From: dave@gergo.tamu.edu (Dave Martin)
Subject: Re: **** ANOTHER COVER-UP - Please read this... ****
News-Software: VAX/VMS VNEWS 1.41    
Organization: Geochemical & Environmental Research Group, Texas A&M University
Date: Sat, 26 Sep 1992 20:59:00 GMT

In article <1992Sep27.133908.28665@anomaly.sbs.risc.net>, kd1hz@anomaly.sbs.risc.net (Michael P. Deignan) writes...
}rdetweil@boi.hp.com (Richard Detweiler) writes:
} 
}>If some Iraqis were buried alive in the heat
}>of combat, they can thank Mr. Hussein for that.
} 
}Yes... We did what was necessary to save American lives. That's why they called
}this Another Cover-Up!

Ah, but we put those same American lives in danger to begin with. We should
never have been over there. I agree that, in wartime, anything goes (including
chemical & nuclear warfare, petroleum spills, burning of crops and shelter,
and so forth); I disagree that we had any business going over there, or that
war was necessary at all. I was always taught that part of the conceptual
image of America was that the military was there to DEFEND our nation, not
participate in combat on foreign soil, much less initiate the hostilities.

Your statement above is akin to advertisements claiming that they will save
you money if you buy their product -- you have to spend money to get that
supposed savings. American lives were not in danger until there were Americans
over there fighting. It's funny how calmly some people will face such things
as burial alive of "the enemy" -- if they had done the same to even ONE of
our soldiers you would be screaming for the nukes to turn Iraq into a glass
parking lot.
The old "us" versus "them" attitude -- what we do to them in the
name of our freedom (ha!) is acceptable, but what they do to us is taken as
an abominable deed. Look at how people reacted to the petroleum spills and
the threat of chemical warfare. The spill was a good tactical move to prevent
attack from the sea, and the *threat* of chemical warfare in the Scuds was
a move to ensure that their enemy (the allied forces) did whatever was needed
to prevent the Scuds from reaching their target. I doubt that Saddam was
even considering chemical agents except as a last-ditch option. But the threat
sufficed, and was heavily frowned upon. Yet we turn away from condemning the
brutal (even for war) actions of burial of the enemy and claim that it was
done to *save American lives* in *defense of our country* and condemn those
who find such acts intolerable.
Perhaps we should let Bush in again, to play another battle in his holy "war",
and let fly the horsemen of apocolypse upon our enemies to bury them all in
the desert sands, gasping for breath but finding no air, as sand enters the
nostrils and presses between their lips, drowning their screams with the dry
harshness of the barren soil. And so we follow blindly where Bush leads... 

 -                                                                     -
 - Dave Martin - Geochemical & Environmental Research Group, Texas A&M - 
 - DAVE@GERGA[GERGO,GERGI].TAMU.EDU - BROOKS@TAMVXOCN.BITNET - AOL:DBM -
 -                                                                     -
      "I knew Moses, and let me tell you, Bush is no Moses" -- God