I hate being right

While we're on the subject of mass graves and such, we should also mention that, compared to Iraq's mass graves of Shiites who rose up in response to the US's lies about sending in troops to help them, Gen. Dostum's mass grave in Afghanistan was composed of 1-3k taliban *prisoners*, who were thrown into sealed metal shipping containers and effectively baked alive in the sun. And of course, if we want to get on the subject of torture (which, given that in Iraq we hardly found anything worse than electric shock devices - which every middle eastern nation uses, even Israel), we should cover our good friend Uzbekistan (which kindly let us use their bases in exchange for more money and weapons). Uzbekistan, who under Islam Karimov, was so bad about torturing that even their ally Britain felt that they had to issue a report condemning the prisoners that he had boiled to death.------------------
"Illuminant light,
illuminate me."

Reference? What apart from isolation cells, hooks from the ceilings, and electric shock (again, all quite common in the middle east) has been found?------------------
"Illuminant light,
illuminate me."

Incorrect, Rrhain. You claimed to have cited torture chambers that were found that things worse than electric shock. Your articles include nothing of the sort.Nothing resembling the "acid baths" or "shredders" has been found. Given the tall tales told by exiles about WMDs, this is not surprising. Of course, a number of the stories were physiologically impossible, so it's not surprising either. Before the war, I actually traced back some of the stories to the exile who started them. A lot of the "shredder" type stories came from one exile who also claimed that Saddam not only had nuclear weapons, but had detonated them (hmm, we must have had our EMP-monitors on our satellites turned off.... ).BTW, check out Qusay's record on Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, if you want an accurate story. Uday has a record there (he reminds me a bit of Faisal ibn Musad); Qusay has almost none. The only thing that I could track down there was the prison allegation, and HRW only lists it as an accusation that he was involved. BTW, that's the prison where the US is now detaining its inmates, and I've seen one interview with a prisoner who was released from there - he described the conditions as being worse than in Saddam's day, because the US doesn't even let the prisoners move, keeps bags over their heads most of the time, and they're largely kept out in the sun.Yes, Uday and Qusay were both spoiled brats (what leaders in the Arab world aren't?), and Uday had a selfish mean streak a mile wide, but the sort of nonsense that's been spouted during the buildup to this war makes the portrayal of WWI German soldiers raping nuns and the 1991 "baby killings" seem like nothing.------------------
"Illuminant light,
illuminate me."

The latter two cases in the first quote are correct, there is plenty of evidence. The first examples are mostly based on expat statements, although I would suspect there may be truth in some of the cases. HRW and Amnesty take a similar non-committal stance on those issues. But the style of beating (common in the middle east) and the assasination of the bodyguard are pretty much indisputable (Saddam actually sent Uday to prison for that - much more severe of a punishment than that received by Faisal ibn Musad for the assasination of king Faisal al Saud, who was just given house arrest).No iron maiden was found, no "coffins" in torture centers, shredders, acid baths, etc in any report that I have read (and I've read a *lot*) (and I would expect things like that to make big news) although there have been (in addition to electrocution equipment) a number of hooks for hanging people from (another common practice in the middle east, including Israel). Again, notice how most of this "They eat babies!" style propaganda falls apart once we actually take control of the country. No shock. The people who were spreading it were mostly members of the Iraqi National Congress, who was receiving millions of dollars every year for their "anti-Saddam" activities, and mainly spent it on themselves and on propaganda. And now their head, much to the dismay of real Iraqis, is a major figure in their government. I define "real" Iraqis as those who didn't flee to Jordan and run the nation's largest banking scam in history, and then, after being convicted on several dozen felony counts, sneak out of the country in the trunk of a car.I personally uncovered one of their operations during the buildup to the war. There was a group that suddenly appeared called the "Committee for the Liberation of Iraq", which had a number of big-name Republicans and a few big-name Democrats behind it. Their official goal was to sway public opinion in favor of the US invading Iraq. I looked up the IP for their web server, and tried connecting to that IP. Strange - it turned out to be an arabic language news site! Which, from chatting with people on its forum, were mostly targetted at ex-pats. I did an nslookup on the IP, and got a URL... but it was a different URL! I typed that URL in, and got... the Iraqi National Congress's homepage! In short, the Inc was part of the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq propaganda campaign, and they also had an expat news/chat site going on the same web server as the committee.------------------
"Illuminant light,
illuminate me."

I love "Get Your War On" - I found it from cursor.org And I didn't know there was an Israel/Palestine thread, I'll be right over hehe------------------
"Illuminant light,
illuminate me."

Wrong thread, and completely incorrect. Please post that on the Israel-Palestine thread though, I'd love to be able to be able to rip that post apart; I just don't want to do it somewhere where the admins will jump all over me.

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As to the Iraq war, I merely suggest that the French, Chinese and Russians could have been a little more responsible by at least allowing the US to put forward a plan before threatening to veto it

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If you had actually kept up with the news before the war (don't feel bad, the US media was atrocious; to keep up with things related to Iraq, you pretty much had to read the British press), you would have been aware of the number of Bush adminsitration officials before the war who had been leaked (and confirmed) as speaking about how the decision to attack Iraq was already made - long before the inspectors even reentered the country. Some even told foreign officials that; I can track down articles if you'd like.

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perhaps they also should have considered helping to take out a tyrant whom they'd helped to support by selling him most of his weapons in past years

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Wrong. The US was Iraq's biggest supplier of weapons during the 1980s. And that weapons trade was reestablished by none other than our very own Donald Rumsfeld back in 1983 (right about when the first chemical weapons reports were coming out). We steadily increased our sales as more reports came back. After the Halabja bombing, the Reagan administration helped defeat a resolution that would merely condemn Iraq for the attack and discourage arms sales (the attack was partially done from Bell-ST helicopters, BTW)

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and, in the case of France, a nuclear reactor no questions asked.

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You talking about the Osiraq reactor, back when he wasn't hated? BTW, if you want to talk about nuclear proliferation, you should be criticizing the US first-off. Want examples of US nuclear technology that we've exported?

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All this business was, of course, in exchange for oil. It would seem their anti-war stance was not so much to protect civilians as to make sure their oil supplies didn't get burned.

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That was the most ridiculous allegation. France's imports from and exports to Iraq were tiny. The biggest importer of Iraqi oil right before we invaded? America (despite the geographic distance). Last I checked, the US was the world's second worst consumer of energy per capita (second only to the UAE). And yet, our oil reserves are miniscule. We are pathetically dependant on foreign oil imports, and this was made clear. In our invasion, the first thing we targetted was the oil fields. When we took Baghdad, we abandoned the central bank and museums, health records, records on the former government, and everything else for days - the only building that we secured off the bat was the oil ministry. I feel most sorry about the book repositories - huge amounts of ancient literature which was completely torched.------------------
"Illuminant light,
illuminate me."

28 Americans were killed in Iraq last week... this week, it looks like its the Italians who are taking the hits... last week, Medact's analysis indicated that between 22,000 and 55,000 Iraqis have died in this so far... the conservatives are lynching Lynch for accusing the pentagon of using her as a propaganda tool...... the US is preparing 85,000 more troops... and reactivating draft boards ...You know, I'd actually be rather happy about being so right if all of this misery wasn't the result of being correct. ------------------
"Illuminant light,
illuminate me."