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

To: stockman_scott who wrote (9187)	2/17/2003 4:29:41 AM
From: Just_Observing	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 25898

The Gospel According to Bush February 16, 2003 In the many hours of debate over Iraq in the United Nations on Friday, every side of the historic question was discussed -- except one. There was the case for war, the case against war, the case for more time and less time for Iraq to rid itself of weapons of mass destruction. But no one -- not a single foreign minister or ambassador -- invoked God in making his or her case. No one, including Secretary of State Colin Powell, raised the issue of "good” and "evil.” Those words are not in the vocabulary of diplomacy. When people from all over the world gather at the UN, no one is presumed to share the same faith or the same non-religious mindset. It would be a diplomatic gaffe to invoke God's will in, say, a debate over the future of Kashmir or Tibet or the West Bank, though (Lord knows) it is invoked plenty in more parochial settings, and with horrible results. In the UN, however, the question of whose side You-Know-Who is on exists in a kind of demilitarized zone. By contrast, it is hard to imagine President George W. Bush making a speech on the subject of Iraq -- or for that matter, any subject -- without mentioning the deity and the war between good and evil in which He or She is apparently enlisted on our side. It has become Bush's trademark. "We do not know ... all the ways of Providence, yet we can trust in them, placing our confidence in the loving God behind all of life and all of history,” he said during his State of the Union address last month. "If this is not evil, then evil has no meaning,” he said of the Iraqi enemy at another point in the speech. "We feel our reliance on the Creator who made us,” he said in a radio address in March. "We place our sorrows and cares before Him, seeking God's mercy. We ask forgiveness for our failures, seeking the renewal He can bring.” Bush makes no bones about it. He found religion and embraced it mightily at a critical juncture in his life. He is convinced that God saved him and continues to guide him. Fine. But every time Bush brings the rest of us into it, he seems -- whether intentionally or obliviously -- to chip away at the secular underpinning of our uniquely democratic country. We are not all evangelicals. We are not all anything. That is the whole point of this country. It is a paradox of America, but when the founders established religious freedom they also established the right of citizens to secular government. They didn't want a president who was head of a church, the way the king of England was. They didn't want a president who was preacher-in-chief. "There is a distinction between America's civil religion and the language that President Bush uses, which comes from a specific evangelical Christian viewpoint,” said the Rev. C. Welton Gaddy, a Monroe, La., theologian and president of the Interfaith Alliance, a Washington-based group that advocates religious tolerance. "When speaks in these terms, he leaves out whole segments of America ... His language implies a lack of appreciation for the vastness of religious pluralism in this land.” Gaddy spoke by phone last week to a group of newspaper reporters linked in a conference call. He was joined by Elaine Pagels, a Princeton University professor of religion. Gaddy and Pagels said they wanted to express their concerns about the way the president has infused his every program -- but especially his call for war on Iraq -- with religious language. "The president reminds me of a first-year seminary student,” Gaddy said. The first-year seminarian has great faith, and great energy, but "has not yet learned the key virtue, which is humility,” he said. In the absence of this virtue, Pagels said, Bush has framed the conflict with Iraq as "God's people versus Satan's people ... ” In framing it that way, only one outcome is possible, she said: "One side can only annihilate the other.” It may end up that way, anyway. But then, why blame God? newsday.com Dubya's own church is against the war. Yet, Dubya is sure he is fighting God's war. His Texan Machismo combined with his Messianic Complex are leading us to disaster.

To: stockman_scott who wrote (9187)	2/17/2003 6:23:00 AM
From: PartyTime	Respond to of 25898

Spy reports 'given pro-war spin' By Marie Woolf, Chief Political Correspondent 17 February 2003 Briefings by the intelligence services have been manipulated by ministers to make a firmer case for war against Iraq, a senior politician says today. Britain's secret services are concerned that their reports have been used "selectively" by the Government to help make a political case for war, Menzies Campbell, the Liberal Democrat Foreign Affairs spokesman, says in an interview with The Independent. Members of the intelligence community have been unhappy to see "checks and balances" in their reports removed by the time they reach the public, he says. "There's no doubt that the intelligence services have been concerned about what they see as the misuse of information ? in the sense that they believe the Government is inclined to use what supports the Government's political case without taking full account of the qualifications attached to such information," Mr Campbell says. The accusation that ministers have failed to include warnings that evidence of chemical or biological material may not be clear-cut will reignite allegations of "spin". The Government was roundly criticised after it emerged that a dossier of evidence about Saddam Hussein's capabilities was gleaned from a PhD student's thesis. Mr Campbell says: "The security services are unhappy at the way some of their products are being used. It's certainly the case that they feel there has been selective use of material." 17 February 2003 06:19 news.independent.co.uk