The US, UN & Iraq II

Some people are so interested in their own agenda that the world passes them by.

TARTARIN--
Watch the interviews. They will tell you.

Bush has said many times he has nothing to do with who will lead Iraq.
He has just given the Iraqi citizens the ability to choose for themselves.

Be alert Sophia---if you wound them too deeply this pack of predators won't give us one day of respite.

People, dont get overenthousiastic.

One crucial element is still missing. The reason for going to war. The democratization and liberation is a nice side-effect but the main reason were the WMD Saddam had and was ready to use.

He hasn't used them until now. Will he ever use them? Does he have them? What if no WMD are found? Where is the justification for this war then?

Is it true what I heard about homeland security requiring a background check for a fishing liscense this year?

A person sinking in quicksand will grasp at any straw.

I know exactly how you feel, Sofia ... <smiles>

Back in 89, I was doing my exam year in high school. Then things started happening. Poland, Hungary cutting open the barbed wire. We'd been in Poland and in Prague in '86, in Budapest in '88, we'd heard Poles cursing Jaruzelski, seen the obligatory banners on the Vltava-shore boulevards ... My mum said, we have to go! We have to see! But I had exams - she said, when the Wall falls, we go - but I had exams, so we just watched TV and read the papers - then at Christmas time we were in Prague, the day before Havel was voted president by the still-communist parliament. All the streets, underground stations, windows were still plastered with posters, slogans, messages. "Freedom", but also "don't react to violence - don't be used by provocators". Slogans full of wit, irony, nuance, too: I remember "Welcome to Prague, Godot" - photographed it, and four years later saw the same photo in a book. Random Czechs came up to us to explain - I was never able to get a job, because of my religious conviction - I was barred from living in Prague. TV sets had been hung up on the streetcorners and showed footage from the november demonstrations, non-stop. I can still hear the chant: Vac-lav Ha-vel! Vac-lav Ha-vel! Obscanske Forum was handing out a first proposed 10-point programme, and Christmas posters. It was exhilerating, and so full of optimism. The year after I started studying Eastern Europe Studies ...

I'm not seeking to wound anyone.
My comments here are not meant to be of the -I told you so- vein.
I'm just very happy for the Iraqis. Silly me; I thought everyone would be happy for them.

I never doubted WMD. We have stumbled upon some questionable materials while prosecuting the war. In the days to come, as we have time to investigate, they will be found. I haven't a doubt.

I imagine they are well-hidden, as twelve years of fooling the inspectors has been plenty of time for creative subterfuge. I also am concerned for the WMD which have probably been shipped elsewhere, but we will find them.

Question: You know the Iraqi guy in NY--the diplomat with the bad comb-over... What does he do now?

A fishing license is required for gamefish----none is required for suckers and carp.

BRAVA! BRAVA, NIMH'S MOTHER!

Saddam's statue has been decimated. More chillbumps!


(I will try to curb my enthusiasm. )

Not having TV, I'm hearing only the descriptions given on the radio (and reading news reports on the internet). As I type, middle Eastern people are calling into a talk show saying, Be careful about what you think you are seeing on TV. So our sources are different and we won't know until later which are more accurate. I think we'll just have to wait and see, frustrating as that is...

The end of dictatorship?

Hey! I thought you pple were with me, here. I've seen almost all the anti-war posters here post the same things as I did: we know Saddam's regime is evil, we are aware of his terror, but we don't agree with this war - its legitimisation, apparent motivations, the way its been started, whatever. Many even agreed that things would obviously be somehow better for the Iraqis after Saddam was defeated - just not as better as we are told, or not better enough to justify the violation of international law, etc.

So - it shouldnt be hard to imagine the celebration now, should it? The celebration of the end of that evil regime, that terror? Other questions are just that, other questions.

"You know the Iraqi guy in NY--the diplomat with the bad comb-over... What does he do now?.."

Sofia -- funny question!! We should have a lottery based on this! My multiple answers include: He will be disappeared by an angry Suni. He will be come a professor in the Middle Eastern Studies Department at SUNY. He will become a Pentagon advisor. He will be elevated to the board of Brown & Root. He will have a small, wheeled stand with Middle Eastern delicacies in front of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Wednesday, 9 April

Baghdad :: Rageh Omaar :: 1435GMT

The American flag was put on the head of the statue, like a hood. There was a huge applause. I turned to one of my Iraqi friends and he said he wouldn't forget this moment for the rest of my life. It was the ultimate humiliation.

They've taken the flag down now, it may have been felt it was a little too much.

There's a man now on top of the armoured carrier. Now he's holding the old Iraqi flag. That has now raised a huge cheer. They are throwing flowers.

Who's the idiot who put that flag up on the statue?!?!

Good answers, Tartarin!

I think you may have hit it with the Professorship.

Or, he will become the next Salman Rushdie.

Isn't it odd that he will be safer here than in Iraq?

Sophia, Tienanmen and Iraq are vastly different cases. It was an internal chinese dissent against their own government, nobody else could conceivably get involved. The war in iraq opposers are not against freedom. I am one of them, i appreciate freedom tremendously. my father was in jail during communism and was liberated thanks to the intervention of the western institutions. but iraq's liberation is not a concerted action and has such a serious negative consequences for international order that it is a pyrrhian victory, at best. a few decades of institution building lost.
bush did say that iraqui people will be free to choose - but only after and interim government, imposed and administered by the U.S., not the UN. Which is another breach of international usus, but that is no longer even mildly surprising. just frustrating. all i am waiting for now is for the president of this country to get out of the office. i believe world will be a safer place then.

Nimh wrote:

Back in 89, I was doing my exam year in high school. Then things started happening. Poland, Hungary cutting open the barbed wire. We'd been in Poland and in Prague in '86, in Budapest in '88, we'd heard Poles cursing Jaruzelski, seen the obligatory banners on the Vltava-shore boulevards ... My mum said, we have to go! We have to see! But I had exams - she said, when the Wall falls, we go - but I had exams, so we just watched TV and read the papers - then at Christmas time we were in Prague, the day before Havel was voted president by the still-communist parliament. All the streets, underground stations, windows were still plastered with posters, slogans, messages. Random Czechs came up to us to explain - I was never able to get a job, because of my religious conviction - I was barred from living in Prague. TV sets had been hung up on the streetcorners and showed footage from the november demonstrations, non-stop. I can still hear the chant: Vac-lav Ha-vel! Vac-lav Ha-vel! Obscanske Forum was handing out a first proposed 10-point programme, and Christmas posters. It was exhilerating, and so full of optimism. The year after I started studying Eastern Europe Studies ...

Kara: I doubt these people would criticize my words on freedom and dignity and it's why the eastern block countries supported this war in Iraq.

Sophia...



crippling OPEC or white man's burden.
I must've missed the footnote on this one, but when the U.S. administration said that "Iraqi Oil is for Iraqis", i didn't realise they meant it was only for the few well off barely organized Iraqi opposition to give away. (Note that U.S. companies and Iraqi exiles were under negotiations for the last couple of months, during the whole 1441 facade.) Under U.S. direction, Iraq will not participate in the OPEC production limitation policy in order to maintain oil prices, even though it'll maintain its membership. Oil companies will have Production sharing agreements (PSA). "Production-sharing is the type of deal favored by the oil industry because it normally guarantees companies a healthy profit margin, even at low world oil prices. Alternative royalty schemes are weighted toward government revenues and penalize investors at low prices.

Under PSAs Iraq would retain control over mineral ownership. Short-term rehabilitation of southern Iraqi oilfields already is underway, with oil well fires being extinguished by U.S. contractor Kellogg Brown and Root, a subsidiary of Halliburton"

Meanwhile "8.3 million barrels, worth nearly $200 million, sat in a Turkish storage facility, hostage to political and legal questions about who is authorized to sell it."


http://www.sunspot.net/news/nationworld/bal-te.oil05apr05,0,6335288.story?coll=bal-nationworld-headlines



Under the plan, the government will consist of 23 ministries, each headed by an American. Every ministry will also have four Iraqi advisers appointed by the Americans, the Guardian has learned.

The government will take over Iraq city by city. Areas declared "liberated" by General Tommy Franks will be transferred to the temporary government under the overall control of Jay Garner, the former US general appointed to head a military occupation of Iraq.


http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,927055,00.html

I dont think what Bush has said is necessarily the most exact identification of what the US government is planning to do ...

The US and British governments have gathered and are gathering together various Iraqi groups - exiles, Kurds etc - and compiling a coalition that could serve as some kind of interim government.

I'm not saying that's bad - just that, for now, Bush will have everything to do with who will lead Iraq. Elections will be a while, I'm sure. (Even in E-Europe after the revolution they took up to half a year to take place - and that was without a war raging on, a humanitarian crisis, and different forms of government existing in different parts of the country).

Its either the US or the UN who's going to govern the country for an interim time resp. appoint an interim gvt of dissidents and exiles - and I have a hunch that Bush wont let it be the UN ...

perception, people in the eastern bloc do NOT support the war. their governments do, due to their membership in NATO. the public opinion is largely against them.