The US, UN & Iraq III

Re the source of the forgeries...Sharon's office sounds just about right.

And....surprise! Another hero story's happy details ain't necessarily so

http://www.salon.com/news/wire/2003/08/07/flight_93/index.html

I always had doubts that the passengers who began trying to overpower the hijackers ever made it to the pilot's cabin. It doesn't make them less heroic -- they would have been considered more heroic if they had save the pilot and taken over the controls of the plane but this seems almost am impossibility. The pilot and co-pilot were likely killed almost immediately.

August 8, 2003
WEAPONS INTELLIGENCE
Iraq Arms Critic Reacts to Report on Wife
By DOUGLAS JEHL


WASHINGTON, Aug. 7 ?- Joseph C. Wilson IV, a retired ambassador who was a secret envoy of the Bush administration to Africa and who publicly voiced doubts about a reported Iraqi weapons program, says he has become a target of a campaign to discourage others like him from going public.

In the prewar effort to uncover information about weapons in Iraq, Mr. Wilson made a fact-finding trip to Niger in February 2002 at the request of the Central Intelligence Agency. His findings challenged contentions in an unsubstantiated document that Iraq was trying to obtain nuclear-weapons material from the West African country.

But it was not until after Mr. Wilson made his account public last month in an op-ed article in The New York Times, to the intense discomfort of President Bush's aides, that the White House acknowledged that it had erred in including the disputed accusations in Mr. Bush's State of the Union address in January.

Days after the column, another chapter opened. Mr. Wilson's wife was identified by name as a covert C.I.A. operative in a column by the conservative columnist Robert Novak, a disclosure that Mr. Novak has attributed to senior administration officials.

Officials are barred by law from disclosing the identities of Americans who work undercover for the C.I.A. That provision is intended to protect the security of operatives whose lives might be jeopardized if their identities are known.

Among those who have cried foul are several Democratic senators, including Charles E. Schumer of New York, who have said that if the accusation is true and if senior administration officials were its source, law enforcement authorities should seek to identify the officials who appeared to have violated the law. Mr. Schumer has asked Robert S. Mueller III, director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, to look into the case.

****************


Mr. Novak cited administration officials as saying Mr. Wilson was chosen for the Niger mission because of Ms. Plame's connection to the Central Intelligence Agency.

Mr. Wilson said his qualifications ?- as an Africa expert, a former ambassador to Gabon and the senior director for African affairs on the staff of the National Security Council under President Bill Clinton ?- made him more than amply suited for the task.

The broad issue of whether intelligence information about Iraq, its weapons of mass destruction and ties to terrorism was subjected to undue influence is under investigation by the House and Senate Select Committees on Intelligence.



A link to the rest of the article (you may have to register...)

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/08/national/08WEAP.html

United Airlines Flight 93 is another in a series of Bush Regime lies. All details to this mishap was kept secret, now we know why.

I so fully agree with LW, just as with Jessica Lynch, these people are true heros and nothing can take that away from them. But, the Bushites are pure scum!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I always assumed that this was what happened, but I am forced to wonder how this is such a big difference to anyone (except the anti-American left, of course). Passengers took action and thwarted the plans of the hijackers. I think it's clear that the passengers didn't crash the plane into the ground, so it was safe to assume that the terrorists did so when they knew their original plans were not going to succeed. I never thought that anyone "wrestled" for the controls, nor do I think it matters whether they did or did not. I'm baffled by Blatham's seeming glee at this non-news.

Remark removed because I will not lower myself to the base level of a scrat!

What is the base level of a scrat? I'm afraid, BillW, you have to explain yourself.

In view of so much that is now being made public, what is it the Bush mob is trying to hide? The more they refuse to air what may be perfectly explainable passages, the more ominous they make these matters appear. And then, after some things come into open air, it is obvious that what was being hidden had very little to do with national security, but everything to do with tight Rove control. After all, if Bush goes, the nation profits but Rove loses.

Isn't it peculiar? Those very things that Bush, Rumsfeld, et al claim to be identifying marks of rogue nations already exist here? The utter secrecy, what is actually contained in the Patriot Acts, the clampdown on reporters in Iraq, the lack of open air around any Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, Libby, Pearle, Wolfowitz doings? Unless you count hot air in Crawford, Texas as open air.

And with all the pros and cons on the economy - from all the pundits - we are left with some unpleasant basics. The vast and growing number of unemployed; the vast and growing number of un-health-insured; the emptiness of talks about job creation - the things that put food in the mouths of people and a little money in their pockets. Most people I know can go on and on with this and that about economics, but it's usually done in the abstract. And making the stock market the leading indicator is not only fraught with danger, it's foolish. Many times the ups and downs are done by just a few people, selling off or buying, taking profits - continuing the same state of affairs that brought us unpunished Enron, for one. It's time we got an administration back that not only understands a necessary economy for the American world, but how to implement one and keep it going. The one we've got is depleting it. Promises of maybe, or an increase in a very few portfolios, just aint gonna do the trick.

Scrats are those tiny dark brown pellets rats leave behind. You want to sweep them up pretty quick because they tend to be a significant source of infection. Thanks to the Dalai Lama (my cat), we don't have the problem here. It looks like the White House may be riddled with them, though...

lower

The latest word on those trailers:

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/09/international/worldspecial/09WEAP.html

From the NYT:

It was hydrogen.......

Iraq is baq. There is more work for us to do.

scrat

I'm sorry, I didn't actually mean to sound gleeful on that last post. That particular incident is quite without anything one might feel glee regarding. What I too awkwardly and too quickly wished to suggest is that this administration (particularly, though as Didion's Political Fictions points out, not exclusively) is concerned with 'presentation' and not truth. And they have become expert at utilizing the modern media as symbiotic associates. This so clearly short circuits democracy because the electorate is then making decisions based not on truthful appraisals or accounts, but rather, on what those in charge wish the electorate to believe.

Every instance of opacity or of mis-weighting or of spin or of false statements ought to be jumped on mercilessly. And, we ought to target the media perhaps even more harshly than the administration.

It is proof of a base and low mind for one to wish to think with the masses or majority, merely because the majority is the majority. Truth does not change because it is, or is not, believed by a majority of the people.
-Giordano Bruno

The baitor masquerades as the baitee eh?

lem·ming (lĕm'ĭng)
n.
Any of various small, thickset rodents, especially of the genus Lemmus, inhabiting northern regions and known for periodic mass migrations that sometimes end in drowning

In freakin credible



Published on Friday, August 8, 2003 by The Bradenton Herald (Florida)
Katherine Harris Booed at Bradenton Town Hall Meeting
by Donna Wright


BRADENTON - U.S. Rep. Katherine Harris had planned a quick town meeting Thursday night at Bradenton Kiwanis Hall.

But when hundreds of people showed up with detailed questions, her tight schedule didn't allow detailed answers, and a frustrated crowd turned angry, booing the congresswoman several times.

After introductions at 5:30 p.m., Harris spoke for nearly half of the allotted hour. It was after 6 p.m. when she asked for questions.


US Rep Katherine Harris
Cover of the Fall 2002 issue of IAM Journal - the newsletter of the International Association of Machinists.
Harris told attendees she wanted all questions asked first before she answered.

The lines at the microphones were long.

The boos were loud.

"We want our answers now," a man in the back of the room shouted.

She said, "Doing it this way will allow more people to speak."

Harris' logic didn't sit well with the standing-room-only crowd.

The crowd's mood already was testy before the meeting began. Security guards and Harris' staff confiscated any written material people tried to bring into the hall.

The confiscated literature included analysis of the Medicare prescription bills passed in the House and Senate in June as well as a chart showing Harris' voting record since she began her term in January.

The fliers were distributed during an earlier news conference staged in the parking lot by senior citizens to protest House and Senate bills designed to provide prescription drug coverage through Medicare.

The protesters were asking Harris to support reform and not support either bill, which they said provided too little coverage to too few through a plan that would ultimately privatize and weaken Medicare.

Joining the news conference were representatives from the Florida Alliance for Retired Americans, the AFL-CIO, the Service Employees International Union and the Association of Community for Reform Now.

"This is wrong," said Tony Fransetta, president of the Florida chapter of AARP, as he was asked to hand over fliers.

"We have never been restricted in what we could hand out at other town meetings," Fransetta said. "We have talking points that simply list questions that would help people better understand and articulate their concerns. They have been denied that right."

Pat Benson of Bradenton said she had never been at a town meeting where literature was confiscated at the door.

"This never happened at Dan Miller's meetings," said Benson, referring to Harris' predecessor in Congress.

Connie M. McKee, a Harris staffer, said ethics laws made it illegal for people to distribute political information during a town hall meeting.

"We are not taking anything away," McKee said. "All of the material is still here and they can pick it up when they leave. They just can't take it into the hall. The ethics laws do not allow us to let them take it in. We have to be very, very careful that there are no laws broken with our member (of Congress)."

Larry Winawer, of the Alliance for Retired Americans, didn't buy McKee's reasons.

"What kind of ethic laws prevent people from having information in front of them so they can ask reasonable questions?" Winawer said "I have never heard of such a thing."

Harris distributed her literature to attendees. One flyer detailed how Bush's economic plans are restoring confidence and creating growth through fiscal discipline. Another highlighted the many benefits of Medicare reforms passed in June.

When she asked for questions, Harris faced a barrage of queries covering phosphate mining, funding for Head Start, veterans benefits, budget deficits, the daily cost of the Iraq War, environmental concerns, fiscal policies, health care reform, medical malpractice crisis, and detailed questions on the proposed prescription plans.

When dozens of attendees could not get their questions asked in the first hour, master of ceremonies Sheriff Charlie Wells said at 6:30 that the meeting would be extended 10 minutes.

At about 6:50, Harris said she would take only one more question, and the room erupted into boos.

At 6:55 p.m., Harris began her answers.

At times, people tried to ask follow-up questions, but she wouldn't allow it

"This is my turn now," Harris said repeatedly.

When the town meeting ended at about 7:20, disgruntled people filed out the door, picking up the pamphlets they had been forced to leave behind.

Becky Martin, of the League of Women Voters for Manatee County, was not happy.

"As a constituent, I was disappointed that there was only an hour allotted for this," said Martin, who is chairwoman of the League's Health Care Committee. "Here in Manatee County we deserve more than an hour for a town hall meeting with everything that is going on in the world. We need a town hall meeting on Medicare privatization alone."

Elizabeth Schultz of Bradenton disagreed, complimenting Harris for her tact and diplomacy.

"I thought the town meeting was very well done," Schultz said. "She handled the crowd very well. I though the crowd was very unruly."

Copyright 2003 The Bradenton Herald

Well, if they voted her in, they can vote her out. I think Bradenton received a record amount of rain.

The people who cast the votes don't decide an election, the people who count the votes do.


Hoisted on her own petard?

MUWAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Getting back to Iraq----I post the following column by Friedman for two reasons: 1) He, unlike most pundits, actually goes to Iraq to obtain his material, and 2) To remind you folks that contrary to any evidence posted on this thread, there is some good news coming out of Iraq.

Dinner With the Sayyids
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN


BAGHDAD, Iraq

The best thing about being in Baghdad these days is that you just never know who's going to show up for dinner.

Take last Wednesday night. I was invited to interview a rising progressive Iraqi Shiite cleric, Sayyid Iyad Jamaleddine, at his home on the banks of the Tigris. It was the most exciting conversation I've had on three trips to postwar Iraq. I listened to Mr. Jamaleddine eloquently advocate separation of mosque and state and lay out a broad, liberal agenda for Iraq's majority Shiites. As we sat down for a meal of Iraqi fish and flat bread, he introduced me to a small, black-turbaned cleric who was staying as his houseguest.

"Mr. Friedman, this is Sayyid Hussein Khomeini" ?- the grandson of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the founder of Iran's Islamic revolution.

Mr. Khomeini told me he had left the Iranian spiritual center of Qum to meet with scholars in the Iraqi Shiite spiritual centers of Karbala and Najaf. He, too, is a progressive, he explained, and he intends to use the freedom that the U.S. invasion has created in Iraq to press for real democratic reform in Iran. Now I understand why his grandfather once threw him in jail for a week. He has Ayatollah Khomeini's fiery eyes and steely determination, but the soul of a Muslim liberal.

The 46-year-old Mr. Khomeini said he's currently advocating a national referendum in Iran to revoke the absolute religious and political powers that have been grabbed by Iran's clergy. But in other interviews here, he was quoted as saying that Iran's hard-line clerical rulers were "the world's worst dictatorship," who have been exploiting his grandfather's name and the name of Islam "to continue their tyrannical rule." He and Mr. Jamaleddine told me their first objective was to open Shiite seminaries and schools in Iraq to teach their ideas to the young generation.

Ladies and gentlemen, I have no idea whether these are the only two liberal Shiite clerics in Iraq. People tell me they definitely are not. Either way, their willingness to express their ideas publicly is hugely important. It is, for my money, the most important reason we fought this war: If the West is going to avoid a war of armies with Islam, there has to be a war of ideas within Islam. The progressives have to take on both the religious totalitarians, like Osama bin Laden, and the secular totalitarians who exploit Islam as a cover, like Saddam Hussein. We cannot defeat their extremists, only they can. This war of ideas needs two things: a secure space for people to tell the truth and people with the courage to tell it. That's what these two young clerics represent, at least in potential.

Mr. Jamaleddine, age 42, grew up in Iraq, sought exile in Iran after one of Saddam's anti-Shiite crackdowns, tasted the harshness of the Iranian Islamic revolution firsthand, moved to Dubai, and then returned to Iraq as soon as Saddam fell. Here is a brief sampler of what he has been advocating:

On religion and state: "We want a secular constitution. That is the most important point. If we write a secular constitution and separate religion from state, that would be the end of despotism and it would liberate religion as well as the human being. . . . The Islamic religion has been hijacked for 14 centuries by the hands of the state. The state dominated religion, not the other way around. It used religion for its own ends. Tyrants ruled this nation for 14 centuries and they covered their tyranny with the cloak of religion. . . . When I called for secularism in Nasiriya (in the first postwar gathering of Iraqi leaders), they started saying things against me. But last week I had some calls from Qum, thanking me for presenting this thesis and saying, `We understand what you are calling for, but we cannot say so publicly.'

"Secularism is not blasphemy. I am a Muslim. I am devoted to my religion. I want to get it back from the state and that is why I want a secular state. . . . When young people come to religion, not because the state orders them to but because they feel it themselves in their hearts, it actually increases religious devotion. . . . The problem of the Middle East cannot be solved unless all the states in the area become secular. . . . I call for opening the door for Ijtihad [reinterpretation of the Koran in light of changing circumstances]. The Koran is a book to be interpreted [by] each age. Each epoch should not be tied to interpretations from 1,000 years ago. We should be open to interpretations based on new and changing times."

How will he deal with opposition to such ideas from Iraq's neighbors?

"The neighboring countries are all tyrannical countries and they are wary of a modern, liberal Iraq. . . . That is why they work to foil the U.S. presence. . . . If the U.S. wants to help Iraqis, it must help them the way it helped Germany and Japan, because to help Iraq is really to help 1.3 billion Muslims. Iraq will teach these values to the entire Islamic world. Because Iraq has both Sunnis and Shiites, and it has Arabs, Kurds and Turkmen. . . . If it succeeds here it can succeed elsewhere. But to succeed you also need to satisfy people's basic needs: jobs and electricity. If people are hungry, they will be easily recruited by the extremists. If they are well fed and employed, they will be receptive to good ideas. . . . The failure of this experiment in Iraq would mean success for all despots in the Arab and Islamic world. [That is why] this is a challenge that America must accept and take all the way."

Mr. Jamaleddine, Mr. Khomeini; these are real spiritual leaders here. But if the U.S. does not create a secure environment and stable economy in Iraq, their voices will never get through. If we do, though ?- wow. To the rest of the Arab world, I would simply say: Guess who's coming to dinner.

Hi there ... I know I've been absent on this thread for quite a while, but I have been following along ... with more than a bit of tongue-biting

Anyhow, in context of the article posted by perc, I just wanna say that I am in e-mail and chat contact with a few folks "Over There", (including my son ... who is not real happy to still be there, though he is quite appreciative of airconditioned quarters and and other ammenities of civilization not available during The Advance). From these contacts, I draw a very different, and far less negative, impression of the actuallity of things "In Country" than is provided by The Media. I could be wrong, but it seems to me The Media go out of their way to find support for their implied argument "See ... We Told You So!".

Sure, there are bitches and complaints from The Troops. That's the way Troops are, and always have been. And no, not everything is running smoothly yet, even after 100 days of Post Major Combat Phase. A hundred days, even a hundred weeks, following the cessation of hostilities in WW II, there were major infrastuctural shortcomings in Occupied Europe and Occupied Asia. Progress has been made, is being made, and will continue to be made. Stability is emerging, it is not established, nor is it endangered ... but progress is in progress. It should be borne in mind that no formal instrument of surrender has been executed, no official transfer of power has occurred, and also that the tens of thousands of vicious thugs once employed by The Saddam Regime are now unemployed viscious thugs. Of note too is the fact that a large proportion of those apprehended or otherwise identified as perpetrators of attacks are Third-Nation citizens, not Iraqis, and that resistance to occupation is largely confined to The Sunni Triangle ... the area traditionally of staunchest Ba'athist support and influence.

a
Perception, would you happen to know if any of these people attended the dinner party



For an Iraqi Family, 'No Other Choice'
Father and Brother Are Forced by Villagers to Execute Suspected U.S. Informant

By Anthony Shadid
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, August 1, 2003; Page A01

THULUYA, Iraq -- Two hours before the dawn call to prayer, in a village still shrouded in silence, Sabah Kerbul's executioners arrived. His father carried an AK-47 assault rifle, as did his brother. And with barely a word spoken, they led the man accused by the village of working as an informer for the Americans behind a house girded with fig trees, vineyards and orange groves.


His father raised his rifle and aimed it at his oldest son.

"Sabah didn't try to escape," said Abdullah Ali, a village resident. "He knew he was facing his fate."

The story of what followed is based on interviews with Kerbul's father, brother and five other villagers who said witnesses told them about the events. One shot tore through Kerbul's leg, another his torso, the villagers said. He fell to the ground still breathing, his blood soaking the parched land near the banks of the Tigris River, they said. His father could go no further, and according to some accounts, he collapsed. His other son then fired three times, the villagers said, at least once at his brother's head.

Kerbul, a tall, husky 28-year-old, died.

"It wasn't an easy thing to kill him," his brother Salah said.

In his simple home of cement and cinder blocks, the father, Salem, nervously thumbed black prayer beads this week as he recalled a warning from village residents earlier this month. He insisted his son was not an informer, but he said his protests meant little to a village seething with anger. He recalled their threat was clear: Either he kill his son, or villagers would resort to tribal justice and kill the rest of his family in retaliation for Kerbul's role in a U.S. military operation in the village in June, in which four people were killed.

"I have the heart of a father, and he's my son," Salem said. "Even the prophet Abraham didn't have to kill his son." He dragged on a cigarette. His eyes glimmered with the faint trace of tears. "There was no other choice," he whispered.




here