Dude, Where's My Country_ - Michael Moore [33]
Bringing up the rear is the United Kingdom (our bestest friend in the whole wide world!) and Uzbekistan. In the United Kingdom, only 9 percent supported military action against Iraq if it meant the U.S. and the U.K. going it alone. The Brits were split evenly on who the “greatest threat to world peace” was, with Bush and Hussein each getting 45 percent of the vote. Why would Tony Blair involve himself in this? What did Bush promise him?
So there we have the Coalition of the Willing, representing about 20 percent of the world’s population. But even that is deceptive, since most of the coalition members’ citizens opposed the war in Iraq—making them the “Coalition of the Coerced.” Or, more accurately, the “Coalition of the Coerced, Bribed and Intimidated.”
For the record, here are a few of the many countries that wanted nothing to do with this fiasco, the “Coalition of the Unwilling”:
Algeria, Argentina, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Chile, China, Cuba, Egypt, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, India, Indonesia, Iran, Ireland, Israel, Jordan, Mexico, New Zealand, Nigeria, Norway, Pakistan, Russia, South Africa, Sweden, Switzerland, Syria, Thailand, United Arab Emirates, Venezuela, Vietnam, Yemen, Zambia, Zimbabwe—and 103 other countries.
Hey, who needs ’em? Chickens! Losers! Weasels!
#7 Junior Whopper Kids Meal: “We are doing everything possible so that no civilian lives are lost.”
We learned a lot in the 1990s about how to fight a war and keep the Yank losses to the absolute minimum. That’s what you get with a liberal in the White House. Clinton closed bases, reduced the number of troops, and funneled money into figuring out ways to bomb people from far away. No fuss, no muss. By the time Bill was finished we had one lean, mean, high-tech fightin’ machine.
One of my favorite Clinton defense projects was the one located in Littleton, Colorado, up the road from Columbine High School. There, Lockheed Martin, the biggest arms-maker in the world, built rockets that carried into space the special new satellites that guided the missiles fired into Baghdad. When Bush unleashed a firestorm on Iraq’s capital city (with a civilian population of five million) during Gulf War II, it couldn’t have happened without those Lockheed rocket carriers. This precision-guided bombing began a whole new era of warfare. It was accurate almost to the inch, and it could be coordinated from the Army’s central command in Tampa, Florida. The same satellites were used to bomb Afghanistan after September 11. And, between these two bombing campaigns, according to some estimates, 9,000 civilians were murdered. Three times as many civilians as died on September 11. And 8,985 more than died at Columbine High School.
The Pentagon brags about how perfect their guidance systems are now, and that in targeting only military installations, no civilians need die.
Tell that to the family of Razek al-Kazem al-Khafaji, who lost his wife, six children, his father, his mother, and two brothers in one attack.
“God take our revenge on America,” he wailed to reporters amid the rubble and body parts.
Wow, what an ingrate!
Then there was the boy who lost his parents and his two arms when a U.S. missile struck his home. As tears streamed down his cheek, he begged reporters to help him find his arms.
Or the mother who began sobbing uncontrollably, then fainted as she watched as a young woman’s torso, then a severed head—her daughter’s—were pulled from a smoldering crater. The crater had been made by four U.S. bombs aimed at a restaurant that Saddam Hussein “might” have been in. Instead, the bombs obliterated three homes, killing fourteen people, including seven children and the woman’s daughter.
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