Watching anti-war protests with pain (By an Iraqi Doctor who's witnessed Sadaam's handiwork)

Chicago Tribune ^ | March 9, 2003 | Adil Awadh

[LOC1]

Just have to comment on the "it's about oil" argument.

First, long term it really is not important who controls the oil from Iraq, or the rest of the mid-east for that matter, as world wide oil production is likely to peak between now and 2010 in any event. A thoughtful analysis of this probability is available at www.hubertpeak.com

The result in such a peak in oil production would likely be that oil prices will rise to the level that encourages conservation and the development of alternative energy sources, ie oil shale, coal to liquids, ultra heavy crudes, methane hydrate production, nuclear energy, etc. OPEC will no longer be particularly important, either as production levels will be at a maximum. Think of the Texas Railroad Commission today, which sets allowable production levels for Texas Oil wells.....at 100% since early 1970's.

So, oil prices are likely to rise to the level that encourages alternative energy supplies, regardless of who own's the oil.

Secondly, Russia's reason for wanting to drag out the insepction process IS purely economic. Right now Russia, the world's largest producer of Oil and a very significant exporter, is awash in cash because of the current high oil prices. Those high prices are at least partly a result of the current concerns about war in Iraq. More information on the Russia cash position may be found at the following site (from today's Houston Chronicle) www.chron.com/cs/CDA/story.hts/business/1809638

[ez]

This is the same "International Organization" who were claiming a quarter of a million muslim women were raped by the Serbs, again they were lying and misleading the world for political agenda.

OK so now I have them, and Iraqi defectors telling the stories of what goes on in Iraq, and I have one guy on the Internet telling me that info is discredited. I have seen multiple sources of information that tell a different story...so your motication here is suspect.

And I'll tell you another thing...I knew four weeks ago that Saddam's atrocities upon his fellow man would be the one lynchpin that trhe left couldn't spin...that there was no justification for leaving a tortuous raping murderer in power regardless opf WMDs or terrorist connections. It is IMMORAL.

As you have seen, this chord has been sounded more and more recently due to the all out atack aginst American power. It only makes sense that, as we go forward and truth emerges, the left will have to send envoys into the public sphere to try and discredit that information.

Welcome to FR...

[ClancyJ]

Oil contracts and business deals? You are correct.

France, Russia and Germany have many of these and that is why they are against us. France and Russia - members of the Security Council - have broken the sanctions of their own Security Council to profit from the build-up of deadly weapons.

America? We don't need war to get oil contracts - we buy it. It is a lot, lot cheaper to do that.

Korea? This is just a diversion by the democrats to try and distract Bush. You must ask why the Democrats do not fear for the safety of Americans, why they want to allow Saddam more and more years to build his weapons.

Then - just what is the purpose of all those weapons Saddam is building? Could it even remotely be to exert power over the U.S. and all other countries? Would Saddam think to "sell" these to terrorists and assist them in taking down America?

If your answer is no - no problem. I thank you for your upmost concern for me, my family and the future of America.

[ClancyJ]

Funny how your claims of lies, lies, lies works. Anything you don't believe - you claim are lies. This allows you to further your own agenda.

Just why would you think Cheney would quit his $400,000+ position as CEO of Halliburton to take a mere fraction of that as Vice-President? Seems if he was interested in money, he would hold on to that position and use his influence there. Seems he would have wanted to keep his stock holdings instead of selling them to run for V-P.

Just why does Halliburton need to bribe, swindle or create war to feather their nest. They are already successful as are all the other oil companies that currently have deals with the Middle East.

Such a neat convenient taunt - "it's about oil". It is not.

If it was - why would you care. Don't you use oil daily? Just stop using it if oil is such a problem for you.

[Valin]

I saw four Iraqi women testifying before Congress on the necessity of America taking Sadam out now.

Gee I wonder how Dan Rather missed this?
/ sarcasm

[Valin]

See Joe and Yacoub's Untold Story about conditions in Iraq
http://209.98.40.76/LISvideo.htm

Or Here's some more "propaganda" for you.

Toronto Globe and Mail

Saddam's chambers of horrors
By MARGARET WENTE
Saturday, November 23, 2002


Abu Ghraib, 30 kilometres west of Baghdad, is Iraq's biggest prison. Until recently, it held perhaps 50,000 people, perhaps more. No one knows for sure. No one knows how many people were taken there through the years and never came out.
For a generation, Abu Ghraib was the centrepiece of Saddam Hussein's reign of torture and death. Yahya al-Jaiyashy is one of the survivors.

Mr. Jaiyashy is an animated, bearded man of 49 whose words can scarcely keep up with the torrent of his memories. Today he lives in Toronto with his second wife, Sahar. This week, he sat down with me to relate his story. With him were his wife, a lovely Iraqi woman in her mid-30s, and a friend, Haithem al-Hassan, who helped me with Mr. Jaiyashy's mixture of Arabic and rapid English.
"Nineteen seventy-seven was the first time I went to jail," he says. "I was not tortured that much."
He was in his mid-20s then, from an intellectual family that lived in a town south of Baghdad. He had been a student of Islamic history, language and religion in the holy city of Najaf, but was forced to quit his studies after he refused to join the ruling Ba'ath party. His ambition was to write books that would show how Islam could open itself up to modernism.

In Saddam's Iraq, this was a dangerous occupation, especially for a Shiite. Shia Muslims are the majority in Iraq, but Saddam and his inner circle are Sunni. Many Shiites were under suspicion as enemies of the state.
"My father was scared for me," says Mr. Jaiyashy. " 'You know how dangerous this regime is,' he told me. 'You know how many people they kill.' "

Mr. Jaiyashy continued his studies on his own. But, eventually, he was picked up, along with a dozen acquaintances who had been involved in political activity against the regime. They were sent to Abu Ghraib. The others did not get off as lightly as he did. One was killed by immersion into a vat of acid. Ten others, he recalls, were put into a room and torn apart by wild dogs. Several prominent religious leaders were also executed. One was a university dean, someone Mr. Jaiyashy remembers as "a great man." They drove a nail through his skull.

For three decades, the most vicious war Saddam has waged has been the one against his own people. Iraq's most devastating weapon of mass destruction is Saddam himself. And the most powerful case for regime change is their suffering.
Sometimes, it is almost impossible to believe the accounts of people who survived Saddam's chamber of horrors. They seem like twisted nightmares, or perhaps crude propaganda. But there are too many survivors who have escaped Iraq, too many credible witnesses. And Mr. Jaiyashy's story, horrible as it is, is not unusual.

Saddam personally enjoyed inflicting torture in the early years of his career, and he has modelled his police state after that of his hero, Stalin. According to Kenneth Pollack, a leading U.S. expert on Iraq, the regime employs as many as half a million people in its various intelligence, security and police organizations. Hundreds of thousands of others serve as informants. Neighbour is encouraged to inform on neighbour, children on their parents. Saddam has made Iraq into a self-policing totalitarian state, where everyone is afraid of everybody else.
"Being in Iraq is like creeping around inside someone else's migraine," says veteran BBC correspondent John Sweeney. "The fear is so omnipresent, you could almost eat it."
To Stalin's methods of arbitrary arrests and forced confessions, Saddam has added an element of sadism: the torture of children to extract information from their parents.

In northern Iraq -- the only place in the country where people can speak relatively freely -- Mr. Sweeney interviewed several people who had direct experience of child torture. He also met one of the victims -- a four-year-old girl, the daughter of a man who had worked for Saddam's psychopathic son Uday. When the man fell under suspicion, he fled to the Kurdish safe haven in the north. The police came for his wife and tortured her to reveal his whereabouts; when she didn't break, they took his daughter and crushed her feet. She was 2 then. Today, she wears metal braces on her legs, and can only hobble.

"This is a regime that will gouge out the eyes of children to force confessions from their parents and grandparents," writes Mr. Pollack in his new book, The Threatening Storm. "This is a regime that will hold a nursing baby at arm's length from its mother and allow the child to starve to death to force the mother to confess. This is a regime that will burn a person's limbs off to force him to confess or comply. This is a regime that will slowly lower its victims into huge vats of acid. . . .
"This is a regime that practises systematic rape against the female victims. This is a regime that will drag in a man's wife, daughter or other female relative and repeatedly rape her in front of him." And if he has fled the country, it will send him the video.

After nearly two years in prison, Mr. Jaiyashy was released and sent to do military service in the north. Then the security police decided to round up the followers of one of the executed clerics. In 1980, Mr. Jaiyashy was arrested again, along with 20 friends, and taken to a military prison. He was interrogated about criticisms he was supposed to have made of the regime, and urged to sign a confession. During one session, his wrists were tied to a ceiling fan. Then they turned on the fan. Then they added weights onto his body and did it again. Then somebody climbed on him to add more weight. "It was 20 minutes, but it seemed like 20 years," he recalls.
He was beaten with a water hose filled with stones. When he passed out, he was shocked back into consciousness with an electric cable. They hung him by his legs, pulled out a fingernail with pliers, and drove an electric drill through his foot.

Mr. Jaiyashy took off his right shoe and sock to show me his foot. It is grotesquely mutilated, with a huge swelling over the arch. There is an Amnesty International report on human-rights abuses in Iraq with a photo of a mutilated foot that looks identical to his. The baby finger on his left hand is also mutilated.
He didn't sign the confession. He knew that, if he did, they would eventually kill him.
They put him in solitary confinement, in a cell measuring two metres by two and a half, without windows or light. Every few weeks, they would bring him the confession again, but he refused to sign. He stayed there for a year.

In 1981, he was sent to trial, where he persuaded a sympathetic judge not to impose the death sentence. He got 10 years instead, and was sent back to Abu Ghraib. "They put me in a cell with 50 people. It was three and a half by three and a half metres. Some stood, some sat. They took turns."
There was a small window in the cell, with a view of a tree. It was the only living thing the prisoners could see. The tree was cut down. There were informants in the cells and, every morning, guards would come and take someone and beat him till he died. "This is your breakfast!" they would say.
Mr. Jaiyashy spent the next six years in that cell. His parents were told he was dead.

Abu Ghraib contained many intellectuals and professional people. Among them was the scientist Hussein Shahristani, a University of Toronto alumnus who became a leading nuclear scientist in Iraq. He was imprisoned after he refused to work on Saddam's nuclear program. He spent 10 years in Abu Ghraib, most of them in solitary confinement, until he escaped in 1991.

Saddam has reduced his people to abject poverty. He wiped out families, villages, cities and cultures, and drove four million people into exile. He killed between 100,000 and 200,000 Kurds. He killed as many as 300,000 Shiites in the uprising after the Persian Gulf war. He killed or displaced 200,000 of the 250,000 marsh Arabs who had created a unique, centuries-old culture in the south. He drained the marshes, an environmental treasure, and turned them into a desert.

In a recent Frontline documentary, a woman who fled Iraq recounted how she and others had been forced to witness the public beheadings of 15 women who had been rounded up for prostitution and other crimes against the state. One of the women was a doctor who had been misreported as speaking against the regime. "They put her head in a trash can," she said.

In 1987, Mr. Jaiyashy and a thousand other inmates were transferred to an outdoor prison camp. There, they were allowed a visit with their relatives, so long as they said nothing of their lives in prison. Mr. Jaiyashy's parents came, hoping he might still be alive. He remembers the day all the families came. "There was so much crying. We called it the crying day."

In 1989, he was finally released from prison. Then came the gulf war and, after that, the uprising, which he joined. It was quickly crushed. He fled with 150,000 refugees toward the Saudi border. But the Saudis didn't want them. "They are Wahhabis," he says. "They consider the Shia as infidels." The United Nations set up a refugee camp, where Mr. Jaiyashy spent the next six years. He began to paint and write again.
Finally, he was accepted as an immigrant to Canada. He arrived in Toronto in 1996, and is now a Canadian citizen.

Mr. Jaiyashy has a deep sense of gratitude toward his adoptive country. Canada, he says, has given him back his freedom and his dignity. He paints prolifically, and has taken courses at the art college, and is the author of three plays about the Saddam regime. He makes his living stocking shelves in a fabric store. "I'm a porter," he says. "No problem. I'm happy."

But Saddam's spies are everywhere. After one of his plays was produced here, his father was imprisoned. His first wife and three children are still in Iraq. He hasn't seen them since his youngest, now 12, was a baby. He talks with them on the phone from time to time, but it is very dangerous. One of his brothers is in Jordan, another still in Iraq.
Sahar, his second wife, is soft-spoken. She covers her head and dresses modestly, without makeup. Her face is unlined. She arrived in Canada with her two daughters the same year as Mr. Jaiyashy; they were introduced by friends.

She, too, has a story. I learned only the smallest part of it. "I was a widow," she told me. "My husband was a doctor in Iraq. He wanted to continue his education and have a specialty. But they didn't allow him. He deserted the military service to continue his education on his own. They beat him till he died."
Today, her daughters are in high school and she teaches at a daycare centre. Her new husband pushed her to study hard here. "ESL, ESL," she says affectionately.
Like many Iraqis, they are conflicted about the prospect of war. They want Saddam gone. But they do not want more harm inflicted on their country. "I want Saddam gone -- only him," says Mr. Jaiyashy.

A few weeks ago, Saddam threw open the doors of Abu Ghraib and freed the prisoners there. Many families rejoiced, and many others, who did not find their loved ones, mounted a brief, unheard-of protest against the regime. The prison is a ghost camp now. Nothing is left but piles of human excrement that cake the razor wire.

Saddam's Iraq is a rebuke to anyone who may doubt that absolute evil dwells among us. No one has put it better than Mr. Sweeney, the BBC reporter. "When I hear the word Iraq, I hear a tortured child screaming."

[ez]

She, too, has a story. I learned only the smallest part of it. "I was a widow," she told me. "My husband was a doctor in Iraq. He wanted to continue his education and have a specialty. But they didn't allow him. He deserted the military service to continue his education on his own. They beat him till he died."

A real person, beaten to death because he would not abandon his dream of being a doctor to serve in Saddam's army.

Peaceniks march in support of this...

[piasa]

Well, since the Serbs have been helping Iraq out, using your logic it's a given we shouldn't believe you.

Not that you have ever had any credibility around here.

[piasa]

Have at it, Smokie:

THE SOCIALIST PARTY OF SERBIA IS AGAINST PRESSURES, THREATS AND SANCTIONS THAT IRAQI PEOPLE ARE EXPOSED TO ON DAILY BASIS ON THE OCCASSION OF THE SEVENTH SESSION OF THE BAGHDAD COMMITTEE TO BE HELD AT BAGHDAD ON MAY 07-09, 2002

THE TRAGIC CONSEQUENCES OF THE NEW WORLD ORDER

It is not difficult to see that world today has entered into new dark age of uncertainty, stagnation, wars, destructions and deep spiritual, ideological and political crisis.

The present political order in the world, which is based on force and power, on bombs and Tomahawk missiles, is permanent source of new dangerous wars and catastrophic crises.

Is there any better proof for such conclusions then new war-threats against Iraq, a sovereign country and founding member of the United Nations, the threats that are completely baseless and contrary to the international law.

Besides, it is clear to everybody in the world that Iraq can not be the threat to anybody since it is the country that is already for 11 years a victim of the unjust sanctions and deadly pressures that could be compared to genocide. However, this heroic country threatened on the daily basis by new military pressures, invasions, bombardments and similar "tools" of so called new world order.

The Socialist Party of Serbia is convinced that any new military action against Iraq and its friendly people can cause new regional and global crisis with extremely dangerous and unforeseeable consequences, as well as harder and more dangerous life for whole world.

The Socialist Party of Serbia expresses its solidarity with friendly Iraq, seeing Iraq, in its courageous resistance against unjust pressures and military threats, as one of the torches of freedom in the present "globalized" world.. On the other hand, it is evident that brave Iraqi people are supported every new day by more and more countries and people in the world, particularly in the Arab world.

One should not forget that creation of the so called new world order, after 50 years of bipolarism, has started through military actions against Iraq, actions which has caused terrible sufferings of Iraqi people in last 12 years.

As the biggest political party in Yugoslavia and the most numerous political force in Balkans, the Socialist Party of Serbia is convinced that all kind of pressures and media-warfare against Iraq (and some other countries) are totally absurd and senseless.

The information system in the world has become the public relations service of the aggressive power centers and the richest capitalists in the Western world.

Fortunately, such senseless propaganda is becoming almost totally useless and counterproductive for its creators.

...

blah, blah, blah....

[piasa]

From Iraq's own web site uruklink:

Iraq, Serbia discuss ties Baghdad, March 5, INA

Director of Foreign Relations Bureau at Iraq’s Regional Command of Arab Ba’th Socialist Party, Harith al-Khshali has received Serb Radical Party delegation headed by President of parliamentary group of party at Serbia and Black Mountain Mrs. Maya Ghoikovetch currently on visit to Iraq in response to an invitation from Foreign Relations Bureau.

Mr. Al- Khshali expressed his appreciation for friendship ties between the two countries which extended for long centuries, considering that aggression on world countries is an expression of hegemonic tendency characterized US administration.

Al- Khshali hailed worldwide national forces’ stances, which are against US administration’s policies and its intentions to dominate and plunder peoples’ riches. Confirming Iraq’s determination to resist this approach , stressing that all world peoples are capable to achieve victory when they are firmly adhered to their national choices and free will.

For her side, Mrs. Ghoikovetch expressed firm position of Serb Radical Party in supporting Iraq, confirming his party stand against US attempts aiming to dominate world peoples.

She expressed her admiration of Iraqi people steadfastness under couragous leadership of President Saddam Hussein.

[piasa]

From The Jerusalem Post:

Monday, March 29, 1999 12 Nisan 5759 Updated Mon., Mar. 29 03:16

Serbia, Iraq forge secret military pact

By DOUGLAS DAVIS

LONDON (March 29) - Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic and Iraq's Saddam Hussein have concluded a secret military pact that will enhance their abilities to withstand allied bombing raids, according to reports in London yesterday.

"We are aware of the reports that there is a connection between the Iraqi and the Serbian regimes," a British official said at the weekend. "We believe that they are accurate and based on good information. Obviously this is a cause for concern and demonstrates the sort of company that Milosevic is now keeping."

A spokesman for British Prime Minister Tony Blair said Blair "is aware of these reports," adding: "Nothing would surprise us about Saddam or Milosevic."

According to a report in the Sunday Telegraph, Milosevic and Saddam have authorized their officials to work closely to fulfill their joint goal of shooting down aircraft flying bombing missions over Serbia and Iraq.

The alliance was initiated with a visit to Baghdad by a Serbian military delegation earlier this month, shortly before NATO commanders last week launched Operation Allied Force. The visit, which marked the first steps in formalizing the Serbian-Iraqi alliance, was intended to explore ways in which the two countries could cooperate to their common advantage.

The Serb delegation was headed by Serbian Deputy Defense Minister Lt.-Gen. Jovan Djukovic and followed a visit by Ivan Ivanovich, a Serb chemical and biological weapons expert, who arrived in Baghdad on March 9 to spend several days visiting Iraqi military facilities.

In addition to conventional military sites, the delegation also visited an Iraqi pharmaceutical plant at Samarra, 170 kilometers from Baghdad, which UN weapons inspectors say is a chemical weapons production site.

Middle East intelligence officials say both visits were authorized by Milosevic. The visits were also confirmed by the Foreign Office in London, where officials regard the growing cooperation between the two with alarm.

"It appears they have identified a common aim - to shoot down allied aircraft," a senior diplomat was quoted as saying. "Saddam and Milosevic see themselves as international outcasts who must support each other if they are to survive."

In return for Serb assistance in rebuilding Iraq's air defenses and making its jet fighters airworthy, Saddam has reportedly agreed to provide Milosevic with oil and cash to sustain the Serbs' battered economy and its war effort.

Since Iraq was subjected to a massive air bombardment by US and British aircraft during and after Operation Desert Fox last December, Saddam has been desperate to shoot down allied bombers and capture their pilots.

The Iraqi air-defense system is currently based on obsolete SA-2 and SA-3 Soviet missile systems, which are no match for the sophisticated air power deployed by US and British fighters patrolling the no-fly zones in northern and southern Iraq.

The Iraqis want Serbia to provide them with the advanced SA-7 anti-aircraft missile system, which was originally built to a Soviet design but has been upgraded by the Serbs and could seriously threaten allied warplanes. It is understood that Serb technicians are already assisting the Iraqis to prepare air-defense traps for allied warplanes.

The Iraqis are also reported to be seeking Serb assistance to modernize their aging squadrons of MiG-21 and MiG-29 fighters. Serb technicians regularly serviced Iraqi MiGs before the current conflict, and there have been reports that, despite the current bombardment, Serbian military specialists are being assigned to work with the Iraqi air force.

It is also believed that Moscow, which has condemned the NATO assault, will be more forthcoming - and more open - about its assistance to Iraq.

[piasa]

From AFP via Spacedaily & intelnet:

Yugoslavia's "Iraq-gate" complicates NATO dialogue

BELGRADE (AFP) Oct 30, 2002

Revelations of Yugoslavia's illegal military cooperation with Iraq will complicate Belgrade's plans to join a partnership scheme with NATO, analysts said. But experts on the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation gathered for a seminar here this week said the scandal probably would not have long-term consequences for Yugoslavia's eventual entry into the alliance.

"Such hiccups have occured with most of the countries that are joining NATO and many of them that are in NATO," said Ira Straus, a Washington-based analyst from the independent Committee on Eastern Europe and Russia.

"It's a bump. It could delay the dialogue, slow it down a little bit, but I don't expect it to be a major obstacle."

The scandal broke last week when Washington went public with allegations that a state-run trading company, Jugoimport, had acted as a middleman in the supply of spare parts for Iraqi fighter jets.

The State Department said a state-owned Bosnian firm, Orao, was manufacturing the parts and selling them through Jugoimport to Saddam Hussein's regime in breach of UN sanctions.

Belgrade reacted swiftly to put out the fire.

Last week the chief of Jugoimport and a deputy defence minister were sacked, Jugoimport's office in Baghdad was closed and a special committee was established to investigate both the company and the defence ministry.

Heads also rolled in the Serb-run entity of Bosnia, where three officials were fired and, after further prodding from Washington, the defense minister and army chief-of-staff resigned on Monday.

Yugoslav President Vojislav Kostunica tried to play down Jugoimport's role in the illegal trade, which he characterised as a "hazardous and irresponsible business move" undertaken without the government's approval or knowledge.

Meanwhile the scandal thickened over the weekend when the Washington Post reported that the United States believed Yugoslav companies were also helping Iraq to build cruise missiles.

Baghdad already has ballistic missiles but they are considered relatively inaccurate.

There has been no official confirmation from US or Yugoslav officials of the missile allegations, which have also appeared in the local press.

Straus said Yugoslavia's relations with the Western powers and NATO was complicated by fresh memories of the Atlantic alliance's bombing campaign against the Yugoslav army three years ago.

"This gave them the moral licence to make those sales. It creates a cynicism which enables money to drive things," he told AFP on the sidelines of a conference called "Advancing into the Euro-Atlantic Partnership."

He said that while the government had undergone a re-orientation toward the West, the military would take longer to reconcile itself to a strategic partnership with its former enemies.

"Such cynicism exists in the West as well, but more so in countries which are reversing their orientation and the military doesn't quite know yet what it's all about."

Other speakers at the conference, including senior Yugoslav military and government officials, made only passing mention of the scandal, preferring to dwell on broader issues of NATO's expansion to the east.

Predrag Simic, an advisor to Kostunica, alluded to the Washington Post article and said Yugoslavia's military-related industries needed to be updated with "modern European concepts."

NATO leaders are to meet next month in the Czech capital, where they are expected to approve the accession of seven new members -- Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia.

Meanwhile Yugoslavia is in line to join the so-called Partnership for Peace (PFP) programme, which includes defence planning and military exercises between member states and NATO.

Twenty-seven countries are currently PFP members.

[nicmarlo]

Here's some more "propaganda" for your perusal:

1. Iraqi Regime Crimes: Torture and Killing

from the State of Kuwait, website:

Samples of the tools used for torturing people in the Kuwiati and Iraqi prisons

Amnesty International issued a report on human rights violations in Kuwait from August 2, 1990 till December 1990. The report cited the following:

. . . In the period from August to November 1990, Amnesty International interviewed dozens of Kuwaiti prisoners of war captured by the Iraqi forces. Most of those Kuwaiti victims were males aged 16-35. Some of them had signs of torture still on their bodies. The organization also received statements from the families of the victims of torture, the physicians who examined them and from those who had buried the victims who died of torture. There were even stories about torture, rape and general mistreatment of women. This report ended with a detailed list of the methods of torture employed by the Iraqi troops against Kuwaitis since August 2nd. . . . [snip]

2. Iraqi Horrors the “Peace Movement” Ignores By John Perazzo

FrontPageMagazine.com | November 29, 2002

. . . Once prisoners are incarcerated for disloyalty to the regime, their suffering is so great it can scarcely be described. Many are placed in solitary confinement on starvation diets. Confessions are forced from them by the most gruesome methods imaginable: They are struck with brass knuckles and wooden bludgeons; they receive electric shocks to their genitalia; scorching metal rods are forced into their body orifices; their toes are crushed and their toenails pulled out; they have their limbs literally burned off; they are slowly lowered into large vats of acid until they confess or die. Many are poisoned with thallium, which causes its victims enormous agony before they die. When these prisons periodically get overcrowded, they are "cleaned out" by means of summary executions. . . . [snip]

3. Human Rights Watch: Iraq and Iraqi Kurdistan

. . . Iraqi intelligence agents targeted political opponents who had fled Iraq, threatening and intimidating them or arresting and torturing family members still in the country. On June 7, Staff Lieut. Gen. Najib al-Salihi, former chief of staff of the Iraqi army's Sixth Armoured Division who had fled to Jordan in 1995, received a videotape showing the rape of a female relative by intelligence personnel. The rape or threat of rape has long been used in Iraq as a punitive measure against opponents to extract confessions or information or to pressure them into desisting from anti-government activities. Shortly afterwards, Salihi received a telephone call from his brother in Baghdad, asking him to cease all opposition activity. Iraqi political exiles living in Europe and elsewhere consistently reported being threatened with the arrest or execution of their relatives if they did not return to Iraq or abandoned opposition activity, and asylum seekers in Jordan, Syria and other countries reported being under surveillance by Iraqi intelligence agents. . . . [snip]

4. Briefing On Iraqi Regime Human Rights Abuses (December 4, 2002): Edited Transcript of a briefing given by UK Foreign Office Officials and Dr Hussein Al-Shahristani, London, 2 December 2002 From the Iraq Foundation website:

I have been a witness to Saddam’s violations of human rights in Iraq. I was the Chief Scientist of the Iraqi Atomic Energy Organization until 1979, working on peaceful applications of atomic energy. I was arrested, tortured and kept in solitary confinement for over 11 years for refusing to work on the military nuclear program. However, I was more fortunate than many of my fellow political prisoners in the country. I did not have holes drilled into my bones, as happened in the next torture room. I did not have my limbs cut off by an electric saw. I did not have my eyes gauged out. My three children were brought in to the torture chamber but they were not tortured to death in front of me to force me to make confessions to things I had not done. Women of my family were not brought in and raped in front of me, as happened to many of my colleagues. Torturers did not dissolve my hands in acid. I was not among the hundreds of political prisoners who were taken from prison as guinea-pigs to be used for chemical and biological tests.

They only tortured me for 22 days and nights continuously by hanging me from my hands tied at the back and using a high voltage probe on the sensitive parts of my body and beating me mercilessly. They were very careful not to leave any permanent bodily marks on me because they hope they can break my will and I will agree to go back and work on their military nuclear program. . . . [snip]

5. Iraqi Dictator Saddam Hussein's Shop of Horrors by Jeff Jacoby (November 15, 2002)

. . . In June, the BBC interviewed "Kamal," a former Iraqi torturer now confined in a Kurdish prison in the north. "If someone didn't break, they'd bring in the family," Kamal explained. "They'd bring the son in front of his parents, who were handcuffed or tied and they'd start with simple tortures such as cigarette burns and then if his father didn't confess they'd start using more serious methods," such as slicing off one of the child's ears or amputating a limb. "They'd tell the father that they'd slaughter his son. They'd bring a bayonet out. And if he didn't confess, they'd kill the child." . . . [snip]

6. Scott Ritter in His Own Words, Saturday, Sep. 14, 2002

QUESTION: You've spoke about having seen the children's prisons in Iraq. Can you describe what you saw there?

SCOTT RITTER: The prison in question is at the General Security Services headquarters, which was inspected by my team in Jan. 1998. It appeared to be a prison for children — toddlers up to pre-adolescents — whose only crime was to be the offspring of those who have spoken out politically against the regime of Saddam Hussein. It was a horrific scene. Actually I'm not going to describe what I saw there because what I saw was so horrible that it can be used by those who would want to promote war with Iraq, and right now I'm waging peace. [snip]

7. If Antiwar Protesters Succeed

Christian Science Monitor, February 26, 2003

To publish an unsigned opinion piece is an exception to the Monitor's policy. But the views expressed here, if put with a name, could endanger the writer's extended family in Baghdad. The author - known to Monitor staff - was born and raised in Iraq. Now a US citizen with a business that requires extensive world travel, the author is in frequent touch with the Iraqi diaspora but is not connected with organized opposition to Saddam Hussein.

. . . What if you antiwar protesters and politicians succeed in stopping a US-led war to change the regime in Baghdad? What then will you do?

Will you also demonstrate and demand "peaceful" actions to cure the abysmal human rights violations of the Iraqi people under the rule of Saddam Hussein?

Or, will you simply forget about us Iraqis once you discredit George W. Bush?

Will you demand that the United Nations send human rights inspectors to Iraq? Or are you only interested in weapons of "mass destruction" inspections, not of "mass torture" practices?

Will you also insist that such human rights inspectors be given time to discover Hussein's secret prisons and coercion as you do for the weapons inspectors? Or will you simply accept a "clean bill of health" if you can't find the thousands of buried corpses?

* * *

Will you decry the hypocritical oil and arms commerce of France, Germany, Russia, and China with the butcher of Baghdad? Or are you only against US interests in Iraqi oil?

* * *

Will you hear the cries of Iraqis executed in acid tanks in Baghdad? the Iraqi women raped in front of their husbands and fathers to extract confessions? Or of children tortured in front of their parents? Or of families billed for the bullets used to execute military "deserters" in front of their own homes?

No. I suspect that most of you will simply retire to your cappucino cafes to brainstorm the next hot topic to protest, and that you will simply forget about us Iraqis, once you succeed in discrediting President Bush.

Please, prove me wrong.

[E.G.C.]

Here are my toughts on the subject.

Let me just say first off that neither President Bush or I want to see us go to war anymore than anyone else does. But, the fact remains that while X42 squandered away his survillence resources going after his political enemies, Saddam took advantage and built up more WMD's. As such he does indeed pose a National Security risk to this country and as a result we really don't have much choice.

The only other option left could very well be mushroom cloud erupting over a part of this country. Is this what all you Saddam appeasers want?

And another thing. For those who are continuing to choose live in a state of denial about the human rights violations by Saddam. My question to you is are you just choosing to carry on this attitude because this is the kind of person you want runing this country? I can tell you that we had someone like Saddam or Mugabe in the White House right now, this nation would end up being a third world country.

You may think it's cool for Saddam or Mugabe or their kind to go and punish their politcal opponents this way but I don't. I don't have any use whatsoever for people of this kind and I can assure you I for one WILL NOT cooperate or accept the authority of any such person like this. I don't care if it makes me a troublemaker or a pariah or what. I just will not submit to any such authority.

I think it's time for our president to do the same thing and get on with this war and SCREW the U.N.!!!!! As far as I'm concerned their authority means diddily squat and they are proving it so.
LET'S ROLL!!!!!!!

[CaliforniaOkie]

#2 that is the Democrats talking points, verbatum.

[smokegenerator]

piasa wrote:
Yugoslavia's "Iraq-gate" complicates NATO dialogue

Ever hear of Iran-Contra Gate? Guilty of selling arms to known terrorist organization. I think that said enough.

Two “scandals” almost toppled the aforementioned pillar of United States power. The Middle Eastern country of Iran received, “arms for [United States] hostages,” and the money acquired by the United States for such sales went to Nicaraguan “Contras,” or, “rebels.” These two interrelated scandals had a further thing in common. Both went forward with knowledge of Executive Branch officials yet no approval by the Legislative Branch. One of the key “players” in the both “scandals” was the National Security Council’s Oliver North. (Fried, 1997, pp. 63-64) Reaching to the highest levels of government, North told Congress he thought, “he was acting under the authority of the Commander in Chief.”(Fried, p. 69)

What else do you want to know about the duplicity of the US govt role in their support of other terrorist organizations? Shall I show you the KLA/NATO buddy relationship? Need proof?

I tell you what, you just rely on "internet sources"... How many times did NATO/US lie to you on Bosnia and Kosovo and you fell for it, How many times? Do you want examples of those lies?

What proof do you need on those areas?

My credibility? Where were you in Bosnia in what years or months? Where?

[smokegenerator]

You are missing the point of what I am saying or you have selective reading/hearing. Try rereading with an open mind and not some conservative think tank closed mind, which I was a former very conservative at one point. Now, I am an indepnedant voter, but still am registered as a Republican. I will not give those democrat/liberals that satisfaction of one less number for reg Republicans.

BTW, get or come up with an original thought/slogan--"Lets Roll".

[nicmarlo]

What else do you want to know about the duplicity of the US govt role in their support of other terrorist organizations? Shall I show you the KLA/NATO buddy relationship? Need proof?

Logic error: "Two Wrongs Make a Right"

Description of Two Wrongs Make a Right
Two Wrongs Make a Right is a fallacy in which a person "justifies" an action against a person by asserting that the person would do the same thing to him/her, when the action is not necessary to prevent B from doing X to A. This fallacy has the following pattern of "reasoning":

It is claimed that person B would do X to person A.
It is acceptable for person A to do X to person B (when A's doing X to B is not necessary to prevent B from doing X to A).
This sort of "reasoning" is fallacious because an action that is wrong is wrong even if another person would also do it.

You justify allowing innocents to be murdered because you question US action in Iran Contra. This is quite illogical and even more alarming, it is immoral.

[E.G.C.]

Look, my mid is open but I'm not going to appease any part of my ideas or beliefs to you or anyone lese just because that's what you want. I've researched this matter and I'm standing by my support of the President and nothing yousay or do is going to change my thinking on this.

It's you who needs to open your mind up to what's going on. Not me.

You and your peacenik crowd aren't holding any sway over me.

[E.G.C.]

My viewpoints and ideas and beliefs are not subject to compromise, or acceptance just to please you or anybody else. Learn to live with it.