Tuesday, March 29, 2005

Fallujah Story-- Must Read

I received this e-mail today from a friend . He forwarded it from Mark Manning, a California documentary film maker who was recently in Fallujah to talk with some of the Iraqis who managed to live through the U.S. "clean-up" (read "flattening") of that city

Read it and weep--literally.


Note to moderators-- this is an e-mail that is intended to be spread around.

Dear Friends,

I have been out of touch. I have been in Iraq and would like to
share a little of my story with you today.

I got back from Iraq a few weeks ago where I stayed inside the city of Falluja and lived with the refugees of that city for over two weeks. I decided to go there because it seems to be the heart of the trouble in Iraq and the place to see if any sense or peace can be found. I had also heard that the city had 250,000 citizens in it who
were told to leave when my government attacked, yet there had been no stories of their situation in our media. As an American, I felt responsible for this and decided to take a look myself.

On February 10th 2005 I flew into Iraq and drove to the city of Falluja. For over two weeks I was a resident and a refugee of Falluja and I am honored and privileged for that experience. They hosted me in their homes, and cared for me because they believed that I was there to listen to them and to honestly bring home their stories to the American people. I came to Falluja without military escort or armed protection in any way. I think because of this they thought I was crazy, but they honored what they thought was courage and they trusted me. Trust means everything there and they look deep into your eyes as they decide who you are. I lived with them and listened to their stories. They told me they do not trust American journalists to accurately tell the story of Iraq. They believe that the American public does not know what is really happening there, and that if they did they would feel differently about the war. They feel that the American people are their brothers and sisters and they are asking them for help. They wanted me to tell you their story.

The horrors of war have been brought to the people of Falluja. The people there say the city had 500,000 people in it, not the 250,000 quoted by our media. The refugees told me that they were given one week notice to leave the city. After three days, they were told they could no longer drive out, they had to walk. No camps were established for them and no refugee location was given. There was no planning by the American government for the people, no food, no shelter and no water. They were just told to leave or be killed. Anyone who stayed in the city after one week would be considered a terrorist and would be killed.

For five months these people have been living in any location they could find, nothing was established for them in the surrounding areas of the Falluja countryside. They are living in tents in the mud, schools, abandoned chicken coups, burned out buildings, cars and other buildings that people were not using or where others have
made room for them. The weather is bad, with much rain and it is very cold. When they were told to leave the city, it was summer and they were not dressed for this cold and many could not carry out their clothes. Some lucky children are going to school in tents and all the classes have been shortened to 2 hours per day. Food is
short and they are eating what the farmers grow and the surrounding community can spare. Again, even after five months they have received no outside aid from either the American government or the new Iraqi government.

The city itself has been devastated. Most houses have been seriously damaged, with about 65% of them totally destroyed. Evidence of depleted uranium (DU) shells is everywhere. This leaves radioactive contamination behind which has a half-life of 4.5 billion years. (See note1). Unexploded ordinance is a common sight. Many residents who were there speak of chemical weapons, napalm, cluster bombs and
phosphorous used by the Americans. These are all illegal weapons and considered war crimes by the international community. Many of the houses were fired, meaning that the troops burned them down after searching them. Many houses with white flags and markings stating "Family Here" were destroyed.

Some families who had nowhere to go stayed in the city during the fighting and have paid dearly. I interviewed many people who were there and their stories will live forever in my mind. Here are some samples:

· A mother whose son was killed by DU shells. He was in his bed sleeping when the shells came through the walls.

· A father who at 65 years of age was shot during a raid of his house, whose son was arrested during that raid and has not been seen since (he states that his son was not a fighter.)

· A 17 year old girl who hid under her bed with her 13 year old brother during a raid of her house and witnessed her father, her cousin, and her two sisters 18 and 19 years old, all shot to death.
She hid for three more days with the dead bodies of her family and then they returned and shot her and her brother after finding them under the bed. Her brother died. She survived and told me her story.

· A Family of ten who lived through all the fighting. The kids were 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 10 and 12. They were a mess. These kids will never be ok. Their faces were marked with open and oozing sores and they were exhibiting serious signs of emotional damage.

There is presently very little medical aid available to the residents and refugees, and again, no aid has been provided to the refugees in the surrounding area. The medical centers in the city have been destroyed and have not been rebuilt. The main hospital has been reopened, but to get there you have to walk, as the ambulances are still being shot by the Americans and the Iraqi National Guard. The doctors have been beaten and their lives have been threatened by the Iraqi National Guard. These are the security forces that the Americans are training. The new government has warned them not to talk to any journalists about the conditions in Falluja. They
understand this threat to be very real and a direct threat on their lives and the lives of their families.

To walk to the hospital you must go through checkpoints, sometimes through fighting, and only at certain daylight hours. The checkpoints are manned by the Iraqi National Guards and they are very hostile to the residents of Falluja. When we were at the hospital, an old man died of a heart attack because he was not allowed through the checkpoint. A woman gave birth in the ambulance because they would not let the ambulance back to the hospital after 5 pm and instead turned it away with her in labor.

We delivered by hand the medical aid provided by some of you to the hospital in Falluja. Me and one Iraqi woman, WE were the international medical aid to Falluja. We carried these boxes one at a time through the checkpoints, across the bridge and into the hospital. They would not let us drive in, we had to walk these boxes in. We did it every day for a week, one box at a time.

All of the people I talked to had messages to the American people.
They said: "We did not attack you! We have done nothing to the Americans. Why have you done this to us?"


These are the people who hosted me, fed me, and worried about my safety. They took care of me and I will never forget their generosity, compassion and grace. They want peace with America and they want the fighting to stop. They feel they are the ones being attacked and that the Americans are the terrorists. They see absolutely no justification for this war and were constantly asking me to explain how the American people can support these acts against a civilian population. For the first time in my life, I was ashamed to be an American.

There are so many more stories to tell you and I will be making a film about it all. But for now, what I want you to know is that I spent two weeks in the heart of the beast. The place where our government and media said is the heart of the resistance, terrorists and Saddam Loyalists, and guess what; the place is full of people. People like you and me. Kids are everywhere. The average Fallujan family has 10 people in it. That means about 8 kids. 500,000 people in the city, you do the math. That is a lot of kids.

There are fighters in Falluja. That is a fact. But they are surrounded by some 490,000 innocent people. As a country, we have decided the damage to the innocents is worth the end result, whatever that may be. These people are being shattered by this very serious situation that they have no control over. They are the
innocent victims of this war.


I cannot tell you what to do. This is a story of just one area in Iraq. These stories are all over the area we call the Sunni Triangle. But I was there and lived with these people and they taught me about love, forgiveness, truth and compassion. They, after all that has happened to them, still have the ability to differentiate between the acts of an enemy and the people of a nation. They cry out to us to save them from the ignorance that has brought this destruction on them. They have suffered 33 times 9/11. Over 100, 000 Iraqis have died at the hands of the American invasion (note 2) and still they say that they have nothing against the American people. This is grace. I learned from these people how to find peace. By deeply listening to my "enemy" I have found that the real enemy is ignorance and fear and acting from that place ofweakness.

I will never forget the people of Falluja.

Thank you for listening to them.
Your Friend,

Mark Manning


I want you all read it, and think about it in neutral way.

There are more details from the same source here.

Thank you for your time

117 comments:

Anonymous said...

Lisa.

Nobody listens to right wing drivel anymore. Why do you even bother.

Anonymous said...

I think it's fair to say that the tight media controls the US has placed on Fallujah are pretty damning for their case. Only criminals hide their behaviour. Jesus said something about that.

waldschrat said...

War came to fallujah. War is ugly, very ugly. There were determined fighters on both sides.

From what I can learn, I think Fallujah is still a mess and severe security rules are still imposed. Here is a news link that may be somewhat less biased than the story you posted:

http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/world/3102838

All I can say is that war is best avoided. The Iraqi fighters of Fallujah did not avoid war, they invited it and defied it and waged it enthusiastically and with determination. It will take a long time for the resulting damage to heal. I think it would have been wiser to choose the path of peace.

Anonymous said...

So you see, the assertion the last commentator is making is that while it is perfectly kosher for a side to have bad elements within its ranks, the very opposite is also true.

It then goes on to state that the animals who have outlawed all news coverage of the Fallujah battle can also be trusted to faithfully report all their abuse.

As evidence of such good faith, the commentator then offers examples where such abuses have been reported, as if a murderer can become innocent again by reporting the crime.

This commentator also finds it convenient to describe the four former military personel who were carrying military weapons, driving a military vehicle and performing military roles as "priva
te contractors", worthy of all the respect and rights that were subsequently denied to hundreds of thousands of innocent Fallujans.

It uses language but it is incapable of communication. The words it uses are indistinguishable from those of the rest of the masses that voted for bush.

It is the reason that its wars won't end by the use of words, and for that I can only apologise for what little responsibility I feel for its deeds.

Anonymous said...

So you see, the assertion the last commentator is making is that while it is perfectly kosher for a side to have bad elements within its ranks, the very opposite is also true.

It then goes on to state that the animals who have outlawed all news coverage of the Fallujah battle can also be trusted to faithfully report all their abuse.

As evidence of such good faith, the commentator then offers examples where such abuses have been reported, as if a murderer can become innocent again by reporting the crime.

This commentator also finds it convenient to describe the four former military personel who were carrying military weapons, driving a military vehicle and performing military roles as "priva
te contractors", worthy of all the respect and rights that were subsequently denied to hundreds of thousands of innocent Fallujans.

It uses language but it is incapable of communication. The words it uses are indistinguishable from those of the rest of the masses that voted for bush.

It is the reason that its wars won't end by the use of words, and for that I can only apologise for what little responsibility I feel for its deeds.

Anonymous said...

The story mentioned by the local residents of Fallujah is false lead by misinformation. In fact, there were camps built outside the city, and the American Forces did provide money for residents captured during the battles. There is chance that Depleted Uranium could have been used, but the use of chemical weapons and Napalm is a propaganda that the local militants spread to cause anger against America. It is known that there is a propaganda unit that was creating anti-US leaflets and spreading words on the Internet for use of certain weapons by US. Local residents of Falluja also have reported the unjust activities by Mujahideen for the local cleric to for a fatwa forcing families with young daughters to give them away to Mujahideen for rape. Explosive factories and car bomb factories were located in various locations, which were used to kill Iraqis. Iraqi Force also have reported that they have captured Zarqawi in the city but released him without recognizing him. Other terrorists leaders have been confirmed killed in Fallujah. In fact, the people who were reporting locations of terrorist leaders were residents of Fallujah themselves. Close friends of terrorist leader also have confirmed this. Some residents of Fallujah also asked to bomb their houses that was illegally occupied by terrorists. One family that regreted to allow terrorists to use the house was tortured. In certain locations of terrorist group, sample kits of chemical weapons and biohazard materials were found. Regarding the story on this blog, it is likely that the residents believed the propaganda that was spread by the propaganda unit in the city, causing them to gain false information. The story from residents of Falluja is unlikely to represent everyone in the city. You may check Iraq the Model for previous posts of the residents from Fallujah about the hostility caused by the local Mujahideens.

Anonymous said...

lisa: Let the door hit you on the way out.

David Collett said...

I read the letter and believe it.

I think my country, Australia, was wrong to assist America. I think we did wrong to help the invasion of your country.

I am truly and humbly sorry for what we did.

Anonymous said...

I am always fascinated when reading propaganda how the writer manages to interweave fact and fiction to make a plausible story.

An earlier commenter mentioned something about documented evidence. What documented evidence? The tapes that were "stolen"? Please, you insult my intelligence. Even if they existed, which I question, does no one in Iraq LIE? Do Iraqi's not have their own agenda? Yes, Truth Teller, kind of like your blog?

The writer of that article states that he considered Marines he met in Fallujah his "buddies". He accuses them of crimes like rape and murder of civilians and yet considers them his "buddies"??

The writer states he wanted to meet the hardest, worst case guys. Well, if he had, he would be missing a head!

Truth Teller, when spreading propaganda it is best to be a little more subtle. You were more believable when you let your daughters slip it into their blogs.

I will give you credit for at least being more pleasant then Riverbend about it. But not everyone is a fool. There are people who may not have supported Saddam directly, but that did benefit from his regime. They did nothing to help those Iraqi's not in favor with him. Because they enjoyed the money that was funneled to them.

My apologies if I am a harsh critic, but hypocrites are annoying.

Lynnette in Minnesota

Anonymous said...

I read through the rest of the article in the link provided. It only underscored the bias and lies of this author.

“Wholesale rape of civilians” (Yeah, right)

“They were given one week to leave home,” (provably false. The assault on Fallujah was telegraphed for at least several weeks beforehand. Everyone knew it was coming. Residents were given at least a month’s advance notice. At the time I remember thinking it was almost too much advance notice, giving the terrorists way too much time to prepare elaborate booby-traps.)

““The whole town is radiated,” said Manning. “We are poisoning the whole country.” (Gimme a break.)

“’Everybody’s in the resistance. You don’t ask them directly; that wouldn’t be wise. But everybody’s in the resistance,” (Maybe everyone you were explicitly directed to talk to, Mark. That should tell you something. )

“A British study [of civilian deaths]— now several months old — placed the figure above 100,000.” (A blatant lie. Even if you believe the suspect Lancet study, it only estimated deaths at between 8,000 & 100,000, with 100,000 at the ridiculously unlikely high end of that spread. How this became the new left-wing mantra of “above 100,000”, I don’t know. Willful ignorance or blatant lies, I guess.)

“Iraqis were told that if they wanted food rations, they had to vote. Everybody over there is on food rations,” he said. “And the food ration guys were at the polling places to make sure people voted.” (So now he’s kicking millions of brave Iraqis in the teeth by claiming they only voted to get food. What an insult. And a lie.)


And then this gem:

“According to Manning, the “bum” winked at him and said, “Look in my eyes. I have the eyes of a former sniper. You thought you had the goods on George Bush, didn’t you? You’ve been sandbagged, boy.”

LOL. “What’s the frequency, Kenneth?”

This guy is either on hallucinogenic drugs, has an exaggerated sense of his own importance or is certifiably insane. (or… a liar.)

You’re making a big mistake, “Truthteller”, in turning your blog into a forum for linking to ridiculous articles like that one. You’re ruining any credibility you might have, except among those on the left-wing fringes. If that’s what you want your blog to become, you’re succeeding. But it would be a shame because it will cause you to lose many readers such as myself who are otherwise open to hearing your views and hearing about your life. That article may sound credible to you and it may sound credible to people who are already vehemently anti-war or anti-American but I assure you it sounds ridiculous to anyone else who is not already in that camp. It's full of things that are provably false. By not using your own voice and instead linking to articles emailed to you, you are allowing your blog to be used by others and it will cause you to lose open-minded readers. The only readers you'll have left will be those on the fringes who already agree with you. Is that what you want?

Anonymous said...

TO LISA:
THANKS A LOT FOR YOUR RATIONAL EXPLANATION,IT MAKE US FEEL A LOT BETTER TO KNOW THAT THE INNOCENT KID WAS KILLED BY JUST A"SHELL"AND NOT A"DU SHELL", AND THE NEXT TIME WE'LL COUNT THE IRAQI DEATHS BEFORE WE SPEAK ABOUT THEM (WHAT NUMBER IS YOUR FAVORAT ?).

Anonymous said...

#1 - Typing in all caps is rude.

#2 - Learn to spell. It will make you appear more intelligent.

#3 - If the reference to a "DU shell" is a lie (which it most certainly is) what else is a lie? God gave you a brain for a reason. Use it.

#4 - When someone refers to "over 100,000" deaths they lose all credibility.

Bill said...

"A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on."
- Sir Winston Churchill

Anonymous said...

"Any truth, or suggestion of flawed behaviour is subrogated, denounced and ridiculed, laid assunder as a victimn of their delusional perspective of reality."

Don't make yourself dizzy talking in circles, Johnny boy.
Lots of words...no substance. Quite a clever trick. Also quite typical.

I see how agitated you become when confronted by people questioning your world view with logic and reason. Facts and reasoned logic are nasty, unpleasant things aren't they, John? They make you quite uncomfortable, I see.

Anonymous said...

"Any commentary which portrays the Americans in a negative light are deemed to be ridiculous!"

My, what a pretty Straw Man!

waldschrat said...

I returned to this blog today to explain some of my previous comments a bit. It occurs to me that I might be mistaken for an apologist for American excesses or considered insensitive to the plight of folks in Iraq.

What I conciously try to do is find some rational positive aspect of the situation when I comment on things like the fate of Fallujah or the appropriateness of police treatment of prisoners obliged to confess on television. I believe if people can find common ground and deliberately avoid concentrating on matters upon which they disagree, focusing instead on things they have in common, there is more hope for agreement and peace.

I feel largely helpless about the war in Iraq, really. When it became clear that war was possible if not imminent in late 2002 I tried to decide if I could support it. I concluded that while the risks many claimed Saddam posed to the world were exaggerated, Saddam and his regime were definitely bad - there was virtually no disagreement among people free to speak honestly that Saddam was bad for Iraq. What the consequences of a "regime change" would be were (and still are) unclear. Fanatic ongoing guerilla war against US forces seemed likely based on the experiences of Afghanistan under the Russians, and Chechnya, and Palestine. Some postulated that civil war between ethnic groups might be likely. At the time, however, it seemed that the chaos invading Iraq would bring was justified by the evils of Saddam's regime. I have heard few people express regret that Saddam is out of power. The current sentiment in Iraq seems to run from neutral to "lynch the bastard now" as far as I can tell, but I am a long ways away, and Iraqis speaking for Saddam now may run risks similar to those people speaking against Saddam faced previously.

Anyway, I felt at the time that war was likely, that there was little I could do to change that, but that if it were to happen it would be best that the loss of life by Iraqis was as low as possible. My concern was not merely for civilians who might be killed ("collateral damage") but for the fate of soldiers ordered to oppose US forces under penalty of Saddam's displeasure. I did wat I could: I sent an email to President Bush's public email address and encouraged him to minimize Iraqi casualties in any invasion of Iraq. I have no idea whether he (or anybody) ever read it. I got no response. It seemed, though, as the war developed, that this was an objective shared by the people fighting the war, and I felt grateful for that.

Now, as guerilla fighting continues and the inevitable excesses of war come to light and are magnified by people with political agendas on all sides, I do what I can. I try to understand the true situation in Iraq, and I try to sound a note of common sense, to look for the positive aspects of every situation, to reiterate my desire as a person far away that peace and stability will come to Iraq.

Will things in Iraq get better? I think they will, eventually. If there is any way I can help by writing comments from time to time, I will do what I can.

Truth teller said...

To all the American commenters,

Thank you for explaining your viewpoints. You are all far away from the events, I live here, and hear more stories from Falloja, Talaffar, and Hadetha. all have almost the same tragedy.
The only difference in these cities, is that there are more Iraqi troops who accompanied the US troops.

In short I believe him.

And I think you shouldn't comment on anybody's grammar or spelling..

Anonymous said...

Saying "I believe him" (simply because you want to believe him) is not enough, Truth teller.

What exactly is it you "believe"?

-That the writer (who is a deep sea diver by trade and has no military or weapons training) can tell the difference between the remnants of a "DU" shell and just a shell?

-That there's been "wholesale rape" of Iraqi civilians by U.S. forces?

-That "everybody's in the resistance"?

-That "over 100,000" Iraqis have been killed by U.S. forces (mostly women and children)?

-That Iraqis who voted in January, defying suicide bombers and proudly waving their purple fingers, did so only to get food?


If these are things you "believe" then you are going to have to provide evidence before you can expect any of us to believe you. Frankly, all the evidence I've read and seen points to none of these things being true so you'll need to have some pretty convincing evidence to back up what are really outrageous charges. Rumor and wishful thinking are not enough.

Anonymous said...

It is true that I am not in Iraq. I cannot speak to what is actually happening in any area as an eye witness.

But what I do see on this blog and on Najma's and HNK's is a pattern of implying anything anti-American that they can. Obviously they have every right to their opinions. But to ask their readers to believe everything that they do, without actual proof, is foolish.

Truth teller, you may believe everything that writer says or any other rumors and innuendos that you hear. Because it is what you want to believe. But I grew up under a legal system where you are innocent until proven guilty. That article you linked to is tabloid journalism at it's best.

Sorry, John, no Maytag. I go for the whatever is on sale at Sears.

Lynnette in Minnesota

Anonymous said...

Dear truth teller:
Sorry to bother you and your readers ,but please let me say the following:
1-Being rude is better than being on the wrong side .
2-looking intelligent wasn't the main idea but being honest and fair .
3-I wish the others could see the real situation in Iraq before they pass their judgments
4-Yes we don't know the real number of the dead Iraqis , but I assure you it is real and big and growing .
finaly,I promise you to check my spelling and grammar the next time, as this is turned to be of major importance to some of the readers

Anonymous said...

"Yes we don't know the real number of the dead Iraqis , but I assure you it is real and big and growing ."

It's growing because the "resistance" is killing innocent Iraqis by the score every day.

"I promise you to check my spelling and grammar the next time, as this is turned to be of major importance to some of the readers"

Don't waste your time busily constructing a Straw Man. Spelling was the least important of your problems. This:

"THANKS A LOT FOR YOUR RATIONAL EXPLANATION,IT MAKE US FEEL A LOT BETTER TO KNOW THAT THE INNOCENT KID WAS KILLED BY JUST A"SHELL"AND NOT A"DU SHELL", AND THE NEXT TIME WE'LL COUNT THE IRAQI DEATHS BEFORE WE SPEAK ABOUT THEM (WHAT NUMBER IS YOUR FAVORAT ?)."

... was not an intelligent response and addressed none of the points you were purporting to address.

Harold/AQ said...

I felt compelled to comment when I read Waldschrat's comment: "All I can say is that war is best avoided. The Iraqi fighters of Fallujah did not avoid war, they invited it and defied it and waged it enthusiastically and with determination. It will take a long time for the resulting damage to heal. I think it would have been wiser to choose the path of peace." There are others in the same or a similar vein.
Do people not understand that Iraq was essentially minding its own business until it was invaded and subsequently occupied by us? Do people mean to say here that those Iraqis who for whatever reasons do not accept "freedom" under an American boot have no right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness with which all men are endowed by their Creator? Who are you people and how did you come to think this way?

Harold/AQ said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Anonymous said...

"Do people mean to say here that those Iraqis who for whatever reasons do not accept "freedom" under an American boot have no right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness with which all men are endowed by their Creator?"

Ah, another Michael Moore clone extolling the “freedom fighters”.

Insurgents in Iraq Attack Shiite Pilgrims and School

Why, is that Thomas Jefferson I see?

Wake up to reality, my cluelessly naïve friend.

And don’t counter with “none of this happened until we invaded Iraq” because hundreds of thousands of similar brutal attacks against Iraqi civilans were routine under Saddam.

Which is why, in a country of 25 million in which there are enough weapons to arm every man, woman and child, there is relatively little violence against U.S. troops by Iraqis. In fact, most of the violence from the "insurgents" is directed towards Iraqi police, Iraqi Shiites, Iraqi men, women and children..

Yes, Iraqis deserve life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. And they voted for it on January 30th. For their sake, I hope the Iraqi politicians honor that vote and do the right thing by the brave Iraqi people.

Bill said...

Truth Teller,
I just received this e-mail from Mark Manning:

Dear Friends,
I forgot to mention in my last e-mail that while in Fallujah,
I saw a man touch a piece of a DU and was instantly turned into a donkey.
I had photos of this ....but....unfortunately these to were stolen by the bum with $5000 and the winking eye.

Thank you for listening
your Friend

Mark Manning
--------------------------------------
Truth...I think you made clear everything when you posted this on
Tuesday, March 08, 2005
A unique personality or a Psychopath ??

"Other thing, is that the people here, accept any thing they heard,
especially if this thing meets their wishes, or close to their believes."

Anonymous said...

The person who wrote the article said he lived in Fallujah for 2 weeks. If this is to be believed than obviously he knows whats going on Iraq 100x more than someone who has never been there and gets their news from the Television and Newspapers. If you have not been to Iraq than you dont REALLY have ANY idea of whats going there. He talked to people who are living through this ordeal, their word holds much more value than someone half way across the world, that THINKS they know whats going on.

Anonymous said...

There's one problem... he went there with a preconceived bias and was escorted to particular places and particular groups with the same bias. Just because he talked to people who made outlandish claims that there's "wholesale rape of civilians" and "everyone's in the resistance" and "the people who voted only did so to get food" doesn't make those things true, does it?

Just because someone is "there" doesn't necessarily make them right or truthful.

There have been many other reports from people who are also actually there, as opposed to those of us halfway around the world, that contradict the things this author says. It's up to all of us to use our own brains, our inherent logic and a combination of all the different things we read and hear and see to formulate a conclusion. I'm certainly not going to take the word of this one anti-war adventurer as gospel, especially since so much of it contradicts facts that are known, any more than I would take the word of one pro-war adventurer as gospel.

Anonymous said...

"Do people not understand that Iraq was essentially minding its own business until it was invaded and subsequently occupied by us?"

I'm going to comment on that as soon as I stop laughing.

I didn't realize that attacking your neighbors was considered "minding your own business." I didn't realize that paying rewards to suicide bombers families was considered "minding your own business."

Come on, always question, didn't you notice a couple of wars? I think the Iranians and Kuwaiti's did. What about Saddams dabbling in Isreal's internal affairs?

Yes, peace is good, but at what cost? How many lives were lost in the Iraq/Iran war? How many lives were lost in Kuwait? How many lives were lost in Isreal?

You don't think Saddam should have been stopped?

Lynnette in Minnesota

Anonymous said...

I was thinking about commenting on Saddam minding his own business but Lynnette did it better than I could have. This blog is interesting and I hope that Truth Teller will try to keep it more to his personal experiences and not let propaganda from any source take off here. Obviously some have an agenda in these comments and we all have our different political views that most likely want be changed very much but I feel that all of us here in the US want the same thing and that is for a peaceful conclusion in Iraq so that our troops can come home and hopefully Iraqis can enjoy peace and prosperity without the presence of dictators like Saddam or military occupations like ours there now. My best wishes to Truth Teller, his family and the people of Iraq.
Larry in Texas

Anonymous said...

Fine, Laugh all you want since you can afford it, you were blessed by being born American. You sit behind a computer screen to justify death and suffering of thousands of people (Americans included). Laugh and enjoy the show.

Saddam is gone, far more ruthless extremists like Zarqaoui and Muqtada Al Sadr are now in Iraq, Iraq is turning to a safe heaven for terrorists, WMD were not found, Bin Laden is at large, the war is creating more terrorists and more hatered for the US, you pay $2 or more at the pump, the dollar is sinking ..etc

Now, according to you, Kuwait, Israel and Iran are more safe because Saddam is gone. I ask, what about you as an American citizen, what's in it for you? You sit behind a computer screen trying hard to justify a war that serves none of your interests?

Anonymous said...

“Iraq is turning to a safe heaven for terrorists”

Actually it’s not. It’s turning into the place where terrorists go to die.

“the war is creating more terrorists and more hatered for the US”

Debateable. 9/11 occurred before the war and after years of doing virtually nothing to fight terrorism. I haven’t seen the fight against terrorism create any bigger manifestation of hatred for the U.S than 9/11.

Oh, sure, everyone loves to hate America. It’s to be expected, as the only Superpower in the world. But the war in Iraq and subsequent democratic vote has actually created some long overdue soul searching in much of the Middle East. The growing pains may be painful, as they usually are, but necessary.


“I ask, what about you as an American citizen, what's in it for you? You sit behind a computer screen trying hard to justify a war that serves none of your interests?”

Democracy is in our interest.

Anonymous said...

Hmm. There seem to be a few misguided individuals here, I’m afraid.

The plainest, most indisputable facts about Fallujah are:

Residents were told to leave the city by US forces. Men between the ages of 16 – 55 were not allowed to leave. 60 – 70 % of the houses are seriously damaged or destroyed, bearing testimony to the extremity of the violence that took place there. The Fallujah hospital was taken over by the US military and the doctors there were prevented from communicating with the outside world.

Now, the very fact that civilians were prevented from leaving is a clear war crime. The militarisation of a medical facility is a contravention of international law that the US routinely accuses others of. The city is in ruins. Zarqawi was not caught. The insurgency rages on. Fallujans are destitute.

From every possible angle this was a total fiasco. Is Iraq better for it? Clearly not.Yet there are Americans that still defend this. Well, that’s duly noted.

Lisa --

You seem to heap scorn on “that study” that reported “between 8000 and 100 000” Iraqi excess deaths due to this war. May I kindly suggest that you are clueless?

Firstly, that study was conducted by The Lancet, a particularly prestigious medical magazine. Get the name right.

Secondly, the next thing you can get right is the range of deaths – it was 8000 to 194 000, with 100 000 being the most likely figure.

Thirdly, the ‘anti war folks’ say “over 100 000” because in fact, (a) the methodology used has the tendency to UNDER count incidences of whatever is being measured and (b) several outliers (like Fallujah) were intentionally omitted to avoid skewing the overall statistical model. That means that these high casualty areas were not even counted in the study. So, that’s why the tally is likely to be “over” 100 000.

Waldschrat –

“The Iraqi fighters of Fallujah did not avoid war, they invited it and defied it and waged it enthusiastically and with determination.”

I agree, it was disgusting the way those Fallujans blasted their way into Washington, killing all those civilians. The way those Fallujans burnt down Chicago was heinous as well. And all those Iraqis on the 9-11 flights were sure inviting war, right?

What, that’s not true?

Hmm. Waldschrat, I think we are talking about the wrong parallel universe here. I suppose you don’t see the irony of the US defending itself … in Iraq?

Curtis --

“If there was any truth to the report of the cold blooded murder of women and children by US soldiers it would have been reported.”

Let me humbly suggest that you are at best more than a little misguided on the realities of the behaviour of the US military in Iraq and elsewhere. News from independent sources is actively discouraged via many means. It is also actively distorted and discredited through other tactics. Which means, even if it is reported, there is always doubt as to whether it is true or not, leaving the confused recipient unable to decide on the genuine merits of a story.

Let us use our common sense here: given that up to 70% of the city is ruined in some way by the ferocious confrontations that took place, and given that when Marines assault a house they shoot anything that moves … is it really surprising that women and children got killed?


Moron99 ---

While you are correct in stating that the war is not simple black and white, this statement of yours bears challenging:

“If we go on track record, then we see that the pentagon has a better record than you. They held elections as promised in both afghan and iraq. They have not interfered with the new iraqi government even though the delays are harmful to them. Your cries of imperialism and oil grabs have been disproven while theirs of democracy have not. So at this early juncture they are a more reliable witness than you.”

Fun Fact (1) They flew Chalabi into Iraq with several hundred armed supporters and intended to install him as dictator. Elections were held due to the severe pressure exerted by Sistani … using the same food ration system that the US previously derided as unworkable.

Fun Fact (2) 200 million $ was spent in trying to install Allawi.

Fun Fact (3) From USnews.com - “On the road to a new Democracy?”

“For its part, the U.S. government is moving quietly to set out political markers. President Bush made clear in his State of the Union address that he will not commit to a withdrawal timetable for American troops. Officials said troops would leave if told to do so by a new Iraqi government, but that was largely a feint since the administration is confident that leaders will need security help from American forces. And U.S. officials in Baghdad said they are prepared to play diplomatic hardball--including the threat to withhold billions in promised reconstruction aid--to ensure that Iraq's political newbies stick to the game plan for a democratic, pluralistic, federalist, and unified state. "The Iraqis are free to choose whatever vision of Iraq they want. That's entirely up to them," says a diplomat in Baghdad. "It's entirely up to us, the United States, who we choose to support. We can use these funds elsewhere."”

Fun Fact (4) Knowing the rough demographics of Iraq, the US drew up the 66% requirement for a government to be formed, thus virtually guaranteeing a Kurdish veto over the government’s form. The Kurds, for various reasons, are currently the US’s biggest friends in Iraq. No other country, and certainly not the US, has a 66% requirement.

Fun Fact (5) The US controls ALL monies from oil sales in Iraq until at least 2007. They can use these to pay US companies to “reconstruct” Iraq in the fashion that they choose, at whatever tariffs they want. It is after all, Iraqi money.

Fun Fact (6) Executive Order 13303 by GWB himself absolves (US) oil companies operating in Iraq from any responsibility for damages or losses that they might inflict in Iraq. This means that if they should “accidentally” purloin a few billion barrels, they are exempt from prosecution in the US.

Sorry to rain on your parade …


Lynette --

“But I grew up under a legal system where you are innocent until proven guilty.”

Except, of course, if you happen to be Iraq and all sorts of allegations are made about the masses of WMD’s you possess by a foreign, powerful, country which has long coveted your resources and geostrategic position. Then, you are irredeemably stained, and are assumed guilty under all circumstances. No amount of explaining will do.

Then, after you are invaded, and after you country is turned into a crock of crap, you will have to listen to foreigners telling you that (a) your eyes lie to you or (b) your countrymen are all liars or (c) you are also a liar when you tell them the situation.

Maybe you, Lynette, should tell Truthteller what the truth is, so that he can understand what is really happening in Iraq. Obviously he needs your guidance in interpreting these events, given your first hand knowledge of the situation – and this method would also have the advantage of not bothering Americans with uncomfortable news that they would rather not hear.

Oh, and I also like the way you bring up invasions and massacres that occurred a DECADE before, as a justification for invading NOW. As if heroic US troops charged in just in time to rescue the people of the ME from a horrible invasion. Your ignorance of the US’s support for Saddam during the Gulf War is interesting.

And of course, opposing Israel in the Middle East is the same as opposing the US. Your devotion to the Israeli cause is duly noted. Your blinkered view that there is only one side to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is also duly noted.

Anonymous --

"Oh, sure, everyone loves to hate America. It’s to be expected, as the only Superpower in the world."

I know what you mean. Everybody hates ME too, because I've got such a big dick.

Seriously, do you realise how stupid you sound?

--Bruno--

Anonymous said...

Americans have been brainwashed since they were born to believe theirs is the land of the brave and the free, so that it is impossible, for many of them, to believe they can be wrong about anything. It is impossible for their boys to kill wantonly, to rape, to destroy a whole town. If anyone says they do all those things, then he must be lying. But they forget to look around, in their own country, and see the violence in the streets. The poverty and despair in certain quarters. The widespread use of the death penalty, when most civilized countries have given it up. The incredible use of Guantanamo, to prevent people suspect (SUSPECT!)of being terrorists from having access to the rule of law. The torture we know has been widely used. And they still think Americans cannot be cruel or murderous in Iraq. I have no doubt that the majority of Americans are decent people. But they have not yet learned to be suspicious of their leaders, who are anything but decent. They will, in the end, say like so many Germans did after WWII: "We didn't know!" We didn't find it then a good excuse, and we don't find it now a good excuse, even if used by nice Americans...

Anonymous said...

Good one, Bruno.
What a tragic farce this US conquest of Iraq has become! There were maybe a few hundred "foreign fighters" in Fallujah, maybe a few thousand "insurgents" or fanatical extremists. The Marine solution was to devastate the city, affecting hundreds of thousands of innocent lives while spreading the insurgency wider, and then to turn the place into a sort of concentration camp.
And for what? The US is never going to defeat or control the insurgency - their tactics ensure that they create more guerrillas than they kill, exactly as they did in Vietnam - and whatever Iraqi Government eventually emerges from these ludicrous elections is going to be virulently Islamic and violently anti-American.
What is the point of people like Lisa? What good do they do the World, supporting and trying to justify a dishonest and deluded Administration and a murderous and misguided military?
If the Germans had done what the Marines have done in Fallujah to a Polish city in World War II, it would rank in the history books as a major war crime. The rest of the world can see this. What hope is there for America when so many of it’s people, like Lisa, let patriotism blind them to reality. Just like Hitler’s Germans.

Anonymous said...

Ha, I see the usual left-wing whackos have shown up (gee, that "Bruno" sure gets around), along with their usual twisted rhetoric.

Must sound very convincing to fellow lefties... but not to the rest of us.

Anonymous said...

Wow, and two mentions of "the Germans" and "Nazi Germany" in a row!

Godwin's Law in action.

When losing an argument... "bring out the Nazis"!

Good work.

Anonymous said...

Did the Fallujah operation end suicide bombers or the insurgency or capture or kill Zarqawi? What objective did it accomplish? Another Bush-Rumsfeld (intelligence?) 'mistake'???
People, you have start asking real questions or you're guilty by association of mass murder like Germans living outside extermination camps claiming they had no idea what is actually done in their name.

waldschrat said...

Dear Truth teller:
I am sad that you find it possible to believe the story of that fellow, but I can understand the feeelings of anyone in Iraq. The level of force and violence that was applied to Fallujah and the people in it was extreme. Whether application of that force was 100% necessary will never be completely known. Neither will the exact nature of the horrible things that were done by fighters on both sides in the struggle. People fought hard, a lot of people died, and the city was badly damaged. Survivors on both sides want the world to believe they fought for justice. These things are clearly true, I think. They fought. Let that be enough.

You are a medical doctor, I understand. I offer you this recent news story as a problem in military and medical ethics:

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20050401/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/germany_us_iraq

The story tells of a US soldier who apparently shot an injured, unarmed Iraqi for reasons of mercy after the Iraqi had been judged untreatable by a medic.

We are far apart. I can believe that that soldier might have been trying to be merciful, although his actions were horrible. Can you think about his actions in a "neutral" way? What is your opinion of his actions?

Anonymous said...

" Did the Fallujah operation end suicide bombers or the insurgency or capture or kill Zarqawi?"


No, it didn't end it yet but it lessened it and it took a lawless city out of the grip of the terrorists. Most Iraqis understand this which is why there was no outcry of protest from the Iraqi people during the Fallujah offensive.

"People, you have start asking real questions or you're guilty by association of mass murder like Germans living outside extermination camps claiming they had no idea what is actually done in their name."

And you have to stop being so idiotically predictable. Really, people... do you have any rational argument besides yelling "Hitler!!", "Nazis!!!", "Germans!!!"?

Anonymous said...

Germans in Hitler's Germany are a valid analogy. Most Germans, like most Americans, were decent people. Most Germans, like most Americans loved their country and thought they were fighting in a just cause. After the war most Germans could rightly say they didn't know about any atrocities, having themselves been subject to some (Leipzig). After this war, some Americans will be horrified at the atrocities commited by some American units and generals. But they may have less excuses for their alleged ignorance, since so many people (journalists, NGO people, etc.) are telling us, almost on a daily base, what is happening in Iraq. Now would be the time to start asking your rulers about what is going on. If you prefer to close your eyes, do not come and say, after the war, that you couldn't have immagined that such things could have been done in your name... The truth is: the US are guilty of war crimes, and you better start believing it.

Anonymous said...

albatroz, you are a complete idiot.

You and your buddies can keep screeching, comparing Bush to Hitler, Americans to Nazi Germany, etc.

Rational people, and yes even rational Iraqis (who are the majority) will continue to laugh in your face... and you better start believing it.

Anonymous said...

"If you prefer to close your eyes, do not come and say, after the war, that you couldn't have immagined that such things could have been done in your name"

"after the war"? Why "after the war"? We live in an age of instant communication. If there was evidence of Nazi-like genocide, millions exterminated in concentration camps, etc., we would have heard about.

Sorry, guys. Keep clinging to the hope that "evidence" will emerge "after the war", if that makes you feel better.

Meanwhile I, and the rest of the sane world, will continue to watch Iraq's inspiring march toward democracy.
That's what's happening "in my name" and I'm very proud of it.

Anonymous said...

Anonymous,
would it make any difference if I changed Germans to whites who stood by as Indians were murdered by land or gold crazy settlers or white lynch-mobs hung blacks? Frankly, I may have been a tiny bit hard on the Germans given that they couldn't protest or they knew that they would end up in a concentration camp, something selfish US bloggers don't have to worry about. But to deny that they knew? We have all seen the newsreels of mortified German civilians being brought to Dachau to see what was done in their name-justifiably so! Americans deserve the same 'tour' of Fallujah, Najaf. You say 'it lessened it'--what evidence other than US press releases(propaganda) do you have to back up that statement? You only see what you want to, not what you need to.

Anonymous said...

You are so clueless it's almost not even worth entering into a discussion.

So Najaf=Dachau? Every independent report I've read and seen from Najaf indicates the people were happy the U.S. military kicked out Sadr's thugs. Why don't you go to Najaf and ask them?

Idiots like you who keep on trying to convince the rest of us that the Iraq war=the Holocaust, Najaf and Fallujah=Dachau, Bush=Hitler, etc., etc. are only making yourselves seem more foolish with every word you say.

And don't worry about me "knowing", like the Germans knew about Dachau. I know full well what's being done "in my name". I saw it on January 30th and I'm damn proud of every Iraqi who defied the terrorists, headchoppers and suicide bombers and voted, as well as damn proud of the U.S. military and Iraqi police that made it possible. I'm a Democrat. Always have been. And I'm remaining true to the liberal tradition. You and your ilk are not. You are the ones allying yourselves with fascists. And when Iraq is a fully democratic, free and prosperous country remember that it wasn't accomplished "in your name". And live with that.

Anonymous said...

"And when Iraq is a fully democratic, free and prosperous country remember that it wasn't accomplished "in your name". And live with that."

One has to be a little silly to believe that Iraq is heading for democracy. More likely a ayatollah regime, based on a religious shiite majority, where women will be discriminated against and the sharia will take precedence. A regime more likely to assist terrorism against the US than Hussein's regime. When that happens remember it was all done in your name. And live with that.

Anonymous said...

One has to be a little silly to believe that Iraq is heading for democracy. More likely a ayatollah regime...

Well, we'll just have to wait and see who's right, won't we?


(And I bet you think you're the non-racist here. How interesting.)

Anonymous said...

Bruno, really, this is a family blog. I don't know if Truth tellers daughters read his comments section, but I can't imagine that they have any interest in the size of any portion of your anatomy.

Nope, I didn't know that we supported Saddam in the "Gulf War". I was under the misconception that we basically kicked him out of Kuwait. But silly me, I wasn't there, so what do I know.

Yes, you are right, I should believe everything that Truth teller posts on his blog about Fallujah because he is there and I am not. Oops, but wait, doesn't he live in Mosul? Oh well, that's totally different from my not being there. It's still Iraq, right?

Soooo, all those people who can search NOW for their loved ones who were murdered by Saddam DECADES ago should just forget about them? Is that it? Besides he wouldn't have ever done anything like that again, right? He is such a NICE GUY, and he sons were just lovely fellows.

Okay, enough sarcasm for this comment. As someone said earlier we will not change anyones minds.


Lynnette in Minnesota

Anonymous said...

You're fighting a losing battle, moron99.

For people like John and others like him, reasoned analysis and rational discussion are not possible. They dwell in the realm of rabid hyperbole and paroxysms of rage when confronted with logic. Their usual M.O. when confronted is to revert to form and start shouting "Nazi!" or similar equivalents.

It's best to just let them rant. Eventually they'll twist a muscle and hurt themselves.

Dancewater said...

Moron99 said...
"On balance the Iraqi war has saved more lives than it has cost."
How on earth would you know? Did you go over there and count? We really have no concrete idea how many Iraqi died in the war, or even died in the last 10 years of Saddam's rule.


Moron99 says....
"Therefore I believe it is a just war."

And you are basing that on absolutely no information at all.

Truth teller said...

dance water,
The estimated number of lost lives during the two years of the Iraqi war, is much more than what saddam killed in his 30 years of predominant. Saddam was a bad guy, that is true for sure, but what would you say about the one who's responsible for the war?
What is built over wrong foundation, is wrong. All the world knows now that the proposed causes of the war were false.
Therefore, I believe it is an absolutly unjust war. And every honest American should say that loudly and clearly.

waldschrat said...

I would be interested in what number of lost lives you believe to be attributable to the war.

US dead is about 1500 so far.
http://www.iraqbodycount.net/database/ suggests about 20,000 reported Iraqi civilian dead so far. I suspect the true Iraqi toll is higher because some Iraqi deaths are not reported and good data are hard to get. The casualty ratio in American/Iraqi firefights seems to be very high, 10 to 20 Iraqi dead per US death, presumably due to US firepower advantages rather than lack of skill and enthusiasm on the part of the Iraqis. However, even if the ratio were 50 Iraqi dead per US dead the maximum plausible Iraqi deathtoll would be about 1500*50=75,000.

So, what number do you consider right?

In any case, I find myself in agreement that further casualties are undesirable and should be avoided if possible.

What can we do to accomplish this?

waldschrat said...

As http://www.iraqbodycount.net points out, justice is ultimately not a question of numbers. It does not matter who killed more, Saddam, the US coalition, or the insurgents and jihadis. One unjust death is an unacceptable and horrible thing all by itself. More importantly, the deaths of people yesterday we can not hope to change. What we say and do today can affect only deaths which might happen tomorrow.

Anonymous said...

moron99,
For a moment, and to keep the analogy as accurate as possible, I thought you were going to say that, faced with those people's lack of sensitivity about the cockroach problem, the neighbours had decided to shoot them, or to bomb their house with napalm...

I guess you actually thought of that solution, more in line with the American tradition, but may have felt some lefties would have some silly objections...

Anonymous said...

Please... The Fallujans deserved this treatment. This city populated by ignorants completely hates Americans since the first day. They have no pity. They have no respect. Because they never have a bath, they smell like shits.Their innocent children learned about use kalashnikov and grenade-launcher. Their teachers were their parents. The U.S. commanders didn't do the decision of attack this city until the people of Falluja gave them a motivation on 31st March 2004. After that insurgents killed the Americans concractors, the innocent civilians showed their barbaric islamic culture of hate and comtempt, burning the bodies of the killed. Now they cry... Who is the cause of his misfortune, cry on himself.

Anonymous said...

moron99, I will tell you a secret: in Europe we do not hang serial killers, or any other type of killers. And we do not seem to have more serial killers than you have. In fact we seem to have less. Why?...

Truth teller said...

To waldschrat and moron99,

I like your approaches in discussion, although I don't agree with your viewpoints.

I am sure that the western media has a great effects on most of the World's population including most Iraqis.

The number of kurds killed because of saddam regimen is very small compared to the number of Iraqi killed because of the war.
This is true if we exclude the massacre of Halabja in which more than 5000 kurds were killed by chemical weapon.!!
Why don't I include this massacre ??. Because those people died, not because of the tyranny of Saddam, but because of the kurdish leaders who permitted the return of the refugees to Halabja while they were warned by the Iraqi side that the area will be blown by chemicals.
I don't have a prove for that, but I am sure that saddam trial will clarify alot of hidden facts.

Other facts, you may forgot.

The Iraq-Iran war occured when Saddam was the strong man of the US in the Middle East. He was the American arm to stop the Islamic revolution of Khumainy.

The invation of Kuwait, wouldn't have happenned if the Americans did not give Saddam the green light to invade Kuwait.

A large number of the mass graves was of Iraqi soldiers who were killed in their way back from Kuwait by the fire of the american jet fighters or by the armed militants of the Bader forces who were supported by Iran. Their bodies were left in place till the Iraqi army regained the power to overcome the uprise.
Another number of the mass graves was of Iraqis who were killed by the shite insurrection, either because they were Government's employees, or were bathies, or Saddam loyalist.
Another number of the mass graves was of the militants who resisted the Iraqi army while taking back the control.

You see, the total number is high, but who is responsible? Saddam? or the ones who were behind him, pushing him forward?

Saddam was an evil dictator, but he was not the only evil in this dilemma.

Anonymous said...

Amazing.

Saddam didn't gas the Kurds.
It's America's fault he fought Iran.
It's America's fault he invaded Kuwait.
Many of the mass graves are America's fault (the other mass graves are just collateral damage from insurrections or militants who resisted the Iraqi army).

So why do you even admit he was "evil", Truth Teller?
Seems to me he never did anything wrong.

(I now understand a whole lot more about you than I did before, Truth Teller. And it's not good.)

Anonymous said...

To review, class. Here's the "truth" about Saddam's "evil" reign, according to "Truth Teller":


Gassed Kurds? - Saddam didn't kill them, he tried to save them. The Kurds killed them.

Iran? - America made Saddam fight them.

Kuwait? - America made Saddam invade them.

Thousands of corpses in Mass Graves?
a) killed by Americans
b) Saddam loyalists killed by Shiites or
c) militants resisting the Iraqi army.

Makes you almost feel sorry for Saddam, doesn't it? All those nasty people (Kurds, Americans, Shiites...) conspiring against him!

waldschrat said...

Dear Truth Teller:

Your comments about the possibility that some (many) of the mass graves may be filled with Iraqi soldiers killed in any of many conflicts is something I had not thought of. As you say, we may learn many things from the trial of Saddam!

There is a more recent matter which has bothered me and perhaps you can answer. Sunni leaders reportedly urged a boycot of the elections in January, and also urged their people not to join the police and new Iraqi army. Apparently many people followed those recommendations. Voting in Sunni areas was light, and I have the impression Sunnis are under-represented in the police and Iraqi guard forces although data is scarce.

More recently Sunni leaders are reported to have announced that boycotting the elections was a mistake and just this week, are reportedly saying Sunnis should seek to join the police and Iraqi military.

My question is what logic or reasoning caused Sunni leadership to urge boycotting the election particularly (and the police and Iraqi military), and what logic brought a reversal of these positions. The only explanation I can think of is that they initially opposed what they considered to be a false creation of the US invaders, but now find they were actually opposing participation in what is becoming the enduring and legitimate power structure of a free Iraq. I do not blame anyone who might doubt America's intentions, although I have always hoped and believed those intentions were good, and that they included development of a new government in Iraq that would be a good servant to all Iraqis.

I expect you understand these matters far better than I can simply because you are in Iraq. Are the Sunni leaders beginning to believe the emerging government will be really independent and legitimate, the true power in Iraq? Or have I misunderstand the reports I have read?

Anonymous said...

John once again uses lots of words to say little of substance.

-Regarding the Kurds, look up the Anfal campaign of 1987-88. Human Rights Watch puts the number of Kurds killed by Saddam's regime at between 70,000-150,000 while Amnesty International puts it more definitively at about 100,000. You can find these reports, and others, on the internet. C'mon, you must know how to use search terms.

-"As far as the entire world standing against Saddam when he invaded Kuwait..." Name more than a handful of countries that were on Saddam's side in that conflict.

- "on another point, today 40 to 60 freedom fighters launched an early evening attack against american occupiers in Abu Ghraib" - "freedom fighters". Interesting. Yeah, they managed to wound some Americans. They also wounded about the same number of Iraqi prisoners. And were most likely "neutralized" by big American guns in the process. And accomplished nothing of substance. Pick your heroes more carefully next time, John.

I hope all Iraqis make careful note, as they struggle to form this nascent democracy, of whose side people like John are on.

Anonymous said...

Although I do not doubt Saddam Hussein was a murderer, it might be worthwhile reading the following document:

http://www.polyconomics.com/searchbase/11-18-98.html

On the other hand, I find it difficult to accept that Saddam Hussein's murders are an acceptable excuse to use the US armed forces in a similar destructive role. After all, Americans are supposed to be more civilized than Saddam Hussein. It seems obvious that Iraqi resistants are in no way connected to Saddam Hussein or the Baath Party. They are a force mostly made up of people who do not want their country being ruled by foreigners. People who have suffered enough at the hands of the coalition to have risen in arms against them. It is highly probable that those resistants would lay down their weapons if the coalition troops left Iraq, being replaced by troops from moslem countries under the direction of the UN, and with the agreement of an independent Iraqi government. The trouble with such an alternative, from the American point of view, is that it would not guarantee American control of Iraqi oil...

Anonymous said...

"On the other hand, I find it difficult to accept that Saddam Hussein's murders are an acceptable excuse to use the US armed forces in a similar destructive role."

- False Analogy.


"It seems obvious that Iraqi resistants are in no way connected to Saddam Hussein or the Baath Party."

- That is not at all "obvious". The "resistants" are a mixture of people, including foreign jihadists like Zarqawi, ordinary criminals doing it for money, Iraqis who sincerely believe they're doing it for nationalistic reasons, and former Fedayeen or Baath party supporters. There has also been evidence that a lot of the direction for these activities, along with the money, comes from former high ranking Saddam loyalists.

Anonymous said...

"It is highly probable that those resistants would lay down their weapons if the coalition troops left Iraq, being replaced by troops from moslem countries under the direction of the UN, and with the agreement of an independent Iraqi government."

Not at all "probable" or likely. Maybe you haven't noticed Iraqi relations with Syria, Jordan, etc. and how they feel about those countries seeming to support the terrorist attacks that kill Iraqis. Ask Iraqis and they would tell you they do not want Syrian, Jordanian or any other Arab country's troops in their country, any more than they want American troops in their country. And maybe you haven't noticed that a lot of these "resistants" are either opposed to democracy as an idea, opposed to a democracy in Iraq that, by definition, would put the Shia in the majority, or are actively trying to resurrect Saddam's Baathist Sunni rule. There's no reason to think that they would "lay down their weapons" if coalition troops were suddenly replaced by Syrian or Jordanian troops, under U.N. direction. On the contrary, they would likely be emboldened by such a pullback. Iraqis risked too much on January 30th to allow that to happen. It would be an abdication of responsibility.

Anonymous said...

moron99,

You're actually trying to use logic with the "No Blood for Oil" crowd?

Good luck.

CharlesWT said...

America has no great need for Iraqi oil. Oil can be gotten in a lot of places for a price. In fact, as soon as we finish melting the North Polar ice cap, we will have access to huge new oil reserves. :) What we really want is for Iraq to be a successful, democratic country so that we can benefit from Iraqi cultural exports in the forms of science, theology, literature, music, movies, cuisine, creative and talented immigrants, etc. All of which has the potential of being worth far more than any oil Iraq has.

CharlesWT said...

"...science, theology,..."

Well, I intended "technology" but my spell checker misread my mind. :o But, I'll let it stand as religion is also a part of culture and can also have value as an export.

Truth teller said...

Dear friend, I couldn't make the link. So I copy and past this article to you.Perhaps some of you had read it. But it will throw some light on what ihave been said.

It is an article written by Jude Wanniski.
The title is:
WHERE DID SADDAM COME FROM?


"February 18, 1998

WHERE DID SADDAM COME FROM? PART I

Memo To: Chairman Jesse Helms, Senate Foreign Relations Committee
From: Jude Wanniski
Re: Where did Saddam Hussein come from?

Thanks for your nice note of February 2, in response to my last memo. I know I'm giving you a lot to mull over, Senator, but there is a lot at stake. We are already spending dollars into the billions as we prepare for another carpet bombing of Iraq. Unless you get behind Jack Kemp's initiative, which is the only way I can visualize a peaceful and reasonable way out of the swamp we are in, we will start measuring the cost in bodies, foreign and domestic. In the Gulf War, we lost 148 lives, a significant percentage by "friendly fire," but it still counts that as many as 300,000 Iraqi lives were lost before we decided to end the slaughter. It also counts that another 1.4 million Iraqi civilians died since the war ended as a result of the destruction of
water and sanitary facilities, which could not be repaired because we will not permit Iraq to sell goods or buy what is needed for their repair. Remember that even before Iraq invaded Kuwait on August 2,1990, we were keeping such a tight hold on what he could buy that he complained to April Glaspie, our ambassador, that they are only permitted to buy wheat, and pretty soon you will argue that gunpowder can be made out of wheat. We do tend to bury the past, especially when it becomes inconvenient to our present and future intentions. Here is a thumbnail account, my own analysis, of how we have arrived at this pretty pass. Please bear with me, Jesse.
First of all, Saddam came to full power as president of Iraq in 1979,
a very important year, as I will explain, in that it was also the year of the Iranian revolution. He had been vice president since 1974, when he was 37, and essentially ran the government under a titular leader. The biggest influence on his life was that of his stepfather, a man
who despised Persians and Jews, who became mayor of Baghdad, and who inspired Saddam to became an Arab nationalist in the new Ba'ath (or Renaissance) Party. The Ba'ath Party grew out of the Great Depression, the way the New Deal surfaced in the Democratic party here. Its three component parts were (Arab) unity, liberation (from colonialism) and (economic) socialism. Saddam's various biographers more or less agree
that his central core has been the acquisition of personal power and
the retention of personal power. He has no moral or spiritual compass, no particular ideology. There is actually no evidence that he despises Persians or Jews as a class, but assesses them at different times according to whether they will add or detract from his secure political position. His biographers agree he is not megalomaniacal or irrational, but is certainly cold-blooded when it comes to dealing
with any direct threat to his station.
When he came to power in this pre-Reagan era, capitalism was not held
in high regard throughout the world. It is not surprising that Saddam attempted to manage the Iraqi economy with socialist schemes mixed in with capitalist markets. He began his leadership of Iraq in the Jimmy Carter years, which saw the price of gold rise from $140 to as high as $850, settling to $625 in 1980 going through election day. These were
marvelous days for the oil-producing states of the Middle East, particularly Iran and Iraq, as the price of oil rose to as high as $35 a barrel, more than ten times the price before president Nixon ended the gold standard in 1971. There were great differences, though, in the way Iran and Iraq managed this new wealth.
In Teheran, the Shah assumed the dramatic rise in the oil price was
due to energy shortages that would continue indefinitely. He decided
to spend not only the cash coming in, but also borrowed heavily
against future receipts, with a dream of building a modern Iran as his legacy. He did not anticipate the fact that the general price level would soon be catching up with gold and oil, and that the Iranian business community would have to catch up with wages and prices too.
When the inflation rate soared as he pumped up the economy on top of
the monetary inflation, the Shah decided to crack down on profiteers
who violated his decrees of price controls. His ignorance of
macroeconomics was not unusual at the time, and he never did make the
connection of why ordinary people began to demonstrate against him in
early 1978. The inflation was not only wrecking the creditor class and strangling the business community, it also was causing a breakdown in morality, as the linkages broke between effort and reward. Opposition to the Shah developed though an amalgam of business and religious
leaders.
The religious leader who came to power when the Shah was finally
kicked out was the Ayatollah Khomeini, who had spent a good part of the 1970s watching the economic expansion and moral degradation of his country from exile, in Baghdad. As in Iran, these were exciting years for the Iraqi economy, but instead of building an expensive memorial
to himself, Saddam Hussein directed the cascade of oil wealth into the improvement of the lives of ordinary Iraqi citizens. Our ambassador to Iraq in these years, Edward Peck, tells me there is no question that as much as ordinary people in Iran came to hate the Shah, the ordinary people of Iraq came to love Saddam. The wealth went into free education, K through university, modern hospitals, water and sewer
facilities, and the greatest expansion of living standards in the history of modern Iraq. His biographers agree he was conscious of the need to share the benefits of the oil wealth as widely as possible in order to keep the support of the masses. There had been anti-Israel episodes in the earlier period, but in this period under Saddam, Israel saw a man who clearly had no wish to disturb a nation that could cause him trouble. He recognized the state of Israel and generally showed respect for its ability to cause him trouble.
Trouble commenced when the Shah of Iran began to see his regime
crumble, and understood the source of his trouble was sitting in
Baghdad. Saddam bowed to the pressure from Teheran and invited the Ayatollah to take up residence in Kuwait. When Kuwait turned him down, Saddam assisted him in finding exile quarters in Paris, but the Ayatollah was not a happy camper. Remember, Iraq is dominated by Shi'ite Muslims, who account for 60% of the population, Sunni Muslims counting for 20%. The Ayatollah is also Shi'ite, as are the great majority of ranians. When the Ayatollah replaced the Shah, Saddam Hussein immediately began courting his own Sh'ia population, donning their traditional religious garb at ceremonies up and down Iraq, and
spending lavishly from state coffers on construction of places of worship. There was plenty of money. Oil revenues were up forty times their level of the 1960s.
As the Ayatollah began to call for an uprising of Sh'ia fundamentalists all over the Middle East, including his old neighbors in Iraq, Saddam also spent lavishly on a military buildup. The United States, Israel, and the NATO powers were happy to sell him anything it
wanted. When we hear the President remind us that Saddam invaded Iran,
we should remember that he did so "out of fear, not out of greed,"
which is how one of his biographers puts it. The historians also agree that he believed the war would be a quick one, because he was not interested in gobbling up Iran, a country with three times the population and land mass of Iraq. His military machine quickly knocked
down the Iranian army in the western province, and instead of
advancing toward Teheran, Saddam stopped when he had incorporated only the segment of the population that was pro-Iraq, anti-Ayatollah. He later saw the mistake in not increasing his hold until his forces had run out of steam. The Iranian forces turned out to be stronger than he had been led to believe by Israeli intelligence. They struck back, and the war dragged on for eight years. Each side suffered several hundred
thousand dead, with most reports indicating Iran losing more. The
total cost of the war was easily $1 trillion. The war ended when Iraq began to win back territory it had lost to the Iranian forces and the Iranians finally accepted a UN resolution of truce.
In that period, his biographers agree that Iraq used poison gas
several times that we can be sure of. From my readings, I've gotten
the impression that except in one instance, they were used as a last
resort, when his forces were about to be overwhelmed by Iranian
forces. In those cases where he used poison gas against his own
people, the most egregious example was in 1988, when the city of
Halabja was gas bombed in the Kurdish area. The UN estimates that
5,000 Iraqis were killed and 10,000 wounded, the bombing occurring after the city had surrendered to the Iranians. There were other Iraqi villages gassed in the Kurdish region, but my impression is that they were given warnings of several weeks to evacuate as Baghdad was relocating some significant portion of the Iraqi Kurds for reasons not clear to me. Even those historians clearly hostile to Saddam will
point out that the western powers kept him supplied with the materials needed for chemical weapons right up to the invasion of Kuwait in 1990, including material cleared by the U.K.
Part II of this thumbnail history will continue tomorrow, Senator.
We'll begin with an April 1990 meeting in Baghdad between Saddam and five United States Senators."
The end of part one.

This is part two:

"February 19, 1998

WHERE DID SADDAM COME FROM? PART II

Memo To: Chairman Jesse Helms, Senate Foreign Relations Committee
From: Jude Wanniski
Re: Where did Saddam Hussein come from?

In our first part of this thumbnail history, Senator, I took us through the Iran-Iraq war. One of the important pieces I omitted, but should bring to your attention in this second part, is the matter of Iraq's nuclear power plant, which Israel blew up in 1981. What
reminded me of my omission was The Wall Street Journal's lead
editorial yesterday, "Waiting for a Pirate." I commented on this in a
client letter I sent out yesterday, the 18th:WALL STREET JOURNAL: The Journal this morning finally decided to join the bombers, in an editorial, "Waiting for a Pirate," that dispenses with any serious intellectual analysis and says it has come down to this: "Who's in charge here, Iraq or the United States?" One might ask "Who's in charge of the editorial page?" The Journal's editor, Robert L. Bartley, obviously gave some junior member of the staff responsibility for beating the war drums. The author fondly remembers: "In 1981 Israel bombed and destroyed an Iraqi nuclear reactor under construction, no doubt delaying Saddam's expansionist instincts. Oh
yes, critics of the moment said the Begin government had ruined Iraq's 'drift toward the West.'" What really happened was that Iraq, a signator to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, had built a power plant at the urging of western governments, including the United States, which said the world was running out of oil. At a cost of several billion dollars, mostly spent on western engineering and material, the plant was supervised by the International Arms Control Agency, which signed off on the plant and would monitor it into the future to make sure it wasn't producing bomb stuff. Israel's spymasters, the Mossad, decided it was too much of a threat anyway and
blew it up. The UN General Assembly condemned the action, but the United States vetoed a Security Council resolution condemning Israel. Saddam immediately began secret work on nuclear weapons. Boys will be
boys. You may dispute me, Jesse, but you have far greater resources than I to get precise information. At the time of the Israeli action in 1981, I supported it when told it was justified by our government. As more information has emerged, I don't think there was justification. I wish you would get a serious report from your staff on the circumstances of
the 1981 terrorist act of Mossad. (I hope you agree that blowing up
someone else's power plant is at the least a criminal political act.)
I said in yesterday's report that at the end of the Iran-Iraq war in
1987, Saddam was in serious financial distress. The cost of the war was enormous, and nobody doubts that Iraq was doing its best to neutralize the forces of Islamic fundamentalism threatening the Middle East, and Israel. The figures vary, but he seemed to owe at least $50 billion in hard currency and had run up debts in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, which were happy to have poor Iraqis die on the battlefield to save the monarchs of the Middle East. Alas, the price of oil was slumping and of no help to him. The living standards that had climbed in the good years had fallen back with the war-time austerity programs. Saddam was in a survival mode, not an expansionist mode.
Every $1 to the price of oil was worth $1 billion to him, and he
observed his fellow OPEC members selling more oil than they had agreed upon, driving down the price to his oil, in order to keep the sheiks and playboys of the "moderate" states in the style to which they had become accustomed. He was demanding OPEC agree to a higher oil price so he could pay his post-war bills, which would mean Kuwait would have
to produce less.
Remember that the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait was on August 2,1990. "On
12 April 1990 Saddam met with five US senators: Robert Dole, Alan
Simpson, Howard Metzenbaum, James McClure and Frank Murkowski; the US
ambassador [April Glaspie], soon to be famous for her 'green light' to Saddam, was also present. No-one reading the various ranscripts of this meeting can doubt the general placatory tone. The US senators even criticized the American press in their attempts to propitiate Saddam, emphasizing that there was a difference between the attitudes
of the US government and those of the journalists."
This account appears in the 1996 edition of "Iraq: From Sumer to
Saddam," published in London by the St Martin's press. You and your
staff should read it, not for further evidence of Saddam's readiness to use force himself, but for the evidence of gross stupidity by our government at various moments in this unfolding history. In the account cited, author Geoff Simons, a respected British journalist, noted that during the meeting Howard Metzenbaum, the only Democrat,
spoke up ('I am a Jew and a staunch supporter of Israel') who "then decided to pay Saddam a compliment: "'...I have been sitting here and listening to you for about an hour, and I am now aware that you are a strong intelligent man and that you want peace... If... you were to focus on the value of peace that we greatly need to achieve peace in
the Middle East then there would not be a leader to compare with you
in the Middle East.'"
In the period between this meeting and the Kuwait invasion, the record
indicates that the Bush administration bent over backwards to indicate that it was thrilled to pieces with Saddam, especially as he was using his oil money to buy what we permitted him to buy to reduce our trade deficit. On May 1, Secretary of State James Baker III was asked by a Senate committee if Iraq should be put back on the list of terrorist
states, having been removed the year before. Baker said "It is a bit premature of me to sit here and make that determination. [If we cut Iraq from our credits] in all probability our allies will be very quick to move in there and pick up our market share." The record is clear that the Bush administration argued against the imposition of sanctions, as the Simons book notes, and "it emerged that the US Attorney General Richard Thornburgh had blocked the Atlanta investigation into Saddam's laundering of $3 billion through the Atlanta branch of Italy's Lavoro Bank for the acquisition of American weapons, including components for nuclear devices."
At this point, Saddam Hussein had his back to the financial wall, he
thought of how much treasure he had expended on a war with Iran that left both sides exactly where they were eight years earlier, and
observed that Kuwait, run by a spoiled little emir with several
hundred wives, was pumping more oil than he was supposed to be pumping from the fields along the Iraq border. It was even shown that the western companies were slanting their drilling into Iraq, under the border, to steal Iraqi oil. The fact that Kuwait was part of Iraq until the British after WWI decided to simply give it to the playboy princelings of that Iraqi province was also weighing on his mind. His people had lost several hundred thousand of their children in a war fought for the west and the monarchs. Now they were cheating him on his oil receipts. He began to argue that the monarchs had declared
economic war on Iraq.
On 24 July 1990 two Iraqi armoured divisions moved from their bases to
take up positions on the Kuwaiti border. Later the same day the US
State Department spokeswoman, Margaret Tutwiler, asked whether the US had any military plans to defend Kuwait, replied: 'We do not have any defense treaties with Kuwait, and there are no special defense or security commitments to Kuwait.' The next day Saddam Hussein summoned US Ambassador April Glaspie to his office in what was to be the last official contact between Baghdad and the United States before the invasion of Kuwait. Even at this late tage, with an obviously deteriorating situation in the Gulf, Glaspie still made efforts to placate Saddam Hussein. She emphasized that President Bush had rejected the idea of trade sanctions against Iraq, to which Saddam
replied: 'There is nothing left for us to buy from America except
wheat. Every time we want to buy something, they say it is forbidden.
I am afraid that one day you will say, "you are going to make
gunpowder out of wheat".' Glaspie was quick to reassure the Iraqi
leader : 'I have a direct instruction from the President to seek better relations with Iraq.' And she emphasized that a formal apology had been offered to Iraq for a critical article that had been published by the American Information Agency: 'I saw the Diane Sawyer programme on ABC... what happened in that programme was cheap and unjust... this is a real picture of what happens in the American media -- even to American politicians themselves. These are the methods that the Western media employ. I am pleased that you add your voice to the
diplomats that stand up to the media....' Later Glaspie added that
"President Bush is an intelligent man. He is not going to declare an
economic war against Iraq...'; and then the ambassador produced the
much-quoted comment that was perhaps the biggest 'green light' of all: "I admire your extraordinary efforts to rebuild your country. I know you need funds. We understand that, and our opinion is that you should have the opportunity to rebuild your country. But we have no opinion
on Arab-Arab conflicts like your border disagreement with Kuwait.
[Author's italics]."
On July 31, two days before the invasion, Assistant Secretary of State John Kelly testified before Chairman Lee Hamilton of House Foreign Affairs. Asked repeatedly if we would come to the defense of Kuwait if it were attacked, he insisted there was no obligation on our part to do so. Meanwhile, Iraq prepared for a meeting the following day with Kuwait to negotiate a deal on the oil issues. The talks ended badly,
with the Kuwaiti emir refusing to attend and Saddam refusing to attend because the emir would be absent. The Iraqi demand for $10 billion was clearly made under the threat of force and constituted blackmail, but Iraq's arguments were that the payment was justified for services rendered in the Iran/Iraq war. It was at this point that Saddam decided to go into Kuwait.
At the time, I was not happy with the idea of the United States
intervening to counter the invasion. This is because I observed that Kuwait's neighbors did not seem concerned, even when Iraq did not stop at the Rumailah oil fields, which Iraq had claimed as its own since 1922, but went on to Kuwait City. It was in 1922 that a British diplomat, Percy Cox, drew a line on a map dividing up the Ottoman Empire as part of the fallout of WWI. There had as yet been no oil produced in the swatch of desert he gave to the new emirate of Kuwait, but Kuwait got the swatch apparently because it offered better oil concessions to the British oil companies. In 1980, a decade before the invasion, Iraq staged a major propaganda campaign reasserting its
rights over the Rumailah fields. In that last-ditch meeting prior to
the August 2 invasion, the Kuwait representative was not permitted to
offer Iraq more than $1 billion to settle the dispute.
I did alter my position, Senator, when our former UN Ambassador,
Jeanne Kirkpatrick, and I, attended a briefing at the Saudi Embassy in Washington by its ambassador, Prince Bandar. He told us that his government was not worried about the invasion at first, and that it in fact had good relations with Baghdad. King Fahd changed his mind when shown photos by U.S. Naval Intelligence that the Iraqi army had bypassed Kuwait City and had taken up positions on the Saudi border.
President Bush had persuaded the King in several phone calls that Iraq might very well be bent on swallowing up Saudi Arabia. If Saudi Arabia was persuaded, I was more open to the idea that it was U.S. responsibility to counter Saddam with force. When Egypt's Hosni Mubarak dropped his opposition to intervention and said his country would join the coalition, I became a solid supporter of the U.S.intervention. I have to say I was still suspicious, wondering how Saddam could possibly have thought he could get away with an invasion
of Saudi Arabia or even a determination to swallow all of Kuwait instead of the Rumailah oil fields. If he could not defeat Iran in an eight-year war, how could he expect to engage the allied powers in a grab for Middle East oil?
In the years since, I've concluded that Saddam had no intention of
invading Saudi Arabia. I later learned, as did you, of the "green
light" that April Glaspie gave Saddam in their July 24 meeting. I also learned that Ms. Glaspie was subsequently "surprised" when the Iraqi army did not stop at the oil fields, but went on to Kuwait City. Of course, if you consider that Kuwait is only 13% the size of your home state of North Carolina, and Iraq is 10,000 square miles larger than
California, you will see that it did not take much for tanks to
overshoot Kuwait City and appear to be menacing Saudi Arabia. In his
invasion of Iran, remember that Saddam did stop when he got what he
wanted, and was later criticized for not pushing as far as he could so that he would have a better bargaining position.
Indeed, there is in the historical record evidence that on August 3,
the day after his forces waltzed into Kuwait City virtually unopposed
by the emir's handful of soldiers, Saddam announced that he would be
prepared to leave Kuwait as soon as it was determined the security of Iraq or Kuwait was not threatened. This was two days before President Bush announced Iraqi aggression "will not stand." In the Simons book, the case is made that Baghdad repeatedly offered to negotiate its
departure from Kuwait prior to the hostilities of Desert Storm.
Perhaps these accounts are in error, but Simons is a respected
journalist and the book is endorsed by British MP Tony Benn, who was the most active British politician in that period in trying to negotiate a peace before the U.S. bombing campaign began. It is Simons' argument that George Bush put together the coalition against Iraq by fabricating a crisis that did not exist, by pressuring King Fahd into a request for military assistance ("all but demanding a Saudi request for American protection") and then asking Morocco and Egypt to back up the Saudi request. At first Egypt resisted, but then:
In 1990 Egypt had massive debts, the largest in the whole of Africa
and the Middle East. Almost $50 billion was owed to the World Bank,
and Secretary of State James Baker... proposed a bribe (or
'forgiveness') of some $14 billion. At the same time Washington
pressured other governments, including Canada and Saudi Arabia, to 'forgive' or delay much of the rest of the Egyptian debt. And where the tactic of bribery worked well with President Mubarak, it could be exploited to equal advantage with other national leaders.
Indeed, the consensus was built with money and arms. Turkey, Syria,
even Iran joined the coalition with sudden fountains of credit
produced by the World Bank. It does appear in my readings that there came a point where there had to be a war to justify all that had been done. In the last weeks before the bombing of Iraq began on January 16, it is clear with hindsight that there was no interest in talking to Baghdad because Iraq had to be taught a lesson. Several hundred thousand Iraqis died as a result of the bombing. The reason we lost
only 148 men was that Iraq was attempting a retreat throughout the 100 hours of battle. If it had put up any resistance, they would have been completely slaughtered. As it was, Colin Powell called off the "turkey shoot" after it had accomplished partial slaughter.
Now I am not trying to argue here, Senator, that what Saddam Hussein
did was right and what we did was wrong. I'm saying this thumbnail
history of Saddam Hussein's intersection with our national interest demonstrates a different picture than we now are presenting to the American people. If you want to go ahead with another massive bombing campaign "to teach the Iraqi people another lesson on who is boss," perhaps that too will be justified by history. I'm only trying to make sure you have all the information you need before you throw in with the President, our commander-in-chief."

This the end of part two. and of my letter

Anonymous said...

Some Americans seem to think that the US are intrinsecally incapable of brutality. They forget Leipzig (although this was mainly a British act of brutality), Hiroshima and Nagasaki (yes, I know the argument that killing hundreds of thousands of innocent Japanese civilians saved a lot of American military lives...), and the widespread use of napalm in Korea on towns and villages, that killed hundreds of thousands of Korean civilians. Going a bit back in time one could even mention the fate of American Indians. So, there is enough proof that brutality is not unknown to Americans. Why is it so unbelievable that Americans are being unacceptably brutal in Iraq?

If the US were invaded by any other country, you would find it imperative to resist. Why is it that, in your opinion, only dishonest Iraqis are resisting the American rape of their country?

When I mentioned "moslem troops" to replace the present coalition forces, I was not thinking of Syrian or Jordanian troops, but Indonesian, Bangladeshi and Pakistani troops. I insist that any Iraqi government not controlled by Americans would accept an interim solution of that type, with the backing of the UN. But such a solution would only be accepted by all parties if it implied the withdrawal of US forces. I have not noticed any willigness from the US to accept such a solution.

Oil is not important and it would never cover the present military costs to the US? You forget that a recent study has shown that if China alone had the same income per capita of the western world - which it will have in about 25 years time - its needs in oil would be close to 30% above present day's total world oil production. Controlling Iraq and Iran's oil reserves is vital to the US, and is certainly worth all the money spent with the invasion. Of course, at the end of the line there is a war for oil between China and the US. I hope you are all young enough to find out that democracy in Iraq is the least of your government worries, and a simple excuse for gullible Americans.

In Europe it took us a couple of hundred years and two world wars to learn that war is evil and that governments should not be trusted without question. You still seem to think that your rulers are pure at heart and that your democratic system guarantees that only honest people reach power. Well, think again...

Anonymous said...

Frightened soldiers - specially reserve and National Guard soldiers - will shoot at anything that moves. Many Iraqi casualties - as widely reported (evidence)- have been victims of such frightened soldiers. Such killings fall under the category of "brutality", because they are needless killings. Bombing of areas where insurgents may have been spotted, and which cause civilian casualties, are also examples of brutality, because you do not indiscriminately bomb urban areas in a country which you are trying to "liberate" from cockroaches. Shooting at ambulances, just because some ambulances may be used by insurgents, is another example of brutality. Preventing people from reaching hospitals, just to prevent insurgents from obtaining medical assistance is an act of brutality. Torturing is an evident act of brutality. Keeping people under suspicion indefinitely in prison, is an act of brutality. Arresting family members of known insurgents, to force them to give themselves up, is an act of brutality. All of which has been frequently reported. And none of these acts of brutality is being performed by "small special units". They are in the very nature of the American intervention in Iraq. All in all a strange way to make friends and to liberate a country. Unless the real reason for the war was oil...

Anonymous said...

moron99,
I am not in Iraq. My evidence are the reports of those who are on the spot. What do you want me to do? To jump on the first plane to Iraq and see by myself? Everything I mentioned before has been reported by more than one source. I find that more solid evidence than the "evidence" for WMD which your government used to justify the invasion...

Anonymous said...

moron99,
Please do indulge me and comment on my 04:33:03 PM post. Tell me where the evidence is insufficient. As for my education I have a Masters degree in Political Science and an IQ of 140. It is not sufficient to guarantee I am not wrong, but it is sufficient to guarantee that I think before I talk or write. Obviously I am not saying that all Americans are guilty of brutality in Iraq. But I am saying that Americans have a duty to themselves and to the rest of the world to try ant stop American aggression in Iraq. You did it before, at the time of the war in Vietnam, so you could do it again. Of course, by then there was the draft, and many protesters were just thinking of their asses. Now, with a more or less volutary army, Americans know they do not risk finding themselves in Iraq against their will, being shot at by rag heads. So, no need to be "principled"...

Anonymous said...

This journalist, Mark Manning, is very lucky to go in Fallujah only now. If he goes in Fallujah one year ago he dies, after being burned up and mutilated by a bestial crowd (the same people that now is so friendly, after having feel the American hammer). He must thank the U.S. Military for gave him the opportunity of visits the city without risks.

Anonymous said...

"But I am saying that Americans have a duty to themselves and to the rest of the world to try ant stop American aggression in Iraq."

Actually, albatroz, Americans have a duty to fulfill the commitments they made to the Iraqi people. To walk away now would be an abdication of responsibility, especially after so many Iraqis risked their lives on January 30th.

The Iraqi government is in the process of forming. The constitution will be written this summer. There will be elections at the end of the year. In the meantime, more and more Iraqi soldiers and police are being trained and are taking over security responsibilities. This is what we are doing. To walk away before this process is complete would be morally wrong. Americans understand this, even though it is a difficult task. Do you think Americans enjoy watching their sons and daughters being injured and killed every day in Iraq? We don't. But we realize that we have a responsibility to see this through. I'm surprised Europeans have such a hard time understanding that (actually, maybe I'm not so surprised).

By the way, people who need to state their IQ do so because they are unable to prove their intelligence in other ways. IQ measurements are an inexact science. By the way, I won't state the number, but my IQ is higher than yours. Does that prove anything? No. There are people with high IQs who are stunningly devoid of logic, reason and common sense. A moderately high IQ and degree in Political Science tells me nothing about either you logical abilities or your ability to approach a subject with reason and without bias.

Anonymous said...

Dear Anonymous,
To which Iraqis did you commit yourselves to? The shiite majority who want you out of the country as soon as possible? The insurgents who risk their lives everyday to kick you out? The kurds who actually want to create their own country separate from Iraq? Those who die everyday killed by your soldiers and planes? Those whom you bribed? With the exception of this last category, who invited you to Iraq?

(P.S. - Reading your post I reached the conclusion that your IQ must be Fahrenheit, mine is Celsius...)

Anonymous said...

Q.E.D.

Bill said...

Omar over at Iraq The Model wrote this today:

"A high official in the Iraqi ministry of interior announced that crime levels in Baghdad have decreased by 40% in March in comparison with the past months,
The source has confirmed that murders, carjacking, have armed robbery levels have all decreased. The source added that the increased cooperation of the citizens in reporting suspicious and criminal elements played a great role in this improvement.
From Al-Sabah newspaper (Arabic).
This announcement came a week after officials from the pentagon announced that attacks rate against American troops have decreased in a similar ratio (40%).
It seems to me that these similar ratios suggest a correlation between crime and terrorism. What do you think?"

Anonymous said...

This is extraordinary. Iraq was a dictatorship under a murderous dictator. However, no worse than many other dictatorships all over the world. Unpleasant as Saddam Hussein was, he was no threat to the US. Under false pretenses (WMD) the US invades Iraq and creates a state of chaos. Having created that chaos the US now states that they cannot leave until Iraq is again peaceful. The overwhelming majority of Iraqis want the Americans to leave, but are faced with a disastrous situation caused by the war. The Iraqi army was disbanded by the Americans, who now say they cannot leave until there is security, which requires a new army. The culprits of this disaster say they only want what is best for Iraq. Are we supposed to believe in the American good intentions? There are only two alternatives: to have got themselves in such a mess, the Americans either are criminally insane, or they are incredibly stupid. Or they are only after Iraqi oil. As I mentioned before, temporarily the security situation in Iraq could be guaranteed by Indonesian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi and maybe Egyptian forces, under UN control, after a new government has been installed. The US forces could leave Iraq until the end of the year. If such a plan was announced, it is very likely that the insurgency could end. Why doesn't the American government announce their willingness to accept such a plan? Obviously, as so many people have stated, Americans do not want to leave because they want to control Iraqi oil. Faced with a severe shortage of oil in the not so far future, Iraq and Iran are the best sources of oil the US needs. One doesn't have to have an IQ as high as the Anonymous to understand this...

Anonymous said...

"If a frog had wings he could fly...


and it's only because he wants the oil"

Anonymous said...

I must concede: this Anonymous is far too smart for me... "If a frog had wings he could fly..." Wow!... Why didn't I think of it?... Now I see how the Iraqi democracy is coming about! I give up. Your arguments are unanswerable... Congratulations!...

Anonymous said...

"You're in the holocaust denial camp..."

Nazis!! Nazis!!!
Under my bed and in my hair,
Nazis, Nazis EVERYWHERE!!!!

Anonymous said...

Don't worry, albatroz, we're laughing with you, not at you.

I promise.

Anonymous said...

"right-wing" "conservative scum bag"

You know you've lost the argument when you attempt to label and insult your opponent instead of countering the argument.

And anyway, did you know I, along with many others who support the democratization of Iraq, am a liberal Democrat?

So maybe you need to come up with some new labels, ya think?

Or maybe, even better, forget the juvenile name-calling and actually try to employ a logical argument. Aw, c'mon, try it once. It won't hurt.

Anonymous said...

Jeff,
Don't waste your time. You are facing the "my country, right or wrong" crowd. It's not even patriotism, it's stupidity at the service of a long tradition of rape of other peoples' integrity. Just last night I was watching on television a programme about the rape of Hawai by the Americans, by the end of the 19th century. Very enlightening. Fortunately for the Iraqis there may not be many candidates for settling in the desert...

waldschrat said...

Seems like you kicked over a hornets nest with that post about Fallujah, Truth Teller. The discussion has become angry and emotions are strong.

Yes, Truth Teller, Fallujah was hit hard, but the insurgents of Fallujah were defiant of a superior force and fought hard. Fallujah suffered because of the insurgents decision to stand and fight there, not because America is evil. Fallujah and Najaf were special cases. If America were evil, Fallujah and Najaf would not be unusual, the wreckage in every Iraqi city would be similar. Call them freedom fighters or terrorists, the insurgents of Fallujah failed an intelligence test: they challenged the US marines, and they lost. There is an old, obscene saying from Viet Nam:
"Fuck em if they can't take a joke."

As for whether Saddam is all bad, nobody is all bad. America may have supported the guy at one time, America does lots of stupid things. In the end, Saddam failed an intelligence test too. If you want to blame somebody for the mess in Iraq, blame Saddam and the people who helped him remain in power. I know it might be unsafe for somebody in Musul to bad-mouth Saddam publicly, I don't ask that you do that. Just bear in mind that he committed serious blunders in diplomacy and civic management that heve been extremely detrimental to the comfort and safety of residents of Iraq.

I hope everybody in your family is over the flu by now, Truth Teller. Spring is not yet over, really.

CharlesWT said...

Albatroz: "...temporarily the security situation in Iraq could be guaranteed by Indonesian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi and maybe Egyptian forces, under UN control,..."

That would certainly guarantee that American forces would be remembered with fondness and longing in Iraq.

Anonymous said...

John,

I apologize that my writing is not up to your obviously "high standards". I will try to do better in the future. Promise.

Strykeraunt,

I agree with you. The first President Bush should have put up or shut up. He never should have encouraged people to rise up against Saddam without giving them support. The United States owes the people of Iraq a debt that should be paid.

Thank you also for the link about April Galspie. I have not had time to read it yet, but will make a point of doing so. I prefer to read more than just Jude Wanniski's analyis.

Truth teller,

I mean this sincerely. For your families sake, I hope that you have chosen your path very carefully.

Lynnette in Minnesota

Bill said...

All the great things are simple, and many can be expressed in a single word: freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy, hope.
-Winston Churchill

Anonymous said...

moron99 links are not bad. Try also this one:

http://www.dahrjamailiraq.com/

Anonymous said...

moron99,

Do you have any concrete reasons to be suspicious of Dahr Jamail's reporting? Not being "embedded", and therefore not being subject to the US Army control, seems to me to be a good thing. And a very rare one, at that.

Anonymous said...

Moron99 --

“US forces in Fallujah were not a hand picked or small unit. When a government such as Saddam, Nazi Germany, or Stalin's Russia wishes to commit atrocities they will assign the task to hand picked units. The reason is simple. Most people, regardless of culture, will refuse to act against the tapestry of their religious beliefs and moral values.”

Well now, that’s a fair enough point.

Human beings everywhere happen to have difficulty in killing other human beings that have done them no harm. It is a problem that the US military has been struggling with for some time, but it does seem as though they have solved it. This following article illustrates the results of US military training, which desensitizes soldiers with regards to the business of killing. It seems as though the results are quite remarkable, even if we take the run of the mill grunts like these in the following excerpt as an example:

'Enemy Contact. Kill 'em, Kill 'em.' - The Times - July 18, 2004
By Charles Duhigg, Times Staff Writer - NAJAF, Iraq

U.S. troops are trained to respond instinctively during combat. But the lessons do not prepare them for the emotional distress that may arise.

“I'm confused about how I should feel about killing," says Dubois, who has a toddler back home. "The first time I shot someone, it was the most exhilarating thing I'd ever felt." Dubois turns back to the road. "We talk about killing all the time," he says. "I never used to talk this way. I'm not proud of it, but it's like I can't stop. I'm worried what I will be like when I get home."”
[…]
“"Kill, kill, kill, kill, kill," Hall says. "It's like it pounds at my brain. I'll figure out how to deal with it when I get home."”
[…]
“The men of the 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment's Alpha and Charlie companies are resting and playing cards in the shade of a staircase here, and the talk turns to killing.
"I enjoy killing Iraqis," says Staff Sgt. William Deaton, 30, who killed a hostile fighter the night before. Deaton has lost a good friend in Iraq. "I just feel rage, hate when I'm out there. I feel like I carry it all the time. We talk about it. We all feel the same way." Sgt. Cleveland T. Rogers, 25, avoids dwelling on his actions. "The other day an Iraqi guy was hit real bad, he was gonna die within an hour, but he was still alive and he started saying, 'Baby, baby,' telling me he has a kid," Rogers says. "I mentioned it to my guys after the mission. It doesn't bother me. It can't bother me. If it was the other way around, I'm sure it wouldn't bother him."” //end excerpt.

Of course these were just the ORDINARY soldiers. The MARINES, who are commonly regarded as the toughest branch of the US military, undergo a more rigorous process. A sample of the mentality instilled in these soldiers can be read in this excerpt:

A Former Marine on the Marine Motto - By CHRIS WHITE
[Counterpunch] Weekend Edition - May 29 / 31, 2004

“So, it didn't surprise me one bit when my friend told me that although he doesn't agree with the purpose of the war, that he was even more angry with the manner in which the war was being carried out: "Marines aren't trained to fight with political correctness. We're trained to locate, close with, and destroy the enemy, and that means that we should have gone in there and destroyed the entire country first, then built it up afterwards, installing people we trust." I responded with, "But, that works fine for the military mission, but what about all the millions of civilians who would die as a result of that policy?" Again, I was not surprised to hear my friend respond with, "Hey man, I got no mercy. I'm a Marine, you know what I'm sayin?"
[...]
Below is an excerpt of a message I received from a Marine recruit who ditched boot camp to save his own humanity:
[...]
Every response was "kill", every chant we had, whether it was in line for the chow hall or PT was somehow involved with killing. And not simply killing the enemy, we had one just standing in line for chow which was "1, 2, 3, attack the chow hall (repeat) Kill the women, Kill the Children, Kill, Kill, Kill 'em All". Constantly using the term "kill" as though it meant nothing was used to desensitize the recruits to the notion of killing and it's implications.
[...]
Why is this killer instinct cultivated into the Marine psyche? Could this instinct be in every human being, but then just harnessed by the Marine Corps? Well, in my case I had never committed a violent crime before the service (or during or after), nor had I felt the desire ever to mutilate someone, but boot camp training instilled in me not just the ability to kill, but the lust to kill, and as strange as it sounds, they made it feel natural. Killing other human beings was the opposite of what we were brought up with. "Right" meant words, and "wrong" meant force. That is what the Marine Corps must tear down. In order to produce efficient killers, it must remove one's inhibition against killing people, and insert the value of killing people, on command. How is this specifically done? The next installment of First to Fight Culture will elaborate.

Chris White is a former Marine Sergeant who is currently working on his PhD in history at the University of Kansas. He served in the infantry from 1994-98, in Diego Garcia, Camp Pendleton, CA, Okinawa, Japan, and Doha, Qatar. He is also a member of Veterans for Peace.”
//end excerpt

And naturally, it’s not surprising that these results are what we get:

A city in ruins, sky thick with smoke: 'let's kick ass ... the American way'
(Lindsey Hilsum joins the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force as it advances into Falluja)
The Observer - Sunday November 14, 2004

“'Only two songs send a shiver up my spine,' said one marine, his face scored with the pockmarks and confidence of youth. 'The marine hymn, and that song by Toby Keith after 9/11 which says "we're gonna kick you up the ass - that's the American way".' ’
[…]
“No soldier can fight unless he hates the enemy - which makes the message that this is all for the Iraqi people difficult to absorb. 'I guess there are some good people - it's jus' that we don' have nothin' to do with them,' mused a marine as he and his colleagues sorted their kit and cleaned their M16 assault rifles. 'I see the little kids in the cars and I feel sorry for them, but when they turn 16 they're evil.' ”
//end excerpt

Additionally, let’s not forget that the nature of the enemy was not human, it was an abstract challenge to civilization that drew upon the primal fears and angers of the combatants. The US Marines were not fighting mere men. They were crushing Satan himself:

Hunting 'Satan' in Falluja hell - By Paul Wood
BBC News, Falluja - November, 2004

[Col. Brandl said]
"You've got to remember, gents, that this enemy does not like to show his face. A lot of the marines that I've had wounded and killed over the past five months have been by a faceless enemy. But the enemy has got a face. He's called Satan. He's in Falluja. And we're going to destroy him."

And … people like you come out and say it’s impossible for US soldiers to kill innocents ? You say that atrocities could NEVER be committed by your civilized and respectful soldiers? Well, I guess even Calley (My Lai massacre, remember) had many apologists, so you are no surprise. Your propaganda doesn’t wash with somebody who knows, though. And it doesn’t wash with Iraqis who see and hear, either.


[moron99] ” according to your math calculations, how many years would Iraq have to pump at full capacity while selling 100% of its oil to the US at a 35% discount under the OPEC price? In what year would the money saved on oil equal the amount of money spent on the war? (hint - think thirty years)”

hint to moron99 – I already demonstrated the fallacy of both your calculations and thinking on Iraqi Blog Count, relating both to your extremely flawed assumptions of the oil price remaining at the same level (despite that most analysts agree that global peak oil production occurring either in 2005 or early 2006) and to Iraq not being able to increase its present oil flow. Furthermore you ignore the fact that the control over the oil flow is more valuable than the actual product itself, because such a control means enormous leverage over economic/strategic rivals such as China.

I pointed this out a few weeks ago, yet you have neither recalculated your equation, nor changed your stance. Yet here you are, recounting the same tales yet again, as if intellectual honesty had never occurred to you. One might almost think that your otherwise interesting calculations were merely a basis for propaganda.


Lynette --

“Bruno, really, this is a family blog. I don't know if Truth tellers daughters read his comments section, but I can't imagine that they have any interest in the size of any portion of your anatomy.”

My non detailed analogy was so that some commentators can understand just how dense they really sound. But I guess you are right. God forbid that anybody should read an obscure sexual reference. I mean, that would really traumatize them more than getting shot at, bombed and occupied, right?

My reference to the Gulf War meant the original Iraq-Iran war.

You know, the one where mountains of Iranians and Iraqis died, with the US rubbing its hands in glee? Of course, after the second Gulf War in which the Iraqis were expelled from Kuwait, you might indeed want to let our audience forget that the US allowed Saddam to fly helicopter gunships and to crush the Shia rebellion which Bush snr had called for. And then after the dirty work was done, arrange for bogus ‘no fly zones’ in order to ‘protect’ the very people which it had allowed to be crushed. Gee, I guess that you don’t know that the US military went so far as to prevent the Shia from looting the battlefields for weapons to use against Saddam, right?

But then, there are lots of things that you don’t know.


Dancewater --

Thank you for saving me a bunch of typing.

Anonymous –

"On the other hand, I find it difficult to accept that Saddam Hussein's murders are an acceptable excuse to use the US armed forces in a similar destructive role."
- False Analogy.

Really? Why is that?

The Shia and Kurds killed were in the process of rebelling against the central Iraqi authority. The Muqawama is in a similar process of resisting US authority. Yet they are called “terrorists”. Now tell me, what is the difference between the two? If Iraqis killed resisting US proxy rule are “legitimate” kills, then the Shia and Kurds killed by Saddam are also “legitimate” kills, for the EXACT same excuses – ie – restoring safety and security to Iraq.

The same way as Saddam was reviled for HIS acts … the US is reviled for what IT is doing right now. See how that works?


On the Saddam – Kuwaiti war :

I happen to agree that it was right to fling Iraq out. However, the people commenting on this issue seem to ignore that even Iraq under Saddam had legitimate grievances against Kuwait, such as the slant drilling into Iraqi oilfields from the Kuwaiti side of the border and such as the fact that Kuwait cheered enthusiastically when Saddam fought the Iranians, but when the bill came home they refused to contribute a cent. The international community refused to help deal with these issues, with predictable results.

Another point that I would like to raise is the merciless bombing of Iraqi troops by the US airforce, even when Iraq had submitted to the UN demands and was withdrawing its troops at full speed. The US’s aim in doing this was less to liberate Kuwait, and more to kill as many Iraqis as possible, both to punish Iraq (something that would be done anyway via reparations) and to weaken the Iraqi military as much as possible. This was a theme that would be returned to during the “no fly zone” days.


Albatroz --

“"If a frog had wings he could fly... and it's only because he wants the oil"”

Yes, indeed!

That argument appears to have you on the ropes. Against such an onslaught what can you do? Ai! We’re finished. (*snigger*)

Seriously, you wrote earlier about Americans being culturally brainwashed into believing that their country is inherently a force for good in the world, no matter what the actual facts on the ground are. This is an opinion that I am rather beginning to share, given the fact that often the moral correctness or lack thereof of a given action is decided upon by some of them by virtue of whether the US did it, or whether it was some ‘other’ country.

On the oil issue – a bit of research has led me to believe that the US is not desperate to claim Iraqi oil for its own use specifically (although cheap oil is always nice to have on hand if you need it), given that it has diversified its sources quite a bit. It is more about denying oil to competitors and substituting cheap diplomatic power for expensive (and controversial) military action when trying to further one’s agenda in the world.


Jeff --

Oh, hey, I like the way that you are attacked on calling people conservative scumbags (on the basis that they identify with people who think that gassing Iraqis is a good idea) and attacked for not presenting a logical argument … when your critic assiduously avoids the very same thing. Bright, huh?

--Bruno--

Anonymous said...

Well, Bruno, thank you. Last night I was telling some of my students that more worrying than American actions in Iraq was the fact that a majority of Americans seemed to support them. And I quoted some of the opinions expressed here and elsewhere. Your post will help me telling them that there is yet some sanity left in the US, and that, hopefully (maybe when the number of coffins reaching the US climbs to unacceptable levels), decent Americans will prevail.

waldschrat said...

If anyone has doubts that there was violence in Fallujah after looking at pictures of rubble, they might, if they have a strong stomach, wish to look and the faces of some of the dead, apparently photographed so that relatives might identify them if possible.

http://dahrjamailiraq.com/gallery/view_photo.php?set_albumName=album32&id=graphic_image

There are 82 photographs. I scrolled through them all, trying to understand. I think I understand the term "horrors of war" a little better.

Truth Teller, a medical doctor saves lives and cures disease. Do what you can for Iraq, and remember Fallujah. I will also. People on both sides thought it was reasonable to fight at Fallujah. Because they couldn't find another way to solve their problems they fought. We should all try to find other, better ways to solve our problems.

Anonymous said...

Moron99,

Thank you for the links to those articles.


Bruno,

Actually, and I know this will amaze you, but I agree with you regarding the events occurring during the Gulf War. I made reference to those events in my post of 4/04/05 at 10:50:06 in my comment to Strykeraunt.

Anyone,

If you want to make an automatic link to an article or post the command is:

title here

Lynnette in Minnesota

Anonymous said...

Bruno,

Your not being American means I will have to wait a bit longer until I find sanity among Americans... But I am still hopeful that there are enough Americans who reject war as a primary means of solving conflicts. Unfortunately they do not seem to appear around here very much. It would be refreshing to read from anyone in the US that American troops would leave Iraq as soon as a security alternative could be found, under the UN supervision. And it would make it a lot easier to believe in the American good intentions.

Anonymous said...

I see that command for the link didn't work. I'll try parantheses around it.

The command is:
"title here"

Lynnette in Minnesota

Anonymous said...

O.K., forget it.

Lynnette in Minnesota

Anonymous said...

moron99,

You are wrong. The UN only refuses to get involved in Iraq as long as the US Army is there, waging war on the Iraqis. Rightly, the UN does not want to be a target of insurgents by appearing to be in collusion with the aggressors. Any involvement by the UN would require a commitment by the US to leave Iraq, and the withdrawal of US troops to assigned camps during the transition from a US dominated Iraq to an independent Iraq assisted by the UN. Asian muslim troops would be the logical choice for UN involvement, and they would not need to be as heavily armed as the US troops, since there would be no reason for the insurgency to continue, once the Americans had aggreed to leave.

"I'm sure that anyone with an iQ of 140 is capable of realizing that a democratized mideast will significantly lessen the importance and cohesion of the EU."

I am surprised that anyone claiming to have an IQ higher than 140 would write such nonsense. A democratized mideast would be a welcome partner of the EU, which may not suit American long term plans. After all, Europe is a lot closer than the US to the Mideast, and we might develop a much closer relationship with the Arabs, giving us a better access to their oil. Not something that the US would welcome. That's why you are planning to remain in Iraq for a long time. Whether the Iraqis will allow you to do so, that's another question.

Anonymous said...

"It would be refreshing to read from anyone in the US that American troops would leave Iraq as soon as a security alternative could be found, under the UN supervision."

I'd really love to know upon what evidence this magical belief in the powers of the U.N. comes from.

"Asian muslim troops would be the logical choice for UN involvement, and they would not need to be as heavily armed as the US troops, since there would be no reason for the insurgency to continue..."

You completely misunderstand "the insurgency" if you think it would end if only U.S. troops left, "Asian Muslim troops" or not. If U.S. troops left it would only mean that the "insurgency" would be freer to expand its reign of terror over the nascent Iraqi democracy.

Anonymous said...

"Whatever insurgency you're so afraid of is entirely more motivated to strike out against a foreign military presence than anything else."

The "insurgency" is targeting more Iraqis than Americans and would continue to do so if American troops left tomorrow, until Iraqi security forces are sufficient to confront them. The only thing that would be accomplished by American troops leaving before Iraqi security forces are fully functional would be the emboldening of the "insurgency". The effect would be that all the Iraqis who have invested themselves in this path to democracy would be hung out to dry.

All of you people who, correctly, castigate America for encouraging Iraqis in 1991 to overthrow Saddam and abandoning them while they were slaughtered are advocating the same scenario now if you're advocating "U.S. troops out now." You may disagree with the decision to go into Iraq, and I can respect that viewpoint, but this is where we are now. And, at this point, it would be not only irresponsible but an active betrayal of millions of brave Iraqis, to walk away precipitously. The best course now is the one we're taking: training Iraqi police and security forces, working alongside them until they can take over alone, district by district (which is already beginning) while the Iraqi people set up their democracy. That's what was voted for on January 30th and that's what's happening. If you want U.S. troops out then you should be advocating that path.

Anonymous said...

"War is always a defeat for humanity." - Pope John Paul II

Anonymous said...

"War is always a defeat for humanity."

Yes, it is. But unfortunately sometimes necessary.

Anonymous said...

It is very difficult to argue with fundamentalists of any sort. Whether muslim, christian, creationist, New Age or flat-earthers. God has given the US the holly mission of spreading democracy (read oligarchy) around the world, even if that means killing, maiming or torturing any who dares to doub that God given right. Unfortunately the only possible answer to this fundamentalism is that which the Vietnamese gave and the Iraqis are quikly learning to give. This nonsense will only stop when a second large wall is built in Arlington, with the names of all Americans who died at the service of these new fundamentalists. So be it.

Truth teller said...

daer friends
Thank you all for your shring in the teaching lesson. I appreciate your intentions, and want to announce : "It is the break time". I need to rest a while, and change the subject,
What you say about this American joke..?


The title is: Mis communication.

Memo from CEO to Mananger:
"Today at 11 o'clock there will be a total eclipse of the sun. This is when the sun disappears behind the moon for two minutes. as this is something that cannot be seen every day, time will be allowed for employees to view the eclipse in the parking lot. Staff should meet in the lot at ten to eleven, when I will deliver a short speech introducing the eclipse, and giving some background information. Safety goggles will be made available at a small cost."
____________________________

Memo from Manager to Department Head:
"Today at ten to eleven, all staff should meet in the car park. This will be followed by a total eclipse of the sun. which will appear for two minutes. For a moderate cost, this will be made safe with goggles. Th CEO will deliver a short speech beforhead to give us all some information. This is not something can be seen every day."
_________________________

Memo from Deoartmant manager to Floor Manager:
"The CEO will today deliver a short speech to make the sun disappear for two minutes in the form of an eclipse. This is something that cannot be seen every day, so staff will meet in the car park at ten to eleven. This will be safe, if you pay a moderate cost."
_____________________

Memo from Floor Manager to Superviser:
"Ten or eleven staff are to go to the car park, where the CEO will eclipse the sun for two minutes. This doesn't happen every day. It will be safe, and as usual it will cost you."
______________________________

Memo from Superviser to Staff:
"some staff will go to the car park today to see the CEO disappear. it is a pity this doesn't happen everyday."

Thank you again and salaam from Mosul

Anonymous said...

Salaam aleikum, Truth Teller.

Anonymous said...

Truth teller,
Thank you. The arguing in circles was growing wearisome.

Lynnette in Minnesota

Bill said...

Vegetarians don't live longer, they just look older.

waldschrat said...

That joke about the eclipse was a good one, Truth Teller! I copied it and emailed it to my boss.

On May first I will retire from my job after many years. I know it is a silly thing to mention, but it is in my thoughts more and more each day. You have shared thoughts about your life and I feel I should share also.

Anonymous said...

Fight evil with more evil.

Anonymous said...

Fight evil with more evil.

Anonymous said...

To Truth Teller:
It's rageous to see the total ignorances posted by these so called americans to your life there and your own experiences. Being as the american people as a collective group, cannot fathom their true selves, I am not shocked at what they are saying. Appalled, but not shocked. They as a collective group (the real thinking ones of their so called country are in a minority)are blind, ignorant, arrogant, pompous, intolerant, racist, psychopathologic in their values of greed, backstabbing, shallowness, inability to REALLY think, violent, sexually obsessed, moronically rabid in thinking themselves righteous at any cost and in general a truly selfish and unloving group of humans without empathy nor strong cultural values of any kind. In fact, I believe they have a particular pathology I would call "culture envy", as their history is one long history of perpetual Genocide against any grouping of peoples of color they have deemed inferior. All the world knows they made slaves of the Black peoples of Africa they drug here in misery and death - to my mind - their grandest personal characteristics: misery and death, as I said. All their dealings with the Hispanic peoples are also recorded, though not in its entirety, due to so many of the thousands upon thousands who did not surive their vampiric assaults upon their latin cultures. The Japanese who were interred right here in the so called "democracy" of usa, in those prison camps, as well as the Germans also (little known) attest to america's self-righteous and hypocritical obsession with denigrating, humiliating and destroying peoples they believe to be whatever it is their "authorities" deem and demonize them to be. The majority of the so called americans who are writing to you here, are of the very ilk of people who IMAGINE they are none of the above, but so erroneously believe they are rational, thinking, scrutinizing, neutral, common sensed peoples. They are absolutely and profoundly mentally and spiritually blind and I will add so very, very ignorant of their own dirty insults to you. I will tell them this: I am definitely anti-american to WHAT AND WHO they falsely claim to be. They do not have the intelligence to even be ashamed for their horrible horrible and unbelievable racism, stupidity and ignorances.
Five hundred years and going, they remain the true "savages". To me, they remain as they were from the beginning and continue to generationally exhibit: a morally, spiritually hypocritical, violent nation of embiciles. Their only claim to anything is that their "might makes right" and they have done nothing if not prove this and shove it down all peoples throats of the world. They haven't an inkling of the truth of their leaders now nor in their lying, denying and covered over revisioned history.
These kinds of americans live their lives in platitudes and hide behind their made-up labels; i.e, right-wing, left-wing, far right, far left, democrat, republican, ad infinitum, ad nauseum. They aren't really human anymore, just labels to hide their empty culture-less shells - always APPEARING to be something other than what their hollow selves are. This is their happiness. If you make them think they are thinking, they will love you. If you REALLY make them think, they will hate you. I will add to that, "and revile you". Just as I see they are doing to your honesty and truth right now. They haven't the intelligence to be ashamed of their abject rudeness. How could they? They never, never, never FEEL they are in error or dead wrong.

If you think this litany of wrongs is alot, I will tell you I have VOLUMES more to write about their layered upon layered characteristics and ugly, ugly behaviors. Volumes. I AM an Ahtna Dene! To those ignoramuses here writing so defamatorily and without conscience to even know what that means, that, I am your REAL CONSCIENCE YOU HAVE NOT DISCOVERED...YET! I am not your "american Indian! I am AHTNA DENE. Go learn what that means.

Since I know it is not within your low mentality to understand, just let me give you one thought about us: WE never forget who kills us!

Also knowing you will stupidly attempt to argue again, again, and over again - against my peoples rights and DIGNITIES, in the face of being told YOUR INDICTMENTS, I know basically these words will be wasted upon your shameless heads. This is why I address the TRUTHTELLER. TRUTH IS WASTED UPON YOU O INDICTED americans. To those whom this applies - which is the greater number of you, I remain as one who indicts you over and over and over.

Go live on our Indian Reservations and Go live in Iraq you lazy minded and souless peoples. There is NO statement from you that will diminish our true and righteous anger - that thing you have no clue of: RIGHTEOUS ANGER. By the way, your ignorance keeps from you one big glaring deficiency of mental awareness: your so called 'democracy is a sham. Go ask our peoples of color in this land you thieved and claimed as your own pride "america". I don't mean the sell-outs either. Thats the only thing I believe you can claim - You create sell-outs. Pat yourselves on the back. Be proud of your slimy accomplishments. It is no wonder that america produces the world's highest number of white male psychopath's. Your violences against your own are reknown. Why the hell wouldn't we understand you!

You haven't the brains to keep your violence in words, here, to this Iraqi man, who your country, once again, murders another collective peoples and destroys and lays waste to its lands. Pat your stupid selves on the back! Iraq, under all laws of God and man, International Law, is a sovereign NATION. Go LEARN what that means! America does not own OUR world. You white americans or otherwise donkey americans(apologies to the donkey)are NOT SUPERIOR TO ANY OTHER HUMAN GROUPING. In fact, in my opinion, you are possibly the worst in arrogance and ignorance. Denial is your finest trait. Pat yourselves on the back you minions and followers. Your Bush is the epitome of who you are. Your society is in decline and you don't even know it. You glorify war and your government has covertly instigated most of the modern wars on this planet and propagandized you into their oblivion of lies that you cannot talk nor think without drawing upon these dark and false lies - ready to spew forth your grand stupidities at the drop of a hat and your typing fingers. SHAME IS FOR YOU.

Little whitey Lisa. What else shall I call you who slander all day long? Little caucasion lisa: you show your lazy mind so well. You have not one clue to the lies you repeat and repeat like you are some sort of intellect. GO TO IRAQ LITTLE GIRL! LIVE WITH IRAQI'S GIRLIE. Stop trying to sound like you know something. YOU are just bull-shit. Period. I have other words to say to you, but from the way you write, I know it will soar right pass you into oblivion and you'll just be ranting and raving wildly stupidly because you just don't get it. You don't even know how laughable you are, but really, its pathetic, not laughable. You are just another insult to the human race with your damnable blathering on about what you know NOTHING of.

Come on! Get off your ranting highhorse and lazy ass and go get the FACTS ON THE GROUND. Otherwise, you should just shut your stupid mouth. REAL HUMAN BEINGS ARE BEING MURDERED IN IRAQ IN YOUR F...ing name. NOT ONE HUMAN BEING SHOULD HAVE BEEN MURDERED. NOT ONE.

Since everyone in the world except sell-outs and mad dogs, hate your president bush, does that give ANY one the right to invade our country and OCCUPY IT because he is hated and imagines himself as a dictator? You are in lala land - like most of your brainswashed with crap lies so called americans. Your reasoning says so. Examine yourself!

If you think this little bit of anger I have thrown out at you is it, you haven't a clue because you have no clue to what your filthy credos and uneven two faced american trashy values have accomplished upon ALL OF THE PEOPLES you white racist americans have denigrated, insulted, violated and destroyed. You haven't a clue. Go LEARN WHO YOU ARE inside your hearts and souls. I don't think you possess anything in your inner worlds. I think you are hollow, empty and truly fearful peoples. You are so layered over in crimes against humanity, I don't think you will ever be able to know who you really are - and I don't just mean you lisa - i mean all of you who write your blathering stupidity here and all of you I encounter on a daily basis that ruins my happiness just to see your ignorance in actions all day long at all times and in all places. You all reek of whatever false means and your violences - hidden and covert and overt - just make me want to spit on you where ever I meet you. You never do anything (those of you who are so ignorant who trash everything and everyone without thought of consequence nor conscience); you never do anything to engender my respect. You are the root of my righteous anger and you continue to be the cause. GO LEARN WHAT THAT MEANS. I don't think you are able. Not now, not in the past and not in the future.

Your society is in deep decline. Your grave ignorance prevents you from seeing how far down you are sunk in all the ways human beings can be sunk. You are blind, I repeat, to yourselves. Your money, television, consumerism, and 15 minutes of fame, is your gods. You dare to talk of Iraqi pluralism in religion. Your religion is next to non-existent for its thousands of conflicting sects and beliefs. Snake charmers being one of your most blatant exhibitions of this! Your priests phaedophiles at your sunken lowest "spirituality". You damned right your society is in decline when you prey upon your own children!

You hypocrits who write so denigrating of truth here. You wouldn't recognize truth if it slapped you in your dumb faces. You have not any truth in you. How could you? You think in boxes, not out of your boxes.

I challenge you to KNOW WHO YOU REALLY ARE. I don't look for you to be able to accomplish it. Five hundred years and going you have not managed to lift yourselves out of your "salem witch hunting and burning". I rest my case.

Your American Indian Genocide: I INDICT! Long live all OCCUPIED and REAL PEOPLES of this world. You are the hollow men and women. You are the infantiles and juvenile delinquents of planet earth.

You can no more quell my righteous anger nor touch my truth than you can diminish and destroy the truths of your genocide and murdering of Iraqi peoples and her lands. YOU STAND INDICTED AND GUILTY IN MY EYES AND THE EYES OF OUR PEOPLES.

Oh, and for those gnat-straining personalities here, your "truths" are lying in the dust of your denials. If you can't recognize the truth when it slaps you in the face, nothing of your words has any meaning. Not even your insults.
Good luck. Five centuries of your crimes and frontier mentalities hasn't made a dent in your collective frontier mentalities. you are the ones who elected cowboy bush. The epitome of your naked and aping selves. Go forth. Continue to sully MY PEOPLE'S LAND AND INSULT AND DESTROY AND DE-HUMANIZE EVERYONE WHO IS NOT YOU! Continue to show your "just and loving" selves. YOU are the real and true meaning of "terrorists". Don't think you aren't.

I ALWAYS capitalize for emphasis and not shouting. As usual, you've got it wrong. I will always have so much more to say than these little boxes can hold. IT'S MY RIGHT IN A DEMOCRACY. By the way, that democracy your so called 'forefathers' also stole from the Great League of Peace Six Nation Peoples. You know. That history you revised. GO LEARN IT IF YOU CAN.

miracles said...

It is interesting to me to read the measured considerate words of Truth Teller, and the empassioned ranting of the people expressing both "sides" of this issue in response.
For myself, I am ashamed of what we Americans have done in Iraq and so many other places (tho we are not alone in the world for oppressing others; just the most recent and the most powerful at the moment.)
My gratitude to Truth Teller for being willing to tell his truth. I am sorry that so many here may make him doubt his belief that the American people were any different from their government.
Mira

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FOUR NEW STUDIES on the health crisis in Fallujah have been published in the last three months. Yet, one of the most severe public health crises in history, for which the US military may be to blame, receives no attention in the United States.

Ever since two major US-led assaults destroyed the Iraqi city of Fallujah in 2004, Fallujans have witnessed dramatic increases in rates of cancers, birth defects and infant mortality in their city.

Dr Chris Busby, the author and co-author of two studies on the Fallujah heath crisis, has called this "the highest rate of genetic damage in any population ever studied".

In the years since the 2004 sieges, Fallujah was the most heavily guarded city in all of Iraq. All movement in and out of Fallujah was monitored by the occupying forces. The security situation made it nearly impossible to get word out about Fallujans' nascent health crisis.

One of the first attempts to report on the crisis was at the seventh session of the UN Human Rights Council in the form of the report, Prohibited Weapons Crisis: The Effects of Pollution on the Public Health in Fallujah by Dr Muhamad Al-Darraji. This report was largely ignored. It wasn't until the first major study on the health crisis was published in 2010 that the issue received mainstream media attention in the UK and Europe.

To this day, though, there has yet to be an article published in a major US newspaper, or a moment on a mainstream American TV news network, devoted to the health crisis in Fallujah. The US government has made no statements on the issue, and the American public remains largely uninformed about the indiscriminate harm that our military may have caused.

The report presented at the seventh session of the Human Rights Council gave anecdotal evidence gathered at the Fallujah General Hospital. It included a stomach-turning collection of pictures of babies born with scaly skin, missing and deformed limbs, and horrifying tumors.
[...]

The victims of Fallujah's health crisis are stifled by western silence: It is well known that the US used depleted uranium weapons in Iraq during the 1991 Gulf war; and Iraqis, at least, are well aware of the increases in cancers and infant mortality rates.

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