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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: LindyBill who wrote (89351)	12/5/2004 10:47:09 AM
From: Lane3	Respond to of 793917

Now Cori Dauber at "Ranting Profs" does a Fisk. That's a "fisk"? Seemed pretty respectful of the article to me. Just picked at a few aspects of it. What it did, primarily, was disagree with the premise of the ROTW (rest of the world) that the WOT is not "the pivotal global struggle of the age," which his just how the author describes the two sides of the question. Dauber took the other side and argued that the ROTW doesn't "get it" thus reinforcing the premise of the article that those are the two sides. <<Of course, the headline ("An Obsession the World Doesn't Share") by using the world "obsession," normally applied to inappropriate levels of focus, implies that those of our critics who charge that we are just trying to create a global "climate of fear" and that they're too smart to fall for it are in fact correct.>> IMO, there are two obsessions here. The first is the one the author describes. I have argued the point many times in this forum that the fear and the fear-mongering are obsessive. The second is the obsession on the other side, the one that manifests itself as America hating. <<"The whole Iraq situation has brought back memories of the big stick - American power as used in Nicaragua or Chile during the cold war. The problem is the perception that Bush uses immense power in an egotistical way.">> So the US fears the militant Islamicists and the ROTW fears the militant US and both sides are obsessing. Dauber took exception to the use of the word, obsession. I can understand that. When you're the one who's obsessed, it doesn't look like obsession but rather as special insight and paladin effort. Seems to me that both sides need to put aside their obsessions and try to understand each other. The Times article was a good effort in that regard, I thought.

To: LindyBill who wrote (89351)	12/5/2004 11:37:07 AM
From: alanrs	Respond to of 793917

Oil-for-Food May Have Funded 9/11 Attacks In what may be the most shocking news to emerge from the already stunning Oil-for-Food scandal, investigators say that Saddam Hussein bankrolled key al-Qaida players in the late 1990s - a period of time when the terror group was planning the 9/11 attacks and the Iraqi dictator was ripping off billions from the U.N. program. "Saddam had given $300,000 in cash to Ayman Al Zawahri, Osama bin Laden's number two man, in the spring of 1998," the Weekly Standard's Stephen Hayes told WABC Radio's Monica Crowley. "It's likely that Saddam was giving some of his [Oil-for-Food] money to al-Qaida." In an eerie coincidence, an October 2001 estimate by the Justice Department put the entire cost of the 9/11 operation at $300,000. While the inception of Iraq's financial relationship with al-Qaida predated the 1996 Oil-for-Food program, the U.N. jackpot enabled Saddam to become much more generous toward his terrorist allies in the years before 9/11. Hayes said the total amount of Iraqi cash funneled into al-Qaida reached into the "millions." "Saddam had pretty strong ties to bin Laden when bin Laden was in Sudan," he said, based on what a former CIA counterrorism official had told him. "He talked about this system of Saddam funneling money, usually cash payments, to a variety of al-Qaida-linked Islamic terrorist groups," the Standard reporter said. Freelance reporter Claudia Rosett, who single-handedly broke the Oil-for-Food story last year, first broached the possibility of a U.N. connection to the 9/11 attacks in the Weekly Standard last August: "By 1996, remember, bin Laden had been run out of Sudan, and seems to have been out of money. He needed a fresh bundle to rent Afghanistan from the Taliban, train recruits, expand al Qaida's global network, and launch what eventually became the 9/11 attacks. "Meanwhile," Rosett continued, "over in Iraq about that same time, Saddam Hussein, after a lean stretch under United Nations sanctions, had just cut his Oil-for-Food deal with the U.N., and soon began exploiting that program to embezzle billions meant for relief." Rosett noted that just prior to Saddam's $300,000 payment to Al Zawahri in 1998, bin Laden issued a fatwa against the U.S. that included references to "the Americans' continuing aggression against the Iraqi people" as well as "the great devastation inflicted on the Iraqi people by the crusader-Zionist alliance." newsmax.com

To: LindyBill who wrote (89351)	12/5/2004 4:04:03 PM
From: haqihana	Respond to of 793917

LB, I found this to be very interesting. It is a letter to the editor of the Tampa Tribune, and although that makes it impossible to supply a link, I will give all the credit to Michael R. Donahue, from Wesley Chapel, FL who sent it to the paper. <b<PROVEN CURE FOR POVERTY David Brook's excellent column "Good News About Poverty", reprinted from the normally liberal New York Times, should be required reading for all Democrats! It tell the truth about so much of what was said against Republicans in the last election: "Write this on your forehead:Free trade reduces world suffering" It is the Republican conservative philosophy of free trade, free markets, supporting multinational corporations, capitalism and democracy that is the compassionate way to end world poverty and increase standards of living for everyone! The question of whether President Bush is really compassionate is now answered. The liberal's social welfare state only creates dependence and prolongs suffering. Many students reiterate what this column says. The best way to really reduce poverty and increase standards of living is not by giving money, encouraging government central planning or minimum wages, but through economic and political democracy: free trade, free markets, and free elections. That is where our efforts in the Third World should be concentrated.