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Politics : War -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Thomas M. who wrote (18442)	12/13/2002 8:51:07 PM
From: Machaon	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 23908

Thomas, what did you like the best about Syria and the Palestinian terrorists invading and destroying Lebanon? Lebanon was the most educated and advanced Arab nation in the Middle East, and it was destroyed by the same Palestinian terrorists who now want to destroy the only remaining civilized nation in the Middle East. Your laughing at the loss of 243 American Marines is the laughter of a lowly hyena. The Marines were in Lebanon on a mission of peace, not occupation and war. This type of peace mission is something you can't possibly understand. What makes you so obnoxious?

To: Thomas M. who wrote (18442)	12/14/2002 1:51:47 PM
From: lorne	Respond to of 23908

tommy. Looks like sadam insane will use a weapon of mass destruction after all. Looks like he is going to use " ISLAM" a weapon of mass destruction. Infidel Saddam dons Islamic clothing for Jihad against US Agence France-Presse Baghdad, December 13 dLong branded an "infidel" by Islamist groups such as al-Qaeda, Iraqi President Saddam Hussein has adopted the language of political Islam as he moves to bolster support for holy war against the United States. Senior officials of his ultra-secular Baath party have been sent off to religious seminaries for refresher courses in the finer points of Islam, while the bars and nightclubs that used to dot Baghdad have been forced underground. A state-sponsored Islamic People's Organization has been set up to spearhead the cultural revolution which has seen new mosques and Koranic schools spring up across the country to preach the Jihad (holy war). "The believers are taking on the infidel," says the imam of Baghdad's huge Abu Hanifa mosque, Sheikh Watheq al-Oteibi, echoing the sermons which ring out weekly across Iraq railing against the heathen West. "People are convinced that the United States is leading a Crusade against Iraq and the whole Muslim world, and are determined to defend their faith," he says. The regime is "channelling" the increasingly Islamist views of ordinary Iraqis when it portrays Saddam as a new Saladin, the 12th century warrior who recaptured Jerusalem from the Crusaders of Christian Europe, says Oteibi. For the man who heads the Islamisation campaign, Abdel Latif Hmaiem, it is a matter of "returning Iraq to its roots," although he acknowledges that the campaign has been resisted by many traditionalists in the Baath party. "Some cadres are against it even now," admits Hmaiem, the secretary general of the Islamic People's Organization. But he swiftly adds that the party has "finally been won over" and now "does not deny Islam". Officially dubbed the "campaign to strengthen faith", Islamisation has played a vital role as a "shock absorber for discontent and a counter to the religious extremism" which had grown "menacingly" amid the poverty created by 12-year-old UN sanctions, he says. But in a nod to the misgivings within a party which has traditionally included many Christians as well as both Sunni and Shiite Muslims, Hmaiem insists the goal of the campaign is limited to "reintegrating religion into the country's secular landscape." For long-time dissident Abdel Jabar al-Qobeisi, the marriage of convenience between Saddam and Islam is the product of common hostility regarding the United States. "Secularists and believers have been forced into the same trench by the US threat," he says. A strong opponent of US designs on Iraq, Qobeisi returned to Baghdad with other members of his National Iraqi Coalition last month after 26 years in exile. He says the regime's redicovery of religion has been a political masterstroke, ensuring that Saddam has "lost neither supporters nor ground" to his opponents. "He has managed to win the masses over to the now sancrosanct principle of holy war against the United States," he says. The radicals of al-Qaeda may still refer to the Iraqi strongman as an "infidel dictator" but even they now threaten attacks against the US forces ranged against him as they target the common enemy. "The danger of what America and its allies are preparing against Iraq and its people is not limited to overthrowing the infidel regime and its dictator but is aimed at... Balkanising this great country," al-Qaeda spokesman Sulaiman Abu Ghaith said in an Internet voice recording last weekend. hindustantimes.com