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

To: Bilow who wrote (160023)	4/1/2005 7:35:29 PM
From: Nadine Carroll	Respond to of 281500

I won't ignore the quote - if you can find one, lol. I wouldn't gloat too much over your predictive powers, Carl, or you'll invite someone to begin digging up ALL your predictions.

To: Bilow who wrote (160023)	4/7/2005 3:33:45 PM
From: stockman_scott	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Pope felt 'deep anguish' as Bush went to war despite his urgings ROME (AFP) - Pope John Paul II felt "deep anguish" that he was unable to stop US President George W. Bush -- who will be among mourners at the late pontiff's funeral on Friday -- from waging war against Iraq's Saddam Hussein. While the pope and Bush, who is set to arrive in Rome late Wednesday ahead of the funeral, may have shared common ground on the issues of abortion and euthanasia, they were worlds apart over the use of military force to topple Saddam. The Italian people were clearly on the side of the pope, as three million of them took to the streets of Rome in 2003 in the largest of worldwide protests against the war. "There was a clear disagreement," the former US envoy to the Vatican, Jim Nicholson, recalled Monday. The pope "was a man of peace, and he always hoped for the peace option," he told the Denver Post. "If he could keep war from breaking out, there's always a chance that peace would break out," he said. "That was his position about Iraq. ... He also said that war is a defeat for humanity." Speaking to reporters in Washington on Monday, Bush sought to play down the rift. "Of course he was a man of peace and he didn't like war," Bush said. "And I fully understood that, and I appreciated the conversations I had with the Holy Father on the subject." John Paul II used his moral position as leader of the world's 1.1 billion Catholics to lead a diplomatic offensive aimed at averting the March 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq, which he said would be seen by extremists as a clash of civilizations. "War must never be allowed to divide the religions of the world," he said then. The pope met a range of world leaders in his efforts to prevent a war, including British Prime Minister Tony Blair and then Iraqi deputy prime Minister Tareq Aziz. He dispatched a special envoy to Washington -- Cardinal Pio Laghi, a Bush family friend -- to implore the White House to scrap its war plans, and another to Baghdad to plead with Iraqi President Saddam Hussein to comply with UN resolutions. Through it all, the pope made no secret of his personal feelings, reportedly losing his temper with Blair in an audience a month before the invasion and using language and tones unsuited to diplomacy, an Italian newspaper quoted aides as saying. He even banged his fist on the table during a lunch with Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, signalling his disgust at Italy's support for US policy on Iraq, the newspaper said. "I lived through World War II and I survived the Second World War. For this reason I have the duty to say 'never again war'," John Paul II said days before the invasion. A week after the onslaught was unleashed, John Paul II told pilgrims during his weekly general audience in St Peter's Square that he was praying "with an anguished heart over the news reaching us daily from Iraq at war." Aides said the pope was "very disappointed and very sad" that his last-ditch appeals against the invasion had been ignored. In May 2004 the pope made another critical statement after the revelations of torture in Baghdad of Iraqi prisoners by US soldiers, though without referring to them specifically. "From all continents come endless, disturbing information about the human rights situation, revealing that men, women and children are being tortured and their dignity being made a mockery of. ... It is all of humanity which has been wounded and ridiculed," he said. news.yahoo.com

To: Bilow who wrote (160023)	5/1/2005 7:54:09 PM
From: Sam	Respond to of 281500

Well, Carl, perhaps you can bookmark the predictions below to see if they come true. Iraq Expects Foreign Troops to Pull Out Mid-2006 WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. and other foreign troops in Iraq will likely start pulling out in large numbers by the middle of next year, Iraq's national security advisor said on Sunday. "I will be very surprised if they (U.S. and other foreign troops) don't think very seriously of starting pulling out probably by the end of the first half of next year," said Iraqi national security adviser Mowaffak Al-Rubaie in an interview with CNN's "Late Edition." When pressed on exact numbers expected to leave, Al-Rubaie said this depended on how quickly Iraqi troops could be trained and armed to take over. Twenty-five months after the invasion to topple Saddam Hussein, the United States has 138,000 troops in Iraq battling a relentless insurgency and training Iraqi security forces. The United States has not given a timetable for withdrawing its troops and President Bush has said repeatedly that U.S. soldiers will leave only when their job is finished and Iraqi forces can take over. Last week, America's top general, Air Force Gen. Richard Myers, said rebels were attacking 50 or 60 times a day in Iraq -- about the same as a year ago. Sunday, a suicide bomber killed 15 people at a funeral procession at the northern Iraqi town of Talafar. Al-Rubaie said the new Iraqi government was determined to quell violence in Iraq by the end of this year. "I think we are winning -- on the winning course, there is no doubt about it. The level of violence is not measured only by the number of explosions every day, or the number of casualties," he said. He added: "There is no shadow of doubt in my mind, that by the end of the year, we would have achieved a lot, and probably the back of the insurgency has already been broken." story.news.yahoo.com