Child Soldiers

A few are missing - Uganda, although not the state use of children, but entities within Uganda use and recruit children to fight in Sudan.





US: Press Allies to End Use of Child Soldiers


Report Lists Repeat Offenders, but Military Aid Continues

June 27, 2011
HRW



(New York) - The United States should suspend military assistance to countries using child soldiers, Human Rights Watch said today.

On June 27, 2011, the US State Department released a list of six governments that use child soldiers in violation of US legislation adopted in 2008: Burma, Chad, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen. Five of the countries - excluding Burma - receive US military assistance.

"The US strategy of just telling countries to stop using child soldiers is not working," said Jo Becker, children's rights advocate at Human Rights Watch. "So long as they keep getting US military assistance, these countries have little incentive to stop recruiting children."

The Child Soldiers Prevention Act of 2008 prohibits governments using child soldiers from receiving US foreign military financing, military training, and several other categories of US military assistance. The six countries identified in the new 2011 Trafficking in Persons report for using child soldiers were all included in the first State Department list in June 2010. In October, President Barack Obama issued national interest waivers to allow Chad, Congo, Sudan, and Yemen to continue to receive military aid despite their use of child soldiers.

Human Rights Watch called on the Obama administration not to issue blanket waivers to countries violating the Child Soldiers Prevention Act unless the governments sign agreements with the United Nations to end their use of child soldiers and take concrete steps to implement these agreements.

The administration contends that the military assistance it provides to Somalia is peacekeeping assistance that is not covered by the law. On June 22, Senators Richard Durbin of Illinois and John Boozman of Arkansas introduced legislation that would amend the Child Soldiers Prevention Act to prohibit peacekeeping operations assistance to governments of countries that recruit and use child soldiers.

In Congo, government forces actively recruit children and have hundreds of children in their ranks. The government has promoted military officers who have been charged - or even convicted - with using child soldiers and has failed to cooperate with the United Nations in finalizing a plan to end its recruitment and use of child soldiers.

In Southern Sudan, which will gain independence from Sudan in July, the Sudan People's Liberation Army has continued to recruit children, according to credible reports received by Human Rights Watch. It has also failed to carry out fully a 2009 agreement to demobilize all children from its ranks.

Yemeni government forces have recruited children as young as 14 and government-affiliated militia have also used children as soldiers.

In Chad, a February 2011 report issued by the UN secretary-general documented ongoing recruitment of children by the Chadian army, including the recruitment of Sudanese refugee children. The government signed an agreement with the UN on June 14 committing itself to end all child recruitment, to release all children from its military and security forces, and to allow UN monitoring of its military installations.

The Chad agreement is a positive step, but progress in other countries has been too slow, Human Rights Watch said.

"Congress was clear in its intent that the US should not be militarily assisting governments that use child soldiers in their forces," Becker said. "Last year the administration gave these governments a pass. It shouldn't do so again."





 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
human rights

Obama: To Boldly Go Where No President Has Gone Before

The airstrike makes Somalia at least the sixth country where the United States is using drone aircraft to conduct lethal attacks, joining Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya, Iraq and Yemen. And it comes as the CIA is expected to begin flying armed drones over Yemen in its hunt for al-Qaeda operatives.



Washington Post
June 29, 2011





 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
obama

War is ...

According to Mr. Obama, when Americans die.

Otherwise, war is not war, it is a conflict.


-  Libya isn’t war because it doesn’t “involve the presence of US ground troops, US casualties, or a serious threat thereof.”


Amazing from a man who was all over Bush for 'torture' and American values.

Who are the men on the ground n Libya directing those missiles that strike at or near Kaddafi ?   They are not simply missiles flying from ships without guidance.  Nor are the missiles off aircraft sent randomly into hit whatever they see.  Someone is on the ground using technology to direct the attacks!  Now, maybe they are not 'US ground troops' but they are American and there is a possibility they are captured and or killed.

So is it war?


Not to Obama.  War is not war unless he says it is, but torture is torture whenever he says it is, unless he is still doing it in which case it isn't torture.

I love liberal hypocrisy.  Conservatives may well be hypocrites but they do not take such a long and tangled route to reach a conclusion that is logically unsupportable. 











obama

Obama: There he goes again, deciding what is and is not Constitutional

We had this discussion for seven years - and Libya is no where near as big of a problem as Iran or North Korea or Syria or Nigeria, or Sudan or Somalia or Yemen or Congo or Uganda or ... and yet, we have become embroiled in a  war that truly, with no question, is so unimportant as to be unworthy of mention but for the fact we have spent a billion dollars dealing with this wholly contrived event that is not relevant to anyone on earth but for some Libyans - and they managed pretty well for 30 years.

Unlike Iraq - who had nuclear materials and had tried to assassinate a US president and was a threat to its neighbors and a majority of the population within its borders.

Unlike Afghanistan - where a sunni sect decided it would interpret the Koran and sharia law as strictly as possible, including when necessary shooting women on the streets if they had fingernail polish on, or were not covered completely.  A group of pedophiles barbarians who abused little boys as earnestly as they abused little girls and older women - all in the name of their religion.  Stopping men on the street to measure their beards, and beating anyone who did not have a beard the correct length.   A group of barbaric men who decided to destroy 5,000 year old monuments because they somehow offended their sensibilities (probably just before they all jumped back in their trucks and went back to town to molest little boys).  An extremist sect who gave refuge, support, aid, and comfort to the world's most sought after terrorist, and in the process brought ruin upon what was left in Afghanistan - often shooting children or teachers if they were in a school, burning down schools, killing anyone and everyone who opposed them.  A group who provided a state for any and all terrorists from which they might plan and carry out attacks against the United States or Germany, or England, or ... any country.

Unlike Iraq and Afghanistan, Libya is a model student.  In 2003, when George W Bush said we would go after anyone and everyone who had WMDs and otherwise anyone who aided terrorism - Kaddafhi called up Bush and asked him to come to Libya and take away his nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons because he no longer wanted them.  Kadaffi has always been a pain but it never bothered Bush, Clinton, Bush enough to act.  Reagan tried to dissuade him from the dark side, only to push him over the edge, and we were not there to ensure he didn't climb back up because by then it was H. Bush and he was not Reagan.

Suddenly Libya is worth a billion dollars.  No.  They are not.  Egypt is not worth $3 billion.  Pakistan is not worth $5 billion.  No.  Not any amount.

Shame on Obama.






2 Top Lawyers Lost to Obama in Libya War Policy Debate


By CHARLIE SAVAGE
The New York Times

June 17, 2011




WASHINGTON — President Obama rejected the views of top lawyers at the Pentagon and the Justice Department when he decided that he had the legal authority to continue American military participation in the air war in Libya without Congressional authorization, according to officials familiar with internal administration deliberations.

Jeh C. Johnson, the Pentagon general counsel, and Caroline D. Krass, the acting head of the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, had told the White House that they believed that the United States military’s activities in the NATO-led air war amounted to “hostilities.” Under the War Powers Resolution, that would have required Mr. Obama to terminate or scale back the mission after May 20.

But Mr. Obama decided instead to adopt the legal analysis of several other senior members of his legal team — including the White House counsel, Robert Bauer, and the State Department legal adviser, Harold H. Koh — who argued that the United States military’s activities fell short of “hostilities.” Under that view, Mr. Obama needed no permission from Congress to continue the mission unchanged.



Presidents have the legal authority to override the legal conclusions of the Office of Legal Counsel and to act in a manner that is contrary to its advice, but it is extraordinarily rare for that to happen. Under normal circumstances, the office’s interpretation of the law is legally binding on the executive branch.

A White House spokesman, Eric Schultz, said there had been “a full airing of views within the administration and a robust process” that led Mr. Obama to his view that the Libya campaign was not covered by a provision of the War Powers Resolution that requires presidents to halt unauthorized hostilities after 60 days.

“It should come as no surprise that there would be some disagreements, even within an administration, regarding the application of a statute that is nearly 40 years old to a unique and evolving conflict,” Mr. Schultz said. “Those disagreements are ordinary and healthy.”

Still, the disclosure that key figures on the administration’s legal team disagreed with Mr. Obama’s legal view could fuel restiveness in Congress, where lawmakers from both parties this week strongly criticized the White House’s contention that the president could continue the Libya campaign without their authorization because the campaign was not “hostilities.”

The White House unveiled its interpretation of the War Powers Resolution in a package about Libya it sent to Congress late Wednesday. On Thursday, the House speaker, John A. Boehner, Republican of Ohio, demanded to know whether the Office of Legal Counsel had agreed.

“The administration gave its opinion on the War Powers Resolution, but it didn’t answer the questions in my letter as to whether the Office of Legal Counsel agrees with them,” he said. “The White House says there are no hostilities taking place. Yet we’ve got drone attacks under way. We’re spending $10 million a day. We’re part of an effort to drop bombs on Qaddafi’s compounds. It just doesn’t pass the straight-face test, in my view, that we’re not in the midst of hostilities.”

A sticking point for some skeptics was whether any mission that included firing missiles from drone aircraft could be portrayed as not amounting to hostilities.

As the May 20 deadline approached, Mr. Johnson advocated stopping the drone strikes as a way to bolster the view that the remaining activities in support of NATO allies were not subject to the deadline, officials said. But Mr. Obama ultimately decided that there was no legal requirement to change anything about the military mission.

The administration followed an unusual process in developing its position. Traditionally, the Office of Legal Counsel solicits views from different agencies and then decides what the best interpretation of the law is. The attorney general or the president can overrule its views, but rarely do.

In this case, however, Ms. Krass was asked to submit the Office of Legal Counsel’s thoughts in a less formal way to the White House, along with the views of lawyers at other agencies. After several meetings and phone calls, the rival legal analyses were submitted to Mr. Obama, who is a constitutional lawyer, and he made the decision.

A senior administration official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to talk about the internal deliberations, said the process was “legitimate” because “everyone knew at the end of the day this was a decision the president had to make” and the competing views were given a full airing before Mr. Obama.

[to read the rest of the article, click on the link]
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
obama

Germans: US a Nation of Warmongers

At least in 2003.  Today, they may have changed their minds, although one should ask them - 300 million people are still here, probably 290 million were here in 2003 as are here in 2011 (same people).  If in 2003 they were warmongers, how did they suddenly change to become less so (assuming that would be the result today) if the people are the same?  Is it the government and its policies that make us warmongers?  If so, is it correct to believe we are a 'nation of warmongers' if we are not warmongers.  Perhaps they acted too quickly, without much thought.  Perhaps they didn't think about the implications of their responses.  Perhaps they are just another culture, no better or worse, just equal to the rest.


Poll: Germans Believe U.S. a Nation of Warmongers



Mon Feb 10 , 2003


BERLIN (Reuters) - A majority of Germans believe the United States is a nation of warmongers and only six percent think President Bush is interested in keeping the peace, according to a survey published Monday.

The poll by the respected Forsa institute, published in the Financial Times Deutschland newspaper, also found 97 percent of those questioned believed Iraqi President Saddam Hussein was ready to go to war.

The survey found 57 percent agreed with the statement: "The United States is a nation of warmongers."

German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder has angered the Bush administration with his outspoken opposition to a war in Iraq, a position that has widespread backing in Germany where six million people were killed during World War II.

Tens of thousands of Germans have taken part in anti-war rallies in recent weeks.

The survey of 1,843 Germans found 93 percent believed Bush was ready to go to war in pursuit of his interests, while 80 percent said the United States wanted war to boost its power.

The poll also found 89 percent believed Schroeder was a "friend of peace."





 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
germans

James Blunt: Saved the World from World War III (all by himself)

'I stopped World War Three by refusing US orders to destroy Russian forces,' claims James Blunt


By Andrea Magrath
15th November 2010
The Daily Mail

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-1329822/James-Blunt-stopped-World-War-3-refusing-destroy-Russian-forces.html#ixzz15P7AlbCc

James Blunt's refusal to obey orders during the Balkans war prevented the start of World War Three, the singer has claimed.


The 36-year-old chart-topping singer made the stunning claims in an interview with John Pienaar on Radio 5 Live's Pienaar's Politics.


Blunt, a former cavalry officer in the British Army, was leading a NATO column under order to seize the Pristina airfield in Kosovo in 1999.

Facing a 200-strong Russian advance, the then- 25-year-old was given orders to 'destroy' the Russian troops by the Supreme Allied Commander of the NATO Forces in Europe.

'I was given a direct command to overpower the 200 or so Russians who were there,' the You're Beautiful hitmaker has revealed for the first time.

'I was the lead officer, with my troop of men behind us... It was a mad situation.'

'The direct command came in from General Wesley Clark was to overpower them. Various words were used that seemed unusual to us. Words such as "destroy" came down the radio.'

He said his men were given orders by the American general to 'reach the airfield and take a hold of it.'

But Blunt - who served under his real name James Blount - says: 'We had 200 Russians lined up pointing their weapons at us aggressively.'

The singer, who has gone on to sell over 11 million albums since leaving the forces in October 2002, risked a court martial by refusing to go along with the orders to attack, a command he feared would spark a major conflict with Russia.

'I was declining my order. I was very clear on that,' he said.


'There are things that you do along the way that you know are right, and those that you absolutely feel are wrong.

'That sense of moral judgment is drilled into us as soldiers in the British army.'


Blunt's instinct was backed by the commander of the British Forces. 'Fortunately, the singer remembered, 'Up on the radio came General Sir Mike Jackson, whose words were, "I'm not going to have my soldiers start World War Three."

'He told us why don't we sugar off down the road and, you know, encircle the airfield instead.'


When quizzed on whether he thought following General Clark's order would have started World War Three, the musician replied: 'Absolutely,' adding that he would have refused the command regardless of Sir Mike Jackson's intervention.

Blunt, who wrote the track No Bravery during his stint in Kosovo, says he was deeply affected by his time serving in the Balkans.

'War is an absolutely terrible, ghastly thing,' he said. 'I wouldn't bother describing the things we saw.'


No Bravery was included on his multi-platinum album Back To Bedlam - recorded just months after he left the military - and became a theme for protesters of the war in Iraq.

Blunt performed at the Help for Heroes benefit concert at Twickenham in September. He is currently promoting new album Some Kind of Trouble in the US.


















singers

The Dow Falls, North Korea on the Brink, Iran with a Nuke, and Al Qaida still Planning

... and we have a community organizer in charge.

We are in trouble.

Dear American People:
I realize that only 42% of you support Obama, according to very recent polling, but dear lord, when you elect a president do NOT, please, DO NOT think domestic.  The domestic issues will resolve themselves and sort out, eventually - THINK globally, think international crisis after crisis after crisis.  Please.  And a community organizer is wholly unqualified to handle these concerns.  Worse, the lack of experience makes the world a much more dangerous position given the fact that most of the world holds us in such contempt.




Stocks drop after euro slumps, Dow falls below 10K



Tuesday May 25, 2010, 1:39 pm EDT

NEW YORK (AP) -- The Dow Jones industrials plunged below 10,000 Tuesday after traders dumped stocks on expectations that the world economy will weaken in the coming months.

The Dow fell about 190 points in afternoon trading. It has fallen about 1,330 points, or nearly 12 percent, from its recent high of 11,205, reached April 26. The Dow and broader stock indexes all fell more than 1 percent.

Investors also exited the euro and commodities including oil and again sought safety in Treasurys. That drove interest rates lower. The benchmark 10-year note's yield fell to its lowest level since April 2009.

Investors were anxious about problems beyond the financial crisis in Europe. Tensions between North and South Korea reminded traders that political issues can be a threat to economic growth. And analysts said that even the still unresolved oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico contributed to investors' foul mood.

Still, uncertainty over the impact that Europe's debt problems could have on the rest of the world in the coming months remains the biggest driver of investor pessimism, said Jonathan Corpina, president of Meridian Equity Partners. The largest concern is that painful austerity measures that European governments are being forced to take could lead to a prolonged economic slump in the region and cause another global recession. And investors fear that even those measures won't contain the crisis, Corpina said.

"It seems like the Europeans are playing 'tag, you're it ' -- first it was Greece and now it's maybe Spain or Portugal," said Corpina, a New York Stock Exchange floor trader. "We know someone else is next. The problem is that it seems like every plan in place isn't going to satisfy the needs."

A warning of hard times came from Britain's Queen Elizabeth, who opened the new session of Parliament with a speech delivered on behalf of Britain's new coalition government. The queen, said there would be budget cuts because "the first priority is to reduce the deficit and restore economic growth."

Other European countries are imposing budget cuts as well, trying to control their debts. Investors are concerned that these steps will stifle economic growth, and that other countries including the U.S. will inevitably see their own growth stunted.

European Union leaders warned Tuesday that the continent's economy would stagnate unless governments make major reforms to promote growth. The problem is, though, that large debts in some countries make it difficult to implement stimulus measures to rally economies.

Traders have been selling the euro heavily in recent weeks because of uneasiness over whether steep budget cuts in countries like Greece, Spain and Portugal will drag down an economic recovery on the continent. Italy was set to become the latest European nation to announce spending cuts to reduce its deficit.

The euro approached a four-year low, which it set last week. The euro dropped to $1.2285, close to the low of $1.2146 it touched last week.

Investors are not focusing on current signs of growth, but are instead trying to gauge where the global economy will be later this year. Pessimism, particularly about Europe, has replaced a hopeful tone among traders early in the year.

"Market participants feel like they're walking on eggshells," said Oliver Pursche, executive vice president at Gary Goldberg Financial Services in Suffern, N.Y. "Every small piece of potentially bad news is being exaggerated and mentally being fast-forwarded to the worst-case scenario."

Markets were also hurt by reports that North Korean leader Kim Jong Il ordered his military to combat alert because of rising tensions on the Korean peninsula. North Korea also said it would cease communication and relations with Seoul. South Korea has said North Korea was responsible for the sinking of a South Korean warship two months ago. Major indexes in Japan and Hong Kong fell more than 3 percent.

Meanwhile, the monthlong effort to cap the Gulf oil well that has spewed millions of gallons of oil is also rattling investors, Corpina said. Oil is now starting to come ashore across a 150-mile swath of the Gulf Coast, endangering wildlife and livelihoods in commercial fishing and tourism.

"The worry is that the situation is getting worse and there's no real fix," he said. "First we were just talking about the oil industry being affected. Now it's the environment and fishing industries. Next we'll be talking about the hotel and leisure industries."

A disappointing report on U.S. home prices added to the downcast mood. The Standard & Poor's/Case-Shiller 20-city home price index fell 0.5 percent in March from February, a sign that the housing market remains weak even as mortgage rates are still near historic lows.

A better-than-expected report on consumer confidence didn't stop the selling. The Conference Board's consumer confidence index rose for the third straight month, climbing to 63.3 in May from 57.7 last month.

The Dow fell 190.07, or 1.9 percent, to 9,876.50 by early afternoon. Only one of the 30 Dow stocks, Home Depot Inc., rose, and that was just by pennies.

The Standard & Poor's 500 index fell 20.13, or 1.9 percent, to 1,053.52. The index hit its lowest level of the year in early trading, dropping to 1,040.78.

The Nasdaq composite index fell 42.75, or 1.9 percent, to 2,170.80.

The yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury note, which moves opposite its price, fell to 3.14 percent from 3.20 percent late Monday. It fell as low as 3.07 percent, its lowest level since April 2009.

The yield on the 30-year bond briefly fell below 4 percent for the first time since October, before rising slightly. It is down to 4.04 percent from 4.08 percent late Monday.

Crude oil fell $2.16 to $68.05 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange, in part a reflection of expectations that weak economic growth will curtail demand for fuel.

Overseas markets were also down sharply. Britain's FTSE 100 dropped 2.5 percent, Germany's DAX index lost 2.3 percent, and France's CAC-40 plummeted 2.9 percent. Japan's Nikkei stock average fell 3.1 percent. Hong Kong's Hang Seng fell 3.3 percent.













obama

North Korea: On the Verge

Get Ready for War.  The world is a dangerous place and we have a man who was a community organizer trying to organize the world, who, despite his best efforts, hold him in contempt (at best), or loathe him for his petulant attitude.  They neither like, respect, nor fear him or the US - and the world becomes and even more dangerous place.

And we have Obama.





U.S. military told to get ready in Korea standoff


Obama orders commanders to prepare 'to deter future aggression'


msnbc.com
May 24, 2010

WASHINGTON - The White House said Monday that President Barack Obama "fully supports" the South Korean president and his response to the torpedo attack by North Korea that sank a South Korean naval ship.

In a statement, the White House said Seoul can continue to count on the full backing of the United States and said U.S. military commanders had been told to work with their South Korean counterparts "to ensure readiness and to deter future aggression."

The administration said it endorsed President Lee Myung-bak's demand that "North Korea immediately apologize and punish those responsible for the attack, and, most importantly, stop its belligerent and threatening behavior."

Late last week, a team of international investigators accused North Korea of torpedoing the Cheonan corvette in March, killing 46 sailors in one of the deadliest clashes between the two since the 1950-53 Korean War.


The United States still has about 28,000 troops in South Korea to provide military support. The two Koreas, still technically at war, have more than 1 million troops near their border.

"U.S. support for South Korea's defense is unequivocal, and the President has directed his military commanders to coordinate closely with their Republic of Korea counterparts to ensure readiness and to deter future aggression," the statement said.

"We will build on an already strong foundation of excellent cooperation between our militaries and explore further enhancements to our joint posture on the Peninsula as part of our ongoing dialogue," it said.

"The U.S. will continue to work with the Republic of Korea and other allies and partners to reduce the threat that North Korea poses to regional stability," the statement added.


Lee said Monday that South Korea would no longer tolerate the North's "brutality" and said the repressive communist regime would pay for the surprise March 26 torpedo attack.

He also vowed to cut off all trade with the North and take Pyongyang to the U.N. Security Council for punishment over the sinking of the warship Cheonan.

Speaking earlier in Beijing, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said the North must be held accountable and she is pushing to get the support of China, North Korea's top ally, for diplomatic action.


Clinton warned of a "highly precarious" security situation in the region, and said North Korea's neighbors, including Pyongyang ally China, understood the seriousness of the matter.

Clinton would not say whether such action would include new international sanctions against the North, and said she was engaged in intense consultations with China and other nations about the next step.

"We are working hard to avoid an escalation of belligerence and provocation," Clinton said.

So far, China has refrained from criticizing the North, which it supplied with troops during the Korean War

Obama and Lee have agreed to meet at the G20 summit in Canada next month, the statement said.





 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Korea

Iran, China, and Russia v UN, US, and Israel: December 31, 2009 Deadline.

Iran



Engagement - remember, this was the mantra two years ago.  Bush didn't engage the enemy, the Democrats would.  Talking was good.  Talking was a sign of civility.  Talking would produce results.  After all, liberals pointed to a terrorist, who when asked questions nicely, responded with answers.  Talking not torture, engagement not isolation, multi-lateral, not unilateral.

What a world we have traversed since then.  Engagement has been tried with Iran every day since November 2008.  Obama bent over backwards several times, restrained himself on many other occasions from saying anything negative, and in fact went out of his way to be kind and open to Iran.  He raised the possibility of high level talks.  Iran snubbed their nose at him.  Obama threatened sanctions and possible military action.  Russia and China stepped in and said Iran would behave.  Iran snubbed their nose at Obama.  The UN investigation of Iran's nuclear program came back with startling revelations about the military applications of the programs and the extent of the nuclear programs within Iran.  The Iranians laughed.  The UN threatened sanctions unless Iran complied.  Iran laughed. 

Faced with the overwhelming evidence of Iran's nefarious plans, secret nuclear sites, lies, obfuscation, and delay tactics - the UN moved ahead with plans to impose sanctions on Iran.  Iran said it would take sanctions as a declaration of war.  Russia and China stopped, and said they would have to consider the evidence.  Obama said the US might have to take military action.  Russia and China said they would force Iran into line - Iran would sell its nuclear waste to Russia - and that would satisfy the UN and all would be happy, and if they didn't Russia and China would consider supporting sanctions against Iran.

Obama smiled, sat down and sighed.  Things were looking up.

China then said it would never support sanctions.

Russia said it would never support sanctions.

Now Iran says it will not comply with any demands by the UN, as those demands violate the sovereignty of Iran.

Obfuscation, delay tactics ...

December 31, 2009 is the deadline for Iran to comply with the UN, or sanctions will be imposed, and military action by Israel, and or the US could occur.  Already the US is straining relations with allies by unilaterally taking on financial companies in Germany and throughout Europe who engage with Iran.  Rather than working with our allies, as Democrats so often howled, the Obama administration has begun punitive actions against companies doing business with Iran (recent case by US against the Swiss resulting in $536 million settlement).

I would look for Russia and China to make statements over the next 3-4 days to stall the UN, Iran to take bold steps either toward Iraq or with its fledgling military / missiles / nuclear testing.

I would look at Israel for an indication and ignore Obama - he will be overwhelmed by events and will quite possibly be two or three steps behind the actions.

All this in the next 96 hours - and the end to the multi-lateral, talking, and engagement silliness Obama touted as his planned course for his administration.  I hope the Retardicans have taken notice.

: )









Iran

Obama, Al Qaida, and (the War on) terror.

This writer doesn't know Obama. I guess some people have not been made aware that the war on terror doesn't exist any more.





Ayoon Wa Azan (The War Is Necessary To Defeat al-Qaeda)


Fri, 27 November 2009
Jihad el-Khazen
dar al hayat



There is a consensus in the American media that President Barack Obama will announce a surge of 30 thousand U.S soldiers to be deployed in Afghanistan, in the speech that he will deliver next week at the West Point military academy, and which will be the first of many speeches and meetings aimed at rallying support for this surge.


Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the U.S military commander in Afghanistan, requested 40 thousand additional troops; however, I read no news items that thought it likely that the surge will involve this figure, and perhaps what had transpired then was sort of a bazaar: it seems that the commander requested more than he actually needs, since he knows that the administration will not agree to his request as it is, and that it will reduce the figure to the number of soldiers that he does indeed need. In all cases, I express my reservation about any figures and will wait instead for the President’s speech.

What we know so far is that President Obama promised that he will finish the mission in Afghanistan, which is an expression that is open to all possible interpretations, whether in continuing the goals of the Bush administration that started this war, or in focusing the war on al-Qaeda alone, as requested by the Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, as it was al-Qaeda alone that was behind the terrorist attacks of 11/9/2001. This is in addition to the possibility that the president has found a way to gradually withdraw from Afghanistan, which is what he pledged during his election campaign; as such, the aim behind deploying more troops is to accelerate arriving at the conditions which will allow for faster withdrawal.

Meanwhile, President Obama will face a political battle as harsh as the one involving his healthcare plan. This is because the senior officials in the Democratic Party, his party, are opposed to a surge in Afghanistan, while the House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said that approving this surge is a very difficult legislative task to ask of her group in the Congress. In fact, Pelosi pushed the Congress to approve a one billion dollar measure to meet the cost of the war in both Iraq and Afghanistan. She is thus aware that the Democratic Party would oppose an increase in these costs given the ongoing financial crisis, and is also aware of the danger of raising taxes, an unpopular choice among the voters.

The cost of deploying each U.S soldiers in the theatre of war amounts to one million dollars annually. This is while the government is suffering under the burden of trillion dollar debts, and I read that the interests paid on these debts amount to approximately 600 billion dollars per year, while unemployment has soared to 10.2 percent, and it does not appear that it will significantly decline in the upcoming few months.

Barack Obama is aware of all these and other issues. However, he also realizes that withdrawing from Afghanistan before establishing a government that is able to rule there, and before clearly defeating al-Qaeda will only mean encouraging the terrorists everywhere to challenge the United States.

Personally, I wish that the American forces would focus their war effort against al-Qaeda, a terrorist organization that killed a larger number of Muslims than of those who perished in the terrorist attacks of 11/9/2001, which also means that it is the duty of Muslims before others to fight al-Qaeda and its ideology, and to help the American efforts.

However, the Muslim role against al-Qaeda remains limited and President Obama wants the Western Coalition to contribute more in the war. He specifically asked the NATO member countries to send ten thousand additional troops in conjunction with the American surge. However, I read that the allies did not promise more than five thousand soldiers, and that Canada and the Netherlands are planning to withdraw their existing troops in Afghanistan.

Barack Obama had a streak of good luck, which was at times almost surreal, and which put him in the White House. However, it seems that he has depleted this good luck, as the Bush administration left him with a heavy legacy, including the financial crisis, the bankruptcy of the treasury and the failed wars. In fact, the war on terror only increased terror around the world, which prompted the United States in the end to stop using this term.

President Obama, along with the Democratic Party, is faced with the midterm elections next year, in November. He is aware that there is a simple majority in the U.S that is opposed to the war, and that an even larger majority, or 69 percent, consider that the war is going badly. This means that the Democrats who control both houses of Congress will now pay the price for George W. Bush’s adventures and ignorance, and for the free pass he gave to the neo-conservatives to run the country’s policies behind his back.

We now hear that Afghanistan is “Obama’s Vietnam”. However, the war is necessary in order to defeat al-Qaeda; for this reason, I do not expect to see the Americans fleeing in airplanes from on top of their embassy in Kabul.











Obama

Ft. Hood: What is the Cost of War?

Fort Hood massacre raises question: What is the cost of war?




Peg Mcentee
The Salt Lake Tribune
11/07/2009




Just a glimpse of that thin face, those intense blue eyes, is heart-rending: another man, barely out of childhood, dead in the war.

Not in Afghanistan or Iraq, but at Fort Hood, Texas, where an Army-trained psychiatrist opened fire, killing 13 soldiers and wounding 30 more who were taking care of the final details before going to the battlefield.

But the death of Aaron Thomas Nemelka, just 19, raises for me an inevitable question: When are we as American citizens going to stop paying the butcher's bill that comes to us all too often from Iraq and Afghanistan?

It's not just the more than 5,000 Americans killed in those wars -- now 53 of them Utahns -- but those who come home wounded in body, mind and spirit. Many fold themselves back into civilian life, but the memory of so many terrifying and ghastly events can never be erased. For some, there can never be healing.

Among the wounded in Thursday's massacre was Utahn Joey Foster, who was headed to Afghanistan and helped pull people to safety despite a bullet to the hip.

The alleged shooter, Nidal Malik Hasan, was gunned down by a SWAT officer but survived. The fact that he is a devout Muslim has the Internet afire with the usual accusations that Islam is a violent faith that spawns murderous behavior. In my view, that's just as much a fallacy as saying any faith ineluctably leads to violence.

I spoke with the Rev. Carl Wright, the head chaplain at Hill Air Force Base,

who has twice been deployed to Iraq. In his view, it's not Hasan's faith but his experiences at the Army's Walter Reed Medical Center that might have brought on what Wright calls "compassion stress" -- also known as secondary stress disorder.

"The shooter would have had patient after patient, soldier after soldier, telling him gruesome stories," he said.

"When you're counseling with people, regardless of the helping profession, to a certain extent you feel what they feel," Wright said. "You vicariously experience ... not the identical experience, but pretty darn close, especially when you're a psychiatrist or psychologist."

Such professionals, he said, need to be in therapy themselves, constantly working on their own issues and on self-improvement. "It's an article of their Hippocratic oath; all healers know that they are themselves wounded people."

No one but Hasan can say what motivated him, but news reports say he was deeply troubled by the prospect of going to Afghanistan, that he opposed the wars but did not express anti-American views. His colleagues at Walter Reed thought him an indifferent therapist who once gave a fiery and inappropriate lecture on the Quran. The reports also say he was quiet and apparently had few friends, although a former president of the Muslim mosque in Killeen, Texas, where Hasan worshipped, called him a "very gentle person."

It's worth remembering that much the same was said about Sulejman Talovic, the Bosnian immigrant who killed five people at Salt Lake City's Trolley Square in 2007 and was killed himself. As a child, he and his family were caught up in the war in Bosnia, and it's been speculated that he, too, was a victim of post-traumatic stress.

In the dozen other mass shootings in the United States since 1991, none of the killers were Muslim: think of the two teenagers who in 1999 killed 13 classmates and a teacher and wounded 26 others before committing suicide at Columbine High School.

So we can acknowledge that we live in a time and world periodically stunned by violence. We must honor the courageous men and women who put themselves in harm's way to protect this nation.

But here's what worries me: even as the Iraq war winds down, President Barack Obama is debating whether to send tens of thousands more troops into Afghanistan.

We must ask, "To what end?" To try to change a corrupt government and contain the Taliban? To rout al-Qaida, even though its influence extends across the Middle East and in Africa? And despite the fact that Afghanis view coalition troops as an army of occupation in a nation that never has tolerated such forces since Alexander the Great?

And we must ask, "At what further cost?"


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

Dear Ms Mcentee,



At what cost you ask, is it too much? I would suggest the cost should never be too high, if what you are fighting for is the right. If what you are doing is not occupying but preventing further war, preventing further deaths of Americans, preventing more cataclysmic events from unfolding - then no cost should be considered too high.


What cost is too high when placed against the life of your child, or even more importantly, your nation, and I would offer that our nation is more important than any one of us, for it must exist to protect each of our grandchildren, provide a home to those who flee war and persecution, it must continue or everything is lost.


It is too much Ms. Mcentee; only if you do not believe what we are doing is important for us, for the future of Afghanis, for the world. If it is not important, then one person wounded is too much, let alone killed.


You offer a question, and I would respond - why do you so oppose the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, why do you believe the people of Afghanistan so unworthy of freedom and opportunity - where women may go to school and learn, rather than shuttered away in a room, hidden under a veil else they be killed in the street or have acid thrown on them. Why are they so unworthy of our help? Why are the Arabs of Iraq so unworthy of freedom and opportunity? Why do you value the life of a non-Arab above that of an Arab, why do you believe THEY are less than WE, and WE should simply allow them to wallow in their pitiful shithole, while we close our ears to the evil perpetrated upon them. When is too much Ms. Mcentee - when do we step in.


Al qaida may well be stretched across the globe, but the head of that snake sits between Pakistan and Afghanistan, and we have a duty and a responsibility to send him to hell as soon as we can. When he is gone, al qaida will remain, but will never again be the same threat it is today. We will then systematically find and kill those who follow that doctrine of death, and give each of them the opportunity they so thrill to have - a chance to meet their maker, in hell.


How much is too much Ms. Mcentee? It depends upon how you view this conflict. Is it narrow and myopic where you see the loss of one American as a great tragedy - which it is; or do you see it in the macro - we are at war with an evil greater than the acts of one Islamicized fanatic in Texas. He did not act because he heard terrible things Ms Mcentee - if that is the case we have several hundred thousand men and women who will return to the US and kill. Most of them lack the training and skill sets to help them deal with the issues as the murderer in Texas had after years of medical and psychological training. All those hours listening to sick and wounded people at Walter Reed did not drive him back to Islam. Watching the wounded come in Ms Mcentee did not force him to shed his American clothing, give away all he owned, gather several weapons, load them, go to a military base and murder American soldiers as he yelled 'ALLAHU AKBAR' ...


That Ms. Mcentee is what we are fighting - wherever they might be, and unfortunately more of them are here, and we do so, to protect people like you and me can live in relative peace until one of these Islamic killers attacks a school bus or a mall.  We are fighting them to kill an ideology at its head - and while it will live on, it will not be as virulent - and will, in time, turn into that which it is, a death cult, easily killed off.  We are there Ms Mcentee to provide an opportunity to those people, the ones you do not believe deserve one - because we are that type of people, and we believe in choice and freedom for all people, not just for white Americans.













 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
crazy people

The Media: Can't be any more clear

The media filed papers with everyone who would listen - they argued their case in the various media forums, they lamented the loss of life and their simple interest in showing the cost of war at home.

They couldn't have been acting politically could they.




Without Bush, media lose interest in war caskets


By: Byron York
Chief Political Correspondent
September 29, 2009


Remember the controversy over the Pentagon policy of not allowing the press to take pictures of the flag-draped caskets of American war dead as they arrived in the United States? Critics accused President Bush of trying to hide the terrible human cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"These young men and women are heroes," Vice President Biden said in 2004, when he was senator from Delaware. "The idea that they are essentially snuck back into the country under the cover of night so no one can see that their casket has arrived, I just think is wrong."

In April of this year, the Obama administration lifted the press ban, which had been in place since the Persian Gulf War in 1991. Media outlets rushed to cover the first arrival of a fallen U.S. serviceman, and many photographers came back for the second arrival, and then the third.
But after that, the impassioned advocates of showing the true human cost of war grew tired of the story. Fewer and fewer photographers showed up. "It's really fallen off," says Lt. Joe Winter, spokesman for the Air Force Mortuary Affairs Operations Center at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware, where all war dead are received. "The flurry of interest has subsided."

That's an understatement. When the casket bearing Air Force Tech. Sgt. Phillip Myers, of Hopewell, Va., arrived at Dover the night of April 5 -- the first arrival in which press coverage was allowed -- there were representatives of 35 media outlets on hand to cover the story. Two days later, when the body of Army Spc. Israel Candelaria Mejias, of San Lorenzo, Puerto Rico, arrived, 17 media outlets were there. (All the figures here were provided by the Mortuary Affairs Operations Center.) On subsequent days in April, there were nearly a dozen press organizations on hand to cover arrivals.

Fast forward to today. On Sept. 2, when the casket bearing the body of Marine Lance Cpl. David Hall, of Elyria, Ohio, arrived at Dover, there was just one news outlet -- the Associated Press -- there to record it. The situation was pretty much the same when caskets arrived on Sept. 5, 9, 10, 12, 13, 14, 16, 22, 23 and 26. There has been no television coverage at all in September.
The media can cover arrivals only when the family gives its permission. In all the examples above, the families approved, which is more often than not the case; since the policy was changed, according to the Mortuary Affairs Office, 60 percent of families have said yes to full media coverage.

But these days, the press hordes that once descended on Dover are gone, and there's usually just one organization on hand. The Associated Press, which supplies photos to 1,500 U.S. newspapers and 4,000 Web sites, has had a photographer at every arrival for which permission was granted. "It's our belief that this is important, that surely somewhere there is a paper, an audience, a readership, a family and a community for whom this homecoming is indeed news," says Paul Colford, director of media relations for AP. "It's been agreed internally that this is a responsibility for the AP to be there each and every time it is welcome."

Colford says the AP has a photographer who lives within driving distance of Dover and is able to make it to the arrivals, no matter what time of day or night. As for the network news, it's not so simple; a night arrival means overtime pay for a union camera crew. And then there's the question of convenience. "It seems that if the weather is nice, and it's during the day, we get a higher level of media to come down," says Lt. Winter. "But a majority of our transfers occur in the early evening and overnight."

So far this month, 38 American troops have been killed in Afghanistan. For all of 2009, the number is 220 -- more than any other single year and more than died in 2001, 2002, 2003, and 2004 combined.

With casualties mounting, the debate over U.S. policy in Afghanistan is sharp and heated. The number of arrivals at Dover is increasing. But the journalists who once clamored to show the true human cost of war are nowhere to be found.










media whores

WAR ?

North Korea claims US could provoke nuclear war

North Korea has accused the United States of targeting it with nuclear missiles and warned that nuclear war could break out on the Korean peninsula.


By Malcolm Moore in Shanghai
The Telegraph
14 Jun 2009


A commentary in the North's state-run Rodong Sinmun newspaper claimed the US had 1,000 nuclear weapons in South Korea ready to strike.

[Obama believes in peace and kisses, not war. This sounds like something the world would say about Bush. Interesting! On the other hand, the US has had nuclear weapons pointed at North Korea for over 50 years - nothing new.]

Meanwhile, the Tongbil Sinbo newspaper said that North Korea is "completely within the range of US nuclear attack and the Korean peninsula is becoming an area where the chances of nuclear war are the highest in the world."

Over the weekend, North Korea angrily responded to fresh United Nations sanctions by threatening to build as many nuclear weapons as possible.

Until now, it said, it had only reprocessed one-third of its spent fuel rods into weapons-grade plutonium. Analysts believe the rogue state could end up with enough plutonium to make eight to nine bombs.

The rogue state also claimed to have a uranium-enrichment programme, the first time it has admitted to one. The claim is alarming, said Professor Yang Moo-Jin, of Seoul's University of North Korean Studies.

"The North has abundant natural uranium of good quality, which, if combined with technology and facilities, would result in a great nuclear arsenal," he said.

The new UN sanctions include the mandatory inspection of any ship suspected of carrying drugs, weapons or counterfeit money, the main sources of income for the impoverished country.

The resolution, which does not authorise the use of force against North Korea, also contains targeted financial curbs and demands that the state halt any further missile or nuclear tests.

Recent US, Russian and South Korean intelligence has picked up signs of activity at the Musudan launch pad in the north of the country and it is believed that North Korea could launch another long-range ballistic missile in the coming days.

However, North Korea responded with threats that any attempt to search one of its ships would be considered "an act of war" and would be "met with a decisive military response".

Meanwhile, Kim Jong-il has paid a morale-boosting visit to the troops, according to the North Korean state news agency.

Kim told soldiers of the 7th Infantry Division that he was greatly satisfied that the army "had been prepared to perform its combat duty in any circumstance".

According to the North Korean state media, Kim "highly praised" the soldiers for their "militant training spirit" and told them that "Training is also a battle!".

Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of State, said the declaration of defiance by North Korea was "deeply regrettable". The North Koreans, she said, "have now been denounced by everyone.

They have become further isolated. And it is not in the interests of the people of North Korea for that isolation to continue."

Kim Yong-kyu, a spokesman for the US army in Seoul, said the US has no nuclear bombs in South Korea and called the accusation "baseless".

Lee Myung-bak, the South Korean president, is due in Washington on Tuesday for talks with Barack Obama.





North Korea

NO MORE WAR

That was the call by all the leftist losers for years.

Now, Mr. Obama is considering a war within Pakistan, maintaining the ongoing war in Afghanistan, and closing out the war in Iraq, in the next 2-3 years.

Which means, for the next three years we could be tied up in three places.

I guess it is ok, as long as Obama is doing it.







Obama

India: War Level.

Indian security chief resigns over Mumbai attacks

Sun Nov 30, 2008
By Rina Chandran

MUMBAI (Reuters) - The fallout from a three-day rampage that killed nearly 200 people in Mumbai threatened on Sunday to unravel India's improving ties with Pakistan and prompted the resignation of India's security minister.

New Delhi said it was raising security to a "war level" and had no doubt of a Pakistani link to the attacks, which unleashed anger at home over the intelligence failure and the delayed response to the violence that paralyzed India's financial capital.

Officials in Islamabad have warned any escalation would force it to divert troops to the Indian border and away from a U.S.-led anti-militant campaign on the Afghan frontier.

Newspaper commentaries blasted politicians for failing to prevent the attacks and for taking advantage of its fallout before voting in Delhi on Saturday and national polls due by May.

Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said he would boost and overhaul the nation's counterterrorism capabilities, an announcement which came after Federal Home Minister Shivraj Patil resigned over the attacks.

"We share the hurt of the people and their sense of anger and outrage," Singh said. "Several measures are already in place ... But clearly much more needs to be done and we are determined to take all necessary measures to overhaul the system," he said.

Air and sea security would be increased, and India's main counter-terrorist National Security Guard would be increased in size and given more regional bases, he said in a statement.

Singh also named Finance Minister Palaniappan Chidambaram -- much derided as finance minister but respected for his work overhauling India's security agencies as a junior minister in the 1990s -- to take over Patil's job.

Singh, an economist by training, will take over the finance portfolio for now, the government said.

Analysts said they expect India's financial markets to get a boost from the personnel changes.

"Markets will rejoice," Arum Kejriwal, a strategist at research firm Kris, said of Chidambaram and Patil. "People will accept that the government has removed two non-performers and this can positively influence the markets."

Indian stocks closed up marginally after markets opened on Friday, the first time since the attacks, while the rupee fell. But analysts said it had already been under pressure.

Indian officials have said most, if not all, of the 10 Islamist attackers who held Mumbai hostage came from Pakistan.

The tension between the nuclear rivals has raised the prospect of a breakdown of peace efforts going on since 2004. The two nations have fought three wars since 1947, when Muslim Pakistan was carved out of Hindu-majority India.

They went to the brink of a fourth conflict after a 2001 militant attack on the Indian parliament which New Delhi also blamed on Pakistan.

"We will increase security and strengthen it at a war level like we have never done it before," Sriprakash Jaiswal, India's minister of state for home affairs, told Reuters on Sunday.

"They can say what they want, but we have no doubt that the terrorists had come from Pakistan," Jaiswal said.
An official in Islamabad said the next one to two days would be crucial for relations. Pakistan has condemned the assaults and denied any involvement by state agencies.

MOPPING THE BLOOD
The three-day rampage and siege in Mumbai turned India's financial and entertainment hub into a televised war zone.

On Sunday, the smell of disinfectant was strong outside Cafe Leopold, and the sidewalk wet from mopping -- a different sight from Wednesday night, when blood-splattered shoes and napkins lay strewn among broken furniture and glass.

It opened briefly before police came and shut it down again, saying investigations needed to be completed first.

Elsewhere in the trendy Colaba district where the fighting took place, shops were open and traffic flowed despite police barricades and heavy clean-up work around the Taj Mahal hotel, a 105-year-old landmark and site of the longest siege.

Broken windows were boarded up and firemen used a crane to reach the sixth floor, gutted by a fire set by the militants as they fought dozens of commandos in the corridors.

Elite Black Cat commandos killed the last of the gunmen on Saturday after three days of room-to-room battling inside the Taj, one of several landmarks struck in coordinated attacks on Wednesday night.

Hundreds of people, many of them Westerners, were trapped or taken hostage as the gunmen hurled grenades and fired indiscriminately. At least 22 of those killed were foreigners, including businessmen and tourists.

Nine gunmen and 20 police and soldiers were also killed. A tenth militant was caught alive.

On Saturday, India's navy and coast guard boosted coastal patrols, after evidence mounted that the attackers had come by boat to Mumbai from Karachi, Pakistan's main port.

India's Home Ministry said the official toll in Mumbai was 183 killed. Earlier, Mumbai disaster authorities said at least 195 people had been killed and 295 wounded.



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

Not that their (Pakistan) efforts in Wazeristan have helped much, but yes, they would be forced to pull troops away, most certainly if they start using nuclear weapons (near impossible).






India

The Real Case Against Iraq

When the full and complete story is written about Iraq, I honestly hope that the author will be objective, and pursue the truth as best he or she can, using all their skills and abilities to uncover and decipher the facts.

They may wish to use the piece by William Cohen, President Clinton's Secretary of Defense - he seemed to know what he was arguing - in the macro. We can always debate and disagree about the micro, but on the macro ... he provided support for Bush's decision in 2003.

Mr Cohen does mention that "although the ties to al qaeda may be real, they are more elusive and resistant to proof in the court of public opinion."

Cohen goes on to agree that the burden was on Iraq to prove, not on the US. Iraq had to abide by "more than a dozen UN Security Council Resolutions adopted since 1991, many of which unequivocally declared Iraq to be in violation of its obligations under international law."

A very good article by Cohen.




Source: Wall Street Journal, February 5, 2003
COMMENTARY
The Real Case Against Iraq
By WILLIAM S. COHEN

Today, Secretary of State Colin Powell will make the case for action against Iraq that Mr. Bush promised in his State of the Union address. The president's detailed presentation of weapons of mass destruction that Saddam Hussein did not account for is not new. Repetition of the obvious, however, does not diminish its validity.

Linking Iraq to al Qaeda and the export of terrorism has clearly been an effort by Mr. Bush to persuade skeptics that the international community can defer exercising its final option no longer. But although the ties to al Qaeda may be real, they are also more elusive and resistant to proof in the court of public opinion. Thus, in seeking to make a more compelling case, the president may have made it more complicated.
***

Mr. Bush is correct in insisting the burden of proof remains on Iraq to account for the horrific weapons it has produced. This is clear under more than a dozen U.N. Security Council Resolutions adopted since 1991, many of which unequivocally declared Iraq to be in violation of its obligations under international law. Resolution 1441, which relaunched U.N. inspections, states that Iraq's noncooperation with today's inspectors would constitute a "further material breach" and warns of serious consequence for "continued violations of its obligations."

For Mr. Bush's skeptics, Mr. Blix's recent report highlights the unconditional requirement for Iraq to account for large quantities of banned materials it once had and may still have, a few well-known examples of which include: hundreds of tons of the deadly nerve agent VX; thousands of liters of the biological agent anthrax; and thousands of chemical rockets. At a minimum, Iraq is required to offer evidence of when, where and how these banned materials were destroyed. It has made no effort to do so.

While the December 1998 attack on over 100 targets by attack aircraft, bombers, and cruise missiles set back Iraq's programs two years by destroying key facilities and killing a number of important personnel, Iraq has used the intervening four years to rebuild facilities and reconstitute its weapons programs. This includes, as Mr. Blix details in his report:

- Two missile facilities that today are building banned missiles and providing them to the Iraqi military.

- Illegal imports, as recently as December 2002, of 380 rocket engines usable in one of these illegal missile programs, as well as illegal imports of missile fuel and guidance systems.

- Reconstruction of illegal missile factory equipment previously destroyed by U.N. inspectors.

At the very time that Iraq was importing missile engines in violation of Security Council resolutions, it submitted a 12,000-page plea of innocence. Submitted on Dec. 7, it is only the most recent "full, final and complete declaration" filed in response to Security Council demands first made in 1991. Before expelling U.N. inspectors in 1998, Iraq submitted seven reports, each purporting to be full, final and complete, each proving to be false and incomplete, each yielding to a subsequent false "full, final and complete" declaration. Iraq's admissions have never exceeded what it believed the U.S. and U.N. already knew and frequently have been limited to what it has been caught red-handed having done.

During the 1990s, Iraq committed vast resources to a sophisticated program to systematically deceive U.N. inspectors, ultimately being able to clear and clean a building in as little as tens of minutes, literally shuttling equipment out the back door while inspectors were given the shuffle at the front door. Mr. Powell, in his presentation to the Security Council today, will provide intelligence that this deception program continues today.

As for the most recent "full, final and complete declaration," as Mr. Blix's report noted, not only were its 12,000 pages a reprint of earlier documents lacking any new evidence to account for the missing tons of Iraqi chemical and biological agents, the report deliberately altered earlier documents to hide information that Iraq had previously admitted. Saddam takes the international community not only to be fools but also forgetful. Unfortunately, he is not far off the mark.

Given all the evidence, the question remains why so many seem more inclined to rally against the U.S. rather than with it.

Part of the answer is that Saddam has waged a successful propaganda campaign that has placed the suffering of the Iraqi people at the doorstep of the White House. There are also the cynical calculations of those governments who are more interested in securing oil contracts and accounts receivable than in dismantling Iraqi weapons. In addition, the "sanctions fatigue syndrome" has been exacerbated by internal European power plays such as the recent Franco-German entente at Versailles.

But a measure of responsibility also rests with the administration's failure, thus far, to convince the world community of the necessity to invade Iraq and use military force to disarm and change the regime.

President Bush has tried to overcome all doubt and reservation by tying Iraq to the spread of terrorism. In a casual but on-camera declaration during a September photo-op, he stated that "You can't distinguish between al Qaeda and Saddam when you talk about the war on terror."
To support this claim, the White House has offered carefully worded statements that point out the following:

• There have been unspecified "contacts" between Iraqi "senior officials" and members of al Qaeda.
• Al Qaeda personnel have found "refuge" in Baghdad.
• Iraqis have provided training assistance to al Qaeda in chemical weapons development.

Saddam has been known to assassinate Iraqi dissidents abroad, to provide safe haven to armed Iranian groups opposed to the mullahs' regime in Iran, and provide well-publicized financial support to the families of Palestinian suicide bombers in an attempt to align international sympathy for the Palestinians to his own regime. He is, indeed, an evil man. But in contrast to many others, ranging from elements of the Iranian government to the IRA, Iraq does not have a reputation for sponsoring or conducting acts of terrorism.

Recognizing that compelling evidence to link Saddam to the export of terrorism may not be forthcoming, Prime Minister Tony Blair recently stated that if Saddam is not aiding terrorists today, he surely will do so tomorrow. Under this standard, a number of nations beyond Iran and North Korea who have similar programs and objectives are likely to be placed on the regime change or disarmament target list.

I remain convinced, however, that if President Bush hopes to meet the jus ad bellum tests that trace their roots to the days -- and orations -- of Cicero, he would be well-advised to keep the evidentiary focus on Saddam's deceits and broken promises and on the U.N.'s obligations to enforce its own resolutions.

***
If the U.N. has a less destructive, more humane and successful method of securing Saddam's disarmament than through the use of military force, it must act without further delay and disingenuousness. If, however, it chooses to remain indifferent to those who flout its resolutions and rule of law, it will succeed only in breeding contempt for the institution and further defiance of its rules.

Time, as President Bush stated, is running out both for Saddam to come clean and for the U.N. to step forward.


Mr. Cohen was secretary of defense under President Clinton.







Iraq



Saddam



Justiifcation

Hello Left Wingers - an FYI

I was just sent, although I have heard about it and read about it before, some photos of the female turned male now pregnant. Interesting and very odd.

For eight years, almost, I have had to listen to the barrage of personal attacks on Bush. So unfair. Like attacking someone with Downs Syndrome - he cannot respond due to his limited skill set, and you hammer away. There should be laws against that - oh, there are, you can't pick on the mentally impaired, which is what you all call Bush, yet you still do. Interesting. Especially given the fact you call yourselves humanistic or more humanistic. Silly of me to misunderstand what that meant.

For nearly eight years you have carped on Bush - he is an international insult you say, his cowboy attitudes have alienated us from the world.

I believe I have trounced this world view issue many times before - the world is unfit to stand in judgment of the US, for its closet is pitch and while ours may be dark, they lay waste to any notion of usefulness.

However, setting all that aside - two things:

1) Gay marriage
2) The person who is now pregnant and was a female and is a male

Those two issues have done more to destroy and lower respect for the US in the Arab and Muslim world than anything Bush has done in eight years. Bush could detonate a nuclear bomb and it would barely register higher than those two issues, barely.

So while you attack him, and on many issues, he deserves reproach, the two shining stars in your world view agenda, are what set us back in the Arab world more than any war in Iraq or Afghanistan, much, much more. The problem with this myopic view of yours is - you don't understand it, and that is a danger to all of us.








Stupid


fucking


liberals


liars


shitheads