Lake
Have to go now, but before I do I will give you something to chew on.
The U.N.'s Human Rights Rituals
By Anne Applebaum
Wednesday, April 16, 2003; Page A27 When is human rights abuse not human rights abuse? When the U.N. Human Rights Commission is discussing it -- or so it seems, judging by that august body's 59th session, now taking place in Geneva. Founded just after World War II and chaired in its early years by Eleanor Roosevelt, the commission meets but once a year and its tasks are manifold. Over the years, the commission has acquired, among other things, a working group on arbitrary detention, a special rapporteur on the right to education and a special representative on internally displaced persons. Some 3,000 people gather in Geneva for the annual meetings; the commission has issued mandates to investigate 38 countries for human rights abuse.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A34496-2003Apr15.html
Was I supposed to chew on that tripe, or choke on it? Here's one for you to drink up when you get back
There is a strong war crimes case against US and British leaders, but big powers have immunity.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,936827,00.html
BTW, you still haven't answered my questions.
Has anyone thought that if it weren't for journalists and politicians, we might actually all be able to get along?
journalists, politicians, and studio wrestlers
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The Alliance of Liberty
Meet the U.N.'s replacement
Posted: 10 February 2003
By Evan Coyne Maloney Would the McDonald's Corporation make an appropriate sponsor for a seminar on obesity?
Should Bacardi be providing refreshments at Alcoholics Anonymous meetings?
If Bill Clinton offered you marital advice, would you take it?
Unless you're a fat, drunk adulterer or a former president, I assume your answer to each of those questions is no. I also assume you wouldn't let Iraq run a conference on disarmament, or let Libya lead a human rights commission.
You might not. But the United Nations would.
Yes, the United Nations--whose purported purpose is "to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person" and "to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom"--decided that Iraq would make an appropriate leader for its U.N. Disarmament Conference, and that the U.N. Commission on Human Rights should be entrusted to Libya.
The U.N. pays lip service to human rights and freedom, but then lets countries like Libya and Iraq drive the discussions where these concepts are debated and defined. Is it any wonder, then, that the U.N.--for all of its inconsequential finger-waving and resolution-passing--has been unable to achieve any of the aims set out in its own charter?
Flawed By Design
The real problem isn't that the U.N. is weak and morally blind, the real problem is that it is built to be this way. As a result, the U.N. is structurally incapable of fulfilling its own goals:
The United Nations makes no distinction between democracies and dictatorships. Libya, Syria and Iraq have the same voice and the same vote as countries like Canada, Iceland and Japan. Because much of the world is not free, any serious effort to liberate the oppressed would be stifled by the sizable bloc of nations that freedom threatens.
The United Nations can't enforce its own resolutions. It has neither the brawn nor the backbone to do so. Without a fighting force, resolutions can't be enforced unless members commit their own troops. But, because other nations rarely put their resources where their rhetoric is, violators correctly calculate that enforcement will never come. Emboldened by years of U.N. inaction, the Saddam Husseins of the world now understand that continual stonewalling is the formula for escaping punishment.
Powder-blue helmets. Like Rodney Dangerfield, U.N. peacekeepers get no respect. This may have something to do with the fact that they wear powder-blue helmets in the middle of war zones. Or maybe it's because the U.N.--hamstrung by an institutional fear of force--discourages its peacekeepers from taking action, even in self-defense. Whatever the reason, peacekeepers are able to maintain tenuous peace only when combatants are willing to grant it. How effective are they? Not very: in a few brutal days during the summer of 1995, as U.N. peacekeepers stood by, some 8,000 people were massacred in Srebrenica, Yugoslavia, a city designated a "safe haven" by the United Nations.
Because these flaws are inherent in the design and culture of the U.N., they won't go away without rebuilding the U.N. from the ground up. That's not going to happen, so we must recognize the U.N. for what it is: a terminal patient, an abject failure, a latter-day League of Nations. And, like its precursor, its time--if it ever came--has come and gone. It's time for a replacement.
The Alliance of Liberty
What we need instead is an Alliance of Liberty, whose purpose is to ensure the eventual freedom of every person on the planet. It would state its mission as follows:
We, the free people of the world, in recognition of the fact that freedom is a gift given to us through the selfless sacrifice of our ancestors, and in agreement on the belief that it is our moral obligation to share this gift with those who were not fortunate enough to be born into it, declare ourselves united in an Alliance of Liberty, whose purpose is to secure the freedom of every human everywhere.
The Alliance would have two main objectives: to free the unfree, and to bring about long-term peace. When it must, the Alliance would use force to topple tyrants. But, by defeating tyranny--even when war is required to so do--the Alliance will be working towards an ultimate peace, a goal touted but unattained by the United Nations and the League before it.
What Is Peace?
Paradoxically, conflict is sometimes required to secure peace. In World War II, peace in Europe was achieved through the exercise of military muscle. But let's say the pacifists had been successful at convincing the allies that--to use the words of Jacques Chirac--"war always means failure and therefore everything must be done to avoid war." If Hitler gobbled up Europe and satiated his appetite for expansion, the fighting in Europe would be over. Pacifists would declare success, because by allowing Hitler to roll over Europe, war was avoided. In the minds of those who believe that peace is the absence of war, a war-free Europe living under the thumb of the Nazis would be a Europe living in peace. Talk about doublespeak.
Of course, peace is not merely the absence of war. Peace is the absence of threat. That's why the Cold War--a conflict containing much threat but no direct fighting--is referred to as a war; for forty years, the world lived under a frightening threat, and we rightly recognized that state of threat as a state of war.
Only by eliminating the threats that the world faces today will we achieve meaningful, lasting peace. Given that such threats invariably come from repressive regimes--how often do you find free countries at war with each other?--bringing freedom to those without it will eliminate these threats, and will lessen the likelihood of new ones emerging in the future. In other words, we may need to fight wars now if we want peace in the future. Or, we can let threats fester, and leave future generations even less secure than we are today. But, remember: threats do not go away simply because one side wishes to avoid conflict. There is no such thing as a unilateral peace.
The Future of the U.N.
In the coming weeks and months, we will hear much debate about the future of the United Nations. Such talk is futile. The United Nations is a world body in rigor mortis. It is not, as it set out to be, a body for promoting progress. Instead, the U.N. promotes stasis. And it has not, as it set out to do, brought about larger freedom. Instead, the U.N. winks at dictatorships by granting them the same consideration as democracies. The U.N. may truly desire world peace, it just doesn't know how to get there.
History gave the gift of freedom to many, but it overlooked many more. Is it right that we enjoy this gift without sharing it? What we now call a coalition of the willing should band together in a permanent alliance to replace groups that--like the U.N. and NATO--find themselves struggling for relevance. Those free nations that agree to fulfill the mission of the Alliance are welcome to help the United States carry the light of liberty to the darkest parts of the globe. And to those other free countries, the stingy ones that seem to think freedom is finite and must be hoarded, I ask: is the only freedom worth fighting for your own?
au1929 wrote:Craven
Quote:
I do not believe that it is academically honest to assert that this was the only way to get rid of Saddam.
By what other circumstance would Saddam have relinquished his grip as leader of Iraq?
I can think of many, but before I spend time dredging them up could you at least confirm that you are of the opinion that this is the only way? Please note that there are also many ways to prosecute war. IMO it's not reasonable to assert that there was only one path available.
Craven
Yes this was the only way to effect a regime change. Saddam was not about to leave by his own volition and it was certain that the Iraqi people were not in a position to push him out. Could Hitler been deposed by any other method?
Au, man tends to narrow down the realm of possibility to options he can count on one hand. Expression like "I had no choice" etc are common place. With a very small amount of lateral thinking the absurdity of that position is quite clear. There are always options, and no they are not a simple "war or Saddam becomes benevolent" array.
In any case I tried to throw a line out there and see if it would avoid some future tedium.
I said, "Please note that there are also many ways to prosecute war."
The point of that sentence was to avoid the war or no war trap and try to find a way in which I could clarify my point in a more palatable way. Let me try again, even if we avoid the debate of war being the only option and concede war, "this way" is most certainly not "the only way".
If you really do want to discuss the possibilities other than war for removing Saddam we can, but it's not the point I was making.
But what the hay:
Assasination,
Natural Causes,
Domestic Revolution......
Now before this gets really tedious let me point out that I'm not going to delve into the probability, I am simply responding to an assertion of the absolute lack of possibility.
Craven
Anything is possible, Hell Saddam could have gotten up one morning and decided to let everyone out of the jails and become benevolent. But is that reality or fantasy. If I wanted to live in a world of fantasy I would visit Disneyland. Iraq is not Disneyland.
Like I said, I am not contesting the practicalities of ousting Saddam as you state them. But absolute lack of possibility is also a fantasy so the Disenyland retort applies there too.
posted April 28, 2003
Families discover Hussein's murder by numbers
By Scott Peterson | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
ABU GHRAIB, IRAQ – The tears now falling in the Abu Ghraib cemetery can't be counted. But the graves can be: 993 of them, victims of Saddam Hussein, marked only by yellow and black metal plates with crudely-painted numbers. These were forgotten victims, most of them Shiite Muslims that their families say "prayed too much" or who opposed the regime, tucked behind a high wall a mile away from Iraq's notorious Abu Ghraib prison.
They were forgotten, that is, until the American war against Mr. Hussein unearthed state-sanctioned murder and linked the anonymous numbers with the names of those buried here.
Now families are digging up the remains for reburial, and finding for the first time the physical evidence of Hussein's regime. Among the field of markers, number 659 was just another pile of earth, until the al-Atabi family arrived to claim their father, Fadil Sadoun.
"Come back, come back to your family, to your children!" pleads Fadil's daughter, Rabab, at the center of a clutch of women clad in long jet-black gowns who slap their faces in grief. "He's an unimportant man, with children. Why did you kill him?" she wails at her ousted president.
The US fought this war for strategic reasons: to destroy any of Iraq's remaining weapons of mass destruction, to advance US security interests in a post-Sept. 11 world, even--at least in the minds of many Iraqis--to control Mideast oil.
But on the ground in Iraq, tha fall of Hussein is yielding an overwhelming human story of great loss. Families have become gravediggers, sifting through dirt with their fingers to recover every bone and scrap of cloth of Saddam Hussein's legacy.
While these scenes may bring closure to families, they are painful nonetheless. And the families are only now starting to flock to this site.
"Be quiet. Slowly, slowly, that's it," says Fadil Sadoun's cousin Hassan Sadran Hussein, as he directs men with tattooed hands and heavy-stoned silver Shiite rings on their fingers, as they feel through the dirt three feet down in the grave.
"Search well, don't leave anything," Hassan says, when more of the skeleton is revealed, and more dirt clawed away with a shovel. "Take your time."
Bones pile up on a graveside blanket, making the sound of dry wood clattering together when more bones are added.
Fadil Sadoun was first taken by security police in 1991, and held at Abu Ghraib prison for two years. When the overtly religious man was arrested again in 1996, he didn't come home. Instead, he was executed in 1997, given a number, and buried.
The loss seems unbearable for son Mustapha, who weeps uncontrollably a few feet away, his tears staining his pale blue shirt. Other family members try to comfort him, and finally have to carry him away, to the van that brought a wood coffin to collect the patricarch's remains.
"Oh my father, my father!" Mustapha chants with a broken voice. "You should be happy-Saddam is gone."
As dawn turns into a hot, blindingly bright and windy morning, more families arrive with scraps of paper scrawled with numbers, and with rudimentary coffins in tow. They walk purposefully along the rows of graves, scanning the markers as if searching for a familiar face in a crowd.
Beneath their feet are the morbid secrets that will define the toppled regime. Bureaucratic efficiency was masterful here. Numbers of graves are finally being matched to names of missing political prisoners by custodians of the cemeteries, who can finally speak out.
The executioners may be gone, but the cruel pain they inflicted endures.
"These are the victims of the crimes of Saddam Hussein," says Mohamed Hussein, who dropped upon grave number 288-of his brother, Ali Hussein-when he found it. He clenched the dirt in his fists, broke down, and leaned for support on a coffin that had clearly been used before.
"Tell the world," he says. "My brother prayed, and they took him from the street." Ali's coffin was carried to a truck, and placed alongside another coffin. That one held the remains of a pair of brothers of a neighboring family, found in a single grave.
While Iraq's modern history is being written today with freshly revealed documents, the opening of Hussein's torture chambers, and the testimonies of officially sanctioned killers, it is the buried treasure here that tells Iraq's true story.
"This was to keep Saddam on his throne. He would do anything," says Jassim Mohamed, whose 70-year-old uncle, in grave number 886, was killed with his militant Islamic son at their home south of Baghdad in October 2000. "Anyone who opposed him, he would kill them."
Among the staunchest of those opponents was Tariq Abu al-Hewa, a 27-year-old militant who lay 20 feet away, in grave number 834. He was arrested in 1999, executed in 2000, and operated with an Islamist group--even using a nom de guerre--that tried to kill senior members of the ruling Baath Party.
"The security agents took him from the street while he was selling perfume," says brother Khalid Rahim Hussein, as he used his car keys as a knife to tear strips of white cloth to wrap Tariq's bones.
"Saddam was a criminal, a dictator, and fascist," says Khalid. "I thank the Americans a lot-we praise them for ending Saddam, with God's help."
"If it wasn't for them, we wouldn't have found the corpse," adds cousin Riath Idramis.
The cemetery compound is part of a larger public one just a mile or so from the prison. And though Hussein ordered a mass release of prisoners last October, to reward Iraqis for giving their leader a perfect 100 percent reelection result, evidence emerged Friday of much more recent, wartime killing.
At the entrance to the prison is a portrait of Hussein that reads: "There is no life without the sun; there is no dignity without Saddam." That dignity was destroyed for 13 men accused of spying, when they were caught using handheld Thuraya satellite phones.
Still wearing prison-issue uniforms of white with blue stripes, their bodies were dug up from a mass grave just outside the prison by men with shovels, alerted to the spot by the smell. The bodies had their eyes strung with white or black cloth blindfolds, and their hands were tightly bound behind their backs. Some seem to have been executed, with bullet holes in their heads.
As accused spies, most were apparently held in the same cell block as Newsday journalists Matthew McAllester and Moises Saman, and freelance photographer Molly Bingham, an American, and Johan Rydeng Spanner, a Dane. Those non-Iraqis were also charged with spying, but released during the war after eight days.
Former prisoner Ihsan Hussein Mohamed on Friday estimated that the 13 men, the alleged spies, had been executed no later than April 8-the day before American forces arrived in the heart of Baghdad, and pulled down the statue of Hussein.
These men were, perhaps, the last official victims of the regime.
And Hussein's henchmen may have been waiting for the 13 bodies to arrive at the bleak, windswept cemetery about a mile away, possibly to put them into the 14 unmarked, empty graves that already had been dug there, beyond the last marker for grave number 993.
Abadi Jabbar found himself there at those empty holes Friday, as he searched for the remains of tribal cousins. Already he had found five. Still missing, according to the scrap of paper gripped in his right hand: numbers 867, 974, and 977.
When asked what this scene told him about Saddam Hussein, he replied: "You are the great witness. You have seen it with your own eyes."
from the May 07, 2003 edition
Treat Iraq's dark chapter like holocaust - remember
By John Hughes
SALT LAKE CITY – When CNN news executive Eason Jordan went public in the New York Times last month with hitherto untold stories of horrendous torture in Iraq, he was doing the world an important service. His article raised a storm because he'd kept silent about the torture for a dozen years while lobbying the Saddam Hussein government for CNN access and facilities. Mr. Jordan argued that to have told his story earlier would have jeopardized the lives of Iraqis and CNN staff in Baghdad.
I wish he'd told what he knew earlier, but even belatedly, it was important corroboration of the fact that Hussein's regime ranks with Hitler's and Stalin's and Pol Pot's and with those of a bunch of other contemporary tyrants from Bosnia to Rwanda in its cruelty to its own people.
Jordan told of an Iraqi cameraman beaten for a week and subjected to electroshock torture in a secret police basement.
He told of executions and teeth ripped out with pliers. He told of a woman beaten daily for two months while her father was forced to watch. Finally, as the American forces approached, the secret police tore her body apart, leaving it in a plastic bag on her family's doorstep.
As American troops have secured Iraq's cities, frightened citizens have emerged to revisit torture cells where hooks for hanging remain, to dig up graves looking for executed relatives, and to start telling their terrible tales of torture and killing on a scale that is mind-boggling.
Ears were sliced off, particularly of young men who went absent without leave from their military units. Official torturers left behind a trail of maimed victims without tongues, toenails, eyes. Thousands of people are missing and may never be found, even as new mass graves are uncovered, and family members scrabble in individual graves in search of relatives lost and probably executed.
Even if weapons of mass destruction are never found and the connection to Al Qaeda is never established beyond all doubt, putting an end to this despicable regime has been a noble cause.
Now the question is: What are we to do in the aftermath?
Where the torturers can be found, they must be brought to justice. But beyond this immediate task, the story of what Hussein did to his country and people must be pieced together in its entirety, recorded, and preserved as history for successive generations lest they forget.
This is no ghoulish whim. Most of the readers of this column probably live in free societies. Even in countries once not-free - in Africa, Eastern Europe, Asia - democracy is on the march. It is easy in this democratic environment to forget the extent of man's inhumanity to man in backward lands where tyrants still rule.
Last week, Americans celebrated the 2003 Day of Remembrance and the 10th anniversary of the US Holocaust Museum. Many of those who had suffered personally as a result of the Holocaust expressed concern that, for successive generations, apathy or affluence, or simply distance in time from the events, might cloud memories of what the Nazis did to 6 million Jews.
In Iraq's postwar trauma there is, as one New York Times reporter put it, "a great national catharsis, confronting the black heart of Mr. Hussein's rule and proclaiming its depravity for everyone to see."
But the electricity is coming back on, there will be running water, the garbage will get collected, and new construction will begin where mountains of rubble now lie.
Normalcy will return, and in a land whose history stretches back to the beginning of civilization, Hussein's reign of terror will be but a chapter to be forgotten.
It should not be.
There is concern - and properly so - over the loss of Iraq's cultural treasures from the pillaged Iraqi National Museum.
Those treasures, which record the emergence and growth of a great civilization, should be restored and preserved.
Preserved, too, in one of those decadent golden palaces that Hussein built while his people went without, should be the dark story of his time. With the help of the Iraqi people, it should become a permanent museum recording the murders and torture-inflicted anguish that was imposed on his subjects.
In this way, future generations would never forget, and hopefully would never permit a return to such misery.
