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Politics : Impeach George W. Bush -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: ManyMoose who wrote (18475)	12/30/2002 3:52:05 AM
From: jttmab	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 93284

Who is "we?" You sound like there are more than one of you. It's one of those common [or at least I thought it was] literary notations to indicate a generalization without identifying specific persons. You might refer to that as "obscure balderdash". I can sort of understand why a fatcat like Ted Kennedy would argue against the Second Amendment. He after all lost two brothers to the illegal use of illegal firearms. So he has standing. You have to be shot or a family member shot to have "standing"? Pretty amazing. The NRA would love to get cases into the Supreme Court, but the founding fathers left too many land mines and the USSC does not appear to have the cajones to go looking for them. The vast majority of cases that the NRA has brought to court that you think are 2nd amendment challenges, are not. The recent case in Texas is the only one that I've been able to find since 1939 that is a direct 2nd amendment challenge. Every other case that I've seen, or that has been offered as an example by a gun nut has been challenged on a States Rights violation. When the NRA sends out their literature they push 2nd amendment. When they get into Court, it's a States rights violation. The NRA and Ashcroft have both petitioned the Supreme Court to not hear the Texas case. jttmab

To: ManyMoose who wrote (18475)	12/30/2002 5:07:53 AM
From: jttmab	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 93284

The administrations of Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush authorized the sale to Iraq of numerous items that had both military and civilian applications, including poisonous chemicals and deadly biological viruses, such as anthrax and bubonic plague. U.S. Had Key Role in Iraq Buildup Trade in Chemical Arms Allowed Despite Their Use on Iranians, Kurds By Michael Dobbs Washington Post Staff Writer Monday, December 30, 2002; Page A01 High on the Bush administration's list of justifications for war against Iraq are President Saddam Hussein's use of chemical weapons, nuclear and biological programs, and his contacts with international terrorists. What U.S. officials rarely acknowledge is that these offenses date back to a period when Hussein was seen in Washington as a valued ally. Among the people instrumental in tilting U.S. policy toward Baghdad during the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war was Donald H. Rumsfeld, now defense secretary, whose December 1983 meeting with Hussein as a special presidential envoy paved the way for normalization of U.S.-Iraqi relations. Declassified documents show that Rumsfeld traveled to Baghdad at a time when Iraq was using chemical weapons on an "almost daily" basis in defiance of international conventions. The story of U.S. involvement with Saddam Hussein in the years before his 1990 attack on Kuwait -- which included large-scale intelligence sharing, supply of cluster bombs through a Chilean front company, and facilitating Iraq's acquisition of chemical and biological precursors -- is a topical example of the underside of U.S. foreign policy. It is a world in which deals can be struck with dictators, human rights violations sometimes overlooked, and accommodations made with arms proliferators, all on the principle that the "enemy of my enemy is my friend." Throughout the 1980s, Hussein's Iraq was the sworn enemy of Iran, then still in the throes of an Islamic revolution. U.S. officials saw Baghdad as a bulwark against militant Shiite extremism and the fall of pro-American states such as Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and even Jordan -- a Middle East version of the "domino theory" in Southeast Asia. That was enough to turn Hussein into a strategic partner and for U.S. diplomats in Baghdad to routinely refer to Iraqi forces as "the good guys," in contrast to the Iranians, who were depicted as "the bad guys." A review of thousands of declassified government documents and interviews with former policymakers shows that U.S. intelligence and logistical support played a crucial role in shoring up Iraqi defenses against the "human wave" attacks by suicidal Iranian troops. The administrations of Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush authorized the sale to Iraq of numerous items that had both military and civilian applications, including poisonous chemicals and deadly biological viruses, such as anthrax and bubonic plague..... washingtonpost.com