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

old europe wrote:

You are, of course, aware, that "extradition of Zarqawi by Saddam" is something completely different from "removal of Ansar al-Islam camps by Saddam".

Yes they are different, but the word completely exaggerates that difference: One is a cause and the other is its effect. The cause is the extradition of Zarqawi. The effect is the removal of Ansar al-Islam camps.

Now: do you really think that the extradition of Zarqawi would have caused a "removal of Ansar al-Islam camps" in the no-fly zone? How so?

Zarqawi is the leader of Jama'at al-Tawhid wal-Jihad, not of Ansar al-Islam, right?

Let's stick to getting closer to the core of the issue. It's irrelevant what else Zarqawi was the leader of or was not the leader of. All that is relevant is that Zarqawi was the leader of the al Qaeda bases in northeastern Iraq.

old europe wrote:

Now: do you really think that the extradition of Zarqawi would have caused a "removal of Ansar al-Islam camps" in the no-fly zone? How so?

Yes! To remove Zarqawi, the remover would have had to remove all those who would have defended against Zarqawi's removal. I bet that would have included a very large majority of the inhabitants of those camps.

The goals of Zarqawi's network have shifted considerably over the years. Originally with a localized goal of overthrowing the Jordanian government, the organization gradually became more globalized and, following the fall of Baghdad to American forces, Iraq clearly became the main focus. The stated goals of [Jama'at al-Tawhid wal Jihad] are to force a withdrawal of U.S-led forces from Iraq, topple the Iraqi interim government and assassinate collaborators with the "occupation," marginalize the Shiite Muslim population and defeat its militias, and to subsequently establish a pure Islamic state. Presumably, if and when those goals are achieved, the global jihad would continue to establish a pan-Islamic state and remove Western influence from the Muslim world.

Maybe you can point out, in Powell's UN speech or in the 9/11 commission report, where it says: "Zarqawi was the leader of the Ansar al-Islam camps".

... Moreover, Bin Ladin had in fact been sponsoring anti-Saddam Islamists in Iraqi Kurdistan, and sought to attract them into his Islamic army.53

...

Bin Ladin ... continued to aid a group of Islamist extremists operating in part of Iraq (Kurdistan) outside of Baghdad's control. ... In 2001, with Bin Ladin's help they re-formed into an organization called Ansar al Islam.

... Iraq today harbors a deadly terrorist network headed by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi an associate and collaborator of Usama bin Laden and his al-Qaida lieutenants.

...

... the Zarqawi network helped establish another ... training center camp, and this camp is located in northeastern Iraq.

...

Those helping to run this camp are Zarqawi lieutenants operating in northern Kurdish areas outside Saddam Hussein's controlled Iraq.

...

... We asked a friendly security service to approach Baghdad about extraditing Zarqawi and providing information about him and his close associates. This service contacted Iraqi officials twice and we passed details that should have made it easy to find Zarqawi.

Maybe you can point out, in Powell's UN speech or in the 9/11 commission report, where it says: "Zarqawi was the leader of the Ansar al-Islam camps".

The core of the issue is whether or not al Qaeda was based in camps in northeastern Iraq prior to our invasion of Iraq, and whether or not Zarqawi was the leader of these camps.

But Powell asked for "extradition" of Zarqawi. You just invented the "removal" of Zarqawi.

Main Entry: ex·tra·di·tion
Pronunciation: "ek-str&-'di-sh&n
Function: noun
Etymology: French, from ex- + Latin tradition-, traditio act of handing over -- more at TREASON
: the surrender of an alleged criminal usually under the provisions of a treaty or statute by one authority (as a state) to another having jurisdiction to try the charge

Main Entry: re·mov·al
Pronunciation: ri-'mü-v&l
Function: noun
: the act or process of removing : the fact of being removed

Main Entry: 1re·move
Pronunciation: ri-'müv
Function: verb
Inflected Form(s): re·moved; re·mov·ing
Etymology: Middle English, from Old French removoir, from Latin removEre, from re- + movEre to move
transitive senses
1 a : to change the location, position, station, or residence of <remove soldiers to the front> b : to transfer (a legal proceeding) from one court to another

Ican - if there is no proof that Zarqawi was the leader of those camps, would you concur that the US had never asked for the removal of said camps?

That would only mean that Powell's advisors screwed up here too

ican711nm wrote:

That would only mean that Powell's advisors screwed up here too

Almost there, ican, almost there!

2. Neoconning the Media Eric Alterman's "Neoconning ...
Neoconning the Media

Eric Alterman's "Neoconning the Media: A Short History of Neoconservatism" is a must-read account of the movement and its main institutions and media outlets.

Alterman lists "half of the New Republic" as among the assets of the Neocons. That's about right, though I suspect that the other half (In the Barefoot And Naked Blog accounting that would be: John Judis, Spencer Ackerman, Michelle Cottle, Mike Crowley) is not as connected to the editorial direction and especially ownership of TNR as the Neocon half.

Michelle Goldberg at Salon.com isn't so generous.

This was after all the same TNR that beat the drums in fall of 2001 to get 100,000 American boots on the ground in Afghanistan. (That is my recollection, from the interface of their online website of the time, and it is the tenor of this editorial from those days.) But we didn't need that kind of troop force there, and, indeed, it would have been counterproductive. What was this mania to occupy other people? Wasn't it treasonous to want to put our servicemen in harm's way when the Northern Alliance was perfectly capable of taking Kabul with our close air support? What philosophy of life would cause you to want such a thing? (What ignorance of mountainous, rugged, Afghanistan would cause you to imagine such a thing possible?) Surely it was just a colonial power fantasy, a dream of subjecting brown men to the will of TNR's editors. You could see Lawrence Kaplan chomping at the bit to go on to occupying Iraq, Syria, and et cetera.

That is the thing nowadays often forgotten about colonialism--its psychological benefits to the colonizing society. There are often material benefits as well, but sometimes those don't materialize. The psychological ones are a sure bet if the conqueror prevails. Racism functions to give the dominant "races" in society cheap self-esteem ('at least we are better than those people'). That is why "whiteness" is so powerful as an American construct. Everyone can hope to join the category and become "white" except African-Americans, who must remain Black to keep the system of racial hierarchy going, ensuring that the lowliest of "whites" can feel good about themselves. It is now often forgotten that Irish, Poles, Italians and Jews were not considered "white" when they first immigrated. But gradually they joined the club.

Likewise, colonial occupation gives the occupiers an easy sense of self-worth and powerfulness. Thus the appeal of occupying other countries precisely for those sections of the dominant "whites" in US society that are least secure in their whiteness (e.g. lower middle class Southerners). Much about the Abu Ghuraib torture scandal can most easily be explained in these colonialist/racist terms. Likewise, the sex and power fantasy of white men saving brown women from brown men, which has figured so prominently in the new discourse of American empire, is best explained in this way.

A Very Short History of Neoconservatism

by Eric Alterman
for MediaTransparency.org

POSTED APRIL 5, 2005 --

Within the past month or so the political/cultural group Neoconning the Mediaknown as the Neoconservatives (Neocons) have lost two of their central magazines. The first, The Public Interest, a journal of domestic affairs edited by Irving Kristol and Nathan Glazer, announced that it would be folding. Almost simultaneously 10 members of the editorial board of The National Interest, a foreign policy journal also founded by Kristol, resigned in protest over the 'realist' direction taken by the magazine under its new owners at the Nixon Center.

But save your tears for the Neocons, because they can afford to lose a magazine or two. Neoconservatives have never lacked for publications from which to pontificate. In fact, for much of the movement's three and a half decades observers have quipped that it has enjoyed more magazines than members.

McTag wrote:

ican711nm wrote:

[The US and its allies had the right to attack Iraq to attempt to prevent Iraq from continuing to contain a growing al Qaeda threat to Americans and their allies.

It took you a long time to dream up that reply, which is arrant nonsense.
The absence of a threat has been well dealt with elsewhere.
Likewise the duplicity of American motives.

False again, McTag!

I've been saying the samething here in a varietyof ways over many many months.

You choose to believe the al Qaeda in Iraq were not a growing threat to Americans and their allies.

I choose to believe the al Qaeda in Iraq were a growing threat to Americans and their allies.