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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Neocon who wrote (400653)	4/29/2003 7:52:00 PM
From: c.horn	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769670

Baghdad Bob 'seeks surrender' U.S. 'We Don't want you' LOL news.bbc.co.uk Former Iraqi Information Minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf is attempting to surrender to US forces, according to a London-based Arabic newspaper. But Al-Sharq al-Awsat says the Americans have refused to arrest Mr Sahhaf - who became a familiar face during the war with his upbeat assessments of Iraqi military "successes" - because he does not appear on their "most wanted" list of 55 former regime officials. An Iraqi Kurdish official told the newspaper that Mr Sahhaf was staying at his aunt's house in Baghdad, and was under surveillance by US forces. He said the former minister was still trying to negotiate his arrest, fearing for his safety in the Iraqi capital. He's my man, he was great President Bush on Mr Sahhaf Mr Sahhaf's daily press briefings in Baghdad during the war, at which his statements were increasingly at odds with reality, made him a cult figure in the West. He was dubbed "Saddam's optimist" and "Comical Ali" by media commentators. A website called We Love the Iraqi Information Minister, carrying his soundbites, has become an internet phenomenon after being set up by a group of New York friends. Mr Sahhaf disappeared after American forces entered central Baghdad, but not before insisting: "They are going to surrender or be burned in their tanks." 'Outsider' US President George W Bush has admitted that he enjoyed Mr Sahhaf's briefings so much that he used to interrupt some of his meetings just to watch him. "He's my man, he was great," he told NBC television in a recent interview. "Somebody accused us of hiring him and putting him there. He was a classic." Despite being the regime's mouthpiece, Mr Sahhaf is not considered to have been one of Saddam Hussein's closest allies. A Shia Muslim, he was an outsider in the Sunni-dominated government that was in power since 1968. He was one of the few senior Iraqi officials not to come from the area around Saddam Hussein's home town, Tikrit.

To: Neocon who wrote (400653)	4/29/2003 8:48:16 PM
From: J_F_Shepard	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 769670

"It does not take a bigot to notice that the Iraqis associated with the regime lie like dogs." Seems to be contagious.... nytimes.com Matters of Emphasis By PAUL KRUGMAN [W] e were not lying," a Bush administration official told ABC News. "But it was just a matter of emphasis." The official was referring to the way the administration hyped the threat that Saddam Hussein posed to the United States. According to the ABC report, the real reason for the war was that the administration "wanted to make a statement." And why Iraq? "Officials acknowledge that Saddam had all the requirements to make him, from their standpoint, the perfect target." A British newspaper, The Independent, reports that "intelligence agencies on both sides of the Atlantic were furious that briefings they gave political leaders were distorted in the rush to war." One "high-level source" told the paper that "they ignored intelligence assessments which said Iraq was not a threat." Sure enough, we have yet to find any weapons of mass destruction. It's hard to believe that we won't eventually find some poison gas or crude biological weapons. But those aren't true W.M.D.'s, the sort of weapons that can make a small, poor country a threat to the greatest power the world has ever known. Remember that President Bush made his case for war by warning of a "mushroom cloud." Clearly, Iraq didn't have anything like that ? and Mr. Bush must have known that it didn't. Does it matter that we were misled into war? Some people say that it doesn't: we won, and the Iraqi people have been freed. But we ought to ask some hard questions ? not just about Iraq, but about ourselves. First, why is our compassion so selective? In 2001 the World Health Organization ? the same organization we now count on to protect us from SARS ? called for a program to fight infectious diseases in poor countries, arguing that it would save the lives of millions of people every year. The U.S. share of the expenses would have been about $10 billion per year ? a small fraction of what we will spend on war and occupation. Yet the Bush administration contemptuously dismissed the proposal. Or consider one of America's first major postwar acts of diplomacy: blocking a plan to send U.N. peacekeepers to Ivory Coast (a former French colony) to enforce a truce in a vicious civil war. The U.S. complains that it will cost too much. And that must be true ? we wouldn't let innocent people die just to spite the French, would we? So it seems that our deep concern for the Iraqi people doesn't extend to suffering people elsewhere. I guess it's just a matter of emphasis. A cynic might point out, however, that saving lives peacefully doesn't offer any occasion to stage a victory parade. Meanwhile, aren't the leaders of a democratic nation supposed to tell their citizens the truth? One wonders whether most of the public will ever learn that the original case for war has turned out to be false. In fact, my guess is that most Americans believe that we have found W.M.D.'s. Each potential find gets blaring coverage on TV; how many people catch the later announcement ? if it is ever announced ? that it was a false alarm? It's a pattern of misinformation that recapitulates the way the war was sold in the first place. Each administration charge against Iraq received prominent coverage; the subsequent debunking did not. Did the news media feel that it was unpatriotic to question the administration's credibility? Some strange things certainly happened. For example, in September Mr. Bush cited an International Atomic Energy Agency report that he said showed that Saddam was only months from having nuclear weapons. "I don't know what more evidence we need," he said. In fact, the report said no such thing ? and for a few hours the lead story on MSNBC's Web site bore the headline "White House: Bush Misstated Report on Iraq." Then the story vanished ? not just from the top of the page, but from the site. Thanks to this pattern of loud assertions and muted or suppressed retractions, the American public probably believes that we went to war to avert an immediate threat ? just as it believes that Saddam had something to do with Sept. 11. Now it's true that the war removed an evil tyrant. But a democracy's decisions, right or wrong, are supposed to take place with the informed consent of its citizens. That didn't happen this time. And we are a democracy ? aren't we?

To: Neocon who wrote (400653)	4/29/2003 9:47:23 PM
From: LTK007	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 769670

Their are a GREAT DEAL of real christians that do NOT believe that one must accept Jesus as their personal savior to be saved. But by this tight humorless self-righteous CULT that one can be saved only through the belief in Jesus and acceptance of him as their Savior, by their OWN words these christians, would view the Dalai Lama as being doomed to eternal damnation. All EXCLUSIONARY religions suck, whatever that religion be. And is the single most underlying force in Mankind at War. I am opposed to exclusionism based on what one believes and will speak it out now and then and i consider such a view an insult to a G-d much deeper and mysterious than such pettiness. Max