:: Has the whole world gone mad or is it just me. ::

:: Thursday, March 27, 2003 ::

It's the Saudi's stupid!


NBC: Saudi tie to bin Laden’s funds NBC: Saudi tie to bin Laden?s funds

Disclosure could embarrass Saudi government at critical time

By Lisa Myers
NBC NEWS

March 18 ? The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, birthplace of Osama bin Laden and most of the hijackers implicated in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, is the home of nine of 10 of those the U.S. government suspects are bin Laden?s biggest financial backers, NBC News has learned. With at least 10,000 U.S. troops stationed in Saudi Arabia, this new information comes at an embarrassing time for the Saudi government.

:: Beauxbeaux's Daddy 6:58 PM [+] ::
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Whose War? March 24, 2003 issue
Copyright ? 2003 The American Conservative


Whose War?

A neoconservative clique seeks to ensnare our country in a series of wars that are not in America?s interest.

by Patrick J. Buchanan


The War Party may have gotten its war. But it has also gotten something it did not bargain for. Its membership lists and associations have been exposed and its motives challenged. In a rare moment in U.S. journalism, Tim Russert put this question directly to Richard Perle: ?Can you assure American viewers ... that we?re in this situation against Saddam Hussein and his removal for American security interests? And what would be the link in terms of Israel??

Suddenly, the Israeli connection is on the table, and the War Party is not amused. Finding themselves in an unanticipated firefight, our neoconservative friends are doing what comes naturally, seeking student deferments from political combat by claiming the status of a persecuted minority group. People who claim to be writing the foreign policy of the world superpower, one would think, would be a little more manly in the schoolyard of politics. Not so.

:: Beauxbeaux's Daddy 5:15 PM [+] ::
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Some times the truth hurts , dont it?

Yahoo! News - U.S. Ambassador Leaves Iraq War Debate U.S. Ambassador Leaves Iraq War Debate
2 hours, 23 minutes ago


By EDITH M. LEDERER, Associated Press Writer

UNITED NATIONS - The U.S. ambassador to the United Nations (news - web sites) walked out of a debate on the Iraqi war Thursday after Iraq (news - web sites)'s ambassador accused the United States of trying to exterminate the Iraqi people.
:: Beauxbeaux's Daddy 4:58 PM [+] ::
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They sure must have a lot to hide:

Bush Orders a 3-Year Delay in Opening Secret Documents March 26, 2003

Bush Orders a 3-Year Delay in Opening Secret Documents
By ELISABETH BUMILLER

ASHINGTON, March 25 ? President Bush today signed an executive order that will delay the release of millions of government documents and make it easier for presidents and their administrations to keep historical records secret.

The White House disclosed a new policy that has drawn criticism from historians in an e-mail message to reporters early this evening, at the end of a day of news about the war in Iraq.

Mr. Bush's signature on the 28-page order, which had been widely expected, amends a less restrictive order signed by President Bill Clinton that would have required automatic declassification on April 17 of most government documents 25 years or older. Mr. Bush's order postpones that declassification for three more years, to Dec. 31, 2006.

Mr. Bush's order stipulates that all information provided in confidence by a foreign government is presumed classified. It gives the president and the heads of government agencies the power to classify documents, as Mr. Clinton's order did, but for the first time specifically extends that power to classify to the vice president.

Vice President Dick Cheney has been the administration's leading advocate of retaining and restoring presidential prerogatives, including keeping private deliberations confidential and barring scrutiny of administration actions by Congress and the news media.

:: Beauxbeaux's Daddy 6:34 AM [+] ::
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Welcome to WorkingForChange An unproven case, a spurious war

Joe Conason - The New York Observer

03.24.03 - Rarely has an American President delivered a more critical but less compelling address than George W. Bush?s ultimatum to Saddam Hussein. Even as he spoke ominously of "tragedy," "appeasement" and "suicide," he failed to show that the Iraqi regime is an immediate threat to the United States. Again, he offered an analogy between Baghdad?s armaments and the Nazi war machine of the 1930?s, although no one back then believed that we would defeat Hitler in a matter of days.

Yet the President?s appeal to fear has persuaded his chosen audience, if not the world. Opinion surveys following his appearance indicate that most Americans now accept his dubious assertion that "every measure has been taken to avoid war." One reason why Americans are rallying around the White House, despite the strong doubts reflected in those same polls, is that many Americans also believe things that are simply not true.

Over the past several months, as the President and his aides promoted the arguments for war, the American people came to believe that the Iraqi dictatorship has nuclear weapons. They believe that the terrorists who attacked the World Trade Center and the Pentagon came from Iraq. Most importantly, they believe a single "big lie": that Saddam Hussein worked in concert with Al Qaeda to perpetrate the atrocities of Sept. 11.

The President has encouraged that false idea, even though he knows very well that our intelligence agencies have uncovered little information to substantiate the charge. During his prime-time press conference last week, Mr. Bush told the nation, "I believe Saddam Hussein is a threat to the American people. I believe he?s a threat to the neighborhood in which he lives. And I?ve got good evidence to believe that? he has trained and financed Al Qaeda?type organizations before, Al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations."

If Mr. Bush actually does possess "good evidence" of Iraqi complicity with the Islamist terror network, he should turn it over to his own government right away -- because, so far, they haven?t been able to find any. According to the State Department?s most recent annual report on the general subject, titled Patterns of Global Terrorism, Baghdad has no ties to Al Qaeda or, for that matter, to any of the "Al Qaeda?type organizations" operating in the Middle East and Africa. Although the report finds that Iraq has assisted "numerous terrorist groups," those outfits are all secular and "Marxist" or "socialist" in ideology -- in other words, "infidels," the insult used by Osama bin Laden to describe Saddam Hussein. That same report, released last year, notes that the "main focus" of Saddam?s terror expenditures has been on "dissident Iraqi activity overseas."

Ahmed Rashid, the Pakistani correspondent for the Wall Street Journal who has spent two decades reporting on Islamist movements, reaffirmed that assessment recently. "I don?t think the Al Qaeda link [with Iraq] is significant," he said. "I don?t think Saddam Hussein is about to give chemical weapons to them? I think the [alleged] linkages with Al Qaeda are very tenuous."

So the case against Iraq as a sponsor of Al Qaeda is weak. The absence of evidence that Iraq has acquired any nuclear materials, or is currently attempting to build nuclear weapons, has been discussed previously in this space. The comparisons between war-ravaged, militarily and industrially weak Iraq and Hitler?s Germany -- rhetorically indulged in by both Mr. Bush and his British echo, Tony Blair -- are ludicrous. As excuses for "collateral damage" to innocent civilians, these arguments are worse than unconvincing.
:: Beauxbeaux's Daddy 9:58 PM [+] ::
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