page 12
Noticing current world affairs


CONTENTS OF PAGE 12
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A Joseph Sobram column about how to recognoize slippery mis-informatiopn in news releases.

A Charley Reese column compares W. Bush with England's King George III
   And details the dire consequences of war with Iraq.

A Scottish newspaper article reports W, Bush and key advisors, before the
   presidential election, conspired that war with Iraq would be the top priority
   and objective of his administration.  If this is true, then it would seem that
   no amount of conciliatory concessions by Iraq; nor actions by the U,N. or
   inspectors; nor horrendous consequences will deter W. from making
   war anyhow.  If true, then Sept.11 had nothing o do wih initiating
   "war on terrorism".  War was already in the works.



ARCHIVES

OCTOBER 16 UPDATE
 Joseph Sobran is a nationally syndicated Washington DC columnist

(ARTICLE START)

TAKING CARE OF PEEWEE
by Joe Sobran   October 15, 2002

  WHO can forget Bert Lahr as the Cowardly Lion in THE WIZARD OF OZ?
Frustrated in his attack on the other characters, he threatens
Dorothy's little dog, Toto:"I'll take care of you anyway, Peewee!"

 President Bush reminds one of the Cowardly Lion. Unable to make
headway against the al-Qaeda terrorists, he figures he can at least take
care of a Peewee, Saddam Hussein -- that supposed "threat" whose
military forcesare at a fraction of their strength in 1991, when theywere
badly mauled.

 The perverse genius of al-Qaeda is that it doesn't depend on any single
state for support. Even if it has some ties to states, including Iraq, that
doesn't mean that destroying those states will seriously hamper its
operations.

  Millions of people in and around Washington, D.C., have just learned how
much panic and disruption a single murderous sniper can create, baffling
the combined forces of the District, Virginia, and Maryland.

 If one lone terrorist, without support from Iraq, can wreak such havoc
locally, imagine the difficulty of defeating terrorism globally.

 Even if the task is impossible, we can count on our rulers to pretend
they're winning the War on Terrorism. Writing in the London magazine
The Spectator, Matthew Parris offers some shrewd tips on how to tell
when the government and the media are bluffing us.

 First, look for imputations of guilt by association. "Watch
for the use of terms like 'linked,' 'possible links to,' to beef up
a thin story. Slyly employed, such words suggest a hard link
where only a soft association exists."

 Second, beware of reports of "front" associations, again
suggesting concrete links where there are none.

  Third, look for "the slither from sympathy to
'sympathizer.'" Parris notes: "I once wrote that we should
try to understand the grievances motivating terrorists, so I
may find myself called 'an al-Qaeda sympathizer.'" Or
"supporter," or "apologist."

 Fourth, watch out for news reports trumpeting the capture
of "key" figures -- or "ringleaders," "henchmen,"
"organizers," who usually turn out to be nobodies.

  Fifth, notice "big-sounding stories which mysteriously
vanish." Again, we are often told that the government has
made a "breakthrough" in the War on Terrorism, but the
other shoe never seems to fall. The initial impression is that
the government is succeeding, yet nothing comes of it.

 Sixth, be alert for "'security' as a justification for the
apparent death of a story." Has anything really been learned
from all those "crack troops" being held in cages in Cuba?
We'll never know. But the Pentagon can always claim the
information gleaned from captives, however meager, is too
"sensitive" to publish.

 Maybe neither we nor the government has any real idea of how well the
War on Terrorism is going, but the persistent official use of slippery,
evasive, even meaningless language isn't encouraging. We aren't being
informed with the respect due to mature people who deserve the
unvarnished truth. Instead, we're being treated like the dupes of
advertising hype -- like kids being sold on the latest sugared and dyed
breakfast cereal.

 Bush keeps insisting that the stakes in his prospective Iraq war are very
high, but neither he nor anyone else acts as if this were true. If Saddam
Hussein really poses an "imminent threat" to the United States, why isn't
the president urging us to take precautions to protect ourselves?

 During the Cold War, when Americans truly feared a nuclear attack from
the Soviet Union, schoolchildren were taught to take civil defense
measures, radio stations broadcast practice alerts several times daily, and
people built bomb shelters in their yards. No such preparations are being
made now against Iraq.

  Of course we don't have to go back to the Fifties for pertinent
precedents. Immediately after the events of 9/11, we became obsessed
with security and took countless steps, at a cost of billions, to frustrate or
avert more terrorist attacks. We still do.

 So why aren't we also bracing ourselves for an Iraqi attack? Why isn't the
government requiring or even advising us to do so? The answer is all too
obvious: because nobody believes an Iraqi attack is coming -- least of all
Bush.

 That tells you how seriously the president himself takes the "threat"
which, he insists, justifies his "preemptive" war.

(ARTICLE END)



OCTOBER 9 UPDATE
Columnist Charley Reese refers to W. Bush as "King George the younger"
Remember: the previous president Bush was George (King) Bush.
Most of the time when Charley Reese mentions "King George", he means
"King George, the younger" = W.

(ARTICLE START)
Orlando Sentinel  Orlando, Florida, October 7, 2002
Consequences Of War
 by Charley Reese

 OUR problems will begin after King George the Younger's war
against Iraq is concluded. Like all wars, those who profit from it
won't die or suffer in it, and those who die or suffer in it won't
profit from it.

  The United States will win the war. The same country, Iraq, that is
presented to the American people as a mortal peril and threat to the United
States -- and even the world -- is in reality a Third World country with nothing but
obsolete Soviet weapons and a wrecked economy. No matter how bravely the Iraqis
fight, they won't be able to win against a superpower and its fifth-rate
sidekick,the United Kingdom.

  And there we will be, in the ruins of Baghdad, responsible for 22 million
souls divided into factions that hate each other, are hated by their
neighbors and that all hate us. The king's counselors seem to have
convinced him that we will simply divide the spoils among the American and
British corporations and then wash our hands of the whole thing, leaving an
American stooge in charge.

 It won't be that easy. Putting Afghanistan back together, which we have
yet to accomplish, will be seen as a cakewalk compared with restoring and
maintaining order in Iraq. From which faction will we draw our stooge? The
Republican Guard? The fanatic Shiites eager for close ties with Iran? The
Kurds who want their own separate country -- which, if they try to produce
it, will spark a war with Turkey? Far from democratizing Iraq, we will end up
imposing a dictatorship. As is the case in Afghanistan, we will find it
harder to get out of Iraq than it was to get in.

  In the meantime, we will bear the moral shame of having launched an
aggressive war against a weak opponent. We will bear the moral blame for all
the dead, maimed and impoverished Iraqis who, like American soldiers, have to
pay the price for their leader's folly. Our grandchildren and their
children will have to live with the terrorism that this aggressive war will
spawn, not to mention the hundreds of billions of dollars that will be
added to the national debt.

 And that's the best-case scenario.

The worst-case scenario is that before we have defeated Iraq, the war expands
to include Lebanon, Syria and Israel, and that the Arab street rises up and
overthrows those Arab governments that have been servile servants of
America's new imperialism. One of several strategic blunders our youthful and
inexperienced King George is making is failing to understand the difference
between secularism and Islamic fundamentalists.

  Secular governments, like Saddam's, want to survive. They would rather live
with us than die with us, and therefore all our differences are negotiable,
even subject to settlement with bribes. Islamist governments, however,
consist of people who would rather die with us than live with us. Nothing
is negotiable. No agreement or compromise is possible. The effect of the
Bush war will be, in the years to come, to place more and more of the
world's 1 billion Muslims under Islamist, rather than secular, leadership.

  Next to King George, the single most enthusiastic and delighted person
backing a war against Iraq is Osama bin Laden. He wants a war of Islam
against the West, and George Bush, who is not a subtle or sophisticated
thinker, is strutting straight into his trap. Rather than making the Middle East safe
for oil companies and Israel, as he imagines, Bush will make the world
unsafe for Americans.

  To paraphrase one of his own macho sayings, he will have started something.
Others will finish it.
                            © 2002 by King Features Syndicate, Inc

(ARTICLE END)

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If it is true as reported in the Scottish Sunday Herald Newspaper, that W and Jeb Bush together with Donald Rumsfield and others, before the presedential election, plotted and determined to involve the U.S. in a war with Iraq: Then isn't it true that Sept.11 and/or "terrorism" are not the real reasons for W. Bush's frantic urgency to start war with Iraq?
W. Bush may use Sept. 11 and "terrorism" as a "smokescreen" but actually isn't it true that no matter
what concessions and concilliations Iraq conceds, or what the United Nations or inspectors do or do not do, or what allies desert us, or what infinite endless disaster results for the U.S. forever after----
W. Bush will plunge us into war anyhow.

   About who was responsible for Sept. 11:; The Keys To The Kingdom Church asks, who had the greatest motive and stood most to gain from the attack?   Zionist Jews dreaded Iraq would eventually
make war on "Israel".  If Zionist Jews could manipulate Arab or Moslems to carry out the Sept. 11
attack:  Zionist Jews could almost surely trick the U.S. into war with Iraq, not to benefit or protect the U.S., but instead to have the U.S. do a war strictly to benefit and protect "Israel"  Zionist Jews stood most to gain from Sept. 11.

  But doesn't W. Bush also have the highest possible motive and benefit from Sept. 11?  It makes W.Bush in effect instant NON-ELECTED dictator!  And then there is Iraq's massive oil deposits, thought to be the second largest in the world.  Plus the opportunity to run an oil pipeline from the Caspian Sea oil riches to either "Israel" or the Persian Gulf harbors.

Here is a relevant news article:

(ARTICLE START)
          Scottish Sunday Herald
                 Sunday, September 15, 2002

 Bush planned Iraq 'regime change' before becoming
        President       Article By Neil Mackay

        A SECRET blueprint for US global domination reveals that
        President Bush and his cabinet were planning a premeditated
        attack on Iraq to secure 'regime change' even before he took power
        in January 2001.

        The blueprint, uncovered by the Sunday Herald, for the creation of a 'global Pax
        Americana' was drawn up for Dick Cheney (now vice- president), Donald
        Rumsfeld (defence secretary), Paul Wolfowitz (Rumsfeld's deputy), George W
        Bush's younger brother Jeb and Lewis Libby (Cheney's chief of staff). The
        document, entitled Rebuilding America's Defences: Strategies, Forces And
        Resources For A New Century, was written in September 2000 by the
        neo-conservative think-tank Project for the New American Century (PNAC).

        The plan shows Bush's cabinet intended to take military control of the Gulf region
        whether or not Saddam Hussein was in power. It says: 'The United States has
        for decades sought to play a more permanent role in Gulf regional security. While
        the unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the immediate justification, the need for a
        substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime
        of Saddam Hussein.'

        The PNAC document supports a 'blueprint for maintaining global US
        pre-eminence, precluding the rise of a great power rival, and shaping the
        international security order in line with American principles and interests'.

        This 'American grand strategy' must be advanced for 'as far into the future as
        possible', the report says. It also calls for the US to 'fight and decisively win
        multiple, simultaneous major theatre wars' as a 'core mission'.

        The report describes American armed forces abroad as 'the cavalry on the new
        American frontier'. The PNAC blueprint supports an earlier document written by
        Wolfowitz and Libby that said the US must 'discourage advanced industrial nations
        from challenging our leadership or even aspiring to a larger regional or global role'.

  The PNAC report also:refers to key allies such as the UK as 'the most effective and efficient
means of exercising American global leadership'; describes peace-keeping issions as                     'demanding American political leadership rather than that of the United Nations';
reveals worries in the administration that Europe could rival the USA;
says 'even should Saddam pass from the scene' bases in Saudi Arabia and
Kuwait will remain permanently -- despite domestic opposition in the Gulf
regimes to the stationing of US troops -- as 'Iran may well prove as large a
threat to US interests as Iraq has'; spotlights China for 'regime change' saying 'it is time
to increase the presence of American forces in southeast Asia'. This, it says, may lead to
'American and allied power providing the spur to the process of democratisation in China';
calls for the creation of 'US Space Forces', to dominate space, and the total
control of cyberspace to prevent 'enemies' using the internet against the US;
 hints that, despite threatening war against Iraq for developing weapons of
 mass destruction, the US may consider developing biological weapons --
 which the nation has banned -- in decades to come. It says: 'New methods
of attack -- electronic, 'non-lethal', biological -- will be more widely available
combat likely will take place in new dimensions, in space, cyberspace,
and perhaps the world of microbes ... advanced forms of biological warfare
that can 'target' specific genotypes may transform biological warfare from
the realm of terror to a politically useful tool';and pinpoints North Korea, Libya,
Syria and Iran as dangerous regimes and says their existence justifies the creation of a
'world-wide command-and-control system'.

    Tam Dalyell, the Labour MP, father of the House of Commons and one of the
leading rebel voices against war with Iraq, said:

             'This is garbage from right-wing think-tanks stuffed with
             chicken-hawks -- men who have never seen the horror of war but
             are in love with the idea of war. Men like Cheney, who were
             draft-dodgers in the Vietnam war.

             'This is a blueprint for US world domination -- a new world order of
             their making. These are the thought processes of fantasist Americans
             who want to control the world. I am appalled that a British Labour
             Prime Minister should have got into bed with a crew which has this
             moral standing".
ARTICLE END

 If these allegations are true, then The Keys To The Kingdom Church concludes that
W. Bush is the most sinister and dangerous rouge to ever appear on earth in all of human history.
Far, far worse and menacing than Ghenghis Khan; Tammerlane; or Joseph Stalin put together.

Another article in the news had it that the British Parliament is in recess and therefore Prime
Minister Tony Blair has been acting alone in dictatorial fashion in committing Britain to war with
out consulting Parliament.  The leader of the Labor Party (which party appointed Blair to be
Prime Minister) has demanded Blair call Parliament into session to debate the war issue.  And
if Blair refuses, then the Labor Party on it's own authority and at  it's own expense will hire a
hall and convene Parliament.  If this happens, it will be the first time since Oliver Cromwell
days and the first British Revolutionary war (which made Parliament to replace the King as the
ruling authority).  The first time in some 500 years that Parliament convened itself in defiance of
the executive government!

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If you have comments, queries, or suggestions, please E-mail me at jbpatter@aug.com

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