America's foreign policy

[eddie92099]

Let's not corrupt the religion debate any further. Liszmaninopin, I commend you on your ability to see the light through the shadow of American propaganda  . TwinkleFingers, the opposite applies,
Ed

[liszmaninopin]

Well thank you, Ed.  For the purposes of debate, here are my positions:
1.  America is a tad overbearing in foreign policy.
2.  We do some good as a country, as well as some bad.
3.  The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were unjustified.
I am willing to debate any of the above points.

[eddie92099]

That is also my stance. Perhaps TwinkleFingers has something to say...
Ed

[TwinkleFingers]

We gave the UN time to do there thing.  They failed. I look at it this way.  You either fight terrorism in another country or sit around and let it come to you.

[liszmaninopin]

But what if this fighting of terrorists causes a backlash?  After the recent war, especially the Iraq one, I feel confident in saying we've created more terrorists than we've destroyed, and alienated many sovereign nations in the world who might otherwise have helped us otherwise.  Enstranging most of the Arab world is not a good way to fight terrorists over there.

[eddie92099]

We gave the UN time to do there thing.  They failed.

(I shall overlook the abhorrent use of the word "there"). You gave the U.N. time to agree with you. Their failure to agree translates to, in your opinion, a failure on their behalf (which is an incredibly ignorant attitude).

I look at it this way.  You either fight terrorism in another country or sit around and let it come to you.  

Or, if you are the USA, you go against international law and use violent force against another nation. This becomes, in fact, by definition, an act of terrorism itself.

Where does the attitude of America being any safer from terrorist attacks after Afghanistan and Iraq stem from? They have thrown billions of dollars into the war on terrorism and have not done the slightest damage to the Al Qaeda network,
Ed

[liszmaninopin]

I agree.  The source could be incorrect, but I have read that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are the first wars the US has ever launched without somehow being provoked.  It's sad when I think of how my country is going.

[TwinkleFingers]

then what the heck do you call 9/11?  also...what do you think we should of done after the events of 9/11.  You guys talk like democrats. so Im guessing you are.  All they do is use anger and judge the republicans.  Yet they dont give us any insight to what kind of plan they might have themselves.

[eddie92099]

I agree.  The source could be incorrect, but I have read that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are the first wars the US has ever launched without somehow being provoked.  It's sad when I think of how my country is going.

How about Vietnam? They certainly didn't do anything wrong.

then what the heck do you call 9/11? .

A terrorist attack. What is your point?

also...what do you think we should of done after the events of 9/11.  You guys talk like democrats. so Im guessing you are.  All they do is use anger and judge the republicans.  Yet they dont give us any insight to what kind of plan they might have themselves.

Why should Democrats give solutions to the problems that Republicans create? All I can say is that George Bush's stance is not the answer (hence no backing from the U.N.),
Ed

[TwinkleFingers]

A terrorist attack. What is your point?

dont you think that provoked us?

Why should Democrats give solutions to the problems that Republicans create? All I can say is that George Bush's stance is not the answer (hence no backing from the U.N.),
Ed

you missed the point of my question.  what should we of done after 9/11?  before the wars ever broke out.  You are negating one side and leaving the other open.  Not a very productive debate.

[BoliverAllmon]

I don't always agree with what the usa does, but I don't mind the outcome that has happened because of the iraq war. Talking about the U.N. The U.N. can be quite frustrating to work with. The way it is set up is ridiculous. The vote has to be unanimous (sp) before something is passed. It is a known fact that while Russia and the USA were locked in Cold War (which answers vietnam) both countries would just vote against anything the other country proposed, just because they hated each other. The same thing happens today. Let's face it. USA has very little friends and people vote against the USA just because they don't like them. They don't vote for the betterment of the world, just to foil anything the USA wants to do.

boliver

[eddie92099]

you missed the point of my question.  what should we of done after 9/11?  before the wars ever broke out.  You are negating one side and leaving the other open.  Not a very productive debate.  

Have you ever considered that 9/11 was not the start of the problem? This goes back much, much further,

I don't always agree with what the usa does, but I don't mind the outcome that has happened because of the iraq war. Talking about the U.N. The U.N. can be quite frustrating to work with. The way it is set up is ridiculous. The vote has to be unanimous (sp) before something is passed. It is a known fact that while Russia and the USA were locked in Cold War (which answers vietnam) both countries would just vote against anything the other country proposed, just because they hated each other. The same thing happens today. Let's face it. USA has very little friends and people vote against the USA just because they don't like them. They don't vote for the betterment of the world, just to foil anything the USA wants to do.

You are paranoid, and you are ignorant. I fear for the USA because it is unfortunately full of people with the same attitude as you (I am not trying to make a cheap snide remark. I am incredibly serious when I say this),
Ed

[liszmaninopin]

I am sure there are many countries out there that don't like the US.  But there has to be a reason for it, people don't just draw strongly held opinions out of a hat.

What would I have done after 9/11 if president?  Well, I probably would have beefed up security at home (without instituting new "patriot" acts) and tried to convince nations over the world of the need to fight terrorists within their own borders, not invading nations and toppling governments.  Saddam actually did a very good job squelching terrorists when in power.

Really, however, one must attack the underlying causes of hatred of the US, and not the effects.

[liszmaninopin]

Don't you think that provoked us?

No, I don't think that a terrorist attack should provoke preemptive war against a sovereign nation.

Boliver, I suggest you give a little thought as to why the US has so few friends.

[allchopin]

Ed, assuming that you are defending the terrorists, which is what it sounds like through all of your constant draconian condemnations of ignorance, we actually did Iraq good, despite the infamous "warlord" that is our president.  After the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, the people (a majority, that is- not everyone in a country can agree) of Iraq were cheering in the streets, not speaking metaphorically.  I am not saying that the war was more advantageous than not, because I really cannot fully conclude the results of the war until more time passes.  But there are good aspects of everything that are often overlooked..

[liszmaninopin]

You have a point.  I think that alot of goodwill that was there at the beginning of the invasion was quickly squandered, though, when Americans started raiding homes, couldn't get crime under control, couldn't restore power, etc.  I have read transcripts of a fair number of ordinary Iraqis and most seemed to welcome the troops at first, but as the occupation wore on, started to resent it.

[BoliverAllmon]

The problem with encouraging fighting terrorist attacks in one's borders is that some countries' governments are the foundation of the terrorist attacks. Saddam was a cold-blooded killer. He financed many terrorist attacks. I agree that many hailed the US conquest at first, but when things don't move along as smoothly as they think it should (no matter how impossible) they begin to resent it.

Here are some reasons why other countries despise us.

Russia: they were communist, we were not. They wanted to turn the whole world communist, we fought against it. They hated us for not joining in WW2 sooner. They feel that we let them bleed. We caused their economy to collapse. This happened when we built more and more of a defense and they tried to keep up but failed.

Japan: we bombed the socks off them. It doesn't matter that they nearly wiped out the pacific fleet before that.

France: They have always prided themselves in their rich heritage and history. Now, this relatively young country comes along. Makes way more money than them and "corrupts" their kids with McDonald's and Disney. Therefore turning people away from their rich heritage. Again, it doesn't matter that without the USA during WW2 France would be Germany right now. It took absolutely no time at all for germany to overthrow france.

All Arab nations: We are a Christian nation. We mock Alla and Muhammed. We allow all Jews to run our nation secretly. We are friends with Israel. Really anything having to do with us having anything to do with the Jews.

boliver

[liszmaninopin]

I'd like some evidence for Saddam's supposed funding of terrorist attacks.  If Germany did take over all of Europe, most likely France would again be free without US help.  I say this because the German system was unsustainable-look at the horrible inflation.  People rebel against occupying armies, and that almost surely would have happened by now.

[Hmoll]

Well thank you, Ed.  For the purposes of debate, here are my positions:
1.  America is a tad overbearing in foreign policy.
2.  We do some good as a country, as well as some bad.
3.  The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were unjustified.
I am willing to debate any of the above points.

Agree with this with the exception that 1) The US is much more than a tad overbearing. Of course, it would be great if some other countries took a leadership position once in a while.
3) The war in Iraq was not justified, but the war in Afghanistan was very much justified.

[allchopin]

3) The war in Iraq was not justified

It most certainly was- America does not go willy-nilly into a war simply for the heck of it.  Not only would that put soldiers in danger, but it costs billions of dollars.  The Iraq war had purpose, and that purpose was fulfilled.  We caught Saddam, a tyrant and misdoer, and ended that aspect of misery in Iraq, as well as other countries.  Now what is wrong with that?  Perhaps it may be looked upon as intrusion into others' business, but in my book (and in the Republicans' and President's book) it WAS our business.

[Hmoll]

3)  Not only would that put soldiers in danger, but it costs billions of dollars

Flush out your headgear allchopin, both of those things happened.
The US had absolutely no international mandate to go into Iraq - and last time I checked, thats what would be required for it to be a legal action. The US used the WMD argument to go into Iraq, not to end the misery of the people there. If that was the reason, then there's lots of other despots and  misery around the world.

[allchopin]

both of those things happened.

Yes, they did, but for a reason.
The purpose of the Iraq invasion, I believe, was to put an end to one despot that was NOT ONLY torturing people and starting trouble, but was connected to terrorism that affected us Americans directly.

[TwinkleFingers]

Have you ever considered that 9/11 was not the start of the problem? This goes back much, much further,

have you considered the fact that you still have failed to answer my question. what would you have done after the 9/11 attacks?

Saddam actually did a very good job squelching terrorists when in power.

sure...sure...lets give the terrorists another million for their cause.

and tried to convince nations over the world of the need to fight terrorists within their own borders, not invading nations and toppling governments.  

ok...do you think that iraq/iran/afganistan have the means to fight terrorism inside their borders?

We mock Alla and Muhammed.

alla is really the same as God. Just their views on Jesus is different for the most part.

No, I don't think that a terrorist attack should provoke preemptive war against a sovereign nation.

I would call it more of a catastrophe.  what was it? 5000 people died?? that is more than a bus bombing.

If that was the reason, then there's lots of other despots and  misery around the world.

which we dont have the financial means to help everyone sadly.

[liszmaninopin]

There were many dictators far worse than Saddam, if it was truly a humanitarian war, we would have gone somewhere else.  The Iraqis at least had regular jobs, homes, medical care, education, etc., and in fact US sanctions made life more difficult for Iraqis for a long time.  The US used WMD's as a reason for invading, but so far none have been uncovered, suggesting very shaky intelligence before the act of war.  I would suggest then, that the US did go sending troops "willy-nilly"

The thing is, there are dictators out there with far better established connections to terrorists.  I have not actually heard one shred of evidence about Saddam supporting terrorists; and until I do I state that the war was unjustified.  Saudi Arabia has better connections to terrorists, and its people endured more misery than those under Saddam, but we didn't invade them.  I suspect it was because they were cooperative with Bush's corporate oil friends.

Your comment about giving the terrorists another million is completely unfounded.  There was no evidence linking Saddam to terrorists.

They probably would have the means, and if we weren't so obnoxious in our actions and words, they might help within their borders.  If we really needed to use force, it is possible to ask permission to enter the country without toppling the governments.

What about all the civilian deaths suffered in this latest invasion of Iraq?  The estimates I have read are many times higher than those of 9/11, but you don't hear about those deaths-only those that further the government's aims.

[eddie92099]

All Arab nations: We are a Christian nation. We mock Alla and Muhammed. We allow all Jews to run our nation secretly. We are friends with Israel. Really anything having to do with us having anything to do with the Jews.

You really think that's why they don't like you? American propaganda is working!
Ed

[BoliverAllmon]

Saddam is linked to terrorism. He gased millions of people in his own country. He has used WMD before. He personally helped overthrow 2 governments himself, just so he could become dictator. We have him on tape saying that the greatest pleasure he has in life is taking a life from someone else. It shows his great power. The guy is a stinkin terrorist.

If I am so wrong about the ideas on Arab nations, then enlighten us all. Enlighten us with your perfect news channels. (that could not be biased either)

boliver

[liszmaninopin]

I'm not saying Saddam was the greatest guy ever, but I have yet to read of evidence of a link to terrorism.  One cannot just say it over and over until it becomes assumed.  That does not make it fact.  Our country has used WMD before too.  Our country  has overthrown so many governments it's not even funny.  I have never heard of that tape before, please tell me where I can find it.

[BoliverAllmon]

I don't know where you can find it. It was on the news. He said it during one of his interviews.

boliver

[liszmaninopin]

I have to admit I'm skeptical, but thanks for replying.  One thing that makes me doubt alot of the stories about the Saddam monster is the fact that there are pro-Saddam demonstrations in some areas of Iraq, and anti-America demonstrations in all parts of Iraq.  The people must not consider America much better.

[BoliverAllmon]

but you don't hear about those deaths-only those that further the government's aims.

This is the biggest load of garb. Telling us that our troops are dying left and right is not furthering the government's aims (by the way, we do hear of the civilian deaths, just remember this certain Arab people are making it much worse than it really is just to cause more problems. They have been pretending to do things during the entire conflict). In fact, it is hurting them. Every reporter is looking to make a name for himself. One of the easiest ways to do this is to find some dirt on a leader. Everyone is looking to see that the USA did something wrong. Our own media rakes the invasion over the coals. Yes, media can be biased, but it is not like you talk about it.

boliver

[liszmaninopin]

Perhaps I overspoke myself about only sharing what's good for the government.  In debates about politics, I (and others) often speak more strongly than is called for about our opinions.  But still, the civilian death toll is high, and according to a good number of sources many times more than 9/11 was.

[BoliverAllmon]

I am not saying that the death toll isn't high. Remember this also, some (not all, not even saying majority) of these so-called civilian deaths are in fact people dressed in civilian clothes blowing themselves up, firing upon us, or some other form of attack.

boliver

[BoliverAllmon]

oh and if you want to talk about civilian deaths what about Russia's 20,000,000 deaths?

boliver

[BoliverAllmon]

oh and another thing remember this. Saddam killed on average 1 million people a year. I think we are going well under his pre-set standard.

boliver

[liszmaninopin]

I never said Russia was a great at controlling civilian deaths.  Throughout history, just about all wars have been remarkable for the number of civilians killed, especially in more modern times.  That's just how it is.  I view an unnecessary war as bad because it results in all those unnecessary civilian deaths.

[BoliverAllmon]

Also remember that Saddam on average killed 1 million people. I think we are doing much better.

boliver

[BoliverAllmon]

the reason why you don't have many anti-saddam demonstrations is because when the Kurds (I believe) in the North rallied against Saddam, Saddam used chemical weapons against them and killed nearly all of them. There is a great fear that has been embedded into them. Saddam would send out people to intentionally start a rumor about an overthrowing of Saddam. Whoever would follow this person or even not report this person to Saddam would immediately be killed and he liked to torture first to make a point.

boliver

[liszmaninopin]

Saddam on average killed 1 million people?  What do you mean by that?

America has had its fair share of atrocities.  Besides the relentless slaughter of Native Americans, we have also bloodied our hands in the Phillippines, Japan, Central America, the Middle East...

Don't forget where Saddam got those wmd's used to kill kurds.  They were supplied by the US originally to help him fight Iran in the Iran-Iraq war.

[BoliverAllmon]

sorry a million people a year.

boliver

[eddie92099]

sorry a million people a year.

Which Republican manifesto did you read that in? Think about it. Saddam Hussein was in power from 1979 until 2003. That is 24 years. The population of Iraq is approximately 26 million. The population of Iraq in 1979 was approximately 22 million. Clearly the statistic is false,
Ed

[BoliverAllmon]

The only thing that proves is that people make lots of babies.

boliver

[eddie92099]

The only thing that proves is that people make lots of babies.

Seriously, where did you hear Saddam Hussein killed approximately a million people a year? Church?
Ed

[liszmaninopin]

One time I read that Iraq had the 4th highest execution rate in the world; 400-500 annually.  Behind Saudi Arabia, China, and the US.  Good company we keep, isn't it?

[eddie92099]

I read that Iraq had the 4th highest execution rate in the world; 400-500 annually.

Not quite a million is it Bolliver?
Ed

[BoliverAllmon]

I heard it on biography. You need to check your facts. The US executes on average 90 people a year. China executes thousands.

boliver

[BoliverAllmon]

Here are several quotes and documented sources on the brutality of this regime.

Most afternoons, among the market stalls leading to the old city of Najaf young men set up TV sets in the street showing grotesque scenes of cruelty. Handcuffed prisoners are executed with sticks of dynamite shoved into their pockets. Screaming men plead for their lives as they are beaten by Saddam Hussein's secret police. Crimson fragments of bodies lie in the street, moments after a huge explosion, to the soundtrack of an Arab lament. The crowds gather round. People mutter and shake their heads. Then they queue to pay 1,000 Iraqi dinars (about 33p) [50 cents] for laser discs containing footage of the appalling scenes. These are the atrocity discs of Iraq, a booming mini-industry in a country still stricken by the consequences of the war. They are produced in home factories, with the simplest computer equipment."
-- The London Times, September 20, 2003
"Some athletes were humiliated, he said. Others were smeared with feces and jailed. Some were placed in a sarcophagus with nails pointed inward so that they would be punctured and suffocated, he said. At least a few were set in front of wild dogs to be torn to pieces. How many were executed is still not clear.

"'Nobody knew what was in his mind,' Mr. Dano said. 'But there was no pity.'"
-- The New York Times, August 17, 2003
'We smelled something rotten, and when we breathed in, we couldn't breathe out. The sky was full of smoke, and someone said it was chemicals. People started crying and running toward the mountains. I was burning and I became blind, but someone led me out. After walking for two days, we reached Iran.' [Wais Abdel] Qadr was the only member of his family to survive the gassing of Halabja by the Iraqi military on March 16, 1988."
-- The Washington Post, August 7, 2003
"Freed in April after 13 years in prison, [Dr. Ibrahim] Basri [Saddam's former physician] is now reaching out to register and help as many victims of the regime as he can find. They stream to a clinic attached to his house, a sad collection of former political prisoners, relatives of the executed, and maimed men who cannot work because they lost an arm, an ear, or a foot to the torturer's knife. 'All the time in prison, I think, "What can I do to help these people?"' he said. ... 'For the first five years, he put me in a cell by myself, 2 meters by 2 1/2 meters, where I didn't know if it was day or night. I was so dirty with lice. There were cockroaches in my mouth at night. And they came to beat you in the morning and at night for nothing, nothing.' Once, he continued, the guards beat him in front of 300 inmates until they broke his legs. 'I never said, "Mercy." I just said, "Iraq."'"
-- The Boston Globe, August 7, 2003
"Jailers often treated allegedly lagging players in ways certain to hurt, not improve, the athletes' performances on the field. After shaving their heads to humiliate them, athletes were hung upside down and the soles of their feet whipped. They were buried in hot sand up to their necks. Their fingers or ears were amputated. Electric shocks were applied to their skin. And, in the case of soccer players, they were forced to kick concrete balls."
-- USA TODAY, July 30, 2003
At only 22, Tareq, a defender, has been to prison five times. After a while, he recognized a pattern to the punishment. "The first stage of the torture is the reception, when you are given a choice of which plastic cable you will be beaten with. Then you are beaten 15 to 20 times. The reception is over. In the next stage, you are thrown into knee-deep sewer water and told to swim," he says. Tareq was dragged bare-chested across hot asphalt. Made to run barefoot over broken glass and gravel. When it was time to leave, he says, "The farewell party is a beating."
-- USA TODAY, July 30, 2003
Tareq recalls how his team was invited to pose for pictures with Uday. At 6-5, Tareq towered over Uday. "The next day, I was taken and flogged 20 times" for being taller, says Tareq, who plans to leave Iraq soon to play professionally in Germany or Scandinavia.
-- USA TODAY, July 30, 2003
"Ahmad was Uday's chief executioner. Last week, as Iraqis celebrated the death of his former boss and his equally savage younger brother Qusay, he nervously revealed a hideous story. His instructions that day in 1999 were to arrest the two 19-year-olds on the campus of Baghdad's Academy of Fine Arts and deliver them at Radwaniyah. On arrival at the sprawling compound, he was directed to a farm where he found a large cage. Inside, two lions waited. They belonged to Uday. Guards took the two young men from the car and opened the cage door. One of the victims collapsed in terror as they were dragged, screaming and shouting, to meet their fate. Ahmad watched as the students frantically looked for a way of escape. There was none. The lions pounced. 'I saw the head of the first student literally come off his body with the first bite and then had to stand and watch the animals devour the two young men. By the time they were finished there was little left but for the bones and bits and pieces of unwanted flesh,' he recalled last week."
-- Sunday Times, London, July 27, 2003
One of the condemned women was pregnant. This presented a problem, said Ahmad, because under religious law a pregnant woman should at least be allowed to finish her term and deliver the baby before being executed. 'She was several months' pregnant,' he said. 'The doctor had verified it, she had said so and we could see her swollen stomach. She was taken in and out three times - everyone was unsure what to do with her.' Telephone calls were made to Uday by his representative. As they waited, the woman sobbed and begged for mercy for her unborn child. On the third telephone call the order was given to go ahead with her execution. 'At that the woman was beheaded - and knowing she was pregnant, I felt sick in the stomach and wished for Allah to open up the ground and swallow everyone there including myself,' said Ahmad.
-- Sunday Times, London, July 27, 2003
They put me in a cell just 1m by 1.5m, painted completely red with no windows and lots of tiny stones on the floor and told me to count them. It did not matter what number you said it would be wrong. If I said 2000, they would say no, it's 2001 and beat me 10 times. Then they put me inside a circle and told me to run round and round for nine hours. After that they threw me on the hot pavement and a fat guard sat on my chest. Then they pulled me along by my ankles so that my back was streaming with blood.

"Another time they drew a bicycle on the wall and told me to ride it. They threw me in foul dirty water and said you must swim, then they kept pushing me under with a stick forcing me to drink.

"Once they told us we had to catch 10 flies during the night and 10 mosquitoes during the day or you would be tortured more. This was impossible so you had to catch the mosquitoes at night and hold them till daytime and vice versa with the flies. Then they would ask which is male and which is female. Whatever you said it would be vice versa."
-- Sunday Times, London, July 27, 2003
"When I was in Iraq a doctor from Basra told me that, after being jailed by the police some years ago, he refused to tell his inquisitors whatever it was they wanted to hear. Instead of beating him, he told me, they brought in his 3-month-old daughter. The interrogator tore the screaming infant's eye out. When the desired answers were still not forthcoming, the questioner hurled the little girl against the concrete wall and smashed her skull."
-- The New York Times, July 26, 2003
Iraqi exiles agreed that Uday Hussein, the eldest of five children, personified the government's random brutality. Human rights groups and Iraqi exiles accused him of routinely kidnapping women off the streets, raping and sometimes torturing them, and personally supervising the torture and humiliation of hundreds of prisoners. Such conduct earned him the title "Abu Sarhan," the Arabic term for "father of the wolf."
-- The New York Times, July 23, 2003
Contrary to what has been written, Uday was never married and he was obsessed with women. If he spotted a woman he fancied in the street or at a reception, he would send his henchmen to fetch her."
-- Uday's former aide, Agence France Presse, July 22, 2003

"Prisoners were often eliminated with a bullet to the head, but one witness told the London-based human rights group Indict that inmates were sometimes murdered by being dropped into shredding machines. Some prisoners went in headfirst and died quickly, while others were put in feet first and died screaming. The witness said that on at least one occasion, Qusai supervised shredding-machine murders."
-- Associated Press, July 22, 2003

[BoliverAllmon]

more quotes

"In the last room, where she was held for several hours, the door was locked. At sunset two men entered. She recalled they said they had to take routine security precautions in advance of a meeting with Uday Hussein. They slipped a black hood over her head and tied her hands behind her back. The anxiety, which had mounted through the day, flared into terror. She was taken down to a lower level in an elevator and then along a passageway that seemed narrow because of the way the two men bumped against her. She was pushed into a room and tied, spread-eagle, to a bed.

"'All of this period, I didn't resist,' she said. 'But on the bed, I knew. I said, "I am like your sister; please don't do this." I started to beg. They said if our sister married an Indian and started a network against the government, we would kill her. I kept praying, calling for Jesus and the Virgin Mary. I prayed to Muhammad. They damned them all.'

"'They raped me twice that first day,' she continued. 'I don't know the persons. Two of them. I couldn't see them. They kept raping for four days as well as I can remember. They took my honor.'

"Over the next seven months, Hanna said, she implicated people she had never heard of in a spy network she knew nothing about. She was routinely beaten and she said the Major, in a grotesque joke, kept three sticks on a wall hanging under the names Jesus, the prophet Muhammad and Imam Ali, whom Shiite Muslims believe is Muhammad's true heir. Whichever holy man a prisoner called out for determined which stick they were beaten with. The Major, she said, also routinely used electric shock and once set a police dog on her in a small room; the scar of the bite mark is still on her arm.

"One of his preferred forms of torture, she said, was to order the women to strip, then tie them to the tree trunk, and smear wet sugar on them so the dogs would terrorize them as they licked it off their bodies. Hanna also identified his superior at the academy."
-- The Washington Post, July 21, 2003
Saddam's troops and Fedayeen first stormed through the region in armed helicopters in 1991- the helicopters that Norman Schwarzkopf allowed him to keep. One man says his son was hung for belonging to a Shiite political group. Another man says his father and uncle were hung in front of him when he was a 15-year-old. Entire families were slaughtered."
-- The Wall Street Journal, July 21, 2003
'Among them here are children of ages less than three - what was their guilt that they should be murdered?' Mr Amin said. 'Just because they were Kurds? Among them are old women with no teeth. What harm could they do? Saddam Hussein was nothing but a dictator and a killer.'

"Sunni Arab villager Ali Ibrahim said his friend Khalil Eid, then a 14-year-old shepherd, was one of the few local people to have had first-hand experience of the massacre. 'One day he came to this place with his sheep and some army vehicles came, and they told him to go far away because there would be shooting practice here,' Mr Ibrahim said. 'He went far off into the desert but later he sneaked back and heard the sound of firing and people screaming.' After the forces had driven away he came and saw they had leveled the ground. It's a disaster. It's a crime that cannot be described."
-- The Age (Melbourne), July 17, 2003
'That's when I realized this was no ordinary execution,' said the officer, a retired colonel from the Iraqi 2nd Army Corps who spoke on condition of anonymity.

"'The government was using prisoners to test its chemical weapons.'

"'He didn't have a mark on him, nothing,' Al-Hamid recalled bitterly. 'We were told not to touch him. We were told to bury him as fast as possible.' As for the Iraqi army intelligence officer who claims to have witnessed the test gassing of hundreds of prisoners at an open-air site in the desert near Jalula, which is about 80 miles northeast of Baghdad and 20 miles from the Iranian border, he asserted that the bodies he saw also bore no marks. 'It was like they were asleep,' he said with lingering awe."
-- Chicago Tribune, July 16, 2003
'We'd raise their legs and place their feet into this sort of wooden frame and we would beat them on the soles of their feet,' said Abu Firaz, a former guard, describing one of the punishments for taking drugs, fighting or having gay sex."
-- Newsday (New York), July 3, 2003

At the age of 21, he had spent 10 days in a torture cell. He says it's a hard thing to talk about, even now. When he does, he describes sadistic brutality with matter-of-fact detail. His tormentors did everything to stop him from sleeping so that he didn't know whether it was night or day. 'Then they take you,' he says. 'They put you flat on a table. Then they tie your legs and hands and they put you under a water tap. Then they let the water tap drip. You cannot move your head and they say you have to confess.' This went on for hour after hour before he passed out. 'One drop,' he says. 'But it's like a bomb.' 'The other one was that they bring in an animal,' he says, searching for the English word. 'Yes, a goat. They put a lot of salt on your feet and they bring in the goat to lick your feet.' The process, he says, induces uncontrollable laughing and crying at first and builds into a loss of control of the nervous system -- eventually a loss of consciousness."
-- CanWest Interactive, June 29, 2003
"Stand at the mass grave near Kirkuk, where huge mechanised trucks churn the earth in clouds of dust. Look at the skeletons now tenderly reburied in simple wooden coffins. Talk to Nasir al-Hussein, who was only 12 at the time of the 1991 mass arrests. He, his mother, uncle and cousins were piled on buses. They turned off on to a farm road and the executions started. People were thrown into a pit, machine gunned and then buried with a bulldozer. Nasir crawled out of the mass grave, leaving his dead relatives behind."
-- The Times (London), June 18, 2003
"Saddam Hussein's regime was similar to those of the Nazis and the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia in that there is a vast amount of documentary evidence relating to the atrocities they committed.

"We visited the notorious Abu Gehb Prison outside Baghdad and found written records of prisoners being executed by being put through mincing machines."
-- Western Mail, June 14, 2003
"Fartousi said security sources in the former government told his organization that some resisted the executions. 'A colonel in charge of intelligence objected to the killing and said, "The regime is on the verge of collapse, why execute people?" So he was executed,' Fartousi said, as the smell of decaying bodies wafted through the blazing heat."
-- The Washington Post, June 9, 2003
"Two witnesses from the village of Salman Pak, south of the capital, said they had seen 115 corpses stacked in piles here on April 10, all of them men with their hands tied behind their backs who had been shot in the back of the head. In attempts to exhume bodies on Saturday and today, Iraqis retrieved the remains of eight victims, none of whom, however, appeared to have died recently."
-- The Washington Post, June 9, 2003
"Saddam killed our people for resisting him. Some were executed for speaking in a religious way when greeting his men. A woman was killed for wearing a veil."
-- Bakr al-Saad, a member of the Daawa party, Orlando Sentinel, June 8, 2003
'We were forbidden even to have a funeral. Sheik Jaafar's men told us our house would be destroyed if even one relative came to console us,' said Qadir, whose spare living room is adorned with a photo of President Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair. 'The security men came anyway and smashed our furniture and dishes.'"
-- Los Angeles Times, June 8, 2003

[eddie92099]

As horrific as this is, it is completely irrelevant. The Bush administration went to war with Iraq because of weapons of mass destruction, not for humanitarian concerns,
Ed

[BoliverAllmon]

more quotes

"Uday's favourite punishment was the medieval falaqa, a rod with clamps that go around the ankles so that the offender, feet in the air, can be hit on the bare soles with a stick. A top official in radio and TV says he received so many beatings for trivial mistakes like being late for meetings or making grammatical errors on his broadcasts that Uday ordered him to carry a falaqa in his car. Uday also had an iron maiden that he used to torture Iraqi athletes whose performance disappointed him.
-- Time, May 25, 2003
"Uday's physical ailments seemed to heighten his sadistic tendencies. According to his chief bodyguard, when Uday learned that one of his close comrades, who knew of his many misdeeds, was planning to leave Iraq, he invited him to his 37th-birthday party and had him arrested. An eyewitness at the prison where the man was held says members of the Fedayeen grabbed his tongue with pliers and sliced it off with a scalpel so he could not talk. A maid who cleaned one of Uday's houses says she once saw him lop off the ear of one of his guards and then use a welder's torch on his face."
-- Time, May 25, 2003
"Her most disturbing memory is of the time she felt nothing but her own pain. After the beatings and electric shocks, Suriya Abdel Khader would find herself once again in the fetid cell, a room so crowded that most prisoners could only stand. The women died upright, then slumped to the floor, but Ms. Abdel Khader remembers registering only a dull flash of annoyance whenever that happened. 'Get this body out of the way,' she would think to herself. 'It's taking up room.' She was imprisoned, she believes, because her four brothers had been arrested in Mr. Hussein's blanket crackdown on Shiites suspected of supporting Iran or the Islamic Dawa Party."
-- The New York Times, June 2, 2003

------

"The soldiers took them out in groups of 100 to 150 people. When his time came, Mr. Shaati was ordered to remove his T-shirt and rip it into strips that were tied over his eyes and around his hands. The prisoners were herded onto a bus, everyone holding on with their teeth to the shirt of the person in front of them. When they arrived at a field - Mr. Shaati is still not sure where - their grave had already been prepared. 'They led us down an incline into a wide long hole,' he said. 'It was quiet. No one fell or even cried. I was positioned very close to the corner, maybe second or third from the wall. Then they started shooting. Somehow I wasn't hit. By then, I guess, they didn't go to the trouble of shooting all of us.' After the grave was covered, Mr. Shaati, alive but choking on dirt, wormed his way out of the ditch. He punched through the earthen blanket with his head, and worked himself free of the cloth straps. Gulping the cold night air, he knew that all his soldierly ideas about honor and country counted for nothing."
-- The New York Times, June 2, 2003

------

"She spent one year being moved from prison to torture center to prison and back. Her tormenters would hang her from a hook in the ceiling by her arms, which were bound behind her back. Sometimes they added electric shocks. Sometimes they beat her on the soles of her feet until they were engorged with blood and her toenails fell off. She was 25.

"'I was lucky that I became like a dead body,' she said. 'I didn't know what was going on around me. There was no water, no bathroom. The only food was two big pots they brought in, one with dirty rice and one of soup. You had to fight for it. If you were strong and healthy, you'd get food. If you were weak, you'd wait.'

"After the torture came the sham trial, then a sentence to spend her life at Rashad women's prison, a maze of unheated cells where the sewage would float from the one toilet down the corridors and seep onto the women's rough mattresses."
-- The New York Times, June 2, 2003

------

"Clawing through the dirt, Abdelhassan al-Mohani collected his brother bone by bone. He knelt in a hole at the edge of a cemetery near the village of Muhammad Sakran, just outside Baghdad. The faded writing on a plastic armband in the grave told him this was his brother, Abdelhussein. Mr. Mohani held the skull and gently brushed the dirt from the eye socket. Then he wept.

"Abdelhussein had disappeared on his way to work in Baghdad on Jan. 23, 1981. His family never heard a word from the government, but eventually they drew the obvious conclusion: as a Shiite, he must have been arrested in the Islamic Dawa Party roundup."
-- The New York Times, June 2, 2003

------

"At the first grave site that the team is investigating - a bleak square-mile expanse of sand and silt near the town of Musayib, 40 miles south of Baghdad - local people have already dug up the skeletal remains of almost 650 victims. Blindfolded with their hands tied, they had been herded into trenches and shot - executed in March and April 1991 during the failed uprising that followed the first Gulf war. Some were buried alive when the holes were filled in over them by bulldozer. In a race against time, it is now up to the scientists from Inforce (the International Forensic Centre), a British charity set up 18 months ago to investigate mass killings and genocide, to persuade their relatives not to uncover any more bodies so that vital forensic evidence is kept intact."
-- The Sunday Telegraph (London), June 1, 2003

------

"His mother tried to keep him close, but her hands were tied and she could not hold the children. They all stumbled into the ready-made grave. 'They were shooting at us, but I didn't get hit,' Mr. Husseini said. 'I was lying on top of my mother. Then someone came down in the hole and dragged me up by my collar and yelled, "Shoot this kid!" I was pretending to be dead. And they started shooting at me again, but still I didn't get hit. Then the shovel came.' He felt himself being lifted with the dirt and dropped once again into the hole. 'I rolled myself to the edge and then to a place where there were reeds and water and the reeds were all sticking in my face,' he recalled. 'My body wasn't covered with the dirt, just my head. I could breath but I didn't move. A man came to check and was standing over the hole where everyone was buried and he called to the shovel driver, "Come and cover this kid." But the driver, maybe he didn't hear, because he didn't come.'"
-- The New York Times, June 1, 2003

------

"A chef at Baghdad's exclusive Hunting Club recalls a wedding party that Uday crashed in the late 1990s. After Uday left the hall, the bride, a beautiful woman from a prominent family, went missing. 'The bodyguards closed all the doors, didn't let anybody out,' the chef remembers. 'Women were yelling and crying, "What happened to her?"' The groom knew. 'He took a pistol and shot himself,' says the chef, placing his forefinger under his chin.

"Last October another bride, 18, was dragged, resisting, into a guardhouse on one of Uday's properties, according to a maid who worked there. The maid says she saw a guard rip off the woman's white wedding dress and lock her, crying, in a bathroom. After Uday arrived, the maid heard screaming. Later she was called to clean up. The body of the woman was carried out in a military blanket, she said. There were acid burns on her left shoulder and the left side of her face. The maid found bloodstains on Uday's mattress and clumps of black hair and peeled flesh in the bedroom. A guard told her, "Don't say anything about what you see, or you and your family will be finished."
-- Time, May 25, 2003
A map provided by a former driver for Iraqi military intelligence brought Abdulaziz al-Qubaisi Abu Musab to the abandoned Iraqi military camp here this morning in search of the answer to the question that most Kuwaitis have asked - and dreaded - since the end of the 1991 Persian Gulf war: where are the nearly 600 missing Kuwaitis? "Mr. Abu Musab, a member of the Iraqi National Congress, the political movement headed by Ahmad Chalabi, said he had been given the map by a man who, in October 1991, was among the drivers who took the Kuwaiti prisoners to their execution in Baghdad and subsequent burial here, 50 miles west of the capital. "It was impossible to speak directly to this driver, who calls himself Samir and still fears for his life, or to say today how accurate his account of the execution is. But the map he gave Mr. Abu Musab proved very accurate."
-- The New York Times, May 17, 2003

------

"Abas Rahim, a speedy 24-year-old left wing for Police, is one of Iraq's finest players. After returning home from 1997 Junior World Cup qualifying matches in South Korea, Rahim was jailed for 21 days. He was the team captain, as well as the tournament's most valuable player, and he was punished for the team's failure. "Five years later, after trying to quit the team, Rahim missed a crucial penalty kick against the Union Club in Qatar. He was held captive in Hussein's Republican Palace for seven days, he recalled, blindfolded the entire time. Today, he played unafraid."
-- The Washington Post, May 17, 2003

------

"The killing began one morning in October 1991 at 8:30. The frightened Kuwaitis - blindfolded, with hands bound by lime- green plastic ties - were ordered into horseshoe formations at the training school for the intelligence service in Baghdad. The prisoners had been brought there that morning in vans and buses.

"A single intelligence man carrying a machine gun positioned himself inside the horseshoe. The prisoners wept and cried out the Muslim prayer before death: there is no god but God.

"The gunfire began. The shooter pivoted, according to the account provided to Mr. Abu Musab, using the horseshoe formation to make the executions quicker. Formation after formation was brought forward until all were dead. All were men, save one."
-- Agence France-Presse, May 17, 2003

[BoliverAllmon]

even more quotes

"An intensive search for Kuwaiti soldiers and civilians missing since the first Persian Gulf war may have ended at this remote site, where skulls, brown pants and bones sticking up eerily from the sand were unearthed in the first day of digging at the site.

"When Saddam Hussein fell, there were grim hopes that the missing might still be alive but starving in one of the regime's prisons. Coalition searches found the prisons empty. Instead, it now appears the Kuwaitis were already dead.

"Ten buses carrying the 'disappeared' had been driven northwest of Baghdad past the relatively prosperous city of Fallujah, according to the driver of one of the buses. The prisoners were unloaded, shot, then buried in deep pits."
-- The Washington Times, May 17, 2003

------

"Desperate relatives and friends were digging to find remains of their loved ones yesterday at what US soldiers said was the largest mass grave of Saddam Hussein's victims discovered in Iraq. ... Seven days into the dig, the scene resembles a battlefield of the dead: the loose sandy soil carved into trenches, ditches and foxholes by a bulldozer. All around lie piles of remains: pelvic bones, ribs, femurs and skulls -- one still wearing its weave-pattern prayer cap, another the blindfold affixed by his killers shortly before death. From many protrude the identity cards, amber necklaces, front-door keys and watches used by relatives to identify their brothers, cousins and sons. A plastic artificial leg sticks out of one pile, two crutches from another."
-- The Australian, May 15, 2003

------

"On an exhumed mound beside the most westerly row of corpses, Ali Abdul Hassan Mekki, 50, sat with a plastic bag between his feet. Thirteen years ago his brother, Jaffar, disappeared during Hussein's post-rebellion slaughter. It was, for him, the worst possible outcome -- misery without certainty. 'I think this is my brother,' he said. 'This is my pullover, which he always borrowed from me to wear, but it is not enough to identify him. The problem is that I don't recognise this wallet and the identity card does not have any writing on it.'"
-- The Australian, May 15, 2003

------

"The executions took place two or three times on most days, Arjawi said. Each time, between 100 and 150 blindfolded people, their hands and sometimes feet bound, were led into pits about 10 feet deep. Gunmen then fired into the pit, often for several minutes, Arjawi said. A bulldozer then pushed dirt onto the bodies, sometimes burying or crushing people who had survived the volley and were trying to climb out."
-- Los Angeles Times, May 14, 2003

------

"[J]ust to see the landscape of bones mixed with clothing, skulls strewn in the splay of human detritus and other remains is chilling. At first, it just seems like hundreds of bundles of clothes have been laid out on the dikes and roads that cut through the marshes here.

"Then the traces of human anatomy appear. A femur from a leg, a humerus from an arm, a shard of pelvis, and skull peeking out from a gray blanket that someone assembling remains laid down. The bundles reveal themselves as the former repositories of living human flesh, before the gunfire sent them on their journey into the marsh.

"'It's a kind of hell out there,' said Mr. Nasir, who no longer plants onions where so many bodies have been desecrated. 'We have always known that there were people here, but we couldn't take them,' he said. 'We knew our Muslim brothers were not buried properly, but we couldn't say a word.'"
-- The New York Times, May 14, 2003

------

"Hundreds of Iraqis whose loved ones vanished during the 1991 Shiite Muslim uprising watched Tuesday as workers dug into a mass grave, a backhoe pulling up eight or nine bodies at a time, and perhaps as many as 3,000 over the past four days. Villagers clutched the remains to their chests, trying to keep them intact as they fell from the machine's big shovel. They laid the bodies in the dirt nearby, next to hundreds of others waiting to be claimed. Then they searched for personal papers, the remnants of a wristwatch or other items that might reveal the identities of the dead."
-- Los Angeles Times, May 14, 2003

------

"Seven days into the dig, the scene resembles a battlefield of the dead, the loose sandy soil carved into trenches, ditches and foxholes by a bulldozer. All around lie piles of remains: pelvic bones, ribs, femurs and skulls--one still wearing its weave-pattern prayer cap, another the blindfold affixed by his killers shortly before death. From many protrude the identity cards, amber necklaces, front-door keys and watches used by relatives to identify their brothers, cousins and sons. A plastic artificial leg sticks out of one pile, two crutches from another."
-- The Daily Telegraph (London), May 14, 2003

------

"As clumps of hair blew across the hard, dry land, Jabar Sattar sat rocking and sobbing on a hill of dirt created by the backhoe. He cradled a clear plastic bag containing the remains of his younger brother Faris. Faris was a soldier, he said, and had just returned from Kuwait when private security men arrested him in his front yard, just two miles from the grave site. 'I looked for 12 years,' Sattar cried into the bag of remains. 'Every day I told myself, you're alive and will come back. Now what am I going to say to our father?'"
-- Los Angeles Times, May 14, 2003

------

"In two days, they've found 2,000 bodies--men, women, children, some handicapped. Many skeletons were still blindfolded. The Iraqis and the US military believe there are several thousand more. This is an archaeological site. And it's no accident the bodies were buried here. Under Saddam Hussein, it was illegal for Iraqis to dig here, or even walk on the site. Search teams look for identification inside crumbling wallets, adding each name to a ledger. If there's no ID, they hope a relative might recognize something -- a watch, a scarf."
-- ABC World News Tonight, May 13, 2003

------

"The skeletal remains on display Monday showed signs of physical trauma. Some still had faded bandages tied around the eye sockets and black cloth binding the feet. Several skulls had large holes on one side or were crushed in the back. In each open wooden coffin, the bones were carefully wrapped in white cloth, surrounded by scraps of hair, bits of teeth and bones. The visible evidence of their demise drove scores of black-clad women to wailing and men to weep."
-- Associated Press, May 12, 2003

------

"For people streaming past 32 coffins laid out in Basra's al-Jumhuriya Grand Mosque on Monday, grief competed with anger as they searched for relatives who disappeared after a Shiite Muslim uprising in 1999. Peering into a simple plywood coffin, Karima Musa Mohammed carefully looked over the remains inside--a ragged blindfold tied around the skull, feet bound by black cloth, faded gray pants, light gray shirt. 'No, not him. Not my son,' she pronounced, then burst into tears. The mass grave was one of many being unearthed around the country as Iraqis come to grips with the reality of Saddam Hussein's brutal regime."
-- Associated Press, May 12, 2003

The grave was no more than a long trench, with dirt shoveled over the men executed for their role in the uprising here in 1999 after the killing of a prominent Shiite cleric, Muhammad Sadiq al-Sadr, said relatives who viewed the remains today.

"On March 25, 1999, a shepherd in the desert about 45 miles north of Basra saw men being brought by Baath Party trucks to an open clearing, said Ali Hassan, 20. The shepherd said he saw a backhoe dig a long trench and the men, blindfolded, were lined up in front of the ditch. Then they were shot."
-- The New York Times, May 12, 2003

------

"Two years ago, Iraqi wrestler Maitham Ali Hadi was competing in the Arab championships in Syria and defected. When the delegation returned home without him, its members were imprisoned and tortured. The punishment - which included wrestlers, coaches, journalists and referees - was a message to others who might have been considering defections. Even the chairman and the secretary of the wrestling federation were imprisoned, though they weren't in Syria during the tournament. 'At night, we used to hear the voices of our colleagues being tortured. We felt their pain alongside them,' former wrestling federation head Loai Sateh said in a recent interview."
-- Associated Press May 11, 2003
Fakher Ali al-Jamali, who headed Iraq's handicapped team, was whipped with electric cables for two days after two members of his team went missing during a 1998 tournament. He was released only after they showed up."
-- Associated Press May 11, 2003

------

"One of the tools used by Odai to torture athletes is currently on display at al-Hikma Mosque in Baghdad. It is a 2-meter (6-foot) body suit of metal bars that was used to restrain offending athletes under the scorching sun for hours. One athlete who spoke on condition of anonymity said he was placed in the suit for long hours under blistering sun. A hose dripped water into his mouth to prevent him from dying of dehydration. 'Whenever I tried to move my body, I would feel the burn of the metal rods,' said the man, displaying scarred legs and hands."
-- Associated Press, May 11, 2003

------

"At Baghdad's teeming Al-Mutanabi book market, Ali al-Saadi held up a gilded Islamist book and recalled the one he said led to his torture in one of Saddam Hussein's military prisons. 'When I was a literature student in 1982, intelligence officers found a book by Mohammed Sadeq Sadr in my house,' said Saadi of the Shiite ayatollah whose 1999 murder was widely attributed to Saddam's Sunni-majority regime. 'They accused me of organizing a political group. I spent three years in jail and suffered a lot,' he said, showing scars on his wrists from prison chains and gaps where he said three teeth had been pulled out with pliers. Saadi was just one of many writers and thinkers at the weekly market who celebrated being able to buy and sell books that were illegal under the old regime."
-- Agence France-Presse, May 9, 2003

------

"First they broke his right arm with a pipe. Then they punctured his right eardrum with a skewer. And then they tried to break his right leg with a bat. But when the X-rays that Uday Hussein demanded as proof of their efficiency showed in fact they had not broken Tariq Abdul Whab's leg, his captors took him back to prison where someone smashed his right leg with such ferocity that his toe hit his kneecap. Mr. Whab received all this treatment simply because Uday thought the sports television reporter was being disloyal to him by talking to soccer players he didn't like."
-- The Vancouver Sun, May 3, 2003