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posted on Jun, 23 2004 @ 11:39 AM
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I know that I'm going to get "bashed" for this thread, but I don't care, while I don't support the war, I support our troops and our leaders, because, they are in charge. We don't have to agree with them, but we need to stand together as a nation.

I found this today :

An Army medic checks the breathing of Wafa�a Fadil, 5, during an impromptu medical clinic in Fadus, Iraq, on Tuesday. U.S. forces periodically run half-day medical clinics for Iraqis in rural areas, though security concerns keep the clinics secret until they are set up on the scene. Teams of Army medics typically see several hundred patients in a few hours before hastily packing up and heading back to base. Fadus is a rural farm village about 60 miles from Baghdad.





A Marine with Combined Joint Task Force-Haiti distributes chips and bottled water to children at the Good Samaritan orphanage in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Troops with CJTF-Haiti spent the afternoon handing out clothes, books and toys donated by people from throughout the United States.



So, all the nay-sayers and people who post the horror stories and bad things that our forces are doing, sit back, take a look at other things that are taking place.

God Bless our Troops, Our Nation and the World.



posted on Jun, 23 2004 @ 11:45 AM
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here's the source for the info in my thread, also more pics can be found there :

www.navytimes.com...



posted on Jun, 23 2004 @ 11:47 AM
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The great thing about troops is, no matter what they are doing what ever they do, for the great good. Even if sent for the wrong reasons.

I do support the troops, I do not support the decision to send them to a war that is not needed. I think the people in charge should be charged with WAR crimes.


Great post elevated.


[edit on 23-6-2004 by SpittinCobra]



posted on Jun, 23 2004 @ 11:57 AM
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Yes it is true that US forces, such as the ones in those photos, are doing some good and are trying to help people and make things better, and they should be supported for doing this.

However (you knew this was coming) the US is just basically cleaning up it's own mess caused by over a decade of sanctions and continuous bombing before and during the war.

Also, you have these good troops helping Iraqis and you have others torturing them (yes torture, not 'abuse'). So it balances it out in a way.



posted on Jun, 23 2004 @ 12:27 PM
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Originally posted by Eddie999
However (you knew this was coming) the US is just basically cleaning up it's own mess caused by over a decade of sanctions and continuous bombing before and during the war.


The US is cleaning up "its own mess"? Saddam Heussein took 30 years of dictatorial rule to make Iraq the mess it was when we found it. He cared nothing for the Iraqi people; only himself. That's why schools and hospitals were falling apart and nonexistent in many places when we got there. That's why millions were living in wooden shacks while Heussein lived in over 20 palaces. The "oil for food" program only confirmed Heussein's selfishness and the UN's corruption.


As for our troops... God bless the US & UK troops! The news media only likes to report the bad news (because it's bad news that gets people's attention), but the good news over there outweighs the bad news. The troops are helping build hospitals, schools, fire stations, and city halls. The troops are donating equipment and time to all those causes, as well as others such as helping farmers become more efficient and helping a real Iraqi government take shape through a Constitution. Iraq has over 25 milllion people; only a few thousand of them are the terrorists.

I hate how the news media tries to make it look like Iraq has gone to hell in a handbasket. Think of it this way -- if the only video footage of the US you saw on TV were pictures of the inner cities of Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, Miami, and crimes committed there -- wouldn't you think that the US was a war zone too?

Similarly, over 300,000 troops are in Iraq right now; a few dozen -- maybe a hundred -- are responsible for the prison abuse embarassment. That does not mean that all 300,000 troops are abusing Iraqis by any stretch of the imagination...



posted on Jun, 23 2004 @ 12:28 PM
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Hmmmm. We save sick children and rough up some pretty bad people as opposed to them killing children and letting bad people continue to run their lives and you say it balances out? What kinda scale are you using?

If you ask me, live children and dead terrorists sounds a lot better than dead children and live terrorists.



posted on Jun, 23 2004 @ 12:54 PM
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By Thundercloud:That's why schools and hospitals were falling apart and nonexistent in many places when we got there


Ha! Don't kid yourself into believering that mainstream propaganda. Saddam invested huge amounts into healthcare in Iraq and the same goes for schools. The majority of children DID go to school in Iraq under Saddam, and as Iraq was a secular state girls were also allowed to go to school.

OK Saddam wasn't the most compassionate of people but he did care about the majority of Iraqis and the Iraqi infrastructure was quite good until the US bombed it into oblivion.



posted on Jun, 23 2004 @ 01:10 PM
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Well if your an inhabitant of North America or Europe and a regular viewer of mass media you have been inundated with images and stories of failure out of Iraq.

If your an inhabitant of ATS, then youve probably read nothing but vile and disgusting opinion pieces decrying the war, but rarely do you see the benefits of the Iraqi occupation.

Although it sounds almost cliche now, removing Saddam did in fact help the people of Iraq. Though it sounds nebulus there are proven instances where whole lives have been transformed by the Iraqi liberation.

The following is one such story.


Back when Saddam Hussein ruled Iraq, seven merchants were found guilty of using U.S. dollars instead of Iraqi dinars and were punished by having their right hands chopped off and X�s tattooed on their foreheads.

In Islamic culture, having a right hand cut off is a severe form of public shame. For Saddam's regime, sending Iraqis back into public without a hand reinforced the former dictator's harsh rule.

But for seven Iraqi men, nine years of public shame are finally over.

These men are now in Houston undergoing rehabilitation. Through plastic surgery, the black X�s are gone from their foreheads and they all now have state-of-the-art prosthetic right hands, which once again allows them to do simple things like tying their shoes.

�They all cried and had tears in their eyes when they put these on,� said David Baty, director of prosthetics at Dynamic Orthotics and Prosthetics in Houston
Each of the prosthetic hands cost between $25,000 and $50,000. For each of the Iraqis, the whole procedure and rehabilitation is worth about $150,000.

But for the Iraqi men, everything is being done for free.


Regardless of your politics you must all agree that this would have never happened without the removal of Saddam. These poor men waited nine long years for someone to help blot out their dissability, and were doing it for free. These men are just a specific example of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis who have had new horizons opened up by the US invasion.

In short this makes me feel justified even if its in just a small way for believing that things are changing within Iraq.

Complete Story:
Link


Thats a post from a thread I made on the subject a while back but it got turned into a mudpit esque topic.



posted on Jun, 23 2004 @ 01:15 PM
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[sarcasm] Oh come now. Surely the great and horrible United States, the cause of all the evil in the world, wouldn't do anything selfless and positive like that. Surely there must be an RFID chip or something in those artificial limbs that will aid the US to take over the world. [/sarcasm]



posted on Jun, 23 2004 @ 01:22 PM
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Originally posted by Eddie999
OK Saddam wasn't the most compassionate of people but he did care about the majority of Iraqis.


So Saddam cared about the majority of Iraqis by skimming millions from the oil for food program, gassing a ethnicity of his own country, keeping open torture prions where thousands were mutilated/killed, refusing to allow sanctions to be lifted by allowing in inspectors and disarming?

Where do you get off thinking he cared about the majority of people.

Go do some reading on the oil for food program. All those millions in dollars that Saddam and his sons were caught with? All of that money was supposed to be food to feed starving Iraqis.



posted on Jun, 23 2004 @ 01:28 PM
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imagine all the good that could be done, if there was no war and soldiers were sent on humanitarian missions like those pictured above, instead of fighting.

a girl can only dream..........



posted on Jun, 23 2004 @ 01:53 PM
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Originally posted by Agent47
gassing a ethnicity of his own country,


Actually he didn't. The 5000 Iraqi Kurds that were killed were killed by a gas called phosgene. A gas that Saddam Hussein never possessed but a gas that Iran possessed in large amounts.

I'll let you do the maths on that one.



posted on Jun, 23 2004 @ 01:59 PM
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our troops are good its just that some ppl hate America so bad they are blinded by their anger.



posted on Jun, 23 2004 @ 02:17 PM
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Originally posted by Eddie999
A gas that Saddam Hussein never possessed but a gas that Iran possessed in large amounts.

I'll let you do the maths on that one.


And I'll let you make up more facts.

The only alternative to Saddam gassing the Kurds was that the Iranians did it, and even then that has been discredited.


As a result of the successful bid for autonomy of Kurds in northern Iraq under the U.S. no-fly zone, tens of thousands of documents from the Iraqi secret police and military were captured by Kurdish rebels from 1991 forward. These were turned over to the U.S. government. Some ten thousand of them have been posted to the World Wide Web at the Iraq Research and Documentation Program at the Center for Middle East Studies of Harvard University: www.fas.harvard.edu...

The captured documents explicitly refer to Iraqi use of chemical weapons against Kurds, called "Anfal" (spoils) operations. Some documents were reviewed by Human Rights Watch in the early 1990s, which issued a report, entitled "Genocide in Iraq." Robert Rabil, a researcher with the IRD Program, has also published an analysis of the documents, in the Middle East Review of International Affairs.

The documents under review never mention Iraqi authorities taking precautions against Iranian uses of chemical weapons, and there is no good evidence that Iran did so. Since Iran and the Kurds were allies, Iran in any case had no motive to gas thousands of Kurds. The Baath documents do frequently mention the Anfal campaign of February-September 1988, when high Baath officials in the north were authorized to gas the Kurds.

The Kurdish minority of northern Iraq speaks an Indo-European language very different from the Semitic language of Arabic, and has long sought greater autonomy from Baghdad. Largely farmers and pastoralists, they practice a mystical, Sufi form of Islam that is distinctive in modern Iraq. During the Iran-Iraq war of 1980-1988, which Saddam Hussein launched against his neighbor, the Kurds sought Iranian support for their insurgency. The Baath regime, threatened, responded by destroying Kurdish villages in strategic zones, resorting to ethnic cleansing.

These brutal conventional measures failed to achieve their objective, and for that reason the Baath regime initiated its chemical warfare on the Kurds in 1988. The operation was headed up by Saddam's cousin, Ali Hasan al-Majid, the Secretary-General of the Northern Bureau of the Ba'th Organization. For this reason, Iraqis call him "Chemical Ali."

The Baath regime launched 39 separate gas attacks against the Kurds, many of them targeting villages far from the Iran-Iraq border. Beginning at night on Thursday, March 16, and extending into Friday, March 17, 1988, the city of Halabja (population 70,000), was bombarded with twenty chemical and cluster bombs. Photographs show dead children in the street with lunch pails. An estimated 5,000 persons died. Although some analysts say the gas used was hydrogen cyanide others have suggested it might have been sarin, VX, and tabun. Iraq is known to have these agents. (Iran is not known to have hydrogen cyanide, in any case).


A. What proof do you have that the gas you claimed was used?

B. Who could have benefited from gassing the Kurds besides Saddam?

Is this all you have? My whole argument was that the Oil for Food program is the focal point of how Saddam cared only about himself and not the greater good of Iraq as you cliam. And you come back with this crap? Grow up. Try proving that Saddam didnt steal millions from the oil for food program and stop with the outlandish lies/claims

Link

[edit on 23-6-2004 by Agent47]



posted on Jun, 23 2004 @ 02:28 PM
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Source:
www.infoshout.com...

Iraq military, average, 5,633
Iraq civilian, average, 10,000

www.csmonitor.com...



Iraqbodycount.net, a website that draws on media accounts and eyewitness reports, estimates that between 4,065 and 5,223 Iraqi civilians have been killed as a result of coalition military action, both during and after the war.




A May 15 Associated Press report gives an estimate of 2,100 to 2,600 civilian deaths, without citing sources.




The US Department of Defense has refused to give any sort of estimate on deaths


Baghdad


Two news organizations have produced estimates of civilian casualties in just the Baghdad area by canvassing hospitals and tallying their records. The Los Angeles Times reported on May 18 that probably between 1,700 and 2,700 civilians were killed in and around Baghdad. The Knight Ridder agency published an estimate of between 1,100 and 2,355 on May 4.


icasualties.org...

US military deaths - 848
US wounded returned to action in 3 days - 2,120
US wounded didn't return to action within 3 days - 3,018

www.guardian.co.uk...

June 12, 2003



At least 5,000 civilians may have been killed during the invasion of Iraq, an independent research group has claimed. As more evidence is collated, it says, the figure could reach 10,000.




Iraq Body Count (IBC), a volunteer group of British and US academics and researchers, compiled statistics on civilian casualties from media reports and estimated that between 5,000 and 7,000 civilians died in the conflict.


antiwar.com...


df1

posted on Jun, 23 2004 @ 02:31 PM
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Originally posted by Agent47
Go do some reading on the oil for food program. All those millions in dollars that Saddam and his sons were caught with? All of that money was supposed to be food to feed starving Iraqis.


I would suggest you go do some reading on the billions for Haliburton and the oil companies program and do your own reading on how the good people in the UN ripped off the oil for food program with the complicity of the US government.

And while your at it, go be a hero with your own life instead instead of posting government propaganda drivel. The patriotic thing to do is support bringing our troops home in some way other than a casket so they can be with their wives, children and loved ones instead of dying to enrich bush, cheney, rumsfeld and their business cabal.

Your arguements in support of the travesty in iraq are worthlessly plastic just like the phoney plastic avatar you choose to use.
.

[edit on 23-6-2004 by df1]



posted on Jun, 23 2004 @ 02:32 PM
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Good research Jamuhn. I dont doubt the numbers. I think the author is just trying to prove that for all of the deaths the military objective isnt to slaugheter Iraqis but rebuild a country they had do dismantle.

Excellent research


[edit on 23-6-2004 by Agent47]



posted on Jun, 23 2004 @ 02:36 PM
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Originally posted by df1

Your arguements in support of the travesty in iraq are worthlessly plastic just like the phoney plastic avatar you choose to use.
.


Im fully aware of all the money lifted by the UN from Iraq through the Oil for Food program. Its the side of the UN no one wants to talk about.

As I am aware of the money Halliburton receives to do the job only they can perform. The complete reconstruction of an infastructure that the US destroyed.

Most of the troops want to be there to help rebuild the country and this isnt vietnam my misinformed friend, we dont have plane loads of caskets being unloaded at Edwards AFB everday. I can be a hero by not giving into this blind rage you seem to display.

I can forgive you for attacking my avatar as Jesus would say "they know not what they do", and all newbs should have a little grace period when they are allowed to make such crude and childish remarks. The avatar is strictly for this months debate tournament and will be gone when I get tired of it.

Go find something constructive to do instead of sitting around jerking your angry self off to others attempts at factual debate.



[edit on 23-6-2004 by Agent47]



posted on Jun, 23 2004 @ 02:46 PM
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www.cnn.com...



Three of America's biggest oil and gas companies have received subpoenas from federal prosecutors related to the U.N. oil-for-food program in Iraq.


This is pretty recent, the list includes Exxon Mobil Corp., ChevronTexaco Corp. and Valero Energy Corp. They are being implicated in under-handed deals with Saddam Hussein.

Please Agent47, don't get all high and mighty. It seems you are pretty recent as well. Just because you won a RATS award or whatever it doesn't mean you are THE authority at ATS. Calm down your ego some. People don't have a handle on research yet, but I would ask that you get some of your research from places other than government sources and with more than one source. I can pick out many websites spouting something that is obviously not true. I don't doubt the Iraqis used the gas on the Kurds, but for future reference on how to research.

The point of my post was that all these Iraqi deaths or at least many of them were caused by non-precisioned weapons, false intelligence, and bad planning which shows me a blatant disregard for the human life. Coupled with the raping of the Iraqi culture through mass looting, which the US was asked to prevent before the war started but allowed priceless artifacts to be stripped and sold in the black market many of which will probably make their way to the US soon enough.

Edit: I am glad to see some are trying to remedy this situation, but this is something we need to think about before we rush into another war...

[edit on 23-6-2004 by Jamuhn]



posted on Jun, 23 2004 @ 02:49 PM
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Please Agent47, don't get all high and mighty. It seems you are pretty recent as well. Just because you won a RATS award or whatever it doesn't mean you are THE authority at ATS. Calm down your ego some.


I never claimed to be. I dont know where your newfound anger is coming from because I thought we had agreed to disagree and hell I just commended your fact finding.

My references to our angry friends time spent here does not negate that I have been here for under a year, but I never attack avatars nor called someone a coward when I was new here. There still seemed to be a decorum of respect at that time.

My ego is fine, it is you who are hounding me from thread to thread.







 
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