We were to busy suporting saddam to notice what a bad guy he was. Exactly what did america do when he gassed the Kurds with the gas we sold him? We increased our aid to him. That is a fact. Then when we needed to make him into a bogey man we pulled it out of the pages of history as if it happened yesterday.

Seriously, what would you do if Canada and the UN invaded america claiming we had WMDS and then we didnt have them except for the ones canada sold to us in the first place. Would you be angry? How about if your daughters wedding party got blown to hell on accident? or your son lost his limbs by being to close to a wayward bomb?

what would we do to them if they were in our country?

Did Saddam Hussein Gas His Own People?
Reality Checks Needed During War

No doubt, Saddam has mistreated Kurds during his rule. But it's misleading to say, so simply and without context, that he killed his own people by gassing 5,000 Kurds at Halabja.

Other Articles Related To This Topic

by Don Sellar
March 1, 2003 by the Toronto Star


Halabja (pop. 80,000) is a small Kurdish city in northern Iraq. On Wednesday, the Star reminded readers that Saddam Hussein's Iraqi army killed 5,000 Kurds in a 1988 chemical weapons attack on Halabja near the end of a bloody, eight-year war with Iran.

The statement that Saddam was responsible for gassing the Kurds — his own people — was straightforward.

Indeed, U.S. President George W. Bush has used similar language about the disaster at Halabja in making a case for a military strike to oust Saddam.

Yet the Star also reported, in a Jan. 31 Opinion page column, that there's reason to believe the story about Saddam "gassing his own people" at Halabja may not even be true.

Curious about those contradictory reports, and prodded by Star reader Bill Hynes, the ombud decided to examine how this paper covered the Halabja story 15 years ago, when Washington was tilting toward Saddam's side in the Iran-Iraq war.

The Star's early coverage was skimpy. I found no breaking news story about the March 16, 1988 gas attack on the city.

But four days later, a Reuters News Agency dispatch (filed from Cyprus) said Kurds, fighting on the Iranian side, had managed to seize Halabja and nearby villages "where Iran has accused Iraq of using chemical weapons against Kurds."

Two days later, Reuters reported, Iran was alleging that 5,000 Kurds were killed by chemical bombs dropped on Halabja by the Iraqi Air Force.

Iranian officials put injured Iraqi civilians on display to back up their charges. An Iranian doctor said mustard gas and "some agent causing long-term damage" had been deployed.

Burn victim Ahmad Karim, 58, a street vendor from Halabja, told a reporter: "We saw the (Iraqi) planes come and use chemical bombs. I smelled something like insecticide."

Two weeks later, the fog of war over Halabja thickened a little when the Star ran a Reuters story saying a United Nations team had examined Iraqi and Iranian civilians who had been victims of mustard gas and nerve gas.

"But the two-man team did not say how or by whom the weapons had been used," the Reuters story said.

It explained that Iraq and Iran were accusing each other of using poison gas in violation of the 1925 Geneva Protocol against chemical weapons.

In September, 1988, the Star quoted an unnamed U.N. official as saying the Security Council chose to condemn the use of gas in the Iran-Iraq war rather than finger Iraq, generally believed to have lost the war with Iran.

The same story said Iraq's claims that Iran also had used chemical weapons "have not been verified."

Buried in that story by freelancer Trevor Rowe was an intriguing piece of information. Rowe reported the Iraqi forces had attacked Halabja when it "was occupied by Iranian troops. Five thousand Kurdish civilians were reportedly killed."

Let's fast-forward to Jan. 31 of this year, when The New York Times published an opinion piece by Stephen C. Pelletiere, the CIA's senior political analyst on Iraq during the 1980s.

In the article, Pelletiere said the only thing known for certain was that "Kurds were bombarded with poison gas that day at Halabja. We cannot say with any certainty that Iraqi chemical weapons killed the Kurds."

Pelletiere said the gassing occurred during a battle between Iraqis and Iranians.

"Iraq used chemical weapons to try to kill Iranians who had seized the town ... The Kurdish civilians who died had the misfortune to be caught up in that exchange. But they were not Iraq's main target," he wrote.

The former CIA official revealed that immediately after the battle the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency investigated and produced a classified report that said it was Iranian gas that killed the Kurds.

Both sides used gas at Halabja, Pelletiere suggested.

"The condition of the dead Kurds' bodies however, indicated they had been killed with a blood agent — that is, a cyanide-based gas — which Iran was known to use. The Iraqis, who are thought to have used mustard gas in the battle, are not known to have possessed blood agents at the time."

"A War Crime Or an Act of War?" was the way The Times' headline writer neatly summed up Pelletiere's argument.

No doubt, Saddam has mistreated Kurds during his rule. But it's misleading to say, so simply and without context, that he killed his own people by gassing 5,000 Kurds at Halabja.

The fog of war that enveloped the battle at Halabja in 1988 never really lifted. With a new war threatening in Iraq, it's coming back stronger than ever.

Journalists risking their lives to cover an American-led attack on Iraq would face many obvious obstacles in trying to get at the truth.

In light of that, editors need to consider assigning staff back home to do reality checks on claims and counter-claims made in the fog of war.

As our retrospective on the Halabja story suggests, the bang-bang coverage — gripping though it may be — may not be enough to get the job done.

Don Sellar is the Toronto Star's ombudsman.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article1779.htm

Sarah Palin caught stripping off her clothes.
Prev

http://www.wimp.com/palinstrips/

If this were the case the torturer would be given a presidential pardon. This would probably be the first time in history the person would deserve it. Lets face it its never hollywood in the real world.

No its verry simple. You had your facts wrong either deliberatly or you were misinformed. It makes a reasoneable conversation difficult. Like most people I prefer facts and reality over wild claims. How can one have a reasonable debate with a person who makes up facts and calls it truth? I am out have a great day. Oh and if you can prove more people attended the anti abortion thing than the inaguration parade I will admit I am wrong.

haha going down. that is a pun if I ever heard one.

again I read tens of thousands and even hundreds of thousands are less than 1.5 million. Please try to have accurate information it makes intelligent conversation difficult.

I read that 1.5 million attended the inaugeration parade and only tens of thousands the pro life rally. Can you please provide some data to back up your wild claim?

Students Lie in Front of Car, Delay Rove After Speech


By Martin Weil and Peter Baker
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, April 4, 2007; Page B04

Heckling protesters briefly delayed the car carrying top White House aide Karl Rove last night as he left the American University campus, where he had just given a speech. No arrests or injuries were reported after Rove's invitation-only talk.

About 20 students lay in front of the car as it prepared to leave, a witness said.


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Josh Goodman, an AU junior, said other students kicked the car "and tried to stop it as best as they could."

He said the car, with Rove in the back seat, left after those in front of it "were all pulled away."

Goodman estimated that the incident lasted for "close to five full minutes," but Maralee Csellar, AU's acting head of public relations, said the delay amounted to a minute or two. She said there were 12 to 15 protesters.

A White House spokeswoman said last night that Rove "is pleased to accept invitations to speak to groups, including students."

"Rarely is there a protest that is not peaceful," spokeswoman Emily Lawrimore said. "Karl was never in any danger. He appreciated the opportunity and the invitation."

Kim Bruce, a spokeswoman for the Secret Service, said that after Rove spoke, "several individuals who had gathered outside the speech area threw unknown objects at the vehicle."

In addition, she said, "some individuals ran in front of the vehicle" but "did not impede" Rove's departure.

Goodman said students went to the Ward Circle building where Rove spoke to make a "citizen's arrest" of the presidential adviser. He said the students claimed they had compiled evidence indicating that Rove had violated what they say is a presidential records act stipulating that all presidential e-mail be recorded on White House servers.



http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/03/AR2007040302257.html

Would you gather good information from torture? I do not think so. Look back in history and you will find women who admited to being witches under torture by the catholic church. I imagine once torture reaches a certain level you will say just about anything to make it stop. All we have gained from this is to debase ourselves before the world for information that is probably worthless and I wonder how many innocents suffered this simply by being related or knoweing the wrong people. Its a huge stain on our country and a shamefull time for america

King's October 11, 2003 news story --Many soldiers, same letter.Newspapers around U.S. get identical missives from Iraq -- and numerous articles about the letters home have been carried by news services and bloggers on the internet.

WASHINGTON -- Letters from hometown soldiers describing their successes rebuilding Iraq have been appearing in newspapers across the country as U.S. public opinion on the mission sours.
And all the letters are the same.
A Gannett News Service search found identical letters from different soldiers with the 2nd Battalion of the 503rd Airborne Infantry Regiment, also known as "The Rock," in 11 newspapers, including Snohomish, Wash.
The Olympian received two identical letters signed by different hometown soldiers: Spc. Joshua Ackler and Spc. Alex Marois, who is now a sergeant. The paper declined to run either because of a policy not to publish form letters.
The five-paragraph letter talks about the soldiers' efforts to re-establish police and fire departments, and build water and sewer plants in the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk, where the unit is based.
"The quality of life and security for the citizens has been largely restored, and we are a large part of why that has happened," the letter reads. ... It describes people waving at passing troops and children running up to shake their hands and say thank you.
It's not clear who wrote the letter or organized sending it to soldiers' hometown papers.
Six soldiers reached by GNS directly or through their families said they agreed with the letter's thrust. But none of the soldiers said he wrote it, and one said he didn't even sign it.
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Letters_home

http://www.wimp.com/bigshame/

Joe the Plumber gets called out by a fed up news reporter.

http://www.wimp.com/calledout/

Bush secretly flew to Iraq a few weeks back to spend 2.5 hours pretending to serve a fake, inedible plastic turkey to that handful of carefully selected, prescreened soldiers for that Thanksgiving PR stunt that will forever embarrass anyone with any sense of decency and pride -- which is, according to Bush's instant surge in the polls after the photo op, fewer and fewer of us.Naomi Klein, The Nation, January 8, 2004

They are run by the same guys who sell toothpaste

I do know how to spell "war crimes"

The dems were handed the lies promoted by bush and the war hawks the only thing they are guilty of is being duped

On Fake News and Other Societal Woes
Noam Chomsky interviewed by Irene
NoOne's Listening, December 7, 2005

Interviewer: Hi Professor Chomsky.
Chomsky: Speaking.

Interviewer: This is Irene from No One's Listening, but in honor of your appearance on the show today we're entitling it Noam's listening.

Chomsky: Oh, well, that's nice.

Interviewer: So our show today is about video news releases.

Chomsky: Video news releases?

Interviewer: Video news releases and fake news. I imagine you don't have time to watch much tv since you've written 90 books but I think the reason you'd be so good for this show is because you could give a historical analysis of the print media.

Chomsky: Well there was a period, in the mid-19th century, that's the period of the freest press, both in England and in the US. And it's quite interesting to look back at it. Over the years, that's declined. It declined for two basic reasons. One reason is the increased capital that was required to run a competitive press. And as capital requirements increased, that of course lead to a more corporatized media. The other effect is advertisement. In the 19th century, the United States had something kind of approximating a market system. Now we have nothing like a market--they may teach you [that] in economics courses, but that's not the way it works. And one of the signs of the decline of the market is advertisement. So if you have a real market you don't advertise: you just give information. For example, there are corners of the economy that do run like markets--for example stock markets. If you have ten shares of General Motors that you want to sell, you don't put up an ad on television with a sexy model holding up the ten shares saying "ask your broker if this is good for you; it's good for me," or something like that. What you do is you sell it at the market price. If you had a market for cars, toothpaste, or whatever, lifestyle drugs, you would do the same thing. GM would put up a brief notice saying here's the information about our models. Well, you've seen television ads, so I don't have to tell you how it works. The idea is to delude and deceive people with imagery. And the same has happened to the print media. Take the New York Times for example. They have something called the news hole. When the editors lay out tomorrow's newspapers, the first thing they do is the important things - they put the ads around. Then they have a little bit left that's called the news hole, and they stick little things there. Quite apart from that the media are just big corporations and of course represent the interests of their owners, their markets, which are advertisers, and for the elite newspapers, more or less the managerial class, the educated population they deal with. The end result is that you get a very narrow perspective of what the world is like.

Interviewer: Well then what would be the alternative. That's where I'm searching.

Chomsky: The alternative would be a free press. It's not hard to imagine, there actually was one in the mid-nineteenth century. So that would mean a press that isn't reliant on massive capital concentration, corporate ownership, that is not reliant on advertising for its revenue, and would involve engaged people who are interested in understanding the world and participating in a reasoned discussion about what it should be like. I mean that's not inconceivable.

read the rest at http://www.chomsky.info/interviews/20051207.htm