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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: i-node who wrote (174137)	8/19/2003 5:10:03 PM
From: tejek	Respond to of 1576881

The suggestion that, somehow, the Klan was affiliated with the Right is nothing more than a damned lie. A liberal lie, I'd say. Al was wrong......you're more than an idiot! That's right, the Klan was part of Disney World. They never existed in the real world. The Right is all Mary Poppins and Dudley Do-rights. There isn't a bad bone in their bodies. BTW, I have a couple of bridges I am trying to offload real cheap. I know you're interested; I just want to know how much you can afford! Let me know!

To: i-node who wrote (174137)	8/19/2003 5:42:50 PM
From: tejek	Respond to of 1576881

<font color=green> Do you think it was T. Blair who got Bush all stirred up over Iraq? Nah! It had to be the other way around........Bush ain't no one's dog! ;~) <font color=black> ******************************************************* politics.guardian.co.uk No 10 knew: Iraq no threat Richard Norton-Taylor and Nicholas Watt Tuesday August 19, 2003 The Guardian One of the prime minister's closest advisers issued a private warning that it would be wrong for Tony Blair to claim Iraq's banned weapons programme showed Saddam Hussein presented an "imminent threat" to the west or even his Arab neighbours. In a message that goes to the heart of the government's case for war, the Downing Street chief of staff, Jonathan Powell, raised serious doubts about the nature of September's Downing Street dossier on Iraq's banned weapons. "We will need to make it clear in launching the document that we do not claim that we have evidence that he is an imminent threat," Mr Powell wrote on September 17, a week before the document was finally published. His remarks urging caution contrasted with the chilling language used by Mr Blair in a passionate speech in the Commons as he launched the dossier a week later. He described Iraq's prog-ramme for weapons of mass destruction as "active, detailed, and growing ... It is up and running now". Mr Powell's private concerns came in the form of an email which was copied to Alastair Campbell, Downing Street's director of communications, and Sir David Manning, Mr Blair's foreign policy adviser. The fact the three closest men to the prime minister knew of this information strongly suggests Mr Blair would have been aware. Downing Street also faced severe embarrassment yesterday when the Hutton inquiry was told the prime minister's official spokesman in an email had described the government's battles with the BBC as a "game of chicken". The email revealed how senior Downing Street officials - and on occasion Mr Blair himself - became intimately involved in the events which led to the death of the government scientist David Kelly. Within minutes of taking the stand, Mr Powell was asked about his email to John Scarlett, chairman of the joint intelligence committee, in which he said he believed the arms dossier "does nothing to demonstrate a threat, let alone an imminent threat from Saddam" and added: "In other words, it shows he has the means but it does not demonstrate he has the motive to attack his neighbours, let alone the west." The Hutton inquiry heard last week that the final version contained claims that a senior defence intelligence official agreed were "noticeably" hardened up. They included a claim in the dossier's foreword, signed by Mr Blair, that Iraqi chemical and biological weapons would be "ready" within 45 minutes of an order to deploy them. Mr Blair also described Iraq as posing a "serious and current threat". Documents disclosed by the inquiry yesterday reveal the close interest Mr Blair and Mr Campbell showed in the dossier as it was being prepared. On September 5, Mr Campbell's office emailed Mr Powell: "Re dossier, substantial rewrite. Structure as per TB [Tony Blair] discussion." The email refers to the need for "real intelligence material". Mr Powell responds by asking, "will 'TB' have something he can read" on the plane on his way to meet George Bush. The Hutton inquiry yesterday revealed that top officials in the Ministry of Defence and Downing Street - and Mr Blair himself - made it clear they wanted Dr Kelly to give evidence both in private to the parliamentary intelligence and security committee (ISC) and in public to the Commons foreign affairs committee (FAC) despite the intense personal pressure he was under. The government was worried about what Dr Kelly would tell MPs. In an email to one of the prime minister's private secretaries, Mr Powell wrote: "We tried the prime minister out on Kelly before FAC and ISC next Tuesday. He thought he probably had to do both but need to be properly prepared beforehand." Three days earlier, on July 7, Mr Blair asked his closest advisers what they "knew of Dr Kelly's views on weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, what would he say if he appeared before the ISC or the FAC". Sir Kevin Tebbit, the top civil servant at the Ministry of Defence, warned that Dr Kelly might say some "uncomfortable" things. The inquiry heard that the Downing Street press office was kept closely in touch with the MoD's strategy which led to Dr Kelly's name being made public. On the day he was named, July 10, one of those officials, Tom Kelly, wrote his devastating email to Mr Powell. "This is now a game of chicken with the Beeb - the only way they will shift is they see the screw tightening," he wrote. He was referring to plans to make the scientist appear before the committees in the hope of forcing the BBC to confirm that Dr Kelly was its source. Sir David, now the British ambassador to the United States, acknowledged that feelings had been running high in Downing Street. "There were certainly moments of personal anger. I think it was the case that it was seen as a pretty direct attack on the integrity of the prime minister and officials at No 10," he told the inquiry.

To: i-node who wrote (174137)	8/21/2003 2:13:43 AM
From: tejek	Respond to of 1576881

A Price Too High By BOB HERBERT How long is it going to take for us to recognize that the war we so foolishly started in Iraq is a fiasco — tragic, deeply dehumanizing and ultimately unwinnable? How much time and how much money and how many wasted lives is it going to take? <font color=red>At the United Nations yesterday, grieving diplomats spoke bitterly, but not for attribution, about the U.S.-led invasion and occupation. They said it has not only resulted in the violent deaths of close and highly respected colleagues, but has also galvanized the most radical elements of Islam. "This is a dream for the jihad," said one high-ranking U.N. official. "The resistance will only grow. The American occupation is now the focal point, drawing people from all over Islam into an eye-to-eye confrontation with the hated Americans. "It is very propitious for the terrorists," he said. "The U.S. is now on the soil of an Arab country, a Muslim country, where the terrorists have all the advantages. They are fighting in a terrain which they know and the U.S. does not know, with cultural images the U.S. does not understand, and with a language the American soldiers do not speak. The troops can't even read the street signs."<font color=black> The American people still do not have a clear understanding of why we are in Iraq. And the troops don't have a clear understanding of their mission. We're fighting a guerrilla war, which the bright lights at the Pentagon never saw coming, with conventional forces. Under these circumstances, in which the enemy might be anybody, anywhere, tragedies like the killing of Mazen Dana are all but inevitable. Mr. Dana was the veteran Reuters cameraman who was blown away by jittery U.S. troops on Sunday. The troops apparently thought his video camera was a rocket-propelled grenade launcher. The mind plays tricks on you when you're in great danger. A couple of weeks ago, in an apparent case of mistaken identity, U.S. soldiers killed two members of the Iraqi police. And a number of innocent Iraqi civilians, including children, have been killed by American troops. The carnage from riots, ambushes, firefights, suicide bombings, acts of sabotage, friendly fire incidents and other deadly encounters is growing. And so is the hostility toward U.S. troops and Americans in general. <font color=red>We are paying a terribly high price — for what?<font color=black> One of the many reasons Vietnam spiraled out of control was the fact that America's top political leaders never clearly defined the mission there, and were never straight with the public about what they were doing. Domestic political considerations led Kennedy, then Johnson, then Nixon to conceal the truth about a policy that was bankrupt from the beginning. They even concealed how much the war was costing. Sound familiar? Now we're lodged in Iraq, in the midst of the most volatile region of the world, and the illusion of a quick victory followed by grateful Iraqis' welcoming us with open arms has vanished. Instead of democracy blossoming in the desert, we have the reality of continuing bloodshed and heightened terror — the payoff of a policy spun from fantasies and lies. Senator John McCain and others are saying the answer is more troops, an escalation. If you want more American blood shed, that's the way to go. We sent troops to Vietnam by the hundreds of thousands. There were never enough. <font color=red>Beefing up the American occupation is not the answer to the problem. The American occupation is the problem. The occupation is perceived by ordinary Iraqis as a confrontation and a humiliation, and by terrorists and other bad actors as an opportunity to be gleefully exploited.<font color=black> The U.S. cannot bully its way to victory in Iraq. It needs allies, and it needs a plan. As quickly as possible, we should turn the country over to a genuine international coalition, headed by the U.N. and supported in good faith by the U.S. The idea would be to mount a massive international effort to secure Iraq, develop a legitimate sovereign government and work cooperatively with the Iraqi people to rebuild the nation. If this does not happen, disaster will loom because the United States cannot secure and rebuild Iraq on its own. A U.N. aide told me: "The United States is the No. 1 enemy of the Muslim world, and right now it's sitting on the terrorists' doorstep. It needs help. It needs friends."