...... now that Saddam Hussein has been removed ?
The Kurds would certainly answer this question with "yes".
Please read the below article to find out why.
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Babies found in Iraqi mass grave
A US investigator said bodies were bulldozed into the graves. A mass grave being excavated in a north Iraqi village has yielded evidence that Iraqi forces executed women and children under Saddam Hussein.
US-led investigators have located nine trenches in Hatra containing hundreds of bodies believed to be Kurds killed during the repression of the 1980s.
The skeletons of unborn babies and toddlers clutching toys are being unearthed, the investigators said.
They are seeking evidence to try Saddam Hussein for crimes against humanity.
Tiny bones, femurs - thighbones the size of a matchstick.
P Willey US investigating anthropologist
It is believed to be the first time investigators working for the Iraqi Special Tribunal (IST) have conducted a full scientific exhumation of a mass grave.
"It is my personal opinion that this is a killing field," Greg Kehoe, an American working with the IST, told reporters in Hatra, south of the city of Mosul.
"Someone used this field on significant occasions over time to take bodies up there, and to take people up there and execute them."
Tiny bones.
The victims are believed to be Kurds killed in 1987-88, their bodies bulldozed into the graves after being summarily shot dead.
One trench contains only women and children while another contains only men.
The body of one woman was found still clutching a baby. The infant had been shot in the back of the head and the woman in the face.
"The youngest foetus we have was 18 to 20 foetal weeks," said US investigating anthropologist P Willey.
"Tiny bones, femurs - thighbones the size of a matchstick."
Mr Kehoe investigated mass graves in the Balkans for five years but those burials mainly involved men of fighting age and the Iraqi finds were quite different, he said.
"I've been doing grave sites for a long time, but I've never seen anything like this, women and children executed for no apparent reason," he said.
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What do you think ? Is the world a better and safer place for the Kurds after the removal of Saddam Hussain ?
The Kurds seem to have been perfectly safe for the last ten years at least. Are you saying that atrocities maybe committed by the Iraqi regime in 1987-88 justified an invasion of Iraq in 2003? Shouldn't Ronny Reagan have been invading them in 1987 if this was a valid reason for war with Iraq?
It is very clear that Saddam Hussein is/was an evil man.
I do not use the word "evil" lightly, but I am completely satisfied that it is applicable to him. Nevertheless, I have to be at best uneasy about using that as a justification for war. Traditionally, the justification for a "just war" has always been that your country has been or is about to be attacked by the adversary in question. Saddam did not attack the US. There is no evidence that he ever acted in concert with anyone who has attacked the US.
Has his removal made the world safer? That's not entirely clear yet. He is no longer a threat to anyone himself, but the level of threat that he posed to the world at large is not all that clear either. He was, without question, a threat to many Iraqi citizens, including the Kurds, but he was not really in a position to be a threat outside of Iraq, at least not in the past dozen years. In the meantime, by deposing him, we have destabiliized Iraq, which is now, in the immor(t)al words of our illustrous President Bush, "a haven for terrorists." It is at least arguable that the world is less safe with Saddam deposed in that Iraq is no longer controlled by this evil, egomaniacal, but fundamentally selfish man. IMHO, his fundamental greed acted as some degree of check on what he was willing to do. He wanted to remain in power and knew that using WMDs outside of his own country could result in personal annihilation. His "replacements" so far are a bunch of warring factions, some of which are fanatics. Saddam was evil, but somewhat predictable. Some of the people who are now unchecked in Iraq are predictable only in their hatred of the west.
Does this mean we (the rest of the world) are safer? I'm not convinced.
Best Regards,
Paul
Originally posted by prnI don't know how well this analogy works, but it seems the 9/11 terrorists were a heart attack, and Saddam Hussien was a cancer.
It is very clear that Saddam Hussein is/was an evil man.
I do not use the word "evil" lightly, but I am completely satisfied that it is applicable to him. Nevertheless, I have to be at best uneasy about using that as a justification for war. Traditionally, the justification for a "just war" has always been that [b]your country has been or is about to ...[text shortened]... oes this mean we (the rest of the world) are safer? I'm not convinced.
Best Regards,
Paul
[/b]
Originally posted by elvendreamgirlThe analogy works really well.
I don't know how well this analogy works, but it seems the 9/11 terrorists were a heart attack, and Saddam Hussien was a cancer.
There is no "cure" for cancer, you can only ever hope to contain it.
There is no cure for heart attacks either, but it can be prevented by having a "good" (healthy) lifestyle.
MÅ¥HÅRM
Originally posted by ivanhoeYou can't ask a question, 'is the world a safer place?', and then answer with the tiniest subsection of people. Even if you broaden your statement from Kurds to Iraqis, then in general, I think the answer would be in the negative due to being in a warzone.
...... now that Saddam Hussein has been removed ?
The Kurds would certainly answer this question with "yes".
Anyway, apart from that, here's a transcript from The Columbus Dispatch in June, 04.
MR. RUSSERT: Let me turn to this report on "Global Terrorism," your credibility being called into question. This is your deputy secretary of State, Richard Armitage, in April.
(Videotape, April 29, 2004):
MR. RICHARD ARMITAGE (Deputy Secretary of State): Indeed you will find in these pages clear evidence that we are prevailing in the fight.
(End videotape)
MR. RUSSERT: "In the fight on terrorism." And the report says this: "There were 190 acts of international terrorism in 2003, a slight decrease from the 198 attacks that occurred in 2002, a drop-off of 45 percent from the level in 2001 of 346 attacks. The figure in 2003 represents the lowest annual total of international terrorist attacks since 1969." And then two professors from Princeton took a look at this, and from Stanford, and they concluded this: "Yet, a careful review of the report and underlying data supports the opposite conclusion: The number of significant terrorist acts increased from 124 in 2001 to 169 in 2003 - 36 percent - even using the State Department's official standards. ...The only verifiable information in the annual reports indicates that the number of terrorist events has risen each year since 2001, and in 2003 it reached its highest level in more than 20 years."
Henry Waxman, the Democratic congressman of California, said that you are manipulating data for political purposes.
SEC'Y POWELL: Well, we're not. The data in our report is incorrect. If you read the narrative of the report, it makes it clear that the war on terror is a difficult one, and that we're pursuing it with all of the means at our disposal. But something happened in the data collection, and we're getting to the bottom of it. Teams have been working for the last several days and all weekend long. I'll be having a meeting in the department tomorrow with CIA, other contributing agencies, the Terrorist Threat Information Center, and my own staff to find out how these numbers got into the report. Some cutoff dates were shifted from the way it was done in the past. There's nothing political about it. It was a data collection and reporting error, and we'll get to the bottom of it and we'll issue a corrected report. And I've talked to Congressman Waxman.
MR. RUSSERT: Was it CIA data?
SEC'Y POWELL: It's a combination of data that flows in, and some of it is CIA. The Terrorist Threat Information Center compiles data, provides it to us. But when you look at it in hindsight now, and you look at the analysis given to me by Congressman Waxman and these two congressmen, all sorts of alarm bells should have gone off. All sorts of, as I say to my staff, circuit breakers should have dropped when we saw this data, and they didn't. But I don't think there was anything political or policy driven about it. It was just data that was incorrect, or it wasn't properly measured compared to the way it was measured in previous years. And so what we have to do is normalize the data this past year, 2003, in the same way that we normalized data in previous years, and we will be putting out that corrected information as fast as we can.
MR. RUSSERT: But it is embarrassing.
SEC'Y POWELL: Very embarrassing. I am not a happy camper over this. We were wrong.
If the right honorable Secretary Powell says that the world isn't a safer place now than before, then I guess I'll just have to take his word for it.
D
Originally posted by ivanhoeYes, no doubt the Kurds suffered horribly under Saddam. Goverrnents that slaughter civilian populations must be held accountable.
...
What do you think ? Is the world a better and safer place for the Kurds after the removal of Saddam Hussain ?
So when are the US investigators going to get around to Guatemala and stat unearthing the 140, 000 civilians who died there at about the same time as these Kurdish vilalges were being killed?