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No one but the dead has seen the end of war
by anna at 06:07 PM on July 28, 2003
Assassinate: verb To murder a prominent person by surprise attack, as for political reasons.
I've always opposed the war in Iraq though not on highfalutin moral grounds. I just view it as a distraction from the true matter at hand, the murder of Osama and all his Big Terror minions---especially former opthamologist Dr. Zawahiri. Somebody ought to rip his eyeballs out and skull-fuck him to death.
Now I've got another reason: the US assassination of Uday and Qusay Hussein. (Is it just me or do their names sound like pig Latin? And what were they doing with pocketbooks?)
You'll note that I referred to their demise as an assassination while calling the killing of Osama a garden-variety murder. To qualify as an assassin you must kill a prominent political figure. Osama isn't even a citizen of any country and thus can't be assassinated. The Hussein brothers were their father's top aides. Hence US forces assassinated them and then paraded their corpses on Iraqi TV.
Which isn't to say they didn't have it coming. They were rapists, killers in their own right and all-around bad guys. Uday in particular was a vicious sadist who made Marquis de Sade look like Mister Rogers.
But what really irked me was the way our government took us for such fools. To hear them tell it, they went to this villa to arrest them. When they refused to give up an "intense firefight" ensued involving much "small arms fire" erupted. Afterwards soldiers stormed inside and here's what they found: Uday, Qusay, his 14 year old son and a fifty year old bodyguard (in addition to the cash, condom, cognac and pocketbooks.)
Generally speaking, one's proficency at and penchant for violence is inversely proportional to one's wealth and privilege. Ghetto kids develop mad fighting skills and the requisite bloodthirsty 'tude early on or perish. In posh 'hoods like the ones the Hussein brothers grew up in, violence is rare. Thus most rich kids couldn't fight their way out of a uterus.
So you'd have us believe that two thirtysomething men of privilege, a 14 year old punk and a geezer proved any match for a platoon of highly trained soldiers backed by Apache attack helicopters, artillery and tanks? You might as well assert that Hiroshima residents could have shot down the Enola Gay. Don't insult my intelligence. Call a spade a spade as Chris Rock did when people started characterizing the deaths of Notorious B.I.G. and Tupac Shakur as assassinations. "Those niggaz was shot," he quipped.
Okay Ezy, I wasn't there. Maybe capturing them would have been too much of a hassle. But one thing's for sure: If anyone knew Saddam's whereabouts, it's them.
Lastly there's the matter of their corpses, which are being stored in an air-conditioned tent. Military officials await family members coming forward to claim them. Like who, might I ask? Saddam himself? Cousins of the boy they gunned down? Their widowed sisters who got that way after the Hussein brothers lured their hubbies back to Iraq only to brutally murder them? Those corpses will rot in that tent as well they should. Ha!
comments (7)
Your definition of assination seems too simplistic. Here's a snippet from a recent Slate article:
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The prohibition dates back to President Gerald Ford, who issued a 1976 executive order banning political assassinations after embarrassing revelations about U.S. efforts to kill Fidel Castro. President Reagan extended the ban with Executive Order 12333. But that ban doesn't apply to combat situations. According to most accounts of the Mosul raid, the American soldiers were fired upon when they entered the house. The moment gunfire was exchanged, the operation became a combat engagement, and anyone involved in the hostilities was legally fair game.
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The full article is here for anyone interested.
by Eviltom at July 28, 2003 7:27 PM
Haha! I said "assination" by mistake. DOH.
by Eviltom at July 28, 2003 7:28 PM
Not to mention a raid on a house 2 nights ago in which 4 Iraqi civilians were killed, and Saddam was not to be found. The press has been relatively silent. The military, "No comment." Erring on the side of caution is one thing. Killing innocent bystanders is something else. And I get the feeling there's an edge or an attitude whereby this administration feels it can do whatever it wants, and no one blinks.
by chris at July 29, 2003 11:00 AM
Anna, I think the text of your post pretty much ensures this website a bunch of hits by freaks & perverts in the coming days. Good god. Skull-fucking, rape, Osama, Marquis de Sade....
It should be good!
by Linz at July 29, 2003 11:56 AM
I believe our guys may have used a bit of overkill. I mean, TOW missiles, Apache helicopters, and 50 caliber machine guns are usually used on much larger targets. Of course they had taken fire and some of our guys were wounded. That tends to piss you off. They, also, had no idea what escape routes the Husseins had in place or if they had reinforcements on the way. Oh well. Hindsight is 20/20 and they didn't come out peacefully. So be it.
As far as the innocent civilians Chris, I couldn't agree more. They should not become a part of any combat operation. The sad thing about these types of efforts is that we don't have an effectively trained force to deal with occupation or rebuilding. We leave combat troops in place, who are trained for an entirely different brand of fighting, and expect them to show almost impossible restraint. This is while their friends and fellow soldiers are being killed off every day by people using guerilla tactics? These guys don't understand and the rules of engagement get fuzzy in these situations. These troops have been in Iraq for too long, in my opinion, wondering if they are the next to be killed in some guerilla raid. This tends to make you a little trigger happy. Innocent people are going to continue to die until some semblance of order is restored. I just hope we can finish this up and get our guys out of there with the least amount of bloodshed possible.
by Ezy at July 29, 2003 12:04 PM
i'll share this joke that someone sent to me:
Donald Rumsfeld died and went to heaven. As he stood in front of St.Peter at the Pearly Gates, he saw a huge wall of clocks behind him. He asked, "What are all those clocks?" St. Peter answered, "Those are Lie-Clocks. Everyone on Earth has a Lie-Clock. Every time you lie the hands on your clock will move." "Oh," said Rumsfeld, "whose clock is that?" "That's Mother Teresa's. The hands have never moved, indicating that she never told a lie." "Incredible," said Rumsfeld. "And whose clock is that one?" St. Peter responded, "That's Abraham Lincoln's clock. The hands have moved twice, telling us that Abe told only two lies in his entire life." "Where's Bush's clock?" asked Rumsfeld. "Bush's clock is in Jesus' office. He's using it as a ceiling fan."
by lajoie at July 29, 2003 3:20 PM
Donald Rumsfeld is a very scary man. I'll leave it at that.
Interestingly Bush once considered lifting the ban on assassinations but he never did. I also think it speaks to the surreal nature of these times that we causally talk about US soldiers entering private homes halfway across the world. Tell you this: If Iraqi soldiers came anywhere near my home I'd open fire on them with my 9.
Flimsy Linz, we shall see. But for a while there I was slipping code words into my posts. No influx of perverts. Maybe they came but just lurked.
Lastly, this: The guy who ratted out the Hussein bros cleared $30 million. If he were to give up Osama and Saddam, that total would go up to $80 million tax-free and all at your expense. Stupid Donald Rumsfeld. D'oh!
by anna at July 29, 2003 5:04 PM