On behalf of Europe: (page 2)

ThiChi

30, Is that all?

This alliance is second only in number to WWll when 47 Nations assisted directly or indirectly the US! Very telling!

: I can understand that he, because of his obviously very limited intellectual capacity, does not understand what he has started, how he has turned the Moslem world against the US and everything Western

Name just ONE leader of any Muslim Country which has spoken out against our attacking Sadaam.

Farkel

Satanus

Farkel

Kingdom Expresses Deep Concern
P.K. Abdul Ghafour, Arab News Staff

JEDDAH, 21 March 2003 — The Kingdom expressed its “deep concern and regret” over the US-led military operations against Iraq yesterday.
Foreign Minister Prince Saud Al-Faisal spoke of the “Kingdom’s hope for a quick halt to military action and for the return to peaceful efforts,” according to the Saudi Press Agency.
In the first Saudi reaction to the start of the US-led war, Prince Saud emphasized that Iraq’s “unity, internal security and territorial integrity” must be preserved, and rejected a military occupation of Iraq by US-led forces.
Prince Saud reiterated that the Kingdom’s stance would be “under no circumstances to take part in the war against Iraq,” again saying that “its armed forces will not enter an inch of Iraqi territory.”
The Jeddah-based Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) also called for an immediate end to the war on Iraq and a diplomatic solution to the standoff.
“The OIC deeply regrets the latest developments in Iraq and for an immediate end to military operations and a return (to diplomacy) to try to find a peaceful solution through the UN Security Council,” Secretary-General Abdulwahed Belkeziz said.
He also urged the return to Iraq of UN weapons inspectors, who were pulled out in the final hours before the United States launched the war earlier yesterday to topple Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.
“War is never the best way to resolve conflicts,” he said, adding that it would “add to the suffering of the Iraqi people and upset the stability of the Middle East region”.
The secretary-general of the 57-member group also said that the war would “increase terrorism and extremism in the world.”
At a recent summit, the OIC condemned any US attack on Baghdad, even though several of its members are providing facilities for the use of US and British forces to carry out the campaign.

http://www.arabnews.com/Article.asp?ID=23994

SS

Realist

thichi,

Please just sit back while others who refuse to make peace with this devil do the right thing. Old Hippies like you have placed us in this mess with your appeasement policies with tyrants. Thank God more than 30 Nations are supporting what must be done!

LOL ...who gave saddam the WMD in the first place??? just in case you don't know...it was bush sen., reagan and rumsfeld!

farkel,

all the arab countries whose leaders are not dependent on the US have spoken against the attack.

Abaddon

Farkel;

Pause your stirring rendition of 'Hail to the Chief' on the piano for one moment and consider that most Arab leaders are more than intelligent enough to see;

1/ Gulf War II is claimed by the US government to be a part of the war against terrorism, based on Al-Quaeda links with Iraq, is claimed to be due to their extra-territorial interests, and also due to their defiance against the UN disarmament program.

2/ Iraq, although run by an evil mad man, has yet to be linked in any substansive way with Al-Quaeda, are not an immediate risk to their neighbours, and do not have enough WMD for weapons inspectors to put them in clear breach.

So, the Arab leaders can see that the USA's leadership has lied, consistantly and constantly, to try and justify the war. They can see that the USA has forged ahead, irrespective of world opnion, when there is no immediate risk to other nations. They can see the USA shows extreme religious bigotry in their handling of the Israeli/Palestinina problem.

thichi; do you realise that Buffy The Vampire Slayer is a fictional program? I ask, as you have a charming belief in the integrity of the American government that suggests a slight difficulty in seperating fact from government bull.

William Penwell

Also who’s next once Iraq goes down? I heard a news report yesterday saying that Iran is more of a threat right now than Iraq. They have a far more advance nuclear program than Iraq.

Will

Gamaliel

According to the definition of "war crimes" that the United States accepted and agreed to in Nuremburg, almost every US President has qualified as a true war criminal.

G.W.Bush was not on the list until this week.

Gamaliel

hillary_step

Well written Abbadon.

HS

Hojon

Let's see what people that actually have lived in Iraq think:

http://www.opendemocracy.net/debates/article-2-73-983.jsp

The anti-“war” feeling prevalent among most people I speak to seems to me totally misjudged and misplaced. (Incidentally, the quotation marks here are deliberate: in truth it will be no war, but an invasion. A war presumes relatively equal forces battling against each other, with resistance on both sides. A US-led force will encounter no resistance from the Iraqi people nor the army).
I have to be honest here and say that, to me, this feeling is based partly on a great misunderstanding of the situation in Iraq, and partly on people’s desire to seem “politically rebellious” against the big, bad Americans.

Lest you think this was written by someone that loves the US, here is more from the same author

Let me say also, that I agree the American government is indeed big and bad; I have no illusions about its true intentions behind an attack on Iraq. The Iraqis have long known the ignorant and truly atrocious attitude of the American government towards most of the world’s population....

Iraqis also felt the effect of this attitude when America and the west ignored, supplied even, Saddam’s use of biological weapons on the people of Halabja in 1998, killing 5,000 people immediately, and causing the deformed births of children in the area to this day.
Iraqis knew well the untrustworthy nature of western governments when the coalition gave Saddam permission, a few days after the end of the Gulf war of 1991, to massacre the rising people after they had wrested control from him of most of Iraq’s cities.
In short, the people inside Iraq know the realities of American and western policy towards their country far better even than Iraqis outside – for they live with its realities every day.

So this is not some American shill here. Note the rest:

Questions to the protestors
I now want to invite those who support the anti-“war” movement (apart from pacifists – that is a totally different situation) to ask themselves some hard questions about their motives and reasoning.
You may feel that America is trying to blind you from seeing the truth about its real reasons for an invasion. I must argue that in fact, it is you who are still blind to the bigger truths in Iraq. I must ask you to consider the following questions:
Saddam has murdered more than a million Iraqis over the past thirty years; are you willing to allow him to kill another million?
Out of a population of 20 million, 4 million Iraqis have been forced to flee their country during Saddam’s reign. Are you willing to ignore the real and present danger that caused so many people to leave their homes and families?
Saddam rules Iraq using fear; he regularly imprisons, executes and tortures large numbers of people for no reason whatsoever. This may be hard to believe, and you may not even appreciate the extent of such barbaric acts, but believe me you will be hard-pressed to find a single family in Iraq which has not had a son/father/brother killed, imprisoned, tortured and/or ‘‘disappeared” due to Saddam’s regime. What then has been stopping you from taking to the streets to protest against such blatant crimes against humanity in the past?
Saddam gassed thousands of political prisoners in one of his campaigns to ‘‘cleanse” prisons; why are you not protesting against this barbaric act?
This is an example of the dictator’s policy you are trying to save. Saddam has made a law excusing any man who rapes a female relative and then murders her in the name of adultery. Do you still want to march to keep him in power?
Throughout my life, my father and many other Iraqis have attended constant meetings, protests and exhibitions that call for the end of Saddam’s reign. I remember when I was around 8 years old, I went along with him to a demonstration at the French embassy, protesting against the French sale of weapons to Saddam. I have attended the permanent rally against Saddam that has been held every Saturday in Trafalgar Square for the past five years. The Iraqi people have been protesting for years against the war: the war that Saddam has waged against them. Where have you been?
Why is it now – at the very time that the Iraqi people are being given real hope, however slight and however precarious, that they can live in an Iraq that is free of the horrors partly described in this email – that you deem it appropriate to voice your disillusions with America’s policy in Iraq?

When this whole business started, I really was against it. I thought that the Iraqis would fight tooth and nail to keep the Americans out, that this would make the VC attacks in Vietnam look minor in comparison. I now believe that the Iraqi people will welcome anyone that can get Saddam out of power. While they probably have no great love of the US, they recognize that this is their chance to end the oppression they have lived with (due to the US and Europe's actions in the past, that is true) for 25 years.

Hojon

Whoops, just realized that the author of that article above didn't live in Iraq, but her parents did. There are some good articles written by other Iraqis here -> http://www.opendemocracy.net/debates/issue-2-73.jsp

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