In the spirit of turnabout is fair play:
Not In Your Name:
Not in Your Name: Millions of Iraqis cheering and weeping, secure in the knowledge that
Saddam is gone.
Not in Your Name: Thousands of leering portraits and statues of
Saddam Hussein, the symbols of the persecution and oppression of the Iraqi people, torn down and destroyed.
Not in Your Name: The joyful return of
Iraqi exiles to their homeland with the intention of rebuilding their country.
Not in Your Name: The end of a horrible, 12+ year humanitarian catastrophe in the Middle East.
Not in Your Name: A beacon of hope, smack-dab in the middle of a turmoil filled region.
Not in Your Name: The release of hundreds of Iraqi prisoners of Saddam, including children who refused to do his bidding.
Not in Your Name: Millions of Iraqis finally permitted the simple dignity of acknowledging and mourning their dead.
Not in Your Name: The inspiring triumph of a Democracy over the horrors of Totalitarianism.
Not in Your Name: A bold example to the
despots of the world - there are still countries on the planet that will not tolerate brutal regimes who would inflict terror on their own people and the world community.
Not in Your Name: Another
environmental catastrophe in the Gulf, prevented.
Not in Your Name: Thousands of
Saudi,
Syrian,
Palestinian,
Egyptian, etc. terror-fighters who now will never have a chance to kill civilians.
Not in Your Name: Thousands more Saudi, Syrian, and other would-be
suicide bombers who are returning to their homes to discuss with their friends and family the sneaking suspicion that maybe, just maybe their cell leader didn't tell them the whole truth...
Not in Your Name: The famous
Arab Street given an object lesson that just because someone claims to be a defender of Islam, doesn't mean that he is.
Not in Your Name:
A treasure trove of weapons, explosives, and intelligence from Iraqi terrorist training camps such as
Ansar al-Islam's camp in the north, and the
Salman Pak camp near
Baghdad, including a phone directory of US contacts, that will almost certainly prevent some future terrorist attack.
Not in Your Name:
Millions of Arabs wondering if they can really trust anything their
state-run media tells them.
Not in Your Name: Millions of Westerners wondering if they can trust the mouthings of CNN reporters "embedded" in countries that torture, murder, and extort CNN journalists, camera crews, and translators.
1
Not in Your Name: The
Scott Ritter / "
U.N. Sanctions Are Immoral" crowd exposed for the
hypocrites they are, for their deafening silence now that the sanctions are no longer serving any purpose whatsoever.
Not in Your Name: Renewed pressure for the U.N to account for the multi-
billions in "oil for food" funds it is holding "in trust" for the Iraqi people (Who is getting the millions of dollars per day of interest on the
escrow accounts? What exactly is the UN doing to earn its administrative fee (on top of the
vig)? How exactly is that administrative fee being spent, and for whose benefit?)
Not in Your Name: Precious moments in diplomacy:
"America cannot write its own rules for the modern world. To attempt to do so would be unilateralism run amok. . . . And it would give other nations--from Russia to India to Pakistan--an excuse to violate fundamental principles of civilized international behavior." --Ted Kennedy, Senate floor speech explaining his pro-Saddam position, Oct. 7, 2002.
"India and Pakistan agreed Friday to restore full diplomatic ties and to hold their first talks in almost two years aimed at ending 50 years of war and acrimony." --Associated Press, May 2, 2003.
Not in Your Name: Precious moments in diplomacy, part II:
Putin (paraphrased): "Iraq may be America's Afghanistan"2
Condi Rice: "We take his point. But, you will recall, Afghanistan was supposed to be our Afghanistan..."3
Not in Your Name:
A ray of hope, although one they may not soon know about or understand, for the 200,000 people in
North Korean gulags whose leaders' time is slowly running out.
Sources
1. Editorial, "The News We Kept To Ourselves" by Eason Jordan, New York Times, Late Edition - Final , Section A , Page 25 , 2nd column. Full text still (Nov 1, 2003) available at
http://www.puk.org/web/htm/news/nws/news030412b.html.
2. "Russia's Putin Warns U.S. of Prolonged Iraq War", Reuters Staff, Oct. 6, 2003, 9:57 AM ET,
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20031006/ts_nm/iraq_putin_dc_1
3.
Condoleezza Rice interview on
PBS's "
Charlie Rose" show, aired October 30, 2003. See
http://www.charlierose.com/archives/archive.shtm