One More Mass Grave

Kurdish mass grave discovered in Iraq

"The Iraqi Human Rights Ministry announced that a mass grave has been discovered in southern Najaf, containing the bodies of 3,000 Kurds murdered by the Saddam Hussein regime. It should be noted that about 100,000 Kurds were murdered by this regime, and that, even six years after its fall, the bodies of thousands of murdered civilians remain undiscovered. In Najaf alone, 48 mass graves have been found."

We haven't heard much about mass graves in quite a while. Of course mass graves are only part of the story. For the full monty, go here. By far the worst story I have yet to read is this one, first written by the brothers at Iraq the Model.

Trees for Our Children

Trees for Our Children is the name of a blog owned by a young university student in my home province who appears to believe without question every negative anti-American statement his commie profs pour into his head. "Billy" is anti-corporate anything, but is especially opposed to the uranium industry and has cited some far fetched nonsense about Saskatchewan's uranium mining companies being responsible for the development of leukima in Iraqi children.

For his enlightenment, I thought I would try to describe what life was like for children in Iraq prior to the American led invasion of 2003 and still is for the children of many Islamofascists, the so called "insurgents". The tiny fraction of children who may be dying from leukima in Iraq, no matter what the cause, pales in comparison to the fate of children and their families under the Ba'athist regime. The little boy who writes Trees for Our Children needs to grow up. Child-like innocents are prime targets for the brainwashing hordes who occupy so many of our universities' hallowed halls.

So, Billy, here goes:

The War Crimes of Saddam Hussein

"The Dujail Massacre of 1982: In July of 1982, several Shiite militants attempted to assassinate Saddam Hussein while he was riding through the city. Hussein responded by ordering the slaughter of some 148 residents, including dozens of children.

After Barzani cast his lot with the Iranians in the Iran-Iraq War, Hussein had some 8,000 members of Barzani's clan, including hundreds of women and children, abducted.

The worst human rights abuses of Hussein's tenure took place during the genocidal al-Anfal Campaign (1986-1989), in which Hussein's administration called for the extermination of every living thing--human or animal--in certain regions of the Kurdish north. All told, some 182,000 people--men, women, and children--were slaughtered, many through use of chemical weapons.

Wartime rhetoric regarding Hussein's "rape rooms," death by torture, decisions to slaughter the children of political enemies, and the casual machine-gunning of peaceful protesters accurately reflected the day-to-day policies of Saddam Hussein's regime. Hussein was no misunderstood despotic "madman." He was a monster, a butcher, a brutal tyrant, a genocidal racist--he was all of this, and more."


“The Head of the Snake”

"Next to the anti-aircraft guns is a white sculpture made by a Suleimaniya artist who happened to be on the grounds when I showed up. It memorializes six Kurdish children who were senselessly gunned down in the streets by the Baath."

From the comments at the above link:

"Andrew: Everyone should remember that Saddam was an ally of the USA during this time and the US government knew everything Saddam was doing.

I agree.

Everyone should also remember who got rid of the bastard when most people wanted to leave him in place.

Posted by: Michael J. Totten at March 3, 2006 08:41 AM

Grow Up! American troops may be guilty of 'humiliating' prisoners and, while I do not condone it, I certainly do not equate humiliation with rape, torture, beheading, or the cold blooded murder of innocent children! Maybe I'm in the minority....

Posted by: D Haynes at March 3, 2006 10:37 AM

Saddam Hussein's murderous and genocidal campaigns: Dujail and Afal

The hardest thing to see was the cell used to hold children before they were murdered. My translator Alan read some of the messages carved into the wall.

“I was ten years old. But they changed my age to 18 for execution. Dear Mom and Dad. I am going to be executed by the Baath. I will not see you again.”

Then, during the Anfal campaign from February to September 1988, Iraqi troops swept through the highlands of Iraqi Kurdistan rounding up everyone who remained in government-declared "prohibited zones." Some 100,000 Kurds, mostly men and boys, were trucked to remote sites and executed. Only seven are known to have escaped.

Knowing Saddam Hussein is one of history's most vicious and cruel dictators is one thing. Proving it in a court of law is another.

The grisly task of methodically finding, excavating, and cataloging Saddam Hussein's mass graves goes on. Great stores of horrendous evidence are increasing daily as murdered Kurds, Shiites, and other Saddam victims, continue to be pulled from shallow, bulldozer-dug trenches.

Even hardened invesigators have difficulty with this macabre task. These huge shallow graves are filled with families: fathers, mothers and children wearing all of their clothes on their backs for their "re-location" - with many of the children carrying their toys with them.

A chain of evidence that investigators believe will help convict Saddam Hussein begins at a windswept grave in the desert near Hatra, in northern Iraq.

The burial site - a series of deep trenches that held about 2,500 bodies, many of them women and children - is one of many mass graves that dot the country. But it was the first excavated by an American investigative team working with a special Iraqi tribunal to build cases against Mr. Hussein and others in his government.

According to Gregory W. Kehoe, the American who set up the investigative team, what was found at Hatra shows how the Hussein leadership made a "business of killing people" - the scrape marks from the blade of the bulldozer that shoved victims into the trench, the point-blank shots to the backs of even the babies' heads, the withered body of a 3- or 4-year-old boy, still clutching a red and white ball.

Babies found in Iraqi mass grave

Tiny bones

The victims are believed to be Kurds killed in 1987-88, their bodies bulldozed into the graves after being summarily shot dead.

One trench contains only women and children while another contains only men.

The body of one woman was found still clutching a baby. The infant had been shot in the back of the head and the woman in the face.

"The youngest foetus we have was 18 to 20 foetal weeks," said US investigating anthropologist P Willey.

"Tiny bones, femurs - thighbones the size of a matchstick."

Mr Kehoe investigated mass graves in the Balkans for five years but those burials mainly involved men of fighting age and the Iraqi finds were quite different, he said.

"I've been doing grave sites for a long time, but I've never seen anything like this, women and children executed for no apparent reason" he said.

Mother of All Ironies.

"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."
[snip]

"And the faking of the mass baby funerals.

You may have seen them on TV. Small white coffins parading through the streets of Baghdad on the roofs of taxis, an angry crowd of mourners, condemning western sanctions for killing the children of Iraq.

Usefully, the ages of the dead babies - "three days old", "four days old" - are written in English on the coffins. I wonder who did that?

Ali gave us the inside track on the racket. There aren't enough dead babies around. So the regime stores them for a mass funeral.

He said that he was friends with a taxi driver - he gave his name - whose son had a position in the regime.

Ali continued: "He told me he had to go to Najaf" - a town 100 miles from Baghdad - "in order to bring children's bodies from various freezers there, and that the smell was unbearable.

"They used to collect children's bodies and put them in freezers for two, three or even six or seven months - God knows - till the smell gets so unbearable. Then, they arrange the mass funerals."

The logic being, the more dead babies, the better for Saddam. That way, he can weaken public support in the west for sanctions. That means that parents who have lost a baby can't bury it until the regime says so."

"In northern Iraq - the only part of the country where people can speak freely - we met six other witnesses who had direct experience of child torture."
[snip]

"While we were in the north of Iraq, the chairman of the Great Britain Iraq Society, Labour MP George Galloway, was in Baghdad. He popped up on Iraqi TV, saying "When I hear the word Iraq, I hear someone calling my name".

I don't agree.

When I hear the word Iraq, I hear a tortured child, screaming."


Insurgents used kids as cover, then killed them. Just one example of hundreds of such reports.

And I won't even begin to detail the thousands of children killed via the UNs oil-for-food scandal. Of course, Trees for Our Children author, Billy, will understand that all of this is due to American imperialism, because, after all, his professors have helped him learn to think for himself.

Condi Rice Writes an Interesting Article

Rethinking the National Interest

Is she positioning herself for the VP post?

Some intriguing passages -

"Our relationships with Russia and China are complex and characterized simultaneously by competition and cooperation. But in the absence of workable relations with both of these states, diplomatic solutions to many international problems would be elusive. Transnational terrorism and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, climate change and instability stemming from poverty and disease -- these are dangers to all successful states, including those that might in another time have been violent rivals. It is incumbent on the United States to find areas of cooperation and strategic agreement with Russia and China, even when there are significant differences."

[---]

"This is why President Bush has made clear his support for a reasonable expansion of the UN Security Council."

[---]

"As important as relations are with Russia and China, it is our work with our allies, those with whom we share values, that is transforming international politics -- for this work presents an opportunity to expand the ranks of well-governed, law-abiding democratic states in our world and to defeat challenges to this vision of international order. Cooperation with our democratic allies, therefore, should not be judged simply by how we relate to one another. It should be judged by the work we do together to defeat terrorism and extremism, meet global challenges, defend human rights and dignity, and support new democracies.

In the Americas, this has meant strengthening our ties with strategic democracies such as Canada, Mexico, Colombia, Brazil, and Chile in order to further the democratic development of our hemisphere. Together, we have supported struggling states, such as Haiti, in locking in their transitions to democracy and security. Together, we are defending ourselves against drug traffickers, criminal gangs, and the few autocratic outliers in our democratic hemisphere."

[...]

"Is it really possible in the long run for governments to respect their citizen's talents but not their rights? I, for one, doubt it."

Indeed. She has interesting things to say about just about every region in the world. I am, of course, interested in her thoughts on the Middle East.

"One response would have been to fight the terrorists without addressing this underlying cause. Perhaps it would have been possible to manage these suppressed tensions for a while. Indeed, the quest for justice and a new equilibrium on which the nations of the broader Middle East are now embarked is very turbulent. But is it really worse than the situation before? Worse than when Lebanon suffered under the boot of Syrian military occupation? Worse than when the self-appointed rulers of the Palestinians personally pocketed the world's generosity and squandered their best chance for a two-state peace? Worse than when the international community imposed sanctions on innocent Iraqis in order to punish the man who tyrannized them, threatened Iraq's neighbors, and bulldozed 300,000 human beings into unmarked mass graves? Or worse than the decades of oppression and denied opportunity that spawned hopelessness, fed hatreds, and led to the sort of radicalization that brought about the ideology behind the September 11 attacks? Far from being the model of stability that some seem to remember, the Middle East from 1945 on was wracked repeatedly by civil conflicts and cross-border wars. Our current course is certainly difficult, but let us not romanticize the old bargains of the Middle East -- for they yielded neither justice nor stability."

And, in particular, her analysis of Iraq, which includes, among others, this passage:

"After we fought one war against Saddam and then remained in a formal state of hostilities with him for over a decade, our containment policy began to erode. The community of nations was losing its will to enforce containment, and Iraq's ruler was getting increasingly good at exploiting it through programs such as oil-for-food -- indeed, more than we knew at the time. The failure of containment was increasingly evident in the UN Security Council resolutions that were passed and then violated, in our regular clashes in the no-fly zones, and in President Bill Clinton's decision to launch air strikes in 1998 and then join with Congress to make "regime change" our government's official policy in Iraq. If Saddam was not a threat, why did the community of nations keep the Iraqi people under the most brutal sanctions in modern history? In fact, as the Iraq Survey Group showed, Saddam was ready and willing to reconstitute his weapons of mass destruction programs as soon as international pressure had dissipated."

BINGO!!!

Read the whole thing. And note the emphasis on the support for democracy and economic freedom.

Epistle to Foudroyaume - Installment II

Following are the next five statements from Foudroyaume's comments on John Murney's blog together with my response. Again, Foud's remarks are in bold italics. The reason I have dealt with all five of them is the single unifying thread in all of them is what appears to be Foud's complete lack of awareness of what life was like for Iraqis under Saddam Hussein.

"SH had his victims, (some, like the Kurds, haven't been treated any better in supposedly free countries, like Turkey), but it's not like the country was subject to constant feuding between thugs and fanatics."

Yes, there was no feuding between thugs and fanatics. Any one in opposition to the regime was murdered. Simple as that. Estimates vary as to the number of Iraqis killed by the regime for political activity, but I'll pick 300,000 as a reasonable middle ground. If you include the number of war dead from the Iran-Iraq war and the invasion of Kuwait that number soars to well over a million.

And about the Kurds, I presume you have heard of the Anfal Campaign and other incidents of oppression and brutality, and yes, Kurds in Turkey and elsewhere are treated badly, but only Hussein used chemical weapons, killing tens of thousands. His Regime was responsible for arbitrary arrests and assassinations, disappearances, and for sending thousands to seek asylum in other countries and need I mention the mass graves. Only 270 of them. Perhaps that's not enough.

"Also, unlke (sic) Afghanistan, where the mass of hardship was caused by the ruling regime and their opponent factions, Iraq's biggest problems were due to American sanctions."

Here's some reading for you Foud. Here, here, here , here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here. This one has a segment of the film by Iraqi Kurd, Jano Rosebiani, who is a member of a panel discussing the war. You'll notice toward the end that Rosebiani is critical about the job done by the media. No. Iraq's biggest problem was it's tyrannical government. I have lots more on that theme below and can give you even more, if you want it.

I agree that regular Iraqi people were the principal victims of the sanctions, but Saddam Hussein had the capacity to end that. He didn't, of course. Rather, he made it worse and exploited it, creating propaganda out of his distorted depiction of their effects. When the impact became known, the sanctions were modified with the introduction of the Oil-for-Food program in 1995, and I'm sure you must know how that turned out.

But why folks persist in calling them "American" sanctions needs some explaining. The fact is, they were imposed by the UN Security Council when Iraq invaded Kuwait. The Americans did impose their own sanctions, as well and while they may have been instrumental in getting the UN to impose sanctions, they were UN sanctions. Lifting the sanctions was, in fact, one of the reasons for the decision to invade Iraq in 2003. It was the United Nations that lifted them on May 23, 2003, two months after the invasion.

"I think the people of Iraq on average would have benefitted (sic) more from lifting sanctions (which would have helped foster a friendlier attitude to the west--"

I'm not sure exactly what you mean by this, Foud but I presume you think the attitude of Iraqis toward the West would have improved had Saddam Hussein been left in power. I'm not sure we could ever know that, since that's not how it turned out. But I would state unequivocally that Iraqis are far less likely to be unfriendly toward the West than other Arabs now, especially since they can now speak without fear and have no compelling reason to repeat the nauseous rhetoric of Arab Nationalism, which is so common in the rest of the Arab world. An illustration of that fact is documented here.

Iraqi opposition groups were consulted prior to the invasion. They all agreed that Saddam Hussein must be removed. It's hard to understand how anyone would think that leaving him there would be in Iraq's better interests.

"SH, unlike Taliban leaders, cared about public opinion and mayb (sic) have been willing to enter into mutually beneficial negotions (sic) if he sensed a pro-western attitude growing in Iraq--he was an opportunist, not an ideologue."

Saddam Hussein cared nothing about public opinion, other than that he be adored and obeyed. Opinions of the West about him were irrelevant. He was offered the option of going into exile. He accepted on condition that he be given $1 billion and all the information he needed on weapons of mass destruction. In other words, he would leave if he could take the means of building a WMD program in exile. That link, by the way, provides a nice summary of the decade long cat and mouse game that Saddam played with the West and with the UN. Here is another summary. This is not a man who would negotiate anything. A study of his rise to power easily shows the only thing he knows is brute thuggery. The notion that he would respond favourably to a "pro-western attitude growing in Iraq" is ludicrous on its face. No such "attitude" would be allowed to grow. Foud, you have no concept of the depth and breadth of his iron grip and the ruthlessness of his apparatus of terror.

"The Taliban, on the other hand, are whackos with guns who maintained a state in which constant terror was the norm for most. As a result of their religious-centerd (sic) governance, Afghanistan is decades behind in infrastructure and services (Iraq, by contrast, is quite modern)."

First of all, Foud, you describe the Taliban regime as one which maintained a state in which constant terror was the norm for most, as if the same was not true of Saddam Hussein. While you may be right about the Taliban, you couldn't be more wrong about Saddam Hussein. I would recommend you read "The Republic of Fear" by Kanan Makiya or "Saddam: King of Terror" by British journalist Con Coughlin or the copious writings and interviews given by Christopher Hitchens. Read the testimonies of legions of Iraqi exiles and families whose members have disappeared, whose testimonies have been collected here and here and here and here, to name only a few.

The last of the four links above describes a massive file of documents discovered in an underground labyrinth containing "three million files with new insights into the regime's repression and depravity". You'll note that among those files "(t)here is a blacklist of schoolchildren, a register of every schoolchild in Iraq, listing their relatives and their supposed political affiliations. If a file recorded that a brother or an uncle had been executed for political reasons, that child was blighted." I had a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach when I read that particular one, as likely you would too. But mine was a little different, because I was able to recall a conversation I was once privy to when I would have been in my late 20s or early 30s (late 1970s or early 1980s, I believe). My ex-husband's cousin visited us from Iraq and told us of what was happening. Saddam Hussein or his henchmen would visit schools and ask the children to tell him what their parents said about him. The little innocents, too young to know better, would sometimes reveal that their parents opposed his regime. Within days, the adults in the family would be arrested, murdered or disappeared. When I read about this registry, I felt certain that that story must be connected.

If that's not enough for you, read though the archives of agencies like Human Rights Watch or Amnesty International. Read the reports and testimony of the UN Special Rapporteur, Max Von der Stoel, on the gravity of the situation in Iraq under the Butcher of Baghdad in the 1990 and again in 1999. Von der Stoel described the atrocities committed by the Ba'athist regime as "the worst since World War II". Your perception of pre-war Iraq is tragically devoid of even the most rudimentary facts. What a shame that someone with your level of intellect would pass judgments on one of the most horrific regimes of the 20th century with such a paucity of knowledge.

I Say We Retaliate

Obama thanks Canadians who crossed the border to work on his campaign

I'm sure said Canadians would be of a left leaning persuasion, wouldn't you say?

Well, how 'bout the next time we have an federal election, which likely isn't too far away, we open the flood gates to the Republican hoards. Set some quotas, like no less than 25% have to be the evil Christian fundis - Jerry Falwell types, to be sure. What would Canadians say about that? Wouldn't CBC have a field day!! Why, they'd be positively drooling!!!!

Really. What an egregious violation of another country's sovereignty!! Of course, I suppose Bushitler's party, and that Christian woman, Sarah Palin, especially, just had to be stopped!! Weapons of mass destruction, those two. I mean look at all the mass graves, political prisoners, huddled and frightened exiles seeking safety in their neighbouring country to the north. How could we not interfere?

Hameed Answers My Question

I mused about funding for the arts in Iraq in a posting yesterday and I determined that I would ask Hameed. Find my question to him at the first link:

10.05.08 - 10:04 pm |Louise

Here is Hameed's response.
==============================
Louise

When the liberation of Kuwait took place at the hands of Prez, Bush senior and the Iraqi army was defeated.

There was a public outcry, but was suppressed violently by Saddam's men including the use of gas against the kurds and the drying of the marshes and the mass killings of the rebels and dissidents.

The people were bewildered why Saddam was kept in his position when he should have been arrested tried for genocide and should have been made to surrender to the Americans. The great Mrs. Thatcher UK PM wanted that and she was over ruled.

To mesmerize the Iraqi people Saddam instituted a monthly pay for all artists and actors and actresses so as to work for him and praise him through the media. Those who did not were either killed, imprisoned without trial, accused of being anti Bath party or sent to mass graves. But all plays were heavily censored and would take for ever to put on a show of any value. The speech was suppressed let alone freedom of speech. People were watched and punished over their dreams?

The poverty of those writers, producers, artists and creative men of vision who yearned for freedom and democracy, and human rights and the rule of Law was apparent and crippling. The majority of rest of the population was very poor too. The money were spent by the very few closer circle and the 170 Extravagant Palaces.

That Salary pay continued after the liberation until today. But it was and still is peanuts, probably 100, 000.00 Iraqi dinars per month, less than $100 dollars- about $3 per Day. It was not enough for one tray of eggs. Today it does not pay for much either.

The government funding such as the Arts Council in UK giving grants does not exist in Iraq, unless I am mistaken.

However, they- the dramatists, have been getting help from us the expatriate Iraqis through personal donations or charity functions. Some serious money such as , payments for heart surgery operations, transport, board and lodgings in India, Jordan, and Lebanon.

This play - was the first to be staged at night on the National Theatre Auditorium in Baghdad, since the liberation, as they were frightened from the Bombers..

When this Play was announced to be staged, a bomber tried to blow up the Theatre building to stop it but the security people closed all the streets leading to it for several miles.

The people the Audience, over around two thousands walked there and filled up the place and paid to enter and watch the play.

It deals with the corrupt officials the kidnappings, the killings and murders and the lack of essential services such as water, electricity, transport, security in a comic way. Hence its popular appeal. [Emphasis added]

I hope this answers your questions.

Kind regards
Hameed Abid | 10.06.08 - 5:11 am |

======================

Wow!! Now if that ain't freedom, I don't know what is.

Saddam Abuse Museum to Open

in Abu Ghraib.

Yes folks. There was far worse torture and abuse in that place under Saddam Hussein than a few stupid American soldiers doing their frat party pranks. And that wasn't the only venue:

Saddam Hussein's crimes against humanity

Saddam's hangman details torture

Saddam's Philippines terror connection

New Video reveals real torture scandal

Mass graves exhumed

Regime of Terror

Ambassadors of terror

Saddam Hussein: Crimes and Human Rights Abuses

Every Once in a While...

...there is a flood of hits on my site from places I'd never expect. This time, they are coming from Venezuela, Panama and Columbia. Who'da thunk? Seems my blog entries from "January, 2009" (http://stubblejumpingredneck.blogspot.com/2009_01_01_archive.html) were posted on a discussion forum, all in Spanish. I have no idea what the subject of the discussion is, but it could be about mass graves. In any case, bienvenido! (Is that Spanish? If so, that's about all the Spanish you'll get from me, I'm afraid. We don't hear that language very much in these here parts. The Spanish I thought I knew - "Via con Dios." - doesn't show up in my translation website.)  Oh.  And "adios amigo!"

One of These Things is Not Like the Others

1. Halabja

"Thousands were killed in 1988 when Iraqi forces bombed the city with mustard gas and nerve agents.

Saddam Hussein's government said the attack was needed to put down insurgents hiding in the city during the bloody Iran-Iraq war. But, evidence emerged that almost all the victims were civilians, most of them women and children."

"The bombing of Halabja was part of a wider campaign of attacks on Iraqi Kurds known as Anfal.

Iraqi Kurdistan Deputy Prime Minister Omar Fatah spoke at the ceremony. He criticized the international community for staying silent at the time of the attack in order to keep their good relations with Saddam Hussein's government.

He says their silence gave the dictator government of Baghdad more power to continue the Anfal operations. He says Saddam's government killed 182,000 Kurds after the Halabja attacks and if the world had stopped them, perhaps the Anfal campaign would not have continued

Hundreds of thousands of Iraqi Kurds were displaced and deported during the Anfal campaign and 4,000 villages were destroyed."

SNIP:

"The Iraqi government approved the execution this month of Saddam's cousin, Ali Hassan al-Majid, better known as Chemical Ali for his role in the gassing of Kurds."

2. "Guantanamo Bay terror suspects to be allowed family phone calls"

3. Abu Ghraib Prisoner Abuse

Maybe I should throw this in for good measure:

4. Mass graves related to Abu Ghraib under Saddam Hussein

Secret Police? In Canada?

Reading Ezra Levant's blog post this morning, I am appalled. Has it really come to this? What's next from these Human Rights thought police? Mass graves?

Not so Fast, Obama

Obama can't withdraw troops before one year unless Iraq agrees

Meanwhile, Saskboy once again demonstrates his usual inanity. He attempted to post this comment:

"If there's one thing Bush taught Americans, it's that the President can do whatever the heck he wants -- Iraqi opinion be damned."

He's clearly suffering from BDS, and since I have far greater respect for Iraqis than that, I will just have to ask him a few questions before I decide whether he is opposed to democracy for Iraq, and therefore not welcome here. So how 'bout it, Saskboy. Which Iraqis are you talking about? This one?



Or did you mean these people, Saskboy?



Or these? (Note that they guy being kissed is an American soldier.)



Or this little one?



Maybe these?



Oh, I know. You meant the ones in mass graves, didn't you:



Yes. That's it. That's what Iraqis want. I mean it certainly wouldn't be the Iraqis who participated in this poll about their upcoming elections.

Own up, Saskboy. You know diddly squat about Iraq and Iraqis. You're like all the other brain dead leftists who have spent the past six years carefully cultivating ever more deeply entrenched BDS, while completely ignoring the real aspirations of Iraq's citizens. I'm sure you'll come up with some addled conspiracy theory about the elections next week, too. They are all Bush's fault, all these elections. Iraqis don't want to choose their governments. Perish the thought.

This is Why

This video, over an hour and a half long, details exactly why I supported the Iraq war and why I will always consider George Bush as a hero.



I don't need no UN resolution to justify it. All I need to know is that among those mass graves, among the bodies that have yet to be identified, there might be two of my ex-husband's cousins, who disappeared and were never seen again.

Right up until the eve of 9/11, the torture continued.


h/t Iraqi Mojo

Good Grief!!

Even Bishop Desmond Tutu suffers BDS and its opposite, the Obamassiah Complex. Funny that he hopes Obama will "be tough on African dictators", but at the same time wants him to apologize to Iraqis for the US being tough on their dictator. I once considered him a hero of mine. Oh well. I still have several others worthy of that distinction.

One of them is Hameed Abid, a lowly engineer, living in exile in Great Britain, and a long-time commenter at Iraq the Model. This is what he had to say in the comments just a little over a month ago:

"One of the regrets is that people writing in this ITM, who could not or would not be in Iraq right now, could not feel and touch the profound changes that have taken place since the liberation of Iraq inside and outside of Iraq.

Iraqis inside and those outside are behaving differently from the pre liberation times.

My own family in Baghdad has changed beyond recogniton from five years ago.

Whilest they were wispering their displeasure at Saddam's regime, in fear, few years ago,some of them ended in the mass graves and eaten up by the acids in the torture chambers, and shot at point blanc range, now they shout their approvals for their freedom and democracy and their ability to practice their brands of religions without fear or intimidatins.

The boys - nephews and nieces sons and have married several wives from the other families and religions and the other Iraqis not Arabs/Muslims.

All thanks to the American and coaltion soldiers.

The Bush/Blair decision to go to war on Iraq with, or without whatever and pretext of WMD or other reasons or excuses, will be seen - Historically-as one of the most far sighted decisions taken by a USA/UK leaders in favour of the promotion and support of freedom and democracy for centuries past present and the future.

The majority of the Iraqi people will forever, be grateful to Bush and the American soldiers and their Coaltion Colleagues for what they achieved so far in Iraq.

There are so many unseen benefits, they are too numerous to mention."

So, Mr. Tutu. Take that and shove it where the sun don't shine. I hope Obama comes down hard on African dictators, too. But don't forget what George W. Bush did for Africa, you ungrateful wretch.

Tony Blair

Still the greatest Prime Minister since Maggie Thatcher.

And still more mass graves.

Yup. The wrong war for the wrong reasons.

Lefties. I just don't understand 'em.

Alright Iraq!!

Iraqi Leader Tries to Isolate Sadrists

"Iraq's prime minister got a show of support from political leaders of both Muslim sects on Thursday as he moved to isolate anti-U.S. Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and his followers."

[snip]

"Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, himself a Shiite, convened the meeting of the main political blocs to discuss the Iraqi-led crackdown on militias that began March 25 in the southern city of Basra, triggering the current crisis.

But the notable absence of the Sadrists signaled that al-Maliki was making good on a threat to try to isolate the movement politically if its Mahdi Army militia is not disbanded."

[snip]

"A marked reduction in casualty rates began around September 2007, and daily averages continued to decline throughout the rest of that year. However, since reaching a low this past January of 20 Iraqis killed per day, casualty levels have once again started to rise, with 26 killed per day in February and 41 per day in March, an Associated Press tally showed."

[snip]

"The clearing of former insurgent strongholds also has led to the increasing discovery of mass graves. More than 30 bodies believed to have been buried for more than a year were unearthed Thursday by Iraqi troops at a house south of Baghdad, the military announced.

The killing of the American soldier pushed the average U.S. death rate to 1.8 per day so far in April, compared with 1.2 per day last month, according to the AP tally."

[snip]

"But prominent Sunni politician Adnan al-Dulaimi, who leads the largest Sunni bloc in parliament, emerged from Thursday's meeting to say the operation was "a courageous step."

"We stand beside this government and support it. It was a good and blessed step to prevent militias in all provinces," al-Dulaimi said, adding his Accordance Front would begin discussions soon on ending its Cabinet boycott."

Never mind all the non-sense about death rates. Apparently AP doesn't realize that when a battle ensues, death rates rise. In between battles, they fall. This is really, really good news. Once the Sadrists are defeated, look for Iraq to soar. Maliki finally developed some balls. Must be that election that's coming.

Next on the agenda: Iran

Well, Well, Well

Sometimes the New York Times holds its editorially slanted nose and allows the publication of an article like this:

A Vote of Thanks by Hussein Abdul Hussein

"“Here is another ballot, go vote again and let him take your picture,” Nabil al-Janabi, the Iraqi chargé d'affaires in Beirut, said while handing me a paper on the Day of the Great Crawl, when we — Iraqis at home and abroad — were required to vote for the only presidential candidate, Saddam Hussein."

[---]

"On Sunday, I will be driving to Arlington, Virginia, to vote for Iraq’s second post-Saddam Parliament. This time I have a choice of more than 6,000 candidates.

The election is the fifth national vote since 2005, a year in which Iraqis voted for a National Assembly, then approved the Constitution, and then elected their first Parliament. Last year we voted in provincial elections."

[---]

"Iraqis realize that their democracy is not the best, but they also know that practice makes perfect.

Since 2002 Iraqi elections have been evolving. While still not perfect, democracy is striking root.

Meanwhile, what Iraqis like me have learned is that transformation from autocracy to democracy would not have been possible without the 4,700 brave American and allied servicemen and women who lost their lives, and the many others who were wounded, for the sake of Iraq’s freedom.

Families of these heroes should know that many of us are grateful to their sons and daughters, and to the United States and its allies at large, even if they do not hear thank you often from Iraq or its leaders.

It is on days like Sunday that these sacrifices most strongly comes to Iraqi minds."

Of course, now that The One has taken responsibility for victory in Iraq, the New York Times has to speak to a different tune.

Not so with Balbulican, though, that lover of autocracy and author of this nasty missive:

"Who issues threats of consequences better that you do – huh? Nobody, thats who….. and remember, no matter what anyone says you’ve always got the invasion and occupation of Iraq to be proud of, nobody can ever take that away from you can they?"

So, my advice to you, Balb pal, is don't read this New York Times article. It may cause such severe cognitive dissonance that all that hot air between your ears will expand and the empty shell that surrounds it will explode.

However, you might want to read the original article I linked to here.

And try this one, too, from which I have lifted the few paragraphs below (emphasis mine). Note, dear Balbulican, that this piece was published in 2002, before the Americans and their many, many allies invaded Iraq, you know, the time during which the Americans offered the Butcher of Baghdad to opportunity to flee the country to find safe harbour somewhere else, an offer he jokingly refused, to his everlasting sorrow, saying only if he could take the instructions for producing WMD with him, plus $1bn, and which not even the Arab League could satisfactorily arrange:

"Since the early 1990s, the Iraqi government has relied upon a policy of deliberate expulsion of people from their homes in order to stamp out and punish political opposition and seize oil-rich areas and valuable land. In the north, there have been systematic efforts to ‘Arabise’ the predominantly Kurdish districts of Kirkuk, Khanaqin and Sinjar. To secure control of this strategically and economically vital oil-rich region, the government expelled Kurds, Assyrians and Turkmans – sometimes entire communities – from the cities and surrounding areas. In the south, Baghdad has carried out campaigns of suppression against the Marsh Arabs and other Shi’a, destroying villages and draining marshlands to hasten depopulation. Hundreds of thousands of IDPs remain without basic resources. There are well over a million internally displaced persons in Iraq, with an estimated three quarters of a million in northern Iraq alone.

In addition, over the last decade, between 1 and 2 million Iraqis are estimated to have fled Iraq. Most live in countries bordering Iraq or in the region, the largest numbers, over 250,000 in Jordan, 200,000 in Iran, and 40,000 in Syria. There are also tens of thousands of Iraqis who live in Lebanon and Turkey. The Iraqis are in addition to the huge numbers of Palestinians who live in Jordan, Lebanon and Syria and the Afghans and other refugees living in Iran and Turkey.

Assistance to refugees in these countries does not meet minimum international standards. In some cases, refugees’ freedom of movement is severely restricted; they are vulnerable to police harassment, beatings, sexual violence, extortion, arrest, detention and possible deportation; they cannot return home for fear of punishment; their chances of being offered resettlement in the US, Canada, Australia or Europe are extremely slim; they cannot integrate with local populations in the Middle East; they are refused permission to work; they live in limbo. It is not surprising that rather than remain in limbo many Iraqis choose to put their lives and the lives of their families at risk by engaging the services of human smugglers in order to try to reach the shores of Western countries to apply for asylum. The lack of safe refuge in the region, therefore, contributes to the so-called asylum crisis in Europe and elsewhere.

Outside of the Middle East, the number of Iraqis seeking asylum in the West has increased steadily in recent years. Between 1989 and the end of 2001, 277,500 Iraqis applied for asylum in western countries, mostly in Europe. Of these, the largest numbers went to Germany (84,500), followed by the Netherlands (40,900), Sweden (36,800) and the United Kingdom (23,800. The numbers of arrivals of Iraqis in Europe have continued to rise in recent years but the pattern of where Iraqis apply for asylum has changed. While Germany (37,900) continued to receive the largest number of Iraqi asylum seekers between 1999 and the end of 2001, the United Kingdom (15,700) overtook other EU countries in numbers of Iraqi asylum applicants. Iraqis are now the largest national group of asylum seekers in Europe and the UK. The alarming size of Iraq’s populations of internally displaced people, refugees and asylum seekers in the West underscore the fact that, even without a war, there already exists a world-wide Iraqi refugee crisis."

It stands to reason that during a war, the number of people seeking asylum will skyrocket, but only a blithering fool will persist in believing that Saddam Hussein's brutal rule did not produce a record number of asylum seekers before those dastardly Americans invaded. Yes. It got worse before it got better, but it is better - far better, and that is a colossal understatement.

Oh, and lest I forget, that doesn't include the estimated 600,000 Iraqis that were killed by Saddam Hussein during his reign of terror buried in both regular cemeteries and in mass graves, and they are still finding new ones. Nor are we talking about the horrific torture that took place in the Abu Ghraib prison under Saddam's orders. We're only talking about the ones that were lucky enough to escape the country.

So Balb, if you haven't done so already, I would highly recommend you read the Euston Manifesto, a position paper produced by prominent leftists, those who still have a modicum of principle and humanity in their souls. Even the prominent British leftist, William Shawcross, supported the war, much to the chagrin of his fellow leftists, and had this to say about Iraq's most recent election:

"...the transformation is extraordinary. The give and take of politics now exists in a country which, under Saddam, was described as “a concentration camp above ground and a mass grave beneath”".

Not to mention that booze soaked leftist icon and hero of mine, Christopher Hitchens.

You'll find a link to the Euston Manifesto in the sidebar right here at Stubble Jumping Redneck, under the heading "Good Stuff". Hurry, now. Before your head explodes.

Over to you.

More Idiocy Exposed

Don't be surprised if I expend more than a few pixels deflating the idiocy of the pseudo-left's continuous droning on and on about that war criminal, George Bush. I expect the crescendo of idiotic blather will rise ever higher until Dubya leaves town on October 22, or so. So here's one.

Over at Celestial Junk I responded to a comment posted by a Bush-Hitler-bot by referring, among other things, to UN Human Rights Special Rapporteur Max van der Stoel's reference to Saddam Hussein's regime and how Chretien's decision to force Canada to sit on our collective asses during the war to oust that monster cost us a lot of respect and stature on the international stage. As an aside, the Liberal Party's decades long policy of forced chronic starvation with respect to funding our armed forces had something to do with it as well.

Prior to posting the comment at C-Junk's blog, I did a quick Google search on Max van der Stoel and the movement started by Ann Clwyd in Britain to indict Saddam Hussein and bring him before an international court for crimes against humanity. Anyway, one of the hits retrieved in that search was this site:

Why hasn't Saddam Hussein been indicted?

This article draws upon Ms Clwyd's knowledge of human rights abuses and lays out a lot of information revealing the true nature of the Ba'athist regime. For example:

"Twenty-five years ago, while living in Cardiff, she befriended Iraqi and Kurdish students, and found it hard to believe their grim reports of life under Saddam Hussein. Evidence was plentiful for those who wished to find it however, and once elected MP for Cynon Valley (in Wales) in 1984, she also became chair of the Campaign Against Repression and for Democratic Rights in Iraq (CARDRI): ‘Even then, in the mid-1980s, I only knew the first name of CARDRI’s secretary, because people were living in such fear…. Isn’t it amazing that they were so afraid of people knowing their whereabouts and their surnames – people like us who were there to highlight the human rights abuses in their country?’"

and this:

"‘A lot of guff is talked about the effect of sanctions. There is a great deal of inaccurate information about it. We took our evidence from a wide range of people, and the conclusion we came to was that Saddam Hussein was primarily responsible for the suffering of his own people. You only have to look at what happened in the north of Iraq, in Kurdistan, where they suffer a double set of sanctions, but with far less disastrous results: the same sanctions apply, and Saddam Hussein’s sanctions apply there as well….’"

But then we learn this:

"Clwyd views the branding of Hussein and his regime as international war criminals as a third way between appeasement and military action. ‘If you want regime change, then do it through using international law, rather than by war,’ she says. ‘(Slobodan) Milosevic was indicted while he was head of state, and nobody thought that two years later, he’d be sitting before the Hague tribunal. It discredited him, and once you discredit their power base, things happen.’

At the time, a lot of people thought that indicting Milosevic was just a sideshow. ‘When Americans talk about regime change – as they do all the time now – they mean post-war. But I’m talking about regime change pre-war. On the evidence of war crimes, crimes against humanity, which we have got against leading members of Hussein’s regime, it is possible to indict them as Milosevic was indicted, which led directly to the crumbling of that regime.’"

I beg your pardon, Ms Clwyd???!! If it were not for the war in the former Yugoslavia, do you really think that Milosevic would have been captured and brought to justice? That war set up the structure of conditions that enabled his arrest. And anyone with even an inkling of knowledge about Saddam Hussein's multi-layered security apparatus would just laugh at you for thinking that someone could just walk up to him, handcuff him and send him off to Europe or somewhere to be tried. Anyone who even talked about attempting such action would have been immediately arrested and treated to one or more of the vast array of human rights violation techniques for which Hussein's layers of security apparatus goons were infamous.

The article also draws parallels between the potential prosecution of Saddam Hussein and that of ex-Chilean dictator, Augusto Pinochet. Well, I beg your pardon, again (eyes rolling). Pinochet was indeed a monster but nowhere close to the degree that Saddam Hussein was. He was also the "ex-president", ie. no longer in control of the machinery of oppression in his native country, nor, consequently, capable of horrific reprisals against anyone who might have tried to arrest him. What a pathetic joke!!

No, the evidence collected via Ms Clwyd's initiative was useful in as much as it better made the case for war which was already very, very strong, but there is no way on God's green earth that Saddam Hussein would have been brought to justice without a war, the goal of which was to topple him and end the misery of the long suffering Iraqi people. If it hadn't been for the US led war and the courage of one George W. Bush, Saddam Hussein would still be in power, his people would still be piling up in mass graves with bullets in the backs of their heads and their families forced to pay for the bullets, among a full panoply of other atrocities. George Bush is no war criminal. He is a liberator and when the leftist idiocy is finally exposed under the lens of history, we will all know this.

Afghanistan and the Euston Manifesto

Given the recent release of the report from the Independent Panel on Canada's Future Role in Afghanistan and ongoing shenanigans in Ottawa about it, I think a revisit to the Euston Manifesto is highly apropos.

The original Euston Manifesto has been around for nearly two years. When it was released, it felt like a breath of fresh air blowing in from the left. There were those on the left who actually took issue with the tacit support of Islamofascism and regimes like Ba'athist Iraq from those in their own political camp and, more astoundingly, took the courage to go public with their disaffection.

Although as a whole, this group of lefties were no different than most, in that they tended to project of themselves as an uptight, overtly judgmental, ideologically closed bunch, it was good to see them breaking ranks, rather than sticking to the left's untenable position of blaming America and/or Bush for everything wrong with the world. Not surprisingly, then, I found the response from the American left especially heartening.

American Liberalism and the Euston Manifesto

"Now we confront the issue of how to respond to radical Islamism. Some of us view this ideology and its political results as the third major form of totalitarian ideology of the last century, after fascism and Nazism, on the one hand, and Communism, on the other. Others regard it as having a history in the Arab and Islamic world that eludes the label of totalitarianism. We all agree however that it fosters dictatorship, terror, anti-Semitism and the oppression of women. We reject its subordination of politics to the dictates of religious fundamentalists as well as its contempt for the role of individual autonomy and rationality in politics, a rejection not seen on this scale in world politics since the 1940s. We understand that the United States must continue to take the lead with our allies in confronting this danger." (emphasis added)

[snip]

"We reject the now ossified and unproductive political polarization of American politics rooted as it is in the conflicts of the 1960s, not the first decade of this century. We are frustrated in the choice between conservative governance that thwarts much needed reforms at home, on the one hand, and a liberalism which has great difficulty accepting the projection of American power abroad, on the other. The long era of Republican ascendancy may very well be coming to an end. If and when it does, we seek a renewed and reinvigorated American liberalism, one that is up to the task of fighting and winning the struggle of free and democratic societies against Islamic extremism and the terror it produces." (emphasis added)

Equally refreshing, the Canadian chapter also took a principled stand on Afghanistan, rather than pandering to the hate-anyone-further-to-the-right meme that fills the speaking notes customarily used by the Canadian left:

"We recognize the conflict in Afghanistan as a liberation struggle, waged by the Afghan people and their allies, against oppression, against obscurantism, illiteracy, and the most brutal forms of misogyny. It is a fight for democracy, and for peace, order, and good government. It is also a struggle waged by the sovereign Government of Afghanistan, a member state of the United Nations, against illegal armed groups that seek to overturn the democratic will of the Afghan people." (emphasis added)

This little gem from the Euston Manifesto Canada's blog speaks volumes:

"On April 13th, 2006 at CAW Local 636, in Woodstock, Ontario, I attended a speech in given by Allan Slater, a Christian Brother who had spent some time in Iraq, which included the period that four of his compatriots were being held hostage. One aspect of his stay there impressed me greatly: The Christian Brothers would meet with leaders from different communities and help them work out their differences and avoid conflict.

Apparently the US and British forces had no problem with the activities of the Christian Brothers, Allan commented that they were only concerned for their safety. But the foreign mecenaries who came to fight in the name of Islam had a big problem with them. The Christian Brothers were presented with the choice: flee or die.

Allan did not offer any solutions to the conflicts in the Balkans, Iraq, Darfur, Haiti, Afganistan or Zimbabwe. As soon as bullets start flying towards them, the Christian Brothers have only one solution: leave. Their tactics may help to promote democracy and human rights but they are incapable of assisting the democratically elected government of Iraq defeat the Fascists currently terrorizing the people." (emphasis added)

Those of you who remember the Christian Brothers episode in Iraq may have a variety of views about that group, of course. But for me, I thought then and I maintain now that like all pacifists, they are incorrigible idiots whose behavior plays directly into the hands of the most egregious hate-mongering zealots on the planet. Their foolish antics are responsible for the death of many, many innocents in Iraq and elsewhere.

I fail, also, to see much difference between them and folks like Taliban Jack and his minions across this country who think all we have to do is negotiate. These folks are the first to point an accusing finger at previous American administrations' friendly dealings with various despots, afterall, but now that the winds have changed, it is they who want to shake hands with villany.

As the airways fill with the usual pre-election-obsessive-hype-disorder, both in the United States and here in Canada, we would do well to reflect on the wording of the original Manifesto, for it seems the left never really took its "Statement of Principles" #2 to heart, vis:

"No apology for tyranny:

"We decline to make excuses for, to indulgently "understand", reactionary regimes and movements for which democracy is a hated enemy — regimes that oppress their own peoples and movements that aspire to do so. We draw a firm line between ourselves and those left-liberal voices today quick to offer an apologetic explanation for such political forces". (emphasis added)

Thankfully, neither Taliban Jack, nor his party, will ever achieve anything close even to minority government status in Ottawa. All they will ever be able to do is annoy us and provide a legitimate avenue for the expression of naive ideologies. Elsewhere in the world these ideologies would leave them languishing in jails or worse, or, with the reins of power in their hands, ordering others to dig the mass graves in order to make more room in the existing jails.