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

To: GST who wrote (112601)	8/24/2003 9:47:16 AM
From: stockman_scott	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

The president's prevarications on Iraq -- and their consequences. ______________________________________ Eight Lies By Michael Tomasky Web Exclusive: 8.21.03 prospect.org Imagine that, after the failure of the health-care bill in 1994, Bill Clinton had come right back in 1995 and proposed the measure again. No, not only proposed it again but proposed a more radical version, arguing that it failed only because it was too watered down, and tried to bully its critics with reckless gunslinger talk about how they didn't care about the future of America. Virtually all of Washington would have thought Clinton ready for the loony bin under such circumstances. And yet this is exactly the m.o. of the current White House. Like one of those M.C. Escher prints in which water tumbles through an endlessly circulating sluiceway but ends up back where it began, Bush administration policy -- in Iraq and on other fronts -- operates on a logic that permits neither facts nor criticism nor other opinions to disrupt its precious flow of water to nowhere. The logic goes something like this: The White House lies and propagandizes. An ever-pliant media gobble up the lies and propaganda. At some point, the lies and propaganda are laid bare and result in failure or crisis. And then -- this is where Escher comes in -- the administration uses its own failure to argue that the crisis just proves that the public must support Bush all the more! Iraq and the blackout, the leading international and domestic crises of the week, are both examples of this. With regard to Iraq, there are at least eight major lies the administration has told that put us where we are today: 1. It said Saddam Hussein was an imminent threat to the United States. He was not. 2. It said he sat on massive caches of weapons of mass destruction, which he was ready to employ at a moment's notice. He apparently did not and he obviously was not (or he would surely have used them when the infidels hit his soil). 3.It said regime change would be a cakewalk. It was for two weeks -- during which time the administration naturally showed the tastelessness to gloat about it -- but it sure isn't now. 4. It said our soldiers would be greeted as liberators. They were for about two days; now they're "greeted" as occupiers. 5. It said it had a solid postwar plan. It didn't. 6. It said toppling Hussein would hem in terrorism. Instead, for now at least, terrorism has spread, as extremists of all stripes swarm into Iraq, where our soldiers are paying the price (four more were injured Wednesday morning, after the United Nations bombing). 7. It said the death of Hussein's sons would slow the bloodletting. Violence has increased (and the same will surely happen if Hussein himself turns up dead or captured). 8. It said we don't need more troops on the ground. A pipeline bombing and a hotel bombing later, it's pretty obvious that, as depressing as it is to contemplate, we need more troops on the ground. Only one thing ever said by the White House is true, which is that Saddam Hussein was a brutal dictator. That he was. And so now, eight lies later, the administration falls back on this rhetoric, which is obviously the Republican National Committee's No. 1 talking point: Would you rather (as I heard a few testy wing nuts say on television yesterday) that Saddam Hussein still be in power butchering his people? This is the question of a demagogue, a shill or an idiot (not groups in short supply these days, unfortunately). But it's scarcely as if supporting this administration to the hilt or being soft on Hussein are the only two alternatives here. A third alternative -- consisting of three or four more months for the UN inspectors (does the administration's timetable really seem that urgent in retrospect?), a second UN resolution, the backing of the Security Council, an honest rather than a dishonest casus belli from the administration and then, if necessary, a war (and yes, I would have supported war under those circumstances) -- is looking better every day. On the blackout, no, it's not the administration's fault, and there is no equivalent catalogue of lies that contributed to it. But what the administration and its allies in Congress are doing now is shocking. There's fairly broad bipartisan agreement on the portions of the administration's energy bill that have to do with updating transmission lines. There are differences in the House and Senate versions, but they're not so great that a deal can't be cut. If that came up by itself, it could pass both houses in a matter of days. It would at least begin to address a problem that has obviously hit the crisis point. But the White House and its Republican allies don't want that. What they want is to take a situation, which they and their ideological soul mates in the various states helped create through hurried deregulation, and use it to force oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) -- which the administration, for now, is insisting be attached to the bill that would update the transmission lines. They'd rather keep the ANWR provisions in the bill and have it fail, so they can then blame Democrats next year, than do something about the problem. Fine, let them do it. And then let's see how it plays in Michigan and Ohio. Iraq or the energy grid, it's always the same with these people: They put ideology ahead of facts and use their own failures as evidence that they should be given more license. It's time someone took their license away. __________________________________________________ Michael Tomasky will become executive editor of the Prospect in September. His columns appear on Wednesdays at TAP Online.

To: GST who wrote (112601)	8/24/2003 12:13:30 PM
From: Sig	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

<<<If I see you walking down the street and decide to shoot you in the face -- that is unilateral action -- it is an unprovoked one-sided attack. The concept of shooting you in the face while holding the hands of my friend (Great Britain) does not make it any less unilateral. Saddam conducted a unilateral attack on Kuwait. If Saddam had Syria cooperate with the attack it would still be unilateral. >>>> So when you post here it is unilateral posting including only your own single minded position with no concern for others positions, no consideration of Faultline rules, even if someone else may from time to time agree with you. Thats true freedom and we support that. Sig

To: GST who wrote (112601)	8/24/2003 6:03:12 PM
From: Nadine Carroll	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

The US invasion of Iraq is 100% unilateral I give up. Your only answer when someone points out that your assertions are counter-factual is to assert them again. Thus, any attempt to debate you degenerates into a child's game of "Did not!" "Did so!" "Did not!" "Did so!" A waste of my time.