im back. just in time for the fun i don't know if this exactly fits in here...but its ok im sure glynch won't mind too much. http://www.counterpunch.org/cockburn03052003.html Invasion by Cellphone; Why Let Facts Stop a Good War?; John Barry's Unfeted Scoop; More on Goldberg's "Journalism"; Hitchens: the Jampot File By ALEXANDER COCKBURN CounterPunch hears that the top 2,500 Iraqis have been getting calls on their cellphones from US intelligence officers telling them that if they lay down their arms when D-day comes they may escape trial for war crimes. One seasoned Iraqi hand tells us the US did the same thing in 1991, but that often the calls got screwed up. Few predict prolonged resistance. Estimates of the duration of any war range from 5 minutes to three weeks. But one CounterPuncher recalls Kim Philby, the KGB's double agent inside MI6, remembering that when Hitler invaded the Soviet Union upper-class buffers in Philby's London club all opined that it would be over in a week or so. Only one grizzled old clubman said it might take "three weeks or more". Philby added, "The silly old fool was right." Meanwhile we hear indirectly from a Pakistani high-up that the calculation from Taliban-symps in Islamabad is that when US attention is entirely deflected to Iraq and North Korea, the low level conflict currently ongoing in Afghanistan will amp up, with the Taliban reasserting itself more and more openly. This source said US forces were sustaining regular losses. On this last point we recall Charlie Clements once saying that the way the Pentagon played losses in Vietnam at one period was not to lie outright about casualties, but simply to trickle them out. Suppose you had 300 in one battle. You wouldn't announce that, but dole out 100 casualties a month in a low-key way. To our mind the most significant story of the season was the one by John Barry in a recent Newsweek. On February 24, Newsweek's issue dated March 3 reported that the Iraqi weapons chief who defected from the regime in 1995 told U.N. inspectors that Iraq had destroyed its entire stockpile of chemical and biological weapons and banned missiles, exactly as Iraq claims. Gen. Hussein Kamel, Saddam Hussein's former son in law who defected and who was killed shortly after returning to Iraq in 1996, was debriefed by officials from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and the U.N.inspections team, UNSCOM. Barry got hold of the transcript of that debriefing. Kemal told the inspectors, in Barry's words in Newsweek, "that after the Gulf War, Iraq destroyed all its chemical and biological weapons stocks and the missiles to deliver them. "All that remained were "hidden blueprints, computer disks, microfiches" and production molds. The weapons were destroyed secretly, in order to hide their existence from inspectors, in the hopes of someday resuming production after inspections had finished. The CIA and MI6 were told the same story, Barry reported, and "a military aide who defected with Kamel... backed Kamel's assertions about the destruction of WMD stocks." But these statements were "hushed up by the U.N. inspectors" in order to "bluff Saddam into disclosing still more." On February 26, FAIR reports, a complete copy of the Kamel transcript- an internal UNSCOM/IAEA document stamped "sensitive"-- was obtained by Glen Rangwala, the Cambridge University analyst who in early February revealed Tony Blair's "intelligence dossier" was plagiarized from a student thesis. Rangwala has posted the Kamel transcript on the Web: http://casi.org.uk/info/unscom950822.pdf. In other words Bush, Blair and rest have them have known perfectly well all along that there are no chemical and biological war stocks to be found. No one seriously maintains that Iraq has any nuclear capability. Barry's tremendous scoop in Newsweek was ignored by the mainstream press. Why let facts get in the way of a good war?
"Probally" so, Mensa. I love foreigners who learn everything they know from their liberal left-wing euro newspapers and think they're so much smarter than Americans.
boy: Are we to take seriously an article by counterpunch.org (an unabashedly leftist conspiracy theory site) stating that they have evidence that Iraq has already destroyed all of its WMD, and that the US is just lying to - what, just to take over Iraq's oil, I guess? Something tells me that we'd look pretty foolish if we rolled in there without knowing of the existence of Saddam's WMD. I personally can vouch that one of the first things we are going to do is seize as many of those nonexistent WMD that we can get our hands on, before Saddam can use said nonexistent WMD against anyone, as he has threatened to do. But I suppose that when said nonexistent WMD start turning up, counterpunch.org will simply produce "evidence" that it was planted there by us, no? BTW, the "evidence" on Kamel is just a little suspect. There's probably a reason that the mainstream press hasn't picked it up (perhaps it's false?). I think that Mango could probably shed some light on the Kamel defection if he felt in the mood.
Treeman, It is a NEWSWEEK article that counterpunch is referencing. Last time I checked, NEWSEEK is part of the mainstream press. BTW, I was going to post a link to the Newsweek article and the complete transcript of Kamel's UN interview earlier this week, but I am so completely burned out of the whole Bush's war with Iraq topic that I did not bother. To listen to the story, go here and listen to the second story. Rolf Ekeus claims that the US used the Kamel defection to claim many new discoveries about Iraq's WMD. The new discoveries were old news. Here is the Newsweek story. Here is the complete transcript of Kamel's UN interview.
No Worries: Go to IraqWatch.org. It is a nonpartisan monitoring organization that checks these issues. Search their database with the search words "Hueesin Kamel" in the category of UNSCOM documents. You will find a large number of links to official UN documents that highlight the destruction of Iraqi WMD and WMD sites *after* Kamel's defection (not to mention continued Iraqi deceit and shell-games). Obviously, unless we also control the UN and told them to lie about their activities, the Iraqis had *not* destroyed all of their WMD prior to Kamel's defection. This story is so bogus, I don't really know where to start. And again, why is no one else picking this up? Because it is false, and everyone with a brain or a basic understanding of internet search techniques knows it. Oh - www.iraqwatch.org I have posted this link before, but apparently no one here is really interested in actually learning the history and status of Iraq's WMD programs.
The response to the Ritter letter cracks me up. My sense was whatever insightful info he could have provided to the debate was lost becuase he's a li'l wacko. In his letter, Mr. Ritter himself admits that Iraq violated the UN sanctions “almost at will.” How he can say that and simultaneously assert that no UN resolutions were being violated is something only he understands. Ripped Ritter. http://www.iraqwatch.org/suppliers/Commentary-debate.htm
Read the links, No Worries. Rolf Ekeus is not the UN. Was UNSCOM just lying from 1995 to the creation of UNMOVIC? This story is garbage.
The problem with asking exiles their opinion is that they are exiles for a reason. The fact that they are exiles indicates they have a particulary bad relationship with their home country. I'm not saying their opinions are not valid or that they are not worth anything; they are both valid and valuable. However, I think there is a tendency to think the position exiles take is a window into the thoughts of Iraqis still living in Iraq and I think that is a dangerous assumption to make. People living in Iraq are going to be living in significantly different circumstances than Iraqis in exile: some for better, others for worse. Probably, exiles have a better idea of what their countrymen think than an American, but I wouldn't think their philosophies or self-interests were identical.
Again, Rolf Ekeus, the former executive chairman of UNSCOM, disagrees with your "story is garbage" line. And he certainly has first person knowledge of what Hussein Kamel did and did not say in his UNSCOM interview. Ekeus did make a point to not tell the Iraqis what Kamel disclosed, in order to bluff more information out of Saddam. Go to the real audio link here and hear Ekeus say this in his own words.
No Worries: Again, I have given you a link to official UN documents. Alot of documents. You give me a link to an unofficial interview with the former head of UNSCOM. Would you like me to give you some links to other former UNSCOM heads saying the opposite? Because they all contradict your story. Not one of them will say that Iraq's weapons were destroyed prior to 1995. Your response to my link: The UN is lying (this is the only thing that you can be implying). Rolf Ekeus is telling the truth. Sure. Right. Everyone in the UN has been lying for 7 years. Everyone except for Rolf Ekeus. Gotcha. Let me ask you a question: Do you honestly believe that all of Saddam's WMD were destroyed prior to 1995? Do you really believe it? Or are you just grasping at phantoms in order to justify an unjustifiable position?
Oh - and if they refused to disclose what Kamel told them in order to bluff more information out - how could they expect to do so if the Iraqis did not have anything left, as your "report" claims that Kamel told them? Bit of a logical faux pas, don't you think? Internal validity is a pain in the butt sometimes...
Treeman, it isn't about sample size, it is about a biased sample. If you want to know how well the average American knows his geography, you won't get an accurate picture by testing doctors, even 4 million of them. The difference in education makes them nonrepresentative. Likewise, Iraqi exiles are different from other Iraqis. They either hate the country or government, are persecuted or under threat of persecution, got kicked out, were starved out, were bought out, or otherwise left under conditions that would be considered unfriendly (obviously with exceptions). There is bound to be a specific conflict between most exiles and Iraq. So, they are not representative of the rest of the country (whose relationship to their country obviously has not gotten so bad that they had to leave). The rest of Iraq may actually feel the same way as exiles, but you can't know by asking the exiles. It's just a warning to remember that when we're talking about those 4 million people, we're talking about them and not necessarily the other 16 million.
It IS about the 'sample' size, but not from the perspective of the 'sample' but the 'population'. You're only focusing on whether the opinions of the 20% of the population who left would be the same as the 80% who are stuck there/did not want to leave. A more telling analysis would be: what % of an entire population wants the current regime removed when 20% of the population are willing (and able) to exile themselves from their homeland?
Another reason that France may not be supporting us is its large muslim population. Lots of muslims in france DD
That goes a good deal beyond a pretty simple point I was making. Certainly you can speculate and draw some conclusions from the fact the exile population is so large. But, it doesn't really speak to the point I was making: that you should not project anecdotal evidence from what exiles are saying onto the mindsets of those who are not exiled. You're implying that because 20% of the population has fled the country, it is probably because they are fleeing an oppressive government. That's more than likely true. However, when these exiles say the US should invade or not invade, or govern or not govern or whatever, they say it not as just an Iraqi but as an Iraqi exile. Maybe you don't find the warning interesting. I thought it was topical since we were debating what exiles really think. Personally, I don't care much about the exiles. If they are in exile, they aren't in nearly as much danger in war or peace as those still in that country. It's easy to say Bomb Baghdad when you're living in London. It's also easy to say leave the government of Iraq to Iraqis when you're living in London.
Ah ha!!! I was only saying that Rolf Ekeus is telling the truth about what Hussein Kamel had said. I never said that Ekeus believed Kamel. The Newsweek article stated that Kamel said in his UNSCOM interview that he ordered all WMD destroyed. The CIA disputes that Kamel said this. From http://www.middleeastreference.org.uk/kamel.html "Despite the significance of these claims, it was not known that Kamel made this assertion until February 2003. Kamel's claim was first carried on 24 February 2003 by Newsweek, who reported that Kamel told U.N. inspectors that Iraq had destroyed its entire stockpile of chemical and biological weapons and banned missiles, as Iraq claims (Newsweek, 3/3/03). Newsweek reported that the weapons were destroyed secretly, in order to hide their existence from inspectors, in the hopes of someday resuming production after inspections had finished. The CIA and MI6 were told the same story, Newsweek reported. ... CIA spokesman Bill Harlow angrily denied the Newsweek report. "It is incorrect, bogus, wrong, untrue," Harlow told Reuters the day the report appeared (Reuters, 24 February 2003). ... Kamel's defection has been cited repeatedly by President Bush and leading officials in both the UK and US as evidence that (1) Iraq has not disarmed; (2) inspections cannot disarm it; and (3) defectors such as Kamel are the most reliable source of information on Iraq's weapons. ... If Kamel is to be taken as seriously as the UK and US administrations have previously held him to be, then his claim that "[a]ll weapons - biological, chemical, missile, nuclear were destroyed" should be taken seriously."
I understand how it's anecdotal and how it is a skewed sample, but to mention those in a dismissive manner while not recognizing the magnitude of the exile population (and what that implies) seems misleading. And FWIW, they may be living in London or California, but reportedly (and logically) many have family back in Iraq.
