by Satanus 65 Replies latest social current
If invading iraq was the right thing to do, why was it necesary to lie so much to do it? Is the 'rule of law' just a fantasy, a myth used to control the masses? Are people so stupid that they would do the wrong things, when told the truth? If they are, i suppose that they deserve the lies they get.
SS
SS,
Is there proof for that figure? Although it's hard to prove, china may be executing the same number of people every yr.
Divide the number of years Saddam was in power by the number of bodies in the death pits, and it's actually a little more than that...and this isn't counting those who were merely tortured in the most aggregious ways.
To your other question...the government didn't lie...GEESH, get over it.
I think what the US is doing is unconstitutional . Iraq was not an immediate threat to the republic I think our government is more in danger of being baught than over thrown . The Iraqies showed no aggression they merely believed they were a sovereign nation and trying to do what every sovereign nation does by arming itself . Yes the US government lied but the biggest lie was to insist it is the reponsibility of the american people to secure regions of the world that are turmultuous. It's like the holy roman empire all over again . We have a guy who thinks God is directing his ever move and those kind of people are very dangerous in the political scene . We have so many problems at home with corporate corruption and poverty I think it's pointless to say you can make the world a better place when your own house is a mess.
Heathen,
You're just wrong on this in more ways than you know...so I'll address the first issue....aside from the fact that Congress authorized the war...this was not a new war but rather the resumption of hostilities from the first war due to Iraq's NUMEROUS violations of the Cease Fire.
SS--- I agree with this statement----- Are people so stupid that they would do the wrong things, when told the truth? If they are, i suppose that they deserve the lies they get. It also applies to Yeru . The Iraq people had civil problems much like the US did during it's civil war and russia with it's many civil wars and I think we can assume there are plenty other countries like china , germany . Iraq never initiated the war with the US the US did . This war was in violation of the UN mandate and the popular vote in the UN . So much for the kinder gentler nation of GWsr. It's all a pack of lies . The only reason the US defended Kuwait was over the oil and the only reason the US is in Iraq is the oil . IMO. There have not been found any weapons of mass destruction . We don't just invent reasons for doing things that involve killing people ( of which we have yet to have any kind of account of how many) and pretend that it's all justified . I don't think they can possibly hope to convince the arabs that what they are doing is for their own good . They've already stated that the longer the US stays the more likelyhood of a serious revolt which could result in many more uncounted dead. I would like to see GW jr. face charges of war crimes and banned from the next election.
"People who think bush was okay in invading Iraq are not going to listen to arguments." No, it's not that. I like a good argument. But all I've seen/heard is Monday morning quarterbacking. It is not easy to make decisions on what action to take/not to take, esp. when national security is at stake. You act upon the best intel available at the time. Sadaam repeated violated the terms of his commitments, and ended up playing a hide and seek game. The US called his bluff...something he obviously hadn't counted on. When we actually got into Iraq and saw more of the horror he was hiding with his incredible violation of human rights, it merely provided MORE justification for deposing the guy. Also, the great UN kickback scheme which Saddam was beneiftting from and his people were starving from, is being uncovered of late. Saddam played a dangerous game and lost. If you think, and the author of the 257 or whatever lies thinks we should have just left the guy alone, that's your call. I, however, do not.
"At least when Saddam was in power he had order in his country, LOL! Wow, things suuure are better now ain't they paw?" I'm frankly amazed at the depth of rationale you are stooping to to try to make your point, which is one of the reasons I don't have time for the whining "257 lies..." Let's see. Tyranny DOES breed order. A while back there was a piece on TV on how hospitals in IRAQ were undergoing some major problems..they were not run in the orderly fashion they had been run before the war. The reason: people previously did their jobs out of fear for their lives. Now, that fear was lifted, and they didn't have the same attitude... Democracy does take a certain spirit...wanting to do the right thing. Dictatorships are very orderly; Hitler was a master organizer. I suppose that's your priority.
What do you call the 300,000+ bodies that have been uncovered in mass graves all over Iraq-suicides??????????
And just who is behind those figures? The United STates of America. The same ones who brought you weapons of mass destruction, etc. etc. etc....
Look, the world is not a nice place. Being a big brother and sticking democracy into other people's lives in unacceptable. Who said that democracy was that great???
I was watching the noon news today, and one Iraqi said "if this is security, then I don't want it" after the latest daily car bombing. DUH.
Until independant observers come in to comfirm any numbers the U.S. have made, I will never believe one word. ONE WORD. WMD bullshit statements and then blaming the lies on the "administration" means nothing to me. I wouldn't be at all suprised if the 300,000 people in mass graves were from the 1700's, and the number is more like 3,000. I sure don't accept a liars statements otherwise; something the Bush administration and america in general is completely responsible for.
Jeez, at least they had order over there. What of all the criminals they let out of prisons when the united states "liberated" Iraq based soley on the presence of WMD? Murderers and thieves let out of prison; yet another of many mistakes made by a hostile country acting aggresively and lying to the entire world. How do you think people thought of they're actions?
Unlike America, we get independent news up herein Canada. We hear the stories of people who have had they're homes burglarized by thieves, who were thrown into jail, only to discover that america let them out. Not very nice.
Yet we still have the same people who argue and have argued that they are bringing democracy to religious extremists in other countries. PAALEASE. Britain tried the very same thing with Iraq, but they failed miserably. It stuns me that american apologists can't see the irony here
And just who is behind those figures? The United STates of America. The same ones who brought you weapons of mass destruction, etc. etc. etc....Look, the world is not a nice place. Being a big brother and sticking democracy into other people's lives in unacceptable. Who said that democracy was that great???
Shamus,
With "arguements" like that, you've already lost.
In answer to the number of estimated number of bodies in mass graves all over Iraq................ Iraqis uncover thousands in mass graves U.S. commander: Troops to crack down on looters Wednesday, May 14, 2003 Posted: 10:21 PM EDT (0221 GMT) An Iraqi woman on Wednesday mourns at the site of mass graves found in Mahawil. Some 1,500 bodies have been uncovered there so far. Families dig through mass graves to find remains of loved ones in Mawahil, Iraq The new U.S. civil administrator for Iraq. The U.S. is trying to secure control of Iraq's oil industry, but will it succeed? U.S. MILITARY BRIEFING, WEDNESDAY U.S. Lt. Gen. David McKiernan, coalition commander, and Maj. Gen. Buford Blout, 3rd Infantry Division commander ?McKiernan: Mass grave sites being discovered in Iraq are high on the U.S. military's list for security arrangements. ? Blount: Looters in Iraq are not to be shot by troops unless soldiers' lives are endangered. ? McKiernan: A policy is being developed with U.S. civil administrator L. Paul Bremer to establish rules for weapons ownership in Iraq. MAHAWIL, Iraq (CNN) -- The head of an Iraqi forensic team said Wednesday he expects to find as many as 15,000 bodies buried at mass graves about 55 miles (90 kilometers) south of Baghdad. Hundreds of relatives of missing Iraqis gathered at the site in Mahawil, seeking to find out the fate of their loved ones. The forensic team has uncovered 1,500 bodies so far, identifying only a fraction of them. (Gallery: Images from Mahawil, On the Scene: Jane Arraf) The bodies are mostly of Iraqi Shiites who died in an uprising against Saddam Hussein following the 1991 Persian Gulf War, according to Human Rights Watch spokesman Peter Bouckaert and local officials. Bouckaert said the crude means of uncovering the bodies -- with a bulldozer -- was destroying evidence from the burials. He cited the example of an Iraqi identity document, with its number still intact, blowing away in the wind. "This little piece of information could actually have led a family to recover the skeleton of their relative, but because it's blown away from this pile -- as we see stuff blowing around all over the place -- that family probably won't have the answer they seek here today," he said. (Human rights groups' concerns) Touring the site Wednesday, Ahmad Chalabi, head of the opposition Iraqi National Congress, said the mass grave was evidence supporting the U.S.-led military action to remove Saddam from power. Posted on 01/23/2004 9:06:45 AM PST by xzins BAGHDAD -- They were killed in their hospital beds and buried in the hospital flower gardens, some with their arms still wrapped in bandages or IVs still connected. And they were killed on long death marches in northern Iraq--Kurdish women and children, separated from their families and carrying the few household items they could drag with them. Wherever they were killed, many were blindfolded and shot in the forehead. Saddam Hussein's whole country became a killing field. Mass graves "are everywhere," said Sandy Hodgkinson, a U.S. State Department attorney who has been working with Iraq's Human Rights Ministry, the agency in charge of investigating the mass graves. "You follow reports, and they turn up in places you would never suspect." Iraq is littered with bodies stuffed dozens at a time into cemetery plots, bodies shoved over cliffs, tossed in lakes or hidden in farm fields where vegetables still grow, said Saad Sultan, 32, a lawyer and detective with the Human Rights Ministry's mass graves research team. So far, 282 possible mass grave sites have been identified, 55 have been confirmed and 20 have been explored. But nine months after Hussein's fall, the total number of graves is unknown. So, too, is the number buried, though the figure is estimated to be in the hundreds of thousands. Among Kurds alone, for example, there are at least 182,000 people missing, 8,000 of them from one clan, the Barzanis. Source: http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0401210319jan21,1,5792396.story In reports emerging six months into the United States occupation of Iraq, a U.S. human rights attorney, Sandra Hodgkinson, reported 300,000 bodies have been reportedly buried in some 260 mass graves in Iraq. "We have found mass graves of women and children, with bullet holes in their heads and we have found mass graves of husbands and fathers out in the desert where they were buried," Hodgkinson said. "We met survivors who crawled out of mass graves after being buried alive. We met with families whose loved ones did not escape," suggesting the graves contain exclusively the bodies of those killed by the regime of Saddam Hussein. Sandra Hodgkinson Sandra Hodgkinson served as the Coalition Provisional Authority's director of human rights in 2003 after the United States' attack against Iraq. An on-line military publication places Hodgkinson in Baghdad with Department of Defense reconstruction and humanitarian assistance planners March 16, 2003, nearly three weeks before US tanks rolled into the city's downtown. The magazine, dcmilitary.com, reports that Hodgkinson worked several years before the war developing plans for human rights investigations in Iraq: "The human rights specialist is from the State Department's Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor. She is also a Navy Reserve judge advocate general officer with the International and Operational Law Unit at the Pentagon. She's worked as a military prosecutor and an instructor in crimes against humanity issues through the International Military Education and Training program. "Under the Iraqi Liberation Act of 1998, defense officials provided some war crimes and crimes against humanity training at the Defense Institute of International Legal Studies in Newport, R.I., for the Iraqi opposition. 'I was the course coordinator and an instructor for that program,' Hodgkinson said, 'which early on, got me working with Iraqi opposition in areas related to crimes against humanity, human rights protection and how to investigate and preserve evidence of these crimes.' "In her civilian capacity, Hodgkinson has participated in the State Department's Future of Iraq Project, and about two years ago, she spoke at a Human Rights and Transitional Justice seminar arranged by the Iraqi National Congress in London. In February she began working with the Defense Department's Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance, deploying first to Kuwait and then to Baghdad on March 16." [1] The following is a web address by A Shia News Agency documenting the Hussein crimes against humanity. Shia Muslims are not know for their love of America and would hardly spout the pro-Bush speil. http://www.shianews.com/hi/articles/politics/0000374.php Here is another by the organization Archeologist for Human Rights documenting the sites to be investigated for more mass graves. http://216.239.41.104/search?q=cache:1pKwKKeB67gJ:www.afhr.org/download/english.pdf+number+of+bodies+found+in+mass+graves+in+Iraq&hl=en&ie=UTF-8 Human Rights Watch, also not a particularly political organization has articles on line??? Iraq: Mass Graves Still Unprotected (Español) Sites Near Basra Being Tampered With (Basra, May 11, 2003) Coalition forces must immediately secure sites of potential mass graves in order to preserve the evidence necessary for identifying the remains and initiating prosecutions against human rights violators, Human Rights Watch urged today. Background on the Crisis in Iraq ?People are excavating mass graves around Basra at an increasing pace. Unless coalition forces secure these sites and show people that they will initiate a process to answer their questions, a tremendous amount of evidence about Iraq?s bloody past will be destroyed.? Sam Zia-Zarifi Researcher for Human Rights Watch Over the last two weeks, several mass grave sites near Basra have been excavated without prior forensic analysis, making it may make it more difficult or even impossible to accurately identify the remains and to begin proper criminal investigations. Human Rights Watch has directly identified several mass grave sites where bodies have been removed for reburial without any forensic analysis. ?People are excavating mass graves around Basra at an increasing pace,? said Sam Zia-Zarifi, researcher for Human Rights Watch. ?They?re desperate for information about their lost relatives. Unless coalition forces secure these sites and show people that they will initiate a process to answer their questions, a tremendous amount of evidence about Iraq?s bloody past will be destroyed.? On April 20, Human Rights Watch requested assistance from coalition forces in securing one such site west of al-Zubayr near Basra. Despite promises from the Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance (ORHA), which is responsible for such activity, Human Rights Watch has not seen any signs of the site being properly secured or prepared for investigation as of May 6???? This from a Balkan website???? In early June, Paul Bremmer, head of the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq, invited members of Bosnia's International Committee for Missing Persons (ICMP) to visit Iraq to determine whether Bosnia's experience with identifying exhumed bodies could be put to use in Iraq. ICMP President James Kimsey and ICMP Chief of Staff Gordon Bacon were quick to offer their services. "It is a tribute to the ICMP and to the government and institutions of Bosnia and Herzegovina that the model developed here is seen as possibly applicable in other parts of the world, and at this time especially in Iraq. . I hope we can show how our experience can bring relief to the suffering and loss now being felt by the people of Iraq," Bacon said in a 16 June press release, shortly before departing for Iraq. The ICMP believes that Iraq has between 250,000 and 300,000 missing persons, almost 10 times more than all of the former Yugoslav countries put together--a situation it says would make identification impossible without Bosnian help. "We understand that they have a difficult situation there, with lists with missing persons more than 15 years old, and I believe that [the ICMP's] DNA testing is the best solution for them," Bacon told TOL upon his return from Iraq in mid-June???. I am not a Bush supporter. Have not voted for him in the past and do not plan to this year. His lies, if they are lies, should be exposed as such. However, if he BELIEVED that the intelligence supplied by various intelligence agencies from around the world was true and a fairly accurate picture of what the Hussein regime had in the way of WMD's, then he is not a liar.After all, Dems and Repubs on intelligences committees in both the House and Senate also believed the reports. Hindsight is a wonderful thing-20/20 vision. I want to read the document 237 lies before I make a judgement on that.
grows
Is it possible for you to put in some paragraphs? Thanks.
SS
Yeru
Since these mass graves are being highlighted by bush et al, why are they not keeping track of the iraqi people that they are killing, both resisters and collateral?
SS
?In 1991 Saddam killed 500,000 people when they rose against him. Nobody demonstrated against him then. But now the United States wants to get rid of the dictator, people are demonstrating against it.?
-one of the Iraqi liberation soldiers the U.S. is training at "Camp Freedom" in Hungary
"At the end of all of the academic arguments is whether we are willing to pay the price to bring freedom to the people of Iraq. If we are, we will not regret it."
-Vietnam veteran and former Democratic Senator Bob Kerrey
