The UN, US and Iraq IV

Sounds like our 'shadow government'! Shocked

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Excellent website

Najaf

Refrences

* THE SACRED CITY OF NAJAF
* History of the Shrine of Imam Ali
* Imam Ali Mosque @ Ziaraat.com

Najaf has a population of 560,000, and Muhammad's son-in-law, Imam Ali bin Ali Talib, is buried in the Imam Ali mosque. Iran's Grand Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini spent 1964-78 in exile in Najaf. The holy city of Najaf is located 160 kilometers South of Baghdad and 60 km to the south of Hilla. Najaf in arabic means a high land where water cannot be reached. It is a city situated on high plateau over a sandy ground looking down from northern and eastern sides on wide scope camp of domes and tombs called valley of the peace. Najaf is a city of low-level sprawl, with boulevards lined by trees, arched brick buildings, and streets filled with bearded clerics wearing white or black turbans. Najaf is the spiritual center of Shiite Islam, site of the shrine of the Imam Ali, son-in-law of the Prophet Mohammad and first leader of the Shias.

Four senior Grand Ayatollahs constitute the Religious Institution (al-Hawzah al-`Ilmiyyah) in Najaf, the preeminent seminary center for the training of Shiite clergymen. Before the 1979 Islamic revolution in Iran, Najaf was the most important center of study for Shia religious leaders. However, Saddam Hussein ordered mass arrests and the expulsion of senior clerics, giving the Iranian seminary in the city of Qom the opportunity to take over the religious leadership of the Shias. Qom was the pre-eminent religious center for Shia Muslims for 25 years. But Najaf has a history of more than a millenium of leadership, and the Iranian clerics who run the holy city of Qom, are facing a revived rival. As of mid-2003 the seminary in Qom hosted between 40,000 and 50,000 clergy, while the number in Najaf stould at about 2,000, down from about 10,000 before the Ba'ath regime took. The first exodus from Qom to Najaf is expected to be by exiled Iraqi clerics, estimated to number between 3,000, and 5,000.

Qom may face a challenge over the concept of the Velayat-e-Faqih - the God-given authority for a top religious leader to oversee secular in the absence of the Prophet Mohammad and infallible imams. The Najaf school does not interpret the Velayat-e-Faqih as meaning the direct intevention of religion in politics. The Najaf seminary's view of the Velayat-e-Faqih is that of a supervisor and adviser. The Qom school believes the opposite, with Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, officially considered as the highest religious authority of the world's Shias. Qom sees the direct involvement of clerics in state ruling and executive affairs as their legitimate right and moral obligation.

Shiites from all over the world, not only Iraqis or Iranians, but Shiites from Pakistan, India, Bahrain, all over the world go to Najaf and they ask to be buried in Najaf close to that mosque. And historically and religiously it's a very important city and mosque for Shiite Muslims. Shiites aspire to bury their dead in its cemetery, which stretches for miles. To the north and east of the town there are acres of graves and myriads of domes of various colors and at various stages of disrepair. The cemetery of Al-Najaf is one of the largest cemeteries in the world. Perhaps the most extraordinary thing in Najaf is the graveyard. Millions of Muslims over the centuries have been brought here for burial from all parts of the world of Islam. So Najaf is embraced by a vast semi-circle of graves- by an immense City of the Dead.

In the nineteenth century, the shrine cities of Najaf and Karbala in Ottoman Iraq emerged as the most important Shi?'i centers of learning. Najaf is known for being an Islamic center for scientific, literary and theological studies for the whole Islamic world and mainly for the Shiites, therefore Najaf is attractive for a large number of people, poets, authors and other visitors from China/India, Lebanon, Pakistan and Iran which is estimated annually over half a million.

The adjoining al-Khathra mosque, which was closed in 1994, had remained closed since. The closure coincided with the death of Ayatollah Sayed Mohammed Taqi al-Khoei, who was killed in what observers believe was a staged car accident; before his death, Ayatollah al-Khoei led prayers in the al-Khathra mosque.

Shi'a groups reported numerous instances of religious scholars -- particularly in the internationally renowned Shi'a academic center of Najaf -- being subjected to arrest, assault, and harassment during the period of Baath rule. This included years of government manipulation of the Najaf theological schools. As reported by Amnesty International in the late 1970's and early 1980's, the Baath Government systematically deported tens of thousands of Shi'a (both Arabs and Kurds) to Iran, claiming falsely that they were of Persian descent. According to Shi'a sources, religious scholars and Shi'a merchants who supported the schools financially were prime targets for deportation. In the 1980's, during the Iran-Iraq war, it was reported widely that the Baath Government expelled and denied visas to thousands of foreign scholars who wished to study at Najaf. After the 1991 popular uprising, the Baath Government relaxed some restrictions on Shi'a attending the schools; however, this easing of restrictions was followed by an increased government repression of the Shi'a religious establishment, including the requirement that speeches by imams in mosques be based upon government-provided material that attacked fundamentalist trends.

On 10 April 2003 senior Iraqi Sh'ite leader Abdul Majid al-Khoei was assassinated at a mosque in the holy city of Najaf. The clergy in Najaf asked the US administration for more security. The Najaf ayatollahs are among the more respected in the entire Shiite world, and to have them blown up while supposedly under US protection makes the US look very bad in the Shiite world.

After the attack on al-Khoi and the siege at Sistani's house, religious leaders in Al-Najaf sought to smooth relations between all parties to prevent further unrest. The Shi'a leaders in Al-Najaf tried to calm down the situation and tried to fix the relations between the different parties in order not to go further with the disagreements and differences between the al-Sadr followers and those of al-Hakim and Sistani. They tried to bring them together and al-Sadr condemned the attack on Abd Majid al-Khoi and said that it is ridiculous to say that our followers are the people who did it.

At least one mass grave was uncovered some 20 kilometers northwest of the holy city of Al-Najaf in May 2003. Iraqis began digging at a site on 3 May, and had reportedly uncovered 72 bodies from the shallow grave within a few days. Bullet casings were found in and near the graves. Iraqis at the site told reporters that the grave was filled with men and women executed following a failed Shi'ite uprising after the 1991 Gulf War. "Everybody knew and could see, but they kept quiet," local farmer Kamal al-Tamimi told AP, adding, "We were told [by Iraqi officials] to stay away from this area, not to go near it, that it was a security zone." Another farmer said that he had seen blindfolded people with their hands tied behind their backs, shot in the back of the head in 1991. US Marines had been controlling the site but transferred control to the Iraqi Unity Association, headed by US-appointed Governor Abd al-Munim Aboud.

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Brand X wrote:

Sounds like our 'shadow government'!

You mean the 'pnac'? Shocked

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http://www.allhatnocattle.net/chiptoons%20worms1.jpg

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Quote:

Oddly enough, not all people ascribe to The US a hegomonistic venality, corruupt Administration, and thoroughly surrilous world view. Asserting an argument has been refuted, no matter how often that assertion is made, does not refute the argument. Some folks persist in criticizing and laying allegations against The Current Administration, and in predicting doom and gloom for it and its prospects. Everything presented or accomplished by The Americasn Right is criticized and dismissed by The American Left. That is wholly unsurprising. It is worth noting, as regards refutation of argument, The Left of late has been characterized neither by judicial nor electoral achievement of any significance, something not characteristic of superior argument.
Somehow, I see The US, on the geopolitical stage, as a sort of parallel with The American Right on the domestic political stage. Its resolution, planning and execution prove consistently capable of overcoming the challenges presented. This infuriates some folks, and alarms others. That too is perfectly understandable. None the less, I, and many, many others, see no reason to expect, nor justification for, any lessening of the established momentum. That too is a matter of dismay for some.

Timber
This post is a good example of how your 'editorializing' - actually, the thinking behind it - commonly fails you. Let's look at this sentence...

Quote:

Oddly enough, not all people ascribe to The US a hegomonistic venality, corruupt Administration, and thoroughly surrilous world view.

You suggest folks on the left here argue absolutes, but no one here argues such (other, perhaps, than when in the uncarefulness of upped dander). I myself commonly make the claim that the US has operated internationally in many locations and instances, and over a long period of time, with motives and consequences which have been decidely non-apple pie. This does not make myself, or folks like me, anti-American, it makes us merely anti-myth. If an American politician, or an American citizen, suggests that the US government ought to be trusted and taken at their word, I and others will not oblige, and do so for reasons based on very real historical facts. Your 'hegemony' point, for example...you have yourself seen those documents, read those sentences. As to 'corruption'...unless one assumes prima facie (evident without questioning) that American individuals are superior to all others in the world, then one will predict the certainty of it (to some variable degree) in your administrations as in all others. America is not the greatest country in the world, other than in the minds of some Americans. And it is entirely common for members of any group (nation, ball team, city, religious community) to have some portion of its membership hold to such a myth. But it is merely a myth that has various uses.

Quote:

It is worth noting, as regards refutation of argument, The Left of late has been characterized neither by judicial nor electoral achievement of any significance, something not characteristic of superior argument.

This claim (and again, it suffers from absolutism) doesn't hold up under much scrutiny. Judicial findings are, across the board, pretty varied. Your Supreme Court (unlike ours, for example) reflects the polar opposition of your political system, and so teeters on the edge of becoming a political tool. That is pretty clearly counter to what it was intended to function as, and so the rapt attention many Americans have regarding appointments is quite justified. Electoral results tell us very little about 'quality of argument', and you know this. If you are just making the more obvious point that a deep swing in either direction will have a commensurate reaction from those opposed, then you say something true. But this move contains a perfect little trick for obfuscation and self-deception which, I think, marks your most common failing in these discussions.

Your references to 'the left', or your repeated suggestions of 'conspiracy thinking' are of the same species of mental move - that which is referred to may be discounted out of hand. For example, you've responded to Lola's posts on the increasing power and influence of a radical Christian element within the Republican party, or her posts on the organization that lay behind Clinton's impeachment, as 'conspiratorial'. Yet both of Lola's claims are well supported, if one takes the time to study these matters. To simply escape the possible real consequences of these matters through saying 'it's just a predictable pendulum swing' or 'it's a predictable left response' is to give up any ability to discern importances and uniquenesses.

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Pot to kettle: You are black.
Shocked

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Blatham, I agree with every word you say except the last one

Quote:

uniquenesses

:wink:

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or did you mean the well known latin motto

SINE UNE SEQ US

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Well, blatham, that'd pretty much be a matter of individual persdpective, wouldn't it? We each have our viewpoijnts, and neither of us is bashful about the occaisional foray into absolutism. We each have our own particular fondness for our own particular myths. Some myths, however, are less removed from reality than are others Twisted Evil

And as to judicial and/or electoral success of Left over Right here in The States, while of course there are counter examples, the predominant tilt here is to the right ... and I'd argue the momentum is building. Whether The American Right is "right" or not, it is in the ascendant. That the swing of the political pendulum clearly favors The American Right at the moment is apparent not only to me, but to much of the American Left, and others scattered about the planet as well.

Had there been a solidly founded organization behind Clinton's impeachment, his conviction would have brought him removal, not mere sanction and censure. I for one am quite content Gore was not given thereby the Oval Office; a potential circumstance I viewed with some trepidation. And as to vast conspiracy, well, no I just don't buy the theory. Its natural for the folks at disadvantage to assert unfair competition by those besting them ... that's so much easier than addressing one's own shortcomings. Of course, from a pragmatic point of view, it is more comforting to be pragmatic from a position of strength than the converse. The most irritating thing about smugness is when it appears in one's oponents as they tot up an imbalance of points on the scoreboard.

The Right driven and directed by Religion? Jerry Fallwell, Pat Robertson and ilk are of less overall influence on The Right than, say, Dr. Laura or Oprah on The Left Twisted Evil

Frankly, there is essential balance in the American Political Makeup ... the rightward tip is just that; a mere tip, and transient at tha, as all such tips always have been. Fortunately, Americans are a fairly level-headed bunch, and not likely to allow that tip to swing to vertical, or really even much past center, one way or the other.

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and how many degrees to starboard are the likudniks, neo-cons and pnac-ists who swarm around a simple minded president whispering sweet nothings in his ear? Are they pretty much ok, right of centre but decent chaps, or is the American administration in the hands of foaming fanatics?

Reading Brezhinsky The Grand Chessboard has really opened my eyes to the true nature of American intentions in the world. No wonder Blair opted to be on the side of might rather than right.

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Timber, Dream on about "balance"! Speaking figuratively of course, it's clear that the Right is quite happy using dirty bombs and anthrax (well, perhaps not all THAT figuratively!) while the Left flails around with its snowballs (sometimes ice-covered, admittedly). If the ongoing political weapons-inflation on the part of the Right seems fair and balanced to you, that certainly explains the kind of loose ethic so many on the right here seem to admire.

A real problem for the Dems will be whether to teach themselves to play the game as the Republicans do. Within our party, Terry McAuliffe and gang would love to unpack new weaponry and use it, or so it seems. On the other side, a kind of reform movement is being urged on the party -- one I back wholeheartedly -- which says, winning ain't worth it if you have to play dirty. I don't think it's either naive or stupid to want to live up to this nation's view of itself. But I wouldn't hesitate to use the word "venal" in connection with those Americans who don't have a problem with playing dirty. It doesn't matter whether they are presidents, political advisors, self-conscious blondies on Fox, or just a bunch of old folks -- like us -- chatting online.

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oi who you callin old?

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First, anyone who thinks the Plame Affair is over is nuts.

You really think the CIA is just going to roll over while Dick Cheney's henchmen reveal the names of their operatives?

Joe Wilson still has a few tricks in his bag, and much of it proves the point that the White House is full of liars who will go to great lengths to advance the PNAC agenda. Like this, from U.S. News and World Report::

Quote:

Just as former Ambassador Joseph Wilson's story that Bushies blew his CIA wife's cover to get back at his criticism of the war in Iraq was getting old, he has stumbled on new ammo to hit the administration's credibility. Wilson tells us he plans to circulate the text of a briefing by analyst Sam Gardiner that suggests the White House and Pentagon made up or distorted over 50 war stories.

I'm in the midst of reading it now, and while it's nothing that anyone who's been paying attention wouldn't know, it's devastating to read it all in one place. And add the fact that Gardiner is retired USAF, and it adds an air of gravitas that wouldn't be there if it were just a reporter saying all this.

This report (.pdf, 56 pages) is scathing, to put it mildly.

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I expect The Dems will get about the same mileage out of the Plame Game as they got out of their not-particularly-successful attempt to slime Ahnuld. I would be wholly unsurprised were either of two scenarios play out in Leakgate:
1) It dies for lack of substance
or
2) It turns out to have been a Dem construct, engineered to damage The Current Administration, and winds up shoving a Dem or two into jail.

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Another opinion:

Quote:

Published on Tuesday, October 14, 2003 by the Philadelphia Inquirer
Depressing Ironies of CIA 'Outing'
by Philip Agee

The current brouhaha over the outing of an undercover CIA officer brings to mind vivid memories and comic ironies. The 1982 law that now threatens Karl Rove, or whoever it was who leaked the officer's name, is the Intelligence Identities Protection Act - and it was adopted to silence me.

I was a CIA agent for 11 years in Latin America, but I quit in 1969 and wrote a book that told the true story of my life in the agency.

In the 1970s, some colleagues and I followed up with a campaign of "guerrilla journalism" to expose the CIA's operations and personnel around the world because we thought we could combat the agency's role in support of so many murderous dictatorships at that time, including those in Vietnam, Greece, Chile, Argentina, Uruguay and Brazil. The Intelligence Identities Protection Act, which makes it a felony to expose a covert intelligence agent, was designed to stop us.

Here's the first irony: It was President George H.W. Bush who fought to get that law passed as CIA director in 1976-1977 and later as vice president.

To justify the law's restriction of amendment rights, Bush the elder and other CIA officials repeated the same lie many times over: That by publicly identifying Richard Welch, the CIA chief in Athens who was assassinated by terrorists in December 1975, I was responsible for his death.

Bush repeated that lie long after Congress passed the law, during his term as president and even afterward. His wife, Barbara, also repeated it in her 1994 autobiography - and I sued her for libel. As part of the legal settlement, she sent me a letter of apology containing the admission that I had not identified Welch.

In fact, I'd never met Welch, didn't know he was in Athens, and had never published his name or given it to anyone.

But Bush's campaign in the 1970s was effective. While he was CIA director, the agency worked with friendly intelligence services in Europe to label me, at different times, a security threat, a defector and a Soviet or Cuban agent, and they succeeded in having me expelled from five NATO countries.

Fast-forward to today. The son of George and Barbara is now a sitting American president with a harsh, neo-imperialist agenda, including waging war to ensure U.S. control of Middle East oil.

In order to sell this war of choice as a war of necessity, the younger Bush concocts a pack of lies. But when former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV pokes a small hole in Bush's farrago of justifications, someone in the White House outs Wilson's wife as a CIA officer in retaliation, a clear attempt to ruin her career.

One has to wonder what Papa Bush thinks of this clear violation of his law in his own son's office.

We were right in exposing the CIA in the 1970s because the agency was being used to impose a criminal U.S. policy. Today I continue to believe that the agency's operations should be exposed in places like Venezuela, where it is doubtless working overtime to organize and support the forces bent on overthrowing the twice-elected President Hugo Chavez. His apparent crime is to develop programs that will finally bring the benefit of that country's fabulous oil wealth to the common people.

But instead of that appropriate kind of exposure, U.S. intelligence officers are being outed, and the law violated. It would be outrageous if it turned out that the outers are part of the Bush administration, and the exposure part of a cheap political tactic to punish an enemy and maintain support for a dishonest and indefensible war.

The ironies are depressing.

Philip Agee, author of "Inside the Company: CIA Diary," wrote this piece for the Los Angeles Times.

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Quote:

Los Angeles Times
NATION & WORLD
Tuesday, October 14, 1997

By JAMES RISEN, Times Staff Writer

Espionage: An effort to get secrets for Cuba was foiled, but
he got away before case against him could be made, officials say.
He denies charges.

WASHINGTON -- It was an aggressive, even reckless bit of
espionage, allegedly committed by a man too well known for his
own good.

CIA officials and other U.S. government sources charged that
Philip Agee, a former CIA officer, author and CIA critic, went
undercover as a spy for Cuba in late 1989 to try to pry secrets
out of a female staff member in the agency's Mexico City station.

U.S. officials alleged that Agee was acting on behalf of
Cuba's intelligence service, which has long staked out Mexico as
a central espionage battleground with the CIA. Agee has denied
the charges.

Agee, posing as a member of the CIA's inspector general's
staff, tried to convince the staff member that he needed
information about the Mexico City station as part of a secret
investigation, the officials charged. CIA sources said that Cuban
intelligence traditionally has targeted women staffers in their
espionage operations.

The plot failed, U.S. officials said, when the CIA employee
reported the contact and brought two CIA case officers with her
to her second meeting with Agee. But one of the two case officers
told Agee that he recognized him, the officials said, and Agee
ended his efforts before enough evidence could be collected
against him to bring formal charges.

The two CIA officers later were disciplined for their
failure to notify their superiors of Agee's alleged action early
enough for the FBI to launch a criminal investigation of whether
the former CIA agent had committed espionage against the United
States.

Agee's alleged willingness to act as a field agent for the
Cubans astonished U.S. intelligence officials.

They said they believe that Agee -- who quit the CIA during
the Vietnam War in 1968 and later was known for his willingness
to expose undercover CIA officers and operations through public
lectures, magazines and books -- has been working for Cuban
intelligence since the early 1970s.

A high-ranking Cuban defector in 1992 told The Times that
Agee had repeatedly taken money that the Cuban intelligence
service had received from the Soviet KGB intelligence agency.

But CIA officers said that they had never seen Agee work
openly as a field operative for the Cubans until his alleged
approach to the female CIA staff member in Mexico City -- an
incident that remains classified.

In written responses to a series of questions from The
Times, Agee denied that he was involved in the Mexico City case.
He suggested that the story of his involvement in Mexico City had
been inspired by the CIA to counter a lawsuit in which he is
seeking damages for alleged illegal actions committed against him
by the CIA in the early 1970s.

He stressed that he is not a Cuban agent.

"The story is one more in a long line of false allegations
[inspired by the CIA] going back to the first mention of me in
the New York Times of July 4, 1974," Agee said in a faxed
response from his home in Hamburg, Germany.

"As for Cuba, the CIA has for many years used the word
'agent' to characterize my relation with the revolution because
to them it means 'sold out,' 'controlled,' 'traitorous,' etc.
This is not the case, and I am no 'Cuban agent. . . . '

"As is widely known, for more than 25 years I have been one
more American working in solidarity activities with Cuba and
against U.S. hostility, aggression, blockade, etc. etc. If this
makes me a 'Cuban agent,' then there are certainly a lot of us
out there."

Agee was in Cuba in July at the invitation of the Cuban
Committee for Peace and the People's Sovereignty to attend an
international student festival. In an interview with the official
Chinese news agency, he alleged that the CIA had ordered the
death of Ernesto "Che" Guevara.

Despite their belief that Agee has been a Cuban agent for
years, the CIA and FBI have long been frustrated by their failure
to gather enough evidence to prosecute him.

Although the State Department revoked his passport in 1979
after Agee proposed solving the Iranian hostage crisis by
exchanging CIA files on Iran for American hostages, he apparently
has traveled in and out of the United States without difficulty
and has made numerous public appearances in this country.

In college lectures and extensive interviews, he frequently
attacks the CIA as "criminal, immoral and against the interests
of all but a very few Americans."

But most galling to CIA officers is their belief that he is
regarded as a legitimate critic of U.S. intelligence, not as a
foreign spy. "The media treats him like any other former CIA
officer with a point of view, but he is a traitor," complained
one former senior CIA officer.

In a speech at CIA headquarters on Sept. 17 during
ceremonies marking the agency's 50th anniversary, former
President Bush, who served as CIA director in the mid-1970s,
singled out Agee for his ire.

"Remember Phil Agee, who I consider a traitor to our
country?" Bush asked the crowd. "The guy encouraged the
publishing of names of those serving under cover, sacrificing
their lives."

Agee established his reputation as a critic of the CIA with
the publication of his controversial 1975 book, "Inside the
Company: a CIA Diary." Published in 20 languages, the book
exposed CIA actions around the world. At the same time, he sought
to identify CIA undercover officers.

"It was not enough simply to describe what the CIA does,"
Agee recalled in a recent television interview. "It was important
to neutralize . . . the effectiveness of everybody doing it. And
that's why I was involved after my first book came out in the
exposure of hundreds and hundreds of CIA people around the
world."

His second book, "On the Run," published in 1987, described
what he alleged was a CIA campaign to harass and silence him,
especially during the years in which he was working on his first
book.

More recently, he has been engaged in a legal battle with
former First Lady Barbara Bush. Agee filed a libel suit against
Mrs. Bush and her publisher for alleging, inaccurately, in her
autobiography that Agee was responsible for revealing the
identity of the CIA's Athens station chief in his first book,
just before the station chief was killed. The former first lady
ultimately agreed to remove the allegation from her book.

But CIA officials said that Agee's alleged actions in Mexico
City took him far beyond the role of anti-CIA propagandist.

The female staff member whom Agee was said to have
approached was apparently a member of the Mexico City station's
support staff and was not trained in espionage work. CIA sources
said that they believe Cuban intelligence operatives steered Agee
to her in hopes that she would not report his overtures.

Yet, she promptly went to a case officer in the station to
report the contact, according to senior U.S. intelligence
sources. She agreed to a second meeting with Agee, and two case
officers went along.

One of the two recognized Agee and, according to some
sources, told him that he knew who he was. Agee then quickly
slipped away, the sources said. Later, the female staffer also
identified Agee's picture from mug shots shown to her by CIA
officials.

For failing to notify their superiors soon enough about the
incident, the two CIA case officers were not only reprimanded but
also briefly taken off the agency's promotion list. They were not
fired because they had previously been considered among the best
case officers in the Mexico City station.

"If they had notified their station chief and headquarters,
we could have gotten the FBI involved for criminal investigation,
but we lost that opportunity," said one former senior CIA
official who was involved in handling the matter. "And Agee got
away."

Copyright Los Angeles Times

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Timber, I present to you the Kay report .... as presented to Congress and Bush.

"We have not yet found stocks of weapons, but we are not yet at the point where we can say definitively either that such weapon stocks do not exist or that they existed before the war and our only task is to find where they have gone. We are actively engaged in searching for such weapons based on information being supplied to us by Iraqis."

Kay report.

Show me the bomb

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timberlandko wrote:

What of my foregoing do you contest, Gel? Do you argue with my therein stated assertions? If any are untrue, refute them. I fail to see error in any of them.

I could repeat that line back to you. You made an assertion about what Bush said, denying that Steve had it right. I quoted Bush back at you, clearly saying exactly what Steve said he had. I did point out the error. Yet you respond with some general political rant, writing stuff like:

timberlandko wrote:

Asserting an argument has been refuted, no matter how often that assertion is made, does not refute the argument. Some folks persist in criticizing and laying allegations against The Current Administration, and in predicting doom and gloom for it and its prospects. Everything presented or accomplished by The Americasn Right is criticized and dismissed by The American Left. [etc etc]

But I, for one, wasnt laying on random piles of allegations or predicting gloom and doom galore, I was in fact merely "refuting an argument". So why dont you specify how exactly I failed to do so, if you think I did, instead of going off on another rhetorical tangent about how the Right is superior to the Left in all kinds of ways?

Its simple enough.

Steve wrote: "Bush never said we have to stop Saddam now because he is going to be a threat in the future [..] Bush said he IS a threat, he HAS WMD".

You responded, contesting his view, by asserting: "what Bush said was "We must not allow that threat to become imminent" [..] That indeed is what he actually said, Steve."

But President Bush actually said: "Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised."

I.e.: "he IS a threat, he HAS WMD".

Bush then spun another threat into the speech, namely that Saddam might hand over those WMD to the terrorists that hit New York at 9/11 - that was the supposedly "imminent" threat.

NATO allies asked the Bush administration, back then already, to share this "intelligence" that would leave "no doubt" that Iraq still posessed WMD and had "aided and trained operatives of al Qaeda". (In fact, back on 8 October 2002 Bush even said that "Iraq has trained al Qaeda members in bomb-making and poisons and deadly gases"). And they considered what it shared with them wholly unconvincing. "We are of the generation that needs to be convinced and, mister Powell, we are not convinced", said Joschka Fischer.

Now the depressing thing is that I'm sure that, just a few days or weeks from now, you'll assert here again that Bush was really only warning that Saddam could still develop WMDs at some future time, back then. And I won't always be there to refute that lie - because that's what it is.

Now there's no need for some new, nice, general post about how people differ of opinion and that doesnt invalidate either opinion, etc, here - we agree there, its not about editorialising here - just stop repeating falsehoods like "Bush didnt say", when he can be quoted saying it.

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This is all crucial - for those who think this is just some personal fight - it's not just harping on words. There's implications for the whole rest of the argument.

For if one insists that Bush never claimed more than that Saddam might still develop WMD, by extension, one can also insist that the mere discovery of technical stuff that could have helped him to build them at some future time already proves his casus belli right.

If, however, you remember that the US pleaded its case for immediate war with the argument "that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised", that just won't do, and the administration's claims that its case for war had been about "WMD programs" fall flat. Which is why many conservatives want you to forget that it did.

The claims about Iraq's supposed actual possession of WMD and proven willingness to hand them over to al-Qaeda were at the core of the Administration's argument not just for war - but for immediate war. It was the basis for its emphatic rejection of a delay that both Blix and Annan and 11 out of 15 Security Council states were asking.

Now they want us to believe that it was all about "WMD programs" - about Saddam having some stuff buried in backyards that he might in the future be able to build some new WMD with again. But thats not how they sold us the war. Because not even Blair or the MOR American voter would have bought the argument that, because of that, we had to buck the UN and most of its SC states and start a war right away.

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timber

If we are, both of us, guilty of absolutisms and generalizations, then let's check each other on it when we fail in this manner. And let's get the whole community here doing the same.

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Had there been a solidly founded organization behind Clinton's impeachment, his conviction would have brought him removal, not mere sanction and censure.

That's not a good argument, as it has the form of "all organized activities produce precisely what they set out to produce and no less", and clearly that's not so. But it also tells me that you haven't read the materials related to this issue. And THAT is why some of us cut and paste, or post references - coming to sound conclusions involves learning as much as we can as well as submitting ourselves to the discipline of writing coherently and compellingly.

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The Right driven and directed by Religion? Jerry Fallwell, Pat Robertson and ilk are of less overall influence on The Right than, say, Dr. Laura or Oprah on The Left

What we (and many others, including traditionalist Republicans beginning immediately after the 92 convention) have actually said is that the party and its policies have become deeply INFLUENCED by the 'religious right'. Once again, your apparent insistence that this is not so (perhaps, that it cannot possibly happen) tells me you haven't been doing your homework. As a consequence, it becomes difficult to converse with you about this issue. Your analogy of Oprah (Dr. Laura is categorized by everyone, including herself, as on the right - she'd like to see homosexuals stoned, for example) to Robertson or Reed as individuals exerting equal influence on governance is not even close to being a valid analogy. On this issue, you are - and you know I say this with sincere respect - poorly informed. It may be that where you live, this influence is not greatly evidenced in local Republican politics. But you and the other folks there aren't the subject.

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Frankly, there is essential balance in the American Political Makeup ... the rightward tip is just that; a mere tip, and transient at tha, as all such tips always have been. Fortunately, Americans are a fairly level-headed bunch, and not likely to allow that tip to swing to vertical, or really even much past center, one way or the other.

Here is the 'not possible' thing again. It prevents you (if you think on it, it MUST prevent you) from perceiving any dangerous extreme - because they can't happen. Thus, voices from either inside your country or from outside, which keep yelling that the dogs are loose, are inevitably perceived by you as dogmatic or paranoid. The US is not protected by angels, its constitution, its founders or some special dispensation granted its citizens - that IS the myth.

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The UN, US and Iraq IV

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