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Blum: The Anti-Empire Report: Great moments in the history of imperialism

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Starfury Donating Member (615 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Jun-27-06 02:32 AM
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Blum: The Anti-Empire Report: Great moments in the history of imperialism
William Blum writing for the Online Journal provides a disturbingly comprehensive list of Iraqi woes since the US invasion. This article is worth bookmarking if you ever want to refer back to it to point out the myriad reasons why the media only focuses on the bad side of things in Iraq. It's because there's so bloody much of it...

National Public Radio foreign correspondent Loren Jenkins, serving in NPR's Baghdad bureau, met earlier this month with a senior Shiite cleric, a man who was described in the NPR report as "a moderate" and as a person trying to lead his Shiite followers into practicing peace and reconciliation. He had been jailed by Saddam Hussein and forced into exile. Jenkins asked him: "What would you think if you had to go back to Saddam Hussein?" The cleric replied that he'd "rather see Iraq under Saddam Hussein than the way it is now."<1>

When one considers what the people of Iraq have experienced as a result of the American bombings, invasion, regime change, and occupation since 2003, should this attitude be surprising, even from such an individual? I was moved to compile a list of the many kinds of misfortune which have fallen upon the heads of the Iraqi people as a result of the American liberation of their homeland. It's depressing reading, and you may not want to read it all, but I think it's important to have it summarized in one place.


(Snip of a VERY long, detailed list of problems in Iraq that everyone should read. This list dwarfs anything I've ever read before.)


Yet, despite the fact that it would be difficult to name a single area of Iraqi life which has improved as a result of the American actions, when the subject is Iraq and the person I'm having a discussion with has no other argument left to defend US policy there, at least at the moment, I may be asked:

"Just tell me one thing, are you glad that Saddam Hussein is out of power?"

And I say: "No".

And the person says: "No?"

And I say: "No. Tell me, if you went into surgery to correct a knee problem and the surgeon mistakenly amputated your entire leg, what would you think if someone then asked you: Are you glad that you no longer have a knee problem? The people of Iraq no longer have a Saddam problem."

And many Iraqis actually supported him.

http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_934.shtml
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OneBlueSky Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Jun-27-06 02:44 AM
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1. "Depleted uranium particles, from exploded US ordnance, . . .
float in the Iraqi air, to be breathed into human bodies and to radiate forever, and infect the water, the soil, the blood, the genes, producing malformed babies. During the few weeks of war in spring 2003, A10 "tankbuster" planes, which use munitions containing depleted uranium, fired 300,000 rounds."

BushCo's use of DU weapons in Iraq and Afghanistan is not only a war crime of the highest order, but a crime against humanity of similar magnitude . . .

why are virtually no Democrats in Congress standing up and denouncing this practice, loudly and repeatedly? . . . is it because by ceding their Constitutional war powers to the Executive they see themselves as equally culpable? . . .

the shame BushCo and their compliant Congress have brought to this great nation is incalculable . . .

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izzie Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Jun-27-06 03:42 AM
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2. I think I will read that long one later. It is too sad this early
Some how this seems to be what happens when the so called 'good' people move in to fix things. People like to say this is war like Germany vs. the West/USSR but in that, we all were coming after Germany had gone into countries to 'fix things'. Just what we have done to Iraq, gone in to 'fix things' The first war pushing Iraq back could be said to be like trying to push Germany back into its boarders early on only. It is time we pulled behind out boarders and for get trying to make over the world fast. People see us like Germany or any other Empire doing this. After all one does not really have to do that. Our ideals or the ones we pulled from the enlightenment of Europe has made its way around the world. The right for the people to run their own country. 5 percent of the worlds pop. is hardly going to force feed it, at our speed, to the whole world. Hitler started his move in 1933 and in some of these countries, that moved from Hitler to Stalin, are now still trying to sort them self out. If we do not understand anything in this country we should be able to see that. That is all in our life time but history is full of this stuff. It is time we learned this. My way of thinking. :shrug: We have made a mess.
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cliss Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Jun-27-06 10:46 AM
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3. Here's the bitter irony in all this.
Bush and Cheney thought it would be so easy to just march in and 'take' the country.

Now they're discovering that Iraq is sucking them in, forcing them to invest more and more time and energy to fix the mess that gets bigger and bigger.

Now they know what Viet Nam was like.

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