Freedom’s Just Another Word for 14,000 Killed
More than 14,000 civilians have been killed in Iraq in the first half of this year, an ominous figure reflecting the fact that “killings, kidnappings and torture remain widespread” in the war-torn country, a United Nations report says.
Killings of civilians are on “an upward trend,” with more than 5,800 deaths and more than 5,700 injuries reported in May and June alone, it says.
The report lists examples of bloody suicide bombs aimed at mosques, attacks on laborers, the recovery of slain bodies, the assassinations of judges, the killings of prisoners, the targeting of clergy — all incidents dutifully reported by media over these three-plus years of chaos in the streets.
But hey, at least it hasn’t devolved into a theocratic militia state yet… right Hitch?
The U.N. agency says it has been made aware since last year of the targeting of homosexuals, “increasingly threatened and extra-judicially executed by militias and ‘death squads’ because of their sexual orientation.”
The intolerance propelling the anti-gay prejudice extends to ethnic and religious minorities and others whose manner of dress doesn’t meet the standards of religious extremists.
“On 28 May, an Iraqi tennis coach and two of his players were shot dead in Baghdad allegedly because they were wearing shorts. Similar threats are said to be made to induce men to conform to certain hair styles or rules regarding facial hair,” the report says.
But the women are better off, right?
Women face intolerance — and violence — as well.
“In some Baghdad neighborhoods, women are now prevented from going to the markets alone. In other cases, women have been warned not to drive cars or have faced harassment if they wear trousers. Women have also reported that wearing a headscarf is becoming not a matter of religious choice but one of survival in many parts of Iraq, a fact which is particularly resented by non-Muslim women.”
Oh.
If this is the sort of progress we’ve made with 14,000 dead this year, I can only imagine what the place’ll look like come December.
What about the school that got built one time! Fascist!
I want to make fun of Hitchens, but it’s just too easy, and too sad.
Yeah, but Saddam gassed his own people… er, um… freedom isn’t free… uh… Ah, fuck it. GAAAAAH!!!!! FAAAAAAGS!!!!!!
I can only imagine
I can’t even imagine…
*SIGH*
And when we’re all dead, all six billion of us, because we couldn’t find a way to live together without butcherin’ one another (thanks, Josey), and the world is one huge open grave, with bodies rotting in the carbon-enhanced sunshine, the rats feasting, an eerie silence over the land, there they’ll be. One last Israeli, crawling through the rubble and death, a sharpened thigh-bone gripped in his radiation-ravaged right hand towards one last Iranian, leaning on a makeshift crutch, his left leg missing below the knee, tied off with an old leather belt. The last Iranian grips a chunk of concrete in his left hand, and staggers towared the last Israeli. They both know that they must kill the other, for their god, in his infinite mercy, wills it…
mikey
The thing is, I think Hitchens genuinely wants peace and prosperity for the people of Iraq. It’s just that he can’t back down from the disastrous, shoot-first-consider-the-likely-outcome-later approach he’s been pimping all these years.
It’s sort of a miracle that he’s such a drunk, actually. I can imagine him hurling a bottle of scotch and a tumbler at his living room wall, then loudly denouncing anybody who dares to suggest that the result isn’t a perfectly poured glass of booze.
I just got finished reading The Kite Runner, by Khaled Hosseini. It had scenes in it that were so harrowing (Afghanistan after the Soviets and during the reign of the mujahadeens (sp.?) and the Taliban).
Reading about how Iraq is developing into a virulent theocratic state is giving me flashbacks of scenes from the novel!
Heckuva job, Georgie!
Extra-Judiciary Anti-Fag Roaming Execution Parties?
There’s parts of the American Right who can only dream of one day being as advanced as Neo-Iraq.
I dunno DA,
Hitchens could give a shit about other people, he’s in it for the ego. He sincerely believed that if he rolled Elevens on this one, he’d be remembered as another principled type (you know, like, Eric Blair) who was willing to turn his back on “his” people for what he thought was a larger meaning. He sought to be on the right side of history, a legacy job.
I mean he sincerely hates the mindset behind the Rushdie fatwa, but I also think he was jealous of the guy.
mikey…yes…sigh.
But “carbon-enhanced sunshine”… LOL
Well, ya know what they say,” You can’t make an omelet without killing people”.
“People do not like to admit that they have been gulled or conned, so a vested interest in the myth was permitted to arise, and a lazy media never bothered to ask any follow-up questions.”
That’s the Christopher Hitchens I like to remember. The one who had the guts to call out Mother Teresa, which is what the above quote refers to. You gotta admit the guy is consistent about anti-religious fundamentalism, at least.
I dunno DA …
You’re right, Jay B.
(I was kinda stretching for a set-up line for the throwing-the-whiskey-bottle-and-tumbler-at-the-wall joke, anyway …)
Just like the budget deficit, you are supposed to be clapping excitedly because some people said it would be worse, which just goes to show that they hate America and Bush was right all along.
Besides, like the IDF the Sunni insurgents have a “right to defend themselves” which gives them a universal permission slip to strike back at the Shi’a civilians however they want, even if that means exploding more of those beautiful gold plated buildings on top of the people inside.
Of course the Shi’a have that right too, which is why all these 14000 killings are just whole lot of self-defense happening, which even Baby Jesus is willing make an exception for.
You are a brave warrior for making it past Hitch’s first paragraph.
I got fully brainlocked by the claim that there can be “nothing remotely comparable” between the war in Iraq and Vietnam, because it is not “the inheritor of a bankrupt French colonialism.”
It was the taint of the surrender monkeys you see, that’s what’s went wrong in Vietnam. Not even napalm can clean that out.
Iraq, on the other hand, is the inheritor of a bankrupt British colonialism.which is something entirely different and obviously prevents even the most remote comparison.
That’s as deep into the report from Hitcheykoo Park I could get for now anyway. Maybe when my brain stops bleeding.
This is fuckin’ MEAN:
I can imagine him hurling a bottle of scotch and a tumbler at his living room wall, then loudly denouncing anybody who dares to suggest that the result isn’t a perfectly poured glass of booze.
But it is mega-appropriate for Hitchens, and also fucking hi-larious! (Am I part of the Inquisition for saying so?)
Actually, amazingly enough, Hitch has the right take on Vietnam. He recently wrote an op-ed for an Australian paper, The Age I think, laying it all out. Basically, he thinks the US should have backed Ho in ’45 instead of idiotically helping the French try to salvage their colony, and that if we had never gone into Vietnam at all in the ’60s, the consequences would be that everything would be exactly like it is now, except that millions of people now dead or maimed would be alive or whole. I have no quibbles whatsoever, and find it baffling that someone who is so right on Vietnam (indeed, righter than most on the left) can be so utterly deluded on Iraq.
brooksfoe, it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that if we hadn’t gone into Vietnam, a lot of people wouldn’t have died. I’m not really generous enough to give Hitchens a thumbs-up on that call. It’s pretty much a no-brainer.
The problem is NOW. There is no turning back the clock to get those soldiers out of Vietnam OR Iraq. And as smart as we all are, none of us seems to have a solution that might prevent a violent theocratic “democracy” ruled by Taliban-ish quasi-military death squads in Iraq.
How many Iraqis were being killed each month under Saddam?
But it’s still safer then souf central LA, occording to the homies in the GOP.
Niggaz are suicide bombing their crack houses killing 52 and injuring 100 everyday.
YAY FOR US!
Jose’s absolutely right, Saddam killed people, too, so as long as we stay under his number we’re golden!
Havijng been to Iraq, it sure isnt anything like the situation was in Vietnam, no matter how many pacifist arm chair idiots here proclaim it to be so. But, yea those guys who showed me the torture scars from being held by the Fedayeen Saddam or who had most of their families killed by same, well, fuck em right? They were so better off under Saddam and we ALL know that the plan you guys had for the place was SO superior to what has actually been accomplished as opposed to talking about it and issueing another useless UN resolution. I mean, John (I was in Vietnam) Kerry has a PLAN and boy I’m sure it’s a GOOD one too! He said so…just ask him. He was in Vietnam don’t you know?
I hope you guys keep lots of lube available so you dont get chaffed rubbing each other over your superior ideas and plans that go nowhere and let Saddam stay in power for 12 years after GW 1 mooning the “international community”. I mean, you guys are SO much smarter than McChimpy BusHitler and wow you are SMART. I know! Lets have another UN Resolution!! That SO works!!!11 one!!
SGT Ted – I think you should seek some counseling. Your anger is a little disturbing to witness. Lots of people come back from war-torn areas with psychological problems. There is nothing to feel bad about.
When our folks torture or kill people or support monsters like Saddam and sell them weapons etc. at the same time they’re known to be committing atrocities, that’s different! Geezus, leftards, grow a brain!
SGT Ted:
As to whether Iraq is at all like Vietnam, you might want to ask someone who was in Vietnam. If you were in Vietnam and are still a plain ol’ sergeant, you got passed over for a few.
Real men don’t use lube when rubbing their superior ideas…
Well, shoot, I’m no help. I’ve never been to Iraq. I’m not sure what the point is. They sent me to Vietnam and Cambodia and all we did was get high, kill people, blow shit up and come home fucked up. So it kind of looks like Iraq to me, except the iraqis are doing a bunch of the internacine killing so we can conserve ammunition.
But Sarge, I’m confused. I mean, is your whole argument that we needed to save the iraqi people from saddam and his security forces, who did definately in fact murder, imprison and torture them with regularity? Because, if that’s so, why didn’t we have a decent national debate about using our blood and treasure to do that? Why did your buddy McChimpy have to lie about WMDs to get us to go? For that matter, where were we on Rwanda? Kazakhstan? Oh yeah, we’re tennants of Nazarbayev’s. We pay him money in exchange for basing rights. You ok with that, Sarge? ‘Cause, y’know, he murders, imprisons and tortures his own people too. I’m gonna guess you were against the air war against Serbia ’cause YOUR boogieman, the Clenis, thought it was a good idea. You think Milosevich was a great humanitarian?
Come on, if you approve of spending American treasure and lives to kill Islamics ’cause you hate/fear them, come the fuck out and say it, boy. Don’t hide behind such obvious bullshit. Jeez, stand up count off…
mikey
I mean, you guys are SO much smarter than McChimpy BusHitler and wow you are SMART.
Ya know, I gotta go ahead and agree with this statement.
I not only know that Russia and China are big; I know that Russia is actually bigger than China.
Hitchens:
We invaded Saudi Arabia?
amen, mikey.