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

To: FaultLine who wrote (140446)	7/15/2004 3:23:24 PM
From: Maurice Winn	Respond to of 281500

Israel makes a blunder. How to win enemies and lose friends. Is the USA with us or against us? csmonitor.com Judith Potter is good [the judge who tried the Israeli criminal citizenship thieves]. But look at the slimeball comments they made: stuff.co.nz <Both men did compulsory service with the Israeli armed forces, were university educated and active in synagogues and communities. Both were interested in conservation. Their lawyers said they shared community disgust that a disabled person had been exploited. They had not known - this was reflected in the financial offer to make amends. Lawyers Stuart Grieve and Grant Illingworth gave the court personal assurances the $100,000 could be paid within a week. They submitted Barkan was the principal offender. No solid evidence existed Cara and Kelman were involved till the day the passport was to be delivered. Mr Grieve said Cara, a father of five, had hoped for a new, civilian life on moving to Australia four years ago after retiring from flying light transport planes with the air force. Cara's testimonials included one from the mayor of his home town outside Sydney. He had a travel business connected to an Israel-based agency promoting eco-tourism in Australia and New Zealand. He had travelled to New Zealand 24 times in recent years for business and family holidays. He put in a lot of time with his son, aged about 12. His son's severe learning difficulties were worsening through separation from his father. Kelman, who studied mathematics and physics, had a glowing testimonial about his "tireless" voluntary work helping disabled children. Mr Grieve said international publicity meant the men and their families would now be at risk for the rest of their lives from terrorists aiming at connections with Mossad.> They should have thought of what they were doing before they got into criminal activity. Tireless voluntary work for disabled children = haw, haw... yeah right. <He had travelled to New Zealand 24 times in recent years for business and family holidays. > Yes, he just wanted to enjoy some sunshine... snigger. What was the business again? Just how many holidays does he have and who paid for the tickets? Both interested in conservation? Hahahaah!! Saving their bacon more like it. [Hmmm, bacon?!] These guys should be stand-up comedians. <Both men did compulsory service with the Israeli armed forces, were university educated and active in synagogues and communities. > Heck, you'd think with all that, they'd have learned that crime doesn't pay, and that ethics are good things. You'd think they could get a real job. Active in the community? What? They went for a run around the community each day to keep fit or what? Just what did they get up to in synagogues? I think their synagogue should check the till to make sure everything is still there. <they shared community disgust that a disabled person had been exploited. They had not known - this was reflected in the financial offer to make amends. > This must be the "voluntary work for cripples". They didn't know? The guy lived around the corner from them. What a coincidence that they just got his name out of the phone book or something - yeah right. They knew he wasn't going to be traveling and that they wouldn't get any problems such as his photo coming up in the computer not looking quite like them! Financial offer not to make amends but to fool the court into thinking there was some remorse and to bribe their way out. They couldn't give a stuff! Whose money was offered anyway? Israel's or their own? They should have just said "Okay, you caught us fair and square. What's the punishment? We were just trying to defend ourselves against Islamic Jihad and another pogrom and you did see what happens to Jews if Nazis and fellow travelers like the Mufti get power". Adding insult to injury wasn't a good idea. They'd have had some sympathy if they'd been less slimey. Judith isn't just a pretty face. Mqurice PS: Israel is an extension of USA foreign policy so I think this fits here. If NZ declares war on Israel as a result, the USA will either be with us or against us. Hmmm, there's lots of oil in the middle east. Maybe NZ should declare war on Israel, take it over, then take over the rest, from Algeria to Pakistan and Sudan to Chechnya and sort the place out. Give everyone a NZ passport and make them nice Kiwis so they all get along. We have Zaoui amnesty.org.nz and now these Jews and a LOT more besides, all trying to become Kiwis. Maybe a takeover would be very easy.

To: FaultLine who wrote (140446)	7/16/2004 8:52:52 PM
From: GST	Respond to of 281500

FL -- I thought you might appreciate this editorial from the New York Times: <A Pause for Hindsight Published: July 16, 2004 Over the last few months, this page has repeatedly demanded that President Bush acknowledge the mistakes his administration made when it came to the war in Iraq, particularly its role in misleading the American people about Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction and links with Al Qaeda. If we want Mr. Bush to be candid about his mistakes, we should be equally open about our own. During the run-up to the war, The Times ran dozens of editorials on Iraq, and our insistence that any invasion be backed by "broad international support" became a kind of mantra. It was the administration's failure to get that kind of consensus that ultimately led us to oppose the war. But we agreed with the president on one critical point: that Saddam Hussein was concealing a large weapons program that could pose a threat to the United States or its allies. We repeatedly urged the United Nations Security Council to join with Mr. Bush and force Iraq to disarm. As we've noted in several editorials since the fall of Baghdad, we were wrong about the weapons. And we should have been more aggressive in helping our readers understand that there was always a possibility that no large stockpiles existed. At the time, we believed that Saddam Hussein was hiding large quantities of chemical and biological weapons because we assumed that he would have behaved differently if he wasn't. If there were no weapons, we thought, Iraq would surely have cooperated fully with weapons inspectors to avoid the pain of years under an international embargo and, in the end, a war that it was certain to lose. That was a reasonable theory, one almost universally accepted in Washington and widely credited by diplomats all around the world. But it was only a theory. American intelligence had not received any on-the-ground reports from Iraq since the Clinton administration resorted to punitive airstrikes in 1998 and the U.N. weapons inspectors were withdrawn. The weapons inspectors who returned in 2002 found Iraq's records far from transparent, and their job was never made easy. But they did not find any evidence of new weapons programs or stocks of prohibited old ones. When American intelligence agencies began providing them tips on where to look, they came up empty. It may be that Saddam Hussein destroyed his stockpiles of banned weapons under the assumption that he could restart his program at a later date. His cat-and-mouse game with the weapons inspectors may have been the result of paranoia, or an attempt to flaunt his toughness before the Iraqi people. But we're not blaming ourselves for failing to understand the thought process of an unpredictable dictator. Even if we had been aware before the war of the total bankruptcy of the American intelligence estimates on Iraq, we could not have argued with any certainty that there were no chemical and biological weapons. But we do fault ourselves for failing to deconstruct the W.M.D. issue with the kind of thoroughness we directed at the question of a link between Iraq and Al Qaeda, or even tax cuts in time of war. We did not listen carefully to the people who disagreed with us. Our certainty flowed from the fact that such an overwhelming majority of government officials, past and present, top intelligence officials and other experts were sure that the weapons were there. We had a groupthink of our own. By the time the nation was on the brink of war, we did conclude that whatever the risk of Iraq's weaponry, it was outweighed by the damage that could be done by a pre-emptive strike against a Middle Eastern nation that was carried out in the face of wide international opposition. If we had known that there were probably no unconventional weapons, we would have argued earlier and harder that invading Iraq made no sense. Saddam Hussein was indisputably a violent and vicious tyrant, but an unprovoked attack that antagonized the Muslim world and fractured the international community of peaceful nations was not the solution. There were, and are, equally brutal and potentially more dangerous dictators in power elsewhere. Saddam Hussein and his rotting army were not a threat even to the region, never mind to the United States. Now that we are in Iraq, we must do everything possible to see that the country is stabilized before American forces are withdrawn. But that commitment should be based on honesty. Just as we cannot undo the invasion, we cannot pretend that it was a good idea — even if it had been well carried out. Congress would never have given President Bush a blank check for military action if it had known that there was no real evidence that Iraq was likely to provide aid to terrorists or was capable of inflicting grave damage on our country or our allies. Many politicians who voted to authorize the war still refuse to admit that they made a mistake. But they did. And even though this page came down against the invasion, we regret now that we didn't do more to challenge the president's assumptions. nytimes.com

To: FaultLine who wrote (140446)	7/17/2004 5:35:21 AM
From: GST	Respond to of 281500

AUSSIE PAPER SAYS IRAQ'S NEW BOSS KILLED 6 PRISONERS By WILLIAM BUNCH bunchw@phillynews.com The story has appeared so far in only one newspaper - albeit a major, reputable one: Australia's Sydney Morning Herald. If it is true, it could be the biggest blow yet to America's intervention in Iraq - bigger than the Abu Ghraib prison scandal or the failure to find weapons of mass destruction. Did new Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi pull out a pistol and cold-bloodedly execute as many as six suspected insurgents at a Baghdad police station, just days before the United States handed control of the country to his interim government? That sensational story is reported by Australian journalist Paul McGeough, who says that two witnesses that he tracked down and interviewed separately both told essentially the same story. The incident allegedly happened on the weekend of June 19-20, just three weeks after former exiled leader Allawi was tapped to lead the nation toward democracy. You can read the story at http: //tinyurl.com/67p5l. "They say the prisoners - handcuffed and blindfolded - were lined up against a wall in a courtyard adjacent to the maximum-security cell block in which they were held at the Al-Amariyah security center, in the city's south-western suburbs." the story states. "They say Dr. Allawi told onlookers the victims had each killed as many as 50 Iraqis and they 'deserved worse than death.' " The witnesses told the Australian newspaper that Allawi had shot each young man in the head as about a dozen Iraqi policemen and four Americans from the prime minister's personal security team watched in stunned silence. They said that the murdered prisoners had been foreign insurgents and that Allawi had wanted to show Iraqi police how to deal with them. Not surprisingly, the story has generated sweeping denials all around. Allawi's office said the new prime minister - reportedly once a member of Saddam Hussein's spy service before a falling out with the dictator - had visited the police station and did not carry a gun. "If we attempted to refute each [rumor], we would have no time for other business," a U.S. embassy spokesman said. "As far as this embassy's press office is concerned, this case is closed." But the reputed eyewitnesses said that not only did the killings happen, but they were the right thing to do. "Any terrorists in Iraq should have the same destiny," one said. "This is the new Iraq." philly.com