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Politics : DON'T START THE WAR -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Karen Lawrence who wrote (21926)	3/16/2003 9:07:20 PM
From: LPS5	Respond to of 25898

Sorry, I was trying to set JLA straight on Constitutional rights. LOL! Having never answered the below question, are you sure you've got the requisite knowledge to "set [anyone] straight" where Constitutionality is concerned? Message 18513714 (And if so...would you like a second opinion?) LPS5

To: Karen Lawrence who wrote (21926)	3/16/2003 9:08:43 PM
From: sandintoes	Respond to of 25898

I can understand knowing where the air bases are, but some of the other sights are questionable.

To: Karen Lawrence who wrote (21926)	3/16/2003 9:10:12 PM
From: jlallen	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 25898

More crapola. Your right to post your drivel is not more important than mine to protest such drivel.....

To: Karen Lawrence who wrote (21926)	3/16/2003 11:13:02 PM
From: KLP	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 25898

Kurds flee as secret police step up arrests Exodus begins from strategic northern town guardian.co.uk Luke Harding in Qushtapa Monday March 17, 2003 The Guardian It was the knock on the door at 5am that convinced Ali Bresmani it was time to leave. Five Iraqi security officers armed with Kalashnikovs burst into his flat. "They searched the entire house. They looked in the cupboards. They looked in the refrigerator. They even searched under the duvet," he said. "They were looking for hidden weapons or people." The war in Iraq may not have started yet, but the exodus of refugees has already begun. Shortly after Iraq's secret police called at his home in the northern city of Kirkuk, Ali decided to escape, travelling across a smuggling route into the western-protected enclave of northern Iraq. Over the past four days nearly 2,000 refugees have streamed out of Kirkuk, bringing few possessions, but laden with stories of searches, arrests and night-time disappearances. "The security officers left after 15 minutes. But they took away one of my neighbour's friends in a Nissan car. God knows what will happen to him," said Ali, 27, a Kurdish taxi driver. Those who have left Kirkuk say the Iraqi authorities have made elaborate preparations to defend the city against US attack and to crush any potential uprising by its majority Kurds. Iraqi soldiers are getting ready for street fighting, refugees say. "Sandbags have been placed on the roofs of schools and hospitals. The city is under curfew. You can't walk 100 metres without passing a new military outpost," said Saba Jebar, 27, who fled Kirkuk two days ago. "Everybody is scared. We are not afraid of war. We are afraid of Saddam." Another refugee, too scared to give her name, said residents living in three- and four-storey buildings had been evicted to make way for Iraqi snipers. The campaign of mass arrests and detentions began last week after protesters apparently destroyed a giant poster of President Saddam. The city was then gripped by rumours that Ali Hassan al-Majid, President Saddam's cousin and the man who gassed the Kurds in 1988, had arrived from Baghdad. Since then a steady stream of vehicles - ancient buses, cars and packed orange-and-white taxis - have crossed into the mountains, and the northern safe haven outside President Saddam's control. Yesterday dozens of Kurdish refugees queued up to register at a makeshift camp at the Kurdish checkpoint of Qushtapa, 45 miles north of Kirkuk. Those with relatives in the enclave were allowed to continue to Irbil, the administrative capital of the Kurdish zone. Others just sat on their suitcases by the side of the road, waiting in the spring sunshine for the authorities to find them somewhere to sleep. "We will provide everybody with accommodation," Barzan Saeed, a Kurdish official promised. "The situation is very bad," said Ahmed Mohammad Khalifa, 42, who fled Kirkuk with his wife Hamdiya and six children at the weekend. "Virtually all the young men have left. Only old women have stayed behind." Mohammad is staying with relatives in Benislawa, an encampment of shabby concrete bungalows settled by earlier Kurdish refugees. The oilfield near his home in Kirkuk had been on fire for the past three weeks, he said, after TNT planted around it exploded. Kirkuk is next to Iraq's most important northern oilfields, and remained under President Saddam's control after the Gulf war while other Kurdish areas to the north achieved effective autonomy under the protection of British and American warplanes. Tens of thousands of Kurds have left Kirkuk for the safe haven over the past 10 years. President Saddam, meanwhile, has moved Arab settlers into the Kirkuk area and enforced a so-called nationality "correction campaign" in which Kurds have been forced to adopt Arab names or risk losing their homes. Many have been expelled anyway. Now, though, Kirkuk's Arab settlers are terrified, too, fearful that when the city falls they will be the object of reprisals.