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bungler's Journal
I haven't blogged for a while, but after receiving dose after dose of Abu Ghraib pictures on TV, I decided to vist the blog of someone who I remember took the moral high ground on the Iraq invasion. (The US is going in there to free an oppressed, tortured people kind of stand...).
Nada, zilch, deathly silence.... nothing at all on Abu Ghraib. I guess the blogger is much too thrilled about Iraqi women being liberated, and Saddam being captured alive to worry out rapes and sodomy (other crimes probably are would not even be worth mentioning). After all if an American is taking your backside, I guess you have to feel grateful for it.
So much for "liberating" Iraqis from Saddam !!!
" Once, after an hour of frustrating debate on the morality and merit of using animals in scientific research, I asked whether she would remain opposed to experiments on, say, five thousand rats, or even five thousand chimpanzees, if it was required to cure aids. "Would you be opposed to experiments on your daughter if you knew it would save fifty million people?" "
Read the full atricle at: http://www.michaelspecter.com/ny/2003/2003_04_14_peta.htmlå
Iraq Through the American Looking Glass: http://www.turks.us/article.php?story=20031227043758337
Saturday, December 27 2003 @ 04:37 AM Eastern Standard Time
Iraq Through the American Looking Glass Robert Fisk, The Independent
Something very unpleasant is being let loose in Iraq. Just this week, a company commander in the US 1st Infantry Division in the north of the country admitted that, in order to elicit information about the guerrillas who are killing American troops, it was necessary to “instill fear” in the local villagers.
An Iraqi interpreter working for the Americans had just taken an old lady from her home to frighten her daughters and granddaughters into believing that she was being arrested. A battalion commander in the same area put the point even more baldly. “With a heavy dose of fear and violence, and a lot of money for projects, I think we can convince these people that we are here to help them,” he said. He was speaking from a village that his men had surrounded with barbed wire, upon which was a sign, stating: “This fence is here for your protection. Do not approach or try to cross, or you will be shot.” Try to explain that this treatment — and these words — offend the very basic humanity of the people whom the Americans claimed they came to “liberate” and you are met in Baghdad with the same explanation: That a very small “remnant” of “diehards” — loyal to the now-captured Saddam Hussein, etc, etc — have to be separated from the civilians whom they are “intimidating”. To point out that the intimidation is largely coming from the American occupation force — to the horror of the British in southern Iraq who fear, understandably, that Iraqi revenge will be visited upon them as it was on the Italians and the Spanish — is useless. Instead, we are told that American troops are winning those famous hearts and minds with the spirit of Christmas. There was a grim example of this — and the inherent racism that pervades even reporting of such events — on the Associated Press wire agency just this week. Describing how an American soldier in a Santa Claus hat was giving out stuffed animals to children, reporter Jason Keyser wrote that one 11-year-old child “looked puzzled, then smiled” as the soldier gave him a small, stuffed goat. Then the report continued: “Others in the crowd of mostly Muslims grabbed greedily at the box,” adding the soldier’s remark that: “They don’t know how to handle generosity.” I don’t doubt the soldier’s wish to do good. But what is one to make of the “mostly Muslims” who “grabbed greedily” at the gifts? Or the soldier’s insensitive remarks? Iraqi newspapers have been front-paging a Christmas card produced by US troops in Baghdad: “1st Battalion, 22nd Infantry Wishes you a very Merry Christmas!” it says. But the illustration is of Saddam in his scruffy beard just after his capture, with a Santa hat superimposed on top of his head. Funny enough for us, no doubt but a clear insult to Sunni Arabs who, however much they may loathe the beast of Baghdad, will see in this card a deliberate attempt to humiliate Iraqis. It’s almost as if the occupying powers want to look through Alice’s looking glass. This week, we had the odd statement by British Gen. Graeme Lamb that Saddam could be compared to the Emperor Caligula. But if anything, the Roman was a good deal more insane than Saddam and even more heedless of human life. The crazy Uday Hussein, son of Saddam, might have been a more appropriate parallel. But what was all this supposed to achieve? A serious war crimes trial — preferably outside Iraq and far from the country’s contaminated judiciary — is the way to define the nature of Saddam’s repulsive regime. All references to the ex-dictator as Hitler, Stalin, Attila the Hun or Caligula are infantile. And again, they will appear insulting to the Sunni Muslims of Iraq, the one community which the Americans should be desperate to placate, since it is the Sunnis who are primarily resisting the occupation. But the looking-glass effect seems to have taken hold of US pro-consul Paul Bremer’s entire authority. Like President George Bush, Bremer has now taken to repeating the absurdity that the greater the West’s success in Iraq, the more frequent will be the attacks on American troops. “I personally feel that we’ll actually have more violence in the next six months,” he said a couple of week ago, “and the violence will be precisely because of the fact that we’re building momentum toward success.” In other words, the better things become, the worse they’re going to get. And the greater the violence, the better we’re doing in Iraq. I wouldn’t worry about this nonsense so much if it wasn’t mirrored on the ground in Iraq. Take the US claim — now regarded as an absurdity — that they killed “54 insurgents” in Samara a month ago. The truth is that they killed at least eight civilians and there’s not a smidgen of evidence that they killed anyone else. But still they insist on sticking to the story of their great victory. Last week, they pushed out a similar version of the same story. This time there were 11 dead “insurgents” in Samara. But when the British daily The Independent investigated, it could only find records of four dead civilians and a lot of wounded. None of the wounded — presumably “insurgents” if the Americans believe their own story — had been visited in hospital by US forces who might, if they didn’t question them, at least have apologized. An even more peculiar habit has now manifested itself among spokesmen for the occupation authorities. When a tank drove over a prominent Shiite Muslim cleric in the Baghdad suburb of Sadr City three weeks ago, they claimed this was a “traffic accident”. A few days later, after a truck-bomber crashed into a car and killed 17 civilians, the occupation lads churned out the same rubbish again. It was, they said, a “traffic accident” involving a petrol tanker. But there was no tanker attached to the lorry. The first American troops on the scene found the grenades intended to detonate the bomb and the victims were all blasted to bits — not burned, as they would have been if the petrol tanker had simply caught fire. Those of us who reached the scene shortly after the slaughter could still smell the explosives. But it was a “traffic accident”. Only the other day we had an equally bizarre event. Jets, C-130 aircraft mounted with chain guns, and heavy artillery was all reported to be striking “guerrilla bases” in Operation Iron Hammer south of Baghdad. But investigation proved that the targets were empty fields and that some of the heavy guns were firing blank rounds as part of an artillery maintenance routine. So let’s get this right. Insurgents are civilians. Truck bombs and tanks that crush civilians are traffic accidents. And the “liberated” civilians who live in villages surrounded by razor wire should endure “a heavy dose of fear and violence” to keep them on the straight and narrow. Somewhere along the way, they will probably be told about democracy as well.
I'm still reading Feynman...
" I wrote a letter to her and proposed. Somebody who's wise could have told me that was dangerous: When you're away and you've got nothing but paper, and you're feeling lonely, you remember all the good things and you can't remember the reasons you had the arguments. And it didn't work out. The arguments started again right away, and the marriage lasted for only two years."
Deja vu anyone - in a relationship or marriage?
Current music: Des O'Connor - Love is in the air.
Was going to get off the computer, when Elvis Presley's 'Are You Lonesome Tonight' started off ... So I stayed a while.
Naaa, I'm not lonesome. I'm just enjoying the number.
We don't make movies for critics, since they don't pay to see them anyhow
~ Charles Bronson
Current mood: amused.
Current music: Boney M - No Woman No Cry.
Being forced to work with assholes increases ones tolerance tremendously.
~ bungler
Current mood: relaxed.
Current music: The Police - De Do Do Do, De Da Da Da.
Frustration - is seeing that someone has posted comments on a blog, but you're unable to read them due to some problem with the commenting service !
"I often had this problem of demonstrating to these fella something that they didn't believe - like the time we got into an argument as to whether urine ran out of you by gravity, and I had to demonstrate that that wasn't the case by showing them that you can pee standing on your head."
~Richard Feynman in Surely You're Joking Mr. Feynman.
I love this guy.
Feeling good - talk about feel good factor. On top of the world
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