Ghost of a Flea links to this article about one "human shield's" awakening to the horror of what he was doing:
Perhaps the most crushing thing we learned was that most ordinary Iraqis thought Saddam Hussein had paid us to come to protest in Iraq. Although we explained that this was categorically not the case, I don't think he believed us. Later he asked me: "Really, how much did Saddam pay you to come?"
This was after an account of how his Iraqi cab driver painstakingly explained to him just how much they wanted to get rid of Saddam, so much so that they were willing for us to wage war on them to do it.
Ghost also has a lot of links to various articles recounting the antics of that wacky Hussein guy and his spawn. Sample: "...rusty butcher hooks--" No, I really shouldn't. You antiwar holdouts might not want to read them -- you'll get really bummed out. Better just to forget about it, right?
Posted by Andrea Harris at March 23, 2003 01:35 AMwhen i heard about the executions by acid bath, i shook and cried for 5 minutes.
but let's protest the end of his regime, shall we?
Posted by: chris at March 23, 2003 at 10:31 AMThanks for the link to the Flea posting. What struck me about this "human shield's" belated understanding of the barbarity of the regime he had chosen to defend was the ultimate selfishness of his emotional posture even after that revelation. People have been and continue to be tortured in ways which defy the imagination and yet somehow even that truth is only important to the "shield" in so far as it informed his vapid cosmic drama. The liberation of Iraq is only one step in a process which includes educating citizens of countries whose freedoms are so taken for granted.
Posted by: Nicholas Packwood at March 23, 2003 at 11:46 AMWhen I first heard about the acid baths, it was at the end of a long list read by one of Fox's blondes, and I cried out at the television, "Oh, come on!" That's right out of a Vincent Price movie, I thought. No one's going to believe that.
And then it occurred to me that I was probably right; no one was going to believe it. It was just too outrageous, too cartoonish.
That wouldn't keep it from being true, but it would keep it from being believed.
Posted by: Angie Schultz at March 23, 2003 at 03:35 PMi heard it on MSNBC or CNN (I'm not sure which). one of the defectors or reporters who had been in Iraq was talking about it, and the news anchor was certainly taking him seriously. i believed it because of everything else i'd heard of Saddam's methods of dealing with traitors in his midst.
i'd love it to be not true; i'm sure at least once everyone is free to talk we'll find out what actually happened.
Posted by: chris at March 23, 2003 at 07:33 PM