Let's Talk Sense Archives - Sept. - Dec. 2001

	Message board comments from April 10 through April 20, 2003
	Date: 04/10/03 Time: 05:05 AM Comments Matilda, There is something odd about that story about "Georgie's mother". The only reference I can find is this op-ed piece by Jimmy Breslin, hardly an impartial or definitive source. (http://www.newsday.com/news/opinion/columnists/ny-nybresvr Since he belongs to that particular camp of virulent bush haters who will believe anything, and I mean absolutely anything, bad about George Bush, I hope you will understand my skepticism and ask for corroboration from another more persuasive source. If there is no other evidence, I would have to assign that quote to the urban legend category and deem it unfit for propagation. Peter Newark Date: 04/10/03 Time: 07:29 AM Comments "Note that the US government is teaching the world a very ugly lesson: if you want to keep us from attacking you, you'd better have a credible deterrent. That's one reason why so much of the mainstream establishment opposes Bush administration adventurism, including the Iraq war, only a special case. They can see that it is likely to increase proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, terror, and other pretty awful outcomes, if only as a deterrent to a rogue superpower -- as the US is regarded in much of the world, maybe most. A suicide attack by military forces resisting an invasion can't possibly be called an act of terrorism. Suppose the Iraqi army were surrounding New York and the Iraqi air force were bombing it unopposed. If an American carried out a suicide attack against the invading forces, would anyone call it "terrorism"? Or a violation of the laws of war? Or would we rather regard it as remarkable heroism, and grant the person an honored place in history?" The above paragraphs were taken from an article by Noam Chomsky, one of the finest minds in today's world. You owe it to yourself to read his entire article. Here is the Url: http://www.zmag.org/content/print_article.cfm?itemID=3357&sectionID=15 I will appreciate your comments. Matilda Date: 04/10/03 Time: 07:37 AM Comments Ran across this quote yesterday... "the West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact, non-Westerners never do." ---------- Samuel P. Huntington Date: 04/10/03 Time: 03:52 PM Comments Was the Baghdad Statue Incident Staged? Date: 04/10/03 Time: 05:11 PM Comments For Matilda, who wanted commments on McGovern's piece in The Nation -- this, from today's Best of the Web, http://www.opinionjournal.com/best/?id=110003321 Like their Arab counterparts, our antiwar elites even indulge in bizarro theology. From an essay in The Nation by George McGovern, the Albatross of Massachusetts: The President frequently confides to individuals and friendly audiences that he is guided by God's hand. But if God guided him into an invasion of Iraq, He sent a different message to the Pope, the Conference of Catholic Bishops, the mainline Protestant National Council of Churches and many distinguished rabbis--all of whom believe the invasion and bombardment of Iraq is against God's will. . . . I most certainly do not see God at work in the slaughter and destruction now unfolding in Iraq or in the war plans now being developed for additional American invasions of other lands. The hand of the Devil? Perhaps. Reading this stuff, it's easy to become dispirited. What hope is there for a world in which so many deluded people side with evil? Then again, they lost their fight to keep Saddam Hussein in power--and American democracy remains healthy, despite the malign influence of the antiwar left. (Time will tell whether the same can be said for the Democratic Party.) If that's true here, who's to say it can't be in the Arab world too? Date: 04/11/03 Time: 05:57 AM Comments "the West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact, non-Westerners never do." ---------- Samuel P. Huntington Let us join hands stare at our umbilici, and if we hum really hard, we will conquer the world. Samuel P., let me give you a clue: Monkeys are smarter and have more organized family structures than the large felines, but the jungle still witnesses the cats having the former for dinner. I can imagine a room full of professional graduate liberal arts students sitting in a room nodding in unison, commenting on the wisdom of that quote. The same people who believe that will also believe that welfare has ended poverty, that taxing the rich will benefit the economy, that politicians really care about us because they say so, and that the toppling of the Saddam statue was staged by the CIA on orders of little green men in UFOs. Mr. Huntington exposes one of the problems with universal suffrage: We let the author of this vapidity, and the people who see great depth in it, cast a vote. Let me take the time to enumerate the countries, western or not, that have conquered or have defended themselves through moral or religious superiority: Well, that did not take long. Space and time constrictions will not allow me to list the countries, western or non western, that have achieved superiority over their neighbors with superiority in applying organized violence. Please consider this very short and simple quote, as it says more in three words than Huntington's idiotic ramblings. If you find the time, please read about this non-Western author: Weakness is death - Swami Vivekanand Peter Newark Date: 04/11/03 Time: 11:52 AM Comments Interesting Peter from Newark. I bet you use to take the fat kid's lunch money, when you were in school right? "Weakness is death" ??? You're a bully just like the United States.... I thought we were supposed to help the weak and protect those who could not protect themselves! Someone who's lunch money was taken by someone like you, when he was a kid! Date: 04/11/03 Time: 04:37 PM Comments You have to be completely ignorant to think that weakness is not death. If you are to weak to support your own life, you are obviously going to die, unless helped. Ever heard of the "Theory of Evolution"? It states that only those who are the best fit for their environment will survive. This is true. Go ahead name an instance where the weak have not perished if they were not helped. What's that? You can't? I wonder why? It's because it's "survival of the fittest." Date: 04/11/03 Time: 07:07 PM Comments "Our government has kept us in a perpetual state of fear - kept us in a continuous stampede of patriotic fervor - with the cry of grave national emergency. always there has been some terrible evil at home or some monstrous foreign power that was going to gobble us up if we did not blindly rally behind it." -- General Douglas Macarthur, 1957 Date: 04/11/03 Time: 10:51 PM Comments Since you did not sign your name, may I call you fumbduck? Those were not my word, but those of Swami Vivekanand . If you think he used to take fat kid's lunch money, I suggest you try to remedy your blissful ignorance and read some of his writings, on the odd chance that you may comprehend it. I would suggest that you improve your understanding of the matter at hand before you post here and expose your ignorance to all. Peter Newark Date: 04/12/03 Time: 12:15 PM Comments SPECIAL REPORT: GOP HYPOCRISY With countless attacks on Democratic leaders, Republicans set a very high standard for patriotism: if you question the President of the United States while our troops are in danger, then you are not patriotic enough. But how do these same Republicans fare under their own standards? Find the answer in the DNC Special Report, GOP Hypocrisy: Republicans Fail Their Own Standards of Patriotism. http://www.democrats.org/specialreports/gop_hypocrisy/ Date: 04/12/03 Time: 12:30 PM Comments This is for the person who commented on George McGovern's article a few postings back. In one of your sentences you said something that took my breath away...."and American democracy remains healthy"!!!! Ye gods and little fishes!!!!!!!!!!!!!! You must be living somewhere off in never never land!!! Can you please explain HOW you think American democracy remains healthy?????? Please tell me, if you can, how America is better off today than it was before George W. Bush was permitted to occupy the Oval Office. And PLEASE don't reply that at least he didn't have oral sex in the White House!!!!! You've already beaten that poor horse to death. Just give me some facts about the genius of George W. Bush. Matilda Date: 04/12/03 Time: 09:23 PM Comments So anybody heard about us Canadians willing to send some of our Mounties to help police Iraq while the U.S. is trying to figure things out? But we have not received an invitation to send them. Date: 04/13/03 Time: 08:08 AM Comments QUOTATION OF THE DAY "It's untidy. And freedom's untidy. And free people are free to make mistakes and commit crimes and do bad things." DONALD H. RUMSFELD, the defense secretary, on lawlessness in Iraq. This a a great quote, no. Be sure to quote it back to the authorities the next time you are pulled in for stealing some food for your hungry children. Matilda Date: 04/13/03 Time: 08:49 AM Comments Tim Robbins vs. the Baseball Hall of Fame. VERY interesting exchange of letters. Matilda http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20030428&s=robbins Date: 04/13/03 Time: 10:30 AM Comments Next time someone tells you how patriotic Bush and the Republicans are, and how much they love our country, our servicemen/women, and VETERANS ... VETERANS FOR JUSTICE - Many Bush/GOP related links http://www.vetsforjustice.com/index.htm PVA’s Fox Denounces House Budget Committee’s Funding Cuts in Veterans’ Benefits and Services http://www.pva.org/NEWPVASITE/newsroom/PR2003/pr03018.htm Republicans Seek To Slash VA Budget With our military poised to attack Iraq, the Republican Party is poised to devastate the budget of American veterans http://www.vaiw.org/vet/modules. Veterans Battle Budget Cuts http://www.legion.org/pub_relations/2003 As thousands of sailors and Marines are sent abroad for a possible war with Iraq, the Bush administration is proposing to cut education funding for many children of military families http://signonsandiego.com/news/education/ Veterans For Justice names a new holiday in honor of the Republican-led U.S. Government … “Veterans Betrayal Day” (2/12/03) http://www.vetsforjustice.com/VeteransBetrayalDay.htm Court Overturns Ruling on Vets' Free Lifetime Health Care http://www.cnn.com/2002/LAW/11/19/retired.veterans.hearing/index.html Bush Threatens Veto of Concurrent Receipt Even As He Prepares to Send Military into Preemptive War (11/02/02) http://www.estripes.com/article American Legion: Billions For Baghdad, Nothing For Veterans (10/31/02) http://www.usnewswire.com/topnews/prime/1031-102.html American Legion is the Latest Victim of GOP Campaign Tricks http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/20/politics/20VETS.html As Bush Seeks to Create New Generation of Disabled Vets, He Withdraws Desperately Needed Aid from Past Veterans (9/16/02) http://www.msnbc.com/news/809143.asp Bush’s War Against Military Veterans: Bush Refuses to Allow the VA to Inform Vets and their Families of Benefits They Have Honestly Earned (9/02) http://www.interventionmag.com/cms/modules Don't Tell, Maybe They Won't Ask http://www.nytimes.com/2002/08/20/opinion/20KRUG.html Bush Breaks Promise to Veterans http://www.legion.org/pub_relations/2002_releases/ Paralyzed Veterans of America are Upset by 'Wholly Inadequate' Funding for Sick and Disabled Vets (7/12/01) http://www.pva.org/NEWPVASITE/newsroom/PR2001/pr0173.htm Disabled Veterans Enraged over Bush Stonewalling on Provision to Aid Disabled Military Retirees http://www.military.com/MilitaryReport/file=MR_DAV_Denounces Date: 04/13/03 Time: 02:11 PM Comments Matilda, before reading further, consider the following quote for a while: "If the facts don't fit the theory, change the facts". How would you feel if that statment was from GW Bush, Rumsfeld, Cheney, Or Condy Rice? How about Tom Dashle, Bill or Hillary Clinton, or Ted Kennedy? re: QUOTATION OF THE DAY "It's untidy. And freedom's untidy. And free people are free to make mistakes and commit crimes and do bad things." DONALD H. RUMSFELD No doubt you long for the good old days of peace and order in Iraq. While we are indeed free to opt to make mistakes and commit crimes, we should also expect to pay the price for our deeds and misdeeds. Do you prefer a society that chooses to predict what part of itself will probably commit crimes, and move preemptively to prevent those crimes by acting on the probable future culprits? Pretty elitist/racist. Freedom may have its problems, but what do you see as an alternative? Regarding "stealing some food for your hungry children", give me a break. I cannot believe you are so naive as to truly believe that the criminals in question are women with babes hanging at their breasts, but if you do indeed care to stand behind that statement, I will gladly elaborate on the fallacy of that tenet. Regarding the quote: "If the facts don't fit the theory, change the facts", it was uttered by the nonpartisan Albert Einstein. Peter Newark Date: 04/13/03 Time: 04:38 PM Comments -- We are in WW III whether anyone will call it that yet or not. I am in complete shock over the equivalent of the burning of the library at Alexandria. No one will remember Bush -- or even the US -- a thousand years from now. All that history will remember of these monsters is that they stood by and allowed the oldest cultural legacy in the world to be completely destroyed. The Museum of Antiquities has been totally ransacked. These barbarians have allowed the origins of civilization itself to be destroyed. Whatever else we accomplished in the last 200 years will be forgotten in comparison. Date: 04/13/03 Time: 06:00 PM Comments Mr WWIII, Would you care to elaborate? Do you consider the Saddam regime the oldest cultural legacy in the world? It is doubtful if anyone but yourself can equate what is going on with the burning of the Alexandria library. Go back and ask the voices in your head what it all means. Date: 04/13/03 Time: 10:13 PM Comments Matilda, re: "and American democracy remains healthy" The quote is excerpted from The Opinion Journal (as stated in my contribution). Here's the link (repeated from the original comment), http://www.opinionjournal.com/best/?id=110003321 But, I'm happy to defend it ... You may have a jaundiced view of American democracy, you living in France where the citizenry is busily trying to kill off the few Jews they missed while they were carrying water for the Nazis. I live in the US of A, the land of the free and the home of the brave. We still have a free press and free elections. And, the last time we went to the polls, we handed Bush and the GOP a resounding victory in the by-election (both the Senate and the House are now controlled by the party of Lincoln). How is America better off today than when the Presidency was "occupied" by Bush's immediate predecessor? Well, we seem to have a sense of purpose -- we're doing our best to make the world a better place for our children and grandchildren. Our chief of state seems to be an honest man. We, the people believe in him and in the mission he has set for us. The President has assembled the most competent and capable team we've seen in our collective memory. And, when we draw our swords, we are fearsome and fearless! (The applicable adverbs for Clinton would be feckless and foolish). Date: 04/13/03 Time: 10:30 PM Comments Oops, make that applicable ADJECTIVES. Date: 04/14/03 Time: 07:00 AM Comments Katie Couric: 'Hopefully' Saddam Made It to Syria Is perky "Today" show host Katie Couric actually rooting for Saddam Hussein to survive the U.S. military's repeated attempts to take him out? It sure sounded that way during a report she delivered on the fate of the Baghdad Butcher yesterday. While chatting about Saddam with NBC's Pentagon correspondent, Jim Miklaszewski, the multimillion-dollar morning host asked whether U.S. officials had been able to "confirm reports he was taken to Tikrit, and then Mosul, and then hopefully to Syria." Hopefully? Surely Couric didn't mean to suggest that she actually hoped the brutal dictator would escape justice by fleeing to another terrorist-sponsoring state. Or did she? The full exchange went like this: COURIC: Mik, we only have a few seconds left. But quickly, anymore information about Saddam Hussein's fate? MIKLASZEWSKI: Not at all. Wild speculation. But U.S. officials insist they still don't know what happened when - after they bombed that site in western Baghdad earlier this week. COURIC: So, they haven't been able to confirm reports he was taken to Tikrit, and then Mosul, and then hopefully to Syria. MIKLASZEWSKI: That - that's very unlikely considering the kind of U.S. forces that are arrayed up there. COURIC: OK, Mik. Thanks. Date: 04/15/03 Time: 05:17 AM Comments Howard Zinn has written an article called "A Kinder,Gentler Patriotism. I don't have a url for his article, but perhaps you can find it on Google. Here's one paragraph: "Mark Twain, having been called a "traitor" for criticizing the U.S. invasion of the Philippines, derided what he called "monarchical patriotism." He said: "The gospel of the monarchical patriotism is: 'The King can do no wrong.' We have adopted it with all its servility, with an unimportant change in the wording: 'Our country, right or wrong!' We have thrown away the most valuable asset we had: the individual's right to oppose both flag and country when he believed them to be in the wrong. We have thrown it away; and with it all that was really respectable about that grotesque and laughable word, Patriotism." Matilda Date: 04/15/03 Time: 05:31 AM Comments From Ronald Reagan's son: "The Bush people have no right to speak for my father, particularly because of the position he's in now," he said during a recent interview with Salon. "Yes, some of the current policies are an extension of the '80s. But the overall thrust of this administration is not my father's -- these people are overly reaching, overly aggressive, overly secretive, and just plain corrupt. I don't trust these people." The rest of the article is available via: http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2003/04/14/ron_reagan/index_np.html Date: 04/15/03 Time: 05:34 AM Comments 04/14/03 Meet the Brave New World the lawless Bush Administration has created. After the U.S. ignores international law, India announces it may stage a pre-emptive strike on Pakistan. Nuclear Armageddon is on the radar screen. Read Now http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/041403_india.html Date: 04/15/03 Time: 05:43 AM Comments My dear readers, Open your eyes, your ears, your brain, and especially your hearts.....and read this article by Robert Fisk: Evil triumphs when good people do nothing! http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=396997 Americans defend two untouchable ministries from the hordes of looters By Robert Fisk in Baghdad Date: 04/15/03 Time: 11:41 AM Comments I'll let The Opinion Journal (http://opinionjournal.com/best/?id=110003338) rebut Matilda on the estimable Mr. Fisk: Anti-American polemicist Robert "25 Rolls" Fisk laments the sacking of Iraq's National Archaeological Museum, from which many priceless antiquities were stolen or destroyed. Fisk opines that the museum was "trashed by the looters whom the Americans unleashed on the city during their 'liberation.' " What happened at the museum does indeed sound lamentable, but this Fisk comment is one of the ugliest expressions of elitism we've ever heard. America is at fault for "unleashing" the Iraqi people--as if they were no more than dogs, and Saddam a benign animal lover. Date: 04/16/03 Time: 07:09 AM Comments "Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, to assure the survival and the success of liberty. This much we pledge, and more." Considering the bottom of this page boats the link votetoimpeach.org with a picture of GWB, I can imagine what the reaction here would be if Georgie W Bush would dare utter these words. They would in fact aptly apply to the present situation. Of course, the liberal elites will say that this was not about freedom for the Iraqis. The same elites also predicted a nationalist uprising against US troops a la Vietnam; the Arab street enraged against us; tens of thousands of civilian casualties and a humanitarian and refugee crisis; bloody house to house combat; Iraq's oil fields aflame, lifting oil prices and sending the economy into recession; the greater threat North Korea using the war as an excuse to attack; the Turks intervening in northern Iraq and a war with the Kurds; and general worldwide mayhem. They also were eager to blame the US for the looting, and could not believe that Iraquis would cheer US troops entering Baghdad. Oh, by the way, the president who talked about bearing any burden was JFK, in the "ask not..." speech. Date: 04/16/03 Time: 07:44 AM Comments "Why have the media bought the administration's propaganda that we come to Iraq with clean hands and virgin swords to slay the dragon of Saddam Hussein, when the U.S. did so much to keep him in power? Surely, even embedded journalists recall that it was Reagan administration special envoy Rumsfeld who met with Hussein in the 1980s to guarantee U.S. support for Iraq's war with Iran. Once again, we're deep in the "nation-building" game that Bush the candidate railed against in 2000. Having blundered in, guns blazing, we should now play to win the peace, slowly backing out and inviting a true multinational rebuilding effort with support from the U.N. and Muslim countries. And for heaven's sake, can we remember in our next preemptive invasion to assign at least a few of our tanks to protect the hospitals and museums?" Robert Scheer Date: 04/16/03 Time: 09:25 AM Comments From today's Wall Street Journal Pessimistic Liberalism With the Pentagon declaring the end of "major combat" in Iraq, most Americans are responding with relief and pride. Our troops have performed with skill, courage and even honorable restraint in deposing a dictator half a world away in less than a month. The puzzle is why some Americans, especially media and liberal elites, continue to wallow in pessimism about this liberation. Two weeks ago these elites were predicting a long war with horrific casualties and global damage. Then at the sight of Iraqis cheering U.S. troops in Baghdad, they quickly moved on to fret about "looting" and "anarchy." Now that those are subsiding, our pessimists have rushed to worry that Iraqi democracy and reconstruction will be all but impossible. What is it that liberals find so dismaying about the prospect of American success? In discounting these gloomy new predictions, it helps to consider their track record. Among the anticipated disasters that haven't come true: a "nationalist" uprising against U.S. troops, à la Vietnam; the "Arab street" enraged against us; tens of thousands of civilian casualties and a refugee and humanitarian crisis; bloody house-to-house urban combat; Iraq's oil fields aflame, lifting oil prices and sending the economy into recession; North Korea ("the greater threat") using the war as an excuse to attack; the Turks intervening in northern Iraq and at war with the Kurds; and all of course leading to world-wide mayhem. We could attach famous names or institutions to all of these positions, but (space limitations aside) our question today is less who than why? America's liberals weren't always so dour about their country's purposes. As recently as the 1960s, their favorite son (JFK) offered to "bear any burden" to extend the promise of freedom. Why are they so afraid of freedom's expansion now? One answer is simple partisanship. The Iraq war would never have happened without President Bush's determination, and many liberals can't bear to admit he was right all along. The American left has developed a special antipathy for Mr. Bush, more than for any President since Nixon. Experts in moral ambiguity, they especially detest his certitude, which is rooted in religious faith. Perhaps they have come to loathe him so much that they can't even bring themselves to relish this broader American triumph. Another answer is the continuing legacy of Vietnam. That failure remains the defining event in the lives of the men and women who now run most of our idea-forming institutions and media. Vietnam has made them forever suspicious of the use of force on behalf of American national interest. They shelved those doubts for a time under Bill Clinton, albeit only when the cause wasn't "tainted" by national interest (Haiti, Kosovo) or when it was constrained by the "international community" (the U.N.). But they simply don't trust that, left to their own devices, the American government and military will act in a moral way that leaves the world better off. Our former editor Robert Bartley offered a third, and more philosophical, explanation in his column1 on Monday. Citing Thomas Sowell, he noted that today's left has become a self-insulated elite convinced of its own virtue. In this view, these members of "the anointed" operate in an echo chamber that listens to and rewards one another to the point that they refuse to admit contrary evidence. If you repeat often enough that Iraqis couldn't possibly welcome Americans as "liberators," you can't process those TV images in Baghdad. Instead of freedom, you see only "anarchy" and American troops that somehow "allowed" looting. We aren't saying that all liberals have succumbed to this pessimism about American purpose. Many have seen Iraq's evil squarely for what it is and have supported the Bush Administration's attempts to remove it. They include the Washington Post editorial page, Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel, Democrats Joe Lieberman and Dick Gephardt, such writers as Christopher Hitchens and Bill Keller, and above all Tony Blair. But the majority of the American left, and especially its leading media voices, remain flummoxed if not embarrassed by America's Iraq victory. These include most Democrats in Congress, the editors (though not all reporters) of the New York Times and its acolytes at CNN and the major networks, and of course most academic experts. They can barely bring themselves to celebrate the downfall of a tyrant before predicting the awful challenges to come. They now find themselves in league with those on the pessimistic and isolationist right who also opposed this war. The difference is that Pat Buchanan and his allies think the U.S. is too good for the world and will be corrupted by it. The liberal pessimists think the U.S. isn't good enough. We don't write this in any spirit of gloating, because in fact this union of American left and far right may pose a long-term problem for liberated Iraq. Nation-building will require both patience and political consensus to succeed. Looking for vindication, these voices may too quickly look for reasons to call every mistake or difficulty a disaster -- and demand a U.S. retreat. As optimists ourselves, we'll hold out hope that the sight of free Iraqis will cause at least some of them to revive their faith in American principles. URL for this article: http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB105045443068891500,00.html Date: 04/16/03 Time: 09:50 AM Comments MAY HE LIVE TO BE A THOUSAND: Clinton blasts US approach to international affairs (AFP, Apr 15, 2003) Former US President Bill Clinton blasted US foreign policy adopted in the wake of the September 11 attacks, arguing the United States cannot kill, jail or occupy all of its adversaries. "Our paradigm now seems to be: something terrible happened to us on September 11, and that gives us the right to interpret all future events in a way that everyone else in the world must agree with us," said Clinton, who spoke at a seminar of governance organized by Conference Board. "And if they don't, they can go straight to hell." The Democratic former president, who preceded George W. Bush at the White House, said that sooner or later the United States had to find a way to cooperate with the world at large. "We can't run," Clinton pointed out. "If you got an interdependent world, and you cannot kill, jail or occupy all your adversaries, sooner or later you have to make adeal." In the thumbsuckers when he was leaving office, reporters speculated about how influential Bill Clinton could be, such a young and popular ex-President with a penchant for the limelight; his pronouncements could continue to shape our politics long after he his administration... Well, it's been almost two and a half years now and he hasn't said a single thing that's mattered. Now, as if to demonstrate his own insignificance, he proposes cutting deals with our adversaries? On what exactly do people base the case for his political genius? Orrin Judd Date: 04/16/03 Time: 09:52 AM Comments Clinton blasts US approach to international affairs NEW YORK (AFP) - Former US President Bill Clinton (news - web sites) blasted US foreign policy adopted in the wake of the September 11 attacks, arguing the United States cannot kill, jail or occupy all of its adversaries. "Our paradigm now seems to be: something terrible happened to us on September 11, and that gives us the right to interpret all future events in a way that everyone else in the world must agree with us," said Clinton, who spoke at a seminar of governance organized by Conference Board (news - web sites). "And if they don't, they can go straight to hell." http://story.news.yahoo.com/news Date: 04/16/03 Time: 10:35 AM Comments Sorry this is a long post....JUST READ IT! Matilda "Protests around the world like never seen before. A largely unreported movement in United States alone. Start crumpling innocent citizen's houses, houses which contained babies, children, the elderly and families, and what thin thread of support you have will snap. Knowing all the risks involved, having seen what happened in Iraq from the Gulf War, we knew there would be looting, there would be logistical problems involving the welfare of Iraq's citizens. Our administration has claimed the soldiers are not designed for policing, they are not designed to aid in the social and environmental problems the war would bring. O.K. I will buy that line for what it is worth, which is not a lot, in the scheme of this war. We know war, we know what it does to societies, to people, to conditions; we have seen it in history. We should have been more prepared, "Why cut off a man's leg, if you do not know how to treat the wound? A war plan * should always contain solutions to all the problems the war will bring. This includes the security of the citizens, their homes, jobs, essentials for sustaining life, and even quality of life. Saying our soldiers were not trained for such duty is a cop out to the real question, "Why did they not take into account, what comes after the war?" The answer lies in what, end of war topic, is key in their discussions. Even before we invaded Baghdad, the squabble over, who gets what contract, and who will control the oil; were the forces agissantes. Nothing was being discussed about what type of security would be in place when Saddam's regime fell. War plan; yes, peace plan; no. This will be the motto of our nation as it moves closer to open hostilities with other nations. Don't worry, we do not want to impose any kind of democracy on these nations; imperialism has nothing to do with Democracy." Mark Drummond Spring Valley, CA And for you readers who react with "What about 9/11? Face it, will you.....Iraq had NOTHING TO DO WITH 9/11. Neither did the innocent people of Afghanistan for that matter. Yes, Bin Laden was supposed to be located in Afghanistan, but bombing an entire country to get one man who could (and should) have been run down by our CIA and other international intelligence agencies, is no reason!!! Good thing he wasn't hiding out in New York City!!! And you know what? Bin Laden never took credit (or blame) for 9/11. Do you know of any terrorist attack which is not claimed by someone? Of course, Bin Laden was delighted about the attacks, but he said, when accused, "You do me too much honor." Date: 04/16/03 Time: 12:06 PM Comments "The opponents of war in Iraq - France, Germany, Russia, China, Canada, Mexico, the Arab nations - were vindicated last week when Baghdad fell [in] just 21 days. The anti-war argument had always been that Saddam Hussein posed no significant threat to the U.S. or its neighbours because Iraq's military power was vastly degraded after Saddam's humiliation in the 1991 Persian Gulf War and the subsequent dozen years of punitive UN-imposed sanctions. And that any nuclear, chemical and biological weapons Iraq might still possess could be destroyed through the U.N. inspection process without resorting to a war that has cost the lives of thousands of Iraqis. With an invasion force the U.S. itself now boasts was of relatively minimal strength, Saddam's regime was easily toppled... Pushed to the wall, the Iraqi regime did not try to blunt the enemy advance by dipping into its vaunted stockpile of 'weapons of mass destruction' - or perhaps that, too, was a paper inventory." David Oliver Date: 04/16/03 Time: 12:07 PM Comments Ok, Matilda, I read it. Perhaps you'll read this: The argument that Saddam had no connection to international terrorism is now conclusively proven wrong by the discovery of a second major terrorist training camp near Baghdad, as well as the discovery of a major arsenal of explosive suicide vests hidden in a school. And this: THE WAR ON IRAQ IS THE WAR ON TERROR. Mastermind of Achille Lauro hijacking arrested in Iraq (David Ensor, CNN, April 15, 2003). Abu Abbas, the Palestinian terrorist who masterminded the 1985 hijacking of the Italian cruise ship Achille Lauro in the Mediterranean Sea, has been arrested by U.S. personnel in Iraq. Abbas was arrested about 50 miles west of Baghdad after being turned away from Iraq's border with Syria, a Palestinian source told CNN. The hijacking of the ship led to the killing of disabled passenger Leon Klinghoffer, an American Jew. Klinghoffer was shot in his wheelchair and thrown overboard by Abbas' men. I assume that we're now clear on the fact that international terror is a seamless web, with America's enemies all quite willing to make common cause. The second lessen here is that Abbas was apparently turned away by Syria, as he tried to escape from Iraq. Either Syria has suddenly become philosophically opposed to middle east terrorism, or something has happened to make it mind its manners. Hmm, I guess the anti-war movement was right: Tyrannical regimes will respond to the careful application of diplomacy. None of that will convince Europe's chattering classes. Neither will stories of children being freed from a special children's prison, or a rising tide of evidence about routine use of torture in Iraq. Date: 04/16/03 Time: 12:09 PM Comments David Olive writes, "The opponents of war in Iraq - France, Germany, Russia, China, Canada, Mexico, the Arab nations - were vindicated last week when Baghdad fell [in] just 21 days. The anti-war argument had always been that Saddam Hussein posed no significant threat to the U.S. or its neighbours because Iraq's military power was vastly degraded after Saddam's humiliation in the 1991 Persian Gulf War and the subsequent dozen years of punitive UN-imposed sanctions. And that any nuclear, chemical and biological weapons Iraq might still possess could be destroyed through the U.N. inspection process without resorting to a war that has cost the lives of thousands of Iraqis. With an invasion force the U.S. itself now boasts was of relatively minimal strength, Saddam's regime was easily toppled... Pushed to the wall, the Iraqi regime did not try to blunt the enemy advance by dipping into its vaunted stockpile of 'weapons of mass destruction' - or perhaps that, too, was a paper inventory." http://www.thestar.com/ Date: 04/16/03 Time: 12:15 PM Comments __So Where Are the WMD? Andrew Gumbel writes, "After three weeks of war, after the capture of Baghdad and the collapse of the Iraqi government, Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction - those weapons that Bush, on the eve of hostilities, said were a direct threat to the people of the US - have still to be identified. Many influential people have begun to wonder aloud if the weapons exist at all... Lt. Gen. Amer Hammoudi al-Saadi, who handed himself over to US forces yesterday, continued to proclaim that Iraq no longer holds any chemical or biological weapons. He should know: the British-educated chemical expert headed the Iraqi delegation at weapons talks with the UN. The few 'discoveries' trumpeted in the media - the odd barrel here, a few dozen shells there - have not been on a scale that could reasonably justify the unprovoked military invasion of a sovereign country, and in most cases have been proven to been no more than rumour, or propaganda, or a mixture of the two." http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=396733 Date: 04/16/03 Time: 12:40 PM Comments "History will record a great American president who finally upheld what America stands for: liberty for all ... " Gracious sakes, who would write in that vein to The New York Times? Some doddering Republican precinct chairman in Petal, Miss.? The Dick Cheney family's assistant chauffeur? Not -- surely not -- an Arab? But, yes, Sami Assadi, a self-identified member of the Arab diaspora, felt led to express his delight at the president's leadership, given "what is evolving in front of our eyes." He wanted likewise to register his weariness at being "patronized by Western leaders who have supported brutal regimes in the Middle East that keep the Arabs down ... " Those would be leaders of a different stripe than the U.S. president who initiated, and is methodically pressing, the campaign for Iraq's liberation. Sami Assadi has paid his own tribute. It is time many more of us chimed in. Hooray for George W. Bush, a president who did what he had to do and did it right! The armed forces did the fighting. The Pentagon laid the plans. Counselors of all sorts put in all sorts of oars. Nonetheless, the thing could not have worked absent the steadiness and resolve of the commander in chief himself -- this so-called Yale frat boy, hungering, supposedly, to be as big a man as Daddy. If Yale frat boys, collectively, perform with the signal decisiveness of Brother George, the U.S. government should scoop them up the instant they graduate. As war leader, George W. Bush has performed -- is performing -- magnificently. It puts one in mind of many things, such as the capacity of the chronically underestimated to run like thoroughbreds when the starting gun goes off. Another thing that comes to mind are the large consequences that sometimes flow from minuscule events -- like the election count in certain Florida precincts. The Duke of Wellington called Waterloo "the nearest-run thing you ever saw in your lives." That was before the 2000 presidential election, which was nearer. The "we wuz robbed" syndrome persists in certain political circles to this day, so narrow was the count, so rancorous were the feelings the count produced. Now if people want to go around with stuck-out lower lips on account of Florida, that's their American right, God bless 'em. But sights should be raised higher. Suppose the near-run thing that was Florida had gone the other way, and Al Gore had become president. If it had, I wouldn't be giving short odds on the prospect of blessings descending upon the American president from the likes of Sami Assadi and the joyous multitudes in Iraq. This isn't to call Gore a wimp. It is to say only that he and Bush see many things differently -- not least the issue of independent U.S. action vs. subservience to the United Nations. Maybe, after all, it takes a "cowboy" -- that favorite European pejorative -- to get things done in this gunslinger world. A body could get killed waiting for Kofi Annan to assemble a decent posse. And further: What if President Gore had shown himself the political equivalent of George Patton -- hell-for-leather-ready to wipe out Saddamism? How would he have sold this aspiration to his fellow Democrats? With extraordinary difficulty, that's how, the Cold War Democrats having turned into the party of peace at most prices you can name. It took a Republican president to move, first, his party, then the Congress, then the nation into alignment with a controversial strategy: doing good for Americans by doing good for Iraqis. It's hard to see how Gore could have brought off such a strategy, even in the unlikely event such a strategy had impressed him. A near-run thing, this Iraq business for sure, and still not finished. For this sort of thing, you want not just political functionaries but gamblers. Maybe also cowboys, who have been known to gamble a little bit. George W. Bush was the right man at the right time. Hip, hip, hooray. The right man at the right time. Bill Murchison Date: 04/16/03 Time: 12:45 PM Comments IN AMERICAN HISTORY, there are three dire dates--December 7, 1941; November 22, 1963; and September 11, 2001--that send a collective shudder through our memory. The left also has its own special roster of days not to cherish: December 12, 2000, when George W. Bush became president; November 7, 2002, when that choice was roundly endorsed by American voters; and April 9, 2003 when Baghdad was freed and Saddam's grip was broken in one of the swiftest, most successful, most surgical strikes in war history, to the Iraqis' wild delight. The terrible news that President Bush had pulled off a tremendous success and was being hailed in the streets as a conquering hero has sent the left into a state of despair and confusion from which it has yet to emerge. Moderate liberals engaged in quick rear-covering actions, saying they always knew it would be a walkover (they didn't), and eagerly assuring us it would now get much worse. On the far left, however, they could barely accept it at all. Readers of the Nation, the American Prospect, or of their websites would be at a loss to know anything happened. On April 9, TAPPED, the continually-updated blog of the American Prospect, ran a few lines saying we should all rejoice in this triumph, and quickly moved on to more promising topics. The main American Prospect posting on April 10--when papers showed pictures of Iraqis hugging Americans--was titled Ugly Americanism. What great timing. If this is "ugly," what would "attractive" look like? Things were still worse at the Nation's website, where the happy events were not mentioned at all. On April 10 a post assailed the failed policies of the younger George Bush, in contrast to those of his father, the suave internationalist (whom the Nation detested when he was in office). This on the day that American forces, hailed once again by ecstatic Iraqis, rolled into two more cities in the North. Also on April 10 the Nation posted a piece by David Corn, one of its more talented writers, that lamented the fate of Iraqi civilians hurt by American bombs and American fire, and urged that America help them. This was a valid point and a meaningful story: We must never lose sight of "collateral damage." But this was just one of the horrors-of-war stories posted in a week filled with them: stories of Iraqis being forced to the front lines by families held hostage; of Iraqis with tales of terrible torture; of the emptying of an Iraqi jail for small children, whose parents had made the mistake of opposing Saddam. In this deluge of horrors--most of them purposefully committed by Saddam's regime--the only ones the Nation saw fit to note and to criticize were the ones committed by the United States by mistake. This is a mindset determined to showcase America as toxic and menacing. On April 11, Andrew Sullivan quoted Salon's Gary Kamiya writing: "I have a confession: I have at times, as the war has unfolded, secretly wished for things to go wrong. Wished for the Iraqis to be more nationalistic, to resist longer. Wished for the Arab world to rise up in rage. Wished for all the things we feared would happen. I'm not alone: A number of serious, intelligent, morally sensitive people who oppose the war have told me they have had identical feelings. Some of this is merely the result of pettiness--ignoble resentment, partisan hackdom, the desire to be proved right and to prove the likes of Rumsfeld wrong, irritation with the sanitizing, myth-making American media. That part of it I feel guilty about, and disavow. But some of it is something trickier: It's a kind of moral bet-hedging, based on a pessimism not easy to discount, in which one's head and one's heart are at odds." And Ron Rosenbaum has this to recount in the New York Observer: "Today, a friend told me a story about a spiritual person, a man of the 'peace' movement. His first reaction, when apprised of early optimistic reports of Iraqi surrenders . . . was to exclaim in anguish, 'Oh, no, this is going to help Bush!'" To date, few on the antiwar side has come out and actually wished that Iraq would actually defeat the United States, though Jonathan Schell came very close in the April 14 Nation, where he praised game Iraqis for defending their country, and brave little Turkey for not being bullied into letting us invade from its turf. What the peaceniks have been, however, is very explicit in their open desire to see France, Belgium, and Germany win their cold war for the direction of Europe against Britain and the United States. "Americans must hope . . . we are not at the brink of the American century," writes Harold Meyerson in the American Prospect. "The battle between Europe and America for the power to shape the century . . . is already joined. And may I gently suggest that the best possible outcome for the American democratic republic . . . would be an American (or more precisely Bushian) defeat." "The French have been better Americans than we have," says Jonathan Schell. Perhaps the America he is referring to is the one once represented by the KKK. Here is Michael Gonzales writing from Brussels for the Wall Street Journal on April 10: "'How did we get here?' asked a former French minister in a newspaper column recently. 'Here' is a situation in which French Jews are being beaten up in the streets of Paris and in which President Jacques Chirac has to write to Queen Elizabeth II to apologize for the desecration of British tombs in France." Let us recall that one of the first acts of George W. Bush after September 11 was to urge Americans not to misuse or abuse the Muslims and Arabs among us. The mercifully few times that he was disobeyed are played up by this press as examples of our unending bloodlust and bigotry. Perhaps you are waiting for them to utter a cross word in the direction of nos amis in Old Europe. Don't hold your breath. Which brings us, of course, to the bad part of this story. It doesn't matter much if the left doesn't want to toss flowers to Bush, or even if they portray America as evil and meddling. What does matter is that, because it may make the United States appear good by comparison, they excuse, downplay, or omit completely evils committed by others. Not a word from them on Saddam's atrocities; not a word on the arms and oil deals between Saddam's Iraq and the "peace-loving" governments of France, Russia, Germany, and Canada; not a word on the anti-Semitism rampaging through "peace movements" in Europe (as well as at home in America). Like April 9, these things never happened. Noemie Emery Date: 04/16/03 Time: 12:59 PM Comments WHEN IT COMES TO IRAQ, media policy seems to be: Good news is no news. Operation Iraqi Freedom was only a few days old when the press seers, often relying on the word of retired generals, began reaching for the "q" word--quagmire. Why didn't the coalition take Basra on day one? Why did an army supply convoy get ambushed? Why weren't Iraqis rising up against Saddam Hussein? The media provided their own answers to these questions: The war plan had failed. Donald Rumsfeld hadn't sent enough troops. Coalition forces were bogged down. The commentariat was particularly gleeful in skewering supporters of the war effort who had predicted that the U.S. military would have little trouble toppling Saddam's regime. Echoing the views of many, the New Yorker's Hendrick Hertzberg warned darkly, "The longer the fighting continues . . . the higher becomes the cost of victory, until, at some unknowable point, victory becomes defeat." As it happens, the issue of the New Yorker which contained this gem arrived in mailboxes last week--just as TV screens were showing pictures of the giant Saddam statute being toppled in Baghdad. Taking Baghdad in half the time, and at a third the casualties, of the first Gulf War would seem a lot like victory, not defeat. Especially because none of the widely predicted worst-case scenarios came to pass: No missile attacks on Israel. No use of chemical or biological weapons. No terrorist attacks in the United States. No widespread destruction of Iraqi oil fields. No repeat of "Black Hawk Down" in urban areas. But the media continue to look for evidence to justify their earlier defeatism. This isn't a problem among in-country reporters, who have performed magnificently at considerable risk to their own lives. It's more a problem among stateside talking heads. I was recently interviewed by a reporter for one of the major network affiliates in New York City. All his questions were about looting, suicide bombings, civilian casualties, Arab resentment of Christian military forces, the possibility of protracted guerrilla warfare, and even the specter of "another Vietnam." That's pretty typical of the news coverage, especially among overseas news outlets, but also among many U.S. papers and TV networks. And mainstream TV executives wonder why the Fox News Channel--which has been a notable dissenter from this gloomy orthodoxy--has suddenly become so popular! The rest of the press should get a grip. This is the most successful U.S. military intervention since 1945. This was no half victory like Kosovo, in which U.S. forces liberated only one province, or Afghanistan, where the U.S. left warlords in control of much of the country. This was the real deal: marching to the enemy capital and imposing peace on our terms. This calls for champagne and tickertape. Instead the press, and opponents of the war, are moving the goalposts. It's not enough to win a smashing military victory at small cost. To listen to the critics, if Iraq doesn't suddenly become as law-abiding and peaceful as Switzerland, then we haven't really won. A little perspective is in order here. The French, after their liberation in 1944, took a cruel revenge on many of those who had collaborated with the Nazis who had occupied their country for just four years. It would be unnatural if Iraqis were not bent on revenge against those who had oppressed them for three decades. It is hard to be overly troubled by the sight of Iraqis looting the homes and offices of leading Baathists. Why shouldn't the people take back a few of the regime's ill-gotten gains? To add a touch of poetic justice, Iraqis also cleaned out the German embassy and the French cultural center in east Baghdad, well aware that Germany and France tried to block their liberation. There are, to be sure, some more troubling events going on, such as the looting of the national museum and hospitals, along with some scattered violence. Those events are regrettable, but also inevitable when one force suddenly collapses and another is just arriving. Given how few casualties have been inflicted so far on either Iraqi civilians or coalition forces, a few more tragic losses at this point are hardly cause to declare the entire mission less than a complete success. Now that the fighting is dying down, coalition troops are starting to turn their attention to policing, and already Baghdad seems to be getting more orderly. But no matter how much things improve, it's a safe bet the press will find some bad news to report. Some of these nearsighted reporters just can't see the victory staring them in the face. Max Boot Date: 04/16/03 Time: 03:09 PM Comments Here's one short paragraph from a speech by Tim Robbins. But I have included the url where you can read his entire speech. It's absolutely superb. DON'T MISS IT!!! Matilda "In the 19 months since 9-11, we have seen our democracy compromised by fear and hatred. Basic inalienable rights, due process, the sanctity of the home have been quickly compromised in a climate of fear. A unified American public has grown bitterly divided, and a world population that had profound sympathy and support for us has grown contemptuous and distrustful, viewing us as we once viewed the Soviet Union, as a rogue state." http://www.democracynow.org. Date: 04/16/03 Time: 04:13 PM Comments There's an old saying: If you keep your mouth shut people may think you're an idiot. If you say something, they'll know for sure. Mr. Robbins, who is an actor of some talent -- which equates to being a good story teller, would be better advised to let others continue to write his scripts. How, exactly, have we seen "democracy compromised" since 9-11? What rights and the sanctity of whose home were "quickly compromised in a climate of fear" ? How did a "unifed" American public grow divided (when were we unifed over anything -- you Bush haters have never and will never give up). And the entire population of the world views us a rogue state? Give me a break! Most of the world (and all of the adults) applaud the US. It's only you mindless Idiotarians (who genuinely belived in your unique access to the TRUTH) who decry us. Date: 04/16/03 Time: 04:19 PM Comments For Matilda, who screams that IRAQ HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH 9/11! This, from that liberal bastion, the LA Times: Two weeks ago, Italian police arrested seven alleged Al Qaeda operatives. They were charged with sending about 40 extremists through Syria to terrorist bases operated jointly by Al Qaeda and Ansar al Islam, whose stronghold in northeast Iraq was recently overrun by Kurdish and U.S. troops. Transcripts of wiretapped conversations among the suspected operatives and others paint a detailed picture of overseers in Syria coordinating the movement of recruits and money between Europe and Iraq, according to court documents obtained by The Times. An Italian judicial order dated March 31 said the conversations show that a Kurdish spiritual leader, identified as Mullah Fuad, was the respected "gatekeeper in Syria for volunteers intent on reaching Iraq." Mullah Fuad and others based near Damascus gave orders to the suspects in Italy, authorities said. On March 23, a caller from Syria identified as Abdullah instructed an Egyptian in Milan to do all he could to procure fraudulent documents for an accused Somali terrorist, according to authorities. "When he contacts you, be at his complete disposal," said Abdullah, according to a transcript of the wiretapped conversation. "Anything he asks, give it to him. Anything he needs, get it for him." "I'm at your orders, God willing," replied the Egyptian, identified as Rady Ayashi. He was arrested a week later as he attempted to flee to Syria. Italian investigators say that ... the activity of the alleged terror network raises questions because the Syrian government has aggressive security services that would likely be aware of extremists operating in their territory. "We are not interested in the politics of it," an Italian law enforcement official said Thursday. "The investigation shows that there were several leaders in Syria. That's the bottom line." Date: 04/17/03 Time: 09:25 AM Comments First of all, the LA Times is FAR from a "liberal bastion". Secondly, please give me, if you can, the exact references that report what you claim. I will truly appreciate it. If what you say has any truth in it, it would have been repeated a million times on Fox news. Plus...the Bush administration would have been shouting it from the housetops....no? This is the first I've heard about it. Matilda Date: 04/17/03 Time: 12:04 PM Comments For Matilda: 1. Is the LA Times a "liberal bastion"? This, from David Horowitz (http://www.townhall.com/columnists/davidhorowitz/dh20030103.shtml). In last Sunday's Los Angeles Times (do you ever wonder why the coasts vote for the left?) Neil Gabler, professor at the Annenberg School of Journalism at USC pretended to be unable to detect liberal bias in the media, including leftwing papers like the one he was writing in. Perhaps that's because he also failed to notice that the Annenberg School is run by a former Clinton Administration official and -- like journalism schools across the country -- its faculty is one hundred percent leftwing. People who call themselves liberals and democrats yet participate and run a system that ruthlessly excludes any view that is not on the left are probably incapable of making sensible comments about the political world we live in anyway. Which brings us today’s Los Angles Times frontpage editorial supporting aid to the longest surviving dictator in the world (but a progressive one). The Times story attacks the US economic sanctions against Cuba because ordinary Cubans are suffering. Don't even ask whether the Times ever ran a story anywhere let alone on the front page attacking the economic sanctions against South Africa because ordinary South Africans were suffering (and they were). The headline for this “news story” itself makes the editorial point: “Many Question Embargo as Cubans Suffer.” The author of the piece, Carol J. Williams demonstrates early that she is an ignoramus of Pulitzer proportions it comes to this pathetic island prison. “Life in Cuba, once one of Latin America’s most prosperous countries has deteriorated over the past decade, putting the tropical island on a level with the region’s most hopeless and destitute nations.” In fact, one can pinpoint the deterioration of the economy of Cuba with precision accuracy as having begun 40 years ago, January 1, 1959, the day a victorious Communist named Fidel Castro entered Havana. Cuba’s descent from the second most prosperous nation in Latin America to the third or fourth poorest was an accomplished fact 30 years ago not ten. Williams follows up this noxious lie with an equally mendacious proposition: “Abandoned by Soviet mentors and isolated by more than 40 years of U.S. embargo, Cubans wanting to put food on the table now must navigate shortages, ....” In reality, Cuba is not at all isolated, since every country in the world trades with Cuba but the United States, including all of Latin America. The problem is that a sadistic dictator has ruined Cuba’s economy and Cuba has nothing to trade but its women (which it does with socialist enthusiasm). Cuba's poverty is caused by the crackpot Marxist doctrines imposed by its sociopathic ruler and promoted by half the liberal arts professors on American faculties. As if this were not enough, the Los Angeles Times account blames capitalism for Castro’s present exploitation of his subject people: "In what amounts to a case of cutthroat capitalism to cover communism’s economic failures, the regime of President Fidel Castro -- who came to power on New Year's Day 44 years ago -- is cashing in on the US sanctions imposed after the 1959 revolution, in the hope that deprivation would prompt Cubans to revolt.” This is an illiterate sentence (don’t try to understand it) but what it is attempting to insinuate is that the Cuban gangster’s policy of encouraging tourism and prostitution at the expense of ordinary Cubans is somehow America’s fault. Oh, and don’t be fooled by the reference to Communism’s economic failures—for the progressives at the Times that wasn’t “real” socialism anyway. Real socialism is what they’re trying to salvage by promoting an aid program for Castro. (After all even Soviet dictators criticized Stalin after the fact.) Consider this self-indicting sentence: “Most damaging, however, is the ban on extending credit to allow Cuba to buy more food from the bountiful US farm belt." Oh-ho, so what is really going on here is that the pro-Communist left is promoting a bailout for Castro’s monster regime in the form of US loans. Nice. And these shills for a bankrupt socialist police state call themselves “progressives.” 2. Here are four links on the Syria-Iraq-Al Qaeda connection: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2003/04/16/MN268781.DTL http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/04/16/1050172655079.html http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2003/4/16/220139.shtml http://www.boston.com/dailynews/106/world/Italian_investigators_say_they:.shtml There's also lots of information about Iraq's connection to Mohammed Atta, the Kuwaiti "credentials" (altered archives in Kuwait among the detritus left by the Iraq's after they were forced out) of Taliban and Al Qaeda "soldiers", etc. And here's some late news from today's UK Telegraph: Saddam link to terror group -- http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/ Saddam Hussein's regime was linked to an African Islamist terrorist group, according to intelligence papers seen by The Telegraph. The documents provide the first hard evidence of ties between Iraq and religious terrorism. Secret dossiers detailing the group's discussions with the Iraqi Intelligence Service were found in the spies' Baghdad headquarters, among the detritus of shredding. The papers show how Iraq's charge d'affaires in Nairobi, Fallah Hassan Al Rubdie, was in discussion with the Allied Democratic Forces, a Ugandan guerrilla group with ties to other anti-western Islamist organisations. While the United States has long argued that Saddam's regime was aiding Islamist groups, it has struggled until now to provide compelling evidence. In a letter to the head of the Iraqi spy agency, a senior ADF operative outlined his group's efforts to set up an "international mujahideen team". Its mission, he said, "will be to smuggle arms on a global scale to holy warriors fighting against US, British and Israeli influences in Africa, the Middle East, Asia and the Far East". The letter, dated April 2001, was signed: "Your Brother, Bekkah Abdul Nassir, Chief of Diplomacy ADF Forces". Nassir offered to "vet, recruit and send youth to train for the jihad" at a centre in Baghdad, which he described as a "headquarters for international holy warrior network". It was not clear whether the centre was established. "We should not allow the enemy to focus on Afghanistan and Iraq, but we should attack their international criminal forces inside every base," the letters said. The ADF emerged in 1996, when it launched a rebellion against President Yoweri Museveni's government. In December 2001 the movement was placed on the US list of terrorist organisations. Throughout its campaign the ADF has been provided with weapons and funding by the Islamist government in Sudan, one of more than half a dozen states Washington accuses of sponsoring terrorism. The key figure behind the ADF is widely acknowledged to be a fundamentalist Islamic cleric, Sheikh Jamil Makulu. According to the Ugandan government and western intelligence sources, Sheikh Makulu became friendly with Osama bin Laden in the early to mid-Nineties, when the al-Qa'eda chief was living in Khartoum. The IIS's headquarters were only loosely guarded by US special forces yesterday. The Telegraph entered the building through one of the many holes left by devastating bombing. Date: 04/17/03 Time: 02:18 PM Comments Lawrence Eagleburger, who was US Secretary of State under George Bush Sr., told the BBC: "If George Bush [Jr.] decided he was going to turn the troops loose on Syria, and Iran after that he would last in office for about 15 minutes. In fact if President Bush were to try that now even I would think that he ought to be impeached. You can't get away with that sort of thing in this democracy." Date: 04/18/03 Time: 05:31 AM Comments UN Weapons chief seapons inspector speaks out in Spain interview: "Consider the case of the production of contracts for a presumed Iraqi purchase of enriched uranium from Níger," Blix said. "This was a crude lie. All false. The information was provided to the International Atomic Energy Agency (OIEA) by the U.S. intelligence services. As for the mobile laboratories, in attempting to verify the data that was passed on to us by the Americans, we only found some trucks dedicated to the processing and control of seeds for agriculture." http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=15666 Date: 04/18/03 Time: 05:34 AM Comments UPI reveals the long, close alliance between the CIA and Saddam Hussein, starting when the agency paid a young Hussein to assassinate Iraq's prime minister (he failed) and then continued to fund his bloody rise in the Ba'ath Party. Also: Robert Fisk's eyewitness account of the preventable destruction of the Iraqi National Library. http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/ Date: 04/18/03 Time: 06:29 AM Comments I would very much appreciate an explanation, if possible, from one of you Bush supporters. Forty-eight hours before invading Iraq, Bush said that it was to give Hussein time to leave the country. If he left the country, there would be no invasion. It was to be the very last chance for Iraq to avoid the war. Sadam Hussein refused publicly, and the US invaded. NOW....the Bush administration is making threatening remarks to Syria about harboring Sadam or members of his Ba'th party. Don't you find this a bit strange??? Sadam was told to leave, and he left. Obviously he had to go SOMEWHERE!!!! Does this mean that the US intended to bomb any country he might flee to??? Good thing he's not hiding in Brooklyn, no? As for the WMD, they have not been found, either by the UN inspectors, or by us. So Bush is now claiming they have been transferred to Syria. But we all know that that whole area has been under satellite surveillance for years. Satellite photos can tell if a coin is heads or tails. Surely they could see the movement of WMDs. How dumb does this administration and its subservient media think we are??? Matilda Date: 04/18/03 Time: 07:46 AM Comments http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0416-09.htmFor Lack of a Beautiful Mind by Joyce Marcel For lack of a beautiful mind, I care about the Iraqi dead and wounded. I care about the looting and destruction. I care about the lies and hypocrisy of my government and what comes next: the profiteering and the attempt to convert the Iraqis to Christianity. For lack of a beautiful mind, I can not be like Barbara Bush, the queen mother, our lady of the white hair and pearls, who believes that her son the president was called upon by God to lead this nation. "Why should we hear about body bags and deaths...?" she said on television just before the war. "Oh, I mean, it's not relevant. So why should I waste my beautiful mind on something like that?" Date: 04/18/03 Time: 09:03 AM Comments Here are a couple of paragraphs of a statement made by Howard Dean. I don't have the url for the entire article (a GOOD one), but I think you can find it on www.commondreams.org "This unilateral approach to foreign policy is a disaster. All of the challenges facing the United States - from winning the war on terror and containing weapons of mass destruction to building an open world economy and protecting the global environment - can only be met by working with our allies. A renegade, go-it-alone approach will be doomed to failure, because these challenges know no boundaries. The largest, most sophisticated military in the history of the world cannot eliminate the threat of sleeper terrorist cells. That task requires the highest level of intelligence cooperation with our allies. Even the largest, most sophisticated military in the history of the world cannot be expected to go to war against every evil dictator who may possess chemical weapons. This calls for an aggressive and effective diplomatic effort, conducted in full cooperation with a united international community, and preferably with the backing of the multilateral institutions we helped to build for just this purpose. This challenge requires treaties - such as the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty - that this Administration has sometimes treated cavalierly. In any case, war should be a last resort or an option to be used in the face of an imminent threat." Date: 04/18/03 Time: 09:26 AM Comments Robert Steinback (of the Miami Herald) A Dissenter Looks at War's Consequences (excerpt) It was never Bush's mission to raise world consciousness about Iraqi freedom; that was a belated excuse for the war he intended to fight all along. Surely the world's most powerful and influential nation has many tools at its disposal besides war for the cause of liberty. Yet Bush never considered any of them. http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/columnists/robert_steinback/5633755.htm Robert Steinback A Dissenter Looks at War's Consequences Date: 04/18/03 Time: 09:37 AM Comments It would be so much easier to reply to your messages if you would sign your name, or if you don't want to do that, at least identify yourself with a phony name. After all, this is not a chat room, and I don't sit here waiting for messages to reply to!! But about 10 or 11 posts back, one of you made the statement: "Most of the world (and all of the adults) applaud the US" My question, dear reader is: What the hell planet have you been living on?????????????????????? Matilda Date: 04/18/03 Time: 10:20 AM Comments As war with Iraq winds down, expect the Democrats' war against President Bush to heat up. Mostly, it will fall along these lines: President Bush cares more about Iraqis than Americans . he is spending too much over there when more needs to be done here . the president cares only about the wealthiest 1 percent and not average people. TV networks don't rerun programs as often as Democrats rerun their class-warfare "reality show." Standing in the springtime Rose Garden last Tuesday (April 15), President Bush tried to get a head start on the coming economic debate by demanding Congress approve at least $550 billion in tax relief over the next 10 years. He had originally asked for $726 billion over the same period. He should have stuck to his guns with the original figure. While the president said his proposed tax cut would stimulate the economy by creating more jobs, which would then provide more revenue to the government from more taxpayers, it would have helped his case to emphasize the wasteful spending by Congress, along with the fraud and abuse committed throughout government. He mentioned the spending part, but he should have given examples in order to attract the public's attention and bypass the media filter. Citizens Against Government Waste continues to serve the public's interest with the publication of its annual "Pig Book." The president should carry it around with him like a Bible and quote passages whenever he speaks. The public would get it when he cites examples of how our money is wasted. Brian Riedl, a fellow in Federal Budgetary Affairs at the Heritage Foundation (www.heritage.org), has written an easy-to-understand spending-reduction proposal he says would offset more than half of the president's original $726 billion tax cut plan. Riedl also notes the federal government is projected to collect $27.9 trillion in taxes over 10 years and that if Congress agreed to the full $726 billion tax cut, the government would still rake in $27.2 trillion. That hardly rates as a "major" tax cut, as Democrats and "moderate" Republicans claim. Riedl projects that if federal spending could be eliminated on things for which U.S. Treasury auditors cannot even account (known by the euphemism "unreconciled transactions"), taxpayers would save more than $17.1 billion in 2004 and $171 billion by 2013. Fixing errors in the Medicare payment system would save $12.1 billion next year and $121 billion by 2013. Repairing errors in housing payments would save $3.3 billion in 2004 and $33 billion by 2013. Riedl offers other examples totaling $35 billion in first-year savings and $350 billion over 10 years. The tax cut would not produce a static loss in revenue because the stimulation to the economy that comes from more jobs and an injection of more capital through consumer spending would offset a portion of it. There are two causes for deficits and only two: not enough revenue or too much spending. The U.S. government ought to be able to live within our means when it is getting a projected $27.9 trillion over the next decade. The problem is spending. Too many members of Congress act like Third World dictators with our money. Instead of buying gold-plated thrones and rifles recently discovered by American forces in Iraq, our spendthrifts take our money and convert it into pork projects they use to keep themselves in office. The president should revive the Golden Fleece Award used successfully by former Sen. William Proxmire (D-Wis.) to shame some of his congressional colleagues. It would be one way to at least balance, if not refocus, attention on spending, not taxes or even revenue. Everywhere he goes Bush should cite examples of waste, fraud and abuse, asking voters to send representatives to Washington who will treat other people's money the way they treat their own. Focusing on spending is the way to combat the predictable class-warfare sloganeering of Democrats (and some Republicans) who want to tell us how much of our money they will allow us to keep, when we should be telling them how much of our money we will let them spend. Cal Thomas http://www.jewishworldreview.com/cols/thomas1.asp Date: 04/18/03 Time: 11:25 AM Comments An earlier post said: Even the largest, most sophisticated military in the history of the world cannot be expected to go to war against every evil dictator who may possess chemical weapons. This calls for an aggressive and effective diplomatic effort.... In order for diplomacy to work, other nations have to believe that we are capable and willing to back up our words with force. US diplocatic actions will now be more effective, because other countries won't think we have a weak, spineless liberal leader. I think you should stop saying this was a unilateral conflict. We had the backing and support of many countries, some even sent troops. We are the most powerful nation in the world, so we rightly carried the heaviest load. Date: 04/18/03 Time: 11:25 AM Comments An earlier post said: Even the largest, most sophisticated military in the history of the world cannot be expected to go to war against every evil dictator who may possess chemical weapons. This calls for an aggressive and effective diplomatic effort.... In order for diplomacy to work, other nations have to believe that we are capable and willing to back up our words with force. US diplocatic actions will now be more effective, because other countries won't think we have a weak, spineless liberal leader. I think you should stop saying this was a unilateral conflict. We had the backing and support of many countries, some even sent troops. We are the most powerful nation in the world, so we rightly carried the heaviest load. Date: 04/19/03 Time: 08:00 AM Comments AMERICA WAS ATTACKED a little over a year and a half ago. This assault was the product of two decades of American weakness in the face of terror and three decades of American fecklessness in the Middle East. From the barely-responded-to bombing of the Marine barracks in Lebanon in 1983 to the host of subsequent, little-noticed or quickly forgotten attacks in the later 1980s and in the 1990s, we came to be seen as a "weak horse." That characterization was Osama bin Laden's, and he made it with reason. Similarly, from the oil embargo of 1973 through the destruction of a free and democratic Lebanon in the mid-1970s by the Palestine Liberation Organization and the Syrians, to the Khomeini revolution in Iran, the accelerated Saudi export of violent Wahhabi Islam to America and the world, and Saddam Hussein's brutalities in the 1980s and 1990s, the United States rolled with the punches. Saddam, to cite an egregious example, was allowed to stay in power after being routed in the Gulf War, then held accountable only on rare occasions for continually violating the ceasefire he signed. Along the way, the United States decided its proper response to Middle East tyranny and brutality should be not to punish our enemies and stand up for our principles, but rather to focus on a "peace process" between democratic Israel and the master-terrorist Yasser Arafat. But that era--in which the American stance was one of doubt, we