Sean Penn preaches Peace in Iraq.

[ShiningIce]

BAGHDAD, Iraq - U.N. inspectors hunted for weapons of mass destruction at missile plants and nuclear complexes Sunday, while an unusual visitor — Hollywood star Sean Penn (news) — spoke out in Baghdad against a U.S. attack and in support of the Iraqi people caught up in an international crisis.



In Berlin, meanwhile, the German defense ministry said the United Nations (news - web sites) had asked it to supply the inspection operation with unmanned spy aircraft to help in the search for banned Iraqi weapons or the facilities to make them.


A decision on whether to supply the LUNA drones and the technicians needed to maintain them likely will be made this week, said a ministry spokesman on customary condition of anonymity. German-U.S. relations were strained over Berlin's opposition to attacking Saddam Hussein (news - web sites), but Berlin has pledged full support for the inspection program.


Penn issued his comments at the end of a three-day visit to Iraq which was organized by the Institute for Public Accuracy, a research organization based in San Francisco, California.


"Simply put, if there is a war or continued sanctions against Iraq, the blood of Americans and Iraqis alike will be on our (American) hands," Penn said at a news conference in the Iraqi capital Sunday.


U.N. inspectors hunting for banned weapons of mass destruction searched a missile plant south of Baghdad that the United States said had aroused suspicion. It was one of ten sites the newly bolstered inspection team visited Sunday, according to Iraqi government officials and a statement by U.N. inspectors' headquarters in Baghdad.


With the arrival of 15 inspectors Sunday and the routine departure of others in recent days, the total of U.N. sleuths now stands at 105, said Hiro Ueki, a spokesman for the U.N. program in Baghdad. On Saturday, the teams visited a dozen sites, a number Ueki said was the largest single-day site visitation since the inspectors returned to Iraq on Nov. 27 after a four-year hiatus.


The sites visited Sunday included al-Mutasim, a government missile plant occupying the grounds of a former nuclear facility 46 miles south of Baghdad, the inspectors said. As usual, they offered no details about what they sought or found.


Al-Mutasim was cited in a CIA (news - web sites) intelligence report released in October that detailed what U.S. officials said was evidence Iraq was producing chemical and biological weapons and the means to deliver them. The report also cited the facility for as a site where Iraq might be trying to build nuclear weapons.


Iraqi officials said the inspectors also revisited al-Qa'qaa, a large nuclear complex just south of Baghdad, Sunday that had been searched Saturday and last week as well. The site had been under U.N. scrutiny in the 1990s and was involved in the final design of Iraq's nuclear weapons ambitions before it was destroyed by U.N. teams after the 1991 Gulf War (news - web sites).


The United Nations offered no details on Sunday's inspection at al-Qa'qaa. During their Saturday visit, inspectors said the question the director of the facility about changes made since teams were last in Iraq four years ago. Last week the teams began taking an inventory of nuclear materials still at the site.

Also Sunday, the inspectors returned to a missile complex north of Baghdad for the second time in two days. The complex, the government-owned al-Nasr Company, 30 miles north of Baghdad, also houses sophisticated machine tools that can, for example, help manufacture gas centrifuges. Such centrifuges are used to enrich uranium to bomb-grade level — a method that was favored by the Iraqis in their nuclear weapons program of the late 1980s.

Haithem Shihab, manager of a factory in al-Nasr, said the inspectors compared the facility to site plans and checked machinery.

"Today's inspection went smoothly, and we provided the inspectors with all the information they asked for. They entered all the places they wanted. We answered all questions. They made sure that there are no prohibited activities in this factory," Shihab said Sunday.

Shihab said his factory produced parts for missiles with a range no greater than 43 miles. Under U.N. resolutions, Iraq is limited to missiles with a range of no greater than 90 miles.

Also Sunday, International Atomic Energy Agency experts on the U.N. team inspected Um-Al Maarek — Mother of Battles — a government facility 12 miles south of Baghdad. Nuclear experts visited the site the first time Nov. 30. It is run by the government's Military Industrialization Commission in charge of weapons development.

In the first round of inspections in the 1990s, after Iraq's defeat in the Gulf War, the United Nations destroyed tons of Iraqi chemical and biological weapons and dismantled Iraq's nuclear weapons program — but inspectors do not believe they got all Iraq's banned arsenal.

The inspectors are back under a tough U.N. resolution passed last month that threatens serious consequences if Iraq fails to prove it has surrendered all its banned weapons. The United States already has expressed skepticism at the voluminous Iraqi weapons declaration filed Dec. 8.

 

[MadKalnod]

And Sean bases his advice on what, his years of extensive first-hand experience at settling geopolitical crises? Maybe Colin Powell and Don Rumsfeld could drop by the Penn estate later and give him some pointers on making crappy movies and how to be best remembered as Madonna's first ex-husband?

As for the sanctions causing blood on our hands, Sean might want to ask his new sleepover buddy Saddam why he spent whatever money comes into his regime on commissioning poems that praise him like demigod, written in solid 24k gold all over the walls of one of his 300+ palaces, instead of using it on food and medicine for his people.

 

[august spies]

where was penn supporting hussien? unlike rumsfeld who went over with an appeasement committee for hussien, penn was speaking about the plight of the people

 

[MadKalnod]

where was penn supporting hussien? unlike rumsfeld who went over with an appeasement committee for hussien, penn was speaking about the plight of the people

Oh, this is golden...

So, let's get this straight: Appeasement is wrong if Donald Rumsfeld does it. (Not that the article mentioned this at all. I'd ask where you got this information, but I've no genuine interest in seeing whatever ranting paranoid fringe publication you'd refer me to beyond gleaning references for my pet comic book project.) However, appeasement is noble if Sean Penn does it. Let's be honest, arguing that Hussein deserves not to experience any consequences for his behavior, either through military action or sanctions, is appeasement. Sean Penn is virtuous for merely talking about how deeply he cares for the plight of the Iraqi people, but the current U.S. policy is evil for actually trying to do something about eliminating the brutal dictator who oppresses them.

We now clearly see the basis of morality in the world of August Spies, and indeed much of the left: Actions are not judged to be right or wrong in and of themselves. They are not judged to be right or wrong based upon the motivation behind them. They are judged to be right or wrong solely upon the basis of the party political affiliation of the person committing them. It is even acceptable to hold the same actions to be both right and wrong at the same time as long as it allows August to praise a person he agrees with and condemn a person he disagrees with. Any position is acceptable as long as it reinforces his mantra that the left is always right and the right is always wrong.

I have read that insanity is the ability to hold two mutually contradictory opinions and believe them both to be equally true simultaneously. Thank you so very much, August Spies, for demonstrating so clearly why nothing you or other prominent leftists say should ever be taken seriously.

 

[august spies]

mak your entire factless rant on the left, just described the right wing perfectly, and it is how i have been describing it in allmost all of my posts. How you still dont get it is beyond me, i really dont think your actually reading what i write.

the right has a double standard, the right has no morality, the right lies and decieves. What seperates the left from the right is that we have no double standard, we are against any violation of the UD.

you on the other hand, silence vioations committed by your allies, and lie about them, you play up violations committed by your enemies and lie about them also.

the gulf war is a clear example of that, no i dont think you understood what i was saying but ill try again, think about it this time and use rational arguments with factual examples, your argument may have made some sense if penn was going to support saddam like rumsfeld did, but he wasnt, here was there with social justice and civilian aid groups.

on the other hand rumsfeld was there to specificaly appease Hussien and pledge his support of the crimes of torture against the people. there is a massive difference and i hope that you can see it. i dont know how i can make it more clear. The appeasement committe went in 83' another one took place in 88 or 89' that one was headed by bod dole, but poing being support for hussien and his crimes went way beyond rumsfelds visit of 83 and passed the massive gas attack of 88', than after the oil grab of 90' the tone changes and they try and use his past crimes(which they all supported) against him because they cant just say war for oil. that is a perfect examples of your double standard. if your going to rebut it, please use specific examples from my response and facts so we can have a rational debate.

fyi here is an article on the appeasement:

Published on Friday, August 2, 2002 by CommonDreams.org
The Saddam in Rumsfeld’s Closet
by Jeremy Scahill

“Man and the turtle are very much alike. Neither makes any progress without sticking his neck out.”
—Donald Rumsfeld

Five years before Saddam Hussein’s now infamous 1988 gassing of the Kurds, a key meeting took place in Baghdad that would play a significant role in forging close ties between Saddam Hussein and Washington. It happened at a time when Saddam was first alleged to have used chemical weapons. The meeting in late December 1983 paved the way for an official restoration of relations between Iraq and the US, which had been severed since the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.

With the Iran-Iraq war escalating, President Ronald Reagan dispatched his Middle East envoy, a former secretary of defense, to Baghdad with a hand-written letter to Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and a message that Washington was willing at any moment to resume diplomatic relations.

That envoy was Donald Rumsfeld.

Rumsfeld’s December 19-20, 1983 visit to Baghdad made him the highest-ranking US official to visit Iraq in 6 years. He met Saddam and the two discussed “topics of mutual interest,” according to the Iraqi Foreign Ministry. “[Saddam] made it clear that Iraq was not interested in making mischief in the world,” Rumsfeld later told The New York Times. “It struck us as useful to have a relationship, given that we were interested in solving the Mideast problems.”

Just 12 days after the meeting, on January 1, 1984, The Washington Post reported that the United States “in a shift in policy, has informed friendly Persian Gulf nations that the defeat of Iraq in the 3-year-old war with Iran would be ‘contrary to U.S. interests’ and has made several moves to prevent that result.”

In March of 1984, with the Iran-Iraq war growing more brutal by the day, Rumsfeld was back in Baghdad for meetings with then-Iraqi Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz. On the day of his visit, March 24th, UPI reported from the United Nations: “Mustard gas laced with a nerve agent has been used on Iranian soldiers in the 43-month Persian Gulf War between Iran and Iraq, a team of U.N. experts has concluded... Meanwhile, in the Iraqi capital of Baghdad, U.S. presidential envoy Donald Rumsfeld held talks with Foreign Minister Tarek Aziz (sic) on the Gulf war before leaving for an unspecified destination.”

The day before, the Iranian news agency alleged that Iraq launched another chemical weapons assault on the southern battlefront, injuring 600 Iranian soldiers. “Chemical weapons in the form of aerial bombs have been used in the areas inspected in Iran by the specialists,” the U.N. report said. “The types of chemical agents used were bis-(2-chlorethyl)-sulfide, also known as mustard gas, and ethyl N, N-dimethylphosphoroamidocyanidate, a nerve agent known as Tabun.”

Prior to the release of the UN report, the US State Department on March 5th had issued a statement saying “available evidence indicates that Iraq has used lethal chemical weapons.”

Commenting on the UN report, US Ambassador Jeane J. Kirkpatrick was quoted by The New York Times as saying, “We think that the use of chemical weapons is a very serious matter. We've made that clear in general and particular.”

Compared with the rhetoric emanating from the current administration, based on speculations about what Saddam might have, Kirkpatrick’s reaction was hardly a call to action.

Most glaring is that Donald Rumsfeld was in Iraq as the 1984 UN report was issued and said nothing about the allegations of chemical weapons use, despite State Department “evidence.” On the contrary, The New York Times reported from Baghdad on March 29, 1984, “American diplomats pronounce themselves satisfied with relations between Iraq and the United States and suggest that normal diplomatic ties have been restored in all but name.”

A month and a half later, in May 1984, Donald Rumsfeld resigned. In November of that year, full diplomatic relations between Iraq and the US were fully restored. Two years later, in an article about Rumsfeld’s aspirations to run for the 1988 Republican Presidential nomination, the Chicago Tribune Magazine listed among Rumsfeld’s achievements helping to “reopen U.S. relations with Iraq.” The Tribune failed to mention that this help came at a time when, according to the US State Department, Iraq was actively using chemical weapons.

Throughout the period that Rumsfeld was Reagan’s Middle East envoy, Iraq was frantically purchasing hardware from American firms, empowered by the White House to sell. The buying frenzy began immediately after Iraq was removed from the list of alleged sponsors of terrorism in 1982. According to a February 13, 1991 Los Angeles Times article:

“First on Hussein's shopping list was helicopters -- he bought 60 Hughes helicopters and trainers with little notice. However, a second order of 10 twin-engine Bell "Huey" helicopters, like those used to carry combat troops in Vietnam, prompted congressional opposition in August, 1983... Nonetheless, the sale was approved.”

In 1984, according to The LA Times, the State Department—in the name of “increased American penetration of the extremely competitive civilian aircraft market”—pushed through the sale of 45 Bell 214ST helicopters to Iraq. The helicopters, worth some $200 million, were originally designed for military purposes. The New York Times later reported that Saddam “transferred many, if not all [of these helicopters] to his military.”

In 1988, Saddam’s forces attacked Kurdish civilians with poisonous gas from Iraqi helicopters and planes. U.S. intelligence sources told The LA Times in 1991, they “believe that the American-built helicopters were among those dropping the deadly bombs.”

In response to the gassing, sweeping sanctions were unanimously passed by the US Senate that would have denied Iraq access to most US technology. The measure was killed by the White House.

Senior officials later told reporters they did not press for punishment of Iraq at the time because they wanted to shore up Iraq's ability to pursue the war with Iran. Extensive research uncovered no public statements by Donald Rumsfeld publicly expressing even remote concern about Iraq’s use or possession of chemical weapons until the week Iraq invaded Kuwait in August 1990, when he appeared on an ABC news special.

Eight years later, Donald Rumsfeld signed on to an “open letter” to President Clinton, calling on him to eliminate “the threat posed by Saddam.” It urged Clinton to “provide the leadership necessary to save ourselves and the world from the scourge of Saddam and the weapons of mass destruction that he refuses to relinquish.”

In 1984, Donald Rumsfeld was in a position to draw the world’s attention to Saddam’s chemical threat. He was in Baghdad as the UN concluded that chemical weapons had been used against Iran. He was armed with a fresh communication from the State Department that it had “available evidence” Iraq was using chemical weapons. But Rumsfeld said nothing.

Washington now speaks of Saddam’s threat and the consequences of a failure to act. Despite the fact that the administration has failed to provide even a shred of concrete proof that Iraq has links to Al Qaeda or has resumed production of chemical or biological agents, Rumsfeld insists that “the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.”

But there is evidence of the absence of Donald Rumsfeld’s voice at the very moment when Iraq’s alleged threat to international security first emerged. And in this case, the evidence of absence is indeed evidence

 

[ShiningIce]

Finally words of truth. 🙂

 

[kurchatovium]

This article is just too funny to comment on. My god I think I hold the opinion of the bum with the shopping cart full of flags where I work in higher regard than Sean Penn.

 

[asutickler]

Why look, everyone! It's Hanoi Jane Jr.! 🙄

While I do not contest the right of any American to protest the actions of our government, doing so from the capital of our avowed enemy is, to put it mildly, in rather poor taste.

Then again, the man used to be married to Madonna, and certain strains of VD really CAN mess with your mind... 😛

 

[august spies]

well those are some intelligent arguments you got going there, keep it up and you can be a mainstream talk radio host

 

[asutickler]

I'm impressed, August! You actually managed to craft a post devoid of politicized ranting, and even, to my utter shock, tried to be humorous! 😀 I think hell just froze.

Damn, next thing we know, you'll be demonstrating that you ACTUALLY have interests outside of leftist politics! 😱

 

[Biggles of 266]

asu: Hanoi Hannah, wasn't it? 😕

 

[asutickler]

Well... Yes and no, Biggles.


"Hannoi Hannah," AKA Thu Houng, was an agent of the North Vietnamese propaganda effort, and broadcasted messages (on Radio Hanoi) which were intended to demoralize American soldiers.


"Hanoi Jane" was a deservedly unfavorable nickname given to American actress/fitness instructor Jane Fonda, who traveled to North Vietnam in 1972 to show her support for the North Vietnamese. She literally went and mingled with the North Vietnamese leadership, and had photos taken of herself touring NVA military installations, all the while preaching the "evils" of America. Although Fonda's actions were considerably more repulsive than any yet undertaken by that idiot Sean Penn, the two incidents are still somewhat similar...

 

[MadKalnod]

Oh, I do love it when they hand me the ammunition...

All righty August, you've provided a reference for Rumsfeld's offer of appeasement waaaaaayyyyyyyy back in 1983. At that time, Iraq was a mortal enemy of Iran, and Iran was making itself a bigger threat to America. You do remember a guy named the Ayatollah Khomenei and that little hostage-taking incident from a few years previous, yes? Our actions with Saddam more or less amounted to shaking him up and pointing him at Iran so that it, and thus its status as a threat to our security, would be weakened. Was it dirty pool, geopolitically speaking? Maybe so. But here's the thing: I t has absolutely no bearing on the current situation.

I mean, what's the point of your argument? We did a bad thing almost twenty years ago, so we aren't allowed to do the right thing now? Changing our mind is a bigger crime somehow than actual crimes? By that logic, we should have ignored Stalin's purges and let the Soviets enslave the world unopposed because we helped him out against the Germans in WWII. By that logic, we should have let Hitler exterminate the Jews because we hadn't done anything to stop him prior to Pearl Harbor. It would have been "hypocritical" to step in and liberate Auschwitz after that.

You toss this news item into the discussion as if it's supposed to silence the argument, but all it does is prove that we tried to negotiate peacefully and diplomatically with Saddam, as the left insists we must, and it got us absolutely nowhere because he couldn't be trusted. We found out the hard way that the enemy of my enemy is not necessarily my friend. So what are we supposed to do because of it? Sit here with our collective hairshirts on, flagellating ourselves and begging the U.N. for forgiveness for our sins of two decades past; and under no circumstances actually taking action to prevent Saddam from causing more bloodshed because August Spies says it would be (gasp) hypocritical? If the United States really does have any responsibilty in making Saddam the tyrant he is today, and I'm perfectly willing to accept that we probably do, then don't you think that makes it even more imperative that we move to take him out? If he's our mess, don't we have an obligation to clean it up? Apparently not, says the left. Apparently trying to undo our mistakes is even worse than the original mistake, says August Spies.

And therein lies the dark secret at the heart of liberalism. Liberals don't really want problems to be solved. You don't believe me? Some facts: Women's Advocacy groups complained for years about the brutal treatment of women in Afghanistan under the Taliban's abhorrent rule. The Bush administration sent the troops in to eradicate those misogynistic theocrats like the roaches they were; and now the burquas have come off, female doctors and lawyers can practice their trade without being stoned as heretics, and the little girls are back in school again. N.O.W. has yet to send thank-you card one to the White House for accomplishing what they always said should have been done where all the peace rallies and e-mail petitions in the world failed. The British government released a report disclosing all of Saddam's human-rights violations from the acids baths to the professional rapist he keeps on his payroll; and Amnesty International is enraged that their findings are being used to obtain support for regime change in Iraq. What was the point of gathering all that data if not to inspire the world to fix the situation? The point, I must assume, was not to inspire or educate, but to impress. In the brilliant words of libertarian author P.J. O'Rourke:

The principal feature of contemporary American liberalism is sanctimoniousness. By loudly denouncing all bad things - war and hunger and date rape - liberals testify to their own terrific goodness. More important, they promote themselves to membership in a self-selecting elite for those who care deeply about such things. People who care a lot are naturally superior to we who don't care any more than we have to. By virtue of this superiority the caring have a moral right to lead the nation. It's a kind of natural aristocracy, and the wonderful thing about this aristocracy is that you don't have to be brave, smart, strong, or even lucky to join it, you just have to be liberal.

Do you begin to see? The liberal cannot feel secure in himself unless he has a target to denounce. The liberal defines himself by his opposition to injustices. If these injustices are ever righted, however, the liberal will be forced to re-assess his world view, and more importantly, redefine his self-image. For example, African Americans have made more advances socially in the past 40 years than they did in the previous 4000. Race relations are better in contemporary America than they are anywhere else in the entire world; (especially compared to Africa, where Tutsis and Hutus trying to commit genocide upon each other is the most popular sport, and Robert Mugabe's Zimbabwe invites famine upon itself by forcing the only successful farmers off their land because they happen to be white) and yet the likes of Jesse Jackson have invested their lives in acting as if every caucasian has a hooded sheet hidden in their closet; as if we could blink and suddenly Jim Crow, slavery, and lynchings-as-family-entertainment might become status quo again. If scientists discovered a gene-therapy technique that would turn everyone's skin the exact same shade of blue overnight, do you really think he would stop blaming everything on racism?

It's the same reason Homeless Advocacy groups discouraged the homeless from participating in the Census so the Government could get an accurate idea of how big the problem really was; the same reason they denounced plans to help the homeless find gainful employment as "exploitation" and opposed attempts to put the mentally ill street people into hospitals where they could be treated for their conditions as "cruel and insensitive." Homeless Advocates think it's more "compassionate" to give the homeless free shopping carts to haul their bags of string and tinfoil; to produce instructional videos on "Safe Dumpster Diving"; and that forcing Public Libraries to allow schizophrenic street people to use the children's section as their latrines is somehow more "respectful of their dignity" than getting them some lithium and some job skills. Liberals do not propose solutions that will make the person be homeless no longer, they propose Band-Aid measures that make being homeless easier. If the Homeless problem were cured, liberals would no longer have that issue to demonstrate their compassion and moral superiority. Martin Sheen wouldn't be able to show his sympathy for the homeless by sleeping on a steam grate for one night, an act which couldn't have helped the homeless guy who normally slept there in any measurable way, unless he was allowed to use Martin's bed that night.

Don't get me wrong, liberalism once did great things for this country, from the first call for "no taxation without representation" up through the Civil Rights movement. The desire to right wrongs and change an unjust status quo has alway been a noble ideal. However, over the past few decades, that idealism has been replaced with narcissism. Liberals have become the new Pharisees, making a grand show of their pious ways. Liberalism has stopped being about fixing what's wrong and become about self-congratulation for "having the courage" to remind others that bad things are indeed bad after all. Has a single AIDS patient been cured by celebrities wearing little red ribbons on their lapels at awards shows? August Spies posts his little Rumsfeld story here not because he expects us to take action to fix the problem, but so that we can be impressed by his Awareness and Moral Superiority in showing us poor ignorant rubes where America has stumbled. Simply pointing out that the U.S. had a hand in creating a monster twenty years ago will not make a single American or Iraqi civillian safer. They certainly won't be made safer by insisting that we must sit idly by while that monster continues its rampage.

 

[ShiningIce]

Hmm yup you're mad alright. 🙄

 

[amk714]

Celebrities like Sean Penn do not represent all leftists by any means. I could care less what they do or say. Both liberals and conservatives want to solve problems, they just have different ways of going about it. We should do what we believe is right, regardless of what side we're on or what the rich and famous think. 🙂

 

[august spies]

first off rumsfelds personal appeasement commitee was almost 20 years ago but his support for hussiens crimes againts humanity continued up way past 88, and he helped crush the popular uprising against him after the gulf war, which he and bush initially gave verbal support to.



1) your saying because crimes against humanity happened 14 years ago so they should be forgotten?

"By that logic, we should have ignored Stalin's purges and let the Soviets enslave the world unopposed because we helped him out against the Germans in WWII."(actually more like they helped us out)

your using my own argumeng against me? um ok

2) no apology or even acceptence of their support for these crimes has been issued, and people like rumsfeld and bush and albirght continue to use saddams crimes in which they supported against him, which is the basis of hypocricy. so obviously they are not all of a sudden "good" also the sanctions specifically target civilians, meaning they dont care about the people.

3) when womens groups like rawa(www.rawa.org) were struggling to keep schools open in refugee camps bush was busy giving the taliban 43 million dollars in 2000 for compliance with "us drug laws" meaning bribing them into letting an oil pipeline through. also rights groups say that in places like herat taliban style restrictions are back in place and spreading. this war had nothing to do with the wellbeing of afghan women.

what should happen is people like rumsfeld should be brought to justice for his crimes, in iraq both during and after his support for saddam, and for crimes elsewhere in the world. then get somone who can decry hussien without being seen as a hypocrite and popular support for him will wain. it happend twice already, but the us refused to support the rebellions and actually acted against them (one pentagon official even joked it was because they wanted somone like saddam to replace saddam, with the only difference being a name and support for the us oil interests). get rid of the real evil first and the people will get rid of the lesser evils themselves, and you dont need a massive war led by the wests criminals which will only do much more harm than good to the entire region, and the world

 

[MadKalnod]

All right, Ice. What course of concrete action should the U.S. be taking in light of August's revelation of our apparent complicity with Iraqi human rights violations? Name a constructive solution, if you can.

Procedural note: Rolling your eyes and making lame cracks about my handle does so much to improve opinion of your beliefs and your ability to advance them.

 

[ShiningIce]

Oh I have no qualms about your opinion on how to deal with Iraq. However your retarded thesis on the true nature of the Liberal is laughable.

 

[asutickler]

Celebrities like Sean Penn do not represent all leftists by any means. I could care less what they do or say. Both liberals and conservatives want to solve problems, they just have different ways of going about it. We should do what we believe is right, regardless of what side we're on or what the rich and famous think. 🙂

I'm with you 100%, Alexander. 🙂

 

[Biggles of 266]

Women's Advocacy groups complained for years about the brutal treatment of women in Afghanistan under the Taliban's abhorrent rule. The Bush administration sent the troops in to eradicate those misogynistic theocrats like the roaches they were; and now the burquas have come off, female doctors and lawyers can practice their trade without being stoned as heretics, and the little girls are back in school again. N

Taliban era lives on for abused women
By Anne-Marie O'Connor
December 18 2002

Women in Afghanistan face a growing wave of human rights abuses in the western city of Herat, where talking to strange men can sometimes result in them being subjected to forcible chastity examinations.

A report by Human Rights Watch said the restrictions on women in the province of Herat are reminiscent of the Islamic fundamentalist Taliban regime.

"Many people outside the country believe that Afghan women and girls have had their rights restored. It's just not true," said Zama Coursen-Neff, co-author of the report released on Monday by the New York-based rights watchdog on the plight of Afghan women.

"Women and girls are still being abused, harassed and threatened all over Afghanistan, often by government troops and officials," Ms Coursen-Neff said.

In five other provinces there are reports of girls' schools being set on fire or attacked with rockets. And Taliban-era restrictions are being imposed by other regional authorities, who ban music and insist women wear the the head-to-toe burqa. Female students have reportedly been threatened by armed men on their way to school.

"While western Afghanistan is perhaps the worst of what's happening to women and girls, it's hardly unique," Ms Coursen-Neff said. "There is growing repression of women in Afghanistan. It's mostly men with guns deciding what's going to happen.."

The report found that the rights of women in the city of Herat improved initially after the fall of the Taliban, with many returning to school or jobs. But the advances were met by social policing.

The government in Herat, headed by Ismail Khan, a former Islamic militia leader, was now encouraging schoolboys to spy on females and report "un-Islamic" behaviour, such as walking unaccompanied at night, the report said.

Even women travelling in taxis have been arrested for being alone with a man, and sometimes taken to a hospital to determine if they have had sex recently. And if they are single, whether they are virgins. Girls deemed improperly veiled have been beaten.

The report called on the US to halt military and other assistance to independent leaders such as Governor Khan and to pressure Afghan regional governments to repeal decrees that restrict or degrade women.

It asked that peacekeepers be stationed outside the capital, for the UN to expand human rights monitoring in provincial Afghanistan, and it urged international donors to support Afghan women's groups.

"The US-led coalition justified the war against the Taliban in part by promising that it would liberate Afghanistan's women," Ms Coursen-Neff said. "In fact, by supporting repressive warlords, the international community has broken that promise and forsaken women's rights."

More than 40 children have died of severe cold this month at camps for Afghan refugees on the border with Pakistan. Haji Abdul Ghani, of the Pakistan-based Edhi Welfare Trust, said on Sunday that the squalid living conditions in four temporary camps in and around the southern Afghan town of Spin Boldak had combined with freezing temperatures to threaten another 1200 children, most below the age of eight.

Mr Ghani said this was just the start and the number of children falling sick and dying could increase rapidly. Almost 100,000 people live in camps at Spin Boldak without adequate clothing or shelter in an area where temperatures often plunge to minus 15C, Mr Ghani said.

 

[Biggles of 266]

"Hannoi Hannah," AKA Thu Houng, was an agent of the North Vietnamese propaganda effort, and broadcasted messages (on Radio Hanoi) which were intended to demoralize American soldiers.

yup, that's the one I meant. Thanks for the info.

Biggles