Conyers on Downing Street Memo
Jun 17 at 2:02pm by Jagwire X
Downing Street
An excerpt from the Downing Street Memo:
C reported on his recent talks in Washington. There was a perceptible shift in attitude. Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy. The NSC had no patience with the UN route, and no enthusiasm for publishing material on the Iraqi regime’’s record. There was little discussion in Washington of the aftermath after military action.
Yesterday John Conyers (D-MI) held an informal hearing regarding the Downing Street Memo. In case you haven’t heard of it the Downing Street Memo reveals that the highest British officials, including the prime minister, were aware that the Bush administration had the intelligence and facts “fixed around the policy”. Usually the policy is based on the facts. This is a very important, as it indicates that there was a pre-existing desire to go to war and the intelligence was manipulated or created to support that desire. The Bush administration, in other words, deceived Congress and people of the United States into going to war with Iraq.
In case you are interested, deceiving Congress is a felony and the president in the March 19, 2002 Congressional Record, submitted to Congress his case for war. If that case for war is knowingly false, the president has committed a felony and that is an impeachable offense for which he should be prosecuted.
Link to the Downing Street Memo
Link to Conyers “Hearing on the Downing Street Memo” (C-SPAN) - note the hearing is about 2 hours long.
And the cost keeps getting higher…
Jul 16 at 12:12pm by Anonymous
Institute for Policy Studies
Time for another review of the numbers. Thanks to our friends at the Institute for Policy Studies for this one: A Failed Transition.
Truly Brilliant!
Jul 14 at 11:11am by Anonymous
UN Security council
Arms suppliers scramble into Iraq
By Thalif Deen
NEW YORK - When the 15-member United Nations Security Council legitimized the US-imposed interim government in Baghdad in June, the five-page unanimous resolution carried a provision little publicized in the media: the lifting of a 14-year arms embargo on Iraq.
I’m too stunned to crack wise.
Free matches with every glass jar of gasoline.
Loyalty to the Truth or Loyalty to the GOP?
Jul 19 at 5:05pm by Anonymous
Republican Party
If, as former White House counsel John Dean explained a few weeks ago in an interview, there is “no chance” the Republican house would impeach Bush for lying to the American people, the nation has transcended mere blind partisan politics and entered a time of living fiction. This is the same Republican Party whose members badgered and hounded President Clinton until he was caught in a lie. His prosecutors, the legions of right-wing radio listeners, organizations dedicated to unearthing damaging material on Clinton’s past, showed a disgust for immorality in the White House. But when Clinton’s impeachment came, the vast majority of Americans refused to march on Washington demanding his removal from office. In fact a few went so far to march in his support. Americans, both for and against President Clinton, knew in their hearts, if not minds, that the question he was asked should have never been asked because it involved his personal life; not his public life. Read the rest of this entry »
As if we didn’t know this
Apr 22 at 11:11am by Jagwire X
Here’s a nice little article about how the US has plans to change and dominate the Mideast. Who cares if the locals have other plans or desires. Wouldn’t it be nice if the US could stay the hell out of other people’s business? Or if we have to be involved I imagine there are a thousand other solutions than domination.
Here’s the article: Iraq first domino in Mideast plan.
Whoops! Sorry about all those lies we presented as fact…
Apr 15 at 1:01pm by Jagwire X
Basra, Iraq
Washington Post tells a different story for the record. Turns out there was no uprising underway.
People in Basra Contest Official View of Siege
Life Was Mostly Normal, Residents Say; Doctors Report Many Civilians Killed
By Keith B. Richburg
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, April 15, 2003; Page A13
BASRA,
Iraq — There was nothing resembling a popular uprising against the Iraqi militiamen who controlled this city during its 13-day siege by British forces. Life continued largely as normal in many neighborhoods, with police directing traffic and residents doing their best to avoid fighting.
Doctors at local hospitals treated scores of civilians wounded by British artillery and U.S. bombs during the siege, despite briefing-room claims of pinpoint accuracy. Many others were killed.
These conclusions about life under siege emerge from a week of interviews in Basra and they differ in many ways from accounts offered by military and other sources before the city’s fall. Reports of large numbers of Basra residents being forced to take up arms and militiamen firing from behind human shields were similarly not borne out in the interviews.
PNAC and The New Militarism
Apr 12 at 12:12pm by Jagwire X
Project for the New American Century
Current policy, it seems, is being made by certain intellectuals and politicians who have been moving towards a new vision of American militarism for many years.
One of the focal points for this movement has been the think-tank group “Project for the New American Century”. They have been openly calling for a renewed militaristic expansion of “American interests” around the world. Basically, they feel that the US military is the glue that holds the world together; or, rather, should be.
But don’t take my word for it. Read their “Statement of Principles” on their own website, written in 1997.
It clearly foreshadows the current “preemption” policy, and reliance on military might as a foreign policy tool. Note the names who signed this statement. You may recognize a few.
Also see their 1998 letter to President Clinton, urging him to invade Iraq, where they conclude:
“We believe the U.S. has the authority under existing UN resolutions to take the necessary steps, including military steps, to protect our vital interests in the Gulf. In any case, American policy cannot continue to be crippled by a misguided insistence on unanimity in the UN Security Council.”
Sounds familiar. Again, notice the list of names at the bottom.
These people finally have the stage, and are implementing strategies that they have long written about, but never had the opportunity to put into practice. Bush, and 9/11, have given them that opportunity.
Again, don’t just take my word for it. For example, see this portrait of PNAC that goes over much of the same ground I do. It’s from a mainstream source: Were Neo-Conservatives’ 1998 Memos a Blueprint for Iraq War?
Of course, you can always “Google it”, as they say.
Try: “PNAC“, or “Project for the New American Century“, or even “neo-conservatives” (a moniker that some of these new century types go by).
It is my belief, and the belief of others within the antiwar community, that this agenda needs to be opposed. It’s humanitarian price is too high, and it’s methodology severely misguided.
History Repeating Itself
Apr 8 at 5:05pm by Jagwire X
Lt. Gen. Stanley Maude
On March 8, 1917, Lt. Gen. Stanley Maude issued a “Proclamation to the People of the Wilayat of Baghdad“. Maude’s Anglo-Indian Army of the Tigres had invaded and occupied Iraq - after storming up the country from Basra - to “free” its people from their dictators. “Our armies do not come into your cities and lands as conquerors or enemies, but as liberators,” the British announced.
Read the article - Liberate? For centuries we’ve been ‘liberating’ the Mideast. Why do we never learn?
Oregon Law Would Jail War Protesters as Terrorists
Apr 3 at 1:01pm by Jagwire X
Protest
This is truly frightening. Oregon is attempting to pass law that would equate protesting with terrorism. Obviously it hasn’t occurred to these vapid lawmakers that the point of the protests is to get their attention because something is TERRIBLY WRONG (this country is becoming more and more oppressive, it’s wages unjust wars on nation that post not real threat to us, etc., etc.) with this country and as a lawmaker YOU SHOULD DO SOMETHING to rectify it. Instead they try making it more oppressive. Bad solution.
Senate Bill 742 identifies a terrorist as an individual who “plans or participates in an act that is intended, by at least one of its participants, to disrupt” business, transportation, schools, government, or free assembly.
There is a conservative radio pundit (Lars Larson, whom you may want to contact with your opinion of his fascist views) who is promoting this bill. No doubt making protesters out to be callous, uncaring individuals who frighten grandmothers and prevent ambulances from getting where they need to go. This is unlikely to be true. And if business gets a bit snarled, well, get the point: THIS WAR IS WRONG and we want you to do something about it. No you don’t get to have business as usual, as citizens of this country our consciences dictate that we must do whatever we can to alter the course of events.
The bill carries a very heavy very immoral and very wrong automatic 25 year sentence. This is not the America I was born in. This is not the America our founders had in mind. It’s beginning to sound a lot more like the England our founders fought to be free of.
This may be the most oxymoronic bill ever introduced anywhere at any time.
This would also technically make the police and lawmakers terrorists the moment they disrupt or plan to disrupt a free assembly of individuals who are protesting.
Oregon Law Would Jail Protesters
Bush Sr. Warning Over Unilateral Action From The London Times
Apr 2 at 10:10pm by Jagwire X
Gulf War
March 10, 2003
Bush Sr warning over unilateral action
From Roland Watson in Washington
THE first President Bush has told his son that hopes of peace in the Middle East would be ruined if a war with Iraq were not backed by international unity.
Drawing on his own experiences before and after the 1991 Gulf War, Mr Bush Sr said that the brief flowering of hope for Arab-Israeli relations a decade ago would never have happened if America had ignored the will of the United Nations.
He also urged the President to resist his tendency to bear grudges, advising his son to bridge the rift between the United States, France and Germany.
“You’ve got to reach out to the other person. You’ve got to convince them that long-term friendship should trump short-term adversity,” he said.
The former President’s comments reflect unease among the Bush family and its entourage at the way that George W. Bush is ignoring international opinion and overriding the institutions that his father sought to uphold. Mr Bush Sr is a former US Ambassador to the UN and comes from a family steeped in multi-lateralist traditions.
Although not addressed to his son in person, the message, in a speech at Tufts University in Massachusetts, was unmistakeable. Mr Bush Sr even came close to conceding that opponents of his son’s case against President Saddam Hussein, who he himself is on record as loathing, have legitimate cause for concern.
He said that the key question of how many weapons of mass destruction Iraq held “could be debated”. The case against Saddam was “less clear” than in 1991, when Mr Bush Sr led an international coalition to expel invading Iraqi troops from Kuwait. Objectives were “a little fuzzier today”, he added.
After the Gulf War, Mr Bush Sr steered Israel and its Arab neighbours to the Madrid conference, a stepping stone to the historic Israeli-Palestinian Oslo accords, in much the same way that the present President has talked about the removal of Saddam as opening the way to a wider peace in the region.
In an ominous warning for his son, Mr Bush Sr said that he would have been able to achieve nothing if he had jeopardised future relations by ignoring the UN. “The Madrid conference would never have happened if the international coalition that fought together in Desert Storm had exceeded the UN mandate and gone on its own into Baghdad after Saddam and his forces.”
Also drawing on the lessons of 1991, he said that it was imperative to mend fences with allies immediately, rather than waiting until after a war. He had been infuriated with the decision of King Hussein of Jordan to side with Saddam rather than the US, but while criticising the Jordanian leader in public and freezing $41 million in US aid, he also passed word to King Hussein that he understood his domestic tensions.
Mr Bush Jr, who is said never to forget even relatively minor slights, has alarmed analysts with the way in which he has allowed senior Administration figures such as Donald Rumsfeld, the Defence Secretary, aggressively to criticise France and Germany.
There are, however, signs that Mr Bush Sr’s message may be getting through.
Father and son talk regularly and it was, in part, pressure from Mr Bush Sr’s foreign policy coterie, that helped to persuade the President to go to the UN last September.
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