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December 5, 2005
Poll Confirms: Many Dems Back Butcher of Baghdad
Posted by Dave Blount at December 5, 2005 6:34 AM
A recent Fox News Opinion Dynamics survey offers a terrifying glimpse into the dantesque abyss that constitutes the soul of today's Democratic Party. Asked if the world would be better off with Saddam still in power, 41% said yes; only 34% disagreed.
Even support for Joseph Stalin could be excused to some extent by the fact that sympathetic institutions such as the New York Times were temporarily able to cover up his atrocities. But we don't need to wait for history to judge Saddam — his crimes are already public record. The only conceivable excuse for being a member of the 41% would be if you had been trapped in a cave for the last 15 years with nothing to read but the NY Times and nothing to watch but CNN.
If you know of anyone in this situation, you might advise them to get up to speed with the new book Le Livre Noir de Saddam Hussein (The Black Book of Saddam Hussein), which is apparently along the lines of the highly recommended The Black Book of Communism. Le Livre Noir is a 700-page catalogue of Saddam's crimes. A review of the book in The Weekend Australian should be enough to convince most cave-dwellers that any supporter of Saddam is a moral monstrosity.
The book catalogues the 288 mass graves that had been discovered in Iraq (this number is already out of date, since more are discovered every week) — each of them filled with Saddam's victims. One of the authors estimates that 1,000,000 people are still missing as a result of Saddam's reign of terror. In 1988 alone, as many as 180,000 Kurds died or disappeared. Among these were residents of the village of Halabja, who were subjected to mustard gas, tabun, sarin, and VX on March 16 of that year, by a regime that we are now incessantly reminded had no weapons of mass destruction. Halabja was unusual only because its proximity to the border allowed Iranians to document the atrocity.
First-hand accounts of those who survived Saddam's brutal prisoners ought to be enough to get it through even Dick Durbin's head that there really is such a thing as prisoner abuse, and it bears no resemblance to the obsequious pampering going on at Club Gitmo. The vicious repression of Shi'ites (300,000 killed after the 1991 uprising) and the extermination of the Marsh Arabs should also help put the alleged "crimes" of the Bush Administration into context. As the review points out:
In Saddam's Iraq no one, not even the dictator's closest relatives and collaborators, was safe. ... Everyone was targeted, including women and children. Torture was systematically used to secure confessions including beating, burning, ripping out finger nails, rape, electric shocks, acid baths and deprivation of sleep, food or water.
Let's hope the book is available in English soon, and that at least a few Democrats read it, so that they can have some idea of exactly what it is that they have chosen to stand for.
Hat tips: Something... And Half of Something, LGF
