FEATURED ARTICLES
- Rumsfeld Visited Baghdad in 1984 to Reassure Iraqis, Documents Show, Wash Post
- Saddam Should Face International Court, by Helen Thomas,
- Mr. Gephardt's Reform Values, Washington Post Editorial
- For Telling The Truth, By Norman Solomon,
QUOTE OF THE DAY
"The White House has always attracted the mentally ill."
- - Secret Service Agent Vincent Charles ( explaining heightened security round La Casa Blanca )
KNOW YOUR HISTORY - DECEMBER 22nd
1974 -- The Hopi & Navajo Relocation Act passed by the US Congress to get those inconvenient Indians at Big Mountain, Arizona, away from the lucrative coal deposits. Big Mountain families have been resisting this forced relocation ever since.
1997 -- Mexico: Paramilitaries associated with the ruling PRI party massacre 45 peasants in the village of Acteal, Chiapas. The Mexican Government will use this event to occupy & suppress the population with over 70,000 troops & expel humanitarian observers stationed in the area.
RHINO HERE:
So now that they have Saddam, what will they do with him. shrub sez they'll try him in a manner that will, "stand up to international scrutiny." Problem for him & his gang is that Rummie & Cheney & so many other gang members, including papa bush, were so in bed with the butcher of Baghdad even as he was butchering, that they must be sure to control what evidence is presented in whichever court hears the case. "In bed?" you say? Check out this Washington Post article from last week.
Rumsfeld Visited Baghdad in 1984 to Reassure Iraqis, Documents Show
Trip Followed Criticism Of Chemical Arms' Use
By Dana Priest, Washington Post, 12/19/03
Donald H. Rumsfeld went to Baghdad in March 1984 with instructions to deliver a private message about weapons of mass destruction: that the United States' public criticism of Iraq for using chemical weapons would not derail Washington's attempts to forge a better relationship, according to newly declassified documents. Rumsfeld, then President Ronald Reagan's special Middle East envoy, was urged to tell Iraqi Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz that the U.S. statement on chemical weapons, or CW, "was made strictly out of our strong opposition to the use of lethal and incapacitating CW, wherever it occurs," according to a cable to Rumsfeld from then-Secretary of State George P. Shultz.
The statement, the cable said, was not intended to imply a shift in policy, and the U.S. desire "to improve bilateral relations, at a pace of Iraq's choosing," remained "undiminished." "This message bears reinforcing during your discussions." The documents, obtained under the Freedom of Information Act by the nonprofit National Security Archive, provide new, behind-the-scenes details of U.S. efforts to court Iraq as an ally even as it used chemical weapons in its war with Iran.
MORE: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A13558-2003Dec18.html
Wise counsel to the shrub from the Grand Ol' Dam of the Washington press corps: Helen Thomas.
Saddam Should Face International Court
by Helen Thomas, Seattle Post-Intelligencer , 12/19/03
Saddam Hussein should be tried by the International Court of Justice at The Hague. That court has a record of meting out justice to people accused of genocide and other gross violations of human rights. A trial at The Hague would help the United States reassert its membership in the post-World War II community of collective security and win back the allies it shunned when President Bush ordered the invasion of Iraq. Bush also could reaffirm the United States' past pledges to honor international law as framed in the United Nations Charter and various treaties.
Since he took office, Bush has shown little use for our past commitments to international covenants. Instead he projects an arrogant philosophy based on the notion that a military superpower can call all the shots. The International Court was established to try dictators like Saddam for their heinous crimes. It is where former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic in on trial for war crimes and genocide. So Bush need look no further as he gropes for a venue to handle the Saddam case. There is a standing international court that deals with this kind of defendant...
READ THE REST AT: http://www.commondreams.org/views03/1219-09.htm
Not directly related to the problem of what to do with Saddam, but related to what sort of gang do we want to replace the shrub gang, a Washington Post Editorial reveals what lengths Richard Gephardt & the DLC crowd are willing to go to to keep a Democratic "outsider" from getting the Dem nomination.
Mr. Gephardt's Reform Values
Washington Post Editorial, 12/16/03
OKAY, POLITICAL MONEY buffs, it's time for a game of connect-the-dots. The machinists union endorses Rep. Richard A. Gephardt (D-Mo.). The machinists union makes a "significant" contribution to Americans for Jobs, Healthcare and Progressive Values (AJHPV), according to union political director Richard Michalski. The same AJHPV, a new organization, runs television ads in Iowa and elsewhere attacking former Vermont governor Howard Dean. Mr. Dean is Mr. Gephardt's leading rival for votes in the Iowa Democratic caucuses.
With us so far? Then continue: Leo Hindery, a cable television executive, is a national finance co-chair of the Gephardt campaign. Mr. Hindery is also a backer of AJHPV. The organization's chief fundraiser is a former Gephardt fundraiser, David Jones. Its president, Edward F. Feighan, a former Ohio congressman, has given the maximum $2,000 to the Gephardt campaign. Is a picture beginning to emerge? If so, it's not a pretty one, at least as it pertains to Mr. Gephardt...
MORE: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A3412-2003Dec15.html
Lastly today, RHINO'S BOTTOM LINE by Norman Solomon reminds us that the shrub gang's immoral & destructive international activities didn't stop with the beginning of the new millennium. And that the UK government is usually ready to hop into bed with the US, no matter how outrageous the requirements. Solomon is executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy in San Francisco. He's co-author of "Target Iraq: What the News Media Didn't Tell You" (Context Books, 2003).
8:21:07 AM 
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