| Author | Message | | Guest | | Posted: Sun Jan 19, 2003 11:04 am Post subject: Support Ebbs for U.S. War Plans By Karen DeYoung |
| http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A12182-2003Jan18.html
A Skeptical U.N.
Support Ebbs for U.S. War Plans
By Karen DeYoung
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, January 19, 2003; Page A01 As the Bush administration heads toward a crucial United Nations Security Council meeting at the end of this month, a strong council majority appears less willing than ever to agree that early military action against Iraq is justified.Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said last week that U.S. intelligence information "we'll be providing to the world," along with U.N. reports and gaps in an Iraqi arms declaration, would make a "persuasive case" at the Jan. 27 council meeting that Baghdad has failed to cooperate with U.N. weapons inspections. Once that case is made, Powell said, there will be "a judgment as to what the council should do."But to the administration's rising frustration, many council members have already declared themselves not persuaded. In the 10 weeks since it agreed that Iraqi failure would bring "serious consequences," the likelihood that the council will authorize a U.N.-backed invasion anytime soon has steadily receded.As a result, the United States may soon find itself faced with deciding whether to go to war with minimal international support in order to take advantage of what it sees as an optimum military and political timetable. Although administration officials have said that a number of countries have indicated they would participate, with or without a U.N. mandate, only a handful have said so publicly. Many, including some considered important to the effort, have publicly declared they would not.According to a number of senior council diplomats from a range of countries interviewed over the past week, the case for using force has become less, rather than more, compelling. "It is much murkier and less clear-cut than it was in November," one diplomat said.Baghdad's at least passive cooperation with inspections, rising public opposition abroad to an attack, and a feeling that the United States is trying to bully the council into approving a deadline determined in part by Mideast weather conditions have all strengthened the view that the use of force in the near future is both unwise and unnecessary, the diplomats said.The United States may have an impressive case to present, and may even be able to twist a significant number of council arms, said another ambassador, but "our preference is to have the facts delivered through the inspection process."The council resolution adopted Nov. 8 was a model of what its authors called "constructive ambiguity," allowing those favoring military action to say further U.N. agreement was not required, and those against action to say the opposite. Powell said last week that "the United States . . . and each nation separately will have to make its own judgment as to what it should or should not do."But following the weeks of painstaking negotiations last fall and the euphoria of a unanimous council vote, few in the administration believed the extent and immediacy of the Iraqi threat would not be quickly obvious to the world, or that they would find themselves back in a small minority favoring military action less than three months later.Even close U.S. allies worry the administration risks appearing unreasonable and obsessed. "An artificiality has crept into [U.S.] decision-making," lamented a sympathetic council diplomat. "There is no arms control reason at present to move," as inspectors have found nothing substantive and Iraqi President Saddam Hussein is thought unlikely to use any weapons of mass destruction while under such tight U.N. surveillance, he said. Although U.S. military deployments to the region will reach their peak by mid-February and planners believe it will be difficult to launch an attack once the spring heat begins, "there is no reason not to calibrate the military vis-a-vis inspections to come to a conclusion by October," when cool weather returns to the Middle East.That kind of talk infuriates many U.S. officials, especially those who were opposed to taking the Iraq case to the United Nations in the first place on grounds that it would trap the United States in a quicksand of international bureaucracy and compromise. President Bush, said a senior U.S. official, is determined not to allow an Iraq-laid trap of seeming compliance to leave the council paralyzed with the indecision of the last 12 years.Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld complained last week that some had seized on the recent statement by chief U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix that "no smoking gun" had yet been found in Iraq to argue for patience. If inspectors had found something, Rumsfeld groused to reporters, "the argument might then have been that inspections were in fact working and, therefore, they should be given more time to work.""I guess for any who are unalterably opposed to military action, no matter what Iraq may do, there will be some sort of an argument," Rumsfeld said. Hussein was so skilled at deception, he said, that failure to find weapons the United States has insisted exist could be considered proof of Iraqi lack of cooperation.Bush also expressed some irritation, saying that "time is running out" for Hussein and Bush was "sick and tired of games and deception. And that's my view of timetables."In addition to the inertia brought about by inspections that have been relatively uneventful so far and only recently gotten up to full steam, a year-end round of musical chairs at the council has had an effect. Instead of compliant Colombia, which was chairman of the council last month, the current chairman is France, which has led the forces of "wait and see." On Friday, French President Jacques Chirac repeated his belief that there should be no attack unless the Security Council agrees, and he said he saw no justification based on what the inspectors have reported thus far."The inspectors have asked for more time to go on working," Chirac said after a meeting in Paris with Blix and Mohamed ElBaradei, the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which shares inspection duties with Blix's U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC). ElBaradei said it would be worth searching "a few more months" if that would prevent a war, and Chirac noted it was "only wise to agree to this request."Russia, one of the five permanent Security Council members who can veto any council action, along with France, China, Britain and the United States, said last week it saw no reason to consider war. Moscow signed three agreements with Baghdad on Friday for exploration and development of oil fields in southern and western Iraq.One of the rotating council seats reserved for Europe is now held by Germany, a staunch opponent of using force and a much more formidable voice than Ireland, the country it replaced. Germany takes over the chair of the council in February; Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder said yesterday that not only would Germany not take part in any "military intervention in Iraq, that is exactly how our voting behavior will be in all international bodies, including the United Nations."A council diplomat said, "Before, the five [permanent members] could meet without serious problems from the rest. They didn't have to think about the Irish. But that's not so with the Germans, particularly for the Europeans." Other new members include Pakistan, Chile and Angola, all U.S. friends reluctant to approve a war, and Spain.Several nonpermanent members said that although it had not yet begun, they were sure U.S. pressure was on the way. "It will be bilateral, and it will be personal," most likely in the form of calls from Bush to other heads of government, said one ambassador who was expecting a call to his president.The United States, said another nonpermanent ambassador, "has a very nice attitude. They assume you are with them. And then when the moment comes that you raise a question, they just look at you and say 'Excuse me?' " Public opinion in his country is "resolutely" against participation in a war, he said. "People believe that this enormous [U.S.] war machine makes the council and all its fevered machinations look ridiculous. But there will be a moment when we have to make a decision."The closest U.S. allies on the council, including Britain, have advised the administration to wait, on grounds that U.N. backing is what one diplomat called "more than just the sugar-coating on the pill." Multilateral action, he said, "is a much more powerful instrument" than a largely U.S.-orchestrated assault, even if some other individual countries sign on."Realities tend to come in rather late," this diplomat said of the administration. "They are thinking 'We have the power, the will and the bases. Let's do it ourselves.' " But he said he hoped the Americans were "beginning to realize that it's all connected -- the Mideast, Afghanistan, oil, Russia, China, North Korea, the economy."A senior Arab official, whose government is deeply involved in the Iraq issue but not presently on the council, put it another way. "If I were in the president's, or [political adviser] Karl Rove's position, . . . I'd weigh the options and say, 'What do I gain by doing this? If [war] lasts two days and works beautifully, the American public will slap me on the back and say 'great job.' But the bill could be $100 billion, oil could go up to $40 a barrel and gas prices to $2.50 a gallon, and there goes the economy.' ""Do you really want to be in the position where . . . the American public will be happy for three months, and then start saying 'Where are the jobs?' " he asked."And that's the best-case scenario. More likely, it will take months. The Arab world and the Israelis will go berserk. Where's the up side? Is it really worth doing?"There is widespread international appreciation of the fact that inspectors would not be in Iraq today if the United States had not used its overwhelming military and diplomatic power, the official said. Bush could easily declare victory now and save himself a potential debacle. "He's shown seriousness, and Saddam caved," the official said. "If you ask whether the world is in a better position vis-a-vis Saddam Hussein than it was a year ago, the answer is 'Absolutely.' Is that victory? Yes, if you want it to be." | |  | | Guest | | Posted: Sun Jan 19, 2003 6:33 pm Post subject: |
| CBS News Poll. Latest: Jan. 4-6, 2003. N=902 adults nationwide. MoE ± 3 (total sample).
"So far, do you think Saddam Hussein has kept his promise to allow United Nations inspectors full access to look for weapons of mass destruction, or has Saddam Hussein not kept his promise?"
Has 21%
Has Not 68%
Don't Know 11%
"To the best of your knowledge, do you think Iraq currently possesses weapons of mass destruction, or doesn't it have those yet?"
Does Possess 79%
Does Not Possess 9%
Don't Know 12%
CNN/USA Today/Gallup Poll. Latest: Dec. 9-10, 2002. N=1,009 adults nationwide. MoE ± 3 (total sample).
"If the Bush Administration says it has evidence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq AND the UN inspectors say they have not found any evidence of these weapons, who would you be more likely to believe: [rotate] the Bush Administration or the United Nations' inspectors?"
Bush Administration 52%
UN Inspectors 36%
Both Equally 4%
Neither 3%
No Opinion 5% | | | | Guest | | Posted: Sun Jan 19, 2003 8:11 pm Post subject: |
| The latest opinion polls show that US public support for an invasion of Iraq (without UN approval) is very low (only like 1/3 or less of the US public supports the Zionist and oil company driven invasion of Iraq as this number would be even lower if everyone were to read what is mentioned via the URL's included below):
THE REAL REASONS THE US WILL INVADE IRAQ:
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/middle-east-and-asia/2003/01/18/the-real-reasons-the-us-will-invade-iraq.php
PS: Most Americans would believe the UN inspectors over the Bush administration if they could have access to what is mentioned via the above referenced URL (but the Zionist controlled press and media in the USA has not even mentioned that radical JINSA group once as I have only seen Robert Fisk of the London Inpendent newspaper mention it from the article that appeared in "The Nation" newspaper, and none of the mainstream television news programs has interviewed the writer Jason Vest at all):
The following article by Robert Fisk mentions the JINSA Zionist (extremist) agenda as well:
http://www.independent.co.uk/story.jsp?story=332011 | | | | Guest | | | | Guest | | Posted: Sun Jan 19, 2003 11:09 pm Post subject: The Zionist Wolf of the White House Pushing US to War |
| The Zionist Wolf of the White House Pushing US to War
Paul Wolfowitz, an Israeli citizen?
Date: 1/19/03 1:58:38 PM Pacific Standard Time
From: BGJDAVID
Note that Paul Wolfowitz has a sister married to an Israeli. I assume they
are living there. Cozy, eh?
I wonder if Wolfowitz has Israeli citizenship. Anyone?
http://www.hoffman-info.com/inferno.html
Last week we were told that it was President Bush who put forth the new,
pivotal National Military Defense Strategy. But Bush's keynote defense
doctrine was lifted almost verbatim from a 1992 directive by Paul Wolfowitz
The Wolf of the White House
by Michael A. Hoffman II
The New York Times Magazine has confirmed what many have suspected, that
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is a figurehead and that the man actually
responsible for setting America's military policy is the "Israel-centric"
Paul Wolfowitz, the fanatical Zionist, architect of the bombing of civilians
in Afghanistan, and the main administration advocate of war on Iraq. In the
waning days of the Ford administration, the C.I.A. director at that time,
George Bush Sr., appointed Wolfowitz to serve on an intelligence panel
(Wolfowitz first infiltrated the Federal government under Nixon):
"Student deferments kept him out of the military draft during the Vietnam
War...In the first days after Sept. 11, when Secretary of State Powell and
others within the administration contended it was too early to put Iraq on
the agenda -- that there was a war to win in Afghanistan first and that
there was no evidence Iraq was complicit in the attacks on the Pentagon and
the twin towers -- Wolfowitz argued that Iraq was at the heart of the
threat...
"...leaving aside the offensive suggestion of dual loyalty...you hear from
some of Wolfowitz's critics, always off the record...that Israel exercises a
powerful gravitational pull on the man...as a teenager he spent his father's
sabbatical semester in Israel...his sister is married to an Israeli...he is
friendly with Israel's generals and diplomats...he is something of a hero to
the heavily Jewish neoconservative movement...
"Charles Fairbanks... a Johns Hopkins political scientist who has known
Wolfowitz since college...(and) who...worked for Wolfowitz in the
policy-planning office of the State Department, recalls him as...ardent on
the subject of certain regimes he regarded as outside the norms of civilized
behavior, including the radical Baath party of Iraq and Muammar el-Qaddafi's
Libya. 'I once presented talking points on Libya, which I considered very
tough. He said: 'You don't understand. I really want to destroy Qaddafi, not
just constrain him." (End quote from the NY Times magazine).
Wolfowitz is an ally of Israeli war criminals and Likud party leaders Ariel
Sharon and Binyamin Netanyahu, both of whom subscribe to the Zionist
"Masada" complex, the mystical suicide course charted by racist "settler"
rabbis who place seizure of the whole of Palestine on the highest level of
priority, above all other geo-political considerations. This crazed policy
orientation would destroy the Israeli state were it not for unlimited
American taxpayer subsidies in the form of arms and cash.
When this Masada complex becomes prevalent within the host state itself--the
U.S.--then the same deterioration of the Israeli economy and government is
bound to occur in America, because no state can govern on the basis of
mystical suicide without imploding under the weight of its own violence,
corruption and irrationality. In a sense, Wolfowitz and his numerous
co-conspirators, such as the equally rabid Richard Perle, are the
gravediggers of not only the Zionist entity but of the U.S. itself. After a
brief spasm of planetary dominion, the U.S. is beginning to sink inexorably
as the crazed Likud philosophy of mystical rabbinic governance gains a
stranglehold in Washington D.C.
The rule of thumb is as follows: Judaism and Zionism = delusion. The more
American officials are influenced by Judaism and Zionism, or actually are
agents of Judaism and Zionism, the more delusional they will become. Any
healthy criticism of this process will be treated as "offensive" to the
sensibilities of the Holy People and therefore career-destroying and
virtually illegal (a form of terrorism).
Last week we were told that it was President Bush who put forth the new,
pivotal National Military Defense Strategy. However, as revealed in the
Sept. 22, 2002 "New York Times Magazine," George W. Bush's keynote defense
doctrine was lifted almost verbatim from a 1992 directive by Wolfowitz:
"...the new worldview evolving in the Bush administration...
interventionist...less sensitive to alliance diplomacy -- is one created
more at the Pentagon than the State Department and one to which Wolfowitz
has brought intellectual weight.... This Defense Department tends to define
leadership as... including a willingness to act unilaterally if need be and
to employ muscle. Rumsfeld and Cheney, who have been friends since the Nixon
administration, are visceral advocates of this more assertive view, but
Wolfowitz is its theorist -- its Kissinger, as one admirer put it.
"In 1992, in what would turn out to be the last year of the first Bush
administration, Wolfowitz, then under-secretary for policy in Cheney's
Defense Department, presided over the writing of a new 'Defense Planning
Guidance,' a broad directive to military leaders on what to prepare for. An
early draft proposed that with the demise of the Soviet Union the United
States doctrine should be to assure that no new superpower arose to rival
America's benign domination of the globe. The U.S. would defend its unique
status both by being militarily powerful beyond challenge and by being such
a constructive force that no one would want to challenge us. We would
participate in coalitions, but they would be 'ad hoc.'
"The U.S. would be 'postured to act independently when collective action
cannot be orchestrated.' The guidance envisioned pre-emptive attacks against
states bent on acquiring nuclear, biological or chemical weapons. It was
accompanied by illustrative scenarios of hypothetical wars for which the
military should be prepared. One of them was another war against Iraq, where
Saddam had already rebounded from his gulf-war defeat and was busily
crushing domestic unrest...That now seems to have become the Bush
doctrine..." End quote from "The Sunshine Warrior" by Bill Keller, NY Times
Magazine, Sept. 22, 2002. | | | | Guest | | | | Guest | | Posted: Mon Jan 20, 2003 5:18 am Post subject: Chirac warns US against unilateral attack on Iraq |
| http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L19183051
19 Jan 2003 18:30
Chirac warns US against unilateral attack on Iraq
PARIS, Jan 19 (Reuters) - French President Jacques Chirac said in an interview released on Sunday that any unilateral U.S. attack on Iraq without U.N. backing would isolate Washington from the international community."If the United States decide to intervene alone, we will have to say that that will happen outside of the international community," Chirac told the daily Le Figaro newspaper, due to publish the interview on Monday.He said any attack on Iraq would not be legitimate unless it was based on a decision by the U.N. Security Council and that could be taken only on the basis of a report by U.N. arms inspectors now searching Iraq.Chirac said France wanted Iraq disarmed of any weapons of mass destruction and urged Iraqi President Saddam Hussein to cooperate with U.N. arms inspectors.Washington has pressed the inspectors to be more aggressive in seeking evidence of Iraqi weapons programmes, but Chirac said it was not up to outsiders to decide whether the inspectors were able to do their jobs."One may doubt the (Iraqi) cooperation is sufficient and may wish it to be more active, which is what I do," he said. "But it's up to the inspectors to judge if they are able to carry out their mission, not up to this or that country."Chief U.N. arms inspector Hans Blix arrived in Baghdad on Sunday demanding that Iraq stop dragging its feet and volunteer evidence on weapons programmes to avoid the threat of war.FRANCE HOLDS U.N. VETOFrance, one of the five veto-wielding permanent members of the U.N. Security Council, has urged Washington throughout the Iraq crisis to work through the U.N. in dealing with Baghdad.Chirac argued war was not inevitable, saying: "It is always an admission of defeat, the worst possible solution."He declined to say whether he thought U.S. President George W. Bush would order a unilateral attack against Iraq."I have a lot of esteem for the American president. I'm sure he will consider all the consequences of such a gesture," Chirac said.Chirac said British Prime Minister Tony Blair's support for Washington's Iraq strategy did not strengthen European cooperation."But, well, everyone has his own characteristics," said Chirac. "By tradition, the English have always kept an eye out towards the wide open sea and their American cousins."Chirac said a war in Iraq "would have possibly very serious human consequences, political consequences that are hard to control, economic consequences and a considerable cost".He cited a war cost estimate of 100 billion dollars."When you think we are not able, for example, to provide necessary medicines to poor countries to fight against epidemics, you ask yourself if all this is reasonable," he said. | | | | Northpoleprsn | | Posted: Mon Jan 20, 2003 4:40 pm Post subject: US War against Iraq, Motivation, Democracy? Oil? |
| Who is going to profit from the War? Who will pay the ultimate price? How long will it last. What will the results be for Our America? Will BUSH reinstitutes the Draft for ALL Americans, including we Senior Citizens so we can be in the front lines so we can save our young persons for the benefits of Old age?
Mr. Bush what about THE PRESENT STATE of our terrible economy? | | | | | ©2002-2009 WarWithoutEnd.co.uk |
