952 replies to this topic

[bobdrake12]

http://abcnews.go.co...030209_214.html

Khatami Says Iran Mines Uranium for Nuclear Plant (excerpts)

Feb. 9

— By Parisa Hafezi


TEHRAN (Reuters) - President Mohammad Khatami said on Sunday Iran had mined uranium for nuclear energy, and insisted its nuclear program was solely for civilian use, the official news agency IRNA said.

The surprise announcement -- the first time an Iranian leader has acknowledged possession of uranium ore reserves -- may alarm Washington, which accuses the Islamic Republic of harboring secret plans to develop nuclear weapons.


Copyright 2003 Reuters News Service

[bobdrake12]

http://www.cnn.com/2...sier/index.html

US and Britain give Saddam just 48 hours to leave Iraq (excerpts)

By Julian Coman in Washington and Colin Brown

(Filed: 09/02/2003)

Britain and America are drawing up plans to give Saddam Hussein as little as 48 hours to flee Baghdad or face war, if UN weapons inspectors report this week that the Iraqi dictator is still refusing to disarm fully.

The proposals will form the framework of a long-awaited second resolution, which could be put before the Security Council by next weekend.

The deadline would be just long enough for Arab neighbours to make a last effort to persuade Saddam to leave the country, according to US officials, or for a coup to take place. The shortest timeframe to emerge from private diplomatic discussions has been two days.


© Copyright of Telegraph Group Limited 2003

[bobdrake12]

http://www.observer....,891940,00.html

Countdown to conflict

First casualties in the propaganda firefight (excerpts)

Gaby Hinsliff, Martin Bright, Peter Beaumont and Ed Vulliamy

Sunday February 9, 2003

All's fair in the war for hearts and minds: frustrated by the failure of the UN weapons inspectors in Iraq to find the 'smoking gun', Downing Street resorted to plagiarising a 12-year-old US doctoral thesis

Working against the clock with fairly thin material, insiders admit that corners were cut. Marahashi's words were changed to exaggerate their meaning: 'monitoring' foreign embassies became 'spying', while 'opposition groups' was transformed into 'terrorist organisations'. The cut-and-paste job was so incompetent that, in combining al-Marashi's work with Boyne's, it confuses two different organisations.

Had it really been written by the four authors credited on the email - Paul Hamill, a Foreign Office official; John Pratt, a junior gofer from Number 10's Strategic Communications Unit; Alison Blackshaw, Campbell's PA; and Mustaza Khan, another official working under Campbell - that might not be surprising.

But Campbell himself is said to have edited and cleared the finished version. Downing Street insists that, for all the red faces, nobody - including al-Marashi - has challenged the accuracy of what is in the dossier. Academics disagree. 'The information presented as being an accurate statement of the current state of Iraq's security organisations may not be anything of the sort,' Rangwala's email concluded.

And that more damaging accusation reflects a murkier power struggle over the Government's use - some say abuse - of intelligence material in the desperate battle to win support for war.

When on Wednesday morning the BBC's Today programme started broadcasting the contents of a classified defence intelligence briefing warning bluntly that there was no link between Iraq and al-Qaeda - there had been contacts in the past but, as a secular state, Iraq was anathema to the fundamentalist terror group -- ears pricked up all over Whitehall.

An unprecedented leak, it was immediately interpreted as a warning: if Blair continued to imply, in the teeth of the evidence, that there was some kind of connection between Iraq and al-Qaeda he would not be able to get away with it.

It is not that the intelligence services are necessary anti-war. Intelligence sources told The Observer this weekend that the case for war was a good one, but complex. 'People want to be shown something cut and dried,' one source said. 'They want evidence of a big shiny warhead. The real case is... that, after 11 September, the world changed in such a way that we can no longer accept risks to our security.

'Here we are dealing with a rogue regime that is potentially one of the biggest proliferators of weapons of mass destruction. So the question is: do we let that go on and face a real and terrible risk some time down the road, or do we insist that Iraq abides by its commitments to disarm? It is a serious issue... but it is not a great story to sell the British public.'

But this is at the very heart of Blair's problem. Faced with a issue that even his intelligence advisers have long known is impossible to dramatise, Number 10 has instead tried to argue its way around opposition to intervention. And journalists, peace activists and the British voters have not been blind to these evasions.

Downing Street's efforts to sell the case for war have created a tension with MI6 that has mirrored that between the White House and Pentagon civilian staff and the CIA, DIA and FBI across the Atlantic. There the White House has established a shadow, parallel intelligence network staffed, not by espionage professionals but by favoured political appointees who are providing answers far closer to what the administration want to hear.

For months British intelligence officers - like their counterparts in the US - have been insisting that there is no hard evidence of a link between Saddam and al-Qaeda, while at every turn their political masters have been insisting the opposite. They have been briefing that Saddam's weapons programme has been so disrupted it is almost utterly redundant: meanwhile, the politicians have insisted that it is still a threat.

But what all do agree on is that Saddam is hiding chemical and biological weapons or the ability to make them.


Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2003

[DJS]

I do not agree that even an easy victory in Iraq will make a difference in the kind of war that is being waged against us, in fact much the opposite.  We are destabilizing the region and I think that we haven't even secured our backs in Afghanistan.

What proof do you have that we are destabilizing the region? You make that statement with absolutely no proof. You get mad when my side puts together a course of action, but your plan is to do nothing.

Everyone, this is a dodge. If the French and Gemans know what is good for them they will get out of the way. It is unacceptable that a NATO allie be denied protection because of political quarrels.

You know why they are doing this? It's not because they are such ardent peace warriors. It is because of greed. Greed first and foremost. We should make the grab and throw it in their faces to make a point. It amazes me that these ungrateful cowards have the temerity to openly oppose us.

All right, I had to let off some steam.

Edited by Kissinger, 10 February 2003 - 05:31 AM.

[DJS]

Lazarus, you have to ask yourself, are you one of those who believes peace in our time is possible?

You wrote your most recent diatribe without pulling any punches. I can tell you poured your heart into it. Give me a little while to type a response.

Bob, if you want to be fair and balance you should find some articles that represent the right wing side of the argument instead of just pushing Reuters on all of us. Everyone knows that Reuters has an agenda.

I heard a left winger coin her view on the Bush Administration's desire to explore the possibilities of tactical nuclear weapons. She called it "NUTS--Nuclear Use Theories". It almost makes me grin. Some people can be so smug, but they offer very little substance.

[bobdrake12]

Bob, if you want to be fair and balance you should find some articles that represent the right wing side of the argument instead of just pushing Reuters on all of us. Everyone knows that Reuters has an agenda.

Kissinger,

If only Reuters (which has 50 million online users each month and a worldwide team of journalists in more than 150 countries) were being presented, you might have a point because a variety of sources should be represented. The fact is that just on the previous page (page 13), I posted 9 articles from the following sources:

o Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company
o BBC News
o Guardian Newspapers Limited
o Reuters
o Times Newspapers Ltd
o Mirror.co
o Telegraph Group Limited

Thus, your point regarding "pushing Reuters on all of us" is at variance with the truth.

Your point on "Everyone knows that Reuters has an agenda", is interesting because Reuters seems somewhat mainstream with its 50 million online users each month.

You are aware of the four D's in Disinformation:

o Deny
o Demean
o Divide
o Distract

Are you demeaning Reuter's rather than simply responding to what Reuters is reporting with other articles that refute the content of the Reuters articles? You are more than welcome to post the articles you wish to refute what is being written or post any articles related to this subject. I would learn something from that which is the purpose why I am here.

I have included a CNN article in full below.

bob

http://www.cnn.com/2...sier/index.html



UK accused of lifting dossier text

Friday, February 7, 2003 Posted: 9:46 AM EST (1446 GMT)

LONDON, England -- The British government has been accused of basing its latest Iraq dossier on old material, including an article by an American post-graduate student.

Large chunks of the 19-page report -- highlighted by U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell at the U.N. as a "fine paper ... which describes in exquisite detail Iraqi deception activities" -- contains large chunks lifted from other sources, according to several academics.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair's office, which posted the dossier on its Web site, said the report was "accurate" and that the government never claimed exclusive authorship.

Academics told Britain's Channel 4 news on Thursday that the "bulk" of the report was lifted from three sources, an article in the Middle East Review of International Affairs by Ibrahim al-Marashi, a research associate at the Center for Nonproliferation Studies in Monterey, California.

Glen Rangwala, a lecturer in politics at Cambridge University, told Channel 4 that large chunks of al-Marashi's paper had been copied to form parts of the UK dossier, entitled "Iraq: Its Infrastructure of Concealment, Deception and Intimidation."

"The British government's dossier is 19 pages long and most of pages 6 to 16 are copied directly from that document word for word, even the grammatical errors and typographical mistakes," Rangwala said.

"Many of the words and phrases I recalled from another context, so I searched around the articles I had read about Iraq's military and security organisations and realised that large sections of the government's dossier were actually copied.

Al-Marashi's article, published last September, was based on information obtained at the time of the 1991 Gulf War, Rangwala said.

"The information he was using is 12 years old and he acknowledges this in his article. The British government, when it transplants that information into its own dossier, does not make that acknowledgement.

"So it is presented as current information about Iraq, when really the information it is using is 12 years old."

A spokeswoman for No. 10 Downing Street told CNN: "This was a government briefing paper which was compiled from a number of sources including intelligence material.

"The first and third sections of the report went to the issues of Iraq's non-compliance with United Nations resolutions. This information was largely intelligence based.

"Section Two dealt with historical background on Iraq, and some of it was based on material written by Dr Ibrahim al-Marashi. In retrospect we should have acknowledged any references to material we used that had been written by Dr Ibrahim. We have learnt an important lesson.

"But this issue does not take away to any degree from the accuracy of the information in the report nor does it negate to any extent the core argument put forward that Iraq is involved in deliberate acts of deception," she said.

International affairs expert Dan Plesch of the Royal United Services Institute in London told Channel 4 that the alleged plagiarism was "scandalous."

"This document is clearly presented to the British public as the product of British intelligence and it clearly is nothing of the kind."

He said it was "dressed up as the best MI6 and our other international partners can produce on Saddam."

"The word 'scandalous' is, I think, greatly overused in our political life but it certainly applies to this."

Shadow defence secretary Bernard Jenkin of the opposition Conservative party said: "The government's reaction to the Channel 4 news report utterly fails to explain, deny or excuse the allegations made in the programme.

"This document has been cited by the prime minister and Colin Powell as the basis for a possible war. Who is responsible for such an incredible failure of judgment?

"The Channel 4 report clearly suggests that the intelligence has been embroidered from other sources. Who is the author and who gave their approval?

"We need a clear assurance that the government's published information is based on the best available sources and is not just spin."

The document claims that Iraqi agents have been hiding vital material from UN weapons inspectors under houses and mosques.

It also argues that UN inspectors are outnumbered 200 to one by Iraqi agents trying to obstruct them.

Edited by bobdrake12, 10 February 2003 - 01:15 PM.

[Bruce Klein]

POST BY SAILLE WILLOW

"However, and this is a big however, you have still not answered how Saddam should be dealt with. Are you saying there is never justification for war? What about self defence? Should we not have stopped Hitler?"
Kissinger

"Use mercy in war
and you win;
use it for defence,
and you're secure"
The Essential Tao, Translated Thomas Cleary

Self defence
It takes no skill to kill. A great warrior would rather disarm a lesser opponent with his skill than make the kill.

I have two big dogs (What do you keep here? Lions?) In strength they are far superior to me. In a playful mood they can knock me right off my feet. Yet they will cower if I just raise my voice. You do not have to rule by might. I do not look at an attacker as an enemy but rather as a human being in pain, more of a threat to himself than to me. There is always another way to the way of war. War happens because the human race is still not skilled enough in conflict resolution. There are many ways to remain safe without having to resort to violence. You can even protect yourself with laughter;

"Tirana - A famous Albanian comedian averted a robbery by making the bandits laugh. The gangsters who aimed Kalashnikov rifles at Sejfulla Myftari's car recognised him when he stepped out of it. "Oh thanks, I haven't seen a Kalash (Kalashnikov) in ages- will you let me hold it please," Myftari said, reaching to pat one of the guns as if it were a much-missed toy. The bandits laughed and told Myftari to leave quickly so that they could hold up another car instead. -Reuters, Jan 24

The best self-defence is still simply to be aware and take nothing for granted.

Of course Hitler should have been stopped, but earlier before he broke out through the barriers. After the First World War, with more foresight there would not have been a breeding ground from which Hitler could have risen. But enough has been said about that episode in our history and it's easy to speculate in hindsight. Lets look at the present.

"How should Saddam be dealt with?"

With so many minds wanting to avoid war, many alternatives have been proposed. I would side with the proponents of 'containment'.


The following is an extract from an article by John Battersby, The Sunday Independent, South Africa February 9, 2003.
"There appears to be a growing consensus between three of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council - Russia, China and France - that the containment of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein would serve the interest of global security far better than war which could push Iraq into using whatever undeclared weapons it might have.

Containment would involve the continued - even indefinite - presence of weapons inspectors. Laurie Nathan, the director of the Cape Town - based Centre for Conflict Resolution, who held talks with top Baghdad officials ten days ago, says that UN Resolution 1441 provides for the arms inspectors to remain in Iraq until the Security Council decides otherwise.

Nathan, who is preparing to substantiate his arguments to the foreign affairs ministry, says the Iraqi regime is convinced there will be war regardless of whether it is seen to comply with the UN resolution or not.
'If Iraq does disarm they fear that they will not be able to defend themselves', Nathan said. He said that the containment was therefore a preferable option to the 'regime change' being advocated by the US.

'The emphasis would be on containment, which means more intrusive inspections. In such a scenario, it would become difficult for Iraq to use its weapons of mass destruction.'

Nathan said that the plan would hold even if Iraq's effort at disarmament failed to satisfy the weapons inspectors because non-compliance was not, in itself, a reason to go to war. He said that the UN charter, which provided for war only in the event of a threat to international peace and security, superseded any UN resolution.

'Breach of a UN resolution does not, in itself, justify war,' Nathan said. He said any invasion of Iraq by the US could lead to a massive conflict. 'The real threat to international security is an invasion of Iraq', Nathan said. He said containment was a win-win plan that would enable US President George Bush to rescue the integrity of the UN.

Nathan said British Prime Minister Tony Blair was concerned about undermining the UN in the event of an attack. 'The UN would revert to its position at the end of the First World War when it had no role as a political forum and when it was an agency for the resolution of conflict, ' Nathan said.

He said there were precedents - Israel/Palestine and Turkey/Cypress to name but two - where countries breached UN resolutions but there was no question of a military attack against them.

One thing is certain; a declaration of war against Iraq will drastically undermine - if not totally emasculate - the UN at a time in history when it is needed more than ever.

'Iraq has a responsibility to comply but its failure does not justify resorting to force,' Nathan said. He said there was a burden of responsibility on the International community to consider the welfare of the Iraqi people.

If one has even an iota of faith in the UN and the collective will of humanity, war is eminently avoidable"


"When you have killed many people,
you weep for them in sorrow.
When you win a war,
you celebrate by mourning."
Essential Tao.



- Saille Willow

[Thomas]

Shame on France, Germany and Belgium.

Saddam is acting accordingly to their actions.

Now, I'll watch, if the US are strong, as I hope they are.

- Thomas

[bobdrake12]

http://news.yahoo.co...re_eu/nato_iraq

France, Germany, Belgium Block NATO Plan (excerpts)

By PAUL AMES, Associated Press Writer

BRUSSELS, Belgium - France, Germany and Belgium blocked NATO (news - web sites) efforts Monday to begin planning for possible Iraqi attacks against Turkey, deepening divisions in the alliance over the U.S.-led push to oust Saddam Hussein (news - web sites).

Turkey immediately requested emergency consultations under NATO's mutual defense treaty — or Article 4 — the first time a nation has done so in the alliance's 53-year history.

"I am not seeking today to minimize the seriousness of the situation. It is serious," said NATO Secretary General Lord Robertson during a break in the meeting of alliance ambassadors, where he called the atmosphere "very heated."

Diplomats said France, Germany and Belgium would do serious harm to the credibility of NATO if they would reject Turkey's direct request for help.

Copyright © 2003 The Associated Press

Edited by bobdrake12, 10 February 2003 - 01:26 PM.

[bobdrake12]

http://story.news.ya...day/4852024&e=2

Key allies widen rift with U.S. (excerpts)

Laurence McQuillan USA TODAY

WASHINGTON -- The rift between the United States and key European allies over Iraq widened sharply Sunday as Germany and France crafted a proposal to the United Nations calling for expanded weapons inspections enforced by U.N. troops.

The proposal, aimed at averting war, threatens to undermine the Bush administration's demand that Iraq disarm or face a military strike. It emboldens opponents of the U.S.-led war effort just days before U.N. arms inspectors are due to report to the Security Council on Friday.

The Bush administration had hoped that report would all but end the inspection process and focus attention on the need for military action. But the emerging French-German proposal, which also could go to the U.N. on Friday, represents a potential setback. German Defense Minister Peter Struck said he hoped the initiative would be ''positively received'' by the Security Council.

The dispute poses one of the most significant challenges to U.S. leadership in the world since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Even the Vatican was sending emissaries to Baghdad today in hopes of averting a war.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, heavily courted by Bush as the U.S. military buildup in the Persian Gulf nears completion, broke ranks Sunday after talks with German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder. He said Russia, Germany, France and China agreed that more inspections are needed.

The four nations pose a potent alliance that could complicate U.S. hopes of pushing the United Nations into approving the use of force. Germany holds the Security Council presidency this month; Russia, France and China each can veto any council action.


Copyright © 2003 USA TODAY

[DJS]

Politicians With Guts
Robert Kagan
Washington Post
January 31, 2003

To appreciate fully the unparalleled political and moral courage of Tony Blair, Jose Maria Aznar and the other six European leaders who called for solidarity with the United States in a statement published in yesterday's Wall Street Journal, you really have to live in Europe and feel the mood out here. Never mind that Blair, Aznar, Silvio Berlusconi, et al. planted themselves at the side of President Bush in the coming confrontation with Iraq -- at a time when polls in Britain, Spain, Italy and elsewhere around Europe show opposition to American policy running at 70 percent or higher. And never mind that they insisted America's war on terrorism must be Europe's war, too -- at a time when, as EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana recently conceded, most Europeans do not feel the slightest bit threatened by international terrorism and, indeed, fear Bush more than they fear Osama bin Laden.

This was nothing compared with the unabashed pro-Americanism of their declaration. The eight European leaders actually wrote of "American bravery, generosity and farsightedness" in setting Europe free from Nazism and communism in the last century and in keeping the peace in Europe for the past six decades. By using the word "generosity," they even implied that Europeans might now owe the United States a little generosity in return. Such sentiments are pure heresy these days in Europe, where anti-Americanism has reached a fevered intensity. I live in Brussels, famed "capital of Europe," and have traveled across the continent over the past year, speaking with intellectuals, journalists, foreign policy analysts and government officials at the endless merry-go-round of highbrow European conferences. The settings couldn't be nicer; the food and wine couldn't be better; the conversations couldn't be more polite. And the suspicion, fear and loathing of the United States couldn't be thicker. In London, where Tony Blair has to go to work every day, one finds Britain's finest minds propounding, in sophisticated language and melodious Oxbridge accents, the conspiracy theories of Pat Buchanan concerning the "neoconservative" (read: Jewish) hijacking of American foreign policy. Britain's most gifted scholars sift through American writings about Europe searching for signs of derogatory "sexual imagery." In Paris, all the talk is of oil and "imperialism" (and Jews). In Madrid, it's oil, imperialism, past American support for Franco (and Jews). At a conference I recently attended in Barcelona, an esteemed Spanish intellectual earnestly asked why, if the United States wants to topple vicious dictatorships that manufacture weapons of mass destruction, it is not also invading Israel.

Yes, I know, there are Americans who ask such questions, too. We have our Buchanans and our Gore Vidals. But here's what Americans need to understand: In Europe, this paranoid, conspiratorial anti-Americanism is not a far-left or far-right phenomenon. It's the mainstream view. When Gerhard Schroeder campaigns on an anti-American platform in Germany, he's not just "mobilizing his base" or reaching out to fringe Greens and Socialists. He's talking to the man and woman on the street, left, right and center. When Jacques Chirac and Dominique de Villepin publicly humiliate Colin Powell, they're playing to the gallery. The "European street" is more anti-American than ever before. Even in the 1960s at the height of the anti-Vietnam War protests or in the early 1980s at the height of the "nuclear freeze" movement, European anti-Americanism was always more than counterbalanced by European anti-communism. Most Europeans believed the real problem was the Red Army and Soviet totalitarianism, not Nixon or Reagan, and the United States, whatever its flaws, was defending them from those twin evils. When Helmut Kohl, Margaret Thatcher and even Francois Mitterrand stood with Reagan in the waning years of the Cold War, theirs was a courageous and vitally important but not a politically risky stand.

Not so today for Messrs. Blair, Aznar and Berlusconi or for Anders Fogh Rasmussen, the Danish prime minister. For leaders in Western Europe, more so than for their Central and Eastern European colleagues, standing with Bush in the present Iraq crisis is political poison, at least in the short run. With the Soviet and communist threats safely behind them and the Balkan crises settled, most Western Europeans either don't remember, don't choose to remember or perhaps even resent America's long record of strategic "generosity" toward them. Certainly they do not feel a scintilla of generosity toward the United States. Instead, as keen observers such as Christopher Caldwell have noted, anti-Americanism has become the organizing theme for all European grievances about their world. And just as Arab leaders channel domestic unhappiness with their rule into anti-Americanism as a kind of safety valve for discontent, so, in perhaps more subtle ways, do European leaders. Schroeder surely hopes his impoverished constituents in the former East Germany can be encouraged to vent their anger at Bush and not at their own chancellor. French anxieties about France's growing Muslim population are channeled into hostility toward Israel and the Bush administration's Middle East policies.

History offers few examples of democratic political leaders willing to sail head-on into such gale-force winds. That is why Blair and his colleagues deserve so much admiration, even more than Thatcher and hers. While Chirac and Schroeder simultaneously feed and feed on anti-Americanism, Blair, Aznar and their colleagues have taken the much harder and much lonelier road. Appealing to what Lincoln called "the better angels of our nature," they ask Europeans to rise above pettiness and insecurity. In the long run, political courage may have a political payoff. In a few months, Blair and his colleagues may come out of this stronger for having the guts to take an unpopular stand now. Let's just pray they survive the effort.

[Lazarus Long]

You wrote your most recent diatribe without pulling any punches.  I can tell you poured your heart into it.  Give me a little while to type a response.

Of course my young friend. I don't even mind you attempting to "dismiss" my approach by labeling it as a diatribe. Please, take all all the time you need.

I think I have you adequately contained for the moment and clearly I have demonstrated both the willingness and the ability to escalate the caliber of the debate to a level that perhaps you were unprepared for.

Take your time but understand that as you prepare for combat so will I but what we may have in common cause beneath this all, is why we debate.

Certainly in this concept, there is a perspective you might find sympathetic to Saddam's but also understand this, "I have yet begun to fight".

I like this conceptual sparring and feel quite as confident as you. In fact, it inspires me to a sense of higher purpose and this is no small state of consciousness. Please relax and understand that a truly powerful opponent always makes the enemy come to him. [ph34r]

Lazarus, you have to ask yourself, are you one of those who believes peace in our time is possible?  

I will answer this profound yet simple question in the affirmative, YES! Many Times yes, yes, YES!

Peace has always been possible, it is just all too inconvenient to those that profit from war.

Do you want peace or just the promise of it?

[DJS]

Surprising Germany
By WILLIAM SAFIRE


UNICH — "Hast Du gehort?" (Have you heard?) Ten days ago, a breathless Joschka Fischer, Germany's foreign minister, burst into a dinner party in Berlin's Ludovici restaurant to break the stunning news to Chancellor Gerhard Schröder.

Leaders of eight European nations — not just Britain, but Italy, Spain, Portugal, Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic and Denmark — had signed an op-ed statement supporting the U.S. stand on Saddam and in effect asserting that Germany and France did not speak for Europe.

Schröder was flabbergasted; he had no idea that this rejection of his anti-U.S. crusade was in the works. Think about that: a Wall Street Journal request started the round-robin letter; eight nations weighed in on its drafting and redrafting for days; but Germany's chancellor, with his vast intelligence system and diplomatic corps, was totally in the dark.

A few days later, after Colin Powell made his case in the U.N. showing the Iraqi cover-up, 10 more nations of Europe — equally outraged at the Franco-German abandonment of collective security — publicly sided with the U.S. (Watch for a "sense of the Senate" resolution thanking all 18.)

That split confirms a more profound surprise: the notion that Paris and Berlin could take charge of a "common foreign policy" for all of Europe turns out to be pipe-dreaming by presumptuous bureaucrats.

Here at the Munich Security Conference, where strategists of the U.S. and Europe meet each year to smooth out strains, Fischer was surprised again: Germany's new opposition leader, the Thatcheresque Angela Merkel, joined the defining issue as her conservative party's past candidate had failed to do. She said of the anti-Saddam op-ed: "if we had been in government, Germany would have signed that letter."

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld bested Fischer in their confrontation, making plain that the German-French argument was with the great majority of European nations, not just with the U.S. Senator Joe Lieberman was tough-minded in his gentle way. Senator John McCain gave it to "the new unilateralists" with the bark on, drawing spirited applause by denouncing the German-French opposition to providing NATO chemical and missile defenses to Turkey.

This increasingly shaky German government is due for yet another surprise: a briefing in Brussels Friday of a U.S. Congressional delegation led by McCain and Lieberman by the new NATO supreme commander, U.S. Marine Gen. James Jones, revealed a developing U.S. strategy. It holds that the 70,000 U.S. troops garrisoned in Germany, accompanied by their 70,000 dependents, make up too many forces with too outdated a mission stationed too far from potential trouble at too high a cost.

At a time when the U.S. is painfully closing bases at home, many defense strategists conclude that we should reduce and redeploy our troops in Europe. By cutting the number in half; by rotating the troops every six months, thereby obviating the need for dependents' schools and extensive support facilities; and by moving the bases south and east toward low-cost Hungary, southern Poland, Bulgaria and Romania, the Defense Department could spread our military techniques and equipment throughout the alliance and train with fewer environmental constraints at far less cost.

The proposed radical change is not finalized and is not punishment for Chancellor Schröder's antiwar pandering or his subsequent isolationism (although the recent weakening of German resolve, as one diplomat told me, "certainly makes the timing opportune"). German officials are right to worry that U.S. forces now headed from Germany to the Persian Gulf may not, after the war and occupation, return to their old bases.

Quiet planning for this overdue reorganization of our European bases began at the Pentagon as NATO expansion changed the strategic map of Europe. Soviet tanks are no longer the threat; lighter, more mobile forces are called for to project power southward toward the nexus of the terror threat in coming years.

But that's postwar planning. As we prepare to liberate Iraq, Americans must guard against hubris. For example, a U.S. Navy bus picked up the high-profile senators, former national security advisers and military journalists at the Senate steps for transportation to Andrews Air Force Base to board a jet to Munich. On the way to the airport, our bus ran out of gas. There's a lesson in that.

[Mind]

Mind, Germany's Weimarr Republic was consummed by vote of a democratic, but manipulated electorate in favor of granting Hitler's NAZI's Military authority. Democracy collapsed not through threat of external force, or internal overthrow, but through manipulation of mass hysteria, common prejudice, avarice, socioeconomic collapse and the media. Look up the history of Cristal Nacht.

Japan is more complex as it was gravitating toward a Democratic Parlimentary Monarchy and had an elected "Diet" before the war that was also overun by Military Industrialists. But Japan was experimenting with democratic reform even under the Shogunate, even as the House of Lords is the beginning of democratic reform in England. I didn't say they had Successful Democracies, I said they were fledgling, in other words the were already on that path independently and we simply played favorites with the survivors of the war.

There are also elections in Iraq . 100% voted in support of Hussein in the last election. Surprise. Surprise. Elections in Japan and Germany(1933-45) were just as meaningless until after the WWII. When the dictators are deposed...the world becomes a better place. I would prefer Hussein being arrested and locked up for life vs. execution, but either way citizens in all countries of the world will benefit.

[DJS]

I will answer this profound yet simple question in the affirmative, YES! Many Times yes, yes, YES!

Peace has always been possible, it is just all too inconvenient to those that profit from war.

Of course you would respond with a solid yes to my rhetorical question. I think Neville might have answered in much the same way.

[DJS]

Fates entwined
Jack Kelly

We are witnessing the last days not just of Saddam Hussein, but also of French pretentions to be a world power, and perhaps of the United Nations. The fate of Iraq's Saddam Hussein was sealed by Secretary of State Colin Powell's presentation. What Mr. Powell said was impressive, made more so by the way he said it. But what was most important was that he made a presentation at all.
By showing satellite photos and playing intercepts of radio and telephone conversations, Mr. Powell provided Iraq with important information about the capabilities of U.S. intelligence. This will make it easier for Saddam to thwart U.S. surveillance in the future. Mr. Powell knows this full well, and wouldn't have jeopardized U.S. sources and methods if he didn't think it wouldn't matter for very much longer what Saddam knows about our intelligence capabilities.
France's fate, and that of the United Nations, was sealed by France's continuing attempts to frustrate U.S. policy.
France is no longer an ally, and should no longer be treated as such, said Richard Perle, who, as chairman of the Defense Policy Board, is more than a private citizen, but less than a government official.
This is not bad news, because France as an "ally" is more harmful to the interests of the United States than France as an enemy.
The United States has not been seeking French support for military action against Saddam because of any material help the French could provide. Going to war without France is, in the words of former Deputy Undersecretary of Defense Jed Babbin, like going deer hunting without an accordian.
The French have no objection to unilateral military interventions. They are engaged in one now in the Ivory Coast, where they are getting badly kicked. This is a typical result. The French haven't had a battlefield success since the time of Napoleon. The Germans whipped them in the Franco-Prussian War, and again in World Wars I and II. The Vietnamese kicked them out of Indochina, and the Algerians kicked them out of North Africa.
The only value the French could have in a "Coalition of the Willing" would be to teach the Iraqis how to surrender. But — on the evidence of the first Persian Gulf war — the Iraqis already have this down pat.
We have nothing to fear from the French as an enemy, and nothing to gain from France as an ally. The French have supported the United States and NATO only to the extent they perceived it in their interests to do so. The French have been there when they needed us. Period.
Thanks to our generosity and foolishness, France has been able to recover at the peace table what it lost on the battlefield. Though France contributed almost nothing to the Allied victory in World War II, it was given a permanent seat on the U.N. Security Council alongside the nations that actually did the fighting.
It is France's permanent membership on the Security Council, with the veto that comes with it, that feeds France's delusions of grandeur. If it weren't for its ability to posture on the U.N. stage, hardly anyone besides the editors of the New York Times would care what the French think about anything.
The French consider themselves sophisticated in the ways of the world, so it's been fun to watch how they've been outmaneuvered by the "cowboy" in the White House.
France and Germany would like to build the European Union into a superstate that would serve as a counterweight to the United States. By claiming to speak for Europe in opposing military action against Iraq, they hoped to isolate us.
But EU expansion has doomed their ambition. The smaller countries resent the efforts of France and Germany to dominate them, and the former communist countries are grateful to the United States for rescuing them. The rulers of 19 European countries have expressed support for the United States. It is the "Axis of Weasels" that now is isolated.
France can veto a resolution authorizing force, but that will mean the effective end of the United Nations. If the United Nations refuses to authorize action to enforce its resolutions, it will fade into the shadows, and take with it France's role on the world stage. Few in the United States will shed tears at the curtain call.

Jack Kelly, a former Marine and Green Beret, was a deputy assistant secretary of the Air Force in the Reagan administration and is national security writer for the Pittsburgh (Pa.) Post-Gazette.

[DJS]

There's No Alternative Now to War

Wednesday, February 05, 2003
By Frank Gaffney, Jr.

It now seems clear to President Bush -- and should be clear to the rest of us -- that there is no longer any alternative to war with Iraq. There are a number of reasons for that being the case, but three are preeminent:

1) Iraq poses a present danger to the United States. As the Bush administration is fond of saying, the prospect that one of the world's most dangerous nations could get its hands on the world's most dangerous weapons is intolerable. There is only one problem: that intolerable condition applies today in Saddam Hussein's Iraq.

There is, moreover, evidence that Saddam has already acted on his oft-stated desire for revenge against the United States following Operation Desert Storm. Iraq expert Laurie Mylroie has documented myriad circumstantial indicators of Iraqi involvement in the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center. A former Oklahoma City television reporter named Jayna Davis has amassed a similar wealth of evidence that Iraqi nationals collaborated with Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols in the murderous 1995 attack on the Murrah Federal Building.

And, it appears that Saddam's terrorist training facilities and operatives may have helped the Sept. 11 terrorists.

Unfortunately, at the moment, none of the available evidence gives rise to an airtight case against the Iraqi despot. That will probably remain so until U.S. forces are inside Saddam's secret bunkers and files. The evidence in hand, however, is certainly consistent with the trail of a skillful intelligence operation tasked with inflicting mass destruction on the United States but not getting caught at it. And we ignore at our peril the possibility that Saddam may take advantage of any future opportunity to employ terrorist cutouts to strike even more devastating blows down the road.

2) The U.N. inspectors have already done their most important job by establishing that Saddam has no intention of voluntarily disarming. Despite the calls from many quarters to give Hans Blix and his colleagues more time, the fact is that the past two months of inspections have demonstrated indisputably that Saddam Hussein's regime is no more willing to comply with the latest security council resolution than with any of its predecessors.

The absence of Iraqi cooperation means that it is unlikely inspectors will find hard evidence that Iraq remains armed with weapons of mass destruction. It amounts, however, to a fool's errand to persist in trying when Saddam's non-compliant behavior establishes a more-than-sufficient casus belli.

3) A coup won't do. The last-ditch alternative to U.S.-led military operations being touted by Saudi Arabia and several other nations -- having Saddam willingly or involuntarily leave office -- is a non-starter for several reasons.

First, it would hardly be acceptable to have some new thug pick up in Baghdad where the last one left off. If anything, a new despot might find it easier to continue Saddam's covert weapons of mass destruction programs and aggressive regional designs, particularly if U.N.-imposed economic sanctions and constraints on Iraqi oil sales are removed following the coup.

Second, President Bush has repeatedly expressed his determination to liberate the people of Iraq. It is unimaginable that he would wish to be party to yet another American betrayal of their aspiration for liberty and economic opportunity.

And third, swapping thugs in Iraq would foreclose the Bush team's most ambitious and laudable goal: The creation of a model of a prosperous Arab democracy in the Middle East that could inspire and catalyze dramatic and constructive changes elsewhere in the region.

The potentially hugely beneficial repercussions of such changes -- for the peoples most immediately involved, for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and for the war on terror -- demand that this important option not be precluded, particularly by those Saudi and other despots who have the most to lose.

In short, the time has come for the United States to act. It would be reckless to delay further in the hope of securing at some point down the road the support of nations that perceive it in their national interest to preserve Saddam Hussein's regime and to thwart any affirmation of the preeminence of American power.

At best, such a course simply affords Saddam more time to conceal, disperse and prepare to use his weapons of mass destruction and/or to prepare a "scorched earth" strategy -- adding hugely to the costs to us and to the Iraqi people of effecting their liberation. At worst, further deferral to the UN, and squandering of what little opportunity for surprise remains, invites Saddam to "go first," attacking our forces, allies or territory preemptively (directly or through cut-outs) in the hope of allowing him to dodge the bullet yet again. It's time to pull the trigger.

Frank J. Gaffney Jr. held senior positions in the Reagan Defense Department. He is currently president of the Center for Security Policy.

[DJS]

I know that everyone here wants to debate the ethics of war. However, before I get too immersed in that debate I want to lay out my analyses of the present circumstances and how this is all going to play out.

[DJS]

America's Ultra-Secret Weapon
By MARK THOMPSON

Every war has its wonder weapon. In Afghanistan, it was the Predator, the unmanned drone that would loiter, invisibly, over the battlefield before unleashing a Hellfire missile on an unsuspecting target. The Gulf War marked the debut of precision-guided munitions, and in Vietnam helicopters came of age. World War II gave us the horror of nuclear weapons, and World War I introduced the tank. If there's a second Gulf War, get ready to meet the high-power microwave.

HPMs are man-made lightning bolts crammed into cruise missiles. They could be key weapons for targeting Saddam Hussein's stockpiles of biological and chemical weapons. HPMs fry the sophisticated computers and electronic gear necessary to produce, protect, store and deliver such agents. The powerful electromagnetic pulses can travel into deeply buried bunkers through ventilation shafts, plumbing and antennas. But unlike conventional explosives, they won't spew deadly agents into the air, where they could poison Iraqi civilians or advancing U.S. troops.

The HPM is a top-secret program, and the Pentagon wants to keep it that way. Senior military officials have dropped hints about a new, classified weapon for Iraq but won't provide details. Still, information about HPMs, first successfully tested in 1999, has trickled out. "High-power microwave technology is ready for the transition to active weapons in the U.S. military," Air Force Colonel Eileen Walling wrote in a rare, unclassified report on the program three years ago. "There are signs that microwave weapons will represent a revolutionary concept for warfare, principally because microwaves are designed to incapacitate equipment rather than humans."

HPMs can unleash in a flash as much electrical power—2 billion watts or more—as the Hoover Dam generates in 24 hours. Capacitors aboard the missile discharge an energy pulse—moving at the speed of light and impervious to bad weather—in front of the missile as it nears its target. That pulse can destroy any electronics within 1,000 ft. of the flash by short-circuiting internal electrical connections, thereby wrecking memory chips, ruining computer motherboards and generally screwing up electronic components not built to withstand such powerful surges. It's similar to what can happen to your computer or TV when lightning strikes nearby and a tidal wave of electricity rides in through the wiring.

Most of this "e-bomb" development is taking place at Kirtland Air Force Base in Albuquerque, N.M. The Directed Energy Directorate at Kirtland has been studying how to deliver varying but predictable electrical pulses to inflict increasing levels of harm: to deny, degrade, damage or destroy, to use the Pentagon's parlance. HPM engineers call it "dial-a-hurt." But that hurt can cause unintended problems: beyond taking out a tyrant's silicon chips, HPMs could destroy nearby heart pacemakers and other life-critical electrical systems in hospitals or aboard aircraft (that's why the U.S. military is putting them only on long-range cruise missiles). The U.S. used a more primitive form of these weapons—known as soft bombs—against Yugoslavia and in the first Gulf War, when cruise missiles showered miles of thin carbon fibers over electrical facilities, creating massive short circuits that shut down electrical power.

Although the Pentagon prefers not to use experimental weapons on the battlefield, "the world intervenes from time to time," Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld says. "And you reach in there and take something out that is still in a developmental stage, and you might use it."

[DJS]

I am not sure if everyone here is completely aware of why I posted an article about HPM. Seems like a nice toy to have in your arsenal, doesn't it? If one ponders the reasons behind the development of this weapon they will see that the United States had ambitions in regards to Iraq for many years.

You may think that I am digging my own grave right now by saying this. Far from it. The US has always viewed Saddam as a loose cannon. A stupid loose cannon. I have always found watching Saddam in action is like watching an ice skater fall over and over again during their routine. Its not a pretty picture, dictators just aren't what they use to be. But I digress...

I consider myself to be well informed in weapons development. Not an expert, but I keep myself up to date. HPM has been in the works for over 20 years. After the first Gulf War its development was accelerated. I am currently researching who was responsible for keeping the project alive. I think I could make a great book about it. It would definitely solve a lot of the questions I have about the military industrial complex of the United States.

The goal of the military is to always be prepared for any and all contingencies. Determining these contingencies is the job of our "defense community". It is my contention that HPM was developed specifically for Iraq.

Let's go through the scenario that is presented by Gulf War II. Let's see if you see what I see.

By launching a preventive (not pre emptive [B)] ) strike we will force Saddam's hand. Once the war begins his objectives will be as follows:

1) Set off the oil fields (that is #1, we will go back to this)

2) Get the scuds up as soon as possible

3) try to hit us with the chem and bio

4) last stand at Baghdad with a civilian shield

The oil fields were always the real conundrum. How could we stop Saddam from lighting them off before we could secure them? The economic and environmental disaster from this would be unparalleled in human history.

The wells would be rigged. Everything would be controlled remotely by those loyal to Saddam. Saddam would never trust lower level personnel with the responsibility of setting off the oil wells manually. The second we attack Saddam would set the wells off by remote.

In comes HPM, giving us the option of a preventive measure that will ensure the integrity of the wells is kept intact.

HPM will also give us the ability to isolate Saddam quickly.

Checkmate.

Always think about the end game.

Edited by Kissinger, 10 February 2003 - 08:59 PM.

[DJS]

If only Reuters (which has 50 million online users each month and a worldwide team of journalists in more than 150 countries) were being presented, you might have a point because a variety of sources should be represented. The fact is that just on the previous page (page 13), I posted 9 articles from the following sources:

o Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company
o BBC News
o Guardian Newspapers Limited
o Reuters
o Times Newspapers Ltd
o Mirror.co
o Telegraph Group Limited

Thus, your point regarding "pushing Reuters on all of us" is at variance with the truth.

Your point on "Everyone knows that Reuters has an agenda", is interesting because Reuters seems somewhat mainstream with its 50 million online users each month.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
I'm not playing your games Bob. Why don't you come out and spar instead of hiding behind your articles. Trying to act like you're unbias when you're posting BBC, Reuters, Mirror and NYT is absurd. It is also intellectually dishonest.

I will not allow the debate to be framed by Reuters which refuses to label terrorists as terrorists. Sorry, its not happening.

Further, you are really missing the point on media bias. Media bias exists because media sources can always frame the debate in a certain light to produce the desired results. Establishing the conceptual framework is like playing on your home field.

Edited by Kissinger, 10 February 2003 - 10:22 PM.

[DJS]

David Horowitz
February 10, 2003

Secessionists against the war

I'm looking at a full page advertisement in Sunday's NY Times by the celebrated counter-culture author Wendell Berry called "A Citizen's Response to the National Security Strategy of the United States of America." The strategy is known as the Bush Doctrine, and was adopted in September of last year (it is available on the White House website). In my view, this is the most important strategy statement made by our government since the Truman Doctrine of 1947. Its salient features are a recognition that the nation's present war crisis is caused by the fact that we have arrived at a historical crossroads where radical ideologies and modern technologies of mass destruction meet, and that this requires us to 1) maintain a military supremacy that cannot be challenged; 2) pre-empt terrorist revolutionaries both fascist and Communist like Osama Bin Laden, Saddam Hussein and Kim Jong Il, who will strike us without warning; and 3) reserve the right to act unilaterally in our self-defense, i.e., be the masters of our political fate. The first thing that struck me about the Berry ad is how rich the querulous left has become -- the same left which pretends to be the voice of the powerless and the poor. A full-page ad in the NY Times costs close to $100,000. I have personally seen half a dozen of these since 9/11, which attack corporate America and the American government and find ways to sympathize with our nation's enemies. (Cheap, second-hand Marxism seems to be the only paradigm available to leftist critics of the President and the war.) Since the Times and the mass media generally have been critical of the President's war policy, and the allegedly "unilateralist" nature of official United States policy, one has to conclude that these leftists with their deep pockets are so radical and so unhappy with the loyal critics of the war, that they are willing to squander prodigious amounts of cash to gain a platform for their extreme screeds. Like his political peers, Wendell Berry is wildly unhappy with American democracy and with the American people because they have ratified through two congresses, presidential requests to go to war with Iraq (I am speaking here of the Clinton request for war powers in 1998 and the Bush request last year). Of course he does not say this in so many words. Like his peers Berry ignores these ratifications and pretends instead to speak in behalf of the allegedly silent people, and in the fatuous phrase favored by radicals "speak truth to power," as though the power in this country were illegitimate and did not flow from the people themselves. Radicals with this perspective are what I call the "secessionists" over the war. They want to make a separate peace as though the terrorists have not condemned all Americans regardless of race, gender, age or political viewpoint for that matter. They want to disown the courageous acts of their own government in defending the world's peoples against tyrants like Saddam Hussein. They have a loathing -- which is really a self-loathing -- for their own country. In the end, their secessionism is really a form of anti-Americanism, because they are self-declared revolutionaries against the America we all inhabit, and therefore share an agenda with our enemies, which is the destruction of the American system as we know it. Now to Berry's complaint. Berry singles out the following passage from the Bush strategy paper as "its central and most significant statement." "While the United States will constantly strive to enlist the support of the international community, we will not hesitate to act alone, if necessary, to exercise our right of self-defense by acting pre-emptively against such terrorists..." A reader of these words who does not harbor intense feelings of hostility towards the United States cannot fail to be impressed by their reasonableness. "While the United States will constantly strive to enlist the support of the international community," we will defend ourselves against attack, even if it means not waiting for terrorists who have declared their intention to do us harm to actually carry out those intentions. Berry, on the other hand, cannot contain his outrage. "A democratic citizen must deal here first of all with the question, Who is this 'we,'? It is not the 'we' of the Declaration of Independence, which referred to a small group of signatories bound by the conviction that 'governments [derive] their just power from the consent of the governed. And it is not the 'we' of the Constitution, which refers to 'the people [my emphasis -- WB] of the United States.' This 'we' of the new strategy can refer only to the President. It is a royal 'we.'" A dictator's "we." This is because under the strategy the President "will need to justify his intention by secret information," and will have to "execute his plan without forewarning." This leads Berry to conclude: "The idea of a government acting alone in pre-emptive war is inherently undemocratic, for it does not require or even permit the President to obtain the consent of the governed." rForget the impracticality of submitting complex geopolitical decisions based on sensitive intelligence reports (which dreamers like Berry of course can't be bothered with.) The President already has that consent through two votes of Congress. Berry doesn't seem to understand the most basic fact about our constitutional democracy -- that it is a representative democracy -- it doesn't require Wendell Berry's direct consent or a referendum of the population before the President acts in our defense. Indeed, the Constitution gave the war-making powers to the Senate, in those days an un-elected body. Could the founders have known something about democratic passions that Berry doesn't? Perhaps Berry regards Sean Penn's walk-on role as a weapons inspector in Iraq as the vox populi in action. I will not bore readers with Berry's descent into communist bathos, with his argument -- familiar from bilious screeds of Noam Chomsky and Edward Said -- that there is really no difference between the terrorist acts of terrorists and the military acts of the United States. ("The National Security Stategy wishes to cause 'terrorism' to be seen 'in the same light as slavery, piracy or genocide' -- but not in the same light as war. It accepts and affirms of the legitimacy of war." Well of course. And what's the alternative except surrender? Berry takes strong exception to the Bush Doctrine's declaration of indpendence from the rule of the world's tyrannies, slavocracies and kleptocracies through international instrumentalities like the UN and the World Court. The Bush Doctrine: "We will take the actions necessary to ensure that our efforts to meet our global security commitments and protect Americans are not impaired by the potential for investigations, inquiry, or prosecution by the International Criminal Court [i.e, the court that would prosecute a Pinochet but not a Castro -- DH] whose jurisdiction does not extend to Americans and which we do not accept." Berry: "The rule of law in the world, then, is to be upheld by a nation that has declared itself to be above the law. A childish hypocrisy here assumes the dignity of a nation's foreign policy." Here we have the problem defined. Delusional radicals like Berry would like to place the security and freedom of Americans in the hands of international bodies that make a slave state like Libya, the chair of its human rights commission; in the midst of a war in which their country is under siege, they seek to taint it as an outlaw state rather than to defend it as the beacon of freedom it so obviously is. Their hatred of America and ultimately themselves is that intense. The rest of us have a charge to keep and a debt to pay to those who died for our freedom in many wars before this one. We must reaffirm our birthright and acknowledge the great bounties we enjoy as Americans by defending this country not only on its military battlefields, but here at home on the cultural war front, where a hostile movement of the political left seeks to sap its confidence and destroy its remarkable achievements by attacking it from within.

Edited by Kissinger, 10 February 2003 - 09:48 PM.

[Bruce Klein]

POST BY SAILLE WILLOW

Collateral Casualty

Think what you are saying
Think carefully
For my life depends on it

Is my life worth less than yours
Do I hold my children less
dear than you
Do I feel pain less than you
Do I love less than you

I am little people
But I am alive
And I love life.


The following is an extract from an article by Wilmot James, The Star, South Africa - Feb 10/2003.

"The new website www.desert-rescue.org.uk for Operation Desert Rescue describes itself as a 'broad-based international campaign, not connected to any political party or group', advocating on behalf of millions of Iraqi children who, with women, will once again be expected to bear the brunt of war.

The website has a jewelled and impassioned epigram a quote from Nelson Mandela and Graca Machel, who wrote as long standing, consistent and focussed champions of childrens rights: 'We cannot waste our precious children. Not another one, not another day. It is long past time for us to act on their behalf.'

And indeed, the United Nations General Assembly in 2002 vowed by the passage of a resolution to have a world 'fit for children' and to 'protect children from the horrors of armed conflict', which to our collective shame and disgrace have been extraordinary over the last decade:
2 - million children have been killed;
4 - million to 5 - million have been disabled;
12 - million left homeless;
1 - million orphaned; and
10 - million left psychologically traumatised.

How is the UN to be helped to honour a resolution that lies at the core of our moral ethos as a human species, taking care of our children lest we perish?"

- Saille Willow

[Lazarus Long]

 HPM will also give us the ability to isolate Saddam quickly.

Checkmate.

Always think about the end game.

Usamma bin Laden gave up having any electronic devices in his presence back in the late 90's when the Clinton Administration tried ineffectively to zero a Cruise Missile in on his location homing in on his cellphone. In other words this fancy weapon you tout is useless against the real threat.

I am afraid it is still your move.

Oh, and as for the all too sexy "Predator" that wiped out an innocent family doing metal salvage on the battlefield because the "Specialists" made a mistake and a tall person happened to look like someone the expert hated. Its record so far isn't that splendid.

The point is he didn't have a decent target and INNOCENT PEOPLE WERE KILLED AND WRITTEN OFF AS COLLATERAL DAMAGE. The predator has to date not been effectively used, because the second time they tried to rely on field data for a strike they killed a wedding party. The bill is now millions spent on these and other "Friendly Fire" incidents. I wouldn't be blowing your horn on super tech just yet.

You aren't even close to an endgame and that is a big part of your mistake.

You have however demonstrated the tactics and equipment for the enemy to analyze. Our enemy wants us in Iraq. As I have insisted we have Saddam contained. There is a vast difference between Containment and Appeasement. The Europeans WITH the US gave away Checzoslovakia. And the problem with your analysis is that the steady destruction of the Leagure of Nations contributed directly to the irreconciliation that lead to the events like the invasion of Poland. Remember by then Stalin and Hitler had made a pact.

You see more of a threat in Saddam then I do. I think we can do much better without allowing this process to go forward. We aren't talking about years and years, we are discussing weeks to months. Just because we've created a juggernaut doesn't mean we should let it opperate as a runaway train.

I think we are creating more harm than good by not allowing for more negotiation before striking and if you are right the best case scenario is we get the responsibility of Iraq and much more. But bottom line is we still don't have the prime suspect and real threat.

Sorry this is more diversion than long term effective strategy and it may yet haunt us all.

Oh, that HMP is an EMP (electromagnetic pulse weapon) that is the latest in a long line of Tactical Nuclear Weapons whose use may put us over the line in terms of "Nuclear Arms Proliferation treaties" and its use could cause a return to the Nuclear arms race between ALL the larger states.

It is true that as a Neutron Bomb Varient, it is smaller then "Conventional Nuclear Weapons" and most of the radiation burst is short duration microwave, but not all the radiation is, and most certainly not the residual isotopes in the blast vicinity. But the Iraqis are used to that we've been dumping Spent Uranium Shells on them since '91.

None of this is a well kept secret. Least of all from you.

No little one, it is not checkmate at all, only another level of escalation, and more reason to believe that we will eventually apply MAD to its logical conclusion.

[bobdrake12]

Trying to act like you're unbias when you're posting BBC, Reuters, Mirror and NYT is absurd. It is also intellectually dishonest.

Kissinger,

Perhaps, you could inform me what other media sources are on your index (black list).


bob

[bobdrake12]

Lazarus Long:

Our enemy wants us in Iraq.

That is an interesting quote.

bob

[DJS]

Rich Lowry

February 11, 2003

Saudis on the verge of a nervous breakdown

The argument of pro-war conservatives that a new, reformist government in Iraq could catalyze the forces of liberalization throughout the Middle East has often been dismissed as wishful thinking masquerading as strategic thought. Well, sign up another adherent to the wishful thinking -- the Saudi monarchy.

The Saudis have been desperately maneuvering to engineer a coup or an exile deal for Saddam Hussein that would avert a U.S. invasion and presumably elevate another Baathist strongman -- Saddam Hussein lite -- to power in Iraq. As The New York Times recently reported, "many Saudis have begun to realize that if Mr. Bush succeeds in removing the Iraqi leader, the potential emergence of a new Iraqi state ... could set the winds of change sweeping through the region."

Change makes the Saudis very nervous -- as it should. The Saudis are perpetually nervous to begin with, since they are sitting on top of the world's richest oil reserves, while they themselves are incredibly weak. They are intimately connected to a virulent, anti-modern variant of Islam, and run an economy that is positively Soviet in its arbitrariness and stagnation.

Rather than deal with their problems frontally, the Saudi strategy has been to try to maintain their freedom to keep driving their country into the ground with political and diplomatic straddles. The biggest has been between their relationship with the United States and their relationship with haters of the United States, whom they extravagantly fund.

This straddle produces professions of cooperation from Saudi diplomats (oh, how Saudi media flack Adel al-Jubeir loves the United States!) at the same time the Saudis engage in such subterfuges as sneaking out of the United States a Saudi woman subpoenaed to testify in connection with the 9/11 investigation (oops -- this sort of thing just happens).

The coming invasion of Iraq has the Saudis straddling harder than ever. Reports say that Crown Prince Abdullah has decided that after the war, U.S. troops will leave the kingdom (pleasing his right), while he will create a democratic assembly (pleasing his left) -- perfect for those who like their Islamic tyrannies not too cold, but not too hot.

Ending the U.S. presence in Saudi Arabia has, of course, been one of Osama bin Laden's chief demands. But it still makes sense. American troops were only stationed in Saudi Arabia beginning in 1991 to serve as a tripwire if Saddam invaded again. With Saddam gone, that purpose evaporates. In any case, Qatar and other Persian Gulf state-lets can accommodate U.S. military needs.

As for reform, Abdullah talks about it every six months or so, because it seems a useful way to ease pressure for real democratic change. The United States should, in this pregnant moment, begin pushing Abdullah toward a much more far-reaching radical break with the kingdom's radical Wahhabi clerics.

Abdullah might not be up for it. He is nearly 80 years old. He is not yet king, as the ailing King Fahd still barely occupies the throne. And he is distrusted by much of the rest of the royal family, who don't really consider him one of them (he has a Syrian mother).

But Abdullah has strengths, including the loyalty of the Bedouin-based Saudi national guard. And he might be forced to move, if he thinks the survival of the Saudi monarchy depends on it.

The founder of the contemporary Saudi state, Ibn Saud, faced a similar choice in the late 1920s. He had conquered the Arabia peninsula on the backs of murderous al-Qaidalike fanatics called the Ikhwan. They began to attack British interests in the region, which prompted the Brits to give Ibn Saud a choice -- crack down on the Ikhwan, or lose British support.

He reluctantly -- and painfully -- dumped the Ikhwan. Abdullah too could break with his fanatics. But only if he feels threatened by the new geopolitical alignment in a new post-Saddam Middle East. The U.S. message to the Saudis should be: Nervous now? You haven't seen nothing yet.

[DJS]

"Perhaps, you could inform me what other media sources are on your index (black list)".
Bob

I'll put out my stuff, you put out your stuff. I was just pointing out that your sources were one sided. When I put out articles you know where I am coming from. When you put out articles you are present them as impartial. Basically, you are augmenting Lazarus' arguments. This is fine. Just please, please don't think that the sources you have are impartial, because they are not.

[DJS]

I think you are missing my point Lazarus. HPM (yes, I have heard EMP also) gives us a tactical advantage in the final phase of eliminating Saddam. When I say end game, I am referring to the end game in Iraq, not the end game for our "War on Terror".

Your statements on the Predator is propaganda. You don't have statistics on its combat record and your knowledge of its effectiveness can not be confirmed.

Some forms of HPM do release a limited amount of radiation into the surrounding environment, but it is only temporary. Days and weeks, not months and years. Once again, collateral damages are acceptable in war as long as objectives are effectively met. Your argument against HPM seems to be more of a moral criticism than a technical critique.

[Lazarus Long]

The use of these weapons is in direct violation of the Nuclear Arms Proliferation Treaty that we are both a signatory to, and claiming to be upholding as a pretext for attacking Iraq.

Both some of our allies, and countries like Russia and China are advising quietly that if we continue in this vein and actually use Tactical Nukes that the treaty is dead and Everyone from India to France and Germany are going to begin developing a vast array of new tactical nuclear weapons arsenals that are cheap and easier to become loose.

The claims about the Predators failed missions aren't propaganda they are failures of the tech that our government is paying damages for in Afghanistan. Since you want verification I will get the old articles referring to these incidents. The point was that in one case the data was misinterpreted and in the second bad data was fed to our targeting forces and innocent people WERE killed and no these kind of losses are no more acceptable then us killing our Canadian Allies.

Your blithe treatment of humans as sacrificial pawns has exposed your callous disregard for life and made all policy you attempt to propose suspect. Your solutions aren't anything we need.

As I said before how can we claim any moral superiority when we refuse to uphold the law for ourselves that we claim to be enforcing upon others?

The use of these weapons is totally unnecessary and unjustified. It is virtually guaranteed to bring us much closer to the global war you claim we are preventing. Sorry, your shiny new toys are unimpressive. And as I pointed out already, unrelated to the real conflict. This is just a bunch of foolish punk machos showing off for the cameras.

It would be comic if it weren't so tragic.

Predator Failures