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

To: GST who wrote (123273)	1/15/2004 6:15:01 PM
From: Hawkmoon	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

You're quoting James P. Rubin, the former State Department spokesman for the Clinton Administration, as an objective source? Why not just quote his wife?? What actually happened, however, was the fourth scenario, one for which Washington was wholly unprepared: partial compliance. Wholly unprepared? Why should we be prepared for such a scenario when the UNSC dictated that such a scenario would constitute a material breach of the cease fire accord? But I especially loved this part from his article: To be fair, the administration had compelling rationales for war beyond the threat of Iraqi WMD. For example, Bush administration officials claimed that toppling Saddam would uphold the sanctity of un resolutions, eliminate a murderous government that brutalized its citizens, deprive Osama bin Laden of a key ally, and bolster democracy in the Middle East. But each of these arguments, although perhaps otherwise convincing, were undermined by the administration's record or reputation. Seems to me I remember many briefings Mr. Rubin gave during his time at State, where he incessantly presented multiple rationales for bombing Iraq, including those he considered "fair" when used by the Bush administration. But the rest of the world was under the view that "Desert Fox" was merely a cynical attempt by Clinton to distract attention from his impeachment hearings and his disgrace related to the Monica Lewinsky affair. However, if anything, the US was unprepared when several permanent members of the UNSC deliberately chose to undermine the credibility of the UN with regard to its binding resolutions.. It's all well and good for Rubin to "debrief" his European buddies and discuss justifications for why they didn't support Bush's invasion of Iraq. But one has only to look at their lack of action in the months prior to the invasion to understand that their heart never was in such an operation. Rubin claimed that many Europeans understood that the US display of military resolve leading up to the war lead to many concessions on the part of Saddam.. But they still believed the US should have left 150,000 US soldiers in a containment role for the entire summer, which supposedly would have convinced the world that Bush was not acting rashly.. But nowhere did I see the forces of France, Russia, or Germany, employed in that containment strategy. No where did I see them display a willingness to keep tens of thousands of their own troops in a standby mode, sitting in sweltering hot and dusty staging camps in Kuwait. That tells me that they never were going to participate in enforcing the UN resolutions. And that's their right. But THEY HAVE NO RIGHT to place their selfish economic interests in the way of upholding 17 different UNSC binding resolutions which Saddam's regime had consistently violated. Sorry GST... Jamie Rubin has his own agenda of bias against Bush.. And the fact that he's playing "apologist" for Germany and France CONTINUED failure to participate, is indicative that he's more interested in making excuses for THEM, than in asking why they sought to passively, and/or actively, undermine the UNSC's resolutions against Iraq. Hawk