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

To: Sig who wrote (123454)	1/19/2004 5:04:39 PM
From: marcos	Respond to of 281500

Sig, everything you type here is centred around the assumption that only two choices exist, that we must live under Diktat from Washington, or under some Hussein/bin Laden figure ..... one quick look around the world would show this not to be the case, it would also show that very few accept this phoney dichotomy - certainly not '50 nations' by a long shot, remember that Blair and Aznar, the only two leaders who supported the Iraq invasion to meaningful extent, were ignoring the stances of their populations .... there are a lot more than two alternatives open to us at any given time, and even as each decision is taken, for example the one to take down Hussein, there remain a wide variety of ways and means to accomplish that goal ..... got to stretch your mind a little, Sig ..... here, playing the 'quaint conceit of imagining' What If may help with some exercise - '... If Lee after his triumphal entry into Washington had merely been the soldier, his achievements would have ended on the battlefield. It was his august declaration that the victorious Confederacy would pursue no policy towards the African negroes, which was not in harmony with the moral conceptions of Western Europe, that opened the high roads along which we are now marching so prosperously.' winstonchurchill.org This piece is probably posted whole somewhere on the net ... it was in a wwii anthology called Soldier's Reader, one of the first i ever read in english .... brought to mind today because there is a new What If book out, and mentioned on a thread where i am banned .... lol, it's quite amusing that, to my knowledge, only two SIers have declared alliance based on common interest in banning me, Emile Vidrine and LindyBill

To: Sig who wrote (123454)	1/19/2004 11:14:50 PM
From: John Soileau	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Sig, You have secular prewar Iraq mixed in with the Arab radical religious terrorists. Oil and vinegar, apples and oranges. Even our president,George W. Bush, has stated that no link has been established between al Qaeda and Hussein's Iraq, and Colin Powell, our Secretary of State, said that again very recently. Should we believe them, or Sig? Yes, pre-war Iraq was controlled by a very bad guy (which has also been true of Zimbabwe, Congo (wow, 2,500,000 dead in 4 years) and a host of other countries never given a rats-ass worth of attention by the new bleeding-heart conservatives), but one cannot say that it was a playground for al Qaeda and its ilk. In fact, Ansar al-Islam, a very nasty Arab religious terrorist group, for years operated in the part of Iraq OUTSIDE of Hussein's control--gee, why was that?! My take is that Hussein-controlled Iraq was actually LESS radical-Islamist-useful prewar than it is now: the Administration tells us that they are in there now, doing their ugly deeds, yet there's no evidence that that was happening at all prewar. And I can't wait to see the post-occupation Shia-Sunni-Kurd Iraqi regime-- hmm, will it be US friendly, or militant-Arab friendly? I'm having a bit of trouble drinking the Republican Kool-Aid that post-pullout Iraq will be a democratic wonderland, with shiny happy people holding hands. The point is that there is a very good argument that the Iraq action, no matter how feel-good and humanitarian, is NOT ultimately conducive to the real war, the war on terrorism. The massive resources consumed or tied down in the Iraq action are obviously not being used or reserved for other missions--such as the mission (remember that?) to find and neutralize al Qaeda and their ilk in the remaining countries where it appears they exist. That would be, for starters, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, and Pakistan, but, umm, ... NOT Hussein's Iraq. Unconvince me, if you can, that the 87+ Billion of our money should instead have been spent on antiterrorist actions in THOSE countries, not in irrelevant, defanged, overflown Iraq. Bush should apologize for being sidetracked, and then turn the fight to the REAL enemy. I'd vote for him if he did that. John

To: Sig who wrote (123454)	1/20/2004 9:35:50 AM
From: GST	Respond to of 281500

U.S. pushes the U.N. to help with Iraq exit USATODAY. By Barbara Slavin, USA TODAY The Bush administration and its Iraqi allies pressed the United Nations (news - web sites) on Monday to come back to Iraq (news - web sites) and help salvage an increasingly troubled plan for reshaping post-Saddam Hussein (news - web sites) Iraq. After meeting with a delegation that included U.S. administrator Paul Bremer, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan (news - web sites) said he was considering sending a small team to Iraq to assess whether it is possible to hold national balloting. Annan told reporters after a lengthy meeting with U.S. and Iraqi officials that he was "conscious of the urgency" of the situation and promised a decision soon. But as bombs continued to explode in Baghdad and more than 100,000 people demonstrated in the Iraqi capital Monday demanding direct elections, it was not clear whether even the United Nations could stem Iraqi protests. "The (Shiites) may get used to demonstrating and become a rallying point for opposition" to the U.S. occupation, warns Judith Yaphe, an Iraq expert at the National Defense University in Washington. Though Iraqis have a more favorable view of the United Nations than they do of the Bush administration, Yaphe says, they also view the world body as an American tool that implemented a dozen years of harsh economic sanctions after the Gulf War (news - web sites) in 1991. The Bush administration, which toppled the regime of Saddam Hussein without explicit U.N. blessing, now appears increasingly desperate to gain the world body's help in devising a political exit strategy. Last November, the U.S.-led administration in Iraq scrapped plans for a slow transfer of sovereignty to Iraqis and instead mapped out a complicated system of caucuses to choose members of a transitional national assembly. That plan is now under a growing challenge from Shiite Muslims, who represent 60% of Iraq's 25 million people. Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, Iraq's most influential Shiite cleric, has demanded direct elections and appears to view the caucus idea as a plot to deprive Shiites of their right to rule. U.S. officials and members of the U.S.-appointed Iraqi Governing Council see the United Nations as the key to convincing Sistani that he is wrong and that quick elections are not feasible given the lack of security and accurate voter rolls. Both U.S. and Iraqi officials urged Annan to send Lakhdar Brahimi to mediate with Sistani. Brahimi, a former Algerian foreign minister and veteran U.N. troubleshooter, just finished a two-year stint overseeing Afghanistan (news - web sites)'s transition to a constitutional government. Last week, he was named Annan's special adviser on the Muslim world. Iraqi officials say they have gone as far as lobbying his daughter Rym Brahimi, a reporter in Baghdad for CNN, to urge him to accept the mediation role, but he is said to be reluctant to take on such a challenge. The United Nations withdrew all foreign staff after a suicide bombing in August killed 22 people at U.N. headquarters in Baghdad. Annan agreed last week to send four staff members to Baghdad before the end of this month to assess security conditions. U.N. diplomats say the team has been told it can stay in the "green zone" that houses U.S. occupation authorities, but U.N. officials are adamant that they will not put a new headquarters there for fear of compromising their independence and making it difficult for Iraqis to consult with U.N. staff. Besides safety, another key issue for the United Nations is how much authority it will be given to change the caucus procedure if it determines that direct elections cannot be held this spring. Bremer told reporters Monday that the U.S.-led coalition authority "is open to clarifications" about how the transitional government will be chosen. But a European diplomat in Washington said that there remains reluctance in the administration - particularly in the office of Vice President Cheney - to give Annan carte blanche to change the U.S. plan. story.news.yahoo.com