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Politics : Stockman Scott's Political Debate Porch -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: T L Comiskey who wrote (46291)	5/15/2004 1:41:57 PM
From: Wharf Rat	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 89467

That was good.I'm still laughing :-) Sunnis and Shias Uniting Against U.S. by Dahr Jamail BAGHDAD - The number of Iraqi dead in Fallujah last month in the so-called Sunni triangle is estimated by doctors to be more than 800. Fighting involving Shia Muslims in the south has claimed the lives of hundreds as well. What is happening is happening to all of Iraq. There is no difference now between Sunni and Shia, Arab and Kurd. We have all been invaded. Imam Muad Al- Adhamy ”From the nature of the people, any action has a reaction,” Imam Muad Al- Adhamy told IPS at his office at the Abu Hanifa mosque in Al-Adhamiyah in Baghdad. This mosque is the center of the country's Sunni power. ”With the Americans attacking Najaf and Kerbala (holy cities of the Shias) there is resistance, and we support this.” Asked about divisions between Sunnis and Shias in the past, Imam Al- Adhamy said ”what is happening is happening to all of Iraq. There is no difference now between Sunni and Shia, Arab and Kurd. We have all been invaded.” The Imam believes his followers share this feeling. ”The feelings of the people of this mosque are the same as all Iraqis -- Iraqi blood is precious and should not be shed. But freedom needs this blood if we cannot obtain it by peaceful means.” This sentiment echoes that of Sheikh Abdul Hadi Al-Daraji, a deputy of the embattled Shia cleric Muqtada Al-Sadr. On Friday last week when Shias from across Iraq attended prayers at Sunni mosques, Sheikh Al-Daraji delivered a strong sermon at the Abu Hanifa mosque. ”We have come here to prove that the forces of evil will never be able to detract from Sunni-Shia unity,” he said. ”Your enemy has come to sow the seeds of social chaos among Sunnis and Shias, but he has failed because Islam is one.” Members of the congregation echoed these sentiments. ”I have given my blood for the people of Fallujah in April,” said Abdul Aziz after the sermon at Abu Hanifa. ”I will do the same for the people in Najaf, because we are all Iraqi. There is no Sunni or Shia now, we are all together against the Americans.” As the fighting in Kerbala continues to rage into the weekend, in Baghdad another Sunni Imam at the Nidal Islam Mosque, Imam Kutaibia Ama'ash, said that ”the actions of the U.S. are uniting the Sunni and Shia. The U.S. actions via the Governing Council are an attempt to divide us, but the result has been the opposite.” Expressing solidarity with embattled Iraqis throughout his country, he said ”all of the people of this mosque are supporting the people of Fallujah, Najaf, and Kerbala. We give full support to the people resisting the Americans.” A member of the mosque, Sheikh Haji Abdul Majit, said ”they brought us a Governing Council that loves Israel more than Iraq.” While the firebrand cleric al-Sadr has caused some rifts within the Shia population of southern Iraq, he is said to have a large following. After a battle in the sprawling slum neighborhood of Sadr City in Baghdad last Sunday, the U.S. military used air support to destroy the headquarters of al-Sadr there. At the destroyed building children chanted, ”Live, live for Sadr! Americans and the Governing Council are unbelievers!” Sheikh Mahmoud Zaidi, a cleric who is an al-Sadr supporter, said: ”You see the people here? They will not stop fighting the invaders, no matter what happens. They are fighting the people. That is why they will never defeat us.” All of the clerics interviewed seem to agree that the only solution to the ongoing violence in Iraq is a complete withdrawal of the U.S. military. ”If the invaders would treat people better, this would never happen,” said Imam Muad Al-Adhamy. ”We have been put in a worse position than Saddam Hussein's time. Nothing is worse than being invaded.” Now that the United States has achieved the goal of removing Saddam Hussein, and seen that there are no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, the Imam said he sees no need for the U.S. troops to remain in Iraq. ”The invaders should pull out, 100 percent.” commondreams.org

To: T L Comiskey who wrote (46291)	5/15/2004 2:39:53 PM
From: Skywatcher	Respond to of 89467

frightening predictions from the esteemed Robert Reich W.'s Second Term: If You Think the First is Bad... by Robert B. Reich Musings about a second Bush term typically assume another four years of the same right-wing policies we've had to date. But it'd likely be far worse. So far, the Bush administration has had to govern with the expectation of facing American voters again in 2004. But suppose George W. Bush wins a second term. The constraint of a re-election contest will be gone. Knowing that voters can no longer turn them out, and that this will be their last shot at remaking America, the radical conservatives will be unleashed. A friend who specializes in foreign policy and hobnobs with subcabinet officials in the Defense and State departments told me that the only thing that's stopped the Bushies from storming into Iran and North Korea is the upcoming election. If Bush is re-elected, "[Dick] Cheney and [Donald] Rumsfeld are out of the box," he said. "They'll take Bush's re-election as a mandate to wage the 'war on terror' everywhere and anywhere." The second term's defense team will be even harder line than the current one. Colin Powell will go. Condoleezza Rice will take over at the State Department. Rumsfeld will consolidate power as the president's national-security adviser. Paul Wolfowitz will run the Defense Department. Domestic policy will swing further right. A re-election would strengthen the White House's hand on issues that even many congressional Republicans have a hard time accepting, such as the assault on civil liberties. Bush will seek to push "Patriot II" through Congress, giving the Justice Department and the FBI powers to inspect mail, eavesdrop on phone conversations and e-mail, and examine personal medical records, insurance claims, and bank accounts. Right-wing evangelicals will solidify their control over the departments of Justice, Education, and Health and Human Services -- curtailing abortions, putting federal funds into the hands of private religious groups, pushing prayer in the public schools, and promoting creationism. Economic policy, meanwhile, will be tilted even more brazenly toward the rich. Republican strategist Grover Norquist smugly predicts larger tax benefits for high earners in a second Bush administration. The goal will be to eliminate all taxes on capital gains, dividends, and other forms of unearned income and move toward a "flat tax." The plan will be for deficits to continue to balloon until Wall Street demands large spending cuts as a condition for holding down long-term interest rates. Homeowners, facing potential losses on their major nest eggs as mortgage rates move upward, might be persuaded to join the chorus. In consequence, Bush will slash all domestic spending outside of defense. He will also argue that Social Security cannot be maintained in its present form, and will push for legislation to transform it into private accounts. Meanwhile, the few shards of regulation still protecting the environment and the safety of American workers will be eliminated. Justice Sandra Day O'Connor will surely step down from the Supreme Court, possibly joined by at least one other jurist, opening the way for the White House to nominate a series of right-wing justices, a list that could easily include Charles Pickering Sr. and William Pryor Jr. After Chief Justice William Rehnquist resigns, Bush may well nominate Antonin Scalia for the top slot -- opening the way for Scalia and Clarence Thomas to dominate the Court. Such a court will curtail abortion rights, whittle down the Fourth and Fifth amendments, end all affirmative action, and eliminate much of what's left of the barrier between church and state. Karl Rove and Tom DeLay, meanwhile, will have four more years to fulfill their goal of transforming American democracy into a one-party state. Congressional redistricting across the nation will make Texas' recent antics seem a model of democratic deliberation. Automated voting machines will be easily rigged, with no paper trails to document abuses. Changes in campaign-finance laws will permit larger "hard money" donations by corporate executives and federal contractors who have benefited by Republican policies. Finally, the Federal Communications Commission will allow three or four giant media empires -- all tightly connected to the Republican Party --to consolidate their ownership over all television and radio broadcasting. Nothing is more dangerous to a republic than fanatics unconstrained by democratic politics. Yet in a second term of this administration, that's exactly what we'll have. Robert B. Reich, secretary of Labor in the Clinton administration, is a professor of social and economic policy at Brandeis University. Copyright C 2004 by The American Prospect,