The Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld-Wolfowitz war in Iraq has killed or displaced ONE MILLION Iraqi Christians...
It muust be remebered, that under Bush(Sr.), Cheney, Reagan, and Rumsfeld, the United States ARMED SADDAM HUSSEIN's IRAQ with "WMD PRECURSOR" technologies and "Agricultural Credits" funding, which Saddam used in his war against Iranian troops, against the Kurd minority, and against his own opposition, mostly SHIITES of the MAJORITY religious group in Iraq. During the Gulf war, President Bush and Secretary of Defense Cheney (and later Rumsfeld) ENCOURAGED Iraq's SHIITES TO RISE IN REBELLION against Saddam... then, when those rebellions DID SPRING UP, the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld-Baker team ORDERED THE US MILITARY _NOT_ TO GET INVOLVED, as Saddam's Repulican Guards, armed with Iraq's remaining tanks and helicopter gunships, ANNHILATED the Shiite rebellion troops, often with mass hangings and mass burials. Fast forward to Bush Junior"s war... and in the name of overthorwing Saddam Hussein and his mostly Sunni Baathist Party, the Cheney-Rumsfeld team ARMED THE VERY SHIITES that their policies had ENCOURAGED SADDAM TO MASSACRE for the previous two decades! Given this basic set of "Real-politik" facts, one would need almost a Christ-like level of toleration of one's enemies, to expect the Shiites not to wage a war of savage reprisal against any and all opponents to their quest for sectarian dominance.
And just as Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Wolfowitz LOOKED ASKANCE at the MASS MURDER of Iraqi Christians, SO TOO HENRY KISSINGER and the US State Department LOOKED AWAY as Indonesia's Muslim secret-police dominated "MILITIAS" exterminated 200,000 East Timorese Christian Catholics, a legacy of Portugal's control over the eastern half of Timor Island. KISSINGER, WOLFOWITZ, the war-enabling NEW YORK TIMES - it is starting to look like the worst thing a native Christian population can see, is American neo-con intellectuals start to talk about THEIR "freedom and safety"!!
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Vicar claims 90 per cent of Iraqi Christians have fled or been murdered
An Anglican clergyman in Baghdad, who has seen his flock murdered and forced into exile by Muslim extremists, says Christians there are worse off now than under Saddam's rule and are probably suffering more than any time in history. The Rev Canon Andrew White, an Anglican priest known as the 'Vicar of Baghdad' made the claim in an interview with Scott Pelley yesterday, on CBS Television Network's 60 MINUTES programme.
"There's no comparison between Iraq now and [under Saddam]," said White. "Things are the most difficult they have ever been for Christians probably ever in history," he said, Rev White estimates that 90 percent of Iraq's Christians, once thought to number over a million, have either fled or have been murdered by Islamic extremists during the religious civil war.
That includes his own church leaders and most of the men of his parish. "They are mainly killed. Some are kidnapped," said White. "Here in this church, all of my leadership were originally taken and killed. Their bodies were never recovered. This is one of the problems. I regularly do funerals here, but it's not easy to get the bodies."
White invited 60 MINUTES cameras to an underground Baghdad service for what was left of his congregation, mostly the old, the ill and those who cannot afford to flee. The purge is almost complete in the Dora neighborhood of Baghdad, once a Christian stronghold, and the recent surge of American troops also has stemmed some of the violence.
"I don't see a lot of [Christian murder victims] anymore," said Army Col. Rick Gibbs. "But when we first arrived, we saw lots of that. It would not surprise my soldiers to walk down a street on patrol and see three or four bodies laying in the street with a bullet behind their head," says Gibbs.
At the height of the violence, churches were bombed and the Army did not guard them, Gibbs said. "[Christians] feel that if we are overtly protecting the churches, that someone underground covertly will come in and murder the Christians because they are collaborating with the US forces," Gibbs tells Pelley.
It all started after the invasion, said a young Christian who did not want to be identified. "[Muslim extremists] were telling us that Christians were against Islam, that we're infidels, that women shouldn't drive and that a woman who doesn't wear a head scarf should get her head cut off," he said.
Source: CBS
© Independent Catholic News 2007
60 Minutes: Reverend Canon White says: The situation is clearly worse in Iraq now for Christians
By: Logan Murphy on Sunday, December 2nd, 2007 at 7:25 PM - PST
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Scott Pelley’s disturbing report on 60 Minutes shows just one angle of the carnage that continues in Iraq despite the surge — the cleansing of Iraqi Christians. Pelley interviews Andrew White, a minister who suffers from Multiple Sclerosis and runs one of the few remaining Christian churches left in the country. Transcript:
The situation now is clearly worse” than under Saddam, White replied.
“There’s no comparison between Iraq now and then,” he told Pelley. “Things are the most difficult they have ever been for Christians. Probably ever in history. They’ve never known it like now.”
“Wait a minute, Christians have been here for 2,000 years,” Pelley remarked.
“Yes,” White said.
“And it’s now the worst it has ever been,” Pelley replied.
White is forced to hold his services underground (you won’t see many adult males as they have all been killed or driven from the country) and risks his life every day to help his parishioners and says life for Iraqi Christians is infinitely worse now than under Saddam. Many Christians who are lucky enough to make it out of the country alive end up in Syrian ghettos, still fearing for their lives and with little hope for the future.
The Bush administration and our liberal media tell us the surge in Iraq is working, but the world knows that is a lie. The surge may be helping with security in some parts of the country, but it has come with immeasurable costs to the people of Iraq in the form of ethnic cleansing and a humanitarian crisis for many millions of people, that should anger and sicken us all. Of course, the plight of Iraqi Christians are just part of this appalling tragedy. Iraqis of all faiths are still being slaughtered and driven from their homes and country daily, by a civil war we allowed to happen and continues to rage on, uninterrupted by the surge.
