Korean Job Discussion Forums

[cerulean808]

So the US media is being used to soften up US public opinion for an attack on Iran. PR firms pumping effluent into the public forum stinking out democracy. And its the likes of Joo Rip, Gopher, Sundubuman, Junior, Kuros, TUM et al who sponge this kind of stuff up. Sad.

[Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee]

Do you have a link so we can check your source? I mean if fair to question the critics is not also fair to question the critics of the critics?

[ddeubel]

This story was broke by The Nation. The guy will do time and deservedly so.

I hope Gopher offers apologizes for smitting me about Taheri when I told him and others quite blankly that Taheri was a paid man, pedalling lies about Iran and beating the war drum.

Seems I was right.

I hope you remember the thread.......vociferous debate and all of you calling me an Iranian apologist bla bla bla , for pointing out that the U.S. govt through the CIA and other covert means, pays for journalists to plant false and seemingly journalistic articles.....

Joo , I'd ask for your apology but I know you are not the type to say you are wrong. And that, as I've stated over and over, is why you are a dupe and stuck record.......no critical thought or apparatus.



DD

[Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee]

You are an apoligsts for the regime in Iran and Hizzbollah and anyone who hates the US.

You have no proof he is paid.

He made a mistake that is all.

He has a strong record as shown by the wikipedia article above.

[TheUrbanMyth]

[Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee]

The lies and Distortions of Robert Fisk


It is difficult to turn a page of The Great War for Civilisation without encountering some basic error. Jesus was born in Bethlehem, not, as Fisk has it, in Jerusalem. The Caliph Ali, the Prophet Muhammad�s cousin and son-in-law, was murdered in the year 661, not in the 8th century. Emir Abdallah became king of Transjordan in 1946, not 1921, and both he and his younger brother, King Faisal I of Iraq, hailed not from a �Gulf tribe� but rather from the Hashemites on the other side of the Arabian peninsula. The Iraqi monarchy was overthrown in 1958, not 1962; Hajj Amin al-Husseini, the mufti of Jerusalem, was appointed by the British authorities, not elected; Ayatollah Khomeini transferred his exile from Turkey to the holy Shiite city of Najaf not during Saddam Hussein�s rule but fourteen years before Saddam seized power. Security Council resolution 242 was passed in November 1967, not 1968; Anwar Sadat of Egypt signed a peace treaty with Israel in 1979, not 1977, and was assassinated in October 1981, not 1979. Yitzhak Rabin was minister of defense, not prime minister, during the first Palestinian intifada, and al Qaeda was established not in 1998 but a decade earlier. And so on and so forth.

The deeper problem with Fisk�s work is not the sort of thing that can be fixed by acquiring a better research assistant or fact-checking apparatus. Facts must be placed in their proper context, after all, and this demands a degree of good faith that Fisk utterly lacks. Indeed, so blatant and thoroughgoing are his ideological prejudices that his very name has entered the lexicon of the Internet as a synonym for systematic bias. Among the online commentators known as bloggers, the verb �to fisk� has come to mean a point-by-point rebuttal of an egregiously slanted piece of writing�like, classically, a Fisk dispatch from the Middle East.

The precise angle of his tilt has been confirmed by Osama bin Laden himself, who, in a videotaped message on the eve of the 2004 presidential election in the U.S., commended Fisk by name for his incisive and �neutral� reporting. On Planet Fisk, there are bad guys and there are victims, and the victims�the Arabs�can do no wrong, at least none for which they are ultimately responsible. Thus, one comes away from his current book hardly realizing that Lebanon was under a repressive Syrian occupation for most of the 30 years that Fisk has made his home there. The only hint arrives three pages before book�s end, when he notes the prompt withdrawal of Syrian forces following the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, a crime in which Damascus was deeply complicit.


http://www.commentarymagazine.com/Archive/DigitalArchive.aspx?panes=1&aid=12102065_1

[Kuros]

Cerulean, Iran has WMDs. They support terror.

If you wish to argue about any of the above, I don't, because you'd have to be an apologist to believe otherwise. Your above article is interesting but irrelevant in the great scheme of things and you know it.

[Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee]

The Truth about John Pilger

John Pilger defines antisemitism
The Guardian carries a letter from John Pilger depicting Egypt as a wronged party in the Yom Kippur War of 1973. There's a time and a place for everything, and Pilger's eccentric historical interpretations are not the subject of this post. But one of the statements within the letter makes a curious juxtaposition with a story elsewhere in the same edition of the paper. Pilger writes:


http://www.guardian.co.uk/letters/story/0,3604,1059901,00.html

[laogaiguk]

[Kuros]

[laogaiguk]

[On the other hand]

[Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee]

Look what OBL said about William Blum. ( I will get that later)

Osama thinks he get the anti war movement on his side.

Sorry about the length just look at the bold

the rest of the artilce is just for context


Osama's Vietnam Syndrome
January 24, 2006 20 19 GMT
By George Friedman


http://www.stratfor.com/products/premium/read_article.php?id=261303&selected=Stratfor+Weekly


The recording reveals two things about bin Laden.

First, he is still in touch with the world. He knows what is going on in American politics, he has access to American books -- he mentions one book by name -- and he is aware of the state of operations in Iraq. The level of detail varies, but it is unlikely that he is stuck in a cave somewhere. Unless there are platoons of couriers bringing reports to him -- something that would violate all rules of security -- it would appear that bin Laden is able to access satellite television and possibly the Internet. Wherever he is, there is electricity and some degree of connectivity to the world. He's getting his news from somewhere.

Second, and much more important, bin Laden is aware of the state of the war and has decided that he needs to change tactics somewhat. He acknowledges the possibility of al Qaeda's defeat, which is not like the old bin Laden. On the tape, according to a translation made by The Associated Press, he says:

"Finally, I say that war will go either in our favor or yours. If it is the former, it means your loss and your shame forever, and it is headed in this course. If it is the latter, read history! We are people who do not stand for injustice and we will seek revenge all our lives. The nights and days will not pass without us taking vengeance like Sept. 11, God permitting."

At this juncture, he is separating the war from the attacks of Sept. 11. He is open to the possibility that the war might be lost. However, acts of revenge -- like the Sept. 11 attacks -- will continue. Bin Laden therefore is referring to Sept. 11 as an operation other than war.

In referring to the true war, he specifically cites Iraq and Afghanistan. About those, he speaks -- at the beginning of his recording -- with his usual bravado: "The war in Iraq is boiling up without end and the operations in Afghanistan are continuing in our favor." Thus, there is a disconnect between this assertion that the war continues and that the trends favor al Qaeda, and the assertion that the war might go either way. Two things are clear: First, bin Laden increasingly means, by "war," operations in Iraq and Afghanistan; and second, he views Sept. 11-type operations not as part of the war, but as an alternative to war.

These points are interesting. But what is fascinating and vital is his turn to Vietnam as a mode of analysis and strategy. Bin Laden refers to the U.S. Army as the "Vietnam butcher." This indicates that he has been thinking about Vietnam, but that thinking becomes clearer in the way he addresses the problems and opportunities in Iraq and Afghanistan.

First, he focuses on anti-war sentiment in the United States:

"But I plan to speak about the repeated errors your President Bush has committed in comments on the results of your polls that show an overwhelming majority of you want the withdrawal of American troops from Iraq. But he has opposed this wish and said that withdrawing troops sends the wrong message to opponents, that it is better to fight them on their land than their fighting us on our land."

Bin Laden clearly knows about the polling trends in the United States and obviously knows that Bush has slipped substantially in opinion polls. He overstates the numbers when he says that the overwhelming majority want withdrawal -- it is a majority, but far from overwhelming -- but he clearly is speaking to the anti-war movement in the United States.

He is also speaking to troops in Iraq, saying: "Pentagon figures show the number of your dead and wounded is increasing not to mention the massive material losses, the destruction of the soldiers' morale there and the rise in cases of suicide among them." Bin Laden is portraying the U.S. Army in Iraq as being in fairly desperate straits, while the Pentagon remains indifferent.

Analytically, he views the condition of the United States as if it were Vietnam. Bin Laden is asserting that there is massive sentiment against the war and that Bush, like Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon, is resisting that movement and resisting withdrawal. He is portraying the Army in Iraq as if it were the Army in Vietnam, late in that war. The truth or falsehood of the view is not material here -- nor should his statements be taken as propaganda directed at the American public. Bin Laden is not unsophisticated. He is not trying to persuade the American public to oppose the war. His view is that the polls show that Bush's political base has collapsed, along with morale in the U.S. Army.

Bin Laden then pulls a maneuver right out of Ho Chi Minh's playbook, saying:

"We don't mind offering you a long-term truce on fair conditions that we adhere to. We are a nation that God has forbidden to lie and cheat. So both sides can enjoy security and stability under this truce so we can build Iraq and Afghanistan, which have been destroyed in this war. There is no shame in this solution, which prevents the wasting of billions of dollars that have gone to those with influence and merchants of war in America who have supported Bush's election campaign with billions of dollars -- which lets us understand the insistence by Bush and his gang to carry on with war. If you are sincere in your desire for peace and security, we have answered you."

If there is a massive anti-war movement in the United States and if the Army is weary of war, then the next logical move is to offer negotiations toward a cease-fire. Bin Laden completely understands that Bush would reject that offer. His hope is that the offer of a truce would further split the United States -- undermining Bush's political power even more and giving ammunition to those who want an end to the war. "If you are sincere in your desire for peace and security," he says, "we have answered you."

During the Vietnam war, the North Vietnamese introduced the idea of a negotiated settlement in large part because they wanted to provide a rational basis for the anti-war movement. They understood that there would be only a tiny pro-Hanoi movement in the United States. They also understood that as the war dragged on and victory became less visible, support would grow for a negotiated settlement as the only reasonable outcome. The view of the pro-war faction -- that the offers of peace talks did not provide any basis for a real settlement but were a cover for a North Vietnamese victory -- was opposed by those who argued that settlement and withdrawal were the only rational actions for the United States in an unwinnable war.

Wherever he is, bin Laden has done a lot of thinking, and he apparently has come to think of himself as Ho Chi Minh. From his viewpoint, Bush, like Johnson, is resisting a wave of anti-war sentiment. The Army is tired. An offer of a long-term, honorable truce would build up the anti-war faction. Add to that the promise that even if the United States wins the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, al Qaeda will continue to stage Sept. 11-type attacks, and you have an added incentive for a negotiated settlement.

Bin Laden may be deluding himself, but he smells serious political problems for Bush in the United States and a movement that wants to withdraw forces in return for a truce that guarantees no further attacks on the American public. That is the heart of his message. He is prepared to negotiate a truce. He believes that this will fuel anti-war sentiment today, just as the offer of negotiations fueled anti-war sentiment in the 1960s. And if that truce is agreed to, he believes that he can reshape the Islamic world today much as North Vietnam reshaped Indochina.

What is most clever in this move is that it doesn't require actual negotiations. If Bush starts to draw down forces in Iraq, bin Laden can declare a truce and imply in the Muslim world that he compelled the United States to capitulate. He is trying to trap Bush in two ways. If there isn't a drawdown, Bush would face an anti-war movement calling for truce with al Qaeda. And if there is a drawdown, Bush would face assertions that he is implicitly or secretly agreeing to the truce that bin Laden proposed.

Bin Laden is not Ho Chi Minh. No one will call him "Uncle Osama" or liken him to George Washington, as they did Ho. It is difficult to imagine that anyone -- pro- or anti-war -- in the United States would think seriously of negotiating with him. Even the Europeans, who have never seen an offer of negotiation they didn't like, took a pass when it came to bin Laden. Nevertheless, as a glimpse into bin Laden's strategic thinking, the view is fascinating. Above all, there is this parallel: The most creative diplomacy of the North Vietnamese followed their defeat in the Tet Offensive. The moment that bin Laden's strategic position in Iraq (but not Afghanistan) is at its weakest -- following the Dec. 15 elections -- is the moment he offers a truce.

Fascinating.


-------------------------------------------------




The Savvy Political Tone of Osama bin Laden
April 16, 2004 23 48 GMT


Summary

A taped message attributed to al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden was broadcast on Arab satellite television channels. It is a marked departure from the Islamist rhetoric of previous bin Laden messages, but sticks to the relatively rational tone he used in a January message. The tape contains a number of messages addressed to the people of Western democracies that have been considered the enemies of al Qaeda. Although it does not contain any specific threats, the potential certainly exists for bin Laden's words to be interpreted that way.

Analysis

Arab satellite television station al-Arabiya broadcast a taped message April 15 attributed to Osama bin Laden. The message was unique in that its target audience -- there were subtitles in German and English -- included the people of Europe and the United States.

The tape's message is as unique for what it does not say as for what it does.

The majority of the message, with the exception of a cursory Islamic preamble, is focused on directly influencing the electorates in Europe and the United States. Previous messages have centered on an Islamic call to arms and vehement denunciations of Western governments. The new tone taken by bin Laden seems aimed at prompting people to pause and re-evaluate the war on terrorism.

Rather than calling for the destruction of Western civilization, bin Laden tries to appeal to the common sense and general insecurity of people in the West. Most of his message is grounded in basic pragmatism and lays out the causal relationship between al Qaeda action and U.S./European intervention in Muslim nations.

Bin Laden describes the Iraq war as more of a privateering venture. He steals from the playbook of critics of U.S. President George W. Bush and claims money is being made hand over fist by U.S. corporations reconstructing Iraq; he also says some of those companies -- Halliburton in particular -- explicitly are linked to the Bush administration. It is an argument not only meant to tap into politics in the United States, but that also speaks directly to anti-war sentiments in Europe.

Perhaps it was the defeat of former Spanish Prime Minister Jose Marie Aznar -- a U.S. ally and Bush supporter -- in the wake of the March 11 Madrid bombings that stirred bin Laden to explore his potential to influence politics in Europe and the United States and indirectly achieve his goal of removing a Western presence from the Muslim world. Bin Laden describes his actions as a form of justice that should not be labeled as "terrorism" -- and asks why Muslim deaths are regarded as less important than the deaths of Western civilians.

Bin Laden also plays on the anti-Israeli and anti-Semitic sentiments that are becoming more common throughout Europe by classifying Israel and the United States as the chief perpetrators of crimes against Muslims. He assures Europeans that should they cease to ally themselves with the United States, and by extension Israel, they will cease to be the target of future attacks.

Bin Laden employs a logic that appears very practical, simple, easy to understand and, perhaps more dangerous for the United States, very easy to sympathize with.

Bin Laden offers a truce to Europe, vowing to halt all aggression against European nations should they withdraw their troops from Islamic countries. He even went so far as to declare a 90-day al Qaeda-sponsored cease-fire against European targets. The start date of that cease-fire likely will be April 15 -- the day the statement was released to the public. This would put the time frame for a resumption of al Qaeda activities in Europe conspicuously in the middle of the June 30 transfer of power in Iraq and at the beginning of the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens. The validity of the cease-fire offer is another question.

The armistice proposed by bin Laden appears almost entirely symbolic. Given the time between major al Qaeda operations -- normally a year or two -- the group was not expected to act in the next three months. Beyond what will most likely be a cessation of al Qaeda-approved actions in Europe, the potential exists for independent al Qaeda-inspired groups to carry on business as usual.

What Went Unsaid

As compelling as bin Laden's stump speech was, what he did not say on the tape is equally important.

Bin Laden does not specifically call for renewed attacks. Neither does he retract previous threats. But he does leave the door open for a variety of interpretations of his remarks by singling out multinational corporations and the U.S. media.

Bin Laden cites only one company specifically - Halliburton -- but does offer general references to companies that are benefiting from the war on terrorism as being partly to blame. In the context of the taped message, these references to corporations are used as an example of to how little the average Westerner is actually benefiting from government operations in the Muslim world. It is an argument that could speak to many, as anti-war sentiment rises in the face of mounting coalition casualties in Iraq and bogged-down operations in Afghanistan.

Despite the fact that bin Laden refers to Halliburton only in passing, there likely are many militant Islamists who will use it -- and vague references to "leading media companies" -- as an implicit endorsement of attacks.

In the end, bin Laden strikes a very pragmatic and realistic tone in his latest message. Combined with the somber rationality of his January message, this could portend the adoption of a less radical tone for bin Laden and his followers as they come to the realization that the militant Islamist audience is a niche market and always will be, and that al Qaeda's overall goals will never be achieved if they cannot appeal to a broader mass market. But bin Laden's kinder, gentler tone is not an indication that the tiger is changing its stripes. Al Qaeda's goals remain the same. The organization's leadership is simply coming to the realization that it must present a more mainstream argument that could prove to be more effective over time than direct confrontation with the United States and its allies.

http://www.stratfor.com/products/premium/read_article.php?selected=Terrorism%20Intelligence%20Report&id=230715

[On the other hand]

Okay, so this is the reality according to you and Friedman.

First, OBL launches an unprovoked attack on the United States, killing thousands of civilians.

Then, OBL seriously assumes that he has enough credibility with the American public that if he endorses a book, then Americans will read that book.

That's what you're asking us to believe, is it Joo?

[Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee]

Yes and I can prove it.