Iraq, from invasion to date

[wklink]

Originally posted by GScholz
Documentation?

Executions for crimes (such as armed uprising) are not illegal. The US still executes criminals. Just because you support the Sunnis or Kurdish cause does not make their actions legal according to Iraqi law. They did wage war on the Iraqi army and government ... somehow I think that would be punishable by death in the US.

I am simply amazed that anyone could use such a rationalization for genocide.

[Toad]

So in civil wars it's OK to massacre the civilians?

Just asking; not getting your point, sorry.

[wklink]

Originally posted by GScholz
Genocide against the Sunnis? Hardly. In fact that would demean the meaning of genocide.

Kent State massacre ... same thing on a much smaller scale except the National Guard were the only ones armed.

And my amazement continues.

Number one, you need to get some facts straight.  The rebellious religious faction is the Shiites in the south, not the Sunnis in the middle.  Saddam Hussein is a Sunni Muslim (technically), the Sunni's make up about 30 percent of the Iraqi population.  The Shiites were the ones that revolted in the South.

Now how you can compare the panicky reaction of about a dozen National Guard troops to the sytematic murder of almost 100 thousand individuals, the draining of their ecosystem, the slaughter of their clerics and the random terror that occured after the 91 uprising is amazing.  The attacks on the Kent State protestors was wrong but it wasn't authorized by the leader of the United States.  The attacks on the Shiites in the south was ordered by Saddam Hussein, executed by his cronies and resulted in the deaths of thousands, not three or four individuals.


If you want to compare it to something, compare it to Stalin and Lenin's treatment of the Ukranians and White Russians after the end of the Bolshevek revolution.  That is a more apt comparision.  I am sure you can justify that too.

Geez.  I can't believe I am even debating this.  I can't believe anyone can somehow apologize for someone like Saddam.

[Hortlund]

Originally posted by GScholz
You're still a fascist, what's new.

[/b] With all due respect GS, Im not the one defending mass murder of civilians...

Documentation?




Documentation? Bosnia was a civil war, but I don't expect you to know the difference.

"During the uprisings" being the operative words here.

[/b]
How about this one:

They started to bring groups of innocent people to this graveyard and began executing them here. Every day, those criminals started executing people at 9:00 a.m. until 5:00 p.m. They brought people here in buses—each group was between 120 and 150 people. They would bring three groups of this size each day.

Before they brought these people, they would bring a bulldozer to dig holes. Military members surrounded the area so no one would come near the place. When they brought the people, they pushed them into the holes with their hands tied and their eyes covered. When they pushed them into the holes, they would start shooting massively. Afterwards, they would bring the bulldozers to bury the people. Then the criminals would prepare for the second and third groups [of victims.] This operation lasted from March 7 until April 6, 1991.27

Or this one

Nasir Khadi Hazim al-Husseini was only twelve years old at the time of the 1991 mass arrest campaign. On March 16, 1991, his twenty-eight-year-old mother Khulud `Abud Naji took Nasir and two other thirteen-year-old relatives, his uncle Muhanad `Abud Naji, and his cousin Muhammad Yassin Muhammad, from their home in the al-Sa`da neighborhood to leave for their grandfather’s house in the Sha’awi neighborhood.

On their way, a soldier stopped the group, asked them where they were going, and accused them of being looters. Nasir’s mother explained that they were just going to their grandfather’s house, but the soldier arrested all of them and took them to a nearby school building: “They put us in a school in a classroom. By the evening, the classroom was filled with people because they kept arresting people.”17

As evening fell, the people gathered in the classroom were taken to the al-Mahawil military base:

They blindfolded us and bound our hands, and then they put us in landcruisers with shaded windows and a bus. We were about twenty-five to thirty people [detained].… They took us to the al-Mahawil military base. Some of us were taken to another area [of the al-Mahawil base]. They put me, my mother, my cousin, and my uncle in a tiny room. In the night of the same day, they brought a fourteen-year-old girl and a thirty-year-old woman to the same room.18

The family spent the night in the tiny room, and received no food since their arrest the prior day. The next morning they were taken for investigation, where high-ranking officers, including a lieutenant-colonel, took down their names, the neighborhood they came from, and similar details. Following the perfunctory investigation, they were taken to a large hall at the al-Mahawil military base, where they were again joined by other detainees:

They took us to a big hall [and] started bringing in people now and then. We stayed there for two days. There were so many people... They were children, women, and men. We were sitting in [family] groups, me with my relatives and the others with their relatives. No one dared to speak to the other groups.19

Toward the end of the second day—the evening of March 18, 1991—the detainees gathered in the big hall were taken outside and lined up in the yard of the compound. “They brought some blankets which they ripped and they tied our hands and blindfolded us with those,” Nasir recalled. “They covered our eyes and put us inside some TATA buses looted from Kuwait. We were between forty-five and fifty people on each bus. It was very crowded, there were two people on each chair.”20

After the detainees were loaded on the buses, they were told that there were some checkpoints on the road, and that if asked, they should say they were going to Baghdad. Nasir, who could see a bit through the blanket covering his eyes, recounted the route taken by the bus:

There was an asphalt road from the door of the military camp. Then we turned off into a remote, dusty dirt road, an agricultural road. We turned off the main road, and I didn’t know where we were going. I was sitting on the bus at the chair near the window. There was an abandoned canal, I was sitting on that side of the bus. … I couldn’t see clearly, but there was a building—later, when I looked [after the executions], it was a brick factory.21

Almost as soon as the buses stopped, the executions began. People were pulled off the buses, thrown in a pre-dug pit, machine-gunned, and then buried with a bulldozer. Nasir told Human Rights Watch how he miraculously survived:

When they started taking us off the bus, some of us began reciting the shahada [Muslim declaration of faith]. My mother told me, “Repeat the shahada, because we are about to die.” I heard the shouting of the children. We grabbed each other’s hands—me, my mother, my cousin, and my uncle. They pulled us, we were all together.

They threw us into the dug-out grave. When I fell down, there were so many bodies underneath me. I layed down on top of them. They started to shoot on us.

There were two [groups of] men. One was taking the people off the bus, and others were shooting at people in the hole.

One of them pulled at my clothes, and said “That one isn’t dead, shoot him.” They shot again, but still I was not shot.

So they gave an order to the bulldozer driver to bury the grave. I was at the edge of the grave. When the shovel came, I spontaneously tried to crawl out. It was sundown now. I crawled to the edge of the grave, and got to a place where the bamboo was on my face and I was able to breathe through it. I heard the man who was standing on the hill instruct the shovel driver to bury us more—he had seen that I was not yet buried—but the driver left the place and didn’t do it.22

After he heard the noises of the vehicles fade away, Nasir crawled out of the mass grave, leaving his dead relatives behind. He made his way to the main al-Hilla-Baghdad road, and met four sympathetic Shi`a Iraqi soldiers who helped him return home.

Since I just know you will be screaming for sources like a good revisionist, here:

http://www.hrw.org/reports/2003/iraq0503/

Its a human rights watch report.

Strange how you can call this an atrocity while praising the Israelis for doing the same thing, albeit on a smaller scale.

[/b]
Yeah, plenty of examples of how Israeli soldiers machine gun palestinian civilians and throw them into mass graves. Sources please.

Halabaja is 7 miles from the Iraq-Iran border, moron.

What I meant was that Halabja was not being defended by Iranians or Kurdish militia at the time of the gas attack.

[Pongo]

"Khorome, an ex-village located 80 kilometers south of the Turkish border. In August 1988 the Iraqi army came to town, raced every village and shot every male person between the ages of 10-70. The women and children were left, alive but without any belongings except for the clothes on their bodies. "

The difference between that and a B52 strike on the village is what? The B52 kills half the village in a more gender neutral way. And you follow it up with agent orange on the sheep pastures so even if they live the locals will still starve, for generations.

Hortland you have a nasty strategy of lieing and then making anyone that corrects you sound like they are defending Saddam, where in fact we are just pointing out to you your lying or stretching or twisting the truth.

I hope they do kill Sadam, and I wish all that perpetuate such acts were held accountable for them. I hope that if Bush Jr lets the Turks into northern Iraq then he pays the price for that decision. I hope that Bush senior has payed the price for instigating an uprising in Northern Iraq then abandoning the Kurds to thier fate.

[Toad]

True, the UN has no mandate to interfere in a civil war.

I think where the difference of opinion is greatest is that, once there, what military force would stand by and allow forces from either side in a civil war to just massacre civilians?

Yah, Yah.. I know. No mandate. Seems simple from your viewing angle.

Just pointing out that a lot of folks don't see it from that angle.

If one is witnessing atrocity, do you just stand and watch or do you act? Should I ask the Dutch Batt?

Bosnia was not Iraq. I agree absolutely.

[wklink]

Ok, so the question then is, what is the purpose of the UN if it isn't to interfere in 'civil wars' that result in the deaths of non-combatants.

There is a definition of the killing of non-combatants in places like Bosnia and Iraq.  It is called War Crimes.  The United States's use of Agent Orange can be debated as a war crime, some may say yes, some may say no but coming into a town that opposes you and killing everyone that doesn't agree with you is a war crime.

When should the UN interfere?  Should they have stood on the sidelines like they did in Rwanda or should they have gotten involved like they did in Bosnia.  I know they can't be everywhere but when the UN has the ability to stop something like that, even in a civil war setting, when should it act?

If it has no moral mandate to intervene then why was it created.  I thought the whole purpose of the UN was to prevent the stuff that happened during WW2, the mass graves, the slaughter of non combatants.   Seems like they should be involved.

[AKIron]

Sounds like a real quagmire Rip. At least it was for some 20+ years. Looks like we're cleaning up the swamp, good post.

[Toad]

Originally posted by GScholz
I would not just stand by and watch, however I would also be violating my mandate. Yes you will have to ask Dutch Batt about that.
 

Well, yeah, I'm pretty sure I'd get involved too. Mandates? Rules were made to be broken. Sometimes, you gotta do what you gotta do.

Now the question becomes "how far away do I have to be before I can look myself in the mirror and say 'there was nothing I could do'"?

A mile? A hundred miles? Across an ocean?

Conscience is a funny thing, isn't it?

[Toad]

What part of seeing groups of women and children being shot down by troops is hard to understand?

[Toad]

Ah, so as long as it's out of your direct vision nothing needs to be or should be done?

[JBA]

Originally posted by GScholz
Genocide against the Sunnis? Hardly. In fact that would demean the meaning of genocide.

Kent State massacre ... same thing on a much smaller scale except the National Guard were the only ones armed.

How does one responed to stuff like this:confused:

[JBA]

I put this in the other thread as well about the Iraqis and the UN,  but in the case anyone didn't see it I think it's relavent here to.

Article Title: "Separate Realities "
Author: Section: Issues & Insights Date: 12/15/2003

Media: Thousands of Iraqis have marched to condemn terrorism and demand a halt to the violence. We're still waiting for the networks to offer their full reports.

And they're probably waiting, too. But not to report on Iraqis coming together against the loyalist insurgents who are trying to sabotage the construction of a liberated society.

They're likely waiting for a handful of Iraqis to demonstrate against the coalition or march in support of Saddam Hussein.

Now that would be real news, wouldn't it? The anti-insurgent rallies haven't gone totally unnoticed by the media. There has been some light coverage.

Otherwise we would have never known that "5,000 to 10,000 Iraqis tried to send terrorists a cease-and-desist message Wednesday from downtown Baghdad," as a Knight Ridder News Service reporter described it.

Or that 4,000 or so chanted "death to terrorists" in Baghdad on Nov. 28. The Media Research Center tells us the rallies were ignored, though, by two of the major broadcast network news shows while ABC gave it a cursory treatment.

And, as far as we can tell, not a single major daily newspaper had a march story on its front page.

However, should a subsidiary of Halliburton, the former employer of Vice President Dick Cheney, be accused of charging the U.S. government too much for its contract services in Iraq, well, then that's front-page news for The New York Times and Washington Post, and an instant obsession for the broadcast media.

(CBS News anchor Dan Rather suggested that the "overcharges" were evidence of some nasty "war profiteering.") Never mind that this alleged overcharging has nothing to do with Cheney. Forget that it's a dispute between accountants. Don't even consider that nothing criminal or illegal has transpired.

And disregard the fact that Halliburton isn't likely to profit from the "overcharges" and that they were the outcome of Halliburton paying a subcontractor too much for gasoline. Just remember when it's time to vote next fall that in some vague way, Cheney did something wrong.

Frankly, we're a little weary of having to continue to point out that the media are dwelling on the negative and largely dismissing the positive in Iraq.

Yet we understand. Focusing on death and dismemberment and looking for dirty deals while downplaying progress is an effective way to poison public opinion on the war and the Bush administration.

Oddly, the media's inconsistencies have actually been captured by a small corner of the press. In a Dec. 5 dispatch from Baghdad detailing the accomplishments of the Army's Civil Affairs soldiers and regular troops,

Tara Copp of Scripps Howard News Service writes: "What Iraq looks like on TV, and what Iraq looks like for the 130,000 troops living here, sometimes feels like two different realities."

Is there a better description than that? Copp, possibly without knowing it, summarized the entire issue in less than 25 words. But, like the progress Copp was writing about, those words, too, will be sidestepped by the mainstream media.

[AWMac]

Good Post Rip!!!   Thanks.  

[Toad]

Well, G, the entire bloody world has stood around with its collective thumb up its collective anal vent while literally millions have been slaughtered in Africa.

I think even you will admit that the media hasn't failed to inform us of that. Or that there's evidence to support what they've said. It's not all mainstream media you know; amnesty international, human rights watch, etc.

Now we have to be very careful, right? I mean, until everyone is dead, we should proceed very slowly. We should all stand around with our thumbs securely buried while we mull this over.

Now the US gets blasted for not righting every single wrong in the world simultaneously whenever we try to right a single wrong at one time.

But, every once in a great while, we get our thumb out and do SOMETHING. We TRY.  Sure, we screw up.

Guess that's much worse than being very careful to leave our thumb securely buried though.