Defending the Truth

he's got a couple thousand under his belt, and he's not done yet...

Who is to say the deaths will not reach the millions, wolrd wide, from the over use of dirty bombs in Iraq. Our boys coming back from Iraq are currently getting cancer at a higher rate that anyone else, and it is getting worse. You must not have read the post about this. Bush is our commander and Has made the choice to continue using these weapons even in the face of our Guys dying. This Administration is ignoring the proof and turning thier back on these guys on top of getting them sick to start with.Bush has the potential to do more harm than Hitler and Saddam combined. Plus, you also have to consider what a long and drawn out way to die(from Cancer).
I must also take the time here to comment on Saddam's trial. How come in America we don't try people after a certain amount of time? Because time does funny things to your mind. The witnesses remember what they want to and have forgotten things they think unimportant. I could not find a case in America that the defendent was put on trial for something 25 years old. Saddam is on tial for something that happened 25 years ago. Since we all know he was an asshole dictator, we look past the point of what is right in our own legal opinions. It is called statute of limitations.
Any other trial we would mention this, but not this one.
Don't get me wrong, I think Saddam was wrong for the things he did, but if he did all that much, why is his trial about something 25 years old. We are all brain washed by the media concerning Saddam, Bush's scapegoat. The changing reasons for us being in there alone should set off alarms in your head. Never mind all the facts put together! Hitler is the historic villian, Saddam is the old villian, and I have to say it is looking more and more like Bush is the new one. whether Bush killed millions of his own people, only time and our future ability to cure cancer, will tell.

I see what you are trying to get at but they were fighting in combat and were killed by terrorists. Bush did not gas our troops or the American people.

I'm sure all the same was said about Reagan when he decided to stand up to the Soviets. I wasn't old enough at that time so I'm just assuming that the anti-war people were saying stuff like this.

War sucks, but sometimes it's necessary to prevent any more further attacks on US soil. Saddam is a horrible dictator who wants more and more power. He will kill his own people who disagree with him, he will fund groups like Al Qaeda who hates America, he is a sick man and for us to put him on trial and give the Iraqi's the chance to live in a Democracy to me seems like the right thing to do. Unfortunately i would have to side with the most of you considering the amount of lives we have lost in this war. I would like to look on the bright side but indeed the casualties make it more difficult to do so.

Listening to that government modified news? Tell me why Saddam is not on trial for something recent. According to the 9/11 comission Saddam did not back al quada. He was a Ass but not a terrorist!!!!

washingtonpost.com
Al Qaeda-Hussein Link Is Dismissed

By Walter Pincus and Dana Milbank
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, June 17, 2004; Page A01


The Sept. 11 commission reported yesterday that it has found no "collaborative relationship" between Iraq and al Qaeda, challenging one of the Bush administration's main justifications for the war in Iraq.

Along with the contention that Saddam Hussein was stockpiling weapons of mass destruction, President Bush, Vice President Cheney and other top administration officials have often asserted that there were extensive ties between Hussein's government and Osama bin Laden's terrorist network; earlier this year, Cheney said evidence of a link was "overwhelming."

But the report of the commission's staff, based on its access to all relevant classified information, said that there had been contacts between Iraq and al Qaeda but no cooperation. In yesterday's hearing of the panel, formally known as the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, a senior FBI official and a senior CIA analyst concurred with the finding.

The staff report said that bin Laden "explored possible cooperation with Iraq" while in Sudan through 1996, but that "Iraq apparently never responded" to a bin Laden request for help in 1994. The commission cited reports of contacts between Iraq and al Qaeda after bin Laden went to Afghanistan in 1996, adding, "but they do not appear to have resulted in a collaborative relationship. Two senior bin Laden associates have adamantly denied that any ties existed between al Qaeda and Iraq. We have no credible evidence that Iraq and al Qaeda cooperated on attacks against the United States."

The finding challenges a belief held by large numbers of Americans about al Qaeda's ties to Hussein. According to a Harris poll in late April, a plurality of Americans, 49 percent to 36 percent, believe "clear evidence that Iraq was supporting al Qaeda has been found."

As recently as Monday, Cheney said in a speech that Hussein "had long-established ties with al Qaeda." Bush, asked on Tuesday to verify or qualify that claim, defended it by pointing to Abu Musab Zarqawi, who has taken credit for a wave of attacks in Iraq.

Bush's Democratic challenger, Sen. John F. Kerry (Mass.), sought to profit from the commission's finding. "The administration misled America, and the administration reached too far," Kerry told Michigan Public Radio. "I believe that the 9/11 report, the early evidence, is that they're going to indicate that we didn't have the kind of terrorists links that this administration was asserting. I think that's a very, very serious finding."

A Bush campaign spokesman countered that Kerry himself has said Hussein "supported and harbored terrorist groups." And Cheney's spokesman pointed to a 2002 letter written by CIA Director George J. Tenet stating that "we have solid reporting of senior level contacts between Iraq and al Qaeda going back a decade" and "credible information indicates that Iraq and al Qaeda have discussed safe haven and reciprocal non-aggression." Cheney's office also pointed to a 2003 Tenet statement calling Zarqawi "a senior al Qaeda terrorist associate."

White House spokesman Scott McClellan said the commission finding of long-standing high-level contacts between al Qaeda and Iraq justified the administration's earlier assertions. "We stand behind what was said publicly," he said.

Bush, speaking to troops in Tampa yesterday, did not mention an Iraq-al Qaeda link, saying only that Iraq "sheltered terrorist groups." That was a significantly milder version of the allegations administration officials have made since shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

In late 2001, Cheney said it was "pretty well confirmed" that Sept. 11 mastermind Mohamed Atta met with a senior Iraqi intelligence official before the attacks, in April 2000 in Prague; Cheney later said the meeting could not be proved or disproved.

Bush, in his speech aboard an aircraft carrier on May 1, 2003, asserted: "The liberation of Iraq is a crucial advance in the campaign against terror. We've removed an ally of al Qaeda and cut off a source of terrorist funding."

In September, Cheney said on NBC's "Meet the Press": "If we're successful in Iraq . . . then we will have struck a major blow right at the heart of the base, if you will, the geographic base of the terrorists who had us under assault now for many years, but most especially on 9/11."

Speaking about Iraq's alleged links to al Qaeda and the Sept. 11 attacks, Cheney connected Iraq to the 1993 World Trade Center bombing by saying that newly found Iraqi intelligence files in Baghdad showed that a participant in the bombing returned to Iraq and "probably also received financing from the Iraqi government as well as safe haven." He added: "The Iraqi government or the Iraqi intelligence service had a relationship with al Qaeda that stretched back through most of the decade of the '90s."

Shortly after Cheney asserted these links, Bush contradicted him, saying: "We've had no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved with the September 11th." But Bush added: "There's no question that Saddam Hussein had al Qaeda ties."

In January, Cheney repeated his view that Iraq was tied to al Qaeda, saying that "there's overwhelming evidence" of an Iraq-al Qaeda connection. He said he was "very confident there was an established relationship there."

The commission staff, in yesterday's report, said that while bin Laden was in Sudan between 1991 and 1996, a senior Iraqi intelligence officer made three visits to Sudan, and that he had a meeting with bin Laden in 1994. Bin Laden was reported to have sought training camps and assistance in getting weapons, "but Iraq never responded," the staff said. The report said that bin Laden "at one time sponsored anti-Saddam Islamists in Iraqi Kurdistan."

As for the Atta meeting in Prague mentioned by Cheney, the commission staff concluded: "We do not believe that such a meeting occurred." It cited FBI photographic and telephone evidence, along with Czech and U.S. investigations, as well as reports from detainees, including the Iraqi official with whom Atta was alleged to have met. On the 1993 trade center bombing, the staff found "substantial uncertainty" about whether bin Laden and al Qaeda were involved.

At yesterday's hearing, commissioner Fred F. Fielding questioned the staff's finding of no apparent cooperation between bin Laden and Hussein. He pointed to a sentence in the first sealed indictment in 2001 of the al Qaeda members accused of the bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania; that sentence said al Qaeda reached an understanding with Iraq that they would not work against each other and would cooperate on acquiring arms.

Patrick J. Fitzgerald, now a U.S. attorney in Illinois, who oversaw the African bombing case, told the commission that reference was dropped in a superceding indictment because investigators could not confirm al Qaeda's relationship with Iraq as they had done with its ties to Iran, Sudan and Hezbollah. The original material came from an al Qaeda defector who told prosecutors that what he had heard was secondhand.

The staff report on Iraq was brief. Though not confirming any Iraqi collaboration with al Qaeda, it did not specifically address two of the other pieces of evidence the administration has offered to link Iraq to al Qaeda: Zarqawi's Tawhid organization and the Ansar al-Islam group.

In October 2002, Bush described Zarqawi, a Palestinian born in Jordan, as "one very senior al Qaeda leader who received medical treatment in Baghdad this year, and who has been associated with planning for chemical and biological attacks."

Zarqawi wrote a January 2003 letter to bin Laden's lieutenants, intercepted at the Iraqi border, saying that if al Qaeda adopted his approach in Iraq, he would swear "fealty to you [bin Laden] publicly and in the news media."

In March, in a statement to the Senate Armed Services Committee, Tenet described Zarqawi's network as among groups having "links" to al Qaeda but with its own "autonomous leadership . . . own targets [and] they plan their own attacks."

Although Zarqawi may have cooperated with al Qaeda in the past, officials said it is increasingly clear that he has been operating independently of bin Laden's group and has his own network of operatives.

The other group, Ansar al-Islam, began in 2001 among Kurdish Sunni Islamic fundamentalists in northern Iraq, fighting against the two secular Kurdish groups that operated under the protection of the United States. At one point, bin Laden supported Ansar, as did Zarqawi, who is believed to have visited their area more than once. Tenet referred to Ansar as one of the Sunni groups that had benefited from al Qaeda links.

Okay, first of all, Saddam did not kill millions of his people. In fact, no where near. The US invasion killed more innocent Iraqis than Saddam ever did with his gassings. Studies have been done over a year ago, and they concluded that over 100,000 innocent Iraqis have been killed as a result of the US invasion of Iraq. And this was over a year ago. Meaning this was before it began to get even more tense. Its also before the battle for Fallujah, which produced some of the greatest casualties.

What makes a US bomb killing an innocent Iraqi more moral than an Iraqi bomb?

Not to mention US economic sanctions which has killed far more than the US invasion of Iraq and Saddam's brutal reign put together. Or not to mention the thousands permanently effected by the poisening of Depleated Uranium. Or the thousands of offspring that turned out to be deformed or with disease. Which will continue as long as Depleated Uranium's half-life (4.5 billion years). The pro-life groups should be more upset about that.

This hypocracy can be seen in just about any war state in human history. And most certainly any fascist state. What I just did was not call Bush a Nazi, but rather just compared history with current events. If we aren't willing to do that, then history is inevetably going to repeat itself. Then it would be to late and unfortunately actually calling the government Nazi, or totalitarian might just be an accurate critique.

So Dylan, that is why I as well as others commonly compare (not call) not just Hitler, but other figures in history to not only Bush, but other figures in current events.

The reason why Hitler is picked so quickly to compare Bush with, is because Hiter has really become the embodyment of unjustified aggression. In fact, the Geneva Convention was not mainly called, on crimes against humanity in response to the holocaust, but rather its main purpose was to critique aggressive action against other sovereign states. Bush is one of the first in our history as Americans to really take our country down the path of aggressive "crusades" (as Bush likes to call them) against sovereign states not only against the United Nations and the vast majority of the international community but also against a defensless and mostly harmless state. And some would say, acquiring natural resources at the expense of innocent lives and the essential liberties of the American people. This hasn't really been seen in a while, and Hitler has been made the icon for this type of unjustified aggressive action. And that is why people compare Hitler's actions with Bush's actions.

I most certainly understand that Bush is not Hitler. I understand that he is not just like Hitler. Bush certainly isn't engaging in ethnic cleansing at home, and certainly isn't sending Jews into a mass systematic killing and torchure. And I'm sure most people who do compare Hitler with Bush do understand this as well. I am not calling Bush Hitler, nor am I saying that Bush is running parallel with Nazi doctrine.

However, what I am doing is comparing current events which are so easily skewed in propaganda and different radical beliefs, with events in history that we as the human race or at least as Americans have come to consensus on. Hitler is the embodyment, and the icon of unjustified aggression throughout the world and esspecially viewed so in America. To come to terms with a different reality than what you hear out of Bush's own mouth and media bias, one must view it in a historical perspective. There are many historical figures that I could compare Bush with (Charles II of Spain [ , Kidding]), but Hitler seems to be the most well known historical figure for an example of unjustified aggression.

And I am actually more tolerant of the ignorance of someone calling Bush exactly like Hitler, or like Stalin, than the ignorance of someone that refuses to come to terms with historical example. So really I'm actually more mad at you than far left people calling him Hitler or far Libertarian people calling him Stalin. Because like I said before, if we aren't willing to engage in debate facing historical example to our own political system, then history is inevetably going to repeat itself. Just look at Israel. Its hard to imagine that a people that underweant so much suffering and tyranny in Europe could turn around and commit some of the same types of attrocities on innocent people. But that's another debate.

Kudos Katcz!!!
Ridin' how did you say it? Psh!?!