BAGHDAD, Iraq � In the deadliest reported firefight since the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime, American forces fended off attempted ambushes Sunday, killing at least 46 Iraqis and capturing eight others in the northern city of Samarra (search ). At least five U.S. soldiers, 22 Iraqi attackers and a civilian were injured.
From FOX but it's popping up everywhere now. This sounds like the ambush was known about before it happened. Escape routes were obviously compremised, unless it was purely a suicide operation. The telling line was this one.
U.S. officials have only sporadically released figures on Iraqi casualties, and wouldn't say whether there has been a deadlier firefight that went unreported.
The headlines of US soldiers killed, were never counter balanced by enemy killed. Surely while they could never have totally accurate numbers, our forces must have some idea of how many enemy fighters have been brought to heel, just by the number of burials alone. They should release the numbers more often, it may dispell some of the publics frustration at seeing how many we lose but always to some elusive unseen enemy. They aren't unseen, or bulletproof as today's action illustrates.
In a standup fight, those feydayeen make a good abject lesson on how not to attack an armored convoy. They'll run down some blood trails in daylight and the count will rise.
Seem's Bush hit a nerve when he popped in and shot them the bird. More stupid wasteful use of the faithful please, we'd like to wrap this up.
I read this with some anger, not that these people don't fear, don't grieve, I'm sure they do. But this, if expressed as how one of them suggests, isn't only not helpful, but may be a source of increased attacks.
The leader of the 10-member group, Fernando Suarez del Solar, said it is important for Iraqis to realize that not all Americans support the U.S. military presence in Iraq. His son, Marine Lance Cpl. Jesus Suarez del Solar, 20, was killed in Iraq eight months ago when he stepped on an unexploded American cluster bomb.
The message such a trip sends is twofold. It's great that opposing opinions are tolerated in democracy, that even people like these are allowed to speak.
It also says that we are weakening, just push a little harder and people like me will win, then we'll cut and run. Abandoning you like we did in 91. Leaving the thugs with the RPG's free reign, to butcher, torture, rape, pillage, main and destroy. We will allow all this because we just want to be liked, and to not suffer the tough choices that come with responsibility.
The illusion these people suffer from is that some misbegotten policy "robbed" them of their family members. That's a concete, an arrogance. The choice of a son or brother doesn't seem to matter at all to them. That death can be arbitrary and random, taking those it will regardless of politics or background seems somehow terribly unfair to them. Well guess what, it is unfair, the old phrase "only the good die young" has more than a grain of truth to it.
These people are taking a noble choice that they themselves did not make, and twisting it to make these young men victims instead. They rob these men of respect, rob them of the responsibility of their decisions just because they themselves fear.
Lord protect us from people interviening for "our own good". They are seldom right, and often bring about worse consequences as a result.
An utterly forgettable experience, proving once again that crack smoking and keyboards don't mix. Just one little thing.
According to European polls Bush is tied with Kim Jong II for the number-two position for greatest threat to world peace, and is considered by 37 percent of Britons to be, well, "stupid." Protests are expected to bring tens of thousands of people from all over Europe, and intelligence shows a major threat of al-Qaida violence creating a daunting challenge for British security and prompting the christening of "Fortress London."
Let's see here, the last numbers I saw said there were something like 400 million Europeans. They can scramble a MERE tens of thousands? What a bunch of candyassed halfwits............Come on bright guy, if he's roundly hated by so many you can't even scrap together a half mill? Hell we get more people at one of our own lefty loveins. You asswipes can't organize a fire drill, and you want to lead?
BBBBWWWHHHHAAAAaaaaaaaahhaaaahaaaahaaahaaahaaaaaaaaaa.......
Once again, the arguement arises, what is Evil, and whatever it is, the Americans got it wrong. A Canadian engaging in the usual sport of second guessing us, this time the globe and mail.
It is often hard to take evil seriously: When Ronald Reagan spoke of the "evil empire" in 1984, or when George W. Bush referred repeatedly to "the evil one" and "the evildoers" two years ago and briefly and regrettably tried to locate an "axis of evil," the words made these presidents sound childish and pathetic. Shouldn't world leaders have a more nuanced view of morality?
Oh, that's how it works.......The Soviet's weren't the Evil Empire. The North Koreans, Iraqi's and Iranians were all just nuances and shades of grey, just subtle missunderstandings of perception. The author has the understanding of a child, he rejects the religious then scrambles to define and name something that's already as old as time.
The American concept of evil, rooted deep in the old theodicy of religion, is in danger of preventing good from being done. This is no longer, in most respects, an evil of big men with big ideas. Once the last of the big tumours have been eradicated, Mr. Rumsfeld's underlings must face the much more patient, gentle and expensive work of allowing the dank layer of fungus to evaporate from otherwise decent and good societies.
This is the mind of secular philosphy, that it's less a matter of Evil than of cultural conflict and poor education. In the rush to distance themselves from the religious they make the fundemental mistake of thinking they have come up with a shiney new idea. Not so new, not so shiney. Lord Chamberlain probably thought as they do, Hitler can be "managed".
You have to have way too much education and a strong sense of selfhate to believe that. Some people, some ideas are just damaged goods, utterly beyond of any serious consideration. We know it when we see it. The graves, the bodies, the haunted children. His redefining evil as something that just happens to ordinarily good people like the flu or a cold is slanderously stupid. If it were true we would have seen a rash of confessions and suicides from among the Nazi's, the Soviet's and now the Taliban when forced to face what they had done.
We haven't.
They ran and hid when not caught out and exterminated, then pecked from the sidelines, killing, bombing, making more orphans, more sorrow. Evil isn't something that can be talked away or convinced that violence isn't the answer.
Common people aren't so foolish. After having seen some of the things they have done, the horror they leave in their wake, only a really stupid man could say that they are the same as we. That it'll all be better from just some kindness and understanding. The last century has taught us different.
It will not end until the excuses stop, till the handy reasons for sitting on their hands go away. There aren't any observers, no safe seats in this, if you don't support the fight then you give the evil your support by default, I should think an educated person would realize that.
A battle rages in the Abu Ghraib suburb of Bagdad, a stronghold for Saddam's Sunni loyalists. A protest, turn riot, turn firefight. Clearly with thousands involved and differing loyalties, nationalities, there is going to be dispute over the cause. The New York Times oddly enough say's so, noting the general confusion over what happened when exactly.
Local residents and American soldiers offered widely varying accounts of the genesis of the firefight. Residents said the violence grew out of an effort this morning by American soldiers and Iraqi police officers to clear vegetable sellers from the street. Soldiers threw a stun grenade into the crowd, injuring some Iraqis, they said. After the Friday prayer services, a pro-Saddam Hussein demonstration of at least 1,000 people later gathered, escalating the confrontation, the residents said.
"People started calling, `By blood and soul we sacrifice for you, Saddam Hussein,' " a resident, Hamad Ali, said. Then Iraqi police fired on the demonstrators, and a firefight broke out, Mr. Ali said.
But American soldiers said the violence flared when someone threw a grenade at troops patrolling the Abu Ghraib market, slightly wounding two soldiers. Then the police station was hit by mortars, they said. On Sunday night, a mortar attack on the station killed at least one person and wounded two others.
The Guardian?....Well never let it be said they ever passed up a chance to blame the whole mess on the US alone. Compare the headlines of the two articles. Note as well the differing account of the same action as described by the NYT's.
Iraqis said the clash at Abu Ghraib, a western suburb of the capital, erupted when U.S. troops tried to clear market stalls from a main road. Youths threw stones at troops and Iraqi police, and set tires ablaze. Protesters shouted, ``Allahu akbar,'' or ``God is great.''
A U.S. officer at the scene, 1st Lt. Joseph Harrison, said someone tossed a grenade at soldiers in the marketplace, wounding two Americans. About the same time, mortars hit a police station near the market. The Americans said they arrested two Iraqis carrying a mortar tube.
Three hours later, when hundreds of Iraqis emerged from nearby mosques after Friday prayers, gunfire erupted as U.S. armored vehicles moved into the area. Ten explosions and machine gunfire were heard, and U.S. helicopters hovered overhead.
The bodies of two Iraqis - identified by friends and family as Mohammed Auweid, 45, and Hamid Abdullah, 41 - were carried from the area.
``God damn America!'' shouted friend Ali Hussein, who said the men were innocent passers-by. He said the Americans fired indiscriminately when Iraqis began throwing stones at them.
The Guardian by printing the qoutes they do, clearly believe them, completely ignoring the context, or passions involved. The truthfullness of arab man on the street interviews is highly suspect. I'm sure that civilians were probably killed, but is the Guardian so certain that we killed them when Iragi's were firing and lobbing mortar rounds? Or that the man qouted even knew the dead, did they follow up, will they check the story out after the fight?
Remember Jenin? They was no shortage of breatheless arabs running up to a camera and screaming massacre, thousands dead, murderers and terrorists...I feel sorry that anyone innocent was caught in the middle, but these shitheads started a shootout in their OWN neighborhood. Liars are not scarce in arab culture, they continue to prove that at every oppurtunity. Check any account by Al Jareeza where they qoute arab spokesmen of any kind. We are burning their tanks by the thousands, they are all committing suicide rather than fight us.
Claims of misdeeds need to be checked, but it would be nice if just once the Guardian and it's ilk actually checked the facts and reported what they know for certain, as opposed to reporting what sounds juicy, then turns out to be smoke.
One other point, did you notice that the first account duly noted that the Iraqi's were lobbing mortars, that a mortar tube had been captured. The Guardian account,
Ten explosions and machine gunfire were heard, and U.S. helicopters hovered overhead.
No mention of the Iraqi mortars, but pointing out the gunships were there. The implication is quite clear, they imply we were the ONLY cause of the explosions. Now when they supposedly were there and talked to the same Army spokesmen, why would they leave that part out?
No wonder we get bad reviews in Europe. The Guardian couldn't slant this any harder without making stuff up.
Bill Moyers....(gag, retch,..ack, ack .....awwwwwwwwk, spit), is so well educated, such a pious icon of Christian lefty goodness that I desire to break things when he speaks. This caught my eye.
Unlike today's crop of cookie-cutter, blow-dried corporate television news celebrities, Moyers is a man who chooses his words carefully because he values and respects the power of language and the importance of his own integrity. He is a craftsman in an age that values the assembly line production of indistinguishable news churned out at a numbing pace.
Nice suckup Buzzflash, now if that is true, then consider this piece here in Moyer's own words.
Everyone operates today in what a friend of mine calls "the blinding white light of 24/7 global medium" -- an increased conglomeration of megamedia corporations has essentially stripped journalism of purpose except pleasing consumers. --Moyers
Oh that's bad, very bad, horribly bad, we are supposed to be indoctrinated,...oops I mean educated by the Reverend Bill without something inconvienent like our own thoughts or wishes getting in the way. Naughty old consumers.........Oh, also let's not forget to dump out something like this. Even if the media isn't leftwing enough to please him, he has discovered the internet.
Right now, as we speak, House Republicans are trying to sneak into the energy bill a plan that would prohibit water pollution lawsuits against oil and chemical companies. Millions of consumers and their water utilities in 25 states will be forced to pay billions of dollars to remove the toxic gasoline additive MTBE from drinking water if the House gives the polluters what they want. I can't find this story in the mainstream press, only on niche websites.--Moyer's
Now any reasonable person might conclude from that, that the story is either without merit, or a flatout lie. The web is full of lunatic fringe sites, we all know that, apparently, Bill does not. You can almost imagine him sitting breathless before the monitor, sweaty hands waiting for the next Bartcop or Dem underground release on the EVIL doings of Bush and his minions. For someone who claims to want to teach the rest of us on what to think, he's pretty damn gulible.
Multiple sources Bill, never take just the word of one or two that the sky is falling. The web is a tool, use it smart guy, or is it possible that as much as you laud the power of free thinking, you indeed don't engage in it yourself.
Kuwaiti security authorities have foiled an attempt to smuggle $60 million worth of chemical weapons and biological warheads from Iraq to an unnamed European country, a Kuwaiti newspaper said on Wednesday.
Ted Turner is without a doubt, among the strangest of billionares, I mean just flat out weird. His latest mutterings aren't of much note, except for this statement.
"The most dangerous thing in the world right now is the fact the Russian and American nuclear missiles, 10 years after the Cold War is over, are still a hair-trigger away with less than 10 minutes response time from two presidents who thankfully are together today," Turner said.
Look, ametuers shouldn't make broad public pronouncements on things they know absolutely nothing about. The ICBM forces of the US and Russia are aimed at uninhabited patchs of the Pacific ocean, by mutual agreement, neither targets the other anymore. The targeting can be changed in about a half an hour, and the launch orders from either man regiures athentification from more than one person. No man can just go nuts and order a strike because he was in a bad mood that day, that's not how it works.
Meaningless, except that some of the chicken little crowd will grab it and run, spreading opinion as if it were fact. I think we need look no further than our resident troll to see that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. Better to have all the information, than just the opinions that fit your agenda.
From Drudge.
Go visit ISM Central
The stated purpose: A skeptical look at the pro-Palestinian International Solidarity Movement
Hosted by Tal G. in Jerusalem
Via LGF
If any of this is in Hillary's new book?
Well, if it's not, at least it is the World Net Daily. Article by Joseph Farah
"Bill and Hillary Clinton and other top U.S. political operatives laundered money for Ehud Barak's campaign to become prime minister of Israel through Americans for Peace Now."
"Over the last five years, Marks' investigation show, at least $3.8 million has been raised by APN and transferred for use by Peace Now in Israel for its overtly political purposes."
"Bill Clinton held a major fund-raiser for APN in New York in 1998. Hillary Clinton served as honorary chairman of an APN fund-raiser the same year."
And if you don't know who Americans for Peace (appeasement) Now is, here's the skinny.
"Americans for Peace Now claims to be 'educational' in nature, it actually serves as a front for the activities of the Israeli Peace Now movement. The American support group admits as much in its official charter. Peace Now is hardly a group in the mainstream of Israeli politics. It's an extremist organization. The group is most well-known for its denunciation of Jewish "settlements" in supposedly Arab territory. Peace Now organizes rallies throughout Israel that give great aid and comfort to Arab terrorists."
Sounds like a lovely group of folks.
ELF has set fire to 3 more houses under construction in 2 hits. One in Michigan and the other in California (of course).
June 03 - CHICO, CALIFORNIA
"on june 4 at about 2:45 am elf set fire to a luxury home at 145 sterling oaks
drive in chico ca. we used a napalm incindiery. it would have burnt to the
ground if the pvc pipe containing water didn't put out the flame. the pvc pipe
caught on fire and released the water. the damage ended up being minimal to our disssatisfaction. we targeted these luxury homes due to the damage to the
bioregion that occurs through development. chico is slowly becoming victim to
sprawl and we will not sit back as all that is natural and beautiful is
destroyed. civilizaion as a whole has proved to be detrimental to humans and
non human animals. we won't settle for anything less then complete collapse.
liberation for all life"
June 04, WASHINGTON TOWNSHIP, MICHIGAN
A pair of houses under construction were burned in an upscale suburban
development in Washington Township, Michigan.
The two houses were both in late stages of construction. The two houses under
construction had a combined value of $700,000, she said.
Graffiti reading "ELF" and "stop sprawl" was spray painted on nearby
construction equipment.
A cottage industry has started on the east coast, with construction companies either letting their employees stay in the in the houses they are building or paying people to stay the night in them. If they could guarantee at least a phone line in the home I'd love to take them up on this offer. But why can't ELF just come directly to me? And why can't they properly use the CAPS button? All lower case or all upper case does not make you a rebel.
Tueday at the anit-LEIU rally..... nothing happened. That pisses me off almost as much as what happened yesterday. I left for work early and headed up to the the massing area and no one was there. Ok, there were people there, but they all looked like they were on Ritalin.
So here's a run-down of the reprocussions of yesterdays action. The 12 people that were arrested yesterday were released later that evening. Tuesday morning some folks showed up at city hall to complain to the city council about the "police brutality" Monday. The normally left leaning city council had the doors chained shut to keep them out, and the protesters were once again, not happy campers. The deputy police chief stepped outside and read a statment that basically said "if you show up at a rally with backpacks containing ball-bearings and mason jars full of urine or fire propellant, you are no longer a peaceful protester." This really harshed the mellow of those gathered. Their response was "but those people don't represent us. Why do you want us to police our own ranks?" Go figure.
Then a magically peaceful rally happened. It included no property damage nor any "police brutality".
Meanwhile over at the Seattle Indymedia site, the moonbats were spraying their guano everywhere. One included a commenter giving instructions about how to set the police officers on fire. More crap here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, andhere. More pics are here, here and here.
The second to the last of the non-photo posts asks for Chief of Police Gil Kerlikowske's resignation. Which makes me wonder how much these dipshits know about the recent history of Seattle. For those of you who don't live here, the last guy who held the Chief's position, basically got cut loose because of they way major events were handled. We had a guy beaten to death in full view of the police on freakin' Mardi Gras.
The protesters are basically all upset that they weren't allowed to act like spoiled children and break other peoples stuff. Tuesday, the police let it be know that they were going to review the video they took on Monday and make arrests during the week of those they could ID. This put the IMC'ers in a tizzy that a gallon of LSD couldn't re-create.
I will continue to go to the massing points and at least try to get my own pics. I would have today, but they would have looked just like fans of 'The Greatful Dead' met 'The Living Dead'. Or basically a large group of 'The Brain Dead'. But I digress.
Also pointed out by LGF, is a story from the Anchorage Dailey News about a co-conspirator of St. Rachel of the Dozers', who should have been denied re-entry to the US.
Megan Eirman recently got back from 7 weeks in Israel. She snuck in under the guise of a tourist and snuck into and out of the "palestinian" settlements in order to help them propagandize whenever the IDF so much as let loose some flatulence near a "palestinian".
It is a heart-warming, almost made-for-tv-movie story about a union organizing mom and her non-conformist daughter. Mom didn't want her to go over so badly that she refused to put any amout of cash towards her daughter's travel expenses. Mom's own words, "I was worried she'd get lost in the hatred along with the rest of them."
Of course Megan was working towards sainthood according to her letters she sent to her mom, "Feb. 20: I saw my first dead body today. ... A 23-year-old boy is dead. ... He left his house at 5 a.m. to go to the Mosque to pray. ... He saw that the military vehicles were at the end of his street, so he turned to go back inside and was shot in the neck." 23 year old boy? 5am to the mosque? Turned away and was shot? I saw her picture attached to the article and thought she had "the look of the simple", but she's got the naivete of a 4 year old. And, apparently, she thinks her mother does too.
"She wrote of driving around in an ambulance with a dead man, stopping along the streets to ask if anyone knew who he was. It turned out this one was a terrorist." This one? Just how many dead guys in ambulances does she ride around with? Is this some kind of necro fixation?
I will never understand these people. And I am almost sure that I never want to, lest I need to start taking heavy psycotic meds.
"All the news that's fit to retract"
an industrial strength paper shredder for Saddam.
While France adamantly denies dealing with Iraq after the start of the war, multiple intelligence reports indicate the French may have helped some Iraqi leaders escape. The Washington Times was the first to report Wednesday that France offered visas to Iraqi officials who had fled to Syria. France denied those charges as well.
Apparently it's not just civilian body counts we have trouble with. The estimate of 170,000 looted items from the National Museum of Iraq has been revised ever so slightly downward. To 29. Not 29,000, just plain old 29.
Tim Blair has a question for a Westerner heading for Iraq to sign up for the Saddam Hussein Human Shield Brigade. To paraphrase Tim: Where were you on September 11th, 2001?
I wonder if Senator Murray knows what country spends more in foreign aid that any other country in the world?
And the spinning begins. It would look a lot more like opening a thoughtful debate if she had spent even a little bit of time thinking before she opened her mouth.
Also interesting that any criticism of Murray gets described as right wing hate mongering. Funny how hiding behind that didn't work for Lott. But, of course, only "right wingers" can be haters - just ask Hillary Clinton or Nancy Pelosi about that.
Another interesting thing I noted - many of my left leaning colleagues (I work in academia, remember) were openly dancing in the halls yesterday when Lott resigned - and pasting hard copy of the story from CNN and MSNBC all over their doors, and sarcastically asking me if I wanted a copy for my door (my political leanings being well known in these parts). Funny thing is, some of these same people were openly hostile to me after the mid-term elections (like I was personally responsible for the failure of their ideology), and I didn't gloat or post the results on my door or any such nonsense.
The Republicans did the right thing in forcing Lott out. The best way to combat the all out charges of racism that seem to form the cornerstone of the Democratic hopes for 2004 (wouldn't coming up with a platform that people actually agreed with be more effective?) is to get rid of the dinosaurs, and combat the scare tactics with social and economic programs that make sense for everyone.
From a reader - the latest release from the international arm of ANSWER (Act Now to Stop War And Racism)
SCENARIO & POLITICS OF JAN. 18
The world is being menaced by Weapons of Mass Destruction in the hands of a government that is openly threatening and planning to use nuclear weapons in preemptive wars of aggression against others, including non-nuclear countries. While all eyes are focused on the purported threat coming from Iraq, the Bush Administration has sharply reorganized U.S. military doctrine and strategy as it prepares to actually use Weapons of Mass Destruction in coming conflicts as a matter of declared policy.
It is for this reason that on January 18, people across the United States will converge at the West side of the Capitol Building in Washington DC and march in a mass demonstration to the Washington Navy Yard -- a massive military installation located in a working class neighborhood in Southeast Washington DC that parks warships on the Anacostia River. We will demand the immediate elimination of US weapons of mass destruction and a people's inspection team will call for unfettered access and a full declaration of U.S. non-conventional weapons systems.
Bush seeks to have world attention focused on the disarmament of Iraq as the preeminent threat to world peace, while the real threat of nuclear war and the use of Weapons of Mass Destruction arises within the U.S. Administration. This is the politics of diversion and should give pause to those who are thinking of joining in Bush's sleight-of-hand anti-Iraq chorus believing it to be a path to peace. The nuclear threat posed by the United States is neither rhetoric nor speculation, it is the now announced doctrine and strategy of the Bush White House. It represents the ushering in of a new era of unrestrained and unprovoked catastrophic violence.
"Preemptive Strikes are Part of US Strategic Doctrine," reads the headline of the front page of the Washington Post of December 11, 2002. A classified version of the new Bush Doctrine "breaks with the fifty years of counter-proliferation efforts" by planning for the use of nuclear weapons against countries that not only have not attacked the US but that do not themselves possess nuclear capability.
A.N.S.W.E.R. believes that all Weapons of Mass Destruction should be banished from the planet. But this is impossible until the biggest arsenal of Weapons of Mass Destruction -- the one at the disposal of trigger-happy George W. Bush and Co. -- is eliminated. Any other call for disarmament will not be viewed as legitimate by the rest of the world.
These war hawks are determined to breach the "taboo" against the use of nuclear weapons that grew after the world experienced the horror of the incineration of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.
It would be cowardly and foolish to turn our attention away from the open threats and plans to use Weapons of Mass Destruction that are issuing from the White House, not Iraq, and are embodied in the new Bush military doctrine.
We must stop the Bush Administration from threatening and killing the people of the world who are not our enemy.
https://www.internationalanswer.org/campaigns/j18/j18endorse.html
ANSWER is, of course, a tool of the World Workers Party, who see North Korea as a model for the rest of us to follow.
I do agree entirely with the last sentence in their missive, however. We should not be threatening and killing people of the world who are not our enemy. We only want to kill the ones who ARE our enemy, preferably with extreme prejudice.
No wonder Gerhard Schroeder doesn't want us to topple Saddam. Who would Germany sell weapons to, then? If this report is true, I say pull the US out of Germany and let them fend for themselves. Go somewhere that our help is actually appreciated.
From the article:
The most contentious piece of news for Germany is that the report names it as the number one supplier of weapons supplies to Iraq. German firms are supposed to easily outnumber the firms from other countries who have been exporting to Iraq.
They have delivered technical know-how, components, basic substances and even entire technical facilities for the development of atomic, chemical and biological weapons of mass destruction to Iraq right since 1975.
In some cases, conventional military and technical dealings between Germany and Iraq are said to date till 2001, ten years after the second Gulf war and a time when international sanctions against Saddam Hussein are still in place.
The paper reports that the dossier contains several indications of cases, where German authorities right up to the Finance Ministry tolerated the illegal arms cooperation and also promoted to it to an extent.
Pretty amazing, eh? Perhaps it is more Iraqi disinformation. But I bet there is more than a kernel of truth to the report.
And his handlers are none to impressed with the flack he is catching for his useful idiot performance over in Baghdad. I was going to comment on it, but Emporer Misha has already scored a clean kill on the subject. Too bad we can't string the corpse up on a fence line to serve as a warning to other wanna-be "moral compasses".
And no offense, but how fucking stupid do you have to be to go to Baghdad on a self directed "fact finding tour" and not anticipate that it will be turned into a major propaganda opportunity for Saddam. Well, Penn wanted publicity, and he got publicity. Now he has to deal with the fact that most Americans think he is a jerk.
I wonder what he really said? And I wonder why he would go to Iraq to be a willing shill for Saddam? It seems like all of these entertainers with sagging careers feel the need to come out firmly in stride with Saddam. I guess it is just a desperate ploy to bolster their public presence.
Just in case it disappears, here is the text from the above referenced article in the Iraq Daily.
Sean Penn condemns US threats against Iraq
Baghdad, Dec 16, INA
The American movie star, Sean Penn has condemned the US-British threats to wage war against Iraq.
He told press conference that there is no legitimate justification for the brutal campaign against an authentic state like Iraq.
He confirmed that Iraq is completely clear of weapons of mass destruction and the United Nations must adopt a positive stance towards Iraq.
He also condemned the US misleading claims arguing that it is the US and not Iraq who is practicing such illegal behavior.
Mr. Penn went on saying that he would convey to the public opinion in US the real situation that the Americans should force the US administration to stop such aggressive campaign.
Finally, Mr. Penn passed a written communiqu� in which he declared that his visit to Iraq is to evaluate the humanitarian situation of Iraqis and to reject the crippling sanctions on Iraq since 1991.
And again, why do these numbskulls always wait until they are safely overseas before they take their "high and mighty" moral stands?