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Politics : DON'T START THE WAR -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: PartyTime who wrote (4)	1/2/2003 11:41:35 PM
From: Karen Lawrence	Respond to of 25898

Will any good come from 2003? By Rasheed Abou-Alsamh www.arabnews.com I’m sure that I’m not the only one who felt depressed and rather miserable this year at a New Year’s Eve party. With a looming war in Iraq that will have untold consequences, a worldwide economic downward spiral and continuing attacks on Americans worldwide, this new year is one of the most troublesome since 1991, when a counter-invasion of Kuwait was about to be launched by the United States and its allies. Last New Year at least we were all relieved and happy to see the back of 2001, the year of the horrific 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington. Life had nowhere else to go but up. After all, what could be worse than those attacks except for nuclear Armageddon? I know that I have many reasons to be thankful and happy: I have a nice home, a good job, plenty to eat, excellent healthcare, good friends and good health. That’s more than can be said for millions of poor people across the globe who struggle on a daily basis to survive on a $1 a day, with dirty water supplies, meager food, no healthcare to speak of, violence and disease. Economic deprivation leads to mental stress and self-doubt. Having enough money is the key to so many things that make a peaceful life possible. I’m hearing people everywhere saying they’re so uncertain about the future that they don’t want to spend unnecessary amounts of money on luxuries, opting to save that money and wait and see what happens. I personally don’t blame them, especially after hearing what one Arab fortune teller had to say about the Middle East’s future on an Orbit television program on New Year’s Eve: That the war between Iraq and the US would last not for three months, but for three years! That Iran and Russia would ally themselves with Iraq, and that Europe and the US would fight a huge war in Palestine trying to help Israel defend itself from an onslaught of Arab attacks. Despite these dire predictions, I see spots of light that bring hope that human nature can many times surprise us and do much good rather than bad. The inauguration of Brazil’s new leftist president Luis Inacio da Silva, aka Lula, brought a smile to my face. The millions of impoverished Brazilians now have hope after someone who came from their ranks was elected and sworn in as their president. I am doubtful that Lula will be able to meet all of the challenges he faces in only one term of office, but let’s give him the benefit of the doubt. Another thing that made me smile was the movie “Victor/Victoria”. I was watching it last night on Turner Classic Movies, and caught the scene where an impoverished Julie Andrews (Victor/Victoria) is stuffing her face with plate after plate of food at a Paris restaurant, of course with no money to speak of with which to pay the bill. Instead, she has a live cockroach in her handbag (“bigger than your thumb,” she tells her dining companion), which she plans to spring into her salad when it is served after the main course. Naturally, by the time she shakes her bag over her salad, the insect has already crawled out of the bag and onto the table. This is the old trick of deliberately placing an insect in your food at the end of the meal so that you don’t have to pay the bill, but it nevertheless sent me howling when everyone started shrieking in the restaurant and jumping up as the monster roach rampaged through the eatery! If real life were only so simple and laughter filled! ****

To: PartyTime who wrote (4)	1/2/2003 11:53:47 PM
From: tfrugal	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 25898

Pt, being good at manipulating public opinion is the essence of politics, at least in a democracy, no? I still think that we don't actually fight in Iraq, Saddam folds at the last possible instant. I don't think our position is a bluff, but that 'sole superpower' moniker means nothing if we can't impose our will in places like Iraq. Maybe we should not have started on this path, but it's too late to stop. Who listens to us if we don't? If Saddam ends up in some gilded cage somewhere, with his life guaranteed by all this world opinion, and our cost is only the military build up, that is win-win right? Saddam is a bad guy, and should not be leading there. We made him, so why can't we unmake him?