The US, UN & Iraq III

Thank you for poor Ashcroft sympathy. It ain't easy bein' greasy.

Congratulations on test!! Yep--we Americans have it relatively easy, as we don't give a **** about talking in other languages. Aren't they all supposed to learn ours?? <Really. Good for you. :wink: >

Yes, true. But only relying to translated sources from third hand sources ... :wink:



Herzliche Glückwünsche/gratulatio ex sententia, btw!

Not only primary source documents, but also the secondary litereature is poorly traslated. Schimmelpfenning (Papstgeschichte), Borst, Grundmann (Religiose Bewegungen im Mittelalter), Vauchez,and Schmitt are all more readily available in French and German than in English. Now don't lets confuse reading proficiency with "smack the hobbit down in the middle of Tours or Karlsruhe and he will be misnterpereted for a native" proficiency, although I'm much better with conversational German than I am with French!
And as far as any language goes, Spellchecker is a gift from the Gods (as my meager output here should amply demonstrate. Why are there not keyboards for people whose fingers came only in the extra-clumsy model?).

Hobbitbob, are you saying that a German language course studied a text entitled Religioese Bewegungen im Mittelalter? Erstaunlich.

McTag

I suppose, when studying history in Germany, it really could only be fine, when being able to read and understand such textes. (Actually, even some German students would better undertake such a course before stating their studies :wink: )

A long yet cogent, thoughtful analysis by Madeline Albright, of how and why we are where we are, reprinted from the September/October 2003 issue of Foreign Affairs, entitled "Bridges, Bombs, and Bluster":

http://www.nytimes.com/cfr/international/20030901FAESSAY82501_albright.html

Here is a quote:

"The second Bush administration, believing that its perception of the meaning of September 11 is self-evidently right, has failed to make a sustained effort to persuade the rest of the world to share it. As a result, the world does not in fact subscribe to the same view. Certainly, most of the world does not agree with Bush that September 11 "changed everything."

The only things 9/11 fatally changed are the quality standards for any criminal investigation.

I'd qualify that, Wolf. I think the bigger issue is that we increasingly want Not To Know in this country. "Know-Nothings." Congress/the administration simply take advantage, cultivate, the childishness of the average American. We sometimes "dignify" it by giving it a pop-psych label -- "denial" -- but that makes one think of a beleaguered, wrinkly-faced adult on overload, unable to deal with serious travails. Nope. Short pants. Smooth skin. Toys. Unworldliness. Protective parental government.

Lolly pop in the one hand and double whopper in the other.

Interesting article on the front page of today's NYTimes about how Rumsfeld hopes to make the forces more efficient. One of the few times he's ever had an idea that I like.

If I can find it online, I'm going to patch in a piece in the front section of the Times by a journalist who worked with Sergio Veiera de Mello for many years and with another UN notable, (I've forgotten her name, she's Egyptian,) who was his chief of staff in Baghdad.)

I was just watching "This Week" with George Snuffleluffagus when I heard Paul Bremer say:



Now didn't Paul Wolfowitz say, just a week or so ago, that:



I started to scream, "You ******* liar!" but then paused and composed myself.

I remembered the concept of six degrees of separation, took out a pen and started writing:

1.) Saddam is connected to Rumsfeld (photographic evidence)
2.) Rumsfeld is connected to George W. Bush
3.) George W. Bush is connected to George Herbert Walker Bush
4.) George Herbert Walker Bush is connected to the bin Laden family through a myriad of oil/construction deals

Only 4 degrees!

Of course, the bin Ladens and Bushes continue their business connections to this day (see the missing pages in 9/11 report, Greg Palast's website has them) but that's beside the point.

Of course what Bremer is saying is true, now that I have connected the dots.

Go read Albright and see if you can gleen anything else from that piece.

This is for all you ------- -------- who have your heads in the sand

DAY OF INFAMY 2001
Group celebrates 'Magnificent 19' hijackers
British Islamists bent on global conquest plan 9-11 conference
Posted: August 23, 2003
1:00 a.m. Eastern


A group operating openly in Britain that regards itself as a front line for global Islamic conquest, is planning a conference to celebrate the anniversary of America's "comeuppance" on Sept. 11, 2001.

Two years after the attacks on New York and the Pentagon, "Muslims worldwide will again be watching replays of the collapse of the Twin Towers, praying to Allah … to grant those magnificent 19 Paradise," says the group, Al-Muhajiroun, on its English-language website.


Poster for 2003 conference

Al-Muhajiroun was founded in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia in 1983 by a Syrian cleric, Sheikh Omar Bakri Mohammed, who was expelled from Saudi Arabia and has lived in London since 1986 despite an unsuccessful appeal for asylum.

The group fashions itself in the UK as a pressure group seeking to uphold the rights of Muslim citizens. But its website clearly details its stated aim to re-establish the "Khilafa," or world Islamic state, which it contends was destroyed by imperialist Europe.

A terrorist who blew himself up in Tel Aviv on April 29, Asif Hanif, and his accomplice, Omar Khan Sharif, had ties to Al-Muhajiroun, according to British authorities.

Al-Mujahiroun's British leader, Anjem Choudary, has claimed the organization has a worldwide following, with 30 offices across Britain and others in Pakistan, Kuwait, France, South Africa, Lebanon, Bangladesh, Mauritius, Saudi Arabia, Syria and Algeria, according to the London Telegraph.

Shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks, Choudary said Al-Muhajiroun represented a much more mainstream Muslim agenda than admitted by other Islamic groups in the country.

"It is they who are sold out and secular. We are the ones who have not compromised our Islamic faith," he said, according to the Telegraph.

In its press release about the upcoming Sept. 11 conference, the group said Muslims worldwide will be praying "for the reverberations" of 9-11 "to continue until the eradication of all man-made law and the implementation of divine law in the form of the Khilafah -- carrying the message of Islam to the world and striving for Izhar ud-Deen, i.e. the total domination of the world by Islam."


Poster for 2002 conference

Al-Muhajiroun held a similar meeting of clerics Sept. 11, 2002 at Finsbury Park mosque in north London, where they launched the Islamic Council of Britain, which seeks to implement Shariah, or Islamic law in the UK.

Mohammed, who has been investigated by Scotland Yard's anti-terrorist squad for anti-semitic statements, said at the time, "The people at this conference look at September 11 like a battle, as a great achievement by the mujahideen against the evil superpower."

The group said Muslims will celebrate Sept. 11 this year, rejoicing the U.S. got its "comeuppance for atrocities" it has committed, "and indeed continues to commit, against Muslims."

Afghanistan and Iraq are the most recent examples, the statement said.

"With thousands of innocent Muslims still in captivity under barbaric conditions in Guantanamo Bay, the U.S. inquisition against Islam and Muslims shows no signs of subsiding," the group said. "In contrast, the operations being carried out by the Mujahideen against the occupiers in Iraq, Palestine, Chechnya and in Afghanistan have also been stepped up to meet the menace led by the U.S. and UK regimes."

The organization said since Sept. 11, 2001, Muslims have noted the "objective of living under the Shariah and ridding all Muslim land not only of the occupiers, but also the dictatorial regimes and the secularists, has gained massive momentum. From Indonesia and Malaysia to Yemen and Nigeria, the call for the return of the Khilafah system, of ruling solely by the Shariah, can be heard."

Al-Muhajroun said, "The hatred towards the U.S. and UK, and their evil plans to crush Islam and Muslims, and to force a washed-down version of Islam on Muslims, similar to Christianity, has backfired, and instead, more and more Muslims are queuing up to fight Jihad and are willing to die to see the domination of divine law over man made law."

"The willingness to die," the group said, "can be seen in the face of those like Imam Samudra, who was recently given the death penalty for his involvement in the Bali bombings, and yet, when the verdict was handed out, he celebrated his upcoming martyrdom (insha'allah) in the way of Allah


NEWS:
New al-Qaida plot for planes into buildings

Any of you want to be martyrs in the manner of Imam Samudra---be my guest----just say INSHA'ALLAH

What do these signatures mean to you?

Could it be ...... conspiracy?

January 26, 1998



The Honorable William J. Clinton
President of the United States
Washington, DC


Dear Mr. President:

We are writing you because we are convinced that current American policy toward Iraq is not succeeding, and that we may soon face a threat in the Middle East more serious than any we have known since the end of the Cold War. In your upcoming State of the Union Address, you have an opportunity to chart a clear and determined course for meeting this threat. We urge you to seize that opportunity, and to enunciate a new strategy that would secure the interests of the U.S. and our friends and allies around the world. That strategy should aim, above all, at the removal of Saddam Hussein's regime from power. We stand ready to offer our full support in this difficult but necessary endeavor.

The policy of "containment" of Saddam Hussein has been steadily eroding over the past several months. As recent events have demonstrated, we can no longer depend on our partners in the Gulf War coalition to continue to uphold the sanctions or to punish Saddam when he blocks or evades UN inspections. Our ability to ensure that Saddam Hussein is not producing weapons of mass destruction, therefore, has substantially diminished. Even if full inspections were eventually to resume, which now seems highly unlikely, experience has shown that it is difficult if not impossible to monitor Iraq's chemical and biological weapons production. The lengthy period during which the inspectors will have been unable to enter many Iraqi facilities has made it even less likely that they will be able to uncover all of Saddam's secrets. As a result, in the not-too-distant future we will be unable to determine with any reasonable level of confidence whether Iraq does or does not possess such weapons.


Such uncertainty will, by itself, have a seriously destabilizing effect on the entire Middle East. It hardly needs to be added that if Saddam does acquire the capability to deliver weapons of mass destruction, as he is almost certain to do if we continue along the present course, the safety of American troops in the region, of our friends and allies like Israel and the moderate Arab states, and a significant portion of the world's supply of oil will all be put at hazard. As you have rightly declared, Mr. President, the security of the world in the first part of the 21st century will be determined largely by how we handle this threat.


Given the magnitude of the threat, the current policy, which depends for its success upon the steadfastness of our coalition partners and upon the cooperation of Saddam Hussein, is dangerously inadequate. The only acceptable strategy is one that eliminates the possibility that Iraq will be able to use or threaten to use weapons of mass destruction. In the near term, this means a willingness to undertake military action as diplomacy is clearly failing. In the long term, it means removing Saddam Hussein and his regime from power. That now needs to become the aim of American foreign policy.

We urge you to articulate this aim, and to turn your Administration's attention to implementing a strategy for removing Saddam's regime from power. This will require a full complement of diplomatic, political and military efforts. Although we are fully aware of the dangers and difficulties in implementing this policy, we believe the dangers of failing to do so are far greater. We believe the U.S. has the authority under existing UN resolutions to take the necessary steps, including military steps, to protect our vital interests in the Gulf. In any case, American policy cannot continue to be crippled by a misguided insistence on unanimity in the UN Security Council.

We urge you to act decisively. If you act now to end the threat of weapons of mass destruction against the U.S. or its allies, you will be acting in the most fundamental national security interests of the country. If we accept a course of weakness and drift, we put our interests and our future at risk.

Sincerely,

Elliott Abrams Richard L. Armitage William J. Bennett

Jeffrey Bergner John Bolton Paula Dobriansky

Francis Fukuyama Robert Kagan Zalmay Khalilzad

William Kristol Richard Perle Peter W. Rodman

Donald Rumsfeld William Schneider, Jr. Vin Weber

Paul Wolfowitz R. James Woolsey Robert B. Zoellick

I fully endorse it----add my name to the list

Sorry perc, those that suffer from cranial sphincter insertion are disallowed.

Cranial-rectal inversion

That's well known stuff. It's surely one of the reasons Clinton and staff urged incoming National Security Council folks to spend some real time on the threat of terrorism. Which the NSC didn't. Which is what needs to be thoroughly investigated. Were they incompetent or were they told to turn a blind eye? When one looks at the growing pile of info, it really does seem that the administration deliberately sat on the info. Whether they were stupid or malign, we have yet to learn.

The neo-cons who wrote the letter to Clinton were setting the stage for the Saddam/conspiracy link. This was at least in part an outcome of their rage that we didn't "get Saddam" the first time around. If one looks carefully at documents coming from that time -- when Bush 1 decided not to take out Saddam -- one sees the seeds of what we're going through today. There's a lot of personal, impolitic frustration which comes out in the Abrams et al. letter (which seems so arrogant and presumptuous when one reads it now).

(It's funny to remember that Fukuyama was a signatory to that stuff. He tried "The End of History," and then tries to end history to prove himself right!)

I could agree with inversertion ...... and I would pay good money to watch

Gels, "Good money" is very subjective; how about naming a amount?