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And while Bobby was just playing a chess match, the Feds were shipping huge amounts of arms to their favorite players in the region, the separatist Bosnian Muslims. As the Guardian newspaper in England documented :

...the Pentagon had incurred debts to Islamist groups and their Middle Eastern sponsors. By 1993 these groups, many supported by Iran and Saudi Arabia, were anxious to help Bosnian Muslims fighting in the former Yugoslavia and called in their debts with the Americans. Bill Clinton and the Pentagon were keen to be seen as creditworthy and repaid in the form of an Iran-Contra style operation - in flagrant violation of the UN security council arms embargo against all combatants in the former Yugoslavia.

The result was a vast secret conduit of weapons smuggling though Croatia. This was arranged by the clandestine agencies of the US, Turkey and Iran... Initially aircraft from Iran Air were used, but as the volume increased they were joined by a mysterious fleet of black C-130 Hercules aircraft.

Just as the trial of Slobodan Milosevic is exposing the fact that most of the claims used to justify the US's Kosovo war were bogus, maybe poor Fischer's inevitable trial will expose the lies told to justify the Bosnian war.

Now that it's been revealed that al-Qaeda members were fighting for the Bosnian Muslims, maybe the USA will acknowledge their mistaken policy, apologize to poor Bobby, and let him go.

Yeah, right. Being an Empire means never having to say you're sorry.

First of all, to say that "Yugoslavia" caused the Bosnian war is as meaningless as saying that the United States caused the (U.S.) Civil War.

The Bosnian war started because some leaders of the Bosnian Muslims-- who as a people had historically been pro-Yugoslav-- wanted to secede from Yugoslavia and start their own Islamic state, and to impose Islamic law on all the people living there-- including the ethnic Serbs and Croats who made up a majority of the population. This was all detailed in their president Izetbegovic's "Islamic Declaration". Along with taking advantage of all the usual Muslim suspects-- including Osama's right-hand man al-Harbi-- who flocked there to fight the jihad, the Bosnian president also recreated a WWII-era SS Division to help in the fight.

A history lesson, since falcon5768 and probably others need it: hundreds of thousands of Serbian civilians were murdered in concentration camps during WWII, when they were on the Allied side while the Bosnians and Croats were allied with the Nazis. Memories are long in that part of the world, and Islamic law is not much fun either-- so is it any wonder that not just Serbs but moderate Muslims like took up arms to prevent the secession of Bosnia, or at least keep their own land out from under the thumb of Izetbegovic and his cronies?

I am confused why you say that the Bosnian war "DID kill US and UN troops". What US or UN troops were in the region? And as for the "mass slaughter" of Muslims at Srebrenica, the story is now starting to leak out that it's not so clear-cut as that-- most of the bodies have never shown up, and many of the dead turned out to be the troops of Muslim warlord Nasr Oric, who would use the UN-protected "safe areas" as a base from which to launch raids involving beheadings of prisoners... sound familiar?

The most laughable part of your post (and, by extension, the US's case against Bobby Fischer) is when you go on about how the sanctions were meant to prevent the world from contributing to the war. Of course, as the Guardian newspaper in England documented (much later after it was no longer inconvenient for the facts to come out), the US government was violating the embargo all along:

...the Pentagon had incurred debts to Islamist groups and their Middle Eastern sponsors. By 1993 these groups, many supported by Iran and Saudi Arabia, were anxious to help Bosnian Muslims fighting in the former Yugoslavia and called in their debts with the Americans. Bill Clinton and the Pentagon were keen to be seen as creditworthy and repaid in the form of an Iran-Contra style operation - in flagrant violation of the UN security council arms embargo against all combatants in the former Yugoslavia.

The result was a vast secret conduit of weapons smuggling though Croatia. This was arranged by the clandestine agencies of the US, Turkey and Iran...

The reason you, and so many other people, hold this inaccurate and deluded view of the Bosnian war, is attributable mostly to the really top-notch propaganda war waged in the U.S. and U.K. media, making the Bosnian Muslims out to be the wonderful, multicultural good guys and the Serbs the baddies. It doesn't matter that so much of the lies have now been exposed-- like

Regarding intelligence failures:
Off the top of your head, tell me how many intelligence successes occur annually? No, don't go looking to the media (not even FoxNews...). No, don't even ask Congress.

Can't think of many, right?

By unofficial definition a true "intelligence success" will never be public knowledge. We, as the general public, have no idea of the staggeringly high number of times intelligence has saved our lives. Ironically, we know all too well a sickening amount of detail from such clusterf$%@s that led to 9/11, the U.S.S Cole bombing, etc.

If we had any clue as to how many "intelligence successes" have saved us from destruction/distress we would probably be scared to get out of bed. We should all be thankful that people are out there working to make sure we don't have to hide under the covers quaking in fear.

You wanted some sources? OK:

• Bureau of Labor and Statistics lists plenty of information on employment/unemployment. Take a look at the historical unemployment rates and whip out a calculator. For '92 to '00 I calculate unemployment to an average of 6.1% -- Nothing wrong with that. That's a very healthy unemployment rate and I couldn't complain, but when you compare that with the current rate quoted at 5.6%, a lot of complaints about the current administration's unemployment rate lose their ability to hold water.

• I see 214,000 jobs added last month. That's bad?

• As for the economic theory, I am a firm believer in Keynesian economics as well as the ideas of John Hicks.

• Bankrate.com has some great information and graphical representations of historical rates and economic indicators. Take a look and let me know how you feel about the current indicators?

• If you want a look at how other people are thanklessly putting their lives on the line for my safety and yours, and hence why they command my utmost respect and gratitude to the extent that I refuse to acknowledge intelligence failures, read Book Of Honor by Ted Gup.

Sorry, no references to anything on the Washington Times, FoxNews, the Washington Post, PBS.org, antiwar.com, or thenation.com. Call me crazy, but I like my data unbiased.

That's all for now.

Sandia's intelligence lab converts business data into 3-D images

I know the taxpayers paid for it, but it always seams like it gets exclusivly [sic] licensed to some company for next to nothing then that company charges the people that paid for it in the first place a lot of money to use it.

You're a wisely cynical man.

In the light of the 9/11 Commission's report of the multiple failures of the CIA and FBI that allowed the terrorists to attack us in 2001, in the light of Sibel Edmonds's allegations that the FBI intentionally destroyed translations of intercepted terrorist conversations, in light of the Senate Intelligence Committee's report about systemic CIA failures to provide accurate intelligence about WMDs in Iraq, why am I less than thrilled to discover that Sandia National Laboratories' businesses?

When I further learn that "Sandia officials say tech firms or venture capitalists can use the lab on a per-request basis," I begin to understand that Sandia's Corporate Business Development and Partnerships aren't using my tax dollars to protect me, they're providing corporate welfare by dong the Research and Development that business wants but doesn't want to pay for.

Remember, these are the same businesses that vociferously object to government programs that might compete with them, whether that's sponsorship of Open Source Software or rural electric cooperatives or IRS software that might be efficient enough to cost H&R Block. These are the same corporations that got a provision added to the Medicare Prescription Drug Bill to prevent the government from getting discounts by buying those drugs in bulk, but which profit from research funded by the National Institutes of Health.

These are the same corporations that want Ashcroft's Department of Justice to stop worrying so much about fixing the FBI's failures, so it can spend government time -- and your money -- prosecuting civil -- civil, not criminal -- suits against file traders under the PIRATE Act on behalf of those corporations. If you need to sue a corporation, you're on your own; maybe you'll get some coupons out of a class action suit. But if the corporation wants to sue you, they get the assistance of top government lawyers and FBI agents packing guns and warrants.

And this just after the U.S. House passed the biggest corporate tax cuts in twenty years, because existing direct subsidies -- or less politely, corporate welfare -- will no longer be permitted under World Trade Organization rules. Even House Republicans admit this tax cut "is riddled with special-interest provisions that would further complicate the tax code, send jobs overseas and worsen a federal deficit already at record highs."

Does anyone really expect Sandia's going to release the source code to the data mining software to us, the citizens who have to pay for it?

Be proud, Americans, of how fat your labor makes your corporate masters! What a joy it is to serve them! It is your privilege to work long hours and pay high taxes so your masters can buy their yachts -- and buy the laws that enslave you.

America, Of the People, By the People, for the Pe^H^H Corporations

is this just what Michael Moore told you to think?

Acceptable risk? Guess you've never lost a family member to stray fire have you? Would you claim acceptable cost then?
Acceptable risk is a retarded US Military saying.
It's like you sitting in front of your TV and saying 10,000 dead Iraqi civillians and 5,000 dead Iraqi militari personnel is an acceptable cost. Ask the families of those 15,000 people.

Some of the Environmentalists are extreme idiots that use junk science to justify their own whims, or are hypocrits who do exactly what they don't want anyone else doing. Not all of them, but as long as there a few like this, I won't trust an Environmentalist, EVER.

Is everyone out there starting to get the point? Or must I go on longer? Statements like these are prejudicial. Including the one about cops. Prejudicial: To judge someone or something without fact.

I won't even argue with you over this point.

What I will argue, is "Is it wrong to be predjudicial in this case"?

In general, "innocent until proven guilty" is the standard I use on most things of this nature, from Michael Jackson, to Hiibel, to myself any my prior run-ins with the law.

However, this works (IMHO) only so long as there is a "higher-up watcher" that can ideally determine the guilt or lack thereof.

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

This brings up a very clear exception (for me) to the "innocent until proven guilty" rule.

That exception occurs when the party under consideration is essentially the "top level watchers" group. This group can include "police", "army/military intellegence (think Guantanimo bay or "Abu Ghraib"), or "Diebold".

These entities are in a position of essentially "unquestionable power" relative to the general population, and are generally shrouded in secrecy, which environment is almost a breeding ground for abuses.

Entities like those need to be viewed in a "guilty before innocent" light, because they can otherwise have no accountability, being in the position of "watchers" already.

This is why I don't like to see cops given new powers like this. You simply cannot trust the cops themselves to be "innocent before proven guilty" since they themselves are the "watchers".

Granted, this view is very much a result of my own personal experiences, and the expereiences of many personal friends & family. Also granted, the plural of "anecdote" is not "data", however I have personally seen such horid abuse of power not just from cops, but from all forms of "watchers" such that I have no choice but to hold this view anymore.

I have been lied about by cops, beaten for protesting legally, arrested for no (real) reason other than to harrass me and intimidate my companions, etc.

It is time for this abuse to stop. "watchers" need to be held to the absolute highest of standards as far as accountability goes.

Once police are transparent enough that I (or any average citizen) can prove that said cop is misusing this authority, or lies about it (authority or specific case), and we can have his badge and run him out of town, then and only then should more powers be granted to them.

Until then, the focus (IMHO) should be on improving transparency and accountibility such that there is no "top level watchers", as they themselves would be just as wholely accountable to the "bottom level watchees", in a kind of a "circular accountability system".

Sorry to babble so much, and to butcher the Queens English so, but this is a very important subject for me, as I have been on the receiving end of police abuse far too often.

-dave-

Afterwards, read The Essential Dishonesty of Christopher Hitchens for a little balance.

If you want to avoid more deaths of American soldiers in Iraq (845 so far and counting), then I suggest you don't vote for Bush in November.

As opposed to the nonsense you hear John Gibson spew which has been independently judged to be failing to observe "respect for truth", which you can read about here.

You want evidence? OK how about This and this

Don't believe the stories? Well check out the pictures here and tell me with a straight face that this is not typical of America, especially given the treatment of detainees at Guantanimo bay that was introduced into Abu Ghraib by General Geoffrey Millar here

Terrorists blow things up and kill about 1/10th the number of Americans who die in highway deaths each year, but in doing do they stiffen our resolve and so never get anywhere near to changing our fundamental America values.

But dissidents and domestic trouble-makers can cause real problems for a regime that calls questioning its mistakes tantamount to aiding America's enemies.

Today is Memorial Day. I hope that all Americans will take time today to reflect on the costs of freedom and the American men and women in our armed forces who have paid for our freedoms with their service, their wounds, and their lives.

On this Memorial Day, let's really support our troops by following the advice of so many retired officers and men by insisting that "Robert S." Rumsfeld and his band of incompetent chicken-hawks resign -- or be fired.

Where are all these alleged Bush supporters, anyway? Texas? I'm beginning to think they're a fabrication of Fox News...

I've seen several English newspapers also try to show that Israel may have had advance knowledge of 9/11. There even was an FBI investigation.

Eh, I'm sick of hearing how one side teaches hatred of the other side in schools. I want to see proof. I hear Hindus teach hatred of Muslims, and Muslims teach hatred of Hindus. Nobody can claim the higher moral ground here.

You're incorrect, Islam doesn't say that there will be a wholesale slaughter of Jews, and nothing like that before the return of Jesus(pbuh). They don't call it "resurrection" either. Islam says that when the antichrist (Dajjal) comes, many Jews, Christians, and even some Muslims will follow him. They're not singling out the Jews.

You're distorting what Islam says, and that verse is not talking about the coming of Jesus. You're unevenly comparing Christianity and Islam. Remember, the bible claims Jesus said "I came not to bring peace, but a sword. "

The faiths are NOT diametrically opposed. Come by to my town and say that to the interfaith services here. Yes, Christianity came before Islam as we know it, but Judaism came before Christianity. Your point? One faith is the expected next iteration of the last.

For those interested in what is going on in government behind the scenes, don't always think people who post the kinds of things I post are all conspiratorial stories aimed at bringing down government through chaos. Hell look at sites like FAS, Cryptome, Arms Control, and the multitude of others. Many people point things out but too many are concerned with menial things such as Janet's boobs, Sex and the Shitty, etc., to notice the rug being pulled from under them. Hell most Americans think CNN and Fox are the holy grail of news. Get out there and read, know what's happening in your country. Check out BBC, Observer, Greg Palast, AntiWar, Chomsky. These people aren't being controlled via advertisers, not political pressure. I write sometimes too kooky assed documents, that some might say aren't worth a pot to piss in. Maybe so, but there is a reason for me rambling on like a madman sometimes. I care about my privacy and liberty. I don't want my friends or family growing up in something out of "Escape from Alcatraz"

I don't necessarily agree with everything Micheal Moore says. However, I do agree with most of it...

Bush DID go AWOL...not that I care
Bush IS stupid... even his former secretary of treasury indicates it (note: I don't necessarily agree with a right winger like Justin Raimondo)
I agree with you that Bush is NOT a drug addict...
I also don't agree with the view that Bush stole the election... The Supreme Court decided it and if there is a problem, it lies with the courts...


Bush allegation, remember that after stripping away the humor, you're just reading the rantings of a religious fanatic. His religion is hatred.

I suppose in the upside world where Ann Coulter, Bill O'reilley and Rush Limbaugh preach love, Moore is preaching hatred...

Pushing this anti-Moore stunt precisely when the Bush administration is facing its biggest problems doesn't help you at all... A better stunt would be to revert to the classical 'anyone who criticizes the war is a traitor and a communist'. That stunt is more appropriate given what Bush is facing...

Sivaram Velauthapillai

Compulsory retention of logs is coming. It's happened in Europe, and it's about to happen in the States.

"An early draft of the White House's National Strategy to Secure Cyberspace envisions the same kind of mandatory customer data collection and retention by U.S. Internet service providers as was recently enacted in Europe, according to sources who have reviewed portions of the plan."

"After delaying for about two years, U.S. President George W. Bush recently asked the U.S. Senate to ratify the Council of Europe Cybercrime Convention, a global agreement apparently created to help police worldwide cooperate to fight Internet crimes."

Actually it is you who doesn't know what a neoconservative is (why do I get the feeling you are one?). It is not just the left that uses that. The right uses it too. Consider the example of and Pat Buchanan (paleoconservative). Also, left-wing anti-war activists are REACTIONARY? lol Whatever! The bogus invasion of Iraq is more reactionary than any anti-war position.

Bush, Cheney, Powell, Wolfowitz, Rice, Rumsfeld... all life-long conservative Republicans.

Bush, Powell, and Rice are not neoconservatives. Bush is pretty much belongs to the Christian Right. However, Wolfowitz, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Douglas Feith, et al are neoconservatives (along with a whole hoard of people at National Review and The Weekly Standard).

Oh, one more thing... Neoconservatives are a branch of the Republicans. So it doesn't matter what they were doing before. Most of them are ex-Trotskyites. If anything, most of the neoconservatives in power now are recycled Reganites.

Read this article for some information about the neoconservative family. Sivaram Velauthapillai

BTW, in case you haven't seen them yet, here are two more excellent links which go further:

http://www.forward.com/issues/2002/02.03.15/news2. html

http://www.antiwar.com/justin/pf/p-j030802.html

A NATION CHALLENGED: THE TALLY; Officials Say Number of Those Still Missing May Be Overstated

By ERIC LIPTON (NYT) 1217 words

It has become clear, though, that the question of foreign citizens has been the most problematic in efforts to keep the city's count accurate. Over the last several days, the city's list of the missing became inflated by what officials said were missing persons reports from consulates and embassies for countries including India and Israel.

But interviews with many consulate officials yesterday suggested that the lists of people they were collecting varied widely in their usefulness. For example, the city had somehow received reports of many Israelis feared missing at the site, and President Bush in his address to the country on Thursday night mentioned that about 130 Israelis had died in the attacks.

But today, Alon Pinkas, Israel's consul general here, said that lists of the missing included reports from people who had called in because, for instance, relatives in New York had not returned their phone calls from Israel. There were, in fact, only three Israelis who had been confirmed as dead: two on the planes and another who had been visiting the towers on business and who was identified and buried.

There appears to be more to this than meets the eye.

Once again, our point is proven, there are bad people on both sides.

The problem facing Wikipedia.org is not unexpected. As a site becomes popular, it becomes very expensive to run. Asking for $20k is not much. I expect that they will need more donations in the future. I'm surprised they need money for hardware. I would think bandwidth might cost even more. Since wikipedia has enormous potential (it is already the #1 free encyclopedia even though not many have heard of it), its costs will mount. For reference, a political site like antiwar.com raises $100k per quarter (antiwar.com is in the top 10 of all news sites). I imagine Wikipedia.org needs at least that much. It wouldn't suprise me if they need around $200k per quarter if the site becomes really popular (when everyone starts using it).

I think Wikipedia.org should open up their books to avoid criticism. It seems some people think the money is going to be scammed. I suggest that wikipedia.org start posting their financial statements. Since it is a non-profit organization (I think), it should have been doing that already.

Sivaram Velauthapillai

oops sorry, wrong link; try this one

--VERY LONG--
I hope you take the time to read this because I spent some time on it :)

Since the "end of major combat", fewer civilians have been killed as a result of insurgency than would have been killed by Saddam's regime (on average).

Speculation can lead to your demise. Let's see. Approximately 1500 have died since the "end of major operations" in Baghdad ALONE. That's all in half a year (approximately). Who knows how many have died in other areas. Let's say an average of 3000 in one year (that's just one city too, although the biggest city). What was Saddam's biggest atrocity? Probably his chemical attack against Kurds in Halabja. Supposedly this killed 5,000. Now, are you telling me that Saddam was killing more than 3000 per year before the war? Do you have any proof other than the US government (propaganda) documents?

As a side note, Saddam killed A LOT during the Iran-Iraq war. I'm not counting these people because it is hard to say what was going on at that time. It's not clear how many of the deaths at that time were human rights abuses, and how many were war casulties. Also, the US government backed Saddam Hussein at that time (remember this famous photo of Donald Rumsfeld shaking hands with Saddam?)

I envision an Iraq where the money from oil revenues pays for schools, roads, hospitals, and other social services, so that people don't have to pay taxes or have any other financial burden of the like.

Is USA going to be profitting from this? Or is this supposed to be a neutral thing left to the Iraqis to decide? How much do you want to bet that American oil companies will control all the oil coming out of Iraq in 10 years?

I envision free press (which already exists now), and a place where people can be as secure in their persons as people are here in the U.S. Part of my vision is already come to pass - there is freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, freedom to dissent - freedoms they didn't have before.

There sure is a lot of free press in Iraq right now ;| Just recently the IGC banned Al-Jazeera and a bunch of other media. That's free media to you? A while ago the same thing happened. I can't find a link to the newsj--sorry about that (sucks how you have to pay for newspaper archives). But read the beginning of this article. This article is from Justin Raimondo who is on the far right so I don't necessarily agree with it or him (I'm on the far left) but it illustrates my point. You only have to read the beginning part.

The problem is that you are either a neoconservative who is in favour of imperialism (unlikely), or that you are a naive "liberal" (likely). You ACTUALLY think what Bush said in front of the National Endowment for Democracy will happen/is true. Sad to say, it won't and it never has. You just CANNOT bring democracy and freedom to a country with a gun. Gunpoint democracy is doomed to fail. The last person to try that was probably Lenin (and his invasion of Poland) but it never got anywhere. Name ONE country that USA has meddled with since WWII, that ended up democratic or free. The answer is absolutely ZERO! There are lots of examples (El Salvador, Guatemala, Chile, Panama, Colombia, Iraq (before), Iran, Indonesia, Philliphines, and so on) but it never worked.

Democracy and Freedom has to come from WITHIN the people (if you are a liberal you should know this already). Foreign forces can never impose it on others. It's just like say women's rights or equality or something. Contrary to what conservatives think, you just cannot bring equality to women in the Middle East (for example) by forcing the people to accept it. It's too bad the conservatives don't understand liberalism (whi

Really? What are you counting? try this

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - At least 3,240 civilians died across Iraq during a month of war, including 1,896 in Baghdad, according to a five-week Associated Press investigation.

The count is still fragmentary, and the complete toll - if it is ever tallied - is sure to be significantly higher.

Several surveys have looked at civilian casualties within Baghdad, but the AP tally is the first attempt to gauge the scale of such deaths from one end of the country to the other, from Mosul in the north to Basra in the south.

Talking about the CIA Factbook...

I, being a leftist, always wonder if the CIA factbook can be trusted (given that spy agencies are immoral, liers, and carry out all sort of heinious crimes). I know everyone uses it, but would anyone notice something if the CIA actually initiates propaganda through the Factbook (as opposed to tradional channels like television, news, etc)?

To see of the potential, consider this example. USA is having all sorts of problems in Iraq (check out antiwar.com to get stories that are ignored). USA is also claiming a desire to implement democracy (which it doesn't but I don't wnat to get into that). Let's say they hold an election in Iraq. Let's say there are voting "irregularities" (that's codeword for vote rigging). To manipulate Americans, and possibly others who rely on the CIA Factbook, the CIA can simply cook up some ethnic figures for Iraq. Instead of Shiite being 60%, they could change the figure to say 49% (they have to do this subtlely of course, but spy agents are good at this stuff (that's their whole job in life)). The US govt can reconcile a questionable election where say the Shiite only got 40% of the vote by claiming that they are only 49% of the population instead of 60%. So why trust the CIA Factbook? Would you notice something like that?

Of course, the example I cited is blatantly obvious and too easy to check. However, agents use more subtle techniques and the majority of the population won't pick it up, just like how the majority can't tell disinformation from expert propagandists (like USA, Britain, China, Russia).

Something to think about...

Sivaram Velauthapillai

So? Does that justify assassinations and funding of terrorism? The only states that the US doesn't like are those that aren't open to business. If you are willing to talk dollars, how many palaces you have, how many citizens you murder somehow becomes irrelevant. Only when said government turns against you, do they suddenly become "the enemy".

We need oil as does the rest of the world. If there was no oil there, we would have nothing to do with them, same with the rest of the world. The USA tried after both WW1 and WW2 to help these people live in peace for once in their lifetime but the fanatical religious leaders chose not to live in peace and set about creating fundamentalist states there.

You created the fundamentalist states! They used to have fairly decent governments, which were destroyed through US funded terrorism.

They said and continue to say much the same things Hitler said to justify war. Hitler said the Jews are to blame for all the problems in the world, they say the Jews and America are. It is interesting how people the world over love to point fingers at everything besides themselves.

Exactly, propaganda hasn't changed much. You are aware that your own government is using terrorism in the exact same way? Ever notice how Bush uses the word "terror" as often as possible in speaches? Why? Iraq never had terrorist links, so what is he implying by using that word I wonder...

Perhaps rather than preaching a religion which demands death to the non-believers, they should take a more moderate tone and respect others beliefs?

Well, Islam doesn't teach that. In the same way that Christianity doesn't teach what we are doing as well. Both sides have their nutters.

If 9-11 never happened, the USA would not be in Afganistan.

Not true. Was in planning before Sept I'm afraid. 9-11 provided a "remember the maine" incident. Google for it to learn more.

The same applies to Iraq. The Project for a New America Century, the think tank that Bush et all are all fully paid up members of, have been planning it for years. 9-11 just gave them the political currency to do it, via deliberate lies and misdirection.

If Iraq had not invaded Kuwait, the USA would not be in Iraq today.

LOL. The Iraqi's asked the US for permission to invade Kuwait and were told "we have no opinion on that matter" by your government. It is only after the Kuwaiti elite started a massive PR campaign, including lies about what the Iraqi soldiers supposedly did to babies. That was the point at which a vote in congress moved the US into the war. At that point, we began to learn what a "bad guy" Saddam was. In the preceeding years, he could do no wrong. Even D. Rumsfed has met him personally, and sold weapons that were used to kill the Kurds.

So what is your point?

That most US citizens live in an idealistic dream world where you believe your country can do no wrong, because of your historic "good guy" stance. Nowadays, that just isn't the case. They just don't teach you the "bad" stuff in school.

You need to wake up before people like Bush destroy everything that America is supposed to stand for. We admire that stance, we always have. But now, we are genuinely scared of you.

According to this (somewhat dubious looking) page the total deaths in Vietnam for the first nine years total as follows

US -- 229,159
South Vietnam -- 792,288
Total -- 1,021,447

Iraq, in contrast has had the following casualties according to this (decidedly left wing) site....

Iraq -- (7,784 - 9,596)

Total (max) -- 9,951

I'm not thrilled with the death toll in Iraq, but lets not pretend that these wars stack up to each other. When it comes to US (& allied) casualties, Vietnam was three orders of magnitude worse (nine years vs thus far in iraq, your figgures, not mine).

However, and I think this is key to realize. In the first year in Vietnam we lost 63 men. We've lost five times that in little more than 6 months in Iraq.

> Now, Iraq: Americans have killed more innocents than Hussein is said to have.

That's almost certainly not true. I haven't heard what you're saying about the Kurds, but even if you are correct I still understand that something over 300,000 thousand Shiites were killed after the Gulf War (though that's hardly the kind of thing the USA should be eager to call attention to, seeing as it was us who stirred them up to rebellion and then sat back to watch them get slaughtered). Also, though people don't usually think of soldiers as 'innocents', I would have to say that about a million 'innocent' soldiers died as a result of Saddam's unprovoked war with Iraq. So it looks like he has at least 1.3 million inexcusable deaths on his hands, and as much misery as we've caused with our invasion, I don't think it's even within an order of magnitude of that yet. Likely not even within two orders of magnitude. (Though we should count again after the US pulls out and they're plunged into civil war.)

OTOH, his hands have been fairly tied since the Shiite affair, and though his prison guards were surely kept busy with ill deeds, it would be interesting to know the average montly rate of death and misery he caused over the past ~10 years vs. the average montly rate since the 'end' of the US invasion.

> Now, gas costs as much as it does in the US...

I read somewhere a week or so ago that US taxpayers are subsidizing the sale of gasoline in Iraq to the tune of $1.75 in addition to what the Iraqis themselves are paying. (Chew on that next time you're filling up your tank or looking at how much tax was taken out of your paycheck.)

> Kuait should be next...

Yeah, part of the pathetic humor of the Bush claim that we were going to invade Iraq to establish democracy was that we already had Kuwait packed full of US troops, and didn't have the least inclination to bring those people the blessings of liberty.

> I would accept that Iraq posed a danger due to powerful WMD, only they had none. They also did not have the means to deploy them if they DID have any, and they had no DESIRE to do so.

I suspect that there was a genuine concern that Saddam would eventually obtain WMD that he could deploy against Israel, though of course the Administration could hardly come out and say they were sending US troops to die in order to make the world safe for Israel. But see the rather strange 'logic' in this interview with John McCain, where the interviewer didn't stick to the "right" questions and McCain was left groping for an explanation that justified his position without saying that. (He failed.) [Notice also the prophetic content of the first few paragraphs of that page, before it gets to the interview.]

BTW, I suspect your post has some other substantial factual errors mixed in with the good stuff. No need to overplay the case; to those not blinded by ideology or hypnotized by FAUX News, the whole thing stinks plainly enough on the simple facts.

Who the hell do you think got us into this mess in Iraq? The fucking Israel lobby and its neocon think tanks, media outlets, and hawks in the Bush administration with the support of their dumbass golems the Christian Zionists.

Highly recommend you read:

Pat Buchanan: Whose War?

Justin Raimondo: Israel's Amen Corner

I'm glad to see that there's somebody else out there that's keeping tabs on this. It's only to be expected, but those libbies are even badmouthing the networks themselves! With statistics! And we know what they use those to do.

The evening "News" is so corporate owned and supported that I don't really consider it a reliable source for information.

Agreed. Here is an interesting experiment to try. Find a major news story, preferably on Iraq or Afganistan. (It can be something else, but Iraq and Afganistan will yield more results.)

Check the story first on CNN

Then check the subtle changes in perception on the same story from these sites:

BBC NEWS
Globe and Mail

Then note the radically different opinions on:

Aljazeera
Antiwar

Note, I am not asking you to agree with any of the above opinions, or websites. Just begin to notice the different perceptions you can gain insight to on news stories on the net. This kind of insight cannot be gathered by watching local news, like NBC, CBS, or even the "most trusted" views of CNN.

He is one of the few to have voted against the notorious PATRIOT ACT and he is quite outspoken about many government abuses that slashdot readers frequently complain about.

Unfortunately, I'm about 30 miles outside of Ron Paul's district so I can't vote for him, but I would strongly encourage you to reconsider your position about Rep. Paul.

Peter

• The number of human shields who turned out to be CIA agents?
  
• The number of Hussein regime figures who accepted American bribes and promises of political refuge if they surrendered peacefully?
  
• The real reason Turkey did not let American troops into northern Iraq? The general media kept reporting it as "opposition to the war". *snicker*
  
• The Kurds policy of "ethnic cleansing" where they are forcing Arab families out of their homes at gunpoint.
  

I continue to disagree with this. Ever since the staged Baghdad Paradise Square incident with Saddam's statue, I'm a firm believer that US news media only shows us what the Pentagon and White House wants us to see. Nothing more, nothing less.

I laughed hard when they compared Paradise Square to the fall of the Berlin Wall. It was hardly that.

Hello !
I am for the arab world, whatever happend on 911 was certainly not the official story, now I'm not saying that Dubya made it happen he is simply too stupid for that, but there is something FISHY about it, click over and read:

1.Two 911 Jetliners EXCEEDED Their Software Barriers

2.The Israeli "arts" students cheering and photographing the collapse of the WTC?

3.The WTC buildings were designed to withstand a jet impact

4.9/11 Survivor Describes Multiple Explosions

ok now you read it, dont be scared, or you can just ignore it and trust your reality.

not just a rumor started in the arab world...
dont you just *WISH* that it is a only a rumor :-) ?

A Sino-Russian Bloc?

Neoconservative imperialism has been good for one thing, improving Sino-Russian relations:

Comrade Ivan: Comrade, let us bury the hatchet.

Comrade Ling: In Soviet Russia, hatchet buries you! Just kidding, let us celebrate our new alliance with the adding of chocolate to milk.

Comrade Ivan: Ha! A good joke, we drink to the future!

That's because the neocon ranks *are* heavily populated by Likudniks, Christian Zionists, and former Trotskyites. The paleo right has known this all along, and the left is catching on.

Joseph Sobran: Defining Conservatism Downward

Justin Raimondo: Israel's Amen Corner

Pat Buchanan: Whose War?

This,

This,

This,

This,

This,

This

For the solution, wait for the Second American Revolution.

In one attempt to undermine the weapons inspection process, it was revealed that Harvey McGeorge of UNMOVIC had "a leadership role in sadomasochistic sex clubs."

Like, so what. Some people do that. It's his private life, it has nothing at all whatsoever to do with his ability to do his job as a weapons inspector. And yet, the only possible reason for publishing that information was to diminish him in the eyes of the public, to try to reduce the credibility of the inspection process as a whole.

Does anybody think their own or anybody else's private lives won't be vulnerable to such abuses?

(More details on this can be found here.)

Now if they fire a photographer for doctoring the truth, why do they fire a reporter for telling the truth?

That sort of sums up my feelings on the subject... outright lies go unchallenged and the debate is restricted to how many supply wagons and troops should be sent into combat. That's hardly criticism of the administration. It's not that there's no debate - it's that the debate is about unimportant details, or about the severity of a course of action that is unquestioned. Individual facts are reported, and sometimes even on the front page, but they're not often used to challenge the status quo.

I understand the reasons for CNN being what it is (or at least think I do) but that's no reason to excuse them. Nobody to my knowledge has refuted Noam Chomsky's bread and butter book... if commercial US networks' coverage hasn't improved since Nicaragua I don't see why it's too likely to change now. The same style sells every year, and the penalties for pissing off your sources of prepackaged news remain the same. Hell, I wouldn't want to piss of the Bush adminsitration... they are incredibly adept at controlling and dispensing information. If you're not on their good list, you might not get invited.

Of course Al-Jazeera is just as biased. That was sort of my intent in my ranting post. One part CNN, one part The Guardian, one part the Hindu Times and a dash of Al-Jazeera, mix with the Page 16 article-hunters' reports and you might actually have a fair picture of what's going on.

Here's the original photo

I think U.S. (and apparently also Australian) news sources do their audiences a discredit by not showing the unedited reality of war.

The only way you're gonna get a clear picture is to the get two or more biased ones and average them out. Actually antiwar.com probably isn't extreme enough to balance cnn... maybe throw in some loonie lefty sources as well? Whatever you do, don't just settle for one source... one man's bias is another man's impartiality.

So, you are a moron who says "its not about oil" over and over again, until some country like France opposes the war, and then, suddenly, it is about oil. And then some other moron moderates you up as "insightful"!!!

Well, it isn't about oil, actually, it is about Israel:

http://www.antiwar.com/justin/j021903.html

No, the war is not about oil, the war is about Israel.

http://www.antiwar.com/justin/j021903.html

Oil is just a pretext. If it were really about the price of oil, there never would have been an economic embargo of Iraq, keeping most of the Iraqi oil off the market, and keeping prices up.

It's about Israel, plain and simple. Remove the Zionists from the equation, and remove their neo-conservative operatives in the Bush Administration, and you have no war.

http://www.antiwar.com/justin/j021903.html

Wow! Was that an apology? It takes a really big man to admit he's wrong.

Sorry I forgot to take the time to literally take you by the scruff of your neck and stick your nose in the heaping pile of dancing Israeli stories. God forbid you should actually read any of the links provided, or that you should inconvenience yourself by having to manually enter text into a Google form.

Here is a partial compilation of just some of the many stories written about these Israelis. This is the link contained in this excellent piece by antiwar.com on the Israeli-9/11 connection. If you are genuinely interested in learning just how mistaken you were you might consider doing some research on your own.

Apology accepted.

It has become clear, though, that the question of foreign citizens has been the most problematic in efforts to keep the city's count accurate. Over the last several days, the city's list of the missing became inflated by what officials said were missing persons reports from consulates and embassies for countries including India and Israel.

But interviews with many consulate officials yesterday suggested that the lists of people they were collecting varied widely in their usefulness. For example, the city had somehow received reports of many Israelis feared missing at the site, and President Bush in his address to the country on Thursday night mentioned that about 130 Israelis had died in the attacks.

But today, Alon Pinkas, Israel's consul general here, said that lists of the missing included reports from people who had called in because, for instance, relatives in New York had not returned their phone calls from Israel. There were, in fact, only three Israelis who had been confirmed as dead: two on the planes and another who had been visiting the towers on business and who was identified and buried.

If Congress doesn't declare war, we are not in a war. (Article I, section 8, clause 11, the U.S. Constitution)

There are a million virtual streetcorners with a million lonely pamphleteers on them, all of them decrying the war and not actually coming together in any organized fashion to oppose it.

Meanwhile, sites such as www.antiwar.com provide hundreds of thousands of people with information about what the Bush administration is doing, what's happening in Europe and in the Arab world. That kind of easy access to relevant news and excellent commentary simply didn't exist during any other war or buildup to war. True, today the guy who checks out antiwar.com every morning might not be doing anything else. But next month maybe he will be marching in streets in protest, and he will have absorbed a great deal of background information that will make a difference in subsequent "yeah, I was there" conversations.

That kind of talk directly adresses a fundamental weakness of the Bush people -- the mass consent, such as it is, they have engineered is based primarily on the shallow propaganda technique of constant repetition. Saying "Saddam has got to disarm!" and "weapons of mass destruction!" over and over again creates in the minds of many people the notion that Iraq is just as dangerous as, say, North Korea. BUT, quite often, really, conversation with more knowledgable fellow citizens can disabuse people from such impressions.

As to the "phamphleteers," if there really are a million of them, that's wonderful! Getting intellectualy involved with issues, formulating one's thoughts, putting them in words, putting them up, almost literally, before the whole world -- those things are often precursors to more active forms of involvement. And I bet some of them have some worthy ideas, too.