Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee]

[igotthisguitar]

Who's the world's number #1 war criminal & terrorist?

[Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee]

Any of the enemies of the US might fit the bill

[spliff]

The fact is that the US hasn't declared war on anyone...we're now in a extended military engagement. Get your facts straight.

[igotthisguitar]

The Art of Selling War
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QRCEpoz1gUQ&mode=related&search=

[igotthisguitar]

State Dept: Corruption in Iraq is "Classified"
David Corn
Wed Sep 26, 12:00 PM ET

The Nation -- Corruption in the Iraqi government--it's classified information.

So says the State Department

http://news.yahoo.com/s/thenation/3237024 (etc)

[igotthisguitar]

"Emancipation at the price of a ruinous war and a Draconian peace."
(G.W. Johnson)

[igotthisguitar]

Soldier tells of shooting unarmed Iraqi
By KATARINA KRATOVAC, Associated Press Writer
Thu Sep 27, 4:31 PM ET

BAGHDAD - A U.S. soldier cried Thursday as he told a court-martial that his staff sergeant ordered him to shoot an unarmed Iraqi.

He said the sergeant then laughed and told the trooper to "finish the job" as the dying man convulsed on the ground.



"Just following orders ..."
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070927/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq (etc)

[Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee]

[igotthisguitar]

Bush At The UN:
Another War Criminal Lectures The World On �Human Rights�
Bill Van Auken
Global Research
Thursday September 27, 2007

George W. Bush delivered his next to the last annual address to the United Nations General Assembly Tuesday.

Taking the same podium that he used five years ago to condemn the world body to �irrelevance� if it failed to rubber stamp his plans for a war of aggression against Iraq, Bush cast his regime in Washington as the world�s greatest champion of human rights and its most generous and selfless benefactor.

That the assembled UN delegates could sit through and then politely applaud such a hypocritical harangue from a man who is without rival as the world�s greatest war criminal is testimony to the spinelessness and complicity of both the world�s governments and the United Nations itself.

While Bush made only the barest mention of either Iran or Iraq in his address, everyone in the hall was well aware that he is attempting once again to utilize the world body�much as his administration did five years ago in relation to purported Iraqi �weapons of mass destruction��to secure a phony pretext for another war of aggression, this time against Iran.

CONT'D ...

http://www.infowars.net/articles/september2007/270907Bush.htm

[Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee]

ong list of rogue leaders at U.N.
Controversial leaders use world stage to gain legitimacy, draw attention
The Associated Press
Updated: 12:44 a.m. ET Sept. 22, 2007

NEW YORK - Nikita Khrushchev banged his shoe on his desk, Fidel Castro delivered torturously long rants, Yasser Arafat showed up wearing a holster and Hugo Chavez called President Bush the �devil.�

Now, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is securing his place in this rogues� gallery of world leaders who have visited New York for the U.N. General Assembly, the annual gathering where petty tyrants and powerful heads of state alike get their say.

Ahmadinejad will be making his third appearance in the past three years. Tensions with Iran are escalating as the United States accuses the country of trying to develop nuclear weapons and arming insurgents in Iraq with powerful roadside bombs that kill U.S. troops.

A defiant and unpredictable Ahmadinejad is not expected to defuse the situation when he appears at a forum at Columbia University on Monday and addresses the General Assembly on Tuesday.

�You should treat this as an off-Broadway production,� former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton said, describing the United Nations as a �Twilight Zone� that gives a platform to �tinhorn dictators.� �The General Assembly is the theater in which Ahmadinejad and others perform.�

Shoe banging, empty holster
The show has been going on practically since the United Nations was founded in 1945 after World War II.

Soviet Premier Khrushchev banged his shoe on his desk after a diplomat criticized the USSR in 1960. On his first visit to the U.N., in 1960, Castro warned the world about American �aggression� in a speech that lasted more than four hours.

Arafat came to the General Assembly in 1974 and delivered a fiery oration while wearing an empty holster, trying to legitimize the Palestinian struggle.

�I have come bearing an olive branch and a freedom fighter�s gun,� Arafat said. �Do not let the olive branch fall from my hands.�

A year later, the murderous Ugandan dictator Idi Amin exhorted the United States �to rid their society of the Zionists� and called for the �extinction of Israel as a state.�

Last year, Venezuelan President Chavez called Bush �the devil,� �an alcoholic� and �a sick man.�

For his part, Ahmadinejad has called the Holocaust a �myth� and has said Israel should be �wiped off the map.�

Iran leader has already caused stir
Though he has yet to arrive, he is already caused a stir with a failed bid to lay a wreath at the World Trade Center site. Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said he would not allow Ahmadinejad to go to ground zero.

The city�s tabloids went ballistic, labeling him a �madman,� �idiot� and a �Holocaust-denying, nuke-coveting, terrorist-aiding nut.�

�He�s more dangerous than Osama bin Laden,� said Malcolm I. Hoenlein, executive vice chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations. �He has missiles. He has an army which has purchased huge amounts of weapons.�

Despite being roundly denounced from the White House to the mayor�s office, Ahmadinejad will be treated like royalty, chauffeured around the city by the Secret Service, which, in tandem with the NYPD, will protect him until he leaves early Wednesday. His appearances at the U.N. and Columbia � which rescinded an invitation to Ahmadinejad last year after an uproar � are expected to draw large crowds of protesters.

The cost to taxpayers? Kim Bruce, a Secret Service agent, said she did not know how much her agency will spend. Mayor Michael Bloomberg said he has no idea what it will cost New York. Whatever it is, he said, the federal government is supposed to pay for the protection of foreign political figures but seldom does.

Travel restrictions
While he is here, Ahmadinejad will be under the same travel restrictions as diplomats in the Iranian U.N. mission, said Kendal Smith, spokesman for the State Department�s Bureau of Diplomatic Security. Iranian diplomats are free to travel up to 25 miles from midtown Manhattan. Any farther requires an exemption.

Will Ahmadinejad try to eat at one of New York�s excellent Persian restaurants? A spokesman for Iran�s U.N. mission said Ahmadinejad would fast during the day because of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan and would have no time to go to restaurants.

Some have used Ahmadinejad�s visit to draw attention to this country�s tradition of protecting free speech.

�This is a country where people can come and speak their minds. It�s something that we�re proud of � giving people whose ideas and beliefs we find abhorrent if not dangerous,� White House spokesman Tony Fratto said.

�It would be wonderful if some of the countries that take advantage of that here allowed it for their own citizens there.�

� 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20913237/

� 2007 MSNBC.com

[igotthisguitar]

US Army Sniper Sentenced In Iraq Deaths
By KATARINA KRATOVAC, Associated Press Writer
Sat Sep 29, 2:36 PM ET

BAGHDAD - The court-martial that cleared a U.S. Army sniper of two counts of murder sentenced him Saturday to five months in prison, reduced his rank to private and ordered his pay withheld for planting evidence in the deaths of two Iraqi civilians.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/iraq;_ylt=ArgZ1WUqj6yyUgWH4DPciB1saMYA

2 civilians = 5 months?

So, let's do the math here.

Hmmmm ... get caught murdering 24 people & you do 5 years?

If there were 5 or 6 killers involved, would each only get a year?

Reasonable enough, yes?

QUESTION:
Were similar sentences doled out by the homeland judiciary during the original medieval crusades?

[Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee]

History Lessen
by Spencer Ackerman
Only at TNR Online
Post date: 02.04.03
It is by now a well-established fact that chemical weapons claimed the lives of over 5,000 Kurds in the northern Iraqi town of Halabja on March 16, 1988. It is equally well-established that responsibility for this atrocity lies with Saddam Hussein. Indeed, there is virtual unanimity among the dozens of journalists, government delegations, and international human rights groups who have investigated the matter that Halabja was the first frightful act of Saddam's Anfal campaign, a genocide that consumed almost 100,000 Kurds in all. Yet according to a chilling and incoherent op-ed published in Friday's New York Times, Saddam had nothing to do with the massacre after all.

The author of this revisionist account is Stephen C. Pelletiere, a retired Army War College professor who served as a senior Iraq analyst for the Central Intelligence Agency during the Iran-Iraq war. Pelletiere is the co-author of the 1990 book Iraqi Power and U.S. Security in the Middle East, which concluded that Iranian gas, not Iraqi gas, murdered the Kurds at Halabja. In his Times op-ed Pelletiere recycles this argument, only this time against the backdrop of a second war with Saddam. He's no more convincing today than he was 13 years ago.

Pelletiere begins by reprising the usual facts--namely, that Halabja was the site of an intense battle between Saddam and the Iranians. He first concedes that Iraq did use chemical weapons, but argues that the Iranians did as well. The Kurdish victims of the chemicals "had the misfortune to be caught up in the exchange." Pelletiere then cites a Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) report, issued shortly after Halabja, to support his conclusion that Iranian gas killed the Kurds. His evidence? The Kurdish corpses "indicated that they had been killed with a blood agent," which the Iraqis, "who are thought to have used mustard gas in the battle, are not known to have possessed."

But this claim is wildly implausible. First, interviews by international human rights groups with scores of Halabja survivors reveal no such confusion about who deployed the chemicals. Kurds who were outside their houses during the mid-morning attack "could see clearly that these were Iraqi, not Iranian aircraft, since they flew low enough for their markings to be legible," concluded Human Rights Watch in its 1993 report Genocide In Iraq. In any case, the argument for Iranian culpability neglects the logistics of the Halabja battle itself. The Iranians, who controlled the town on March 15, would have no reason to use chemical agents against the Iraqi counteroffensive on March 16, since the Iraqis retaliated with air strikes and placed no soldiers on the ground against whom such weapons could be used.

Second, even if the victims died of exposure to blood agents, this would be perfectly consistent with the claim of Iraqi responsibility. A 1991 DIA report, since declassified, concluded definitively, "Iraq is known to have employed ... a blood agent, hydrogen cyanide gas (HCN) ... against Iranian soldiers, civilians, and Iraqi Kurdish civilians." Nonetheless, it is far more likely, according to the standard accounts of the attack on Halabja, that mustard gas and the nerve agents sarin and tabun--and perhaps even VX and the biological agent aflatoxin, which the Iraqis were also known to possess--were the instruments of Kurdish murder. For example, Human Rights Watch noted that survivors excreted blood-streaked urine, "consistent with exposure to both mustard gas and a nerve agent such as Sarin."

Third, the 1988 DIA report Pelletiere cites to pin Halabja on the Iranians was not the end of the DIA's inquiry. The DIA's April 19, 1988 cable--a month after Halabja--took note of the fact that the Iraqis were already forcibly resettling "an estimated 1.5 million Kurdish nationals," including "an unknown but reportedly large number of Kurds [who] have been placed in 'concentration camps' located near the Jordanian and Saudi Arabian borders." This in mind, the far more plausible story is that Halabja was part of a concerted effort to settle the Kurdish problem "once and for all," in the words of an October 24, 1988 DIA report--by wiping out the Iraqi Kurdish population.

This brings us to the biggest problem with Pelletiere's argument: If the Kurds were legitimate battlefield casualties, why is it Saddam subsequently felt the need to slaughter nearly 100,000 more of them? Pelletiere writes that any other examples of Saddam's chemical deployment on Kurdish victims "must show that [the dead Kurds] were not pro-Iranian Kurdish guerillas who died fighting alongside Iranian Revolutionary guards." But even if Saddam's goal was to root out traitors, it's inconceivable that all or even most of the residents of the dozens of Kurdish villages Saddam subsequently razed were treacherous peshmerga, or that Saddam believed this to be the case. Certainly the testimony of hundreds of Kurdish refugees, who have provided remarkably consistent accounts of the genocide despite being dispersed from Iran to Turkey, refute this. So does the fact that Saddam kept gassing the Kurds after signing the August 20, 1988 ceasefire with Iran, as Samantha Power points out in her 2002 book, A Problem From Hell. And in unguarded moments, members of Saddam's regime have given lie to this rationale as well. Saddam's cousin Ali Hassan al-Majid, entrusted to carry out the Kurdish slaughter, was caught on tape at a Ba'athist meeting in May 1988 boasting about the Kurds, "I will kill them all with chemical weapons! Who is going to say anything? The international community? *beep* them!" (Human Rights Watch believes the tape is mislabeled, recording a conversation that really took place in 1987--i.e., before Halabja.)

What's perhaps most infuriating, though, is that Pelletiere is now reviving his decade-old hobbyhorse as a cynical argument against war with Iraq. "President Bush himself has cited Iraq's 'gassing its own people,' specifically at Halabja, as a reason to topple Saddam Hussein," Pelletiere writes. Considering the Bush administration's "lack of a smoking gun" in the U.N. weapons inspections, he continues, "perhaps the strongest argument left for taking us to war quickly is that Saddam Hussein has committed human rights atrocities against his own people."

Even if Pelletiere had his facts straight on Halabja, his would be a noxious and dishonest argument against war. To begin with, it is an insult to the principled antiwar critics who recognize and condemn Saddam's record of genocide but who still oppose an invasion of Iraq. One such critic is Maryland Democratic Representative Chris Van Hollen, who as a staffer for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in September 1988 visited Kurdish refugees in Turkey to determine what had happened in Kurdistan. Van Hollen's team documented Iraqi chemical attacks on 49 Kurdish villages, leading him to conclude that "at the end of the Iran-Iraq war, all evidence pointed to the fact that [Saddam] used chemical weapons against the Kurds." More important, though, Van Hollen grasps the distinction that eludes Pelletiere, which is that while Bush invokes the Kurdish genocide in his brief against Saddam, the president does so to establish Saddam's willingness to use weapons of mass destruction, not to argue that, as Pelletiere ludicrously puts it, "we go to war over Halabja." The only one fighting a war over Halabja, it seems, is Stephen Pelletiere. And it's one he'd lost before it had even begun.

Spencer Ackerman , a former associate editor of The New Republic, is a senior correspondent for The American Prospect.

http://www.tnr.com/docprint.mhtml?i=foreign&s=ackerman020403

[contrarian]

Basically Saddam and his two sones Uday and Qsay were Weapons of Mass destruction in theri won right.

They just needed killin'.

It looks like the Israelis may have found them in Syria.

[igotthisguitar]

Report: Russia Evacuates Entire Bush-fuhrer Staff
Iranian news outlet claims nuclear experts packed their bags Friday,
increasing speculation of imminent U.S., Israeli attack
Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet
Monday, October 1, 2007

Iranian and Israeli news outlets are reporting that Russia has evacuated its entire staff of nuclear engineers and experts who were working at the Bushehr nuclear reactor, increasing speculation that the United States is preparing an imminent military attack on Iran.

According to the Khorramshar News Agency, which represents ethnic Arabs in opposition to Ahmadinejad's regime who live near the reactor, the Russians packed their bags and left on Friday.

DEBKAfile offers three different scenarios to explain the sudden withdrawal of the experts.

a) Russian-Iranian negotiations about how work will proceed on Bushehr have again hit a roadblock. This is highly unlikely because Vladimir Putin is set to visit Iran later in the month to sign a set of nuclear accords.

b) The Russians have learned that an Iranian attack against American interests in the Persian Gulf or Israel is imminent. This is extremely doubtful because any preemptive Iranian attack would give Israel and the U.S. the pretext they are desperately searching for to launch a devastating bombing campaign.

c) Moscow or Tehran have been tipped off that an attack on Iran's nuclear facilities is imminent and the Russians are getting their people out of harm's way. This seems to be the most plausible scenario, especially since reports emerged Friday from numerous "unnamed" worldwide intelligence sources that military action is just around the corner.



With every passing week, war rhetoric and maneuvering escalates as an assault on Iran seems all but inevitable.

This past weekend, Former US ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton said there was no alternative to a military option and that plans should be enacted for a "limited strike against their nuclear facilities."

Veteran newsman Seymour Hersh reports that the Bush administration has switched targets from Iran's nuclear facilities to instead target the Revolutionary Guard in a series of planned "surgical" air strikes.

"During a video conference over the summer, Bush allegedly told Ryan Crocker, the US ambassador to Iraq, that he was considering striking Iranian targets across the border and that the British "were on board," reports AFP.

http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/october2007/011007_russia_evacuates.htm