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Topic: What Will It Take?
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Daniel S
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Member # 1714
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posted
Oh, and as far as finding the so-called WMDs (NBC weapons)...
We didn't hear much about the shipping containers from Iraq found in one of the Persian Gulf ports (I forget which one) with deleivery devices and other components last year. We didn't hear much about the aircraft found buried in the desert several months back - the ones capable of delivering NBC munitions. We didn't hear much about what was found in Syria recently. And the press is now stragely silent about the serin shells used by terroists in Iraq in the last couple of weeks - BTW, those munitions are specifically designed for chemical weapons like serin and are not standard HE shells.
Finally, we don't hear much about how nearly every international leader was persuaded that Saddam had such weapons before Bush ever came out and proposed any action. Clinton declared Saddam had them and supported Bush's evaluation. Even Senators Kennedy and Kerry said it was clear he had them - before Bush did and based on evidence not provided by the Bush "team."
OK, that's all for awhile.
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The Lord bless you indeed.
http://www.First-EMC.org (shameless self promotion)
Posts: 436 | From: on the Ohio River | Registered: Jun 2003
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Daniel S
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Member # 1714
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posted
Since you have no desire to listen or hear, I have no idea why I am responding to this package of shells, straw, and stones, but Tyme's last post included this line: quote:
Do you ever think the solder that shot a 10 year old girl, is ever going to forget that image?
Allow me to add a few rhetorical questions for your consideration...
Do you think the soldier who saw COL Bob die in the fire of a helicopter crash in Germany because he dared to care for human lives enough to help in the planning for the removal a murdering dictator from power?
Do you think the GI who pulled survivors and corpses from the Pentagon will ever forget the smell of burnt flesh and JP4?
Do you think the sailors on the USS Cole will ever forget the battle they lost because their Commander in Chief refused to actively pursue an one who had already declared himself to be in a state of war with the USA?
Do you think that a nation with a desert the size of California could find a couple of really good hiding places for warheads (especially since jet fighters buried in the desert weren't found for nearly a year - and only some of them have been found)?
Do you think any soldier who has helped any Iraqi in any way will truly understand why the press never reports any of the good things being done in that country?
Do you think I will ever forget the burned face of my friend (1994, aide to a general killed while planning an humanitarian mission) whose wife is now dead (Pentagon 9/11) and whose life isn't in turmoil because he joined the military or because he's an American, but rather because some people can't see beyond their hatred?
Do you think that hateful rhetoric against our leaders is Biblically endorsed?
Do you think that soldiers who know, as the world (not just Bush) declared before this conflict, that Saddam was a threat to the peace of the entire world, supporting terrorism and possessing chemical and biological weapons - and working on or maybe possessing nuclear weapons - might just look at your posts in this thread and see them for the shells, straw, and stones that they are, filled with such hate for the president that they hide the whole truth behind anomalies and fabrications?
Don't try to hide behind saying "we don't blame the soldiers..." GI's can see your hate right through that tripe and don't like being used by you and politicians of your ilk.
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The Lord bless you indeed.
http://www.First-EMC.org (shameless self promotion)
Posts: 436 | From: on the Ohio River | Registered: Jun 2003
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Tyme
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quote:
As day by day America’s shame blazes across the television sets of the world, and we craft a multi-generational bloodbath to bequeath our children, I have a question for my evangelical Christian brothers and sisters: What will it take for us to come to our senses regarding our long gruesome trail of wreckage in Iraq?
I guess, for some, nothing will show them the truth.
Not the Lies of the Commanders that started the War.
Not the Tormenting situations that our young boys and Girls are placed in, having to witness grueling sites that no one should have to see.
Not the Death Tolls, not the costs, or the suffering.
I guess to some, Nothing will make them realize the horrors of exactly what we have wrought here on earth.
I do not believe this is the end of Times. But it shows in Great light who are the followers of God and Jesus, and who are the Followers of Man, and Earthly things.
quote:
Perhaps it will take the forcible government conscription of our own children so that they too might gain the opportunity to be separated from their families for months or even years, shot, burned alive in their humvees, or cluster-bombed. Or maybe have half their face blown off by a suicide bomber like my old college buddy did as he worked to help our government pump oil out of Iraq. He calls himself Mr. Pumpkin Head now and says one time when he blew his nose, the air came out his forehead.
This hurt the Most, I hope it happens, maybe as we see the horrors, the pain of life, it has been too long, and some of us have forgotten the pains of War, the True Horror War is.
Who is our Master, and Who do we serve, is the Question we Must ask. Are we diligent to God and Christ, or to Man and our Military.
We pray for the Solders, that are duty and honor bound do as they pledged to God almighty, they would do any and all that we asked of them, but the question is,
“Why have we asked this of them?”
quote:
Or will it take other things, things we wish not to speak or think of, even more heart wrenching than our already-gathering tragedies? Will it take having our own beloved sons – or daughters – drafted and placed in situations neither they nor we would ever have intended for them, as they attempt to uphold the honor of their country and protect their loved ones?
Where is it written, that we must make our children killers to feed our own desires.
Where is it written that we must kill those who are not our enemy, while we ignore and allow our true adversary to foster and grow?
Why do we demand this of our children, why do we impose this pain upon them, to have to see, something as painful to witness as War.
I do not blame the Solders for doing their Job, I blame the ones that told them, to do this Job. The people that sent them, and said they must do this.
I guess, as long as we are removed from the pain and the blood and slaughter, it is ok and good, that our leader is great, and our military is great.
Do we ever stop to think of the price of this war?
Not the Guns and Bombs and the Weapons, but the pain of the families that bury their “Solder” children and the anguish of the ones that live though it, having seen, what no on should ever witness.
The Price of War is never a dollar sign, it is paid in Life, Blood, and it effects the people for years to come.
Do you ever think the solder that shot a 10 year old girl, is ever going to forget that image? Do you think that 20 year old man, that had shot down a young woman, who if the situation was different would want to buy her drink and ask her name?
Tyme.
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I dream of a world.......
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Caretaker
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Member # 36
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Ralph Raico reminds me of Paul Craig Robert's devastating point: if US war planners had thought Saddam was able to defend his country with WMDs, they would never have concentrated 150,000 troops in a small area in Kuwait for weeks before invading. They would have been too easy to wipe out in a preemptive strike.
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There was quite a buffer called the "no-fly zone" between Saddam and Kuwait, which had been softened up for quite awhile, with bombing. The original plan had been to also come through Turkey, but when that fell throught they had to stage from Kuwait, and chemical/biological attack was an overiding concern, and that was why our troops had to spend so much time in chemical suits, in the dessert heat.
The latest lying pablum from the Democrats, antiwar zealots and rabid Bush-haters, is that it is actually Americans dressed as Arabs, beheadding Berg in the video. I suppose that it will be the topic of your next "meritorious" diatribe.
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A Servant of Christ,
Drew
1 Tim. 3:
16: And without controversy great is the mystery of godliness: God was manifest in the flesh..
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Silverleaf1963
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Member # 3344
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posted
Taken from this Blog:
http://blog.lewrockwell.com/
We Know the Bu'ushists Were Lying About WMDs
Posted by Lew Rockwell at 08:44 AM
Ralph Raico reminds me of Paul Craig Robert's devastating point: if US war planners had thought Saddam was able to defend his country with WMDs, they would never have concentrated 150,000 troops in a small area in Kuwait for weeks before invading. They would have been too easy to wipe out in a preemptive strike.
Posts: 13 | From: Newberg Oregon | Registered: May 2004
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Caretaker
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http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=13438
No less studiously ignored is evidence that has come to light that Saddam Hussein could, indeed, have handed Weapons of Mass Destruction to terrorists bent on employing them against the United States and its allies. As Charles Smith reminded us in Newsmax.com yesterday, "(F)ormer Clinton Defense Secretary William Cohen testified that in 1998 Saddam's top nerve gas experts met with several members of al-Qaeda in Baghdad."
Recent events underscore the danger such a combination represents. Smith notes that just a few weeks ago, a number of al-Qaeda operatives based in Iraq were caught before they were able to carry out a plot aimed at killing tens of thousands of Jordanians with poison gas. Evidently, the failure to perpetrate such an atrocity permits some to persist in the fantasy that this aspect of the WMD case against Saddam is still without foundation.
Whether partisan Democrats, antiwar zealots and rabid Bush-haters wish to admit it or not, Saddam Hussein is guilty as charged . We now know that Saddam once had significant quantities of Weapons of Mass Destruction and aspired to build more; he used them against his own people and his neighbors; and he persisted in violating nearly two-score UN Security Council resolutions – right up to the end of his days in power – by concealing his actual programs and capabilities.
It is now safe to conclude as well that Saddam bequeathed a frightening legacy to post-liberation Iraq: the Weapons of Mass Destruction still at large in Iraq. The alternative thesis – namely, that the only two WMDs left in the entire country were employed in the (fortunately) failed IED attacks involving sarin and mustard gas conducted in recent days – is preposterous on its face.
While we may still be in the dark as to where all of the remaining WMDs are – their specific condition and numbers – these attacks should serve indisputably to establish that there are at least some WMDs in-country and accessible to terrorists. Moreover, the Jordanian near-miss underscores the point that we should take no comfort from the fact that the status of such weapons is unknown, since some of them may wind up being used outside Iraq.
It is entirely understandable that those who opposed the war with Iraq and/or President Bush for launching it would try to make hay of the difficulty we have had to date locating quantities of WMDs that former chief inspector David Kay once said would fit in a two-car garage, while searching a country the size of France. Now that we have begun to find them the hard way, it behooves such critics to stop moving the goal-posts, to recognize the validity of Mr. Bush’s concerns and to throw their support behind the urgent effort to find and destroy such weapons – wherever they may be, including possibly in neighboring Syria – before any more of them are used against us...inside Iraq or outside.
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A Servant of Christ,
Drew
1 Tim. 3:
16: And without controversy great is the mystery of godliness: God was manifest in the flesh..
Posts: 3978 | From: Council Grove, KS USA | Registered: Jun 2002
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Tyme
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Member # 3017
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posted
Humor me, on this.
Are you seeking to support George Bushes Actions, for going into Iraq, because of something that Saddam had done, 26 years ago with weapons we sold to him during the Reagan Administration?
I just want some clarity, on that.
Secondly, I am not “Bush Bashing” I am sure he is a Good man, on some level (Be is a religious man, or a decent father or husband, or what ever)
But that does not make him a Good President, nor does it justify the War in Iraq.
If you think in some way, “Making Saddam look bad” will make Bush look good, you are mistaken. (“Red Herring” I believe is the nickname for that attempt at misdirection)
Another Note:
If what he did 26 years ago, was really important to us, why did we not take care of it, in the last 26 years?
And, in case you all missed this.
“The War on Terror” and “Iraq has WMD’s” has nothing to do with “Abu Ghraib”, besides, if squashing a rebellion in his own country should be considered “Evil Bad” then NO ONE has the right to cast ANY stones in this world, especially the U.S.A.
Final Note:
You still not have provided one shred of evidence to support the War in Iraq, as lined to the Twin Towers, nor have you provided anything or justify us starting it. All you have done, is provide after thought, non-related propaganda, about the former leader of Iraq.
Tyme.
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I dream of a world.......
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Caretaker
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posted
Thank you Sister Linda. I thought a bit of perspective on the despotic evil of Saddam's regime should be inserted into this Bush bashing thread.
http://www.iht.com/articles/94444.html
ABU GHRAIB, Iraq First the grave digger found some teeth.
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"Please, just barely scrape the sand," Adel Rahaif Hani, whose brother Satter, was arrested as a political prisoner in 1995, begged the digger. "I'm worried he's just below this layer."
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Hani came to a cemetery here, like dozens of other Iraqi families, not with the name of his dead brother but with a number. Satter's number was 535. A cousin, Sagur, arrested at the same time, was 537.
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These numbers were what was left of the people convicted as enemies of Saddam Hussein's regime and then made to disappear. Their graves were not dignified with names but with numbers painted on metal plates that spread like rusty weeds in the cemetery, covering more and more feet of desert every year that Saddam held to power.
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But now that he is gone, the families are finding the numbers, matching them to the metal plates and finally collecting their dead.
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These were people executed - most by hanging in the fearsome Abu Ghraib prison 2 kilometers (1 mile) away - merely because the regime considered them a threat. Many of them were Shiite Muslims more active in their religion than the Sunni-dominated regime felt it could tolerate.
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"This is all because of Saddam!" shrieked Ali Majid Shamali, in tears, as he waved his arms Thursday at the long rows of graves marked with metal signs, well over 1,000 of them. "My brother! My brother!"
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He sat on the ground and stroked the dirt on the grave of his only brother, Walid, arrested in October 1993. A man from another family at the graveyard tried to comfort him. "You lost only one person?" the man asked. "We lost eight here." Two women in black wailed. Both the men started to cry.
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"Why these innocent people?" Shamali yelled. "Why?"
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The thousands - more probably tens or hundreds of thousands - of Iraqis executed as political prisoners might have been unidentified forever, except that Saddam's regime kept records of most everyone it killed. These were not available to ordinary Iraqis.
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But now a new organization, the Committee for Free Prisoners, says it has received millions of documents from the custodians of Iraq's graveyards for executed political prisoners. The numbers are contained in these documents.
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The head of the group, Ibrahim Raouf Idrisi, who says he spent 6 of his 35 years in Saddam's prisons because he joined a Muslim party, has opened the records to family members to find what happened to their loved ones - and they are coming here every day.
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Sitting Thursday in the abandoned house in Baghdad of one of Saddam's generals, whose rooms are now piled with fat green record books of torture and execution, Idrisi mused at the hundreds of millions of dollars Saddam spent jailing and killing his enemies.
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"If he had spent only half that money on the people, they would have loved him," he said. "He is a terrorist, the only terrorist in the universe."
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He said that the documents represented only a small part of what existed on cemeteries around Iraq before the regime went on a spree of paper shredding in its last hours.
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But much survived. Hani, for example, now has the death certificate of his brother, which states plainly that, on Aug. 23, 1997, he was "executed by hanging."
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A slightly broader picture of the long-held secrets of what happened at the cemetery and prison here, some 24 kilometers west of Baghdad, can be found, too, from the chief grave digger, just 21.
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Mohammed Muslim Mohammed said he began digging graves here when he was 14, to fulfill his military service.
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He said that he received the bodies every Wednesday at about 11 a.m., after the weekly hangings, which were at around 5 a.m. There were never fewer than nine bodies to bury. During one especially bad time in 2001, he said, the numbers rose. One day he buried 18 people.
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He said he never told anyone the details of his job. "I didn't open my mouth, or I would have ended up with these poor people here," he said.
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The oldest graves in the cemetery, he said, date to 1983, four years after Saddam took power. The most recent, he said, was from six months ago, about the time that Saddam declared an amnesty for prisoners at Abu Ghraib as the threat of an attack by the United States rose.
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He says he personally helped bury 700 people, but has no idea how many bodies are in the cemetery, a walled-off part of the huge Islamic cemetery here. The area is sizable, measuring about 130 graves by 25 graves, which if full might hold more than 3,000 bodies.
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Slowly, the area is emptying of its corpses. In the two weeks since Saddam's regime fell, the families have been coming, but were not able to find their relatives amid the numbers until the Committee for Free Prisoners recovered the documents. So far, Mohammed said, about 80 bodies have been removed.
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It is not easy, even for families who have the numbers. On Thursday, a 40-year-old tailor named Hassan Jassim arrived with a scrap of paper scrawled with the number 849, which was supposed to mark the grave of his brother, Selim.
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A student in the Hawsa, the Shiite religious school in An Najaf, about 135 kilometers south of Baghdad, Selim was arrested in 1998 at the family's home in Baghdad. The military then destroyed the family house
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What Jassim wanted was to provide his brother with a proper Islamic burial, in which the body is ritually washed and wrapped in white linen. But he could not find the grave: The numbers ran from 847 to 848, then skipped up to 853.
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They decided to dig anyway. "Do you want me to dig up everything or just the head?" the gravedigger asked. Jassim decided just to see the head, because he believed he could identify his brother by the two missing back teeth.
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"There are so many graves that don't have numbers," he said. "We don't know what to do." The dirt was dry and easily dug and soon the gravedigger held up a skull. "It's not him," Jassim said. "The teeth are complete."
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At grave No. 444, a large family worked together to unearth Hamid Omran, who was 31 when he was arrested in 1994. As the family carefully lifted the bones onto fresh linen, his cousin, Farhan Jassim, 47, exploded in anger.
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"I don't think there was a regime in the world that treated political prisoners the way Saddam did," he said. "You can't imagine such exaggerated injustice."
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The jaw surfaced. Saddam, the cousin said, "hated every Iraqi. Believe me, he hated all Iraqis."
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Then the family found the skull, which showed a crack in a temple, which the family said was from a kick from a guard when he was first arrested.
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Another cousin, Thaer Ghawi, 27, wept as he smoked a cigarette once all the bones were out of the grave.
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"We are just people who opposed the regime," he said. "Why couldn't he just put political prisoners in prison?"
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Hani, the man whose brother disappeared in 1995, spent three hours picking through the grave of his brother. It was laborious. After the teeth, they found a few small bones, perhaps from the feet or hands. Finally, he had found enough to fill a small coffin. He did not find the skull.
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"It is enough for me," he said as he loaded the coffin onto a truck. "I feel relieved. What worried me before was I didn't know if he was alive or dead. Now I know."
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A Servant of Christ,
Drew
1 Tim. 3:
16: And without controversy great is the mystery of godliness: God was manifest in the flesh..
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helpforhomeschoolers
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posted
Thanks for posting that link Drew!
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Caretaker
Advanced Member
Member # 36
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posted
The pictures at the link are graphic as they show the effect of chemical weapons, by Saddam Hussein, on men, women, and children:
http://www.kdp.pp.se/chemical.html
The pictures are said to have been taken in the aftermath of Saddam's attack using chemical weapons and cluster bombs on the Kurdish city of Halabja (population estimated at 70,000) on March 17, 1988. Halabja is located about 150 miles northeast of Baghdad and 8-10 miles from the Iranian border. The attack, said to have involved mustard gas, nerve agent and possibly cyanide, killed an estimated 5,000 of the town's inhabitants. The attack on Halabja took place amidst the infamous al-Anfal campaign, in which Saddam brutally repressed yet another of the Kurdish revolts during the Iran-Iraq war. Saddam is also said to have used chemical weapons in attacking up to 24 villages in Kurdish areas in April 1987.
Of all the atrocities committed against the Kurds during the Anfal, Halabja has come to symbolize the worst of the repression of the Iraqi Kurds. Halabja was a town of 70,000 people located about 8-10 miles from the Iranian border. It became the target of conventional and chemical bomb attacks over three days in March of 1988.
During those three days, the town and the surrounding district were unmercifully attacked with bombs, artillery fire, and chemicals. The chemical weapons were the most destructive of life. The chemicals used included mustard gas and the nerve agents sarin, tabun, and VX. At least 5,000 people died immediately as a result of the chemical attack and it is estimated that up to 12,000 people in all died during the course of those three days.
Article by the correspondent of the London Daily., the independent, published on 23rd of March, 1988:
" ... The reported slaughter of 5,000 Kurds in Iraqi poison gas attacks underlines a dangerous new dimension
in the volatile middle east: the growth of the chemical warfare capability of several important regional powers, and the fear that, despite efforts to curb these weapons, they could be used more widely.
".. (in producing chemical weapons) Iraq has apparently been helped by British, west German, Indian, Austrian, Belgian, and Italian companies, despite bans on the sale of chemical that could have military use...
"... There is evidence that the Iraqis did drop poison gas bombs on the towns because the traditionally rebellious Kurds, who have been fighting for autonomy from Baghdad for years, welcomed the Iranian (troops)."
French Television m 23rd, and 24th of March, 1988
Different French Television networks, on Thursday and Wednesday on 23rd and 24th of March 1988, the first pictures of corpses of thousands of those martyred and wounded of the chemical bombing in Halabja were broadcast.
The commentators of the French Television, described these crimes as intolerable, disgusting and horrible. Some commentators considered the crimes of Saddam as even more horrible than some of Hitter's crimes.
The first channel of the French Television noted that it is not the first time that the Baghdad regime had deployed chemical weapons, however this is the first time that Iraq, is so vastly deploying them against the civilians.
Andrew Gowers, middle east editor, and Richard Johns of the London Daily, Financial Times, writing on 23rd of March, 1988:
"... What has been happening in the last year, especially the last week, in a remote corner of north-east Iraq reveals unplumbed depths of savagery...
Alistair Hay, pathology professor at Leeds university, England, speaking on BBC Television News, and BBC Radio
World Service oh 22nd and 23rd of March, 1988:
" The Kurds have claimed for a number of months, perhaps over a year, that Iraq has been using chemical agents against them. But this latest occasion seems to be the first really documented case that we have where chemical agents have been used.
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A Servant of Christ,
Drew
1 Tim. 3:
16: And without controversy great is the mystery of godliness: God was manifest in the flesh..
Posts: 3978 | From: Council Grove, KS USA | Registered: Jun 2002
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Tyme
Advanced Member
Member # 3017
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posted
Daniel S, Please provide evidence of your claims.
I find it hard to think, that the "Monies" the Government made where supposed to be sent on medication because we had put a trade embargo on them regarding medications.
All data, I found on this, said “Al-Queda” used Iraq training grounds, and that at best, it was convince. I found reports that “Al-Queda” even had to pay Saddam for the use of the land.
Most of not all the terrorist groups that Iraq supported, or housed, where targeting other middle east countries, or Israel, not targeting the USA,
As attacking the USA was not profitable or convent for Saddam.
Another Note:
We did not Attack Iraq, because he was an “Evil Bad Man” that was just another Lie, along with the WMD, and Biological Weapons, and the Chemical Plants, and all the other junk our “Loving President” gave us to eat.
It could have been anything from “George Just did not like the Guy” to “Iraq has the Largest oil fields in the word and George is a Texan Oil man”
We do not know the real reason behind this invasion of Iraq, that is the only truth I do know.
But, how Saddam ran his country, was an after thought, the rape camps, might, might not have been real, the mass graves, might, might not have been real, (Although they are very real now, because we made them)
All that was just puffery, to get us “Railed Up”. Do you really think, if Saddam was in some worthless country like “Afghanistan” we would be doing this at all?
Hardly, in Afghanistan, we dropped food, blew up some abandoned buildings and said ‘See you later, you pick up the pieces’
Tyme.
I do not endorse politics but please, Pray For Our Troops
There are 4 links there, please click them all
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I dream of a world.......
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Daniel S
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Member # 1714
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posted
OBL declared war on us many years ago. The attacks on the embassies were not classical terrorism, but rather "unconventional warfare," a term that applies well to the attacks on the USS Cole and even the 9/11 attacks. We have been at war with several terrorist organizations for years - even if we didn't admit it until after 9/11. One of the problems is that the enemy is a "non-nation" in the traditional sense of the word, but these organizations have had support from several sources. Iraq was clearly a base of a good deal of support for those organizations, including the aircraft training facility used by several of the 9/11 hijackers. This facility had nothing to do with flying an airliner, it was entirely for training on how to successfully hijack a plane and then maintain control of it. Iraq was a safe-haven for terrorists, some of whom we captured there in the past year or so. Iraq used its small income, which was intended to provide food and medicine to its citizens, to provide logistics support to terrorist organizations. This logistic support included funding, training, documents, intelligence through embassies and consulates, weapons, etc. If I were in charge (which I'm not - obviously) I might have gone another direction - perhaps Syria, but Iraq under Saddam was clearly an enemy to the people of the United States - one of many.
BTW, I wasn't arguing with you about that yellow munition; I was just commenting. I didn't think you were saying the sub-munitions were all (or mainly) brightly colored. Your research was really excellent.
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The Lord bless you indeed.
http://www.First-EMC.org (shameless self promotion)
Posts: 436 | From: on the Ohio River | Registered: Jun 2003
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Niedziejkore
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posted
Right, people forget that the war on terrorism and our occupation of iraq are two different wars.
I agreed 100% with going into afghanistan. That was the logical action to take when Al Qaeda attacked us. Al Qaeda, not Iraq.
Going into Iraq was a different story. Saddam and Al qaeda were enemies. We went into Iraq because saddam was a "bad man" who ran his country with an iron fist. We were never never at risk of an attack from saddam. He never had the means to level Israel, let alone put a dent in America.
I see the republican party (well, not the entire party... the Bush administration) is practicing a sort of new colonialism and is apparently trying to build a world empire in our name.
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Worker bees can leave
Even drones can fly away
The queen is their slave.
Posts: 346 | From: Wisconsin | Registered: Feb 2004
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Tyme
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Member # 3017
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posted
So, if a bunch of people from China, fly a plane into our buildings, killing our people.
We should go wage war with Japan.
And Justify it with the idea they are all Asian?
I do not agree with that, and I shall never agree with that.
War is Hell, No joke, no Duh. Deal with it.
But: Tell me the logic here, where we are sending in troops against a peanut dictator, named Saddam Hussein, Who can’t even blow up Israel, and yet Osama Bin Laden is running around free, (The Guy that Masterminded the Attacks against us)
Justify this to me, in some way and I’ll vote for Bush.
Tyme.
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I dream of a world.......
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helpforhomeschoolers
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posted
You know war is a very ugly thing. People die, innocent people die, I mean really, when any country is at war it is never the citzen on the street that makes that choice, and yet it is the citzen on the street that dies or worse is mamed.
Today I visited with a wife of a soldier who is deployed in Iraq, she has a 5 month old baby that has never seen his daddy and she knows that there is a great possibility that he never will. Still strangely she told me that she thinks it is right that he went and though she is not a Bush supporter, she agrees with the decisions he has made.
War is a very ugly thing, people die... innocent people die.
But you know what I think is much uglier? When innocent people die and there is no war.
I worked for United Arlines on September 11th, 2001. I was sitting at my desk, with my headset on. It was an ordinary day in America. I had taken my children to school that day and went to work like so many others. I was sitting at my desk when a co-worker came by and said to go to the internal news screen. An American Airlines plane has just crashed through the World Trade Center and our flight 93 is missing and there is no word on Flight 175, but it has been hijacked.
Within minutes a Television had been set up in the breakroom, the phones were silent for a short time, there was a bustle in the building as co-workers franticlly tried to find out if staff from our office were on those flights. Then the phones began to ring as frantic family members tried to find the fate of their loved ones. I didnt work in reservations but we were getting the overflow of calls and we had no information, there was nothing we could say to bring comfort or help. The TV in the breakroom, was going and aother had been moved into the callcenter itself for those who remained on the phone. There was such disbelief that I cant describe it. I think the only thing that allowed me to remain somwhat calm was the knowledge that God is in control.
The weeks that would follow were much worse than the first day. What do you say to a father who tells you that his daughter and his wife were on flight 175 bound for Los Angeles, they were going to meet her fiance who's parents were on American's flight 77, also bound for Los Angeles?
What do say to this father, who has lost wife, daughter, and inlaws to be on an ordinary day in a nation at peace?
What do you say to grandmother whose going to pick up her grandkids who kissed their parents good bye this morning and now they sit waiting in a daycare for parents who will never return?
This to me is much uglier than war.
This is the day to day way of life in Israel, where they are continually pressured by the world community not to make war.
If war leads one single terrorist to think that this is not something that we will tollerate as a day to day way of life here on American soil, then I will thank my God for a president that is not afraid to wage war.
There are lots of us with family members who gladly give their lives so that there might never be another September 11th. I guess the fact that they also provide the freedom that allows people to speak harshly against this country and its government and their Commander and Chief without fear of reprisal is something we have to accept... kind of like taking the bad with the good. But I tell you that at times, I think that I would like to build an island and let you all go live with and under Saddam or maybe the Taliban for a while, and then maybe you would change your song.
As a daughter of a WWII POW, a Daughter in Law of a Korean, Viet Nam, and Gulf War vet and an ex-wife of a Viet Nam vet, I find your excercise of freedom of said freedoms appauling especially while we have men and women over there risking their lives for the freedoms you so blatantly take for granted.
You can attack me as a war monger if you like; but just remember the ones that died so that you can!
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Tyme
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quote:
Originally posted by Daniel S:
Good pictures. I'm still not sure about the yellow coloring on the one because the only "bright" ones I ever ran across were for training.
I in no way said, that Cluster Bombs did not have "Dull Colored" "Bomblets"
As a matter of fact, I took your statement at face value because of your history in the service, I do admit it did seem odd to me, that it they were called “Brightly colored” Bomblets.
But as I was researching what Cluster Bombs were used in Iraq, I found out that they had used the BLU97 A/B (or CBU89 A/B) Cluster Bomb.
I like to cross check things like this, because there is too much propaganda going around, especially when it just does not sound right and “Brightly Colored” military anything, did not sound right.
That was why I provided the pictures that I did, Not because I wanted to “Support” the writer. But because to my surprise, they were “Bright Yellow” bomblets, seems I was mistaken about the “Post Explosion” effect.
I was not seeking to say you were wrong in your statement in any way.
You can find out more about what bombs were dropped Here
I am not sure how exact this site was, I just know I used it to check against this site and this site
BTW: the picture works fine for me.
Oh yah, and your right, that tens of thousands was incorrect (or Bull----) it was only about 1,500 cluster bombs drooped.
You are very correct about that., it did seem like an unusually high number of “Cluster bombs” dropped, although I still say “We could have dropped that many” but it seems the truth is, we just did not.
Tyme.
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I dream of a world.......
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Caretaker
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http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,119278,00.html
'It Felt Like He Was Trying to Protect Me'
Friday, May 07, 2004
President Bush was working the crowd at a campaign stop in Lebanon, Ohio, when a voice rose above the excited din: "This girl lost her mom in the World Trade Center on 9/11."
Bush stopped in his tracks, turned around and without fanfare, wrapped his arms around 15-year-old Ashley Faulkner (search), hugging her to his heart.
"It felt like he was trying to protect me," the teen told The Post yesterday.
"Here is the most powerful guy in the world, and he wants to make sure I feel safe," the high-school junior said. "He took 20 seconds to give me a hug for no other reason but to comfort me."
Ashley's dad was equally impressed with the president's simple, heartfelt gesture - and moved by his daughter's response.
"That's more emotion than she's shown in 2 1/2 years" since 9/11, said her father, Lynn.
"The man just transformed before our eyes. He changed from this very powerful, very important person into a man, and a husband and a father," said Faulkner, 50, of Mason, Ohio. "It was remarkable."
The emotion-packed encounter took place on Tuesday, when Ashley, her dad and a neighbor went to a Bush rally.
"We got there early and were right up toward the front," Lynn Faulkner said.
"When he finished talking, he came down to shake hands. He was in campaign mode, lighthearted and smiling as he came down the line.
"I shook his hand, then my daughter handed him her ticket to autograph and he signed it.
"And then our neighbor said, 'Mr. President, this girl lost her mom in the World Trade Center on 9/11.' "
Bush's response was immediate, Faulkner said.
"A very honest sort of sadness came over his face," he said. "He backed up to where Ashley was, looked down at her and asked, 'How are you doing?' Then he gently put his hand around her back and pulled her head to his chest to hug her."
"Ashley sort of snuggled into him and said, 'I'm OK,' " he said.
As Faulkner reached for his camera, "The president looked up, right into my eyes, and told Ashley, 'I can see you have a father who loves you very much.' "
Seconds later, Faulkner said, "the president was back down the line in campaign mode."
"There were so many people crowded around, there was no way [anyone else] saw what happened. It was not for public consumption," Faulkner said.
"It was a private moment - one I just happened to steal," he said, referring to the photo he managed to take.
The rally had special significance for Ashley, who had spent a rainy afternoon with her mom four years ago, waiting - but not getting close enough - to see candidate Bush on an earlier campaign trip.
A year later, Bush was in the White House, and Ashley's 47-year-old mother was gone.
Wendy Faulkner (search), an Aon Corp. vice president, was at a meeting on the 104th floor of the World Trade Center's south tower when the terrorists struck.
She tried to flee the building, but the elevator was packed and she didn't make it out. Her remains were never found.
The Faulkners have established a memorial foundation to carry on her philanthropic work -- sending packages of clothing, food, medicine, toys and other items to orphanages and impoverished families in Third World countries.
The foundation's Web site is www.wendyfoundation.org.
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A Servant of Christ,
Drew
1 Tim. 3:
16: And without controversy great is the mystery of godliness: God was manifest in the flesh..
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Daniel S
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Silverleaf1963,
That's an interesting article you posted, but you failed to tell us your opinion of it. Do you agree or disagree... and with all of it or which parts? How reliable is the author?
IMO, it's just another political propoganda paper with little regard for the complete story - sort of like the guy who works to convince you (Adam) the Garden of Eden was a bad place to live because: you couldn't get a decent steak dinner, you couldn't find anything respectable to wear, God even paraded all the animals through the place and had you name them, job opportunities were severly limited, dating was very restricted, your marriage was pre-arranged, etc...
I'm not saying I like war - I don't, but let's not make this one into something it isn't - on either end of the spectrum.
Dan S
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The Lord bless you indeed.
http://www.First-EMC.org (shameless self promotion)
Posts: 436 | From: on the Ohio River | Registered: Jun 2003
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Daniel S
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Good pictures. I'm still not sure about the yellow coloring on the one because the only "bright" ones I ever ran across were for training (blue) or testing (various colors) - and we did see some interesting colors used at White Sands. For example, we painted ten old Nike Hercules missiles with bright orange fins for easier optical tracking! Also, I forgot that some "wing-borne" munitions might be painted white, but those don't look like anything you'd want to play with. I was thinking of the spherical submunitions that get scattered; they are the type of thing that might be inviting to children - what the legal folks might call an attractive nuicance. Here's a common submunition (hope the picture works), it's the The BLU-61/B - a spherical, grenade-like anti-personnel fragmentation bomblet about the size of a tennis ball. The CBU-49 carries 217 submunitions, while the CBU-52 carries 254.:
I think statements such as these are counter productive when they are not substantiated. The author is asking us to accept his interpretation of oppinions - not facts.
(BTW, my military logistics and ordnance expertice was left behind when I retired from the Army about ten years ago, but I was pretty good with USAF and allied "stuff" ![[Wink]](wink.gif) )
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The Lord bless you indeed.
http://www.First-EMC.org (shameless self promotion)
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Tyme
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well, the bomblets for the BLU97 A/B cluster Bomb are a bright yellow.
the cluster bomb itself however is a dull green with yellow lettring.
Tyme.
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I dream of a world.......
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Tyme
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Daniel S,
I am not going to attack you, but, I think some of your points, need to be addressed.
Well when you think about it.
First off. When I read the “Brightly Colored” I did not get an image of “Balloons” if that was what you got, I am sorry. But I got a “Post Explosion” image, with the “Brightly colored” issue.
As for the tens of thousands, well, it could be true, remember the “Shock and Awe” campaign?
There is no doubt that our military does posses these numbers of weapons of destruction, the issue is if we dropped over ten thousand of them on the Iraq people, this might, might not be true. Since I do not doubt that we have this level fire power, It is not out of our ability to do this, the possibility is there.
Now, as for the “Land Mines” or “Remaining Bomblets” on the ground.
Each Cluster Bomb contains 200 to 700 “Bomblets” per “Cluster”
At a 5% to 30% failure rate to detonate when supposed to. IE: 5% to 30% of them do not blow up when they hit the ground, or when “Triggered”
So if say, one thousand cluster bombs were dropped, that would be between 200,000 to 700,000 Bomblets.
That would be at bare minimum, 10,000 unexploded bomblets, on the ground., max would be around 210,000 bomblets on the ground.
So the number of unexploded bomblets is well within imagined numbers, even if the numbers of actual cluster bombs dropped is off.
However, the US. Military used the BLU97 A/B Cluster Bomb in Iraq, which holds only 202 “Bomblets” the number of “Unexploded” bomblets is around the lower Ten Thousand Mark, (As I like to believe the US military is in the 5% ratio) if we dropped one thousand of these bombs.
However, I am in the need to agree with you, that is does not make much sence that it would state the “Tens of Thousands of Cluster Bombs” and only “Thousands of bomblets” I think those numbers should have been reversed.
But as you said, it’s a political document, not written as a military guide.
It stands well within reason, that we did not drop tens of thousands of cluster bombs, you are correct it does seem that this person is stretching the reality of how much munitions were used in Iraq. They may, may not be correct on that aspect.
However, the “Brightly colored” Bomblets. That was an odd image as well. Like I said above, I connected that with the “Post Explosion” look of them, like “Brightly Colored Fireworks” idea, not Balloons.
Tyme.
Information Found:
http://fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/dumb/cbu-87.htm
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I dream of a world.......
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Silverleaf1963
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The Crimes at Abu Ghraib Are Not the Worst
by Robert Higgs
Recent days have been hectic ones for the Supreme Rulers in Washington, D.C. President George W. Bush and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld have ceased their accustomed swaggering, put on their most somber faces, and issued one apology after another for the mistreatment of prisoners by U.S. soldiers and mercenaries at Abu Ghraib prison. Although the government had known about these disgusting, sadistic, and idiotic amusements for a long time, Rumsfeld kept a close hold on the information, the better to brush it under the official rug. (We know that the government knew, because the International Committee for the Red Cross, which made several inspections of the prisons in Iraq, confirms that long ago it "told the Americans that what was going on at Abu Ghraib is reprehensible.") Once the photos got out, of course, more than one kind of hell broke loose, and now the government's top dogs all have their tails tucked shamefully between their legs. South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham warned reporters after Rumsfeld's Senate interrogation on May 7 that "there's more to come" and "we're talking about rape and murder and some very serious charges" against U.S. soldiers and civilian employees in Iraq.
Although Bush says that he is sorry for "the terrible and horrible acts," and Rumsfeld says that he takes "full responsibility," the president continues to express confidence in his defense secretary, and the secretary says that he has no intention to step down. Which is to say, neither of these men foresees bearing any real personal cost whatsoever, aside from the momentary embarrassment, the political discomposure, and the time expended in spinning the issue for Congress and the public. Meanwhile the administration is working overtime to pin the blame on some low-level patsies so that everybody can get on with campaigning for Bush's reelection.
Although no principle stands higher in military doctrine than that the commander bears full responsibility for the actions of his subordinates, neither of these two top military commanders has the decency to resign – not just on account of the prison disclosures, of course, but also on account of the plethora of actions by which they have abused their constitutional powers and brought everlasting shame upon the United States – and nobody is in a position to dismiss them except the spineless Congress, whose members would sooner cut off their arms and legs than impeach Bush for his war crimes.
And make no mistake: plenty of war crimes have been, and continue to be, committed for which these men, along with many other civilian and military agents of the government, bear full responsibility. After all, in violation of the rule the Allies enforced against the Nazis at the post-World War II Nuremburg Trials, they chose to launch an aggressive, unprovoked, and unnecessary war against the Iraqi people, and during the past year they have undertaken to impose U.S. domination on the conquered people by rampant military violence. That many Iraqis have fought back against their occupiers in no way justifies U.S. actions. Everyone has a right of self-defense. What would you do if your country had been occupied by murderous and sadistic foreign troops?
The worst U.S. crimes in Iraq have received far less press than the photos of U.S. soldiers having fun and games with the prisoners at Abu Ghraib – not that the prisoners were anything but terrified by these vile amusements – but the truly terrible crimes have not gone totally unreported, especially in the news media outside the United States.
Last May 11, one of the thousands of such stories somehow made its way into the New York Times. It told how on April 5, 2003, a home in Basra had been hit by a U.S. bomb that exploded and killed ten members of Abed Hassan Hamoodi's extended family. British military officials said they had received reports that General Ali Hassan al-Majid – the notorious "Chemical Ali" – was in the neighborhood. Of course, the attack, which demolished a number of houses and killed twenty-three of their occupants, failed to kill al-Majid. (In the phrase "military intelligence," emphasis should always be placed on the word "military.") But one of the bombs brought an end to most members of Hamoodi's family.
"Ammar Muhammad was not yet 2 when his grandfather pulled him from the rubble and tried to give him mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, but his mouth was full of dust and he died." Seventy-two-year-old Hamoodi declared that he considered the destruction of his home and the killings of his family members to constitute a war crime, and he asked rhetorically: "How would President Bush feel if he had to dig his daughters from out of the rubble?"
How indeed?
U.S. forces have expended thousands of cluster munitions in Iraq, often in heavily populated places. (In the Karbala-Hillah area alone, U.S. teams had destroyed by late August last year more than 31,000 unexploded bomblets "that landed on fields, homes, factories and roads . . . many were in populated areas on Karbala's outskirts.") The toll among children, whose natural curiosity draws them to the interesting-looking bomblets, has been heavy.
Khalid Tamimi and four other members of his family were walking on a footpath in Baghdad when his brother, seven-year-old Haithem, spotted something interesting, picked it up and examined it, then threw it down. The bomblet's explosion killed Haithem and his nine-year-old cousin, Nora, and seriously wounded Khalid, as well as the children's mothers, Amal and Mayasa.
Last year the whole world learned about Ali Ismail Abbas, the twelve-year-old boy who was sleeping in his home in Baghdad when a U.S. missile struck and the explosion tore off both his arms and killed his parents and his brother. His heartrending photo appeared in news media around the world, as did reports of his anguished cries for help in getting his arms back.
Recently, the ferocious U.S. attacks on Fallujah have yielded hundreds of additional casualties among the innocent. There, as in many other places in Iraq, U.S. troops have fired recklessly and without adequate regard for the thousands of civilians they thereby placed in mortal jeopardy. "I'm sitting at the funeral of my only son, who was killed because of the U.S. Marines' harsh manner in dealing with civilians," Abbas Abdullah told a reporter for the Los Angeles Times. "They shot him in the head, and he died instantly."
In the White House Rose Garden on April 30, President Bush, displaying his usual keen sensitivity, blustered as he often has on the campaign trail that because of the U.S. invasion "there are no longer torture chambers or rape rooms or mass graves in Iraq." The president made this claim even as the whole world's press was featuring photos of the U.S. torture chambers at Abu Ghraib and reporting worse crimes against Iraqi detainees there and elsewhere, including rape and murder.
Moreover, mass graves have been filling up for weeks at Fallujah, for the most part with noncombatants. According to Dahr Jamail's report in The Nation, "two soccer fields in Fallujah have been converted to graveyards." Jamail also reported that "the Americans have bombed one hospital, and, numerous sources told us, were sniping at people who attempted to enter and exit the other major medical facility." Snipers also shot ambulances braving the dangerous streets to bring the wounded to makeshift places of medical assistance.
Along a quiet residential street in Fallujah, nine-year-old Rahad Septi and other children were playing hide-and-seek when the pilot of a U.S. A-10 aircraft dropped a bomb there. Rahad, "little flower" to her father Juma Septi, was killed along with ten other children, and twelve other children were wounded. Three adults also were killed. Jamal Abbas was driving his taxi when the bomb fell. He found his eleven-year-old niece Arij Haki with "the top half of her head . . . blown off." After half an hour of searching amid the devastation, Abbas found his daughter, eleven-year-old Miad Jamal Abbas, "her body bloody and ripped." She died later at the hospital. "There was no military activity in this area," said Saad Ibrahim, whose father Hussein was killed in his nearby shop by the same bomb blast. "There was no shooting. This is not a military camp. These are houses with children playing in the street."
When Daham Kassim, his wife Gufran Ibed Kassim, and their four children tried to escape the hell of U.S. bombing in their neighborhood in Nasiriyah, they stopped on the outskirts of the city at a military checkpoint, where, without warning, U.S. tank crews blasted their car with machine-gun fire, killing three of the children and wounding all the other occupants of the car. U.S. troops, humanitarian as ever, then took the three survivors of the attack to a field hospital, treated their wounds, and let them rest in beds. On the third night, however, the troops expelled them from the hospital to make room for wounded U.S. soldiers. As Kassim relates the story: "They carried us like dogs, out into the cold, without shelter, or a blanket. It was the days of the sandstorms and freezing at night. And I heard [five-year-old] Zainab crying: 'Papa, Papa, I am cold, I am cold.' Then she went silent. Completely silent. . . . My arms were broken. I could not lift or hold her. . . . We had to sit there, and listen to her die."
In Nasiriyah, only Kadem Hashem and his youngest daughter survived when a U.S. missile struck their house. His wife Salima, five of their children, and six other family members who happened to be in the house at the time were killed. Finding a photograph in the debris of his house, Hashem told reporter Ed Vulliamy of The Observer: "This was my middle daughter, Hamadi. I found her burnt to death by that doorway, she had shrunk to about a metre tall." His one surviving daughter, Bedour, described now as "what remains of a beautiful girl," lies on the floor of a relative's house. "She is shrivelled and petrified like a dead cat. Her skin is like scorched parchment folded over her bones. Unable to move, she appears as if in some troubled coma, but opens her eyes, with difficulty, to issue an indecipherable cry like a wounded animal." Hashem dug a mass grave for his family in a nearby holy city. "I collected them all and put them in a single grave at Najaf; my money was burnt, too, and I couldn't afford to bury them separately."
To my knowledge, neither President Bush, nor Vice President Dick Cheney, nor Secretary of State Colin Powell, nor Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld, nor Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, nor Under Secretary of Defense Douglas Feith, nor Richard Perle (who has worked for decades at the highest levels both inside and outside the government to bring about the present horrors in Iraq) – not a single one of them has apologized to any of the victims identified in the foregoing accounts.
What the U.S. government did at Abu Ghraib was bad, but what it did to Ammar Muhammad, to Haithem Tamimi, to Ali Ismail Abbas, to Abbas Abdullah's son, to Rahad Septi, to Arij Haki, to Miad Jamal Abbas, to Zainab Kassim, and to Bedour Hashem was far far worse.
Their stories are but a very few of the tens of thousands that might be told if more complete information were available to provide the details associated with the gruesome statistics on deaths and injuries among the Iraqi population. Relatively few of the people slain were "terrorists," Baathists, or even insurgents. Most were noncombatants; thousands were women, children, and elderly people. The military euphemism for these deaths is "collateral damage," but they are actually murders. After all, they did not happen by accident; in the circumstances, they were as predictable as the sun's rising in the east. By choosing to engage in the kinds of military actions that made these deaths inevitable, the U.S. government thereby chose to cause these deaths. The claim that they were not intended has no substance whatsoever.
Bush and Rumsfeld have been busy with apologies this past week, to be sure, and the prison hijinks at Abu Ghraib certainly cry out for apologies, as well as for a great deal of additional effort to restrain the sadists and sexual psychopaths among the U.S. troops in Iraq and to bring some measure of justice to those who have been wronged. Yet this whole mess, its powerful symbolism notwithstanding, has constituted a gigantic distraction from the truly monstrous crimes committed, and still being committed daily, by U.S. forces in Iraq.
Saddam Hussein now languishes in U.S. custody; his government has been overthrown; no weapons of mass destruction existed in Iraq, and therefore "disarming" the Iraqis of such weapons proved unnecessary. In short, the declared U.S. mission has long since been accomplished fully. Why then does the U.S. government persist in slaughtering the Iraqi people?
May 10, 2004
Robert Higgs [send him mail] is senior fellow in political economy at the Independent Institute and editor of The Independent Review. His most recent book is Against Leviathan.
http://www.lewrockwell.com/higgs/higgs25.html
Posts: 13 | From: Newberg Oregon | Registered: May 2004
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Daniel S
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quote:
Originally posted by Tyme:
what part of that was Lies?
Tyme.
Well let's take this for starters...
quote:
The tens of thousands of cluster bombs and the brightly-colored bomblets they spawn that we and the English dropped on Iraq did not do it. Nor have the thousands of bomblets which remain undetonated on the ground at this writing, waiting for yet more arms and legs of Iraqi children and adults – and American soldiers – to blow off.
1. I don't know how many CBUs were used, but "tens of thousands" would far exceed our logistic capabilities. Our stocks are not that great and our production capabilities are pretty low. I can't call this a lie because I don't know the true number, but "tens of thousands" doesn't pass the common sense test.
2. The individual "bomblets" are not "brightly colored" but rather are normally a drab green with dull yellow and/or black printing. Certain training/inert munitions are blue with white printing, but they are what we used to call "concrete" bombs which don't get deployed because they don't blow up. To imply that we scatter thousands of "cute" brightly colored munitions out for little boys and girls to chase after thinking they are balls to play with is a perversion of the truth.
3. US and Brittish CBU munitions are controlled explosives. They are set to go off at a certain altitude, or on impact, or at varying times after impact. No munition is perfect and some are indeed duds that do not explode when intended, but to imply that there are "thousands" of individual CBU munitions laying around all over the place, with no effort by the US military to find and disarm them is intentionally misleading at best and completely unsupported by facts. Again, it doesn't pass the common sense test.
I'm sure I'll be attacked as a war monger because I dared to challenge the truthfulness of the article, but that charge won't pass the commonsense test either. I don't like war, and I have a special dislike for these munitions because I was once inadvertantly shot at by an older version of them! (The range safety folks at White Sands forgot we were out there and didn't clear the range - we were about a mile away from where a missle delivered version was targeted; fortunately it hit the target rather than us ![[Big Grin]](biggrin.gif) ). These munitions are effective and, like our other area-denial weapons, are (realatively) easily cleared.
Look closely at the article and you'll find other things that don't fit. It is politically oriented and that's usually a good sign that there are gaps and stretches - if not out right lies.
Dan S
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The Lord bless you indeed.
http://www.First-EMC.org (shameless self promotion)
Posts: 436 | From: on the Ohio River | Registered: Jun 2003
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Tyme
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what part of that was Lies?
Tyme.
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I dream of a world.......
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Daniel S
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It would have been better without the lies in the middle of it.
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The Lord bless you indeed.
http://www.First-EMC.org (shameless self promotion)
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Niedziejkore
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Sweet! Excellent writing. I agree 100% with that post.
And I hope evreyone's voting for someone other than Bush in the up and coming election. The fact that he isn't firing Rumsfeld shows that he is the one to blame for the torture of the Iraqi detainees. I say theres a time to vote republican, and theres a time to vote democrat. It all depends on which party has the moron running for office.
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Worker bees can leave
Even drones can fly away
The queen is their slave.
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Tyme
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WOW !
Great Post, Great Article!
AMEN!
WOW!
Tyme.
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I dream of a world.......
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Silverleaf1963
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What Will It Take?
by John J. Dwyer
As day by day America’s shame blazes across the television sets of the world, and we craft a multi-generational bloodbath to bequeath our children, I have a question for my evangelical Christian brothers and sisters: What will it take for us to come to our senses regarding our long gruesome trail of wreckage in Iraq?
First, however, I must confess that despite my conviction from the beginning of the folly of our attacking Iraq, other than having written a couple of articles and expressed my views among a few friends, I have played the coward. I have worried about my own popularity, respect, career, and peace. I have feared men and not God. Now I ask Him to forgive me for my faithlessness and my lack of love for Him and my neighbor. I ask Him to empower me to disregard the fear of man and to speak the truth with boldness to my generation.
What I need to know is what it will take for conservative Christians to cease enabling "our man in the White House," George W. Bush, to carry on his disastrous war against Iraq. The effects of the sanctions our nation placed on Iraq after the first Gulf War and kept on it for twelve years did not do it. That is, our forcing the withholding of water purification chemicals and many other supplies crucial to the health of the people, especially old folks and children. The 227,000–350,000 children on-site United Nations officials estimate the sanctions killed did not do it. Nor did the bombs U.S. airmen dropped on the civilian Iraqi infrastructure that contaminated water and prevented hospitals from functioning due to lack of electricity and running water. No, we Christians prefer to call such men heroes and award them medals.
Paul Craig Roberts, former associate editor of the Wall Street Journal and assistant secretary of the U.S. Treasury, writes that for a period in 2001, the administration of our Christian President "even embargoed infant vaccines and medical equipment from being sent to Iraq."
A colossal militaristic empire’s storming into a small country less than one-tenth its own population and forcing its will and culture on that country did not do it, either. Not the thousands of civilian Iraqi men, women, and children we have slaughtered in our "liberation" of their country, nor the many more killed by anti-American factions for cooperating with us. Professional organizations such as Global Policy Forum, Amnesty International, and the Future of Freedom Foundation report that at least three thousand Iraqi civilians died during the initial Spring 2003 American onslaught, and many thousands more since then.
The nearly eight hundred U.S. soldiers that have died in Iraq, and the thousands of wounded have not brought Christians to our senses. Rather, we support the President as he continues to send – and keep – troops there.
No, the reported treatment by American soldiers of Iraqi civilians, inside prison and out – some beaten to pulp with rifle butts, others shot in the back, others sexually abused, and still others tortured to death – have failed to do it. So, too, the wedding party we gunned down "by mistake." Likewise, our Marines shooting up ambulances bringing food, water, and medical aid to hungry and injured civilians, as well as the containers of food and water intended for them. And Fallujah, too, and the other towns, where the soccer fields are now cemeteries for the people.
The American sharpshooter blasting away from atop a tank did not do it, either, as he shot down various Iraqis, resisters and civilians alike, then shrugged and told a disturbed English journalist that the woman he had just blown apart was "just some chick" who got in the way.
Neither did the exposure of a cavalcade of Bush Administration claims for the falsehoods they were: claiming Iraq had "drones of death," mobile germ laboratories, a stash of Scud missiles, a pipeline to al-Qaida and "poison camps," chemical munitions bunkers, smallpox or anthrax to unleash on America, that it attempted to purchase uranium from Niger in order to develop its secret nuclear program, that it "continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised," including nuclear weapons.
The tens of thousands of cluster bombs and the brightly-colored bomblets they spawn that we and the English dropped on Iraq did not do it. Nor have the thousands of bomblets which remain undetonated on the ground at this writing, waiting for yet more arms and legs of Iraqi children and adults – and American soldiers – to blow off. Rather, we prefer to put those airmen on the covers of our own Christian magazines, interview them on our syndicated Christian radio programs, and honor them in our church services.
Perhaps it will take the forcible government conscription of our own children so that they too might gain the opportunity to be separated from their families for months or even years, shot, burned alive in their humvees, or cluster-bombed. Or maybe have half their face blown off by a suicide bomber like my old college buddy did as he worked to help our government pump oil out of Iraq. He calls himself Mr. Pumpkin Head now and says one time when he blew his nose, the air came out his forehead.
We do know, don’t we, that some of those Republican Congressional leaders to whom we conservative Christians offer so much moral and monetary support are now calling for consideration of a national draft of our children? This, despite the United States Constitution’s prohibition both of standing armies and "involuntary servitude." (Last time I checked, not one Congressman, nor Rush Limbaugh or Sean Hannity or Ann Coulter is "serving their country" in Iraq, even as they champion the herding of hundreds of thousands of other people’s children to do so.)
Or will it take other things, things we wish not to speak or think of, even more heart wrenching than our already-gathering tragedies? Will it take having our own beloved sons – or daughters – drafted and placed in situations neither they nor we would ever have intended for them, as they attempt to uphold the honor of their country and protect their loved ones? Situations that result perhaps in their beating unarmed prisoners to death, shooting mothers in the head, or blowing up buildings with children in them, as others of our young people have already done in Iraq. Situations they will carry around with them the remainder of their scarred lives. Will that finally do it?
"When you see a child five years old with no head what can you say?" asks one doctor in Fallujah. "When you see a child with no brain, just an open cavity, what can you say? When you see a mother just hold her infant with no head and the shells are all over her body."
What will it take, fellow Christian?
May 10, 2004
John J. Dwyer (send him mail) is chairman of history at Coram Deo Academy near Dallas, Texas. He is author of the historical novels Stonewall and Robert E. Lee, and the upcoming historical narrative The War Between the States, America’s Uncivil War. He also is the former editor and publisher of The Dallas/Fort Worth Heritage newspaper.
Copyright © 2004 LewRockwell.com
http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig3/dwyer4.html
Posts: 13 | From: Newberg Oregon | Registered: May 2004
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