Thanks, Joe Nation, I appreciate your concern. I hate that he's there too. I particularly hate that he's there AGAIN. He's doing real well ... and pretty enthusiastic. He and I have xchanged e-mails a few times the last couple days ... he's advised me now to expect he'll be out of touch again for a while.
Enjoy your dinner.
<Joe Nation, that is a rather unusual quote by Samuel Huntington in your signature, and very true! Although the ideas have fared rather well too. Where does it come from?>
Okay, roger. Prevail rather than destroy. Maybe there is a difference. I hope.
I saw it on a blog
http://dear_raed.blogspot.com/
and like it immediately.... I need to find out where they got it I guess.
Joe
I love Goggle!
Samuel Huntington, whom I met once in 1966 while visting a friend in Boston, the Clash of Civilizations?
http://www.lander.edu/atannenbaum/Tannenbaum%20courses%20folder/POLS%20103%20World%20Politics/103_huntington_clash_of_civilizations_full_text.htm
Go to Harvard for free.....
Joe
hm, i've read that a few times, i had to. go to harvard for free?? who? what?
harvard for free? only if you're VERY lucky and very smart.
I meant that because SAMUEL P. HUNTINGTON is the Eaton Professor of the Science of Government and Director of the John M. Olin Institute for Strategic Studies at Harvard University, you get the benefit of reading one of his lectures for free.
Don't you love the phrase "The Science of Government" ?
Joe
ok, back to the topic.....
yeah, please. Where were we?
I've been away from the news and a2k all day. Here's some bad news, but I'm not sure if it's old or new:
Aid gets hi-jacked
And this. Hyping up the finding that iraqis had a stock pile of chemical weapon suits officials say that these are proof that iraq has chem/bio weapons and is willing to use them. Far stretch to my mind. Says that the iraqis know that the brit and american troops don't have chem/bio weapons. How in the world could they know that? I am not convinced of that and I'm not under attack.
link
Hoon has been doing this a lot -- "Foxing". That is to say, playing up dubious information and then later, if necessary, whispering a recantation in a footnote. So I'd take what he says with a grain -- a boulder -- of salt. Remember the Newsweek discovery of the false information the Bush administration had given to the UN about chemical weapons... It's been terrific that so many here are checking and double-checking this stuff. The "other" war is surely the war about the media and "facts"!
I dunno. If you were an innocent Iraqi civilian and had to choose, would you prefer a chem-bio attack or Billy Graham? The latter has announced he's going to Iraq. Arabs troubled...
littlek, its been mentioned here before that the exitance of warehoused protective gear is troublimg, but that far more troubling would be the discovery that the gear had been issued. There could be lots of reasons the Iraqi's might have such gear, some of which have nothing to he US. Of course, there is no reason or justification for storing the gear among other weapons, munitions, and military gear in a hospital. That the gear appears to be of excellent quality and of recent manufacture is bothersome, though. I tend to think the obvious explanation is likely to be correct. I strongly suspect they have dispersable noxious agents, and that they, or at least their high command, will use them if given suitable opportunity and sufficient command coherence to launch the attack.
On the "Hijacking" of aid ... well, yeah ... calm, civil decorum is not very typical of populaces in an active warzone. A bit of public panic is to be expected, and the youngest, strongest ones will push to the front of the crowd and grab what they can, regardless of need. Its probably a tad early to let NGOs start wandering around Iraq just yet. Its still a dangerous place, even if you're in an M1 tank and not a Red Cross Delivery Van loaded with MREs.
i am guessing that the legitimate press will begin mau mauing the flack catchers in the near future. it seems to be starting already as in this transcript from the dept of state today;
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Nobody had ever put a timeline on this
conflict. I don't think you will be able to go back and find a single
statement by --
Q: The Vice President did. Weeks, not months.
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Well, weeks, not months for what? For
total liberation of Iraq?
Q: For the conflict, for the war, for what we would consider battle.
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Well, weeks, not months means that
there will be a liberation of Iraq when the time -- as the President
said today, when it is over it will be over. Now, the fact is the
President has never put a timetable on this. The timetable is when we
complete the mission.
Southern Iraq :: Jonathan Charles :: 1451GMT (BBC)
Coalition forces in one village near a military forward base in southern Iraq, are trying to win over the population, by holding medical clinics.
Squadron Leader Simon Chappel, an RAF doctor, recognises that he has a tough job to persuade the local people that the British force that has invaded their land is friendly.
Simon is holding the first of what he hopes will be many medical clinics.
The first job for him and his team is treating children who have developed severe diarrhoea after drinking ditch water, and adults who have been wounded by shrapnel from missiles.
It is the only medical treatment they have received for weeks.
Anyone heard more about this?
Sulaymaniyah, Northern Iraq :: Stuart Hughes :: 1502GMT (BBC)
Command sources from the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan - the PUK - have claimed a massacre has taken place near the Iraqi city of Kirkuk.
PUK sources say yesterday evening government forces, loyal to Saddam Hussein, moved into the town of Hawi Jah, near Kirkuk, and tried to persuade members of the Jabbor tribe to fight alongside them on the northern front.
When they refused a clash ensued between the Jabbor tribe and the Iraqi army, from the Jaysh Al-Quds Brigade.
And this morning the Iraqi army allegedly butchered five hundred tribesmen with knives.
These claims come from PUK sources and the BBC has no way of independently verifying them.
I hope that story is wrong. But not likely.
