Posted on 04/14/2006 11:41:04 AM PDT by \/\/ayne
by Wayne Boettcher
Posted: 04/14/2006
This week's column is a report of an event some friends and I attended. The propaganda speech by an Iraqi woman named Eman Ahmed Khamas (or Khammas) was recently held in Tucson, Arizona at a Unitarian Universalist church. Sponsored by various "anti-war" groups such as Code Pink, Khamas is touring America to accuse US troops of bizarre atrocities and attempt to get people to believe that life was better for the Iraqis under Saddam Hussein.
It may have been better for her, since she worked in a government approved job as a journalist. Could any journalists publish in prewar Iraq uncensored by the Butcher of Baghdad, Saddam Hussein? No, they could not. Although she said in a recent interview with MotherSpeak.org that she had a good job with the prewar government organization "General Federation of Iraqi Women" she was recently heard to deny that employment when challenged in the context of Amnesty International reports that GFIW representatives were present at tortures of women in Saddam Hussein's Iraq.
Code Pink itself is a study in strangeness. They support Fidel Castro and other Communist leaders, protest wounded soldiers at Walter Reed Army Hospital, and notoriously facilitated a $600,000 donation of cash and supplies to the "other side" in Fallujah, Iraq. A short time ago they were caught faking a publicity photo on their website and had to change it. In spite of these activities, they claim to be against killing and torture, for the troops and say they want to stop others from lying. They are also apparently not very skilled with presentations.
The meeting, scheduled at 7:00 pm, began at 7:15 pm with Tucson's Code Pink leader remarking they were running on Universalist time. This statement came directly after a Protest Warrior known only by her screen name of "harmsninjagirl" had kidded to me they were running on "Clinton" time. I really should say the meeting tried to begin, as the indecisive moonbats could not settle on whether to use a Macintosh or PC to display their unlabeled photos of dead people and bombed buildings with a projector on the wall. Eventually they tried the Mac as a man hovered the cursor over first one, and then a second option (neither would have worked) while the speaker waited along with the audience of about 150 people. Excruciating minutes passed. Which option would he finally click on? Neither. They switched to the PC.
But the problems didn't end there. Feedback from the PA system interrupted frequently. Khamas was stopping and starting her descriptions of American atrocities at random with long periods of dead time as computer malfunctions abounded with eerie irony. A woman was typing desperately on the PC keyboard. But as the Iraqi accuser described bombings of civilians, photos of happy tuxedoed and gowned young people at a party were shown. When she told of a horrible death, a cute puppy holding a stuffed toy in his mouth appeared. Finally, they changed back to the Mac. Thankfully the option switching man was not summoned and the deceptive dialogue finally began in earnest as the slideshow started. Later it was stopped and then started again just before the end.
To say the "information" emitted from the speaker was bizarre is quite an understatement. Khamas claimed America would "shoot and explode" non-military buildings to kill civilians on purpose; to what advantage she did not reveal. She referenced a lot of names while pointing at pictures of dead bodies and blown up buildings but there was no way to verify the information was true. Should we simply trust her? After hearing the rest of the presentation, I decided not to.
Contradictions abounded. For instance, she claimed we were bombing villages with innocent people in them using the "excuse" that terrorists were there. Mixed in among the criticism, however, was that the method of civilian evacuation previous to bombing was flawed. Evacuation? Sounds like the civilians were cleared out first then the terrorists attacked with troops and air support. She also said a school and hospital were bombed. She forgot to mention the thousands of schools repaired and built with American support and money, not to mention twenty hospitals repaired and a new one built. Why would we deliberately destroy what we are building more of - unless terrorists were callously using the buildings?
Khamas complained that too many security precautions were preventing access to a hospital and causing other problems. But these precautions are due to the actions of the terrorists, not the USA. If terrorists were not attacking civilians and our military forces in such sneaky backstabbing ways, the stringent security measures would not be needed! Then the anti-American diatribe turned very strange. Eman Ahmed Khamas claimed our troops often hide by the roadside, shooting peaceful civilians walking down the road to their jobs. Puzzled by this genocidal behavior, she asked a soldier why. According to Khamas, he explained they were only following their training! This wacky statement was swallowed whole by the moonbats.
Another ghastly fairy tale involved treatment of prisoners. According to the self-proclaimed former Saddam Hussein government employee, Iraqi prisoners were not just hazed at Abu Ghraib prison. They were skinned alive there with hot irons! And it was not just a few individuals like those actually caught hazing there. It was everyone in the US military who worked in prisons torturing, all the time. She described many different methods of torment that Americans supposedly used as gullible liberals oohed and aahed.
She also spoke a canard about Iraqi civilians Americans would arrest for no reason, never to be heard from again. As the meeting went on, I noticed a few people get up and stalk out. Two next to me did and I gratefully used the seat to organize my briefcase. I had refutation for everything she said organized and ready. The final outlandish proclamation was that life was much better under Saddam Hussein! I didn't expect her to say it that plainly but she did, several times.
At long last the torture session speech was over and Khamas announced there would be questions and discussion - of any subject we liked! Really? I could hardly wait. The first question by an audience member was on the number of civilian deaths; to answer the misinformation maven referred to the Lancet study that claimed 100,000 deaths. 'She's walking right into your trap,' whispered harmsninjagirl's young son to me, noticing the printout I held. harmsninjagirl was busy furiously formulating questions about the number of Kurds killed by Saddam. I was called upon next so I stood up.
"Yes, I have here a printout of a column from our local newspaper which talks about the very same Lancet study you just cited," I paused for dramatic effect as she nodded. "According to this article, the study's method is flawed and the number wrong. The true number is closer to 15,000."
Although less than a hundred were left in the audience, the room erupted in loud groans, snorts and wails from left wing activists overshadowed by some shouts of "let him talk" and "he's got a good point, there!" The Code Pink leader shouted that only questions pertaining to the talk were allowed (although the speaker had said discussion on any subject would follow) but someone rightly shouted out that I was only responding to what she had just said. Khamas' final answer was that I should look up the Lancet study on the web, to which I replied again that the Lancet study was proved wrong by the column in my hand and sat down.
The next lady called upon apologized to Khamas for the evil of the USA with appropriate dramatic gestures. Then a flurry of leftist questions ensued such as "Won't the young people of Iraq hate us now" and "How long will you be in town?" Early on, Code Pink announced there would be no more public questions. It was my turn to snort loudly in disbelief. I had much more evidence ready, including stacks of printouts, an interview with an Iraqi general and photos of water stations and schools built. However, it was then announced that people could ask questions one on one with Eman Khamas. While in line, several moonbats accosted me with the usual anti-war statements.
I lectured two on the fact that most of the problems in Iraq are caused by the terrorists fighting illegally, i.e. without uniforms, kidnapping people, hiding behind civilians and shooting, planting bombs to blow up children and civilians as well as our military with hidden bombs.
"The terrorists are the ones violating the Geneva Convention," I declared.
"They're not terrorists! They're freedom fighters!" the two protested. I explained that I had a letter from a mayor in Iraq thanking the US troops for defeating terrorists, which I would give them a copy of later when I got back to my briefcase.
"Oh, sure, maybe one…"
"One mayor?" I interjected? "One mayor of a large city?"
I would have continued the conversation about how many Iraqis are grateful to America but the second of the two guys unaccountably started screaming incoherently. Unable to talk to the first guy, I turned around; actually with good timing since Eman Khamas was ready for my question.
"I have hoped for some time to find an Iraqi who lived in Baghdad before the war to ask this question," I said. Unrolling a three and half foot wide color poster of soldiers holding a painting of Saddam Hussein gesturing at two burning skyscrapers with jetliners crashing into them I asked the question: "Why in the world would Saddam Hussein place this giant painting in the Baghdad Airport? You can read for yourself here where it says 'The Sir, The Respected President, Combat Leader Saddam Hussein.'" (emphasis mine)
For a short time the flabbergasted propagandist simply stared aghast at the axiomatic graphic.
"What was the question?" she finally demanded. Many had gathered behind her and were also examining the painting.
"Why would Saddam Hussein place this painting with burning towers in the Baghdad Airport? He says he is the 'Combat Leader.'"
"He always says he is the combat leader," she retorted.
"Wasn't it reckless of him to put it up there, though? You don't think it means anything at all?"
She didn't but I continued to name terrorists harbored by prewar Iraq like Abu Nidal and Abu al-Zarqawi. Then I mentioned Iraqi General Sada and his new book "Saddam's Secrets" (which is in the public library) and told her how the General explained about Weapons of Mass Destruction and Saddam's plan to hit Israel with nerve gas in Desert Storm that was canceled because some gas might get on Syria and Jordan. She claimed to have never heard of Sada and I had to spell his name for her. It's incredible that a supposed political expert on Iraq says she doesn't know of the famous General Sada and his book!
"You believe all that?" she asked.
"Yes I do," I replied. "I certainly don't believe anything you say!"
"Is there anyone else to speak with Eman?" called out Code Pink's Tucson Leader Nancy Hill anxiously. I had used a lot of time so I moved aside. Some of my friends and also moonbats were peppering Khamas and Code Pink with questions and I asked Ms. Hill a question.
"You're an American. Do you honestly believe American military personnel would torture and kill a bunch of civilians? And even if one or two did, wouldn't the other soldiers turn them in immediately?"
She indicated that she believed they would torture and the other soldiers would not turn them in. She knew this because her brother was in Vietnam. She went on a lot about Vietnam and claimed that thirty percent of Vietnam veterans were homeless.
"That's not true," I exclaimed, "and you can read about it in a book called 'Stolen Valor' at the public library here in Tucson. "
The cursor hovering computer setup man from earlier was listening nearby. Astonished, he said he was a Vietnam veteran and stated something to the effect that it was a travesty and affected him badly.
"That's not what my Vietnam veteran friends tell me," I replied calmly. "They are proud of their service to the country."
"Aharrgh!" he sputtered. "What are you doing here? We don't come to conservative events and disrupt everything!" Then he took off like a shot, probably to cool off. Actually, Code Pink is notorious for illegally disrupting conservative events and getting arrested on purpose but we weren't trying to disrupt anything. We were just using the question and answer period to discuss facts. Apparently that's very disruptive to them!
I couldn't find the guy to give the mayor's letter to so I handed it to a "Democracy Now" reporter who attended the gathering. The unbiased journalist had been very helpful to the event, working to set up and break down, organizing, assisting all the leaders, coordinating things and dashing to and fro to make sure everything went smoothly. That was certainly kind of her.
A pink clad lady, probably a Code Pink leader, smugly asked if I had been to Iraq lately. I replied I hadn't but before she could finish saying "Ah-ha!" I told her I have spoken to many veterans who just came from there and they dispute everything Khamas said with their statements to me. Then I related how it was estimated that Saddam Hussein killed at least a million of his own people and possibly much more, not to mention at least a million more Muslims in nearby countries.
"No other nation in history has killed so many of their own people except for Communist countries," I noted. "Of course, they still hold the record. No one can take that away from the Marxists."
There were more discussions and then jovial camaraderie and a moment of prayer with the eleven Pro-Americans that came ready to dispute the lies. The cheerfulness on one side and crankiness on the other was obvious. I didn't get a chance to show my articles on schools and water plants built, the interview with Iraqi General Tikrit and some other printouts but as a matter of fact, I accidentally left a few copies on the main computer table when packing up my briefcase which I noticed when I was putting things away in the truck. Maybe someone benefited from them. I know that anyone can profit from learning facts and standing up for what they believe in. I'm certainly glad that I stand up for liberty, freedom and the United States of America! And may God bless our military that defends us!
Wayne Boettcher is the head of AmericanProtest.net
Related Links:
Michael Fumento: Numbers on Iraqi deaths questionable - Arizona Daily Star
Saddam Hussein Mural with Burning Twin Towers - 3rd Infantry Division
Saddam's Secrets - General George Sada
Defend America - DOD News
Passing on a Letter From an Iraqi Mayor - ChronWatch
The Changed Baathist: Interview with Ali Ibrahim Al-Tikriti - WorldThreats.com
Free Republic DC Chapter at Code Pink event in Greenbelt, MD - 03/29/06 - tgslTakoma
AAR?
Outstanding report!
The local Code Pink leaders in North Carolina lied and told the same "we don't disrupt other people" bullsheet to Chuck Fager who organized the Fayetteville anti-war rally.
Code Pink even lies to their own people.
Hosted by Osama bin Amy Goodman....as my Iraqi friends tell me.
BTW, Amy is a millionaire courtesy of the taxpayer and Pacifica radio.
I hate Marxist Millionaires. They are SUCH liars.
You guys are the ones covering our troops back in a very real way.
You rocked the world of this Ba'athist, the Pinkos, and that the other America-hating traitors.
Great work!
Wayne and patriots verbally demonished the Ba'athist and Pinko propaganda show.
Wayne, your report is so good that I think you need to come to DC, FReep with us, and write the report. Really outstanding!
I say presented badly since Code Pink has had trouble with the computer presentation on three out of four events that I've read on FR. On the fourth event, they didn't even show it. Hopefully it was because tgslTakoma was there with her movie camera.
But Code Pink freaks out and doesn't want her to speak too much on counter-arguements. They try to stop her from responding
At least Code Pink realizes that she has lost the argument before she even speaks.
Love the post. Keep up the great work.
[Mr] T
Khamas is touring America to accuse US troops of bizarre atrocities and attempt to get people to believe that life was better for the Iraqis under Saddam Hussein.
Saddam's chambers of horrors
By MARGARET WENTE
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1419920/posts
Toronto Globe and Mail Saturday, November 23, 2002
Abu Ghraib, 30 kilometres west of Baghdad, is Iraq's biggest prison. Until recently, it held perhaps 50,000 people, perhaps more. No one knows for sure. No one knows how many people were taken there through the years and never came out.
For a generation, Abu Ghraib was the centrepiece of Saddam Hussein's reign of torture and death. Yahya al-Jaiyashy is one of the survivors.
Mr. Jaiyashy is an animated, bearded man of 49 whose words can scarcely keep up with the torrent of his memories. Today he lives in Toronto with his second wife, Sahar. This week, he sat down with me to relate his story. With him were his wife, a lovely Iraqi woman in her mid-30s, and a friend, Haithem al-Hassan, who helped me with Mr. Jaiyashy's mixture of Arabic and rapid English.
"Nineteen seventy-seven was the first time I went to jail," he says. "I was not tortured that much."
He was in his mid-20s then, from an intellectual family that lived in a town south of Baghdad. He had been a student of Islamic history, language and religion in the holy city of Najaf, but was forced to quit his studies after he refused to join the ruling Ba'ath party. His ambition was to write books that would show how Islam could open itself up to modernism.
In Saddam's Iraq, this was a dangerous occupation, especially for a Shiite. Shia Muslims are the majority in Iraq, but Saddam and his inner circle are Sunni. Many Shiites were under suspicion as enemies of the state.
"My father was scared for me," says Mr. Jaiyashy. " 'You know how dangerous this regime is,' he told me. 'You know how many people they kill.' "
Mr. Jaiyashy continued his studies on his own. But, eventually, he was picked up, along with a dozen acquaintances who had been involved in political activity against the regime. They were sent to Abu Ghraib. The others did not get off as lightly as he did. One was killed by immersion into a vat of acid. Ten others, he recalls, were put into a room and torn apart by wild dogs. Several prominent religious leaders were also executed. One was a university dean, someone Mr. Jaiyashy remembers as "a great man." They drove a nail through his skull.
For three decades, the most vicious war Saddam has waged has been the one against his own people. Iraq's most devastating weapon of mass destruction is Saddam himself. And the most powerful case for regime change is their suffering.
Sometimes, it is almost impossible to believe the accounts of people who survived Saddam's chamber of horrors. They seem like twisted nightmares, or perhaps crude propaganda. But there are too many survivors who have escaped Iraq, too many credible witnesses. And Mr. Jaiyashy's story, horrible as it is, is not unusual.
Saddam personally enjoyed inflicting torture in the early years of his career, and he has modelled his police state after that of his hero, Stalin. According to Kenneth Pollack, a leading U.S. expert on Iraq, the regime employs as many as half a million people in its various intelligence, security and police organizations. Hundreds of thousands of others serve as informants. Neighbour is encouraged to inform on neighbour, children on their parents. Saddam has made Iraq into a self-policing totalitarian state, where everyone is afraid of everybody else.
"Being in Iraq is like creeping around inside someone else's migraine," says veteran BBC correspondent John Sweeney. "The fear is so omnipresent, you could almost eat it."
To Stalin's methods of arbitrary arrests and forced confessions, Saddam has added an element of sadism: the torture of children to extract information from their parents.
In northern Iraq -- the only place in the country where people can speak relatively freely -- Mr. Sweeney interviewed several people who had direct experience of child torture. He also met one of the victims -- a four-year-old girl, the daughter of a man who had worked for Saddam's psychopathic son Uday. When the man fell under suspicion, he fled to the Kurdish safe haven in the north. The police came for his wife and tortured her to reveal his whereabouts; when she didn't break, they took his daughter and crushed her feet. She was 2 then. Today, she wears metal braces on her legs, and can only hobble.
"This is a regime that will gouge out the eyes of children to force confessions from their parents and grandparents," writes Mr. Pollack in his new book, The Threatening Storm. "This is a regime that will hold a nursing baby at arm's length from its mother and allow the child to starve to death to force the mother to confess. This is a regime that will burn a person's limbs off to force him to confess or comply. This is a regime that will slowly lower its victims into huge vats of acid. . . .
"This is a regime that practises systematic rape against the female victims. This is a regime that will drag in a man's wife, daughter or other female relative and repeatedly rape her in front of him." And if he has fled the country, it will send him the video.
After nearly two years in prison, Mr. Jaiyashy was released and sent to do military service in the north. Then the security police decided to round up the followers of one of the executed clerics. In 1980, Mr. Jaiyashy was arrested again, along with 20 friends, and taken to a military prison. He was interrogated about criticisms he was supposed to have made of the regime, and urged to sign a confession. During one session, his wrists were tied to a ceiling fan. Then they turned on the fan. Then they added weights onto his body and did it again. Then somebody climbed on him to add more weight. "It was 20 minutes, but it seemed like 20 years," he recalls.
He was beaten with a water hose filled with stones. When he passed out, he was shocked back into consciousness with an electric cable. They hung him by his legs, pulled out a fingernail with pliers, and drove an electric drill through his foot.
Mr. Jaiyashy took off his right shoe and sock to show me his foot. It is grotesquely mutilated, with a huge swelling over the arch. There is an Amnesty International report on human-rights abuses in Iraq with a photo of a mutilated foot that looks identical to his. The baby finger on his left hand is also mutilated.
He didn't sign the confession. He knew that, if he did, they would eventually kill him.
They put him in solitary confinement, in a cell measuring two metres by two and a half, without windows or light. Every few weeks, they would bring him the confession again, but he refused to sign. He stayed there for a year.
In 1981, he was sent to trial, where he persuaded a sympathetic judge not to impose the death sentence. He got 10 years instead, and was sent back to Abu Ghraib. "They put me in a cell with 50 people. It was three and a half by three and a half metres. Some stood, some sat. They took turns."
There was a small window in the cell, with a view of a tree. It was the only living thing the prisoners could see. The tree was cut down. There were informants in the cells and, every morning, guards would come and take someone and beat him till he died. "This is your breakfast!" they would say.
Mr. Jaiyashy spent the next six years in that cell. His parents were told he was dead.
Abu Ghraib contained many intellectuals and professional people. Among them was the scientist Hussein Shahristani, a University of Toronto alumnus who became a leading nuclear scientist in Iraq. He was imprisoned after he refused to work on Saddam's nuclear program. He spent 10 years in Abu Ghraib, most of them in solitary confinement, until he escaped in 1991.
Saddam has reduced his people to abject poverty. He wiped out families, villages, cities and cultures, and drove four million people into exile. He killed between 100,000 and 200,000 Kurds. He killed as many as 300,000 Shiites in the uprising after the Persian Gulf war. He killed or displaced 200,000 of the 250,000 marsh Arabs who had created a unique, centuries-old culture in the south. He drained the marshes, an environmental treasure, and turned them into a desert.
In a recent Frontline documentary, a woman who fled Iraq recounted how she and others had been forced to witness the public beheadings of 15 women who had been rounded up for prostitution and other crimes against the state. One of the women was a doctor who had been misreported as speaking against the regime. "They put her head in a trash can," she said.
In 1987, Mr. Jaiyashy and a thousand other inmates were transferred to an outdoor prison camp. There, they were allowed a visit with their relatives, so long as they said nothing of their lives in prison. Mr. Jaiyashy's parents came, hoping he might still be alive. He remembers the day all the families came. "There was so much crying. We called it the crying day."
In 1989, he was finally released from prison. Then came the gulf war and, after that, the uprising, which he joined. It was quickly crushed. He fled with 150,000 refugees toward the Saudi border. But the Saudis didn't want them. "They are Wahhabis," he says. "They consider the Shia as infidels." The United Nations set up a refugee camp, where Mr. Jaiyashy spent the next six years. He began to paint and write again.
Finally, he was accepted as an immigrant to Canada. He arrived in Toronto in 1996, and is now a Canadian citizen.
Mr. Jaiyashy has a deep sense of gratitude toward his adoptive country. Canada, he says, has given him back his freedom and his dignity. He paints prolifically, and has taken courses at the art college, and is the author of three plays about the Saddam regime. He makes his living stocking shelves in a fabric store. "I'm a porter," he says. "No problem. I'm happy."
But Saddam's spies are everywhere. After one of his plays was produced here, his father was imprisoned. His first wife and three children are still in Iraq. He hasn't seen them since his youngest, now 12, was a baby. He talks with them on the phone from time to time, but it is very dangerous. One of his brothers is in Jordan, another still in Iraq.
Sahar, his second wife, is soft-spoken. She covers her head and dresses modestly, without makeup. Her face is unlined. She arrived in Canada with her two daughters the same year as Mr. Jaiyashy; they were introduced by friends.
She, too, has a story. I learned only the smallest part of it. "I was a widow," she told me. "My husband was a doctor in Iraq. He wanted to continue his education and have a specialty. But they didn't allow him. He deserted the military service to continue his education on his own. They beat him till he died."
Today, her daughters are in high school and she teaches at a daycare centre. Her new husband pushed her to study hard here. "ESL, ESL," she says affectionately.
Like many Iraqis, they are conflicted about the prospect of war. They want Saddam gone. But they do not want more harm inflicted on their country. "I want Saddam gone -- only him," says Mr. Jaiyashy.
A few weeks ago, Saddam threw open the doors of Abu Ghraib and freed the prisoners there. Many families rejoiced, and many others, who did not find their loved ones, mounted a brief, unheard-of protest against the regime. The prison is a ghost camp now. Nothing is left but piles of human excrement that cake the razor wire.
Saddam's Iraq is a rebuke to anyone who may doubt that absolute evil dwells among us. No one has put it better than Mr. Sweeney, the BBC reporter. "When I hear the word Iraq, I hear a tortured child screaming."
Wayne, this woman makes me sick. Where will she be next? I feel like detaining her and skinning her alive with a hot iron!!
Ping for later read
LOL. She said that you U.S troops have been doing the hot iron skinning for years.
Bet she said that because she (or at least Saddam-supporting friends of hers) did the hot iron trick in Iraq before you and our other troops liberated the country.
If she didn't personally kill and torture, but was just a paid propaganda mouthpiece for one of the most evil, mass-murdering tyrants in recent history, she has blood all over her hands. All of the perfumes of Arabia cannot wash that blood out.
Eman Ahmed (Ahmad) Khamas (Khammas), Code Pink and the rest of the Iraqi Baathist Women Circus Tour are on the receiving end of Free Speech; and they don't like it.
DC Chapter ping for a great After Action Report!
Well done. Freepers are everywhere! Interesting that you got the same reaction from the libs that was reported on from an earlier appearance of this witch. The groan and eye roll. The cult of blame America first is alive and well.
Code Pink itself is a study in strangeness. They support Fidel Castro and other Communist leaders, protest wounded soldiers at Walter Reed Army Hospital, and notoriously facilitated a $600,000 donation of cash and supplies to the "other side" in Fallujah, Iraq. A short time ago they were caught faking a publicity photo on their website and had to change it. In spite of these activities, they claim to be against killing and torture, for the troops and say they want to stop others from lying.
Code Pink pimps their woman everywhere.
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