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| 5/24 |
| 2003/3/22-23 [Politics/Foreign/MiddleEast/Iraq] UID:27805 Activity:very high |
3/22 American kid/human shield 'shocked back to reality'.
http://www.upi.com/view.cfm?StoryID=20030321-023627-5923r
A group of American anti-war demonstrators who came to Iraq with
Japanese human shield volunteers made it across the border today with
14 hours of uncensored video, all shot without Iraqi government
minders present. Kenneth Joseph, a young American pastor with the
Assyrian Church of the East, told UPI the trip "had shocked me back to
reality." Some of the Iraqis he interviewed on camera "told me they
would commit suicide if American bombing didn't start. They were
willing to see their homes demolished to gain their freedom from
Saddam's bloody tyranny. They convinced me that Saddam was a monster
the likes of which the world had not seen since Stalin and Hitler. He
and his sons are sick sadists. Their tales of slow torture and killing
made me ill, such as people put in a huge shredder for plastic
products, feet first so they could hear their screams as bodies got
chewed up from foot to head."
A few of you might also like to check out the history of the Baathists
in Iraq. They're not just "Nazi-like" but are actually Arab Nazis.
The truth is out there for those who are interested in knowing it.
\_ I've posted this before, only to be deleted. People didn't seem to
like the source.
"It is Michel Aflaq who created the party and not I,"
Saddam told an interviewer in 1980.
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/001/837uvzrs.asp
\_ Saddam was a bloody tyrant right from the start, yet we supported
him all those years, giving him weapons and technical help when
he used his nerve gas against Kurds and Iranians.
him all those years, giving him weapons and technical help while he
was using nerve gas against Kurds and Iranians. Note that Iran-
Iraq War was started by Saddam when he invaded Iran.
\_ Just because we've done evil in the past doesn't mean we're not
allowed to correct it later. If the standard for who is allowed
to fight evil is only people who have never done anything evil
then no one would be left to do so.
\_ Except that it calls into question as to whether our
stated reason for the war is the real reason for it.
\_ Why is this any more believable than the stories about babies
being pulled from incubators in the last war? Don't be so quick
to swallow the propaganda.
\_ ie, believe the news stories that support your stance on war.
\_ babies? incubators? What are you talking about? Ok, ok, you're
right. Anything that supports a point of view different from
yours must be lies. Afterall the UPI has such a long history of
supporting right wing conservative christian anti-arab, pro-
israel, anti-minority racist lies. Did I miss anything in my
list? Do we still hate rich white people too? Why don't you
just post a list of the things we're allowed to believe and the
ultra left wing 'media' resources you use to 'learn' of those
events?
\_ Your historical memory is weak, child. Bush I sold the
war against Iraq with such a story:
http://www.counterpunch.org/cohen1228.html
\_ Why do you think his arab neighbors aren't jumping to support him? |
| 5/24 |
|
| www.upi.com/view.cfm?StoryID=20030321-023627-5923r Jordan is already home for 400,000 Iraqi refugees from the first Gulf War. The one-camel village of Ramadi was also the only phone booth on the desert road and a Jordanian was killed by the explosion of the gas station while making a call to his parents in Amman to let them know he was on his way home. At the same time, the few taxi drivers in Baghdad willing to run the risk of making it to the Jordanian border are charging $1,500 per passenger. As a result, only some 300 TCNs (Third Country Nationals) reached the border post since the bombing started. From there, they were bused to the tent city at the Ruwaished refugee camp, 36 miles inside Jordan. The Sudanese and Egyptian governments agreed to pay for Jordanian Airlines charters to fly their nationals home. A group of American anti-war demonstrators who came to Iraq with Japanese human shield volunteers made it across the border today with 14 hours of uncensored video, all shot without Iraqi government minders present. They were willing to see their homes demolished to gain their freedom from Saddam's bloody tyranny. They convinced me that Saddam was a monster the likes of which the world had not seen since Stalin and Hitler. Prior to the war, some 700 tanker trucks shuttled daily between both countries. Some 2,600 and 1,500 Iraqi tankers have been involved in the overland oil traffic. Movement was down to 140 tankers the day before the bombing started. Jordan had made plans for a quick switch to tankers anchored off Aqaba. Qatar had pledged to replace whatever shortfall Jordan experienced. Jordanians see a good omen in the daily arrival of almost 1,000 white storks. They alight near the Safeway on one of Amman's seven hills, a pit stop on their way from Africa to their east European breeding grounds. About 100,000 storks are expected at the Safeway for the next month, numbers not seen in 10 years, and a sign of ample rain and a good harvest. The official and private views of some ranking Jordanian officials appear to be diametrically opposed. Copyright 2004 United Press International Copyright 2001-2004 United Press International. |
| www.counterpunch.org/cohen1228.html She testified that Iraqi soldiers who had invaded Kuwait on August 2nd tore hundreds of babies from hospital incubators and killed them. Republicans and pro-war Democrats used Nayirah's tale to hammer their fellow politicians into line behind Bush's war in the Persian Gulf. Nayirah, though, was no impartial eyewitness, a fact carefully concealed by her handlers. She was the daughter of one Saud Nasir Al-Sabah, Kuwait's ambassador to the United States. A few key Congressional leaders and reporters knew who Nayirah was, but none of them thought of sharing that minor detail with Congress, let alone the American people. There were, in actuality, only a handful of incubators in all of Kuwait, certainly not the "hundreds" she claimed. Mohammed Matar, director of Kuwait's primary care system, and his wife, Dr. Fayeza Youssef, who ran the obstetrics unit at the maternity hospital, there were few if any babies in the incubators at the time of the Iraqi invasion. In an ABC-TV News account after the war, John Martin reported that although "patients, including premature babies, did die," this occurred "when many of Kuwait's nurses and doctors stopped working or fled the country" -- a far cry from Bush's original assertion that hundreds of babies were murdered by Iraqi troops. Subsequent investigations, including one by Amnesty International, found no evidence for the incubator claims. It is likely that Nayirah was not even in Kuwait, let alone at the hospital, at that time; Some defended their country at the gaming tables in Monte Carlo, where at least one member of the ruling family was reported to have gambled away more than $10 million as his fellow rulers called for economic and military assistance from abroad. As invasions go, Iraq's invasion of Kuwait was relatively -- I stress the word "relatively" -- bloodless. How did Nayirah first come to the attention of the Congressional Human Rights Caucus, which put her before the world's cameras? Hill & Knowlton's yellow ribbon campaign to whip up support for "our" troops, which followed their orchestration of Nayirah's phony "incubator" testimony, was a public relations masterpiece. The claim that satellite photos revealed that Iraq had troops poised to strike Saudi Arabia was also fabricated by the PR firm. Does it demonstrate a certain potential for the future exercise of global political power -- the power to manipulate democratic political processes through managing public opinion," which Hill and Knowlton demonstrated 10 years ago? All of this is concealed in a new HBO "behind-the-scenes true story" of the Gulf War, which is being released at this crucial political moment. As Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting writes, "HBO's version of history never makes clear that the incubator story was fraudulent, and in fact had been managed by an American PR firm, not Iraq. The last time they were involved, by the time their lies were exposed TV newscasters were waxing ecstatic over the rockets' red glare, computerized "smart-bombs" bursting in air, and 250,000 people were dead. Mitchel Cohen is the co-editor of Green Politix, the national newspaper of the 10 Greens/Green Party USA. The use of the Big Lie to manipulate public opinion and neutralize opposition to a particular war was not invented by Bush. See, for instance, James Laxer, "Iraq: US has match, seeks kindle: American leaders have often falsified reasons to attack other countries," (ActionGreens, Mar. Laxer is a Political Science Professor at York University, Toronto. In actuality, people in only certain areas of Somalia were starving -- those that had been subjected to IMF structural adjustment programs. See, Mitchel Cohen, "Somalia & the Cynical Manipulation of Hunger," Red Balloon Collective, 1994. Sharon Beder and Richard Gosden, "PR Watch," Volume 8, No. The PR firm has since been working at the behest of the pharmaceutical industry to ban over-the-counter vitamin and nutritional supplement sales in Europe. Mitchel Cohen is the co-editor of Green Politix, the national newspaper of the 12 Greens/Green Party USA. CounterPunch Available Exclusively to Subscribers: * CounterPunch Special: The Persecution of Gershon Legman by Susan Davis: Smut, the Post Office, Commies and the FBI; Remember, the CounterPunch website is supported exclusively by subscribers to our newsletter. Our worldwide web audience is soaring , with about seven million hits a month now. This is inspiring, but the work involved also compels us to remind you more urgently than ever to subscribe and/or make a (tax deductible) donation if you can afford it. Mengele: Agent Green Over the Andes Gavin Martin 35 Joe Strummer is Dead: Long Live the Clash! Daniel Wolff 36 From Gospel to the Birth of Soul: Sam Cooke & the Soul Stirrers David Vest 37 Stirred and Shaken Ben Tripp 38 Yuletide Saul Landau 39 The Quiet American Returns Michael Wolff 40 X-mas in Zone One Kevin Begley 41 Nestl and a Nation in Famine Francis Boyle 42 O Little Town of Bethlehem Linda Heard 43 Where are the Wise Men? |
| www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/001/837uvzrs.asp But they really should give serious consideration to Michel Aflaq. It was Aflaq, a Syrian intellectual and political organizer, who founded the Syrian and Iraqi Baath parties. It was Aflaq, too, who in 1963 elevated Saddam Hussein to the Regional Command in Iraq's Baath party, and so set him on his course to dictatorship. And it was Aflaq who laid down the ideology that continues to dominate Saddam's thinking today. Saddam Hussein, after all, isn't a general who took over a government by means of a military coup. He's not only a thug, a ruthless tribal leader, a Don Corleone-style Godfather, a power-mad dictator. He is first and foremost a political activist, a party man. Saddam grew up as a cadre in the highly ideological and dogmatic Baath party structure. His speeches, from the time he entered government in 1968 until today, have had a consistent ideological, pseudo-intellectual character, even if in the past decade a layer of Islamist rhetoric has been added. From his first declarations to his last, he has always presented the Arabs as the master race, whose history and accomplishments are glorious. He has always had a mystical belief in self-purification through violence, the notion that the soul is elevated through warfare and killing. And most important, he has always been committed to the life of relentless struggle, of ever-widening wars and confrontations, of perpetual revolution, which undermines all objective truth, all stability, all possibility of rest and peace. He has believed all this in the name of some final and transcendent conquest for himself and the Arab nation. These beliefs and habits of mind he absorbed from the Baath party, and ultimately from its founder-leader. It is Aflaq whom Saddam cites when he insists, as he does frequently, that the Baath party is not like other parties. MICHEL AFLAQ was born in Damascus in 1910, a Greek Orthodox Christian. He won a scholarship to study philosophy at the Sorbonne sometime between 1928 and 1930 (biographies differ), and there he studied Marx, Nietzsche, Lenin, Mazzini, and a range of German nationalists and proto-Nazis. Aflaq became active in Arab student politics with his countryman Salah Bitar, a Sunni Muslim. Together, they were thrilled by the rise of Hitler and the Nazi party, but they also came to admire the organizational structure Lenin had created within the Russian Communist party. Due to this limitation, you may experience unexpected results within this site. |