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Author
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Topic: The Fragrance of Freedom
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Niedziejkore
Advanced Member
Member # 2773
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posted
Soft Touch, i'm not saying i'm opposed to the elections, in fact I think the whole world should be impressed with millions of Iraqis risking their lives to go to the polls. But I am skeptical nonetheless. I hope it works out for the iraqis. They deserve more than we can give them.
I do not believe that the government elected by the iraqis will be the kind that the bush administration wants. What is most likely is that the new government will be just as hostile to Israel. Also, if the government wants us to keep our troops there, we HAVE to keep our troops there. If the gov't wants our troops to leave, we HAVE to leave. I'm very eager to see how this all plays out. Apparently, there are more elections to come in iraq, and power has to change hands before we have a good idea as to what is to come. the role Iraq is to play in the middle east is not in our hands anymore, and our government, wether they like it or not, is obliged to have to do what the new Iraq government wants them to do to secure peace in their country, possibly abroad.
Oh yeah, the [Source.]
But that really wasn't the main point of my post. wehter it is true or not has little bearing on the future. In the grand scheme of things, it will only be a side note to Iraqi history.
I also want to retract my statement regarding Iraqis having little knowledge of Democracy. IT's misleading. The older generations of Iraqis should remember that before Saddam's Baath party came to power, Iraq was a democratic state, however their leaders were nothing more than mere puppets, allowing Saddam to rise easily to power. But i stated it in that way only because 50% of Iraqis are 15 and younger.
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I'm not talking about the lack of WMD evidence... least we forget that Iraq had 14 months with which to 'dispose' of whatever they had.
1) He could not have gotten rid of all his weapons, if there had been weapons, there would be traces of them, likewise a trail to follow. We found nothing to even support that he transported his weapons anywhere.
2) Saddam's army, had they had any chemical weapons, would surely have used them on U.S. forces. Why didn't he use them on our military? Good question. Maybe he didn't have them.
3) The weapons that he did have were given to him by The United States under the leadership of Ronald Reagan.
Saddam's move to gas the Kurds is a great talking point for some U.S. propagandists who gleefully note that the "Butcher of Baghdad" has "gassed his own people." The Kurds were poisoned mostly with Mustard Gas, which blisters the skin and lungs, as well as Nerve Agents and good old-fashioned cyanide.
The downside to the whole "gassing his own people" angle is, of course, that the United States under President Ronald Reagan was actively supporting Iraq with logistical and military assistance at the time, in one of those little "proxy wars" with the Soviets that always turned out so well.
In the late 1980s, Reagan dispatched a very special envoy to the Middle East, one Donald Rumsfeld, who wined and dined Saddam even as the dictator was slicing and dicing the Kurds. Rumsfeld claims he warned Saddam about those bad old chemical weapons at the time, but the warning somehow got lost between his uttering it and the notes he submitted to the State Department describing the meeting.
U.S. companies were recruited and encouraged, both covertly and overtly, to ship poisonous chemicals and biological agents to Iraq, by the administrations of both Reagan and George Bush Sr., according to the Washington Post and numerous other reports. The CIA also followed up on these efforts with various military and intelligence assists.
U.S. care packages to Saddam included sample strains of anthrax and bubonic plague, which must have seemed like a really great idea to someone at the time. With U.S. assistance and on its own initiative, Iraq also reportedly developed new and improved toxins, such as ricin and sarin gas.
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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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SoftTouch
Advanced Member
Member # 2316
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posted
Why am I not surprised by this response? ![[Frown]](frown.gif)
N. When you make claims like you have in the above post, it's always a good idea to link to the source of the info you're quoting. (I'm not talking about the lack of WMD evidence... least we forget that Iraq had 14 months with which to 'dispose' of whatever they had.) I have not heard about food being with held...etc. Not to say I Know all the news (which is why a link is a good idea).
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Psalm 119:104Through thy precepts I get understanding: therefore I hate every false way. 105Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path.
Posts: 3465 | Registered: Nov 2003
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Niedziejkore
Advanced Member
Member # 2773
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posted
quote:
No matter what view one takes on the war in Iraq (I'd rather call it the Liberation of Iraq), you can't help but be happy for those people who now have a chance at real freedom!
Liberation of Iraq? Well, uh, uhm... there was that whole WMD thing that, well, uh, was the whole reason we started the war. I see the administration and news media have properly brainwashed you.
I can't forget that once good day can not make up for three years of blunders. But I am happy it's a step in the right direction. It's great these people are happy they voted, but they're voting because they believe that by voting our troops will leave and the new government will stop the violence, but that will take time, and insurgencies are going to start up as soon as soldiers allow traffic to move through iraq once again.
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With this Freedom may also come the opportunity to spred the Gospel more freely! I know that God is using some of our men and women over there as HIS witnesses!!!
If you consider an islamic state with two groups, fighting each other the best place to spread the gospel, sure. The Shiite muslems are saying that they're not going to accept the results of the election. Which is fine, except unlike democrats, they'll actually do something.
The model of democracy used in Iraq should NOT be a model to use anywhere else. In some areas, people were withheald their food rations unless they voted, as a way for the current administration in Iraq to increase voter turnout. Second, the names of the people running were not known. All the Iraqis did was vote for a party name. There was no campaigning or anything. Add to the fact that you had many, many parties on the ballot, and you can get an idea of why people may think this is not a great democratic start.
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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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SoftTouch
Advanced Member
Member # 2316
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posted
No matter what view one takes on the war in Iraq (I'd rather call it the Liberation of Iraq), you can't help but be happy for those people who now have a chance at real freedom! With this Freedom may also come the opportunity to spred the Gospel more freely! I know that God is using some of our men and women over there as HIS witnesses!!!
May God/Yeshua be Glorified and may HIS kingdom increase in Iraq! ![[clap2]](graemlins/clap2.gif)
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Psalm 119:104Through thy precepts I get understanding: therefore I hate every false way. 105Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path.
Posts: 3465 | Registered: Nov 2003
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Caretaker
Advanced Member
Member # 36
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posted
http://news.scotsman.com/topics.cfm?tid=404&id=115892005
THE ballot boxes were full almost to overflowing, and still people queued to get into the polling stations. They turned out in their hundreds of thousands, walking in family groups, couples with their children, talking excitedly about what, for the majority, was their first chance to cast a vote in an election for anyone other than Saddam Hussein.
Maybe it was the weight of the overwhelming security, maybe it was just the sheer desire to vote, but in Basra yesterday it appeared that nothing could stop the people from making their voices heard.
And what they were saying was this: We want to vote, we want to decide for ourselves what our future will hold and, above all of this, we want to show that we are free.
"This is the first time to decide for ourselves," said Taliaa Abdul Karim, a young bank worker who turned up at the al Kamadil girls’ primary school with her friends to vote.
It was already late in the day when she walked in, and there was precious little room left in the transparent plastic ballot boxes for her paper. She waited for the clerk to find her name on the register of voters, took her voting forms, went behind one of the cardboard booths set up at the far end of the room, and emerged to drop the two completed forms into the boxes.
Then she dipped her finger into the tub of indelible indigo ink. It was there to make sure no-one voted twice, but people brandished their marked index fingers like badges of honour.
"This is the first time we can be free," she said. "Saddam Hussein was putting us in jail - he would not allow us to breathe."
The future, she said, would not be that way. "We want freedom, freedom of opinion, and I hope it will be just and we will have equality and no sectarian differences. The voice of women should he heard in this society."
Nori Jawad, the jovial headmaster running the polling station, could not contain his excitement. The first people turned up at 7am; by 4pm, an hour before the polls closed, 80 per cent of the 4,020 people on his list had cast their votes.
"Today, everyone is treating it like Christmas," he said. "Yes, Christmas. The old regime is finished. This will succeed. Saddam put pressure on people to come to the elections, but now they come because they want to."
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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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Caretaker
Advanced Member
Member # 36
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posted
http://news.scotsman.com/topics.cfm?tid=404&id=114242005
Some of the people around me must have, like me, fled Saddam Hussein’s tyranny. Others fled the insurgency Saddam’s diehard loyalists and other terrorists are bent on pursuing. For all of us, the vote is remarkable: we survived Saddam’s brutality and also are deciding our future, regardless of when or why we left our homeland.
I was only four when Iraq held its last independent elections. Four years later, in 1958, army officers toppled the monarchy and ruled the country by decree until Saddam’s Ba’ath party took over in another coup in 1968.
The military leaders and Ba’athists despised democracy, considering elections a western novelty. They always said Iraq was unfit for democracy, Iraqis not competent to judge what is best for the nation, and the tenets of democracy un-Iraqi. By implication, the Ba’ath party was claiming for Saddam the official and sole right to decide what was best and what was indigenous to our culture. Now we are relying on ourselves to decide what is best.
Friday was the second time in my 55 years that I have cast a ballot. The first was in a student union election at my British university in 1980. Then, I was a candidate - and was elected to represent overseas students - an experience that taught me what it means to be able to freely express one’s opinions.
Three years later, I returned to Iraq. At the time, Saddam decided to hold National Assembly elections - from which anyone who would not swear allegiance to him was barred.
I did not vote then or in a similar 1987 election, knowing the outcome would be a rubber stamp parliament.
As a journalist, I covered sessions of the assembly and saw how members would vote, without debate, by applauding and blindly chanting their support for bills. I would not participate in a phoney election and accepted the alternative - being blacklisted and placed under surveillance.
One resolution I covered was the council’s endorsement of Saddam’s 1990 occupation of Kuwait a week after the invasion had sparked an international crisis. I also covered the 1991 Gulf War that followed, and it was not long after that war when I had to leave Iraq.
My press credentials were revoked in June 1991, with the government making clear it was unhappy with my coverage of the war and of the Iraqi Shiite uprising that followed. Saddam’s forces killed tens of thousands of Shiites who rose up against the regime that spring.
I fled with my wife and two children. I was lucky: days later the regime began imprisoning and torturing journalists for the same offence I’d committed.
I have no illusions. Elections are only a first step in a long process that is bound to be imperfect. There will be public frustration over the results, accusations of irregularities and possibly vote-rigging. Later, corruption and broken election promises are almost certain.
Still, with Saddam gone, I could feel as I left the school courtyard that Iraq has a real chance to transform itself from a brutal, pariah nation to multiethnic democracy. Now I can hope that the agony of the past will end soon and I will be able to return to stay.
Associated Press writer Salah Nasrawi, an Iraqi, fled his homeland in 1991 after Saddam Hussein’s regime revoked his press credentials because of his coverage of the Gulf War and the Shiite uprising that followed. Yesterday he cast his vote in Jordan.
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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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