To Hell with UN?

Cheney recently claimed that Iraq was the geographical base for the 9/11 attacks, and that he can’t speculate on the Saudi’s involvement.

This counters much of the FBI & CIA’s own statements.

How much evidence has the White House provided concerning Iraq? zero

Has the FBI linked Saudi money sources? yes

For those interested read Walter Pincus of the Washington Post, who has long been the mouthpiece of the CIA to get out info they can’t “officially” state.

The bit of good news is that little by little questions are being asked.

I think UN is good cuz they beat Penn State.

“What can I say to you?” Mr. Powell told a crowd at a cemetery with a thousand headstones, many of them marking the graves of entire families. “I cannot tell you that choking mothers died holding their choking babies to their chests. You know that.”

“I cannot tell you that the world should have acted sooner,” he went on. “You know that. What I can tell you is that what happened here in 1988 is never going to happen again.” -Secretary of State Colin L. Powell on 9/15/03 speaking to a crowd of Kurds about a 1988 chemical weapon attack ordered by Saddam.

Lumpy, the answer to your post is very simple. Mage, myself, BB, and others believe that we are doing the right thing. You don’t. Even better, you want to tell everyone to fuck off after a couple of months, completely lacking any sort of historical perspective, or more relevant, any sort of notion of the time required to complete the mission of locating WMD’s and restoring a free Iraq.

Nobody has forgotten about the WMD’s. Just today there was an AP Wire stating:

But if Mr. Powell’s visit underscored an unwelcome fact, it was that the evidence of Iraq’s stockpile of chemical, biological and nuclear weapons the main rationale cited for war earlier this year have not been found, much to the chagrin of American forces here.

To make the case that weapons programs were in existence even if the weapons themselves do not turn up, the Bush administration has enlisted a former United Nations (news - web sites) weapons inspector, David Kay, to sift through the evidence and issue a report. Mr. Powell said on Sunday in Baghdad that the report would be made public soon.
(Yahoo News - Latest News & Headlines)

Basically your post is irrelevant. The WMD’s have not been found. Will they be found in the future? No one can say. However, we can say there won’t be any more Kurdish mass graves caused by Saddam. Good thing, yes? In the meantime, the best thing for the US to do is to stay the course and continue to rebuild Iraq. The best thing for you to do is to continue to follow the events.

It’s good that you are passionate about making sure the US sticks to its word. There is nothing wrong with that. Keep following the progress and continue to encourage your representative to ask tough questions in congress and continue to raise awareness both here and in your community. However, at the same time, drop the hate fanatic act. Too many of your statements are merit less and have no credible source. I respect your difference of opinion, but I have no respect for the regurgitation of rubbish. Think critically and post intelligently.

Anderson
You are right in that I let jerks like “US=GoodGuys” get under my skin,
and I am a little pissed off about the earlier posts that said crap like “send the war protestors to Afghanistan”.

Sorry, but I knew this war was not being approached correctly (with a true coalition) and when I said so, I was flamed.

I think a little turnabout is fair play.

Get this, today I was flipping through the channels and The View (talk show “for ladies” LOL) was talking about Bush, reporters doing self-censoring, etc. One of the women said she didn’t think reporters censored themselves during the war, and someone else brought up Ari Fleischer saying “people need to be careful what they say” in response to Bill Maher, and how ominous that could be construed.

Then they talked a bit about how they felt misled about the reasons for war, no WMD, etc.

Even THE VIEW is starting to see through the White House BS! LOL!!!

One more thing, regarding the website whatreallyhappened.com. Anyone who actually reads the website will see that they were no fans of Bill Clinton, and other Dems. They call out BS on both sides of the aisle.

Lumpy my communist friend.

Here is an article that describes the liberal media:


A recent Freedom Forum poll of journalists revealed that 89 percent of Washington reporters voted for Clinton in the 1992 presidential election, along with 60 percent of newspaper editors across the country. Yet only 43 percent of voting Americans did so.
These figures would seem to support the wide-spread and long-standing complaint that the media are far more liberal than the rest of the country.
Some other revealing findings:
? Only 2 percent of reporters and 6 percent of editors described themselves as conservatives, while 22 percent of reporters described themselves as liberals.
? Those who saw themselves as liberal or moderate-to-liberal totaled 61 percent of reporters and 32 percent of editors.
? Only 9 percent of reporters and 25 percent of editors described themselves as conservative or moderate-to-conservative.
? One-half of Washington reporters and 31 percent of editors identified themselves as Democrats, contrasted to 4 percent of reporters and 14 percent of editors who said they were Republicans.
Just one example of how this orientation manifested itself: 3 percent of reporters called the Contract With America a serious reform; almost 60 percent called it an election year campaign ploy.
More disturbing is the fact that apparently reporters do not see themselves as “reporters.” Ninety-six percent of reporters polled saw their role as that of “educating” the public. Sixty-two percent saw their role as “sometimes to suggest potential solutions to social problems,” yet 88 percent still described themselves as objective reporters.
Such press establishment bias leaves little mystery as to why presidential candidate Steve Forbes and the flat-tax received such negative coverage during the primaries, according to media analysts. Forbes press coverage was 66 percent negative and the flat-tax plan was covered in a negative manner 62 percent of the time.
Source: Thomas McArdle, “When Liberals Rule the Media,” Investor’s Business Daily, May 6, 1996.


Now I have found articles that try to discount this due to a small sample number, but even a small sample can be accurate. The larger the sample the more accurate of course, but I think this is accurate enough.

As far as news radio, sorry but it is an alternative media. Mainstream is TV, and most people who listen to the radio listen to music. Then there are sports, and regular news. How many people do you know who have ever tuned their radio to AM?

I realize you fall for this “myth” idea, but it is not. Though it is more conservative then it was. How many conservative movies have you seen recently? Every time I see a TV or movie, I notice that if they have any beliefs they are often liberal.

And I don’t care where you’re site is located, many of it’s links are to “news” sources outside of America. Plus his little Anti-American (A word you still don’t understand,) bias before every link.

And PNAC. Gee, I am sorry I didn’t read the entire site. I generally don’t go to opinion sites, and when I do they are often the liberal sites. I have looked through it a little, and never ran into the word. I decided to see how often it occurred there and ran a search through google limiting my search to that site only. It came up with 2 pages. That is 2. Only 2. In fact here is one of the quotes:

“In London, where Tony Blair has to go to work every day, one finds Britain’s finest minds propounding, in sophisticated language and melodious Oxbridge accents, the conspiracy theories of Pat Buchanan concerning the ‘neoconservative’ (read: Jewish) hijacking of American foreign policy.”

This is the only mention on that page. I thought you were trying to say it was all over that website, not in two obscure pages. Oh yeah, the other was about how the term neoconservative is being used negatively as an attack word.

Obviously you don’t understand what a corporation is. You assuming that all corporations are conservative is ludicrous. (And not the rapper.) practically all business is a corporation. I can almost guarantee that Biotest is a corperation. Are they a conservative organization? I don’t think so.

And as far as oil, terrorists have blown up the pipeline on September 8. (And this wasn’t the first time.) Rebuilding Iraq is not an overnight thing. I expect to be there a year from now with some progress, while you will be complaining that everyone said we would be out by then. Germany took over 10 years, why should Iraq take a month or two? You do care about these people don’t you? I thought that is why you were arguing about this. Do you think we should just leave them to rot?

kuri, how was your birthday? Good I hope.

I don’t trust any reporter that says they were quiet because of fear. They are willing to go into a war repeatedly, putting their lives in danger, walk into crack houses and interview people who might just kill them, stand in the middle of a hurricane storm to report that you shouldn’t stand in the middle of a hurricane. But they were afraid of Bush and Fox News. Sorry, but any reporter who is intimidated by anyone is not a reporter.

If these people were so intimidated, why are they not so now?

As far as Saudi involvement, yeah, I believe that. Was it high in the government? Or lower? Supposedly one of Al-Qaeda leader catches had said that Saudi’s were used intentionally to cause a rift between the US and Saudi Arabia. This is interesting, but it is not a strong statement, and some discount it.

I still believe Saddam had a hand in 911, but regardless what we did was the right thing to do. We have a war on terror, and Saddam supported terrorists, and was housing a terrorist who attacked an American ship.

I believe that all the facts will come out. I believe most of the facts will support Bush, some won’t. I think he should release more information then he has. I believe he supports the “Loose lips sink ships” philosophy a little too much, although there is some truth to it.

Oh yeah, back to Lumpy. I know you weren’t flipping past the view, you taped it. :^P

yeah good Bday Mage, merci!

as for Saddam and 9/11, its interesting that Bush came out and said Saddam has NO connection - this right after Cheney’s odd “geographical base” statements.
Perhaps redirecting some incoming fire there.

And Hans Blix too is saying the Iraq had most likely gotten rid of their chemical and biological weapons in the 90’s - echoing former weapons inspector Scott Ritter.

So here we have it: no WMDs (perhaps they’ll turn up papers regarding a “program” - watch the wording carefully)

and no Saddam connection to 9/11

Unfortunately we the US people were made to believe this war was about WMDs and 9/11.

The constant redirection is sad. CNN said today that 70% of Americans (whatever that really means) believe Saddam was involved - even though Bush Co. has now said he was not.

Well, how were we made to believe that?

Damn effective use of the media.

I can easily see how journalists can be intimidated - threaten their career, directly or indirectly. Its not a stretch at all, and it has happened many a time before.

Bush said there was no evidence linking Saddam to 911. He also said they never said that Iraq was involved, just that there was a link with Al-Qaeda. So he did use statements that did give people the impression, (A true politician,) although I think he still believes that there is a link, just can’t prove it. There is circumstantial evidence, just not hard evidence.

Iraq had connections with some of the 9/11 attackers, and that is good enough for me.

Now as far as Hans Blix, I have little respect for this guy. He ignored US intel, and let Saddam manipulate him. He is little more then a bureaucrat who is pissed he lost his job. Also if Saddam had no WMD then why play his little cat and mouse game?

Oh yeah, Scott Ritter. First he complains that Clinton is being too soft on Saddam, then complains that Bush being to hard.

Here is a Scott Ritter quote from Time:

“I have never given Iraq a clean bill of health! Never! Never! I’ve said that no one has backed up any allegations that Iraq has reconstituted WMD capability with anything that remotely resembles substantive fact. To say that Saddam’s doing it is in total disregard to the fact that if he gets caught he’s a dead man and he knows it. Deterrence has been adequate in the absence of inspectors but this is not a situation that can succeed in the long term. In the long term you have to get inspectors back in.”
So he didn’t say Iraq didn’t have WMD, just that allegations were not backed up. I disagree with his assessment of Saddam’s fear of death. It has been stated before by an expert on Saddam (I forget who,) that Saddam wants to be a martyr. Also he didn’t get the job by election, he got it though military might.

Here are some simple thoughts on the situation in Iraq. Saddam is an evil man. Can anyone dispute this? He helped destabilize the region. One of the ways he did this was to pay the families of suicide bombers $25,000 for blowing up Israeli children. These people no longer get this cash. That can be a big influence on a young mind, especially with how much that is in the region. Do you want him back?

The quote above showed that Ritter knew that we either had to keep constant inspectors there, or military deterrents. Most often switching back and forth between the two. After things settle down we won’t need to have such a military force there, and without an embargo the Iraqi lives can go on for the better. Does anyone disagree that life in Iraq is better without Saddam?

Saddam was given the ultimatums to prove he didn’t have weapons, then given the option to leave. He chose to ignore each. This was his choice.

Also we have taken a blind eye for too long about terrorism. People keep complaining that we don’t care about the region. We finally do something about one of the worst, and suddenly that is bad. It does not matter what we do, certain people will decide that everything we do is wrong, or that we have an ulterior motive. And yet people don’t ever think that the other side might have ulterior motives.

And as far as intimidated journalists, again they are not journalists. CNN being intimidated by FOX is like Burger King being intimidated by Culvers. They are competitors, and fight each other for ratings. If CNN is intimidated by FOX it means they are losing the ratings battle. Fox has no other effect on them. When I first heard that I laughed about such a moronic statement. In effect she said that the people at CNN are wimps.

Now I just need to find out why I keep responding to these threads

"RESTLESS: I am sure that those 8000 are are the Everest compared to what Saddam did behind the scenes, eh? At least keep things into context (in terms of scales of deaths on both sides), for impartiality`s sake. "

Well, but then to be fair we would have to bring in the 3 000 000 civilians that the US killed in Vietnam, Laos, Cambodja, Iraq,etc…And there’s not much point going into that, or is there?

The mage wrote:

"Who exactly counted these deaths? Baghdad Bob? "

http://www.iraqbodycount.net/bodycount.htm

The sources are listed. Of course, to you it will everyone’s fault but the good guys, right?

Anyway, what are 8000 civilian deaths in order to prevent an hipothetic threath to world peace that any non american expert says it didn’t even exist?

Iraquis live’s are cheap. 20 000 wounded that receive no help from ocidental illegal occupiers are also irrelevant.

"Iraq had connections with some of the 9/11 attackers, and that is good enough for me. "

Good enough to justify the killing of 8000 innocent civilians? Wonderfull. By your book, the Saudi’s should be completely exterminated then.

"Lumpy, the answer to your post is very simple. Mage, myself, BB, and others believe that we are doing the right thing. You don’t. Even better, you want to tell everyone to fuck off after a couple of months, completely lacking any sort of historical perspective, or more relevant, any sort of notion of the time required to complete the mission of locating WMD’s and restoring a free Iraq. "

What a bunch of crap. Freeing Iraq. You won’t even aloow the regime Iraquis want in there.

Historical perspective?? That’s exactly what feeds my disgust for most of america (together with a few of the pro war posters here and in other forums). History shows you are full of crap and have no respect whatsoever for life, particualrly foreign life, but not only.

I said he was lacking historical perspective in the sense that neither Germany nor Japan was rebuilt in 5 months. I’m not sure why you think the free Iraq part was crap. Iraq wasn’t exactly free under Saddam, was it? While we are there I’m not surprised we are influencing who will take over, however, at a certain point, I expect that the decision will not be influenced by us any more than the Japanese prime minister or German chancellor are influenced by us.

Tell me, Restless, what do you see as the future of Iraq? Do you see American imperialism and colonization? I don’t, based on history in places like Germany, Japan, and Panama. This is only my opinion of course, you are free to disagree, I’m really not interested in changing your mind. It’s kind of cool to be able to disagree on politics. It’s even cooler that the Iraqi’s are now able to disagree on politics, don’t you think?

Mage, in regards to the Scott Ritter it would do you well to read more of what caused him to quit the UN in disgust in '98 - it was PRECISELY the fact that the US were the ones screwing up their inspections.

They had good success in destroying stockpiles of weapons, but often with US would interfer with stipulations regarding inspection protocol - which would turn up with tension, until eventually the US told them (UN) to pull out - and the bombing in '98 followed shortly.

Ritter’s point is that Al Queda ties are BS (he was military intelligence and worked with CIA in Iraq) and that the US did not want the inspections to work becuase that would essentially defuse the situation, preventing good reason for deposing Saddam.

Now, the lack of ANY WMD or evidence of recent programs should be proof of Ritter and Blix stating that Iraq’s weapons were destroyed (much of their chemical agents have a short shelf life and they lacked the means to deliver them as well-so stated). The US actually took the WMD inspection teams off the job.

It should be glaringly obvious that Saddam’s WMD did not in any way pose an “imminent threat” as Bush stated, and they had no nuclear progam of any kind.

There has been ZERO hard evidence presented by anyone that such weapons exist currently in Iraq.

The UN stated it had accounted for 90-95% being destroyed by 1998.

Old papers referring to past programs Im sure have been found but I hope that will not be taken seriously.

Well, feel like I keep harping on the same points here but the case the mass media doesn’t make, or even bother to ask seriously is WHY then the urgent need for an invasion?

Having been back and forth between Japan and the US alot in the past year I can tell you that many Japanese’s views of the US has worsened, and basically consider the Bush Admin a bunch of thoughtless bullies.

Perhaps some don’t care what the world thinks, but to end up a hated imperial power is not conducive to long life.

Actually some in the CIA used to refer to Wolfowitz, Scooter and others in Dubyas regimes as “the crazies” - this directly from the mouth of a long time agent speaking on NPR.

Hey Restless. How you been?

iraqbodycount.net? Gee, sounds like an unbiased source of information. Also it does list the minimum as 6131. Interesting how you only use the maximum number rounded up. Anyway how does this compare to what Saddam has done? Check these quotes:

“Anfal, a name of a sura in the Koran, is thus the official military code-name used by the Iraqi government in its public pronouncements and internal memoranda. It was a name given to a concerted series of military offensives, eight in all, conducted in six distinct Kurdish geographic areas between late February and early September 1988.”

“…by a conservative estimate more than 100,000 rural Kurds had died in Anfal alone; half of Iraq’s productive farmland is believed to have been laid waste.”

http://www.iraqwatch.org/perspectives/hughes-rotavirus-070302.htm

Saddam has killed over 100,000 people in a single year due to genocide, but less then 8,000 due to war to get rid of the guy and that is bad. Iraqi’s have been regularly killed, and tortured. I doubt 8,000 is anywhere near what Saddam would have done to people over the same time. If you are complaining about 8,000 but ignore the larger numbers Saddam has killed then you should realize just who actually finds their lives cheap.

Also the American government uses their medical resources to help the Iraqi people. To say we didn’t help any of the wounded is crap.

Also pleas don’t twist my words. Saudi Arabia should be looked at, but many of the terrorists do not like the Saudi leaders. This is very true of Osama, and the true reason he hates America.

Now exactly how are we preventing them from having the “regime” they want there? Once the government is set up they will be able to choose their leaders. This is the only way to give them the “regime” they want. You don’t trust any of Saddam’s elections do you?

“Historical perspective?? That’s exactly what feeds my disgust for most of America?”

Sorry but hate and misunderstandings are what feeds your disgust. You are part of the group that believes that anything America does is bad, regardless of what it is. Have you heard of the terrible Americans that kidnap kids and chop them up to use their organs in American hospitals for American children? Heard of Americans tourists being killed by people when a child goes missing, only later the child shows up perfectly fine?

This is one example of the hate of America. It would be great if you could see the issues without filtering it through hate.

Saddam certainly is/was a brutal tyrant, just as he was when most of his worst crimes were committed, when he was a US friend & ally. The USA gave him everything he needed to kill off all those people but you good guys still don’t want to even acknowledge it, I guess because it doesn’t appeal to your preferred view of the USA.

“Now exactly how are we preventing them from having the “regime” they want there? Once the government is set up they will be able to choose their leaders. This is the only way to give them the “regime” they want.”

There will never be democracy in Iraq beause if there was, the people would demand that they control their own resources, which the USA would never tolerate. (Heaven forbid that a country would want to do that. Incidentally, whenever someone asks why Americans aren’t paying us for the oil & gas they’re taking out of Alberta or Sable Island fields-which is one of the poorest regions of the country-everyone screams about how unfair it would be lol) It has been a driving force behind American foreign policy in the Middle East to ensure that an country indigeneous to that region doesn’t get any significant control over it’s own oil supply. The State Dept said so in the 40s that the Middle East oil is the greatest material prize in world history. I said before in this thread or in that other one who is rewriting a bunch of Iraq’s laws & where you can find out more. It sure isn’t the IRaqi people who are benefitting from the USA’s aggression.

Yes the Kurds: "The Bushites love to visit the mass graves in Halabja. That’s where about 7,000 Kurds died after a chemical weapons attack. “I can’t tell you that Saddam Hussein was a murderous tyrant – you know that,” said Colin Powell with prosaic certainty. “What I can tell you is that what happen here in 1988 is never going to happen again.”

No, probably not. But what Powell didn’t bother to mention is the fact the US State Department “instructed its diplomats to say that Iran was partly to blame,” according Joost R. Hiltermann of Human Rights Watch, which has extensively investigated the Halabja incident. “The result of this stunning act of sophistry was that the international community failed to muster the will to condemn Iraq strongly for an act as heinous as the terrorist strike on the World Trade Center.”

Photo ops with disentombed corpses aside, Powell also didn’t bother to mention that people connected to the US government at the time of the Halabja massacre believe Iran, not Iraq, committed the atrocity. “We cannot say with any certainty that Iraqi chemical weapons killed the Kurds,” insisted Stephen C. Pelletiere a few months ago in the New York Times. “I am in a position to know because, as the Central Intelligence Agency’s senior political analyst on Iraq during the Iran-Iraq war, and as a professor at the Army War College from 1988 to 2000, I was privy to much of the classified material that flowed through Washington having to do with the Persian Gulf. In addition, I headed a 1991 Army investigation into how the Iraqis would fight a war against the United States; the classified version of the report went into great detail on the Halabja affair.”

In another article published in the New York Times last year, Col. Walter P. Lang, a senior defense intelligence officer during the Iran-Iraq war, said the CIA wasn’t particularly concerned over the use of chemical weapons. “It was just another way of killing people – whether with a bullet or phosgene, it didn’t make any difference.” In fact, that was the idea – to not only sit back while the Iranians and Iraqis killed each other off in huge numbers, but actively arm both sides." (from Counterpunch)

Sit down juri, with all that stuff about interviews with people who read classified documents & CIA officers, you sure sound like you’re just a Democrat with an agenda. hehe

It makes sense then to say that the USA has never wanted a country indiginous to that area to get significant control over its own resources & become powerful enough to defend itself. The USA provided intelligence to both sides during that war also.