Pre-War Iraq

This is what happens when good men do nothing.

Bottom line the world is a better place without these jokers.

Article follows: RWN 29 June, 2004

The Left Had Nothing To Do With Stopping Torture In Iraq

Prepare yourself, because this is just an unbelievably horrible story about what used to go on in Iraq before George Bush put a stop to it…

"Ibrahim Idrissi has mixed feelings about the recent uproar caused by the abuse of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib under the US occupation. “As a humanitarian organization, we oppose this,” he says. “But these are soldiers who have come to Iraq to fight, not to be prison guards. It was to be expected. Of course, if there are innocent people in there … it is possible, I guess, that some of them are innocent.”

If Idrissi seems a bit callous about the fate of the Iraqis in US-run jails, he has probably earned the right to differ. He recalls a day in 1982, at the General Security prison in Baghdad:

“They called all the prisoners out to the courtyard for what they called a ‘celebration.’ We all knew what they meant by ‘celebration.’ All the prisoners were chained to a pipe that ran the length of the courtyard wall. One prisoner, Amer al-Tikriti, was called out. They said if he didn’t tell them everything they wanted to know, they would show him torture like he had never seen. He merely told them he would show them patience like they had never seen.”

“This is when they brought out his wife, who was five months pregnant. One of the guards said that if he refused to talk he would get 12 guards to rape his wife until she lost the baby. Amer said nothing. So they did. We were forced to watch. Whenever one of us cast down his eyes, they would beat us.”

“Amer’s wife didn’t lose the baby. So the guard took a knife, cut her belly open and took the baby out with his hands. The woman and child died minutes later. Then the guard used the same knife to cut Amer’s throat.” There is a moment of silence. Then Idrissi says: “What we have seen about the recent abuse at Abu Ghraib is a joke to us.”

The Idrissis, and many families like them, feel that people in Iraq have too quickly relegated the horrors of the old regime to the annals of history. “But it is not the past to us,” says Idrissi. “The mother of the person who was killed, his brothers and sisters, they are alive. We are still living the nightmare every day.”

Keep that in mind when people like Al Gore & Ted Kennedy try to claim that we’re just as bad as Saddam. When you hear people like John Kerry, Ted Rall, Michael Moore, & Nancy Pelosi trying to tell you that Bush is a rotten guy, remember that if they had been in charge, Saddam’s torture chambers & rape rooms would be open for business and manned by the same sort of people who are sawing the heads off of helpless hostages in Iraq. Better that pregnant women get gang raped and murdered in front of their husbands than for Bush to be the one to get credit for stopping it…

John Hawkins |

So even though we’ve broken our own laws and violated the treaties we’ve signed, no matter how badly some of our soldiers have acted, “they’re not as bad as Saddam”?

Should we use the shittiest standards of decency to measure ourselves?

Lowering our benchmarks to Saddam’s standards diminish America far more than any compaints about torture possibly could.

Lumpy,

Stop being a god damn twit! (thanks RSU)

Nowhere did he say he approved or liked what happend to the iraqi prisoners. He was simply trying to put things in perspective of how bad things were in iraq and how bad things are now. You can have perspective when a bad situation occurs without supporting the bad in the situation.

I backed into my girlfriends car yesterday. She did not get angry with me, she did not want me to go turn in my liscense at the DMV, she did not want to file charges for property damage against me, all things that i’m sure at least some people in this country would want done if I had backed into their car. WHY? because she can keep things in perspective. Does it mean she supports the policy of me backing into her car? does she want me to do it every day? NO, but that doesnt mean she blows it out of proportion.

Bad things happen, live with it and stop being such a polarized voice here. You are one of the only people who post here that I have never heard a positive thing about the conservative efforts of the day. RSU, ELK, Vroom, and others have all disagreed with conservative posters here but at least a few times when the right admin or any arm thereof did something pretty good they at least can admit there is some good done. You ALWAYS look for any negative aspect of it and spew it out like slimy ooze.

You live in fantasy land and your world sucks!

Vegita ~ Prince of all sayajins

Hey,
Vegita take it easy on Lumpy! His voice needs to be heard just as much as anyone else’s! He is a balance to many of the hardcore rightwingers on the forum. Some of your opinions and analogy’s can be pretty arrogant and infantile! Furthermore you may not like what he say’s, but much of it is backed up with fact! More so then your idea’s

[quote]Elkhntr1 wrote:
Hey,
Vegita take it easy on Lumpy! His voice needs to be heard just as much as anyone else’s! He is a balance to many of the hardcore rightwingers on the forum. Some of your opinions and analogy’s can be pretty arrogant and infantile! Furthermore you may not like what he says, but much of it is backed up with fact! More so then your idea’s[/quote]

Your defense of anything on the left side of the fence amuses me.

Sorry I didn’t think he would take offense to anything I said, He is what he is and I was just pointing it out to him. Maybe he doesn’t realize that 100% of what he posts is anti conservative, pro extreme liberal. Not 80% not 90% but 100%, anyone with any shred of common sense knows that the fringes (right or left) are not where the truth lies. Lumpy has shown time and time again that his ideas and viewpoints are extremely fringe left. If you believe in the defenition above, and desire serious political debate, fringe ideas do not have a home. This is the major problem most of us conservatives have with Michael Moore. He is a LOON! Most political leaders in this country dems and gop’s have said this, yet many mainstreet liberals still tout him a some sort of liberal hero.

Lumpy, sorry bud but you are just so negative when it comes to anything positive this administration does. I can just see the next headline, GWB saves boys life when boy falls into river. I’m sure you would be quick to point out the only reason GWB is such a good swimmer is because he had a priveliged upbringing and he had someone throw the boy into the river so he could jump in and save him and boost his poll #s and that it wasn’t really bush ho saved him that it was a stunt double because GWB is really a pansy.

Please prove me wrong and dig deep, say one thing that this administration has done well and I will apologize and get off your back.

Vegita ~ Prince of all Sayajins

Veg,
My dear lad! You fail to see you and rainjack are exactly what you accuse Lumpy of only on the other side. You have made posts saying some pretty derogatory things about democrats! You have also disagreed in a nice way as well, but you just as most of us, are guilty of both. Go back and look at your posts you have never said a good thing about someone on the left! It makes me laugh when you call Lumpy to the carpet for your same behavior!

Rain you kill me, you really do! If I amuse you I’m glad! Now, cmon we can broaden your horizens it just takes a little effort!

Vegita,

“You can have perspective when a bad situation occurs without supporting the bad in the situation.”

Exactly right. Perspective is the key. I don’t care what the rest of the world does in terms of torture - the US should adhere to its own standards regardless. In other words, just because other countries get an ‘F’ in human rights doesn’t mean we are angels because we score a ‘D+’.

That being said, most critics of Abu Ghraib are losing perspective. They equate the actions of some inept soldiers and bad local policy at Abu Ghraib to the institutions of torture under Saddam. It’s insane.

I despise what happened at Abu Ghraib and, if I had my way, I’d hold those responsible as traitors.

The comparisons are flatly dishonest, but the Left’s only currency nowadays is hyperbole. Just like the Bush-Hitler cant, the Iraq-Vietnam story, and the Abu-Ghraib-gulag comparison.

It begs the question: why keep firing if you are shooting blanks?

“Lumpy, sorry bud but you are just so negative when it comes to anything positive this administration does.”

Umm they did something positive???

Just kidding. I like the administration’s AIDS initiative in Africa (although I disagree with some of the details regarding things like condoms and abstinence- they don’t place enough emphasis on prevention with condoms, and teaching abstinence has it’s limits…for example with prostitutes).

I also like that Bush proclaimed that Palestine should be recognized. Obviously I think he is making a mess of the Middle East but that was a good gesture.

I never posted any political messages on T-Mag until some of the other guys here started posting insane pro-war posts in the days leading up to the invasion. I thought that was kind of sickening. I also was offended by the many posts saying anti-war protestors were traitors and other similar crap. I’ve felt all along that the reasons given by Team Bush for going to a pre-emptive war with Iraq were flimsy, and that the war would become a mess, and potentially destablize the entire region.

I figure that in real life we would be arguing about this over beers, not getting into fistfights… Sorry if you guys feel differently.

It’s been interesting reading Lumpy’s stuff. He’s not as dumb as some other liberals.

Who are you going to vote for Lump? Will you really vote for Kerry? Even after you found out he accepted a purple heart for a wound that didn’t even require stitches. In my book he’s a laughing stock. He’s an E-man, no honor. He is like some kind of lower…well he’s a liberal.

Bush ain’t what he should be, but he’s a lot more than Kerry.

Elk, You must be insane, I have stated many times that I am not a republican and only conservative with respect to defense and spending. I think there are many great democrats out there and they all do good work, Maybe with the exeption of Ted Kennedy. And even if I don’t agree with thier ideas 100% of the time, I have never misconstrued something they have done to paint the picture any worse than it really was. You are really trying to find hypocracy where there isn’t any, try looking in the mirror you might find some there.

Lumpy, Thanks that was actually refreshing. I do apologize for coming down on you, I just thought you might have actually been a democratic supercomputer that just spit out negative bush statements on internet forums all day. :wink: Anyways I don’t think i’d want to discuss this over a beer with any of you, I’m sure we’d be way too busy talking about the set of legs on the hot blonde over in the corner. :wink:

Vegita ~ Prince of all Sayajins