Re: Trigger-happy in Baghdad - US troops butcher unarmed firefighters
No, infact I have tried to go beyond the media before I formed my opinions about Saddam. Let’s forget WMD for just a minute, and look at what he did to his own people. If you did not read my post above, it references the Anfal campaigns used by Saddam to purge the Kurds. Now there were other campaigns, against the Marsh Arabs, a number against the Shia, a number of purges against political enemies, but the one against eh Kurds is unique in many ways.
The Baathists were unique in many ways. They were highly organized, and very methodical. As you can read below, and in further documents on the Anfal campaigns, the Genocide of the Kurds was highly organized, well documented and fully integrated into the fabric of Saddam’s administration. This was not an accident, not a rogue unit gone astray, not some over zealous administrator in the hinterlands.
Genocide was the official policy of the Baathist regime of Saddam. The cold blooded murder of perhaps 100k people was highly planned, documented and executed.
So, go beyond the common media, and read what really happened. Decide for yourself if Genocide on Muslims should be allowed or punished. Decide when rulers have stepped over the boundries of humanity. What would the future of Iraq have been under a leader who destroyed 4000 Kurdish villages so that these area could be settled by Arabs? They perform a census, and anyone who identifies himself as a Kurd is ethnicly cleansed by rounding them up, booking them into Nazi-like concentration camps where they are never seen again. See the following:
People who are whining that things were better under Saddam, are frankly ill informed idiots who do not carefully consider what they are really saying. The real issue is why Muslims allowed Iraq to fail simply to spite the US. Was it worth it? Did you do all you could to help your “brothers” in Iraq? Or have you sat completely idle though the regime of Saddam, and now through the sectarian slaughter?
Whether you believe it or not, the US troops who mistakenly shot some fire fighters believe that they are there to assist the Iraqi people in making a new future. They showed up. They put their lives on the line, and they believe that there is a better future. Many of them have died in that cause. That those guys are now branded as “trigger happy” (when 100 of them have been killed this month) by some Canadian computer geek whose closest brush with death will be commuting in his air-bagged Volvo strikes me as a bit silly.