Friday, September 20, 2002

Common Dreams carried this Toronto Star Column

An Iron-Fisted Foreign Policy
Bush's Hard Line on Iraq Serves Notice That No Carthage Will Be Allowed to Rise to Challenge Today's Rome
by Richard Gwyn

"No Carthage will be allowed to arise to challenge today's Rome, nor any mini-Carthage as some "rogue state" might become, once equipped with even crude weapons of mass destruction.

Bush was giving notice that the U.S. will forever hopelessly outspend everyone else."

He also mentions that the U.S.' military budget is larger than those of the next 15 nations combined. The US also accounts for 80 per cent of all the world's military research so that it can fight wars that no one else can even yet imagine.

Common Dreams - President Bush Wants War, Not Justice - And He'll Soon Find Another Excuse For It
by Robert Fisk " Saddam's letter to Mr Annan was a smart move, as contemptuous as it was inevitable. Stand by, then, for an equally contemptible response from President Bush."
He also mentions "But for now, the Americans have been sandbagged. It will take at least 25 days to put the UN inspection team together, another 60 for their preliminary assessment – always assuming they are given "unfettered" access to all Iraqi government facilities -- then another 60 days for further inspections. In other words, George Bush's latest war has been delayed by more than five months. Saddam, of course, must have his own worries. Back in 1996, the Iraqis were already accusing the UN inspectorate of working with the Israelis.

Major Scott Ritter, Iraq's nemesis-turned-savior, was indeed – as an inspector – regularly traveling to Tel Aviv to consult Israeli intelligence. Then Saddam accused the UN inspectors of working for the CIA. And he was right. The United States, it emerged, was using the UN's Baghdad offices to bug Iraq's government communications. And once the inspectors were withdrawn in 1998 and the US and Britain launched "Operation Desert Fox", it turned out that virtually every one of the bombing targets had been visited by UN inspectors over the previous six months. Far from being an inspectorate, the UN lads – though they didn't all know it – had been acting as forward air controllers, drawing up an American hit list rather than monitoring compliance with UN resolutions."

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