Re: I am anti war. You stupid evil scum are pro Saddam.

2003-12-24 Thread Steve Schear
At 09:20 AM 12/22/2003, James A. Donald wrote:

The Nuremberg trials were held in Germany by the victors.  Why
this big desire to do something different this time around?   I
don't hear anyone except the usual Nazis whining that Nuremberg
was illegitimate or unfair.
From a 2001 cypherpunks post to cypherpunks

Basis
Fundamental questions have been raised regarding the legal and moral 
foundation of ad hoc judicial forums, such the War Crimes Tribunal in the 
Hague and Rwandan tribunals.  Both were created by the U.N. Security 
Council though its charter mentions no such authority.  Isn't this little 
more than mob justice carried out by nation states?  Come to think of it 
isn't the purpose of all murder trials civilized Vengeance (small c, big V)?

The espoused purpose of these courts is to enforce norms of justice in the 
international community.  But who constitutes that community and what are 
those norms?  The truth is justice like beauty is in the eye of the 
beholder.  Historically, the notion of what is just has varied considerably 
and often based on economics and religion.  Modern western justice tends to 
ignore these factors and so sets the stage, indirectly, for a trial of 
cultures.  Even within the west these norms seem to be rapidly 
changing.  Can or should such norms be used a basis for international law?

Uniform Application
Like the Nuremberg trials before them, these tribunals appear ripe with 
application of ex post facto laws and inattention to 
technicalities.  They often bear little resemblance to the laws and their 
application within the major U.N. member states.  The states have no great 
interest in either bringing a consistent moral basis to their foreign and 
domestic policies or establishing strong extra-national courts which could 
conceivably bring national leaders to account their actions.

All potential violators must be investigated with equal vigilance and 
judged according to a uniform standard or none should be.  Serious charges 
have been leveled against Henry Kissenger yet no criminal indictments have 
been brought or even discussed by the tribunals.  Unless these courts are 
held by world citizens to the motto Equal Justice Under Law carved on our 
Supreme Court building then no courts should be convened.  Current 
procedures brand the courts as a propaganda puppet show merely using forms 
of justice to carry out a predetermined policy.

Competition
Despite frequent evidence that economics trump justice, national 
governments continue the charade of representing all the interests of their 
citizens.  Mohammed Douri, Iraq's U.N. ambassador's quote in the article 
put it cynically and succinctly, Politics is about interests. Politics is 
not about morals.  I believe Mohammed is right.  That these courts aren't 
better is because, like most governmental services, they have no need: 
there is no viable alternative.

If one accepts the American Constitutional notion that all rights are 
originally vested in the sovereign individual and that competition is 
usually the best path to maximizing quality of a service, then a clear path 
extends to a market based solution.  Effective private justice may not 
provide a fairer outcome but it will offer an alternative which will 
challenge the current tribunals and their masters to either abandon 
pretexts that they are impartial, abandon the tribunals altogether or 
improve them.

Any attempt to establish a private global (as opposed to international, as 
in between nations) justice system are likely to be met with harsh 
responses by the major nation states.  They don't want the competition and 
some of their current or former leaders and their lieutenants could be the 
first facing indictments.  So, anonymity of supporters is a prerequisite.

The Internet has shown us that it can be an effective medium for annealing 
those with out of the mainstream political views into formidable groups 
whilst offering effective privacy. Money often buys justice.  So, a means 
for moralists to anonymously fund their interests is needed.  Fortunately, 
a number of effective and popular electronic currencies (e.g., e-gold) with 
adequate privacy features exist.

Every successful social movement requires leadership.  Hopefully someone of 
great character and stature will step forward or emerge and take the reins 
to either bring all to account for their war crime actions (by whatever 
means necessary) or thwart (by whatever means necessary) the ability of the 
U.N. tribunals to operate from their baseless pedestal.

steve

War is the health of the State. It automatically sets in motion throughout 
society those irresistible forces of uniformity, for passionate cooperation 
with the Government in coercing into obedience the minority groups and 
individuals which lack the larger herd sense ... the nation in wartime 
attains a uniformity of feeling, hierarchy of values culminating at the 
undisputed apex of the State ideal, which could not 

Re: I am anti war. You stupid evil scum are pro Saddam.

2003-12-23 Thread James A. Donald
--
On 22 Dec 2003 at 22:02, Tyler Durden wrote:
 If you think Ho Chi Minh was a KGB sockpuppet then you really
 don't know anything about Vietnam, China, or East Asian
 history.

He was not a KGB sock puppet.  He was KGB.

The indochinese communist party was run from a desk in Moscow,
and the guy behind that desk in Moscow was one Ho Chi Minh.


--digsig
 James A. Donald
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 43Qc8nduD4tJh6uumE28HC7EsKfnNFvnGEYCCH0BO



Re: I am anti war. You stupid evil scum are pro Saddam.

2003-12-23 Thread Tyler Durden
Well, again you've WAY oversimplified things.
Indeed, this oversimplification is curiously identical to US foregin policy 
mistakes.

Ho Chi Min, like Mao, would take guns from anybody in order to get the job 
done. If that meant wearing a Soviet uniform for 15 minutes, then sobeit. 
Don't mistake that for Eastern-European-style Soviet block governments.

Was Ho Chi Min ultimately a dictator? Sure. A Soviet-style dictator? Well, 
I'd argue only nominally. I'd also argue that our post World War II betrayal 
of Ho had a lot to do with shoving him into the arms of the Soviets, just 
like with Mao. (But in neither case did the association stick.) The 
important notion is that, unlike in Europe, China and Vietnam never had 
anything resembling a democracy or Parliament or anything like that. They 
were still largely fuedal, agrarian societies that weren't really in a 
position to critically evaluate the implications of Soviet-style rulership 
(and in fact they probably viewed it as being merely a non-Monarchic version 
of what they'd always done). BUT...the Soviets were providing guns and money 
and we weren't.

That both countries were really only externally Stalinst for a brief while 
(ie, a couple of decades) is evidenced by the fact that both economies are 
as about, in SOME ways, as free-wheeling and as capitalistic as exists these 
days. Of course, both are still certainly authoritarian and, depending on 
the subject, oppressive, but this has nothing to do with their 
politico-economic stance per se, as is now obvious.

In other words, the moral of this story is that you can't merely graft on a 
western political philosophy--in this case Marxism--to cultures that have 
unbroken traditions dating back to the stone age. It may look 'Marxist' on 
the outside, but internally that transplant ain't going to take root.

That US foreign policy in the far east in in Indo-China during most decades 
of the 20th century was a complete disaster was precisely due to the views 
you seem to hold. It's why we didn't back Mao when even though it was 
obvious BILLIONS of dollars were being siphoned away by Soong Tse-Vung and 
the Chiang regime...it's why we backed Lon Nol to overthrow Sihounouk 
(bringing in the Khmer rouge), and it's why we didn't back Ho even though he 
fought with us against the Japanese.

Had we stood back from our prejudices, respected the soverignity of those 
nations, engaged and offered some guns in order for them to choose their OWN 
government, I'd bet the era of Soviet-style government in both China and 
Vietnam would have been much shorter, and in Cambodia it would have 
CERTAINLY never existed.

In other words, YOU (and people with beliefs just like yours in the US 
government) are responsible for the spread of communism in the far east. Now 
you and your friends (including, I suspect, the guy who signs your paycheck) 
are going to do the same thing in the near east: you're going to force many 
ostensibly neutral nations into the Fundamentalist Islamic camp, because you 
just don't get it, and think we have the right to interfere.

Well, the Soviets did it and the liberal left said it was great, so that 
makes it right. Forget it. Stop saying this crap and use that brain. 9/11 
sucked enough in this town...we don't need another.

-TD





From: James A. Donald [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: I am anti war. You stupid evil scum are pro Saddam.
Date: Tue, 23 Dec 2003 09:35:39 -0800
--
On 22 Dec 2003 at 22:02, Tyler Durden wrote:
 If you think Ho Chi Minh was a KGB sockpuppet then you really
 don't know anything about Vietnam, China, or East Asian
 history.
He was not a KGB sock puppet.  He was KGB.

The indochinese communist party was run from a desk in Moscow,
and the guy behind that desk in Moscow was one Ho Chi Minh.
--digsig
 James A. Donald
 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG
 tUqRWDkYAq3CLoQkZ14K0qF1d7QxbWlf6d2ZXjZs
 43Qc8nduD4tJh6uumE28HC7EsKfnNFvnGEYCCH0BO
_
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Re: I am anti war. You stupid evil scum are pro Saddam.

2003-12-23 Thread James A. Donald
   --
On 23 Dec 2003 at 15:07, Tyler Durden wrote:
 Ho Chi Min, like Mao, would take guns from anybody in order
 to get the job done

It is mighty hard to take guns from anybody but Stalin when you
are working in Moscow 9 to 5 for Stalin.

. If that meant wearing a Soviet uniform for 15 minutes

He worked behind a desk in Moscow for over ten years in a very
senior position, which suggests he joined the KGB as a field
agent much earlier.

Kind of odd behavior for a nationalist.

If you are looking for a nationalist leadership, Stalin's
Moscow was not the place to find it.

 That US foreign policy in the far east in in Indo-China
 during most decades of the 20th century was a complete
 disaster was precisely due to the views you seem to hold.

Containment was a catastrophe from the beginning.  The US
government should have done what the communists accused us of
doing, and provided aid to the resistance in East Germany
shortly after Stalin launched the cold war, and aid for the
anti communist resistance in China when the true nature of
Chinese 'land reform became apparent.

Containment is a strategy that requires one to win or draw
every time, at places and times of the enemies choosing.  The
US army did not win every time, and Vietnam was a bad place and
time.

With roll back, one could lose some, lose most, or even lose
all, and if one launched more wars than the Soviet Union could
afford, would still win the overall struggle.   Indeed,
arguably this was what happened during the second Reagan term.
The Soviets were not losing anywhere -- but could not afford
it. 

--digsig
 James A. Donald
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 4Opm3+oP1ir/TfOFhgXW8XuAzWps8FHp6AicowA0O



Re: I am anti war. You stupid evil scum are pro Saddam.

2003-12-23 Thread Tyler Durden
James Donald wrote...

They were supposedly supporters of the NLF, which they well
knew was a North Vietnamese sock puppet, and thus a KGB sock
puppet. 
Uh...huh?

You really get a lot of things mixed up. If you think Ho Chi Minh was a KGB 
sockpuppet then you really don't know anything about Vietnam, China, or East 
Asian history. Think of Ho Chi Min as, utlimately, a violent pragmatist...he 
was going to get his guns from whoever he could, and that's what he did. He 
also had Chinese guns and, during WWII, American guns (yes: We were allied 
with Ho Chi Minh against the Japanese during WWII).

Likewise, you accused Saddam Hussein of being allied with bin Laden, which 
is also silly. In fact, bin Laden has regularly called for Saddam's death, 
and I see no reason to believe he wasn't serious.

Likewise, your lambasting of Chomsky on the Chomsky Dis website also 
indicates huge and suspicious gaps in knowledge. I'm starting to connect the 
dots here: I dare you to read the name that signs your paycheck.

-TD


From: James A. Donald [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: I am anti war.  You stupid evil scum are pro Saddam.
Date: Mon, 22 Dec 2003 10:14:20 -0800
--
On 22 Dec 2003 at 1:10, Tim May wrote:
 I, and many others, were against the war in Vietnam without
 being supporters of Ho Chi Minh or the Soviets or anyone of
 that ilk
True, but amongst the vast mass chanting Ho, Ho, Ho Chi Minh,
one could no more discern principled opponents of the Vietnam
war, than one can today discern principled opponents of the
Iraqi war among the Americans worrying about poor little
victimized Saddam, and the mass of Europeans jumping for joy
over the fall of the two towers.
Amidst the pro Saddam posters on this thread, many have come
rather close to chanting Ho, Ho, Ho Chi Minh -- for the
example the argument that the evil CIA deprived the third world
masses of their beloved socialism provided by benevolent
dictators, and the argument that the US created' the Afghan
resistance -- and thus presumably every other resistance
movement against the Soviets.
 Essentially _none_ of them were supporters of the Soviets or
 the North Vietnamese qua North Vietnamese.)
Now I get to call you the pinko:

They were supposedly supporters of the NLF, which they well
knew was a North Vietnamese sock puppet, and thus a KGB sock
puppet.  And when that sock puppet was discarded to reveal the
iron fist of the NVA that had been moving its lips, none of
them were surprised or dismayed.   Similarly Jane Fonda was
supposedly not a supporter of the North Vietnamese qua North
Vietnamese, yet without hesitation she lied about the condition
and treatment of the POWs she met, whom she depicted as
leniently treated war criminals.  When some of those she lied
about returned home to speak the truth, she stuck to her
position, counter attacking them as hypocrites and liars,
denying that they had shown signs of starvation and torture.
I find it strange that the speakers at your rally were so
remarkably different from the speakers at my rally --
particularly when so many of the pro Saddam posters in this
thread sound like they are new nyms for the same people who
spoke at my rally.
If any of your speakers really thought the NLF was something
other than a KGB sock puppet, they would have had posters of
the supposed NLF leader on their wall.  Instead, not one of
these supposed supporters of the NLF blinked when the most of
the NLF vanished in the 1975 purge.
--digsig
 James A. Donald
 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG
 vgi7SNuqDzYgX5I5Cmd4QPW+QLDM2w78B+RO1o8f
 4oxwhPbCXdnYRp30H5XOTLwLfzQyCsQo15VgpDWYW
_
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Re: I am anti war. You stupid evil scum are pro Saddam.

2003-12-22 Thread Bill Stewart
At 07:31 PM 12/21/2003 -0800, James A. Donald wrote:
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
 That is quite a presumption there.  If you're not with US,
 you're with the terrorists,
If you call for the release of Saddam, or you justify 9/11,
as the anti-war posters in this thread have  been arguing,
then indeed you are with the terrorists.
Saddam's not particularly related to the terrorists,
especially the 9/11 gang, other than having a common enemy.
He's apparently funded some terrorism in Israel,
but then the Israelis have funded lots of terrorism in Palestine.
He is related to the anti-invader resistance, but that's fair.
He may have been involved in a plot to kill George Bush the Elder,
but Bush had tried to kill him first, with decapitation bombings.
Either try both of them for that, or neither of them, or better,
let the two of them do pistols at dawn.  (Come to think of it,
give enough people that opportunity and the problem goes away.)
(Of *course* I meant give them that opportunity with Saddam, not Bush...)
But making up pretenses for invasion any time people question
your previous pretense is simply unprofessional.
If you want to have any pretense of caring about the Rule of Law,
you need to stick to it even after capturing your enemies,
otherwise you're just an illegitimate tyrant.
(Also, it's nice to pronounce rule of law the way Jefferson did,
rather than sounding like Bismarck's speech about Blut und Eisen.)
That means either letting him go, or finding something to
try him for that you can not only prove, but that you have
your own standing to try him for, or else turn him over to
someone else who has a legitimate case.  Handing him to the ICC is fine,
if you don't think drowning people in red tape is cruelunusual,
or hand him to the Kuwaitis, but not to the gang who were
lying about Iraqis ripping babies out of incubators.
Or to the Iraqis.
Plus, if you really believed that Saddam was a CIA agent, how
come you are calling for him to be released, or turned over to
the questionable justice of his fellow tyrants and mass
murderers running the court in the Hague?
The US did support Saddam in the Iran-Iraq war, because he was
more in line with their interests than the Ayatollah's gang were.
However, unlike Noriega, I doubt he was a direct employee,
so if they wanted to attack him, the right channel was to declare war,
rather than to just call in CIA Internal Affairs


Re: I am anti war. You stupid evil scum are pro Saddam.

2003-12-22 Thread James A. Donald
--
James A. Donald:
  If you call for the release of Saddam, or you justify 9/11, 
  as the anti-war posters in this thread have  been 
  arguing, then indeed you are with the terrorists.

Bill Stewart
 Saddam's not particularly related to the terrorists,

Those who want Saddam released, for the most part also 
rationalize 9/11

He may not be related to the terrorists, but his fans are 
related to the terrorists.

 But making up pretenses for invasion any time people question 
 your previous pretense is simply unprofessional.

The title of this thread is I am anti war, you stupid evil 
scum are pro saddam.

I do not support the invasion.   I am not making up pretenses 
for the invasion.

 If you want to have any pretense of caring about the Rule of 
 Law, you need to stick to it even after capturing your 
 enemies

This is war.  Rule of law does not apply.  Rules of war do 
apply.  And rules of war say that the US army can not only give 
Saddam a dental examination, it can nail Saddam's head to a 
post in Baghdad with a nine inch nail, because he was captured 
out of uniform, administering the war effort while hiding 
amongst civilians.

 Handing him to the ICC is fine, if you don't think drowning 
 people in red tape is cruelunusual

Handing him to the ICC is not fine, because the ICC is not 
going to execute him, and because the ICC is farcically 
incompetent, and because the ICC is dominated by the same 
tyrants who dominate the UN human rights commission, who might 
well choose to let him off.

When I see how many people want to get him off, I more and more 
think the the USG needs to kill him quickly.  The longer he 
lives, the greater the likelyhood that his international pals 
will pull him out of trouble, and eventually return him to 
power.

The Nuremberg trials were held in Germany by the victors.  Why 
this big desire to do something different this time around?   I 
don't hear anyone except the usual Nazis whining that Nuremberg 
was illegitimate or unfair. 

--digsig
 James A. Donald
 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG
 ffvNRYuGrbqZTNb8D6gHcU9pscBMBdTQYoiW5UTS
 4RbpAw5ZWrw71na8WBeLsb0wxGPk4N0JFG0QkwH12



Re: I am anti war. You stupid evil scum are pro Saddam.

2003-12-22 Thread James A. Donald
--
On 22 Dec 2003 at 1:10, Tim May wrote:
 I, and many others, were against the war in Vietnam without  
 being supporters of Ho Chi Minh or the Soviets or anyone of  
 that ilk

True, but amongst the vast mass chanting Ho, Ho, Ho Chi Minh,  
one could no more discern principled opponents of the Vietnam  
war, than one can today discern principled opponents of the  
Iraqi war among the Americans worrying about poor little  
victimized Saddam, and the mass of Europeans jumping for joy  
over the fall of the two towers.

Amidst the pro Saddam posters on this thread, many have come  
rather close to chanting Ho, Ho, Ho Chi Minh -- for the  
example the argument that the evil CIA deprived the third world 
masses of their beloved socialism provided by benevolent  
dictators, and the argument that the US created' the Afghan  
resistance -- and thus presumably every other resistance  
movement against the Soviets.

 Essentially _none_ of them were supporters of the Soviets or 
 the North Vietnamese qua North Vietnamese.)

Now I get to call you the pinko:

They were supposedly supporters of the NLF, which they well  
knew was a North Vietnamese sock puppet, and thus a KGB sock  
puppet.  And when that sock puppet was discarded to reveal the 
iron fist of the NVA that had been moving its lips, none of  
them were surprised or dismayed.   Similarly Jane Fonda was 
supposedly not a supporter of the North Vietnamese qua North 
Vietnamese, yet without hesitation she lied about the condition 
and treatment of the POWs she met, whom she depicted as 
leniently treated war criminals.  When some of those she lied 
about returned home to speak the truth, she stuck to her 
position, counter attacking them as hypocrites and liars, 
denying that they had shown signs of starvation and torture.

I find it strange that the speakers at your rally were so  
remarkably different from the speakers at my rally --  
particularly when so many of the pro Saddam posters in this  
thread sound like they are new nyms for the same people who  
spoke at my rally.

If any of your speakers really thought the NLF was something  
other than a KGB sock puppet, they would have had posters of  
the supposed NLF leader on their wall.  Instead, not one of  
these supposed supporters of the NLF blinked when the most of  
the NLF vanished in the 1975 purge.


--digsig
 James A. Donald
 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG
 vgi7SNuqDzYgX5I5Cmd4QPW+QLDM2w78B+RO1o8f
 4oxwhPbCXdnYRp30H5XOTLwLfzQyCsQo15VgpDWYW



Re: I am anti war. You stupid evil scum are pro Saddam.

2003-12-22 Thread James A. Donald
--
On 21 Dec 2003 at 13:13, Bill Stewart wrote:
 But this isn't an American war or occupation.  It's a war by
 the Allies, including the US, Great Britain, and the
 Coalition Of the Willing, and the UK and most of the COWs are
 responsible for bringing this to the ICC.

For this to be true, most of the coalition would be nations
that agreed to UN becoming a world government.   Somehow I
doubt it.

The ICC has no legitimacy. 

--digsig
 James A. Donald
 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG
 MVU3HFcf4zBO8SGAeAoleCnLt+ySdaD9K5ITh4lJ
 4HGnXPUOhSyzJ+wUkY0TdY99yKRck7IifD3Hly1iA



Re: I am anti war. You stupid evil scum are pro Saddam.

2003-12-22 Thread James A. Donald
--
James A. Donald:
  So in your version of reality, the Iraqi people were
  happily enjoying socialism, loving the socialism this
  benevolent dictator Kassem provided to them and then this
  evil capitalistic CIA agent, Saddam, took it all away from
  them.
 
  If that is what happened, what is your objection then to
  him being given to Iraqi people for execution?  Why are you
  calling for him to be released, or to be given to his
  fellow tyrants who run the Hague court, who certainly will
  not execute him, probably will not imprison him for very
  long, and might well exonerate him?

[EMAIL PROTECTED]
 You are apparently so wrapped up in seeing this in some
 pre-conceived way, as to not grasp the obvious, literal
 meaning of what you read. Kassem was a pro-arab nationalist,
 who nationalized (as in seized, without compensation)
 formerly foreign corporate oil interests. Kassem was
 ANTI-western, anti-American, do you get it?

Your story is inconsistent.  You tell us Saddam was a
capitalistic CIA agent -- so therefore we should not let the
Iraqis hang him. Huh?

Saddam also was and is socialist, anti western, anti american,
seized stuff without compensation etc, which is presumably why
you are backing him today -- and which makes the tale that he
was a CIA creation unbelievable.

 You can, in your ignorance, ignore the well established and
 documented history of covert CIA operations

Your history comes for the most part from notorious KGB
agents, for example John Pilger.

From time to time old archives of the CIA are opened, and
usually conspicuously fail to confirm these tales -- these
tales all being variants of one single tale -- that wherever
Soviet aligned tyrants had trouble with each other or with
those they subjugated, it was all the CIA's doing.

 I also don't understand your contempt of the ICC Hague

Consider the trial of Milosevic.  Either the Hague is
deliberately trying to get him off, or they are idiots.  Most
likely idiots.

Plus if the Hague should ever get to exercise real power,
which its present performance makes unlikely, we would have a
world government, which would probably decide the entire
American population to be war criminals and send everyone to
the camps. 

--digsig
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 4zVatkiNc/ZPba7GUPRigeFpK5jmJrSkpQ/2Y7edR



Re: I am anti war. You stupid evil scum are pro Saddam.

2003-12-22 Thread Steve Schear
At 09:20 AM 12/22/2003, James A. Donald wrote:
This is war.  Rule of law does not apply.  Rules of war do
apply.  And rules of war say that the US army can not only give
Saddam a dental examination, it can nail Saddam's head to a
post in Baghdad with a nine inch nail, because he was captured
out of uniform, administering the war effort while hiding
amongst civilians.
Cite your sources.  The one's I find creditable indicate that at the time 
of his capture he appeared to have been held captive for at least 2-3 
weeks.  He may not have had an option about his uniform, or much else for 
that matter.

steve 



Re: I am anti war. You stupid evil scum are pro Saddam.

2003-12-22 Thread Eugen Leitl
Would you kindly STFU now. Talk about crypto, your politics is flat-EEG.

On Mon, Dec 22, 2003 at 09:20:35AM -0800, James A. Donald wrote:
 --
 James A. Donald:

[demime 0.97c removed an attachment of type application/pgp-signature]



Re: I am anti war. You stupid evil scum are pro Saddam.

2003-12-22 Thread R. A. Hettinga
At 11:43 AM -0800 12/22/03, Steve Schear wrote:
Cite your sources.  The one's I find creditable

Debka? Really?

:-)

Cheers,
RAH
-- 
-
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The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation http://www.ibuc.com/
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience. -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'



Re: I am anti war. You stupid evil scum are pro Saddam.

2003-12-22 Thread James A. Donald
--
On 22 Dec 2003 at 11:43, Steve Schear wrote:
 Cite your sources.  The one's I find creditable indicate that 
 at the time of his capture he appeared to have been held 
 captive for at least 2-3 weeks.

Oh come on.

A whole platoon of random troops would have to be part of a big 
conspiracy. Plus quite a few Iraqis have interviewed him.  They 
in the vast right wing conspiracy also?

Or did the US perhaps rewrite Saddam's memory with the memory 
erasure thingy from 'men in black'

Shortly after busting Saddam, the US busted large numbers  of 
people in his apparatus, on the basis of records seized from 
his farmhouse.  Did Saddam's henchmen perhaps not notice Saddam 
was missing because the US replaced him with a double?

Real conspiracies exist, but when you start to see conspiracies 
so large, so well organized, so tightly disciplined, embracing 
so many quite ordinary seeming people, you are slipping into 
madness.   If a conspiracy is large, it is not going to be well 
organized and tightly disciplined.   The communists took the 
big conspiracy as far as it could go, and it did not go that 
far.  It is really hard to put on a big show unless you can 
carefully select your audience for willing suspension of 
disbelief.

If the US was faking the circumstances of Saddam's capture, 
this would be comparable to the bigger potemkin village 
operations that the communists put on, for example Mao's fake 
prison, where only the most privileged got to play prisoner, 
but the communists were utterly paranoid about exercising total 
control of any outsider's access to the set, the actors or 
anyone remotely connected to the actors, and only allowed the 
most carefully selected outsiders tightly controlled and highly
supervised access, whereas the US army has been completely
relaxed about letting anyone contact those involved in the
story. 

--digsig
 James A. Donald
 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG
 mnNGnEuQuzpGASrruKWsKhQzuCnYUai/jQiqorMy
 4qGaSHHsj4ncE7dJt0UcQcaG4v8WQFbg0mZElu6db



Re: I am anti war. You stupid evil scum are pro Saddam.

2003-12-22 Thread Tyler Durden
James Donald wrote...

They were supposedly supporters of the NLF, which they well
knew was a North Vietnamese sock puppet, and thus a KGB sock
puppet. 
Uh...huh?

You really get a lot of things mixed up. If you think Ho Chi Minh was a KGB 
sockpuppet then you really don't know anything about Vietnam, China, or East 
Asian history. Think of Ho Chi Min as, utlimately, a violent pragmatist...he 
was going to get his guns from whoever he could, and that's what he did. He 
also had Chinese guns and, during WWII, American guns (yes: We were allied 
with Ho Chi Minh against the Japanese during WWII).

Likewise, you accused Saddam Hussein of being allied with bin Laden, which 
is also silly. In fact, bin Laden has regularly called for Saddam's death, 
and I see no reason to believe he wasn't serious.

Likewise, your lambasting of Chomsky on the Chomsky Dis website also 
indicates huge and suspicious gaps in knowledge. I'm starting to connect the 
dots here: I dare you to read the name that signs your paycheck.

-TD


From: James A. Donald [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: I am anti war.  You stupid evil scum are pro Saddam.
Date: Mon, 22 Dec 2003 10:14:20 -0800
--
On 22 Dec 2003 at 1:10, Tim May wrote:
 I, and many others, were against the war in Vietnam without
 being supporters of Ho Chi Minh or the Soviets or anyone of
 that ilk
True, but amongst the vast mass chanting Ho, Ho, Ho Chi Minh,
one could no more discern principled opponents of the Vietnam
war, than one can today discern principled opponents of the
Iraqi war among the Americans worrying about poor little
victimized Saddam, and the mass of Europeans jumping for joy
over the fall of the two towers.
Amidst the pro Saddam posters on this thread, many have come
rather close to chanting Ho, Ho, Ho Chi Minh -- for the
example the argument that the evil CIA deprived the third world
masses of their beloved socialism provided by benevolent
dictators, and the argument that the US created' the Afghan
resistance -- and thus presumably every other resistance
movement against the Soviets.
 Essentially _none_ of them were supporters of the Soviets or
 the North Vietnamese qua North Vietnamese.)
Now I get to call you the pinko:

They were supposedly supporters of the NLF, which they well
knew was a North Vietnamese sock puppet, and thus a KGB sock
puppet.  And when that sock puppet was discarded to reveal the
iron fist of the NVA that had been moving its lips, none of
them were surprised or dismayed.   Similarly Jane Fonda was
supposedly not a supporter of the North Vietnamese qua North
Vietnamese, yet without hesitation she lied about the condition
and treatment of the POWs she met, whom she depicted as
leniently treated war criminals.  When some of those she lied
about returned home to speak the truth, she stuck to her
position, counter attacking them as hypocrites and liars,
denying that they had shown signs of starvation and torture.
I find it strange that the speakers at your rally were so
remarkably different from the speakers at my rally --
particularly when so many of the pro Saddam posters in this
thread sound like they are new nyms for the same people who
spoke at my rally.
If any of your speakers really thought the NLF was something
other than a KGB sock puppet, they would have had posters of
the supposed NLF leader on their wall.  Instead, not one of
these supposed supporters of the NLF blinked when the most of
the NLF vanished in the 1975 purge.
--digsig
 James A. Donald
 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG
 vgi7SNuqDzYgX5I5Cmd4QPW+QLDM2w78B+RO1o8f
 4oxwhPbCXdnYRp30H5XOTLwLfzQyCsQo15VgpDWYW
_
Tired of slow downloads? Compare online deals from your local high-speed 
providers now.  https://broadband.msn.com



Re: I am anti war. You stupid evil scum are pro Saddam.

2003-12-22 Thread James A. Donald
--
James A. Donald:
  I am anti war.  You lot are pro Saddam.

Michael Kalus
 Why. Because we OPPOSED the war on Saddam?

Because you have been justifying his actions, denying his 
crimes, and calling for his release.

James A.Donald:
  But instead the opponents wound up chanting 'ho, ho, ho Chi 
  Minh Ho Chi Minh was a senior KGB agent, who after 
  spending ten years behind a desk in Moscow organizing the 
  murder of Indochinese nationalists was sent from Moscow to 
  rule what became North Vietnam.  He purged 85% of the 
  communist party, murdering a large but unknown proportion 
  of them, and conducted a terror against the peasants of 
  extraordinary savagery.

Michael Kalus
 Yet you still think there was a good reason to Oppose the 
 Vietnam war? Make up your mind man. Was it a just war like 
 (in your opinion) Iraq right now or was it unjust?

It was an unwise war fought by unjust means.  The cause of 
saving the Vietnamese from Soviet domination was a just cause, 
as the terror and the flood of refugees that followed the 
defeat of the west in Indochina proved.   However, just cause 
is only one of the several criteria needed for a just war.
(And the Iraqi war does not satisfy all the criteria of just
war either, though hanging Saddam is surely a just cause.)

 Why does the american way of life have to win?

The world cannot remain half slave and half free.  We must 
become slaves, or they must become free. 

--digsig
 James A. Donald
 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG
 jZXTBmVpML2nLd2bSKH/1gh9Qm3dDT6mYomGoIsl
 4wZklKuwlV/p34b+cMEJm5vQiUIkitUC0+bJTIw0v



I am anti war. You stupid evil scum are pro Saddam.

2003-12-22 Thread James A. Donald
--
On 19 Dec 2003 at 22:23, Anonymous wrote:
 Re saddam et all... 
 http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/EL19Ak01.html

 The war of words over Saddam  Bush is quite amusing. The
 blind faith in ones govt structure and the willingness to
 support force that is in such extreme measure overpowering
 and statist such as the dropping of tons of depleted uranium
 high explosives shows that some on this list have not
 broadened their news reading beyond fox news.

I am anti war.  You lot are pro Saddam.

Back in the sixties, there were lots of good reasons to oppose
the Vietnam war, notably that it was fought by conscription,
and that McNamara's search for measures of war fighting
efficiency and to create incentives for efficient production of
war effort were demoralizing the troops, and instead of
creating incentives to fight effectively, created perverse
incentives to commit mass murder in place of killing the enemy.

But instead the opponents wound up chanting 'ho, ho, ho Chi
Minh Ho Chi Minh was a senior KGB agent, who after spending
ten years behind a desk in Moscow organizing the murder of
Indochinese nationalists was sent from Moscow to rule what
became North Vietnam.  He purged 85% of the communist party,
murdering a large but unknown proportion of them, and conducted
a terror against the peasants of extraordinary savagery.

And now the guys on this list are weeping big salt tears about
poor victimized Saddam.

Anyone who opposed the war on Vietnam should have started off
by asking How shall we contain the Soviet Union and eventually
defeat communism, and what is wrong with the way this
administration is doing it.

Similarly anyone who opposes the war in Iraq should start by
visualizing himself as the heir of  King John Sobieski, not the
heir of Saladin.  Anyone opposing the war in Iraq needs oppose
it from the point of view that Americans and their way of life
should win, deserve to win, and the raghead fanatics should
lose, and their way of life perish.


Anyone who wants to argue that the guys in the two towers had
it coming, and poor Saddam is a victim, puts himself in the
corner with the people who are stupid, evil, and losers. 

--digsig
 James A. Donald
 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG
 XwnNnDWaFm4T8flPHGpKzyaV4jg8/RzK3pUzhOzQ
 4+xdZmD79Z+1bt+2a7gG1vL9K6V53m4xxeoRxCt4p



Re: I am anti war. You stupid evil scum are pro Saddam.

2003-12-22 Thread Michael Kalus
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA1

On 21-Dec-03, at 10:58 PM, James A. Donald wrote:

 --
 James A. Donald:
 I am anti war.  You lot are pro Saddam.

 Michael Kalus
 Why. Because we OPPOSED the war on Saddam?

 Because you have been justifying his actions, denying his
 crimes, and calling for his release.


I guess statements like these come about when there is a disconnect 
between the brain, the eyes and the fingers who type out these words. I 
suggest you go back and re-read the arguments.


 James A.Donald:
 But instead the opponents wound up chanting 'ho, ho, ho Chi
 Minh Ho Chi Minh was a senior KGB agent, who after
 spending ten years behind a desk in Moscow organizing the
 murder of Indochinese nationalists was sent from Moscow to
 rule what became North Vietnam.  He purged 85% of the
 communist party, murdering a large but unknown proportion
 of them, and conducted a terror against the peasants of
 extraordinary savagery.

 Michael Kalus
 Yet you still think there was a good reason to Oppose the
 Vietnam war? Make up your mind man. Was it a just war like
 (in your opinion) Iraq right now or was it unjust?

 It was an unwise war fought by unjust means.  The cause of
 saving the Vietnamese from Soviet domination was a just cause,
 as the terror and the flood of refugees that followed the
 defeat of the west in Indochina proved.   However, just cause
 is only one of the several criteria needed for a just war.
 (And the Iraqi war does not satisfy all the criteria of just
 war either, though hanging Saddam is surely a just cause.)


Ah, so now we agree that neither war was justified. So, there you go. 
The end not always justifies the means. As in the case of Iraq which is 
pretty much everybody saying here.



 Why does the american way of life have to win?

 The world cannot remain half slave and half free.  We must
 become slaves, or they must become free.

Well, in america instead of being the slave to the man (just yet) 
you're the slave to your credit card bills, your employers and all the 
other robber barons you have in the industry, while under Castro you 
are Well what? You can't travel to the US? You are not necessarily 
always able to state your political opinions (which sound vaguely 
familiar in the US right now) etc.

Yeah, I see how much freer the US is.

Repeat after me: Freedom is something that is defined differently by 
every human being.

Michael

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Version: PGP 8.0.3

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Re: I am anti war. You stupid evil scum are pro Saddam.

2003-12-22 Thread Michael Kalus
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA1

On 20-Dec-03, at 8:41 PM, James A. Donald wrote:

 I am anti war.  You lot are pro Saddam.


Why. Because we OPPOSED the war on Saddam? That's an interresting logic 
you have here:

I am against the war, unless of course, it is initiated by lies, 
deceit and the US of A. YOU are all of course for Torture, Murder and 
Saddam because he is the one the US of A is fighting the war against.

 Back in the sixties, there were lots of good reasons to oppose
 the Vietnam war, notably that it was fought by conscription,

Oh, so if it can hit your friend Buddy from down the road who just got 
drafted it is okay to be against it. But if a kid from the Bronx who 
has no other viable choice but join the military gets into the 
crossfire (and don't tell me he understands the reasons any better than 
your Buddy did back in Vietnam) it is okay?

 and that McNamara's search for measures of war fighting
 efficiency and to create incentives for efficient production of
 war effort were demoralizing the troops, and instead of
 creating incentives to fight effectively, created perverse
 incentives to commit mass murder in place of killing the enemy.


Ah, and this right now was / is a clean war? You now, good and 
honest? Two guys facing each other? One a couple of thousand feet up in 
the air dropping cluster bombs on cities while the other one hides in a 
hole, together with his family?


 But instead the opponents wound up chanting 'ho, ho, ho Chi
 Minh Ho Chi Minh was a senior KGB agent, who after spending
 ten years behind a desk in Moscow organizing the murder of
 Indochinese nationalists was sent from Moscow to rule what
 became North Vietnam.  He purged 85% of the communist party,
 murdering a large but unknown proportion of them, and conducted
 a terror against the peasants of extraordinary savagery.

Yet you still think there was a good reason to Oppose the Vietnam war? 
Make up your mind man. Was it a just war like (in your opinion) Iraq 
right now or was it unjust?



 And now the guys on this list are weeping big salt tears about
 poor victimized Saddam.


Because, if we claim to be humane, do these wars for the greater good, 
we better act like it. (By it i mean the West in general). If we don't 
then we better shut the fuck up about our 'ideals and how everybody 
should live by them. Why do you think we're such a target? Because the 
majority of the world population sees us for what we are: Opportunistic 
killers. Either we do it ourselves or we pay others to do our dirty 
work.


 Anyone who opposed the war on Vietnam should have started off
 by asking How shall we contain the Soviet Union and eventually
 defeat communism, and what is wrong with the way this
 administration is doing it.

First of all the USSR was not Commust, it was a Stalnistic country. 
Second of all: Shouldn't people be free to choose under which political 
system they want to live? I grew up in Western Germany, I have been to 
what was then the GDR several times. I have still family in those 
areas. You know what? They said overall it was just as good if not 
better than it is today.

It is your kind of Arrogance that causes wars like one in Iraq right 
now. It is arrogance like yours that makes millions suffer without you 
even notice. There were a million more places where an intervention 
would have done any good. Yet in none of these places do we see anybody 
(Ivory Coast anyone?)



 Similarly anyone who opposes the war in Iraq should start by
 visualizing himself as the heir of  King John Sobieski, not the
 heir of Saladin.  Anyone opposing the war in Iraq needs oppose
 it from the point of view that Americans and their way of life
 should win, deserve to win, and the raghead fanatics should
 lose, and their way of life perish.

Why does the american way of life have to win? What is it about the 
american way that has to win? The ability to dream of maybe becoming 
rich one day? The american dream and lifestyle has just as much right 
to win as any other. There is no right in any of these.




 Anyone who wants to argue that the guys in the two towers had
 it coming, and poor Saddam is a victim, puts himself in the
 corner with the people who are stupid, evil, and losers.


Sammdam and the two towers had nothing to do with each other. That for 
one.

Second of all. Did they had it coming? Yes. It was only a question of 
time until something like this would have happened. The fact that the 
majority refused to see it has nothing to do with it.

Something will happen again, doesn't matter how many grannys you take 
away their needles, or how many people you put on a no-fly list 
because they are reading the wrong books. History is beginning to 
repeat itself. The Colonial Powers got kicked out of their colonies. As 
the world can hardly kick the US out of the Earth they will strike 
home.

If you really think that the US's behaviour (in regards to foreign 
policy) has nothing to do with 9/11 

Re: I am anti war. You stupid evil scum are pro Saddam.

2003-12-22 Thread Bill Stewart
At 08:14 AM 12/21/2003 -0500, Michael Kalus wrote:
He won't be put in front of the ICC as the US never signed on to it.
So this one is out.
That leaves either an American Tribunal or an Iraqi one. In either case
they should adhere to US procedures as they are based on them.
But this isn't an American war or occupation.  It's a war by the Allies,
including the US, Great Britain, and the Coalition Of the Willing,
and the UK and most of the COWs are responsible for bringing this to the ICC.
That means it's either the Iraqis that get to try Saddam and hang him,
or else the Americans have to pretend that they weren't pretending
that this was an international effort.
(Did Iraq join the ICC?)



Re: I am anti war. You stupid evil scum are pro Saddam.

2003-12-22 Thread James A. Donald
--
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
 Kassem [...] took power in a popularly-backed coup in 1958,  
 [..] starting the process of nationalizing foreign oil 
 companies in Iraq, withdrawing Iraq from the US-initiated 
 right-wing Baghdad Pact (which included another military-run, 
 US-puppet state, i.e., Pakistan) and decriminalizing the 
 Iraqi Communist Party. Despite these actions, and more likely 
 because of them, he was Iraq's most popular leader. He had to 
 go! In 1959, there was a failed assassination attempt on 
 Qasim. The failed assassin was none other than a young Saddam 
 Hussein. In 1963, a CIA-organized coup did successfully 
 assassinate Qasim and Saddam's Ba'ath Party came to power for 
 the first time.

So in your version of reality, the Iraqi people were happily 
enjoying socialism, loving the socialism this benevolent Kassem 
provided to them and then this evil capitalistic CIA agent, 
Saddam, took it all away from them.

If that is what happened, what is your objection then to him 
being given to Iraqi people for execution?  Why are you calling 
for him to be released, or to be given to his fellow tyrants
who run the Hague court, who certainly will not execute him,
probably will not imprison him for very long, and might well
exonerate him?  

--digsig
 James A. Donald
 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG
 PlYk3rEnQaDH/vg6bQg87i+LKYnWL9B1wqDEvWkg
 4OVFXm6Pp/pT/tn37qWgP4Q8Njgd7Uzm3LbUDEesM



Re: I am anti war. You stupid evil scum are pro Saddam.

2003-12-22 Thread Tim May
On Dec 20, 2003, at 5:41 PM, James A. Donald wrote:
I am anti war.  You lot are pro Saddam.

Back in the sixties, there were lots of good reasons to oppose
the Vietnam war, notably that it was fought by conscription,
and that McNamara's search for measures of war fighting
efficiency and to create incentives for efficient production of
war effort were demoralizing the troops, and instead of
creating incentives to fight effectively, created perverse
incentives to commit mass murder in place of killing the enemy.
But instead the opponents wound up chanting 'ho, ho, ho Chi
Minh
As usual, you generalize to the point of venality.

I, and many others, were against the war in Vietnam without being 
supporters of Ho Chi Minh or the Soviets or anyone of that ilk. We were 
voters for John Hospers in 1972, who opposed the war in Vietnam without 
being a chanter of Ho, Ho or whatever it is your fantasies had us all 
chanting.

(And, yes, I was at the 1970 Mobe March in D.C., the one in May 1970, 
just after Kent State, where Nixon surrounded the White House with 
buses. I finagled my way into the inner ring, and saw the speakers from 
a few feet away. Essentially _none_ of them were supporters of the 
Soviets or the North Vietnamese qua North Vietnamese.)


Ho Chi Minh was a senior KGB agent, who after spending
ten years behind a desk in Moscow organizing the murder of
Indochinese nationalists was sent from Moscow to rule what
became North Vietnam.  He purged 85% of the communist party,
murdering a large but unknown proportion of them, and conducted
a terror against the peasants of extraordinary savagery.
So? Not my problem. And rescuing others by using taxes stolen from 
Americans, or their bodies, is statist. Moreover, rescuing others is a 
moral hazard. Rescuing the Jews from their folly of spinning their 
dreidels and twirling their sidelocks was a particularly heinous moral 
hazardthey had been in favor of victim disarmament for centuries 
prior to the so-called Holocaust and their liquidation was predictable. 
For the American government to send boys to Europe to die to liberate 
Europe was one of the great crimes of the last century.

All of America's alliances have either been based on one-sided use of 
force (the USA always goes to fight in foreign lands, they never come 
here to help us fight our battles with the negroes and Mexicans) or 
have been based on corporate interests (oil companies, manufacturers 
wishing to expand into dangerous countries, etc.).

Not my problem is what the libertarian sentiment embodies. General 
Motors wants to set up a factory in Eritrea? Let them hire a private 
army, not use American cannon fodder. Squibb wants to sell baby formula 
in Paraguay? Intel wants to open a plant in mainland China? The answers 
are all the same: the U.S. armed forces are not clearing operations 
for corporations or do-gooders.

Anyone who opposed the war on Vietnam should have started off
by asking How shall we contain the Soviet Union and eventually
defeat communism, and what is wrong with the way this
administration is doing it.
Containing some political system in some foreign land is NOT MY 
PROBLEM. Nor is it in the U.S. Constitution that foreign wars would be 
launched to save _other_ people from themselves and their foolish 
decisions.

Similarly anyone who opposes the war in Iraq should start by
visualizing himself as the heir of  King John Sobieski, not the
heir of Saladin.  Anyone opposing the war in Iraq needs oppose
it from the point of view that Americans and their way of life
should win, deserve to win, and the raghead fanatics should
lose, and their way of life perish.
All of you, and I do mean _you_, who take my money to spend on these 
kinds of foreign adventures ought to be taken out and shot...for your 
aggressions, not for your sentiments.

Spend your own money. Become a mercenary. Fight Saddam and Muamar and 
Jacques all you want.

But don't steal my money, either directly or through corporate taxation 
to do it. Use your own money.

Got it?

--Tim May

In the beginning of a change the patriot is a scarce man, and brave, 
and hated and scorned. When his cause succeeds, the timid join him, for 
then it costs nothing to be a patriot. -- Mark Twain



I am anti war. You stupid evil scum are pro Saddam.

2003-12-22 Thread James A. Donald
--
James A. Donald
  I am anti war.  You lot are pro Saddam.

[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
 That is quite a presumption there.  If you're not with US, 
 you're with the terrorists,

If you call for the release of Saddam, or you justify 9/11, as 
the anti-war posters in this thread have  been arguing, then 
indeed you are with the terrorists.

You are stupid evil, and a loser.

 Uncle Ho was the leader of the Indochinese resistance, 
 leader of a popular anti-colonial nationalist movement

A popular anti-colonial nationalist movement which he led from 
Moscow?   Somehow I seriously doubt that Stalin's Moscow was 
the place to find nationalist movements, let alone popular 
ones.

When Ho came to power in North Vietnam, he treated the 
population as though they were the enemy, and himself the 
quisling leader of a hostile alien occupation force.  In his 
terror against the Vietnamese, he set execution quotas.  His 
servants had to kill such and such a number of class enemies 
in each village.

 Chickens always come home to roost.   This is the case with 
 Saddam, same as it was for Bin Laden as well (another CIA 
 Frankenstein, run amok on Master).

I deleted most of your lies without comment, as too obvious and 
stupid to merit rebuttal, but this lie, though equally obvious 
and equally stupid, is significant, as it links the fans of 
Saddam, with the fans of Stalin and Soviet expansionism.

You accuse the US of not merely being allied to bin Laden, but 
of creating him, which presupposes that the US created the 
Afghan resistance, and indeed every resistance to Soviet 
tyranny.

Hey, if it had not been for that nasty CIA the afghans would 
have been happy as pigs in mud enjoying the vast benefits of 
being uplifted by the Soviets to the superior level of 
civilization enjoyed by the beneficiaries of Soviet alliance
:-)

That is a lie we have heard over and over again, with thirty 
different wars of Soviet aggression, starting in the 1920s.  We 
heard it most infamously uttered against East German 
resistance, and every time we heard that tired old lie, those 
servants of tyranny uttering it were less believable, and less 
believed.

 in particular: In the quotations collected below, the name of 
 the leader who was assassinated is spelled variously as 
 Qasim, Qassim and Kassem. But, however you spell his name, 
 when he took power in a popularly-backed coup in 1958, he 
 certainly got recognized in Washington. He carried out such 
 anti-American and anti-corporatist policies as starting the 
 process of nationalizing foreign oil companies in Iraq, 
 withdrawing Iraq from the US-initiated right-wing Baghdad 
 Pact (which included another military-run, US-puppet state, 
 i.e., Pakistan) and decriminalizing the Iraqi Communist 
 Party. Despite these actions, and more likely because of 
 them, he was Iraq's most popular leader. He had to go! In 
 1959, there was a failed assassination attempt on Qasim. The 
 failed assassin was none other than a young Saddam Hussein. 
 In 1963, a CIA-organized coup did successfully assassinate 
 Qasim and Saddam's Ba'ath Party came to power for the first 
 time.

oh come on.

The Baathist coup was part of a pan arab conspiracy for 
simultaneous coups in all major arab countries, to create a 
united pan arab socialist government modelled on Stalin's 
dictatorship, which would supposedly make the arabs strong in 
the way that Stalin had supposedly made the Soviet Union 
strong.

It is plausible that the CIA might support an ordinary military 
coup against a pro Soviet tyrant, but it is unbelievable that 
the CIA would support a pan arabist coup, intended to unite the 
arab world and subjugate the drunken fat princes of Kuwait, 
Saudi Arabia, etc.

Plus, if you really believed that Saddam was a CIA agent, how
come you are calling for him to be released, or turned over to
the questionable justice of his fellow tyrants and mass
murderers running the court in the Hague? 

--digsig
 James A. Donald
 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG
 TvAY6+Fkueg9q0ZdMfMzOTt1CMEcIaszUot0IXzl
 4nh/RBzF7wz2eI/jN6gnWICUVvW8DNV8OwkTIisqt



Re: I am anti war. You stupid evil scum are pro Saddam.

2003-12-22 Thread baudmax23
At 01:59 AM 12/22/2003 -0800, James A. Donald [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

--
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
 Kassem [...] took power in a popularly-backed coup in 1958,
 [..] starting the process of nationalizing foreign oil
 companies in Iraq, withdrawing Iraq from the US-initiated
 right-wing Baghdad Pact (which included another military-run,
 US-puppet state, i.e., Pakistan) and decriminalizing the
 Iraqi Communist Party. Despite these actions, and more likely
 because of them, he was Iraq's most popular leader. He had to
 go! In 1959, there was a failed assassination attempt on
 Qasim. The failed assassin was none other than a young Saddam
 Hussein. In 1963, a CIA-organized coup did successfully
 assassinate Qasim and Saddam's Ba'ath Party came to power for
 the first time.
So in your version of reality, the Iraqi people were happily
enjoying socialism, loving the socialism this benevolent Kassem
provided to them and then this evil capitalistic CIA agent,
Saddam, took it all away from them.
If that is what happened, what is your objection then to him
being given to Iraqi people for execution?  Why are you calling
for him to be released, or to be given to his fellow tyrants
who run the Hague court, who certainly will not execute him,
probably will not imprison him for very long, and might well
exonerate him?
You are apparently so wrapped up in seeing this in some pre-conceived way, 
as to not grasp the obvious, literal meaning of what you read.  Kassem was 
a pro-arab nationalist, who nationalized (as in seized, without 
compensation) formerly foreign corporate oil interests.  Kassem was 
ANTI-western, anti-American, do you get it?  THAT is why Saddam had been 
recruited by CIA for the original (failed) assassination attempt.  After 
that, he fled Iraq, for Egypt.  Later, after the CIA successfully had 
Kassem assassinated, then Saddam returned to Iraq, and eventually installed 
himself (with US blessing) as Dictator/president.  Kassem was highly 
popular with the Iraqi public, who were we to say otherwise, and have him 
killed for power/profit considerations?  In doing so, for our interests, 
the Iraqi people suffered decades of tyranny under Saddam.  Do you 
understand our involvement in that?  More historical facts for the memory 
hole...

I don't much care to exonerate him, martyr him or anysuch 
nonsense.  However, if he is ALL THAT YOU RANT about, then he would 
obviously be convicted of his crimes in a fair and open court.  To reduce 
it to a kangeroo court and a lynching as you propose is to delegitamize 
such action.

As Tim May has already pointed out, what direct threat has Saddam posed to 
us suddenly that required us to attack him (as well as cause all the 
collateral casualties of innocents who didn't even support Saddam?).  To 
punish the Iraqi people for the actions of their leaders ( 2 wars and 12 
years of sanctions, no less) ... is just as much terrorism as Bin Laden 
punishing the US by attacking civilian Americans in the homeland.

It was an excellent point Tim made though, that if you feel so strongly 
about intervening militarily in the affairs of others who have not directly 
come here and attacked you (like Saddam) then you ought to enlist and start 
fighting.  I still can't figure out your obsessive and false connexion 
between Saddam and the Sept.11 attacks (besides Bush's widely disseminated, 
baseless media propagated innuendo which misled ignorant US citizens to 
believe otherwise).  What ever did happen to Bin Laden?  Are we REALLY any 
safer today than before Sept.11th?  (Fade to Code Orange for Xmas/New 
Years) Is it possible to defend such a large empire, always, everywhere? 
(hint: Sun Tzu's Art of War provides the historical answer here) Or is 
the true path to security and peace (in the longer term) based on mutual 
respect of societies and cultures.  I posit the only true solution will be 
to remove the motivation for the attacks: a non-interventionist policy that 
trades with all, and wars with none, except any that directly ATTACKS the 
US.  When we threw the English out of the US in our revolution, WE THE 
PEOPLE did it, not some foreign liberation force coming to save us 
yocals.  Any people desiring freedom from intolerable restraint will take 
the same action, without requiring external nations to intervene and get 
the ball rolling.  Unfortunately, the US has an extensive and well 
documented history around the world of supporting/arming/protecting 
dictators, even from their own people who may be revolting against them in 
armed rebellion.

You can, in your ignorance, ignore the well established and documented 
history of covert CIA operations, leading to the installation of brutal 
dictators (like Saddam, like the return of the Shah in Iran, like most of 
the coups in S.America, like Pinochet in Chile, etc etc etc), but your 
belief does not make any of that history any less real.  Experiencing some 
severe cognitive dissonance between the media-reinforced 

Re: I am anti war. You stupid evil scum are pro Saddam.

2003-12-22 Thread Bill Stewart
At 07:31 PM 12/21/2003 -0800, James A. Donald wrote:
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
 That is quite a presumption there.  If you're not with US,
 you're with the terrorists,
If you call for the release of Saddam, or you justify 9/11,
as the anti-war posters in this thread have  been arguing,
then indeed you are with the terrorists.
Saddam's not particularly related to the terrorists,
especially the 9/11 gang, other than having a common enemy.
He's apparently funded some terrorism in Israel,
but then the Israelis have funded lots of terrorism in Palestine.
He is related to the anti-invader resistance, but that's fair.
He may have been involved in a plot to kill George Bush the Elder,
but Bush had tried to kill him first, with decapitation bombings.
Either try both of them for that, or neither of them, or better,
let the two of them do pistols at dawn.  (Come to think of it,
give enough people that opportunity and the problem goes away.)
(Of *course* I meant give them that opportunity with Saddam, not Bush...)
But making up pretenses for invasion any time people question
your previous pretense is simply unprofessional.
If you want to have any pretense of caring about the Rule of Law,
you need to stick to it even after capturing your enemies,
otherwise you're just an illegitimate tyrant.
(Also, it's nice to pronounce rule of law the way Jefferson did,
rather than sounding like Bismarck's speech about Blut und Eisen.)
That means either letting him go, or finding something to
try him for that you can not only prove, but that you have
your own standing to try him for, or else turn him over to
someone else who has a legitimate case.  Handing him to the ICC is fine,
if you don't think drowning people in red tape is cruelunusual,
or hand him to the Kuwaitis, but not to the gang who were
lying about Iraqis ripping babies out of incubators.
Or to the Iraqis.
Plus, if you really believed that Saddam was a CIA agent, how
come you are calling for him to be released, or turned over to
the questionable justice of his fellow tyrants and mass
murderers running the court in the Hague?
The US did support Saddam in the Iran-Iraq war, because he was
more in line with their interests than the Ayatollah's gang were.
However, unlike Noriega, I doubt he was a direct employee,
so if they wanted to attack him, the right channel was to declare war,
rather than to just call in CIA Internal Affairs


Re: I am anti war. You stupid evil scum are pro Saddam.

2003-12-22 Thread baudmax23
At 05:41 PM 12/20/2003 -0800, James A. Donald [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

--
On 19 Dec 2003 at 22:23, Anonymous wrote:
 Re saddam et all...
 http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/EL19Ak01.html

 The war of words over Saddam  Bush is quite amusing. The
 blind faith in ones govt structure and the willingness to
 support force that is in such extreme measure overpowering
 and statist such as the dropping of tons of depleted uranium
 high explosives shows that some on this list have not
 broadened their news reading beyond fox news.
I am anti war.  You lot are pro Saddam.


That is quite a presumption there.  If you're not with US, you're with the 
terrorists, eh? Same old sorry ass script, dug up but unoriginal dullards 
as the boilerplate world domination scam.  You know, the Nazis were just 
make the world safe for freedom, fighting those pesky Commies, and oh yeah, 
those terrorists who burned down the Reichstag...

WTC-Reichstag 2.  Same old story.  Yep, just no decent boogymen, since the 
commies gave up the good fight.  They tried replacing them with the drug 
menace, but that never quite took the same way.  People were yet too 
skeptical because too many people like gettin' high themselves.  Oh ok, 
here we go kiddies on our neverland joyride interminable war on 
terror.  Oh yeah, that's a REAL good one, that'll keep the proles cowering 
for the protection of the feudal state's protection.  O. Protect Me, Thine 
Lord, and I shall prostrate my ass to your minions at the airports!  Pucker 
up to prove you don't a bomb hidden up yo ass, boy.

Back in the sixties, there were lots of good reasons to oppose
the Vietnam war, notably that it was fought by conscription,
and that McNamara's search for measures of war fighting
efficiency and to create incentives for efficient production of
war effort were demoralizing the troops, and instead of
creating incentives to fight effectively, created perverse
incentives to commit mass murder in place of killing the enemy.
But instead the opponents wound up chanting 'ho, ho, ho Chi
Minh Ho Chi Minh was a senior KGB agent, who after spending
ten years behind a desk in Moscow organizing the murder of
Indochinese nationalists was sent from Moscow to rule what
became North Vietnam.  He purged 85% of the communist party,
murdering a large but unknown proportion of them, and conducted
a terror against the peasants of extraordinary savagery.
Uncle Ho was the leader of the Indochinese resistance, leader of a 
popular anti-colonial nationalist movement (remember, Indochina was a 
French colony, before the Japanese seized it from them).  The original viet 
cong tunnel complexes, dated back to the nationalist resistance movement 
which was fighting the Imperial Japanese occupation of 
Indochina.  Eisenhower actually considered Ho to be a great ally in the 
region at the time, for giving the Japs such hell.  After the War, however, 
the Frenchys wanted their old colony back so they could rape it some more 
of it's cheap natural resources, and well, Ho having fought the dickens out 
of the Japs, wasn't having any of it.  Eventually the French gave up (ever 
hear of dienbienphu?)  Then WE got involved in that mess (under the pretext 
of anticommunism proxy warism), and rather than just let them have their 
own country, killed a lot of peasants and made big defense contractors some 
mega money, before the Amerikan youth finally rebelled at being sent off to 
be slaughtered for defense contractor profiteering.  Ho had actually 
admitted to being an avid admirer of the founding fathers of the US, I seem 
to recall.


And now the guys on this list are weeping big salt tears about
poor victimized Saddam.
Saddam is irrelevant, and the real joke on US will be when we come to 
understand it.  OK, whoopy-dee-do, We Got Him!  (nevermind that WE MADE 
HIM, nevermind that we built up his bio-chem WMD proggies, to counter the 
reaction in Iran after our tyrant Shah THERE got his ass kicked out by the 
people).  A CIA puppet who got out of control.  Don't want to believe it, 
look for how he was part of a CIA team recruited to assassinate Kassem.  He 
was useful while he did US bidding.  Once he outlived his usefulness, we 
set him up (the greenlighting of kuwait invasion, ala April Gillespie and 
Poppy Bush), so we had a great excuse to dump our obsolete inventories of 
older military hardware, as well as battle-test our latest weapons 
technologies at the same time.

Chickens always come home to roost.   This is the case with Saddam, same as 
it was for Bin Laden as well (another CIA Frankenstein, run amok on 
Master).  Do you not see a PATTERN here, of building up and tearing down, 
and making monster profits every step of the way, and the hell with those 
useless eater peasants by the millions?  Look at all the Panamanians we 
slaughtered, so Poppy Bush could take out a noncompliant Noriega, who was 
threatening to spill the sloppy details or Poppy's CIA cocaine 
trafficking.  Silenced 

Re: I am anti war. You stupid evil scum are pro Saddam.

2003-12-22 Thread David Crookes
On Monday 22 December 2003 13:49, Michael Kalus wrote:

 Well, in america instead of being the slave to the man (just yet)
 you're the slave to your credit card bills

By choice.

 your employers

By choice, through a range that is barely enough to eat and drink to 
unimaginable heights in historical terms.

 and all the
 other robber barons you have in the industry, while under Castro you
 are Well what? You can't travel to the US? You are not necessarily
 always able to state your political opinions (which sound vaguely
 familiar in the US right now) etc.

Not even close to the US situation. Get a clue.

A simple example, read Tim May's continued expressions on the state of the US.

Now read this about Cuba:

http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2003/05/67973.html

Now, tell me that you still think the US is less free.

 Repeat after me: Freedom is something that is defined differently by
 every human being.


So Cuban's choose oppression and no free speech, in exchange for freedom of 
slavery to credit-card spending on luxury items, employment and robber 
barons?

Have you been to Cuba?



Re: I am anti war. You stupid evil scum are pro Saddam.

2003-12-22 Thread James A. Donald
--
James A. Donald:
  If you call for the release of Saddam, or you justify 9/11, 
  as the anti-war posters in this thread have  been 
  arguing, then indeed you are with the terrorists.

Bill Stewart
 Saddam's not particularly related to the terrorists,

Those who want Saddam released, for the most part also 
rationalize 9/11

He may not be related to the terrorists, but his fans are 
related to the terrorists.

 But making up pretenses for invasion any time people question 
 your previous pretense is simply unprofessional.

The title of this thread is I am anti war, you stupid evil 
scum are pro saddam.

I do not support the invasion.   I am not making up pretenses 
for the invasion.

 If you want to have any pretense of caring about the Rule of 
 Law, you need to stick to it even after capturing your 
 enemies

This is war.  Rule of law does not apply.  Rules of war do 
apply.  And rules of war say that the US army can not only give 
Saddam a dental examination, it can nail Saddam's head to a 
post in Baghdad with a nine inch nail, because he was captured 
out of uniform, administering the war effort while hiding 
amongst civilians.

 Handing him to the ICC is fine, if you don't think drowning 
 people in red tape is cruelunusual

Handing him to the ICC is not fine, because the ICC is not 
going to execute him, and because the ICC is farcically 
incompetent, and because the ICC is dominated by the same 
tyrants who dominate the UN human rights commission, who might 
well choose to let him off.

When I see how many people want to get him off, I more and more 
think the the USG needs to kill him quickly.  The longer he 
lives, the greater the likelyhood that his international pals 
will pull him out of trouble, and eventually return him to 
power.

The Nuremberg trials were held in Germany by the victors.  Why 
this big desire to do something different this time around?   I 
don't hear anyone except the usual Nazis whining that Nuremberg 
was illegitimate or unfair. 

--digsig
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Re: I am anti war. You stupid evil scum are pro Saddam.

2003-12-22 Thread James A. Donald
--
On 21 Dec 2003 at 13:13, Bill Stewart wrote:
 But this isn't an American war or occupation.  It's a war by
 the Allies, including the US, Great Britain, and the
 Coalition Of the Willing, and the UK and most of the COWs are
 responsible for bringing this to the ICC.

For this to be true, most of the coalition would be nations
that agreed to UN becoming a world government.   Somehow I
doubt it.

The ICC has no legitimacy. 

--digsig
 James A. Donald
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 4HGnXPUOhSyzJ+wUkY0TdY99yKRck7IifD3Hly1iA



Re: I am anti war. You stupid evil scum are pro Saddam.

2003-12-22 Thread James A. Donald
--
On 22 Dec 2003 at 1:10, Tim May wrote:
 I, and many others, were against the war in Vietnam without  
 being supporters of Ho Chi Minh or the Soviets or anyone of  
 that ilk

True, but amongst the vast mass chanting Ho, Ho, Ho Chi Minh,  
one could no more discern principled opponents of the Vietnam  
war, than one can today discern principled opponents of the  
Iraqi war among the Americans worrying about poor little  
victimized Saddam, and the mass of Europeans jumping for joy  
over the fall of the two towers.

Amidst the pro Saddam posters on this thread, many have come  
rather close to chanting Ho, Ho, Ho Chi Minh -- for the  
example the argument that the evil CIA deprived the third world 
masses of their beloved socialism provided by benevolent  
dictators, and the argument that the US created' the Afghan  
resistance -- and thus presumably every other resistance  
movement against the Soviets.

 Essentially _none_ of them were supporters of the Soviets or 
 the North Vietnamese qua North Vietnamese.)

Now I get to call you the pinko:

They were supposedly supporters of the NLF, which they well  
knew was a North Vietnamese sock puppet, and thus a KGB sock  
puppet.  And when that sock puppet was discarded to reveal the 
iron fist of the NVA that had been moving its lips, none of  
them were surprised or dismayed.   Similarly Jane Fonda was 
supposedly not a supporter of the North Vietnamese qua North 
Vietnamese, yet without hesitation she lied about the condition 
and treatment of the POWs she met, whom she depicted as 
leniently treated war criminals.  When some of those she lied 
about returned home to speak the truth, she stuck to her 
position, counter attacking them as hypocrites and liars, 
denying that they had shown signs of starvation and torture.

I find it strange that the speakers at your rally were so  
remarkably different from the speakers at my rally --  
particularly when so many of the pro Saddam posters in this  
thread sound like they are new nyms for the same people who  
spoke at my rally.

If any of your speakers really thought the NLF was something  
other than a KGB sock puppet, they would have had posters of  
the supposed NLF leader on their wall.  Instead, not one of  
these supposed supporters of the NLF blinked when the most of  
the NLF vanished in the 1975 purge.


--digsig
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Re: I am anti war. You stupid evil scum are pro Saddam.

2003-12-22 Thread James A. Donald
--
James A. Donald:
  So in your version of reality, the Iraqi people were
  happily enjoying socialism, loving the socialism this
  benevolent dictator Kassem provided to them and then this
  evil capitalistic CIA agent, Saddam, took it all away from
  them.
 
  If that is what happened, what is your objection then to
  him being given to Iraqi people for execution?  Why are you
  calling for him to be released, or to be given to his
  fellow tyrants who run the Hague court, who certainly will
  not execute him, probably will not imprison him for very
  long, and might well exonerate him?

[EMAIL PROTECTED]
 You are apparently so wrapped up in seeing this in some
 pre-conceived way, as to not grasp the obvious, literal
 meaning of what you read. Kassem was a pro-arab nationalist,
 who nationalized (as in seized, without compensation)
 formerly foreign corporate oil interests. Kassem was
 ANTI-western, anti-American, do you get it?

Your story is inconsistent.  You tell us Saddam was a
capitalistic CIA agent -- so therefore we should not let the
Iraqis hang him. Huh?

Saddam also was and is socialist, anti western, anti american,
seized stuff without compensation etc, which is presumably why
you are backing him today -- and which makes the tale that he
was a CIA creation unbelievable.

 You can, in your ignorance, ignore the well established and
 documented history of covert CIA operations

Your history comes for the most part from notorious KGB
agents, for example John Pilger.

From time to time old archives of the CIA are opened, and
usually conspicuously fail to confirm these tales -- these
tales all being variants of one single tale -- that wherever
Soviet aligned tyrants had trouble with each other or with
those they subjugated, it was all the CIA's doing.

 I also don't understand your contempt of the ICC Hague

Consider the trial of Milosevic.  Either the Hague is
deliberately trying to get him off, or they are idiots.  Most
likely idiots.

Plus if the Hague should ever get to exercise real power,
which its present performance makes unlikely, we would have a
world government, which would probably decide the entire
American population to be war criminals and send everyone to
the camps. 

--digsig
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 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG
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 4zVatkiNc/ZPba7GUPRigeFpK5jmJrSkpQ/2Y7edR



Re: I am anti war. You stupid evil scum are pro Saddam.

2003-12-22 Thread Eugen Leitl
Would you kindly STFU now. Talk about crypto, your politics is flat-EEG.

On Mon, Dec 22, 2003 at 09:20:35AM -0800, James A. Donald wrote:
 --
 James A. Donald:

[demime 0.97c removed an attachment of type application/pgp-signature]



Re: I am anti war. You stupid evil scum are pro Saddam.

2003-12-22 Thread R. A. Hettinga
At 11:43 AM -0800 12/22/03, Steve Schear wrote:
Cite your sources.  The one's I find creditable

Debka? Really?

:-)

Cheers,
RAH
-- 
-
R. A. Hettinga mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation http://www.ibuc.com/
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience. -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'



Re: I am anti war. You stupid evil scum are pro Saddam.

2003-12-22 Thread James A. Donald
--
On 22 Dec 2003 at 11:43, Steve Schear wrote:
 Cite your sources.  The one's I find creditable indicate that 
 at the time of his capture he appeared to have been held 
 captive for at least 2-3 weeks.

Oh come on.

A whole platoon of random troops would have to be part of a big 
conspiracy. Plus quite a few Iraqis have interviewed him.  They 
in the vast right wing conspiracy also?

Or did the US perhaps rewrite Saddam's memory with the memory 
erasure thingy from 'men in black'

Shortly after busting Saddam, the US busted large numbers  of 
people in his apparatus, on the basis of records seized from 
his farmhouse.  Did Saddam's henchmen perhaps not notice Saddam 
was missing because the US replaced him with a double?

Real conspiracies exist, but when you start to see conspiracies 
so large, so well organized, so tightly disciplined, embracing 
so many quite ordinary seeming people, you are slipping into 
madness.   If a conspiracy is large, it is not going to be well 
organized and tightly disciplined.   The communists took the 
big conspiracy as far as it could go, and it did not go that 
far.  It is really hard to put on a big show unless you can 
carefully select your audience for willing suspension of 
disbelief.

If the US was faking the circumstances of Saddam's capture, 
this would be comparable to the bigger potemkin village 
operations that the communists put on, for example Mao's fake 
prison, where only the most privileged got to play prisoner, 
but the communists were utterly paranoid about exercising total 
control of any outsider's access to the set, the actors or 
anyone remotely connected to the actors, and only allowed the 
most carefully selected outsiders tightly controlled and highly
supervised access, whereas the US army has been completely
relaxed about letting anyone contact those involved in the
story. 

--digsig
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Re: I am anti war. You stupid evil scum are pro Saddam.

2003-12-22 Thread Steve Schear
At 09:20 AM 12/22/2003, James A. Donald wrote:
This is war.  Rule of law does not apply.  Rules of war do
apply.  And rules of war say that the US army can not only give
Saddam a dental examination, it can nail Saddam's head to a
post in Baghdad with a nine inch nail, because he was captured
out of uniform, administering the war effort while hiding
amongst civilians.
Cite your sources.  The one's I find creditable indicate that at the time 
of his capture he appeared to have been held captive for at least 2-3 
weeks.  He may not have had an option about his uniform, or much else for 
that matter.

steve 



Re: I am anti war. You stupid evil scum are pro Saddam.

2003-12-22 Thread proclus
On 21 Dec, Michael Kalus wrote:
  I don't know who you are referring too, but that comment is amusing, 
  because it is exactly the kind of lambaste broadside that one hears on 
  Faux news channel all the time.  Anyway, I say that Saddam has human 
  rights, just like everyone else, which includes due process, right to 
  counsel, and to face your accusers in an open court that has  
  legitimate 
  authority to find you innocent or guilty.  The US is clearly and 
  wrongly doing the opposite of this, and if this makes me pro-Saddam, 
  then I will wear the label proudly. 
  
  How can we offer him procedural guarantees enjoyed by U.S. residents 
  when we won't be the ones conducting procedure at his trial?  He's  
  going 
  to be tried in the ICC or by Iraqis in Iraqi courts.  We have no good 
  evidence that he's committed crimes against Americans, and unless we 
  find some, I don't think that anyone would want him anywhere near a 
  Federal courtroom. 
  
  
 He won't be put in front of the ICC as the US never signed on to it. So  
 this one is out. 
  
 That leaves either an American Tribunal or an Iraqi one. In either case  
 they should adhere to US procedures as they are based on them. 

Yes, but I think Justin is mistaking my meaning.  In order for the
trial to be fair and valid, it must adhere to certain standards, some
of which I enumerated.  They are not necessarily US procedures, per se.
Based on these discussions, I think it is clear that the war crimes
tribunal should be composed of elected Iraqi judges.   This would have
the advantage of adding democratic legitimacy to the process so that the
result would be widely accepted, something terribly lacking in any
proceeding under US auspices.  Moreover, this solution addresses US
exceptions to the international courts as well, since the case would be
heard in US-occupied Iraq.

Regards,
proclus
http://www.gnu-darwin.org/


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Re: I am anti war. You stupid evil scum are pro Saddam.

2003-12-22 Thread Justin
[EMAIL PROTECTED] (2003-12-21 03:50Z) wrote:

 I don't know who you are referring too, but that comment is amusing,
 because it is exactly the kind of lambaste broadside that one hears on
 Faux news channel all the time.  Anyway, I say that Saddam has human
 rights, just like everyone else, which includes due process, right to
 counsel, and to face your accusers in an open court that has legitimate
 authority to find you innocent or guilty.  The US is clearly and
 wrongly doing the opposite of this, and if this makes me pro-Saddam,
 then I will wear the label proudly.  

How can we offer him procedural guarantees enjoyed by U.S. residents
when we won't be the ones conducting procedure at his trial?  He's going
to be tried in the ICC or by Iraqis in Iraqi courts.  We have no good
evidence that he's committed crimes against Americans, and unless we
find some, I don't think that anyone would want him anywhere near a
Federal courtroom.

McRumsfeld and co. should be held accountable if they violate the Geneva
Convention with respect to Saddam or any other prisoner.  But the
procedural guarantees you talk about are attached to U.S. trials, which
Saddam will not enjoy (or dread, depending...).

-- 
I am a carnivorous fish swimming in#+#  Banking establishments are
two waters, the cold water of art and  -*+  more dangerous than standing
the hot water of science.  - S. Dali   #-#  armies.  - Thomas Jefferson



Re: I am anti war. You stupid evil scum are pro Saddam.

2003-12-22 Thread Michael Kalus
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA1

 I don't know who you are referring too, but that comment is amusing,
 because it is exactly the kind of lambaste broadside that one hears on
 Faux news channel all the time.  Anyway, I say that Saddam has human
 rights, just like everyone else, which includes due process, right to
 counsel, and to face your accusers in an open court that has 
 legitimate
 authority to find you innocent or guilty.  The US is clearly and
 wrongly doing the opposite of this, and if this makes me pro-Saddam,
 then I will wear the label proudly.

 How can we offer him procedural guarantees enjoyed by U.S. residents
 when we won't be the ones conducting procedure at his trial?  He's 
 going
 to be tried in the ICC or by Iraqis in Iraqi courts.  We have no good
 evidence that he's committed crimes against Americans, and unless we
 find some, I don't think that anyone would want him anywhere near a
 Federal courtroom.


He won't be put in front of the ICC as the US never signed on to it. So 
this one is out.

That leaves either an American Tribunal or an Iraqi one. In either case 
they should adhere to US procedures as they are based on them.


 McRumsfeld and co. should be held accountable if they violate the 
 Geneva
 Convention with respect to Saddam or any other prisoner.  But the
 procedural guarantees you talk about are attached to U.S. trials, which
 Saddam will not enjoy (or dread, depending...).


See above. Because of the possiblity that either Rumsfled  friends 
might end up in front of the ICC they never signed off on it.


Michael

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Re: I am anti war. You stupid evil scum are pro Saddam.

2003-12-22 Thread Justin
Michael Kalus (2003-12-22 00:28Z) wrote:

  As Bill Stuart pointed out, this is not an American war.  This is a
  war (or so the U.S. claims) based on alleged violation of an
  agreement between Iraq and the UN.  It seems to me that American
  Courts or American Tribunals have no authority to preside over
  Saddam's case in general.  I don't think anyone wants to try Saddam
  for crimes over which the U.S. might have jurisdiction.  There's
  likely a much better case that he killed various subordinates, or
  that he gave orders to murder a bunch of Kurds, or that he murdered
  various people in his ascent into power, than there is that he
  offered material support to Al Qaeda or some other terrorist group.
 
 I agree they should. But this war was not sanctioned by the UN, nor
 did the US ratify the ICC. Sure, the British and spanish and Italian
 where along for the ride, but the US Administration made it clear
 several times that THEY are going to call the shots on Iraq.

But the U.S. position since way before the war has been that this is not
a bilateral conflict.  That alone seems to invalidate any notion that
the U.S. has sole jurisdiction over prosecutions stemming from the
war.

Are you suggesting that we might try to get the ICC to handle Saddam's
trial and that they'd refuse on the grounds that it was a
Bush/Blair/Howard junta that went to war rather than an international
coalition?  It would be highly amusing if the ICC signatories were to
say that, but I don't see it happening.

  Please explain why an Iraqi court must give Saddam U.S. style
  procedural rights, because I don't understand.  I know you said
  should, but what does that mean if not must?  The U.S. has no
  influence on Iraqi judicial proceedings, or at least it shouldn't.
  Appeals to ethics don't mean anything when one talks about a
  different culture.

 If the US is serious to establish a democracy in Iraq than this would
 also mean a reform of the Criminal Justice system. Most likely built
 on the best system in the world and that would make it the US one,
 no?

Even if the United States wants to reform the Iraqi judicial system to
incorporate most or all of U.S. rights (which really don't exist here
anymore thanks to decades of creative work by the Supremes), I think
that goal is orthogonal to the matter of how to treat Saddam.  The Iraqi
courts haven't been reformed yet.  There's no Iraqi constitution, and
the country isn't even sovereign, in the sense that there's no permanent
system of authority or law.  If Iraqi courts are to be used, do
prisoners just have to sit around for years until the process generates
a criminal justice system with adequate procedural guarantees?  I would
think that the current courts have to be used, regardless of what shape
they're in.

We really have no direct control over what goes on in Iraq.  We can use
diplomacy to try to influence what the governing council does, but it's
the governing council that's creating a constitution.  I'm really not
sure what we'd do if the governing council were to come up with a
constitution without the equivalent of our 4th-8th amendments.  Would we
march into the meeting chamber and kick everyone out, and seat military
commanders at the table instead?

Also, there's an existing (1968) constitution in Iraq, ignoring the
post-coup modifications, and Saddam ignoring it for a few decades
doesn't mean it's bad.  I haven't read it in translation and I don't
know Arabic, so I can't say what the old constitution guarantees in
terms of criminal procedure.  But allegedly it wasn't a terrible
constitution, and it probably guarantees something.

How much influence can we exert without turning Iraq into a U.S.
territory?  It's easy to argue that we've gone too far already by
screening Governing Council members.  Are you suggesting that Iraq
should be a U.S. territory?  If the Governing Council is a puppet, does
it matter whether they have fair trials?  I would think in that case
that any trials they conducted would be invalid, even if no other
countries were to object.

Just because we're there and we're trying to set up a democracy that has
some toleration for religious freedom and speech doesn't mean we have an
obligation to turn Iraq into a puppet state and run U.S. trials for
people who violated Iraqi law.

-- 
I am a carnivorous fish swimming in#+#  Banking establishments are
two waters, the cold water of art and  -*+  more dangerous than standing
the hot water of science.  - S. Dali   #-#  armies.  - Thomas Jefferson



Re: I am anti war. You stupid evil scum are pro Saddam.

2003-12-22 Thread Justin
Michael Kalus (2003-12-21 13:14Z) wrote:

  How can we offer him procedural guarantees enjoyed by U.S. residents
  when we won't be the ones conducting procedure at his trial?  He's
  going to be tried in the ICC or by Iraqis in Iraqi courts.  We have
  no good evidence that he's committed crimes against Americans, and
  unless we find some, I don't think that anyone would want him
  anywhere near a Federal courtroom.
 
 He won't be put in front of the ICC as the US never signed on to it.
 So this one is out.
 
 That leaves either an American Tribunal or an Iraqi one. In either
 case they should adhere to US procedures as they are based on them.

As Bill Stuart pointed out, this is not an American war.  This is a war
(or so the U.S. claims) based on alleged violation of an agreement
between Iraq and the UN.  It seems to me that American Courts or
American Tribunals have no authority to preside over Saddam's case in
general.  I don't think anyone wants to try Saddam for crimes over which
the U.S. might have jurisdiction.  There's likely a much better case
that he killed various subordinates, or that he gave orders to murder a
bunch of Kurds, or that he murdered various people in his ascent into
power, than there is that he offered material support to Al Qaeda or
some other terrorist group.

Even if such a U.S. law-based prosecution were to be pursued, clearly
there are serious international law issues.  Saddam was not some rag-tag
nation-less scoundrel.  Even if he was directly involved in terrorism, I
would think the only way to prosecute him for any such crimes would be
in some international court, because he was essentially sovereign.

Please explain why an Iraqi court must give Saddam U.S. style procedural
rights, because I don't understand.  I know you said should, but what
does that mean if not must?  The U.S. has no influence on Iraqi
judicial proceedings, or at least it shouldn't.  Appeals to ethics don't
mean anything when one talks about a different culture.

-- 
I am a carnivorous fish swimming in#+#  Banking establishments are
two waters, the cold water of art and  -*+  more dangerous than standing
the hot water of science.  - S. Dali   #-#  armies.  - Thomas Jefferson



Re: I am anti war. You stupid evil scum are pro Saddam.

2003-12-21 Thread Michael Kalus
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Hash: SHA1

 I don't know who you are referring too, but that comment is amusing,
 because it is exactly the kind of lambaste broadside that one hears on
 Faux news channel all the time.  Anyway, I say that Saddam has human
 rights, just like everyone else, which includes due process, right to
 counsel, and to face your accusers in an open court that has 
 legitimate
 authority to find you innocent or guilty.  The US is clearly and
 wrongly doing the opposite of this, and if this makes me pro-Saddam,
 then I will wear the label proudly.

 How can we offer him procedural guarantees enjoyed by U.S. residents
 when we won't be the ones conducting procedure at his trial?  He's 
 going
 to be tried in the ICC or by Iraqis in Iraqi courts.  We have no good
 evidence that he's committed crimes against Americans, and unless we
 find some, I don't think that anyone would want him anywhere near a
 Federal courtroom.


He won't be put in front of the ICC as the US never signed on to it. So 
this one is out.

That leaves either an American Tribunal or an Iraqi one. In either case 
they should adhere to US procedures as they are based on them.


 McRumsfeld and co. should be held accountable if they violate the 
 Geneva
 Convention with respect to Saddam or any other prisoner.  But the
 procedural guarantees you talk about are attached to U.S. trials, which
 Saddam will not enjoy (or dread, depending...).


See above. Because of the possiblity that either Rumsfled  friends 
might end up in front of the ICC they never signed off on it.


Michael

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Re: I am anti war. You stupid evil scum are pro Saddam.

2003-12-21 Thread Michael Kalus
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On 20-Dec-03, at 8:41 PM, James A. Donald wrote:

 I am anti war.  You lot are pro Saddam.


Why. Because we OPPOSED the war on Saddam? That's an interresting logic 
you have here:

I am against the war, unless of course, it is initiated by lies, 
deceit and the US of A. YOU are all of course for Torture, Murder and 
Saddam because he is the one the US of A is fighting the war against.

 Back in the sixties, there were lots of good reasons to oppose
 the Vietnam war, notably that it was fought by conscription,

Oh, so if it can hit your friend Buddy from down the road who just got 
drafted it is okay to be against it. But if a kid from the Bronx who 
has no other viable choice but join the military gets into the 
crossfire (and don't tell me he understands the reasons any better than 
your Buddy did back in Vietnam) it is okay?

 and that McNamara's search for measures of war fighting
 efficiency and to create incentives for efficient production of
 war effort were demoralizing the troops, and instead of
 creating incentives to fight effectively, created perverse
 incentives to commit mass murder in place of killing the enemy.


Ah, and this right now was / is a clean war? You now, good and 
honest? Two guys facing each other? One a couple of thousand feet up in 
the air dropping cluster bombs on cities while the other one hides in a 
hole, together with his family?


 But instead the opponents wound up chanting 'ho, ho, ho Chi
 Minh Ho Chi Minh was a senior KGB agent, who after spending
 ten years behind a desk in Moscow organizing the murder of
 Indochinese nationalists was sent from Moscow to rule what
 became North Vietnam.  He purged 85% of the communist party,
 murdering a large but unknown proportion of them, and conducted
 a terror against the peasants of extraordinary savagery.

Yet you still think there was a good reason to Oppose the Vietnam war? 
Make up your mind man. Was it a just war like (in your opinion) Iraq 
right now or was it unjust?



 And now the guys on this list are weeping big salt tears about
 poor victimized Saddam.


Because, if we claim to be humane, do these wars for the greater good, 
we better act like it. (By it i mean the West in general). If we don't 
then we better shut the fuck up about our 'ideals and how everybody 
should live by them. Why do you think we're such a target? Because the 
majority of the world population sees us for what we are: Opportunistic 
killers. Either we do it ourselves or we pay others to do our dirty 
work.


 Anyone who opposed the war on Vietnam should have started off
 by asking How shall we contain the Soviet Union and eventually
 defeat communism, and what is wrong with the way this
 administration is doing it.

First of all the USSR was not Commust, it was a Stalnistic country. 
Second of all: Shouldn't people be free to choose under which political 
system they want to live? I grew up in Western Germany, I have been to 
what was then the GDR several times. I have still family in those 
areas. You know what? They said overall it was just as good if not 
better than it is today.

It is your kind of Arrogance that causes wars like one in Iraq right 
now. It is arrogance like yours that makes millions suffer without you 
even notice. There were a million more places where an intervention 
would have done any good. Yet in none of these places do we see anybody 
(Ivory Coast anyone?)



 Similarly anyone who opposes the war in Iraq should start by
 visualizing himself as the heir of  King John Sobieski, not the
 heir of Saladin.  Anyone opposing the war in Iraq needs oppose
 it from the point of view that Americans and their way of life
 should win, deserve to win, and the raghead fanatics should
 lose, and their way of life perish.

Why does the american way of life have to win? What is it about the 
american way that has to win? The ability to dream of maybe becoming 
rich one day? The american dream and lifestyle has just as much right 
to win as any other. There is no right in any of these.




 Anyone who wants to argue that the guys in the two towers had
 it coming, and poor Saddam is a victim, puts himself in the
 corner with the people who are stupid, evil, and losers.


Sammdam and the two towers had nothing to do with each other. That for 
one.

Second of all. Did they had it coming? Yes. It was only a question of 
time until something like this would have happened. The fact that the 
majority refused to see it has nothing to do with it.

Something will happen again, doesn't matter how many grannys you take 
away their needles, or how many people you put on a no-fly list 
because they are reading the wrong books. History is beginning to 
repeat itself. The Colonial Powers got kicked out of their colonies. As 
the world can hardly kick the US out of the Earth they will strike 
home.

If you really think that the US's behaviour (in regards to foreign 
policy) has nothing to do with 9/11 

Re: I am anti war. You stupid evil scum are pro Saddam.

2003-12-21 Thread proclus
On 21 Dec, Michael Kalus wrote:
  I don't know who you are referring too, but that comment is amusing, 
  because it is exactly the kind of lambaste broadside that one hears on 
  Faux news channel all the time.  Anyway, I say that Saddam has human 
  rights, just like everyone else, which includes due process, right to 
  counsel, and to face your accusers in an open court that has  
  legitimate 
  authority to find you innocent or guilty.  The US is clearly and 
  wrongly doing the opposite of this, and if this makes me pro-Saddam, 
  then I will wear the label proudly. 
  
  How can we offer him procedural guarantees enjoyed by U.S. residents 
  when we won't be the ones conducting procedure at his trial?  He's  
  going 
  to be tried in the ICC or by Iraqis in Iraqi courts.  We have no good 
  evidence that he's committed crimes against Americans, and unless we 
  find some, I don't think that anyone would want him anywhere near a 
  Federal courtroom. 
  
  
 He won't be put in front of the ICC as the US never signed on to it. So  
 this one is out. 
  
 That leaves either an American Tribunal or an Iraqi one. In either case  
 they should adhere to US procedures as they are based on them. 

Yes, but I think Justin is mistaking my meaning.  In order for the
trial to be fair and valid, it must adhere to certain standards, some
of which I enumerated.  They are not necessarily US procedures, per se.
Based on these discussions, I think it is clear that the war crimes
tribunal should be composed of elected Iraqi judges.   This would have
the advantage of adding democratic legitimacy to the process so that the
result would be widely accepted, something terribly lacking in any
proceeding under US auspices.  Moreover, this solution addresses US
exceptions to the international courts as well, since the case would be
heard in US-occupied Iraq.

Regards,
proclus
http://www.gnu-darwin.org/


-- 
Visit proclus realm! http://proclus.tripod.com/
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Re: I am anti war. You stupid evil scum are pro Saddam.

2003-12-21 Thread Bill Stewart
At 08:14 AM 12/21/2003 -0500, Michael Kalus wrote:
He won't be put in front of the ICC as the US never signed on to it.
So this one is out.
That leaves either an American Tribunal or an Iraqi one. In either case
they should adhere to US procedures as they are based on them.
But this isn't an American war or occupation.  It's a war by the Allies,
including the US, Great Britain, and the Coalition Of the Willing,
and the UK and most of the COWs are responsible for bringing this to the ICC.
That means it's either the Iraqis that get to try Saddam and hang him,
or else the Americans have to pretend that they weren't pretending
that this was an international effort.
(Did Iraq join the ICC?)



Re: I am anti war. You stupid evil scum are pro Saddam.

2003-12-21 Thread Justin
Michael Kalus (2003-12-21 13:14Z) wrote:

  How can we offer him procedural guarantees enjoyed by U.S. residents
  when we won't be the ones conducting procedure at his trial?  He's
  going to be tried in the ICC or by Iraqis in Iraqi courts.  We have
  no good evidence that he's committed crimes against Americans, and
  unless we find some, I don't think that anyone would want him
  anywhere near a Federal courtroom.
 
 He won't be put in front of the ICC as the US never signed on to it.
 So this one is out.
 
 That leaves either an American Tribunal or an Iraqi one. In either
 case they should adhere to US procedures as they are based on them.

As Bill Stuart pointed out, this is not an American war.  This is a war
(or so the U.S. claims) based on alleged violation of an agreement
between Iraq and the UN.  It seems to me that American Courts or
American Tribunals have no authority to preside over Saddam's case in
general.  I don't think anyone wants to try Saddam for crimes over which
the U.S. might have jurisdiction.  There's likely a much better case
that he killed various subordinates, or that he gave orders to murder a
bunch of Kurds, or that he murdered various people in his ascent into
power, than there is that he offered material support to Al Qaeda or
some other terrorist group.

Even if such a U.S. law-based prosecution were to be pursued, clearly
there are serious international law issues.  Saddam was not some rag-tag
nation-less scoundrel.  Even if he was directly involved in terrorism, I
would think the only way to prosecute him for any such crimes would be
in some international court, because he was essentially sovereign.

Please explain why an Iraqi court must give Saddam U.S. style procedural
rights, because I don't understand.  I know you said should, but what
does that mean if not must?  The U.S. has no influence on Iraqi
judicial proceedings, or at least it shouldn't.  Appeals to ethics don't
mean anything when one talks about a different culture.

-- 
I am a carnivorous fish swimming in#+#  Banking establishments are
two waters, the cold water of art and  -*+  more dangerous than standing
the hot water of science.  - S. Dali   #-#  armies.  - Thomas Jefferson



Re: I am anti war. You stupid evil scum are pro Saddam.

2003-12-21 Thread Michael Kalus
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Hash: SHA1


 As Bill Stuart pointed out, this is not an American war.  This is a war
 (or so the U.S. claims) based on alleged violation of an agreement
 between Iraq and the UN.  It seems to me that American Courts or
 American Tribunals have no authority to preside over Saddam's case in
 general.  I don't think anyone wants to try Saddam for crimes over 
 which
 the U.S. might have jurisdiction.  There's likely a much better case
 that he killed various subordinates, or that he gave orders to murder a
 bunch of Kurds, or that he murdered various people in his ascent into
 power, than there is that he offered material support to Al Qaeda or
 some other terrorist group.


I agree they should. But this war was not sanctioned by the UN, nor did 
the US ratify the ICC. Sure, the British and spanish and Italian where 
along for the ride, but the US Administration made it clear several 
times that THEY are going to call the shots on Iraq.


 Even if such a U.S. law-based prosecution were to be pursued, clearly
 there are serious international law issues.  Saddam was not some 
 rag-tag
 nation-less scoundrel.  Even if he was directly involved in terrorism, 
 I
 would think the only way to prosecute him for any such crimes would be
 in some international court, because he was essentially sovereign.


Agreed.

 Please explain why an Iraqi court must give Saddam U.S. style 
 procedural
 rights, because I don't understand.  I know you said should, but what
 does that mean if not must?  The U.S. has no influence on Iraqi
 judicial proceedings, or at least it shouldn't.  Appeals to ethics 
 don't
 mean anything when one talks about a different culture.

If the US is serious to establish a democracy in Iraq than this would 
also mean a reform of the Criminal Justice system. Most likely built on 
the best system in the world and that would make it the US one, no?

M.

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Re: I am anti war. You stupid evil scum are pro Saddam.

2003-12-21 Thread Justin
Michael Kalus (2003-12-22 00:28Z) wrote:

  As Bill Stuart pointed out, this is not an American war.  This is a
  war (or so the U.S. claims) based on alleged violation of an
  agreement between Iraq and the UN.  It seems to me that American
  Courts or American Tribunals have no authority to preside over
  Saddam's case in general.  I don't think anyone wants to try Saddam
  for crimes over which the U.S. might have jurisdiction.  There's
  likely a much better case that he killed various subordinates, or
  that he gave orders to murder a bunch of Kurds, or that he murdered
  various people in his ascent into power, than there is that he
  offered material support to Al Qaeda or some other terrorist group.
 
 I agree they should. But this war was not sanctioned by the UN, nor
 did the US ratify the ICC. Sure, the British and spanish and Italian
 where along for the ride, but the US Administration made it clear
 several times that THEY are going to call the shots on Iraq.

But the U.S. position since way before the war has been that this is not
a bilateral conflict.  That alone seems to invalidate any notion that
the U.S. has sole jurisdiction over prosecutions stemming from the
war.

Are you suggesting that we might try to get the ICC to handle Saddam's
trial and that they'd refuse on the grounds that it was a
Bush/Blair/Howard junta that went to war rather than an international
coalition?  It would be highly amusing if the ICC signatories were to
say that, but I don't see it happening.

  Please explain why an Iraqi court must give Saddam U.S. style
  procedural rights, because I don't understand.  I know you said
  should, but what does that mean if not must?  The U.S. has no
  influence on Iraqi judicial proceedings, or at least it shouldn't.
  Appeals to ethics don't mean anything when one talks about a
  different culture.

 If the US is serious to establish a democracy in Iraq than this would
 also mean a reform of the Criminal Justice system. Most likely built
 on the best system in the world and that would make it the US one,
 no?

Even if the United States wants to reform the Iraqi judicial system to
incorporate most or all of U.S. rights (which really don't exist here
anymore thanks to decades of creative work by the Supremes), I think
that goal is orthogonal to the matter of how to treat Saddam.  The Iraqi
courts haven't been reformed yet.  There's no Iraqi constitution, and
the country isn't even sovereign, in the sense that there's no permanent
system of authority or law.  If Iraqi courts are to be used, do
prisoners just have to sit around for years until the process generates
a criminal justice system with adequate procedural guarantees?  I would
think that the current courts have to be used, regardless of what shape
they're in.

We really have no direct control over what goes on in Iraq.  We can use
diplomacy to try to influence what the governing council does, but it's
the governing council that's creating a constitution.  I'm really not
sure what we'd do if the governing council were to come up with a
constitution without the equivalent of our 4th-8th amendments.  Would we
march into the meeting chamber and kick everyone out, and seat military
commanders at the table instead?

Also, there's an existing (1968) constitution in Iraq, ignoring the
post-coup modifications, and Saddam ignoring it for a few decades
doesn't mean it's bad.  I haven't read it in translation and I don't
know Arabic, so I can't say what the old constitution guarantees in
terms of criminal procedure.  But allegedly it wasn't a terrible
constitution, and it probably guarantees something.

How much influence can we exert without turning Iraq into a U.S.
territory?  It's easy to argue that we've gone too far already by
screening Governing Council members.  Are you suggesting that Iraq
should be a U.S. territory?  If the Governing Council is a puppet, does
it matter whether they have fair trials?  I would think in that case
that any trials they conducted would be invalid, even if no other
countries were to object.

Just because we're there and we're trying to set up a democracy that has
some toleration for religious freedom and speech doesn't mean we have an
obligation to turn Iraq into a puppet state and run U.S. trials for
people who violated Iraqi law.

-- 
I am a carnivorous fish swimming in#+#  Banking establishments are
two waters, the cold water of art and  -*+  more dangerous than standing
the hot water of science.  - S. Dali   #-#  armies.  - Thomas Jefferson



I am anti war. You stupid evil scum are pro Saddam.

2003-12-21 Thread James A. Donald
--
James A. Donald
  I am anti war.  You lot are pro Saddam.

[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
 That is quite a presumption there.  If you're not with US, 
 you're with the terrorists,

If you call for the release of Saddam, or you justify 9/11, as 
the anti-war posters in this thread have  been arguing, then 
indeed you are with the terrorists.

You are stupid evil, and a loser.

 Uncle Ho was the leader of the Indochinese resistance, 
 leader of a popular anti-colonial nationalist movement

A popular anti-colonial nationalist movement which he led from 
Moscow?   Somehow I seriously doubt that Stalin's Moscow was 
the place to find nationalist movements, let alone popular 
ones.

When Ho came to power in North Vietnam, he treated the 
population as though they were the enemy, and himself the 
quisling leader of a hostile alien occupation force.  In his 
terror against the Vietnamese, he set execution quotas.  His 
servants had to kill such and such a number of class enemies 
in each village.

 Chickens always come home to roost.   This is the case with 
 Saddam, same as it was for Bin Laden as well (another CIA 
 Frankenstein, run amok on Master).

I deleted most of your lies without comment, as too obvious and 
stupid to merit rebuttal, but this lie, though equally obvious 
and equally stupid, is significant, as it links the fans of 
Saddam, with the fans of Stalin and Soviet expansionism.

You accuse the US of not merely being allied to bin Laden, but 
of creating him, which presupposes that the US created the 
Afghan resistance, and indeed every resistance to Soviet 
tyranny.

Hey, if it had not been for that nasty CIA the afghans would 
have been happy as pigs in mud enjoying the vast benefits of 
being uplifted by the Soviets to the superior level of 
civilization enjoyed by the beneficiaries of Soviet alliance
:-)

That is a lie we have heard over and over again, with thirty 
different wars of Soviet aggression, starting in the 1920s.  We 
heard it most infamously uttered against East German 
resistance, and every time we heard that tired old lie, those 
servants of tyranny uttering it were less believable, and less 
believed.

 in particular: In the quotations collected below, the name of 
 the leader who was assassinated is spelled variously as 
 Qasim, Qassim and Kassem. But, however you spell his name, 
 when he took power in a popularly-backed coup in 1958, he 
 certainly got recognized in Washington. He carried out such 
 anti-American and anti-corporatist policies as starting the 
 process of nationalizing foreign oil companies in Iraq, 
 withdrawing Iraq from the US-initiated right-wing Baghdad 
 Pact (which included another military-run, US-puppet state, 
 i.e., Pakistan) and decriminalizing the Iraqi Communist 
 Party. Despite these actions, and more likely because of 
 them, he was Iraq's most popular leader. He had to go! In 
 1959, there was a failed assassination attempt on Qasim. The 
 failed assassin was none other than a young Saddam Hussein. 
 In 1963, a CIA-organized coup did successfully assassinate 
 Qasim and Saddam's Ba'ath Party came to power for the first 
 time.

oh come on.

The Baathist coup was part of a pan arab conspiracy for 
simultaneous coups in all major arab countries, to create a 
united pan arab socialist government modelled on Stalin's 
dictatorship, which would supposedly make the arabs strong in 
the way that Stalin had supposedly made the Soviet Union 
strong.

It is plausible that the CIA might support an ordinary military 
coup against a pro Soviet tyrant, but it is unbelievable that 
the CIA would support a pan arabist coup, intended to unite the 
arab world and subjugate the drunken fat princes of Kuwait, 
Saudi Arabia, etc.

Plus, if you really believed that Saddam was a CIA agent, how
come you are calling for him to be released, or turned over to
the questionable justice of his fellow tyrants and mass
murderers running the court in the Hague? 

--digsig
 James A. Donald
 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG
 TvAY6+Fkueg9q0ZdMfMzOTt1CMEcIaszUot0IXzl
 4nh/RBzF7wz2eI/jN6gnWICUVvW8DNV8OwkTIisqt



I am anti war. You stupid evil scum are pro Saddam.

2003-12-20 Thread James A. Donald
--
On 19 Dec 2003 at 22:23, Anonymous wrote:
 Re saddam et all... 
 http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/EL19Ak01.html

 The war of words over Saddam  Bush is quite amusing. The
 blind faith in ones govt structure and the willingness to
 support force that is in such extreme measure overpowering
 and statist such as the dropping of tons of depleted uranium
 high explosives shows that some on this list have not
 broadened their news reading beyond fox news.

I am anti war.  You lot are pro Saddam.

Back in the sixties, there were lots of good reasons to oppose
the Vietnam war, notably that it was fought by conscription,
and that McNamara's search for measures of war fighting
efficiency and to create incentives for efficient production of
war effort were demoralizing the troops, and instead of
creating incentives to fight effectively, created perverse
incentives to commit mass murder in place of killing the enemy.

But instead the opponents wound up chanting 'ho, ho, ho Chi
Minh Ho Chi Minh was a senior KGB agent, who after spending
ten years behind a desk in Moscow organizing the murder of
Indochinese nationalists was sent from Moscow to rule what
became North Vietnam.  He purged 85% of the communist party,
murdering a large but unknown proportion of them, and conducted
a terror against the peasants of extraordinary savagery.

And now the guys on this list are weeping big salt tears about
poor victimized Saddam.

Anyone who opposed the war on Vietnam should have started off
by asking How shall we contain the Soviet Union and eventually
defeat communism, and what is wrong with the way this
administration is doing it.

Similarly anyone who opposes the war in Iraq should start by
visualizing himself as the heir of  King John Sobieski, not the
heir of Saladin.  Anyone opposing the war in Iraq needs oppose
it from the point of view that Americans and their way of life
should win, deserve to win, and the raghead fanatics should
lose, and their way of life perish.


Anyone who wants to argue that the guys in the two towers had
it coming, and poor Saddam is a victim, puts himself in the
corner with the people who are stupid, evil, and losers. 

--digsig
 James A. Donald
 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG
 XwnNnDWaFm4T8flPHGpKzyaV4jg8/RzK3pUzhOzQ
 4+xdZmD79Z+1bt+2a7gG1vL9K6V53m4xxeoRxCt4p



Re: I am anti war. You stupid evil scum are pro Saddam.

2003-12-20 Thread proclus

I don't know who you are referring too, but that comment is amusing,
because it is exactly the kind of lambaste broadside that one hears on
Faux news channel all the time.  Anyway, I say that Saddam has human
rights, just like everyone else, which includes due process, right to
counsel, and to face your accusers in an open court that has legitimate
authority to find you innocent or guilty.  The US is clearly and
wrongly doing the opposite of this, and if this makes me pro-Saddam,
then I will wear the label proudly.  

Regards,
proclus
http://www.gnu-darwin.org/


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Re: I am anti war. You stupid evil scum are pro Saddam.

2003-12-20 Thread baudmax23
At 05:41 PM 12/20/2003 -0800, James A. Donald [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

--
On 19 Dec 2003 at 22:23, Anonymous wrote:
 Re saddam et all...
 http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/EL19Ak01.html

 The war of words over Saddam  Bush is quite amusing. The
 blind faith in ones govt structure and the willingness to
 support force that is in such extreme measure overpowering
 and statist such as the dropping of tons of depleted uranium
 high explosives shows that some on this list have not
 broadened their news reading beyond fox news.
I am anti war.  You lot are pro Saddam.


That is quite a presumption there.  If you're not with US, you're with the 
terrorists, eh? Same old sorry ass script, dug up but unoriginal dullards 
as the boilerplate world domination scam.  You know, the Nazis were just 
make the world safe for freedom, fighting those pesky Commies, and oh yeah, 
those terrorists who burned down the Reichstag...

WTC-Reichstag 2.  Same old story.  Yep, just no decent boogymen, since the 
commies gave up the good fight.  They tried replacing them with the drug 
menace, but that never quite took the same way.  People were yet too 
skeptical because too many people like gettin' high themselves.  Oh ok, 
here we go kiddies on our neverland joyride interminable war on 
terror.  Oh yeah, that's a REAL good one, that'll keep the proles cowering 
for the protection of the feudal state's protection.  O. Protect Me, Thine 
Lord, and I shall prostrate my ass to your minions at the airports!  Pucker 
up to prove you don't a bomb hidden up yo ass, boy.

Back in the sixties, there were lots of good reasons to oppose
the Vietnam war, notably that it was fought by conscription,
and that McNamara's search for measures of war fighting
efficiency and to create incentives for efficient production of
war effort were demoralizing the troops, and instead of
creating incentives to fight effectively, created perverse
incentives to commit mass murder in place of killing the enemy.
But instead the opponents wound up chanting 'ho, ho, ho Chi
Minh Ho Chi Minh was a senior KGB agent, who after spending
ten years behind a desk in Moscow organizing the murder of
Indochinese nationalists was sent from Moscow to rule what
became North Vietnam.  He purged 85% of the communist party,
murdering a large but unknown proportion of them, and conducted
a terror against the peasants of extraordinary savagery.
Uncle Ho was the leader of the Indochinese resistance, leader of a 
popular anti-colonial nationalist movement (remember, Indochina was a 
French colony, before the Japanese seized it from them).  The original viet 
cong tunnel complexes, dated back to the nationalist resistance movement 
which was fighting the Imperial Japanese occupation of 
Indochina.  Eisenhower actually considered Ho to be a great ally in the 
region at the time, for giving the Japs such hell.  After the War, however, 
the Frenchys wanted their old colony back so they could rape it some more 
of it's cheap natural resources, and well, Ho having fought the dickens out 
of the Japs, wasn't having any of it.  Eventually the French gave up (ever 
hear of dienbienphu?)  Then WE got involved in that mess (under the pretext 
of anticommunism proxy warism), and rather than just let them have their 
own country, killed a lot of peasants and made big defense contractors some 
mega money, before the Amerikan youth finally rebelled at being sent off to 
be slaughtered for defense contractor profiteering.  Ho had actually 
admitted to being an avid admirer of the founding fathers of the US, I seem 
to recall.


And now the guys on this list are weeping big salt tears about
poor victimized Saddam.
Saddam is irrelevant, and the real joke on US will be when we come to 
understand it.  OK, whoopy-dee-do, We Got Him!  (nevermind that WE MADE 
HIM, nevermind that we built up his bio-chem WMD proggies, to counter the 
reaction in Iran after our tyrant Shah THERE got his ass kicked out by the 
people).  A CIA puppet who got out of control.  Don't want to believe it, 
look for how he was part of a CIA team recruited to assassinate Kassem.  He 
was useful while he did US bidding.  Once he outlived his usefulness, we 
set him up (the greenlighting of kuwait invasion, ala April Gillespie and 
Poppy Bush), so we had a great excuse to dump our obsolete inventories of 
older military hardware, as well as battle-test our latest weapons 
technologies at the same time.

Chickens always come home to roost.   This is the case with Saddam, same as 
it was for Bin Laden as well (another CIA Frankenstein, run amok on 
Master).  Do you not see a PATTERN here, of building up and tearing down, 
and making monster profits every step of the way, and the hell with those 
useless eater peasants by the millions?  Look at all the Panamanians we 
slaughtered, so Poppy Bush could take out a noncompliant Noriega, who was 
threatening to spill the sloppy details or Poppy's CIA cocaine 
trafficking.  Silenced 

Re: I am anti war. You stupid evil scum are pro Saddam.

2003-12-20 Thread Justin
[EMAIL PROTECTED] (2003-12-21 03:50Z) wrote:

 I don't know who you are referring too, but that comment is amusing,
 because it is exactly the kind of lambaste broadside that one hears on
 Faux news channel all the time.  Anyway, I say that Saddam has human
 rights, just like everyone else, which includes due process, right to
 counsel, and to face your accusers in an open court that has legitimate
 authority to find you innocent or guilty.  The US is clearly and
 wrongly doing the opposite of this, and if this makes me pro-Saddam,
 then I will wear the label proudly.  

How can we offer him procedural guarantees enjoyed by U.S. residents
when we won't be the ones conducting procedure at his trial?  He's going
to be tried in the ICC or by Iraqis in Iraqi courts.  We have no good
evidence that he's committed crimes against Americans, and unless we
find some, I don't think that anyone would want him anywhere near a
Federal courtroom.

McRumsfeld and co. should be held accountable if they violate the Geneva
Convention with respect to Saddam or any other prisoner.  But the
procedural guarantees you talk about are attached to U.S. trials, which
Saddam will not enjoy (or dread, depending...).

-- 
I am a carnivorous fish swimming in#+#  Banking establishments are
two waters, the cold water of art and  -*+  more dangerous than standing
the hot water of science.  - S. Dali   #-#  armies.  - Thomas Jefferson