The flag
: Cpl. Edward Chin, the man who brought down Saddam yesterday, is on the Today show right now. The flag he put up there was in the Pentagon when it was attacked on 9.11.
15 responses to “The flag”
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Hi Jeff,
hm, what would Osama bin Laden think about that? He is the declared death-enemy of the “devil Saddam”. Will he laugh about the situation in these days… US-Marines doing a job he himself wasn’t able to do? The world out there is a little bit more complicated as it seems…
w/kind regs (Roland from Germany = Old Europe;-) -
I wish I could have seen this interview, but unfortunately I am work already.
Roland: Blogeline in DC, but from Germany :) -
Roland,
I cringed when I saw the marine do that because I knew all the pundits would be worried about imperialism and of course, it’s just an exhuberant 20 year old marine who hasn’t been to diplmatic charm school.
As far as Osama saying he’s Saddam’s sworn enemy, he was pledging to help Saddam if the U.S. invaded. So…whatever.
I also have to add that I was watching 60min last night and they had an Arab professor/biographer saying that the calls that Saddam is different from the Muslim extremist dictators are not true. In fact, he saw himself as a descendant of the profit Mohammed and in recent years liked having himself filmed in a prayerful pose.
Just rambling… -
I supported the war, I’m thrilled the Iraqis are freed and I hope this victory is the moon that brings democracy in the Middle East to high tide.
All that said, we have to face the fact there was no substantial connection between Hussein’s regime and al-Qaeda. Chin’s action would have been appropriate a year ago in Afghanistan, over a statue of Mullah Omar (not that the Taliban would allow graven images anyway). Rubbing Saddam’s face in a 9/11 flag does no more to defeat al-Qaeda than does shining Hafez al-Assad’s mug with Old Glory; both are (or were) evil, evil sons of bitches, but ones whose modus operandi was socialist thuggery, not religious fanaticism. The fact religious fundamentalists fought for Hussein’s regime doesn’t convince of a connection, either; al-Qaeda has never shown consistently or rationality when it has the chance to kill Americans. More Africans died in the 1998 embassy bombing than the people bin Laden targeted.
I want to make this clear: we had to enforce the U.N. resolutions, we should continue our war on terrr, and I think winning this war will help us remove troops from Saudi Arabia, getting rid of a major reason for pissing Osama off. But the war on terrorism seems separate from this victory. -
http://www.cnn.com/2003/US/Northeast/04/09/sprj.irq.statue.marine/index.html
Here is the story on Chin, an immigrant from Burma who now hails from Brooklyn, NY.
Brian, I don’t really care about the connection to Osama, I was just pointing out what “Osama” (if it was indeed him) said. The only people who really care about the connection are those who need convincing. I don’t and frankly I always (I don’t nec. mean you Brian) find the “he’s not a terrorist with this group” “he’s evil, but not a terrorist” “these people hate us for different reasons than those people” seem pointless. I guess it makes people feel like terrific armchair diplomats, and quasi-expert in foreign affairs, but it’s otherwise a pointless discussion unless you’re the diplomat. I’ll leave the semantics to Colin Powell, thank you. -
And I guess Hussein knew nothing or had no contact with that Al-qaeda group that operated in N. Iraq. Just a coincidence.
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(Ooops. Just saw this, after commenting above. Guess you did know.)
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We can all sleep soundly now.
Saddam Hussein will never orchestrate a multiplane hijacking/crash into American buildings again. -
Brian: “we have to face the fact there was no substantial connection between Hussein’s regime and al-Qaeda”
No, Brian we don’t. Because you’re wrong. It was in all the news, by the way. Even the Kurds and our troops in the north of Iraq whacked the Al Queda base.
Try reading the news for a change. That skimming stuff just isn’t working for you. -
“Saddam Hussein will never orchestrate a multiplane hijacking/crash into American buildings again.”
HA HA HA! Yeah, I mean, basically he was an okay guy. -
Ah…. the symbolic connection between Iraq and the September 11th attacks in the U.S. – well scripted, I wonder how many times that tidbit got mentioned in the American media as a reinforcement tool?
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i watched news most of yesterday (including the iraqis celebrating in dearborn, michigan and their ‘incident’ with al jazeera), but this is the first i heard that this flag placed on saddam’s face was present in the pentagon on 9/11.
that changes alot as far as i’m concerned. i winced when i saw the soldier put it over his face, but it might just have been planned to be there for a short time and then get replaced with the iraqi flag.
notice, too, that if we wanted to do occupation, we probably would have knocked the damned thing down when the marines first moved into the square. our guys didn’t do that. they let the iraqis attack the symbol. and when it was blatantly clear what the iraqis intended to do, and obvious that it wasn’t going to be an easy thing, the marines were either asked or volunteered to help. it’s the nature of the american beast.
clearly these people didn’t enjoy being raped, pillaged and otherwise brutalized by saddam (pronounce this SAD.DAMN) for the period of years he looted, raped and pillaged his country.
heard a rumor that he absconded with the russians who didn’t leave bagdad on a timely basis. no proof of any kind for the rumor according to the guy posing it as a theory, just his perspective as to why the russians would wait so long to leave, knowing that we were ‘on our way’. -
Catherine: I agree, and that post wasn’t directed at you. As I have said, the repeated violations of U.N. resolutions, the unwillingness to cough up his anthrax and our resultant need to keep troops in Saudi Arabia were all good reasons to go to war.
A and Paul: Thank you for the kind words. Ansar al-Islam, the terrorist group that was rooted out of northern Iraq, gets funding from Iran. Iraqi funding of the group, founded after the Taliban’s defeat in Afghanistan, is not entirely out of the question but has never been proven. One of the reasons it could operate in the north, ironically, was because Saddam does not have a firm grip on that portion of the country.
Again, I support the war. And I applaud Corporal Chin’s patriotism, and all efforts to destroy al-Qaeda. But this wasn’t one of them. -
Whether there’s an al-Qaeda/Iraq connection: Of course it’s going to be tenuous at best. You’d hardly expect them to have a convention at the Baghdad Hilton.
But the connections are emerging. Just do a search for “salman pak”. You’ll find a terrorist training base, complete with passenger plane (said to be a 707), and eye-witness accounts of many groups of non-Iraqi Arabs going through the course.
“Former Iraqi military officers have described a highly secret terrorist training facility at Salman Pak, where both Iraqis and non-Iraqi Arabs receive training on hijacking planes and trains, planting explosives in cities, sabotage, and assassinations.”
Now maybe that’s just their idea of Club Med. But I don’t think so.
