THE US, THE UN AND IRAQ VI

Talk about "flagrant maniacal falsities," ican.

The Ashkenazim went into Palestine looking to establish a Jewish homeland. A homeland of Jews, by Jews, and for Jews.

One man's conclusions were portentious for what was to come, ican, your incredulity not withstanding.

So, because Britain had a mandate over Palestine, their interests trumped those of the very inhabitants themselves? You are an imperialist apologist, ican. Morally, the interests of the inhabitants of Palestine trumped those of imperialist Britain and the Zionists to whom they made promises about establishment of a homeland there.

You probably also think that the US' interest in Iraq trump those of the Iraqis themselves, huh?

The Zionist leaders themselves, those representing the Zionist Ashkenazi, went into Palestine with those chauvinistic attitudes, ican.

The Zionists of the first Aliyah had a benign indifference to the pre-existing poplulations in Palestine. They propagated the propaganda slogan, "A land without a people for a people without a land." In Ernst Pawel's biography of Theododr Herzl, The Labyrinth of Exile: A Life Of Theodor Herzl, he writes, "He never questioned the popular view of colonialism as a mission of mercy that brought the blessings of civilization to stone-age savages...He fully believed that the Palestine Arabs would welcome the Jews with open arms; after all, they only stood to gain from the material and technological progress imported by the Jews."

Herzl was truly a product of his European supremacist culture of the nineteenth century.

In a report to Herzl written prior to the Second Zionist Congress, Leo Motzkin wrote, "Completely accurate statistics about the number of inhabitants do not presently exist. One must admit that the density of the population does not give the visitor much cause for cheer. In whole stretches throughout the land one constantly comes across large Arab villages, and it is an established fact that the most fertile areas of our country are occupied by Arabs..." (Protocol of the Second Zionist Congress, Pg. 103).

He referred to Palestine as OUR COUNTRY.

When Herzl himself toured Palestine he was flatly oblivious to the Arabs there. ""The account of this visionary's journey through both past and future is notable for one conspicuous blind spot. As Amos Elan has pointed out, the trip...took him through at least a dozen Arab villages, and in Jaffa itself, Jews formed only 10 percent--some 3,000--of the total population. Yet not once does he refer to the natives in his notes, nor do they ever seem to figure in his later reflections. In overlooking, in refusing to acknowledge their presence--and hence their humanity--he both followed and reinforced a trend that was to have tragic consequences for Jews and Arabs like," writes Pawel.

Some of the other Zionists were truly concerned for the aspirations of the Arabs in Palestine, however.

Zionists like Ahad Ha'am who wrote in his essay, The Truth From Eretz Yisrael, ""We tend to believe abroad that Palestine is nowadays almost completely deserted, a non-cultivated wilderness, and anyone can come there and buy as much land as his heart desires. But in reality this is not the case. It is difficult to find anywhere in the country Arab land which lies fallow...," and Yitzhak Epstein: ""Among the grave questions raised by the concept of our people's renaissance on its own soil there is one which is more weighty than all of the others put together. This is the question of our relations with the Arabs. This question, on the correct solution of which our own national aspirations depend, has not been forgotten, but rather has remained completely hidden from the Zionists, and its true form found almost no mention in the literature of our movement," and Yosef Luria, who wrote ""During all the years of our labor in Palestine we completely forgot that there were Arabs in the country. The Arabs have been 'discovered' only during the past few years. We regarded all European nations as opponents of our settlement, but failed to pay heed to one people--the people residing in this country and attached to it." Verily, there were some Zionists who felt compunction with regard to their incursions, and the plight of the Arabs in Palestine.

The Revisionists would have none of it. It was "conquest of the motherland by force!" and "the Jewish homeland for Jews!"

In the Revisionists the Zionists had their counterpart to the militant nationalism that had infected Europe in the late nineteenth century to the early twentieth.

Allan C. Brownfield writes in his essay The Myth of Palestine as "A Land Without People," "More realistic, perhaps, was the assessment of the militant Zionist Revisionist leader Vladimir Jabotinsky, who was sympathetic to the extreme nationalism he saw emerging in Eastern Europe, even on the part of the anti-Semitic Ukrainian nationalist Schevenko, whom he praised for his nationalist spirit, despite "explosions of wild fury against the Poles, the Jews and other neighbors." Jabotinsky was under no illusions about a "land without people," and recognized that, in the long run, Zionism must displace the indigenous inhabitants of Palestine."

Jabotinsky declined the cooperation with the Arabs, in pursuit of a Jewish homeland of, for and by Jews only--in a land already populated with goyim.

The original goals or objectives of this or that group of Jews is irrelevant. What the Palestinian Jews and the Palestinian Arabs actually did is what is relevant.

The Palestinian Jews did not murder and maim Palestinian Arabs prior to 1920. After the British Mandate was established in 1918, the Palestinian Jews did not murder and maim Palestinian Arabs. In 1920, the maniacal Palestinian Arabs started murdering and maiming Palestinian Jews. The Palestinian Jews responded by defending themselves. This continues to be the case to this day. The maniacal Palestinian Arabs have cost the non-maniacal Palestinian Arabs much more than they have cost the Palestinian Jews. In 1948, many non-maniacal Palestinian Arabs were induced to flee Palestine at the urging of maniacs. Subsequently, with each and every battle between the Palestinian Jews and neighboring maniacs as well as Palestinian Arab maniacs, the non-maniacal Palestinian Arabs lost more including much of their lands.

Clearly the non-maniacs among the Palestinian Arabs as well as among the Palestinian Jews have a vested interest in eradicating the maniacs among them. When they do, Palestine can be peacefully divided between the Palestinian Arabs and the Palestinian Jews along the lines of the last Barak-Clinton proposal that was rejected by the maniacal Arafat. Then and only then will the Palestinian Arabs prosper. Continued maniacal behavior and self-deceiving polemics will allow only death to prosper.



I think self-defense trumps the continuation in power of maniacal rulers whether those rulers are Taliban-like or Baathist-like. It surely was not in the interests of the non-maniacal Iraqies for the maniac Saddam Hussein to remain and continue to tyrannize them.

The following is from a friend and reminds us the Reagan presidency was hardly a record to boast about. Yet, revisionist history is already underway, and the first book praising Reagan and spinning out
distortions will probably be released later this year.
You will pardon me if I don't join the endless chorus of praise for Ronald Reagan. Yes, he was very telegenic. Yes, optimistic, yes a man of strong convictions. Well and good.

But when he was alive I never heard him take responsibility for any one thing that went wrong, and he took credit for everything good that happened while he was president. (He took credit for ending the cold war. Did anyone ever hear him mention that the cold war was fought for forty years, half of those years under Democratic presidents, and almost all of those years under Democratic congresses?) Apparently his supporters intend to continue the practice now that he is dead. And you can see already that the Republicams are going to make a big deal of his state funeral, in an attempt to borrow whatever legitimacy they can.

But --

a couple of reminders.

1) In 1982, when nearly 300 marines were killed in Lebanon, what was tough-talking Reagan's actual response? He had us cut and run. Bin Laden is said to have concluded from that incident among others that America can't take casualties, and so the way to get rid of them is to give them casualties. What would Reagan have said if that had happened to a Democratic president? You KNOW what he would have said. He showed the same talk
tough/ act weak combination in dealing with the hostages in 1986. (Anybody remember that? Or Iran-Contra in general?)

2) In a gratuitous slap in the face to Jimmy Carter's attempt to wean America from excessive dependence on foreign oil, in the very week that Reagan took possession of the white house, he ordered the solar power cut off that Jimmy Carter had had installed. (I think it heated the white house swimming pool.) Installing it had been a symbolic act, and removing it was a symbolic act. His adminsitration remained firmly on the side of big oil all eight years.

Talking tough and then cutting and running. Sending a message to America that when it came to getting our energy from oil, it would be business as usual. When you're discussing Reagan's legacy, don't overlook the fact that part of that legacy has people dying in Afghanistan and Iraq, with many more to come.

You are!



These carefully crafted multiple choice poll questions invite the very responses they got.

Why not provide the following multiple choices:
1. Removal of Saddam Hussein's tyrannical regime;
2. Preventing Saddam Hussein from financing and equiping terrorists;
3. Capturing Hussein;
4. Eradicating Terrorists;
5. Spreading Democracy;
6. Fighting Terrorists;
7. Other;
8. No Opinion.

I bet the first three together would get more than 80% of the total.

Why do I bet that the remaining 5 together would get only 20%?

Simple! Eradication of Terrorists has not yet been accomplished. Spreading Democracy has not yet been accomplished. Fighting Terrorists is not an accomplishment: it is merely a necessary condition for an accomplishment. Other includes ending domestic terrorism (not accomplished yet) and distracting terrorists from committing more domestic terrorism (so far so good). No Opinion includes haven't decided as well as don't know or don't care.



Gad, this is not just fallacious logic, it is stupid logic. According to that great American Philosopher :wink: , Yogi Berra, "it ain't over 'til its over." Whether or not it is worth it cannot be determined after less than 15 months. Surely you can understand that.



Saddam helped financed payments to terrorists. He, himself, told us that when he repeatedly announced his family rewards program to the families of suicidal Palestinian terrorists. What reason do we have for supposing that Saddam would not finance other terrorists?

Osama bin Laden declared Saddam an infidel before 9/11/2001, but committed zero terrorism against Saddam's government after that declaration. Clearly, Osama's declaration was a cover to make YOU believe that Saddam and Osama were not in cahoots and thereby hoping to continue to protect the secrecy of Saddam's sponsorship of Osama.

Then there's the discovered Boeing 727 fuselage and training site in northern Iraq. Some say Saddam was ignorant of that site. Yeah, right!

Then of course, we subsequently discovered Saddam's redistribution of billions of the UN Oil-for-Food money to secret sites around the world. Some believe this was done to finance Saddam's quest for furnishings for those of his palaces built with some of that same money. Naivety or stupidity, which?

Then after Saddam's removal, we witnessed hords of terrorists including Al Qaeda pouring into Iraq and killing innocent Iraqies and Americans as well as our soldiers in an insane attempt to drive the American miltary out. Isn't it quite likely this happened because the Terrorists are desperate to regain what had been Saddam's financing from Iraqi oil? Hmmmmm?

Finally, we get the big news that some of the Al Qaeda terrorists that committed the 9/11/2001 atrocity met both inside and outside of Iraq more than once with members of Saddam's government prior to 9/11/2001.

Neither Dick Chenney or any other administation official is our source for the above information. It all came from multiple newspapers, radio commentators and TV newscasters.



"Go figure" indeed. Unlike some Americans, most Americans can think for themselves. They wish Bush had made fewer mistakes, had not made a flawed plan for democratizing Iraq, and acted more like Ronald Reagan. But compared to his competition, who scares the hell out of most Americans, most Americans think Bush is the better of the two fallible choices. Because of this they are even willing to continue to put up with a president who believes in God.

Of course, those observers who think themselves infallible have a different opinion of Bush and his competition.

Except for the Lebanon terrorism and decision to withdraw, these are all pathetic little complaints that simply don't measure up to what Reagan actually accomplished.

Unfortunately, the Lebanon terrorism occurred when the US military had not yet been brought back to pre-Carter-diminished levels. Launching a counter attack at that time under such conditions would have resulted in the same terrorist hysteria as the 2003 invasion of Iraq with far worse military casualties. Did he make the right decision? I don't know, because I don't know how prepared the US military was at that time.

By the way, Reagan took credit for only one thing.

Al Qaeda Warns of Attacks on Western Airlines

26 minutes ago Add Top Stories - Reuters to My Yahoo!


By Samia Nakhoul

RIYADH (Reuters) - A statement purportedly from al Qaeda militants in Saudi Arabia warned Monday of new attacks on U.S. and Western airlines, as a Saudi diplomat said the militant group was behind an attack that killed a BBC cameraman.


"All compounds, bases and means of transport, especially Western and American airlines, will be a direct target for our coming operations in the near future," said the statement, posted on a pro-al Qaeda site on the Internet.


It asked Muslims to keep away from Americans and other Westerners to avoid falling victim to an attack by the Islamic militant network led by Saudi-born Osama bin Laden (news - web sites).


Saudi forces hunted Monday for gunmen who shot dead Irish cameraman Simon Cumbers, 36, and critically wounded BBC security correspondent Frank Gardner, 42 in a Riyadh area known as a militant stronghold.


Sunday's attack, the fourth in five weeks on Westerners in a kingdom battling al Qaeda militants, heightened security fears among the tens of thousands of expatriates in the world's largest oil exporter.


"We also warn security forces and guards of Crusader (Western) compounds and American bases and all those who stand with America, its agents...and the tyrants of the Saudi government, and urge them to repent," said the statement, signed by al Qaeda's Organization in the Arabian Peninsula.


The BBC said Gardner, who suffered wounds mainly to the abdomen, was in a stable condition after extensive surgery overnight.


AL QAEDA SEEN BEHIND ATTACK ON BBC TEAM


"It is the same fanatical group. They are linked to al Qaeda," Jamal Khashoggi, the media adviser to Prince Turki al-Faisal, Saudi ambassador in London, told Reuters, referring to a recent string of attacks.


"It was an easy job for these militants because they had spent some time in the area. I believe it was an opportunistic strike," Khashoggi said. "These militants want to send a message that the kingdom is not safe for Westerners."


The attack came a week after al Qaeda militants killed 22 people, 19 of them foreigners, in a shooting and hostage-taking spree in the oil city of Khobar. The assault helped push oil prices to record highs before producers vowed to raise output.


British Ambassador Sherard Cowper-Coles also said the BBC team, who were with a Saudi information ministry guide, appeared to be victims of an opportunist rather than organized attack.


"Westerners operating in this area of Riyadh with a camera would obviously be vulnerable," he told the BBC, adding there was a "serious and chronic terrorist threat" in Saudi Arabia.


Khashoggi said police, who have so far avoided a large-scale crackdown, will now take tougher measures on militants.


"Citizens should have a bigger role... in warning against falling into the trap of covering up or keeping silent," King Fahd told a cabinet meeting, according to the SPA news agency.


Riyadh's Suweidi district is a stronghold of Saudi-born Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda followers and 15 of the 26 most wanted militants in the kingdom, including the leader of the group in Saudi Arabia, Abdulaziz al-Muqrin, come from there.


In London Prince Turki, the kingdom's former intelligence chief, said militants were going after individuals and soft targets because of a security clampdown.





Saudi Arabia has been battling al Qaeda for more than a year, and security forces have arrested or clashed with many suspected militants in Suweidi in recent months.

Bin Laden is blamed for the September 11, 2001 attacks on U.S. cities and his followers have vowed to drive Western "infidels" from the birthplace of Islam.

The British embassy has advised its 30,000 nationals against non-essential travel to the kingdom. Some 35,000 Americans live in Saudi Arabia and last month Washington urged them to leave.

At least 80 civilians and police have been killed since May last year in a string of al Qaeda suicide bombings and attacks. Police have killed or arrested nine top militants.

The Military: Losing Hearts and Minds?
By Oscar R. Estrada

Sunday, June 6, 2004; Page B01

BAQUBAH, Iraq

The General and the Colonel have told us that we are the main effort, at the forefront of helping to rebuild Iraq. But how do you rebuild when all
around you destruction and violence continue? Do the facts and figures showing levels of electricity restored, the amount of drinking water available, the number of schools reconstructed or the numbers of police officers hired and trained really convince the Iraqi people that we are here to help? Are we winning their hearts and minds?

Winning hearts and minds is my job, in a nutshell. I'm an Army Reserve civil affairs (CA) officer stationed in Baqubah, 30 miles northeast of
Baghdad. In Vietnam, winning hearts and minds was mostly a Special Forces task, but after that they were smart enough to get out of it, and the responsibility has since fallen into the laps of reservists like me who are trained to deal with every conceivable problem that arises when Big
Army meets Little Civilian. And that's why CA soldiers are among those most often deployed overseas in the Reserve.

That's how they get you, actually, with promises of foreign travel, foreign language training, Airborne School, Air Assault School . . . and the chance to help others. We're trained in the Army's regimented style to deal with civilians in foreign countries, required to learn a satisfactory number of acronyms, probed, pricked and tested, and then sent overseas to do good.

And here we are, in Iraq, trying to help the Iraqi people as death threats frighten our Iraqi interpreters into quitting to protect their families, and as attacks from mortars, rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs) and improvised explosive devices (IEDs) become daily and nightly occurrences.

We're told by senior officers that most Iraqis are being influenced by "bad guys" and their anti-coalition messages. The latest acronym for these bad guys is AIF, which stands for Anti-Iraqi Forces. The fact that most AIF members are Iraqi is neatly ignored as we try to win the goodwill of
the "good" Iraqis.

One day last week we rolled into the town of Zaghniyah to win some of the local hearts and minds. In a country where most people are unemployed, we offer the townspeople $1 for every bag of trash they can collect. Our "docs" -- medics, assistants and physicians -- set up shop in the local health clinic and we try to "engage local leadership." But most of the local leaders, we are told, are not there. Those people who do speak with us do so only to catalogue their concerns -- chiefly unemployment and lack of electricity and water. It's the day after the swearing-in of Iraq's new interim government, and so I explain that their concerns have to be presented to their Governing Council, and that we can fund projects only through that council. An old man waves me off and tells me that they know the Americans control everything and will do so as long as they are here. The rest of the men nod in agreement.

As the day wears on, every ray of sun seems to add weight to my Kevlar helmet and body armor. I am at a loss as to why our efforts aren't recognized or appreciated. But then, as I look at the children collecting trash and the main road clogged with military vehicles, as I watch one of our docs try to help a woman carrying a gaunt and sickly baby in her arms, and as I listen to an old sheik struggle with our demands that he hold American-style town meetings, I realize that Iraqis may see our help as something else. I see how paying them to collect trash may be demeaning and remote from their hopes for prosperity in a new Iraq. I see our good faith efforts to provide medical care lead to disappointment and resentment when we have neither the medicine nor the equipment to cure or heal many ailments. And I see how our efforts to introduce representative democracy can lead to frustration.

Some experiences here have reminded me that our sacrifice for the rebuilding of Iraq is minor compared with that of the average Iraqi. A few weeks ago I was on a patrol in the town of Buhriz, near Baqubah. Our mission: to assess the city's potable water needs. Buhriz is a place where our soldiers are often shot at, so we rolled in with two Bradleys and several Humvees packed with heavily armed troops.

On the way to the water treatment plant, we stop for a psychological operations (psyop) mission. A psyop team walks up and down the market handing out "product," in this case pro-coalition messages in a glossy Arabic-language magazine. Young people take the magazines and seem to enjoy the novelty of the event; some people bombard the team and its interpreter with questions about things the town needs and the whereabouts of detained relatives.

But others return the fancy magazine and pull their kids away from "the occupiers." One man pulls a young boy by the arm and slaps him on the back of the head as he chastises him. I stare at the man and he at me; his hatred is palpable. We're less than five feet apart, but the true separation is far greater. I'm unable to communicate with him without the help of the one interpreter assigned to this patrol of 30 or so soldiers, and the "terp" is with the psyop team. I wish I could ask the man why he hates us, but I doubt anything useful would come of such a conversation. As we drive out of town, a little boy who looks about 3 years old spits at our vehicles as we pass his house.

I flash back to an incident a month earlier when we were returning to our compound by way of "RPG Alley," a route of frequent attacks. A unit ahead of us had reported taking fire and we rushed to the scene. Other patrols and M1 tanks soon arrived and we sat and waited, pointing our weapons into a date palm grove to the north. A small column of Humvees moved down a dirt road toward the grove, and all hell broke loose. I never heard a shot fired from the grove, but someone did, and then everyone was firing.

"Hey, what the hell are we shooting at?" I screamed at my buddy as I continued to squeeze off rounds from my M-16.

"I'm not sure! By that shack. You?"

"I'm just shooting where everybody else is shooting."

But everybody else was shooting all over the place. Small puffs of white erupted in front of us as our own soldiers lobbed grenades at the grove but came up short; tracers from .50-caliber machine guns flew past us, and the smell of cordite filled the air. Then, as suddenly as it had started, the tumult
ended. We sat in silence and listened to the crackling radios as a patrol dismounted from a couple of armored Humvees and began to search among the trees.

"Dagger, this is Bravo 6. Do you have anything, over?"

"Roger. We're going to need a terp. We have a guy here who's pretty upset. I think we killed his cow, over."

"Upset how, over?"

"He can't talk; I think he's in shock. He looks scared, over."

"He should be scared. He's the enemy."

"Uhm, ahh, Roger , 6 . . . he's not armed and looks like a farmer or something."

"He was in the grove that we took fire from; he's a [expletive] bad guy!"

"Roger."

From my perch in the Humvee, I listened as the patrol found a suspicious bag hanging from a tree
and called in an explosive ordnance disposal unit to examine it. On the other side of the road, in the
distance, a horse-drawn cart crept on its way from some unknown village to the piece of road we
now controlled. I watched it grow larger until the old man on the cart came face to face with the
armed soldier waving him off. He slowly turned the cart around and headed back to where he had
come from. I wondered where he was going, whether it was important and how much effort he'd put into the trip. I wondered if we had any chance of winning either his heart or his mind.

As we headed back to our compound, I couldn't stop thinking about the man in the grove, frozen in
shock at the sight of his dead livestock. Did his family depend on that cow for its survival? Had he
seen his world fall apart? Had we lost both his heart and his mind?

Stop thinking about this, I tell myself as our imposing convoy comes to a stop in front of the water treatment plant that serves Buhriz -- it's time, once again, to go about my job of winning those hearts and minds. I spend the next half-hour asking people questions and taking notes that I'll later summarize in a neat and orderly report sprinkled with just the right number of Army acronyms, grid coordinates and date-time groups. I'll detail the gallons-per-day requirements and the inoperable pump and the need for high-capacity filters and all the other bits of information that will help someone somewhere request the thousands of dollars it will take to repair the plant. My work is
done, and I feel confident I've done it well. I feel as if I've actually accomplished something
worthwhile today.

And then I remember: Security, you forgot to ask about security! So I do, and the treatment plant
manager tells me that his biggest threat is coalition soldiers, who shoot up the compound whenever
the nearby MP station and government building are attacked. He shows me the bullet holes and
asks, "Why?" I give the standard response: We have to defend ourselves, and these problems are
caused by the insurgents. And I think the people listening are buying it when the plant's caretaker
tugs at my elbow, urging me to come see his house on the corner of the plant grounds. We're running late, but I follow the man before the patrol leader can say no.

An old man, the caretaker's father , comes out of the house and gestures for me to come inside. It's
a one-level, three-room concrete building, clean but humble. The old man's grandchildren, his
daughter-in-law and his wife stare up at me as he leads me by the arm and points out the bullet holes
on the side of the house, the shattered windows and the bullet-riddled living room. He's speaking to
me in Arabic. I can't understand a word he's saying, and yet I understand it all. I see the anguish in his face as his eyes start to tear up, I see the sadness as he points to old photographs of safer days under Saddam Hussein. I see the shame as he mimics how our soldiers hit him when he was detained, and I see the disappointment as he asks me "Why?" and I stare at him at a loss for words.

"Why?" I don't even remember what I told him, but I think I apologized. The patrol leader was telling
me it was time to go. Everyone, even the old man's family, seemed in a hurry to end the encounter. So we quickly walked out, hoping to somehow outpace the wave of shame that threatened to knock us over.

Only I can't outrun it. I stay up that night thinking of the old man and the young soldiers who fired
into the darkness in response to bullets and mortars and RPGs hurled at them from somewhere "out there." I think of the man with the dead cow and of the rush of adrenaline I felt firing from the back of that Humvee at the perceived threat. I think of the old man on the cart, the children who burst into tears when we point our weapons into their cars (just in case), and the countless numbers of people whose vehicles we sideswipe as we try to use speed to survive the IEDs that await us each morning. I think of my fellow soldiers and the reality of being attacked and feeling threatened, and it all makes sense -- the need to smash their cars and shoot their cows and point our weapons at them and detain them without concern for notifying their families. But how would I feel in their shoes? Would I be able to offer my own heart and mind?

Author's e-mail:[email protected]

Oscar Estrada is an Army Reserve captain from Arlington, serving as a civil affairs team leader
in Iraq. A third-year student at the University of Michigan Law School, he spent 81/2 years as a
Foreign Service officer with the State Department.

© 2004 The Washington Post Company

Date: Mon, 7 Jun 2004 15:18:53 -0700





Below is the text of Andy Rooney's recent commentary on 60 Minutes.

Our Darkest Days Are Here
May 23, 2004
The following is a weekly 60 Minutes commentary by CBS News Correspondent Andy Rooney.
If you were going to make a list of the great times in American history, you'd start with the day in 1492, when Columbus got here.
The Revolution when we won our independence would be on the list.
Beating Hitler.
Putting Americans on the moon.
We've had a lot of great days. Our darkest days up until now have been things like presidential assassinations, the stock market crash in 1929,
Pearl Harbor, and 9-11, of course.
The day the world learned that American soldiers had tortured Iraqi prisoners belongs high on the list of worst things that ever happened to our country. It's a black mark that will be in the history books in a hundred languages for as long as there are history books. I hate to think of it.
The image of one bad young woman with a naked man on a leash did more to damage America's reputation than all the good things we've done over
the years ever helped our reputation.
What were the secrets they were trying to get from captured Iraqis?
What important information did that poor devil on the leash have that he wouldn't have given to anyone in exchange for a crust of bread or a sip of
water? Where were your officers? If someone told you to do it, tell us who told you. If your officers were told we should know who told them.
One general said our guards were "untrained." Well, untrained at what?
Being human beings? Did the man who chopped off Nicholas Berg's head do it because he was untrained?

The guards who tortured prisoners are faced with a year in prison.

Well, great. A year for destroying our reputation as decent people.
I don't want them in prison, anyway. We shouldn't have to feed them.

Take away their right to call themselves American -that's what Id do. You aren't one of us. Get out. We don't want you. Find yourself another country
or a desert island somewhere. If the order came from someone higher up, take him with you.
In the history of the world, several great civilizations that seemed immortal have deteriorated and died. I don't want to seem dramatic tonight, but I've lived a long while, and for the first time in my life, I have this faint, faraway fear that it could happen to us here in America as it happened to the Greek and Roman civilizations.

Too many Americans don't understand what we have here, or how to keep it. I worry for my grandchildren, my great-grandchildren. I want them to have what I've had, and I sense it slipping away.

Have a nice day.

So do I!

I also know that while criticism is necessary it is not sufficient. We fallible and mistake plagued Americans must nonetheless solve these problems for the sake of our posterity. We have no other choice. This is not merely a tornado that we can huddle away from in our basements until it passes. It won't pass; it will just get stronger until we make it weaker.

"Time's a'wastin'. "
- "Get off your high horse."
-- "Let's roll."

Likely, you've all now seen coverage on the Justice Department memo revealed in the Wall Street Journal yesterday which advised that the President was not bound by conventions and military protocols regarding torture...that torture could be used on prisoners.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/print/image/

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/08/politics/08ABUS.html

From the WSJ's take on the subject:



Since f-cking when?

There is no power inherent in the president simply to set aside the law.

That claim alone should stop everyone in their tracks.

It should prompt a serious consideration of the safety of the American republic under this president. It is the very definition of a constitutional republic that the law is superior to the executive, not the other way around. This is the essence of what the rule of law means -- a government of laws, not men, and all that.

Richard Nixon famously argued, here cited, that "when the president does it that means that it is not illegal." But the constitutional rulings emerging out of Watergate said otherwise. And history has been just as unkind to his entreaty.

No man is above the law, to boil it down.

No President, either.

Not even one who's on a mission from God.

Good place for this:

"The original goals or objectives of this or that group of Jews is irrelevant" to you only when it's inconvenient to your argument, ican. Otherwise, it is relevant, and the goals and objectives of the early Zionist leaders came to fruition in the modern state of Israel. And it is exactly what the Ashkenazim and the Arabs did that is relevant also. The Europeans went in to Palestine looking to expropriate land for an ethnocentric state, visiting bigotry, intolerance and violence upon the Arabs, and the Arabs responded with violence. What Ahad Ha'Am had to write is inconvenient to your maniacal delusional denials, but he spoke clearly of the situation that the Zionist movement was fomenting among the Arabs in Palestine, your psychological issues notwithstanding.

The riots in Palestine were one of a series of riots that the Arabs engaged in in reacting to the imperialism of the post-WWI European powers, namely the British. The Arabs in Iraq also rose against the British there, and the British responded with blanket bombings of Arab villages.

Your elusive red-herring about Iraqis' interests and the US' interests in Iraq speaks for itself, ican.

I think we may actually agree on something!

Can torture be lawfully used on prisoners--all prisoners--certain prisoners? Let's see what's true.

The Constitution of the United States of America
Effective as of March 4, 1789:

{emphasis added}

I infer that appeal to a higher law than the the supreme law of the land is required to control our treatment of cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the militia, when in actual service in time of war or public danger.

That law is: Treat others the way you want to be treated; do not treat others the way you do not want to be treated.

In other words, U.S. law in this matter applies to U.S. citizens. The treatment others may receive will be determined by the degree of conscience and compassion of the captors.

Personally, when it comes to the use of weapons of mass destruction whether nukes or highjacked airplanes related to national security, I don't care how uncomfortable the detainees are when they are interrogated. I trust our leaders to have sufficient conscience to not inflict unwarranted pain and suffering. Otherwise, make em miserable until they talk.

More on Ronnie.
**************
". . . this week we'll be hearing a lot about
Ronald Reagan, much of it false."
The Great Taxer

June 8, 2004
By PAUL KRUGMAN

Over the course of this week we'll be hearing a lot about
Ronald Reagan, much of it false. A number of news sources
have already proclaimed Mr. Reagan the most popular
president of modern times. In fact, though Mr. Reagan was
very popular in 1984 and 1985, he spent the latter part of
his presidency under the shadow of the Iran-Contra scandal.
Bill Clinton had a slightly higher average Gallup approval
rating, and a much higher rating during his last two years
in office.

We're also sure to hear that Mr. Reagan presided over an
unmatched economic boom. Again, not true: the economy grew
slightly faster under President Clinton, and, according to
Congressional Budget Office estimates, the after-tax income
of a typical family, adjusted for inflation, rose more than
twice as much from 1992 to 2000 as it did from 1980 to
1988.

But Ronald Reagan does hold a special place in the annals
of tax policy, and not just as the patron saint of tax
cuts. To his credit, he was more pragmatic and responsible
than that; he followed his huge 1981 tax cut with two large
tax increases. In fact, no peacetime president has raised
taxes so much on so many people. This is not a criticism:
the tale of those increases tells you a lot about what was
right with President Reagan's leadership, and what's wrong
with the leadership of George W. Bush.

The first Reagan tax increase came in 1982. By then it was
clear that the budget projections used to justify the 1981
tax cut were wildly optimistic. In response, Mr. Reagan
agreed to a sharp rollback of corporate tax cuts, and a
smaller rollback of individual income tax cuts. Over all,
the 1982 tax increase undid about a third of the 1981 cut;
as a share of G.D.P., the increase was substantially larger
than Mr. Clinton's 1993 tax increase.

The contrast with President Bush is obvious. President
Reagan, confronted with evidence that his tax cuts were
fiscally irresponsible, changed course. President Bush,
confronted with similar evidence, has pushed for even more
tax cuts.

Mr. Reagan's second tax increase was also motivated by a
sense of responsibility - or at least that's the way it
seemed at the time. I'm referring to the Social Security
Reform Act of 1983, which followed the recommendations of a
commission led by Alan Greenspan. Its key provision was an
increase in the payroll tax that pays for Social Security
and Medicare hospital insurance.

For many middle- and low-income families, this tax increase
more than undid any gains from Mr. Reagan's income tax
cuts. In 1980, according to Congressional Budget Office
estimates, middle-income families with children paid 8.2
percent of their income in income taxes, and 9.5 percent in
payroll taxes. By 1988 the income tax share was down to 6.6
percent - but the payroll tax share was up to 11.8 percent,
and the combined burden was up, not down.

Nonetheless, there was broad bipartisan support for the
payroll tax increase because it was part of a deal. The
public was told that the extra revenue would be used to
build up a trust fund dedicated to the preservation of
Social Security benefits, securing the system's future.
Thanks to the 1983 act, current projections show that under
current rules, Social Security is good for at least 38 more
years.

But George W. Bush has made it clear that he intends to
renege on the deal. His officials insist that the trust
fund is meaningless - which means that they don't feel
bound to honor the implied contract that dedicated the
revenue generated by President Reagan's payroll tax
increase to paying for future Social Security benefits.
Indeed, it's clear from the arithmetic that the only way to
sustain President Bush's tax cuts in the long run will be
with sharp cuts in both Social Security and Medicare
benefits.

I did not and do not approve of President Reagan's economic
policies, which saddled the nation with trillions of
dollars in debt. And as others will surely point out, some
of the foreign policy shenanigans that took place on his
watch, notably the Iran-contra scandal, foreshadowed the
current debacle in Iraq (which, not coincidentally,
involves some of the same actors).

Still, on both foreign and domestic policy Mr. Reagan
showed both some pragmatism and some sense of
responsibility. These are attributes sorely lacking in the
man who claims to be his political successor.

(Paul Krugman joined The New York Times in 1999 as a columnist on the Op-Ed Page and continues as professor of Economics and International Affairs at Princeton University.)

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/08/opinion/08KRUG.html?ex=1087694561&ei=1&en=2f1cdce062a7acca

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

EXACTLY!

If I were a maniac threatening to perpetrate murder or maiming of an innocent person or persons, I would hope my captors would make me miserable until I talked.

During Reagan's eight years, Carter's double digit inflation, double digit unemployment, and double digit interest rates were halved.

Clinton was handed a simpler set of economic problems by Reagan/Bush-41 than was Reagan by Carter.



Reagan cut the top marginal tax rate from 70% to 28%, and subsequently increased the top marginal rate to 35% from 28% based on the promise of te Democrats to reduce federal spending. The Democrats reneged on their promise. Reagan did not renege on his promise. Clinton increased the top marginal rate to just under 40%.



Bush's tax cuts are in fact producing Bush's projected results. The so-called Reagan deficit resulted from the very simple and well known fact that while tax revenue doubled during his presidency, federal expenditures tripled. Federal expenditures would not have tripled had the Democrats kept their part of the bargain and cut so-called entitlement spending as they promised to do.

Typical neocon logic - they did the bad stuff, we did the good stuff..... ****, spare ne - it is usually exactly backwards......

HELP ME OUT HERE

I cannot find anything in the US Constitution that delegates to the federal government the power to transfer wealth from some citizens to other citizens except as payment for stuff, things or services.