The US, The UN and Iraq

Faith, Hope and Charity!

Peace on Earth and Goodwill Toward All Mankind!

Happy New Year All!

I'm with you, Blatham.

We too often forget that in a democracy -- excuse me, democratic republic -- these subterfuges are committed in our name and we share responsibility for them. We can't pass them off as the king's prerogative. (And at the same time, we all getting boinked.)

c.i., those are for real documents, obtained by reporters and researchers under the Freedom of Information Act and/or declassified archival sources, including The Congressional Report and The Government Accounting Office.



timber

Roger

You are a formidable debater...even arguments you don't make, I find compelling.

I wouldn't have thought it likely that anyone here might find the spread of chemical agents justifiable, though clearly certain agencies, individuals, and chemical companies did. Still, the point re subterfuge that timber made is valid - it would be naive to think it unnecessary.

But, on the other hand, if we are not to be naive regarding our hopes for both representative democracy and the 'goodness' of US involvement in the world, then I think we have to ceaselessly demand honesty from our own governments, and be merciless when we find them speaking falsely or witholding information.

The stated reasons for US involvement in Iraq continue to change. Yesterday, we had a new one - President Bush said it was to protect the US economy. Why did he say this? In aid of full and forthright honesty to his citizens such that we might better think through our government's situation and policies and then share what we think ought to be done? Why did Rumsfelt, in all the news conferences and interviews he has done over that last year, not say "Actually, we are partly guilty ourselves here, I'm included, in helping to provide this regime with chemical agents"?

To the degree that these guys lie to us, or tell us half-truths, or hide embarrassing facts, or ignore the opinions of those who entrusted them to office...to that degree, they become what representative democracy seeks to avoid.

Falseness of this sort undercuts everything - our own confidence and engagement with the democratic process, and particularly relevantly now, our credibility as well'intentioned agents for social betterment in the world.

I would like to present what I perceive to be a monumental "fact" that no one on this or in the world who is so critical of our current policies seems to comprehend or "if" they comprehend it they discount it because it doesn't suit their agenda.

This "fact" negates the requirement of the past to "cozy" up to certain leaders of countries that occupied strategic locations in our global strategy. The men who were involved in these nefarious adventures on behalf of the US Gov't may or may not have believed in the perceived objectives and because they had no crystal ball, could not envision the impact of their actions. This is especailly true if the actual intent was to provide cultures of these evil diseases to identify such after a possible attack. Since hindsight is always 20-20 it is so easy for monday morning quarterbacks to sit in judgement and condemn such actions in the darkest manner. My point is that all such questionable actions took place prior to the collapse of Communist Russia and our emergence as the only superpower.
Our defensive and offensive actions taken to thwart the aggressive actions of the Soviets and to prevent them from gaining any advantage that would be fatal to us were justified by our spy masters(manipulators) as being necessary for national security.
In the interests of national security was a coverall for even the most heinous of activities.

I would like to take the position that since we are now recognized by all as the only superpower and since there is no longer a requirement to form questionable "deals" with tin pot dictators, our gov't should be held to a higher standard of conduct. The manipulators are still there but perhaps they will crawl back into the woodwork.

I truly think that in this new year, our gov't will respond with very carefully considered actions,as evidenced by our recent actions toward North Korea.

Happy New Year All

VERY interesting shifts yesterday in the talk of war with Iraq.

W, as well as a few talking heads from the administration are now saying, "We hope we can resolve this without war," when they were saying very recently, "It appears as though we will have to wage war."

It is almost like they know something we don't.

Is Saddam talking privately about exile, or do we think Saddam's assassination is imminent?

Does anyone else think this change in rhetoric points to something new?

Lash

Yesterday also, Kofi Annan stated that there is no reason or argument for war as Iraq is allowing unimpeded access.

If it's backpeddling, they'll pay the political price for it. Let's assume for their sake that there is something happening. If it doesn't include the end of Saddam's regime, that won't bode well for the administration's rhetoric unless they can characterize it as "our diplomacy worked." I don't see how with all the doubles that they'd ever be able to assassinate Saddam and that could be a bigger mistake than an invasion. I don't believe this adminstration would wisely change the policy of assassinating foreign leaders. If the CIA has an Iraqi insider who would appear to be doing it without our instigation, he'd have to kill himself.

I believe it has always been the stated aim and sincere wish of this Administration that hostilities might be avoided. It would be prudent for them to prepare to prevail should diplomatic endeavors fail.

Mereley announcing to a bully that you are displeased and possess a gun is nowhere near as effective as shoving that gun in his face, cocking it, and shouting "Halt!"



timber

perception= "agenda" is that something left over from slick willie?

I received the following from a high school friend. I'm talking somebody I knew almost fifty years ago. I think it has relevance to our discussion, so I'll post it here. c.i.
**************************
Subject: In honor of American Restraint


No matter what your views on President Bush's statement of upcoming war, this, from an English journalist, is very interesting. For those of you not familiar with the UK's Daily Mirror, this is a notoriously left-wing daily
that is normally not supportive of the Colonials across the Atlantic.

Tony Parsons, Daily Mirror September 11, 2002 ONE year ago, the world
witnessed a unique kind of broadcasting -- the mass murder of thousands,
live on television. As a lesson in the pitiless cruelty of the human race,
September 11 was up there, with Pol Pot's mountain of skulls in Cambodia, or the skeletal bodies stacked like garbage in the Nazi concentration camps.

An unspeakable act so cruel, so calculated and so utterly merciless that
surely the world could agree on one thing -- nobody deserves this fate.
Surely there could be consensus: the victims were truly innocent, the
perpetrators truly evil.

But to the world's eternal shame, 9/11 is increasingly seen as America's
comeuppance. Incredibly, anti-Americanism has increased over the last year.
There has always been a simmering resentment to the USA in this country -- too loud, too rich, too full of themselves and so much happier than Europeans - but it has become an epidemic. And it seems incredible to me.

More than that, it turns my stomach.
America is this country's greatest friend and our staunchest ally. We are
bonded to the US by culture, language and blood. A little over half a
century ago, around half a million Americans died for our freedoms, as well astheir own. Have we forgotten so soon? And exactly a year ago, thousands of ordinary men, women and children -- not just Americans, but from dozens of countries -- were butchered by a small group of religious fanatics. Are we so quick to betray them? What touched the heart about those who died in the twin towers and on the planes was that we recognized them. Young fathers and mothers, somebody's son and somebody's daughter, husbands and wives, and children, some unborn.
And these people brought it on themselves? And their nation is to blame for their meticulously planned slaughter? These days you don't have to be some dust-encrusted nut job in Kabul or Karachi or Finsbury Park to see Americaas the Great Satan. The anti-American alliance is made up of self-loathing liberals who blame the Americans for every ill in the Third World, and conservatives suffering from power-envy, bitter that the world's only superpower can do what it likes without having to ask permission. The truthis that America has behaved with enormous restraint since September 11.
Remember, remember. Remember the gut-wrenching tapes of weeping men phoning their wives to say, "I love you," before they were burned alive.
Remember those people leaping to their deaths from the top of burning
skyscrapers. Remember the hundreds of firemen buried alive. Remember the smiling face of that beautiful little girl who was on one of the planes with her mum.
Remember, remember -- and realize that America has never retaliated for
9/11 in anything like the way it could have. So a few al-Qaeda tourists got
locked without a trial in Camp X-ray? Pass the Kleenex...

So some Afghan wedding receptions were shot up after they merrily fired
their semiautomatics in a sky full of American planes? A shame, but maybe next time they should stick to confetti. AMERICA could have turned a large chunk of the world into a parking lot. That it didn't is a sign of strength. American voices are already being raised against attacking Iraq - that's what a democracy is for. How many in the Islamic world will ever give a minute's silence for the slaughtered innocents of 9/11?
How many Islamic leaders will have the guts to say that the mass murder of 9/11 was an abomination?
When the news of 9/11 broke on the West Bank, those freedom-loving
Palestinians were dancing in the street. America watched all of that -- and
didn't push the button. We should thank the stars that America is the most
powerful nation in the world. I still find it incredible that 9/11 did not provoke all-out war. Not a "war on terrorism." A real war.
The fundamentalist dudes are talking about "opening the gates of hell," if
America attacks Iraq. Well, America could have opened the gates of hell
like you wouldn't believe. The US is the most militarily powerful nation
that ever strode the face of the earth. The campaign in Afghanistan may
have been less than perfect and the planned war on Iraq may be misconceived.
But don't blame America for not bringing peace and light to these wretched
countries.
How many democracies are there in the Middle East, or in the Muslim world?
You can count them on the fingers of one hand-assuming you haven't had any chopped off for minor shoplifting. I love America, yet America is hated. I guess that makes me Bush's poodle. But I would rather be a dog in New York City than a Prince in Riyadh. Above all, America is hated because it is what every country wants to be -- rich, free, strong, open, optimistic. It is the best friend this country ever had and we should start remembering that.

Or do you really think the USA is the root of all evil? Tell it to the
loved ones of the men and women who leaped to their death from the burningtowers. Tell it to the nursing mothers whose husbands died on one of the hijacked planes, or were ripped apart in a collapsing skyscraper. And tell it to the hundreds of young widows whose husbands worked for the New York Fire Department. To our shame, George Bush gets a worse press than Saddam Hussein. Once we were told that Saddam gassed the Kurds, tortured his own people and set up rape-camps in Kuwait.
Now we are told he likes Quality Street. Save me the orange center, oh
mighty one!

Remember, remember, September 11.

One of the greatest atrocities in human history was committed against
America.

No, do more than remember. Never forget.

Well stated, Perception!

Cicerone imposter--
Thank you so much. Sometimes, I feel like everyone has forgotten.
Very appreciative.

C.I.

Thanks for posting that great article from as you---the most notorious "left wing" newspaper in the UK---which makes it all the more relevant.

Amid Brutal Poverty in Iraq, a Favored Few Enjoy Riches
Tue Dec 31, 3:00 PM ET Add Top Stories - The New York Times to My Yahoo!


By JOHN F. BURNS The New York Times

BAGHDAD, Iraq Perhaps the keenest measure of impoverishment in Saddam Hussein (news - web sites)'s Iraq can be taken from the scenes at places like Liberation Square in central Baghdad.

For 30 years, the square has had a chilling place in the collective memory of most Iraqis, as the site of the public hangings, in January 1969, of nine Iraqi Jews and five other Iraqis accused of spying for Israel. Their gallows were inspected, just before the hangings, by Mr. Hussein, then vice president, who toured the square in an open car.

These days, Liberation Square like similar sites in all Iraqi cities has been transformed into a vast flea market. Here, the sellers of household bric-a-brac, of plumbing fixtures, of postcards and old magazines, of 45- and 78-r.p.m. records, of plastic sandals, of anything with even vestigial monetary value are not the illiterate underclass so much as the newly destitute middle class.

On one recent morning, a visitor strolling the sidewalks met lawyers, engineers, teachers, writers, musicians and doctors, some of them jobless, others seeking a few extra dollars to augment salaries rendered virtually worthless by a devaluation of the Iraqi dinar of around 8,000 percent over 20 years.

One of the most poignant stories was that of Fuad Zeiki Ibrahim, a handsome, gray-haired man of 45, who said he had been captured early in the Iran-Iraq war and spent eight years in an Iranian military prison before returning in 1990 to a veteran's pension equivalent to about $4 a month.

On this, he said, he was trying to support a family of seven. Mr. Ibrahim dispensed with the usual praise of Mr. Hussein, whose beaming portrait, on a concrete plinth, looked down as he spoke. "My life has no meaning; when I came home, I found that there was nothing left for me here in my country," he said.

Not far away from the square, at Baghdad's thriving car market in the Murad Arusafa district on the city's east side, showrooms are filled bumper-to-bumper with luxury cars. Eager salesmen offer a brand new, gleaming Landcruiser for $42,000; a top-of-the-line Mercedes-Benz for $72,000. A vintage Ferrari is also available, along with new Porsches and a Lamborghini.

Saddam Hussein's Iraq is a place of brutal and potentially explosive social divisions. Among the country's 22 million people, a favored few have access to the most extravagant luxuries. In general, most seem blithely indifferent to others' suffering in a society where a vast majority of people have been reduced to penury by two decades of war and sanctions.

The sanctions, requiring United Nations (news - web sites) approval for Iraq's imports of medicines and other goods, were imposed after Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in 1990 and have continued until now, pending resolution of the dispute over Iraq's banned-weapons programs.

For any visitor spending a few weeks in Iraq, it is this contrast in lifestyles between Mr. Hussein's elite and other Iraqis that seems as telling a characteristic of the society as any other, besides a pervasive climate of fear with no obvious counterpart in any country, except possibly North Korea (news - web sites).

In this atmosphere of dread, with Iraqis forever terrified that their dissident thoughts will attract the attention of Mr. Hussein's secret police, the self-indulgence of those with favored positions has echoes, for an outsider, of Bob Fosse's 1972 movie "Cabaret," with its depiction of the decadence in mid-1930's Berlin that accompanied the rise of Hitler.

Much of the decadence in Iraq is out of sight, or, at best, barely glimpsed by those not within the elite. Those inside the country who speak of it do so in anxious whispers, and those outside who tell of it are mostly people who have taken flight from Mr. Hussein's rule.

In these circumstances, sorting fact from rumor is all but impossible. Still, there has been little variance over the years in the accounts of sinister goings-on many of them involving coerced women, sexual excess and violence that filter out of the villas and palaces of those who have the protection of Mr. Hussein.

But even taken on the evidence visible to all Iraqis, what has developed in Mr. Hussein's 23 years in power is a society of social and economic extremes.

If any incident in recent weeks captured this more powerfully than others, it was on the day in October when the Iraqi leader staged a one-candidate referendum, featuring himself, that was officially announced as having produced a 100 percent "yes" vote among the 11 million Iraqis who turned out to endorse a new seven-year term.

On referendum day, Iraqi state television showed the president's eldest son, Uday Saddam Hussein, who is the focus of many of the more lurid stories circulating in Baghdad about excessive behavior within the ruling elite, casting his ballot.

The younger Mr. Hussein, 38, was shown driving up to the polling station in a late-model Rolls-Royce Corniche, one of the world's most expensive cars, and handing his ballot through the driver's window, in seigneurial style, to a boy assigned to place it in the box.

It was the sort of show-off gesture that has been shunned by the younger brother, Qusay, 36, who has lived more modestly, or at least less visibly, and has won favor as his father's heir apparent.

With the universal vows of fealty to Mr. Hussein and his sons that have been achieved by years of terror, it is a matter of surmise how such behavior goes down among millions of impoverished Iraqis.

Until matters started to spiral downward with Mr. Hussein's decision to start an eight-year war with Iran in 1980, and the disastrous invasion of Kuwait that followed in 1990, Iraq's oil revenues at $26.5 billion in 1980, nearly three times the level of 20 years later had made it one of the wealthiest Arab countries, with striking successes in health care, education, sanitation, agriculture, employment and a fast-growing urban middle class.

Now, the levels of social distress are pitiable.

In Saddam City, a sprawling slum on Baghdad's outskirts that is home to a teeming population of about two million Shiite Muslims, small children can be seen clambering amid mountains of refuse at garbage dumps looking for scraps of food or other salvageable items for barter.

In recent months, Western reporters asking for permission from the Information Ministry to visit Saddam City have frequently been refused, apparently because of concerns that they might stumble across pockets of dissent, or even underground resistance groups, which have found a breeding ground among Shiites who are a majority in Iraq but mostly excluded from power by the Sunni Muslim minority represented by Mr. Hussein.

Begging is common, everywhere, among tousled street urchins, mothers with infants clutched to their breast, widows in black cloaks and scarves and toothless old men.

But another country, and another Baghdad also exist. In up-market districts like Arasat, Karada and Mansour, money can buy almost any luxury. Merchants offer Armani suits, Escada blouses, L'Oréal perfumes, Sony digital television sets, Burberry scarves, $2,500 American-made, double-door refrigerators and $20,000 swimming pools as big as small lagoons.

Cruising down the main shopping streets at night are expensively groomed men and women in Mercedes-Benzes, Jaguars and BMW's, many of whom make their purchases from wads of American dollars, and return home to sprawling villas that brood behind steel gates guarded by men with Kalashnikov rifles.

In Iraq, people like this rarely give interviews, so where their money comes from is a matter for speculation. But less favored Iraqis have little trouble providing theories.

While war and sanctions destroyed many legitimate businesses, those Iraqis say, they created boundless opportunities for black-marketeering that were quickly monopolized by those with connections to the most powerful men in the land.

One of the most lucrative enterprises has been oil smuggling, in tankers that run to Syria, Jordan and Turkey, earning billions of dollars in revenues that outflank the controls on Iraq's main oil sales.

The best vantage points for watching the beneficiaries of this wealth are the swank restaurants that line the main streets of Arasat and Karada. There, in glitzy interiors with marbled fountains, and in alfresco settings around crystal-clear pools, diners can choose from thick menus that offer European and Arab specialties, and relax to live music.

On a stroll through Arasat on a balmy evening, the sight of the shoppers and diners and the young tyros in their open-topped sports cars was too much, ultimately, for an Information Ministry "minder" who had spent weeks in a relentless advocacy of everything wrought by Mr. Hussein.

Asking to be excused, the man said he felt unwell at the thought of having to support his family on a monthly salary of about $50 while a minority privileged by their links to the powerful indulged themselves so conspicuously. "It is gangster business," he said, as he turned on his heels to depart. "Gangster business, pure and simple."

In a society run on such grounds, human lives can easily be subordinated to political and personal expediency. In one Baghdad cancer ward, an 11-year-old boy lay stick thin and pasty of complexion, his lymphocytic leukemia untreated for want of the drugs commonly used in chemotherapy treatment.

On the ward, the Iraqi doctor gave the explanation Mr. Hussein's government has offered for a decade: that the sanctions had blocked the import of necessary cancer drugs.

It is an allegation rejected by Washington, which has said that Iraq has been free to order any cancer drugs it needs.

But something in the doctor's uneasy manner suggested he might have something else to say, so a visitor asked if he could discuss his own experience with lymphoma privately, away from the minder monitoring the conversation.

Over the minder's protests, the doctor agreed. Retreating to a tiny, windowless office, he closed the door, sat down, and spoke hurriedly, in German, at barely a whisper. Pointing to the walls, he drew a finger across his throat, indicating he was speaking at risk of his life.

When the visitor asked him whether the drugs required were not available in Baghdad's thriving black market for medical drugs, the doctor said: almost all cancer drugs are available, but at a cost.

In the boy's case, he said, the cycles of chemotherapy required would have cost $2,500, an unimaginable sum for the parents of the boy, a $15-a-month soldier in Mr. Hussein's army and his wife. And so, he said, the boy would die, probably within a day or two.

What if a stranger were to go to the black market and buy the drugs? Again, the doctor drew his finger across his throat. In Iraq, he seemed to be saying, even acts of charity can be construed as conspiracy against the state.

I am not unmindful of the length here, but beyond rhetoric, life in Iraq is harrowing.

It makes me think the reason W seems newly peaceful, is he knows his battle with Saddam will be taken care of by means other than war. My bet is on the Iraqis. They certainly have a bigger stake in the oust of Saddam than anyone else on the planet.

Dys

I won't address that one----could lead to many distractions on a perfectly good thread.

Well done, dys.



timber

A Cut-and-Paste of an old post of mine from another forum.






timber

timberlandko: in line with your post may i suggest "Canticle for Liebowitz" by Walter Miller Jr.

Of course you may, dys. Thankyou.



timber