As you all know I’m a hardened cynic of the first order, but even this brought a misting to the eye while it brought rage to my chest:
“More than 100 children held in a prison celebrated their freedom as US marines rolled into northeast Baghdad,” Agence France-Presse reports:
Around 150 children spilled out of the jail after the gates were opened as a US military Humvee vehicle approached, Lieutenant Colonel Fred Padilla told an AFP correspondent travelling with the Marines 5th Regiment.
“Hundreds of kids were swarming us and kissing us,” Padilla said.
“There were parents running up, so happy to have their kids back.”
“The children had been imprisoned because they had not joined the youth branch of the Baath party,” he alleged. “Some of these kids had been in there for five years.”
In a September interview with Time magazine, here’s what Scott Ritter had to say about Iraq’s children’s prisons:
The prison in question is at the General Security Services headquarters, which was inspected by my team in Jan. 1998. It appeared to be a prison for children–toddlers up to pre-adolescents–whose only crime was to be the offspring of those who have spoken out politically against the regime of Saddam Hussein. It was a horrific scene. Actually I’m not going to describe what I saw there because what I saw was so horrible that it can be used by those who would want to promote war with Iraq, and right now I’m waging peace.
Beyond the obvious point about the cruelty of the Iraqi regime, this article also proves what can only be called the evil of the peace movement! You wouldn’t report the torture of children because it might lead to their freedom through war!!!! Are you insane??????? Mr. Ritter, shame on you. How you sleep at night is beyond me. If this war will teach us anything, it should teach us that these so called peace activists are complicit in their support of murder.