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

I re-read your post No. 1234944, page 909. I have boldfaced both the specific parts you were responding to and your response that led me to infer you were still hung up on the WMD whooey.

revel wrote:

Quote:

Well for once Blair's team at the UN failed to convince. Of course we blamed the French, we weren't going to admit that the resolution was not going to pass because a majority would vote against. In the infamous tv interview Chirac said he would veto the use of force. But he didn't rule it out for all time, he wanted the inspectors to be allowed time to finish their job and report. We jumped on that, withdrew the resolution, went to war without it and blamed the French.

What was the job Chirac wanted to be finished? It was the search for WMD. Chirac too was hung up on WMD whooey.

This was the problem for me in a nutshell. It was like they wanted to shove that down everyone's throat so fast that it was a done deal before anyone really knew why we were going to war.

Had they said at the outset that they wanted to turn Iraq into a democracy to have as an example for the rest of the middle east an alternative way of running their country without dictators so that the rest of the world would be safer and that they couldn't do it unless they got rid of Saddam Hussein who is an evil dictator anyway who has tortured and oppressed his people for decades, then at least it would have been an honest approach and people could have made up their minds on the truth instead of sexed up half truths.

(Sorry for the long sentence)

People keep going on about those of [us] in the United States are just so opposed to George Bush that we are against the war in Iraq. That is simply not true. Most of us [were] for the war in Afghanistan, at least I was and I still am and George Bush was acting President then too as well.


I would have been against the war in Iraq even if they had phrased it that way. (I do not believe treating people much less whole nations as though they are merely pawns in a world chess game.) If they went strictly for the Iraqi people and I trusted that was their interest, I would have been for it even though we were still in a war with Afghanistan that we still have not completed yet. But the way they sprung this war on us with the excuses of WMD

Multiple reasons were given for our invasion of Iraq. Only one, WMD, turned out to be false. All the others turned out to be true. Why not get hung up on them? Why not get hung up on the most important true reason. That reason was that al Qaeda had bases in Iraq just like they had bases in Afghanistan. Both the Taliban and Saddam ignored our requests to remove al Qaeda leaders from their countries. So we chose to remove both al Qaeda and these governments that ignored our requests. We removed the governments to reduce the probability of al Qaeda re-establishing itself in both these countries after we left. We surely had had good reason for believing al Qaeda was a threat to US.

and past crimes of Saddam Hussien which never was a direct threat to us just made me suspicious of them from the get go. I thought at the time that if others in the world who are closer to that part of the country feel like they were threatened then I would support the war, but they didn't so I didn't understand the rush.

It wasn't Saddam that was a direct threat to us. His threat to us was indirect. It was/is al Qaeda that was/is a direct threat to us. Saddam was an indirect threat to us, because he ignored the direct threat to us of the Iraq based al Qaeda.

I infer that some think the Iraq based al Qaeda were an insignificant direct threat to us because Saddam was alleged to have had little or no relationship with them. Well Saddam allegedly had little or no relationship with the Afghanistan based al Qaeda, yet that invasion is ok with you.

So, in conclusion I infer that you are hung up on the WMD whooey because you fail to look at all that what was actually true in Iraq.

Please, tell usmore about your scroll button ........ pant pant pant

Iraqi, U.S. forces overrun rebel base, kill 85

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- After a two-hour firefight, Iraqi forces and U.S. helicopters captured an insurgent base north of Baghdad, killing 85 rebels, U.S. and Iraqi military officials said Wednesday.

"A previous safe haven for planning attacks has been removed," a U.S. military official said of Tuesday's battle.

Although the Iraqi military said it killed 85 insurgents during the firefight, the U.S. military said the number of rebel dead was "undetermined."

Seven Iraqi police commandos with the Ministry of Interior died in the fighting and six were wounded, the U.S. military said.

The U.S. military said it had lost no American troops in the battle.

The base included between 80 and 120 rebels at the time of the attack, some of them non-Iraqis, a U.S. military officials said.

The insurgents evacuated their positions about two hours into the battle, the officials said.

After entering the camp, Iraqi commandos found non-Iraqi passports, training publications, propaganda documents, weapons and ammunition, the U.S. military said.

The U.S. military said the camp is at a remote location about 60 miles northwest of Baghdad, near Lake Tharthar, along the border of Salah ad Din and Anbar provinces. But the Iraqi Interior Ministry said the camp was in Samarra, which is east of the lake.

Iraqi forces also seized 30 boats at the camp which presumably were used at the lake, the Iraqi Defense Ministry said.

The U.S. role in the battle was primarily to provide helicopter support, the U.S. military official said. The battle "is another indication of [the insurgents'] diminished capabilities," the official said.

"This in an indication that they have been forced from major population centers and forced to operate in more remote areas," he said.

The battle follows Sunday's ambush on a U.S. convoy south of Baghdad that the U.S. military said left 26 insurgents dead.

Saving Shiavo Whle Burying the Real News
author: Dave Lindorff e-mail:e-mail: [email protected]
The corporate media were too busy covering a demonstration by 30 fundamentalists trying to keep Shiavo from meeting her maker to bother cover ing the global and nationwide demonstrations against the U.S. Iraq War.

The weekend second anniversary of the start of the U.S. invasion of Iraq was marked by demonstrations large and small around the globe, but here in the U.S. you could be forgiven for not knowing anything was happening. In the corporate media, the front pages and TV news programs were dominated by a demonstration of 30 religious fundamentalists opposed to the removal of a feeding tube from the brain-dead Terri Schiavo.

Who had time or space for reports on tens of thousands of noisome protesters in New York, London, Ankara or Tokyo? Who had time to pause and reflect on two years of a war that never should have happened in the first place, that has taken over 100,000 civilian lives, and that has killed over 1500 American soldiers?

The New York Times, which promotes itself as the nation's newspaper of record, limited its coverage of the global and national anti-war protests to two inside photos and a short caption on Sunday, which focused more on a small demonstration by two dozen people in Times Square than on a large march and demonstration that began in Harlem, continued to Central Park, and ended up at the mayor's house. (The Times Square event, a block from the paper's offices, was a cheaper assignment, I guess, and had the advantage of touting the paper's name for free.) The paper's "Week in Review" shamelessly ignored the protests completely.

CNN ignored the anti-war protests completely too, likewise preferring to blow its daily news budget Saturday and Sunday on the Shiavo flap and the sad tale of the rape and murder of a nine-year-old girl, allegedly by a paroled sex offender.

Most outrageously, no major media covered the remarkable 4500-person protest in Fayetteville, North Carolina outside Ft. Bragg, which featured large numbers of former military personnel marching against the war, including Camilo Mejia, recently released from 9 months in a military brig for desertion from his army unit (he courageously refused to return to Iraq after doing one tour there, saying it was an illegal, immoral war of aggression).

Apparently, like Congress, where Democrats and Republicans alike have spent more time fulminating over and interfering in the issue of when to let poor Schiavo die than on the matter of providing another $82 billion in funding for the ongoing slaughter of innocents in Iraq, the corporate media feel that the sad plight of one lone brain-dead woman on a feeding tube is more important than the lives of 150,000 U.S. servicemen and 30 million Arabs and Kurds.

In Philadelphia, where several hundred demonstrators from a variety of organizations marched in a cold rain on Sunday from a historic Quaker meeting house to the city's Federal Courthouse opposite Independence Hall, the city's main media outlet, the Philadelphia Inquirer, following the Times' lead, limited coverage of the event in its Monday edition to an inside page of the Local News section. Ironically, the biggest headline on page one was "March On"?not about the protests but rather about the weekend NCAA playoff victories of the Villanova men's and Temple University women's basketball teams. The other banner headline in the Inquirer's Monday edition was about Congress approving the Schiavo bill, while below the fold was an article--belied by the reality of the ignored protests--headlined "Iraq war fades from student activists' focus."

Yeah, right.

It should more appropriately have said, "Coverage of Iraq war protests fade from editors' focus," but then that would have implied that editors at the Inquirer, CNN and the Times and other mainstream media organizations had paid attention to anti-war protests before, which was certainly not the case.

ican711nm wrote:

cicerone imposter wrote:

Well, Bush signed a law in Texas that states that the spouse has final say on their spouse, but last weekend, he signed a law that denies that right to Michael Schiavo.

No! Bush did no such thing. Bush signed a law ordering the federal courts to review the decisions of the Florida state courts.

For over 200 years, the federal courts have repeatedly reviewed the decisions of state courts on all kinds of matters, especially matters of life and death. The only difference this time is that the Congress itself appealed the decisions of the state courts to the federal courts. I cannot find anything in the Constitution that prohibits Congress from making such an appeal, and I infer the 5th and 14th Aendmendments to the Constitution delegate to the Congress the power to make such an appeal. If they lacked such power, the Congress would be severely limited in enforcing the the 5th and 14th Amendments.

Look up 'Texas futile care law'.

The Congress shall have power to enforce this aticle by appropriate legislation.

Does this meet the approval of the PP?

U.S. bars Italians from examining victim's carThe U.S. military command in Iraq has blocked two Italian policemen from examining the car in which an Italian intelligence agent was shot to death in Baghdad, a newspaper said Wednesday.
Corriere della Sera said that the policemen were about to leave when the Italian Embassy in Baghdad received an order from the U.S. command on Monday to abort the mission for security concerns.

The embassy in Baghdad reportedly alerted Rome authorities, who called off the trip.

The car, a Toyota Corolla, is reportedly still in American hands, at Baghdad airport where it was originally rented.

The Foreign Ministry in Rome declined comment on the report, while officials at the Italian Embassy in Baghdad could not immediately be reached. The U.S. military in Baghdad had no immediate comment.

Italian authorities say that examining the vehicle is key to assessing what happened on March 4, when U.S. troops opened fire on the car carrying secret service agent Nicola Calipari, another intelligence officer and journalist Giuliana Sgrena, who had just been released after a month of captivity in Iraq.

Calipari died on the spot, while the other two were wounded.

Prosecutors investigating the shooting have received photographs of the car, but they want to analyze bullet holes and other elements, according to Corriere.

Calipari's killing outraged Italians and prompted Premier Silvio Berlusconi to demand that Washington provide an explanation. Italy agrees that the shooting was an accident but disputes some key elements of the U.S. account.

The U.S. military said that the vehicle was speeding and refused to stop, and that a U.S. patrol tried to warn the driver with hand and arm signals, by flashing white lights and firing shots in front of the car and into the car's engine block.

Berlusconi said the car was traveling slowly at night and stopped immediately when a light was flashed at it, shortly before U.S. troops fired on the car. Foreign Minister Gianfranco Fini said the fire appeared to have hit the right side of the car.

Vowing to shed light on the incident, Washington has ordered an investigation into the shooting, to be led by a U.S. brigadier general with the participation of Italian officials. The joint commission is expected to release its findings by mid-April.

Navy SEALs Sue AP Over Detainee Photos
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


3/23/2005 at 11:39

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- A federal lawsuit filed by several Navy SEALs and the wife of a special forces member claims The Associated Press violated copyright and privacy laws and endangered the servicemen's lives by publishing photographs of them with Iraqi prisoners. The lawsuit, filed Monday in federal court in San Diego, seeks unspecified damages. It also asks the court to bar the AP from further use of the photos and to require the news agency to protect the SEALs' identities.

It replaces a lawsuit filed in state court in December to add the federal copyright infringement allegations, said plaintiffs' attorney James W. Huston.

"The claims are just as groundless in federal court as they were in state court," Dave Tomlin, the news cooperative's assistant general counsel, said in a statement. "The pictures are of obvious public interest. AP obtained them in a completely proper way and was right to publish them."

The photos, distributed worldwide with a Dec. 3 story, appear to show the servicemen in Iraq sitting on hooded and handcuffed detainees and also what appear to be bloodied prisoners - one with a gun to his head.

The story said the Navy had launched a formal investigation into the photographs after being shown them by an AP reporter, adding the photos did not necessarily depict any illegal activities.

The AP later reported the Navy's preliminary findings showed most of the 15 photos transmitted by the agency were taken for legitimate intelligence-gathering purposes and showed commandos using approved procedures.

Gelisgesti wrote:

Does this meet the approval of the PP?

<sigh>

Post a link please.

Ticomaya wrote:

Gelisgesti wrote:

Does this meet the approval of the PP?

<sigh>

Post a link please.

Sigh? Why the despondency?

The link is Here

Hope it helps.

Do you get frustrated a lot?

Gelisgesti wrote:

Do you get frustrated a lot?

Often when you post.

Now this will piss Bush off: Iraq's interim government is refusing to make payments on some contracts with foreign companies including Raytheon Co. and A.P. Moeller-Maersk A/S because they overcharged or failed to deliver everything they promised, an official said.

``It's a problem all ministries are dealing with because of the lack of paperwork provided by the U.S.-led administration on contracts they signed before handing over power in June,'' Iraq's deputy transport minister, Atta Nabil Hussain Auni Atta, said in a telephone interview from Amman, Jordan, on March 21.

The refusal of interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi's government, which took power June 28, 2004, to pay bills may discourage foreign companies from working in the country, said analysts including Youssef Ibrahim, managing director of Strategic Energy Investment Group, a consulting firm in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.

The Last Word: Ayad Allawi
Still Iraq's Top Dog, for Now