MERGED --> Impeachment Tour + Mother of US Soldier Vows To Follow Bush Around

[BonosSaint]

The election gave Mr. Bush the opportunity to lead. It did not make him a leader.

FACT is when Mr. Bush goes out, it is choreographed that he is surrounded by his supporters to the point where in many venues people who hold opposition views are denied access. I don't have much respect for someone who does not desire (or is not trusted) to face his opposition.

FACT is Mr. Bush is leading his supporters. It is pure speculation that he is leading the country.

I haven't lost the right to opposition because he won the election. I haven't seen much leadership. I don't think he is stupid. I don't think he is evil. I think he is ineffective.

If that is Bush bashing, so be it.

And yes, Sting, I know he won the election.

I didn't see a whole lot of restraint in Clinton bashing. And even though I voted for Clinton, I thought a lot of it was well deserved.
And funny.

You guys are much too sensitive. Mr. Bush is not a sacred cow to me. And he is not a sacred cow to almost half the electorate.

 

[financeguy]

Bono's Saint, don't you realise that any criticism of Bush is, in and of itself, mindless 'Bush bashing'?

It is not a legal requirement to support the President (yet), but if you can't say anything nice, the least you could do is stay silent!

Why bring up non relevant facts if the White House has already determined the correct facts of each and every situation?

Why do you hate freedom?

 

[BonosSaint]

Thank you. I enjoy your posts to no end.

 

[financeguy]

well someone has to.....

 

[BVS]

Let's be honest, Bush IS president, now I know he takes a lot of vacations, but he really doesn't have time to meet with one family.

Now if she were able to congregate a large group of families that would be different. If she could do that, then I would probably question why Bush isn't meeting with the families of those that gave their lives.

But honestly all she would do is receive the same rhetoric we've all been fed, it's seriously a waste of time.

She should really spend her time(after her grieving) trying to see how many other families are out there who feel like her and create a coalition...

 

[FizzingWhizzbees]

Too bad there is a 48 hour old thread on this already.....

Maybe a mod can merge it....

'Tis done.

 

[Angela Harlem]

I do hope everyone who has advice on what this woman should do about her grieving contacts her somehow to point her on the right track!

 

[Dreadsox]

No meeting in the middle
By Boston Herald editorial staff
Friday, August 12, 2005

Cindy Sheehan has achieved what she set out to achieve when she dragged her sleeping bag to President Bush's Texas ranch this summer: drawing national media attention to her crusade against the Iraq war, which claimed the life of her 24-year-old son, Casey.

And let's be honest, isn't that what Sheehan's well-publicized campout is really all about?

More than a meeting with the president, which she is demanding, Sheehan went to Crawford in search of a broad platform from which to protest the administration's policy in Iraq. She found it.



She arrived on a bus emblazoned with the words, ``Impeachment Tour.''

She was escorted by a Greek chorus of 50 protesters chanting ``W Killed Her Son.''

Her story has appeared in all of the major newspapers and on the television networks.

But Sheehan says she won't leave Crawford until Bush meets with her again. Their first meeting came last year, when the president visited a group of families whose loved ones died in the war.

It must be tempting for Bush's staff to have him stroll down the dirt path to meet with this grieving mother.

But really – will the president be able to offer Cindy Sheehan any words that would ease her troubled mind?

He has already tried. After their first meeting, Sheehan told the Vacaville (Calif.) Reporter, that she knew Bush was sorry, that he is a man of faith who felt some of her family's pain and is sincere in wanting freedom for the Iraqis.

Today, she has changed her mind – and her story.

It's not surprising her anger over the war that claimed her son's life has deepened. But in a truly incredible revision of history, Sheehan now accuses the president of approaching their meeting last year ``like it was a party.''

Rather than offering her comfort, Sheehan says it made her more angry. In other words, it was a bust.

It's doubtful she would approach a second meeting with the commander in chief, a man she so obviously hates, in any other way.

 

[Teta040]

Wow. The Boston Herald, in supposedly liberal Mass.

Clearly, Bush is privately panicking, and has called Karl Rove away from his Roberts-appointment duties for this dangerous , life-threatening situation. Oh, one woman's protest is sooooo dangerous, that she must be isolated, publicly shamed, even by her own family (isn't it amzing that every single member of her family, right down to the grandma and grandpa, suddenly think she is "politically motivated'? Listen, do you think she decided to go off and do this without telling anybody in her family? Don't you think that part of her courage might have come from a couple of them supporting her in the first place?) and then be made to disappear.

It's amazing how few people actually have the courage to put fear aside and stand up for their convictions, with regards to this guy. How much did they pay her relatives to publicly disown her.

It's amazing that whenever someone asks serious questions about a Bush action or policy,, the extremely few who have, nothing else seems to matter in the news the next week or two, until they are disgraced and made to disappear, after being made to apologize. Proecting Bush's image, rather than dealing with the life and death issues she is raising, is always Urgent Concern Number One.

All I can say is, right now, Mr Bush, it's one mother, and it's so easy to tar and feather one mother. But you're afraid. Afraid of the hundreds and thousands of other mothers out there, to whom she may be giving inspiration. Afraid of the people, you and me, who now know the truth about this sordid little colonial venture you got us into. Yes, he may never know it, but his repsonse fits a well-established pattern, a pattern of so-called "leaders" who know they have done dubious things but care not because they have their own selfish interests at heart, whatever else they may say to the gullible public. It's the response of someone who's secretly afriad, and is going to war with we the people, to protect himself from the threat of some ne who finally is not afriad. If I were less chariable about Bush, like I should be, I'd say that this is the univeral pattern of response dictators begin with, the public shaming, even though , this being America, it won't go further than that.

So good, turn the screws, make the threats, use your friends who control the international corporations who own these newspapers and TV stations to coerce her and her nearest and dearest to lie to save their reputations (and perhaps their lives.) It's such a tied and predictable pattern and we've seen it before from others. And when she is silenced, go about your life, laugh, and make your schemes. Someday, you may even crack a joke about her, and we will laugh along, like the sheep we are, forgetting our anger. All will be normal again, and we will forget that she was trying to awaken us from our drugged stupor. Oh, thank you, our glorious Leader, for knowing what was best for us, and saving us from the tyranny of Thought. But silence cannot remain forever so, not when the dead are calling out for justice. The terrorists will have to answer for their crimes, and so will you, from the same God.

My bets are a week from now, this woman will suddenly have a history of mental problems, be emotionally fragile, have a checkered and dubious past of some sort. Other mothers of lost sons wil "come out" by the dozens to tell her to shut the f*ck up and deal. Or they will sakes their heads and speak sadly aobut her asif she is mental patient who needs help. Next, once she is out of the picture, she can't have acted alone. She must have been sponsored by prominent Democratic groups, like Moveon.org, etc, and thes'll be anice way to smear them at a much-needed time when the Supreme Court fight is going on. Oh, it's so predictable...and The people who could so benefit from her example and take up here she left off will instead, no doubt, be privately approached and handsomely paid by Rove's hench men to vilify her, Rove perhaps thinking this is the only way to shut her up.

But in the end, Mr Bush, it will do you no good. Because 5 years from now, ten years from now, people will not have forgotten her, and when they finally know the truth, they will be inspired by her example. Someday, "Meester Bush", that one mother will become a hundred, and then a thousand, and then ten thousand. And though you'll long gone out office, those ten thousand mothers will be the mothers of the nation, and the nation itself. They'll be the ones who pass the ultimate sentence, in the area where it counts: your legacy. Do you know what this is called, MR Bush? A little thing called Democracy. A term you're not very familiar with, I suspect. You've done your best to kill it, media-wise, but it is a resilent thing, and the calls for justice by the righteous will not go unheeded. For you will untimately have to answer on the Day of Judgement, , not only for the thousands of American dead and scarred for life, but the nameless and faceless Iraqi dead as well.How will you lie to Him, Mr Bush? How will you be able to look Him in the eyes? We can't speak for God, of course, but if I were Him, I wouldn't take kindly to people who openly claim to act in My Name when espousing murder, when we are supposed to be the righteous and they the savages. There are differnet ways to be savage, indeed.


"Mock on, mock on, Voltaire, Rosseau. Mock on, mock on, 'tis all in vain. You throw the sand against the wind, and the wind blows it back again."

 

[A_Wanderer]

Right so evil Chimpy McHitlerburton and Dark Lord KKKarl Rove are plotting to silence her dissent by paying off or threatening family members to discredit her, using the media that they control to vilify her as a deranged woman. Incidently im stilll waiting for the Secret Service to murder all those protestors ~ we were promised blood.

Compassion is a one way street because of it is a trump card in politics ~ everybody gets so teared up and righteously angry over Iraqi's killed by US bombs or terrorist bombs (but they are the fault of the US because they wouldn't have happened without the war). But don't give a piss about them when it was Saddam doing legions more of them in day by day ~ opposite can be just as true as well. The best way to get to the high moral ground is to get the greatest victims out there and splash them all over respective outlets. This is not a lone womans protest, it is an orchestrated and calculated move with the backing of various groups with their own agendas.

I wonder how people would feel if when Bush visits the families of dead soldiers he had got the press to cover it all, splash it on the front page, show the world how compassionate he is.

 

[A_Wanderer]

See silencing dissent can be easy if you just do it right, like when the Russians just took a relative angry over the Kursk disaster and injected her with sedatives to get her quiet.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/894597.stm

Come on, this crypto-fascist leader Bu$h is a total bufoon when it comes to handling the rabble. At least he could send everybody who is associated with MoveOn.org or reads lefty blogs for psychological assesments; that would get rid of a few of them. Purge the vast media empire of those with sympathies outside him and his close personal circle.

Oh yeah and Iraq - I guess that the glamour of freedom is overrated, just pay off some stooge make them dictator for life, this whole representative democracy thing is a waste of time and money and it's obviously just making people hate America more. If you withdraw all US troops and pay off the regime with a few billion of "reparations" then surely it will help your interests. Oh and get back into Khazakstan ~ that oh so fake setup to make it look like Karimov is kicking you out for your actions against the regimes human rights abuses isn't fooling anybody, the world knows that it is a sham to make people think you care ~ you just have to look through the looking glass a few times over.

 

[Teta040]

PS. Deadsox. Regarding the breastfeeding thread....our being political opposites hasn't changed my opinion of you BTW! Can we agree to disagree? Just remember, James Carville and Mary Matalin...

 

[Teta040]

Regarding silencing....I'm talking about smear cmpaigns. There's nothing on this eart hI hate more, and in politics it's a fact of life, but some are more slimy than others. Sometimes, a bullet or an injection is lot more honest, you know? The smear campaign's aftereffects are far more toxic, harder to shake off, and can scar for life. Some people deserve to be the victims of them. Some do not.

I'm not comparing anything Bush does with other REAL wackos, in repressive regaimes. I am merely judging him by American criteria, which is perfectly valid and relavant, since we like to hold ourselves up as the world's moral arbiters. And judging him agsinst other Americans....Well, that claim is not so easily made anymore, is it? IS that why one of the UN "reforms" the abolishment od the UN High Comittee for Human Rights, which is officially being carried next month?

I was thinking, above, of the comforting and benign official language the Young Turks were giving to Western media in Istanbul in 1915 as they were secretly carrying out the genocide of the Armenian people. The pattern of isolation of dissenters and challengers to the official party line was the same. Only, this being am actual dictatorship, things went a bit further than Micheal Corleone's "Who's being nieve, Kay?" Ordinary Turks in the street who protested the death marches and tried to hide Armenian friends were hanged in the doorways of their own homes. My grandpa, as a boy of 7, saw this many times, on the road,and he told me as if it had happened yesterday. When he grew up and later read the West's 'verdict on the Genocide (The Armenains must have borught this on themselves..they were planning to invade Turkey with Russia and turn it Communist! )My family has seen oppression up close and personal. They've been shot, evicted from their homes, their village destroyed, gone on the forced death marches. Some starved to death, others died of exposure. It isn't just legend at this point, either, no matter how long ago it happened. It's real as if 90 yrs were yesterday. We Armenians have not been able to put it behind us, like many Jews have the Holocaust, becuase of the continued Turkish denial. Anytime a so-called "leader" retreats into using this double-speak and goes on this pattern of behavior, covering thier ass, I call it "talking Turkish." We've seen it before.

 

[A_Wanderer]

Not the UN High Comittee for Human Rights! where will the US get it's dose of flagellation over being the worlds worst human rights abuser from the luminaries in human rights like Libya, Sudan or Zimbabwe.

 

[financeguy]

See silencing dissent can be easy if you just do it right, like when the Russians just took a relative angry over the Kursk disaster and injected her with sedatives to get her quiet.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/894597.stm

Come on, this crypto-fascist leader Bu$h is a total bufoon when it comes to handling the rabble. At least he could send everybody who is associated with MoveOn.org or reads lefty blogs for psychological assesments; that would get rid of a few of them. Purge the vast media empire of those with sympathies outside him and his close personal circle.

Oh yeah and Iraq - I guess that the glamour of freedom is overrated, just pay off some stooge make them dictator for life, this whole representative democracy thing is a waste of time and money and it's obviously just making people hate America more. If you withdraw all US troops and pay off the regime with a few billion of "reparations" then surely it will help your interests. Oh and get back into Khazakstan ~ that oh so fake setup to make it look like Karimov is kicking you out for your actions against the regimes human rights abuses isn't fooling anybody, the world knows that it is a sham to make people think you care ~ you just have to look through the looking glass a few times over.

Here is my considered, intellectual response to the above rant, er sorry, I mean to the above considered intellectual post:-

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

 

[financeguy]

Regarding silencing....I'm talking about smear cmpaigns. There's nothing on this eart hI hate more, and in politics it's a fact of life, but some are more slimy than others. Sometimes, a bullet or an injection is lot more honest, you know? The smear campaign's aftereffects are far more toxic, harder to shake off, and can scar for life.

Absolutely correct, some kill with a bomb or gun, some kill with the stroke of a pen.

 

[A_Wanderer]

And some commit suicide by opening their own mouths.

 

[financeguy]

This is not a lone womans protest, it is an orchestrated and calculated move with the backing of various groups with their own agendas.

I sincerely hope you are correct in this assumption.

 

[Teta040]

I'm sure there were many people out there like you in 1962, A Wanderer. Too bad that it will take ten years or more for we anti-war wackos, who knew this was a dubious venture from the start, to be proved right. And sorry to say it, but in the future, it's you folks who will be the most angry, not we anti-war looneys, who had no illusions from the start. No, it's YOUR blind ideals and beliefs that will be shattered. And you no doubt will be the first to vilify the Kurds, etc, who were ungrateful for everything we tried to do for them. As if, say,had Lafayette imported more troops to America in 1783 so we could hammer out a Constitution under the watchful eyes of hundreds of tousndas of French troops on our soil...would you have liked that? Sure you would...

But heck, nothing I can say....

 

[financeguy]

Too bad that it will take ten years or more for we anti-war wackos, who knew this was a dubious venture from the start, to be proved right.

I sense a disturbance in the space time continuum.

 

[A_Wanderer]

I most certainly think not.

 

[Teta040]

Do you know how long it took the French to "pacify" Vietnam in the mid-20th century?(God, but it still feels weird using that phrase "20th century"...) A full 20 yrs. And then another 5-10 just to turn Vietnam into a productive colony. And this is with a much less politically complicated situation, with only 2 main Vietnamese miltary factions involved, no semi-autonomous group like the Kurds in addition watching on the sidelines, and no Chinese insurgents streaming acorss the border. Vietnam, unlike Iraqm was comaratively isolated from outside interference, and the French had the playground to themselves, and it was still a nightmare. The Iraqi situation is 20 times worse. Read your hsotory. Oh, that's right, it appears nobody in the White House reads books, follwing the example of the so-called Commander in Chief....

Do you want a model of what we are trying to do here? Read about the history of America's beginnings in Saudi Arabia in the 50's. Aramco is so similar to Kellogg, Brown and Root it's scary. But the Sunni/Shiite war...the fact that there are 2 ruling families in Saudi Arabia, not 1..t the 9/11 familes in effect sued the wrong people....hat there is a strong liberal traditon of moderate Islam that was crushed just 30 yrs ago, (to the point where some people say "I don't talk to animals", so strong is their hatred for the fundamentalists) and how much do you know of Wahhibism? But most of a ll, SA is a country so totalitarian it makes North Korea look like Amsterdam.

I won't say more....yet.

 

[A_Wanderer]

Too bad that it will take ten years or more for we anti-war wackos, who knew this was a dubious venture from the start, to be proved right. And sorry to say it, but in the future, it's you folks who will be the most angry, not we anti-war looneys, who had no illusions from the start. No, it's YOUR blind ideals and beliefs that will be shattere

And how is the Soviet Union faring these days? If I recall the "anti-war wackos" were quite adement that Reagan was dead wrong in his foreign policies, that he was bringing the world to the brink of nuclear armageddon.

As far as anger; I think that staying on the side of free people struggling against theofascist death squads is generally a more positive side to be on than banking on failure to reinforce ones ideals. Objectively pro-fascist would seem to be the only logical postition if people are unable to be anti-totalitarian when faced with a dilema that goes beyond good peace verus bad war. The situation in Iraq pre-liberation was fucked, and it represented a persistent threat to the the region and fueled the flames of hatred towards the US. The options were resolving that situation or doing nothing at all. There were different ways to resolve said sitation many such as diplomacy and sanctions were attempted through the 1990's and were exausted. What would be the moral thing to have done in regards to Iraq and what would the concequences of that action be?

If Iraq goes to shit and the world winds up in flames then you may well be right. But if in ten years Iraq remains democratic after multiple elections and has managed to preserve a secular consitution then the most vilified policy makers today (the neoconservatives) will deserve the kudos.

 

[financeguy]

If I recall the "anti-war wackos" were quite adement that Reagan was dead wrong in his foreign policies, that he was bringing the world to the brink of nuclear armageddon.

How off topic can we get?

The 'anti-war whackos' back then were people like CND, etc, on the lunatic left, many of whom were actual communists or close to it, by contrast with the Iraq situation virtually every country surveyed showed a majority against the invasion. Oh I guess they were all Saddam sympathisers!

The lessons of history are only of benefit if we apply them to relevant situations, if not they can be extremely dangerous and I would feel that the justifications for the Iraq invasion are a case in point, e.g., couching the justification in the language of pre-WWII, i.e. we appeased Hitler and look what happened, we should not make the mistake again. Read some Edward de Bono on the dangers of mis-applying historical lessons to present situations. History is a fine and worthwhile study in and of itself but we need to be very careful when relying on history to form political strategy.

Saddam was already emasculated and was no more than a localised tin-pot dictator, don't take my word for it, read the quotes from Condi R. and Colin P. only a few years before the Iraq war stating their view that Iraq did not constitute a serious threat.

 

[A_Wanderer]

Do you know how long it took the French to "pacify" Vietnam in the mid-20th century?(God, but it still feels weird using that phrase "20th century"...) A full 20 yrs. And then another 5-10 just to turn Vietnam into a productive colony.

But the US is not in Iraq to transform it into a colony.

And this is with a much less politically complicated situation, with only 2 main Vietnamese miltary factions involved, no semi-autonomous group like the Kurds in addition watching on the sidelines, and no Chinese insurgents streaming acorss the border.

Different situations; in Vietname the anti-colonial struggle against the French had been exacerbated by the second world war. Then the Cold War had come about and the US wound up supporting a colonial force against a nominally communist anti-colonial one. In Iraq the nationalist element of an insurgency does not exist, the support for the insurgency is severly limited and their campaign is one of terror against innocents. They do not represent the will of the people rather the retrograde forces of totalitarian Islam and fascist Baathism.

Vietnam, unlike Iraqm was comaratively isolated from outside interference, and the French had the playground to themselves, and it was still a nightmare. The Iraqi situation is 20 times worse.

Yeah, because now were trying to have a country with a consensual single government instead of keeping it split with a dictator running the south side to keep the communists in the north from taking over.

Read your hsotory. Oh, that's right, it appears nobody in the White House reads books, follwing the example of the so-called Commander in Chief....

Yeah us neanderthalic right wing death beasts are so ignorant of history, we cant even pull together Iraq = Vietnam, for shame.

Do you want a model of what we are trying to do here? Read about the history of America's beginnings in Sadi Arabia in the 50's.

And thats exactly what America want's another Saudi Arabia on their hands, another petrol pump in the ME to pour money into for cheap oil regardless of what other problems it exports. if you read any of the literature put out by the neoconservatives you will find a fiercely anti-totalitarian bend to it, a consistent idea that the support given to SA is driving terror and that to remedy that situation support of civil society and democracy must be fostered ~ in my opinion quite a liberal concept.

Aramco is so similar to Kellogg, Brown and Root it's scary.

Yes, but times have changed as will the actions and course of what will happen. Considering what the last round of history delivered we won't make the same mistakes.

But the Sunni/Shiite war...the fact that there are 2 ruling families in Saudi Arabia, not 1..t the 9/11 familes in effect sued the wrong people....hat there is a strong liberal traditon of moderate Islam that was crushed just 30 yrs ago, and how much do you know of Wahhibism?

I know that ideologically it is considered pure by adherents, that it judges other derivations of Islam to be heretical, that it seeks to follow the path of the prophet by bringing the ummah back to the 7th Century. That the clerical class runs SA's internal affairs effectively and keeps the royals power consolidated in a somewhat symbiotic relationship.

But most ofa ll, SA is a country so totalitarian it makes North Korea look like Amsterdam

You have freely admited before that you don't have a huge ammount of knowledge about the DPRK, I will just put this down to this. They are both totalitarian regimes one of theocratic and one of communist bend, their barbarity at tines can be equal but in terms of scale of suffering North Korea wins out big time. One can be a comitted anti-totalitarian and call a spade a spade ~ if the USA had stuck Ahmed Chalabi in charge as soon as baghdad fell and started bolstering the Iraqi Army with guns to supress the population then I would be very much opposed to it, but they have not. Instead they have come down on the side of democracy; free elections, human rights, independent judiciary and rebuilding the country are all elements of this. The groups that stand in opposition do not offer anything. You are free to not believe any of this, put it down to Bushco propaganda and willful ignorance or any number of reasons. I am not certain that Iraq will suceed, but I dearly hope that it does; the foreign forces are out of the reigon sooner rather than later, that the push democratic change starts yielding more dividends and that these flow on effects weaken the support granted to terorists.

 

[STING2]

Do you know how long it took the French to "pacify" Vietnam in the mid-20th century?(God, but it still feels weird using that phrase "20th century"...) A full 20 yrs. And then another 5-10 just to turn Vietnam into a productive colony. And this is with a much less politically complicated situation, with only 2 main Vietnamese miltary factions involved, no semi-autonomous group like the Kurds in addition watching on the sidelines, and no Chinese insurgents streaming acorss the border. Vietnam, unlike Iraqm was comaratively isolated from outside interference, and the French had the playground to themselves, and it was still a nightmare. The Iraqi situation is 20 times worse. Read your hsotory. Oh, that's right, it appears nobody in the White House reads books, follwing the example of the so-called Commander in Chief....

Do you want a model of what we are trying to do here? Read about the history of America's beginnings in Saudi Arabia in the 50's. Aramco is so similar to Kellogg, Brown and Root it's scary. But the Sunni/Shiite war...the fact that there are 2 ruling families in Saudi Arabia, not 1..t the 9/11 familes in effect sued the wrong people....hat there is a strong liberal traditon of moderate Islam that was crushed just 30 yrs ago, (to the point where some people say "I don't talk to animals", so strong is their hatred for the fundamentalists) and how much do you know of Wahhibism? But most of a ll, SA is a country so totalitarian it makes North Korea look like Amsterdam.

I won't say more....yet.

No, Saudi Arabia is NOTHING compared to North Korea. Vietnam was far from being and isolated area after World War II. The Soviet Union poured BILLIONS, let me say that again BILLIONs of dollars of weapons and supplies into Vietnam. Yet, had the United States not abandoned South Vietnam in the early 1970s, it would still be an independent country today with a standard of living and democratic government on par with South Korea.

 

[STING2]

How off topic can we get?

The 'anti-war whackos' back then were people like CND, etc, on the lunatic left, many of whom were actual communists or close to it, by contrast with the Iraq situation virtually every country surveyed showed a majority against the invasion. Oh I guess they were all Saddam sympathisers!

The lessons of history are only of benefit if we apply them to relevant situations, if not they can be extremely dangerous and I would feel that the justifications for the Iraq invasion are a case in point, e.g., couching the justification in the language of pre-WWII, i.e. we appeased Hitler and look what happened, we should not make the mistake again. Read some Edward de Bono on the dangers of mis-applying historical lessons to present situations. History is a fine and worthwhile study in and of itself but we need to be very careful when relying on history to form political strategy.

Saddam was already emasculated and was no more than a localised tin-pot dictator, don't take my word for it, read the quotes from Condi R. and Colin P. only a few years before the Iraq war stating their view that Iraq did not constitute a serious threat.

No one ever said that Saddam was NOT a threat in 2000 or 2001. Guess which country was spending BILLIONS of dollars at the time to try and enforce UN sanctions, a UN No Fly Zone, a UN weapons embargo as well as trying to get UN insepectors back into a certain country which had failed to disarm of thousands of stocks of WMD? Name another leader with the past behavior of Saddam, a 400,000 plus military, over 1,000 Liters of Anthrax, 500 pounds of Mustard Gas, 500 pounds of Nerve Gas, over 20,000 Bio/Chem capable shells. Over 2,700 Tanks, over 3,000 Artillery pieces, over 300 combat aircraft.

All of this in a country that sits only a couple of dozen miles from the planets main source of energy in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia.

Please, name the other dictator or dictators that you can that have precisely the same capabilities and location or proximity to the planets vital resources.

 

[A_Wanderer]

I realize how tragic your loss is and I know how much pain there is crushing your heart and I know the darkness that suddenly came to wrap your life and wipe away your dreams and I do feel the heat of your tears that won't dry until you find the answers to your question; why you lost your loved one?

I have heard your story and I understand that you have the full right to ask people to stand by your side and support your cause. At the beginning I told myself, this is yet another woman who lost a piece of her heart and the questions of war, peace and why are killing her everyday. To be frank to you the first thing I thought of was like "why should I listen or care to answer when there are thousands of other women in America, Iraq and Afghanistan who lost a son or a husband or a brother…”

But today I was looking at your picture and I saw in your eyes a persistence, a great pain and a torturing question; why?

I know how you feel Cindy, I lived among the same pains for 35 years but worse than that was the fear from losing our loved ones at any moment. Even while I'm writing these words to you there are feelings of fear, stress, and sadness that interrupt our lives all the time but in spite of all that I'm sticking hard to hope which if I didn't have I would have died years ago.

Ma'am, we asked for your nation's help and we asked you to stand with us in our war and your nation's act was (and still is) an act of ultimate courage and unmatched sense of humanity.
Our request is justified, death was our daily bread and a million Iraqi mothers were expecting death to knock on their doors at any second to claim someone from their families.
Your face doesn't look strange to me at all; I see it everyday on endless numbers of Iraqi women who were struck by losses like yours.

Our fellow country men and women were buried alive, cut to pieces and thrown in acid pools and some were fed to the wild dogs while those who were lucky enough ran away to live like strangers and the Iraqi mother was left to grieve one son buried in an unfound grave and another one living far away who she might not get to see again.

We did nothing to deserve all that suffering, well except for a dream we had; a dream of living like normal people do.

We cried out of joy the day your son and his comrades freed us from the hands of the devil and we went to the streets not believing that the nightmare is over.
We practiced our freedom first by kicking and burning the statues and portraits of the hateful idol who stole 35 years from the life of a nation.
For the first time air smelled that beautiful, that was the smell of freedom.

The mothers went to break the bars of cells looking for the ones they lost 5, 12 or 20 years ago and other women went to dig the land with their bare hand searching for a few bones they can hold in their arms after they couldn't hold them when they belonged to a living person.

I recall seeing a woman on TV two years ago, she was digging through the dirt with her hands. There was no definite grave in there as the whole place was one large grave but she seemed willing to dig the whole place looking for her two brothers who disappeared from earth 24 years ago when they were dragged from their colleges to a chamber of hell.

Her tears mixed with the dirt of the grave and there were journalists asking her about what her brothers did wrong and she was screaming "I don't know, I don't know. They were only college students. They didn't murder anyone, they didn't steal, and they didn't hurt anyone in their lives. All I want to know is the place of their grave".

Why was this woman chosen to lose her dear ones? Why you? Why did a million women have to go through the same pain?

We did not choose war for the sake of war itself and we didn't sacrifice a million lives for fun! We could've accepted our jailor and kept living in our chains for the rest of our lives but it's freedom ma'am.
Freedom is not an American thing and it's not an Iraqi thing, it's what unites us as human beings. We refuse all kinds of restrictions and that's why we fought and still fighting everyday in spite of the swords in the hands of the cavemen who want us dead or slaves for their evil masters.

You are free to go and leave us alone but what am I going to tell your million sisters in Iraq? Should I ask them to leave Iraq too? Should I leave too? And what about the eight millions who walked through bombs to practice their freedom and vote? Should they leave this land too?
Is it a cursed land that no one should live in? Why is it that we were chosen to live in all this pain, why me, why my people, why you?

But I am not leaving this land because the bad guys are not going to leave us or you to live in peace. They are the same ones who flew the planes to kill your people in New York.
I ask you in the name of God or whatever you believe in; do not waste your son's blood.
We here have decided to avenge humanity, you and all the women who lost their loved ones.
Take a look at our enemy Cindy, look closely at the hooded man holding the sword and if you think he's right then I will back off and support your call.

We live in pain and grief everyday, every hour, every minute; all the horrors of the powers of darkness have been directed at us and I don't know exactly when am I going to feel safe again, maybe in a year, maybe two or even ten; I frankly don't know but I don't want to lose hope and faith.

We are in need for every hand that can offer some help. Please pray for us, I know that God listens to mothers' prayers and I call all the women on earth to pray with you for peace in this world.

Your son sacrificed his life for a very noble cause…No, he sacrificed himself for the most precious value in this existence; that is freedom.

His blood didn't go in vain; your son and our brethren are drawing a great example of selflessness.
God bless his free soul and God bless the souls of his comrades who are fighting evil.
God bless the souls of Iraqis who suffered and died for the sake of freedom.
God bless all the freedom lovers on earth.

link

 

[deep]

Mother begs for end to killing
Atlantan: 'It's too late for my son'

By ANNA VARELA

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 08/12/05

Mary Ann MacCombie didn't protest Vietnam. She was in her early 20s and wasn't sure she understood that war well enough to take a stand.

And she didn't know anybody who died there.
HO/Family photo

Sgt. Ryan Montgomery Campbell visits his mom in Kirksville, Mo., during his last two-week leave in February 2004. He was killed April 29, with seven others from his unit. In previous weeks his e-mails home had betrayed growing bitterness.

Sgt. Ryan Campbell asked that this photo of him with an Iraqi child, be placed on his coffin if he died in the war.




When the United States invaded Iraq in March 2003, she was "cautiously supportive." And when her son's Army unit joined the fight, she thought it would be like the Gulf War in 1991 — few casualties, "in and out."

In April 2004, MacCombie's son was killed in Iraq. Suddenly the war became personal.

On Thursday, two years after the invasion of Iraq, MacCombie spoke out at an anti-war demonstration for the first time. It took her more than a year to trust herself to talk about her son without breaking down, a year spent in a state of shock and coping with the bureaucratic details that follow death in a faraway place.

She joined about three dozen protesters who gathered in front of the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Decatur to show support for Cindy Sheehan, the California mother who lost a son in Iraq and has camped out on a road leading to President Bush's ranch in Crawford, Texas, where he is vacationing. Sheehan has vowed to stay until he meets with her personally.

MacCombie read a speech she wrote ahead of time because she didn't think she could speak off the cuff. "It's too late for my son," she said, "but not for his best friend and thousands of their fellow soldiers and Marines. Now is the right time, the right place, the right mission — to bring our troops home."

Afterward, MacCombie ad­mitted she was nervous. She knows she shook a little during her speech. But she thought she did OK, and she's willing to do it again.

She's thinking about going to Texas to join Sheehan.

When Sgt. Ryan Montgomery Campbell settled in for his yearlong tour of duty, MacCombie supported her son by sending video games, music CDs and a laptop computer, making sure his bills got paid, and e-mailing him regularly.

The 25-year-old swapped gossip with his mother about friends back home in Kirksville, Mo. They talked about the intense heat of the Baghdad summer and the college classes she was taking. Toward the end of the tour, Campbell e-mailed his mother to suggest she meet him at his base in Europe so they could see Germany and Spain together.

But a few days before he was to leave Iraq in April 2004, he e-mailed her with bad news: The Army had ordered his unit to stay for four more months.

Morale 'at an all-time low'

The extension was a shock. The soldiers in his unit had already packed and shipped their personal items to their home base in Germany. Campbell dropped plans to re-enlist, intentions based on assurances that he could be stationed in Hawaii. Now, he wrote his mother, he couldn't trust the Army to keep its word.

On April 10, 2004, he wrote:

"Well, the days are just dragging by over here ... before at least there was something to look forward to. ... I continue to hate this place. I hate the Army."

He e-mailed his sister, Brooke Campbell, and urged her not to vote for Bush. On April 26 he sent his sister another e-mail, noting that he was pulling 16-hour workdays providing security for an engineering unit assigned to dig up roadsides where Iraqi insurgents often hid bombs.

"My morale is at an all-time low," he wrote, "and the days are hard. Our mission is more dangerous than ever before."

On April 28, Campbell called his mother twice, sounding very discouraged. She didn't know how to console him.

The next day, he was killed by a suicide bomber along with seven other soldiers from his unit.

Mom's Bush ranch protest

MacCombie buried her son in Arlington National Cemetery on May 11, 2004. The next week she moved to Atlanta to be closer to Brooke, a graduate student at Emory University.

MacCombie had remained in Kirksville so Ryan would have a home to return to. When he died, there was no point staying there, she decided. She dropped out of college because she didn't have the heart to go on.

She lives in a rented duplex in Virginia-Highland and drives the red Jeep Wrangler her son bought on his last two-week leave home. At 59, she thinks she probably looks silly in "his dream car," but it makes her feel closer to her son.

MacCombie has been slower to go public with her opposition to the war than her daughter. Brooke, 29, appeared in an anti-Bush TV ad that was aired in swing states during the 2004 election campaign.

MacCombie long ago concluded the president's stated reasons for going to war in Iraq were untrue. One of her first steps toward protest came July 22, when Bush visited Atlanta to promote his Social Security plan and the new Medicare prescription drug benefit. She stood silently in a black T-shirt with "Bush Lied" on the front and "They Died" on the back. Names of U.S. troops who died in the war cover both sides of the shirt. Her son's name runs across the middle of the B in "Bush."

She is monitoring the situation in Texas, where news reports Thursday said more than 50 war protesters had joined Sheehan. Rumors were flying that Sheehan would be arrested. If that happens, MacCombie is ready to take her place to show Bush that the California mother "speaks for a lot of us."

Several opinion polls show support for the war has slipped. In a USA Today-CNN-Gallup Poll released this week, 56 percent of Americans surveyed said the war was going badly. The same poll asked if they supported sending more troops, keeping troop levels the same, a partial pullout or a complete pullout. The leading choice was complete withdrawal, with 33 percent favoring that option. Twenty-three percent supported a partial withdrawal.

MacCombie rejects the idea that mothers like her endanger the troops by speaking out. She feels they are already demoralized and nothing she says will put them in greater danger than they already face. She also knows that many people, including some mothers who have lost children in Iraq, see her criticism as bringing dishonor to the soldiers who have died. She said she respects their feelings and hopes they will respect hers.

She thinks about the mothers whose sons and daughters are still fighting. More than a thousand U.S. soldiers and Marines have been killed in Iraq since her son died. "How many is enough?" she asks.

"Maybe it's going to take more speaking out. ... It just seems to be the right time for me personally."

And, she notes sadly, she didn't speak up during Vietnam.

 

[MissVelvetDress_75]

The Atlanta newspaper yesterday had a page dedicated to all the GA soldiers that have been killed in Iraq. They included the names, photos, age, cause of death, spousal information, if they had children and locations in GA where they were from. It was very touching and very sad. Last night during the local news they showed footage of our Gov. crying when he heard about the Georgia Army National Guard's 48th Infantry Brigade losing 4 members in Iraq to a roadside bomb. The Gov. has asked that the state have a moment of silence on Thursday at 1:00PM.

http://www.gov.state.ga.us/prayer_vigil.shtml