:: Has the whole world gone mad or is it just me. ::

:: Friday, August 08, 2003 ::

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Posted by: terra gazelle ®
08/08/2003, 23:09:46


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Six Impressions Imprinted on the Pre-War Republican Mind

I was pre-sold on a war this year that now weighs heavily on my soul. I believed the war was a necessary patriotic effort for the future freedom of the United States. When we butted heads with France, I stopped buying French Fries and started ordering Freedom Fries. I started drinking California wine (not that I could ever afford French wine, thank you Bush economy) and criticized anyone I met who didn’t support the war, especially “Liberals.” We were going to war, and we all had to be patriotic, right? Otherwise, it would be Un-American or so that was what I was told my media.

Well, as with life, hindsight is 20/20, and now many months after the fact, we can closely examine the “impressions” which were fed to the people of our party. The sad part is many people have not yet realized that these were all mistruths that served an agenda NOT of the people. Bush took the People to war, and the People followed.

Please review this list, from Al Gore’s speech yesterday, and ask yourself honestly if any of these are at least partially true. Then please, please, please copy and past this into your email, and send to every Republican friend you have. We need to take back America, one mind at a time.

(1) Saddam Hussein was partly responsible for the attack against us on September 11th, 2001, so a good way to respond to that attack would be to invade his country and forcibly remove him from power.

(2) Saddam was working closely with Osama Bin Laden and was actively supporting members of the Al Qaeda terrorist group, giving them weapons and money and bases and training, so launching a war against Iraq would be a good way to stop Al Qaeda from attacking us again.

(3) Saddam was about to give the terrorists poison gas and deadly germs that he had made into weapons which they could use to kill millions of Americans. Therefore common sense alone dictated that we should send our military into Iraq in order to protect our loved ones and ourselves against a grave threat.

(4) Saddam was on the verge of building nuclear bombs and giving them to the terrorists. And since the only thing preventing Saddam from acquiring a nuclear arsenal was access to enriched uranium, once our spies found out that he had bought the enrichment technology he needed and was actively trying to buy uranium from Africa, we had very little time left. Therefore it seemed imperative during last Fall's election campaign to set aside less urgent issues like the economy and instead focus on the congressional resolution approving war against Iraq.

(5) Our GI's would be welcomed with open arms by cheering Iraqis who would help them quickly establish public safety, free markets and Representative Democracy, so there wouldn't be that much risk that US soldiers would get bogged down in a guerrilla war.

(6) Even though the rest of the world was mostly opposed to the war, they would quickly fall in line after we won and then contribute lots of money and soldiers to help out, so there wouldn't be that much risk that US taxpayers would get stuck with a huge bill.

Once the Republican mind is awaken to the truth, please direct them to the Howard Dean for America campaign. There they will find an honest dose of patriotism.

:: Beauxbeaux's Daddy 8:41 PM [+] ::
...

North County Times - North San Diego and Southwest Riverside County News: "Bushniks are in denial

Counterattacking rising criticism of the administration's handling of the war, Vice President Dick Cheney said that 'failing to attack Iraq would have been irresponsible.'

The Bushniks are in denial. First they deliberately overestimated intelligence data and impatiently launched a war. Then when justification for the war proved nonexistent, they claimed they acted upon the intelligence available at the time. They never got blessing from the United Nations or other countries to provide troops or share the $200 billion cost. Such chutzpah!

This is a reckless and fractured administration motivated by an agenda of imperialism and continued terrorist threats. It's good for re-election. The Pentagon's Dr. Strangelove makes and carries out foreign policy. Why not? He has his own State Department and intelligence service.

Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz calls Iraqis paranoid. Cheney and Bush's political adviser Karl Rove, ably assisted by speech writers, shelter Bush from blame. Charley McCarthy is east to spot, but who is Edgar Bergen?

Advised by Washington Likudniks whose agenda favors Israel, this administration guessed wrong and should be held accountable. Bush should be impeached and his cohorts jailed, charged with sending America's finest in harm.s way. Trading lives for political gain is not acceptable.

WILLIAM DREU

Vista
"
:: Beauxbeaux's Daddy 8:21 AM [+] ::
...

North County Times - North San Diego and Southwest Riverside County News: "Bushniks are in denial

Counterattacking rising criticism of the administration's handling of the war, Vice President Dick Cheney said that 'failing to attack Iraq would have been irresponsible.'

The Bushniks are in denial. First they deliberately overestimated intelligence data and impatiently launched a war. Then when justification for the war proved nonexistent, they claimed they acted upon the intelligence available at the time. They never got blessing from the United Nations or other countries to provide troops or share the $200 billion cost. Such chutzpah!

This is a reckless and fractured administration motivated by an agenda of imperialism and continued terrorist threats. It's good for re-election. The Pentagon's Dr. Strangelove makes and carries out foreign policy. Why not? He has his own State Department and intelligence service.

Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz calls Iraqis paranoid. Cheney and Bush's political adviser Karl Rove, ably assisted by speech writers, shelter Bush from blame. Charley McCarthy is east to spot, but who is Edgar Bergen?

Advised by Washington Likudniks whose agenda favors Israel, this administration guessed wrong and should be held accountable. Bush should be impeached and his cohorts jailed, charged with sending America's finest in harm.s way. Trading lives for political gain is not acceptable.

WILLIAM DREU

Vista
"
:: Beauxbeaux's Daddy 5:23 AM [+] ::
...

Letters to the Editor : "What 'apologists' for the Iraq war don't see

Apologists for the invasion of Iraq continue to forget an essential fact about the American public. While there is a minority of extremists on both the right and left, most of us are moderates whose opinions (and votes) are driven by common sense. Refuting some predictions about the war by some possibly extreme 'alarmist' elements on the left does not change what we all now can see.

Common sense tells us that Caldwell's 20-day 'spectacular success' is a war that is far from over, as our soldiers die and get maimed every day, the costs continue to mount, the Iraqi population suffers, and our stature in world opinion plunges.

Common sense tells us that the discovery of no weapons of mass destruction shows that the warnings of imminent threat by the Bush administration were, at the very least, overblown, and that, as other members of the United Nations Security Council argued, the immediate need for war was unjustified. And maybe even that the U.N. inspectors had been effective.

Common sense tells us that the same people who insisted that we go to war before it got too hot got many other things wrong. Our troops are living every day with the result of poor intelligence, poor planning and inadequate preparation for the postwar situation. And we taxpayers are paying the tab in deficits, cuts in domestic spending and bankrupt state governments.

Common sense tells us that if you insult and minimize your allies, and ignore their advice about going to war, they are unlikely to jump in and help with the reconstruction when things start going badly. Those would be the allies that have sufficient funds and resources to be useful, not like El Salvador or Lithuania.

Common sense tells us that moderate opinions were not a part of the analysis and preparation for the war in Iraq. Only the opinions of the reactionary right were considered."
:: Beauxbeaux's Daddy 7:25 AM [+] ::
...

Crime Casts Fear in Iraq





Residents, like Hussein's former physician, who felt safe under the old regime are now being terrorized by killers, thieves and vandals.
By John Daniszewski
Times Staff Writer

August 3, 2003

BAGHDAD -- A man walked into Dr. Mohammed Alrawi's private clinic in an upscale part of the capital last Sunday moaning and complaining so loudly of kidney pain that he was ushered straight past waiting patients.

Inside, the "patient" immediately pulled out a pistol and shot the doctor through his right eye, killing him.

As the gunman dashed out, he passed Alrawi's wife, Bushra, who also practices medicine at the clinic. "I looked at his face. I will never forget that face," she recalled.

"I went to my husband. I saw him collapsed in his chair. I hugged him while his blood covered the floor."

Murder is stalking this city. In the aftermath of the U.S. campaign to oust Saddam Hussein, residents who have no memory of violent street crime during his iron-fisted rule are now being terrorized by killers — not to mention thieves and vandals — whose motives range from retribution to rapaciousness. The crime wave poses a challenge for the U.S.-led occupation as it grapples with a multitude of problems — electricity shortages, joblessness and a guerrilla campaign among them — that have destabilized this shattered country. Iraqi police have started to work, but ineffectually. They defer to the U.S. soldiers, who often have no clue about what is going on in the streets and alleys around them.

Alrawi, 52, was a former dean of Baghdad University, physician to Hussein and chairman of the Iraqi Physicians Syndicate. His family believes he is the latest victim of reprisal killings aimed at prominent members of the former Hussein government. Others think that is farfetched — maybe it was a personal vendetta of some sort, they say, or a botched robbery.

As hundreds of his relatives, friends and colleagues mourned Alrawi at his funeral Wednesday, trying to make sense of the crime, officials with the Iraqi police and the U.S.-led occupation authority said they had no information about the investigation. At the Yarmouk police station, the U.S. staff sergeant in charge struggled to remember the case. His Iraqi interpreter, trying to help, reminded him that Alrawi was a very important man.

Once-privileged families such as the Alrawis have been left vulnerable and confused in the wake of Hussein's fall. Sunni Muslims who enjoyed favor under the Baath Party, they now live in fear of retribution from poorer sectors.

But others are being targeted as well.

People who work with the U.S. authorities have been victims. Haifa Aziz Daoud, the manager of an electricity distribution office in Baghdad, was gunned down in June by someone who rang her doorbell at 7 a.m. She died in her daughter's arms. Seven newly graduated police recruits in the city of Ramadi were blown up by a bomb set in a bag of rice last month. And the U.S.-sponsored mayor in Haditha was shot to death with his son while driving around the western Iraqi city.

Anyone who owns a car faces the threat of carjacking, as bold bandits stage assaults in broad daylight, often killing their victims as an afterthought.

That was the case Wednesday morning with Faaz Ghani Aziz, the director of Vegetable Oils Co. in southern Baghdad. His driver came to his house to take him to work. They had gone 100 yards from his home when two cars blocked the road. The men demanded Aziz's Nissan sedan.

Aziz gave it up, but when a neighbor fired at the carjackers, they turned back and shot Aziz and his driver to death. There was no political motive for the killing, only robbery, neighbors said later.

Although no statistics are available, coalition authorities say the murder rate in Baghdad is no greater than in any major U.S. city. Still, restoring security to the streets has been a top priority for the Coalition Provisional Authority, led by U.S. administrator L. Paul Bremer III.

He has brought in Bernard Kerik, a former New York City police commissioner, to reform Iraq's police. The blunt-spoken Kerik now has almost 5,000 Iraqi police officers working in Baghdad, although he would like to see three times that number.

Crime is not a problem that is going to be fixed in a day, he tells reporters at his frequent briefings. The solution, he says, lies in the steady professionalization of law enforcement here.

In one show of force last week, Iraqi police cordoned off the central market area of downtown Baghdad — which had been terrorized by criminals — and then swooped in and made about 50 arrests, to the cheers of vendors and residents. Such operations are designed to demonstrate to Iraqis that security is being restored.

But the tactics aren't convincing for many here, including Alrawi's survivors, who spoke bitterly about the absence of law and order.

"It is the responsibility of George W. Bush and Paul Bremer who told us before that they would give us security," Alrawi's son Yassir, 21, said between greeting mourning friends of his father at the mosque where the memorial was held.

"It is their responsibility to find the killer and to give security to every Iraqi person under real risk from terrorists — and I think these were terrorists. The word has no other meaning."

Alrawi was a famous doctor in Iraq, a physician accustomed to being hauled out of his bed in his pajamas to go see Hussein if the president had a slight pain in his joint. "Nobody could say no" to serving Hussein, said one nephew, Mohammed Arrawi.

Family members suspect that he may have been killed by members of the Badr Brigade, a Shiite militia that — according to rumors — has death lists of former Baathists.

Asked at a news conference about recent killings, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, blamed supporters of the old regime.

Sanchez called the violence detestable and vowed to work to defeat it. "That is Iraqi-on-Iraqi violence, which is totally unacceptable," he said.

But another coalition official, briefing reporters, minimized the extent of the violence, calling it "not an enormous problem."

"For the most part, the Iraqi people have not taken the law into their own hands and gone around taking vengeance," he said.

Such words do not lessen the sting for those who knew Alrawi.

"To see a colleague, who used to be so prominent and who used to perform his work to the highest standard, being killed in this crude and brutal way is hard to accept," said Dr. Adnan Araji, a close associate. "Is this the price we have to pay for change? It is simply horrible."

Relatives said that Alrawi, as a former Baath Party member, knew he might face difficulties but was determined to avoid politics in the future and adapt to the new Iraq.

"We asked him several times to leave Iraq, but he refused," said Qassim Arrawi, a cousin and close friend. "He said that 'my country needs me — I will keep working here to serve my people.' "

With that thought in mind, his family draped his coffin with an Iraqi flag and carried a sign: "Dr. Mohammed Alrawi, killed by the hands of traitors."


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Copyright 2003 Los Angeles Times
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/iraq/complete/la-fg-reprisal3aug03,1,7560019.story?coll=la-home-headlines


:: Beauxbeaux's Daddy 5:48 AM [+] ::
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