by Abaddon 53 Replies latest jw friends
Yeru, it all depends on the company you keep. I've only met two people that agreed with it, my boss and my coworker. My boss is a toe the line Republican and my coworker is just a violence loving nut. Absolutly every other person I've met either outright disagreed with the war or was on the fence.
I'm with Aztec on this one!
Merc'
Merc,
Most of us in favor of taking out saddam were of that opinion because we hate the violence Saddam Hussein perpetrated on Iraqis, Kuwaitis, and many others.
Thi Chi,
I see two red X's and this:
Yeru, most of us that opposed the war hated the violence Saddam perpetrated against his own people as well. We just didn't buy into Bush's lies and propoganda and wanted a less violent solution. Or at the very least some believable evidence that military action was the preferable route.
~Aztec
PS I see all of ThiChi's pics
Yeru, most of us that opposed the war hated the violence Saddam perpetrated against his own people as well.
Did you really? Did you protest this violence? Or did your protests begin only when it became likely the US government was about to go to war against the regime of Saddam Hussein? Perhaps you didn't hate Saddam's violence against his own people quite enough to support the only feasible way of ending it.
We just didn't buy into Bush's lies and propoganda and wanted a less violent solution.
A less violent solution such as.....? The diplomacy that failed miserably and allowed hundreds of thousands to die for twelve years? Or perhaps you have another solution in mind that doesn't involve violence. Please tell us what it is, so that in future this method can be used with other psychopathic dictators.
Or at the very least some believable evidence that military action was the preferable route.
There was abundant evidence of the suffering and death caused by the regime of Saddam Hussein. What is so unbelievable about all of that evidence? What better reason do you need than the mass brutalisation of an entire population?
Expatbrit
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Here we "connected the dots" in a way people accused us of not doing before 9/11, and these partisan nuts are ticked off! Either Bush 41, Clinton, Bush 43, Colin Powell, and the 14 Democrats who signed that October 1998 letter urging President Clinton to attack and destroy Iraq's WMD programs were telling the truth, or Saddam Hussein was. Either the Democrat-controlled Senate had ulterior motives in approving the use of force resolution (77-23) in October 2002, as did the House (296-133), or they knew Saddam had WMDs
http://www.NewsAndOpinion.com |
The whole world is focused on what we've failed to find in Iraq -- to the point of neglecting what we have found. In doing so, the press is missing the significance of what the United States and Britain have achieved.
The banned weapons will eventually be accounted for. Of that there can be no doubt. But the more important story is that the coalition overthrew a regime that can fairly be compared with Nazi Germany. Such a deed would be applauded by the world -- if we lived in a better world.
The absolute numbers of those tortured, maimed and killed by the Ba'ath government will never be known. But some estimates say 1 million Iraqis were butchered by Saddam. American and British forces are finding mass graves throughout the country. Corpses of men, women and children were found. Even some of the children had been tortured before being executed. A columnist for a Lebanese newspaper wrote: "This barbarism, unprecedented in human history, was committed by Arab hands, by hands that found such delight in death and murder that the death squads would send the heads of the victims to Saddam Hussein's two sons in cardboard boxes. . . . These plastic bags in the mass graves contained bullet-riddled skulls, bodies wrapped in rags, tied in ropes, or dressed in worn pieces of clothing. . . . Ropes still tied a mother's bones to her infant's, and a father's to his son . . . "
U.S. forces have reportedly captured millions of pages of meticulous documents from the files of the security forces, detailing tortures and murders by the regime. According to Insight magazine, "A single document dated August 1989 lists the names of 87 people who were executed and a summary of each case. The alleged crimes included trespassing into forbidden zones and teaching the Kurdish language." In one police station in Nasiriya, survivors showed U.S. Marines the electric shock prods, electric chair, and other torture implements, as well as tons of surveillance equipment. The station was filled with pictures of burned bodies.
The Saddam regime apparently used photos of its torture victims to intimidate others, particularly the victims' families.
Insight tells the story of Fatima Faraj, a Kurd whose nephews were arrested by the regime in 1986. After two years, they were executed. The Republican Guards demanded that their father pay a fee for their burial. When he demanded a receipt, the guards turned over the bodies. The father took the bodies of his sons home in boxes. "Their entire bodies other than (beneath) their underwear were places of burn," Fatima sobbed. "There were two black spots on their necks. They looked as though they were whipped and kicked throughout their bodies." Another nephew survived his torture. "He was kicked so bad," Fatima testified. "They took out all his fingernails and toenails. . . . He had a nervous breakdown."
Writing in the London-based Arabic newspaper Al-Sharq Al-Awsat, columnist Ahmed Al-Rab'i issued a "J'accuse" at fellow Arabs: "Is there not a single man of conscience who might be brought by these sights to . . . admit that he was mistaken, that he was unaware of the truth, that he was a victim of the misleading (Arab) media?" A Jordanian journalist declared the obvious: "The dictatorship of the Iraqi Ba'ath reached the level of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia . . . "
Any nation that marched into that torture chamber of a country and freed it deserves the world's gratitude. Instead, we have carping from all sides.
Antiquities were stolen from the museum (by the way, only 47 unaccounted for out of the originally suggested 170,000), water and power supplies took more than a couple of weeks to stabilize, and we haven't yet laid hands on the well-hidden weapons of mass destruction. The weapons will be found. The rest is nonsense. The United States and Britain have done a magnificent thing. Even if nothing else follows from it -- no liberalization of the Arab world, no breakthrough between Israelis and Palestinians, no hobbling of the terror masters -- it will have been worth it. 
Here we go expat...
Did you protest the violence against the Iraqi people? I signed petitions in person and online asking the US government to end sanctions against the Iraqi people for a long time before the war took place. I also did something very important, I educated myself about the region. Did I just start this recently? No. I took and interest in the Middle East after reading a book by a woman who lives there. I was appalled at the conditions women living there have to deal with. A lot of the deplorable conditions the people living there have dealt with are a result of sanctions.
Are you admitting that Bush and his administration lied about their reasons for going in? Yes, I think there could have been a less violent solution. It's been done before. We've supported coups for one thing.
Yes, there was abundant evidence that Saddam was a nasty butcher. Why did the Bush administration keep changing their reasons for the war? If they had stated that this was the reason for the war at the beginning though I'm sure they would've realized that they now have the burden of going after all the nasty butcher's out there! Wouldn't want to become known as the world's police... They went the safe, ie post 9-11 route, and linked it all to terrorism. When that failed they went an alternate route. Classic bait and switch, and most American's are either too apathetic, ignorant or scared to argue.
~Aztec
Aztec,
So...you signed petitions asking the US to end UN sanctions against Iraq, but what did you do to protest the REASON for those santctions, which was Saddam Hussein and his brutal regime. Now I agree, the Sanctions were a bad idea (as are most UN ideas). The only ones hurt buy it were the poor in Iraq. Had we taken out Saddam back in the first gulf war we wouldn't have this problem. I blame Bush Senior and his advisors for that.
The reasons for taking out Saddam never changed. At times one might have been emphasized over another, but all the reasons were there. So far the total of civilian deaths is less than 3500. Too many, but not near as many as predicted by nay sayers. That number is mostly the fault of Saddam and regime for stationing weapons next to civilians. Further, that number doesn't reflect how many of that 3500 were actually Fedeyen or soldiers that had put on civilian clothes. The point to that litany...just one of Saddam's mass graves had over 15,000 men women and children in it, just one, and there are many more mass graves left to go. How does one deal with a dictator like that without force of arms?
So, the question to you is, what did you do to protest SADDAM, not UN sanctions, but SADDAM?
Yeru, I did a lot more than most people as stated in the above post. One thing I did was activly engage people in dialogue about the situation in the Middle East. Please understand that I am not some hothead uber leftist. I subscribe to a few sites that give me quite a balanced perspective. There are quite a few radical people out there that think about little else than getting themselves arrested for "the cause". I'm not like that. If I disagree with something I will speak up but not in an irrational manner.
The only ones hurt buy it were the poor in Iraq. Had we taken out Saddam back in the first gulf war we wouldn't have this problem. I blame Bush Senior and his advisors for that.
Agreed! I think we should have dealt with Saddam a long time ago. The reason we didn't take him out at the time is we didn't have a proper replacement.
The reasons for taking out Saddam never changed. At times one might have been emphasized over another, but all the reasons were there.
Not true. Bush and his administration backpeddled quite a few times. The usual hem and haw verbatim was issued, of course. I'm sick of the ad infinitum support of this man and his suspicious choices of administration heads. I do lean a tad to the left but I have supported and voted for right-wing candidates when I thought they would do a good job. Bush is very circumspect in many regards. I sincerly doubt his motivations or veracity on many things.
Lest you suspect my motives, I did not participate in any anti-war protests. I felt they were futile and attempts for attention. I've heard many people whining about being arrested. Get real! Real change is not never made by silly protests. Real change is met by everyday interaction and subtle interchanges.
Okay, that's it for now!
~Aztec *ramble ramble*
