So What's to be Done in Iraq?

What Is To Be Done in Iraq?
From the May 3, 2004 issue: A plan for dealing with every faction.
by Reuel Marc Gerecht
05/03/2004, Volume 009, Issue 32

SO, what do we do in Iraq? It is obvious that the Bush administration and its distant and sometimes independent offshoot, the Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad, have been knocked off balance by events. It's not the first time, of course. The Baghdad and Najaf bombings of August 2003 unnerved Washington. But the "insurrection" of April 2004 appears to have completely disoriented the administration. Whether it is dealing with the Sunni Arabs, particularly those attacking and resisting U.S. forces in Falluja, or the Shiite militants behind the radical young cleric Moktada al-Sadr, or the anti-radical Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, or the United Nations and the Europeans, the administration certainly doesn't convey the impression that it has any plan left--except to (convincingly) promise perseverance and cross its fingers and hope that the U.N. envoy Lakhdar Brahimi can devise a new political roadmap for the transfer of sovereignty on June 30.

At this point, it is worthwhile to remember that the vast majority of Iraqis are still probably on "our side," that is, they sincerely want a peaceful and workable transition of sovereignty that leads to a functioning, democratic Iraq. Given all the violence, and the enormous political problems that lie ahead, it is easy to forget this datum. Among the Shiites, and the Kurds, and even the Sunnis, it is not hard to see the desire to make things work. Though the June 30 deadline has made both American and Iraqi pulses race, we still probably enjoy more margin of error than we

think we do, because relatively few Iraqis--certainly very few senior clerics in Najaf, who are the most consequential political players in the country--want chaos or a return to dictatorship. It's not unlikely the Bush administration will in the end be forgiven its worst mistakes and the problems that would have occurred even if the CPA had played a better hand. The Sunni "insurrection," for example, was in all probability inevitable. Would that we'd rounded up sooner more men from Saddam's elite military units, the intelligence and security services, and the paramilitary storm troopers, but these folks were going to come for us in any case. Ditto the Sunni militants and foreign holy warriors who have no intention to allow a Shiite-led democracy to take shape. And if the CPA had adopted the anti-Shiite mentality present in the voluminous, much-touted, but seldom-read State Department guide to Iraqi reconstruction, things in Iraq could be far worse. Sometimes poor--or no--planning is better than stacks of consistently bad ideas.

But what do we do now? Let's divide Iraq up into its principal sects--Sunnis, Shiites, Kurds, U.N. bureaucrats, Europeans, and Americans--and work through them.

The Sunnis. What is the CPA trying to accomplish in the siege of Falluja? It is at this point unclear. If it is trying to send a clear signal of American resolve to the ex-Baathists, Sunni fundamentalists (and Falluja has been a crucible for Wahhabism in Iraq), and foreign holy warriors, it is failing. Just a glance at the Arabic media gives the opposite impression: The brave denizens of the town have successfully defied the American occupiers. Falluja has become a rallying cry. Even Iraqis who hate the insurrectionists may start to flip on us because the Americans appear to be engaging in an endless military action. Iraqi nationalism is a real and fickle thing. Even Shiites who would be thrilled to see the American military maul the ex-Baathists and Sunni fundamentalists fortified in the town (better the Americans deal with them now than we have to later) could start to turn if the United States undertakes a protracted siege. The Shiites may distrust the satellite channels Al Jazeera and Al Arabia for their pro-Saddam bias through the years, but nonstop images and sounds of the Falluja siege with innocent civilians dying day after day will start to tweak Iraqi nationalist nerves. Soon we could be in that very unpleasant situation where even our most steadfast Shiite allies start to say nice things about Iraqis they detest. And we should not forget the effect that this has upon Sunni holy warriors. Bin Ladenism is primarily fed by the appearance of American indecision and weakness. Inside Iraq and out, the "resistance" of Falluja is a godsend for holy warriors like Abu Musab al Zarqawi, an al Qaeda acolyte who has been behind many of the suicide bombings.

The United States simply cannot afford to engage in siege tactics. Negotiations must lead to the immediate surrender of the town and all those within it--the surrender of the insurgents' weaponry is meaningless since weaponry in Iraq can be quickly reacquired. Any agreement where the insurgents abandon their heavy weaponry and withdraw from the town unmolested is even worse. This will only punt down the road a worse confrontation. This is exactly what we did with Moktada al-Sadr. In other words, the only real option is for the Marines to storm the place. We should have taken the town immediately after the four American contract-workers were desecrated; indeed, U.S. armed forces should have cleaned up Falluja months ago. If there is one town in Iraq that has merited classic counterinsurgency tactics, it is Falluja. No doubt, there could be unpleasant repercussions within Iraq and elsewhere from a direct assault--Lakhdar Brahimi has already concluded that "collective punishment is certainly unacceptable and the siege of the city is absolutely unacceptable." But we now have no choice. We cannot retreat and we cannot maintain a siege. Sooner, not later, we need to align the tough rhetoric of the CPA chief L. Paul Bremer with military actions on the ground. It's unlikely we can please Brahimi and successfully fight this war in the Sunni Triangle at the same time.

The Sunnis and politics. It is obvious and understandable that the CPA is desperately trying to engage the Arab Sunnis in a political process that will,

in theory, diminish the violence within the Sunni Triangle. It is entirely likely that some military actions were poorly planned and executed, killing and harassing moderate Sunni Arabs who earlier wished us no harm. Clumsy, heavy-handed U.S. actions are perhaps inevitable given the type of combat forces deployed, the American proclivity toward force-protection, and the dubious sources of some American intelligence (think about the known Sunni bad eggs in the hastily rebuilt Iraqi security services and then think about the information given to the U.S. military and the CIA about "hostile" Sunnis--it is quite possible that we have unknowingly on occasion done the bidding of ex-Baathists and Sunni militants). In an effort to make the Sunnis feel more loved, the Bush administration has decided to reverse partially Ambassador Bremer's decision to exclude the former Sunni military elite from a new Iraqi army. Brahimi, a Sunni Algerian Arab who rose to prominence under the rule of Algeria's generals, has already let it be known that he believes the Americans have engaged in too much de-Baathification. This view is also common within the State Department, the uniformed services at the Pentagon, and among Iraq experts in universities and think tanks. The administration ought to realize, however, it is playing with fire.

Does the Shiite community, and especially the Shiite clergy, realize that there are such things as "good Sunni military officers"? Sure. Though not numerous, such men in the past spared Shiite lives and property. The Shiites are well aware of the collective hell that all Iraqis endured under Saddam Hussein. But there is a red line here. And it will be very hard to know when we've crossed it until it is too late. And once we've crossed, we can't step back. And let us repeat what has become obvious since the "insurrection" of Moktada al-Sadr started: We lose the Shiites, we lose Iraq.

Let us be honest about how the Sunni community will view Sunni colonels and generals returning to an Iraqi army. Are they likely to say to themselves, "See, we will have a place in a new democratic Iraq," or to think they have a chance to recapture the instrument of political power, the ultimate check against a Shiite-led government? The Sunni will to power is the common denominator of modern Iraqi history--Shiites might argue that it is the common denominator of Islamic history. Travel Iraq and it is easy to find Sunnis who sincerely want to see their country democratic. Spend much time among the former military elite and you don't come away with the same sensation. Rather, you get the impression that they are furious at Saddam Hussein for going too far, for cocking up what had been a very good and sustainable situation.

It is possible, of course, that the democratic ethic can grow in such men. Ambassador Bremer has said that only ex-Baathist military officers with good records will be considered for reemployment. But what exactly does that mean? Officers who embraced the party--and your "better" officers over the rank of major probably did enthusiastically--but did not personally shoot women and children or order the destruction of Shiite homes, are these soldiers of good standing? And how many Sunnis will we need to hire into the new army to make the Sunnis feel as if they've received their "fair" share? Do we really think that whatever that share is will turn most of the Sunni rejectionists into democrats? If there is one thing the Provisional Authority may do in Iraq that most resembles Russian roulette, this is it. It would be very wise for the administration, if it insists on going through with this new "Buy Sunni" approach to the Iraqi military, to clear senior Sunni Arab military appointments with a good sampling of Shiites--especially the senior clergy in Najaf.

The essential political step for the Sunnis, as for all Iraqis, is to move to national elections as quickly as possible so we and the Iraqis can see how many Arab Sunnis are willing to vest themselves in a new, Shiite-led democratic order. The Sunnis need to know that the train is leaving the station and that they cannot stop it. Profound cooperation is much more likely if they know as a community that their interests will be permanently short-changed if the Shiites, Kurds, and Americans must construct a new Iraq without substantial Sunni participation.

For the Shiites, a seven-point plan:

(1) At all times treat Grand Ayatollah Sistani as the leader of the Shiite community. Even if Sistani isn't clearly in control--and Moktada al-Sadr is trying hard to challenge Iraq's preeminent divine--act as if he ought to be. The ayatollah is America's most essential ally in Iraq, regardless of whether the Americans and the Iraqis like to publicly admit it.

(2) Realize we have more maneuvering room with the rebellion of Sadr than with the Sunnis in Falluja. This means, first and foremost, don't attack the holy city of Najaf. There are many reasons why the Iraqi Shiites today loathe the Saudis, but up there at the top is the memory of Wahhabi holy warriors besieging and sacking Shiite shrine cities in Iraq repeatedly throughout the 19th century. If we go into Najaf in force, we will lose Grand Ayatollah Sistani, who is the guardian of the holy city. We lose him, we lose the country. There may conceivably be some wiggle room for a lightning-fast strike directly against Sadr, but it's most doubtful that American intelligence could ever supply the information needed to make this tactically possible. It's also most unlikely that the senior clergy of Najaf's clerical establishment, the Hawza, would countenance such a strike, though they detest Sadr. There is nothing wrong, however, with going after Sadr's men elsewhere in the country if they engage in any violent actions against Iraqis, Americans, or our allies. And if they attack, we should respond immediately with lethal force.

Ultimately, however, Sistani and the Hawza must handle Sadr. We cannot do this for them. In the past, Sistani could draw on significant armed forces from the tribes in the Shiite heartland around Najaf. He did so earlier to intimidate the followers of Moktada, the Sadriyyin. We must continue to hope that the senior clergy, who loathe the idea of internecine Shiite fighting, especially within Najaf, can find a means to neutralize Sadr as long as he remains in the shrine city. And if Sistani agrees to Sadr's being deported to Iran, then let the young holy warrior go. Even if Sadr has been receiving substantial Iranian encouragement and support--and it's likely that he has--it's unlikely that once in Iran he will be nearly as effective as he is in Iraq.

Though the clerical regime in Tehran unquestionably does not wish America well next door, and will try to sabotage the creation of a democratic order backed by moderate Iraqi clerics, its relationship with Najaf and the Iraqi Shia is complicated. Iranian pilgrims, including clerics, have flooded into Iraq's shrine cities--the Atabat, the gateways to Heaven--since the fall of Saddam Hussein. By now, Iran's ruling clerics have no illusions about the Hawza's antagonism to the Iranian model of a theocratic state and the distaste the Iraqi senior clergy has for Iran's "spiritual" guide, Ali Khamenei, whose politically acquired title of "ayatollah" (the sign of God) is not uttered felicitously by Iraq's more accomplished clerics. The regime in Tehran does not like to be seen as openly sponsoring a very young, not particularly well-educated cleric who is challenging the entire religious establishment of Najaf. Khamenei and Iran's number two, Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, are well aware of the clerical dissatisfaction within their own ranks. If they openly or clandestinely go too far in Iraq, Najaf could and probably would push back. This may yet happen. But Sadr in Iran could actually be for Khamenei and Rafsanjani vastly more trouble than he's worth. If they are so foolish as to want him, let them have him.

(3) Have Bremer, or ideally the president, state clearly that America intends to help the United Nations advance the date of national elections as fast as possible. We should state loudly and clearly that we do not want United Nations participation in the political reconstruction of Iraq to delay elections for a constitutional assembly or a national assembly by a single day.

(4) We should state loudly and often that we will oppose any U.N. plan that diminishes the democratic throw-weight of the Shiite majority in Iraq. We believe that all Iraqis ought to have constitutional protections guaranteeing their individual rights, but the United States is not in favor of Lebanonizing Iraq into religious and ethnic cantons. This means that on most matters--except those specifically enumerated in a new constitution--the Shiites, if they vote as a bloc, will legislatively carry the day.

(5) If Brahimi and Sistani disagree on any issue pertaining to the representation of Shiites, Sunnis, and Kurds in a transitional government, side with Sistani. If individuals in the State Department, CPA, or Congress (thinking here of Senators Joseph Biden and Richard Lugar) have a problem with this, then CD-ROMs full of Sadriyyin chest-thumping chants should be sent to these protesters. To add extra clarity, labels could be put on the CDs saying, "We lose Sistani, we lose Iraq."

(6) The Transitional Administrative Law is probably as dead as a door-nail. Don't waste time defending it. We should encourage the Shiites and Kurds to sit down and work out a different arrangement to protect Kurdish rights other than through a constitutional veto that effectively checks a Shiite majority on virtually any legislative matter. Encourage the Kurds and Shiites to work out, perhaps through a bicameral legislature, a checks-and-balances arrangement that makes it very difficult for a majority to run roughshod over Kurdish concerns.

(7) Senior U.S. officials and congressmen should repeat to themselves each night before bedtime: "The Islamic Republic of Iran intends to screw us in Iraq." Do not fall victim to the "realist" delusion that some kind of grand bargain is possible with Iran. A clerically supported democracy in Iraq is poisonous for Iran's theocracy. Intra-Shiite squabbles do matter, and this one--the battle between a one-man, one-vote democracy and Iran's theocratic "rule of the jurisconsult" (velayat-e faqih)--is enormous. Dealing with Iran in Iraq is going to be a very tricky, long-term affair. Most of the heavy lifting will, fortunately, be done by the religious establishment in Najaf. But we shouldn't complicate their lives or ours by seeking, openly or clandestinely, any bilateral U.S.-Iranian discussion on Iraq that allows Iran an official role in Iraq's reconstruction. If Brahimi starts to move in this direction, stop him.

The Kurds. The most overwhelming issue is fairly straightforward: Do the Kurds want to live in a democratic Iraq where they will not be able to veto legislation nearly as often as they might like? We should tell the Kurds that we will not support them against the Shiite objection to their comprehensive constitutional veto power in the Transitional Administrative Law. It's much better for us and all Iraqis if the Kurds and the Shiites have it out now on this issue, not later. Our position in Iraq is only going to get weaker with time--perhaps much weaker very quickly--and the Kurds would be far better off to have this argument with the rest of Iraq while we are in a position to influence events.

The United Nations and the Europeans. It is possible that Lakhdar Brahimi will ride to the rescue of the Bush administration before June 30. His and his office's commentary about excessive American-led de-Baathification and his preference for "technocrats" over would-be politicians in a transitional government probably do not help his case among the Shiites and Kurds, who see such language as pro-Sunni Arab. (Sunni Arabs made up the vast bulk of senior-level technocrats under Saddam Hussein's rule.) Brahimi's own silence as a senior official in the Arab League and as Algeria's foreign minister about Saddam's slaughter of Iraqi Shiites and Kurds after the great rebellion of '91 also probably does not endear him to most Shiites and Kurds. If Brahimi did speak out against this atrocity at the time, it would be most helpful for him to remind others of when and where he remonstrated against Saddam's actions.

Brahimi has, however, two factors working in his favor: the surreal but now unavoidable June 30 deadline and the "uprising" of Moktada al-Sadr, who has spooked the traditional Shiite establishment in Najaf. Both these factors might cause Grand Ayatollah Sistani to be less democratically inclined for the sake of short-term stability. Then again, Sistani might not want to compromise at all on Shiite representation in a transitional government and interim constitution if he feels too threatened by Sadr. The Bush administration and the Coalition Provisional Authority are both concerned about Brahimi's "Sunni" factor. Many within the government certainly know, even if Senator Biden does not, that the Iraqi Shia have viewed the United Nations primarily as a tool to use against the United States to expedite the elections process. If the United Nations ends up offering the Shiites no more, perhaps less, than what Ambassador Bremer was offering, we shouldn't be surprised if the U.N.'s "international legitimacy" and utility in Iraq evaporate overnight. We should obviously support Brahimi's efforts, but we should do so only as long as he does not run afoul of the majority of Shiites. If he does that, we need to be prepared to seize the initiative back, call for national, constituent elections within six months, and directly ask Sistani--privately at first, publicly if necessary--to whom we should transfer sovereignty on June 30. We should not hesitate to pass the responsibility for this to the Grand Ayatollah. (And we will see if he takes it.)

And concerning the Europeans, don't expect more of them to embrace our democratic cause in Iraq, even with a U.N. resolution. If Iraq were really a serious strategic issue for France and Germany--more serious than internal European Union politics and the humbling of the United States internationally--they would be behind us already. Though the transatlantic foreign-policy establishment in Washington is loath to see or admit the truth, France and Germany have more to gain in Europe--and therefore, in their eyes, in the world--if America is laid low in Iraq. Tactically, philosophically, and spiritually (anti-American schadenfreude is a legitimate and serious foreign-policy objective in both these countries), the French and the Germans--the heart of Senator John Kerry's international order--have much more to win by watching the Bush administration electorally defeated in Mesopotamia. Nonetheless, if Colin Powell would finally like to travel throughout Europe making the case for increased European commitment to the Anglo-American effort in Iraq, he should be encouraged to do so.

The Americans. Beyond what has been said above, only two things. Send more troops, and repeat several times each day: "If we lose the Shia, we lose Iraq."

Reuel Marc Gerecht is a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and a contributing editor to The Weekly Standard.

SOURCE...

Name:	HILLARY SUPPORTER
To:	Free Republican

In response to:
How many gangstas will be killed in Maxine Waters district tonight?

Message:
At least she's out there trying to help the communities of South L.A. I really don't think gangstas killing each other is a laughing matter like you ignorant Archie Bunker types do! You love to sit back and joke and say what's wrong because the only way you losers feel good about yourselves is to put the less fortunate people down and laugh at there misery and consider them lower than you. Maybe someday those communities will find peace, but it sure as hell won't be any thanks to you types!

Name:	Liepshen
To:	Tax Bomb Feel Good Goony Bird
Re:	HILLARHEEEEEEEEEE!

In response to:
In response to: How many gangstas will be killed in Maxine Waters district tonight? Message: At least she's out there trying to help the communities of South L.A. I really don't think gangstas killing each other is a laughing matter like you ignorant Archie Bunker types do! You love to sit

Message:
Yeah, I see her riding in the ambulances on that paramedics show all the time!

Name:

Danny Boy

Message:
FRENCH GOVERNMENT RAISES TERROR ALERT LEVEL

API and UPI report that the French Government announced today that in light of the Madrid bombing, France has raised its terror alert level from:

"RUN" to "HIDE."

The only two higher levels in France are:"SURRENDER" and "COLLABORATE"

.......................................................................

Hi all, Got this from my boss. Saw that nobody posted it recently and did so. Also if you have a copy of Death Race 2000, they blame France as well. Had a moderate day here. Temps in the low 100's. Rained like an SOB just before sunset. That's the news unless you hear it from someplace else first.

Jack Crow in Iraq

Name:

Yokki

Message:

Message:
You are more worthless than a tit on a boar hog. You and Hillary and Dear Maxine work tirelessly to tax and legislate away freedom and opportunity in South Central and Detroit and all across America. Damn you sanctimonius pissants! You add to the despair anfd hopelessness even as you subsidize and institutionalize it!

Name:	just a question
To:	HILLART COMMERCIAL
Re:	animal farm

In response to:
"...At least she's out there trying to help the communities of South L.A. I really don't think gangstas killing each other is a laughing matter like you ignorant Archie Bunker types do! You love to sit back and joke and say what's wrong because the only way you losers feel good about yourselves is to put the less fortunate people down and laugh at there misery and consider them lower than you. Maybe someday those communities will find peace, but it sure as hell won't be any thanks to you types!..."

Message:
Silly sanctimonious pointy-headed you… Some animals are more equal than others. Always remember:

Name:	Dan Wesson
To:	FORUM

Message:
THE PRIME MINISTER makes much of the “scare stories” and “myths” which opponents of further deepening of the EU supposedly propagate. They are based, apparently, on paranoia, and are products of not-so-latent xenophobia. Well here’s a very scary story which is not speculation but fact. This week democracy — the right to vote for the party you wish to support — ended inside one EU member state.

On Wednesday, the Belgian judiciary banned a political party from operating in Belgium. The reason? The country’s political establishment dislikes its views. The party it banned is not some obscure fringe organisation but one which has 18 MPs in the 150-seat Belgian parliament, many local councillors and two MEPs. The opinion polls were predicting that it could win the most Belgian votes at the European and local elections in June.

The banned party is Vlaams Blok (VB). The Court of Appeal in Ghent — notorious for its left-liberal bias — deemed it to be an “undemocratic and racist” organisation because of its policy that immigrants should be given only two choices: “to assimilate or to return home”.

Maybe such a policy is indeed racist; maybe it isn’t. The VB itself, which has much in common with the Fortuyn List in the Netherlands, has been accused of this. But in a democracy, surely, that is a decision which voters should make, not judges. But the VB’s racism was merely an excuse. The real reason why the Belgian authorities have been bent on banning the VB for years has nothing to do with racism and the rights of immigrants. It is that the party advocates secession from Belgium and the establishment of a Republic of Flanders. Worse still, as Belgium’s only conservative party it upsets the country’s cosy political applecart. The Belgian Establishment has responded not by defeating it in argument but by banning it.

After Wednesday’s ruling, it is now illegal to distribute VB publications and its politicians are barred from state radio and television. The party is appealing against the ruling, but the Belgian judiciary’s predisposition to do the bidding of the political class means that the appeal has almost no chance of succeeding. When the ban is confirmed, the VB will be proclaimed a criminal organisation and disbanded, unable to exist, let alone to field candidates and argue its case.

I hold no brief for the VB; and were I to have a vote in Flanders, I would not vote for it. But that is not the point. What happened in Ghent on Wednesday is a frightening, but classic demonstration of the political mindset which lies behind the EU’s “ever-closer union”: if you do not sign up to certain beliefs then your politics are, by definition, beyond the pale and thus illegitimate.

The ruling was merely the latest in a series of attempts to destroy the VB because of the threat it posed to the Belgian status quo. In 1999, “undemocratic and racist” parties were banned from receiving state funding (private donations of more than 125 euros are illegal in Belgium). This decision was immediately followed by an action against the VB on those grounds. When a Flemish judge refused to issue a judgment, arguing that these were matters for the electorate rather than the courts, the head of the Centre for Equal Opportunities, the quango which had brought the case said that he would continue appealing until he had found a judge who would find against the VB. This week one emerged: Alain Smetrijns, who happens also to be the chairman of the Lions Club in Ghent, a francophone pro-Belgian unity group.

Belgium is in many ways a mini-EU: an artificial state created (much like Europe’s three former such states, the Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia) as a result of political ideology rather than any sense of national unity, and held together by a political class which is prepared to subvert democracy to achieve its ends. Add to that a judiciary which, far from being independent of the political establishment, is an important part of the problem — and you have a recipe for what took place in Ghent this week: democracy, Belgian-style, in which you may vote only for a party whose views are approved by the elites.

The actions may be specific to Belgium, but the lesson is of wider import. The EU is in the process of becoming just such an artificial state. The fate of the Vlaams Blok shows that worries about the future of democracy are not scare stories. They are real dangers and they are with us today.

The author is a senior Fellow at the Centre for the New Europe, a Brussels-based think tank

how many children have suffered the consequences when republican administrations go out of their way to wipe out every social program needed for the social needs of society and is there really a thing as equal education to all when we have been suppressed under republican administration who all the know how to do is destroy all the rights we have left in this country?

how many more Palestinian children have to die before the international community decides to stop the Israeli slaughter in Palestine with the american bullets the bush administration gives to Ariel Sharon and who's war are we fighting with our foreign aid to Israel?

The conditions at hand right now in Palestine and Iraq are due to two committed efforts on two fronts and opposite sides of the world to contine the further humiliation of regions long under the iron feet of the gluttony to control the world and I am afraid we have reached a point of no return when Israel threatens the life of President Yasser Arafat and expects to get the nod from the United States which would place in danger all the United States when terror forces would join in a mass movement of retaliation contributing to the already defeat of george walker bush for being the errand boy for Saudi Arabia and for fighting its wars with Iraq while the Saudis bleed the american purse through high gasoline prices

george bush should be ashamed of himself for thinking he can brainwash the world and continue misleading a country tired of being misled

HEY BUSH YOU CANNOT LIE TO US FOREVER AND SOONER OR LATER YOUR COFFIN ASSEMBLY LINE IS GOING TO EXPLODE IN ANGER HERE IN THE U.S.WHAT WILL YOU DO THEN COUNT INSTEAD OF SHEEP COFFINS TO GET SOME SLEEP?

I CAN SEE WHY BUSH WOULD COFFINS INSTED OF SHEEP WHEN HE IS UP TO HIS NECK IN THE SLAUGHTER OF IRAQ, THE ONLY BUSH VIETNAM BUSH HAS GOTTEN BLOOD ON HIS HANDS AND NOT FROM DEFENDING HIMSELF BUT BY ATTACKING WITHOUT NO REASON IRAQ GIVING OSAMA BIN LADEN AN OPPORTUNITY TO HIDE WHEREVER HEHAD TO HIDE OR WHY ELSE WOULD BUSH RUN TO IRAQ WHEN THE CULPRIT OF 9-11 WAS IN THE CAVES OF AFHGNAISTAN?

BUSH YOUR FAKE STORY TO AMERICANS FAILED AND YOU WILL BE REMOVED FROM OFFICE FOR BEING AN INCOMPETENT FOOL AND IDIOTA, WHO ONLY REPEATS WHAT HE IS TOLD TO REPEAT THIS IS WHY BUSH CANNOT GIVE A STEP WITHOUT THAT OTHER PORK CHENEY BY HIS SIDE BECAUSE ITS LIKE THIS PEOPLE

we have a ball park manager playing g.I. joe in Irak and its your sons paying the price of this insane blood for oil scheme on the backs of american coffins, you decide america, its your choice, war or peace or more threat to our country when bush taunts terrorism, dont blame nobody when we get and if we get attacked but george bush, because in order to continue scaring the public he keeps taunting terror revenge just like the same pattern in palestine, boy this bush and our country are behaving so much like Israel in Palestine while Israel bleeds american foreign aid bush rushes our young troops to war yes while his twins sleep safely in a whitehouse that is ready to puke them out of office

hey right wingers your is going out of office this is a promise from the tomb of tutankammen

Name:	Editor
To:	Forum Fans
Re:	What Is To Be Done in Iraq?

Message:
The article I placed on the masthead is from the Weekly Standard, a serious right-wing publication.

Everyone should read it. This is an article full of solid intelligence. You won't like it, but you must read it, because it is coming from one of the strongest Bush supporting publications in this country.

They are telling you the way it is in Iraq. WE all need to face the fact that only a miracle is going to get us out of this mess. I don't know what that miracle could possibly be, but we need one.

Name:	solid intelligence
To:	Forum Fans
Re:	what to do

Message:
New Page 1

Name:	we can't read it
To:	solid intelligence
Re:	DEALING WITH TRAUMA

Message:
We can't read it - Please repost a magnified version.

Name:

we can't read it

Message:
Thank you for the larger version. Much appreciated.

THIS WAR IN IRAQ, WAS ONLY A REASON TO WIPE OUT IRAQ FOR THE SAUDI'S PEACE OF MIND BECAUSE IT IS BEGINNING TO SEEM LIKE THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION FOUND IT VERY EASY TO USE AMERICAN TROOPS IN THIS ERRANDS HE HAS TO RUN FOR THE SAUDIS OR WHY ELSE ARE WE IN IRAQ TODAY IF NOT TO FIGHT THE WARS OF THE SAUDI'S?

THE FACT NO WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION WERE FOUND IS A PRIME INDICATION BUSH LIED TO THE COUNTRY TO DRAG US INTO IRAQ TO DISTRACT US FROM THE TWIN TOWER TERROR

ON AUGUST 6, 2001 GEORGE BUSH WAS WARNED THROUGH WRITTEN DOCUMENTATION FROM CREDIBLE AMERICAN AGENCIES, THERE WAS A THREAT ON OUR COUNTRY BUT RATHER THAN TELL US HE DECIDED TO KEEP IT ALL TO HIMSELF SO THAT WHILE THE TWIN TOWERS WERE BURINING MUCH WOULD TAKE PLACE LIKE ENRON WOULD UNMASK ITS ILLICIT PRACTICES AND RUN FOR THE COVER OF BANKRUPTCY WHILE AT THE SAME TIME,ARIEL SHARON FROM ISRAEL WOULD COMMENCE THE BOMBING OF PALESTINIAN WITH A HIGHER DEGREE OF FORCE PLACING IN DANGER THE ENTIRE PEACE PROCESS KNOWINGLY AND INTENTIONALLY

we are not the police of the world and we should never allow any president to drag us into any war where we dont know the details and the details dont involve self defense because if we were not attacked then our american occupation is in Iraq for offensive purposes and this invites hate for our way of occupying foreign territories and trying to impose our western style on their territory

we should bring home the troops right now and anything less than that is treason by george bush treason! for lying to us and expecting to get away with all this coffins mr. bush, may you pay in hell for your sins on earth.

Name:	Suggestion
To:	ET
Re:	Article

In response to:
Everyone should read it. This is an article full of solid intelligence.

Name:

Free Republican

Message:
At this point, it is worthwhile to remember that the vast majority of Iraqis are still probably on "our side," that is, they sincerely want a peaceful and workable transition of sovereignty that leads to a functioning, democratic Iraq.

Yeah and the liberals want 'free health care'. As long as someone else is paying. What they want and what they get may be two different things. If the majority of Iraqis want a peaceful transition-let them go out and hustle for it. From what I've seen they are vaginalized wimps who wouldn't get of their Arabs rear ends to scratch their butt if it itched. Kind of like Bernie Ward.

I find it interesting that you put more creedence into a conservative spin than any of that self serving hillary swill.

Name:	Editor
To:	Suggestion

Message:
In response to your suggestion I put the entire article on the masthead.

Name:	Real Deal
Re:	font size=6 >You can just go to Hell, Senator Kerry

Message:
by David Allen

Now that the Catholic Church is, finally, cracking down and saying that leaders who unabashedly support the nonexistent right to murder children don't have a place in the Church, Kerry Corp is whining up a storm:

Kerry spokesman David Wade would not respond directly to [Cardinal Francis] Arinze [who only vaguely supported barring hypocritical Catholic pols from receiving communion], but he reiterated Kerry's position on the separation of church and state that "helped make religious affiliation a nonissue in American politics."

Nonissue huh? Then how about you stay out of black churches where you suck up to gullible people who really think you give a sh!t about God. You made it an issue, now you owe us an explanation as to how a man governs completely apart from his professed morality and just why we should trust such a duplicitous being with the most powerful office on earth.

Name:	just a question
To:	HILLARY COMMERCIAL

In response to:
Are you going to blame this on the Jews? How about Republicans? How about President George W. Bush? Who are you going to blame this on?

Name:	Editor
To:	Free Republican

In response to:
I find it interesting that you put more creedence into a conservative spin than any of that self serving hillary swill.

Message:
Don't assume that the reason I put that article up on the masthead is because I put more credence into a conservative spin....

I did that as a wake-up call for the conservatives. You know as well as I do nothing a Democrat could say would convince you, but it's very hard for an intelligent conservative to deny the message in the Weekly Standard.

Message:
Maybe that's why John E'fn Kerry mentions Vietnam every other frikken breath...HE NEEDS TREATMENT FOR PTSD!!!!!

Name:	Suggestion
To:	Esteemed Editor
Re:	Important Article

In response to:
In response to your suggestion I put the entire article on the masthead.

Message:
Thank you! That makes it much easier to study, especially for dial-up fuddies.

Name:	Free Republican
To:	Bordertex

Message:
You are an idiot. You are the soul of the Democratic Party. Keep on talking. I suspect it wasn't some hobgoblin free republican rightwinger that kept the queen Hillary from mentioning the HRC forum on dateline, but your carvellian embarassing ass. Flog the Donkey! And cry when it step on your toes! Afterall you a democrat and thrive on victimhood!

Hillary should co-sponsor a bill in the senate to provide free hankies for all the vaginalized wusses in the democratic party.

Name:	Editor
To:	just a question

In response to:
Are you going to blame this on the Jews? How about Republicans? How about President George W. Bush? Who are you going to blame this on?

Message:
I don't know what your point is here. As far as I know it was the fault of President Siad Barre a crazed megalomaniac.

Name:	Editor
To:	Free Republican Misogynist

In response to:
vaginalized wusses in the democratic party

Message:
You are obsessed with the fear of "vaginalization of America" - You've got to stop going to the Free Republican Forum. They are making you mad with hatred for females. You belong in the Middle East where you can hide females in black robes from head to toe so that they are invisible. You cannot handle a free and open society.

Name:	The SUV
Re:	More Flipping: Kerry Said He Burned Villages

Message:
Appearing on the April 18, 1971, edition of NBC's "Meet the Press," John Kerry accused himself of committing what he described as "atrocities," including the burning of Vietnamese villages. Host Tim Russert replayed the excerpt last Sunday on "Meet the Press" while interviewing Kerry, who is now the Democratic presidential candidate.

"There are all kinds of atrocities and I would have to say that, yes, yes, I committed the same kind of atrocities as thousands of other soldiers have committed in that I took part in shootings in free-fire zones," Kerry said on the 1971 program. ". . . I took part in search-and-destroy missions, in the burning of villages. All of this is contrary to the laws of warfare. All of this is contrary to the Geneva Conventions and all of this ordered as a matter of written established policy by the government of the United States from the top down. And I believe that the men who designed these, the men who designed the free-fire zone, the men who ordered us, the men who signed off the air raid strike areas, I think these men, by the letter of the law, the same letter of the law that tried Lt. Calley, are war criminals."

At first, Kerry responded flippantly: "Where did all that dark hair go, Tim?"(badly timed joke made by an American)

Then he contended he made the accusation that Americans had committed atrocities in Vietnam in "anger." "I think it's an inappropriate word," he said. "I mean, if you wanted to ask me have you ever made mistakes in our life, sure. I think some of the language that I used was a language that reflected an anger. It was honest, it was in anger, but it was a little bit excessive."

But in June 1971, a year after his first abortive run for Congress, Kerry appeared on "The Cavett Show" and said exactly the opposite.

Debating John O'Neill -- who served in Vietnam in the same unit as Kerry did (in the months immediately following Kerry's tour) and who said Kerry's war-crimes charges were lies -- Kerry insisted to Cavett that he had made the charges after careful deliberation.

C-SPAN recently rebroadcast this Cavett program. It shows a preternaturally calm, calculating, even snooty, Kerry stating in a low, modulated voice that sounds almost British: "Now, on the question of war crimes. It's really only with the utmost consideration that we pose this question. I don't think that any man comes back to this country to say that he raped, or to say that he burnt a village, or to say that he wantonly destroyed crops or something for pleasure. I think he does it at the risk of certain kinds of punishment, at the risks of injuring his own character, which he has to live with, at the risks of the loss of his family and friends as a result of it, and he does it because he believes intensely that people have got to be educated about the devastation of this war."

Whether or not Kerry ever did burn villages -- or engage in any other act of war that was neither necessary nor morally justified -- the explanation he gave last week on "Meet the Press" contradicts his statements and the extremely cool, reserved demeanor he displayed on "The Cavett Show." This raises a new question about Kerry's credibility.

Which is it? Did he accuse his country of war crimes in anger -- as he told Tim Russert last week -- or "only with the utmost consideration" -- as the young politician calmly told Cavett two full years after returning from Vietnam?

Name:	Free Republican
Re:	The sorry Press and affirmative action

Message:
Now USA Today is in hot water for promoting unqualified dipsticks and looking the other way because of their particular hue. The NYT is totally discredited and Blairized. How many other liberal rags have been compromized? No wonder the editor only takes conservative publications seriously. She doesn;t even believe Salon.com but puts it out there as the Hillaryite lightweight provocative fluff that it is.

Name:	just a question
To:	ET

In response to:
What are you trying to say to me?

Message:
Nothing to you, Esme. To HILLARY SUPPORTER who blames the above for all the ills in society

Name:

Free Republican

In response to:
You've got to stop going to the Free Republican Forum.

Message:
Your creepy shallow demonization reflects your paranoid liberal victimhood. Your one dimensional hypocrisy is as laughable as Hillarys feminism and a bigger sham. Grow up fer christsakes.

Name:	Hu Mann
Re:	Free The Republican Misogynist and other endandered species

In response to:
You are obsessed with the fear of "vaginalization of America" - You've got to stop going to the Free Republican Forum. They are making you mad with hatred for females. You belong in the Middle East where you can hide females in black robes from head to toe so that they are invisible. You cannot handle a free and open society.

Message:
As an alternative, you can stay on this forum where the Editor thinks that men spray sperm like a firehouse over unsuspecting womyn who are then forced into birthing pens and literally deliver DOZENS of children at a time....

Name:	eHarmony
Re:	Peace Pacts

Message:

Hillary Supporter and Free Republican share a woodland glade...

Name:	Editor
To:	Hu Mann

In response to:
As an alternative, you can stay on this forum where the Editor thinks that men spray sperm like a firehouse over unsuspecting womyn who are then forced into birthing pens and literally deliver DOZENS of children at a time....

Name:

Free Republican

Message:
Men are ! Hillary says so. Especially the ones that grew up around only womyn persons. Then they have big time issues. conflicted wimmes issues. Not big enough to free their victim loving asses from them though. How could a dumpy squat little doctors daughter from Skokie or whatever priviliged chicago suburb she's from acheive anything? Hook up with a hick with wimmins issues then use his disrespect as a form of victimhood! Of course. why didn;t I think of that?

Name:	bordertex
To:	forum
Re:	HEY BUSH,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,STOP YOUR MADNESS IN IRAQ

Message:

but what raises a bigger question is whether four years under an appointed presidency went down the drain and whether it was worth it all those deaths of american troops and all those billions taken to Iraq

yes right winger, was it worth it to leave the country starving and wasting "four billion dollars a month" to keep this slaughter in "bush's vietnam" going?

and it is worth it to lose so many american sons after a war has been over and we are fighting for nothing but for bush's oil ego war or why are american soldiers dropping like dead flies on foreign soil?

GEORGE BUSH OWES US AN EXPLANATION AS TO WHY HE LIED TO US AND CONGRESS AND WE DO NOT NEED TO KEEP IN OFFICE THIS KINDS OF LIARS Who betray not only the country but nations and corruptedly attempt to hide the coffins of american deaths they caused hey bush, thou cannot hide from americans no longer the truth when american troops are dropping like flies in your madness in Iraq sir.

GEORGE BUSH IS A DISGRACE TO THE COUNTRY, A THREAT TO WORLD PEACE AND A MENACE TO ALL SOCIETY AND OUR CIVIL RIGHTS AND THIS MONSTER MUST BE STOPPED BY REMOVING HIM FROM OFFICE

THIS IS THE ONLY CHOICE WE HAVE AND WE CANNOT AFFORD ANOTHER FOUR YEARS OF MASSIVE JOB LOSS OR HAVING CORPORATIONS CALLING THE SHOTS IN THE WHITEHOUSE

NO WE CANNOT AFFORD TO HAVE POLLUTION INSTITUTIONS MAKING THE DECISIONS ABOUT OUR SOCIAL ENVIRONMENTAL NEEDS BECAUSE UNDER BUSH/CHENEY/PERRY IN TEXAS ALL THIS POLLUTION CONTRIBUTORS HAVE GOT IS SLAP ON THE HAND FOR HOW COULD THEIR POLITICAL CRONIES BITE THE HAND THAT BUYS THEM THE AMERICAN PRESIDENCY?

GEORGE BUSH AND HIS CRONIES DO INDEED DESERVE A ONE WAY TRIP BACK TO THEIR ROCKERS ON THEIR RANCHES SO THEY CAN GO AND MILK THE COWS INSTEAD OF MILKING THE AMERICAN ENCONOMY WITH UNECESSARY WARS IN IRAQ COSTING US NOT ONLY MILLIONS BUT OF WHAT CAN BE THOUSANDS OF AMERICAN LIVES IF WE DONT STOP THIS REPUBLICAN MONSTER IN THE BUSH WHITEHOUSE

AMERICANS WE OWE IT TO OUR CHILDREN AND TO OUR COUNTRY, BUSH HAS BEEN A TOTAL FAILURE FOR THIS COUNTRY AND WE CANNOT ALLOW TO DELIVER OUR CHILDREN INTO THE SUITS OF SOLDIERS PRETENDING TO BE KNOWLEDGABLE OF WAR RELATED DEATHS WHEN THESE BARELY YOUNG ADULTS WERE NOT TRAINED TO BE POLICING IRAQ NOR TO COMMIT MASSIVE SLAUGHTER IN A TOWN TAKEN OVER BY OCCUPATION WHERE A WAR HAS CEASED TO EXIST

AND I GUESS WHAT I MEAN IS WHERE IN THE HELL DID THE U.S. EVER GET THE IDEA WE COULD POLICE THE WORLD WHO NEXT MR. BUSH AND ON THE BACK OF WHO'S COFFIN?

Name:

Free Republican

Message:
You are obsessed with the fear of "vaginalization of America"

I'm afraid that the squishy ones will do to the country what they have done to government schools. Render them ineffective and almost worthless.

And you say I'm the one obsessed with fear! Every time someone challenges you or that squat fat assed hypocrite from Arkansas you start screaming "Free Republic!!!! Free Republic!!. Pathetic. And sad.

You belong in the Middle East where you can hide females in black robes from head to toe so that they are invisible. You cannot handle a free and open society.

Name:	bordertex
To:	forum
Re:	the bush reality and madness in Iraq

Message:
I REPEAT, GEORGE BUSH IS A THREAT TO THE WORLD AND IS BETTER OFF OUT OF OFFICE FOR THE SAKE OF HUMAN HEALTH, WORLD PEACE WORLD STABILITY AND THE NEED TO REMOVE TYRANTS FROM OFFICE WHO HAVE FOR TOO LONG POLLUTED THE ELECTORAL SYSTEM IN THE UNITED STATES HEY BUSH YOU AND THE REPUBLICAN PARTY AND RIGHT WING EXTREME RELIGIOUS ZEALOTS, YOU CANNOT TAKE A WOMANS RIGHT TO CHOOSE AWAY UNLESS OF COURSE YOU ARE WILLING TO ASK MEN TO GIVE VIAGARA UP DONT YOU THINK THIS IS FAIR THAT IF WE ARE TO MEDDLE IN A WOMAN'S RIGHT TO HER MEDICAL DECISION WE ARE ASKING TO MEDDLE IN THE MEDICAL DECISIONS OF EVERYONE FOR LET HE WHO CANNOT GIVE BIRTH KEEP HIS DISTANCE FROM THE RIGHT OF WOMEN TO MAKE THEIR OWN MEDICAL DECISIONS FOR WHAT CAN HE, WHO CANNOT HAVE A VAGINA TO EXPERIENCE BIRTH OR NOT BIRTH KNOW OF SUCH THINGS? AND WHERE IN THE BIBLE DID IT SAY WE WERE TO BE RULED BY AN ALL MALE VATICAN WHO HAS KEPT ALL TO ITSELF THE PRIEST PERVERSITY IN THE EXTREME RIGHT BRANCH OF CATHOLICS IN THIS COUNTRY? AT NOT TIME HAS OUR NATION BEEN UNDER A MORE BIG THREAT THAN WHEN VATICANS ATTEMPT TO INTERFERE WITH THE RIGHT OF A WOMAN TO MAKE HER DECISION REGARDING HER MEDICAL BUSINESS AND NOW HERE WE GO AGAIN WITH THE SAME OLD TOOLS USED BY REUPBLICANS AND THIER RIGHT WING ZEALOTRY IN THE VATICAN IN THE PERSECUTION OF WOMEN AND THEIR RIGHT TO CHOOSE HEY BUSH YOU CANNOT HAVE YOUR CAKE AND EAT IT TOO AND WE CANNOT AFFORD AS A COUNTRY TO HAVE ANY PRESIDENT WHO ACTS ON WHAT HE BELIEVES IS THE "will of God" as bush said about going to IRAQ BECAUSE THEN WE ARE WORSE THAN IRAQ AND ALL THOSE EXTREME JEWISH METHODS WHO KEEP IN ETERNAL IGNORANCE THE JEWISH PEOPLE WITH THE CONSTANT RUTHLESS WAYS ISRAEL USES I GUESS THE ISRAELI PEOPLE'S DESTINY IS TO CONSTANTLY RUN FROM AN ISRAELI ITSELF IMPOSSED PERSECUTION FOR WHY ELSE WOULD ARIEL SHARON RISK THE SECURITY OF ISRAEL BY COMMITTING SO MUCH SLAUGHTER OF ASSASSINATIONS TO UNWIND TERROR RAGE? AND WHY ELSE WOULD GEORGE BUSH DO THE SAME THING IN IRAQ TO UNWIND WORLD TERRORISM AGAINST OUR COUNTRY TO THEN COME BACK AND SAY I TOLD YOU SO? GEORGE BUSH HAD AN OBLIGATION TO THIS COUNTRY ON AUGUST SIXTH TWO THOUSAND ONE AND THAT WAS TO WARN US OF THE AUGUST SIXTH MEMO AND BY FAILING TO DO SO GEORGE BUSH HAS FAILED THIS NATION AND NOTHING NOTHING NOTHING GEORGE BUSH SAYS TODAY WILL ERASE THE FACT THE TWIN TOWER TERROR COULD HAVE BEEN AVOIDED IF BUSH HAD WARNED THE COUNTRY BUT AGAIN WE HAVE THE AMERICAN REPUBLICAN TERRORISTS COMMITTING THE BIGGEST TERRORS THEMSELVES BY INVITING TERRORISM WITH THEIR ACTIONS TO OUR BORDERS BECAUSE BUSH DONT GIVE A DAMN FOR SOCIETY, THE SOCIETY WHOM'S VOTE HE SEEKS NOW, BUT SEEK SO AND FIND NOT SHALL HE FIND WHEN THE COUNTRY REJECTS THIS KIND OF REPUBLICAN GARBAGE LIKE GEORGE BUSH AND JOHN ASHCROFT WHO ALL THEY ARE CONCERNED WITH IS WITH THE CONTINIING BLEEDING AND MILKING OF THE COUNTRY AND I SAY YOU HAVE HAD ENOUGH MILK MR.BUSH AND MR. CHENEY AND MR. RUMSFELD ITS TIME TO GIVE THE AMERICAN TIT A BREAK

Name:

bordertex

Message:
I REPEAT, JOHN KERRY IS A THREAT TO THE WORLD AND IS BETTER OFF OUT OF OFFICE FOR THE SAKE OF HUMAN HEALTH, WORLD PEACE WORLD STABILITY AND THE NEED TO REMOVE TYRANTS FROM OFFICE WHO HAVE FOR TOO LONG POLLUTED THE ELECTORAL SYSTEM IN THE UNITED STATES HEY KERRY YOU AND THE DEMOCRAT PARTY AND LEFT WING EXTREME RELIGIOUS ZEALOTS, YOU CANNOT TAKE A MANS RIGHT TO CHOOSE AWAY UNLESS OF COURSE YOU ARE WILLING TO ASK WOMEN TO GIVE THE PILL UP DONT YOU THINK THIS IS FAIR???? THAT IF WE ARE TO MEDDLE IN A MAN'S RIGHT TO HIS MEDICAL DECISION WE ARE ASKING TO MEDDLE IN THE MEDICAL DECISIONS OF EVERYONE FOR LET SHE WHO CANNOT PEE STANDING UP KEEP HER DISTANCE FROM THE RIGHT OF MEN TO MAKE THEIR OWN MEDICAL DECISIONS FOR WHAT CAN SHE, WHO CANNOT HAVE A PROSTATE TO KNOW OF SUCH THINGS? AND WHERE IN THE BIBLE DID IT SAY WE WERE TO BE RULED BY AN ALL FEMALE PRESIDENT WHO HAS KEPT ALL TO ITSELF THE PERVERSITY IN THE EXTREME LEFT BRANCH OF ISN IN THIS COUNTRY? AT NOT TIME HAS OUR NATION BEEN UNDER A MORE BIG THREAT THAN WHEN DOUCHE COMMERCIALS ATTEMPT TO INTERFERE WITH THE RIGHT OF A MAN TO MAKE HIS DECISION REGARDING MEDICAL BUSINESS AND NOW HERE WE GO AGAIN WITH THE SAME OLD TOOLS USED BY TACO SALESMEN AND THIER LEFT WING ZEALOTRY IN THE PRESS IN THE PERSECUTION OF MEN AND THEIR RIGHT TO CHOOSE HEY KERRY YOU CANNOT HAVE YOUR SUV AND DRIVE IT TOO AND WE CANNOT AFFORD AS A COUNTRY TO HAVE ANY PRESIDENT WHO ACTS ON WHAT HE BELIEVES IS THE "will of God" as cLINTON said about going to IRAQ BECAUSE THEN WE ARE WORSE THAN IRAQ AND ALL THOSE EXTREME mEXICAN METHODS WHO KEEP IN ETERNAL IGNORANCE THE mEXICaN PEOPLE WITH THE CONSTANT RUTHLESS WAYS cALIFORNIA USES I GUESS THE mEXICAN PEOPLE'S DESTINY IS TO CONSTANTLY RUN FROM A cALIFORNIA ITSELF IMPOSED PERSECUTION FOR WHY ELSE WOULD gRAY dAVIS RISK THE SECURITY OF cALIFORNIA BY COMMITTING SO MUCH SLAUGHTER OF ASSASSINATIONS TO UNWIND TERROR RAGE? AND WHY ELSE WOULD bILL cLINTON DO THE SAME THING IN bERKELEY TO UNWIND WORLD TERRORISM AGAINST OUR fRIED cHICKEN TO THEN COME BACK AND SAY I TOLD YOU SO? rONALD mCdONALD HAD AN OBLIGATION TO THIS COUNTRY ON AUGUST SIXTH TWO THOUSAND ONE AND THAT WAS TO WARN US OF tHE dANGERS OF "SUPER-SIZING" BY FAILING TO DO SO BURGER KING HAS FAILED THIS NATION AND NOTHING NOTHING NOTHING TACO BELL SAYS TODAY WILL ERASE THE FACT THE TWIN TOWER TERROR COULD HAVE BEEN AVOIDED IF BUSH HAD WARNED THE COUNTRY BUT AGAIN WE HAVE THE AMERICAN FAST FOOD INDUSTRY COMMITTING THE BIGGEST TERRORS THEMSELVES BY INVITING TERRORISM WITH THEIR ACTIONS TO OUR BORDERS BECAUSE THE SOCIETY WHOM'S VOTE HE SEEKS NOW, BUT SEEK SO AND FIND NOT SHALL HE FIND WHEN THE COUNTRY REJECTS THIS KIND OF FLIP-FLOPPERY THAT JOHN KERRY AND THE VALUE-LESS SHUCK AND JIVE DEMOCRATICOS PEDDLE TO THE LARD-ASS MASSES.

Name:	Free Republican
To:	bordernut

Message:
You're an idiot. But you are the soul of the democratic party.

Message:
It seems clear that Ms. Bordertex has obtained a large supply of amphetamine-based substances!

Name:	I'm John Kerry.
To:	All You Littlepeople
Re:	I was in Vietnam.

In response to:
The sky is falling.

I've argued often that gay marriage should be legal and that conservative Christians should show a tad more divine love for homosexuals.

But there's a corollary. If liberals demand that the Christian right show more tolerance for gays and s, then liberals need to be more respectful of conservative Christians.

One of the most ferocious divides today is that between evangelical and secular America. Some conservative Christians are all too quick to sentence outsiders to hell. And liberals denounce stereotypes of Muslims but not of "Christian nuts."

It's encouraging that the right is less hostile to gays and s than it used to be. President Bush argued in his 1994 run for governor that gay sex should be illegal, while now he feels comfortable hitting up gays for campaign contributions.

On the other hand, the left seems more contemptuous than ever of evangelicals. Sensitive liberals who avoid expressions like "ghetto blaster," because that might be racially offensive, blithely dismiss conservative Christians as "Jesus freaks" or "fanatics."

Take Ted Turner. He has called Christianity a "religion for losers" and once ridiculed CNN employees observing Ash Wednesday as "Jesus freaks." Later, he apologized.

Then there are the T-shirts: "So Many Right-Wing Christians . . . So Few Lions."

Of course, it's fair to criticize the Christian right's policies. Regular readers know I do so all the time, for religion is much too important an influence on policy to be a taboo. For example, while we're on the subject of gay marriage, one question for fundamentalist Christians is this: What's your basis for opposing ism?

Granted, the Bible denounces male homosexuality, although it strikes me as inconsistent not to execute people who work on the Sabbath (Exodus 35:2) and not to crack down on those who get haircuts (Leviticus 19:27) or wear clothes with more than one kind of thread (Leviticus 19:19).

But there's no clear objection in the Bible to ism at all. And since some fundamentalists have argued that AIDS is God's punishment for gay men, it's worth noting that s are at less risk of AIDS than straight women. So if God is smiting gay men for their sin, is he rewarding s for their holiness?

Those kinds of pointed questions are fair, but sneering is not. And in polite society, conservative Christians — especially Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses — are among the last groups it's still acceptable to mock.

That scorn is deeply resented. A poll this month found that three-quarters of evangelicals believe "the mass media is hostile," and nearly half agreed that "evangelical Christians are looked down upon by most Americans."

This resentment is global. In a Tyndale Lecture in England last year, Cristina Odone complained: "The chattering classes . . . pride themselves on being tolerant. . . . Yet they share one prejudice that turns them into rabid persecutors: Christians."

There's also an odd lack of intellectual curiosity within the secular left about the Christian right. After 9/11, intellectuals rushed out to buy books about Islam. But on many campuses, it's easier to find people who can discuss the Upanishads than the "Left Behind" books about Jesus' Second Coming — which, with more than 40 million copies, are the best-selling American novels of our age. To be worldly, one should understand not only Tibetan Buddhism but also red-state Pentecostalism.

Liberals often protest that they would have nothing against conservative Christians if they were not led by hypocritical blowhards who try to impose their Ten Commandments plaques, sexual mores and creationism on society. But that's a crude stereotype, and it ignores the Christian right's accomplishments. Polls show that evangelical Christians are more likely to contribute to charities that help the needy, and in horror spots in Africa Catholics and other Christians are the bulwark of the health care system.

Moreover, saying that one will tolerate evangelicals who do not evangelize — well, that's like Christians saying they have nothing against gays who remain celibate. It's always easy to point out the intolerance of others. What's harder is to practice inclusiveness oneself. And bigotry toward people based on their faith is just as as bigotry toward people based on their sexuality.

Name:

Sideways Elevator

Message:

Kerry heads towards a meeting of "Oil Free Future"

Name:	Ringmaster
To:	Expresso Kyle
Re:	Gargantuan fulminating tissue mass

In response to:
You're cute.

Name:	Mr Y
To:	ABC

Message:
If the Legion seems a little too Euro or confining, you can try the next level down: an Afghan rebel. The qualifications are that you be a Muslim, don't mind being completely disposable and hate infidels more than the IRS. The most volunteering folks on this planet are the Afghans, or veterans of the war in Afghanistan against Russia. Being an Afghan means getting smack-dab in the middle of the Superbowl of religious wars: Jihad. There is always Jihad, or the Holy War, being exported by Iran against Russia, the Great Satan (us) and all its allies. Think of it as the Crusades of the 21st century.

Jihad started with Mohamed a century and a half ago and was really cooking during the crusades. It died down for five centuries, and then, an almost retro enthusiasm hit the big time twenty years ago. But the big J restarted in 1979, when the Soviets decided to install a puppet ruler backed by the Soviet Army. As with all foreign countries who decided to roll armies into Afghanistan, they forgot that the tribes of Afghanistan love a good fight. In fact, when there is no occupying power, they love to fight amongst themselves.

The "Afghans," or outsiders who fought in Afghanistan, are the direct effect of too much money, training and weapons being funneled into one of the world's poorest regions-Pakistan and Afghanistan. The U.S. decided this would be a great time to give the Russians a bloody nose, prompting them to send in massive amounts of money to support every tiny tribal religious or political group that hated the Russians. All the Afghan groups had to do was provide a head count, a list of weapons, an area of operations, and they were in business. Naturally, the real mujahedin looked upon the money from the infidels warily.

The result is that the U.S. and the Gulf States (through the CIA, through Pakistan) created a new "franchise" of warrior clans armed to the teeth with the common goal of causing the Russians grief. Simple gun-happy tribesmen were trained in everything from how to make explosives out of fertilizer to how to use Stinger missiles. The CIA not only provided more than enough money; they created an unholy network where these factions could swap war stories and business cards.

Over 10,000 volunteers traveled to Afghanistan to fight the Russians, most of them lured by money and a chance to poke the bear in the nose. Many more people, after hearing of the plight of the Afghan people, sent funds and were predisposed to the total annihilation of the Russian soldiers in Afghanistan. Recruits and funding were actively sought in 28 states in America, but the number of U.S. volunteers was minuscule.

The war in Afghanistan was the largest covert operation of the Reagan era. Over the course of the war, Western countries pumped in from $25 million to several billion dollars a year. The CIA, Saudi government and Gulf States signed most of the checks, with 70 percent of the U.S. aid going to training and arming the Islamic radicals. Pakistan was hired to provide training to the volunteers, and nobody ever thought about what these people were going to do after the war. The Russian people simply went bankrupt and flushed the Communist Party down the drain; the Russian army went into business for itself, renting and selling weapons to any social or political group that wanted them, and the well-trained and ideologically infused Afghans became terrorists for hire. Keep in mind that the term "Afghan" refers to fighters who traveled or were trained in Pakistan to fight Russians. They are typically young Muslim men (now in their thirties) turned on by clerical haranguing and with little financial incentive to remain in their home country. Their home countries are usually Muslim, have high birth rates, high unemployment and strong representation by Iranian-backed political and religious groups (usually from Egypt, Sudan, Algeria, Libya or Pakistan).

It is no coincidence that all the men arrested in the World Trade Center bombing were trained or involved in the war in Afghanistan.

It is no coincidence that all these men have links to Afghan Prime Minister Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, who was the most entrepreneurial and most dedicated anti-Soviet. He allegedly blew over $1 billion of U.S. aid during the war against the Soviets, but the truth is he squirreled away enough weapons to fight a civil war after the Russians left. That Hekmatyar hated the West didn't seem to bother Ronald Reagan. In the mid-'80s Hekmatyar set up an Afghan refugee center to coordinate and support the works of fundamentalist activities in America. The taliban recently told DP that when they took control of Hekmatyar's stockpile of arms, they acquired enough weapons and ammunition to fight a war for 20 years.

Most of the Afghan volunteers whom Hekmatyar recruited and trained did not come from America but ended up in America as refugees from Afghanistan. The CIA facilitated the handing out of visas and green cards, and many of these recent transplants can be found driving taxis in New York City. Using the funds supplied by the CIA, Hekmatyar set up a center in Brooklyn to raise funds for the mujahedin in Afghanistan and to send volunteers to fight in Afghanistan. The center also organized paramilitary training in the United States for Muslims.

Today mujahedin can be found in the refugee camps and mosques of Algeria, Morocco, France, Iran, Pakistan, Sudan, Egypt and other poor Muslim countries. There is not much paying work for the surplus of fighters, but they gladly accept infidels if they have special skills.

If you are a traditional Westerner, forget it. You are the enemy. If you accept Islam or want to provide training or skills, you may be considered. If you are from Sudan, Pakistan, India, Egypt, Turkey, Syria, The Philippines, Saudi Arabia or the Middle East, you stand a good chance. Currently there are mini Jihads in Algeria, The Philippines, Iraq, Iran, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Chechnya, Kashmir, China, Morocco, Egypt, Sudan, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, America, Lebanon, Turkey, and many more places. If you fought in the war against Russia and have contacts, you are in like Flynn. The problem is now finding an employer or a cause. Peshawar is still the major clearinghouse for Afghans. The taliban will take any Muslim willing to fight, and there are numerous insurgencies that will take volunteers.

Name:	Cliff May
Re:	Seeing Only What They Want to See

Message:
Bob Woodward's new book is less an expose than an inkblot test. It's remarkable how people can see the same words on the same pages - and come away with entirely different pictures. In an election year, it's to be expected that members of the opposition party would thumb eagerly through a book like "Plan of Attack," looking for stones to throw at the incumbent president.

More troubling is that so many media figures also are viewing the book through a partisan prism - headlining whatever casts the president in an unfavorable light, conspicuously ignoring those chapters that challenge the conventional critique of Bush and his policies.

An example? For months, the president's critics have accused him of exaggerating or even distorting the CIA's intelligence on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. Indeed, the charge has been made repeatedly that the president "misled" the public - even that he "lied" and "betrayed" America.

The big news in Woodward's book is that Bush was deeply skeptical about the CIA's conclusions regarding Iraqi WMD - even after he was presented with a "Top Secret" document starkly warning: "Baghdad has chemical and biological weapons."

What changed the president's mind? Woodward vividly describes a meeting in the Oval Office in which George Tenet, the director of central intelligence, responded to Bush's doubts by rising up from his seat and throwing his arms in the air. "It's a slam-dunk case!" he said.

Even that didn't quite persuade Bush. He pressed further, asking Tenet: "George, how confident are you?" At which point, the nation's top spy - a nonideological nonpartisan who held the same job in the Clinton administration - "threw his arms up again. 'Don't worry, it's a slam dunk!' he repeated."

Imagine if - instead of heeding this warning - Bush had ignored it, put on his sweat suit and gone for a jog around the White House. Imagine if a terrorist attack, utilizing WMD supplied by Saddam Hussein, had followed. Bush would have faced impeachment - and deservedly so.

But the president didn't do that. Instead - according to Woodward's reporting - he instructed his CIA chief to assemble the evidence on WMD, adding cautiously: "Make sure no one stretches to make our case."

The Woodward book also reveals that early in this administration, Vice President Cheney recognized that, "Democracy in the Middle East is just a big deal for (President Bush). It's what's driving him." That's news to me. Isn't that news to you? But have you heard anyone in the media talk about it?

One more surprise: It's not a secret that President Bill Clinton in 1998 signed the Iraq Liberation Act, making regime change in Baghdad the official policy of the U.S. government. What was not widely known before Woodward's book was that in 2002 the CIA reluctantly concluded that neither diplomacy nor clandestine action could get the job done. Instead, the CIA's top Iraq specialist told Bush that he regarded "military action as the only feasible way of removing Hussein." In other words, Bush had no choice other than war or abandoning America's bipartisan policy on Iraq.

"Plan of Attack" also shows Bush listening - sometimes for hours - to Secretary of State Colin Powell as he made reasoned arguments about how difficult it would be to help Iraqis transform their injured nation into a free and democratic society.

On some occasions, Bush did take Powell's advice. Over Cheney's "strenuous objections," he followed Powell's strong recommendation to go to the United Nations "to seek new weapons inspection resolutions." On other occasions, he took Cheney's counsel instead. Is that not what a president is supposed to do - listen to various advisers and then make up his own mind? Inside the Beltway, the answer to that question would be "no." In this town, every president is supposed to take your advice - if he doesn't, what a fool he must be, as you are bound to reveal in a blockbuster book and maybe a movie, perhaps starring Harrison Ford in the role of you.

In the real America, people have different expectations, which might explain why the storms whipped up by Washington best sellers so seldom unsettle the broader political landscape. Americans expect debate and even disagreement within their government. They expect their president to make the tough, final decisions.

One last word: Those media moguls who have chosen to highlight only parts of Woodward's book they hope will damage Bush might want to recall the old joke about the man whose psychiatrist shows him a series of inkblots.

"Listen, Doc," he says, "I have serious problems to discuss with you. I have no time to look at a bunch of dirty pictures."

Clifford D. May, a former New York Times foreign correspondent, is the president of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, a policy institute focusing on terrorism and a Townhall.com member group. This column first ran on the Scripps Howard News Service.

Name:

dean

Message:
I hadn't thought about what US mercenaries might be doing around the world. I should have. The story of how an obscure American company ended up becoming the Saudi monarchy's personal protection service is a case study in how the United States government has come to rely on unaccountable private companies and unrepresentative foreign governments to do its dirty work on the world stage, short-circuiting democracy at home and abroad in the process.

Name:	"Mad" Mike Hoare
Re:	Tired Not Retired Looking Smart

Message:
Why is the government planning to regulate mercenaries?

ONE of the most controversial matters in international relations over the past few decades has been the steady rise in the use of mercenaries and "private security" companies. Britain, with plenty of ex-soldiers to draw on, looms large in this business, but does not tend to boast much of its prowess. Colonel "Mad" Mike Hoare, an ex- paratrooper, entered popular culture as a byword for mayhem for his exploits in the Congo and South Africa in the mid-1970s. He and his men were eventually picked up trying to topple the government of the Seychelles in 1981, having infiltrated the islands disguised as a visiting beer-tasting team, the "Ancient Order of Frothblowers".

Successive British governments have kept the mercenaries at arm's length. Now, however, the foreign secretary, Jack Straw, has decided that mercenaries are, in fact, rather a good thing. They have therefore, in true New Labour fashion, been re-branded as "private military companies" (PMCs). And this week the Foreign Office published a Green Paper proposing a system of licensing or regulation for companies offering military services abroad.

Not surprisingly, this has prompted outrage amongst some of the government's own back-benchers. After all, this new policy hardly seems to fit very well with Labour's "ethical foreign policy". So what is the government up to?

Mr Straw claims that in the post-cold war world of "small wars and weak states", there is now a legitimate role for PMCs. For a state under threat from "armed insurgents" or from "criminal gangs", the swift intervention of a PMC might be the only "realistic" option. By contrast, national governments or, even worse, the UN, can take weeks or months to mobilise public opinion and put a force together. By then the "peacekeepers" are usually picking bodies out of the swamp.

This re-think about mercenaries was prompted by just such a situation in Sierra Leone in the late 1990s. A London-based PMC, Sandline, was used to return the ousted president to power after a military takeover. Sandline claimed that it had acted with Foreign Office approval, despite breaking a UN arms embargo. The operation was successful, British troops followed in the footsteps of Sandline, and Tony Blair was recently hailed as a saviour in the country.

The suspicion is that these proposals are for the benefit not so much of foreign governments as of the British government. Mr Blair has grand ambitions for more intervention abroad, especially in Africa, but Britain's regular armed forces are overstretched. Anyway, the British public does not like to see British soldiers dying in other people's fights, but it does not care what happens to mercenaries.

These proposals may be a move towards sanctioning the overt government use of PMCs abroad. Regulating PMCs and making them conform to a "code of conduct" on human rights might make such operations somewhat more acceptable to a sceptical public. No doubt the regulator will be known as Ofkill.

Name:

Britain's regular

Message:
"By its past and present actions, by its technological capabilities, by the merciless nature of its regime, Iraq is unique. As a former chief weapons inspector of the U.N. has said, 'The fundamental problem with Iraq remains the nature of the regime, itself. Saddam Hussein is a homicidal dictator who is addicted to weapons of mass destruction.'...

"We know that the regime has produced thousands of tons of chemical agents, including mustard gas, sarin nerve gas, VX nerve gas. Saddam Hussein also has experience in using chemical weapons. He has ordered chemical attacks on Iran, and on more than forty villages in his own country. These actions killed or injured at least 20,000 people, more than six times the number of people who died in the attacks of September the 11th....

"Iraq is a land rich in culture, resources, and talent. Freed from the weight of oppression, Iraq's people will be able to share in the progress and prosperity of our time. If military action is necessary, the United States and our allies will help the Iraqi people rebuild their economy, and create the institutions of liberty in a unified Iraq at peace with its neighbors."...

Name:	Kyle E
To:	Ringmaster

In response to:
Yer lookin' through the wrong end of your binoculars, dude!

Did you see her picture? She's a doll. Believe me, I know dolls and she's a doll.

Name:	Mark Crutcher
Re:	What pro-aborts won't say in D.C.

Message:
The American abortion lobby is poised to hold its death march in Washington, D.C., to renew their commitment to the slaughter of premature babies. Of course, they will cynically disguise their agenda as concern for the lives of women who might be killed if abortion is again made illegal.

As always, these people are lying through their teeth and as proof I predict the following:

There will be no mention of the women who are currently being killed in their "safe and legal" abortion clinics. Our website, LifeDynamics.com, lists several hundred of them, and we know of several hundred more, including at least six in just the last few months.

There will be no mention of the American women who are being murdered by pro-choice men because these women refuse to submit to abortions. This is a common and very well-documented problem that has victimized women for years.

There will be no mention of the suspected link between abortion and breast cancer.

There will be no mention of the women who are raped and sexually assaulted in these "safe and legal" abortion clinics. This problem was well documented in my book, "Lime 5," also available at LifeDynamics.com.

There will be no mention of the almost universal use by abortion-industry lawyers of the " or nut" defense against women who bring malpractice suits against abortionists.

There will be no mention of what the abortion industry intends to do about the substandard quacks they know are working in their "safe and legal" abortion clinics. Even some industry apologists have admitted that they can only attract the washouts and losers of medicine, with one chain of clinics killing at least 10 women as of February of 2000.

There will be no mention of what the abortion industry plans to do to stop over-the-counter sales of emergency contraceptives despite the fact that these drugs are known to cause serious problems in some women.

There will be no mention of the new Internet abortion business in which the pro-choice crowd is teaching underage girls how to use powerful and dangerous drugs to induce abortions on themselves. In the past, these drugs have proven to be potentially fatal, even with medical supervision. Now, the abortion industry is showing 13-year-olds how to get them without a prescription.

There will be no mention of the fact that the American abortion industry is currently operating a nationwide pedophile protection racket (see ChildPredators.com), despite the known consequences for young girls who are victimized by older men.

The list goes on and on, but the point is that one would have to be either horribly stupid or hopelessly naive to believe that America's abortion profiteers care about the welfare of their customers. As is often the case, the bottom line is ... the bottom line.

Name:	//!!!^^^((+))^^^((+))^^^!!!((
To:	Chica -- and Forum

In response to:
Your mention of Psalms where David asks or praises God for the hands to fight & make war. (not exact, but close enough for poker). Using Bush's Christianity To Justify his right to wage war with Iraq.

(18) "A heart that deviseth wicked imaginations, feet that be swift in running to mischief"

(19) "A false witness that speaketh lies, and he that soweth discord among brethren."

WELL, I don't like to Judge, but on the surface, it appears that George Bush, in his conversations with God, just must have dozed off, when God was telling him the BIG HATES that God had. Since George went out & did at least 6 of the 7, immediately after his Heavenly discourse.

Can we deny that George has lied, shed innocent blood, or run swiftly to mischief in Iraq? Has he or his merry band of cabinet men, given "false witness" to the UN & the world? (about WMD, etc?) -- Golly, it would have been much better if George drank a lot of coffee before this very important holy conversation, so he could have taken Notes.

Name:	Kyle E.
To:	RingMaster
Re:	bordertex

Message:

Did you see her picture? She's a doll. Believe me, I know dolls and she's a doll.

Name:	The B..I.B..L..E
Re:	He cut off ears,burned villages,etc....

In response to:
(17) "A proud look, a lying tongue, and hands that shed innocent blood" (19) "A false witness that speaketh lies, and he that soweth discord among brethren."

Name:	John Dawson
Re:	Painfully unaware

Message:
ABORTION TRIAL: Fetal-pain expert testifies on the "excruciating" partial-birth procedure as the government defends its ban against the industry's lawsuit. But as the trial produces sensational testimony, the courtroom remains virtually journalist-free

NEW YORK -- The National Abortion Federation never wanted Dr. Kanwaljeet Anand to testify in the ongoing Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act trials. And no wonder: The Oxford- and Harvard-trained neonatal pediatrician and pain expert told a New York courtroom on April 13 that unborn children would feel "excruciating pain" during either a dilation and evacuation or dilation and extraction procedure.

That argument-a key justification for the partial-birth abortion ban passed in 2003-will find its way into several other trials going on simultaneously across the country. But federal judges in San Francisco and Omaha have limited the scope of evidence government lawyers can present, making it more difficult to defend the ban. But in New York, Judge Richard Conway Casey has allowed the defense to establish a broad record of harm and frivolity in partial-birth abortions. "That's huge when it goes to the Supreme Court," said Jay Sekulow, chief counsel for the American Center for Law and Justice.

The NAF attorneys attempted time and again to block Dr. Anand's testimony. Then, once he was on the stand, the plaintiff's attorneys cross-examined him redundantly in a style that drew Judge Casey's ire.

"Is this a new school of cross-examination where you make a statement and finish every statement with 'is that correct?'" he asked an NAF attorney.

Later, Judge Casey drilled a plaintiff's lawyer for attempting to make an NAF witness testify about events that happened before she was hired. "Your Honor, in conjunction with Rule 30(b) ..." the lawyer started for a second time before the judge interrupted. "I heard you, ma'am. I am blind, yes. But not deaf," said the 71-year-old judge who is led through the cavernous federal courthouse by his guide dog, Barney.

Dr. Anand, a native of India, belied the stereotype of a Bible-toting government witness in this case, and not just for his religious head wrap, neat beard, and large Rollie Fingers-style mustache. Rather, Dr. Anand said he personally believed women had an "unalienable right" to abortions-except in the case of fetal pain. Such views are an asset, Mr. Sekulow said: "If everybody that testified on behalf of the United States took a completely pro-life position, it would affect the credibility and weight of that testimony."

Dr. Anand took the stand in the morning and testified for hours that unborn children can feel pain even more vividly than adults or even infants. He said that by 20 weeks fetuses have developed all the nerve and brain functions to feel pain, but none of the coping mechanisms that help infants and adults to deal with the sensation. According to Dr. Anand's research, handling the fetus in the womb, delivering the child up to its head, slicing open its skull and sucking out the brains would all produce "prolonged and excruciating pain to the fetus."

The evidence for fetal pain is not new-Dr. Anand studied expressions of pain in unborn and neonatal children as early as the 1980s-but the legal argument is novel. Unlike previous legislative attempts to ban partial-birth abortion, Congress used a fetal-pain argument to rally support. If a fetus does feel pain as early as 20 weeks into the pregnancy, it bolsters Congress' ethical argument for banning the procedure. And in the courtroom it humanizes the unborn child in a way that the pro-life legal community has never been able to do.

Even as sensational news floats out of Judge Casey's courtroom, the media-and most inexplicably the New York media-have yawned. The New York Times newsroom stands less than four miles from the courtroom, but the "newspaper of record" has not sent a reporter to the courthouse since the trials started.

"The lack of media is because the gruesome nature of what goes on inside those clinics is finally being discussed," Mr. Sekulow said. "We waited for 25 years for this moment."

Name:

The Beat Goes on

In response to:
I particularly like this quote: Proverbs 6:16-19. (16) "These 6 things doth the Lord hate; yea, 7 are an abomination unto him: (17) "A proud look, a

Name:	Freedom Is The Greatest Treasure
To:	Feely Goody Control Freaks
Re:	You "care"... the hell you do!