Unjust war

[DulceDecorum]

A few months ago, on the old DU 9:11 Forum, there was a thread about the impending war in Iraq.

This extract is taken from the first post.

"By any rational, objective standard, we have done everything we possibly can to settle this war peacefully. To say that we are in a rush to war is an obscene fabrication, a statement of wilful amnesia, a simple denial of history. To retreat now, to concede that this monster has a better case than we do in the final prosecution of this war is a travesty of any concept of just war theory. In fact, it is to engage in positive pro-active injustice. Yes, we must do all we possibly can to keep casualties in this war as low as possible. We must do more than we can imagine to help rebuild that poor country and bring hope and democracy to its terrorized and brutalized people. And those objectives are absolutely essential for the justice of this war to be maintained. But equally, we would fail in any conception of Christian duty if we failed to act after all this time, if we let evil succeed, if we lost confidence in our capacity to do what is morally right. I'm tired of our moral defensiveness in this matter. It bears saying once and many times again: those advocating war as the last resort after twelve years of broken promises, butchery, evasion and threat on the part of Saddam are morally in the right. And, however good their intentions, the thousands of protestors who will throng the streets of Western cities this weekend are the purveyors and celebrants of a rank and palpable injustice."
http://www.democraticunderground.com/cgi-bin/duforum/duboard.cgi?az=show_thread&om=5575&forum=DCForumID43&archive=yes

There were many and several on this forum who strongly advocated for the bombing and occupation of Iraq.
Where are they now that we are all shocked and awed?

We know where the soldiers are:

Washington - Chronically short of musicians for military funerals, the Pentagon has approved the use of a push-button bugle that plays "Taps" by itself as the operator holds it to his lips.
Only about 500 buglers are on active duty on any one day, but about 1,800 people with military service die across the country each day and are eligible for honors ceremonies, Air Force Lt. Col. Cynthia Colin, a Pentagon spokeswoman, said yesterday.
So the Defense Department worked with private industry to invent the "ceremonial bugle," which has a small digital device inserted into its bell to play the music.
A member of the honor guard at a funeral simply presses a button on the device. A five-second delay gives the guard time to raise the instrument to his or her lips as if to play it.
http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/nation/ny-ustaps05q3441573sep05,0,7964482.story?coll=ny-nationalnews-print

But where are the commanding officers?

[DulceDecorum]

1. Toasted

http://americanhistory.si.edu/september11/collection/record.asp?ID=140

WASHINGTON – American soldiers now being held as prisoners of war in Iraq had nothing to do with the Bush administration's decision many months ago not to grant prisoner-of-war status to Taliban fighters detained by the US in its war on terrorism. But American POWs may face a tougher time in Iraqi captivity because of it.
Military and international law experts say that administration waffling over whether the Geneva Conventions should apply to terror suspects held by the US has somewhat eroded America's moral authority to demand full Iraqi compliance with international law now that US troops are the captives.
"What everyone is learning in Iraq is what many of us said in Afghanistan: The Geneva Conventions are profoundly important to American servicemen and women," says Tom Malinowski of Human Rights Watch. "Respecting the conventions preserves our ability to complain when the rights of Americans are abused."
http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/0326/p02s01-woiq.html

The ambassador noted that the international conventions on the conduct
of war and treatment of noncombatants recognize that at times war will
be necessary or legal. "But it does not mean that there are no limits
or that anything goes," he stressed.
The conventions, he said, say, "when you wage war there are rules that
must be followed. And if you exceed those rules, you are committing
war crimes and are subject to prosecution."
The 1907 Hague Convention on the Laws of War and the four 1949 Geneva
Conventions and their later protocols on the treatment of prisoners of
war (POWs), the wounded, and civilians are the basic international
agreements covering armed conflicts.
These conventions do not deal with the rights and wrongs of a
conflict, Prosper noted, but "state there is a right way to wage war.
There are rules that must be followed and respected to preserve
legitimacy of the actions."
These documents, he said, spell out who are the belligerents, who are
the civilians that should be protected, and how POWs are to be
treated.
Both the United States and Iraq are signatories to the Geneva
Conventions, he said, and the Hague Convention is a "customary law"
which all nations are bound to follow.
http://usinfo.state.gov/topical/rights/law/03040303.htm

The Red Cross accused the United States yesterday of violating the Geneva Conventions by releasing photographs of Taliban and al-Qa'ida fighters held at Guantanamo Bay.
The organization, whose inspection teams are interviewing detainees at the US base in Cuba, said the conventions forbade exposing prisoners of war to "public curiosity". The Red Cross believes the men ­ shown shackled and wearing masks and goggles in photographs released at the weekend ­ should be treated as prisoners of war rather than "unlawful combatants", as the US calls them. Darcey Christen, a spokesman for the International Committee of the Red Cross, said the US had contravened the third Geneva Convention by releasing the photographs.
The European Union also waded into the dispute when its security chief, Javier Solana, also said the detainees should be treated as prisoners of war. He said on Spanish television: "For us, treatment of people like this should be as laid down by the international conventions which of course, for Europeans, are part of international law."
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines02/0123-03.htm

The Geneva Conventions are outdated and need to be rewritten to deal with the threat of international terrorism, the United States ambassador for war crimes said yesterday.
The forthright views of Pierre-Richard Prosper, who was personally appointed by President Bush, will fuel the controversy over the treatment of Afghan detainees by America. His remarks, in an interview with The Independent, represent the first time a senior figure in the Bush administration has spoken so unambiguously about an overhaul of the conventions. They reflect Washington's exasperation at criticism by Western allies and international organisations of its treatment ofprisoners at Camp X-Ray on Cuba.
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/story.jsp?story=139004
http://www.defenselink.mil/news/Apr2003/t04072003_t407genv.html

[Abe Linkman]

2. Budding war profiteers

"Where are they now that we are all shocked and awed?"

Waiting til the right moment to sell their shares; but still upset that they missed out on those fabulous airline stock deals just prior to 9/11. btw - think the "it was just a case of negligence in the intelligence agencies" Official Story Conspiracy Defenders would argue that those mysterious pre-9/11 stock deals were also nothing more than the result of negligence?

[DulceDecorum]

3. PAGING the INC, call for PR Ahmed Chalabi

"The intelligence isn't reliable at all," said Vincent Cannistraro, a former senior CIA official and counterterrorism expert. "Much of it is propaganda. Much of it is telling the Defense Department what they want to hear. And much of it is used to support Chalabi's own presidential ambitions. They make no distinction between intelligence and propaganda, using alleged informants and defectors who say what Chalabi wants them to say, cooked information that goes right into presidential and vice-presidential speeches."
http://www.disinfopedia.org/wiki.phtml?title=Iraqi_National_Congress

Mr. Chalabi,
seeing as how you control the State of the Union Address, sir, and knowing that you are extremely talented in convincing Congress to submit manpower and funds into your care, sir, would it be too much to ask you to grant that welder over there, the authority to perform a much needed masectomy on several of the statues here in the United States?
Or, sir, if you will but say the word, the crew that toppled the statue of Saddam is willing to re-enact that glorious day using the effigies located around Washington DC. Attorney General John Ashcroft is awaiting your final word on this issue sir.
We project a massive savings on blue velvet expenditures over the next two fiscal years. The blue velvet can be recycled into lining the trunks of several vehicles to ensure your own personal comfort should you again feel the need to travel to neighbouring countries incognito.
In addition to which, sir, it will give the people something to discuss while we continue our work of rescuing American funds from the grasp of the American taxpayer.

[DulceDecorum]

10. And thugs

The School of the Americas (SOA), in 2001 renamed the “Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation,” is a combat training school for Latin American soldiers, located at Fort Benning, Georgia.

Initially established in Panama in 1946, it was kicked out of that country in 1984 under the terms of the Panama Canal Treaty. Former Panamanian President, Jorge Illueca, stated that the School of the Americas was the “biggest base for destabilization in Latin America.” The SOA, frequently dubbed the “School of Assassins,” has left a trail of blood and suffering in every country where its graduates have returned.
http://www.soaw.org/new/type.php?type=8

At least 96 people were detained by Fort Benning authorities when they crossed over the main gate and entered the base. The organization said about 100 people have served prison sentences for trespassing since its protests began.
Though U.S. defense officials formally closed the School of the Americas in 2000 and reopened it a year later under a new name, critics say the school is a tarnished symbol of violence.
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines02/1117-06.htm

Today I have a black eye and the soreness that comes with severe muscle strain. Mostly, I’m burdened with a serious question, "What are these soldiers training for?" The soldiers conducting that search must have been ordered not to tolerate the slightest dissent. They were practicing intimidation tactics far beyond what would be needed to control an avowedly nonviolent group of protesters who had never, in thirteen years of previous actions, caused any disruption during the process of arrest. Bewildered, most of us in the "tank" inside the Muskogee County jail acknowledged that during the rough processing we wondered, "What country do we live in?" We now live in a country where Homeland Security funds pay for exercises which train military and police units to control and intimidate crowds, detainees, and arrestees using threat and force.
http://www.antiwar.com/orig/kelly6.html

Don't let your sons grow up to be soldiers.
Or "officers" who argue for a war
they flee
after giving assurances on their "honour"
that there is nothing shocking or awful
about the manner in which they conduct themselves.

Kicking up dust amid the explosions and commotion, an MH-6 “Little Bird” helicopter fired blanks into the crowd that shook sticks at Bush and chanted “Go home USA! Go home USA!”
As Bush watched, special forces went room-to-room in an adjacent building using explosives and machine guns to root out rioters where they hid. Army Rangers kept watch from nearby rooftops, and a refueling plane passed overhead, its gas lines tethered to two helicopters.
After about 15 minutes, Bush radioed to the commander that the battle was over. Bodies and shells littered the ground as silence fell over “Pineland.” “That was exciting. I think they’re well trained,” Bush said. “I’m glad they’re on our side.”
http://www.agrnews.org/issues/167/localnews.html

[DulceDecorum]

4. The Pentagon and the American Soldier

WASHINGTON - After a grenade exploded inside his Humvee in Iraq, Marine Staff Sgt. Bill Murwin was treated at a military hospital in Germany and spent four weeks at the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Md. Part of his left foot was amputated.
His medical care was free, but the government billed him $243 for the food.
Then, just three days after he received his first bill for the hospital food in Germany, he got a stern letter saying the bill was overdue. It warned that his account would be referred to a collection agency.
http://www.sptimes.com/2003/09/11/Worldandnation/Wounded_billed_for_ho.shtml

You talk o’ better food for us, an’ schools, an’ fires, an’ all:
We’ll wait for extry rations if you treat us rational.
Don’t mess about the cook-room slops, but prove it to our face
The Widow’s Uniform is not the soldier-man’s disgrace.

For it’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy that, an’ “Chuck him out, the brute!”
But it’s “Saviour of ’is country” when the guns begin to shoot;
An’ it’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy that, an’ anything you please;
An’ Tommy ain’t a bloomin’ fool—you bet that Tommy sees!
http://www.web-books.com/Classics/Poetry/Anthology/Kipling/Tommy.htm

I am sending this letter as a very concerned and angry family member of a Serviceman stationed in Kuwait. It was recently brought to our attention that our Troops serving in Iraq do not have enough "Small Arms Protection I" SAPI plates. These plates fit into the soldiers individual body armor vests and protect them from the Iraqi's AK-47's. After hearing this extremely disturbing information, I asked my son-in-law to confirm this fact. His answer to me was "yes, this is true, they are very expensive and not all soldiers are giving the plates. He himself was not given one when he was in Iraq."
THIS IS UNACCEPTABLE. How can we justify sending men and women into War without the proper equipment? How does our Administration sleep at night knowing the conditions we are putting are Serviceman and Women into? This needs to be public information and resolved immediately.
87 Billion dollars for what? It better include the necessary equipment needed to protect our sons and daughters.
If a factory in the US were not given their employees the proper equipment to do their jobs, it would be closed down. There are government agencies to protect American workers what about protecting our Military!


There are Officers whose Ego's overshadow common sense. In my last talk with my son he related to me one of the most ridiculous orders I have ever heard. His unit has been in the same place since May. They conduct security for a Palace, Mayor's compound, and (They are grunts remember) train Iraqui police officers). Part of their duties include conducting TCPs (tactical clearing patrols). Here's where the problems start. They patrol the same roads at the same time of day using the same formation and set up OP's in the same location every day. Last week a patrol took fire (same place as always) they were unable to engage the enemy because they forgot thier firepower, (no MG or Thumper). The Company Commander got pissed. Now he has ordered his troops to check suspicious items by KICKING them and to search rockpiles by hand for what the new Army calls IEDs (Indigeneous Explosive Devices) (I think we called them booby traps).
I guess the New Army has gotten so High Tech it has mispalced it's Basic Bomb Detectors, the K-9. Just so you'll know I told my son it was an illegal order, you can't be ordered to commit suicide. I told him to take the CourtMartial, I'll pay for the Lawyer.
http://www.sftt.org/cgi-bin/csNews/csNews.cgi?database=Special%20Reports%20Hack.db&command=viewone&op=t&id=35&rnd=275.8762131494365
http://www.hackworth.com/

[DulceDecorum]

5. DEMS VS. REPUBS

The Democrats who are latching onto this aren’t doing so, for the most part, out of somber regard for the law. They are in near hysteria because they finally see a way to make stick a line of attack they have been using for months: that Bush, far from being a decent Texas straight-shooter, is really a genially deceitful liar — a man who cannot be trusted. Indeed, as Bush’s poll numbers have fallen for handling the economy and the war on terrorism, his re-election plan calls for selling him as a man of faith, virtue and solid leadership.
But you don’t always get to choose your own test of leadership. The current scandal has turned into one. Bush didn’t expect it, but he now has to survive it.
http://www.msnbc.com/news/974912.asp?cp1=1

I t's one thing to be small in politics, another to be mean. But it's a whole 'nother thing entirely to be as petty and nasty as Bush administration officials are accused of being in seeking revenge against former U.S. ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV.
http://www.oregonlive.com/news/oregonian/steve_duin/index.ssf?/base/news/1064923563178481.xml

[DulceDecorum]

6. The guilt of killing

Originally published October 26, 2003

FORT CAMPBELL, Ky. - During the Iraq war, Pfc. Tyrone Roper became a combat star. By early April his Kevlar helmet bore three hand-drawn feathers, one for each of his confirmed kills. His buddies in the 101st Airborne Division praised his machine-gun prowess. He was the one they most wanted by their side in a firefight.
These days, Roper's battles are raging mostly inside his head. He was evacuated to the Army base here this summer after being found psychologically unfit. He says he is still racked by bad dreams, acute loneliness and punishing guilt over the killings he carried out for the U.S. Army.
Now Roper, 27 and a married father of two, is on the run. This month, days before he was to be released from the Army, he left his blue stucco rowhouse on the base, possibly headed to Texas, where his mother lives, or to Canada, where he was born. No one is sure where he went or why. But he has communicated by e-mail to The Sun in rambling, unpunctuated and uncapitalized messages about his pain.
"im feeling depressed i have nightmares a lot i get this feelings a lot and i never them before the war," he wrote last week. "a lot has changed in my life im a very different man."
http://www.sunspot.net/news/bal-te.soldier26oct26,0,6899611.story?coll=bal-home-headlines

[DulceDecorum]

7. Dissent on the home front:

The growing toll and reports of poor conditions and low morale among troops have produced an undercurrent of dissent among US military families. The Guardian has found that 75% of the 478 troops removed from the Iraqi theatre because of mental health issues have been reservists.
In researching this story, we received more than 70 emails and phone calls from relatives of US forces overseas. All but two were negative - about the treatment of soldiers, the reasons for the Iraq war, the pain of family separation and the insensitivity of the military bureaucracy.
The criticisms - a breach of military culture - is viewed with concern at the Pentagon, which sent a team to Iraq this week to investigate 13 cases of suicide in recent months. It has also promised better treatment of sick soldiers, and has vowed to expand the programme of 15-day furloughs introduced last month - despite the failure of about 30 soldiers to catch their flights back to Iraq. But many on the home front remain furious, and today's anti-war protests in Washington and others US cities will kick off with candlelight vigils by families of soldiers serving in Iraq.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/antiwar/story/0,12809,1070682,00.html

I don't want you, petroleum!
For a long time,
I thought that you burnt for me.
Now I see that I am burning for you.
http://judithpordon.tripod.com/poetry/id233.html

[DulceDecorum]

8. Commando Solo Radio Messages

Soldiers of Iraq. Since the beginning of time, there has been no profession more honorable than that of a soldier. Soldiers are decorated with awards and medals that show their achievements and mark their skills. The uniform of a soldier is an article that demands respect, and loyalty. Soldiers are the defenders of their people, and the protectors of women and children. A soldier is willing to sacrifice himself for his country and their way of life. Soldiers sacrifice their own personal freedoms to protect others.

Saddam has tarnished this legacy. Saddam spews forth political rhetoric along with a false sense of national pride to deceive these men to serve his own unlawful purposes. Saddam does not wish the soldiers of Iraq to have the honor and dignity that their profession warrants. Saddam seeks only to exploit these brave men. Saddam uses the soldiers of Iraq not as protectors of the peace, but rather as his own personal bodyguards.

Do not let Saddam tarnish the reputation of soldiers any longer. Saddam uses the military to persecute those who don’t agree with his unjust agenda. Make the decision.
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/ops/021216-iraq-radioscripts.htm

[DulceDecorum]

9. Biting off more than one can chew?

War, NATO expansion and the other rackets of Bruce P. Jackson
Unless you think democracy is equivalent to fattening the bottom lines of US defense contractors and Western multinationals, then NATO expansion and promoting "democracy" in Eastern and Central Europe are rackets; unless you believe boosting the profits of US oil companies and Lockheed Martin is synonymous with liberating a country from a tyrant and rooting out terrorist infrastructure, then the impending war on Baghdad, and the ongoing war on terrorism, are also rackets; and Bruce P. Jackson, former Vice-President for Strategy and Planning at Lockheed Martin Corporation, is one of the principal racketeers. It's more than regrettable that hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, and numberless others who will eventually be caught in the war on terrorism, will die, and that countless people in former Communist countries will be poorer, so that Bruce P. Jackson and his fellow racketeers, and the shareholders of Lockheed Martin, can enjoy the fruits of booming weapons sales.
http://www3.sympatico.ca/sr.gowans/jackson.html
http://www.disinfopedia.org/wiki.phtml?title=Committee_for_the_Liberation_of_Iraq

Preparations for the 1991 Gulf War included one of the most ambitious propaganda campaigns ever staged. An unprecedented coalition of PR companies including Hill & Knowlton and the Rendon Group, together with lobbyists and lawyers was assembled to persuade a sceptical American public to go to war.
<snip>
It’s Official - Pentagon is Honest, says Spokesperson
Speaking to French television reporters, Pentagon spokesperson, Torie Clarke kept a straight face while explaining that, ‘We try to put out news information in as straightforward and as credible a fashion as possible.’
She added: ‘We always tell the truth.’ Clarke, who is Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs, was previously General Manager of Hill and Knowlton’s Wasington DC branch, the office that arranged Nayirah Al Sabah’s dubious testimony.
http://www.corporatewatch.org/newsletter/issue11/isue11_part6.htm

New Group Aims to Drum Up Backing for Ousting Hussein
Effort Seeks to Reverse Decline in Support for Attacking Iraq
Monday, November 4, 2002
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A64233-2002Nov3?language=printer
Public Relations Efforts
http://www.avot.org/stories/storyReader$29
http://defenseofamerica.org/ideas/
http://www.citizensunited.org/about/bossie.html see also http://www.citizensunited.org/courtroom.html
http://www.commondreams.org/views02/1108-02.htm

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/0220-05.htm

The Committee to Bomb Iraq
After the 1991 Gulf Conflict the far right gloated about how Iraq had been bombed “back into the stone age.” The deliberate and illegal destruction of Iraq’s civilian infrastructure combined with the most comprehensive economic sanctions ever imposed on a single country precipitated a humanitarian crisis to rival the worst of recent famines in Africa. Humanitarian agencies warn that another bombing campaign could cause an immediate famine in Iraq, and a U.N. report marked “strictly confidential” recently leaked to the Washington Post “foresees in the event of war 10 million Iraqi civilians in need of immediate aid and 24 million imperiled by disruptions to the U.N.-supervised food supply network currently in place.”<23>
Posing today as the would-be “liberators” of Iraq are the same far right Pentagon and military contractor superstars who supported the Ba’ath Party’s coming to power in a military coup in July 1968, who helped arm both sides in the Iran-Iraq War, who supplied the components for making weapons of mass destruction to Saddam Hussein, and who showed no mercy to the Iraqi people during 12 years of economic and social devastation under sanctions. Their explicit agenda is the expansion and preservation of US military pre-eminence across the globe. Their corporations will profit directly from a war whose costs will be borne by the American taxpayer, from control of Iraq’s natural resources and from contracts to rebuild the infrastructure they have destroyed or plan to destroy in bombing Iraq.
The Iraqi people deserve better “allies” than this. Americans who genuinely want to promote freedom and democratic institutions in Iraq should abhor the level of violence the US is once again preparing to inflict on the Iraqi people.
http://www.endthewar.org/cli1.htm

AFFILIATIONS TABLE
of the Board Members for the
COMMITTEE FOR THE LIBERATION OF IRAQ (CLI)
http://www.endthewar.org/whoiscli3.htm

http://www.expandnato.org/brucejackson.html

http://www.prospect.org/print-friendly/print/V14/5/judis-j.html

http://www.heritage.org/Press/NewsReleases/nr040699.cfm

http://www.policyreview.org/apr99/jackson.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/print/0,3858,4552159-103677,00.html

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/0114-02.htm

http://www.counterpunch.org/nimmo1119.html

http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=14547

http://en2.wikipedia.org/wiki/Committee_for_the_Liberation_of_Iraq

http://www.projecttransitionaldemocracy.org/html/PTD_press.htm
See also: http://www.projecttransitionaldemocracy.org/html/PTD_bios.htm

http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/ops/iraq.htm

As the Iraqi resistance expands and perfects its attacks, the American military, like so many occupying armies before it, is turning to methods of warfare long outlawed by civilized nations -- assassinations and reprisals against civilians.
http://www.commondreams.org/views03/1117-10.htm

Emboldened by their historic propaganda success -- the creation ex nihilo of a justification for the U.S. invasion of Iraq completely unsanctioned by international law -- members of the dangerous Washington faction with deep links to the security services and the military-industrial complex, the dread Bushoviki, have identified a new "terrorist threat": President Vladimir Putin.
The means they are now deploying are strikingly similar: planted "intelligence," manipulation of public opinion by tame journalists and "nonprofit foundations," as well as the insidious repetition of evident lies on the assumption that at least something will stick.
In a recent op-ed piece in the increasingly reactionary Washington Post,
http://www.aei.org/research/nai/news/newsID.19410,projectID.11/news_detail.asp
http://www.projecttransitionaldemocracy.org/html/Press/PTD_putin.htm
Bruce Jackson, president of the innocuous sounding Project on Transitional Democracies, accuses Putin not just of re-establishing a tsarist state, but of the supreme crime of opposing U.S. political and economic interests in Russia's historic sphere of influence: the CIS. After long service in the weapons trade (Lockheed, Martin), Jackson is now a hatchet-man for the Bush administration. A member of the far-right Project of the New American Century, he serves with the likes of Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle and Donald Rumsfeld. Jackson was instrumental in rounding up support for the Iraq war with a stealth attack, corralling East European presidents into signing the notorious letter of the "Vilnius 10."
http://www.rusnet.nl/news/2003/11/04/print/opinion04.shtml

He (President Vladimir Putin) vowed to push through a political reconciliation with the Chechens, including an amnesty, despite what he called rearguard action by the rebels targeting innocent civilians.
He also vowed to strengthen Russia's partnership with the countries of the global anti-terrorist coalition.
But in a veiled criticism of the United States, he said some of the countries were using their military clout not to fight the evil but to expand their sphere of influence.
He spoke in defence of the United Nations as the only legitimate world arbiter.
And he promised to modernise Russia's armed forces to protect the country's national interests.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/3034911.stm

Do they not suspect that the Afghan scenario is repeating itself? The Soviet Red Army broke Afghanistan, set up gangsters in the ruins. Then the Taliban and Osama bin Laden came. The fall of the Twin Towers was the result. With the West's abandonment of Chechnya, the tragedy repeats itself. How long will the survivors of the Russian "cleansing" hold back on the slippery slope of suicidal terrorism? How long until a crazy missile is aimed at a nuclear reactor? Mr. Putin is a pyromaniac fireman and his relentlessness places us all on the edge of the abyss.
http://www.aei.org/research/nai/news/newsID.19412,projectID.11/news_detail.asp
http://www.aei.org/research/nai/projectID.11/default.asp

Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov mistakenly imagined he was on a high horse when, in early October, he received a delegation from the U.S. oil company ExxonMobil and allowed his guests to announce publicly that the Russian government could find no obstacle to their acquisition of a strategic stake in YukosSibneft, Russia’s principal oil producer. That put him on the wrong side of President Vladimir Putin, at the very moment when Putin decided to make the fight of his career, arresting and jailing Mikhail Khodorkovsky, forcing head of the Presidential Administration Alexander Voloshin into the cold and deciding there will be no sales or share swaps of Russia’s strategic natural resources to foreign corporations. If Kasyanov had any hope of retaining the prime minister’s portfolio after the parliamentary elections on Dec. 7 or the presidential poll next March, he appeared to have lost it when, his eyes askance, he was obliged by Putin to listen to a blunt warning to the entire cabinet to stay out of the Yukos affair. His exit became a certainty when, on Halloween, Kasyanov publicly attacked the court-ordered freeze of the 44 percent bloc of Yukos shares Khodorkovsky and his allies control.
http://www.therussiajournal.com/index.htm?cat=9&type=2&obj=41195&sid=4703389601164422618362041

For the first time since 1991, the Russian president has called into question the policy of the oligarchs in turning over the economy’s resource assets to foreign enterprises, and taking the multi-billion dollar concession fees for themselves. No civilized country in the oil world - not even Saudi Arabia - allows foreign corporations to control the rate of their oil production and the risk of reserve depletion. If Russia must depend on oil for the short term, then Khodorkovsky was warned - in July - that neither he, nor Yukos, will decide this question of national strategy. And yet, he has continued to negotiate a sale to ChevronTexaco and ExxonMobil. As I have reported many times since July, it was the asset sale, not Khodorkovsky’s political manipulations, that crossed the Kremlin, and led to his current fate.
http://www.therussiajournal.com/index.htm?cat=9&type=2&obj=41024&sid=9823389601780373297051839

http://www.future-of-russia.org/issues/index.html
See also: http://www.future-of-russia.org/others/index.html

"Russia can price its crude in any currency it wants, and maybe it will, but the international benchmark prices are in dollars, so everyone will have to run around, get out their calculator, figure out the price in dollars and, at the end, they will talk about the value in dollars anyway," said Sarah Emerson, Managing Director of Energy Security Analysis, an independent research firm in Boston.
<snip>
If Russia or Iran do end up selling some oil in euros, it is not likely many other countries will follow suit because Saudi Arabia, the world's biggest oil exporter and the kingpin of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, almost certainly will not.
Saudi economic interests are so closely linked to those of the United States that there is little chance OPEC, supplier of one-third of the world's oil, would price oil in euros as long as U.S.-Saudi interests remain so significant.
http://www.forbes.com/home_europe/newswire/2003/11/24/rtr1159161.html

Laurent Murawiec, who identified Saudi Arabia as the "kernel of evil" in the Summer of 2002 for an influential Pentagon policy review board, has a new book out. In La Guerre d'Après (The War that Follows, Paris, 2003) - soon to be translated into English - the author provides significant detail on what is wrong with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and what should be done about it.
His frightening conclusion, that Saudi Arabia is an "enemy" of the West, should not be dismissed for two reasons. First, because it is absurd and, second, because prominent policy-makers subscribe to it.
http://www.gulf-news.com/Articles/news.asp?ArticleID=103849

Since a triple bombing against American targets in Saudi Arabia in May, the Saudi government has been more cooperative. It has allowed American investigators to collect DNA from the homes of the Sept. 11 hijackers. The Saudis have also detained more than 200 terror suspects since the May bombings, including two who were arrested on Tuesday after a gun battle with Saudi police.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,98129,00.ht

Mansour al-Nogaidan, a former zealot turned reformer, was the first columnist to suggest publicly that the extreme lessons within the Wahhabi sect about shunning foreigners helped terrorists to justify their attacks.
That column and subsequent ones created such an uproar that Nogaidan's writing was suspended for a couple of months, and this summer he found himself summoned by a conservative judge who he said sentenced him to 75 lashes.
http://www.sltrib.com/2003/Nov/11232003/nation_w/113744.asp

Several lawmakers reserved their deepest anger for any notion of permitting countries such as France, Germany and Saudi Arabia — which vehemently opposed the war in the first place — to collect on Iraqi debts incurred under the Saddam Hussein dictatorship while U.S. taxpayers pay to rebuild the country.
"Indeed, if the leaders of those nations had their way, Iraq would still be suffering under the brutal regime of Saddam Hussein," Miss Collins said. "The American taxpayer will be justifiably furious if one dime of his money goes, even indirectly, to repaying the dirty debts of a dictator."
http://washingtontimes.com/national/20031104-120603-6188r.htm

The nomination of Texas oil executive Jim Oberwetter as ambassador to Saudi Arabia is fuel to lawmakers who charge that U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East is driven only by pursuit of oil.
But that's not a bad message, analysts say, if it weakens the growing fear in that part of the world that U.S. policy is being shaped only by a hatred of Islam.
A Republican power player and longtime friend of President Bush and his father, Oberwetter wins praise from Republicans and Democrats as a calm, intelligent man with an inner core of toughness.
<snip>
Oberwetter is senior vice president for governmental and public affairs for Dallas-based Hunt Consolidated Inc.
Subsidiary Hunt Oil Co. is one of the top dozen independent oil companies in the United States.
Oberwetter was introduced to the oil business at an early age. His father was an executive with Phillips Petroleum. His family moved a lot, and one friend speculates that he learned a powerful combination of charm and discretion as a means of making friends quickly.
Oberwetter cut his teeth on Republican politics at the University of Texas at Austin, gaining recognition as a young man with political insight. He was press secretary for the president's father when George Bush was a member of Congress in the late 1960s, and then worked in the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency before joining Hunt in 1974.
Oberwetter was chairman of former President Bush's Texas campaign in 1992, when he lost to Democrat Bill Clinton. More recently he served on the younger Bush's presidential transition team.
Friends say that while he could have moved easily into a more high-profile political career in Washington, he preferred to live in Texas and work behind the scenes.
http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/business/2241293

TO BE CONTINUED

[DulceDecorum]

11. The Grand Liberators

" seem to have gotten pretty aggravated with us being around. I asked my interpreter if the Iraqi people are mad at us. He said that 90 percent of Iraqis hate us, and the other 10 percent have left Iraq.” – Private T.J. Knight, the driver of White's humvee.
http://www.traveling-soldier.org/11.03.words.php

I would have told them
the international red cross in Baghdad reports 200 casulties with 16 dead at most, in a city of 5 million people. Tragic but not exactly a massacre or as slaughter as the Arab media is reporting. More people probably die in automobile accidents in a month there.
Proof that "S&A" is against the Iraqi Regime and it's agents, NOT the Iraqi people.
vincent_vega
Mar-24-03,
http://www.democraticunderground.com/cgi-bin/duforum/duboard.cgi?az=show_thread&om=5575&forum=DCForumID43&archive=yes#98

[DulceDecorum]

12. The torturer's prose

The cause of peace requires all free nations to recognize new and undeniable realities. In the 20th century, some chose to appease murderous dictators, whose threats were allowed to grow into genocide and global war. In this century, when evil men plot chemical, biological and nuclear terror, a policy of appeasement could bring destruction of a kind never before seen on this earth.
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/03/20030317-7.html

To all the men and women of the United States Armed Forces now in the Middle East, the peace of a troubled world and the hopes of an oppressed people now depend on you. That trust is well placed.
( http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/0503/dailyUpdate.html )
The enemies you confront will come to know your skill and bravery. The people you liberate will witness the honorable and decent spirit of the American military. In this conflict, America faces an enemy who has no regard for conventions of war or rules of morality. Saddam Hussein has placed Iraqi troops and equipment in civilian areas, attempting to use innocent men, women and children as shields for his own military -- a final atrocity against his people.
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/03/20030319-17.html

http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/

FORT HOOD, Texas (AP) -- President Bush on Sunday braced the country for the possibility of more American casualties in Iraq while saying the U.S.-led mission is just.
"What we're doing in Iraq is right," Bush said after attending an Easter service at a chapel on this sprawling base.
http://www.cnn.com/2004/US/04/11/bush.easter.ap/

Many Iraqis can hear me tonight in a translated radio broadcast, and I have a message for them. If we must begin a military campaign, it will be directed against the lawless men who rule your country and not against you. As our coalition takes away their power, we will deliver the food and medicine you need. We will tear down the apparatus of terror and we will help you to build a new Iraq that is prosperous and free. In a free Iraq, there will be no more wars of aggression against your neighbors, no more poison factories, no more executions of dissidents, no more torture chambers and rape rooms. The tyrant will soon be gone. The day of your liberation is near.
<snip>
And all Iraqi military and civilian personnel should listen carefully to this warning. In any conflict, your fate will depend on your action. Do not destroy oil wells, a source of wealth that belongs to the Iraqi people. Do not obey any command to use weapons of mass destruction against anyone, including the Iraqi people. War crimes will be prosecuted. War criminals will be punished. And it will be no defense to say, "I was just following orders."
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/03/20030317-7.html

[seemslikeadream]

13. Abu Ghraib - Now we have another to add to the list

The deaths in Auschwitz were as unacceptable as those in Soweto, Sabra, Shatila, My Lai, Jonestown, Jenin and Basrah.
It is our duty as HUMANS to PREVENT a violent struggle NOW.



Why are you here insisting that others spill blood to please you?
Who are you?
Why do you want us all to die?

"The path of the righteous man is beset on all sides with the iniquities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men. Blessed is he who in the name of charity and good will shepherds the weak through the valley of darkness, for he is truly his brother's keeper and the finder of lost children. And I will strike down upon those with great vengeance and with furious anger those who attempt to poison and destroy my brothers. And you will know that my name is the Lord when I lay my vengeance upon thee."
I hold you to this.

Thanks Dulcey