My solution for the Iraq and NK problems

[Jagsbch]

ya my kind of thinking gets people killed... But no one gets killed in a war. Ok...:doh:

The Majority of the allies that are supporting this campaign against Iraq are only doing so because they are dependent on us and really have no choice in the matter...

The UN is Ineffective true...

But now that it is established our hands are tied...

We are a country among many...

So many kings... and so little resources lets face it,

the best we can do is postpone the inevitable... No matter how silly it sounds.

Like we can go overthere and face armed and unarmed civilians, as well as soldiers, as well as civilian shields and come out of this war without UN approval saving face... I don't think so...

Fighting this war outside of the UN and NATO is a no win situation.

The math that says we can pull this off just doesn't exist.

The only reason we would be fighting it is to uphold a useless UN resolution and to Subdue a threat that only get's Multiplied across the globe.

I should have been at the beach today...

[PCS]

Radical

Text of Remarks by U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell

By Colin Powell

CNSNews.com Information Services

February 14, 2003

Editor's Note: The following is the text of the response by U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell to the report on Iraqi compliance to U.N. Resolution 1441 by Chief Weapons Inspector Hans Blix.

Mr. President, Mr. Secretary General, distinguished members of the council, it's a great pleasure to be here with you again to consider this very important matter, and I'm very pleased to be here as the secretary of state of a relatively new country on the face of the Earth.

But I think I can take some credit sitting here as being the representative of the oldest democracy that is assembled here around this table. Proud of that. A democracy that believes in peace, a nation that has tried in the course of its history to show how people can live in peace with one another, but a democracy that has not been afraid to meet its responsibilities on the world stage when it has been challenged; more importantly, when others in the world have been challenged, or when the international order has been challenged, or when the international institutions of which we are a part have been challenged.

That's why we have joined and been active members of institutions such as the United Nations and a number of other institutions that have come together for the purpose of peace and for the purpose of mutual security and for the purpose of letting other nations which pursue a path of destruction, which pursue paths of developing weapons of mass destruction which threaten their neighbors, to let them know that we will stand tall, we will stand together to meet these kinds of challenges.

I want to express my appreciation to Dr. Blix and Dr. ElBaradei for their presentation this morning. They took up a difficult challenge when they went back into Iraq last fall in pursuit of disarmament as required by Resolution 1441. And I listened very attentively to all they said this morning, and I am pleased that there have been improvements with respect to process. I'm pleased that there have been improvements with respect to not having five minders with each inspector down to something less than five minders with each inspector.

But I think they still are being minded, they are still being watched, they are still being bugged, they still do not have the freedom of access around Iraq that they need to do their job well.

I'm pleased that a few people have come forward for interviews, but not all the people who should be coming forward for interviews, and with the freedom to interview them in a manner that their safety can be protected and the safety of their families can be protected as required by U.N. Resolution 1441. I am glad that access has been relatively good. But that is all process, it is not substance.

I am pleased to hear that decrees have now been issued that should have been issued years and years ago, but does anybody really think a decree from Saddam Hussein -Directed to whom? - is going to fundamentally change the situation? And it comes out on a morning when we are moving forward down the path laid out by Resolution 1441. These are all process issues. These are all tricks that are being played on us.

And to say that new commissions are being formed that will go find materials that they claim are not there in the first place... Can anybody honestly believe that either one of these two new commissions will actively seek out information that they have been actively trying to deny to the world community, to the inspectors for the last 11-plus years?

I commend the inspectors. I thank them for what they are doing. But at the same time, I have to keep coming back to the point that the inspectors have repeatedly made, and they've made it again here this morning, they've been making it for the last 11-plus years: What we need is not more inspections, what we need is not more immediate access, what we need is immediate, active, unconditional, full cooperation on the part of Iraq. What we need is for Iraq to disarm.

Resolution 1441 was not about inspections.

Let me say that again. Resolution 1441 was not about inspections. Resolution 1441 was about the disarmament of Iraq.

But the questions, notwithstanding all of the level of letter, the questions remain, and some of my colleagues have talked about them. We haven't accounted for the anthrax, we haven't accounted for the botulinum, VX - both biological agents - growth media, 30,000 chemical and biological munitions.

These are not trivial matters one can just ignore and walk away from and say, "Well, maybe the inspectors will find them, maybe they won't.''

We have not had a complete, accurate declaration. We have seen the reconstitution of casting chambers for missiles. Why? Because they are still trying to develop these weapons. We have seen the kind of cooperation that was anticipated, expected and demanded of this body.

And we must continue to demand it. We must continue to put pressure on Iraq, put force upon Iraq to make sure that the threat of force is not removed because 1441 was all about compliance, not inspections. The inspections were put in as a way, of course, to assist Iraq in coming forward and complying, in order to verify, in order to monitor, as the chief inspector noted.

But we got an incomplete answer from Iraq, so we are facing a difficult situation. More inspectors - sorry, not the answer. What we need is immediate cooperation. Time? How much time does it take to say, "I understand the will of the international community, and I and my regime are laying it all out for you and not playing guess, not forming commissions, not issuing decrees, not getting laws that should've been passed years ago suddenly passed on the day when we are meeting''?

These are not responsible actions on the part of Iraq. These are contingent efforts to deceive, to deny, to divert, to throw us off the trail, to throw us off the path. The resolution anticipated this kind of response from Iraq. And that's why, in all our discussions about that resolution, we said they're in material breach. If they come into new material breach with a false declaration or not a willingness to cooperate and comply, then the matter has to be referred to the Council for serious consequences.

I submit to you that, notwithstanding the improvements in process that we have noted and I welcome - and I thank the inspectors for their hard work - these improvements in process do not move us away from the central problem that we continue to have. And more inspections and a longer inspection period will not move us away from the central issue, the central problem we are facing. And that central problem is that Iraq has failed to comply with 1441.

The threat of force must remain. Force should always be a last resort. I have preached this for most of my professional life as a soldier and as a diplomat...but it must be a resort.

We cannot allow this process to be endlessly strung out, as Iraq is trying to do right now: "String it out long enough, and the world will start looking in other directions, the Security Council will move on, we'll get away with it again.'' My friends, they cannot be allowed to get away with it again.

We now are in a situation where Iraq's continued noncompliance and failure to cooperate, it seems to me, in the clearest terms requires this Council to begin to think through the consequences of walking away from this problem or the reality that we have to face this problem, and that in the very near future, we will have to consider whether or not we've reached this Council, as distasteful as it may be, as reluctant as we may be, as many as - there are so many of you who would rather not to face this issue, but it's an issue that must be faced, and that is whether or not it is time to consider serious consequences of the kind intended by 1441.

The reason we must not look away from it is because these are terrible weapons. We are talking about weapons that will kill not a few people, not a hundred people, not a thousand people, but could kill tens of thousands of people if these weapons got into the wrong hands.

And the security of the region, the hopes for the people of Iraq themselves, and our security rests upon us meeting our responsibilities and, if it comes to it, invoking the serious consequences called for in 1441. 1441 is about disarmament and compliance, and not merely a process of inspections that goes on forever without ever resolving the basic problem.

Thank you.

[Tommy-the-Greek]

Getting back to Kilmer's original topic. There is no way Saddam would ever trust America again. We screwed him during the Iran Contra fiasco. The problems with Iraq started under the Reagan years. He was our buddy. We looked the other way regarding his WMD as long as he was killing Iranians. At the time he was the lesser of the middle eastern evils. Funny how things turned out 20 years later.

[codeorama]

Originally posted by tommy-the-greek

Getting back to Kilmer's original topic. There is no way Saddam would ever trust America again. We screwed him during the Iran Contra fiasco. The problems with Iraq started under the Reagan years. He was our buddy. We looked the other way regarding his WMD as long as he was killing Iranians. At the time he was the lesser of the middle eastern evils. Funny how things turned out 20 years later.

Very true.:laugh:

[PCS]

"The enemy of my enemy is my friend". Trust was never a part of the relationship. It was... a type of business deal. Saddam hasn't stayed in power as long as he as because he trusted or trusts anyone or any government. Actually...getting used comes to mind. And looking at this from the post..well....who screwed who could be a matter of point of view. Brief history from the post. Note the last paragraph.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A52241-2002Dec29.html

High on the Bush administration's list of justifications for war against Iraq are President Saddam Hussein's use of chemical weapons, nuclear and biological programs, and his contacts with international terrorists. What U.S. officials rarely acknowledge is that these offenses date back to a period when Hussein was seen in Washington as a valued ally.

Among the people instrumental in tilting U.S. policy toward Baghdad during the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war was Donald H. Rumsfeld, now defense secretary, whose December 1983 meeting with Hussein as a special presidential envoy paved the way for normalization of U.S.-Iraqi relations. Declassified documents show that Rumsfeld traveled to Baghdad at a time when Iraq was using chemical weapons on an "almost daily" basis in defiance of international conventions.

The story of U.S. involvement with Saddam Hussein in the years before his 1990 attack on Kuwait -- which included large-scale intelligence sharing, supply of cluster bombs through a Chilean front company, and facilitating Iraq's acquisition of chemical and biological precursors -- is a topical example of the underside of U.S. foreign policy. It is a world in which deals can be struck with dictators, human rights violations sometimes overlooked, and accommodations made with arms proliferators, all on the principle that the "enemy of my enemy is my friend."

Throughout the 1980s, Hussein's Iraq was the sworn enemy of Iran, then still in the throes of an Islamic revolution. U.S. officials saw Baghdad as a bulwark against militant Shiite extremism and the fall of pro-American states such as Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and even Jordan -- a Middle East version of the "domino theory" in Southeast Asia. That was enough to turn Hussein into a strategic partner and for U.S. diplomats in Baghdad to routinely refer to Iraqi forces as "the good guys," in contrast to the Iranians, who were depicted as "the bad guys."

A review of thousands of declassified government documents and interviews with former policymakers shows that U.S. intelligence and logistical support played a crucial role in shoring up Iraqi defenses against the "human wave" attacks by suicidal Iranian troops. The administrations of Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush authorized the sale to Iraq of numerous items that had both military and civilian applications, including poisonous chemicals and deadly biological viruses, such as anthrax and bubonic plague.

Opinions differ among Middle East experts and former government officials about the pre-Iraqi tilt, and whether Washington could have done more to stop the flow to Baghdad of technology for building weapons of mass destruction.

"It was a horrible mistake then, but we have got it right now," says Kenneth M. Pollack, a former CIA military analyst and author of "The Threatening Storm," which makes the case for war with Iraq. "My fellow [CIA] analysts and I were warning at the time that Hussein was a very nasty character. We were constantly fighting the State Department."

"Fundamentally, the policy was justified," argues David Newton, a former U.S. ambassador to Baghdad, who runs an anti-Hussein radio station in Prague. "We were concerned that Iraq should not lose the war with Iran, because that would have threatened Saudi Arabia and the Gulf. Our long-term hope was that Hussein's government would become less repressive and more responsible."

What makes present-day Hussein different from the Hussein of the 1980s, say Middle East experts, is the mellowing of the Iranian revolution and the August 1990 invasion of Kuwait that transformed the Iraqi dictator, almost overnight, from awkward ally into mortal enemy. In addition, the United States itself has changed. As a result of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, U.S. policymakers take a much more alarmist view of the threat posed by the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.

U.S. Shifts in Iran-Iraq War

When the Iran-Iraq war began in September 1980, with an Iraqi attack across the Shatt al Arab waterway that leads to the Persian Gulf, the United States was a bystander. The United States did not have diplomatic relations with either Baghdad or Tehran. U.S. officials had almost as little sympathy for Hussein's dictatorial brand of Arab nationalism as for the Islamic fundamentalism espoused by Iran's Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. As long as the two countries fought their way to a stalemate, nobody in Washington was disposed to intervene.

By the summer of 1982, however, the strategic picture had changed dramatically. After its initial gains, Iraq was on the defensive, and Iranian troops had advanced to within a few miles of Basra, Iraq's second largest city. U.S. intelligence information suggested the Iranians might achieve a breakthrough on the Basra front, destabilizing Kuwait, the Gulf states, and even Saudi Arabia, thereby threatening U.S. oil supplies.

"You have to understand the geostrategic context, which was very different from where we are now," said Howard Teicher, a former National Security Council official, who worked on Iraqi policy during the Reagan administration. "Realpolitik dictated that we act to prevent the situation from getting worse."

To prevent an Iraqi collapse, the Reagan administration supplied battlefield intelligence on Iranian troop buildups to the Iraqis, sometimes through third parties such as Saudi Arabia. The U.S. tilt toward Iraq was enshrined in National Security Decision Directive 114 of Nov. 26, 1983, one of the few important Reagan era foreign policy decisions that still remains classified. According to former U.S. officials, the directive stated that the United States would do "whatever was necessary and legal" to prevent Iraq from losing the war with Iran.

The presidential directive was issued amid a flurry of reports that Iraqi forces were using chemical weapons in their attempts to hold back the Iranians. In principle, Washington was strongly opposed to chemical warfare, a practice outlawed by the 1925 Geneva Protocol. In practice, U.S. condemnation of Iraqi use of chemical weapons ranked relatively low on the scale of administration priorities, particularly compared with the all-important goal of preventing an Iranian victory.

Thus, on Nov. 1, 1983, a senior State Department official, Jonathan T. Howe, told Secretary of State George P. Shultz that intelligence reports showed that Iraqi troops were resorting to "almost daily use of CW" against the Iranians. But the Reagan administration had already committed itself to a large-scale diplomatic and political overture to Baghdad, culminating in several visits by the president's recently appointed special envoy to the Middle East, Donald H. Rumsfeld.

Secret talking points prepared for the first Rumsfeld visit to Baghdad enshrined some of the language from NSDD 114, including the statement that the United States would regard "any major reversal of Iraq's fortunes as a strategic defeat for the West." When Rumsfeld finally met with Hussein on Dec. 20, he told the Iraqi leader that Washington was ready for a resumption of full diplomatic relations, according to a State Department report of the conversation. Iraqi leaders later described themselves as "extremely pleased" with the Rumsfeld visit, which had "elevated U.S.-Iraqi relations to a new level."

In a September interview with CNN, Rumsfeld said he "cautioned" Hussein about the use of chemical weapons, a claim at odds with declassified State Department notes of his 90-minute meeting with the Iraqi leader. A Pentagon spokesman, Brian Whitman, now says that Rumsfeld raised the issue not with Hussein, but with Iraqi foreign minister Tariq Aziz. The State Department notes show that he mentioned it largely in passing as one of several matters that "inhibited" U.S. efforts to assist Iraq.

Rumsfeld has also said he had "nothing to do" with helping Iraq in its war against Iran. Although former U.S. officials agree that Rumsfeld was not one of the architects of the Reagan administration's tilt toward Iraq -- he was a private citizen when he was appointed Middle East envoy -- the documents show that his visits to Baghdad led to closer U.S.-Iraqi cooperation on a wide variety of fronts. Washington was willing to resume diplomatic relations immediately, but Hussein insisted on delaying such a step until the following year.

As part of its opening to Baghdad, the Reagan administration removed Iraq from the State Department terrorism list in February 1982, despite heated objections from Congress. Without such a move, Teicher says, it would have been "impossible to take even the modest steps we were contemplating" to channel assistance to Baghdad. Iraq -- along with Syria, Libya and South Yemen -- was one of four original countries on the list, which was first drawn up in 1979.

Some former U.S. officials say that removing Iraq from the terrorism list provided an incentive to Hussein to expel the Palestinian guerrilla leader Abu Nidal from Baghdad in 1983. On the other hand, Iraq continued to play host to alleged terrorists throughout the '80s. The most notable was Abu Abbas, leader of the Palestine Liberation Front, who found refuge in Baghdad after being expelled from Tunis for masterminding the 1985 hijacking of the cruise ship Achille Lauro, which resulted in the killing of an elderly American tourist.

Iraq Lobbies for Arms

While Rumsfeld was talking to Hussein and Aziz in Baghdad, Iraqi diplomats and weapons merchants were fanning out across Western capitals for a diplomatic charm offensive-cum-arms buying spree. In Washington, the key figure was the Iraqi chargé d'affaires, Nizar Hamdoon, a fluent English speaker who impressed Reagan administration officials as one of the most skillful lobbyists in town.

"He arrived with a blue shirt and a white tie, straight out of the mafia," recalled Geoffrey Kemp, a Middle East specialist in the Reagan White House. "Within six months, he was hosting suave dinner parties at his residence, which he parlayed into a formidable lobbying effort. He was particularly effective with the American Jewish community."

One of Hamdoon's favorite props, says Kemp, was a green Islamic scarf allegedly found on the body of an Iranian soldier. The scarf was decorated with a map of the Middle East showing a series of arrows pointing toward Jerusalem. Hamdoon used to "parade the scarf" to conferences and congressional hearings as proof that an Iranian victory over Iraq would result in "Israel becoming a victim along with the Arabs."

According to a sworn court affidavit prepared by Teicher in 1995, the United States "actively supported the Iraqi war effort by supplying the Iraqis with billions of dollars of credits, by providing military intelligence and advice to the Iraqis, and by closely monitoring third country arms sales to Iraq to make sure Iraq had the military weaponry required." Teicher said in the affidavit that former CIA director William Casey used a Chilean company, Cardoen, to supply Iraq with cluster bombs that could be used to disrupt the Iranian human wave attacks. Teicher refuses to discuss the affidavit.

At the same time the Reagan administration was facilitating the supply of weapons and military components to Baghdad, it was attempting to cut off supplies to Iran under "Operation Staunch." Those efforts were largely successful, despite the glaring anomaly of the 1986 Iran-contra scandal when the White House publicly admitted trading arms for hostages, in violation of the policy that the United States was trying to impose on the rest of the world.

Although U.S. arms manufacturers were not as deeply involved as German or British companies in selling weaponry to Iraq, the Reagan administration effectively turned a blind eye to the export of "dual use" items such as chemical precursors and steel tubes that can have military and civilian applications. According to several former officials, the State and Commerce departments promoted trade in such items as a way to boost U.S. exports and acquire political leverage over Hussein.

When United Nations weapons inspectors were allowed into Iraq after the 1991 Gulf War, they compiled long lists of chemicals, missile components, and computers from American suppliers, including such household names as Union Carbide and Honeywell, which were being used for military purposes.

A 1994 investigation by the Senate Banking Committee turned up dozens of biological agents shipped to Iraq during the mid-'80s under license from the Commerce Department, including various strains of anthrax, subsequently identified by the Pentagon as a key component of the Iraqi biological warfare program. The Commerce Department also approved the export of insecticides to Iraq, despite widespread suspicions that they were being used for chemical warfare.

The fact that Iraq was using chemical weapons was hardly a secret. In February 1984, an Iraqi military spokesman effectively acknowledged their use by issuing a chilling warning to Iran. "The invaders should know that for every harmful insect, there is an insecticide capable of annihilating it . . . and Iraq possesses this annihilation insecticide."

Chemicals Kill Kurds

In late 1987, the Iraqi air force began using chemical agents against Kurdish resistance forces in northern Iraq that had formed a loose alliance with Iran, according to State Department reports. The attacks, which were part of a "scorched earth" strategy to eliminate rebel-controlled villages, provoked outrage on Capitol Hill and renewed demands for sanctions against Iraq. The State Department and White House were also outraged -- but not to the point of doing anything that might seriously damage relations with Baghdad.

"The U.S.-Iraqi relationship is . . . important to our long-term political and economic objectives," Assistant Secretary of State Richard W. Murphy wrote in a September 1988 memorandum that addressed the chemical weapons question. "We believe that economic sanctions will be useless or counterproductive to influence the Iraqis."

Bush administration spokesmen have cited Hussein's use of chemical weapons "against his own people" -- and particularly the March 1988 attack on the Kurdish village of Halabjah -- to bolster their argument that his regime presents a "grave and gathering danger" to the United States.

The Iraqis continued to use chemical weapons against the Iranians until the end of the Iran-Iraq war. A U.S. air force intelligence officer, Rick Francona, reported finding widespread use of Iraqi nerve gas when he toured the Al Faw peninsula in southern Iraq in the summer of 1988, after its recapture by the Iraqi army. The battlefield was littered with atropine injectors used by panicky Iranian troops as an antidote against Iraqi nerve gas attacks.

Far from declining, the supply of U.S. military intelligence to Iraq actually expanded in 1988, according to a 1999 book by Francona, "Ally to Adversary: an Eyewitness Account of Iraq's Fall from Grace." Informed sources said much of the battlefield intelligence was channeled to the Iraqis by the CIA office in Baghdad.

Although U.S. export controls to Iraq were tightened up in the late 1980s, there were still many loopholes. In December 1988, Dow Chemical sold $1.5 million of pesticides to Iraq, despite U.S. government concerns that they could be used as chemical warfare agents. An Export-Import Bank official reported in a memorandum that he could find "no reason" to stop the sale, despite evidence that the pesticides were "highly toxic" to humans and would cause death "from asphyxiation."

The U.S. policy of cultivating Hussein as a moderate and reasonable Arab leader continued right up until he invaded Kuwait in August 1990, documents show. When the then-U.S. ambassador to Baghdad, April Glaspie, met with Hussein on July 25, 1990, a week before the Iraqi attack on Kuwait, she assured him that Bush "wanted better and deeper relations," according to an Iraqi transcript of the conversation. "President Bush is an intelligent man," the ambassador told Hussein, referring to the father of the current president. "He is not going to declare an economic war against Iraq."

"Everybody was wrong in their assessment of Saddam," said Joe Wilson, Glaspie's former deputy at the U.S. embassy in Baghdad, and the last U.S. official to meet with Hussein. "Everybody in the Arab world told us that the best way to deal with Saddam was to develop a set of economic and commercial relationships that would have the effect of moderating his behavior. History will demonstrate that this was a miscalculation."

Oh and Jagsbch...again... that's radical...

[Jagsbch]

My argument SEEMS TO BE GETTING LOST SO I'LL TRY TO BREAK IT DOWN ONE MORE TIME. we can't go in to Iraq with out UN consent and not expect the civilian casualty to provoke an onslaught of terrorist attacks... This is not Afghanistan we are talking about here...

This is an entirely different war, We are about to attack a country who's civilians are armed, some by force as you could imagine, some are being used as human shields. We are talking about a country where civilians have no say in their government. A country who's people would rather have peace at the moment even under the tyranny of their dictator who rules through the fear of murder and rape. Now the images OF DEAD CIVILIANS AND THEIR CHILDREN that will be pouring in from CNN is going to do more to fuel the Hatred of the US by the Muslim world as well as others than anything else. As some see it we are attacking a country that has not attacked ours, we are doing it outside of UN authority, therefore resolution 1441 is meaningless; we can only enforce that resolution as officials of the UN.

Until we make the case to the world that Iraq warrants an attack we may as well bring every troop we have after the war, and put hem on the streets, and kiss our liberties goodbye.

So you see as a sovereign country we can not just go in and attack another country merely because they are a threat. How many other countries would use a threat to justify an attack on another... The chain reaction of such actions will create an apocalyptic scenario that could make the landscape of the planet look like mars. We have to prove their link to terrorism, as well as their possession of WMD. Until then our case for an attack is only justified by our anger of 911 and the threat Iraq poses to us, and it‘s nieghbors. To the world that is not a good enough reason. Bush’s diplomatic skills of pulling our pants down and showing Iraq our sack and N. Korea our @ss is on the verge of destroying over a half a centuries worth of true diplomacy with the world. It has escalated tensions all over the world. It’s time we reflect our anger to what happened in 911, and approach to how we deal with the delicate issue of terrorism in a more mature fashion.

Iraq was knowingly doing more to trigger an attack when we were allies with it, than it is now. When Iraq where poisoning Iran as well as their own people with chemical agents we knowingly supported this evil regime because of our oil interests in the region, now for the same reason among others of course we want to attack them, and we wonder why the world is saying, woe, wait just a dam minute.

Bush’s diplomatic policy of my way or the High way approach, has single handedly done more to provoke the high terror threat than anything else in my opinion. We have already taken the heart out of Al Queda, and liberated a nation, the world is fine with that. Our approach here of late has not only debunked the popular position we had with the world just a few months ago. Our position has caused the relationship with our NATO Allies and the UN, which have taken a half a century to establish to be in dire turmoil at the present moment. Our position with N. Korea one of the most volatile places on earth, has created a pandemonium effect on it’s neighboring countries, that may very well start a nuclear domino effect in that region. Saddam Hussein

game has turned the table making Bush appear to the Arab world among others as the evil dictator who wants to terrorize the country of Iraq with his overpowering brut force.

It‘s not that we don‘t know what time it is, it‘s just that Bush‘s inability to use tact and diplomacy to bring the rest of the world up to speed, before embarking in this mad dash to war with Iraq, has brought this country center stage with it’s pants down in front of the whole world. All I want us to do is pull our pants up. WE HAVE TO MAKE A DIPLOMATIC ATTEMPT TO BRING THE WORLD UP TO SPEED; WHAT THEY DON'T KNOW COULD HURT US!!!

[Jagsbch]

Notice the use of the word Radicle in the article, regarding first strike on a threat. You guy's didn't see this coming...

First-strike call against North Korea shakes Japan

February 17 2003

As Japan is spooked by a threat it has not seen since 1945, a radical and rapid change of outlook may be unavoidable, writes Shane Green.

Amoderate earthquake shook central Japan at the weekend, but its impact was not nearly as strong as the call to arms by Japan's Defence Minister Shigeru Ishiba. The hawkish Ishiba declared Japan's readiness to strike first against North Korea if Tokyo believed its unpredictable neighbour was about to launch a ballistic missile attack against it.

In most countries, this would be a statement of the obvious - a preparedness to act to avoid what could be a horrific death toll.

In pacifist Japan, Ishiba's warning represents a fundamental challenge to conventional thinking, one sure to have its own aftershocks.

Reflecting this, Ishiba tried to take some heat out of his comments, maintaining there was no evidence of an imminent North Korean attack. Yet his warning remained.

The history here is important. After the march of imperial Japan across Asia was halted in 1945, the US imposed on the vanquished nation an anti-war constitution.

Specifically, article nine declares that the Japanese people "forever renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force as a means of settling international disputes". The pacifist sentiment has shaped the thinking of postwar generations of Japanese and their governments.

At times, it has led to national loss of face, such as the agonising debate during the Gulf War about whether to commit forces. In the end, Tokyo decided to provide only cash, leading to Japan's international embarrassment.

Under Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, there has been a subtle shift towards a more proactive role. Japan supplied ships to provide logistical support in the Indian Ocean to allied forces in the war in Afghanistan. But it was still well short of any active role.

This is why the Ishiba first-strike comments are so radical. The reason he has gone so far is that Japan is facing a threat - in North Korea - of the kind it has not experienced in the postwar period.

There is an argument in Japan and abroad that for Japan to fully be a member of the international community, it must assume responsibility for its own defence, rather than principally rely on the US.

If there is a moment for such a sea change in outlook, this is it. In recent weeks, Japan has been spooked by the possibility of an attack. The Japanese media has accurately focused on the country's vulnerability.

Even still, the first-strike comments will provoke deep Japanese soul-searching. But as the North Korean crisis worsens, Japan may have little choice but to make such a profound - and rapid - change in its thinking.

article

[fansince62]

no...the better reason might be that it is increasingly risky for Japan to hang it's security on the moral cowardice and ambivalence of an America increasingly paralyzed by the uninformed like Susan Sarandon!

[Mad Mike]

Jagsbch wrote...

Look how far it got Bill Clinton...

Good example. Lets look at Clinton's "success".

Clinton paid N. Korea, gave them technology and food and walked away while N. Korea continued to develop their nuke program in violation of the agreement. Clinton solved nothing and in fact paid N Koreato become a bigger threat. Thanks Bill.

The US was attacked by Al Qaeda repeatedly during the 8 years Clinton was in office. The 1993 World Trade Center Bombing, the 1996 Khobar Towers Bombing, the 1998 Embassy Bombings, the 2000 USS Cole Bombing to name a few. He knew UBL and Al Qaeda were in Afghanistan but he did'nt go in after him and instead slapped them on the wrist with an inefective cruise missle attack. The result? Al Qaeda saw us as weak and afraid and their next attack destroyed the World Trade Center, Damaged the Pentagon, and killed 3000 Americans. Thanks Bill.

In both cases Clinton came out looking squeeky clean to morons who like the policy of "postponing the inevitable" but America paid a terible price.

Bush knows that doing the right thing is not always popular and accepts the responsibility of his office. THAT is what is needed now.

BTW. I find the fact that you laugh at your "Look how far it got Bill Clinton..." statement offensive. You talk about saving lives? Why don't you go say that to the families of the 3000 who died because Clinton refused to confront Al Qaeda. Don't forget to laugh when you say it.