THE US, THE UN AND THE IRAQIS THEMSELVES, V. 7.0

First of all, it is an out and out lie that the 9/11 commission has stated, or even alleged, in your hyperbolic term, that there was any working relationship between the Ba'atists and AQ.

As i never read opinion pieces, except when i come here, your belief about the origin of my opinions is of supreme indifference to me.

You have yet to demonstrate how the invasion of Iraq constitutes fighting to protect our freedom. You have lied outright about the report of the 9/11 commission. You have lied outright about Iraq and the attacks on September 11th.

I would really like to know in what way Saddam posed a threat to US or British national security.

... in a state in a vulnerable postion, surrounded by powerful enemies, it is the duty of the prince to defend his people by seizing the initiative.

Now given that the United States has oceans on two sides, and that the UK is a an island group, and the Iraqi Navy seems not to exceeded a few motor launches, i would like someone to explain the clear and present danger which was allegedly posed.

Who did?

Having evidence of a connection between al Qaeda and Iraq is having evidence of a "working relationship."

1. He provided training sites for al Qaeda.
2. He provided financing for al Qaeda.
3. He provided equipment for al Qaeda.
4. He provided sanctuary for al Qaeda.

Quote:

Having evidence of a connection between al Qaeda and Iraq is having evidence of a "working relationship."

No, it isn't.

Aug 9, 5:34 PM (ET)

By Patricia Wilson
GRAND CANYON, Ariz. (Reuters) - Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry said on Monday he would have voted for the congressional resolution authorizing force against Iraq even if he had known then no weapons of mass destruction would be found.
Taking up a challenge from President Bush, whom he will face in the Nov. 2 election, the Massachusetts senator said: "I'll answer it directly. Yes, I would have voted for the authority. I believe it is the right authority for a president to have but I would have used that authority effectively."

I will be a commander in chief who will never mislead us into war. I will have a Vice President who will not conduct secret meetings with polluters to rewrite our environmental laws. I will have a Secretary of Defense who will listen to the best advice of our military leaders. And I will appoint an Attorney General who actually upholds the Constitution of the United States.

With respect to Saddam Hussein and the threat he presents, we must ask ourselves a simple question: Why? Why is Saddam Hussein pursuing weapons that most nations have agreed to limit or give up? Why is Saddam Hussein guilty of breaking his own cease-fire agreement with the international community? Why is Saddam Hussein attempting to develop nuclear weapons when most nations don't even try, and responsible nations that have them attempt to limit their potential for disaster? Why did Saddam Hussein threaten and provoke? Why does he develop missiles that exceed allowable limits? Why did Saddam Hussein lie and deceive the inspection teams previously? Why did Saddam Hussein not account for all of the weapons of mass destruction which UNSCOM identified? Why is he seeking to develop unmanned airborne vehicles for delivery of biological agents?

Does he do all of these things because he wants to live by international standards of behavior? Because he respects international law? Because he is a nice guy underneath it all and the world should trust him?

It would be naive to the point of grave danger not to believe that, left to his own devices, Saddam Hussein will provoke, misjudge, or stumble into a future, more dangerous confrontation with the civilized world. He has as much as promised it. He has already created a stunning track record of miscalculation. He miscalculated an 8-year war with Iran. He miscalculated the invasion of Kuwait. He miscalculated America's responses to it. He miscalculated the result of setting oil rigs on fire. He miscalculated the impact of sending Scuds into Israel. He miscalculated his own military might. He miscalculated the Arab world's response to his plight. He miscalculated in attempting an assassination of a former President of the United States. And he is miscalculating now America's judgments about his miscalculations.

"[W]e urge you, after consulting with Congress, and consistent with the U.S. Constitution and laws, to take necessary actions (including, if appropriate, air and missile strikes on suspect Iraqi sites) to respond effectively to the threat posed by Iraq's refusal to end its weapons of mass destruction programs."
Letter to President Clinton, signed by Sens. Carl Levin, Tom Daschle, John Kerry, and others Oct. 9, 1998

"There is unmistakable evidence that Saddam Hussein is working aggressively to develop nuclear weapons and will likely have nuclear weapons within the next five years ... We also should remember we have always underestimated the progress Saddam has made in development of weapons of mass destruction."

"[W]ithout question, we need to disarm Saddam Hussein. He is a brutal, murderous dictator, leading an oppressive regime ... He presents a particularly grievous threat because he is so consistently prone to miscalculation ... And now he is miscalculating America's response to his contin ued deceit and his consistent grasp for weapons of mass destruction ... So the threat of Saddam Hussein with weapons of mass destruction is real ..."

'I don't think there will be a civil war. This isn't Northern Ireland or Bosnia or Lebanon'

In the league table of highly charged confrontations, the 25-minute meeting that Adnan Pachachi and three Iraqi colleagues had with Saddam Hussein in his prison cell last December ranks pretty high.

When Saddam was caught, Mr Pachachi, a leading member of the Iraqi government before the Baathist coup in 1968, was phoned by Paul Bremer. The Americans' administrator in Iraq invited him, as the acting chairman of the Iraqi Governing Council, to gather a few members together and visit the prisoner "so the Iraqi people could see that it was true, that it wasn't propaganda."

"Of course, the temptation was too great," Mr Pachachi recalls. "Who could give up a chance like that?" Mr Bremer and the US military commander, General Ricardo Sanchez, had suggested they might want to stare at Saddam through a window or via a television camera. But of course, the group, all former opponents of Saddam, wanted to talk to him; or at least three of them did.

For while the fourth, Ahmad Chalabi, the Pentagon's favourite Iraqi until the CIA accused him earlier this year of being an Iranian spy, later talked a great deal about the meeting, he was silent while it went on. When Saddam, who was sitting in black slippers on his steel US Army cot with his beard freshly trimmed, saw the four come in, Mr Pachachi said: "He asked the Americans: 'Who are these gentlemen?' Chalabi immediately pointed to me and said: 'That's Adnan Pachachi'." Whether or not Mr Chalabi had taken sudden fright at Saddam in the flesh, however haggard, Mr Pachachi adds with an infectious laugh: "These were the only words [Chalabi] uttered during the entire meeting."

"Then [Saddam] said: 'Oh yes, of course we know you; you were the foreign minister. What brought you with these people?' And I said: 'Well, we are trying to create a democratic Iraq.'

"Then I asked [Saddam] why didn't he withdraw from Kuwait [after the invasion in 1990] when he could have done. He would have saved Iraq all its problems: sanctions and the ravages of war. He said that he was prepared to withdraw provided all the problems of the Middle East could be settled. I said: 'You must have known that was never going to happen, that it was a non-starter.'

"I then asked him why did he kill so many people, why he had been such a ruthless ruler. And he said: 'Iraq needs a just but firm ruler.' I said: 'You were not a just ruler. You were in fact an oppressive ruler, an oppressive tyrant over the Iraqi people.' And he said: 'You know, sometimes one has to use force in order to keep the peace and unity and integrity of the country'."

Mr Pachachi says thoughtfully now that these exchanges - including Saddam's breathtakingly hubristic self-justification - were conducted in a "very civil way". He added that his other colleagues - the Governing Council member Mowaffak al-Rubaie, a victim of Saddam's torturers in 1979, and Adel Abdel Mahdi, of the Shia Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq - had been "more abusive. And he replied in kind". This is an understatement; when Mr Rubaie accused the former dictator of cowardice, because he had had two AK-47s when he was run to ground by US forces but did not shoot a single bullet, Saddam replied with the full - and ample - range of Arabic swear-words favoured in the Iraqi street.

But the conversation he recollects in such detail also says as much about Mr Pachachi as it does about Saddam. The man who can have a "civil exchange with even a tyrant he has every reason to hate - one who put tens of thousands of his fellow Iraqis into mass graves, and caused his own exile for more than a generation - remains by instinct the diplomat he once was - as a pre-Saddam ambassador to Washington.

One question about the future Iraq is how pivotal a role a man as internationally experienced, but also as fastidious and undemagogic, as Mr Pachachi, will play in it. What is clear is that Mr Pachachi, at 81 the nearest Iraq has to an elder statesman, is ready and eager to try. Sitting behind his desk in the spacious house he has rented as his headquarters in the upmarket Mansour neighbour- hood of Baghdad, he is seeking to maximise the support in the coming elections promised by the end of January for his party, the Independent Democrats. Like its leader, the party is nationalist, but also secular and liberal in outlook. The elections will choose the national assembly entrusted with drawing up a new constitution.

Mr Pachachi says: "There is now a real possibility of having credible, fair, transparent elections that would reflect the desire of the Iraqi people more than anything that has gone before." He welcomes the fact that they will use a system of proportional representation which means that every vote will count.

Let's see the group reconcile this little litany of Kerry statements re Saddam, the war in Iraq, the threats that existed, and what he thought about it, and what he has said.

Tribal Sovereignty - Letters to the Editor, 11Aug04 -

Seattle P-I promotes false image of President Bush
I don't know how many people have seen President Bush's appearance at Unity, the Journalists of Color convention. I watched it on C-SPAN.org and listened at Indianz.com. I know that the P-I's Mark Trahant had a ringside seat, because as a panelist he asked Bush about Native American sovereignty. So it's surprising to read Trahant's account (Sunday), which gives the false impression that Bush competently fielded his question.

Bush's response, with his telling hesitations and stammering left intact, was:

"Yeah, uh, tribal sovereignty means that. It's sovereign. It's you're, you're a, you've been given sovereignty, and you're viewed as a s-s-sovereign entity. (Audience laughter.) And, therefore, the relationship between the federal government and tribes is one between s-s-sovereign entities."

Trahant indicates that he found encouraging answers in Bush's bumbling evasions. I wonder if he's indulging an overactive imagination. Newsweek's Marcus Mabry more accurately describes Bush as "looking like a schoolboy unprepared at the front of the class" while his audience "snickered."

If Bush were exposed to the public eye as the contestants on reality shows, putting his shortcomings on regular display without scripts or handlers to make him look good, his career would be toast. No wonder such unmanaged encounters are rarely allowed.

Why do journalists like Trahant, upon whom we depend to give us facts, habitually rewrite Bush's embarrassing goof-ups to make them seem like smart, substantive statements? If this is what is currently meant by objectivity, how can we possibly rely upon anything the press tells us about the powers that be?

Kenneth Huey
Seattle

"What is the full picture?



"'It's just like the West,' Jones said, 'when we were trying to settle it with the Indians.'



"He wouldn't elaborate.



"'It means that we have to kill all of them,' said a captain standing nearby, half-joking."



James Meek, a journalist for the British Guardian, spent some days on patrol with a U.S. Marine platoon near al-Karmah, a town between Abu Ghraib and Fallujah west of Baghdad. Here are comments found in his two-parter, Five days in the life of an invisible war (7/19/04):


"Another [Marine]: 'I just wonder why we can't come to an agreement with the fuckin' retards out there. If you stop tryin' to kill us we'll stop tryin' to kill you.'