From: "bob scheetz" <rscheetz-AT-cboss.com> Subject: Re: spectacle v truth Date: Fri, 19 Dec 2003 00:45:17 -0500 Anthony Crifasi writes: > > If a bunch of people help you move out of your house, and then later you > reward all those people for helping you, does that mean you're punishing > everyone else who didn't help you? what bunch? micronesia, malaysia, el salvador, ...? gimme a break. "the coalition" is a propaganda fiction would have made stalin blush. the ridiculous brits alone, in their bleary fly-blown thatcher-ite imperial tatters, contributed, albeit a mere fraction, materially; and, they too have got near disregarded for their pains. the profiteering (mine and your tax money) has been, thanks to our pecksniffian veep, pretty exclusively the preserve of halliburton and, to a lesser extent, geo schultz's bechtel. and since niether halliburton nor bechtel contributed to the war effort either, why should their frank, german, rusky counterparts be considered any less (un)worthy the loot? > >19th cent think is to simplistic today, anthony; middle-men are essential > >to > >super-imperialism. it's just so much more efficient. give a handful of > >nabobs a decent cut to pillage the hubshi. remote control 's the thing, > >...off-shore, or 10 miles up. > > In that case, what the US would have done was leave Sadaam in power, ignore > the UN oil sanctions comlpetely, and simply buy much more oil from Iraq > >no, partners in crime. and now the senior partner assuming a high tone > >condemning the junior. > >nor was it saddam who turned on US; rather he got wise to the US dble game. > >recall, he exocet'd a navy ship in persian gulf killing large number of > >sailors during reagan's re-flagging of kuwaiti tankers crisis; but > >reagan-bush bided their time til iraq-iran war was over, even covered for > >the kurd genocide, and then proceeded to set him up for '91 gulf war. so > >the falsity/betrayal is all on the US side. > > And how exactly did the US "set him up" for the '91 gulf war? First of all, > the '91 gulf war was a UN led effort, and it is inconsistent to appeal to UN > judgment in the most recent case but ignore it in the previous case. > Secondly, as I recall, there was the slight issue of an invasion of Kuwait, > which would have almost doubled the percentage of the world's oil reserves > under Hussein's control. Given Hussein's affinity towards invading when free > to do so (which Iran knew well), it wasn't hard to project the resulting > Middle East picture a few decades into the future. normally the US would have been happy to go on doing bidness with saddam, as they had with the sha and so many others and continue to do; morality has historically weighted against friendship with washington (Putin's pacification of Grozny makes Halabja look venial, yet you'd never know it from his love affair with our selected cowboy in chief); but a judgement was made that saddam beyond a certain critical mass was unreliably subserviant; and so menachim begin in '82, clearly with US approval if not command, foreclosed his nukular prospects; and then the US dble game with iran denying him clear victory, etc., queered the realtionship for good. so a dicision was taken gamble on fresh blood. with the end of the war with iran saddam's iraq was exhausted, especially financially; and the price of oil had dropped disasterously for him. at the 1990 opec conference he requested a price and quota strategy to assist him with debt service. he had after all saved them, the oil sheiks, thru stanching revolutionary islamic fundamentalism in iran. inexplicably, the kuwaitis, who should logically have been the one most grateful and willing, not only refused, but insisted on increasing production. not only saddam saw this as willful provocation. his regime was in immanent danger of financial starvation and kuwait was bearing down even harder. reasonably he plainly warned them he'd have to break out (obvious parallel with oil/rubber starvation to provoke japan in ww2), and getting no response he began mobilizing and called in the US ambassador, April Glaspie, to check it out with US. she told him on instruction that washington had no position on arab-arab conflict. reasonably he took this for a green light and invaded. it was a trap, .... > Your list of coutries makes it sound like genuine Islam can only be like the > Islam of OBL and the Taliban and Iran. I hope that's not what you're saying, > because I know many devout Muslims who would take you to task. But we do > agree about britany and such - I'm not particularly fond of the effect > they've had on Christianity either. But that threat is a lesser danger than > the "Islam" of OBL and the Taliban. you're sure about that, anthony? a deracinated people is a forelorn spectacle, ...only consider the soul-less US, and then add medieval poverty. the pop of afghanistan is overwhelmingly not middle-class, tradition is nearly all the richesse their life has. > > Anthony Crifasi you know of course the weekly standard is thee rupert murdoch neo-con flagship. this "case closed" article has been disowned by the pentagon, cia, dia,... and subsequently even i think editor bill kristol. the memo was a product of the straussian office of special plans under douglas feith, charged to provide pretext for war even if none existed. bob --- from list heidegger-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
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