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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Nadine Carroll who wrote (31623)	6/5/2002 10:51:00 PM
From: paul_philp	Respond to of 281500

What do self-interest and rational compromise have to do with each other? You have an exagerated view of Israel's moral character as you do of the monstroisity of the Palestinians. However, since you allow for no grey in a black and white world, there is no point continue the discussion. Paul

To: Nadine Carroll who wrote (31623)	6/6/2002 1:36:56 AM
From: LindyBill	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

June 6, 2002 What Else Are We Missing? By WILLIAM SAFIRE [W] ASHINGTON ? For years I used to drive up Massachusetts Avenue past the vice president's house and would notice a lonely, determined guy across the street holding a sign claiming he'd been sodomized by a priest. Must be a nut, I figured ? and thereby ignored a clue to the biggest religious scandal of the century. In the same way, clues to the most dismaying financial scandal of our time ? the off-the-books legerdemain that ruined Enron and stained the accounting dodge ? were largely ignored by sleepy credit agencies, conflicted analysts and most of the business media. Similarly, but with a lethal result, clues to the conspiracy to launch the Sept. 11 attacks were overlooked by the C.I.A. and F.B.I. and undersighted by Congressional oversight staffs. ("I see, Holmes." "You see, my dear Watson, but you do not observe.") In addition to asking, "What else did we know back then?" we should be asking, "What are we missing right now?" Hindsight is useful only when it improves our foresight. For example, front pages now focus on a potential India-Pakistan conflict and on Yasir Arafat's war on Israel. But in a year's time, editors may be directing reporters to find out why investors had not been warned of an incipient bear market; or why parents had not been warned of the effect on teenagers of the F.B.I.'s sudden withdrawal from crackdowns on drug kingpins; or why nobody here knew of some country's secret research into cloning of humans. Six months from now, stunned political analysts may be searching for reasons that the G.O.P. took back the Senate while losing the House to Democrats. Could it be that Tom Daschle lost his Senate majority because he waffled on the need to invade Iraq ? while the reason Dick Gephardt became House speaker was that he urged President Bush to match his oratory with speedy action to remove Saddam's terrorist threat? Let's put on tomorrow's retrospectacles today. Place yourself in 2003, looking back on what we knew and what we did about the Iraqi threat in the summer of the previous year. In May and June of 2002, State Department officials were arguing strenuously for no military action to achieve "regime change" until Turkey was fully a part of a broad anti-Saddam coalition. Mid-level generals, fearful of comparisons with our cakewalk victory of a decade ago, were infuriating their Pentagon superiors with leaks downmouthing the whole operation. The C.I.A., having failed previously in a Baghdad coup attempt, could not decide on which indigenous Iraqi dissidents to equip and train for an uprising to support our invasion. To restrain Bush's hawks, C.I.A. doves denied any connection between Saddam and Al Qaeda, despite hard intelligence linking Mohamed Atta, the leading suicide hijacker, with the Iraqi spymaster in Prague ? a fact reaffirmed in June to The Prague Post by Hynek Kmonicek, the Czech ambassador to the U.N. Assume, for argument's sake, that in the spring of 2003 U.S., British and Turkish forces invade Iraq. Assume the best ? that with the support of 70,000 Kurdish fighters plus some indigenous Shiites and discontented Sunnis, we liberate that country. But also assume the worst ? that Saddam will go down fighting with nuclear and germ warheads weaponized in 2002. Shocked Americans would be asking: Who knew what and when? Did the C.I.A. inform the president that Rihab Taha, "Dr. Germs," had provided anthrax and other biological agents to Saddam's Republican Guard? Did the president know that an untested atomic device could be detonated to punish invaders along with the Iraqi people? If so, should we have saved lives by going in earlier? Or knowing the cost later, should we have sought to appease the dictator? As we engage in hindsight today about what data could have been assembled to prevent the Sept. 11 attacks, we can hope that Bush's National Security Council is also looking back from an imagined future. That's how to avert disasters. Journalists can help by examining even the most seemingly far-out claims. I see where Ouyang Ziyuan, chief scientist of China's space program, told People's Daily that Beijing plans to establish a manned base on the moon within eight years. He then denied to the BBC that he ever said it. Must be a nut. Even so . .

To: Nadine Carroll who wrote (31623)	6/6/2002 1:59:53 AM
From: Bilow	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

Hi Nadine Carroll; Re: "Who wanted the war, and who tried hard to solve disputes by negotiation?" Perhaps the best way to analyze this would be to chart death rates for Palestinians due to Israeli action against death rates for Israelis due to Palestinian action. The side that was in favor of conflict will be the side that accelerated the death rate first. This is consistent with the usual assumption that the side that sent its troops to attack the other side first is the one that started it. Do you have a source for Israeli and Palestinian deaths on a monthly basis? I'll volunteer to do the charting, and post the results on this thread. -- Carl