Eclectic Views

    
Ah, but in the face of such sound reasoning, this is where the veto
power really kicks ass.
  

    
Yes ... but remember that the Russians, the Chinese, and the
French all have a veto as well.   And *they* have misgivings.

If Bush insists that nothing but war will suffice, he may yet
end up going into Iraq with a "coalition", but without the UN.
I think that would be a terrible mistake.   Any coalition Bush 
could orchestrate would be the thinnest of fig leaves covering 
a unilateral, "preventative" invasion by the US of a sovreign nation. 
Bad precedent.
 
  

    
I don't know what everyone else's misgivings are, but I certainly know my
own.  Here's the problem I'm having with it all:

I think back to Hitler and good ole Joseph Kennedy's attempts to keep the US
out of war and how "appeasement" looks to everyone in retrospect in that
situation.  I think it's possible we might one day feel the exact same way
about the merits of knocking out Saddam.

But there is a major question on the table regarding our real motivations
for attacking him and attacking him now.  The one I'm particularly hung up
on it the theory pertaining to some in this adminstration's alleged desire
to take over control of the middle east's oil reserve and all the
colonization implicit in that.

My problem is that no one from the "attaq Iraq" side is addressing that
concern that is shared by a pretty big lot of people.  By "addressing" it, I
mean speaking directly to people's suspicion about a domination agenda and
what we would exactly do vis-a-vis the oil in Iraq and elsewhere if we did
indeed topple Saddam Hussein.

As long as the administration does not confront this challenge directly, it
will continue to be hard for me to trust the case against Saddam -- however
compelling it might be -- or to even hear it above all the static.
  

    
I agree with you. I think if Clinton had chosen to undertake this in, say,
1997, it might have made more sense to me.
  

    

Yes, I think that's where my viewpoint is headed too.  I smell a rat, and
no amount of bluster about good reasons to do it is going to help unless
they explain about the oil.
  

    
I never thought that "no blood for oil!" was a particularly good criticism
against war, though. The Pacific campaign in WWII was as much about oil as
the Persian Gulf war was. Not to say that oil isn't bad, shouldn't be
replaced by Welsh cooking-oil lorries, etc. My main opposition to the war 
right now is economic -- will this be good or bad for my family and 
friends economically. If Bush were to come clean and say that he plans to 
pump the shit out of the Iraqi oilfields for ten years as reparations, 
that might get me on board. I realize this is terribly selfish of me.
  

    
> My main opposition to the war right now is economic ... I realize this
> is terribly selfish of me.

I don't think it is.  There are circumstances where the people of the US or
another nation will "bear any burden, pay any price" (I think that's what
JFK said) to achieve a goal - stopping Al Qaeda after 9/11 was probably an
example - but for lesser threats it's reasonable to ask what the charge will
be, and W has simply failed to make the case that cost is no object here.
The effect of this adventure on the economy is apt to be considerable; the
Vietnam War combined with LBJ's Great Society spending helped make the
1970's a dismal period economically.  While the War On Poverty has been
largely surrendered to Poverty, the proposed tax reductions may have a
similar effect to massive spending on the Federal budget.
  

    
That assumes that the war in Iraq will last more than a few years. I think
that's vanishingly unlikely for a number of reasons, not the least of
which being the Iraqi army's proven inability to counter what we throw at
them.

While I'm not comfortable with the idea of war at this point (I was pretty
gung-ho in favor of the Persian Gulf War), I think the best we can hope
for at this stage is that we get in there and resolve it quickly.
  

    
Don't start me up on the War On Poverty or else I'll make you all sit inside
on a Saturday and read my dissertation.

The War on Poverty -- or better stated, "The War on Poverty" was a metaphor
about which lots has been written vis-a-vis the rhetorical constraints it
put on actually dealing with actual poverty.

I don't think it has too terribly much to do with our current situation,
except that both the problems AND their possible solutions, AFAIC at this
point, lie in the discourse.  Reasons for going to war/staying at war are
always complex and they morph into new things as the battle goes on -- so I
don't expect to have a nice, neat binary reason, complete with "smoking gun"
to explain why some people think it's important to attack Iraq.

No, MY problem is that -- because of what they're NOT talking about -- what
they ARE talking about is of dubious credibility to me.  It's more what
they're NOT saying.   The only one I half way trust is Colin Powell and half
way isn't quite far enough for me.
  

    
I don't think it's a matter of the war itself lasting for years, which is
unlikely, in order to damage the economy.  The existing buildup has already
been expensive, the actual assault will be more so, and even if we're
successful we're going to have a mess that we created that we will probably
end up paying to address, lest the power vacuum be filled by forces as bad
as what we just stamped out.
  

    
2 slips. Yes, but then comes the at least 5-year occupation, when the
real troubles and costs kick in. And if we don't get the support of the
UN and more allies, no one is going to help much with those costs.

As far as appeasement, I might go for that argument if Saddam were
raising hell in the world, invading countries and such. As it stands,
he is completely contained, with most of his country not under his
control and patrolled constantly by the US/Brits in the no fly zones
which, by the way, were never approved by the UN. His economy and war
machine are both in shambles. Inspectors are moving about Iraq quite
freely and satellites with incredibly sensitive cameras and other
sensors are patrolling constantly. The nuclear inspectors have said he
has no nuclear capabilities. Meanwhile, N. Korea proceeds on with an
active push towards nukes, and this so-called "appeasement" type
approach is what is being pursued there.
  

    
The 5-year occupation will actually prove very profitable for the United
States, in the same way that the British and French occupation of the Ruhr
valley was after World War I.
  

    
> And *they* have misgivings.

And the U.S. is *sooooo* good about listening to the misgivings of
others.  Haven't we already been sanctioned by the U.N. for terrorist
activities in either Nicaragua or the Mideast and we just kinda said,
"Neener neener"?  I mean, misinformed, misguided, whatever, it doesn't
matter when American government wants what it wants.  The American
public, however, is another story, and the rift between them and the
government (I can't say "their government") one of the main stories of
the century it seems to me.  Recently saw that Noah Chomsky movie at
the Castro and was struck by his optimism in the face of such horrific
world events.  He said things are actually getting better and, when
questioned on this, explained it was precisely because the American
people are more informed now and the government's covert activities
more difficult to maintain.
  

    
Wow, I can't believe Chomsky feels that way. I hope he's right, but I 
dunno.
  

    
I find sorting out the motivations of political leaders, nations,
economic interests, special interests or ordinary individuals for that
matter a difficult proposition. In regards to the Iraq issue, every
inference I try to make, whether for war or against, seems potentially
dubious and questionable. Not to mention the whole mess is kind of a
moving target in terms of pinning it down. Lately I've simplified
things in terms of a couple of questions:

1. Does the United States have the right to go in and topple Saddam's
regime?

No. (I would only answer yes if I felt Iraq posed an imminent threat
to U.S. security.)

2. Would toppling Saddam's regime ultimately be a good thing for Iraq?

Most likely. Iraq is a country of enormous potential that's squandered
under Saddam's absurd and horrific regime.  Of course, it is to a
large extent a monster of the Western World's creation.

I'm of a mind now that if were going to go to war, let's do it and get
it over with. We're not going to get a smoking gun and Saddam will
always dance just on the other side of the line that would give us a
clear reason to invade. Dragging things out would seem to just make
things worse for the Iraqis, or prevent things from getting better.

The other option is to let Saddam off the hook and start loosening the
thumb screws. (If done intelligently, this strategy could prove
effective.) But I don't think we (the post 9/11 Western World) have the
stomach for it. Saddam is too worrisome.

So I guess what I'm saying is we should either let the boil heal on
its own or lance it. But, whatever we do, we should stop picking at it.
  

    
<63> -I agree with Chomsky's reasons for optimism, and embrace them.
People are dubious, to say the least, and getting pissed off. This is a
good thing. 

Of course, much damage can and probably will be done before we get it
together and make a plan - while we're assimilating the increasing
evidence that these guys do not have US citizens' interests in mind in
any way, much less the world's. 
  

    
I don't care all that much what the Bushites' motive are.  It
would be a big plus, though, to hear forthright statements of
what we're trying to accomplish and how we expect to get it
done.

My simpleminded expectations are in line with what I heard Chris
Matthews say on the radio a few weeks ago.

The US can bang away at Iraq until Saddam gives in.  Then what?

Iraq will be a political ruin, but a ruin with enough resources
that we won't be able to ignore it as we have Afghanistan.
Figure at least five years of engagement, at substantial cost -
estimates are in the range of half a trillion dollars or more.

The Middle East will be in an uproar.  Islamic radicals will
gain support in a number of countries, most importantly Saudi
Arabia.  There will be no scope at all for American-led
diplomacy in the region, leaving Israel looking pretty lonely.

Our traditional allies will have to make hard choices.  They
will not do so gladly.


Or, maybe I'm just looking at this through glasses of the wrong
tint.  A few days ago a friend suggested that the inner circle
in the White House believe that if they impose democracy on
Iraq the other oligarchies in the region will fall like dominoes,
that freedom will reveal itself to them as the one true way.
Could they be right?  If they provoke Armageddon instead will
they be disappointed?
  

    <scribbled by hal Thu 6 Feb 03 01:20>
  

    
They probably do have somesuch notion on their minds.   The
clique running this country, however, spend far too much
time listening to themselves and too little time listening
to dissenting voices.   I think they will be surprised and 
confused when chaos ensues after their little adventure,
with or without UN figleaf.
  

    
Not to mention managing the ingredient most close to home... home.
Ah, but they think they've got that under incipient control now, what
with the stranglehold on all three branches of our alleged democracy.

I read the blog below earlier today with mixed feelings of doom and
hope.  Is there no outrage that will awaken and rally us?  Or could
this? Florida didn't. Or hasn't yet. I recall telling people in 2000,
"Why vote?  You know that if you really, *effectively* vote to change
things, they won't count your vote" ... and nobody listened.

this, excerpted from:   www.bestoftheblogs.com/
Wednesday, February 05, 2003
 
"Chuck's Ball, Chuck's Game"

"Everybody loves a good conspiracy theory and the revelation that
Nebraska Republican Senator Chuck Hagel once ran and is still a major
stockholder in the company that owns the company that counted 85
percent of the votes cast in his very own 2002 and 1996 election races
is a potential doozy. His 1996 victory, some will recall, was
considered one of the biggest upsets of that election; he was the first
Republican in 24 years to win a Nebraska senatorial campaign.

On January 29, The Hill reported that Hagel had reported a financial
stake worth $1 million to $5 million in the McCarthy Group Inc., a
private merchant banking company based in Omaha. But he did not report
the company’s underlying assets, choosing instead to cite his holdings
as an “excepted investment fund,” and therefore exempt from detailed
disclosure rules. As The Hill suggests, that claim is false or, at
least was, until the Senate Ethics Committee's new staff director
Robert Walker met with Hagel’s staff and changed the rules after The
Hill began snooping around. 

A major asset of the McCarthy Group (not listed by Senator Hagel in
his disclosures) is the nation's largest vote counting firm Election
Systems & Software (ES&S) [called American Information Systems until
the name was changed in 1997]. Hagel resigned as CEO of AIS in 1995 to
run for the Senate. Following his election, he resigned as president of
the parent company McCarthy & Company.

Today, the McCarthy Group is run by Michael McCarthy, who happens to
be campaign treasurer for--you guessed it--Chuck Hagel. Hagel's
financials list the McCarthy Group as an asset, with his investment
valued at $1-$5 million.

In short, Hagel controlled and still partly owns the only voting
machines that counted his votes when he ran for election in 1996 and
2002. 

But, wait. There's more. The majority stake in ES&S is owned by Howard
F. Ahmanson and the Ahmanson Foundation, heirs to the Home Savings of
America fortune. Howard Ahmanson has long been associated with
Christian Reconstruction, a radical faction of the Religious Right that
seeks to replace American democracy with a theocracy based on biblical
law and under the "dominion" of Christians. For years, the Orange
County, California multimillionaire served on the board of the
Chalcedon Foundation, the lunatic Right's think tank. He has channeled
millions from his family's fortune to a variety of causes designed to
discredit and defeat Darwin's evolution theory. He currently is a
member of ultra-right Council for National Policy.

Christian Reconstructionists have been instrumental in getting at
least 24 conservatives into the California legislature; launching prop.
209, California's successful anti-affirmative action law; financing
Prop. 22, California's effort to ban gay marriages; and financing the
Chalcedon Institute, which reportedly believes in the death penalty for
homosexuality and other "sins." 

Let me draw a picture here: about 60 percent (and growing) of the
computerized ballots cast in elections in the United States now pass
through machines whose software is owned, designed and controlled by
people who are soul brothers of the Taliban."     .......

  ......    "Virtually all of the information in this post (as well as
The Hill article) was unearthed in nearly two thousand hours of
research by a tenacious writer and publicist named Bev Harris, who is
the author of a forthcoming book: _Black Box Voting: Ballot-Tampering
in the 21st Century_.           ......
      .....           She says she began researching voting machine
companies when she discovered that unauditable private, proprietary
codes are used for vote-counting, and that ownership of voting machine
companies is often kept secret. 
     
You'll find virtually all of Harris' supporting documentation and
backup materials here:      [www.blackboxvoting.com] 
If all these dots can be connected, she's onto one hell of a story." 
           - Posted by Jerry Bowles at 12:35 AM comments(2) 

You can say that again.   
For more details, and allegations extending into Georgia and other
venues, see:     www.commondreams.org/views03/0131-01.htm 
  

    
I've been delving in a little deeper at: 
                          www.blackboxvoting.com/whistle.html 
The page is devoted to  
 "Whistleblower and Reporters' Stories of Election Machine Errors"

Here is a sampling of 8 from a listing of about 100 'incidents':
[the first 6 are from 3 categories; the last 2 are ... 'interesting']
_____________________________________________________________________
     GHOST PRECINCTS: Now this is really scary —
* A Florida woman, a former news reporter, discovered that votes were
being tabulated in 644 Palm Beach precincts, but only 643 precincts
have any eligible voters. An earlier court case in Florida found the
same discrepancy, and the reason for it was never satisfactorily
explained.

* A reporter in New Jersey observed 104 precincts with votes in an
area that has only 102 precincts. "Ghost precincts" — no matter what
the official explanation — do not provide the transparent accounting
needed to protect voting integrity."

     NUMBERS THAT DIDN'T MAKE SENSE:
* A Texas-sized lack of curiosity about discrepancies: In Comal County
Texas, the uncanny coincidence of three winning Republican candidates
in a row tallying up exactly 18,181 votes each was called weird, but
apparently no one thought it was weird enough to audit.

* But when Scurry County poll workers got suspicious about a landslide
victory for Republicans, they had a new computer chip flown in and
also counted the votes by hand — and found out that Democrats actually
won by wide margins, overturning the election.

* Fuzzy math in Miami: November 10, Miami Herald listed the following
figures for the total votes cast at the Democrat-friendly Broward
County Century Village precinct in the general election: 
1994: 7,515
1998: 10,947
2002: 4,179 
Yet a hero e-mailed me. As Dr. Henry Lee would say, "Something is
wrong." This whistleblower is a regular citizen and also an accountant,
and he took it upon himself to call Century Village. He was told that
their occupancy has remained stable (around 13,000 residents) since the
complex hit capacity in 1998.

     COMPUTER COUNTING PROBLEMS
* No one at ES&S can explain the mystery votes that changed after
polling places had closed, flipping the election from the Democratic
winner to a Republican in the Alabama Governor's race. "Something
happened. I don't have enough intelligence to say exactly what," said
Mark Kelley, of Election Systems & Software. Baldwin County results
showed that Democrat Don Siegelman earned enough votes to win the state
of Alabama. All the observers went home. The next morning, however,
6,300 of Siegelman's votes inexplicably disappeared, and the election
was handed to Republican Bob Riley. A recount was requested, but
denied. The "glitch" is still being examined. (By a citizens group?)
No. (By a judge?) No. (By an independent computer expert?) No. (By
someone who works for ES&S?) Yes. 

    [AN INTERNATIONAL CASE INVOLVING GUESS WHO? ... AND WHO?]:

     05/23/2000 
     EFE News Service 
Caracas, May 23 (EFE).- Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has asked the
United States to help fix a software programming error that threatens
to disrupt the May 28 general elections. 
"This is very strange," Chavez said, referring to the computer problem
that prevented election officials from accessing the computer program
that runs the complex electoral process. 
The problem was discovered by two U.S. technicians working for
Elections Systems and Software (ES&S), which supplied the system to be
used in next Sunday's elections. 
"After working for four or five hours into the early morning, they
haven't been able to open the program and that's very serious. That's
why I called the U.S. ambassador, John Maisto, at 5:30 a.m. (0930 GMT)
to officially ask his government to do what needs to be done with that
company and to make the decisions that need to be made," Chavez told
Radio Caracas Television. 
Although ES&S is ultimately responsible for solving the problem,
Chavez said he asked for direct U.S. government involvement because the
United States recommended the company. 
 
    [SAVING PERHAPS THE 'BEST' ILLUSTRATION FOR LAST]

     09/17/2002 
     The Bradenton Herald 
Union County...has had trouble-free elections dating back at least to
the early 1920s as the only county in Florida that continued to hand
count its ballots. But that changed this year...The old way, stacking
and restacking the color-coded ballots into winners and counting them,
could be completed by a dozen or two poll workers in time to send the
paperwork to Tallahassee and still be home for the late news on
Election Day. 
But counting the county's 2,642 ballots using the new optical-scan
machinery this year took two days, after a programming error rendered
the automatic count useless. So it was back to the tried-and-true hand
count for Union County, which is about 130 miles east of Tallahassee. 
The equipment vendor, Election Systems and Software Inc., accepted
responsibility for the problems, which were caused when a printing
error gave both Republican and Democratic ballots the same code. The
machines read them both as Republican. 
  

    
> stop picking at it

<murffy>, you overestimate the American government's ability to get
over its bad habits.

> The US can bang away at Iraq until Saddam gives in.  Then what?

Next!!  Will the next country please step up to the plate.  "This
ain't no game of chance; not the way you play."

> If they provoke Armageddon instead will they be disappointed?

No, they'll be dead.  And they know that.  So what do they care?  At
least they went down in a blaze of glory.

> UN figleaf

I love that term.  It conjures such explicit imagery.  Not a very big
figleaf, eh?

Recounting the Recount.  Now there's an exercise in futility when
practically half the country doesn't vote anyways.  Provides more
credence to the notion of voting with one's feet.  As in walking away,
either in disgust or defeat.  The Maya did it and an entire elite
structure collapsed.  But, of course, they were small fry in their
addictions.  They only wanted gold, jade, a little blood maybe, not
oil.
  

    
Headline from the BBC today:

Washington 'seeks more executions'

The US attorney general orders federal prosecutors in two states to seek the
death penalty in more cases, media reports say.


And a lighter one they probably enjoyed composing:

Love makes peace with Virgin

Virgin Atlantic agrees to fly Courtney Love back to Los Angeles despite her
police caution after she meets chairman Sir Richard Branson.
  

    
The following post is cribbed from <politics.1916.519>:

-------------------


   from CNN.COM/WORLD
 
 UK accused of lifting dossier text
 
 www.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/meast/02/07/sprj.irq.uk.dossier/index.html
 
 "LONDON, England -- The British government has been accused of basing
 its latest Iraq dossier on old material, including an article by an
 American post-graduate student. 
 
 Large chunks of the 19-page report -- highlighted by U.S. Secretary of
 State Colin Powell at the U.N. as a "fine paper ... which describes in
 exquisite detail Iraqi deception activities" -- contains large chunks
 lifted from other sources, according to several academics."    
 ........     
 
   .....  "Shadow defence secretary Bernard Jenkin of the opposition
 Conservative party said: "The government's reaction to the Channel 4
 news report utterly fails to explain, deny or excuse the allegations
 made in the programme. 
 
 "This document has been cited by the prime minister and Colin Powell
 as the basis for a possible war. Who is responsible for such an
 incredible failure of judgment?" 
  

    
I think this administration has made a great case that Saddam Hussein
is a sneaky, lying sociopath who is probably hiding stuff -- but we
knew all that 20 years ago when he was our ally.  The connnections to
Al Qaeda seem flimsy at best -- this is not a guy who has ever seemed
palsy with radical Islam, mostly likely because he wants people to have
no other god before him.

So basically, we have a case where we are attacked by Al Qaeda and as
a result (?) are attacking the one nation in the middle east which
appears to have the least to do w/ Islamic terror.  An attack on Saudi
Arabia would make a lot more sense to me, or failing that a relentless
campaign of extra-judicial killing against Wahhabist leaders around the
globe.