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To: NYer
Oh, come on. The Vatican Secretary of State called it an American war of aggression. The Vatican press accused Bush of starting a war for Iraq's oil. Nothing at all about 250,000 butchered Iraqis, nothing about the rape rooms and torture chambers where in one instance a small boy had his eyes gouged out before his parents or in another where a small three-year-old girl had her feet deliberately broken before her mother to get the woman to confess the whereabouts of her husband. Nothing about men being put feet-first and alive into giant shredders. Nothing about tongues cut out for trivial remarks or the heads of prostitutes chopped off and publicly impaled to terrorize the populace. Nothing about the public executions with townspeople, men, women and children, forced to watch while neighbors were brutally put to death.

No, it's a little late for papal back-tracking and damage control. The Pope's inability to come to grips with evil and to confront it, has been at best naive and at worst morally blind. Politically, it has been very destructive and has played into the hands of the Iraqi regime which has suckered the left for three decades. Saddam's still doing it, feeding off the knee-jerk European anti-Americanism of the sort expressed by JnPII.

Having said this, I will concede the Pope has spoken with more circumspection than was widely reported. It is the way of popes to be coy in what they say--in case they need future cover. And it is the way of the media to understand what they really mean and to interpret their words accordingly. But this Pope certainly knew how much influence his voice would have in the anti-war movement. What is unacceptable is that he hadn't done his homework or shown any understanding at all of the depth of the evil we are now confronting. The simple fact is that JnPII has never expressed compassion for the many victims of Hussein's tyranny, nor condemned the tyranny of Saddam. Nor has he properly understood why it is imperative for the United States and its allies to eliminate such a monster.
14 posted on 03/28/2003 9:53:53 PM PST by ultima ratio
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To: ultima ratio
The Pope's inability to come to grips with evil General Sherman, who knew a little about it, said that war is hell. Face it: even in a good cause, war results in evil being done. Iaruis died; our men die. It boils down to what is the lesser evil, and that is something we will know only after the fact. I know who is wrong in this matter. Our Lord spoke a parable about the king with inferior forces was enjoined to treat with his enemy and get the best terms possible.
17 posted on 03/29/2003 9:22:18 AM PST by RobbyS
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