The US, UN & Iraq III

You're lying through your teeth. The publisher of Iraq Today is Stephen MacSearraigh, Research Director for PETROLEUM INTELLIGENCE WEEKLY.

Ha! The other side

Wow, wolf. You're really out there. That's just about as left as you can get. (I hope.) I wouldn't use FOX as a source (just like I wouldn't accept Dem.com and MoveOn and such) for factual narratives--but when they quote--it has to be a legitimate quote.

You think the US government orchestrated 911? There are really no terrorists?

Mafia-like protection proposals?

Walter--
Your quote is the one widely read everywhere, including FOX. Only FOX had the report in print that I'd seen televised featuring the UN official, who refused US military security for the UN building.

This morning I saw the guy I'd seen before, explaining that US assistance was refused. His name is Ramero Lopes de Silva. Now, there are two of them telling the same story.

Wolf, are you one of those rabid ass democrats .. you almost sound like a person that until very recenntly post ed on this thread ......

be that as it may ... what exactly was tthe crime of Stephen MacSearraigh?

Yes Wolf, you're as far out there as a perception or Gentrix. Better get a hold on yourself

Too true. Thanks for the reminder, Ge.

This today from George Will, not known as one of the lib-cons group (which I created out of whole cloth, sumac!)

Thursday, August 21, 2003 12:00AM EDT

More than we can chew?


By GEORGE WILL, Washington Post Writers Group


WASHINGTON--Tehran, Iran, Aug. 19 -- Iranians loyal to Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlevi, including Tehran civilians, soldiers and rural tribesmen, swept Premier Mohammed Mossadegh out of power today in a revolution and apparently had seized at least temporary control of the country. -- The New York Times, Aug. 20, 1953

This anniversary reminds us that America is not new to the business of regime change. Fifty years ago U.S. and British intelligence services -- the principal U.S. operative was Kermit Roosevelt, Teddy's grandson -- had a remarkably easy time overthrowing Iran's government.

It took just two months and $200,000, mobs being cheap to rent back then. The shah's "at least temporary control of the country" lasted just a bit more than half of these 50 years. The fact that his control crumbled in 1979 under the assault of Islamic fundamentalists responsive to the Ayatollah Khomeini does not mean the coup was misguided or unavailing.

History teaches that everything is temporary. Besides, the coup's purpose was to confound Soviet designs, not settle Iran's future in perpetuity. The fact that the coup in some sense set in train events that led to today's highly unsatisfactory situation in Iran does not mean that the coup was not successful, any more than Soviet control of Eastern Europe for almost half a century after 1945 meant that the Second World War was not worth winning. Rather, the point to be pondered is that U.S. involvement in regime change deeply implicates the United States in the future of the affected country.

Much ink has been spilled in arguing about when the U.S. commitment in South Vietnam became large and irreversible. It is at least arguable that the day can be pinpointed: Nov. 2, 1963. That was when the United States was involved in regime change -- in the assassination of President Ngo Dinh Diem.

Again, the reason for remembering such U.S. undertakings at this moment is not to reopen arguments about their wisdom, but to underscore the point that the United States has been practicing the craft of regime change for a long time. And that such changes inevitably are the beginnings of long and sometimes melancholy entanglements.

We are in the process of acquiring yet another in Liberia. That one arises from historic ties, supplemented by President Bush's post-9/11 conclusion that "weak states, like Afghanistan, can pose as great a danger to our national interests as strong states."

The Economist of London, which was founded in 1843, when British imperialism was flourishing, is neither squeamish about the fact of empire nor tainted by anti-Americanism. But as an anxious friend The Economist notes:

In less than two years the United States has occupied two Muslim countries with a combined population of more than 50 million. Afghanistan "remains a failed or nonexistent state" where "the government's writ does not extend much beyond Kabul" and "local warlords, deep into the heroin trade, wield the real power." In Iraq, where a U.S. general says the current condition is "war, however you describe it," there are 161,000 occupying troops, of which 148,000 are American. The largest contingent of the other 13,000 are British and the other 18 participating nations have sent on average a few hundred.

It might be time to pause in pushing the American project that was implicit in Woodrow Wilson's assertion that America's flag is "the flag not only of America but of humanity." Wilson was echoing Lincoln's belief that our nation is "dedicated to a proposition" that is "an abstract truth, applicable to all men and all times." But the belief that the American model of civic life could be a blessing to everyone is as old as Benjamin Franklin's proclamation that America's "cause is esteemed the cause of all mankind."

Franklin did not say, but probably was wise enough to think: "Eventually. Maybe."

Okay, this is line in the sand time. A good many sensible and well-informed people have been expected -- here in A2K and out in the big world -- to place Fox News and organs like the Petroleum Intelligence Weekly etc. etc. -- within the spectrum of what one considers news, factual reporting.

We (the sensible and well-informed) have been polite about this up till now. But the time has come to put the center back where it belongs -- a cool, clean no-man's land between the left (i.e., liberal-moderate) wing of the Republican Party and the right (i.e. conservative) wing of the Democratic Party.

Fox is nowhere near the center. There are no media on the left which are anywhere near as radical as Fox, none which are propaganda machines like Fox and still quoted as "news" sources.

So drop Fox. Fuggedabahtit. It has no standing. It doesn't work for liberal Dems, it doesn't work for moderate Republicans, it doesn't work for educated and informed people, it doesn't work as a responsible news gathering organization. It's a propaganda machine purely and only.

Gelis has lost his bearings; too many go along to get along; Wolf is right. In this tug of war, I declare the need for the central knot to placed at the center.

Just one question Tartarin

Who elected you to speak for anyone here? You're sounding more and more like a dictator

How bout we throw the freaking rope away and deal wth ideas? The man wolf labeled by intimation .. I repeat, what was his crime .... and then calling me a liar .... gaurd your teeth wolf, we just may meet someday.

Tar, on that day when we all agree .......... where will we place the center?

I mean, we must evolve people. You can not spill 3000 of your own citizen's blood and break a million times as much hearts, including mine, for some sinister and frankly sick political goal. I will never accept that, I will always challenge it.

You who play games with this tragedy are an insult to your own births. Something, probably money, has perverted your soul into accepting what is morally unacceptable: to see large-scale murder as a means to some hypothetical and self-serving end.

9/11 is the most disgusting and shameful high-level fraud in history, it still goes on, and I will not remain quiet until some justice is done.

Kara

Good article----George Will is more and more likely to get my vote as the most analytical of columnists---certainly the most intellectual. His bias is definitely to the right but that's understandable. :wink:

Ah, Perception, if I were dictator, you wouldn't even be here!!

Wolf, your rush to judgment of others of whom you know little or nothing, and your self-righteously superior stands, upon issues which often exist only in your head are pretty pathetic. You seem to consider that the events of September 11th, 2001 were a part of a government conspiracy. Don't sling mud at others on that subject unless and until you have proof of it--and you'll need to do better than the standard you displayed on the topic of UFO's. Specifically, the people you casually slander here are opposed to the occupation of Iraq, and opposed the invasion before the fact--which you would know if you had read either of the two predecessor threads. But you haven't time for that, do you, you're too busy spewing your hatred for anyone not as "enlightened" as you think yourself to be.

Wolf

Don't look now but the men in white coats are on the way. Just hang in there and don't do anything foolish.

Ah sweetheart I'm crushed----but if you change your mind just ----Wwiissttllee

Good idea, Perception. My problem: when I laugh at you, I can't whistle at the same time!

Well then I've done my good deed for the day---I've brought a laugh to a little ole lady. You were getting terribly serious----

There was a story on NPR this morning, "Love and War," about the side effects of the US invasion and the bombing of UN headquarters in Baghdad. Well worth a listen -- audio available: http://www.npr.org/rundowns/rundown.php?prgId=3&prgDate=current

Wolf said:

9/11 is the most disgusting and shameful high-level fraud in history, it still goes on, and I will not remain quiet until some justice is done.

I have returned to this discussion later in the game, and the reasons why you say such things may well have been discussed earlier. But I sure don't understand where you are coming from, and why. That quote above is just one example of some of your recent statements which leave me scratching my head.

As to the bombing of the UN headquarters. While the UN may be staying, lots of other organizations are bailing. Who would benefit from that? Any one, or several of groups of individuals, who wants to disrupt current developments in Iraq. My gut feeling is that we do not need to posit any one single group, organized, well-funded, etc., but that there now exists many different loosely or tightly associated group of people with the mindset and capability of doing bad things. There are plenty of munitions still around, they can easily be brought in, as well as people, and their are multi-strains of motivations out there. Saddam-supporters, bin Laden-supporters? Not necessary, I am afraid.

Tartarin--

As I stated earlier, I don't cite Rush, or Fox narratives, anymore than I accept some of the biased lib sites linked. Not the narratives as fact. However, due to the strict laws on quotes, I feel safe using quoted comments on these--I just make sure to extricate them from the surrounding tripe, and wash them off real good.

That being said, don't you think its a little presumptuous to tell everyone else what sources are, or are not accepted? You can surely tell me YOU don't accept it.

Fox had the quote.

PS-- Would anyone, who believes 911 was a fabrication please explain what you think happened?