Old News You May Have Missed, or "From Iraq to Vietnam and back in time for tea"
« on: 2005-11-05 22:31:58 »
In a little publicized article, which bled out while attention focused on Plonegate, an even messier morass of war crimes leaked out of their 40 year old basket last week. The highlighting below is mine. This article, while dealing with only one of the many wars which the US has bullied and lied itself into (which basically includes all the recent wars she has invited, both declared and undeclared) does make the "Iraq" is just Arabic for "Vietnam" connection even more poignant. "How?" you may wonder. Well, as I repeatedly proved at the time, only an idiot, or willful believer could assert validity to the absurd claims being made at the time over the alleged causa belli prior to the Afghan Adventure, and even more so, prior to the Iraqi Debacle. I think that it was a pity that the noise levels (generally) drowned out the few knowledgeable analysts saying so. Perhaps it is still a pity that the noise levels continue to drown out reason for that small benighted group that imagines that the US as currently mismanaged (and I'm experiencing it first hand too see e.g. http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/message/index.php) is a force for good. I am sure that it is a pity that US citizens apparently know no history - only the lies their teachers taught them*. Which bye the bye, is a damned good book and thoroughly recommended by me. See http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0684818868/thechurchofvirusA. Buy one for Newton's Mass for yourself. Buy more of them as gifts for all the neoconartists you know (if you still know any who admit to such thinking by December). You will thereby contribute to the CoV, attempt to improve what passes for neocon's minds after Fox is through with them, and possibly relieve the pressure on their inflatable sheep. More seriously, when people recognize that they are simply swimming in bullshit (first proudly mass produced in America) it sometimes shakes loose their cognitive dissonance sufficiently for them to recognize that other cherished delusions are perhaps less than wholesome. And this book does a fair job of rubbing noses into the mess on the carpet sufficiently closely to prevent assertions that the scent is merely attar of roses.
Or just wait for the attempts to force wars on Syria, Iran and China to become clearer in the near future - and think on the fact that serious studies have shown that the hallmark of the incompetent is that they have absolutely no clue about how cluelessly incompetent they are. Leading to the incompetent repeatedly chewing off far more than they can possibly digest. Unfortunately, when the incompetent are our dear leaders, the consequent spewing affects the entire planet. Which raises another question? Is it possible, that unlike the case has been for other wars, will the US eventually repudiate its own legislation protecting those who passed it from prosecution as war criminals? And if they are prosecuted - and found guilty, will we sentence them as we have dealt with our enemies? Or will we continue to be self-serving hypocrites?
For a penultimate closing thought, if we can only agree to recognise that vision, reason and empathy are incompatible with torture, we might even find that those who identify themselves as Virians by posting on the CoV would find that the motley crew in Washington are deserving of nothing more or less than reeducation in the hands of other previously and currently nasty (but allied with us and thus wholly good) regimes who have the grace to at least pretend that they no longer engage in torture while facilitating its use by Washington's minions. Or perhaps these wonderful Virians might stop asserting that Saddam was a nasty, nasty man for allegedly engaging in torture (which not even the current sham trial is attempting to prove) while asserting that it is legal when the US deals it out because our intent is pure. Or perhaps we might agree to decide that lying and impoverishing 280 odd million Americans, destabilizing the Middle East and the World, and killing well over a million Iraqi (not to mention a few thousand Americans) is much too steep a price to pay to "liberate" people who didn't ask for it, - and that anyway, it is possibly only "arguably acceptable" to those not paying the price which is undoubtedly due. Perhaps there is an offchance that we could agree that continuing to parade these outdated, putative arguments in the face of continuing expose smacks brutally of our senseless sins. Hypocrisy, Apathy and Dogmatism. (Yes, those sins). And avoid posting vast volumes of plaintive apologetics for the indefensible. Or is this much to much to hope for? Are we going to have to live with assertions that "we meant well" excuses anything forever?
Finally, and I mean this, having met the appalling Charles and his unspeakable paramour here in New Orleans, and observed the obsequious attention paid to them by every class of American, I am sufficiently inspired to wonder why our nearly royal visitors have not been invited to a great big tea party to commemorate the occasion. For some reason, Boston springs to mind as a suitable locale. Perhaps it is only in America that the incompetent Charles could be seen as “statesman” like, suggesting perhaps, that it is only because of the even more awesome incompetence of America's own truly horrible government that this comparison might lead to such a conclusion.
Speaking of conclusions, excuse me while I go and throw up.
Hermit To teach superstition as truth is a most terrible thing. Hypatia
*"Lies My Teacher Told Me : Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong", James W. Loewen, 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
It is just a coincidence, but fortuitous nevertheless, that the Democrats forced the Senate into a special secret session to discuss how we got into the war in Iraq during the same week that we finally learned the nation was deliberately misled about the famous "Tonkin intercepts" that helped lead us into Vietnam more than 40 years ago.
What worried the Democrats about Iraq turns out to be exactly what happened in Vietnam. We know now, thanks to one brave and dogged historian at the National Security Agency, that after the famed Gulf of Tonkin "incident" on Aug. 4, 1964 — in which North Vietnam allegedly attacked two American destroyers — National Security Council officials doctored the evidence to support President Johnson's false charge in a speech to the nation that night of "open aggression on the high seas against the United States of America."
In fact, no real evidence for those attacks has ever been found. The entire case rested on the alleged visual sightings of an inexperienced 23-year-old sonar operator. Nevertheless, Johnson took the opportunity to order the bombing of North Vietnam that night and set the nation inexorably on a path toward the "wider war" he promised he did not seek. And administration bigwigs never admitted publicly that they might have acted in haste and without giving contradictory signals their proper weight.
On the contrary, military and national security officials scrambled wildly to support the story. The media cooperated, with lurid reports of the phony battle inspired by fictional updates like the one Johnson gave to congressional leaders: "Some of our boys are floating around in the water."
The new study apparently solves a mystery that has long bedeviled historians of the war: What was in those famous (but classified) North Vietnamese "intercepts" that Defense Secretary Robert McNamara was always touting to Congress, which allegedly proved the attack took place? Until recently, most assumed that McNamara and others had simply misread the date on the communications and attributed conversations between the North Vietnamese about an earlier Tonkin incident on Aug. 2, 1964, (when the destroyer Maddox was briefly and superficially under fire) to Aug. 4, the day of the phony attack. But, according to the New York Times, NSA historian Robert J. Hanyok has concluded that the evidence was deliberately falsified: there were translation mistakes that were not corrected, intelligence that was selectively cited and intercept times that were altered.
In revealing the story Monday, the Times reported that Hanyok's efforts to have his classified findings made public had been rejected by higher-level agency policymakers who, beginning in 2003, "were fearful that it might prompt uncomfortable comparisons with the flawed intelligence used to justify the war in Iraq."
And rightly so. The parallels between the Tonkin episode and the war in Iraq are far too powerful for political comfort. In both cases, top U.S. national security officials frequently asserted a degree of certainty about the alleged actions and capabilities of an adversary that could not possibly be supported by the available evidence. In both cases, it's possible that the president might have been honestly misguided rather than deliberately deceptive — at least at first. But in neither case would anyone admit the possibility of an honest mistake.
Johnson does not appear to have known that he was retaliating for an imaginary attack when he ordered U.S. planes to take off on the evening of Aug. 4. But, according to Alexander Haig, who was at work at the Pentagon that night, "Everyone on duty wanted to make it possible for the president to do what he wanted to do." The director of the U.S. Information Agency, Carl Rowan, wondered: "Do we know for a fact that the North Vietnamese provocation took place? Can we nail down exactly what happened? We must be prepared to be accused of fabricating the incident." McNamara said they would know for sure the next morning. But the speech couldn't hold.
The phony Tonkin incident alone did not cause the Vietnam War. But the fact that the war was initially inspired by an attack that was, in fact, fabricated after the fact made the experience far more bitter for its victims. Doubts about the incident arose almost immediately. A 1966 article in the magazine Ramparts on Tonkin and the war caught the flavor of the times with its title, "The Whole Damn Thing Was a Lie."
The Bush administration's desire to keep secret the story of a 40-year-old deception — a set of official lies, phony documents and trumped-up data that led the country into a debilitating, counterproductive and deceptive war — simply to protect its own misdeeds is despicable, however typical. But thanks to Hanyok's willingness to go public against the administration's wishes, we know who was lying vis-à-vis Vietnam.
One day we may learn the truth about Iraq. Let's hope for the sake of a future president who finds himself similarly tempted to mislead the nation into conflict that the warnings of history will be viewed with humility rather than hubris, and that the nation will be spared yet another war based on official lies.
Eric Alterman is a senior fellow of the Center for American Progress. His "When Presidents Lie: A History of Official Deception and its Consequences" is just out in paperback from Penguin.
With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion. - Steven Weinberg, 1999
Re:Old News You May Have Missed, or "From Iraq to Vietnam and back in time for t
« Reply #1 on: 2005-11-06 00:31:09 »
[Blunderov] As Capt.Willard said in 'Apocalypse now! "the bullshit piled up so fast you needed wings to stay above it..."
The Whitehouse better hope that those wings are now available in supersize.
http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/?q=node/4468 <snip> Smoking Gun on Manipulation of Iraq Intelligence? 'NY Times' Cites New Document Submitted by davidswanson on Sat, 2005-11-05 21:31. Media Editor and Publisher By E&P Staff
NEW YORK Ever since the Democrats briefly closed the U.S. Senate from view earlier this week, to protest alleged Republican foot-dragging in probing Bush administration pre-war manipulation of intelligence, the press has been asking: So what new evidence do the Democrats have in this matter?
Tomorrow, The New York Times starts to answer the question, with reporter Doug Jehl disclosing the contents of a newly declassified memo apparently passed to him by Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan, the top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee.
It shows that an al-Qaeda official in American custody was identified as a likely fabricator months before the Bush administration began to use his statements as the foundation for its claims that Iraq trained al-Qaeda members to use biological and chemical weapons, according to this Defense Intelligence Agency document from February 2002.
It declared that it was probable that the prisoner, Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, "was intentionally misleading the debriefers" in making claims about Iraqi support for al-Qaeda's work with illicit weapons, Jehl reports.
“The document provides the earliest and strongest indication of doubts voiced by American intelligence agencies about Mr. Libi's credibility,” Jehl writes. “Without mentioning him by name, President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Colin L. Powell, then secretary of state, and other administration officials repeatedly cited Mr. Libi's information as ‘credible’ evidence that Iraq was training Al Qaeda members in the use of explosives and illicit weapons.
“Among the first and most prominent assertions was one by Mr. Bush, who said in a major speech in Cincinnati in October 2002 that ‘we've learned that Iraq has trained Al Qaeda members in bomb making and poisons and gases.’” A White House spokeswoman said she had no immediate comment on the D.I.A. report.</snip>
<snip>We already knew about Curveball and Chalabi -- liars whose accounts the Administration used to bolster their case for imminent WMD danger requiring pre-emptive war. Now, thanks to a Doug Jehl New York Times piece (via Editor & Publisher), we know about Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, the defector who alleged that Iraq was training Al Qaeda members in the use of explosives and illicit weapons. Al-Libi was Scooter Libby's dream come true. But it turns out -- even as his claims were making their way into Administration speeches -- that as early as February 2002, American intelligence agencies knew that al-Libi was making the stuff up.
Imagine the scene in the West Wing. Here are Cheney and the rest of the cabal (W was doubtless off mountain biking, or brush-clearing) looking at al-Libi's claims on the one hand, and on the other, the Defense Intelligence Agency's warning not to buy what al-Libi was selling. They had a choice to make: trust American intelligence, or trust neocon ideology. They picked ideology. The next time you hear the "everyone-believed-Saddam-was-training-Al-Quaeda" talking point, remember that there were red lights flashing in the White House telling them al-Libi was a fabricator.
There's a word for holding fast to a belief despite the evidence: fundamentalism. Is a faith-based foreign policy cult really the best we can do?.</snip>
Vietnam is SOOOO 35 years ago, but some peoples' cherished guilt-projection vehicles remain incomprehensibly precious to them long after their relevance and efficacy have dispersed in the winds of time and circumstance. I can't believe that the same fellow who was lead-pipe-cinch-certain that the US military would perish on cruel Afghanistan's plain, and equally certain that we should send Andy Griffith and Barney Fife there to extract Al Qaedan operatives from amidst their sheltering Taliban hosts, would cling to such long-passed chimeras.
Of course, this is the same logic that would do its best to repeat Vietnam's end (a half a million slaughtered South Vietnamese civilians and another million boat people) by bugging out and leaving the purple-finger-waving, democracy-desiring Iraqi populace (a greater percentage of eligible Iraqis voted in their recent election than the percentage of eligible US citizens voting in 2004 - and we didn't have to do it in the face of thuggish threats to our lives and those of our families) to the tender beheading mercies of the Zarqawis and Al-Douri's amongst them before their police and military are sufficiently assembled and trained to protect that fledgling democracy and its citizens.
There were twenty-four different causus belli in the bill that the US Congress passed authorizing use of force vis-a-vis Iraq; WMD was only one of them. It was accentuated tom the virtual exclusion of the rest because the administration was already aware that UN Security Council nations that were sucking Saddam's suborning Oil-for-Food kickback teat (displacing starving children in the process) cared more for the filthy lucre thereby obtained than they did about the lives and freedoms of Iraqi citizens, so an attempt had to be made to persuade them with something more than just the lives and dignity of millions; they had to personally feel threatened. This is why the WMD angle was pushed, and other equally legitimate causus belli were softpedaled. But those crafty French figured out that, as long as Saddam was successfully bribing them to block the Security Council, it would be counterproductive for him to attack those who were short-circuiting any international attempts to hold him culpable for his horrific crimes. So, the announcement went out from the French that NO MATTER what was revealed - even if it could be proven that Saddam was collaborating with hostile extraterrestrials to de-terraform the globe - the French would vote NON. They had their integrity, after all; how would it look to the global graft community if they took the blood money and then didn't stay bribed? Of couse, those who would defend protect and defend such a regime tend to suffer existential ennui for the absence of a Soviet counterbalance to Dat Old Monopolar Hyperpower Debbil America. This absence was induced by gifting the Soviets with their very own Vietnam in Afghanistan, and by, via elevated defence spending, causing them to bankrupt their own economy in response so they were no longer able to subsidize Eastern Europe into hegemonic satellite thrall. However, the Soviets' political demise has obviated the Cold War geostrategic necessity of opposing their Middle Eastern bastards with own, so we no longer feel compelled to talk up democracy while supporting the dictators not being supported by the Soviets; their demise has finally freed us to dispense with that terrible contradiction and, by means of dictator-and-mullah-deposing and constitutional-democracy-organizing, actually walk our freedom-facilitating talk, as true liberty-loving liberals like Kennedy would've done had their hands not been atomically tied.
As to future US interventions: Syria - possibly, Iran - not bloody likely, China - are you fucking inSANE?
Two connected words for you to Google: "Able Danger" (report back to me).
And a Congressional report has already gotten the intelligence analysts in question on the record as testifying that they reached their conclusuions and recommendations vis-a-vis iraq absent any Bush administration pressure. It was in the news a few months ago; did you miss it?
BTW: Wilson was pulling an Arafat; saying one thing to the administration privately (that he had interviewed a secretary of state in Niger who had personally been approached by a representative of the Iraqi government concerning the purchase of yellowcake uranium ore from them - it's the only thing, aside from goats, that they have available for export, and Iraq has plenty of goats), and another thing to the New York Times and Washington Post (about the same time he joined the Kerry campaign). If Libby is convicted on a second-order offence of untruthfulness to a grand jury in the absence of a foundational crime (whether he learned Valeric Plame's identity from a reporter or a bureaucrat), he should suffer the same penalty that Sandy Berger did for smuggling classified documents that showed that Jamie Gorelick's firewall forfended the possibility of CIA and FBI intelligence being considered together, something that could've led to the prevention of 9/11.
And lemme know whn you find the purchase invoices on the plastic shredders the US must be using on stubborn Al Qaedan detainees, the requisition forms for all the bullets use to shoot captured jihadis dead, the chemical plants that are furnishing the toxic poison sprayers with which US helicopters neutralize inconvenient villages, and the escort services that are furnishing designated big-dicked official government rapists, because these things, among others, are what Saddam's regime was doing, and if you are equating the two, they must be identical, right? Oh, yeah; and find the mass graves. We didn'[t fill them; Saddam did. He took the Oil-for-Food money that was supposed to go for...well...FOOD, and spent it coddling his military, engaging in weapons research, and bribing UN officials (check out Kofi Annan's son Kojo; he got some fat consulting contracts for doing nothing - Claudia Rosset has blown the story wide open, including the quarter million in Iraqi oil vouchers that ended up in George Galloway's wife's charity account), UN Security Council member nations, and a host of companies, corporations, and individuals - 4500 of them by current count - and, while starving the Shiite Marsh Arabs, sped up their genocide by ecocidally draining their marsh habitat home (so French oil company ELF could more easily drill for oil there) and polluting what was left of their water (the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers themselves) with toxic munitions manufacture waste byproducts. After all, dead Iraqi children were good Saddamic propaganda; as long as he blamed them on the West, the willfully credulous and gullible antiamericans would swallow it hook, line, sinker and pole and engage in usefully idiotic fifth columnism.
But be of good cheer; even though I do not yet know whather your malignant anti-american psychosis can be cured, or even palliated, at least a nosology has taken place, so the symptoms can be noted and the affliction can be reliably diagnosed. Since caucasian South Africans are kinda like Euro wannabes, they probably are afflicted with this malady to a more serious degree than the Brits.
According to the article, there are three confluential strams that join to feed the anti-american river; they are:
1) the popular stream (it feels good to call everyone else dumber and more ignorant and more barbaric than oneself, even when it's oneself who is cluelessly spouting that which is provably bovine fecus, in support of wholesale slaughterers).
2) the foreign policy stream (those who want to see restraints placed upon the use of US power, no matter how fecilitously that power may be being used, no matter how clumsy, corrupt, impotent and incompetent an international restrainer or how vicious and totalitarian a geopolitical counterbalancer one must embrace in order to achieve such a desire.)
[note] Strangely enough, the actions of the US proceeding with Iraqi regime change and, with the evidence of UN and UNSC member nation bribery, graft and corruption discovered there, demanding a purge of the system, may be the only thing that could possibly (eventually) restore some of its lost credibility and integrity (which it's kinda hard to maintain when you have genocidal nations sitting on UN human rights committees), and spare it the fate that deservedly befell its equally hapless predecessor, the League of Nations.
3) the ideological stream (those who drift in nostalgic reminiscences of the good old proletarian stalinist days, pine for their return, and bitterly resent the bourgeois imperialist US for bringing them to an end).
If people like the above gentlemen wish to attempt to muster enough objectivity to attempt self-analysis and self-diagnosis of their particular pathologies, I commend them to the following URL:
Re:Old News You May Have Missed, or "From Iraq to Vietnam and back in time for t
« Reply #3 on: 2005-11-06 05:29:48 »
[Blunderov] I doubt whether you would be capable of sticking to the point even if it was shoved right up your arse. The inescapable conclusion, assuming that you have any grip on reality at all, is that you are quite incapable of discerning the point in the first place.
Here is some more nosology: you are not 'misunderstood', you are just incomprehensible. Big difference.
<snip> [Salamantis] But be of good cheer; even though I do not yet know whather your malignant anti-american psychosis can be cured, or even palliated, at least a nosology has taken place, so it the symptoms can be noted and the affliction can be reliably diagnosed. Since caucasian South Africans are kinda like Euro wannabes, they probably are afflicted with this malady to a more serious degree than the Brits.</snip>
As usual, you are completely wrong. Not to mention illogical. Your trusted ally and friend is afflicted with an anti-american psychosis? Apparently your diagnostics talents are as defective as your attention span. Did your mother teach you to be such fascist or did you teach yourself?
Why don't you fuck off back to Little Green Footballs where you belong? Take your mother with you to help with the drooling.
Just as I had suspected (and feared) might happen, but had hoped wouldn't; vicious personal invective in the place of any coherent discussion of the issues which the previous two posts had raised and to which I gave cogent point-by-point replies. I had hoped for better from you (for instance, a logically cohesive and evidentiarily suported reply in kind), and once upon a time you were indeed capable of something of the sort; I see now that such a hope was, considering what your foregoing post reveals to be your present condition, sorely misplaced.
It is Hermit, not you (AFAIK) who is a former South African, and I KNOW, considering the list treatment he has aimed in my direction and in the direction of my family, that HE's no trusted ally and friend of mine. Or, for that matter, of anyone who disagrees with him. Just ask Bill Roh. Or Mermaid.
And to call me a fascist as an illegitimate ad hominem means by which to, rather than replying to my points, attempting to suppress them, and me along with them? That is itself fascism, dogmatism, totalitarianism and hegemony in action. I never told YOU WTF to or not to do; kindly return the same civil forbearance, Blunderful one.
Saying that I'm wrong is quantums removed from proving that I'm wrong. Wrong about what facts I cite, for instance? Wrong about this toxic and willfully blind attitude I apprehend? Wrong about its cause? And please diagram the illogic to which you refer, and list any fallacies by name.
The boo-hooray mode just doesn't cut it.
And THEN you try to climb up into some self-righteous simulacrum of a St. George saddle with Hermit and follow his noxious lead by lashing out at my mother, as he infamously did:
Why don't you fuck off back to Little Green Footballs where you belong? Take your mother with you to help with the drooling.
That sort of thing really elevates the discourse, doesn't it? Did it give you some sense of misplaced nobility to descend to such subterranean levels? As if you were in the service of some transcendent good far greater than yourself? Kinda like jihadists feel when they suicide-bomb Jews, or like Aryan Nations skinheads feel when they lynch blacks? All you have to do is first consider the other to be subhuman because of a complexion or opinion which the other might hold, and then it gets sooo easy to reach for the dirty bomb, doesn't it - and that way you can avoid considering the personally cognitively dissonant merits of what they have to say. And the fact that, rather than choose to engage in discourse concerning differences of fact or opinion, a process that might conceivably lead to a superceding synthesis, or at least a civil compromise, you would rather suggest the balkanization of such things, so they can egocentrically fester, and never undergo the growth process that socialization brings. The suggestion of such a flawed and regressive alternative deeply troubles me, for it points to something deeply disturbing about you.
Let me tell you something about my mother, Blunderov; she never drooled, and she never ever will, because, you sick and malevolently misshapen piece of work, she DIED March the 13th of this year. Does that fact make your twisted demented day? Or maybe you're just lashing out in existential pain because you DID read the article, and the ugly truth you reluctantly perceived in it about your attitude caused you grief and pain, and you then attacked my dead mother on a public list because you were hurting, and misery thirsts for company. Or maybe it was the factual, historical and logical, but nevertheless unpalatable-to-you nature of my reply which so grievously wounded you. It's kinda like what Reagan had to say to his handlers after his first debate with Mondale (which he lost): 'I didn't believe that he could disagree with me so WELL...', or something to that effect. Or maybe it's some bizarre displacement of Bush-hatred; you make of me a malignant neocon icon in your own mind, and simply spew your aploplectic spittle in my direction instead, as if I were some sort of Dubya voodoo doll to you, and you magically believed that you could somehow injure him by going all Columbine on me.
Or maybe it's just something that is simply too dark and irrational for my comprehension. Strange and unhealthy things can happen inside when one invests one's self-esteem or self-concept in a fallible external ideal, even one so monochromatically reductionistic and manicheanly simplistic as Bush-is-a-moron-so-everything-he-has-done-has-to-be-moronic (reducing a person to an evil thing), or one so machinistically mythic as all-the-unhappiness-in-the-world-is-the-responsibity-and-fault-of-its-most-powerful-entity-so-America-is-to-blame-for-everything (reifying a government into a demonic and diabolical deity surrogate to be vilified).
But be assured that I will not attempt to respond to your direction in kind by directing you to the daily Kos or the Democratic Underground; some consignations are simply too cruel for anyone to be submitted to them.
I do know that, after having read your post, that SOMETHING pathological is seriously awry with you. It may be intellectual, but I doubt it; I think we're witnessing the revelation of some deep-seated emotional problem on your part.
Now, endeavor to dispassionately SHOW me the failings of fact or logic in my previous reply, or else retract your illegitimate and utterly unsupported claims of same. I will not allow your attempt to crudely resort to a flaming diversion to deter me from the defence of my above contentions.
Re:Old News You May Have Missed, or "From Iraq to Vietnam and back in time for t
« Reply #5 on: 2005-11-06 08:40:28 »
Still getting your exercise jumping to erroneous conclusions based on your cherished beliefs Mr Dees? You have not yet learned that belief is to accept as true something for which the evidence is lacking or contradictory. Shame on you. When you recover your sobriety and you have taken your meds for the day, get a clue or four.
Consider who might be a so called "white" in this community (many Virians - including Blunderov perhaps). Consider who is not (you perhaps). Notice that you are the person who repeatedly brings up peoples' melatonin level as an issue. It seems, most usually in the hope of scoring a cheap shot. Cheap because educated people know that there is more variation within supposed "racial groups" than between them. Educated people (most Virians perhaps) also know that the most appropriate word to describe people who throw off derogatory comments about others with different melatonin levels based on supposed "race", remains "racist." Look in the mirror, Mr Dees. Your racial epithet is parked in the very center of your forehead.
Consider well whether the child of Scottish/German parents, brought up in Europe, might hold a different mindset from those raised in South Africa. You might also wonder what citizenships such a person might hold. Haben Sie schon geschätzt? Meer as een, miskien? Could it be? Peut-être ainsi. You ain't going to hit the target if you don't know what you are aiming for. Poor Mr Dees. You might also wonder if anyone else other than the intended target for your poorly made and badly thrown insults might be a South African and whether they might be upset at your deliberate use of racial aspersions. Blunderov perhaps?
I didn't see Blunderov suggest that your mother need be alive in order to dribble. Having been the butt (pardon the pun) of Infekt Bin Ladin's humor, I'd have thought that an experienced alleged analnecrorapist like yourself would have known that. Besides, if you are still feeling bad about eating your mother, you can dig a hole and throw up in it - and pretend that you buried her there. Or perhaps take a dump in the hole, it might end up smelling more authentic*.
As for your putative responses, I suggest you go back and reread your rants of yesteryear in order to remind yourself just how stupid, illigitimate and specious the perspectives you advocated back pre-Afghanistan and pre-Iraq really were. Now count the troops, the death counts, the expense and the continuing confirmation of the fact that I was right on every call I made when I said that the supposed justifications for these disasters were invalid - and perhaps search for the point where I told you that what was needed to fight terror was intelligence not war, plenty, not hardship, and friends not enemies. Remember? Ask yourself, "How concerned are the Swedes about Islamic terrorists?" Now look at the shit we have on our hands in consequence of following the arguments and course which you so ably flooded the list with for far too long.
I notice, as an interested observer, that it seems that you are doing it again. Very sad. This could be a nice place, probably will be again after you die (please let us know how soon you expect that to happen) - if the neonuts don't kill us all on their funeral pyre.
Have a nice death
Hermit
PS I won't be discussing things with you as I consider discussion with idiots undignified - and have still not forgotten how quickly you attempt to characterise your opponents as Nazis. Not that that is much of an insult anymore. The clique running this asylum has succeeded in making even the Nazis look like responsible global citizens. A pity that the people most likely to be hurt by their insanities are the 230 odd million Americans who did not vote for them. Then again, this is still purportedly a "representative democracy", so no matter how friendly most Americans are, they still have the president they really deserve. You most of all. Right?
PPS The Brits are supposedly our trusted allies. With a "special relationship" and all. At least, that is what we told them when the B's wanted the Brits help in making the current wars appear quasily legitimate. Now reread your rant. Grammar being lacking, I'm sure Blunderov accurately diagnosed your confusion from the relative proximity of your words to one another. If you meant something else, perhaps you should try writing English. It isn't all that difficult. Most 6 year olds can do it well enough to be understood by those who care for them. And you do know we all care very much about you, or you wouldn't be here. Right?
With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion. - Steven Weinberg, 1999
In a little publicized article, which bled out while attention focused on Plonegate, an even messier morass of war crimes leaked out of their 40 year old basket last week. The highlighting below is mine. This article, while dealing with only one of the many wars which the US has bullied and lied itself into (which basically includes all the recent wars she has invited, both declared and undeclared) does make the "Iraq" is just Arabic for "Vietnam" connection even more poignant. "How?" you may wonder. Well, as I repeatedly proved at the time, only an idiot, or willful believer could assert validity to the absurd claims being made at the time over the alleged causa belli prior to the Afghan Adventure, and even more so, prior to the Iraqi Debacle. I think that it was a pity that the noise levels (generally) drowned out the few knowledgeable analysts saying so. Perhaps it is still a pity that the noise levels continue to drown out reason for that small benighted group that imagines that the US as currently mismanaged (and I'm experiencing it first hand too see e.g. http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/message/index.php) is a force for good. I am sure that it is a pity that US citizens apparently know no history - only the lies their teachers taught them*. Which bye the bye, is a damned good book and thoroughly recommended by me. See http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0684818868/thechurchofvirusA. Buy one for Newton's Mass for yourself. Buy more of them as gifts for all the neoconartists you know (if you still know any who admit to such thinking by December). You will thereby contribute to the CoV, attempt to improve what passes for neocon's minds after Fox is through with them, and possibly relieve the pressure on their inflatable sheep. More seriously, when people recognize that they are simply swimming in bullshit (first proudly mass produced in America) it sometimes shakes loose their cognitive dissonance sufficiently for them to recognize that other cherished delusions are perhaps less than wholesome. And this book does a fair job of rubbing noses into the mess on the carpet sufficiently closely to prevent assertions that the scent is merely attar of roses.
Or just wait for the attempts to force wars on Syria, Iran and China to become clearer in the near future - and think on the fact that serious studies have shown that the hallmark of the incompetent is that they have absolutely no clue about how cluelessly incompetent they are. Leading to the incompetent repeatedly chewing off far more than they can possibly digest. Unfortunately, when the incompetent are our dear leaders, the consequent spewing affects the entire planet. Which raises another question? Is it possible, that unlike the case has been for other wars, will the US eventually repudiate its own legislation protecting those who passed it from prosecution as war criminals? And if they are prosecuted - and found guilty, will we sentence them as we have dealt with our enemies? Or will we continue to be self-serving hypocrites?
For a penultimate closing thought, if we can only agree to recognise that vision, reason and empathy are incompatible with torture, we might even find that those who identify themselves as Virians by posting on the CoV would find that the motley crew in Washington are deserving of nothing more or less than reeducation in the hands of other previously and currently nasty (but allied with us and thus wholly good) regimes who have the grace to at least pretend that they no longer engage in torture while facilitating its use by Washington's minions. Or perhaps these wonderful Virians might stop asserting that Saddam was a nasty, nasty man for allegedly engaging in torture (which not even the current sham trial is attempting to prove) while asserting that it is legal when the US deals it out because our intent is pure. Or perhaps we might agree to decide that lying and impoverishing 280 odd million Americans, destabilizing the Middle East and the World, and killing well over a million Iraqi (not to mention a few thousand Americans) is much too steep a price to pay to "liberate" people who didn't ask for it, - and that anyway, it is possibly only "arguably acceptable" to those not paying the price which is undoubtedly due. Perhaps there is an offchance that we could agree that continuing to parade these outdated, putative arguments in the face of continuing expose smacks brutally of our senseless sins. Hypocrisy, Apathy and Dogmatism. (Yes, those sins). And avoid posting vast volumes of plaintive apologetics for the indefensible. Or is this much to much to hope for? Are we going to have to live with assertions that "we meant well" excuses anything forever?
Finally, and I mean this, having met the appalling Charles and his unspeakable paramour here in New Orleans, and observed the obsequious attention paid to them by every class of American, I am sufficiently inspired to wonder why our nearly royal visitors have not been invited to a great big tea party to commemorate the occasion. For some reason, Boston springs to mind as a suitable locale. Perhaps it is only in America that the incompetent Charles could be seen as “statesman” like, suggesting perhaps, that it is only because of the even more awesome incompetence of America's own truly horrible government that this comparison might lead to such a conclusion.
Speaking of conclusions, excuse me while I go and throw up.
Hermit To teach superstition as truth is a most terrible thing. Hypatia
Good to see you back in the church, Hermit. Some of us in #virus chat noticed your logging in more recently. Im a little too much of a patriot (or at least personally invested) to give up on the possibility of the US being a power for good. Yes, the current administration and political power structure has brought us to embarrassingly low standards for civilization. I have, however noticed how many of my formerly apathetic neighbors have become more actively involved in politics in response to this situation. While it does not yet seem like the velvet revolution that we sorely need, it doesn't seem to be diminishing either. I myself have lately become convinced that a mere turnover of power is not enough. Without reform occuring on some level comparable to a constitutional convention, I think a mere turnover in power will only delay the inevitable catastrophic collapse of the system.
As for all the criminals you mention . . . If I were the one leading the revolution, I would probably consider some sort of pardon for some of them for the sake of revealing all that went wrong to aid us in our considerations of such reform. Not everyone gets off the hook however; the president, vice president, and whistleblowers get pardons (in exchange for their cooperation, of course); other cases should be handled individually. Of course I think the two (reconcilliation and reform) are an inextricable deal. There is no sense in a truth and reconcilliation that leads to nothing.
Of course we can start with the presidential electoral system, since obviously the Neocons proved that it was the weakest link in the system and the most easily rigged and corrupted. It was their illegitimate foot in the door, which lead to everything else. That's just the start I'm sure.
Now all who read this thread can clearly see what execrable company Hermit is to keep. All he turns out to provide is a bloviating gasbag of illegitimate personal and familial ad hominems, without even the faintest ephemeral aroma of evidence or logic to support them. NOT ONE point I made in my original reply was addressed. No attempt is made to point to either any any purported "erroneous conclusions" nor to any alleged "cherished beliefs". It is just nakedly and unsupportedly contended that they exist. I furnished evidence for my contentions; I can furnish reams more, so it is not lacking, and not a single contradiction has been proferred. There is no need to defend contentions which have not been evidentially, logically or coherently disputed. I am deeply sorry that the more than $200 in seminal philosophy texts with which I gifted him before he went utterly mad with Bush Derangement Syndrome were of no apparent assistance to him.
As I have stated before, I an about 3/4 Irish and 1/4 Native American. So?
And now Hermit, unbelievably, would attempt to rhetorically perpetrate a complete logical inversion, by claiming that those who would deplore racism are themselves racist. In Hermit's world, perhaps, but in no sane and logical one.
As to Hermit's having come to the US from South Africa, he has stated this very fact to me in the past. Was he lying then, or is he lying now?
And no one has been so apodictically certain of himself and his own prescience regarding his dire prophecies regarding Iraq and especially Afghanistan - and no one has been so glaringly, utterly, completely wrong concerning their predictions as subsequent events have proven him to be. Those who have been here long enough to have read them have no choice but to admit this incontrovertible fact. He predicted that the entire US military would be quagmired and decimated in Afghanistan, with tens of thousands dead. Instead, US military losses were negligible, and the Afghanis are substantially on the way to constitutional and democratic self-government, with the Iraqis following their lead. Iraq is indeed proving to be a killing field; with the willing cooperation of the Al Qaeda flies attracted and being sent to martyrdom flypaper, it has become an elephant graveyard for terrorists and terrorist wannabees from around the globe. Only the most willfully blind can now deny that Al Qaeda itself has made Iraq central to our struggle against them, and only the most willfully dense or malignant would urge the US to vacate Iraq before the Iraqis themselves can confront this jihadist immigration unaided - something that the Iraqis themselves direly wish to do, for it is overwhelmingly native Iraqis who are being killed by these Al Qaedan mujaheddin. The US will be in Afghanistan and Iraq for a while, and will not bug out on them and abandon them before their constitutional-democracy transformations are completed and they are able to protect and secure them themselves- just like in Germany and Japan (successes), and unlike in Vietman and in Afghanistan before (failures). In the first Iraqi vote, to elect a provisional government under which to oversee the writing of an Iraqi constitution, 8.9 million Iraqis went to the polls in the face of 343 terror attacks. In the second vote, 10.5 mililion Iraqis voted by a nearly 80% margin to approve the constitution that had been written, and there were only 13 terror attacks at the polls. The next Iraqi vote is in December, to elect their first constitutional officials under that constitution.
The only way to make friends with Al Qaedans is to become ideological and socioreligious clones of them and be Borgianly assimilated into their terror cult juggernaut. Is this what Hermit is advising? As for the Swedes not being concerned about Radical Islamist terrorism (not Islamic terrorism; here Hermit commits the very offence of which he has been so fond of accusing others; that of failing to distingush between the main Islamic faiths and their terrorist mutational variants), well, it's most likely coming; terror has already been wreaked in Spain, Britain and the Netherlands - this last because a now-asassinated moviemaker, Theo Van Gogh, dared to critically portray the treatment of Muslim women by their coreligionist relations, and France and Denmark are presently enduring riots in their streets - Denmark, for a newspaper there daring to offend the delicate not-ever-to-be-criticized sensibilities of Muslims by publishing cartoon pictures of Muhammed - a mere pittance when compared with the (frequently deserved) excoriating which Christianity peacefully endures every day. I guess appeasement on the Iraqi issue was not dhimmitudinous enough for the French to escape jihadic intifadeh.
This passage from Hermit's prior post tell all here everything they need to know about him:
I didn't see Blunderov suggest that your mother need be alive in order to dribble. Having been the butt (pardon the pun) of Infekt Bin Ladin's humor, I'd have thought that an experienced alleged analnecrorapist like yourself would have known that. Besides, if you are still feeling bad about eating your mother, you can dig a hole and throw up in it - and pretend that you buried her there. Or perhaps take a dump in the hole, it might end up smelling more authentic*.
This canardic calumny is too deranged and disgusting for words, and so must be its author.
And to Jake: elections by popular vote of the citizenry are here to stay; I cannot imagine any democratic alternative to them. More people voted for Dubya in his re-election than had ever previously voted in US history, and 3 1/2 million more US citizens voted for him than voted for his Democratic opponent. That result is conclusive. Are you saying that, since the election did not go the way you would have preferred, that you desire to abolish them and stage some kind of anti-democratic coup here? Sound's suspiciously like 'let the people speak, as long as a voting majority speaks my message; when they reject it and speak another one, I'd rather that they just STFU." And that, of course, is totalitarian.
Of course we can start with the presidential electoral system, since obviously the Neocons proved that it was the weakest link in the system and the most easily rigged and corrupted. It was their illegitimate foot in the door, which lead to everything else. That's just the start I'm sure.
It does seem odd that something called a "Democracy" would have as its largest political event something that is so undemocratic. The electoral college needs to go. Direct popular majority vote (with a runoff if necessary) would change it from a system where one had to vote for the lesser of two evils, to one where people truly can vote for their favorite candidate and never feel like they were throwing their vote away.
Of course we can start with the presidential electoral system, since obviously the Neocons proved that it was the weakest link in the system and the most easily rigged and corrupted. It was their illegitimate foot in the door, which lead to everything else. That's just the start I'm sure.
It does seem odd that something called a "Democracy" would have as its largest political event something that is so undemocratic. The electoral college needs to go. Direct popular majority vote (with a runoff if necessary) would change it from a system where one had to vote for the lesser of two evils, to one where people truly can vote for their favorite candidate and never feel like they were throwing their vote away.
As it stands, a Democrat in Tex., or a Republican in Mass. are throwing away their votes for president as their electors are most surely not going to be from their party. Also each vote from a less populous state gets more weight than a vote from a more populous state; all votes are not equal. Also third parties in the electoral college system are essentially non-existant. Votes for any other party than Republican or Democrat are rendered pointless. These are all anti-democratic flaws in the system, and it is time that we start treating them as such instead of sacred cows. A direct popular majority election cures all of these problems and is the most encouraging of participation. There are no reasonable arguments against it.
I have no problem with abolishing the electoral college. It is an anachronism; originally created when the electronic infrastructure to allow swift tallies of mass popular votes did not exist.
I do note that the previous US presidents who were elected while losing the popular vote (John Quincy Adams, Rutherford B. Hayes, and Benjamin Harrison) served just one term in office (Hayes, who received the electoral college nod over Samuel J. Tilden, did not run for re-election, having previously stated that, if elected, he would serve for only one term; he was succeeded by James Garfield, who was assassinated in his first year in office, with Chester A. Arthur serving out his term. Adams and Harrison, who had received the electoral college nod over Andrew Jackson and Grover Cleveland, respectively, were defeated in their runs for re-election by them).
Thus, considering the 3 1/2 million vote popular majority that Dubya received in 2004, and remembering that 9/11 had already been set in motion during the Clinton administration, and most probably would have happened anyway, there is a good chance that, had Gore (who, remember, could not even carry his home state of Tennessee in 2000) been elected in a squeaker according to popular vote in 2000 and responded weakly to events, he would have lost to Dubya in 2004 and Dubya would have subsequently acted as he has, won re-election (most likely over Kerry), and been president until 2012.
Re:Old News You May Have Missed, or "From Iraq to Vietnam and back in time for t
« Reply #11 on: 2005-11-08 07:31:06 »
Dear Jake
Thanks for the welcome. Due to shortages of time, this is written in dribs and drabs, and not terribly well organized.
Hypatia Lucifer is doing magnificently, but then, I expect nothing less of her. I'll write more on this topic when I have more time. Suffice to say that she is a delight and a pleasure - and not just in her parent's possibly biased opinion.
The USA is not a "Democracy", it is a "Republic". The difference is important. Especially when we engage in exporting "democracy" by means of illegal elections rigged more blatantly than even the Soviets dared. The US started out at a time when the aristos of America, the Merchant Princes who instigated the American insurgency (and terrorism) against the legitimate government had an example of democracy at work - the terror in France - which quite reasonably terrified them. The response was to build a system which left control in the hands of a small ruling class, while giving a "voice to the people" (which substitutes for power). The voice is now owned by others, but the illusion of "democracy" persists.
Do you remember GW Bush's "There ought to be limits to freedom."? He said this in response to gwbush.com pointing some satire in his direction and has subsequently treated it as an inescapable campaign promise to such effect that the unhappy American subjects of King George probably had significantly more freedom than any American today. It was this statement, the current wars and a knowledge of history which inspired my little epigram on the subject, "The USA, exporting limited freedom since 1798TM." This of course refers to the undeclared Quasi-war ignited when the United States Congress rescinded treaties with France as a continuation of the XYZ Affair. Since then, the US has had a near unalloyed history of brutal attacks on ideologically motivated pretexts against many other peoples (including her encompassed native populations), while apparently escaping significant cost to herself.
As for patriotism, Samuel Johnson's most famous Boswell quote still applies (see http://www.samueljohnson.com/patrioti.html) - but if you don't like it, he has others. Many others. Not least "That man, therefore, is no patriot, who justifies the ridiculous claims of American usurpation; who endeavours to deprive the nation of its natural and lawful authority over its own colonies, which were settled under English protection; were constituted by an English charter; and have been defended by English arms." Personally, I treasure ideas (and sometimes artifacts) before most people, and people before most places. If that fits with how you define patriotism, I have no argument. If by patriotism, you imply support of a state, mixed bag that invariably encompasses, I must disagree. It is far too easy in my opinion, to subvert that sort of patriotism into support for all manner of dubious actions.
Apropos of invalid actions, this might fascinate you. http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-110705scotus_lat,0,4630444.story?coll=la-story-footer&track=morenews Note especially that our alleged "constitutionalist" Supreme Court chief justice ruled "Congress gave the president all the authority he needed when it passed the resolution authorizing Bush to use "all necessary and appropriate force" to fight Al Qaeda" while he was still on the bench of the U.S. Court of Appeals. Perhaps this is one comprehensible reason for Shrub's haste in seeking to have a loyal replacement for the unpredictable Justice Sandra Day O'Connor seated ASAP.
Further to your "Im a little too much of a patriot (or at least personally invested) to give up on the possibility of the US being a power for good. Yes, the current administration and political power structure has brought us to embarrassingly low standards for civilization.", I had hoped that the US could become a "power for good" and even expected to see it - although I wasn't banking on civilization. That frequently takes hundreds of years to achieve . I do still 'hope' the US can become a "power for good" even though, post Bush, I no longer expect to see it in my lifetime. Like you, I think that this will take a massive change in the political system, rather than just changes in the office holders. Not, in my opinion, a revolution in any conventional sense, as revolutions tend to be very destructive and in general need a long time after the revolution in which to stabilize. Time which I am not sure we have available. Against this hope, I think we (the US) have pretty much run out of credit (economic, social and ethical), and certainly don't think we (the US) have the kind of capital (economic, social and ethical) which I am sure that this change will need - so that even if the voters under-40 realized that they could readily outvote the over-50s who are the current (minority) voting group determining the composition of government, I'm not sure that even a total replacement of the government could lead to the kind of structural change I suspect is needed to recover from the retrogression of the past decade - never mind implementing some progress.
Nevertheless, I am sure we agree that we have to keep trying, and that if we intend to achieve anything at all, despite the fact that the system is massively biased against any person or group attempting to elect anyone outside the corral of the largely indistinguishable Democans and Republicrats, we have to focus our attention on the Presidential election. When we were discussing a potential "Rational Party" (Rats), we decided that every effort should be put into electing a president - and shaming the Electoral college into acting appropriately. Once a president has the floor, an electoral college could be formed to attempt to fix some of the more obvious constitutional blunders. My favorite proposed change would b to adopt a Dutch style constitution as far as personal liberty goes. In other words, no law may be passed infringing on any personal freedom unless real damage to another will result (i.e. No slippery slopes) unless that law is passed.
Speaking of rats, some of the material at here might still be useful if anything does move ahead.
As usual, I have spent many hours I don't have trying to craft this letter, so I'll draw a line in the sand at this point - other than to say that I hope that once the work here is done that we can get together - maybe with Local Roger too, before I head back North.
Hermit
Hermit, "Fuck" Hypatia (looking around very carefully to find the frog), "Frog hiding"
PS Blunderov, I think that incomprehensibility is part of the disease... Listen to the master debater at work. As observed here, this points to neurological damage in the speech centers.
2005-09-01 I don't think anyone anticipated the breach of the levees. [Good Morning America]
2005-09-01 Well, there's a lot of food on its way. A lot of water on the way. And there's a lot of boats and choppers headed that way. Boats and choppers headed that way. It just takes a while to float 'em. [Good Morning America]
2005-09-06 Listen, I, I, I wanna thank, uhh, leaders of the -- in the faith, and uhh -- faith-based and community-based community for being here, we've got people who represent thousands of volunteers who are in the midst of helping save lives. [White House]
2005-09-02 Here's what I believe. I believe that the great city of New Orleans will rise again and be a greater city of New Orleans. I believe the town where I used to come -- from Houston, Texas, to enjoy myself, occasionally too much -- will be that very same town, that it will be a better place to come to. [Photo-op, New Orleans, Louisiana]
2005-09-02 Right now, we need to get food and clothes and medicine to the people, and we'll do so. And one of the main delivery systems will be the armies of compassion. [Photo-op, Biloxi, Mississippi]
2005-09-02 Brownie, you're doin' a heck of a job. [Photo-op, Mobile, Alabama]
With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion. - Steven Weinberg, 1999
Not much commented on is the fact that in 1999, according to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Joseph A. Wilson IV made another trip to Niger, a trip also paid for by the CIA and for which he was chosen upon the recommendation of his wife, Valerie Plame. The SSCI gives no explanation for that trip. And I don’t claim to know what it is about. One commentator, Macsmind, has his ideas. He suggests it was to
...broker what I believe were ongoing sales of Uranium from Niger to other rogue nations including Iraq. Of course detractors note that since France controlled the mines, this would be impossible, but the findings of the Oil for Food Scandal are shedding a differing light on COGEMA.In essence, what you had was a “cake” laundering operation, and the “washing machine” was the cache located at Al Tuwaitha. So long as the amount remained the same, no one would ever know. This is so simple (crooked cops do it with cocaine in the evidence room), etc.Of course there would be one caveat and this is key and not surprising. The IAEA would have had to have “blinked” once in a while. Scandelous? Yes, but that the IAEA might not have been so suspect if frustratated by the Bush Administration killing the Golden Goose, they showed their hand in October of 2004 by leaking the story of missing munitions at Al-Qaqaa. Make no mistake, the move was to defeat Bush and thus, get the ‘heat off” as a Kerry Administration would have canned any further scrutiny into the Oil for Food Scandal.
While there is little public information yet on Wilson’s company, JC Wilson International, Mac notes that he found that
“Wilson’s company was headquartered out of the offices of an investment company, Rock Creek Corporation, which was run by Mohammed Alamoudi who helped him gain access to markets in Africa ‘for his business’. ”
He reminds us that
Alamoudi you might remember is the dirt bag who banks “with Al Qeada”.
So many questions and so many things squiggling in the dirt under the rocks.Not the least of which is where are the investigative reporters who get paid to look into these things.
ON SUNDAY, the New York Times and the Washington Post ran stories based on excerpts of a newly declassified Defense Intelligence Agency document provided by Senator Carl Levin, the number two Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee. The stories concerned the interrogation of Ibn Shaykh al Libi, a senior al Qaeda official who told U.S. officials that Iraq had trained al Qaeda in chemical and biological weapons. The DIA was skeptical of his story; the CIA less so. Al Libi recanted in January 2004. Levin released the excerpts to demonstrate his assertions that the Bush administration exaggerated prewar intelligence on Iraq and al Qaeda.
According to the Times, Levin made his declassification request of the DIA on October 18, 2005. The excerpts were declassified on October 26, 2005. The entire process, it seems, took eight days.
Why did the DIA work so quickly? I have been trying since late spring to obtain documents on Iraq and al Qaeda from the DIA. The documents are unclassified. My requests--including several Freedom of Information Act filings--have been denied. (I will be detailing these efforts in THE WEEKLY STANDARD later this week.)
In any case, it's good to know that at least on some requests, U.S. intelligence agencies can move with such alacrity. The Bush administration and congressional Republicans should learn from Levin. There are dozens of documents and reports that, if declassified, might provide context to Levin's tendentious claims that there was no relationship at all between Iraq and al Qaeda. Some of them are U.S. analyses of the Iraq-al Qaeda relationship; others are documents from the former Iraqi regime. They should all be declassified. Here are ten:
(1) "Abdul Rahman Yasin, a fugitive from the [1993 World Trade Center attack], is of Iraqi descent and in 1993 he fled to Iraq with Iraqi assistance." So reads a passage from page 339 of the Phase I report from the Senate Intelligence Committee. My reporting indicates that Yasin returned to Iraq after mixing the chemicals for the first World Trade Center attack with the active assistance of the second secretary of the Iraqi Embassy in Jordan. According to documents recovered in postwar Iraq, Yasin probably received housing and financial support from the Iraqi regime. Vice President Dick Cheney put it this way on Meet the Press on September 14, 2003: "And we've learned subsequent to that, since we went into Baghdad and got into the intelligence files, that this individual probably also received financing from the Iraqi government as well as safe haven." THE WEEKLY STANDARD made numerous requests to the FBI for copies of these documents. Each of these requests was denied. FBI officials refused even to discuss Yasin on background, despite the fact that he is on the FBI's "Most Wanted Terrorist" list.
(2) A 1992 Iraqi Intelligence Service [IIS] document listed Osama bin Laden as an IIS asset who had good relations with the Iraqi intelligence section in Syria. A spokesman for the Defense Intelligence Agency told 60 Minutes that the document was likely authentic, but not terribly meaningful, since the relationship with bin Laden was not spelled out on its pages.
(3) On June 25, 2004, the New York Times reported on an Iraqi Intelligence document unearthed in postwar Iraq. A team of Pentagon analysts concluded that the document "appears authentic." The Iraqi Intelligence memo reports that a Sudanese government official met with Uday Hussein and the director of the Iraqi Intelligence Service in 1994 and reported that bin Laden was willing to meet in Sudan. As a consequence, according to the Iraqi document, bin Laden was "approached by our side" after "presidential approval" for the liaison was given. The former head of Iraqi Intelligence Directorate 4 met with bin Laden on February 19, 1995. The document further states that bin Laden "had some reservations about being labeled an Iraqi operative." But the absence of a formal relationship hardly precludes cooperation, as the document makes clear.
Bin Laden requested that Iraq's state-run television network broadcast anti-Saudi propaganda; the document indicates that the Iraqis agreed to do this. The al Qaeda leader also proposed "joint operations against foreign forces" in Saudi Arabia. There is no response provided in the documents. When bin Laden leaves Sudan for Afghanistan in May 1996, the Iraqis seek "other channels through which to handle the relationship, in light of his current location." The IIS memo directs that "cooperation between the two organizations should be allowed to develop freely through discussion and agreement."
(4) Wali Khan Amin Shah, a senior al Qaeda operative in U.S. custody since 1995, told FBI interrogators that an al Qaeda leader named Abu Hajer al Iraqi maintained a good relationship with Iraqi Intelligence. Abu Hajer al Iraqi ran al Qaeda's WMD procurement operation until his capture in 1998 and was described by another al Qaeda member as Osama bin Laden's "best friend." According to the Senate Intelligence Committee report, Wali Khan testified that he had knowledge of two "direct meetings" between the leadership of Iraqi Intelligence and Abu Hajer al Iraqi.
(5) On February 19, 1998, the Iraqi Intelligence Service finalized plans to bring a "trusted confidant" of bin Laden's to Baghdad in early March. The revelation came in documents discovered after the Iraq war by journalists Mitch Potter of the Toronto Star and Inigo Gilmore of the Sunday Telegraph. The documents--a series of communiqués between Iraqi Intelligence divisions--provide another window into the relationship between the former Iraqi regime and al Qaeda. The following comes from the Telegraph's translations of the documents:
The envoy is a trusted confidant and known by them. According to the above mediation we request official permission to call Khartoum station to facilitate the travel arrangements for the above-mentioned person to Iraq. And that our body carry all the travel and hotel expenses inside Iraq to gain the knowledge of the message from bin Laden and to convey to his envoy an oral message from us to bin Laden, the Saudi opposition leader, about the future of our relationship with him, and to achieve a direct meeting with him.
A note at the bottom of the page from the director of one IIS division recommends approving the request, noting, "we may find in this envoy a way to maintain contacts with bin Laden." Four days later, on February 23, final approval is granted. "The permission of Mr. Deputy Director of Intelligence has been gained on 21 February for this operation, to secure a reservation for one of the intelligence services guests for one week in one of the first class hotels."
The al Qaeda envoy to Iraq arrived in Baghdad on March 5, 1998. Notes in the margins of the Iraqi Intelligence memos indicate that Mohammed F. Mohammed stayed for more than two weeks in Room 414 of the Al Mansour Melia Hotel as the guest of Iraqi Intelligence. After extending his trip by one week, bin Laden's emissary departed on March 16.
The U.S. intelligence community is now in possession of these documents and has assessed that they are authentic.
(6) In a speech at the U.S. Naval Academy on May 22, 1998, President Clinton warned that our enemies "may deploy compact and relatively cheap weapons of mass destruction--not just nuclear, but also chemical or biological, to use disease as a weapon of war. Sometimes the terrorists and criminals act alone. But increasingly, they are interconnected, and sometimes supported by hostile countries." Hostile countries such as Iraq, Afghanistan, and Sudan.
Although Osama bin Laden left Sudan in 1996, many al Qaeda operatives stayed behind. According to testimony from several al Qaeda terrorists now in U.S. custody, al Qaeda operatives worked closely with Sudanese intelligence. Sudanese intelligence provided security for al Qaeda camps and safehouses. These agents intervened when local Sudanese authorities arrested al Qaeda members for exploding bombs at an al Qaeda farm, securing the release of the detained terrorists. Jamal al Fadl, an al Qaeda terrorist who later cooperated with U.S. prosecutors, testified that he was ordered by Sudanese intelligence to assassinate a political rival to Hassan al-Turabi. Even after bin Laden's departure, al Qaeda and Sudanese intelligence were virtually indistinguishable.
From 1998 through 2002, the CIA produced unclassified assessments of WMD proliferation. In each one, the CIA reported that Iraqi scientists were working on WMD development in Sudan. From the 1998 assessment: "Sudan has been developing the capability to produce chemical weapons for many years. In this pursuit, Sudan obtained help from other countries, principally Iraq. Given its history in developing CW and its close relationship with Iraq, Sudan may be interested in a BW program as well."
On page 128 its final report, the 9/11 Commission stated that former NSC Counterterrorism Director Richard Clarke "for years had read intelligence reports on Iraqi-Sudanese cooperation on chemical weapons."
(7) On August 20, 1998, the Clinton administration bombed the al Shifa pharmaceutical factory in Sudan. The attack came in retaliation for the nearly simultaneous al Qaeda bombings of U.S. embassies in East Africa. The decision to strike al Shifa was--and remains--controversial. But senior Clinton administration officials defended the bombing, citing the presence of Iraqi scientists at chemical weapons facilities in Sudan. Several senior U.S. intelligence officials supported those claims. In an interview with THE WEEKLY STANDARD last year, John Gannon, who was at the time chairman of the CIA's National Intelligence Council, said this: "The consistent stream of intelligence at that time said it wasn't just al Shifa. There were three different [chemical weapons] structures in the Sudan. There was the hiring of Iraqis. There was no question that the Iraqis were there."
( An October 2002 report from the National Security Agency reported that "al Qaeda and Iraq reached a secret agreement whereby Iraq would provide safe haven to al Qaeda members and provide them with money and weapons." It was this agreement that "reportedly prompted a large number of al Qaeda members to head to Iraq." Another NSA report included intelligence that an Iraqi Intelligence officer praised Ansar al Islam, provided it with $100,000, and vowed to continue this support.
(9) The report on Phase I of the Senate Intelligence Committee refers to two CIA reports on Iraq and terrorism. One is called Iraq and al Qaeda: Interpreting a Murky Relationship, and was published internally in June 2002.
(10) The other was called Iraqi Support for Terrorism and it was published internally in January 2003.
IT TOOK THE DIA just eight days to declassify excerpts of the document Carl Levin released last week. Levin, remember, claims that there was no relationship whatsoever between Iraq and al Qaeda. Imagine how different the debate on the relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda might be if the Bush administration were to have all of these documents declassified in, say, two weeks.
Stephen F. Hayes is a senior writer at The Weekly Standard.
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Personally, I treasure ideas (and sometimes artifacts) before most people, and people before most places. If that fits with how you define patriotism, I have no argument. If by patriotism, you imply support of a state, mixed bag that invariably encompasses, I must disagree. It is far too easy in my opinion, to subvert that sort of patriotism into support for all manner of dubious actions.
An October 2002 report from the National Security Agency reported that "al Qaeda and Iraq reached a secret agreement whereby Iraq would provide safe haven to al Qaeda members and provide them with money and weapons." It was this agreement that "reportedly prompted a large number of al Qaeda members to head to Iraq." Another NSA report included intelligence that an Iraqi Intelligence officer praised Ansar al Islam, provided it with $100,000, and vowed to continue this support. 
