The US, UN & Iraq III

Kara wrote:

I have heard nothing about a neo-con "conspiracy," and I read widely.

Kara
Why don't you talk to Blatham about conspiracy---he's been writing about it ever since this thread started. He especially likes Perle and Wolfowitz.

My grandson is writing a paper on the subject of governmental security agencies using an individual's race, ethnicity, or religious affiliation as probable cause when investigating possible threats to national security. He has the unfortunate assignment of arguing the "pro" side of this question. Does anyone, off the top of their head think of a recent article on this subject. He's goggled. I just thought some may have an odd resource he hasn't uncovered. Thanks.

Perception, now honestly!! I don't even think of you when I post, unless I'm responding, as I am now, to something directed to me. What I write (what you write, what everyone else here writes) are opinions, addressed to the forum at large. Occasionally we all address one another with an idea, a response, a laugh, an agreement, a disagreement. But I don't come into the forum thinking that others' posts are directed at me unless they address me by name. Nor should you.

Lola

Try google with this --- Profile religion race US national security---it's a start.

Tartarin

I didn't mean "jam it down MY throat literally---correct that to read---jam it down the readers throat and that will cover making posts to the audience at large. You've got some powerful opinions and most of them don't leave any room for discussion. At least that is my perception!

Quote me an example, if you would, Perception.

Lola, you might also want to check the ACLU website. They may have links...

Tartarin wrote:

Quote me an example, if you would, Perception.

How about this one for starters:

Blair is interesting, but not great enough to either be a statesman or tragic. He seized on the Bush plan because he wanted greatness and thought that was the way to get it. Not even a tragic flaw -- just a damn silly and dangerous one.

Looks like a regular old, run of the mill opinion, to me. Nothing absolute or exclamatory, nothing "rammed down" anyone's orifice of any kind.
Just an opinion, to which someone could reply "I disagree - Blair's a fine, courageous and creative leader, and he was motivated only by what's best for his countrymen." Or "You're right, Blair's a jelly-backboned weasel." But to say this is an example of some kind of demagoguery
by Tartarin - well, no.

Lola, your grandson could e-mail Ashcroft directly and ask him his reasons, which must be compelling, that every man of a certain ethnicity in the US has to turn himself in for questioning, and detention in some cases. Also, your grandson could ask about the prisoners kept incommunicado at Guantanamo Bay, even though it has been written that little useful information is coming from that source anymore.

U.S. Troops Fire on Iraq Protesters Again
52 minutes ago

By CHARLES J. HANLEY, AP Special Correspondent

FALLUJAH, Iraq - U.S. troops opened fire on anti-American demonstrators for the second time this week as Iraqis marched Wednesday to protest the previous shooting. The city's mayor said two people were killed and 14 wounded in the clash.
An Army officer said soldiers in a convoy passing the demonstrators were shot at, and then returned fire.
The gunfire came less than 48 hours after a shooting during a demonstration Monday night that hospital officials said killed 13 Iraqis.
There was no immediate indication of American casualties. U.S. Central Command in Qatar said it was looking into the incident.
The clashes in Fallujah, a conservative Sunni Muslim city and Baath Party stronghold 30 miles west of Baghdad, reflect the area's increasing tensions as American troops try to keep the peace in Iraq (news - web sites

As 20/20 hindsight develops, I have seen nothing to change my opinion that this war was fought for American geopolitical imperatives and the control of oil.

The weapons of mass destruction, the farcical shenanniggins at the UN, the humanitarian issue, the "liberation" of Iraq, the removal of a tyrant, were all mere adjuncts to the overall global strategy of securing oil supplies, and protecting America's client Jewish state in the middle east.

And you know what? I see nothing wrong with that. Its just that I believe the objectives could have been achieved without the invasion of Iraq and the associated death and destruction.

a
Buddy can you spare a dime?



WASHINGTON - The Treasury Department says the United States could face the prospect of not being able to pay its bills in late May unless Congress raises the government's borrowing authority, now capped at $6.4 trillion.

Treasury's debt managers have taken a number of steps since February to prevent the government from defaulting on the national debt, but "on current projections, the extraordinary measures taken since Feb. 20, 2003, will only be adequate to meet the government's needs until the latter half of May," said a statement released Tuesday.

After that - absent a boost in the government's borrowing authority by Congress - Treasury would breach the current $6.4 trillion ceiling on the national debt.

"The Treasury will continue to work with Congress to ensure the government's ability to finance its operations," Treasury said.

Treasury has asked Congress to boost the government's borrowing authority, although it has not suggested a specific amount. A proposal is pending on Capitol Hill that would raise the debt ceiling to $7.38 trillion.

Last year, Congress boosted the old debt limit by $450 billion, from $5.95 trillion to the current $6.4 trillion.

At that time Treasury warned that Congress would need to again increase the government's borrowing authority.

Boosting the debt limit is more a matter of politics than economics.

Economists doubt Congress will refuse to raise the limit. A federal default is considered unimaginable because it would rattle bond markets, force interest rates higher, weaken the world economy and deliver a political blow to President Bush.

Democrats point to the government's need to borrow more to ridicule President Bush's tax cuts, his handling of the economy and ballooning federal government budget deficits, which are expected to hit records this year and next.

Republicans blame the lingering effects of the 2001 recession and the costs of fighting terrorism for the need to extend the debt limit.

By Memorial Day, Republicans hope to have pushed through Congress a tax-cut bill with a price tag of between $350 billion and $550 billion through 2013.

If Congress must approve a debt-limit extension during the same period of time, it could play into Democrats' political argument that the new tax cut will only make the government's red ink worse.

The government had to borrow a record $111 billion in the January-March quarter to cover the shortfall between expenses and tax revenue. It expects to borrow another $79 billion in the current quarter.

--

On the Net:

Treasury Department: http://www.ustreas.gov/

© 2003 The Associated Press

On NPR just now, there was a nice piece on Rumsfeld, in Baghdad, sitting behind a desk in one of Saddam's imperial palaces. And Maureen Dowd, in her 4/30 NYTimes column, writes:

Snood

I deliberately did not provide a link to the massacre because I wanted people to find out for themselves and also to see just how most media sources are playing it down.


Here's a couple of quotes from the Guardian

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,946336,00.html

Steve, I am continuing to look at different sources to figure out what happened in that massacre. I am hoping that our troops had some reason to fire on that crowd but it seems increasingly less likely.

Tartarin, Ferguson is the author of that piece I mentioned, a few posts back. He wrote an article in last Sunday's NYTimes mag about the difference between the Brits and the US in setting up colonies. He discusses, also, the way that the Scots and the Irish were represented in large numbers in the troops that were dispersed around the Empire to run colonies and that many of them escaped from their disadvantaged beginnings by joining the military. He draws some parallels to today's US military. (The article is absorbing, and I would cut and paste it here but Timber would comment, rightly, that NYTimes articles belong to the newspaper for print dissemination and that I am stealing from them if I post a story here. And timber is this thread's POH-leese. :wink: )

Yes, Kara. Niall Ferguson keeps popping up in the NYRB, the LRB, and of course in his article for Sunday's NYTimes mag.

This careful report was just broadcast on NPR and can be listened to (click on link). It gives substantial details and notes that more civilians were killed per day than in the previous Gulf War.

Walter and Kara

I'd read that piece by Lieber several days ago. Lieber has worked with Kristol and others in the group he defends, and argues the same policy strategies as a google search and a few minutes of reading will confirm.

His use of the term 'conspiracy' is quite disengenuous, because of the connotations the term carries. And none of the links I've provided nor the many good analyses which discuss this 'neocon' movement (neocon is a term self-imposed by some of these gents, by the way) refer to it as a conspiracy.

It is a set of notions about how the US ought to procede in the world following upon the demise of Soviet power. That some of the notions are highly questionable and outside of traditional policy (hegemony, unilateral and preemptive military action) isnt news, of course. That the proponents of this set of notions are now effectively driving White House policy isn't news either. So it isn't a conspiracy, in the paranoid style (eg Jewish bankers, fluoridation as commie plot).

To describe the folks who argue against these notions and who point to the authors of them (and their connections with each other and with the White House) as conspiracists is a naughty attempt to denigrate the arguers, to suggest there is little in what they say because they are merely paranoid.