| Topic: |
Religions > Atheism |
| User: |
"maff" |
| Date: |
11 Apr 2004 05:20:42 AM |
| Object: |
OT: Apocalypse now? |
Apocalypse now? Part 1: The War Front
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/story.jsp?story=510450
Unable to end the insurgency, the US is rapidly losing its few friends
By Patrick Cockburn in Baghdad
11 April 2004
If Iraq comes to be seen as President George W Bush's Vietnam, this
past week may be the equivalent of the 1968 Tet offensive - the moment
when America discovered that, for all its overwhelming military
superiority, it is not winning the war.
Apocalypse now? Part 2: The White House
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/story.jsp?story=510449
The President has few options
By Rupert Cornwell in Washington
11 April 2004
Spring in central Texas is the loveliest season, when the fields are
carpeted with bluebonnet wild flowers and the blistering heat of
summer is still months away. But that will be scant comfort for George
W Bush during this Easter holiday at the ranch he calls Prairie
Chapel.
Apocalypse now? Part 3: The Home Front
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/story.jsp?story=510448
In Middle-America, folks are beginning to worry
By Tom Carver in Washington
11 April 2004
"I don't want to come back in 30 years and look for my friends' names
on a wall." Sixteen-year-old Sarah Wells is visiting Washington for
the weekend with her family. She feels a generalised anxiety about
what is going on in Iraq, but admits that the fighting "hasn't really
hit home" so far because she doesn't know anyone who has been sent
there.
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| User: "The other Donald" |
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| Title: Re: Apocalypse now? |
11 Apr 2004 02:19:43 PM |
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"maff" <maff91@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:18510aff.0404110220.6da43a8f@posting.google.com...
Apocalypse now? Part 1: The War Front
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/story.jsp?story=510450
Unable to end the insurgency, the US is rapidly losing its few friends
By Patrick Cockburn in Baghdad
11 April 2004
It would suck to grow up with the name "Cockburn."
-DMc
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| User: "Christopher A. Lee" |
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| Title: Re: Apocalypse now? |
11 Apr 2004 02:45:35 PM |
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On Sun, 11 Apr 2004 19:19:43 GMT, "The other Donald"
<the_donald_13@yehaw2.com> wrote:
"maff" <maff91@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:18510aff.0404110220.6da43a8f@posting.google.com...
Apocalypse now? Part 1: The War Front
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/story.jsp?story=510450
Unable to end the insurgency, the US is rapidly losing its few friends
By Patrick Cockburn in Baghdad
11 April 2004
It would suck to grow up with the name "Cockburn."
Groan. But it's usually pronounced Coburn.
-DMc
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| User: "The other Donald" |
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| Title: Re: Apocalypse now? |
11 Apr 2004 04:21:29 PM |
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"Christopher A. Lee" <calee@optonline.net> wrote in message
news:128j70pm4bst7b9dldv4onk1okpu1gjiqs@4ax.com...
On Sun, 11 Apr 2004 19:19:43 GMT, "The other Donald"
<the_donald_13@yehaw2.com> wrote:
"maff" <maff91@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:18510aff.0404110220.6da43a8f@posting.google.com...
Apocalypse now? Part 1: The War Front
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/story.jsp?story=510450
Unable to end the insurgency, the US is rapidly losing its few friends
By Patrick Cockburn in Baghdad
11 April 2004
It would suck to grow up with the name "Cockburn."
Groan. But it's usually pronounced Coburn.
I know, I know.....like the name Kuntz.
It's just one of those things I read and do a double-take.
-DMc
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| User: "Christopher A. Lee" |
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| Title: Re: Apocalypse now? |
11 Apr 2004 04:25:57 PM |
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On Sun, 11 Apr 2004 21:21:29 GMT, "The other Donald"
<the_donald_13@yehaw2.com> wrote:
"Christopher A. Lee" <calee@optonline.net> wrote in message
news:128j70pm4bst7b9dldv4onk1okpu1gjiqs@4ax.com...
On Sun, 11 Apr 2004 19:19:43 GMT, "The other Donald"
<the_donald_13@yehaw2.com> wrote:
"maff" <maff91@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:18510aff.0404110220.6da43a8f@posting.google.com...
Apocalypse now? Part 1: The War Front
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/story.jsp?story=510450
Unable to end the insurgency, the US is rapidly losing its few friends
By Patrick Cockburn in Baghdad
11 April 2004
It would suck to grow up with the name "Cockburn."
Groan. But it's usually pronounced Coburn.
I know, I know.....like the name Kuntz.
It's just one of those things I read and do a double-take.
I once knew somebody called Death - who pronounced it De Ath.
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| User: "Lars Eighner" |
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| Title: Re: OT: Apocalypse now? |
11 Apr 2004 02:00:25 PM |
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In our last episode,
<18510aff.0404110220.6da43a8f@posting.google.com>,
the lovely and talented maff
broadcast on alt.atheism:
By Patrick Cockburn in Baghdad
11 April 2004
Spring in central Texas is the loveliest season, when the fields are
carpeted with bluebonnet wild flowers and the blistering heat of
summer is still months away. But that will be scant comfort for George
W Bush during this Easter holiday at the ranch he calls Prairie
Chapel.
Picturesque, but in point of fact it is cold and wet in Central Texas
this weekend.
--
Rev. Lars Eighner, ULC, Atheist #1965 http://www.io.com/~eighner
"I hope I never get so old I get religious." --Ingmar Bergman
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| User: "stoney" |
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| Title: Re: OT: Apocalypse now? |
11 Apr 2004 10:42:05 PM |
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On 11 Apr 2004 03:20:42 -0700, (maff), Message ID:
<18510aff.0404110220.6da43a8f@posting.google.com> wrote in alt.atheism;
Apocalypse now? Part 1: The War Front
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/story.jsp?story=510450
Apocalypse now? Part 1: The War Front
Apocalypse now? Part 2: The White House
Apocalypse now? Part 3: The Home Front
Apocalypse now? Part 1: The War Front
Unable to end the insurgency, the US is rapidly losing its few friends
By Patrick Cockburn in Baghdad
11 April 2004
If Iraq comes to be seen as President George W Bush's Vietnam, this past
week may be the equivalent of the 1968 Tet offensive - the moment when
America discovered that, for all its overwhelming military superiority,
it is not winning the war.
The US civil and military leaders in Iraq discovered that their
authority was a house built on sand. It crumbled with extraordinary
speed in the face of poorly armed and ill-organised opposition in
Fallujah and southern Iraq. The message was that the opponents of the US
in Iraq are not very strong, but that the coalition itself is very weak.
Not only are large parts of Iraq outside its control, the US is weaker
in Iraq than it was a year ago, after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein.
By yesterday its allies within the US-appointed Iraqi Governing Council
(IGC) were accusing it of "genocide". On the ground, the US troops
recognise that they have no friends among the Iraqi forces supposedly on
their side - and even America's closest allies in Iraq are beginning to
run for cover.
Yet the disasters of the past week, the worst in political terms since
President Bush decided to invade Iraq, are in large measure
self-inflicted. The US suddenly found itself fighting a two-front war
because it over-reacted to pressure, political and military, from
important minority groups in the Sunni and Shia communities.
In Vietnam a US commander once said of a village: "We had to destroy it
in order to save it." In Iraq the same might apply to Fallujah. It is
true that since the war Fallujah has been the most militant and
anti-American city in Iraq, but it is not entirely typical. Sunni by
religion and highly tribal, it has a well-earned reputation among Iraqis
as being a bastion for bandits. Iraqis in Baghdad, even those
sympathetic to the resistance, spoke of people in Fallujah pursuing
their own private feud with the US.
Yet the US responded to the killing of the four US contractors in
Fallujah by sending in 1,200 Marines to launch a medieval siege, one in
which they initially refused to allow ambulances in or out. If the
Americans really believed they were being attacked by a tiny minority,
Iraqis asked, why were they attacking a city of 300,000 people? The
result has been to turn Fallujah into a nationalist and religious symbol
for all Iraqis.
For the first time the armed resistance is becoming truly popular in
Baghdad. Previously Iraqis often approved of it as the only way to put
pressure on the US. But they were also wary of the guerrillas, because
of fear of religious fanaticism or connections with Saddam's deeply
unpopular regime. But thanks to Fallujah, this has changed: Iraqi
nationalism is back in business.
As the first refugees began to reach Baghdad yesterday they received a
hero's welcome. At the Khalid bin Whalid mosque in the Dhora district of
the city, about 300 people had offered to house families from Fallujah.
There were, in fact, more offers of free accommodation than there were
refugees needing somewhere to live.
"I have two wives in two houses," said one man, "but they can go and
stay with their parents, and people from Fallujah can stay there
instead." The Baghdad blood bank in the Adhamiyah quarter was also
overwhelmed with people giving blood for the wounded.
The US made a similar mistake by driving Muqtada al-Sadr, the young Shia
cleric, into a corner. His group has always been well organised, and he
has a committed core of supporters. His position depends on the
reputation of his martyred father, Mohammed Sadiq al-Sadr, assassinated
by Saddam in 1999, but he has never been able to mobilise many people in
the past. During his confrontation with the authorities last October he
was unable to put more than a couple of thousand marchers on the streets
in Sadr City, supposedly his home base.
Muqtada al-Sadr was an irritant for the Coalition Provisional Authority,
but he never rivalled the influence of Shia clerical leaders such as
Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani. There were no real signs that Mr Sadr's
movement was going anywhere. Then on 28 March, Paul Bremer, the head of
the CPA, closed Mr Sadr's newspaper, al-Hawza, before arresting one of
his lieutenants, Mustafa Yaqubi, in Najaf. This may have been a
pre-emptive strike to get Mr Sadr out of the picture before the nominal
handover of power to the Governing Council on 30 June, but it has proved
a disastrous misjudgement.
The young cleric's black-clad militiamen, known as the Army of the
Mahdi, number perhaps 5,000 men. But as soon as they went on the
offensive, they exposed the fragility of US support among the Iraqi
police and US-trained paramilitary units, such as the Iraqi Civil
Defence Corps, which were expected to assume an increasing share of
security duties.
About 200,000 Iraqis belong to these forces. However, confronted by the
Army of the Mahdi the police faded away, often handing over their
weapons to Mr Sadr's men. As soon as the Army of the Mahdi moved on the
city of Kut, on the Tigris south of Baghdad, the police disappeared and
the Ukrainian soldiers in the city withdrew. Not only have local Iraqi
allies showed they are not prepared to fight, the crisis has also put
intense pressure on America's foreign allies, such as the Poles,
Bulgarians and Japanese as well as the Ukrainians, who have military
forces in the south. They had gone there in the belief that they were
out of harm's way, only to find they were policing some of the most
dangerous cities in Iraq.
On Friday a force of 1,000 US Marines counter-attacked and recaptured
Kut. When the local police went to see them, the Marines immediately
confiscated any of their remaining weapons that had not already been
seized by the Army of the Mahdi, then pulled out of the city, leaving no
one to keep order.
As for the Civil Defence Corps, its men are accused of luring the four
American contractors into a trap in Fallujah at the end of last month,
leading to their death and mutilation. However, this has been all but
forgotten in the ferociousness of the US response. Early yesterday the
IGC, to which the US is supposedly going to hand over power on 30 June,
issued a statement demanding an end to military action and "collective
punishment" - meaning the siege of Fallujah.
One of the most famous guerrilla leaders against Saddam, the so-called
Prince of the Marshes, Abdul-Karim Mahoud al-Mohammedawi, said he was
suspending his membership of the council until "the bleeding stops in
Iraq". Another IGC member, Adnan Pachachi, the former Iraqi Foreign
Minister, whose language is normally highly diplomatic, denounced the
siege, saying: "It is not right to punish all the people of Fallujah,
and we consider these operations by the Americans unacceptable and
illegal." The political isolation of the Americans in Iraq, apart from
their support among the Kurds, is now almost complete.
How has that been allowed to happen? Why did Mr Bremer play so easily
into the hands of America's opponents? One answer probably is that
hardline civilians in the Pentagon retain their control of the Coalition
Provisional Authority, which they have staffed with fellow
neo-conservatives who share their over-simplistic agendas for Iraq. The
State Department still has little influence.
As a result, the US is reduced to playing its only remaining card in
Iraq, which is its overwhelming military strength. After the siege of
Fallujah, the US army promises that Mr Sadr will be "crushed", which
means a military assault on the Shias' holy city of Najaf and possibly
Karbala. Even if it backs off - and yesterday it declared a ceasefire in
Fallujah - it will mean that the insurgents will have achieved a sort of
official recognition.
Mr Bremer and his colleagues are now in a state of denial. In the days
before the fall of Saddam the Iraqi Information Minister, swiftly
nicknamed "Comical Ali", was derided internationally as he insisted that
US troops had not captured Baghdad International Airport. On Friday US
commanders in Iraq were sending poorly defended convoys of vulnerable
petrol tankers down the road past the airport, ignoring the fact that
the surrounding countryside is under the control of guerrillas. Not
surprisingly, the convoys were immediately ambushed - yesterday the US
admitted that two of its men had been captured and another killed.
At the time of the US invasion last year, Iraqis were evenly divided on
the merits of what was happening. They welcomed the overthrow of Saddam,
whose swift fall showed the shallowness of his support. Many were
prepared to pay the price of temporary occupation.
As for the Americans, the guerrilla war was worse than they expected,
but it was still confined to Sunni areas of Iraq, extensive though these
are. The US was not facing the Vietcong, backed by North Vietnamese; it
has taken a series of unforced errors, far worse than those in Vietnam,
to make things as bad as they are now.
By dissolving the Iraqi state and dealing only with Iraqis long in
exile, the US began to alienate Iraqis as a whole. Mr Bremer and the CPA
confined themselves to Saddam's old palaces, and when they visited other
cities they were cocooned from the reality of Iraqi life around them,
most notably the growing anger at the lack of economic opportunities.
Even now there are only limited signs that Washington and the CPA
understand the extent of the political defeat that they have suffered.
If they are not prepared to hold Iraq with a large military garrison,
they need Iraqi Arab allies - and of these today they have almost none.
11 April 2004 20:26
Search this site:
© 2004 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd
Apocalypse now? Part 2: The White House
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/story.jsp?story=510449
Apocalypse now? Part 2: The White House
The President has few options
By Rupert Cornwell in Washington
11 April 2004
Spring in central Texas is the loveliest season, when the fields are
carpeted with bluebonnet wild flowers and the blistering heat of summer
is still months away. But that will be scant comfort for George W Bush
during this Easter holiday at the ranch he calls Prairie Chapel.
In the all-embracing "war against terror", stretching from 11 September
2001 to the plains of Iraq today, this has been his rockiest week. On
Thursday, over the President's initial vehement objections, his National
Security Adviser, Condoleezza Rice, testified under oath to the special
commission investigating the 9/11 attacks, obliged to defend her boss in
the one area he had seemed impregnable, as the super-vigilant foe of
global terrorism. By common consent she made a pretty good fist of it.
Even so, the White House may not be home free. Despite separate
objections by the President, at week's end his aides were preparing to
make public the text of the top-secret President's Daily Briefing for 6
August 2001, which contained an assessment of the threat posed by
al-Qa'ida. Ms Rice says the document merely assembled existing
information, but some suspect it may have contained new warnings of an
impending attack. By and large, however, she countered the central
charge of her former counter-terrorism deputy, Richard Clarke, that the
Bush team was asleep at the wheel in the months before the attacks on
New York and Washington.
Alas for the President, the great Condi show, so keenly anticipated by
connoisseurs of Washington scandal, was by Thursday a mere side-show to
the real drama playing out 5,000 miles away. As she duelled with the
commission members, the on-screen "crawls" beneath her face on the cable
news channels told the true story of the day - the urban warfare,
hostage-taking and general mayhem across Iraq, all part of an
unravelling of US policy that could cost Mr Bush the presidency in
November.
Caution is in order. Whatever Edward Kennedy may say, this is not
"George W Bush's Vietnam" - or not yet. Support for the war in Iraq has
waned since the invasion a year ago, but public opinion has not turned
decisively against it. Nor are military casualties yet the potential
tipping point, even though last week they were at a rate reminiscent of
Vietnam.
That war, however, lasted eight years and took 55,000 American lives. In
the year since the Iraq invasion, about 650 US servicemen have been
killed. For now, the American public - hardened by 9/11 and the real and
fictional violence served up daily on TV - seem less concerned about the
losses than do the generals and politicians.
Moreover, Democrats, are having a hard job making political capital out
of Iraq. As US troops wage pitched battles, politicians of both stripes
dare not be seen to be deserting them. Complicating matters further,
John Kerry, the party's designate to face Mr Bush this autumn, backed
the war in the crucial Congressional resolution of October 2002, and has
been trying to reconcile that vote with his criticism of the White
House's handling of the war ever since.
Even now, as he denounces Mr Bush as "arrogant" and "inept", Mr Kerry
struggles to say what he would do differently, beyond vague formulations
about "bringing in the United Nations" and mending fences with estranged
US allies. By a small margin, Americans still believe it was right to
invade.
But if the chaos continues, something will have to give. Donald
Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz and the neo-conservatives maintain that this
upsurge of violence was expected, and that the insurgents are a small
minority. But the endless pictures of smoke plumes rising over Iraqi
cities and gunmen in the streets give the lie to the Pentagon's claims
that foreign terrorists and "dead-enders" loyal to the vanished Baathist
regime alone were behind the resistance.
As Fallujah, Najaf and Kut turn into battle zones, as Sunnis and Shias
start to make common cause and nervous GIs no longer know who is friend
and who is foe, the question soon will be unavoidable: what on earth is
America doing there?
As he mulls the crisis this weekend, with the November election less
than seven months off, Mr Bush has nothing but bad and less bad military
and political options. He can stick to the 30 June deadline for the
transfer of sovereignty to Iraqis, but to which Iraqis? And how will
they maintain security, when the newly trained Iraqi security force the
Americans have set up is unwilling or unable to restore order? Or Mr
Bush can put back the date - and extend an occupation that many Iraqis
plainly detest.
Either way, more troops will have to be sent to reinforce the 135,000
already in Iraq, at a time when almost half of all Americans think US
forces should be withdrawn. On Friday, as yet another explosion rocked
the centre of Baghdad, Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt, the chief US
military spokesman, solemnly announced that "the coalition is in firm
control of Baghdad". Wasn't that supposed to have been settled a year
ago?
But the President shows no sign of changing tack. The US will "stay the
course" in Iraq, Mr Bush says. Even assuming the violence is brought
under control, the underlying dynamic in Iraq has surely changed on a
lasting basis. From the White House, however, the message never varies.
The very notion that the US might have made mistakes never seems to
cross anyone's mind, let alone being publicly acknowledged.
At the end of her testimony on Capitol Hill, Ms Rice vigorously defended
the doctrine of pre-emptive strikes against "rogue" states, and depicted
the invasion of Iraq as an unmitigated good. It was left to commissioner
and former Nebraska senator Bob Kerrey - a Vietnam war hero who
initially supported the war - to point out the obvious. The US was
leading a largely Christian army in a Muslim nation, in a campaign that
would only stoke hatred in the Islamic world and recruit new terrorists
to the anti-American cause.
Current US military tactics, he warned, were going to have a number of
consequences, "all of them bad". His words were a statement, not a
question, and they went virtually unnoticed. But for George Bush, they
could be a harbinger of a terrible day of political reckoning ahead.
© 2004 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd
Apocalypse now? Part 3: The Home Front
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/story.jsp?story=510448
Apocalypse now? Part 3: The Home Front
In Middle-America, folks are beginning to worry
By Tom Carver in Washington
11 April 2004
"I don't want to come back in 30 years and look for my friends' names
on a wall." Sixteen-year-old Sarah Wells is visiting Washington for the
weekend with her family. She feels a generalised anxiety about what is
going on in Iraq, but admits that the fighting "hasn't really hit home"
so far because she doesn't know anyone who has been sent there.
"Iraq will never be that many names," says Sarah's father, Jeff Wells,
47, looking back at the Vietnam Memorial, an angled scar of granite in
the ground inscribed with the names of the 58,209 Americans who died in
Vietnam.
Jeff was called up for duty in Vietnam but never served; the war ended
before he had finished training. He is confident that Iraq will not be a
repeat of Vietnam. "We're going in with our eyes open this time. We're
there to eliminate terrorism." His wife Carrie, also 47, agrees, "I do
think the objective is clearer."
Jeff did not vote for George Bush last time but is thinking of doing so
now. He has no difficulty with the mission in Iraq. "I don't want
another 9/11," he says. But a few minutes later, he is worrying about
how America will extricate herself. "Vietnamisation - the idea of
handing over control to the Vietnamese - never worked, and I can't see
it working in Iraq either."
Kay Drury, 65, from New Jersey, disagrees. "I am a registered Republican
but I don't like the Bushes. I'm so mad that he should think we have a
right to go into Iraq." Her sister, Lee Moore, 64, from Atlanta nods. "I
hope he starts pulling the troops out, but I don't know what happens
then. There'll be a vacuum." Among the crowds of visitors there is
general agreement that Iraq is not Vietnam redux. "I don't think this
country will stand for another Vietnam," says Kay Drury simply.
"Vietnam never had a purpose," adds Brad Glosser, 40, who has brought
his family from Pittsburgh to look for his father-in-law's name on the
wall. "It was aimless. This is an established mission. The backing of
the country this time is much greater. I don't think a President will
ever let another Vietnam happen."
Rick Stanger, 27, from New York, doesn't share Mr Glosser's support for
the war, but agrees that it's not like Vietnam. At least not yet. "Our
involvement in Vietnam built up gradually over a long time," he said.
"That's not the same in Iraq." His 26-year-old wife, Spring, agrees. "If
political careers start ending, we will pull out." They both worry about
leaving the job unfinished. "America has a history of half-assed foreign
relations. We've got to stay," says Rick. "We've got to rebuild all the
hospitals and schools we've destroyed," says Spring.
Is Iraq going to be a factor in deciding how they shall vote in
November? Not yet. "If it becomes a bigger issue, we will vote on it,
but not at the moment."
On this Easter weekend, there is a relaxed mood among the families
sitting on the grass under the cherry blossom soaking up the spring
sunshine. A hut near the Vietnam Memorial sells military memorabilia,
including a poster saying "terrorist hunting permits available". Most
Americans here seem to have no difficulty accepting the idea that the
invasion of Iraq was a justified response to 9/11.
Craig Erman, a construction manager from Columbus, Ohio, has just found
his brother's name on the Vietnam War Memorial. Asked if he supports the
war in Iraq, he replies, "Absolutely. You've got to look at 9/11 and
remember what happened." He reveals that one of his employees is in the
Marines fighting in Fallujah. "He says they've found so many weapons.
I'm sure the weapons of mass destruction are there somewhere - they've
just been moved."
Art and Cathy Darling from Orlando, Florida, whose future son-in-law is
a Cobra pilot in Iraq, also believe that Saddam was a threat to American
interests who needed to be removed. "Look what he did to his own
country," says Mr Darling. "We are finishing what should have been done
in '92."
One of the few to express outright opposition to the war is Kenneth
Brown, a 58-year-old African-American history professor from Michigan.
"Saddam never did anything against America," he said. "Of course he was
a bad person, but there are a lot of bad people in China. We don't go
after them." Mr Brown is definitely not going to vote for George Bush,
but still thinks he will win. "People want their President to be right."
The writer is a BBC News correspondent in Washington
© 2004 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd
Stoney
"Designated Rascal and Rapscallion
and
SCAMPERMEISTER!"
When in doubt, SCAMPER about!
When things are fair, SCAMPER everywhere!
When things are rough, can't SCAMPER enough!
/end humour alert
alt.atheism military veteran #11
{so much for the 'no atheists in foxholes' rubbish}
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