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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.'"
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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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
.. 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.
How is Iraq less of a dictatorship today than it was under Saddam Hussein?
Will you ever stop beating your wife?
Read Senator Kerry's testimony to the Senate from 1971. Read it all. Comprehend. Then form an opinion and speak.
If you can read english, you will see that Kerry was relating details of war crimes related to him by over 100 other men. War crimes that they were coerced and abetted in committing by commanding officers. They knew it was wrong, and they admitted it out of shame, and because they knew that it tarnished the credibility of the United States, which they defended because they loved.
Fast forward 33 years. Location: Abu Ghraib Prison, Iraq. Same story. Nothing learned. Our national credibility savaged. Maybe because we have a president who admittedly "doesn't read much".
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.
It's the desparate tactics of the people whose candidate is starting to slide
Interesting choice of misspellings - I can't decide whether desperate or disparate fits better here.....
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.
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 . . . . .
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.
...allegedly wrote...
Is this the part where I get to assume it's already fact?
Do you really think the US government would allow a theocracy to come to power in Iraq? How about Afghanistan? What if this is what the people of those countries want? What if that government is unhelpful or outwardly hostile to the US? Would we still want them around? That's the up and down-side to democracy; it is what the people make of it.
iRooster, the Mac OS X a
If the White House wrote Allawi's speech, that would be one thing. If the Bush campaign wrote it, that would be quite another. But the Bush campaign has never been shy about using the power of the White House to get an upper hand in their campaigning, and this is nothing out of the ordinary for them. They're in a position to do it, but they're not supposed to do it. Apparently they see nothing wrong with it. Recall the terror alert they issued within hours of Kerry's DNC speech. Could have been a real terror alert, so they have plausible deniability and Kerry can't say anything. Now we have the Bush campaign quietly putting phrases directly into Allawi's mouth, and Kerry can't criticize this Pollyanna nonsense without "undercutting a valuable ally". (Like ahemcoughFrancecoughcoughGermanyahem never mind.)
Relying on plausible deniability is OK if you only do it once in a while. But as these terribly convenient events pile up, the probability of the null hypothesis (i.e. that these are all just coincidences, and nobody is abusing his presidential powers) gets smaller and smaller. The electorate starts dividing into people with a healthy level of cynicism and people who are essentially hero worshippers.
It's one thing to not have voters cast ballots in genuinely unsafe conditions. It's quite another to rule that areas that support someone other than the US-selected leader cannot vote.
This makes the fuss over who got onto what banned list in the 2000 US Presidential elections seem like a trivial affair. Here' we're talking about the disenfranchising of entire regions, based on how the US happens to feel about those regions at the time. Those who feel the election is tainted and invalid have some serious grounds for complaint. Now all they have to do is find anyone who'll listen. That's the hard part.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
In short, no one entity, governmental, military, or otherwise, is calling the shots for the whole country. That doesn't sound like any kind of dictatorship to me -- it sounds more like chaos.
What exactly does 'lost the popular vote' have to do with anything? The popular vote does not matter. IT NEVER HAS. The citizens of the United States do not vote for the President -- the states do. That is how it works now, and that is how it has always worked.
The elections of 2000 were not the first time a candidate has lost the popular vote yet won the presidency. It happened in 1824. It happened in 1876. It happened in 1888. It will happen again eventually.
I dislike Bush as much as anybody, but Jesus Christ, people need to get over that subject. The Electoral College is in place for a very specific and important reason. If America worked by direct democracy, the candidates would only have to win the huge urban areas like New York and Los Angeles in order to win the presidency. The Electoral College, at least partly, ensures that candidates have to win other places, too, like the Mid-west (e.g., Iowa, where i live and Kerry/Edwards and Bush/Cheney have passed through multiple times in the past few months).
If you want to argue that the Electoral College could be improved (for example, make it proportional instead of winner-takes-all), i might agree with you. (In fact, i do support making it proportional in all states.) Or if you wanted to argue that maybe somehow voters were disenfranchised in Florida and that caused Gore to lose Florida's electoral vote, i might agree with you. (Although i think that's kind of getting worn out too.) But pouting because Bush didn't win the popular vote is just retarded. :/
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."
Because their city councils and school boards are elected? Because the elect the equivalent of governors and legislatures for their provinces?
Dictators don't allow the people to do such a thing. They know when people get the idea that they can elect whoever they want to run the city, that they'll figure out that they should be able to elect whoever they want to be prime minister.
It's one of the reasons why the kings of England weren't considered dictators - they allowed the people a democracy to a large extent, and even demanded it.
The radical sect of Islam would either see you dead or "reverted" to Islam.
"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.
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.
These days, it's not the Iraqi government that's kidnapping, torturing, and murdering people, but a group of loosely-affiliated amateurs.
Come on, the US army isn't quite that poorly organized.
(Sorry, I couldn't resist.)
Quattuor res in hoc mundo sanctae sunt: libri, liberi, libertas et liberalitas.
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.
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.
--
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.
These days, it's not the Iraqi government that's kidnapping, torturing, and murdering people, but a group of loosely-affiliated amateurs.
And those brave soldiers of the U.S. military.
Off course, if you commit the additional crime of making photo evidence of your actions, you will be court martialed...
I'm pretty sure they're doing much less volume.
Well, over ten thousand dead in a year...that's rather a lot I would think.
You can't take the sky from me...
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
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
A point of caution. While I am not in a position to know the extent of Saddam's doings you should keep this in mind; Histories are written and Villains are made by the Victors. All of the links you quoted are provided by organizations who are sworn enemies of the Bathists and who all are known to make stuff up when it suits them. Some of the mass graves listed here turned out to be graves from the battlefields of the Iran-Iraq war. The war itself was actively encouraged and financed by the USA. While it is quite likely that Saddams torture chambers, bullets and chemical weapons killed thens of thousands, that happened over period of twenty years while the Iraq war alone produced around 10000 casaulties (both military and civilian). One has to mention that the first Gulf War prodcued over 150000 dead Iraqi soldiers and civilians, bulk of them killed on the famous slauther on the "Highway of Death" over which they were withdrawing from Kuwait when the war was essentially over.
I am personally not sure who killed more Iraqis in total, Saddam on his own, Saddam aided by the US when he was an "ally" or US by itself.
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.
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
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.
... 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?
Sorry, but al-Zarqawi and his animals are not "defending their country against invasion." They are opportunistic, completely intolerant Islamic fundamentalists whose sole vision is to convert or kill all non-Muslims and create a unified Islamic world under strict sharia. Yesterday, this group killed 35 Iraqi kids with car bombs who were waiting for candy from American soldiers. Too bad there's no mod "-1, Misinformed".
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
By reports, she of course meant newspaper reports. You know, the things most of us get our information from. From the Washington Post:
Later in the article:
So it seems that it is a bit more than mere suspicion, as you would characterize it. The article makes it pretty clear that Allawi was a mouthpiece for the Bush campaign while he was here in the US. So that's why Ms. Feinstein was dismayed. Frankly, so am I.
The article is here
"What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)
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.