Would you pay $1 bn to save $1 trillion?
Guillermo el Gato
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article3010189.ece
"A transcript of an eve-of-war conversation between President George
Bush and former Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar has revealed a
previously undisclosed initiative to avert war in Iraq by spiriting
Saddam Hussein out of the country.
""Yes, it's possible," Mr Bush told the Spanish leader. "The Egyptians
are talking to Saddam Hussein ... He seems to have indicated he would
be open to exile if they would let him take one billion dollars and
all the information he wants on weapons of mass destruction.""
I'll be interested if this story gets legs in the US. I really doubt
it will.
Mary
> Not if you're President Bush:
>
> http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article3010189.ece
>
> "A transcript of an eve-of-war conversation between President George
> Bush and former Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar has revealed a
> previously undisclosed initiative to avert war in Iraq by spiriting
> Saddam Hussein out of the country.
>
> ""Yes, it's possible," Mr Bush told the Spanish leader. "The Egyptians
> are talking to Saddam Hussein ... He seems to have indicated he would
> be open to exile if they would let him take one billion dollars and
> all the information he wants on weapons of mass destruction.""
And let him go where? He could do a lot with a billion dollars.
> I'll be interested if this story gets legs in the US. I really doubt
> it will.
It seems like a really bad idea to give Saddam Hussein a billion bucks
and set him free. I'd have much preferred that if we wanted to save the
money from the war, that we simply not do it rather than reward the
little despot with our tax dollars.
Mary
Greg Goss
>> ""Yes, it's possible," Mr Bush told the Spanish leader. "The Egyptians
>> are talking to Saddam Hussein ... He seems to have indicated he would
>> be open to exile if they would let him take one billion dollars and
>> all the information he wants on weapons of mass destruction.""
>
>And let him go where? He could do a lot with a billion dollars.
>
>> I'll be interested if this story gets legs in the US. I really doubt
>> it will.
>
>It seems like a really bad idea to give Saddam Hussein a billion bucks
>and set him free. I'd have much preferred that if we wanted to save the
>money from the war, that we simply not do it rather than reward the
>little despot with our tax dollars.
It wouldn't be American tax dollars. The US was holding billions of
bucks in money earmarked as belonging to Iraq. If Saddam couldn't
find a billion from his own vaults, then a few of the Iraqi held funds
could have been released to him.
The airlift of billions of bucks to unaudited handing-out in Iraq has
been mentioned here a few times. Each time, I find thirty tons of
hundred dollar bills to be an astounding sum of money.
http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2007/10/iraq_billions200710
A small fraction of that could have been allocated for a peaceful
transfer of power. A billion for a clean hand-off or a trillion for a
disastrous mess. Which one spent more US tax dollars?
--
Tomorrow is today already.
Greg Goss, 1989-01-27
Mary
I'm not convinced that letting Saddam roam around with a billion dollars
wouldn't have led to further messes later on, though. This is not to
say that I believe in the war or think we should have invaded; I don't.
But if you really think, as many people do, that Saddam is someone who
shouldn't have power, money, and the instructions to build a nuclear
bomb, then this is not exactly a smoking gun.
Mary
Opus the Penguin
> Guillermo el Gato wrote:
>> Not if you're President Bush:
>>
>> http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article3010189.ece
>>
>> "A transcript of an eve-of-war conversation between President
>> George Bush and former Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar
>> has revealed a previously undisclosed initiative to avert war in
>> Iraq by spiriting Saddam Hussein out of the country.
>>
>> ""Yes, it's possible," Mr Bush told the Spanish leader. "The
>> Egyptians are talking to Saddam Hussein ... He seems to have
>> indicated he would be open to exile if they would let him take
>> one billion dollars and all the information he wants on weapons
>> of mass destruction.""
>
> And let him go where? He could do a lot with a billion dollars.
>
That's kind of where I came down. I saw an article about this a few
days back. I let out an expression of disgust at the headline. I
assumed it was just another botched opportunity by the Bush
administration. That's the path of least resistance.
But then I read that, in addition to the billion dollars, Saddam
wanted to take all his info on weapons of mass destruction as well.
It would take a different kind of total fool than George W. Bush to
agree to that.
Taken by itself, the story breaks in the president's favor. He made a
good decision, and he has a bit more evidence that Saddam was
actively seeking possession of weapons of mass destruction. So even
though we didn't find any, Bush can claim it was only a matter of
time. And I think he'd be right. That doesn't mean total invasion was
the only recourse back in 2003, of course.
Guillermo el Gato (just to keep the attributions straight) said:
>> I'll be interested if this story gets legs in the US. I really
>> doubt it will.
>
I don't see why it should get legs. Despite the "man bites dog"
aspect of George W. making a good decision, it's really a minor
story.
--
Opus the Penguin
"A honeybee may have the behavior for the waggle dance imprinted in
its DNA, but you aren't going to learn the Watusi that way." - S.
Checker
Guillermo el Gato
>Guillermo el Gato wrote:
>> Not if you're President Bush:
>>
>> http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article3010189.ece
>>
>> "A transcript of an eve-of-war conversation between President George
>> Bush and former Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar has revealed a
>> previously undisclosed initiative to avert war in Iraq by spiriting
>> Saddam Hussein out of the country.
>>
>> ""Yes, it's possible," Mr Bush told the Spanish leader. "The Egyptians
>> are talking to Saddam Hussein ... He seems to have indicated he would
>> be open to exile if they would let him take one billion dollars and
>> all the information he wants on weapons of mass destruction.""
>
>And let him go where?
French Riviera? Las Vegas?
> He could do a lot with a billion dollars.
That could buy a lot of hookers, whisky, and blow.
>
>> I'll be interested if this story gets legs in the US. I really doubt
>> it will.
>
>It seems like a really bad idea to give Saddam Hussein a billion bucks
>and set him free.
I don' think that "setting him free" would have had to have been in
the deal. "In exile" is the usual term.
I'd have much preferred that if we wanted to save the
>money from the war, that we simply not do it rather than reward the
>little despot with our tax dollars.
You're much too rational for this froup.
Boron Elgar
<opusthepen...@gmail.com> wrote:
>I don't see why it should get legs. Despite the "man bites dog"
>aspect of George W. making a good decision, it's really a minor
>story.
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/sfgate/detail?blogid=15&entry_id=20648
Boron
Guillermo el Gato
<opusthepen...@gmail.com> wrote:
>But then I read that, in addition to the billion dollars, Saddam
>wanted to take all his info on weapons of mass destruction as well.
>It would take a different kind of total fool than George W. Bush to
>agree to that.
Well, that's certainly correct. I'm real interested if the WMD claim
is also real, or just the excuse made up to cover the decision. If
you're a dictator, and you've seen the writing on the wall, don't you
think you'd try to play nice?
Something doesn't smell right about the claim that Saddam wanted to
take his WMD plans with him.
Raven-Poe
<snip>
> A small fraction of that could have been allocated for a peaceful
> transfer of power. A billion for a clean hand-off or a trillion for a
> disastrous mess. Which one spent more US tax dollars?
The problem with tribute money is that it's never just one payment: every
completed payment leads to ever increasing demands for more payment.
Appeasment sucks as a national policy.
It would beat defeat of course, but the mishandling of the anti-war
movement and it's role in securing a possible defeat for the US was hardly
a foregone conclusion: even at this late date, it's not decided.
John
Here, have 10 Opus Points (TM)
--
Remove the dead poet to e-mail.
Ask me about joining the NRA.
Greg Goss
>Greg Goss <go...@gossg.org> wrote:
><snip>
>> A small fraction of that could have been allocated for a peaceful
>> transfer of power. A billion for a clean hand-off or a trillion for a
>> disastrous mess. Which one spent more US tax dollars?
>
>The problem with tribute money is that it's never just one payment: every
>completed payment leads to ever increasing demands for more payment.
>Appeasment sucks as a national policy.
This is not tribute. You take away his country and let him keep a
small part of the country that he used to own. It isn't a trick that
he can easily repeat.
Baby Doc didn't take ANOTHER tranche of Haitian money. Idi never took
a second tranche of Uganda's money.
>
>It would beat defeat of course, but the mishandling of the anti-war
>movement and it's role in securing a possible defeat for the US was hardly
>a foregone conclusion: even at this late date, it's not decided.
Mishandling the anti-war guys is the only mistake that your goofballs
made? Let me know when you're interested in reality again.
Igor
Where was he going to go? Detroit?
Bill Turlock
>
> On Sun, 30 Sep 2007 13:12:23 GMT, Mary <mrfea...@aol.com> wrote:
>
> >Guillermo el Gato wrote:
> >> Not if you're President Bush:
> >>
> >> http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article3010189.ece
> >>
> >> "A transcript of an eve-of-war conversation between President George
> >> Bush and former Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar has revealed a
> >> previously undisclosed initiative to avert war in Iraq by spiriting
> >> Saddam Hussein out of the country.
> >>
> >> ""Yes, it's possible," Mr Bush told the Spanish leader. "The Egyptians
> >> are talking to Saddam Hussein ... He seems to have indicated he would
> >> be open to exile if they would let him take one billion dollars and
> >> all the information he wants on weapons of mass destruction.""
> >
> >And let him go where?
>
> French Riviera? Las Vegas?
>
> > He could do a lot with a billion dollars.
>
> That could buy a lot of hookers, whisky, and blow.
Esqs., L.L.P.
Mary
Denny Crane.
Mary
Bill Bonde ( 'Hi ho' )
Saddam wanted a billion dollars and all the information he could get on
WMDs? That's a great plan, that's bin Laden with a billion dollars and
all the information on WMDs.
--
"Throw me that lipstick, darling, I wanna redo my stigmata."
+-Jennifer Saunders, "Absolutely Fabulous"
Bill Bonde ( 'Hi ho' )
Mary wrote:
>
> It seems like a really bad idea to give Saddam Hussein a billion bucks
> and set him free. I'd have much preferred that if we wanted to save the
> money from the war, that we simply not do it rather than reward the
> little despot with our tax dollars.
>
Saddam had a billion dollars, certainly, squirreled away. Why he didn't
have it hidden outside Iraq, I don't know. In the end, Saddam played the
same hand he had always played, push a Bush too far, get your ass
kicked.
tooloud
No, it's not nearly as simple as you're trying to make it. And George Bush
sucks.
--
tooloud
Remove nothing to reply
groo
http://www.koco.com/news/14213305/detail.html
--
i'm in ur kitchin eatin ur horsemeet.
bill van
ra...@westnet.poe.com (Raven-Poe) wrote:
> Greg Goss <go...@gossg.org> wrote:
> <snip>
> > A small fraction of that could have been allocated for a peaceful
> > transfer of power. A billion for a clean hand-off or a trillion for a
> > disastrous mess. Which one spent more US tax dollars?
>
> The problem with tribute money is that it's never just one payment: every
> completed payment leads to ever increasing demands for more payment.
But he's got no more leverage. What he had was control, more or less,
over Iraq. If he has sold that for $1 billion, he has nothing more to
sell. So no more payments. If he finds some other way to cause trouble,
he'll be a lot easier to assassinate on the Riviera than in Baghdad.
> Appeasment sucks as a national policy.
Okay, let's say you could look into the future and your choice was to
buy out this uncouth dictator for $1 billion with no loss of life, or to
spend $500 billion and counting, with something over 100,000 dead
including thousands of young Americans, and counting?
>
--
bill
bill van
Opus the Penguin <opusthepen...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Mary (mrfea...@aol.com) wrote:
>
> > And let him go where? He could do a lot with a billion dollars.
>
> That's kind of where I came down. I saw an article about this a few
> days back. I let out an expression of disgust at the headline. I
> assumed it was just another botched opportunity by the Bush
> administration. That's the path of least resistance.
> But then I read that, in addition to the billion dollars, Saddam
> wanted to take all his info on weapons of mass destruction as well.
> It would take a different kind of total fool than George W. Bush to
> agree to that.
All his info on WMD, it turned out, was reports packed full of lies by
bureaucrats who were afraid to tell him they no longer had the capacity
to make WMD. Even if he took how-to information with him, what could he
do with it, lacking a national scientific establishment and
manufacturing facilities to make them, and a military capability to
deliver them?
>
> Taken by itself, the story breaks in the president's favor. He made a
> good decision, and he has a bit more evidence that Saddam was
> actively seeking possession of weapons of mass destruction. So even
> though we didn't find any, Bush can claim it was only a matter of
> time. And I think he'd be right.
But Iraq's capability was devolving. They were not approaching the
ability to make WMD, they were losing it. They had only remnants left of
what they'd had a decade earlier.
--
bill
Bill Bonde ( 'Hi ho' )
Probably France.
Opus the Penguin
That's surely a possibility.
--
Opus the Penguin
"My suspension of disbelief is currently in a coma." - groo
Opus the Penguin
> In article <Xns99BB68107E544op...@127.0.0.1>,
> Opus the Penguin <opusthepen...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Mary (mrfea...@aol.com) wrote:
>>
>> > And let him go where? He could do a lot with a billion
>> > dollars.
>>
>> That's kind of where I came down. I saw an article about this a
>> few days back. I let out an expression of disgust at the
>> headline. I assumed it was just another botched opportunity by
>> the Bush administration. That's the path of least resistance.
>
>> But then I read that, in addition to the billion dollars, Saddam
>> wanted to take all his info on weapons of mass destruction as
>> well. It would take a different kind of total fool than George W.
>> Bush to agree to that.
>
> All his info on WMD, it turned out, was reports packed full of
> lies by bureaucrats who were afraid to tell him they no longer had
> the capacity to make WMD.
What's your source on that? Was that known at the time that Saddam's
offer was on the table? If not, could it have been known with better
intelligence?
> Even if he took how-to information with
> him, what could he do with it, lacking a national scientific
> establishment and manufacturing facilities to make them, and a
> military capability to deliver them?
I dunno. Does a billion dollars not buy what it used to?
>> Taken by itself, the story breaks in the president's favor. He
>> made a good decision, and he has a bit more evidence that Saddam
>> was actively seeking possession of weapons of mass destruction.
>> So even though we didn't find any, Bush can claim it was only a
>> matter of time. And I think he'd be right.
>
> But Iraq's capability was devolving. They were not approaching the
> ability to make WMD, they were losing it. They had only remnants
> left of what they'd had a decade earlier.
>
Again, is that something you feel a better intelligence community
with a better president could and should have known?
If it had been known, do you think a competent, wise president would
have made the deal with Saddam? So far I'm not convinced. At all. I
think any president who made that deal would have justly invited the
ire of the people. There would (and should) have been Senate hearings
to find out just what kind of deal had been made and just how illegal
it was.
To repeat, rejecting the deal does not make Bush a competent, wise
president. It just makes him a different kind of total fool than the
total fool who would have pursued the deal.
--
Opus the Penguin
"Am I the only one here who smells Chinese Freedom Wall?" - Robert
Goodman
K_S_ONeill
wrote:
> bill van (bill...@shaw.chopchop.ca) wrote:
> > In article <Xns99BB68107E544opusthepenguinnet...@127.0.0.1>,
> > Opus the Penguin <opusthepenguin+use...@gmail.com> wrote:
I don't know that I understand your objections all that well. For
example, from my extensive watching of The West Wing, I am given to
understand that dictators always ask for a billion dollars and to take
out fifty armed personal guards, and that the response is to laugh and
to tell them they can take out a quarter million, their immediate
family and they get a guarantee of safe passage and a public will-not-
harm promise from us as long as they stay on the estate in Syria, say.
Now, that would have been an excellent example of useful
brinksmanship. We dispose of a dictator, we cut out the heart of the
badness in Iraq, we spend precious little money, we drop no bombs (to
be completely accurate, we stop the bombing we were doing under
Clinton and then Bush II), Iraq is far less in tatters than it was
when we had to roll over an army to get in, no matter how useless the
army was it was still an army we had to shoot up, I mean, what's the
downside here? Boot his ass, for god's sake. Make the offer public,
put some pressure on him, sit on the border and growl for a month,
he'd have flinched, I bet.
Then we let the UN run some elections, and since we didn't bomb the
hell out of the place we aren't on the hook for fixing everything in
the miserable godforsaken dirtyassed useless fucking chunk of desert,
let the people who want to live there sell the oil, buy some power
plants, and tell them not to let any more crazy people into power.
What's the downside?
--
Kevin
Opus the Penguin
The part where Saddam has tons of money to fund Al Qaeda and good
reason to do so?
--
Opus the Penguin
"Most of us don't store much fat in our heads." - bill van
Dover Beach
news:Xns99BB9397EB6E7op...@127.0.0.1:
>> All his info on WMD, it turned out, was reports packed full of
>> lies by bureaucrats who were afraid to tell him they no longer had
>> the capacity to make WMD.
>
> What's your source on that? Was that known at the time that Saddam's
> offer was on the table? If not, could it have been known with better
> intelligence?
>
Foreign Affairs, May/June 2006.
--
Dover
bill van
Opus the Penguin <opusthepen...@gmail.com> wrote:
> bill van (bil...@shaw.chopchop.ca) wrote:
>
> > In article <Xns99BB68107E544op...@127.0.0.1>,
> > Opus the Penguin <opusthepen...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >> Mary (mrfea...@aol.com) wrote:
> >>
> >> > And let him go where? He could do a lot with a billion
> >> > dollars.
> >>
> >> That's kind of where I came down. I saw an article about this a
> >> few days back. I let out an expression of disgust at the
> >> headline. I assumed it was just another botched opportunity by
> >> the Bush administration. That's the path of least resistance.
> >
> >> But then I read that, in addition to the billion dollars, Saddam
> >> wanted to take all his info on weapons of mass destruction as
> >> well. It would take a different kind of total fool than George W.
> >> Bush to agree to that.
> >
> > All his info on WMD, it turned out, was reports packed full of
> > lies by bureaucrats who were afraid to tell him they no longer had
> > the capacity to make WMD.
>
> What's your source on that? Was that known at the time that Saddam's
> offer was on the table? If not, could it have been known with better
> intelligence?
It was widely reported some time after the invasion. I don't know
whether that was known outside Iraqi government circles before the
invasion.
> > Even if he took how-to information with
> > him, what could he do with it, lacking a national scientific
> > establishment and manufacturing facilities to make them, and a
> > military capability to deliver them?
>
> I dunno. Does a billion dollars not buy what it used to?
>
Probably not. But it never bought a functional economy with lots of
infrastructure and a capable military for a mid-sized country.
Especially when the recipient is exiled from that country, and there's
no ongoing oil and tax revenue to top up the treasury.
>
> >> Taken by itself, the story breaks in the president's favor. He
> >> made a good decision, and he has a bit more evidence that Saddam
> >> was actively seeking possession of weapons of mass destruction.
> >> So even though we didn't find any, Bush can claim it was only a
> >> matter of time. And I think he'd be right.
> >
> > But Iraq's capability was devolving. They were not approaching the
> > ability to make WMD, they were losing it. They had only remnants
> > left of what they'd had a decade earlier.
>
> Again, is that something you feel a better intelligence community
> with a better president could and should have known?
Without going into full search mode and reading the collected speeches
of Hans Blix, I think the intelligence community knew very well that WMD
capabilities were largely destroyed in the Gulf War bombing, and that
Iraq had halted its nuclear program in 1991. I don't know how organized
or complete or dependable this information was. I think that whether
secret work was under way to rebuild, and to what extent remnants
remained in hidden places, was not fully known.
It was certainly compatible with what Blix and the inspectors were
reporting -- that they had found nothing yet by way of nuclear, chemical
or biological weapons, and that they were confident they were getting
enough cooperation from Iraq that, given time, they could find the
nooks, crannies and filing cabinets they hadn't inspected yet. You
recall what happened, though. Their information and intelligence
information to the same effect was discounted, and anything that pointed
to the presence of weapons was "enhanced."
> If it had been known, do you think a competent, wise president would
> have made the deal with Saddam? So far I'm not convinced. At all. I
> think any president who made that deal would have justly invited the
> ire of the people. There would (and should) have been Senate hearings
> to find out just what kind of deal had been made and just how illegal
> it was.
In that context, hindsight is everything. Imagine the deal was made and
there was no war, but Iraq continued to be annoying in some ways. No one
would be able to look into an alternate universe and realize 100,000
deaths and half a trillion in spending had been averted.
>
> To repeat, rejecting the deal does not make Bush a competent, wise
> president. It just makes him a different kind of total fool than the
> total fool who would have pursued the deal.
That decision was made when the U.S. was on the verge of invasion.
Assuming there was such an offer, it was just Saddam trying to save his
ass when it became clear the U.S. was serious and he was not going to
remain in charge. He wouldn't have offered such a deal in earlier times,
I think. By the time the deal was apparently on the table, the U.S. had
determined to wipe out his regime and remake the political balance in
the Middle East.
--
bill
Charles Bishop
K_S_ONeill <K_S_O...@yahoo.com> wrote:
[snip]
>
>I don't know that I understand your objections all that well. For
>example, from my extensive watching of The West Wing, I am given to
>understand that dictators always ask for a billion dollars and to take
>out fifty armed personal guards, and that the response is to laugh and
>to tell them they can take out a quarter million, their immediate
>family and they get a guarantee of safe passage and a public will-not-
>harm promise from us as long as they stay on the estate in Syria, say.
>
>Now, that would have been an excellent example of useful
>brinksmanship. We dispose of a dictator, we cut out the heart of the
>badness in Iraq, we spend precious little money, we drop no bombs (to
>be completely accurate, we stop the bombing we were doing under
>Clinton and then Bush II), Iraq is far less in tatters than it was
>when we had to roll over an army to get in, no matter how useless the
>army was it was still an army we had to shoot up, I mean, what's the
>downside here? Boot his ass, for god's sake. Make the offer public,
>put some pressure on him, sit on the border and growl for a month,
>he'd have flinched, I bet.
>
>Then we let the UN run some elections, and since we didn't bomb the
>hell out of the place we aren't on the hook for fixing everything in
>the miserable godforsaken dirtyassed useless fucking chunk of desert,
>let the people who want to live there sell the oil, buy some power
>plants, and tell them not to let any more crazy people into power.
>What's the downside?
I'm behind you all the way, but . . .and it's a big one, what do you think
Iraq would have been like with Saddam gone? If the US can't make elections
happen, what would the UN be able to do? Saddam's bureauracy is still in
place, I assume the army is under its control, or that of his lackeys, so
there is perhaps hope for a more stable country than we have now, but do
you really think the majority Shia are going to let things go on as
before?
Admittedly, we are in the fray, and that's all to the good, but what would
the result have been?
charles, with three moves of the chessmen, there are two many
alternatives, and that butterfly is stil there, bishop
Charles Bishop
van <bil...@shaw.chopchop.ca> wrote:
>In article <Xns99BB9397EB6E7op...@127.0.0.1>,
> Opus the Penguin <opusthepen...@gmail.com> wrote:
[snip]
>
>> If it had been known, do you think a competent, wise president would
>> have made the deal with Saddam? So far I'm not convinced. At all. I
>> think any president who made that deal would have justly invited the
>> ire of the people. There would (and should) have been Senate hearings
>> to find out just what kind of deal had been made and just how illegal
>> it was.
>
>In that context, hindsight is everything. Imagine the deal was made and
>there was no war, but Iraq continued to be annoying in some ways. No one
>would be able to look into an alternate universe and realize 100,000
>deaths and half a trillion in spending had been averted.
And, of course, history is no help.
--
charles
bill van
<ctbishop-300...@dialup-4.246.39.38.dial1.sanjose1.level3.net>
,
ctbi...@earthlink.net (Charles Bishop) wrote:
How would you have used it in this context?
--
bill
K_S_ONeill
wrote:
Did you read the part where I mused on how perhaps Saddam would have
taken less than his first foray indicated? How much trouble could he
have caused on an estate in Syria or Egypt, not in charge of a country
any more?
--
Kevin
Opus the Penguin
Yes.
> How much trouble
> could he have caused on an estate in Syria or Egypt, not in charge
> of a country any more?
>
How likely was he to abide by such an agreement? How easy is it to
funnel money from there to Al Qaeda? I'm betting it could be done.
--
Opus the Penguin
"Some days there isn't enough herring in the world to give you the
smack you're asking for." - Veronique
K_S_ONeill
> In article <1191182322.880963.291...@d55g2000hsg.googlegroups.com>,
I don't know. If we fucked up how things should have gone after we
invaded, we can be presumed to have had a good chance at fucking up a
better but still not ideal situation, sure. I would like better the
precedent set by buying out a dictator and retiring him to a villa,
and working on the problem of transitioning a country from a
dictatorship to a democracy. The Shia were a minority in power. The
best parallel I can think of is South Africa. Truth and
Reconciliation Commissions might have been a reasonable thing to think
about. General advice from South Africa might have been a reasonable
thing to think about. Getting some help in general would have been
good.
> Admittedly, we are in the fray, and that's all to the good, but what would
> the result have been?
I don't know. But it's a better starting position than we had, and a
lot fewer people dead.
> charles, with three moves of the chessmen, there are two many
> alternatives, and that butterfly is stil there, bishop
More than two, eh? But sure, life is complicated. Make smart moves,
take the center squares, don't kill a lot of people if you can help
it. General principles for reasonable game play have to take over.
--
Kevin
because even the very wise cannot see all ends.
Charles Bishop
van <bil...@shaw.chopchop.ca> wrote:
>In article
><ctbishop-300...@dialup-4.246.39.38.dial1.sanjose1.level3.net>
>,
> ctbi...@earthlink.net (Charles Bishop) wrote:
>
>> In article <billvan-E12C4D...@shawnews.vc.shawcable.net>, bill
>> van <bil...@shaw.chopchop.ca> wrote:
>>
>> >In article <Xns99BB9397EB6E7op...@127.0.0.1>,
>> > Opus the Penguin <opusthepen...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> [snip]
>> >
>> >> If it had been known, do you think a competent, wise president would
>> >> have made the deal with Saddam? So far I'm not convinced. At all. I
>> >> think any president who made that deal would have justly invited the
>> >> ire of the people. There would (and should) have been Senate hearings
>> >> to find out just what kind of deal had been made and just how illegal
>> >> it was.
>> >
>> >In that context, hindsight is everything. Imagine the deal was made and
>> >there was no war, but Iraq continued to be annoying in some ways. No one
>> >would be able to look into an alternate universe and realize 100,000
>> >deaths and half a trillion in spending had been averted.
>>
>> And, of course, history is no help.
>
>How would you have used it in this context?
Don't get involved in a land war in Asia^W the Middle East.
--
charles
D.F. Manno
> I don't know that I understand your objections all that well. For
> example, from my extensive watching of The West Wing, I am given to
> understand that dictators always ask for a billion dollars and to take
> out fifty armed personal guards, and that the response is to laugh and
> to tell them they can take out a quarter million, their immediate
> family and they get a guarantee of safe passage and a public will-not-
> harm promise from us as long as they stay on the estate in Syria, say.
>
> Now, that would have been an excellent example of useful
> brinksmanship. We dispose of a dictator, we cut out the heart of the
> badness in Iraq, we spend precious little money, we drop no bombs (to
> be completely accurate, we stop the bombing we were doing under
> Clinton and then Bush II), Iraq is far less in tatters than it was
> when we had to roll over an army to get in, no matter how useless the
> army was it was still an army we had to shoot up, I mean, what's the
> downside here? Boot his ass, for god's sake. Make the offer public,
> put some pressure on him, sit on the border and growl for a month,
> he'd have flinched, I bet.
>
> Then we let the UN run some elections, and since we didn't bomb the
> hell out of the place we aren't on the hook for fixing everything in
> the miserable godforsaken dirtyassed useless fucking chunk of desert,
> let the people who want to live there sell the oil, buy some power
> plants, and tell them not to let any more crazy people into power.
> What's the downside?
The downside is that it doesn't achieve the intended purpose of the Iraq
war. It doesn't set the stage for the grand democratic makeover of the
Middle East, it doesn't satisfy blood lust, and it doesn't secure the
oil fields.
--
D.F. Manno | dfm...@mail.com
The America I believe in does not torture people.
The America I believe in does not run secret prisons.
The America I believe in would shut down Guantanamo Bay.
(Amnesty International USA)
D.F. Manno
Opus the Penguin <opusthepen...@gmail.com> wrote:
> The part where Saddam has tons of money to fund Al Qaeda and good
> reason to do so?
Hussein was a secularist, al Qaeda is not. Hussein wasn't out to restore
the Caliphate, he was just in it for the power and the money. If he got
the billion, not a nickel would have gone to al Qaeda.
D.F. Manno
> The problem with tribute money is that it's never just one payment: every
> completed payment leads to ever increasing demands for more payment.
Being out of power and in exile, Hussein would have no leverage for
demand additional money.
> Appeasment sucks as a national policy.
>
> It would beat defeat of course, but the mishandling of the anti-war
> movement and it's role in securing a possible defeat for the US was hardly
> a foregone conclusion: even at this late date, it's not decided.
Only on Planet Raven.
K_S_ONeill
wrote:
What's the downside?
>
> >> The part where Saddam has tons of money to fund Al Qaeda and good
> >> reason to do so?
>
> > Did you read the part where I mused on how perhaps Saddam would
> > have taken less than his first foray indicated?
>
> Yes.
Ok. When do you think he was convinced we were invading and he was
going to lose? I mean, maybe he was nuts, maybe he wouldn't have
taken it, but he did end up dead. If he saw that coming, a quarter
million US and a small estate in Syria and a web page where he can
rant to his heart's content might have sounded pretty good to him.
>
> > How much trouble
> > could he have caused on an estate in Syria or Egypt, not in charge
> > of a country any more?
>
> How likely was he to abide by such an agreement?
Well, once he's gone he's not in charge of Iraq, there's no 'will he
abide'. Put him somewhere where he feels safe but where we can
monitor his communications, something like that.
> How easy is it to
> funnel money from there to Al Qaeda? I'm betting it could be done.
What money is this? I wouldn't let him take enough to be trouble. If
you're thinking he could do fund raising, well, I guess. Monitor his
communications. A Saddam in Syria or Pakistan or wherever in an
estate where the US has an ear on his phone and internet
communications sounds like a de-fanged Saddam, to me.
--
Kevin
bill van
We're agreed on that. But the discussion is much narrower than that: if
such a deal was really offered by Saddam, would you/I/we have made it?
If you use history to answer that question, there a lot of past tyrants
who made such deals and were never heard from again.
Then the trick would be to lean on the next guy to act a bit more
reasonably. If that was the goal. I don't think it was.
--
bill
bill van
Opus the Penguin <opusthepen...@gmail.com> wrote:
> How likely was he to abide by such an agreement? How easy is it to
> funnel money from there to Al Qaeda? I'm betting it could be done.
Saddam had no ties with Al Qaeda. His secular regime and the Islamic
fundamentalists were not on the same side.
I'm also thinking, by offering the deal, he has declared what he is. Now
we just dicker about his price. So, in return for his life, no mass
bombing of his country, a quiet exile and much less money than demanded,
he goes away.
If it doesn't work out, not very much harm has been done, and you still
have the military threat in reserve.
--
bill
Bill Turlock
Rcd by email today:
""
HOW IT WORKS
Three contractors are bidding to fix a broken fence at the White
House in D.C.; one from New Orleans , another from Tennessee
and the third, from Florida. They go with a White House official
to examine the fence.
The Florida contractor takes out a tape measure and does some
measuring, then works some figures with a pencil. "Well", he
says, "I figure the job will run about $900: $400 for materials,
$400 for my crew and $100 profit for me."
The Tennessee contractor also does some measuring and figuring,
then says, "I can do this job for $700: $300 for materials, $300
for my crew and $100 profit for me."
The Looziana contractor doesn't measure or figure, but leans over
to the White House official and whispers, " $2,700."
The official, incredulous, says, "You didn't even measure like
the other guys! How did you come up with such a high figure?"
The Cajun contractor whispers back, "$1000 for me, $1000 for you,
and we hire the guy from Tennessee to fix the fence."
"Done!" replies the government official.
And that friends, is how it all works!
""
bill van
Bill Turlock <"Bill Turlock "@sonnnic.invalid> wrote:
> Rcd by email today:
>
> HOW IT WORKS
>
> Three contractors are bidding to fix a broken fence at the White
> House in D.C.; one from New Orleans , another from Tennessee
> and the third, from Florida. They go with a White House official
> to examine the fence.
>
> The Florida contractor takes out a tape measure and does some
> measuring, then works some figures with a pencil. "Well", he
> says, "I figure the job will run about $900: $400 for materials,
> $400 for my crew and $100 profit for me."
>
> The Tennessee contractor also does some measuring and figuring,
> then says, "I can do this job for $700: $300 for materials, $300
> for my crew and $100 profit for me."
>
> The Looziana contractor doesn't measure or figure, but leans over
> to the White House official and whispers, " $2,700."
>
> The official, incredulous, says, "You didn't even measure like
> the other guys! How did you come up with such a high figure?"
>
> The Cajun contractor whispers back, "$1000 for me, $1000 for you,
> and we hire the guy from Tennessee to fix the fence."
>
> "Done!" replies the government official.
>
> And that friends, is how it all works!
>
Nice. You figure that's how they're rebuilding New Orleans?
--
bill
Bill Turlock
Maybe, but it's just as valid for the organization that pays off
Saddam to retire. Problem is, there isn't enough to go around,
so... we gotta make a trillion $ war.
Charles Bishop
van <bil...@shaw.chopchop.ca> wrote:
I was replying to
"No one would be able to look into an alternate universe and realize 100,000
deaths and half a trillion in spending had been averted."
Going to war there was likely to cost, in deaths and money (and current
history confirms this). I don't think there is anyone competent who
wouldn't have predicted that. History of the region, and of recent wars
helps predict that. If Iraq continues to be annoying after the deal, then
war isn't the answer, assuming that "annoying" doesn't involve WMDs or
nuclear attacks, and I don't think it would.
Of course, if the outcome to Saddam leaving is complete chaos and
genocide, that's another decision.
>
>Then the trick would be to lean on the next guy to act a bit more
>reasonably. If that was the goal. I don't think it was.
No, it wasn't.
--
carles
groo
That would be the best-case scenario. It is well established that much of
the rebuilding is going through a Russian-doll-like series of sub-, sub-
sub-, sub-sub-sub-contractors (repeat as deep as you can stomach). This
quite often results in the final sub^n-contractor operating on a slim
margin and being marginally capable or totally incapable of doing an
adequate job. And virtually everyone in the chain having someone else to
point at as being the cause of the problem.
I believe the Bush administration calls this "privatization". Louisiana
politicians probably call it "the way we've always done things down
here".
--
i'm in ur kitchin eatin ur sausages.
Mary
Yeah, but Kevin, the problem is that Bartlet isn't really in the White
House. Bush is. Also, you'd be relying on the ruler of Syria or Egypt
to confine him to his estate. Would that be wise?
Mary
Peter Boulding
<Xns99BBAFEDED63994...@207.115.33.102>:
2. Nothing special about Louisiana reconstruction: exactly the same system
is in use both in Iraq and elsewhere. But in any case,
1. *What* Louisiana reconstruction?
--
Regards
Peter Boulding
p...@UNSPAMpboulding.co.uk (to e-mail, remove "UNSPAM")
Fractal music & images: http://www.pboulding.co.uk/
Peter Boulding
wrote in
<ctbishop-300...@dialup-4.246.39.38.dial1.sanjose1.level3.net>:
>Of course, if the outcome to Saddam leaving is complete chaos and
>genocide, that's another decision.
>>
>>Then the trick would be to lean on the next guy to act a bit more
>>reasonably. If that was the goal. I don't think it was.
>
>No, it wasn't.
It is now. At least for the US strategists who are currently arming and
supplying intelligence to Sunni clans, and especially to the Neocons who
have of late been scheming to put Allawi back in power. (And they'd settle
for another Saddam if that's what he turned out to be. *Anyone* who agreed
neither to badmouth Israel too much nor to give China and India preference
on oil exploitation would do.)
Mary
Silly. The Superdome. What else?
Mary
Opus the Penguin
> Opus the Penguin <opusthepenguin+use...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> How easy is it to funnel money from there to Al Qaeda? I'm
>> betting it could be done.
>
> What money is this? I wouldn't let him take enough to be trouble.
Then you're changing the whole hypothetical. What is your evidence
that Saddam would have left for pocket change?
--
Opus the Penguin
"I dunno, maybe I'll remember and be coherent, later." - Charles
Bishop
Bill Turlock
>
> On Sun, 30 Sep 2007 17:08:05 -0700, ctbi...@earthlink.net (Charles Bishop)
> wrote in
> <ctbishop-300...@dialup-4.246.39.38.dial1.sanjose1.level3.net>:
>
> >Of course, if the outcome to Saddam leaving is complete chaos and
> >genocide, that's another decision.
> >>
> >>Then the trick would be to lean on the next guy to act a bit more
> >>reasonably. If that was the goal. I don't think it was.
> >
> >No, it wasn't.
>
> It is now. At least for the US strategists who are currently arming and
> supplying intelligence to Sunni clans, and especially to the Neocons who
> have of late been scheming to put Allawi back in power. (And they'd settle
> for another Saddam if that's what he turned out to be. *Anyone* who agreed
> neither to badmouth Israel too much nor to give China and India preference
> on oil exploitation would do.)
Hell, _I_ could do that! Some body armo(u)r and a hit squad, I'm
in business!
Bill "Me for President" Turlock (of Iraq), I wouldn't want it
here--too many warring factions.
Bob Ward
<opusthepen...@gmail.com> wrote:
>K_S_ONeill (K_S_O...@yahoo.com) wrote:
>> Opus the Penguin <opusthepenguin+use...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> How easy is it to funnel money from there to Al Qaeda? I'm
>>> betting it could be done.
>>
>> What money is this? I wouldn't let him take enough to be trouble.
>
>Then you're changing the whole hypothetical. What is your evidence
>that Saddam would have left for pocket change?
Jack Benny's "Your money or your life?"
Bob Ward
>
>Yeah, but Kevin, the problem is that Bartlet isn't really in the White
>House. Bush is. Also, you'd be relying on the ruler of Syria or Egypt
>to confine him to his estate. Would that be wise?
>
>Mary
How about a small estate in the south of Cuba?
K_S_ONeill
wrote:
> K_S_ONeill (K_S_ONe...@yahoo.com) wrote:
> > Opus the Penguin <opusthepenguin+use...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> >> How easy is it to funnel money from there to Al Qaeda? I'm
> >> betting it could be done.
>
> > What money is this? I wouldn't let him take enough to be trouble.
>
> Then you're changing the whole hypothetical. What is your evidence
> that Saddam would have left for pocket change?
Do you read what I write, at all? I said very clearly earlier that I
was basing my idea of how such things would go on my extensive viewing
of The West Wing.
Also, if Saddam understood that he was going to lose and that we were
going to kill him, which he may well have, a villa in Pakistan and
enough money to live comfortably on for the rest of his life might
seem like a good deal. Or he may not have take it, but we could have
tried.
--
Kevin
Bob Ward
<opusthepen...@gmail.com> wrote:
>Mary (mrfea...@aol.com) wrote:
>
>> Guillermo el Gato wrote:
>>> Not if you're President Bush:
>>>
>>> http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article3010189.ece
>>>
>>> "A transcript of an eve-of-war conversation between President
>>> George Bush and former Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar
>>> has revealed a previously undisclosed initiative to avert war in
>>> Iraq by spiriting Saddam Hussein out of the country.
>>>
>>> ""Yes, it's possible," Mr Bush told the Spanish leader. "The
>>> Egyptians are talking to Saddam Hussein ... He seems to have
>>> indicated he would be open to exile if they would let him take
>>> one billion dollars and all the information he wants on weapons
>>> of mass destruction.""
>>
>> And let him go where? He could do a lot with a billion dollars.
>>
>
>That's kind of where I came down. I saw an article about this a few
>days back. I let out an expression of disgust at the headline. I
>assumed it was just another botched opportunity by the Bush
>administration. That's the path of least resistance.
>
>But then I read that, in addition to the billion dollars, Saddam
>wanted to take all his info on weapons of mass destruction as well.
>It would take a different kind of total fool than George W. Bush to
>agree to that.
>
Nothin' from nothin' leaves nothin'...
either he had it or he didn't - unless he was a quantum despot.
Bob Ward
wrote:
Would he have access to the Home Shopping Network?
K_S_ONeill
> In article <Xns99BBAF103ECEAopusthepenguinnet...@127.0.0.1>,
> Opus the Penguin <opusthepenguin+use...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > How likely was he to abide by such an agreement? How easy is it to
> > funnel money from there to Al Qaeda? I'm betting it could be done.
>
> Saddam had no ties with Al Qaeda. His secular regime and the Islamic
> fundamentalists were not on the same side.
Right, but Opus is right in principle if not in the details. We have
to worry about him funding some group of bad actors somewhere if he
has the ability.
> I'm also thinking, by offering the deal, he has declared what he is. Now
> we just dicker about his price. So, in return for his life, no mass
> bombing of his country, a quiet exile and much less money than demanded,
> he goes away.
I would think so also, but it's hard to say. On the one hand he was
apparently a pretty good judge of what was and was not going to fly in
Iraq. On the other hand, he was apparently fucking delusional about
his own weapons programs. So it's possible, perhaps even likely, that
he would have thought he could ride out a US assault, and not realized
he was lost until it was too late. That's possible. That's likely,
even. But it's not certain, and it would have been a good thing to
try, and a fine model for future actions. Imagine if we could as a
rule evict dictators for a million bucks, a villa and a promise not to
kill them.
> If it doesn't work out, not very much harm has been done, and you still
> have the military threat in reserve.
Correct. But as has been pointed out, this doesn't leave Haliburton
in charge of the oil wells. I actually think that went into the
considerations, that important stuff like oil wells really can't be
trusted to how a bunch of Iraqis might vote. We're not that far from
Operation Ajax, even now.
--
Kevin
bill van
K_S_ONeill <K_S_O...@yahoo.com> wrote:
Which pretty much explains why the U.S. wouldn't take the deal.
--
bill
Glenn Dowdy
"K_S_ONeill" <K_S_O...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:1191210574.6...@19g2000hsx.googlegroups.com...
> On Sep 30, 6:33 pm, bill van <bill...@shaw.chopchop.ca> wrote:
>> In article <Xns99BBAF103ECEAopusthepenguinnet...@127.0.0.1>,
>> Opus the Penguin <opusthepenguin+use...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> > How likely was he to abide by such an agreement? How easy is it to
>> > funnel money from there to Al Qaeda? I'm betting it could be done.
>>
>> Saddam had no ties with Al Qaeda. His secular regime and the Islamic
>> fundamentalists were not on the same side.
>
> Right, but Opus is right in principle if not in the details. We have
> to worry about him funding some group of bad actors somewhere if he
> has the ability.
>
money, is he going to spend it on folks he doesn't like, knowing that if
it's traced back to him all deals are off, or is he going to use it to
maintain his hedonistic lifestyle for the rest of his life. If he doesn't
play nice with his billion dollars, another $50M in foreign aid to sic the
Mossad on him is peanuts. That could be made very clear up front.
Glenn D.
SourOldSeeReal
news:billvan-8373BE...@shawnews.vc.shawcable.net:
Oil is certainly a part of the equation, but I also think part of the
"problem" the US was facing (I put problem in quotes because it was of
their own making) was that the force that was put in place wasn't prepared
to stick around in a holding pattern while the details of a transfer of
power.
Partly this was due to what Rumsfeld and the Bush administration was
willing to finance. Adding another 3-6 months to the timeline would have
added several to tens of billions to the overall cost. OMB and the other
financial guys in the Bush administration wanted to avoid the spending,
while Rumsfeld didn't want funding diverted away from the less traditional
stuff he liked and to a conventional operation.
This dovetails into one of Rumsfeld's bureaucratic wars -- to hamstring
the traditional planning, coordinating, implementing and risk managing
parts of the Pentagon that accompanied conventional wars. A longer
deployment would require ceding more control (and therefore more
legitimacy) to the part of the Pentagon he was trying to bust up, as
forces needed to be resupplied, rotated, reequipped, etc.
Also, the hardcore Cheney side of the Administration wanted Chalabi in
power, but a negotiated removal of Saddam would have probably checkmated
that approach. Since the negotiations were going on with Egypt and
presumably other friendlish Arab states like Jordan, Chalabi most likely
would have been shut out if negotiations took place.
In addition, the hope of the Cheney wing was to avoid any long US
involvement in the nation building side of Iraq, and a negotiated
withdrawal of Saddam would have increased US ownership of Iraq. Plus,
negotiations would have offered the State Department an avenue of getting
into the process, and Rumsfeld and Cheney would absolutely not want that.
They were fuming that Bush had granted Powell his opportunity to make a
case before the UN, and they would explode if he and the State machinery
got involved.
I think the Cheney and Rumsfeld and OMB side at this point was able to
push a naturally impatient Bush over the edge with the tiniest of pushes,
if he wasn't already there.
Here is where you can insert all of the incredible ironies about where all
of this thinking (and lack of thinking) led.
xho...@gmail.com
> On Sep 30, 5:13 pm, Opus the Penguin <opusthepenguin+use...@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>
> > How easy is it to
> > funnel money from there to Al Qaeda? I'm betting it could be done.
>
> What money is this? I wouldn't let him take enough to be trouble.
Heck, if I were in charge Saddam would have paid me a billion dollars to
allow him to hang himself. I'm just that good of a negotiator. Vote for
Me.
Xho
--
-------------------- http://NewsReader.Com/ --------------------
The costs of publication of this article were defrayed in part by the
payment of page charges. This article must therefore be hereby marked
advertisement in accordance with 18 U.S.C. Section 1734 solely to indicate
this fact.
Veronique
> "K_S_ONeill" <K_S_ONe...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
Surely a billion in gold, dropped from a height, would have solved the
ethical dilemma.
V.
--
Veronique Chez Sheep
K_S_ONeill
> K_S_ONeill <K_S_ONe...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> > On Sep 30, 5:13 pm, Opus the Penguin <opusthepenguin+use...@gmail.com>
> > wrote:
>
> > > How easy is it to
> > > funnel money from there to Al Qaeda? I'm betting it could be done.
>
> > What money is this? I wouldn't let him take enough to be trouble.
>
> Heck, if I were in charge Saddam would have paid me a billion dollars to
> allow him to hang himself. I'm just that good of a negotiator. Vote for
> Me.
Your sarcasm is duly noted. But if he'd been convinced that what was
in fact going to happen was in fact going to happen, surely he'd have
taken a quiet retirement and the hope of causing trouble at some point
over being dragged out of a hole in the ground and fitted for a
noose? The problem is convincing him to connect with reality. Ok,
he's not the only world leader for whom that's a problem. Still.
--
Kevin
Lee Ayrton
> Guillermo el Gato wrote:
>>
>> Not if you're President Bush:
>>
>> http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article3010189.ece
>>
>> "A transcript of an eve-of-war conversation between President George
>> Bush and former Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar has revealed a
>> previously undisclosed initiative to avert war in Iraq by spiriting
>> Saddam Hussein out of the country.
>>
>> ""Yes, it's possible," Mr Bush told the Spanish leader. "The Egyptians
>> are talking to Saddam Hussein ... He seems to have indicated he would
>> be open to exile if they would let him take one billion dollars and
>> all the information he wants on weapons of mass destruction.""
>>
>> I'll be interested if this story gets legs in the US. I really doubt
>> it will.
>>
> Saddam wanted a billion dollars and all the information he could get on
> WMDs? That's a great plan, that's bin Laden with a billion dollars and
> all the information on WMDs.
there's room for doubt on that one. bin Laden was probably happy to
Saddam go, too.
--
"We began to realize, as we plowed on with the destruction of New Jersey,
that the extent of our American lunatic fringe had been underestimated."
Orson Wells on the reaction to the _War Of The Worlds_ broadcast.
Raven-Poe
> ra...@westnet.poe.com (Raven-Poe) wrote:
> >Greg Goss <go...@gossg.org> wrote:
> ><snip>
> >> A small fraction of that could have been allocated for a peaceful
> >> transfer of power. A billion for a clean hand-off or a trillion for a
> >> disastrous mess. Which one spent more US tax dollars?
> >
> >The problem with tribute money is that it's never just one payment: every
> >completed payment leads to ever increasing demands for more payment.
> >Appeasment sucks as a national policy.
> This is not tribute. You take away his country and let him keep a
> small part of the country that he used to own. It isn't a trick that
> he can easily repeat.
Just above, it seemed the billion was coming from the US trasurey. Now it
looks like you're thinking it's coming from the Iraqi treasury.
> Baby Doc didn't take ANOTHER tranche of Haitian money. Idi never took
> a second tranche of Uganda's money.
Yes, if it was just the money, then all we'd be risking by letting him go
is that he'd become another extra-national enemy of the US, much like bin
Laden. Of course, wanting to go with a Billion -and- whatever WMD secrets
he wanted to take with him, well, that would potentially make for a
nuclear, biological, or chemical weapon armed bin Laden type. Still more
than a bit of a risk.
> >It would beat defeat of course, but the mishandling of the anti-war
> >movement and it's role in securing a possible defeat for the US was hardly
> >a foregone conclusion: even at this late date, it's not decided.
> Mishandling the anti-war guys is the only mistake that your goofballs
> made? Let me know when you're interested in reality again.
I'm well in touch with it, but you're evidently not. Where in the above
did you see me type what you said I typed?
Get a grip son, you're trying to pretend that yoiu've got it together and
I'm the madman: ranting and raving at me about things I didn't say doesn't
do a very good job of that.
John
Here, have 10 Opus Points (TM)
--
Remove the dead poet to e-mail.
Ask me about joining the NRA.
Raven-Poe
> In article <46ffd18e$0$15909$6c5e...@news.westnet.com>,
> ra...@westnet.poe.com (Raven-Poe) wrote:
> > Greg Goss <go...@gossg.org> wrote:
> > <snip>
> > > A small fraction of that could have been allocated for a peaceful
> > > transfer of power. A billion for a clean hand-off or a trillion for a
> > > disastrous mess. Which one spent more US tax dollars?
> >
> > The problem with tribute money is that it's never just one payment: every
> > completed payment leads to ever increasing demands for more payment.
> But he's got no more leverage.
Sure, just Kile Osama bin Laden has no leverage...
> What he had was control, more or less,
> over Iraq. If he has sold that for $1 billion, he has nothing more to
> sell. So no more payments. If he finds some other way to cause trouble,
> he'll be a lot easier to assassinate on the Riviera than in Baghdad.
True, if he's kind enough to go there, but as we've seen, not every
individual that teh country would like to see dead turns up dead in short
order.
> > Appeasment sucks as a national policy.
> Okay, let's say you could look into the future and your choice was to
> buy out this uncouth dictator for $1 billion with no loss of life, or to
> spend $500 billion and counting, with something over 100,000 dead
> including thousands of young Americans, and counting?
If teh buy out ends up wioth nuclear armed terrorists, well, I think we
made a hell of a good bargain. Of course, the war may not go so well and
we may yet get the nuclear armed terrorists, but that's reality these
days.
Sure, if Sadam was a the warm & fuzzy dictator that we could all love,
doing nothing with his billion and WMD research but to try and blow
through it as fast as possible, I'd say that would be great. Further, if
the war goes tits up we are defeated, then it may also have been better to
just try to buy him off. I say "may" becuase the actions Sadaam would
have taken are not known.
Raven-Poe
> In article <46ffd18e$0$15909$6c5e...@news.westnet.com>,
> ra...@westnet.poe.com (Raven-Poe) wrote:
> > The problem with tribute money is that it's never just one payment: every
> > completed payment leads to ever increasing demands for more payment.
> Being out of power and in exile, Hussein would have no leverage for
> demand additional money.
Yeah, it's not as if individual actors have any effect on the national
scale, certanly That Osama guy, he had no effect.
Surely I'm not the -only- person who remebers 9-11?
Raven-Poe
> In article <46ffd18e$0$15909$6c5e...@news.westnet.com>,
> ra...@westnet.poe.com (Raven-Poe) wrote:
> > It would beat defeat of course, but the mishandling of the anti-war
> > movement and it's role in securing a possible defeat for the US was hardly
> > a foregone conclusion: even at this late date, it's not decided.
> Only on Planet Raven.
Heh. Weren't you the one who belittled claiming insanity on the part of
those who's opinons differ with you? Something about how you don't have
to counter the actual point and a comparison to Stalin IIRC. Does that
advice apply all the way around, or is it only sound when it happens to
bolster your side of an argument?
Raven-Poe
> In article <Xns99BBAF103ECEAop...@127.0.0.1>,
> Opus the Penguin <opusthepen...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > How likely was he to abide by such an agreement? How easy is it to
> > funnel money from there to Al Qaeda? I'm betting it could be done.
> Saddam had no ties with Al Qaeda.
False. His government had contacted al Qaeda before, and it's pretty
reasonably likely that they could again if they wanted to.
> His secular regime and the Islamic
> fundamentalists were not on the same side.
Though both were opposed to the same country.
> I'm also thinking, by offering the deal, he has declared what he is. Now
> we just dicker about his price. So, in return for his life, no mass
> bombing of his country, a quiet exile and much less money than demanded,
> he goes away.
Except he thought he could win. Indeed, if he had been a bit better at
hiding, he might have been able to pull it off.
> If it doesn't work out, not very much harm has been done, and you still
> have the military threat in reserve.
Yes, the military threat is oh so effective at extra-national threats....
Bill Bonde ( 'Hi ho' )
Lee Ayrton wrote:
>
> On Sun, 30 Sep 2007, Bill Bonde ( 'Hi ho' ) wrote:
>
> > Guillermo el Gato wrote:
> >>
> >> Not if you're President Bush:
> >>
> >> http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article3010189.ece
> >>
> >> "A transcript of an eve-of-war conversation between President George
> >> Bush and former Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar has revealed a
> >> previously undisclosed initiative to avert war in Iraq by spiriting
> >> Saddam Hussein out of the country.
> >>
> >> ""Yes, it's possible," Mr Bush told the Spanish leader. "The Egyptians
> >> are talking to Saddam Hussein ... He seems to have indicated he would
> >> be open to exile if they would let him take one billion dollars and
> >> all the information he wants on weapons of mass destruction.""
> >>
> >> I'll be interested if this story gets legs in the US. I really doubt
> >> it will.
> >>
> > Saddam wanted a billion dollars and all the information he could get on
> > WMDs? That's a great plan, that's bin Laden with a billion dollars and
> > all the information on WMDs.
>
> there's room for doubt on that one. bin Laden was probably happy to
> Saddam go, too.
>
This seems to be repeated so much that people around here seem to
believe it. What did bin Laden have against Saddam? Osama and Saddam
are/were both Sunni Arabs. They both hated the United States. They both
were threatened by the United States due to their behaviours. No Saddam
puts the focus on Osama. Why would he want that?
--
"Throw me that lipstick, darling, I wanna redo my stigmata."
+-Jennifer Saunders, "Absolutely Fabulous"
Paul Ciszek
In article <jYOLi.111418$Xa3.22880@attbi_s22>,
Mary <mrfea...@aol.com> wrote:
>
>But if you really think, as many people do, that Saddam is someone who
>shouldn't have power, money, and the instructions to build a nuclear
>bomb, then this is not exactly a smoking gun.
The "instructions to build a nuclear bomb" are in books that can be
found in public libraries in the US and other countries. That particular
horse was let out of the barn a long, long time ago. Getting together
enough competent scientists and engineers, and the equipment they would
need to actually *do* it...could that be done for a billion dollars?
Particularly if you didn't necessarily have the option of setting up
shop anywhere you chose?
--
Please reply to: | "One of the hardest parts of my job is to
pciszek at panix dot com | connect Iraq to the War on Terror."
Autoreply is disabled | -- G. W. Bush, 9/7/2006
Paul Ciszek
In article <47018224$0$15936$6c5e...@news.westnet.com>,
Raven-Poe <ra...@westnet.poe.com> wrote:
>
>Yes, if it was just the money, then all we'd be risking by letting him go
>is that he'd become another extra-national enemy of the US, much like bin
>Laden. Of course, wanting to go with a Billion -and- whatever WMD secrets
>he wanted to take with him, well, that would potentially make for a
>nuclear, biological, or chemical weapon armed bin Laden type. Still more
>than a bit of a risk.
How "secret" were his WMD "secrets"? Did Sadaam have anything that was not
"off the shelf" somewhere in the world market?
groo
>
> In article <jYOLi.111418$Xa3.22880@attbi_s22>,
> Mary <mrfea...@aol.com> wrote:
>>
>>But if you really think, as many people do, that Saddam is someone who
>>shouldn't have power, money, and the instructions to build a nuclear
>>bomb, then this is not exactly a smoking gun.
>
> The "instructions to build a nuclear bomb" are in books that can be
> found in public libraries in the US and other countries. That
> particular horse was let out of the barn a long, long time ago.
> Getting together enough competent scientists and engineers, and the
> equipment they would need to actually *do* it...could that be done for
> a billion dollars? Particularly if you didn't necessarily have the
> option of setting up shop anywhere you chose?
There's instructions and there's instructions. I know the basics, and I
know I could learn a lot more with a little searching. But when building
a nuke there's a fair bit of devil in the details. If you had plans that
were detailed enough that you wouldn't have to do much testing or
simulation and you'd still be confident that it would go bang correctly,
I'd guess that you could build one for $1B. But if you had to do a bunch
of R&D, I think it would probably take more than $1B.
--
i'm in ur kitchin eatin ur cake.
Paul Ciszek
In article <46FFE6A6...@yahoo.co.uk>,
Bill Bonde ( 'Hi ho' ) <tributyl...@yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
>
>Saddam wanted a billion dollars and all the information he could get on
>WMDs? That's a great plan, that's bin Laden with a billion dollars and
>all the information on WMDs.
1) He wanted to be able to *escape with* a billion that he *already had*.
The righties in this group keep skipping over that part, it must be
deliberate. How he intended to transport it could be...amusing. Who
could he hire to help him transport it under guard, who would not find
it more profitable steal it instead?
2) If you are used to living in palaces and having faux-Rowena paintings
custom made, etc., are you going to blow your last billion (which will
be much less than a billion by the time you have managed to get it
somewhere safe) on some religious zealot? Keep in mind, Saddam was
never religious until, during the first Gulf war, it was advantageous
to appear so. He never believed in anything but Saddam.
Peter Boulding
<tributyl...@yahoo.co.uk> wrote in <47019A49...@yahoo.co.uk>:
>This seems to be repeated so much that people around here seem to
>believe it. What did bin Laden have against Saddam? Osama and Saddam
>are/were both Sunni Arabs.
So? What makes you think that all Sunnis, or even all Sunni Arabs, share the
same political aims? Sunni Arabs tend to live in highly authoritarian
clan-based societies and their allegiance is usually local (whereas Shiites
value their idea of freedom - which seems to me quite as weird as Bush's -
and are much more likely to unite ... but only against someone who is seen
as a tyrant or oppressor, such as the western-imposed Shah of Iran).
But in any case neither Bin Laden nor Saddam had normal upbringings. Bin
Laden, the offspring of a lowly Yemeni and a Syrian, was brought up amongst
wealthy Saudi Wahhabis and was then infected with Qutb's loathing of western
decadence. Meanwhile Saddam, the son of a shepherd, escaped poor and
violently oppressive family in Sunni tribal Iraq and was instead raised by
an unusually passionate Arab nationalist in Baghdad.
>They both hated the United States. They both
>were threatened by the United States due to their behaviours. No Saddam
>puts the focus on Osama. Why would he want that?
You should try to indulge in some reading that actually informs you rather
than that which merely tells you what you want to hear and/or assumes that
everyone either shares your own motivations or is suicidally insane.
Bin Laden wants the Muslim world to return to the straight and narrow, and
that involves rule by Islamic theocracies, not by princes and dictators such
as his own family, whose palaces are to him places of decadent luxury.
Saddam ran a secular state, and wanted to ignite a brand of Arab - not
Muslim - nationalism; his dream was something along the lines of an Ottoman
empire led by Iraq (i.e. himself).
Few leaders are quite so incompetent as those in the US and Britain when it
comes to supporting, on the basis that "my enemy's enemy is my friend" those
whose ideology they abhor or claim to abhor. So although they shared a
common enemy the best Saddam could expect to achieve in terms of reaching an
accommodation with Bin Laden was to persuade him to stop causing trouble in
Iraq, at least for the time being.
HTH
--
Regards
Peter Boulding
p...@UNSPAMpboulding.co.uk (to e-mail, remove "UNSPAM")
Fractal music & images: http://www.pboulding.co.uk/
Greg Goss
>Greg Goss <go...@gossg.org> wrote:
>> ra...@westnet.poe.com (Raven-Poe) wrote:
>> >Greg Goss <go...@gossg.org> wrote:
>> ><snip>
>> >> A small fraction of that could have been allocated for a peaceful
>> >> transfer of power. A billion for a clean hand-off or a trillion for a
>> >> disastrous mess. Which one spent more US tax dollars?
>> >
>> >The problem with tribute money is that it's never just one payment: every
>> >completed payment leads to ever increasing demands for more payment.
>> >Appeasment sucks as a national policy.
>
>> This is not tribute. You take away his country and let him keep a
>> small part of the country that he used to own. It isn't a trick that
>> he can easily repeat.
>
>Just above, it seemed the billion was coming from the US trasurey. Now it
>looks like you're thinking it's coming from the Iraqi treasury.
The money was being held in trust for Iraq, to be released once the US
and Iraq resolved their differences.
--
Tomorrow is today already.
Greg Goss, 1989-01-27
bill van
nos...@nospam.com (Paul Ciszek) wrote:
> In article <46FFE6A6...@yahoo.co.uk>,
> Bill Bonde ( 'Hi ho' ) <tributyl...@yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
> >
> >Saddam wanted a billion dollars and all the information he could get on
> >WMDs? That's a great plan, that's bin Laden with a billion dollars and
> >all the information on WMDs.
>
> 1) He wanted to be able to *escape with* a billion that he *already had*.
> The righties in this group keep skipping over that part, it must be
> deliberate. How he intended to transport it could be...amusing. Who
> could he hire to help him transport it under guard, who would not find
> it more profitable steal it instead?
>
> 2) If you are used to living in palaces and having faux-Rowena paintings
> custom made, etc., are you going to blow your last billion (which will
> be much less than a billion by the time you have managed to get it
> somewhere safe) on some religious zealot? Keep in mind, Saddam was
> never religious until, during the first Gulf war, it was advantageous
> to appear so. He never believed in anything but Saddam.
You can't argue with Bonde. He has been told many times that Saddam was
no friend of the Islamists. He is either too stupid to breathe and think
at the same time, or he cares nothing for the truth if it doesn't fit
his outlook. He's an aggravating waste of time.
--
bill
bill van
ra...@westnet.poe.com (Raven-Poe) wrote:
> bill van <bil...@shaw.chopchop.ca> wrote:
> > What he had was control, more or less,
> > over Iraq. If he has sold that for $1 billion, he has nothing more to
> > sell. So no more payments. If he finds some other way to cause trouble,
> > he'll be a lot easier to assassinate on the Riviera than in Baghdad.
> True, if he's kind enough to go there, but as we've seen, not every
> individual that teh country would like to see dead turns up dead in short
> order.
If you're referring to bin Laden, the U.S. only chased after him
seriously for a few months, as I recall, in places where he was hard to
pin down. The deal with Hassam has to be negotiated and part of it is
that he goes to a mutually agreeable country where he can be touched.
>
> > > Appeasment sucks as a national policy.
>
> > Okay, let's say you could look into the future and your choice was to
> > buy out this uncouth dictator for $1 billion with no loss of life, or to
> > spend $500 billion and counting, with something over 100,000 dead
> > including thousands of young Americans, and counting?
>
> If teh buy out ends up wioth nuclear armed terrorists, well, I think we
> made a hell of a good bargain.
Totally false argument. As others in this thread have said, it is
trivially easy to find out how to build a nuclear bomb. Saddam needs no
documents for that. I'm wondering if that was even a real part of the
proposal. It could easily be a bit of self-serving fiction to justify
not making the deal.
>
> Sure, if Sadam was a the warm & fuzzy dictator that we could all love,
> doing nothing with his billion and WMD research but to try and blow
> through it as fast as possible, I'd say that would be great.
A billion dollars would buy little or nothing in the way of WMD
technology or manufacturing ability. In any case, as I said upthread,
once Saddam has revealed he can be bought, you can always knock the
price down. He's trying to save his ass at this point.
> Further, if
> the war goes tits up we are defeated, then it may also have been better to
> just try to buy him off. I say "may" becuase the actions Sadaam would
> have taken are not known.
>
Okay. So, we are not certain that the $1 billion or less option will
work. Let's not even try it and commit to the $1 trillion option that
will kill 100,000 people, and counting. You can see the insanity of
that, I hope.
--
bill
bill van
ra...@westnet.poe.com (Raven-Poe) wrote:
> bill van <bil...@shaw.chopchop.ca> wrote:
> > In article <Xns99BBAF103ECEAop...@127.0.0.1>,
> > Opus the Penguin <opusthepen...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > > How likely was he to abide by such an agreement? How easy is it to
> > > funnel money from there to Al Qaeda? I'm betting it could be done.
>
> > Saddam had no ties with Al Qaeda.
>
> False. His government had contacted al Qaeda before, and it's pretty
> reasonably likely that they could again if they wanted to.
There is evidence of fleeting and shallow contacts in the early 1990s,
when bin Laden was based in Sudan and before any of Al Qaeda's
significant attacks occurred. There is no evidence for anything more
serious coming out of those contacts than Iraq agreeing to allow sermons
critical of Saudi Arabia's rulers to be rebroadcast on Iraqi radio.
>
> > His secular regime and the Islamic
> > fundamentalists were not on the same side.
>
> Though both were opposed to the same country.
I'd venture that more than half the countries in the world have problems
with said country. That doesn't make them supporters of terrorism.
>
> > I'm also thinking, by offering the deal, he has declared what he is. Now
> > we just dicker about his price. So, in return for his life, no mass
> > bombing of his country, a quiet exile and much less money than demanded,
> > he goes away.
>
> Except he thought he could win. Indeed, if he had been a bit better at
> hiding, he might have been able to pull it off.
I'd say that when he offered to fold up his tents for cash and exile, he
no longer thought he could win. And pull what off? Spend another couple
of years at the bottom of a dry well cursing the U.S.?
>
> > If it doesn't work out, not very much harm has been done, and you still
> > have the military threat in reserve.
>
> Yes, the military threat is oh so effective at extra-national threats....
>
I'll have to guess at what that means, but if you mean something like
the threat of military action preventing war between the U.S. and the
USSR for nearly half a century, I'll buy that.
But what I meant was that if the buyout of Saddam didn't achieve the
desired results, you would still have the option of bombing and
invading. When you bomb and invade first, you lose your chance at
avoiding a tremendous waste of human life and money.
--
bill
Guillermo el Gato
wrote:
> The deal with Hassam
Hassam?
huey.c...@gmail.com
Like all government projects, this is woefully underspecified. What are
my starting conditions? Build a nuclear bomb out of WHAT? Fifty feet of
garden hose and some ordinary household bleach? That's gonna be
expensive. If you have some highly enriched uranium, that'd help quite a
bit. If I have to enrich my own, that starts to get more expensive.
Still, for a billion dollars, I'd either go after the most insecure
Russian already-assembled nukes, or else the most insecure fissile
material.
--
Huey
Peter Boulding
<g82dnY_Of4tKzJ_a...@speakeasy.net>:
>Still, for a billion dollars, I'd either go after the most insecure
>Russian already-assembled nukes, or else the most insecure fissile
>material.
That's when you really need a counterproliferation network - that is, the
kind of organisation that Valerie Plame was part of until it was rendered
ineffective by certain leakers and compliant journalists.
groo
> You can't argue with Bonde. He has been told many times that Saddam was
> no friend of the Islamists. He is either too stupid to breathe and think
> at the same time, or he cares nothing for the truth if it doesn't fit
> his outlook. He's an aggravating waste of time.
More breaking news: The sun rose in the East this morning. Britney Spears
has managed to fuck up in a new but entirely predictable way. Brett Bayne?
Still cute.
--
i'm in ur kitchin eatin ur duh.
Bill Bonde ( 'Hi ho' )
Paul Ciszek wrote:
>
> In article <46FFE6A6...@yahoo.co.uk>,
> Bill Bonde ( 'Hi ho' ) <tributyl...@yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
> >
> >Saddam wanted a billion dollars and all the information he could get on
> >WMDs? That's a great plan, that's bin Laden with a billion dollars and
> >all the information on WMDs.
>
> 1) He wanted to be able to *escape with* a billion that he *already had*.
> The righties in this group keep skipping over that part, it must be
> deliberate.
>
How does it matter whether he's paid a billion dollars, which is what
the originator of the thread said in the subject line, or whether he
already has the money? It's still like giving an Osama a billion bucks.
> How he intended to transport it could be...amusing. Who
> could he hire to help him transport it under guard, who would not find
> it more profitable steal it instead?
>
They found Saddam's money buried, at least some of it. I don't know if
it was a billion or not.
> 2) If you are used to living in palaces and having faux-Rowena paintings
> custom made, etc., are you going to blow your last billion (which will
> be much less than a billion by the time you have managed to get it
> somewhere safe) on some religious zealot?
>
What are you talking about? I'm talking about Saddam without a country,
like Osama, but Saddam without a country and a billion bucks to get back
at the US with.
> Keep in mind, Saddam was
> never religious until, during the first Gulf war, it was advantageous
> to appear so. He never believed in anything but Saddam.
>
I'm not convinced that's not ultimately what bin Laden buys into,
himself too.
Bill Bonde ( 'Hi ho' )
Peter Boulding wrote:
>
> On Mon, 01 Oct 2007 18:09:29 -0700, "Bill Bonde ( 'Hi ho' )"
> <tributyl...@yahoo.co.uk> wrote in <47019A49...@yahoo.co.uk>:
>
> >This seems to be repeated so much that people around here seem to
> >believe it. What did bin Laden have against Saddam? Osama and Saddam
> >are/were both Sunni Arabs.
>
> So? What makes you think that all Sunnis, or even all Sunni Arabs, share the
> same political aims? Sunni Arabs tend to live in highly authoritarian
> clan-based societies
>
Pretty much all the Arab states are dictatorships. That's a source of
the hopelessness in the region.
> and their allegiance is usually local (whereas Shiites
> value their idea of freedom - which seems to me quite as weird as Bush's -
> and are much more likely to unite ... but only against someone who is seen
> as a tyrant or oppressor, such as the western-imposed Shah of Iran).
>
The Persians are the people who were trying democracy in 1953. That was
before the pigheaded British couldn't see past colonial attitudes to
actually pay the very reasonable half to the Iranians for their oil,
something the Americans didn't have a problem with doing elsewhere where
they were engaged. But anyway, I don't believe it's really a Shia and
Sunni think as much as it's an Arab and Persian one. Of course if Shia
generally do want (or are better prepared for) democracy more than Sunni
do, that makes Iraq the Arab state to start that in.
> But in any case neither Bin Laden nor Saddam had normal upbringings. Bin
> Laden, the offspring of a lowly Yemeni and a Syrian, was brought up amongst
> wealthy Saudi Wahhabis and was then infected with Qutb's loathing of western
> decadence.
>
Apparently after a visit on holiday to Lebanon.
> Meanwhile Saddam, the son of a shepherd, escaped poor and
> violently oppressive family in Sunni tribal Iraq and was instead raised by
> an unusually passionate Arab nationalist in Baghdad.
>
I think that while the means were different, both Saddam and Osama
sought (seek) a unified empire. I don't think that Saddam was satisfied
with Iraq just as Iraq. He wanted more. The fact that he started two
wars to get that more is proof enough.
> >They both hated the United States. They both
> >were threatened by the United States due to their behaviours. No Saddam
> >puts the focus on Osama. Why would he want that?
>
> You should try to indulge in some reading that actually informs you rather
> than that which merely tells you what you want to hear and/or assumes that
> everyone either shares your own motivations or is suicidally insane.
>
Maybe you should become more widely read. I don't see that I'm reading
the wrong things, I've certainly endeavoured to understand alternative
views as much as possible. To that end, I usually only engage in debate
with people who disagree with me. I don't listen to talk radio. I do
read popular and specialized works from many different viewpoints.
> Bin Laden wants the Muslim world to return to the straight and narrow, and
> that involves rule by Islamic theocracies, not by princes and dictators such
> as his own family, whose palaces are to him places of decadent luxury.
>
What is the "straight and narrow" to bin Laden? He seeks a pan-Arab
empire, really more than that, a pan-Islamic empire ruled by Sharia with
himself or someone after him as ruler.
> Saddam ran a secular state, and wanted to ignite a brand of Arab - not
> Muslim - nationalism; his dream was something along the lines of an Ottoman
> empire led by Iraq (i.e. himself).
>
The Ottoman Empire wasn't an Arab empire. You can't limit Saddam's quest
for empire to Arabs since Iraq itself isn't only Arabs, and Saddam
attacked Iran, a Persian country. But there has long been an Arab desire
to unify the countries of the region into an empire to, I guess, relive
the glory days long gone. For example:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nasser
#begin quote
Nasser's policies became associated with Pan-Arabism, which promoted
aggressive action by Arab states to confront the "imperialist" West, and
urged that the resources of the Arab states should be used for the
benefit of the Arab people and not the West. In a 1967 speech, Nasser
declared, "We can achieve much by Arab action, which is a main part of
our battle. We must develop and build our countries to face the
challenge of our enemies."
In 1958, Syrian military and civilian leaders requested a merger of
Syria and Egypt. Somewhat surprised by the sudden request and unsure as
to whether the time was ripe, Nasser nevertheless agreed and the United
Arab Republic came into being. Many saw it as the first step towards the
establishment of a pan-Arab state.
#end quote
> Few leaders are quite so incompetent as those in the US and Britain when it
> comes to supporting, on the basis that "my enemy's enemy is my friend" those
> whose ideology they abhor or claim to abhor. So although they shared a
> common enemy the best Saddam could expect to achieve in terms of reaching an
> accommodation with Bin Laden was to persuade him to stop causing trouble in
> Iraq, at least for the time being.
>
There isn't any evidence that I know of that bin Laden ever ordered
attacks against Saddam's Iraq. OTOH, he certainly did support efforts to
build up terrorist cells in Saudi Arabia and apparently only held them
mostly in check in a sort of quid pro quo for support of the export of
Wahabbism to other Islamic countries, for example Pakistan.
bill van
Whoops. That will happen to you if you type Saddam too many times.
--
bill
remove my country for e-mail
Opus the Penguin
> In article <vqb4g3hiv8f8khqfu...@4ax.com>,
> Guillermo el Gato <dev...@example.com> wrote:
>
>> On Tue, 02 Oct 2007 06:56:28 GMT, bill van
>> <bil...@shaw.chopchop.ca> wrote:
>>
>>
>> > The deal with Hassam
>>
>> Hassam?
>
> Whoops. That will happen to you if you type Saddam too many times.
>
Saddam Saddam Saddam Saddam Saddam Saddam Saddam Saddam Saddam Saddam
saddam Saddma Sasddamsaddam Saddam Saddam Saddsm Sadddamsaddam Saddam
Saddam Saddam Saddam Saddam Saddam Saddam Sadddeam Saddsamsaddam
Saddam Saddam Saddam
No luck so far. How many times do I have to go?
--
Opus the Penguin
It's easy to resist temptation when it comes in the form of
Budweiser. - darkon
Mary
wrote:
> bill van (bill...@shawcanada.ca) wrote:
> > In article <vqb4g3hiv8f8khqfu8bj1rhtdpu8lfo...@4ax.com>,
> > Guillermo el Gato <devn...@example.com> wrote:
>
> >> On Tue, 02 Oct 2007 06:56:28 GMT, bill van
> >> <bill...@shaw.chopchop.ca> wrote:
>
> >> > The deal with Hassam
>
> >> Hassam?
>
> > Whoops. That will happen to you if you type Saddam too many times.
>
> Saddam Saddam Saddam Saddam Saddam Saddam Saddam Saddam Saddam Saddam
> saddam Saddma Sasddamsaddam Saddam Saddam Saddsm Sadddamsaddam Saddam
> Saddam Saddam Saddam Saddam Saddam Saddam Sadddeam Saddsamsaddam
> Saddam Saddam Saddam
>
> No luck so far. How many times do I have to go?
42, probably.
Mary
Raven-Poe
> In article <470183d9$0$15936$6c5e...@news.westnet.com>,
> ra...@westnet.poe.com (Raven-Poe) wrote:
> > True, if he's kind enough to go there, but as we've seen, not every
> > individual that teh country would like to see dead turns up dead in short
> > order.
> If you're referring to bin Laden, the U.S. only chased after him
> seriously for a few months, as I recall,
Uh, suuuure....
> in places where he was hard to
> pin down. The deal with Hassam has to be negotiated and part of it is
> that he goes to a mutually agreeable country where he can be touched.
I like the deal Xho would have negotiated better.
<snip>
> > Further, if
> > the war goes tits up we are defeated, then it may also have been better to
> > just try to buy him off. I say "may" becuase the actions Sadaam would
> > have taken are not known.
>
> Okay. So, we are not certain that the $1 billion or less option will
> work. Let's not even try it and commit to the $1 trillion option that
> will kill 100,000 people, and counting. You can see the insanity of
> that, I hope.
When set next to the possibility of hundreds of trillions of dollars and
and millions dead, the insanity level looks to be in the "letting someone
with resources and a grudge" out and about.
Raven-Poe
> In article <4701872d$0$15936$6c5e...@news.westnet.com>,
> ra...@westnet.poe.com (Raven-Poe) wrote:
> > bill van <bil...@shaw.chopchop.ca> wrote:
> > > In article <Xns99BBAF103ECEAop...@127.0.0.1>,
> > > Opus the Penguin <opusthepen...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > > > How likely was he to abide by such an agreement? How easy is it to
> > > > funnel money from there to Al Qaeda? I'm betting it could be done.
> >
> > > Saddam had no ties with Al Qaeda.
> >
> > False. His government had contacted al Qaeda before, and it's pretty
> > reasonably likely that they could again if they wanted to.
> There is evidence of fleeting and shallow contacts in the early 1990s,
Correct. Thank you for your confirmation of my postion.
<snip>
> > > His secular regime and the Islamic
> > > fundamentalists were not on the same side.
> >
> > Though both were opposed to the same country.
> I'd venture that more than half the countries in the world have problems
> with said country. That doesn't make them supporters of terrorism.
Right, however, in Sadaam's case we know that he was a supporter of
terrorism.
> > > I'm also thinking, by offering the deal, he has declared what he is. Now
> > > we just dicker about his price. So, in return for his life, no mass
> > > bombing of his country, a quiet exile and much less money than demanded,
> > > he goes away.
> >
> > Except he thought he could win. Indeed, if he had been a bit better at
> > hiding, he might have been able to pull it off.
> I'd say that when he offered to fold up his tents for cash and exile, he
> no longer thought he could win.
Not necesasarilly: he only needed to think there was a credible chance
that he could lose. A chance versus a sure thing.
> And pull what off?
Defeat the US.
> Spend another couple of years at the bottom of a dry well cursing the
> U.S.?
It's working for ObL.
> > > If it doesn't work out, not very much harm has been done, and you still
> > > have the military threat in reserve.
> >
> > Yes, the military threat is oh so effective at extra-national threats....
>
> I'll have to guess at what that means, but if you mean something like
> the threat of military action preventing war between the U.S. and the
> USSR for nearly half a century, I'll buy that.
You're pretty cold there: the USSR was a national actor.
> But what I meant was that if the buyout of Saddam didn't achieve the
> desired results, you would still have the option of bombing and
> invading.
Nope, that would be gone. You see how well bombing and invading worked to
destroy ObL.
> When you bomb and invade first, you lose your chance at
> avoiding a tremendous waste of human life and money.
This is indeed true, but the thing is, once the bombing begins, it's kinda
hard to stop, and the idea that folks will just take thier billions and
WMD secrets and go quietly into the night, well, that's really rather
naive.
Jim Prescott
>take his WMD plans with him.
One of the theories was that Saddam knew he didn't have any worthwhile
WMD after the first US-Iraq war but was just bluffing to increase his
stature in the region and to piss off the US. By insisting that he
take the secrets with him he avoids having to reveal his weak hand.
Plus, one of the benefits of exile over death is that you might somehow
finagle the "triumphant return from exile" thing. Having his pretend
WMDs would be handy then.
--
Jim Prescott - Computing and Networking Group j...@seas.rochester.edu
School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, University of Rochester, NY
Opus the Penguin
> Guillermo el Gato <dev...@example.com> wrote:
>
>>Something doesn't smell right about the claim that Saddam wanted
>>to take his WMD plans with him.
>
> One of the theories was that Saddam knew he didn't have any
> worthwhile WMD after the first US-Iraq war but was just bluffing
> to increase his stature in the region and to piss off the US.
I think the latter was an unavoidable consequence rather than a
goal. Saddam was playing a dangerous bluffing game. He needed the
surrounding countries to believe he was on the verge of WMD power.
And he needed the US to publicly worry that this was so, thus
increasing his stature. But he also needed the US not to truly
believe it.
> By insisting that he take the secrets with him he avoids having to
> reveal his weak hand.
>
> Plus, one of the benefits of exile over death is that you might
> somehow finagle the "triumphant return from exile" thing. Having
> his pretend WMDs would be handy then.
I think that's a pretty good analysis. It would be interesting to
know what a better president would have done with the intelligence
available. A Reagan or a Clinton or even a Bush Sr. might have had
the subtlety to know how to play along.
--
Opus the Penguin
You know, this may actually be the most magnificient piece of
insignificance I've ever seen. - Lisa Ann
bill van
ra...@westnet.poe.com (Raven-Poe) wrote:
> bill van <bil...@shaw.chopchop.ca> wrote:
> > In article <4701872d$0$15936$6c5e...@news.westnet.com>,
> > ra...@westnet.poe.com (Raven-Poe) wrote:
> > > bill van <bil...@shaw.chopchop.ca> wrote:
> > > > In article <Xns99BBAF103ECEAop...@127.0.0.1>,
> > > > Opus the Penguin <opusthepen...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > >
> > > > > How likely was he to abide by such an agreement? How easy is it to
> > > > > funnel money from there to Al Qaeda? I'm betting it could be done.
> > >
> > > > Saddam had no ties with Al Qaeda.
> > >
> > > False. His government had contacted al Qaeda before, and it's pretty
> > > reasonably likely that they could again if they wanted to.
>
> > There is evidence of fleeting and shallow contacts in the early 1990s,
>
> Correct. Thank you for your confirmation of my postion.
>
> <snip>
John, that's a sleazy cut of a key argument. I take it you realized you
couldn't deal with it.
> > I'd venture that more than half the countries in the world have problems
> > with said country. That doesn't make them supporters of terrorism.
>
> Right, however, in Sadaam's case we know that he was a supporter of
> terrorism.
Whatever terrorism can be hung on Saddam occurred decades ago. It was
ancient history by the time 9/11 happened. And right now, you're using
it to avoid the point, again. You know very well that one of the flimsy
excuses for bombing and invading was that Iraq was to blame for 9/11.
And that is false, like all the other excuses.
>
> > > > I'm also thinking, by offering the deal, he has declared what he is.
> > > > Now
> > > > we just dicker about his price. So, in return for his life, no mass
> > > > bombing of his country, a quiet exile and much less money than
> > > > demanded,
> > > > he goes away.
> > >
> > > Except he thought he could win. Indeed, if he had been a bit better at
> > > hiding, he might have been able to pull it off.
>
> > I'd say that when he offered to fold up his tents for cash and exile, he
> > no longer thought he could win.
>
> Not necesasarilly: he only needed to think there was a credible chance
> that he could lose. A chance versus a sure thing.
I think he had just realized the U.S. was really crazy enough to invade
and create the mess we have there now. He was trying to save his own ass.
>
> > And pull what off?
>
> Defeat the US.
Never in his wildest dreams did he think he could defeat the U.S. Nor
does anyone else in the Middle East.
>
> > Spend another couple of years at the bottom of a dry well cursing the
> > U.S.?
>
> It's working for ObL.
He's not at the bottom of a well. He's comfortable in a villa in
Pakistan, shooting videos. He's not running a nation-state.
>
> > But what I meant was that if the buyout of Saddam didn't achieve the
> > desired results, you would still have the option of bombing and
> > invading.
>
> Nope, that would be gone. You see how well bombing and invading worked to
> destroy ObL.
For god's sake, John. You can't hide Baghdad in the hills of Pakistan.
There is all the difference in the world between a small, mobile group
of people in a lawless, borderless mountain region, and a nation-state
with borders and buildings and oil wells.
But you know that. Why bother with the phoney rhetoric?
>
> > When you bomb and invade first, you lose your chance at
> > avoiding a tremendous waste of human life and money.
>
> This is indeed true, but the thing is, once the bombing begins, it's kinda
> hard to stop,
No, it's not. The U.S. has done limited bombing in many places around
the world, and never had trouble stopping before. And the bombing of
Iraq hadn't begun yet in any case.
> and the idea that folks will just take thier billions and
> WMD secrets and go quietly into the night, well, that's really rather
> naive.
>
No, what's naive is the notion that the U.S. was going to stop short of
a full invasion once the administration had found the excuse it had been
looking for since before 9/11.
This stuff about the Saddam deal is just a tangent. But it serves to
illustrate that the U.S. had no interest in avoiding war. The invasion
had not much to do with the reasons stated, and everything with the
desire to reshape the political configuration of the Middle East,
control the oil and stare down Iran and Syria. And that was determined
early on in the Bush administration, not after 9/11.
They lied, John. Stop defending them.
bill van
Opus the Penguin <opusthepen...@gmail.com> wrote:
> bill van (bil...@shawcanada.ca) wrote:
>
> > In article <vqb4g3hiv8f8khqfu...@4ax.com>,
> > Guillermo el Gato <dev...@example.com> wrote:
> >
> >> On Tue, 02 Oct 2007 06:56:28 GMT, bill van
> >> <bil...@shaw.chopchop.ca> wrote:
> >>
> >>
> >> > The deal with Hassam
> >>
> >> Hassam?
> >
> > Whoops. That will happen to you if you type Saddam too many times.
> >
>
> Saddam Saddam Saddam Saddam Saddam Saddam Saddam Saddam Saddam Saddam
> saddam Saddma Sasddamsaddam Saddam Saddam Saddsm Sadddamsaddam Saddam
> Saddam Saddam Saddam Saddam Saddam Saddam Sadddeam Saddsamsaddam
> Saddam Saddam Saddam
>
>
> No luck so far. How many times do I have to go?
Did you click your heels together?
Lesmond
>
>
>bill van <bil...@shaw.chopchop.ca> wrote:
>
>> You can't argue with Bonde. He has been told many times that Saddam was
>> no friend of the Islamists. He is either too stupid to breathe and think
>> at the same time, or he cares nothing for the truth if it doesn't fit
>> his outlook. He's an aggravating waste of time.
>
>
>More breaking news: The sun rose in the East this morning. Britney Spears
>has managed to fuck up in a new but entirely predictable way.
http://www.transworldnews.com/NewsStory.aspx?id=24252&cat=2
Brett Bayne?
>Still cute.
I hope so.
--
If there's a nuclear winter, at least it'll snow.
Bill Turlock
In other news:
Halle Berry reveals struggle to get pregnant on Oprah Winfrey
http://www.transworldnews.com/NewsStory.aspx?id=24234&cat=2
I'd watch Oprah that day!
Paul Ciszek
In article <4703A262...@sonnnic.invalid>,
Bill Turlock <"Bill Turlock "@sonnnic.invalid> wrote:
>
>In other news:
>
> Halle Berry reveals struggle to get pregnant on Oprah Winfrey
Someone needs to explain the facts of life to Ms. Berry.
Unless Oprah is also making a major career-destroying revelation...
Raven-Poe
> In article <4702c399$0$15931$6c5e...@news.westnet.com>,
> ra...@westnet.poe.com (Raven-Poe) wrote:
> > > There is evidence of fleeting and shallow contacts in the early 1990s,
> >
> > Correct. Thank you for your confirmation of my postion.
> >
> > <snip>
> John, that's a sleazy cut of a key argument. I take it you realized you
> couldn't deal with it.
No, it was simple weasling of the point. You said 'there is nothing' and
I told you there was, and you said, 'yeah there was but I don't like to
admit it.' The second part isn't really that inmportant, we already know
you didn't like to admit it, that's why you tried to sneak it through as
if it wwasn't there.
> > > I'd venture that more than half the countries in the world have problems
> > > with said country. That doesn't make them supporters of terrorism.
> >
> > Right, however, in Sadaam's case we know that he was a supporter of
> > terrorism.
> Whatever terrorism can be hung on Saddam occurred decades ago.
Wrong again. He was actively supporting terrorism through the invasion
by funneling monies to the fmailies of suicide bombers, and of course as
the invasion loomed, he was quick to organize his own terrorist
organization out of Uday's special Death Squads, the Fedayeen Saddam.
http://www.globalsecurity.org/intell/world/iraq/fedayeen.htm
http://abcnews.go.com/International/story?id=79602&page=1
<snip>
> > Not necesasarilly: he only needed to think there was a credible chance
> > that he could lose. A chance versus a sure thing.
> I think he had just realized the U.S. was really crazy enough to invade
> and create the mess we have there now. He was trying to save his own ass.
Yeah, this is the warm and fuzzy brutal dictator depiction I had eluded to
earlier. It' not very well connected with the actual man.
> > > And pull what off?
> >
> > Defeat the US.
> Never in his wildest dreams did he think he could defeat the U.S. Nor
> does anyone else in the Middle East.
Don't be a fool: Not only do a gereat many folks in the middle east think
we will be defeated in the US, many of them are already claiming victory.
Saddam claimed victory in the fist gulf war and more than a few bought
into it.
> > > Spend another couple of years at the bottom of a dry well cursing the
> > > U.S.?
> >
> > It's working for ObL.
> He's not at the bottom of a well. He's comfortable in a villa in
> Pakistan, shooting videos. He's not running a nation-state.
Exactly as you'd have had Saddam be. QED.
> > > But what I meant was that if the buyout of Saddam didn't achieve the
> > > desired results, you would still have the option of bombing and
> > > invading.
> >
> > Nope, that would be gone. You see how well bombing and invading worked to
> > destroy ObL.
> For god's sake, John. You can't hide Baghdad in the hills of Pakistan.
Try to wake up: you're not talking about Baghdad any more, you're talking
about Saddam, loose, wealthy and with whatever WMD info he cared to take
with him. Stop pretending that Saddam in inseperable from Iraq when that
is the very idea you are pushing.
<snip>
> > > When you bomb and invade first, you lose your chance at
> > > avoiding a tremendous waste of human life and money.
> >
> > This is indeed true, but the thing is, once the bombing begins, it's kinda
> > hard to stop,
> No, it's not. The U.S. has done limited bombing in many places around
> the world, and never had trouble stopping before. And the bombing of
> Iraq hadn't begun yet in any case.
Well, yeah, back in 1999. But once the shooting has started, it's very
stupid to think that the other guy won't shoot back, you know?
<snip>
> This stuff about the Saddam deal is just a tangent. But it serves to
> illustrate that the U.S. had no interest in avoiding war.
This is true: the war had in fact been going on for two years by the time
9/11 rolled around: to avoid it, you'd have to roll back history and while
I'd be happy to undo the Clinton admistration, it's not reasonable to
adopt a policy who's first step is devise functional time travel devices.
> They lied, John. Stop defending them.
I know who's doing the most lying, Bill, I'm mostly interested in the
truth and how it can further anti-terrorism policies. Defending the
administration isn't anything I particularly care about: it's just that
the truth and furthering anti-terrorist polices tends to back them up far
more often than it backs up thier detractors.
Bill Bonde ( 'Hi ho' )
I've been told that Saddam was no friend of Islamists? What actual
evidence for that claim have you or others provided? I haven't claimed
that Saddam was an "Islamist", but I think that he didn't mind using
them for his ends, just as Osama doesn't mind using others, like Saddam,
like even Shia, for his own ends.
bill van
ra...@westnet.poe.com (Raven-Poe) wrote:
> bill van <bil...@shawcanada.ca> wrote:
> > In article <4702c399$0$15931$6c5e...@news.westnet.com>,
> > ra...@westnet.poe.com (Raven-Poe) wrote:
> <snip>
> > > > There is evidence of fleeting and shallow contacts in the early 1990s,
> > >
> > > Correct. Thank you for your confirmation of my postion.
> > >
> > > <snip>
>
> > John, that's a sleazy cut of a key argument. I take it you realized you
> > couldn't deal with it.
>
> No, it was simple weasling of the point. You said 'there is nothing' and
> I told you there was, and you said, 'yeah there was but I don't like to
> admit it.' The second part isn't really that inmportant, we already know
> you didn't like to admit it, that's why you tried to sneak it through as
> if it wwasn't there.
John, when I disagree with something in a post I'm replying to, I quote
it. It's kind of like full disclosure, you know? To cut it and claim
later it was all wrong is, as I said, sleazy.
>
> > Whatever terrorism can be hung on Saddam occurred decades ago.
>
> Wrong again. He was actively supporting terrorism through the invasion
> by funneling monies to the fmailies of suicide bombers, and of course as
> the invasion loomed, he was quick to organize his own terrorist
> organization out of Uday's special Death Squads, the Fedayeen Saddam.
>
> http://www.globalsecurity.org/intell/world/iraq/fedayeen.htm
> http://abcnews.go.com/International/story?id=79602&page=1
>
Fair enough on the money for suicide bombers, although I think that had
nothing to do with the invasion. But the Fedayeen Saddam were formed in
1995, something like seven years before the invasion. Sure, they appear
to have been a brutal bunch. But no points for that one.
> Yeah, this is the warm and fuzzy brutal dictator depiction I had eluded to
> earlier. It' not very well connected with the actual man.
John, you're being dishonest again. I've never described Saddam as
anything other than a murderous dictator.
>
> > Never in his wildest dreams did he think he could defeat the U.S. Nor
> > does anyone else in the Middle East.
>
> Don't be a fool: Not only do a gereat many folks in the middle east think
> we will be defeated in the US, many of them are already claiming victory.
> Saddam claimed victory in the fist gulf war and more than a few bought
> into it.
Hell, George W. declared victory how many years ago on that aircraft
carrier? Declaring victory means dick-all, and you know it. And no one
in the Middle East thinks the U.S. can be defeated, as you say, "in the
U.S." That's simply insane. The best they can hope for is to convince
the U.S. to withdraw from the Middle East before the whole region is
trampled into dust.
>
> > > > Spend another couple of years at the bottom of a dry well cursing the
> > > > U.S.?
> > >
> > > It's working for ObL.
>
> > He's not at the bottom of a well. He's comfortable in a villa in
> > Pakistan, shooting videos. He's not running a nation-state.
>
> Exactly as you'd have had Saddam be. QED.
Nope. I've said repeatedly, you make the deal with Saddam only if you
can put him in a safe place, like King Saud on the Riviera. Let him have
his villa where you can keep an eye on him, or not at all.
> > > > But what I meant was that if the buyout of Saddam didn't achieve the
> > > > desired results, you would still have the option of bombing and
> > > > invading.
> > >
> > > Nope, that would be gone. You see how well bombing and invading worked
> > > to
> > > destroy ObL.
>
> > For god's sake, John. You can't hide Baghdad in the hills of Pakistan.
>
> Try to wake up: you're not talking about Baghdad any more, you're talking
> about Saddam, loose, wealthy and with whatever WMD info he cared to take
> with him. Stop pretending that Saddam in inseperable from Iraq when that
> is the very idea you are pushing.
Try to think clearly, and follow the conversation. We're talking about
what happens if you try to make the deal with Saddam, and he rejects
what you offer or it doesn't work out for some other reason. Then you
still have the option of military action against Iraq.
The point is that you can't hide Iraq or Baghdad, the way bin Laden can
hide in Pakistan. If the deal falls through, either Saddam hasn't gone
anywhere, or he's in a place where a friendly country (to the U.S) and
U.S. agents are watching him. If Iraq remains belligerent, you still
have the military option. Savvy?
> But once the shooting has started, it's very
> stupid to think that the other guy won't shoot back, you know?
Context, please. Countries shoot at each other all the time without
full-out war ensuing. That includes the U.S. and Iraq for more than a
decade.
>
> <snip>
> > This stuff about the Saddam deal is just a tangent. But it serves to
> > illustrate that the U.S. had no interest in avoiding war.
>
> This is true: the war had in fact been going on for two years by the time
> 9/11 rolled around:
The hell it had. Sanctions had been in place since the Gulf War, and
there were occasional skirmishes, mostly in the air, between the U.S.
and Iraq. That's not war.
> to avoid it, you'd have to roll back history and while
> I'd be happy to undo the Clinton admistration, it's not reasonable to
> adopt a policy who's first step is devise functional time travel devices.
John, are you -- I think you are -- trying to blame a war started by the
G.W. Bush administration on the basis of deliberate lies, on the
previous administration? That's plain scummy.
You can't win that argument; give it up. The guy you're defending will
go down in history as a war criminal. He proceeded without solid
evidence, and he did not look for ways to avoid a conflict that by now
has cost more than 100,000 human lives. That is unforgivable, and so is
your defence of him.
>
> > They lied, John. Stop defending them.
>
> I know who's doing the most lying, Bill, I'm mostly interested in the
> truth and how it can further anti-terrorism policies. Defending the
> administration isn't anything I particularly care about: it's just that
> the truth and furthering anti-terrorist polices tends to back them up far
> more often than it backs up thier detractors.
>
I hope you're posting this because you're lying to yourself and falling
for it. The alternative is that you're knowingly defending an
administration that has needlessly caused more than 100,000 deaths on
the basis of intentional lies.