Most seem to have so far.
Speculation seems to be increasing that Saddam and sons may already be dead, buried in the rubble of that first strike...
Since this thread has become the "War Update Central", I'd REALLLLY like to know more of anything anyone is hearing about this development...
(FTR, I don't see anything that makes me doubt that was Saddam on that video that some say is a body double)
" All right, let me see if I understand the logic of this correctly. We are going to ignore the United Nations in order to make clear to Saddam Hussein that the United Nations cannot be ignored. We're going to wage war to preserve the UN's ability to avert war. The paramount principle is that the UN's word must be taken seriously, and if we have to subvert its word to guarantee that it is, then by gum, we will. Peace is too important not to take up arms to defend. Am I getting this right?"
Sorry, screwed that up ............
Rumor Mill News Reading Room Forum
DOWN THE RABBIT HOLE
Posted By: HeraldAp
Date: Wednesday, 19 March 2003, 9:40 p.m.
Written by: Peter Freundlich of NPR
Food for thought... I'll take some mushroom tea, please...
All right, let me see if I understand the logic of this correctly. We are going to ignore the United Nations in order to make clear to Saddam Hussein that the United Nations cannot be ignored. We're going to wage war to preserve the UN's ability to avert war. The paramount principle is that the UN's word must be taken seriously, and if we have to subvert its word to guarantee that it is, then by gum, we will. Peace is too important not to take up arms to defend. Am I getting this right?
Further, if the only way to bring democracy to Iraq is to vitiate the democracy of the Security Council, then we are honor-bound to do that too, because democracy, as we define it, is too important to be stopped by a little thing like democracy as they define it.
Also, in dealing with a man who brooks no dissension at home, we cannot afford dissension among ourselves. We must speak with one voice against Saddam Hussein's failure to allow opposing voices to be heard. We are sending our gathered might to the Persian Gulf to make the point that might does not make right, as Saddam Hussein seems to think it does. And we are twisting the arms of the opposition until it agrees to let us oust a regime that twists the arms of the opposition. We cannot leave in power a dictator who ignores his own people. And if our people, and people elsewhere in the world, fail to understand that, then we have no choice but to ignore them.
Listen. Don't misunderstand. I think it is a good thing that the members of the Bush administration seem to have been reading Lewis Carroll. I only wish someone had pointed out that "Alice in Wonderland" and "Through the Looking Glass" are meditations on paradox and puzzle and illogic and on the strangeness of things, not templates for foreign policy. It is amusing for the Mad Hatter to say something like, `We must make war on him because he is a threat to peace,' but not amusing for someone who actually commands an army to say that. As a collector of laughable arguments, I'd be enjoying all this were it not for the fact that I know--we all know--that lives are going to be lost in what amounts to a freak, circular reasoning accident. --
Peter Freundlich / National Public Radio / 13.03.03
Interesting link to Arab News, Doug.
And this crisis seems to have brought out the poet in you. Nice job.
Re whizz-bang gizmo weaponry coverage...
Since Panama, the US military has very purposefully and very effectively controlled what we see and hear through controlling reporter access. The reason is simply to avoid the rise of negative public opinion such as occured during Viet Nam.
In the Gulf War, the military handled information flow quite astutely, through denying reporter access, AND through providing lots of groovy 'missle-nose-cone-cam' shots and "speaking to you here from the deck of the carrier USS Uberallis" content and constant 'latest developments' briefings from military types, all in order to fill up the insatiable demand for content...thus effectively lessening the need for reporters and networks to actually do much.
Part of that strategy that worked very well indeed was the technology/weaponry fetish. Now, let me say right away that I share this fetish - I am entranced by good engineering and design, as are many of us. And too, there is something in many of us (all?) that is equally entranced by watching great big things go KERBLOOEY!
But we ought to be alert to the new and rather unsettling Orwellian reality, as we watch in our comfortable living rooms, that we have been purposefully directed into a into a moral plane of war as entertainment.
perception wrote:That may be his last official statement before he disappears to spend that $10 million that Saddam paid him for influencing the UN security council to continue the farce that he was engaged in. He did Saddam a great service---he may even have gotten a bonus.
Funny, no one has ever implied this. Any proof/links to substantiate this accusation ? Or it is one of those "U don't agree with what Bush is doing, so either you are unpatriotic or you must have been paid off" ??
roger and perc
Your indictment of Blix is without foundation, and without any reasonable rationale I can discern.
That his findings and words proved an impediment to US intentions tells us nothing other than that his agenda was different. But in what way did he differ in this from Kofi Annan? Or any foreign state official or diplomat who argued for continuing containment, or for further inspections.
We have, on the one hand, documents and speeches (going back to 1992) by the team presently around Bush arguing for an attack on Iraq. Do you have something similar from Blix?
We have numerous statements from UN staff and even members of the US diplomatic corps suggesting that the US had but one intention from the beginning - to attack Iraq. Do you have similar statements from people working in the process regarding Blix?
If you advance such as is noted above, your argument might appear as something more valuable than 'against us, therefore valueless and biased and wrong and in it for self'.
Quote:The Bush Doctrine: War without anyone's permission.
By Michael Kinsley
Posted Thursday, March 20, 2003, at 12:51 PM PT
...Putting all this together, Bush is asserting the right of the United States to attack any country that may be a threat to it in five years. And the right of the United States to evaluate that risk and respond in its sole discretion. And the right of the president to make that decision on behalf of the United States in his sole discretion. In short, the president can start a war against anyone at any time, and no one has the right to stop him. And presumably other nations and future presidents have that same right. All formal constraints on war-making are officially defunct....
http://slate.msn.com/id/2080455/
Personally, I find this new interpretation of checks and balances ("Who's arguing? Put their head on a god damned pike!") to be a very refreshing change from the unecessary and bumbling bureacratic nonesense so dear to liberals.
So much for global checks and balances.
Blatham -- On the one hand we have Eric Alterman's incredibly discouraging, well-substantiated critique of the corporate media. On the other I've noticed that people -- even those who are staring, apparently totally engaged, at whatever TV screen is within view -- are also making comments which show they know they're being manipulated. I go almost daily to a health club here and am one of those bodies on a Precor in a row of Precors lined up in front of Fox. I'm always heartened to notice (in this conservative neighborhood) , the scathing comments about the presentation of the news coming from my fellow panters.
I think what troubles me more is what we see here in intelligent discussions: some who take what they're told by the media as the bottom line, and go from there. (Even more so if the commentator is wearing a uniform... I think we need to consider a thread in which we talk about the deification of the military... a cadre which seems to be "more equal"... vs. the strong admonition of genuinely free people, "Question authority.")
Your quotation from Kinsley, Blatham, reminds of a radio interview I heard yesterday with a woman who lives in a retired military area south of San Antonio. I expected to hear a wholehearted "support for the troops" comment and instead was surprised to hear her burst into life and say something like, We can't let this country become one of those places where the government chooses to go to war just because it wants to. It's important to remember we live in the world with other people. (She then went on to say that this president whom she apparently voted for would be brought down not by his imperialism but by his disdain for his own citizens -- their economic plight in particular.)
little k
Yes. That is it.
Tartarin
The corporatization of media is an over-riding I share with yourself and others. For a peek into one neo-con's notions of why aristocracy is better than democracy, I refer you to this WSJ guest editorial, it's a dilly...
http://opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=85000672
