| Predator |
04-13-2008 05:32 PM |
I am an uneducated American who supports the war for no good reason
To bad that as true as most people who oppose the war. I support the war and I am educated on the reasons why. I could of course go on and on about weapons of mass destruction and why we never found them even though they were in Iraq prior to the war. I could talk about the resistance the U.N. inspectors faced that is the common reason for the start of the war. I could go in to the ties with terrorist organizations. I'm not going to do that and I would appreciate if others could abstain from bringing these up in this discussion. If you would like make a new thread and we can discuss it there.
As a disclaimer and to protect those who do not want to see the disturbing images, please do not click the links.
I am going to talk about Halabja and the events that took place there in 1988. There were similar attacks, but I am focusing on Halabja because this was the worst attack. This discussion is to hopefully educate some members of this board of the reasons that the Baath party needed to be taken out of power in Iraq.
Most people have heard how the Iraqi government launched chemical weapons against their own people, but how many know more than that? Did you know that Iraq signed the 1925 prohibition of the use of chemical weapons? Did you know that Iraq used various chemical weapons in a civil war in 1988? Did you know that 75% of those killed were unarmed women and children? Ali Hassan Al Majid, the man appointed as governor of northern Iraq by Saddam Hussein, stated "I will strike with chemical weapons and kill them all. What is the international community going to say? The hell with them and the hell with any other country...". Words spoken by a mad man. A mad man appointed by a mad man. 5000 lives lost in less than an hour. 75% were women and children. Mustard, cyanide and nerve gas used against 70,000 civilians. Bombs dropped for an hour in an act of genocide. They were targeted for extermination because they were Kurdish. Does this sound familiar? Would you have been willing to turn your back on the acts of the Nazi party? Iraq used chemical weapons against Iran and their own Kurdish population in 1984, 1986 and 1987. These times were verified, there are more times suspected. A government that has already shown that they would use chemical weapons in war time as well as against unarmed civilians would no doubt use them against against others. Back to the subject. When I joined the Army in 1997, I had to attend NBC (Nuclear, Biological and Chemical) weapons training. At this time, I was introduced the first time to the events in Halabja. As time went on, I researched further. The thing that turned me to the point of supporting any invasion of Iraq was the images.
Again, do not click the links if you are easily disturbed by death.
halabja,halabjah, iraq, north iraq, kurdistan, kurdland, kurd,bloody friday
Quote:
You have to understand something here that's so diabolically clever. The Iraqis knew that gas is heavier than air and would penetrate cellars and basements more effectively by launching a conventional artillery attack on the town for several hours. In other words, they knew that people would do what they always did during an artillery barrage and run to their basements. They were stuck in their basements, and then [the Iraqis] launched the chemical weapons attack turning them, really, into gas chambers.
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Quote:
Al-Anfal
Halabja was neither an aberration nor a desperate act of a regime caught in a grinding, stalemated war. Instead, it was one event in a deliberate, large-scale campaign called Al-Anfal to kill and displace the predominately Kurdish inhabitants of northern Iraq. In an exhaustive study published in 1994, Human Rights Watch concluded that the 1988 Anfal campaign amounted to an extermination campaign against the Kurds of Iraq, resulting in the deaths of at least 50,000 and perhaps as many as 100,000 persons, many of them women and children.
Baghdad launched about 40 gas attacks against Iraqi Kurdish targets in 1987-88, with thousands killed. But many also perished through the regime's traditional methods: nighttime raids by troops who abducted men and boys who were later executed and dumped in mass graves. Other family members — women, children, the elderly — were arrested for arbitrary periods under conditions of extreme hardship, or forcibly removed from their homes and sent to barren resettlement camps. As Human Rights Watch details, Iraqi forces demolished entire villages — houses, schools, shops, mosques, farms, power stations — everything to ensure the destruction of entire communities.
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So in the war on terror, the Baath party had to be eliminated. They were a terrorist government. They supported terrorism. They developed their attacks to cause the most civilian deaths possible. So now that the Baath party is out of power, should we leave? No, we started a job and now its time to finish it. I hear that we went into Iraq with no exit strategy. We have an exit strategy. Victory. The total liberation of the Iraqi people. Their ability to live without fear of genocidal attacks from their own government. Was the war about weapons of mass destruction? Partially, but remember the name of the operation. Iraqi Freedom. |
