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Karl Baba
Trad climber
Yosemite, Ca
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Topic Author's Original Post - Aug 6, 2008 - 09:46pm PT
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Sorry for the politics thread but we live in dangerous times.
from
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/08/06/10836/
""Published on Wednesday, August 6, 2008 by The Huffington Post
The Forged Iraqi Letter: What Just Happened?
by Ron Suskind
What just happened? Evidence. A secret that has been judiciously kept for five years just spilled out. All of what follows is new, never reported in any way:
The Iraq Intelligence Chief, Tahir Jalil Habbush — a man still carrying with $1 million reward for capture, the Jack of Diamonds in Bush’s famous deck of wanted men — has been America’s secret source on Iraq. Starting in January of 2003, with Blair and Bush watching, his secret reports began to flow to officials on both sides of the Atlantic, saying that there were no WMD and that Hussein was acting so odd because of fear that the Iranians would find out he was a toothless tiger. The U.S. deep-sixed the intelligence report in February, “resettled” Habbush to a safe house in Jordan during the invasion and then paid him $5 million in what could only be considered hush money.
In the fall of 2003, after the world learned there were no WMD — as Habbush had foretold — the White House ordered the CIA to carry out a deception. The mission: create a handwritten letter, dated July, 2001, from Habbush to Saddam saying that Atta trained in Iraq before the attacks and the Saddam was buying yellow cake for Niger with help from a “small team from the al Qaeda organization.”
The mission was carried out, the letter was created, popped up in Baghdad, and roiled the global newcycles in December, 2003 (conning even venerable journalists with Tom Brokaw). The mission is a statutory violation of the charter of CIA, and amendments added in 1991, prohibiting CIA from conduction disinformation campaigns on U.S. soil.
So, here we go again: the administration full attack mode, calling me names, George Tenet is claiming he doesn’t remember any such thing — just like he couldn’t remember “slam dunk” — and reporters are scratching their heads. Everything in the book is on the record. Many sources. And so, we watch and wait….
Pulitzer Prize-winner Ron Suskind is the author of The Way of the World. See http://www.ronsuskind.com"
Peace
Karl
Shouldn't fabricating lie to justify war be a war crime?
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adatesman
Trad climber
philadelphia, pa
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"Shouldn't fabricating lie to justify war be a war crime?"
Well, yes. Especially if its a war of aggression, as the current one (in reality two) are. My suggestion is to call your Senators and Congressmen and support Kucinich's articles of impeachment. I doubt they'll go anywhere, but no harm in trying.
Oh, and as far as I'm concerned you're preaching to the choir.
-a.
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drgonzo
Trad climber
east bay, CA
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WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 06, 2008
Earth to Reporters
Why isn't every major news organization bombarding McCain with questions about this?
I realize that late 2001 was a time period that most journalists would rather forget, but come on; this is potentially a very big deal. Within days of the first anthrax attacks, McCain goes on television and claims that Iraq may be responsible for the attacks and states that Iraq will be the "second phase" of our response to 9/11.
This screams out for follow up questions. What information, if any, did McCain have at the time linking the anthrax attacks to Iraq? Who gave him this information? What did he mean when he said Iraq would be the "second phase" or our response? Did he believe Iraq was somehow responsible for 9/11? Had he already decided that an invasion of Iraq was necessary? Had the Bush administration?
The answers to these questions would not only shed light on McCain's judgment on important issues, but could potentially be relevant to the criminal investigation into the anthrax attacks. As Glenn Greenwald has tirelessly pointed out, there were government officials who were feeding false information to journalists at around this time linking the anthrax attacks to Iraq. And in light of the direction the investigation has taken since then, it's at least possible that one or more of these officials were involved in the attacks themselves. Were these same officials feeding lies to McCain and his staff? Or the White House? How exactly did McCain come to believe that Iraq was responsible?
These are important questions, and I find it utterly incomprehensible that McCain isn't being asked them by every reporter. Are tire gauges and Paris Hilton really more pressing issues?
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MisterE
Social climber
My Inner Nut
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Most people in our culture just want to be safe, maybe that's why...Given the (peceived) possibilty of risk to one's family (from media and Govt) , isn't sensationalism a perfect fit to distraction from larger issues? Whew!
Thanks for keeping up on the reporting, Karl. I agree.
The articles of impeachment are in committee for "review" now, I believe, until way after the term-end?
Best, Erik
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Karl Baba
Trad climber
Yosemite, Ca
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Topic Author's Reply - Aug 6, 2008 - 11:57pm PT
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You have to wonder what it would take to get Bush impeached. Is sex the only immoral thing for a president to lie about?
All this at a time when we're having a war crimes trial for a guy because he had a job as a driver for Bin Laden. Seems like there's war crimes and war crimes.
Cooking up lies to kill tens of thousands of people and displace millions must just be "politics"
Peace
karl
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Russ Walling
Social climber
Out on the sand.... man.....
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I laugh robustly.....
{circle_jerk} commence peeing on Bush {/circle_jerk}
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Mighty Hiker
Social climber
Vancouver, B.C.
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bin Laden's driver, Salim Ahmed Hamdam, was convicted by a U.S. military tribunal today. Convicted of "providing material support to terrorism", but acquitted of the more serious charge of conspiracy.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/07/washington/07gitmo.html?hp
Given the processes used to obtain the 'evidence', and for the trial itself, the judgment seems likely to be appealed.
It is damning that after seven years, the administration has not managed to catch most of the key plotters of the terrorists attacks in 2001. Also that its "judicial" system for those it did catch is in tatters, and that few if any will ultimately be convicted, given the use of torture.
Hitler's driver, Erich Kempka, was not charged with anything after World War II, as the defence pointed out.
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coldstonesoup
Mountain climber
outside the taco stand
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What happened to "battlefield justice?" I read the other day that we brought some bitch back to this country for "shooting" at US military personnel. Granted, she's a Dr., but what the fu#k, even the educated can be fundies.
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MisterE
Social climber
My Inner Nut
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Russ, you are quite enigmatic, I must say.
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Mighty Hiker
Social climber
Vancouver, B.C.
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So, are you arguing that the end justifies the means? Or at least, the supposed end?
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HighDesertDJ
Trad climber
Arid-zona
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In before Skipt or bluering question some blinding obvious aspect of this issue.
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, Ca.
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Err..I don't really care. Did I get dragged into this somehow?
Iraq=bad....now?.....Iraq=good
Is that easy enough for ya?
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Russ Walling
Social climber
Out on the sand.... man.....
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uh oh.... LEB just opened the "Gore Won" door......
But seriously, how would I know if my lime tree is feeling distress from heat or lack of water? I seems moist most of the time, but is rather listless and never fruits to fruition. It is a dwarf in a pot. Does pot color have anything to do with vibrancy of the tree? Size? material?
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, Ca.
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This is great, re-read the thread title and re-evaulate where you stand in terms of Iraqi's.
You think they're happier now?
We want Saddam back, the U.S. sucks!!! yeah!!!!
idiots.
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Karl Baba
Trad climber
Yosemite, Ca
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Topic Author's Reply - Aug 7, 2008 - 02:20am PT
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"It is very possible that Bush takes the view that the country elected him to do a particular job (keep the homeland safe) and he is going about doing that job. "
So attacking a country that wasn't involved in 9-11 at the expense of a trillion dollars and thousands of American lives was to keep us safer? Didn't work that way.
Also, after the world trade attack in 1993 there wasn't another Islamic attack on American soil until Bush took office. What does that prove. They are killing us in Iraq instead!
Lying to start a bogus war that had nothing to do with 911 is a crime and those who justify it should consider what they are really saying.
Peace
Karl
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Standing Strong
Trad climber
sunlight on the surf
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i don't need any more evidence... please let up on the poli threads doodZ!!!
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, Ca.
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Yeah, the Iraqi's probably want to hang W, don't they?
Iraqi's prolly hate us now.
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John Moosie
climber
Beautiful California
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We aren't safer.
More of the world is pissed at us, which means less of the world will want to help. The war on terrorism is global. We need everyones help to stop it.
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, Ca.
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John, you mean help from the Dutch, Polish, French, Italians, Germans, the Phillipines, India, Belgium, Japan?
Who's help do we need? They look at us for guidance...look back 2 or 3 years and see how they've reacted.
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Karl Baba
Trad climber
Yosemite, Ca
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Topic Author's Reply - Aug 7, 2008 - 02:47am PT
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LEB, the Job Bush feels hired to do is deliver Iraq to the oil companies. That's why Cheney and the oil guys were pouring over the charts of Iraqi oil fields even before 9-11.
you might think all is fair in politics, that Bush could do anything, since after all, we elected him (another totally debatable issue)
It's reprehensible to think that a guy who was elected via lies and who got us into death, debt and war via lies should be justified by your arguments.
If he can have a false document forged to justify attacking a country that is no threat (that was also proved to be known in advance) who is to say he couldn't also know in advance of the 9-11 attacks. Which hurt this country more, knocking down the towers costing 3000 lives or attacking Iraq costing many thousands more plus a trillion dollars?
Bluering, many more Iraqis have died during this war than during any period under Saddam and over 2 million are homeless refugees. You think we did them a favor but the jury is still far from in on it.
Peace
Karl
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Mighty Hiker
Social climber
Vancouver, B.C.
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I second SS' motion - and a motion to adjourn is always in order.
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Karl Baba
Trad climber
Yosemite, Ca
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Topic Author's Reply - Aug 7, 2008 - 02:55am PT
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Here's some stat about how America's world status has fallen under our bogus war.
from
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2007/02/25/do2501.xml
"...But who hates Americans the most? You might assume that it's people in countries that the United States has recently attacked or threatened to attack. Americans themselves are clear about who their principal enemies are. Asked by Gallup to name the "greatest enemy" of the United States today, 26 per cent of those polled named Iran, 21 per cent named Iraq and 18 per cent named North Korea. Incidentally, that represents quite a success for George W. Bush's concept of the "Axis of Evil". Six years ago, only 8 per cent named Iran and only 2 per cent North Korea.
Are those feelings of antagonism reciprocated? Up to a point. According to a poll by Gallup's Centre for Muslim Studies, 52 per cent of Iranians have an unfavourable view of the United States. But that figure is down from 63 per cent in 2001. And it's significantly lower than the degree of antipathy towards the United States felt in Jordan, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. Two thirds of Jordanians and Pakistanis have a negative view of the United States and a staggering 79 per cent of Saudis. Sentiment has also turned hostile in Lebanon, where 59 per cent of people now have an unfavourable opinion of the United States, compared with just 41 per cent a year ago. No fewer than 84 per cent of Lebanese Shiites say they have a very unfavourable view of Uncle Sam.
These figures suggest a paradox in the Muslim world. It's not America's enemies who hate the United States most, it's people in countries that are supposed to be America's friends, if not allies.
The paradox doesn't end there. The Gallup poll (which surveyed 10,000 Muslims in 10 different countries) also revealed that the wealthier and better-educated Muslims are, the more likely they are to be politically radical. So if you ever believed that anti-Western sentiment was an expression of poverty and deprivation, think again. Even more perplexingly, Islamists are more supportive of democracy than Muslim moderates. Those who imagined that the Middle East could be stabilised with a mixture of economic and political reform could not have been more wrong. The richer these people get, the more they favour radical Islamism. And they see democracy as a way of putting the radicals into power.
The paradox of unfriendly allies is not confined to the Middle East. ...
Back in 1999, 83 per cent of British people surveyed by the State Department Office of Research said that they had a favourable opinion of the United States. But by 2006, according to the Pew Global Attitudes Project, that proportion had fallen to 56 per cent. British respondents to the Pew surveys now give higher favourability ratings to Germany (75 per cent) and Japan (69 per cent) than to the United States - a remarkable transformation in attitudes, given the notorious British tendency to look back both nostalgically and unforgivingly to the Second World War. It's also very striking that Britons recently polled by Pew regard the US presence in Iraq as a bigger threat to world peace than Iran or North Korea (a view which is shared by respondents in France, Spain, Russia, India, China and throughout the Middle East).
Nor is Britain the only disillusioned ally. Perhaps not surprisingly, two thirds of Americans believe that their country's foreign policy considers the interests of others. But this view is shared by only 38 per cent of Germans and 19 per cent of Canadians. More than two thirds of Germans surveyed in 2004 believed that American leaders wilfully lied about Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction prior to the previous year's invasion, while a remarkable 60 per cent expressed the view that America's true motive was "to control Middle Eastern oil". Nearly half (47 per cent) said it was "to dominate the world".
The truly poignant fact is that when Americans themselves are asked to rate foreign countries, they express the most favourable views of none other than Britain, Germany and Canada..."
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John Moosie
climber
Beautiful California
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"John, you mean help from the Dutch, Polish, French, Italians, Germans, the Phillipines, India, Belgium, Japan?
Who's help do we need?"
If this were a war of powerful nation against powerful nation, then your list would be helpful. But it isn't. This is a war against individual people who are pissed off and live all over the world. Last I checked there were 193 nations in the world.
How did Al Qaeda become so powerful in Afghanistan and how were they allowed to operate?
there is a number of reasons but one is that afghanistan was so destroyed after its war with Russia and needed money, so when Osama Bin Ladin offered them money to allow them to set up camps, they said yes.
We basically abandoned afghanistan after its war with Russia. That was unwise.
....
Bush comes across to the world like a bully. He doesn't want to negotiate. He doesn't seem to be able to work with other nations. If we bully the word, then people will look the other way and not help us. Just look at how that worked in our intelligence community before 9/11. There was inter community rivalries, some of which happened because each agency was egotistical and bullied other agencies. The FBI was notorious for bullying police departments. So much so that lots of police departments didn't want to share info with them. So they didn't. This led in part to a breakdown in intelligence. Intelligence is one aspect of how we will stop terrorist. Treating the rest of the world with respect is another.
We need those countries that terrorist would hide in to want to help us. Not be pissed at us because we bully them.
There is lots of history on this, such as in the thread with the book " Confessions of an economic hitman". Our actions have consequences and terrorism is bringing it home to us. We basically thought we were immune from attack. No country would attack us. 9/11 showed us we aren't. Small groups of terrorist can hurt us and hurt us bad.
This means we can't afford to bully the rest of the world, even small countries for that is where the terrorist will hide as they make their plans.
This isn't a war that can be won with a large army.
This is poorly written, but I am tired and probably not making sense.
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WoodySt
Trad climber
Riverside
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This may come as a surprise to some of you: I don't believe for a moment the the majority of Americans care much about what the rest of the world thinks about us.
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John Moosie
climber
Beautiful California
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Not surprised. But they should and if they don't, we will never stop terrorism.
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Matt
Trad climber
primordial soup
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started out as a good thread karl-
loisification strikes again.
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HighDesertDJ
Trad climber
Arid-zona
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"This may come as a surprise to some of you: I don't believe for a moment the the majority of Americans care much about what the rest of the world thinks about us. "
Yes well the majority of Americans never leave their country. It's easy to sit in your own house and not give a crap what other people think. It just sucks to be you when you realize that you need help from your neighbors. America only has so long to give the bird to the rest of the world. Sooner or later we aren't going to be the top dog, and when that time comes it would be to our advantage to not have shat in the punchbowl.
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dirtineye
Trad climber
the south
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Good grief Lois.
Bush and cheney LIED to the the American people, Gutted the constitution and KEPT IT SECRET for years, Expanded the presidents war powers IN SECRET beyond anything ever done before and kept that secret for years, thwarting the checks and balances built into our government BTW, and that's just for starts.
Bush DID feel a sense of power, he DID want to finish what his dad started, LOL, and he did feel justified to do anything it took, even if it broke the laws of our country in ways that were unimaginable even to some of his supporters, who were quickly demoted or shut out of the loop.
You really need to read The Dark Side, although I am sure you will just ignore the revelations in that book just like you do every thing else you don't like.
This Bush gang is criminal.
But wait, there's more! The new findings about the shennanegans at the justice department, to turn a non-political branch of gov into a republican bush bot hot bed is totally illegal.
Now, you say that people are fine with what Bush did, but really, they don;t even know because the information has not been well distributed, and people like you are ignoring what is coming out, but the tide may be turning.
THE very principle that formed this country have been shattered by Bush/Cheney. The crap they have pulled will not be dealt with sufficiently if at all by another republican president. It is time to clean house ans sweep the vermin out, and try to undo serious damage. Bandaids won't help.
For the sake of your country Lois, WAKE UP.
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nature
climber
Santa Fe, NM
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I agree with SS.
More lime tree discussion is in order.
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TGT
Social climber
So Cal
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You can substitute about a dozen ST names for Mr. Goodman and this reply is still applicable.
"The Paranoid Style
Howard...
Calm down Mr. Goodman, and employ logic rather than the same old, same old Bush/Cheney/oil conspiracy vocabulary.
The reasons for going into Iraq (did you intend casus belli? rather than your nonsensical cassi belli ("absences of war" ?) were spelled out by the Senate and House that passed the authorizations for invasion on October 11-12, 2002.
I suggest you reread them. Yes, the Congress, like the administration, included WMD, but also Saddam's subsidies for terrorists, the presence of variously named terrorists in Baghdad, violations on the U.N. and armistice accords, violation of oil for food, past histories of attacking four neighbors, genocide, attempts to assassinate a former President, and on and on. They are all there.
True, there turned out not to be stockpiles of WMD of the sort that was given up shortly after Saddam's capture by Libya, but the recent discovery of 1 million pounds of yellow-cake in storage in Iraq is significant. The administration erred in showcasing WMD, inasmuch as the Congress in more sober fashion had provided a far more sweeping case to remove Saddam (I suggest you review the moving and powerful speeches of Sens. Clinton, Kerry, Harry Reid (especially), etc. on the need to remove the Husseins).
No one spoke of Iraq as a Jefferson democracy; that is your caricature. But it is presently the only freely voting constitutional government in the region. Why would you not seek to support it rather than in puerile fashion ridicule it?
And Iraq is not, as in its prior 20-year history, attacking either its neighbors or exporting terror abroad. In a post-911 landscape that is why we removed Saddam, and why 75% of the American people supported the invasion — until the costs mounted at which time a majority gradually abandoned their prior solidarity for the effort.
Saddam's Iraq was practicing genocide for years, and killing hundreds of thousands of its own and others across its borders; the transition from that nightmare to the growing quiet we see today does not arrive naturally or without costs. But for the first time in two decades there is hope that Iraqis won't be slaughtered by their own government or be used to do the same to others.
Saddam was not to be boxed in, and that's why the official policy of regime change was passed in the Clinton administration (that bombed Saddam, and, as in the case of the Balkans, did so without either going to the Congress or the U.N.). Our allies either had abandoned, or were going to abandon, the 12-year-old, no-fly zone effort. The Oil-for-Food disaster had both led to starvation and to $50 billion in extortion on the part of the Husseins and corrupt U.N. officials. Given the oil price hikes caused by soaring world demand, we can imagine what Saddam would have done with $130-a-barrel oil — cf. his corrupt sweetheart oil deals with France and Russia as a model to come.
No one is plundering Iraq's oil fields. Such rhetoric is boilerplate, but intellectually misinformed: for the first time in history, Iraqi oil concessions are put out to bid, transparent, critiqued in a free Iraqi press, and the revenues under the auspices of a constitutional government. Would you prefer the old system of Saddam's to the present one?
I have criticized numerous times in print our energy policy, and especially the radical environmentalist agenda that assumes our critical elites, like the rest of us, will consume energy at present voracious levels (cf. the personal consumption habits of critics as diverse as Al Gore, John Edwards, and the Hollywood elite), while demanding that others in more fragile eco-systems from Siberia to the Persian Gulf increase production while we pontificate about "green" energy. In truth, the same emotional and juvenile rants about the war characterize the present debate over Americans evolving to alternate fuels-impossible without a bridge of a decade or so of more oil, coal, nuclear, natural gas, hydro, etc. to ensure that we don't go broke in the process of transformation.
In lieu of an argument, there is always the ad hominem tactic, as you employ like clockwork in your conclusion. Very sad, but very predictable.
VDH"
The ME is well on its way to having its first arab Democracy. An event that will prove transformative. Although,it breaks the pink little hearts that good and peace may be the ultimate outcome.
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Matt
Trad climber
primordial soup
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re:
The ME is well on its way to having its first arab Democracy. An event that will prove transformative. Although,it breaks the pink little hearts that good and peace may be the ultimate outcome.
what a f*#king tool you are!
regurgitating the prewar BS now?
can i get a-
"the surge has worked"
"we're winning the war!"
hey genius, we are not even fighting a war!
re:
"True, there turned out not to be stockpiles of WMD of the sort that was given up shortly after Saddam's capture by Libya, but the recent discovery of 1 million pounds of yellow-cake in storage in Iraq is significant"
HUH?
yeah, nice try, not so much...
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25546334/
try READING CAREFULLY rather than just posting a liar's rant that you take no responsibility for- what a complete joke you are- you just eat that crap up don'tchya?
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Matt
Trad climber
primordial soup
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lowest, put a cork in it
and the rest of you, for craps sake just ignore it and it will go away, scratch it and it's like poison oak or bug bites, never leaves you alone.
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WoodySt
Trad climber
Riverside
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Americans, on the whole, don't much care for what the world thinks because they've learned from hard lessons--particularly from Western Europe--not to trust them. Western Europe puts its self interest first, second and third and wants us to follow along, defer to them, protect them and then bail them out when things go bad.
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dirtineye
Trad climber
the south
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Lois, I strongly recommend that you not wait for the audio version. Just go buy the thing and read it the old fashioned way.
That goes for everyone else too.
It is not easy reading, but your jaw will be hitting the floor.
I have read about 100 pages so far, and I just cannot believe what was done.
Neither could many members of the Bush administration, who were kept out of the inner circle even when they had supervision over the people writing the quasi-legal underpinning for the actions taken.
It was too much even for the likes of Ashcroft, who was not considered worthy (read not loyal enough to Bush and not ideologically pure enough) to know the true nature and details of the dirtiest job ever pulled on America.
Read the book.
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Nefarius
Big Wall climber
Fresno, CA
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I'm just curious... Where's the proof to support the claim? Just because someone writes this in a book doesn't make it so. I think Shrub is scum too. I think this, as well as many other things are probably true and that he should not only be impeached, but prosecuted to the full extent... But, just asking, as there's been nothing that's come up to support the author's claims.
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HighDesertDJ
Trad climber
Arid-zona
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"Americans, on the whole, don't much care for what the world thinks because they've learned from hard lessons--particularly from Western Europe--not to trust them. Western Europe puts its self interest first, second and third and wants us to follow along, defer to them, protect them and then bail them out when things go bad. "
Woody the US pretty much acts in its own interest every step of the way and tells other countries to ride a pole if they won't play along. Which altruistic policies are you upset that western European countries have eschewed exactly? We had the opportunity to have them all by our side in nearly lock step after 9/11 and then Bush basically told them they were irrelevant and that we could do whatever we wanted without them.
What is hilarious is that you perfectly articulated our Iraq/Afghanistan policy. Act out of self-interest and then beg for help when things go bad.
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, Ca.
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Matt,
re:
"True, there turned out not to be stockpiles of WMD of the sort that was given up shortly after Saddam's capture by Libya, but the recent discovery of 1 million pounds of yellow-cake in storage in Iraq is significant"
HUH?
yeah, nice try, not so much...
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25546334/
try READING CAREFULLY rather than just posting a liar's rant that you take no responsibility for- what a complete joke you are- you just eat that crap up don'tchya?
550 metric tons is OVER 1 million pounds.
Thats a lot of yellow cake.
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WoodySt
Trad climber
Riverside
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We are the world's policeman just as the British were during the Nineteenth Century. And, much like a large city police department, we'll botch it now and then. We take constant criticism from one side or the other no matter what we do; and ,at times, the rebukes are justified. The world is an incredibly complex and dangerous place where decisions made lead off into non-liner territory; sometimes good, sometimes bad; think of four dimensional chess. For instance, Bush has been a mediocre President; however, the ultimate history of the Iraq enterprise is unknown; and anyone who claims to know is a liar or fool. Practically, anywhere one looks in the world, there's conflict over religion, hegemony, natural resources etc. It's the same old world except we live now cheek by jowl with terrible weapons and the very real potential for catastrophe. But back to my main point: we are the salient stabilizing power on this planet, and we must work with cantankerous allies and semi allies to maintain order. It's the usual mess; but, when things begin to go to hell, those "friends" run to us to solve the problem, usually a bit late in the game. They will also complain, grouse and whine as it's being done; but they are very, very glad we are there leading the way--remember Yugoslavia.
Many people on ST constantly hammer on Bush et al. Fair enough to a point, but being rabid is a waste of time because it becomes redundant and tedious. You fantasize about impeachment and prosecution here or the World Court. Ain't going to happen. Now you may well believe it should happen, but if you believe it may happen, your ignorance of how politics here and abroad works is astonishing. Keep going, though, if it makes you feel better.
Here's a short quote from Eric Hoffer's "Passionate State of Mind". I'm certain some of you are familiar with him vis a vis "The True Believer". "There is apparently a link between excess and unattainability." Some of you do practice excess to the nth degree.
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graniteclimber
Trad climber
Nowhere
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" We are the world's policeman just as the British were during the Nineteenth Century. And, much like a large city police department, we'll botch it now and then."
In a large police department there are so many people that some of them are going to be crooked or make mistakes.
What is happening now is more analogous to finding out that the Chief of Police and his whole team is crooked. The size of the department is irrelevant.
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Buckwheat
Big Wall climber
No. Cal
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Thanks TGT
Dont forget our military also found more than 500 bombs filled with mustard and nerve gas in iraq. Yes they were old but so what, WMD is WMD.
These lie accusations are only liberals desperate to get Bush.
No evidence behind the accusations.
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jstan
climber
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Opinion:
We need to cease responding directly to persons who are unaffected by those responses. Zero output can not justify nonzero input.
We can express data and opinions but they need to cease being a direct response - in such instances.
People are "active" elements and we should not assume those elements are fully known or for that matter those elements are even linear.
What we are doing and what Congress is doing has to be looked at from an operational point of view. If, before Jan. 1, we/Congress makes war crimes trials a distinct possibility we increase the chance of an attempted putsch. That can be either good or bad. If an attempt is made and is squashed then the actions going forward will be one thing. if the putsch is successful then the actions going forward will be another. It is a risk/benefit calculation and the choice made on the Democratic side is evident. They feel the chance of a change in regime is high enough to make risking civil war a poor choice. (Civil war is almost never a good choice.) Mr. Bush himself has adopted ex post facto law as legitimate so we might do the same. What we do after the election need not be proscribed or hampered in any way by actions coming now - I would suggest.
Our principal order of business is to "leverage" and further develop the unusual unanimity we are experiencing now, due simply to the patent illegalities committed in the recent past. The real issues facing us are not this simple. We need to develop further the ability to weigh carefully and fully each other's input, and reach decisions on the many serious issues before us. Each of us will have to get in the habit of giving up in order to get.
Arguments with the unresponsive do not further our country's interests.
Indeed they are a diversion.
IMO
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Karl Baba
Trad climber
Yosemite, Ca
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Topic Author's Reply - Aug 7, 2008 - 05:14pm PT
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If you conservatives had to actually pay the extra money the Iraq war cost right from increased taxation, you'd become doves in a moment.
Your share, many thousands of dollars, to help those poor iraqis elect their own islamic government instead of the old oppressive secular one that keep the radical islamist down by violence (now we do it for them)
Worth it? Pay up and then talk.
Old forgotton mustard gas and yellowcake they could never use is not justification to invade a country, particularly when we have more wmds than the rest of the world combined.
Peace
karl
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dirtineye
Trad climber
the south
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Author:
Nefarius
Big Wall climber
From: Fresno, CA
I'm just curious... Where's the proof to support the claim? Just because someone writes this in a book doesn't make it so. I think Shrub is scum too. I think this, as well as many other things are probably true and that he should not only be impeached, but prosecuted to the full extent... But, just asking, as there's been nothing that's come up to support the author's claims.""
Um, well, the SOURCES that gave up the info, the PAPER TRAIL left behind, The NUMEROUS comments from military lawyers who said upon reviewing the actions that they were illegal and would get us in trouble...
How can you say nothing has come up?
It's coming up all along and now more and more.
Read the book. Evaluate the sources yourself, the book is sourced and footnoted.
It's an investigative piece, not something made up.
And keep in mind, a LOT Of this stuff was kept secret for years, because the perpetrators feared what might happen when word got out. Well, it's getting out now.
I hope they all go to prison.
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jstan
climber
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Karl:
Your point is well taken. I'll try to be quantitative and business like if I may.
If anyone hopes to be a leader in fact for any length of time, as distinct from creating a perception you hope to sell as being leadership, you need to discover beforehand whether your position improves when both direct and indirect costs are compared to the expected gain. Doing other than that is a form of either fraud or self-delusion.
The present value of the Iraq war to date, including both assigned cost and that which is normally called "burdened", can be estimated and should be estimated. The taxpayers are owed this.
On the indirect side we have to estimate the value of the future international support that our acting unilaterally has cost us. To estimate this I would suggest we just go to the value of the international support NATO has received and scale that. That support would otherwise have been needed from the US. Assembling data from the defense budgets of those countries when appropriately adjusted would give us a number. Not perfect, but a starting point.
The benefit to be gained from putative "normalization" of relations in the M/E has, first, to come to grips with the fact the present status in the M/E is normal. So a preferred end state has to be defined and the probabilities of achieving that estimated. Presumably our government has carried out this analysis and we will get a chance to see it.
So we are left to deal only with our gain in oil resources. We would take that to be half the present value of the oil resources in Iraq as adjusted for future increases in value due to scarcity of that commodity. If we were willing to seek a permanent solution to the presence of the population in Iraq we might allocate all of Iraq's resources as our gain. However achieving that alternative would, itself, entail costs that would have to be considered.
This last decision had to have been considered in detail before our invasion so some of that data can, in all probability, be recovered from government files.
Leadership is a complex issue ill-suited for encapsulation in sound bytes. Governments not subject to self-delusion must necessarily perform cost/benefit calculations for all probable scenarios - beforehand. Failing to do so generally causes general failure of a government to perform even its most basic functions.
While this may appear burdensome this sort of contingency work is a normal part of planning and is routinely done long beforehand.
Before you invade someone else's country this is the homework that has to be done.
It is critically important that a country's chief executive understand the importance of homework.
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Splater
climber
Grey Matter
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Blue, you claimed the yellowcake was a recent discovery.
The article you linked to goes on to say:
Israeli warplanes bombed a reactor project at the site in 1981. Later, U.N. inspectors documented and safeguarded the yellowcake, which had been stored in aging drums and containers since before the 1991 Gulf War. There was no evidence of any yellowcake dating from after 1991, the official said.
U.S. and Iraqi forces have guarded the 23,000-acre site — surrounded by huge sand berms — following a wave of looting after Saddam's fall that included villagers toting away yellowcake storage barrels for use as drinking water cisterns.
Yellowcake is obtained by using various solutions to leach out uranium from raw ore and can have a corn meal-like color and consistency. It poses no severe risk if stored and sealed properly. But exposure carries well-documented health concerns associated with heavy metals such as damage to internal organs, experts say.
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Karl Baba
Trad climber
Yosemite, Ca
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Topic Author's Reply - Aug 7, 2008 - 06:57pm PT
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Jstan
Your point is well taken that congress may very well be afraid that really investigating Bush and Cheney with any seriousness might result in them sinking democracy for good.
Would the US population roll over an take it if they cancelled the elections (or something)
Hard to say. We've shown ourselves to be country of wimps who give up our freedom at the least sign of danger, and you can bet that the whole operation would happen under the cover of an Iran war or a false flag attack.
Dangerous times.
Peace
karl
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Matt
Trad climber
primordial soup
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splater-
his post was unclear.
he was actually quoting me, so that was my link.
(and yes, you got the point that he missed)
take a look at the link in my other post
(here)
http://www.mahablog.com/oldsite/id13.html
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John Moosie
climber
Beautiful California
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blah blah blah... so basically you and your friends lied about the reasons for going to war. blah blah blah
And basically half of America does not care. blah blah blah.
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jstan
climber
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Self-delusion.
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Matt
Trad climber
primordial soup
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Randy-
(and others unfamiliar with current developments)
Here is the answer to your question:
http://www.ronsuskind.com/about/
Ron Suskind just released a new book.
The Bush administration is flatly accused of ordering the CIA to produce a blatant fabrication- a forged memo- attempting to link AQ, Iraq, and WMDs, all neatly tied together.
The CIA is apparently forbidden by statute for doing what they are accused of, and (apparently) according to the book, the order came in writing, direct from the WH, on stationary no less, and was seen my many people (who can all be sworn in for Congressional testimony under threat of perjury).
Criminal acts by the WH.
Impeachable acts.
If true, the above is not debatable.
Suskind is a well respected NY/DC journalist.
("the Wall Street Journal's senior national affairs writer until 2000")
Suskind is not some left wing 9/11 conspiracy theorist or a MoveOn.org director.
He claims to have high level CIA officers on the record, ON TAPE, making these claims and describing their own participation at length.
Ron Suskind is on all the news shows the last day+ (on Hardball right now)
Sh#t will hit the fan... maybe.
Other posts in this thread imply that these guys were only willing to finally say all of this out loud because they feel they are no longer personally at risk, and because they want the word to get out so it can be investigated before everyone gets pardoned and goes home.
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Karl Baba
Trad climber
Yosemite, Ca
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Topic Author's Reply - Aug 7, 2008 - 07:15pm PT
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Buckwheat wrote
"Dont forget our military also found more than 500 bombs filled with mustard and nerve gas in iraq. Yes they were old but so what, WMD is WMD.
These lie accusations are only liberals desperate to get Bush.
No evidence behind the accusations."
You are misrepresenting what was found and how much of threat is was. There's plenty of evidence they lied and certainly enough evidence to get some sworn testimony to see if your president is a liar or just made a stupid mistake costing trillions of dollars and thousands of lies.
From
http://mediamatters.org/items/200606280006
"...In his June 28 nationally syndicated column, Media Research Center president L. Brent Bozell III claimed that "[t]he hardened historical narrative" on weapons of mass destruction in Iraq "needs to be amended" because of the June 21 assertion by Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA) and House Intelligence Committee chairman Peter Hoekstra (R-MI) that a recently declassified report found there were WMDs in Iraq prior to the U.S.-led invasion. According to Bozell: "There were WMDs in Iraq that could have been used against our troops or acquired by terrorists." Bozell also faulted the "media" for not "correct[ing] the record," writing: "[T]he reception of this declassified memo shows we do not have an honest, nonpartisan news media."
Bozell, however, ignored conclusive declarations by intelligence officials that the degraded chemical munitions hyped by Santorum and Hoekstra were not, in fact, in the category of "weapons of mass destruction" that the United States was looking for at the time of the invasion in March 2003. Bozell also ignored the Iraq Survey Group's (ISG) September 2004 final report (known as the Duelfer report, for former ISG head Charles Duelfer), which noted that degraded chemical munitions had already been found in Iraq and that they were not proof of a chemical weapons stockpile or of a renewed Iraqi chemical weapons program. Indeed, Duelfer stated that the munitions referred to by Santorum and Hoekstra do not qualify as WMDs, though they may still pose a local hazard. David Kay, also a former ISG head, claimed that the degraded chemicals in the weapons were "less toxic than most things that Americans have under their kitchen sink at this point."..."
Lois, I won't bother to respond to your silly posts as you offer nothing but idle speculation regarding what happened, no evidence. So what if Bush did what he wanted in Iraq? So did Hitler, Milosovic, Pol Pot and the rest of the war criminals. Being president (barely) is NO justification for what happened.
Peace
karl
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Nefarius
Big Wall climber
Fresno, CA
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Dirt said -
"Um, well, the SOURCES that gave up the info, the PAPER TRAIL left behind, The NUMEROUS comments from military lawyers who said upon reviewing the actions that they were illegal and would get us in trouble...
How can you say nothing has come up?
It's coming up all along and now more and more.
Read the book. Evaluate the sources yourself, the book is sourced and footnoted.
It's an investigative piece, not something made up.
And keep in mind, a LOT Of this stuff was kept secret for years, because the perpetrators feared what might happen when word got out. Well, it's getting out now. "
Still all speculative and heresy, Dirt. Just as is pointed out about so many other things posted here and elsewhere, each day. Sources don't amount to much, really. The "source" is a wanted Iraqi. The paper trail really comes down to just the letter, as nothing was mentioned about supporting documents - ie: emails/letters from WH folks saying to do this, etc... Nothing is showing the document as forged - no analysts/forensic specialists having viewed the letter saying it's a fake...
And, of course, if this were to be proven true, it's illegal. As I said before, I hope Bush burns. But this isn't going to do it. There's simply no tangible evidence. It comes down to his word vs. theirs. I don't trust anything shrub or his peeps say, but there is a process, ya know...
I'll pick up the book and read it tho, regardless.
Edited to make it easier to read...
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Matt
Trad climber
primordial soup
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randy-
please look up the page to my post, directed at you. the claims being made are not only in relation to the iraqi who was the jack of diamonds...
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Nefarius
Big Wall climber
Fresno, CA
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I'll have a look, Matt. Your post wasn't there when I started mine, so didn't see before I hit "submit"...
Very interesting developments, indeed!!! Nice! Maybe we can have a religious party of sorts now, complete with Burning Bush. :)
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Matt
Trad climber
primordial soup
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august recess
(as if you haven't been following the farce of the 2 dozen Rs trying to debate off shore drilling all by themselves, with the lights in the USHoR chamber turned off...
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jstan
climber
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"Then why isn't Pelosi starting impeachment proceedings? "
C'mon Jeff:
Need to do better.
1. Impeachment is a moot issue simply because it cannot be completed in time to take effect.
2. As a moot issue its importance falls far below that of all the other issues now threatening America.
We don't have that kind of time to waste.
(Locker space)
And one other thing I learned the very first day I was in management.
You pick fights only with people at your level.
A person above your level will go to the person above you and will have you squashed.
A person below your level, just be resisting, will make you look like a fool.
We are trying to identify someone who can stand toe to toe with Premier Hsu who has something north of a billion Chinese behind him. And now, thanks to our lack of foresight, also a deepening relationship with Russia and all its resources.
Wake the hell up America. Zip up your pants and use the other thinking organ located north of your belt buckle.
A nation of idiots!
Damn. I can't believe it.
That it comes to this.
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WoodySt
Trad climber
Riverside
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It's also moot because both parties were aware of what went on; both parties are complicit. All the surface yelling, accusations etc, were for popular consumption. Think pop wrestling. The Senate Intelligence Committee was/is well aware of things we aren't. The security stakes are too high for investigations. If the Dems take over the Presidency, Obama can ill afford to alienate Congress and a large proportion of the public. Further, he knows, once in the hot seat, he may well have to operate in ways not approved by the more delicate.
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dirtineye
Trad climber
the south
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"Still all speculative and heresy, Dirt. Just as is pointed out about so many other things posted here and elsewhere, each day. Sources don't amount to much, really. The "source" is a wanted Iraqi. The paper trail really comes down to just the letter, as nothing was mentioned about supporting documents - ie: emails/letters from WH folks saying to do this, etc... Nothing is showing the document as forged - no analysts/forensic specialists having viewed the letter saying it's a fake... "
that's not what I'm talking about.
Nothing in The Dark Side is speculative.
One of the paper trails I am talking about exists and was used to ruin the career of a woman ( lawyer in government service) who said the prosecution of john walker lindh was tainted when she was asked to review the case. Her emails were made public in newsweek, and then the bush admin did all sorts of things to ruin her life.
This is not speculation at all. It is a matter of fact. And it is only ONE SMALL PART.
You need to stop talking until you know something.
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WBraun
climber
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And you know something ......?????????
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dirtineye
Trad climber
the south
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Yes Werner, I know something.
You'd know something too if you read the damned book.
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WBraun
climber
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That sounds scary ....
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dirtineye
Trad climber
the south
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It is a fvcking scary book.
I can't read too much at one sitting because I have to recover every so often from the shock.
This administration has committed serious crimes.
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couchmaster
climber
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Where are the recriminations for the illegal war in El Salvador where we blasted shitloads of people off of the planet? Didn't happen, won't happen. In fact, because it was successful, we all benefited. All of us. So you all shut up about it.
Where were the recriminations for the illegal war in Nigaragua where we blasted shitloads of people off of the planet? Didn't happen, won't happen. In fact, because it was successful, we all benefited. All of us. So you all just shut up about it as well ?
The stakes are even higher that we pull this one off successfully. World class big on many levels. See the second part of my paragraphs above.
Karl, still appreciate the info. This heavy, heavy sh#t make the bolting issues seem petty in comparison, no?
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MisterE
Social climber
My Inner Nut
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What Bill said! Those in power want to stay there and they have the resources and tactics to make it so. History proves that again and again. A fundamental change is required, and honestly? I don't think your average resident of the USA is up for the task...
Jesus people - you really believe you can change folks opinion on a climbing forum?
Good luck with that
Will the political diatribes end and we all go back to climbing on Jan 20?
Hmmm...winter is not so good for the climbing scene, so my guess is:
NO!
Erik
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Mighty Hiker
Social climber
Vancouver, B.C.
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Woody has a good point - both parties, certainly many of the leading figures in both parties, are complicit in what has happened. Both in terms of Iraq, the war on terror, the failure to realistically address economic and social issues, and most importantly the failure to generate a debate on the future of the U.S.A.
As many Democrats did not object at the time to things that occurred or were planned, when they could and should have, they are at least tacitly culpable. Right from the start, when there was a failure to challenge the "election" of Bush.
In Watergate, Iran-Contra, and even "Monicagate", it was pretty clear who the bad guys were. Thus easy for people to take sides.
The challenges now for the Democrats:
 Ensure the current administration is kept on a tight leash for the next six months, as their incompetence and taste for adventurism seems limitless.
Run a competent and focused election campaign, focussing on issues. Pour resources into countering Republican dirty tricks, of which there will be lots.
Generate an informed public debate on issues that matter to the future of your country.
Be honest with the country about the mess that it's in, and the work, sacrifices and changes that will be needed to address the problems.
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Mighty Hiker
Social climber
Vancouver, B.C.
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Actually, I take it back. Maybe they should impeach Cheney. If there's to be any hope, someone has to be held accountable. He clearly thinks he's above the law, and the constitution, and you've got to start somewhere.
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Karl Baba
Trad climber
Yosemite, Ca
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Topic Author's Reply - Aug 8, 2008 - 01:23am PT
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CIA Agent Allegedly Involved In Forged Iraq Letter Ran Previous Operation To Create Pretext For War
In Ron Suskind's interview on NPR today (and also in his new book), he names CIA operative John Maguire as one of the people allegedly involved in the Iraq letter forging. This is from Suskind's NPR appearance:
SUSKIND: In the fall [of 2003]...the White House, they decide that a letter should be fabricated, dated July 2001, a handwritten letter from [Iraqi intelligence chief] Habbush to Saddam Hussein. And the letter should say that in fact Mohammed Atta, the 9/11 hijacker, trained in Iraq prior to 9/11, showing a connection between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda, and the letter should say Iraq was buying yellowcake uranium from Niger with the help of al-Qaeda...
NPR: Are you saying the White House ordered the CIA to fabricate evidence, even after the invasion of Iraq, fabricate evidence linking Iraq to 9/11, in effect.
SUSKIND: Absolutely. George Tenet comes back from a White House briefing...folks at CIA remember seeing the creamy White House stationery. Tenet says, we want a letter fabricated, and we want this letter to essentially emerge, this handwritten letter from Habbush, to Saddam, which is essentially a checking of the box on all the controversies on WMD that are unfolding that the United States may have been taken to war under false pretenses...
NPR: Are you saying George Tenet told you, I was given this order to lie, and I fulfilled that?
SUSKIND: There are off the record sources in the book, but there are on the record sources who are right in the thick of this operation: Rob Richer, the head of the Near East Division, just a notch or two below Tenet. Richer turns to Tenet, as [Richer] remembers it, and says, "Listen, Marine"—Richer's a former Marine—"you're not going to like this, but here goes." Richer then takes it, he turns to John Maguire, who runs Iraq for the CIA, another senior manager. And Richer talks to Maguire, old intelligence hands, and they say, goodness gracious, all right, well, an order's an order. And it goes down the chain.
This is the description, in Hubris by Michael Isikoff and David Corn, of part of a pre-war covert CIA plan named Anabasis and run by John Maguire. It had been authorized by George Bush in February, 2002:
Who needed evidence of weapons of mass destruction? John Maguire, the deputy chief of the CIA's Iraq Operations Group, and the agency officers working the Anabasis project had their own plan for starting the war, and it had nothing to do with the WMD debate. They also had a small army of Iraqi commandoes—led by a former Iraqi war hero—willing to put the plan into action...
The plan was a core element of the original Anabasis program. These were the CIA-backed commandoes who would seize control of an Iraqi case at Nukhaib, near the Saudi border. Then they would go on the radio, announce a coup was underway, call on military units within Iraq to join them, and request that other nations support their bid to topple Saddam. Saddam, the thinking went, would be compelled to send troops to regain the base. But that would require him to violate the no-fly zone. The United States and Britain would then have a reason to attack Saddam's forces, and the war would be on. The Bush administration, Maguire later said, "was too wedded" to the WMD argument for war. "The idea was to create an incident in which Saddam lashes out." If all went as planned, "you'd have a premise for war: we've been invited in."
However, the administration continued to rely on the WMD justification, and this plan was never put into effect.
Amusingly, Anabasis was almost a xerox of Saddam Hussein's scheme for his invasion of Kuwait; while no one on earth remembers this now, Iraq justified their attack in the same way. This is from the New York Times on August 3, 1990:
Iraq said it struck to support a coup by young Kuwaiti revolutionaries against the Sabah family, whom it denounced as ''traitors and agents of Zionist and foreign schemes.''
and
"Suskind's Sources Deny Book's Forgery Charge; Suskind Has Sources On Tape?
Last night Countdown read statements from Ron Suskind's two main named sources for the charge in his new book that the White House ordered the CIA to forge a letter from Iraq's intelligence chief to Saddam Hussein. Rob Richer, the former head of the CIA's Near East Division, spoke for both himself and John Maguire:
“I never received direction from George Tenet or anyone else in my chain of command to fabricate a document from Habbush as outlined in Mr. Suskind‘s book.
Further, today, I talked with John Maguire, who has given me the permission to state the following on his behalf, ‘I never receive any instruction from then Chief/NE Rob Richer or any other officer in my chain of command instructing me to fabricate such a letter. Further, I have no knowledge to the origins of the letter and as to how it circulated in Iraq.”
And here's some of Suskind's response:
OLBERMANN: Why do you believe they‘re backtracking now?...
SUSKIND: You know, I‘m sympathetic in a way to all these guys. They‘re under acute pressure. They‘re individuals. They‘ve got to feed their families. They really survive off the government, both of them, they‘re contractors and whatnot...
[T]hey may still stand up—and Maguire, I think, will still stand up in daylight...
You know, these guys, though, are feeling now great pressure. And, you know, what you realize in this process is that there is a limit to what a journalist can do even with taped interviews, people talking for hours at a time, when they can be brought into a moment of crisis by the government saying, “You‘ll never work again, you‘ll never earn a living.” That‘s the kind of thing that mostly happens in terms of what congressional hearings do testimony under subpoena with threat of perjury.
OLBERMANN: Well—and that‘s what we need. But in the interview, I presume the Maguire and Richer interviews are on tape, is that right?
SUSKIND: You bet, yes. And there‘s a lot of them. They‘re very detailed.
The obvious questions now are whether Suskind will release any of his interview tapes, and whether there will be any congressional investigation with witnesses testifying under oath."
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Karl Baba
Trad climber
Yosemite, Ca
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Topic Author's Reply - Aug 8, 2008 - 01:31am PT
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A lot of government has been corrupted by power and money. It's gone too far and we need to clean it up. Raising awareness in whatever communities we run in, and that includes online, is a step to generating the concern to seek the truth.
I'd be fine impeaching Bush, Cheney and all the Democrats complicit in crimes. SInce so many folks have broken laws, basically committing treason on the country and constitution, I think a truth and reconciliation commission that offered immunity to all but the worst crooks could go a long way to separating conspiracy from conspiracy theory. We have to get back our civil rights and democracy and quit killing and bombing innocent people.
Peace
Kalr
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WoodySt
Trad climber
Riverside
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Ah, Karl, who's going to do the impeaching of all the Reps and Dems etc.etc.etc. ? Maybe you didn't think it through.
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graniteclimber
Trad climber
Nowhere
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When a Democratic President lies about a blow job, the Republicans consider impeaching him to be the most important thing in the world and took precedence over everything else. And they do impeach him.
But when a Republican President commits war crimes and sets about systematically violating every part the Constitution, Congress can't be bothered. The Republicans may be criminals, but the Democrats are completely spineless.
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Matt
Trad climber
primordial soup
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and then there was nixon, who was forced to resign over his criminal actions, and without being impeached.
like it or not, both the ability of the republicans to impeach clinton over a BJ and the inability of the democrats to effectively oppose the war (or expose the multitude of shenanigans these as#@&%es have been perpetrating for 7-1/2 years) have as much to do with the way that the mainstream media chooses to frame the story as any other single factor.
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Bill
climber
San Francisco
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"You have to wonder what it would take to get Bush impeached."
Karl, Bush could eat a live baby on nationwide TV, and the mainstream media and Lois and Russ and Fatty would say the little terrorist deserved it. Welcome to Fascism 2.0.
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HighDesertDJ
Trad climber
Arid-zona
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The reality is that the American public isn't that in to impeachment. Bill Clinton got impeached and his approval rating shot up to 80%. Everyone remembers this and with 2 years left on his term there was no way that a Democratic Congress was going to risk their newly won majority with something like that, especially at a time of war. Impeaching the President with troops under fire would have been instant doom, not to mention the simple fact that the Dems don't have a big enough majority to pass legislation, much less articles of impeachment.
Impeachment is a waste of energy to even talk about. The important things are to uncover the truth about what has been happening and talk about it in a reasonable and factual manner. The stuff that has happened is egregious enough not to need shrieking hyperbole to be dramatic. It's pretty amazing already.
"It's also moot because both parties were aware of what went on; both parties are complicit. All the surface yelling, accusations etc, were for popular consumption. Think pop wrestling. The Senate Intelligence Committee was/is well aware of things we aren't. The security stakes are too high for investigations. If the Dems take over the Presidency, Obama can ill afford to alienate Congress and a large proportion of the public. Further, he knows, once in the hot seat, he may well have to operate in ways not approved by the more delicate. "
Probably the only sensible thing Woody has posted in weeks.
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Karl Baba
Trad climber
Yosemite, Ca
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Topic Author's Reply - Aug 8, 2008 - 04:57am PT
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"Impeachment is a waste of energy to even talk about. The important things are to uncover the truth about what has been happening and talk about it in a reasonable and factual manner. The stuff that has happened is egregious enough not to need shrieking hyperbole to be dramatic. It's pretty amazing already. "
That's my problem, the folks we elect to protect the constitution won't even investigate to determine what happened and they have allowed administration figures to ignore subpoenas and the justice department to ignore crimes as they please.
Just investigate and get the truth. Immunize the lower criminals and send the ringleaders away, from whatever party. Go ahead and wait until Bush is out of office, that way he won't be pushed into a coup. But we cannot let this kind of corruption go unamputated from our system and government or it will be a simple following of precedent that would allow another president, GOP or DEM to take government and turn us into a fascist state.
Peace
karl
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Doug Buchanan
Mountain climber
Fairbanks Alaska
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After you exhaust yourselves with your favorite issues, all or nearly all of you and those like you, as did I before I started asking questions related to this sentence, will say and do the same thing with your next favorite issues, learning nothing until you end up as dumb as the government liars.
There are a few people on the planet at any one time, including you if you wish, who start asking the questions of the commonalities of their reactions to the commonalities of the issues. Might you want to read that again?
For my amusement in irritating the minds of those who have not yet done so, it is verifiable beyond every question any human can ask, that, as a generality excepting only contrivances, government always lies about everything, by design.
It has no other ability. Government is based on the contradiction of using force rather than reasoning, and then must perpetually add contradictions on top of contradictions in the ultimately futile attempt to sustain the original controlling contradiction.
The mind of the government US Army kill-the-other-guy person is functioning with the same controlling contradiction as the government Park Service save-the-wilderness person.
The Army guy incessantly kills innocent civilians as "collateral damage", and the Park Service guy incessantly issues citations to people who damaged no persons or Park resources. Both are contradictions that damage people who damaged no one. And the process is never corrected, by design.
Their commonality is that they are advancing institutional power above reasoning, by design of power and the power-damaged mind.
Now, demonstrate your advancing knowledge by mentioning that you are therefore laughing robustly at the human show, as more are logically doing as they figure out the show.
The next war and Park Service citation will be based on lies, by design, in the budge-excuse name of saving the wilderness or whatever rhetorical illusions fool fools, much to the amusement of the observers.
As to my benevolent absence from SuperTopo for a few days, a friend of mine asked me to cut a tree down for her. One tree. Sure, I said. Well, trees are smaller in Fairbanks, and even precision falling between houses and power lines does not take much time. Then I saw the tree, a huge old birch with 4 trunks emerging from one. And where it was, a small house lot in old Fairbanks. Heavy roof-punching green birch above house and shed roofs, including the neighbors. Day 4 part time tomorrow up in the tree again with ropes lowering each branch down. This is seriously delaying spreading the dredge tailings for the larger AlaskanAlpineClub HQ parking area. It's a conspiracy.
Some of you have not yet sent your old ice axe with your name and date on it, to the new AlaskanAlpineClub museum. Get one from eBay if you must, and laugh robustly at the show.
Doug
AlaskanAlpineClub.org
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dirtineye
Trad climber
the south
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Yeah Impeachment is not nearly enough.
Besides, the whole gang is guilty. In The Dark Side, Bush comes off looking a bit like a dupe of Cheney and the others. The legal advice and support (for the actions taken) that Cheney and Bush got from their lackeys was awful.
Criminal prosecution is what is called for.
They willfully and knowingly broke the law.
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WoodySt
Trad climber
Riverside
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HD, I'm crushed. Everything I say is sensible, rational and profound.
Nixon, due to his paranoia, kept digging until Congress and the public couldn't stand it anymore. He would have been impeached if he hadn't resigned.
Clinton, in his own way, did the same with his public denials and finally perjury. His impeachment was for perjury not a bj.
Both Nixon and Clinton could have avoided most of their pain if they hadn't behaved stupidly.
Keep in mind that there is tit for tat here between the parties. With Nixon, only the left radicals wanted to destroy him; and he walked right into their grasp with his attempted cover-up. Only the radical right wanted to destroy Clinton, and he fumbled his way into the net. A factor in Clinton's impeachment was pay back for Nixon.
The bulk of Congress members want nothing to do with the tumult, resentment and fury that goes along with the process of impeachment. It roils and pisses off the public, and brings the government to a stop.
Finally, as I ask before, who is going to lead they way when many leaders in both parties have been complicit in those activities some of you feel impeachment is justified?
Nothing will happen, and it doesn't bother me in the least. Let me list some Presidents that could have been impeached for illegal or clearly unconstitutional acts: Jackson, Polk, Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, Wilson, FDR, Kennedy, L.Johnson. If I had the time to review in detail, I could probably bring up a few more.
If you're unaware of why the above could have been impeached, look it up.
Being President puts the person holding the office in a position that very often requires "questionable" acts. This is usually accepted by the public and the governmental establishment. Sometimes these acts are nefarious and self-serving such as the President using the IRS and Hoover's FBI(wiretaps) against political opponents. Other times national security is the factor.
It's always existed and will always exist.
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Nefarius
Big Wall climber
Fresno, CA
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"Impeachment is a waste of energy to even talk about. The important things are to uncover the truth about what has been happening and talk about it in a reasonable and factual manner. The stuff that has happened is egregious enough not to need shrieking hyperbole to be dramatic. It's pretty amazing already."
Seriously, it's this kind of thinking here, that allows someone like Bush to continue to do as he pleases, without regard for the job he signed up for or the people he signed up to serve and their personal liberties, without any kind of punishment, at all.
Sad, really. If there's been any president that should have been impeached, it's Bush - a dozen fold. Impeachment should be followed up with prosecution for the lies, theft (in so many ways) and total disregard with which he ran this country into the ground and sh#t on everything it stands for, all in 8 short years.
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couchmaster
climber
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If ever hearings were called for in any case ever, it would seem this instance would fit that bill. Time to get our congressmen notification that this is an issue with us, let them all know via email, it can be done faster than any post here, and then lets step back and all laugh robustly at the show....together.
Doug, what is the address I'm sending my axe too? I have my old one that was new in the 50's - probably worth $300 bucks, I'm sending over before I pass and my kids just toss it in a dumpster.
Laugh robustly at that show:-)
BTW, my email address is the same except @Gmail.com now, not @Mail.com.
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WoodySt
Trad climber
Riverside
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Couchmaster,
Be sure your congressman isn't on the potential list to be impeached. You guys are hilarious.
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Nefarius
Big Wall climber
Fresno, CA
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None of it really matters, one way or the other, fattrad, when the majority sit on the sidelines, complacent and don't demand anything be done or exercise their rights, one way or the other. That was my point. In light of that, good or bad, people in charge will continue to do as they please, as the checks and balances put in place aren't being used.
edit: The internment camps are a poor example for what we're talking about, to begin with... The internment camps were a temporary "solution", but a permanent scar on American history. The evidence that this is a scar on our history can be seen in how we do our best to see that history pushes them under the carpet. The things Bush is doing, are being passed into laws and needling away the rights of all Americans, permanently, and making leaps and strides towards removing the checks and balances, or at least removing their significance and power, while placing the Executive Branch in ultimate power.
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Karl Baba
Trad climber
Yosemite, Ca
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Topic Author's Reply - Aug 8, 2008 - 02:10pm PT
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Woody, you somehow forgot Reagan's Iran-contra crimes.
Funny how most of America looks at Nixon as a super bad president when his crimes were far less than Bush's and he actually did some good things as well.
Lois, I don't need to justify my life to you, but i would argue that fighting to raise awareness of administration crimes IS a good thing. YOu minimize what happened but it is a cancer inside this country. Bombing and killing many thousands of people who weren't a threat to us (and we knew it) , torture as a official policy and the elimination of basic civil rights. It has to stop.
Please, please, please, just stop and ask yourself. If America was headed on the road to authoritarian fascism, how far along the road would we go before you raised a red flag?
Do you really think the people in pre-war German were many times more evil and stupid than we are now?
If people act like sheep, they will be sheered like sheep.
You don't fight for democracy by bombing other countries. You fight for it by not letting it get stolen from us at home.
peace
karl
TGT, there very well might be guilty democrats in this but an important distinction should be made. If Bush ordered the CIA to fake intelligence and documents, then congress and other democrats were mislead by false statements and cooked evidence. That just makes the forgeries and lies more serious crimes.
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Nefarius
Big Wall climber
Fresno, CA
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well said, Karl. Keepin' it real, as always... I especially like this line:
"You don't fight for democracy by bombing other countries. You fight for it by not letting it get stolen from us at home."
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John Moosie
climber
Beautiful California
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Lying or misled. Remember, the republicans controlled what info was released. This does not mean that I think the dems are innocent.
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TGT
Social climber
So Cal
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Everyone seems to be ignoring that the hoopla over WMDs started back in 98 in the Clinton Administration, and that Clinton signed a directive that official poicy was regime change.
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John Moosie
climber
Beautiful California
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We didn't need to go to war to have regime change. We already had him boxed.
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happiegrrrl
Trad climber
New York, NY
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" I'd love to hear of a person on ST that has had their civil rights violated by the Bush admin."
....There's a whole group of people who got jailed in a toxic storage space during the GOP convention who are proof, for starters, of persons who had their civil rights violated by the Bush admin. They may not be ST'ers, but they are real people. I likely would have been one of them had I not ditched NYC to go climbing that weekend.
But, during the time leading up to it, I was not allowed freedom to travel. Roads were closed and we were not allowed to go on them. Simply getting home was an adventure in the absurd for many a New Yorker.
I have a friend who is Muslim, and he began receiving strange phone calls a few months after 9/11, from a person acting familiar, and speaking in a heavily accented voice. The person seemed to be trying to somehow get an "in" with my friend, Salim. What a shock it was to him, a Canadian-American born and raised here, to find out that this was widespread amongst Muslims in New York. It was government agents, trying to cold-call Muslims and pull the "long lost cousin" scam in an attempt to infiltrate social circles. In other words, spying.
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dirtineye
Trad climber
the south
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Lying and cover up is right.
You have to remember, LOTS of big time republicans were kept in the dark in this crap too, and they were furious and astounded when they found out what had been done.
To name a few you'll recognize:
Colin Powell
John Ashcroft
Main scumbags in this are Addington, Yoo, Gonzales, Coffer Black, Cheney himself, and a few others.
They basically broke every law we have against torture-- Laws and policies we wrote as long ago as the 1700's ans as recently as the 80's and 90's.
BTW, water boarding has been recognized as torture by the US since 1901. Sleep deprivation has been recognized as torture by the US nearly forever, as in the '30's a US report said that for 1500 years sleep deprivation has been know to be torture.
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Doug Buchanan
Mountain climber
Fairbanks Alaska
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Yoooo the Master of the Couch....
Alaskan Alpine Club
1957 Weston Drive
Fairbanks Alaska 99709
And if you show up in Alaska to go climbing, your ice axe in the club museum will be available to you.
Fattrad.....
An "asymmetrical war" is a rhetorical illusion that diverts one's considerations from the controlling contradiction of war. What accounts for the asymmetry between high tech air force with mini-cannons and laser guided bombs verses AK 47's and person-carried bombs, or cluster bombs versus individually placed land mines, or remote control predator jets with real time video guided rockets versus cheap cars with desperate suicide drivers, etceteras?
If, for a war, you had your choice between the entire US military with all of its think-tank analysts, and one thinking person, which would you choose? Why was US defeat in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan inherent?
Civil rights violated? For fun, pay the IRS more taxes than you need to, as a person living below the poverty level, but ask certain logical, harmless questions with your return, about tax laws, and enjoy the IRS seizing your meager bank account with a summary Levy Notice with no affordable legal recourse as retaliation for asking those questions via certified mail.
The list is endless. You hold no civil rights under the US DemocanRepublicrat Police State.
The US government war against the American people and everyone else in the world is only asymmetrical to those who are impatient. The US DemocanRepublicrat War Regime will collapse, on schedule, after it causes more amusing grief. It is then that the offspring of the DemocanRepublicrats will deny their association with their parents and grandparents. Symmetry will have been effected.
What other nation has openly defined those who live below the poverty level, therefore paying most of their money in product and service passed-on corporate taxes, then taxes them another about $1,000 deeper into poverty, via the malicious IRS, to pay mostly millionaire Congressmen and fund war after war against countries that did not attack it?
On certain remote summits, if you sit real quiet, you can hear the spectators laughing.
Doug
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jstan
climber
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I have a half dozen laws. Sixteen when I am feeling expansive. Here are the first two.
1. We accuse others of doing, only those things we ourselves are doing.
This one has a corollary. These are the things we generally enjoy the most.
The second is relevant to this situation.
2. We seek to bring upon ourselves the things we most fear.
If you look at the abuse being heaped upon us by our corporations, and they are our coporations, where are they pushing us? Toward communism, the thing they most abhor and fear.
Few to none of us want to go there. Really bad people get far too much power. But here in capitalism, we aren't doing that well either are we?
This is what George Bush has taught us.
We really need to be much more careful when choosing those to whom power will be given. And we need to think very seriously about reducing that power.
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stevep
Boulder climber
Salt Lake, UT
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For those of you cheering for the fact that this is going to change the Middle East...maybe it will, but are you going to like the change?
TGT mentioned that this might create the first Arab democracy in the ME.
I think those nice chaps in Hamas who were democratically elected in Gaza might think they were the first. And that has worked out so well.
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Karl Baba
Trad climber
Yosemite, Ca
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Topic Author's Reply - Aug 9, 2008 - 01:40pm PT
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Skip wrote
"stevep,
Are you honestly comparing Hamas with Iraq?
A bit of a stretch there don't you think?
You might have a point maybe with Muqui's army. But even they are giving up their armed struggle.
Maybe Hamas ought to give that a try.
Skip"
I think what steve has been saying is already proved. Iraq was a secular state before that oppressed islamic radicals, often very violently. Now they are a democracy and have voted to be an Islamic state. Sadrs army says they'll disarm when the US leaves. I bet Hamas would be happy to make that statement contingent on Israel leaving the West Bank and Gaza.
It's not hard to imagine, with a true democracy without fishy elections, that Al Sadr will be ruling Iraq someday. You'll have spent thousands of dollars of your own money helping free the Iraqis to elect him.
Peace
Karl
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, Ca.
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Mmmwaaahh!1!!!111!
I hate the gov't , we should have anarchy, or better yet, outright liberal communism....that'd fix things.
I'm growing tired of crap like this. Anybody wanna climg with me and the Rock tomorrow?
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TGT
Social climber
So Cal
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Nobody has a crystal ball but KB again shows an ignorance of Iraqi politics.
For a start Malaki and the Iraqi army and police destroyed Sadirs little private army.
He's not that popular figure in Iraq. Every time he's been defeated he's come up with one of these grandiose statements only to fade back to his hideout in Iran. Clerics can't make the sewer and water systems work or produce a stable economy. He's proven that and the people have seen the results. Same with the Badir bunch in the south. Unfourtunately it was neccissary for them to stew in that for a couple of years to figure that out. As long as the government works and basic services continue to improve the clerics will only weaken in influence. Locals are turning in "Special Groups" members, (Iranian agents) at rates of about a dozen or so per week. Same for AIQ, what's left of them.
There's been a tension at the local level for hundreds of years between the tribal sheiks and the clerics for political power. It looks like the secular sheiks are convincingly winning for now. In Anbar they have formed a secular political party that is quickly displacing the Sunni religious party. These tribal groups are not monolithicaly Shia or Sunni either for the most part with at least some intermarrage between sects. 11,000 families, mostly Sunni returned to the Baghdad area last month in a continuing trend to normalization. There are those however, with blood on their hands that will never be welcomed back.
Iraq's major political challenge is not secular versus clerical, but economic conflict between various tribal/ethnic groups. The major political problem right now is if the Kurds are going to get Mosul back. Saddam disposesed them years ago and the Sunnis he put in their place have lived there for two generations now and aren't going to leave willingly. Some kind of deal will likely be worked out this year though.
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graniteclimber
Trad climber
Nowhere
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Stevep: "For those of you cheering for the fact that this is going to change the Middle East...maybe it will, but are you going to like the change?
TGT mentioned that this might create the first Arab democracy in the ME.
I think those nice chaps in Hamas who were democratically elected in Gaza might think they were the first. And that has worked out so well."
Word. Democratic elections give the people the right to elect whomever they want. We may or may not like the choice but what we like or think of it is irrelevant. They choose and we have to live with their choice.
Bush just learned this the hard way when "his" Iraqi government refused to resign the basing agreements on the terms Bush wanted and then all but endorsed Obama as their preferred choice. Even the National Review recognized that Bush and McCain were left with egg on their faces. Also, Bush was not pleased when Iraq reverted to Sharia law.
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jstan
climber
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The US tells us all it wants to advance "democracy" while it really wants to advance someone's economic interest. You read the newspapers, put your head in gear and inevitably conclude the US is widely perceived as being a fraud. And a poor one at that.
Even inept. We invade Iraq without an exit strategy. We force a democratic election in Palestine, as I understand it against the advice of many on the scene, and then ourselves refuse to honor the result of that election.
But here is the mind boggling part. The people who are doing all of this--- we believe what they are telling us here in the US.
I think there is a name for this. We are in a state of suspended disbelief. Oh, I have to go answer my door. Spiderman is here.
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, Ca.
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jstan, it amazes me you espouse the crap you do. You are old enough to see things in a different perspective.
I wonder what lead you to your current philosophies?
I don't mean to slander you, but I'm curious.
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Karl Baba
Trad climber
Yosemite, Ca
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Topic Author's Reply - Aug 9, 2008 - 02:32pm PT
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You guys have me laughing robustly with your passionate defense of Iraqi democracy.
If you want to spend thousands of your money (trillions of future tax dollars) and other american's blood so Iraq is "Free" to adopt Sharia law, fine. I'm too selfish for it. I just think you're blowing smoke.
If you care so much about freedom and democracy, start speaking up for it here at home.
The US goal in Iraq is to have a stable enough government so Oil companies will have enough faith to enter into long term contracts with the government. Period. That's a private quote from a behind the scenes friend of the Bush Family (happens to be Palestinian btw)
We don't care about democracy there anymore than we did when we supported Saddam during his most violent period. I'll believe we want Iraqi democracy when we leave the place and they have free elections without the obligation to honor the laws we put in place there to protect our economic interests.
Peace
Karl
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John Moosie
climber
Beautiful California
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Advancing democracy by showing the world it is a good system is one thing, forcing it on other is an entirely different ball of wax. Jstan makes good points. We force people to have democracy before they are ready for it, ie mature enough to make good decisions, then we don't respect their decisions.
We aren't behaving in a democratic manner. Was it democratic to do the illegal things we did in Iran which put the Shah of Iran in power and overthrew a democratically elected leader?
You can't force democracy on a people who aren't ready for it. If the people don't take the power themselves, then they are just vulnerable to the same type leader they had before. Iraq is vulnerable to despots. Thats how the clerics have come into power. They are just taking up where Saddam left off.
Please try to figure this out.
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Doug Buchanan
Mountain climber
Fairbanks Alaska
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The statement that Hamas is based on the complete destruction of Israel is like the statement that the US is based on the complete destruction of North Korea, Iran and whoever else was branded as the Axis of Evil. Therein Hamas and US are comprised of insane mass murderers.
In real life, when WORDS THAT HOLD THEIR MEANINGS are used, one discovers the normal human mind processes that defy the routine use of words that do not hold their meanings, and do not produce wars.
Remember, "democracy" is Mob Rule. A "constitutional" government with a constitution that limits the government's authority to deny human rights is the form of government chosen by wise people. But the US DemocanRepublicrat War Regime cannot mention the US Constitution as its basis for government, and must keep loudly pandering its desire to spread mob rule because to attract attention to the US Constitution illuminates the fact that the US War Regime has negated every clause of the US Constitution.
Despite the anger created by such a plain, verifiable statement, in the future Israel will not exist, because its government was FORCED onto the locals by the Americans and Brits, seizing the land and assets of the locals, then instead of instituting a constitutional government that gave the locals more human rights and a better life, the Israelis did to the locals what the Americans attempted to do to the Vietnamese, under the ruse of mob rule, and the Russians attempted to do to the Afghans. The results are inherent. The time frame is printed in the program what was available at the theater door.
There is a reasoning-based process to efficiently effect all Middle East countries asking to be States of Israel under Israeli rule. The process has been repeatedly offered to the Israeli government, but like George Bush's government, they are too busy with their fool's quest to kill and destroy their way to success, to consider anything outside the insatiable quest for more (inherently self-defeating) POWER. Power-damaged minds CANNOT comprehend reasoning-based processes, by design.
The human comedy is on schedule. Enjoy the show.
DougBuchanan.com
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jstan
climber
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Blue:
OK let's see. When I disagree with you what are the pros and cons of my saying you are well off the mark while at the same time giving no specifics whatsoever? As you just did to me.
Pro:
1. By saying you are full of crap all the tens of thousands of people who accept everything I say, uncritically, will dis you.
2. By giving no specifics, I will cause you to be dissed completely.
3. By criticising your opinion, I assert your expression of your opinion requires my approval.
4. By expressing myself very strongly everyone has to know right up front, I must be right and I will win.
Con:
1. If I do all of the above I will have precluded the possibility of our cooperating when i find myself in agreement with you.
That's a pretty big con.
All the pros are completely imaginary. Like, so totally.
Anger was the only content in your post Blue. There was nothing in it to which someone can respond.
Think about it.
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John Moosie
climber
Beautiful California
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So many people keep coming because many places are worse. That doesn't mean we don't need to keep trying harder and it doesn't mean we should accept corruption.
Answer the question about Iran.
As for the countries you list, they were much more ready for democracy then Iraq is or Vietnam was. Sure there are people in that country which were ready, but most weren't. Remember.. democracy, it is suppose to be what most want. Most folks in Iran voted for a leader which we helped oust, then we helped put in place the Shah, who turned out to be very brutal. We broke our own rules.
Until you understand this, you will not understand the anger that Iranians feel toward us and you wont be able to deal with it in a constructive manner.
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, Ca.
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jstan, I'm sorry you took my post offensively. You, of all people, I thought were above personal insults in a discussion.
I gues it's the nature of the internet to corrupt good people.
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stevep
Boulder climber
Salt Lake, UT
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I'm not sure that Sadr is finished. He and his militia may just be taking a break until we leave, and to have better success in the regional elections (if they happen). And they have very close ties to Iran, which also at least sometimes espouses the destruction of Isreal. So while the parallels with Hamas aren't exact, there are at least some.
Even if the Sadr branch doen't win, the other Shiite groups aren't exactly moderates. By most accounts women had more freedom under Saddam than they do now. And Coptic Christians have almost completely been run out of the country.
As I've said many times before, Saddam wasn't a great guy. But he was pretty much zero threat to the US when we invaded.
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jstan
climber
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Blue:
1. I was not offended
2. I am trying to get you to see what you were doing in your post as seen from the receiving end. The receiving end is always very different from the sending end.
3. If I offended you in any way, let me know what caused you to be offended. Please.
As to my being above being offended, I don't know why that would be. Everyone who is still breathing can potentially be offended. But we all try to do the best we can, and try to recover as best we can.
If you let me know what parts of my post you disagreed with I can PM you describing the data on which I have based my viewpoint. It will be too long and of too little interest to anyone else to respond here.
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jstan
climber
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Too many posts. Sorry.
Stevep:
One of the most difficult tasks of all is to figure out who your friends are. In the M/E melange I am not sure it is even possible, which may explain why those peoples have not been able to come together sufficiently to fend off foreign interference in their affairs.
Let me take a leap here and pose a really scary question.
Are we beginning to see the same kind of phenomenon here inside the US? I don’t know, but it is getting worrisome. Multiple ethnic, religious, whatever barriers.
If this is happening we need to plan an approach to fix it, ASAP.
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graniteclimber
Trad climber
Nowhere
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"You can't force democracy on a people who aren't ready for it."
So, John
Ever hear of Japan. Or Germany. Or how about Poland. Or India...
The German government was put into place by the Allies after World War II, but Germany already had a democratic tradition. (Hitler rose to power in a democracy).
India and Poland both had internal popular uprisings demanding democracy. They were ready for it and wanted it. It wasn't forced on them.
Japan was handled differently from Iraq.
Immediately after the Japanese announced their decision to surrender, Gen. Douglas MacArthur was appointed the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers to oversee the occupation of Japan. Although he was technically under the authority of an Allied Powers commission, MacArthur took his orders from Washington. Rather than establish an American military government to rule Japan during the occupation, MacArthur decided to employ the existing Japanese government. To do so, he would issue various direct orders to Japanese government officials but allow them to manage the country as long as they followed the occupation goals developed in Potsdam and Washington.
MacArthur realized that imposing a new order on the island nation would be a difficult task even with Japanese cooperation. It would be impossible, MacArthur believed, for foreigners to dictate radical changes to 80 million resentful people.
http://www.crf-usa.org/election_central/japan_democracy.htm
Also, MacArthur kept the Emperor in place and had gained the Emperor's cooperation.
Edit: Japan was very homogeneous with a highly organized society. It didn't have the ethnic and religious divisions that Iraq had.
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dirtineye
Trad climber
the south
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Comparing the end of WW2 and how the Allies dealt with the losing countries with the Iraq situation is silly.
First, WE HAD A PLAN about what to do when the fighting was over in WW2.
Second, a bunch of immoral ideological idiots and intellectual midgets were not in charge of THIS country.
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TGT
Social climber
So Cal
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I'm just finishing Dick Winters book. If you think there was any more of a plan for dealing with Germanys surrender you're fooling yourself. It was as inept as anything in Iraq.
Democracy has primarily spread by force of arms for over 2500 years. Membership in the Delian League was inforced by the Athenian navy. The Brits did a good job with India as well as most of the places they occupied. We haven't done to badly ourselves with the defeat of Germany, Japan and the Soviet Union.
Peacefull transition to Democracy has been historicaly incredibly rare. Despots like the gig they've got. They don't go away quietly. Either the neighboring democracy removes them or more rarely there's a revolution.
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Doug Buchanan
Mountain climber
Fairbanks Alaska
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Aug 11, 2008 - 04:40am PT
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Yoooo Skipt, and cool colleagues of the mountains.......
You failed to question your words.
If I wanted to get rid of the evil ones who run our government, I would have already easily done so. And I would not murder them or use any form of force. They are so laughably vulnerable to reasoning that one must pity them while laughing at their comedy.
Let me know if anyone with incentive to learn new knowledge would like an honest US government. But those words hold their meanings.
If the Gaza government or a significant entity in Gaza would like to learn how to efficiently and permanently prevail above their enemies, I would favorably consider their request. Indeed a bullet proof vest as protection from Israel and US government thugs might be prudent.
The same offer to the Israel and US governments has been repeatedly made, but is analogous to suggesting a round earth before the time of Christopher Columbus, with the same reaction from those power-damaged minds. They fear new knowledge more than their own death, because knowledge is the death of power, and power dictates the power-damaged mind.
Bush and his dolts have been offered the knowledge to promptly win their Iraq and Afghan wars, but they only want the knowledge of how to kill and destroy more efficiently. They cannot comprehend human action prevailing above that concept.
Think......
1. If human minds CREATE a problem or contradiction, is it not inherent that the resolution exists within human minds?
2. Is the process to identify the resolution not merely that of asking and answering every question of every action or perception that created the problem?
3. Does the above not merely require patience and the simple skill of asking and answering questions?
4. Is it not apparent that those who create and sustain problems are noticeably hasty with the use of threats, deception and force instead of patience and questioning?
5. For how many thousands of years have governments created militaries and wars to achieve power that ALWAYS ultimately failed them?
6. Can you verifiably identify any one or more people, in government or otherwise, who have identified a human-caused problem or social goal, then simply asked and answered all related questions (a week at the most) until no such question was not answered?
7. If you have every possible question verifiably answered, in print, what could you do to a human mind, itself, that claimed a social, government or organizational leadership status, which used damaging force before asking and answering the obviously remaining questions you could show to his or her followers?
Extract yourself from the Bush and Hitler power-based perception that the zenith of the human mind's ability is to devise more destructive power to force the other guy into perceiving your inherent errors as truth.
Your errors are demonstrated as errors, by questions.
Your use of force will ALWAYS fail your goal, by design of the human mind being based on reasoning.
Can I force you to do as I dictate if you decide to not be forced? Did you answer that question?
If I answer your every question that proves a particular suggestion as beneficial to you, will you use that suggestion?
Every war is initiated with lies by laughably ignorant chaps whose power-damaged minds could not understand the above even if you handed them a dictionary, much to the amusement of the observers.
DougBuchanan.com
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dirtineye
Trad climber
the south
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Aug 11, 2008 - 01:56pm PT
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OOPS, you're wrong.
Can you say, " MARSHALL PLAN"???
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Doug Buchanan
Mountain climber
Fairbanks Alaska
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Aug 11, 2008 - 03:36pm PT
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Yoooo Skipt......
Ask questions, and synthesize the knowledge YOUR answers therefore create in your mind.
What precisely qualifies for the referenced complete destruction?
You need the above answer before the next question is useful.
If, with the threat of US military presence backed by the largest stockpile of Weapons of Mass Destruction, North Korea is brought under the democratic government of South Korea, will North Korea be completely destroyed?
What are the answers of Hamas, or do you claim to speak for them?
Does war constitute mass murder, that is, killing of masses of people?
Who, of what US government titles, have openly called for, or openly supported, the war attempt to completely destroy communists, terrorists, other ist's representing real people who were not actually what the US claimed, Taliban, Saddam Hussein's Regime, Castro, Viet Cong, Somalian War Lords, Al Queda, etceteras?
Does the above represent the US, for another person's discussion comparable to this one relating to "Hammas"?
How many thousands of villagers in Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam (who did not attack the US) were mass murdered by the US, with napalm and B-52 carpet bombing?
(The US dropped more bombs on Cambodia and Laos than on Germany in WWII, to kill people.)
How many Iraqis have the US slaughtered in the current US war against Iraq AFTER the US won its first war against Iraq, AND THEN AFTER "mission accomplished" in the current war?
Is a call for the complete destruction of Israel, or any other expressed opinion by whoever, a reason to support more military use of force, or a reason to ask the questions to identify what the opinion expresser really wants, and precisely why in line-item detail that can be used to resolve each revealed contradiction with reasoning? Did you answer that question?
Israel can promptly and completely defeat Hamas with reasoning, and leave it as a historical example of what to never be, but the Israel leaders will ultimately lose Israel by using military force to seize more land from the people whom the US and Brits seized the original land for the Jews shipped in from other countries.
Think... If human minds are capable of changing their belief's when they learn more knowledge, including changing religions and political affiliations, as routinely happens, the use of force to seize another person's land is left bare to the contradiction of having used force instead of reasoning.
What is the reaction of yourself and your friends if I use malicious force to seize your climbing gear, for your own good?
In the history of war seizures of lands, is not the current one involving living people, or people who would still be alive if not killed, the demarcation for a reasoning-based resolution of that contradiction, and all the prior one's no longer rationally resolved for lack of a demarcation among them?
Think more than the bombs-for-brains Bush, Stalin, Saddam, Hammas leaders, Israel leaders, and their unquestioning supporters.
Use YOUR answers to questions, or otherwise be recognized as a dumb person who did not ask or answer questions related to your statements and actions.
Or some sort of whatever that it might be.
DougBuchanan.com
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UncleDoug
Social climber
N. lake Tahoe
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Aug 11, 2008 - 06:48pm PT
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'You say that comparing hammas's open and declared statements calling for the destruction of Israel is good enough to extrapolate out to mean the United States is a mass murderer.'
Skip,
Hammas openly declares it but Israel is actually doing it, to Palestinians in Gaza.
To me Israel is the bigger nimrod/wuss. They can't admit to what they want or are doing.
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Karl Baba
Trad climber
Yosemite, Ca
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Topic Author's Reply - Aug 11, 2008 - 07:52pm PT
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Skip, I know it's hard to wade through Doug's writing, but you should read the last post completely. He did address your concerns
Comes down to this, We don't recognize or take responsibility for our own senseless killing, but we just other's angry rhetoric as an excuse to demonize them in a situation where there are wrongdoers on all sides.
Peace
Karl
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Karl Baba
Trad climber
Yosemite, Ca
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Topic Author's Reply - Aug 11, 2008 - 09:38pm PT
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Hi Skip
yeah, I agree that Doug sound unnecessarily condescending in his posts. I thing that arrogance might not be his real problem but that doesn't mean he doesn't have a point about "the log in our own eye"
Peace
Karl
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dirtineye
Trad climber
the south
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Aug 11, 2008 - 10:53pm PT
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Doug B's bg problem is that after he learned to write by reading the Dr Bronner's bottle and copying the style he found there, he drank the contents.
And Skip, HOW could you pick one of the rare sentences of Doug's that actually can be forced to make sense as your example of crappy writing? Now I didn't say it made good sense, or that it was correct, only that it is not total garbage, like much of what he writes.
It's kind of like a Baba Rum Raisin sentence. OR, a sentence off a DR Bronner's bottle.
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Doug Buchanan
Mountain climber
Fairbanks Alaska
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Aug 12, 2008 - 05:28am PT
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Yoooo my good friends of rhetorical bivies on precarious ledges......
Because I have never seen or read a Doctor Bronner's bottle, and have no idea what is in one, might it be that the good Doctor has bottled some rhetorical adventures that IF QUESTIONED rather than attacked, might produce some medicinal knowledge from one's answers to one's questions?
The human mind learns new knowledge from forming questions, not statements. The wisdom of answering every question one encounters, is derived from the process of asking and answering questions, that might cause one to wisely ask questions of one's always wrong first several answers.
Be cautious with that which you accuse the other guy. If questions of your accusation reveal that it holds no substance, it often identifies the nature of the accuser.
I hold no superior thinking skills, and have claimed none. I have never claimed to be a great thinker. I simply ask questions of recognized contradictions, the same simple ability of Skip, Karl, Dirt and every other human. Therefore the accusation revealed more of the accuser than the accused.
I routinely suggest the wisdom of asking more questions. Thinking is the process of asking and answering questions. It produces new knowledge useful to society and thus myself. Some people suggest that others consider climbing, or voting for idiot politicians. Some people suggest that others ask more questions. Good thing they do not all suggest the same thing.
If there is arrogance in asking questions, and verifiably describing people who make mistakes because they act before they adequately question their actions, then you and I are indeed an arrogant lot.
Is it not obvious that George Bush and every other war monger in human history acted before he adequately questioned his actions?
War is merely a dramatic example of all the other examples we manifest. Would we not make fewer embarrassing mistakes if we first asked ourselves a few more questions?
Those actions which harm others, such as charging climbers $200 for their RIGHT to walk on their public land, are worth first asking more questions, or otherwise expect thinking climbers to accurately describe mental midget National Park Service slugs and their unthinking Access Fund minions. Is it not obvious that, like George Bush, those dolts did not ask themselves the legal definitions of a RIGHT, and public land? Well?
Upon their inherent failure, when the total costs of the Iraq war and the National Park Service taxation for rights are tallied, even children will marvel at the unmitigated stupidity of those people of these days who denigrated those who suggested the wisdom of asking more questions before creating damaging contradictions.
Ask those questions.
Skipt, consider reading again what you have written. I read what I write many times before I upload it (and still find errors in what I upload).
You wrote the following of about my comment.....
(Skipt) "Look at this sentence:
(Doug)"Ask questions, and synthesize the knowledge YOUR answers therefore create in your mind."
(Skipt) This doesn't even make sense."
It does make sense, that is, convey useful knowledge.
Instead of asking a question to derive knowledge you did not yet recognize, you made a statement that revealed that you asked no question of a contradiction you perceived, to therefore remain ignorant. I did the same thing for many years, including those during which I maliciously damaged Vietnamese. I was an idiot.
An airplane flies because several concepts were discovered by curious humans asking questions, and synthesizing or combining the correct answers in a mechanical device.
A military enemy can be abjectly defeated without using any force, permanently, by asking questions about human minds functioning under the perception that force can achieve a sustainable goal.
SKIPT, Can I force you to think and act as I decree, with no subsequent cost to me? Did you answer that question and combine your answer with the answers to questions about what George Bush and his idiot National Park Service dolts do?
Now, does my earlier statement make sense?
Each new item of knowledge your mind learns results from arrangements of words (or actions) that your mind mostly recognizes from previously learned data, with the one new item better supported by that data, than any prior learned contradiction or lack of knowledge. Therefore, any of several different arrangements of words can effect a transfer of knowledge not recognized from prior arrangements.
Some people simply do not agree with others. Other people instead keep asking themselves questions to identify WHY they do not agree, to thus advance their related knowledge to and beyond the other guy. Your choice. Because you simply do not agree, do not expect the other guy to be so simple.
(An aside... All humans ultimately agree on everything, by design of the human mind, but the proof requires one to ask and answer a few more questions than are common.)
Bullshit is male bovine feces. Bullsh#t, as a rhetorical term, was invented to hastily avoid accurately identifying and resolving a contradiction, to thus remain ignorant. (Now what? I did not type that # in bullsh#t. Some bullshit censor did it.) The term has served its purpose well. Bush considers much to be bullsh#t. More carefully consider bullsh#t. It holds much knowledge.
There is nothing herein that is a lecture. You train your mind by the words you use. Use them accurately, and you will discover much useful knowledge not recognized by those who trained their mind to never really understand what is being referenced by bullsh#t, lectures and countless other rhetorical excuses to denigrate offered knowledge. If a word recognition zipping along a prior trained neuron must slow its process to identify unrelated meanings, such as bullshit that is not bullsh#t, or matters of the heart that are really matters of the mind, the brain will miss the accurate neuron assignment for the next three words which may hold the knowledge you seek.
If you do not have time for these concepts, you are not reading this sentence.
And why do I not do what I often say can be so easily done, such as manifest peace in Iraq, Palestine, Israel, Afghanistan, or make an honest US government, etceteras? As often stated, there is no incentive. It is part of the knowledge puzzle. There are other parts, all learnable by anyone.
But let me know if any significant entity would like to resolve any complex human-caused contradiction. The worthless-to-climbers AmerAC and Access Fund members might by some chance event sack their entirely corrupted, self-serving leadership and staff, select some actual climbers, and want to regain climber rights, an inconsequential example. They can learn how to do so on their own by STARTING to ask questions where they prior stopped to start acting with a verifiably doomed process. They stopped for a reason they did not question. I can offer them the questions, if they ask. Those particular self-serving idiots just lack the knowledge resultant from more questions.
A rather well designed show, these humans. Do you not agree?
DougBuchanan.com
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UncleDoug
Social climber
N. lake Tahoe
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Aug 12, 2008 - 12:19pm PT
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Skip,
Do you realize how arrogant and condescending you come off in your last post?
I hope you do so this is planned and not your true self.
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dirtineye
Trad climber
the south
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Aug 12, 2008 - 12:43pm PT
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HEHE, gotcha on the Dr Bronners, huh Doug?
But seriously, let's examine one small bit your stuff.
Doug, probably after taking a big swig of Dr. Bronners, wrote:
"Is it not obvious that George Bush and every other war monger in human history acted before he adequately questioned his actions?"
Well no Doug, it's not. In fact, war mongers are pretty much well known for not giving a damn about questioning their actions, or caring at all for that matter, so why do you think that self examination of any duration or level would make any difference to someone hell bent on waging war for their own gain?
You seem to think that questioning would provide enlightenment to these guys, and change their path. I bet not.
I can just see Hitler thinking, in 1940, right before one of his invasions: "Oh wait, the unexamined life is not worth living. I really should not be doing this. God what have I done??? wow, Herman, do you think if we stop now the rest of the world will let us keep Poland and still kill the jews? Do ya?? huh?
I feel soooo bad about this, really I do. Don't know what came over me. I'm REALLY sorry. If only I had asked myself more questions, I might not have become a megalomaniac war monger hell bent on conquering the world. Oh well, too late now.
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Doug Buchanan
Mountain climber
Fairbanks Alaska
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Aug 12, 2008 - 03:16pm PT
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Skipt and colleagues of the mountains.......
The primary reason government lied to "forge" or start and continue the Iraq war, and maintain idiot climbing regulations, can be found in this thread and other comments on any war or government action.
Person A makes Statement B.
Person C changes the words to Statement D and says that the (new) statement is therefore wrong and/or Person A is therefore wrong.
A contradiction is therefore created by the changing of the words. Wars are started and maintained with created contradictions. They are ended with resolving contradictions.
Doug, who often states and describes all human minds as of the same design, with none inferior or superior, is described by Skipt as Doug telling others of their inferiority. Notice the significant change in words.
When one fails to use or recognize words that hold their meanings, they usually create contradictions.
Further, one person's perception of "bad style" and "lack of respect" is another person's perception of good style and respect. They just learned different things with their same brain design.
(As an aside, the power-damaged mind of the idiot who sought power above reasoning, is not inferior. Its perceptions were altered to create rather than resolve identified contradictions, by a specific process. That is a separate part of the knowledge puzzle.)
Because it is NOT POSSIBLE for the speaker or writer to conform his words to those unknowable words desired by the other mind, the other mind, if it wishes to learn more knowledge or entertain itself, must make the effort to derive knowledge from the writer's words. Your choice.
Therein if one does not understand something, they wisely ask questions, not change the words and claim that the changed words are in error.
If the 6th grade school teacher only said what the 5th grade student learned, so said teacher would be understood all the time, social knowledge would not be advanced.
If the 6th grade student accused the teacher of being wrong, rather than ask the questions to clarify the new knowledge or demonstrate its error, said student would remain with 5th grade knowledge on average.
If the climber spoke only of walking on the sidewalk, the sidewalk walker would not learn climbing. What did you want to learn from a climber's forum and a war thread?
THEREFORE Skipt..... A simple point demonstrates a simple point, not intelligence or an ability to focus. The latter are demonstrated by themselves.
To parse away what others consider to be unnecessary, might be, by analogy, to leave the rope behind since the climbers are not going to pull each other up the mountain. What? The rope is used for a different purpose? The simple point of climbing is to climb, not fiddle-fart with ropes. Should that not be adequate knowledge for climbing?
The careful reader will notice how often I state or indicate that I have no desire to want others to understand what I am writing. These words are for the advancement of my knowledge, by insuring that I create no contradiction in them (not always with success before uploading).
YOU AND SKIPT ARE ON YOUR OWN, as is the case with all people and knowledge. Your mind is isolated in a cranium. YOU must do the work to learn new knowledge. It cannot otherwise be put in your cranium. If you easily understand somebody's words, you have already learned the related concept. Only the difficult to understand offers you new knowledge.
You will never successfully get or give something for nothing, or more for less. Work your mind, if you wish.
MICRO ROCKS IN EYE..... Consider that the war mongers do not really desire to start wars, but to gain more power, by design of power in the human mind. Now therefore with those words, if they discovered an easier, less costly process to rule a larger area, perhaps the world, without war, would they start a war or use the easier process?
Practical sorts looking for the simple point, they would verifiably use the easier process.
And therefore the amusement is illuminated. That process is readily available, theirs for the asking. It has always been available. With his basic desire, Hitler or Bush could have ruled the world, or any part of his interest, and been the most respected leader in human history, but only by using words that hold their meanings, and other parts of the knowledge puzzle they do not access with their current knowledge because they are looking for the simple point, not new knowledge.
Hitler lost his chance. Bush, McCain, Obama, Osama or any of their desire could still do that, but they must learn the related knowledge. If they wanted to climb mountains, would they learn the related knowledge, or attempt to achieve more power with more lies?
The balance is perfect in all things. The humans are predicated on the design of their mind. That stated, WHO would use the process of their mind (reasoning), and who would use the process of their muscles (force)?
Notice that the use of institutional force always ultimately fails the humans.
NOW THEREFORE, WHAT WAS THE GOOD DOCTOR SUGGESTING OF HIS BOTTLE OF MEDICINE?
DougBuchanan.com
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Doug Buchanan
Mountain climber
Fairbanks Alaska
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Aug 13, 2008 - 05:05am PT
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The current Presidential Ego Gratification Wars may offer a better example of what I attempted to explain above.
The writers of the US Constitution were well educated in the Common Law, the most brilliant process of social governance created by humans. Therein words hold their meanings, and no law may create a contradiction.
Knowing the countless excuses and rhetorical illusions that European monarchs used to hastily start destructive ego gratification wars, the US Constitution writers required Congress to "declare" war, if US military personnel were to use force of arms.
A Congressional "declaration of war" creates an open and accountable process of responsibility for the results, by each congressman voting for the "declaration of war". There is no equivocation, approximation, maybe, sort of, or a little bit. Everybody knows precisely what is being done, and the votes are recorded by name.
The "simple point" is the "simple point", and nothing else. The "Congressional Declaration of War" is the "Congressional Declaration of War", and nothing else.
Now notice that the ten wars the US has started, since WWII, involved no "declarations of war".
The US Constitution gives the DemocanRepublicrat Regime no authority to use US military force of arms with an "authorization" for war, "police action", "national interest", "response to terrorism", "search for weapons of mass destruction", or "insult to King George Bush's father".
The power-damaged minds of the DemocanRepublicrat congressmen rightfully feared the words, "Declaration of War", so they merely CHANGED THE WORDS to "authorization for war", not accountable in the common law, and more easily juggled again to rhetorically dilute the guilt by the same shift used to change "declaration" to "authorization".
They reverted to the nebulous ego gratification war excuses of in-bred, mental midget European monarchs.
The controlling concept was the government's "public" schools having already successfully taught society, especially the useless news journalists, that words hold no accountable meanings, and that word meanings can be changed, shifted or slithered slaunchwise at the whims of illiterate dolts with government titles equivalent to European titles of nobility and their effect on their minds.
You train your mind by the words you use. Start using accurate words. Stop shifting and approximating meanings of words. Practice precise words.
Your concern is not the other guy. Your concern is your own mind's ability to recognize that US military personnel fighting a war based on an "authorization" identifies those military personnel, the congressmen and their supporters as illiterate, criminally acting (add a few derogatory adjectives) simpletons who have sunk to the nadir of intellectual inability so magnificently illuminated by George Bush.
Learn that sooner than I did, since I did the same thing in Vietnam, much to my current embarrassment and amusement. The other guy must learn on his own. You cannot help him, especially if he easily understands you because you have sunk to his level.
As your questions advance your ability to recognize controlling contradictions, including those illuminated by the National Park Service climbing regulations supported by the idiot American Alpine Club leaders supported by obviously unquestioning American climbers (if any support the AmerAC), you will be amused by those who ask fewer questions, and learn much from those whose comments add valuable parts of the knowledge puzzle to your mind.
You will have vastly more fun, and laugh more often.
And send your old climbing gear for the new Alaskan Alpine Club museum and display area. Spread the word. Today I found one of those little "not for climbing" miniature biners in a dumpster. Used it to hang Andrew Embick's rock shoes on the rope around the main room ceiling edge. More old biners would be good.
NO SALT AND PEPPER SHAKERS. I saw several of them in the dumpster, also. As smart as I think I should have already been by now, I have no idea of what to do with salt and pepper shakers. Maybe put all of them in a durable container, with a picuture of the galaxy, and bury it where it will erode out in 1,000 years, to mystify archeologists.
Or something like that.
Doug
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