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Since 1999 Haliburton's campaign donations have been to both parties but the Republican party has gotten 95 percent of the money. So it's a bit misleading to say they give to both parties.
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I fail to see how if Haliburton gave contributions to both parties, that it's "deceitful" to say that Haliburton gave money to the Democrats as well. It's a pure and simple fact that they gave money to both parties.
And even 5% (assuming that ratio you disclose is correct, I've seen no such breakdown disclosed) is no doubt a sum in the thousands. And not a sum so small that it couldn't also influence contracts.
And also, it's wrong to assume corruption, while ignoring that there are SEVERAL independent auditors monitoring the contracts.
It's a bit slanderous to assume corruption, just because Bush and Cheney have friends and former ties to the contractors, without evidence to back it up.
It's valid to investigate, but Democrats constantly describe corruption in awarding contracts, without evidence that this has actually occurred. Which is slanderous.
Finally, Lewis (as I quoted in my above previous post) describes that the Defense department is slow in disclosing documentation of contractor expenditures.
But I find this overstated, since we've only been in Iraq for 6 months. It takes a year or more just to build a family home in the U.S., I can only imagine the scale of reconstruction in Iraq, and on a reconstruction project this massive, I can easily see that taking awhile just to estimate and begin.
I wonder what a reasonable timeframe is to disclose documentation of estimates for Iraq reconstruction, or for the actual work when completed, which is quite obviously just beginning.
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I think it's misleading because the amount is so skewed towards the Republicans. Technically your right but the 95-5 percent gives some perspective to the "Haliburton donated to both parties" statement. Here's one place I got the figure with more details http://www.corporatewatch.org/profiles/haliburton/haliburton3.htmI remember seeing that figure elsewhere but google searched & found it here. Whomod may have even posted it earlier. Maybe there is a good explanation for dumping the penalties dealing with corrupt contracts. Nobody from the GOP is giving one though as far as I'm aware. So that leaves us with something that doesn't look right & should be investigated. I wouldn't hold my breath waiting though ![[...rassamnfrackin...]](graemlins/grumble01.gif)
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Okay, first of all, that site you list is a partisan one. Within the pseudo-objective summary they list of Halliburton and its connections to Washington leaders, the linked report editorializes quite a bit, and it's clear they begin with an assumption of guilt by Haliburton and its executives, without demonstrating facts to back it up. They IMPLY quite a bit, but don't come out and say that there is a direct connection, or give evidence of a connection. And they also --rather unprofessionally-- slip in quite a few digs and snide remarks. Some examples: quote:
Links with government
It is Halliburton's unashamed ties to the US Administration and key think-tanks such as Project for a New American Century that has guaranteed it a smooth flow of large contracts. Current US vice president, Dick Cheney, was Hallibuton's Chief Executive until 2000. He joined the company in 1995 after it was awarded the job of studying and then implementing the privatisation of routine army functions under the then secretary of defence... Dick Cheney. Unsurprisingly, Cheney is still being paid by Halliburton. When he left in 2000, he opted not to have his leaving payment in a lump sum, but instead to have it paid to him over five years, possibly for tax reasons. The obligatory disclosure statement filled by all top government officials says only that these yearly payments are in a range between $100,000 and $1 million. Nor is it clear how they are calculated.62
Several of the current directors of Halliburton have previously worked for the US government. For example, in October 2001, Ray L. Hunt was appointed by President George Bush to the President's Foreign Intelligence Board, whilst Lawrence S. Eagleburger has held a variety of positions.
"Unashamed ties". Gee, how objective and impartial.
All that can be said about Cheney is that he worked for in several high level government positions, and also worked for Halliburton, and had a five-year severance payout that is not disclosed publicly.
It is implied that Cheney (and others, later in the piece) rigged the contracts and received kickbacks. But this IMPLIED corruption is never proven.
The fact that Cheney and these men worked in several high-level policy groups and intellectual think-tanks simply proves that they are bright individuals who are very competent in world affairs and their chosen field.
Is it so unthinkable that Halliburton was one of several contractors, and was found to be the most competent contractor among them to do the job? Perhaps instead people should be chosen who have NO experience, and no knowledge of international business.
quote:
National Petroleum Council (NPC)
Halliburton's CEO David J. Lesar is currently a member of the NPC, whilst director Ray L. Hunt has served as chairman. Although the NPC is not allowed to lobby or act as a trade group, it operates in an advisory role to the US Energy Department.
The council's 1999 natural gas report concluded that regulation was becoming a barrier to meeting rising demand. Partially overseen by then chief executive of Halliburton, Dick Cheney, the report became a frequently cited source book for policy debate in the days leading up to House passage of new energy legislation which opened up some of the US's last unspoiled mountains, canyons and badlands.
Again, implied corruption, without proof. Perhaps as competent businessmen and world leaders, these executives simply convinced Cheney that that their policy was sound and logical and good for the country. And convinced, Cheney passed on the recommendations they suggested in their report.
Clearly, the last sentence of the above quote smacks of partisanship and whining environmentalism, and editorializes quite a bit.
I guess every member of the House who passed the bill is corrupt as well.
quote:
USA ENGAGE
Similarly, Cheney has opposed sanctions against almost all the countries that Halliburton does business in, including Iran, Libya and Azerbaijan. The one exception is Iraq, at least that is what he would have us believe (see Corporate Crimes). Now that Dick Cheney is back in government, his position on sanctions is likely to become more influential. Secretary of State Colin Powell has already echoed the sentiment of Cheney and USA*Engage, saying he wanted to reduce the use of sanctions as a foreign policy tool. This would leave Cheney’s ex-colleagues back at Halliburton freer than ever to pursue profits where environmental and human rights norms are disregarded.
This quote implies that all Cheney's decisions against sanctions are motivated out of greed, to fill Halliburton's coffers with lucrative contracts.
It also implies that Powell as well is corrupt. (If there is one person in Bush's administration I trust above all others to do what is right and best for the country, it's Powell, and I find this groundless accusation deeply annoying)
Perhaps their decision to not use sanctions is based on the fact that (far from underhanded motives of corporate greed) sanctions over the last 15 years against various countries HAS NEVER WORKED !
But like the rest of this piece, it editorializes toward trashing Cheney and anyone close to him, with a very narrow reading, toward a pre-dominant conclusion. And presents these wild conjectures as if they were facts.
They are not.
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Well I disagree with your conclusion. You might not care for the way the dots (facts) seem to connect but that doesn't make the dots untrue. Cheney was CEO of Halliburton, he opossed sanctions in certain countries etc etc. I do agree it doesn't prove anything conclusive but it does show some very close ties between Halliburton & the government.
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________________________________________
THE PRICE OF BEING WRONG
by Mona Charen
October 31, 2003
The Left's criticism of President Bush's decision to go to war in Iraq makes no sense historically, strategically or morally.
Democrats like John Kerry insist that the president has done everything wrong since Congress voted to authorize war (Kerry's vote in the affirmative has dogged his campaign for the nomination of a dovish party). All of the Democratic candidates insist that Bush should not have taken the nation to war without the full participation of the United Nations.
What they never address is this: President Bush sought the support and participation of the United Nations, returning again and again to that body virtually begging it to uphold its own resolutions. France, Germany and sometimes Russia -- nations that were only too happy to trade with Saddam Hussein's Iraq -- declined to agree. Without France's OK, the U.N. Security Council could not pass a final resolution endorsing the use of force. If Kerry or Dean or Sharpton had been president at the time, would they have permitted France to dictate U.S. foreign policy?
The answer may be yes, if the Clinton administration is any guide. As Rich Lowry reminds us in "Legacy," the Clinton administration sought European support for a strong stand against Serbia in 1993. The Europeans balked. Clinton backed down. The resulting massacres took the lives of tens of thousands.
Have the enthusiasts for United Nations action noticed that the U.N. has pulled out of Baghdad at the first sign of trouble?
Democrats further argue that our failure to find weapons of mass destruction proves that the war was illegitimate. In fact, not satisfied to say that Bush erred, they insist -- against logic -- that Bush purposely deceived the world about the presence of the WMDs so as to drag us into an unnecessary war.
Have they thought this through? In the first place, Bush was hardly alone in believing Iraq possessed WMDs. All of the Democratic candidates thought so, too. As did the U.N., the British, the French (yes, the French should know, they built Saddam's first reactor back in 1981), the Russians and even Scott Ritter. He certainly possessed them in the past, and used them on the Kurds and the Iranians. And why would Bush lie about something that would so rapidly be revealed?
But there is another question, as well. Suppose it turns out that Bush acted on the basis of bad intelligence. We can judge a decisionmaker only on the basis of what was known at the time. A good president will weigh the consequences of being wrong in both directions. If we did not act, and Saddam was on the verge of getting nuclear weapons that he in turn shared with terrorists, hundreds of thousands might have died. If we did act, and it turned out that Saddam was less threatening to other nations than suspected, then what?
We're seeing what. A vicious dictator who supported terrorism in the region and tortured and starved his own people on a truly gruesome scale has been deposed. Did massive numbers of innocent Iraqis die? No. In fact, as Walter Russell Mead has pointed out, continuing the sanctions for one more year would have killed more Iraqi civilians than the war did.
According to UNICEF, Saddam's response to sanctions was to permit 5,000 Iraqi children under the age of five to die each month (60,000 per year) so that he could purchase military equipment and palaces. The number of Iraqi civilian deaths in the recent conflict was estimated at 3,240 by The Associated Press.
Further, it could well be argued that we have done the Iraqi people a huge service. We have liberated them and are now showering them with new schools, hospitals, electrical grids and fresh drinking water. There are plenty of countries around the world that would welcome a U.S. invasion.
It's true that we have reasons beyond humanitarianism for doing this. But it remains a mystery that the Democrats cannot see the advantages to us. We are creating in Iraq an open, market-oriented, pro-Western (we hope) country in the heart of darkness that is the modern Middle East. This is a giant step toward draining the swamp that generates homicidal jihadis. It demonstrates strategic thinking on Bush's part.
But the Democrats prefer endless talk, passivity and truckling to "our allies."
________________________________
I agree so strongly with this editorial that I could have written this column myself (and pretty much have made many of the same points, repeatedly, on these boards.)
It addresses the emotionally charged false accusations of Democrats, and their revisionism that bypasses reality.
We went to war in Iraq without the U.N. because France, Germany and Russia were NEVER going to come aboard, no matter how long Bush waited. And that these three nations were violating sanctions on Iraq all along, which is why 12 years of sanctions didn't work in the first place.
- from Do Racists have lower IQ's...
Liberals who bemoan discrimination, intolerance, restraint of Constitutional freedoms, and promotion of hatred toward various abberant minorities, have absolutely no problem with discriminating against, being intolerant of, restricting Constitutional freedoms of, and directing hate-filled scapegoat rhetoric against conservatives.
EXACTLY what they accuse Republicans/conservatives of doing, is EXACTLY what liberals/Democrats do themselves, to those who oppose their beliefs.
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You oversimplify things by refering to the "left vs. the right." Objecting to war isn't native to either side of the political spectrum, you van't lump all these people together as "the left."
If there was a liberal, or Democratic, monopoly over the media, Al Gore would be in office. That's how powerful propaganda can be. I don't doubt there's a liberal tilt in some sectors of the media, but there's no monopoly. It's gotten to the point where some people think if something's going wrong with the war, economy, or foreign policy, the liberals must be burrying the great news. Call me naive, but I don't think Dan Rather, Barbarra Streisand, Michael Moore, ABC, NBC, CBS, and CNN are working together to hurt the reputation of our president
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Well the editorial Dave posted was a bit too partisan in the opposite direction (anything that mentions "left" and liberals raises my antenna). I actually read a pretty even one in todays Sunday Times that praised efforts and declared that people are indeed better off while acknowledging that perils remain. quote:
November 9, 2003
IRAQ
Place the Fate of Iraq Above U.S. Politics
The truth is a mixed bag: Most people are better off, but crime and chaos have risen
BAGHDAD — The last time I was here, during the final years of Saddam Hussein's nearly 25-year-long reign, no one was happy and everyone was scared.
In the hospitals, babies died of malnutrition, and a perpetual shortage of antibiotics meant many deaths that could have been prevented. International sanctions had devastated the economy — jobs were disappearing, infant mortality was rising, ragged street children were everywhere. I met former doctors and lawyers hawking cigarettes on corners or driving cabs. Auction houses sold the furniture of middle-class families that had declined into poverty.
On the streets of Baghdad, I was dogged by a government "minder," and people ducked into doorways rather than talk to me. Innocent questions provoked looks of terror but little information. Criticizing the president was punishable by death. Hussein's secret police and army were dreaded. And for good reason.
In northern Iraq on a previous trip, I had visited a village where 33 men and boys, virtually all the males in the village, had been lined up, shot and killed by Hussein's soldiers as part of the genocidal Anfal campaign against the Kurds. I spoke with one of a handful of survivors, who had been shot but was able to hide behind a tree as his brother and nephew bled to death nearby.
Last week, I arrived back in Iraq for the first time in six years, and the transformation was extraordinary. On the streets of Baghdad and Al-Hilla, people were eager to speak, often gathering in small groups to hear my questions and offer answers. A furniture salesman told me that now, people were buying back furniture rather than selling it. Political parties — banned during my last visit — have offices visible throughout the city. It is now easy to set up interviews, and many of those I've interviewed have been harsh in their recollections of Hussein, whom they described as a tyrant and a criminal.
Iraq is a difficult country to understand, a difficult place for a foreigner to come to know, particularly if one's visits are short and one's Arabic limited. On my earlier visit, I was also hampered by the powerful government propaganda machine. My taciturn minder, an employee of Hussein's government, served as my translator, tour guide and shadow, reporting to his superiors on my movements and my questions. Virtually everything I saw that was interesting or real I saw by sneaking away from him.
My most recent trip was a propaganda mission as well, but this time led by the new rulers of Iraq, the United States government. I was invited by the office of the secretary of Defense as part of a government effort to get its side of the story out. President Bush and his advisors say the truth in Iraq is being distorted by a liberal media "filtering" out all the good stories in order to present only the bad. They've decided to go over the heads of the reporters in Baghdad and talk directly to more sympathetic journalists and opinion makers in the U.S.
The original invitation I received went, overwhelmingly, to people perceived as friendly to the administration's position. Among the 20 or so people invited for a three-day visit to Baghdad, Kirkuk and Mosul (to be paid for by the invitees or their employers) were conservative columnists George Will, Fred Barnes and William Safire, as well as several generals and representatives of Fox News, the Wall Street Journal, Americans for Tax Reform and the American Conservative Union. Among the dozen or so who ultimately attended were an editorial writer for the Wall Street Journal, a speechwriter for Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, and a former press secretary for Nancy Reagan and the first President Bush (whose résumé said, mysteriously, that she had also done "international crisis work" for Crayola Co.). Only a handful of Democrats were on the trip.
The administration's message was pounded into us relentlessly: The war has been a success, and any postwar obstacles were no more than speed bumps. Do not allow the news accounts of suicide bombings, mortar attacks, insurgents and downed helicopters to distract you from the main story: the freedom of an oppressed people and the rebirth of their country as a modern democracy. On our first day, we met L. Paul Bremer III, who directs the American occupation of Iraq from one of Hussein's old palaces. He held out his hand, smiled and said, "Welcome to free Iraq."
In free Iraq, Bremer explained, U.S. troops were working overtime to rebuild the country from the ground up. The U.S. accomplishments cited by Bremer were impressive: 1,260 schools renovated and reopened in time for the beginning of the term in October, 90% of the health clinics reopened, 12,000 tons of pharmaceuticals brought into the country, $300 million worth of jobs created. Oil production is up to a rate of 1.9 billion barrels per year.
Yes, there's an insurgency, and yes, every death must be mourned, we were told, but America's mission is not being threatened. Resistance to U.S. occupation is restricted to a small group of malcontents in the narrow Sunni Triangle formed by Baghdad, Tikrit and Ramadi. "It's like Richard Wagner's music," said Brig. Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, who commands the 30,000 soldiers of the 1st Armored Division in Baghdad. "It isn't as bad as it sounds."
Above all, we were told, the defeatist television images beamed into American living rooms must not force America to back down, as it did in Vietnam and Somalia. "Saddam had his guys read 'Black Hawk Down,' " said Col. Steve Hicks. "They believe that if they hit us hard enough, we'll leave."
At the end of a couple of days on the tour — and after several days on my own in Baghdad and Tikrit — I was persuaded that the administration's case has a good deal of merit. There's no question that people in Baghdad are freer. There's no denying that most people are happy to see the end of a terrifying, violent, criminal dictatorship. And it is probably true that the deaths of a couple of hundred soldiers out of a fighting force of 139,000 coalition troops is not enough to cripple our effort.
But the administration's view lacks nuance. To dismiss the insecurity in Iraq today as "tactically insignificant," as one official did, is to miss the point. On the streets, disorder, lawlessness and insurrection claim lives daily — and many more Iraqis die than Americans. Coalition forces operate from heavily fortified palaces and bases that make much of Baghdad off limits. Checkpoints and barriers abound, and armored vehicles patrol by night.
Altercations between soldiers and Iraqis are a daily occurrence, and relations are fraying. "They raid our homes in a barbaric, animalistic way, blasting down the doors with explosives and kicking in the gates," said Mohammed Hashem, a 35-year-old Sunni Muslim who works at a mosque in the Baghdad neighborhood of Adamiya. "Now, the American soldiers are hated by all parts of the community." Iraqis are frustrated at the pace of reconstruction, and few trust U.S. intentions. I found no one with anything kind to say about the U.S.-installed Governing Council, which is seen as a puppet organization.
Perhaps even more disturbing to Iraqis are the general lawlessness and chaos that have been epidemic since the end of the war. Although some data suggest it is beginning to decline, a postwar crime wave has left Iraqis disappointed and angry at the Americans who are supposed to be in charge. Carjackings, kidnappings, murder and robbery are common in the city. Electricity shortages continue. Much garbage that lined the streets after the war has been removed, finally, but much remains. "Any government would be better than this," said Khaled el-Adani, a 46-year-old Baghdad shop owner. "Now, we're living in a vacuum."
One of the worrisome things about the U.S. government's efforts to oversell its case is that in the months ahead, the public relations battle will become more and more intertwined with the upcoming presidential election. If the insurgency continues, if Iraq is not made measurably better and happier and freer and safer and more self-sufficient as the election draws closer, there will be growing pressure on the Bush administration to make decisions about Iraq's future based on political considerations.
Presidential politics are already palpable here. In the village of Al-Hilla, a young political appointee who worked on the last Bush campaign is spokeswoman for the Coalition Provisional Authority. In Baghdad, presidential politics are a common subject of discussion at the authority's offices. In a meeting in Al-Hilla, a Shiite Muslim cleric, Farqad al-Qizawini, who has worked closely with the Americans, ended his presentation to those of us on the government tour by saying: "I am asking you all for one more thing, and this is very important — to reelect President George Bush."
The administration has the right to make sure that Americans understand before next November why the president initiated this war and why he thinks he was right to do so. But decisions about the war itself should rise above politics. Calculations about whether to stay or leave, about troop deployment, about when Iraq is ready to govern itself, are decisions that must not be made based on how they would affect the U.S. election.
Whether or not one supported the U.S. decision to go to war, there is no question that Iraq now has the opportunity to become a much better place than it was. Even the minder who watched me for the government during my last trip has a new life: He is a translator for the Times bureau, no longer beholden to his government, no longer withholding the news and no longer quite so taciturn.
http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/suncommentary/la-op-goldberg9nov09,1,1395133.story?coll=la-headlines-suncomment
But in the end, it's not going to be about who's right, the Democrats or Republicans, the liberals or the conservatives. What happens in Iraq is going to be decided by the Iraqi's. And whether they want to view the U.S. presence there as either "liberators" or as an "occupational force", anything propaganda-wise said by AM Radio/FOX News or "the liberal media" really doesn't matter. It's going to be up to them to decide if our intenions are just or if we're just there to loot and pillage their treasures. After all, it is their country and not our war booty.
Something to think about.
As for Halliburton. Call me idealistic but It's my beleif that government service shouldn't be performed to help further enrich you in the private sector.
And that one link that Matter Eater man provided was pretty eye opening even for me. The only groups not associated with Halliburton appears to be The Bildebergs and the bloody Freemasons! The rest were a veritable who's who in the annals of the NWO literature.
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That last article you posted is among the most balanced I've seen you post here Whomod, I pretty much agree with all of it, and your commentary after as well. The war in Iraq clearly has great benefits as well as setbacks, and it's refreshing to see a balanced view of this.
I assume NWO stands for "New World Order".
Again, regarding the Halliburton/Iraqi reconstruction contracts, I think I made it pretty clear that I'm not blind to the fact that Halliburton and other corporations have made tremendous lobby and campaign donations to both parties, which is clearly intended to influence government regulation and federal contracts.
The need for campaign finance reform is one of the main reasons I supported McCain over Bush as a candidate for president.
But at the same time, I do think the Democrat/anti-Bush attacks are way overstated. It's one thing to say that: There is enormous money going to the Republicans from Halliburton, and many key people from Halliburton are working in high levels of the Bush administration, and while there's no proof yet of corruption, that definitely warrants investigation, to insure there is no corruption.
THAT is a statement I agree with 100% !
But it's quite another thing for Democrats to say: Cheney and Bush are making millions and giving huge contracts to their buddies at Halliburton, getting rich at the expense of U.S. taxpayers.
THAT statement is inflammatory, slanderous and unproven.
~
Regarding the Mona Charen editorial I posted at the top of this page, what was quicky dismissed by you guys (JQ and Whomod) as partisan, is simply equal time and a pointed deconstruction of the absurd conspiracy theories made here against Bush for initiating the war in Iraq.
Especially since up until March 2003 (as I posted earlier) many of these same Democrats in Washington, who now allege that the evidence was "fabricated", not only voted to go to war, but said over and over that Saddam Hussein by all indications and intelligence did have WMD's and pose an imminent threat.
And only began to question the threat of Saddam having WMD's when it became politically expedient. (John Edwards, Hilary Clinton, John Kerry, Bob Graham, Diane Feinstein, etc. )
Hindsight opened the door for anti-Bush revisionism. But the best available knowledge AT THE TIME (Sept 2002-March 2003, and prior) had virtually all the Democrats supporting invasion of Iraq.
If it is "partisan" to point out the hypocrisy and unfounded allegations of Bush's attackers (who happen to be Democrats), then so be it.
And while I've already said above that it's not "all the Democrats" who vitriolically oppose the President on Iraq invasion (as I said, Joseph Lieberman, for one, largely supports the President, and how a majority of Democrats feel about this can be seen in how most Democrats instead support Dean, Kerry, Clark and Edwards, who relentlessly attack the President's credibility regarding invasion of Iraq) anti-Bush vitriol is the way of an overwhelming majority of Democrats.
Most Democrats, I think, want to believe Bush is wrong. And hyperbolically attack the President with facts not in evidence, and make allegations contrary to the obvious
(such as "waiting for the U.N. to join the coalition", which was never realistic. France publicly said to the world it would oppose ANY resolution to invade Iraq, and though less strongly stated, Germany and France were also adamant. And ALL were violating U.N. trade sanctions with Iraq and doing business with Iraq, which was allowing Saddam's government to go on indefinitely.)
For Democrats to come back again and again and allege that we "should have waited for the U.N." is a clear falsehood, in contradiction of these facts.
And it is "partisan" to respond to that point here, alleged over and over here by liberal Democrats? That's a dismissive way to bypass the truth.
- from Do Racists have lower IQ's...
Liberals who bemoan discrimination, intolerance, restraint of Constitutional freedoms, and promotion of hatred toward various abberant minorities, have absolutely no problem with discriminating against, being intolerant of, restricting Constitutional freedoms of, and directing hate-filled scapegoat rhetoric against conservatives.
EXACTLY what they accuse Republicans/conservatives of doing, is EXACTLY what liberals/Democrats do themselves, to those who oppose their beliefs.
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James Woolsey stated on 02 April 2003 at a speech at UCLA that the war on Iraq is the opening of a much-to-be-desired "Fourth World War" and that the governments of Iran and Syria are "America's enemies" in this war. Woolsey stated that "We are fighting "World War IV, a war that will last longer than World Wars I or II. As we move toward a new Middle East," Woolsey said, "we will make a lot of people very nervous." Including James Madison, who wrote: quote:
"Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes. And armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few. In war, too, the discretionary power of the Executive is extended. Its influence in dealing out offices, honors, and emoluments is multiplied; and all the means of seducing the minds, are added to those of subduing the force of the people. The same malignant aspect in republicanism may be traced in the inequality of fortunes, and the opportunities of fraud, growing out of a state of war...and in the degeneracy of manners and morals, engendered by both. No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare."
-- James Madison
(Sounds like he was talking about Halliburton, doesn't it? That's why I think those founding fathers were geniuses!)
On the propaganda front:
quote:
Jessica Lynch Laments Military Portrayal
By ALLISON BARKER, Associated Press Writer
PALESTINE, W.Va. - Former prisoner of war Jessica Lynch accused the military of using her capture and dramatic nighttime rescue to sway public support for the war in Iraq.
Dramatic video of U.S. commandos whisking the former Army supply clerk from a Nasiriyah hospital to a waiting chopper April 1 helped cement Lynch's image as a hero. But the 20-year-old private told ABC's Diane Sawyer there was no reason for her rescue to be filmed.
"They used me as a way to symbolize all this stuff," Lynch told Sawyer in a "Primetime" interview to air Tuesday. "It's wrong." ..
![[DOH!]](graemlins/homerface01.gif)
***************************************
I just saw the Diane Sawyer Special. Nice job of recounting the propaganda of Jessica fighting Rambo-like perpetuated by the military and carried by the Washington Post and FOX News. With no corrections ever made. Pass the lie and repeat it until it's the truth.
Jessica Lynch is more heroic than I could ever have imagined for getting up and setting the record straight despite the fact that she simply could have lied and cashed in like that loathsome Iraqi lawyer Muhammed Odeh al-Rehaief, responsible for the accounts behind that Jessica Lynch TV movie. And no one would have ever been the wiser. Of course now he's on the fast track to wealth and citizenship for helping the propaganda machine with a book deal with Rupert (FOX) Murdoch's Harper Collin's book company. ![[no no no]](graemlins/nono.gif)
Muhammed Odeh al-Rehaief's neocon beloved account disputed by not only both the Iraqi doctors and hospital staff but by Jessica Lynch herself tonight on TV. How you people can still defend FOX and the propaganda machine is proof of the power of delusion and blind faith.
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THE NAZIS, AGAIN
by Mona Charen
June 10, 2003
The whole world is focused on what we've failed to find in Iraq -- to the point of neglecting what we have found. In doing so, the press is missing the significance of what the United States and Britain have achieved.
The banned weapons will eventually be accounted for. Of that there can be no doubt. But the more important story is that the coalition overthrew a regime that can fairly be compared with Nazi Germany. Such a deed would be applauded by the world -- if we lived in a better world.
The absolute numbers of those tortured, maimed and killed by the Ba'ath government will never be known. But some estimates say 1 million Iraqis were butchered by Saddam.
American and British forces are finding mass graves throughout the country. Corpses of men, women and children were found. Even some of the children had been tortured before being executed.
A columnist for a Lebanese newspaper wrote: "This barbarism, unprecedented in human history, was committed by Arab hands, by hands that found such delight in death and murder that the death squads would send the heads of the victims to Saddam Hussein's two sons in cardboard boxes. . . . These plastic bags in the mass graves contained bullet-riddled skulls, bodies wrapped in rags, tied in ropes, or dressed in worn pieces of clothing. . . . Ropes still tied a mother's bones to her infant's, and a father's to his son . . . "
U.S. forces have reportedly captured millions of pages of meticulous documents from the files of the security forces, detailing tortures and murders by the regime. According to Insight magazine, "A single document dated August 1989 lists the names of 87 people who were executed and a summary of each case. The alleged crimes included trespassing into forbidden zones and teaching the Kurdish language."
In one police station in Nasiriya, survivors showed U.S. Marines the electric shock prods, electric chair, and other torture implements, as well as tons of surveillance equipment. The station was filled with pictures of burned bodies.
The Saddam regime apparently used photos of its torture victims to intimidate others, particularly the victims' families.
Insight tells the story of Fatima Faraj, a Kurd whose nephews were arrested by the regime in 1986. After two years, they were executed. The Republican Guards demanded that their father pay a fee for their burial. When he demanded a receipt, the guards turned over the bodies. The father took the bodies of his sons home in boxes. "Their entire bodies other than (beneath) their underwear were places of burn," Fatima sobbed. "There were two black spots on their necks. They looked as though they were whipped and kicked throughout their bodies." Another nephew survived his torture. "He was kicked so bad," Fatima testified. "They took out all his fingernails and toenails. . . . He had a nervous breakdown."
Writing in the London-based Arabic newspaper Al-Sharq Al-Awsat, columnist Ahmed Al-Rab'i issued a "J'accuse" at fellow Arabs: "Is there not a single man of conscience who might be brought by these sights to . . . admit that he was mistaken, that he was unaware of the truth, that he was a victim of the misleading (Arab) media?" A Jordanian journalist declared the obvious: "The dictatorship of the Iraqi Ba'ath reached the level of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia . . . "
Any nation that marched into that torture chamber of a country and freed it deserves the world's gratitude.
Instead, we have carping from all sides.
Antiquities were stolen from the museum (by the way, only 47 unaccounted for out of the originally suggested 170,000), water and power supplies took more than a couple of weeks to stabilize, and we haven't yet laid hands on the well-hidden weapons of mass destruction. The weapons will be found. The rest is nonsense.
The United States and Britain have done a magnificent thing. Even if nothing else follows from it -- no liberalization of the Arab world, no breakthrough between Israelis and Palestinians, no hobbling of the terror masters -- it will have been worth it.
_________________________________
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deleting double post from below and adding prophecy: Madison and Lincoln both saw the future. Scary, isn't it? quote:
“I see in the future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. As a result of war, corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow. The money power will endeavor to prolong its reign by working on the prejudices of the people until all the wealth is aggregated into a few hands and the republic is destroyed.” - Abraham Lincoln
quote:
“We are free today, substantially, but the day will come when our republic will come to impossibility because its wealth will be concentrated in the hands of a few. When that day comes, then we must rely upon the wisdom of the best elements in the country to readjust the laws of the nation to the changed conditions.” - James Madison
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Now it stands to reason that the CIA isn't going to be the President's rubber stamp any longer after what they did to one of their agents. quote:
CIA Report Says U.S. Losing Popular Support in Iraq
Wed Nov 12, 5:04 PM ET Reuters
By Will Dunham
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A CIA report concludes that ordinary Iraqis increasingly are siding with the insurgency amid doubts about the U.S. ability to stamp it out, officials said on Wednesday, while the U.S. administrator in Iraq said it was hard to figure out where the Iraqi public stands.
Word of the report came as President Bush (news - web sites)'s national security team held urgent meetings at the White House with Paul Bremer, the U.S. civil administrator in Iraq, aimed at accelerating the transfer of power to Iraqis.
The CIA's classified field assessment concluded that many Iraqis are losing faith in American efforts in Iraq amid the U.S. failure to crush an increasingly bold resistance, said U.S. officials, speaking on condition of anonymity.
The report, warning of possible failure for Bush's efforts to establish Iraq as a democracy if the situation is not fixed, said aggressive U.S. counter-insurgency measures were leaving many Iraqis disillusioned and pushing them to support the insurgency, one U.S. official said.
Amid continuing violence, at least 17 Italians and nine Iraqis died on Wednesday when a suicide bomber wrecked an Italian military base in the town of Nassiriya, while in Baghdad, U.S. forces killed two people in a counter-insurgency strike called "Operation Iron Hammer."
The report, disclosed earlier by the Philadelphia Inquirer, noted that no member of the U.S.-appointed Iraqi Governing Council nor any other Iraqi politician had shown an ability to lead the nation following the U.S.-led invasion in March that chased President Saddam Hussein (news - web sites) from power, the official said.
But the official refused to fault Iraqi politicians for keeping a low profile amid a mounting insurgency.
"If they've got the smarts to be the future leader of the country, then they've got the smarts not to paint themselves as a target (for assassination), and to see how real is this American commitment to Iraq," the official said.
IRAQI DISILLUSIONMENT
Asked about Iraqi disillusionment toward the U.S. presence, Bremer told reporters, "I think the situation with the Iraqi public is, frankly, not easy to quantify."
"We've looked at polls. We've talked to people. We make our own assessments," Bremer said at the White House after meeting with Bush, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and others. "Obviously, the terrorists are trying to encourage the Iraqi people to believe that the United States is not going to stay the course."
Bremer said, "I don't think that that's going to work. I don't think the Iraqis are going to be intimidated. We're certainly not going to be intimidated."
Bremer expressed confidence that as U.S. forces "prosecute this low-intensity conflict" and as American authorities give Iraqis political responsibilities "we'll find that the Iraqi people support that."
"We are in a war of perceptions," added a senior defense official, saying the insurgency hopes to influence public opinion in Iraq, America and other countries with troops in Iraq,
"Militarily, this resistance cannot match the U.S. forces. But if they can attack the will of the people and if they can pose the question of why we are involved, that's what they will seek to do."
Another defense official said some tactics used by the U.S. military -- such as aggressive raids aimed at weeding out insurgents -- may be counter-productive.
"There's a difference between how many hearts and souls you're going to win or supporters you're going to get by kicking in doors as opposed to knocking on the doors and asking for cooperation," the official said.
Please tell me the CIA is nothing but a bunch of lying "liberals" and "Sadaam Lovers" and the President's rosy assesments are still something besides utter B.S. It's sadly apparent that we're losing the p.r. war. Now if this was NATO's or the U.N.'s mission rather than the American's, I think perceptions of the Iraqi council being puppets of the American's would be dispeled.
I also added some commentary on Jessica Lynch's interview from the other night in the post above, right before Dave's.
quote:
'No President has lied so baldly and so often and so demonstrably'
By Andrew Gumbel
09 November 2003
"The intelligence process is a bit like virginity," says Ray McGovern, who worked as a CIA analyst for 27 years. "Once you prostitute it, it's never the same. Your credibility never recovers.
"Watching what has happened with Iraq over the past several months has been like watching your daughter being raped."
Such is an indication of the extraordinary depth of feeling within the US intelligence community as the Bush administration's basis for the war in Iraq - the weapons of mass destruction, the dark hint of links between Saddam Hussein and al-Qa'ida - has been shown to have been built on air.
Mr McGovern worked near the very top of his profession, giving direct advice to Henry Kissinger during the Nixon era and preparing the President's daily security brief for Ronald Reagan. Now he is co-founder of a group of former CIA employees called Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, or Vips for short.
What the Bush White House has done, he believes, is far worse than the false premise that dragged the United States into the Vietnam War - a reported second attack on a US destroyer in the Gulf of Tonkin which later turned out not to have taken place. "The Gulf of Tonkin was a spur-of-the-moment thing, and Lyndon Johnson seized on that. That's very different from the very calculated, 18-month, orchestrated, incredibly cynical campaign of lies that we've seen to justify a war. This is an order of magnitude different. It's so blatant."
Mr McGovern accuses Mr Bush of an extraordinary act of chutzpah - taking advantage of his authority as President of the United States to make people believe there must be something to his insistent allegations that Iraq possessed potentially devastating weaponry.
"Many of us felt there had to be something there ... If this had been another country, one would have written a convincing analysis that this guy is lying through his teeth, that there are no weapons in Iraq. But people thought, the President can't say he knows something if he doesn't. That was persuasive, in a way.
"Now we know that no other President of the United States has ever lied so baldly and so often and so demonstrably ... The presumption now has to be that he's lying any time that he's saying anything."
It will, Mr McGovern believes, take a change of president and a change of CIA director to even begin to repair the damage done by what he sees as an overt politicisation of the intelligence business. But even that may not be enough.
"Unless what has happened in the past year and a half is recognised as a scandal, in which the CIA has been badly abused, then there's no hope," he said. "I pin my hopes mostly on the press these days. Turns out, surprise surprise, that even the US press doesn't like to be lied to."
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  What are you hiding Georgie-boy?? quote:
November 13, 2003
THE NATION
9/11 Panel Will See Briefings About Menace of Al Qaeda
But some are unhappy with the limits placed by the White House on the documents
By Greg Miller, Times Staff Writer
WASHINGTON — The federal commission investigating the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks said Wednesday that it has reached an agreement with the White House that will give investigators unprecedented access to intelligence briefings given to presidents Bush and Clinton on the threat posed by Al Qaeda.
But the agreement was sharply criticized by some members of the panel for placing severe restrictions on how many commissioners will be allowed to see the documents and what they will be allowed (!!  ) to report to the rest of the panel and the public.
The agreement calls for the White House to make sensitive intelligence documents available to the commission, including the daily CIA briefing delivered exclusively to the president.
In exchange, the panel has consented to an arrangement in which only two members will be allowed to view material sought by investigators. Even then, they will face further restrictions imposed by the White House on whether they will be able to take notes from the documents they review, and how much can then be shared with others on the panel, according to sources familiar with the arrangement.
One commissioner, former Indiana Democratic Rep. Tim Roemer, said the restrictions insisted upon by the White House are "maddening"  and could seriously undercut the panel's ability to produce a comprehensive report.
"Never have so few commissioners reviewed such important documents with so many restrictions," Roemer said.
Roemer, who refused to discuss certain details of the agreement, is a former member of the House Select Committee on Intelligence who served on a previous congressional investigation of the Sept. 11 attacks.
The criticism underscores sharp internal disagreement over how aggressive the commission should be in pursuing certain documents from the White House and an array of federal agencies.
The commission is charged with producing a definitive account of whether the government failed to prevent the Sept. 11 attacks. Its negotiations with the White House have been particularly nettlesome.
Indeed, in recent weeks, the chairman of the commission, former New Jersey Gov. Thomas H. Kean, had suggested the panel was prepared to subpoena the records from the White House. But the commission has also been eager to avoid a major confrontation with the White House, in part because a protracted fight could impair its ability to meet a May 2004 deadline to finish its work.
The commission defended its agreement in a statement released late Wednesday.
"We expect that the terms of this agreement will provide the commission the access it needs to prepare the report mandated by our statute," the panel said. The deal "will provide the commission with access to these key documents while recognizing the sensitivity of the information contained in them."
At stake for investigators is access to materials numerous administrations have guarded jealously. In fact, the White House refused to turn over the same materials to congressional investigators last year, and is resisting calls from Democrats to hand over similar documents in connection with prewar intelligence about Iraq.
A White House spokeswoman declined to discuss terms of the agreement. "We are pleased we were able to reach an agreement and we look forward to their recommendations to make America safer," the spokeswoman said.
According to sources, the deal struck with the White House includes a number of complicated provisions. Some materials will only be made available to two of the 10 commissioners, most likely Kean, a Republican, and the vice chairman, former Indiana Rep. Lee H. Hamilton, a Democrat. But other less sensitive documents will be shown to as many as four members, or some combination of members and staff investigators.
"There are note-taking limitations" on some documents, a source said. And with other materials "you have to be able to convince the White House that this meets a certain legal threshold" before it can be shared with the rest of the group.
The commission has sought access to the documents to help it answer one of the lingering questions about the Sept. 11 attacks: whether presidents Bush and Clinton ever received warnings from the intelligence community that Al Qaeda might attempt strikes like those that killed nearly 3,000 people a little more than two years ago.
Both presidents have insisted that they never had any specific warning that such attacks were possible, let alone in that the terrorist network had put such plans in motion. But the White House's refusal to provide access to key documents has fostered suspicion.
Investigators are likely to focus in particular on an Aug. 6, 2001, briefing in which, according to national security advisor Condoleezza Rice, Bush was told that Al Qaeda might seek to carry out terrorist plots involving the hijacking of airplanes. That briefing came when the U.S. intelligence community was warning that a major Al Qaeda attack might be imminent.
You do realize that all these are the people's documents. Never before have I seen an Administration with so much to hide from the American people. Maybe Bush should come out and actually tell America what IS our buisness.
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I'm all for public disclosure. I share your frustration that they consider so much too "classified" to publicly release. I certainly entertain the POSSIBILITY they could have something to hide, but at this point there is no evidence of that. I suspect that the Bush administration feels, --justifiably, based on the relentless coverage that attempts to turn every half-baked allegation into a silver bullet to kill Bush's presidency-- that if they release information, it will just be partisanly spun negatively by a Bush-bashing press. But just the same, I think they could publicly disclose a lot more, and not releasing information just raises suspicion, whether or not the Bush adminisration is doing anything wrong. Regarding an earlier point of yours from the previous topic page: quote:
Originally posted by whomod, in 10-29-2003 post:
From AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE MAGAZINE
Since I can no longer find any news sources that DTWB won't deride as "liberal".
quote:
The Cost of Empire
President Bush’s war policy marks the beginning of the end of America’s era of global dominance.
By Christopher Layne
The administration’s U-turn decision to ask for United Nations help in Iraq, and President George W. Bush’s request that Congress appropriate $87 billion to fund the occupation and reconstruction of that country send a very clear message: the administration’s Iraq policy is a fiasco. And a foreseeable one at that.
U.S. intelligence agencies predicted that American troops occupying Iraq would not be welcomed as liberators but would be resisted. A pre-invasion State Department report warned that the administration had the proverbial snowball’s chance of transforming Iraq into a Western-style democracy (a conclusion reinforced by a recent Zogby poll of Iraqis that found only 38 percent of Iraqis favor democracy, while 50 percent believe that “democracy is a western way of doing things and it will not work here”). Similarly, it was obvious that the administration’s go-it-alone hubris, combined with its sledgehammer diplomacy, would chill Washington’s relations with the other major powers and trigger a worldwide backlash of hostility toward the United States....
http://www.amconmag.com/10_06_03/cover.html
An unsurprising assesment. That is unless you just accept the White House press briefings as gosphel and dismiss anything to the contrary as the treasonous machinations of the "liberals" out to 'get' Bush out of partisan hatred. I have been making many of the same criticisms as the article. but when I say it, It's because I hate Bush and have some evil treasonous agenda that needs to be dismissed if out of patriotism at the very least. What's AMERICAN CONSERVATIVES excuse?...
You raise the point that Republicans are critical of Bush as well.
But I would argue that simply proves the Republican party has a wide range of independent opinions, and are not automatons who blindly follow what Bush says.
And I can just as easily find opinions who are sharply critical of the Democrats and their tactics against Bush
Here from the November 2 broadcast of NBC's Meet the Press, interviewing Democrat Georgia Senator (and former Georgia Governor) Zell Miller:
http://www.msnbc.com/news/969743.asp
quote:
MR. RUSSERT: And we are back. Senator Zell Miller, welcome to MEET THE PRESS.
SEN. ZELL MILLER, (D-GA): Thank you. Honored to be here.
MR. RUSSERT: Let me quote from your book, page nine to be exact. I’ll share it with our viewers:
“Once upon a time, the most successful Democratic leader of them all, FDR, looked south and said, ‘I see one-third of a nation ill-housed, ill-clad, ill-nourished.’ Today our national Democratic leaders look south and say, ‘I see one-third of a nation and it can go to hell.’”
What do you base that on?
SEN. MILLER: I base it on history. Look at what has happened. In 1960, John Kennedy carried the state of Georgia by a larger percentage than he carried his home state of Massachusetts. I think it was the second-highest percentage in the nation, next to Rhode Island. And John Kennedy was popular in Georgia. He could have been re-elected because he stood up to the Russians, and he cut taxes; he was a tax-cutter. And Southerners liked him. He carried other states: North Carolina, South Carolina. But that was in 1960.
And if you look at all the cycles since then, in four of those elections they didn’t carry a single Southern state; in two of those elections, the Democrats carried one Southern state; in three of those elections, they managed to carry a handful and they got elected. And only one time since 1964 have they carried the South, and that, of course, was in ’76 when Jimmy Carter was a favorite son. Also, these so-called national leaders, none of them can come South and try to help a fellow Democrat.
MR. RUSSERT: Why not?
SEN. MILLER: Because they’re considered too liberal. They do more harm than good. Terry McAuliffe can’t come down there and try to help us Southern Democrats. Neither can Bill Clinton or Al Gore or Tom Daschle or Nancy Pelosi, because this party has been pulled by these special interests with their own narrow agenda so far to the left that they’re completely out of the mainstream. These special interests, they see their narrow agenda as being more important than the sum total of the party.
MR. RUSSERT: This is how you assess the current Democratic field. “But, Lord, those current presidential candidates in my party! They are good, smart”—”able folks, but if I decided to follow any”—”of them down their road, I’d have to keep my left turn signal blinking and burning brightly all the way. All left turns may work on the racetrack, but it is pulling our party in a dangerous direction. ... They are convinced most Americans will like”—that. “Joe Lieberman, steadily and surely plodding along, one labored step at a time, like Aesop’s tortoise. John Kerry ... posing for Vogue in an electric blue wet suit with a surfboard tucked up under his arm like a rail just split.” “Howard Dean of Vermont...Clever and glib, but deep this Vermont pond is not.”
I take it you don’t respect Governor Dean.
SEN. MILLER: I respect all of them, and they’re good and decent people, but they are so far afield in wherever they’re going in this campaign. I mean, here they have adopted the worst possible features of the McGovern campaign. That is, get out, at any cost. Give up, come home, quit. And, the worst possible feature of the Mondale campaign, raise taxes. Tim, I was there in 1972 at Miami Beach when—here you had this crowd, chanting about the president of the United States, “Liar, liar, liar.” And they had on these T-shirts, “Make love, not war.” And Willie Brown was going around, shouting, “Let my people go.” And then in the wee morning hours, they nominated George McGovern. He carried one state, one single, solitary state. And I was there in 1984 at San Francisco when Walter Mondale looked out and told the nation, “I’m going to raise your taxes.” What? Goodness gracious, that’s not the way to campaign. He carried one single, solitary state. They have managed, except a somewhat [moderate] Lieberman, Gephardt, a little exception—they have managed to make this a double feature of the worst of the Democratic Party.
MR. RUSSERT: The Democratic candidates will say they’re not for pulling out of Iraq but they’re for going to the world community and letting the United Nations and other countries in the world pay their fair share.
SEN. MILLER: There are 32 or 35 nations already over there that are working in Iraq. It’s not a unilateral action, like some say. Sure, we should try to get more people to work with us on that, but I don’t think we ought to do a backflip.
MR. RUSSERT: You then say that, again, on the candidates about the war, “I fear some of the Democratic presidential candidates are treading on very dangerous ground for the party, and, more importantly, for the country. I do not question their patriotism; I question their judgment. ...”
“My concern is that, without meaning to, they are exacerbating the difficulties of a nation at war. A demagogue is defined by Webster as ‘a political leader who gains power by arousing people’s emotions and prejudices.’ Isn’t that exactly what some of them are doing? ...”
“Howard Dean, while not alone, is the worst offender...He likes to say he belongs to the Democratic wing of the”—party—”I say he belongs to the whining wing of the Democratic Party.” Let me show you what Howard Dean said yesterday, and get your reaction.
“I still want to be the candidate for guys with Confederate flags in their pickup trucks...We can’t beat George Bush unless we appeal to a broad cross-section of Democrats.” Is he making sense with that statement?
SEN. MILLER: Howard Dean knows about as much about the South as a hog knows about Sunday. This must be his Southern strategy. And I can tell you right now, that that’s the same kind of stereotype, that’s the same kind of character trait that I write about in this book. I write about in this book in 1988 Michael Dukakis coming to Georgia and having this rally, and they had all these bales of hay stashed around here and there, like it was some kind of set from the television show “Hee Haw.” That’s not what the South is. The South right now, if you took its economy, it would be the third largest in the world, next to the United States as a whole and next to Japan. Fifty-five hundred African-Americans right now hold office in the South. In Georgia we have several statewide elected officials who are African-American and who were elected last year in a race where a senator and a governor were being defeated. They were being elected in a state that’s 70 percent white. This is not the South that Howard Dean thinks it is. Sure, we drive pickups, but on the back of those pickups, you see a lot of American flags. It’s the most patriotic region in the country. And you see hardworking individuals that want to instill values in their children, and you see a very, very strong work ethic in the South. He [Howard Dean] doesn’t understand the South.
MR. RUSSERT: Do you think the Confederate flag should be flown in public places?
SEN. MILLER: Maybe at a museum or somewhere like that. I think you may know—it’s in the book— that whenever I was governor, early on I tried to remove the Confederate emblem from the flag in Georgia.
MR. RUSSERT: Wesley Clark, the general: What do you think of him?
SEN. MILLER: Well, as you know, Tim, there’ve been 12, I think, generals been elected president of the United States. Only one of them has been a Democrat; 1828, Andrew Jackson. And with all due respect to Wesley Dean, he is no “Old Hickory.” I can tell you that. I have a tremendous respect for anyone who wears the uniform, anyone who has been shot at by our enemies. But when your last boss, in this case General Hugh Shelton, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, says that you lack integrity, that’s a pretty strong indictment. No integrity? I mean, how would you like to be taking that reference around whenever you’re looking for a new job?
MR. RUSSERT: General Clark will say many other people in the military have a lot more favorable things to say.
SEN. MILLER: Well, this was his last boss. This was a man who’s known him for years.
MR. RUSSERT: What if Howard Dean or the Democratic nominee selected someone like former Georgia Governor Sam Nunn as vice president? Would that be helpful?
SEN. MILLER: Well, I don’t think Sam Nunn would run on that ticket. I would be very surprised if he did. But no—see, that’s also what they think. They think that they can ignore the South and not pay any attention to the South, and then the last six months of the campaign, maybe they can find a Southerner that they will put on the ticket, and that that’s going to be the magic silver bullet that does it all. That is not how you campaign in the South. That’s the old strategy that has failed all this time.
MR. RUSSERT: Some Democrats in your home state are hopping mad about some of your comments, or not taking kindly to them. David Worley, the former Georgia Democratic Party chairman, had an open letter printed in your local Atlanta paper. This is what he said: “Now, with the hot political wind blowing from conservative networks, talk radio and corporate boardrooms, when it’s become the fashion to bash the Democratic Party, you’ve joined in, writing a book betraying the people who stood [with you in] every one of your campaigns—not party activists, but hardworking Georgia families. You cast stone after stone at Democrats. Your silly, petty and often personal attacks remind me of no one more than your old boss, Lester Maddox.”
SEN. MILLER: Well, everybody has [a right]to their opinion, but I think that I am much more in touch with the people of Georgia than the young man who wrote that column. You know, I’m trying to help this party. I’m trying to throw them a life preserver. I’m trying to tell them how to do it. They can call it “Bush lite” and “Republican lite” if they want to, but it’s where the people are. I mean, if David Worley doesn’t want to reach out and take that life preserver, then so be it. To heck with him.
MR. RUSSERT: You wrote a—it was a compilation of your speeches, “Listen to This Voice: Selected Speeches of Zell Miller.” Let me refer you to one from 1976, Governor—or Senator, now Governor—now Senator, former Governor. And this was Zell Miller in 1996 before the Democratic Party Training Academy: “The real story of what happened to ‘We the people’ is that the Republicans sold us out, with a generation of trickle -down economics that blew the deficit sky-high, drove poverty through the roof, squeezed the middle class like a lemon at a county fair. They gave themselves the gold mine and they gave the rest of us the shaft.”
And Democrats would say, “That’s the real Zell Miller. That’s the old Zell Miller, because he now voted for the Bush tax cut and that’s what the Bush tax cut has done to the country, what he was telling us the Reagan tax cut did.”
SEN. MILLER: Here’s what the Bush tax cut has done to the country, that kind of economy right now. I know The New York Times had a time printing this, but “Economy records speediest growth since the mid-1980s.” That’s what the tax cuts have done. I have always been a tax cutter. I was a tax cutter whenever I was governor. I took the sales tax off of groceries and I cut the income tax twice. I came up here intending to be a tax cutter.
MR. RUSSERT: What about the deficit...
SEN. MILLER: We...
MR. RUSSERT: ...$500 billion?
SEN. MILLER: The deficit is there not because of the tax cuts. The deficit is there because we have been in a recession and we’re a country at war. And you always run a deficit in those kind of times. Also, a deficit I would say is there because of a lot of wild spending by the Democrats.
MR. RUSSERT: And the Republicans.
SEN. MILLER: And the Republicans, of course.
MR. RUSSERT: The Wall Street Journal columnist Al Hunt had this to say. “This veteran Democrat (Miller) has adopted” this “approach: Cut any tax in sight, back every popular spending measure...Oh, yes: Zell Miller supports the balanced budget constitutional amendment” as well.
SEN. MILLER: I tell you what you can do. Al Hunt can go back and research or you could go back and research. In the last four years that I’ve been up here, over three years that I’ve been up here, I bet I have voted against more increases in spending than any Democrat and voted against more increases in spending than a lot of Republicans.
MR. RUSSERT: But you were for the farm bill, for prescription drugs. Even your hometown paper had this to say. “Back when he was governor of Georgia, Miller used to make fun of those who refused to face fiscal reality. As he put it back then, they like to drink that free bubble up and eat that rainbow stew. Now, that he’s up in Washington, though, Miller has found that the free bubble up” while “quite intoxicating, and that” the “rainbow stew real tasty.”
SEN. MILLER: That’s a good line from Merle Haggard about the free bubble up and rainbow stew. I go back to what I said a while ago. I have voted against more spending up here than any Democratic senator serving and more than a lot of Republicans serving. As far as the farm bill, look, one of the most important things that we can do for this nation is to keep a safe and affordable supply of food. What if we were having to import as much food as we are oil? There would be rioting in the streets. That was .5 of 1 percent of the total budget. Whenever we spend money on highways and other infrastructure, we call it investments. This is one of the best investments that this country can make.
MR. RUSSERT: We have to take a quick break. We’ll be right back with more of our discussion with Zell Miller and his new book “A National Party No More” right after this.
(Announcements)
MR. RUSSERT: And we are back. Senator, many Democrats are saying you vote with the Republicans, you’ve endorsed George W. Bush for re-election. Why not just be intellectually honest and change your registration to be a Republican?
SEN. MILLER: I know this is hard to understand for anyone, and I thought about it a lot. It’s kind of like living in this old house. You’ve lived in it all of your life. It’s getting kind of run down, and it’s drafty, and the commodes won’t flush. And last week a family moved in down into the basement, and you don’t even know who they are or where they came from. And I would be comfortable probably in some other house much more than I am where I am, but I have been here all these years. I haven’t got many more years to live in it. It’s home. It’s always been home. And I’m not leaving it. Now, I know that doesn’t make sense to everybody that is just so tied up with political parties, but it makes sense to me and it makes sense to my family and it makes sense to my neighbors. And that’s all that matters with me.
MR. RUSSERT: What could a Democratic candidate for president or a future candidate, like Hillary Clinton, do—what one issue or two issues could they seize on that you think would resonate with Southern Democrats?
SEN. MILLER: Well, the road map is out there. The battle plan has been tested and shown to work. Look at how Kennedy ran in 1960. He ran on tax cuts. He was tougher on national security issues than Richard Nixon was. That’s how he won, and he could have been re-elected, as I said a while ago. Look at 1992 and 1996 when Bill Clinton ran. In 1992, he was talking about changing welfare as we know it. He was talking about punishing criminals, not explaining away their behavior. In ’96, he was saying that there’s not—”You can’t have a federal program for every problem.” And he even said that, “The era of big government is over.” That’s how you run, not like McGovern and Mondale did.
MR. RUSSERT: That has to be the last word. The book, “A National Party No More: The Conscience of a Conservative Democrat.” Senator Zell Miller, we thank you for your views.
SEN. MILLER: Thank you.
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The server seems to be moving very slowly, I'm eliminating a duplicate post here.
Poof ! Gone. 
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The monkey trap
Certain African tribesmen have a clever way of trapping monkeys.
They begin by making a paw-sized hole in a coconut, then filling the coconut with rice or some similarly attractive food. A monkey will come along, stick in his paw and grab a fistful of rice -- and then find that he can't get his paw out.
It screams for help, but it is trapped by its own greed. As you and I can see, all the monkey would have to do is turn loose of the rice. His open hand could easily be withdrawn. The problem is that the monkey places greater value on the rice than on his own freedom."
That was the attention-getting windup. Here was the pitch:
The Bush administration has stuck its hand into a coconut called Iraq, grabbed a fistful of oil and control, and now is finding it difficult to get out. It is trapped by its power and its greed. Now it screams for help from the United Nations (which it had earlier dismissed as irrelevant and inconsequential). And all the administration would have to do is to turn loose some control, and it might be able to withdraw with dignity.
But like the monkey, it places greater value on the spoils of war than on freedom for the Iraqi people, reconciliation with the world order and what might very well be the soul of our nation.
William Raspberry, Washington Post
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quote:
Originally posted by whomod:
The monkey trap
Certain African tribesmen have a clever way of trapping monkeys.
They begin by making a paw-sized hole in a coconut, then filling the coconut with rice or some similarly attractive food. A monkey will come along, stick in his paw and grab a fistful of rice -- and then find that he can't get his paw out.
It screams for help, but it is trapped by its own greed. As you and I can see, all the monkey would have to do is turn loose of the rice. His open hand could easily be withdrawn. The problem is that the monkey places greater value on the rice than on his own freedom."
That was the attention-getting windup. Here was the pitch:
The Bush administration has stuck its hand into a coconut called Iraq, grabbed a fistful of oil and control, and now is finding it difficult to get out. It is trapped by its power and its greed. Now it screams for help from the United Nations (which it had earlier dismissed as irrelevant and inconsequential). And all the administration would have to do is to turn loose some control, and it might be able to withdraw with dignity.
But like the monkey, it places greater value on the spoils of war than on freedom for the Iraqi people, reconciliation with the world order and what might very well be the soul of our nation.
William Raspberry, Washington Post
AFLAC.
http://www.nypost.com/news/worldnews/42706.htm
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quote:
Originally posted by whomod:
Absolutely spot-on. I'll count the minutes until outraged neocon aplogists come and declare that Sadaam was Hitler: The Sequel and we were all in imminent peril from his WMD program.
AFLAC.
http://www.nypost.com/news/worldnews/42706.htm
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quote:
Originally posted by whomod:
Funny how you focus on the "U.S. is # 1" aspect of the comments but completely discount the preemtive war half.
I'm curious to see if any non-Americans here on the boards share this nationalistic zeal of most of you on these boards. I'm sure they're comforted to know that if their nations get too ambitious they can expect a blitzkreig attack.
AFLAC.
http://www.nypost.com/news/worldnews/42706.htm
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quote:
Originally posted by whomod:
What a sordid little bunch.
And boy what a coincidence that the stars aligned a few years later and reunited all these chaps when Sadaam was busy helping Osama! ![[yuh huh]](images/icons/rolleyes.gif)
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAFFFFFFFFFFFFLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLAAAAAAAAAAAC!
http://www.nypost.com/news/worldnews/42706.htm
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I was curious what AFLAC's New York Post link was about. Here it is:
_________________________________________
SADDAM-OSAMA LINK
By CLEMENTE LISI
November 15, 2003 -- Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein gave terror lord Osama bin Laden's thugs financial and logistical support, offering al Qaeda money, training and haven for more than a decade, it was reported yesterday.
Their deadly collaboration - which may have included the bombing of the USS Cole and the 9/11 attacks - is revealed in a 16-page memo to the Senate Intelligence Committee that cites reports from a variety of domestic and foreign spy agencies compiled by multiple sources, The Weekly Standard reports.
Saddam's willingness to help bin Laden plot against Americans began in 1990, shortly before the first Gulf War, and continued through last March, the eve of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, says the Oct. 27 memo sent by Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith.
Two men were involved with the collaboration almost from its start.
Mamdouh Mahmud Salim - who's described as the terror lord's "best friend" - was involved in planning the bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998.
Another terrorist, Hassan al-Turabi, was said by an Iraqi defector to be "instrumental" in the relationship.
Iraq "sought al Qaeda influence through its connections with Afghanistan, to facilitate the transshipment of proscribed weapons and equipment to Iraq. In return, Iraq provided al Qaeda with training and instructors," a top-level Iraqi defector has told U.S. intelligence.
The bombshell report says bin Laden visited Baghdad in January 1998 and met with Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz.
"The goal of the visit was to arrange for coordination between Iraq and bin Laden and establish camps in an-Nasiriyah and Iraqi Kurdistan," the memo says.
Though the bombing of the USS Cole on Oct. 12, 2000 was an al Qaeda job, the secret memo says the CIA believes "fragmentary evidence points to possible Iraqi involvement."
The relationship between Saddam and bin Laden continued to grow in the aftermath of the Cole attack when two al Qaeda terrorists were deployed to Iraq to be trained in weapons of mass destruction and to obtain information on "poisons and gases."
CIA reporting shows the Saudi National Guard went on a "kingdom-wide state of alert in late December 2000 after learning Saddam agreed to assist al Qaeda in attacking U.S./U.K. interests in Saudi Arabia," the memo says.
And the report contains new information about alleged meetings between 9/11 mastermind Mohamed Atta and former Iraqi intelligence chief Ahmed Khalil Ibrahim Samir al Ani in the Czech Republic.
Even some Bush administration officials have been skeptical about a purported meeting in April 2001.
But the secret memo says Atta met two other times in Prague with al Ani, in December 1994 and June 2000. It was during one of these meetings that al Ani "ordered the [Iraqi Intelligence Service] finance officer to issue Atta funds from IIS financial holdings in the Prague office," the memo says.
The memo says the relationship between Saddam and bin Laden went forward even after 9/11.
Both sides allegedly reached a "secret deal" last year in which Iraq would provide "money and weapons" and obtain 90 Iraqi and Syrian passports for al Qaeda members.
Al Qaeda associate Abu Maseb al Zarqwari also helped set up "sleeper cells" in Baghdad starting in October 2002.
The memo was sent to Sens. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.) and Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) of the Senate Intelligence Committee.
__________________________________
This is new from what I've seen previously about a link between Saddam's Iraq and Al Qaida. Prior reports did not state a direct link, this onbe does.
An earlier January 2003 New York Times article discussed Saddam employing Al Qaida as mercenaries to fight Kurdish rebels in the North of Iraq.
I previously discussed a book by Laurie Mulroie, about terrorists who had trained in camps inside Iraq, using a grounded 747 jet to learn hijacking techniques, that arguably could have been utilized in the 9/11 hijacking. She also discussed ties between Saddam, 1993 WTC bomber Ramsey Yousef, and Khalid Sheikh Mohammad. The information was from defectors to the U.S. who had trained in Saddam's terrorist camps. And a documented Saddam plot to assassinate George Bush Sr.
"The World's Reaction to the War" topic
http://www.rkmbs.com/showflat.php?Cat=&Number=212973&page=13&view=collapsed&sb=5&o=&fpart=3&vc=1
The only report contradicted by FBI investigation is the report by Czech intelligence that Mohammad Atta had met with a Saddam intelligence official in Prague, just prior to the 9/11 bombing.
The FBI found that Atta had an open rental agreement for that period, so the FBI rejected that meeting validly reported.
But the report cited in this New York Post article cites two other meetings between Atta and Saddam's intelligence official. It occurred to me that he could have opened a rental agreement and left the car for someone else to use, while he was out of the country in the Czech Republic.
In any case, even without Al Qaida links, Saddam was a major sponsor of terror groups in Israel, offering training, weapons and other support to various Palestinian terror groups, and Saddam paid $25,000 to the families of every Palestinian suicide bomber.
I reject the idea that Bush's invasion of Iraq is or ever was about "greed".
Certainly, Bush has been clear that Iraq's resources belong to Iraq, and that the U.S. plans to leave as soon as Iraq establishes a self-sufficient police and defense force, to insure a healthy and stable Iraqi democracy.
Far from the notion of "greed" and profit, the evidence is abundantly clear that Iraq has already cost, and will continue to cost, the United States a great deal.
If the U.S. is successful, it will have --in establishing a democracy in the Middle East-- done a great deal to benefit the Muslim world, certainly far more than any other nation, and something it will no doubt never get credit for, from either the Muslim world or other U.S.-bashers around the world.
Mistakes have been made, certainly. But I still support what has occurred in Iraq. It is certainly better than anyone else's alternative. Although there really are no alteratives offered, just condemnation.
Except for notions that we "should have waited for the U.N." (which is a clear contradiction of the fact that France, and possibly Germany and Russia as well, made clear they would veto ANY resolution to invade Iraq, so waiting would never have borne fruit, and is just so much anti-American liberal revisionism that has no basis in fact).
And the U.N. with its most recent resolution now supports U.S. action and opens the door to nations like Japan, Turkey, and many other nations to send assistance.
But the assistance of these other U.N. nations combined would offer at most 30,000 troops, and probably a lot less.
So regardless of any cooperation of Bush with the U.N., the overwhelming brunt of it is and will remain on the U.S., no matter what is conceded by the U.S. And other nations don't WANT to take command from the U.S.
For any invasion of Iraq to have occurred, the U.S. had to do what it did, because the U.N. was giving zero cooperation, DESPITE seeing the same potential threat of Iraq as the U.S. cited. As U.N. resolutions against Iraq, and private intelligence of European nations makes clear.
What really pisses me off is that if the U.S. sends in more troops (as they did after the official end of the war, to do the job right against guerilla fighters) Democrats label it a "miserable failure" or a "quagmire" or "another Vietnam."
And if they lessen troop strength, then Bush is accused of "endangering the mission" and "caving in to political pressure" (the very political pressure that Democrats themselves are providing, to get out !)
I dislike the partisan accusations of Democrats, that criticize Bush's conduct of the war in Iraq, no matter what Bush does to stay the course.
Some of the criticism is warranted (such as vastly underestimating the cost of the war). But much of it unfair criticism that has no consistency, and vaccilates from one hysterical extreme to the other (too much, not enough...)
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Here is a panel discussion of Iraq, with Republican Senator Richard Lugar, and Democrat Senator Joseph Biden, discussing the present situation in Iraq, and plans for "Iraqification". Biden is one of the Democrats I consider to be critical of Bush in a productive way, without being divisive, hyperbolic and partisan about it. He is someone who clearly has the best interests of the country in what he says: http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/middle_east/july-dec03/iraq_11-13.html
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oooooohhhhh boyyyyyy. Winning the Arab hearts and minds. quote:
U.S. checking possibility of pumping oil from northern Iraq to Haifa, via Jordan
The United States has asked Israel to check the
possibility of pumping oil from Iraq to the oil
refineries in Haifa. The request came in a
telegram last week from a senior Pentagon official
to a top Foreign Ministry official in Jerusalem.....
You think this will sit well with most Arabs or Iraqi's?? That's right, we don't give a fu*k.
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Officially "too old for this shit" 15000+ posts
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Yeah, given that there is not yet a single Arab democracy in that entire region (contrast with Israel), I can see why would should take care not to hurt their widdle-dictator feelings. It's amazing, simply amazing, how the radical left defends dictators and terrorists when they think it has the potential to embarrass their real enemy, the President.
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Yes, G-man, that is frustrating. I used to joke during the invasion that if I was a marine in Iraq, I'd take special pleasure in gunning down some "human shields" (i.e. the liberal schmucks who traveled from the U.S. to Iraq to provide cover for Saddam and his thugs, attempting to prevent U.S. military from firing on them because they -- U.S. civilians-- were present. ) Here's a PBS interview from January 17, 2002, with the then-Prime Minister of Turkey, that gives an insightful overview of Turkey's 80-year democratic history, following the collapse of the Ottoman Empire at the end of WW I. Turkey is considered the most democratic nation in the Muslim world. This interview was done immediately after the Afghan invasion and prior to the current Iraq war. http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/middle_east/jan-june02/ecevit_1-17.html
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Man, you two don't get it, do you? It's not about suppporting dictators or appeasing the enemy or anything. It's about the perception of the common Arab in the street and the safety of our troops! You think siphoning Iraqi oil to Isreal is going to sit well in the Arab street, dictatorial, theocratic or otherwise?? Don't you think that by giving their oil to Isreal, the average Arab is going to be further inclined to listen to radicals like Osama Bin Laden and wage jihad against us over there??? Hey, we've just radicalized thousands more moderate Arabs, I guess we'll be needing more troop divisions now. Again, i think you just don't give a fuck. 100, 200 body bags, who cares. All that matters is the neocon agenda suceed no matter the price in american (or Arab) lives. Kill em all and let God sort em out, eh? It's just bad judgment. I just can't stop thinking about the United Fruit Company for some reason.... ****************************** funny. http://www.ucomics.com/tomthedancingbug/2003/09/20/
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quote:
Originally posted by whomod:
oooooohhhhh boyyyyyy.
Winning the Arab hearts and minds.
quote:
U.S. checking possibility of pumping oil from northern Iraq to Haifa, via Jordan
The United States has asked Israel to check the
possibility of pumping oil from Iraq to the oil
refineries in Haifa. The request came in a
telegram last week from a senior Pentagon official
to a top Foreign Ministry official in Jerusalem.....
You think this will sit well with most Arabs or Iraqi's?? That's right, we don't give a fu*k.
If it strengthens their economy, you would think so.
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quote:
Originally posted by whomod:
Man, you two don't get it, do you?
It's not about suppporting dictators or appeasing the enemy or anything. It's about the perception of the common Arab in the street and the safety of our troops!
You think siphoning Iraqi oil to Isreal is going to sit well in the Arab street, dictatorial, theocratic or otherwise??
Don't you think that by giving their oil to Isreal, the average Arab is going to be further inclined to listen to radicals like Osama Bin Laden and wage jihad against us over there???
Hey, we've just radicalized thousands more moderate Arabs, I guess we'll be needing more troop divisions now.
Again, i think you just don't give a fuck. 100, 200 body bags, who cares. All that matters is the neocon agenda suceed no matter the price in american (or Arab) lives. Kill em all and let God sort em out, eh?
It's just bad judgment.
I just can't stop thinking about the United Fruit Company for some reason....
******************************
funny.
http://www.ucomics.com/tomthedancingbug/2003/09/20/
First of all, it sounds like a proposal to send oil to Israel for refining, NOT an ironclad plan, if it's not just an unsubstantiated rumor.
Second, if we do any trade with Israel at all it seems to be resented and used as a rationalization for hatred,
If there's to be an independent Palestinian state, then doesn't logic suggest Arab trade between Israel and its neighbors, INCLUDING Iraq ?
Meanwhile, no matter what the U.S. or Israel does, it can be spun with conspiracy theories that rationalize Muslim violence.
If we send them food and medicine, they'll say it's laced with mind-control drugs to conquer them.
Related to the Turkey link I posted above, two bombings of mosques in Turkey over the weekend, which exploded almost simultaneously, are believed to be the work of Al Qaida.
Interesting in many Muslim bombings, how many Muslims are killed in the Jihad for Islam. Muslim terror groups not only kill the "infidels" (i.e., any non-Muslims), they kill and intimidate any Muslims who would cooperate with Americans or Jews. And many innocent Muslim bystanders as well.
A man I know from Bangladesh (a Muslim) told me there were dozens of Bangladeshi/Muslim workers in the World Trade Center on 9/11 who died.
There were also many Muslims killed in the Al Qaida bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998.
An Al Qaida terrorist who turned witness for the United States, interviewed on 60 Minutes said this indiscriminate killing of Muslims by Al Qaida (the 1998 bombing in particular, which he helped plan, and then saw firsthand the outcome)is what made him leave the organization.
I hasten to add, Whomod, you're once again rationalizing the violence of the enemy.
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 Who payed for all this?
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quote:
War critics astonished as US hawk admits invasion was illegal
International lawyers and anti-war campaigners reacted with astonishment yesterday after the influential Pentagon hawk Richard Perle conceded that the invasion of Iraq had been illegal.
In a startling break with the official White House and Downing Street lines, Mr Perle told an audience in London: "I think in this case international law stood in the way of doing the right thing."
President George Bush has consistently argued that the war was legal either because of existing UN security council resolutions on Iraq - also the British government's publicly stated view - or as an act of self-defence permitted by international law.
But Mr Perle, a key member of the defence policy board, which advises the US defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, said that "international law ... would have required us to leave Saddam Hussein alone", and this would have been morally unacceptable.
French intransigence, he added, meant there had been "no practical mechanism consistent with the rules of the UN for dealing with Saddam Hussein".
Mr Perle, who was speaking at an event organised by the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London, had argued loudly for the toppling of the Iraqi dictator since the end of the 1991 Gulf war.
"They're just not interested in international law, are they?" said Linda Hugl, a spokeswoman for the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, which launched a high court challenge to the war's legality last year. "It's only when the law suits them that they want to use it."
Mr Perle's remarks bear little resemblance to official justifications for war, according to Rabinder Singh QC, who represented CND and also participated in Tuesday's event.
Certainly the British government, he said, "has never advanced the suggestion that it is entitled to act, or right to act, contrary to international law in relation to Iraq".
The Pentagon adviser's views, he added, underlined "a divergence of view between the British govern ment and some senior voices in American public life [who] have expressed the view that, well, if it's the case that international law doesn't permit unilateral pre-emptive action without the authority of the UN, then the defect is in international law".
Mr Perle's view is not the official one put forward by the White House. Its main argument has been that the invasion was justified under the UN charter, which guarantees the right of each state to self-defence, including pre-emptive self-defence. On the night bombing began, in March, Mr Bush reiterated America's "sovereign authority to use force" to defeat the threat from Baghdad.
The UN secretary general, Kofi Annan, has questioned that justification, arguing that the security council would have to rule on whether the US and its allies were under imminent threat.
Coalition officials countered that the security council had already approved the use of force in resolution 1441, passed a year ago, warning of "serious consequences" if Iraq failed to give a complete ac counting of its weapons programmes.
Other council members disagreed, but American and British lawyers argued that the threat of force had been implicit since the first Gulf war, which was ended only by a ceasefire.
"I think Perle's statement has the virtue of honesty," said Michael Dorf, a law professor at Columbia University who opposed the war, arguing that it was illegal.
"And, interestingly, I suspect a majority of the American public would have supported the invasion almost exactly to the same degree that they in fact did, had the administration said that all along."
The controversy-prone Mr Perle resigned his chairmanship of the defence policy board earlier this year but remained a member of the advisory board.
Meanwhile, there was a hint that the US was trying to find a way to release the Britons held at Guantanamo Bay.
The US secretary of state, Colin Powell, said Mr Bush was "very sensitive" to British sentiment. "We also expect to be resolving this in the near future," he told the BBC.
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www.aim.orgWHO'S BEHIND THE PROTESTS ?By Cliff Kincaid November 18, 2003 President Bush and his spokesman have welcomed the planned "anti-war" and anti-Bush demonstrations in Britain as an example of free speech. But what the President and his administration ought to be doing is exposing and confronting the anti-American forces behind them. We certainly can’t expect the media to tell the American people that communists, socialists, radical Muslims and other America-haters are organizing the protests. "I am so pleased to be going to a country which says that people are allowed to express their mind," said President Bush. "That’s fantastic." At the daily White House press briefing on Monday, Scott McClellan said, "…democracy is a wonderful thing. Freedom of speech and the right to peacefully assemble are the very foundation of our democracy. They are fundamental rights the people of the United States and United Kingdom hold dear, and many in the world yearn for." These are nice words, and we all support free speech. But these are not spontaneous demonstrations of conscientious objectors who oppose all war. Some of the key groups and individuals want America to fail in Iraq, and they want American soldiers to die there. The "Stop the War Coalition" behind the protests includes former member of Parliament George Galloway on its steering committee. Galloway was expelled from the ruling Labor Party for having told British soldiers in Iraq they should disobey orders to fight. Galloway, who visited Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein in 2002, was labeled the British representative of "Baghdad Central." He has sued Britain’s Daily Telegraph newspaper for reporting evidence that he had been in the pay of the Iraqi government. Other individuals on the steering committee include Mohammed Aslam Aijaz of the London Council of Mosques, Lois Austin of the Socialist Party, Lindsey German of Socialist Review, John Haylett of the British Communist Party newspaper Morning Star, Mark Hoskisson of Workers Power, John Rees of the Socialist Workers Party, Carlos Rule of the Socialist Labour Party, Tanja Salem Al-Awda of the Campaign for Palestinian Rights, and Wolf Wayne of the Green Socialist Network and Socialist Alliance. The coalition’s website not only opposes the war in Iraq, it opposes the war on terrorism in Afghanistan and elsewhere. While the group claims "compassion for those who lost their life" on 9/11, its says that "any war will simply add to the numbers of innocent dead, cause untold suffering, political and economic instability on a global scale, increase racism and result in attacks on civil liberties." Hence, it opposed the war to overthrow the al Qaeda-supported Taliban regime in Afghanistan. Another steering committee member is Tariq Ali, author of the new book, Bush in Babylon: The Recolonization of Iraq. The cover of the book depicts a boy in Iraq urinating on the head of an American soldier. In a November 3 column in the London Guardian, Ali makes such absurd statements as, "Few can deny that Iraq under U.S. occupation is in a much worse state than it was under Saddam Hussein." If you don’t regard the murder of more than 300,000 people as terrorism, then there certainly is more terrorism in Iraq, but Ali blames that on the U.S. and hails the anti-American "resistance." A fascinating aspect to the British protest is its American connection. The "Stop the War Coalition" features a set of links to its collaborators abroad, including Moveon.org, International ANSWER, and United For Peace. The latter two groups are heavily infiltrated by communists and have played the key role in "anti-war" demonstrations here. Moveon.org is regarded even by the liberal U.S. media as a front of the Democratic Party. The group has benefited from millions of dollars from George Soros and Peter Lewis, financial backers of the drug legalization movement. Another key group working with the "Stop the War Coalition" is the British Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND). It is left over from the days of the Cold War, when the CND opposed deployment of American cruise missiles in Europe to counter the massive Soviet nuclear-weapons buildup. Key leaders of the CND were exposed at the time as being communists or communist sympathizers who attacked British and American defense policies while praising the "peace" propaganda of the Soviet Union. Then, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and U.S. President Ronald Reagan were determined to confront Soviet power. They faced down the Soviet Union and the rest is history. President Bush must seize this historic opportunity to expose and confront another global movement that wants to bury America. He must identify these "protesters" as essentially the same group that was prepared to let communism dominate Europe and the world. ___________________________ Cliff Kincaid is Editor of the AIM Report. ________________________________
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Joined: May 2003
Posts: 32,001 Likes: 1
We already are 15000+ posts
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We already are 15000+ posts
Joined: May 2003
Posts: 32,001 Likes: 1 |
quote:
Originally posted by JQ:
Who payed for all this?
Those fucking morons need to get a life......and JQ that's a damn good question.
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Joined: May 2003
Posts: 188
100+ posts
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100+ posts
Joined: May 2003
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Joined: Nov 2000
Posts: 2,447
2000+ posts
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2000+ posts
Joined: Nov 2000
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I found this article while surfing the net: quote:
Crimes Against Nature
Bush is sabotaging the laws that have protected America's environment for more than thirty years
By Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
It's very long and informative.
Edit PS: What's Bush supposed to be holding in his arms?
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Joined: May 2003
Posts: 5,958
some RKMB'ers are Obsessed with Black People Hmmm? 5000+ posts
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some RKMB'ers are Obsessed with Black People Hmmm? 5000+ posts
Joined: May 2003
Posts: 5,958 |
In light of this: quote:
Iraqi Teens Pummel Bloodied U.S. Soldiers
MOSUL, Iraq - Iraqi teenagers dragged two bloodied U.S. soldiers from a wrecked vehicle and pummeled them with concrete blocks Sunday, witnesses said, describing the killings as a burst of savagery in a city once safe for Americans.
Another soldier was killed by a bomb and a U.S.-allied police chief was assassinated.
The U.S.-led coalition also said it grounded commercial flights after the military confirmed that a missile struck a DHL cargo plane that landed Saturday at Baghdad International Airport with its wing aflame.
Nevertheless, American officers insisted they were making progress in bringing stability to Iraq and the U.S.-appointed Governing Council named an ambassador to Washington — an Iraqi-American woman who spent the past decade lobbying U.S. lawmakers to promote democracy in her homeland.
i'll post something I read last week which rings truer today in light of this news.
quote:
There's Something Happening Here
Echoes of Vietnam emanating from Iraq are all too clear
November 18, 2003 – Here we go again. Only now it's the "Iraqification" rather than the "Vietnamization" of a quagmire war in another distant and increasingly hostile land.
Washington's puppets are once again said to be on the verge of getting their act together, and the American people are daily assured that we are about to turn the corner. Soon we will be able to give Iraq back to the Iraqis, and some distant day the United States will get out. In the meantime, U.S. troops must continue in a "support role" while being maimed and killed with increasing frequency.
Sorry to appear so jaded, but it has been nearly 40 years since I was briefed in Saigon by U.S. officials about the great progress being made in turning the affairs of South Vietnam over to Washington's handpicked leaders of that country. I was also told with great emotional forcefulness that it would be irresponsible to just leave, given the dire consequences for world freedom.
Iraq is not Vietnam, and this is not 1964. But there are enough pillars for this analogy that we should remember some of the lessons of our last attempt to remake a nation in our image.
First, we never managed to build "our" stable Vietnam government; one gang of incompetents and thieves simply replaced another, until -- 10 years and millions of deaths later -- we finally left, under the most ignominious circumstances.
Second, after Saigon fell, the anticipated security disaster for the United States and the region didn't happen. To the contrary, communist Vietnam and communist China soon went to war with each other, leaving the U.S. in a far stronger position to exert its influence on both of those nations and the rest of Asia.
Third, and perhaps most important, in Vietnam then and Iraq now, guerrilla tactics by "the locals" and overwhelming American firepower killed or maimed a large number of innocent people on all sides. All in a war without a clear purpose and sold to the American people by U.S. political leaders willing to lie to them.
For me, there are two particularly symbolic victims, one from each war. They stand out for their parallel experiences, marked by tragedy and bravery before and after their experiences in battle. Ron Kovic and Jessica Lynch were both working-class kids vulnerable to the siren song of jingoism, and both suffered serious injuries that will keep them in considerable pain throughout their lives -- long after the movies made about them and the reasons for the wars they fought in have been mostly forgotten.
Kovic and Lynch are true heroes, not because they were severely wounded in battle but because they refused to give in to despair and emerged as decent people with clear, honest voices. Both refused the easy positions -- either retreating into private silence or touting the government's line that their sacrifice was worth it. Each went public to talk about the nonsensical realities of war in general, their wars in particular and how they were individually treated by their government.
"They used me as a way to symbolize all this stuff," Lynch told ABC's Diane Sawyer of the way the military packaged her story for the media. "It hurt in a way, that people would make up stories that they had no truth about."
Kovic served two tours with the Marines in Vietnam and has been a peace activist for three decades now. I first met him in the early 1970s while he sat in his wheelchair contemplating the vast rows of graves in a West Los Angeles military cemetery. Recently, he met with families of some of those killed in Iraq and with wounded soldiers. Compare this to President Bush, who has been unwilling to attend funerals of those killed in Iraq.
Lynch is still grappling with just how she was used as a propaganda tool by a Pentagon that sought to turn her into a female action figure. But the stance she has taken against further manipulation of her suffering reveals a sterling character far stronger than the macho movie image placed on her when she was a prisoner of war. As Lynch told her biographer, Rick Bragg:
"We went and we did our job, and that was to go to war, but I wish I hadn't done it -- I wish it had never happened. I wish we hadn't been there, none of us…. I don't care about the political stuff. But if it had never happened, Lori [Piestewa, a fellow soldier and her best friend] would be alive and all the rest of the soldiers would be alive. And none of this would have happened."
Amen.
http://www.robertscheer.com
Funny how you don't hear about Jessica Lynch much from the right anymore....
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Joined: May 2003
Posts: 5,958
some RKMB'ers are Obsessed with Black People Hmmm? 5000+ posts
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some RKMB'ers are Obsessed with Black People Hmmm? 5000+ posts
Joined: May 2003
Posts: 5,958 |
quote:
Originally posted by PJP:
quote:
Originally posted by JQ:
Who payed for all this?
Those fucking morons need to get a life......and JQ that's a damn good question.
LOL!
Yeah, I can imagine that spontaneous displays of democracy would offend the right wing.
It's funny because it's true.
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Joined: May 2003
Posts: 5,958
some RKMB'ers are Obsessed with Black People Hmmm? 5000+ posts
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some RKMB'ers are Obsessed with Black People Hmmm? 5000+ posts
Joined: May 2003
Posts: 5,958 |
quote:
November 24, 2003
THE NATION
FBI Is Monitoring War Protesters, Official Says
From Reuters
WASHINGTON — The FBI has gathered data about tactics and training used by war protesters in an effort to blunt potential violence by extremist elements, a federal law enforcement official said Sunday.
The FBI warned of tactics used by such groups in a weekly bulletin circulated to 15,000 law enforcement agencies around the country last month, ahead of large demonstrations in Washington and San Francisco to protest the Iraq war.
The bulletin discussed tactics, training and organization of groups, some of which have Web sites that refer to training camps to teach activities like disrupting traffic and law enforcement during large public events, the official said.
It described activist strategies like videotaping arrests to intimidate police and using the Internet to recruit and raise funds.
The memorandum was first reported by the New York Times on Sunday.
"It contains information that we gleaned through investigation and through other means," a federal law enforcement official who asked not to be identified told Reuters.
Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.), appearing on ABC's "This Week," said he was concerned about reports that the FBI was monitoring war protesters.
"We have the stories going on this morning where they're using the FBI to look into demonstrations in order to find out who is demonstrating and getting into their background. That reminds me of the old Nixon times and the enemies list," he said. White House officials in the administration of President Nixon kept a list of political enemies.
The federal law enforcement official said the FBI was only interested in individuals and groups who plotted violence.
Civil rights groups quoted by the New York Times nonetheless said the monitoring of protesters was alarming.
Seig heil. Funny how at the moment I'm quite interested in the Right wing military dictatoriships in Latin America during the 20th century and how they would supress "leftist" dissent thru whatever means neccesary, and usually with right wing American support.
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