RKMBs Forums .::Important::. Politics and Current Events "It's not about oil or Iraq..."

i dont really find the oil reseve theory plausible. as the US has the military capability to capture many of the worlds oil reseves at any time, so why go through all this on the assumption we can install a puppet goverment somehwere. as has been documented elswhere the us had plans at one time to capture all of saudi arabias oil during the embargo years ago. so the need to control a reseverve is pretty moot.

Regarding the oil theory (which I think is close to the truth), here's a really good article that I think I might have posted before:

[qoute]

Deciphering the Bush Administration's Motives

by Michael T. Klare
The United States is about to go to war with Iraq. As of this writing, there are 60,000 U.S. troops already deployed in the area around Iraq, and another 75,000 or so are on their way to the combat zone. Weapons inspectors have found a dozen warheads, designed to carry chemical weapons. Even before this discovery, senior U.S. officials were insisting that Saddam was not cooperating with the United Nations and had to be removed by force. Hence, there does not seem to be any way to stop this war, unless Saddam Hussein is overthrown by members of the Iraqi military or is persuaded to abdicate his position and flee the country.

It is impossible at this point to foresee the outcome of this war. Under the most optimistic scenarios--the ones advanced by proponents of the war--Iraqi forces will put up only token resistance and American forces will quickly capture Baghdad and remove Saddam Hussein from office (by killing him or placing him under arrest). This scenario further assumes that the Iraqis will decline to use their weapons of mass destruction (WMD) or will be prevented from doing so by U.S. military action; that civilian casualties will be kept low and that most Iraqis will welcome their "liberation" from Saddam; that a new, pro-U.S. government will quickly and easily be put into place; that fighting between competing ethnic factions will be limited and easily brought under control; that anti-American protests in other Muslim countries will not get out of hand; and that American forces will be withdrawn after a relatively short occupation period of six months to a year.

It is not difficult, however, to imagine less optimistic scenarios. In these scenarios, the Iraqis could put up stiff resistance and conduct house-to-house fighting in Baghdad, thereby producing significant U.S. casualties and leading, in turn, to heavy U.S. air and missile strikes on populated areas, resulting in high civilian casualties. Under these scenarios, the Iraqis will use their chemical and biological weapons in a final spasm of self-destruction, producing untold civilian and combatant casualties. The surviving Iraqis will turn against their American "liberators," resulting in constant sniping and acts of terrorism. The Kurds and Shiites and Sunnis will fight over the spoils of war, producing widespread carnage and trapping U.S. forces in the middle. American troops will remain in Iraq for a generation, or more, producing hatred and resistance throughout the Muslim world and increased levels of terrorism elsewhere.

Which scenario will prevail? Nobody can be certain at this point. Those who favor a war with Iraq tend to believe that Iraqi resistance will be light and that the rest of the optimistic scenario will fall into place. But no one can guarantee that any of this will come to pass, and there are many experts who believe that the likelihood of things going awry are very great. For example, the CIA has indicated that Iraq is most likely to use its WMD in the event that Iraq is attacked and defeat appears likely. In weighing the relative merits of going to war with Iraq, therefore, one should reckon on the worst possible outcome, not the best. One must ask: are the purported benefits of war so great as to outweigh all of the possible negative repercussions?

And this leads to the most fundamental question of all: WHY are we going to war? What is really motivating President Bush and his senior advisers to incur these enormous risks?

In their public pronouncements, President Bush and his associates have advanced three reasons for going to war with Iraq and ousting Saddam Hussein: (1) to eliminate Saddam's WMD arsenals; (2) to diminish the threat of international terrorism; and (3) to promote democracy in Iraq and the surrounding areas.

These are, indeed, powerful motives for going to war. But are they genuine? Is this what is really driving the rush to war? To answer this, we need to examine each motive in turn. In doing so, moreover, it is necessary to keep in mind that the United States cannot do everything. If we commit hundreds of thousands of American troops and hundreds of billions of dollars to the conquest, occupation, and reconstruction of Iraq, we cannot easily do the same in other countries--we simply don't have the resources to invade and occupy every country that poses a hypothetical threat to the United States or is deserving of regime change. So a decision to attack Iraq means a decision to refrain from other actions that might also be important for U.S. security or the good of the world.

(1) Eliminating weapons of mass destruction: The reason most often given by the administration for going to war with Iraq is to reduce the risk of a WMD attack on the United States. To be sure, a significant WMD attack on the United States would be a terrible disaster, and it is appropriate for the President of the United States to take effective and vigorous action to prevent this from happening. If this is, in fact, Bush's primary concern, then one would imagine that he would pay the greatest attention to the greatest threat of WMD usage against the United States, and deploy available U.S. resources--troops, dollars, and diplomacy--accordingly. But is this what Bush is actually doing? The answer is no. Anyone who takes the trouble to examine the global WMD proliferation threat closely and to gauge the relative likelihood of various WMD scenarios would have to conclude that the greatest threat of WMD usage against the United States at the present time comes from North Korea and Pakistan, not Iraq.

North Korea and Pakistan pose a greater WMD threat to the United States than Iraq for several reasons. First of all, they both possess much bigger WMD arsenals. Pakistan is known to possess several dozen nuclear warheads along with missiles and planes capable of delivering them hundreds of miles away; it is also suspected of having developed chemical weapons. North Korea is thought to possess sufficient plutonium to produce one to two nuclear devices along with the capacity to manufacture several more; it also has a large chemical weapons stockpile and a formidable array of ballistic missiles. Iraq, by contrast, possesses no nuclear weapons today and is thought to be several years away from producing one, even under the best of circumstances. Iraq may possess some chemical and biological weapons and a dozen or so Scud-type missiles that were hidden at the end of the 1991 Gulf war, but it is not known whether any of these items are still in working order and available for military use. Equally important is the question of intention: how likely are these countries to actually use their WMD munitions? Nobody can answer this with any degree of certainty, of course. But there are a few things that can be said.

To begin with, Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf has publicly stated that he was prepared to employ nuclear weapons against India last year when New Delhi massed its forces on Pakistan's border and threatened to attack unless Pakistan curbed the activities of Islamic militants in Kashmir. This does not mean that Pakistan would use nuclear weapons against the United States, but it does indicate a readiness to employ such weapons as an instrument of war; it is also easy to imagine a scenario in which someone else comes to power who is far more anti-American than Musharraf.

Just as worrisome is the fact that the North Koreans have declared that they would consider any move by the United States and the UN to impose economic sanctions on North Korea as punishment for its pursuit of nuclear weapons as an act of war, to which they would respond accordingly, turning the United States into a "sea of fire." Again, this does not mean that they would actually choose to use their nuclear weapons, but it is not hard to imagine a scenario in which war breaks out and the North Koreans use their WMD in a desperate bid to stave off defeat.

On the other hand, the CIA has concluded that Saddam Hussein will not choose to use his country's WMD capabilities against the United States so long as his regime remains intact; it is only in the case of imminent U.S. conquest of Baghdad that he might be tempted to use these weapons.

The Bush administration has also indicated that war with Iraq is justified in order to prevent Iraq from providing WMD to anti-American terrorists. The transfer of WMD technology to terrorist groups is a genuine concern--but it is in Pakistan where the greatest threat of such transference exists, not Iraq. In Pakistan, many senior military officers are known to harbor great sympathy for Kashmiri militants and other extremist Islamic movements; with anti-Americanism intensifying throughout the region, it is not hard to imagine these officers providing the militants with some of Pakistan's WMD weapons and technology. On the other hand, the current leadership in Iraq has no such ties with Islamic extremists; on the contrary, Saddam has been a life-long enemy of the militant Islamists and they view him in an equally hostile manner.

It follows from all this that a policy aimed at protecting the United States from WMD attacks would identify Pakistan and North Korea as the leading perils, and put Iraq in a rather distant third place. But this is not, of course, what the administration is doing. Instead, it has minimized the threat from Pakistan and North Korea and focused almost exclusively on the threat from Iraq. It is clear, then, that protecting the United States from WMD attack is not the primary justification for invading Iraq; if it were, we would be talking about an assault on Pakistan and/or North Korea, not Iraq.

(2) Combating terrorism: The administration has argued at great length that an invasion of Iraq and the ouster of Saddam Hussein would constitute the culmination of and the greatest success in the war against terrorism. Why this is so has never been made entirely clear, but it is said that Saddam's hostility toward the United States somehow sustains and invigorates the terrorist threat to this country. It follows, therefore, that the elimination of Saddam would result in a great defeat for international terrorism and greatly weaken its capacity to attack the United States.

Were any of this true, an invasion of Iraq might make sense from an anti-terrorism point of view. But there simply is no evidence that this is the case; if anything, the opposite is true. From what we know of Al Qaeda and other such organizations, the objective of Islamic extremists is to overthrow any government in the Islamic world that does not adhere to a fundamentalist version of Islam and replace it with one that does. The Baathist regime in Iraq does not qualify as such a regime; thus, under Al Qaeda doctrine, it must be swept away, along with the equally deficient governments in Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia. If follows from this that a U.S. effort to oust Saddam Hussein and replace his regime with another secular government--this one kept in place by American military power--will not diminish the wrath of Islamic extremists but rather fuel it.

In addressing this matter, moreover, it is necessary to keep the Israeli-Palestinian struggle in mind. For most Arab Muslims, whatever their views of Saddam Hussein, the United States is a hypocritical power because it tolerates (or even supports) the use of state terror by Israel against the Palestinians while making war against Baghdad for the same sort of behavior. It is this perception that is fueling the anti-American current now running through the Muslim world. An American invasion of Iraq will not quiet that current, but excite it. It is thus exceedingly difficult to see how a U.S. invasion of Iraq will produce a stunning victory in the war against terrorism; if anything, it will trigger a new round of anti-American violence. Hence, it is very difficult to conclude that the administration is motivated by anti-terrorism in seeking to topple Hussein.

(3) The promotion of democracy: The ouster of Saddam Hussein, it is claimed, will clear the space for the Iraqi people (under American guidance, of course) to establish a truly democratic government and serve as a beacon and inspiration for the spread of democracy throughout the Islamic world, which is said to be sadly deficient in this respect. Certainly, the spread of democracy to the Islamic world would be a good thing, and should be encouraged. But is there any reason to believe that the administration is motivated by a desire to spread democracy in its rush to war with Iraq?

There are several reasons to doubt this. First of all, many of the top leaders of the current administration, particularly Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney, were completely happy to embrace the Saddam Hussein dictatorship in the 1980s when Iraq was the enemy of our enemy (that is, Iran) and thus considered our de facto friend. Under the so-called "tilt" toward Iraq, the Reagan-Bush administration decided to assist Iraq in its war against Iran during the Iran-Iraq War of 1980-88. As part of this policy, Reagan removed Iraq from the list of countries that support terrorism, thus permitting the provision of billions of dollars' worth of agricultural credits and other forms of assistance to Hussein. The bearer of this good news was none other than Donald Rumsfeld, who traveled to Baghdad and met with Hussein in December 1983 as a special representative of President Reagan. At the same time, the Department of Defense, then headed by Dick Cheney, provided Iraq with secret satellite data on Iranian military positions. This information was provided to Saddam even though U.S. leaders were informed by a senior State Department official on November 1, 1983 that the Iraqis were using chemical weapons against the Iranians "almost daily," and were aware that U.S. satellite data could be used by Baghdad to pinpoint CW attacks on Iranian positions. Not once did Mssrs. Rumsfeld and Cheney speak out against Iraqi CW use or suggest that the United States discontinue its support of the Hussein dictatorship during this period. So there is no reason whatsoever to believe that the current leadership has a principled objection to dictatorial rule in Iraq--it is only when Saddam is threatening us instead of our enemies that they care about his tyrannical behavior.

There is another reason to be skeptical about the Bush administration's commitment to democracy in this part of the world, and that is the fact that the administration has developed close relationships with a number of other dictatorial or authoritarian regimes in the area. Most notably, the United States had developed close ties with the post-Soviet dictatorships in Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, and Uzbekistan. Each of these countries is ruled by a Stalinist dictator who once served as a loyal agent of the Soviet empire: Heydar Aliyev in Azerbaijan, Nursultan Nazarbaev of Kazakhstan, and Islam Karimov of Uzbekistan. Only slightly less odious than Saddam Hussein, these tyrants have been welcomed to the White House and showered with American aid and support. And there certainly is nothing even remotely democratic about Kuwait or Saudi Arabia, two of America's other close allies in the region.

So it is hard to believe that the Bush administration is motivated by a love of democracy, when it has been so quick to embrace patently undemocratic regimes that have agreed to do its bidding. So, if concern over WMD proliferation, or the reduction of terrorism, or a love of democracy do not explain the administration's determination to oust Saddam Hussein, what does?

I believe that the answer is a combination of three factors, all related to the pursuit of oil and the preservation of America's status as the paramount world power. Ever since the end of the cold war, American policymakers (whether Democratic or Republican) have sought to preserve America's "sole superpower" status and to prevent the rise of a "peer competitor" that could challenge U.S. paramountcy on anything approaching equal terms. At the same time, American leaders have become increasingly concerned over the country's growing dependence on imported oil, especially oil from the Persian Gulf. The United States now relies on imported oil for 55% of its requirements, and this percentage is expected to rise to 65% in 2020 and keep growing thereafter. This dependency is the "Achilles heel" for American power: unless Persian Gulf oil can be kept under American control, our ability to remain the dominant world power would be put into question.

These concerns undergird the three motives for a U.S. invasion of Iraq. The first derives from America's own dependence on Persian Gulf oil and from the principle, formally enshrined in the Carter Doctrine, that the United States will not permit a hostile state from ever coming into a position where it can threaten America's access to the Gulf. The second is the pivotal role played by the Persian Gulf in supplying oil to the rest of the world: whoever controls the Gulf automatically maintains a stranglehold on the global economy, and the Bush administration wants that to be the United States and no one else. And the third is anxiety about the future availability of oil: the United States is becoming increasingly dependent on Saudi Arabia to supply its imported petroleum, and Washington is desperate to find an alternative to Saudi Arabia should it ever be the case that access to that country is curtailed--and the only country in the world with large enough reserves to compensate for the loss of Saudi Arabia is Iraq.

Let us examine each of these three factors in turn.

First, on U.S. dependence on Persian Gulf oil and the Carter Doctrine. Ever since World War II, when American policymakers first acknowledged that the United States would someday become dependent on Middle Eastern petroleum, it has been American policy to ensure that the United States would always have unrestrained access to Persian Gulf oil. At first, the United States relied on Great Britain to protect American access to the Gulf, and then, when Britain pulled out of the area in 1971, the U.S. chose to rely on the Shah of Iran. But when, in 1979, the Shah was overthrown by Islamic militants loyal to the Ayatollah Khomeini, Washington decided that it would have to assume responsibility on its own to protect the oil flow. The result was the Carter Doctrine of January 23, 1980, which states that unrestricted access to Persian Gulf is a vital interest of the United States and that, in protection of that interest, the United States will employ "any means necessary, including military force."

This principle was first invoked in 1987, during the Iran-Iraq War, when Iranian gunboats fired on Kuwaiti oil tankers and the U.S. Navy began escorting Kuwaiti tankers through the Gulf. It was next invoked in August 1990, when Iraq invaded Kuwait and posed an implied threat to Saudi Arabia. President Bush the elder responded to that threat by driving the Iraqis out of Kuwait, in Operation Desert Storm; he did not, however, continue the war into Iraq proper and remove Saddam Hussein himself. Instead, the U.S. engaged in the "containment" of Iraq, entailing an air and sea blockade.

Now, President Bush the younger seeks to abandon containment and pick up Operation Desert Storm where it left off in 1991. The reason being given for this is that Saddam is making more progress in the development of WMD, but the underlying principle is still the Carter Doctrine: Iraq under Saddam poses an implied threat to U.S. access to Persian Gulf oil, and so must be removed. As noted by Vice President Dick Cheney on August 26, 2002, in his important speech before the Veterans of Foreign Wars, "Armed with these weapons of terror and a seat at the top of 10% of the world's oil reserves, Saddam Hussein could then be expected to seek domination of the entire Middle East, take control of a great portion of the world's energy supplies, directly threaten America's friends throughout the region, and subject the United States or any other nation to nuclear blackmail." Stripped to its essence, this is a direct invocation of the Carter Doctrine.

To underscore this, it is useful to compare Cheney's VFW speech to his comments 12 years earlier, following the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, before the Senate Armed Services Committee: "Iraq controlled 10% of the world's reserves prior to the invasion of Kuwait. Once Saddam Hussein took Kuwait, he doubled that to approximately 20% of the world's known oil reserves.... Once he acquired Kuwait and deployed an army as large as the one he possesses [on the border of Saudi Arabia], he was clearly in a position to dictate the future of worldwide energy policy, and that gave him a stranglehold on our economy and on that of most of the other nations of the world as well." The atmospherics may have changed since 1990, but we are still dealing with the Carter Doctrine: Saddam must be removed because of the potential threat he poses to the free flow of oil from the Persian Gulf to the U.S. and its allies.

The second administration objective springs from the language employed by Cheney in his 1990 testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee: whoever controls the flow of Persian Gulf oil has a "stranglehold" not only on our economy but also "on that of most of that of the other nations of the world as well." This is a powerful image, and perfectly describes the administration's thinking about the Gulf area, except in reverse: by serving as the dominant power in the Gulf, WE maintain a "stranglehold" over the economies of other nations. This gives us extraordinary leverage in world affairs, and explains to some degree why states like Japan, Britain, France, and Germany--states that are even more dependent on Persian Gulf oil than we are--defer to Washington on major international issues (like Iraq) even when they disagree with us.

Maintenance of a stranglehold over Persian Gulf oil is also consistent with the administration's declared goal of attaining permanent military superiority over all other nations. If you read administration statements on U.S. national security policy, you will find that one theme stands out above all others: the United States must prevent any potential rival from ever reaching the point where it could compete with the United States on something resembling equal standing. As articulated in "The National Security Strategy of the United States of America" (released by President Bush in September 2002), this principle holds that American forces must be "strong enough to dissuade potential adversaries from pursuing a military build-up in hopes of surpassing, or equaling, the power of the United States."

One way to accomplish this, of course, is to pursue advances in technology that allow the United States to remain ahead of all potential rivals in military systems--which is what the administration hopes to accomplish by adding tens of billions of dollars to the Department of Defense budget. Another way to do this is maintain a stranglehold on the economy of potential rivals, so that they will refrain from challenging us out of fear of being choked to death through the denial of vital energy supplies. Japan and the European countries are already in this vulnerable position, and will remain so for the foreseeable future; but now China is also moving into this position, as it becomes increasingly dependent on oil from the Persian Gulf. Like the U.S., China is running out of oil, and, like us, it has nowhere to go to make up the difference except the Gulf. But since WE control access to the Gulf, and China lacks the power to break our stranglehold, we can keep China in a vulnerable, subordinate position indefinitely. As I see it, then, the removal of Saddam Hussein and his replacement by someone beholden to the United States is a key part of a broader U.S. strategy aimed at assuring permanent American global dominance. Or, as Michael Ignatieff put it in his seminal essay on America's emerging empire, the concentration of so much oil in the Gulf "makes it what a military strategist would call the empire's center of gravity" ("The Burden," The New York Times Magazine, January 5, 2003).

And finally, there is the issue of America's long-term energy dilemma. The problem is as follows: The United States relies on oil to supply about 40% of its energy requirements, more than any other source. At one time, this country relied almost entirely on domestic oil to supply its needs; but our need for oil is growing all the time and our domestic fields--among the oldest in the world--are rapidly being exhausted. So our need for imported oil will grow with each passing year. And the more we turn to foreign sources for our oil, the more we will have to turn to the Persian Gulf, because most of the world's untapped oil--at least two-thirds of it--is located in the Gulf area. We can of course rip up Alaska and extract every drop of oil there, but that would reduce our dependence on imported oil by only about 1-2 percentage points--an insignificant amount. We could also rely for a share of our oil on non-Gulf suppliers like Russia, Venezuela, the Caspian Sea states, and Africa, but they have much less oil than the Persian Gulf countries and they are using it up faster. So, the more you look into the future, the greater will become our dependence on the Gulf.

Now, at the current time, U.S. dependence on Persian Gulf oil means, in all practical terms, American dependence on Saudi Arabia, because Saudi Arabia has more oil than everyone else--about 250 billion barrels, or one-fourth of world reserves. That gives Saudi Arabia a lot of indirect influence over our economy and our way of life. And, as you know, there are many people in this country who are resentful of the Saudis because of their financial ties to charities linked to Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda. More to the point, Saudi Arabia is a major backer of OPEC and tends to control the global availability of oil--something that makes American officials very nervous, especially when the Saudis use their power to put pressure on the United States to alter some of its policies, for example with respect to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

For all of these reasons, American leaders would like to reduce America's dependence on Saudi Arabia. But there is only ONE way to permanently reduce America's reliance on Saudi Arabia: by taking over Iraq and using it as an alternative source of petroleum. Iraq is the ONLY country in the world with sufficient reserves to balance Saudi Arabia: at least 112 billion barrels in proven reserves, and as much as 200-300 billion barrels of potential reserves. By occupying Iraq and controlling its government, the United States will solve its long-term oil-dependency dilemma for a decade or more. And this, I believe, is a major consideration in the administration's decisionmaking about Iraq.

It is this set of factors, I believe, that explain the Bush administration's determination to go to war with Iraq--not concern over WMD, terrorism, or the spread of democracy. But having said this, we need to ask: do these objectives, assuming they're the correct ones, still justify a war on Iraq? Some Americans may think so. There are, indeed, advantages to being positioned on the inside of a powerful empire with control over the world's second-largest supply of untapped petroleum. If nothing else, American motorists will be able to afford the gas for their SUVs, vans, and pick-up trucks for another decade, and maybe longer. There will also be lots of jobs in the military and in the military-industrial complex, or as representatives of American multinational corporations (although, with respect to the latter, I would not advise traveling in most of the rest of the world unless accompanied by a small army of bodyguards). But there will also be a price to pay. Empires tend to require the militarization of society, and that will entail putting more people into uniform, one way or another. It will also mean increased spending on war, and reduced spending on education and other domestic needs. It will entail more secrecy and intrusion into our private lives. All of this has to be entered into the equation. And if you ask me, empire is not worth the price.

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since Iraq will be ruling its self somwhere around june i guess the empire theory is out the window....

it came out earlier this month i believe im drunk right now but someone posted the story, it was released i think by a freedom of infornation act like thing, im sure it was posted here, if you dont dig it up ill look when im sober...

I'll drink to that!

Quote:

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Iraqi Finds Home Became Torture Chamber
Sat Feb 21, 3:08 PM ET

By LEE KEATH, Associated Press Writer

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Dhia al-Hariri returned to Iraq (news - web sites) after decades in exile to reclaim his father's beloved home, only to find Saddam Hussein (news - web sites)'s regime had turned it into a house of horrors.


AP Photo



What was once the backyard is now a dark maze of iron-doored cells. One bedroom has a hook in the ceiling from which interrogators hung prisoners, breaking their arms and giving them electric shocks.


"This was my grandmother's bedroom," al-Hariri, 54, said Saturday, standing in a room barren except for the remains of iron bars embedded in the floor where lines of prisoners were chained.


For years, neighbors on the street of walled homes heard screams at night from the house down the lane and saw handcuffed men being led in and out.


Saddam's security agents seized the house in 1980, after al-Hariri's family fled the country, and for the next 23 years, it was used as a secret interrogation center for political prisoners.


After Saddam's fall in April prisons were opened, and former inmates flooded in to revisit the scene of their ordeals. Mass graves have been uncovered, and families have begun the task of tracking down loved ones among the hundreds of thousands who disappeared.


Al-Hariri's house illustrates how the regime's brutality was literally right next door — and how it remains woven into the fabric of the neighborhood. One officer who worked in the al-Hariri house still lives on the street.


"No one can touch him. We don't dare," said Ali Zeini, a neighbor.


The house was the realization of a dream for al-Hariri's father, Kadhem. He built it in 1968, a one-floor modernist home in a neighborhood of doctors in Baghdad's upper-class Mansour district.


"He brought in architects to do it American-style, because that's what he liked," Dhia said.


"This was all wood paneling on the walls here. Oak. See those windows? All oak frames," he said, walking through what was once the sitting room. "There were chandeliers in every room."


One of the first to be tortured in the house was al-Hariri's younger brother, Safa, just yards from his old bedroom. He was executed in 1982.


Dhia al-Hariri, visiting from his home in Leeds, England, was 18 when the family moved into the house. He lived there until he went abroad for studies six years later.


The outside facade looks much the same, but the interior has been transformed. Windows are bricked over. Cinderblock walls seal the passageways and cut rooms in half.


It is this other house that Qays Abu Muhammed, a former prisoner, remembered.


"This is where they did the interrogations," he said, standing in the bedroom next to the grandmother's.


Abu Muhammed said he was hung by his arms from the ceiling hook, then pulled down until his shoulders dislocated. Electrodes then were put on his earlobes.





The next room down, a tiny space by the stairs up to the roof, was where they held women, he said.

One day, the interrogators brought in another prisoner, a man in his 60s. They threw alcohol on him and set him ablaze.

In the grandmother's room, Abu Muhammed was handcuffed, crouching, to the iron bar on the floor, with the burned man chained next to him.

"Over the next few days they would take him away and bring him back. Then one day, he didn't return," he said.

Abu Muhammed, 39, was arrested in 1984 and held at the house for a month, accused of belonging to a Shiite Muslim opposition group, the Dawa Party. He estimated that several hundred prisoners — Shiites, communists and other activists — passed through the house just during the time he was there.

"Who knows how many were here over the years? Maybe a third died in torture. A third were taken out and executed, and a third got out alive," al-Hariri said.

Saddam's government frequently took over houses abandoned by exiles, handing them out to high-ranking loyalists or using them for offices. Houses like al-Hariri's gave security agents a discreet location to carry out interrogations and force confessions. Some, like Abu Muhammed, were then sentenced to jail terms — or execution.

"We would always hear screaming," said the neighbor, Zeini. "It became very ordinary for us. What could we do?"

Al-Hariri moved to the back of his house, which used to be an open yard. Now, it's walled off into five cells. With a bang, al-Hariri jammed aside the bolt on an iron door and swung it open. This cell was the bedroom of two more of his brothers, twins.

"They had pictures of every football star in the world taped on their walls," he said.

Now, the bare concrete walls are carved with graffiti from those held there: names, dates — as far back as December 1980 and as recent as 2002 — hashmarks counting the days, prayers, a crude drawing of a girl.

"Call these numbers: Fayez and Heifaa," pleads one scrawl to anyone who gets out, with phone numbers beside them.

On another cell's wall is the drawing of a heart with wings and a palm tree with birds flying above it.

Al-Hariri, who had 10 relatives killed by Saddam's regime, has hired lawyers to start the long process of reclaiming the house. In the meantime, a cousin stays there to keep away looters.

But al-Hariri said he will never live there again.

"I want a home in Baghdad, but this house is too difficult. I need something where I won't see it everyday," he said. "In this house, I can hear my father's voice, my uncles' and cousins' voices.

"A lot of blood has been spilled in this house."

On the way out, he motioned to the front yard with one more memory.

"Here we planted azaleas," he said.

Now, it's covered with concrete.

"They put that there. God only knows what's buried underneath."

---

.....i think the countries who toppled Saddam can sleep well knowing they stopped this stuff....

...and the left can ponder the fact they were willing to allow the torture to continue....

Yep. So when is everyone invading Burma? Same shit happens there - probably worse.

Or China, for that matter?

Or our good friends in Turkey, who aren't allowed to join the EU because they have an atrocious human rights record.

Now, my problem is not the fact that Iraq was invaded. My problem is that not enough people are being freed from torture and indiscriminate rape and murder.

As I've said before, if oil was the incentive to invade Iraq, then I hope to God they find huge oil reserves under the palace of every shithead running a country and terrorising his citizens.

You always here liberals whine "but worse is happening somewhere else," as if that was a justification for Saddam torturing and murdering thousands.

Using that logic, we never should have attempted to stop Hitler because Stalin was killing just as many.

Using that logic, the police should never arrest someone for, say, wife beating, as long as they've failed to arrest someone for murder.

Bascally, that argument boils down "you can't save everyone, so don't save anybody..."

Your analogy is flawed. Hitler was invading Europe: Stalin was not. England anf France only declared war on Germany because they had a defensive pact with Poland. Although a simlification, the US only entered war with Germany because the Germans were silly enough to declare war on the US after Pearl Harbour.

Now, in comparison, Iraq was an aggressor in the Gulf War. But not in 2003: Saddam was just an old windbag sitting on top of a lot of oil.

Why Iraq, then? If liberal whining is always focused on not doing enough (and here I was thinking that you just said it was focused on not doing anything), why choose Iraq, of all the many places with a bad human rights record? Why Iraq?

This new-age-hippie-tree-hugging-help-the-poor-Iraqis fervour of our Republican friends here is an odd fit. It was never about helping the Iraqis: it was about WMDS (and - shh! - oil). Only when WMDs were not about did it invasion-supporters start wearing flowers in their hair, and started becoming concerned with human rights.

My argument was that it was always about human rights, and I didn't give a rat's arse if there were WMDs or not. Saddam is an evil bastard and he needed to be taken out.

It was lonely out there on my little leaky raft. Everyone was either on the big luxury cruise ship S.S. Neo-Imperialism Sucks ("Let Them Eat Cake!"), or the warship USS WMDs Suck (except our WMDs, which are good).

But suddenly everyone who was on the warship seems to be trying to get on my raft, and saying they were on it all along.

Actually, a lot of us on the right were bringing up the human rights issue before the war too.

I think because of the belief of WMD's. You combine all that and you have a case. Pakistan and India have WMD, but not histories of atrocities, and using them on their own people and neihbors. So when you get a lump some of reasons you have an reason and ability to do it, you do it.

Also, Iraq is in the Middle East a strategically important region, both geographically and politically.

There's also the deterrence factor. Since our attack on Iraq, we've seen a greater willingness on the part of other middle eastern powers to eschew terrorism and/or weapons programs. Do you think its a coincidence that Ghaddafi suddenly decided to allow inspectors into Libya and to take steps to turn over harbored terrorists?

In any event, as I touched on before, the idea that we can't deal with one murdering dictator unless we deal with ALL evil dictators is a silly one. It's not unlike the argument, as noted before, that we can't apprehend one criminal unless we apprehend ALL criminals.

BTW, this is completely off topic, but looking at that Ted Kennedy cartoon that BSAMS posted, has anyone else noted the irony of Kerry's bragging about not leaving his buddies behind in Nam and his friendship and mutual support with Kennedy, who left a girl behind to drown in a submerged car?

Or the Democrats attacking Bush for a 30 year old DWI where nobody was hurt, while simultaneously embracing Kennedy, whose DWI resulted in a death?

Naw, I find it more ironic that some far-righters spend so much time on Kerry's alleged (insert anything scandalous) & yet love, love, love President Bush cute indiscretions.

BTW I don't know anyone who really cares about President's Bush's DWIs. That won't be what loses him another election.

ive never heard anything about his DWI's since the last election. I think that what you did when you were younger stuff is only important to people when dealing with an unknown, these two have pretty extensive political records now, and id assume thats what the majority will vote on....

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Kennedy Presses Tenet on Iraq Intelligence

By Vicki Allen

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Democratic Sen. Edward Kennedy called on Friday for CIA Director George Tenet to state plainly whether he believed the White House altered or misused intelligence to justify the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.

The veteran Massachusetts lawmaker said Tenet also must explain "why he waited until last month -- nearly a year after the war started -- to set the record straight" that the intelligence did not indicate Iraq posed the immediate threat depicted by the Bush administration.

Kennedy, who has taken a high-profile role in the presidential campaign of Sen. John Kerry, a fellow Massachusetts Democrat, also tore into Republican President Bush for exaggerating the threat posed by Iraq for political gain.

Speaking to reporters afterward, Kennedy called his speech to the Council on Foreign Relations "an indictment of the administration using their own words."

He cited Bush calling Iraq a "threat of unique urgency," Vice President Dick Cheney saying Iraq was trying to acquire nuclear weapons, and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld saying "we know where they are" of weapons of mass destruction that have yet to be found.

"Why wasn't CIA Director Tenet correcting the president and the vice president and the secretary of defense a year ago, when it could have made a difference, when it could have prevented a needless war and saved so many lives?" Kennedy questioned.

Kennedy is a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee which is scheduled to grill Tenet on intelligence leading up to the war at a hearing next week.

"If he feels that the White House altered the facts, or misused the intelligence, or ignored it and relied on dubious sources in the Iraqi exile community, Tenet should say so, and say it plainly," the senator said.

Citing a speech Tenet gave last month, Kennedy said the CIA director "clearly distanced himself from the administration's statements about the urgency of the threat from Iraq."

But Kennedy said Tenet "stopped short of saying the administration distorted the intelligence or relied on other sources to make the case for war."

He also questioned whether Tenet ever tried to urge White House policymakers "to cool their overheated rhetoric" about Iraq's alleged banned weapons and links to Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network.

"Our men and women in uniform are still paying with their lives for this misguided war in Iraq. No president who misleads the country on the need for war deserves to be re-elected," Kennedy said.

"The only imminent threat was the November congressional election. The politics of the election trumped the stubborn facts," he said of the 2002 elections held in the run-up to the war to oust Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.

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March 6, 2004


THE NATION
Records of Bush Aides Sought

The prosecutor looking into the leak of a CIA agent's name wants Air Force One phone logs.

By Richard B. Schmitt, Times Staff Writer


WASHINGTON — A special prosecutor is seeking phone records from Air Force One as part of an investigation into whether the Bush administration illegally unmasked a covert CIA operative, the White House acknowledged Friday.

A spokesman said the administration was complying with grand jury subpoenas seeking the phone records and other documents, ranging from the records of a little-known White House working group on Iraq to the guest list at a White House birthday party for former President Gerald R. Ford.

The subpoenas — three in all, first reported Friday by Newsday — were issued to the White House in late January. They required the White House to produce the documents in stages, and all of them no later than Feb. 6. But officials said the process of turning over the information was not yet complete.

"We have provided the Department of Justice investigators with much of the information, and we're continuing to provide them with additional information," Press Secretary Scott McClellan told reporters in Crawford, Texas, where President Bush was spending the weekend.

The issuance of the subpoenas followed by three weeks the appointment of U.S. Atty. Patrick J. Fitzgerald of Chicago to investigate whether laws were broken when the name of then-CIA operative Valerie Plame showed up in a newspaper column last summer.

Plame is the wife of former diplomat Joseph C. Wilson IV, who was commissioned to travel to Africa in 2002 to investigate claims that Iraq was attempting to purchase raw uranium ore to develop nuclear weapons.

Wilson wrote an opinion article in the New York Times on July 6, 2003, casting doubt on the suspected deal, which had been used by the Bush administration last year in making its case for war in Iraq.

Eight days after that article, Plame was identified as a CIA undercover officer by syndicated columnist Robert Novak. Investigators are attempting to learn who leaked the information to Novak and possibly other journalists.

Wilson is writing a book about the affair, "The Politics of Truth," to be published in May; his publicists say it will name the person Wilson believes outed his wife.

Federal law prohibits officials with security clearances from knowingly disclosing the identity of an undercover agent. But probes of leaks to the media have been hobbled in the past because journalists have been unwilling to disclose their sources.

Some lawyers close to the case say they believe that Fitzgerald may be gearing up to subpoena journalists before the grand jury. Justice Department policy requires that investigators exhaust all other potential sources of information before they seek to compel the testimony of journalists.

McClellan and several other White House aides already have testified before the grand jury. McClellan said Friday that he was not aware that anyone had asserted the 5th Amendment right against self-incrimination before the grand jury.

The subpoenas request information about conversations and records that occurred within days and weeks of the Novak column. They cover Air Force One telephone call records from July 7 to July 12, while Bush was traveling in Africa, and a transcript of a July 12 press briefing given by then-White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer. The same subpoena requests a list of attendees at a July 16 White House birthday reception for Ford.

The investigators also have asked for records of the White House Iraq Group, which was created to publicize the threat posed by Saddam Hussein. Its participants reportedly have included such senior White House figures as political advisor Karl Rove and I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, the chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney.

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say what you want people, but that IS kinda funny

then you must live a very dull and boring life

I thought truth was relative, Mr. Whomod.

Mischief.

LMAO! Good cartoon.

Someone should collect all of this stuff for a book. It'll be great reading in 20 years.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=574&e=6&u=/nm/20040308/wl_nm/iraq_blix_diary_dc_4

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LONDON (Reuters) - George W. Bush and Tony Blair (news - web sites) probably knew they were exaggerating the threat from Iraq (news - web sites) when they were making the case for war, according to former chief U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix.


Reuters Photo




Latest headlines:
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Special Coverage





The U.S. president and the British prime minister ignored the few caveats in reports from intelligence services on Iraq's nuclear, chemical or biological weapons programs, he writes in his account of the months leading up to the U.S.-led invasion.


Blix says it was "probable that the governments were conscious that they were exaggerating the risks they saw in order to get the political support they would not otherwise have had."


Blix was head of the International Atomic Energy Agency from 1981 to 1997 and later chief of UNMOVIC (the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission) until 2003.


At other points in his book "Disarming Iraq - The search for weapons of mass destruction," due to go on sale on Tuesday, the former Swedish diplomat appears to soften his criticism of the British and American leaders.


"I am not suggesting that Blair and Bush spoke in bad faith, but I am suggesting that it would not have taken much critical thinking on their own part or the part of their close advisers to prevent statements that misled the public," he writes.


"It is understood and accepted that governments must simplify complex international matters in explaining them to the public in democratic states.


"However they are not vendors of merchandise but leaders of whom some sincerity should be asked when they exercise their responsibility for war and peace in the world."


Blix says he too had believed Iraqi President Saddam Hussein (news - web sites) had illegal weapons. But he adds he was unwilling to state it as fact until he saw concrete proof -- which was never obtained by his teams of inspectors scouring the Iraqi countryside.


"A number of intelligence services, including the French, were convinced that weapons of mass destruction remained in Iraq, but we had no evidence showing it," Blix wrote.


But he quoted French President Jacques Chirac, staunchly opposed to war, as saying intelligence services sometimes "intoxicate each other."


Nearly a year after the invasion and overthrow of Saddam, the coalition has not found illegal weapons in Iraq.

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....and again for those who claimed it was somethging made up by the US and Britain

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"A number of intelligence services, including the French, were convinced that weapons of mass destruction remained in Iraq, but we had no evidence showing it," Blix wrote.

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And again for those of us who fall back to "but everyone thought they had WMD's" arguments

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But he [Blix] quoted French President Jacques Chirac, staunchly opposed to war, as saying intelligence services sometimes "intoxicate each other."

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March 8, 2004


THE STATE
'Arlington West' Marks Iraq Deaths

A peace activist seeking 'powerful imagery' plants a field of crosses to represent American fatalities in Mideast.

By David Downs, Special to The Times


SANTA BARBARA — Peace activist Stephen Sherrill has marched and shouted in dozens of antiwar demonstrations in his lifetime, but it was his silent protest that touched thousands of people.

Every Sunday since early November, on the sand next to Stearns Wharf, Sherrill has planted what is now a field of white crosses — a sobering tribute to America's fallen in Iraq.

Sherrill said he had put the crosses on display to create "a visual representation" of the cost of the Iraq war in American dead.

"People can read numbers in a newspaper article and just breeze right by the number," he said. "But to actually see objects, each object representing a life, is a powerful imagery."

Sherrill, a 55-year-old carpenter, said his greatest hope was that the idea would spread.

Photographs of his "Arlington West" cemetery have appeared in American and European newspapers, and the protest has spawned similar monuments in Santa Monica and Oceanside.



Moreover, the antiwar group Veterans for Peace plans additional exhibits of the "Arlington West" cemetery in Huntington Beach, elsewhere in Orange County, and in San Francisco and Santa Cruz, as well as cities in Florida, Maine and Michigan, said Wilson Powell, executive director of Veterans for Peace.

Sherrill said he had come up with the idea because the almost daily count of human lives lost in Iraq was too abstract.

"The original idea I had was for full-size cardboard cutouts of soldiers," he said. "The crosses were Plan B, but we instantly understood its impact and started making it better."

At the site, now frequently visited by tourists and locals, half a dozen American flags and more than 500 crosses shimmer in the bright sun. Most crosses bear the name, rank, age and hometown of a member of the U.S. military.

Taps sounds from a small stereo. Emotions of visitors range from sadness to rage, said Lane Anderson, Veterans for Peace chapter president in Santa Barbara.

"Some were just standing up on the wharf saying provocative things like, 'You don't care about them,' pointing at the crosses," Anderson said. "But most people have been very positive."

"When I first saw it I was very angry. I didn't want to see it," said Shawn Rickman, a Santa Barbara resident who was raised in Galveston, Texas. "The more I thought about it, though — those are individual lives."



"Washington, D.C., is where they need it, on the White House lawn," said Joe Tighe, a retired electrician with a grandson serving in Iraq. "The fact that they do it every Sunday shows a great love for humanity. It's an amazing fixture of the Santa Barbara community."

Strangers drop off donations to support the purchase of more crosses, and volunteers from Veterans for Peace in Santa Barbara and Santa Monica pledge to keep their Arlington Wests going, weather permitting, every Sunday until the troops come home.

Sherrill said the chance to take part in thought-provoking conversation is enough to keep him making crosses week after week.

"I was just misting up at first," said Frank Borreani, 61, of the Bay Area. "All of these people lost their dreams. This whole beach could be full of crosses before this is over."



http://www.veteransforpeace.org/Arlington_west_121003.htm

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