Ican.........can I just say...........
But ican just say 
You can count on it!
can't by Edgar Guest
can't is the worst word that's written or spoken;
Doing more harm here than slander and lies;
On it is many a strong spirit is broken,
And with it many a good purpose dies.
It springs from the lips of the thoughtless each morning,
And robs us of courage we need through this day:
It rings in our ears like a timely sent warning,
And laughs when we falter and fall by the way.
can't is the father of feeble endeavor,
The parent of terror and halfhearted work;
It weakens the efforts of artisans clever,
And makes of the toiler an indolent shirk.
It poisons the soul of the man with a vision,
It stifles in infancy many a plan;
It greets honest toiling with open derision,
And mocks at the hopes and the dreams of a man.
can't is a word none should speak without blushing;
To utter it should be a symbol of shame;
Ambition and courage it daily is crushing;
It blights a man's purpose and shortens his aim.
Despise it with all of your hatred of error;
Refuse it the lodgment it seeks in yor brain;
Arm against it as a creature of terror,
And all that you dream of you someday shall gain.
can't is the word that is foe to ambition,
An enemy in ambush to shatter your will;
Its prey is forever the man with a mission,
And bows but to courage and patience and skill.
Hate it, with hatred that's deep and undying,
For once it is welcomed 'twill break any man;
Whatever the goal you are seeking, keep trying,
And answer this demon by saying: "I can."
Well, all I can say Ican is that it is so sweet to find someone so euphorically sure of the future, I haven't seen such foaming happy giddiness since the dogs found that bag of special mushrooms and ate the whole thing.
What's missing is your lack of understanding of Iraq, of it's history and it's conflicts and of Islam which is an basic part of the Iraqi character. I would have thought by now you would have spent some time learning about the place where Americans are dying every day, instead of contenting yourself with Tom Franks bloviations about how good we whipped em twice.
Catch this: we haven't whipped them yet. The insurgents are well equipped for this war of horror, they care about nothing but their faith in their God and their hatred of the American presence in their land. Get this: they do not hate freedom, or democracy or rockandroll, they just want to be free of western influences, to be under the law of Shariah and be guided in their life by Allah and his Prophet Mohammed. And they are willing to keep killing us one by one until we leave. There will never be a cease-fire, there will never be a negotiated peace.
You don't like it? Too bad, they will kill you too if you happen to be in or around their land.
Joe (time's up. Face the facts.) Nation
Afghan citizens made their commitment to democracy so clear by ``massively'' participating in the election that no major political figure would now attempt to circumvent the vote, U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan Zalmay Khalilzad told reporters in Washington today.
``It was a spectacular success,'' Afghan-born Khalilzad said of the voting. He described a celebratory attitude among many Afghan citizens, many of who took special baths and dressed in their best clothes for the event.
Some women wore henna on their hands, a tradition often observed at weddings, and others ``said their last prayers,'' apparently determined to vote even if it meant they might be killed by opponents of the U.S.-assisted election, Khalilzad said.
http://quote.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000080&sid=adsKIaRvXmBQ&refer=asia
Most are baathist holdovers from Saddam reign who no longer have the power they once had over the populace of Iraq.
3. Absolutely? Sometimes you have to go to the reg...
Absolutely?
Sometimes you have to go to the regional newspapers for the punchy editorials. The Pentagon's announcement that the search for Iraqi weapons of mass destruction officially ended quietly in late December provokes the Virginia Pilot to observe, "And America is left with a seemingly endless war in Iraq, but without a rationale for it."
Well, not the main rationale. But Bush is still spinning the old fool's gold with his privileged lips:
Dan Froomkin of the Washington Post quotes this exchange from the 20/20 to be aired Friday night:
"Barbara Walters: This was our main reason for going in. So now when we read, 'Okay, the search is over,' what do you feel?
"President Bush: Well, like you, I felt like we'd find weapons of mass destruction. Or like many, many here in the United States, many around the world, the United Nations thought he had weapons of mass destruction, and so therefore, one, we need to find out what went wrong in the intelligence gathering. Saddam was dangerous. And . . . the world was safer without him in power.
"Walters: But was it worth it if there were no weapons of mass destruction? Now that we know that that was wrong? Was it worth it?
"Bush: Oh, absolutely."
Bush's response contains three elements.
1) The US was not alone in being wrong about Iraq having weapons of mass destruction. All the other nations did, too.
2) Saddam was dangerous.
3) Absolutely.
When is someone going to call him on this inanity? The Belgians didn't have intelligence assets inside Iraq that could have given them an independent view of the question. Whatever the world believed, it mostly believed because the United States disseminated the information.
Moreover, it is not true that there were no dissenters. The State Department's own Intelligence and Research Division dissented. French military intelligence dissented. What Bush is saying is either untrue or meaningless.
As I have pointed out before, Saddam without weapons of mass destruction could not have been "dangerous" to the United States. Just parroting "dangerous" doesn't create real danger. Danger has to come from an intent and ability to strike the US. Saddam had neither. He wasn't dangerous to the US. It is absurd that this poor, weak, ramshackle 3rd world state should have been seen as "dangerous" to a superpower. That is just propaganda.
Calling Saddam "dangerous" as an existential element without regard to the evidence falls under the propaganda techniques of name-calling and stirring irrational fear.
As for "Absolutely," it is a weasel word. It is not an argument. It is a species of hand waving. It is cheap.
Bush has figured out, apparently, that some in the American public respond, rather like the apes to which they deny they are related, to posture, grunting and body language rather than to reason and evidence. When I see him smirking and gesturing, I can't help thinking of the ape General Thade (Tim Roth) in Tim Burton's remake of the Planet of the Apes, which used scientific findings about primate behavior and hierarchy to inform the acting.
"Absolutely" used in this way is a vocalization that actually functions as an intimidating agonistic display meant to close off further dialogue by the silverback.
What would happen if we turned away from the world of political theater to the real world? We would find a study by the National Intelligence Council which is quite alarming about Iraq and the future.
The National Intelligence Council, the think tank of the CIA, has concluded that Iraq has now succeeded Afghanistan as the training ground for professionalized terrorists.
Much of the terrorism in the Middle East in the 1990s and early zeroes has been carried out by fighters who had assembled to defeat the Soviet Union in Afghanistan in the 1980s, got training and became ideologically committed, and then returned to their home countries. The "Afghans" on the streets of Algiers actually wore Afghan clothing (sort of like an American coming back from Scotland and insisting on wearing a kilt), and they joined the vigorous stream of Islamic politics in Algeria. When the generals cancelled the election results of the 1991 parliamentary polls, which the Islamic Salvation Front had won, many Muslim fundamentalists turned radical and got training from the "Afghans." The more radical of them formed the Armed Islamic Group, which joined al-Qaeda in the late 1990s and to which belonged Ahmad Rassam, who tried to blow up Los Angeles Airport for the Millennium Plot. Similar stories could be told about the Afghanistan returnees in Yemen, Indonesia, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and so forth.
So, the likelihood is that Bush's Iraq misadventure will be responsible for terrorism that is blowing up our grandchildren down the line.
Absolutely.
Fri, Jan 14, 2005 0:15
)Nation
Cyclo - I think you underestimate the Iraqis. Even if the number of terrorists there is twice what you say, there are millions more who have no intention of folding under Baath pressure.
I thought this thread was about Iraq....
White House Calls CIA Report 'Speculative'
Associated Press
WASHINGTON - The White House on Friday played down a government report which said the war in Iraq is providing an important training ground and recruitment center for Islamic terrorists.
"This is a speculative report about things that could happen in the world," press secretary Scott McClellan told reporters on Air Force One as President Bush traveled to Florida for an education speech.
Bush has frequently described Iraq as the central front in the war on terror, and has said the United States wants to confront terrorists overseas rather than at home.
"The report confirms that we have the right strategy for winning the war on terrorism," McClellan said.
Asked about the finding that the war had created a breeding ground for terrorists, he said, "That's assuming that terrorists would just be sitting around and doing nothing if we weren't staying on the offensive."
The report was released Thursday by the National Intelligence Council, the CIA director's think tank.
US Ignored Warning on Iraqi Oil Smuggling
A joint investigation by the Financial Times and Il Sole 24 Ore, the Italian business daily, shows that the single largest and boldest smuggling operation in the oil-for-food programme was conducted with the knowledge of the US government.
by: Claudio Gatti on: 15th Jan, 05
For months, the US Congress has been investigating activities that violated the United Nations oil-for-food programme and helped Saddam Hussein build secret funds to acquire arms and buy influence.
President George W. Bush has linked future US funding of the international body to a clear account of what went on under the multi-billion dollar programme. But a joint investigation by the Financial Times and Il Sole 24 Ore, the Italian business daily, shows that the single largest and boldest smuggling operation in the oil-for-food programme was conducted with the knowledge of the US government. "Although the financial beneficiaries were Iraqis and Jordanians, the fact remains that the US government participated in a major conspiracy that violated sanctions and enriched Saddam's cronies," a former UN official said. "That is exactly what many in the US are now accusing other countries of having done. I think it's pretty ironic."
Overall, the operation involved 14 tankers engaged by a Jordanian entity to load at least 7m barrels of oil for a total of no less than $150m (113m) of illegal profits. About another $50m went to Mr Hussein's cronies. In February 2003, when US media first published reports of this smuggling effort, then attributed exclusively to the Iraqis, the US mission to the UN condemned it as "immoral".
However, FT/Il Sole have evidence that US and UK missions to the UN were informed of the smuggling while it was happening and that they reported it to their respective governments, to no avail. Oil traders were told informally that the US let the tankers go because Amman needed oil to build up its strategic reserves in expectation of the Iraq war.
Last week Paul Volcker, head of the independent commission created by the UN to investigate failures in the oil-for-food programme, confirmed that Washington allowed violations of the oil sanctions by Jordan in recognition of its national interests. However, only a fraction of the oil smuggled out of Iraq reached the Jordanian port of Aqaba. Most was sold to the Middle East Oil Refinery, in Alexandria, Egypt; to a refinery in Aden, Yemen; and to Malaysia and China. "This operation was not permitted under the Security Council resolutions dealing with the oil-for-food programme," said Michel Tellings, one of the two UN inspectors responsible at the time for the implementation of the programme. "The volume of oil was not inspected and payments were not made to the UN escrow account, as required by the programme."
In January 2003, Millennium, a little-known Jordanian company, asked Odin Marine, a shipping broker based in Stamford, Connecticut, to find tankers to load millions of barrels of Iraqi oil. Odin declined to comment. "The ship owners were very wary," recalled another broker involved in the deal. "They received papers from Jordan with all kinds of government stamps claiming it was legitimate,but never actually received anything from the UN."
In fact, no UN papers could have been provided since Millennium was not allowed to lift oil from Iraq, and the port of loading, Khor al-Amaya in southern Iraq, did not have UN authorisation to operate. Nevertheless, shipping companies willing to take the cargo were found. "One of the vessels I fixed was the Argosea, which was owned by the Greek shipping company Tsakos," the broker said. At the same time, Millennium chartered a couple of supertankers, including the Empress des Mers, to hold its oil in the Gulf.
According to a spokesman for the Bahamian-based company that owned the Empress des Mers, the vessel was to be loaded at sea from other tankers and sit in the territorial waters of the United Arab Emirates off Fujairah, a port at the entrance of the Gulf. The operation was too big to go unnoticed. In the middle of February 2003, UN inspectors began receiving calls from companies that were lifting oil from Mina al-Bakr, the only UN-authorised port in southern Iraq.
The companies complained that tankers had suddenly appeared a few miles away in Khor al-Amaya. Their activities had halved the pace of loading in Mina, which was served by the same pipeline, leading to delays that were causing demurrage fees. Furious because the Iraqis had a history of refusing to reimburse those costs, the lifters informed Mr Tellings who in turn notified the US and UK missions to the UN.
Mr Tellings provided detailed information, including the names of some of the ships spotted by inspectors in the area. He believed the tankers would be challenged by the Multinational Interception Force (MIF), the force led by the US navy that had been enforcing the embargo on Iraq. "Three or four days later, I chased [the US and UK representatives] and asked them what had happened with my information. They told me that they had communicated it to their capitals and that they were puzzled themselves by the lack of action."
US mission spokesman Richard Grenell said: "We were tireless advocates to bring to the attention of the committee any and all oil smuggling and illegal activity. But while the [oil-for-food] investigation is going on we are not going to talk about specific issues." Mr Tellings was not the only one who informed US authorities. Saybolt, the Dutch company hired by the UN to oversee oil loading operations in Iraq, reported the incident to the MIF.
On February 21 2003, when reports of the smuggling first appeared in the US press, Jeff Alderson, spokesman for the Maritime Liaison Office (MLO), the US navy office in Bahrain that co-ordinated the MIF activities, was quoted as saying that he had "no information" about it. His successor, Jeff Breslau, confirmed to Il Sole/FT that "we have no record that we were warned" about the smuggling. But Il Sole/FT has discovered that on February 17 2003, Saybolt sent an e-mail to the MLO about smuggling that specifically mentioned the Argosea. The same day, the MLO sent a reply to Saybolt acknowledging that notification.
For months, international traders looked for ways to make the cargo legal. "There were plenty of letters from the Jordanian ministry claiming that the oil was legitimate," saidone trader. "But we concluded that there was no way that it could be legally bought." Eventually, however, customers willing to take a chance were found. "After six months, we were asked to discharge the oil," said the spokesman for the Empress des Mers. The cargo was taken to Egypt, he added.
Out of this operation, traders estimate, Iraqis pocketed about $50m, all off the UN books, while subsequent sale of the oil netted $150m in profits. Millennium, the company that arranged the operation, is owned by Khaled Shaheen, a Jordanian magnate who is president of Shaheen Investment & Business (SBIG), and his two brothers, according to a company search. However, Millennium clearly operated with the approval of the Jordanian government. Papers exchanged with the shippers, and e-mails from Odin Marine describe the company as "Millennium, for the trade of raw materials and mineral oils for and on behalf of the Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources". An e-mail sent on March 6 2003 by Odin Marine to confirm the fixing of one of the vessels mentioned that "the Jordanian government through the Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources empowered Millennium to conduct this transaction on their behalf, as per the attached power of attorney".
