Response to Anti-War Crowd

[TYLERTECHSAS]

Here are some Snappy Answers to Anti-War arguments. They go well with the Wash Post article. Enjoy LR
Young Americans will die in battle.
-->Would you prefer they die in skyscrapers?

The United States is taking unilateral action against Iraq!
-->So far, it's a 90-member worldwide "unilateral" coalition.

We are in a rush to war.
-->A 12-year rush?

Tough inspections can disarm Saddam Hussein without invading Iraq.
-->12 years of inspections have done wonders so far.

We should let the inspectors finish their job.
--> We did. They didn't. We will.

Why fight? The Iraqi military is weaker than in 1991.
--> But their biological weapons and chemical weapons are much more dangerous.

There's no proof of weapons.
--> We know they have 'em, we know they hide 'em, and we have tape recordings and photographs. What more is needed? An Iraqi rocket inMartin Sheen's shorts?

If we invade, Saddam Hussein might use those weapons of mass destruction against us.
--> I thought you said Iraq didn't have them?

But terrorists might attack if we invade Iraq.
--> Oh, so if we don't attack Iraq, terrorists will never strike again?

We shouldn't go to war without a UN resolution.
--> ANOTHER resolution? What about the last 18 resolutions? Shall we use them as wallpaper? Or shall we use the same resolutions Bill Clinton used in Bosnia? (he didn't go to the UN on Bosnia).

We don't have a real declaration for war.
-->It's called "Joint Congressional Resolution #114."

We are giving 20 billion dollars to Turkey. We could use that money at home.
--> OK, we'll use that money to strengthen our Iraqi border with Wyoming.

If North Korea has nuclear weapons, why aren't we invading them first?
--> Uh...hello...isn't that the point?

European leaders are against the war.
--> The Reichstag wasn't attacked. The Grande Place wasn't attacked. The Kremlin wasn't attacked. And the Jerry Lewis Lifetime Achievement Museum wasn't attacked. America was attacked. And besides, except for the
tantrums of France, Belgium and Germany, only three European nations aren't willing to defend freedom. The entire rest of Europe is with America.

The French don't support the war.
--> Oh, did they surrender already?

Germany objects to this war.

--> Germany objected to Reagan's "attitude" towards the Soviet Union. Of course, they objected to our presence in 1943 as well.

Belgians are against the war.
--> I can live without waffles and ice cream.

Russia doesn't support the war.
--> They are still angry over Reagan's brilliant Cold War victory.

Polls show Europeans are against this war.
--> Polls show Europeans believe their freedom was achieved by endlessly debating in marvelous dining halls, conveniently forgettingtheir right to be pompous blowhards was granted with American blood, not fabulous wine and brie.

We should build a coalition with our friends.
--> With friends like these, who needs enemies?

What happens if we can't build a United Nations coalition?
--> Who cares?

But the UN is the world's most respected governing body.
--> Not as respected as the US military.

America has always waited until enemies attacked.
--> Now that oceans can't hold back enemies, pre-emptive war is forever a necessity.

War will cost billions!
--> So how much is YOUR city worth?

President Bush says he's willing to violate the 1976 executive orderforbidding assassinations of foreign leaders.
--> As soon as the ink is dry on rescinding that idiotic order, will someone please pull the trigger? The line forms to the right.(Suppose President Bush issues an executive order to allow assassinations of foreign leaders, that would make it legal.)

Many Senators don't support Bush.
--> Are you speaking of the Senators from Bordeaux?

Tom Daschle says George Bush has a "credibility gap"
--> When was the last time we came to Tom Daschle for the truth???

These problems didn't happen under Clinton.
--> Actually, they happened. But Clinton ignored them. Now, Bush will clean up his mess.

But Clinton didn't start a war.
--> Unless his girlfriend was testifying before congress.

Bush senior should have taken out Hussein in '91.
--> That 1991 UN resolution forbade a march on Baghdad. Remember?

Millions of peace activists are demanding we stop the war.
--> Millions of Iraqi's are begging for us to start the war.

Thousands of innocents will be killed or injured.
--> That's a lot less than Hussein is killing right now.

Protesters have genuine objections to war.
--> Just like they did in WWII? Korea? Vietnam? Panama? The Gulf War?Somalia? Haiti? Bosnia? Afghanistan?

People are coming from all over the world to act as "human shields".
--> Quick...hurry up...before the bombs start dropping.

This is about American Imperialism.
--> So which country do we own? Name our colonies? What nation sends us their tax dollars? If America was imperialist, we'd already own the entire world. Who could stand in our way?

This is Blood for Oil
--> The only blood is the Iraqi people tortured, starved and killed while Hussein builds massive palaces to hide nuclear weapons...all financed with Iraqi oil.

This is a racist war.
--> America happily endorses a multi-cultural attitude towards anyone who dares to take away our freedom. Regardless of race, color, or creed; we will hunt them down and kill them.

A U.S.-led invasion of Iraq is a great recruiting tool for terrorists.
--> Have fun recruiting people into oppressive misery as they enjoy their first taste of freedom.

An attack on Iraq could seriously undermine and destabilize Arab nations.
--> Destabilize the region? What stability? The sooner we topple theseoppressive 14th century terrorist regimes the better.

Are we prepared for a multi-billion dollar occupation?
--> Were we prepared to liberate Europe and Japan in 1945? South Korea in 1953? Grenada? El Salvador? Kuwait? The Eastern Bloc? Afghanistan? Nations always love Americans when we rescue them from tyranny. The price of freedom is never free.

Polls show Americans are more concerned about the threat from al Qaeda than from Iraq.
--> It's not a war against Al Qaeda. It's not a war against Iraq. It's a war against terrorism. Anywhere we find it. One nation at a time.

American opinion is against the war.
--> No, it's not. A majority of Americans want to fight now, not later.

According to a recent poll...
--> You know what? Screw those polls. We're in a war against terrorism. If you don't want to fight the ones who would murder you and your family in a heartbeat, get the hell out of the way. Go visit Paris. Or Antwerp.
Or Berlin. Or Moscow. And stay there. Forever.
But this time, don't call us when the heathens are at the gates.

[TYLERTECHSAS]

washingtonpost.com
Bearing Wounds, Shiites Return to Torture Chamber


By Susan B. Glasser
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, April 9, 2003; Page A01


BASRA, Iraq, April 8 -- Adnan Shaker pulled up his shirt to reveal dozens of scars crisscrossing his chest. He turned to show the marks of cigarette burns on his back. He waved his misshapen right hand, two fingers twisted and useless. He grabbed the electric wire attached to the ceiling in the cell where he lived until a few days ago, and demonstrated how his jailers had tied his hands behind his back when they administered the shocks.

His crime was participating in a Shiite Muslim uprising four years ago against Saddam Hussein's Sunni Muslim-dominated Baath Party. But when he was arrested three years ago, he would not confess to opposing Iraq's rulers. So he was charged with stealing a bag of flour, and tortured. "They put electricity into me three times a day," he said. "They just wanted me to say I was against the party."

He freely proclaimed his hatred today. "I killed seven people" in the uprising, he said.

Two days after the southern city of Basra was seized by the British military, Shaker and other former prisoners returned to their jail on the outskirts of the city. They came to celebrate and to tell their stories to anyone who would listen. They brandished identification cards and color mug shots of those they claimed died here. Shaker pointed to a Ministry of Defense identification card for an army officer named Hilal Abbas.

"This one said 'Death to Saddam,' " Shaker said. "They hanged him."

Around him, the crowd chanted their defiance of Hussein. "Yes! Yes! Bush! Yes! Yes! Bush!" they screamed. "Saddam! No! No! No!" One man grabbed a picture of Hussein and started eating it, ripping violently with his teeth. Another man took a newspaper with a photo of Hussein and slowly tore off the head.

Here then, a few weeks after they had been expected, were the scenes of Shiite rebellion that the U.S. and British military had anticipated when they rolled across the border from Kuwait last month. Emerging, too, were fragmentary firsthand accounts of human rights abuses under Hussein, stories like Shaker's that suggest how the Baath Party used repression to rule Basra.

Not all residents of this shabby port city share the freed prisoners' jubilance. As looters roamed freely through the streets in front of British tanks that made no move to stop them, those who took time to reflect today were often as ambivalent as they were relieved. Many said prisoners freed by Hussein before the war were to blame for the anarchy. Others blamed the British for occupying Basra without restoring order.

But for many, even those critical of how slow the British have been to restore order, it was a time to speak openly at last about the abuses of the Baath Party committed in Hussein's name.

At Basra Teaching Hospital, Nasser Hassan, an agricultural engineer, said the Sunni Muslims in the party had terrorized residents. "I saw many bad things myself," he said. During the Shiite rebellion in 1999, he said, he saw men being thrown from the roof of a school. "We are against Saddam," he said. "But before we cannot say anything opposite Saddam Hussein. They would kill us."

Hassan was at the hospital because his 2-year-old daughter lay in a coma after being injured when several coalition bombs fell on their house. He said he did not blame the British for her grave injury, but rather the members of Saddam's Fedayeen militia who hid in civilian areas.

As he spoke, Hassan's daughter moved slightly on her bed. Her eyes fluttered, but she did not regain consciousness. "Yes, people believe Saddam is no more, he is gone," Hassan said.

British goals for the occupation of Basra are lofty, even if the ability to execute them is limited. "Ultimately, what we have to do is replace what they've been fighting to protect with something better," said Maj. Kevin Oliver, whose company of commandos first stormed Hussein's apparently unoccupied summer palace here.

Today, the palace qualifies as a luxury barracks for war-weary British troops, some of whom were playing Scrabble in their underwear this afternoon as others showed off the sun shower they had rigged up in a marble bathroom with no running water but gold fixtures on the toilet.

"It's a striking thing," Oliver said of Hussein's palace. "He's prepared to have such opulence while these other people are living so desperately. . . . They're so desperate they're looting anything they find -- they are literally looting rubbish."

At the prison where Shaker and others returned today, there was nothing left to loot, just stacks of documents in a few front-room offices and leftover implements that the men there said had been used to torture them.

They were freed just two days ago from a jail that was once an "adult house of reeducation" but was taken over after the Shiite uprising that swept southern Iraq in the wake of the Persian Gulf War. The uprising was harshly repressed here. Now the building is known as the "jail for adult reeducation."

Liberation, when it came on a hot Sunday morning, was sudden. "They locked us inside and the police fled," Shaker said. "There was shouting. They said, 'Our brothers come, our brothers come.' "

Shaker said he was 32 years old and had four hungry children at home. He said he used to work selling food for donkeys. But he is not yet thinking about the future, about what it means to have British tanks in the street outside the prison where he lived. He is still thinking about the past and how he wants to come to terms with it. "I want to kill all Baathis, I want to kill Saddam," he said.

Other former prisoners also traced their detention to repression of Shiites by the Sunni-dominated government. In 1999, riots broke out in response to news reports that Grand Ayatollah Mohammed Sadiq Sadr, a prominent Shiite cleric in the holy city of Najaf, had been shot to death with his two sons. "So we started jihad against Sunni," Shaker said.

He pulled a small stone from his pocket, the stone used by devout Muslims to bow their heads against during their five daily prayers. "That is how they know we are Shiite," he said. "From the prayer stone." In the prison, the jailers often talked about politics. "They used to say, 'Long live Saddam,' " Shaker said. When he did not join in, he said, "they tortured me more."

Another prisoner who had returned was Ali Nasser, 16. He said he had come to this place more than six months ago. Smaller than his years would suggest, he did not answer directly when asked why he was arrested. An older man answered for him: "Because he was Shiite and he went to pray."



© 2003 The Washington Post Company

[TYLERTECHSAS]

Jailed Iraqi Children Run
Free as Marines Roll into
Baghdad Suburbs (AFP)

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmp...n_030408163048



BAGHDAD (AFP) - More than 100 children held in a prison celebrated their freedom as US marines rolled into northeast Baghdad amid chaotic scenes which saw civilians loot weapons from an army compound, a US officer said.

Around 150 children spilled out of the jail after the gates were opened as a US military Humvee vehicle approached, Lieutenant Colonel Fred Padilla told an AFP correspondent travelling with the Marines 5th Regiment.

"Hundreds of kids were swarming us and kissing us," Padilla said.

"There were parents running up, so happy to have their kids back."

"The children had been imprisoned because they had not joined the youth branch of the Baath party," he alleged. "Some of these kids had been in there for five years."

The children, who were wearing threadbare clothes and looked under-nourished, walked on the streets crossing their hands as if to mimic handcuffs, before giving the thumbs up sign and shouting their thanks.

It was not clear who had opened the doors of the prison.

[TYLERTECHSAS]

Propensity to Lie, the
Arab Perspective, Iraq
-- Bill Koenig


April 6, 2003

Propensity to Lie

Arab officials’ propensity to lie continues to be exposed on U.S. TV weekly. The only good news to this travesty is millions of Americans can see this behavior first hand.

The Iraqi Ambassador to the UN, Mohammed Al-Douri, in his March 30, 2003, interview with Tim Russert of Meet the Press, lied throughout his entire interview. Russert, one of TV’s top interviewers, wisely didn’t debate the Ambassador’s response; instead, he would just serve up another question and the Ambassador would answer it again with another lie. If the Ambassador had been cross-examined by an attorney in a court of law, he would have been found guilty of lying. (Meet the Press transcript: click here. )

In Australia’s Daily Telegraph article, “Iraqi Minister for Lies Working Overtime,” the following was said: click here for the article

As U.S. ground troops made their first forays into downtown Baghdad yesterday and the images were broadcast worldwide, Iraq's information minister maintained it never happened.

The regime-in-denial also insisted the Republican Guard had control of the Iraqi capital's international airport, despite the fact that units of the US 3rd Infantry Division seized the tactically valuable site three days ago. "Today we slaughtered them in the airport. They are out of Saddam International Airport," a seemingly deluded Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf said as US troops prepared one of the runways for military use. (end of excerpt)

Many of us have been watching the habit of lies for months on American TV, this behavior has been annoying to secular TV journalists. The person being interviewed will typically attempt to reword the question or try to change the subject, if that fails - then they will refuse to answer the question or lie if the interviewer keeps pressing for an answer.

The Arab Perspective

Can you imagine how Americans would have reacted if American TV had broadcasted Iraqi POWs being interrogated, tortured or killed on U.S. TV? First of all, the POWs wouldn't have been treated that way, secondly there would have been a public outcry. Yet, there was virtually no public outcry in the Arab world when Al-Jazeera shows the Arab world videos of U.S. troops being interrogated, brutalized and shot in the head.

Also, Arab newspapers through the Middle East are showing photographs and writing commentary for the sole purpose of inciting their people against America. Blair and others in the international community are concerned and are going to push for a solution to the Israel-Palestinian issue — as if Israel is the answer.

In further perspective: among the biggest barbarians in history, Saddam Hussein and his thugs are under attack, and the Muslim community speaks out against President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair as if they are the problem. Saddam tortures hundreds of thousands of people and the U.S. and British get the blame for the overthrow of this tyrant. The Arabs will call Bush and Blair “Hitlers,” while defending Osama bin Laden, Saddam Hussein and Yasser Arafat.

If Christians had flown two planes into the World Trade Center and one into the Pentagon, there would have been a major public outcry by Christian leaders and Christians throughout the world. Yet, how many Imams and/or Arabs publicly spoke out against the 9-11 terror events? How many Muslims spoke out against Al-Jazeera’s airing on TV of the cross-examination and torture of American soldiers?


Fundamental Muslims want to bash Jews and Christians, they attack Christianity but are unable to defend Islam. If you challenge Islam, they want to kill you. Do we, as Christians want to kill those we share the faith with or who we don’t agree with? Absolutely not!

[TYLERTECHSAS]

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OPERATION: IRAQI FREEDOM
Marines find tunnels
under nuke complex
Captain at underground discovery: 'How did the world miss all of this?'

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Posted: April 9, 2003
7:00 p.m. Eastern



© 2003 WorldNetDaily.com

U.S. Marines have located a complex of tunnels underneath an Iraqi nuclear complex – apparently missed by U.N. weapons inspectors – discovering a vast array of warehouses and bombproof offices that could contain the "smoking gun" sought by intelligence agencies, reported the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review.

The Iraqi Atomic Energy Commission's Al-Tuwaitha facility is located 18 miles south of Baghdad.

"I've never seen anything like it, ever," said Marine Capt. John Seegar. "How did the world miss all of this? Why couldn't they see what was happening here?"

Marine nuclear and intelligence experts say that at least 14 buildings at Al-Tuwaitha indicate high levels of radiation and some show lethal amounts of nuclear residue, according to the Pittsburgh daily. The site was examined numerous times by U.N. weapons inspectors, who found no evidence of weapons of mass destruction.


Marine combat engineers guard Iraqi Atomic Energy Department (Carl Prine/Pittsburgh Tribune-Review)


"They went through that site multiple times, but did they go underground? I never heard anything about that," said physicist David Albright, a former International Atomic Energy Agency inspector in Iraq from 1992 to 1997.

In a 1999 report, Albright said, "Iraq developed procedures to limit access to these buildings by IAEA inspectors who had a right to inspect the fuel fabrication facility."

"On days when the inspectors were scheduled to visit, only the fuel fabrication rooms were open to them," he said in the report, written with Khidhir Hamza, an Iraqi nuclear engineer who defected in 1994. "Usually, employees were told to take to their rooms so that the inspectors did not see an unusually large number of people."

Chief Warrant Officer Darrin Flick, the battalion's nuclear, biological and chemical warfare specialist, said radiation levels were particularly high at a place near the complex where local residents say the "missile water" is stored in mammoth caverns.

"It's amazing," Flick said. "I went to the off-site storage buildings, and the rad detector went off the charts. Then I opened the steel door, and there were all these drums, many, many drums, of highly radioactive material."

Noting that the ground in the area is muddy and composed of clay, Hamza was surprised to learn of the Marines' discovery, the Tribune-Review said. He wondered if the Iraqis went to the colossal expense of pumping enough water to build the subterranean complex because no reasonable inspector would think anything might be built underground there.

"Nobody would expect it," Hamza said. "Nobody would think twice about going back there."

Michael Levi of the Federation of American Scientists said the Iraqis continued rebuilding the Al-Tuwaitha facility after weapons inspections ended in 1998.

"I do not believe the latest round of inspections included anything underground, so anything you find underground would be very suspicious," said Levi. "It sounds absolutely amazing."

The Pittsburgh paper said nuclear scientists, engineers and technicians, housed in a plush neighborhood near the campus, have fled, along with Baathist party loyalists.

"It's going to take some very smart people a very long time to sift through everything here," said Flick. "All this machinery. All this technology. They could do a lot of very bad things with all of this."

Marine Capt. Seegar said his unit will continue to hold the nuclear site until international authorities can take over. Last night, they monitored gun and artillery battles by U.S. Marines against Iraqi Republican Guards and Fedayeen terrorists.

The offices underground are replete with videos and pictures that indicate the complex was built largely over the last four years, the Tribune-Review said.

Iraq began to develop its nuclear program at Al-Tuwaitha in the 1970s, according to the Institute for Science and International Security. Israel destroyed a French-built reactor there in 1981, called "Osiraq," and a reactor built by the Russians was destroyed during the 1991 Gulf War.

In his 2000 book "Saddam's Bombmaker," Hamza revealed Saddam's secret plans for the nuclear complex at Al-Tuwaitha:


From my office window in the Nuclear Research Center, I could see just a slice of what Saddam's oil money had built in less than a decade: a sprawling complex of nuclear facilities, scattered over ten square miles, poised to deliver us the bomb. It was called al-Tuwaitha, in Arabic "the truncheon."
… Below my floor was fifty thousand square feet of office space and laboratories, sparkling with new equipment, where hundreds of technicians were running nuclear experiments. Outside to my left was our chemical reprocessing plant, where we would enrich fuel for a plutonium bomb. Down the street was our domed Russian reactor, newly renovated with Belgian electronic controls, which made it capable of generating radioactive material for nuclear triggers. Past that was our French-supplied neutron generator, and next to that our electronics labs, and then a four-story building that handled spent nuclear fuel, full of hot cells and new remote-controlled equipment overseen by platoons of white-jacketed technicians. All this was a long, long way from the dining room table where we'd scratched out our first memo for a bomb in 1972.

Rising up behind my office, however, was al-Tuwaitha's jewel in the crown, the aluminum dome of the French reactor, glittering in the blue desert sky. Osiraq was the most advanced reactor of its kind, crammed with such up-to-date equipment and technology that visitors were amazed that the French had ever agreed to sell it to us. Little did they know that the acquisition of Osiraq, an incredible feat on its own, was merely a decoy: Saddam wanted us to copy the French design and build another, secret reactor, where we would produce the bomb-grade plutonium beyond the prying eyes of foreign spies and inspectors – the same thing to him.

But it was not to be. On June 7, 1981, Israel sent eight F-16 warplanes almost 700 miles over Jordanian, Saudi and Iraqi air space for hours without detection. By flying in tight formation, they generated a radar signal resembling that of a commercial airliner. Upon identifying the Osiraq nuclear plant, and catching Iraqi defenses by surprise, the Israeli pilots managed to demolish the reactor in one minute and 20 seconds.

At the time, Israel's audacious preemptive strike was almost universally condemned, but later praised by many for helping thwart Iraq's development of nuclear weapons.

Despite this and other setbacks, says Hamza, Saddam persisted in his quest for a nuclear bomb. In testimony before Congress last August, Hamza – the architect of Iraq's atom bomb program – said that if left unchecked, Iraq could have had nuclear weapons by 2005.



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