THE US, THE UN AND IRAQ VI

Quote:

...If the American electorate, knowing what it knows and, above all, having seen what it has seen, proceeds to reelect George W. Bush in November, the moderating distinction between the American administration and the American people will be eroded or perhaps erased -- with what violent consequences no one can predict.

Before discussing the concrete repercussions of anti-Americanism in Europe and the Middle East, I want to pause briefly to say a word about a famous phrase of Machiavelli's, frequently cited by neoconservatives in the run-up to the Iraq war, that "it is better to be feared than loved." This quotation is interesting mostly for what it omits. For Machiavelli quickly went on to add: "It is worst of all to be hated." People who fear us, for the most part, will dare not harm us. But fear, according to Machiavelli, works too slowly on the human spirit to obstruct the effects of the searing hatred that drives men immediately and impulsively to furious action. The administration is wrong, therefore, to believe that it can easily scare people into abandoning their plots to injure Americans. U.S. shows of force invariably provoke rage; and this rage, in turn, often overrides the trepidation that our military superiority instills...

http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2004/06/17/anti_americanism/index.html

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McGentrix wanna cracker? :wink: Laughing

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Sorry, a crime of opportunity. My humble apologies.

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So far all responses have shied away from addressing any of the points I have that CLEARLY shows that there is indeed a link between Iraq and al Qaeda.

Why is that you guys can't defend the statements that your side keeps making?

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McG - bipartisan Commssion Question

I don'tv know, looks like equal footing to me - decisions, decisions. Blinded by the right, everthings gonna be alright. Today we obfuscate, tomorrow belongs to me.....

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A Tale of Two Enemies
The real connection between al-Qaida and Iraq.
By William Saletan
Posted Monday, Oct. 7, 2002, at 8:35 PM PT

President Bush opened his Monday night speech on Iraq with two stories. "Eleven years ago, as a condition for ending the Persian Gulf War, the Iraqi regime was required to destroy its weapons of mass destruction, to cease all development of such weapons, and to stop all support for terrorist groups," he began. "The Iraqi regime has violated all of those obligations." Then Bush turned to a second story: "On Sept. 11, 2001, America felt its vulnerability, even to threats that gather on the other side of the earth."

Throughout his speech, Bush tried to weave the two stories together. He argued that Iraq was entangled with al-Qaida and that Sept. 11 revealed new dangers in Iraq that required military action. He tried to show, as he has for months, that war in Iraq would be part of the war on terror. Instead, he confirmed the opposite. If Bush had evidence linking the two wars, this was his last plausible chance to divulge it. He didn't. It's clear that the two stories are objectively unrelated. The link between them is subjective: The events of Sept. 11 lowered our standards for using force.

The first story goes halfway toward justifying an assault on Iraq. It provides a clear justification for military action against Saddam Hussein. "Every chemical and biological weapon that Iraq has or makes is a direct violation of the truce that ended the Persian Gulf War in 1991," Bush observed. He noted the many U.N. resolutions Saddam has breached since the war. The problem with this story is that it doesn't justify unilateral action by the United States. It justifies action by the Persian Gulf war coalition or by the United Nations.

That's why Bush turned to the second story. It provides a clear justification for American action. But the justification applies only to those who attacked us on Sept. 11. Bush tried to link Iraq to al-Qaida, but his attempts fell flat. He said that they both hate the United States, that some al-Qaida leaders have fled to Iraq, and that Iraqis have taught some members of al-Qaida how to build dangerous weapons. These things are true, but they aren't unique to Iraq. Bush also pointed out that Iraq harbors terrorists, but he ignored other regimes that are more guilty of this offense.

Bush said Iraq and al-Qaida "have had high-level contacts," but he didn't specify what they were or how long ago they took place. He said Iraq could unleash "a chemical or biological attack" against us by using "one terrorist or Iraqi intelligence operative to deliver it." The first delivery option makes the second gratuitous: If Saddam wants to send us anthrax or smallpox, he doesn't need Osama Bin Laden to do it. And on the question of Iraq's links to Sept. 11, the only evidence Bush produced was that "Saddam Hussein's regime gleefully celebrated the terrorist attacks on America." Not exactly a felony.

From the word games Bush plays, you can see how hard he's straining to connect the two stories. "Terror cells and outlaw regimes building weapons of mass destruction are different faces of the same evil," he declared, as though this metaphor clarified rather than confused the issue. Later, Bush spoke gravely of Saddam's "numerous meetings with Iraqi nuclear scientists, a group he calls his 'nuclear mujahideen'?-his nuclear holy warriors." This was an obvious attempt to make Saddam sound like a Muslim zealot when in fact he's a secular Arab nationalist.

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cicerone imposter wrote:

"Suppose the western powers occupying Iraq were largely to withdraw ... little is ventured, precious little is gained, but, as a result, not much is reported either."

Suppose the US were to make a total withdrawal from the entire Middle East and bring all of our military back home to the US. This would leave the Middle East Oil in the ground and reduce or eliminate the amount of oil revenues available to finance the TMM. A side effect of this will be to reduce US oil consumption and thereby increase the number of Americans dependent on government charity (i.e., entitlements).

We could then probably wait about two to three years until the TMM got themselves adequately organized using such funds as they could borrow/extort from Israel, France and Russia. Then the TMM could simultaneously attack multiple cities throughout the US. These attacks, despite our then totally home based military, would result in the murder and maiming of hundreds of thousands of Americans. This in turn would probably result in a total collapse of the US economy and starvation of those surviving the TMM attack for lack of the ability of the US government to tax/borrow enough money to cover the increasing demands on government charity.

The up side, of course, is that the rest of the world would no longer envy, resent and hate Americans. They would henceforth simply pity them. This state of affairs would continue until such time as the TMM do to the rest of the world what they did to the US. The upside of that of course is what remained of the human race at that point would all be equally miserable.

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Quote:

Rumsfeld ordered prisoner held
off the books
Iraqi terror suspect
hidden from
International Red Cross
By Jim Miklaszewski
Correspondent
NBC News
Updated: 7:08 p.m. ET June 16, 2004Pentagon officials tell NBC News that late last year, at the same time U.S. military police were allegedly abusing prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison, U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld ordered that one Iraqi prisoner be held "off the books" ?- hidden entirely from the International Red Cross and anyone else ?- in possible violation of international law.

It's the first direct link between Rumsfeld and questionable though not violent treatment of prisoners in Iraq.

The Iraqi prisoner was captured last July as deadly attacks on U.S. troops began to rise. He was identified as a member of the terrorist group Ansar al Islam, suspected in the attacks on coalition forces.

Shortly after the suspect's capture, the CIA flew him to an undisclosed location outside Iraq for interrogation. But four months later the Justice Department suggested that holding him outside Iraq might be illegal, and the prisoner was returned to Iraq at the end of October.

That's when Rumsfeld passed the order on to Army Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, commander of U.S. troops in Iraq, to keep the prisoner locked up, but off the books.

In the military's own investigation into prisoner abuse, Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba said efforts to hide prisoners from the Red Cross were "deceptive" and a "violation of international law."

Pentagon officials claim it's entirely lawful to hold prisoners in secret if they pose an immediate threat. But today, nearly one year after his capture, he's still being held incommunicado.

In fact, once the prisoner was returned to Iraq, the interrogations ceased because the prisoner was entirely lost in the system.

Human rights critics call it a clear violation of the Geneva Conventions.

Tom Malinowski of Human Rights Watch said, "If they thought he was such a threat that he could not get Red Cross visits, then how come such a threatening prisoner got lost in the system?"

Pentagon officials still insist Rumsfeld acted legally, but admit it all depends on how you interpret the law.

Ashcroft should arrest Rumps - a true criminal if there ever was one.....

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InfraBlue wrote:

Your are right, ican, the Zionist Ashkenazi conquered Palestine, they defeated and subdued by force of arms, they maimed and murdered to gain dominion over Palestine, and in your mind there is legitimacy in that.

There you go again mis-stating my position. My position is that the Palestinian Arabs have no higher claim to Palestine than do any other people descended from conquerors of Palestine. I explicitly agreed with your expressed desire that all of Palestine be governed by one government. I inferred that you meant that such government would secure equal suffrage for all inhabitants present and future.

The rest of your diatribe below is more repetition of your same old BS about conquerors for me are more equal than conquerors for you. Wake up man! They are all rotter mentalities. The problem is, and has been for the last 56 years, how to evolve a society relatively free of such rotter mentalities.

bah humbug wrote:

The law of the jungle

...

For a taste of this mentality in the modern day read any of steissd's posts here on A2K on the Arab Jews in Israel.

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"White House misled world about Saddam"

This is the headline for the lead story in The Independent today.

And there are lots more interesting reports inside.

Nuremberg-style trials for messrs Bush and Blair?

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BillW wrote:

McG - bipartisan Commssion AIN'T BIPARTISAN
McG - bipartisan Commssion AIN'T BIPARTISAN
McG - bipartisan Commssion AIN'T BIPARTISAN
McG - bipartisan Commssion AIN'T BIPARTISAN
McG - bipartisan Commssion AIN'T BIPARTISAN
McG - bipartisan Commssion AIN'T BIPARTISAN
McG - bipartisan Commssion AIN'T BIPARTISAN
McG - bipartisan Commssion AIN'T BIPARTISAN
McG - bipartisan Commssion AIN'T BIPARTISAN
McG - bipartisan Commssion AIN'T BIPARTISAN
McG - bipartisan Commssion AIN'T BIPARTISAN
McG - bipartisan Commssion AIN'T BIPARTISAN

I don'tv know, looks like equal footing to me - decisions, decisions. Blinded by the right, everthings gonna be alright. Today we obfuscate, tomorrow belongs to me.....

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blatham wrote:

Quote:
...If the American electorate, knowing what it knows and, above all, having seen what it has seen, proceeds to reelect George W. Bush in November, the moderating distinction between the American administration and the American people will be eroded or perhaps erased -- with what violent consequences no one can predict.

There is another possibility. If a majority/plurality of the American electorate, knowing what it knows and, above all, having seen what it has seen, heard what it has heard, read what it has read, studied what it has studied, experienced what it has experienced, proceeds to reelect George W. Bush in November, that majority/plurality electorate will have demonstrated that they have a keener sense of truth than do the minority of the American electorate. They will have demonstrated their ability to better distinquish fact from fiction, reality from delusion, truth from propaganda.

Or, the majority/plurality of the American electorate could simply perceive their choice to be the lousey choice between dumb and dumber, and decide to stick with dumb. Is it more rational to pick dumber just because so many others hate dumb? I don't think so.

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Thank goodness the choice is between dumb and a return to intelligence, the choice is easy Exclamation

Then again, you guys don't like choice - only being told what to do........

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Smack That Cheney-Bot!
June 17, 2004
By MAUREEN DOWD

WASHINGTON

The whole thing was extremely suspicious.

People here still haven't stopped buzzing about the
president's bizarre behavior at the White House unveiling
ceremony for the Clintons' official portraits on Monday.
Mr. Bush acted totally out of character: witty, engaged,
amiable, bipartisan and magnanimous. Even to Bill and
Hillary.

He gave a sly wink to his own black-sheep past and that of
the wayward Rodham brothers, Hugh and Tony, when he greeted
the Rodhams' mom, Dorothy: "Welcome, we're glad you're
here. And those two boys you're still trying to raise."

W. gave lavish encomiums - and even a nickname - to the man
he once accused of stripping the White House of dignity and
honor. Saying his dad was 41 and he's 43, he grinned and
said, "We're glad you're here, 42."

Even Bill Clinton was dumbfounded, not to mention
confounded. Maybe that's why the usually articulate 42
declared he felt like "a pickle stepping into history."
Shouldn't he have felt like the ham and cheese between two
slices of Wonder bread?

Mr. Clinton told friends afterward that he was blown away,
that W. had never been so nice to him before. There was no
smirk, no begrudging. And Clinton pals at a Georgetown
restaurant that night alternated between bellowing about
getting rid of President Bush and marveling at how great
he'd been at the unveiling.

"Maybe after a week of seeing the comparisons of himself
and Reagan, in which he did not come out as well," one
Clintonista speculated, "he's getting the knack of acting
more like Reagan." Mr. Clinton used to study Reagan tapes
to pick up pointers; why shouldn't Mr. Bush?

Perhaps we have a Potomac invasion of the body snatchers.
Maybe, like the grumpy wives of Stepford, bristly W. has
been replaced by soothing W. With the race with John Kerry
so tight, the Republicans were reminded last week of the
advantages of a leader with a light touch - not one who's
at odds with the world, and rattled about the prison
torture scandal creeping toward Rummy and the sulfurous
reversals in Iraq. (Although it would be natural for Mr.
Bush to feel churlish. After going to war to save Iraqis
from a regime that "tortured children in front of their
parents," now he can't even trust the Iraqis to bring
Saddam to justice.)

Like the Stepford husbands, G.O.P. bigwigs could have met
in a smoky men's club and decided they wanted a W. who was
a little less pushy and a little more sunny. All world
domination, all the time, can be wearing.

The Republicans messed up their first attempt at this, when
they took Dick Cheney to an undisclosed location to switch
him with a replicant. Instead of an affable, reassuring
presence, as he was in Bush I, the Bush II vice president
is a macabre automaton who keeps repeating, over and over,
as contrary evidence piles up, that Saddam and Al Qaeda
were linked, and that Mohamed Atta met an Iraqi
intelligence officer in Prague.

Mr. Cheney did it again on Monday in Florida speaking at -
where else? - a conservative think tank; he said Saddam
"had long-established ties with Al Qaeda." This claim, used
by the White House to justify its gallop to war, was once
more flatly contradicted by the 9/11 panel's report
yesterday: "Two senior bin Laden associates have adamantly
denied that any ties existed between Al Qaeda and Iraq. We
have no credible evidence that Iraq and Al Qaeda cooperated
on attacks against the United States."

The report says Osama did seek help from Saddam in the
90's, "despite his opposition to Hussein's secular regime."
But aside from sending an official to meet with Osama in
Sudan, Saddam stiffed his request for weapons and
training-camp space.

Mr. Cheney isn't programmed to process evidence that shows
he was wrong; he simply keeps repeating the same
nonsensical claims as if he has a microchip malfunction.

Unfortunately, there's no spouse to give him a knock on the
head, as the Stepford husbands do when their Farrah
fem-bots go haywire and keep repeating things like, "I'll
just die if I don't get that recipe. . . . I'll just die if
I-I-I [bop!] don't get that recipe. . . ."

Cheney-bot just keeps going and going: "He had
long-established ties with Al Qaeda. . . . He had
long-established ties with Al Qaeda-a-a. . . . He-he-e-e?-?- brzzzrrrp!"

E-mail: [email protected]

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/17/opinion/17DOWD.html?ex=1088471142&ei=1&en=0a29122ee121fa8a

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..tomorrow belongs to me.......

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Bush Insists on Saddam Relationship with Al-Qaeda

1 hour, 1 minute ago

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Bush (news - web sites) on Thursday insisted Saddam Hussein (news - web sites) had a relationship with al-Qaeda but said his administration never asserted that the former Iraqi president had a role in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

"The reason I keep insisting that there was a relationship between Iraq (news - web sites) and Saddam and al-Qaeda is because there was a relationship between Iraq and al-Qaeda," Bush told reporters after a meeting with his Cabinet.

"This administration never said that the 9/11 attacks were orchestrated between Saddam and al-Qaeda. We did say there were numerous contacts between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda," the Republican president said.

"There were numerous contacts between the two," he added, citing reports of a Sudan meeting between al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden (news - web sites) and Iraqi intelligence officers.

His remarks came a day after the independent commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on Washington and New York reported that there was no evidence to support claims of a working relationship between Saddam and the militant network blamed for the attacks that killed 3,000 people.

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It's conflation, plain and simple.

Cycloptichorn

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I've heard Bush say there was a connection between Saddam and al Qaeda, then no connection between Saddam and al Qaeda. He now says there was. Is anybody else out there confused?

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ican711nm wrote:

McG - bipartisan Commssion AIN'T BIPARTISAN
McG - bipartisan Commssion AIN'T BIPARTISAN
McG - bipartisan Commssion AIN'T BIPARTISAN
McG - bipartisan Commssion AIN'T BIPARTISAN
McG - bipartisan Commssion AIN'T BIPARTISAN
McG - bipartisan Commssion AIN'T BIPARTISAN
McG - bipartisan Commssion AIN'T BIPARTISAN
McG - bipartisan Commssion AIN'T BIPARTISAN
McG - bipartisan Commssion AIN'T BIPARTISAN
McG - bipartisan Commssion AIN'T BIPARTISAN
McG - bipartisan Commssion AIN'T BIPARTISAN
McG - bipartisan Commssion AIN'T BIPARTISAN

Ehmm ... "bipartisan" seems to be an easy enough concept to grasp ... includes people from both parties ... the 9/11 Commission does include people from both parties ... in equal numbers. So whats your point here, exactly, ican?

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tomorrow belongs to me...... :sad:

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THE US, THE UN AND IRAQ VI

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