The UN, US and Iraq IV

Sofia, there is an exampple, and I have seen others elsewhere, some from folks at this forum, who simply refuse to believe these things happened at all. Instead, they claim they are the fiction of a media that hates Bush, God, Freedom and polyester leisure suits.
As for honour killings, I stand (or rather sit, at the moment) opposed to such actions, along with female circumcision, and killing of family members for betraying a tribal affiliation. I would hope that, should efforts to democratze Iraq be successful, such practices would cease.
Timber, your comment about being proud of what the US did in Iraq confuses me. If you mean you are proud the US removed Hussein and ostensibly intends to grant sovereignty to the people, then I would agree. But, what of the destruction and violence that have befallen Iraq due to these actions? Should we not hang our collective hads in shame for the consequences? Patting oneself on the back for our "strength" while others suffer because of it is not the action of a "moral nation," a phrase that has been oft-used by the far right in the past.

Sidebar here, re "Barbarian" ... the Romans used the term perjoratively as description of the "Uncivilized", largely Germanic hordes, whose language and speech patterns the word mocked; the implication was that to "Civilized Romans" the fur-clad foreigners sounded as though they were saying "Bar-bar-bar-bar"

And the Romans got it from the Greeks. The Greeks considered the Romans Barbarians. Go figure. Personally, I think you are all barbarians. I am the only civilized person on this board. So sayeth the might Hobbbit.

bob, I don't deny the tragic, wasteful cost of war, or discount it. I point, however, to the simple fact, horrible though it may have been for some, that no war in modern times, perhaps no war ever, has been conducted with so much humane concern, effort, and success in the matter of minimizing civilian death and damage. More people by far were killed by Allied bombs in a single raid on any number of occaisions during WWII, in both Europe and Asia, than by all causes in Iraq since the war began. Our current capabilities in the matter of indiscriminately spewing death and destruction far surpass our sophistication in the practice back then. We took great pains and undertook considerable risk, expense, and inconvenience to assure there would be an intact Iraqi society to reconstruct. We easily could simply have "started from scratch", so to speak. I'm quite proud we took the more humane approach.

And rationalization will return the approx 10,000.
Those people are dead, if you feel better by calling thier death hyperbole then go with it although IMHO it is denial.

It's somewhat a little bit ironic that the Greeks used 'barbarian" at first (?) as synonym for the Persian invaders :wink:

"Bar Bar Bar
Bar Bar Barbara Ann ... "


Forgive me .. a little Beach Boys moment there.

Yeah, searching, ehem, surfing USA

Well, I am glad that their honor allowed them to die well. I am also glad that it wasn't the 100,000's that it could have been if we had wanted to. Hell, we could have flattened the entire country into a nice glassy parking lot. But, being the barbarian oil mongers we are, we diceded to use precision strike missiles and bombs instead.

Maybe you can go in a corner and weep for the 10's of thousands that died before the war. Maybe you can find a place in your heart for them next to the hatred you feel for Bush and America.

They have been mourned for. But your comment implies that the proper response for one who doesn't "hate Bush and America" is to (at best) ignore their deaths or (even worse) celebrate them. Don't you find that just a bit odd?

Gotta wonder if this is "Cry Havoc! and let slip the dogs of war", or "Send in the clowns"

The clowns are already there. The next administration may have to include stableboys to clean up the horse poop!

That's pretty funny, timber. I have a whole week of media and input here and stuff I want to talk about. I don't think you guys have day jobs.

There were two or three worthy pieces in the NYTimes today. But I must ponder and write carefully.

Kara, my "dayjob" pretty much requires starin' at computer monitors for hours at a time. I keep a couple of ticker scrolls and wire service news alert feeds goin' on a couple different screens just to break the monotony, and I visit websites from one machine or another when actual business doesn't intrude.

And the CIA wants the White House investigated for outing an agent. The White House appears to be heading into some rough seas, and these seas for rough from their own people

BillW, I'm patiently waiting for that to happen.

http://moveon.org/

For what it's worth.

Cheney's Ties to Halliburton
By Mike Allen
The Washington Post

Friday 26 September 2003

Deferred Compensation Package Counts, Report Indicates.

A Congressional Research Service report released yesterday concluded that federal ethics laws treat Vice President Cheney's annual deferred compensation checks and unexercised stock options as continuing financial interests in the Halliburton Co.

Democrats have aggressively challenged Cheney's claim that he has no financial ties to Halliburton, despite those arrangements.

The Houston-based energy conglomerate has been awarded more than $2 billion in contracts for rebuilding Iraq, including one worth $1.22 billion that was awarded on a noncompetitive basis.

The report, from the law division of the congressional research arm of the Library of Congress, said deferred salary or compensation received from a private corporation -- as well as unexercised stock options -- may represent a continuing financial interest as defined by federal ethics laws.

The seven-page report, dated Monday, did not name Cheney or Halliburton, but addressed the general legal question. It was prepared at the request of Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.), who said Cheney should "stop dodging the issue with legalese, and acknowledge his continued financial ties with Halliburton to the American people."

Cheney, who was Halliburton's chairman and chief executive, has disclosed the payments and the 433,333 options. The report suggests no illegality.

Catherine Martin, Cheney's public affairs director, said: "The vice president has no financial interest in Halliburton. He has no stake in the company. He will in no way benefit from the rise or fall of Halliburton's stock price or the success or failure of the company."

Cheney said on NBC's "Meet the Press" on Sept. 14 that he has "no financial interest in Halliburton of any kind and haven't had now for over three years." His assertion came during a discussion of Halliburton's contracts in Iraq. Cheney said he had "severed all my ties with the company, gotten rid of all my financial interests."

Democrats disputed that because Cheney received deferred compensation of $147,579 in 2001 and $162,392 in 2002, with payments scheduled to continue for three more years.

In response, Cheney's office said he had purchased an insurance policy so he would be paid even if Halliburton failed. And his office also has announced he has agreed to donate the after-tax proceeds from his stock options to three charities.

However, the congressional report said that neither the insurance policy nor the charity designation would change the public official's disclosure obligation.

The continuing controversy over Cheney's statement puts him in the position of drawing criticism to the White House. In the past, White House officials have considered him a reassuring figure for viewers and voters.

Bush issued what amounted to a correction of another statement Cheney made on "Meet the Press." When asked about the possibility of a connection between former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein and the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Cheney said, "We don't know." Three days later, Bush said in response to a question that the government has no evidence of such a link.

The liberal group American Family Voices has spent more than $300,000 to run ads about Halliburton's connection to the administration. The group said the commercials are effective for raising money. The ads -- on cable in Washington and on broadcast television in New Hampshire and battleground states of the Midwest -- began last week and will run for at least another week, the group said.

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More refutation of the "evidence" that led to the war.Chalabi's lies

http://www.reason.com/interviews/minaret.shtml

This is an interview by Tim Cavanaugh, who is Reason's Web editor, with Imad A. Ahmad, who is director of Minaret of Freedom. He teaches at U. Maryland and claims that Islam is not only compatible with but intimately related to free speech, free religious exercise, and free markets.

One issue in this discussion, something I knew but had not really thought much about, is the Islamic proscription on charging interest when lending money, which they consider usury. Dr. Amad's way of getting around that law is perhaps Jesuitical but offers a way out. It got me to thinking about how and why the Arab world has not developed and modernized as has the non-Arab world or rather non-Islamic world.

I don't often see eye to eye with Charles Krauthammer, but I agree with him here.


Saturday, September 27, 2003 12:00AM EDT

By CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER, The Washington Post Writers Group


WASHINGTON--"There was no imminent threat. This was made up in Texas, announced in January to the Republican leadership that war was going to take place and was going to be good politically. This whole thing was a fraud." ....Sen Edward Kennedy on Iraq, Sept. 18,2003

The Democrats have long been unhinged by this president. They could bear his (Florida-induced) illegitimacy as long as he was weak and seemingly transitional. But when post-9/11 he became a consequential president -- reinventing American foreign policy and dominating the political scene -- they lost it.

Kennedy's statement marks a new stage in losing it: transition to derangement. As such, it merits careful parsing:

* IMMINENT THREAT?: How many times does one have to repeat this: When Bush laid out the case for the war in his 2003 State of the Union address, he deliberately denied imminent threat. "Some have said we must not act until the threat is imminent," he explained, but then disagreed. The assumption underlying the Bush Doctrine of pre-emption is that Sept. 11 taught us that we live in a world where the enemy is too stealthy, his capacity for destruction too great, and the margin for error too small to permit the traditional luxury of waiting for imminence.

Indeed, in the U.N. speech one year ago that launched us on the road to war, Bush spoke not of a "clear and present danger," the traditional formulation of imminence, but of a "grave and gathering danger," an obvious allusion to Churchill's two-decade-long "gathering storm."

* TEXAS?: A lovely and telling geographic tic, betraying the Massachusetts liberal's regional prejudice. For a president to unleash an unnecessary, cynical war he needs to be as far removed as possible from sanity (Hyannisport?). You head south and west -- to redneck country -- to plan your killings.

* GOOD POLITICALLY?: There are a host of criticisms one might level at Bush's decision to go to war -- that it was arrogant, miscalculated, disdainful of allies, lacking in foresight, perhaps even contrary to just-war principles. I happen not to agree with these criticisms. But they can be reasonably and honorably made. What cannot be reasonably and honorably charged, however, is that Bush went to war for political advantage. (My emphasis)

On the contrary, this war was an enormous -- and blindingly obvious -- political risk. It was clear that if America failed either in the conduct of the war itself (a bloody Battle of Baghdad, for example) or in the aftermath (a failure of reconstruction), Bush would be deeply wounded politically.

Indeed he has been. The unsettled outcome and mounting casualties have so damaged his standing that his poll ratings are now at their lowest ever.

A year ago, Bush was riding high. He decided nonetheless to put at risk the great political advantage he had gained as a successful post-9/11 leader -- an advantage made obvious by the Republican gains in last year's elections -- to go after Saddam.

Politically, the war promised nothing but downside. There was no great popular pressure to go to war. Indeed, millions demonstrated against it both at home and abroad. Bush launched the war nonetheless, for the simple reason that he believed, as did Tony Blair, that it had to be done.

You can say he made a misjudgment. You can say he picked the wrong enemy. You can say almost anything about this war, but to say that he fought it for political advantage is absurd. The possibilities for disaster were real and many: house-to-house combat in Baghdad, thousands of possible casualties, a chemical attack on our troops (which is why they were ordered into those dangerously bulky and hot protective suits on the road to Baghdad).

Whatever your verdict about the war, it is undeniable that it was an act of singular leadership. And more than that, it was an act of political courage. George Bush wagered his presidency on a war he thought necessary for national security -- a war that could very obviously be his political undoing.

To accuse Bush of perpetrating a "fraud" to go to war for political advantage is not just disgraceful. It so flies in the face of the facts that it can only be said to be unhinged from reality. Kennedy's rant reflects the Democrats' blinding Bush-hatred, and marks its passage from partisanship to pathology.