11/17/09 – Dahlia S. Wasfi – The Scott Horton Show

For Antiwar.com, I'm Scott Horton.
This is Antiwar Radio.
Okay, now, I'd like to introduce you to Dr. Dalia Wasfy.
She spent her childhood in Saddam Hussein's Iraq and returned with her family to the United States in 1977.
I guess she was born here.
Graduated from Swarthmore College, has a B.A. in Biology, and graduated from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine.
In February and March of 2004, after years of separation, she visited Iraq to see her family in Basra in Baghdad.
She journeyed to Iraq again for a three-month visit in 2006, and has been speaking out against the negative impact of the U.S. invasion on the Iraqi people.
She's got a website here called Liberate This.
Welcome to the show, Dalia.
How are you?
I'm good.
Can you hear me okay?
I can hear you just fine.
Did I get that right?
LiberateThis.com?
Perfect.
Thank you so much for having me.
Well, thank you very much for joining us today.
I saw a short talk that you gave at I'm not sure what event, but I think it must have been just after you got back in 2006, I think, from the way you described.
I thought it would be interesting for people, hopefully, after all these years, it's actually been enough time, the occupation has been going on there, that we could actually go back and sort of do a history of the Iraq war so far and what is really the effect of the American invasion on the people of that country.
As I'm sure you're well aware, as far as TV is concerned, the Iraq war is over.
It never existed, in fact, and we can just forget about all of that, and it doesn't even matter.
People are really tired of the Iraq war, so I think that's why we need to talk about it some more.
I appreciate that.
In my experience, for my speaking invitations, they dropped off to almost none after the presidential election a year ago, and with the idea that Barack Obama was a peace candidate, which is really quite a myth.
But the idea was that he would bring all the troops home, and the nightmare was over with the change of administration, and while there's a different family living in the White House, our policies are really very much the same, and he's maintained the same secretary of, well, what we call a secretary of defense, which is really a secretary of offense, and the same secretary of the Treasury, who I suppose could also be called secretary of what is offensive.
But the reality is that the suffering in Iraq that we are now expanding in Afghanistan as well continues to this day, and these are human beings who love their children and want to raise their families in the same way that we do, and I believe that when we respect that and respect the humanity of those millions overseas who are suffering and the thousands coming home, veterans coming home who are suffering, from that we can build a better world.
Well, now, when you talk about Obama picking up where Bush left off, I mean, that's the actual fact of the case, right, is that he's basically, he ran on ending the Iraq war, but then Nouri al-Maliki basically gave Bush no choice but to sign this status of forces agreement that does end the occupation, at least on paper, by the end of 2011.
So Obama just said, okay, fine, we'll just go with that.
If Bush signed the thing that says we're going to withdraw, we'll just do it that way.
But that means he's got three years, or I guess two and a half, left before he's a liar.
He can break his promise, but it'll be years before his promise is broken.
In the meantime, we're just supposed to accept that the occupation is ending, even though we all know there's still more than 100,000 troops and 100,000 mercenaries in the country right now.
Right, and that's really been the plan all along.
You sort of painted that picture as if Nouri al-Maliki is in control, at least that's how I heard it, and I would disagree with that.
He is in power as long as he foes the line that we want him to.
As a matter of fact, this is what the parliament is really about in the green zone.
They depend on American forces and mercenaries for protection.
They depend on American forces and U.S. taxpayers for their very high salaries, and so they will do what they have to do according to what the CIA wants them to.
Well, now, Patrick Coburn says that in the parliament, Maliki basically stitched together a coalition powerful enough to keep him the prime minister, but he had to make deals with Sunni nationalists and Saudi nationalists who are absolutely intent on ending the occupation, and that his entire power is as dependent on them as it is on the Americans, maybe more, and that he really started out last, I guess, spring 2008 with Bush demanding 58 bases and that Maliki stuck by his guns throughout 2008 until Bush was facing the very last month of his presidency and was just out of time and ended up being forced by Maliki to sign this thing that does not allow any bases at all, much less 58.
Do you disagree with that?
Well, you see, we have to go back to how things happened after our illegal invasion.
The whole setup for the interim Iraqi government was coordinated by American administrators.
We decided there will be this many Sunni, this many Shia parties and representatives and this many Kurds, and this is introducing sectarianism into Iraq.
Now, there are those divisions, certainly, but not to a point where it's people killing each other over it, and we have trained the death squads that have made purely Sunni and purely Shia neighborhoods today.
Yes, they are wheeling and dealing in the green zone, but if you look at what the Iraqi parliament has done, they have passed the PSAs, the product sharing agreements with regards to Iraq's oil, which opens it up to 75% foreign investment.
They have done nothing to establish security.
They have done nothing to improve electricity or water services.
Really, their main accomplishment has been to establish a new Iraqi flag, and while people are dying and blood is running in the streets, this is absolutely not a government of the people, by the people, and for the people.
Well, certainly not, but is it a government of Muqtada al-Sadr made in alliance with the Dawa party, made in alliance with some former Ba'athists?
To me, it's a really important part of the narrative, I guess, only for my own emotional well-being, when Patrick Coburn says, actually, Maliki's got the Americans over a barrel.
He's telling them they've got to go, and they really do, and in fact, Maliki's put himself in a position where he can't back down from that.
They would, at some point, have to start the war over against the people who more or less went along with it.
Well, you know, you mentioned the Status of Forces Agreement before, and if you look at the wording of the Status of Forces Agreement, which is supposedly, it has been pitched to us as an agreement between two sovereign nations, if you switch around Iraq and the United States, everywhere they're listed, there is no way, no way that American people or representatives would accept such an agreement that allows Iraqi ships and airplanes to have control over U.S. territory the way that that agreement allows them to in Iraq.
And it's important to remember that Barack Obama never claimed that he would end the occupation.
What he said was, in his campaign, that we will leave enough troops behind to defend our embassy and defeat Al-Qaeda.
Now, number one, if you have to defend your embassy with United States Armed Forces, then that country probably is not happy that you're there.
That's number one.
Number two, who is Al-Qaeda?
We designate Al-Qaeda as anyone who attacks an American.
Well, the Americans are illegally occupying Iraq, so there will be attacks forever, as long as we occupy them.
The Iraqi people want us out.
In August, there were still over 3,000 dead, just for the month of August, in Iraq.
The American people want us out.
Our only obligation to the people of Iraq, to the people of this country, and the rest of the world, is immediate, unconditional withdrawal.
Now, I want to get into some of this about the casualties and so forth.
Because, as I'm sure you know, it's pretty easy to understand that the American people, basically, if you ask them to think of Iraqis, they think of some Disney movie, of some Arabs flying around on carpets or some sort of thing.
Basically, Iraqis are cartoon characters.
They're abstractions whose lives have no real meaning or inherent dignity or value.
They're sort of, you know, pretend to Americans.
Well, actually, if that were the only thing, that wouldn't be so bad.
The problem is, we have been absolutely demonized.
We are terrorists, Arabs and Muslims in general.
And that's been a long campaign in the Hollywood movies, to designate us like that.
Sure.
And I guess that even includes, I guess the women and children are abstract enough that if they die next to the so-called fighting aged male terrorists, then, oh well.
And, you know, the problem I have with this is that, well, I don't believe in it.
Because if anybody ever goes to any foreign country, you can tell that, wow, the earth looks flat from here, too.
And people are people, just like anywhere else.
And murder is murder, just like any other thing.
And I talked with Alan Hyde, this is back in the beginning of 2008.
He did two studies to double check and make sure.
And he said that if you take into account what they call the excess deaths, that is the rate of deaths, not just murders, but this would include people who couldn't get to the hospital in the way that they used to be able to get to the hospital, or have a hospital that is actually operating, that kind of thing.
Take into account all the excess deaths, infant mortality increases.
And they did a massive in-depth survey twice.
And Alan Hyde from Opinion Business Research told me on this show that a million Iraqis had been killed extra, you know, beyond the rate of death from before the invasion.
Of course, that takes into account, or doesn't even acknowledge, really, the state of the blockade and the no-fly zones and all that before the actual invasion in 2003.
So it's a million excess deaths on top of, they were already talking about, a million dead from the blockade from the 1990s.
Absolutely.
And these are real people.
These aren't cartoon characters.
These are real people.
A million of them, more than a million, maybe two million of them.
You know, we're working on a third of a Holocaust now in Iraq.
Exactly.
And thank you so much for bringing these numbers to light.
That's absolutely the case.
And, of course, there were the Lancet reports before ORB issued their report.
And extrapolating from the Lancet report, the estimate now is somewhere between 1.3 and 1.5 million dead.
Now, that's, you know, the number in and of itself, you're talking about, that's within a country whose population is 26 million.
So that's almost 5% of the population.
Now, for us, that would be 15 million deaths caused by another country's policies.
These numbers are staggering.
But all you have to think about is your dear loved ones and how much they mean to you.
And, you know, believe me, Iraqi families love their family members, too.
And that's sort of where I'm trying to bridge the gap because I have my family here in the States and I have my family in Iraq.
And when we went into Shakina, Iraq, you might as well have tried to Shakina, Yonkers, New York.
To me, it was the same thing.
And my goal through my talks and now through my writing is to try to get that point across, that these are people's lives who are being destroyed, not only overseas.
But if we want to know how well the occupations are going, look at the military suicide rate.
It is at the highest point it has ever been, and it is beyond the national average.
People are coming home, and once they are back in their, quote, unquote, normal life, they are remembering what they experienced and what they participated in, and they cannot live with themselves.
And this is we are destroying a society overseas in Iraq, in Afghanistan, and for the future as well, as our depleted uranium affects future generations overseas and at home.
Well, and isn't that an important point?
And this gets back into some of the history that people would prefer to not remember because the Iraq war itself is not just some abstraction.
It's been going on for years and years and different things happening at different times and places that were worse than others.
And, of course, in the spring of 2004, there were uprisings in Fallujah and in Najaf, and there was nationalist Muqtada al-Sadr types aligning with nationalist Ba'athist types in two different cities.
And then for at least a time, Sadr backed down, but in the preparation for the American election of 2004, it was so clear that the Republicans were just waiting for the right time to reinvade and smash Fallujah.
And then as soon as Bush was safely reelected, at least, quote, unquote, depending on if you want to argue Ohio or not, they did exactly that.
And I'm no scientist, and I don't really know all the medicine.
I guess you are a doctor.
Maybe you can actually scientifically discuss the effects of depleted uranium.
But it's at least been said, I don't know what all the numbers in real science and proof are, but it's been said that the people of Fallujah to this day are suffering an inordinate amount of birth defects, children being born with terrible deformities and cancers and no eyeballs and insanity, the kinds of nightmare on earth there.
To this day, the battle long over now.
Absolutely.
Before addressing depleted uranium, I just want to make a note that it's very, I think in fairness, we cannot sit here in the United States and say that the Saudis led this uprising and Ba'athists led this one.
If the United States had been invaded in 2007 and my family were in jeopardy, I would fight to defend my family, not to defend Bush, but because my family was in danger and we have inalienable human rights.
And that's what's happening every day in Iraq.
It is the people of the cities whom we are bombarding and destroying who are fighting for their lives and their future.
I'm not trying to delegitimize that at all, but I mean, Saudi did have an organization and a militia and they shut down his newspaper because that will shut him up once we shut down his newspaper.
And this is where Casey Sheehan was killed, was in this ridiculous battle in Najaf against Muqtada al-Sadr and his militia when the occupation had completely picked a fight with them in the run-up to that.
I mean, I'm not saying that anyone who fought during that died for the loyalty of the Japanese emperor or something, rather than fighting for their own interests as they saw them, but I'm just saying it was Saudi and his militia at that time, right?
Well, I think it's important to note that whatever happens in Iraq is up to Iraq.
Believe me, if you talk to Iraqis today and ask them, are you better off now than before we invaded, they will tell you no way.
And we've screwed things up for decades to come, and the only people who can determine the future are the Iraqi people.
And they might not choose a leader who we like.
And as a matter of fact, if they democratically elect someone, they will probably elect someone who will serve the Iraqi people's interests rather than the interests of Halliburton and ExxonMobil.
So we probably won't like them.
And you're probably getting my knee-jerk reaction because Iraqis have been so demonized in the media that I don't know what to do with myself when I'm doing an interview where that doesn't happen.
Well, no, believe me, I understand.
That was why I was trying to – I said all that inarticulate stuff about Disney movies and so forth, because I try to – well, look, this is what I thought of Iraqis when I was in ninth grade, right?
I don't care if you bomb Iraqis.
That was what I thought when I was 14 or whatever the hell in ninth grade, back during the first Gulf War.
And it wasn't until after that I realized that, you know, no, actually murder is murder, and they were lying to you to justify that and the rest of that.
In fact, a friend sent me this morning, told me a whole story about how he was completely taken in by the story that the Iraqi army threw the Kuwaiti babies on the cold floor to die and stole their incubators.
And we all know now that this was a $10 million advertising campaign by Hill and Knowlton on Madison Avenue, that they got the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador to tell this lie in front of the Congress, where she must be under oath and this must be true, right?
And this was the thing that turned not only my friend who wrote me this morning's opinion, but it turned the opinion of every editorial page in this country, that these Iraqis, even if they are humans, they're terrible ones, and how dare they do this thing.
And, you know, as a kid I was caught up in that.
So when I address what Americans probably think of Iraqis, that they're cartoon characters and it's okay to kill them, I'm really only describing myself when I was 14, the best I can remember the way my view was then.
And, you know, I remember how easy it is to get caught up in, yeah, USA number one and yellow ribbon and American flag and stop those bad guys.
It's not that hard.
They make it pretty easy to buy right in, you know?
Exactly.
There was tremendous, and as you described, calculated demonization of the Iraqi people.
And really all we saw was the swarthy mustached face of Saddam Hussein.
That was all of Iraq.
But, you know, if you do the math with me, you take any population, it's about half male and half female, you add up the women, the girls, and the boys.
So the majority of any population is women and children.
And they are the ones who pay the highest price whenever there is war or a loss of law and order.
And so you're absolutely right.
It makes it very easy.
They showed us on TV the Gulf War was essentially a video game.
We didn't see the suffering on the ground.
And then certainly in the years that followed after we had purposely bombed the electrical grids and the water sewage treatment plants, cholera became endemic in Iraq, massive disease outbreak, and to this day 70% of the deaths of children under five are the result of easily treatable diseases or diseases that can be prevented with vaccines.
And we made sure that none of those materials went into Iraq during the years of sanctions.
So as you aptly described, it's a calculated now almost 20-year war on a nation and a people who have done nothing to us.
They are paying the price for the actions of a leadership that we helped bring to power there in the 1960s.
And, you know, it's far past the time of enough is enough.
It's a suffering that there's a very good bumper sticker that says, I love my country, but I think we should start seeing other people, you know, other people.
That is a great one.
I'm so mad I didn't make that up.
You get a major million.
But, you know, we have a – and it's very calculated.
And if people today, families in the U.S. today in the problem with the economy, which is never linked to the billions that are spent in these occupations, but people working multiple jobs just trying to put food on the table and they have very little time with their kids at the end of the day, all they get is the sound bites from the news.
And that's really a problem if you have, you know, if you're listening to stations that will purposely mislead you.
And they don't have – they don't send the humanity of our victims overseas.
And I'm telling you what's coming, and it's coming now, is disrespecting the humanity of the soldiers coming home.
There's still enough atmosphere of support the troops that people pay lip service to that, but there are already Iraq and Afghanistan veterans who are homeless on the street.
Veterans make up a quarter of the homeless population in this country, and that is appalling in any situation, but especially in a country that claims to support its troops the way it does.
If you want to support the troops, get them out of harm's way.
Bring them home and give them the benefits that they earn.
Take care of them because if we don't, we are going to pay later as a society because they are traumatized, and that leads to increased drug abuse, alcoholism, domestic violence, suicide, homicide, and homelessness on the street.
These are people who were lied to.
They joined the military and they were betrayed, and it's on our society to start that healing.
But none of that healing can start either here or overseas until the occupation ends.
You're a very interesting character.
I like – I guess it's part of being an American and part Iraqi and everything, is you can say we invaded them and also they invaded us and tell both sides of that same story that way.
I like that.
That's very interesting.
I normally object to collectivist-type language, but it is part of just the structure of human language, and since you can very credibly take both sides and explain the way this works, I think that's really valuable.
I really like that.
I appreciate that, and I also just want to say that I take responsibility because I know my tax dollars have paid for it.
So my government put the blood of innocence on my hands, and I find that at first that's a heavy weight, but then that's empowering to me.
That means I have a say in what's happening, and I am saying no, not in my name.
You are not going to raise my nephew in this country to go join the army and kill his cousin overseas.
Yeah.
Wow.
What a great way to put it.
Now, so let's get back to Fallujah, and what is it – do you know about the deformities and the horror stories about the depleted uranium?
Is it metal poisoning?
Is it radiation poisoning?
It's not that depleted.
I mean, we're talking about, what, uranium-239 or whatever with the sweet stuff taken out, but it's still pretty radioactive, huh?
Exactly, and basically the answer is yes to all the forms of harm that it can bring to your health.
Basically, in my understanding of depleted uranium, what it is is that when any country mines uranium for the purpose of nuclear energy, nuclear power, nuclear weapons, only 0.7 percent of what is mined is the isotope that can be used towards nuclear power and nuclear energy.
The other 99.3 percent doesn't have a use, so basically it's nuclear waste, it's garbage, and we have tons of it stockpiled around the country.
Actually, we get a lot of our uranium that's mined in Canada, and they have a number of problems in the areas where the mining takes place of environmental damage and harm to the people.
But anyway, what the Pentagon discovered is that this uranium is the densest material on Earth, and if you form the uranium into a rod or you put it on the tip of a missile and you aim that missile at a tank, what it does is, as they describe, it'll cut through a tank like a hot knife through butter.
Right, because it's part of the lattice work of the molecules in there is that it's self-sharpening.
So even if you use some really heavy metal like cobalt or something, which is pretty dangerous stuff itself, I think, that flattens when you hit armor with it.
But with depleted uranium, as it's doing the friction there, it just makes it sharper and sharper.
And ultimately, it bursts into flames.
It burns and aerosolizes, and so those tiny radioactive particles go into the air, they go into the sand or dirt where we're bombing, and they go into the water supply.
Now, we used depleted uranium for the first time in the 1991 Gulf War where we used over 300 tons aerosolized over mostly Bafra in the south where my family lived.
We used it again in the 1999 bombing of Kosovo.
NATO used it.
And we used it again in Afghanistan, 2001 through today, and in Iraq through the bombing of the no-fly zones and on through Chakanon today.
Now estimated over, and this is an old number so it's higher, over 2,000 tons aerosolized over Iraq.
Now what happens is if it's in the air, you breathe it in.
And if it's in the water, you drink it in.
And it can settle in your lungs and in your kidneys, and those particles that are small enough, it's all microscopic, they can cross over into the bloodstream and then go anywhere in your body.
So over time, you can end up with lung or kidney tumors just from the immediate radiation exposure or the heavy metal exposure, but if you don't do it.
So basically you won't just metabolize this and move on.
It's sort of like mercury in the fish or whatever where it just stays and stays?
I believe so.
I think that's a correct analogy.
Actually, the expert on this who I've been in communication with is Doug Rocky, who was the whistleblower.
He was the toxiophysicist at the Pentagon.
They asked him to investigate our use of depleted uranium, and after he reported his results of its damning effects and that every soldier returning needs to be tested, they promptly fired him.
Well, you know, it's been years, but I interviewed Doug Rocky, and I tried to get him to explain exactly, well, is it heavy metal poisoning or is it radiation poisoning, and what is this doing?
And his answer was, look, I'm sick.
I'm not lying.
And I said, well, yeah, I know, but you also might have a certain personality because of where Jupiter was the day you were born, but show me the cause and effect here.
What exactly is the problem?
And I was not satisfied that he was able to answer that, and I'm certainly not trying to be a Gulf War Syndrome denier because there are all kinds of uncounted people in Iraq and in America who suffer from that, and I'm perfectly willing to accept the possibility that depleted uranium is a major part of it, but I wish I knew who could answer my questions in a real satisfactory manner.
Well, I think the definitive studies have yet to be done for obvious reasons.
Well, yeah, there's that too, right.
On the one hand, there's no one to do the studies of what's happened in Iraq, but you need the scientific foundation, but because of the lack of security and lack of resources, they have not been able to do the studies.
However, following the first Gulf War, what pediatricians in Iraq noted was a 300% increase in Iraq's infant mortality, excuse me, 600% increase in Iraq's infant mortality rate and 300% increase in the incidence of pediatric leukemias and lymphomas.
This was after heavy bombardment in the south of Iraq.
Following the 2003 invasion, starting in 2005, hospitals in Baghdad started to note that they were diagnosing leukemias and lymphomas in children at a rate unprecedented.
Now in Fallujah, several years after our massive bombardment, massive sieges of 2004, now the same thing is being reported.
So there appears to be a cause and effect.
Same thing here at home.
After the first Gulf War, there was a significant increase in the incidence of congenital abnormalities in the children of desert storm veterans, but the incidence of these particular abnormalities, the funding was cut for further research.
So further studies need to be done, but there's no question, I mean international bodies have ruled that any bit of radiation is not good for you and it makes sense that children are affected the most because they're growing, their cells are dividing, and when you introduce radiation into that, it screws it up.
Clearly something that we are contributing to is causing tremendous morbidity and mortality, and once again our obligation is to first of all stop the killing and then begin the healing.
Well, you know, when you talk about infant mortality in general, not that this makes it any better or anything, but I think people might assume, okay, well, hospitals get bombed and roadblocks get put up and the drinking water is tainted and that kind of thing, but when you're talking about these cancers, that's a whole different story.
When you're talking about terrible deformities and terrible cancers and the rates of increase like that, maybe it's not the depleted geranium, maybe it's the massive burn pits of every other kind of toxic chemical in the world, but it's still a result of this and the last war, this same war that's been on really since 1990.
Exactly, and simply an Iraqi engineer who actually did her training in Colorado, her name is Suad Al-Azawi, and she has done reports about the general, she's an environmental engineer, and the general environmental destruction that has come basically on the backs of the U.S. military, and that involves things like the electromagnetic forces that are involved with all the technology and electronic equipment that we bring in, tremendous disturbance of the natural landscape with our tanks, and I'm not sophisticated in the military jargon, but all the things that we drive when we're over there, significant disruption of the ecosystem, and these things, it's been documented in the past to cause problems, if not in the short term, in the long term, and in the picture of what's happening to the earth, the United States military is the number one user of fossil fuels, so if we accept the concept of climate change, we are using the oil that we covet so much faster than anybody else.
Okay, now I want to get back to where we started here, with Obama and the status of forces agreement, and the passivity of the anti-war movement that used to wake up and go to sleep screaming, out of Iraq now, and how it all seems to have gone away on the vague promise that it's going to sort of end, except for these and those major exceptions, by the end of 2011.
What is it that people need to understand to get them back into the mode of demanding that, you know what, if we're leaving at the end of 2011, we can leave right now.
If the deal is that we're not going to continue to trespass and expand our Pentagon's footprint and all of these things in that country, if that policy has really been called off, then let's do this thing.
What do you tell people to get them to understand that this is just as important as it was two years ago?
If I had the answer, I would hang up the phone and I would be on it.
Well, say it here, I mean, you're on the radio.
Yeah, I mean, all I know how to do, and unfortunately in my experience it's trial and error, is, you know, I tried to do for four and a half years basically what the mainstream media was supposed to do, and that was to tell the truth.
It was one of the lessons learned from Vietnam is don't show the people the reality on the ground.
You get a very sanitized version of the truth, which ends up being, you know, basically disinformation through the mainstream media.
So I tried to go around the country and just say, look, this is the information I have, this is my family, this is what their lives are like, this is what I went through when I lived under occupation.
It sucks.
End it.
Come home.
But I tell you, even in the Bush years, it was an effort to convince people for immediate unconditional withdrawal.
People kept asking me, but I don't want to leave too quickly because then, you know, some harm will come to the Iraqi people.
You know, if anyone can make an argument to me of how United States armed forces are helping in Iraq and Afghanistan, I'm open to hearing it, but I don't have the evidence.
We are using depleted uranium.
We are using napalm in its derivatives.
We are using white phosphorus.
We are raping and pillaging our way to destroy the society.
I don't see a solution without us leaving, and that's the myth is that we want to help, we want to feel good about ourselves, but we are not helping.
If we want to help people, send in scientists, send in engineers, stop choking people with economic sanctions, and help people here at home.
You know, I was in Basra, Iraq, March 2006, six months after Hurricane Katrina, and six months afterwards, the report came on, I think it was Al Jazeera or Al Arabiya, that they were finding dead bodies in homes in New Orleans.
And my cousins looked at me like, what is wrong with you people?
You don't even take care of your own.
What are you doing here saying you're helping us?
And that's the reality of it.
We are pretending that we are a force for good, and we've got a lot of problems here at home.
Let's bring home our children, which they're basically children, bring the soldiers home, take care of them when they get here, and let's work on the problems that we have here.
We have no business dictating what is right and what is good to anyone else on this planet when we have so much to fix here at home.
All right, folks, that is Dahlia Waspie.
You can find her website at liberatethis.com.
Thanks very much for your time on the show today.
My pleasure.
Next time I'll tell you how I really feel.
All right, good.
Yeah, I'm looking forward to that.
Thanks.
Thank you very much.
All right, folks.
Now, one of the things that I remember quite clearly from the days of the first Gulf War was George Bush Sr.'s promise that this will not be another Vietnam.
This is going to be like the G.I.
Joe cartoon where everything works out great.
Well, that was almost 20 years ago now.
You realize that?
That was 19 years ago that George Bush Sr. promised this would not be another Vietnam, and it hasn't been a Vietnam for America.
We haven't lost 60,000 people.
Our society hasn't torn itself apart over this.
But well over a million Iraqis have died.
It's been a Vietnam for them.
And based on lies that are even more preposterous than those told to get your parents and your grandparents to support that war back then.
And again, listen to this.
Ten million dollars, your dollars, your dad's dollars taken out of his paycheck, went to Hill and Knowlton, an advertising firm on Madison Avenue, who put together this lie and wrote these lines for this daughter of a Kuwaiti ambassador to tell the Congress.
And this is the thing that changed the mind not just of my friend that emailed me this morning, but changed the mind of every newspaper editorial board in this country.
That something has got to be done to stop that madman Middle Eastern Hitler, Saddam Hussein.
This is where it started.
This war that they promised would not be another Vietnam.
Right here.
While I was there, I saw the Iraqi soldiers coming to the hospital with guns.
They took the babies out of incubators.
Took incubators and left the children to die on the cold floor.
They had kids in incubators, and they were thrown out of the incubators so that Kuwait could be systematically dismantled.