"But the world isn't like that"

[pynchonoid]

--- jbor <jbor at bigpond.com> wrote:
> Is it my imagination or were most of Doug's
> delusional claims below even
> sillier than usual?

It's your "imagination" -- working overtime.  


Each of those claims is well-documented, and accepted
as fact -- except in the upside-down world of Bush &
Co. propaganda spin, produced by people who will never
get any closer to the battlefield than their TV
screens.


Try to marginalize the anti-war workers as you may,
these facts finally seem to be getting through even to
the American people who, increasingly, do not want
Bush's war on Iraq.  Even mainstream corporate media
organs can't ignore them any more.


[...] First, US intelligence knew far more about
al-Qa'ida and other Islamic terrorist organisations
than governments acknowledged in the immediate
aftermath of 11 September. As transpired from US
Congressional hearings, the problems lay less in the
provision of intelligence than in the capacity of the
US government to process, evaluate and then act on
what it knew.


Second, the US signally failed to capitalise on the
vast wave of solidarity that surged towards it after
11 September. Its treatment of prisoners captured in
Afghanistan, its seemingly cavalier attitude to
civilian casualties, the enduring belligerence of its
language and its high-handed attitude towards its
allies resulted in a squandering of international
goodwill. President Bush's warning after 11 September
that "all who are not with us are against us" now
rings all too true.


But nothing has undermined the collective war on
terrorism more than the way in which the Bush
administration has caused it to mutate, before our
eyes, into preparations for an old-style US-led war on
Iraq. The US may not yet have given up on an
international effort to combat terrorism – it has
forces deployed in anti-terrorism operations in places
as far apart as the Philippines, Georgia and Kuwait –
but the thrust of its military and propaganda effort
is now Iraq. The deadly terrorist attack in Bali, once
described as the most peaceful place in the world,
shows the folly of that approach."

http://argument.independent.co.uk/leading_articles/story.jsp?story=342672



Yup, they love US over there...


" [...] Yup, that's actually a common view in the Arab
world. The idea is that the U.S. asked its pawn Saddam
to invade Kuwait, so that Washington could respond by
establishing military bases in the region and steal
Arab oil.


I should add that there are also plenty of grateful
Kuwaitis who see no conspiracies.  [...]
Unfortunately, there are many others who applaud Osama
bin Laden for having the guts to take on the infidels.
The suspicion and hostility we face in the Islamic
world will be one of our central challenges in the
coming years, particularly after any invasion of Iraq.
Look at Pakistan, our supposed ally in the war on
terrorism. The most common name given to Pakistani
boys born after 9/11 in Pakistan's Northwest Frontier
Province reportedly was Osama — that's right, Osama. 


Last week's elections in Pakistan resulted in huge
gains for fundamentalists who are vehemently
anti-American. The fundamentalist parties, which used
to be a fringe element in Pakistani politics, now will
control two of the country's four provinces. If we
gain friendly governments in Afghanistan and Iraq but
see the rise of an Islamist nuclear power in Pakistan,
that will have been an appalling trade.


A poll published this month by Zogby International
found that across eight countries, Arabs have warm
feelings about some Western countries but a wretched
view of the U.S. While Kuwaitis were the most
pro-American, even they regarded the U.S. unfavorably
more than favorably, by a 48 percent to 40 percent
margin. In most other Arab countries, fewer than one
person in six viewed the U.S. favorably."


from:
Saddam, the U.S. Agent
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/15/opinion/15KRIS.html



[...] the administration has offered many different
explanations, some of them mutually contradictory, for
its determination to occupy Baghdad. I think it's like
the man who looks for his keys on the sidewalk, even
though he dropped them in a nearby alley, because he
can see better under the streetlight. These guys want
to fight a conventional war; since Al Qaeda won't
oblige, they'll attack someone else who will. And
watching from the alley, the terrorists are pleased. "

October 15, 2002
Still Living Dangerously
By PAUL KRUGMAN
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/15/opinion/15KRUG.html?pagewanted=print&position=top




"A chickenhawk, dear readers, is one of two things:
either a voting-age pedophile, or a warmonger who has
never gone to war. It's an unattractive word. [...]
there's a bunch of them in Washington hell-bent on
starting a war with Iraq, even as we speak. [...] In
George W. Bush's case, maybe the cathartic ascent to
manhood came when he stopped drinking at age 40, or
when he executed his first Texan, Clifton Russell Jr.,
in 1995. Bush was 49 then. Maybe it was when he
graduated from Harvard in 1975 (age 29), or when he
was arrested for DUI in 1976 (age 14). Actually I
don't think he ever became a man. I suspect he's still
waiting for that moment to come, and I think all the
chickenhawks suffer from this, whether like Rumsfeld
they just missed the chance to go on that first hunt
or like Richard Perle they chickened out and hid in
the palmettos. So they're eager to fight war, if not
personally. They want to be men at last. [...] Let's
get all of them together one night on a small tropical
island, light a bonfire, break out the jug liquor and
get a little noisy. Beat on some drums, dance around
in masks, you know the effect I'm going for. Get them
good and scared. Then the ceremony begins, with George
Junior and Cheney and Perle and Rumsfeld and DeLay and
Limbaugh and Kemp and Lott and all the rest dressed up
in school uniforms, forming a writhing conga line,
maybe with pacifiers in their mouths so they can
channel their bottled-up boyhoods. They dance and weep
as the drums throb toward an urgent crescendo, the
fire leaping like an angry god--the moment is here:
these old boys will at last become men! And then we
run like hell for the boats while a battalion of the
other variety of chickenhawk, released from prison for
this purpose, descends upon the circle of ancient
children.

C'est la guerre."


from:
October 15, 2002
A Bird Lover's Guide to Chickenhawks
or Chickenhawk a la Mode
by BEN TRIPP
http://www.counterpunch.org/




















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