LOL, i hope that isn't true and just a good april fools joke, but i suppose it could be true which is pretty sick.
Western media war reporting a farce
- Thread starter alfonso
- Start date
C'mon, you know its true. In the same rag:
Iraq Protests Lack of Name Taking
BAGHDAD, Iraq (DPI) - Iraq's information minister, Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf, complained yesterday that the Coalition Forces are knocking the shit out of his country and not taking any names. "Isn't there something in the Geneva Convention that sets the proper protocol for this?" he said. U.S. military spokeswoman Brenda Renfro countered, saying complying with that request would take too long. "Taking names like Abdel Tawab Mullah Huweish on all prisoners of war would cost us hours in paperwork," she said. "If we had to do that we'd still be only three miles over the border."
Mesopotamia. Babylon. The Tigris and Euphrates
How many children, in how many classrooms, over how many centuries, have hang-glided through the past, transported on the wings of these words? And now the bombs are falling, incinerating and humiliating that ancient civilisation
Arundhati Roy
Wednesday April 2, 2003
The Guardian
On the steel torsos of their missiles, adolescent American soldiers scrawl colourful messages in childish handwriting: For Saddam, from the Fat Boy Posse. A building goes down. A marketplace. A home. A girl who loves a boy. A child who only ever wanted to play with his older brother's marbles.
-
So here's Iraq - rogue state, grave threat to world peace, paid-up member of the Axis of Evil. Here's Iraq, invaded, bombed, besieged, bullied, its sovereignty shat upon, its children killed by cancers, its people blown up on the streets. And here's all of us watching. CNN-BBC, BBC-CNN late into the night. Here's all of us, enduring the horror of the war, enduring the horror of the propaganda and enduring the slaughter of language as we know and understand it. Freedom now means mass murder (or, in the US, fried potatoes). When someone says "humanitarian aid" we automatically go looking for induced starvation. "Embedded" I have to admit, is a great find. It's what it sounds like. And what about "arsenal of tactics?" Nice!
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,927849,00.html
How many children, in how many classrooms, over how many centuries, have hang-glided through the past, transported on the wings of these words? And now the bombs are falling, incinerating and humiliating that ancient civilisation
Arundhati Roy
Wednesday April 2, 2003
The Guardian
On the steel torsos of their missiles, adolescent American soldiers scrawl colourful messages in childish handwriting: For Saddam, from the Fat Boy Posse. A building goes down. A marketplace. A home. A girl who loves a boy. A child who only ever wanted to play with his older brother's marbles.
-
So here's Iraq - rogue state, grave threat to world peace, paid-up member of the Axis of Evil. Here's Iraq, invaded, bombed, besieged, bullied, its sovereignty shat upon, its children killed by cancers, its people blown up on the streets. And here's all of us watching. CNN-BBC, BBC-CNN late into the night. Here's all of us, enduring the horror of the war, enduring the horror of the propaganda and enduring the slaughter of language as we know and understand it. Freedom now means mass murder (or, in the US, fried potatoes). When someone says "humanitarian aid" we automatically go looking for induced starvation. "Embedded" I have to admit, is a great find. It's what it sounds like. And what about "arsenal of tactics?" Nice!
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,927849,00.html
.
Like most people with nothing to say, you bastardize "ad hominem" to the hilt; using it even when there's nothing remotely ad hom about the remarks.
As I said, you are merely repeating the assertions of your government. Have you stopped to consider whether they are based on kind of likely probabilities, derived from the facts of the situation, or whether they amount to chimerical phantasms, whose purpose is to divert public attention from the aims of Pax Americana?
Looks like I'm going to be right sooner rather than later: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,83009,00.html
I'm betting another $10,000 that fonsy doesn't pay up.
Speaking of children...
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/world/from_our_own_correspondent/2058253.stm
Saturday, 22 June, 2002, 11:26 GMT 12:26 UK
Iraq's tortured children
...The star witness against the government of Iraq hobbled into the room, her legs braced with clumsy metal callipers. "Anna" had been tortured two years ago. She is now four years old.
Her father, Ali, is a thick-set Iraqi who used to work for Saddam's psychopathic son, Uday. Some time after the bungled assassination of Uday, Ali fell under suspicion.
He fled north, to the Kurdish safe haven policed by Western fighter planes, but leaving his wife and daughter behind in Baghdad.
So the secret police came for his wife. Where is he? They tortured her. And when she didn't break, they tortured his daughter.
"When did you last see your father? Has he phoned? Has he been in contact?" They half-crushed the toddler's feet.
Now, she doesn't walk, she hobbles, and Ali fears that Saddam's men have crippled his daughter for life. So Ali talked to us...
Speaking of innocent casualties...
BAGHDAD BUTCHER
By RALPH PETERS
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
April 2, 2003 --
We may wonder, in fairness, how those heroic Europeans who have taken to the rhetorical barricades in defense of Saddam will respond when all the atrocities are catalogued, when the torture chambers are opened and the political prisons unlocked, when the mass graves are unearthed, the weapons of mass destruction revealed and the extent of European complicity with a criminal regime is made public.
What will the Europeans say as the tormented people of Iraq begin to awake and tell their tales?
The Europeans will sigh, briefly, then have a pleasant lunch.
***
Certainly, allied weapons may miss their targets, despite technological advances. But when we err and confirm it, we admit even our most painful mistakes - as CENTCOM did immediately after Iraqi civilians in a speeding vehicle were shot at an Army checkpoint. Thus far, there has been no concrete evidence that any of the civilian casualties in Baghdad were the victims of U.S. bombs.
***
Here's a partial list of what the regime's henchmen have done since the war began:
* Used their own people as human shields in countless instances.
* Engaged in acts of genocide against Shi'a Muslims in the south of Iraq.
* Forced Iraqi civilians to take up arms at gunpoint.
* Executed Iraqi civilians on the spot for any suspicion of disloyalty or even indifference.
* Cut off food and water to Shi'a Muslim urban populations.
* Used the most sacred shrines of Iraq's Shi'as as military strongpoints and arms caches.
* Used hospitals as military staging areas, fighting positions and arms storage depots.
* Took Iraqi family members, including children, hostage.
* Executed allied POWs in cold blood, while abusing others.
* Prevented the International Red Cross or Red Crescent from visiting allied soldiers taken as POWs.
* Fought in civilian clothes, in violation of the Geneva Convention and the Laws of War.
* Employed false surrenders to lure allied troops into ambushes, in violation of the same.
* Committed multiple acts of terrorism against Iraqi civilians and coalition forces.
* Forced unwilling soldiers to attack allied forces by executing some and driving the others forward at machine-gun point - far from patriotic resistance, this is the mass murder of Iraqis by Iraqis.
* Attempted to create an ecological and economic catastrophe in Iraq's Shi'a and Kurdish regions by rigging oil fields for demolition.
* Attempted to prevent relief supplies from reaching Iraqi civilians.
* Welcomed and harbored terrorists from abroad.
* Took practical steps to prepare Iraqi troops for the use of chemical weapons against allied forces.
This is only a fragmentary list. We cannot yet measure the ongoing purges and executions within Baghdad, where a maddened regime clings to life and sees enemies everywhere. Nor have we seen the atrocities in areas yet to be reached by allied troops. Many more crimes against humanity are likely to unfold in the days ahead.
Unwilling or unable to speak directly to his own people, Saddam or a surviving son used a spokesman to call for a jihad against the allied liberators. This plea comes from a regime that has killed and tortured more Muslim clerics than any other in our time. The Ba'athist regime also has used its arms to impose the tyranny of a Sunni Muslim minority over a Shi'a majority kept in bondage and poverty.
If there is any justification for a holy war, it would be a jihad of oppressed Shi'as against the infidel dictatorship in Baghdad, which is cynically attempting to use Islam as a tool after decades of violating the faith.
* * *
As for Saddam - if he is alive - he's a coward, terrified to emerge to lead the people he has oppressed. If dead, we may be certain he is not enjoying the lovely virgins of paradise, but something even more stimulating.
As for his vainglorious crap about being the new Saladin - Saladin was a Kurd. And, unlike Saddam the Fallen, Saladin was famous for his humanity.
http://nypost.com/postopinion/opedcolumnists/72473.htm
BAGHDAD BUTCHER
By RALPH PETERS
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
April 2, 2003 --
We may wonder, in fairness, how those heroic Europeans who have taken to the rhetorical barricades in defense of Saddam will respond when all the atrocities are catalogued, when the torture chambers are opened and the political prisons unlocked, when the mass graves are unearthed, the weapons of mass destruction revealed and the extent of European complicity with a criminal regime is made public.
What will the Europeans say as the tormented people of Iraq begin to awake and tell their tales?
The Europeans will sigh, briefly, then have a pleasant lunch.
***
Certainly, allied weapons may miss their targets, despite technological advances. But when we err and confirm it, we admit even our most painful mistakes - as CENTCOM did immediately after Iraqi civilians in a speeding vehicle were shot at an Army checkpoint. Thus far, there has been no concrete evidence that any of the civilian casualties in Baghdad were the victims of U.S. bombs.
***
Here's a partial list of what the regime's henchmen have done since the war began:
* Used their own people as human shields in countless instances.
* Engaged in acts of genocide against Shi'a Muslims in the south of Iraq.
* Forced Iraqi civilians to take up arms at gunpoint.
* Executed Iraqi civilians on the spot for any suspicion of disloyalty or even indifference.
* Cut off food and water to Shi'a Muslim urban populations.
* Used the most sacred shrines of Iraq's Shi'as as military strongpoints and arms caches.
* Used hospitals as military staging areas, fighting positions and arms storage depots.
* Took Iraqi family members, including children, hostage.
* Executed allied POWs in cold blood, while abusing others.
* Prevented the International Red Cross or Red Crescent from visiting allied soldiers taken as POWs.
* Fought in civilian clothes, in violation of the Geneva Convention and the Laws of War.
* Employed false surrenders to lure allied troops into ambushes, in violation of the same.
* Committed multiple acts of terrorism against Iraqi civilians and coalition forces.
* Forced unwilling soldiers to attack allied forces by executing some and driving the others forward at machine-gun point - far from patriotic resistance, this is the mass murder of Iraqis by Iraqis.
* Attempted to create an ecological and economic catastrophe in Iraq's Shi'a and Kurdish regions by rigging oil fields for demolition.
* Attempted to prevent relief supplies from reaching Iraqi civilians.
* Welcomed and harbored terrorists from abroad.
* Took practical steps to prepare Iraqi troops for the use of chemical weapons against allied forces.
This is only a fragmentary list. We cannot yet measure the ongoing purges and executions within Baghdad, where a maddened regime clings to life and sees enemies everywhere. Nor have we seen the atrocities in areas yet to be reached by allied troops. Many more crimes against humanity are likely to unfold in the days ahead.
Unwilling or unable to speak directly to his own people, Saddam or a surviving son used a spokesman to call for a jihad against the allied liberators. This plea comes from a regime that has killed and tortured more Muslim clerics than any other in our time. The Ba'athist regime also has used its arms to impose the tyranny of a Sunni Muslim minority over a Shi'a majority kept in bondage and poverty.
If there is any justification for a holy war, it would be a jihad of oppressed Shi'as against the infidel dictatorship in Baghdad, which is cynically attempting to use Islam as a tool after decades of violating the faith.
* * *
As for Saddam - if he is alive - he's a coward, terrified to emerge to lead the people he has oppressed. If dead, we may be certain he is not enjoying the lovely virgins of paradise, but something even more stimulating.
As for his vainglorious crap about being the new Saladin - Saladin was a Kurd. And, unlike Saddam the Fallen, Saladin was famous for his humanity.
http://nypost.com/postopinion/opedcolumnists/72473.htm