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.

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*?

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
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