This was written before Saddam was even captured. This guy is a brilliant commentator & one of the most popular in my country. He despises those left wingers who use pure lies & rightly so. He literally tears them to pieces with fact.
ANDREW BOLT
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
back PRINT-FRIENDLY VERSION EMAIL THIS STORY
Year of the big lie
12dec03
THE gleeful fabricating of the myth that we were fools, frauds and flops in liberating Iraq proves two sad things.
First, truth matters too little to too many of our opinion makers. Second, so does freedom.
I know, I've said this in many Herald Sun columns this year, whether writing about, say, green fascists or the modish anti-American racism of our elites.
But this last column for 2003 must be about the most depressing illustration of it and of a media that often refuses to tell you what does not fit the biases of our cultural elite.
I'd bet you haven't heard, for instance, of three recent and remarkable news items that knock holes in the claim that as Labor says "we went to war on a lie".
Item one, detailed in just one newspaper here, is the leaking to the Weekly Standard two weeks ago of a United States Defence Department memo that lists the known or suspected links between Saddam Hussein's regime and Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida.
The memo, by under-secretary Douglas Feith, describes 50 such links, some dubious but many not, and concludes that they "clearly indicate that Osama bin Laden did co-operate with Iraq's secular regime despite differences in ideology and religious beliefs."
There are reports of meetings between bin Laden and the Iraqi Intelligence Service's top bombmaker; between bin Laden's deputy and Iraq's vice president; and between al-Qaida terrorists in Baghdad and Iraq's intelligence chief.
The memo says a captured terrorist trainer, Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, admits al-Qaida asked him to go to Iraq to learn about poisons, and that Abu Zubaida, who was al-Qaida's field commander, told his captors he'd asked bin Laden to talk to Iraq because the "potential benefits included access to . . . chemical or biological weapons material".
On the links go, including a credible report that an Iraqi connected to the Iraqi embassy in Kuala Lumpur escorted two of the September 11 bombers to an al-Qaida planning meeting.
NONE of this is final proof that al-Qaida and Saddam worked closely together which is not a claim the leaders of the coalition of the willing made anyway. Their argument was that it was lethally stupid to ignore the risk of Saddam sheltering and arming terrorists, as he'd already done for Abu Nidal.
But this memo at least proves how wrong anti-war activists are to insist, as does Age commentator Professor Robert Manne, that "there was no link between al-Qaida and Iraq".
Item two, which no newspaper here reported, is an investigation last month by the respected American internet magazine Slate into an alleged meeting in April 2001, between the head of the September 11 hijackers, Mohammed Atta, and an Iraqi diplomat in Prague.
Top Czech officials told reporter Edward Epstein on the record they remained convinced contrary to many media reports that this meeting did happen on the first of Atta's four mysterious trips to their capital.
Epstein also revealed the FBI was wrong when it said last year that car rental records proved Atta was actually in Virginia at the time. No such records exist.
So why didn't this make the news here, either? Is it that a possible Saddam-September 11 tie-in is just too awkward to digest?
The third item at least was reported here, prominently in the Herald Sun, but in just two buried paragraphs in the Age.
Remember the claims made without a whiff of evidence that the Blair Government lied when it said it had intelligence that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction that could be deployed in 45 minutes?
BRITISH and American reporters last week found the Iraqi Lt-Colonel who'd smuggled that information to Britain, after his unit was issued with what he claimed were chemical or biological weapons to be fired from a rocket-propelled grenade.
"It is 100 per cent accurate," he said. "Forget 45 minutes, we could have fired these within half an hour."
These are just the latest examples of how the "elite" media in particular has little time for news that backs the case for the war in Iraq.
The uncovering of Saddam's mass graves is likewise barely mentioned. Nor are the big protests in Iraq against the terrorist "resistance". Nor are the polls that show Iraqis feel better off having been liberated, and don't want US troops to leave for at least a year.
On it goes. That Iraq's economy is growing, crime is falling, power is running and oil is flowing good news like this, so vital to the hope of democracy in the Middle East, is largely ignored.
Instead, anti-war activists many of them in the media want you to believe they were right to try to stop the US from toppling a tyrant responsible for more than a million corpses.
And some will say almost anything to convince you.
Here's just two examples.
On Tuesday, SBS television ran yet another wild-eyed documentary by its pet propagandist, John Pilger, this time claiming the "fascist" US "regime" committed "war crimes" in its "illegal" attack on Saddam, who was the "only" leader to tell the "truth" about his weapons. It even accused the US of killing thousands of civilians deliberately, just like al-Qaida, and said its leaders should be tried like the Nazis at Nuremberg.
Pilger's moral confusion is sick enough, but more damning is Pilger's peddling of foul untruths about Iraq.
He has falsely claimed, for instance, that the United Nations' sanctions on Iraq killed 200 children a day in a "genocide", when a dozen Iraqi doctors have said, no, the real crime was that Saddam simply refused to give them crucial medicines.
He falsely claimed the US handed Iraq its chemical and biological "weapons", when the truth is that an American non-profit research institute linked to our Australian National University unwittingly sent germ samples to Iraqi medical and agricultural facilities, thinking they'd be used for legitimate science.
Pilger also misleadingly claimed that "up to 10,000" civilians died in the Iraq war, not telling viewers he was relying on "research" by double-counting anti-war activists who include in their toll of 9766 many suicide bombers and slain terrorists, as well as their hundreds of victims, and dozens of criminals killed in shootouts since the war's end.
What Pilger didn't show, of course, were the countless brave Iraqis doctors, police, administrators and teachers now working with the US to give their country the democracy and freedom it never had.
What an inspirational story this is. What a shame it is so rarely told. Instead, we hear only the gloating over every American setback, however tiny or bloody.
"If this is success, try to imagine failure," giggled gloater-in-chief, ABC star and millionaire "ex"-communist Phillip Adams, last week, forgetting he himself imagined a "Stalingrad-style battle" for Baghdad.
MANY anti-war hysterics before the war also "imagined failure" in Iraq, and recalling their predictions should tell even Adams that this war has actually gone brilliantly.
Greens leader Bob Brown, for example, said more than 100,000 children would be killed, and the Australian Sociological Association, in a letter signed by 300 notables, warned of a "probable loss of 100,000 civilians".
But the most detailed attempt to "imagine failure" was made a year ago by the Medical Association for Prevention of War, in a report endorsed by Labor's president, Carmen Lawrence.
"Total possible deaths on all side during the conflict and the following three months range from 48,000 to over 260,000," it said. "Civil war . . . could add another 20,000 deaths. Additional later deaths from post-war adverse health effects could reach 200,000. If nuclear weapons were used, the death toll could reach 3,900,000."
Add to this the million refugees predicted by the UN, the environmental holocaust predicted by the Greens, and the famine, riots, soaring petrol prices and explosion of the entire Middle East predicted by so many other apocalyptics.
And none of it happened.
COMPARE the predictions to the reality and admire the difference. Admire those gallant people some of them Australian who made that difference.
And ask why that difference is not hailed by people you'd expect to tell the truth about Iraq, and the boldest attempt to bring freedom to a tyranny you are ever likely to see.
Truth and freedom. Let's talk more on this next year.
Another thing... from the article that Fred posted... the author, Andrew Bolt, is right on the money about John Pilger except he missed one other important relevant bit... that John Pilger is more than just a sick lying morally confused propagandist.... John Pilger is also a communist.
In fact, it's more accurate to say that John Pilger is a sick lying morally confused propagandist because he *is* a communist.
Ron I think most on the right already know it and don't need evidence,
from your perspective you'd say we know its not true and will never see it. From my perspective I just think your side just throws in too much shonky evidence I spent time looking up edward Epstein he was fairly clear he couldn't be sure where if Atta wsas there, but the U.|S. hjas had the Iraqi diplomat since July.
Alsso I listened to a foreign aid worker in Iraq working for the quakers mission in Iraq ( about the time of the invasion) he was pretty clear his organisation had got a lot more co-operation from the Iraqi Administration than from the U.N. in getting medicine.
Because keremiko they are spoiling people's minds with their inverted vision of the world. They are turning EVERYTHING upside down. And what's the worst their propaganda sounds so 'fair' and intriguing, people who were not into it before are easily convinced in what liberals are saying.
It was Lenin before with his 'lands to masses', now it is liberals with social healthcare and 'fair trade'. Know that you are fooling nobody.
Keremiko if you ask such a reasonable question with a crowd like these, expect no different that what you got as a response.
Notice the complete lack thereof of anything closely resembling reason or facts. But when you have nothing to rely on, I guess it can kinda leave you speechless.
Ah, Andrew Bolt - Murdoch's chief attack dog at the tabloid Herald-Sun - a bloke who'll never let the truth get in the way of a good yarn - a shock-jock in the O'Reilly mould, a bloke whose job it is to stir up ****. Like the sound of him? Google search for Piers Akerman in Sydney, and Miranda Devine isn't far away either, and you'll get all the right-wing, anti-left-liberal biased stuff you want. Wallow in their simplistic takes on complex issues - they make so black-and-white don't they, so easy you don't even have to think.
I mean, these ****ers aren't objective, y'know, like the way journalists are meant to be - they don't report - they pass their opinions off as facts. I mean **** Fred, what's this:
"[Pilger] falsely claimed the US handed Iraq its chemical and biological "weapons", when the truth is that an American non-profit research institute linked to our Australian National University unwittingly sent germ samples to Iraqi medical and agricultural facilities, thinking they'd be used for legitimate science."
I mean, what the ****??? This is what Bolt passes off as truth? And you believe it? You believe that America unwittingly gave Anthrax and Bocci-****ing-lism to Iraq in the belief that Saddam Hussein, Saddam-****ing-Hussien, the maddest dictator mass-murdering ****wit nut-job since Adolf Hitler himself, this mad ****, was going to use these horrible germ ****ing things so that "Iraqi medical and agricultural facilities would use them for legitimate science"???
And you ****ing believe this?
HUH?
****! Bolt's as far-right as they come - Media Watch regularly out the guy as a ******** artist. He's got a chip on his shoulder about these "elites" in the media to whom he thinks are anti-American, and more importantly, anti-Bolt ... but the media hasn't run with his "facts" yet because they haven't been verified - Look, Bolt doesn't tear anyone to pieces with fact - the "facts" in his story haven't been picked up by the major news outlets NOT because these outlets are run by elites who don't want to know the truth, but because these "facts" haven't been verified. And when you're dealing with administrations as sneaky and devious and prone to spinning lies as the ones who've gone and blown **** out of Iraq, you pretty much have to check everything. Y'know, there was that leaked memo: "Niger Gave Uranium to Iraq!" and everyone got scared to death and ran with that because it must be true, because Dubya said so, and used it in his State of hte Union address.
Well, that was a lie along with all the others used to justify the invasion, so now the journalists are acutally CHECKING these facts before they run with them (unlike Bolty), and using a cynical eye towards anything (let's call it propaganda because that's what it is) coming out of George Dubya's gob.
Y'know, the Herald-Sun is Murdoch's pro-war tabloid. The broadsheet News-owned Australian isn't far away either. Rupert's pro-war because having Bush in the White House means rich ****s get richer. And all Rupert has ever ever cared about is being a rich **** who wants to get richer. I mean, **** Fred, this is a bloke who changed nationalities, gave up his Australian citizenship just so he could make more cash and wield more influence over punters like you. He's pro-war and so are his papers. I don't know where Bolt gets his "elite" **** from - he should take a look at the bloke who signs his pay cheque if he wants to winge about elites controlling the media. What's more elite than one of the world's richest ****wits getting richer?
Anyway. When the major news networks VERIFY the things Bolt is passing off as facts then ... I dunno. Great. Let's party.
Bolt is a grand man & a voice of freedom for all. For a bloke that also owns all these so called pro war papers there sure are a lot of left wing thinkings. But we love democracy don't we champ, we all get a say without fear of retirbution other than verbal. Freedom came from war so someone like you that supports the Greens, who are no better than environmental Nazis, should look at what you write.
You contradict yourself constantly. War gave you your freedom. You seem very biased also & are set in yout left wing ways too deeply. You keep believing there is a NWO out to get you mate. Those black choppers hovering round Googee Beach lately?
Choppers? Coogee Beach? NWO's? Greens? Nazis? Bolt a grand man? A voice of freedom?! Contadicting myself? What? Where? When? What? This war gave me freedom? What, from Saddam Hussein? Mate, I didn't really get any of that.
Look, Bolt's an arse. Lemme swap you your biased righty for a gaggle of biased lefties from Fairfax:
You do read alternate viewpoints than your own? Y'know, to get the other side's opinion, in order to balance your own and be aware that there are differing opinions and people who hold a different one to you aren't necessarily wet-blanket tree-hugging enemies of freedom.
Mate, my mates fought in Gulf War 1. They defended East Timor. I was behind them then. And if they go to Iraq now I'll be behind them again. But the reasons put forward by Bush and Howard and Blair have consistently been proven ********. So you believe whatever you want and read your maniac Bolt. But this is going to blow up in their faces one day because the truth will out and it'll **** them up.
oneofpeace said this in post #16 : Keremiko if you ask such a reasonable question with a crowd like these, expect no different that what you got as a response.
Notice the complete lack thereof of anything closely resembling reason or facts. But when you have nothing to rely on, I guess it can kinda leave you speechless.
You know what is ironic?
Even the "idea" of blowing the **** out of some folks, just because they have a (very) different view of the world from yours is somewhat terrorizing.
In that sense, if you OK this idea in your mind, you definitely do give the right to the terrorists to do what they are doing. You basically agree with their approach to life.
Do these people think they are being convincing when they talk about democracy and freedom of speech? How can you "spread" and "inforce" something you don't even believe in?
At least you support the troops & thanks. I do read all forms of media & are true conservative just like Bolt is. He's been noted as one of the most factual commentators in Aus coming from all circles so don't tell me he isn't respected.
I don't really care what the politicians are saying too much. I've been supporting the removal of Saddam since 1991 purely based on human rights & the potential to real threat the regime posed.
Think about it honestly. Saddam in power would never have solved the Middle East problem & terrorism at large. Peace would not be available. I think the politicains have this in mind but we can't tackle every dictator & human rights abuse at the same time. Look at the bigger picture, not what the men at the top are always saying in words.
I just can't imagine a peaceful Middle East with that regime in power. The West is finally on the Arabs peoples side & this will be the greatest things that ever happened.
Bolt is either loathed or loved - as black-and-white shock-jock right-wingers are - but as far as having respect for his brand of "journalism", among journos, he's got nil. I mean, he's been in and out of court for slander, Media Watch tore him to shreds over bottom-line untrue **** he wrote about some academic he had a grudge against - there are continual complaints to the Press Council about his stuff, he tried to **** over that Andrew Wilkie with some leaked memo he bragged he had but hasn't fronted up with (probably because he'll go to jail for leaking sensitive intelligence - I mean, that's treason), and he's offended tens of thousands of people. The guys's a germ.
I do however agree the world minus Saddam is a better place. I don't know if it's safer - time will tell. But for mine there's MORE terrorists wanting to join Al Queda and go on a jihad and meet those 72 virgins than before the Great Satan invaded holy land.
I just think there had to be a better way, and that better way was a united coalition of UN-backed forces - a world force, not just the US and Britain and a rag-tag bunch of little countries co-erced through free trade agreements, wanting to stay on side with the mighty US becuase they feared (like France, Germany and our brothers in NZ) that if they didn't support the US they'd be shunned.
Both are worth a read, if only for you to see the other side's viewpoint about why they were hesitant to invade the place. And lots of their warnings have come true. This war has killed 10,000 innocent Iraqis, there's more dying every day and there doesn't seem to be any light at the end of the tunnel for the US to pull out and let the world share the burden. Why? Oil. What else could it be? If they're keen on the freedom of the Iraqi people they wouldn't ban Canadian, Russian, French, German and Chinese companies from bidding to rebuild the joint. I mean, these countries have some of the world's best engineers, scientists, doctors, etc etc, yet they're being shut out because they didn't support the mad rush to war.
Bottom line is the French bloke is agreeing that the world had to act over Saddam, but the way the US went about it, invading and over-taking another country on the suspicion that they might have weapons, that they might be a threat, that they might give WMDs to Al Queda - all these maybes - set a dangerous precedent.
What's now to stop any country from invading another pre-emptively, on the premise, however shaky, that that country poses a threat to this them.
Should Australia invade Indonesia because there might be more Bali bombers where those came from?
Or should we work with the UN and Indonesia and Interpol and the FBI - whoever - and root out these fanatics?
For mine, the US used a sledgehammer when a scalpel was needed. And they did it for spurious reasons. If they'd cared about people funding terrorism we'd have invaded Saudi Arabia, hotbed of Western hatred - but nope, they supply lots of oil and their Kings and elites (including the bin Ladens) are mates of the Bush's.
fred hooper said this in post #21 : At least you support the troops & thanks. I do read all forms of media & are true conservative just like Bolt is. He's been noted as one of the most factual commentators in Aus coming from all circles so don't tell me he isn't respected.
I don't really care what the politicians are saying too much. I've been supporting the removal of Saddam since 1991 purely based on human rights & the potential to real threat the regime posed.
Think about it honestly. Saddam in power would never have solved the Middle East problem & terrorism at large. Peace would not be available. I think the politicains have this in mind but we can't tackle every dictator & human rights abuse at the same time. Look at the bigger picture, not what the men at the top are always saying in words.
I just can't imagine a peaceful Middle East with that regime in power. The West is finally on the Arabs peoples side & this will be the greatest things that ever happened.
Fred Hooper
Fred,
Little Coogoo here is a John Pilger Pimper... so he's apt to get his feathers ruffled when exposing Pilger for the lying slab of septic dog sh*it that he is.
little man the acid of your message is lost among the bile. what is impressive is actually being able to type with six fingers in a Y2K bunker in the hill country of ****-head County as your fist slips off your joystick and your self-administer those uppercuts. Good of you too.
You dismiss the fact that Saddam did support families of suicide bombers in Palestine, whereas the bombers deliberately explode themselves near civilians to kill them and that's why are considered terrorists. So, if Saddam did support terrorists, we have a case for invasion. Don't we?
"Oh then, what i was going to say is, how bombing Iraq will bring peace and stability to the Middle East...."
The case for going to war - hey, let's play it again, Sam - was because of the WMDs that Dubya scared us all into thinking were lying about the place in Iraq, just waiting for him to give to Al Queda, who Saddam was in bed with.
Said Georgie in January: "Imagine those 19 hijackers with other weapons and other plans, this time armed by Saddam Hussein. It would take one vial, one canister, one crate slipped into this country to bring a day of horror like none we have ever known."
And so everyone justifiably shat their daks and pretty soon it was bombs away Baghdad - you got a moustache or a burqa or a pair of pants you wear every day? Run!
Yet it's nearly a year after that speech and we still haven't found the ****ing things Dubya said he KNEW Saddam had. I mean ... the President is where the buck stops, no? I mean, ****in hell, Clinton tells the country that getting blown by an intern isn't actually sex, and he's impeached and hung out to dry and Ken Starr and the boys spend $10 million of tax-payer money to go after him - yet Dubya says things that ARE NOT TRUE, and that end up killing 10,000 innocent Iraqis and 500 US servicemen and **** knows how many other people in future, and he's still in office and planning for an election, that plenty of you people will vote for him in.
This is just insane.
Then there's Saddam's links with Al Queda, whose "evidence" is fragmented, spurious and downright invented at best. I mean, who's saying these things? Dissident Iraqis? Is it just possible that former Iraqi scientists looking for someone, anyone, please, to overthrow the dictator, might've tweaked their intelligence, just a tad? I mean, someone wrote that Niger-Uranium document, the one so badly forged that the Foreign Minister of Niger had resigned 10 years previously! (And yet still Dubya used it in the State of the Union speech - what a crazy ****-up, ha ha, how ever did we stuff that one up.)
As for Saddam paying off the families of suicide bombers in Palestine - in the Middle East and places where Israel is seen as just as destructive a force against peace as Hamas (hey, takes two to tango baby), Saddam's dirty money isn't seen as that much different from Barak or Bush providing the widows of dead servicemen with life-time pensions.
We in the West can't ascribe to it because they're the baddies and we're the good Christian Jew White People and God's actually on OUR side on this one, because doesn't the bible say Thou Shalt Not Kill?
Oh - we've murdered 10,000 innocent Iraqis? And Afghanis? And others who don't ascribe to the American Way? And our President put the death sentence on 140-odd of his fellow Texans? And our cool gun laws kill 11,000 of our own citizens each year, most by someone they know, their family.
I put it to this forum, that America for all its money and power and good will to see democracy and freedom flourish around the globe (well, for its own benefit) simply doesn't have the patience, wisdom or maturity to play the role of global police force.
Coogee Beach said this in post #28 : The case for going to war - hey, let's play it again, Sam - was because of the WMDs...........
Too latewater under the bridge and all that sort of thing, mate! Been there done that! The fat lady has sungshe's taken off her Viking helmet and blond wig, turned out the lights and gone to bed. She's snoring even (what a racket)! Good night!
But I know you're going to do so: So, feel free to go pound sand!
fred hooper said this in post #1 : This was written before Saddam was even captured. This guy is a brilliant commentator & one of the most popular in my country. He despises those left wingers who use pure lies & rightly so. He literally tears them to pieces with fact.
ANDREW BOLT
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
back PRINT-FRIENDLY VERSION EMAIL THIS STORY
Year of the big lie
12dec03
THE gleeful fabricating of the myth that we were fools, frauds and flops in liberating Iraq proves two sad things.
First, truth matters too little to too many of our opinion makers. Second, so does freedom.
I know, I've said this in many Herald Sun columns this year, whether writing about, say, green fascists or the modish anti-American racism of our elites.
But this last column for 2003 must be about the most depressing illustration of it and of a media that often refuses to tell you what does not fit the biases of our cultural elite.
I'd bet you haven't heard, for instance, of three recent and remarkable news items that knock holes in the claim that as Labor says "we went to war on a lie".
Item one, detailed in just one newspaper here, is the leaking to the Weekly Standard two weeks ago of a United States Defence Department memo that lists the known or suspected links between Saddam Hussein's regime and Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida.
The memo, by under-secretary Douglas Feith, describes 50 such links, some dubious but many not, and concludes that they "clearly indicate that Osama bin Laden did co-operate with Iraq's secular regime despite differences in ideology and religious beliefs."
There are reports of meetings between bin Laden and the Iraqi Intelligence Service's top bombmaker; between bin Laden's deputy and Iraq's vice president; and between al-Qaida terrorists in Baghdad and Iraq's intelligence chief.
The memo says a captured terrorist trainer, Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, admits al-Qaida asked him to go to Iraq to learn about poisons, and that Abu Zubaida, who was al-Qaida's field commander, told his captors he'd asked bin Laden to talk to Iraq because the "potential benefits included access to . . . chemical or biological weapons material".
On the links go, including a credible report that an Iraqi connected to the Iraqi embassy in Kuala Lumpur escorted two of the September 11 bombers to an al-Qaida planning meeting.
NONE of this is final proof that al-Qaida and Saddam worked closely together which is not a claim the leaders of the coalition of the willing made anyway. Their argument was that it was lethally stupid to ignore the risk of Saddam sheltering and arming terrorists, as he'd already done for Abu Nidal.
But this memo at least proves how wrong anti-war activists are to insist, as does Age commentator Professor Robert Manne, that "there was no link between al-Qaida and Iraq".
Item two, which no newspaper here reported, is an investigation last month by the respected American internet magazine Slate into an alleged meeting in April 2001, between the head of the September 11 hijackers, Mohammed Atta, and an Iraqi diplomat in Prague.
Top Czech officials told reporter Edward Epstein on the record they remained convinced contrary to many media reports that this meeting did happen on the first of Atta's four mysterious trips to their capital.
Epstein also revealed the FBI was wrong when it said last year that car rental records proved Atta was actually in Virginia at the time. No such records exist.
So why didn't this make the news here, either? Is it that a possible Saddam-September 11 tie-in is just too awkward to digest?
The third item at least was reported here, prominently in the Herald Sun, but in just two buried paragraphs in the Age.
Remember the claims made without a whiff of evidence that the Blair Government lied when it said it had intelligence that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction that could be deployed in 45 minutes?
BRITISH and American reporters last week found the Iraqi Lt-Colonel who'd smuggled that information to Britain, after his unit was issued with what he claimed were chemical or biological weapons to be fired from a rocket-propelled grenade.
"It is 100 per cent accurate," he said. "Forget 45 minutes, we could have fired these within half an hour."
These are just the latest examples of how the "elite" media in particular has little time for news that backs the case for the war in Iraq.
The uncovering of Saddam's mass graves is likewise barely mentioned. Nor are the big protests in Iraq against the terrorist "resistance". Nor are the polls that show Iraqis feel better off having been liberated, and don't want US troops to leave for at least a year.
On it goes. That Iraq's economy is growing, crime is falling, power is running and oil is flowing good news like this, so vital to the hope of democracy in the Middle East, is largely ignored.
Instead, anti-war activists many of them in the media want you to believe they were right to try to stop the US from toppling a tyrant responsible for more than a million corpses.
And some will say almost anything to convince you.
Here's just two examples.
On Tuesday, SBS television ran yet another wild-eyed documentary by its pet propagandist, John Pilger, this time claiming the "fascist" US "regime" committed "war crimes" in its "illegal" attack on Saddam, who was the "only" leader to tell the "truth" about his weapons. It even accused the US of killing thousands of civilians deliberately, just like al-Qaida, and said its leaders should be tried like the Nazis at Nuremberg.
Pilger's moral confusion is sick enough, but more damning is Pilger's peddling of foul untruths about Iraq.
He has falsely claimed, for instance, that the United Nations' sanctions on Iraq killed 200 children a day in a "genocide", when a dozen Iraqi doctors have said, no, the real crime was that Saddam simply refused to give them crucial medicines.
He falsely claimed the US handed Iraq its chemical and biological "weapons", when the truth is that an American non-profit research institute linked to our Australian National University unwittingly sent germ samples to Iraqi medical and agricultural facilities, thinking they'd be used for legitimate science.
Pilger also misleadingly claimed that "up to 10,000" civilians died in the Iraq war, not telling viewers he was relying on "research" by double-counting anti-war activists who include in their toll of 9766 many suicide bombers and slain terrorists, as well as their hundreds of victims, and dozens of criminals killed in shootouts since the war's end.
What Pilger didn't show, of course, were the countless brave Iraqis doctors, police, administrators and teachers now working with the US to give their country the democracy and freedom it never had.
What an inspirational story this is. What a shame it is so rarely told. Instead, we hear only the gloating over every American setback, however tiny or bloody.
"If this is success, try to imagine failure," giggled gloater-in-chief, ABC star and millionaire "ex"-communist Phillip Adams, last week, forgetting he himself imagined a "Stalingrad-style battle" for Baghdad.
MANY anti-war hysterics before the war also "imagined failure" in Iraq, and recalling their predictions should tell even Adams that this war has actually gone brilliantly.
Greens leader Bob Brown, for example, said more than 100,000 children would be killed, and the Australian Sociological Association, in a letter signed by 300 notables, warned of a "probable loss of 100,000 civilians".
But the most detailed attempt to "imagine failure" was made a year ago by the Medical Association for Prevention of War, in a report endorsed by Labor's president, Carmen Lawrence.
"Total possible deaths on all side during the conflict and the following three months range from 48,000 to over 260,000," it said. "Civil war . . . could add another 20,000 deaths. Additional later deaths from post-war adverse health effects could reach 200,000. If nuclear weapons were used, the death toll could reach 3,900,000."
Add to this the million refugees predicted by the UN, the environmental holocaust predicted by the Greens, and the famine, riots, soaring petrol prices and explosion of the entire Middle East predicted by so many other apocalyptics.
And none of it happened.
COMPARE the predictions to the reality and admire the difference. Admire those gallant people some of them Australian who made that difference.
And ask why that difference is not hailed by people you'd expect to tell the truth about Iraq, and the boldest attempt to bring freedom to a tyranny you are ever likely to see.
Truth and freedom. Let's talk more on this next year.
Too latewater under the bridge and all that sort of thing, mate! Been there done that! The fat lady has sungshe's taken off her Viking helmet and blond wig, turned out the lights and gone to bed. She's snoring even (what a racket)! Good night!
But I know you're going to do so: So, feel free to go pound sand!
Curley, matey, if you're happy to vote for a President who's lied to you, then good for you. Enjoy the plentiful fruits of that tunnel-visioned redneck wonderland where ends always justify the means and your President uses the fear of his fellows to spread an agenda being rammed down the world's throat by a bunch of mal-contented right-wing neo-con arseholes.
Who's next? Not Libya. They're our buddies now despite three decades of terrorism. Syria? They're unarmed enough. Ditto Iran. Wouldn't have a crack at North Korea though, would we, because they're not even trying to hide their nuclear-****ing-weapons, they're parading em down the street. They're just a bit too scary. Maybe we should try a spot of diplomacy on them.
Anyway - for Bush, the water's not under any bridge and the fat bastard isn't yet singing - Because come Election '04 his political rivals are going to repeatedly trot out his lies on television and night after night ram them down everyone's throat - I mean, so much of what he said pre-war isn't true. And the buck stops with him. So many things he's said to justify going to war (and hence killing lots of Americans) are going to be shown up on television - which as as we know means it must be true - as lies and crap, proving Dubya to be either a liar, incompetent or both. I'm going with both.
He and his cronies are toast my friend. You can't spin so much crap for so long in as dirty a game as politics and get away with it. They'll dig up all sorts of stuff on him. It's a dirty, dirty game and George has played it to the hilt plenty of times himself - hell, what was that with the supreme court and the chads or something in Florida? - and when the fat lady eventually cranks up she'll be singing "**** off Bush and don't come back you illiterate ****in daddy's boy idiot ****-stick".
Or something like that anyway. I bloody will be anyway. The guy's a dangerous fool and is so not the man who should have his finger on the button.
MrJukoVette said this in post #26 : LOL keremiko i dont think i need reasoning to blow communists and socialists up. I would if i could. Any more questions?
You left wingers are angry people. LOL. ABC Media Watch? LOL. About 15 people watch that channel let alone that show. Everyone has got the jist its a far left wing proproganda channel oddly funded by taxpayers dollars.
Fact of the matter is, you and Iraqis think its good the regime is gone, yet coalition action was the only thing that made it a reality already. Not UN/Western European weakness & appeasment or hand held marches through city streeets. Just reality & fact that is.
Its the only way the regime would have been ended so you contradict yourself by saying things are now better. Live with the fact that sometimes war is required & if you can't understand this then you never will understand the world.
Keremiko you can't blame him. He's a victim of Bush's deceit..
I kinda feel sad for people who can readily dismiss someone's lies like that and blindly follow. If you would notice the common phrasing.... "leftis propeganda" "liberal media". I think these people are manufactured or something
Just another victim of Bush's Scaregate campaign....for shame!!!
oneofpeace said this in post #34 : Keremiko you can't blame him. He's a victim of Bush's deceit..
I kinda feel sad for people who can readily dismiss someone's lies like that and blindly follow. If you would notice the common phrasing.... "leftis propeganda" "liberal media". I think these people are manufactured or something
Just another victim of Bush's Scaregate campaign....for shame!!!
Yes, whatever you say, oneofdeathnow keep pounding that sand....
