Inhuman

I'm only 17, and I'm not as aware of the world as I want to be. I had no idea that chemical weapons were being used by Saddam and his cousin against his own people up until a few days ago. Up until that point I was opposed to the war because "War kills people". It may turn up that less people are going to die in this war than have already been killed by Saddam.

This site was utterly gruesome, but the truth sometimes is. How can sit back and watch this happen.
 
Two wrongs dont make a right.
If this moves you enough to want war... What makes this different from the genocides in Rwanda and Burundi? East Timor or Sierra Leon? What about China and its "great leap foreward" or Tiannamen Square? What about the Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia? These are all just as bloody, with just as many deaths as Iraq, and there have been many many more in the last 50 years alone... Yet not only did we not go to war for any of them, but we didn't even consider war. Why is that? Do you think we should now invade all of those countries because of what they did?

Also people seem to ignore the fact that this happened over 15 years ago, why is it only now that we talk about invading because of it? Why did we sit on our hands in 1988 when it was actually happening, but now use it as our primary reason for war? The hypocrasy of Bush's actions chalking up something that happened 15 years ago as an excuse to invade is undeniable and quite sickening.
 
Yes it was 15 years ago. I think somehting was up for our government to act so quickly. I willing to bet we don't know the whole story and we're probably preventing other attacks like 9/11 by removing this regime.
 
[b said:
Quote[/b] (Locarius @ April 01 2003,12:44)]We can do without the propaganda.
Click to expand...
Saddam’s Racism
Where’s the American Left?

By Paul Kengor & Matt Sitman



Three whom God should not have created: Persians, Jews, and flies.
— Hussein family proverb

The slogans of the antiwar movement are by now quite familiar: No blood for oil. Wage peace, not war. Drop Bush not bombs. It is no secret that most of the protesters are on the left politically. Therein lies an interesting irony: In the case of Saddam Hussein and Iraq, those calling for an end to American imperialism or Bush "war crimes" are ignoring one of their longtime favorite sins — racism. As protesters angrily march in cities throughout America and the world, statements denouncing the rabid racism of Saddam have been noticeably missing in action.

Liberals have always been good at rooting out racism. There is seemingly nothing they detest more. We commend them for that. Offensive racial comments scarcely go unpunished — just ask Jim Moran or Trent Lott. The Left is the undisputed watchdog of American bigotry. Liberals are so vigilant that they frequently decipher racism where it doesn't exist. A conservative who opposes affirmative action or hate-crime legislation will often quickly get tagged with the scarlet "R."


This is why the Left's neglect of Saddam’s lengthy track record of hate and intolerance is all the more baffling. Indeed, Saddam is a racist by the truest definition of the word: He hates certain groups, and even tries to murder people in those groups, precisely because of their mere race. Saddam is not a bigot because, say, he opposes racial profiling at airports. He is a bigot because he tries to exterminate entire groups of people based solely on their race. Some of his frightening actions constitute genocidal racism.


Nowhere has Saddam’s racism been more apparent than in his actions against Iraq’s Kurdish minority, where his personal hatred of Kurds achieved horrific dimensions. Saddam’s Anfal Campaign in the 1980s involved human-rights violations of the most heinous variety. According to Human Rights Watch, the campaign resulted in the death of at least 50,000 to 100,000 Iraqi Kurds. The U.S. State Department describes the campaign as including the “worst ever chemical weapons attack against a civilian population.” Mass executions, arbitrary jailings, and unsolved disappearances were the norm. 2,000 Kurdish villages were destroyed, causing massive displacement. 1.2 to 1.4 million refugees fled to Iran, and another 500,000 became refugees in the northern no-fly zone.


Rather than even mention these atrocities, let alone focus on them, the antiwar movement hurls invectives at President Bush. The Left seems more vocal about minority preferences for admission at the University of Michigan than the 40 separate gas attacks against Kurds in 1987-88.


Saddam has also waged war against the thousands of marsh dwellers in Southern Iraq. These predominantly Shia Muslims — identified as "monkey-faced" and "subhuman" by the Iraqi press — have had a culture thousands of years old decimated by a concerted campaign to destroy the Al Amarah and Hawr al Hammar marshes. Since the Shia uprising following the first Gulf War, Saddam’s regime has attempted to dry the whole region, largely succeeding. The United Nations Environmental Program believes that by May 2001 more than 90 percent of the aforementioned marshes were almost completely dry. The marshes that once were home to nearly a quarter of a million men, women, and children now supports less than 10,000.


This was routine ethnic cleansing by Saddam — another day at the office.


Saddam’s mistreatment of the Shia goes beyond the destruction of their home. Following the previously mentioned insurrection after the Gulf War, at least 30,000 to 60,000 Shia were executed, according to the U.S. State Department. Even more recently, the Iraqi regime destroyed the southern town of Albu Aysh sometime between September 1998 and December 1999. The regime was careful to destroy only houses and businesses, not government or military buildings. This stands in stark contrast to the precision air strikes of allied forces in Operation Iraqi Freedom, where great care is taken to hit strictly governmental and military targets. The protesters who filled the streets of Chicago might want to consider which action ought to merit greater outrage.


In addition, Saddam’s hatred of Jews and the state of Israel is no secret. He is a well-known financier of Palestinian suicide bombers who provide the service of killing Jews. Almost a year ago, Saddam offered the families of such suicide bombers a $15,000 raise — the $10,000 payment was increased to $25,000. Leading up to the first Gulf War, Saddam threatened to “scorch half of Israel” with poison gas. In 1990, Saddam called Israel — the only country in the Middle East where Arabs can vote — an “evil entity.”


Lastly, it must be stressed that this racism pervades Saddam's regime. Racial epithets by Iraqi emissaries are commonplace even at diplomatic venues like the United Nations and Arab League. To cite just one of many examples, during the Arab League Summit in Egypt on March 5, the Iraqi representative called the Kuwaiti representative a monkey. Try as we might, we recall no similar name-calling by the likes of Donald Rumsfeld.


Such examples of blatant prejudice, which usually drive the left wild, are conspicuously absent from the shouts of antiwar protesters. Instead, incredibly, their placards puzzlingly condemn George W. Bush as a bigot, as the president dispatches over 100,000 white-male soldiers to risk their lives liberating Iraqis.


It is remarkable that the antiwar Left, a political constituency that prides itself on battling racism from South Africa to Cal-Berkeley, can so consistently ignore the blatant bigotry of Saddam Hussein. The first casualty of the Left's war against regime change in Iraq appears to be its own internal consistency. The hypocrisy here is extraordinary, but not surprising.


— Paul Kengor is professor of political science at Grove City College. His forthcoming book is Reagan, God, and the Evil Empire. Matt Sitman is a research assistant at Grove City College.
 
[b said:
Quote[/b] ]Also people seem to ignore the fact that this happened over 15 years ago, why is it only now that we talk about invading because of it?
Click to expand...

That may be true, but can you say, with a straight face, that Saddam simply stopped killing anyone after slaughtering those people?  Saddam Hussein has over two million notches on his gun!  OVER TWO MILLION!  There will be civilian casualties in the war, unfortunately.  Many of these casualties are from Iraqi guns, and many more people would have died had Saddam remained in power.  This is a FACT that you can't deny.  If you're the one who is at the fore-front of preventing civilian casualties, than you should also be the one on the fore-front of removing Saddam from power.  And by the way, there is no peaceful way to remove a dictator.

I have a link that almost made me cry.  I'm only going to post it if you guys think you're ready to see it.  There are pictures not only of that chemical attack, but of victims from Saddam's torture chambers.  I saw one guy who had his head smashed so badly that it was deformed.  One guy had a huge chunk taken out of the left side of his head.  There are a few of them missing arms.  Some are so bloody that their faces are not recognizable.

But, where are the protesters?  Why do they say nothing about this?  Why is it that only when American action is being taken do these people gather?  Would you mind explaining that to me?  And while you're at it, would you also tell me how leaving Saddam in power is going to keep Iraqis safe from harm?

And by the way Locarius, propaganda isn't always a bad thing; using chemical weapons on an entire villiage, however, IS.
 
Oh....okay Mustard.
I get it. With age, the vitality lessens. Understood now! So the murders that can't be solved back then don't matter now at all. Scew the criminals, right? Let them go free. What, they raped some chick ten years ago? So what?
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Good idea man.
OR...we just couldn't do anything back then. We never know. Why did we go to Vietnam? We could have just sat on our hands then, too, right? Why did we go to Germany? I mean, why oh why did America, of all weak, insufficenty countries, get involved in such a boring little skirmish? Just some German taking land, was all. We shouldn't have done anything.
Oh yeah, the Greeks didn't do anything to the Trojans. It was just some chick who started it all. I mean, what, 15 years later, grudges are still held, but they're unjustified, because, you know, it's yesterday's news. If anything, get a new war. Old wars are so boring!
Yeah. Great logic you got running there.
 
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