Ashcroft Expands Reach
Once seen as a peripheral player in this administration, he has become one of the most powerful attorney generals ever.
(NYT, Suggested by Kate Varner)
Domingo Soto's Personal Blog https://domsoto.blogspot.com/
Saturday, March 15, 2003
KURD PM WARNS FRENCH AND RUSSIANS: SIDE WITH US OR LOSE OIL AFTER THE WAR
French and Russian oil and gas contracts signed with the Saddam Hussein regime in Iraq "will not be honored," Barhim Salih, a leading Iraqi Kurdish official, said in Washington Friday, just before a series of high-level meetings with Bush administration officials.
(UPI, found in Blogdex)
French and Russian oil and gas contracts signed with the Saddam Hussein regime in Iraq "will not be honored," Barhim Salih, a leading Iraqi Kurdish official, said in Washington Friday, just before a series of high-level meetings with Bush administration officials.
(UPI, found in Blogdex)
Friday, March 14, 2003
IRAQ'S HISTORY
...In July 1988, Iran accepted the terms of UN Resolution 598, and the cease-fire in its war with Iran came into force on 20th August 1988. Before Iraq had a chance to recover economically, it was once more plunged into war, this time with its invasion of Kuwait in 1990.
The invasion was the result of a long-standing territorial dispute. Iraq accused Kuwait of violating the Iraqi border to secure oil resources, (on July 17, 1990 Saddam Hussein accused Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates of flooding the world oil market. In addition, he singled out Kuwait for the production of oil from a disputed supply, the Rumaila oil field), and demanded that its debt repayments should be waived. Direct negotiations were begun in July 1990, but they were destined soon to fail; along with reassurance from the United States making a claim that they would not get involved (click here to read what the United States Ambassador said to Saddam Hussein. This is remarkable stuff.). This was the go ahead that Hussein needed....
...In July 1988, Iran accepted the terms of UN Resolution 598, and the cease-fire in its war with Iran came into force on 20th August 1988. Before Iraq had a chance to recover economically, it was once more plunged into war, this time with its invasion of Kuwait in 1990.
The invasion was the result of a long-standing territorial dispute. Iraq accused Kuwait of violating the Iraqi border to secure oil resources, (on July 17, 1990 Saddam Hussein accused Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates of flooding the world oil market. In addition, he singled out Kuwait for the production of oil from a disputed supply, the Rumaila oil field), and demanded that its debt repayments should be waived. Direct negotiations were begun in July 1990, but they were destined soon to fail; along with reassurance from the United States making a claim that they would not get involved (click here to read what the United States Ambassador said to Saddam Hussein. This is remarkable stuff.). This was the go ahead that Hussein needed....
A Tyrant 40 Years in the Making
George W. Bush is not the first American president to seek regime change in Iraq.
...
In 1963 Britain and Israel backed American intervention in Iraq, while other United States allies — chiefly France and Germany — resisted. But without significant opposition within the government, Kennedy, like President Bush today, pressed on.
...
Then, on Feb. 8, 1963, the conspirators staged a coup in Baghdad. For a time the government held out, but eventually Kassem gave up, and after a swift trial was shot; his body was later shown on Baghdad television.
As its instrument the C.I.A. had chosen the authoritarian and anti-Communist Baath Party, in 1963 still a relatively small political faction influential in the Iraqi Army. According to the former Baathist leader Hani Fkaiki, among party members colluding with the C.I.A. in 1962 and 1963 was Saddam Hussein....
the 1963 coup was accompanied by a bloodbath. Using lists of suspected Communists and other leftists provided by the C.I.A., the Baathists systematically murdered untold numbers of Iraq's educated elite — killings in which Saddam Hussein himself is said to have participated. No one knows the exact toll, but accounts agree that the victims included hundreds of doctors, teachers, technicians, lawyers and other professionals as well as military and political figures.
(NYT)
George W. Bush is not the first American president to seek regime change in Iraq.
...
In 1963 Britain and Israel backed American intervention in Iraq, while other United States allies — chiefly France and Germany — resisted. But without significant opposition within the government, Kennedy, like President Bush today, pressed on.
...
Then, on Feb. 8, 1963, the conspirators staged a coup in Baghdad. For a time the government held out, but eventually Kassem gave up, and after a swift trial was shot; his body was later shown on Baghdad television.
As its instrument the C.I.A. had chosen the authoritarian and anti-Communist Baath Party, in 1963 still a relatively small political faction influential in the Iraqi Army. According to the former Baathist leader Hani Fkaiki, among party members colluding with the C.I.A. in 1962 and 1963 was Saddam Hussein....
the 1963 coup was accompanied by a bloodbath. Using lists of suspected Communists and other leftists provided by the C.I.A., the Baathists systematically murdered untold numbers of Iraq's educated elite — killings in which Saddam Hussein himself is said to have participated. No one knows the exact toll, but accounts agree that the victims included hundreds of doctors, teachers, technicians, lawyers and other professionals as well as military and political figures.
(NYT)
Wednesday, March 12, 2003
FBI Announces Secret Tracking Device For PCs.
They are now able to see every click you make on the internet. Privacy advocates say this is bad, but the FBI says you will never even notice, and it won't affect the common man at all.
(Suggested by Sixto Mendez)
They are now able to see every click you make on the internet. Privacy advocates say this is bad, but the FBI says you will never even notice, and it won't affect the common man at all.
(Suggested by Sixto Mendez)
Antiwar Song, With Whimsy
With no advance fanfare, the Beastie Boys released "In a World Gone Mad," an anti-war single, on their Web site.
With no advance fanfare, the Beastie Boys released "In a World Gone Mad," an anti-war single, on their Web site.
"A war in Iraq will not resolve our problems. It can only result in the deaths of many innocent civilians and US troops. If we are truly striving for safety, we need to build friendships, not try to bully the rest of the world."
(NYT)Tuesday, March 11, 2003
The Weekly Standard's Influence On Power
Five years ago, during the Clinton administration, The Weekly Standard made the broad, seemingly preposterous assertion that America was entitled and even compelled to engineer regime change in Iraq. But under the current administration, driven by 9/11, that contention has become conventional wisdom.
...His magazine is not the only way that the younger Mr. Kristol's influence is delivered to the White House. In June 1997 he formed the Project for a New American Century, which issued papers supporting essentially unilateralist efforts to police the world. It was a call to arms that compelled neoconservatives, who say that America is best protected by exporting its values, but it also stirred people with allegiances to traditional conservatism, who have generally had more isolationist impulses and who have been wary about using American troops to patrol the world.
...Signers at the time included many people who are now in a position of power, including Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, along with others with a more neoconservative impulse, including Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle, who heads the Defense Policy Board, which advises the Pentagon.
...Western Europe, nestled beneath the nuclear wing of the last remaining superpower, has developed a naive belief in a new, post-conflict paradigm that was somehow inherently secure. America, he postulated, lived in a harsher, more traditional, Hobbesian world of threat and military power. He tartly concluded that "Americans are from Mars and Europeans are from Venus." The Weekly Standard is Mars central.
(NYT
Five years ago, during the Clinton administration, The Weekly Standard made the broad, seemingly preposterous assertion that America was entitled and even compelled to engineer regime change in Iraq. But under the current administration, driven by 9/11, that contention has become conventional wisdom.
...His magazine is not the only way that the younger Mr. Kristol's influence is delivered to the White House. In June 1997 he formed the Project for a New American Century, which issued papers supporting essentially unilateralist efforts to police the world. It was a call to arms that compelled neoconservatives, who say that America is best protected by exporting its values, but it also stirred people with allegiances to traditional conservatism, who have generally had more isolationist impulses and who have been wary about using American troops to patrol the world.
...Signers at the time included many people who are now in a position of power, including Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, along with others with a more neoconservative impulse, including Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle, who heads the Defense Policy Board, which advises the Pentagon.
...Western Europe, nestled beneath the nuclear wing of the last remaining superpower, has developed a naive belief in a new, post-conflict paradigm that was somehow inherently secure. America, he postulated, lived in a harsher, more traditional, Hobbesian world of threat and military power. He tartly concluded that "Americans are from Mars and Europeans are from Venus." The Weekly Standard is Mars central.
(NYT
Monday, March 10, 2003
Castro's Take
These are hard times we are living in. In recent months, we have more than once heard chilling words and statements. In his speech to West Point graduating cadets on June 1 2002, the United States president declared: "Our security will require transforming the military you will lead, a military that must be ready to strike at a moment's notice in any dark corner of the world."
That same day, he proclaimed the doctrine of the pre-emptive strike, something no one had ever done in the political history of the world. A few months later, referring to the unnecessary and almost certain military action against Iraq, he said: "And if war is forced upon us, we will fight with the full force and might of the United States army."
That is what we are: dark corners of the world. That is the perception some have of the third world nations. Never before had anyone offered a better definition; no one had shown such contempt. The former colonies of powers that divided the world among them and plundered it for centuries today make up the group of underdeveloped countries.
(The Guardian)
For further reading go to Castro Speech Database and click on "Ingles" for the English version.
These are hard times we are living in. In recent months, we have more than once heard chilling words and statements. In his speech to West Point graduating cadets on June 1 2002, the United States president declared: "Our security will require transforming the military you will lead, a military that must be ready to strike at a moment's notice in any dark corner of the world."
That same day, he proclaimed the doctrine of the pre-emptive strike, something no one had ever done in the political history of the world. A few months later, referring to the unnecessary and almost certain military action against Iraq, he said: "And if war is forced upon us, we will fight with the full force and might of the United States army."
That is what we are: dark corners of the world. That is the perception some have of the third world nations. Never before had anyone offered a better definition; no one had shown such contempt. The former colonies of powers that divided the world among them and plundered it for centuries today make up the group of underdeveloped countries.
(The Guardian)
For further reading go to Castro Speech Database and click on "Ingles" for the English version.
NODINE'S RESPONSE
Dear Dom,
The bottom line is that we have a moral obligation to the Cuban people who have been oppressed under communism a "chance" at freedom. That chance comes in only one way my friend, and that is the power of the greatest nation on earth, the United States of America. I grew up in a very dominate Cuban-American community in south Florida and have more experience with the torture, oppressed and murderous side of Castro, not the eye opening experience of arts and culture as you Bob and Wendell ( God, how much rum was sucked down that night!) have had with your trips. I was 17 years old when my cousin and I made a trip to Miami to help with the boatlift. I witnessed first hand true ethnic cleansing by Castro, insuring most of the Black Cubans whom had been held as political prisoners be sent to Key West so his communist regime could be filled with more " light skinned Cubans" Reference your letter regarding cameras and how far the regime has come, it is because of human rights abuses, murder and domination. Dom, you mention in your e-mail about how Cuba is not " dominated". I am wondering why in the world would a woman jump in an intertube with a 7 year old boy and float across shark infested waters just for a taste of freedom? Elian. The United States has a policy regarding an embargo on trade and travel, not arts and culture exchanges. That is why I have, and always will support the sister city relationship as well as your work in the Cuban towards human rights and humanitarian aid. I will not trade my freedom for the sake of a 57 Chevy and a Cigar. The question to ask is have eight United States Presidents, Congress been wrong on the embargo? As far as a shrill, no nothing attitude, Dom your the lawyer, not me! Much Love Brother! Stephen
Dear Dom,
The bottom line is that we have a moral obligation to the Cuban people who have been oppressed under communism a "chance" at freedom. That chance comes in only one way my friend, and that is the power of the greatest nation on earth, the United States of America. I grew up in a very dominate Cuban-American community in south Florida and have more experience with the torture, oppressed and murderous side of Castro, not the eye opening experience of arts and culture as you Bob and Wendell ( God, how much rum was sucked down that night!) have had with your trips. I was 17 years old when my cousin and I made a trip to Miami to help with the boatlift. I witnessed first hand true ethnic cleansing by Castro, insuring most of the Black Cubans whom had been held as political prisoners be sent to Key West so his communist regime could be filled with more " light skinned Cubans" Reference your letter regarding cameras and how far the regime has come, it is because of human rights abuses, murder and domination. Dom, you mention in your e-mail about how Cuba is not " dominated". I am wondering why in the world would a woman jump in an intertube with a 7 year old boy and float across shark infested waters just for a taste of freedom? Elian. The United States has a policy regarding an embargo on trade and travel, not arts and culture exchanges. That is why I have, and always will support the sister city relationship as well as your work in the Cuban towards human rights and humanitarian aid. I will not trade my freedom for the sake of a 57 Chevy and a Cigar. The question to ask is have eight United States Presidents, Congress been wrong on the embargo? As far as a shrill, no nothing attitude, Dom your the lawyer, not me! Much Love Brother! Stephen
CHILDREN INTERROGATED BY CIA
Two young sons of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the suspected mastermind of the September 11 attacks, are being held by the CIA to force their father to talk, interrogators said yesterday.
Yousef al-Khalid, 9, and his brother, Abed al-Khalid, 7, were taken into custody in Pakistan in September when intelligence officers raided an apartment in Karachi where their father had been hiding.
He fled just hours before the raid, but his two young sons, along with another senior al Qaeda member, were found cowering behind a clothes closet in the apartment.
The boys have been held by the Pakistani authorities, but this weekend they were flown to America, where they will be questioned about their father.
(Washington Times, Suggested by Paul Whitehurst)
Two young sons of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the suspected mastermind of the September 11 attacks, are being held by the CIA to force their father to talk, interrogators said yesterday.
Yousef al-Khalid, 9, and his brother, Abed al-Khalid, 7, were taken into custody in Pakistan in September when intelligence officers raided an apartment in Karachi where their father had been hiding.
He fled just hours before the raid, but his two young sons, along with another senior al Qaeda member, were found cowering behind a clothes closet in the apartment.
The boys have been held by the Pakistani authorities, but this weekend they were flown to America, where they will be questioned about their father.
(Washington Times, Suggested by Paul Whitehurst)
LETTER FROM COUNCILMAN NODINE
I got this email from my friend and city councilmember Steve Nodine
Missed the party but look forward to the Cuban Fiesta this week. Opposed to Castro but loving of the arts and culture exchange between our sister city!
My Response:
I went to Russia in 1979. A few of the things that I remember as striking were the very things that I was awed about when I went to Cuba. One of those is that for all of our supposed education and sophistication, you can't discount how much we all come to subsume our national viewpoint. We undergo institutionalization and come to believe, no matter how right or left, liberal, conservative, vegetarian, lesbian, or whatever you are - a general picture about ourselves and our relationships with other places. This comes to us served through our mostly vicarious experiences, like the news and entertainment media (lately one and the same). I found both places to be nothing like I imagined them and the people not to be in the state of mind that I supposed them to be.
If we have internalized nationalistic views, imagine the inhabitants of other places that have also been cut off by distance, lack of a "free press", privation, or education. Remember the wall? Who built the wall? Why? When I went to Russia I found that, first of all, the big bear we had all been propagandized to fear so much was on its last legs. I knew this by looking at the bleak existence that the people were living. At the goods, and their shoddyness and the fact that the system was ripping at its seams, primarily because everything was being diverted to silly military campaigns. I knew that from sharing my experiences with the Russians with whom we spoke. They considered themselves Russian's first and love their country but they were open to ideas and economic change.
Without meaning to, I probably caused more harm to the system when I spoke of having my own newspaper to a young communist who bragged about the CPUSA having a newspaper here. "Anyone can have a newspaper there," I told him, and he was incredulous. When we paid with our credit cards he wondered how that could be. The jeans he was willing to pay $300 for on the black market, we told him we could buy for $30. Reagan would later be instrumental in pushing them over the edge but it was my little satchel charge of information about how our system works that softened the way. There was millions of tourists laying the groundwork for Glasnost and Peristroika.
When you say that you are "opposed to Castro" you must mean the man and not the country or its people. You've probably missed a great opportunity to be rid of him. I think we have lost an opportunity to help some people who were suffering, help ourselves, and to see some good positive changes in Cuba. On my first trip to Cuba the country had been suffering five years of an economic depression that rivaled our own of 1929. You remember, people so driven by privation that they float over on an ice chest, children so hungry that they were going blind. The country was like a fighter on the ropes, struggling to regain its composure, breath, and vision. Dissent and grumbling was everywhere. About a third of the people hated Castro, a third still loved him, and a third just wanted something to improve and didn't care if you called it Capitalism or Fred. (Membership in the Communist Party in this country was at its peak during the Depression.) Things started to improve on my four subsequent trips and by 2002 the middle ground had shifted to the government's side. If anything, the virulent anti Castro sentiment is, at the very least, underground or has moved to Miami.
In 1995, the normal life there had been bleak. Even Minrex was reusing paper to give us as passes. The cops on the street did not even have the basics. Now, it looks like a regular consumer society, thanks to the Germans, Mexicans, Spanish, French and Canadians. That's the good news. The bad news is that the last time I was in the Plaza de Armas I saw one of those little cameras that we put up on Dauphin Street. The last time I was there I could tell that the cops were tracking me (suspected black marketeer) via those little lapel radios our cops use to talk to each other. If you talk to the "middle class" Cuban (Yes, they are there.) his or her concerns sound like those of the Springhillian. Crime is increasing and the average Cuban is now happy to see a cop on every corner (and one in the middle) and no longer sees it as anything but for their own protection.
"Castro" grows stronger every day. It is ridiculous to think that the leadership rules only through domination. Ask the hardline communists Wendell Quimby, Joe Thomas and Bob Donlon what they saw there. Ask other Mobilians who have gone over if we aren't screwing up in more ways than one. But, more to the point, why do you insist on missing out on an opportunity to win them over to your point of view or to have some actual experiences upon which to base your opinion? Don't want to go there and give that awful regime your hard-earned cash. Gee, okay. But, at least talk to others and let some of them come here - and quit adopting this shrill "no. nothing." attitude.
(PS I am posting this on my weblog. If you would like to respond, please do so and I will post it.)
I got this email from my friend and city councilmember Steve Nodine
Missed the party but look forward to the Cuban Fiesta this week. Opposed to Castro but loving of the arts and culture exchange between our sister city!
My Response:
I went to Russia in 1979. A few of the things that I remember as striking were the very things that I was awed about when I went to Cuba. One of those is that for all of our supposed education and sophistication, you can't discount how much we all come to subsume our national viewpoint. We undergo institutionalization and come to believe, no matter how right or left, liberal, conservative, vegetarian, lesbian, or whatever you are - a general picture about ourselves and our relationships with other places. This comes to us served through our mostly vicarious experiences, like the news and entertainment media (lately one and the same). I found both places to be nothing like I imagined them and the people not to be in the state of mind that I supposed them to be.
If we have internalized nationalistic views, imagine the inhabitants of other places that have also been cut off by distance, lack of a "free press", privation, or education. Remember the wall? Who built the wall? Why? When I went to Russia I found that, first of all, the big bear we had all been propagandized to fear so much was on its last legs. I knew this by looking at the bleak existence that the people were living. At the goods, and their shoddyness and the fact that the system was ripping at its seams, primarily because everything was being diverted to silly military campaigns. I knew that from sharing my experiences with the Russians with whom we spoke. They considered themselves Russian's first and love their country but they were open to ideas and economic change.
Without meaning to, I probably caused more harm to the system when I spoke of having my own newspaper to a young communist who bragged about the CPUSA having a newspaper here. "Anyone can have a newspaper there," I told him, and he was incredulous. When we paid with our credit cards he wondered how that could be. The jeans he was willing to pay $300 for on the black market, we told him we could buy for $30. Reagan would later be instrumental in pushing them over the edge but it was my little satchel charge of information about how our system works that softened the way. There was millions of tourists laying the groundwork for Glasnost and Peristroika.
When you say that you are "opposed to Castro" you must mean the man and not the country or its people. You've probably missed a great opportunity to be rid of him. I think we have lost an opportunity to help some people who were suffering, help ourselves, and to see some good positive changes in Cuba. On my first trip to Cuba the country had been suffering five years of an economic depression that rivaled our own of 1929. You remember, people so driven by privation that they float over on an ice chest, children so hungry that they were going blind. The country was like a fighter on the ropes, struggling to regain its composure, breath, and vision. Dissent and grumbling was everywhere. About a third of the people hated Castro, a third still loved him, and a third just wanted something to improve and didn't care if you called it Capitalism or Fred. (Membership in the Communist Party in this country was at its peak during the Depression.) Things started to improve on my four subsequent trips and by 2002 the middle ground had shifted to the government's side. If anything, the virulent anti Castro sentiment is, at the very least, underground or has moved to Miami.
In 1995, the normal life there had been bleak. Even Minrex was reusing paper to give us as passes. The cops on the street did not even have the basics. Now, it looks like a regular consumer society, thanks to the Germans, Mexicans, Spanish, French and Canadians. That's the good news. The bad news is that the last time I was in the Plaza de Armas I saw one of those little cameras that we put up on Dauphin Street. The last time I was there I could tell that the cops were tracking me (suspected black marketeer) via those little lapel radios our cops use to talk to each other. If you talk to the "middle class" Cuban (Yes, they are there.) his or her concerns sound like those of the Springhillian. Crime is increasing and the average Cuban is now happy to see a cop on every corner (and one in the middle) and no longer sees it as anything but for their own protection.
"Castro" grows stronger every day. It is ridiculous to think that the leadership rules only through domination. Ask the hardline communists Wendell Quimby, Joe Thomas and Bob Donlon what they saw there. Ask other Mobilians who have gone over if we aren't screwing up in more ways than one. But, more to the point, why do you insist on missing out on an opportunity to win them over to your point of view or to have some actual experiences upon which to base your opinion? Don't want to go there and give that awful regime your hard-earned cash. Gee, okay. But, at least talk to others and let some of them come here - and quit adopting this shrill "no. nothing." attitude.
(PS I am posting this on my weblog. If you would like to respond, please do so and I will post it.)
Sunday, March 09, 2003
Losses, Before Bullets Fly
As one savvy official observed, occupying Baghdad comes at an "unpardonable expense in terms of money, lives lost and ruined regional relationships." Another expert put it this way: "We should not march into Baghdad. . . . To occupy Iraq would instantly shatter our coalition, turning the whole Arab world against us, and make a broken tyrant into a latter-day Arab hero . . . assigning young soldiers to a fruitless hunt for a securely entrenched dictator and condemning them to fight in what would be an unwinnable urban guerrilla war. It could only plunge that part of the world into even greater instability."
(NYT OpEd Suggested by Chris Marston)
As one savvy official observed, occupying Baghdad comes at an "unpardonable expense in terms of money, lives lost and ruined regional relationships." Another expert put it this way: "We should not march into Baghdad. . . . To occupy Iraq would instantly shatter our coalition, turning the whole Arab world against us, and make a broken tyrant into a latter-day Arab hero . . . assigning young soldiers to a fruitless hunt for a securely entrenched dictator and condemning them to fight in what would be an unwinnable urban guerrilla war. It could only plunge that part of the world into even greater instability."
(NYT OpEd Suggested by Chris Marston)
Just War — or a Just War?
By Jimmy Carter
Profound changes have been taking place in American foreign policy, reversing consistent bipartisan commitments that for more than two centuries have earned our nation greatness. These commitments have been predicated on basic religious principles, respect for international law, and alliances that resulted in wise decisions and mutual restraint. Our apparent determination to launch a war against Iraq, without international support, is a violation of these premises.
(NYT OpEd)
By Jimmy Carter
Profound changes have been taking place in American foreign policy, reversing consistent bipartisan commitments that for more than two centuries have earned our nation greatness. These commitments have been predicated on basic religious principles, respect for international law, and alliances that resulted in wise decisions and mutual restraint. Our apparent determination to launch a war against Iraq, without international support, is a violation of these premises.
(NYT OpEd)
Some Evidence on Iraq Called Fake
A key piece of evidence linking Iraq to a nuclear weapons program appears to have been fabricated, the United Nations' chief nuclear inspector said yesterday in a report that called into question U.S. and British claims about Iraq's secret nuclear ambitions.
(Washington Post)
A key piece of evidence linking Iraq to a nuclear weapons program appears to have been fabricated, the United Nations' chief nuclear inspector said yesterday in a report that called into question U.S. and British claims about Iraq's secret nuclear ambitions.
(Washington Post)
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