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

To: GST who wrote (126791)	3/21/2004 1:31:52 PM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 281500

A War's Woeful Results _____________________ EDITORIAL The Los Angeles Times March 20, 2004 The first anniversary of the war in Iraq provides an inevitable and appropriate time for reflection. The Bush administration deployed its top officials this week to argue its case. President Bush on Friday took his turn, telling diplomats from scores of countries gathered in the East Room of the White House that Iraqis are better off now and that the world at large is safer than it was a year ago. At least the president might score a debatable point in asserting that life in Iraq is far better without Saddam Hussein. But he's the president of the United States and leader of the free world. So it's fair to ask whether the war has made life better for this nation and its allies. In our assessment, it has not. Although ridding Iraq of weapons of mass destruction was the administration's major selling point for the war, it is now clear that Hussein's regime no longer possessed those weapons. And European allies, including Poland — which Bush on Friday used as a post-communist model of how Iraq could evolve — feel misled and more worried than ever about their security. Hussein's Iraq played no part in 9/11, even as the administration insisted that the war in Iraq was an inevitable consequence of the 9/11 attacks. Al Qaeda followers, perpetrators of the assault against the United States, were and still are more likely to be found within the borders of U.S. ally Pakistan than within the borders of Iraq. Islamic radicals were able to portray the war as an imperialist ploy of the U.S. and its reluctant followers, invading Iraq because it was a Muslim nation with a stand-up Hussein as leader. That propaganda, which the Bush administration helped mightily to feed through its hubris and miscalculations, has spawned a new generation of recruits for terror. Those recruits have joined Hussein's followers to kill U.S. soldiers and Iraqis cooperating with the occupation forces. More than 570 U.S. troops have died in Iraq, along with soldiers from Britain, Spain, Italy and other nations. The war has killed thousands of Iraqis as well. Nations must retaliate for attacks like those on the World Trade Center and Pentagon and expect casualties in war. But the invasion and occupation of Iraq — a nation that did not pose an imminent threat — and the shameful underfunding of homeland security have not lessened U.S. vulnerability. The U.S. grows increasingly isolated from its allies, and that gives comfort and strength to its enemies. Last October, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld asked his generals: "Are we capturing, killing or deterring and dissuading more terrorists every day than the [Islamic schools] and the radical clerics are recruiting, training and deploying against us?" The answer was obvious as Islamic radicals killed more than 200 in Spain this month and scores more in Turkey, Morocco and Saudi Arabia earlier. Meanwhile, troops are still in Afghanistan, hunting Al Qaeda and remnants of the Taliban while Pakistanis chase Osama bin Laden's right-hand man, Ayman Zawahiri. In March last year, before the invasion, this editorial page agreed that Iraq would be better without Hussein. We still believe that. But we worried that the war would do far more harm than good. We were concerned that combat would fuel a myth of American bullies come to wreak havoc on Muslims, would cost us billions of dollars, not to mention the rebuilding costs, and would divert attention from attempts to solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. "We desperately hope to be wrong in our trepidation about the consequences here and abroad," we said then. Today we regret that our fears are being realized. latimes.com

To: GST who wrote (126791)	3/21/2004 1:49:30 PM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 281500

Canada Got it Right on Iraq commondreams.org <<...The most obvious consequence is that the United States and its posse are caught in a morass. They cannot end the occupation precipitously without triggering a civil war and undoing the good they have done in removing Saddam Hussein. They cannot stay in Iraq without losing more soldiers and more money. Echoes of Vietnam. Meanwhile, the Iraqi toll also rises. As one Arab ambassador at the United Nations put it, the Americans have swallowed a razor and nothing they do now will be painless or cost-free. The cost to U.S. interests extends well beyond Iraq. In December, the U.S. Advisory Group on Public Diplomacy for the Arab and Muslim World, headed by former U.S. ambassador to Israel and Syria, Edward Djerejian, reported that "the bottom has indeed fallen out of support for the United States." According to a poll released this week by the Pew Research Center, international discontent with the United States and its foreign policy has intensified rather than diminished since last year. In some Muslim countries, support for the United States is in the single digits. Pew found little change in the overwhelmingly negative attitudes of countries toward the Iraq war. In Britain, support has plummeted from 61 per cent last year to 43 per cent now. The Globe and Mail/CTV News poll found that two-thirds of Canadians believe that President George W. Bush "knowingly lied to the world" about Iraq. Nor are all the critics foreign. The war, according to a report of the U.S. Army War College, was a strategic error, a distraction from the war on terrorism. Beyond the neo-cons, few see terrorism as monolithic. The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace found that weapons of mass destruction were not an immediate threat, inspections were working, the terrorism connection was missing and war was not the best or only option. Most of the extraordinary foreign disaffection with the United States can be traced to U.S. foreign policy, rather than to the United States per se...>>

To: GST who wrote (126791)	3/21/2004 3:21:07 PM
From: KLP	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

I am assuming those comments are your opinion. If there is "other" proof, please share the proof for every one of your allegations.

To: GST who wrote (126791)	3/22/2004 8:06:15 AM
From: John Carragher	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

guest this morning on Imus , ex fbi terror group who worked with john O'Neil for five weeks on uss cole investigation says there were a dozen or more terrorists groups they were watching. He also mentioned that the top man on Al Q. for knowledge about the group was John O'Neil. who retired shortly after the cole investation and went to work for twin towers in charge of security. He died in the twin towers the following morning. do you think with his depth knowledge of Al Q that if we had any idea the twin towers was going to be hit he would have been in the building. snip background on John O'Neil "O'Neill was a man Osama bin Laden wanted dead. O'Neill had been a Deputy Director of the FBI, and Osama bin Laden's main pursuer in the US government. O'Neill had investigated the bombings of the World Trade Center in 1993, a US base in Saudi Arabia in 1996, the US embassies in Nairobi and Dar-Es-Salaam in 1998, and the USS Cole last year."