You can't handle the truth!!!

AAAintheBeltway · Jun 16, 2003

KymarFye,

Thoughtful and persuasive. The final chapter to this story has yet to be written.

alfonso · Jun 17, 2003

Quote from AAAintheBeltway:

KymarFye,

Thoughtful and persuasive. The final chapter to this story has yet to be written.
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Good grief. 'Thoughtful', as in highly creative? Yes. Persuasive? Well, to borrow a Kymar phrase, that sure speaks volumes about your predisposition.

ps - how about Bush's "Revisionist" comments. Hilarious! I bet the antiwar folks have a field day with that one. (Still, I can't believe people in his regime could be that stupid to tell him to say it unless that they thought Joe America really is dumb enough to buy it. Scary thought.)

KymarFye · Jun 17, 2003

Quote from alfonso:

Good grief. 'Thoughtful', as in highly creative? Yes. Persuasive? Well, to borrow a Kymar phrase, that sure speaks volumes about your predisposition.

ps - how about Bush's "Revisionist" comments. Hilarious! I bet the antiwar folks have a field day with that one. (Still, I can't believe people in his regime could be that stupid to tell him to say it unless that they thought Joe America really is dumb enough to buy it. Scary thought.)

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Let's hear your persuasive and thoughtful explanations for why, if Saddam got rid of all of his WMDs at some point prior to the war, he didn't offer full cooperation with UN inspections.

And, while you're at it, don't forget to tell us for the umpteenth time how much you "hate" America's security and foreign policy - even while you use an invention of the US Defense Department (the internet) in order to stress the importance of another American invention, the UN.

Madison · Jun 17, 2003

Quote from KymarFye:

even while you use an invention of the US Defense Department (the internet) in order to stress the importance of another American invention, the UN.
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that is a farcical statement - "the Internet" is the result of collaboration by universities and by millions of people all across the globe, far from the guidance and control of the US Defense Dept.

at best, the US Defense Dept could claim inventorship of arpanet, which bore little resemblance to the modern Internet, and none to the www

to say that the US Defense Dept. invented "the Internet" is like saying Henry Ford invented the 2003 Mercedes Benz.

alfonso · Jun 18, 2003

Quote from KymarFye:

Let's hear your persuasive and thoughtful explanations for why, if Saddam got rid of all of his WMDs at some point prior to the war, he didn't offer full cooperation with UN inspections.

And, while you're at it, don't forget to tell us for the umpteenth time how much you "hate" America's security and foreign policy - even while you use an invention of the US Defense Department (the internet) in order to stress the importance of another American invention, the UN.
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Well, let's see. Consistently and unequivocally stating that they had no WMD, coupled with the fact that none, whatsoever, had been detected obviously isn't enough neither for you or Rumsfeld, I think, who said something like that the failure to find the WMD is the best evidence that Iraq has them.

As for the full cooperation, well, putting my thoughtful and persuasive cap on, and aiming for the simpler explanation, how about that Iraq had long suspected the US weapons inspectors as serving as spies? Obviously that's not too difficult to imagine at all, is it. Given that, I think it's pretty simple to understand why a country would be cautious about a bunch of foreigners being given free reign to galavant unchecked all over the country.
Personally, given the previous (and current) US (and other countries') regimes tendency to distort facts, and even outright lie, I have little doubt that the US exaggerated the levels of non-cooperation; probably way beyond any reasonable estimate of the difficulties reluctant cooperation posed.

As for that last paragraph. All I can say is LOL.

Nolan-Vinny-Sam · Jun 18, 2003

Yo:eek:

Leave brother KymarFye alone, or I will unlease on you 1000 attacks by AAAinthebeltway/max401

KymarFye · Jun 18, 2003

Quote from alfonso:

Well, let's see. Consistently and unequivocally stating that they had no WMD...

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Yes, just as they had several times previously, only to be found out by diverse inspection teams and the testimony of defectors.

As for the full cooperation, well, putting my thoughtful and persuasive cap on, and aiming for the simpler explanation, how about that Iraq had long suspected the US weapons inspectors as serving as spies? Obviously that's not too difficult to imagine at all, is it. Given that, I think it's pretty simple to understand why a country would be cautious about a bunch of foreigners being given free reign to galavant unchecked all over the country.
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Better to have US and British divisions of troops galavanting virtually "unchecked all over the country?"

So, in other words, you believe that the UN mandated inspections - least of all the augmented, more intrusive inspections that the Weasel nations were advocating at the end - would NEVER have worked. Iraq would never have extended full cooperation, in your view.

Personally, given the previous (and current) US (and other countries') regimes tendency to distort facts, and even outright lie, I have little doubt that the US exaggerated the levels of non-cooperation; probably way beyond any reasonable estimate of the difficulties reluctant cooperation posed.
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The US was not the sole arbiter of Iraq's cooperation. NO ONE outside of the Iraqi Information Ministry claimed that Iraq had given full cooperation.

The question before us here, though, was why would Iraq not have provided full, or at least fuller, documentation, testimony, and evidence if indeed they intended to allow their WMD program to be eradicated? Why would they risk imminent war and the likely removal of their government?

Your explanation does not come close to providing an answer. In effect, it simply presumes Iraqi non-cooperation, while making a for you typical, utterly irrelevant anti-US statement that has nothing to do with the question. What's also hilariously typical is that your statement indicts the US for lying, but you're apparently quite comfortable trusting the former Iraqi government. And, finally, it's typical for you that you would simply condemn my humbly offered analysis without pointing out a single specific element of it that you find questionable, much less how your answers better clear up the various mysteries.

KymarFye · Jun 18, 2003

Speaking of truth's that some have difficulty handling - here are some facts on the regime that Alfonso finds so trustworthy - though which he did once have the courage to concede was "yucky."

June 18, 2003

Stop bleating about WMD and listen to how Nasir's mother was executed in a pit
Ann Clwyd

I never imagined when I wrote on this page in March about the plastic shredder used to kill in one of Saddamâs prisons that I would, some months later, read in a chillingly meticulous record book that one of the methods of execution was âmincingâ.
I had just finished a press conference in the still-shabby British Embassy in Baghdad, when a reporter from Fox TV told me that he had been handed for safekeeping by an Iraqi a 56-page record book from the notorious Abu Ghraib prison outside Baghdad. Later, at the Sheridan hotel, we scanned the horrific record of Saddamâs sadism and brutality.

The prison itself, really a vast concentration camp, is on the edge of a small town. Market traders sell fresh fruit and vegetables, children play ball in the dusty streets. The normality of life outside this ghastly place, where so many lives came to an end, is itself horrible, since many of the people probably would have worked in the prison. I walked around talking to groups of young boys messing around on their bikes. Two of them, not more than 16 years old, told me they had been guards.

Just a few days before the Americans arrived, they said, the remaining prisoners had been killed; stood in trenches up to their waists and shot through the head.

In the corridors there are murals of Saddam Hussein: Saddam with a hawk on his shoulder; Saddam with a rocket-launcher and a dove in the barrel; Saddam in a silk shirt with a cigar. His victims were taken from dark and overcrowded cells to the execution block with its ceiling hooks and levers that catapulted them to a grisly death in the pits below. Some were still alive. The guards then broke their necks by standing on them.

The UN could have gone on passing resolutions and sending in inspectors and rapporteurs for the next 50 years, but in the end there was no realistic alternative to war. Those who bleat about weapons of mass destruction or question the legality of war should talk to the Iraqi people. They are irritated. They ask, âDonât they care about us? About mass graves? About torture?â Stand at the mass grave at al-Hillah where up to 15,000 people are buried, hands tied behind their backs, bullets through their brains. Examine the pitiful possessions found so far: a watch, a faded ID card, a comb, a ring, a clump of black hair. Watch the old woman in her black chador, tattoos on her gnarled hands, looking through the plastic bags on top of unidentified, reburied bodies, for something that will help her to find her son, who disappeared in 1991.

Stand at the mass grave near Kirkuk, where huge mechanised trucks churn the earth in clouds of dust. Look at the skeletons now tenderly reburied in simple wooden coffins. Talk to Nasir al-Hussein, who was only 12 at the time of the 1991 mass arrests. He, his mother, uncle and cousins were piled on buses. They turned off on to a farm road and the executions started. People were thrown into a pit, machinegunned and then buried with a bulldozer. Nasir crawled out of the mass grave, leaving his dead relatives behind.

The killing fields of al-Hillah and Kirkuk look unremarkable. Shepherds graze their sheep, children play on bikes. But also here are some of the hundreds and thousands of the perhaps 800,000 of the dead of this country. Saddamâs victims: Shias, Kurds, Communists, the people of Iraq. Now the secrets of this evil and despotic regime are being revealed. How much more killing could there have been?

A house in Baghdad, formerly the private home of one of Saddamâs secret police, has been taken over by those who seek to put the record straight. Outside on the banks of the Tigris, hundreds of Shia men search through the records found so far. Dusty papers and old files fill every room. In one are three computers into which 150,000 names of the dead and where they died have been logged in just two weeks. In another room is some of the torture equipment: a chiropractorâs couch wired to administer electric shocks, the weights and pulleys used to apply pain. All around are grieving relatives, women in black chadors clutching tearfully at my arm. They have waited 12 long years for news. They still wait. Saddam, like Hitler and Pol Pot, kept meticulous records of his crimes. At the same time, Baath party men are said to be buying up the files that implicate them in the crimes.

The director of this self-help centre, Ibrahim al-Idrissi, was in prison eight times. Once they took off all his toenails. He shows me photographs of executions and the bloodied, battered body of a university lecturer from Basra, still alive, his sawn-off arm lying by his side.

On the streets of Baghdad, WMD is not an issue. âThanks to Bush and Blair,â they cry. I ask what would have happened if they had spoken to me like this in the past on the streets of Baghdad. One man slowly drew his hand, palm down, across his throat.

The author is an MP and special envoy on human rights in Iraq to the Prime Minister.
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http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,482-717360,00.html

KymarFye · Jun 18, 2003

Some other facts to ponder about the regime that Alfonso wishes we had trusted, and that he prefers we'd have left in power indefinitely:

Suffer the children

16jun03

JOHN Pilger was far from the only journalist to believe -- incredibly -- it was our fault that Iraqi children were dying in their hundreds of thousands.

Oh, no. Time magazine in 1998 even reported on the parade of children's corpses that Saddam Hussein staged through Baghdad's streets to persuade Western journalists of our guilt, and warned of the "anger and despair of Iraq's people".
But I mention Pilger because you may have seen his documentary, Paying the Price: Killing the Children of Iraq, which screened on SBS in 2000 and is perhaps the best example of the wicked myth that is now being exposed by ashamed Iraqi doctors.

In Pilger's film, the Australian-born activist "journalist", who was recently the subject of a fawning exhibition at the Melbourne Museum, is shown touring a Baghdad hospital's children's ward.

The footage is harrowing, and the tragedy is real.

There are skeletal children just hours from death, children catatonic with pain, children too weak to blink.

And there's an Iraqi doctor who silkily explains that many such children could have been saved -- if the United Nations hadn't imposed sanctions on Iraq that stopped these children from getting food and drugs.

Pilger, who has built a career in demonising democracies like ours, believed it. Believed it greedily. Thanks largely to our sanctions, he said, "at least 200 children are dying every day". The "viciousness" of our embargo -- imposed to stop Saddam from building more weapons -- could be called a "genocide".

IT is a sign of the naivety and self-congratulatory self-loathing of our cultural elite that Pilger was by no means unusual in endorsing such an evil, almost incredible, accusation of the West.

"The American insistence that sanctions against Iraq be continued has led, by reliable accounts, to the slow death of at least 500,000 children," purred the ABC's Phillip Adams.

"It is estimated that half a million children have died as a result of the sanctions," declared the ABC's Foreign Correspondent.

Even at the start of the war in Iraq, correspondents such as A Current Affair's Jane Hansen made their pilgrimages to Baghdad's children's hospital to show us the dying that was, they implied, at least in part caused by our sanctions.

And intellectuals here -- too eager as always to believe the worst of us -- believed this, too.

The sanctions caused "the deaths of children on a scale far exceeding that caused by any military weapon in history," wrote Malcolm Fraser in a letter co-signed by Chris Sidoti and Peter Garrett -- people happy to think we're so evil that we also stole Aboriginal children, keep refugees in "concentration camps" and rape Mother Earth.

And the prominent Middle East correspondent Robert Fisk, a regular ABC guest, not only claimed perhaps "a million" Iraqi children were dying from our "madness", but said "mass funerals for babies -- 70 in one cortege on the last count -- made their way through Baghdad".

B UT now for the truth -- because the peddlers of such corrosive hate-speech must be exposed and shamed, if not into silence then into moderation.

Iraqi doctors now say what our intellectuals and our reporters should have felt in their bones. Iraq's children were dying not because of us, but because of Saddam. And even the parades of dead children were part of a monstrous hoax.

Dr Amer Abdul a-Jalil, the deputy resident at Baghdad's Ibn al-Baladi Hospital, has told the London Telegraph that "sanctions did not kill these children -- Saddam killed them".

"Over the past 10 years, the government in Iraq poured money into the military and the construction of palaces for Saddam to the detriment of the health sector," he said.

"Those babies or small children who died because they could not access the right drugs, died because Saddam's government failed to distribute the drugs."

As the hospital's chief resident, Dr Hussein Shihab, confirmed to Newsday: "We had the ability to get all the drugs we needed. Instead of that, Saddam Hussein spent all the money on his military force and put all the fault on the USA. I am one of the doctors who was forced to tell something wrong -- that these children died from the fault of the UN."

Dr Azhar Abdul Khadem, a resident at Baghdad's Al-Alwiya maternity hospital agreed: "Saddam Hussein, he's the murderer, not the UN."

In fact, Dr Oasem al-Taye, who now runs the Baghdad Children's Hospital, said last week that after Saddam's fall he'd found plenty of medical supplies and equipment at a hospital once reserved for leaders of Saddam's regime.

"They were willing to sacrifice the children for the sake of propaganda," he said bitterly.

THE parades of dead children were part of that same propaganda.

Doctors say hospitals were forced to keep the bodies of babies who had died prematurely or of natural causes for up to two months until Saddam had enough to stage a parade of the little corpses, with women bussed in to act as "mourners", screaming insults at the US in front of television cameras.

"All 10 hospitals in Baghdad were involved in this and the quota for the parade was between 25 and 30 babies a month, which they would say had died in one day," Dr Hussein al-Douri, deputy director of the Ibn al-Baladi hospital, told the Telegraph.

Muslims traditionally bury their dead immediately, so keeping the bodies of the babies added to the grief of their parents.

"The mothers would be hysterical and sometimes threaten to kill us," said al-Douri, "but we knew that the real threat was from the government. They would have killed our families."

Why didn't more commentators understand this?

Why didn't they assume we might expect such crimes, such lies, from a savage dictatorship?

It is not enough to say such folk had no way of knowing the truth, given Iraqis were too terrified to tell it. Some people did try to expose the hoax, but few would listen -- just as Left gurus like Noam Chomsky refused to believe Cambodian refugees who tried to tell us of Pol Pot's genocide.

In 1999, for instance, Saddam was caught smuggling baby milk and children's medicines to India.

Last year, the BBC interviewed an Iraqi refugee who told how the parades of coffins were run. And human rights groups warned for years of Saddam's depravity.

But too often, it seems, our intellectual class preferred to hear the stories that confirmed its prejudices against the West. See, even now, how eagerly it believed the lie that Baghdad's antiquities museum had been cleaned out by looters -- perhaps even by the barbaric Yanks.

WHAT made this phenomenon worse is that under Saddam too many Baghdad-based correspondents were too scared to tell the full truth about him.

CNN has now admitted censoring reports of Saddam's brutality that could get its Baghdad correspondents into trouble, and the ABC's Mark Willacy conceded he faced a dilemma: "Do you fully report what you're seeing and what you're hearing or do you hold back in case you get deported?"

The answer for the diplomatic correspondent of Britain's Channel 4 News was to hold back.

"There was one occasion when we did censor ourselves," Lindsey Hilsum admitted last week.

She'd decided not to report that the US was right -- that she'd seen for herself on the night of the deadly explosion in a Baghdad market that Iraq was indeed hiding missile launchers in residential areas.

"If I'd said that, I think we would have been thrown out the next day," she said.

Hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil. I wonder if we even dare recognise true evil any more.

This is one small gain we can take, then, from the war in Iraq. What we learn now of the horror that gripped Iraq may end our dangerous and wilful ignorance.

There is such a thing as evil in this world, after all. And, believe me, it isn't us.
More...

http://heraldsun.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5478,6600315%5E25717,00.html

bungrider · Jun 18, 2003

emotional jibberish, designed to manipulate the american people into submitting to a war for oil...

please.

if that's a good reason to start a $60B war, why the FUCK haven't we attacked the 50 other countries with similar human rights violations??

oh lemme guess the answer -- because those countries don't have WMD...and Iraq does!!! HAHAHAAAAAAAAAAAA

Sucker! I bet HAL won't even send you a "Thank You" note for your tax contribution to their effort...