War against Iraq (1 Viewer)

[flashpants]

Here is a voice you don't hear too often -- the conservative Republicans who have questioned these policies.

Rep. Ron Paul is an M.D. and a Republican Member of Congress from Texas.

He read the following to the House of Representatives on September 10, 2002:

Soon we hope to have hearings on the pending war with Iraq. Here are some questions I would like answered by those who are urging us to start this war:

1. Is it not true that the reason we did not bomb the Soviet Union at the height of the Cold War was because we knew they could retaliate?

2. Is it not also true that we are willing to bomb Iraq now because we know it cannot retaliate -- which just confirms that there is no real threat?

3. Is it not true that there are those who argue that even with inspections we cannot be sure that Hussein might be hiding weapons, and at the same time imply that we can be more sure that weapons exist in the absence of inspections?

4. Is it not true that the U.N.'s International Atomic Energy Agency was able to complete its yearly verification mission to Iraq just this year with Iraqi cooperation?

5. Is it not true that the intelligence community has been unable to develop a case tying Iraq to global terrorism at all, much less the attacks on the United States last year? Does anyone remember that 15 of the 19 hijackers came from Saudi Arabia and that none came from Iraq?

6. Was former CIA counter-terrorism chief Vincent Cannistraro wrong when he recently said there is no confirmed evidence of Iraq's links to terrorism?

7. Is it not true that the CIA has concluded there is no evidence that a Prague meeting between 9/11 hijacker Atta and Iraqi intelligence took place?

8. Is it not true that northern Iraq, where the administration claimed Al Qaeda were hiding out, is in the control of our "allies," the Kurds?

9. Is it not true that the vast majority of Al Qaeda leaders who escaped appear to have safely made their way to Pakistan, another of our so-called allies?

10. Has anyone noticed that Afghanistan is rapidly sinking into total chaos, with bombings and assassinations becoming daily occurrences; and that according to a recent U.N. report the Al Qaeda "is, by all accounts, alive and well and poised to strike again, how, when, and where it chooses?"

11. Why are we taking precious military and intelligence resources away from tracking down those who did attack the United States -- and who may again attack the United States -- and using them to invade countries that have not attacked the United States?

12. Would an attack on Iraq not just confirm the Arab world's worst suspicions about the United States? And isn't this what bin Laden wanted?

13. How can Hussein be compared to Hitler when he has no navy or air force, and now has an army one-fifth the size of 12 years ago, which even then proved totally inept at defending the country?

14. Is it not true that the constitutional power to declare war is exclusively that of the Congress? Should presidents, contrary to the Constitution, allow Congress to concur only when pressured by public opinion? Are presidents permitted to rely on the United Nations for permission to go to war?

15. Are you aware of a Pentagon report studying charges that thousands of Kurds in one village were gassed by the Iraqis, which found no conclusive evidence that Iraq was responsible, that Iran occupied the very city involved, and that evidence indicated the type of gas used was more likely controlled by Iran not Iraq?

16. Is it not true that anywhere between 100,000 and 300,000 U.S. soldiers have suffered from Persian Gulf War syndrome from the first Gulf War, and that thousands may have died?

17. Are we prepared for possibly thousands of American casualties in a war against a country that does not have the capacity to attack the United States?

18. Are we willing to bear the economic burden of a 100 billion dollar war against Iraq, with oil prices expected to skyrocket and further rattle an already shaky American economy? How about an estimated 30 years occupation of Iraq that some have deemed necessary to "build democracy" there?

19. Iraq's alleged violations of U.N. resolutions are given as reason to initiate an attack, yet is it not true that hundreds of U.N. resolutions have been ignored by various countries without penalty?

20. Did former President Bush not cite the U.N. resolution of 1990 as the reason he could not march into Baghdad, while supporters of a new attack assert that it is the very reason we can march into Baghdad?

21. Is it not true that, contrary to current claims, the no-fly zones were set up by Britain and the United States without specific approval from the United Nations?

22. If we claim membership in the international community and conform to its rules only when it pleases us, does this not serve to undermine our position directing animosity toward us by both friend and foe?

23. How can our declared goal of bringing democracy to Iraq be believable when we prop up dictators throughout the Middle East and support military tyrants like Musharaf in Pakistan, who overthrew a democratically elected president?

24. Are you familiar with the 1994 Senate Hearings that revealed the United States. knowingly supplied chemical and biological materials to Iraq during the Iran-Iraq war and as late as 1992 -- including after the alleged Iraqi gas attack on a Kurdish village?

25. Did we not assist Saddam Hussein's rise to power by supporting and encouraging his invasion of Iran? Is it honest to criticize Saddam now for his invasion of Iran, which at the time we actively supported?

26. Is it not true that preventive war is synonymous with an act of aggression, and has never been considered a moral or legitimate U.S. policy?

27. Why do the oil company executives strongly support this war if oil is not the real reason we plan to take over Iraq?

28. Why is it that those who never wore a uniform and are confident that they won't have to personally fight this war are more anxious for this war than our generals?

29. What is the moral argument for attacking a nation that has not initiated aggression against us, and could not if it wanted?

30. Where does the Constitution grant us permission to wage war for any reason other than self-defense?

31. Is it not true that a war against Iraq rejects the sentiments of the time-honored Treaty of Westphalia, nearly 400 years ago, that countries should never go into another for the purpose of regime change?

32. Is it not true that the more civilized a society is, the less likely disagreements will be settled by war?

33. Is it not true that since World War II, Congress has not declared war and -- not coincidentally -- we have not since then had a clear-cut victory?

34. Is it not true that Pakistan, especially through its intelligence services, was an active supporter and key organizer of the Taliban?

35. Why don't those who want war bring a formal declaration of war resolution to the floor of Congress?

 

[sarah]

Reading this after reading a few pages of silo's post on Iraq,
puts the long winding list of Iraqs alleged millitary weapons list by Tony Blair in perspective.

Thanks

 

[Speed Racer]

I wonder, were any of his Questions answered?

 

[Dan]

Anyone else find it a little convenient that the "evidence" linking al qaeda and iraq has surfaced now? I mean they had "evidence" within days that al qeada were responsible for sept 11, but its taken them a year to discover this link and just is time for when they need something that will really get the backing of the American public. They must be delighted to have discovered this.

 

[P. Littbarski]

The Dishonesty Of This So-called Dossier
by Robert Fisk
September 25, 2002

IRAQ

Tony Blair's "dossier" on Iraq is a shocking document. Reading it can only fill a decent human being with shame and outrage. Its pages are final proof – if the contents are true – that a massive crime against humanity has been committed in Iraq. For if the details of Saddam's building of weapons of mass destruction are correct – and I will come to the "ifs" and "buts" and "coulds" later – it means that our massive, obstructive, brutal policy of UN sanctions has totally failed. In other words, half a million Iraqi children were killed by us – for nothing.

Let's go back to 12 May 1996. Madeleine Albright, the US Secretary of State, had told us that sanctions worked and prevented Saddam from rebuilding weapons of mass destruction (WMD). Our Tory government agreed, and Tony Blair faithfully toed the line. But on 12 May, Mrs Albright appeared on CBS television. Leslie Stahl, the interviewer, asked: "We have heard that half a million children have died. I mean, that's more than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price worth it?" To the world's astonishment, Mrs Albright
replied: "I think this is a very hard choice, but the price, we think the price is worth it."

Now we know – if Mr Blair is telling us the truth – that the price was not worth it. The price was paid in the lives of hundreds of thousands of children. But it wasn't worth a dime. The Blair "dossier" tells us that, despite sanctions, Saddam was able to go on building weapons of mass destruction. All that nonsense about dual-use technology, the ban on children's pencils – because lead could have a military use – and our refusal to allow Iraq to import equipment to restore the water-treatment plants that we bombed in the Gulf War, was a sham.

This terrible conclusion is the only moral one to be drawn from the 16 pages that supposedly detail the chemical, biological and nuclear horrors that the Beast of Baghdad has in store for us. It's difficult, reading the full report, to know whether to laugh or cry. The degree of deceit and duplicity in its production speaks of the trickery that informs the Blair government and its treatment of MPs.

There are a few titbits that ring true. The new ammonium perchlorate plant illegally supplied by an Indian company – which breached those wonderful UN sanctions, of course – is a frightening little detail. So is the new rocket test stand at the al-Rafah plant. But this material is so swamped in trickery and knavery that its inclusion becomes worthless.

Here is one example of the dishonesty of this "dossier". On page 45, we are told – in a long chapter about Saddam's human rights abuses – that "on March 1st, 1991, in the wake of the Gulf War, riots (sic) broke out in the southern city of Basra, spreading quickly to other cities in Shia-dominated southern Iraq. The regime responded by killing thousands". What's wrong with this paragraph is the lie is in the use of the word "riots". These were not riots. They were part of a mass rebellion specifically called for by President Bush Jnr's father and by a CIA radio station in Saudi Arabia. The Shia Muslims of Iraq obeyed Mr Bush Snr's appeal. And were then left to their fate by the Americans and British, who they had been given every reason to believe would come to their help. No wonder they died in their thousands. But that's not what the Blair "dossier" tells us.

And anyone reading the weasel words of doubt that are insinuated throughout this text can only have profound concern about the basis for which Britain is to go to war. The Iraqi weapon programme "is almost certainly" seeking to enrich uranium. It "appears" that Iraq is attempting to acquire a magnet production line. There is evidence that Iraq has tried to acquire specialised aluminium tubes (used in the enrichment of uranium) but "there is no definitive intelligence" that it is destined for a nuclear programme. "If" Iraq obtained fissile material, Iraq could produce nuclear weapons in one or two years. It is "difficult to judge" whether al-Hussein missiles could be available for use. Efforts to regenerate the Iraqi missile programme "probably" began in 1995. And so the "dossier" goes on.

Now maybe Saddam has restarted his WMD programme. Let's all say it out loud, 20 times: Saddam is a brutal, wicked tyrant. But are "almost certainly", "appears", "probably" and "if" really the rallying call to send our grenadiers off to the deserts of Kut-al-Amara?

There is high praise for UN weapons inspectors. And there is more trickery in the relevant chapter. It quotes Dr Hans Blix, the executive chairman of the UN inspection commission, as saying that in the absence of (post-1998) inspections, it is impossible to verify Iraqi disarmament compliance. But on 18 August this year, the very same Dr Blix told Associated Press that he couldn't say with certainty that Baghdad possessed WMDs. This quotation is excised from the Blair "dossier", of course.

So there it is. If these pages of trickery are based on "probably" and "if", we have no business going to war. If they are all true, we murdered half a million Iraqi children. How's that for a war crime?

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=15&ItemID=2379

 

[Anne OMalley]

Brilliant: if the dossier is false, we have no business going to war. If it's true, Britain and the US are guilty of genocide to the tune of half a million children.

The logic is devastating.

Originally posted by P. Littbarski
The Dishonesty Of This So-called Dossier
by Robert Fisk
September 25, 2002

IRAQ

Tony Blair's "dossier" on Iraq is a shocking document. Reading it can only fill a decent human being with shame and outrage. Its pages are final proof – if the contents are true – that a massive crime against humanity has been committed in Iraq. For if the details of Saddam's building of weapons of mass destruction are correct – and I will come to the "ifs" and "buts" and "coulds" later – it means that our massive, obstructive, brutal policy of UN sanctions has totally failed. In other words, half a million Iraqi children were killed by us – for nothing.

Let's go back to 12 May 1996. Madeleine Albright, the US Secretary of State, had told us that sanctions worked and prevented Saddam from rebuilding weapons of mass destruction (WMD). Our Tory government agreed, and Tony Blair faithfully toed the line. But on 12 May, Mrs Albright appeared on CBS television. Leslie Stahl, the interviewer, asked: "We have heard that half a million children have died. I mean, that's more than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price worth it?" To the world's astonishment, Mrs Albright
replied: "I think this is a very hard choice, but the price, we think the price is worth it."

Now we know – if Mr Blair is telling us the truth – that the price was not worth it. The price was paid in the lives of hundreds of thousands of children. But it wasn't worth a dime. The Blair "dossier" tells us that, despite sanctions, Saddam was able to go on building weapons of mass destruction. All that nonsense about dual-use technology, the ban on children's pencils – because lead could have a military use – and our refusal to allow Iraq to import equipment to restore the water-treatment plants that we bombed in the Gulf War, was a sham.

This terrible conclusion is the only moral one to be drawn from the 16 pages that supposedly detail the chemical, biological and nuclear horrors that the Beast of Baghdad has in store for us. It's difficult, reading the full report, to know whether to laugh or cry. The degree of deceit and duplicity in its production speaks of the trickery that informs the Blair government and its treatment of MPs.

There are a few titbits that ring true. The new ammonium perchlorate plant illegally supplied by an Indian company – which breached those wonderful UN sanctions, of course – is a frightening little detail. So is the new rocket test stand at the al-Rafah plant. But this material is so swamped in trickery and knavery that its inclusion becomes worthless.

Here is one example of the dishonesty of this "dossier". On page 45, we are told – in a long chapter about Saddam's human rights abuses – that "on March 1st, 1991, in the wake of the Gulf War, riots (sic) broke out in the southern city of Basra, spreading quickly to other cities in Shia-dominated southern Iraq. The regime responded by killing thousands". What's wrong with this paragraph is the lie is in the use of the word "riots". These were not riots. They were part of a mass rebellion specifically called for by President Bush Jnr's father and by a CIA radio station in Saudi Arabia. The Shia Muslims of Iraq obeyed Mr Bush Snr's appeal. And were then left to their fate by the Americans and British, who they had been given every reason to believe would come to their help. No wonder they died in their thousands. But that's not what the Blair "dossier" tells us.

And anyone reading the weasel words of doubt that are insinuated throughout this text can only have profound concern about the basis for which Britain is to go to war. The Iraqi weapon programme "is almost certainly" seeking to enrich uranium. It "appears" that Iraq is attempting to acquire a magnet production line. There is evidence that Iraq has tried to acquire specialised aluminium tubes (used in the enrichment of uranium) but "there is no definitive intelligence" that it is destined for a nuclear programme. "If" Iraq obtained fissile material, Iraq could produce nuclear weapons in one or two years. It is "difficult to judge" whether al-Hussein missiles could be available for use. Efforts to regenerate the Iraqi missile programme "probably" began in 1995. And so the "dossier" goes on.

Now maybe Saddam has restarted his WMD programme. Let's all say it out loud, 20 times: Saddam is a brutal, wicked tyrant. But are "almost certainly", "appears", "probably" and "if" really the rallying call to send our grenadiers off to the deserts of Kut-al-Amara?

There is high praise for UN weapons inspectors. And there is more trickery in the relevant chapter. It quotes Dr Hans Blix, the executive chairman of the UN inspection commission, as saying that in the absence of (post-1998) inspections, it is impossible to verify Iraqi disarmament compliance. But on 18 August this year, the very same Dr Blix told Associated Press that he couldn't say with certainty that Baghdad possessed WMDs. This quotation is excised from the Blair "dossier", of course.

So there it is. If these pages of trickery are based on "probably" and "if", we have no business going to war. If they are all true, we murdered half a million Iraqi children. How's that for a war crime?

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=15&ItemID=2379

 

[Speed Racer]

Blairs document on Iraq did make me ask the question: How do I know that alot of this isn't fabricated? Robert Fisk seems to answer those questions for me. Which is great. I think his documentaries are exceptional. As is his quest for the truth.

 

[dubh in seattle]

dija hear bush jr say that it's reason enough to attack Iraq 'cos "saddam tried to kill my dad?" And here I though that national interests and sanity took presidence over personal vendettas? Oops-- that's right, I live in the u.s, and the thief-in-chief is a coke snortin' rich kid who's never accomplished anything without daddy's thumb on the scale. The ratio of dead Iraqi children to living kleptocrats doesn't quite seem even to the white house cabal, apparently.

 

[P. Littbarski]

25/10/2002 15:04:46

Afghanistan back as top poppy producer

Afghanistan has again established itself as the world’s largest opium poppy producer, with growers taking advantage of a power vacuum during the US-led war and the collapse of the Taliban regime, the UN drug control agency said today.

This year’s production follows a sharp decline in 2001, when the Taliban were enforcing a ban on poppy cultivation, the United Nations Office for Drug Control and Crime Prevention said in a report released in Rome.

The agency, however, expressed support for an eradication programme launched earlier this year by Afghan President Hamid Karzai, and called on the international community to step up its support for the government campaign.

"These figures are not the manifestation of a failure of Afghan authorities or of the international drug control efforts," the agency’s executive director, Antonio Maria Costa, said.

"The planting took place during the total collapse of law and order in the autumn of 2001."

Opium is the raw material of heroin.

The total opium production this year has been estimated at about 3,400 tons, compared to 185 tons in 2001 - the result of the Taliban ban.

The figure is also above preliminary assessments, which had projected this year’s production at around 2,500 tons.

Revenue for each of the 200-250,000 families involved in poppy production is estimated at around €35,800 per year, Costa said.

The UN survey found opium poppy cultivation in 24 of the 32 Afghan provinces, but said that some 95% of it was concentrated in five provinces, traditionally the largest-poppy growing areas: northern Badakhshan, eastern Nangarhar, central Uruzgan and southern Helmand and Kandahar.

Another reason for this year’s increase is that cultivation has been extended to more productive, irrigated land in southern and eastern Afghanistan, and that weather conditions have improved after years of drought, the report said.

The UN agency has conducted annual opium surveys in Afghanistan since 1994. Due to security concerns, this year’s report was based on satellite images enhanced by ground verification, said the agency.

Costa said that prospects for this year’s planting – next year’s crop – are still uncertain. Planting starts in autumn and goes through December.

“Farmers are not sure they will go unpunished as they did last year,” he said.

In the 1990s Afghanistan was the world’s largest opium producer. In the late 1990s, it was supplying 70% of the world’s opium.

Then, in 2000, the Taliban government banned poppy cultivation. But the US-led war that ousted the Taliban late last year prompted Afghan farmers to plant poppy again over tens of thousands of acres.

The nationwide eradication campaign was launched in April, when the government began offering farmers cash for every acre of destroyed poppy.

Costa said the international community – and especially European countries which are a major destination of heroin originating from Afghanistan – should help Afghans strengthen drug control and develop legal means of earning a livelihood.

 

[P. Littbarski]

another article that supports Gore Vidals theory

http://www.oilandgasinternational.com/departments/from_editor/10_29_01.html