From: souissi@ei.ecn.purdue.edu (Ridha Souissi)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.arabic
Subject: Re: About the explosion
Date: 9 Apr 92 19:12:10 GMT
Article-I.D.: noose.1992Apr9.191210.21323
Organization: Purdue University Engineering Computer Network

In article <15066@optima.cs.arizona.edu> bakken@cs.arizona.edu (Dave Bakken) writes:
>In article <1992Apr6.151301.14328@en.ecn.purdue.edu> souissi@en.ecn.purdue.edu (Ridha Souissi) writes:
>
>>Bush and company should be tried for war crimes because of the
>>"collateral" damage which resulted in the death of thousands
>>of Iraqi  civilians with his military's "surgical" bombing.
>
>Let me see if I have this straight.  Say an evil gang breaks into
>my home, and starts to rape my wife and daughters and loot my
>house.  Say a friend or acquaintance down the street hears the
>commotion.  He sends his sons with rifles, telling them to
>try to kill only the bad guys.  But in the process a few neighbors
>are killed.  You're saying that the person that came to my aid
>should be punished, rather than the gang?  Maybe if he told his
>sons to blow up my house with dynamite...
>

1. Why doesn't this friend or acquintance down the street
doesn't respond to other commotions? Isn't it maybe that
he didn't send his sons for humanitarian and just reasons,
but out of greed and want of your money?

2. Why does he brag about his weapons being very precise when
they are not so precise?

3. If he wanted to save your house and family, why does he
send his sons to the neighbor's house? (Why did Bush drop
all those bombs on Iraq while the he claims to liberate
Kuwait?)

4. Why did he use so much force and drop so many bombs that
increase the chance of civilian deaths?

>I don't know that any informed person has considered war to
>be a clean business, despite some of the (idiotic) early
>press coverage of the war.  I think that there was no doubt
>that civilians would die due to the allies pushing Iraq out
>of Kuwait.  I also believe that the US planners went to great
>lenghts to avoid civilian casulties (in WWII our bombers flew
>during daylight to lessen civilian casulties, even though this
>meant more US casulties).  That is not to say no bombs missed their
>targets and landed in civilian areas---this demonstrably happened.
>I just think it is clear that the US went to very reasonable
>lengths to avoid that, and the blame for the damage from the war
>rests squarely on the shoulders of Saddam Hussein and the
>sycophants surrounding him.  Why do you not blame him?  Does the
>fact that he thumbed his nose at the West outweigh what he did
>to Kuwait and the damage his rape of Kuwait caused to Iraq?
>

Saddam is defenitely to blame for the damage from the
war, because he is stupid enough for invading Kuwait
and failing to withdraw in the proper time.  However Bush
did in fact encourage him to go ahead with the invasion
by giving the wrong signal to him through his ambassador
in Baghdad, April Glapsie who told Saddam just a few
days before the invasion that the US has nothing to say
aout the dispute between Iraq and Kuwait, and the American
intelligence is intelligent enough to see the troops
movement aong the border, yet the administration tuned
a blind eye.  Saddam (I am not defending the guy, as I have
no respect for a dictator of his caliber) was very
scared and was ready many times to talk and withdraw, but
it seemed that the US had other plans no matter how much
he pleaded.

>Anyone who thinks that the US would deliberately bomb civilians
>(like here or in the accidental downing of the Iranian airliner
>a while back) is an ignorant fool (I used those words advisedly)
>and is showing utter contempt and ignorance of the American people.
>It takes the most paranoid of conspiracy theorists to believe
>that only a handful of Americans could know about such plans or
>policies (and that they could be assured to be placed in the right
>jobs by the conspirators).  And it shows ignorance of Americans to
>think that American officers would tolerate it, and our adversarial
>press (adversarial to the military, for the most part) would not find
>out.  And if this did happen people *would* be tried.   And the
>outrage from the American people would be very great.
>
>

I don't say that the US delibrately bombed civilians in the
Gulf war to kill as many as possible of them.  I say that
the US doesn't care much if so many civilians died in the
bombing (they are not American after all).  As for the Iranian
airliner downed by the US, the man who gave the command to
shoot it is known.  Why doen't the US agree to hand him over
to Iran so they may investigate the incident and give him a trial?
in contrast the US wants two Libyan "suspects" for the
downing of the PanAm plane and used its "United nations" to
impose sanctions on a small weak country of 4 million
people or so.

Believe me there are so many secrets and conpiracies
that are not known to the Average Americans and are
kept by a handful of top officials.  It is extremely
hard for this information to leak out, and therefore
people will never know.  Don't think that the US 
government is so honest and wants only peace and democracy
in the world.  One would be a foolish ignorant
(and I use these advisedly) to believe this.

>Well, I'm on a roll.  I have a lot to get done by Monday, but I 
>fear this debate will go on...  c'est la vie.
>--
>Dave Bakken                               Internet: bakken@cs.arizona.edu
>Dept. of Computer Science; U of Arizona   Voice:    +1 602 621 4089      
>Tucson, AZ 85721; USA                     FAX:      +1 602 621 4246
>The fact that you're paranoid doesn't prove they're *not* out to get you.