Politics, Everyday, All day... morning, noon and night....

[can't sit still]

Hey Joel,,,good to see you.
Geekster, you seem to have the most time on your hands. Check out Indonesia. Muslim, 20,000 islands and a pop growing like CRAZY.
It's thought to be ungovernable. Don't hold me to the details.

Just think, scalar weapons or neutron bombs and we'd have 20,000
islands to party on. ENDLESS beaches. A developers dream. Why not?? You've heard the lyrics to Randy Neuman's song "Political Science"

[geekster]

Al Qaeda is going to pop up anywhere that there is a large muslim population and the existing government is either weak, friendly to them, or has the potential to be made weak though intimidation. A good example would be Somalia A recent example would be this BBC story.

The goal is the same. Fight secular governments, establish sharia as the law of the land, do the same in other areas, unite them all together under a caliphate as a single global muslim nation and then begin to forcibly destroy the remaining non-muslim countries until they either convert or submit. It really is a doctrine of taking over the entire world and they are, as I mentioned before, prepared to spend thousands of years and billions of lives in doing it. And they believe that so long as only one of them (the true jihadis) survives, it is their duty to fight for Islam.

The trouble has been that varying political factions around the various secular countries of the world have been trying to define the battle in terms of their own domestic politics, which has nothing at all to do with the situation. The US and the UK and pretty much the rest of the EU are the first targets because they are the countries that tend to champion for and support secular government around the world. What many are missing, though, is that all the rest of the countries will be delt with at some point too. At some point they will get around to dealing with Canada and Mexico and Switzerland etc. But for now, if they can get squabbles going between internal political factions of potential adversaries and cause them to run from the current fight by things such as setting a few bombs on some train tracks, fine. That is easy to do, doesn't cost a lot of money, and in this instance caused Spain to exit Iraq. It doesn't mean that Al Qaeda isn't going to get back around to Spain at some point in the future, it just means that they were able to get Spain off their back for the moment and get the internal politics stirred to basicaly paralyze Spain when it comes to doing any overt actions.

Back when 9/11 first happened (which was, remember, the *second* attack on the World Trace center by Al Qaeda. The first attempted bombing by truck bomb in the parking garage failed because the explosive wasn't powerful enough and it burned so hot that it destroyed the cyanide gas that was part of the bomb) you heard a phrase tossed around of "asymmetrical warfare". This means that one side can cause much to happen by exerting little effort (smuggling in some dynamite and blowing up some rail lines causing an entire army to leave a theatre of battle) while the other side must exert tremendous effort to cause even little small things to happen.

But it really goes deeper than that, even. It is also asymmetrical states of mind. One side of the conflict approaches things in a risk/reward fashion where they are constantly weighing what the benefits are, what losses can be tolerated, how much can be spent, etc. The other side is operating on religious fanatacism which is emotional and a lot like love in many ways. It can allow people to pay an irrational price, bear an irrational burden, suffer an irrational amount of loss, and never ever ever give up. As long as we are simply approaching it as if we are fighting against some fanatics, we are going to lose. They are going to continue to fight no matter what we do. At some point they will finally extract as much from anyone fighting them as that country will pay and they will either convert or go docile and be delt with again later until they do convert or unconditionally submit. Until we realize that they are not out to destroy our government, that they are out to destroy our SYSTEM of government and that they are bent on destroying secular rule of law and separation of religious from secular law, we are going to lose. Only when we see this for what it is, a fight for the survival of self determination, will we be able to remove the asymmetry of state of mind. At that point there is still an asymmetry of combat but that will change when the mind changes. We will eventually reach the point where rather than play according to some kind of rulebook, we will see that we are basically fighting for our very lives and at that point, we will be able to play just as dirty as they are.

It has happened in our past. After the Japanese attacked Perl Harbor and Alaska, we were pretty much ruthless in our combat with them. It wasn't so much the military/industrial sleeping giant that was awakend as it was a state of mind, an absolute determination to win at any cost because the enemy had demonstrated that if we don't attack them, they are going to attack us. The deal is that with Al Qaeda, we don't get to decide not to fight. THEY have already decided THEY are going to fight and if we won't go to them, then they will come to us and have demostrated that several times. They attacked two of our embassies, they attacked a family housing unit for US personnel in Saudi Arabia, they attacked the USS Cole, and they attacked the World Trade Center in New York twice.

But that isn't really all. They were also engaged with us in combat in Somolia and caused Clinton to run away. Black Hawk Down is a story about one of the earliest engagements of the US against Al Qaeda. We ran away. They came after us. 4 attacks upon US soil and 2 attacks directly on US government interests. Running away didn't do any good. Clinton tossed some cruise missiles at Osama, so Osama figured out how to get a couple of cruise missiles of his own (Boeing jets) and tossed them into the Pentagon and World Trade and who knows where the other plane was headed.

You may pretend it is about domestic politics, but that is a very dangerous game. If you decide to disengage, you will be hit harder later. They have absolutely no problem with and feel completely justified in mass slaughter. They would have no problem releasing poison gas if it served their needs. They really don't care how many of us they kill and they really don't care how many of their own need to die doing it.

But there is hope. Their methods could so disgust their own people that they have trouble getting recruits. There is evidence that is happening with them now having to put want ads on the Internet and recent chiding on their net forms at european muslims for simply spectating and not participating. Sounds like they may be starting to get desparate for recruits. Not to worry, the next generation can pick up where this one left off. They fancy themselves as the modern day Ottoman Empire. We shall see.

[geekster]

And I missed telling that the main difference between Iraq and say Bosnia, or Kosovo, or Vietnam is that Al Qaeda is truly global. They are in the Phillipines, they are in Maylasia, they are in Indonesia, Thailand, Afghanistan, Iraq, Somolia, Sudan, Nigeria, Niger and other countries in Europe, Asia, and Africa. That is quite a different threat than the Viet Cong or NVA or Serbia. This is a global threat that is willing to pay any price to slaughter people. Ignoring it won't stop it. Negotiating with it won't stop it. Being nice to it won't stop it.

[can't sit still]

Geekster, we've been going tit and tat back and forth. The only problem is that I don't have much tit.
You talk about clarity of purpose. Our gov has to say WMD. They can't say that we need to commit genocide to preserve our existence. Too many people would say "just leave them alone and they'll leave us alone"
Too many people still have the "island America" mentality.

I'm afraid that we're going to have to absorb a lot of punishment before we wake up AND fight. We don't yet have that "terrible resolve" that Hirohito spoke about. We aren't anywhere near being convinced that our survival is on the line. We'll have to patiently wait for more destruction.

We've been the "paper tiger" too long. Europe knows that they're under the knife. China is snipping away at us. They're working to take over the south pacific. Islam, like China is willing to bide their time. Musharef is holding on in Pakistan, but he can't last forever. He's surrounded by the "stans" Russia can't contain their former provinces in the south.

It looks pretty shitty all around. You said that they'll continue to fight. The same was said about the Japanese,,,,,until the arrival of fat man and little boy. I think that when our back is to the wall, The US military will unleash the worst nightmares ever invented. When the US is finally scared, we may very well turn Pakistan and Somalia into fused glass. If we can't sort the good from the bad, we have to kill them all.
Dan

[geekster]

You have to understand that the nature of the Iraq war changed the moment Zarwqawi decided to align himself with Al Qaida. At that point you can forget about the WMD and every other potential reason for going in there. The entire nature of the operation changed. It became, in effect, two wars at the same time. It is extremely complex in that there are a lot of different things interacting here. You have the Baathists who simply want to sabotage anything that Iraq might do that doesn't include Saddam as head of state. You have Al Qaeda who want to sabotage any government of any sort that isn't theirs. You have a criminal element that wants to sabotage any government period.

It takes a while to get each of these cleaned up and they each need to be approached in their own way because they are each operating with different motivations. I read a story today about some Iraqis that were caught. Their job was that they were paid about USD100 every time they escorted a foreign "jihadi" to a location to explode his bomb. The Iraqis weren't jihadis, they would never consider blowing themselves up. They aren't aligned with the jihadis in wanting a state ruled under islamic law. They simply A: wanted the $100 and B: the mayhem produced by the explosion advanced their own agenda. They are happy to accept the Al Qaeda $100 for escorting Saudi kids to their death.

But there are a few things in our political areana that are impacting how things are reported. We are getting close to the 2006 elections. It is imperitive for some that the news appear worse and wose as we approach the elections. Failing a lot of bad news, it would be imperitive that no good news be reported or bad news be exaggerated or distorted. That is how political propoganda works and most US news is really political propoganda. There really aren't any more neutral sources of news in the US anymore because objectivity doesn't "sell".

For example, I saw a headline this month about Iraqi casualty rates "soaring". That is a lie. It isn't true. Casualty rates among Iraqi military and security personnel have been dropping for about three months. Civilian casualty rates will this month be in the second consecutive month of dropping. They aren't "soaring", they are falling.

Al Qaeda has managed to string together an amazing series of defeats and play them in the press as victories. The press continues to play them as such as long as it furthers their political agenda. This is where it gets cynical. The press is probably responsible for a great amount of killing and suffering by giving encouragement to the terrorists. Every time the press prints a story that uses such words as "quagmire" or "pullout" it gives them a feeling that they have a light at the end of the tunnel and could encourage them to fight on. What we need is press that calls them what they are and sets their political agenda aside ... as if that is ever going to happen. That's the reason I tend to read offshore news. US and UK news is distorted. You have to look at the political agenda of the source and you will get a pretty good idea of what the story is going to say before you even read it.

Today's interesting news:

http://newsblaze.com/story/200510190930 ... Story.html

http://www.techcentralstation.com/102005D.html

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/9756845/ Is Syria starting to cover their ass?

[can't sit still]

Geekster, I went to Syria several years ago. They're worse than Jordan and better than Lybia. The truth is that all those countries blow with the wind. The wind is blowing pretty fucking hard from the west.
The Indians have a saying " when the elephants fight, it is the grass that suffers"
Syria can see that straight on conquest is not our M.O. We pulled out of Germany, Japan, etc. The US goes after communism first thing. After that, we push stability.The US generally works to make the world a stable place where WE have access to all the raw materials. We fuck up many things on the way to stability, but that's the end goal.

Syria has to align with somebody. It ain't going to be China. The Arab league has never gotten their shit together,,, so it better be the west. Syria buys their grain from the US and Canada. The prognosis is that the world grain supply is going to come up short very soon. We're the only ones that can insure a continuing supply for the little guys.

Syria would rather fight off Al Queda and the Baathists than try to fight the west. They know that if they go along with us,,,,,we'll let them conduct business as usual. We have our biggest fight in countries where ideology is more important than commerce and survival. Once the whole world is materialistic, everyone will say,,,fuck ideology.

[geekster]

I would have agreed that Syria was better than Lybia until only the past 18 months or so. Lybia has seemed to be minding their own business and doing a rather good job of it too. Their economy is expanding, their world trade is increasing, etc. I see some evidence of Syria trying to clean up their act a bit recently and I also understand that they can't move too quickly in this regard because there are quite a number of, well, thugs in the government there who would probably find a way to get Assad shot if he moved too quickly. Having the intelligence chief suicided probably went a long way toward getting some obsticles to moderation out of the way.

Oh, and lookie what I found today ...

A 30:48 minute audio message purportedly orated by Abu Abdul Rahman al-Iraqi, the Deputy Emir of al-Qaeda in Iraq [Tanzeem Qaedat al-Jihad Fi Bilad al-Rafidayn], titled: “We Are Not Quitters,” was issued today, October 20, 2005. The speech urges the Islamic Nation to have patience and the mujahideen to hold steadfast in their jihad against the “crusader/Shi’ite war.” Abu Abdul Rahman mentions Abu Azzam, a member of the group slain in Baghdad, who was a “pioneer in jihad [and] finished his life as a good scholar and defender of the religion fighting the crusaders and the Shi’ites,” as well as Um Imara al-Ansariyah, the female suicide bomber in Tal Afar, as examples of “victory in the jihad.”

In addition, the speech describes the month of Ramadan as the “month of victories,” to not only fast, but to wage jihad, believing that it is “our duty to remove all the devils in the whole world wherever they are found.” He stresses cohesion with Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Emir of al-Qaeda in Iraq, and to continue jihad to construct an Islamic Nation within Iraq, and “free the captures men and women from the hands of the cross worshippers and the Shi’ites; even if our home are destroyed or our members cut we will never stop our fight.”

Now think about that for a moment. It was entitled "We are not quitters" and it begs people to stand fast, not give up hope, etc. Sounds to me like they are starting to have a problem with people quitting and going home. Otherwise there would be no point to producing it in the first place, and giving it that title in the second place.

That rang a bell with some other reports that came out a couple of weeks ago concerning a decreased number of foreign jihadis in Iraq. The "word" was that they were being sent to wage war in their home countries having been trained in urban warfare in Iraq. That doesn't pass the smell test for a couple of reasons. First of all there hasn't been a lot of urban combat for them to receive any kind of constructive training other than how to run away when US or Iraqi forces come to town. Most of the "action" has been just setting up roadside bombs and pulling off drive-by shootings. That is training they could get in New Jersey. It doesn't take a lot of skill to shoot someone from a speeding car. There just hasn't been a whole lot of organized small unit urban combat in what, the last six to nine months. There for a while they were pretty good at taking over police stations when the cops ran away bot since the cops stopped running, there haven't really been any more problems.

There was one exception in Fallujah where the ones stupid enough to decide to stay and fight rather than flee to Mosul found themselves surrounded so they couldn't run away. That forced them to stay and fight. I don't think any of those guys are going to be training anyone. The ones that fled to Mosul are now gone too. All they gained in training was in intimidating unarmed civillians and scaring poorly armed and trained police. Now that the police are better equipped, better armed, and have the backing of Iraqi army units, I have not seen any organized urban combat at all. By organized urban combat, I mean ability to clear an urban area of an enemy and hold it. Where a year ago the insurgents would boldly walk around towns in their black skimasks brandishing AK's, they are now pretty much limited to hiding in the backseat of cars and popping up to take pot shots every so often.

So, I don't believe they are leaving to export their "skills". I believe they are leaving because being a jihadi in Iraq isn't as fun as it used to be. Not with all the civillians turning them in to the cops and stuff. I think they are leaving just to get out of there.

[can't sit still]

Geekster, I do believe that you're right.

"What is now certain is that neither jihadism, in its many varieties, nor pan-Arabism, in any of its sinister versions, enjoys, a popular base in Iraq. Nevertheless, the referendum does not mean that Iraq is out of the woods. What have been agreed upon are the rules of the game and the framework within which political agendas are pursued. The real fight over the future of Iraqi politics is about to begin."

http://www.benadorassociates.com/ Real cool site, you have to look.

Iraq is pretty much convinced that we aren't there to stay. They know that this is their last , best chance at self-detirmination. They don't want to go down the shitter like Lebanon. They realise that if they want security, it has to come from Iraquis.

As far as Kadafi goes, he was isolated after the Pan Am bombing. Then we later sent jets to bomb his palace. He caught on very quickly to the fact that he was asking to be destroyed,,,,and that we were eager to do it. He's trying to appear the good guy, but there's still questions about his weapons programs.

Another thing that moderates politics in the middle east is death. Iraq killed 1 million Iranis. Some of them were poor conscripts, but many were
rabid jihadis. Both Iraq--US wars did the same. Afghanistan--US killed more of Allahs most fervent acolytes. Many of the Pakistanis who went to fight for Iraq are now at Allah's side. It definitely tones things down in the area when you snuff the worst nutcases. It also serves as an "object lesson" to the wannabes.
I'm sure that it's more difficult for Al Queda to recruit when everybody knows that it's a sure ticket to see Allah.
Dan

[can't sit still]

Geekster, we've disposed of the arabs. Now we need a new idea to thrash around.
Do a search on "weather war" You find some really interesting shit. Most of it centers on Tom Bearden. The guy is inarguably a genuis. But just where does credibility stop??
He says the Yakuzi is behind some of the weather manipulation. WTF
It does seem that we are definitely in a full on weather war.
Defense secratary Cohen said just as much. GOV isn't notorious for blabbing scare stuff with no basis. WTF is going on. Was the Pakistani earthquake retaliation for NOL ??

Now we have Wilma. She went from cat 3 to cat 5 in 11 hours. That isn't natural. It appears that HAARP is a full-on offensive weapon.
Bearden is claiming that they used scalar radiation to sicken combatants in the first gulf war. It was worked out early on to sicken the people in the US embassy in Moscow.
If you search the "piore" site in France, they've been using scalar radiation for MANY years to cure tumors. The U of Bordeaux and the people involved have impeccable credentials. Their original human trials were all done with terminal patients. They have a very high cure rate. If you can cure with scalar radiation, it stands to reason that a reversal of polarity could cause sickness.
Check out the weather stuff for a start.
Badger, give me a break this time and do some research on your own.

[joel the ornery]

10/31/05
Does Leadership Matter?
By David Gergen
Do leaders really matter? That question has prompted debate for centuries. The Scottish philosopher Thomas Carlyle famously represented one side of the argument. "The history of the world is but the biography of great men," he wrote. Leo Tolstoy spoke for the other side. Great men, the novelist wrote, "are but the labels that serve to give a name to an end and, like labels, they have the least possible connection with the event."

But surely the 20th century resolved the issue that individual leaders do matter--a lot. Consider: As the 1900s opened, hopes ran high that the new century would bring a golden age, perhaps rivaling the Renaissance. European nations had not engaged in a general war for more than 80 years, trade spurred growth, and new discoveries were transforming life.
Yet the first half of the century brought the bloodiest wars in all of human experience. The international economy fell into darkness, and the number of democracies dwindled.
What happened? One of the most persuasive answers comes from the British historian John Keegan. The political history of the 20th century, he wrote, can be found in the biographies of six men: Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Mao Zedong, Churchill, and Franklin Roosevelt. The first four were tyrants who almost drove the world over a cliff; had it not been for the final two, western civilization might have perished.

Historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. poses this question. In 1931, a British politician visiting New York City was struck by a car and nearly squashed. Fourteen months later, an American politician was sitting in an open car in Miami when a gunman opened fire and--had a woman not jarred his arm--would have killed his target. How would history have been different, asks Schlesinger, if Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt had died?

Yes, the quality of leaders matters, and what we have learned is that it matters across American life. General Electric would not have flourished as it did had Jack Welch not been at the helm. Martin Luther King Jr. inspired with his dream; Eleanor Roosevelt opened doors for millions closed out; Rachel Carson sparked the environmental movement. Would we have gotten to the moon without John Kennedy?

The issue today is whether America can nourish enough good leaders to forge a bright path into the 21st century. There are, after all, some ominous parallels to the early 20th century. As we opened this new century, Americans stood as the most powerful people since ancient Rome. Peace and rising prosperity were within our grasp; globalization and technology offered grand vistas. But recent years have brought sharp reversals. Now we worry that caldrons of terrorism are boiling over, that our culture is declining, that our politics are dysfunctional, that our best jobs may disappear to China and India.

"Perhaps no form of government needs great leaders so much as democracy," Lord Bryce observed. Nowhere is that more true than in America today.

No spotlight. What emerges from this initial Best Leaders project is that America has many worthy leaders, especially in business and the nonprofit worlds. And increasingly the two worlds intersect. Bill Gates, for instance, is best known for Microsoft and personal fortune, but he and his wife, Melinda, are now leaders of social change.

Many of today's best leaders also work out of the national spotlight. Lt. Gen. David Petraeus is not well known publicly, but he has become a legend in the U.S. Army. Even less well known are Bill Drayton and Bill Shore, both sparking a tide of social entrepreneurship.

Yet the selection committee wondered: Why aren't there more good leaders in politics? To be fair, the committee's decision to leave out presidents and potential presidential candidates shrank the field. Still, the committee was dismayed that it could agree on so few other political leaders, in Washington or beyond.

The general public apparently agrees. The first annual confidence index of American leadership, reported in this issue, shows that the public has high confidence in today's military and medical leadership and very low confidence in Congress and the executive branch. The results track with other surveys that have shown relatively low levels of confidence in government generally since Vietnam and Watergate. As Warren Bennis has written, one cannot easily explain why in the early days of the republic, a nation of fewer than 3 million people could produce a half-dozen political giants and today, in a nation of nearly 300 million, we are aching to find just one.

The 20th century taught us that progress is not inevitable. Each generation has to struggle and sacrifice to secure a better future for its children. When it fails, the world slips backward. Whether America moves forward will hinge in significant degree upon the quality and number of those who lead.

[can't sit still]

Joel, that was a great post. It begs a question. If [say] Monroe were alive today, could he get elected without selling his soul? Could he get through the ranks on his brilliance?
Our recent presidents have been famous for being devious or inept,,,not brilliant.
Having good advisors can only go so far. If a leader's only ability is deviousness and his primary concern is maintaining his power,,,can we ever expect to get fair government?
It appears that our political process of winnowing the candidates tosses out brilliance with the chaff.
The most powerful man in the world is always likely to be a bumpkin under the control of others.
Dan

[ZaphodBurner]

So, I don't believe they are leaving to export their "skills". I believe they are leaving because being a jihadi in Iraq isn't as fun as it used to be. Not with all the civillians turning them in to the cops and stuff. I think they are leaving just to get out of there.

Yeesh. Is this the camp where all the disgruntled rednecks hang out and shoot the political bull? Make a hole and pass me a Currs. 'Bout time.

My younger bro came home from Al Anbar last week and answered questions I had about the situation there. Had some interesting anecdotes, but he told me one in particular about a place nicknamed the Alamo (a fallback point, but I'd prefer not to say where) built by Hussein. The Marines found a torture chamber in the basement. So...

He said the insurgents are as likely to be Syrian or other as Iraq in that section of Iraq, which is why the Marines are fighting so hard in Qaim, for example. (Massive smuggling operation was destroyed in Rutvah this summer, along with most of the town which he likened to Mos Eisley.)

Also said they talk tough but fall apart as soon as they're thrown in the back of the wagon, and if you tell them you're married they respect you quite a bit more. If you tell them you have two wives and they believe you, you're respected even more.

But the interesting thing is the hard cases...when they needed info from those people, they just took 'em down to the torture chamber, set 'em in a chair and left for awhile. The captured fighters knew immediately that they were in a torture or killing room and tended to go bugshit. No torture was required (although if Iraqi forces caught them, they were likely to have been beaten up pretty badly already) and these guys just spilled everything as soon as somebody came back into the room.

The impression I get is that a lot of them are analogous to the anarchist skinhead types we have here--the protest rioters, rock throwers, vandals who fuck up perfectly legitimate and peaceful protest--except that there AK-47s, mortars, rockets and violence are ubiquitious.

Strange that they recognize a torture chamber when they see it, though.

-zb

[joel the ornery]

The New York Times
April 7, 2004
Iraq Needs a Credible U.N.

For the first time since last May, word came yesterday that American forces were engaged in serious combat in Iraq, this time against Iraqi insurgent forces who attacked American marines in a city southwest of Baghdad, and against an armed Sunni resistance in the town of Falluja. Reports of significant casualties on both sides in the pitched battle in the city of Ramadi were a grim and powerful reminder of how badly the United States needs a strong, credible and engaged United Nations.

Unfortunately, not only is the role of the U.N. still unsettled, the world organization is suffering from two self-inflicted wounds. One is a kickback scandal of multibillion-dollar proportions swirling around the U.N.-run oil-for-food program that kept ordinary Iraqis from starving during the long years of punishing economic sanctions. The other is the recent finding by an independent investigative panel that oversights in U.N. security management may have worsened the death toll in last August's terrorist bombing of the Baghdad headquarters.

Urgent steps, including high-level demotions and dismissals, are already under way to address the security failures. U.N. officials returning to Iraq face unavoidable risks, but everything that can be done to make them safer must be done. Ferreting out the murky details of the financial scandal, and meting out appropriate punishments, is no less urgent or important.

At the heart of the scandal are reports that Iraq collected billions of unmonitored dollars from oil surcharges and kickbacks for awarding consumer goods contracts under the oil-for-food program. U.N. officials clearly failed to supervise effectively the roughly $10 billion a year in transactions and may have been involved in illicit deals.

The oil-for-food program began in the mid-1990's, at Washington's behest, as a way to maintain political support for sanctions in the face of Iraqi civilian suffering. It seems to have fairly well served the limited goals of keeping sanctions intact enough to prevent Iraq from rebuilding unconventional weapons and of easing the burdens on ordinary Iraqis. But exporting the oil and buying the consumer goods required working with a corrupt Iraqi government, with Security Council members eager to maximize commercial gains and with some of Iraq's less than scrupulous neighbors.

U.N. officials have been reporting systematic corruption in the program for years, but the Security Council never insisted on a thorough cleanup. Washington acquiesced, since the faulty program was the only way to maintain support for the sanctions. Now there is finally some political will to investigate, and details of the corruption are emerging from documents seized by American occupation authorities in Iraq.

The U.N. investigation now under way can be credible only if it is independent of Security Council control. The investigators must put aside diplomatic niceties and concentrate on cleansing the U.N.'s reputation.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
October 27, 2005
U.N.: 2, 200 Cos. Gave Iraq Illicit Funds
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 11:58 p.m. ET

UNITED NATIONS (AP) -- Investigators of the U.N. oil-for-food program issued a final report Thursday that accused more than 2,200 U.S. and foreign companies, and prominent politicians, of colluding with Saddam Hussein's regime to bilk the operation of $1.8 billion.

The 623-page document was a scathing indictment that exposed the global scope of a scam that allegedly involved such name-brand companies as DaimlerChrysler and Siemens AG, as well as a former French U.N. ambassador, a firebrand British politician and the president of Italy's Lombardi region.

It meticulously detailed how the $64 billion program became a cash cow for Saddam and more than half the companies participating in oil-for-food -- at the expense of regular Iraqis suffering under tough U.N. sanctions. It blamed shoddy U.N. management and the world's most powerful nations for allowing the corruption to go on for years.

''The corruption of the program by Saddam would not nearly have been so pervasive if there had been diligent management by the United Nations and its agencies,'' said Paul Volcker, a former Federal Reserve chairman who led the investigation.

Volcker and many nations said the report underscored the urgent need to reform the United Nations. Earlier reports in his investigation have already led to criminal inquiries and indictments in the United States, France, and Switzerland.

The investigators found that companies and individuals from 66 countries paid illegal kickbacks using a variety of methods, and those paying illegal oil surcharges came from, or were registered in, 40 countries.

Most of the contracts went to Russian and French companies and individuals, who were rewarded for their governments' outspoken opposition to the sanctions. But the report found that even firms in countries supportive of the sanctions, such as the United States, found ways to manipulate the system illegally -- sometimes by using Russian firms as middlemen.

While most of the names of those individuals and companies were known, the extensive involvement of U.S. firms will be embarrassing to the United States government, which has been a leading critic of corruption in oil-for-food.

The oil-for-food program, which ran from 1996-2003, allowed Iraq to sell limited and then unlimited quantities of oil provided most of the money went to buy humanitarian goods. It was launched to help ordinary Iraqis cope with U.N. sanctions imposed after Saddam's 1990 invasion of Kuwait.

But Saddam, who could choose the buyers of Iraqi oil and the sellers of humanitarian goods, corrupted the program by awarding contracts to -- and getting kickbacks from -- favored buyers.

Volcker's $38 million investigation, which ran for about a year and a half, had earlier faulted U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, his deputy, Canada's Louise Frechette, and the Security Council for tolerating corruption and doing little to stop Saddam's manipulations.

The final report released Thursday detailed just how companies bilked the program. There were two main ways they did it: through surcharges paid for humanitarian contracts for spare parts, trucks, medical equipment and other supplies; and kickbacks for oil contracts. Most of the illicit income -- more than $1.5 billion -- came from the humanitarian contracts.

Among the companies that paid illegal surcharges were South Korea's Daewoo International and three subsidiaries of Siemens AG of Germany, as well as the Brussels, Belgium-based Volvo Construction Equipment.

On the oil side, contractors listed included Texas-based Bayoil and Coastal Corp., Russian oil giant Gazprom, and Lukoil Asia Pacific, a subsidiary of the Russian company Lukoil.

The founder and former chairman of Coastal, Texas oil tycoon Oscar Wyatt, pleaded not guilty Thursday in New York to charges that he conspired to pay several million dollars in illegal kickbacks to Saddam's regime to win contracts through the program.

U.S. District Judge Denny Chin set a June 20 trial date for the 81-year-old Wyatt, who was arrested last week.

Volcker's report referred to Wyatt as a ''longtime and loyal oil customer of Iraq,'' the lone exception to an Iraqi ban on selling oil to American companies.

Among the individuals targeted in the report, investigators found that Jean-Bernard Merrimee, France's former U.N. ambassador, received $165,725 in commissions from oil allocations awarded to him by the Iraqi regime. He is now under investigation in France.

Merrimee ''began receiving oil allocations that would ultimately total approximately 6 million barrels from the government of Iraq,'' the report said. He has denied wrongdoing.

Other so-called ''political beneficiaries'' included British lawmaker George Galloway; Roberto Formigoni, the president of the Lombardi region in Italy; and the Rev. Jean-Marie Benjamin, a priest who once worked as an assistant to the Vatican secretary of state and became an activist for lifting Iraqi sanctions.

Formigoni, in a statement, said he received ''neither a drop of oil, nor a single cent.'' Galloway also denied the allegations, saying ''I've never had a penny through oil deals and no one has produced a shred of evidence that I have.'' Benjamin has also denied any personal benefit from the program.

Vladimir Zhirinovsky, who heads Russia's Liberal Democratic Party, and Alexander Voloshin, who at the time was chief of staff in the administration of Russia's president, were also named. Both have denied wrongdoing.

The report strongly criticizes the U.N. Secretariat and Security Council for failing to monitor the program and allowing the emergence of front companies and international trading concerns prepared to make illegal payments.

In a letter to Annan, the committee said its task had been to find mismanagement and evidence of corruption, and ''unhappily, both were found and have been documented in great detail.''

The letter said responsibility should start with the U.N. Security Council, which is dominated by its five permanent members: Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States. ''It was, as one past member of the council put it, a compact with the devil, and the devil had means of manipulating the program to his ends.''

The United States said the report again showed the need for urgent reform of the United Nations.

''I do think it does highlight that there are certain management practices within the U.N. that need reform,'' State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said. ''We're going to continue to urge and push for management reform at the United Nations.

In the report, Volcker's team gave several examples of just how companies and Saddam went about manipulating the program. German car manufacturer DaimlerChrysler's dealings were emblematic on a small scale.

According to Volcker's team, DaimlerChrysler had oil-for-food contracts worth about $5.2 million to sell Iraq spare parts and vehicles. The contracts were paid out of a U.N. bank account funded by Iraqi oil sales, also administered by the U.N.

One of those contracts was to sell Iraq's Oil Ministry a Mercedes armored van worth about $70,000. As a sweetener, a DaimlerChrysler agent signed a secret deal to give Iraq a $7,000 kickback -- 10 percent of the van's value.

When the final contract for the van was submitted for U.N. approval, the price of the truck was inflated to include that amount. That meant that the U.N. fund ended up paying DaimlerChrysler for the kickback.

DaimlerChrysler said it was aware of the report but declined to comment because of an ongoing investigations by the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Justice Department.

[can't sit still]

Joel. more great info,,,as usual
I like the part where they talk about corruption.

"U.N. officials have been reporting systematic corruption" by looking in the mirror,,, should be the rest of the quote.

The UN wants to run the world, but they continually demonstrate that they can't act with a shred of responsibility.
The UN,,,a pack of bumbling thieves who think that they should be sanctified just because they run in a pack.

Politicians don't actually produce anything[wealth]. The best that they can hope to do is to govern intelligently and facilitate the creation of wealth.

The worst that they can hope to do [in the absence of intelligence] is to steal. It's the usual approach for those who have no talent other than to tell their fellow man how to live.
Dan

[DVD Burner]

BOO!


That's right......I'm back.


Now you know after the front page of the San Francisco Chronicle I just could not stay away. Too bad the admins thought it best to delete my posts on this thread but I feel very very very good right now.

WOO HOO!

Hi guys.

[can't sit still]

What deleted posts? The long post about butt-fucking Larry Harvey is still up in another section. What did you do that's so special that you got deleted?
I never saw the SF chronicle or any other paper. Was it interesting??

[DVD Burner]

What deleted posts? The long post about butt-fucking Larry Harvey is still up in another section.

Whoa! I dont know anything about that.

What did you do that's so special that you got deleted?

Tell the truth about politics.

I never saw the SF chronicle or any other paper. Was it interesting??

This is what is on the front page of today's chronicle:

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f ... FG5QU1.DTL

[can't sit still]

DVD , here's a thread in "experiences" that has been around for a while. "Which BMORG member do you fantasize about fucking?"

"Personally, I fantasize about fucking Larry Harvey. Here's my fantasy:

It's the night of the Burn and Larry, as usual, has done too many drugs. In fact, he's done so many, that he's standing at the base of the man, for all intents and purposes paralyzed.

I go up to him and I rip off all his clothes--except for his socks and, of course, his hat. As he stands there shivering,"


As far as being political,,,, I started a thread here a week ago"Bet on Bush" I wasn't doing any heavy shit-slinging, just posting a little news.
No delete

WTF do I have to do to get censored?? I keep trying. I put up a link in the thread about "British racing Pigs" that was somewhat inflamatory. 300 views after I posted it and not one damn delete.

I need to pick on more people.
My ship will come in someday.
Dan

[DVD Burner]

You funny.

[joel the ornery]

Wm F Buckley Jr writes on the flawed logic of Bush critics

[joel the ornery]

"Strip everything else away, though, and Libby, like Clinton, is accused of lying."

Howard Kurtz, Washington Post

[can't sit still]

Joel, I read the article by Buckley. It doesn't mean much. Scowcroft didn't present a logical or meaningful critique of Bush. So what? There are plenty of others who do present damning rational evidence for the illegality of his actions. Here's an example. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0, ... 85,00.html

Buckley, et al are asking why Bush did this or did that. If you do a search on "bush + motivation" you get 3.9 million. You are far more likely to find the truth if you examine motivation rather than actions. What motivates GWB?
It sure as hell doesn't look like altruism is his motivation.

Our energy bill and his subservience to the whims of his cronies in the petro industry prove that he's motivated by greed.

Imagine the results if he had spent all the war money to build schools, water projects and farms in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Syria, Palestine, etc. He'd much rather spend the bucks on the military-industrial powers here. World peace is brought about by food and security not death. He's short-sighted and self-centered,,,,no surprise.

His detirmination to execute a regime change in Iraq regardless of the evidence proves that he's motivated by egoism.

This country can survive his greed---we just have to work a lot harder.

His egoism is far more damaging. He's detirmined to secure for himself a BIG place in history. The man who tamed the middle-east. He's willing to spend every last dime in America to prove that he is right. He's going to use American dollars and lives to make Sunnis, Shias and Jews get along.

He has no sense of history but he wants to make sure that he gets a grand place in it.

History has proved time and again that you can't achieve peaceful co-existence if you don't achieve economic integration. Europe was rich but had no peace until they integrated their economies. Canada and all 50 states have peace. South America is becoming more integrated economically,,,with resultant peace.

The middle east doesn't have an economy. They sell oil to the west and that's it. They have almost zero economic interaction with neighboring countries. They're doomed to war regardless of legislation or short term intervention.

Africa has even less economic integration. They don't produce much of anything so they don't have an economy to integrate. What little they do produce is shipped to the west. The Matabele and the Ngoronongoro killed 1.3 million. The Hutsu and the Tutsi killed .5 million. There is no incentive to think in an "extended clan" way of thinking so they KILL. The only thing slowing them down is AIDS. They don't fight as much when they're all dying. The same happened to Europe during the "black death".

Bush is no student of history. He's doomed to failure if he thinks he can change the way that people think.
JFK and LBJ weren't students of history either. China always fights her wars in her border provinces[Viet Nam]

He's going to shove religeous morality down the collective throats of America with his right hand. But his left hand is busy lying, stealing and bankrupting the country. He believes that any crime commited in the name of God and righteousness is excusable.

His egoism and stupidity is leading us down the wrong path,,,,the operative word is DOWN .

His legacy will be---"One More Egotistical, Short-Sighted Fool"

[can't sit still]

"Strip everything else away, though, and Libby, like Clinton, is accused of lying."
True, true, true!!!
It's also true that Al Capone went to Alcatraz for tax evasion. It was all that they could prove.
It sure as hell didn't prove that he was innocent of other allegations.
Dan

[DVD Burner]

"Strip everything else away, though, and Libby, like Clinton, is accused of lying."


There will always be a HUGE diffrence between lying about a blow job and lying in a way that kills tons of people.
And Buckley will never have any credibillity.

[joel the ornery]

credibillity.

sir, you speak of something you know so little about.

[DVD Burner]

credibillity.

sir, you speak of something you know so little about.

Know little about eh?

Sit down son:

http://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution ... cleii.html

Article II
Section 4 of "The Declaration of Independence" and the " Constitution of the United States.". The President, Vice President and all civil officers of the United States, shall be removed from office on impeachment for, and conviction of, treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors.

Based on the speach "ALONE" of "Yellow Cake being bought in Nigeria"

Not only does the white house have questionable credibility but so does Joel.

This should be good.

Who really has any Credibillity.




I still love you Joel and will be here when the walls comes tumbling down.


Joel has questionable credibility.


Ha!


Hi Guys!.



P.S. hey, Yo, you guys,



If you have the time to check out the Christian Brothers Port......please do..........Does that mean I am drunk????????



I have no time.



Love to you all and let's take over the world and make it "Burningman."



Woo Hoo !.

Love you all.


T-
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[cowboyangel]

now let's all get along...Joel dija know ole scooter was a porn writer?
http://www.newyorker.com/talk/content/a ... lk_collins

maybe the guy can do a little better from his cell......ya I know about the looming pardon....nice to anticipate his just deserts though.....
if it's only about lying....tell that lie to the 15,000 plus guys in military and VA hosptials home from Iraq without legs, arms, some of both , no faces, no eyes and brain damaged.....lie to them please.....

[joel the ornery]

credibillity.

sir, you speak of something you know so little about.

Know little about eh?
Sit down son:
http://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution ... cleii.html
Article II
Section 4 of "The Declaration of Independence" and the " Constitution of the United States.". The President, Vice President and all civil officers of the United States, shall be removed from office on impeachment for, and conviction of, treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors.
Based on the speach "ALONE" of "Yellow Cake being bought in Nigeria"
Not only does the white house have questionable credibility but so does Joel.
This should be good.
Who really has any Credibillity.

I still love you Joel and will be here when the walls comes tumbling down.
Joel has questionable credibility.
Ha!
Hi Guys!.
P.S. hey, Yo, you guys,
If you have the time to check out the Christian Brothers Port......please do..........Does that mean I am drunk????????
I have no time.
Love to you all and let's take over the world and make it "Burningman."
Woo Hoo !.
Love you all.
T-
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

#1 impeachement would require a hostile congress and some more FACTS... a hostile congress might be able to investigate prior to '08.... and that would require non-republicans to take over congress in '06. you have to wait until the '06 election to make that happen. good night and good luck.

#2 refer to #1

[ZaphodBurner]

now let's all get along...Joel dija know ole scooter was a porn writer?
http://www.newyorker.com/talk/content/a ... lk_collins

"At age ten the madam put the child in a cage with a bear trained to couple with young girls so the girls would be frigid and not fall in love with their patrons. They fed her through the bars and aroused the bear with a stick when it seemed to lose interest. "

Ferfucksake. Whoa.

-zb

[lurker]

Article II
Section 4 of "The Declaration of Independence" and the " Constitution of the United States.". The President, Vice President and all civil officers of the United States, shall be removed from office on impeachment for, and conviction of, treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors.

Based on the speach "ALONE" of "Yellow Cake being bought in Nigeria"

But, DVD, it doesn't say anything in there about lying. Lying is not a 'high crime or misdemeanor', it's not bribery--or treason.

And that speech--didn't it explicitly state that 'British intelligence' or some such thing was the source of the yellowcake thing?

I could be crazy, but that's what I remember. I couldn't ever figure out why someone would focus on that as a 'lie' Hell, the whole WMDs thing is the same way--there's way too much on both sides of the aisle--and the pond about Saddam having WMDs before the US went in--how could one side claim the other side was lying when they were saying the same things last week?

It just doesn't make sense.