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More like a smoking Gatlling Gun really.

 
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R. S. Refugee



Joined: 29 Sep 2004
Location: Shangra La, ROK

PostPosted: Tue May 10, 2005 10:22 pm    Post subject: More like a smoking Gatlling Gun really. Reply with quote

"This is it folks, no more pretending. George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Colin Powell, Condoleeza Rice, and the rest of them are lying [.pdf], murdering war criminals. Aluminum tubes, yellowcake from Niger, mobile biological weapons laboratories, warehouses full of biological and chemical agents, remote control planes that could fly across the Atlantic Ocean to spray us with chemical weapons: every last assertion was a deliberate, premeditated lie intended to scare us into letting them kill people.

It worked, and so far their invasion has resulted in the deaths of over 100,000 people and the untold destruction of their property. It has helped bin Laden "complete the radicalization of the Islamic world" and recruit thousands of new followers, pushed socialist Europe even further away from us, alienated our country from regular people all over the world, and wasted hundreds of billions of borrowed dollars."


I'm Here for My Bill of Goods
by Scott Horton

http://www.antiwar.com/orig/horton.php?articleid=5903

["Well, that's a relief. I thought maybe we had really screwed up."]
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Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee



Joined: 25 May 2003

PostPosted: Tue May 10, 2005 10:35 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

http://www.economist.com/science/displayStory.cfm?story_id=3352814

The Iraqi war

Counting the casualties

Nov 4th 2004
From The Economist print edition



Yes Saddam was going to make nice. Al Qaida trained 70,000 in the 90's what was the problem then?
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Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee



Joined: 25 May 2003

PostPosted: Fri May 13, 2005 1:54 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

The real reason for the war.


Quote:
U.S. is targeting the Mideast, not Russia
James P. Pinkerton


May 12, 2005

The United States has a strategy of encircling Russia, and it's working.

But the real target of that strategy is beyond Russia - or, more precisely, south of Russia, all the way down to the Middle East.

President George W. Bush's trip to Europe illustrates his ideological, as well as geopolitical, ambitions. When he visited Latvia last week, the president cheered conservatives here by denouncing the 1945 Yalta agreement, in which the U.S. recognized the capitalist-communist partition of post-World War II Europe.

For the most part, to be sure, Franklin D. Roosevelt was simply acknowledging reality at the time of Yalta; the Red Army already controlled most of Eastern Europe. What was the alternative? Another war? But the right, of course, denounced Yalta as a "sellout."

Today, Yalta is a dead letter; the 1945 deal came crashing down along with the Berlin Wall and the Soviet Union itself. The former "captive nations" of Eastern Europe are now free. So for Bush to bring up the Yalta agreement yet again on May 7 - he denounced it as "unjust" and even equated it to the 1939 Nazi-Soviet pact that triggered World War II - is a clear sign of his determination to cement his standing with conservatives in the United States as well as ex-Soviet peoples abroad.

Bush also traveled to the former Soviet republic of Georgia, another new country on the border of Russia, to deliver yet another paean to democracy. To small "d" democrats everywhere, they were moving words.

But interestingly, when Bush visited Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow, he had little to say. Putin is an anti-democratic neo-Stalinist who openly laments the fall of the Soviet empire. So if Bush wished to be consistent in advancing his "forward strategy of freedom," he had no better venue to sound the call for "liberty century" than inside the dark heart of the Kremlin.

But his goal is not to transform Russia. The Russians don't particularly want to be transformed, and besides, they have 22,000 nuclear weapons. Instead, Bush wants to neutralize Russia, as Washington advances its real plan, which is to displace Moscow as the dominant power in Eurasia. This plan did not start with Bush: The Clinton administration extended NATO, the American-led military alliance, all the way to Russia's western border.

But now the Bush administration, thinking even more grandly, seeks active military alliances with countries along Russia's southern border as well. One such country is Georgia, and other ex-Soviet countries also are moving into the American orbit, such as Ukraine, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan. And so long as Putin - ruling a country that seems terminally sickened by corruption, alcoholism and low birth rates - is willing to tolerate America's penetration into what the Russians call their "near abroad," well, then, the U.S. will leave Putin alone. He is free to tyrannize his own shrunken and shrinking realm.

So if the U.S. is not interested in "regime change" in Moscow, why is Uncle Sam so interested in positioning military assets across Eurasia? For the answer, one need only look at a map. From "New Europe" to Central Asia to Pakistan, the U.S. is building an arc of power above the Middle East, with the goal of completely surrounding the area. That's the real focus of American foreign policy in the 21st century, the transformation, by one tool or another, of the Arab countries, as well as Iran, into Iraq- and Afghanistan-like dependencies. For reasons of anti-terrorism, for reasons of oil, for reasons of neoconservative ideology, the U.S. wants to be ready to intervene anywhere in the region with overwhelming force.

Working closely with Israel, the U.S. hopes to enlist other countries, too. One possible ally is India, which has long been fearful of Islam. In addition, black African countries fear Islamism in their own neighborhood, propagated, most recently, by brutalitarian Sudan.

To America, Russia is just a sideshow, so long as Putin behaves. Meanwhile, the U.S. has, in effect, drawn a bull's-eye around the Middle East - which has been targeted for transformation, by any means necessary.
Copyright 2005 Newsday Inc.


http://www.newsday.com/news/opinion/ny-oppin124254947may12,0,4123195,print.column?coll=ny-viewpoints-headlines
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Alias



Joined: 24 Jan 2003

PostPosted: Fri May 13, 2005 2:12 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

They lied.
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Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee



Joined: 25 May 2003

PostPosted: Fri May 13, 2005 2:33 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

No I think they thought Saddam had WMD otherwise they would have come up with some other excuse.
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hypnotist



Joined: 04 Dec 2004
Location: I wish I were a sock

PostPosted: Fri May 13, 2005 2:41 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee wrote:
No I think they thought Saddam had WMD otherwise they would have come up with some other excuse.


The intelligence reports said maybe at best, and it's clear that they were talked up. However, if regime change was the reason, that would have made the war illegal (not that the US really cares about international law unless someone else breaks it), so the UK and Colin Powell put heavy pressure on Bush not to go with that reason. That's what the documents leaked recently make clear. However Bush referred often to regime change in any case.
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Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee



Joined: 25 May 2003

PostPosted: Fri May 13, 2005 2:48 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Regime change would have still been moral, but anyway I think the US really did think that Saddam had WMDs and more than that was convinced that he would try to rearm if he got free The administration also felt that containing Saddam was a huge burden for the US.

I think the US would care more about international law if nations that were in violation of it really had to suffer consequences for it. It is not like the EU counteries was doing much to contain Saddam , moderate Iran , or stop the teaching of hate in the mid east.
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mithridates



Joined: 03 Mar 2003
Location: President's office, Korean Space Agency

PostPosted: Fri May 13, 2005 3:58 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Quote:
contain Saddam , moderate Iran , or stop the teaching of hate in the mid east.


Containing Saddam - they did a good job there.

Moderating Iran - That's hard to say. I think that the new stance of the US towards Iran after 2000 is what gave the extremists in Iran a lot of firepower in the last election there. "See, we try to reform and this is what we get!" - that's why what's-his-name (Khatami?) lost the last election in my opinion. No visual progress.

Stopping the teaching of hate - I think you're right about that, Joo.
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Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee



Joined: 25 May 2003

PostPosted: Fri May 13, 2005 4:11 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Mith

The reformers weren't defeated at all in the last Iranian election what happend was Supreme Leader Ali Khamani and the council of guardians disqualified them from running.

and so turn out was very low.

http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/0114/p06s02-wome.html

from the January 14, 2004 edition - http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/0114/p06s02-wome.html

Major test for Iran's reformists
Hard-liners' moves to disqualify opponents before February vote could spark top officials' resignations.
By Scott Peterson | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

Sweeping moves by Iranian hard- liners to disqualify reform opponents before next month's key elections are sparking a political crisis that could lead to the resignation of President Mohamad Khatami's government.

The unelected Guardian Council, which vets all political candidates, rejected nearly half of Iran's 8,200 parliamentary hopefuls over the weekend. Failure to reverse the action could bring Iran's messy political conflict to a head well before the Feb. 20 vote.

"If the government becomes impotent in securing the legitimate freedoms of the nation, it loses its legitimacy, and then, whether it dissolves itself or not, it is automatically dissolved," said Vice President Mohamed Satarifar, according to the official IRNA news agency.

Reformist members of parliament said that about 12 top government officials are ready to quit if the decision is not overturned, Reuters reported. The MPs said the list included four of Iran's six vice-presidents and six ministers.

The crisis is turning into a political test for Mr. Khatami and reformers, who have watched their popularity dissipate, and have fumed at conservative predictions of victory next month.

While reformists decry a "civilian coup" - dozens of the 80 incumbent deputies barred from running again have staged a sit-in at the 290-seat parliament since Sunday - some say the unprecedented scale of disqualifications may bolster the flagging reform cause.

"This is a very good gift for the reformists," says Hamid Reza Jalaiepour, a former editor of a string of closed reform newspapers, who teaches political sociology at Tehran University.

Top liberal writers and intellectuals met Monday night at offices of the chief reform party, Musharekat, to discuss a unified strategy. "It's a new wave of movement," says Mr. Jalaiepour in a telephone interview, though not likely to change reformist fortunes.

"The 'rational' conservatives are against [the candidate disqualifications], but they are passive," says Jalaiepour. "These days hard-liners are very active and at the core of power, so they do what they wish. They suppose that democracy comes from the West and is not a product of Islam, and use that interpretation to justify undemocratic behavior."

President Khatami has vowed to "protest" through "legal channels," methods he does not see as "compatible with the principles of religious democracy."

But a letter from him apparently read out during the parliament sit-in, and reported in the Etemad reform newspaper Tuesday, suggested that he may step down if the crisis is not resolved. Regional governors have already said they will step down if a solution is not found.

"I will wait for one week so that things go back to normal," the newspaper reported Khatami's letter as stating. "Otherwise, if elections cannot be held, I will step down from my position."

Khatami's pro-reform League of Combatant Clerics saw dangers beyond Iran's border, saying on Monday: "(The conservatives) are paving the way for enemies who want to show the Islamic Republic is a despotic state."

Ayatollah Khamenei - who has final say over all issues - told state radio he would not act unless the issue "goes beyond legal methods."

"We are heading for trouble, because this is no way to deal with people," says Shahriar Rouhani, an analyst at Tehran's Azad University. "It's a dangerous game [for conservatives] to play, because of the lack of trust of the people."

The sweeping disqualifications coincide with deepening popular disillusion with the reform camp, which handily won control of the parliament, or Majlis, in 2000 for the first time since Iran's 1979 Islamic revolution.

But unelected conservative bodies have blocked reform efforts at every turn. The current crisis could help foster renewed sense of purpose.

"If [conservatives] don't show some flexibility, it will automatically mobilize the opposition, and many are quite militant anyway," says Mr. Rouhani, a physicist who was active in the early years of the revolution. "They are going to be bunched together, and will not - to say the least - be very peaceful."

Even Iran's supreme religious leader, the conservative Ayatollah Sayed Ali Khamenei, was reportedly surprised at the number of rejections. Some 900 of the 1,700 hopefuls for Tehran seats alone are not allowed to run.

Among those barred were the president's brother and reform leader, Mohamad Reza Khatami, and Behzad Nabavi, both vice-speakers of parliament.

The Guardian Council has disqualified candidates in the past - though never on this scale - and has used its mandate for guaranteeing that all legislation and candidates meets certain Islamic standards, as an instrument for continuing hard-line control.

But one of the creators of the council, Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri - a strident critic of the regime - told reformers in a letter that conservatives today are misusing it for political ends. "I am really sad when I see this Guardian Council has been transformed into a body that violates the nation's rights and disqualifies these people."

Full HTML version of this story which may include photos, graphics, and related links



http://www.pbs.org/newshour/extra/teachers/lessonplans/world/iran_2-20.html
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