War has begun! The Bombs are falling!

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I am feeling rather uneasy as I post this statement! The war has started! I pray that this will be a short-lived conflict! I have members and family over there! Let us all pray for peace and an end to this conflict! In times like these, we need a brother like Amos to preach the truth! In times like these we need a Savior to assure us that peace is still obtainable...we need Jesus! Pray much for our men and women who have placed themselves in harms way! Pray for our leaders...more importantly, as the bombs fall...just Pray!

-- Anonymous, March 20, 2003

Answers

Parson Allen:

We should all meditate on parable described in The Gospel According to Dr. Luke 18:1-8. QED

-- Anonymous, March 20, 2003


NEWS YOU WON'T FIND ON CNN

Salaam,

Allaah, the Most High is the only Source of Peace and the religion Allaah sent to his last Prophet Muhammad is being attacked and isn't it ironic that all of the Muslims lands are being attack by Christians and Jews right wing extremists (no offense to Christians and Jews who are innocent). Just like September 11, 2001 attacks which I believe was orchestrated by the extremist in the white house along with other groups. We are being deceived by the media. Everything that you hear is not truth only propoganda. Jesus said the truth will set you free. As a Muslim I urge all Christians to take a look at Islam and consider Islam because only through realizing that Jesus is a prophet, the Messiah but Allah (none has the right to be worshiped but He) only then will you recieve true understanding and true peace through affliction. Muslims are being attacked worldwide and yet Islam continues to spread without radio shows, television, media helping it. True servants of Allah will be persecuted, killed and even exiled from their land because of Allah's All-knowing Wisdom He tests His true servants. To a True believer in Allah we recognize that to Allah Alone belongs the kingdom of the heavens and the earth. Nothing happens without His Permission. When a blessing comes to a believer, the believer is thankful and it shows through righteous actions and when a believer is afflicted he is patient and Allah and understands that it is a test from Allah and don't complain and work even more deligently to earn favor from Allah by worshiping Him Alone and Allah rewards him. To Allah we belong and to Allah we all will return for an account for our actions.

Re: Now, I Am the Terrorist

On September 11th, I sat in numb horror as the images of carnage unfolded before me on the television. On that day, I was the victim of terrorism, along with every other American. Today, I sit in numbed horror as more carnage unfolds. Hundreds of massive missiles have rained down on a city far away, killing indiscriminately among the young, the infirm, the old and the innocent. My government did this. My nation did this. My leaders did this. Today, I am the terrorist.

By: William Rivers Pitt - 03/22/03

The city of Baghdad, founded in 762 A.D. under the name Madinat as- Salam – 'City of Peace' – is this day a lake of fire. The opening stage of the Bush administration's "Shock and Awe" attack plan began as night fell on Iraq, and lived terribly up to its terrible name. CBS news is reporting that great swaths of residential neighborhoods within Baghdad have been engulfed in flames. One can trust, perhaps, the ability of a cruise missile to hit a bullseye from many miles away. One cannot be so precise in predicting which way the resulting fires will blow.

In the great earthquake in San Francisco in 1906, people were not killed so much by the shaking. They were killed by the firestorm that sucked the air from their lungs and reduced them to ash before they could flee. So it seems to be today in Baghdad.

Baghdad is a city of 5 million people, half of whom are under the age of fifteen, most of whom are too poor to flee. Now, a great many of those people are dead, burned in their homes and on their streets.

The American television media provided all of us with a Dresden-eye view of the attack. Huge mushroom clouds bloomed from the streets as buildings blazed and fell. The thunder of the explosions was so loud that television speakers became distorted with the sound of the concussion. The sky lit up as though the sun was rising. It was a fitting image, for a new day in world history has dawned.

Much has been made of the precision of our vaunted arsenal of bombs and missiles, as if they can go into a building and find the second door on the left before they explode. The truth is far more dire. When a B-2 bomber drops a 2,000 lb. JDAM munition, everyone and everything within a 120 meter radius is instantly killed. Anyone within a 365 meter radius risks severe shrapnel wounds. To be totally safe, one must be 1,000 meters away from the epicenter of the explosion. Imagine how many homes can fit into 1,000 meters, and never mind the firestorm.

American Marines have died securing petroleum facilities, and in a helicopter crash. If Iraqi forces do not surrender soon, American forces will attack Baghdad from the ground. The loss of life among our people will grow exponentially if a Stalingrad-style fight unfolds in Baghdad and Tikrit. On Tom Brokaw's CBS News broadcast, the father of one of the soldiers killed in the helicopter crash held a picture of his son to the camera and shouted, "Take a look, Bush. You killed my only son."

Those who stand against this attack are dunned as "Not supporting the troops." One might suggest the best way to support troops is to see them brought home safely. One might also suggest that support continues after the shooting stops. This does not appear to be on the agenda for the Republican Party. A vote along party lines today in the House Budget Committee slashed $9.7 billion from veterans disability compensation programs, as well as from other programs. These cuts, pushed through the committee by the majority-holding Republicans, are part of the plan to see Bush's new $1.57 trillion tax cut through. Wave that flag, George.

Defense Secretary Don Rumsfeld, when asked by a reporter whether the Iraqi people would cheer Americans after this attack, stated that Baghdad's civilians would welcome us. This defies known history in Japan and Germany and Vietnam; those populations, after absorbing saturation bombing, hardened their resistance. American television purported to show Iraqi civilians cheering a soldier who tore down a picture of Hussein, but a Sky News reporter walking Baghdad's streets reported that, to a man, everyone he spoke with spat hatred and derision for this American attack.

On September 11th, I sat in numb horror as the images of carnage unfolded before me on the television. On that day, I was the victim of terrorism, along with every other American. Today, I sit in numbed horror as more carnage unfolds. Hundreds of massive missiles have rained down on a city far away, killing indiscriminately among the young, the infirm, the old and the innocent. My government did this. My nation did this. My leaders did this. Today, I am the terrorist.

So are you.

There is no justification for this attack. Saddam Hussein and his forces had been effectively disarmed by the first Gulf War, by the UNSCOM inspections, and by the more recent UNMOVIC inspections. According to Hussein Kamel, son-in-law to Saddam Hussein whose comments to the UN in 1991 were recently reported in a buried Newsweek story, Iraq was pretty much disarmed of mass destruction weapons even before the first war. The Bush administration, in pushing for this war, has foisted lie after lie after lie upon the American people and the world. The world didn't buy it, but they weren't dependent upon lapdog media sources like ours for their data.

We are the terrorists now, stupid underinformed terrorists who dance to the tune of a corporate media machine that will profit wildly from this attack. NBC, MSNBC and CNBC are owned by General Electric, one of the largest defense contractors on earth. They will be paid handsomely in military contracts because of this, as they always have been. Yet GE gives us the news we need to understand what is happening.

Americans are not often afforded the opportunity to witness a war crime live on television. Today's actions bring to mind a war crime from a generation ago: The shooting of a prisoner by Vietnamese General and American ally Nguyen Ngoc Loan. General Loan put a pistol to the head of this bound prisoner and blew his brains into the street, an image that millions of Americans saw after it had taken place. We are here again today. The poverty of the Iraqi people leaves them bound, unable to escape the wave of steel. We have blown their brains out. We have incinerated them in place. We will continue to do so, and you can watch it from your couch. Today, you are the terrorist.

So am I.

William Rivers Pitt is a teacher from Boston, MA. He is a New York Times best-selling author of two books - "War On Iraq" (with Scott Ritter) available now from Context Books, and "The Greatest Sedition is Silence," available in April 2003 from Pluto Press. William is a contributing writer for Liberal Slant. He is also on the writing staff at www.truthout.com E-mail him at: williamriverspitt@hotmail.com or visit his website: http://www.willpitt.com/

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-- Anonymous, March 23, 2003


Salaam,

According to some Christians in the 60's a man named Martin Luther King Jr. was one of the most influential speakers in his time and he condemned the United States in a speech about the Vietnam war.

(borrowed from When Will We Ever Learn? Dr. King’s Forgotten Speech on Peace by Paul Rockwell) Oakland, California

Dr. King saw our crisis coming. “A few years ago,” he began from his well-lit pulpit, speaking in reference to the anti-poverty programs, when America was moving forward -- “A few years ago, there was a shining moment in our struggle. It seemed as if there was a real promise of hope for the poor, both black and white, through the poverty program. There were experiments, hopes, new beginnings. Then came the buildup in Vietnam, and I watched the programs broken. I was compelled to see the war as the enemy of the poor.”

As Dr. King analyzed the hope-wrecking nature of war, I put down my pen, stopped taking notes, and listened with my heart, as he described, not only the devastation abroad, the injuries and scarred lives of the working class youth returning home, but the spiritual costs of imperialism -- the mendacity of our leaders, the disillusionment of youth. “ A nation,” he said, “ that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.”

King reminded his listeners that U.S. lawlessness abroad breeds violence within the United States as well. “As I have walked among the desperate, rejected angry men, I have told them that Molotov cocktails and rifles would not solve their problems. But they ask -- and rightly so -- what about Vietnam? Wasn’t our own nation using massive doses of violence to solve its problems? Their questions hit home, and I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly against the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today - - my own government.” King never used the term “blowback,” but his message was clear: When America sows the wind, it will reap the whirlwind in due time.

The Vietnam War is past. The cold war is over. But King’s teachings about the moral and social costs of militarism and empire are as relevant today as they were 35 years ago. After all, there is still no Marshall Plan for our cities, no jobs program for our youth yearning for hope and direction.

The recent $396 billion military appropriation is a mockery of economic justice. While our cities are in decay, Americans pay more for defense than all potential adversaries and neutral parties combined. The recent $45 billion increase -- a mere add-on -- is more than three times the defense budgets of Iran, Iraq, Libya, North, Korea, Sudan and Syria combined.

As U.S. corporations continue to globalize weaponry and violence for profit, the U.S. has become the primary font of arms proliferation in the world. Subsidized by American taxpayers, U.S. corporations -- Lockheed-Martin, General Electric, General Dynamics, McDonnell Douglas, Boeing, Hughes Aircraft, to name a few -- sell lethal weapons to more than 40 countries. Assault helicopters, tanks, 50- caliber machine guns, hellfire anti-armor missiles, land-mine dispensing pods, Stinger missiles, fighter jets, rifles, guns -- mechanized violence has become the main currency of American foreign policy. There is hardly a major battlefield where U. S. arms are not involved, and U.S. industries produce arms for both sides in many conflicts: Britain and Argentina in the Falklands, Ethiopia and Somalia in the Horn of Africa. According to USA TODAY, U.S. companies, along with France, helped Iraq build his its arsenal of poison gas and chemical weapons. How easy we forget that President Reagan sold arms to Khomeini, after which President Bush (senior) promoted and backed Saddam Hussein’s 7-year war against Iran.

King once described the sale of weaponry on a world scale as one of the great social crimes of the modern age. His 35-year-old speech still sears my soul, because my own country is still “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today.” We are all victims, in King’s words, of that “deadly western arrogance that has poisoned the international atmosphere for so long.” If you are compelled to disbelieve in September 11, 2001 could have been orchestrated by the United States please open your mind and check this website page "Operation Northwoods"

New book on NSA sheds light on secrets U.S. terror plan called Cuba invasion pretext ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------- By Scott Shane and Tom Bowman Sun Staff Originally published April 24, 2001 These are the same people who preached the gospel of Jesus being equal with Allah or being the son of Allah. I challenge you to do research about operation northwood it just a click of your computer button and once you succeed I then challenge you to find out about the Unitarian Christian called the Nazarenes who believed that Jesus was a prophet, the Messiah and believed in the Divine Unity of Allah like the Muslims understood.

Adul Halim



-- Anonymous, March 23, 2003


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