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

To: Noel de Leon who wrote (100594)	6/7/2003 11:42:38 AM
From: LindyBill	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

INSTAPUNDIT'S PARIS CORRESPONDENT CLAIRE BERLINSKI sends this report: For the past few days, helicopters have been circling noisily above the center of Paris. No one I speak to knows why -- there are dark murmurings that something, somewhere has been tipped to explode, or that the water supply is scheduled to be poisoned, but no one knows for sure. The choppers are making a huge racket outside my window and driving me nuts. But that's not the big story, at least not yet. The story, which isn't getting much attention outside of France, is that the trade unions' protests over the government's pension reform scheme have become outrageously violent, and France is in chaos. The scale of the lawlessness and thuggery would generate endless anguished editorials in the English-language press if France were Iraq, and if somehow the United States could be blamed for it. The demonstrators have barricaded roads and railway tracks, ransacked and occupied administrative buildings, set fires, reversed over one another with their cars, sealed off city centers, emptied garbage onto the streets and rendered public transportation throughout the country unusable. Air traffic has been brought to a halt. Demonstrators cut off power lines at the Gare de Lyon. Tourists have been stranded everywhere. The national railway company, the SNCF, has lost $140 million in six days. This is not a loss the shaky French economy can tolerate. And why? Because the government has proposed to increase the number of years public sector employees must work to receive full retirement benefits, from 37.5 years to 40 years -- a move that would bring them in line with the private sector. Are these reforms necessary? You bet. Will France go broke if they're not implemented? Without a doubt -- retirees will account for a third of the French population by 2040, and the best projections suggest that if the reforms aren't implemented, France will be running a 50 billion Euro annual deficit by 2020. Have the reforms been proposed by a democratically-elected government? Indeed. Are they supported by the public at large? Yes. Pretty much everyone, save the demonstrators themselves, acknowledges that pension reform is necessary. What's interesting, sociologically, is that the account given by the demonstrators of their behavior simply doesn't correspond to reality: There is no objective grievance commensurate with the scale of the violence. An especially interesting fact is that the violence has been whistled up and spearheaded by the transport workers, who are for the most part unreconstructed communists, and who would not be affected by the proposed reforms. Given that the ideology championed by the leaders of these protests has been, over and over again, completely discredited, how should we account for their influence? The only conclusion I can draw from this is that a segment of French society can be easily inspired to smash things for the fun of it. I wonder why. instapundit.com

To: Noel de Leon who wrote (100594)	6/7/2003 2:11:45 PM
From: KLP	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Keep an open mind if possible. You will be glad you did.

To: Noel de Leon who wrote (100594)	6/7/2003 2:54:42 PM
From: KonKilo	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

His (Blix') most recent remarks are quite telling as to the value of the "intellegence" he got from the US. Here are those comments: I was shocked by poor weapons intelligence - Blix Pentagon agency doubted threat posed by Saddam Ewen MacAskill, Richard Norton-Taylor, and Suzanne Goldenberg in Washington Saturday June 7, 2003 The Guardian The UN chief weapons inspector, Hans Blix, expressed his disappointment yesterday at the quality of the intelligence given to him by the US and Britain before the war with Iraq. Mr Blix, who retires at the end of the month, told the BBC: "We went to a great many sites that were given to us by intelligence, and only in three cases did we find anything - and they did not relate to weapons of mass destruction. That shook me a bit, I must say." He added: "I thought 'My God, if this is the best intelligence they had and we find nothing, what about the rest?'" As he was speaking the credibility of the White House claim that Saddam Hussein posed an imminent threat to the world took a further blow when it emerged that the Pentagon's intelligence branch had doubts about Iraq's capabilities. The report by the Pentagon defence intelligence agency said there was no reliable information that Iraq had battlefield-ready chemical and biological weapons. It was produced in September just as President Bush was embarking on a campaign to convince the UN that Saddam Hussein and his arsenal were a threat to the international community and should be removed, by force if necessary. It was leaked to US news organisations at the end of a week in which Mr Bush, the secretary of state, Colin Powell, and the defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, have had to defend the decision to go to war by quashing suggestions that White House ideologues overrode intelligence officials to suit their political agenda. A summary obtained by CNN says: "There is no reliable information on whether Iraq is producing and stockpiling chemical weapons or where Iraq has or will establish its chemical warfare agent production facilities." It adds that while Iraq appeared to have stocks of mustard gas the agency had detected no clear indications of other deadly agents. A British government source, defending the intelligence services, said his recollection was that there had been frustration in London that Mr Blix had not moved fast enough after being given the intelligence. British intelligence claims credit for providing the information which led to the seizure of hundreds of documents at the home of an Iraqi scientist. Mr Blix led the hunt for biological and chemical weapons in Iraq and Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), led the search for nuclear weapons. The US and Britain have failed to find any weapons of mass destruction. A team from the IAEA returned to Iraq yesterday to check whether there has been any contamination from the postwar looting of Iraq's main nuclear site at Tuwaitha, south-east of Baghdad. Its spokeswoman Melissa Fleming said: "We are going there to find out what's missing, to see if we can repackage and secure the material so that we can account for every gram of it." The Verification, Research, Training and Information Centre in London says the inspectors were making good progress before they were withdrawn from Iraq on the eve of the war, but would have needed at least three more months to complete the job. guardian.co.uk

To: Noel de Leon who wrote (100594)	6/7/2003 3:00:06 PM
From: Hawkmoon	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

What I care about is that the US government has lied to the public. Noel.. Yes or no.. Did the Iraqis fake that document discovered in 1998: During a routine inspection in July 1998, UNSCOM found a document showing the use of CW munitions during the Iran/Iraq war, revealing major discrepancies in Iraqi declarations. Iraqi "minders" accompanying the inspectors snatched the document back, and Iraq has still not allowed UNSCOM access to it. 31,000 CW munitions and 4,000 tonnes of precursor chemicals that Iraq claims to have destroyed unilaterally still have to be properly accounted for. special.fco.gov.uk Because that's the basis for the belief that Saddam's regime still possesed Chemical Warheads. They LIED to the UN about how many warheads they used against Iran.. The discrepancy was 6,000 Warheads. 6,000 of them.. Where are they Noel? And futhermore, why is it that you think that everyone who TAKES IRAQI DOCUMENTATION AT FACE VALUE is a liar and a fraud?? They apparently documented how many warheads they expended against in the Iran-Iraq war.. But you're ready to believe they couldn't properly account for destroyed weapons, RIGHT?? Is this what you are trying to convince us to believe? Would you rather believe the denials of a criminal who has been caught red-handed, or the notes he kept to himself detailing how he would commit his crime. Btw, you're not related to Thomas M., are you?? There seems to be a striking similarity in your logic and responses. Hawk