The questions are being answered.

[shereads]

The congressional hearings right now, are revealing that the atrocities at Abu grahib prison were detailed in a report to the administration back in January. "In vivid detail," according to members of the Senate Armed Services committee.

The senator added, "The release of the photographs to the press is not the point. You may be shocked that the photographs were released, but it's not accurate to say that you were shocked last week to learn of the atrocities."

 

[dr_mabeuse]

They’re tryting to blame this whole thing on a handful of soldiers at the prison, as if the 6 or 7 worst people in the entire army were gathered together in one place by some outrageous quirk of fate and just went out of control. The message they want to get out is that these are the ‘bad apples’ that spoil the entire batch, and that once these apples are removed, we’ll all be shiny bright again and our virtue will be restored.

But in truth, it could have been any soldiers. If you put these young, untrained GI's in over their heads in positions of great stress and danger amongst people who hate them, and give them the power and permission to act like tyrants, a lot of them will take it. I think that’s human nature, and there’s nothing uniquely American about it. The lesson here is not that Americans are necessarily cruel and evil, but that we’re not inherently more virtuous than other people either. I think that’s what makes this so hard for so many people to deal with.

But these are exactly the same soldiers who will sacrifice and put themselves in harm’s way to save an innocent Iraqi’s life, and who have shown such courage and restraint and good will in carrying out a dangerous and thankless task. They’re neither all good nor all bad, but like most of us, a mixture of the two. So it’s not that these few were exceptionally evil. It’s the situation they were in that caused this, and I would bet that, put in the same position, there are not many of us who could guarantee that we'd act any better.

---dr.M.

 

[shereads]

I can guarantee that I wouldn't torture someone, with absolute certainty. But I do understand your point.

It's clear that these MPs were put into a situation where there was no clear chain of command - They were unofficially taking orders from civilian "interrogators" (is that on someone's business card?) who, like so many Americans in Iraq right now, are there under contract.

John McCain had one hell of a time today trying to get Rumsfeld to answer these two questions: "What was the chain of command?" and "Who was in charge of the interrogations?"

The few people who have been arrested will be scapegoated for an attitude of arrogance that came from the top - and when it comes down to a court-martial, can you convict someone of abusing prisoners when they were told to "loosen up the prisoners" and to "make sure this one gets the treatment" on the night before his interrogation?

 

[Guest]

Abuse is not torture.

Vote goddamn sonofabitch George fucking Wanker Bush Junior!

 

[shereads]

Abuse is not torture.

There were deaths, Chill.

Deaths, and injuries that were sufficiently severe to warrant hiding the prisoners from the Red Cross inspectors. The rape of an Iraqi woman by an MP, videotaped by other MPs. Rapes of boys by Iraqi guards on our payroll, while the Americans took pictures.

It's unfortunate that there was nudity involved, because people seem to focus on that and think, "fraternity hazing," and tune out the rest.

 

[Guest]

Sher, I believe CV was quoting Bush.

I couldn't believe he said that! Pratt!

Lou

 

[minsue]

I can guarantee that I wouldn't torture someone, with absolute certainty. But I do understand your point.

Really? I couldn't. Not in that situation, that culture (meaning the military, not the middle east), and at that age. I'd love to say I would never, ever do that, but I've said that about other topics in the past only to eat my words. When I take a good hard look at myself and imagine myself (myself as the person I was a few years ago) in their shoes, I can't say with a certainty that I would have been any better. The only thing I can say with any certainty is I wouldn't have been able to live with myself later. Another small tragedy to add to the exponentially growing pile is that those so-called soldiers* will have to look in the mirror one day with the full knowledge of what they did. And the commanders who led them to do it will get off scott-free.




*I say 'so-called' only because, to me, a soldier is honorable and they have proven to be otherwise.

 

[shereads]

You wouldn't torture anyone, Min, at least not because you felt compelled to go along with the crowd or to follow orders. You're an iconoclast. You and I would both have spent our military careers in the brig for insubordination. I suspect that the same is true of Dr. M.

 

[minsue]

You and I would both have spent our military careers in the brig for insubordination. I suspect that the same is true of Dr. M.

LOL

That's basically what I kept telling the damned recruiter that kept calling me when I was in high school after I took the ASVAB tests because you got out of class for a day to do so. He finally stopped after I explained, "Mister, I'm out of shape, lazy, and I have real problems with authority figures."

 

[shereads]

LOL

That's basically what I kept telling the damned recruiter that kept calling me when I was in high school after I took the ASVAB tests because you got out of class for a day to do so. He finally stopped after I explained, "Mister, I'm out of shape, lazy, and I have real problems with authority figures."

'

Nevertheless, the army needs people to occupy its brigs. It's not too late to sign up.

 

[cantdog]

"What would it take to convince you to enlist?"

That's what the fellow asked.

I can't remember feeling prouder than when my daughter came back with:

"A lobotomy."

 

[magichandslee]

Hello.

So much we don't know, here in America, surrounded and protected at almost every turn.

Truth is fed to us in bits and pieces, sound bites. Easy to twist or spin the truth. Portions that lead us one way, when the rest of the facts lead us the other.

Then a shock to our system, our lives, how quickly we forget, let falling bodies fade into a past. I saw a picture that had three living people falling, in the same photo. They leaped to extend their lives, seconds only, the alternative sure death by fire.

Human nature.

Shocking beyond belief. Terror. Intended to be.

Back to life.

We do not fight a Country, that would be easy. We fight a point of view. But some Country will become the field of battle. In truth, it is best it is not here.

As a Doctor, I have treated just a few females who managed to escape (is this the right word?) to this Nation from Taliban and those who consider women to be less than cattle. I see Genitalia damaged beyond any repair.

The part I do not understand and accept is these women really do consider this as normal and expected, my suggestions and advice go unheeded.

I see comments both pro and con regards war, no one would be pro regards war in my opinion. But when we are faced with war, not with a Nation, but with a point of view, then the only option is to fight.

I sometimes cry at night for our best, gone for nothing but that insane point of view. I would give everything I know to hold those men, give them pleasure, life, a chance at a future.

Some of you, a tiny few, follow what I write. My husband told me that life and politics really do boil down to the same as any pack of Wolves. This is a society that really does closely follow mankind, perhaps even leads, as an example.

They fight, nearly always with no real harm, the competition is over the spoils. The biggest and meanest gets the best, and leads. The rest get scraps. Most often it is the Alpha male, but sometimes...A female leads...It is the way of the world.

Logic says all would share equally, but this would dictate that all would contribute equally, and a leader would be kind and fair.

There are no kind and fair leaders, and no one contributes equally.

So choose.

Do we wish as a Nation to be the biggest and meanest wolf in the pack? I choose to go with that thought. I do not wish to be the lessor. Is that fair? It is not. But I see the alternative.

Perhaps you do not. This is fine.


Scraps for you.


I would hope my analogy is understandable. I have to choose who to vote for this year. I dislike both.

I will decide this way: Who are our greatest enemies? Who would THEY vote for? I will vote for the other guy, then say a prayer.

Lee

 

[Somme]

Q Wire: The Red Herrings Of 9/11
Friday, 7 May 2004, 12:31 pm
Opinion: www.UnansweredQuestions.org
Distribution via the Unanswered Questions Wire
Sign up for the wire at:
http://www.unansweredquestions.org/headlines.php
Unanswered Questions : Thinking for ourselves.

The Red Herrings Of 9/11
Indict The 19 Suspected Hijackers Now!

Red Herring: Any diversion intended to distract attention from the main issue. Digression, diversion, deviation, deflection.
May 5 -- Venice, Florida
by Daniel Hopsicker
A MadCowMorningNews World Exclusive!
From: http://www.madcowprod.com


IMAGE: Welcome To Terrorland - A NEW BOOK BY DANIEL HOPSICKER
PRE-ORDER YOUR SIGNED COPY TODAY, RECEIVE IT BEFORE THE OFFICIAL LAUNCH
http://www.madcowprod.com/books.html

***************

PLUS: The MadCowMorningNews has begun airing, on Conspiracy Tonight, Episode 2 – Rudi Dekker Walks! FBI Shuts Down Boston Terror Investigation. What Really Happened At Tora Bora.

***************

“A Smoke Screen. A Wild Goose Chase.”

What the search for the truth about September 11 desperately needs right now is a zealous prosecutor somewhere in America—someone like New Orleans D.A. Jim Garrison, who appears to have been right on the money—willing to investigate and indict the 19 suspected hijackers as well as their still-living associates to compel federal investigative agencies like the FBI to present at trial the evidence they have been sitting on.

Instead, what we got was the recent 9/11 Conference in San Francisco, where you could hear all about the Bush’s links to the Nazis, learn everything you ever need to know about “Peak Oil,” and find out that the hijacked planes were operated—Look Ma! No hands!—by Remote Control.

The “No Arabs aboard” attack was fail-safed and backstopped with missiles hidden in the undercarriage of the airliners, explosive charges secreted inside WTC7, and a voodoo hex placed on the WTC by the Spiders from Mars.

If it weren’t so serious it would have been funny.

The 9/11 attack is an open homicide investigation involving the murders of 3000 people. We need to demand that it be treated as such.

It’s not an excuse to hold a UFO Conference with an entrée for every conspiratorial taste—like the 9/11 Conference in San Francisco—where attendees can check out everything from plaster molds of alien footprints to literature written by alien abductees to presentations on "The Reptilian Perspective: Serpents of Wisdom or Snakes in the Grass.”

News stories that appeared after the San Francisco event quoted someone identified as “activist” Nicholas Levis saying the event was all about "making the connections that the mainstream media refuse to make" and exposing "the complicity of the United States Government" in the attacks.

This came as news to some of us. We were there to present what we had learned during a two-year long investigation into the key members of the terrorist conspiracy activities in Florida, and their associates during their year in the U.S.

Had Levis unearthed some startling new documents? Found witnesses who could testify to seeing Mohamed Atta and Ollie North talking together in low voices under a street lamp on a drizzly night in D.C.?

We thought you had to actually—you know— conduct an investigation before releasing the results.

But Levis showed that all you need to hold forth as an expert on 9/11 is a loud voice, an indignant attitude towards the current occupant of the White House, and an inexplicably cozy relationship with the conference’s sponsors.

Petrochemical Bullpucky

In San Francisco, you could be excused for feeling you’d woken up in the middle of a conference of geologists. Also quoted in press accounts about the event was former Los Angeles police officer Michael Ruppert, stating the administration "motivated America into a war to control the last of the world's oil reserves."

Earth to Mike: It wasn't “Peak Oil” slitting passenger’s throats on those hijacked airliners.

“Peak Oil” bears the same relationship to the 9/11 investigation that the Iraq War bears to the World Trade Center Attack.

None whatsoever.

Now, Ruppert is a friend of ours. And we fervently wish he’d start acting more like the trained detective he is, and less like an academic gasbag. The 9/11 investigation needs a good homicide detective. It needs a good dozen of them.

9/11 & William Butler Yeats

Probably the most egregious of the red herrings being peddled currently come from “The Remote Controllers.” If you believe in “hijackers having done the dastardly deed,” you know you’re “part of the sinister cover-up extravaganza,” according to these people.

“The unknown men who played the roles of the so-called Arab terrorist hijackers were really recruited by either American and/or Israeli intelligence services in a scheme set up as a diversion to inflame dumb Westerners against the Islamic world,” writes Remote Controller John Kaminski.

“The purpose was to divert the world's attention from the Israeli genocide and dispossession of the Palestinians by blaming the attacks on Muslims.”

How does that line of poetry go? “The worst are filled with a terrible certainty?”

“The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.”

Right. William Butler Yeats.

In defense of his argument that there were no Arab terrorists on 9/11, Kaminski has the bad taste to quote a man, John O'Neill, former FBI counter-terrorism chief, who lost his life precisely because of his pursuit of Arab terrorists.

O’Neill quit the FBI in protest at being prevented from following terror leads to Saudis he suspected were conspiring with Osama bin Laden.

He then lost his life on the first day of his new job as security chief at the World Trade Center.

If there were no Arab terrorists John O’Neill would still be alive.

Kaminski does say one useful thing however... “In order for the people of the world to be convinced that Islamic hijackers were responsible for terrible tragedy of 9/11, we need to see some evidence. Not hearsay, innuendo, aspersion or promises of evidence, but real evidence.”

He’s right. We need to see the evidence. The same evidence that would be the primary focus of any ordinary homicide investigation, proving the identities of the perps and their associates.

"Dispossession of the Palestinians" was only half the objective, Kaminski states. "The other half was to enable our despicable cabal of neocon gangbangers to fleece the American public with an endless array of no-bid contracts to enrich the conscienceless billionaires who are really driving the war machine.”

“Neocon gangbangers” is good. Now all Kaminski needs is proof.

That's usually the hard part.

George Soros & Mohamed Atta

There is a whole industry springing up devoted to peddling such red herrings. White noise and disinformation about 9/11 are on the upswing. Attendees in San Francisco viewed, for example, a documentary called "Aftermath - Unanswered Questions from 9/11" made by the “Guerrilla News Network.”

The documentary’s correspondents—who in truth probably wouldn’t know a ‘guerrilla’ if one strolled past them at The Beverly Center—were breathlessly interviewing, of all people, billionaire George Soros.

Which one of the terrorists did George Soros hang out with?

“ Conspiracy Buffs Gather,” read the next day’s headline about the San Francisco event.

“ Theorists share their views of 9/11,” read another.

Exactly. Another might have been: “ A Good Way to Get Discredited: Hanging Out with the Terminally Clueless.”

The Government says, citing the woefully insufficient evidence it has released, that the “perps” were Arab terrorists—15 of them Saudis.

Two groups prefer that this inconvenient piece of information not be dwelled on overmuch: the politically-correct 9/11 “experts” who think using the word “Arab” in the same sentence as the word “hijacker” amounts to racial profiling.

They say, basically, that “we attacked ourselves.”

Now you wouldn’t think this group had much in common with Bush supporters, would you?

But politics makes strange bedfellows, and the second group that doesn’t want us to dwell on the Saudi connections to 9/11 are the Bushies themselves.

It is a nice irony.

Bush, we all remember, classified 28 pages of the Intelligence Committee Report that would have told the American people about the foreign government sponsorship of the terrorists. "It would reveal sources and methods," said Bush.

Hell, he had to say something .

He couldn’t say that the pages point to specific foreign sponsorship of the September 11th attacks, and that he would prefer not to see it revealed because some people he knew in the government had ongoing and very dirty business with Osama bin Laden right up to September 11 that some other people he knew in the government have been keeping hidden from view.

At least so far.

"Throwing the dawgs off the scent"

You learn something new every day: the term ‘red herring’ derives, we discovered, from the fact that prison escapees were known to smear themselves with a herring, which turns brown or red when it spoils, in order to throw dogs off their track.

To use a red herring in an argument is to try to throw the audience off the right track onto something not relevant to the issue at hand. Beware scenarios that will never result in fingering anyone culpable in 9/11.

The “Remote Controllers” scenario results in no one getting indicted, for example.

And it will prove next to impossible to find and take "Peak Oil" into custody.

Here's something you can take to the bank: “All our friends are not our friends” .

Take the Reverend Al Sharpton. Turns out, his entire Democratic Presidential bid was financed and run by Republican dirty trickster Roger Stone, the longtime GOP consultant who fomented the mob that shut down the Miami-Dade recount in 2000.

"I helped Sharpton because I like him," says Stone, a veteran of the Nixon, Reagan, Dole, and Bush campaigns, who steered $288,000 to Sharpton's National Action Network last year.”

So what happened when the Village Voice made that known? Did the Reverend Al get thrown out of the Democratic Party on his fat greasy ass?

He did not.

Just last week Democratic candidate John Kerry told BET Network Sharpton would be welcome to give a speech to the Democratic Convention.

Democrats are people who have a hard time calling a spade a spade.

Republicans are even worse.

And the big dirty secret in American political life today is that they are just inches away from skating past the American people the troubling fact that there has not even been a 9/11 investigation yet.

Yet there it is. There has not.

“Saudis in Florida”

Although they had an entire continent to roam about, the core of the terrorist cadre all used Florida as their beachhead and base. 14 of the 19 hijackers voted with their feet and hung out in Florida.

The terrorists lived in Florida, drank in Florida, stuffed $20 bills down stripper’s g-strings in Florida, all up and down the state. And they learned to fly in Florida, mostly in the tiny town of Venice. Mohamed Atta and his sidekick Marwan Al-Shehhi had been flight students there. Siad Al Jarrah, supposedly at the controls of the plane that went down in western Pennsylvania.

And even more key terrorists with connections to Venice, Florida. Ramzi bin al-Shibh, who would have been the 20th hijacker, was on his way to Venice until he was denied a visa. Ramzi’s replacement as the so-called 20th hijacker, Zacarias Moussaoui, was also in Venice.

The state of Florida is one big Sept. 11 crime scene.

And, since 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudi, the story of the terrorist conspiracy is, perforce, a story about “ Saudis in Florida.”

There has been no official explanation for why terrorists beat a path from the Baltic Sea to the Florida Gulf.

Any 9/11“expert” whose revelations don’t frequently use the word “Saudi” in conjunction with the word “Florida” is peddling a red herring. Probably from the back of a purple Cadillac.

The effort to learn the truth about what happened on September 11 will not succeed unless and until someone steps forward with the power to compel the FBI and other federal agencies to reveal the evidence they’ve accumulated and so-far completely withheld from the American people.

“Theorists” aren’t going to solve the mystery of how 3000 people came to die. But a half-dozen dedicated homicide detectives, working for a zealous prosecuting attorney, might.

There are a number of already-known individuals who are currently indictable for being engaged in an ongoing criminal conspiracy of their own while simultaneously assisting the terrorist’s conspiracy.

Legally, they are liable for the terrorists actions as well as their own.

Pursuing cases against one of these individuals—Wally Hilliard, say, or Rudi Dekkers—might actually lead somewhere.

"The horror."

They’re holding another International 9/11 Conference later this month in Toronto.

We won’t be going.

This one features Dr. John Gray, author of Men Are From Mars, Women are from Venus, one of the world's bestselling authors.

Perhaps Dr Gray has discovered extraterrestrial origins to the 9/11 attack.

***************

- Daniel Hopsicker is the author of Barry & 'the boys: The CIA, the Mob and America's Secret History. About the author. - Email the author.



IMAGE: Welcome To Terrorland - A NEW BOOK BY DANIEL HOPSICKER
PRE-ORDER YOUR SIGNED COPY TODAY, RECEIVE IT BEFORE THE OFFICIAL LAUNCH
http://www.madcowprod.com/books.html

***************

STANDARD DISCLAIMER FROM UQ.ORG: UnansweredQuestions.org does not necessarily endorse the views expressed in the above article. We present this in the interests of research -for the relevant information we believe it contains. We hope that the reader finds in it inspiration to work with us further, in helping to build bridges between our various investigative communities, towards a greater, common understanding of the unanswered questions which now lie before us.

 

[oggbashan]

The difference between democracies and other systems of government is that democracies do not usually use torture and murder as a means of policy.

When it happens, those responsible are punished, not promoted.

Og

 

[Guest]

Over 100 female American solders (in Iraq) had made alligation against Amercan solders sexually assulting them.

That's the standard.

Have a nice day.

 

[shereads]

I will decide this way: Who are our greatest enemies? Who would THEY vote for? I will vote for the other guy, then say a prayer.

You might wish to consider this: Who will make us more enemies than we already have?

 

[cantdog]

Who are these people?

Lee? come on, tell me tell me!

Who are the greatest enemies you speak of who would vote if they only could for whoever they would vote for, if I am getting you so far?

The greatest enemies. Wow! I ache to know who those ones are. Do spill it!

I am all agog.

 

[magichandslee]

Hello.

To me, it is easy. It is those who would fly civilian airplanes into buildings. It is those who would strap bombs to themselves to kill anyone they can reach.
It is those who would deliberately harm children to make a political point.

Within our own borders, it is those who would challenge our freedoms and our way of life, without thought to the consequence should they succeed.

It is those who believe the world will be perfect when all share equally.
It is those who would watch their neighbor beat his children and claim it not to be their concern, or allow a mad leader of a Nation to kill any who oppose. We already see today some of the results of inaction.

There isn't enough space, the list is very long.
The choice is easy for me. The enemy is a point of view. That point of view sounds wonderful, but it is a fantasy.


Lee

 

[shereads]

The choice is easy for me. The enemy is a point of view. That point of view sounds wonderful, but it is a fantasy.

The idea that you can win a war against a point of view is a fantasy. You can exterminate every man, woman and child who holds a point of view, I suppose, but only if you can identify them, gather them together in one place and get them to stay there while you plan their deaths.

Some fantasy.

What's real is that we've been mislead into a war against people who had nothing to do with those planes that flew into those buildings. What's also real is that our personal freedom is being destroyed from within, by people who either pretend or are deluded enough to believe that they can protect our freedom by taking some of it away. The world has been dragged to the brink of an abyss by people serving their own narrow interests. They used our emotions about 9/ll to pursue their own need for power.

If you want to see how they think, read it in their own words.

Richard Clark was astonished to hear the topic of Iraq raised in the days immediately following 9/ll, when he had assumed the focus would be on al Queda.

"Al Queda is in Afghanistan, not Iraq" he said to Rumsfeld.

Rumsfeld replied, "There aren't enough good targets in Afghanistan. There are a lot in Iraq."

If that's what you call fighting our enemies, then yes, its' an easy choice. I call it unconscionable. A power-grab by amoral men. It protects us from nothing, and in fact it has exposed us and our dwindling number of allies to more hatred than we've ever faced before.

 

[magichandslee]

Hello.

Yes, you make very good, well thought out points. I enjoy an honest discussion. Some simply degenerate into derision, insults, or name-calling. The net effect of that is nothing, a good discussion can change minds and improve the world.

My fear is that you may be correct, we cannot win a war against a point of view.

The fact remains that we must, or have it instilled on us. Otherwise, as I say, our children will be maimed and we shall recieve scraps. As selfish as it sounds, I like living in a nation that allows me to own a $55,000 sports car, for driving just for fun.

So the war is fought in places, against people. Some wars are fought by armies, some are fought in courtrooms, some are fought with fists over fencelines.

Some are fought with words.

I do not think this Nation made any new enemies. I think we have exposed some that always were. United nations officials, leaders of nations, accepting bribes?

Perhaps it has always been this way, I confess I do not know. I do know this Nation has spent more money and more effort on aid and good for less fortunates around the world than the combined efforts of all other nations. I have many friends that have served, I have been thinking of offering myself. The application to serve with Medical teams in Afganistan sits on my desk, I need only sign and mail it. I have picked it up no less than a dozen times, but my mind is still not completely in my control. I am well aware of that weakness, so I wish to be sure I can harm no one first.

What I do know is I have seen the results, done to women, of what that Point of View I fear has done. The thought, instilled from birth, leads to simple acceptence by these women.

My efforts to help them are often rebuffed. I treat them and see horror, any chance of normalcy or pleasure as God intended gone for all time.

They then do this to their Daughters, because of that point of view. Women are like cattle in that point of view, something to be controlled and used.

I confess to liking men, no man would do this to their Daughter unless the point of view is from fanaticism. I do not see this now where I work, it is almost a relief in my crazy life.

That is my personal war, my personal evil. I cannot affect the politics of this world, I can only send my vote. I vote for who I believe will be most likely to stand up and fight. Yes, on other soil, not ours! Does this mean some may be wronged? Yes. But then so was Jesus on the cross.

So I say that I pick the greatest enemies of this nation, to me, those enemies are fanatics. They desire to kill and maim all who do not agree. Yes, it is a point of view, not a Nation. We may well not be able to win the war, perhaps in time we can control it. The fact that we fight in any given nation only means we are not yet fighting here in our own streets.

That is coming. Would I do things differently? The answer is yes, I think I might well have been less kind than this nation has been.

Lee

 

[cantdog]

Shereads?

You can't do therapy over a BBS.

He would be less kind than the people who pushed the button on the Shock and Awe attack which burned children to make a political point.

Yet those who burn children to make a political point are the worst enemies.

His list is very long and seems to include himself along with everyone else except the Buddha. If you opt out of the dog-eat-dog nationalist idea, well scraps for you. If you buy into it, he would have you be less kind than what we already have.

Female genital mutilation, whether or not it's a point of view, is not voting. I don't know who it would vote for, and neither does he.

This is lunacy. Something is very very wrong here. Nothing connects, nothing parses. Ignoring the contradictions, even, he seems to have it in for fanatics, and yet that Christ comment, well, there's another contradiction.

A fanatic is someone who wants things to be done the way the Almighty would have done them , if only the Almighty had been conversant with the facts.

We have one running for president.

 

[dr_mabeuse]

It's pretty indisputable that the Bush administration has done more to anger and alienate the Arab world against the US than anyone or anything in the entire history of the United States.

And it's fairly indisputable that the June 30th deadline for turning over sovereignty of Iraq tro Iraqi's is based on a political decisison to help Bush in his re-election. So much for democaracy in Iraq.

And it's my strong suspicion that the decision to go to war in Iraq was about 25-50% politically motivated with Bush's re-election in mind: an easy victory with minimal American losses, a big victory parade in the fall of 2004. Who can run against press like that? It would have been just perfect.

Arrogance, ignorance, and incompetence.

---dr.M.

 

[rgraham666]

We have met the enemy. And he is us.

Walt Kelly

As has always been the case, the biggest and most important battle is against ourselves.

The battle is against the part of us that has no remorse, no pity and most important of all, no understanding of the other. When you have no understanding of other people, all things become possible.

The people who flew the planes into the WTC and the Shrubbies are of a piece to me. They've lost the battle. They probably didn't even fight it but instead opened their gates wide and invited the enemy in for a life long party.

 

[shereads]

The battle is against the part of us that has no remorse, no pity and most important of all, no understanding of the other. When you have no understanding of other people, all things become possible.

The people who flew the planes into the WTC and the Shrubbies are of a piece to me. They've lost the battle. They probably didn't even fight it but instead opened their gates wide and invited the enemy in for a life long party.

Amen.

 

[shereads]

The fact remains that we must, or have it instilled on us. Otherwise, as I say, our children will be maimed and we shall recieve scraps. As selfish as it sounds, I like living in a nation that allows me to own a $55,000 sports car, for driving just for fun.

I do not think this Nation made any new enemies.

I think you can't be serious.

1) The people you think are fighting our enemies allowed Osama bin Laden's trail to grow cold so they could focus all of our resources on Iraq - and take attention away from the Saudis who are their business associates, and who may inadvertently have funded Al Queda.

2) Iraq, despite the horrors inflicted in its prisons - then and now - was one of the few Islamic nations did not impose Islamic law on women. The point of view represented by the Taliban was helped, not hindered, when we eliminated the civil structure of Iraq.

3) Iraq was no longer a threat to us. Iraq had been a "contained threat" for a decade; the active threat was Al Queda, a criminal organization whose homes were in Florida and Germany and Afghanistan, not Iraq.

4) A criminal investigation with the cooperation of the countries that used to trust us, could have eliminated the leaders of Al Queda and rendered the organization impotent, if a fraction of the resources focused on Iraq had been used to solve the 3,000 murders on 9/ll.

5) The reason that didn't happen is this war. Your president, "the one who will fight" as you put it, wanted to fight Saddam Hussein for his own reasons, and for the benefit of the corporations who were given rebuilding contracts. It's been disproven time and again that he had any reason to believe that Iraq was a threat to the U.S.

6) Saddam Hussein was the enemy of Islamic religious extremists. Not because he was morally superior, but because they represented the same threat to his way of life that they do to ours.

7) New enemies: political moderates throughout the Islamic world, particularly in Pakistan, supported the U.S. when we invaded Afghanistan.

They began to fear us when we expanded the invasion into Iraq, and if you think about it you can understand why: a pre-emptive invasion of a country that was said to possess weapons of mass destruction. Pakistan has nuclear weapons. Why shouldn't they think they might be next, just because they weren't currently a target? Every moderate country in the middle east is full of people who think they'll be next, and who are demanding that their leaders end their relationships with the U.S.

Invading Iraq, and the revelation that it was based on lies and misinformation, has to have made us appear as unworthy of trust as we are powerful. Fear and distrust don't make people behave as you wish they would. It pushes them into the ranks of the few who used to cheer whenever something happened to weaken us.

We're in the wrong here, Lee. "Staying the course" when the course has proven disastrous can't benefit anyone. We have to correct the course. Re-electing a man whose mind is capable of so little subtlety that he sees no middle ground between "stay the course" and "cut and run" is an invitation to armageddon. If you think you'll be safe in the U.S. when we collapse the rest of the world, good luck to you.

Scraps for everybody.