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

To: Bilow who wrote (105026)	7/12/2003 10:22:34 PM
From: NightOwl	Respond to of 281500

It was a coward's war, a war by a people afraid to face the reality that this planet is inherently unsafe and eventually universally fatal. Surely mine eyes doth gyre and gimble! <vbg> Do these slithy toves deceive me? ...Or has Plato finally taken his EE orals!? "The End" must be near indeed. At least I can now die in peace, ...despite these eternal drums of war. <Hoo> 0\|0

To: Bilow who wrote (105026)	7/13/2003 3:09:43 AM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 281500

National House of Waffles ___________________ By MAUREEN DOWD OP-ED COLUMNIST THE NEW YORK TIMES July 13, 2003 WASHINGTON - More and more, with Bush administration pronouncements about the Iraq war, it depends on what the meaning of the word "is" is. W. built his political identity on the idea that he was not Bill Clinton. He didn't parse words or prevaricate. He was the Texas straight shooter. So why is he now presiding over a completely Clintonian environment, turning the White House into a Waffle House, where truth is camouflaged by word games and responsibility is obscured by shell games? The president and Condi Rice can shuffle the shells and blame George Tenet, but it smells of mendacity. Mr. Clinton indulged in casuistry to hide personal weakness. The Bush team indulges in casuistry to perpetuate its image of political steel. Dissembling over peccadillos is pathetic. Dissembling over pre-emptive strikes is pathological, given over 200 Americans dead and 1,000 wounded in Iraq, and untold numbers of dead Iraqis. Our troops are in "a shooting gallery," as Teddy Kennedy put it, and our spy agencies warn that we are on the cusp of a new round of attacks by Saddam snipers. Why does it always come to this in Washington? The people who ascend to power on the promise of doing things differently end up making the same unforced errors their predecessors did. Out of office, the Bush crowd mocked the Clinton propensity for stonewalling; in office, they have stonewalled the 9/11 families on the events that preceded the attacks, and the American public on how — and why — they maneuvered the nation into the Iraqi war. Their defensive crouch and obsession with secrecy are positively Nixonian. (But instead of John Dean and an aggressive media, they have Howard Dean and a cowed media.) In a hole, the president should have done some plain speaking: "The information I gave you in the State of the Union about Iraq seeking nuclear material from Africa has been revealed to be false. I'm deeply angry and I'm going to get to the bottom of this." But of course he couldn't say that. He would be like Sheriff Bart in "Blazing Saddles," holding the gun to his own head and saying, "Nobody move or POTUS gets it." The Bush administration has known all along that the evidence of the imminent threat of Saddam's weapons and the Al Qaeda connections were pumped up. They were manning the air hose. Mr. Tenet, in his continuing effort to ingratiate himself to his bosses, agreed to take the fall, trying to minimize a year's worth of war-causing warping of intelligence as a slip of the keyboard. "These 16 words should never have been included in the text written for the president," he said, in 15 words that were clearly written for him on behalf of the president. But it won't fly. It was Ms. Rice's responsibility to vet the intelligence facts in the president's speech and take note of the red alert the tentative Tenet was raising. Colin Powell did when he set up camp at the C.I.A. for a week before his U.N. speech, double-checking what he considered unsubstantiated charges that the Cheney chief of staff, Scooter Libby, and other hawks wanted to sluice into his talk. When the president attributed the information about Iraq trying to get Niger yellowcake to British intelligence, it was a Clintonian bit of flim-flam. Americans did not know what top Bush officials knew: that this "evidence" could not be attributed to American intelligence because the C.I.A. had already debunked it. Ms. Rice did not throw out the line, even though the C.I.A. had warned her office that it was sketchy. Clearly, a higher power wanted it in. And that had to be Dick Cheney's office. Joseph Wilson, former U.S. ambassador to Gabon, said he was asked to go to Niger to answer some questions from the vice president's office about that episode and reported back that it was highly doubtful. But doubt is not the currency of the Bush hawks. Asked if he regretted using the Niger claim, Mr. Bush replied: "There is no doubt in my mind that Saddam Hussein was a threat to world peace. And there's no doubt in my mind that the United States, along with allies and friends, did the right thing in removing him from power. And there's no doubt in my mind, when it's all said and done, the facts will show the world the truth." I'm happy that Mr. Bush's mental landscape is so cloudless. But it is our doubts he needs to assuage. nytimes.com

To: Bilow who wrote (105026)	7/14/2003 2:31:04 AM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 281500

This website is dedicated to all those who have lost their lives in the War with Iraq started by George Bush on March 19, 2003. pigstye.net

To: Bilow who wrote (105026)	7/14/2003 2:32:53 AM
From: frankw1900	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

The vast majority of this country has become so afraid of death that they will go to almost any length to avoid it. Sure, they live Florida in the path of hurricanes and tornados, in California with violent earthquakes, they take up jobs like fire and policemen, join the army, take extremely dangerous jobs like lumbering, smoke cigarettes, behave heroically during disasters, etc, etc. What demonstrably false bullshit you write. Then there's your dishonest argument based on it: The attack on Iraq was driven by this fear. It was a coward's war, a war by a people afraid to face the reality that this planet is inherently unsafe and eventually universally fatal. Natural forces are often deadly - I've faced them and shat myself - and life ends. But natural forces have no mind. The 9/11 crimes were not committed by a "planet...inherently unsafe and eventually universally fatal," as you dishonestly claim. Not so, instead, thinking men chose to do them. These thinking men also chose to murder large numbers of Shias and other Muslims in Iraq and Pakistan. When I saw those towers come down and read the drivel of SW Asian religious and secular ideologues I was enraged. These assholes want to put us through the same crap machine their forbears put us through in the 20th century. That's their choice. Well, the hell with them and their criminal regimes. To hell with you too, for your dishonest conclusion based on false premises: So they thought that by killing a few Iraqis, at the cost of a few "volunteers", their own safety could be purchased cheaply.