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Persecution in Iraq

December 17, 2010

Chuck Colson

Chuck Colson

12/17/2010 – Chuck Colson -
Finally, a major news outlet reports on the persecution of Iraqi Christians. But I have to wonder if the Administration is reading the headlines.

On Monday the New York Times ran a lead paragraph to a story that’s as chilling as any I’ve read in recent memory. Here it is:

“A new wave of Iraqi Christians has fled to northern Iraq and abroad amid a campaign of violence against them and growing fear that the country’s security forces are unable or, more ominously, unwilling to protect them.”

There, in one paragraph, the Times sums up the grim situation facing Christians in Baghdad and throughout Iraq. They are subject to a campaign of violence—not some indiscriminate acts by a few Islamist radicals. They are being harassed and killed right under the very noses of the Iraqi security forces and the government, and it is not clear at all that the government wants to stop it. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Christian Persecution, Defense of Innocence, Iraq

Waving the White Flag

November 18, 2007

Human Events | Michael Reagan | Nov. 16, 2007

It has been said that there are none so blind as those who will not see. The quote is attributed by some to Jesus (Matthew 13:13): “Therefore I speak to them in parables: because they seeing see not; and hearing they hear not, neither do they understand”

That’s a perfect description of Rep. Nancy Pelosi and Sen. Harry Reid, both of whom disingenuously state that that there has been no sign of progress in Iraq and that we are losing the war there and must pull up stakes and run as fast as we can with our tails between our legs.

[Read more...]

Filed Under: Iraq, Politics

Christians, Muslims erect cross in Baghdad

November 8, 2007

Bagdad Cross

knoxnews | Michael Yon | Nov. 8, 2007

I photographed men and women, both Christians and Muslims, placing a cross atop the St. John’s Church in Baghdad. They had taken the cross from storage and a man washed it before carrying it up to the dome. A Muslim man had invited the American soldiers from ‘Chosen’ Company 2-12 Cavalry to the church, where I videotaped as Muslims and Christians worked and rejoiced at the reopening of St John’s, an occasion all viewed as a sign of hope.

[Read more...]

Filed Under: Iraq, Orthodox Christianity

Winning Iraq

November 5, 2007

FrontPageMagazine | Lt. Col. Gordon Cucullu | Nov. 5, 2007

If the old saw “no news is good news” has any truth to it, then things must be going very well indeed in the Iraq war. Increasingly obvious signs of success as a result of the “surge” under the able leadership of General David Petraeus have all but rendered the mainstream media speechless on the warfront. From the days of constant television showing video of black smoke billowing from burning car bombs in marketplaces, we have now reached a virtual blackout. When was the last time you saw a detailed listing of U.S. and Iraqi casualties in the top right column of the New York Times or Washington Post?

The media are not going to report good news, which leaves Americans with the impression that the war is going as poorly now as it was a year ago. Nothing could be further from the truth.

[Read more...]

Filed Under: Iraq

Baghdad Christians Find New Life in Kurdish North

June 27, 2007

New York Times | John Spanner | June 27, 2007

Some Iraqi Christians who fled the violence of Baghdad have returned to their ancestral homeland in the country’s north.

KARA-ULA, Iraq — The 70 houses of this tiny village spring from the treeless, arid plain here in the northern tip of Iraq with the uniformity of an army camp.

[Read more...]

Filed Under: Iraq, Religion (general)

Blood of Iraqi Martyrs

May 25, 2007

FrontPageMagazine.com | Kenneth R. Timmerman | May 25, 2007

There is another tragedy taking in place in Iraq on a daily basis, far from the front pages and the TV news. It does not involve the kidnapping of U.S. troops, nor even the fire-bombing of Muslim shrines by other Muslims, both of which by now are familiar to most Americans.

This is a tragedy taking place in a total media vacuum. Even our government has remained silent as it continues.

Perhaps it’s because the victims are Christians. Indeed, members of the most ancient Christian communities in the world.

Over the past three years, Iraqi Muslim extremists have targeted Christians in systematic attacks, aimed at driving them from their homes, their work places, and their churches.

Just last week, a group of armed Muslims set fire to St. George’s Assyrian Church in the Dora neighborhood of Baghdad, completely decimating what remained of a church already hit by a deadly fire-bombing in October 2004.

. . . more

Filed Under: Iraq

‘I Love Those Guys’

May 23, 2007

Wall Street Opinion Journal | Jeff Emanuel | May 23, 2007

Embedded journalists in Iraq are having their minds changed left and right by U.S. soldiers.

Operation Iraqi Freedom saw the advent of a practice that revolutionized modern war reporting: the embedding of journalists with frontline combat units in war. This practice gave the media, the American public and the world unprecedented access to the soldiers on the front lines, as well as to the war itself, through the filing of stories, photographs and video from the battlefront in real time, by reporters who were right there with the soldiers doing the fighting. “We were offered an irresistible opportunity: free transportation to the front line of the war, dramatic pictures, dramatic sounds, great quotes,” said Tom Gjelten of National Public Radio. “Who can pass that up?”

[Read more...]

Filed Under: Iraq, Media

No More Stains

March 30, 2007

Townhall.com Chuck Colson March 30, 2007

For Americans over, say, fifty, the image of desperate Vietnamese surrounding the American embassy during the fall of Saigon is one we will not soon forget. Watching American helicopters fly away leaving people, many of whom had helped us, to their fates in Vietnam made me feel ashamed—a sense of shame that only grew when we learned what happened to many of those people. These memories are why I find some recent stories coming out of Iraq troubling. As I have told “BreakPoint” listeners and readers, I believe that we should not leave Iraq until we have first established a measure of stability and restored order. To do otherwise would be bad for American security and even worse, of course, for the Iraqi people.

[Read more...]

Filed Under: Human rights, Iraq

Can Gen. Petraeus turn war in Iraq around?

March 15, 2007

Jewish World Review Victor Davis Hanson March 15, 2007

The verdict on four years of fighting in Iraq hinges on the events of the next few months.

[Read more...]

Filed Under: Iraq

Moral Culpability When Holocaust Follows Retreat

January 19, 2007

Hugh Hewitt interviews Christopher Hitchens.

Filed Under: Iraq

Hussein’s Voice Speaks in Court in Praise of Chemical Atrocities

January 10, 2007

New York Times John Burns January 9, 2007

The courtroom he dominated for 15 months seemed much smaller on Monday without him there to mock the judges and assert his menacing place in history.

But the thick, high-register voice of Saddam Hussein was unmistakable. In audio recordings made years ago and played 10 days after his hanging, Mr. Hussein was heard justifying the use of chemical weapons against the Iraqi Kurds in the late 1980s, predicting they would kill “thousands” and saying he alone among Iraq’s leaders had the authority to order chemical attacks.

In the history of prosecutions against some of the last century’s grimmest men, there can rarely have been a moment that so starkly caught a despot’s unpitying nature.

On one recording, Mr. Hussein presses the merits of chemical weapons on Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, his vice-president, and now, the Americans believe, the fugitive leader of the Sunni insurgency that has tied down thousands of American troops. Mr. Douri, a notorious hard-liner, asks whether chemical attacks will be effective against civilian populations, and suggests that they might stir an international outcry.

“Yes, they’re very effective if people don’t wear masks,” Mr. Hussein replies.

“You mean they will kill thousands?” Mr. Douri asks.

“Yes, they will kill thousands,” Mr. Hussein says.
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Filed Under: Human rights, Iraq

Moral Purification

November 14, 2006

Wall Street Opinion Journal Josh Manchester November 14, 2006

Why intellectuals love defeat.

James Carroll, recently writing in the Boston Globe, wondered if America could finally accept defeat in Iraq, and be the better for it, comparing it to Vietnam:

[Read more...]

Filed Under: Iraq

Saddam’s Nuclear Script

November 4, 2006

Ed. Although not mentioned in the article, it’s nice to see the NYT concerned with national security for a change.

Wall Street Journal November 4, 2006

The troubles in Iraq have caused many Americans to conclude we should never have toppled Saddam Hussein. So it’s worth noting a new report that reminds us that if Saddam were still in power he’d almost certainly be in a race with his arch-enemy Iran to obtain a nuclear bomb. The alternative to regime change was not the continuation of a sanctions regime that was crumbling, thanks in part to Saddam Hussein’s manipulation of the U.N. Oil for Food program.

[Read more...]

Filed Under: Iraq

A Military Solution for Iraq

November 2, 2006

Front Page Magazine Ralph Peters November 2, 2006

We went to Iraq to overthrow a police state. Through a combination of stubbornness, naivete and noble intentions, we’ve replaced it with another police state – more violent, more corrupt and less accountable.

[Read more...]

Filed Under: Iraq

‘My Country Needs Me’

November 2, 2006

Wall Street Opinion Journal Heather Robinson November 1, 2006

Iraqi democrats haven’t given up the fight. How can we?

With the midterm elections fast approaching, the panic over Iraq seems more intense than ever. That country, the thinking goes, is a hopeless mess, and there could be a precipitous American withdrawal, especially if the Democrats win.

[Read more...]

Filed Under: Iraq
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