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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Lane3 who wrote (21251)	12/23/2003 6:42:19 PM
From: frankw1900	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 793690

"More talk about "conflicted views." When will the lies stop?" Actually, it was a pretty good article. Burns nailed it to the wall. You are looking at the difficult aspect of the honour culture: shame and honour are a hydraulic relation. More shame -less honour. Lay shame on someone and increase your honour - increase his shame and decrease his honour. Hatfields and McCoys. Insult can be repaired by receiving material gift or killing the offender. Our anglo-saxon ancestors were almost exactly like that. They eventually solved the problem in a relatively short time by offloading the honour-shame work to magistrates and courts. It can be done in Iraq because it has the grand advantage of doing away with blood feuds which are a huge burden on families and tribes. In Baghdad and many of the larger cities and towns there are already operating coourts to which folk are taking their cases against members of the former regime rather than seeking out private justice. I'm amazed at how few revenge killings there have been given the size of Hussein's repessive apparatus. The guy Burns was talking with was giving a message. Spoke loud enough to be heard at adjoining tables. The hard men said they'd appreciate talking with Burns. Work was being done by everybody. Interesting story.

To: Lane3 who wrote (21251)	12/23/2003 7:03:41 PM
From: Sully-	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793690

The Times Misfires (Again) on Bush's "Imminent Threat" The Times puts one of its favorite anti-war myths back in circulation in Thursday's story by Richard Stevenson, which employs the snide and misleading headline: "Remember 'Weapons of Mass Destruction'? For Bush, They Are a Nonissue." <font size=4>The article deals with two appearances by Bush in which he downplayed the failure thus far to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and highlights criticism of Bush for deceptively claiming that Iraq posed an "imminent threat" to the United States. But Bush never said that it did. Stevenson quotes Sen. Bob Graham, Democrat and former presidential candidate: "'This was a pre-emptive war, and the rationale was that there was an imminent threat,'<font size=3> said Senator Bob Graham of Florida, a Democrat who has said that by elevating Iraq to the most dangerous menace facing the United States, the administration unwisely diverted resources from fighting Al Qaeda and other terrorists." <font size=4>Then Stevenson recites, without comment, another of Graham's "imminent threat" accusations: "The overwhelming vote in Congress last year to authorize the use of force against Iraq would have been closer 'but for the fact that the president had so explicitly said that there were weapons of mass destruction that posed an imminent threat to citizens of the United States.'" Bush never said that, but Stevenson fails to challenge Graham on the point.<font size=3> Then Stevenson himself gets into the "imminent" (or "immediacy") act: "Mr. Bush's answers to questions on the subject continued a gradual shift in the way he has addressed the topic, from the immediacy of the threat to an assertion that no matter what, the world is better off without Mr. Hussein in power." <font size=4> But Bush never called Saddam an imminent threat.<font size=3> In fact, in his 2003 State of the Union address, Bush said: "Some have said we must not act until the threat is imminent. Since when have terrorists and tyrants announced their intentions, politely putting us on notice before they strike?" <font size=4>This isn't the first appearance of the "imminent threat" canard in the Times, and it apparently won't be the last. <font size=3> timeswatch.org