Powell speech.…Iraqi Unions.…..Both painful

Posted on September 9, 2005 by Sappho

From his own mouth…Powell admits ..his speech was ‘painful’.

FORMER US sec­re­tary of state Colin Pow­ell has said his UN speech mak­ing the case for the US-led war on Iraq was “a blot” on his record.

In the Feb­ru­ary 2003 pre­sen­ta­tion to the UN Secu­rity Coun­cil, Mr Pow­ell force­fully made the case for war on the regime of Sad­dam Hus­sein, offer­ing “proof” that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.

The pre­sen­ta­tion included satel­lite pho­tos of trucks that Mr Pow­ell iden­ti­fied as mobile bioweapons lab­o­ra­to­ries. After the inva­sion US weapons inspec­tors reported find­ing no Iraqi nuclear, bio­log­i­cal or chem­i­cal weapons.

“It’s a blot” on my record, Mr Pow­ell said in an inter­view with America’s ABC News to be aired today.

What about the Iraqi Unions? remem­ber what they did before?

Iraq’s other resistance

August 2003 oil work­ers’ unions organ­ised a strike that stopped all pro­duc­tion in south­ern Iraq for two days. The result­ing bar­gain­ing power has been impres­sive, with the unions — which later merged to become the GUOE — suc­cess­fully push­ing for for­eign work­ers to be replaced by Iraqis; the role of US com­pa­nies in the recon­struc­tion to be reduced; and wages to be raised to live­able levels..

Now they want to destroy them.. Unions About to Be Destroyed

The Bush admin­is­tra­tion has been actively hos­tile to the trade unions in Iraq– even keep­ing old Sad­dam Hus­sein laws in place to restrict union rights — but a new decree 875 by the new gov­ern­ment promises an even worse crack­down or even elim­i­na­tion of labor union inde­pen­dence in that nation.

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78 Responses to Powell speech.…Iraqi Unions.…..Both painful

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  2. CMAR II says:
    September 10, 2005 at 00:03

    Hmmm…you’re wor­ried about Iraqis being divided by ethinic­ity and reli­gion but you don’t mind, at this time of cri­sis, hav­ing divi­sions by occu­pa­tion seek­ing a big­ger cut of the pie. Okaaaaay.

  3. Ken says:
    September 10, 2005 at 00:48

    I am con­cerned about the Bush administration’s atti­tudes towards unions in Iraq as well, so I won’t fight you on this. de Toqueville wrote long ago of the impor­tance of hav­ing a wide vari­ety of orga­ni­za­tions in soci­ety. I agree that weak­en­ing the unions can only strengthen the reli­gion­ists. I highly doubt that the Bush Admin­is­tra­tion sees the sig­nif­i­cance of that; they are more con­cerned with repli­cat­ing how they would behave in America.

    If you’re going to quote Pow­ell, I’ll note that else­where in the speech he makes the point that it was not painful because he now thinks it was all a lie; it is painful to him because they were wrong. He does not believe, either, that CIA Head Tenet was any­thing less than truth­ful in pre­sent­ing what the CIA believed to be the evi­dence. Pow­ell cred­its bad ground intel­li­gence. Let’s just be sure we’re clear about all of this.…

  4. Charles says:
    September 10, 2005 at 03:27

    And let’s also remem­ber that in the autumn of 2002 the UNSC unan­i­mously found Sad­dam to be in mate­r­ial breach of the cease fire agree­ment that ended the first gulf war.

    The US led coali­tion went into Iraq to enforce com­pli­ance because Sad­dam had proven him­self unwill­ing over the course of an entire DECADE to come clean and meet the terms of the cease fire.

    I’m glad the SOB was just bluff and blus­ter and that our troops and peo­ple in the region did not have to face a con­flict where Sad­dam used WMD. Too bad for Sad­dam (not really) and too bad for the Iraqi peo­ple who suf­fered under his rule for so long (notwith­stand­ing LB I’m sure).

    But on the bright side the SOB was pulled from a hole, and now sits in prison eat­ing healthy break­fast cere­als and cheese puffs.

  5. Charles says:
    September 10, 2005 at 05:37

    Fatwa orders Indian ten­nis star to cover up

    Ran­deep Ramesh in Delhi
    Sat­ur­day Sep­tem­ber 10, 2005
    The Guardian

    A group of Mus­lim cler­ics has issued a reli­gious dik­tat demand­ing that India’s teenage ten­nis star Sania Mirza cover up dur­ing matches, say­ing that her skirts and T-shirts are “un-Islamic” and “corrupting”.

    I think it would be kind of neat to see her play her next match in a burka(?) — or what­ever you call that long black head to toe garb with a mos­quito net cov­er­ing her face.

    She would be trip­ping and flop­ping about all over the place. She would prob­a­bly col­lapse from heat exhaustion.

    If she could do it with­out get­ting hurt, I think it would be a very pow­er­ful statement.

    Some­one send her an email with the idea…

  6. AXIS OF OIL says:
    September 10, 2005 at 06:09

    Colin Pow­ell as well as lots of govts. and agen­cys believed in the dan­ger Sad­dam posed. The dan­gers were WMD and a nexus ‘tween al splody­dopes and the Batthists regime. All the com­mu­nists like Lady­Car­rion and [fish]“Mikey“[/fish] can do is squeek, ‘no blood for oil’ squeek, it’s Bush­hitler fault squeek, no WMD or ter­ror­ists in Iraq squeek.

    BUT Lots of evi­dence has come to light in tri­als and debrief­ings since

  7. Jeff says:
    September 10, 2005 at 08:48

    Colin Pow­ell as well as lots of govts. and agen­cys believed in the dan­ger Sad­dam posed

    Here’s one…

    Click Here!!!

  8. Jeff says:
    September 10, 2005 at 08:52

    But on the bright side the SOB was pulled from a hole, and now sits in prison eat­ing healthy break­fast cere­als and cheese puffs.

    LOL!! I also hear that he has a lit­tle gar­den that he tends to as well.

  9. Michael says:
    September 10, 2005 at 11:06

    Was Pow­ell mis­lead or did he sim­ply lie? If you look at the report men­tioned below writ­ten shortly after­wards it appears that he knew exactly what he was doing, he described it him­self, before mak­ing his speech, as “bullshit”.

    http://www.usnews.com/usnews/news/articles/030609/9intell_4.htm

    At one point dur­ing the rehearsal, Pow­ell tossed sev­eral pages in the air. “I’m not read­ing this,” he declared. “This is bulls– -

    As for Sad­dam being in breach of the 1991 cease fire agree­ment, that’s the whole point, we now know he wasn’t. He didn’t have any WMD and was there­fore unable to destroy them. The UN Weapons Inspec­tors were still doing their work in Iraq when they were told to leave in order for Bush to start his oil moti­vated inva­sion.
    Besides can there be any doubt that if there had been the slight­est chance that Sad­dam had WMD the USA would bot have invaded in the first place.
    It’s an inter­est­ing con­fes­sion by Pow­ell reveal­ing the fact that the US Gov. was fully aware that there were no WMD and that there was no con­nec­tion between Sad­dam and 9/11. Claims which we still see repeated on this blog and many oth­ers by Amer­i­can fas­cists and those unwill­ing to admit their stu­pid­ity by agree­ing that they were fooled.
    Inci­den­tal this isn’t of course Powell’s only blot, we also have his “turkey shoot” dur­ing which he shot retreat­ing Iraqi sol­diers in the back and indeed even bull­dozed some still alive directly into the sand. . This was not autho­rised under the terms of the UN res­o­lu­tion call­ing for the lib­er­a­tion of Kuwait.Now 12 years later these mass graves are opened up and blamed on Sad­dam
    Pow­ell is a mass mur­derer, hope­fully after the USA is defeated he will have his turn at the Inter­na­tional Crim­i­nal Court along with his co-conspirators.

  10. Jon says:
    September 10, 2005 at 11:13

    Michael–

    I have to ask. Is there more than one of you? If not, have you dis­cov­ered a way to live with­out sleep?

  11. Michael says:
    September 10, 2005 at 11:25

    There are mil­lions of us Jon.

  12. Jon says:
    September 10, 2005 at 11:28

    “There are mil­lions of us Jon.”

    OK, now I’m worried.

  13. Nadia_4iraqis says:
    September 10, 2005 at 12:18

    This clip from John Pilger’s doc­u­men­tary, Break­ing the Silence, con­tains 2001 footage of Pow­ell and Rice declar­ing that Iraq is not a threat.
    http://www.thememoryhole.org/war/powell-rice-wmd.wmv
    ——-

    I think he should be charge in court for assis­tance to wage an ille­gal war based on what he knew were lies.

  14. Charles says:
    September 11, 2005 at 00:26

    As for Sad­dam being in breach of the 1991 cease fire agree­ment, that’s the whole point, we now know he wasn’t.

    We all step back in awe as Michael’s moun­tain of crap grows ever higher.

    Michael, please clar­ify your posi­tion. Are you say­ing that from 1991 on, Sad­dam was in full com­pli­ance with all cease fire terms?

    I think even al jazeera’s lat­est con­sul­tant Scott Rit­ter would disagree:

    MR. RITTER: Mr. Chair­man, mem­bers of the com­mit­tee; last week I resigned my posi­tion out of frus­tra­tion that the United Nations Secu­rity Coun­cil, and the United States as its most sig­nif­i­cant sup­porter, was fail­ing to enforce the post-Gulf War res­o­lu­tions designed to dis­arm Iraq. I can speak to you today from first­hand expe­ri­ence about the effec­tive­ness of Amer­i­can pol­icy or lack thereof, with respect to the United Nations’s effort to rid Iraq of its weapons of mass destruc­tion. I sin­cerely hope that my actions might help to change things.

    Iraq today is not dis­armed, and remains an ugly threat to its neigh­bors and to world peace. Those Amer­i­can who think that this is impor­tant and that some­thing should be done about it have to be deeply dis­ap­pointed in our leadership.

    MR. RITTER: …So the dis­cov­er­ies that the team that I was in charge of and the Spe­cial Com­mis­sion as a whole were on the verge of mak­ing and, indeed, have made in the past include defin­ing with cer­tainty what this con­ceal­ment mech­a­nism was and clos­ing in on the mate­ri­als that this con­ceal­ment mech­a­nism were (sic) retaining.

    MR. RITTER: …But what I can say is that we have clear evi­dence that Iraq is retain­ing pro­hib­ited weapons capa­bil­i­ties in the fields of chem­i­cal, bio­log­i­cal and bal­lis­tic– mis­sile deliv­ery sys­tems of a range of greater than 150 kilo­me­ters. And if Iraq has under­taken a con­certed effort run at the high­est lev­els inside Iraq to retain these capa­bil­i­ties, then I see no rea­son why they would not exer­cise the same sort of con­ceal­ment efforts for their nuclear programs.

    MR. RITTER: Yes, sir. Again, I believe that the Feb­ru­ary agree­ment is part of a cycle of activ­ity which has started ear­lier — much ear­lier — in fact, the sum­mer of 1996, in which Iraq pro­vokes a con­fronta­tion with weapons inspec­tors, know­ing that there will not be con­sen­sus for deci­sive action in the Secu­rity Coun­cil and as a result gets a con­ces­sion from the Secu­rity Coun­cil. What hap­pened in Feb­ru­ary is such a con­ces­sion. Why the United States sup­ports this is that they, I believe they are under­stand­ing that it’s dif­fi­cult to put together a coali­tion, and they want to keep the inspec­tion process mov­ing for­ward. How­ever, they’re in a sit­u­a­tion where by sav­ing the inspec­tion process they are destroy­ing the inspec­tion process. And this is one rea­son why I felt the need to resign; I would not be part of a destruc­tion of some­thing of this nature.

    MR. RITTER: Yes, sir. This is part of the cycle of con­fronta­tion and con­ces­sion that I have been talk­ing about, and we can’t give con­ces­sions. If we have con­fronta­tion, it must have a resolution.

    MR. RITTER: The threat of force was made back in April 1991 when the Secu­rity Coun­cil together with the vote and push­ing and back­ing of the United States passed the orig­i­nal cease-fire res­o­lu­tion. I don’t see any­thing that would have caused the law to be altered. Iraq has not been dis­armed. I would assume that that threat of force still exists today.

    More later — gotta go feed the kids…

  15. Charles says:
    September 11, 2005 at 02:45

    MR. RITTER: The threat of force was made back in April 1991 when the Secu­rity Coun­cil together with the vote and push­ing and back­ing of the United States passed the orig­i­nal cease-fire res­o­lu­tion. I don’t see any­thing that would have caused the law to be altered. Iraq has not been dis­armed. I would assume that that threat of force still exists today.

    SEN. BIDEN: I am try­ing to get this as clear as I can. I really mean this now. You have an absolute logic; you put together a very tight syl­lo­gism here. You have indi­cated that your job is to dis­arm. The only way you can dis­arm is to have access. And the only way you can have access is either with per­mis­sion on the part of Iraq, or if denied, forced access. Right?

    MR. RITTER: Com­pelled access, yes.

    SEN. BIDEN: “Com­pelled.” Well, okay, com­pelled. You sound like the lawyer, and I sound like the mil­i­tary guy. (Chuck­les.) I mean, you know, com­pelled where I come from — when my old man said, “You’re com­pelled,” it meant “I was forced.” I mean, it was a real sim­ple propo­si­tion. It wasn’t — you know, there wasn’t much to debate. Now there is a clear logic to that, and that’s what I mean when I say I respect your posi­tion. But that means that when­ever your choose a tar­get that war­rants inspec­tion and you are denied, that ipso facto at that moment the only way your posi­tion can be sat­is­fied or sus­tained is if the U.N. Secu­rity Coun­cil, or the United States act­ing uni­lat­er­ally, uses force to guar­an­tee access. Is not that true?

    MR. RITTER: Yes, sir.

    SEN. BIDEN: At that moment, we’re on auto­matic pilot as far as you’re con­cerned — period. No ifs, ands or buts. Now I respect that. But now it seems to me the sec­re­tary of State might have a slightly dif­fer­ent prob­lem. The sec­re­tary of State might be sit­ting there and say­ing: “Now look over there on that side now. I remem­ber so-and-so and so-and-so and so-and-so, and the 12 peo­ple on this side, they’re all the ones that said they didn’t want to use force. Now I am going to have to go tell the pres­i­dent now that we should — or Sec­re­tary Cohen — unleash what­ever it takes to get it done.” And our mil­i­tary assess­ment is the same as the major’s. The major’s assess­ment is, pri­vately held but pub­licly acknowl­edged later, that air strikes alone aren’t going to do this. Saddam’s not going to cave on this. So, now, here’s the deal. I rec­om­mended the pres­i­dent have at it, and let the chips fall where they may. A rea­son­able posi­tion for the sec­re­tary of defense and the sec­re­tary of state to take. But I respect­fully sug­gest, major, I respect­fully sug­gest they have respon­si­bil­i­ties slightly above your pay grade — slightly above your pay grade — to decide whether or not to take the nation to war alone or to take the nation to war part-way, or to take the nation to war half-way. That’s a real tough deci­sion. That’s why they get paid the big bucks. That’s why they get the limos and you don’t. I mean this sin­cerely. I’m not try­ing to be flip, because I think — and that’s what I said at the out­set. The rea­son why I’m glad you did what you did, we should come to our milk. We should make a deci­sion. But in terms of whether the sec­re­tary of state has no more to con­sider than you do as the arms inspec­tor — you didn’t get in, didn’t get my job done, get me in! Period. You made the deal, right? That’s the deal. A deal’s a deal. Get me in! Scott Rit­ter, I’m ready to go. That’s not how it works.
    Now, maybe it should work that way. But wouldn’t you acknowl­edge that if you were Pres­i­dent of the United States or the sec­re­tary of state you’d sit there and say, “Now, okay. Old Scot­tie boy didn’t get in. We said he should get it. We want him to get in. It’s impor­tant that he does get in. They’re not going to let him in. So what are we going to do now? We know that France and Rus­sia aren’t going to be with us. We’re quite con­fi­dent China’s not. We’ve already run those traps; they’re not there. We’re not sure whether the United States Sen­ate is. But have at it, boys. Go get ‘em. And by the way, Scott and the boys say air power’s not enough.” I think it’s a legit­i­mate debate, major. I think it’s a legit­i­mate debate. But I don’t think we should be putting it in the con­text of, you have some­body up there at State say­ing “Now, look, how can we weasel out of this agree­ment? We don’t want to let this guy out there hang­ing. We’re not this — “. It’s a very prac­ti­cal polit­i­cal deci­sion. The same kind of deci­sion Gen­eral Pow­ell made. The same kind of deci­sion Pres­i­dent Bush made. Every pres­i­dent and every sec­re­tary of state needs to do it. Like I said, they get paid more than you, their job’s a hell of a lot more com­pli­cated than yours. They may have made the wrong deci­sion. And you brought it to light. We should address it. We should say straight up where we are. And we should do it. And for that, I thank you. But it’s above your pay grade. I yield the floor.

    MR. RITTER: My under­stand­ing of the — first of all, I’d need to make clear that the issue of the dis­cov­ery of weaponized VX in Iraq was done by another team, a team that I was not directly asso­ci­ated with. I’m famil­iar with their work. It’s a very impor­tant dis­cov­ery. It’s one that shows clearly that, A, Iraq has not dis­armed, and they’ve lied across the board about not just VX, but once we get to the bot­tom of the VX issue, we’ll find it exposes addi­tional lies, which cause con­cern for a num­ber weapons issues. When that issue became pub­lic in June of 1998, I believe that the admin­is­tra­tion was forced to endorse the find­ings that indeed there was weaponized VX in Iraq today, and as such, they expressed sup­port for con­tin­ued inspec­tion oper­a­tions in Iraq to dis­close not only the VX but all aspects of Iraq’s retained weapons capabilities.

    SEN. WARNER: Had this ces­sa­tion of inspec­tions not hap­pened, can you pro­vide the com­mit­tee — com­mit­tees with any esti­mate of how much longer your teams and oth­ers would have to do their work and the like­li­hood of what they might find?

    MR. RITTER: Sir, that’s a ques­tion that Iraq keeps pos­ing to the Spe­cial Com­mis­sion: how much longer will this go on? The fact of the mat­ter is that since April 1991 under the direct orders and direc­tion of the Pres­i­dent of Iraq the gov­ern­ment of Iraq has lied to the Spe­cial Com­mis­sion about the total­ity of its hold­ings. We can­not con­duct ver­i­fi­ca­tion of Iraq’s com­pli­ance with Secu­rity Coun­cil res­o­lu­tions with­out an under­stand­ing of what there was to begin with. Iraq not only lied to us in April 1991. In the sum­mer of 1991 they con­ducted what they call uni­lat­eral destruc­tion: that is, they dis­posed of cer­tain mate­ri­als with­out the pres­ence of weapons inspec­tors and then destroyed the records of this alleged destruc­tion. They also diverted cer­tain mate­ri­als to the pres­i­den­tial secu­rity forces. This has con­fused an already con­fus­ing sit­u­a­tion. We do not know the total­ity of what Iraq has. What we do know is that the dec­la­ra­tions they have made to the Spe­cial Com­mis­sion to date are false. And the expla­na­tions that they give to us about how they dis­posed of weapons are wrong. And there­fore we know we have a job to do. How much longer will it take? I can say this, and I’ll echo the words of the exec­u­tive chair­man. If Iraq gave us today a full and final account­ing of all of its weapons of mass destruc­tion — pro­grams and retained weapons capa­bil­i­ties — our job would be over very quickly. But because we don’t have such an account­ing, our job has become a mis­sion of dis­cov­ery. We must go forth and find these weapons that Iraq is hid­ing. And that could go on a very long time, espe­cially given the level of Iraqi obstruc­tion today.

    MR. RITTER: Yes, sir. It’s — I’m not second-guessing the pres­i­dent of the United States. I’m not pre­sum­ing to be in a posi­tion to make deci­sions on behalf of him or on the behalf of the sec­re­tary of State. What I’m doing is hold­ing a mir­ror up to the Sen­ate, to this admin­is­tra­tion and to the Amer­i­can peo­ple, and I’m ask­ing you to look into it. In 1991, you tasked the spe­cial com­mis­sion to carry out dis­ar­ma­ment inspec­tions of Iraq. And you said that Iraq, if they don’t do it, because we passed this res­o­lu­tion under Chap­ter 7, we will enforce this res­o­lu­tion. And in 1998, today, I stand before you to say that, A, Iraq is not dis­armed; and B, the United States, as a mem­ber of the Secu­rity Coun­cil which gave us this mis­sion, is doing other than it has said it wanted to do.

    SEN. COATS: — to pur­sue evi­dence of Iraqi weapons of mass destruc­tion. The pres­i­dent [Clin­ton] in his April 6th mes­sage says: I believe if Iraq does not keep his word, we would have a uni­lat­eral right to respond. He also said, “The United States remains resolved and ready to secure by what­ever means nec­es­sary Iraq’s full com­pli­ance with its com­mit­ment to destroy its weapons of mass destruction.”

    MR. RITTER: Again, the idea of cre­at­ing a cri­sis, of ele­vat­ing it to a cri­sis level, means that the Secu­rity Coun­cil once again would be con­fronted with the need to enforce its law. By low-keying the prob­lem, the Secu­rity Coun­cil would be able to be given more maneu­ver room to find a solution.

    MR. RITTER: …We urged the exec­u­tive chair­man to carry out this inspec­tion, because the fight we want the Secu­rity Coun­cil and the mem­bers of the Secu­rity to dis­cuss is the issue of dis­ar­ma­ment, and that can only be dis­cussed in the frame­work of dis­ar­ma­ment. And that means Iraq stop­ping a spe­cific inspec­tion, in this case an inspec­tion that, had it been allowed to go for­ward and had we been given access to the sites, we would have found, in most — given the high qual­ity of the intel­li­gence infor­ma­tion, com­po­nents of bal­lis­tic mis­siles ille­gally retained by Iraq as well as spe­cific doc­u­men­ta­tion which listed the exact method­olo­gies and capa­bil­i­ties of the Iraqi con­ceal­ment mech­a­nism. I say that with cer­tainty.

    SEN. BROWNBACK: And yet you were stopped on two occa­sions. In your opin­ion, in the absence of a robust inspec­tion regime, how quickly could Iraq restart its weapons of mass destruc­tion program?

    MR. RITTER: Iraq has — in my opin­ion, within a period of six months, sim­ply put. Six months.

    SEN. BROWNBACK: Do you have any infor­ma­tion as to whether they are con­tin­u­ing with it to even today?

    MR. RITTER: Yes, sir.
    SEN. BROWNBACK: You do?

    MR. RITTER: Yes, sir.

    SEN. BROWNBACK: What’s your opin­ion about that con­tin­u­a­tion of their weapons-of-mass-destruction pro­gram today?

    MR. RITTER: They’re — Iraq has posi­tioned itself today that once effec­tive inspec­tion regimes have been ter­mi­nated, Iraq will be able to recon­sti­tute the entirety of its for­mer nuclear, chem­i­cal and bal­lis­tic mis­sile deliv­ery sys­tem capa­bil­i­ties within a period of six months.

    MR. RITTER: Yes, sir. It’s not just the United States, but also the world col­lec­tive, espe­cially the Secu­rity Coun­cil. Sad­dam Hus­sein has stood up to the law of the Secu­rity Coun­cil and, as such, has con­fronted the Secu­rity Coun­cil and its mem­ber com­po­nents to include the United States with their impo­tence in the face of his con­tin­ued obstructions.

    MR. RITTER: There is no ques­tion that Sad­dam Hus­sein is the prob­lem here. All deci­sions per­tain­ing to his reten­tion of weapons of mass destruc­tion in direct dis­obe­di­ence of inter­na­tional law, are made by him and him alone. And he is the only one who can make the deci­sion to com­ply with Secu­rity Coun­cil res­o­lu­tion. So I would agree with you that Sad­dam Hus­sein is the prob­lem. How you resolve the prob­lem of Sad­dam Hus­sein is an issue that’s bet­ter left to peo­ple whose respon­si­bil­ity that is.

    MR. RITTER: There’s a col­lec­tive respon­si­bil­ity. The Secu­rity Coun­cil is the body respon­si­ble for enforc­ing its law — in this case, the Secu­rity Coun­cil res­o­lu­tions passed under Chap­ter Seven call­ing for Iraq to dis­arm. But the United States, as a mem­ber — one of the five per­ma­nent mem­bers — and, in fact, as the sin­gle most capa­ble and respon­si­ble mem­ber of the Secu­rity Coun­cil, the sin­gle nation which the world looks to to exer­cise lead­er­ship, I hold the United States directly respon­si­ble, because it is a fail­ure of lead­er­ship to get the Secu­rity Coun­cil to enforce its own laws.

    MR. RITTER: No, sir. What I see that occurred in Jan­u­ary is that the United States, faced with the fact that it was — that its bluff was going to be called about the use of mil­i­tary force, engaged the office of the secretary-general to inter­cede, on its behalf and the behalf of the Secu­rity Coun­cil, with Iraq and gave Iraq an oppor­tu­nity to back out.

    SEN. CLELAND: Look­ing back, do you think that was a good idea or a bad idea?

    MR. RITTER: It’s a bad idea. It’s part of a sys­tem­atic process of con­fronta­tion and con­ces­sions. And the more we do this cycle of con­fronta­tion and con­ces­sions, the weaker this col­lec­tive body of the Secu­rity Coun­cil gets, the more inef­fec­tive the inspec­torate — the Spe­cial Com­mis­sion becomes, and the more res­olute Sad­dam becomes in keep­ing these weapons, because now he believes hon­estly that he can win.

    MR. RITTER: I think it means we either make the inspec­tion regime work or Iraq is allowed to retain weapons of mass destruc­tion. How we make the inspec­tion regime work is a deci­sion that the col­lec­tive or — the Secu­rity Coun­cil or indi­vid­ual action by a mem­ber nation might decide to do.

    MR. RITTER: Sen­a­tor, as you cor­rectly stated, this issue is, indeed, part and par­cel of the war that was fought in 1991, a war in which I par­tic­i­pated in and a war in which hun­dreds of Amer­i­cans lost their lives to achieve a spe­cific aim: that was the lib­er­a­tion of Kuwait. In April of 1991 as part of the cease-fire res­o­lu­tion the Secu­rity Coun­cil added pre­con­di­tions to ter­mi­na­tion of con­flict. These pre­con­di­tions were that Iraq must dis­arm, be rid of its weapons of mass destruc­tion. In doing so, the Secu­rity Coun­cil set forth a marker on the table, say­ing “We are tak­ing a col­lec­tive deci­sion to play a role in non­pro­lif­er­a­tion and dis­ar­ma­ment activ­i­ties in the world.” And the United States in sup­port­ing that said this is a good role for the Secu­rity Coun­cil to do.

    What we have today is two things. One, the cease-fire res­o­lu­tion is being vio­lated on a con­tin­ual basis by Iraq. And if we do not take action to turn this around, we will have, in fact, lost the gulf war. We will have, in fact, dis­hon­ored those Amer­i­cans who died in the gulf war and those Amer­i­cans who paid a heavy price, per­sonal or phys­i­cal, through the con­duct of the gulf war. But even worse, Sad­dam Hus­sein will have dis­graced the body of the Secu­rity Council.

    SEN. MCCAIN: …Do you believe that Sad­dam Hus­sein today has three nuclear weapons assem­bled — lack­ing only the fis­sile material?

    MR. RITTER: The Spe­cial Com­mis­sion has intel­li­gence infor­ma­tion, which indi­cates that com­po­nents nec­es­sary for three nuclear weapons exist, lack­ing the fis­sile mate­r­ial. Yes, sir.

    MR. RITTER: It’s a ques­tion of how he chooses to acquire enriched ura­nium, either through indige­nous enrich­ment or through pro­cure­ment from abroad. If it’s indige­nous, it would take some time because the IAEA has effec­tively dis­man­tled the inter­nal enrich­ment — but they have not dis­man­tled the weaponiza­tion pro­gram per se.

    SEN. MCCAIN: So what period of time are you talk­ing about, roughly?

    MR. RITTER: For a total recon­struc­tion, it would be a period of sev­eral years to recon­struct enrich­ment capa­bil­ity. Yes, sir.

    SEN. MCCAIN: And the bio­log­i­cal and chemical?

    MR. RITTER: That’s a much less time frame. I believe within a period of six months Iraq could recon­sti­tute its biological-weapons and chemical-weapons capability.

    SEN. MCCAIN: And the mis­siles to deliver them?

    MR. RITTER: Within a period of six months. We know in fact that Iraq has a plan to have a break­out sce­nario for recon­sti­tu­tion of long-range bal­lis­tic mis­siles within six months of the “go” sig­nal from the pres­i­dent of Iraq.

    SEN. MCCAIN: So it is your opin­ion that if these inspec­tions are fur­ther emas­cu­lated, then within a six-month period of time, Sad­dam Hus­sein would have the capa­bil­ity to deliver a weapon of mass destruction?

    MR. RITTER: Yes, sir.

    SEN. KERRY: …You know, Sad­dam Hus­sein has got to be delighted with what he’s hear­ing here today and what he’s seen in the last days, because he’s win­ning. His strat­egy is work­ing. Make no mis­take about it, his strat­egy is not to lift the sanc­tions. His strat­egy is to build weapons of mass destruc­tion. And his strat­egy has been able to nip away at UNSCOM over the course of months so that he’s cre­ated sanc­tions fatigue among our allies, who also have a dif­fer­ent set of inter­na­tional or national inter­pre­ta­tion of inter­est here. And the fact is that our admin­is­tra­tion rec­og­nized some time ago that it had great dif­fi­culty build­ing the coali­tion to sup­port what was nec­es­sary to let Major Rit­ter and his team do what they do.

    …But there’s really a larger issue than that. And that’s where I say that the Con­gress has a shared respon­si­bil­ity, and the Amer­i­can peo­ple have a shared respon­si­bil­ity, and our allies have a shared respon­si­bil­ity, because the hard real­ity is that when it came time to con­sider really fol­low­ing through and drop­ping some bombs, the Amer­i­can peo­ple had doubts, and Con­gress voiced doubts. And many of us were in room 407 when a lot of those doubts were expressed. Now, I at the time sug­gested, as many did, that we ought to be pre­pared to use force to the point of guar­an­tee­ing we achieve our goals. I still believe that.

    …We’ve been slid­ing into a fun­da­men­tal pol­icy of con­tain­ment, which I share with Major Rit­ter the notion is dis­as­trous to our over­all pro­lif­er­a­tion inter­ests and dis­as­trous with respect to the Mid­dle East and our inter­ests with respect to Sad­dam Hus­sein and Iraq. But we have to make a deci­sion whether we’re pre­pared to do what is nec­es­sary, and I mean to the point of a sus­tained tar­get­ing of the regime; not the Iraqi peo­ple, but the regime. And now, given what’s hap­pened in Kenya and Tan­za­nia, we have to do that in a cli­mate where the United States may have to even ask itself whether we’re pre­pared to be a coun­try that’s per­ceived as just will­ing to drop some bombs on Mus­lim nations with­out the sup­port of other peo­ple in the world. This is not a small issue, and we should not approach it in a way in the next days that’s just work­ing to find some scape­goats or find some guilty par­ties. We’ve got to find out what we’re will­ing to do and com­mit to do it.

    Oh heck — just go read the whole thing — its great!

    Tes­ti­mony of Scott Rit­ter, for­mer UNSCOM Inspec­tor
    before the U.S. Sen­ate
    Sep­tem­ber 3, 1998

  16. CMAR II says:
    September 11, 2005 at 02:53

    Of course he is say­ing that. He’s say­ing the hap­less inspec­tors wan­der­ing aim­lessly around Iraq could not prove that Sad­dam had not got­ten rid of the all the WMDs and the infra­struc­ture sup­port­ing them that he had after the 1991 war and so there­fore Sad­dam was in compliance.

    Nev­er­mind that Sad­dam was required to VERIFY the destruc­tion of same. Nev­er­mind that it would have been quite easy to do that: just ask the inspec­tors to be on hand as the WMDs and facil­i­ties and doc­u­men­ta­tion were destroyed. No. That would be apply­ing REASON to the sit­u­a­tion. Using that in a dis­cus­sion with Michael (and in most cases, the author of this blog) is like show­ing a cross to a vampire.

    Nev­er­mind that the inspec­tors DID find that Sad­dam was retain­ing equip­ment for and doc­u­men­ta­tion on his WMD pro­grams in order to restart them after the world looked the otehr way. Nev­er­mind that THAT was in gre­vi­ous vio­la­tion of the 1991 agreement.

    Michael is not going to live in the real world. He is a spi­der spin­ning a web of delu­sive “what-ifs” and con­spir­acy the­o­ries. In engag­ing him, we are play­ing the role of piti­ful flies.

  17. CMAR II says:
    September 11, 2005 at 03:01

    Try­ing to get Michael to con­cede a sim­ple point?

    I direct you to this recent exchange start­ing here that I had with him in which I attempted to get him to con­cede that a “fact” he cited was a well-known Inter­net hoax and that the very web­site he ref­er­enced declared it to be a hoax.

    He never con­ceded that fact even though it was clearly stated on the web­site and I cut and pasted the text for him. Oh no! All the web­sites claim­ing it was a hoax were bought off by the White House!

    Beware enter­ing his par­lor, lit­tle fly!

  18. Hank says:
    September 11, 2005 at 03:10

    The threads on this blog change quicker than a whore’s knickers!

  19. Hank says:
    September 11, 2005 at 03:22

    Plus ca change, eh Michael?: “UN inspec­tors ‘pow­er­less to stop atom bomb plans in Iran’”
    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml;jsessionid=XBFHO35NU2YATQFIQMGSM5WAVCBQWJVC?xml=/news/2005/09/11/wiran11.xml&sSheet=/portal/2005/09/11/ixportal.html

    Now could you please explain to me again just how “inter­na­tional law” works?

    Or do you see the Iran­ian mul­lahs and the Teheran bazaar as allies in the Nor­man D. Liv­er­good Party’s (“NDLP”) strug­gle against US fas­cism and thus sup­port their acqui­si­tion of WMD?

  20. Jeff says:
    September 11, 2005 at 03:23

    As for Sad­dam being in breach of the 1991 cease fire agree­ment, that’s the whole point, we now know he wasn’t.

    LOL!! LOL!!!

    When Sad­dam lauched the first SAM at a fighter jet over the No Fly Zones he was in breach of the cease fire agree­ment dip­shit. And he did that about everyday…for years!

    Jon said — OK, now I’m worried.

    LOL!! I wouldn’t worry to much Jon, A mil­lion Michaels is the equiv­a­lent of about 10 or so pocket knife car­ry­ing midgets.

  21. Jeff says:
    September 11, 2005 at 03:25

    Nor­man D. Liv­er­good Party

    Norm’s hav­ing a party? Should I bring the cheesy puffs?

  22. Jeff says:
    September 11, 2005 at 03:46


    Remem­ber, Europe threaten Iran last week with a Sept. 19th deadline…They said that they may turn it over to United Nations…In retrun the UN may send them an angry let­ter… LOL!!

    blah, blah, blah.…

  23. Charles says:
    September 11, 2005 at 04:14

    Sorry for the long posts above. I just found the exchanges very compelling.

    Here is Rit­ter, one of the top inspec­tors for years over there, telling the Sen­ate that Sad­dam has not dis­armed, has no inten­tion of dis­arm­ing, and that he is delib­er­ately mak­ing fools of the impo­tent UN. The US, by not enforc­ing com­pli­ance, is mak­ing the inspec­tions regime point­less and so there­fore the hon­or­able Rit­ter resigned.

    Read the full text.

    You can sense the respect paid by the Sen­ate to Rit­ter. His words car­ried a lot of weight and cer­tainly helped shape the foun­da­tion of US pol­icy towards Saddam.

    And then the com­plete rever­sal by Rit­ter. The above tes­ti­mony was made just after his res­ig­na­tion (because he thought the US was not doing enough to enforce com­pli­ance), and now he is an al jazeera contributor.

    Why the change? Has he ever explained it?

  24. Hank says:
    September 11, 2005 at 04:47

    Charles, may be he joined the NDLP… Wasn’t there an alle­ga­tion that some­one had paid him off?

    Michael would of course argue that he HAD BEEN paid off at the time of the hear­ings and then saw the error of his ways and began to tell the truth. I agree that the exchanges with the Sen­ate are compelling.

  25. Charles says:
    September 11, 2005 at 05:34

    While Bush may not be the bright­est bulb out there (although he is not as dumb as the cliched char­i­ca­tures make out), I found the dems to be beyond duplic­i­tous in their attacks on Bush dur­ing the campaign.

    That is why I just can’t sup­port the dems at this point. Read­ing what Kerry and Fein­stein and oth­ers said here — and in plently of other places, their attacks against Bush were just disgusting.

    Fein­stein: And I think what you’re doing today is effec­tively mak­ing the case because what’s clear to me at least is that the United States at this time, can­not afford to be a paper tiger and nei­ther can the Secu­rity Council.

    I am also repulsed by the dem/progressive activists (check out the dem under­ground). Their utter naivete and stu­pid­ity dri­ves me to sup­port the oppo­site camp by default.

  26. Hank says:
    September 11, 2005 at 06:37

    Charles, I find David Horowitz “Front Page” site an anti­dote to much of the pos­tur­ing by Democ­rats. Mr. Horowitz, as you are prob­a­bly aware, was edi­tor of “Ram­parts” which we of that time read eagerly. He is a man who is pre­pared to change his mind if he finds that his beliefs and the facts do not coin­cide — a qual­ity which one could some­times wish more fre­quently demon­strated by some on this blog. He and his cor­re­spon­dents are par­tic­u­larly good on the unholy alliance of the “left” and ter­ror­ist Islam whose rep­re­sen­ta­tives appear to be the only beget­ters of this rather sparsely attended blog.

    Rec­om­mended to all lovers of lib­erty and free thought: http://www.frontpagemag.com/index.asp — also to Michael, Lady­bug and Nadia.

  27. Jon says:
    September 14, 2005 at 08:55

    Charles– “I found the dems to be beyond duplic­i­tous in their attacks on Bush dur­ing the campaign.”

    I found them capit­u­lant. Even when Kerry was point­edly asked if he thought Bush was a liar, he didn’t speak up. I was expect­ing him to say, “HELL YEAH!”, but all he could come back with was, “Those were your words, not mine!” There is some col­lu­sion going on. Must have had a deal not to scream liar at each other writ­ten into the debat­ing rules con­tract. What a farce.

    “That is why I just can’t sup­port the dems at this point.”

    If the choice was only between the Democ­rats or the Repub­li­cans, I’d have to choose the Democ­rats because they have a bet­ter record of defend­ing civil rights (at least the ones in my state do). Luck­ily, the choice isn’t between the lesser of two evils and another choice exists.

    “their attacks against Bush were just disgusting”

    More dis­gust­ing than Bush’s attack on Iraq? Which had more blood being splat­tered? Which ended with more burnt corpses lay­ing around?

    “the United States can­not afford to be a paper tiger”

    Trans­la­tion: F### the UN!

    “Their utter naivete and stu­pid­ity dri­ves me to sup­port the oppo­site camp by default.”

    The IRONY is KILLING ME!!! :-D

    Hank– “I find David Horowitz “Front Page” site an antidote”

    Are you sure you just don’t pre­fer to have your ide­ol­ogy rein­forced because it gives you a com­fort­able feeling?

    “He is a man who is pre­pared to change his mind if he finds that his beliefs and the facts do not coincide”

    If he’s a Repub­li­can, his head must be spin­ning by now.

    “a qual­ity which one could some­times wish more fre­quently demon­strated by some on this blog”

    Trans­la­tion– “You’re a dick if you dis­agree with me!”

    “He and his cor­re­spon­dents are par­tic­u­larly good on the unholy alliance of the “left””

    I find that peo­ple throw words like unholy and God and evil and the rest too eas­ily. I have this feel­ing that peo­ple have been fooled into believ­ing that, if some­one dis­agrees with what­ever the Repub­li­cans are putting out, they are evil. I think the effect of tel­e­van­ge­lism on polit­i­cal think­ing was grossly underestimated.

    “ter­ror­ist Islam whose rep­re­sen­ta­tives appear to be the only beget­ters of this rather sparsely attended blog.”

    Actu­ally, being rel­a­tively new to this site, it has been my impres­sion that the vocal left, Michael, is far out­num­bered by the vocal rad­i­cal right, CMAR, Charles, DaKruser, Ken, Christo­pher, and even Jeff. Nadia and Lady­Bird seem to be direct­ing their speach con­sis­tantly to a plea that the US leave Iraq. It seems that there are only two peo­ple on this site from the Lib­er­tar­ian front and I won’t out the other guy. Beyond these peo­ple, there isn’t much more than spo­radic activ­ity and the bulk of it is a plea for education.

    “Rec­om­mended to all lovers of lib­erty and free thought”

    Trans­la­tion– “Con­form to my way of think­ing!” The irony of it all is just too much.

  28. Michael says:
    September 14, 2005 at 11:44

    Usual dreamy stuff from Hank

    But there’s no evi­dence at all that Iran wants or is plan­ning to build “atom bombs”. Still don’t let the facts get in the way, you haven’t up till now.
    My view on this is clear, while Israel is allowed to have nuclear weapons with­out inspec­tions then there’s no rea­son why Iran shouldn’t have them as well. It’s Israel of course that are the most aggres­sive nation in the area, which has ignored more UN Res­o­lu­tions than any nation on earth, and is presently ille­gally occu­py­ing land belong­ing to another nation.

  29. Jeff says:
    September 14, 2005 at 11:59

    which has ignored more UN Res­o­lu­tions than any nation on earth, and is presently ille­gally occu­py­ing land belong­ing to another nation

    LOL!!!

    which has ignored more UN Resolutions

    You mean like Saddam…It’s ok for Sad­dam to, but god for­bid any­one else.

    The UN is use­less any­way. And why is Europe so con­cerned about Iran? And what’s up with Sept. 19th dead­line that Europe just gave Iran.

    Michael, you need to move to the mid­dle east, I think you’ll feel more at home there.

    presently ille­gally occu­py­ing land belong­ing to another nation

    you mean like North­ern Ireland?

  30. Charles says:
    September 14, 2005 at 21:47

    Hi Jon,

    the vocal left, Michael, is far out­num­bered by the vocal rad­i­cal right, CMAR, Charles, DaKruser, Ken, Christo­pher, and even Jeff.

    Do you really think I am rad­i­cal? Gosh. Really?

    And Michael (who enjoys snuff films and hopes we all die hor­ri­bly) is a mem­ber of the ‘vocal’ left?

    I’m curi­ous as to what makes some­one a rad­i­cal in your eyes, and what makes some­one part of the ‘left’? Are there any val­ues based dis­tinc­tions any­more? Or am I a rad­i­cal because I sup­port the over­throw of dic­ta­tors like Sad­dam and Milo­se­vich, while Michael is a mem­ber of the (lib­eral) left because he opposes the over­throw of Sad­dam and sup­ports the mur­der of civilians?

    This has got­ton so wierd. Doesn’t it strike you?

  31. Charles says:
    September 14, 2005 at 22:39

    Most coun­tries that lie about their devel­op­ment pro­grams and vio­late the non-proliferation treaty are by default sus­pect. There gov­ern­ment is authoritatrian/theocratic. They sup­port ter­ror­ists. Their new leader praises mar­tyr­dom ops. They have no inher­ent need for nuclear power.

    They def­i­nitely want the bomb. They think it is in their inter­est to vio­late the non-proliferation treaty and desta­bi­lize the region. The US — and appar­ently Europe, think it is not in their inter­est that the mul­lahs get the a-bomb. All I know is that the risk of deadly con­flict increases again.

    We all know that you would sup­port using WMD’s against the US and our allies so I hardly think your objec­tive on this one.
    Its just a recipe for trouble.

  32. Hank says:
    September 15, 2005 at 03:11

    We must ask our­selves why is it that the left, who built vast moun­tains of dead with­out the excuse of war and destroyed whole economies in the 20th cen­tury through the poli­cies of eco­nomic igno­ra­muses like Stalin, Mao Tse Tung and Pol Pot, con­tinue to rail against tiny demo­c­ra­tic coun­tries like Israel and defend the pos­ses­sion of nuclear arms by a reac­tionary reli­gious elite from the bazaar.

    I remem­ber though some years back a wise Amer­i­can friend com­ment­ing on the view that we should try to under­stand a dic­ta­tor that we didn’t need to under­stand him, we needed to destroy him.

    The slo­gan, coined by that same friend, “No Civil Rights for Genghis Khan’ serves well as a guide to our response when faced with that creaky old rhetor­i­cal device of the dis­cred­ited left: why should X (fill in name of reac­tionary gov­ern­ment of choice) not have nuclear weapons if Y (fill in demo­c­ra­tic coun­try of choice) has them — as if by par­rot­ing this cant they had lit up a bea­con of ratio­nal dis­course which onlky the blind could not see.

    The con­tra­dic­tion on the “hard” left is that they defend reac­tion in the name of lib­erty and paint the democ­ra­cies in the lan­guage of reaction.

    Once this for­mula is under­stood, the mask falls from the face of those posters on this blog — and we see the true face of the epigones of Stalin, the Mao Tse Tung, the Pol Pot in their ded­i­ca­tion to ideas proved false by prac­tice and their attempts to force truth to kneel to ideology.

    What do they want? They want to boss peo­ple around, hurt them and steal from them. Not much more than that — for all their fancy talk.

    We who read the 20th cen­tury clearly know how to deal with these people.

  33. Jon says:
    September 15, 2005 at 09:29

    Charles– “Do you really think I am radical?”

    Is war radical?

    “I’m curi­ous as to what makes some­one a rad­i­cal in your eyes”

    The will­ing­ness to solve prob­lems using vio­lence as other than a last resort.

    “what makes some­one part of the ‘left’?”

    Advo­cacy of social wel­fare programs.

    “Or am I a rad­i­cal because I sup­port the over­throw of dic­ta­tors like Sad­dam and Milosevich”

    Do you sup­port the over­throw of the Saudi Royal fam­ily? Does the US have any author­ity over mat­ters in another sov­er­eign nation? Why did the US request UN approval of Iraqi Free­dom before the war? Why did the US pro­ceed with­out it? Why wasn’t approval given? Did the US rush to war? Why was it nec­es­sary that we race into a war with a nation that was no direct threat to the US? Has your rhetoric changed since the Pres­i­dent changed the ratio­nal for the war from WMD to “spread­ing free­dom and democ­racy”? Exactly what per­cent­age of dead Iraqis should be con­sid­ered OK in the process of free­ing them? Why does the US gov­ern­ment ignore the Iraqi government’s request to with­draw troops? And so on…

    “while Michael is a mem­ber of the (lib­eral) left because he opposes the over­throw of Sad­dam and sup­ports the mur­der of civilians”

    First off, it doesn’t help any­one when you just mud­sling and say things you know aren’t true. Michael does not sup­port mur­der. Michael would like the Iraqi author­i­ties to han­dle it. I have a feel­ing that Arabs will be bet­ter men­tally equipped the deal with sui­cide bomb­ings. Sec­ond, nobody except Sad­dam and his cronies opposed the over­throw of Sad­dam. Not even Michael. Michael is happy Sad­dam is gone. He is more unhappy about the US now using Iraq as a hon­ey­pot and a fuel source.

    “This has got­ton so wierd. Doesn’t it strike you?”

    I detected a wierd­ness as soon as GW was elected and the Chris­t­ian right got all uppity about it. When I speak to peo­ple around me and try to warn them that a Chris­t­ian theoc­racy was triend and was very bloody and bad, they don’t want to hear it. It’s like speak­ing to Step­ford cit­i­zens. I shout at peo­ple to be aware that their Con­sti­tu­tional rights are being usurped and they seem to care less. Most of them have no idea what a civil right is. Most of them are will­ing to trash the Bill of Rights in order to pro­tect the Amer­i­can Way of Life. It’s ironic. I have always thought the Bill of Rights WAS the Amer­i­can Way of Life. What kind of sense does this make? I can only attribute what I’m see­ing to a mass delu­sion or a mass dont­giveacrap. The US is is not, in my opin­ion, prop­erly qual­i­fied to go around the world telling peo­ple what they should and shouldn’t do. They can’t even pro­tect the free­dom of Amer­i­cans let alone the free­dom of Iraqis. It’s a smoke­screen. You’ve been fooled. Wake up. If you saw the news the way I see the news, in other words, raw and uncut, you would be wor­ried. Scared maybe even. I can see this coun­try becom­ing the next Hitler’s Ger­many, not because Hitler in fact is run­ning things, but because of our bul­ly­ing atti­tude toward the rest of the world. How far is this coun­try will­ing to go? Nuclear? I wouldn’t put it past the cur­rent admin­is­tra­tion. You should NEVER allow some­one who is con­vinced that Armaged­don is a require­ment to run a nation which has as much holo­caus­tic power as the US has. It’s a BAD IDEA. Wake up. I watch what goes on in the US these days and I see peo­ple using words back­wards. Things like the USA PATRIOT Act. There is noth­ing patri­otic about it. In fact the exact oppo­site is true. Call­ing war pro­test­ers “anti-war extrem­ists”. What is so extreme about try­ing to peace­fully stop a war? See­ing rad­i­cal con­ser­v­a­tives try to label other peo­ple rad­i­cal and their own view­point con­ser­v­a­tive. If you’re given a choice where one of the options is “or death and destruc­tion”, when you choose death as the solu­tion, YOU are the rad­i­cal. Wake up. Or when I found out that the media col­ors sit­u­a­tions to favor one side or another. Or when I found out that some events are NEVER reported, loike mas­sive anti-war protests or the dis­ap­pear­ance of an Arab Amer­i­cans with­out a trace. But, I don’t want you to think I’m biased. The only thing I care about is America’s well-being and the rest of the world can sort things out for them­selves. But that can’t hap­pen until the US stops med­dling in the affairs of other nations. We aren’t the world’s mommy. As soon as we can get the Amer­i­can pub­lic to admit it was wrong to attack a nation in the way we attacked Iraq, I will put my full sup­port behind you in con­vinc­ing Michael that a social wel­fare state is coun­ter­pro­duc­tive. Until then, the most press­ing issues are a)unsecured plu­to­nium and b) Apache mounted chain­guns turn­ing peo­ple into hamburger.

    “This has got­ton so wierd.”

    Trans­la­tion– My world view is dif­fi­cult to main­tain with peo­ple show­ing me pic­tures of dead babies.

    “But there’s no evi­dence at all that Iran wants or is plan­ning to build “atom bombs”.”

    I guess that was Michael say­ing that, but I’m copy­ing it from a quote in Charles’ note. This is false. Iran is bust­ing butt to develop nuclear capa­bil­ity. It has been shown that the US does not treat a nation with respect unless the nation is nuclear capa­ble. If the EU really wanted to stop Iran’s pur­suit of nuclear weapons, they sim­ply need to offer a pact to Iran stip­u­lat­ing that France and Ger­many will defend Iran when the US attacks.

    “There gov­ern­ment is authoritatrian/theocratic”

    It’s funny that you say that. The US has an author­i­tar­ian gov­ern­ment. I sus­pect that theoc­racy is soon to fol­low if we aren’t careful.

    “They sup­port terrorists.”

    True, but US for­eign pol­icy made the ter­ror­ists in the first place.

    “Their new leader praises mar­tyr­dom ops.”

    It’s a whole lot like the way the Pres­i­dent praises fallen US sol­diers for duty, honor and coun­try… blah blah blah.

    “They have no inher­ent need for nuclear power.”

    If they want to stand a snow­balls chance in hell of sur­viv­ing a war with the US, they do.

    “They think it is in their inter­est to vio­late the non-proliferation treaty”

    Com­ing from a guy with a well-stocked nuclear arsenal.

    “desta­bi­lize the region”

    Some­one wants you to think the region is sta­ble under US lead­er­ship, so they drop phrases like that to scare you.

    “think it is not in their inter­est that the mul­lahs get the a-bomb”

    Does that inter­est include some­thing called OIL???

    “All I know is that the risk of deadly con­flict increases again.”

    I can’t help but roll my eyes try­ing to think of you sit­ting there wor­ry­ing about deadly con­flict. The deadly con­flict has already been engaged. Wake up.

    “We all know that you would sup­port using WMD’s against the US and our allies”

    Has the num­ber of peo­ple who would like to see the US nuked increased since the attack on Iraq, or has that num­ber decreased? Michael doesn’t sup­port the nuk­ing of anyone.

    “Its just a recipe for trouble.”

    So are storm troopers.

    Hank -“con­tinue to rail against tiny demo­c­ra­tic coun­tries like Israel”

    Hmmm… maybe because Israelis are ON THEIR LAND????

    “we didn’t need to under­stand him, we needed to destroy him.”

    How much of the pop­u­la­tion needs to be destroyed along with him?

    “should X not have nuclear weapons if Y has them”

    And you still can’t answer it can you? It seems like a rhetor­i­cal device because the truth is that NEITHER should have them. Have to watch out for trick ques­tions like that.

    “they had lit up a bea­con of ratio­nal dis­course which onlky the blind could not see”

    It’s not the blind, it’s the bel­liger­ent and will­fully ignorant.

    “Stalin, the Mao Tse Tung, the Pol Pot”

    I noticed that you for­get right-wing ide­o­logues such as Hitler, Mus­solini and GW Bush. Sad that we have to add a US pres­i­dent to a list of peo­ple who com­mit crimes against humanity.

    “They want to boss peo­ple around, hurt them and steal from them.”

    Pot… ket­tle… black.

    “We who read the 20th cen­tury clearly know how to deal with these people.”

    Trans­la­tion– Do what I say and shut up or I will FU##ING KILL YOU!!!

  34. Jeff says:
    September 15, 2005 at 09:52

    Do you sup­port the over­throw of the Saudi Royal family?

    kill’em all!

    Does the US have any author­ity over mat­ters in another sov­er­eign nation?

    when that nation breaks a cease­fire agree­ment in the first place — Yes.

    Why did the US request UN approval of Iraqi Free­dom before the war? Why did the US pro­ceed with­out it? Why wasn’t approval given? Did the US rush to war?

    Is 12 years rush­ing to war?

    Why was it nec­es­sary that we race into a war with a nation that was no direct threat to the US?

    Accord­ing to this guy, Iraq was a direct threat.

    Why does the US gov­ern­ment ignore the Iraqi government’s request to with­draw troops?

    ? Where’s your source on that one, I haven’t seen or heard that one.

    France and Ger­many will defend Iran when the US attacks.

    LOL!!!

    Nope, this is what will happen…Iran gets a nuke, Israel will have no part of it and bombs the shit out of Iran…Iran then Nukes Israel, Israel then Nukes Iran and for the hell of they nuke Syria at the same time. Iran then nukes Europe in retal­i­a­tion for the cru­sades that slaugh­tered tens of thou­sands of mus­lims back in the day. France fires off a nuke only to quickly real­ize they just nuked Spain by mis­take. Hilar­ity ensues…

  35. Jon says:
    September 15, 2005 at 10:35

    Jeff– “kill’em all!”

    I sus­pect some­day we will.

    “when that nation breaks a cease­fire agree­ment in the first place”

    What effect did the Treaty of Ver­sailles have on Hitler’s Ger­many? How did that treaty help Hitler to rise to power?

    “Is 12 years rush­ing to war?”

    How long was it between the time Pow­ell spoke to the UN and the first bombs dropped on Bagh­dad? What was the neces­sity of attack­ing as soon as pos­si­ble? Do you really think that a year would have given Sad­dam ade­quate pro­tec­tion from US forces? Could there be any other fac­tors which would spur the US into react­ing rapidly and will an ill-devised plan?

    “Accord­ing to this guy, Iraq was a direct threat.”

    Accord­ing to all the other sources, your guy is a frickin liar.

    “Where’s your source on that one, I haven’t seen or heard that one.”

    Next time Rums­feld pays a visit, watch more closely.

    “LOL!!!”

    I’m glad you can still laugh when a bunch of rag­tag camel jock­eys can throw the mil­i­tary oper­a­tion in Iraq into such dis­ar­ray. Will you still be laugh­ing when we are at war with a force posess­ing sim­i­lar tech­no­log­i­cal mul­ti­pli­ers to our own?

    “Nope, this is what will happen…”

    You for­got China nukes Israel, US nukes China, Rus­sia nukes the US, every­one nukes every­one. Every­one dies. Game over.

  36. Jeff says:
    September 15, 2005 at 10:49

    Accord­ing to all the other sources, your guy is a frickin liar.

    Did you watch the clip? It was what Amer­i­cans were spoon fed for 8 years. For some rea­son peo­ple seem to forget…

    I’m glad you can still laugh when a bunch of rag­tag camel jock­eys can throw the mil­i­tary oper­a­tion in Iraq into such disarray.

    We are fight­ing with one arm tied behind our backs over there.

    Will you still be laugh­ing when we are at war with a force posess­ing sim­i­lar tech­no­log­i­cal mul­ti­pli­ers to our own?

    No, I’ll be to busy killing.

    You for­got China nukes Israel, US nukes China, Rus­sia nukes the US, every­one nukes every­one. Every­one dies. Game over.

    Yep… no more oil depen­dency, no more wars, no more vio­lence, no more geno­cide, no more wor­ring about the rain for­est, no more taxes, no more sick­ness, no more suf­fer­ing, no more bor­der dis­putes, no more lib­er­als, no more neo-cons, no more social­ist, no more com­mu­nist, no more human life. The earth will repair itself in 10,000 to 20,000 years and the game will start all over. Maybe this time with­out the human fac­tor. Then you will have a peace­ful earth and only then.

  37. Jon says:
    September 15, 2005 at 10:52

    Jeff– “Where’s your source on that one, I haven’t seen or heard that one.”

    I wanted to come back to this point. The truth is it has hap­pened many times. The source is months old now and I don’t have the time or intesti­nal for­ti­tude to look it up for you. But this is how the media works. Because you haven’t heard of it, doesn’t mean it’s not hap­pen­ing. Your local media out­let very well may have pub­lished this fact. But we in the indus­try have ways of con­trol­ling per­cep­tion. As I said before, the media con­trols per­cep­tion by under-reporting, over-reporting and omit­ting facts. There are also rules of design that come into play, but we won’t bother get­ting into sub­lim­i­nals and things like that. So, the interim gov­ern­ment ask­ing Rums­feld to take his troops and go home is a buried story, but chances are that we’ve all seen the pic­ture of some 3rd ID sol­dier hand­ing out pen­cils. This con­trol of per­cep­tion is a huge source of power over a pop­u­la­tion. Until peo­ple begin to ques­tion EVERYTHING, they will con­tinue to be led around by their vir­tual nose-rings.

  38. Hank says:
    September 15, 2005 at 12:00

    Oh dear! More un-numbered ques­tions. Has ratio­nal dis­course no other technique?

    The prob­lem in address­ing mem­bers of the Flat Earth Soci­ety is that on each occa­sion that facts are adduced show­ing the earth to be round the Flat Earther accuses one of inflex­i­ble think­ing, entrenched ideas and a mind closed to other possibilities.

    1. “Hmmm… maybe because Israelis are ON THEIR LAND????“
    Please go back to Post 31 and iden­tify the sub­ject of the sen­tence which you have mistaken.

    2.“And you still can’t answer it can you? It seems like a rhetor­i­cal device because the truth is that NEITHER should have them.”

    Well, yes, of course I can and do so in the post — which is pretty clear on the point — by apply­ing the by exten­sion the maxim: “No Civil Rights for Genghis Khan”.

    At the same time many moral brownie points are awarded for tak­ing the posi­tion that “NEITHER should have” nuclear weapons. A most touch­ing, and decent posi­tion to adopt if I may say so and one which would win your argu­ment hands down were it not totally divorced from real­ity. The tech­nique used by the Flat earther here is twofold (1) you are so unfair to deny Genghis Khan nuclear weapons while allow­ing them to George Wash­ing­ton; and, (2)if George Wash­ing­ton were really not a Nazi gov­ern­ment he would vol­un­tar­ily give up nuclear weapons and ask genghis Khan nicely to do the same.What kind of world would it be, the flat earther might con­tinue, if only George Wash­ing­ton, the noto­ri­ous dic­ta­tor, and not Genghis Khan had nuclear weapons!!?

    3. “I noticed that you for­get right-wing ide­o­logues such as Hitler, Mus­solini and GW Bush. Sad that we have to add a US pres­i­dent to a list of peo­ple who com­mit crimes against humanity.”

    Yes, yes — George wash­ing­ton was really a Napoleon and the earth is flat. Actu­ally, I thought I would give Hitler and Mus­solini a rest since they have been rather over-exposed by the mech­a­nis­tice “bour­geois democracy=fascism” or “Israelis fight for inde­pen­dence = Nazism’s ambi­tion for world dom­i­na­tion” equa­tions of which some posters on this blog are so fond. But I agree that Hitler ranks right up there with Com­rades stalin, Pol Pot and Mao.

    4. “Pot… ket­tle… black.”

    This is the famil­iar “ele­phant and canary pie” for­mula, fre­quently used by intel­lec­tu­als who think they are on the left.

    They will argue that since the pie con­tains one ele­phant and one canary, there is an equal quan­tity of the dif­fer­ent meats in the pie.Thus, in polit­i­cal terms, they are implic­ity imply­ing that seven or so mil­lion jews, communists,homosexuals,gypsies and men­tally sick gra­tu­itously mur­dered by the National Social­ist Party of Ger­many equals X thou­sand dead in the inva­sion of Iraq by the USA to free Kuwait.

    5. “It’s not the blind, it’s the bel­liger­ent and will­fully ignorant.”

    And the earth is flat.

    6.“Translation– Do what I say and shut up or I will FU##ING KILL YOU!!! ”

    No, lan­guage skills which got the wrong sub­ject in the sen­tence to which 1. above refers, also led to a mis­trans­la­tion here. Accu­rate trans­la­tion: from a proper study of 20th cen­tury his­tory, we can accu­rately iden­tify tyrants and under­stand that the tree of lib­erty must be refer­shed from time to time with the blood of tyrants — and their intel­lec­tual lackeys.

  39. Charles says:
    September 15, 2005 at 15:32

    The will­ing­ness to solve prob­lems using vio­lence as other than a last resort.

    After nearly a dozen years of sternly worded let­ters, that repeated the same demands over and over, the UNSC pro­vided Sad­dam with an ulti­ma­tum. What is the point of the UN issu­ing an ulti­ma­tum if it has no inten­tion of back­ing it up? His­tory has shown that appeas­ing dic­ta­tors and try­ing to avoid con­flict at all costs just makes con­flicts worse.

    Advo­cacy of social wel­fare programs.

    Par­tially cor­rect (broadly speak­ing). But have you noticed that it is Mike who spews hatred and wants to kill peo­ple and enjoys watch­ing snuff films? While he will give lip ser­vice (prob­a­bly) to ideas of social jus­tice, he would not lift a fin­ger to help truly oppressed peo­ple. He actu­ally sup­ports ter­ror­ists who are slaugh­ter­ing Iraqis every day. I there­fore find it odd that you swal­low the bla­tant con­tra­dic­tion and con­tinue label­ing him a mem­ber of the lib­eral left.

    Do you sup­port the over­throw of the Saudi Royal family?

    When they start slaugh­ter­ing their own peo­ple and invad­ing their neigh­bors — absolutely. If you were to estab­lish a pri­or­i­tized list of bad­dies, Sad­dam would rank far higher than the Saudis.

    Does the US have any author­ity over mat­ters in another sov­er­eign nation?

    Inter­est­ing choice of words. All coun­tries have inter­ests. As the world shrinks, spheres of inter­ests over­lap. Sad­dam chose to start a war that oblig­ated the US to exer­cise author­ity in the region and estab­lish order. He ignored cease fire terms that required the US to con­tinue active involve­ment. Sad­dam trig­gered the con­di­tions that required the estab­lish­ment of an active US secu­rity umbrella, and while under that umbrella, he con­tin­ued the same poli­cies. The terms of the orig­i­nal cease fire were never met. The US sim­ply got tired of ‘pre­tend­ing’ otherwise.

    Why did the US request UN approval of Iraqi Free­dom before the war?

    Pol­i­tics. Don’t be naive. When it comes down to it every­one knows that the US bears the bur­den of secur­ing the civ­i­lized world either way.

    Why did the US pro­ceed with­out it?

    Because other USNC mem­bers balked at enforc­ing their own ulti­ma­tum. The US chose to enforce the UNSC ultimatum.

    Why wasn’t approval given?

    Because cer­tain UNSC mem­bers pub­licly dis­closed they would never enforce their own ultimatum.

    Did the US rush to war?

    If you con­sider over a decade of patience to be a ‘rush’, then yes. If you con­sider a decade of refusal to com­ply with a cease fire agree­ment that ended a war Sad­dam started, and con­sen­sus that Sad­dam was unlikely EVER to com­ply (as per French FM), then I won­der how much time would have to go by before you were satisfied?

    Why was it nec­es­sary that we race into a war with a nation that was no direct threat to the US?

    If he was no threat why did the UNSC con­sider him a threat? Why did they keep repeat­ing over and over that he was a threat? Why did they go so far as to issue him an ulti­ma­tum demand­ing that he com­ply?
    Why did we have thou­sands of troops over there for a decade try­ing to enforce the cease fire that here­fused to accept?

    My inter­est in see­ing Sad­dam and his ilk erad­i­cated from the face of the earth has not changed one bit. I don’t need fluff argu­ments. I thought that Sad­dam should have been removed back in 91. I thought miloso­vich should have been squashed imme­di­ately at about the same time. The civ­i­lized world, with all of its latent power, could eas­ily unite to set a few exam­ples, and the rest of the bad­dies would fall into line, and then dis­ap­pear from his­tory, with­out ever hav­ing to fire a shot.


    “Vir­tu­ous motives, tram­meled by iner­tia and timid­ity, are no match for armed and res­olute wicked­ness. A sin­cere love of peace is no excuse for mud­dling hun­dreds of mil­lions of hum­ble folk into total war. The cheers of weak, well-meaning assem­blies soon cease to echo, and their votes soon cease to count. Doom marches on.”

    That basi­cally sums up my for­eign pol­icy views.

    Exactly what per­cent­age of dead Iraqis should be con­sid­ered OK in the process of free­ing them?

    The casu­al­ties to free them were rea­son­able. We killed far more French civil­ians when we lib­er­ated them from Hitler. The casu­al­ties of the last 24 months are caused by ter­ror­ists and insur­gents who want to take their free­dom away. We are now try­ing to pro­tect Iraqi freedoms.

    Is there some mag­i­cal num­ber of mur­dered Iraqis that when reached, should cause the Iraqis to give up their quest for free­dom? That’s how oppres­sion works. Some­one like Sad­dam, account­able to no one, pounds the pop­u­la­tion into sub­mis­sion through vio­lence and threats of violence.

    Why does the US gov­ern­ment ignore the Iraqi government’s request to with­draw troops? And so on…

    Was there an offi­cial request by the Iraqi gov­ern­ment??? That would be big news. Why have the Pres. and PM con­sis­tently stated that they need US forces to stay? I don’t think any Iraqi’s (includ­ing Pres. and PM) ‘WANT’ the US forces there. Nei­ther do I think that US forces ‘WANT’ to be there.

    There must be a link for this. Please pass it along. This is MAJOR NEWS!

    If the Iraqi gov­ern­ment (I mean peo­ple autho­rized to make such requests) told the US to leave and we didn’t, then I’m switch­ing sides.

    I’ve always wanted to go jihading.

  40. Michael says:
    September 15, 2005 at 17:53

    Iraq slams U.S. deten­tions, immu­nity for troops

    http://reuters.myway.com/article/20050914/2005–09-14T125807Z_01_DIT446696_RTRIDST_0_NEWS-IRAQ-JUSTICE-DC.html

    BAGHDAD (Reuters) — Iraq’s jus­tice min­is­ter has con­demned the U.S. mil­i­tary for detain­ing thou­sands of Iraqis for long peri­ods with­out charge ( ANOTHER CONTRAVENTION OF THE GENEVA CONVENTION)and wants to change a U.N. res­o­lu­tion that gives for­eign troops immu­nity from Iraqi law.

    Speak­ing to Reuters, Jus­tice Min­is­ter Abdul Hus­sein Shan­dal also crit­i­cized U.S. deten­tions of Iraqi jour­nal­ists and said the media, con­trary to U.S. pol­icy in Iraq, must have spe­cial legal pro­tec­tion to report on all sides in the con­flict.
    “No cit­i­zen should be arrested with­out a court order,” he said this week, com­plain­ing that U.S. sug­ges­tions that his min­istry has an equal say on deten­tions were misleading.

    “There is abuse (of human rights) due to deten­tions, which are over­seen by the Multi­na­tional Force (MNF) and are not in the con­trol of the jus­tice min­istry,” said Shan­dal, a Shi’ite judge respected for stand­ing up to Sad­dam Hus­sein on the rule of law.

    Killings and unjus­ti­fied arrests of Iraqi civil­ians by U.S. troops risked going unpun­ished, he said, because of U.N. Secu­rity Coun­cil res­o­lu­tion 1546, which granted U.S.-led forces sweep­ing pow­ers fol­low­ing their over­throw of Sad­dam in 2003.
    “The res­o­lu­tion … gives immu­nity to the MNF and means tak­ing no action against the MNF no mat­ter what hap­pens or what­ever they do against the peo­ple of Iraq,” Shan­dal said.

    “We’re hop­ing to make more efforts with the Secu­rity Coun­cil and the whole United Nations to end this res­o­lu­tion or amend it so that any­one who vio­lates Iraqi law or assaults any cit­i­zen is held account­able,” he said. “This is a mat­ter of sovereignty.”

    He said he was press­ing the occu­py­ing forces to speed up releases for some of the 10,000 Iraqis held at Abu Ghraib prison and else­where, often for many months with­out charge, on sus­pi­cion of aid­ing Sunni Arab insurgents.

    Last month, 1,000 men were freed from Abu Ghraib, noto­ri­ous under Sad­dam and under U.S. con­trol since 2003, as Iraq’s Shi’ite-led gov­ern­ment and Wash­ing­ton tried to appease the once dom­i­nant Sunni minor­ity. The United Nations said last week faster releases could pro­mote Sunni accep­tance of the new polit­i­cal system.

    Iraqi offi­cials voice frus­tra­tion with U.S. and British vetoes on some requests for release, not­ing that Iraqis have been held for two years with­out charge to “gather intel­li­gence.“
    Speak­ing of the Com­bined Review and Release Board (CRRB) which guar­an­tees detainees a hear­ing every six months, Shan­dal said: “The rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the MNF in the com­mit­tee have the rights and all the author­ity under the U.N. resolution.”

    MEDIA RIGHTS

    Shan­dal said he was con­cerned about the U.S. military’s refusal to accord spe­cial con­sid­er­a­tion to the media and at the num­ber of jour­nal­ists detained for many months by U.S. troops.

    Among these are two cam­era­men for Reuters. One of them is Ali Omar Abra­hem al-Mashhadani, who was ordered detained by the CRRB last month as a “threat to the peo­ple of Iraq.” The mil­i­tary will not say what sus­pi­cions it has against him.

    Asked to clar­ify the CRRB def­i­n­i­tion of “threat,” Shan­dal said: “It’s a catch-all term to por­tray this per­son as a threat to the nation and allow the other side to keep him in custody.”

    Asked if the gov­ern­ment approved of such mea­sures, which U.S. gen­er­als say they imple­ment with Iraqi offi­cial sup­port, he said: “I am a man of law and a judge and I respect human rights … No cit­i­zen should be arrested with­out a court order.”

    Though the nature of their work brings jour­nal­ists under sus­pi­cion from both sides, the U.S. com­mand in Iraq refuses to con­sider spe­cial treat­ment for accred­ited reporters and says it will detain them under the same con­di­tions as any other suspect.

    Shan­dal, how­ever, said jour­nal­ists needed spe­cial pro­tec­tion and defended inde­pen­dent report­ing from all sides, includ­ing from rebel-held areas. He insisted on jour­nal­ists’ right to film and inter­view Iraq’s insur­gents with­out fear of arrest or worse.

    “In this time of con­flict … between ter­ror­ists and the army or Multi­na­tional Forces, the jour­nal­ist comes to the fore.

    “Full free­dom should be given to jour­nal­ists to take pic­tures and film in the field,” he said. “With­out images what would we know of his­tory? … We would know nothing.”

  41. Charles says:
    September 15, 2005 at 19:26

    Killings and unjus­ti­fied arrests of Iraqi civil­ians by U.S. troops risked going unpun­ished, he said, because of U.N. Secu­rity Coun­cil res­o­lu­tion 1546, which granted U.S.-led forces sweep­ing pow­ers fol­low­ing their over­throw of Sad­dam in 2003.

    You mean to tell me that the UNSC pro­vided the autho­riza­tions and protections???

    But I thought you said the US was an ille­gal occu­pier? Hmmmph.

    Are these pro­tec­tions afforded to MNF troops dras­ti­cally dif­fer­ent from pro­tec­tions afforded UN troops deployed in the field?

    Here’s what hap­pens when you let bad peo­ple out of jail:

    “The doc­tors rolled LTC Kurilla and the ter­ror­ist into OR and our sur­geons oper­ated on both at the same time. The ter­ror­ist turned out to be one Khalid Jasim Nohe, who had first been cap­tured by US forces (2–8 FA) on 21 Decem­ber, the same day a large bomb exploded in the din­ing facil­ity on this base and killed 22 people.

    That Decem­ber day, Khalid Jasim Nohe and two com­pa­tri­ots tried to evade US sol­diers from 2–8 FA, but the sol­diers man­aged to stop the flee­ing car. Then one of the sus­pects tried to wres­tle a weapon from a sol­dier before all three were detained. They were armed with a sniper rifle, an AK, pis­tols, a silencer, explo­sives and other weapons, and had in their pos­ses­sion pho­tographs of US bases, includ­ing a map of this base.

    That was in December.

    About two weeks ago, word came that Nohe’s case had been dis­missed by a judge on 7 August. The Coali­tion was livid. Accord­ing to Amer­i­can offi­cers, solid cases are con­tin­u­ally dis­missed with­out appar­ent cause. What­ever the rea­son, the result was that less than two weeks after his release from Abu Ghraib, Nohe was back in Mosul shoot­ing at Amer­i­can soldiers.”

    Read the whole thing — very detailed account of small battle

  42. DaKruser says:
    September 15, 2005 at 20:00

    I’m inter­ested in the prob­a­bil­ity (note that that word is a neu­tral one indi­cat­ing a %‘age of chance) of Ger­many boot­ing Schroeder and elect­ing the first woman as Chancelor. I’m sure Michael would tell me it was less than 5%, but in look­ing at the polls taken under the aus­pices of Der Spiegel, even the Ger­man lan­guage ver­sion has “Her” ahead by more than the Stan­dard Devi­a­tion (+/- 4 pts). The mid-level advi­sors have begon set­ting them­selves up to con­tinue under new lead­er­ship.
    Quoted from Der Spiegel/Deutsch
    ”“How­ever, Gull­ner also said that most Ger­mans don’t think Schroeder’s Social Democ­rats have any reme­dies for the nation’s wors­en­ing eco­nomic sit­u­a­tion. In spite of his incum­bency and pop­u­lar anti-war posi­tion, Schroeder’s party is the under­dog in the upcom­ing elec­tion because it has failed to lower unem­ploy­ment, has rammed through unpop­u­lar eco­nomic reforms that cut work­ers’ ben­e­fits and has failed to make a dent in the nation’s grow­ing debt.

    Ger­many is weighed down by the huge costs of reuni­fi­ca­tion and bur­dened with an expen­sive wel­fare sys­tem that is badly in the red. Con­sumer con­fi­dence has struck rock bot­tom and is hold­ing back domes­tic demand. This has become the biggest obsta­cle to growth. Ger­mans see their gen­er­ous ben­e­fits threat­ened and the econ­omy get­ting worse.

    Con­se­quently, com­pa­nies like Volk­swa­gen, Siemens and BMW are invest­ing in coun­tries such as Slo­va­kia and Hun­gary where skilled labor is cheaper. That is why there is lit­tle incen­tive for Ger­man indus­try to cre­ate jobs at home.


    End Quote

    That last state­ment from Mau­rus hardly sounds like the EU is to the ben­e­fit of all Nations involved. Maybe the Deutsch­ers are begin­ning to real­ize that the EU is just another name for Napoleon’s Empire?

  43. Charles says:
    September 15, 2005 at 20:13

    She (CDU) may receive more votes than schroeder, but it doesn’t mean she gets to form a gov­ern­ment. German’s can form all sorts of coali­tions and even the FDP (kinda con­ser­v­a­tive types but pre­fer power to oppo­si­tion) could join the SPD to put him over the top.

    I met (as a stu­dent) with FDP reps on sev­eral occa­sions in the late 80’s and they struck me typ­i­cal cyn­i­cal politi­cians. I could never really pin them down on spe­cific beliefs/platform. They will remold them­selves into what­ever shape nec­es­sary if they think it will get them a few votes. That opin­ion is based on just a few meet­ings with spe­cific peo­ple from the party so I am don’t want to paint the whole FDP in that light nec­es­sar­ily. But SPD, CSU, and CDU politi­cians with whom I met seemed much more forth­right in com­mit­ting to spe­cific positions.

    So who knows? Merkel will prob­a­bly get sig­nif­i­cantly more votes out­right than Schroeder, but she could still fail.

  44. Jeff says:
    September 15, 2005 at 20:14


    So what you’re say­ing is that Cindy Craw­ford really digs me, I just haven’t heard about it…? so I should pur­suse her? Man she’s a hot­tie. I always knew that she liked me.

    Until peo­ple begin to ques­tion EVERYTHING

    Which I do, just not to the level of “Con­spir­acy The­o­ries”. The only way that I’m ever con­vinced on any sub­ject is with hard facts. Not facts from a bias web­site or just because some­one said it was so or said maybe it was so

    This is why the Iraq thing is so cut and dry for me personally…Hard Facts.

    Sad­dam vio­lated 17 UN resu­lo­tions over 12 years.

    Sad­dam vio­lated his cease­fire agreements.

    Again, hard facts.

    There was no rush to war, if you 12 think years is rush­ing then I’ve got some land on mars I can sell you at a great price. A decade is a long time.

    If there aren’t con­se­quences for not obey­ing the rules set out, then why have them at all.

    Which means we can get rid of those annoy­ing Geneva Con­ven­tion rules and really get down to business?

  45. DaKruser says:
    September 15, 2005 at 21:47

    We can keep our fin­gers crossed, Charles, but like you say, I won’t hold my breath.

  46. Hank says:
    September 16, 2005 at 01:04

    For those inter­ested in back­ground to the Bush Administration’s devel­op­ment of a legal posi­tion on how ter­ror­ists can be han­dled in cur­rent cir­cum­stances, there was an arti­cle appear­ing as “Col­umn One” in Wednesday’s The Asian Wall Street Jour­nal on the Berke­ley law pro­fes­sor and some­time White House adviser, John Yoo. I expect the arti­cle appeared on or around the same date in The Wall Street Journal.

  47. Hank says:
    September 16, 2005 at 01:47

    Charles, there was an arti­cle on Angela Merkel in the Week­end sec­tion of the Finan­cial Times last Sat­ur­day enti­tled “New Kid from the Bloc”. With your com­ment on expe­ri­ence of the vague­ness of Ger­man politi­cians in mind, I notice that the writer refers to “the dis­arm­ing hon­esty of her man­i­festo, one that spells out the indi­vid­ual cost of its reform pro­pos­als, tells vot­ers when they will be imple­mented in the life of the next par­lia­ment and promises higher taxes rather than benefits”.

    This, cou­pled with a for­eign pol­icy which leans towards the United States, no doubt as a result of hav­ing had some expe­ri­ence as a young woman under the kind of gov­ern­ment which some on this blog seem eager to estab­lish, makes her an inter­est­ing and hope­ful pos­si­bil­ity next Sunday.

  48. Jon says:
    September 16, 2005 at 09:39

    Jeff– “It was what Amer­i­cans were spoon fed for 8 years.”

    Who’s fault is that?

    “We are fight­ing with one arm tied behind our backs over there.”

    We always will be too.

    “No, I’ll be to busy killing.”

    Does the state­ment “My coun­try, right or wrong” describe you in any way?

    “The earth will repair itself in 10,000 to 20,000 years and the game will start all over.”

    Maybe it will, maybe it won’t.

    “Has ratio­nal dis­course no other technique?”

    I could just resort to insults and shout­ing matches like some peo­ple I know.

    “accuses one of inflex­i­ble think­ing, entrenched ideas and a mind closed to other possibilities.”

    Resort to name-calling as your type always does, but there is still no way you can hon­estly say that your mind is open to the idea of mis­deeds by our government’s hand.

    “Please go back to Post 31 and iden­tify the sub­ject of the sen­tence which you have mistaken.”

    My bad. Long night, tired eyes, etc. I’ll refor­mat the response. You seem to think that democ­racy is an excuse to act how­ever you want. You seem to think because a coun­try is demo­c­ra­tic, that they shouldn’t be held to the same stan­dard as other nations. Why did the US main­tain a stance of plau­si­ble deni­a­bil­ity towards Israel build­ing a nuclear stash? Do you think that the Pales­tini­ans have been treated fairly? Do you think that Israel always acts with honor? Why wasn’t Israel given south­ern Florida for a home­land instead of in the mid­dle of every­one who hates them? Can you see any instances in the past 50 years where the US has acted to antag­o­nize Arabs? Why is it that fas­cism never uses other fas­cists as exam­ples of what not to do? Is it nec­es­sary for com­mu­nism and cap­i­tal­ism to always be at odds? Do you think that com­mu­nal own­er­ship of resources or cap­i­tal­ism will be the bet­ter method of spread­ing resource wealth through­out the Iraqi population?

    “reac­tionary reli­gious elite”

    What is a reac­tionary? Are Israel and the US under Repub­li­can rule reac­tionary nations? Is there a reli­gious elite in both of these nations? Don’t you real­ize there is no real dif­fer­ence between these nations and the ones you intended to describe as such?

    “A most touch­ing, and decent posi­tion to adopt if I may say so and one which would win your argu­ment hands down were it not totally divorced from reality.”

    OK… what is the dif­fer­ence between the US nuclear stock­pile and that of every other nation’s? Our’s is com­pletely secured. No nut­bag can bribe some­one to get any plu­to­nium in this coun­try because alarms would go off all over. Do you believe that the US dick­ing around in a coun­try with no nuclear capa­bil­ity is doing any good in con­tain­ing the great­est threat to US secu­rity? War in Iraq is a waste of time and resources and we don’t have either to spare right now. Per­son­ally, I don’t care about Iraqis. Let them fight for their own free­dom or they’ll never appre­ci­ate it. And I don’t think we will end up with any­thing resem­bling free­dom in Iraq after the killing is done. It may be that Sad­dam was the best gov­ern­ment for that type of pop­u­la­tion and by tak­ing Sad­dam out, we have just roy­ally screwed ourselves.

    “intel­lec­tu­als who think they are on the left”

    Of which I am neither.

    “they are implic­ity imply­ing that seven or so mil­lion… gra­tu­itously mur­dered… equals X (HUNDRED)thousand dead in the inva­sion of Iraq by the USA to free Kuwait.”

    First off… Kuwait? Snap your­self back up here into this decade. Now, does the killing of hun­dreds of thou­sands of Arabs make us more or less like Hitler’s Germany?

    “And the earth is flat.”

    And the moon is made of green cheese. Do you guys all go to the same indoc­tri­na­tion pro­grams? I hear the same thing from all of you. Almost verbatum.

    “from a proper study of 20th cen­tury his­tory, we can accu­rately iden­tify tyrants and under­stand that the tree of lib­erty must be refer­shed from time to time with the blood of tyrants”

    Trans­la­tion– It’s OK to bomb Iraq into the stone-age because Sad­dam was a bad guy.

    Charles– “His­tory has shown that appeas­ing dic­ta­tors and try­ing to avoid con­flict at all costs just makes con­flicts worse.”

    Who’s talk­ing about avoid­ing con­flict? Why is it GW didn’t invite Sad­dam to the peace table at Camp David? How do we know that Sad­dam wouldn’t have come and worked with the US for a way to solve our issues with­out Sad­dam maybe feel­ing like he’d been bum­rushed and gan­graped? Pride is a big thing to Arabs and it’s pos­si­ble to use it as a tool against them. Why doesn’t this coun­try, with all the dif­fer­ent cul­tures it has assim­i­lated, have any sense of cul­tural sen­sativ­ity? Why was GW first reac­tion in the sit­u­a­tion to start antag­o­niz­ing peo­ple and beat­ing the war drum and shout­ing things like evil and God and cru­sade and all the rest of these inflam­mi­tory things. Could the US have devel­oped an approach that didn’t make the rest of the world think that the US gov­ern­ment had devel­oped sociopathy?

    “But have you noticed that it is Mike who spews hatred and wants to kill peo­ple and enjoys watch­ing snuff films?”

    Hon­estly, no, I have not noticed that. To be hon­est, I skip any­thing he posts that looks like it was pasted from some­where else. I do the same to the right-wing too. But, it wouldn’t suprise me if he did get a lit­tle bent out of shape. Bang­ing his head against the wall that the con­ser­v­a­tive right fac­tion has put up around here is bound to make any­one nuts.

    “When they start slaugh­ter­ing their own peo­ple and invad­ing their neigh­bors — absolutely.”

    How much of this is old news? We trained Sad­dam to do that kind of stuff. We put him in the posi­tion to enable all of this stuff to hap­pen. And now that the oil sup­ply is get­ting tight, we decide we want him gone. How con­ve­nient. And what a load of horse­shit too.

    “If you were to estab­lish a pri­or­i­tized list of bad­dies, Sad­dam would rank far higher than the Saudis.”

    So, do you envi­sion the US as hav­ing the inter­na­tional author­ity to exe­cute plans to destroy any form of gov­ern­ment we don’t approve of? Does a country’s petrolium stock­pile have any­thing to do with a nation’s posi­tion on that list?

    “All coun­tries have interests.”

    Do all coun­tries have the right to fur­ther those inter­ests through vio­lent means?

    “Sad­dam chose to start a war that oblig­ated the US to exer­cise author­ity in the region and estab­lish order.”

    Old news. Hasn’t hap­pened since.

    “He ignored cease fire terms that required the US to con­tinue active involvement.”

    What was your response to the Treaty of Ver­sailles ques­tion? Is Sad­dam man­ning all the trig­gers at every SAM site in Iraq? Are there “yahoos” (these are the same types who pull stunts like the Abu Ghraib deba­cle) in every mil­i­tary orga­ni­za­tion? Does the Amer­i­can peo­ple have any idea what the real sit­u­a­tion is and has been there? No, they don’t. All that US cit­i­zens see is peo­ple in robes and they start yelling “towlie”. Or “tango” if you’re in the military.

    “Pol­i­tics. Don’t be naive.”

    It was just pro­ce­dure. But why does this pro­ce­dure exist? What is the ben­e­fit of world con­sent? …world participation?

    “The US chose to enforce the UNSC ultimatum.”

    Why did they wait until now?

    “If you con­sider a decade of refusal to comply”

    Why didn’t this choice come until the US was buried under anti-islamic fer­vor right after 9/11 and while we were still deal­ing with that sit­u­a­tion? What are the two great­est threats to US secu­rity for the next cen­tury? And ter­ror­ism isn’t one of them.

    “If he was no threat why did the UNSC con­sider him a threat?”

    That’s a good ques­tion. With the state of Iraq’s mil­i­tary machine at the time, I’m suprised mul­lahs weren’t run­ning around pants­ing Sad­dam on the playground.

    “Why did we have thou­sands of troops over there for a decade try­ing to enforce the cease fire that here­fused to accept?”

    Maybe we were pro­tect­ing him. Or pre­serv­ing the situation.

    “My inter­est in see­ing Sad­dam and his ilk erad­i­cated from the face of the earth”

    That would be nice, but if it’s going to cost us hun­dreds of bil­lions and maybe tril­lion of dol­lars a pop, it seems less worth­while to me.

    “and the rest of the bad­dies would fall into line”

    Yeah, because as we see in the US, exe­cut­ing mur­der­ers has pushed the mur­der rate to zero and of course crim­i­nals always act in a ration man­ner in the face of sta­tis­tics. Who’s being naive here?

    “That basi­cally sums up my for­eign pol­icy views.”

    Trans­la­tion– Kill ‘em all and let God sort ‘em out.

    “The casu­al­ties to free them were reasonable.”

    Rea­son­able to who?

    “We killed far more French civil­ians when we lib­er­ated them from Hitler.”

    Why the hell am I spend­ing all my tax dol­lars on bet­ter bombs if we can’t even hit the right peo­ple with them?

    “We are now try­ing to pro­tect Iraqi freedoms.”

    For the low, low cost of how many bar­rels of oil?

    “Is there some mag­i­cal num­ber of mur­dered Iraqis that when reached, should cause the Iraqis to give up their quest for freedom?”

    The Iraqis should never give up. The US on the other hand is in a good pos­ti­tion to admit we loused the whole thing up and humbly march back home with maybe a polite apol­ogy over the shoulder.

    “Some­one like Sad­dam, account­able to no one, pounds the pop­u­la­tion into sub­mis­sion through vio­lence and threats of violence.”

    If they’d have wanted him gone, appar­ently they would have car-bombed his ass.

    “Was there an offi­cial request by the Iraqi government???”

    The last time Rums­feld was asked, it was after his debarka­tion on the flight strip. It’s not an offi­cial request. It’s an unof­fi­cial over­ture. It’d be dif­fi­cult to get all of those US gov­ern­ment employ­ees that com­prise the interim gov­ern­ment to agree to ask the US to offi­cially leave. ;-)

    “Nei­ther do I think that US forces ‘WANT’ to be there.”

    That would have to be deter­mined on a case by case basis, but yes, I do know peo­ple who are hav­ing what they con­sider to be a hel­lu­va­good time in Iraq. But, I guess some­one has to make the sac­ri­fice for all of us to be able to gas up our Ford Mus­tangs ‘n’ shtuff.

    “There must be a link for this. Please pass it along.”

    As I said, it’s not an “offi­cial” request and it was some­thing I picked up from the raw AP feed report­ing on his last visit, so who knows if there is a link somewhere.

    “I’ve always wanted to go jihading.”

    I have a friend at the local Army recruit­ing office. Why don’t you just join up with the jihad we already have in progress?

    Michael– “Iraq slams U.S. deten­tions, immu­nity for troops”

    I can’t even argue with Michael when he does this because it IS hap­pen­ing. What good is it to cham­pion free­dom in another nation when you for­sake all those that you should hold dear? You only come off look­ing like a hypocrite.

    But then you end up with pho­tos of flag-drapped coffins on the front pages of news­pa­pers and sup­port for the war goes out the win­dow and that never helped anyone.

    “after his release from Abu Ghraib, Nohe was back in Mosul shoot­ing at Amer­i­can soldiers.”

    He’d have had a much more dif­fi­cult time aim­ing if those troops were back home where they belong.

    And with that, I have to wrap things up for the night. Peace to all.

  49. Jeff says:
    September 16, 2005 at 11:06

    We always will be too.

    That’s unfortunate…Thank god this wasn’t the mind­set 60 years ago.

    That would be nice, but if it’s going to cost us hun­dreds of bil­lions and maybe tril­lion of dol­lars a pop, it seems less worth­while to me.

    Trans­la­tion — fuck those sand fleas, they’re not worth one Amer­i­can penny.

    Is Sad­dam man­ning all the trig­gers at every SAM site in Iraq?

    Care­ful…

    It seems that every­time the US mil­i­tary makes a mis­take, the blame goes directy to Bush and no other. You’re walk­ing on a fine line of hypocrisy.

    And by the way, those SAM’s where fired more than once…try everyother day for about 10 years.

    Do all coun­tries have the right to fur­ther those inter­ests through vio­lent means?

    I’m sorry, but hasn’t every coun­try on the planet done this…? Again, always has…always will.

    Who’s talk­ing about avoid­ing con­flict? Why is it GW didn’t invite Sad­dam to the peace table at Camp David?

    Wasn’t Sad­dam and his fam­ily offered Exile?

    Why yes, yes they were…

    does the killing of hun­dreds of thou­sands of Arabs make us more or less like Hitler’s Germany?

    That’s it boys.…go heat up the ovens! It’s time to load up the box­cars and move’em out.

    Jon, I’m actu­ally sur­prised this type of state­ment is com­ing from you. You seem a lit­tle more edu­cated than that.

    If they’d have wanted him gone, appar­ently they would have car-bombed his ass.

    Watch the fol­low­ing, this is what hap­pened when Iraqis moved against Sad­dam.

    Click Here…

    Here’s one more for the road…

    Click Here!

  50. Hank says:
    September 16, 2005 at 14:53

    “Why wasn’t Israel given south­ern Florida for a home­land instead of in the mid­dle of every­one who hates them?”

    Is this (for exam­ple) meant to be a rhetor­i­cal ques­tion? Is it one which wants an answer? Is it one which has an answer? Do all your ques­tions have answers? Was “Israel/they” GIVEN land by any­one? Have there been jews liv­ing in ‘Israel’ ever since before the Arabs arrived? How many 3000 year old jew­ish relics are there in Florida (South­ern) (no ageist jokes please)? How did the Arabs arrive in Israel? Is that a good thing? What is the name of their state in the area? How many states do the arabs have? How many states do the arabs need?Is “pales­tine” a state? Is a pales­tin­ian state nec­es­sary? Why did the “pales­tini­ans” not realise that they were a nation until the 1960s? Are the “pales­tini­ans” a nation? Are the Jor­da­ni­ans “pales­tin­ian”? Is Jor­dan in Pales­tine? Was Pales­tine “given” to the jews”? Was pales­tine “given” to the arabs? Are the pales­tini­ans, the bien pen­sants, the ter­ror­ists and the obses­sionn of the extreme left and extreme right with Isarel being used by the arab states? What other organ­i­sa­tions apart from the PLA have the destruc­tion of another nation writ­ten into their con­si­tu­tion and why does this make them admirable in the eyes of the bien pen­sant and the ter­ror­ist? What other state apart from Israel is being asked to demon­strate that it “has a right to exist”? What other nation has kept alive its cul­ture and its dream of renewed state­hood for 2000 years? What other nation has had state­hood con­ferred on it not only by its own eco­nomic and mil­i­tary efforts but by act of the United Nations? How many ques­tions do I have to ask before you go away for a six month sab­bat­i­cal and read up on the 5000 years of jew­ish his­tory in the area? What is it about long lists of ques­tions bereft of rea­soned argu­ment which really get on my tit?

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