For sure I don’t agree on the killing of any living soul and nothing can legitimate such an act including the killing of journalists and Steven Vincent is no different, the guy was just a journalist doing a peaceful job.
But why this exaggeration of showing feelings and I am talking about ordinary people here in websites and Blogs, people are shading tears and they tell that couldn’t sleep when they heard the news and others tell that they are saddened they whole day or in panic, at least one of them tell us about the last minute of the martyrdom of Steven Vincent.
There are 63 journalists died
Is being an American journalist makes people more superior than the others or I missed something?
Any clue???
P.S
I am not addressing the Americans here
Michael, which “Iraqis” would you like the Americans to give control to? The Sadrists? Baathists? Taleban style Islamists? A coalition of politically moderate (and I use that term loosely) Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds, who are not hostile to all things Western, should control Iraq, for the sake of the middle east and the world. Again, you are painting the country with a very broad brush and fail to acknowledge the nuances of the political situation. Now please get back to answering the question — what good has come from the “resistance”?
The nuances of the political situation that the USA has created? The USA needs to be replaced perhaps for a couple of years by an United Nations force made up preferably to the large extent by Muslim troops. Saddam was able to keep control and there’s no reason why controlled cannot be restored. It’s natural for all peoples of the world to want peace rather than war and Iraqis are no different.
But all this is theoretical, the USA won’t leave Iraq until it’s forced to do so or until the oil motivation is clearly out of reach.
The good has yet to come from the resistance, that will begin to happen when the USA leaves Iraq. Whilst they are there Iraq will never be peaceful.
Michael,
United Nations force?
You mean like the UN blue-helmets from the Netherlands that stood by and watched while Serbs murdered 8,000 Bosnian Muslims because they lacked the “proper authority” to stop the carnage?
You mean like that?
I suggest you take a look at the sorry history of the toothless blue-helmets.
If the UN stepped in, there would have to be a separate section of the main market in Baghdad simply for piles and piles of blue helmets for sale or barter.
*
Ah yes Bosnia
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2002/07/03/1025667009064.html?oneclick=true
Washington ready to paralyse UN peacekeeping operations
July 4 2002
To the open dismay of its allies, the United States appears ready to paralyse UN peacekeeping operations from the Middle East to Central Africa unless it extracts a guarantee that US personnel will be protected from the new International Criminal Court — a condition the court’s backers consider legally and politically untenable.
Washington has rejected back-room suggestions that it simply withdraw from UN peacekeeping missions, few of which have more than a handful of American participants.
US officials say Washington wants to retain the option of participating in UN peacekeeping, but cannot do so unless its demands for immunity are met. It is therefore prepared, if necessary, to block peacekeeping missions that do not provide these guarantees.
After vetoing a routine extension of two UN peacekeeping missions in Bosnia on Sunday, US diplomats proposed a new
Security Council resolution on Tuesday that would exempt from court “investigations or prosecutions” all current, former and future peacekeepers from countries such as the US that have not signed the treaty establishing the court.
Britain and France were expected to strongly resist the new US proposal during debate in the Security Council early today, Sydney time. Both US allies enjoy veto power on the council and strongly oppose special provisions exempting any peacekeepers from the court’s jurisdiction.
Michael, your “resistance” bombed the UN headquarters in Iraq and they left. They want no part of Iraq. Furthermore, because the Iraq situation is so politically volatile, it would be impossible for member nations to agree on how any UN security force should be constituted. In any event, it hasn’t been even on the radar screen for the UN — when has Kofi Annan ever mentioned anything about offering UN Security for Iraq if the Americans leave? Has any country’s government offered troops for a UN Security force?
With regard to your second post, I could just as easily argue the same thing in reverse. That is, progress will come once the “resistance” stops the foolishness. At that point, money allocated for Iraq reconstruction will be spent on reconstruction, instead of security. On the other hand, if the Americans just up and left, the Kurds would declare independence, and the Sadrists and Baathists would fight a civil war for the rest of the country. All of the wealthy, educated people would leave for America or the UK, Saddam (or someone like him) would come back into power, and Iraq would continue to operate as a failed state causing trouble for the Middle East and the rest of the world, ultimately leading to a much larger war.
But Superman under the Geneva Convention the occupying force was supposed to provide security and clearly they failed to do so, perhaps deliberately do you think? Actually we were discussing it only yesterday, Saudi Arabia proposed exactly what we are referring to, a force under UN auspices to replace the USA. But of course it all comes down to oil, the USA refused the offer, the USA won’t leave until they are forced to or until the oil objective is not obtainable.
You know very well that the Resistance won’t stop while there’s still an American standing and it’s unreasonable to expect them to. Would you expect Americans to stop resisting if the USA was invaded?
Saudis propose Muslim Iraq force
Saudi Arabia has proposed that a new international military force drawn exclusively from Muslim countries be sent to Iraq.
The plan was raised in talks between US Secretary of State Colin Powell and senior Saudi officials in the city of Jeddah.
A number of Islamic nations had been approached, a Saudi official said.
The talks came as the White House condemned a suicide bombing which killed scores of people in Iraq.
But it said the attack in Baquba, north-east of Baghdad, would not derail efforts to rebuild the country.
Iraqi officials raised the number killed in the Wednesday morning blast to 70; dozens more people were injured.
Witnesses said a suicide bomber drove a vehicle into a crowded market area, as men queued to join the police.
Across Iraq, more than 100 people were killed on Wednesday in the worst day of violence since the handover of sovereignty exactly a month earlier.
‘A goal’
The Saudi Foreign Minister, Saud al-Faisal, confirmed that preliminary discussions had taken place about a Muslim force, but gave no details.
A US state department spokesman told reporters the talks dealt with facilitating “the deployment of troops from Muslim countries not bordering Iraq to help… Iraqis establish security.”
This is a goal “we support and we will keep talking about”, Richard Boucher said in comments reported by AFP news agency.
A senior Saudi official said the kingdom had been exploring the idea for the last two weeks — and had made initial approaches to a range of Islamic nations.
Saudi officials also said they had discussed the idea with the UN and Iraqi leaders, and that the details were still being worked out.
Hurdles
The BBC’s Jill McGivering, travelling with Mr Powell, says it might be difficult to gain support for the plan from the public in many Muslim countries, who angrily opposed the US-led action in Iraq.
Much will also depend on the mandate under which it would operate and it would also have to be invited by the interim Iraqi government, she says.
Our correspondent suggests it might help if the deployment of Muslim troops was seen as part of a broader process of the gradual withdrawal of US and former coalition forces.
Many in the US public might support the idea of their troops extricating themselves from Iraq as soon as possible and returning home.
But the question might be whether a loss of control on the ground is a price Washington would be prepared to pay, she adds.
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/middle_east/3935077.stm
Darling Michael. I have relatives who were victims of Saddam Hussein’s regime long before the US set foot on Iraqi soil. How many the Butcher of Baghdad’s victims did you personally know before they disappeared or were deported for frivolous reasons?
And BTW, I’m neither an American nor a Brit. In fact my country is not even involved in Iraq. My support for what the coalition is doing in Iraq has nothing to do with any adulation for Bush or Blair or any other world leader. It was and still is based solely on my desire to see the overthrow of what the former United Nations Human Rights Rapporteur Max van der Stoel called the worst violator of human rights since Hitler. Funny that you think his removal is nothing to celebrate.
Sweet petite Louise pardon me if I doubt the truthfulness of your claim, I presume you are claiming you knew each of the fictitious 500,000 Iraqis personally? As for the Dutch guy you mentioned, he clearly had a political agenda, did he gaze into the half a million graves, if so perhaps he could tell the world where they are. It’s true that Saddam had many enemies all of which were undoubtedly willing to swear black was white in order to please their American guardians.
What do you think of the 500,000 Iraqi children lost due to the vindictive sanctions that the USA refused to release. Does it justify an invasion of the USA do you think and should the Bushes and Clinton stand trial?
Michael, Turkey offered troops as well. Iraq did not want its neighbors meddling, for good reason. But if it was really a UN plan, why didn’t Kofi Annan hold a press conference and say that the UN was in discussions with numerous muslim nations to establish a multinational UN force in Iraq. It never happened. Furthermore, if anyone wants to control Iraq’s oil supply, its Iraq’s Arab brethren. Cheap Iraqi Oil would severely undercut the OPEC mafia.
Also, just because some Saudi prince mentioned something somewhere about a UN Muslim security force does not mean there have been any concerted efforts made towards establishing it. If the UN really wanted to handle the matter, they would take action, and they haven’t, plain and simple.
Superman are you saying that the puppet Iraqi Government would prefer the US to remain instead of a multi-national UN Force? Apart from the fact that they do as they are told and the USA has no intention of leaving.
The plan was discussed with the UN as the BBC report mentions, it never got off the ground because the USA insisted on US control which rather defeated the whole object.
Besides everyone knows, apart from you it seems, that the UN doesn’t take any action on its own accord, you need voting and Resolutions and of course the usual obstacle , American vetoes.
As for your remark about oil , frankly it doesn’t make any sense. What Arab nation wants to see OPEC’s price control disappear? Apart from the American controlled Iraq of course.
Just came back,
Now too tired to join the party, start with you one by one later and Michael did a very good job
I will think which one to start with.
Exactly — what OPEC member Arab nation wants to see OPEC’s price control disappear? None. OPEC doesn’t want anyone buying Iraqi oil. It would totally undermine their control over oil supplies. Thank you for proving my point, Arab nations do not want to see a prosperous, stable Iraq to compete with. And who would you want to “control” this UN peacekeeping force — Saudi Arabia? Because they are so trustworthy? The US has vested security and economic interests in making sure Iraq is a normal, stable country in the Middle East, not some oligarchy like Saudi Arabia.
Oh, and if I remember correctly, it wasn’t America that blocked the UN from providing an initial “security force” to go in and handle business in Iraq — that would be France.
Perhaps the more interesting question than the one raised by Ladybird to launch this blog is why Ladybird and Michael chose the death of Steven Vincent rather than that of the previous journalists murdered or killed in Iraq? Perhaps I am unfair and they are have been active in expressing their concerns in blogs on those deaths elsewhere. I would suggest however that the tired old anti-American line in their posts supplies the answer. The USA is of course the revolutionary power in the world, with the events of 1776–1787 reverberateing today as the Big Bang billions of years ago still determines the trajectory and momentum of matter today. The terrorists and their spokesmen in Iraq and elsewhere are the counter revolutionaries attempting to turn back the force of that explosion of ideas at whatever the cost to their own people. They have an ideological problem in explaining this to their people and to their half-conscious fellow travellers in other countries of course since it goes against the facts. Therefore they must attempt to characterise the republicans in the USA as fascist and their own fascists as patriots. Hence, the rhetorical question of Steven Vincent’s murder by counter-revolutionaries at the head of this blog is revealingly couched in the terms of the super race -“is being an American journalist makes people more superior…” and in consequence we find ourselves struggling through the tortuous argument of counter-revolutionary propaganda re-hashed here by the those who wish to seal Iraq back up into its dark age in misguideed defence of a concept of Arab and Islamicist superiority expressed by the special intersts of narrow sects and other powers hostile to liberty. Through that thorny underbrush we reach out a hand of friendship to the mass of the Iraqi people who are struggling to understand the gesture and to take the hand.
Dear michael. You are aware, are you not, that those sanctions of which you speak were imposed by the United Nations, not by the United States. Repeating received airhead rhetoric over and over does nothing to change that fact.
I’m sure you have airhead speaking notes to refer to when the oil-for-food scandal is mentioned, as well, but in case you didn’t do enough connect-the-dot exercises in kindergarten, I’ll make it plain for you.
Persons working for the very institution which imposed the sanctions activily worked around those sanctions to fatten Saddam Hussein’s own bank accounts and their own, while Iraqis of all ages suffered from want.
The American government was not involved in that, despite what you speaking notes are telling you to say, although some bloggers have made a tantalizingly believable case that the highly placed members of the government in my country, on some level at least, were. It’s well know that participants in that scam represent a virtual panoply of nationalities, so your “blame America for every evil in the world” rants are rather juvenile.
Perhaps more connect the dots exercises might help you improve your understanding of how these things work. For now, since you probably wouldn’t get it, I won’t even bother with the details of how Saddam Hussein exploited left wing bleeding hearts in the West with ficticious accounts and theatrics aimed at making them believe he himself had no role in actively creating the misery his people suffered.
Louise babe, I’m obviously aware that the sanctions were originally imposed by the UN. But unlike you, I’m also aware that while the rest of the world could see the damage they were causing, it was the USA that continuously made it clear that they would veto any attempt to relinquish them.
I’m also aware that it was the USA for the most part that continued to traded with Iraq in contravention of those sanctions. I’m also aware that the USA as a member of the Security Council was in a position to overlook all trade done with Iraq and furthermore, it was the US navy that physically policed all movements out of Iraq.
Derek. I presume Ladybird chose Vincent is that as far as I’m aware is the only American journalist to have died in Iraq out of the total of 63. If you want to refer to American history, as short and un-glorified as it is, it’s my belief that the USA’s problems originate from the fact that the umbilical chord of colonialism was cut before civilisation could be properly installed.
Superman.
The point is Iraq was invaded by the uSA for the oil, the plan was to increase Iraq production, ignoring OPEC quotas and thereby undercut OPEC forcing world prices down. It hasn’t worked of course because Iraqi oil production has continuously been sabotaged and in addition Iraqi oil workers have taken industrial action over their concerns that Iraq’s resources were being stolen by barbarians.
I’m sure neither of us would like to see any country gain from breaking International Law and theft.
I think we have to disregard any further comments from Michael because he has made it clear that his mind is clamped in the iron calipers of anti-Americanism.
A more fruitful line of enquiry might start at the website of FrontPage and in particular in the symposium which has just been posted there on the question of how America (and the coalition) is doing in Iraq. The URL is, if this blog accepts the post at: http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=19031
The reason for my citing this page is because one of the participants is, or rather was, Steven Vincent. Both he and the symposium have been cut short. But you will be able to read some of his thoughts and of the other participants made before his murder by the islamofascists in Basra.
You will notice that, although he is a supporter of what America and its allies are trying to do in Iraq, he does not give the exercise so far very high grades and, with respect to what he considers (or rather considered) the most important question — improvements in the quality of Iraqi lives — he gives it an “F”.
In the sincerity of his sympathy and concern for the happiness and prosperity of the Iraqi people, and in the fact that unlike most commentators and journalists on Iraq he was brave enough to leave secure circles and walk around unprotected, I think Ladybird (be she woman or mustachioed Baathist propaganda agent or both) will find the real answer to the query ‘she’ posed to initiate this blog — albeit that she discredited herself by posing it as a rhetorical question.
As soon as you used the word “Islamofascists” Derek you give yourself away as a person that is highly prejudiced against Islam, Vincent used the same word many times.
Of course I’m anti-American , most people I suspect in the world today are. If I would have been alive in 1939 I would have been anti-German as well.
It’s the American fascists and not Islam that has invaded another country just to steal natural resources and in doing so have committed gross crimes against humanity.
Michael’s task in this blog is to generate sudd.
Derek I will say you are pathatic because this is a very fast answer and i neded to go shopping now, but I wanted to say more maybe later.
Hi Ladybird! Noted that I am “pathatic’. I look forward to your further constructive comments.
What is “sudd” Derek?
Louise
I don’t know your level of education or intelligence which I don’t think is very high and as you claim you are not an American or British but you slavishly defending the smirking monkey and his cronies.
Are you one of the political virgins who her brain activities just started after 9/11?
Ladybird,
I’ve seen you’ve already gone dirty in your tactics in your response to Louise.
I think that is a mistake.
“Smirking monkey”?
Very ADULT, Ladybird.
You’ve shown your cards and you’ve completely lost the respect of the commenters who used to trust you.
In the last few months the Ba’athists/terrorists have murdered several thousand Iraqi men, women, and children and you’ve rarely blogged about any of those incidents.
Why is that, Ladybird?
*
Ladybird, for you information I have two bachelor degrees (A BA in Anthropology and History and a B. Ed.) and a MLIS (Master of Library and Information Science). As Jeffrey says, your remarks are childish but predictable.
Michael, concerning the US and the sanctions, you are the one who referred to them as American sanctions. Your remarks are in black and white somewhere up there above, so why are you now backtracking?
I guess I need to point out one of the other rather large dots to which you seem oblivious, namely, that the coalition led by the Americans are the ones who put an end to the sanctions.
Apparently they are damned if they do and damned if they don’t or am I to believe you would rather have had the sanctions lifted but Saddam Hussein remain in power? If so, why restore and prolong the misery of the Iraqi people by returning to the old regime?
Surely you understand that either Uday and Qusay would have followed in their daddy’s footsteps and the miserable plight of the Iraqi people would continued on much, much longer than the current troubles in that land. They were both very young men and could be expected to live another 40 to 50 years. How many more mass graves filled with Iraqi men, women and children are willing to tolerate in order to maintain your virulent anti-American stance? Are you so indifferent to Iraqi lives? Are you one of those whose strange logic would have it that when Arabs and Muslims are killed by Arabs and Muslims it doesn’t count?
There are copious amounts of documentation collected over the past 30 years that serve to verify the statistics about Iraqis killed and brutalized by that regime. You might want to spend some time reading through the archives of organizations like Human Rights Watch or Amnesty International.
In fact, you can ask my ex-husband about Amnesty International. He was approached by them almost a quarter of a century ago, asking him for assistance in documenting the crimes of that regime. Don’t you think a quarter of a century is enough?
That’s because Louise that they were in affect American sanctions. True the UN authorised them in the first place but when concern grew about the disastrous affect it was having on the people of Iraq there was a call to lift them. It was the callous Americans that threatened to veto any attempt to do so. True after the illegal invasion took place the Americans then asked the UN to lift them but by that time Iraq was already stolen property and this was benefit the USA since they controlled the oil.
It’s not me that’s indifferent to Iraqi lives :), the USA has killed far more Iraqis in the last 14 years than Saddam ever did and of course they are still doing it today.
Sure I know that a figure of 400,000 mass graves was widely circulated by the world’s press and accepted by Amnesty etc, just as in fact were WMD, links with terrorism etc, but it all originated from the White House. If you are sure that there were mass graves of 400,000 from Saddam’s time, perhaps you can say where they are located.
I’m becoming more certain that this invasion for oil was not just Bush’s brainchild, I think US policy has been leading up to this since at least 1991. I believe foreign policy is planned long term in the USA and an election of a democrat or Republican doesn’t change what is written in stone.
Here’s a website that directly answers your question.
A simple search using Google with the keywords mass graves Iraq will yield an enormous amount of information on this topic. The item I have linked to above was published a few months ago. This is a key statement from it: “About 290 mass graves have been uncovered since Saddam’s downfall in April 2003. They contain the bodies of 300 000 people believed to have been killed under his regime, outgoing human rights minister Bakhtiar Amin said in January.”
There have also been numerous eyewitness accounts attesting to the fact that many of the people murdered by the regime were buried in ordinary cemetaries, so the full extent of the genocide is not going to be uncovered solely in mass graves. And this doesn’t even begin to touch on the other forms of human rights violations, such as imprisonment without due process, mutilation, forced expulsion, and so on.
That’s true Louise, but a Google search on WMD Iraq will give even more results, but surely even you would now accept that as being bunkum. If you find any websites actually confirming these mass graves have been found and where they have been found I would be very interested. But I don’t believe you will, this 300,000 figure came straight from an American Joseph Goebbels in the propaganda department.
Unless you are calling Tony Blair a liar.
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/politics/story/0,6903,1263830,00.html
PM admits graves claim ‘untrue’
Peter Beaumont, foreign affairs editor
Sunday July 18, 2004
The Observer
Downing Street has admitted to The Observer that repeated claims by Tony Blair that ‘400,000 bodies had been found in Iraqi mass graves’ is untrue, and only about 5,000 corpses have so far been uncovered.
The claims by Blair in November and December of last year, were given widespread credence, quoted by MPs and widely published, including in the introduction to a US government pamphlet on Iraq’s mass graves.In that publication — Iraq’s Legacy of Terror: Mass Graves produced by USAID, the US government aid distribution agency, Blair is quoted from 20 November last year: ‘We’ve already discovered, just so far, the remains of 400,000 people in mass graves.’
On 14 December Blair repeated the claim in a statement issued by Downing Street in response to the arrest of Saddam Hussein and posted on the Labour party website that: ‘The remains of 400,000 human beings [have] already [been] found in mass graves.’
The admission that the figure has been hugely inflated follows a week in which Blair accepted responsibility for charges in the Butler report over the way in which Downing Street pushed intelligence reports ‘to the outer limits’ in the case for the threat posed by Iraq.
Downing Street’s admission comes amid growing questions over precisely how many perished under Saddam’s three decades of terror, and the location of the bodies of the dead.
The Baathist regime was responsible for massive human rights abuses and murder on a large scale — not least in well-documented campaigns including the gassing of Halabja, the al-Anfal campaign against Kurdish villages and the brutal repression of the Shia uprising — but serious questions are now emerging about the scale of Saddam Hussein’s murders.
Funny you should leave out the last statement from that article: A Downing Street spokesman said: ‘While experts may disagree on the exact figures, human rights groups, governments and politicians across the world have no doubt that Saddam killed hundreds of thousands of his own people and their remains are buried in sites throughout Iraq.’
Do you have a threshold for the number of people that have to be killed before you will admit that it is genocide? Or does none of that matter unless you can blame it on the US.
Michael, just how much do you value the lives of people who live under brutal dictatorships? It seems to me you have some sort of psycopathic need to use them. You stand on their backs, as if their remains were a mere soapbox whose only purpose is to provide you with a platform from which to bark your hatred at the US.
And by the way, the first figure estimating the number of dead in Iraq I ever read was 500,000, and it came from one of many Iraqi human rights groups who had been asking for outside intervention to help in bringing down the regime. Did they over estimate in order to strengthen their case? Maybe they did. It will likely take years before experts come to an agreement on the number of people who actually were killed by that regime and its policies.
But again, you seem to imply that there is some sort of “acceptable” level when it comes to a genocide body count. Is there any case of genocide in the world, past or present, that would have motivated you to take action against it?
I suspect you would prefer the status quo, no matter where the slaughter is taking place, as long as you can twist it to your own sick purposes. To me, that makes you the fascist and you are hardly the one to go around accusing others of being a Goebbels. If I’m wrong, then by what criteria, if any, would you think action to end a genocide is justified?
Louise,
If you want to have a real laugh-riot with Michael, just ask him what country he lives in.
And believe me, it isn’t Cuba. Heh heh. Let him try out his Freshman-level Spanish on you for kicks. It’s a hoot. Hey, Michael, was that “por” or “para”? Dimwit.
Michael hates Americans, but refuses to say what country he lives in.
Convenient, isn’t it, Michael?
*
The point is though Louise is that there have been many estimates on the number of people killed by Saddam, although that definition seems to include those who died during the war against Iraq and Iran. Mass graves totalling between 5 and 30,000 are the only ones to be actually found.
So what about the 700,000 Iraqis who have lost their lives due to the Bush’s and Clinton, why are you not concerned about those?
Of course the Americans are the closest thing we have witnessed to the Nazis of the last century, how can there be any doubt about that.
Jeff(rey) you best go and get yourself another drink.
Michael,
Um … what country did you say you were from?
Oh, riiiiiight.
“Cuba.”
Sure. Whatever you say.
*
Interesting that a man who lives in Cuba would be skeptical of the information coming from the elected US administration, and NGOs, and the elected Iraqi government who are all digging up the mass graves, but wholly credulous of all Fidel and Saddam says.
They’ll never lie to you Michael. Hahahahahaha!
interesting that men (and i use the term loosely) who are so quick to jump on the lady who owns the blog and call her out for her immaturity are then so quick to turn around and use exactly the same tactics…
“You’ve shown your cards and you’ve completely lost the respect of the commenters who used to trust you”
uh oh — losing the respect of spineless hypocrites, im sure she’ll lose many nights sleep over that one!
in regards to where michael comes from, what relevance does that have to anything? it seems that in arguments you are so clearly losing, you’re very quick to try to turn it around to pointless irrelevant issues like that, or a name.
ladybird, keep writing. it is insightful and genuine, and people on the other side of the world trying to tell you how to feel and what reality is are morons. i appreciate the honesty in your blog.
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