THE US, THE UN AND IRAQ VI

Quote:

Are we threatening to murder people with that stuff?

If we are not, Ican, then why do we have it? If we are stockpiling it as a "deterent," then why aren't other countries allowed to have such "deterents"? I think the world is seeing right now that we do not occupy the high ground we claim. If we did, Rumsfeld (or at least Myers) would have been out on his ear last week.

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Walter Hinteler wrote:

Scrat wrote:

Better yet, let's replace some Palestinian soil with Arafat. :wink:

Oitside Israel, some "rough countries" and obviously the USA - attempted murder, incitement to commit murder or conspiracy to commit murder is an criminal offense.

I'm peeing myself in fear, Walter.

News Flash: I'd be happy to see Bin Laden and every other terrorist dead too.

(I'll leave the door unlocked for Interpol.) Rolling Eyes

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Yes, Scrat, I've have heart you were amongst the "et al." in the trial against Joseph Shipp et al. :wink:

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Walter Hinteler wrote:

Yes, Scrat, I've have heart you were amongst the "et al." in the trial against Joseph Shipp et al. :wink:

Sorry Walter, I'm not buying into your absurd linkages. You'd equate anyone who'd like to see Bin Laden dead with Dahmer. I and others see the difference that you pretend doesn't exist.

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Scrat

I deeply believe in democracy and a juridical system. It's the law that gives justice the power to sentence.

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Walter Hinteler wrote:

I deeply believe in democracy and a juridical system. It's the law that gives justice the power to sentence.

And I deeply believe in the right of a nation to act to defend itself, up to and including targeting those individuals acting as de facto generals in the attacks against that nation.

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I do as well, Scrat, if everyone is following the laws.

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Shocking and Awful

May 6, 2004
By MAUREEN DOWD

WASHINGTON

Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz were swanning around in
black tie at the White House Correspondents' dinner on
Saturday night, mingling with le hack Washington and a
speckling of shiny imports, like John Kerry's former
Tinseltown gal-pal Morgan Fairchild, Ben Affleck, a
Victoria's Secret model who was not Gisele and several
"Apprentice" alumni who were not Omarosa.

The Pentagon potentates seemed unburdened by the spreading
storm kicked up by the torture pictures shown on "60
Minutes II" and about to appear in The New Yorker - the
latest example of a dysfunctional and twisted occupation
warped by arrogance over experience, ideology over common
sense.

When a beaming Mr. Wolfowitz stopped at my table to greet
an admiring Republican, I wanted to snap, "Get back to your
desk, Mr. Myopia from Utopia!" Shouldn't these woolly
headed warriors burn the midnight Iraqi oil - long enough
for Wolfie to learn the body count for dead American troops
and for Rummy to read Gen. Antonio Taguba's whole report on
"horrific abuses" at Abu Ghraib?

Sure, the secretary of defense has had two months to read
the report, but as he complained to Matt Lauer, it's
awfully thick: "When I'm asked a question as to whether
I've read the entire report, I answer honestly that I have
not. It is a mountain of paper and investigative material."
Goodness gracious, where is Evelyn Wood now that we need
her?

Can't the hawks who dragged us into this hideous unholy war
at least pay attention to a crisis of American credibility
that's exposing Iraq and the world to more dangers every
day? For the defense chief and the president to party two
nights in a row, Friday at Rummy's house and Saturday at
the Washington Hilton, is, to borrow a Rummy line,
"unhelpful in a fundamental way."

President Bush also seemed in a buoyant mood on Saturday.
But he might think about getting just a tad more involved
so he doesn't have to first see on TV, as he clicks around
between innings, the pictures sparking a huge worldwide,
American-reputation-shattering military scandal. And so he
doesn't keep nattering about how we had to go to war to
close Iraq's torture chambers, when they are "really not
shut down so much as under new management," as Jon Stewart
drily put it.

Most Republicans seemed in a "party on, Garth" mood, less
concerned with Humpty Dumpty Iraq or Unjolly Green Giant
John Kerry than with the unfairness of a world where Jeb
Bush would probably not be able to succeed his brother. "By
2008," a wistful Republican fund-raiser said, "there'll
probably be Bush fatigue."

It seems nothing can make hard-core hawks criticize the war
(even the request for $25 billion more). Rush Limbaugh
compared the prison torture to "a college fraternity
prank," like a Skull and Bones initiation.

Michael Eisner evidently also feels the Bush dynasty will
survive because he is balking at distributing a new
documentary by Michael Moore that criticizes President
Bush's 9/11 actions and ties with the Saudis, probably out
of fear that Jeb will come after his Disney World tax
breaks.

Senator Kerry jumped on the president yesterday for saying
nothing about Crown Prince Abdullah's "outrageous
anti-Semitic comments" that terrorists in Saudi Arabia get
funds from "Zionists." The prince's remarks - and arrests
of reformers - show that, far from transforming the Mideast
into democracies that flower with love of America and
Israel, the bumbling neo-cons have unleashed a rash of
racism, revenge and hate.

Colin Powell's chief of staff, Larry Wilkerson, tells GQ
magazine that Wolfie is "a utopian" like Lenin: "You're
never going to bring utopia, and you're going to hurt a lot
of people in the process of trying to do it."

Just when you thought things couldn't get worse, The
Associated Press reports from London that "U.S. soldiers
who detained an elderly Iraqi woman last year placed a
harness on her, made her crawl on all fours and rode her
like a donkey."

And Douglas Feith, the defense under secretary who was in
charge of Iraqi postwar planning and the secret unit that
furnished prêt-à-porter intelligence to back up Dick
Cheney's doomsday scenarios, told conservatives that the
administration might set up an office to plan postwar
operations for future wars.

Well, on the one hand, it would be refreshing to have a
postwar plan. On the other: future wars???

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/06/opinion/06DOWD.html?ex=1084845742&ei=1&en=9f75ca28de3cc482

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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Quote:

Steve - Why should Israel give up that which it took defending itself against attack by countries who now number among those you cavalierly suggest they should give the land back?

Scrat if you could rephrase that into a question I might be able to answer it...

ican wrote

Quote:

Israel will do all that except "guaranteed right of return" if Those 22 Arab countries PLUS THE PALESTINIANS THEMSELVES guarantee to enforce NO MORE MURDER OF ISRAELIES.

'fraid not ican old boy. Sharon prefers a continuing war of attrition with the aim of establishing greater israel than peace with an international border that limits his ambition. Wake up, Israel is the aggressor, and they haven't finished yet. And I wasn't being flippant when I said the solution is obvious. It is...its just not acceptable to war criminal Sharon, who prefers war than compromise on his dreams. The so called targetted killings (state murder) are not "revenge" attacks, even if that could be justified, they are deliberate attempts to keep the war going.

So many people still haven't got it. It really is simple. The USSR has collapsed. America has the military power, but is vulnerable because of its profligate use of hydrocarbons. Oil production has peaked, therefore it is vital that America secures its supplies. And as there is no one around who can challenge them, thats what its doing. {and acting no differently that any other imperial power in the past, except for one of scale)

All the b/s reasons about fighting terrorism, liberating poor oppressed people, eliminating tyrants and destroying weapons of mass destruction, are secondary to the primary requirement of ensuring oil and gas supplies until such time as a carbon neutral hydrogen economy can be built up.

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That's a good conspiracy theory. Throw in some suit in dark glasses you could probably convince 10's of people it's true.

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Walter Hinteler wrote:

I do as well, Scrat, if everyone is following the laws.

Which laws? Whose? You do understand that your country's laws have no weight in Israel, right?

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Steve (as 41oo) wrote:

ican wrote
Quote:
Israel will do all that except "guaranteed right of return" if Those 22 Arab countries PLUS THE PALESTINIANS THEMSELVES guarantee to enforce NO MORE MURDER OF ISRAELIES.

Steve (as 41oo) wrote:

'fraid not ican old boy. Sharon prefers a continuing war of attrition with the aim of establishing greater israel than peace with an international border that limits his ambition.

You are the one who needs to wake up. Think! THINK! THINK!THINK!. My assertion above is easily tested. All the 22 Arab States PLUS THE PALESTINIANS THEMSELVES (e.g., plus Arafat) have to do is accept the last Baruk-Clinton proposal, plus guarantee to enforce NO MORE MURDER OF ISRAELIES, plus agree to negotiate guaranteed right of return after a year or more following the last terrorist murders of Israelies. If they do that much, then let's see what Sharon actually does. The Israeli people will dump him down the toilet if he even threatens to refuse to accept that proposal.

Steve (as 41oo) wrote:

Wake up, Israel is the aggressor...

BS (i.e., Buncombe Slop)! It was the Arab states who rejected the UN proposal not Israel. Israel would have been quite content to be free of terrorist murders of their people with those trivial pieces of land they declared in 1948 to be Israel, an independent state. But the Arab States would not agree to that and attacked Israel. Each time they attacked Israel, Israel increased in size up until 1967. After 1967 Israel was repeatedly victimized by terrorist murders of their people. With each major terrorist murdering attack, Israel gained more and more of what is now called the "occupied territories" of Palestine. That is reality, sport, not stupid polemic.

Steve (as 41oo) wrote:

So many people still haven't got it. ... Oil production has peaked, therefore it is vital that America secures its supplies.

Yes, we must secure our oil supplies. That could have been done already if the stupid environmentalist domestic and world-wide lobby hadn't effectively shut down domestic US oil field development.

Steve (as 41oo) wrote:

All the b/s reasons about fighting terrorism, liberating poor oppressed people, eliminating tyrants and destroying weapons of mass destruction, are secondary to the primary requirement of ensuring oil and gas supplies until such time as a carbon neutral hydrogen economy can be built up.

More BS. The Iraqi oil supplies were secure under Saddam; they were especially secure under the Oil-for-Food Program. Any end-user of the Iraqi oil obtained under the Oil-for-Food program reduced the demand on other suppliers. The problem with Oil-for-Food was not supply of oil, it was supply of billions of oil revenue not to the Iraqi people but to World-wide Terrorist organizations including but not limited to Al Qaeda.

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Quote:

Israel would have been quite content to be free of terrorist murders of their people with those trivial pieces of land they declared in 1948 to be Israel, an independent state.

Yes as a first step. They have been stealing Arab land ever since, and continue to this day.

Quote:

Yes, we must secure our oil supplies. That could have been done already if the stupid environmentalist domestic and world-wide lobby hadn't effectively shut down domestic US oil field development.

Give us a break. There's a lot of oil left in N America. But America is making sure it uses everyone else's first. Got it yet?

Quote:

The Iraqi oil supplies were secure under Saddam; they were especially secure under the Oil-for-Food Program.

What????

Saddam nationalised the Iraqi oil industry. How does that make Iraqi oil secure for America? The other point about oil for food shows a fundamental misunderstanding of what the oil for food programme was all about and what it was trying to achieve.

I really do wonder sometimes if Americans are capable of distinguishing reality from fantasy.

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Kara wrote:

Quote:
Are we threatening to murder people with that stuff?

If we are not, Ican, then why do we have it?

We have that stuff because originally some DAMN FOOLS in our government decided we needed it along with rockets and nuclear weapons to deter the Soviets from attacking us and using the same kind of stuff against us. We still have it because we do not know how to get rid of it as fast as we all would like without killing ourselves. That stuff is dangerous as hell and must be destroyed very carefully. It should never have been developed in the first place.

Kara wrote:

If we are stockpiling it as a "deterent," then why aren't other countries allowed to have such "deterents"?

We are not stockpiling it. We are eliminating it as fast as we can without causing major ecological disasters.

Kara wrote:

I think the world is seeing right now that we do not occupy the high ground we claim. If we did, Rumsfeld (or at least Myers) would have been out on his ear last week

Rumsfeld and/or Myers should be tossed out because some US military subordinates behaved outrageously?????????????

The people responsible for this outrage ought to be tried, convicted, jailed, and tossed out on their ears. What reason do you have for believing Rumsfeld and/or Myers are among the responsible? It happened on their watch??????????????

If that be the case, then the Vietnam atrocities (e.g., murders of innocents) to which John Kerry confessed justify John Kerry having been jailed. All the chain of command on whose watch John Kerry committed his atrocities should have been tossed out on their ears. That includes General Westmorland, former Secretary of Defense McNamara, and Presidents John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon, does it not? Oh, but Presidents Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon are dead now! Well, except for Kennedy, they weren't dead then. They all should have been tossed out on their respective ears after John Kerry confessed, right? Wrong!

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Quote:

Rumsfeld and/or Myers sould be tossed out because some US military subordinates behaved outrageously?????????????

The people responsible for this outrage ought to be tried, convicted, jailed, and tossed out on their ears. What reason do you have for believing Rumsfeld and/or Myers are among the responsible? It happened on their watch??????????????

Well as several people have now jumped on the apologising band wagon including

from the bottom

several one star generals including Janis Karpinski (acting under orders mein furher)
Bush's press spokesperson
several other higher generals with decorations the size of football pitches
The President of the United States of America
Rummy (sort of)

Perhaps they feel in some way responsible

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Ican,

1) The current administration features individuals who have a stated interest in developing new nukes.

2) They want to develop ones that can be used with less political cost (smaller) and that can therefore be used at a lesser criteria.

3) We very frequently rattle our nukclear sabre. We've stationed them across NK's border and leaked pre-emptive nuclear attack plans for just one example.

The notion that we have them due to past folly and are trying to get rid of them is, IMO, very misleading. We are trying to get rid of some of the cold war surplus but we also have people actively trying to modernize our nuclear arsenal in a way that would make them more easily used.

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Steve (as 41oo) wrote:

They have been stealing Arab land ever since, and continue to this day.

Murderers ought to lose their land to those they attempt to murder and to those whose family members they murdered.

Quote:

Yes, we must secure our oil supplies. That could have been done already if the stupid environmentalist domestic and world-wide lobby hadn't effectively shut down domestic US oil field development.

Steve (as 41oo) wrote:

Give us a break. There's a lot of oil left in N America. But America is making sure it uses everyone else's first. Got it yet?

Now that's dumb! The development of oil fields (e.g., drilling) must first occur before all that oil left in North America can be removed from the ground.

Steve (as 41oo) wrote:

Saddam nationalised the Iraqi oil industry. How does that make Iraqi oil secure for America?

That's dumber! It was available for sale to the world market before and after it was nationalized.

Steve (as 41oo) wrote:

The other point about oil for food shows a fundamental misunderstanding of what the oil for food programme was all about and what it was trying to achieve.

What it was intended to be about was the support of the Iraqi people with the revenue from Iraqi oil sales. The Iraqi oil was in fact the oil that was sold under the Oil-for-Food program. The problem with the Oil-for-Food program is that almost all of its revenues were used to support not the Iraqi people but world-wide terrorist organizations including al Qaeda.

Steve (as 41oo) wrote:

I really do wonder sometimes if Americans are capable of distinguishing reality from fantasy.

I really do wonder all the time if you are capable of distinguishing reality from fantasy.

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Craven de Kere wrote:

... developing new nukes. ...

The notion that we have them due to past folly and are trying to get rid of them is, IMO, very misleading. We are trying to get rid of some of the cold war surplus but we also have people actively trying to modernize our nuclear arsenal in a way that would make them more easily used.

Retrace Kara and my exchanges of posts. Neither of us were discussing nukes. We were discussing the US storage of extremely dangerous chemical and biological materials.

Kara wrote:

ANOTHER THING--Weve got over 150 acres of GB and VX gas at Ft Detrich and at ABerdeen PG in Maryland (near major population areas of DC, Frederick, and the little community of Balltimore) Were living with all these WMDs in many of our back yards, the Army is slowly oxidizing this stuff and we go on with life not knowing that many of us live within an hours ride of some of the deadliest caches of nerve gas on the planet.

The nuke development you mentioned is another question. Should we develop nukes that are more limited in the damage they can do than the old currently stored nukes they are being designed to replace?

Good question. I know too little about new nuke development to have an opinion other than the following: it seems like it may be a small step in the right direction.

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Steve (as 41oo) wrote:

Quote:

Saddam nationalised the Iraqi oil industry. How does that make Iraqi oil secure for America?

and ican said

Quote:

That's dumber! It was available for sale to the world market before and after it was nationalized.

Except that Saddam would have his hands on the tap! Again you dont understand. Its not just buying it that counts, its controlling supply. America was not going to sit back and be dependent on Iraqi oil with someone like Saddam in charge.

Do yourself a favour ican and learn a little about peak oil and what it means for all of us.

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ican711nm wrote:

Retrace Kara and my exchanges of posts. Neither of us were discussing nukes. We were discussing the US storage of extremely dangerous chemical and biological materials.

I see. <fans the air, trying to disperse brainfart>

Quote:

The nuke development you mentioned is another question. Should we develop nukes that are more limited in the damage they can do than the old currently stored nukes they are being designed to replace?

Good question. I know too little about new nuke development to have an opinion other than the following: it seems like it may be a small step in the right direction.

I see it as a step intended to make their use slightly more palatable and with the aim of introducing tactical nukes to the battlefield.

I think those who feel this way are out of touch and that we'd not really end up using them in the way they envision.

So ultimately, I think that when we are on a anti-WMD theme we should avoid it as I think it would ultimately be immaterial.

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THE US, THE UN AND IRAQ VI

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