Slashdot Mirror

We now know for certain that Bush's statement was entirely accurate.

"National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice acknowledged June 8 that Bush's claim was based in part on inaccurate information, and the controversy intensified when White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer conceded July 7 that the information should not have been included in the president's speech."

I pointed my cardboard box at your post, and well, it points to BULLSHIT.

You make my point for me.

Not so fast. That would be true if we both agreed about the interpretation. Since we do not agree, then I do not nor those articles make your point for you. This is Argumentation 101 material.

Those contracts are paid for by the US government to bring the Iraqi oil infrastructure back online.

When are the Iraqis going to see that money?

You also ignore the fact that companies from Russia, France, and other countries already have oil facilities and contracts in Iraq which predate the latest war. The new US and UK only contracts oust the previous companies.

If it is really about freedom, not conquest, shouldn't the Iraqis, not USA, be the ones to have the say on who should rebuild?

Get a clue.
A clue like these?

http://www.thelondonline.co.uk/theline/article.php ?articleID=437
http://www.globalpolicy.org/security/oil/2004/0128 oilprofit.htm
http://www.globalpolicy.org/security/oil/2003/0403 rebuilding.htm

You make my point for me.

Not so fast. That would be true if we both agreed about the interpretation. Since we do not agree, then I do not nor those articles make your point for you. This is Argumentation 101 material.

Those contracts are paid for by the US government to bring the Iraqi oil infrastructure back online.

When are the Iraqis going to see that money?

You also ignore the fact that companies from Russia, France, and other countries already have oil facilities and contracts in Iraq which predate the latest war. The new US and UK only contracts oust the previous companies.

If it is really about freedom, not conquest, shouldn't the Iraqis, not USA, be the ones to have the say on who should rebuild?

Get a clue.
A clue like these?

http://www.thelondonline.co.uk/theline/article.php ?articleID=437
http://www.globalpolicy.org/security/oil/2004/0128 oilprofit.htm
http://www.globalpolicy.org/security/oil/2003/0403 rebuilding.htm

Oh, really?

Did your recruiting officer tell you that?

Lucrative gig, soldiering, eh?

Percy Schmeiser, a Saskatchwan farmer, was sued by agribusiness Monsanto...when the "roundup-ready" canola was found on Schmeiser's farm - blown there by the wind. Although Schmeiser didn't want the plants, and tried to get rid of the plants, he lost the lawsuit.

Without a renewed license, Iraqi farmers cannot replant each year's seeds, like 97 percent of them currently do. Also, they cannot sell or trade the seeds - because the genetic materials of the crops are patented.

Actually as I understand it, most historians view the causal beginning of WWII as being attributed to the failure of Britian and France to respond to the violations of the Lacarno Pact and the Treaty of Versaille. Specificially though Hitler's seizure of Czech land (an autonomous region setup by the Treaty of Versaille), but also due to the British concession of their 3/5ths "commonwealth" fleet allowance which ensured Hitler's trajectory. But Hitler had to have his Lebensraum, and the later invasion of Poland was an extension of this goal originally initiated in Czech territory.

I was more referingn to the actual shooting starting, but yes, I would agree that Hitler was testing how far he could go before the victors of WWI would intervene, a more decisive response may just have stopped Hitler for a couple of years.

BTW, I also believe that the treaty of Versaille was in part the issue for Hitler being able to gain power, the fact that at the end of WWII the US decided to go with the Marshall plan instead of the Morgenthau plan.

What I find of a bit ironic is that what happened to Iraq after the last Gulf War seems to be what Morgenthau suggested for Germany.

The UN has never been more than a convenient place for diplomates to address each other as a sitting body (everyone in a common place). When it was ostensibly under the League of Nations charter (as created after WWI), many wished to give it an enforcement capacity. It was this inate interferance in local sovereignty that spelled its downfall. And for the UN, ironically it is its lack of such capacity that renders it uncapable of dealing effectively with with security issues.

The idea behind the UN was to have a "gathering place" a "world townhall" if you like. A noble idea, problem is the more voices you have the harder it is to hear a single one.

The UN definetly needs a reform, starting with the security council which is not up to times anymore. Unfortunatly the ones who are prone to lose power in the council are also the ones who have to agree to the changes, and who likes to give up power?

I would say that if the reforms would happen that the UN would benefit greatlly from their own military force. The problem there only is that the question is: Where would you stage them? How would you make certain that they really only answer to the council?

I'm not sure why you insist on couching this in moral terms. Taking a moral position is nice, but when faced with imminant threat, it is often an afterthought.

Out of the same reason why I am against the death penalty: You can't take it back. If we do not act on morale grounds but rather on "gut feelings" then what differenciates us from animals?

A dog that bites people or is outwardly aggressive (for whatever reason, be it that it feels threated, be it that it's in it's character) is put down. Why should we allow an entire nation to act irrationally out of fear and then not hold them to morale standards?

It is (in this case the US) who claims to go the moral high ground by "freeing Iraq", yet their motivation is anything but morale, it is something that is at best motivated by fear and at worst out of greed and power hunger.

Am I correct in understanding your opinion to be that, one does not have the right to attack another country until one has been physically attacked?

Yes, one has to reserve the force as the last resort, and that means if there is sufficent evidence then one can prepare to defend onself, but the moment you attack first you lose any moral grouind you may have.

Look at the events of 9/11, this was a "first strike" scenario, when the US decided to go into Afghanistan

Oh really? Tell that to Enron's employees.

Britain's example show that even a problem as simple as upgrading the ID system cannot be entrusted to carreer politicians, who'll attach their side agendas to what should be a strictly technical affair. See this for instance.

Are the Continentals more serious? Hardly. This article talks about how tens of thousands of blank Belgian passports are routinely stolen every years and turn up as "real" fakes in the hands of fraudsters. And such a passport is valid accross all of the EU, mind you.

As for France, an authentic blank passport is worth about $2000 in the street. Grab one and put your prefered ID on it.

So, with such a track record, I am afraid you cannot trust the government to certify ID. It would cost you a few thousands to produce an official document certifying your fake ID, which would then be use to defeat your scheme.

Regarding ChoicePoint, I hope they are sent to jail because they are irresponsible and unaccountable. But irresposability and unaccountability are the defining trait of most government-run administrations (can't be fired, no big raise to expect, few incentives), so replacing these rotten apples by other rotten apples won't fix the problem.

"You were 4 when Reagan was"

Why don't you stop trying to pretend like you have psychic abilities, because you don't, and it just makes you look stupid. Do you actually think you are psychic? I was out of school and working for a living when Reagan siezed power.

"I accused you of being a liberal "

Well you were wrong again, your psychic powers are really slipping. I'm socially liberal which means I believe in live and let live. When it comes to big government I'm an arch conservative or maybe libertarian. I pretty much want the whole thing to go away. The only place I don't fit the mold and which makes me not a libertarian is I'm a huge believer in regulating the hell out of corporations because if someone doesn't keep them in check they are going to make life not worth living on this planet. Greed is a great motivator but its also a great destroyer when left unchecked.

"What, by prosecuting a war against our enemies."

No, by shreding our constitution, due process and rule of law. If we don't preserve those then you'll win some battles and lose the war. You really don't deserve American citizenship because apparently have no clue what its actually all about. Just a hint its our constitution, due process and the rule of law, not letting anyone be below the protection of the law and not letting anyone be above the law, most of all the President. Me thinks you would be happier in a nice right wing dictatorship though the U.S. practicly there so I guess you are in the right place. Me I think the New Republican party would be reviled by out founding fathers if they were alive to see it.

Hate to break it to you, but you aren't going to beat Al Qaida by invading one country after another. All your going to do is bankrupt the U.S. and turn the whole world against you. I know my history well enough to recognize paranoid delusionals like you and Joe McCarthy who start seeing enemies behind every rock, and you will become more dangerous to this country than external enemies. You should study Joe McCarthy sometime and learn from his mistakes before you repeat them. He died in disgrace you know because eventually everyone figured out he was wrong, out of control and dangerous.

"Democrats always claim to be fiscally responsible"

The problem here is you are still ranting about Democrats like they matter. They are irrelevant now. I know its an obsession for right wing nut cases and you can't stop ranting about them but to me they are irelavant. Why don't you rant about Bill Clinton while your here, he's only been gone 4 years. Just because the Democrats are pathetic, doesn't make the Republicans right and good by default.

"Wrong again. Reagan, through tax cuts DOUBLED treasury revenues beginining in 1982"

Simple answer here. Look at a chart of budget deficits. You will notice there are two staggering periods of deficits since 1972. The '80's during Reaganomics and since Little George siezed power. I'm all for tax cuts to stimulate the economy, the key point is you need to cut spending to so the deficits don't erase the benefits and the Republican's, despite their rhetoric, don't.

"If you want to get rid of the deficit, cut taxes and spending."

The problem here is you keep lecturing on something I already know and agree with. The problem is you keep kidding your self that the Republican's actually do that. At least for Reagan and Little George, they cut taxes, cut domestic spending and explode spending on defense, they generate huge deficits and the economy never generates enough revenue to correct the shortfalls. Meanwhile we accumulate staggering debts and an ever bigger percentage of our economu, the budget and our tax dollars go to maintaing debts that are being consistently produced at overwhelming levels under right wing presidents. The liberal conspiracy theory is they are trying to bankrupt the U.S. government so they wipe out the Fed

Am I missing something?

Long-term memory, apparently. Do the names Scott Ritter and Hussein Kamel ring any bells?

Did not every serious observer, from John Kerry to MI5, believe that Saddam had WMD's prior to the war?

So, did John Kerry believe that because of what his intelligence service said? Oh, you mean Kerry didn't have his own intelligence service? Hm, I guess he had to rely on the Executive Branch.

People believed that Saddam had not accounted for all his weapons. Some intelligence reports, particularly from defectors, indicated that Saddam was hiding weapons. These reports had qualifications and equivocations that seemed to mysteriously get stripped out when declassified for public consumption.

Bush made his decision to go to war without even asking for a National Intelligence Estimate - Ahmed Chalabi's defectors speaking to the Office of Special Plans were good enough for him.

Not everyone believed that Saddam still had WMDs - former UN weapons inspector (and ex-Marine) Scott Ritter is a strong counter-example. Hans Blix was having no success because all of the US 'hot leads' were coming up a dry hole. Heck, even the State Department's intelligence service saw through most claims, such as those wacky aluminum tubes.

Hussein Kamel, Saddam's slain son-in-law, was frequently referenced as an expert in Iraq's WMD programs. But, after he defected, he claimed Saddam had unilaterally destroyed all his WMD. Didn't hear that a lot, did you?

Are you saying that they were all so stupid and gullible that they could be misled by the smooth lies of the inarticulate smirking chimp moron Bushitler?

Well, Colin Powell lied too, and so did Cheney, and Condi, and Rumsfeld...

But yes, I do say it was stupid and gullible for Congress to believe this administration, particularly in granting him a blank declaration of war.

You're missing a fundamental point - the issue is not that many people believed Saddam was lying about WMDs. The issue is that, when evidence to the contrary surfaced and the case began to collapse, Bush rushed to invade without a post-war plan more advanced than "collect rose petals thrown by grateful Iraqis, give keys to Chalabi".

Clinton never did that, and I doubt President Gore would have either.

" The gap between harvests has become an annual occurrence in North Korea's four years of slow-motion famine. In the lean weeks to come, government mills will churn out a staple of the crisis -- edible roots, grasses, sea weed, corn stalks and the like often mixed with cereals and enzymes and cooked into noodles or buns. The substitutes are "basically a stomach filler" with little nutrition and eating them causes digestive problems especially for children and the elderly, Morton said.

Floods, drought and other natural disasters ruined North Korea's collective agriculture already crippled by mismanagement and the loss of crucial Soviet bloc trading partners. Without food and imported fuel, North Korea's centrally planned economy has largely broken down. Morton said the worst food shortages were believed to be occurring in the cold, land-scarce, heavily urbanized northeast."
-CNN, April 27 1999
source

But, instead of lifting the economic sanctions on North Korea that prohibited them from being able to purchase that Wide Selection of Cheap Food Available to Everyone, we told them to starve.

"the economic logic behind dumping a load of toxic waste in the lowest wage country is impeccable and we should face up to that.... I've always thought that underpopulated countries in Africa are vastly underpolluted; their air quality is vastly inefficiently low compared to Los Angeles or Mexico City." -- the "Summers Memo"

The whole point is that, to Chinese industry (and Korea, too), every bit of hard intellectual work that the the western world does is simply considered free for the taking. They are building their economy on theft, and figuring that they can build up a culture of actual innovation some other day when they no longer have people smarter than them to steal from.

Oh, the irony.

Here at home we have the MCA, which despite the resounding accolades it gives itself, has yet to disperse a single dollar.

http://www.globalpolicy.org/socecon/develop/oda/20 05/0103pledges.htm

So FBI, how about working on where the one billion dollars appropriated to the Millennium Challenge Corporation have gone first?

I mean, we wouldn't want to swat at flies now would we?

For better or worse, the US's aggressive anti-terrorism foreign policy has had an effect. It's the invasion of Afghanistan that did it. The Taliban thought they were safe backing bin Laden - they'd beat the Russians, their country was landlocked and a long way from US allies, and the terrain favored them. Big mistake. Three months later the Taliban was out of power with its leaders dead, jailed, or on the run.

This made a big impression on dictators and warlords worldwide. Allowing terrorists to operate from your territory against the US is not survivable.

We'll probably have trouble again. But we have bigger problems. Compared to AIDS, hurricanes, and other problems, the death toll from terrorism is low.

Protectionism, as implemented by the United States over the last twenty years, apparently means, "You third world countries will open your markets, and your governments will cut back on taxes and social spending."

We demand that they open their financial markets, making it quick and easy for foreign investors to shovel money into a good economy (read: inflation) and then take it back out at the first sniff of trouble (read: bankruptcy).

We demand that their governments avoid deficit spending, making no distinction between money being spent on education and public infrastructure, or on facelifts for some dictator's harem. It's like John Maynard Keynes never existed.

We demand that they open up their markets. Now. There are no timetables for job retraining. There are no exemptions for classes of goods that, if left unprotected, would result in millions of people thrown immediately into poverty. There are no delays for giving local industries a chance to modernize and become competitive. They will "liberalize" their economies, and they will liberalize them now, or else we will have the IMF withhold loans and badmouth them to foreign investors.

Meanwhile, we protect and subsidize our agriculture, our steel and aluminum industries, and dozens of other industries. When Russia found that the one thing their economy could do really well was create aluminum, we responded by accusing them of "dumping," when in fact they simply had a competitive advantage because of their abundant cheap energy. Then when that failed, the Bush administration (those champions of the free market) latched onto the idea of creating a worldwide aluminum cartel. Hint: The entire point of a cartel is to keep the price of a given good higher than it would be if its sellers behaved competitively rather than cooperatively. They are also illegal as hell when done by anyone but the government.

The IMF has been pushing for decades for precisely these sorts of "reforms", though they haven't demonstrated any particular knack for improving economies or reducing poverty. But the policies are beloved by American banking institutions, as are the IMF "bailout" loans which are almost invariably targeted towards making sure that when a given economy collapses, foreign investors get their money back. So billionares can make bad investments and be protected from the risks of making those investments.

After the fall of communism, Russia's entire economy was ransacked. We encouraged its government to privatize in a Chinese fire drill* fashion, and threatened to withhold loans if there was any delay. Result? Many critical components of the Russian economy ended up in the hands of rich investors, usually friends of Yeltsin, who were more interested in stripping them of their assets for a quick buck than in taking the harder and riskier road of growing them into healthy and competitive companies.

Conclusion: simple-minded free trade policies, worshipped by so many on the right, hurt the poorest of the poor, while enriching a very few. Read more Stiglitz for a complete blow-by-blow of the incompetence and intellectual bankruptcy of the institutions we've charged with the task of reducing worldwide poverty.

* Besides being a bit racist, the phrase is a bit of a misnomer. China, which has basically told the IMF to go have relations with itself, seems to be doing quite well.

= 3,389.61 USD

Note that's the price today. Considering the way the dollar's going, here's a handy chart to help you through the next 6 months:

Jan 2005 => 3,689.35 USD
Feb 2005 => 3,745.22 USD
Mar 2005 => 3,823.43 USD
Apr 2005 => 3,897.01 USD
May 2005 => 3,925.23 USD
Jun 2005 => 3,990.45 USD

Oh, small caveat. The above assumes that Russia doesn't start selling its oil in Euros. If that happens, all bets are off :)

cLive ;-)

The US historically has not 'paid for the lion's share of its operation'. They are supposed to, but they rarely did and never on time.

In fact, the UN Accounting department in 1998 held that the UN was suffering in terms of what it is able to do, in large part because a large number of members, most notably the US, do not pay their dues on time and in full. Since 1983, the US only paid in October, even though dues are due January 1st, and since 1986, it withheld part of those dues until certain conditions were met.

The report issued by Accounting 'also notes that of the countries in considerable arrears to the U.N., "according to a State Department official, only the United States has not paid its arrears because of policy reasons."'

What it comes down to is that the UN has been incapable of doing 'the lion's share of its operation' because of the US's inability or unwillingness to pay its dues when it is supposed to. In 1998, it was in danger of losing its vote in the General Assembly because of its arrears. As of 1998, the US owed $1.8 billion in back dues.

Now, bear in mind the US has actually started to pay its dues, perhaps because of the possibility of losing its influence (though it is obvious now that they don't give a damn what the rest of the world thinks anyway), but I don't see that lasting. Abandon the world and the way the world works and see how pleasant it is to live without any friends. Unless things change with the way the US does buisiness, it's going to find itself alone when bad things start to happen.

I'm all for preventing global warming, but the Kyoto protocal is worthless unless the same standards apply to everyone.

Where was this "same standards apply to everyone" stance when the world criminal court was being discussed? A US State Department spokesman said "The United States is concerned that its military and civillian personnel will be exposed to politically motivated investigations and prosecutions." Mmm-hmm, so the US gets immunity while everyone else faces up to their responsibilities?

Y'see, this is why much of the world now looks up on the US with disdain and despair. It's not that we don't like you, it's that we don't like the "fuck you" attitude.

find it funny that foreiners liked clinton and he didn't sign any of those treaties either. Actually, what most foreigners are ignorant of is that the president cannot sign it unless congress gives him the authority to (for each indevidual treaty).

Incorrect, he signed a number of treaties, they were just either not ratified, or rejected by GWB. He (Clinton) didn't have support of the senate which was and still is Republican controlled.

"The United States ratified the 1989 U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child on February 16, 1995. However, in 2000 when the U.N. attempted to pass the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the involvement of children in armed conflicts, the United States raised strong objections and still refuses to ratify it. President Clinton signed the Protocol in May 2000, but the Republican-dominated Senate did not ratify it, raising the objections that the treaty undermines the rights of parents and is unfair to the U.S., since the U.S. currently recruits and deploys 17 year-olds for service. The Bush Administration is taking no action on ratification."

http://www.clw.org/control/bushunilateral.html

"On Dec. 31, 2000, Bill Clinton signed the Rome agreement creating an International Criminal Court. He waited until almost the last permissible moment to affix the United States to the agreement even though he did not, he said, agree with its contents."

"President George W. Bush, recognizing the consequences of treating the U.S. signature so frivolously, has instructed the State Department to make clear the United States has no intention of being bound by the signature by informing the United Nations of the decision."

http://www.cei.org/utils/printer.cfm?AID=3312

"The current treaty at issue is the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, first opened for signatures in 1996. This multilateral agreement bans all nuclear tests above and below the Earth's surface. The treaty also established a worldwide monitoring system to check air, water and soil for signals that someone set off a nuclear explosion. While President Clinton signed the treaty, in 1999, the U.S. Senate refused to ratify it."

http://www.pbs.org/now/politics/nucleartreaties.ht ml

"Although President Clinton signed the Kyoto Protocol, mandating a reduction in carbon emissions to below 1990 levels by 2012, a 2001 State Department memo rejected the protocol on the basis that it would harm the US economy and exempt developing countries from reduction requirements. Of industrialized states, only the US, Australia and Israel haven't ratified the protocol. The US did ratify the UNFCCC, but has not complied"

http://www.globalpolicy.org/empire/un/2003/treatyt able.htm

Likely there is more (thats enough for today, but I see a recurring theme). It seems pretty much like his hands were tied.

Dood, I've travelled all over this great land. Go ahead, just try and tell me that materalism isn't prevalent in America and I'll tell you that you're just so typically biased.

Oh, and yes, btw, I can back it up. Here, do some reading:

Likewise, an article in American Prospect last January noted that even by the global inequality measure--the third concept discussed earlier--the richest 10 percent of the world's population had incomes that were 120 times higher than those of the poorest 10 percent in 1990; as a consequence
of the evidence on convergence presented earlier, this ratio did drop, but only to 118 by the end of the decade. The dangers of such concentration of income, according to Krugman and others, are that it fosters the formation of oligarchies more interested in preserving their own wealth and power than in fostering societies with equal opportunities for all.
http://www.globalpolicy.org/socecon/inequal/indexi nq.htm

I reiterate, greed is destroying America and the earth. Period.

Check out:

http://www.oxfam.org/eng/pr030827_corn_dumping.htm

http://www.globalpolicy.org/socecon/bwi-wto/wto/20 04/0909useusubsidies.htm

the US did not make anything from the oil-for-food program

My mistake, that was a typo in my post, I meant UK, not US. I've found this and this link that provide more information on the oil for food scandal.
What I find shocking is the apparent concensus here (not from you from what I can see) that only France abused the program. There were 250 companies of 61 countries involved in this program, and it looks like the majority did abuse it at one point or another. And it looks like countries abusing it were for or against the war, without much distinction. Russia, France, UK, Italia... are supposed to have abused it.
I guess that we will have to wait for the investigations to see more clearly into these apparent abuses. For the moment, nothing is sure, and since this topic is hottly politics, we must be wary of all the accusations and declaration of innocence, since it's likely that all parties are more or less lying (and I don't trust Chalabi for giving fair informations).

So, it looks like major corruption occured (but note that the program was under supervision of US, so we will have to wait to see what happened really). What looks sure is that abusers were either for or against the war, so accusing the anti-war countries of being anti-war just for this program looks misguided.

Sure everyone condemmed the kiddnapping ... but they still got kidnapped and they're still not back. It does no good to have Muslim leaders back you if the Muslim people do not.
Actually, Muslims do back the liberation of the French reporters. Only the group (a very scarse number of muslims) that did the kidnapping is to blame, not all muslims. Other radical groups have even publicaly proposed their help to free the reporters. On this particular point, there is absolutly no doubt that if you're kidnapped in Iraq, it's better to be French than American.

However, sometimes the right thing to do is not the popular thing to do.
This is very true, but, in my opinion, France did the right thing, but that's only my opinion. What is sure is that the reasons given by Bush's administration (WMD and link between Iraq and Al-Qaeda) are blatently false. Even Rumsfield acknowleged that neither existed.
So, I think that France was right and the US was wrong.

Bitter? No, just a little sad.
I should have make the precision that I wasn't specifically speaking of you when I spoke about bitterness. That is the sentiment I have about people here bashing the French.

Last, but not least, I'm tired of all the French bashing I see here, and i'm glad you and I can have a pleasant and intelligent discussion of this. That is conforting, and I hope some of the worst war supporter and "anyone not supporting the war is a coward and corrupt bastard" crowd on Slashdot will take a lesson from our discussion. Too many people (but again, not you) have listenned too much to Bush's "You're either with us or against us" stupidity.

Mr. Bush, why is our government protecting one of the world's most notorious arms smugglers, Victor Bout, known affectionately as the "merchant of death" and is suspected of supplying weapons to Al Quaeda? The administration has pushed to protect Bout from international sanctions claiming he's "assisting" the US in Iraq. Why is our country protecting this criminal? Why would the US do business with a man who has been supplying terrorists with weapons? Why is this story not being covered by the mainstream media?

For starters, he trumpets the oft-stated mistake that there is no connection between Iraq and al Qaeda

Check your sources, to say that that memo is misleading is to be fawningly polite. The truth is its bullshit.
Bush has yet to give a coherent argument about why we needed to invade Iraq, but not invade Syria or Saudi Arabia or Iran or Jordan or etc, because all those other countries have had minor or low level connections with terroists organizations too, but we aren't attacking them. This is the problem: even if it was true in a technical sense (low level connections may have existed), it wasn't true in a fundamental or practical sense because:

• Hussein had nothing to do with 9/11.
• Hussein was extremely suspicious of the radical Islamists, he himself was a secular nationalist, not a religious nut. Within Iraq he actively suppresed Islamic fundamentalism.
• Removing Hussein did *not* hurt Al Queada in any way. Al Queda was in Afghanistan, but they had no known presence in Iraq (for the reason given above) until we removed Hussein and the Iraqi army which allowed the terrorists to infiltrate into Iraq.
• Americans are now more threatened by Al Queda than ever before, because AQ has about 300,000+ convenient US targets in Iraq now to go after, a substantial population to hide within, and a real, *genuine* resistance movement (anti-West Islamic fundamentalists in Iraq) to complicate attempts at stopping AQ. Had we kept our presence to just Afghanistan, we would be now in a much better situation.

Next, he brings out the ridiculous draft claim. First, re-enlistment rates are at record highs.

No, they aren't. The military, for the most part, for most units, is meeting its own targets for retention, but that doesn't make them records. Second, the big exception is the National Guard, which is dramatically failing to meet its retention goals nationwide, and because half the troops in Iraq are reservists, this is a serious problem. (If Bush plans more of these wars, the Army may be forced to abandon the concept of integrating the Guard into the full-time military units). Third, we don't know yet what the full effect of multiple, back-to-back, year-long deployments are going to do in the long run to the Army. If the Army can end those long deployments soon, it may have no effect, but if they can't stop it because of a chronic lack of combat troops, it could start to have a bad effect. Fourth, the longer the Army uses "stop loss" orders (Bush's stealth draft) to keep people from going home after serving their time, that will have a negative impact on people too (particularly the Guard). Finally, it depends on who you ask, many units aren't having major problems with retention, but some definitely are.

Second, there will not be a draft. Bush has stated that he doesn't want a draft

I believe the whole issue in dispute here is whether we can trust Shrubby anymore. I believe this about as much as I believed his father's "no new taxes" pledge.

Of course we will first dismantle the army and reassemble it -- the first one wanted to kill us (baathists) and the second one is our ally!

You need to get in touch with the troops. Its high ranking officers in the military that are the ones admitting we should have kept the Iraqi military force structure intact (this doesn't mean keeping the politically appointed officers, nor does it mean keeping units like the Republican Guard). I'm pretty sure even Rummy has conceded this. This was

Someone mentioned earlier that the previous generation could survive with one income. Today many families need two incomes to make ends meet.

>Do you want to keep sending these guys money and stuff?

Sanctions on Iraq.

Sanctions on N Korea.

Details of Fuel Oil program for NK.

In other words, they aren't getting "tons of free stuff" and NK developed, broke its reactors seals, etc under the "cowboy diplomacy" of the Bush admnistration, not Clinton. There are solutions to problems and if you can keep UN inspectors in and nukes out by bribing someone with fuel oil than so be it. We are witnessing the "tough guy" alternative. Are you ready to be drafted to fight a couple more wars for "cowboy diplomacy?"

Hey CLinton had his number called and lied to get out of it, you speak as if this is something new.

"Everyone else does it, so why does it matter?" Sorry, but I didn't vote for Clinton back in '92, either. I don't think that people should get to lie about this stuff and not have that held against them. Oh, wait, you just like to lump people into neat categories of "Liberal asshole" and "Republican god", rather than face the messier reality of real life.

Umm for the umpteenth time Oil is fungable if all the Oil in Iraq went to france the cost US companies pay for oil would go down as much as if all the Oil came to the US. If you dont understand market economics dont pretend to know what you are talking about..

So, according to you, the only 2 options are:

1) All of Iraq's oil comes to the US
2) All of Iraq's oil goes to France

What about:

3) Iraq keeps its oil, and the US cuts down on its dependance on foriegn oil by ramping up utilization of non-fossil fuel energy sources

But, hey, if that happened, energy & oil companies (i.e. the backers of Bush & Cheney) wouldn't be able to continue making massive profits.

Yes because puttiong that information togeter as it has now been done had nothing to do with the fact it actually happened? Look at Perl Harbor, all indications were months in advance something was going to happen, if we let the modern Liberal run things then we would still have comitties on why the radar was not followed up on, and would not have actually done anything about Japan..

Have you any evidence that backs up your assertion that a "modern liberal" wouldn't have reacted to the attack on Perl Harbor? I believe that liberals and conservatives alike supported going into Afghanistan. Do you remember? You know, that other war that we're in that nobody talks about anymore? The vote was unanimous.

Second: There's a difference between a) doing absolutely NOTHING to keep an eye on terrorist activities and b) working as hard as you can and learning as much as possible about what terrorists are planing. Bush & Co. did (a): They ignored the Clinton-appointed terrorist adivsor Richard Clarke and FBI memos before September 11th. Which would you rather see, a President that did NOTHING to make terrorism a priority, or one that tried as hard as possible to prevent terrorist attacks, even if they failed? I, for one, would rather see the latter.

But, obviously, you're not concerned with reality, but just your black & white view of it. Critical thinking is _hard_, and if you don't want to do that, then only you will suffer the consequences.

Where do these people come from? I don't like Kerry one bit either, but Bush has done nothing to show that he deserves any American's trust in the war on terrorism. News flash -- his unprovoked war in Iraq has actually increased terrorism. And while his actions in Afghanistan have helped destroy some of al-Qaeda's leadership, the organization has gotten more resilient as new leaders have emerged, and bin Laden has inspired hosts of other terrorist groups, and his ideology has gotten stronger. And don't forget that Bush gave al Qaeda a month to regroup and abandon bases and training camps that US officials knew the locations of because he wanted to invade Iraq first! These are just some basic military realities; never mind the long series of scandals and embarassments this administration has led us through. How is it, after 3 years of miserable failure, people still trust George W. Bush to win the war on terrorism?

So since Bin Laden is our Enemey, and Sadam was Bin Laden's Enemy, then Sadam was our friend? Seems like a poor way to treat a friend. Or does that mean that Sadam was our enemy and Bin Laden is our friend?

Believe it or not it _is_ possible to have three people or three groups of people who all hate each other.

Another example, i hate Bush, and i have a pretty poor opinion of Micheal Moore too. Does that make Micheal Moore and Bush friends?

Of course, more oil means cheaper oil. Cheaper oil benefits the largest consumer (the US). It's not "stealing" just "good business."

Meanwhile it looks like the era of cheap oil may be over forever. Just as nations like China and India were starting to get an appetite for it. Too late! We ate it all.

if the actually paid what they were supposed to then perhaps, try this

I don't think the parent poster could have been any more insightful. The UN is only as effective as it's individual parts let it be. If the security coucil would stop crushing the vast amount of proposals (points to the USA representative) perhaps they would get the big issues dealth with.

From my own observations when the issues are small enough to escape the attention of the 5 veto members (before they can veto it), then the UN is actually able to get in there and get some work done. Case in point: East Timor

Of course the unpaid bill that's crippling the UN owed by the USA doesn't help much either.

That there is an "interest" (mild word) in oil driving not just the current Iraq adventure but middle-east policy at large is undeniable.

However, the idea that France (or, say, Russia) is above "feet wet in some shitty Arab country that means nothing to most people, except of course GW Bush and his oil frenzied cronies" does not match the facts. Russia (in the form of the USSR) certain got its feet wet (and often blown off) in Afghanistan, where the U.S. strangely enough trained or flowed money to a lot of people (the Mujihideen, spelling loose ;)) fighting the Soviets, who then went on to form the Taliban government; Russia was one of the major oil trading partners with Iraq while that country was under sanctions ... swing your partner, do-si-do.

A few tidbits about France's involvement in the export of Iraqi oil can be found here (globalpolicy.org/security/oil/irqindx.htm)

(And more on French involvement in Iraqi trade.)

The high-level U.S. motives in Iraq I consider partly cynical, though they're mixed with some good ones. Are they *mostly* cynical, and the good ones are only in there as window dressing, or is it a matter of inextricably linked attributes? That's not a rhetorical question.

[Note: I think the U.S. should stay out of this sort of adventure unless truly necessary, but even though it sounds definitive, "truly necessary" is a tough standard to agree on. A lot of people consider WWII to have been obvious (U.S. involvement, that is), but it sure wasn't at the time. The UN had found it necessary to place a series of arms-inspection teams (by most accounts ineffective due to manpower constraints as well as their acceptance of rather bizarre rules) into Iraq, and the uncooperation those teams faced is one thing that goaded the U.S., with greater support than it now enjoys for it, into war; this has always struck me as one of the most bizarre aspects of the whole thing.]

timothy

> Seventeen UN resolutions (of which ANY member could enforce)

The US mostly regards the UN as irrelevant - isn't it hypocritical to be using resolutions as an excuse for aggression?

> unwillingness to destroy or show records of destruction of WMD's > (which are well documented, and are beginnning to be discovered)

Can you cite sufficient references to weapons that were not destroyed, and those records beginning to be discovered?

> hostility towards neighboring countries (Iran, Kuwait, Israel)

Again, since we have been quite hostile toward countries, isn't it a bit hypocritical to cry foul? Israel has also been the aggressor against Iraq (Osirak reactor bombing). The US ambassador implicitly allowed the invasion of Kuwait. clicky. The US backed Iraq in its agression against Iran and tried to spin Iraqi civil rights atrocities against Iran because it was convenient. clicky.

> The man was rightly deposed by the international community (sans France, > Germany, and Russia -- whom we discover later had lucrative, possible illegal, > contracts with Iraq).

So Germany, France, and Russia maintained trade ties, possibly illegally (again we suddenly care about "International Law" when it suits us), and we busted in and introduced our trade ties from behind a gun barrel (possibly illegally). Economic interests are always in the background, and no one is disputing that. The difference is that France and Germany, in particular, haven't been using military means to accomplish their strategic and economic objectives. To do so is reprehensible.

> Would you prefer Saddam was back in power?

To do so while pretending there is another reason is also reprehensible. If the US cared primarily about deposing dictators and stopping humanitarian crises, there are many other countries with worse situations than pre-Bushite Iraq. Why not them:

China, Pakistan, Sudan, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Swaziland, Malawi, Namibia, Rwanda, Congo, Colombia, Indonesia

The answer is that it's not in our interest at this time. Even Syria and the DPRK are in the background now. Besides, we don't have a good track record when intervening militarily. The poorest countries in the Western hemisphere are those we've messed with (Nicaragua, Haiti) and Afghanistan is in the middle of a humanitarian crisis. Iraq has been even since the US and UN got involved in Gulf War part I.

So would I feel good with Saddam in power? No. Would I feel better than now? Yes. When Saddam ordered gas attacks under the then-unflinching eye of the US, he killed 7000 of his own people. We have killed maybe 20,000-50,000 of his people, and about 600 of our own, and the ensuing humanitarian crises have affected (read: shortened) the lives of millions of Iraqis. Millions. That's hardly an improvement.

If by "before", you're talking about the 1960s or something, then yes, you would be correct, but America has been running trade deficits for an extremely long time--jobs have, for my entire lifetime, always flowed out of the United States. The countries they flow to change, the direction does not. There is no ebb, there is only flow.

How someone can defend themselves and their friends being paid vastly overblown salaries (and yes, US salaries are high, even when compared to cost of living) when people in these countries are just as able (which they are - India has schools too, yet Indian society places more emphasis on the importance of studies than American society - which favors athletic prowess), and more needing of the salary. It's being selfish.

I don't defend the level of my salary--I defend the fact that I have a job at all. After all, the problem isn't that wages are falling, the problem is that people are losing jobs. Being unemployed in America doesn't suck much less than being unemployed in India. Not being able to afford food or medical bills sucks wherever you are.

I don't mind so much if U.S. wages fall if it means otherwise starving countries like India will actually have food. What makes me angry is that the profits of outsourcing aren't going to just Indians--they're going to the super-rich Americans at the top of the economic ladder--the people who no longer have to work for a living, if they ever did. The free-traders chant how selfish we Americans are and how we should sacrifice for poorer workers abroad--yet they say nothing about the people in America who benefit from outsourcing. In other words, the particular Americans who are richest and sacrificing the most, end up being the ones who sacrifice nothing!

If we are going to have fiscal and monetary policies that force the worst-off Americans to sacrifice to help the rest of the world, then we need redistribute incomes in this country. Otherwise, your complaints about the selfishness of American workers are very deceitful.

Want to get jobs back to the US? Lower the wages.

Or subsidize health care and education like Europe and Canada. Or eliminate regressive Social Security taxes. Or make regular income taxes more progressive. Or have the government stop borrowing so much money from Asia. Basically, have the goverment stop doing everything it possibly can to make sure Americans don't have jobs.

Get special knowledge. Make yourself irreplacable. If you just sit at your desk all day, hammering out code anyone could do, you are replacable. It's not just IT this principle works for.

Who's just talking about IT? How do you expect 250 million people to find "special knowledge"? If you want to make sure there's no place in society for unskilled American labor, fine, just don't complain when unemployed factory workers start mugging you--it's the only job left them, now.

Please folks, I can understand exactly where you're coming from on this one, but no-one moaned when this same phenomenon was working the other way round, and it's just plain immature (and selfish) to complain now.

I wasn't alive to moan when the phenomenon was working the other direction. Were you? The only selfishness I see are those at the top of the American pyramid stealing the last few scraps of bread from those at the bottom.

Typical US-centric, head-in-the-sand bullshit.

There couldn't possibly be another reason to prevent the UN weapons inspectors from having carte blanche access to secure facilities in Iraq, right? I mean, those guys are all about the inspections and are completely trustworthy right? They would NEVER abuse that level of access to go "beyond scope" of their charter would they?

OF COURSE THEY WOULD:
http://www.globalpolicy.org/security/issues/iraq02 23.htm
http://www.fair.org/activism/unscom-history.html
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,351 165,00.html

As for punishing "violations of UN resolutions" shouldn't the UN be responsible for that? Just exactly whose resolutions are these anyway? As if the Bush league has any interest in enforcing UN resolutions against other countries that are routinely broken on a daily basis anyhow.

This was the best I could find. Have a look around on that site for 'arrears' as well. It's interesting. I didn't find anything on un.org - didn't look that hard, mind.

I imagine they will finally know what it is like to have peace. The Dark Side of Natural Resources

The US is well known for not ratifying treaties they have signed, or just not signing treaties at all. Treaties like the Kyoto Accord are agreements by countries to say that making another dollar isn't more important than the welfare of our children. Treaties like the ABM Treaty are agreements that countries agree that WMDs (to coin an American phrase) are bad things to have. Treaties like the International Criminal Court are agreements between countries as to how they will deal with criminals that happen to be doing crimes in places they aren't citizens.

Some examples of treaties the US have not signed/ratified

• Convention on Discrimination Against Women
• Convention on the Rights of the child
• International Convenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights
• UN Convention on Climate Control and the Kyoto Accord
• Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty
• Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty
• Chemical Weapons Convention
• Mine Ban Treaty
• Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court

Americans are always trying to say they are the bastion of free society. They always say "What would you do without our armies and technology?" I always like to ask what I would do without acid rain, the threat that someone might think Toronto is close enough, or whether I might be sent to some foreign country while in transit through the states.

It was most definitely about the oil. But not necessarily the United States getting the oil. The U.S. just needed to stop Iraq from selling oil in Euros and devaluing the U.S. currency even further.

Not from the "mainstream" press, but excellent articles detailing of how Iraq switching from the U.S. dollar (approved by OPEC in the early 70's as the official currency for oil) to the Euro for oil could seriously harm the U.S. economy.

Not Oil, but Dollars vs. Euros
Iraq, the Dollar and the Euro

The sad thing is that the U.S. isn't even on the UN Human Rights commission right now, yet the procedure makes sure that "countries with poor human rights records -- including Cuba, Sudan and Syria -- are represented on the commission." (Security Council)

The worst part is that Sudan is one of the countries mentioned in the article about which the United States is "very troubled." Amazing.

Heres a nifty graph" of who veto'd what during UN history.

Basically russia at the outset went a little nutty up to '65 with the veto's then dropped right off while the US took the lead.

Till 2001 it had only been the US and China that used them. I gather since france and germany have showed up on that graph.

Ultimately I suspect the best thing to do is replace it with a court. If you want to invade someone or attack, you prosecute them. They can defend themselves in court. The onus is on the attacker to prove beyond reasonable doubt that the guilty party has broken the law in a way that deserves intervention.

And if you cant prove your charge. The court finds the defendant guilty, and if you still attack them you would then be a war criminal.

If people can defend there lives in court, why not countries. Its the fairest way possible.

What I don't understand is why people here think that "protecting capitalism" is a good thing.

If capitalism is such an efficient economic formation, why does it require such protectionist policies (such as employed by US)?

This situation is not unique to the software industry. US representatives actively protect IP rights of large multinational pharmaceutical companies, which is, without a doubt, a major factor in AIDS pandemic in Africa. Another industry that will not make without the help of US politicians is biotech.

US, WTO and World Bank have been pushing similiar policies for many years and US policy on WSIS is just their logical continuation.

KalvinB sez: It's pretty telling that the "best" MoveOn could come up with is that the national debt is bad and no president has managed to do anything about it for a very long time.

Please take a look a this graph. Notice the caption at the bottom which says that data from the Congressional Budget Office was used to make it. (There is more detailed info about the whole last century here.

Now take a good look at the 1990's, the part of the graph where the budget goes starts going up and up and then, in 1999, goes into surplus for the first time since 1972. Clearly someone managed to fix the deficit problem.

Now let's look a few years later, starting in 2000, when the younger Bush became president; the budget took a nosedive. The deficit is greater than it has been in 30 years.

No political arguments here; just please check facts before you start spouting off.

The dues were based on a GDP formula and paid more than other individual countries. The US was most definitly not paying a lion's share compared to collections of countries (such as the EU, even just adding Germany's, the UK's and France's contributions together) - and in any case, they welched for party-political reasons.

Well, it looks like I was slightly wrong about this. The US pays 25% of the UN budget, which is certainly more than any other country, but certainly not what I woudl have thought given the Republican whining on this subject (I would have put the figure closer to 75%). However it is more than the UK France, and Germany put together. In fact if you throw in mighty Spain you are still short. You need Italy to get above the contribution of the US.

Now, that is just the "union dues," as it were. When the UN needs to do something militarily, 9 times out of ten it means the lion's share of the work has to be done by US troops. UN adventures which do not feature US troops are unsuccessful almost without exception. Which goes back to the 300-500 billion dollars the US spends annually to keep the world safe.

And again, the EU is not a country. To be a country, you need a common government and a common currency. The EU does not have either. A constitution was recently drafted, and there is the Euro, yes. And of course the UK, France, and Germany all use the.. oh that right, they DON'T use the euro and probably NEVER will.

And by the way if you do live in Europe you had better pray that the EU never does become a country. Especially now that the originally democratic provisions of the EU were replaced so that it will in fact be a dictatorship. This is beside the fact that adoption of the Euro is likely to cause economic collapse. Estonians were recently quoted as saying that the EU is becoming the new Soviet Union. I hope that they are not right, or it does not work out, because living in Europe will be very bad otherwise.

Now don't get me wrong. I am all for cooperation between countries. In fact I think that removing economic and immigration barriers between European countries will stimulate growth there and is therefore a healthy thing. I likewise think that the United States should work to improve the lot of all nations in the Western Hemisphere. NAFTA was supposed to do that, but apparently it did not work out that way. And there is the rub. Just as greedy corporate elitists took advantage of and subverted NAFTA, so greedy banking elitists will take over and subvert the EU systems.

I'm sorry our Military Advisors were there to help you do this, but the Iranians were our enemy and the Kurds were communist terrorists, so we just had to help you do this.

Oh, and then we had to cover it up and obfuscate this bit of history with false reports of Iranian use of chemical weapons in this incident, denials that it happened, and denials that we knew about it.

Ironically, although the U.S. and Japan provide the greatest amount of foreign aid to poor countries in nominal terms, they received the two lowest scores in the aid category. This was because U.S. aid as a percentage of GDP ranks in the cellar among the 21 wealthiest countries, and because the quality of the aid from both countries is regarded as particularly poor. Much of both countries aid is "tied;" in the late 1990s, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) told Congress that almost 80 percent of its resources were used to buy U.S. goods and services.

Wow, what propaganda rags you been reading?

Insufficiently Jewish? Like the 1 million Arab-Israeli citizens with full citizenship rights? Like the various Arab political parties in Israel? Like the Arab supreme court justice in Israel? Like the Druze community in Israel? The only difference is that Israeli-Arabs are exempt from having to serve in the army for obvious reasons. Not bad for a 55 year old country - run a quick comparison with any other country in the region or even in Europe and you'll see just how amazing it is.

If you mean land that was always intended to be returned for some true peace, then you can obviously see why turning it over to a terrorist thug would have to opposite effect. That is why, although they wanted to trade the land for peace with all her neighbors in 1967, Arab mentality prevented it and continues to prevent peace to this day:

"On June 19, 1967, scarcely ten days after the cease-fire, the Israeli government decided in a secret cabinet session to return all of the Sinai Peninsula, all of the Golan Heights, to Egypt and Syria respectively in return for full peace treaties. At the same time, the Israeli government launched a clandestine operation to canvass 80 Palestinian notables on the West Bank about the possibility of creating an autonomous Palestinian entity, leading potentially to an independent Palestinian state. The Egyptians and the Syrians rejected this overture. They convened at Khartoum at the end of the summer, and they passed the infamous Three No's: no negotiations, no peace, no recognition of Israel. The Palestinian notables in the West Bank, the protocols of the discussions, all said they'd be interested in having an autonomous entity. They certainly wanted independence. But they were afraid if they concluded any peace treaty at all with Israel, they'd be executed. A historic opportunity was lost that summer, and we've lived with the consequences ever since"

I hope you're as concerned with your tax dollars going to the direct indoctrination of Palestinian children or the funds going to corrupt NGOs or to support Palestinian apartheid.

You have a right to comment. In fact, you even have a right to that incredibly stupid and uninformed comment you just made, but repeating mindless lies just makes you look all the more incompetent.

Only in the security council.

For reference, data on use of the veto.