zenpundit.com » 2003 » April

Archive for April, 2003

Tuesday, April 15th, 2003

HYUNDAI FIRES MARINE UNDER FIRE IN IRAQ

This is against federal law. Nor is this the first instance of corporations firing employees on active-duty in Iraq. The Department of Justice needs to begin enforcing the law that protects reservists and their families.

From NewsMax.com

Tuesday, April 15, 2003

Marine Fired While Serving in Iraq

What in the world is going on with Hyundai? First the giant conglomerate is caught in South Korea’s bribery scandal involving communist North Korea. Now the pregnant wife of a Marine reservist says the corporation fired him while he was serving in Operation Iraqi Freedom.

Shari Moffitt says her husband, Sgt. Clifford Moffitt, thought his job at the automaker was secure after he was called to active duty.

“Instead he received a letter on the battlefield saying that Hyundai decided to terminate his employment two months after he left,” Mrs. Moffitt told KGTV in San Diego.

Mrs. Moffitt, also employed at Hyundai, is talking with publicity-loving attorney Gloria Allred about legal action.

Tuesday, April 15th, 2003

AVOIDING THE MISTAKES OF SCAP

The first meeting to rebuild the Iraqi civil polity has begun under Coalition auspices. Hopefully, with Iraq there will more care exercised in the selection of personnel and a through dismantling of the fascist Baath than there was during the Occupation of Japan.

Hastiness, confusion and the lack of familiarity with Japanese language and culture of American officers allowed not only politically unacceptable Japanese bureaucrats to retain their posts under SCAP but Class-A war criminals like Colonel Manasobu Tsuji – the architect of the Death March to Bataan- were able to worm their way back into the government. Large numbers of fascist ex-Naimusho ( Home Ministry)and Kempetai ( Military Police) officials found places in Japan’s postwar Ministries of Education, Finance and International trade and Industry and ultranationalist gangsters like Yoshio Kodama who had looted Manchuria for the Japanese Imperial Army were left free to build billion dollar Yakuza empires.

In an effort to restore order to Baghdad, the wholesale recall of Iraqi police is worrisome without some kind of vetting procedure to screen out the rank and file uniformed traffic cop from the agents of Saddam’s Amn, Mukhabarat and other security agencies. If Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union are any guide, midlevel security officials often wear the hats of several organizations and they will be presenting themselves to Coalition officers in their least sinister roles.

Backgrounds need to be checked.

Tuesday, April 15th, 2003

QUOTE OF THE DAY:

” Man is the measure of all things “

– Protogoras

Tuesday, April 15th, 2003

TIPPING THE ZENPUNDIT HAT TO THE FORMER IRAQI MINISTER OF MISINFORMATION

A good friend sent this to me, perhaps some of you have seen it since it is making the rounds on the internet. It’s a good indication of the lunatic mindset that prevails in a totalitarian state. Where the chilling meets the laughingstock.

— Daily Updates —

14 April – Still no sighting of Muhammed Saeed al-Sahaf (M.S.S.). Major media outlets promise lucrative personal-appearance contracts, talk show bookings, etc. Representatives of William Morris Agency sighted at Iraqi/Syrian border…

13 April – M.S.S. not included in “Death Pack” playing cards distributed to coalition forces. International uproar. NBC News: M.S.S. “curiously absent.”

12 April – Sahafomania grips globe. Amateurish website dedicated to M.S.S. crashes four separate servers. Visitor rates reach 4000 per second. Website inexplicably featured in daily papers, Reuters, AP, CNN, BBC and assorted lame talk shows.

10 April – M.S.S. begins ‘administrative leave’.

9 April – Last known remark of M.S.S., to John Burns of NY Times : “I NOW INFORM YOU THAT YOU ARE TOO FAR FROM REALITY.”

— TREASURY OF DEATHLESS QUOTES —

“There are no American infidels in Baghdad. Never!”

“My feelings – as usual – we will slaughter them all”

“Our initial assessment is that they will all die”

“I blame Al-Jazeera – they are marketing for the Americans!”

“God will roast their stomachs in hell at the hands of Iraqis.”

“We have destroyed 2 tanks, fighter planes, 2 helicopters and their shovels – We have driven them back.”

“They’re coming to surrender or be burned in their tanks.”

“No I am not scared and neither should you be!”

“We are not afraid of the Americans. Allah has condemned them. They are stupid. They are stupid” (dramatic pause) “and they are condemned.”

“The authority of the civil defense … issued a warning to the civilian population not to pick up any of those pencils because they are booby traps,” he said, adding that the British and American forces were “immoral mercenaries” and “war criminals” for such behavior.

“I am not talking about the American people and the British people,” he said. “I am talking about those mercenaries. … They have started throwing those pencils, but they are not pencils, they are booby traps to kill the children.”

“We have them surrounded in their tanks”

“The American press is all about lies! All they tell is lies, lies and more lies!”

“Lying is forbidden in Iraq. President Saddam Hussein will tolerate nothing but truthfulness as he is a man of great honor and integrity. Everyone is encouraged to speak freely of the truths evidenced in their eyes and hearts.”

“because we will behead you all”

“Let the American infidels bask in their illusion”

“I triple guarantee you, there are no American soldiers in Baghdad.”

Britain “is not worth an old shoe”

“we have given them a sour taste”

Of US troops: “They are most welcome. We will butcher them.”

“We will welcome them with bullets and shoes.”

“We are in control. They are in a state of hysteria. Losers, they think that by killing civilians and trying to distort the feelings of the people they will win. I think they will not win, those bastards.”

“We have placed them in a quagmire from which they can never emerge except dead”

“Washington has thrown their soldiers on the fire”

“I speak better English than this villain Bush”

“These cowards have no morals. They have no shame about lying”

“They’re not even [within] 100 miles [of Baghdad]. They are not in any

place. They hold no place in Iraq. This is an illusion … they are

trying to sell to the others an illusion.”

“Their failure in this regard is abysmal. They want to tell the world changes thought – as a matter of fact, they do not respect the world, they want to tell taxpayers and the domestic public to keep them deceived. We will embroil them, confuse them and keep them in the quagmire. They have begun to tell more lies so that they might continue with the perpetration of their crimes. May they be accursed.”

“We will kill them all……..most of them.”

Monday, April 14th, 2003

BASHING BASHAR:

When Hafez al Assad ruled Syria with an iron grip less paranoid but equally as ruthless as Saddam’s hold over Iraq, the Syrian dictator was often described as ” wily ” by journalists. His son and successor, Bashar al Assad seems to lack his father’s talent for reading the geopolitical situation and changing course. When the elder Assad took into account the impact of the ongoing Soviet collapse on Syria’s military fortunes, Assad promptly lined up with the United States to tackle his bitter enemy Saddam Hussein in the first Gulf War. By contrast, Bashar embraced the Iraqi regime in its weakness, reputedly having formed a close friendship with Hussein’s maniacal son Uday and has granted not only asylum to his father’s defeated Baathist rivals but passage to jihadi radicals who wanted to fight the Americans. By contrast, Hafez Assad regarded the Islamists as a dire threat to the Syrian Baath, having crushed the Muslim Brotherhood at Hama.

In short, Bashar Assad is cultivating needless conflict with the United States by provoking U.S. military forces on the ground in Iraq when even the Neocon hawks would prefer to leave Syria alone If the U.S. strikes at Damascus it will be driven by the security needs of U.S. troops in Iraq, not Pentagon civilian Neocons who would much rather be putting pressure on Iran or turn to to North Korea. Syria is small beer on the rogue state all-star team.


Switch to our mobile site