The Pope quoted a 550 year old statement from some obscure character who said that the Muslim religion is fraught with violence and that force is not an acceptable way to promulgate a religion. True enough. So why has he spent the past week apologizing for his quote? Is he gutless? The Muslim religion is indeed fraught with violence and always has been. That is nothing new. When the prophet said that infidels must be killed, or words to that effect, he meant it, and his followers may say they are peace loving, but their religion instructs that infidels be killed.
Did you ever wonder if when Muslim kills Muslim, as is happening by the thousands in Iraq, do they still get instant paradise and 72 virgins? Or is that reward for killing infidels? Or do the Shiites consider the Sunnis infidels? Strange way to get to heaven! Isn’t that like Catholics slaying Protestants? Of course civilized Christians don’t indulge in that, but leave judgment to God.
This morning on NPR, the news reader said that Saddam was “Being tried for the murder of 180,000 Kurds.” In a later news brief, the reader said that Saddam was being tried for the murder of “Over 150,000 Kurds.” Is this an innocent mistake? Or is this a deliberate exaggerating of things to promote something…like how evil Saddam is? He may be evil, but his being accused of killing 140 Kurds, not 180,000, and there are no witnesses to it. When Saddam was in power the lights, water, and sewers worked. Everyone had a job, and crime was minimal. Now it is a no-mans land, and hundreds of thousands have been killed and continue to be beheaded, murdered, and raped. And Dubya has the gall to stand up before the UN and say that things are going well and we are going to bring peace to Iraq. It’s Vietnam all over again, as is Afghanistan, only with depleted uranium ammo now. How revolting. I was filing away in plastic sheets my columns back in 2002, and I predicted everything that has happened. The Constitution gives the legislature the power to DECLARE WAR, not give the President freedom to do as his feeble mind dictates, with the world suffering. George Washington warned us about foreign entanglements, and he was totally correct. Eisenhower warned about the military-industrial complex, and he was right also. War is very profitable to some, and deadly to a lot more.