Fuck ! Too long.
Did you know that Bush's so called nuclear dismantling is just turn them off and store them, not destroy them so he can use them against the bad guys when he wants, so will Russia also do this?
IrishGuevara
Results 1 to 10 of 10
BUSH'S "WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION" HOAX: BIG LIE MASKS REAL MOTIVE
FOR IRAQ WAR
Politicians Debate Tactics for Middle East Domination
By Brian Becker
The Bush administration's preparations for a massive onslaught on Iraq
are rapidly advancing. So too is international cooperation between
anti-war and progressive working-class organizations that are striving
to urgently create a broad, worldwide movement to stay the hand of
the Pentagon.
There exists vast potential for anti-war mobilization. If one had the
power to take a public opinion poll of the 6 billion people who inhabit
the planet, only an infinitesimal percentage would support a U.S.
invasion of Iraq.
In the region where the conflict is slated to take place there is
already widespread anger against the United States for threatening new
war against Iraq while the U.S. sends $15 million every day to finance
Israeli terror against the Palestinian people.
Every government in the Middle East--including Saudi Arabia and Kuwait-
-wants to see an end to the conflict with Iraq. The Arab League Summit
in Beirut in March showed that all 22 governments want to improve
relations with Iraq. Saudi Arabia and Iraq have since re-opened their
long-closed border. Syria and Lebanon have normalized their
relations with Iraq.
While world public opinion is decidedly against Bush's war drive, it
will take a mass peoples' movement--in the streets, workplaces,
communities, campuses and high schools-- to stop the coming war.
A DEBATE ON TACTICS
While there are divisions and debates between the U.S. administration
and the governments of France, Germany, Russia, Japan and the other
U.S. "allies," it would be naïve to believe that any of the imperialist
governments will stand up to the might of the Pentagon war planners.
As with the political establishment in Europe, there are sectors inside
the U.S. capitalist establishment that have grave misgivings and fear
about a war in the Middle East that is so brazenly aggressive. Gen.
Brent Scowcroft, a national security advisor to President George W.
Bush and his father 10 years ago, went on national television on Aug. 4
to warn that a U.S. invasion of Iraq "could turn the whole region into
a cauldron and, thus, destroy the war on terrorism."
Scowcroft and others fear the war could provoke revolution and anti-
U.S. ferment in this strategic region that contains two-thirds of the
world's known oil resources. But these establishment figures won't stop
the war. Nor should we expect meaningful opposition inside the halls of
the U.S. Congress.
The supposed "debate" in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on July
31-Aug. 1 over the coming war against Iraq is a clear indication that
the political and military establishment are in harmony over the basic
strategic assumptions promoted by the Bush administration.
"President Bush has made clear his determination to remove Iraqi
dictator Saddam Hussein from power--a goal many of us in Congress
share," Joseph Biden and Richard Lugar, the highest-ranking Democrat
and Republican in the Senate Committee, announced in a joint statement.
What passes as grand democratic debate in Congress is a polite
"gentlemen's" consultation over the best strategy: war or sanctions?
The "debate" is strictly confined to selecting the best means to
accomplish the goal of U.S. domination over Iraq:
* new military invasion and air war to install a pro-U.S. regime, or
* maintain economic sanctions coupled with routine low- intensity
bombing. (U.S. and British planes bombed Iraq on six separate occasions
in the last four weeks, according to an Aug. 5 Associated Press
dispatch.)
This is just a debate about the most politically effective way to kill
large numbers of Iraqis.
In the 1991 Gulf War more than 100,000 Iraqis died as the U.S., Britain
and France dropped more than 88,500 tons of explosives on Baghdad,
Basra, Mosul and other cities during the 42-day onslaught. (Wall Street
Journal, March 20, 1991)
Sanctions took even more lives. UNICEF reports that well over 1 million
Iraqi civilians died from malnutrition and disease brought on by
airtight economic sanctions in the 11 years since the war ended.
Following the Senate debate, Biden, the leading Democrat on foreign
policy issues, went on "Meet the Press" Aug. 4 to signal that the
economic sanctions would now be replaced by all-out war.
"I believe there probably will be a war with Iraq," he stated. "The
only question is, is it alone, is it with others, and how long and how
costly will it be?"
ANSWERING BUSH'S WAR PROPAGANDA
The tasks facing the new international anti-war movement include
developing a popular and effective answer to the White House propaganda
machine. Bush and the Pentagon are working non-stop to demonize the
victims of their planned attack, while creating a credible pretext for
war.
Working people in the United States, and especially the youth, must be
able to learn the real causes for the coming conflict and learn how to
respond to the Pentagon's lies. Otherwise people will be susceptible to
the pro-war hype and frenzy that are being cynically generated to
prepare public opinion for war.
The main argument used by the White House to scare up support for an
invasion is that "Saddam Hussein must be prevented from acquiring or
developing chemical, biological or nuclear weapons--a.k.a. weapons of
mass destruction."
The White House has focused on this bogus argument because it has no
other. Every effort was made to connect Iraq to the Sept. 11 attack and
later to the anthrax attacks in the autumn of 2001.
But there was no evidence of a connection, so Bush simply broadened the
scope of the "war on terrorism" by proclaiming that Iraq, Iran, north
Korea and other "evil" countries would be considered terrorist and
subject to preemptive military attacks.
What made them terrorists? Bush said they were "trying to acquire
weapons of mass destruction."
Iraq certainly did possess and use chemical weapons in the 1980s. Both
Iraq and Iran used such weapons against each other in that brutal and
reactionary war. But these weapons were not "frightening" to the U.S.
at the time of their use.
Donald Rumsfeld, the current secretary of defense, was meeting in
Baghdad with Saddam Hussein and other Iraqi leaders in December 1983
and March 1984, and improving U.S.- Iraqi relations on behalf of the
Reagan administration when the allegations concerning chemical weapons
surfaced. But this was when the U.S. was encouraging Iraq's war effort
as part of a strategy to weaken and exhaust the Iranian Revolution.
During the 1991 Gulf War, Iraq did not use chemical or non-
conventional weapons, but the U.S. did. It dropped tons of depleted
uranium weapons all over Iraq.
It is important to deconstruct the piece of propaganda regarding
"weapons of mass destruction." It is the only pretext available to the
war-makers and it needs to be answered effectively.
The facts are very crucial to understanding the duplicity of U.S.
strategy. The U.S. is employing a classic Catch-22 public relations
technique aimed at demonizing Iraq before an uninformed and
unsuspecting public.
BACKGROUND TO OPERATION DESERT FOX
Iraq agreed in 1991 to let in UN weapons inspectors--a condition
imposed by the United States at the end of the Gulf War. The U.S.
insisted that economic sanctions would be lifted only after inspectors
verified that Iraq was free from non-conventional weapons.
But for the last four years it has been the U.S. government that has
worked hard at manipulating the UN so that there would be no inspectors
in Iraq, thus eliminating any chance of ending sanctions.
After the U.S.-dominated team carried out 9,000 inspections over nearly
eight years, Iraq demanded in 1998 that the UN/U.S. economic sanctions
be ended. Most governments in the UN favored lifting sanctions.
The demand to end the sanctions was gaining irresistible momentum.
This prompted the Clinton administration to withdraw the weapons
inspectors on Dec. 12, 1998, on the pretext that Iraq was not "fully
cooperating," creating the impression that Iraq was leading inspectors
on some wild goose chase or blocking their path.
Clinton argued that the U.S. had no choice but to bomb Iraq because it
was blocking meaningful inspections.
In fact, the United Nations Special Commission--UNSCOM-- cited only
five "obstructions" to the 423 inspections conducted between Nov. 18-
Dec.12, 1998. One was a 45-minute delay before allowing access. Another
was Iraq's rebuff to a demand by a U.S. inspector that she be able to
interview all the undergraduate students in Baghdad University's
Science Department.
Two other cases of Iraq's alleged non-compliance had to do with
UNSCOM's request to inspect two establishments on Friday--the Muslim
holy day. Since the establishments were closed, Iraq asserted that the
inspections must be held another day or that an Iraqi official would
accompany the inspectors--in accordance with an agreement between
UNSCOM and Iraq regarding Friday inspections.
Less than 48 hours after the inspectors were withdrawn from Iraq, the
Pentagon began the massive bombing campaign known as Operation Desert
Fox on Dec. 16-19, 1998. U.S. and British warplanes dropped more than
1,000 missiles and bombs on the country during those four days.
Two weeks after Operation Desert Fox, U.S. officials publicly admitted
the weapons inspectors were intelligence agents who provided Pentagon
bombing planners with bombing coordinates. (New York Times, Jan. 7,
1999)
Predictably--and justifiably--the Iraqi government announced that it
would no longer cooperate with the UN weapons inspections.
Bush, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Vice President Richard
Che ney now routinely bellow that Iraq has denied weapons inspectors
access to the country for four years; Iraq is intransigent and defiant
of UN resolutions.
And thus, the U.S. has cynically crafted the chief rationale for the
coming invasion.
IRAQI DIPLOMACY REBUFFED AGAIN
Bush, Rumsfeld and Co. reveal the depth of their cynicism and duplicity
as they work overtime now to make it nearly impossible for weapons
inspectors to return to Iraq. That would slow down the invasion plan--
their biggest fear of all.
On Aug. 1, the day the Senate hearings concluded, Iraq's foreign
minister released a letter sent to UN General Secretary Kofi Annan
announcing that Iraq was ready to resume discussions about the possible
re-admission of UN weapons inspectors. Given the experience of the
past, however, when so-called inspectors were actually
gathering coordinates for cruise missile attacks, Iraq
wanted discussions first to set terms.
Iraq also offered to allow a delegation of U.S. congressional
representatives, accompanied by arms experts of their choice, to tour
sites in Iraq where they suspect weapons of mass destruction are
hidden.
Far from defusing the U.S. war drive, however, the Bush administration
immediately dismissed the Iraqi invitation to discuss the return of the
weapons inspectors or the invitation to an arms control delegation from
Congress. Colin Powell, secretary of state, and frequently portrayed as
less hawkish than the other Bushies, made it clear that the U.S.
wouldn't take "yes" for an answer from Iraq.
"Inspection is not the issue, disarmament is ... we have seen the
Iraqis fiddle with the inspection system before," Powell said
dismissively while stopping over in the Philippines. (The Observer,
Aug. 4)
Another official, John Bolton, U.S. under-secretary for arms control,
was even more blunt: "Our policy ... insists on regime change in
Baghdad and that policy will not be altered, whether inspectors go in
or not." (British Radio 4 Today show, Aug. 4)
WHO ARE THE REAL TERRORISTS?
If the production of weapons of mass destruction is the criteria to
affix the terrorist label, then clearly George W. Bush presides over
the biggest terrorist enterprise now or at any time in world history.
The U.S. has the largest nuclear arsenal--more than 6,000 nuclear
missiles and bombs. It has spent $4 trillion on nuclear weapons since
1945. When it had a monopoly on these weapons it did not hesitate to
use them against civilian centers--up to 200,000 civilians were
instantly incinerated in Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.
Bush is spending hundreds of billions on militarizing outer space. The
recently-released Pentagon military doctrine includes a declaration of
its right to first use of nuclear weapons against Iraq, north Korea,
Iran, China and Russia. The U.S. has Trident submarines and U.S.
aircraft carriers carrying nuclear weapons 24 hours a day as the
imperial fleet roams the seven seas.
The U.S. government used chemical weapons in Vietnam, spraying Agent
Orange over vast parts of that country. Thousands of U.S. GIs and an
unknown number of Vietnamese people died, or live difficult and painful
lives from the after-effects.
Today, the U.S. government manufactures chemical and biological
weapons, a fact that was routinely denied and only admitted after the
anthrax attacks of 2001.
And the U.S. government--led by both Democrats and Republicans--has
knowingly and deliberately killed more than 1 million Iraqi civilians
through the quieter, less dramatic weapon known as economic sanctions.
This weapon that has killed 5,000 children every month for 12 years
must be regarded as a weapon of mass destruction.
A WAR TO DOMINATE OIL RESOURCES
Bush and the Pentagon want to control Iraq and the entire Middle East.
This has been a primary focus of U.S. foreign policy for more than a
half-century.
Before the Arab nationalist revolutions overthrew the corrupt pro-
Western monarchies in the region in the 1950s and 1960s, more than 50
percent of all U.S. corporate overseas profits came from the region.
Iraq experienced a profound anti-feudal and anti-colonial revolution in
1958 that brought down the British-backed monarchy. Within one week of
the revolution, President Dwight D. Eisenhower sent 10,000 marines to
occupy Lebanon in fear that the Iraqi Revolution would spread.
Fearing retribution for taking control of its own natural resources,
Iraq waited until 1972--when the U.S. military was bogged down in
Vietnam--before it nationalized its western-owned oil fields.
When Iraq nationalized its oil industry it became the target of CIA
covert operations. Richard Nixon, Henry Kissinger and the Shah of Iran
met in May 1972 and began a massive covert operation to foment a
Kurdish uprising in northern Iraq--an area that contains half of Iraq's
oil supply.
Today, Iraq has oil reserves of 112 billion barrels, second only to
Saudi Arabia, according to Middle East Economic Survey.
The real goal of the planned invasion of Iraq is to undo or reverse the
process of de-colonization and nationalist revolutions that restricted
the previously unfettered authority of western capitalist corporations
to dominate and profit from the vast natural resources of the Middle
East.
For U.S. imperialism, and its policymakers in Washington and Wall
Street, the goal is to secure U.S. control over these strategic
resources that are vital to a modern economy.
[The writer is a co-director of the International Action Center and a
spokesperson for the ANSWER coalition.]
- END -
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“There are no boundaries in this struggle to the death. We cannot be indifferent to what happens anywhere in the world, for a victory by any country over imperialism is our victory; just as any country's defeat is a defeat for all of us.” – Che Guevara
“We still believe that the struggle of Ireland for freedom is a part of the world-wide upward movement of the toilers of the earth, and we still believe that the emancipation of the working class carries within it the end of all tyranny – national, political and social.” – James Connolly
Fuck ! Too long.
Did you know that Bush's so called nuclear dismantling is just turn them off and store them, not destroy them so he can use them against the bad guys when he wants, so will Russia also do this?
IrishGuevara
this is a thought, how come the united states is so bent on making sure nations dont have weapons of mass destruction while the us keeps building up its arsenal. the other day i belive on the anniversary of the bombing of Nagasagi(spelling) in ww2 the mayor blasted the us for pulling out of treaties and such. i dont know of it all because i was in a hurry. i am worried now that with Bush&CO saying that they need to stop Saddam by any means nesessary i am afraid that we may nuke Iraq and whats that going to do to middle east relations? this "War on Terror" to me seems to get more and more Nazist each day
Ok, First of all, the united states would never consider dropping a nuclear bomb on iraq, thats just plain stupid, because of the consequences it would cause. In response to the millions of dollars being pumped to israeli terror: have you ever looked at it from an israeli perspective? their women and children cannot walk the streets because they are in fear of their lives, of being blown up by people who have no care for human life and who are obviously not going to heaven for killin babies. israel is merely defending herself against people who hate her, it is located in a region of islamic people who hate everyone of them, and for her to defend herself is justified. what if you were in a classroom of 36 people, and everyone bullied you around, what would you do? therefore, their strikes against palestinian terror groups are purely justified. also, if iraq would for 5 days let inspectors in, and prove they have no wmd, then the sactions would be lifted. its like this, is you get pulled over by a cop, and he asks whats in your pocket, its easier to just show him you have nothing then to just say, nothing. but saddam husein is hardheaded, and forgets to realize that he lost the gulf war, he should have never invaded kuwait, but he did, and he lost, and he has to deal with the consequences. its unfortunate his people have to suffer for him being hard headed.
it's called america - where people were given another chance to succeed, where you can say whatever you want about the government, you can protest within reason if you think something is wrong, you can beileve what you want to without anyone telling you no. try and do that in china buddy. so our history isnt the best, slavery was a mistake, but this nation wouldnt be the same without it, so we owe the slaves respect. war is neccesary, and it always will be, because people are still the same inside as they were 1000 years ago, basic human nature will never change, we are animals. you have to accept some realities in life and live your life accordingly. i used to be like you and hate the government and all, but then i realized, what is that going to get me? nothing. hate breeds hate. if you dont like it here, then get out, simple as that, why stay somewhere you hate or put up witha government you hate, get out and join al qaeda, and get killed with the rest of them.
from Jownman
their women and children cannot walk the streets because they are in fear of their lives, of being blown up by people who have no care for human life and who are obviously not going to heaven for killin babies.
Palestinian women and children cannot walk the streets because they spend most of the day under IDF-enforced curfew. And when they are allowed out on the streets, they are in fear of their lives from the many Israeli snipers.
israel is merely defending herself against people who hate her, it is located in a region of islamic people who hate everyone of them, and for her to defend herself is justified.
Israel has often committed acts of aggression against its neighbours. And its treatment of Palestinians is enough to piss of any person with a heart and a sense of injustice.
also, if iraq would for 5 days let inspectors in, and prove they have no wmd, then the sactions would be lifted.
Iraq did let inspection teams in, but later threw them out because many members of them team were US spies. The US government even admitted this after it occurred.
“There are no boundaries in this struggle to the death. We cannot be indifferent to what happens anywhere in the world, for a victory by any country over imperialism is our victory; just as any country's defeat is a defeat for all of us.” – Che Guevara
“We still believe that the struggle of Ireland for freedom is a part of the world-wide upward movement of the toilers of the earth, and we still believe that the emancipation of the working class carries within it the end of all tyranny – national, political and social.” – James Connolly
the women are under constant supervision because they are potential suicide bombers. israel is doing what it can to protect itself from these so called martyrs. if you remember a few months ago, israel pulled out and offered a truce - only to have a suicide bomber blow up a motel. the problem is rooted in yassir arafat, a known terrorist who gives money to these terrorist groups, and its has been proven. its a horrible life for both parties involved, the israelis have to worry about just walking down the street, while the palestinian women are under supervision, but, there is a cause and an effect. if there werent radical terrorist groups with no regard for life, even infants, then the israeli attacks wouldnt happen. they attack because they are being attacked. someone has to stop, and israel tried... so what can they do? stop again, and just have more innocent people killed? about the us spies, i dont know man, im just saying, if they got nothing to hide, then just let them come in, and end it all.
There can be no peace until there is justice. Until Israeli implements the 70+ UN resolutions it continues to refuse to, the Palestinian people will continue to have no rights, nothing to live for, which is what really turns them into suicide bombers.
“There are no boundaries in this struggle to the death. We cannot be indifferent to what happens anywhere in the world, for a victory by any country over imperialism is our victory; just as any country's defeat is a defeat for all of us.” – Che Guevara
“We still believe that the struggle of Ireland for freedom is a part of the world-wide upward movement of the toilers of the earth, and we still believe that the emancipation of the working class carries within it the end of all tyranny – national, political and social.” – James Connolly
"also, if iraq would for 5 days let inspectors in, and prove they have no wmd, then the sactions would be lifted."
Not according to the Bush administration, which has gone on record repeatedly saying that inspections are not the issue. Bush is dedicated to regime change. Inspections do not change that.
vox
Economists have provided capitalists with a comforting concept called the "free market." It does not describe any part of reality, at any place or time. It's a mantra conveniently invoked when it is proposed that government do something the faithful don't like, and just as conveniently ignored whenever they want government to do something for them.
but I do want to read it, I just can't bring myself to 
, maybe later.