Segacs’s World I Know

Speaking of Gazette articles, Norman Webster gets it right about Saddam and why he’s got to go:

“He is the most dangerous creature God ever created,” an Iraqi woman living in exile shivered to an interviewer recently. For decades, Saddam has brutalized rivals, friends, mentors, Iran, Kuwait, Israel, the Kurds, the Marsh Arabs, the poison-gas victims of Halabja, millions of ordinary Iraqis and the very environment of the Gulf.

The most chilling film clip you will ever see is the one where Saddam announces to an auditorium that he has discovered a plot and has the names of the plotters, including close acquaintances, read out. As they are named, they stand and are led away, never to be seen again.

[ . . . ]

In sum, this is a truly wicked man, deeply evil, as deadly and disgusting as his role model, Stalin. He just hasn’t had as broad a canvas to work on.

He has tried to remedy that defect, relentlessly pursuing the weapons that would make him a destroyer of worlds. He was almost there when the Israelis took out a reactor near Baghdad in 1981, and again 10 years later, when the first Gulf War interrupted a nuclear arms program that was only months from fruition – not to mention biological and chemical horrors.

The scary thing is that much of the world actually believes that Bush is more dangerous than Saddam. I suggest they try spending a week living near either one of them. Let them try voicing a dissenting opinion to both of them. Let’s see what they have to say after that.

Josh Freed thinks it would be kinda cool if we all had doubles, like Saddam.

Ungrateful brats:

“I couldn’t believe what I was hearing,” said Snow when asked about his reaction to the Bell Centre fans booing the U.S. national anthem.

It wouldn’t hurt all the childish idiots who were booing last night to remember that the only reason Canada can afford to keep its nose clean is thanks to the U.S.

After 9/11, Canadians were going around proclaiming how much they loved Americans, buying pins with the Canadian and American flag together to pin to their lapels, grieving together with the U.S. But now, less than two years later, they’re booing the U.S. national anthem at hockey games. Utterly disgraceful, and utterly fickle. It seems Canadians only have compassion for helpless victims, not for strong nations willing to defend the interests of the world.

Idiots like that give all Canadians a bad name. It’s time for Canada to re-examine its relationship with the United States, and to start acknowledging that we have more than enough reason to be grateful.

Jean Chretien said it’s pointless to criticise the U.S. about Iraq, because it just plays into the hands of Saddam Hussein:

“At this point I think there is no use debating the reasons why some people think war is necessary and some people think it is not. We should not say anything that would comfort Saddam Hussein,” he told reporters.

Hmmm. Do you think Chretien is reacting to this:

Sometimes a picture does indeed say a thousand words.

Good editorial in the London Times:

There has not been, despite what some critics charge, an unseemly rush to war on the part of the United States and the United Kingdom. Six months have passed since George W. Bush first went to the United Nations, five months since he acquired the political authority from Congress to deal with Iraq and well over four months since the UN Security Council backed Resolution 1441 and provided Saddam Hussein with his final, final chance.

[ . . . ]

Now that British forces have been committed, the country should and almost certainly will rally around them. The Prime Minister deserves the support of all political parties. The peace may prove harder to win than the war, but war will still be a difficult endeavour. It rarely proceeds precisely as planned. Ulysses Grant, the general who took charge of the Union army after its rout at Fredricksburg, eventually received Lee’s and the South’s final surrender at Appomattox with the words: “The war is over — the rebels are our countrymen again.” His respectful tone was such that it prevented his men from cheering the defeat of their opponents. Mr Bush and Mr Blair must welcome the people of Iraq back into the civilised world in exactly the same spirit.

Worth reading.

It appears that Saddam Hussein might only be alive today thanks to the efforts of an Iraqi Jewish man who talked his pregnant mother out of committing suicide:

85-year-old Nassima Karush [ . . . ] relates how Saddam’s mother, Subha, had watched her first-born son die of what doctors said was cancer. Depressed from the death, she didn’t want to live and tried several times to kill herself and her unborn child, Saddam.

Karush, who immigrated from Iraq to Israel in 1951, said Wednesday she remembers her sister-in-law’s husband, Sallim Zirha, convincing Saddam’s mother not to commit suicide.

Man, the antisemitic conspiracy theorists must be frothing at the mouth on this one!

The war now officially has a name. Bush has dubbed it Operation Iraqi Freedom.

Well, at least we can start calling it something (even though a good many people are sure to use the name in an ironic or sarcastic sense).

In yet another example of strife between Arab nations, it appears that Syria has closed its border to Iraqi refugees trying to flee ahead of attacks.

As the countdown to war continues, Iraqis have been trying to get out of the country.

But since midday on Tuesday, they have been unable to cross the border into Syria.

There were conflicting explanations about why this was the case, but from speaking with Iraqis waiting to be let in and officials on both sides it appears that Syria decided to close its border after an influx of Iraqis earlier in the morning.

The Iraqi side then decided not to process any more passports for travelling Iraqis.

An Iraqi custom official expressed his anger at the Syrian decision, saying it was turning back families with women and children at a time when their lives were at risk because of an impending war.

Note that Syria not only sits on the UN Security Council, but has been adamently opposed to the prospect of war supposedly out of concern for the civilian population. Some concern.

It’s war.

Here’s hoping and praying that this conflict is short, that casualties are as few as possible, that civilians remain unharmed, and that military personnel return home safely to their families as soon as possible.