BS: Brilliant U.S. Victory

Subject: BS: Another Stunning U.S. Victory
From: Greg F.
Date: 18 Jul 03 - 07:13 AM

Good to know the kiddies are having fun on our tax dollars.


Jul 18, 5:44 AM EDT

U.S. Soldiers Blow Up Saddam Statue

By JAMIE TARABAY
Associated Press

TIKRIT, Iraq (AP) -- With a thunderous explosion from 12 pounds of plastic explosives, the U.S. military toppled a 30-foot statue of Saddam Hussein on horseback from its perch overlooking the dictator's hometown Friday.

Pvt. Reshaun Richardson of the 555th Combat
Engineering brigade, known as the "Triple Nickel," pushed the button that sent the Saddam statue pitching over near the gate to his former palace compound in his northern hometown of Tikrit.

"It felt real good," said Richardson, of Dothan, Ala. "There were lots of smiles around,and I had the biggest of them all."

The statue - depicting the ousted leader mounted on a rearing horse and brandishing a sword as if charging into combat - was made of solid bronze and stood near the main gate of the his huge palace complex overlooking the city of his birth.

The head of the statue was taken to 4th Infantry division headquarters in Tikrit as a trophy, with the rest of the bronze to be shipped to Fort Hood, Texas, where it will be melted down and turned into a memorial "for all of Task Force Iron Horse who contributed to this war...

Subject: RE: BS: Brilliant U.S. Victory
From: Gareth
Date: 18 Jul 03 - 08:03 AM

One wonders at the mentality of any ruler who errects a statue of himself. But Greg why is this remarkable ?

Gareth

Subject: RE: BS: Brilliant U.S. Victory
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 18 Jul 03 - 06:23 PM

But remember this story - Three months for Thatcher decapitator - about Paul Kelleher who was jailed for treating Maggie Thatcher's statue in a similar spirit.

Ain't no justice.

Subject: RE: BS: Brilliant U.S. Victory
From: Gareth
Date: 18 Jul 03 - 06:39 PM

Yes I weep for Paul Kelleher.

Gareth

Subject: RE: BS: Brilliant U.S. Victory
From: Little Hawk
Date: 18 Jul 03 - 06:50 PM

Yes, yes...

Other trophies of the glorious American forces reside in the Smithsonian. I believe Sitting Bull's winchester rifle is there, for example, and various other items stolen from Indian gravesites in numerous places.

Blowing Saddam's statue up was silly, but it did provide another neat photo-op for the Nintendo-addled minds of North America, I suppose. They might better have simpy carted the whole thing away undamaged to Washington and mounted it there as a trophy of war to intrigue future generations of fast food eaters.

It's easy to destroy things...but quite hard to build them. That is why the stupidest among us simply delight in blowing things up.

Go to any Hollywood blockbuster and you will see an endless succession of expensive things being smashed and blown up, accompanied by a thundering soundtrack. Why this appetite for mayhem? I believe it has something to do with a civilization that is beginning to subconsciously despise itself for its slavery to materialism and excess. People get a catharsis seeing the stuff they can't afford to buy get wrecked, and they call that "entertainment". How sad.

- LH

Subject: RE: BS: Brilliant U.S. Victory
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 18 Jul 03 - 06:59 PM

A bit rough on the horse. If they'd been real experts, they'd have got rid of Saddam and left the horse rearing in freedom.

Subject: RE: BS: Brilliant U.S. Victory
From: Little Hawk
Date: 18 Jul 03 - 07:02 PM

That would have required a very precise surgical strike... :-)

- LH

Subject: RE: BS: Brilliant U.S. Victory
From: artbrooks
Date: 18 Jul 03 - 07:02 PM

12 pounds of plastique? Sloppy.

Subject: RE: BS: Brilliant U.S. Victory
From: Leo Condie
Date: 18 Jul 03 - 07:02 PM

McGrath - I think they were waiting for a Ferrari sponsorship deal to come through before trying that.

Subject: RE: BS: Brilliant U.S. Victory
From: Gareth
Date: 18 Jul 03 - 07:10 PM

Leo - Tears ran down my legs - but I think that might have been too subtle.

Gareth

BTW the Ferrari symbol is a rearing 'Orse.

Subject: RE: BS: Brilliant U.S. Victory
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 18 Jul 03 - 07:19 PM

I'm sure the bloke who made the statue in the first place would have been able to remove Saddam with a hacksaw and a bit of lifting gear. And probably happy to do so.

I'm glad these guys weren't around at the Fall of the Roman Empire. Or let loose in the National Portrait Gallery - there are some vicious bastards on the walls in there you know...

Good manners would have been to leave it to the Iraqis to decide what to do with these things.

Subject: RE: BS: Brilliant U.S. Victory
From: Little Hawk
Date: 18 Jul 03 - 07:36 PM

Yeah. Andrew Jackson comes to mind when you mention the "vicious bastards". He killed Indians like some people exterminate cockroaches, and with much the same attitude, I'd say. I get chills every time I see his face on the paper money. To be fair, some of the Indians were equally vicious...no doubt about that.

- LH

Subject: RE: BS: Brilliant U.S. Victory
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 18 Jul 03 - 08:11 PM

I was thinking of our National Portrait Gallery in London - but the principle is the same.

Destroying statues because you don't like what they portray is the kind of thing the Taliban did.

Subject: RE: BS: Brilliant U.S. Victory
From: Rapparee
Date: 18 Jul 03 - 10:32 PM

12 pounds of C-4? Unless that horse had legs the diameter of a steam boiler, somebody didn't know how to calculate for blasting (or didn't care to do so).

Since the thing was probably hollow, a couple of pounds on each leg on one side, tamped with some sandbags, would probably have cut away enough to topple the statue. But then I wasn't there to do the calculations.

Maybe even several turns of PETN det cord would've done the trick.

Of course, if you have a LOT of explosives....

As for blowing up symbols, there's a rather famous section of film showing the demolition of the Nazi symbol on the top of the stadium in Nuremberg (I think it was there, anyway).

Subject: RE: BS: Brilliant U.S. Victory
From: Little Hawk
Date: 19 Jul 03 - 02:11 PM

Possibly. Or it could have been atop the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin. Seems to me that the Russians blew that one up and the film was shown in all the newsreels. The Nazis also destroyed various statues of Stalin during the invasion of Russia and showed it gleefully on their newsreels, and they forced the French to sign surrender terms in 1940 in the same railway car where Germany had signed such terms in 1918...and then carted the railway car off to Germany as "spoils of war". Childish minds do think alike, don't they?

It's the old "We win, you lose, nyah! nyah! nyah!" routine.

- LH

Subject: RE: BS: Brilliant U.S. Victory
From: Gareth
Date: 19 Jul 03 - 07:00 PM

Mmmm ! LH was not the VIctoria Cross, a decoration Canadians have been awarded made from the bronze of Russian Guns captured in the Crimea ?

Incidently, were not the battle trophies of the original inhabitants of the North American continent scalps ?

Gareth

Subject: RE: BS: Brilliant U.S. Victory
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 19 Jul 03 - 07:08 PM

I believe that scalping in North America was actually introduced by the colonists, as a way of checking that people claiming bounties on Indians they claimed to have killed weren't cheating. I think it had earlier been used for a similar purpose by the British in Ireland.

Subject: RE: BS: Brilliant U.S. Victory
From: Gareth
Date: 19 Jul 03 - 07:16 PM

Kevin - I think some reference may be required here.

But even if your story is true, and I might suspect "Sexing Up" to enhance your prejudices, the fact remains that scalping was a custom of the original inhabitants - can you justify this.

Gareth

Subject: RE: BS: Brilliant U.S. Victory
From: Little Hawk
Date: 19 Jul 03 - 07:25 PM

The scalping thing remains a bit mysterious as to just who introduced it first...and where and when...but it became extremely popular among the Indians in no time flat. The main difference was, they did it for prestige whereas the whites did it for money. This was something you could always count on with white people...they would do absolutely ANYTHING, no matter how insane, for money, and that hasn't changed to this day. Matter of fact, it's that very habit which is ruining the World.

Now even the Indians have caught the money sickness and are becoming notable for building casinos!

The thing is, Gareth, you're quite right...Canadians and Indians are guilty of much the same failings as other people, given the opportunity to indulge in them.

- LH

Subject: RE: BS: Brilliant U.S. Victory
From: Donuel
Date: 19 Jul 03 - 07:32 PM

http://www.angelfire.com/md2/customviolins/winds-of-war1.jpg

Subject: RE: BS: Brilliant U.S. Victory
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 19 Jul 03 - 07:49 PM

No prejudice involved, just passing on the story as I've heard it. Actually digging around a bit on the net, it sounds as if there's evidence that some scalping did occur even before the Europeans arrived on the scene.

Here's a quote from a site I found:

While Europeans did not originate scalping, they did encourage its spread through the establishment of bounties. J. C. B. writes that "the French and English were accustomed to pay for the scalps, to the amount of thirty francs' worth of trade goods. Their purpose was then to encourage the savages to take as many scalps as they could, and to know the number of the foe who had fallen."

The French paid virtually nothing for scalps, preferring to purchase prisoners that they would at times send back to their families or utilize for prisoner exchanges. Father Pierre Joseph Antonie Roubaud, missionary to the Abenaki at St. Francis, obtained a scalp from one of his warriors to redeem an infant from a Huron captor. The priest then reunited him with his parents.

The English, however, passed acts through their colonial assemblies. Even before war was declared, on June 12, 1755, Massachusetts Governor William Shirley offered £40 for Indian male scalps and £20 for female scalps. The following year, on April 14, Pennsylvania Governor Robert Hunter Morris "declared war and proclaimed a general bounty for Indian enemy prisoners and for scalps." The bounties to be paid were £130 for a male scalp and £50 for a female scalp.

J. C. B. also mentioned that "to increase the compensation received for scalps, they got the idea of making them of horsehide, which they prepared in the same way as human scalps. The discovery of this fraud was the reason they were more carefully inspected before a payment was made."

Subject: RE: BS: Brilliant U.S. Victory
From: NicoleC
Date: 19 Jul 03 - 09:03 PM

How does one tell a male scalp from a female scalp???

Subject: RE: BS: Brilliant U.S. Victory
From: Rapparee
Date: 19 Jul 03 - 09:21 PM

Granted that there were also religious implications, but the Celts didn't scalp, they took the whole head.

The folks in early Israel collected foreskins from the dead. So did other peoples in Asia Minor.

Ears were collected by some in Vietnam, and also in the Pacific -- and in the Pacific both US and British troops weren't adverse to collecting heads from the Japanese.

Since you went to the afterlife in the same condition that you left this one, Plains Indians would mutilate corpses. The Vietcong did not originate the practice of cutting off genitals and stuffing them in the mouth....

I leave other ugliness to your imagination, but will only say things like "Treblinka" "Buchenwald" and "Auschewitz" to make my point.

"Spoilings of war" are limited to one race, that's the human one.

Subject: RE: BS: Brilliant U.S. Victory
From: Dead Horse
Date: 19 Jul 03 - 09:25 PM

It parts on the other side, of course!

Subject: RE: BS: Brilliant U.S. Victory
From: Little Hawk
Date: 19 Jul 03 - 10:27 PM

Yes, I've always wondered how one proved a scalp was male, not female! Possibly by the hairstyle, depending on the tribe, I suppose, but that wouldn't always work.

There were many white scalphunters plying their lucrative trade in the Southwest and in Mexico in the 1800's. If they could not find Indians to kill they would just kill a bunch of Mexicans or anyone else with black hair and bring those scalps instead...cos money is money, right?

This is what I find most disgusting...that they killed not for honour, not for revenge, not on behalf of their people, not for any reason but a few more lousy dollars in their useless hands.

- LH

Subject: RE: BS: Brilliant U.S. Victory
From: LadyJean
Date: 19 Jul 03 - 10:44 PM

The tale is told of Jane McCrae, an American loyalist, affianced to a British officer, who was killed by Native Americans fighting for the British during the revolutionary war. Supposedly he recognized HER scalp, among a collection of trophies.
I always admired the Czechs. There was a tank in some Czech village set up as a monument to the Russian army. Shortly after the Russian Army packed up and left, the villagers started painting it pink. I believe the authorities finally moved the thing indoors.
Friends of mine, and I, risked life and limb to put silly clothes on a statue on The Monument, in Athens Ohio, when I was going to O.U. (No it wasn't the one at the top.) Try that with your favorite monument.

Subject: RE: BS: Brilliant U.S. Victory
From: Gareth
Date: 20 Jul 03 - 07:57 AM

Oh I don't know - interestingly one of the more effective means of keeping us Welsh down was instigated by King John.

No costly punative expeditions into the mountains, he would just put ta price on the head of any uppity welsh princelet. An sure enough, sooner rather than latter a bloodstained bag would be delivered - C O D.

Which prooves the point, that Gold weighs heavier than ties of kin.

Gareth

Subject: RE: BS: Brilliant U.S. Victory
From: kendall
Date: 20 Jul 03 - 08:03 AM

I'm not in favor of blowing it up, but I do think they should rename the FBI building. (J.Edgar Hoover)

Subject: RE: BS: Brilliant U.S. Victory
From: Rapparee
Date: 20 Jul 03 - 10:59 AM

Personally, I think that the largest office building in the world being named for Ronald Reagan is quite appropriate. He seems to have been the first to initiate a policy of "Borrow and Spend," leaving it to the future to pay the bills, and the US is going to need a lot of office space to write the checks when the payoff is due.

LH, the scalp hunting in the SW was intended to reduce the number of raids by the Apaches and others by reducing their population. Just like poisoning coyotes and other pesky varmints. And naturally they got paid for children's scalps as well as adults (although less, of course) because, as I'm sure you're aware, "nits breed lice." Now who was it that said that...an Englishman, I seem to remember....

Oh well, in the words of an eminent churchman, "Kill them all. God will know His own."

I saw a picture of the statue of Sadam Hussein on horseback -- ugly thing, that. But the horse was rearing on his back legs! A quarter pount of C4 at the front of each leg, a couple of sandbags each, and POWEE! the statue falls neatly forward, taking a header. Geez, those rearing horse statues are inherently unstable, all the weights to the rear -- blow the legs behind and Saddam falls on his butt. Either way, you point out he's no horseman....

I must be in a pretty pessimistic mood today.

Subject: RE: BS: Brilliant U.S. Victory
From: The Walrus
Date: 20 Jul 03 - 08:34 PM

Rapaire,

I think you'll find the "...its make lice..." (refering to American Indians) is actually attributed to Phil Sheriden (or one of his contemporaries), about the time of the Plains Indian Wars.

Walrus

Subject: RE: BS: Brilliant U.S. Victory
From: Teribus
Date: 21 Jul 03 - 03:38 AM

With regard to the statue, and LH's knowledge of WWII, I am surprised that he has not drawn the all too obvious parallel.

In the aftermath of WWII in both Italy and Germany, all highly visible symbols of the Nazi and Fascist regimes were removed as part of the rebuilding process.