This war is illegal!

Bush did a bad job of presenting the case. He should have acted like he needed everybody's support or he would not attack. Instead he says "my way or the highway" and everybody just took the position of "ok, go for it, we don't want to pay anything or do anything since you are going to anyhow but more power to ya".

It was the USA that was attacked BTW, not the UN. The gutless UN is nothing but the debating society of the world.

Max

 

>>I think I am backing out of this argument as I can't really see an answer.
I just am not for a war. Women aren't as a group.<<

I understand your feelings one hundred percent Cathy.
Clearly emotional considerations carry a lot of weight in your mind, as in fact it is the case with most of us.

Unfortunately sometimes in life difficult decisions need to be made in life as one just cannot shirk one's responsibility towards the outcomes in the world.

The fact is that not making a deicsion is also making a decision.
You are a reasonable person so I bet you would agree that decision, vital decisions, need to be made with the head, not the heart as otherwise one will finish up in a mess.

At least you are fair enough and honest enough to admit that your original statement ("YOU BET YOUR ASS THAT THIS WAR OR ANY WAR IS ILLEGAL") cannot stand up under all circumstances.

I wonder how many protest marchers have actually thought things through rather than making rash judgements with the heart ?

I will leave you (and everyone else) with one more question.
There is no need to answer it publicly, just think about it.

The fact that there may be a multitude (even a majority of a population if you like) of people in a protest march that doesn't necessarily mean that their statements are being made in a rational manner, does it now ?

Hard as it is to accept I believe that Bush's statement 'You are either for us or against us.' is the reality.

Regards,

freealways

 

Hapaboy, there is little or no logic in many of Candletwit's statements.

He may not even hold these views. I believe that he is very mischievous in his posts trying to get as many people riled up as possible.

It is clear that he is like a little boy. getting a delight out of setting someone on fire. Hence his fascination with candles ?

He is however dangerous and needs to be reported to the CIA as he appears unstable enough to actually start to believe his own shit and he could thus go as far as acting on his ranting and raving by committing some subversive acts.

If he lives in the USA he needs to be kicked out as an undesireable alien.

freealways

 

Oh boy. You've just set yourself up for mass flaming of links from msfe and gales of "ROFL! YEEEHHHAAAA!" from candle.

Be afraid. Be VERY afraid!

 

It is very interesting to me that in his article Carter mentions collateral damage against innocent Iraqis as one of the reasons the coming war is not justifiable.

He was more than willing to attempt a hostage rescue that had expectations of a 50% casualty rate among the hostages! I guess the lives of American hostages weren't important enough, but Iraqi lives are now.

 

Harry ahahaha good finds


Sooooo, where is Cheney these days?
Sure we know, making certain ole HAl gets the contracts for the oil fires. Ahahaha war hasn't even began, but we know there will be oil fires AND good ole HAl gets the bids


Halliburton wins contract on Iraq oil firefighting
Reuters, 03.06.03, 8:31 PM ET

HOUSTON, March 6 (Reuters) - A Halliburton Co. (nyse: HAL - news - people) subsidiary Kellogg, Brown & Root (KBR) has won the contract to oversee any firefighting operations at Iraqi oilfields after any U.S.-led invasion, a Defense Department source said on Thursday.

KBR was widely viewed by many in the oilfield services industry as the likely candidate to oversee firefighting in Iraq's oilfields. Halliburton does extensive logistic support work for the U.S. military.

Vice President Dick Cheney served as Halliburton's chief executive officer from 1995 to 2000,

Beneficiary of Thursday's deal is oilwell firefighting company Boots & Coots International Well Control Inc., with which Halliburton has had an alliance since 1995.

A Halliburton spokeswoman declined comment and referred all questions to the Defense Department.

Copyright 2003, Reuters News Service


My tax dollars at full work I know contingencies, just in case. In the mean time Rummy "has not a clue" how much this shithole they are getting us in, is going to cost

 

A War Crime or an Act of War?

MECHANICSBURG, Pa. — It was no surprise that President Bush, lacking smoking-gun evidence of Iraq's weapons programs, used his State of the Union address to re-emphasize the moral case for an invasion: "The dictator who is assembling the world's most dangerous weapons has already used them on whole villages, leaving thousands of his own citizens dead, blind or disfigured."

The accusation that Iraq has used chemical weapons against its citizens is a familiar part of the debate. The piece of hard evidence most frequently brought up concerns the gassing of Iraqi Kurds at the town of Halabja in March 1988, near the end of the eight-year Iran-Iraq war. President Bush himself has cited Iraq's "gassing its own people," specifically at Halabja, as a reason to topple Saddam Hussein.

But the truth is, all we know for certain is that Kurds were bombarded with poison gas that day at Halabja. We cannot say with any certainty that Iraqi chemical weapons killed the Kurds. This is not the only distortion in the Halabja story.

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.

This much about the gassing at Halabja we undoubtedly know: it came about in the course of a battle between Iraqis and Iranians. Iraq used chemical weapons to try to kill Iranians who had seized the town, which is in northern Iraq not far from the Iranian border. The Kurdish civilians who died had the misfortune to be caught up in that exchange. But they were not Iraq's main target.

And the story gets murkier: immediately after the battle the United States Defense Intelligence Agency investigated and produced a classified report, which it circulated within the intelligence community on a need-to-know basis. That study asserted that it was Iranian gas that killed the Kurds, not Iraqi gas.

The agency did find that each side used gas against the other in the battle around Halabja. The condition of the dead Kurds' bodies, however, indicated they had been killed with a blood agent — that is, a cyanide-based gas — which Iran was known to use. The Iraqis, who are thought to have used mustard gas in the battle, are not known to have possessed blood agents at the time.

These facts have long been in the public domain but, extraordinarily, as often as the Halabja affair is cited, they are rarely mentioned. A much-discussed article in The New Yorker last March did not make reference to the Defense Intelligence Agency report or consider that Iranian gas might have killed the Kurds. On the rare occasions the report is brought up, there is usually speculation, with no proof, that it was skewed out of American political favoritism toward Iraq in its war against Iran.

I am not trying to rehabilitate the character of Saddam Hussein. He has much to answer for in the area of human rights abuses. But accusing him of gassing his own people at Halabja as an act of genocide is not correct, because as far as the information we have goes, all of the cases where gas was used involved battles. These were tragedies of war. There may be justifications for invading Iraq, but Halabja is not one of them.

In fact, those who really feel that the disaster at Halabja has bearing on today might want to consider a different question: Why was Iran so keen on taking the town? A closer look may shed light on America's impetus to invade Iraq.

We are constantly reminded that Iraq has perhaps the world's largest reserves of oil. But in a regional and perhaps even geopolitical sense, it may be more important that Iraq has the most extensive river system in the Middle East. In addition to the Tigris and Euphrates, there are the Greater Zab and Lesser Zab rivers in the north of the country. Iraq was covered with irrigation works by the sixth century A.D., and was a granary for the region.

Before the Persian Gulf war, Iraq had built an impressive system of dams and river control projects, the largest being the Darbandikhan dam in the Kurdish area. And it was this dam the Iranians were aiming to take control of when they seized Halabja. In the 1990's there was much discussion over the construction of a so-called Peace Pipeline that would bring the waters of the Tigris and Euphrates south to the parched Gulf states and, by extension, Israel. No progress has been made on this, largely because of Iraqi intransigence. With Iraq in American hands, of course, all that could change.

Thus America could alter the destiny of the Middle East in a way that probably could not be challenged for decades — not solely by controlling Iraq's oil, but by controlling its water. Even if America didn't occupy the country, once Mr. Hussein's Baath Party is driven from power, many lucrative opportunities would open up for American companies.

All that is needed to get us into war is one clear reason for acting, one that would be generally persuasive. But efforts to link the Iraqis directly to Osama bin Laden have proved inconclusive. Assertions that Iraq threatens its neighbors have also failed to create much resolve; in its present debilitated condition — thanks to United Nations sanctions — Iraq's conventional forces threaten no one.

Perhaps the strongest argument left for taking us to war quickly is that Saddam Hussein has committed human rights atrocities against his people. And the most dramatic case are the accusations about Halabja.

Before we go to war over Halabja, the administration owes the American people the full facts. And if it has other examples of Saddam Hussein gassing Kurds, it must show that they were not pro-Iranian Kurdish guerrillas who died fighting alongside Iranian Revolutionary Guards. Until Washington gives us proof of Saddam Hussein's supposed atrocities, why are we picking on Iraq on human rights grounds, particularly when there are so many other repressive regimes Washington supports?

http://www.nytimes.com/auth/login?U...L.html&OQ=pagewantedQ3DprintQ26positionQ3Dtop


ok ok ok who done it? was it sodom or the Iranians?

Ahahaha!!!!But but but we can always accuse whoever we need to at the time of convenience??? Hey we sold them WMD's both sides. If you are historically challenged: - brushing up on the iran contra bs & the Iran/Iraq wars- would help

 

This story has been debunked repeatedly, not just by Pelletiere's former associates, but by UN and relief organization representatives. The Iraqi general who was responsible for the Kurdish policy recorded himself bragging about the event.

The particular most recent article by Pelletiere on the subject - he's been trucking this story around for years - led to series of letters to the New York Times editors, including this one:



To the Editor:

Re ''A War Crime or an Act of War?'' (Op-Ed, Jan. 31):


Stephen C. Pelletiere writes that Iran, not Iraq, might have been responsible for the 1988 gassing of Kurdish civilians in Halabja.

Human Rights Watch researchers interviewed survivors from Halabja and reviewed 18 tons of Iraqi state documents to establish beyond doubt that the attack was carried out by Iraq.

Iraqi forces used mustard and nerve gases, as well as mass executions, to kill some 100,000 Kurds in the genocidal 1988 Anfal campaign. The commander, Gen. Ali Hassan al-Majid, said of the Kurds, in a taped speech obtained by Human Rights Watch: ''I will kill them all with chemical weapons! Who is going to say anything? The international community?''

The evidence is incontrovertible: Iraq is responsible for the crime of genocide, committed against its own Kurdish population. The gassing at Halabja was part of that crime.

KENNETH ROTH
Executive Director
Human Rights Watch
New York, Feb. 3, 2003

http://query.nytimes.com/search/full-page?res=9803EEDB1F38F936A35751C0A9659C8B63

There was also this denial from Iran:

To the Editor:

Stephen C. Pelletiere (''A War Crime or an Act of War?,'' Op-Ed, Jan. 31) refers to a United States classified report, unknown to us, that would appear to exonerate the culprit in the tragedy at Halabja, Iraq, in March 1988.

This report stands in stark contrast to the United Nations investigation team findings, which invariably singled out the Iraqi Army as the culprit in the use of chemical weapons.

The Iranian government was the party that brought the Halabja tragedy to the attention of the United Nations and invited the international media to visit the city under its escort, the action that helped make clear who the culprit was.

Unfortunately, United States political expediency at the time obstructed the United Nations' efforts to investigate this incident fully.

MORTEZA RAMANDI
Press Attaché, Mission of Iran to the United Nations
New York, Feb. 3, 2003

http://query.nytimes.com/search/full-page?res=9E02EEDB1F38F936A35751C0A9659C8B63

and this one:

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F50A1FFA345C0C768CDDAB0894DB404482

You have to pay for that one, for some reason.

Of course, since those letters, and the evidence they cite, don't comport with your prejudices, I expect you to ignore them.

 

you say "THIS IS THE GREATEST NATION on the FACE OF THIS EARTH!--- do not destroy it any more"??

Bush has done more to HELP the US in 2 years, than Clinton did in 8 years.

I think you've been to one too many peace rallies. I suggest heavy voltage for you.

And you say "impeachment"????? Could you be any more out of touch? You don't deserve to live in the US under our great president Bush.

Go to France, please. You'll enjoy it.

And I got bad news for you, Bush is a heavy favorite to be re-elected. I'd bet up to $100,000 he gets re-elected.

So you don't like him?? Goto France, so you won't have to complain about him till 2008.

vinny "proud american" gigante

 

Defiance of global will

This war is not only about Iraq, but about who runs the world and how to make them accountable to us

Gary Younge
Monday March 10, 2003


He could have chosen anything. With such a huge majority and so little coherent opposition in parliament, there have been no end of issues on which Tony Blair might have taken a moral stance and shown leadership against either popular opinion or powerful vested interests over the past six years.

He might have faced down the tabloids and made a stand against the scapegoating of asylum seekers, or resisted the pressure from the markets and raised taxes to fund increased investment in public services.

But the issue on which he chose to set himself against the wishes of the country and his party has been international law; if necessary, to embark on military action to secure cheap oil supplies for the world's wealthiest nation.

Were this an aberration it might be worthy of disappointment. The fact that it is entirely consistent is a source of exasperation. For while Blair's support for the war has never been inevitable, it is nonetheless a logical progression of the path he has travelled thus far.

Under his leadership, New Labour has now leapfrogged European Social Democracy and even Gaullism and landed in the lap of the most rightwing forces on the planet, from America's Republican president George Bush to Italian premier Silvio Berlusconi. This result is the most glaring example of the fundamental dislocation between popular political culture and an isolated political class. We are stuck with a government that does not represent us, prosecuting a war we do not want.

The conditions from which this dilemma emerges might be particular to Britain. But the issues of representation and accountability that underlie them are not. We are not grappling with a local difficulty but a global crisis in democratic legitimacy.

It is difficult to find a nation that supports a US-led war against Iraq, and difficult to find a nation where people do not think it is inevitable. Every time we turn on the news it is like watching a juggernaut heading towards a crowded playground in slow motion. We can see the catastrophe coming, but feel powerless to stop it.

Take the "key allies" with whom Bush will bomb regardless. Only 39% of Americans, 22% of Australians, 15% of Italians and Britons, 13% of Bulgarians and 2% of Spaniards back a war without UN approval. So much for the "coalition of the willing".

The irony of a man who lost an election and won a court case "installing" democracy in the Arab world is not lost on many. Not least because if we had anything like representative democracies in the west he would be in no position to do so.

So while the millions who took to the streets last month have finally found their voice, they have yet to find anyone with their hand on the tiller to heed it. The question is, what are they going to do about it? Where will all the political energy and activism, that has produced the largest demonstrations and one of the most vibrant anti-war movements in the post-war era, go? How will it get there, who will lead it and what will it look like when it arrives?

The most pessimistic scenario is that it will not go anywhere. This is Blair's most fervent hope. That after the arm-twisting, horse-trading, phone-tapping and vote-buying is over they will receive enough votes on the security council to claim they have a UN imprimatur even if the resolution is vetoed. Whether the votes come through or not, they hope that, within a week of bombing, Baghdad will be trashed from a great height, Saddam will be captured or killed and a US-sponsored viceroy imposed. Then the spin doctors will come in to clear up the mess. They will claim victory and their electorates will lose interest in the trail of mayhem and broken promises about installing democracy that follows, just as they have done with Afghanistan.

This could happen. Demonstrations are expressions of popular public sentiment - an intangible commodity that often burns brightly and then fades away. They occasionally secure single-issue concessions but rarely make lasting imprints. Remember the fuel protests and the Countryside Alliance march? Powerful while they lasted, forgettable once over. Marches can express popular public disaffection, but it takes a movement to translate that into a coherent, political challenge.

And the war may well be swift. Nobody doubts America's military superiority. And if that were not enough, the UN will have forced Saddam to destroy most of his weapons of mass destruction by the time the US employs its own weapons of mass destruction to destroy him. But for all that, this scenario is unlikely. The anti-war movement has already made its mark on the mainstream. It has stopped the Turkish government in its tracks, forced the Pakistani regime to pause for reflection and given German chancellor Gerhard Schröder another term in office.

In the line-up for the Democratic presidency, four of the nine nominees are standing as anti-war candidates. None of them has a chance of winning, but all are shifting the debate to the left and between them they make a solid bloc that will have to be catered for and cannot be ignored.

Likewise, a critical mass of Labour backbenchers has finally discovered a purpose - to represent the people who elected them to the government rather than the interests of the government to the electorate. As former ministers Frank Dobson and Chris Smith will testify, dissent is an acquired taste. Now they have tried it they might extend the practice to other areas of government policy.

But while these dissidents should be supported, they cannot be relied on. They gain their strength from the pressure coming from outside parliament. They can follow a movement but they cannot lead it.

If and when military action begins, many of these domestic rebellions may well fizzle out. But the pressure that brought them to bear will persist. The war is not, and never has been, solely about Iraq. It is about who runs the world, to whom they are accountable and how we might influence them. As such, the issues it raises are inextricably entwined with those the anti-globalisation movement has been addressing for the best part of a decade.

They will not go away if Baghdad falls but will go on as long as there are sweatshops in Thailand and banana fields in the Caribbean. It is not only the US and UK's role in the UN they question but their role in the World Trade Organisation and World Bank too. While anti-war movements must be focused on the issue at hand - protesting against the bombing of Iraq - they must be prepared and able to embrace the broader issues, which are the source of much of the anxiety that brought people to the streets last month. Both Bush and Blair have made clear the current crisis is about what kind of world we want to live in and whether one nation has the right to defy international will. We should take them at their word.