Bush

[Gość: Agnieszka]

It's Under Bush's Bed!
By Paulo Coelho

Bearing in mind that the president of the most powerful nation in the world
is responsible for his actions and knows what he is talking about, I - a
Brazilian writer, with no access to the secret services, the UN inspection
procedure or confidential files, but able to read newspapers with a degree
of intelligence - have come up with the definitive answer on how to locate
the weapons of mass destruction being hidden by Iraq. I will require payment
for this information, by the way.
This is how to locate the weapons, step-by-step:

1. All UN weapons inspectors currently in Iraq should pack their bags,
settle their hotel bills and drive to Baghdad airport.

2. There they should buy business class air tickets to Washington. I stress
business class so that they have time to rest, as the journey will involve a
number of stopovers.

3. On reaching Washington, they should catch the first bus to the
headquarters of the Central Intelligence Agency. The address can be found in
the telephone directory for Virginia.

4. On reaching CIA headquarters, and armed with the appropriate UN
inspection mandate, they should demand to see all photos, information and
documents being supplied to Mr George Bush. These are the documents
pinpointing the precise location of each arms cache that allow Mr Bush to
assure us that Iraq has an arsenal capable of destroying the planet.

5. Once in possession of these documents, they should return to Iraq (again
they should fly business class in order to arrive feeling rested) and go
immediately to the places indicated in the photographs. Unable to deny the
evidence, Saddam Hussein will have no option but to destroy his arsenal, for
fear that the whole world will turn against him.

6. If the CIA does not have the documents, the inspectors should go straight
to Mr George Bush's bedroom in the White House, Washington. On the way, they
should avoid all contact with the thousands of American demonstrators taking
part in protests against the war in Iraq.

7. If Mr George Bush fails to cooperate with the UN inspectors, they should
look for the evidence under his bed. If they do not find it there, they
should go and see the president's psychoanalyst, having first equipped
themselves with a mandate from the UN security council, and ask the
following question: "Does a son necessarily have to complete his father's
work?" If the answer is yes, please advise me at once: my father was a civil
engineer and, when he retired, he may well have left unfinished projects for
his heir to deal with.

If the answer is no, demand that the psychoanalyst - on behalf of the UN,
the US and the rest of the world - prescribe the necessary medication to his
patient so that he no longer constitutes a threat to his country and to his
planet.

This is the required method of payment:

Once this infallible line of action has been followed, I ask that the
billions of dollars that would have been spent on the war be divided up in
the following manner:

1. 50% to help the poor in Brazil, since the president of Brazil is
currently grappling with a huge budget deficit, and because the author of
this practical guide is himself Brazilian.

2. 40% to go to Africa.

3. 9% to old Europe, which wavered but did not fall - at least not up until
now, the day on which I am writing this article.

4. 1% to pay for a nice biography of Tony Blair, to be translated into 40
languages, in hard cover, with colour photographs, saying what a great
leader he is, how intelligent, important, charismatic, handsome and
charming. That should be enough to keep him content, in the knowledge that
his remarkable qualities have been recognised.

Finally, it is important to add the following: when speaking about the war,
please do not generalise and say: "Americans all want to attack Iraq." We
have made the same mistake before, in saying that "Serbs are all
butchers", "Brazilians are all lazy", or "Iranians are all fundamentalists".

The people who want to attack Iraq are the politicians surrounding George
Bush, the Enron orphans. The American people are fully aware of what is
going on, and just as they managed to stop the war in Vietnam, they may,
when no convincing explanations are forthcoming, manage to persuade Mr
Bush's psychoanalyst to prescribe a sedative and put an end to this
nightmare.

This article is a contribution to the openDemocracy debate on the Iraqi
crisis published on www.opendemocracy.net

Paulo Coelho is a bestselling novelist

[glory]

An interview with 15 year old boy from Bagdad:
I was brought to the police station. First thing I noticed was a huge picture
of smiling Saddam, well it wasn't really a picture but a painting and another
thing I noticed, that scared me really badly was my mother's cry and my
sister's voices which were trying to stop my mother crying . I was called to
THE room! I was so scared that I wished to get over it as soon as possible and
say whatever they liked me to say. Before I was called I tried to get an
explanation from my mother and my sister. But they were too scared and shocked
to explain what really happened to my father.
At that point I was figuring out if I ever would see my father again.
And now I know, my Dad was tortued and killed by the Saddam's regim just
becouse he didn't agree with the way Saddam was trying to force his idea of
kill child- kill everybody - in the name of God( I hope God will punish him
for what he's done to Iraquis and other nations ). This man is a creature of
evil and should be destroyed as soon as possible.
So please, all you do- gooders - green commy and - free to protest people,
just listen to average of citizens of Iraq and take under the considiretion
what is happening in my country : 15 year old Iraqui boy .
So please in the name of this boy, who's lost his father and another thousands
of boys who are familiar to this tragedy, this is not about fuel or Israeli
protection. I hope I'm right ( with that Israeli protection

[Gość: al]

My comment is:
www.stopesso.com/funstuff/nose.html

[Gość: chickenShorts]

A rather thought provoking letter... to C. Powell

"Dear Mr. Secretary:

I am writing to you to submit my resignation from the Foreign Service of the
United States and from my position as Political Counselor in U.S. Embassy
Athens, effective March 7. I do so with a heavy heart. The baggage of my
upbringing included a felt obligation to give something back to my country.
Service as a U.S. diplomat was a dream job. I was paid to understand foreign
languages and cultures, to seek out diplomats, politicians, scholars and
journalists, and to persuade them that U.S. interests and theirs fundamentally
coincided. My faith in my country and its values was the most powerful weapon
in my diplomatic arsenal.

It is inevitable that during twenty years with the State Department I would
become more sophisticated and cynical about the narrow and selfish bureaucratic
motives that sometimes shaped our policies. Human nature is what it is, and I
was rewarded and promoted for understanding human nature. But until this
Administration it had been possible to believe that by upholding the policies
of my president I was also upholding the interests of the American people and
the world. I believe it no longer.

The policies we are now asked to advance are incompatible not only with
American values but also with American interests. Our fervent pursuit of war
with Iraq is driving us to squander the international legitimacy that has been
America’s most potent weapon of both offense and defense since the days of
Woodrow Wilson. We have begun to dismantle the largest and most effective web
of international relationships the world has ever known. Our current course
will bring instability and danger, not security.

The sacrifice of global interests to domestic politics and to bureaucratic self-
interest is nothing new, and it is certainly not a uniquely American problem.
Still, we have not seen such systematic distortion of intelligence, such
systematic manipulation of American opinion, since the war in Vietnam. The
September 11 tragedy left us stronger than before, rallying around us a vast
international coalition to cooperate for the first time in a systematic way
against the threat of terrorism. But rather than take credit for those
successes and build on them, this Administration has chosen to make terrorism a
domestic political tool, enlisting a scattered and largely defeated Al Qaeda as
its bureaucratic ally. We spread disproportionate terror and confusion in the
public mind, arbitrarily linking the unrelated problems of terrorism and Iraq.
The result, and perhaps the motive, is to justify a vast misallocation of
shrinking public wealth to the military and to weaken the safeguards that
protect American citizens from the heavy hand of government. September 11 did
not do as much damage to the fabric of American society as we seem determined
to so to ourselves. Is the Russia of the late Romanovs really our model, a
selfish, superstitious empire thrashing toward self-destruction in the name of
a doomed status quo?

We should ask ourselves why we have failed to persuade more of the world that a
war with Iraq is necessary. We have over the past two years done too much to
assert to our world partners that narrow and mercenary U.S. interests override
the cherished values of our partners. Even where our aims were not in question,
our consistency is at issue. The model of Afghanistan is little comfort to
allies wondering on what basis we plan to rebuild the Middle East, and in whose
image and interests. Have we indeed become blind, as Russia is blind in
Chechnya, as Israel is blind in the Occupied Territories, to our own advice,
that overwhelming military power is not the answer to terrorism? After the
shambles of post-war Iraq joins the shambles in Grozny and Ramallah, it will be
a brave foreigner who forms ranks with Micronesia to follow where we lead.

We have a coalition still, a good one. The loyalty of many of our friends is
impressive, a tribute to American moral capital built up over a century. But
our closest allies are persuaded less that war is justified than that it would
be perilous to allow the U.S. to drift into complete solipsism. Loyalty should
be reciprocal. Why does our President condone the swaggering and contemptuous
approach to our friends and allies this Administration is fostering, including
among its most senior officials. Has “oderint dum metuant” really become our
motto?

I urge you to listen to America’s friends around the world. Even here in
Greece, purported hotbed of European anti-Americanism, we have more and closer
friends than the American newspaper reader can possibly imagine. Even when they
complain about American arrogance, Greeks know that the world is a difficult
and dangerous place, and they want a strong international system, with the U.S.
and EU in close partnership. When our friends are afraid of us rather than for
us, it is time to worry. And now they are afraid. Who will tell them
convincingly that the United States is as it was, a beacon of liberty,
security, and justice for the planet?

Mr. Secretary, I have enormous respect for your character and ability. You have
preserved more international credibility for us than our policy deserves, and
salvaged something positive from the excesses of an ideological and self-
serving Administration. But your loyalty to the President goes too far. We are
straining beyond its limits an international system we built with such toil and
treasure, a web of laws, treaties, organizations, and shared values that sets
limits on our foes far more effectively than it ever constrained America’s
ability to defend its interests.

I am resigning because I have tried and failed to reconcile my conscience with
my ability to represent the current U.S. Administration. I have confidence that
our democratic process is ultimately self-correcting, and hope that in a small
way I can contribute from outside to shaping policies that better serve the
security and prosperity of the American people and the world we share. "

[butter_fly]

cS where did you find it? a link?

[Gość: chickenShorts]

In today's New York Times:

www.nytimes.com/2003/02/27/international/27WEB-TNAT.html

[Gość: Duduch]

For further informaton (out of Saddam inner circle) please ask too:

www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/saddam/interviews/aburish.html

[Gość: awalk]

Well, here is another opinion of the kind:

The United States has gone war-mad
By JOHN LE CARRE
America has entered one of its periods of madness, but this is the worst I can remember: worse than McCarthyism, worse than the Bay of Pigs and in the long term, potentially more disastrous than the Vietnam War.

The reaction to September 11 is beyond anything Osama bin Laden could have hoped for in his nastiest dreams. As in McCarthy times, the freedoms that have made America the envy of the world are being systematically eroded. The combination of compliant US media and vested corporate interests is once more ensuring that a debate that should be ringing out in every town square is confined to the loftier columns of the East Coast press.

The imminent war was planned years before Mr Bin Laden struck, but it was he who made it possible. Without him, the Bush junta would still be trying to explain such tricky matters as how it came to be elected in the first place; Enron; its shameless favouring of the already-too-rich; its reckless disregard for the world's poor, the ecology and a raft of unilaterally abrogated international treaties.

They might also have to be telling us why they support Israel in its continuing disregard for UN resolutions. But Bin Laden conveniently swept all that under the carpet. Now 88 per cent of Americans want the war, we are told. The US defence budget has been raised by another $60 billion to around $360 billion. A splendid new generation of nuclear weapons is in the pipeline, so we can all breathe easy.

Quite what war Americans think they are supporting is a lot less clear. A war for how long, please? At what cost in American lives? In Iraqi lives?

American public browbeaten

How Bush and his junta succeeded in deflecting America's anger from Bin Laden to Saddam Hussein is one of the great public relations conjuring tricks of history. But they swung it. A recent poll tells us that one in two Americans now believe Saddam was responsible for the attack on the World Trade Centre. But the American public is not merely being misled. It is being browbeaten and kept in a state of ignorance and fear.

The carefully orchestrated neurosis should carry Bush and his fellow conspirators nicely into the next election. Those who are not with Mr Bush are against him. Worse, they are with the enemy. Which is odd, because I'm dead against Bush, but I would love to see Saddam's downfall ? just not on Bush's terms and not by his methods. And not under the banner of such outrageous hypocrisy.

The religious cant that will send American troops into battle is perhaps the most sickening aspect of this surreal war-to-be. Bush has an arm-lock on God. And God has very particular political opinions. God appointed America to save the world in any way that suits America. God appointed Israel to be the nexus of America's Middle Eastern policy, and anyone who wants to mess with that idea is a) anti-Semitic, b) anti-American, c) with the enemy, and d) a terrorist.

God also has pretty scary connections. In America, where all men are equal in His sight if not in one another's, the Bush family numbers one President, one ex-President, one ex-head of the CIA, the Governor of Florida and the ex-Governor of Texas. Care for a few pointers?

Mr George W. Bush, 1978-84: Senior executive, Arbusto Energy/Bush Exploration, an oil company; 1986-90: senior executive of the Harken Oil Company. Mr Dick Cheney, 1995-2000: chief executive of the Halliburton oil company. Condoleezza Rice, 1991-2000: Senior executive with the Chevron oil company which named an oil tanker after her. And so on.

But none of these trifling associations affects the integrity of God's work. In 1993, while ex-President George Bush was visiting the ever-democratic Kingdom of Kuwait to receive thanks for liberating them, somebody tried to kill him. The CIA believes that "somebody" was Saddam. Hence Bush Jr's cry: "That man tried to kill my Daddy."

But it's still not personal, this war. It's still necessary. It's still God's work. It's still about bringing freedom and democracy to oppressed Iraqi people.

What Bush won't tell us is the truth about why we're going to war. What is at stake is not an Axis of Evil ? but oil, money and people's lives.

Saddam's misfortune is to sit on the second biggest oilfield in the world. Bush wants it, and who helps him get it will receive a piece of the cake. And who doesn't, won't.

If Saddam didn't have the oil, he could torture his citizens to his heart's content. Other leaders do it every day ? think Saudi Arabia, think Pakistan, think Turkey, think Syria, think Egypt.

Baghdad represents no clear and present danger to its neighbours, and none to the US or Britain. Saddam's weapons of mass destruction, if he's still got them, will be peanuts by comparison with the stuff Israel or America could hurl at him in five minutes.

What is at stake is not an imminent military or terrorist threat, but the economic imperative of US growth. What is at stake is America's need to demonstrate its military power to all of us ? to Europe and Russia and China, and poor mad little North Korea, as well as the Middle East; to show who rules America at home, and who is to be ruled by America abroad.

The most charitable interpretation of Tony Blair's part in all this is that he believed that, by riding the tiger, he could steer it. He can't. Instead, he gave it a phoney legitimacy, and a smooth voice. Now, I fear, the same tiger has him penned into a corner, and he can't get out.

Voters simply look the other way

It is utterly laughable that, at a time when Blair has talked himself against the ropes, neither of Britain's opposition leaders can lay a glove on him. But that's Britain's tragedy, as it is America's: as our Governments spin, lie and lose their credibility, the electorate simply shrugs and looks the other way.

Blair's best chance of personal survival must be that, at the eleventh hour, world protest and an improbably emboldened UN will force Bush to put his gun back in his holster unfired. But what happens when the world's greatest cowboy rides back into town without a tyrant's head to wave at the boys?

Blair's worst chance is that, with or without the UN, he will drag us into a war that, if the will to negotiate energetically had ever been there, could have been avoided; a war no more democratically debated in Britain than it has in America or at the UN.

We are in this war, if it takes place, to secure the fig leaf of our special relationship, to grab our share of the oil pot, and because, after all the public hand-holding in Washington and Camp David, Blair has to show up at the altar.

[Gość: salmotrutta]

...excellent...thanks...

[Gość: awalk]

> It is inevitable that during twenty years with the State Department I would
> become more sophisticated and cynical about the narrow and selfish bureaucratic
> motives that sometimes shaped our policies. Human nature is what it is, and I
> was rewarded and promoted for understanding human nature.

I love this part. Suddenly rewards and promotions are not enough to understand the human nature of his President, so he quits. :)

[Gość: Duduch]

"A choice between appeasement and responsibiliy"
see:

www.iht.com/articles/88250.html

[Gość: al]

See also:
www.bushisms.com

Paulo, you've smoked 1 joint too many

[Gość: Kapitalizm Kaput]

Paulo, although I am (like you) against wars, and specifically against this
particular war, I have to disagree with your 'mambo brasiliano' rethorics
fuelled maybe by marijuana, magic mushrooms, or green pease. You do not
understand these political events that you perceive as a Bush-Saddam affair
only.
This war is not against Iraq, this war is not the Bush-Saddam affair. This war
is to defend capitalism from itself. Capitalism has just come to the end of its
cycle and needs a kick, which will provide impetus to it for another 30-50
years to come. Such events used to be called world wars and this war will be
the third one, ie the third attempt to save capitalism. Saddam provides as good
reason to start a war as those reasons previously provided by Poles attacking
the German radio station in Katowice in 1939 or by Balkan Slavs killing the
Austrian prince in Sarajevo in 1914.