Free Republic

You've got my support!!! Screw you liberal, anti-american celebrities.

Go Army!!!

Whoo! HA!

“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” --Edmund Burke (Butler, 2000)
As the United States rounds into the fourth week of fighting, Americans are starting to wonder whether or not we should have gone to war with Iraq. War with Iraq is justifiable on several fronts. This war is to prevent genocide using biological, chemical, or nuclear warfare, and is supported by a coalition of more than 49 countries according to CNN after April 7, 2003. Saddam and his regime have been killing innocent people, mainly the Kurds of Iraq/Iran. Saddam has been killing these people as early as 1981, and has continued to kill them since that time. His massive slaughter of almost 300,000 Kurds was put on hold by the Gulf War in 1991. Saddam will not stop his ruthless killing unless he is taken out of power. Saddam stockpiles these massive weapons with the intent to strike fear into the hearts of all his enemies, this includes his own people. Several cases have shown that continued production and research in Iraq would leave Saddam the capability to build a nuclear bomb within, five years, and that’s at the latest. With nuclear power no one knows what Saddam would be able to do, let alone what he would do. Let’s not find out.(Hamza, 2000)
The Kurds are an Iraqi radical religious group that inhabits the mountainous crescent that extends from the Euphrates River in northern Syria and Turkey to Kermanshah in Iran. This area is generally designated as Kurdistan, a semi-continuous territory divided among the modern nations of Iran, Iraq, Turkey, Syria, and the USSR.
At the treaty of Sevres in 1920, it was proposed that Kurdistan be made a political unit; but this proposal was eventually dropped and Kurdistan never came into existence as a nation. Estimates of the total Kurdish population vary considerably, ranging from 1,500,000 to 4,000,000, with the greatest single concentration located on the Turkish-Iraqi border. The Kurds were early converts to Islam, with the majority belonging to the school of Sunnite Muslims. Several Kurdish groups in Iran belong to the Shi'ite sect.
For the last eight hundred years people in the Middle East, primarily Iraq, Iran, and Israel have faced persecution on grounds of religion, race, and even sex. About 3000 B.C., the area known to us as the Middle East was settled by a fair-skinned people known mainly as Arabs. Since about the beginning of civilization wars have raged across this area: These wars are still being fought today, and mainly for the same reasons. Leaders were ruthless and incompassionate as recorded in documents of the time. Rulers in the Middle East to this day remain incompassionate and have no regard for human life, human rights, and freedoms that we value in the western world. People follow laws and codes given to them by harsh dictators, “Don’t tell me about the law. The law is anything I write on a scrap of paper.” – Saddam Hussein (Hamza, 2000) that have no regard for human life.
In February of 1988, Saddam Hussein’s cousin Ali Hasan Majid who was at the time the leader of Kurdistan issued a decree known as the “al-anfal” decree. This decree stated: “The greater part of Iraqi Kurdistan is decreed off-limits to man or beast. Anyone or anything found in the prohibited zone is to be killed.” Every village in the area deemed “off-limits” were totally destroyed, some with conventional weapons, but most with chemical and biological weapons. (Galbraith, III, ’92)
Kurdish people that didn’t leave the “off-limits” zone were attacked with chemical agents known as sarin and mustard gas. Five thousand people were killed in the town of Halabja by the toxin known as mustard gas.
This act against the Kurdish people was a “crime against humanity” as defined by the Nuremberg Charter and Genocide as defined by the Genocide Convention. “Article 6 of the Charter of the Nuremberg Tribunal defines crimes against humanity as: ‘murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation, and other inhumane acts committed against any civilian population, before or during the war; or persecutions on political, racial or religious grounds in execution of or in connection with any crime . . . whether or not in violation of the domestic law of the country where perpetrated.” (Galbraith, 1992)
In studies conducted in early 1992, one man, Peter W. Galbraith found videotapes that showed graphic depictions of this genocide, images similar to those found in Nazi-German concentration camps. Galbraith describes what he saw in a video, “…Five men [in Kurdish attire]. The camera shows up-close the facial expressions of the men as they are unloaded from a truck, tied to the stake and then blindfolded. After the execution, each of the Iraqi officials attending the execution is shown unloading his revolver into the slumping corpses. When the video shows the bodies being picked up after the executions, some are so bullet-ridden that they cannot be lifted intact onto the truck.”(Galbraith, 1992)
For almost twenty years Saddam has continued to produce on a large scale chemical and biological weapons, several of which he has used, largely against his own people. Saddam, like Adolph Hitler, has used chemical agents to commit genocide on a massive scale. (Butler, XV, 2000)
Between 1987 and 1990, Iraq destroyed more than 3900 villages in the Kurdistan area. Ali Hasan ordered that the surrounding countryside be made useless so that no residing or farming in the area could be done. To do so they planted mines in the ground, removed water sources, removed power from the area. To this day the economic structure of the Kurdish people has not raised back to normal levels. As a part of the campaign, ancient Kurdish temples, schools, and other significant monuments were destroyed. In 1987 and 1988, Saddam’s regime used massive scale amounts of chemical weapons on the Kurdish people. Large numbers of people were gathered up and executed. It is estimated that some 300,000 or more Kurdish people were killed, this number is about 7 percent of the Iraqi Kurdish population (Galbraith, 8, ’92). Although anti-war protestors do exist, they seem to lack statistical information backing up ninety percent of what they say. Anti-war protesting is supported by such famous people as; Barbra Streisand, Cher, Martin Sheen, Jessica Lange, Alec Baldwin, Julia Roberts, George Clooney, Sarah Jessica Parker, and Jennifer Anniston. Jessica Lange went so far as to tell a crowd in Spain “I hate President Bush and am embarrassed to be an American.” Other celebrities go on TV and conduct interviews for famous magazines screaming about the Bush Administration. Other antics include, but aren’t limited to, running ads in major newspapers, defaming the President and his Cabinet every chance they get, to anyone and everyone who will listen. They publicly defile them and call them names like "stupid," "morons," and "idiots." What do any of these people know about world affairs, let alone how to conduct them. The reason this information is so important is that we need to consider who people listen to in America. Sadly someone will believe a famous celebrity over the leader of the free world. Lets just briefly review some of these anti-war protestors credentials: George Clooney: Dropped out of University of Kentucky, Career: Acting. Barbra Streisand: Completed high school, Career: Singing and acting. Cher: Dropped out of school in 9th grade, Career: Singing and acting. Martin Sheen: Flunked exam to enter University of Dayton, Career: Acting
Jessica Lange: Dropped out college mid-freshman year, Career: Acting. Julia Roberts: Completed high school, Career: Acting. Jennifer Anniston: Completed High School, Career: Acting. It’s quite amazing that none of them finished college yet they think they are world authorities on affairs concerning the war in Iraq. Lets briefly review George W. Bushes credentials: President George W. Bush: Received a Bachelors Degree from Yale University and an MBA from Harvard Business School. He served as an F-102 pilot for the Texas Air National Guard. He was elected Governor of Texas on November 8. In a historic re-election victory, he became the first Texas Governor to be elected to consecutive four-year terms on November 3, 1998. President Bush certainly knows what he is doing and should receive a lot more credit than what people are giving him.
Some of the arguments presented by anti-war protestors are that American lives will be lost in this war. America is fighting a war for a people who do not idealize, or even recognize our culture and beliefs. Another question being asked is what are we fighting for? Iraq hasn’t attacked us yet, nor have they presented any threat that they can. If we attack Iraq we will be provoking a biological attack on a massive scale. Another question is, why doesn’t Iraq fight its own war. With the ever-growing number of anti-Saddam supporters, why is it that Iraq does not lead a revolution against Saddam to over- throw him? Should we really lay our lives on the line for a cause that doesn’t affect us, and a people who don’t believe enough in this cause that they would die for it as well?
One of the largest fears of the American society today is that of biological warfare. Saddam’s arsenal of biological weapons as presented to the UN, are deadly and real. Anti-war protestors argue that Saddam will not use his weapons unless provoked by the United States, and we don’t know this! If this statement were true then why is it that Saddam has tested his chemical agents on his own people to see whether or not they work? The biological agents that Saddam has in his arsenal are capable of massive genocide, and mass murder of any peoples that fall victim to them. Some of the agents in Saddam’s possession have the ability to kill some three thousand people in a matter of minutes, with only a small drop of exposure to the skin, or through inhalation. Anti-war protestors would rather fight for a peace than fight for the safety of their children. We should fight Saddam, if we don’t more will die.