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Politics : Stockman Scott's Political Debate Porch -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Mannie who wrote (12731)	2/8/2003 1:10:01 PM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 89467

Colin Powell is Flawless -- Inside a Media Bubble By Norman Solomon fair.org There's no doubt about it: Colin Powell is a great performer, as he showed yet again at the U.N. Security Council the other day. On television, he exudes confidence and authoritative judgment. But Powell owes much of his touted credibility to the fact that he's functioning inside a media bubble that protects him from direct challenge. Powell doesn't face basic questions like these: You cite Iraq's violations of U.N. Security Council resolutions to justify the U.S. launching an all-out war. But you're well aware that American allies like Turkey, Israel and Morocco continue to violate dozens of Security Council resolutions. Why couldn't other nations claim the right to militarily "enforce" the Security Council's resolutions against countries that they'd prefer to bomb? You insist that Iraq is a grave threat to the other nations of the Middle East. But, with the exception of Israel, no country in the region has made such a claim or expressed any enthusiasm for a war on Iraq. If Iraq is a serious threat to the region, why doesn't the region feel threatened? You say that the Iraqi regime is committed to aggression. Yet Iraq hasn't attacked any country for more than 12 years. And just eight days before Iraq's invasion of Kuwait on Aug. 2, 1990, the U.S. envoy to Baghdad gave what appeared to be a green light for the invasion when she met with Saddam Hussein. An Iraqi transcript of the meeting quotes Ambassador April Glaspie: "We have no opinion on your Arab-Arab conflicts, such as your dispute with Kuwait. Secretary (of State James) Baker has directed me to emphasize the instruction ... that Kuwait is not associated with America." Mr. Powell, why don't you ever mention such information? Washington tilted in favor of Iraq during its war with Iran in the 1980s. Like other U.S. officials, you emphasize that Saddam Hussein "gassed his own people" and used chemical weapons against Iran, but you don't talk about the intelligence data and other forms of assistance that the United States provided to help Iraq do those things. If the history of Baghdad's evil deeds is relevant, why aren't facts about U.S. complicity also relevant? When you warn that the U.N. Security Council "places itself in danger of irrelevance" if it fails to endorse a U.S.-led war on Iraq, aren't you really proclaiming that the United Nations is "relevant" only to the extent that it does what the U.S. government wants? If Colin Powell faced such questions on a regular basis, his media halo would begin to tarnish. Instead, floating inside a media bubble, he moves from high-level meetings to speeches to news conferences where tough questions are rare. And when Powell appears as a guest on American media outlets, he doesn't need to worry that he'll encounter interviewers who'll challenge his basic assumptions. Tacit erasure of inconvenient history -- including his own -- is integral to the warm relationship between Powell and U.S. news media. There's a lot to erase. For instance, in January 1986, serving as a top aide to Pentagon chief Caspar Weinberger, he supervised the transfer of 4,508 TOW missiles to the CIA, and then sought to hide the transaction from Congress and the public. No wonder: Almost half of those missiles had become part of the Iran-Contra scandal's arms-for-hostages deal. As President Reagan's national security adviser, Powell worked diligently on behalf of the contra guerrillas who were killing civilians in Nicaragua. In December 1989, Powell -- at that point the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff -- was a key player behind the invasion of Panama. The Gulf War catapulted Powell to the apex of American political stardom in early 1991. When he was asked about the Iraqi death toll from that war, Powell said that such numbers didn't interest him. At the U.N. on Feb. 5, in typical fashion, Powell presented himself as an implacable foe of terrorism -- much as he did on Sept. 11, 2001, when he denounced "people who feel that with the destruction of buildings, with the murder of people, they can somehow achieve a political purpose." While aptly condemning the despicable hijackers who murdered thousands of people on that day, Powell was also using words that could be applied to a long line of top officials in Washington. Including himself. At this point it seems that only a miracle could prevent the Bush administration from going ahead with its plans for a horrific attack on Iraq, sure to kill many thousands of civilians. The U.S. leaders will demonstrate their evident belief that -- in Colin Powell's apt words -- "with the destruction of buildings, with the murder of people, they can somehow achieve a political purpose." To the extent that the media bubble around them stays airtight, Powell and his colleagues are likely to bask in national acclaim. __________________________________________________________ For an in-depth analysis of Colin Powell's role in setting the media agenda for a war on Iraq in 2003, go to accuracy.org -- an excerpt from "Target Iraq: What the News Media Didn't Tell You," a new book by Norman Solomon and Reese Erlich, just published as a paperback original by Context Books. For the prologue to the book and information on how to order, go to: contextbooks.com

To: Mannie who wrote (12731)	2/9/2003 11:36:46 PM
From: lurqer	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 89467

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To: Mannie who wrote (12731)	2/11/2003 2:34:13 AM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 89467

A Case for Containment By Morton H. Halperin Editorial The Washington Post Tuesday, February 11, 2003 Before the United States goes to war, we should consider once more whether war is necessary. The facts suggest that it isn't. Why? Our current policy is working. Saddam Hussein has been contained. That is, Hussein has not used weapons of mass destruction against anyone who could retaliate with either weapons of mass destruction or overwhelming conventional military power. His use of weapons of mass destruction in the past came when we were supporting him (before 1991) and supplying him with the materials to construct the weapons. It has been clear to Hussein since he invaded Kuwait and was defeated in the Persian Gulf War that the United States no longer supports him. Since then he has neither threatened to use weapons of mass destruction nor threatened conventional military attacks on his neighbors. So the evidence proves that he has been contained and he can continue to be contained. If the United States decided to tighten the embargo instead of invading, as Secretary of State Colin Powell originally proposed and as the U.N. Security Council approved, we could get agreement from the countries surrounding Iraq to eliminate the leaks in the embargo, especially if we compensated them -- as we should -- for the revenue they would lose as a result of not trading with Iraq. Will Hussein ever use weapons of mass destruction? I can only cite what the CIA has said, namely that he shows no signs of using them, because he knows we would retaliate with deadly force. The only circumstance under which he is likely to use them, the CIA said, is if we attack him. The administration has not answered that argument other than to speculate that he may be tempted to use these weapons against us even if we do not attack first. Following this argument to its logical conclusion, it seems clear that by attacking Iraq now we will substantially increase the likelihood that he will use or try to use weapons of mass destruction against us or his neighbors. Abandoning containment now has real consequences. Unfortunately, no one is asking whether containment has worked. The question being asked now: Has Hussein met all of his obligations under the U.N. resolution? He has not met all of his obligations, and he is never going to meet all of his obligations. Instead, the United States should be asking: What is the most prudent and effective policy to deal with a Saddam Hussein who is not meeting his obligations? To me, the question is not even close. Rather than go to war, we should apply a policy of "containment plus," which entails tightened sanctions, beefed-up inspections, support for opposition groups and the creation of a U.N. war-crimes tribunal. To make the sanctions work, and to keep Hussein from getting the hard currency and supplies he needs for his weapons program, we must tighten and enforce the embargo. That would require stationing U.N.-authorized troops on Iraq's borders to monitor trade and compensating Iraq's neighbors for lost revenue caused by the embargo. Weapons inspectors must be backed by force and authorized by the United Nations. That means, for example, destroying from the air any building to which inspectors are denied entrance. We may need to use U.N.-sanctioned force in other ways, but the goal should be to disarm Iraq, not change the regime. To isolate Hussein further, the U.N. Security Council should create a war-crimes tribunal to indict him. As we have seen in Yugoslavia and Rwanda, such tribunals can discredit and even destroy criminal regimes. Meanwhile, the United States could work for a change in Iraq's leadership by supporting effective opposition groups. This policy is more likely to prevent Saddam Hussein from using weapons of mass destruction and less likely to lead to other terrorist attacks on the United States and its citizens at home or abroad. It might even be more successful in bringing about an indigenous change in the regime. _______________________________________________________ The writer is director of the Washington office of the Open Society Institute and a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. © 2003 The Washington Post Company washingtonpost.com

To: Mannie who wrote (12731)	2/11/2003 5:18:01 PM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 89467

We are punting for the coffin corner By Jon Carroll Columnist The San Francisco Chronicle Tuesday, February 11, 2003 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Let me bring up an aspect of the proposed war against Iraq that has so far not gotten a lot of public notice: dead people. The object of war is not dead people, but many people die anyway. Sometimes the winning side has more dead people than the losing side, leading one to consider what "winning" may mean in this context. Colin Powell presented an effective case in the United Nations that Saddam Hussein is probably guilty of a lot of things, which is something we already knew. The quarrel was never there; the quarrel was with the construction "and therefore we must . . ." At the moment, Hussein is surrounded by a million or so U.S. troops, plus planes, tanks, guns and probably a tactical nuke or two. Should he wish to, say, invade a neighbor, or attack the Kurds, or build anything with radioactive material, U.S. forces would be all over him like a cheap burqa. This strategy is called "deterrence." It is preferred to war by many experts because it involves far fewer dead people. It is understandable that the Bush administration does not mention corpses in its frequent calls for war. It's not the most appealing part of the process. Beating up a bad guy, asserting American supremacy and bringing democracy to the Middle East all have higher ratings than shroud-wrapped former humans. It would seem that most of the bodies would be Iraqi, the very people we are trying to rescue from the depredations of a cruel dictator. This is the "saving a village by destroying it" strategy that was so effective during the Vietnam War. Inevitably, though, Americans will die. Those of us older than 45 remember what it was like when Americans died in a war that turned out to be a big mistake. It split the nation. Families grieved for years. Even the soldiers who survived suspected that they had suffered at the hands of a capricious and bloodthirsty government -- their own. It's not a thing one wants to repeat. Granted, some wars are necessary. But all wars should be counted as failures, even if they achieve their intended objectives. Only a fool or knave wants to launch an unnecessary war. We seek peace. We seek a calm place in which to live our lives, raise our children, care for our parents, walk in the woods and sing in the bathtub. We are still an agrarian society -- I suppose civilization could have taken a different turn and we could have been marauding nomads, for whom war was pretty much a necessity, but it didn't and we aren't. So when we're asking whether the war in Iraq is necessary, we are really asking: Is it necessary to sacrifice an unknown but large number of human lives to achieve this end? It turns out from leaked documents that the Bush administration has been willing to do that virtually since its inauguration. We have a fine phrase for killing many innocent people. The phrase is "regime change." That sounds better than "mangled civilian bodies lying in the street," but it's pretty much the same thing. I am curious about what sort of person makes war eagerly. I understand the bravery and dedication of combat soldiers. Their soldiers, our soldiers, all soldiers -- the wetware pawns in the great geopolitical game. But the civilians who sit in fine offices and invent euphemisms for war and slaughter, who twist facts to make war a more likely outcome, who feel free to send other people's sons and daughters into combat -- I don't quite see why they are so enthusiastic. Look at media star Donald Rumsfeld and consider that he is wisecracking his way toward a terrible and one-sided battle. Lord, I just shuddered. Maybe it's the wind. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- We have a budget with no money for a war we will almost certainly fight. sfgate.com