"Galen Hekhuis" wrote in message
...
On Fri, 25 Feb 2005 00:40:58 GMT, "No Spam"
wrote:

"Galen Hekhuis" wrote in message
.. .
On Thu, 24 Feb 2005 23:56:14 GMT, "Michael Daly"
wrote:

On 24-Feb-2005, Scott Weiser wrote:

First, he was a brutal tyrant who was murdering
his own people wholesale and was engaging (and condoning) the most
heinous
sorts of torture, rape and brutality imaginable.

Which also describes US treatment of prisoners in Iraq.

I've kind of wondered about this. Who thought Abu Ghraib was a good
place
to continue to keep prisoners? From what I understand, the place had a
pretty bad rep even before the US got there. Why not just tear it
down?

The prison existed - much faster than building new.

I realize it was faster to use the existing prison, but if speed is the
criteria, it would have been faster to not have any trials or prisoners at
all. Obviously speed was not the criteria.

So what are you saying? The prison is bad so we are not going to use it, so
let's just kill everyone. No what you are saying is we should not be there
at all, which is a whole other argument (just read anything posted here
recently). My point was, we went in and we rounded up people that we thought
were a threat. They needed to be placed somewhere - quickly. The existing
prisons were the logical answer. I'm only dealing with logistics here not
the ideology of the invasion. My other point was that now is the time to let
the new government take over the prisons and prisoners and decide for
themselves if they would prefer to tear down the old reminders of both their
old government and the occupations use of them.


It should be destroyed
now that there is time to do it. But since it belongs to the new
government
it really should be their decision what to do with it. I'm sure the
families
of anyone that was ever there would like to see it replaced by something
else.

So why was it used and not destroyed in the first place?

For that matter, why did US generals and others use Saddam's palaces?
Having an occupying army billeted in luxury smacks more of "new boss
same
as the old boss" than it does of any kind of "liberation."

Yes it probably does, but it was a fast moving invading force and they
wanted secure command areas and I would assume that the palaces were
fortified and built to be easily defended. I wonder what they will do
with
them now? I suggest Universitys/Schools/librarys something for the public
good.

For Pete's sake. The palaces and such have been used long after the
invasion. I could see taking them and holding them as strategic
locations,
but turning them over to the CPA and having US soldiers swimming in
Saddam's swimming pools is just a little over the top. Remember, these
things were Saddam's previously, but the wherewith all to get them was
*stolen* from the Iraqi people. Didn't anyone think about *them*?

With all the car bombs etc still happening I still think they serve a
purpose. But I will still stand by my earlier remarks that they should be
turned over and converted to something for the people as soon as possible.
Something I did see was that Iraq did have, at one time, a strong Boy Scout
tradition. There are now people trying to get it started again and the
people that are old enough to remember being Boy Scouts are very enthused
about getting it going again. To this end they had petitioned the interim
government for a place for their headquarters and were granted rights to a
property previously used to train secret police. Apparently it is a quite
large complex located on a river. I was a scout and I think every kid should
have the opportunity to be one. I wish them well and I think it is a great
use for this property - better than just tearing it apart.


Second, he was facilitating
and harboring terrorists, which threatened world peace and
facilitated
the
9/11 attacks.

No one has ever made a credible link between Saddam and 9/11.

Even George W Bush has said he has seen no evidence to link Saddam and
9/11.

I imagine you get your news from the CBC, so I wouldn't expect you
to have heard anything even reasonably unbiased.

I get news from The Economist, a British right-wing news magazine.
They
reported the same news and then condemned the US for fraud after the
results of the invasion were revealed.

Third, all the above justifications were repeated by the
administration
many, many times. That the liberal press refused to publish them is
not
the
administration's fault

The first invasion of Iraq was preceded by a huge mass of propaganda
that
proved to be complete fiction (e.g. nuclear-hardened bunkers filled
with
Republican Guards just inside the border). Given such a precedent,
why
should we believe anything the US Administration says?

Lets see if I've got this straight: The same bunch that predicted what
would happen to the Peacock Throne in Iran, the same crowd that
accurately
forewarned folks about the Tet offensive, among other things in Viet
Nam,
the folks that told all of us about the eventual breakup of the Soviet
Union, the crew that provided us with the hard evidence of WMD in Iraq,
this gang now wants us to believe they know what is going on in Syria?

Inteligence agents and weathermen - don't bet your life on either. But I
guess each are right sometime - as I sit watching the snow come down
that
was supposed to be over by now.

I call 'em the weatherguessers. If we changed the nation's economists
with
the nation's meterologists...no one would ever notice.

Galen Hekhuis NpD, JFR, GWA
Illiterate? Write for FREE help