Tim Blair

I continue to seek God's forgiveness for my complicity ...in not championing the cause of millions of murdered and oppressed Iraqis over the years, before the Yanks had the guts to do it for me.

"Thank God"

You call Bush - God?
I admit that I support the Prez rather strongly, but even I would not go that far...

Holy crap, the US has lost the endorsement of the Anglican Church, all is lost... what? It wasn't the whole church, just one guy?

Oh, all right then. Maybe we can salvage the situation and turn a more or less functonal Iraq over to its citizens anyway. Who may then choose either to run it themselves or have some dictator in a large totalitarian hat murder them instead. Because as Jonh Kerry says, whether they have democracy or not isn't as important as whether Iraq is stable.

Like it was when Saddam had it.

By the way, why do you Aussies still call it the "Anglican" Church? We have it here in the states, but it's known as the... ummm, I think the Left Wing Dipnuts. Maybe you should consider reconfiguring it, make it more Down Under.

Bishop Frame writes: "What is worse, men and women from a nation claiming to be civilised have shown they are just as capable of the barbarism that characterised Saddam's Baathist regime ..."

Yes. People everywhere since Eden are fallen and depraved, equally capable of barbarism. We Americans are not fundamentally better people than anyone else (nor do many of us think we are, despite the accusations of arrogance). But we do have better *institutions* than most nations in the world--and that was the real point of this war: to bring the institutions of liberty, the rule of law and representative government to the Iraqi people and the rest of the Arab world. It is these institutions, not the inclinations or sensibilities of individuals, that promote civilized behavior and constitute the best hope for mankind until the return of our Savior. Dr. Frame's rejection of the war now only shows that he never understood it's true justification to begin with.

Until every square inch of Iraq and its neighbours has been thoroughly searched, I will continue to believe that Saddam Hussein possesed weapons of mass destruction.

It wasn't up to the coalition to prove their existence anyway. Hussein was supposed to prove that he didn't have any and he couldn't.

Therefore the invasion was legally justified and in full accordance with Christ knows how many U.N resolutions. Not that they're worth anything besides being used as toilet paper in the above mentioned dysentry ward.

And finally, the war was fully justified on moral grounds. But if you haven't figured that out by now then you never will.

Do we remember where the Iraqi air force was? Hidden and buried under sand. There are alot of places to hide things in a sandbox the size of california.

well put, nathan

Nathan, that is exactly the point that the leftoids (whose roster now includes Bishop "Loser" Frame) miss. No, actually they ignore it, for the sake of whatever "higher" ideals they may seek to reach in their own bumbling fashion.

TO: Tim Blair
RE: A Parallel 'Universe'

I was having a similar discussion with an old friend of mine who is a Nam-era anarchist. He was all up in arms about the lack of evidence of WMDs IN Iraq. It was a furious exchange of e-mails for seven days. [Note: I've got a new meaning for Seven Days in May.]

Then, the news of the binary chemical munition attack on a US convory broke.

The engage, ceased. Now, when I discuss things with him, there is no mention of the WMDs thing. I didn't even need to mention the UN's recent revelation about how WMD parts had been shipped off to other countries. He's convinced.

I wonder why your "Man of God" is so ignorant. Or maybe it's something else. Those guys in 'high' places tend to be more political than anything else.

Regards,

Chuck(le)

People can bail out all they want. I'm quite sure history will show who was right and who was wrong. Just like WWII and just like the Cold war.

I'm comfortable in saying I supported this war 100% at the beginning, and I support it 100% now.

The bishops in the Anglican Church do have a lot to apologize for, but support for the demise of Saddam's regime would seem to me to be low on the list.

You'd think God would have filled the guy in, he is a Bishop, after all. Remember, it only took a few hundred years for the Pope to acknowledge Galileo and his crazy "gravity" ideas.

OK reality check...rationales for the invasion of Iraq -

WMD's - The UN inspectors stated that Iraq did not possess WMD's before the invasion and this has been subsequently confirmed. Old chemical battle field weapons do not count. If possession of WMD is a reason for war why not invade North Korea - they admit they have them!

Terrorism - The 9/11 Commission has shown that there was no link between Saddam and any terrorist attack on the US.

Human rights - This reason was not highlighted by the Bush regime. In fact none of you conservative dips give a damn about the human rights of foreigners. If human rights abuse is a reason to go to war then why hasn't the U.S. invaded China/Pakistan/Cuba/Saudi Arabia etc etc. Why aren't you pushing to stop killing in Sudan? Why Iraq? Why now? I've never seen such a quick conversion to human rights as when the right-wing realised there were no WMDs in Iraq.

Tim - the photos may have been taken on one day but torturing of prisoners and breaching the Geneva Convention seems to have been Bush administration policy for some time now. I wonder how many of those mass-graves they found contain Kurds encouraged to rise up against Saddam in Gulf War 1 and then left high and dry by the U.S. (no invasion of Iraq necessary then apparently).

I'm not saying the removal of Saddam is not a good thing for the Iraqi people - it is. But there is a big difference doing a good thing and doing the right thing.

The Framer's an Anglican; of course he's going to drive on both sides of the road. It's how those people do theology. "Unity in diversity" is the Episcopal/Anglican term and it means that if people don't like your principles, change them to what people do like.

First, all who were involved with the 'events' that took place in Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad must be punished.

Second, why is this viewed as the worst thing any civilized nation has ever dreamed of? Get real. It was bad, but it was not anywhere near the torture that others have inflicted.

do-baman

Let me get this straight, it was a good thing to remove saddam,
but it wasn't the right thing, correct? This argues that saddam
shouldn't have been removed, it was the wrong thing to remove him, correct?
We shouldn't have done the good thing, right?
This is what you're saying, isn't it?

300,000 murdered by Saddam.

WMDs used against Kurds, leaving their streets strewn with the little corpses of children - their mothers arms still around them. Piles of them thrown into utilities to be taken off fpr burial.

These facts are not disputed.

Personally, I couldn't give a rat's arse about Abu Ghraib or the felicitously well-timed dispersal of WMD before the war began.

This Right Reverend moron should beg God's forgiveness for his casual indifference to evil. He should also heed Our Lord's warning about what God's justice has in store for those who would harm his little ones. Or morally wimp out like Judas before the PC cries of the Bush-bashing Sanhedrin.

300,000 murdered by Saddam.

CurrencyLad

Only those killed by Americans - even accidentally - count. When was the last time anybody heard a leftie complaining about death and torture in N. Korea?

And when that regime finally falls, we will find that the succession of Dear Leaders managed to create such a hell on Earth over there that Saddam’s atrocities will pale in comparison.

Then again, there will be lots of people who will deny that anything untoward happened there, or will say that even if some people were killed you cannot make omelet without breaking eggs etc….And of course, none of those bad things would have happened without the US embargo. So it will be our fault anyway.

I kind of got used to it by now.

do-baman

"The UN inspectors stated that Iraq did not possess WMD's before the invasion"

No they didn't ,they waffled.

"The UN inspectors stated they could not confirm that Iraq did not possess WMD's before the invasion"

Tim, to imply that these abuses occurred only in one day and then refer to a news article that implies the same thing is to pull the wool over your head and those of your readers. Even the article you quote starts off saying that "many of the WORST abuses" happened at that time. Selective commenting on your part only promotes an obvious attempt to mislead your readers. Anyone can do a news search on the same Yahoo news website you use and find all manner of stories that show the abuse was practiced for far longer than just on a single day. As an example:

http://au.news.yahoo.com/040520/2/p3cw.html

'gaz', you said: "It wasn't up to the coalition to prove their existence anyway. Hussein was supposed to prove that he didn't have any and he couldn't."

So therefore, if there are no WMDs and there remains an inability to prove they don't exist (because they don't exist!), then war is justified. So you could effectively say that I, as your neighbour for example, could have stolen $100 of your money, and if I can't prove I didn't steal it, then you are justified in invading my house and taking what you want.

That's absolutely the most flawed argument I have ever seen for justifying illegal invasions. If I don't have it, that means I actually must have it and therefore I need to be invaded? Stupidity.

'Mike.H', your logic is about as illogical as George Bush's when he said "those who aren't with us are obviously against us." Removing Saddam Hussein would have been a good thing, but the way it was done was the wrong thing. America supported an anti-Saddam insurgency in 1991, offering their support to Iraqis to rise up against Saddam. This was the right thing to do, empowering the locals to take a stand and, with support, do what was right for themselves and their country and remove Saddam.

However, the pattern of wrong things being done began back then, when suddenly all support was removed. All those who had risen up against Saddam suddenly had no support, and they were killed. Their bodies fill those graves, because America refused to support them against Saddam. Instead, America then engaged in 10+ years of economic sanctions and continuous bombings of civilians, with many thousands of Iraqi civilians killed as a result. And then we had Gulf War 2, again killing many thousands of Iraqi civilians in an alleged attempt to save the Iraqi people from death at Saddam's hands - better to die at America's hands instead?

'CurrencyLad', you said: "300,000 murdered by Saddam.

WMDs used against Kurds, leaving their streets strewn with the little corpses of children - their mothers arms still around them. Piles of them thrown into utilities to be taken off fpr burial.

These facts are not disputed."

I dispute your facts.

I don't know where you get your figures from, but your figure of 300,000 is as misleading as Tim's arguments are. All information available about the deaths of the Kurds at the hands of Iraq all imply many hundreds of thousands were killed, so I can't blame you for accepting conjecture, when all that's provided is conjecture laced as truth.

However, according to most information provided, while they imply hundreds of thousands killed, all they talk about as an example is a village of 5,000 that were killed. The Human Rights Watch website has a human rights report for Iraq in 1990. It says:

"Chemicals weapons slaughter. On April 15-16, 1987, March 16-17, and August 25-27, 1988, dozens of villages in Kurdish areas of Iraq were decimated by chemical weapons delivered by aerial bombardment. The US State Department reckoned the death toll in the thousands. Many of the male victims were Pesh Merga (Kurdish nationalist) guerrillas. However, investigations by the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee concluded that those clearly hors de combat -- women, children, the aged and the infirm -- comprised the overwhelming majority of victims. Well over 140,000 Kurds were forced to flee to neighboring Iran and Turkey, abandoning their possessions."

I do not condone the use of chemical weapons, but consider the circumstances. Iraq (Saddam) was acting to prevent an Iranian-supported attack against Iraq by the Kurds. And due to American fear of the Iranians, America was supporting Iraq in its actions against Iran, and subsequently against the Kurds that were supported by Iran. During the times that Iraq was engaging in chemical attacks against Kurds, it was still receiving support for its actions from America. If America supports Iraq, and Iraq uses chemical weapons, and America does nothing about it, it's easy to see how Saddam can deduce that his use of chemical weapons is also supported by America.

I think Saddam should have certainly been removed, but it could have happened in 1991 with Americans supporting the Iraqi uprising then. Instead, we have what we see today.

I'm sorry this has been so long, but I felt it worth pointing out a few things to you all.

Alan

It was written in the cease fire agreement and UN resolutions that it was up to Saddam to prove he had disposed of his WMD. The figure of 300,000 is the accumulation of Saddam’s torture his withholding medical and food supplies over the period of 12 years. If that was "conjecture" it is coming from groups like Human Rights Watch. Have they been lying?

Alan, I don't think you'll find anyone here who might argue against the more desirious effect of toppling Saddam in 1991.

It would have meant no twelve years of sanctions, crippling the country and enriching Saddam, and no UN corruption.

However, such an event would not have occured back then due to many factors, including

A) The adherence to a UN mandate
b) The inclusion of Saudi Arabia in the anti-Iraq coalition
c) "Realists" directing foreign policy.

I imagine many of the problems occuring now would have occured in 1991 as well.

Those WMDs. Timbo like most other of the pro-war lobby could never specify the specific WMDs Iraq possessed that 'threatened' other nations.

Hussein only used 'WMDs' against the Kurds where cannisters were primarily shot from helicopters and artillery shells were used against Iran.
This latter tactic proved so decisive that Huseein wanted peace as quickly as possible. If the mad mullahs of Iran had wished to send more tropps to be killed against Iraq they could have taken Iraq.

So Timbo can't specifiy what WMDs had,
We know from the 9/11 commision there was no collaboration with AQ.

Iraq couldn't threaten any other nation.

And Timbo just can't tell us why Iraq rated ahead of North Korea, Sudan, Zimbwawe or even which nation is next to be 'freed'.

Never mind it is interesting to see Tim change his mind on the reasons for the invasion at the same time George W does.

Hey Homer, wake up and smell the sarin.

North Korea is a very different situation to Iraq.
Saddam was considered a threat to those around him, and he was more likely to be willing to collaborate with terrorists and terrorist organisations than the norks. He used WMD's, and never produced evidence that they had been destroyed, the US and many other nations beleived he posed a threat to them and the world.
North Korea has a very different mindset, they are, and have been, paranoid about the outside world for a long time. The missile tests they conducted were a muscle flexing exercise on their behalf. A sort of make themseleves bigger and scarier than they are, kind of tactic.
The anti-western part of the arab world attempts to gain the moral high ground in the worlds media and portray themselves as the poor widdle victim, the norks dont, they're just anti-everyone that isnt them. As I said, paranoid.
Thus, the manner in which the Norks (and Mugabe etc) should be dealt with is different and war with them will be a last resort, whereas Saddam was considered a more imminent threat.
Thats the non-humanitarian reason for going to war in Iraq, so dont give this we-didnt-attack-NorthKorea/Zimabawe/whoever arguement as proof that the US did it for some other ulterior motives.
North Korea/Zimbabwe/Whoever are all very different situations than Iraq

Did anyone watch the doco about Uday & Qusay on the History Channel last night? WMD aside, I think getting rid of the Baathist regime alone was worth the action taken by the Coalition.

If I were an olympic athelete competing against Iraq, I would've let them win gladly knowing the alternative was jail, torture or execution.

Good riddance to all the Baathist scum.

Maybe Bishop Flip Flop should've taken a peek.

Alan:

My reference to the 300,000 figure and the Kurds were broken into two points for a reason. I didn't put a figure on the number of Kurds killed. I said 300,000 in toto were murdered by Saddam. That is, 300,000 Iraqis. What percentage of that figure consists of Kurds I did not say.

Homer Paxton wrote:

"Hussein only used 'WMDs' against the Kurds where cannisters were primarily shot from helicopters and artillery shells were used against Iran."

Phew. That's alright then. They were only wasted en masse by chopper-delivered cannisters people! It's not, like, they were Enola Gayed or anything.

He goes on:

"And Timbo just can't tell us why Iraq rated ahead of North Korea, Sudan, Zimbwawe or even which nation is next to be 'freed'."

It rated ahead because the UN (including France and Germany, by the way) passed resolutions threatening military measures if Iraq did not comply with verification procedures. Iraq didn't comply, Saddam betting the ranch on US inaction. Oops.

Campaign for similar resolutions against the other countries you mentioned Homer and, hey, I'll support the overthrow of their governments too. Gladly.

currencylad is misleading.
I talked of cannisters being shot at Kurds only in the context of specific WMDs Iraq have had.
I am sorry to tell you this my friend but cannisters shot from helicopters do not threaten any country.

Again intalking about why Iraq was invaded I was talking of Timbo's 53rd reason for invasion ie the moral imperative.
Actually if you look closely at the UN resolution it did not threaten military intervention but never let the facts get in the way of a good theory.

Any idea where we can send the piss-wit an e-mail?

And I love "full of it as a dysentry ward toilet."!

Tricia01,

I watched the doco last night and it was a sobering reminder of how evil Saddy and Sons Murder Inc were. Not just evil in a 'I wear bad berets at a jaunty angle' way but pure evil.

Seeing those families sob over the remains of their families. Particularly the man who lost five of his brothers, murdered by Uday And Qusay, and then was CHARGED by the brothers for the cost of the bullets. Totally heartbreaking.

And totally reinforced my belief that, regardless of US motives, it's good Saddy is gone.

Alan,

Just a word of encouragement.

You're response was remarkable in this forum, admittedly I've got better things to do than lurk on this forum continually and read every article but on the regular sample I do, this stood out for a refreshing change of logic and reason. Thank you.
It's a lot better than the usual ad-hominem attacks, appeals to emotion and exaggerated facts that the regulars put out, certainly better than I could have done. Mind you, the regulars on this forum stand out as intellectual giants compared with the forum poster in something like www.frontpagemag.com.
Over all, it's nearly, but not quite an impervious chain of logic you've constructed.
To be balanced though, RickoR came up with a good refute to your argument which was the 'we-didnt-attack-etc' point. He shot and scored (one point only, but a good one).
This small item of nit picking though cannot disprove and refute the weight of your logic, but it might be worth googling for 'fallacious arguments' and proofing your copy with these guidelines before posting, it's already great, but needs to be bombproof to get through the blairophiles on the forum.

bs

Head in the clouds no-hoper'

Or as Steve Skubina would put it,

he's a Down-Under Dip-Nut

Homer:

From Resolution 1441:

Recognizing the threat Iraq’s non-compliance with Council resolutions and proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and long-range missiles poses to international peace and security...

Recalling that its resolution 678 (1990) authorized Member States to use all necessary means to uphold and implement its resolution 660 (1990) of 2 August 1990 and all relevant resolutions subsequent to resolution 660 (1990) and to restore international peace and security in the area...

These were among the resolution's preambles. Then, on to potential consequences. The signatories to the resolution stated that the UN:

2. Decides, while acknowledging paragraph 1 above, to afford Iraq, by this resolution, a final opportunity to comply with its disarmament obligations under relevant resolutions of the Council; and accordingly decides to set up an enhanced inspection regime with the aim of bringing to full and verified completion the disarmament process established by resolution 687 (1991) and subsequent resolutions of the Council;

13. Recalls, in that context, that the Council has repeatedly warned Iraq that it will face serious consequences as a result of its continued violations of its obligations...

Who's being misleading on a, yes, Homeric scale?

Homer also said:

I am sorry to tell you this my friend but cannisters shot from helicopters do not threaten any country.

They do (and did) threaten thousands of lives, though, Homer. And what Saddam had done to the Kurds was, without question, moral context for the internationally held suspicions about the Iraqi dictator's intentions and bona fides. Therefore, the Kurdish question is not a moral sideshow to, but a profoundly cogent and constitutive dimension of, the action taken by the Coalition.

That such a morally compelling component of the case against Saddam was not formally considered material to the pressure the international community sought to place on his regime was (and is) a disgraceful indictment of Kofi Annan's UN.

That the Coalition acted anyway, is - for the modern era - one of the proudest acts of forthright and independent recognition of the often superior quality of moral, over against merely legalistic, justification for corrective action in international affairs.

In the modern era, suffragettes/feminists and figures like Ghandi, Dr King, the Freedom Riders and many others valued the moral over black letter law. This makes the left's anal obsession with the various placita of arcane UN resolutions all the more pathetic.

The words of Democratic Senator Tom Daschle seem relevant here. This is what he said at a news conference on 11 February 1998 when President Clinton was ratcheting up support for a possible attack on Iraq:

Look, we have exhausted virtually all our diplomatic effort to get the Iraqis to comply with their own agreements and with international law. Given that, what other option is there but to force them to do so? That's what they're saying. This is the key question. And the answer is we don't have another option. We have got to force them to comply militarily.

Why, then, does the left persist with what, in essence, is a David Irving-like holocaust denial?

A US Founding Father provides a possible answer:

Men often oppose a thing merely because they have no agency in planning it, or because it may have been planned by those whom they dislike.

- Alexander Hamilton

bemused spetator:

Don't be such a jessie. You're supporting someone who writes, apparently without any outward attempt at comedy: "I do not condone the use of chemical weapons, but..."

From the people who brought you "I got nothin against niggers, but..."

Alan, allow me to correct you on the most flawed of your counter arguments. You write:

>>'gaz', you said: "It wasn't up to the coalition to prove their existence anyway. Hussein was supposed to prove that he didn't have any and he couldn't."

So therefore, if there are no WMDs and there remains an inability to prove they don't exist (because they don't exist!), then war is justified. So you could effectively say that I, as your neighbour for example, could have stolen $100 of your money, and if I can't prove I didn't steal it, then you are justified in invading my house and taking what you want.

That's absolutely the most flawed argument I have ever seen for justifying illegal invasions. If I don't have it, that means I actually must have it and therefore I need to be invaded? Stupidity.

The correct analogy is: I am your neighbor. I show you 10 guns. I claim them to you and you tag them for destruction. The deal is, I will bring them in front of you and destroy them as you watch for verification

When you come to me asking where the guns are, I show you a pile of scrap metal.

Did I destroy them? Should you be obligated to look for them? How can you prove I destroyed them?

Now factor in that I am an unbelievable bastard who kills and rapes and tortures people on a massive scale. My officials have met with the most dangerous organizations in the world, although no proof exists of collaboration on any major incidents.

You trust me not to attack you, dont you?

That sir, would be Stupidity.

Here is Mr. Blix's comments on it. I assure you, he is not my favorite person and rather stupid in my opinion. But you tell me if the questions he poses were answered to anyones satisfaction:

While Iraq claims, with little evidence, that it destroyed all biological weapons unilaterally in 1991, it is certain that UNSCOM destroyed large biological weapons production facilities in 1996. The large nuclear infrastructure was destroyed and the fissionable material was removed from Iraq by the IAEA.

One of three important questions before us today is, How much might remain undeclared and intact from before 1991 and possibly thereafter? The second question is, What, if anything, was illegally produced or procured after 1998 when the inspectors left. And the third question is, How it can be prevented that any weapons of mass destruction be produced or procured in the future? >>

What weapons? THOSE weapons that were destroyed, and where are the rest? Are there more? 4 years without inspectors... yeah, we should trust him.

Currencylad perhaps you need a lesson in english but country is not people.

to threaten a country Iraq needed a silo of missiles with warheads , an airforce which could dominate another country and an experienced well trained army.
A shame it had none of those.

also remember the last time it used WMDs in a war it didn't assist them! Shame about that.

CurrencyLad

Watch old Homer bait and switch.

"Actually if you look closely at the UN resolution it did not threaten military intervention but never let the facts get in the way of a good theory."--HP

You reply with quotes from UN resolutions.

He then ignores them and sends out more bait "to threaten a country Iraq needed a silo of missiles with warheads"--HP
But useing that lodgic Al qaeda in no threat

"Removing Saddam Hussein would have been a good thing, but the way it was done was the wrong thing."

You are completely right in saying that we should have removed Saddam in 1991. Our betrayal of the Iraqi people was despicable, and I only hope we can in some small measure make amends for it by helping them rebuild their country now. Surely we could not have redeemed ourselves by continuing to turn a deaf ear to the sound of their bones cracking under Saddam's boots.

You may also be right to criticize some of Bush Jr.'s reasons for war. The purported WMD certainly haven't surfaced the way he led us to expect they would. The argument can be made that Bush's justification for invasion was insufficient.

However, the fact that Bush failed to justify the war does not automatically make it unjust. The legal justification for war is the fact that Saddam never complied with the terms of the 1991 ceasefire. The moral justification for war is that life and liberty are precious, and no dictator should be allowed to deprive his people of either. The practical reason for war is two-fold: by making an example of Saddam we encourage other despots to cooperate in bringing terrorists to justice, and by making an example of a liberalized Iraq we encourage the people of neighboring nations to demand the kind of democratic reforms that will eventually undermine the social impetus for terrorism. None of this is rebutted by the fact that Bush failed to articulate it properly.

Removing Saddam was a good thing. The way it was done may have been incompetent, hypocritical, or even dishonest--but it was still the right thing to do. No amount of irrelevant carping about the various alleged skeletons in America's collective closet can change that fact.

I think what's more newsworthy is that you've found an Anglican Bishop who actually believes in God. So the dude is in the minority even if he has come out against the war.

So, any willing defenders for Tim's specious claim that the "prison abuses you complain of mostly took place during a single day"?

First line of the link Bleh.

"Many of the worst abuses that have come to light from the Abu Ghraib prison happened on a single November day amid a flare-up of insurgent violence in Iraq"

Bleh: Nobody gives a fuck.

As I read some of the arguments here about the Iraq war, on the same reasoning it was clearly wrong and in contravention of international law for the UK to declare war on Germany in 1939 because it had invaded Poland -- a country far away and whose ill-fortune offered no threat to sovereign UK concerns. Beastly treatment of the Poles by Mr Hitler's Germans was not for the UK to do something about. Nor was his trampling on the human rights of his own and his neighbouring countries' minorities. This was squarely the responsibility of the League of Nations and the International Red Cross to fix.

Indeed.

Reality check here, please, folks.

Current showing in Melbourne of Pontecorvo's 'Battle of Algiers' also brings to mind for me the rather mild response of France to news of US 'tortures' in Iraq. As distinct from other French positions taken on US policy.

Quel embarras.

Which reminds me of the brutalities of all those US prison movies ('Fugitive from a Chain Gang', 'Cool Hand Luke') and TV shows ('Oz'). Didn't I read that former state prison governors from Utah and elsewhere had been advising the military on how to run Iraq's prisons and even actually running some? Why are we suprised, then, at incidents which faithfully replicate the sort of thing we are shown by Hollywood?

But, then, the Red Cross and Amnesty International don't inspect US prisons.

On reflection, I don't think I'll be joining these various busybodies and god-botherers on the moral high ground which they affect towards the USA.

So now it's only Abu Ghraib where abuses have occurred, "mostly" on a single day? That's strange, what about the British soliders who are being charged, or don't they count? Minimise away, but it fools few and makes you look dishonest in my opinion.

I keep hearing the meme that the war was fought over Saddam's WMDs, that the president/coalition wasn't concerned with humanitarian aims.

And then I think 'Operation Iraqi Freedom' and wonder why it doesn't say anything about WMDs....

Maybe one day the US will return to it pre-WWII posture, pull all of its troops home, and let the rest of the world figure it all out, militarily speaking.

Sadam Hussein could have had infant stew every morning for breakfast and someone here would have found a way to justify it. Perhaps some of you can truly justify Sadam's actions and those of his sons to their own countrymen. I would like to read your rationale there. Bad hair day?

And after you are done there, justfy Castro's treatment of his people, and then justify the lovely events in the past years in Cambodia, Rwanda, and Serbia. Please wrap up with a justification of the former Soviet Union arranging for so many to have a 'gulag' vacation.

The US military is not perfect and neither are US policies, foreign or domestic. However, I will take the US and leave the rest, thank you.

...You're response was remarkable in this forum, admittedly I've got better things to do than lurk on this forum continually and read every article but on the regular sample I do, this stood out for a refreshing change of logic and reason. Thank you. It's a lot better than the usual ad-hominem attacks, appeals to emotion and exaggerated facts that the regulars put out, certainly better than I could have done. Mind you, the regulars on this forum stand out as intellectual giants compared with the forum poster in something like www.frontpagemag.com. ... but it might be worth googling for 'fallacious arguments' and proofing your copy with these guidelines before posting, it's already great, but needs to be bombproof to get through the blairophiles on the forum.

bemused spectator

Bemused spectator was later admitted to the hospital because his rectum had engulfed his head to the shoulder. The only treatment would have been a radical dose of irony, but tragically, the doctors found him immune. "You'd think that a person who posts under the psuedonym of 'bemused spectator' would avoid speaking about the ad-hominems of others," the doctor said regretfully as he released the patient back into the wild.

blahagagagrurur gugurgrug
blththththth blub blub blub
(NOTE: This is what it sounds like....when ones rectum leaps up and engulfs your head).

It's very uncomfortable....just like a double irony bypass hey Sortelli??

bs.