Text 24816, 61 rader
Skriven 2008-12-10 10:48:40 av Michiel van der Vlist (2:280/5555)
     Kommentar till en text av Robert Bashe (2:2448/44)
Ärende: Loyalties
=================
Hello Robert,

On Tuesday December 09 2008 10:47, you wrote to me:

 RW>>> That Saddam gassed the Kurds is not in question. He most
 RW>>> definately did.

 MV>> It is not proven.

 RB> No pictures of him personally mixing the ingredients, eh?

As I wrote: no proof.

 MV>> I do not care what you think. I care about verifiable proof and
 MV>> there is none.

 RB> A little naive, don't you think?

Not at all. I am just stating the facts as I know them. There is no proof.

 RB> What does a murderer always do? Make sure there are no witnesses, and
 RB> if there are, make sure they can't talk. And of course, like the
 RB> Nazis, never put anything on paper always verbal orders. And then "I
 RB> don't remember". Prove the contrary. Damned hard or even impossible to
 RB> do, regardless of the facts.

You are right in that absence of proof is not proof of absence. But you can not
turn that around to prove that absence of proof is proof that proof has been
shoved under the carpet. Absence of proof is just that: absence of proof.

Your basic reasoning is: Saddam was a bad guy, so he must have done this as
well. What you ignore is that he was not the only bad guy in the region. As
Ward pointed out, the Turks had as good a motive as Saddam and they too have a
history of not being to considerate with dissident minorities. Plus as you
repeatedly stated: fabricating chemical weapons is relatively easy.

You are the one who is naive by ignoring the alternatives to Saddem being the
one guilty of the events at Halabja.

 RB> Same situation with the claim that Saddam or his sons put a few
 RB> opponents through a meat grinder. May be true, may be propaganda. But
 RB> knowing the kind of people they were, do you really want to exclude
 RB> the possibility completely?

Without further information, if I have to choose between propaganda and it
really have happened, I'd put my money on propaganda. Considering that a LOT of
effort has gone into demonising Saddam and his regime.

We know that the story about the WMD's was not true. We know that the story
about the yellow cake was not true. We know the the story about mobile chemical
labs was not true. We know that the story about babies in the microwave in
Kuweit is not true.

Does that not make you wonder what else that we have been told about Saddam is
not true?


Cheers, Michiel

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