POLL: The repercussions of a US attack on Iraq

somebody around here has a tag line with a quote attributed to A. Einstein...something like: There are two things that are infinite, the universe and human stupidity and I'm not sure about the former.

What a lunatic world we live in.

g

 

March 10, 2003

Bush Sr warning over unilateral action

From Roland Watson in Washington


THE first President Bush has told his son that hopes of peace in the Middle East would be ruined if a war with Iraq were not backed by international unity.
Drawing on his own experiences before and after the 1991 Gulf War, Mr Bush Sr said that the brief flowering of hope for Arab-Israeli relations a decade ago would never have happened if America had ignored the will of the United Nations.

He also urged the President to resist his tendency to bear grudges, advising his son to bridge the rift between the United States, France and Germany.

“You’ve got to reach out to the other person. You’ve got to convince them that long-term friendship should trump short-term adversity,” he said.

The former President’s comments reflect unease among the Bush family and its entourage at the way that George W. Bush is ignoring international opinion and overriding the institutions that his father sought to uphold. Mr Bush Sr is a former US Ambassador to the UN and comes from a family steeped in multi-lateralist traditions.

Although not addressed to his son in person, the message, in a speech at Tufts University in Massachusetts, was unmistakeable. Mr Bush Sr even came close to conceding that opponents of his son’s case against President Saddam Hussein, who he himself is on record as loathing, have legitimate cause for concern.

He said that the key question of how many weapons of mass destruction Iraq held “could be debated”. The case against Saddam was “less clear” than in 1991, when Mr Bush Sr led an international coalition to expel invading Iraqi troops from Kuwait. Objectives were “a little fuzzier today”, he added.

After the Gulf War, Mr Bush Sr steered Israel and its Arab neighbours to the Madrid conference, a stepping stone to the historic Israeli-Palestinian Oslo accords, in much the same way that the present President has talked about the removal of Saddam as opening the way to a wider peace in the region.

In an ominous warning for his son, Mr Bush Sr said that he would have been able to achieve nothing if he had jeopardised future relations by ignoring the UN. “The Madrid conference would never have happened if the international coalition that fought together in Desert Storm had exceeded the UN mandate and gone on its own into Baghdad after Saddam and his forces.”

Also drawing on the lessons of 1991, he said that it was imperative to mend fences with allies immediately, rather than waiting until after a war. He had been infuriated with the decision of King Hussein of Jordan to side with Saddam rather than the US, but while criticising the Jordanian leader in public and freezing $41 million in US aid, he also passed word to King Hussein that he understood his domestic tensions.

Mr Bush Jr, who is said never to forget even relatively minor slights, has alarmed analysts with the way in which he has allowed senior Administration figures such as Donald Rumsfeld, the Defence Secretary, aggressively to criticise France and Germany.

There are, however, signs that Mr Bush Sr’s message may be getting through.

Father and son talk regularly and it was, in part, pressure from Mr Bush Sr’s foreign policy coterie, that helped to persuade the President to go to the UN last September.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-605441,00.html

 

...The last time a BUSH listened to the UN , they didn;t go after Saddam and finish the job......I 've got ten bucks that that story is a fake just like all your other cut and past garbage!

 

by Ryan McMaken

(EXCERPT)

The response from the War Party to this European reluctance has been to launch anti-European hysteria (albeit with different "enemies") of the kind not seen since the First World War, complete with the ludicrous renaming of French fries as "Freedom Fries" and local boycotts of French wine. The underlying motivator behind this among the war-loving rank and file is the suspicion that Europeans don’t care about terrorism because it wasn’t their populations that were attacked on September 11th.

In a particularly embarrassing piece of populist nonsense, a piece called "They Didn’t Hit the Vatican" in a "conservative" Catholic publication, asserted that the main reason The Vatican opposes the invasion and occupation of Iraq is because Vatican officials, sitting "over a glass of brandy," are simply gambling that they won’t be a target of terrorism. The United States, the author tells us, as "de facto protector of the Vatican State" has given itself the moral authority to deem the foreign policy positions of the Vatican worthless, and the rest of the Western world would be wise to pay heed to this lesson.

Not only are such arguments nothing more than tacky self-righteous imperial snobbery, but they are also factually incorrect. Europe has been the target of all types of terrorism for decades (i.e., the Munich Olympics), with much of it coming from Islamic extremists. Many Americans still cling to the fantasy that, September 11th notwithstanding, the American state can provide total security from the threats of the world. All we need is one more war, one more government agency, and one more constitutional right trampled upon.

The Europeans, who realize that they are much more accessible to Islamic terrorists, rightly see that an unjustified invasion of Iraq will only increase the threat of terrorism. Nowhere is terrorism presently a greater problem than in Russia, where terrorists, Islamic and otherwise, are emerging from central Asia to attack the Russian heartland. In fact, polls from last November find that 90 percent of Russians surveyed fear a terrorist attack on nuclear facilities, and 86 percent fear that a nuclear weapon in the hands of a terrorist could be used against Russia. By the "They Didn’t Hit the Vatican" rationale, the Russians should be pushing hard for this war, yet they aren’t.

Knowing the "they kill us because we love freedom" argument to be one of the most ridiculous theories ever uttered in public, Europeans, after decades of dealing with terrorism, have concluded that the best defense, is well, defense. As the Europeans see it, The American "plan" of unilaterally invading foreign nations while encouraging illegal aliens to stream across the border will have limited success against terrorism to say the least.

Throughout the entire debate over the invasion of Iraq, the President has repeatedly claimed that it is his decision alone that will be heard on this matter, and the American people, more of whom are becoming unemployed by the minute, are willing to just give the president a pass and buy the propaganda about the alleged selfish laziness of Europe.

With rising unemployment and outrageous deficit spending (which will be paid for by inflation), the interesting thing to see will be how long the American people are willing to put up with a stock market in ruins and a shrinking economy. Is global democracy worth your life-savings and another trillion dollars of national debt? Bush thinks so. It may not be long before preferring employment over global democracy will be deemed as treasonous as "second-guessing" the president.

(link)

 

Rumblings of War

Enticements, threats, bribes - the U.S. wants to force a majority in the Security Council to vote in favor of war against Iraq. The struggle for power at the U.N. is moving toward a decision - How much credibility will the parliament of nations still have after that? A chronology of the battle of the diplomats.

http://www.spiegel.de/spiegel/english/0,1518,239589,00.html



as a new service, DER SPIEGEL offers English translations of its cover stories or the most important feature articles whenever they concern international affairs. Additionally, concise summaries of other important SPIEGEL articles are also provided.

http://www.spiegel.de/spiegel/english/

 

Chinese sold Iraq 'dual-use' chemical
By Bill Gertz
THE WASHINGTON TIMES


Despite French denials, U.S. intelligence and defense officials have confirmed that Iraq purchased from China a chemical used in making fuel for long-range missiles, with help from brokers in France and Syria.
Bush administration officials said the sale took place in August and was described in classified intelligence reports as a "dual-use" chemical used in making missile fuel.
Officials discussed details of the chemical sale after it was first reported by columnist William Safire in Thursday's editions of the New York Times.
France's government, however, denied that the sale took place and disputed Mr. Safire's assertion that French intelligence agencies knew about it.
In Paris, Foreign Ministry spokesman Francois Rivasseau said reports of the sale are not true. "These accusations are devoid of all foundation," he said.
"They are a part of a polemic that we do not want to get involved in. In line with the rules currently in force, France has neither delivered, nor authorized the delivery of such materials, either directly or indirectly," the spokesman said.
Meanwhile, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz met yesterday with France's ambassador to the United States for what were termed "candid" discussions on Iraq.
The meeting at the Pentagon with French Ambassador Jean-David Levitte came at a time of strained U.S.-French relations. Mr. Levitte sought to lobby Mr. Wolfowitz against U.S. military action in Iraq, and Mr. Wolfowitz told the ambassador that 12 years of waiting had been too costly in terms of the growing threat from Baghdad, according to a U.S. official present at the meeting. The issue of chemical and spare-parts sales to Iraq were not discussed.
The chemical transferred to Iraq was a transparent liquid rubber called hydroxy terminated polybutadiene, or HTPB, that is used in making solid fuel for long-range missiles, said U.S. officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
The sale of the chemical was known since last summer, when it was traced from China's Qilu Chemicals company in Shandong province, the officials said.
"Qilu Chemicals is the largest manufacturer of HTPB in China," one official said.
Although used mainly for making solid fuel for missiles, HTPB also is used for commerical purposes, such as for space launches.
Disclosure of the Chinese chemical sale comes amid other recent intelligence reports revealing that an unidentified French company sold military-aircraft spare parts to Iraq in January.
The spare parts for Iraq's French-made Mirage jets and Gazelle helicopters were sold to a company in the United Arab Emirates and sent to Iraq over land from a third country, intelligence officials said.
The chemical sale to Iraq, according to the officials, involved a French company known as CIS Paris, that helped broker the chemical sale in August of 20 tons of HTPB, which was shipped from China to the Syrian port of Tartus.
The chemicals were then sent by truck from Syria into Iraq to a missile-manufacturing plant.
A CIA spokesman declined to comment on the sale.
U.S. officials said the Chinese chemical shipment was purchased by the company in charge of making solid missile fuel for long-range missiles.
A CIA report to Congress made public in January stated that Iraq has constructed two new "mixing" buildings for solid-propellant fuels at a plant known as al-Mamoun. The facility was originally built to produce the Badr-2000 — also known as the Condor — solid-propellant missile.
The new buildings "appear especially suited to house large, U.N.-prohibited mixers of the type acquired for the Badr-2000 program," the CIA report stated.
"In fact, we can find no logical explanation for the size and configuration of these mixing buildings other than an Iraqi intention to develop longer-range, prohibited missiles (that is, to mix solid propellant exclusively geared for such missiles)," the report said.
A second plant at al-Mamoun has casting pits that "were specifically designed to produce now-proscribed missile motors," the report said.
Information about the chemical and parts transfers to Iraq, which are banned under U.N. sanctions, comes amid growing anti-French sentiment in the United States.
France's government has been actively opposing U.S. efforts to win U.N. Security Council support for taking military action to disarm Iraq.
Retired Air Force Lt. Gen. Thomas McInerney said France's actions in opposing its longtime ally should be punished.
"Those who do not take part in the liberation of Iraq should not be allowed to take part in the reconstruction of Iraq," he said.
China has been identified as a major supplier of chemical-, biological- and nuclear-weapons goods and missile systems to rogue states.
The chemical HTPB is listed as a controlled export on a list of missile-related goods made public by the Chinese government in August — about the same time that the HTPB transfer to Iraq was made.
A Chinese Embassy spokesman had no immediate comment on reports of the HTPB sale. But the spokesman, Xie Feng, said "irresponsible accusations" about China's exports have been made in the past.

 

Excellent essay by Victor Davis Hanson at

http://www.nationalreview.com/hanson/hanson031403.asp

Excerpt:

Building coalitions, crafting containment, surrounding enemies — all that Dullesque globe-trotting presupposes the need to corral a monstrous nuclear Soviet Union when our present foes are in fact more diverse, weaker, and insidious, our allies no longer allies by any classical definition, and our friends opportunistic rather than benevolent. The only drama left in the looming Iraqi war is whether France & Co. will smile or at least remain mute on news of American losses....

The key is to avoid the deplorable spectacle of begging and buying off a democratic Turkey, offering either threats or concessions for a corrupt Mexico's U.N. vote, or thanking the Germans for protecting our bases from their own demonstrators. If it were not for a few courageous British, Spanish, and Italian statesmen public opinion in all those countries would make their governments as anti-American as those in France and Germany. American power, and the willingness to use it successfully for moral aims and our national interest, alone will win far more allies than sitting through yet another sanctimonious U.N. debate and an open-air auction for support.

It is time quietly to accept that the U.N. and the EU are inimical mechanisms that seek to oppose, isolate, and weaken the United States for both natural and less than honorable reasons. The obstructionism of Germany and France and the fickleness of Turkey are no longer mere irritants, but may well result in strengthening the resistance of our enemy Saddam Hussein and thus lead to unnecessary American deaths.

We are well beyond the nuances of debate and chic sophistry; the drama now hinges on to what degree a NATO ally's behavior will increase the number of Americans killed in action. France, remember, did not reluctantly vote against the United States, but actively sent its diplomats throughout Africa and Asia to lobby countries to oppose America, a visceral hostility not matched by either Russia or China — or even any of the Arab League. NATO, in other words, as we knew it, is already dead and buried.

Nothing is worse for a great power than to ask others far less moral for permission to use its power; and nothing weakens a great power more than intervening and intruding frequently but rarely decisively. Had we simply ignored the U.N. — as Mr. Clinton did in Kosovo — and moved unilaterally last fall (like Russia and France do all the time), Saddam Hussein would be gone, and we now would have more impressed friends than we do disdainful enemies. Instead, we await China's moral condemnation of our unilateral action — this from a regime that in the last 50 years butchered more of its own citizens than any government in the history of civilization, annexed Tibet, invaded Korea and Vietnam, and threatened to annihilate Taiwan. France hysterically alleges that we will harm the city of Baghdad in its liberation, but is silent about the Russian destruction of Grozny in its subjugation. And so on.

 

US And Israel Should Comply With UN Resolutions
By Karen Nakamura
http://www.coastalpost.com/03/03/13.htm
One of the United State's sticking points for pushing the United Nations into an invasion of Iraq is Iraq's non-compliance with United Nations resolutions. President Bush has repeatedly accused the United Nations of "going the way of the League of Nations" if it doesn't follow through on its resolutions to disarm Saddam Hussein.
Therefore, according to democratic principles, what's good for the goose is good for the gander. If the United Nations must enforce resolutions against Iraq, then it should be made to do the same to all countries currently under unresolved resolutions. Isn't that what justice is about, even application of the law? How about starting with the United States and Israel?

Each of these countries has been severely censored through the years, the United States for its invasion of Panama, for instance. The American government has never seriously addressed that issue, the bombing destruction, (it was rumored at the time that the resulting fire was "enhanced" by US troops), of an entire section and its residents of Panama City. Nor has it acted on any other condemnation of its tactics, at least, on the greater issues. We think because we're us we can bomb and kill approximately 2,500 civilians in Panama with impunity. What's the difference between 3,000 dead civilians in New York and nearly the same amount in Panama?

Of even more immediacy is the situation in the Middle East. No one can say that the treatment of the Palestinians by the Israelis isn't the biggest bone of contention and anger in the Arab world. It's also a rallying point pitting the world against America. According to United Nations' legalese, Israel is the Occupying Force in Palestine. It has certain responsibilities set out in the Fourth Geneva Convention (1949) concerning the treatment of civilians in occupied territories. Ironically, this particular Geneva Convention was convened to set forth standards that would never allow a repeat of the Holocaust.

From the world's perspective, as seen in the United Nations' votes, Israel has been in violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention for years. Israel has a continuous stream of cease and desist resolutions from the United Nations Security Council. These resolutions, call almost entirely for the immediate withdrawal of Israeli Defense Forces from Palestinian territories. Just since the beginning of 2003, over 60 items of business on the UN agenda have dealt with Israel's provocations in the territories. Taking Resolution 1435, passed on September 24, 2002, as typical, it states:

"Reiterating the need for respect in all circumstances of internal humanitarian law, including the Fourth Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in time of War [1949]

1. "Demands complete cessation of all acts of violence, including all acts of terror, provocation, incitement and destruction.

2. "Demands that Israel immediately cease measures in and around Ramallah including the destruction of Palestinian civilian and security infrastructure.

3. "Demands also the expeditious withdrawal of the Israeli occupying forces from Palestinian cities to the positions held prior to September, 2000.

4. "Calls on the Palestinian Authority to meet its expressed commitment to ensure that those responsible for terrorist acts are brought to justice by it."

Agenda items for February 10 of this year calls for aid for Palestinians suffering due to the focus on Iraq. As well published, a high percentage of Palestinian children are showing signs of malnutrition, just as in the Warsaw ghetto. February 3 saw the UN discuss deep concern by continuing Israeli air violations into Southern Lebanon whereas January 30 saw an emergency special session on illegal Israeli actions in occupied East Jerusalem and the rest of the occupied Palestinian territories.

It might behoove both Americans and Israelis to look within and find out why the world is against us on the Palestinian occupation. Instead, advocates for Israel's occupation say that world disdain is based in anti-Jewish sentiments. This is false. The problem is not the greater Jewish people or the nation of Israel. What it is, is that the Israeli government has been allowed to carry out repeated war crimes. It's the refusal of the right-wing, militant government to treat Palestinians with respect and dignity, while trying to convince the world that the Nazis were wrong but they are right. Neither policy of extermination is right, as the Jewish people of all peoples should know.

It became evident when the Likud party voted in 2002 to never accept a Palestinian state that any honest negotiations towards peace were unacceptable to Israel. Land was chosen over peace. The current government of Israel is determined to raze the West Bank and incorporate those lands into the body Israel. The Nazi demolition of the Warsaw Ghetto was one of the greatest war crimes of World War Two. For the Israeli right wing to think that it can carry out the same action against the Palestinians and not be called on the carpet is unbelievable. That's why Israel must comply with active resolutions in the United Nations.

Interesting twist, the roadmap to a free terrorist state or should we say a fighting for freedom state? Too much international pressure and Bush had the speech on it. Friday nice mkt runnup with Bush/Powell talk

 

Oh, yeah, that's a great premise you have there. Sure, Israel drops all suggestions/acts of "violence" on their part while the Palestinians are sending in suicide bomber after suicide bomber.

 

max401:`Oh, yeah, that's a great premise you have there. Sure, Israel drops all suggestions/acts of "violence" on their part while the Palestinians are sending in suicide bomber after suicide bomber.´

Oh, yeah, that's a great premise you have there. Sure, the Palestinians drop all suggestions/acts of "violence" on their part while the Israelis are sending in homicide bomber after homicide bomber.