Violent propaganda

quote:

---

I'm well aware of the allegations. That said, I consider some of them spurious - one is that a group of guards refused to let them into an HQ; that could be simply cockup rather than conspiracy.

---

Oh, so you see conspiracy everywhere when you are looking at a government you don't like, but you give Saddam Hussein's government every benefit of the doubt?What an amazing double standard you have there, contracycle.

quote:

---

You will need to more specific about alleged attacks on inspectors - I don't recall any such.

---

Well, I have my news sources which say that they happened. Do you have any particular reason or evidence which would cause me to doubt them?

quote:

---

And clearly, no such WMD plans or programmes were in fact uncovered: because as we now know, they were clean since 1991.

---

quote:

---

Thats the allegation that has now been comprehensively disproven. You will remember that Scott Ritter testified that "we got it almost entirely wrong", and as I recall he ran USNCOM during this period. This is also the period in which UNSCOM inspectors were revealed to be US intelligence agents, in total violation of the agreed tersm of the inspection.

​

Once again, these alleged products that justified Desert Fox have never been found.

---

Source please.

quote:

---

The problem is, the rest of the world does not haver access to US intelligence sources, and cannot verify US claims. And that is all we have to go on.

---

What bullshit.Do you think that no other governments besides the US monitor Al Qaida and other Islamic terrorist groups?Italy, France, Spain, Germany and Great Britain all have counter terrorism offices and monitor Al Qaida and similar groups.

quote:

---

Why should they, when Bin Laden was administering justice?

---

He administered justice to office workers? Cleaning staff? Fire fighters?You have a very twisted idea of what justice is.

quote:

---

Oh, so you see conspiracy everywhere when you are looking at a government you don't like, but you give Saddam Hussein's government every benefit of the doubt? What an amazing double standard you have there, contracycle.

---

*I* most certainly do NOT have a double standard - remember, I was opposing Aemrica's support for the brutal Saddam back when washington was feting him as Our Friend in the Middle East. It is America that demonstrably has the double standard, turning round know to complain about events like Halabja which it turned a blind eye to at the time. In fact, they even said that it was understandable Hussein was using extreme measures against Kurdish terrorism.The fact of ther matter remains that however terrible Saddams regime was, it was not so unusually terrible that it was in immediate need of toppling. The hypocritical military humanists who seem to think that democracy is achieved by laser guided munitions from 15,000 feet clearly never examined the consequences of their use of force properly, and far far more Iraqi's have died at the hands of the West than died at the hands of Saddam.

quote:

---

Well, I have my news sources which say that they happened. Do you have any particular reason or evidence which would cause me to doubt them?

---

Yes, I do - your own media's subsequent collective and public confession that they failed to apply due scrutiny to official pronouncements about the Iraqi government. Which is much like the same confession they gave over Vietnam. Your media has a discernible and repeated pattern of being overawed by the executive and failing to hold it to any kind of account. This is why I say the USA is the most thoroughly propagandised state on the planet.

quote:

---

Source please.

---

Source for what? Ritters testimony to the committee? Otr the allegations of espionage? I'm sure you have cited Ritter yourself in the past; as for the espionage allegations, by all means see here:

quote:

---

U.S. Spied On Iraqi Military Via U.N.
Arms Control Team Had No Knowledge Of Eavesdropping
By Barton Gellman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, March 2, 1999; Page A01
United States intelligence services infiltrated agents and espionage equipment for three years into United Nations arms control teams in Iraq to eavesdrop on the Iraqi military without the knowledge of the U.N. agency that it used to disguise its work, according to U.S. government employees and documents describing the classified operation.
By all accounts the U.N. Special Commission, or UNSCOM, did not authorize or benefit from this channel of U.S. surveillance. This contrasts with previous statements in which the Clinton administration acknowledged use of eavesdropping equipment but said it was done solely in cooperation with UNSCOM to pierce Iraqi concealment of its illegal weapons.
As recently as last week, the administration asserted again that its intelligence work within UNSCOM was invited by the panel's senior leaders and directed at rooting out Iraq's forbidden missiles and its nuclear, biological and chemical weapons programs.

---

http://bss.sfsu.edu/...20360/Readings/cia%20AND%20unscom.HTM

quote:

---

What bullshit.
Do you think that no other governments besides the US monitor Al Qaida and other Islamic terrorist groups?

---

Of course they do. But that does not mean that they know the things the US knows or claims to "know" - this is not science-land, everything is murky. We are not taking about independant reproducibility at all. And no intelligence agenceis had heard of this alleged "al Qaeda" before the US advanced its claims. Not one.

quote:

---

Italy, France, Spain, Germany and Great Britain all have counter terrorism offices and monitor Al Qaida and similar groups.

---

What they monitor is people alleged to be members of Al Qaeda according uncheckable and unverifiable US claims. They also monitor local extremists, who may NOW be in contact with an "organisation" calling itself al qaida; but that does not imply AQ had a prior exiostance or was being monitored. Nobody had ever heard of them before 9/11.

quote:

---

He administered justice to office workers? Cleaning staff? Fire fighters? You have a very twisted idea of what justice is.

---

War is hell, Schraf. Maybe Bomber Bill should have though about that when he adminstered justice to make-up girls, programme producers and cameramen when he orderd the bombing of Belgrade's TV station. Or is it OK and not really murder if you are a Democrat?Once again American Exceptionalism insists that the US not be held accountable for its brutality and cruelty. Well, Bin Laden DID hold you accountable, and you didn' like it much, did you?I remind you of the debts you owe, yet unpaid:

quote:

---

Until we go through it ourselves, until our people cower in the shelters of New York, Washington, Chicago, Los Angeles and elsewhere while the buildings collapse overhead and burst into flames, and dead bodies hurtle about and, when it is over for the day or the night, emerge in the rubble to find some of their dear ones mangled, their homes gone, their hospitals, churches, schools demolished only after that gruesome experience will we realize what we are inflicting on the people of Indochina...

​

William Shirer, 1973

---

quote:

---

*I* most certainly do NOT have a double standard...(snipped the rest)

---

Yes, you do, and the several paragraphs you wrote about Iraq are irrelevant to this point, which I will restate: The fact of the matter is that you are willing to give Saddam's government every benefit of the doubt (as if he had the reputation of being a wonderfully upright, just, virtuous leader instead of a homicidal sociopath), and you are completely willing to see conpiracy everywhere from a government you don't like.You know, it must be really comfy living in that black and white world, where everything is so crystal clear and you know that the "bad guys" are 100% bad and the good guys are 100% good.Too bad you don't live in reality.

quote:

---

This is why I say the USA is the most thoroughly propagandised state on the planet.

---

Except for China.

quote:

---

Maybe Bomber Bill should have though about that when he adminstered justice to make-up girls, programme producers and cameramen when he orderd the bombing of Belgrade's TV station. Or is it OK and not really murder if you are a Democrat?

---

Maybe Bin Laden should have though about that when he adminstered justice to office workers, firefighters, and cleaning crews when he orderd the bombing of the World Trade Center. Or is it OK and not really murder if you are a non-American?

quote:

---

Once again American Exceptionalism insists that the US not be held accountable for its brutality and cruelty.

---

Once again a Terrorist Apologist insists that the extremist religious terrorist not be held accountable for its brutality and cruelty.

quote:

---

Source for what? Ritters testimony to the committee? Otr the allegations of espionage?

---

Neither. I'd like a source for tis claim of yours:

quote:

---

Once again, these alleged products that justified Desert Fox have never been found.

---

Show me that the chemical weapons were not actually found and destroyed, contrary to my Wikipedia timeline source.

quote:

---

The fact of the matter is that you are willing to give Saddam's government every benefit of the doubt (as if he had the reputation of being a wonderfully upright, just, virtuous leader instead of a homicidal sociopath), and you are completely willing to see conpiracy everywhere from a government you don't like.

---

Thats outright nonsense and personal slander, Schraf. And amazingly hypocrtitical; having frequently criticised Republican apologists for damning anyone who opposes the state as unaptriotic, here you know resort to their same dishonest technique of launching aspersions against my character and suggesting I am a "Saddam lover". Are you going to call me a cheese-eating surrender monkey next?Secondly,I have never suggested that Saddam was anything other than a homicidal sociaopath - rather like Bush and Clinton in that regard. or have I ever said that he was just an virtuous under any circumstances. Those are outright lies to blacken my character, are they not, Schraf?Third, I am not "willing" to see "conspiracy" in a government I don;t like - what I see, and have abundant evidence of, is an agressive racist and Imperialist state that executes a foreign intervention nearly every years in the last hundred. The idea of the USA as a peaceful state contributing to stable world order is a groos nationalist fiction.As we already, you are insufficiently knowledgeable of your own states long and thoroughly documented history of assasination, torture, invasion and deception that you cannot even name 10 US interventions in Latin America - so I am substantially better informed of the FACTS about your state than you are. Do I have to give you a massive list of American crimes again?

quote:

---

You know, it must be really comfy living in that black and white world, where everything is so crystal clear and you know that the "bad guys" are 100% bad and the good guys are 100% good.

---

Except of course, that is NOT the world *I* live in - that is the world the US lives in. Just as we saw when the Us turned on its buddy Saddam, having gone from claiming he was one of the virtuous good guys and defenders of dmeocracy to denouncing him as a sociapth. the blind, Orwellian doublethink switch from 100% good to 100% bad; this happens in YOUR political environment, not mine.

quote:

---

Except for China.

---

Possibly. But not probably, becuase both states regard their leadership and the decisions of its state apparatus as inherently virtuous and unequesionably good.

quote:

---

Maybe Bin Laden should have though about that when he adminstered justice to office workers, firefighters, and cleaning crews when he orderd the bombing of the World Trade Center. Or is it OK and not really murder if you are a non-American?

---

I'm quite sure he did think about it. In fact, I know he thought about it, because his statement on thw 9/11 strike makes that explicitly clear:

quote:

---

What America is tasting now is something insignificant compared to what we have tasted for scores of years. Our nation (the Islamic world) has been tasting this humiliation and this degradation for more than 80 years. Its sons are killed, its blood is shed, its sanctuaries are attacked, and no one hears and no one heeds.

---

and...

quote:

---

Millions of innocent children are being killed as I speak. They are being killed in Iraq without committing any
sins, and we don't hear condemnation or a fatwa (religious decree) from the rulers. In these days, Israeli tanks infest Palestine in Jenin, Ramallah, Rafah, Beit Jalla, and other places in the land of Islam, and we don't hear anyone raising his voice or moving a limb.

​

When the sword comes down (on America), after 80 years, hypocrisy rears its ugly head. They deplore and they lament for those killers, who have abused the blood, honor and sanctuaries of Muslims. The least that can be said about those people is that they are debauched. They have followed injustice. They supported the butcher over the victim, the oppressor over the innocent child. May God show them His wrath and give them what they deserve.

---

quote:

---

When people at the ends of the earth, Japan, were killed by their hundreds of thousands, young and old, it was not considered a war crime, it is something that has justification. Millions of children in Iraq is something that has justification. But when they lose dozens of people in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam (capitals of Kenya
and Tanzania, where U.S. embassies were bombed in 1998), Iraq was struck and Afghanistan was struck.

​

Hypocrisy stood in force behind the head of infidels worldwide, behind the cowards of this age, America and those who are with it.

---

quote:

---

To America, I say only a few words to it and its people. I swear by God, who has elevated the skies without pillars, neither America nor the people who live in it will dream of security before we live it in Palestine, and not before all the infidel armies leave the land of Muhammad, peace be upon him.

---

Bin Laden is abundantly clear - America was struck in just vengeance for its crimes. Bin Laden speaks for the free people of the world, albeit in a religious voice. He points out the hypocrisy we are all aware of; he highlights the disregard America exhibits for non-American lives, and the hysteria it falls into when Americans die.He points out that Americans should not expect to live in peace while they wage war and bomb from the skies. While they fund and support and arm the state terrorism of Israel. Fundamentally, Bin Laden is right and the US is wrong, murderous and hypocrticial state that it is.

quote:

---

Once again a Terrorist Apologist insists that the extremist religious terrorist not be held accountable for its brutality and cruelty.

---

Ha ha. Of crouse I'm a terrorist apologist - and have been for years. Thats becuase the "terrorists" - by which the West means a peoples army - is usually in the right, and criticism of "terrorists" is invariably hypocritical. Why should I not be proud to challnge that Western hypocrisy? Of course I am.And if you want to start talking about accountability, why don't you state exercising some at home Schraf? Why don't you impeach your war criminal president? Why did you re-elect the mass murderer in the first place? How can you have the outright hypocratical arrogance to denounce terrorists for striking the twin towers while your terrorist state, lead by a war criminal, is openly allied with the terrorist Israeli state, also lead by a war criminal, while providing funds and weapons to aid the Israeli state in killing more civilians?You don't have even the slightest trace of self-awareness, guilt or conscience, do you? And you wonder why I think the brutal US is the most propagandised place in the world, huh.

quote:

---

Show me that the chemical weapons were not actually found and destroyed, contrary to my Wikipedia timeline source.

---

Ha ha ha - you know I can't prove a negative.But I can point to some of the reports:

quote:

---

Revelation casts doubt on Iraq find

​

Julian Borger in Washington
Tuesday October 7, 2003
The Guardian

​

The test tube of botulinum presented by Washington and London as evidence that Saddam Hussein had been developing and concealing weapons of mass destruction, was found in an Iraqi scientist's home refrigerator, where it had been sitting for 10 years, it emerged yesterday.

​

David Kay, the expert appointed by the CIA to lead the hunt for weapons, told a congressional committee last week that the vial of botulinum had been "hidden" at the scientist's home, and could be used to "covertly surge production of deadly weapons".

---

Revelation casts doubt on Iraq find | Politics | The GuardianNote how Kay builds his case purely based on allegations of intent, rather than material evidence. He looks for confirmation of his expectations, and lo and behold, he finds them. What a hard job that must be.On Maqy 17th 2004 Fox News reported:

quote:

---

"The Iraqi Survey Group confirmed today that a 155-millimeter artillery round containing sarin nerve agent had been found," Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt (search), the chief military spokesman in Iraq, told reporters in Baghdad. "The round had been rigged as an IED (improvised explosive device) which was discovered by a U.S. force convoy."

​

The round detonated before it would be rendered inoperable, Kimmitt said, which caused a "very small dispersal of agent."

​

However, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said the results were from a field test, which can be imperfect, and said more analysis was needed. If confirmed, it would be the first finding of a banned weapon upon which the United States based its case for war.

---

Now, how is it that this is the FIRST FIND of a chemical weapon, if chemical weapons were allegedly found in 2003, huh? And this one is thought to have been an old shell that the IED-planters probably did not even know contained gas.As Scott Ritter, UNCOMS head until 1998, wrote in War on Iraq
"If you listen to Richard Butler, biological weapons are a "black hole" about which we know nothing. But a review of the record reveals we actually know quite a bit. We monitored more biological facilities than any other category, inspecting over a thousand sites and repeatedly monitoring several hundred... For Iraq to have biological weapons today they'd have to reconstitute a biological manufacturing base... [the inspectors] blanketed Iraq--every research and development facility, every university, every school, every beer factory: anything that was a potential fermentation capability was inspected--and we never found any evidence of ongoing research and development or retention."The Washington Post wrote, of Desert Fox:

quote:

---

Thanks to the hard work of the United Nations Special Commission (Unscom), US targeters know a lot more about the Iraqi regime today than they did during the Gulf War in 1991. The United States and Britain now have a diagrammatic understanding of the Iraqi government structure, as well as of the intelligence, security and transport organisations that protect the Iraqi leadership. The same mission folders that Unscom put together to inspect specific buildings and offices in its search for concealed Iraqi weapons of mass destruction (WMD) became the basis for the targeting folders that missile launchers and pilots used in December.

​

It is clear from the target list, and from extensive communications with almost a dozen officers and analysts knowledgeable about Desert Fox planning, that the US-British bombing campaign was more than a reflexive reaction to Saddam Hussein's refusal to cooperate with Unscom's inspectors. The official rationale for Desert Fox may remain the 'degrading' of Iraq's ability to produce weapons of mass destruction and the 'diminishing' of the Iraqi threat to its neighbours. But careful study of the target list tells another story.

​

Thirty five of the 100 targets were selected because of their role in Iraq's air defence system, an essential first step in any air war, because damage to those sites paves the way for other forces and minimises casualties all around. Only 13 targets on the list are facilities associated with chemical and biological weapons or ballistic missiles, and three are southern Republican Guard bases that might be involved in a repeat invasion of Kuwait.

​

The heart of the Desert Fox list (49 of the 100 targets) is the Iraqi regime itself: a half-dozen palace strongholds and their supporting cast of secret police, guard and transport organisations. Some sites, such as Radwaniyah, had been bombed in 1991. Other sites, particularly 'special' barracks and units in and around downtown Baghdad and the outlying palaces, were bombed for the first time.

​

National security insiders, blessed with their unprecedented intelligence bonanza from Unscom, convinced themselves that bombing Saddam Hussein's internal apparatus would drive the Iraqi leader around the bend. 'We've penetrated your security, we're inside your brain,' is the way one senior administration official described the message that the US was sending Saddam Hussein.

​

Without the target list, such a view seems like sheer bravado. With the target list, a host of new questions arises: Is the administration's view of Saddam Hussein's hold on power in line with reality? And what is the feasibility, not to mention the legality, of what amounts to an aerial assassination strategy?

---

So Schraf, these alleged chemical weapons found in Iraq in 1998 such that it justified Desert Fox are:
1) refuted by the head of UNSCOM at the time
2) refuted by the result of Iraq Survey Group
3) not reflected in the targetting list actually used in Desert FoxAnd we also see from the likes of David Kay that the Us was purposefully applying the worst and most malicious spin it could concoct to any finding in Iraq whatsoever.Desert Fox, Afghanistan and the occupation of Iraq - all based on paranoid, hypocritical and frankly racist assumptions about foreign states. It is America that is in the wrong in all these matters, case closed. And September the 11th was not nearly enough payback, not at all.

I don't remember exactly, but in the period after the terrorist attack many different nations were in the news for breaching WMD rules, like North korea, Iran and Iraq. They were all quite careless about it.regards,
Mohammad Nor Syamsu

How strangely unedifying.TTFN,WK

Burma gas attack allegedJohn Aglionby, South-east Asia correspondent
Friday April 22, 2005
The GuardianThe Burmese army used chemical weapons in an attack on ethnic Karenni rebels in February, the UK-based rights group Christian Solidarity Worldwide alleges in a report published today.Martin Panter, the organisation's international president, told the Guardian he had interviewed and examined five reported survivors of the February 15 assault on Karenni positions in Nya My, just over the border from the northern Thai town of Mae Hon Son."I believe there's overwhelming and compelling circumstantial evidence that these soldiers are victims of chemical weapons," he said."I cannot say exactly what the cocktail of chemicals was but it appears to have contained blister agents, mustard gas and neurological agents." He said the Karenni forces had allegedly been enduring an artillery bombardment for more than a month when, on February 15, a shell exploded with a different sound."They said there was a strongly pungent acrid yellow vapour," Dr Panter said. "The gas was yellow, tasted like chilli and was hot."The Karenni allegedly told Dr Panter their eyes watered, and they suffered severe nausea and vomiting, coughed up blood and suffered gastro-intestinal illnesses such as diarrhoea and had great difficulty walking for some time."I have a report from a doctor who examined them five days after the attack and what I saw was completely consistent with what was in that report," he said.--
Burma gas attack alleged | World news | The GuardianSo now we wait and see what the moral west will do in response.This message has been edited by contracycle, 04-22-2005 07:52 AM

quote:

---

The problem is that the real Evil Nation in the Terrorist Camp is Indonesia. If you examine what has come to light since 9-11 the recurring theme is that Indonesia was the meeting ground and home base for all of the various terrorist elements. Instead of invading IRAQ which has not been shown to have played any part in Terrorism, we should have invaded Indonesia.

---

Really, Mr. Orangutan, your idea suck.Indonesian authorities are way better in catching terrorists than the US. Almost all participants of the Bali bomb case is now in prison, the top brass in death row. There are some that is still at large but hopefully we'll get them soon. Fathurrahman al-Ghozi has been shot dead in the Philippines. Hambali is under arrest (although not by Indonesian authorities). And while I don't know if Abu Bakar Ba'asyir is guilty or not, at least he's under surveillance.What about the US? 6 years of chasing Osama and still no luck.I say the US should source the job of cracking down terrorists to the Indonesian authorities.

is that you are the only person to have responded to that message.The purpose of the message was to try to point out how absolutely absurd the planning, purpose and methodology of the War of Terror really is. I picked Indonesia because several key meetings were held there. The fact is that they were held there because Indonesia has a well developed communications and transportation infrasturcture.I could have as easily picked France, England, Germany, Italy, Spain, Brazil, Mexico, Canada, Portugal, Chile, Argentina, the Philippines and particularly the US. Each country was host and a training camp for the 9-11 terrorists.Notice, Iraq is missing from all of them. It simply was not a significant player, the infrastructure was demolished, communications lousy, it was surrounded by US forces and under constant monitoring for all communications and transportation. Today's terrorists, above all else, want access to basic infrastructure and technology, things not found in undeveloped countries but rather in the developed world.But you are the only person that responded. And we think we have a chance to address the issue.

---

Aslan is not a Tame Lion

SourceSome info from Iraqi defectors. Source

---

Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, "Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?" And I said, "Here am I. Send me!" Isaiah 6:8
No webpage found at provided URL: www.1st-vets.us

Sorry but that has little to do with why we invaded IRAQ. Taking planes hostage has been standard terrorist tacktics for many, many decades and such sites were built in many locations, including Lybia.Sorry, but that's really, really weak support.

---

Aslan is not a Tame Lion

Are these the same Iraqi defectors who were shown to be hopelessly unreliable? One 45 minute claim in particular springs to mind. Iraqi defectors' weapons claims were 'false'This article by Seymour Hersh in the 12 May 2003 New Yorker goes into greater detail about Sabah Khalifa Khodada Alami incident - it appears that what he had to say was completely fabricated (line breaks added by me, to make it readable): PEThis message has been edited by Primordial Egg, 04-26-2005 12:35 PM

Sure it does.And how is Lybia nowadays?

---

Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, "Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?" And I said, "Here am I. Send me!" Isaiah 6:8
No webpage found at provided URL: www.1st-vets.us

Oh, he didn't give the name of the former CIA station chief? Hrm. Good source. A guy told me.I posted 2 sources, the defector was one. The 911 commission hearings was the other. Pretty cut and dry there.

---

Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, "Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?" And I said, "Here am I. Send me!" Isaiah 6:8
No webpage found at provided URL: www.1st-vets.us

You're reaching. What reason would you have for believing or even knowing that Khodada was who he said he was or that he was telling the truth. Some guy told you? Good, so now we know you're no longer prepared to defend the claims of the Iraqi defector we can move on to what you quote of the 911 Commission. Intelligence information? That would be some guy told another guy? Sounds bizarrely like exactly the same source, no? Everything here is consistent with Hersh's report. Its a pretty weak argument to ignore Hersh's article because his sources are anonymous (as they were for his Abu Ghraib article, if memory serves me correctly) and then seek refuge in "intelligence information" which has since been discredited.PEThis message has been edited by Primordial Egg, 04-26-2005 01:12 PM