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

To: JohnM who wrote (51624)	10/12/2002 11:08:09 PM
From: LindyBill	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Chomsky are out of bounds. I think we have exhausted the subject. I thought the Debka post by Nadine on the Arafat situation was interesting. We don't know if the details are correct, but the point that interests me is that Bush's rejection of Arafat really worked. This was one of the first results of the new position the US is in. What we say, goes, to almost an alarming degree. You, of course, are afraid that a a Right Wing Administration will go to far. I am afraid that a Left Wing one will. We are constrained, of course, by WWD. We won't take on China. I am afraid of us getting involved, under a left wing admin, with some do-gooder mission in Africa or South America. The other area of concern to me is the reported interplay with Iran. That Government is still very hostile, and has actively financed terrorists that have killed Americans.

To: JohnM who wrote (51624)	10/13/2002 12:37:45 AM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 281500

Texas on the Tigris By MAUREEN DOWD Columnist The New York Times October 13, 2002 WASHINGTON — This has always been a place where people say the opposite of what they mean. But last week, the capital soared to ominous new Orwellian heights. Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton voted to let the president use force in Iraq because she didn't want the president to use force in Iraq. Giving Mr. Bush bipartisan support, she said, would make his success at the U.N. "more likely, and, therefore, war less likely." The White House feigned interest in negotiation while planning for annexation without representation. The Democrats were desperate to put the war behind them, so they put the war in front of them. They didn't want to seem weak, so they made the president stronger, which makes them weaker. Mr. Bush said he needed Congressional support to win at the U.N., but he wants to fail at the U.N. so he can install his own MacArthur as viceroy of Iraq. (Poor Tommy Franks may finally have to leave Tampa.) Mr. Bush says he's in a rush to go to war with Iraq because it's so strong, but he's in a rush to go to war with Iraq because it's so weak. In his Cincinnati speech, he warned of a menacing Iraqi drone that could fly across the ocean and spray germs or chemicals on us. But Pentagon experts say the drone could not make the trip and would have to be disassembled, shipped over, sneaked in and reassembled. Mr. Bush said he wanted an independent 9/11 commission to investigate more broadly what went wrong with the government before 9/11. But now he's trying to kill the panel because he already knows just about everything went wrong before 9/11. He doesn't want us to know. Doesn't he know that we already know? The president's father lamented in his diary in 1991 that his Persian Gulf war didn't have a clean end because "there is no battleship Missouri surrender." Now the son wants to skip the surrender and turn Baghdad into Houston East, putting a branch of the Petroleum Club at the intersection of the Tigris and the Euphrates. Tom Daschle, Dianne Feinstein and other doubters came around on Thursday to the view that Iraq is an urgent threat after the C.I.A. director, George Tenet, sent Congress a memo on Monday stating that Iraq is not an urgent threat. Mr. Tenet, a Clinton holdover, is desperate to please Mr. Bush. Senators joke that he gives the president intelligence briefings while polishing Mr. Bush's shoes. So the C.I.A. chief was embarrassed to find himself insinuating that W. is hyping his war. After providing the smoking gun to show that Mr. Bush has no smoking gun, the usually silent top spook was frantically calling reporters on Tuesday night to insist that there's no daylight between him and the president on Iraq. Let's see: Mr. Tenet says Saddam is unlikely to initiate a chemical or biological attack against us unless we attack him, and Mr. Bush says Saddam is likely to initiate a chemical or biological attack so we must attack him. The C.I.A. says Saddam will use his nasty weapons against us only if he thinks he has nothing to lose. So the White House leaks its plans about the occupation of Iraq, leaving Saddam nothing to lose. The president says Iraq is linked to Islamic terrorists so we must attack, while the C.I.A. says that Iraq will link up with Islamic terrorists only if we attack. Mr. Bush says the war on Iraq will help us in the war on terrorism. But somebody forgot to tell the Osama lieutenant Ayman al-Zawahiri, who says the war on Iraq justifies more terrorist attacks. Mr. Zawahiri's taped message has incited Al Qaeda warriors to new attacks while we're preoccupied with our post-occupation. When asked if Iraq in 2003 would look like Japan in 1945, Ari Fleischer said no, it would look like Afghanistan in 2002. But Afghanistan is now even more dangerous than the suburbs of Washington. We have lost interest in Afghanistan because we are too busy trying to turn Iraq into Japan. The Nobel committee gave Jimmy Carter the peace prize as a way of giving W. the war booby prize. Still, George Bush, the failed Harken oil executive, and Dick Cheney, the inept Halliburton chairman, will finally get their gusher. One day, the prez was shootin' at a dictator bein' rude, and up from the ground came a bubblin' crude. Oil, that is. Black gold. Baghdad tea. nytimes.com

To: JohnM who wrote (51624)	10/13/2002 1:27:09 AM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 281500

Man of peace A BOSTON GLOBE EDITORIAL 10/12/2002 JIMMY CARTER'S life is a lesson in renewal and the triumph of character over punditry. The former US president, who won the Nobel Peace Prize yesterday, could have easily disappeared from public view after leaving the White House 22 years ago - and there were those in the Democratic Party who hoped he would. Despite his success in brokering the 1978 peace accord between Egypt and Israel - one of many accomplishments that earned him this year's Nobel medal - by 1980 Carter was seen as an ineffectual leader who could not end the Iran hostage crisis abroad nor revive the economy at home, and who spoke of a national malaise when he might have rallied the public. No one would have been surprised if he'd sunk into an embittered retirement to pen a grudge book and play golf. But he went out into the wider world instead, building on his success in getting Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin to shake hands at Camp David, and on his commitment to a presidency that, in the words of the Nobel citation, put ''renewed emphasis on the place of human rights in international politics.'' Carter pressed the Soviet Union to adhere to the 1975 Helsinki Accord and expanded that social justice mission to other countries when he set up an office of human rights in the US State Department. After leaving the White House, Carter became a travel ing broker for peace, exhibiting, as the Nobel committee stated, ''untiring effort to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts, advance democracy and human rights, and to promote economic and social development.'' Through the Carter Center, which celebrated its 20th anniversary this year, he has gone himself, or sent workers, to 65 countries to monitor elections, battle disease, and help raise living standards. He has become America's nonpartisan elder statesman, with or without the blessing of the White House. While valued by Clinton for helping to win passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement and for getting the military junta to stand down in Haiti, Carter riled the administration with a 1994 freelance peace mission to North Korea - he refused to take calls from Washington as he cooled a nuclear dispute in a meeting with Kim Il-sung. Last month Carter criticized President George Bush's stand on Iraq, urging that the United States not act without support from the United Nations. The head of the Nobel committee, Gunnar Berge, said yesterday that the award was a slap at Bush, although other Nobel officials denied it. Carter refused to discuss Iraq yesterday, perhaps preferring to keep his silence as a man of peace. He did get a call from Bush, as well he should, for he deserves the cheers and gratitude of the nation and the world. boston.com