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

To: stockman_scott who wrote (68715)	1/25/2003 10:00:59 AM
From: PartyTime	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Stockman, Higgs pretty much tells it all. Why can't Bush. Here's an excerpt from his writing which should ring far and wide not only throughout America but the whole world. Perhaps it is and everyone in the world except America's Republican Right are getting the message. >>>Is it really more important to preserve the details of the government?s intelligence sources than to avert war by assisting the inspectors in locating and destroying the alleged Iraqi weapons, raw materials, and production facilities? If the U.S. government truly knows that such things exist in Iraq, what is so complicated about simply telling the inspectors where to find them?<<< alternet.org American journalists should take the question above and make it the only one asked, repeatedly, the next time the White House holds a press conference.

To: stockman_scott who wrote (68715)	1/25/2003 10:05:08 AM
From: PartyTime	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 281500

Moreover, think about how the Administration misled Congress in order to get its approval vote for marching into Iraq, with or without UN backing. Remember those aluminum tubes supposedly meant for Iraq's nuclear development program? Anyone looking back would know that this was a major portion of the proof Bush provided Congress in order to get the go-ahead vote he wanted. Given that the aluminum tube issue has is today completely debunked, should Congress request reconsideration of that vote, given the matter passed based on misinformation? >>>In any event, the president?s recently displayed impatience and undisguised hostility ill suit a leader who, thanks to congressional abdication, holds the power of war and peace in his own hands.<<< alternet.org

To: stockman_scott who wrote (68715)	1/25/2003 10:08:58 AM
From: Poet	Respond to of 281500

Scott, That was one of the best-written editorials I've seen describing where we are now. Higgs speaks for me, and very likely hundreds of thousands of Americans as well. The last paragraph bears re-posting: Despite what President Bush insists, time is on our side, not Saddam’s. We hold the upper hand in every way. It is no answer to catalog how under a host of conditions not yet realized and not likely to be realized soon, the Iraqi regime someday might seriously harm the American people here on our own territory. Justification of war requires that we face a definite, immediate, grave threat, and the administration has put forth no evidence that Iraq poses such a threat to us. In the present circumstances, then, a U.S. attack on Iraq would constitute a clear, utterly unjustified act of aggression. We ought not to tolerate a government that commits such acts in our name

To: stockman_scott who wrote (68715)	1/25/2003 10:20:39 AM
From: PartyTime	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

>>>If Americans allow themselves to become lodged in Iraq, ruling it directly or through a puppet regime, they will soon rue the day they plunged into that oil-rich but politically hopeless quagmire. If U.S. occupiers cannot deal successfully even with the rag-tag clans and warlords of Afghanistan, they won?t stand a chance in the treacherous ethnic, religious, and political cauldron known as Iraq.<<< Regime change. OK, it happens and now the new regime is complacent to the wishes and whims of the U.S. Time to rebuild the country. So everything for the first six months to a year seems well, there's this whole renewed feeling and all and Bush is thinking himself head of the Mutual Admiration Society. But time wears on. Not a lot of time, but a bit of time. Eventually, given a weakened state of Iraqi politics, i.e., a new opposition regime which can't get along, no matter what the US wants--both Turkey and Saudi Arabia become apprehensive about the respective interests of the northern Kurds and the southern Shiites. Some questions--I'm sure there are more: Would or could Turkey, fearing its own internal domestic political realities, move its troops into the north to head off an independent Kurd state? Would or could Saudi Arabia, although unlike to invade southern Iraq, make things very difficult for the new regime to succeed? Would Iran renew old wounds? Would Iraqi people evolve into a strong anti-American attitude, this while America works to reopen the country's oil business? Would suicide bombers move against Americans, thereby making it difficult to accomplish anything and putting America in a similar position that Israel sees today? With the US occupying the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, would this fact help to breed renewed and even greater hatred of Muslims against the Americans? For instance, will the present day moderate Muslims become radical Muslims? Will Al Qaeda's recruiters finally get the clear and convincing evidence they need in order to prove that their leader, Osama Bin Laden, has a point what with the American sitting in Baghdad? So many questions. And you know what? No matter how hard Bush, et. al. make their appeals to Rightwing America, there just ain't any easy answers to what's been asked above. I'll conclude by reminding folks that Bush should be paying attention to the American economy, and not get bogged down in Iraq in an attempt to solve what's been impossible to solve for centuries. Indeed, the only thing that'll help the MidEast is an enlightened world. And that ain't gonna happen until and unless America gets its act together.

To: stockman_scott who wrote (68715)	1/25/2003 10:28:07 AM
From: TigerPaw	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

The advice that George the Younger is getting from his political advisor is to force things along until there is no alternative, then everyone will back the enevitable. The very power of the United States works against that strategy. The fact than no power can stop the U.S. from invading also means that no power can stop the U.S. from taking a measured approach. The option are open. TP

To: stockman_scott who wrote (68715)	1/25/2003 10:42:48 AM
From: Suma	Respond to of 281500

Thank you for this article . It is just more upsetting however. Frustration, confusion, a bit of anger.... and finally a deep sadness. What to do. Scream and wail as the Muslims do at the dead. Bleed for the entire world . There isn't enough blood. But there will be when this war commences. Again, those of you who have not experienced, those of you who have not fought or been associated with war you will be initiated to human beings worst nightmare. And may God have Mercy on our souls.

To: stockman_scott who wrote (68715)	1/25/2003 11:49:24 AM
From: MSI	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

It's the "flying body parts" factor. Ultimately, the most troubling aspect of the administration's present rush to war is its failure to treat the question of war and peace as the grave issue that it is Al Jazera will publicize the human carnage of the US attack to the entire Arab world all day, every day, and much of the non-Arab world as well. Control of US reportage won't help. The inevitable result will be immediate and massive recruiting of suicide bombers for domestic attacks on US citizens. Rumsfeld let the cat out of the bag and called these "undeterrables", meaning simply that they cannot be deterred by massive attacks as are being planned for Iraq. The result is clear: the planned Iraqi attacks could not be better designed to create domestic political chaos in the US.

To: stockman_scott who wrote (68715)	1/25/2003 5:00:11 PM
From: Karen Lawrence	Respond to of 281500

Scott: Thank you for posting this article. This is not America's war Bush wishes to start, but Bush's war. History, if there is one in our future, will not look kindly on this proposed act of aggression. Bush "appears to be acting under the greatest sway of advisers – Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Perle, and their ilk – who have long been obsessed with attacking Iraq no matter what Saddam might do to placate them" In fact it was the admins plan all along to attack Iraq Hours after Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld learned Bin Laden was a suspect that he sought reasons to "hit" Iraq : 2.5 Source: CBS News, 9/4/02 Bush's advisor's "manifest a megalomania for remaking the Middle East in their preferred image. Their fantasies of transforming Iraq into a liberal democracy abide light years away from any realizable reality: Iraq lacks all the ingredients for baking that cake" No kidding. In Lewis Lapham's article the road to Babylon, he quotes Thucydides who wrote of the equally uncalled for war that caused the fall of Greece In going to Sicily you are leaving many enemies behind you, and you apparently want to make new ones there and have them also on your hands. . . . [E]ven if we did conquer the Sicilians, there are so many of them and they live so far off that it would be very difficult to govern them. It is senseless to go against people who, even if conquered, could not be controlled, while failure would leave us much worse off than we were before we made the attempt. . . This is history repeating itself in the making.