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A lot of fine young men and women have been killed

on both sides of the Atlantic.

posted by SlyCy on December 18, 2005 at 8:22 AM | link to this | reply

very true!!!

hello!! this is sheri aka poetluver. i know we did not kick it off good in the beginning when i joined this site a couple of months ago, and we may not see eye to eye on everything that we write and read but i must admit that this one hit me real hard. i have a work called " pray for the lost", and i think i have it here, but i will have to double check that ok? this makes me angry at knowing that a woman that cared enough to read the names of the fallen, was jailed for doing nothing more than remembering and honoring the lost soldiers. i think that when i can get the chance, and thinking about this for a while, that i may write a work for this and dedicate it to her, but i will need her name. so that way she can have peace and pray that god will deliver her from her captors.         Damonleigh, i applaud you very much for this blog!! merry christmas and happy new year to you and yours! may peace be with you.                                                                       sheri

posted by poetluver on December 15, 2005 at 6:18 PM | link to this | reply

Damon

 Well done my friend. Stick the lot of 'em in The Tower mate 

posted by WileyJohn on December 12, 2005 at 9:43 PM | link to this | reply

Damon,

Nice thoughts.  I checked with the hardware store though, and they don't carry World Fixing Tools.  Go ahead and give it a try.  I can promise you support from the Anti-Genghis Khan groups.  They built the very effective Great Wall of China.  It didn't stop the Mongol hordes, but it sure draws a crowd of tourists and their money.    jj

posted by Jack_Flash on December 12, 2005 at 7:20 PM | link to this | reply

Very powerful words, Damon.

What penalty are they giving the woman? The law she was charged under -- the title -- sounds really heavy.

How would her act be organized crime? Because the list of names she read was organized in alphabetical order, perhaps?

I hate to pick yet another fight, but while I agree that foreign troops should withdraw and that there is a case for impeachment of Mr. Bush, I still cannot go along with war crimes charges. Presumably you would hold Messrs Bush and Blair primarily responsible for all the civilian deaths that ensued after the invasion. I think they are primarily responsible only for the civilian deaths that occurred in the three weeks it took to remove the regime, and the deaths the coalition inflicted thereafter in the fight against the insurgents, but not the deaths resulting from insurgents' actions.

Also, the egregious human-rights abuses that were occurring under Saddam Hussein should still be weighed, I feel, against war-crimes charges against the belligerents, because a legitimate case can be made that the war saved lives as well as took lives. Even you have conceded that the sanctions killed more people than the war, were a worse crime, if you will, than the war. They killed more people and didn't even have the benefit of removing the odious regime. 

In order to lay primary blame on Bush and Blair, I think you would have to prove that they inflicted more civilian casualties than would otherwise have resulted from some other cause -- sanctions, internal revolution, renewed genocide by Saddam, etc., because these were the potentialities against which the pre-war human-rights case was weighed, and it still does not come out as unambiguously as you paint it. Take Abu Ghraib, for example. I definitely think blame lies mainly with the White House and Pentagon for that; but let's remember that if Saddam had remained in power, the abuses at Abu Ghraib would have been more rampant, and not likely exposed and prosecuted. The miscreant troops at Abu Ghraib were emulating Saddam, from when his regime ran the prison. The main difference was that the regime was much worse. So whatever blame we lay on Bush and Blair, from that we must at least subtract some of the culpability on grounds of removing a threat to human rights.  

I'm not saying we have to settle for lesser evils. That's why I support the impeachment case against Mr. Bush. I'm saying it's not as plain as you make it out, even though most of your opinions on the war have been vindicated.

posted by Dylan24 on December 11, 2005 at 3:48 PM | link to this | reply