Sunday, February 23, 2003

Let the UN Inspection Regime de-fang Saddam Now is the time to call your Congressional Representative and Senators Time is running out for peaceful solutions to problems in the Middle East. If you support giving the UN inspection regime time to complete their inspections and slowly but surely de-fang Saddam, then let your elected officials know how you feel! 9:30:44 AM

Support the Israeli and Palestinian people, not their leaders It is sad to think that both the right wing extremist Israel leadership and the awful Palestine leadership keep their political power as long as civilians on both sides are killed. A breakout of peace would spell the end of a lot of political careers in the Middle East. My personal belief is that the world community (through the UN) must permanently station observers and an international armed force to maintain the peace in the Middle East. To me, nothing else makes sense - let the people of the Middle East have peace. 9:09:38 AM

U.S. Vetoes 35 UN Resolutions Critical of Israel I read a lot of foreign and domestic U.S. news. I have noticed that U.S. vetoes of UN resolutions critical of Israel seldom appear in U.S. news but they are widely covered in most foreign press. For easy reference, the web site US-ISRAEL.org lists 35 resolutions that the U.S. has unilaterally vetoed: read this. The great thing about this site is that it also lists the original vote count (almost always with a huge majority vote - often unanmous except for the U.S.). I believe that our 30 year history of vetoing UN resolutions puts us on shaky ground when blasting France, Germany, and Russia for the possibility that they might veto the resolution that the Bush administration is expected to promote this week. Note that the chances are that, even with huge multi-billion dollar payoffs to the few governments that support the U.S. position, that the U.S. is not likely to get the required security council votes. Other examples in the news about U.S. vetoes Searching Google using "US UN security council veto west bank" yields many news articles on the U.S. policy of vetoing UN resolutions that otherwise have virtually unanamous world support: UNITED NATIONS, March 28, 2001: The United States used its veto power to kill a UN Security Council resolution that would have backed the creation of an international observer force to help protect civilians in the West Bank and Gaza. US vetoes force to protect Palestinians Wednesday March 28, 2001: America has vetoed moves in the United Nations Security Council to establish an international observer force to help protect Palestinians, after six months of clasheswith the Israeli army. December 22, 2002: The United States blocked a Syrian-drafted UN Security Council resolution condemning Israel for the deaths of UN workers in the occupied territories. 9:08:48 AM

© Copyright 2003 Mark Watson. Last update: 9/16/03; 7:35:01 AM.