I cant believe Im interrupting my vacation to write in this thread but here goes... Showing pictures of Q/U Hussein is NOT the same as al Jazeera or other Arab TV stations showing slain soldiers. Here is why, these guys were part of a criminal family that terrorized a whole country and killed, tortured and maimed thousands. The US is showing the pictures so that Iraqis can begin to put the Hussein decades behind them and move on into the future. The Iraqis need to see that these guys are dead otherwise there will be a thousand Q/U sightings a week ala Elvis. As well, I caught this link: http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A46118-2003Jul25?language=printer I found it laughable that the say that it is "un-Islamic" to show corpses. What exactly were al-Arabia and al-Jazeera doing for weeks on end??!?! How do you spell "hypocracy" ?!
PRESIDENT RELEASES NEWLY RECOVERED WARZONE DOCUMENTS OFFERING INCONTROVERTIBLE PROOF OF IRAQI ACQUISITION OF WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION Statement by the President THE PRESIDENT: Good afternoon. Today, I'm taking just a few minutes off from scarfing down pork rinds at my daddy's 79th birthday party to bring glorious news to the American people. After months and months of fruitlessly scouring the charred carcass of Iraq for some shred of evidence to justify my killing more innocent civilians than died on 9/11, I'm pleased to say that documents newly recovered from Saddam bin Hussein's safe prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that this nefarious evildoer was actively scheming with rogue regimes to acquire vast quantities of WMDs. And while I have not had an opportunity to examine the papers myself, I have the utmost faith in the competence of those persons in the Central Intelligence Agency to whom I delegated the task of covering my ass. Therefore, I have ordered these documents to be released immediately. I trust that they will appease the crybaby liberal news media, and effectively debunk any absurd speculation about my Administration and the DoD's Constitutionally suspect Intelligence Office having bullied Georgie Peorgie Tenet and his chubby office jockeys into falsifying reports of Iraqi WMDs just so I could settle a family score. Thank you. EXHIBIT A EXHIBIT B http://www.whitehouse.org/news/2003/061303.asp
The word you've entered isn't in the dictionary. Click on a spelling suggestion below or try again using the Dictionary search box to the right. Suggestions for hypocracy: 1. hypocrisy 2. hippocras 3. Hippocrates 4. hypocrites 5. hypocorism 6. hypocrite 7. hypocrisies 8. hippocrases 9. Hippocratic 10. hyperacuities http://www.webster.com
July 23, 2003 Quagmire Index Revised to Reflect Death of Saddam Sons (2003-07-23) -- Now that Saddam Hussein's sons are dead, a panel of journalists has revised the official Iraq Quagmire Index. According to the new benchmark, all violence against Coalition troops should cease immediately, since Uday and Qusay Hussein are gone. The Quagmire Index is a service journalists provide to establish hopeful expectations for the future. When those expectations are proved wrong by events, reporters and pundits may officially use the term "quagmire" to describe the situation. Journalists last revised the index when President George Bush declared an end to major combat operations in Iraq. Reporters interpreted this to mean that if any American troops were killed or wounded after that date, then Mr. Bush had lied about the "war" being over, and Iraq was a Vietnam-like quagmire. Studies of American news consumers show they appreciate the Quagmire Index because it eliminates the need to consider and remember numerous facts. For journalists it saves time, and bypasses the discomfort of careful news analysis. http://www.scrappleface.com/MT/archives/001074.html#001074
From http://www.nationalreview.com/hanson/hanson072503.asp These are still perilous times. But if anyone on September 12, 2001, had predicted that 22 months later there would still be no repeat of 9/11; that bin Laden would be either quiet, dead, or in hiding; that al Qaeda would be dispersed, the Taliban gone, and the likes of a Mr. Karzai in Kabul; that Saddam Hussein would be out of power, his sons dead, and an Iraqi national council emerging in his place; that troops would be leaving Saudi Arabia, Arafat ostracized, and Sharon seeking negotiations; that new Middle East agreements under discussion â and all at a cost of fewer than 300 American lives â then he would surely have been written off as a madman. All that and more were no mere accidents. They were the direct result of the work of thousands of brave and astute Americans who were as likely to be slurred during their risky ordeal as they were to be third-guessed in its successful aftermath â and predictably by the same opportunistic bystanders. So far we have lost fewer lives in Afghanistan and Iraq than we did in a single day's butchery in the Marine barracks in Lebanon. But unlike that terrible sacrifice, this time Americans are fighting back, winning, and changing for the better the lives of millions in the most remarkable, ambitious, and risky endeavor since the end of World War II. We need to remember all of that, and get a grip on ourselves amid the latest outbreak of what we can now diagnose as a chronic and embarrassing hysteria Americana.
I don't recall the President or anyone else calling a GC foul over the photos of dead Americans and Brits that showed on some Arab TV stations and the internet. They did call GC fouls on other events. As for "acceptable public display of dead war criminals," as has been pointed out by the DOD and others, there is plenty of precedent for showing the pictures of dead dictators and other leading officials to the populations they used to abuse - as in Italy, Rumania, and Germany, among others. As Clifford May pointed out today, imagine what people would be saying, in the Arab world and in certain dank dark corners of the Internet if the US refused to release pictures. Give 'em time. The first rush of denial is already abating, and most even in the skeptical Arab world are already accepting the basic reality. Futher documentation, testimony, and exhibition have already followed, and there will be more, probably until long after no one even feels like bringing the subject up anymore. As for third-party ID, there has already been some - for instance by the Hussein family's plastic surgeon - and there will be more. As for the other point, anything positive that happens prior to the release of the WMD survey team's report will be interpreted in just the same paranoid manner by just the same people. Is there any point over the last couple of months at which those same people wouldn't have felt justified in saying the exact same thing over the same news? It's part of the typical syndrome of "naive cynicism," the desperation both not to be fooled and not to have one's accustomed worldview shaken. This syndrome was long ago identified by Marx as typical of a certain petit-bourgeois insecurity, as Euroblogger Nelson Ascher recently explained while discussing the BBC's difficulties: "most intellectuals, belonging as they do to the petit bourgeoisie, are unsure of their place in society and, thus, cannot rely on any of their own instincts except that of distrusting, in principle, anyone else, especially people who are in a position of power and close enough at hand." On this note, I would estimate that approximately 50% of all posts to the chit-chat area of ET embody precisely this syndrome. No matter what the team reports, it will be found lacking by many of those same people. If it's too good for the Administration, some will claim that whatever is there was fabricated. No matter what it contains, people will find some statement on such and such a date that will prove to them that the Administration "lied" or that the war wasn't necessary or whatever theme they happen to be pushing that day.
' You're welcome. I posted it and the Holocaust material to help put the Dresden firebombing - clearly one of the worst operations ever carried about the US - as well as much of the rest of this discussion in some context. We've lost some 200 soldiers in Iraq, in the process of seeking to achieve policy goals that are, without exaggeration, of world-historical significance. As I've pointed out here before, we lost 200 soldiers/minute on D-Day. Our willingness to take such casualties was essential to our ability to win the war and re-make the post-war world along lines that inestimably improved our lives and made a Europe more or less at peace and more or less prosperous possible. As Victor Davis Hanson pointed out in the article excerpted above, we lost more soldiers in a single day in Beirut - and our resultant withdrawal, which sent the clear message to one group of radical Islamists trying to seize a country that TERRORISM WORKS, may have more than a little to do with many of our current difficulties. If we are successful, we will help prevent incalculably worse events from occurring in the not too distant future. If we fail, then no one but the individuals' bereaved friends, families, and comrades will remember the casualties suffered in Iraq to the this point, except as an example of an extremely low-cost conflict. If we can't handle a "quagmire" of even this type, can't stay the course against the opposition of some scattered, hopeless losers, then our position as a world power won't last very long - and is already an illusion. In that case, we might as well write off the rest of the planet to the interests and plans of those who would laugh at our squeamishness, have depended on it in the past and are only just now beginning to wonder about it, and who will do everything that can to test it and re-test it until convinced it no longer is likely to work for them.
Quote from hardrock375: And, of course, the Soviets had no problem killing their own people. Friendly fire estimates since WW2: The following are The American War Library's best estimates on friendly fire casualties (both fatal and non-fatal) based on historic War Dept, Dept of the Navy and Dept of Defense casualty reports detailing various battle reports. At best, these are conservative figures. Which is to say, these figures represent the minimal prcentages of FF casualties on record so far. As additional friendly fire incidents are discovered these figures will increase, not decrease. War/Campaign Percent Casualties (U.S. Military only)* World War II 21% Korea 18% Vietnam 39% Persian Gulf 49% * Both fatal and non-fatal (These figures do not include murders or deliberate/accidental self-inflicted wounds/fatalities)