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

To: Jacob Snyder who wrote (99991)	6/3/2003 1:38:23 PM
From: Hawkmoon	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

There was no reason the Vietcong couldn't have done what Al Queda has done, the WTC and Bali attacks. They chose not to target our civilians; they chose to limit the conflict to their own homeland; they could have made other That's some pretty good stuff you're apparently smoking... Take about "altered states" of consciousness.. The Viet Cong had a very simple philosophy. Starting in 1958, they reintroduced assassination squads into South Vietnam....By [late 1961], the Vietnamese communists were killing, on the average, 11 government officials a day. Their message to the Vietnamese people was: If you affiliate with the government of South Vietnam, in contested areas, we will kill you. nixonlibrary.org And from a marxist terrorist leader in Brazil, Carlos Marighella, who wrote the "Minimanual of the Urban Guerrilla", we have this doctrine that became widely accepted later on by other marxist/maoist guerilla groups: airpower.maxwell.af.mil The urban guerrilla is an implacable enemy of the government and systematically inflicts damage on the authorities and on the men who dominate the country and exercise power. The principal task of the urban guerrilla is to distract, to wear out, to demoralize the militarists, the military dictatorship and its repressive forces, and also to attack and destroy the wealth and property of the North Americans, the foreign managers, and the Brazilian upperclass.20 army.mil In the first stages, the Viet Cong avoided units of the Army of the Republic of Vietnam and operated as guerrillas. Sabotage, bombing, terrorism, and assassination were their hallmark. Speed, security, surprise, and deception were keys to their success. Certainly not limited to military targets there, are they? They'd be stupid if they were... Personally, I find it less than amazing that someone, such as yourself, would believe that the Viet Cong would NEVER lower themselves to using terrorism to advance their "noble cause", totalitarianism... Hawk

To: Jacob Snyder who wrote (99991)	6/3/2003 1:39:51 PM
From: stockman_scott	Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 281500

There Must Be Weapons Of Mass Destruction In Here Somewhere by Helen Thomas Published on Tuesday, June 3, 2003 by the Minneapolis Pioneer Press The Central Intelligence Agency is investigating the accuracy of the Bush administration's conclusions that Iraq represented an imminent and direct threat to the United States. The administration cited U.S. intelligence assessments that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction and had ties to al-Qaida terrorists as reasons to attack Iraq. Now, after seven weeks of U.S. occupation of Iraq, the failure to find evidence supporting those accusations raises the prospect that President Bush, Secretary of State Colin Powell, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and other administration officials either exaggerated the danger to justify the invasion of Iraq or were misled by flawed intelligence. There's also another possible outcome: U.S. searchers will eventually find that evidence. While asking tough questions about administration credibility, we should keep an open mind. We know with certitude that Saddam Hussein didn't use those monstrous weapons during the war, despite pre-war U.S. claims that front-line units of the Iraqi army had been delegated authority to do so. Either the weapons are buried deep or were destroyed — or they didn't exist. Four retired CIA officials with access to the classified reports of 12 separate intelligence agencies are conducting the U.S. intelligence review. A CIA spokesman said it would be months before the study is completed. Rumsfeld, who suggested last fall that the looming Iraq war would provide a perfect case study to compare pre-war intelligence assessments with post-war evidence, requested the study. At the time, Rumsfeld had been frustrated over the conflicting intelligence reports he was getting on Iraq. Faced with a credibility gap, administration officials have been gradually rolling back some of their pre-war assertions — always made with great confidence and convincing detail — about Iraq's store of tons of biological and chemical weapons. In a speech to the Council of Foreign Relations in New York May 27, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld suggested the weapons were destroyed before the start of the war. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz told the Washington Post that Iraqi concealment has been clever. "No one should expect this kind of deception effort to get penetrated overnight," he said. Stay tuned. According to the next issue of Vanity Fair magazine, Wolfowitz cited "bureaucratic reasons" for focusing on Saddam's alleged arsenal and said a "huge" reason for the war was to enable Washington to withdraw its troops from Saudi Arabia. "For bureaucratic reasons we settled on one issue, weapons of mass destruction, because it was the one reason everyone could agree on," Wolfowitz was quoted as saying. White House press secretary Ari Fleischer said the discovery last month of two tractor-trailers — fitted for high tech laboratory work — proved they could be used to produce illicit weapons for germ warfare. No such products were found in the trucks. Nevertheless, Fleischer said, "they have been caught red handed." Of course that attitude conveniently overlooks the fact that no one doubts that Saddam owned weapons of mass destruction in the early 1990s. The question is: Did he still possess such weapons more recently? Rumsfeld said last week, "We don't know what happened." Some CIA analysts have quietly complained of Bush administration pressure to cook the intelligence reports to bolster its militant position on Iraq. One point of friction is a special intelligence unit created at the Pentagon last year when Defense Department officials thought the CIA was not giving enough attention to the Iraqi exiles. CIA officers, in turn, began to complain that the Pentagon unit was staffed by conservative ideologues who put a political spin on the information at hand. Bush apparently based his war decisions on the intelligence advice of his close coterie of conservative aides who had been itching to invade Iraq since they came into office. Sen. Bob Graham, D-Fla., a presidential candidate and the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, wonders whether there was an intelligence failure and whether the statements made by Powell before the United Nations on Feb. 5 concerning Iraq's arsenal might prove to be untrue. It is up to Bush to clear up the confusion. Some might say, "So what? We got rid of the brutal dictator Saddam Hussein and liberated the Iraqis." But that would ignore the duty of our elected leaders to level with the American people. And it would ignore the public's duty to demand that accountability. _____________________________________ Helen Thomas is a Washington columnist for Hearst Newspapers. Copyright 2003 Hearst Newspapers commondreams.org

To: Jacob Snyder who wrote (99991)	6/3/2003 1:48:21 PM
From: aladin	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Jacob, There was no reason the Vietcong couldn't have done what Al Queda has done, the WTC and Bali attacks. They chose not to target our civilians; they chose to limit the conflict to their own homeland; they could have made other choices. Maybe. But just maybe it never occurred to anyone to do something like this before. What nationality are you from in Europe? My ancestors came after the indian wars and slavery, do we have to get into this guilt trip you seem to be on? Bad shit happened. I think we all agree on that. However, the US did not become a major power until WW1 and was not a dominant power until WW2. Your constant jumping between the current context and the historical seems strange at best. Did you do some geneology and discover that your ancestry owned slaves and scalped indians? And even if they did, what has that got to do with current Foreign Affairs? John