The 'Abu Earless' Brigade

[MMMMMM]

(excerpt)
"Saddam Hussein’s ear-amputation campaign went on for three days, May 17-19, 1994, in every city in Iraq. Some of the estimated 3,500 men who lost their ears are now telling their stories"(end excerpt)

This is a pretty interesting article and not for the squeamish.

http://www.msnbc.com/news/904230.asp?0cv=KA01&cp1=1

And some people are still against the war because we bombed too many civic administration offices or for other relatively minor reasons.

God forbid any of you folks who are still opposed to the Iraq War ever have to live under the heel of a tyrant all the while listening to the rest of the world saying war isn't justified.

[B-Man]

Yeah, but M, instead of paying for the war, we could have hired "688,206 top-notch U.N. weapons inspectors for a year"!!!

[Cyrus]

"And some people are still against the war because we bombed too many civic administration offices or for other relatively minor reasons."

It would probably surprise you to learn that ear cutting is not the worst thing that has happened to people in Iraq or the Middle East in general (just to keep things confined to that area). A tremendous amount of inhuman torturing and maiming is going on as we speak in, for instance, Turkey.

What are you gonna do about it? Nothing, you say, because the war on Iraq was not based only on human rights abuses but also on the threat against the U.S. that Iraq posed, along with its possession of WMDs (Iraq's not the United States'). However, that threat has not been verified nor amply supported, except for generalities and some extremely thin "evidence" that not even Powell dares to support anymore.

So, we are left with the human rights excuse/reason, once more. A country was picked for no other reason except to demonstrate to the world, per the new "American Century" doctrine, that the new era of American unilateralism, absolutism and militarism is upon us. Jingoists like Wogga here have a hard time hiding their glee or keeping their words free of racial abuse and anti-Arab prejudice, even as they speak of "Iraqi liberation". You see American officials proclaiming "moral victory" on TV and they are grinning like they swallowed that damn canary, finally.

The obvious question then, i.e. what are the rules of the game? becomes empty of purpose.

[nicky g]

"And some people are still against the war because we bombed too many civic administration offices or for other relatively minor reasons."

I assume you're referring to something I wrote, which I think you're misrepresenting. You are confusing two separate issues:
1. I am against the war.
2. I have problems with how the war was conducted.

I was not against the war because civil administration buildings were bombed, I was against the war AND I objected to the needless bombing of civil administration buildings. Finally, I was pointing out, in support of something someone else posted, that the only major ministry to be untouched by both bombing and looting (and indeed the only one to be guarded by coalition forces in the early days of Baghdad's fall) was the Oil Ministry, which I think showed the real priorities of the coalition.

[Parmenides]

We do live under a tyrant. No one will ever go to war with us to overthrow him either. I don't think a Brown Shirt like you should be talking about G-d.

[MMMMMM]

You somewhow confuse the fact that I hate tyranny and totalitarianism, with Brown-shirtism.

I rail against the Brown Shirts--and today the principal Brown Shirts are the totalitarian governments and terrorist leaders.