Judy from Canada sends along an article in which British MP Tam Dalyell points out that whistle blowers like the late David Kelly may be the truest patriots of all.
Dalyell recalls his own experience with a whistle blower who risked jail for exposing a mass murder carried out by Margaret Thatcher. She had ordered an Argentine cruiser to be sunk with the loss of 368 lives when she knew it was retreating to Argentina and posed no threat to British forces in the Falklands. But the Iron Lady needed a political victory at home
Something similar happened in Bush War I, when George W. Bush’s father slaughtered thousands of retreating Iraqis on the “Highway of Death.” Here’s an account from Iraq: In the Eye of the Storm, by Dilip Hiro…
At 0100 GMT on February 24, the coalition launched its ground offensive from Saudi Arabia, code-named Operation Desert Saber…The next day at 2130 GMT Moscow presented a new peace plan, and an hour later Iraq accepted it. Baghdad ordered a withdrawal from Kuwait. By noon on February 26 the Iraqi troops had withdrawn from Kuwait City and its suburbs, and a long convoy of Iraqi tanks, armored personnel carriers, trucks buses, and hijacked vans and cars was on its way to Basra along the six-lane Highway 80.
As it approached Mitla ridge, north of Jahra, twenty miles west of Kuwait City, its head and tail were hit by U.S. ground-attack aircraft.l This immobilized the convoy. The slaughtering of the retreating Iraqis continued for the next forty hours until the truce at 0800 local time on February 28.
In the words of Colin Smith, the chief roving correspondent of the London Observer, the aerial assault was “one of the most terrible harassments of a retreating army from the air in the history of warfare.” When the weather turned unsuitable for aerial bombing in the afternoon, the task of “taking out” the retreating Iraqis fell to the US army and marines.
“We got there (Highway 80) just before dusk and essentially shot up the front of this column,” reported Tony Clifton of Newsweek. “The group of vehicles we hit included petrol tankers and tanks, so the tanks exploded in these great fountains of white flame from the ammunition…You could see the little figures of soldiers coming out with their hands up. It really looked like a medieval hell — the hell you see in (the paintings of Hieronymus) Bosch, because of the great red flames and then these weird little contorted figures…It was all conducted at a distance of say, half a mile, and in darkness.”
Posted by Jerome Doolittle at July 24, 2003 09:02 PM
It's called running up the score.
It's all part of the Andover/New England Prep School/honor code ethos that governs the Bush clan.
Posted by: on July 25, 2003 2:21 PMOh gross! War is so ickey! I wish we could elect a bunch of marxists - er I mean progressives, because they are such nice, caring people! Not like mean republicans and that horrible woman, Maggie. I just bet she was really mean in school and gossiped and everything!
Progressives would apologize for the shame of America, give away our foreign policy to the UN because they CARE so much more than Americans! And they are really neat people...diverse, that's the best you can get, diverse!
And if we had some of those really smart and caring progressives, people like Osama would really respect us and leave us alone and everything! It is really America's fault. Just like when mean people gossip and, like, everything.
Posted by: Jack M on July 25, 2003 5:09 PMI don't think Jerry was talking about war, Jack. I think he was talking about shooting people in the back.
Posted by: CCRyder on July 25, 2003 7:34 PMJack, you poor pathetic fool.
When will you ever admit that the my-dick-is-big policies that you and W espouse will in the end weaken, and not strengthen, America?
Also, Jack, progessives are not pacifists. When appropriate, as in WW II, or Afghanistan, we will support military action, even brutal military action.
The difficulty here is that in Afghanistan -- a fully justified retaliation by us -- the US has abdicated its moral obligation to rebuild the country. (An obligation which, if fulfilled, would have strengthened, not weakened, the U.S., Jack.)
Now, W has picked a fight with a tinpot dictator with a 30-year record of not attacking the U.S. I was against that, but once done, that also created the obligation to rebuild Iraq. As in Afghanistan, 1) fulfilling this obligation would strengthen, not weaken, American security and influence, and 2) we have shown little interest in rebuilding that country as well.
Posted by: No. 2 on July 27, 2003 2:55 PM