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Senator Alleges White House Wrote Allawi's Speech
Jeremiah Cornelius writes "In a letter to the White House, a leading US Senate Democrat, Diane Feinstein, expressed 'profound dismay' that the White House allegedly wrote a large portion of Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi's speech to Congress last week. 'His speech gave me hope that reconstruction efforts were proceeding in most of the country and that elections could be held on schedule. To learn that this was not an independent view, but one that was massaged by your campaign operatives, jaundices the speech and reduces the credibility of his remarks.'"
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Is this really news to anyone? I watched only a small clip of the speech and said "Bush's speechwriters wrote that speech.
Writing the speeches of your conquered enemies. You know this is the exact same tactic Julius Caesar used against the nations he conquered, and he was one of Rome's greatest leaders.
To sum up, worked-for-caesar.
nobody writes their own speeches all the time any more. There are spin doctors and there are teams of spin doctors. Under Clinton the model was to use competing teams of writers, similar to the model used by TV show Friends I'm told, to come up with the best speech possible.
Having said that, I would have thought his own spin doctors would have written it, not White House staff, but really this idea that Iraq is somehow sovereign and no longer merely existing at the whim of the US is bollocks. The White House is the final authority in Iraq today and will be for many years to come.
Flame away...
I am a leaf on the wind
Why should we be surprised by this? The entire Iraq war has been managed more as a political event than a military action. That this administration, which is profoundly unwilling to consider any views than those expressed in its own talking points, would spoon feed self-serving rhetoric to its hand picked Iraqi puppet shouldn't come as a shock to anyone.
I suspect Senator Finestein's shock is strictly rhetorical. I certainly hope it is.
Hey, I watched the debate... Bush praised Allawi very much... sure ... because he really is a puppet ... he was a CIA agent for christ's sake ... but Kerry surely won it ...
Because I distinctly saw President Bush take a drink of water while he was speaking.
Unknown host pong.
Stuff that matters?
Where are my Star Wars action figures?
Where are my Natalie Portman pics?
Where are my eye-burning lasers?
Where are my new programming languages?
I want my Slashdot back!
I wish Kerry had mentioned this fact in today's debate... that Allawi's speech was influenced by the Bush election (not *re-election, mind you) campaign.
BUSH:
You know, I think about Missy Johnson. She's a fantastic lady I met in Charlotte, North Carolina....
You know, it's hard work to try to love her as best as I can...
This kinda news, whether true or not, doesn't help Bush kill the rumors that Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi isn't some kind of a puppet. But, hey, we wrote the Japanese constitution and made the Empiror publicly declare he wasn't a god, and that all worked out.
If you must moderate, please moderate as irrelevent, not something bad, because I'm sure someone will find this interest
Incidentally, Al Lorentz is under the threat of serious jail time for speaking out.
Then why doesn't the USGOV release unedited video of all the good things that are happening in Iraq?
Well, it is nice to see that someone in Washington watches the Daily Show, I guess. The night after the speech they did a segment showing that several of the phrases in the speech were exactly the same as the president uses.
http://www.popularculturegaming.com -- my blog about the culture of videogame players
Isn't this the Bush admininstration in a nutshell? If you disagree with us, you are un-American, disloyal, unpatriotic.
That's what America is all about: blindly following our commander-in-chief, not questioning their policies, always agreeing.
Just give me my 12 hours of TV, and my low-carb 2000 calorie retired dairy cow hamburgers, and my gas-guzzling SUVs, and I WILL BE HAPPY.
It's interesting that Bush tonight stated that calling the new Iraqi Prime Minister a "puppet" is preposterous.
But Kerry didn't call him a puppet in the debate.. Bush broght it up. Bush's subcouncious seems to have gotten in his way a few times tonight.
...cause it made him mean.
"the humanity that goes into choosing targets..."
.. is how the President of any other soverign country would behave if he / she was handed a speech to be read while the invited guest of a foreign country.
Imagine the outcry if Bush or Kerry went to China to address the National People's Congress and was handed a speech and told to read it.
Iraq is not a US, EU or UN state; it is a soverign country.
A dream is good. A plan is better.
I'm glad President Bush has set upon this crusade at taking out our foes one by one, and remaking it in our image. Their dictators fall, and their citizens live in freedom, meanwhile we gain a foothold in another part of the world.
The sad thing is that America's image in the rest of the world is so bad right now, that as a foreigner, I am not entirely sure that this guy is trolling.
You can permanently disable individual slashdot sections, such as politics.slashdot.org, from appearing on the slashdot front page by going to your user preferences.
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
And that makes it all the more repugnant that Bush and Co. have been complaining about Kerry criticizing the speech. Bush has his puppet prime minister give a campaign speech and Kerry isn't allowed to criticize it? Puh-leeze.
The point isn't that "people dont write their own speeches" the point is that a foreign government's party (the Republicans) wrote a speech for an Iraqi national AND Prime Minister (Allawi) to deliver to the US congress.
That's not "spin" or "status quo" thats outright imperialism.
I just assumed it would be obvious from the fact that Allawi repeated not one, but almost every catchphrase that Bush throws into all of his speeches on the "war on terror". Anyway, read the speech for yourself and see if it sounds like chunks of it came from the same speechwriters Bush uses. Mind you, I'd expect Allawi to be thankful and congratulatory, since he needs the US's continued commitment right now, but I wouldn't expect his own speechwriters to parrot back Bush's campaign slogans word-for-word.
Anyway, this doesn't come as a surprise to me, it was just much more blatant and obvious than I would have thought possible. Another poster brought up Julius Caesar, who wrote his conquered enemies speeches for them. His long lived and immensely successful successor, Caesar Augustus, was the master of running an authoritarian regime while maintaining all the dressings of the Republic, practically the inventor of political spin and authoritarianism cloaked in democracy.
Unfortunately, the analogies don't end there. Trading freedom for security under authoritarian regimes was practically pioneered by the Romans. If our schoolchildren were forced to read some of the classics, I wonder how different things might be in America today.
from TAPPED:
But it turns out that "the U.S. government and a representative of President Bush's reelection campaign had been heavily involved in drafting the speech given to Congress last week by interim Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi." The same article notes that the official response to some negative data that USAID released a few days ago is going to be to stop releasing the data. The whole story's a must-read, revealing how the entire federal government has been mobilized to fight not the war on terrorism but the president's reelection campaign."
That last sentence is obviously partisan, as suggested by the source, but read the article it links to.
> In the last week, there has been a spin war going on between the campaigns about whether Allawi is a US puppet. I'd like to know what most of you guys think: is he independent, sort of independent, or a puppet.
Are you seriously considering a possibility that one country would take on the expense and political risk of imposing a regime change on another country, and then neglect to ensure that the replacement regime was subservient?
It's called the "client state", and the idea has been around at least since the time of the Roman republic.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Why is it that all of this new political thrust slashdot is doing seems to be skewed left?
i tics/9802008.htm?1c
How about a story on how the Dems are sponsoring a Bill to Bring Back the Draft in both the House and Senate so that Kerry can go out on the stump and say
"See there, they are bringing back the draft"
http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascity/news/pol
There's you a conspiracy Cowboy, you wanna talk some RatherGate next?
> America is doing th right thing by keeping a firm hand on Iraq. A decade from now, pulling out completely will be viable. Doing so now would create a situation so bad that the rest of the middle east would look like a picnic.
I think that's called "the Viet Nam argument".
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
The puppet prime minister of the puppet government of a half-conquered nation is saying what his puppet boss' bosses tell him.
I for one welcome our puppet overlords.
Only in a Slashdot fantasy can a Slackware install turn into several hours of sex . . . . .
We haven't even had elections yet, and we have a prime minister? WTF? Guard the Oil Get contracts with US companies Install a Prime Minister Is this what you call democracy in action?
Seeing how the comments so far have been moderated, it's quite clear that the moderators are either unaware, or unwilling to be aware of a serious problem in America.
-1 mod for overrated? For posting two editorials critical of the war?
This is a prime example of why America is headed for disaster.
If you're genuinely interested in knowing what's really happening in the world, I would suggest looking beyond CNN, FOX, Wall Street journal and the New York Times. All of America's big media is owned by a very small group with very strong political leanings. When you look to them, you only get one side of the story.
If you want the other side, places like www.cursor.org are a good place to start.
Shocked, I am.
Shocked and astonished by this news.
Namely, that there's a senator stupid enough to have accepted the speech as independent material.
www.eissq.com/BandP.html Ball and Plate System. Amuse your friends. Crush your enemies.
does anyone think Bush and Kerry will have a real debate?
Actually, tonight's debate was oddly substantial. Kerry stuck to short, cogent, fact-based criticisms of Bush foreign policy, and Bush spent almost all of his time on the defensive. That's not a position he's good at, by the way. Karl Rove has trained W. to take the stance of aggressor, regardless of the facts on the ground.
Not that any of this is terribly surprising. People tend to forget that Kerry was captain of the debate team at Yale, and also gave some of the best Congressional testimony regarding the Vietnam war. The president, on the other hand, has never been particularly quick on his feet. See if you can dig up some of the joint press conferences with Tony Blair during the Iraq War. The president has NEVER been a good extemporaneous speaker, and he looks even worse when he stands next to a professional.
Short version: Kerry wanted a real debate, so he forced one. Regardless of format.
This
Oh My God, The PTA has disbanded!!
*jumps thru window*
A morning without coffee is like something without something else.
...allegedly wrote...
Is this the part where I get to assume it's already fact?
Ms. Feinstein, who seems to only profess profound emotional injury when non-Democrats speak or are in the news. She was deeply injured by Ahnold's "girly-man" remark. She was appalled by GWB's gayrriage ban proposal.
I am all for presenting the facts. Just because she is from CA does not mean she needs to go for the cheesy emotion crap.
Off topic, yes, but how many people here think the Daily Show will have infinite material after tonight's debates? The Puppet comments alone could be used to make a miniseries.
He was talking about the statements made by other people. From the transcript:
Please read the transcript (hell, skim it) before coming to any conclusions about Kerry's actions in '72. The 'media' sure ain't going to clarify any of this. We need to do it ourselves.
"Our interests are to see if we can't scale it up to something more exciting," he said.
To learn that this was not an independent view, but one that was massaged by your campaign operatives, jaundices the speech and reduces the credibility of his remarks
As if ANY politician these days (including Diane Feinstein) writes their own speeches, instead of having them "massaged by their campaign operatives"...
The article on Allawi over at wikipedia is quite informative, though it raises more questions than it answers... there are a lot of wild theories and accusations out there, hard to know which are true. At the very least, he's led an interesting life. Since he's worked so closely with the CIA, MI6, and the Baath party in his earlier years, and seems to have a (possibly undeserved) reputation as some kind of hitman/thug/loose cannon, I wouldn't blame an Iraqi for not trusting him.
Does anyone have a link to the washington post article that Feinstein is quoting? This is close, but not it.
-jim
True democracy comes from within. We can't impose it on a country and it keeps looking like we're trying to do that even though a simple examination of the historical evidence indicates that this is a difficult if not impossible task at beset.
It is my humble but thoughtful opinion that most of the current strength of the U.S. was actually forged during the time of the physical, bloody rejection of British governance 225 years ago. Ironically, as a result I wonder if the ideal solution to the Iraqi problem would actually be to pull out and allow the forces at work there to believe they HAD fought for their independence and won.
I look at Germany (the homeland of my parents) as a rare, good, but definitely not ideal, outcome of "nation-building". Germany to this day continues to struggle (I feel) with a definition of itself that works in this century. Why else are there these irrational resurgences in interest in Nazi ideas. It was the last time that Germany was the world leader in engineering, science, and was getting lots of attention. Now they're known as the source of oom-pah music, all kinds of wurst, that country that Mike Myers makes fun of, kinky porn, and beer. Ideally, I think the people of a country would like a better fate than that. A defining moment... Where is Iraq's defining moment??
We'll "capture" osama in about 2 weeks. I'm willing to lay 3-to-1 odds.
Then, after Bush wins in a massive landslide, the "Republicans" in power can get back to raping this nation and the world.
Have a nice day!
- A.P.
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
I dunno -- I would like to think the basic qualifications for "President of the United States of America" would be slightly higher than those for "random Slashdot poster".
It is just me or is slashdot politics sounding awful similar to Democratic Underground.
The shrill nature of the allegations and insinuations are just laughable against President Bush.
My Weblog
Just look at Africa -- after Britain and France pulled out, everything went to straight to hell.
No, depending on where you're talking about, many countries in Africa did fine and dandy for a couple of decades.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Why on earth would you waste a perfectly good mod point to mod someone a troll just becuase it goes against what you believe (speaking, of course, to the person who modded you a troll)?
You are, in fact, reenforcing ACs point that if you disagree, you must be unpatriotic and a troll.
Jeezus.
327 comments after having just been posted says that SlashDot readers ARE interested in this.
The only other story with so many comments is "Your Rights Online: Missed Opportunities in U.S. v. Microsoft" with 342 comments but this was posted 7 hours earlier.
I don't come here to read politics either and I realize that comments alone do not necessarily denote interest, but you can't deny that Politics, for better or for worse, interests a lot of SlashDot readers. As a technical crowd, as close as I can tell, the stats bare this out.
Sunny
Be my Friend
I recommend a new book, The Family: The Real Story of the Bush Dynasty. Don't expect any author to be perfect. However, this book is an excellent overview of the Bush family, and the best book by this author. Here is a quote which shows just one more fact about the chronic lying of George Herbert Walker Bush and his son George W. Bush:
"The official family tree provided by the Bush archivists does not include the two mentally retarded daughters of John M. Walker, and lists only two of James Smith Bush's wives, not all four of them; one of Ray Walker's two wives is omitted, and George Herbert Walker III is listed with only two, instead of three, wives."
Note that the author of that book has never lost a lawsuit, for any of her writings. As you would expect from a major publishing house like Doubleday: "Before publication, each book is vetted by several sets of lawyers; facts and sources are checked and rechecked and sources documented."
--
Before, Saddam was killing. Now, the U.S. Gov. is killing and destabilizing, and you pay. Improvement?
Funny, I thought Microsoft Word wrote most speeches to Congress.
"Seeing how the comments so far have been moderated, it's quite clear that the moderators are either unaware, or unwilling to be aware of a serious problem in America."
MOD PARENT UP!!!! Exactly right.
You cannot develop an accurate opinion by listening to the innuendo from media employees who would lose their jobs if they seemed to indicate a preference for one candidate over another. Remember, the media exists to make money. Unfortunately, we don't have directly supported media, only ad supported media, and advertisers, understandably, are careful not to alienate anyone.
Please don't be intimidated by someone with unspecified objections, or objections that merely try to draw attention away from the major issues. Consider everything in the light of your own experiences and your own extensive investigation.
If you have never read the books about the Bush family and Bush administration, I suggest you do so. If you read the books, you will see that the corruption is far worse than you are being told.
--
Bush: Borrowing money to try to make his administration look good.
Just re-emphasises the fact that the US thinks that it should place it's influence on everything and everybody.
Yeah, because we should be influencing other people to stand for equality, democracy, and civil liberties. Just like we influenced the Afghanis to depose the Taliban, put girls back in school, and allow women to participate in society as something more than property.
Like the way we influenced Japanese to throw away tyrannical rule by despots and adopt a democracy. Just like we convinced the Germans that having a nutjob whacko for a dictator is not a good idea. Just like we influenced the British, Indians, Chinese, and pretty much every other world out there that maybe, just maybe, freedom is a viable alternative to oh, say, injustice, hatred, violence, and tyranny.
Yeah, I think you have a great point here. So many people want to influence the world to do evil, to trade in slaves and blood, to sell out their own countries for a little profit, while the US is standing up for the individuality and freedom and humanity, at the cost of instant gratification.
The radical sect of Islam would either see you dead or "reverted" to Islam.
As if ANY politician these days (including Diane Feinstein) writes their own speeches, instead of having them "massaged by their campaign operatives"...
No one is complaining that Allawi didn't write his own speech. What they are complaining about is that it was written by Bush's campaign operatives.
Don't you see a difference between Allawi having his speech written by his own, independent speech writers and having it written by Bush campaign operatives? Allawi is supposed to be the leader of a sovereign nation, not a member of the Republican party giving stump speeches to promote Bush's reelection.
Sadly, he's probably not. A sizable portion of the country say such things in all seriousness.
Democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on lunch.
Last week, Karl Rove pulled off a spectacular victory by suckering Dan Rather to present obviously forged documents as real. This week, the plot thickens.
... (keeps talking) ...
GEORGE AND ALLAWI ARE TALKING ON THE PHONE
ALLAWI'S HOUSE IS BEING ATTACKED BY TERRORISTS SHOUTING "Allah Ackbar! Saddam is great! We love Kerry!" BOMBS ARE EXPLODING AND THERE IS GUNFIRE.
ALLAWI: George, I'm kind of busy. You know, the whole "Iraq" thing?
GEORGE: But that was solved a long time ago. Didn't you hear my speech from the carrier? I said, "IRAQ IS NOW A FREE COUNTRY, AND EVERYONE SHOULD GO HOME NOW."
ALLAWI: Okay, George, if you say so. What time do you want me to drop by the congress?
GEORGE: Right when my convention bubble starts to burst. Oh, and I have the speech we wrote for you.
ALLAWI: Alright, I'll see you there.
LATER, AT THE PRESS CONFERENCE FOLLOWING ALLAWI'S SPEECH
REPORTER: Prime Minister Allawi, what do you say to your critics who call you a "dundering idiot" who "can't even write his own speeches" and "who obviously doesn't know anything about Iraq, despite the fact that he is an Iraqi and living in Iraq and leading Iraq"?
ALLAWI: Well, I
GEORGE DRINKS A GLASS OF WATER
REPORTERS OOH AND AAH
REPORTER: (Interrupting Allawi) George, where did you learn to do ventriloquism so well?
GEORGE: I'd tell you Karl Rove taught me, but that would be a lie. (chuckles anxiously) Okay, you got me. Karl Rove taught me.
KARL ROVE RUNS ON TO THE WHITE HOUSE LAWN WITH A ROLLED UP NEWSPAPER
KARL: (Hitting George with the newspaper) Bad George, bad George! No biscuit for you today!
LATER THAT DAY, JOHN KERRY INTERVIEWS REPORTERS
JOHN: I knew all along that Allawi is a stooge. In fact, his nickname was "Larry". Or was it "Moe"? I don't recall. But that's not the point. The point is that Allawi is a stooge.
REPORTER: Senator Kerry, how did you know this? You've never been to an intelligence committee for years!
JOHN: Well, as you know, (or as *I* know), I am omniscient. I am also omnipotent. Here, watch this. Using my mind I will cause an earthquake in Southern California.
JOHN CONCENTRATES.
CUT SCENE TO SAN FRANCISCO SHAKING IN AN EARTHQUAKE
JOHN: As you can see, I am clearly superior to George Bush in every way, and I will solve all the problems in Iraq and the rest of the world. However, you have to elect me president first. Otherwise, I will be powerless.
REPORTERS ARE AWWED AND STUNNED AND REVERENTLY KNEEL. A LIGHT SHINES AROUND JOHN KERRY AND HE LIFTS HIS ARMS AS IF TO BLESS THE REPORTERS.
The radical sect of Islam would either see you dead or "reverted" to Islam.
The elction will be over soon. Then everyone will go back to not caring about politics until 2008 :)
The record seems to show that George W. Bush became a cheerleader because he wanted to be close to the campus leaders, who were, at the time, athletes. Since he did not excel at athletics, being a cheerleader was the only way he could be one of the student leaders. The captain of the cheerleaders was part of the social group that included the captains of the teams.
George W. Bush was an obnoxious alcoholic then. The culture of alcoholics is very different from the male gay culture. There is no hint George W. Bush was gay. He was interested in partying, and being close to the student leaders was a way to be involved in the parties. Two of his arrests came from stunts that seem like something a drunk person would do. The third arrest was for drunk driving.
I can cite numerous authorities for this. For example, see George W. Bush: Living the Bush Legacy.
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24 wars since WW2: Creating fear so rich people can profit.
The U.S. government is building 16 permanent bases in Iraq. This was mentioned in the debate tonight. They apparently want control over the oil. They apparently care about nothing else. A democratic country is one that has control over its own resources.
Remember: Allawi and his speech-writers write in Arabic for an Iraqi audience. Of course he is going to get help on a speech delivered in English for an American audience. If you want more authentic Allawi, read his speech to the U.N. General Assembly he gave the next day. The Arabic translated into English is far more bland and unappealing but the content is the same. You can also read the press conference he gave afterward, or an interview to the Washington Post, or anything else you can google if you want to read what Allawi says without assistance from American speech writers.
Men elect to become cheerleaders in the hopes of being able to hold a female cheerleader aloft by her crotch. Sometimes they try to sneak a peek up there, too. That hardly seems homosexual to me.
Mod me down if you like, but you know it's true.
http://harpers.org/BaghdadYearZero.html
---
Dear mum,
our flatulant, pompus general lost another battle. This is hopeless. We've lost every battle so far, and General Washington keeps retreating. Will we retreat all the way to the territories? How am I to get back to this fall's harvest if the British burn our fields?
Indeed, the times are grim, and I wonder what is to become of us. All we hear is how things are going well, but all I see is death and retreat.
-----
People on the ground rarely have any idea of what's going on.
"Same story"
Not quite the advent of the digital camera and expedent digital media conveyance made the Abu Ghraib Prison story different.
I listened to an interview of the guy who broke the Abu Ghraib prison story. He said he could have written pages and pages with all sorts of details concerning the incident and it would have never be noticed. But a single image drove the point lucidly home and made all the difference.
THE SECURITY COUNCIL, 27 JANUARY 2003:
AN UPDATE ON INSPECTION
"The nerve agent VX is one of the most toxic ever developed.
Iraq has declared that it only produced VX on a pilot scale, just a few tonnes and that the quality was poor and the product unstable. Consequently, it was said, that the agent was never weaponised. Iraq said that the small quantity of agent remaining after the Gulf War was unilaterally destroyed in the summer of 1991.
(2003 report)
UNMOVIC, however, has information that conflicts with this account. There are indications that Iraq had worked on the problem of purity and stabilization and that more had been achieved than has been declared. Indeed, even one of the documents provided by Iraq indicates that the purity of the agent, at least in laboratory production, was higher than declared.
There are also indications that the agent was weaponised. In addition, there are questions to be answered concerning the fate of the VX precursor chemicals, which Iraq states were lost during bombing in the Gulf War or were unilaterally destroyed by Iraq.
I would now like to turn to the so-called "Air Force document" that I have discussed with the Council before. This document was originally found by an UNSCOM inspector in a safe in Iraqi Air Force Headquarters in 1998 and taken from her by Iraqi minders. It gives an account of the expenditure of bombs, including chemical bombs, by Iraq in the Iraq-Iran War. I am encouraged by the fact that Iraq has now provided this document to UNMOVIC.
The document indicates that 13,000 chemical bombs were dropped by the Iraqi Air Force between 1983 and 1988, while Iraq has declared that 19,500 bombs were consumed during this period. Thus, there is a discrepancy of 6,500 bombs. The amount of chemical agent in these bombs would be in the order of about 1,000 tonnes. In the absence of evidence to the contrary, we must assume that these quantities are now unaccounted for.
The discovery of a number of 122 mm chemical rocket warheads in a bunker at a storage depot 170 km southwest of Baghdad was much publicized. This was a relatively new bunker and therefore the rockets must have been moved there in the past few years, at a time when Iraq should not have had such munitions.
The investigation of these rockets is still proceeding. Iraq states that they were overlooked from 1991 from a batch of some 2,000 that were stored there during the Gulf War. This could be the case. They could also be the tip of a submerged iceberg. The discovery of a few rockets does not resolve but rather points to the issue of several thousands of chemical rockets that are unaccounted for.
The finding of the rockets shows that Iraq needs to make more effort to ensure that its declaration is currently accurate. During my recent discussions in Baghdad, Iraq declared that it would make new efforts in this regard and had set up a committee of investigation. Since then it has reported that it has found a further 4 chemical rockets at a storage depot in Al Taji.
I might further mention that inspectors have found at another site a laboratory quantity of thiodiglycol, a mustard gas precursor.
Whilst I am addressing chemical issues, I should mention a matter, which I reported on 19 December 2002, concerning equipment at a civilian chemical plant at Al Fallujah. Iraq has declared that it had repaired chemical processing equipment previously destroyed under UNSCOM supervision, and had installed it at Fallujah for the production of chlorine and phenols. We have inspected this equipment and are conducting a detailed technical evaluation of it. On completion, we will decide whether this and other equipment that has been recovered by Iraq should be destroyed.
Biological weapons
I have mentioned the issue of anthrax to the Council on previous occasions and I come back to it as it is an important one.
Iraq has declared that it produced about 8,500 litres of this biological warfare agent, which i
http://www.un.org/Depts/unmovic/Bx27.htm
Tell me I'm wrong. This report was filed in January of 2003. 2 months before the "evil" George Bush began the war.
On a related note - the CIA had plans "to put an operation in place to affect the outcome of the elections." before it was stopped by Nancy Pelosi:
1 ,1 101041004-702122,00.html
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,917
Whether or not Iran is influencing the elections, this idea is very very wrong. The biggest problem any politician elected will be credibility, to be more exact, they need to be seen to be independent of the US. Even *rumours* of CIA interference in elections will derail the reputation of anyone elected. As academic Juan Cole writes, if it is wide-spread opinion that the US rigged the elections (esp. through the CIA bogeyman), it does not mean only failure of democracy in Iraq but in the entire Middle East:
"The first is to point out that this sort of behavior by the Bush administration fatally undermines the ideal of democracy in the Middle East. If Muslims think that "democracy" is a stalking horse for CIA control of their country, then they will flee the system and prefer independent-minded strongmen that denounce the US. The constitutional monarchies established in the Middle East by the British were similarly undermined in the popular imagination by the impression they gave of being mere British puppets. This was true of the Wafd Party in Egypt in the 1940s and early 1950s, which the Free Officers overthrew in 1952 in the name of national indepencence. It was also true in Iraq, where in 1958 popular mobs dragged the corpse of the pro-British Prime Minister Nuri al-Said through the streets and finished off the British-installed monarchy."
http://www.juancole.com/
Al Lorentz is the former Chairman of the Constitution Party of Texas. He was against the war in Iraq, because Lorentz believes in isolationism (even after 9/11). So while he is not "some politically idealistic and naÃve young soldier", that's only true because he's not young. He is a political ideologue, with an anti-Bush paranoia.
That made my Bullshit Detector go off like a Claymore in a cattle drive.
Al Lorentz spent most of his career in the Reserves.
A noncomm in Civil Affairs doesn't have a "muds-eye view" of the war at all. He may as well be back in Texas, for all the fighting he'll see. This guy is an armchair General. Why isn't he an officer? Because he's incompetent for a commission, that's why.
Al Lorentz was a Bush basher before he went to Iraq, and he's a Bush basher now.
From another article by Lorentz:sigs, as if you care.
If the soldier's letter were written in Arabic (by an Iraqi), your letter might be a reasonable parallel. Or perhaps if it were written in 18th Century French, by a foreign liberator, as part of a doomed war where the colonists attacked their liberators in order to join a neighboring Puritan colony in Canada, which freed itself from the French 20 years prior, that they'd been sent to war against in the intervening decade.
Who, in your opinion, *does* know what's going on in Iraq? Allawi, their new leader, whose speeches are written for him by the White House who chose him for his past CIA work? You?
--
make install -not war
It could be filed two years before for all its importance. Not only this report is a lot of "maybe-coulda-woulda", it is also quite silly that otherwise intelligent people are so easilly fooled by all of this Iraq WMD talk. VX is known to be possessed by just about any two-bit country on the planet, including places like Serbia. Anthrax is produced from cow dung. A few nutcases were able to make it in a bathtub in England. Etc. Etc. If Saddam was truly bent on using this (rather awkward and unreliable weapon), he would have done so looong ago. Actually he did in 1980s on the Kurds and probably like every military before him, decided the thing was useless. Did you ever wonder why during WWII noone used chemical weapons on the battlefield? All sides had them. They are just extremely useless things in combat. Additionally, Iraq had no capability to produce nuclear technology in any meaningful way for a foreseeable future due to constant oversight.
Truly frightening bio-weapons are of genetic nature and at this point in time beyond reach of the terrorists. This will unforunately change in not so remote future and because of the nature of the technology they will become the primary, cheap and widely available weapon of unspeakable terror.
Maybe some of the insurgency is inspired by the feeling that the country shouldn't have a U.S./Israeli mole installed as chief executive, no?
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
The following text was located at BoingBoing, and is supposed to be from Wall Street Journalist, Farnaz Fassihi, located in Bagdhad. I Googled her name a bit, and Farnaz Fassihi is indeed on WSJ staff as a journalist. I do not know if this e-mail she sent is real so I asked her. A reply is pending. Anyway, it is good reading, and it is A LOT more like the AP and AFP newswire reports I see every day than the hard-ass edited Fox News and CNN stuff I see (Yes, we get Fox News in Norway. No, it is not "fair and balanced")
9/30/2004
Farnaz Fassihi, a Wall Street Journal correspondent in Iraq, confirmed that a widely-redistributed letter she emailed to friends about the nightmarish situation in Iraq was indeed written by her. Too bad the WSJ doesn't allow this reporter to write these kinds of stories for the paper.
=====
Being a foreign correspondent in Baghdad these days is like being under virtual house arrest. Forget about the reasons that lured me to this job: a chance to see the world, explore the exotic, meet new people in far away lands, discover their ways and tell stories that could make a difference.
Little by little, day-by-day, being based in Iraq has defied all those reasons. I am house bound. I leave when I have a very good reason to and a scheduled interview. I avoid going to people's homes and never walk in the streets. I can't go grocery shopping any more, can't eat in restaurants, can't strike a conversation with strangers, can't look for stories, can't drive in any thing but a full armored car, can't go to scenes of breaking news stories, can't be stuck in traffic, can't speak English outside, can't take a road trip, can't say I'm an American, can't linger at checkpoints, can't be curious about what people are saying, doing, feeling. And can't and can't.
There has been one too many close calls, including a car bomb so near our house that it blew out all the windows. So now my most pressing concern every day is not to write a kick-ass story but to stay alive and make sure our Iraqi employees stay alive. In Baghdad I am a security personnel first, a reporter second.
It's hard to pinpoint when the turning point exactly began. Was it April when the Fallujah fell out of the grasp of the Americans? Was it when Moqtada and Jish Mahdi declared war on the U.S. military? Was it when Sadr City, home to ten percent of Iraq's population, became a nightly battlefield for the Americans? Or was it when the insurgency began spreading from isolated pockets in the Sunni triangle to include most of Iraq? Despite President Bush's rosy assessments, Iraq remains a disaster. If under Saddam it was a potential threat, under the Americans it has been transformed to imminent and active threat, a foreign policy failure bound to haunt the United States for decades to come.
Iraqis like to call this mess the situation. ÊWhen asked how are things? they reply: the situation is very bad.
What they mean by situation is this: the Iraqi government doesn't control most Iraqi cities, there are several car bombs going off each day around the country killing and injuring scores of innocent people, the country's roads are becoming impassable and littered by hundreds of landmines and explosive devices aimed to kill American soldiers, there are assassinations, kidnappings and beheadings. The situation, basically, means a raging barbaric guerilla war.
In four days, 110 people died and over 300 got injured in Baghdad alone. The numbers are so shocking that the ministry of health, which was attempting an exercise of public transparency by releasing the numbers-- has now stopped disclosing them.
Insurgents now attack Americans 87 times a day.
A friend drove thru the Shiite slum of Sadr City yesterday. He said young men were openly placing improvised explosive devices into the ground. They melt a shallow hole into the asphalt, dig the explosive, cover it with dirt and put an old tire or plastic can over it to signal to the locals this is booby-trap
Isn't this the Bush admininstration in a nutshell? If you disagree with us, you are un-American, disloyal, unpatriotic.
I'm tired of linking the following quote : People don't want War by Herman Goering . That in a few sentences covers what you have saidQuidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur
what goddamm difference does it make? vote for the man based on his policies, not on his private life. as al sharpton put it - the government should be able what's happening in the kitchen, not the bedroom. that could be generalised much more broadly to all of politics.
Launch War on Terrorism
Civilians reported killed by military intervention in Iraq 15033
http://www.iraqbodycount.org/
plus
Deaths due to kidnapping and beheading of citizens of countries [ some that have noting to do with war ] - Kenya,Egypt,India,Australia,Britain,France..etc etc.
plus death of military persona of USA,Britain and other countries whose soldiers are present in Iraq.
There are more than 16 U.S. Bases in Germany, but does that make it not free? What about Japan, or Kosovo, or Korea... most reasonable people would concider them to be free. Not having permanent bases there after such a large scale change in governments would be short sighted and extremely hurtful to any chance Iraq has of being free of brutal murdering dictators.
What an amazing sense of compasion Ms. Feinstein has for the Bush administration: She's dismayed that there are reports of this, that, and the other! There can be no other explaination as to why she would bother to be so outspoken about such an allegation, unless there were cold hard facts about what was allegedly perertrated.
This jumping the gun on this issue is no more astute than Dan Rather and his brillant, yet revealing, ways.
... we must give them great respect, and curry their favor.
Er, unless they actually help us in Iraq (UK, Australia, etc), or are trying at great personal risk to rebuild a country and hold elections (Allawi). Then we sneer at them and call them Bush puppets.
Who's doing exactly the wrong thing for political purposes, again?
I think you should change your nick, bud.
Or maybe it was a mooooooolah.
So if Saddam was in breach of the agreements, it wasn't really that bad, yes? Especially since the genetic super Shazam! bioweapon of the future would always be unavailable to him, correct?
You gave yourself an appropriate screen name.
But heaven forfend a soldier speaks out his mind or opinion!
Damn!!!! I fed the troll again!
There are 35 states with higher tax rates than Mass. Montana is one of them. When you have a bad employee (the President is our employee) you fire them. You don't look at his potential replacement and think, "What if he does a worse job than the current guy?".
Just wondering, they're the only ones I know of who are so virulently anti-psychology.
Weed out this insidious cult, Americans! The organized movements of Pscyhology which have your government in their grips are Working Against The American Public.
You've got it backwards. The manipulation of minds is just a tool to them, the people in power who seek to stay in power. Politicians have been messing with people's heads since before anyone ever heard of "psychology".
Freedom: "I won't!"
Well, you just destroyed any shred of credibility you had. This guy may be an asshole with an agenda, but I dare you to walk up to a First Sergeant and tell him the only reason he isn't a felching butterbar Lieutenant is that he's incompetent. I will gladly administer first aid afterward, you'll need it.
Hell, I know a couple of officers who would gladly hold you while the said noncom fed you your balls, if he had the optical magnification equipment to find them.
You can only drink 30 or 40 glasses of beer a day, no matter how rich you are.
-- Colonel Adolphus Busch
I hardly know where to start with this. Ideally it would be "insightful" viewpoints which are modded up as "insightful" independent of their political background. But what makes your post totally silly is that, despite the fact that people say slashdot has liberal leanings, liberals are kept on the defensive. Liberal viewpoints are modded down just for being liberal.
And the rest of what you said is totally inane- it is conservatives, not liberals, who seek to (and frequently manage to) quench "opposing viewpoints".
The republican noise machine's ability to shout louder than anyone else is great for conservative politicians, but it's hurting our country. How is a democracy supposed to adjust to circumstances when the debate is brought to the level of an elementary school playground fight?
I met an informed, reasonable republican on slashdot the other day. I praised him for his character, but in fact I was shocked because usually I only meet people like you, who gloss over reality because they came up with a witty barb to toss at the other party.
You guys are really good at that, credit where credit is due; it's only to bad that you are fucking us all over by removing the substance of the conversation.
"A witty saying proves nothing." ~Voltaire
"d'Oh!" ~Homer
(Copied from The American Thinker, the link in my sig)
Letter from Iraq
September 28th, 2004
[Editor's note: The letter which follows has reached mevia a number of American military officers. They tell me that it has privately circulated widely in military circles, and is generally regarded as credible by knowledgeable people. The version which appears below has had many corroborating details removed, to avoid compromising possibly sensitive military information.
The author must remain anonymous. Thus, no guarantee of its provenance can be made. Nevertheless, the argument made by The Major is compelling enough that American Thinker readers deserve to see it. Caveat lector.]
I'm a Major in the United States Military, in Iraq. The analysts and pundits, who don't see what I see on a daily basis, have no factual basis to talk about the situation - especially if they have yet to set foot in Iraq. The media filters out most events, through a sieve of their latent prejudices - personal, political, and professional.*
The US media recently buzzed with the news of an intelligence report that is very negative about the prospects for Iraq's future. CNN's website said, "[The]National Intelligence Estimate was sent to the White House in July with a classified warning predicting the best case for Iraq was 'tenuous stability' and the worst case was civil war."
That report, along with the car bombings and kidnappings in Baghdad in the past couple days, were portrayed in the media as more proof of absolute chaos and the intransigence of the insurgency. From where I sit, at the Operational Headquarters in Baghdad, that just isn't the case. The public is being misled about what is happening.
The media types who think this "National Intelligence Estimate" is the last word on the situation either don't know, or don't want to know the realities of the process behind it. It was delivered to the White House in July. That means that the information that was used to derive the intelligence in the immediate aftermath of the April battle for Fallujah, and other events was gathered in the Spring.
The report doesn't cover what has happened in July or August, let alone September. The naysayers will point to the recent battles in Najaf and draw parallels between that and what happened in Fallujah in April. They aren't even close.
The bad guys did us a HUGE favor by gathering together in one place and trying to make a stand. It allowed us to focus on them and defeat them. Make no mistake, Al Sadr's troops were thoroughly smashed. The estimated enemy killed in action is huge. Before the battles, the residents of the city were afraid to walk the streets. Al Sadr's enforcers would seize people and bring them to his Islamic court where sentence was passed for religious or other violations. Long before the battles, people were looking for their lost loved ones who had been taken to "court" and never seen again.
Now Najafians can and do walk their streets in safety. Commerce has returned and the city is being rebuilt. Iraqi security forces and US troops are welcomed and smiled upon. That city was liberated again. It was not like Fallujah - the bad guys lost and are in hiding or dead.
You may not have even heard about the city of Samarra. Two weeks ago, that Sunni Triangle city was a "No-go" area for US troops. But guess what? The locals got sick of living in fear from the insurgents and foreign fighters that were there and let them know they weren't welcome. They stopped hosting them in their houses and the mayor of the town brokered a deal with the US commander to return Iraqi government sovereignty to the city without a fight. The people saw what was on the horizon and decided they didn't want their city looking like Fallujah in April or Najaf in August.
Boom, boom, just like that two major "hot spots" cool down in rapid succession. Does that mean that those towns are completely pacified? No. What it does mean is that we are lea
Allegedly, I did not ake a shower this morning....that does not mean it is true. Let both sides talk about it before you make statements. Miss Diane Feinstein is a DEMOCRAT. She's against the war and against Bush. This alledged item could be nothing more then Bushes aide's translating Arabic to English. Nothing more then advising him what to say for the good of Iraq. I also DO believe Kerry would pul us out. Let me remind you Bill Clinton was President when alot of the Air Stations on NORAD control were reduced. During the Cold War, we had a high of 26 Air Bases with 2 fighters on 24 hour alert. That high number is now down to 7. MAJOR reductions in the miltary have happened under the Democrats. Granted, at times during the reduction, both sides had the ability to stop the bleeding but neither did anything because they thought they were doing what the people wanted. Sometimes, the people don't know what they want and you have to do the RIGHT thing for the country instead. I am not saying more air stations and the like would have prevented 9/11, but they certainly would have given the ability to vector more aircraft and possibly even quicker. If you have not read the 9/11 Commision report, I highly reccomend reading it. Just don't go into with a biased view. Read it as if you were standing in their shoes and you will realize that 9/11 and the new war on terror is something that regardless of who's in office, it WOULD have happened anyway. Under Clinton, Bush Number one or Bush number 2 and even Al Gore.
Gorkman
...come on - what did you expect?
No, I'm not just trying to be a tinfoil-hat-carrying left-wing anti-US conspiration theorist - but seriously, have you read a paper the past few years?
How this can be "news" is beyond me. How it ever became "news for nerds" that's a whole other story...
Please, can we go back to Xeon vs. Opteron bashing?
Of course this is just a game of thought and not a 100% precise analogy (most Arabs have no particular liking for Iran, for instance), it still gives you a vague impression of the other side's mindset. (Just to anticipate likely responses: your analogy has its limits, too. Israel is in a rather good state, except for the terrorism threat that, well, they've brought upon themselves to deal with somehow. And Iran isn't exactly on the scale of the Soviet Union as a global threat. And Iran has oil, too.
As a state gets corrupt, its laws multiply; the most corrupt states have the most numerous laws. (Tacitus, Annales 3:27)
The US can solve the problems in Iraq tomorrow. It would be the end of GW's presidency, and US foriegn policy would suffer for decades to come as a result, but I think it's time to cut our losses and gain the best possible outcome that we can.
1) Arrange to slack Mr. Allawi's protection just enough that he can be killed (I'm not suggesting that we do it, just that we let it happen). He knew the risks when he went in, and he will be dying for the cause he claims to advocate.
2) Have GW make an appearance on Al J the next day BEFORE he speaks to the US press (very important).
3) He says that the US mourns Allawi. Make it clear that he's one of "ours".
4) Admit that western forces cannot control Iraq's "strong spirit and determination." It's important to not be negative toward the Iraqi's. They need to feel like they have the power to make the next move or OUR next move won't work.
5) Point to the most anti-western, pro-Islam, fundamentalist we can find who has a large base of followers, but is generally not a terrorist so much as an honest freedom fighter for Iraq, the way I hope GW would be if the US were occupied by a foreign force. Someone who won't just bomb the crap out the Kurds and set up his own rape rooms, but everyone knows isn't going to be our friend.
6) Make the offer. US troops will withdraw, entirely with no conditions, in a two week period the moment he takes over the Iraqi government.
7) Walk away and never explain. If someone asks about Iraq, you have to look at your shoes and say, "it's a shame... it's just a shame."
If we do that, and do it soon, we win. Iraq will be no more anti-western than when we stared (that would be impossible). They will have no more or less love for Israel (that too would be impossible). The problems in the region will not have been solved. However, someone with the political clout to re-build Iraq without being attacked by guerilla bombings every day will be able to establish order. It will be slow and painful. There will be abuses, but it will work because he will appear to have "kicked out the Americans". In the end we will have removed the largest source of instability in the region (which we created) and accomplished our goal of removing S.H.
If our twin goals are to liberate the Iraqis and reduce the threat of terrorism world-wide, this is, IMHO, the strongest step we can make.
The interview you cited does not establish anything negative about the author, only about the verbally aggressive Chris Matthews.
Do you disagree that George W. Bush stopped his Guard service in April, 1972? Or, do you disagree that the Guard started drug testing in the same month? Or, do you disagree that alcoholics use cocaine to help them drink more?
I find it really, really frightening that you did not already know the things in the book. There's nothing particularly remarkable, if you understand the issues from other sources. The interview discusses someone who said he thought George W. Bush was involved with a prostitute. It should not come as a surprise that an alcoholic abused sexuality. I don't know if George W. Bush was involved with a prostitute, but such a story does not seem surprising for an admitted alcoholic. They usually abuse sexuality. For example, Dick Cheney was known as a drinker and "womanizer" when he worked in Wyoming as CEO of Halliburton.
(George W. Bush admitted only to years of problem drinking, but said he did not think he was an alcoholic. However, this is normal behavior for alcoholics, to deny that they are alcoholics.)
The book just lists things you would hear if you did the research yourself. If you go out to ask people, and 10 people who don't know each other all say that they had knowledge of an abusive drunk, it begins to have credibility. Anyhow, the matter is not in contention, since George W. Bush has admitted publicly his problems with alcohol, and his wife Laura Bush told him she was thinking of leaving him because of his drinking.
George W. Bush would say that his abusiveness was only having fun. This is normal for alcoholics. For example, he called Russian leader Vladimir Putin, "Pootie-Poot". English commentators are not able to analyze this adequately. They don't know that "poot" is a slang American term for a baby's defecation.
George W. Bush's grandfather, Senator Preston Bush, had real ability as a politician, but he was a physically violent alcoholic. George W. Bush's daughters have problems, too. See the story Laura's Girls. It is common that highly stressful families who abuse alcohol induce abuse of alcohol and/or drugs in their children.
Do some googling. For example, see this admiring article from Time Magazine: How George got his groove. Or, see this less-admiring article: Bush's Life-Changing Year. Remember, these journalists were covering a political candidate who might win, and the journalists depend on access to keep their jobs.
"Bush kept attacking Kerry on the basis that Kerry is critical of Bush's own war policy and is therefore unfit to be president."
Bullshit. Bush attacked Kerry on his multilateralism, not because of his criticism of Bush's policies. Bush made it clear that he didn't need international authority to defend US interests. That pretty much sums up the difference between the two. Like that approach or not, if you have a shred of honesty, you have to admit that Bush was upfront about his policy ideals, and that he'll tell you, upfront, that those ideas are very different from Kerrys. You make it sound like Bush went "How dare you criticize me?". That's utter crap. There are very big differences between the ideas of these two men, and that's what they debated last night.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
Living in California and have Diane Feinstein as one of our members of government I can tell you she only cares about herself and no one else.
I had a problem with social security and I wrote the same letter to all my representatives both democrats and republicans asking for help. We have some of the supposedly most caring democrats in the country, like Diane Feinstein, Barbara Boxer and Nancy Pelosi. Not one of them answered their email, so I sent a real letter to their offices which also went unanswered...not even a form letter. Yet every republican I emailed contacted my either in person or through a representative and were very helpful, pointing me in the right direction and even arranging meetings in my local community.
I have seen all the news articles and one thing Diane Feinstein does not offer is any kind of proof that this happened....she just said it did. Those in California my also remember how she said she helped San Francisco when she was mayor but how it was bankrupt when she left and how it barely pulled itself up from that debt.
Diane we here in California know you are long on words but woefully short on action.
Ok. Following that logic, I'm sre that you agree that it's high time that America unilaterally invade:
- Sudan: to stop the Genocide in Darfur and the civil war in the South (FYI the UN Charter *mandates* military action in cases of Genocide, how come the US isn't pushing this harder?)
- North Korea: Kim Jong-Il is a nucular-armed (sic) madman who oppresses and starves his subjects while maintaining a massive military complex and threatening his neigbors
- Iran: A major sponsor of global terrorism, has its own nuclear program, and has been working covertly to undermine US efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan
- Myanmar: A brutal, bloody and tyrannical regime by any standard
- Syria: Fellow Baathists, also tyrannical, also supporters of terrorism (Hamas, hezbollah, Islamic Jihad). Somehow our friends in the War on Terror (?!). Oh yeah, they're the US torture outsourcer of choice!
- Pick any one of at least a dozen regimes in Africa that are as Brutal as the Iraqi Baathist regime. Or more so.
Y'know what I find funny? Many of the same people who are now saying that it was good for America to invade Iraq to liberate its people would have said the exact opposite a few years earlier. I remember much grouching about the 'new world order' and America's role as 'Global Cop'. I remember a presidential candidate who said he would not be a nation builder. I guess it's ok to change your philosophy ('flip-flop') once your guy's in power, though, right?
Don't get me wrong. Even though I knew, in March 2003 (it was well-knowneven then) that the rationale for going to war (WMD's *NOT* liberation) was a sack of BS and that the war had been predicided by mid '02, I thought the war was a good thing: Saddam was a monster and his kids were even worse. If the American's are even halfways competent the Iraqis would be free and it would all be worth it. But they weren't. And it wasn't. And now Iraq is a far more dangerous place than it was before 03/03.
Wanted: One witty yet thought provoking
Kerry voted to go to Iraqi. it can't be said it's alright for Kerry to say he was mislead and not give the president the same creedance.
I and the 9-11 commission would disagree....
I do agree that as far as ultimate goals for the Iraq war Bush and Kerry's positions are quite similar with the main impetus from Kerry being "I can do better." Consequently, I would point out the errors in judgement as found by the commission as well as current members of the administration's support of Sadam Hussein in the past (Ah Hem, Rumsfeld, chemical weapons, gassing of the Kurds and Iranian's anyone) and lack of ability to significantly cripple Osama's network in defense of this assumption.Than I would point out Bush's failure in domestic areas such as economy, human rights, benefits cuts to soldiers, tax breaks for the rich, quelching of the very principle of capitalism our country's economy is based on with no bid/uncontested contracts awarded to Haliburton, corporate welfare thinly veiled as an AID's relief package by writing in that no drugs can be generic, largest deficit ever seen in the history of the modern world, alienation of allies through failed diplomacy, worst security record of any president in our country's history allowing (you can argue that no one could have done better, but the only certaintity is that the Bush admin. didn't do good enough).
*NOTE* you can google for any one of these with any common news network like cnn, cbs, abc, etc to 'read all about it'.
The embassy kidnappings in Tehran were done by a highly radicalized group of religious students active in the Islamic Revolution. Khomeini called the US embassy in Tehran a "US den of espionage" and ordered it kidnapped, and these students did it.
wrong. That's part of the public misconception. There were actually two invasions of the US embassy by radicals. The First one was in June, if I remember correctly. After that takeover, Khomeini talked them out after the first embassy taking and told them not to do that again. After the second taking, he sent his own sun in to talk them out again, but he failed.
The reason why he failed on the second time was public sentiment. Iranians at the time still remembered that the US had caused a counter-revolution in the early 60's that had returned the Shaw to power (and marked the beginning of serious brutality on his part). All along, they had simply been asking for an apology from the US for the (illegal) interference in Iranian government affairs and a promise not to do it again. (the later alone probably would have been sufficient).
When The Shah entered the US ostensibly (OK, and actually, too, but try and tell that to fearful Iranians) for medical treatment, radicals in Iran claimed that it was really to organize a second counter-revolution. The Iranians were too scared of a repeat of that fate to think straight (sound familiar?). The irony is that it was the US's unwillingness to verify it's compliance with international law that resulted in one of the most serious violation of the US's international law rights. (sound familiar?).
Khomeini made a number of attempts at moderating the hostage situation. Every time he did so, the US ignored his actions and undercut his intentions. The portrayal of Khomeini as able to get the hostages out with a snap of his fingers is entirely contrary to the effort that he had to take in the face of public sentiment and fears. Khomeini was in power by dint of public support only..
A couple of samples:
I think that it was about this time that Khomeini's moderate former prime minister was executed.
For the record: I have nothing against the rescue attempt, per se. but the timing sucked bigtime
This is part of the reason why (I think) Khomeini arranged to get the hostages out the same day that Regan was sworn into office. He wanted to get rid of
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