There were two interesting articles in the Daily Universe (BYU Newspaper) today about refugee Iraqis living in Salt Lake. I’m not sure when the articles will be available online, but I will summarize.

The three Iraqis love their homeland and miss their families; they want to go home. However, they know they can’t return until Saddam Hussein is gone.

They say Saddam’s government taught them to hate Americans. Now that they have lived here since the gulf war, however, their opinions have changed.

Although they don’t like war, especially in their own country, they know war must happen and people must die to remove Saddam. Their hopes of returning home lie in US military action.

I had the opportunity of going to an interesting lecture this afternoon. The speaker was Tom Farer, Dean of the Graduate School of International Studies at the University of Denver. He is a prominent expert on international law, international organization, and conflict resolution. As far as I could tell from the context of his lecture, he’s a democrat.

I thought his presentation was well put together. He gave a lot of good support for why the Bush administration is doing what they are doing. However, he seemed awfully non-committal. He did not give any good evidence as to why the U.S. shouldn’t go to war, which led me to believe he is not at all against war in Iraq, but I can’t even remember the number of times he said, “I don’t know”, “I could be completely wrong”, or “I’m not sure”. He admitted several times that he hadn’t yet made up his mind about the issue, which caused me to wonder why he would get up in front of that many people and lead a discussion.

Nevertheless, I learned a great deal about what could happen after the war. He presented a few different scenarios, citing the outcomes of previous conflicts to back up each possibility. He seems to think the outcome of this war will decide whether the U.N. remains in power. He claims that the U.N. charter is reaching the end of its usefulness and that some things will need to change in global organization if we are to last through the next century.

All in all it was a very interesting lecture. He made a good case for why war in Iraq is justified, but again seemed very reluctant to say that war is necessary. I agreed with a few of his points, but found myself disagreeing with him more than agreeing.

This lecture was part of a series of lectures surrounding the Iraqi-American Conflict. I would really like to go to the rest of the lectures, and would invite all who are interested to come with me. The full lecture schedule can be found on the University website. 

Janene’s Granny went into the hospital a few days ago, and I feel bad that I’ve neglected to say anything about it on the site. She was having kidney problems, and, given that she only has one kidney, everyone was very worried.

She’s doing much better now, and has been moved out of the hospital to a smaller medical facility where she can rebuild her strength before they release her.

I would just like to ask all of you to pray that Granny can have a swift recovery and be back on her feet soon. I’m sure she would be thankful for all of your support. 

Have you all heard of this new site the Department of Homeland Security has set up? I haven’t had a chance to look through the whole site, but apparently there are instructions for setting up a terrorism survival kit, directions for disaster-proofing your home, and an outline for a family plan in the event of a terrorist attack near your home.

The site is located at Ready.gov.

I found it somewhat interesting, and I definately feel it is worth a second look. However, from what I understand the government is getting a lot of flack over it. Certain people seem to think that a website of this nature only serves to scare the general public and put our nation on edge. I tend to believe it is better to be prepared, and I applaud the government for trying to help americans to understand the importance of being ready. 

Well… this is no fun. I can’t find a job that I can work my school schedule into. I am taking a few too many credits this semester, but i really want to graduate soon, so I don’t know what I should do. Even though I don’t know what I should do, I know what we are going to do. Back to the parents house. We will move back in by the 21st of March. i will let you all know more of what’s actually going on as soon as i know more.

I just needed to vent a little