Jaidness

I heard Tony Blair say: ‘We are asked to accept Saddam decided to destroy those weapons. I say that such a claim is palpably absurd.’

I heard the president say: ‘We know that Iraq and al-Qaida have had high-level contacts that go back a decade. We’ve learned that Iraq has trained al-Qaida members in bomb-making and poisons and deadly gases. Alliance with terrorists could allow the Iraq regime to attack America without leaving any fingerprints.’

I heard the vice president say: ‘There’s overwhelming evidence there was a connection between al-Qaida and the Iraqi government. I am very confident there was an established relationship there.’

I heard Colin Powell say: ‘Iraqi officials deny accusations of ties with al-Qaida. These denials are simply not credible.’

I heard Condoleezza Rice say: ‘There clearly are contacts between al-Qaida and Saddam Hussein that can be documented.’

I heard the president say: ‘You can’t distinguish between al-Qaida and Saddam.’

I heard Donald Rumsfeld say: ‘Imagine a September 11th with weapons of mass destruction. It’s not three thousand – it’s tens of thousands of innocent men, women and children.’

I heard Colin Powell tell the Senate that ‘a moment of truth is coming’: ‘This is not just an academic exercise or the United States being in a fit of pique. We’re talking about real weapons. We’re talking about anthrax. We’re talking about botulinum toxin. We’re talking about nuclear weapons programmes.’

I heard Donald Rumsfeld say: ‘No terrorist state poses a greater or more immediate threat to the security of our people.’

I heard the president, ‘bristling with irritation’, say: ‘This business about more time, how much time do we need to see clearly that he’s not disarming? He is delaying. He is deceiving. He is asking for time. He’s playing hide-and-seek with inspectors. One thing is for certain: he’s not disarming. Surely our friends have learned lessons from the past. This looks like a rerun of a bad movie and I’m not interested in watching it.’

I heard that, a few days before authorising the invasion of Iraq, the Senate was told in a classified briefing by the Pentagon that Iraq could launch anthrax and other biological and chemical weapons against the eastern seaboard of the United States using unmanned aerial ‘drones’.

I heard Donald Rumsfeld say he would present no specific evidence of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction because it might jeopardise the military mission by revealing to Baghdad what the United States knows.

*

I heard the Pentagon spokesman call the military plan ‘A-Day’, or ‘Shock and Awe’. Three or four hundred cruise missiles launched every day, until ‘there will not be a safe place in Baghdad,’ until ‘you have this simultaneous effect, rather like the nuclear weapons at Hiroshima, not taking days or weeks but in minutes.’ I heard the spokesman say: ‘You’re sitting in Baghdad and all of a sudden you’re the general and thirty of your division headquarters have been wiped out. You also take the city down. By that I mean you get rid of their power, water. In two, three, four, five days they are physically, emotionally and psychologically exhausted.’ I heard him say: ‘The sheer size of this has never been seen before, never contemplated.’

I heard Major-General Charles Swannack promise that his troops were going to ‘use a sledgehammer to smash a walnut’.

I heard the Pentagon spokesman say: ‘This is not going to be your father’s Persian Gulf War.’

I heard that Saddam’s strategy against the American invasion would be to blow up dams, bridges and oilfields, and to cut off food supplies to the south so that the Americans would suddenly have to feed millions of desperate civilians. I heard that Baghdad would be encircled by two rings of the elite Republican Guard, in fighting positions already stocked with weapons and supplies, and equipped with chemical protective gear against the poison gas or germ weapons they would be using against the American troops.

I heard Vice Admiral Lowell Jacoby tell Congress that Saddam would ‘employ a “scorched earth” strategy, destroying food, transportation, energy and other infrastructure, attempting to create a humanitarian disaster’, and that he would blame it all on the Americans.

I heard that Iraq would fire its long-range Scud missiles – equipped with chemical or biological warheads – at Israel, to ‘portray the war as a battle with an American-Israeli coalition and build support in the Arab world’.

I heard that Saddam had elaborate and labyrinthine underground bunkers for his protection, and that it might be necessary to employ B61 Mod 11 nuclear ‘bunker-buster’ bombs to destroy them.

I heard the vice president say that the war would be over in ‘weeks rather than months’.

I heard Donald Rumsfeld say: ‘It could last six days, six weeks. I doubt six months.’

I heard Donald Rumsfeld say there was ‘no question’ that American troops would be ‘welcomed’: ‘Go back to Afghanistan, the people were in the streets playing music, cheering, flying kites, and doing all the things that the Taliban and al-Qaida would not let them do.’

I heard the vice president say: ‘The Middle East expert Professor Fouad Ajami predicts that after liberation the streets in Basra and Baghdad are “sure to erupt in joy”. Extremists in the region would have to rethink their strategy of jihad. Moderates throughout the region would take heart. And our ability to advance the Israeli-Palestinian peace process would be enhanced.’

I heard the vice president say: ‘I really do believe we will be greeted as liberators.’

I heard Tariq Aziz, the Iraqi foreign minister, say: ‘American soldiers will not be received by flowers. They will be received by bullets.’

I heard that the president said to the television evangelist Pat Robertson: ‘Oh, no, we’re not going to have any casualties.’

I heard the president say that he had not consulted his father about the coming war: ‘You know he is the wrong father to appeal to in terms of strength. There is a higher father that I appeal to.’

I heard the prime minister of the Solomon Islands express surprise that his was one of the nations enlisted in the ‘coalition of the willing’: ‘I was completely unaware of it.’

I heard the president tell the Iraqi people, on the night before the invasion began: ‘If we must begin a military campaign, it will be directed against the lawless men who rule your country and not against you. As our coalition takes away their power we will deliver the food and medicine you need. We will tear down the apparatus of terror. And we will help you build a new Iraq that is prosperous and free. In a free Iraq there will be no more wars of aggression against your neighbours, no more poison factories, no more executions of dissidents, no more torture chambers and rape rooms. The tyrant will soon be gone. The day of your liberation is near.’

I heard him tell the Iraqi people: ‘We will not relent until your country is free.’

__________________
Crazy,but thats how it goes Millions of people,living as foes,maybe,it's not too late,to learn how to love and forget how to hate.~Ozzy~Crazy Train
In your house,I long to be,Room by room,patiently,I'll wait for you there,Like a stone,I'll wait for you there Alone~ LIke A Stone ~Audioslave(for my hubby)