Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: rich4eagle who wrote (295363)	9/10/2002 11:13:37 PM
From: E	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769667

If what is fabricated?

To: rich4eagle who wrote (295363)	9/10/2002 11:36:21 PM
From: E	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 769667

Don't forget to answer. If what is fabricated? Like... 9/11? Say it. If you aren't embarrassed to.

To: rich4eagle who wrote (295363)	9/11/2002 12:05:26 AM
From: Doug R	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 769667

...a more serious threat to the world has emerged. That threat, perhaps not so ironically, is the United States itself. America has become a rogue state, a danger to itself and others, a superpower on the verge of losing all self-control. This is not the analysis merely of those that my friends in the right-wing press like to call professional anti-Americans. It is one that, in different ways, is articulated by members of the U.S. power elite itself — including some whose patriotic and conservative credentials are impeccable. Inside the United States, this critique has crystallized over President George W. Bush's obsession with Iraq. One by one, advisers to former Republican presidents — including George Bush Sr. — have stepped forward to advise the younger Bush against taking unilateral action against Iraq and its dictator, Saddam Hussein. "The issue before us is not simply whether the United States should end the regime of Saddam Hussein, but whether we as a nation are prepared to physically occupy territory in the Middle East for the next 30 to 50 years," warns James Webb, a Navy secretary under former U.S. president Ronald Reagan. But Iraq is merely the most visible point of contention. At base, these old Cold Warriors are decrying the Bush administration's hubris, its decision not just to act alone but to deliberately destroy an elaborate international structure that previous U.S. regimes spent decades constructing. Writing last week in the Washington Post, former U.S. president Jimmy Carter blamed a cabal around the younger Bush for trying to rewrite the world order "under the cover of the proclaimed war against terrorism." Specifically, Carter decried the Bush administration's attack on human rights — its practice of jailing Americans without charge or trial, and its flouting of the Geneva Convention on prisoners of war. "These actions," he wrote, "are similar to those of abusive regimes that historically have been condemned by American presidents." Yet these are just part of a broader piece, he went on. The Bushites have "thrown down counterproductive gauntlets to the rest of the world" by sabotaging a host of U.S.-supported efforts — including a treaty to control chemical and biological weapons, anti-torture proposals, the international world court, nuclear arms agreements. In the sober establishment magazine Foreign Affairs, Georgetown University political scientist G. John Ikenberry expands this argument. Since 1945, he writes, the U.S. has worked to create a network of alliances designed to encourage capitalist markets and protect American interests. These "historic bargains" as Ikenberry calls them, favoured the U.S. But at the same time, they created a framework of rules in which America, like all other members, agreed to operate. Even before Sept. 11, key figures in the new Bush administration were preparing to jettison these bargains in favour of what Ikenberry calls a "neo-imperial grand strategy" in which America would be bound by no constraints. But the terror attacks provided a new justification. Like Carter and other establishment critics, he predicts the new strategy will backfire. Not only will it prove too costly for America to police the world alone, he says, but by increasing the resentment of America's erstwhile allies, it will leave the U.S. virtually friendless. It is this new, rogue nature of America that explains much of the world's unease over Bush's plan to invade Iraq. The French, German, Russian and Canadian governments don't weep for Saddam Hussein. But if America breaks all international rules to invade Iraq, where will it stop? Already U.S. officials are musing about moving against Libya, Sudan and Yemen. Americans look at Iraq and see an aggressive country run by a ruthless dictator who gives not a fig for world opinion and who wants to develop nuclear bombs. The rest of the world looks at America and sees a country historically far more aggressive than Iraq, one that is currently run by a casual and arrogant cabal that cares nothing for world opinion, one that not only possesses, but has actually used nuclear weapons. thestar.com