Don't you love how they blame Iraq's crumbling infrastructure on Saddam.

[Robin Hood]

I guess all that Shocking and awing didn't really do any damage to Iraq's infrastructure. 12 years of brutal sanctions had nothing to do with Iraq's crumbling infrastructure, yeah...right.

It's all Saddam's fault. We have precision missiles that only blow up things that aren't needed, it's like magic, yeah... right. We didn't bomb these already impoverished people into the stone age because we're the good guys. See?! I got my white cowboy hat on, I'm the good guy. Damn that Clinton and his big, sexy, crooked weenie, Oh, uh, um, I mean, Damn that Soddom.

Anyway.... When they blame Iraq's infrastructure on Saddam, please realize that what they are not telling you is iraq's infrastructure is screwed because of us. And 87 billion won't be enough to bring this country back from the dark ages, and surely won't be enough to make up for all the innocent lives lost and brutally damaged beyond repair.

We broke Iraq.

[efhmc]

1. Nothing about what "they" say has any basis in reality.

[Robin Hood]

2. So true.

We no longer have a free media, but rather a right wing propaganda machine. Everything you read and hear is a lie.

[laconicsax]

3. It's more that they don't tell you

that we destroyed the country's infrastructure in the Gulf War and that because of sanctions, most of it couldn't be rebuilt. Here comes Shock and Awe, and we destroyed the rest of the infrastructure.

They don't say that. What they say is, "I visited Iraq before/after the war and visited a hospital. The building was crumbling, and most of the equipment was extremely outdated. Saddam built palaces while his people suffered and had no proper medical care."

Outdated medical equipment? Sanctions
Crumbling building? "Precision Bombs"

[Career Prole]

4. I would certainly think they would...

...since they'll lay the blame for our own crumbling infrastructure at the same doorstep. My grandchildren will know that "Saddam" is spelt B-U-S-H.

[annak110]

5. I just heard an "interview" of a

couple in Denver who had "lost a son" in Iraq. What they said was something like, "we're really sorry we lost our son but, oh well, sometimes it is necessary to sacrifice." jesus fucking christ!

I was so damned mad I called Ch4(CBS) and raised hell but the woman who answered said, "you shouldn't say such things about our President." I don't ordinarily listen to Reality TV, the News, didn't hear the canned speech by the canned idiot but I had just finished watching a movie and stumbled right into the interview . I really wish I hadn't heard it at all.

I asked the Ch 4 representative to get someone to interview the families of the more than 10,000 veterans who have died after our first invasion of Iraq from having breathed in the spent uranium that we've spread everywhere there. They should talk to the Iraqis about their innocent dead that we have killed over the years, what is it, 57,000 since our first invasion in '91. They should interview the rubber stamp congress about why they cut off money for the health care for thousands of other veterans who are ill and dying here in the U.S. from thespent uranium exposure. I pointed out that the latest invasion was illegal under both national and international law, never mind the cooked up "reasons".

I hung up on her before she could hang up on me,

Sorry for the rant but sometimes I just can't stand it!

[Robin Hood]

6. Jeezus H Christ.

These people are in denial. It will be years before they get angry. Also, Colorado is a Republican strong hold. This is not surprising coming from there.

[annak110]

7. So unfortunatelly true,

I live with it daily. Did you know that David Horowitz (or is that whoranowits) has traveled from California to visit with the Colorado Legislature, whose IQs, if added up, would not reach a three digit sum. He wants them to insist that the faculty in Boulder be seeded with lots of republicans and, presumably, these republicans would ultimately replace the sitting faculty. Of course the legislative idiots apparently believe that "education" is rote memorization of an idiology. They do prefer fascism. All this academic unrest reminds me of the White Rose Society...

[cliss]

10. I don't think lying that much can be good for you.

These guys lie, lie, lie 'round the clock. This can't be good for you. Bush does it all the time. His fibbers for hire do it constantly.

Life gets tough.

The problem with constant lying on such a colossal scale is, you forget what you said. You kinda remember what happened. You sorta remember what you were supposed to say, and you hope that's what you really said. That's when things come out like, "Oh, well Saddam woudln't let inspectors in, so we showed him where the Exit Door was".

You stammer, hedge, hesitate, try to remember what's the right thing to say here? Cause you know THEY'RE OUT THERE WATCHING EVERY WORD YOU SAY and they remember. The hyenas are waiting.

That's why you have rehearsed speeches. Occasional press conferences where the press has been browbeaten into 'keep it simple, stupid'.

You stick with a simple agenda.

That way, you can't get into too much trouble if you keep saying the same things over and over.

Life sucks at 4:20 a.m.

Life is so complicated, you think. Was it like this when I was 10? No, no way. Then you get up and do it all over again.

I have a better way.

Just stop lying.

[Zuni]

11. I don't know

I have read a lot about Gulf war Syndrome and it is very unlikely that it was caused by Depleted Uranium. I think the effects of depleted uranium have been overstated.
The real culprits are probably a combination of chemical weapons blown up in storage bunkers--mustard gas can cause cancers, birth defects, all kinds of physical ailments. Mustard and nerve toxins blown up in bunkers and in storage would be far more toxic and cancerous then either DU or Agent Orange defoliants. The vaccine cocktails given to soldiers might have been unstable, and some might have done damge to soldier's immune systems. A lot of pesticides were used as well. The amount of pollution released into the soil, air and water from the oil well destruction and burnings was one of the worst in history, and there are many toxins carried in that oil smoke as well as carcinogens.

Very few soldiers were directly exposed to sizable amounts of DU, and the ones with the most exposure, people with fragments actually in them often don't have symptoms of many other Gulf War veterans or cancers.
As for the so called cancer and birth defect outbreak in Iraq, that was more likely caused by the substantial use of chemical weapons in Southern Iraq in the Iran-iraq war and in the Anfal campaigns. The cancer increases that Iraq publicized began at the time of the war, and Cancer does not develop that fast. It is likely that cancer outbreaks in 1991-1992 and thereafter more likely started with exposure to Mustard agents in the late 1980s. The amount of DU used was small, most concentrated in areas where armor was deployed in the open desert.
Birth defects can also be caused by chemical weapons, residue from said weapons, toxic waste, heavy pollution or simple natural causes as well.

[ComerPerro]

8. You have to understand

The party that for years attacked liberals for always seeing themselves as victims is now portraying Bush as a victim.

Nothing is his fault. Nothing is the president's fault when he is a Republican, according to the party of "personal responsibility"

[opiate69]

9. That's if they even admit infrastructure damage

I was flipping through some of the news channels after Whistle-ass' speech, and one of them showed a clip of Condi (shudder), and she was claiming that we had done such a wonderful job invading, I mean "liberating" Iraq, with "really, no real damage to infrastructure".... I wanted to throw my TV out the damn window. Are any of these asshats capable of forming a complete sentence that is actually based in fact?

[Zuni]

12. Actually

many towns, mostly in Southern Iraq were deliberatly unrepaired, had no services, little electricity or fresh water because of widespread support in those areas for the 1991 Uprising. Tikrit and West Baghdad were very clean and had all kinds of services. Some areas in the south hadn't had running water in years.

[Robin Hood]

13. It was also part of the no-fly zones.

which probably made Saddam abandon those areas.