Founding member of Monty Python, huh? Perhaps you can
interest me in something from the Knights who Say Nee.

J. Wyatt



--- Phil Gasper <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> CounterPunch
> March 10, 2003
>
> A Lot More Killing Than Saddam Ever Managed
>
> Mr. Bush Goes for the Kill
>
> By TERRY JONES
>
> Mr. Bush is right, Saddam Hussein is a nasty man and
> nobody I know
> has the least objection to Mr. Bush killing him.
> It's just the way he
> proposes doing it that worries me. Dropping 3000
> bombs in 48 hours on
> Baghdad is going to kill a lot of other people who,
> as far as I am
> aware, are not nasty at all.
>
> That's the bit of the 'moral' argument I don't
> follow. It's a bit
> like the police saying they know a murderer comes
> from the south of
> England so they are going to execute everybody in
> Epsom.
>
> Then again why does Mr. Bush need to drop 3000 bombs
> on Saddam
> Hussein? I would have thought one would have been
> enough to take him
> out, if he knows where Saddam is. And if he doesn't
> know where he is,
> what on earth is the moral justification for
> dropping any bombs at
> all? Doesn't Mr. Bush realise they are dangerous
> things and tend to
> kill people when they land?
>
> Or does Mr Bush simply enjoy the idea of taking out
> a lot of Iraqis?
> I appreciate Mr. Bush's argument that because Saddam
> Hussein has
> refused to take any notice of the UN, Mr. Bush
> should teach him a
> lesson by dropping a lot of bombs on him. But now
> he's telling us
> that if the UN won't give him permission to do it,
> he's jolly well
> going to drop a lot of bombs on Saddam anyway. In
> which case won't
> Mr. Bush be guilty of the same thing he's accusing
> Saddam Hussein of?
> Apparently not because, according to the President's
> advisers, if the
> United Nations won't give him permission to drop a
> lot of bombs on
> Saddam Hussein, it will have ceased to be a
> Responsible World
> Organization and therefore he doesn't need to take
> any notice of it.
>
> But doesn't the same thing go for Saddam Hussein? If
> the United
> Nations ceases to be a Responsible World
> Organization how can the
> fact that Saddam Hussein has refused to take any
> notice of it be
> something so evil that it justifies dropping bombs
> on the poor people
> living under his heel?
>
> And that's another thing--everyone seems to be very
> certain that
> dropping a lot of bombs on Baghdad will get rid of
> Saddam Hussein.
> But will it?--any more than devastating Afghanistan
> (and killing
> maybe 20,000 people) got rid of Al-Qaeda? A recent
> UN report reckons
> that if and when the US starts bombing as many as
> 100,000 Iraqis will
> die.
>
> I can't really believe that the President of the
> United States gets
> his rocks off by having people killed. That's more
> like Saddam
> Hussein.
>
> And yet it worries me that Mr. Bush says that one of
> the reasons he
> wants to kill a lot of Iraqis is because Saddam
> Hussein has also been
> killing them. Is there some sort of rivalry here?
>
> Back in 1988 Saddam killed several thousand at once,
> in the town of
> Halabjah. Since then he's been carrying on the good
> work, but on a
> piecemeal basis. In fact, for all I know, since his
> 1988 spree, he
> may not have killed any more of his own citizens
> than George W. Bush
> did as Governor of Texas. When Mr. Bush became
> Governor in 1995, the
> average number of executions per year was 7.6. Mr.
> Bush succeeded in
> quadrupling this to a magnificent 31.6 per year. He
> must have had the
> terrible chore of personally signing over 150 death
> warrants while he
> was Governor. I suppose the advantage of killing
> Iraqis is that you
> don't have to sign a piece of paper for every one of
> them. Just one
> quick scribble and--bingo! You can kill a hundred
> thousand and no
> questions asked! What's more, nobody is going to
> quibble about some
> of them being mentally retarded or juveniles, which
> is what happened
> to George W. Bush when he was Governor of Texas.
>
> I'm not saying that George W. Bush shouldn't be
> allowed to kill as
> many people as he wants. After all he is the
> unelected leader of the
> most powerful country on earth, so if he can't do
> anything he likes,
> who can?
>
> And, in the years to come, we can confidently look
> forward to a lot
> more killing all over the world--certainly a lot
> more than ever
> Saddam Hussein managed in his own country.
>
> Terry Jones is a founding member of Monty Python.


__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Tax Center - forms, calculators, tips, more
http://taxes.yahoo.com/