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Dear Keith,
Very seldom am I tempted to answer
something that comes from Curtis and Global News. However such utter rubbish as
this needs some correction.
The claim that the war is about
weapons of mass destruction claim is a furphy. It is about oil, pure and
simple.
Which nation has the most weapons of mass
destruction?
Which country supplies these weapons?
Which country took 8000 pages out of the
declaration supplied to the UN by Iraq because they listed the US companies that
supplied them to Iraq.
As to this child unwittingly helping
Saddam Hussein, has it ever occurred to you that you may be unwittingly deceived
by rown mass media. This war is not some video game that you turn the TV on
to which channel will show you the most sanitised version of an unjust
war.
What makes some people in America think
that they have the right to be the policeman of the world?
There may be millions of people in the US
who share your views, however a head count would probably show that there are
more people worldwide who can see through the motives of your beloved Dubya and
are going out on the streets to show their contempt for him.
If you feel so dearly for what you see as
a just American cause why dont you go into Iraq and be the first person to enter
Baghdad at the head of a victorious US Army after it has massacred hundreds of
thousands of innocent civilians.
At any rate with any sort of luck you may
be able to kill more Iraqi's than your own soldiers. I feel that if you led the
victorious troops into Baghdad you would have more chance of being shot by your
own men than by the enemy.
Enjoy your war and may you inheret the
legacy of the results which you are demanding from your leaders.
Somehow you are reading the world
sentiment wrong. The protest marches are not just anti war they come from a
heart felt compassion for the people of Iraq.
As for the idea of showing someone a
different way. How's this for a different way. Pistols at dawn for the two leaders of the dispute with the winner takes all.
Either America gets Iraq or Saddam gets
America. Or how is this for a different scenario,
Hussein and Bush leads their army into battle with each man at the head of
their armies. Let us see just how good a General each one is.
Could you just imagine the ratings
for a real life pistol duel on prime time after the evening news. Maybe you
could be Dubya's second. It could be held on neutral ground say in
Afghanistan or maybe Venezuela. It would beat High Noon or Gone With The Wind
for drama. What do you think.
James Hedley
Sent:
Wednesday, February 26, 2003 8:55 AM
Subject: Re:
[globalnews] Iraq: a 12-year old's powerful statement
Jane,
There is not one person alive in the
west who wants war. But I think stories like you have posted and all
anti war rallies are doing more harm to the cause than the good that is
intended. The focus is wrong. I mean antiwar. In my
humble opinion, people power ought to be used to convince the world that
Saddam needs to go along with all his regime. For some insane reason,
the powers that be believe it is better to kill millions of kids like the
writer spoke of in your post rather than be accused of being politically
incorrect by accidentally killing one or two or a dozen or two of Saddams
"innocent" relatives, as apparently happened in Cuba or somewhere many years
ago.
If you oppose something someone more
powerful wants so he can achieve his goal, he'll take no notice and
operate against you. Show him there is another way, certainly not, in
this case by suggesting SH can be trusted not to use weapons of mass
detruction as France China and Russia seem to be doing backed by
Germany. That is absolutely rediculous. People power needs to be
used to back the permanent elimination of SH and his henchmen. And
for the US to suggest they can't is rediculous. They just don't want to
because of the political fall out they perceive hppening. Let's show
them that it is more politically unbeneficial to make war than to risk a
bad political reputation by dealing with SH.
The other sad thing is that our little
girl as true and horrific as her story is, is, unwittingly
hopefully, just a tool in the hand of SH so he can continue to
live to wreak far more damage on her own people than the Allies will ever do
in any war. Let's hear her talk about that, and the very fact that she
will have no chance in her own country of getting people to oust SH. As
evil as war is, there are greater evils as the free west can attest to.
Where would we be with our freedoms if the wars of last century had not
happened, if Hiroshima and Nagasaki hadn't happened? And where would the
oppressed peoples of Europe and Japan be if it hadn't happened just as it
did.
Do you really honestly believe people
like Hitler, Stalin, Amin, Pol Pot, Mugabe can be convinced by
dialogue?
Just my opinions but I believe
millions upon millions share them or similar ones.
Keith
----- Original
Message -----
Sent: 26
February, 2003 12:00 AM
Subject:
FW: [globalnews] Iraq: a 12-year old's powerful statement
12 Year Old
speaker
Presque Isle, Maine Peace Rally
Speech
Before 150 Aroostook county residents from around the
County
February 15, 2003 - St. Mary's
Church
by Charlotte Aldebron
When
people think about bombing Iraq, they see a
picture in their
heads of Saddam Hussein in a military
uniform, or maybe
soldiers with big black mustaches
carrying guns, or the
mosaic of George Bush Sr. on the
lobby floor of the Al-Rashid
Hotel with the word
criminal. But guess what? More than half
of Iraq's 24
million people are children under the age of 15.
That's
12 million kids. Kids like me. Well, I'm almost 13,
so
some are a little older, and some a lot younger,
some
boys instead of girls, some with brown hair, not
red.
But kids who are pretty much like me just the same.
So
take a look at me, a good long look. Because I am
what
you should see in your head when you think
about
bombing Iraq. I am what you are going to
destroy.
If I am lucky, I will be killed
instantly, like the
three hundred children murdered by your
smart bombs in
a Baghdad bomb shelter on February 16, 1991.
The blast
caused a fire so intense that it flash-burned
outlines
of those children and their mothers on the walls;
you
can still peel strips of blackened skin souvenirs
of
your victory from the
stones.
But maybe I won't be lucky and I'll
die slowly, like
14-year-old Ali Faisal, who right now is on
the death
ward of the Baghdad children's hospital. He
has
malignant lymphoma cancer caused by the
depleted
uranium in your Gulf War missiles. Or maybe I will
die
painfully and needlessly like 18-month-old
Mustafa,
whose vital organs are being devoured by sand
fly
parasites. I know it's hard to believe, but
Mustafa
could be totally cured with just $25 worth of
medicine,
but there is none of this medicine because of
your
sanctions.
Or maybe I
won't die at all but will live for years
with the
psychological damage that you can't see from
the outside,
like Salman Mohammed, who even now can't
forget the terror he
lived through with his little
sisters when you bombed Iraq in
1991. Salman's father
made the whole family sleep in the same
room so that
they would all survive together, or die
together. He
still has nightmares about the air raid
sirens.
Or maybe I will be orphaned like Ali,
who was three
when you killed his father in the Gulf War. Ali
scraped
at the dirt covering his fathers grave every day
for
three years calling out to him, It's all right
Daddy,
you can come out now, the men who put you here
have
gone away. Well, Ali, you're wrong. It looks like
those
men are coming back.
Or
I maybe I will make it in one piece, like Luay
Majed, who
remembers that the Gulf War meant he didn't
have to go to
school and could stay up as late as he
wanted. But today,
with no education, he tries to live
by selling newspapers on
the street.
Imagine that these are your
children or nieces or
nephews or neighbors. Imagine your son
screaming from
the agony of a severed limb, but you can't do
anything
to ease the pain or comfort him. Imagine your
daughter
crying out from under the rubble of a
collapsed
building, but you can't get to her. Imagine
your
children wandering the streets, hungry and alone,
after
having watched you die before their
eyes.
This is not an adventure movie or a
fantasy or a video
game. This is reality for children in
Iraq. Recently,
an international group of researchers went to
Iraq to
find out how children there are being affected by
the
possibility of war. Half the children they talked
to
said they saw no point in living any more. Even
really
young kids knew about war and worried about it.
One
5-year-old, Assem, described it as guns and bombs
and
the air will be cold and hot and we will burn
very
much. Ten-year-old Aesar had a message for
President
Bush: he wanted him to know that a lot of
Iraqi
children will die. You will see it on TV and then
you
will regret.
Back in
elementary school I was taught to solve
problems with other
kids not by hitting or
name-calling, but by talking and using
I messages. The
idea of an I message was to make the other
person
understand how bad his or her actions made you feel,
so
that the person would sympathize with you and stop
it.
Now I am going to give you an "I message." Only
it's
going to be a We message. We as in all the children
in
Iraq who are waiting helplessly for something bad
to
happen. We as in the children of the world who
don't
make any of the decisions but have to suffer all
the
consequences. We as in those whose voices are too
small
and too far away to be
heard.
We feel scared when we don't know if
we'll live another
day. We feel angry when people want to
kill us or
injure us or steal our future. We feel sad because
all
we want is a mom and a dad who we know will be
there
the next day. And, finally, we feel confused
because
we don't even know what we did
wrong.
Charlotte Aldebron, 12, attends
Cunningham Middle
School in Presque Isle, Maine. Comments may
be sent to
her mom, Jillian Aldebron:
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Charlotte has been a busy girl since September
11. A
search of her name will bring up other speeches and
papers
she has written for class.
Tanya Barber
International Outreach
Coordinator
Global Village
School
http://www.globalvillageschool.org
--
"All truth passes through three
stages.
First, it is ridiculed.
Second, it is violently
opposed.
Third, it is accepted as
being self-evident."
-- Arthur
Schopenhauer
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