I don’t know what you wrote, but the tone of Shawaaj’s enitire post implied that it was. Take for instance this line, “‘All levels of command tended to view civilian casualties, even in significant numbers, as routine and as the natural and intended result of insurgent tactics,’ General Bargewell wrote in his report.” Are those civilian deaths a result of coalition actions or a result of insurgent actions? Another fact is that that was not so across all divisions, even with the broader definition of civilian casualties at the hands of the insurgents. One of the division commanders who fit that description is now in charge of all forces in Iraq.

I don’t consider the events in Haditha to be routine. I just consider them to have been something that should never have happened that then added to the other things that were condoned by upper levels of our government to further lower our standing in the world. Aberrations such as Haditha wouldn’t have the force they do in world opinion if it wasn’t for Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo.

“Rudi,

I’m not even going to bother addressing the other person [now who do you suppose THAT could be, hmmmm?] who has been making posts that ignore facts . . .”

It tis to laugh.

And I wonder just what “facts” he would be referring to? All I’ve seen Miss Hoboken do is blather on in pursuit of “Miss Clueless, ‘07.” And he will be well on his way, if only Cris will keep his mouth shut.

You know, Rudi and Hobo, I like you. (O.k., no, but I want to help – does that count?)

You’re energie vortices seem to be really out of wack. You probably need the touch of a Reiki master to heal your thinking, not to mention your other lower bodily functions.

Or, you can do it yourself in the privy of your choice. (Careful, it may involve crystals or other hard objects).

“learn a simple yet powerful healing method that will enable you to relieve stress,find inner peace, health, happiness, align the planets, rid your appartment of roaches and help you answer neocons firmly but pleasantly.”

Operators are standing by. . .

Hey, I’m funnier than Bill Maher, and a LOT less nasty.

(no one’s taking me seriously, so why the heck shouldn’t I have some fun with this?)

Summary: Reports that U.S. troops may have killed 24 civilians in Haditha, Iraq, last November have renewed fears that the U.S. military routinely violates the laws of war. But is the Haditha incident the exception or the rule? In fact, U.S. compliance with noncombatant immunity in Iraq has been relatively high by historical standards, and it has been improving since the beginning of the war.

With the US and Israel being advanced developed nation I expect them to behave better than the “enemy”. In the case of the US, Rummy, Gonzales and Yoo have used twisted logic to justify torture and then deny this when MSM or the SCOTUS rules against them. The US should tear down Saddam’s prisons, not use them as a tool in the GWOT.

Back to my question, I don’t expect ZERO deaths of detainees, just something close to ZERO. I don’t want to hear the Rummy words “stuff happens” or “you go to war..”.

I’m not even going to bother addressing the other person who has been making posts that ignore facts and make up statements by other people, including myself. I’ve found that as much as some here claim that I am purely a partisan there is a point at which some people on both “sides” should just be ignored. After all, did you claim that the United States is as bad as Saddam’s Iraq? No, you didn’t. Neither did any other person writing here. Yet that is what another writer claims we believe. He is completely incapable of actually reading what is written by someone who disagrees with his worldview. There is no one in the free world outside of the extreme right wing in this country who believes that there was nothing wrong with Abu Ghraib and is nothing wrong with Guantanamo. It is those people who cannot be reasoned with. The entire series of posts by this individual shows that.

(I’m baaaack, but only for a moment.)

I don’t trust Rudi’s references.

They lie about Israel

“. . . Human Rights Watch did not issue any report about the attacks against Israel perpetrated by Hezbollah, although these amounted to several thousand missiles fired blatantly at civilian targets, every one of them an unambiguous war crime. The warheads of these missiles, moreover, were packed with ball bearings, which are of minimal use against military targets but intended to maximize harm to civilians, . . .”

,…
[Not telling the truth, by leaving out massive violations, is the equivalent of a lie, and in this case a particularly massive and cruel one.]
…so it’s no stretch to believe they lie about the US as well, especially when they seem to favor the terrorists over our own citizens, as Marlowe correctly asserted above.

“Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch can rarely even bring themselves to use the word “terrorism,” at least without quotation marks. Human Rights Watch avoids the word, it says, because “there is no universally accepted definition” of it and “one person’s terrorist is another person’s freedom fighter.”

Both groups recognized that the attacks were a massive violation of human rights. In the months since, they have occasionally noted atrocities by our enemies in the war on terror, such as the murder of journalist Daniel Pearl. But almost all of their criticism has been directed at America and its allies. If all you knew about the war came from reading the section of Amnesty’s website on the subject-titled “Justice Not Revenge”-you would think that the United States had a worse human-rights record than the Taliban.”

No, those references, until confirmed by a truly objective [which the "rights" groups have clearly shown they are not] third party, aren’t worth the legal pad they are scribbled on.

1) At least 45 detainees died in U.S. custody due to suspected or confirmed criminal homicides.[1] At least eight people were tortured to death. At least 98 detainees have died while in U.S. custody in Iraq or Afghanistan;[2]
2) At least 69 of the detainees died at locations other than Abu Ghraib;[3]
3) At least 51 detainees have died in U.S. custody since Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld was informed of the abuses at Abu Ghraib on January 16, 2004;[4]
4) 12 deaths have led to punishments of U.S. personnel;[5]

http://www.humanrightsfirst.info/pdf/06221-etn-hrf-dic-rep-web.pdf

Do I believe that [abuse] may have hurt us in winning the hearts and minds of Muslims around the world? Yes, and I do regret that. But one of the ways we address that is to show the world that we don.t just talk about Geneva, we enforce Geneva . . . . [T]hat.s why you have these mili-
tary court-martials; that.s why you have these administrative penalties imposed upon those responsible because we want to find out what happened so it doesn.t happen again. And if someone has done something wrong, they.re going to be held accountable.

U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales
Confirmation Hearings before the Senate Judiciary Committee

How many death during torture and custody are justified for the GWOT?

If America were as evil a place as Saddam’s Iraq, many of your heads would have long ago been in a dumpster behind some WalMart.

Good night.

Well, if you can show me factual evidence that you are right, I’ll admit it. But you are the one who cannot be reasoned with, because you make ridiculous unsubstantiated claims, ignore the facts I present, and then say “I can’t reason with him.”

You’re right about that. You can’t reason with anyone. Not by spouting propaganda against facts.

“And a horrible effect is that now the US tortures, just like all those barbarians that we want to educate and democratize.”

NO, we do not! They are still alive, many released and returned to terror. They all still have all their body parts. They may have been scared and humiliated, but that’s a far cry from the evil of Saddam It’s like Halloween when compared to the Inquisition. NO COMPARISON.

But in order for you to vent your hate, you have to demonize the USA, because otherwise you would have no excuse. So, the most humane country in the history of the world becomes for you no better than Saddam’s Iraq.

You are really sick.

…he says

“Remember, Marlowe’s claim was that Amnesty and HRW never talked about human rights in Iraq. How about a reminder in his own words?”

…then he quotes part of the following

Marlowe said – That is because Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International etc. only really care about atrocities when it is the US who is accused of commiting them. Then they rage and stomp and get headlines.

…he IS NOT saying they don’t report it. He is saying, quite rightly, that they DO NOT make a big deal out of it. Everyone knows they report it, which is all your links show. And everyone also knows that unless someone is blowing it up in the MSM, it’s AS IF it were never reported. And the ONLY time those HR types EVER make a BIG fuss, is about the USA and Israel.

It’s one thing to write a report and another to try to do something about it.

They howled for months about America’s detention of terrorists, but barely made a peep when Saddam or his sons went wild. And what America has done to the terrorists is NOTHING compared to what Saddam did to innocent women and children. THAT’S the point, slick.

All this screaming, I suspect is to drown out the topic of the original post: responsibility.

Yes, Saddam was bad.
But the effects of the war are obviously worse, because they reach far outside Iraq.

One such effect is a weakened US and an empowered Iran.
Another is that Iraq is now the training ground for terrorists and the poster picture for recruiting jihadis.

And a horrible effect is that now the US tortures, just like all those barbarians that we want to educate and democratize.

You can yell and scream if you wnat to, but you can not erase our part in the responsibility.

Rudi,

After writing the paragraph above I read more of yonason’s postings. If you want to post things to contradict his ideas of facts for the information of other people you should do so but the more I read of his ramblings the more I realize that reasoning with him is a complete impossibility. In his critique of my post he reveals he does not comprehend such basic things as what has happened to our reputation in the world because of Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, extraordinary renditions and the incidents where our own military has put troops on trial for criminal acts. It is very true that only the first three were condoned by upper levels of our military and our government. But all of them cause people who should be our allies to look askance at us. He apparently has no idea how much of effective intelligence gathering and covert actions based on that intelligence involve both the psychology and sociology of understanding your enemy and the people and society surrounding him and therefore helps with predicting his likely course of action. Many things will go into successfully protecting the United States and its friends from the violent fanaticism of the jihadists and it will go on for several decades easily. This is something that some people just can’t understand.

The research I quoted was from NIH, and suggests REAL DANGERS of feeding infants soy formula before a certain age.

Other research I didn’t reference suggests there may be other harmful effects that suggest what Rev. Rutz is saying may be correct, but they aren’t as clear. So, that makes him Rutz? As much of a fanatic as Rev Rudi? I doubt it. Remember it’s the bigot Rudi who used the term “slant ey**” implying that’s what Rutz said.

But that ISN’T THE ISSUE. The article if importance is the one on Saddam’s villainy, NOT the other on pros or cons of soy products.

Leave it to a Leftie to change the subject away from what is important to deceive his readers. Just read the article on Saddam, and decide for yourselves.

“The following, according to the State Department report, were routine in Iraq during Saddam Hussein’s rule:

Medical experimentation

Beatings

Crucifixion

Hammering nails into the fingers and hands

Amputating sex organs or breasts with an electric carving knife

Spraying insecticides into a victim’s eyes

Branding with a hot iron

Committing rape while the victim’s spouse is forced to watch

Pouring boiling water into the victim’s rectum

Nailing the tongue to a wooden board

Extracting teeth with pliers

Using bees and scorpions to sting naked children in front of their parents”

Yeay, Rev. Rudi. I’ll bet you would just love to work for Saddam. And, for all I know, maybe you do. After all, you don’t want people to know how evil he was, and you are hacking up a whole lot of hairballs to do it, too.

Well, if you don’t like WND (even though they were only reporting on State Dept., findings) here’s more from State Dept., that shows Rev. Rudi is the coolaide drinker, as usual.

http://www.state.gov/g/wi/rls/18877.htm
http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2001/nea/8257.htm

Amnesty International: Denounced the torture and murder of the Iraq regime under Saddam in every annual report dating back to 1993 (all available on the amnesty international website) http://www.amnesty.org/ailib/aireport/ar93/index.html

Also prepared over 8 specific reports on Iraq and human rights violations.

True, they now say that the situation in Iraq is worse now than it was under Saddam. But then so do Iraqis.

“Former Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi said human rights abuses were even worse now than they were under Saddam Hussein?s rule.

“Speaking to The Observer Allawi said, ‘People are doing the same as (in) Saddam’s time and worse.’ Noting that the comparison was an appropriate one, Allawi also warned against the elimination of the records attesting to the current situation

For a primer, here’s Amnesty International’s 2001 report on torture in Iraq under Saddam (World Nut Daily must have missed it).

http://web.amnesty.org/library/Index/engMDE140082001?OpenDocument&of=COUNTRIESIRAQ?OpenDocument&of=COUNTRIESIRAQ

Human Rights Watch Here is one of many of their reports this from 1992

Endless Torment: The 1991 Uprising in Iraq and Its Aftermath

Or how about ”
“Genocide in Iraq – The Anfal Campaign Against the Kurdsâ€?” Here http://hrw.org/english/docs/2006/08/14/iraq13979.htm

Or how about `Ali Hassan al-Majid and the Basra Massacre of 1999″

http://hrw.org/reports/2005/iraq0205/

Remember, Marlowe’s claim was that Amnesty and HRW never talked about human rights in Iraq. How about a reminder in his own words?

That is because Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International etc. only really care about atrocities when it is the US who is accused of commiting them.

Nowhere is that addressed in your world nut daily piece.

G Weightman – The “feeding them into plastic shreddersâ€? line is pure propaganda, like GW1 and the Iraqis thowing babies to the floor to steal incubators. I have followed this lie from the beginning, please supply some links to verify this propaganda.

If you don’t believe this Genocide Watch cite, I’d review these Human Rights Watch documents to see how justice was meted out by Saddam in those halcyon, kite-flying day of yore. Caution: these documents at not for the squeamish.

Good luck in your campaign to rehabilitate Saddam‘s reputation, Rudi.