BAGHDAD - Once again, a bombing, this time in Iraq, and the victims are mostly Arab Muslims. Perhaps they are used to it. Perhaps they do not feel the same pain that innocent victims felt in Ashdod this week, or in Madrid, or in New York. The lives of the occupiers go on, Americans are engrossed with their elections, or perhaps with Martha Stewart since all but the most sensitive have forgotten Janet Jackson's breast, the Spanish people have decided this is not their fight since the costs of participating are so high and the cost of withdrawing are none, but here in Iraq nothing changes, the innocent die, the bomb important only because of its consequences for George W Bush's public opinion polls.
I was sitting in my room, having just read about the report declaring my adopted city, Baghdad, the worst city in the world to live in, but not feeling it since it had been a slow day, when an immense blast hit me and sent my door flying off its hinges. That’s a car bomb, I thought, and l ran to my balcony to see if any nearby buildings had collapsed. Downstairs, I sprinted past Fardus Circle to Andalus Circle, where the Mount Lebanon Hotel, which I had never heard of, no longer existed.
It was dark and hazy, with visibility nearly zero, but a huge orange glow the size of a building shimmered through the smoke and dust. Hundreds of people were running away, hundreds more were running towards it and hundreds more were standing in shock, crying, screaming. A woman walked by carrying the inert body of her child, American Humvees pulled up as did Iraqi police cars. "There are many dead people," shouted one man running out of the hotel's wreckage, asking people to help. Terrified and confused US soldiers tried to turn back the crowd of Iraqis who rushed to help, swinging in ever direction with their guns, looking for the enemy, as Iraqi police with guns drawn tried to push people back. Ambulances arrived, by now well practiced in quick responses to bombs, and carried away the lucky ones who survived, screaming, their shredded clothes and bodies drenched with blood. Everywhere angry men, stunned, hurt, feeling vulnerable.
Furious survivors attacked cameramen, seeking someone to vent their fury on, neighbors stood crying, friends rushed to the scene looking for loved ones, terror on their faces. Two fat women in their night gowns began screaming at an American soldier angrily. Bewildered, not knowing what they were saying, he told them "Everything's gonna be alright." From atop their Humvees other American soldiers swiveled their machineguns, screaming and cursing at the Iraqis and journalists below them. An Iraqi policeman with his gun drawn pushed me away. All the while, the glowing orange inferno lit the scene as the fire spread to a nearby building.
Journalists moved away to report on their phones in English, Turkish, Italian. Others stood still filming the scene. Arguments broke out between Iraqis who wanted the journalists to film and those who wanted them to leave. More and more bodies were carried out from the gaping wreckage of the flaming hotel building. Aljazeera, always first on the scene of any attack, didn’t have to go very far since their hotel was across the street, its windows blasted out.
posted on March 19, 2004 04:59:27 PM new
These attacks have been anticipated by our military. The closer Iraq gets to forming it's own government and on the anniversary of the 1st year since saddam was removed the terrorists are doing all they can to force us to leave, or get the Iraqi's to make us leave.
posted on March 19, 2004 05:11:58 PM new
BS.The unfortunate aspect is that this never should have happened. There were no terrorists in Iraq before the Bush invasion. We have made the country unsafe and the Iraqis want the U.S. to leave.
BAGHDAD, Iraq - Perched on a pile of rubble that was the front of his family's carpentry shop until Wednesday night, Hussein Muhaissen, 18, stared glumly at his surroundings.
In front of him, the shop's ceiling was reduced to a mass of twisted metal. To his left, two homes were practically razed. Across the road, the front of a five-story hotel had been ripped and shredded.
The road through this post-apocalyptic landscape had been practically severed by a giant, jagged crater, where, according to U.S. authorities, a suicide bomber blew himself up in a car Wednesday night, killing seven people and injuring 35 others. Officials originally thought 27 or 28 people had been killed.
"The Americans eat up our oil as if it were a sweet dessert, but they let the terrorists kill us," Muhaissen said yesterday as he kicked a singed shoe out of the yard. "No one is safe in Iraq anymore."
Violence, in fact, continued yesterday, with at least nine more Iraqis killed in four separate incidents across Iraq, including a cameraman whom U.S. troops shot dead at a checkpoint in Baghdad. In addition, rocket-propelled grenades damaged two Baghdad hotels, although no one was seriously hurt.
It was a grim prelude to the first anniversary of the U.S.-led invasion, which was launched a year ago tonight Eastern time (dawn Saturday in Baghdad).
Speaking to troops in Kentucky, President George W. Bush defended the war. "Because America and our allies acted, one of the most evil, brutal regimes in history is gone forever," he said.
In a news conference here yesterday, U.S. officials downgraded the carnage from Wednesday night's blast in the bustling Karrada area based on new information from Iraqi officials. The victims included telecommunications engineer Scott Mounce, 29, of Scotland.
Army Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, deputy director of operations for the U.S.-led coalition in Iraq, said one reason authorities believe the blast was the work of a suicide bomber is that "remnants of a suicide bomber's person were found connected to the vehicle." He added that the hotel may not have been the bombers' intended target because the explosion occurred in the middle of the road, not at the hotel itself.
At the bomb site yesterday, it was easy to imagine hundreds could have died. Nearly an entire street of buildings was damaged or destroyed.
In one home's dining room - the only room still almost standing - a fan dangled implausibly from a lone scrap of ceiling. Rubble was knee-high, yet a bowl of apples and oranges remained intact on the table, dusted with pulverized debris.
Neighbors said four of the victims lived in that house: a couple, one of their sons and a 10-year-old granddaughter who was struck by a metal beam.
Across the street in the remains of the Mount Lebanon Hotel, where the other three victims died, workers cleared the lobby of shredded furniture and scraps of blood-stained clothes. Behind the crumbling reception counter, three trails of blood made by fingers slid down a wall for several inches, then abruptly stopped.
Yesterday's deaths included an Iraqi cameraman working for Dubai-based Arab satellite television channel Al Arabiya who was shot in central Baghdad while trying to cover last night's rocket attacks on two hotels. U.S. military spokesmen said his car ran a checkpoint, but al Arabiya journalists said the soldiers were firing randomly.
U.S. troops also killed two Iraqis during a battle in Fallujah, a hotbed of anti-U.S. sentiment.
Three other Iraqis, including a child, were killed in Basra by a car bomb blast at yet another hotel. In addition, gunmen killed three Iraqis who worked for the U.S.-funded television station Diyala TV in a drive-by shooting in northern Iraq.
posted on March 19, 2004 05:26:56 PM new
The Iraqi people can easily see it is NOT U.S. soldiers, nor their newly formed police, who are attacking like this. It is the terrorists.
They want us to go home according to you? Not until there's peace or they can handle the situation themselves. Maybe you missed reading the Oxford Research poll taken from 6,000 Iraqi's themselves. Then, in addition to those people, there's their governing body who's not calling for us to leave them to protect themselves.
posted on March 19, 2004 05:37:01 PM new
Then there's the subject of will kerry do a better job of bringing our allies help to the table.
Zapatero to Kerry: Drop Dead
Spain's newly elected prime minister, Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, is on record as endorsing John Kerry for president of the United States. The other day Kerry urged Zapatero not to appease al Qaeda by withdrawing Spanish troops from Iraq.
Yesterday, the Scotsman reports, Zapatero responded by telling Kerry to buzz off: "Maybe John Kerry does not know--but I am happy to explain it to him--that my commitment to withdraw the troops goes back before the tragic, dramatic terrorist attack."
If there is any reason at all for patriotic Americans to consider voting for a man on the basis of his foreign endorsements, it is that he may be better able to persuade those leaders to act in accord with American interest.
Zapatero's contemptuous attitude toward Kerry gives the lie to that argument. The new Spanish leader is unwilling to consider keeping his country's commitment to Iraq even though it would probably help Kerry politically.
Don't try to shift blame for this war to anybody but the BUSH administration. Bush set the stage for the influx of terrorists into Iraq.
The Bush administration bungled this war from the beginning and as a result, there is no end in sight. Iraq is less safe now than before the war. The United States is less safe. And the world is less safe. Absolutely nothing has been achieved while so many lives have been lost.
Zapatero's attitude simply reflects the feeling of the rest of the world toward the Bush invasion of Iraq which was unnecessary and based on lies.
posted on March 19, 2004 06:57:14 PM new
Bush's "gut reaction" got us in to a hell of a mess costing billions of dollars and thousands of lives. Clinton is not responsible for that.
By this time next year, it will cost 250 billion and the US is less safe now than it was before the Iraq war.
posted on March 19, 2004 06:57:23 PM newCongress First Voted to Back Regime Change in Iraq in 1998
White House seeks new congressional resolution on ousting Saddam Hussein
By Steve LaRocque
Washington File United Nations Correspondent
Washington ?
As members of the 107th Congress prepare to debate what sort of resolution they should provide the Bush administration in its confrontation with the Baghdad regime of Saddam Hussein, it recalls a similar situation in September 1998 when the 105th Congress dealt with Iraq's threat to international order.
In that mid-term election year, Congress passed the Iraq Liberation Act, calling for the removal of Saddam Hussein's regime.
"It should be the policy of the United States to support efforts to remove the regime headed by Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq and to promote the emergence of a democratic government to replace that regime," according to the Iraq Liberation Act (Public Law 105-338).
The Congress urged the President "to call upon the United Nations to establish an international criminal tribunal for the purpose of indicting, prosecuting, and imprisoning Saddam Hussein and other Iraqi officials who are responsible for crimes against humanity, genocide, and other criminal violations of international law."
Representative Benjamin Gilman (Republican of New York) introduced H.R. 4655 September 29, 1998. President Bill Clinton signed the bill into law October 31, 1998.
Gilman's bill passed in the House of Representatives on a 360-38 vote October 5, and the Senate approved H.R. 4655 by unanimous consent on October 7.
Clinton signed the bill into law October 31.
posted on March 19, 2004 07:11:22 PM new
clinton's own words on why regime change was needed in Iraq. Many are the exact reasons President Bush has given.
posted on March 19, 2004 07:11:50 PM new
February 20, 2003—Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfield and Deputy Secretary Paul Wolfowitz undertook a full-fledged lobbying campaign in 1998 to get former President Bill Clinton to start a war with Iraq and topple Saddam Hussein's regime, claiming that the country posed a threat to the United States, according to documents obtained from a former Clinton aide.
Clinton rebuffed the advice from the future Bush administration officials saying he was focusing his attention on dismantling al Qaeda cells, according to a copy of the response Clinton sent to Rumsfield, Wolfowitz and Kristol.
The Clinton aide said the former president believed that the policy of "containing Saddam Hussein in a box" was successful and that the Iraqi regime did not pose any threat to U.S. interests at the time.
President Clinton "never considered war with Iraq an option," the former aide said. "We were encouraged by the UN weapons inspectors and believed they had a good handle on the situation."
Rumsfield, Wolfowitz and Kristol, however, disagreed; saying the only way to deal with Hussein was by initiating a full-scale war.
posted on March 19, 2004 08:02:19 PM new
Did somebody say war was funny? I must have missed it. That laugh was at your suggestion clinton was in some way 'forced' to sign that legislation or was forced to say what he did in my last link. That's what was funny to me.....
You're the one who's always providing dictionary definitions. I'm sure you understand the difference between regime change which clinton called for and containment. containing Saddam Hussein in a box".
posted on March 19, 2004 08:31:09 PM new
So do you vote in the US kiara? You talk about dual citzenship and I can understand that, knowing what a POS country canada is... I would want to be a US citizen too...
Also curious about how many canadains have died in Iraq? What? the answer is NONE... because as usual when some real fighting needs to take place they won't come to the front...
We and our real friends have done the world a favor and freed the Iraqi people from Saddam Hussein... it is too bad that this is not taking place within your expected time frame... having been there in 1991, he needed killing pure and simple... people die in war...
of course we all can't die in training...
Maybe if they got off their asses in Afgahnistan they could help out and actually assist in the capture of Bin Laden...
posted on March 19, 2004 08:32:43 PM new
Linda, You seem to think of Clinton as a God like figure. Clinton did work with the U.N and established sanctions so that Saddam could not easily arm the country with WMD. He bombed the poor country almost into oblivion. I can remember protests against the number of bombings. Attempts to maintain inspections were also enforced.
Bush on the other hand sold the country on a unilateral preemptive invasion...the first in the history of the country. He manipulated America, Congress and the world with lies related to WMD in order to justify the invasion. Don't you believe that Bush should be responsible for the Bush war. How can you blame Clinton for the Iraq disaster that was engineered by Bush. How can you blame Clinton for the lies and manipulation to justify such a war. How can you blame Clinton that Bush chose to wage this war alone without a plan for exit and without troops trained for peacekeeping after the war. I don't believe that Clinton would have handled the situation that way.
Now, Bush has a never ending war and at the same time is in trouble for driving away allies. Bush is responsible for a total disaster.
Linda, You seem to think of Clinton as a God like figure.
Oh yeah....what planet are you on tonight?
You go from the above statement to:
How can you blame Clinton....
Just WHERE do you see me blaming clinton for either bombing Iraq or for signing a bill that calls for a regime change? I've pointed out areas of AGREEMENT between Bush and clinton on what was needed in Iraq.
posted on March 19, 2004 09:20:48 PM new
Twelvepole, the Canadian government did not believe in the war in Iraq so soldiers weren't sent. The Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan are handling one of the most dangerous jobs worldwide but I think you already know that. Some of them have been killed.
You continue to use the expression POS and declare your ignorance of the world, yet the other day you brought my name into the conversation about the ones hurling insults while you pretend to be all innocent.
As for my personal life, I don't need to tell you anything especially after the way you've treated me. It's none of your business.
posted on March 19, 2004 09:50:29 PM new The rest of your post is just repetitious
linda
George W. Bush is the president of the United States and during his presidential term he is responsible and should be held accountable for his actions. You are unable to grasp this concept and continue to hold Bill Clinton, the president over 3 years ago responsible for all actions by George W. Bush, the president today.
You blame him for the economy.
you blame him for the war.
You blame him for everything.
This, linda is repetitious.
And furthermore it's senseless.
posted on March 20, 2004 04:04:28 AM newAs for my personal life, I don't need to tell you anything especially after the way you've treated me. It's none of your business
You're getting as good as you give...
I will take that answer as a No then.. so your concerns about this country are nothing more than country envy...
It is laughable when foreigners talk sh*t about this country and you wonder why I don't take any of your questions or comments seriously...
You don't live here... 'nuff said... so why do you and kraft keep ignoring canadian topics? surely there must be something some little thing worthwhile that goes on up there...
Oh and my look at the world hasn't been through some monitor of computer honey... I have been out there... you should try it sometime.
I will say it again anti-americans and anti-war protestors give breath and meaning to the terrorists... the more you protest the more they are going to kill...
posted on March 20, 2004 06:33:49 PM new
Today there were huge protests all over the world against the war in Iraq. More and more people are realizing it was a big lie and they are speaking out, including the families of the dead and injured soldiers.
posted on March 20, 2004 06:50:54 PM new
Yes, they think Iraq would be much better off with Saddam Hussien in power. Never mind the murder and torture of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis.
posted on March 20, 2004 06:58:48 PM new
Absolutely they would be better off. Weigh the misery and you will find that the number of people killed and wounded in this war far outweigh the damage that Saddam could ever do. Do you really believe the myth of democracy in Iraq. Hell, we can't even maintain peace in one city.
posted on March 20, 2004 07:06:28 PM new
Hellen, are you on crack?? Saddam Hussien and his henchmen murdered hundreds of thousands people. Hundreds of thousands more tortured. Tongues cut off. Wives raped. Absolutely no freedom.
You obviously don't give a rat's ass about Iraqis. You just want to see President Bush defeated at any cost. You people are pathetic.
posted on March 20, 2004 07:18:02 PM new
Actually, I do care about the people in Iraq and every other country ruled by a tyrant. But the preemtive invasion by Bush killing thousands of Iraqis and hundreds of Americans - wounding thousands of Americans and Iraqis for life while ignoring terrorism and at the same time increasing it all over the world was not the right way to handle Saddam. This war was a miserable failure and will continue to be for years.
posted on March 20, 2004 07:29:35 PM new
EAG said - Yes, they think Iraq would be much better off with Saddam Hussien in power. Never mind the murder and torture of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis.
then:
helen - posted on March 20, 2004 06:58:48 PM
Absolutely they would be better off.
Doesn't surprise me she one bit she feels that way. I've long said she's further left than socialism, that she's pro-saddam and I've also said she's anti-American. To me, her statement proves it.
By being in disagreement with what the last three U.S. administrations have felt was necessary - the removal of Saddam from power - because he posed a threat to our country and the world.....and she sides against them.
posted on March 20, 2004 07:40:00 PM newDoesn't surprise me she one bit she feels that way. I've long said she's further left than socialism, that she's pro-saddam and I've also said she's anti-American. To me, her statement proves it.
Linda, I jokingly predicted a while back that Bush would drive all of the lefties nuts but I think it's actually really happening. Almost all of the lefties on this board are irrational, paranoid nutcases. Howard Dean suffered a meltdown and Kerry is acting like he might flip out at any minute and start shooting people. At this rate, there may not be any sane lefties left by November!
[ edited by ebayauctionguy on Mar 20, 2004 07:40 PM ]
posted on March 20, 2004 07:57:03 PM new
There are two opposing views here but it seems that some can't respect another point of view if they don't agree with it so they have to continually lambaste the opposition with personal attacks instead of discussing the issue.
Helen seems very calm and rational when she discusses this and I admire her for taking the high road.
posted on March 20, 2004 08:31:29 PM newThere are two opposing views here but it seems that some can't respect another point of view
Would that be you, kiara? Not being able to accept my opposing view of her statement? It appears so to me.
-----------------
As usual, linda you hop to the chance to insult rather than discuss the issue of the war. If it insults you so be it. It's how I've long seen your posts.
Not because you hate this President, not because you disagree about going to war, but because of this and similar statements you've made in the past.
I've said nothing that is anti-American.
I disagree, imo, you just did.
We in America believe in freedom....not just our own but freedom for all. Your statement that 26 million Iraqi's would be better off having continued under saddam's regime, rather than being free is against what our country stands for.
Putting all the political agruments aside, whether we should have gone in, shouldn't have gone in, our soldiers dying, their people dying. By your statement you'd take away the newly found freedom of 26 million people.
There has been much disagreement on if this war was the right thing to do or not. But you're the first person I've ever heard say the people of Iraq would be better off under saddam.
Re-elect President Bush!!
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