In Reply to: Facts? We don't need no stinking facts. posted by Jim Thorpe on Tuesday, 11. October 2005 at 09:40 Bali Time:
Get past your automatic defence mechanisms and find out some stuff.
According to the UN's own figures there were 500,000 deaths of Iraqi children by 1997 as a result of the first Gulf war and sanctions up to that point. That's just the children. Remember when Madeline Albright proclaimed that "it was worth it"? Total Iraqi deaths were 1.5 million by 2000.
They bombed the hospitals, the water supply, the power grid, the food factories, and then they prevented the country from trading oil to rebuild. And they left vast tracts of radiations from the depleted uranium in the anti-tank missiles.
The liberals hated Saddam long before the conservatives did, too. But Reagan and Bush weren't going to depose him while Rumsfeld was over there doing deals to sell him weapons, were they?
Of the millions of dead Muslim citizens in a number of countries, not ONE of them is Saddam Hussein or Osama bin Laden. That pisses off a bunch of people in the Western world, so imagine how Muslims feel about it.
And, for Mat: you have the internet. Do a search for "US in Libia", "US in Jordan", etc... see what you can learn.
Why is it that when I talk about the abuse of power in general, you guys immediately assume I'm anti-American?
I'll repeat my point. The power structures on both sides of this conflict are very similar, have similar aims, and use similar methods of motivation. The main difference between them is the amount of resources at their disposal.