Bush and his 'Bunch of Liars'

[Captain Virgil Hilts]

Originally posted by Dowding
Sling - you seem to regard Schwarzkopf's opinion highly. What about his current opinion, which pretty much challenges the entire Bush strategy?

Well, you are wrong again. Stormin Norman WAS against the idea of force, about 60 days or more ago. However, after seeing the B.S. stupidity in the UN itself, the total lack of co operation by Saddam, and the total incompetence of Hans Blix, he made a 180 and said that we should not hesitate to take Saddam on and take him out ASAP.

[SirLoin]

.

[Arlo]

The Ugly Truth About Canadians[/size]

FACT: Canadians are more likely to than any other nationality to eat roadkill. In fact, Canadians refer to dead raccoons found on the highway as "Toronto Bologna."

(Source: McMillan's Culture Guide 1999-2000)

FACT: Canada is the world's largest supplier of cocaine, heroin, methamphetamines and back bacon.

(Source: Gene Raphael's Big Book Of Canucks)

FACT: A 1987 survey found that Canadians have the worst handwriting in the whole world. They also frequently misspell the word "sauce."

(Source: Heritage United Poll - Summer 1987)

FACT: Almost half of the planes in the Canadian Air Force are made completely of paper.

(Source: Jane's Information Group)

FACT: When eating at fancy restaurants, or even not-so-fancy ones, there is an 81 percent chance that a Canadian will leave no tip. There is a 19 percent chance that a Canadian will leave an upside-down penny stuck into a wad of chewed-up gum. He will probably laugh about it afterward, too.

(Source: Culture, Culture, Culture - p. 59)

FACT: Canadians frequently give tourists and vistors bad directions on purpose. Many of them hope that the tourists will drive into an open mine shaft and die.

(Source: Northern Neighbor Network Online)

FACT: Canada only has three museums, and two of them are dedicated to the history of the buffalo

(Source: Seeing The Sights - p.108)

FACT: Canadian stamp collectors are 54 percent more likely to eat their stamps than stamp collectors of other nationalities are. Canadians are also known to taint their stamp adhesive with LSD.

(Source: Peter Fontaine's Big Book Of Wow pp.207-208)

FACT: Canadians don't tell their children about the myth of Santa Claus. When December rolls around, they entertain their kids with stories of Saint Oh, a skinny man with a pencil thin mustache who likes to stab people with an ice pick.

(Source: Winter Holidays Worldwide - p.80)


This is a Canadian map.
I can't figure it out either.

FACT: 75 percent of Canadians think it's okay for young people to smoke random plants that they find growing on the side of the highway.

(Source: B.C. Believer Online)

FACT: Eight out of ten Canadians think people in wheelchairs should have to live on an island overrun by ferrets.

(Source: ASPCA)

FACT: 42 percent of the average Canadian's income comes from money stolen from the collection plate at church. The Canadians who don't go to church get most of their money via strong-arm tactics used on the paperboy.

(Source: UNICEF UNIWorld Report 1995)


Most Canadians claim to know this guy.
They don't, but they'll lie to you about it anyway.

FACT: The majority of Canadians believe that "teaching toddlers the correct way to smoke a cigarette" is a matter of national importance and should be government funded.

(Source: Manitoba Free Press)


Playing football is illegal in Canada.
In fact, most sports are illegal in Canada.
Canadians prefer that their young people spend their time by using illegal drugs or vandalizing public works of art.
Playing football in Canada is punishable by a $75 fine and/or death.

[blitz]

Originally posted by blitz
I know very well  they are good people

Ever heard the word : Propaganda?


I hope ya find WMDs to proof at least 1 of ya points but why search, jusk ask Doni Rumsfeld about it, he definately knows all about. And if not, he just gives a call to his old pal , Saddam.

Regards Blitz

America was threatened by Iraq in no way , it was just plain
ridiculous, it's a classic 'Angriffskrieg'

 
America Didn't Seem to Mind Poison Gas
By Joost R. Hiltermann
International Herald Tribune
January 17, 2003

In calling for regime change in Iraq, George W. Bush has accused Saddam Hussein of being a man who gassed his own people. Bush is right, of course. The public record shows that Saddam's regime repeatedly spread poisonous gases on Kurdish villages in 1987 and 1988 in an attempt to put down a persistent rebellion.

The biggest such attack was against Halabja in March 1988. According to local organizations providing relief to the survivors, some 6,800 Kurds were killed, the vast majority of them civilians.

It is a good thing that Bush has highlighted these atrocities by a regime that is more brutal than most. Yet it is cynical to use them as a justification for American plans to terminate the regime. By any measure, the American record on Halabja is shameful.

Analysis of thousands of captured Iraqi secret police documents and declassified U.S. government documents, as well as interviews with scores of Kurdish survivors, senior Iraqi defectors and retired U.S. intelligence officers, show (1) that Iraq carried out the attack on Halabja, and (2) that the United States, fully aware it was Iraq, accused Iran, Iraq's enemy in a fierce war, of being partly responsible for the attack. The State Department instructed its diplomats to say that Iran was partly to blame. The result of this stunning act of sophistry was that the international community failed to muster the will to condemn Iraq strongly for an act as heinous as the terrorist strike on the World Trade Center.

This was at a time when Iraq was launching what proved to be the final battles of the war against Iran. Its wholesale use of poison gas against Iranian troops and Iranian Kurdish towns, and its threat to place chemical warheads on the missiles it was lobbing at Tehran, brought Iran to its knees.

Iraq had also just embarked on a counterinsurgency campaign, called the Anfal, against its rebellious Kurds. In this effort, too, the regime's resort to chemical weapons gave it a decisive edge, enabling the systematic killing of an estimated 100,000 men, women, and children.

The deliberate American prevarication on Halabja was the logical, although probably undesired, outcome of a pronounced six-year tilt toward Iraq, seen as a bulwark against the perceived threat posed by Iran's zealous brand of politicized Islam. The United States began the tilt after Iraq, the aggressor in the war, was expelled from Iranian territory by a resurgent Iran, which then decided to pursue its own, fruitless version of regime change in Baghdad. There was little love for what virtually all of Washington recognized as an unsavory regime, but Iraq was considered the lesser evil. Sealed by National Security Decision Directive 114 in 1983, the tilt included billions of dollars in loan guarantees and other credits to Iraq.

Sensing correctly that it had carte blanche, Saddam's regime escalated its resort to gas warfare, graduating to ever more lethal agents. Because of the strong Western animus against Iran, few paid heed. Then came Halabja.

Unfortunately for Iraq's sponsors, Iran rushed Western reporters to the blighted town. The horrifying scenes they filmed were presented on prime time television a few days later. Soon Ted Koppel could be seen putting the Iraqi ambassador's feet to the fire on Nightline.

In response, the United States launched the "Iran too" gambit. The story was cooked up in the Pentagon, interviews with the principals show. A newly declassified State Department document demonstrates that U.S. diplomats received instructions to press this line with U.S. allies, and to decline to discuss the details.

It took seven weeks for the UN Security Council to censure the Halabja attack. Even then, its choice of neutral language (condemning the "continued use of chemical weapons in the conflict between the Islamic Republic of Iran and Iraq," and calling on "both sides to refrain from the future use of chemical weapons") diffused the effect of its belated move. Iraq proceeded to step up its use of gas until the end of the war and even afterward, during the final stage of the Anfal campaign, to devastating effect. When I visited Halabja last spring, the town, razed by successive Iranian and Iraqi occupiers, had been rebuilt, but the physical and psychological wounds remained.

Some of those who engineered the tilt today are back in power in the Bush administration.

They have yet to account for their judgment that it was Iran, not Iraq, that posed the primary threat to the Gulf; for building up Iraq so that it thought it could invade Kuwait and get away with it; for encouraging Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programs by giving the regime a de facto green light on chemical weapons use; and for turning a blind eye to Iraq's worst atrocities, and then lying about it.

The writer is preparing a book on U.S. policy toward Iraq, with partial support from the Open Society Institute and the MacArthur Foundation.


Regards Blitz

[blitz]

Originally posted by Steve
Blitz. 72% of the U.S. Population supports the war, are you saying they are all either fools or mistaken?  You argue your points intelligently Blitz.. I'll be sure to look for your eloquent retractions once we uncover Saddam's luncay///WMD.  Are you man enough for something like that?

 
Rumsfeld "Offered Help to Saddam"
By Julian Borgor
Guardian
December 31, 2002

The Reagan administration and its special Middle East envoy, Donald Rumsfeld, did little to stop Iraq developing weapons of mass destruction in the 1980s, even though they knew Saddam Hussein was using chemical weapons "almost daily" against Iran, it was reported yesterday.

US support for Baghdad during the Iran-Iraq war as a bulwark against Shi'ite militancy has been well known for some time, but using declassified government documents, the Washington Post provided new details yesterday about Mr Rumsfeld's role, and about the extent of the Reagan administration's knowledge of the use of chemical weapons.

The details will embarrass Mr Rumsfeld, who as defence secretary in the Bush administration is one of the leading hawks on Iraq, frequently denouncing it for its past use of such weapons.

The US provided less conventional military equipment than British or German companies but it did allow the export of biological agents, including anthrax; vital ingredients for chemical weapons; and cluster bombs sold by a CIA front organisation in Chile, the report says.

Intelligence on Iranian troop movements was provided, despite detailed knowledge of Iraq's use of nerve gas.

Rick Francona, an ex-army intelligence lieutenant-colonel who served in the US embassy in Baghdad in 1987 and 1988, told the Guardian: "We believed the Iraqis were using mustard gas all through the war, but that was not as sinister as nerve gas.

"They started using tabun [a nerve gas] as early as '83 or '84, but in a very limited way. They were probably figuring out how to use it. And in '88, they developed sarin."

On November 1 1983, the secretary of state, George Shultz, was passed intelligence reports of "almost daily use of CW [chemical weapons]" by Iraq.

However, 25 days later, Ronald Reagan signed a secret order instructing the administration to do "whatever was necessary and legal" to prevent Iraq losing the war.

In December Mr Rumsfeld, hired by President Reagan to serve as a Middle East troubleshooter, met Saddam Hussein in Baghdad and passed on the US willingness to help his regime and restore full diplomatic relations.

Mr Rumsfeld has said that he "cautioned" the Iraqi leader against using banned weapons. But there was no mention of such a warning in state department notes of the meeting.

Howard Teicher, an Iraq specialist in the Reagan White House, testified in a 1995 affidavit that the then CIA director, William Casey, used a Chilean firm, Cardoen, to send cluster bombs to use against Iran's "human wave" attacks.

A 1994 congressional inquiry also found that dozens of biological agents, including various strains of anthrax, had been shipped to Iraq by US companies, under licence from the commerce department.

Furthermore, in 1988, the Dow Chemical company sold $1.5m-worth (£930,000) of pesticides to Iraq despite suspicions they would be used for chemical warfare.

The only occasion that Iraq's use of banned weapons seems to have worried the Reagan administration came in 1988, after Lt Col Francona toured the battlefield on the al-Faw peninsula in southern Iraq and reported signs of sarin gas.

"When I was walking around I saw atropine injectors lying around. We saw decontamination fluid on vehicles, there were no insects," said Mr Francona, who has written a book on shifting US policy to Iraq titled Ally to Adversary. "There was a very quick response from Washington saying, 'Let's stop our cooperation' but it didn't last long - just weeks."



Regards Blitz



America was threatened by Iraq in no way , it was just plain ridiculous, it's a classic 'Angriffskrieg'

[Arlo]

Do you have subscriptions to every anti-American agenda rag out there?

[blitz]

Originally posted by Arlo
Do you have subscriptions to every anti-American agenda rag out there?

No, only to the intelligent ones


Regards Blitz


America was threatened by Iraq in no way , it was just plain ridiculous, it's a classic 'Angriffskrieg'

[Arlo]

If you're the judge then the jury's still out.

Originally posted by blitz
No, only to the intelligent ones
 

[blitz]

Originally posted by Arlo
If you're the judge then the jury's still out.

I'm the judge? Naaaah, i'm just a spectator



Regards Blitz


Resignation speech of Robin Cook, in full. Former Foreign Secretary and now former Cabinet minister.



quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This is the first time for 20 years that I have addressed the House from the Back Benches. I must confess that I had forgotten how much better the view is from here. None of those 20 years were more enjoyable or more rewarding than the past two, in which I have had the immense privilege of serving this House as Leader of the House, which were made all the more enjoyable, Mr. Speaker, by the opportunity of working closely with you.

It was frequently the necessity for me as Leader of the House to talk my way out of accusations that a statement had been preceded by a press interview. On this occasion I can say with complete confidence that no press interview has been given before this statement. I have chosen to address the House first on why I cannot support a war without international agreement or domestic support.

The present Prime Minister is the most successful leader of the Labour party in my lifetime. I hope that he will continue to be the leader of our party, and I hope that he will continue to be successful. I have no sympathy with, and I will give no comfort to, those who want to use this crisis to displace him.

I applaud the heroic efforts that the Prime Minister has made in trying to secure a second resolution. I do not think that anybody could have done better than the Foreign Secretary in working to get support for a second resolution within the Security Council. But the very intensity of those attempts underlines how important it was to succeed. Now that those attempts have failed, we cannot pretend that getting a second resolution was of no importance.

France has been at the receiving end of bucketloads of commentary in recent days. It is not France alone that wants more time for inspections. Germany wants more time for inspections; Russia wants more time for inspections; indeed, at no time have we signed up even the minimum necessary to carry a second resolution. We delude ourselves if we think that the degree of international hostility is all the result of President Chirac. The reality is that Britain is being asked to embark on a war without agreement in any of the international bodies of which we are a leading partner -- not NATO, not the European Union and, now, not the Security Council.

To end up in such diplomatic weakness is a serious reverse. Only a year ago, we and the United States were part of a coalition against terrorism that was wider and more diverse than I would ever have imagined possible. History will be astonished at the diplomatic miscalculations that led so quickly to the disintegration of that powerful coalition. The US can afford to go it alone, but Britain is not a superpower. Our interests are best protected not by unilateral action but by multilateral agreement and a world order governed by rules. Yet tonight the international partnerships most important to us are weakened: the European Union is divided; the Security Council is in stalemate. Those are heavy casualties of a war in which a shot has yet to be fired.

I have heard some parallels between military action in these circumstances and the military action that we took in Kosovo. There was no doubt about the multilateral support that we had for the action that we took in Kosovo. It was supported by NATO; it was supported by the European Union; it was supported by every single one of the seven neighbors in the region. France and Germany were our active allies. It is precisely because we have none of that support in this case that it was all the more important to get agreement in the Security Council as the last hope of demonstrating international agreement.

The legal basis for our action in Kosovo was the need to respond to an urgent and compelling humanitarian crisis. Our difficulty in getting support this time is that neither the international community nor the British public is persuaded that there is an urgent and compelling reason for this military action in Iraq.

The threshold for war should always be high. None of us can predict the death toll of civilians from the forthcoming bombardment of Iraq, but the US warning of a bombing campaign that will "shock and awe" makes it likely that casualties will be numbered at least in the thousands. I am confident that British servicemen and women will acquit themselves with professionalism and with courage. I hope that they all come back. I hope that Saddam, even now, will quit Baghdad and avert war, but it is false to argue that only those who support war support our troops. It is entirely legitimate to support our troops while seeking an alternative to the conflict that will put those troops at risk.

Nor is it fair to accuse those of us who want longer for inspections of not having an alternative strategy. For four years as Foreign Secretary I was partly responsible for the western strategy of containment. Over the past decade that strategy destroyed more weapons than in the Gulf war, dismantled Iraq's nuclear weapons programme and halted Saddam's medium and long-range missiles programmes. Iraq's military strength is now less than half its size than at the time of the last Gulf war.

Ironically, it is only because Iraq's military forces are so weak that we can even contemplate its invasion. Some advocates of conflict claim that Saddam's forces are so weak, so demoralized and so badly equipped that the war will be over in a few days. We cannot base our military strategy on the assumption that Saddam is weak and at the same time justify pre-emptive action on the claim that he is a threat.

Iraq probably has no weapons of mass destruction in the commonly understood sense of the term—namely a credible device capable of being delivered against a strategic city target. It probably still has biological toxins and battlefield chemical munitions, but it has had them since the 1980s when US companies sold Saddam anthrax agents and the then British Government approved chemical and munitions factories. Why is it now so urgent that we should take military action to disarm a military capacity that has been there for 20 years, and which we helped to create? Why is it necessary to resort to war this week, while Saddam's ambition to complete his weapons programme is blocked by the presence of UN inspectors?

Only a couple of weeks ago, Hans Blix told the Security Council that the key remaining disarmament tasks could be completed within months. I have heard it said that Iraq has had not months but 12 years in which to complete disarmament, and that our patience is exhausted. Yet it is more than 30 years since resolution 242 called on Israel to withdraw from the occupied territories. We do not express the same impatience with the persistent refusal of Israel to comply. I welcome the strong personal commitment that the Prime Minister has given to middle east peace, but Britain's positive role in the middle east does not redress the strong sense of injustice throughout the Muslim world at what it sees as one rule for the allies of the US and another rule for the rest.

Nor is our credibility helped by the appearance that our partners in Washington are less interested in disarmament than they are in regime change in Iraq. That explains why any evidence that inspections may be showing progress is greeted in Washington not with satisfaction but with consternation: it reduces the case for war.

What has come to trouble me most over past weeks is the suspicion that if the hanging chads in Florida had gone the other way and Al Gore had been elected, we would not now be about to commit British troops.

The longer that I have served in this place, the greater the respect I have for the good sense and collective wisdom of the British people. On Iraq, I believe that the prevailing mood of the British people is sound. They do not doubt that Saddam is a brutal dictator, but they are not persuaded that he is a clear and present danger to Britain. They want inspections to be given a chance, and they suspect that they are being pushed too quickly into conflict by a US Administration with an agenda of its own. Above all, they are uneasy at Britain going out on a limb on a military adventure without a broader international coalition and against the hostility of many of our traditional allies.

From the start of the present crisis, I have insisted, as Leader of the House, on the right of this place to vote on whether Britain should go to war. It has been a favorite theme of commentators that this House no longer occupies a central role in British politics. Nothing could better demonstrate that they are wrong than for this House to stop the commitment of troops in a war that has neither international agreement nor domestic support. I intend to join those tomorrow night who will vote against military action now. It is for that reason, and for that reason alone, and with a heavy heart, that I resign from the Government.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------



__________________
Only a year ago, we and the United States were part of a coalition against terrorism that was wider and more diverse than I would ever have imagined possible. History will be astonished at the diplomatic miscalculations that led so quickly to the disintegration of that powerful coalition. - Robin Cook, MP

[Arlo]

Then .... quiet in the gallery.

Originally posted by blitz
I'm the judge? Naaaah, i'm just a spectator

[blitz]

..

[blitz]

Originally posted by Arlo
Then .... quiet in the gallery.

To much fun cheering while the warmovie is running



Regards Blitz



America was threatened by Iraq in no way , it was just plain ridiculous, it's a classic 'Angriffskrieg'

[Arlo]

Still upset over missing the "human sheild" bus last month? I'm sure you wouldn't have missed the one coming back.

Originally posted by blitz
To much fun cheering while the warmovie is running

[blitz]

Originally posted by Arlo
Still upset over missing the "human sheild" bus last month? I'm sure you wouldn't have missed the one coming back.

I'm upset watchin on TV these scarred to death american POWs the Iraqi forces got.  

Bring ya boys home to their families, damn !


Regards Blitz



America was threatened by Iraq in no way , it was just plain ridiculous, it's a classic 'Angriffskrieg'

[Arlo]

That's the plan. Some will make the ultimate sacrifice ... freeing people from tyranny and helping make the region more stable. If it could have been done by remote control or via the internet or maybe by writing a scathing article about it, I'm sure one of those methods would have been used.

Originally posted by blitz
I'm upset watchin on TV these scarred to death american POWs the Iraqi forces got.  

Bring ya boys home to their families, damn !