BOISE, Idaho -- A Kansas preacher and gay rights foe whose
congregation is protesting military funerals around the country said
he's coming to Idaho tomorrow to picket the memorial for an Idaho
National Guard soldier killed in Iraq.
A flier on the Web site of Pastor Fred Phelps' Westboro Baptist
Church claims God killed Cpl. Carrie French with an improvised
explosive device in retaliation against the United States for a bombing
at Phelps' church six years ago.
"We're coming," Phelps said yesterday.
Westboro Baptist either has protested or is planning protests of
other public funerals of soldiers from Michigan, Alabama, Minnesota,
Virginia and Colorado. A protest is planned for July 11 at Dover Air
Force Base, the military base where war dead are transported before
being sent on to their home states.
Phelps gained national notoriety in 1998 when he picketed the
funeral of Matthew Shepard, the gay college student beaten to death in
Wyoming.
Since then, Phelps said his church has been the target of hateful words and actions, including a bomb attack six years ago.
Phelps' church has picketed the funerals of AIDS victims for more than a decade.
French, 19, was a Caldwell High School graduate and varsity
cheerleader. She was killed June 5 in the northern city of Kirkuk.
French served as an ammunition specialist with the 116th Brigade Combat
Team's 145th Support Battalion.
Phelps said the fact that French led an all-American life gives him all the more reason to picket her final public tribute.
"An all-American girl from a society of all-American heretics," he said.
"Our attitude toward what's happening with the war is the Lord is
punishing this evil nation for abandoning all moral imperatives that
are worth a dime," Phelps said.
Caldwell Police Chief Bob Sobba said he cannot bar Phelps from going
to the public funeral, which is scheduled for 1 p.m. at the Albertson
College of Idaho in that city.
"While we respect Mr. Phelps' right to protest, we would hope that
he would respect the family and friends of this young person by not
disrupting the memorial," Sobba said.
Idaho Air National Guard Lt. Tony Vincelli, acting as spokesman for
French's family, said there were no plans to change the funeral
arrangements.
The Rev. Brian Fischer, pastor of Boise's Community Church of the
Valley, and himself a past target of protest by the Westboro Baptist
Church, decried Phelps' plan.
"What Phelps is doing is a reprehensible thing, to take a funeral and turn it into a photo op for his hate cause," Fischer said.
"We hope everyone will ignore Phelps' group."
In 2003, Phelps demanded that he be allowed to erect an anti-gay
monument in a Boise public park. To avoid a lawsuit from his group,
city officials voted in 2004 that a Ten Commandments monument be moved
out of the park.
Ugh...These are the assholes at godhatesfags.com. What kind of sick
bastard even becomes involved with this "ministry"? What a perversion.
What a mess. How disgusting. It makes me sick.
That deafening silence is Bill O'Reilly, Rush Limbaugh and Dick Cheney
not attacking Pastor Phelps for a failure to "support our troops".
Possible Undeclared Motives for the Invasion of Iraq
The general idea was that sanctions would not work in the long term.
Saddam could play a cat-and-mouse game with the USA indefinitely. Given
his past record, he would be likely to acquire a stockpile of WMD,
particularly nuclear weapons that could threaten other countries in the
region as well as the USA.
Fair enough. This is certainly a reasonable argument. But there is a
problem with this hypothesis: if this was indeed the motive " a long
term threat" then what was the hurry? Saddam was in no position in
March 2003 to threaten any regional country or the United States. Could
the administration have given itself a little bit more time to plan the
campaign?
There is almost universal agreement now that the post-invasion phase
was poorly planned. The reason most people accept for that poor
planning was that haste! But why was there so much haste? Lack of
proper preparation, lack of proper planning, disasters that led to the
loss of countless lives, Iraqi and America; chaos, lawlessness, poor
decisions that led to America being viewed as an enemy by ordinary
people.
What would have happened if the invasion was delayed for some six
months, or even a year to prepare better?Wouldn't this have led to
some life saving? If all those criminal mistakes were not made,
couldn't that have possibly led to the success in this campaign instead
of resulting in a humiliating failure?
Even the plans put forward by the numerous committees set up by the
State Department were hurriedly and unceremoniously discarded! Why?
This theory does not explain the great urgency with which the
campaign was conducted or the great incompetence in its implementation.
If long term dangers were the main motive, then surely the long term
effects of chaos in Iraq and the already-volatile region would also be
equally threatening to the USA and to world peace and would have
warranted some consideration?
1. The timing was dictated by "short-term" domestic US political
considerations, for re-election purposes, which did not leave
sufficient time to plan for the campaign properly, and to exploit
public sentiment that allowed that "thin" evidence to be sufficient
justification for the war;
2. A level of (political and administrative) incompetence that no amount of planning could improve.
The implications, in either case, for the integrity of the
administration or its capability to run the affairs of America, are
self evidently disastrous!
In summary, there may have been a case for Saddam being regarded as
a long-term threat to the USA for that factor to be considered a motive
for the invasion. But if that is accepted, then the conclusions of
either criminal incompetence or recklessness and lack of sufficient
consideration for loss of American (or other) lives or for creating
more long-term grave dangers on the part of the administration must be
accepted by advocates of this theory.
