Media Malfeasance

Well Word… er, Mr. Sanders… LOL… at least your fans know how to address cyber Christmas cards for you next year.

Now… I’m truly scratching my head over this from your post, and the linked articles:

in 2001, shortly after the 9/11 terror attacks, this supposedly impartial Norwegian doctor (actually a radical Marxist member of Norway’s Red party) expressed support for the hijackers.

In an interview with the Norwegian daily, Dagbladet, shortly after the attacks, Gilbert stated:

…. snip…

I checked the Dagbladet link in the Camera.org piece you refer to. That interview with the statement of bombing and killing civilians in Iraq was given Sept 30th, 2001… 19 days after 911.

Let’s see… OIF was March 2003. Hummmm… what *could* Gilbert be speaking of? Surely not the the Kuwait/1st Gulf War, as we didn’t go into Iraq. Did he mention Kosovo, Yugoslavia or Bosnia? But nooooo.

So at that date, he could only be referring to Clinton’s Desert Fox in ’98. This came on the heels of Congress and Clinton passing and enacting the Iraq Liberation Act… a policy that made desposition of Saddam official policy. A fact that the Dems and a nation with the historic/current events attention span the size of a small gnat tend to forget for political expediency.

It was a four day campaign. The very type of campaign that the world wants Israel to engage in. I’d say Madeline no-so-bright put it aptly into words with her quote:

“I don’t think we’re pretending that we can get everything, so this is – I think – we are being very honest about what our ability is. We are lessening, degrading his ability to use this. The weapons of mass destruction are the threat of the future. I think the president explained very clearly to the American people that this is the threat of the 21st century. [. . .] [W]hat it means is that we know we can’t get everything, but degrading is the right word.”

ooops… there’s that lie about WMD’s again. Ages well, no?

Per a July 2005 article by Dr. Mark Conversino:

In response to Saddam’s intransigent behavior President Bill Clinton declared on December 16 that Hussein had “abused his last chance” and that he had directed US forces to strike military and regime security targets in Iraq. In a brief televised address to the American people, President Clinton laid out both his rationale for and the objectives of the operation. Referring to airstrikes he called off at the last moment during a tense period in November 1998, the President declared, “I gave Saddam a chance—not a license. If we turn our backs on his defiance, the credibility of U.S. power as a check against Saddam will be destroyed.” The mission of the US and British operation was “to attack Iraq’s nuclear, chemical and biological weapons programs and its military capacity to threaten its neighbors.” More importantly, Clinton declared that Saddam “must not be allowed to threaten his neighbors or the world with nuclear arms, poison gas or biological weapons.” This time, Clinton vowed, the allies’ response would be “strong” and “sustained.”5 Yet the President only hinted at a broader political goal, one beyond the immediate aims of crippling Iraq’s WMD programs. The best way to eliminate the threat Saddam posed to the security of the Middle East and the world, the President claimed, was “with a new Iraqi government.”6

The operation had about 100 targets of chem/bio facilities… as well as SRG, Republican Guard and broadcast/transmission facilities.

Planners created seven broad target categories: Integrated Air Defense System (IADS); Command and Control; WMD Security (generally Special Republican Guards units); WMD Industry and Production; Republican Guards; Airfields; and one simply listed as “Economic.”18 CENTCOM planners purposely avoided “dual-use” facilities in order to minimize the attack’s impact on Iraqi civilians. Likewise, CENTCOM and Administration spokesmen stated publicly that airstrikes would not target known WMD stockpiles or storage sites in order to avoid widespread collateral damage.

Iraq recognized it as more show than intent and sat idly by. As Saddam’s Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz said:

“The reality is that the resources they could assemble for this aggression are limited. They are not the same resources that they assembled in the aggression of 1991. They cannot throw missiles every day for a whole month.

The Pentagon determined that over the 70 hour mission, they had hit 85% of the targets, with 74% “highly successful”. Clinton didn’t feel it needed to advance into Ramadan, and decided to declare a victory instead. In fact, there are many around that still claim there were no WMDs because Clinton got them all in Desert Fox…. but not so fast.

The absence of Iraqi WMD use during OIF and the failure of the United States and its allies to find significant WMD stockpiles afterward has led to some speculation that we “got it all” during DESERT FOX. This line of reasoning is not supported by the available evidence.

The US and UK did not target stockpiles during the 1998 operation and neither at the time nor since has anything come to light to suggest that such stockpiles were hit, if they even existed.

At the same time, the ISG determined that Iraq did not retain SCUD-type missiles beyond 1991, though other missiles were both used by the Iraqis and captured by the coalition during OIF.

The fate of Iraqi WMD and related materials left accounted for in December 1998 remains unknown to this day. [Mata note: this is all Conversino’s 2005 article]

Beyond the physical damage noted earlier, the operation failed to “reshape Iraqi behavior,” in Cordesman’s words. Iraq refused to accept the return of UN inspectors. Tariq Aziz declared that Iraq would not permit the resumption of inspections until the UN Security Council lifted sanctions, a move the US and Britain would clearly oppose. Indeed, UN inspectors would not return to Iraq for another four years. Despite reports of unrest and regime reprisals within Iraq, Saddam Hussein remained in control of the country.47

Iraq remained a threat to its neighbors and the interests of the United States and its allies—one need only to recall Clinton’s assertion that Saddam’s very presence in power, and not his WMD alone, constituted that threat.

Just as Israel does, and the US had done in the first Gulf War (*and* OIF), leaflets were dropped advertising advanced warning to the Iraqi citizens, in addition to 4 hours of daily broadcasting on Coalition Radio Free Iraq.

The civilians casualties from the actual conflict were low… one of the only reported numbers I’ve seen is approx 25. Not exactly massive collateral damage, tho zero loss of innocent life is rare if not impossible. This, of course, doesn’t stop those who oppose any military action from claiming thousands to hundreds of thousands of children’s lives being lost because of the destroyed infrastructure.

Well… what the heck were they doing living in chem/bio facilities, TV broadcast stations etal??

All in all, Gilbert, citing massive killing of innocent Iraqis in Desert Storm or Desert Fox makes him a fruitcake. And the OIF casualty loss? One has to look at the global Islamic jihad movements and their comrades – the Saddam loyalists – for the highest death counts.

But when you’re a pro-terrorist kind of guy, you never see the flaws of your buds…. the ones’ truly doing the most killing are those that endanger their fellow citizens merely to wage jihad and spread Shariah law.

Iman, you have settled on a “selective truth”. You accuse Word of being blind. I suggest you wear blinders.

Below, parading Hamas leader Nizar Rayyan’s body, along with his family, thru the streets in Gaza.

Rayyan was given warning to take his family and go underground before the strike. He refused to leave on “ideological” grounds.

That’s all well and good for Rayyan to decide for himself to be a martyr. But Rayyan deliberately chose to sacrifice his family’s lives as well. And this is not the first time he has killed his family for his “ideology”. In Oct 2001, he sent one of his sons on a suicide mission to kill Israeli settlers in Gaza.

Rayyan… what a nice guy, eh? … pictured below in 2007.

Rayan was fundamentally against the state of Israel and had declared: ‘There is nothing called Israel, neither in reality nor in the imagination.’

He was preaching in a local mosque on the day before he was killed and said: ‘Our only language with the Jew is through the gun.’

If that is the “only language”, Rayyan well knows that the Jews speak that language fluently. If he chooses to communicate that way, they will respond in the same language… but with far more eloquence.

This “ideology” of the global Islamic jihad movement’s leaders, like Rayyan, is responsible for the death and chaos. It is they who stand in the way of peace, because it does not fit into their visions of a paradise under Shariah law (and boy, ain’t that an oxymoron…). The Israelis and Palestinians could learn to coexist, once the generations that were taught, and perpetuate the hate, die off. All hope lies in the young… *if* they remain untainted by their parents prejudices.

You say Word, or those like myself, close our eyes to the truth, and will never be “convinced”. I am absolutely convinced that – to those like Rayyan – the most valuable Gazan is a dead Gazan. Rayyan, himself, has proven that “truth” to me. And when the dead is innocent family members, it’s even better.

So when I see pictures such as you have linked, I wonder of the circumstances of their death. Who placed them in the line of fire in order to make an “ideological” statement? Or, have they learned the secrets of Hollywood make up and set artists…

For family Rayyan, may they rest in peace. And for the father who deliberately sacrificed the lives of his family for his “ideology”? May Nizar spend his eternity in Allah’s hellfire. For there is no purification possible for an ideology based on self-empowerment, and the perpetuation of hate, oppression and violence.