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Actually, though, it reminds me of something a friend of mine said to me. "You know, given its location and history, you'd think that Canada would be the ideal nation, because it would be able to combine French food, American technology, and British culture. But, tragically, instead they have British food, French technology, and American culture."
Third, if war is a major reason for our current and future deficits, why is the potential cost of our looming war not even mentioned in the budget? This is not an oversight. Ignoring the biggest single new expenditure of the next several years is simply irresponsible bookkeeping at best and downright deception at worst.And that's just a sample. If history is any judge, apparently the only way to ever get the budget to balance is to have a Republican Congress and a Democratic President. It's a shame that none of the Democratic contenders for the job so far appear to be up to snuff.But what really bugs me is that the president doesn't seem to give a damn. He could say: Look, we're running deficits because I need to pay for a major war and tax cuts will help get us out of a recession. Instead, he told us last year that the deficits would be temporary and this year that, er, well, he didn't say anything much about them in the State of the Union address, did he? Or he could say: OK, I know I've turned the spigot on for the last couple of years, but I'm going to be a hard-ass from now on. But on what grounds do we believe him? If he's not even including the cost of war and reconstruction in Iraq, what credibility does he have in controlling domestic discretionary spending?
UPDATE: Grrr... blogger links bad. (I should know--I use it myself. For now, anyway.) At any rate, just go to the main page. The post in question is entitled "Why John Stuart Mill is Canonized."
Until about three weeks ago, Mr. Powell was said to be reluctant to go before the Security Council with a case connecting Al Qaeda with the Iraqi leadership. "Colin did not want to be accused of fabricating or stretching the truth," a coalition official said.And there's more, especially some rather infuriating bits about our "allies" in Qatar. Read it all.That all changed, the official said, when the interrogation of Mr. Zarqawi's deputy began to yield the first detailed account of the network's operations in Iraq, the Middle East and Europe.
The network was planning terrorist attacks in a half dozen European countries, Mr. Powell said, adding that recent police raids in France and Britain, where one police officer was killed, stem from the disruption of the Iraq-based network. About 116 operatives have been connected to it, he said.
When all the shards of intelligence came together today, along with new information on Iraq's secret programs to develop chemical, biological and nuclear weapons, Mr. Powell's presentation was a more detailed and well-documented bill of particulars than many had expected.
Mr. Powell said that after Mr. Zarqawi fought against the Soviets, he returned to Afghanistan at the peak of Mr. bin Laden's influence in 2000 and ran a training camp. His leg injury during the allied military campaign in 2001 may have been serious enough for amputation by the time he reached Baghdad.
An expert in poisons and chemical weapons, Mr. Zarqawi is believed to have been providing training to the extremist group Ansar al-Islam. The group is based in northeastern Iraq in territory that is neither under the control of the Baghdad regime nor the main Kurdish groups that have divided up most of northern Iraq.
I'm afraid of what these people are doing to the legacy of the United States, and what we stand for. We have over two hundred years of history coming up to this point, and I really can't believe one group of people can truly derail us from our glorious path.I'm not exactly sure how using nonlethal weapons in accordance with international law goes against the "legacy of the United States." You'd think that the use of non lethal weapons would be a good thing, right? Okay, so maybe it might cause some deaths among Iraqi soliders, but I think that the conventional method--i.e. shooting them all is a bit worse, don't you? Not that I disparage the necessities of war, but I do think that casualities should be kept to a minimum. This seems like a good way to do it. Where are the "war crimes," here?But every day something turns up that shakes my confidence. I cannot blindly walk in lockstep with this sort of thing. When I see the country I love going down a path like this, I have to say something - even if it accomplishes nothing.
Open expressions of such hostility to the Iraqi leader remains taboo in many Arab countries, in part because, like Mubarak, Arab heads of state have sought to convince the West that invading Iraq will produce popular unrest and thereby destabilize the region. In reality, Arab leaders are more concerned that the ouster of Saddam will produce popular jubilation - followed by demands for political reforms at home. The claim that the Arab street is bursting at the seams with pro-Saddam sympathies is a convenient justification for increased restrictions on civil liberties.Imagine that, huh? Does this really suprise anybody? I've always personally had a difficult time believing that there was a seething rage against America for the majority of the populace in the Arab nations. I think it's becoming increasingly clear that the "destabilization" that the Arab governments fear is their own demise. Tyrants always fear that their populace will rise up against them. Mostly because they're aware that they deserve to be risen up against.
The fact of the matter is, folks, that the reason we have a First Amendment is to facilitate and foster debate in the "marketplace of ideas." So if Ben Stein wants to come out and say he's all about the war, I'm cool with that, as long as he gives cogent, thoughtful reasons to say so. And if Dustin Hoffman wants to say he's against it, that's cool, too--again, so long as he gives cogent, thoughtful reasons to say so (which he really didn't, but at least he conceded that he "wasn't an expert.") What bothers me the most about most celebrity political pronouncements, on any issue, is that they tend to be vitriolic and unreasoned. But I'll tell ya, some celebrities come off damn well when they talk about politics. Mock Bono's crusade for third world debt relief all you like, but you can't say that he doesn't know what he's talking about. And Charleton Heston's defense of gun rights is not only well-articulated, but this is a guy who's been active in politics a long time (he marched with Martin Luther King, Jr. for civil rights). By contrast, Sheryl Crow's invocation of karmic consequences of war, and James Woods kooky comments on the pro-war side are just embarrasing for all concerned.
If you're against war, fine. If you think there are better ways to deal with Saddam, fine. Maybe there are. But don't minimize the harms without credibly addressing the evidence. Don't just casually dismiss what is, in fact, a great deal of evidence just because you don't like Bush for whatever reason. I don't like Bush either. But that doesn't make him, or his Administration, wrong. That doesn't mean that none of his chosen policies are good ideas. Get out of the partisan box and examine things objectively! That's all I ask.[/rant]
We are not surprised that Iraq is harboring Zarqawi and his subordinates. This understanding builds on decades long experience with respect to ties between Iraq and Al Qaida. Going back to the early and mid-1990s, when bin Laden was based in Sudan, an Al Qaida source tells us that Saddam and bin Laden reached an understanding that Al Qaida would no longer support activities against Baghdad. Early Al Qaida ties were forged by secret, high-level intelligence service contacts with Al Qaida, secret Iraqi intelligence high-level contacts with Al Qaida.And that's just a small part of it. Read the whole thing. It's devastating.We know members of both organizations met repeatedly and have met at least eight times at very senior levels since the early 1990s. In 1996, a foreign security service tells us, that bin Laden met with a senior Iraqi intelligence official in Khartoum, and later met the director of the Iraqi intelligence service.
Saddam became more interested as he saw Al Qaida's appalling attacks. A detained Al Qaida member tells us that Saddam was more willing to assist Al Qaida after the 1998 bombings of our embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. Saddam was also impressed by Al Qaida's attacks on the USS Cole in Yemen in October 2000.Iraqis continued to visit bin Laden in his new home in Afghanistan. A senior defector, one of Saddam's former intelligence chiefs in Europe, says Saddam sent his agents to Afghanistan sometime in the mid-1990s to provide training to Al Qaida members on document forgery.
From the late 1990s until 2001, the Iraqi embassy in Pakistan played the role of liaison to the Al Qaida organization.
Some believe, some claim these contacts do not amount to much. They say Saddam Hussein's secular tyranny and Al Qaida's religious tyranny do not mix. I am not comforted by this thought. Ambition and hatred are enough to bring Iraq and Al Qaida together, enough so Al Qaida could learn how to build more sophisticated bombs and learn how to forge documents, and enough so that Al Qaida could turn to Iraq for help in acquiring expertise on weapons of mass destruction.
Hi there. Laurence Simon here. I've got a quick question... it's based on the following snippet I caught in a Jerusalem Post article: JERUSALEM POST: Israeli astronaut Ramon to be buried in Israel Tuesday (UPDATE)
Also Wednesday, the Israeli memorial center for the Nazi Holocaust opened an exhibit to show the original of a drawing copy Ramon carried into space. The drawing was made by a 14-year-old boy who was later killed in a Nazi camp.Odd. I thought he was carrying the original: NY TIMES: Cause of Fiery Fall Is Unknown; Ship Was Fleet's Oldest
Colonel Ramon, had little room to take personal items on the flight, but he did lift off with a piece of Holocaust-era art: a small black-and-white drawing called "Moon Landscape" that he had borrowed from the Yad Vashem Art Museum in Israel. The drawing, by Peter Ginz, a 14-year-old Jewish boy killed at Auschwitz in 1944, was a picture by a child who dreamed of faraway places and sketched what he thought the Earth would look like from the mountains of the moon.I wonder if the one that used to be at Yad Vashem was just a copy for display.This morning, nearly 60 years later, it was incinerated over the skies of Texas.
It's little mysteries like this that occupy our attention in times of tragedy. They are the threads to start back up the loom with which we weave the future, and the pattern in the tapestry of our lives is changed.
We Iraqis hear much about the rage of the so-called Arab street. I know the streets of Baghdad, and I know they will be filled with jubilant Iraqis once the dictator is gone. Recall the joy of liberation in Rome and Paris in 1944, the cheering crowds in Kosovo in 1999, the Afghans who danced in the streets in 2001. Wars of liberation created hope and opportunity in these places.Will you ignore this plea? Read the whole thing.The only way for Iraqis to escape their nightmare is for the international community to help us liberate Iraq and build a postwar democracy that is peaceful, stable and based on the rule of law.
In their conference in London in December, the Iraqi opposition movements endorsed a vision for a democratic, federal Iraq — one in which my people, the Kurds, would be an integral part. I ask the free people of the West to lend their passion and energy to support our liberation.
QUICK NOTE: Dean Esmay calls my attention to this article, which features a similar argument from the North Korean perspective.
"TELL SENATORS: Filibuster the Estrada Nomination!" cries the Web site of People for the American Way. The subject is President Bush's nomination of Miguel A. Estrada to a seat on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. Democratic senators may not need much encouragement. With the Estrada nomination due to come to the Senate floor today, they are contemplating a dramatic escalation of the judicial nomination wars. They should stand down. Mr. Estrada, who is well qualified for the bench, should not be a tough case for confirmation. Democrats who disagree may vote against him. They should not deny him a vote.Agreed. Because not allowing a vote would be, you know, un-Democratic. This whole partisan fight over judges has gotten way out of hand, by the way. It all started with Bork, who (thank God) was denied a seat on the Supreme Court. But at least he got a vote, and there was discussion and debate over his nomination. Then came the Republicans who, in petulant revenge, wouldn't allow Clinton's nominees to even get out of Committee a lot of the time. Then the Democrats got the Senate for a while and, showing the kind of class and statesmenship they're known for, wouldn't let Bush's nominees get out of Committee. It's bloody childish. Anybody nominated for office deserves a full vote of the Senate.
I suspect that many libertarians are confronted with two choices in opposition to creeping authoritarianism in the United States. Particularly that resulting from the "war on terror." They can oppose it directly by denouncing the Government's actions, even to the point where they embrace the "lesser of two evils", and start voting and supporting the opposing political party [in this case, the Democrats]. Or, they can oppose it indirectly and seek to remove the motivating force [in their minds] behind the Government's actions. Namely terrorists, and the states that harbor or support them.Ah yes, the "creeping authoritarianism in the United States"--because, you know, before Bush was "selected," the United States was a happy utopia, filled with perfect love and freedom where the government never, ever did anything wrong. Okay, sarcasm aside. What is Hesiod saying here? That pro-war libertarians only support war so that we can get Ashcroft off our backs? Hey, Hesiod, look at me over here! I've called for Ashcroft's impeachment, and I support the war. What do you say to that? Do you think that maybe--just maybe--it's possible that some libertarians support the war because they recognize the government's role in defending the nation and that the current war (which, by the way, we didn't start) is necessary in order for the government to do it's job?
Thus, many libertarians, but by no means all, both support limited government here at home, and unilateral [if necessary] military action to "change regimes" abroad, and impose an quasi-imperial U.S. administration upon those regimes.Well, aside from the "imperial" part, there's nothing un-libertarian about either of the latter two principles, as I've written about at length before.
To them, it means the best of both worlds [sort of]. Since the Ashcroftian crackdown on civil liberties in the United States does not [yet] directly touch them [it only applies, so far, to "enemy conbatants," and immigrants], they can [in their minds] safely remain opposed to the Democratric party [and its more government, more taxes on the wealthy agenda] without suffering direct negative consequences."Enemy combatants" is a term of art that didn't start with Ashcroft. Believe it or not, the designation is a part of codified international law under the Geneva Convention. Just clearing that up. Okay, again, well, what does Hesiod have to say about me? I've written several times before decrying the crackdown on immigrants without cause and also have stated that any alleged terrorists should receive an open and fair trial. I might be more open to voting Democrat if their opposition to Homeland Security had been about civil liberties violations, rather than the notion that workers for Homeland Security wouldn't be allowed to unionize.
I'd also like to note, for the record, the Hesiod has not provided one example of a pro-war libertarian who supports the police state tactics of the domestic side of the War on Terror. After heaping praise on the anti-war libertarian crowd, Hesiod then goes off again on the notion that us hawkish libertarians are only in it for the civil liberties by using the bizarre example of the Japanese internment camps.
The "have it boths ways" Libertarians, I think, are making a huge error in judgment. Was it the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor that "caused" the United States to intern thousands of Japanese Americans during World War II?Well, at least he's right about Japanese internment being wrong. But, again, he's wrong in his assertion that the pro-war libertarians support war in order to get rid of violations of civil liberties. If we were fighting World War II right now, I'd be the one claiming that we should be fighting and that the internment camps were wrong.blockquote>True libertarians know this [as Walt Kelley immortally wrote: "We have met the enemy, and he is us."] And they want to prevent such policies from taking hold. Once the right to an attorney is lost for some groups, it is inevitable that it will be put under contant pressure for the rest of us.Or was it our own weakness of character, fear, and [dare I say it] racism? After all, the Japanese did not create and implement the internment policy in the United States. We, as a people, did it to ourselves.
Once you can hold some individuals without due process, they know it's only a matter of time before the "principle" is expanded to include more and more people.Well, I'm not entirely sure that the slippery slope described will actually occur, but I do oppose denying civil liberties to any accused person in the United States. And I still support war. Does that make me a true libertarian?
Note that all of Hesiod's arguments (and read the whole thing--I didn't quote it all) boil down to these points:
1. Pro-war libertarians only want war to stop violations of civil liberties.
2. In the meantime, they're perfectly willing to put up with violations of civil liberties.
3. Wars of liberation are unlibertarian.
4. Real libertarians vote Democrat.
None of these statements are actually backed up with quotes or links to any pro-war libertarians. And where's the huge groundswell of anti-war libertarians who plan on working for the Democratic party? I don't know any of them, either. As for myself, I think that Ashcroft should be impeached, Homeland Security should be junked, and we should go to war with Iraq. Oh yeah, and I've only voted for one Republican in my life, and I only did that because the Democrat was the incumbent and I was voting against him. And I'd be willing to bet that a lot of pro-war libertarians are with me on that.
In interviews with senior officials, the following picture emerged: American intelligence believes that Al Qaeda and Saddam reached a non-aggression agreement in 1993, and that the relationship deepened further in the mid-nineteen-nineties, when an Al Qaeda operative—a native-born Iraqi who goes by the name Abu Abdullah al-Iraqi—was dispatched by bin Laden to ask the Iraqis for help in poison-gas training. Al-Iraqi's mission was successful, and an unknown number of trainers from an Iraqi secret-police organization called Unit 999 were dispatched to camps in Afghanistan to instruct Al Qaeda terrorists. (Training in hijacking techniques was also provided to foreign Islamist radicals inside Iraq, according to two Iraqi defectors quoted in a report in the Times in November of 2001.) Another Al Qaeda operative, the Iraqi-born Mamdouh Salim, who goes by the name Abu Hajer al-Iraqi, also served as a liaison in the mid-nineteen-nineties to Iraqi intelligence. Salim, according to a recent book, "The Age of Sacred Terror," by the former N.S.C. officials Daniel Benjamin and Steven Simon, was bin Laden's chief procurer of weapons of mass destruction, and was involved in the early nineties in chemical-weapons development in Sudan. Salim was arrested in Germany in 1998 and was extradited to the United States. He is awaiting trial in New York on charges related to the 1998 East Africa embassy bombings; he was convicted last April of stabbing a Manhattan prison guard in the eye with a sharpened comb.The whole article is worth reading, if nothing else than for insight into exactly what the CIA and other intelligence agencies do. Personally, I have been and continue to be satisfied that there is plenty of evidence demonstrating cooperation between Iraq and al-Qaeda. Does this mean Iraq was involved in 9/11? Maybe, maybe not. Also, does this mean that Iraq will provide al-Qaeda members with weapons of mass destruction? Well, again--maybe, maybe not. But is that a risk we seriously want to take? Especially when coupled with Hussein's regional ambitions and his desire to acquire nuclear weapons? The answer is clearly no.
[emphasis mine]
As a hostile crowd of women ringed the French Embassy in Ivory Coast's main city, Abidjan, President Jacques Chirac of France met with his cabinet and military advisers Monday to seek a way out of a situation that has turned dramatically wrong.Hey Jacques, maybe instead of acting like a unilateral imperialist, you should have gone through the U.N.
The way to consecrate the memory of those noble souls on Columbia is not to mindlessly repeat the past 20 years but to rethink the whole enterprise. For now, we need to keep the shuttle going because we have no other way to get into space. And we'll need to support the space station for a few years, because we have no other program in place.I have this odd feeling like this is going to be the end result of the whole thing. Even though he didn't talk about it in the State of the Union address, I wouldn't be surprised if the Bush Administration gives the Prometheus program another nudge. The whole process of mission reassessment in the wake of Columbia will, hopefully, give NASA a "vision thing" and lead to the opening up of the Solar System. We'll see. Of course, if we don't do it, it looks like the Chinese are planning that way, so at least some humans will be in space. But it'd be a shame if we Americans turned our back on it.But that is not our destiny, nor our purpose. If we're going to risk that first 150 miles of terrible stress on body and machine to get into space, then let's do it to get to the next million miles -- to cruise the beauty and vacuum of interplanetary space to new worlds. Back to the moon. Establish a lunar base. And then on to Mars.
The Columbia tragedy will give voice to the troglodytes who want to give up manned space travel altogether. But the problem is not manned flight. The problem is this kind of manned flight, shuttling up and down at great risk and to little end.
Icarus fell because he flew too close to the sun. Columbia -- and the whole American manned space program today -- fell because it flies too close to the Earth, repeatedly, gratuitously braving the terrors of takeoff and reentry. It is time to once again raise our eyes and our horizons, and return to our original path, so inexplicably abandoned: to the moon and beyond.
Spanish Foreign Minister Ana Palacio has warned France and Germany to steer clear of unilateralism and urged them to take more account of the positions of other European nations and NATO ally, the US.That's gotta sting.In an article published in the Spanish daily ABC, Palacio said last month's Franco-German declaration, published to celebrate the 40th anniversary of their post-World War II friendship treaty, was not exempt from " a whiff of unilateralism".
Today, claims of territorial sovereignty by dictators and illegitimate regimes amount to the biggest con in history. No matter how unfairly borders are drawn, no matter how monstrously tyrants behave toward their populations, no matter how ruthlessly a strongman seizes power, the world pretends that those who hold the reins in the capital city are entitled to do whatever they want on their own territory.I've argued for this before, but not quite so lucidly. Read the whole thing.The current system is the greatest collective violation of human rights in our time. The United States must shatter this antiquated scam designed by kings and princes to protect their personal fiefdoms. In the 21st century, a government must earn its right to claim sovereignty.
How? By working for the benefit of its citizens, not just for the privileges of a small, armed elite. By respecting the dignity of its people, including its minorities. By providing for its citizens, instead of stealing from them. By allowing them to speak freely and to live without fear of their own government. Above all, a state must earn its right to sovereign borders by adhering to universal standards of human rights.
And that's why there's no investigation. Because the intelligence failures that led to 9/11 were just that--failures. Failures caused by a complacent, unaccountable bureaucracy. Failures caused by members of both parties (which is why you don't see any huge pressure from Democrats in Congress for such a Commission). The government isn't interested in pursuing an investigation because the political fallout would mean, at the very least, voters turning out half of Congress and probably end up with the public demanding the firing--if not outright jailing--of senior FBI and CIA officials.
And that's why we'll never see a real investigation, any more than we saw a real investigation of Waco or Iran-Contra or any of the other deep, broad-based acts of wrongdoing in the Federal government. Like any other bureaucracy, the FBI, NSA and CIA are first and foremost interested in their own survival. And I have no doubt that officials in all of those agencies have called in every favor and pulled every string they can to insure that any investigation, if one even happens at all, is as weak and ineffectual as possible.
SADDAM Hussein's senior bodyguard has fled with details of Iraq's secret arsenal.Please note the second item--missiles from North Korea. Let's see how the anti-war crowd spins this...His revelations have supported US President George W. Bush's claim there is enough evidence from UN inspectors to justify going to war.
Abu Hamdi Mahmoud has provided Israeli intelligence with a list of sites that the inspectors have not visited.They include:
AN underground chemical weapons facility at the southern end of the Jadray Peninsula in Baghdad;
A SCUD assembly area near Ramadi. The missiles come from North Korea;
TWO underground bunkers in Iraq's Western Desert. These contain biological weapons.