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Politics : GOPwinger Lies/Distortions/Omissions/Perversions of Truth -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?


To: Karen Lawrence who wrote (27143)10/5/2004 5:56:45 AM
From: Crimson Ghost  Read Replies (2) | Respond to of 173976
 
This is a massacre, not a war in Iraq
By: Sam Hamod on: 04.10.2004 [19:05 ] (780 reads)

10/04/04 "ICH" — This is a massacre, not a war in Iraq. The U.S. bombing Samarra, Fallujah, Baghdad and other cities, killing hundreds of civilians and calling them terrorists is like the massacres of the Native Americans during America's push westward.
In this case, it has to do with America's push eastward.

What is also troubling is that no major media outlet, no major politician--none are callig this what it is, an immoral, unmitigated killing of hundreds of Iraqi civilians every week, a massacre.

Also, those who are experts in Arabic have claimed for months that the man alleged to be Zarqawi is not really Zarqawi because he does not have the real Zarqawi's Jordanian accent. But, the American military, we are positive by now, has created this mythical Zarqawi to allow it to mercilessly attack Fallujah and punish its inhabitants because they withstood the American ground attack and chased the Americans out. Even today, the Fallujhans have said aloud to Al Jazeera and other outlets, that they will come out into the streets and fight the Americans--but our country, America, is immoral and cowardly, every day attacking Fallujah by F16, Apache and long range cannon fire. In the process, killing hundreds of civilians, but as in the Viet Nam war, saying, "It's just collateral damage and we are not responsible for that."

My question then, is who is responsible for the killings.
I point my finger at General Abizaid, a man who should know better. I also point the finger of guilt at his subordinate commanders in Iraq and all the way up to the two devils at the top of the pole, George W. Bush and Donald Rumsfeld. By now, it is obvious why Bush and his cronies do not want to support the International Criminal Court and are even attacking the court at the Hague--because they know that they are breaking international laws and that they would be pulled up, kicking and screaming ala Milosovich, to that court for their war crimes and crimes against humanity in Iraq.

It is time for Americans to speak up to stop this massacre.
We are killing Iraqis in the name of "Freedom" and "Democracy!"
How absurd, must we kill the Iraqis to "save them". This sounds almost like the old Salem Witch Trials, where they put people to death in order to save them. But it also smells of the aforementioned slaughter of the Native Americans by the jolly good American cavalry--ironically, it's the same cavalry that is repeating its deeds 200 years later, but this time against Iraqis. For shame.

Also, shame our media outlets, our church leaders, those phony Christians, Billy Graham, Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson--men who shall certainly be condemned to hell by God on the day of judgement. Some may say, I have no right to say such a thing, but all you have to do is see how they are supporting these atrocities--especially Billy Graham and his son, both men who had built reputations for decency but have now destroyed them with this endorsement of slaughter in Iraq.

As for Falwell and Robertson, they not only endorse the Iraq slaughter, they also are doing all they can to praise Sharon and Israel for their slaughter, on a daily basis for the past 3 years of Palestinians. They also cheer when Palestinian homes are bulldozed, as in the 200 taken down in the past month.

In the process, some at the UN have spoken out, even Kofi Annan, but people in America are not hearing. Instead, America is trying to distract the public with stories about Darfur, about the non-existant Zarqawi, about "staying the course" (as if there is a course and as if it is justified), and few are asking, "Just why are we in Iraq, after all, Saddam is gone?" We hear such nonsense as, "We have to stay to settle things down in Iraq." But President Jimmy Carter and most international experts say that we are the problem and that Iraqis could solve their own problems if we'd leave.
But, as most know, and this has been pointed out by Jane's of London and other experts in the U.S. such as Chalmers Johnson, America intendes to build at least 2 dozen bases or more in Iraq to stay on--never to leave.

I want to say again, as I said in articles since Bush's invasion of Iraq, we shall pay a heavy price for this slaughter of Iraqis who are Arabs and Muslims. This slaughter, this massacre has incensed the entire Muslim world.
America is no longer respected in any part of the Muslim world.
In fact, a recent poll in Egypt, one of our strongest allies in the Arab and Muslim world, showed that over 90% of the Egyptians are now angry at America. But what of the 1.6 billion Muslims in the world, many of them are so incensed that they will become militant against us. Our behavior has taken away any credibility moderates had, now the radicals can say, "See, moderation got you nowhere with America. They even kicked Cat Stevens out of America, a leading moderate in England, a man who had even given advice to the White House on how to deal with radicals."

Samuel Huntington in his book, The Clash of Civilizations, claimed Islam was intent on making a war on the West. This was not true, but what has happened is that Bush and his fundamentalist Christian friends are making war on Islam--it can be seen with American troops attacking Muslims in Iraq, in Afghanistan, in the Phillippines, in Indonesia, in Malaysia,
in Yemen, in assisting Israel with money, weapons and expertise in their killing of Palestinians.

America may win some battles, but it losing the larger war.
The entire world is condemning our behavior in Iraq as illegal and immoral. What is coming is the long term hatred of America by the majority of Muslims in the world, and some will become combatants in time--not necessarily in Iraq, but in their own countries. Bush and his massacre of Muslims is sowing anger, hatred, desire for revenge--in time, America will reap a whirlwind that the ignorant GW Bush has sown.
Make no mistake about it.

America has played its last cards as a moral world leader.
Our moral arguments now are laughable to the rest of the world.
The word has gotten out on how we tried to remove Chavez from office in Venezuela, have placed a puppet regime in Iraq to lord over the people ala Vichy in France in WWII, have supported Israel in its massacres of Palestinians, and the continued killing and bombings of innocents in Iraq and Afghanistan, while now threatening Syria, Iran and Lebanon.
It is obvious to any intelligent and moral observer that our the Bush team has gone out of its mind.

And one last point, have you noticed two important things that never get into the news: 1. Israel has the second largest supply of atomic weapons in the world and has threatened to use the, but you never hear that criticized or even admitted by America. 2. Bush is afraid of North Korea because it has atomic weapons, but also because China told him in uncertain terms, "Keep your nose out of this area or we'll bloody it for you and wreck your economy as well."

Our fearless leader is only good at killing innocent civiilans through attcks from the air with F16s, Apaches and long range missiles, then calling those killed "enemy combatants," "terrorists," or "insurgents." I hope more people in America will wake up before things get much worse. It is already to late in most cases for America to recover its place in the world. But, if we kick Bush out of office and replace his military commanders in the field, especially Myers and Abizaid, we may be able to salvage something--but it's going to be long, hard road and will take us decades and maybe centuries to ever again be trusted by any Muslims in the world.

Let's call it what it is in Iraq and Palestine, massacres, not wars. Somehow, it is as if Bush and Sharon are joined together at the hip and in their immoral hearts and minds.
Both are guilty of war crimes. We knew this about Sharon by recalling his infamous invasion of Lebanon in the 1980s; but we didn't know how much Bush would follow his lead and take America down with him.

Just remember this one line, "This is a massacre, not a war."
The Iraqis have no planes, helicopters or tanks; the Palestinians have no planes, helicopters or tanks; but America does and uses them indiscriminately, as does Israel. America should take a cue from the resistance to Israel, some day it will come here, when the people in the Muslim and Arab worlds have had enough and decide to strike back.

Woe unto us for allowing the madman Bush to kill people in Iraq, Afghanistan and by proxy, in Palestine. Some day, as Malcolm X prophesied, "The chickens will come home to roost."



To: Karen Lawrence who wrote (27143)10/5/2004 9:36:11 AM
From: Suma  Read Replies (2) | Respond to of 173976
 
Published on Monday, October 4, 2004 by the Minneapolis Star Tribune
Security Moms Should Look Closely at Bush
By Susan Lenfestey

Security moms, the women who are said to be sliding over into President Bush's camp out of fear for the safety of their children, should take a better look at the man who is courting them.

George W. Bush is so unsympathetic to women that his first act in office was to reinstate the Reagan era's so-called "Global Gag Rule," under which foreign family planning agencies may not receive U.S. assistance if they provide abortion services, including counseling or referrals on abortion, even if they do so with their own funds.

For the past three years the Bush administration has also denied $34 million annually in funding for the U.N. Population Fund, which provides birth control, maternal and child health care, and HIV/AIDS prevention services for women in some of the world's most impoverished regions. This money could have prevented an estimated 2 million unwanted pregnancies, 800,000 induced abortions and 4,700 maternal deaths, as well as 77,000 infant and child deaths each year.

So before they're lured into Bush's bubble world of faux security, these women should ask if he really has what it takes to help keep them and their children safe:

Will he provide good health care? Census data shows that 5.2 million people have lost their health insurance under Bush, bringing the total of uninsured Americans to 45 million, 27 million of them children. According to Dr. Judith Palfry, professor of pediatrics at Harvard Medical School, "The uncaring policies of the current administration are systematically shattering our promise to children."
Will he provide a living wage? Under Bush, well over a million jobs have been lost and one in eight people now live in poverty, an increase of 10 percent. Women took a steep decline and nearly one in six children are being raised in poverty, the biggest increase in a decade.
Will he provide good schools? President Bush's No Child Left Behind Act promised improvement for students and accountability from schools, yet all educational programs, including Head Start, have been funded at less than half of what was promised, and local school districts are forced to make ever deeper cuts, further stripping our struggling public schools.
Will he be financially responsible and not saddle the children with massive debt? Under Bush, the record-busting deficit continues to soar to new heights and weigh down our children's futures.
Will he keep our air and water clean? Our children are not safe when the air grows more foul and our lakes and streams are so full of mercury that pregnant women cannot eat the fish. By rolling back environmental policies, some in place since the Nixon administration, Bush has put the profits of his friends' energy companies above the health of his country's children.
Will he take a responsible approach to the war on terror? The 9/11 report clearly spelled out our nation's vulnerability to another attack. But the Homeland Security Act is still not fully funded, our first responders -- firefighters and police -- are being laid off, and we know where the National Guard is headed.
Finally, Iraq, Iraq, Iraq. Will he ever admit making mistakes? Despite Bush's early lies to the contrary, Iraq had nothing to do with the war on terror until his blunders and bravado made it so.
His mismanaged occupation of Iraq has deprived us of the precious world sympathy we so tragically earned on 9/11. It has killed over 1,000 Americans and thousands of innocent Iraqis while ceding control of cities such as Fallujah to the insurgents. (A similar reversal by a Democratic president would have brought yowls from an outraged Republican Congress.) It has made freedom fighters out of ideologues and fanatics out of moderates throughout the Muslim world. Yet when Bush whitewashed his tragic misadventure to a skeptical United

Nations and interim Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi sugarcoated Iraq's bitter future before an all-too eager U.S. Congress, most of the mainstream press reported their wishful thinking as fact.

It's not hard to see how a busy soccer mom, with little time for in-depth reading, could be transformed into a security mom.

But anyone looking beyond the eye-blink coverage can see that we're knee deep in big muddy, to borrow a phrase from our last misguided war. Some of Bush's own party members, Sens. Richard Lugar, Chuck Hagel and John McCain among them, have questioned the way the invasion is now going. "We're in deep trouble in Iraq," says Hagel.

One last thing the security moms ought to ask as they consider Bush's offer. Will there be a return of the military draft, one that would leave no child behind, instead of the current "poverty draft" that cruelly selects those with the fewest financial or educational options?

If they take the time to look at his record instead of his promises, they'll see that the only "children" who are safer under President Bush are fetuses in the first trimester of gestation. Like a deadbeat dad, he wants to be there to help make them, and skedaddle once the bills start rolling in.

Susan Lenfestey is a Minneapolis writer. soolen@aol.com