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Politics : Stockman Scott's Political Debate Porch -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: elpolvo who wrote (22119)	7/13/2003 10:19:52 PM
From: epicure	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 89467

It is very, very strange. I certainly didn't feel any sense of certitude after reading the article- but then I'm a ...liberal. I thought maybe I was being biased.

To: elpolvo who wrote (22119)	7/13/2003 11:27:05 PM
From: lurqer	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 89467

''This is a list of the henchmen of the regime. Our hands will reach them sooner or later. Woe unto them.'' In an era of proven forgeries, did a red flag just go up? Not knowing what's going on, I'll wait and see along with everyone else. I say that even though my "this is a little too pat" alarm is screaming Meanwhile, I'm considering what are any implications? Let's just say for the sake of argument that SH had an "intelligence officer responsible for the coordination of activities with the Osama bin Laden group at the Iraqi embassy in Pakistan". Several questions ensue. First, you mean to tell me that with all of the US Intelligence agencies (and those of many other countries as well), none of them ever heard of a confiscated Baghdad newspaper, that provided the answer they were all looking for. The spook business must have really deteriorated badly, since the cold war. Second. Note the date of the newspaper - Nov. 14, 2002. By this time SH was "pulling out all stops", and most importantly maybe seeking new ones. We know that the Iraqi war has driven SH loyalists, and fundamental jihadists together in the post war Iraq. SH, always the opportunist may have seen an opening to a potential ally (at a time when he needed any ally), because of pre-election American war rhetoric. In this scenario, the opening for the reported connection occurs only because of the war drum rhetoric. Three. Bin Luddite is (IMO) really a fundamental Islamic nut. Just because SH thinks there might be an opening does not mean that OBL agreed. Until important cleric's called for a jihad against America, and OBL was obliged to be SH's ally, he may have declined on religious grounds. Sure "enemy of my enemy" and the Bush behavior by Nov. 14, 2002, was "driving them into each others arms", but don't belittle the significance of religion in OBL's behavior. Until we know that OBL responded even the existence of an "intelligence officer responsible for the coordination of activities with the Osama bin Laden group at the Iraqi embassy in Pakistan” only would show that SH was trying to establish a connection. Four . Let’s say OBL responded favorably and a connection was established (now that it had been facilitated ), uhhh…. so what. Remember the big scare was because SH would be giving these WMD’s to our terrorists enemies. That was when “we were sure” the WMDs were there just waiting to be dispensed like lollypops. Now… Still thinking about this. Some, but not all JMO lurqer

To: elpolvo who wrote (22119)	7/14/2003 12:38:06 AM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 89467

It’s time to turn our eyes back home By Emma Sepulveda 07/12/03: SPECIAL TO THE RENO GAZETTE-JOURNAL Why are we venturing outside of our country so much in an attempt to solve the world’s problems when we have our own disarray within these borders? Could it be that our leaders want to divert our attention from the real problems here at home? There are several areas that we can talk about. Let’s take, for example, unemployment. It is now the highest it has been in the past decade, but we don’t see members of the government telling us what they are going to do about the millions of people who can’t find work, who can’t feed their families. And we are not just talking about unskilled laborers anymore. There are many highly qualified professionals who are taking any job available so they can get a paycheck. No one talks about how to solve the tremendous deficits that states are running up and their inability to fund the most basic programs. Seniors and children are going hungry, right here in the country of never-ending resources, the richest place in the world. Education went from the national rhetoric of “no child left behind” to larger classes, fewer books, old computers and the prospect of many schools shutting down because there is no money to pay teachers. Several states have walked to the end of the proverbial plank in their quest to balance their budgets and are days or hours away from closing their government for lack of money. If California shuts down, its fall will be felt by every other state, not to mention Nevada, which has its own unresolved budget problems. The list goes on, with no answers or solutions, but only more campaign promises for now. So the “whys” are getting more echoes. Why are we still spending more and more money in Afghanistan? Some observers are saying that it will take billions of dollars more than was originally estimated to rebuild that country, and we still haven’t stopped the tribal warlords from taking back their pieces of the country and oppressing their own people; nor have we found the person we were looking for in the first place. The same is true with Iraq. We are sliding down a slippery slope into exactly the situation the rest of the world told us we would end up in: fighting extremists and nationalists in the streets as our toll of injured and dead slowly and relentlessly mounts. As our federal deficit climbs faster and faster, more billions of dollars are going to be needed to find the ghost of Saddam Hussein and to rebuild what we destroyed during two wars. Helping Iraqis find their own democratic self is going to cost much more than our president told us when we went searching for the weapons of mass destruction that we never found. But there is more to come on the international front. The unrest that we are supporting in Iran will cost us money, too, very soon. Iran is beginning to look more like Iraq every day. We are assuming that they are building weapons of mass destruction and that they are increasingly becoming a “serious” threat to world peace, and to the United States in particular. They are perhaps harboring terrorists, too. But mostly they are part of the axis of evil, and that’s bad news. Perhaps it is time to shift our eyes to the situation back home. We have plenty to worry about right here in the United States before we continuously look to be the world’s savior (or aggressor). The enemy is among us and it is not necessarily terrorism anymore. It’s unemployment, poverty, budget deficits, a poor educational system and many other national problems for which our current government is offering no solutions. Unfortunately, it is not the first time that the leaders of a country have tried to focus a nation’s attention toward a foreign enemy when they are failing to find the way out of a national crisis. It is up to us to tell them where their focus should be. ____________________________ Emma Sepulveda is a writer, and a professor of foreign languages and literature at the University of Nevada, Reno. She is a regular contributor to the Opinion page. Copyright © 2002 The Reno Gazette-Journal informationclearinghouse.info