>Of course everything you say is correct. That is exactly the point. But the website did not 'show us some unfiltered reports'. It accepted them without question as true.
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>Saying "it is reported that" pretty much means nothing. In the case Terry cited it was used to claim hundreds of thousands of Iraqi casualties from American airstrikes and comparing this to the Luftwaffe attack on Guernica. Just didn't seem to pass any kind of burden of proof ( which should be on the accuser ) Guernica has passed the test of history. We'll have to wait and see about Faludja.
I detect a good level of reservedness here, which I think is generally a good thing. I don't trust much either, everyone has an agenda. I've seen a lot of misreporting of events I witnessed myself, or where my close friends were witnesses. I've even found an image of "Town of Okolina near Belgrade in flames" on cnn.com... except that they didn't bother to check that such a place doesn't exist. "Okolina" means "vicinity".
>As to Iraqis on the moral high ground - talk to Kuwaitis about what fun visitors they were. I'm a little surprised we were restrained enough to not entirely annihilate the Republican guard as the fled burdened with everything they could steal.
My usual take is to distinguish the people from the government. So, the Iraqis who were visiting Kuwait thirteen years ago are, IMO, not the same people.
As for the Republican Guard, I've seen the story of how the national museum was looted (and this was a place where the world's heritage from pre-Greek cultures was kept) went pretty much undisturbed. US troops actually refused to protect the place. If you don't trust my memory, search the BBC archives.
>The truth will be known in time, but I am suspect of spin and political agendas. I am a especially suspicious of people who cut off the heads of innocents on video, and of their aplogists. That's not the 'Iraqi Resistance'. Al Zarqowi is a Jordanian thug.
I've heard some comments that these beheadings actually cost fewer lives than other attempts of whoever was behind these tapes to get their word heard.
> Many of those who were appalled by the mistreatment of prisoners at Abu Ghareb just don't seem to have the same level of indignation about the beheadings. And they compare humiliation of prisoners ( by people who were actually court-martialed) to Saddam's treatment of his enemies... or Uday's treatment of the Iraqi soccer team. This seems to lack a sense of proportion and show extreme bias. ( of course, if like terry one thinks all the bad buzz about Saddam is some kind of plot by Jews then rational discussion ends there. )
History may show that Saddam wasn't so bad, specially in the beginning when he was a marionette of the West. If I recall well, he was a renegade CIA trainee, set in position by CIA, and played nice for a while. But then he decided the oil belongs to Iraq... and felt he's got all the dictator's prerogatives as well. I'm not surprised that Uday turned the way he did, these guys were the best of the worst of royal tradition of the Old World. Compare Uday with Ceausescu's son, and you get pretty much the same picture, the spoiled sadistic son of a dictator who kills for pleasure or just uses his power any way he likes.
The court-martialed guys got one year... I don't know much about American legal system, but I do watch "Law & Order" regularly, and I hear "15 to life", "20 to life", "25 to life" at least twice a week. Are these guys on TV totally off the mark?
As far as mentioning the Jews go, I have a lot of historical reasons to be on their sides. Our ancestors were roommates in several heavily populated (and rapidly depopulated) concentration camps. Zionism however... again, I tend to distinguish the people from powers-that-be.
>The site Terry linked has a pretty obvious bias. I also suspect spin, of course, in any U.S. Military press briefing. I feel better about the embedded reporters, but still consider that in battle very few people have the whole picture, however well-intentioned.
I think such texts deserve to exist. What if it is a real whistle-blower? It's a call for attention to what is going on.
>I do find it amazing that someone will accept without question any casualty figure coming out of any website without question - but find the deaths of the Kurds in Halabja some kind of urban folk myth or just the unfortunate luck of some people who ate some bad hummus.
The "he gassed his own people" mantra that was repeated thousand times always gets mentioned without the actual context. He gassed the Iran side of the front, and those gassed his side. While he didn't really gass them directly, he put them in harm's way.
The Kurd question is very interesting to keep track of... I got a feeling this nation will get screwed all over again, simply because half of them are in Turkey, and Turkey is a member of which soccer league?
