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

To: Bilow who wrote (156633)	1/19/2005 7:07:21 PM
From: lorne	Respond to of 281500

Please, “sign” the petition below. We will be collecting as many electronic signatures as possible during the next several weeks. We will then print out the signed petitions and deliver hard copies to all of the individuals identified in the “To:” field. moveamericaforward.org -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- To: U.S. President George W. Bush Senate Majority Leader, Bill Frist Senate Minority Leader, Harry Reid Speaker of the House, Dennis Hastert House Majority Leader, Tom DeLay House Majority Whip, Roy Blunt House Minority Leader, Nancy Pelosi House Minority Whip, Steny Hoyer UN Secretary General, Kofi Annan H.E. Mr. Jean Ping, President, UN General Assembly During the past several years, the threat facing the United States of America and much of the world from violent terrorist organizations has grown exponentially. While the United Nations is chartered to promote peace, its actions recently have made it an accessory to terrorist crimes. This calls for straightforward action by the people of the United States to protect our national interest. Americans must demand our government remove the United Nations from our borders and cease serving as the major financial supporter of an organization that has veered from its original purpose. The United Nations was originally founded according to its charter “to unite our strength to maintain international peace and security.” However, it has become apparent that leading voices in the United Nations have positioned the organization so that it is increasingly a body that sides with those who find the use of terrorism against unarmed and innocent civilians tolerable. Instead of serving as a rallying point for free nations and free people to unite to combat terrorism, the United Nations has become a safe harbor, apologist and defender of terrorist organizations and their agents. Recently it has become clear that none other than the UN General Secretary himself, Kofi Annan, has been implicated in covering up the troubling “Oil for Food” scandal, and stonewalling investigators. The so-called “independent audit” of the alleged misdeeds of the UN’s “Oil for Food” program is looking more and more like a whitewash. Why? Evidence suggests that Mr. Annan and his son, Kojo, may themselves have been involved in wrongdoing in partnership with Iraqi dictator, Saddam Hussein. High-ranking officials throughout the UN are now suspected of financially benefiting from maintaining Saddam Hussein in power, despite his despotic rule and ties to worldwide terrorism and refusal to accept UN resolutions. Saddam Hussein served as one of the greatest advocates for international terrorism, yet the United Nations is wrought with individuals who became the greatest obstacles for putting an end to his promotion of international terror. In the aftermath of Operation Iraqi Freedom, Kofi Annan has added insult to injury by calling the military operation enforcing UN resolutions “illegal.” This is despite a series of resolutions, including Resolution 1441, which stated, “the Council has repeatedly warned Iraq that it will face serious consequences as a result of its continued violations of its obligations.” That resolution included a dissenting opinion by three nations. Those nations were France, Russia and China. Evidence has now emerged which implicates those same three nations as being the most actively involved in the UN-Iraq “Oil for Food” corruption scandal. Money from the “Oil for Food” scheme not only went to pay the families of Palestinian terrorists, and journalists and officials in countries opposing the Iraqi action, but it looks like it also went to purchase the weapons that so called “insurgents” are now using in Iraq to kill coalition forces, Iraqi security forces, and innocent Iraqi civilians. No longer should the United States of America serve as the host to an institution that serves as a forum for opposition to our national interests. Further, the United States should reexamine the extent of its financial support of such an agency. The U.S. pays a membership fee to the United Nations of $360 million per year (and billions more in payments to other UN organizations). These are payments made to an organization that is serving as an obstacle in the war against terrorism. That makes no sense, and we must take action to reduce or cancel payment of these fees. [Currently the U.S. pays approximately 22% of the UN’s general budget and 27% of peacekeeping budgets.] We, the undersigned, do therefore call for the following to take place immediately: Removal of the United Nations Headquarters facilities from New York, relocating it outside of the United States and any of its territories. A thorough review of the US financial contributions to the UN with a goal of a more equitable payment schedule. Until that review is concluded, eliminate all the payments made by the United States to the United Nations.

To: Bilow who wrote (156633)	1/19/2005 10:28:49 PM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 281500

seattlepi.nwsource.com

To: Bilow who wrote (156633)	1/20/2005 9:09:43 AM
From: michael97123	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Dont think anyone in iraq is kicking our butt. It seems to me that they are kicking the butt of innocents they are blowing up. As far as the following goes: "After all this time, you still don't know what the Palestinians desire??? No wonder the area is dangerous. It's clear to me that the Palestinians (and also the Arabs in general, in particular the ones that are kicking our ass in Iraq) want Palestinian rule throughout Israel. Any number of polls support this simple fact. Why don't you admit the same." I dont doubt that the arab street is anti israeli. But that is no reason to give up on peace, is it? Or do you just want the israelis to lay down and accept their fate? But i assume from you rant that you just dont care about that. Perhaps i am wrong.

To: Bilow who wrote (156633)	1/20/2005 9:15:01 AM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 281500

As George W Bush prepares for a second term, his administration is setting its sights on Iran. But, Rupert Cornwell reports, a new foreign policy adventure could be disastrous... news.independent.co.uk

To: Bilow who wrote (156633)	1/20/2005 10:08:34 AM
From: Neocon	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

"He who has the power uses it": another hopeless platitude. Some rulers have despoiled their subjects, especially those acquired by conquest, and some have bestowed citizenship and given value for taxation. Some nations, for example, the Czech Republic, are content to have a modest presence in the world, because they wish to preserve their ethnic culture, without imposing on others. They find comfort in playing a role in multi- lateral institutions that augment their influence, but they have no aspirations to great power status. Whether it was Lincoln's desire to have a number of American Republics, it was more or less the desire of those loyal to their states above the Union, conceiving of themselves in Czech terms, not Roman. I have no doubt that the Moroccans, the Algerians, the Egyptians, the Syrians, and so forth would decline to vote themselves into a unified republic. The United Arab Republic, consisting of Egypt, Syria, and Iraq, ostensibly mobilized by Ba'athism, was practically DOA. Divorce, literal or metaphorical, frequently is ugly, as rights are sorted out and insults are bandied. Unity can be as peaceable as the Swiss Republic. Even the Zionist right wing did not want infinite expansion, but a filling out of the historical Zion. The Zionist left, which dominated most of Israeli history, aspired to far less. It was not a case of the arbitrary expression of power, but of an ethnic identity built on repatriation to an ancient homeland, and misgivings about the security of the Jews in Europe, especially in the East. That such misgivings were not bizarre is demonstrated by the fact of the Holocaust. The aim of the Yishuv, the Zionist presence in Palestine, was peacefully to acquire territory through immigration and purchase, not through conquest. As the situation in Europe deteriorated, a sense of doom led to greater militancy, and the fact that many Arabs sympathized with the NAZIs and opposed immigration at crucial points where lives might have been saved exacerbated inter- communal violence. I think I will stop here. My main point is that there is a specific history, and that things need not have been so hostile.