The UN, US and Iraq IV

"A single instance"! LOL.

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Sigh, guess that's par for the course.

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Or, maybe he was too stupid to realize he had it on him. I don't think there are too many genius level bombers blowing themselves into itty-bitty pieces.

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I guess some just can't get it through their heads that in that region carrying a passport is as unremarkable and wholly commonplace as might be carrying a driver's license or a student ID card elsewhere. Agenda-convenient preconceptions and personal prejudices have little tolerance for contravening fact.

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Tartarin,

Way back last evening........my post about what Bush said, was an exact quote. But I don't agree that it sounds literate, well maybe more literate than most of what he says (obviously he had some help with what to say and how to say it) but the thought is overly simplistic, as usual. I posted the link to the NPR site where you can listen to it, if you like. It's also what he said in the CNN report I heard as well. Maybe there's another sound bite out there. I didn't hear that one.

Here's the link again:

http://www.npr.org/rundowns/rundown.php?prgId=2&prgDate=27-Oct-2003

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My apologies if the link to this report has already been posted. If it has, I haven't seen it. And it's just been sent to me by email from a friend. I wonder, Timber if this doesn't point to a trend in which the President's own party and allies in the press are no longer buying his spin on the aftermath of the war. Or at least they can see that it's too thin for the American public to believe. I surely hope so. I find it especially interesting that it's written by Novak.

http://www.suntimes.com/cgi-bin/print.cgi

Quote:

War is worrying Republicans

October 20, 2003

BY ROBERT NOVAK SUN-TIMES COLUMNIST

The defeat on Iraq aid that the Senate handed President Bush on
Thursday, when normally dependable supporters defected, was presaged
four days earlier when the respected Republican chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee called on Bush to act more like a president. Sen. Richard Lugar's comments, unexpected in their bluntness, conveyed a major political message. Members of the president's party are really worried about the war.

Lugar's stance on NBC's ''Meet the Press'' was the exception among
Republicans in openly implying Bush is not in control. Nevertheless, GOP
senators returned from the weeklong Columbus Day recess reporting discontent by constituents. Defections by congressional Republicans in supporting loans to Iraq reflected deep unease.

That unease goes to the difficulty of waging a global war against terror. While building a democratic Iraq is laudable, not only Democrats question whether investment of blood and treasure in Iraq is directly related to that war. Hints by a prominent Pentagon adviser that Syria could be the next target for an overextended military seem even
further removed from directly assaulting terror.

Lugar, an elder Republican statesman who usually minds his words, was
the talk of Washington after his ''Meet the Press'' performance. As his
Democratic counterpart on Foreign Relations, Sen. Joseph Biden, delivered partisan slashes, Lugar offered no criticism. When Biden commanded Bush to ''take charge,''moderator Tim Russert asked whether that was good and necessary advice. ''Yes it is,'' Lugar said. ''It's very necessary.''

Republican insiders have been talking all week about what came next from Lugar: ''I concur with my colleague. The president has to be president. That means the president over the vice president and over these secretaries [of state and defense].'' Lugar had just had enough of the administration's divided voices, especially Dick Cheney's, which he called ''very, very tough and strident.''

Other senior senators share Lugar's concern. Sen. John Warner, chairman
of the Armed Services Committee, is reported to be unhappy (though it is
unlikely he ever would go public). Many GOP lawmakers who do not share Lugar's opinions have their own concerns.

Freshman Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina has no doubt Bush is in
charge. He knows from personal experience because the president tried to dissuade him from supporting a proposal to lend Iraq half of $20 billion in reconstruction money. Graham never was intimidated by party leaders during eight years in the House and has not changed in the Senate. He feels there is nothing the American people should feel ashamed about in lending some money to oil-rich Iraq.

Sen. Sam Brownback, a conservative Bush loyalist from Kansas, also
affirms the president is in control. But at town hall meetings during
the recess, he felt the public's alarm over casualties in Iraq. Like Graham, he defied Bush as the Senate voted 51-47 (with Lugar and Biden both backing Bush in this instance).

Irritation with Bush's intractable opposition to loans spread to his
strongest supporters in the House reflecting Iraqi war weariness. Rep.
Zach Wamp of Tennessee, a leading advocate of loans, was called to the White House to be lectured. That turned Wamp around. However, other conservative Republicans -- led by Representatives Mike Pence of Indiana and Dana Rohrabacher of California -- rounded up votes against the White House.

Concern by Republican constituents over American soldiers being picked
off one by one suggests deep-seated hostility to new battlefields. A new
combat area was suggested in a little-noticed AP interview in Jerusalem last weekend with Richard Perle, a Defense Policy Board member and adviser to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. ''We have problems with the Syrians who continue to support terrorism,'' said Perle, adding ominously, ''Syria is militarily very weak.''

That's what Perle was saying about Iraq two years ago, and he was
exactly right in conventional terms. It is postwar worries that haunt
Dick Lugar and other thoughtful Republicans, who do not relish Syria as yet another fighting front in the war against terrorism.

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Lola -- I heard a quick clip, maybe ten words, a kind of aside, in his "I'm (ah'm) just a barbecue king" voice. Your quote sounded kind of, more, maybe, normal? Also what I heard was one short sentence -- so why didn't I write it down? In kitchen, doing something, and my memory is in a downward spiral, hope for improvement when puppy allows plenty sleep!!

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Tartarin,

We heard different things, then. The one I heard was staged, he was sitting in his president's chair (on CNN TV) at the white house and looked rehearsed. Best of luck on the puppy.

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Yeah -- this didn't sound rehearsed or "for the record."

Very nice puppy, by the way... But she's a kid and I'm old and grey...

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Received from a friend in Australia.
*****************************
"I feel like God wants me to run for president. I can't explain it, but I sense my country is going to need me ... I know it won't be easy on me or my family, but God wants me to do it."

-- George W. Bush, speaking in 2000 and quoted in Stephen Mansfield's soon-to-be-published The Faith of George W. Bush (Tarcher/Penguin).

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c.i., you can read about it here in this Didion article from the New York Review of Books

The third is another essay "Mr. Bush and the Divine" by Joan Didion
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/16749

and discuss it here:

http://www.able2know.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=13977&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0

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Dubya's surprise news conferance this morning, the first one for over three months was laden with his usual gaffes, stumbling over answers like a schoolboy taking a pop quiz. This man shouldn't be allowed out in public. His overtures to repair the damage of his ignorance in Asian foreign policy
is commendable but could be too little too late. His rationalization of the daily loss of life is not commendable. He hasn't just cracked open Pandora's box to see what's inside. Let's just hope it doens't explode in his face.

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Actually, LW, I kind of hope it does explode-- but timing is everyting. I'd prefer a White House, at this time, which remains willfully blind and deaf, not one which is plotting how to overcome bad press, not one which is planning its next marketing campaign, not one which is pressuring media execs to cut out the questioning. Instead, let the admin be very surprised indeed at the contents of Pandora's box on election day, 2004.

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LOL, Tartarin........very funny

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I was being too generous, huh! Laughing

(It's my nature).

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Did anyone notice footage of Rice standing in the background, looking like a pissed of parent? I am beginning to think she might really be his minder! Shocked

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Interesting choice of words, hobit. You might have said "Nanny," but no, you were more polite.

As far as the passport thing. Would the passport really be completely blown to bits in the blast, necessarily? Isn't there a chance, Craven, that enough of it could remain to identify the bomber as a Syrian? Often the identity of the bomber is announced in the news, but I'm not sure how they know.

He might have had it with him because he thought he might have had to run away if something went wrong and he figured he better keep it in his pocket. Or, maybe he was so anxious about the whole ordeal that he forgot to get rid of it, or he didn't maybe know how to get rid of it, you know, leave it at home? or toss it in the trash somewhere? tear it up into little bits and scatter it in waste bins all over town before attending the mass murder? so he got all muddled and gave himself away accidentally for the same reason he still had his passport, or it might have been a unconsciously motivated passive aggressive act of defiance against an unfeeling maniacal authority that would order him to blow himself up. Or perhaps his mixed feelings were more conscious, and he hadn't made up his mind whether to turn himself in, or alternatively to decide at the last minute to go ahead and do the deed.........but his wish to live overcame his wish to be rewarded later after death...or his intellect just told him it was the wrong thing to do. I suppose some suicide bombers might feel reluctant to do as they're told at the same time be frightened of the punishment that comes when he backs off and thinks of his own skin and the skins of others. Well, I guess it could happen. After all, look at me, I was raised to be a fanatic, but I'm a psychoanalyst instead.

OR, he could be a plant for the purpose of providing PR for the Pres. No one would believe this possibility except this admin has lied so many times now, that we're beginning to suspect everything that happens oh so very serendipitously to be another in the series. This WH is so slick, it's like a sad little sow in a pig troth. The situation in Iraq makes me sick. If only we'd been wise enough to not start a war.

All of the above is my opinion.

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Quote:

Isn't there a chance, Craven, that enough of it could remain to identify the bomber as a Syrian?

Sure.

Quote:

Often the identity of the bomber is announced in the news, but I'm not sure how they know.

Usually from those left behind.

In any case I have no idea why anyone thinks the bombers have any intention of hiding their identity at all. Very few suicide bombers make any attempt to be anonymous, the overwhelming majority take steps to make sire they are identified.

Quote:

OR, he could be a plant for the purpose of providing PR for the Pres.

Dunno why it'd be worth it. There are two ways I can think of it helping the admin off teh top of my head.

One is to assert that the attacks are foresign nationals. That helps portray the attacks as being simple terrorism rather than resistance. The downside is that it also highlights that the war in Iraw has attracted and craeted terrorists.

Since it has long been known that militants have been entering Iraq I don;t think this would be much of a PR coup at all for the admin.

The second way this can help the admin is in their posturing in regard to Syria. But their positions are currently not setup to capitalize on it so I don't think this can be condtrued as having been helpful for political capital at all, much less having been been intentionally fabricated to generate political capital.

My take is that the explanations are more pedestrian than exotic, that the guy simply was carrying his passport just like anyone else, and that he didn't care about his identity being concealed or revealed.

An elaborate hoax is possible, of course, but the details of this incident make it very tough to pull off. Many were in the loop and it would be a very messy conspiracy.

And since there is no benefit from this, the motivation for a hoax would be hard to prove.

This situation is an eyesore to the Bush admin, every attact undermines the progress and more importantly (for political reasons) it casts the rebuilding in the very negative light that the administration attacked the media for.

They are getting what they can out if the attack (by highlighting the foreign element) but this is hardly something positive for the admin.

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Could it be that those sneaky terrorist dudes have several authentic in appearance passports in their terrorist dop kits for whatever reason?
Nahhhh .....why would say, an Iranian or a Saudi want to make people think they were from Syria or any other place?
Give credit where credit is due Wink

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Why would an Iranian or Saudi want to spoof Syrian identity?

Dunno. There is no credible reason I can think of. I can think of why someone would want to spoof Saudi identity but not Syrian.

How did the second guessing start in this passport case BTW?

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The UN, US and Iraq IV

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