RKMBs Forums .::Important::. Politics and Current Events "It's not about oil or Iraq..."

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Originally posted by whomod:

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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.

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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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Originally posted by whomod:

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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.

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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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Originally posted by whomod:

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Originally posted by PJP:

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Originally posted by JQ:


Who payed for all this?

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Those fucking morons need to get a life......and JQ that's a damn good question.

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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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Like the other liberal propaganda I see --about the iraq war, and any number of other issues-- it is a selective omission and re-interpretation of the facts, to make things far darker than they really are. For every American soldier killed, there are a thousand schools, businesses, hospitals, etc., built in the new free Iraq.

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Again, we WERE in Germany, Japan, and more recently Bosnia and Kosovo for many years more than was initially projected, to do the job right. Liberals aren't interested in doing the job right, just smearing a Republican president.

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I commend Bush for doing the heavy lifting, that Clinton and Gore didn't have the guts to do. This war should have been fought sometine between 1995-1998.

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Bush is not worrying about popular opinion polls to determine his policy.

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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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I don't disagree that this war has gone good. It's been fast, there's been relatively few casualties, and Saddam Hussein has been removed from power. But I'm still a little skeptical of the justifications and agendas behind the scenes.

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“Trying to eliminate Saddam, extending the ground war into an occupation of Iraq…would have incurred incalculable human and political costs. Apprehending him was probably impossible. We had been unable to find Noriega in Panama, which we knew intimately. We would have been forced to occupy Baghdad and, in effect, rule Iraq. The coalition would instantly have collapsed, the Arabs deserting it in anger and other allies pulling out as well…Going in and occupying Iraq, thus unilaterally exceeding the U.N.’s mandate, would have destroyed the precedent of international response to aggression we hoped to establish.” -George H. W. Bush and Brent Scowcroft quoted in Time magazine, March 2, 1998.

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"We had a good discussion, the Foreign Minister and I and the President and I, had a good discussion about the nature of the sanctions -- the fact that the sanctions exist -- not for the purpose of hurting the Iraqi people, but for the purpose of keeping in check Saddam Hussein's ambitions toward developing weapons of mass destruction. We should constantly be reviewing our policies, constantly be looking at those sanctions to make sure that they are directed toward that purpose. That purpose is every bit as important now as it was ten years ago when we began it. And frankly they have worked. He has not developed any significant capability with respect to weapons of mass destruction. He is unable to project conventional power against his neighbors. So in effect, our policies have strengthened the security of the neighbors of Iraq, and these are policies that we are going to keep in place..."--Colin Powell, February 24, 2001

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December 5, 2003


THE WORLD
Ex-General Says Israel Inflated Iraqi Threat
Shlomo Brom asserts his nation's spy agencies helped U.S. and Britain make case for war.

By Laura King, Times Staff Writer


JERUSALEM — A former senior Israeli military intelligence official asserted Thursday that the nation's spy agencies were a "full partner" to the United States and Britain in producing flawed prewar assessments of Iraq's ability to mount attacks with weapons of mass destruction.

The sharply worded report by Shlomo Brom, a brigadier general in the army reserves, prompted one lawmaker to call for an independent inquiry into the performance of Israeli intelligence before the start of hostilities in Iraq.

Until now, the role of Israeli intelligence agencies in assessing the threat posed by Saddam Hussein's regime — and the subsequent failure so far by coalition investigators to find evidence of a chemical and biological weapons program that was an imminent threat — has been the subject of little public debate here.

In Britain, Prime Minister Tony Blair has been hounded by domestic critics who say prewar intelligence on Hussein's weapons program was either flawed or exaggerated — or both — in order to support President Bush's decision to go to war.

Bush also has faced criticism over the lack of proof that Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, though the U.S. president has not been forced to expend nearly as much political capital as Blair in fending off contentions that the threat was deliberately distorted.

Brom, a senior researcher at one of Israel's leading think tanks, the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University, said intelligence produced by Israel played a significant role in augmenting the case for toppling Hussein.

"In the questioning of the picture painted by coalition intelligence, the third party in this intelligence failure — Israel — has remained in the shadows," he wrote. "And yet, Israeli intelligence was a full partner to the picture presented by American and British intelligence regarding Iraq's nonconventional capabilities."

The Israeli intelligence agencies, Brom said, "badly overestimated the Iraqi threat to Israel and reinforced the American and British belief that the weapons existed."

Brom attributed the failure to professional lapses and misreading of important data, coupled with what he called a "one-dimensional perception" of Hussein by Israel's intelligence-gathering agencies.

Brom also cited a culture of "excessive intelligence anxiety," dating back to Israel's failure, just before the Jewish state's 1973 war with Syria and Egypt, to act on clear signs of an imminent Arab attack, with near-calamitous results. "Israeli intelligence agencies have tended to overstate the threat the country faces ever since," he wrote.

Before the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in March, Israeli officials sent mixed signals to the public over the threat of a biological or chemical attack by Hussein's forces. They described the likelihood of Israel being targeted as slight, yet the country was placed on a war footing. Jet fighters patrolled the skies 24 hours a day. Israelis were told to prepare "sealed rooms" in which they could take shelter in the event of attack. Children were sent off to school carrying gas masks.

Many Israelis had vivid memories of the 1991 Persian Gulf War, during which Iraq lobbed 39 Scud missiles at Israel, none armed with a chemical or biological agent.

Brom said that even if Iraq had any Scud missiles left, it was difficult to understand how professional intelligence-gatherers would perceive them as a threat to Israel, particularly after 10 years of disuse.

Although Israeli military intelligence and the Mossad spy agency have suffered scandals and high-profile blunders in recent years, both are considered to be among the world's premier intelligence operations. In his report, however, Brom expressed concern that as a result of mistakes regarding Iraq, foreign services might stop trusting information provided by Israel, thus hampering cooperation in the fight against terrorism.

Brom's article, which appeared in the Jaffee Center's quarterly publication Strategic Assessment, prompted lawmaker Yossi Sarid to call for a parliamentary inquiry on prewar intelligence-gathering.

Brom held senior positions in Israeli military intelligence for 25 years before retiring from the army in 1998.

Traditionally, intelligence officers of his stature retain access to a great deal of sensitive information even after leaving active service.

http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/asection/la-fg-isintel5dec05,1,4449923.story?coll=la-news-a_section

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"Why should we hear about body bags and deaths and how many, what day it's gonna happen? It's not relevant. So why should I waste my beautiful mind on something like that?"

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Finally, i never got any feedback from Dave TWB about Richard Perle admitting the invasion of Iraq was illegal (see posted article at the top of the page). There is no evil media to blame here. This came out of the horses mouth.

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Originally posted by Pariah:
So, what you're saying is....Barbara Bush represents all of the Bush family.

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No. I just thought it intestesting at what an evil bitch she is.

For "all of the Bush family", I present you this:

http://www.hereinreality.com/familyvalues.html



Now, "i'm through with you" (to further quote the good mum).

Bush: Gave up on Osama. Mystified by the Anthrax mailer. Don't have any idea who leaked Valerie Plame's name to Novak. Can't decide who put that Mission Accomplished banner up. Confused about which BA pilot saw Air Force One headed to Iraq. Can't tell a turkey dinner from a prop.

Do this: Go to Google. Type in "miserable failure" then click on "I'm feeling lucky." What you get is no surprise but the source is astounding!

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originally posted by Whomod:

Finally, i never got any feedback from Dave TWB about Richard Perle admitting the invasion of Iraq was illegal (see posted article at the top of the page). There is no evil media to blame here. This came out of the horses mouth.

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3.

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"THE LIBERAL MEDIA!!! THE LIBERAL MEDIA!!!"

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"The larger point is, and the fundamental question is, did Saddam Hussein have a weapons program? And the answer is, absolutely. And we gave him a chance to allow the inspectors in, and he wouldn't let them in. And, therefore, after a reasonable request, we decided to remove him from power, along with other nations, so as to make sure he was not a threat to the United States and our friends and allies in the region. I firmly believe the decisions we made will make America more secure and the world more peaceful." - George W. Bush

http://www.drmomentum.com/aces/archives/000683.html

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Yep. The "liberal" media took him out of context. But that's the thing about liars. Once you start, the more you have to keep on lying and the harder it is to keep all the lies straight.

Say Dave, you say you voted for Nader because of his decades of integrity. Here.

http://www.issues2000.org/Celeb/Ralph_Nader_War_+_Peace.htm

You may not beleive me nor trust the "liberal" media, but i'm sure Nader will set you straight.

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AP: Scientists to Excavate Iraqi Graves
54 minutes ago Add Top Stories - AP to My Yahoo!


By NIKO PRICE, Associated Press Writer

MAHAWEEL, Iraq - The killers kept bankers' hours. They showed up for work at the barley field at 9 a.m., trailed by backhoes and three buses filled with blindfolded men, women and children as young as 1.


AFP/File Photo



Every day, witnesses say, the routine was the same: The backhoes dug a trench. Fifty people were led to the edge of the hole and shot, one by one, in the head. The backhoes covered them with dirt, then dug another hole for the next group.


At 5 p.m., the killers — officials of Saddam Hussein (news - web sites)'s Baath Party — went home to rest up for another day of slaughter.


In this wind-swept field in the central town of Mahaweel, witnesses say, this went on without a break for 35 days in March and April of 1991, during a crackdown on a Shiite Muslim uprising that followed the first Gulf War (news - web sites).


"I watched this with my own eyes," said Sayed Abbas Muhsen, 35, whose family farm was appropriated by Saddam's government for use as a killing field. "But we couldn't tell anyone. We didn't dare."


The mass grave at Mahaweel, with more than 3,100 sets of remains, is the largest of some 270 such sites across Iraq (news - web sites). They hold upward of 300,000 bodies; some Iraqi political parties estimate there are more than 1 million.


"It's as easy to find mass graves in Iraq as it once was to find oil," said Adnan Jabbar al-Saadi, a lawyer with Iraq's new Human Rights Ministry.


In the days following Saddam's fall on April 9, family members rushed to grave sites, digging for ID cards and clothing that confirmed their worst fears: The bones in the ground belonged to a son, a wife, a grandfather.


The U.S.-led occupation authority desperately tried to halt the digging, telling people that if they waited, forensic teams would unearth the remains and use the evidence to punish those responsible.


Now, an Associated Press investigation has discovered, forensic teams will begin digging in January to preserve the first physical evidence at four grave sites, their desert locations kept secret to prevent relatives from disturbing them first.
a tiny back room of the deposed Iraqi president's sprawling brick-and-marble Republican Palace in Baghdad, American and British experts are using the latest technology to reach out to the dead.


They work from a growing database of 270 suspected grave sites, matching witness accounts with geological evidence, preparing for field trips by four-wheel-drive vehicle and helicopter to confirm their high-tech data with the most low-tech of methods: a shovel.


"This is not a case of `X marks the spot,'" said archaeologist Barrie Simpson. "It's not like driving down Route 66 with signposts that say, `Stop here.'"


Gypsum is one key tool. The Iraqi desert has a hard crust a foot below the surface, which is broken when a hole is dug. Minerals then mix to form gypsum, a kind of salt whose glistening white crystals are visible decades later from a satellite or from the ground.


Imagery in six spectral bands comes from a commercial satellite in orbit since 1983, which can take images of any spot on Earth every 16 days. The classified computers — which the experts switch off before a reporter enters the room — hold two decades of imagery.


If witnesses report a mass grave was dug in a certain desert location, say, in March 1991, Burch can analyze data from images taken in February 1991 and June 1991, and determine whether a pit was dug in that area during that time period.




"We don't care what it looks like," said geoscientist Bruce Gerrick. "When our pixels come back and say it's gypsum, that's it."

After seven months of work, the team has confirmed 41 mass graves across the length and breadth of Iraq — a country the size of France — some near major cities, and others miles from the nearest road.

They have a long way to go.

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Excavating a grave site under international standards is painstaking work. To pull 100 sets of remains from the ground, it usually takes six to eight weeks.

Nobody expects scientists to dig up and identify 300,000 sets of remains. So as the scientists analyze the desert, experts are trying to identify which graves could help prosecutors build a case against those responsible for their creation.

"We're trying to make sure that there is at least one grave, and hopefully two or three, for each major period of atrocity," said Sandra Hodgkinson, director of the occupation authority's human rights office. That would mean eight to 24 mass graves selected for full exhumation.

Of the 41 mass grave sites confirmed by the coalition team, only four meet the criteria for full exhumation so far, several members of the scientific team told AP. All are in the remote desert, none closer than 10 miles from the nearest road.

Forensic teams were supposed to have been in place months ago, but several canceled or delayed their trips out of fear for their safety. Hodgkinson said several are ready to begin work in late January.

The locations of the first four graves selected remain classified. Experts fear that if people know where they are, family members — or even the killers — might try to dig them up.

Meanwhile, Iraqis will unearth graves with an eye toward identification. Entifadh Qanbar, spokesman for the Iraqi National Congress, a major political party, said that will help Iraqis move on from three decades of brutal dictatorship — at least as important as seeing justice served.

"Those people who lost family members need to know where their sons and fathers are, and to rebury them with dignity," he said. "That will bring a lot of peace and comfort to the victims' families and start a process of reconciliation."

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Iraq's U.S.-appointed rulers have drafted a plan to set up a special tribunal for crimes against humanity.

According to four people who have seen the draft — expected to be approved as soon as Sunday — it calls for Iraqi judges to hear cases from Iraqi prosecutors. International experts will participate as advisers.

Some human rights groups are uncomfortable with the plan, fearful that Iraqis won't have the expertise, or that they will sacrifice justice in their thirst for revenge. Some also say the U.S.-led government forced the plan on Iraqis.

But many Iraqis like the idea. They see an Iraqi-led process — no matter how it comes about — as more satisfying.

"I think it's very important for people to see the criminals who killed their families in court," said al-Saadi at the Human Rights Ministry.

U.S. authorities are pushing for a small number of high-profile trials — maybe 100 or so, including Saddam and other key leaders. Many Iraqis want to try thousands with links to the former regime.

"I think those highly responsible should face the courts," said al-Husseini, the doctor. "For the people who followed their orders, we need forgiveness in Iraq."

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Villagers dug furiously in Mahaweel in April, carting away more than 2,200 sets of remains. For those they couldn't identify, they dug individual, unmarked graves, and piled the belongings found with them atop the mounds.

In Mahaweel today, 900 mounds sit topped with shreds of clothing. On one is a pair of child-sized high-tops. On another, a blood-spattered green jacket. A wallet. A string of black prayer beads.

"It's over," said Atlas Hamid Ode, whose brother-in-law was buried there. "People don't go there anymore. They have lost all hope of finding their sons. These graves, without names, will remain as shrines."

If families are losing hope, the start of formal exhumations next month is sure to churn up old feelings. It's a process complex beyond description — a fragile mix of politics, justice and revenge in a delicate country wary of all three.

And relatives hope that in the midst of it all, in an occupied land where the very notion of tomorrow is uncertain, someone, somehow, will help them find peace.

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Niko Price is correspondent-at-large for The Associated Press.

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Originally posted by whomod:
[QB] 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.

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I met "humanitarian workers" in Baghdad who, even as they decried the U.S. "occupation" of the country, would fall into an embarrassed silence when I mentioned Saddam’s atrocities, and "peace activists" who suggested that the terrible image the world has of Saddam Hussein was largely the creation of "U.S. propaganda." One Dutch photographer argued that Saddam’s attack on Iran was no worse than "America’s invasion of Vietnam" and that Baath-party members were mostly "guys just looking for jobs." When I tried to describe to a worker for a Canadian NGO some of the findings of the human-rights association, he shrugged and waggled his hand as if to say, "Yeah, yeah, we’ve heard all this before." Impatiently, he burst out: "Yours is the real rogue nation."

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Originally posted by MisterJLA:

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I met "humanitarian workers" in Baghdad who, even as they decried the U.S. "occupation" of the country, would fall into an embarrassed silence when I mentioned Saddam’s atrocities, and "peace activists" who suggested that the terrible image the world has of Saddam Hussein was largely the creation of "U.S. propaganda." One Dutch photographer argued that Saddam’s attack on Iran was no worse than "America’s invasion of Vietnam" and that Baath-party members were mostly "guys just looking for jobs." When I tried to describe to a worker for a Canadian NGO some of the findings of the human-rights association, he shrugged and waggled his hand as if to say, "Yeah, yeah, we’ve heard all this before." Impatiently, he burst out: "Yours is the real rogue nation."

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Remind you of anyone?

:lol:

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Deciphering the Bush Administration's motives
by Michael T. Klare
The United States is about to go to war with Iraq. As of this writing, there are 60,000 U.S. troops already deployed in the area around Iraq, and another 75,000 or so are on their way to the combat zone. Weapons inspectors have found a dozen warheads, designed to carry chemical weapons. Even before this discovery, senior U.S. officials were insisting that Saddam was not cooperating with the United Nations and had to be removed by force. Hence, there does not seem to be any way to stop this war, unless Saddam Hussein is overthrown by members of the Iraqi military or is persuaded to abdicate his position and flee the country.

It is impossible at this point to foresee the outcome of this war. Under the most optimistic scenarios--the ones advanced by proponents of the war--Iraqi forces will put up only token resistance and American forces will quickly capture Baghdad and remove Saddam Hussein from office (by killing him or placing him under arrest). This scenario further assumes that the Iraqis will decline to use their weapons of mass destruction (WMD) or will be prevented from doing so by U.S. military action; that civilian casualties will be kept low and that most Iraqis will welcome their "liberation" from Saddam; that a new, pro-U.S. government will quickly and easily be put into place; that fighting between competing ethnic factions will be limited and easily brought under control; that anti-American protests in other Muslim countries will not get out of hand; and that American forces will be withdrawn after a relatively short occupation period of six months to a year.

It is not difficult, however, to imagine less optimistic scenarios. In these scenarios, the Iraqis could put up stiff resistance and conduct house-to-house fighting in Baghdad, thereby producing significant U.S. casualties and leading, in turn, to heavy U.S. air and missile strikes on populated areas, resulting in high civilian casualties. Under these scenarios, the Iraqis will use their chemical and biological weapons in a final spasm of self-destruction, producing untold civilian and combatant casualties. The surviving Iraqis will turn against their American "liberators," resulting in constant sniping and acts of terrorism. The Kurds and Shiites and Sunnis will fight over the spoils of war, producing widespread carnage and trapping U.S. forces in the middle. American troops will remain in Iraq for a generation, or more, producing hatred and resistance throughout the Muslim world and increased levels of terrorism elsewhere.

Which scenario will prevail? Nobody can be certain at this point. Those who favor a war with Iraq tend to believe that Iraqi resistance will be light and that the rest of the optimistic scenario will fall into place. But no one can guarantee that any of this will come to pass, and there are many experts who believe that the likelihood of things going awry are very great. For example, the CIA has indicated that Iraq is most likely to use its WMD in the event that Iraq is attacked and defeat appears likely. In weighing the relative merits of going to war with Iraq, therefore, one should reckon on the worst possible outcome, not the best. One must ask: are the purported benefits of war so great as to outweigh all of the possible negative repercussions?

And this leads to the most fundamental question of all: WHY are we going to war? What is really motivating President Bush and his senior advisers to incur these enormous risks?

In their public pronouncements, President Bush and his associates have advanced three reasons for going to war with Iraq and ousting Saddam Hussein: (1) to eliminate Saddam's WMD arsenals; (2) to diminish the threat of international terrorism; and (3) to promote democracy in Iraq and the surrounding areas.

These are, indeed, powerful motives for going to war. But are they genuine? Is this what is really driving the rush to war? To answer this, we need to examine each motive in turn. In doing so, moreover, it is necessary to keep in mind that the United States cannot do everything. If we commit hundreds of thousands of American troops and hundreds of billions of dollars to the conquest, occupation, and reconstruction of Iraq, we cannot easily do the same in other countries--we simply don't have the resources to invade and occupy every country that poses a hypothetical threat to the United States or is deserving of regime change. So a decision to attack Iraq means a decision to refrain from other actions that might also be important for U.S. security or the good of the world.

(1) Eliminating weapons of mass destruction: The reason most often given by the administration for going to war with Iraq is to reduce the risk of a WMD attack on the United States. To be sure, a significant WMD attack on the United States would be a terrible disaster, and it is appropriate for the President of the United States to take effective and vigorous action to prevent this from happening. If this is, in fact, Bush's primary concern, then one would imagine that he would pay the greatest attention to the greatest threat of WMD usage against the United States, and deploy available U.S. resources--troops, dollars, and diplomacy--accordingly. But is this what Bush is actually doing? The answer is no. Anyone who takes the trouble to examine the global WMD proliferation threat closely and to gauge the relative likelihood of various WMD scenarios would have to conclude that the greatest threat of WMD usage against the United States at the present time comes from North Korea and Pakistan, not Iraq.

North Korea and Pakistan pose a greater WMD threat to the United States than Iraq for several reasons. First of all, they both possess much bigger WMD arsenals. Pakistan is known to possess several dozen nuclear warheads along with missiles and planes capable of delivering them hundreds of miles away; it is also suspected of having developed chemical weapons. North Korea is thought to possess sufficient plutonium to produce one to two nuclear devices along with the capacity to manufacture several more; it also has a large chemical weapons stockpile and a formidable array of ballistic missiles. Iraq, by contrast, possesses no nuclear weapons today and is thought to be several years away from producing one, even under the best of circumstances. Iraq may possess some chemical and biological weapons and a dozen or so Scud-type missiles that were hidden at the end of the 1991 Gulf war, but it is not known whether any of these items are still in working order and available for military use. Equally important is the question of intention: how likely are these countries to actually use their WMD munitions? Nobody can answer this with any degree of certainty, of course. But there are a few things that can be said.

To begin with, Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf has publicly stated that he was prepared to employ nuclear weapons against India last year when New Delhi massed its forces on Pakistan's border and threatened to attack unless Pakistan curbed the activities of Islamic militants in Kashmir. This does not mean that Pakistan would use nuclear weapons against the United States, but it does indicate a readiness to employ such weapons as an instrument of war; it is also easy to imagine a scenario in which someone else comes to power who is far more anti-American than Musharraf.

Just as worrisome is the fact that the North Koreans have declared that they would consider any move by the United States and the UN to impose economic sanctions on North Korea as punishment for its pursuit of nuclear weapons as an act of war, to which they would respond accordingly, turning the United States into a "sea of fire." Again, this does not mean that they would actually choose to use their nuclear weapons, but it is not hard to imagine a scenario in which war breaks out and the North Koreans use their WMD in a desperate bid to stave off defeat.

On the other hand, the CIA has concluded that Saddam Hussein will not choose to use his country's WMD capabilities against the United States so long as his regime remains intact; it is only in the case of imminent U.S. conquest of Baghdad that he might be tempted to use these weapons.

The Bush administration has also indicated that war with Iraq is justified in order to prevent Iraq from providing WMD to anti-American terrorists. The transfer of WMD technology to terrorist groups is a genuine concern--but it is in Pakistan where the greatest threat of such transference exists, not Iraq. In Pakistan, many senior military officers are known to harbor great sympathy for Kashmiri militants and other extremist Islamic movements; with anti-Americanism intensifying throughout the region, it is not hard to imagine these officers providing the militants with some of Pakistan's WMD weapons and technology. On the other hand, the current leadership in Iraq has no such ties with Islamic extremists; on the contrary, Saddam has been a life-long enemy of the militant Islamists and they view him in an equally hostile manner.

It follows from all this that a policy aimed at protecting the United States from WMD attacks would identify Pakistan and North Korea as the leading perils, and put Iraq in a rather distant third place. But this is not, of course, what the administration is doing. Instead, it has minimized the threat from Pakistan and North Korea and focused almost exclusively on the threat from Iraq. It is clear, then, that protecting the United States from WMD attack is not the primary justification for invading Iraq; if it were, we would be talking about an assault on Pakistan and/or North Korea, not Iraq.

(2) Combating terrorism: The administration has argued at great length that an invasion of Iraq and the ouster of Saddam Hussein would constitute the culmination of and the greatest success in the war against terrorism. Why this is so has never been made entirely clear, but it is said that Saddam's hostility toward the United States somehow sustains and invigorates the terrorist threat to this country. It follows, therefore, that the elimination of Saddam would result in a great defeat for international terrorism and greatly weaken its capacity to attack the United States.

Were any of this true, an invasion of Iraq might make sense from an anti-terrorism point of view. But there simply is no evidence that this is the case; if anything, the opposite is true. From what we know of Al Qaeda and other such organizations, the objective of Islamic extremists is to overthrow any government in the Islamic world that does not adhere to a fundamentalist version of Islam and replace it with one that does. The Baathist regime in Iraq does not qualify as such a regime; thus, under Al Qaeda doctrine, it must be swept away, along with the equally deficient governments in Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia. If follows from this that a U.S. effort to oust Saddam Hussein and replace his regime with another secular government--this one kept in place by American military power--will not diminish the wrath of Islamic extremists but rather fuel it.

In addressing this matter, moreover, it is necessary to keep the Israeli-Palestinian struggle in mind. For most Arab Muslims, whatever their views of Saddam Hussein, the United States is a hypocritical power because it tolerates (or even supports) the use of state terror by Israel against the Palestinians while making war against Baghdad for the same sort of behavior. It is this perception that is fueling the anti-American current now running through the Muslim world. An American invasion of Iraq will not quiet that current, but excite it. It is thus exceedingly difficult to see how a U.S. invasion of Iraq will produce a stunning victory in the war against terrorism; if anything, it will trigger a new round of anti-American violence. Hence, it is very difficult to conclude that the administration is motivated by anti-terrorism in seeking to topple Hussein.

(3) The promotion of democracy: The ouster of Saddam Hussein, it is claimed, will clear the space for the Iraqi people (under American guidance, of course) to establish a truly democratic government and serve as a beacon and inspiration for the spread of democracy throughout the Islamic world, which is said to be sadly deficient in this respect. Certainly, the spread of democracy to the Islamic world would be a good thing, and should be encouraged. But is there any reason to believe that the administration is motivated by a desire to spread democracy in its rush to war with Iraq?

There are several reasons to doubt this. First of all, many of the top leaders of the current administration, particularly Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney, were completely happy to embrace the Saddam Hussein dictatorship in the 1980s when Iraq was the enemy of our enemy (that is, Iran) and thus considered our de facto friend. Under the so-called "tilt" toward Iraq, the Reagan-Bush administration decided to assist Iraq in its war against Iran during the Iran-Iraq War of 1980-88. As part of this policy, Reagan removed Iraq from the list of countries that support terrorism, thus permitting the provision of billions of dollars' worth of agricultural credits and other forms of assistance to Hussein. The bearer of this good news was none other than Donald Rumsfeld, who traveled to Baghdad and met with Hussein in December 1983 as a special representative of President Reagan. At the same time, the Department of Defense, then headed by Dick Cheney, provided Iraq with secret satellite data on Iranian military positions. This information was provided to Saddam even though U.S. leaders were informed by a senior State Department official on November 1, 1983 that the Iraqis were using chemical weapons against the Iranians "almost daily," and were aware that U.S. satellite data could be used by Baghdad to pinpoint CW attacks on Iranian positions. Not once did Mssrs. Rumsfeld and Cheney speak out against Iraqi CW use or suggest that the United States discontinue its support of the Hussein dictatorship during this period. So there is no reason whatsoever to believe that the current leadership has a principled objection to dictatorial rule in Iraq--it is only when Saddam is threatening us instead of our enemies that they care about his tyrannical behavior.

There is another reason to be skeptical about the Bush administration's commitment to democracy in this part of the world, and that is the fact that the administration has developed close relationships with a number of other dictatorial or authoritarian regimes in the area. Most notably, the United States had developed close ties with the post-Soviet dictatorships in Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, and Uzbekistan. Each of these countries is ruled by a Stalinist dictator who once served as a loyal agent of the Soviet empire: Heydar Aliyev in Azerbaijan, Nursultan Nazarbaev of Kazakhstan, and Islam Karimov of Uzbekistan. Only slightly less odious than Saddam Hussein, these tyrants have been welcomed to the White House and showered with American aid and support. And there certainly is nothing even remotely democratic about Kuwait or Saudi Arabia, two of America's other close allies in the region.

So it is hard to believe that the Bush administration is motivated by a love of democracy, when it has been so quick to embrace patently undemocratic regimes that have agreed to do its bidding. So, if concern over WMD proliferation, or the reduction of terrorism, or a love of democracy do not explain the administration's determination to oust Saddam Hussein, what does?

I believe that the answer is a combination of three factors, all related to the pursuit of oil and the preservation of America's status as the paramount world power. Ever since the end of the cold war, American policymakers (whether Democratic or Republican) have sought to preserve America's "sole superpower" status and to prevent the rise of a "peer competitor" that could challenge U.S. paramountcy on anything approaching equal terms. At the same time, American leaders have become increasingly concerned over the country's growing dependence on imported oil, especially oil from the Persian Gulf. The United States now relies on imported oil for 55% of its requirements, and this percentage is expected to rise to 65% in 2020 and keep growing thereafter. This dependency is the "Achilles heel" for American power: unless Persian Gulf oil can be kept under American control, our ability to remain the dominant world power would be put into question.

These concerns undergird the three motives for a U.S. invasion of Iraq. The first derives from America's own dependence on Persian Gulf oil and from the principle, formally enshrined in the Carter Doctrine, that the United States will not permit a hostile state from ever coming into a position where it can threaten America's access to the Gulf. The second is the pivotal role played by the Persian Gulf in supplying oil to the rest of the world: whoever controls the Gulf automatically maintains a stranglehold on the global economy, and the Bush administration wants that to be the United States and no one else. And the third is anxiety about the future availability of oil: the United States is becoming increasingly dependent on Saudi Arabia to supply its imported petroleum, and Washington is desperate to find an alternative to Saudi Arabia should it ever be the case that access to that country is curtailed--and the only country in the world with large enough reserves to compensate for the loss of Saudi Arabia is Iraq.

Let us examine each of these three factors in turn.

First, on U.S. dependence on Persian Gulf oil and the Carter Doctrine. Ever since World War II, when American policymakers first acknowledged that the United States would someday become dependent on Middle Eastern petroleum, it has been American policy to ensure that the United States would always have unrestrained access to Persian Gulf oil. At first, the United States relied on Great Britain to protect American access to the Gulf, and then, when Britain pulled out of the area in 1971, the U.S. chose to rely on the Shah of Iran. But when, in 1979, the Shah was overthrown by Islamic militants loyal to the Ayatollah Khomeini, Washington decided that it would have to assume responsibility on its own to protect the oil flow. The result was the Carter Doctrine of January 23, 1980, which states that unrestricted access to Persian Gulf is a vital interest of the United States and that, in protection of that interest, the United States will employ "any means necessary, including military force."

This principle was first invoked in 1987, during the Iran-Iraq War, when Iranian gunboats fired on Kuwaiti oil tankers and the U.S. Navy began escorting Kuwaiti tankers through the Gulf. It was next invoked in August 1990, when Iraq invaded Kuwait and posed an implied threat to Saudi Arabia. President Bush the elder responded to that threat by driving the Iraqis out of Kuwait, in Operation Desert Storm; he did not, however, continue the war into Iraq proper and remove Saddam Hussein himself. Instead, the U.S. engaged in the "containment" of Iraq, entailing an air and sea blockade.

Now, President Bush the younger seeks to abandon containment and pick up Operation Desert Storm where it left off in 1991. The reason being given for this is that Saddam is making more progress in the development of WMD, but the underlying principle is still the Carter Doctrine: Iraq under Saddam poses an implied threat to U.S. access to Persian Gulf oil, and so must be removed. As noted by Vice President Dick Cheney on August 26, 2002, in his important speech before the Veterans of Foreign Wars, "Armed with these weapons of terror and a seat at the top of 10% of the world's oil reserves, Saddam Hussein could then be expected to seek domination of the entire Middle East, take control of a great portion of the world's energy supplies, directly threaten America's friends throughout the region, and subject the United States or any other nation to nuclear blackmail." Stripped to its essence, this is a direct invocation of the Carter Doctrine.

To underscore this, it is useful to compare Cheney's VFW speech to his comments 12 years earlier, following the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, before the Senate Armed Services Committee: "Iraq controlled 10% of the world's reserves prior to the invasion of Kuwait. Once Saddam Hussein took Kuwait, he doubled that to approximately 20% of the world's known oil reserves.... Once he acquired Kuwait and deployed an army as large as the one he possesses [on the border of Saudi Arabia], he was clearly in a position to dictate the future of worldwide energy policy, and that gave him a stranglehold on our economy and on that of most of the other nations of the world as well." The atmospherics may have changed since 1990, but we are still dealing with the Carter Doctrine: Saddam must be removed because of the potential threat he poses to the free flow of oil from the Persian Gulf to the U.S. and its allies.

The second administration objective springs from the language employed by Cheney in his 1990 testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee: whoever controls the flow of Persian Gulf oil has a "stranglehold" not only on our economy but also "on that of most of that of the other nations of the world as well." This is a powerful image, and perfectly describes the administration's thinking about the Gulf area, except in reverse: by serving as the dominant power in the Gulf, WE maintain a "stranglehold" over the economies of other nations. This gives us extraordinary leverage in world affairs, and explains to some degree why states like Japan, Britain, France, and Germany--states that are even more dependent on Persian Gulf oil than we are--defer to Washington on major international issues (like Iraq) even when they disagree with us.

Maintenance of a stranglehold over Persian Gulf oil is also consistent with the administration's declared goal of attaining permanent military superiority over all other nations. If you read administration statements on U.S. national security policy, you will find that one theme stands out above all others: the United States must prevent any potential rival from ever reaching the point where it could compete with the United States on something resembling equal standing. As articulated in "The National Security Strategy of the United States of America" (released by President Bush in September 2002), this principle holds that American forces must be "strong enough to dissuade potential adversaries from pursuing a military build-up in hopes of surpassing, or equaling, the power of the United States."

One way to accomplish this, of course, is to pursue advances in technology that allow the United States to remain ahead of all potential rivals in military systems--which is what the administration hopes to accomplish by adding tens of billions of dollars to the Department of Defense budget. Another way to do this is maintain a stranglehold on the economy of potential rivals, so that they will refrain from challenging us out of fear of being choked to death through the denial of vital energy supplies. Japan and the European countries are already in this vulnerable position, and will remain so for the foreseeable future; but now China is also moving into this position, as it becomes increasingly dependent on oil from the Persian Gulf. Like the U.S., China is running out of oil, and, like us, it has nowhere to go to make up the difference except the Gulf. But since WE control access to the Gulf, and China lacks the power to break our stranglehold, we can keep China in a vulnerable, subordinate position indefinitely. As I see it, then, the removal of Saddam Hussein and his replacement by someone beholden to the United States is a key part of a broader U.S. strategy aimed at assuring permanent American global dominance. Or, as Michael Ignatieff put it in his seminal essay on America's emerging empire, the concentration of so much oil in the Gulf "makes it what a military strategist would call the empire's center of gravity" ("The Burden," The New York Times Magazine, January 5, 2003).

And finally, there is the issue of America's long-term energy dilemma. The problem is as follows: The United States relies on oil to supply about 40% of its energy requirements, more than any other source. At one time, this country relied almost entirely on domestic oil to supply its needs; but our need for oil is growing all the time and our domestic fields--among the oldest in the world--are rapidly being exhausted. So our need for imported oil will grow with each passing year. And the more we turn to foreign sources for our oil, the more we will have to turn to the Persian Gulf, because most of the world's untapped oil--at least two-thirds of it--is located in the Gulf area. We can of course rip up Alaska and extract every drop of oil there, but that would reduce our dependence on imported oil by only about 1-2 percentage points--an insignificant amount. We could also rely for a share of our oil on non-Gulf suppliers like Russia, Venezuela, the Caspian Sea states, and Africa, but they have much less oil than the Persian Gulf countries and they are using it up faster. So, the more you look into the future, the greater will become our dependence on the Gulf.

Now, at the current time, U.S. dependence on Persian Gulf oil means, in all practical terms, American dependence on Saudi Arabia, because Saudi Arabia has more oil than everyone else--about 250 billion barrels, or one-fourth of world reserves. That gives Saudi Arabia a lot of indirect influence over our economy and our way of life. And, as you know, there are many people in this country who are resentful of the Saudis because of their financial ties to charities linked to Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda. More to the point, Saudi Arabia is a major backer of OPEC and tends to control the global availability of oil--something that makes American officials very nervous, especially when the Saudis use their power to put pressure on the United States to alter some of its policies, for example with respect to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

For all of these reasons, American leaders would like to reduce America's dependence on Saudi Arabia. But there is only ONE way to permanently reduce America's reliance on Saudi Arabia: by taking over Iraq and using it as an alternative source of petroleum. Iraq is the ONLY country in the world with sufficient reserves to balance Saudi Arabia: at least 112 billion barrels in proven reserves, and as much as 200-300 billion barrels of potential reserves. By occupying Iraq and controlling its government, the United States will solve its long-term oil-dependency dilemma for a decade or more. And this, I believe, is a major consideration in the administration's decisionmaking about Iraq.

It is this set of factors, I believe, that explain the Bush administration's determination to go to war with Iraq--not concern over WMD, terrorism, or the spread of democracy. But having said this, we need to ask: do these objectives, assuming they're the correct ones, still justify a war on Iraq? Some Americans may think so. There are, indeed, advantages to being positioned on the inside of a powerful empire with control over the world's second-largest supply of untapped petroleum. If nothing else, American motorists will be able to afford the gas for their SUVs, vans, and pick-up trucks for another decade, and maybe longer. There will also be lots of jobs in the military and in the military-industrial complex, or as representatives of American multinational corporations (although, with respect to the latter, I would not advise traveling in most of the rest of the world unless accompanied by a small army of bodyguards). But there will also be a price to pay. Empires tend to require the militarization of society, and that will entail putting more people into uniform, one way or another. It will also mean increased spending on war, and reduced spending on education and other domestic needs. It will entail more secrecy and intrusion into our private lives. All of this has to be entered into the equation. And if you ask me, empire is not worth the price.

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"I can't help thinking how supremely ungrateful so many nations of the world are to the U.S."

Not to mention some of its own citizens...

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Originally posted by Dave the Wonder Boy:
Setting aside international policy, American tourists have a reputation for being rude.

I've seen several news stories on this.

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I would strongly disagree. And have made a number of posts that, I submit, demonstrate why I disagree. I would hazard that the same could be said for "Dave the Wonder boy."

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Me too G-Money.....I strongly disagree too. That's just gibberish.

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Originally posted by JQ:
Does anyone disagree with these statements:

1. "The war was mainly motivated by oil."
2. "We never really cared about bringing Democracy to Iraq."

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