[thechat] reporter fired for reporting

[Martin Burns]

On Mon, 31 Mar 2003, Bob Haroche wrote:

> > I'm not saying that Hussein and his cronies are all love and
> > flowers, but they've been demonized by lies.
>
> I'll grant you that the US goverment, past and present, has demonized
> Saddam with lies. But won't you grant me that, stripped of all the
> lies, the un-varnished truth is that he's still a cruel, sadistic,
> murderous man?

Absolutely.

But there are plenty of other such leaders in the world, past and present.
There's a queue, dontchaknow. Somewhere nearer the top are plenty of
barberous regimes which the US has supported, politically, economically
and militarily.

Saddam is one of them btw.

What I'm saying is that the US government can't now play the moral card of
"oooh, it's *such* a bad regime" with *any* shred of integrity.

In the mean time, this kinda thing doesn't do anything for the US'
credibility:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/59/29974.html

> Yes, the story about the babies dying from their incubators being
> unplugged was total fiction. But there are thousands and thousands of
> incidents of equal cruelty by the Baathist regime which have been
> properly documented. Amnesty International has reported extensively on
> them for years.

So let's take the list of Amnesty reports and be non-selective about it.

Or alternatively (for those who are being UN Security Council
fundamentalists), let's take the UN Security Council resolutions currently
in breach and work our way through them. 242 might be a good place to
start.

> While these incidents may not justify a US invasion, I don't see how
> it serves the peace movement when it ignores or plays down these
> facts. That's the problem when one side over-sells a position -- be it
> the White House or the protesters -- he robs himself of
> credibility.

I think you'll find that most of the organisations (*certainly* in the UK)
protesting about the war were the very ones 30 years ago pointing out
these facts while a Mr D Rumsfeld was selling the chemical weapons in
question.

Cheers
Martin

-- 
"Names, once they are in common use, quickly
 become mere sounds, their etymology being
 buried, like so many of the earth's marvels,
 beneath the dust of habit." - Salman Rushdie