view (or anyone who might appreciate aaron's efforts here against stupidity and nationalist bloodlust) is aaron, then Doreen = SFC in drag = free thinker in drag = Stupid ass Fuckin doritos in drag = "?" in drag = tawni = tyrone in drag = Barnacle Bill in drag = a legend in his own mind in drag = the other SFC in drag = read the record in drag = Real Mothers wear flannel = Allah the loser in drag = Scottie in drag = circus dog in drag = Lonnie Clark = Gary in drag = Momma = Bill Elliott in drag = Another soldier out in middle of nowhere in drag = Ms. Delete = True American in drag = American by birth in drag = redd in drag = Jeff Nelson in drag = Richard in drag = "ME" in drag = Zroom in drag = the other Emma (who posted above) in drag.

No, I'm not aaron, with or without drag. I'm just someone with a mind and a heart. It seems all of the above-listed war clones (who I'm too pessimistic and realistic to hope are all one person) lack at least one of the two.

I have neither the eloquence nor the persistence to post so many reasonable, politically on point, well thought out replies to so many stupid people. Aaron is a pearl cast before swine.


@}-,-`---
Emma



by Doreen
You are so filled with hatred it spills out in your vile tirade.

I'll pray for you.
by sam
"Patriotism in its simplest, clearest, and most indubitable meaning is nothing but an insturment for the attainment of the government's ambitious and mercenary aims, and a renunciation of human dignity, common sense, and conscience by the governed, and a slavish submission to those who hold power. That is what is really preached wherever patriotism is championed. Patriotism is slavery." - Leo Tolstoy
by SFC
SFC stands for Sergeant First Class .......look up US rank structure .....
Yes aaron you completely tied me up in nuts........I am so so angry....ha ha ha.......
well again you got your 'facts" screwed up.........don't ask the Pentagon which is 100000 miles from here.......YOU show me where the cluster bombs are in bagdad........It is interesting that there are 25000 of us here and none of us knows what a cluster bomb looks like, maybe you will teach us........in have invited you on many ocasions to come on down.......I know it is the organic food that does not allow you to come.......
Secondly I do not lie..............you seem to have problems with the truth however.........
Third, go back to the comments section an see that it was not me who left the comment.........I even thanked the person who answered you in my name....like I said my 5&7 year olds do that.............
A-10, apaches, M1, and Bradleys use depleted uranium rounds.........news flash everybody in the world uses depleted uranium rounds........

doreen, found your sons PLTSGT and passed on your message! RS SFC
by sam
Children in Kabul are being found with 2,031 nanograms of uranium in their urine, when the highest acceptable level for US citizens is only 12 nanograms (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3050317.stm). This is a result of the US invasion of Afghanistan and its use of radioactive bombs. It is only logical to assume we will see the sky rocketing levels of cancer rates in Afghanistan that we also saw in the Iraqi population after the first Gulf War. Since you claim to be in the know, SFC, can you explain to us what is causing this spread of uranium contamination throughout Afghanistan, if it is not the result of the US military? And if you concede to the fact that the US has done this, how can you defend the poisoning of these people? Of course, this is not mentioning the fact that the US has basically abandonded Afghanistan after practically swearing on the bible that it would stay to the end to ensure reconstruction. I suppose the US thought leaving a present that generations could enjoy was thanks enough.
by SFC
Sam, I spent 9 months in Afghanistan and I don't think that having 27000 troops on the ground is abandoning.
Russians ralied having on tank warfare agains the mujahadeens and their sabot round is made out of depleted uranium, not just ours. Also not all bombs are made of depleted uranium. It is true that some of the bunker buster do use depleted uranium to penatrate the rock of the mountains. why the children of afghanistan have such a high level of uranium in their urine? I am not a doctor and only can tell you of what I know of personally and not from here say.
But i do have tankers here with me I will ask them about it and get back with you on that.
by Doreen
Thanks SFC! I'm getting ready to send out another package to my son - I have a feeling he'll be there long enough to receive it.

This is an interesting forum to be passing messages on to my son in Iraq, eh? :-)

by Doreen
Thanks SFC! I'm getting ready to send out another package to my son - I have a feeling he'll be there long enough to receive it.

This is an interesting forum to be passing messages on to my son in Iraq, eh? :-) So how are things in Baghdad now? I know they have increased the patrols...is it returning to 'normal'?

by Tolstoy
"Patriotism in its simplest, clearest, and most indubitable meaning is nothing but an insturment for the attainment of the government's ambitious
-Leo Tolstoy by sam

sam, how appropriate it is that you would be lecturing and quoting "Tolstoy's" definition of "Patriotism" on this forum to an active duty service NCO (and a spec opps NCO ) but I guess you had to look up the definition of Patriotism some where for I am sure it is not in your vocabulary (I delight in this the mother of all oxymoron's)
by aaron
Emma, I appreciate your words of support. Sometimes I feel like a lunatic engaging these cro-magnons, but I wouldn't do it if I thought there was no pay-off. Thanks.

To SFC: I understand why you would want to deny that the US used cluster bombs in Baghdad and other populated centers. I don't have time right now to track down and identify exact neighborhoods that were struck but if you read the Newsday piece I linked to above there is reason to believe that a quite a few were. It mentions the northeastern district as having been hit heavily. I'll try to get more specifics in the next twenty four hours. Why don't respond to the Newsday article with something more than your usual smug dismissals?

As to the US' use of depleted uranuim munitions--between 1,100 and 2,200 tons of which were used in this latest invasion, according to the Pentagon--you say that every country uses them. Oh?

The UK Guardian says otherwise in its May 24th piece that linked above:

"U.S. tanks, Bradley fighting vehicles, A-10 attack jets and Apache helicopters routinely use depleted uranium rounds. Aside from the United States and Britain, no other nation uses the munitions. Russian military experts say shells made from alloys of hardened steel, lead and tungsten are equally effective in the anti-tank role."

Now, maybe the Guardian is wrong, but the onus is on you, who says "every country" uses them (as if that makes it okay), to support that claim with evidence.

by MSG
why on god's green earth would I WANT to hide that cluster bombs were used?........you got me........I am a secret spy .........000017 is my code.....
the US used between 1100 and 2200 tons of ....well hate to brake it in but a bombs weight is exact it does not fluctuate .........so the gap in tonage is way off....if you would have said 1100 and 1200 tons I could possibly see a 100 ton difference.....do you have any idea what 100 tons of ammo looks like we have 10 tons here and tthat is 2 football fields long worth of ordanance........again you go back to some website that has some bogus numbers.........you listen to the Pentagon?........might as well read some comic books while you are at it and let me know if spider-man is really alive!.........have you ever actually listened to a briefing? they talk for 2 hours and when they are done you are not sure of what was said.........God knows how many times I watched news, taped by my wife, while I was gone and was amazed how untrue it was: from Panama, Desert Storm, Haiti, Somalia, Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan and no Iraq! I can sit here and write a book on the bs they pushed on the public!
What I tried to do here is to let you know that my prospective (ie here on the ground) is completely different that what you are told at home or this website.
As far as your comment about ammunition you need to go to Jane's website and they have listed every kind of military vehicle on this planet and the ammunition it uses. Depleted uranium by ALL countries (tanks, anti tank).........why range and penetration........tungstan will not penetrate III generation armor. That is according to the master gunner from the tank unit with 26 years of service. He should know. I am not quoting a website or Pentagon but a person that worked with this shit for 26 years and he is not pissing 2012 grams of uranium. ?????

Doreen, things got a little hairy here...we had a couple of ambushes........they took place at road blocks maned by your sons unit.... not to worry the people killed were not scouts........they were augmenties from a support unit.....the first was a weapons smugging gone bad........the second was a full fledged fire fight.........in both cases they were fedayeen fighters. they had their ids on them.......4 killed in the first and 5 killed with 2 wouded in the second, my unit was involved in the second, I have one wounded with a tigh wound, pretty nasty but doc said he will be ok.... and for the people doubting the account........I saw the bodies in both cases!
that is it for now! RS MSG (got promoted)
.
by True American II
Aaron, as the True American stated in his article, "If you do not like the country MOVE. I believe he meant it so "MOVE!" You are so caught up in something you view as being intellectually responsible that you no longer can see the forest through the trees. To repeat, if you do not think we have the best nation bar none, get OUT !! Somehow, I do not think we are in any danger of losing you to another more just nation however.
by Doreen
I had a bad feeling when I heard about those reports about firefights in Baghdad. Thanks for letting me know he's okay.

Keep your head low & I'll be praying for you, as well as everyone in Iraq!
by Doreen
I had a bad feeling when I heard about those reports about firefights in Baghdad. Thanks for letting me know he's okay.

Keep your head low & I'll be praying for you, as well as everyone in Iraq!
by jonah

People who see this war as an absolute good, who deny the findings of those who worry about the local population and the long term safety of the soldiers stationed there, are complete, self-righteous lunatics. Thanks.

by aaron
<why on god's green earth would I WANT to hide that cluster bombs were used?>

What you really want to do is change the subject. Earlier you denied that the US used cluster bombs in urban areas. THAT is what you'd like to hide.

<........you got me........I am a secret spy .........000017 is my code.....>

i can't stop laughing, KFC.

<the US used between 1100 and 2200 tons of ....well hate to brake it in but a bombs weight is exact it does not fluctuate .........so the gap in tonage is way off....if you would have said 1100 and 1200 tons I could possibly see a 100 ton difference....>

don't play dumb: you know that these estimates are always crude. if the Pentagon said that 1,100-2,200 pounds of depleted-uranium munitions were dropped in this latest "campaign", then, chances are, the higher number is accurate or something even higher than it.

<you listen to the Pentagon?........might as well read some comic books while you are at it and let me know if spider-man is really alive!.........have you ever actually listened to a briefing? they talk for 2 hours and when they are done you are not sure of what was said......>

well, finally we're in agreement: the Pentagon is comprised of lying, prevaricating scum.

<...God knows how many times I watched news, taped by my wife, while I was gone and was amazed how untrue it was: from Panama, Desert Storm, Haiti, Somalia, Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan and no Iraq! I can sit here and write a book on the bs they pushed on the public!>

my suggestion: quit the military, write a book and all the proceeds can go to anti-capitalist actionists committed to combatting the Pentagon's trickery and imperial slaughters.

<As far as your comment about ammunition you need to go to Jane's website and they have listed every kind of military vehicle on this planet and the ammunition it uses. Depleted uranium by ALL countries (tanks, anti tank).........why range and penetration........tungstan will not penetrate III generation armor. That is according to the master gunner from the tank unit with 26 years of service. He should know. I am not quoting a website or Pentagon but a person that worked with this shit for 26 years and he is not pissing 2012 grams of uranium. ?????>

i understand your strategy: be deliberately cryptic and hope that people think you're saying something of substance. you're the one who said "all countries" use depleted uranium munitions. now prove it.

<Doreen, things got a little hairy here...>

sounds like a quamire to me.
by a
It brightens my day to see aaron's posts. Good job.
by free thinker
Can you read English? SFC told you where to exactly where to check regarding DU - Jane's website - and your response was your usual: i understand your strategy: be deliberately cryptic and hope that people think you're saying something of substance. you're the one who said "all countries" use depleted uranium munitions. now prove it.

So here is an article from Jane's after a brief 5 minute search:

Pakistan joins DU producer nations

Among the exhibits at IDEX 2001 was a model of the new 125mm armor-piercing fin-stabilized discarding sabot (APFSDS) projectile with a depleted uranium (DU) long-rod penetrator, which is being developed by the Pakistani National Development Complex (NDC) for use with T-80UD tanks.

It follows the development of a DU round for the Pakistan Army's Chinese-designed T-59 tanks, which have been re-armed with 105mm guns and currently fire a license-built version of the British L64A4 tungsten APFSDS projectile. The latter is credited with a range of 4km against a NATO single heavy target. The 105mm DU APFSDS round has a muzzle velocity of 1,450m/s and can penetrate more than 450mm of rolled homogenous armor at an unspecified range.

The performance of the 125mm round is said to be 25% greater. A noticeable feature of the saddle-type sabots of the NDC 125mm projectile and of the Norinco 125mm tungsten APFSDS projectiles (now being license-produced by Pakistan Ordnance Factories) is the reconfiguration of their forward bore-riders so that the projectiles align accurately with the autoloading system of the T-80UD.

(It was reported in 1998 that unspecified 'loadability' problems had arisen between Chinese projectiles and Ukrainian autoloaders. The same problem is not thought to have been encountered with the loading systems of the 125mm smoothbore guns mounted in Chinese Type 85-IIAP tanks.)

Let's see Aaron, in just one article it lists Pakasistan, China, Ukraine, Britan, and NATO..(which has lots of countries belong to this organization - including France!)...can you understand now? Am I too cryptic for you?
by aaron
Listen, "free thinker": It's not clear to me whether all the countries mentioned in the excerpt you posted above actually possess, let alone use, depleted-uranium munitions or simply manufacture military technology that is compatible with Pakistan's DU armaments.

As I mentioned above, the May 24th edition of the UK Guardian published an article on the use of DU in which it stated (with my emphasis):

"Aside from the United States and Britain, no other nation USES the munitions. Russian military experts say shells made from alloys of hardened steel, lead and tungsten are equally effective in the anti-tank role."

I stated in an earlier post that the Guardian article may be wrong, but that the onus was on MKFMCG to support his assertion that "every country" uses DU munitions. Pointing to the fact that Pakistan (an ally of the US) is developing DU hardly fills the bill.

(Perhaps it's like the case with nuclear weapons: quite a few possess them, but only the US has used them during military engagement....)

Assuming that the Pentagon's lower-range estimate of 1,100 tons of DU munitions used in this latest campaign is correct, I'm wondering if anyone can provide proof that any other country has used even a third of that weight-volume of DU during war-time. It's estimated that the US dropped approximately 375 tons of DU munitions during Gulf War 1. Given that the rates of leukemia and other cancers swelled in the areas of high usage in the aftermath of that "war," it would be interesting to know--if in fact other countries HAVE used DU voluminously--whether there was any similar correlation between use of DU and various illnesses.

I don't hold that the US government is the only ogre in today's world. I don't doubt that many other countries would develop and use DU munitions until the cows' came home if they could get away with it. The difference is that the US (and it's pathetic franchise, the UK) CAN get away with it, for now at least.

=============================

to 'a': thanks!

i wanted to get back to you on the "capitalism in crisis" thread but I'm inept at navigating this place and couldn't find it. i had read your last post but couldn't at the time respond, and later couldn't retrieve....

you asked if there was any particular books that I'd recommend on the subject... One that I read fairly recently that gives a really good overview (although some say that it gives a too rosy portrait of conditions in the US and is flawed in its analysis of the reasons behind heightened tension between the US, Europe, and Japan) is "The Boom and the Bubble" by Robert Brenner, published by Verso, 2002.

later.






by horror
"Russian military experts say shells made from alloys of hardened steel, lead and tungsten are equally effective in the anti-tank role."

Russian military experts also thought they could rule Afghanistan, suppress Chechnya, and that Iraq was invincible. The same experts who built the world's largest bioweapons program because they were SURE the U.S. was also doing it.

Talk about asshats!

Meanwhile, Saddam's chem/bio weapons have absolutely NO lingering side effects after decades of use, right?
by MSG
Aren't you the one that accused me of having a secret agenda.......you are trully a hypocrite!!.....you got me Pres. Bush said that: "if you can convince aaron, on this forum, that we did not use cluster bombs in Bagdad you have a 1000000$ bonus upon return!"..........poor excuse, you could have come up with something better than secret agenda!...
Free thinker provided you with info from Jane's website........don't tell me it is not good enough.........I know I know it is not the UK Guardian!......... but they are the foremost leader on weapons reporting in the world.......but you obviously know more about weaponry then them....Give me a little time and I might be able to get you in to take over as CEO since you abviously are the "foremost" expert on weapons!
Going back to the DU issue why don't you show me the air force's report on how much DU was used! I don't want the Pentagon being quoted I want a copy of the US Air Force report that went to the Pentagon and that my "friend" would be proof! Why? because his report will not be "between 1100-2200 LBS of DU"!.........besides not all weapons have DU in them........do you even know what DU is?.......sorry, I forgot you are a chemist too.........
So the Russians used people friendly ammunition in Chechenya?...I know they have the knder, gentler people killing weapons than us imperialists!!.....by the way, I was in a T-72 and it had Russian depleted uranium rounds( I can send you pictures, for you to inspect, but then you would probably tell me that I put them there for you only!) .....almost forgot, was your quote by the Russian scientist from the 1940s? and also did you speak to him personally or are you quoting the UK Guardian again?.......for your info: in the T-72 the 72 stands for the year it made its appearance, so that means that the Russians had DU in 1972 and could they have used it Afghanistan? my money is on the fact that they did!..... also the ammo is dated 1974 and1978 ........but then again I did not check with the UK Guardian so I could be wrong........
I do not need your suggestions on what to do with my life you might want to take a look in the mirror however, before giving advice on that subject! or maybe you are also a psichologist?.....
I noticed that every time somebody refutes your twisted statements you attempt to dismiss it: as untrue or not a FACT. I like to know your definition of FACT!
So far you have told me that we used cluster bombs on Bagdad yet 25000 troops can't seem to find ONE but you are telling us that they are there. I need you to tell us everything you know about the cluster bomb issue. You might want to check with the Air Force, I am sure they have a log of what went out and where it was used. Don't forget the pilots since they are the ones that dropped it! Please forward to us so we can locate them! Or if this is to much trouble come on down and show us where they are since we could all be color blind, shit it is hot enough, everything is brown here!!! so green/yellow would be hard to distinguish.......
by Doreen
Congrats on the promotion!
by a
http://www.indybay.org/news/2003/04/1603835.php

One quick note: just as I hesitate to yell "capitalism is in crisis", I wouldn't count your quagmires before they're hatched.
by a
Too much latency between a post and its appearance, and too long between submission and acknowledgement.

Sorry if this appears twice.

To aaron:

http://www.indybay.org/news/2003/04/1603835.php

and ... don't count your "quagmires" before they're hatched.
by JUANZ (JCJJ25 [at] HOTMAIL.COM)
THE WAR WILL NEVER BE OVER UNTIL EVERYONE LEARNS TO LIVE WITH EACHOTHER. THE MOST IMPORTANT THING IS TO LOVE GOD AND YOUR NEIGHBOR AS YOURSELF IN ORDER TO SEE REAL LOVE AND VIEW THIS WORLD WITH THE EYES OF JESUS!!!!!
by hayder
dear all

I may be the first iraqi to post here.

Iraq has been under occupation by saddam hussein al tikriti's regime since the 1970s. Saddam did not rule with an "iron fist" as one of the left wing luvvies here proclaimed in an attempt to belittle the KILLING FIELDS that iraq has become.

The war was a LIBERATION for the Iraqi people. Certainly its not a liberation for ALL the iraqi people, but you must understand that saddam did not misrule and kill alone, no he relied on the ethno-religious subgroup of sunni-arabs (yes the ones who riot against the americans today, in their strongholds "north and west of bagdhad"). so when you see such rioting try to understand what you're talking about for christ's sake!! read ONE damned book on iraq... stop repeating the same old buzzwords "war for oil" etc, rationalise your toughts and provide evidence to support you claims.

Now I can tell you that the american "trailer trash" GIs are completely clueless in iraq and don't give a flying f*ck for it, they think we're goat herders because there's no wallmart... but YOU the left are also IGNORANT of Iraq yourselves. You have proven in the run up to this war, during the war and in its aftermath how DETACHED you all are from the reality of Iraq. Look at robert fisk as an example. He's the hero of the left, but when the news in iraq is not to his liking he simpy did not file any reports in the period from mid april to mid may. The media and the left want to be objective do they? so why not report on ALL of iraq? including the south and north, rather than the "sunni-arab belt" that constitues such a SMALL percentage of the total population. where is your objectivity? or is it because that's where the "action" is happening?? if that is the case try to understand WHY the "action" is happening there and not in kerbele or erbil...

A brief lesson for the unitiated:

the way ethno-religions statistics are shown about iraq do not reflect the actual faultline in iraq. The situation is thus:
60% of the population is Shia arab (that's SHI'A not SHI'ITE!).
20% is Kurdish
5% are turcmen, mandaens, chaldean and assyrian
15% are sunni arab.

the ones who were saddam's police, soldiers, executioners, politicans, media faces, intelligence services were from this class. The sunni-arabs were the "ruling elite" but this was not achieved through education or a sophisticated elite, but by nepotism and brute force under tha baathis rule. Baathism is "Arab national Socialism" i.e. arab fascism. Since the arabs disdcrimnated against iraq's non-arab populations, and considered the shia to be "persians" (in effect alienating 85% of the population)

now that its destroyed, the 15% of UNDECUATED people (they are uneducated not because of any "genetic" fault, but because they NEVER needed to study or work hard, they got positions without knowing anything... so why the f*ck bother learning?) are losing their priveldged positions and their livelihoods (there won't be salaries paid to torture people or write reports on your neighbours...). So naturally they are using the DEMOCRATIC rights they denied to 85% OF THE IRAQi population to bit*h on about it endlessly... some are still in denial and hope saddam comes back, others are the fu*kwits from arab and muslim countries coming to iraq to make it into their "jihad playground" but they got a can of whoop-ass opened on them in the south/baghdad and kurdistan so now they're hiding out in the only place where they get refuge ... yes you know it the sunni-arab triangle. they can never come back to power, not because of teh americans but because their IDEOLOGY treats 85% of the population as an oppresed untermeschen.

try to think about iraq, speak with iraqis, even visit iraq and learn the truth.

the falluja "humans" will learn to accept the crimes of teh past, accet their EQUAL position in the new iraq, or they will win the darwin award 2003 and join fida'ee al-naghal saddam.

by hayder
dear all

I may be the first iraqi to post here.

Iraq has been under occupation by saddam hussein al tikriti's regime since the 1970s. Saddam did not rule with an "iron fist" as one of the left wing luvvies here proclaimed in an attempt to belittle the KILLING FIELDS that iraq has become.

The war was a LIBERATION for the Iraqi people. Certainly its not a liberation for ALL the iraqi people, but you must understand that saddam did not misrule and kill alone, no he relied on the ethno-religious subgroup of sunni-arabs (yes the ones who riot against the americans today, in their strongholds "north and west of bagdhad"). so when you see such rioting try to understand what you're talking about for christ's sake!! read ONE damned book on iraq... stop repeating the same old buzzwords "war for oil" etc, rationalise your toughts and provide evidence to support you claims.

Now I can tell you that the american "trailer trash" GIs are completely clueless in iraq and don't give a flying f*ck for it, they think we're goat herders because there's no wallmart... but YOU the left are also IGNORANT of Iraq yourselves. You have proven in the run up to this war, during the war and in its aftermath how DETACHED you all are from the reality of Iraq. Look at robert fisk as an example. He's the hero of the left, but when the news in iraq is not to his liking he simpy did not file any reports in the period from mid april to mid may. The media and the left want to be objective do they? so why not report on ALL of iraq? including the south and north, rather than the "sunni-arab belt" that constitues such a SMALL percentage of the total population. where is your objectivity? or is it because that's where the "action" is happening?? if that is the case try to understand WHY the "action" is happening there and not in kerbele or erbil...

A brief lesson for the unitiated:

the way ethno-religions statistics are shown about iraq do not reflect the actual faultline in iraq. The situation is thus:
60% of the population is Shia arab (that's SHI'A not SHI'ITE!).
20% is Kurdish
5% are turcmen, mandaens, chaldean and assyrian
15% are sunni arab.

the ones who were saddam's police, soldiers, executioners, politicans, media faces, intelligence services were from this class. The sunni-arabs were the "ruling elite" but this was not achieved through education or a sophisticated elite, but by nepotism and brute force under tha baathis rule. Baathism is "Arab national Socialism" i.e. arab fascism. Since the arabs disdcrimnated against iraq's non-arab populations, and considered the shia to be "persians" (in effect alienating 85% of the population)

now that its destroyed, the 15% of UNDECUATED people (they are uneducated not because of any "genetic" fault, but because they NEVER needed to study or work hard, they got positions without knowing anything... so why the f*ck bother learning?) are losing their priveldged positions and their livelihoods (there won't be salaries paid to torture people or write reports on your neighbours...). So naturally they are using the DEMOCRATIC rights they denied to 85% OF THE IRAQi population to bit*h on about it endlessly... some are still in denial and hope saddam comes back, others are the fu*kwits from arab and muslim countries coming to iraq to make it into their "jihad playground" but they got a can of whoop-ass opened on them in the south/baghdad and kurdistan so now they're hiding out in the only place where they get refuge ... yes you know it the sunni-arab triangle. they can never come back to power, not because of teh americans but because their IDEOLOGY treats 85% of the population as an oppresed untermeschen.

try to think about iraq, speak with iraqis, even visit iraq and learn the truth.

the falluja "humans" will learn to accept the crimes of teh past, accet their EQUAL position in the new iraq, or they will win the darwin award 2003 and join fida'ee al-naghal saddam.

by the way the iraqi air force and the republican gurad forces command have both deployed DU equiped weapons since around 1981. doesn't ANY of teh left wing media types EVER bothers corroborating or RESEARCHING? you make yourself look like a bunch of chi*ps... but then again you are "arts" graduates...
by Doreen
I appreciate the time you took to write your post.

I also appreciate the correction - I have been one of the ones who incorrectly called the 60% majority Shi'tes rather than Shi'as.

My son is in Iraq and has said the overwhelming majority of Iraqis he has met have been happy to see him - the children seem especially interested (and they like the candy given out :-) And yes, people have given him flowers.

But it does seem like the Sunni population will be where the problems for the US forces emerge, as predicted.
by internationalist
Hayder that is a good post but I think you are mischaracterizing those who were critical of the US invasion.
First of all, myself at least, were not critical of it because we supported Saddam, but because the US would most likely replace the Saddam government with its own totalitarian rule (as they are doing) and would put the majority of the Iraqi population into further poverty through "free market reforms" which would put the resources of Iraq into an small elite's hands, US hands. Already now gas in Iraq costs 10 times what it did under Saddam.
Second, I am curious as to why you think the US overthrew the Baathist regime, if not for geo-political interests?
Third, it was my understanding that Shiite and Shia were the same thing, those who accept Ali as the true successor to Muhammad, could you clarify the difference between Shiite and Shia?
by Bush Admirer
Thanks for posting that Internationalist.

We can now see that you and the rest of your left wing locos are even dumber than it first appeared.

And please stop denying that you supported Saddam. If you get out in the streets and march for the guy's interests (eg: keeping him in power, removing the US military and leaving Iraq to the Ba'ath Party) then you are definitely a Saddam supporter whether you care to admit it or not.

Geez, street rabble!
by conservative
In addition to believing that Hayder is an Iraqi, I also believe in the tooth fairy.
by try to think about iraq

try to think about iraq, speak with iraqis, even visit iraq and learn the truth.


why in a week or two it will be the republic of Kurdistan
by Lori
Linda,

I'm sorry to disagree with you. My son who is a only child is over there fighting for us. He is not a terroist, he is a American fighting for your freedom. How can you be so blind when you walk on the land of the free.
Did you forget about 911.

by give me a break
> he is a American fighting for your freedom

(1.) Iraq was never a threat to our freedom.

(2.) We're not free. If you think we are, read up on the PATRIOT Act, CAPPS II, or forfieture.
by &quot;free thinker&quot;
Your links are total bullshit and that "evidence" has been disproven long ago. Debka is a rumor monger, everyone knows this.
by free thinker
You totally ignored that Iran claimed to expell al Qaeda fighters that came in via Iraq as reported by Rueters...
Why else would Iran claim that - except there was al Quada in Iraq - funny boy.

You discredit sources - yet what are your credentials?
You are a comedian? Maybe that will work for those with an agenda - "Bush bad / US bad"

Know what happened to people who joked about Hussein - trust me, it wasn't funny. But you don't have to worry about that here, now do you, oh "oppressed one"?

Oh, and the whole premise for this thread is faulty - as usual.

What gives is that Tanenhaus has mischaracterized Wolfowitz's remarks, that Vanity Fair's publicists have mischaracterized Tanenhaus's mischaracterization, and that Bush administration critics are now indulging in an orgy of righteous indignation that is dishonest in triplicate.

Pentagon staffers were wise enough to tape-record the Tanenhaus-Wolfowitz interview. Prior to publication of the Vanity Fair piece, they made that transcript available to its author. And they have since posted the transcript on the Defense Department's website (http://www.defenselink.mil). Tanenhaus's assertion that Wolfowitz ''admitted'' that ''Iraq's WMD had never been the most important casus belli'' turns out to be, not to put too fine a point on it, false. Here's the relevant section of the conversation:

TANENHAUS: Was that one of the arguments that was raised early on by you and others that Iraq actually does connect, not to connect the dots too much, but the relationship between Saudi Arabia, our troops being there, and bin Laden's rage about that, which he's built on so many years, also connects the World Trade Center attacks, that there's a logic of motive or something like that? Or does that read too much into--

WOLFOWITZ: No, I think it happens to be correct. The truth is that for reasons that have a lot to do with the U.S. government bureaucracy we settled on the one issue that everyone could agree on which was weapons of mass destruction as the core reason, but . . . there have always been three fundamental concerns. One is weapons of mass destruction, the second is support for terrorism, the third is the criminal treatment of the Iraqi people. Actually I guess you could say there's a fourth overriding one which is the connection between the first two. . . . The third one by itself, as I think I said earlier, is a reason to help the Iraqis but it's not a reason to put American kids' lives at risk, certainly not on the scale we did it. That second issue about links to terrorism is the one about which there's the most disagreement within the bureaucracy, even though I think everyone agrees that we killed 100 or so of an al Qaeda group in northern Iraq in this recent go-around, that we've arrested that al Qaeda guy in Baghdad who was connected to this guy Zarqawi whom Powell spoke about in his U.N. presentation.

In short, Wolfowitz made the perfectly sensible observation that more than just WMD was of concern, but that among several serious reasons for war, WMD was the issue about which there was widest domestic (and international) agreement.

http://www.chronwatch.com/editorial/contentDisplay.asp?aid=2928
by Doreen
The Al Qaeda Connection
From the May 12, 2003 issue: Saddam's links to Osama were no secret.
by Stephen F. Hayes
05/12/2003, Volume 008, Issue 34


OOPS. In what could go down as the Mother of All Copyediting Errors, Babil, the official newspaper of Saddam Hussein's government, run by his oldest son Uday, last fall published information that appears to confirm U.S. allegations of links between the Iraqi regime and al Qaeda. It adds one more piece to the small pile of evidence emerging from Iraq that, when added to the jigsaw puzzle we already had, makes obsolete the question of whether Saddam and Osama bin Laden were in league and leaves in doubt only the extent of the connection.

In its November 16, 2002, edition, Babil identified one Abd-al-Karim Muhammad Aswad as an "intelligence officer," describing him as the "official in charge of regime's contacts with Osama bin Laden's group and currently the regime's representative in Pakistan." A man of this name was indeed the Iraqi ambassador to Pakistan from the fall of 1999 until the fall of the regime.

Aswad's name was included in something Babil called an "honor list." Below that heading, in boldface type, came a straightforward introductory comment: "We publish this list of great men for the sons of our great people to see." Directly beneath that declaration came a cryptic addendum--included by accident?--in regular type: "This is a list of the henchmen of the regime. Our hands will reach them sooner or later. Woe unto them. A list of the leaders of Saddam's regime, as well as their present and previous posts."

Then comes the list of regime officials. It is in alphabetical order until, halfway down the page, it starts over with officials whose names begin with the letter "A." It includes Baath party leaders, military heroes, ambassadors, intelligence chiefs, the commander of the "Saddam Cubs Training Center," governors of Iraqi provinces, chemical and biological weapons experts, and so on.

U.S. intelligence experts have not conclusively determined what the list means. One possible explanation they have entertained is that part of the list came from an opposition source, and that Babil republished it as a gesture of defiance. This would account for the reference to "henchmen of the regime" whom "our hands will reach"--to say nothing of the candid description of Aswad's duties.

Sounds plausible. But that explanation leaves unanswered one important question: Why would the regime, at a time when it was publicly denying any link to al Qaeda, publish anything admitting such a link?

Even if the identification of Aswad in the Babil list was nothing more than an embarrassing editorial oversight, several recent developments have bolstered the Bush administration's case that Saddam Hussein had connections to the al Qaeda leader.

On April 28, senior administration officials announced that the United States had captured an al Qaeda terrorist operating in Baghdad. The operative is believed to have been an associate of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a top al Qaeda figure who plotted the assassination of Laurence Foley, an American diplomat gunned down in Jordan last fall. Zarqawi is also believed to have received medical treatment in Baghdad after he was wounded fighting U.S. troops in Afghanistan.

That arrest came shortly after U.S. troops patrolling the Syrian border captured Farouk Hijazi, long believed to have been an outreach coordinator of sorts between the Iraqi government and al Qaeda. Hijazi, formerly a high-ranking Iraqi intelligence official, has confirmed to U.S. officials that he met Osama bin Laden in Sudan in 1994. He denies meeting with al Qaeda officials in 1998, but U.S. officials don't believe him. At that time, a leading newspaper in Rome reported that Hijazi traveled to Afghanistan on December 21, 1998, to offer asylum to bin Laden. The Corriere della Sera described Hijazi as "the person who has been responsible for nurturing Iraq's ties with the fundamentalist warriors since 1994."

Back then, reports about a budding Hussein-bin Laden partnership were not limited to the foreign press. Newsweek magazine, in its January 11, 1999, issue, ran the headline "Saddam + Bin Laden." The subhead declared, "America's two enemies are courting." The article was written by Christopher Dickey, Gregory Vistica, Russell Watson, and Joseph Contreras. The authors cited reports from an "Arab intelligence source" about the alliance.

According to this source, Saddam expected last month's American and British bombing campaign to go on much longer than it did. The dictator believed that as the attacks continued, indignation would grow in the Muslim world, making his terrorism offensive both harder to trace and more effective. With acts of terror contributing to chaos in the region, Turkey, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait might feel less inclined to support Washington. Saddam's long-term strategy, according to several sources, is to bully or cajole Muslim countries into breaking the embargo against Iraq, without waiting for the United Nations to lift it formally.

(Interestingly, after Colin Powell's presentation last month to the U.N. Security Council linking Hussein and al Qaeda, Dickey reversed course and referred to the evidence of these links as "egregious smokescreens.")

The timing here is critical. Operation "Desert Fox" began on December 16, 1998, and ended after just 70 hours, on December 19, 1998. Two days later, Hijazi was dispatched to meet with al Qaeda leaders. And the Newsweek report detailing the increased collaboration appeared shortly thereafter. And it wasn't just Newsweek.

In fact, Time magazine, in an issue also out January 11, 1999, one-upped its competitor by quoting bin Laden himself on the Iraq issue. "There is no doubt that the treacherous attack has confirmed that Britain and America are acting on behalf of Israel and the Jews, paving the way for the Jews to divide the Muslim world once again, enslave it and loot the rest of its wealth. A great part of the force that carried out the attack came from certain Gulf countries that have lost their sovereignty."

U.S. intelligence officials who have expressed skepticism about a Hussein-bin Laden relationship often point to religious differences as the reason for their doubts. Hussein was secular, they say, bin Laden a fundamentalist. True enough. But, as bin Laden's comments suggest, there were bigger concerns--that America and "the Jews" might "divide the Muslim world once again"--that would trump these differences and unite the two men against a common enemy.

The Hijazi meeting wasn't the only Iraq-al Qaeda around that time. Eleven months before bin Laden spoke to Time, then-President Bill Clinton traveled to the Pentagon, where he gave a speech preparing the nation for war with Iraq. Clinton told the world that Saddam Hussein would work with an "unholy axis of terrorists, drug traffickers, and organized international criminals." His warning was stern.

We have to defend our future from these predators of the 21st century. . . . They will be all the more lethal if we allow them to build arsenals of nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons and the missiles to deliver them. We simply cannot allow that to happen. There is no more clear example of this threat than Saddam Hussein.

The timing, once again, is critical. Clinton's speech came on February 18, 1998. The next day, according to documents uncovered earlier this week in Baghdad, Saddam Hussein reached out to bin Laden. A document dated February 19, 1998, and labeled "Top Secret and Urgent" tells of a plan for an al Qaeda operative to travel from Sudan to Iraq for talks with Iraqi intelligence. The memo focused on Saudi Arabia, another common bin Laden and Hussein foe, and declared that the Mukhabarat would pick up "all the travel and hotel costs inside Iraq to gain the knowledge of the message from bin Laden and to convey to his envoy an oral message from us to bin Laden." The document further explained that the message "would relate to the future of our relationship with him, bin Laden, and to achieve a direct meeting with him." The document also held open the possibility that the al Qaeda representative could be "a way to maintain contacts with bin Laden."

There is certainly much more to learn about the "contacts with bin Laden" after this meeting. What is clear, though, is that it is no longer defensible to claim there were no contacts. The skeptics, including many at the CIA, who argued that previous evidence of such links was not compelling, ought to be convinced now. They may well argue that, given the timing of the contacts, Saddam reached out to al Qaeda only when he felt threatened. The facts as we know them today are consistent with such a conclusion. But as journalists continue to pore over documents, and military analysts begin to do the same, it would be hasty to imagine that we've already uncovered everything there is to find on the bin Laden-Saddam tie.

Whatever the differences between al Qaeda and the Iraqi regime, the two shared a hatred of America. One Iraqi official, some weeks after the September 11 attacks, publicly criticized the United States for rooting out al Qaeda in Afghanistan. The official was quoted in a report in broken English carried on The Pakistan Newswire of October 29, 2001, which said: "He stressed the US to stop bombardment on Afghanistan resulting in death of innocent children, women and elderly people." The official, who had been in his job since 1999, also expressed doubt that bin Laden was even a terrorist and responsible for 9/11. He "said the US President Bush should knock the door of international court of justice to address the situation because only court had authority to declare Prime suspect of September 11 tragedy 'Osama Bin Laden' terrorist or not.'"

You might recognize the official's name. It was published in Babil last fall: Abd-al-Karim Muhammad Aswad, "intelligence officer, official in charge of regime's contacts with Osama bin Laden's group and currently the regime's representative in Pakistan."


Stephen F. Hayes is a staff writer at The Weekly Standard.

by aaron


In 1991, bin-Laden offered to pull together an army to protect Saudi Arabia and drive Iraq out of Kuwait.

Late last year, bin-Laden proclaimed that Hussein was an apostate and an infidel.

Doreen makes a specialty of postings that purport to establish a link between Hussein and bin-Laden, but they're all filled with congecture and sources that are goofily obscure and/or unverifiable.

Do you honestly believe, Doreen, that bin-Laden was disappointed when the US invaded Iraq?

This is how I see it: bin-Laden has been mightily cheered by the US invasion. It ridded Iraq of his secular nemesis, Hussein, while driving al-Qaeda recruitment in the Muslim world.

by Scottie
Do you honestly believe, Doreen, that bin-Laden was disappointed when the US invaded Iraq?

- do you seriously think he liked the USA MORE than iraq??

People like binladin have a scalesomthing like this

1)holy people (binladin himself)
2) fello jihadists (hamas etc etc)
3) people who try but arent up to it (anyone who doesnt live exactly by sharia law and wonem who dont cover their faces etc etc.)
4)other muslims
5) infidels who arent imediate targets (sadam, africans some asians)
6) white people (especialy moraly liberal ones)
7) people from countries that have taken territory from muslims... india australia (east timor) USA (saudi arabia) Russia (chechnyia) etc etc
8) jews
9) jews in the military (and americans in world trade centers)

If he kills all of the people in the lower levels he will jsut slowly move on up the pyramid until he is killing hte people close to the top because he expects perfection.
He critisizes everyone including the leadership of fundimentalist countries like saudi arabia but that doesnt stop him from wanting to work with them against greater evils such as jews or the USA or women who dont keep modesty.
by Doreen
How quickly you forget ...remember the tape bin-Laden made in Nov '02 threatening US because of impending war with Iraq?

http://www.csmonitor.com/2002/1114/p01s01-wogi.html

And in the Feb '03 tape bin Laden says:
"Anyone who helps America — from the Iraqi hypocrites [opposition] or Arab rulers … whoever fights with them or offers them bases or administrative assistance, or any kind of support or help, even if only with words, to kill Muslims in Iraq — should know that he is an apostate."

Sounds alot like jihad to me. http://www.fas.org/irp/world/para/docs/980223-fatwa.htm

Strange - he didn't mention Hussein in the jihad listed above....explain that aaron.
by Just Guess (justguess [at] gosympatico.ca)
Jed459: Stop crying and just live the rest of your life for you... People are b***ards and always will be... it's just that some take less provocation than others... but we can and will all be one, just the same.

Don't argue this point, you're wasting time if you do... at least as much as I'm wasting my time writing it.

Have a day.
by one of the editors
>Debka is a rumor monger,

This refers to a comment that was removed because it contained a ling to Frontpage. Links to Frontpage (and littlegreenfootballs, and stormfront and the rest of their ilk) are not allowed here. If you see one we missed, please notify us by email:

imc-sf-editorial [at] lists.indymedia.org


Debka, FWIW, is widely considered to be a Mossad asset. It's worth monitoring, but take what they say with a grain of salt.
by Scottie
as in owned by the mossad? or just a useful ally of mossad? or maybe just gets alot of its info from mossad?
by sgt michael martin (michael.martin13 [at] us.army.mil)
being in baghdad i can understand some of the things the soldiers mentioned in the stories.yes,there were swarrms of kids and women who gathered beside the road and congratulated us for what we were doing,but also there were a select few who did not look so happy. first of all saddam was all they had ever known and we all saw how he won with a over 95% election rate and he ruled the people with terror and they were afraid to do anything. i have talked with a retired iraqi ltc, several electricians,laborers, and countless interpreters and believe me i have a better understanding of this whole thing than probably the the president and that's because i was there.we have been fired upon and maybe even caused some of the civilians when the iraqi iraqi army changed its statery from fighting in uniforms like true soldiers and started to change into civilian clothes and using them as cover so they could fire upon us and then we end up killing innocent people trying to save our own lives. we lost equipment and most important we lost comrades and friends. i know it happens but they were fighting dirty and unfair.i pray every night for the families on both sides who lost someone, but this is far rrom over and sadly i was injured and have been sent to28cash,kuwait,and finally to landstuhl regional med. center, and finally to walter reed and in a few days i will be home.i was electrocuted while replacinga power line to the complex i was in and then i fell 25-feet to the ground and was burned on my left arm,left thigh(entry and exit),burned on my right rist,broke my right collar bone,messed up some ligaments in my knee and then fractured some vertebrates in my spine. but other than that i am fine. i blacked out and bit my tongue.about four doctors have told me i should be paralyzed and even worse dead,but thank GODi am not.so i do not regret anything but leaving my soildiers behind and if i couuld do it all over again i would give my life for my country.see we are all here so the people who complain of our gov't and are afraid to enlist and are not liking our pres and country can sit on their but and remain free to gripe and complain. i have not seen many casualties wish they were not there or didn't go.someone has to so it may as well be us.pray for us and support us for what we are doing. sports stars get paid more but they don't put their lives on the line and complain of themillions they make and let them think of the sacrifice we were making while they were going for the trophy and lose a guy to a knee injury. we lose guys to enemy fire and that's jut part of the job.my championship will be going home to my wie and two little girls anstarting my life over and getting strong enough to pick up my daughters and get healthy enough to be intimate with my wife. i have a way to go, but i will be there one day.sorry from deviating from the subject,but this is my story. enjoy your health and love you family while you can. we head back next year some time oh well here we go.
It is so sad how the military enlists the less intelligent members of our society and brainwashes them into believing whatever B.S. they are fed. A majority of soldiers go back to the old standby: "We are here fighting for your right to sit on your ass and complain about us being here fighting for your right to sit on your ass...". That's not even B.S.! It goes so far beyond that. First of all, our right to free speech is being threatened by our own gov't and their "Office of Homeland Security" not the Iraqi's. Secondly, they haven't found any weapons of mass destruction, signs of nuclear programs, biological/chemical weapons, etc. so exactly what did we attack them for. Oh yeah, for supporting/conspiring with Al Qaida! Our gov't has failed to find any proof of this relationships existence as well. G.W.B. doesn't want PEACE, he wants A PIECE! I am sorry Sgt. that you got hurt in Iraq and I wish you a speedy recovery. I am also sorry that some of your friends had to die. Maybe next time you won't listen to those lying, greedy, power/money hungry war mongers in Washington. Maybe you'll be a free thinking man who isn't so easily manipulated by the unfortunate "POWERS THAT BE". You were sent to a foreign land to kill people, who have done nothing to us, by a pack of liars who care nothing about you. This is not a noble cause. My Grandfather, a WWII vet, fought for my right to free speech. That was the last justified war we were involved in, the last noble cause. Please don't cheapen his sacrifice by comparing what you are doing to what he and thousands of other young men did in Europe, Asia, Africa, etc. There is no comparison. You are simply ignorant, hired killers whose strings are easily pulled-nothing more!. Really stop and think about it. Really, really, really THINK ABOUT IT!!!
by Uhhh...
Okay - how many of you have been arrested here in the US for protesting?

Hmmm.

Okay, how many of you have been arrested for putting up flyers in illegal places?

Okay...

How many of you have been arrested for posting stuff on the web? You know they can track down your ISP, and your ISP has records of where you connected from. So - how many have gotten raided in the middle of the night?

Hmmm...

Anyone imprisoned for...

Writing letters to newspapers?

Talking with your friends?

For saying Bush is an idiot, and harming the country? In public?

Okay...

Now - out of all the multitudes arrested (all ten or twelve of you who've gotten arrested at protests) how many of you have been

Tortured? (Cattle prods, hot wires, dislocated joints?) (Jail food doesn't count.)

Mutilated? (Body parts like tongues cut out?)

Had your families imprisoned?

Killed?

Dumped into a mass grave?

Hmmm.

Come on. The US is so repressive, we've got to have mass graves around here somewhere. Where's the tens, hundreds, thousands of people slaughtered and dumped into an unmarked pit? The thousands maimed by the police? The hacked off ears? Cut-out tongues? The ruined bodies?

Think you don't have free speech? I'd join you if you were right. But you aren't.
That's like saying it wasn't *really* rape because he only put in in one hole.
by I''m being oppressed by the system!
And that addressed it how?
by free thinker
"It is so sad how the military enlists the less intelligent members of our society and brainwashes them into believing whatever B.S. they are fed."

What a pompous elitist statement coming from a brat who is most likely typing on the computer that Daddy & Mommy bought him, living in a nice safe dorm room, where his biggest concern is what protest is going to be the most "socially aware" one to be seen at!

Kid, you might think you are intellectually superior because you are going to a college (paid for by Daddy and Mommy) where YOU mouth back the crap YOU'VE been brainwashed with by your college professors who live in their own lala land and use naive dopes like you to support them with the collective delusions of grandeur - that only they know best. And you follow along - because you want to be considered one of the few who knows best. And since you are living in that lala land of elitest ideas - the pretence continues.

Guess what? You don't have a clue about reality. These soldiers you mock, know about life and what is real. There are a number of types of intelligence - and you "think" your intellect is the most important - of course you do. Do you think you could survive what Sgt. Martin has been through? Do you have any idea what skills that would take? Hell no, you probably can't imagine what it would take to be self-sufficient - living on your own, without Mommy & Daddy footing the bill. And that is an intelligence that is most important, yet sadly lacking for many of your ilk..

Why don't you TRY to talk to Iraqis who fled their country to live in the US - because there is no way that you would move from your safe, secure cocoon to actually go to Iraq and see what is happening there. And then you REALLY, REALLY think about it.

It's very easy to talk like you are smart - it is damn hard to live life smart - especially in places like Iraq.

by aaron
you weaken your argument (which is weak enough as it is) when you make presumptions about the lives of those whose views you detest.

it's time you learned the word 'quagmire' and stopped talking about other people's parents.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/2969704.stm

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/2970158.stm


by MSG
Mindseyek you need to talk to grandpa and ask him of what HE thinks! I am 100% sure that his statement would be 180 of yours! As far as the soldiers being dumb well, you would be surprised.......but then you must be part of the people that could not make it in the armed forces or it is just too unconfortable to be out in the hot desert and that is to incovinient. Also remember that Grandpa was and YOU are NOT.... a vet! MY salute to grandpa and a kick in the ass to you!

Aaron, DO YOU have your own opinion? .......you keep quoting the UK this the UK that ........and I am supposed to believe them over what I see and do over here........eeehhhhh..........wrong answer.........also you never answered my invitation to come and visit?.......any reason?
by Angie
Just to point out that GWBush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld are not vets.
by Scottie
Few people actually sit on the front line and actuallly kill people now adays.
I guess technically GW bush IS in the army right now as the commander in cheif. as specious as this sounds not many people have to actually fight front line or in a situation where their life is significantly threatened by anything other than their own technology.
by Carrie:
accept for the Freedom fighters.
by Angie
GWBush, Cheney, Rumsfeld (and God knows who else in this current administration) did not fight in Viet Nam. While thousands of young Americans were being slaughtered, these folk, thanks to family wealth and influence, stayed home. The fact that other "draft dodgers" were prosecuted says a lot, doesn't it?

Wonder why US mainstream media never bothered too much with this non-event by their Prez. Certainly US mainstream media was quite eager to chat about ex President Clinton's non-war participation.

Curious, indeed.
by MSG
George W. Bush was in the Texas Air National Guard. As far as the other two are concerned you are correct they have never served. But for you to have the guts to bring that two-by piece of shit former president is got me reved up. I lost 18 good soldiers, because of him personally and his idiotic cabinet line up. Clinton is no angel. NO man should be president of the most powerfull army on this planet without having served in it and knowing what it's needs and capabilities are! Let me assure you Clinton did not have the fogiest idea of what the military is all about. Hell, he wanted to do away with the Marine guards which have been at the White House since the White House was built. Who the fuck did he think he is? I know he is a ladies man and you ladies like him but he is a chiken shit in my eyes along with the 900,000 other members of the armed forces serving. So leave Clit out of this....
by inquierin+
what's your take on Mr. Ritter?
by Angie (greatly chastised )
I never said I liked Clinton or didn't. I merely stated he didn't serve in Viet Nam, and it was well known.

Bush didn't serve in Viet Nam either, and as far as the National Guard in Texas is concerned, well, that's another story.
by aaron
I'm sure I hated Clinton every bit as much as you did--obviously, for very different reasons--but there's no arguing that he got a hell of a lot more flack for dodging Vietnam than Bush has for pulling connections and going AWOL from the National Guard. Clinton at least opposed the Vietnam war, while Bush supported other peoples' sons killing and being killed in that death-fest. There's a long list of right-wing war-lovers who, when it was their turn, sat on the side-lines. Rush Limbaugh, Dick Cheney, Richard Perle, Dan Quayle, Michael Savage, George Bush Jr., and on and on.

As to the situation in Iraq, you can try to suggest that everything's going swimmingly, but you know that's bullshit. Thousands of civilians were killed during the invasion. Water and electricity are still on-and-off for huge numbers of people. Hospitals and universities and museums and a nuclear plant were looted while the US guarded the Iraqi Oil Ministry. 400,000 gov't workers just got their pink-slips, and the economy shows few or no signs of moving picking up. The US is talking about re-routing oil pipe-lines. An elected government is nowhere in the offing. US troops are being attacked with increasing frequency....

have a nice summer.
by Cough
If it Saves alot of iraqis from dying cool
if it makes the USA better able to defend itself (against terrorism or whatever) then cool

there is a price to pay for such things

when it is a small price you are just lucky
by observer
Gunmen kill U.S. soldier at Iraq checkpoint

(CNN) --A U.S. soldier was killed by small arms fire late Sunday evening while manning a traffic control point in Al Qaim, Iraq, according to a statement on the U.S. Army's Centcom website.

An undetermined number of assailants pulled up to the checkpoint in a vehicle and requested help for a "sick" person in the car, the Army said. Two people armed with pistols then got out of the vehicle and shot the soldier, the statement said.

Soldiers at the checkpoint returned fire, killing one assailant and capturing a second, while at least one other assailant fled in the vehicle, the Army said.

The Army did not immediately release the soldier's name and unit.

http://www.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/meast/06/09/sprj.irq.soldier.killed/index.html
by American taxpayer
>If it Saves alot of iraqis from dying cool

It has killed thousands of innocent civilians and maimed thousands more.


>if it makes the USA better able to defend itself (against terrorism or whatever) then cool

It makes America less safe by creating more motivation for terrorists. These people hate us for a reason. We kill their relatives and steal their property.

>there is a price to pay for such things

And innocent American civilians will pay it. There will be another 9/11, then another, then another, until Americans learn to stay at home, mind our own business, and live within our means. There is *no* way to stop a determined terrorist. It can't be done.

by free thinker
"you weaken your argument (which is weak enough as it is) when you make presumptions about the lives of those whose views you detest."

Aaron, you are such a hypocrite and are so intellectually lazy - you really make me laugh! Now Aaron, isn't it highly sexist of you to make a presumption about my gender - eh? "Tough Guy"!?!
Not very PC!! I'm shocked and appalled at your insensitivity and how you sterotype people - not a very enlightened view there, Aaron. Could it be that you have preconceived ideas about people whose views you detest? Pretty closed mind there...eh?

So how's the dorm food? Do they carry organic food in the cafeteria?

"it's time you learned the word 'quagmire' and stopped talking about other people's parents."

Hmm - how is it talking about ones parents when you mention that they support their ingrate child? It only says that the parents are very generous - and that they have one of the new breeds - an adultescent. That's an over 18 year old who thinks they are grown up, but lacks self-sufficiency - and I have seen a number of these, especially on this board. I'll tell you what - those soldiers you mock are very self-sufficient - they would die if they weren't. Talk about real knowledge! Could you survive what they went through in Iraq? Would you risk your life to free people you never met?
Don't talk to me about your ideals. I know about those who LIVE their ideals.

Actually I am fully aware of what quagmire means - it is the leftist media that seems to have a misunderstanding of the meaning of that word, because only they have been ranting that the US is going to be caught in a quagmire since 2001 in Afganistan...so where is this quagmire? Maybe it's with all the museum pieces that were looted - NOT!

Keep looking for something to whine about - because the US HAS to be wrong about something - right?

Baghdad treasures 'mostly intact'

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/2971882.stm

Iraq is home to one of the world's oldest civilisations
American officials in Iraq have announced that nearly all the Baghdad Museum's priceless antiquities are intact, despite initial fears that they had been lost to looters during the war. US investigators working at the museum slashed the number of antiquities listed as missing from about 170,000 to 3,000 after a secret storage vault was uncovered this week.




by &#1489;&#1500;&#1492; &#1489;&#1500;&#1492; (זונות בע"מ@hotmail.com)
עירקים חביבים......
קחו את עצמכם לידיים כי במלא זה לא יגיע לכם לראש אתם ממש מפחידים אני לא יודעת למה ה' ברא אתכם
עז תתעשתו
אוקי........
by MSG
At no point did I try to say that Iraq is just as good as a Hawaian vacation! What I disputed was the "facts" that this website posted. Have you noticed that the website is maintained by XYX Phd, ZUS Phd but there is no Sergeant Major xyz, SAS, or Major JKL US Army Ret. These people are reporting from 3,4 and 5th hand me downs and you take it as gospel. Look at the numbers: 5523 to 7203 that is one hell of an error percentage...........do you have any idea what 1800 dead bodies look like? well I just saw 300 or so and it was a site about the length of a football field and about that wide........counting dead bodies is and exact science: either he is dead or not........obviously to the anti US crowd that doesn't matter.......these people are counting from hospitals and I wrote them to tell me which doctor passed on the info? I would like to know the truth for myself and nobody else.........but so far the phds have not answered me......... like I said I did not see any of the phds here so for them to quote ABC, BBC, NBC CNN well it makes this site BS......also correction: water and electricity is up and running. They looted radioactive material? well it says on the box in arabic not to fuck with it....I can't believe you blame that one on the US........or could it have been somebody else who stole and had a more sinister plan in mind?....... learn one thing out of this: never let a civilian run a military operation; their idea and reality are, well 180..............take notice that when we had a military commander running the operation regardless of where we were things worked out fine and then when we had a civilian dictating of what he "envisioned" then things went to shit...........
עירקים חביבים......
קחו את עצמכם לידיים כי במלא זה לא יגיע לכם לראש אתם ממש מפחידים אני לא יודעת למה ה' ברא אתכם
עז תתעשתו
אוקי........

Hmmm.

May have a point there.
by Cough
It has killed thousands of innocent civilians and maimed thousands more.

- how many has it saved? by the liberals own logic on sanctions lifting sanctions saves more lives than the war killed DURING THE WAR. let alone until now. also how many people did sadam kill per day?

It makes America less safe by creating more motivation for terrorists. These people hate us for a reason. We kill their relatives and steal their property.

- yeah china too but they dont bother china much.. why not? cause they get their asses kicked. Sorry Im just a little insensitive when it comes to terrorists. More proof.. you know that whole section in the middle of asia? that used to be filled with very unruly islamic countries. but russian comunism put down their attempts to revolt. Proves it can be done.

--there is a price to pay for such things And innocent American civilians will pay it. There will be another 9/11, then another, then another, until Americans learn to stay at home, mind our own business,

- if they want a war of attrition they will loose
Japan could not teach us to "mind our own business" and alquaeda is no japan..so they certainly can't.

peace time lulls you into a sense of security where you think 9-11 is an unusual thing.. but actually the world is a rough place with many evil people doing worse things than 9-11 all over the world. 9-11 ws jsut a reminder to the USA that evil is still there and if you ignore it it will come for you and the longer you wait the worse that coming will be.
by me
You sure talk about tight asses alot.....hmmmmmmmmmm, let me guess? San Francisco right?

As for freeing the Iraqi's, there are now over 5000 + free to spend eternity with their 77 Virgins and see allahhhhh..........
by sperry

The invasion of Iraq was based on a genuine belief that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction that posed a threat to the US.

Intelligence reports prior to the war supported that belief.

The invasion of Iraq was based on a desire to liberate the Iraqi people.

The US wants democracy in Iraq and the Middle East.

The war in Iraq was an extension of a larger war on terror.

There is a larger war on terror.

The Bush administration's foreign policy was born spontaneously and by necessity in the wake of 9/11.

The Bush administration had a plan for restoring essential services after the shooting war ended.

The Patriot Act and other sundry rollbacks of domestic freedoms were conceived only after 9/11, as a response to the events of that day.

Saddam was involved in the plotting of 9/11.

US troops have been under attack on the numerous occasions when they have killed members of angry, protesting crowds in Iraq.

After the war, the US would promptly facilitate the formation of an independent Iraqi government.

After the war, the US would not seek to control Iraq's oil supply.

The US's invasion plan was backed by a 40-nation-strong "coalition of the willing," many members of which (if they existed at all) refused to be named publicly lest the rest of the world hate them, too.

There has been progress to date in the war on terrorist/guerrilla elements around the world.

US troops bravely rescued Private Jessica Lynch from an Iraqi hospital.


<As I say, that's only the start of a list. I'm sure there's more to add, especially as concerns the "little" lies, like the saga of Jessica Lynch. So let's make that the BW Question of the Day:

Which lies of the Bushmen am I missing so far?

Email me at sperry [at] citypages.com, and as always, thanks.

by Mycos (amanita [at] shaw.ca)
Why were the nuclear facilities which contained all the "dirty bomb" making material left to the looters? if stopping the proliferation of such marterial was the point of the war, we have an extreme deriliction of duty on the hands of the military.
by MSG
"US troops have been under attack on the numerous occasions when they have killed members of angry, protesting crowds in Iraq.: Lies?? Beg to differ on this one.........I was there and we had 5 interpreters yelling via loud speaker for the crowd to disperse. DId you notice the only ones killed were the gunmen or did the media forget to inform you of that. There was only semi automatic and sniper fire from our side to ensure that only the ones shooting at us are hit. They fired fully automatic and RPGs at us.
If we would have returned fire with what we had at hand NOBODY from that crowd would have made it home that night!!! I find it very interesting how you got it all figured out, yet I don't remember seeing you at roll-call this morning?! hmmm........

by Scottie
Dont you know, when these guys add up innocent casualties they include terrorists and murderers. because in their mind they are innocent too.
by Dirk
Man, this discussion is a mess, I recently read an article that said the internets information wealth is not what it is cranked up to be, since most surfers will not search alternative information sources or discuss to gather more knowledge. No, they just look for confirmation of their own way of thinking and will fiercely defend their own vision.
I must say that I'm surprised to find so many "rightwing" (pardon the generalisation, just making a point) people on Indymedia, but I guess that's where search engines come in.

However, you guys and girls (before somebody starts picking at me ;-) sure live up to it. You 're just looking for tiny holes in each other defences and fire a bazooka in it. AFAIK we're not each others enemies, right? We're not in some war where any dirty trick is allowed because our lives are at stake...

I'm pretty sure we all agree on some points here (the list by sperry was a nice example, with MSG only contesting one of them -I know it was because of a personal experience and you could counter them all if you wanted, but just hear me out for the moment-)

- Iraq would be much better off with a democratic govt than with Saddam (just for the record: Saddams regime was not democratic)
- Iraq had nothing to do with the planning/execution of 9/11 (though, to put it bluntly, I'm sure Saddam had a ball watching CNN that day)
- There was no link between Iraq and Al Quaeda (there might be now)
- There was no proof of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq
- The Bush family and friends are gaining money and power with every bullet fired and every drop of oil produced (Just stating a fact here, I'm not saying if this is the main drive or just a lucky coincidence)

All still with me, here? Thanks

Just an "off topic" then, I don't think anybody wants to be disrespectful of the soldiers over there, I'm certain they all do their best. It 's a pity errors can cost human lives, but that's just what waving guns is all about...
The reason I labeled this off topic -in my typical rude way, I'm afraid- is that the discussion does not seem to be whether you're doing a good job, but whether you should be there or not.
I do agree, however, that the official information soldiers get from the army is by definition one sided. I also agree that soldiers are trained not to doubt (orders, decisions, ...) and, whatever you may say, this does affect them. This is the only way to be a good soldier, but to some people this appears to be more frightening than reassuring.

Sorry about that, back to the war:
My feeling is that we can safely accept the fact that the US never has started a war out of compassion with the people in any country and they did not do it now.
Yet that is what they are claiming (well, until some rusting bomb is dug up somewhere and they can say the undeniable proof was undeniable after all -don't blame me for this, they tried it recently with the two containers-)

Once you accept the fact that the cause of this war might rather be some wishfull thinking by a few powerfull men and less military intelligence than one might expect, all the rest falls into place...

Just like I don't believe all American soldiers are stupid, I don't believe all Iraqi soldiers are terrorists and/or murderers either. I dare Scotty to place himself in the shoes of a young Iraqi, being confronted by a foreign army coming to free him using guns.
1. imagine Saddam coming over with an over the top superior army to install a truly islamic governement in the West, so we can all finally be happy (and take over our oil, of course)
2. don't forget they more than likely got even more one sided information (after all their government, as we could all see, were not the same sophisticated liers that ours are :-), backed up by people shooting at him, how real can proof get?

You're free to be nitpicky about this post, but I won't answer anybody that doesn't talk about the general line of this post.

Thanks for reading :-)

PS: about GWBJ serving in the army: he backed out because he had a rich and powerful dad. Simple as that. It 's something a lot of us might have done, but he certainly does not deserve anybody's respect for that. And it's proof for Orwells statement "some animals are more equal than others" in his fantastic novel Animal Farm.
by Scottie
most surfers will not search alternative information sources or discuss to gather more knowledge.

- that happens in printed academia also. we say "you can always find a quote to support anything if you look hard enough".

I must say that I'm surprised to find so many "rightwing" (pardon the generalisation, just making a point) people on Indymedia, but I guess that's where search engines come in.

- I came here because I was looking at a bloggers site and he had a link to indymedia. the blogger himself is a little right in his politics and he was linking to indymedia as a "this is what indymedia is up to" sort of link.

I'm pretty sure we all agree on some points here

- yes finding common ground is good.

My feeling is that we can safely accept the fact that the US never has started a war out of compassion with the people in any country and they did not do it now.

- hmm there are always very complex reasons for these decisions of state policy. sadam being a bad man is one that made it possible to have a war with him but didnt force the war in itself.

I dare Scotty to place himself in the shoes of a young Iraqi, being confronted by a foreign army coming to free him using guns.

- I can understand what a person would do in a situation and still believe that what they do is wrong. I know some people have trouble with that but it is important because a smart enough person can understand everyone.. but you cant use that to just give up on law and order.

And in a similar vein - I expect the iraqis were totally mislead just like the nazi soldiers were mislead. again someone can be honest and even a nice person in normal situations and he may just "have to be stoped" like some nazi soldiers..

Note I am picking out points that I can comment on but
you sound like a pretty reasonable person thanks for the good post.
by Dirk
Thanks for the reply, I'd like to elaborate on some of my points here, I'll take your comments as a guide:

- hmm there are always very complex reasons for these decisions of state policy. sadam being a bad man is one that made it possible to have a war with him but didnt force the war in itself.

Sure, Saddam sons being real bastards was a stroke of luck for Bush, but they were just the kind of beasts -not a word I use lightly- the US have been proven to created themselves in Latin America (see 'School of the Americas'). That has never been a reason for a war (on the contrary, I'd even say). Saddam himself is no match for some dozens of other dicators around the world, that will never even be looked at by the US.

My point being that at the time this was a nice extra to get support from the a certain part of the US people, who could be fooled in believing they were doing the right thing and now, while the Bush administration is groping around in the dark for a hold on, it turns out to be the only reliable reason left, so it suddenly is promoted as being sufficient a reason for a pre-emptive war!
- Does that mean the Chinese have the right to go out impose their way of life on some US state because it doen't like its judiciary system? I'd say this turns into a dangerous statement
- I can't believe the American people will keep giving Bush the benefit of the doubt, while it becomes more and more obvious that the "classified proof" (tons of chemicals - nuclear attack within 45 minutes - ...) was manipulated or manufactured

- I can understand what a person would do in a situation and still believe that what they do is wrong. I know some people have trouble with that but it is important because a smart enough person can understand everyone.. but you cant use that to just give up on law and order

To really understand it, I think you should compare it to an alien invasion, the law and order the West is bringing them is not their law and order, they don't relate to it, they don't want it and they don't understand it, it is a foreign occupation and they KNOW, just like you and me, Bush is after their oil.
You believe they are wrong (as is your right) and they believe you are wrong (as is their right), the difference is they can't run while the tanks drive in. If you see what happened to Palestina the last few decades, I'd be terrified if I were an Iraqi.

The nazis were an occupying force, the Iraqis are forced to give up their governement, their country, their family, their natural resources, ... I'm not talking about Saddams elite soldiers here, I'm talking about young kids that believed they were fighting for their lives and their family's freedom; I can't think of a good reason to 'stop' them the way they were 'stopped' and AFAIC, they can be added to the victims
by Angie
Perhaps someone could explain to us what this little telling spiel means in terms of accusations of being "anti-semitic", hmm?
by PB
you need to look in the mirror
by PB
Why as a nation are we so blinded by lies put out by "you know who". It would be a better planet if more people like yourself would take off thier blinders and see the real truth.
by Scottie
--One of your basic asumptions is that Soverignty is paramount. THIS is a european concept
(Peace of Westphallia, Treaty of Paris, Vienna Conference, Treaty of Versailles, U.N. Charter) and I have no attachment to it. There is no reason why If I slaughter all the opposition in my country that I should have a seat at the UN no reason why my country should have boarders that are locked in place for eternity despite having been drawn in a very inefficient manner by some burecrat or as a result of some historical war.

-- What is basic to my world view is two things one is basic human rights. and the other is the practicalities of maintaining a world in which we are not fighting all of the time.

--The US also has an obligation to try not to loose the hegemony because if someone with a totally different world view becomes the hegemon you will see a totally different set of morals enforced. besides changes in hegemon often result in war.

"but they were just the kind of beasts -not a word I use lightly- the US have been proven to created themselves in Latin America."

- the us has played all sorts of games against the comunists and for all sorts of ther causes. sometimes they picked the best of two evil people buy supporting one over the other sometimes it depended on how friendly the two sides were with the US.
If you look for cynical reasons you will see many but you can also see altruistic reasons if you look for them too.
These events have been much debated and I have almost never seen an action by the US that was just plain evil. that is a more demanding test than it seems because it makes the USA the best hegemon the world has ever seen.

"Saddam himself is no match for some dozens of other dicators around the world, that will never even be looked at by the US."

- There may be worse people but the US has to have certain pieces in order before it can attack a country. that is because of the UN and the peace movement and the EU etc etc. (for better or for worse) besides at least initially sadam was a significant threat because of his army size and the oil in the region.
- Iraq was fair game because of the attack on kuwait the ceasefire the lack of cooperation with the USA and so on. Most of the other dictators are not in that sort of a "legal" situation.

" Does that mean the Chinese have the right to go out impose their way of life on some US state because it doen't like its judiciary system? I'd say this turns into a dangerous statement"

-- there is no dangerous statment...... the chineese WILL impose their way of life on the USA when they have the power. they dont need us to have shown them how it is done.
if the US becomes that weak there will be no one who will run around yelling about not getting into other countries business. That is a special trait of the US hegemony. a Chineese hegemony will be totallly different.
by aaron
You claim to hold human rights in high regard, yet when I commented on another thread that the US engineered a coup in Indonesia in 1965 and then oversaw the killing of a half million leftists you dismissed it as no big deal. When I pointed out (on yet another thread) that the US killed 600,000 Cambodians in the early-mid 70s and assisted the Khmer Rouge in a myriad of ways you reflexively issued one of your "i don't know much but i'll talk like i do" nonsensical rationalizations. Some upholder of human rights, scotty.

The US has been an imperialist power since the mid-19th century, having launched multiple invasions of Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean BEFORE the Russian "commies" existed as a justification. Instead of writing semi-literate screeds about things you don't know about, why not read up on the horrible living conditions faced by the vast majority in a region that the US has dominated for 150 years? Then get back to me about 'evil'.


by scottie
you obviously misunderstood me but I am not surprised.
You were as always spewing your US is to blame for everything that happens in the world logic. if you count the bad things you have to also count the good things and there is more good than bad.

"The US has been an imperialist power "

So what? does new mexico want to go back to mexico? is hawaii beging for independance? if not get over it, they obviously have.

" Instead of writing semi-literate screeds about things you don't know about, why not read up on the horrible living"

--- And one day I can be filled with hate just like you aww how sweet of you but Ill stick to reading normal history books.
If we had a history test I would thrash you.

" the horrible living conditions faced by the vast majority in a region that the US has dominated for 150 years? Then get back to me about 'evil'. "

ok done.. living conditions are pretty good. conclusion you are an idiot.
Your problem is your life in the US has given you a totally distorted view of what is "normal" or what you can expect.
No you cant just wave a wand and make everyone have two cars an internet connection and air tickets to the bahamas every major holiday.
by Angie
I was just glancing through the board here and noted my one sentence followed immediately after your comment.

It was not addressed to you - HARDLY! It was in response to a comment that has blessedly been deleted.

I agree with your comments. For the most part they are similar to my own.

I don't much care if there are WMD found or not. There was NO JUSTIFICATION for this terrorist attack on a soverign nation. And we don't have to look far for the dictators who are worse than Saddam. Only thing is they don't have oil.

Angie
by PatrickSMcNally
China was shown how to "get into other people's business" by a whole century of western colonialism which ended with Washington propping Chiang Kai-Shek up until the end. Daniel Pipes, former lobbyist for Saddam from the Reagan years and member of AIPAC, has already announced that "what's needed is an Iraqi Chiang Kai-Shek." The Iraqis understand the ramifications of this, when the same CIA that put Saddam in power is now in control. Eventually when Pipes lays the groundwork for US imperialism's invasion of invasion of China one should be prepared for a change in syntax as he calls for "a Chinese Saddam Hussein." Plan on seeing all of the lower-ranking minions move like robots in response. In actuality, China's real betrayal was it's political pressure on Vietnam in the early 50s at a time when support from Moscow and Peking might easily have led to a French defeat and withdrawal from the whole of Indochina. Instead, early pressure for a "hoped-for-detente" with Washington allowed the establishment of the subfascist regime of Diem in Saigon. Later, when seeking a detente in the 70s, Mao accepted Nixon's calculated bombing of Hanoi while they were toasting martinis together. These accumulated betrayals by the Peking bureaucracy have simply undermined its position in the face of an extremely arrogant US imperialism.
by Scottie
"I don't much care if there are WMD found or not. There was NO JUSTIFICATION for this terrorist attack on a soverign nation. And we don't have to look far for the dictators who are worse than Saddam. Only thing is they don't have oil."

---There were a few other differences between iraq and most other countries including their invasion of kuwait and their beligerance in living up to the ceasefire agreement.

---Most of us, that I know of, dont care all that much about the WMD either........ not sure who ever cared about it.. . would be interesting to know.

---Finally name a few of these dictators who are worse than sadam, they keep getting mentioned but not named (i expect there ae some somwhere though). maybe we should be keeping a close eye on them.
by Angie
Well, certainly GWBush must have cared a hell of a lot about WMD or he must love deceiving the international community. Even if he didn't know what a WMD was, the people around him sure as hell did.

He, together with Tony Blair, are as much war criminals as any other "leader" who commits a terrorist attack on another soverign nation. He and Blair said there were WMD. That they were ready to be aimed at the US and Britain in 45 minutes (can anyone believe this??)

The mind boggles.

It will be interesting to see how they wiggle out of this one, won't it?

Like, they were "liberating" the people of Iraq; that they were turning the Government over to Iraqis; that this was not about oil. He, he, he. Take a look at Iraq, Scottie, and tell us what you see today?
by MSG
Let me guess.......you don't care about WMD because......?? ah ye you don't know what WMD are, or you are not familiar with their effects, or you live on Mars and they would not affect you!
Terrorist act........hmmm last time I checked it was an armed conflct. Do you know the difference between terrorist attack and armed conflict? If I showed up at yours house dressed as a mailman and blew myself up THAT would be a terrorist act. But our attack was no sneaky, covert operation unless you know a new way of sneaking 300,000 men with all their gear across the world! He knew we were coming ...........are we clear or should we go back to the Clinton episode.........
by Angie
You move around the board too, hmm?

So have you found them yet??? Has the Iraqi people been given their government? Their oil? Their freedom?
by Angie
After your last vicious attack because I innocently stated - and truthfully too - that Clinton 's non participation in Viet Nam was well documented whereas Bush, Cheney et al are rarely mentioned, I hardly expected to be hearing from you so soon.

I am assuming that's what you mean by the "Clinton episode"?
by Scottie
"Well, certainly GWBush must have cared a hell of a lot about WMD or he must love deceiving the international community. Even if he didn't know what a WMD was, the people around him sure as hell did."

Since the opposiotion was constantly claiming ridiculous things like "there will be 500,000 civilian causualties" and "it will cause the arab nations to all colapse in anarchy" or whatever else us conservatives were obliged to pick up on whatever evidence was against sadam too.
I think we had a better hit rate.

But the REASON why I at least was willing to support war was that Sadam was an evil man he invaded kuwait
At that stage he was a serious threat to his neighbours and if we had not stoped him he would soon have been a serious threat to everyone. (iraq+kuwait+saudi arabia would be a srong enemy) we had high level UN resolutions against him (as opposed to the just a piece of paper resolutions that are against israel, note the last iraqi resolution was a special kind of resolution) and he breached the ceasefire with the US.

"He and Blair said there were WMD. That they were ready to be aimed at the US and Britain in 45 minutes (can anyone believe this??)"

- he did? I seriously doubt that because Iraq does not have that sort of missile technology. maybe aimed at his neighbours. and that may well have been true until near when the war started. Im still betting that he had some WMD of some sort and destroyed / burried them etc.

Anyway if he didnt have weapons he shouldnt have messed us around for a decade.. at some stage it jsut became too late.
by toonpi
you're funny
but I love u
hahaha
crazy man!
by Dirk
"One of your basic asumptions is that Soverignty is paramount"

I see what you mean, but that's not what I meant :-). I believe in universal human rights and I support the statement these were violated by Saddam. I only wanted to say that, IMHO, Bush used this fact as a vehicle to camouflage (a pretext my mother would say) his greediness driven war.
Just like communism was a pretext in the past and terrorism willl be for the years to come.
What is significant is that, where Bush had a whole list of reasons before the war began (links with international terrorism, WMD and human rights), only the last one remains. My question is why this last one now should be sufficient to start a war and I can't answer it without using the word "oil".

"it makes the USA the best hegemon the world has ever seen."

So you're saying we should be prepared to pay the price... While it's really not our suffering
That is what I meant with the "benefit of the doubt". It's cynical how, as long as a pretext can be found, Bush is free to do as he pleases. "OK, so there may be some military industry and oil interests, but hey, we did it to save the world"? That's just not true. In this case, the evil is engineered and the human rights thing is just wrapping.
It's also funny the US people seem to be offended more by the fact their president lied to them -it is my personal opinion this is a proven fact :-)- than the reason why he lied and the consequences involved. People seem to be believing Bush actually lied so he would be able to better help the Iraqi people.

"sadam was a significant threat because of his army size and the oil in the region."

He was a threat to US interests, if that's enough, you're actually giving the 9/11 terrorists a pretext, they also thought their interests were at risk because of the expanding Western influence (this is a provocative statement for which I apologize, but I considered it a point to be made)
Some people feel bombing by using an airplane is more "noble" than launching a sneeky terrorist attack, but I find it hard to relate to that if one of the sides is so immensely superior. I understand all soldiers tried not shooting anyone, but in the end a war is still about staying alive and people tend do do that by any means possible.

"the chineese WILL impose their way of life on the USA"

Your post seems to primarily bear one message, namely "it's to eat or be eaten" and I agree that this might in many American minds be the main reason for supporting this war. I also applaud you to state it so clearly.
However, this is currently not the official reasoning anymore (it is clear now Saddam posed no immediate threat to the US and the Bush administration knew it, so the whole preemptive strike thing was bullshit and this seems to be a widely accepted view)

More provocative statements:
Angie: I actually hope no WMD/links with Al Quaeda are found; not that I would want to influence the course of things, but it would force the American public to face the lies of their leader. I don't trust Saddam however -talk about an understatement :-)-, so it's quite possible something turns up that will allow Bush to say he didn't lie after all. And that would be a pity.

MSG: Wether you like to dress as a mailman, a bomber plane or a GI, if you blow up my house without me having wronged you, the difference doesn't strike me as being that huge


by Angie
Scottie, I'm tired, so I'll make this brief.

There was plenty of rhetoric coming from Bush and Blair prior to the attack that Iraq could aim its weapons at the UK and the US within 45 minutes. Now go look that up. If It wasn't said, I wouldn't be repeating it.

You want to know some evil dictators? Why not start with Auguste Pinochet, the Shah of Iran, Marcos. I can go on if you want me to, but it won't be tonight.

by Angie
I couldn't agree with you more. Thanks!
by MSG
Last time I checked we did not nuke the place so your statement has no ground. As far as wronging us.......well I don't think you have all the "spook" info on what he was doing behing the curtains.......
Do you have a fetish with men in uniform? .....just wondering why you gave so many examples..........
by Scottie
Angie
1) er Im surprised I didnt hear such a big fuss about that when they said it since everyone knows that is impossible. only russia and the US have those sorts of weapons and possibly (although I ma not sure) china.
2) those guys arent available to kill now.... bush cant get at attilla either although he certainly was also not a nice guy..

" I believe in universal human rights and I support the statement these were violated by Saddam. I only wanted to say that, IMHO, Bush used this fact as a vehicle to camouflage (a pretext my mother would say) his greediness driven war."

-- hmmm I think your being a bit emotive with the "greediness" but Im at least pleased you agree with the first point.

"Just like communism was a pretext in the past and terrorism willl be for the years to come."

-- to an extent but they are also honest threats.

My question is why this last one now should be sufficient to start a war

- the most important reasons are the technical ones such as the lack of cooperation with the ceasefire the invasion of iraq etc etc. this is what made him a target. These reasons are a result of the way the world works nowadays. Iraq stupidly walked straight into them.

People seem to be believing Bush actually lied so he would be able to better help the Iraqi people.

- Some may not be but some people actually are conviction politicians. For example blair got himself into alot of trouble to support the war in iraq..

but I find it hard to relate to that if one of the sides is so immensely superior.

--Frankly I am not afraid to give benifit of the doubt to the superior power. just like a wolf pack would be just a big dog fight if they did not know who was the top dog.
So I say." man attacks policeman with a stick and gets shot = stupid man" (even if he has a cause).
because I jsut dont want to encourage the weak to constantly be at war fighting over power. there will always be weak so a world like that is just a world of suffering. I dont expect the world to become perfect tomorrow.

Your post seems to primarily bear one message, namely "it's to eat or be eaten" I also applaud you to state it so clearly.

---if somthing is true it doesnt have to be PC.
there are some practicalities of the world. for example china can get away with more than some countries because it has lots of nukes and teaching them a lesson might just end the world as we know it. To an extent we can be sheltered from the world but in reality our freedom etc is all dependant on those that would fight for it.

(it is clear now Saddam posed no immediate threat to the US and the Bush administration knew it, so the whole preemptive strike thing was bullshit and this seems to be a widely accepted view)

-- Iraq may not have been a major threat in itself anymore but it was a threat to the credibility of those that try to prevent the spread of WMD etc etc.

" I actually hope no WMD/links with Al Quaeda are found;"

--I hope a link turns up because that would mean we have choped another leg of the octopus that is al quaeda ..
but I dont think it will be a "very strong" link like that between the taliban and alquaeda. However there is a link between him and the siucide bombers and I dont like them either so that is terrorist reason enough.

"MSG: Wether you like to dress as a mailman, a bomber plane or a GI, if you blow up my house without me having wronged you, the difference doesn't strike me as being that huge "

--Continuing on my point above If I was the leader of the world and if aliens comes along in a million spaceship and one of them blows up new york and says it was an accident I will be willing to accept an appology because fighting the other million would be suicide.
by Angie
Apart from the one comment you addressed, the rest of this post does not apply to me. You must be quoting from Dirk.

I don' t care much if thse people are dead or not. They were dictators, evil, and vile, and they were supported by the US.
by Scottie
it is too late for bush Jnr to have a go at the other guys he is a new president and the fact that some other guy supported pinoche doesnt count against him. However those dictators who are still in control they have lots of counts against them.

The US is a democracy so if you want to blame an administration you have to have found a whole new set of crimes that they personaly comitted.
by Angie
Dear Scottie,

I know you mean well, and I know you enjoy commenting here, and you always respond to anything I say, sometimes very well, indeed, but surely you are not naive enough to think that the US has not supported regimes over the years that were/and are worse than Iraq? Why not look at Pol Pot's murderous reign of terror in Cambodia??? That's a start.
by phuleeze
Angie, the U.S. did NOT support Pol Pot or the Khmer Rhouge. In fact, the U.S. got in a lot of trouble, and is still criticized for fighting them (with UN support).

Jane Fonda supported Pol Pot. Why don't you blame her?

As for other dictators, I don't think you can find a sitting ruler who killed more people than Saddam. Pol Pot is out of power, convicted, and dead. Many people died to make it so. Same with Saddam, same with all tyrants.

I was going to say this site, indymedia, is an embarrasment to the peace movement. However, after reading their mission statement, I see that indymedia is not part of the peace movement. Their goal is the overthrow of everything (including capitalism), which means they are part of the war movement. That's not a movement to which I can subscribe.
by free thinker
'Iraqis did have Scuds'

Ciar Byrne
Wednesday June 11, 2003

Channel 4 News diplomatic correspondent Lindsey Hilsum has admitted that she "self-censored" her reports from Baghdad and did not tell viewers that Saddam Hussein's regime was hiding Scud missile launchers in residential areas, because she did not want to be thrown out of the city.
Hilsum saw a missile launcher in a back street of Baghdad after losing her way when driving to the scene of the first marketplace bombing in the city, in which 14 people were killed.

Although Channel 4 News was not censored by Saddam's secret police, the Mukhabarat, Hilsum decided not to report on what she had seen for fear of being ejected from the city.

by Angie
There are numerous articles, books, reports, etc. that contradict your response to my comment re US and Pol Pot.

For instance, there's John Pilger's "The UnHoly Alliance: Uncle Sam and Pol Pot". Then there is the article "How the Washington Post Glossed Over US Culpability in Pol Pot's Rise to Power", by Scott Laughrey. Another one I've read is a 1990 report by Jack Calhoun in the the Third World Traveller, entitled, "On the Side of Pol Pot: US Supports Khmer Rouge".

I could go on, but you can pop out to a library or search the Net for other articles.
by SAMEER N. YACOUB
SAMEER N. YACOUB
Associated Press Writer

For decades they were taught that Saddam Hussein was their compassionate father, a beloved genius and war hero.

Now, almost overnight, Iraq's young generations have been forced to confront the bitter reality about the mass killings and other crimes carried out by his dictatorship.

In a country where the slightest criticism of Saddam's personality cult was treated as treason, and public adoration led to promotions and other rewards, almost no one dared to speak the truth him for more than 33 years.

It took the sight of American tanks rolling through their cities to get many Iraqis talking freely about Saddam's reign.

At the al-Kumeit secondary school in Baghdad, an 11th-grade student, Yaaser Akram, 15, said he was very confused. For 10 years he was taught that Saddam was a brilliant leader who should be idolized by all honest people.

Akram is now surprised to hear so many people saying the exact opposite.

"The name of Saddam had a value among us, but now, I do not love Saddam. I feel I have been deceived. I am shocked to hear about his crimes against our people," Akram said.

Nazaht Salman was al-Kumeit's teacher of patriotism — a subject that encompassed lessons on how to love Saddam and the Baath Party, how to resist "hostile propaganda" and to report any "enemy activities."

Salman said when classes resumed this month, many students asked her why she had not told them the truth about Saddam's regime before the war.

"Frankly, I was embarrassed but I told them I was forced to conceal the truth in order to protect both them and myself," Salman said. Patriotism class has now been dropped and she now teaches history.

After Saddam seized full control in 1979, school curriculums were infused with massive doses of propaganda. It aimed at indoctrinating young people into believing Saddam was a flawless leader while his critics were enemies of the nation.

Textbooks were filled with Saddam's photos and accounts of his courage or acumen — whether it was teaching farmers to increase yields or engineers to build better highways.

Children were regularly told to write compositions or create murals extolling Saddam and vowing undying loyalty to the regime. Students received high marks if they enthusiastically participated in events such as poetry recitals to praise the supreme leader.

Iraqi children and teenagers were subjected to "systematic brain washing" both at school and in the media, said Saad Abdulazhra, a professor of psychology at al-Mustansiryia University.

The goal, he said, was to mold a generation that would be willing to sacrifice itself to protect him from any threat.

"Now, there is conflict in their minds, there is one existing concept that is being contradicted by a new concept," Abdulazhra said.

Other psychologists have warned of a possible backlash from young people frustrated by the chaos and economic breakdown in post-Saddam Iraq.

"If children and teenagers continue to live in an unsafe environment and if they continue to see their fathers jobless and penniless, I think they will begin to yearn for Saddam. The Americans should listen to this message," said psychologist Haithem Deia.

Nijla Bihnam, the assistant principal at al-Bdour primary school, said it took a week to convince some pupils not to shout "Long live Saddam!" at the start of classes.

"We always thought of Saddam as the bold protector of the country, but when the U.S. army reached Baghdad, he ran away and did not defend us," said Wisam Mehdi, a third-grader.

Mahmoud Ali, a sidewalk book vendor, said his two young sons were big Saddam fans until three weeks ago, when Iraq's new television station showed images from a mass grave site.

Both boys asked: "Who did this?" and Ali said he replied "Saddam."

Neither boy has mentioned Saddam since.

"I think they are trying to forget anything about him," Ali said.

by Angie
Frankly, I have never been confused about Saddam Hussein, not from when he first became "ruler" of Iraq on to his departure. However, I thank you for the input that was directed at myself..
by Scottie
In the mind of pilger chomsky etc if you are bad you are supported by the USA.
Seems you can write a conspiricy theory about anything if you really want.
by Dirk
- Sameer: If I'm the Kirt you addressed, you should reread my posts
- free thinker: having to rely on the sayings of a lost reporter rather confirms my point the undeniable proof was fake
- phuleeze: Pol Pot, Osama Bin Laden, Saddam Hussein, they -and many others- were all supported, trained and/or paid by the CIA during long periods of their dubious careers (as early as the 50s and 60s for some of them). As you say, it's only when the Frankensteins turn against their maker that the problems begin (for the US, that means)
- MSG:
+ The US are the master of spook info and "behind the curtains" conduct; I would love to know all Saddams connections and actions over the last 50 years, but I doubt they'd be what you apparently expect
+ you "didn't nuke the place"? Man, I'm proud of you, that's an A+ for human behaviour
+ I'll refrain from answering your childish uniform remark :-)

General remark: now that we're getting to the bottom of this, we seem to get some polarizing and the kind of "you're either with us or against us" retoric we now from the beginning of the war are popping up again; although I do not always agree with them, I respect the effort people like Scottie, free thinker, phuleeze etc. invest to come up with solid arguments.

I know you should never generalize, but I'll do so anyway; I think we have the following visions here:

1. I don't care about the Iraqi, Saddam had it coming and though the oil is a nice extra; it won't even pay for our expenses. If there are innocent Iraqi, they just have to sit back and enjoy the ride. Those terrorists we seem to find all over the place deserve to be killed.

2. Somebody had to do something and I'm proud it's us. Even if Saddam was no immediate threat, he was dangerous enough. WMD and terrorists or not would not have ade a difference in my support for the war, but we had to try getting international support.

3. the war is a farce, orchestrated with deadly precision for other than the official reasons. The American public is tricked into financing an investment that others will benefit from

4. the US governement belongs to the big companies and if they decide it's time for a profitable war, they just find a pretext and go for it


Feel free to elaborate on these experimental stereotypes, or make funny remarks about tight asses and uniforms, if you must :-)

Dirk
by Scottie
each decision that a country makes has hundreds of different implications. it is possible that the US might for example oppose some country they might then have to support its neighbour in order to make the sanctions against the first country possible they might have to support one person in a country in order to prevent someone much more evil from getting into power. any of a million different similar reasons.
if you view certain actions in isolation of reality you can create a chomsky like evil conspiricy but collectively they might have been the right thing to do.
If the US was to give no support at all to bad reigemes then it would have to have total sanctions on the country (otherwise chomsky will easily follow the trail from a govt department or US company to the hostile reigeme).
but if you complete sanctions on then A) the liberals will protest in the streets all day about the dying children and
B) you will have sanctions on most of the countries in the world.

So since that situation is not sustainable there is by definition scope for chomsky to create a USA is evil theory. even if the USA does the very best it possibly can.

Obviously the jury is still out on if there are WMD or not. I think it would be bad if Bush had fabricated evidence for WMD with hte intention to mislead. But failing any direct evidenceI dont think that he did that. If he was wrong about some pieces of evidence I think it was either an human mistake (as happens) or a result of the nature of how information travels from human intelligence to the president.
by Dirk
On the war:
The actual reason for starting the war is exactly where we differ and, since at this moment there is no way of proving either side, I don't think discussion will help us out.

You think the major reason for any (or let's say most) evil American intervention (or let's say American intervention with, sadly enough, evil consequences) is improvement of the living circumstances or human rights for one or other group of people.
And, according to you, somebody up there must be calculating to make sure that the humanitarian benefits are greater than the foreseeable sacrifices.
-this is just my interpretation, feel free to correct if I'm mistaken-

I, on the other side, think the "doing good" part is only a minor issue (I would even say it only serves to sell the actions to the public, but you need a psychologist to find out in what way the desicion makers need these pretexts to sell their decisions to themselves).
To see the real reasons, we have to dig deeper and there we find interests and short and/or long term profits for companies and stock holders with clear ties to people at the top of the US administration.
This is appallingly obvious if you look at the casual way those "humanitarian" reasons are treated. What I heard was that the first trucks with non-military equiment entering Iraq during the war were not carrying water or food, but repair pieces for oil pipelines.
I'm also convinced somebody was counting, but I'm pretty sure it wasn't human lives...

On the WMD:
Again, the point is not whether there are WMD or not, the point is Iraq did not have to be a proven threat to start a pre-emptive war.
IMHO, if a human mistake or "the nature of how information travels from human intelligence to the president" can make that what is not proof suddenly become enough proof to start a 150 bn dollar war with many deaths on either side, somebody up there should get his head checked. The slightest word Bush speaks (at least those written down :-) is checked, checked and double checked; there's no way you can tell me it was all just a mistake. If it happened, they did it knowing what they did and what the consequences would be.
by Scottie
The US government is not GOD it hardly ever has full details of exactly what is happening. sometimes it needs to make decisionsfast on limited information. If you dont have enough information it doesnt matter how many times you check it.
However if you are in a country like Iraq with no checks or balances or france which has less checks and balances (cant even call chirac a worm!) then you can expect mroe cynisism in policy.

I dont think he weighs up every decision in a "does it make me money" sense because if he did he would have rapidly become the richest man in the world.
Anyway when it comes to war how many protestors did oyu see out on the stree saying "dont attack iraq because I have shares in ELF!!!"

most people just dont work that way.
by Angie
Do you really believe what you just said?
by Scottie
Sadam made about 2 billion dollars from an economy MUCH smaller than the USA.
Now like sadam Bush is faced with lots of decisions every day. any of which could make him money by some sort of "insider trading". IF Bush used that information cynically to make money on just one out of 100 of those decisions he would be richer than sadam. dont you agree?

There is no reason for it to be a "war" (infact it is better if it is not) it could jsut as easily be some sort of law that creats some tiny advantage to some type of manufacturing (followed by or just after a big purchace of shares by some agent)
So three reasons to explain why bush and all other living US presidents are not multi billionares (from unknown sources).

A) there are enough controls sothat he doesnt dare to do that(so stop worrying)
B) people who become US president don't do that sort of thing
C) it does happen but hey stop caring after they get their first million or so so it amounts to about 1 decision out of a million.

Well those are the three I though of...If you can think of another one please tell me.
by Angie
I was referring to your sentence, in part, "sometimes it needs to make decisions fast on limited information" etc.

I somehow doubt that the US is making decisions based on partial info.
by Cloudsprinter
You must put out fires before they spread.
by Scottie
No one EVER has all the info.
and things at a governmental level sometimes need to be acted on fast or in secret etc etc
by Dale - sick of A.H. do nothings
Barry, it is A.H.s like you in this country that causes people in other countries around this messed up world to believe killing is justified no matter what the means or cause. To voice the wishes that people of other countries kill people from this country just because they are doing something that needs to be done is in itself a testament of your stupidity and gutless being. You are probably one of the people in this country that counts on everything being given to him but not having to get off your dead ass and do anything for it. Many people have died for this country and for many other countries in this world, so that they can enjoy the freedom of which you do and say. That is you right and that is why many of my friends died. I don't have to like it and gutless pieces of crap like you make me sick. Have a good day, someone has probably just died to let you continue to do so. Best of luck in your worthless future.
by toonpi
you're always right, my dearest
I love you!!
by Dale
The U.S. is not perfect. I do not for one minute think that any american would believe that evrything done by the US. is perfect or exactly right. Nothing in this world is perfect. Unless "you" look in the mirror. Must be nice sitting there filled with all your crap. If you have so much knowledge of all the facts, why do you not publish any showing the other view. Guess that would defeat your one sided purpose in life. Not to get the whole truth but to convert the facts into what you - GOD - believe. Most people reading this publishing knows that innocent people have died and that is not a responsiblity that any true american or any other person can over look. But why don't you publish reports of all the proven facts and not just from your point of view. Where do you get all your information from or are you one of the government information officers that caused all this shit. No person knows what the people of Iraq are going through but the people of Iraq themselves. This is true with all the countries and people of the world. To set there and claim that all reported civilian casualties were all innocent bystanders is being unrealistic. Not all combatants in a war dress in uniform and not all reported facts are true as you yourself profess. Even one innocent civilian death is a loss to the people of Iraq, to the USA, to the people of the world and "yes" even to those you call murders and yes I do personally know how they feel. MY question is DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA HOW THEY FEEL. My guess is a definite NO!! You are one that wants to set on his ass and have the murders protect your life and liberty, but when they are done you want them gone or put away for your own self respect. I am glad you believe you know everything, it might help you when the murders are no longer there to cover your ass.
by Dale
Your comments as an Iraqi are very enlightening. You show the diversity of the Iraqi people with some knowledge. I do see a flaw in your statements. You refer to the "trailer trash" GI's. For all your professing of diversity in people you make an all encompassing remark about the U.S. servicemen operating in your country. I know servicemen that have or are serving there at this time. I know from conversations with them that not all GI's think of Iraqis as goat herders. Many GI's are trying, during these hard times, to do exactly as they say and help the Iraqi people. I do not say all are that way, as in every war or action there are and will be men on both sides that will do anything without any thoughts. I just feel that a statement as you made about all GI's would indicate a lack of knowledge about Americans as a people. Just as some Amercians lack the care or knowledge of the Iraqi people. Be it that all people could live together in peace but there is no such thing as a perfect world no matter what some people wish. I do hope that maybe you will meet with or find some caring GI's or at least realize that there are many out there.
by Paul (paul_aby [at] hotmail.com)
When u enter a soverign country under some pretext , but the basic intention ( oil), and kill inocent lives, the united states will reap what it sows. No sane person supports Sadam Hussien and his methods, but neither do they support the US policies, which is so selfish and arrogant. We have history teaching us that all world bullies will in the end meet their fate, and the famous rulers - romans, greeks, persians,british have all vanished. History repeats itself. The down fall of the US has started with its societies moral bankruptcy. American society is the only society where children take up guns and shoot their teachers. It is the only place where there are more locked up people than anywhere else in the world. What sort of a democracy is this. It is only in america that we see maximum number of broken homes. Children leave homes at an early age and do not respect elders. just worldly wealth and so called afluence will not bring inner peace. It is the modern Sodom and Gomara. Americans do not have anything to be proud about their society or what they can offer to the world. It is amazing to note the US public not being bothered about the world opinions and disregard for other people's lives. What's soo special about american blood. There is a just God and american society has to answer HIM, for the blood of innocents on their hands.
by Dirk
Just my opinion :-)

I never said Bush was carrying bags of money home every night to put in his savings account (the Bush family is not exactly the poorest of the coutry, after they helped laundring Nazi money as the Rockefeller advisors before, during and after WWII -this is not me saying it, it comes from a respected former US Nazi War Crime inspector-). But they do have a lot of friends that have been doing extremely well and rest assured, their stock haven't collapsed either.

"A) there are enough controls sothat he doesnt dare to do that(so stop worrying) "
Enron showed how far they can go without being held accountable and this war will show they can go even further. I am not so much worried about the fact that America is ruled by a combination of befriended pressure groups, industrials and politicians that help each other in getting richer and more powerfull; there are few countries were it is different (none that I can currently think of, actually). I am worried about the American press and public not having second thoughts about any of this.

"B) people who become US president don't do that sort of thing"
That is just not true. If you're not prepared to sell yourself you won't even get the chance of running for President

"C) it does happen but hey stop caring after they get their first million or so so it amounts to about 1 decision out of a million."
Sorry if this hurts, but that is utter nonsense. Human nature makes sure no one looses interest after his first million. If your in the Bush leage, a million is small change, anyway

Just a small CNN story from a few years back; nothing compared to what the Bush family actually capable of, but a small example of how a little pushing here and there can make a lot of money:
http://www.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/stories/1999/05/13/president.2000/jackson.bush/
by Scottie
and the famous rulers - romans, greeks, persians,british have all vanished.

A) the british have not vanished
B) the countries that they defeated are the ones that REALLY vanished. Do you see people learning etruscan or carthiginian at schools nowadays? even the romans continue in that we use their alphabet and some of their systems of law etc.

American society is the only society where children take up guns and shoot their teachers.

- you haven't been to many other societies have you? Lets jsut say that is wrong and shows your ignorance.
the same with most of your other points you are not very well traveled.

"the Bush family is not exactly the poorest of the coutry, after they helped laundring Nazi money"

- that isnt Bush Jr's fault go chace down his grandfather or whoever is responsible.

But they do have a lot of friends that have been doing extremely well and rest assured, their stock haven't collapsed either.

- I think they have colapsed somewhat as alot of it will be in companies and shares that wont have escaped the economic downturn, but I guess since they aren't likely to just show us their financial positions so that will remain up for debate.

Enron showed how far they can go without being held accountable

Enron was the result of a lack of control on AUDITING FIRMS (at least mostly). That is really a bit off topic I knw and have known for a long time that those guys operate that way.

America is ruled by a combination of befriended pressure groups
- Note that I am not saying that these pressure groups dont have influence. Im sure they do at least more influence than you or I have (what credibility do we hae anyway). Just that it doesnt manifest itself in quite the way that you seem to believe.

Well you come up with your logic as to why presidents SHOULD be ripping the country off left right and centre (in terms of cash) and yet apparently they dont.. (at least not that badly) have we jsut been insanely lucky?
Even Clinton just fiddled around with whitewater as opposed to some real jucy stuff he could have done in the government.
by Dirk
"that isnt Bush Jr's fault go chace down his grandfather or whoever is responsible"
fair enough. You'll notice I didn't say Bush was to blame, I was just trying to indicate a pattern.
You seem to be keen on history, so you should know patterns shouldn't be neglected. You don't have to accept them right away, but being certain about something is a prison to an intelligent mind.
Bush is in this pattern and is doing it very well.

"Enron was the result of a lack of control on AUDITING FIRMS (at least mostly)"
Blaming the auditing firms is like blaming corrupt policemen for drug traffic. Sure they should be punished, but that's no reason for the dealers to be left alone.
Enron is THE example of how these mixed interests work "no strings attached" and everybody wins (those who are in on the deal, at least and that won't be you or me) Sometimes it works out (see previous article) and sometimes it doesn't and then they cut loose.
http://edition.cnn.com/2002/ALLPOLITICS/02/06/column.billpress/
When somebody wins, you know there's somebody losing and with Bush that's the taxpayer.

"Just that it doesnt manifest itself in quite the way that you seem to believe."
Exactly, it doesn't manifest itself. We can't normally see it, because they're very good at what they should do, namely keeping the balance. Only, instead of keeping the balance horizontal, they tilt it just so the complaining remains within limits. And they have even found out that by influencing the information people get they can tilt it even more without most people noticing. And that's the tragedy, because now, with theses same tactics, they 're killing people and you don't even see it
by Scottie
patterns shouldn't be neglected.

- It is possible however I am reluctant to accept patterns like "there are more black people in jail than asian" or there are "more nazi supporting bushes than dirks" as somthing that their is even an implication that we can make policy based on them. It would be too dangerous to have a "black people and bushes are bad" piece of legislation.

As to the rest ---- some companies seem to have "the ear of the government" for example but as you said thier influence has to remain within limits (for whatever reason).

Besides, they are fighting over whether the US government allows them to use slightly larger drills or make their drilling area larger or other technical things. It is a massive waste of resorces to get involved in a big battle like whether a war should be fought etc etc. A smart company (I believe) would back the president or whoever they wanted to influence mindlessly (or at least keep their mouth shut) on big issues (no matter how they effected them) in order to build up credit to win the "small issues" (from the point of view of the government) that will make them lots of money compared to competitors.

Now we might say that this is a bad system and I would agree that it should be changed however there is some point to those who know about the problem (those in the industry it effects) should have a say on the issue and also that their power appears to have limits.
by dirk
what, again
by Mark Steyn
Mark Steyn says that the scare stories are wrong: there is no humanitarian disaster in Iraq

On Monday the Daily Telegraph gave a big chunk of its comment-page real estate to Mr Will Day of something called Care International. I’ve never heard of it myself but doubtless that’s because I’m a fully paid-up member of Don’t Care Unilateral. Anyway, the headline on Mr Day’s column read: ‘Things Are Getting Worse In Iraq, So Give The UN A Chance’.

You can guess how it went from there: ‘Something in Iraq is going fundamentally wrong.... Did the coalition planners think things through..? They can’t have ...Nobody is safe ...complete breakdown in security ...making their lives a misery ...almost total lack of basic services...’.

I didn’t see any of this during my stay in western and northern Iraq last month. I went to quite a lot of effort to look for complete security breakdowns, miserable lives and total lack of basic services, but I couldn’t find them in Tikrit or Rutba, Kirkuk or Ramadi, Samarra or even Fallujah, where they’ve had one or two little local difficulties but nothing like the widespread civic collapse Mr Day confidently asserts. Perhaps he’s referring to different parts of Iraq. Hard to know, since he cites no specific examples and, indeed, names no Iraqi cities apart from the capital. He includes one hard statistic, in the midst of a paragraph claiming that Iraq is ‘on its knees. The supply of electricity is erratic and unreliable, clean water is fast becoming scarce and rubbish is piling high in streets flooded by sewage — an estimated 500,000 tonnes of raw sewage, at least, is being poured into the river daily. In the soaring summer temperatures, this is a recipe for disaster. How long will it be before we see this contamination seriously affect the health of the population?’

This passage rang a bell with a correspondent of mine, Nicholas Hallam, who sent me the following press release from the self-same Care International:
Sewage treatment has collapsed, resulting in 500,000 tons of raw sewage being discharged into water sources every day.... Electricity, essential for many services and previously enjoyed by the remotest villages, is now generally available for less than 12 hours per day in many parts of Iraq. This has an obvious impact on water quantity and quality, sewage treatment, health facilities, education and overall quality of life....
That was Care International’s assessment of the situation in Iraq on 31 January this year, at least according to Margaret Hassan, the director of the Baghdad office, in her testimony in New York before a bunch of UN bigshots. Mr Day’s Telegraph column of 16 June cheerfully recycles his colleague’s January press release, differing only in the root cause of the problem: now, instead of UN sanctions being to blame, it’s the American administration. Other than that slight modification, however, far from the headline’s claim that ‘Things Are Getting Worse In Iraq’, things seem to be pretty stable. In January, there were 500,000 tons of raw sewage. By June, there were 500,000 tonnes of raw sewage.

As far as I remember, a ton is either just a wee bit more than a tonne or just a wee bit less. But a little research never hurts anyone, so I looked it up and it turns out I’m both right. A British ton is a wee bit more than a metric tonne but an American ton is a wee bit less than a metric tonne. So, giving Ms Hassan the benefit of the doubt, let’s assume she was speaking in US tons. That would mean there’d been roughly a 10 per cent increase in the amount of raw sewage from 500,000 tons to 500,000 tonnes.

But you know what? When you keep seeing the same big, fat, awfully round number and only the unit of measurement varies, you can’t help feeling that, whether in metric or American or imperial, nobody at Care International has a clue about how much raw sewage is being pumped into Iraq’s water sources. And while I wouldn’t want to find 500,000 tons or tonnes of sewage dumped in my favourite swimming hole, I wonder what exactly the public-health consequences are of putting it in the water network of a country the size of Iraq. For purposes of comparison, the Chinese city of Chongqing puts a million tons of raw sewage into the Yangtze each day. In the year 2000, China put 23.5 billion tons of sewage into the Yangtze — that’s 63 million tons a day. In Mexico, 100 million tons of raw sewage are said to flow down the Rio Grande every day. Mexico, like Iraq, is pretty hot. My advice to the NGOs is that these big, round Iraqi scare numbers need to be rounded up a lot more. Five hundred thousand tons is chickenfeed or, in this case, chickenshit: it’s like that moment in Austin Powers when the newly defrosted Dr Evil threatens to destroy the world unless it pays him a ransom of $1 million, and everyone at the UN laughs. You’re thinking too small, you Care guys. If half a million tons of raw sewage per day was hitting the Tigris in January, now that the Yanks have been there a couple of months it should surely be at least half a billion.

I can only report my own interaction with Iraq’s drinking supply. I crossed into the country from Jordan and stopped for lunch in the first town I came to — Rutba — and the first thing that happened was that the young slip of a lad plunked down on my table a grubby plastic Thermos of water with an encrusted spigot and a metal goblet. He seemed to be hanging around and I didn’t want him to think I was some sort of NGO nancy boy, so I filled up the goblet and drained me a skinful. Not as good as the stuff from my well in New Hampshire, but better than municipal water in Montreal — or in London, where I believe it’s mostly recycled Welsh urine these days. This ritual repeated itself across the country and by the third day I was a dab hand, ostentatiously tasting the water and then sniffing to the sommelier: ‘Hmm. I was hoping for a soupçon more coliform bacteria and a rather more playful parasitic worm. Oh, and stick a cocktail umbrella in the human faecal material....’ But everywhere I went I drank the water and, aside from mild side-effects like feeling even more right-wing than before, I’m fine and dandy.

Others will have their own experience. Robert Fisk of the Independent bought 25 loo rolls at the beginning of the war, evidently anticipating a far more gruelling campaign intestinally speaking. But let me make a prediction. However much raw sewage is actually getting pumped into the Tigris and Euphrates, it’s never going to be enough to cause a genuinely widespread public-health crisis — no matter how much Will Day would like one. ‘How long will it be before we see this contamination seriously affect the health of the population?’ Seriously? Never.

I would be interested to know, by the way, which streets where are actually ‘flooded’ by sewage.

After I wrote about my trip to Iraq in the Sunday Telegraph and its sister papers, I received quite a few emails from US troops in the country, the gist of which was summed up by one guy with a civil affairs unit near Baghdad: ‘I’m glad to hear somebody report what’s really going on ...the fact that there isn’t anything going on.’ I saw no anarchy, no significant anti-US hostility, and no hospitals at anything like capacity. In other words, I was unable to find Will Day’s Iraq. I don’t honestly think it exists outside his head: as Dinah Washington once sang, ‘Water difference a Day makes’; he has miraculously transformed Iraqi water into whine.

But these are the times we live in. There have always been issues on which the differences are so huge that they’re beyond discussion: generally speaking, it’s not worth an American and a European getting into a dinner-party debate over the Israeli/Palestinian question; neither is ever going to change the other’s mind because the shared assumptions necessary to engage in argument don’t exist. The problem now is that the Israeli/Palestinian template has spread to whole other areas, not least Iraq and the war on terror. In October 2001 Faizul-Aqtab Siddiqi, president-general of the International Muslim Organisation, said bombing Afghanistan would create a thousand bin Ladens. It didn’t. In March this year President Mubarak of Egypt said bombing Iraq would create a hundred bin Ladens. So right there you’ve got a tenfold decrease in the bin Laden creation programme. But even that modest revised target wasn’t met. There’s widespread starvation and disease and millions of refugees in Iraq. Except there aren’t. The Baghdad Museum was looted of its treasures. Only it wasn’t.

What all these fictions have in common is the prejudice behind them: the article of blind faith that the Americans are blundering idiots who know nothing of the world. It was this that led Robert Fisk, whom my colleague Stephen Glover regards as a ‘genius’, to suggest in print that when the Yanks claimed to be at Baghdad International Airport they’d in fact wandered by accident on to an abandoned RAF airfield many miles away. Nobody who knows anything about a modern military or even the kind of GPS technology that Chevrolet now include in their mid-price trucks and SUVs would say anything so stupid in print — unless he were so blinded by irrational Yankophobia that he was impervious to anything so prosaic as reality. Likewise, the Guardian’s ‘Gotcha!’ scoop, in which they brayed that Paul Wolfowitz had finally fessed up: the Iraq war was ‘all about oil’. The Guardian was forced to back down when it was pointed out that all Wolfowitz had done was to observe that America had economic leverage against North Korea that it didn’t have against Iraq, because the latter ‘floats on a sea of oil’.

But, as with Fisk, it’s the headlong stupidity that startles. Anyone who’s spent even a few minutes listening to Wolfowitz knows that he’s actually quite soft-spoken and tonally benign, and that he’s a thoughtful fellow who has better contacts among Iraqi political groups than any other Western politician. But the deputy defence secretary’s sinister reputation depends on little other than the fact that his name starts with a ferocious animal and ends Jewishly. (Christopher Hitchens noted the other day the curious habit of BBC correspondents of referring to the fellow as ‘Vulfervitz’, declining to accept the bearer’s own pronunciation of his name.)

The honourable exception among this company is my colleague Matthew Parris, who beginning some months ago declined to sign on to any of the bogus objections of the anti-war crowd — the millions of civilian deaths, etc. Matthew cut to the chase: he was against the war because he thought the real issue was American power in the world. Fair enough. If you believe that, don’t duck behind non-existent rubbish like rampant cholera and all-about-oil fantasies. Last week Matthew said that, had he been president, he would not have invaded. That way, ‘international law would not have been violated, swollen-headed neocons would not have gained sway, the yee-hah tendency in US foreign policy would have been restrained, precedents for future unilateral regime-changes would not have been set, Nato would be intact, the UN Security Council would not have been damaged, America’s relationship with Europe would have remained good, and Britain would still be on speaking terms with our EU partners.’

Actually, aside from anything else, they’re all reasons why I was in favour of war. If the overriding issue for M. Parris is American hegemony, the issue for me is the rise of transnational neo-imperialism. I’d rather take my chances with nation-states and great power politics than submit to ‘international law’. I think Nato and the UN Security Council need ‘damaging’, and so does America’s relationship with ‘Europe’. And the jet-set humanitarians, as represented by Will Day, might also benefit from being forced to rethink their act. There is, of course, a real humanitarian crisis in the world today — in the Congo, an environment blessedly free of blundering Yanks, where ‘international law’ has ridden to the rescue and, as in the Balkans and elsewhere, the UN is providing the usual genteel multilateral cover for ethnic slaughter. But, because it doesn’t accord with the New Universal Theory of Texan-Zionist neocon aggression, nobody cares.

In Iraq, the Americans and British are muddling through; in the Congo, ‘international law’, as represented by the French and the UN, is failing big time. That’s my view and it happens to fit my prejudices. But it also fits the facts.
by Wes
I am a simple person I suppose, and so I have a simple analogy to make. I have four kittens, well cats really, and I'm such a sap. I Love them so dearly. We all are so proud of how we've 'liberated' the Iraqi people. And we say we Love these people and care for them. I thought about these repressed people, and I thought about my kittens, ...if I had to destroy one of them so that the others could live. If I had to make that terrible choice and actually put to death one of the 'friends' I treasure most on this earth. What do you think I would be feeling? Would it be pride, ...or would I weep endlessly? Do you see that as the bombs were falling, we Americans never really cared or thought about about the innocent children that screamed in the night and suffered such terrible desecration to their frail bodies, ...the children that will no longer walk or see again. How many times did you cry for them this week, ...in the agony they must endure for the rest their lives? You say you Love them? How many tens of thousands of young boys were slaughered that no one even cares to mention. Soldiers, ...16 to 18 year old children, ...they don't count, right? They're to be expected, ...right? It doesn't matter to you does it, ...the artillery shells, ...the thousands of massive fireballs hitting their targets, ...troop formations, ...human beings. Did you see when you closed your eyes at night, ...the night mare and violence of thousands with their arms and legs torn off from the concussion bombs? Pretty tough to see when you're all choked up with pride isn't it. You talk about mass graves of thousands, but how many tears did you shed for the million of their children that died for our embargo we imposed on the poorest of their people? You say it was caused by him for the last five years, ...Saddam? No, ...it was the imbargo and the inability to sell their oil and purchase so many desperately needed things, ...the root of the problem. Tell me true, ...did you think of them every day in their absolute misery and suffering you imposed on them for those 12 years? Were you fighting to keep their children alive? Do you want to be that kind of a person, ...proud over someone dying? Were you cheering as our troops were when the missles were launched? Don't you know you should never cheer or find pleasure over someone dying, ...not even Saddam? As easily as you can see, I should not be proud of my kitten being put to death, you should find some respect for the immense suffering we've caused and take those damned yellow ribbons down. You should weep for the children, and it' s they you should be thinking about now, ...not imagined heroes. Why do I even need to be saying this to you...
You say we've liberated them at great sacrifice (mostly their sacrifice)? You are mostly all intelligent people and I think you would agree with me that Saddam, ...or someone like him could never take over this country of ours. Aren't we just a little too aware of the world, and educated to allow this to happen? I mean how long would our flesh and blood sons and daughters that serve in our armed forces stand for this, ...slaughtering innocent people and doing the will of a mass murderer? In our society, soldiers and Generals would not stand for it if our president took out a pistol and shot someone in the head on the street in cold blooded murder. Then what did we need to do in Iraq? Well golly gee, maybe someday they could be just like us. With all our technology and satellite communications, we could have educated them and caused them to be aware of the world, ...all the United Nations stand by them in Love and enlightenment, ...reach them and touch their hearts. We could have Loved them and fed them and cared for them, instead of having them watch their children die of starvation and terrible diseases. How would it feel to you to have your 8 year old daughter crippled for life because a big powerful country wouldn't allow her to have a five dollar polio shot? What an absurd choice, ...should we Love them or kill them. Now the question at this moment is, are you going to pick my words apart here so you can be a smart guy/gal, or are you going to get the point of this and think about the young boys and children that have to drag themselves on the street because they have no legs, ...because of what we did to them.
Simply put, had we educated, and really cared for these people, ...just as us, and in any enlightened people, ...they would not be living under a repressive regime for very long. And you know what? No one ever had to die or suffer. Those of you that need to, you all need to put some real Love in your hearts and never conceed to violence or war as an answer. Love is the right choice, and it always was. For 12 years, these pople could have been our friends and that Love could have grown between us. Didn't you see the children, ...as all children, ...how they wanted so much for us to Love them? Don't ever cheer or be proud when an innocent child has been crippled or died, ...no matter the percieved reason. War in reality, is a shameful thing that kills and maims the innocent.
By the way, ...thanks all you anti-war protesters. I was proud, and it was an honor to be among so many of you caring souls. Hold the Light...
by free thinker
First off - I think it is wonderful for a person to want peace and love in the world - kudos to you for those thoughts Wes. And a person who cares deeply for animals shows compassion - more kudos. But, quite frankly, your simple analogy makes no sense.

1. Why do you think anyone who support the action in Iraq is not upset with the death of anyone involved; US soldiers, Iraqi civilians & Iraqi soldiers? Do you think this possibilty did not enter into the US administration's minds, or in the minds of the soldiers and their families? I do not know ONE person who thinks war is anything but horrible. There needs to be a damn good reason for it - you do not unlease the furies of war for minor things. Hussein was evil - period. Ask any Iraqi. I know, I did. I know people who are in Iraq now. I know one Iraqi refugee who went back to Iraq with the US forces as a translator. Why risk his life over again? Because Hussein gassed his mother and all the rest of his family. Was there joy in the liberation of the Iraqis? Yes, but not as much as the Iraqis felt - and I know that from Iraqis.

2. "I thought about these repressed people, and I thought about my kittens, ...if I had to destroy one of them so that the others could live."
Okay - so you think that 25% of the 25 million Iraqi's lost their lives due to the war? That comes to 6.25 million...come on now! The reported amount of Iraqi deaths comes to around 3500 (and of course any amount is regretable) but following your analogy you would lose .00014 of your cats. I think a furball was coughed up. Your analogy does not hold water.

3. "we Americans never really cared or thought about about the innocent children that screamed in the night and suffered such terrible desecration to their frail bodies, ...the children that will no longer walk or see again." Many Americans did think of the children who suffered in prisons - who were buried alive in the mass graves of Hussein's regime, of the MILLIONS who were tortured and murdered because of this evil man - but that regime is ended. There will be no more torture chambers and mass graves, because Americans did respond to the cries of the innocents. They now have a hope for the future they never had before.

4." how many tears did you shed for the million of their children that died for our embargo we imposed on the poorest of their people? You say it was caused by him for the last five years, ...Saddam? No, ...it was the imbargo and the inability to sell their oil and purchase so many desperately needed things, ...the root of the problem."

Okay, so you fail to hold Saddam responsible to obeying the UN requirements (because of his invasion of Kuwait & the atrocities to the Kuwaiti people) that led to the UN sanctions. Then, you fail to recognize that Saddam diverted funds from the purchases of necessary items for his people, instead bought masses of weapons (found all over the country), looted BILLIONS of dollars from the Iraqi people and sent out of the country, staged "dead baby parades" by having all the hospitals store dead infants for up to 6 weeks (contrary to muslim practices), and then have them all paraded at one time for the cameras to make it look like the number of deaths in one day due to "the sanctions" (and this is documented by Iraqi doctors to reporters) - and that is exactly what Hussein hoped for. He knew his gullible audience.

5. "you should find some respect for the immense suffering we've caused and take those damned yellow ribbons down."
We have STOPPED immense suffering - have you talked to the Iraqis who have lost family members and pick through the bones in the mass graves? And since you don't understand - the yellow ribbons are to let the US servicemen & women know that we miss them, respect their sacrifice and anxiously await their safe arrival home.

6. "You are mostly all intelligent people and I think you would agree with me that Saddam, ...or someone like him could never take over this country of ours."

No, Saddam could never take over the US. But what he was capable of and did was to support terrorism, with money and weapons - and his hated of the US was well documented. Remember 9/11?
Hussein had a painting in his palace of the planes hitting the towers - he loved it.

by c.campbell
Free thinker it does no good to waste effort trying to convince the immorals that spew their self indulgent shallow emotion on these threads. They don't think, they have no intellect and they are devoid of any true compassion. Slaughtered Iraqi's compared to kittens, that says it all.
by aaron
Free Thinker, who cares so deeply for the Iraqi people, never has an unkind word for the Reagan and Bush administrations' military assistance to Hussein through the 80s--up until AND AFTER he gassed the Kurds. No, that would be improper, and might suggest a need to reconsider his entire political cosmology.

Nor does Free Thinker, the humanitarian par excellance, emit even a whisper of criticism of the fact that the US, having pushed Iraqi troops (many of them forced conscripts) from Kuwait, proceeded to massacre thousands of them as they were RETREATING.

Nor does FT allow the US' deliberate destruction of Iraqi water treatment facilities to alter his panglossian view of american intentions and conduct in Iraq. No, america is the bestest and moralest because a little man calling himself freethinker says so.

I could go on like this for days....

Free Thinker "cares" about the Iraqi's ONLY because it's a required part of the act. If his concern for the exploited and oppressed were genuine, it wouldn't be so selective and cohere in time and space so thoroughly with the strategic objectives of the US ruling class.

You only fool fools, FT.
by Scottie
mugabe wasnt totally insane until recently.
usually people go insane they arent born that way some would say power corrupts and absolute power [can] corrupt absolutly. the regan administration etc was not telepathic.
I am sure they did somthing wrong at some stage but you havent passed the initial test of showing that wthe US should have had reason to believe that he would invade kuwait, gas the kurds etc etc. and only the attack on kuwait was a "acceptible excuse" for starting a war.
by free thinker
Hmm - again Aaron, you speak with no real knowledge. How many Iraqis have you actually TALKED to? And I already expressed in prior posts my feelings about US history in Iraq - I guess you didn't read it.

I believe MSG has extended an offer to you to come and visit Iraq so you can see for yourself the situation there, rather than just mouthing the leftist propaganda you so love. But that might just provide you with a very different reality and would fry your circuts!

Just for fun, here's the results of a poll done by CBS News: Sixty-five percent of Iraqis polled in Baghdad claimed they want the U.S. military to stay until Iraq is stable and secure; only 17 percent want American soldiers out now.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/06/20/iraq/main559521.shtml
by free thinker
Where is your concern about Zimbabwe, and the Congo, and Iran for starters? Why don't we hear you speak out for the oppressed people there?

Could it be that you can't blame it on the US?
by phaedra
You can certainly blaim the present situation in the Congo on American CIA involvement from the 60's onward, before that Belgium and other consortiums of European corporatists controlled and stole the resources of the people of the Congo .In the 60's when the Congolese voted in a left leaning leader that proposed to use Congo resources for the Congolese (imagine the nerve of the man) he was promptly assassinated and replaced (with CIA help) with a slimy sellout that would arm himself and hand over the resources of the Congo to the western powers that wanted them.It has been a downward spiral ever since for the people of the Congo. The attention is not centred on the Congo because the conglomerates both
American and European that operate there and extract resources are doing just fine with the cooperation of the really insane person in control of the government and more importantly the military. Read "King Leopold's Ghost" ,and for an enjoyable and relevant fictional work the excellent American novel "Poisonwood Bible".
by free thinker
A killing in Congo
Lumumba's death no longer seems a CIA plot


BY KEVIN WHITELAW

It was the height of the Cold War when Sidney Gottlieb arrived in Congo in September 1960. The CIA man was toting a vial of poison. His target: the toothbrush of Patrice Lumumba, Congo's charismatic first prime minister, who was also feared to be a rabid Communist. As it happened, Lumumba was toppled in a military coup just days before Gottlieb turned up with his poison. The plot was abandoned, the lethal potion dumped in the Congo River.

When Lumumba finally was killed, in January 1961, no one was surprised when fingers started pointing at the CIA. A Senate investigation of CIA assassinations 14 years later found no proof that the agency was behind the hit, but suspicions linger. Today, new evidence suggests Belgium, Congo's former colonialist ruler, was the mastermind. According to The Assassination of Lumumba, a book published last year in Belgium by sociologist Ludo de Witte, Belgian operatives directed and carried out the murder, and even helped dispose of the body. Belgian authorities are investigating, but officials admit de Witte's account appears accurate.

Does that mean the CIA didn't play a role? Declassified U.S. cables from the year preceding the assassination bristle with paranoia about a Lumumba-led Soviet Communist takeover. The CIA was hatching plots against Cuban leader Fidel Castro and was accused of fomenting coups and planning assassinations worldwide. And Lumumba clearly scared the daylights out of the Eisenhower administration. "In high quarters here, it is the clear-cut conclusion that if [Lumumba] continues to hold high office, the inevitable result will [have] disastrous consequences . . . for the interests of the free world generally," CIA Director Allen Dulles wrote. "Consequently, we conclude that his removal must be an urgent and prime objective."

Even out of office, Lumumba remained under the microscope of Western spy services. His ties to Moscow frightened Washington. His fierce anti-colonialism unnerved Brussels. Belgium finally got its chance at Lumumba after Congolese authorities arrested him in December 1960. Belgian officials engineered his transfer to the breakaway province of Katanga, which was under Belgian control. De Witte reveals a telegram from Belgium's African-affairs minister, Harold d'Aspremont Lynden, essentially ordering that Lumumba be sent to Katanga. Anyone who knew the place knew that was a death sentence.

Firing squad. When Lumumba arrived in Katanga, on January 17, accompanied by several Belgians, he was bleeding from a severe beating. Later that evening, Lumumba was killed by a firing squad commanded by a Belgian officer. A week earlier, he had written to his wife, "I prefer to die with my head unbowed, my faith unshakable, and with profound trust in the destiny of my country." Lumumba was 35.

The next step was to destroy the evidence. Four days later, Belgian Police Commissioner Gerard Soete and his brother cut up the body with a hacksaw and dissolved it in sulfuric acid. In an interview on Belgian television last year, Soete displayed a bullet and two teeth he claimed to have saved from Lumumba's body.

What remains unclear is the extent, if any, of Washington's involvement in the final plot. A Belgian official who helped engineer Lumumba's transfer to Katanga told de Witte that he kept CIA station chief Lawrence Devlin fully informed of the plan. "The Americans were informed of the transfer because they actively discussed this thing for weeks," says de Witte. But Devlin, now retired, denies any previous knowledge of the transfer.

Either way, Lumumba's death served its purpose: It bolstered the shaky regime of a formerly obscure colonel named Joseph Mobutu. During his three-decade rule, Mobutu would run his country, bursting with natural resources, into the depths of poverty. It took a civil war to oust him, and Congo has seen little peace since. Today, at least five countries are fighting in Congo and Lumumba's son, an opposition leader, spent several weeks in a Kinshasa jail cell on politically motivated charges.

by phaedra
Let's face it the Congo and Mobuto has had lots of help in gutting the resources of the territory for the benefit of white industrial countries for the better part of the century. Moscow was a beacon of hope for Lumumba as the colonial masters of western Europe and the US were the problem. In any case the countries involved aren't as important as the mindset of the exploiters. Imperialism and colonialism are still very much alive in this world long after the 19th century should have seen their demise. An attitude of greed, corruption, and entitlement from "modern" first world countries and the deliberate crippling of independence of thirld world nations is the problem.
by MSG
Nor does Free Thinker, the humanitarian par excellance, emit even a whisper of criticism of the fact that the US, having pushed Iraqi troops (many of them forced conscripts) from Kuwait, proceeded to massacre thousands of them as they were RETREATING.

That is about BULLSHIT!!
Again Aaron I forgot you were there with us and have first hand experience. Now hear the truth! First your Iraqi troops were not massacre they were given the opportunity to surrender. The bridge was blown so roughly 20000-25000 Iraqi troops and their looted goods bunched up at the brige. Our AWACS saw what was happening and dispatched 2 Kiowa helos witth loud speakers. They were told in arabic to surrender however seeing that they outnumber the 2 helos they fired on the helos, little did they know that less than 2 km away was a full division waiting for the word to go. Well we got the word to go and they all died for their country. yes it only took about 10-15 minutes but remember that was a full division on line with one way "traffc"........you are right their chances of surviving were about none.
So unless you know what happened stop telling your "stories". They are very enterntaining!
what would you have done? let me guess.......you would have rebuilt the bridge and allowed them to return home with all their loot!
But what about the kuwaity civilians they hanged on the streets..........oh I remember they were not innocent, they had it coming for not surrendering fast enought?!.............need more history lessons.....anything from Panama on let me know
by Scottie
http://www.khilafah.com/home/category.php?DocumentID=7470&TagID=2

fisky has been hiding from us but here he is.

it is interesting to see the sort of stories the iraqi media is making up. (I mean even fisk thinks they are making it up so I guess its fair to assume he is right)

"One paper has claimed that US soldiers distributed postcards of naked women to schoolgirls — they even published the pictures, with Japanese script on the cards. "

the stuff about Wolfowitz which is really an example of bad journalism... considering the guardian has apologized for it already (as you can see from fisks essay they had taken a translation from german from english and using it as a quote, which changed the meaning)

but at least he is pro-US relitive to sadam.

"and the idea that the Anglo-American presence is as awful as Saddam’s torturers betrays a truly eccentric mind"
JA and co will be turning in their graves...
by aaron
<I already expressed in prior posts my feelings about US history in Iraq - I guess you didn't read it. >

well, it's true that i've never heard you criticize US imperialism. your MO seems to be very much the opposite. so...go for it. i'd be curious to hear what inferences you draw from US support for the B'aathists (going all the way back to 1963) and how you think the imperial prerogatives that were the basis of that support manifest themselves today in Central Asia. tell us oppressed thinkers about US policy vis a vis Uzbekistan circa 2003.

<Just for fun, here's the results of a poll done by CBS News: Sixty-five percent of Iraqis polled in Baghdad claimed they want the U.S. military to stay until Iraq is stable and secure; only 17 percent want American soldiers out now.>

although i'd be curious to know the exact methods and wording of this poll, it's not surprising to me that many Iraqi's would say that they want the US--now that the bombing and destruction are a fait accompli--to stay until their country is stabilized and made secure. by posing the question in this way the pollster (i'd say deliberately) elides the real questions that need to be raised and instead produces a nice, but vacuous, sound-bite for the US occupation. here are some questions that i'd like to see the Iraqi's asked that i suspect wouldn't produce such a US-friendly sound-bite:
--what do you think the US' support for Hussein throughout much of the 80s says about US intentions in your country?
--what do you think about the fact that the US deliberately destroyed Iraq's water treatment facilities in the early 90s?
--do you think that Iraq's oil should be privatized and pipelines re-routed as has been suggested by US administrators?
--has your life gotten better or worse in the past three months?
--do you think that the US want to see an Iraqi government emerge that represents the interests of the average Iraqi OR one that represents the interests of the US ruling class?
--what do you feel about the fact that US corporations, many with close political affiliation to the Bush Adm., have gotten huge contracts to, in their words, "rebuild" your country?
$$$$$$$
i gotta go but intend to take up freethinker's question about the Congo, Iran (etc) and MSG's despicable defense of the Highway of Death sometime fairly soon.
by MSG
You are going to take up what? oh ye you have to check with the UK Guardian.......like I said you were not there so talk about something that you DO know and stop quoting X, Y and Z ...........despicable acts......oh ye the Iraqis were very humane to their enemies........just ask any Kuwaity?........but I forgot that in your book the Iraqis rape and kill humanely and we kill them without pity.........am I close?.......bring me an eye witness, but he better be a grunt from the VII Corp or the 2nd Marine Division.........you have no ground on this one so keep talking about Congo or something..........
by Scottie
And you would find out that they dont trust the US government. That is pretty meaningless though.

Imagine this asked on a survey "do you think that the US want to see laws emerge that represents the interests of the average san fransiscan OR one that represents the interests of the US ruling class? "

You see if you took a survey of just about anywhere you would probably find the majority of people want the their givernment to own their city but at the same time dont trust the government and expect it to make desicsions in its own interest (whether that is republican interest or US national interest etc etc).

The operative question however is "do you want us to sort out your country or not" and so "if you do then we are doing you a favor so you dont get to tell us exactly how it should be done."
by aaron
MSG--
Doesn't your sorry-ass have ANYTHING better to do than spend time defending a twelve year old human "turkey-shoot"? Shit, can't your preppy superior, Bremmer, find you some errand to run or something?

I guess you'd prefer to sit on your air-conditioned ass and spin incoherent justifications for massacring retreating soldiers that posed absolutely NO threat to "coalition forces". (Not surprising given the pathetic state of your glorious occupation.)

Your entire argument justifying the massacre rests on the suggestion that the massacred were all carrying looted goods back home. What I've read contradicts this "testimony"; in fact, there were eye-witnesses that said a some portion of those killed were refugees and not soldiers. But let us assume that every last one of the human beings killed were soldiers transporting pillage. Tell me: how does raining down absolute destruction assist in returning stolen treasure? It's pretty fucking obvious that "concern" about looted goods is/was just a flimsy post-hoc excuse for a massacre that was merely one of many.

Please spare me your standard "you're not here blah blah blah" responses. I notice you never tell "free thinker" or any of the other pro-war geniuses that they can't speak because they're not in Iraq.

by aaron
you're in tar-baby, msg. i feel sorry for the grunts--many of whom are getting pretty demoralized from what I read. i can't say i sympathize with you, though.
gung ho dirt-bags like you don't deserve sympathy.

it's not only radicals like me who say that yer fucked. even some former generals are saying the same. sounds like this may be your last imperial expedition, MSG. yer gonna be in Iraq until you retire or leave with your tail between yer legs.

"US general condemns Iraq failures"

Ed Vulliamy in New York
Sunday June 22, 2003
The Observer

One of the most experienced and respected figures in a generation of American warfare and peacekeeping yesterday accused the US administration of 'failing to prepare for the consequences of victory' in Iraq.
At the end of a week that saw a war of attrition develop against the US military, General William Nash told The Observer that the US had 'lost its window of opportunity' after felling Saddam Hussein's regime and was embarking on a long-term expenditure of people and dollars for which it had not planned.

'It is an endeavour which was not understood by the administration to begin with,' he said.

Now retired, Nash served in the Vietnam war and in Operation Desert Storm (the first Gulf War) before becoming commander of US forces in Bosnia and then an acclaimed UN Civil Affairs administrator in Kosovo.

He is currently a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington, specialising in conflict prevention.

In one of the most outspoken critiques from a man of his standing, Nash said the US had 'failed to understand the mindset and attitudes of the Iraqi people and the depth of hostility towards the US in much of the country'.

'It is much greater and deeper than just the consequences of war,' he added. 'It comes from 12 years of sanctions, Israel and Palestinians, and a host of issues.'

As a result, he says, 'we are now seeing the re-emergence of a reasonably organised military opposition - small scale, but it could escalate.'

It was insufficient for the US to presume that the forces now harassing and killing American troops were necessarily confined to what he called a residue of the Saddam regime. 'What we are facing today is a confluence of various forces which channel the disgruntlement of the people,' said Nash.

'You can't tell who is behind the latest rocket propelled grenade. It could be a father whose daughter has been killed; it could be a political leader trying to gain a following, or it could be rump Saddam. Either way, they are starting to converge.'

He said: 'the window of opportunity which occurred with the fall of Saddam was not seized in terms of establishing stability'.

'In the entire region - and Iraq is typical - there is a sense that America can do whatever it wants. So that if America decides to protect the oilfields and oil ministry, it can.

'And if America doesn't provide electricity and water or fails to protect medical supplies, it is because they don't want to or they don't care.'

Nash is reluctant to make comparisons with Vietnam: 'There are far more things that were different about Vietnam than there are similarities. Except perhaps the word "quagmire". Maybe that is the only thing that is the same.'


by Scottie
http://darwinawards.com/darwin/darwin1999-38.html

Apparently they like to train suicide bombers in about 4 days so that they dont have time to change their minds.

It shows.....


Anyway.. 4 days.. hmm it seems it is not the hardcore haters of israel blowing themselves up its the impulsive kids.
by MSG
My dear brit comarade, you are obviously looking in the mirror and writting about yourself!!
1. There is no air -conditioning here!.......but then you must know that or did the UK Guardian forgot to mention that!
2.You again in your own words dismiss you stupid arguments about the looting........you must have checked with the nearest Kuwaity for that information, did you? did you ask any kuwaity how they felt about being raped?..did you ask any Kuwaity how they felt about being hang from traffic signs?...oh no the UK Guardian did not report that.........
3. I dd not ask for you sympathy...........(sympathy is between shit and syphilis) ...........nor do I want it!......
4. Why don't I notice free thinker, I do but he does not quote the UK Guardian and think that is gospel!.....YOU DO
5. I never was concerned with the loot, the concern was about 25000 troops not surrendering when asked to. Since you don't know shit about the military or military ops may I suggest IP 1-4 Fleet Marine Force and it runs you through all the steps you take when you surround an enemy force, it is not what you think and it is not what you read.......so read that and you will be iluminated, but then there is a slight chance of that!
6. Just because you have rank on your collar does not mean you are not a moron. Regarding the "generals" statements well Nash is no stranger to making bone head decisions. Have you wondered why he is not a 4 star general.........as far as acclaimed UN Civil Affairs in Kosovo, that is not so and let's just leave it at that!
7. You never leave a conquering force to do peace keeping, but because the US is so spread out, we have to stay........this is a job for an MP battalion.......not infantry........we should be on QRF in support of them........
That is all I had time for........I have to on patrol and " sit on my ass in the air-conditioned" hummer ...........you are such a fucking idiot I'd really like to know where do you get off.............you must feel sorry that the brits lost their influence in the world..........sorry!...not really
by free thinker
Hello Aaron,

>>well, it's true that i've never heard you criticize US imperialism. your MO seems to be very much the opposite. so...go for it.

You know, actions by the US (and everyone) are based on the information they have AT THAT TIME, and one tries to chose the best path based on that information. Also we all know, information can be incomplete or inaccurate and given 20-20 hindsight, different choices might have been the better answer, if one had better information at the time. It is a fact that Hussein was supported by the US government, since he was the enemy of our enemy, Iran. Iran had taken Americans hostage and declared the US to be the great Satan. I really think the powers in Washington attitude at that time was "who cares - let them kill off each other". Was that long sighted or very humane? No.

But that was over 25 years ago and quite frankly, the US government was more concerned with Soviet influence and the "cold war" and how that could impact the US and its interests. Did capitalist greed enter into the decisions made? I'm sure it had some bearing. But I'm also sure that capitalist greed was not the deciding factor in all the decisions made; rather most decisions in this region were based on trying to limit Soviet influence. Why else would the US have aided the Afgan rebels against the Soviet Union?

Did the Soviets have imperial prerogatives? I'm sure as hell they did! Why where they interested in Afganistan and Africa, for example? Not for humanitarian reasons, I'm sure.

>>i gotta go but intend to take up freethinker's question about the Congo, Iran (etc) and MSG's despicable defense of the Highway of Death sometime fairly soon.

Hmm, an invading force refuses to surrender - what other military action would be taken, Aaron?

Again - when you posed questions for the Iraqis to answer for the poll, you didn't say that YOU had or would talk to Iraqis....wouldn't that be informative?

Regarding Congo:

"Moscow was a beacon of hope for Lumumba as the colonial masters of western Europe and the US were the problem. "

Wow, phaedra - given that in the past five years 3 MILLION people in the Congo have died - I find your statement sickening. The colonial powers & the US were long out of the picture when this nightmare occured after Laurent-Desire Kabila grabbed power and was later assassinated in 2001.

I think you should check out these sites:

http://www.congonline.com/Forum1/Forum00/Sloj01.htm

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/23/international/africa/23CONG.html?pagewanted=2

http://old.smh.com.au/news/0101/18/pageone/pageone5.html

A little history: In 1964, Kabila helped lead one of three rebellions launched by Lumumba supporters in different parts of the country. Ernesto (Che) Guevara, the Argentine-born revolutionary, assisted Kabila's revolt--in the eastern province of South Kivu--but reportedly grew disillusioned with Kabila's military leadership. The revolt was suppressed in 1965 by the Congolese army, led by Mobutu. Mobutu seized power later that year.

Kabila in 1967 founded the People's Revolutionary Party (PRP), which later set up a Marxist mini-state in South Kivu. The PRP territory, in the mountains west of Lake Tanganyika, was sustained by gold mining and ivory trading.

Kabila and the PRP lived in relative obscurity for the next two decades, except for a 1975 kidnapping in which PRP members seized four Western students from naturalist Jane Goodall's primate research center in Tanzania.

The PRP mini-state came to an end in the 1980s. Kabila spent most of the next decade in the Tanzanian capital, Dar es Salaam, running a business selling gold mined in eastern Zaire.

Kabila came to prominence again in October 1996, when he emerged to lead a revolt by ethnic Tutsis in South Kivu. With support from Museveni's government in Uganda and the Rwandan military--which was headed by Major General Paul Kagame, another Kabila associate--Kabila united the Tutsis with veteran anti-Mobutu guerrilla groups to mount a full-fledged rebellion. Kabila's forces were known as the Alliance of Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Congo-Zaire (ADFL).


by Scottie
Kagame doesnt trust the UN and not surprisingly is little nervous when his people are being opressed.
I think he may have become cynical and bitter. Still I notice he seems to have delt rather nicely (considering) with the hutu dudes who killed so many of his relitives.
by phaedra
What nonsense! The elite capitalists of the world in Belgium, Britain and the US have had their hands in the Congo up to their elbows for decades and turned their eyes away when human rights abuses took place. It was profitable to do so and therefore the leader of the
Congo that was willing to sell out his own country would be kept in power no matter what his atrocities because it was making a few people very rich.
If you really believe that this state of affairs in the Congo was simply tribal violence and had nothing to do with 4 decades of colonialism you are hopelessly naive.
by free thinker
Hmm...

You were declaring that the US was involved in the Congo - and the CIA murdered Lumumba in 1961 (42 years ago); I submitted an article proving that the CIA didn't murder him, the Belgium government was responsible...your reply was that "Moscow was a beacon of hope for Lumumba as the colonial masters of western Europe and the US were the problem." (???)
I guess the Belgium government didn't agree. Maybe they will bring themselves up for war crimes.

Oh yeah.

Then I pointed out that in the past five years 3 MILLION people in the Congo have died - and that I find your statement sickening and irrelevant. How did the US profit from that massive bloodshed, phaedra?

Besides, the colonial powers & the US were long out of the picture when the tribal warfare and mass killings occured after Laurent-Desire Kabila grabbed power in 1997 (and was later assassinated in 2001).

So the Marxist Kabila seizes power - and the mass killings begins.

You follow the timeline...

But the US is always responsible, whether involved in the country or not involved in the country, right? US is always bad - right, phaedra?
by Scottie
How long will you exonerate people of responsibility for their own action because you think that some they were influenced by colonialism or some other such vague conspiricy.
Surely you can't stand there and say

"a bunch of locals had a war with another bunch of locals.. but they are ALL innocent !!! It was big businesses fault !"
by aaron
'free thinker' takes pains to not mention the US-backed stooge and kleptomaniacal tyrant, Mobuto, who ruled the Congo (remember when it was called Zaire?) for decades between Lumumba's death and Kabila's ascendance. To suggest that the US's role in the Congo had ended a long time before Kabila took power is dead wrong--just as wrong as it is to suggest that Kabila was a socialist or communist. like I said on the other post, just ask all the capitalists that profited by looting the Congo's wealth under his reign.
by Mary Porter (mport84 [at] yahoo.com)
There is no way the US can bring democracy to Iraq. A UN force can take up the task of coordinating relief and reconstruction and supervising immediate national elections without further US interference. There is a much greater likelihood that all factions could cooperate with UN peacekeepers.
by Scottie
The UN tends to not be very good in places where the people will attack them. The UN might seem like an independant force to you but to the remainder of the iraqi forces they will be just a slightly different colour of occupier.
Besides the UN would tend to sit and watch as some group of people with power in Iraq (or from iran etc) set up some fundimentalist terrorist state or a facist state or whatever and not do anything about it.
by fyrguy
the UN has a great history of daling with volitile situations. Look at everything they've done, from Korea and Cypress to the various missions in the Balkans. Obviously, you are not getting the full story of what teh UN is about.
by Scottie
What has the UN done in any of those places? except for stuff that was actually achieved by individual nation states.
I mean besides what was going to happen anyway
by IS A WINNER!
the UN, an entity that is not accountable to any one chose to dispossess an entire People from their land in 1948 and hand it over to Jewish refugees from WW2 and beyond.

They have been able to get away with another final solution of transfer by innundating the public with tragic images of Jewish people who suffered grusome torture under Nazi Germany!

The UN is a bunch of balding aging men and occasionaly women who were either bribed or blackmailed to do the bidding of a few jewish thugs who shamelessly collaborated with Nazis;namely, Rudolph kastner, a Jewish collaborator who later worked with Israel's first prime Minister.

the Palestinians and the Jewish people are pit one against the other so they shall Not find out who the real threat to peace is, namely the *zionist establishment .


* zionist establishment- a for-profit org.
by free thinker
Aaron, I believe you were asking about this....

Wednesday, 06/25/03
Document links Saddam, bin Laden

By GILBERT S. MERRITT
For The Tennessean
Federal appellate Judge Gilbert S. Merritt of Nashville is in Iraq as one of 13 experts selected by the U.S. Justice Department to help rebuild Iraq's judicial system.

Merritt, 67, has made trips to Russia and India to work with their judicial systems. He has been sending periodic reports to The Tennessean about his experiences in Iraq and filed this dispatch recently:

Through an unusual set of circumstances, I have been given documentary evidence of the names and positions of the 600 closest people in Iraq to Saddam Hussein, as well as his ongoing relationship with Osama bin Laden.

I am looking at the document as I write this story from my hotel room overlooking the Tigris River in Baghdad.

One of the lawyers with whom I have been working for the past five weeks had come to me and asked me whether a list of the 600 people closest to Saddam Hussein would be of any value now to the Americans.

I said, yes, of course. He said that the list contained not only the names of the 55 ''deck of cards'' players who have already been revealed, but also 550 others.

When I began questioning him about the list, how he obtained it and what else it showed, he asked would it be of interest to the Americans to know that Saddam had an ongoing relationship with Osama bin Laden.

I said yes, the Americans have, so far as I am aware, have never been able to prove that relationship, but the president and others have said that they believe it exists. He said, ''Well, judge, there is no doubt it exists, and I will bring you the proof tomorrow.''

So today he brought me the proof, and there is no doubt in my mind that he is right.

The document shows that an Iraqi intelligence officer, Abid Al-Karim Muhamed Aswod, assigned to the Iraq embassy in Pakistan, is ''responsible for the coordination of activities with the Osama bin Laden group.''

The document shows that it was written over the signature of Uday Saddam Hussein, the son of Saddam Hussein. The story of how the document came about is as follows.

Saddam gave Uday authority to control all press and media outlets in Iraq. Uday was the publisher of the Babylon Daily Political Newspaper.

On the front page of the paper's four-page edition for Nov. 14, 2002, there was a picture of Osama bin Laden speaking, next to which was a picture of Saddam and his ''Revolutionary Council,'' together with stories about Israeli tanks attacking a group of Palestinians.

On the back page was a story headlined ''List of Honor.'' In a box below the headline was ''A list of men we publish for the public.'' The lead sentence refers to a list of ''regime persons'' with their names and positions.

The list has 600 names and titles in three columns. It contains, for example, the names of the important officials who are members of Saddam's family, such as Uday, and then other high officials, including the 55 American ''deck of cards'' Iraqi officials, some of whom have been apprehended.

Halfway down the middle column is written: ''Abid Al-Karim Muhamed Aswod, intelligence officer responsible for the coordination of activities with the Osama bin Laden group at the Iraqi embassy in Pakistan.'' (For more about the list, see accompanying article on this page.)

The lawyer who brought the newspaper to me, Samir, and another lawyer with whom I have been working, Zuhair, translated the Arabic words and described what had happened in Baghdad the day it was published.

Samir bought his paper at a newsstand at around 8 a.m. Within two hours, the Iraqi intelligence officers were going by every newsstand in Baghdad and confiscating the papers. They also went to the home of every person who they were told received a paper that day and confiscated it.

The other lawyer, Zuhair, who was the counsel for the Arab League in Baghdad, did not receive delivery of his paper that day. He called his vendor, who told him that there would be no paper that day, a singular occurrence he could not explain.

For the next 10 days, the paper was not published at all. Samir's newspaper was not confiscated and he retained it because it contained this interesting ''Honor Roll of 600'' of the people closest to the regime.

The only explanation for this strange set of events, according to the Iraqi lawyers, is that Uday, an impulsive and somewhat unbalanced individual, decided to publish this honor roll at a time when the regime was under worldwide verbal attack in the press, especially by us. It would, he thought, make them more loyal and supportive of the regime.

His father was furious, knowing that it revealed information about his supporters that should remain secret.

For example, at the same time this was published, Saddam was denying that he had any relationship with Osama. Therefore Saddam had all the papers confiscated, and he ordered that publication of the paper be stopped for 10 days.

That is the story of the ''Honor Roll of 600,'' and why I believe that President Bush was right when he alleged that Saddam was in cahoots with Osama and was coordinating activities with him.

It does not prove that they engaged together in any particular act of terror against the United States.

But it seems to me to be strong proof that the two were in contact and conspiring to perform terrorist acts.

Up until this time, I have been skeptical about these claims. Now I have changed my mind. There is, however, one big problem remaining: They are both still at large and the combined forces of the free world have been unable to find them.

Until we find and capture them, they will remain a threat — Saddam with the remnants of his army and supporters in combination with the worldwide terrorist organization of Osama bin Laden.

by Dave Shultz (dwshultz [at] canada.com)
I have a better idea, why don't YOU move somewhere else, and take the Assholes of Evil with you.
by WARRIOR (warrior8411 [at] cableone.net)
If it wasn't for the assholes of evil, we would not have to keep deploying U.S Forces to take care of business and then nobody would have to move anywhere else, what a perfect world it would be
the rest of the world wouldn't hate America.

If it wasn't for *ssholes like Warrior8411, the rest of us wouldn't have to be ashamed of our countrymen.
by re: Anarchist (suckow [at] hotmail.com)
It's good to have unfiltered access to current events. The pictures are helpful, and I hope the dissenters in Iraq are many and courageous. I want US soldiers to recognize the same rights to home rule and free speech that they have pledged their lives to protect as Americans. I hope we can all put ourselves in the shoes of the invaded and invader, sufficiently to avoid further destruction, injuries and killings. Had someone, had anyone, invaded my home turf, killing between six and seven thousand "collateral" civilians in the process, I would hope to show as much zeal protesting the occupation and standing up to an unjust armed presence as do the citizens in these pictures.
by Dave
Don't cheer for the protests in Iraq to turn into civil unrest. The most peaceful outcome is to allow the occupation to run its course, resulting in the establishment of a stable and Iraqi-run government. Pulling out now would result in chaos, as you well know and may, indeed wish for.

I heard an interview with the former NYC Police Commissioner who is overseeing the Iraqi Department of the interior. His description of the issues we face and the wisdom with which we approach them was fascinating. For example, we are having to retrain all of the Iraqi police officers so they can conduct routine patrols, investigations, and interviews by American methods - methods which respect the rights of the Iraqi citizens.

The task is huge but we have competent people in charge. You need to be more patient to see it through - for the sake of Iraq and that region.
by MuseTek
Dave, you comment: "by American methods - methods which respect the rights of the Iraqi citizens.

The task is huge but we have competent people in charge."

Nice fantasy. Unexploded cluster bombs sure do a nice job respecting the rights of Iraqi citizens.

Competent? we had to fire the whole top transition team only 2 weeks into the fiacso.

We do need to clean up the mess we have created. But I'm afraid you have been hypnotized by fast-talkiing snake oil salesmen.
by Try something radical
"killing between six and seven thousand "collateral" civilians in the process"

3,240 according to an AP report, although I suspect that figure will still be whittled own some more, lets use 3,000 for argument sake, you know the same amount that have died in the Paris, with almost daily attacks and it increasing looks like France is in a Quagmire and will have to surrender to air conditioning.
Stopping or preventing all death is an impossible goal; one can only hope to minimize it that is what all you lefty fantasy dreamers fail to understand. These deaths could not be prevented; Saddam would have easily killed more had we done nothing.
Your completely out of touch with the average Iraqi, that is because you can't imagine yourself in a true oppressive type environment, (You have never been to one) so you have no idea of the hatred for Saddam, since you were to lazy to talk to Iraqis or exiles or hell anyone who disagrees with you. Of course your fight for freedom, you like it, know what makes you think most Iraqis would fight for Saddam? aside from financial benefits, or with a gun in their back. I personally loved reading the stories about Arab volunteers from outside Iraq who the moment they started shooting at Americans, we in turn shoot in the back by Iraqi soldiers. (no 72 virgins for you)
Rest assured the vast majorities wants their own government and no long term occupation, yet are scared to death of US troops pulling out right now.
You know like back in ‘91, when your kind was bitching about the loss of life, and how we must let the poor Iraqis overthrow Saddam, because in some fancy world this was somehow better than the world nations doing it. They got crushed at least 60,000 died, I know your slow so that’s about 20 times as in this war, which your all really upset about, yet back in April of 91 none of you could be bother about the plight of Iraqis, no massive street protests none of your pretty signs. But don’t worry the American government won’t follow your silly ideas anymore. Do you even have any ideas?

"We do need to clean up the mess we have created"

That’s nice, any original ideas? didn't think so, better to complain from afar then stick your neck out, wouldn’t you say. Nor do I assume you have/had an alternative plan to get rid of Saddam with less than 3,000 civilian causalities. (I know I know we could give $65 million to an Iraqi opposition group that will do the job right?) Token charity, I love it, your Americans are so arrogant and ignorant because of your decadence.
Your movement has no vision, no idea what should be done, only that every American action must be wrong. You offer no solutions, or current help, only how with 20/20 hindsight, you would do things better, yet fail to address the key problems at the time.
For example although your willing to admit Afghanistan is better off without the Taliban, you use “the America supported them” to wipe your hands of the whole affair. (if only it were that easy) But you forget, or rather choose not to learn, that when the CIA and mainly Pakistan “supported” the Taliban in the early 90’s, was during the Northern Alliance “civil war” when each warlord was fighting for a daily share of Kabul. As you now have found the need to learn, the NA and Taliban are not that different. (Although trust me NA is still the lesser evil) However in the early to mid 90’s Afghanistan need stability, most of all to get somewhat back on their feet and the Taliban were the only real option for this. This also why the Taliban were at first, somewhat welcomed especially in Kabul. I doubt half you could have found Afghanistan on a map before 9/11, let alone be worried about their plight.
I will remind you that it was the radical left not the right that gave rise to demons such as Hitler and Stalin, it is your movement that has 150 million deaths on your hands, and yet you continue to refuse to learn from your mistakes. You preach about human rights and freedom of speech, yet are willing to violate your own principles and goals whenever it suits your own political interests, you have become “the machine” which you despise so much.
The radical left has had its Vietnam, goodbye we won't miss you!
by Andrew
"...I know your slow..."

This is an insult that should definitely be taken seriously. I know that I listen when somebody without even a basic grasp of grammatical conventions calls me stupid.
by Why would that be?
Perhaps because you don't have any answers? Or any solutions that would work better?

When someone is telling you that what you believe isn't true, and is offering you proof of that - are you going to discount it because his english isn't perfect and polished?

Seems to me you need to read it again, and put your ego to one side.
by Why would that be?
Perhaps because you don't have any answers? Or any solutions that would work better?

When someone is telling you that what you believe isn't true, and is offering you proof of that - are you going to discount it because his english isn't perfect and polished?

Seems to me you need to read it again, and put your ego to one side.
by JoerT
Is it just me, or are you guys missing the point? Booting up flamewars will help noone, and will make any converstion about this news impossible. I didn't read all your crap, but chill out guys.

PS: flaming me won't do you good, cuz I won't be back here.

Peace.
by blw (balenda23 [at] aol.com)
you are a stupid person with no background of the military you should be ashame of yourself, just like all those innocence people died in 911, that whould be the same as all the people who would die in the bomd that you are suggesting that AMERICA use. So it is OK for us to go and destroy these people but it is not OK for sthem to do the same. I am in the military and on my way to I raqi, with two kids and a husband, I will do what I need to do to stay alive. Are you in the military? Do you know how it feels to have to go over that with the idea of not coming home for reasons unknown to you? If you answer no to any of these questions, shut up. Please don't say that this is my job.
How can anyone say "take an A-bomb over there and kill them all before they attack us"????? Should we blow up Canada and Mexico before they attack too?

Iraq did not attack the US. We are over there killing their children and I feel so bad and horrible about it.

BUSH, BRING OUR TROOPS HOME!!!!
by midget sun
The THUGS they call the u.s. military has raped IRAQ for someone they didnt evern find, and george bush is a 2 faced wannabe president who discraces the people killed in SEPT 11 by using them as an excuse for evrything from OIL DRILLING in ALASKA to THROWING OUR RIGHTS AWAY. Innocent people and other people die each day for his mistake and the mistakes of Sadam and all of those money hungry jerk-faces including george bush and Al-Queda.
by nemo4memmo
it seems apparent now that many iraqis would like to return to living as they were before, under the ruthless fist of another dictator. they are not assisting the U.S. soldiers in setting up a peaceful government in a peaceful country. they would rather help the insurgents kill more americans. it doesn't take much to realize what they're planning. they are ready to set up another theocracy and to hell with U.S. help. well, at least we tried. oh, by the way, now that we have Saddam in our custody we should make a deal with him. if he keeps his nose clean and behaves himself we should give him back his country and people. maybe the iraqis might learn something after 5000 years.
Barry says that soon the U.s. will be kicked out of Iraq, well then you don't understand the united states motives to defeat terrorism as of yet. It doesn't matter how long it takes takes. I agree with you Zroom, I'm with ya all the way.
by Wade
This goes for nemo4memmo, if you want the u.s to cut and run, stop wasting your time because we aint leaving until the job is done, and you know what I mean by that.
by no wade
not enough blood in your mouth yet?

I would ask you to put yourself in another's place. Someone who is led by a dictator who violates human rights in an obscene manner. You fight back against what seem insurmountable odds, only to be beaten up in your own country by people who don't respect your rights.

Iraq? you betcha. Amerika? right.
by Lorna Abbott
Any nation stupid enough to fight a land war in Asia is dumb enough to invade the Middle East where there has been killing for thousands of years.

In both cases. American troops killed more civilians than combatants.

I wouldn't want the US military to invade my country (USA) either.

Ask any Native American. They have been defending their homeland from invaders since 1492.
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