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Politics : Support the French! Viva Democracy! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Brumar89 who wrote (4133)	12/18/2003 9:48:13 AM
From: zonder	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 7834

we use them [US powers] on a priority basis where we have interests or involvement Agreed. If it were put like this, there would be no hypocrisy. However, US administration's case for war was (after the WMD argument fizzled at least) that the US was doing this to bring democracy and freedom to a nation and ending their misery through the forceful removal of their dictator. Given that there are other nations suffering and dying just as miserably under dictators around the world for whom the US has no such plans (and even flat out supports some), this statement constitutes hypocrisy. Think of it this way - If the police were to arrest one thief and leave others untouched, it would be hypocritical of their stated case that theft is a crime and its purpetrators should be brought to justice. By the way: (1) I did not say Kosovo was a UN-blessed operation. They dragged their feet for an unforgivably long time. It was a mistake Annan later admitted. (2) I said "UN involvement". (3) Again, look up the timing of Clinton's decision to go ahead in Kosovo. I would add that Bush's credibility in dealing with Taylor was greatly enhanced by the strong hand he used in dealing with Saddam Bush has zero credibility after all the rubbish he proclaimed about Iraq - Nigerian documents, "tons and tons of WMDs", etc - in his absolute need to invade Iraq no matter what.

To: Brumar89 who wrote (4133)	12/18/2003 10:10:51 AM
From: 49thMIMOMander	Respond to of 7834

<..Bosnia here - mightbe blamed on the Clinton administration's trying to work through the failed institution that is the UN.> Well, UN had asked NATO, with US the top dog, for intervention for many years, but the republican senate just talked about selling Bosnia weapons (knowing that there was a weapons-embargo for the whole region, to avoid a real escalation plus involvment of the whole larger region). Unluckily CSPAN did not, in those times, archive the debates on internet. This process became one important step in the idea that EU must build up non-NATO EU-forces, despite the agreement that there is little sense in having both NATO and one additional military (organisation) in both the "the west" and europe. However, the other solution is that NATO will change, a process which is going forward steadily but slowly. Ilmarinen Funny thing, on one hand many in US fear UN as a "world-government + military", black helicopters,etc and in the same or following sentence, mostly the same groups complain that UN does not have a (standing) military?? However, I'm sure they have some way of combining those two thoughts and ideas?? PS Then, as well as now, the UN is a peace-keeping organisation (made up of its members, with especially on having more power than all others) and not a war-making organisation. This will probably stay so, if the present NATO succeeds in its internal reforms. (the other possibility is that NATO becomes the private NATO of US)

To: Brumar89 who wrote (4133)	12/18/2003 5:54:22 PM
From: Raymond Duray	Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 7834

Thank God Saddam is finally back in American hands! He must have really missed us. Man, he sure looked bad! But, at least he got a free dental exam today. That's something most Americans can't get. America used to like Saddam. We LOVED Saddam. We funded him. We armed him. We helped him gas Iranian troops. But then he screwed up. He invaded the dictatorship of Kuwait and, in doing so, did the worst thing imaginable -- he threatened an even BETTER friend of ours: the dictatorship of Saudi Arabia, and its vast oil reserves. The Bushes and the Saudi royal family were and are close business partners, and Saddam, back in 1990, committed a royal blunder by getting a little too close to their wealthy holdings. Things went downhill for Saddam from there. But it wasn't always that way. Saddam was our good friend and ally. We supported his regime. It wasn’t the first time we had helped a murderer. We liked playing Dr. Frankenstein. We created a lot of monsters -- the Shah of Iran, Somoza of Nicaragua, Pinochet of Chile -- and then we expressed ignorance or shock when they ran amok and massacred people. We liked Saddam because he was willing to fight the Ayatollah. So we made sure that he got billions of dollars to purchase weapons. Weapons of mass destruction. That's right, he had them. We should know -- we gave them to him! We allowed and encouraged American corporations to do business with Saddam in the 1980s. That's how he got chemical and biological agents so he could use them in chemical and biological weapons. Here's the list of some of the stuff we sent him (according to a 1994 U.S. Senate report): * Bacillus Anthracis, cause of anthrax. * Clostridium Botulinum, a source of botulinum toxin. * Histoplasma Capsulatam, cause of a disease attacking lungs, brain, spinal cord, and heart. * Brucella Melitensis, a bacteria that can damage major organs. * Clostridium Perfringens, a highly toxic bacteria causing systemic illness. * Clostridium tetani, a highly toxigenic substance. And here are some of the American corporations who helped to prop Saddam up by doing business with him: AT&T, Bechtel, Caterpillar, Dow Chemical, Dupont, Kodak, Hewlett-Packard, and IBM (for a full list of companies and descriptions of how they helped Saddam, click here. We were so cozy with dear old Saddam that we decided to feed him satellite images so he could locate where the Iranian troops were. We pretty much knew how he would use the information, and sure enough, as soon as we sent him the spy photos, he gassed those troops. And we kept quiet. Because he was our friend, and the Iranians were the "enemy." A year after he first gassed the Iranians, we reestablished full diplomatic relations with him! Later he gassed his own people, the Kurds. You would think that would force us to disassociate ourselves from him. Congress tried to impose economic sanctions on Saddam, but the Reagan White House quickly rejected that idea -- they wouldn’t let anything derail their good buddy Saddam. We had a virtual love fest with this Frankenstein whom we (in part) created. And, just like the mythical Frankenstein, Saddam eventually spun out of control. He would no longer do what he was told by his master. Saddam had to be caught. And now that he has been brought back from the wilderness, perhaps he will have something to say about his creators. Maybe we can learn something... interesting. Maybe Don Rumsfeld could smile and shake Saddam's hand again. Just like he did when he went to see him in 1983 (click here to see the photo). Maybe we never would have been in the situation we're in if Rumsfeld, Bush, Sr., and company hadn't been so excited back in the 80s about their friendly monster in the desert. Meanwhile, anybody know where the guy is who killed 3,000 people on 9/11? Our other Frankenstein?? Maybe he's in a mouse hole. So many of our little monsters, so little time before the next election. Stay strong, Democratic candidates. Quit sounding like a bunch of wusses. These bastards sent us to war on a lie, the killing will not stop, the Arab world hates us with a passion, and we will pay for this out of our pockets for years to come. Nothing that happened today (or in the past 9 months) has made us ONE BIT safer in our post-9/11 world. Saddam was never a threat to our national security. Only our desire to play Dr. Frankenstein dooms us all. michaelmoore.com