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Politics : Stockman Scott's Political Debate Porch -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: elpolvo who wrote (22877)	7/21/2003 11:16:06 PM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 89467

..... regardless of the facts <g>.

To: elpolvo who wrote (22877)	7/22/2003 8:58:05 AM
From: jlallen	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 89467

Facts are stupid things....and to maintain that Bush "lied" in the face of the facts does call into question the motives of the accusers...IMHO....

To: elpolvo who wrote (22877)	7/24/2003 3:15:02 AM
From: Sully-	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 89467

Speaking of perceptions........ ....I came away with two overwhelming impressions about the feelings of the Iraqi people. First, there is enormous gratitude on their part for American and British forces, and for President Bush and Prime Minister Blair personally, for what they have done to bring about the liberation of the Iraqi people from an incredibly evil and brutal regime. That gratitude was obvious across all the communities we encountered, definitely including Sunni Arabs. That may surprise some, but in fact, Saddam and his two evil sons practiced what I've called equal opportunity oppression. The second big impression I came away with is that the pervasive fear of the old regime is still alive in Iraq. That's not surprising, particularly when you have a chance to view first-hand the kinds of horrors that Saddam and his regime perpetrated, the effects of which are visible everywhere you turn in that country. Among the most horrific remnants of the brutality of that regime that I witnessed were the Marsh Arabs of the village of Al Taraba (ph), the mass graves of Al Hillah, and the industrial-style execution process that was practiced in Abu Gharib prison. In the case of the Marsh Arabs, liberation came just in time to save a fragment of a civilization that goes back thousands of years. In the case of the many tens of thousands who were killed at Al Hillah and Abu Gharib, it did not come in time. For the Marsh Arabs, where there was once a lush landscape of productive, fresh-water marshes, there is now a wasteland the size of the state of New Jersey. One reporter with us compared it to the surface of the Moon -- a parched, lifeless void. In Al Hillah, villagers told us stories about how buses and trucks of people were led to a field where they were gunned down and buried dead or alive. Today, the graveyard in Hillah is one of dozens that have been discovered throughout Iraq. In fact, while we were in the north, a field commander there told us they had just temporarily stopped the excavation of a newly discovered gravesite after unearthing the remains of 80 victims, including women and little children, some still with their toys. The torture chamber at the police academy, that was reported in gruesome detail in Monday's Washington Post, and which we chanced to see because we were going to the academy for a very different purpose, which was to get a better understanding of the training that's being done to bring in a new Iraqi police force -- but they took us to see the torture chamber. And it strikes you that this was just one family, that story, and there are tens of thousands of other individual families in Iraq that can tell similar stories. I raise these issues because one conclusion that I draw from this visit is that the history of atrocities and the punishment of those responsible is directly linked to our efforts to establish better security and to achieve intelligence information from the Iraqi people. The Iraqi people want to build a free, secure and democratic future. But to do so, we need to remove the blanket of fear that still covers them. Yesterday's events help enormously in that regard. It strikes me that in many ways, Iraqis are like prisoners who have emerged from years of solitary confinement with no light, no news, no knowledge of the outside world, and they have just emerged into the blinding sun and the fresh air of freedom. The progress that our troops are making is helping to lessen the grip of fear. Make no mistake; we are making a great deal of progress. Message 19140654