Tuesday, December 20, 2005

Is Killing People the same as Liberating People?

Check out this exchange between Scotty McMessage McClellan and Helen Thomas (I love her, in case you didn't know already). I haven't seen any video of this particular briefing, but it reads as if Scotty blew a gasket on this one. Helen does have a point - and of course, Scotty's got the usual rhetorical spew and spin:
Q The President has publicly acknowledged that we went to war under false information, mistaken information. Why does he insist on staying there if we were there falsely, and continue to kill Iraqis?

MR. McCLELLAN: Well, maybe you missed some of his recent speeches and his remarks, but the President said it was the right decision to remove Saddam Hussein and his regime from power --

Q And a right decision to move in and to tell the people, the American people, that it was all a mistake, and stay there?

MR. McCLELLAN: I don't think he said that. He said that Saddam Hussein was a destabilizing force in a dangerous region of the world --

Q That isn't true. We had a choke-hold on him.

MR. McCLELLAN: It is true. He was a threat. And the threat has been removed.

Q We had sanctions, we had satellites, we were bombing.

MR. McCLELLAN: Let's talk about why it's so important, what we're working to accomplish in Iraq --

Q I want to know why we're still there killing people, when we went in by mistake.

MR. McCLELLAN: We are liberating people and freeing people to live in a democracy. And why we're still there --

Q Do you think we're spreading democracy when you spy and put out disinformation and do all the things that -- secret prisons, and torture?

MR. McCLELLAN: I reject your characterizations wholly. I reject your characterizations wholly. The United States is helping to advance freedom in a dangerous region of the world.

Q -- recognize this kind of --

MR. McCLELLAN: For too long we thought we had stability by ignoring freedom in the Middle East. Well, we showed -- we saw on September 11th --

Q -- 30,000 plus?

MR. McCLELLAN: Well, Helen, we can have a debate, or you can let me respond to your questions. I think this is an important subject for the American people to talk about. By advancing freedom and democracy in the Middle East we're helping to protect our own security. It's a dangerous region --

Q By killing people in their own country?

MR. McCLELLAN: Well, I reject that. We're liberating and freeing people and we're targeting the enemy. We're killing the terrorists and we're going after the Saddam loyalists.

Q The President said 30,000, more or less.

MR. McCLELLAN: And you know who is responsible for most of that? It's the terrorists and the Saddam loyalists who want to turn back to the past.

Q We didn't kill anybody there?

MR. McCLELLAN: Our military goes out of the way to minimize civilian casualties. They target the enemy --

Q You admit they kill?

MR. McCLELLAN: Well, we've got a lot of technology that we can use to target the enemy without going after -- without collateral damage of civilians. And that's what our military does.

Q Are you kidding?

MR. McCLELLAN: Oh, I'm going to stand up for our military. Our military goes out of the way to protect civilians. In fact --

Q Fallujah, we didn't kill any civilians?

MR. McCLELLAN: We freed some 25 million people in Iraq that were living under a brutal regime.

Go ahead.

3 comments:

enigma4ever said...

God- Helen deserves some sort of award she is a living breathing miracle and she whacks at the Scotty Pinatta (sp) with such expertise and she is dead on...What kind of Democracy did we take them?...Dead women and children, even the insurgents are just fighting for their own homes- they feel occupied, and I don't think I would be happy with soldiers banging on my door and cutting off my power , or accidentally blasting my home...and about Democracy - are we taking "Our Kind " there- propaganda, Spying on normal folk, renditioning and torturing people, rigged elections, corrupt greedy officials,sexed up itel, made up intel to bomb a country and take their oil...and then send out poor Reserves who are trained to help with Natural Disasters instead are eating sand...and being shot at by people that don't want them there....gee , is this gonna get any better ?

CALL YOUR REPS AND DEMAND HEARINGS NOW- PUT THE DAMN SUPREME COURT HEARINGS ON HOLD THIS IS MORE IMPORTANT- AND I THINK SANDRA DAY O'CONNOR WOULD AGREE. BECAUSE THE REPUGS ARE GOING TO TRY AND PUSH THIS TO SPRING- 1000'S OF CITIZENS ARE BEING SPIED ON NOW.....AND IT NEEDS TO STOP. NOW.

( sorry to nag)

Phil said...

I love the way McLellan keeps using the term "I reject". Every time he says it, I think of MythBusters . . . Adam's quote during the beginning of every show: "I reject your reality and substitute my own." lol

Phil
Echoes in a Nomad's Head

Anonymous said...

I guess Scottie forgot all about the Iraqi civilians that were vaporized in a few seconds a day or so before this illegal invasion started, when the Air Force dropped four J.D.A.M.s into a residential part of Baghdad in an unsuccessful assassination attempt on Saddam based on a faulty tip from an Iraqi janitor that said Saddam was in some restaurant; wiped out four entire city blocks in the blink of an eye, and all the people living in them. Yeah, they go "out of their way to minimize civilian casualties". What a fucking dipshit. Scottie is ignorant on this civilian casualties matter in three ways: One, the "30,000" number is almost certainly a gross underestimate. Two, the vast majority of the Iraqi civilian dead have been killed by American air power, not the Rebels; and three, anyone killed in Iraq by the U.S. OR the Rebels is 100% the fault of America because none of this would be happening if not for America's illegal invasion of Iraq. None of it. Period. Every Iraqi death over there is 100% unneccessary and the U.S. government is completely responsible for starting a war where there wasn't a need for one, and thus deserves exactly ALL of the blame for ALL of the deaths that have come as a result of this unneccessary and illegal war.

Bush, Cheney, Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld, all of them are war criminals and the world will never take America seriously ever again if these bloodthirsty butchers aren't tried for crimes against humanity.