Republicans & Conservatives: Archives

Alleged, appears to be, could be, perhaps, might, possibly, may have, if true, etc. etc. etc. - Good lawyer tricks to convince a jury when the facts arent’t available to do the job. How many of these shoula, coulda, woulda’s can you find in the above article.

Bang on, Eric. It’s high time people came off their high horse and realized what the anti-war movement was really about. It was about keeping a mass-murdering dictator in power. And about the money. Somebody recently called it, more aptly, the Oil-for-Fools program.

The Iraqi foreign minister said it outright at the General Assembly —- members of the UN, you have failed us.

FADE IN:
INT. UN SECURITY COUNCIL CHAMBERS - DAY

GEORGE W. BUSH, 56, a white male with greying hair approaches the security council podium in well tailored suit, aides carrying thick file folders with them. He drops them on the podium with a palpable thud.

NEWS ANCHOR(Voice Over);…The world is abuzz with speculation. The president unexpectedly requested this special meeting of the Security Council during the last week. We have word he’s about to begin his address. Let us listen in…

BUSH:Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. It is with a grave heart and greatest reluctance that I asked for this session.

Cameras sweep over the audience and the council.

BUSH: Under normal circumstances, I would be asking to speak with you about what my country feels we and this council must do to combat the evils of terrorism that have made themselves so plain in recent times, at the cost of so many lives.

INT. MIDDLE EASTERN HOUSE - NIGHT

An Arab man hastily packs up a suitcase. The Commander in Chief’s speech plays on the television. The channel is CNN, via satellite.

BUSH(Through TV): But these are not normal circumstances. Though our weapons inspectors are working their way through Iraq, attempting to find the truth of whether one of the century’s most brutal and evil dictators…

the man hurries through the house. He pauses at a window, sees police cars pull up.

BUSH(Through TV): …possesses the worlds most destructive weapons, before any of the nations here finds it out the hard way, they are not being given the support necessary to do their jobs right. So I cannot speak of Weapons of Mass Destruction, until we have spoken of a more insidious threat.

Dead center on the television- Bush looks into camera.

BUSH(Through TV): Those who would sell out their countrymen, this council, and the peace loving neighbors of Iraq to a tyrant who wants a truce he has not earned by his deeds

The men bust in and wrestle the man to the ground.

INT. UN SECURITY COUNCIL CHAMBERS - DAY

The council is abuzz.

BUSH(Through TV):I have with me the results of an investigation by our state, Defense and Justice departments, and by the investigators of many of the member countries here- evidence, intelligence reports, and affidavits- all detailing a disturbing pattern of oil voucher reciepts, payment for oil outside of the Oil For Food program, oil that Saddam has no legal right to sell and these people cannot legally accept. I have spoken with the governments of the respective nations whose members are sadly involved in this, and we have been assured that there will be a reckoning…

EXT. MIDDLE EASTERN HIGHWAY - NIGHT

The man sits in the back of a police car, the yellow lights from the lampost above playing over him rythmically as the car runs.

BUSH(offscreen):Those who have corrupted the weapons inspection process, who have besmirched the name of this council will be brought to justice.

FADE TO BLACK

Back to normal…
That little dramatization was meant to make a point: We could have used this information as a diplomatic weapon, a means of blackmail, a way of gaining prestige from the members who were just stonewalling us. But you, Eric, you let your prejudices get in the way of an essential truth: Bush squandered his diplomatic opportunities. He squandered his ability to twist the arms behind the scenes, and his opportunity to use those people’s corruption against them.

What’s more, they could have used the evidence of collusion with Saddam as a lever to turn the public opinion of those countries farther towards neutral, even as a Causus Belli itself.

Instead, Bush painted this country into a diplomatic corner. Gee, thanks a lot.

> It’s high time people came off their high
> horse and realized what the anti-war movement
> was really about. It was about keeping a mass-
> murdering dictator in power.

Vivek, I take this as a deep personal insult.

The anti-war movement includes literally tens of millions of Americans, every single one of whom opposed the invasion of Iraq for reasons other than “keeping a mass-murdering dictator in power.” You are suggesting that to be against the war is to be pro-Saddam, and that is either a dirty slanderous lie or just plain dumb.

Can’t we debate the war without assuming that those who opposed it were lovers of oppression and death? Can you give tens of millions of your fellow Americans at least that much of the benefit of the doubt? Or do you really beleive that the Baathist party has infiltrated our country so thoroughly that a third of all Americans are Saddam loyalists?

Moderator: before you censor/censure me, please think about just how inflamatory - and personal - Vivek’s comment really is.

-Cf

Stephen,

That’s actually good screen writing. But it wasn’t entirely clear to me if you meant the President should be doing that now or whether he should have done that instead of going to war.

I agree that Bush should go to the UN tomorrow.

For what it’s worth, these are documents released by Iraqi’s uncovered as a result of our occupation of Iraq.

On January 25, 2004, the Iraqi independent daily Al-Mada published a list of approximately 270 individuals and entities who were beneficiaries of Saddam Hussein’s oil vouchers. [1] The report evoked reactions from many of those included in the list as well as from the Arab media, among them apologists for Saddam’s regime. The fact that so many have opted for silence may give credence to the list’s authenticity.

A former undersecretary in the Iraqi Ministry of Petroleum, Abd Al-Saheb Salman Qutb, said that the ministry possesses documents proving the authenticity of the list published by Al-Mada. The list was originally the property of the State Oil Marketing Organization (SOMO), which was responsible for marketing Iraqi petroleum. [2] Mr. Qutb also said that the ministry was collecting the information for submission to Interpol, which could then pursue the voucher beneficiaries. [3]
Memri.org

Well, thank you for the compliment on the writing. I intended the setting to be a year back in time from our own. That’s why Bush’s age is given as 56, instead of it’s current 57

I intended this to be Bush using diplomatic muscle, instead of burning up political capital with his defiant stance.

On a lighter note, I’d say writing for Bush’s style is relatively easy. he favors long sort of up and down rhythyms in his speeches, broad, sort of paternalistic word choices, prescribing of moral values, and bluntly spoken assessments of the moral character of those involved. Addtionally important would be the sense of absolute confidence in what he’s saying. Like it or not, that sort of cockiness/arrogance would be sorely missed if it weren’t in the tone of Bush’s dialogue.

Ironically enough, one of my chief complaints about how Bush speaks, is his tendency to sound like a president from a genre movie of some kind. So I kind of enjoyed writing my own dialogue for Bush to say, improving the direction of Bush’s typical dramatic speech making sesion. Oh well.

Vivek - ah, another sweeping (incorrect) generalization about the left from you. I don’t suppose you’re going to be retracting your articles earlier on WatchBlog that were proven to be false or misleading?

The anti-war movement was about money? Sorry, but I think my (starving college student) girlfriend would take umbrage at that, as do I.

How about keeping a mass-murdering dicator in power, then? Sorry, but just about every single one of us leftists readily acknowledges that Saddam was an evil man. The way Bush went about removing that evil man, however, was not sound - misleading the American public and the world, paying only lip service to establishing a coalition (c’mon - when you have to list El Salvador as one of your coalition members in a speech, you’re really reaching…), etc.

Stephen - exactly.

If we’d gone to the UN and said “here’s the proof that France is protecting Iraq so that they can illegally profit off oil sales”, I think we’d have had a much better chance of pulling together a true coalition force.

Instead, we went to the UN saying “we know there are chemical/biological/etc. weapons there, where they are, etc” - and that turned out to be untrue.

We gained these documents only as a result of our occupying the country. :) And thus could not have gone to the UN with them before the war.

just about every single one of us leftists readily acknowledges that Saddam was an evil man.

Just not important enough to actually remove? After 9/11?

The way Bush went about removing that evil man, however, was not sound - misleading the American public and the world, paying only lip service to establishing a coalition…

The anti-war left has no problem leaving him in power though? And now must get out of power?

Bush started by saying we needed a regime change in Iraq. Regime change. Disarmament was not enough. We had been pussyfooting around with this guy for more than a decade.

Here’s a point the left may not admit to. They believed, as the whole world did, that Saddam had WMD before the war, they just didn’t think it was that important an issue to have to go in and remove him.

I believe, as I believe the Bush adminstration did, that after 9/11 it became clear that Saddam Hussein was too great a threat to leave to his own devices.

The argument that he was not much of a threat to the US because of our great military might is no longer valid in a classical sense of national military threat.

Who would have predicted that Afghanistan would be complicit in the deaths of nearly 3,000 New Yorkers and the total destruction of the World Trade Towers?

In essence the margin for error is much lower.

Ok! France and Russian politicians are corrupt self serving scum. Is this even a point worth arguing? What politician on this planet doesn’t match that description?

However, if Iraqi exiles can’t be trusted on the weapons of mass destruction issue how can we trust the Iraqi collaborators working for us now? If you have had anything to do with an ordinary individual from a 3rd world country then you know that truth never trumps a paycheck. They would claim the moon was green cheese if you offered them a green card.

At this point in the electoral cycle so would W.

Eric, we were taken in by the enthusiasm of people who have built their careers on turning everything into a worst case scenario. though some in my party would disagree, I would have supported a war to overthrow Saddam if Bush’s people had had their act together on things.

But they didn’t get their act together, and however justified removing him from power is, it is positively stupid to go about in such a way that weakens our ability to project power, and even worse to demonstrate such incompetence in running the place after everything is said and done. From the start, Bush’s people alienated allies, depended on the opportune turn-out of events, and employed insufficent troops and supplies to get the job done right the first time, that is, the only time it really matters.

We don’t get to take back a war like this. We have done something fairly historic in modern times, and that will have its effect. If Iraq degenerates into civil war and anarchy, we will not be able to plausibly deny our role in creating it.

All things being equal, I’d rather leave a consecrated victory behind than an unholy mess.

Bush’s people alienated allies, depended on the opportune turn-out of events, and employed insufficent troops and supplies to get the job done right the first time, that is, the only time it really matters.

Did we alienate them or have they alienated us? I feel a bit used especially in light of the gross ‘appearance of corruption’ France, and Russia in particular has in it’s duplicitice involvement with Saddam. Should all of our foreign policy be pre-approved by France and Russia?

Your insistance that they depended on opportune turn of events and used insufficient troops is merely that, an insistance. Did we use enough ground troops in Kosovo?

We don’t get to take back a war like this. We have done something fairly historic in modern times, and that will have its effect. If Iraq degenerates into civil war and anarchy, we will not be able to plausibly deny our role in creating it.

All things being equal, I’d rather leave a consecrated victory behind than an unholy mess.

You would rather return the Iraqi people to bondage?

UPDATE:

Perhaps the best measure of the corruption comes from a review of the $8.7 billion in outstanding oil-for-food contracts by the provisional Iraqi government with United Nations help. It found that 70 percent of the suppliers had inflated their prices and agreed to pay a 10 percent kickback, in cash or by transfer to accounts in Jordanian, Lebanese and Syrian banks.

At that rate, Iraq would have collected as much as $2.3 billion of the $32.6 billion worth of contracts it signed since mid-2000, when the kickback system began. And some companies were willing to pay even more than the standard 10 percent, according to Trade and Oil Ministry employees.

Iraq’s suppliers included Russian factories, Arab trade brokers, European manufacturers and state-owned companies from China and the Middle East. Iraq generally refused to buy directly from American companies, which in any case needed special licenses to trade legally with Iraq. -New York Times