Tariq A. Al-Maeena
close_encounters@gawab.com
| They never get tired of writing this stuff, do they? I think they generate it like horses generate horse apples. |
 See. I told you so! There is often a smug feeling of satisfaction when this phrase is used. But no self-indulgent pleasure can be derived when we speak of the regretful situation in Iraq. It defines the continuing immorality against humans and is being carried out by none other than the President of the United States of America.
| Zark is not the president of the U.S. Neither is Izzat Ibrahim. |
Today, as more and more information on the pre-planning and thinking behind this heinous crime is filtering to the surface, our reservations three years ago on the subject of an illegal invasion and occupation are being widely substantiated.
| I'd suggest not only that you don't believe everything you read, but also that you don't write something you'd like to believe, then read it and believe it. You end up with the snake eating its own tail. |
In a campaign based on lies, greed, and the wiles of Ariel Sharon of Israel, Bushâs military adventurism into Iraq has won no war on terror.
| It's not won yet, though there's a pretty high stack of bodies to show for it. The charges of lying come from parsing isolated phrases over and over. The greed doesn't seem to have paid off yet. Ariel Sharon didn't invade Iraq and probably doesn't even like the place. What Bush's military adventurism actually has done is throw an old-fashioned tin-hat dictator out of office and break up a ruling oligarchy made up of sadists and crooks, to allow Iraqis the privilege of screwing up their own country the way they prefer, rather than the way he prefers. Bush has been trying to devolve the rights that accrue to the state under Baathism to the individual. The fact that the adherents of the old regime don't like that and are fighting tooth and nail to stop it is rather a point in his favor than against him. That they're willing to ally themselves with international terrorism and to slaughter their own people is more a reflection on them than on him. |
It is now factually documented that the planned invasion of Iraq began long before the events of Sept. 11.
| I'd guess war plans were first drafted about the time the troops came home from the first Gulf War, updated every year or two, and then mostly discarded and rewritten when we actually decided to stomp the sucker this time. |
There have been reports from US federal agencies that the White House chose to ignore warnings on possible terrorist attacks on American soil, perhaps to bring together the impetus needed to garner world sympathy and license these âdemocratic lawmakersâ to pursue their diabolical objectives.
| Whatever warnings there may have been were pretty vague, if there at all. The "Bush knew" argument consists mostly of sophistry, from what I've seen, though it is much beloved of crackpots. |
To manipulate his own constituents into a state of fear, in a State of the Union address back in January 2003, Bush stated âOur intelligence officials estimate that Saddam Hussein had the materials to produce as much as 500 tons of sarin, mustard and VX nerve agent... US intelligence indicates that Saddam Hussein had upwards of 30,000 munitions capable of delivering chemical agents... We have also discovered through intelligence that Iraq has a growing fleet of manned and unmanned aerial vehicles that could be used to disperse chemical or biological weapons across broad areas.â
| Now, the really funny part about that is that Sammy seems to have thought the very same things. |
And to tie Al-Qaeda in this whole scheme, some more fabrication was needed. âEvidence from intelligence sources, secret communications and statements by people now in custody reveal that Saddam Hussein aids and protects terrorists, including members of Al-Qaeda,â stated Bush. All these statements today have proven to be untrue.
| People like Zarqawi, in fact. So Sammy aided and protected Zark, and now Zark is returning the favor. |
A couple of months later, oil hungry Vice President Dick Cheney on âMeet the Pressâ stated: âWe know heâs been absolutely devoted to trying to acquire nuclear weapons, and we believe he has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons.â
| Sammy's acquisitive greed on the subject of weapons of any kind was near legendary. It actually seems to have been a form of mental illness. |
Alarm bells and a state of siege was being declared on US citizens with threats of Anthrax, poisened water reservoirs, blown bridges, etc. A very well choreographed setup.
| Yes. I remember the anthrax scare in the wake of 9-11. I'm guessing it didn't work as well as the perpetrators intended. As far as I know, it's the first intentional biological weapons attack anywhere, though rumor has it the Soviet accident with the same substance in the late 70s caused a lot more casualties. But I doubt if it was Cheney sending out infectuous letters. Based on who got 'em, I'd guess the perpetrator was an Islamist. |
We all know what happened next. Following the âshock and aweâ display of power boasted by Rumsfeld, there were no garlands of flowers, no rejoicing in the streets.
| "Shock and awe" was actually scheduled, but they seem to have changed their mind at the last moment because they were squeamish about wiping out the large numbers of cannon fodder we were capable of killing. Instead, they used more precision tactics, leaving a large portion of the Iraqi army to live to demobilization. In gratitude for our mercy, they're now running around blowing up civilians, since they're not very squeamish themselves. And there actually were a few garlands of flowers, there actually was a certain amount of celebrating in the streets, simultaneously with the Sunni weeping and gnashing of teeth, coupled with vows of Dire Revengeâ¢. |
Instead there were rising US body counts and coercion by the US military against Iraqi doctors who were brave enough to tell the world of the âotherâ unreported body counts, that of Iraqi civilians.
| The rising U.S. body counts aren't rising very quickly. We've been there 32 months, with around 2200 dead, for an average of 68 or 69 dead per month. To achieve the 50,000 dead we took in Vietnam we'd have to remain in Iraq for 60 years. Iraqi "civilian" body counts are always subject to suspicion, since they're routinely inflated for political purposes by the other side, and probably deflated for the same purposes by our side. Additionally, there's the problem of identifying which of the "civilians" are actually non-combatants, rather than bad guyz, who, recall, are technically civilians. |
There were indiscriminate killings, and some with more intent. The bombings of Al-Jazeera offices in Baghdad and the murder of one of their correspondents were not in error. They were simply following a similar pattern of when the US bombed the Kabul offices of Al-Jazeera just before the Northern Alliance entered the city. The attempted killing of an Italian journalist, shocked at the atrocities she had witnessed firsthand at Fallujah, took place at a US military checkpoint soon after. In that an Italian intelligence officer was killed in the process, well, we've heard enough about collateral damage. To top it off, the Commander in Chief himself made clear to Tony Blair of the UK that he wanted to bomb Al-Jazeera in Qatar and elsewhere.
| I guess that's a risk you take when you're a war correspondent for an organization that's openly opposed to one of the combatant sides. Correspondents for Volkischer Beobachter probably would have fared about the same at Monte Cassino, or from Asahi Shimbun at Tarawa. I have no more sympathy for the ink-stained wretches than they do for our Marines. |
Lame attempts by some spin doctors cannot diminish the sinister attempts by this administration to silence the truth at any cost.
| Always depending on your definition of truth, of course. |
So long as the simple folks back home donât know the real story, everything shall be hunky dory. Heck, for extra insurance, they'd even recruited journalists on their payroll.
| And they've even put lying live feeds right up front with the troops so we can't tell what they're doing. They've embedded journalists with those troops to pass lies back to the simple folk. There are emails flowing from the troops to the home front, reinforcing the lies and deceit. Never in history has a war been reported with so little filtration and "interpretation," and the results are lies, all lies!⢠|
Guantanamo, Abu Ghuraib, and scores of secret torture chambers spread out in eastern European countries marks the underhandedness of this administration.
| We're much less merciful than the Iraqi bad guyz, in that rather than lopping off the heads of those we capture â and we could build one of those pyramids of skulls that occasionally dot Islamic history and no one else's if we did â we intern the bastards, keeping them alive, feeding them, clothing them, and eventually decided they're not a threat before sending them back to the hellholes they came from, whereupon they embark anew on the road to jihad. My personal preference would be to drop them off at Bikini Atoll and allow them to fend for themselves until the war is over, at which time any who hadn't been slaughtered by their fellows over doctrinal or tribal differences could be patriated to someplace in Antarctica. |
The use of outlawed weaponry and chemical warfare used against civilians in Fallujah and elsewhere is a despicable affront to humanity.
| It would be, if it had occurred... |
There is enough hard evidence to reveal that white phosphorus was deployed as a weapon in Fallujah. US infantry officers confessed that they had used it.
| More like admitted to having used it. There's a difference between an admission and a confession. Confession implies you've done something wrong. An admission is often accompanied by a questioning look and the phrase "Why do you ask?" |
White phosphorus burns people, and is both incendiary and toxic. The gas it produces attacks the mucous membranes, the eyes and the lungs.
| It's a very unpleasant substance. On the other hand, being blown to shreds by high explosive is just as unpleasant. Being kaboomed by a suicide boomer wearing a vest containing rat-poisoned hardware is also unpleasant. What's yer point? |
The US Army knows that its use as a weapon is illegal, but yet there were no attempts by the Commander in Chief to forbid its use. Talk about chemical warfare against the innocent!
| Actually, the Army knows no such thing. The fact that you want it to be illegal doesn't make it so. |
In a statement to the BBC recently, Peter Kaiser of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons stated, âIf... the toxic properties of white phosphorus are specifically intended to be used as a weapon, that of course is prohibited, because... any chemicals used against humans or animals that cause harm or death through the toxic properties of the chemical are considered chemical weapons.â
| The heat produced by WP, while unpleasant, is not one of its toxic properties. As I've stated before, WP is not a chemical weapon unless the definition of chemical weapons is changed. |
One eventually loses score of the numerous war crimes that have been committed as a result of this illegal and immoral invasion and continuing occupation.
| Lost your train of thought, didja? Happens to me sometimes, too. |
Nor would a score of columns of print be sufficient to highlight all these crimes. Over a 100,000 innocent civilians, many who were just children, have lost their lives because of Bushâs adventurism.
| I believe the 100,000 figure's been pretty well discredited by now, but I'd also add that it's about a third of the numbers recovered to date from Sammy's mass graves. So let's do a little cost benefit analysis here. Assuming Sammy continued in his methodical manner and we in ours, I'd make that three people saved for every one destroyed. I've also pointed out that even if the number of 100,000 is correct, and all were "civilians," are are not "innocent" civilians, unless one has a pretty greasy definition of innocence... |
There is indeed no âpie in your faceâ sense of satisfaction in all of this.
| You seem to be imitating it well enough... |
Today, as I watch the pitiful figure of Saddam Hussein in court, on trial facing charges of crimes against humanity while he was in command, I ask myself: âShouldnât Mr. Bush, et al, be sharing the seat next to him?â
| I don't think so. Millions of us don't, in fact. The fact that you wish it could be so doesn't matter squat. |
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