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

To: carranza2 who wrote (58701)	11/25/2002 12:14:48 PM
From: zonder	Respond to of 281500

I cannot of course know the inner wishes and desires of the "regular posting community" here, but would like to point out that we have seen numerous posts referring to how the Saudi or the "axis of evil" or North Korea or Iran would be next after "regime change" was affected in Iraq. While I cannot say many people here "want war" per se, this makes me doubt that they wish to avoid it.

To: carranza2 who wrote (58701)	11/25/2002 1:00:46 PM
From: Win Smith	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

Some historical notes on the allegedly nonexistent desire for war among the "right minded". Used to be, this was my favorite, from Sept. 2001. But in which direction? NEWSWEEK has learned that at a two-day meeting of the Pentagon’s Defense Policy Board, which is chaired by hard-liner Richard Perle, eminent conservatives including Henry Kissinger, James Schlesinger, Dan Quayle and Newt Gingrich reached a consensus that Iraq should be targeted quickly after Afghanistan. “When the U.S. loses what may be more than 6,000 people, there has to be reaction so that the world clearly knows that things have changed,” Gingrich told NEWSWEEK. msnbc.com Turns out that Rummy was way ahead of Perle and his merry band hotheads and retreads, though. Plans For Iraq Attack Began On 9/11 cbsnews.com [in full] CBS News has learned that barely five hours after American Airlines Flight 77 plowed into the Pentagon, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld was telling his aides to come up with plans for striking Iraq — even though there was no evidence linking Saddam Hussein to the attacks. That's according to notes taken by aides who were with Rumsfeld in the National Military Command Center on Sept. 11 – notes that show exactly where the road toward war with Iraq began, reports CBS News National Security Correspondent David Martin. At 9:53 a.m., just 15 minutes after the hijacked plane had hit the Pentagon, and while Rumsfeld was still outside helping with the injured, the National Security Agency, which monitors communications worldwide, intercepted a phone call from one of Osama bin Laden's operatives in Afghanistan to a phone number in the former Soviet Republic of Georgia. The caller said he had "heard good news" and that another target was still to come; an indication he knew another airliner, the one that eventually crashed in Pennsylvania, was at that very moment zeroing in on Washington. It was 12:05 p.m. when the director of Central Intelligence told Rumsfeld about the intercepted conversation. Rumsfeld felt it was "vague," that it "might not mean something," and that there was "no good basis for hanging hat." In other words, the evidence was not clear-cut enough to justify military action against bin Laden. But later that afternoon, the CIA reported the passenger manifests for the hijacked airliners showed three of the hijackers were suspected al Qaeda operatives. "One guy is associate of Cole bomber," the notes say, a reference to the October 2000 suicide boat attack on the USS Cole in Yemen, which had also been the work of bin Laden. With the intelligence all pointing toward bin Laden, Rumsfeld ordered the military to begin working on strike plans. And at 2:40 p.m., the notes quote Rumsfeld as saying he wanted "best info fast. Judge whether good enough hit S.H." – meaning Saddam Hussein – "at same time. Not only UBL" – the initials used to identify Osama bin Laden. Now, nearly one year later, there is still very little evidence Iraq was involved in the Sept. 11 attacks. But if these notes are accurate, that didn't matter to Rumsfeld. "Go massive," the notes quote him as saying. "Sweep it all up. Things related and not."