Powell's On NOW..9:40 am

Needless to say, I am not in the least bit surprised. Anyone who has followed this issue and/or studied the Iraqis' behavior over the past two decades should not have been surprised. It is perfectly in character for the Baathists and Saddam to carry on with their weapons programs and spit at the world community when asked about them.

It will be a quick war. Actually, it may make the Gulf War I look protracted by comparison. The whole world will be better off afterwards as well - except for possibly France, Germany, Russia, and China, who all stand to lose out on huge petro and armaments deals with Saddam's government. Tough s* for them.

We're going.

As for timing, early to mid-March. Our troops will be in place and acclimatized by then. Although the air campaign may begin a bit earlier...

 

I agree. I am but a citizen, too. What do we know? But what will ever make me un"confused."

It boils down to faith, for us citizens. I told you Powell couldn't convince you with satellite images of VX test tubes.

Achebe, coming straight out and say you are against any war like France and wish you were french and could point at the superpower and be cool with your romantic sexy culture.

Don't imply you are a citizen who ever could be convinced for war.

Saying no war is a vaild .... is a very valid stance. I just don't see an imperialistic oil motive or a revenge-monger motive because they crashed a plane into my war room, office building thing going on.

no war until provocation is my feelings, too. but i just don't share the ulterior imperialistic motives with you on this,, no matter if I like Bush or not.

I probably can't make my beliefs very clear in hangout posts, though. Oh well.

 

It is important to see how Powell has acted in the past, when he has been a "good soldier".

****************************************
Making the case for war
Only by swallowing big lies can Powell justify an invasion of Iraq


We know in advance that Colin Powell's performance will be flawless. His military career has prepared him well to execute the orders of his commander in chief, no matter what his doubts as to their morality, efficacy or logic. Making a seamless case for preemptive war on Iraq to the United Nations, the secretary of State can draw on his decade of wartime experience in which he publicly justified the deaths of more than a million Vietnamese, tens of thousands of Americans and hundreds of thousands of Laotians and Cambodians.
It took two decades for Powell, in his autobiography "My American Journey," to acknowledge that all the destruction brought down upon Indochina by the U.S. was based on an uneducated, unfocused and enormously costly policy that he and other military leaders had known to be "bankrupt."

Powell's silence on Vietnam

So I guess we should wonder if Powell actually believes what he said today or he is just being a "good soldier" for his boss, Bush II.?

 

He believes the intercepted transmissions...he believes the satellite images...he believes all of the evidence he showed the world this morning.

I guess if they launched a nuke at LA you'd still not believe it until the thing exploded at Hollywood and Vine.

 

glynch...this statement belittles this whole point in history by trying to attach it to some previous age, lame ass skirmish during the Cold War.

250,000 soldiers are being mobilized.

this is no Noriega skirmish.

These Generals do no OK this stuff based on some President wanting oil.

I'm sorry.

Your faith in believing Powell is lying for imperialistic reasons (much less being a friggin Yes man to Bush) is way way
way weaker than my faith in the Army not starting a very serious and very complicated and very deadly campaign based on Halliburton lobbiests.

imo, this Army has learned its lesson about allowing politicians to dictate war to it.

 

That was weak evidence in my opinion. I am not saying that the evidence Powell brought was fakes or anything but I was just dissapointed with the sattelite photos who could be showing anything and then that phone call didn't really say anything. The only reason any of the evidence made any sense was that Powell continuisly told us what we were seeing and hearing. That was weak.

And as far as the link to Al-Qaeda it was a statement no one have a chance to know is right or wrong. It is probably right but I am just not ready to trust the Bush administration a 100%. You all seem very pleased with the evidence Powell laid forward but is there any way of knowing if they could be wrong or even worse not telling the truth. I will look forward to when experts from the UN will get the chance to look carefully at the evidence and give their verdict.

But I am afraid that war is upon us. I just don't hope it will trigger something uncontrollable.

 

A little more info on Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi and the Al-Queda-Iraq link; also some troubling info on the Quatari Royal Family and Al-Queda:

Intelligence Break Led U.S. to Tie Envoy Killing to Iraqi Qaeda Cell
By PATRICK E. TYLER
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/06/international/middleeast/06QAED.html


UNITED NATIONS, Feb. 5 — An intelligence breakthrough in the last several weeks made it possible for Secretary of State Colin L. Powell to set forth the first evidence of what he said was a well developed cell of Al Qaeda operating out of Baghdad that was responsible for the assassination of the American diplomat Laurence Foley last October.

The breakthrough was the work of a coalition of intelligence services from the United States, Britain, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, according to a senior official from one of the coalition countries.

The Qaeda network based in Iraq has operated for the last eight months under the supervision of Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian of Palestinian origin who is also a veteran of the Afghan war against the former Soviet Union, Mr. Powell said.

Critical information about the network emerged from interrogations of captured cell members conducted under unspecified circumstances of psychological pressure, the coalition official said. But a lucky break also figured prominently — a satellite phone conversation gave away the location of a Qaeda operative, Mr. Zarqawi's deputy, driving out of Iraq.

Until about three weeks ago, Mr. Powell was said to be reluctant to go before the Security Council with a case connecting Al Qaeda with the Iraqi leadership. "Colin did not want to be accused of fabricating or stretching the truth," a coalition official said.

That all changed, the official said, when the interrogation of Mr. Zarqawi's deputy began to yield the first detailed account of the network's operations in Iraq, the Middle East and Europe.

The network was planning terrorist attacks in a half dozen European countries, Mr. Powell said, adding that recent police raids in France and Britain, where one police officer was killed, stem from the disruption of the Iraq-based network. About 116 operatives have been connected to it, he said.

When all the shards of intelligence came together today, along with new information on Iraq's secret programs to develop chemical, biological and nuclear weapons, Mr. Powell's presentation was a more detailed and well-documented bill of particulars than many had expected.

Mr. Powell said that after Mr. Zarqawi fought against the Soviets, he returned to Afghanistan at the peak of Mr. bin Laden's influence in 2000 and ran a training camp. His leg injury during the allied military campaign in 2001 may have been serious enough for amputation by the time he reached Baghdad.

An expert in poisons and chemical weapons, Mr. Zarqawi is believed to have been providing training to the extremist group Ansar al-Islam. The group is based in northeastern Iraq in territory that is neither under the control of the Baghdad regime nor the main Kurdish groups that have divided up most of northern Iraq.

Soon after Mr. Zarqawi arrived, Mr. Powell said, "nearly two dozen extremists converged on Baghdad and established a base of operations there."

He continued, "These Al Qaeda affiliates, based in Baghdad, now coordinate the movement of people, money and supplies into and throughout Iraq for his network, and they are now operating freely in the capital for more than eight months."

Coalition officials said that no group could operate in this manner without deep engagement with Iraq's ubiquitous intelligence services.

Mr. Powell withheld some critical details today, like the discovery by the intelligence agencies that a member of the royal family in Qatar, an important ally providing air bases and a command headquarters for the American military, operated a safe house for Mr. Zarqawi when he transited the country going in and out of Afghanistan.

The Qatari royal family member was Abdul Karim al-Thani, the coalition official said. The official added that Mr. al-Thani provided Qatari passports and more than $1 million in a special bank account to finance the network.

Mr. al-Thani, who has no government position, is, according to officials in the gulf, a deeply religious member of the royal family who has provided charitable support for militant causes for years and has denied knowing that his contributions went toward terrorist operations.

Private support from prominent Qataris to Al Qaeda is a sensitive issue that is said to infuriate George J. Tenet, the director of central intelligence. After the Sept. 11 attacks, another senior Qaeda operative, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, who may have been the principal planner of the assault on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, was said by Saudi intelligence officials to have spent two weeks in late 2001 hiding in Qatar, with the help of prominent patrons, after he escaped from Kuwait.

But with Qatar providing the United States military with its most significant air operations center for action against Iraq, the Pentagon has cautioned against a strong diplomatic response from Washington, American and coalition officials say.

The issue of whether Al Qaeda's terror network is linked with Iraq had been a contentious part of the debate over the justification for war. Some experts have sought to undermine the Bush administration's rationale for war by asking how a war against Iraq relates to the Sept. 11 terror attacks. The administration's theory is that the threat from Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction could merge with the large-scale terror tactics of Al Qaeda to pose an unacceptable threat.

The unraveling of the Qaeda story in Iraq, still under way, took on some of the drama of an espionage thriller when, following the murder of Mr. Foley, the Qaeda deputy to Mr. Zarqawi suffered a lapse of communications discipline, a coalition official said. As he drove across northern Iraq to the Turkish and Syrian frontiers, he could not resist using his satellite phone to call Mr. Foley's murderers to congratulate them and to tell them he was on his way to meet with them.

"The captured assassin says his cell received money and weapons from Zarqawi for that murder," Mr. Powell said. In December, Jordan said it had two men in custody who had confessed to killing Mr. Foley on the instructions of Mr. Zarqawi.

Western intelligence is withholding the name of the captured Zarqawi deputy. However, they swiftly detected the satellite phone signal and tracked the operative to Syria and then into Turkey, where he was arrested and transported to one of the interrogation centers that the C.I.A. is operating in the region.

The decision to identify Mr. Zarqawi, still at large in Iraq, as the leader of a Qaeda cell will put his life in jeopardy because Mr. Hussein has insisted that Baghdad has no links with Osama bin Laden's network.

"A half hour after Powell mentioned his name, I'll wager he disappears or is killed," said a coalition official, recalling the death in Baghdad in 2001 of the Palestinian terrorist Abu Nidal, after intelligence reports suggested than he might be activating his own terrorist network.

 

It didn't take long for folks such as yourself to pull a complete 180. For months, the anti-war segment has been touting Powell, with his reluctance to commit to an invasion, as the only trustworthy member of the Bush administration. Yet as soon as Powell outlines some concrete evidence that justifies taking out Saddam, the same people repeal their support of him immediately.

 

and maybe powell worships that stone owl god too, glynch.

you never cease to amaze me.

 

Well Cohen I actually had no intention to write anything directed at you in this post but I have done before so I understand why you would react like that to what I wrote. I was just writing what I thought of Powells evidence and not anything else I promise you!

I guess I have been so annoyed with the Bush administration that I have acted hostile towards you when you defended their actions every time. And I didn't really like the way you posted it just kind of irritated me so bad.

But my view on this war is that it could very well be the case that this is a justified war but the fact that the USA has wanted this war from the very beginning is sickening. There have been no alternatives to a massive invasion. Not one single proposal and that is not good enough IMO. Bush could only just tolerate the fact that the UN wanted inspectors in Iraq but Bush had already planned that all this could only end in a war! There have been troop gatherings for a long time now.

Bush is horny for war as a lot of people around him is. The Israelis want to get rid of Saddam and the oil companies want to secure the oil fields.

I feel that all the arguments laid forward by Bush and his men are just excuses for the fact that Bush wants a war and has wanted a war from the beginning. Well now you will get the war but what then? Shouldn't there be a debate of what to do after the war is over. How will we secure democracy? Is it a given that we want democracy? How will we help the civilian people in Iraq to get just a reasonable life in the future? How will we secure the oil fields in the surrounding countries? How will we better the relashionship between the western world and the middle east?

Well if we get rid of Saddam it will certainly be a good thing but how can Bush and co. be so sure that war is the only solution. Is it because he is extremely narrowminded or has he got hidden agendas?

So Cohen I guess I have just directed my suspicion towards Bush on to you. I will stop that now.

 

If that happened, I travel to Baghdad and thank Saddam Hussein personally!

 

Well Cohen I now see where you stand in all this. I think it would be interesting to hear your take on why Bush wants a war. Are you completely dismissing that Bush has other reasons to go to war than that Saddam causes an immediate thread to the USA and that it doesn't matter that we risk both economic and political stability in the world for this great course.

The great opposition towards the war in Europe is not because we don't agree that Saddam is a man that we would be better without, but IMO it is coming from the fact that Bush has wanted this war a little too much from the beginning. It is almost like the fact that Saddam has MDW is being an excuse for other things. Bush has wanted this war no matter what the current situation is in Iraq. I think this all reminds people a little too much of the words "american imperialism". Just a few moths ago it would be unthinkable to find any serious journalist over here writing anyhting about american imperialism but now it is a common argument in the papers and news media when war on Iraq is being discussed.

About Powell and his role in all this, I have been a little shocked to see how easy many people is manipulated by the strategies of the Bush administration. I mean I surely cannot be the only one who think about how nicely all the statements from the Bush administration fit into a bigger plan.

You have the troublemaker Rumsfeld who is coming with some really strong words towards anyone questioning US policy (France, Germany for example.) This to me clearly looks like an attempt cause to trouble in the debate in these countries and to make a statement to the americans that the US are the ones doing the right things.

Then you have Powell whose role is to raise US credibility in Europe and the UN. He is never using strong words or calling anyone out. He is the diplomat and that is why he was chosen to bring forward the evidence in the UN.

Then you have Bush who when he is talking about war on Iraq just repeats himself over and over. He reminds so much of when everything was about fighting communism. Everything was looked at how it fit into the fight against communism. After 9/11 everything has been about war on terror and to secure the US against attacks. Well to be honest there have been no solid proof that Iraq had anything to do with 9/11 so getting rid of Saddam will not prevent a new 9/11 IMO. But Bush doesnt care about this he just wants to be on the safe side no matter what the costs.

To me it surely looks like the roles of everyone of importance is being orchestrated like a theater play. That is why I don't buy into all this praising of Powell. He is doing what he is told to do and he is doing ít well but it is all just part of a higher plan to justify war IMO.

And last but not least I don't think the chances of any of the four wishes you have for the war is likely to happen but wouldn't it be nice if just one of these things would happen. I just don't think Bush and Co. will do enough to make any of it happen, all I know is that Bush will have to change his attitude and take these discussions if he wants any credibility in my book.