Posted on 02/17/2005 8:30:19 PM PST by markkind
I would like to consider myself a fair person. I think my radio listening habits reveal just how open-minded I am to alternative points of view. When I lived in NY I listened to Morning Sedition on Air America in the morning, Rush Limbaugh at noon, Bill O'Reilly in the mid-afternoons, and depending on my mood and what time I got out of work, I switched off between Randi Rhodes (again Air America) and Mark Levin. If I was in the car late at night I switched back and forth between Laura Inghram, and the Majority Report with Jeneane Garofolo and Sam Seder. In Miami my habits are still the same. Air America in the mornings, Rush and some awful radio host named Schnitt and then Randi Rhodes.
This week on the Rhodes show she was being her usual sarcastic self while talking about the war in Iraq. If you listen to the show regularly you'd know it is fairly typical of her to complain about the war while "supporting the troops". Her major bone of contention is that there, "were no WMD's in Iraq" and "Saddam didn't attack us on 9/11," which is the usual juvenile and provincial arguments one hears from the left side of the debate. Mind you, she'll go out of her way to expose all sorts of information about Republicans but does not display the same intellectual fairness with regards to Democrats or the UN.
For example, in her latest diatribe against our involvement in Iraq and the "nonexistent" WMD's she didn't bother to cite an article saying the UN weapons inspectors were drinking on the job. This from News.Telegraph out of the UK: "UN inspectors in Iraq spent their working hours drinking vodka while ignoring a shadowy nocturnal fleet believed to be smuggling goods for Saddam Hussein, a former senior inspector told the US Senate yesterday.
In a move that provoked fury from officials of the Swiss firm Cotecna, an Australian former inspector detailed a picture of incompetence, indifference and drunkeness among the men acting as the frontline for UN sanctions."
On the "nonexistent" weapons, Rhodes and those just like her never get into the role Syria played in aiding and abetting Saddam Hussein’s regime while we were mired in on-going UN debate. According to 2LA.org, which appears to be a pro-Lebanon website, "Nizar Nayuf (Nayyouf-Nayyuf), a Syrian journalist who recently defected from Syria to Western Europe and is known for bravely challenging the Syrian regime, said in a letter Monday, January 5, to Dutch newspaper “De Telegraaf,” that he knows the three sites where Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) are kept...Nayouf writes that the transfer of Iraqi WMD to Syria was organized by the commanders of Saddam Hussein's Special Republican Guard, including General Shalish, with the help of Assif Shoakat , Bashar Assad's cousin. Shoakat is the CEO of Bhaha, an import/export company owned by the Assad family.
In February 2003, a month before America's invasion in Iraq, very few are aware about the efforts to bring the Weapons of Mass Destruction from Iraq to Syria, and the personal involvement of Bashar Assad and his family in the operation. Nayouf, who has won prizes for journalistic integrity, says he wrote his letter because he has terminal cancer."
I've seen this story before in at least a dozen other places. It's meticulously documented in Yossef Bodanskys, "Secret History of the Iraq War." I also remember Don Rumsfeld saying after we took Baghdad that we should takes steps to secure Syria as well because of there involvement in the war. Of course the story got buried and now the only people talking about WMD's in Syria are Sean Hannity and me ::::sigh::::.
As a patron of the show I must put up with her one-sided research and destroy methods because eventually she gets around to making a lucid point. However, today she uttered something to the tune of, "we killed children in Iraq." Not too long after the war started Harlem Congressman Charlie "I'm a redneck too" Wrangle said much the same thing, that we were purposely killing women and children.
It's possible. In war there is collateral damage. But they are not talking about collateral damage here, they and a good portion of this wing of the Democratic party are implying that the US purposely murders innocent civilians for the expressed desire of empire building. There are those whom are Democrats, Greens, Liberals or just plain anti-American that view our armed forces as a weapon of ill intent without bothering widening their perspective to the rest of the world.
They call us murderers in the face of this: "The residents of a Syrian city named Hama had been more persistent in their criticisms of the dictator than other towns. For that reason, Hafez Assad decided that Hama would be the staging point of the example he was to make to the Syrian people. In the twilight hours of February the 2nd, 1982, the city of Hama was awakened by loud explosions. The Syrian air force had began to drop their bombs from the dark sky.
The initial bombing run cost the city few casualties. It's main purpose had been to disable the roads so that no-one could escape. Earlier in the night, Syrian tanks and artillery systems had surrounded Hama. With the conclusion of the air bombing run, the tanks and artillery began their relentless shelling of the town.
The cost in human lives was severe. As homes crumbled upon their living occupants and the smell of charred skin filled the streets, a few residents managed to escape the shelling and started to flee. They were met by the Syrian army which had surrounded the city ... they were all shot dead.
Hours of shelling had turned Hama into rubble. The tanks and artillery had done all that they could. The next wave of attacks came in the form of Syrian soldiers. They quickly converged onto the town killing anything that would move. Groups of soldiers would round up men, women, and children only to shoot them in the back of the head. Many other soldiers would invade homes with the orders to kill all inhabitants.
After the majority of the people in Hama were dead, the soldiers began looting. They would take all that they could from the now empty homes. Some were seen picking through the dead civilians looking for money, watches, and rings.
With their mission completed and their pockets filled with loot, the soldiers began to retreat from the city. One would think that would have been the last wave of the attacks. It was not. The final attack on Hama was the most gruesome. To make sure that no person was left alive in the rubble and buildings, the Syrian army delivered poison gas generators. Cyanide gas filled the air of Hama. Bulldozers were later used to turn the city into a giant flat area." (Credit reformsyria.org).
When has the US Armed Forces EVER done something like this? The only event that I can recall that remotely resembles the massacre of Hama was the bombing of Black Wall Street in Oklahoma and civilians with their own planes did that while the National Guard more or less watched. Mind you, that event took place in 1921. Syria essentially committed genocide as recently as 1982. With the help of the Red Cross and dogged determination, the residents of Greenwood (Black Wall Street) rebuilt their city and today it is a testament to the resilience of the American spirit in the face of occasional insanity. The residents of Hama are dead, all of them. They were buried in rubble, shot, and gassed to death. What happened in Hama is not an aberration in the Middle East; it is the way things are done. When Rhodes, Wrangle, Kennedy and the rest compare our government and our military to that...the systematic genocide of an entire city then in my opinion, there is nothing left to talk about.
I am done having this stupid conversation the "Bush-haters". Blind ideology is bad no matter where it is coming from. The Bush administration has its faults, and lots of them, but to day after day beleaguer both our government, our military and our attempts at some degree of national security while allowing events such as Hama go unreported falls under the heading of intellectually dishonest and juvenile a la Alan Colmes, and that's the most diplomatic way I can put it.
It's 30 some odd years after the Vietnam War and some people still have the nerve to accuse us of being, "baby killers." That is the height of irony considering it's coming from the pro-abortion contingent of the national debate.
I have tried since roughly late 2002 to educate in the most empathetic and mindful way I can to those whose only source of world news the Daily Show. I have used every skill in my social work/mental health arsenal to try to reach people and I won't do it anymore. I refuse to have civil discussions with people who refuse to see the other side of the argument or bother to fully research an issue before definitively declaring a position. Being "anti-war" doesn't give you the right to be a tactless moron. As any good social worker knows, I cannot help you if you categorically will not help yourself.
I will continue to write because I love to write. I will continue to educate myself out of a sense of duty to do so. But to the Randi Rhodes' of the world, you folks are on your own because I cannot rationalize with the irrational.
In the immortal words of Pogo from the Sunday funnies, "I have seen the Enemy and it is us."
This from News.Telegraph out of the UK: "UN inspectors in Iraq spent their working hours drinking vodka while ignoring a shadowy nocturnal fleet believed to be smuggling goods for Saddam Hussein, a former senior inspector told the US Senate yesterday.pertains to the Oil For Food Inspectors, not the WMD inspectors.
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