Voice from the Commonwealth Commentary, World Views and Occasional Rants from a small 'l' libertarian in Massachussetts
"If ye love wealth greater than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest for freedom, go home and leave us in peace. We seek not your council nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen." - Samuel Adams
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Praise for Voice
"A smart fellow...I do like, recommend and learn from Barbera's blog." -Roger L. Simon
"Your blog is bullshit"- anonymous angry French reader.
The United States also has raised its military profile in the region, with the aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson arriving off South Korean and the Air Force resuming reconnaissance flights, suspended since communist jets briefly intercepted a U.S. spy plane on March 2.
On Friday, the U.S. military showed off one of the six F-117 Nighthawk stealth fighters it has brought to South Korea for the major U.S.-South Korean military exercise this month. Officials insisted the fighters were strictly for training and would leave the region when the annual exercise, dubbed Foal Eagle, wraps up April 2
Speaking to an anti-war gathering in south Beirut, Hezbollah's Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah said US troops "will face bullets, guns, blood and suicide attacks within Iraqi territories."
And out to make more friends in the region he issued a threat to any nations in the region that support the US.
He issued a warning to some Arab countries that provide facilities to US troops to attack Iraq, saying they should pay backfor what they got.
But there is no evidence that Saddam and Islamic terrorists would ever form an alliance.
Italian Special Forces are on the ground with the US in the hunt for Osama (orthe specks of him that can be identified) and other al Qaida and Taliban leaders in South East Afghanistan.
"The commandos have been specially selected for their features that match the Pashtuns of the area and have familiarised themselves to the terrain and native milieu," media reports here quoted officials as saying.
"They (commandos) have launched a systematic hunt to capture bin Laden, Omar and (Afgan rebel leader Gulbuddin) Hekmatyar dead or alive," they said.
They said the Alpine commandos, who were in action along the border with Pakistan since December 2002, appear Pashtuns, wear salwar kameez and sometimes even turbans and shawls.
The commandos study roads and mountain passes, inspect caves and tunnels and mix up with villagers. They carry computers to transmit reports to the US Air Force base in Bagram. "We may hear some news soon," the officials said.
A Norwegian commando who was a member of the Operation Gunnerside, which destroyed the Nazi's heavy water plant, died last week.
Claus Helberg, a Norwegian resistance fighter and member of a commando team that destroyed Germany's atomic weapons program in a daring World War II raid, has died. He was 84.
Helberg died March 6 of a heart attack.
Lewis Mantus, a British writer who helped publicize the 60th anniversary of the raid, held Feb. 28, said Helberg, along with the other eight, "probably saved the world and we should be thankful for what they did."
Born near Rjukan, 90 miles west of Oslo, Helberg was an avid outdoorsman and guide, leading citizens and Scandinavian royal families through the country's mountain trails.
B-2's left Missouri last night to an undisclosed location.
''We have deployed B-2s to the Central Command area of responsibility,'' said Air Force Lt. Matt Hasson, a spokesman for the bomb wing at Whiteman. ''Last night we launched them.''
So James Zogby is going around the country putting on a dog-and-pony show where American students talk to Iraqi 'students' via sattelite. Sorry if I sound sceptical but, let's be honest. Who really thinks anyone allowed to speak from Iraq isn't prescreened and afraid to tell the truth? We know that people who live under oppressive regimes will never feel free to speak their minds without fear of retribution. This little farce lowers Zogby a great deal in my estimation. This is a cynical display and he must know it.
Intersting, in making the case to his people John Howard used Pearl Harbour.
He refused to release any intelligence material and said the world could not afford to wait for another terrorist attack.
"We're not talking about proving, beyond reasonable doubt, to the satisfaction of a jury at the central criminal court in Darlinghurst," Howard said.
"If you wait for that kind of proof, you know, it's virtually Pearl Harbour."
He is making the humanitarian case. A good one no doubt.
"The Iraqi people are oppressed by this current regime," he said. "There is no chance of normalcy in a nation where torture and rape and genocide and killing are standard practice.
"We're talking about a regime that will gouge out the eyes of a child to force a confession from the child's parents. The regime that will burn a person's limbs in order to force a confession or compliance.
"This is a regime that in 2000 decreed the crime of criticising it would be punished by the amputation of tongues."
Needless to say, his political opponents were not impressed.
An important question. Does Kim Jong Il know when to stop?
...Alexander Orlov, an NKVD (Narodny Kommisariat Vnutrennikh Del, or People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs) general who defected to the United States during the Great Purge, wrote a famous work called A Handbook of Intelligence and Guerrilla Warfare in which he stressed that the first rule was not to respond to provocation. Orlov was a highly astute thinker, but what happens when one side constantly resorts to provocation and cannot be trusted to know when and where to stop and the other side is either increasingly in no mood to heed his advice or is obliged to respond because the act of provocation is finally too great to let happen?
A group of Cuban patriots are lobbying the EU to remove special advantages to Castro.
The dissidents include human rights activist Vladimiro Roca. They sent the request Wednesday to EU Development Commissioner Poul Nielson, who opened a new EU office in Havana earlier this week.
The dissidents say Cuba should be barred from the EU's Cotonou Agreement on the grounds that President Fidel Castro's administration violates human rights.
Some EU states, such as Britain and Sweden, say Cuba has not shown advances toward democratic reforms under President Castro.
The promise of a post-Saddam period in the Gulf represents an historic opportunity to fundamentally redefine the dynamics of a region that has proven to be among the most unstable in the world. The challenge to the US, the region, and the international community-whether beforehand they support or oppose it happening - is to ensure that another Gulf war and the removal of Saddam serves as a positive force to allow the Gulf to make a peaceful transition into the post-cold war world, providing an enduring framework for peace and security.
Australian troops prepared to be in the combat when it comes. Howard still hasn't committed but, the comander in the field says they are ready to go.
Australian forces, including Special Air Service Regiment (SASR) soldiers and F/A-18 Hornet fighter-bombers, are set for a frontline role in any conflict with Iraq, the commander of Australia's 2,000 member contingent said today.
But Brigadier Maurie McNarn refused to say just what that role would be or when it might occur.
"But if the government requires us to go to operations, yes, we are ready," he told reporters.
"They would have active frontline roles. By their very nature, virtually all the forces we have got here are frontline and should the government choose to commit them, we expect that our forces will have key and frontline roles."
In event of conflict, SASR soldiers are tipped to infiltrate Iraq to look for hiding places for weapons of mass destruction and Iraqi military communications and command centres.
No ties to terrorism. So, why is every militant Islamic terrorist group threatening violence if Saddam is overthrown? Philippine police have uncovered a plot by M.I.L.F.
More stories of the lovely regime that the 'peace' protesters assure us can be trusted accept true diarmament.
The knock on Maha Fawzi's door came in the middle of the afternoon.
Four members of the Iraqi secret police, the Mukhabarat, stormed in and began beating her husband. They grabbed her 7-year-old son, threw him against a wall and over a table as two agents held the screaming mother.
Finally, they bundled her off in an SUV and beat her with rifles. She was found in a Baghdad garbage dump and taken to a hospital.
Her crime: failing to meet her quota of donations collected for Iraq's Olympic committee. The failure marked her for life in Iraq, she said, a threat to anybody else who would employ her. She is convinced her newborn child was killed months later in a hospital because the regime needed expendable children as a propaganda tool to combat United Nations economic sanctions against Iraq.
"You tell these stories to people, and they're almost impossible to believe if you haven't lived under such a government," said Fawzi, as she sat by a kerosene heater in her one-room apartment in a poor neighborhood in Jordan's capital of Amman.
"How do you describe how a mother feels when she sees a soldier beating her son, when she sees her shirt covered with blood, and there's nothing she can do?" she asked. "How do you convey that to people who haven't lived it?"
Salami El-Daraji lost a brother who was arrested for religious activity, quickly tried and executed.
Adel Hasan hasn't seen or heard from his father, who was picked up for illegal political activity several years ago.
And former soldier Hadi El-Asdi is still haunted by the men he was charged with hunting down: military defectors whose ear lobes he removed after they were apprehended.
"You ask how people can put up with this, but after 23 years of Saddam, people are like bodies without souls in Baghdad," said Fawzi. "Every day here, you hear people asking when the Americans are coming."
"Saddam has built into Iraqis this unreasonable fear," said El-Daraji. "We are used to spying on each other, informing on our families and our friends. It is hard for us to trust in anything."
Then there is some wacked out paranoia.
"I just have a hard time believing that the United States doesn't want to take our oil," said Nadem Kuder, 38, a former literature professor at Baghdad University. "I've heard on the news here that people like Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice have their own private accounts, that they get to keep the oil they claim. I know that Rice has her own oil tanker."
Are the Saudis quietly helping the US prepare for a war to free Iraq?
"When war happens, jaws will drop," said one Middle East diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity.
The public-private split in Saudi policy was graphically illustrated this weekend when a Saudi dissident group in London reported that the United States has deployed as many as 9,000 troops on Saudi territory near the Iraqi border, including at a base in Arar.
Many of the troops are said to conduct special operations.
It soon emerged that Arar's airport had been closed to the public.
Saudi Defense Minister Prince Sultan said late Saturday that the airport had been closed for the safety of local residents. He also suggested that it would be used for humanitarian aid flights for Iraqi refugees expected along the border area once war breaks out.
"We are on the verge of war and the situation is different from what it was in 1991," Prince Sultan said. "There's no secret U.S. bases and we closed the airport for humanitarian reasons." He implied that any U.S. troop presence was there only for humanitarian missions.
Well that's not veryreassuring. The Russians are now saying they can't tell for sure if Iran is building nuclear weapons with all of the nuclear technonlgy they have gotten from Russia.
"While Russia is helping Iran build its nuclear power plant, it's not being informed by Iran of all the other projects that are currently under way," Rumyantsev said in an interview.
This comment was very different from Rumyantsev's Feb. 21 statement that "Iran does not have the capacity to build nuclear weapons."
Rumyantsev said he was interested in getting hold of a report from the UN nuclear inspectors on the details of Iran's program.
What? You're the ones selling Iran all of this stuff, what are you planning to learn from the report?
More French/German bully tactics. How's that spite taste Gerhard? Time for that TAFTA idea to start being whispered by the Administration.
Germany is reviving plans for a two-tier European Union – leaving Britain and Spain out in the cold in anger over the Iraqi crisis, it was confirmed today.
The details will be set out in a speech in Berlin on Friday by German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder – and his scheduled dinner in London tomorrow night with Prime Minister Tony Blair is unlikely to soften his tone.
The “two-speed” Europe idea is not new; it has been mulled over in Paris and Berlin every time a policy difference casts Britain against the continental mainstream.
But Britain has repeatedly resisted being left in the European slow lane, and will not welcome any suggestion of a European “hard core” group driven by France and Germany – particularly one seeking to drive a wedge into the EU on the basis of policy towards Iraq.
"We are here so that an attack might not take place. The fact that this is a risky place actually strengthens my determination to be here. The power plant is a humanitarian target, because it produces electricity for the population, for hospitals, and water purification plants". Virolainen says.
"I didn't come here to become a martyr. If necessary I am ready to leave this building. The plant has a bomb shelter where we can also go."
So he is using his life to try and protect this building. But not really. A well thought out position
"When people shout slogans in favour of Saddam Hussein, they are actually shouting for Iraq. I do not see this country as a police state. The Iraqi people really are free", Virolainen ponders.
"One thing that has become quite clear to me is that Iraq cannot be occupied. To do so it would be necessary to kill every citizen, because everyone here wants to defend this country to the last."
Repeat that line back to him when the people of Baghdad are cheering in the streets to see liberating forces move in.
Can we buy Denmark on eBay? It is getting to be a long list of nations for sale over there, as their PM has come out in support of a March 17th deadline for Saddam.
The Danish government supports the U.S.-British Security Council draft resolution giving Iraq until March 17 to disarm or face a war, Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen said on Tuesday.
"It is positive that the weapons inspectors have signaled some progress, such as the destruction of missiles, but that does not resolve the international community's problem that Saddam Hussein does not respect the demands of the UN Security Council when it comes to disarming," Rasmussen told reporters.
"Iraq is only cooperating a little, cooperating only under pressure and at the last minute," he added.
He said it was essential that UN Resolution 1441, which demands that Saddam Hussein cooperate immediately, actively and unconditionally with the UN, be respected.
"That has not been the case so far. As a result the government supports the draft resolution" submitted by the United States, Britain and Spain, which "sets a final deadline for Saddam Hussein to account for Iraq's weapons of massive destruction," he said.
"The game of cat and mouse is over," Rasmussen stressed. He said the UN's demands "were clear: It is not up to the weapons inspectors to find Saddam's hidden arms. It is Saddam's responsibility to say where they are, or where they were destroyed."
They are running out of mediation, too. Of course this will somehow be blamed on the US. Of course those same people will never consider what ever happened to the millions that North Korea illicitly gained from that shipload of Scuds last year.
Warning that its clinics in North Korea will run out of medicines next month, the U.N. children's agency issued an urgent appeal Tuesday for donations, asking countries to set aside any unease about helping the North during its nuclear crisis.
UNICEF has received less than $500,000 of the $12 million it needs this year to buy medicines, high-energy milk and other supplies for 2.5 million North Korean children, said Mehr Khan, its Asia-Pacific director. She said more than half of that came from Norway, while many other previous donors have given nothing.
With the last harvest in October and the next not due until June, food levels were critically low.
"The trees in our compound were trimmed recently and I noticed the bark had been stripped off to be taken away and eaten," said Richard Bridle, UNICEF's representative in Pyongyang.
Two consecutive years of severe floods in the mid 1990s, followed by a year-long drought, set off a near famine that forced North Korea to make unprecedented appeals for international aid.
Unconfirmed estimates of deaths resulting from starvation have reached millions, while as many as 300,000 North Koreas are thought to have fled to China.
Khan said the World Food Program (WFP) only had funding until the middle of the year when its stocks will be exhausted.
WFP will need about 250,000 tons of food, Khan said.
She said the only countries to have responded to the appeal for aid so far were the Nordic nations.
The United States last month said it would give North Korea food aid this year, but cut the amount to between 40,000 and 100,000 tons.
U.S. officials said the WFP sought 611,000 tons last year and got 303,000 tons, more than half from the United States.
Of course it is a drought. Nothing to do with the collectivist policies of the Kim's. Every Stalinist country in history has had famine and 'drought'. Eventually these fools have to get it through their heads that it is man-made. Do you think Kim cares if a few more million starve to death?
A Cambodian Muslim Professor, living in Guam supports a war to end the rule of Saddam.
I, for one, have never been a proponent of war. I protested the Vietnam War during my college days. But terrorism and Iraq shake me to my core.
I am a Muslim. The Koran (5:32) says: "(W)hoever slays a person who had not committed murder or horrendous crimes, it shall be as if he had slain the whole of humanity. And whoever has spared a life, it would be as if he had spared the lives of all people."
A visit to Ground Zero in New York made me numb. How could there be anyone as terrible as Pol Pot, whose policies sent 1.7 million Cambodians to death -- including my parents -- while the world watched in 1975-1978? That Osama bin Laden thanked Heaven for bringing down the World Trade Center, and Saddam Hussein approved, sent a chill down my spine.
The commander of al-Anfal [a campaign that killed 180,000 Kurds] was Hussein's cousin, Ali Hassan Majid. Iraqi documents of the al-Anfal campaign include orders and a ledger of executions of men, women and children. Peter Galbraith wrote in the Boston Globe that Iraqi forces videotaped executions and torture sessions, "a bureaucracy of killing." Human Rights Watch charged the Hussein regime with "crimes of genocide."
Claudia Rosett quoted an e-mail from an Iraqi in northern Iraq: "The 'No Blood for Oil' signs are particularly galling." She wrote in the Wall Street Journal that people in northern Iraq are not protesting the "imminent fight," but they "have been preparing to join" the fight to bring down Hussein.
It is a wonder why President George W. Bush would not just say plainly that the United States chooses to fight a war to end a regime of genocide.
The Jews are responsible for the war? And we all know, as the NY Times and others constantly remind us that the cost of the war will be enormous and drive up oil prices and wreck the economy in general. So, how long until the Jews are blamed for the ecomomy being in the crapper?
Or, if your talking point is that the war is just to give the economy a boost via the War Machine and Big Oil, the Jews will be responsible for trading innocent Iraqi blood for money. Right?
Who was the last group to scapegoat Jews were for a bad economy? Oh, right.
The CIA is warning that members of the al-Qaeda network in Iraq are planning to attack US forces should they invade.
The warning came in a two-page report based on recent intelligence that was provided to policymakers within the last week, according to the official.
The report said al-Qaeda operatives may try to hide among Iraqi civilians in an effort to get close enough to launch an attack. It said US forces could be at risk of attacks with either conventional explosives or unspecified toxins.
Maybe Saddam doesn't know they are there? He should put together a team to assist in the 'search' for such terrorists on his soil. Since he is completely 'disarmed' he can draw from some of the specialists who were 'helping' the UN inspectors look for WMD.
"You guys, you won," he told ABC's This Week with George Stephanopoulos in a 15-minute interview.
Chretien credited U.S. President George W. Bush with forcing Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein to disarm by amassing troops in the region.
"In my judgment, it has been won. You know the president has won. I have no doubt about it. He won," the PM said in an interview taped Saturday at his Shawinigan home. "He has created a situation where Saddam cannot do anything anymore. He has troops at the door and inspectors on the ground, planes flying over -- and he cannot do anything."
Is this the woman who will serve as interim governor of Iraq?
Barbara Bodine, 54, has been asked to return to Baghdad, the city where she once served as a junior diplomat -- this time as its interim governor until a new postwar Iraqi government is set up, the Sunday Telegraph has reported.
During the first Gulf War, she was among 27 Americans held hostage at the U.S. Embassy in Kuwait by occupying Iraqi forces for more than four months without water, power, telephone and food supplies. In 1999, as ambassador to Yemen, she led secret negotiations over the release of three Americans who had been kidnapped by armed tribesmen.
In 2000, during her stint as ambassador in the Yemeni capital, al-Qaeda terrorists launched their attack on the warship USS Cole in the port of Aden, killing 17 Americans. She handled negotiations that enabled the FBI to help investigate the attack.
Less than a year later, she and 90 other passengers were flying to the Yemeni city of Taiz -- where she was to meet the country's president -- when their flight was hijacked by a terrorist who ordered the pilot to fly to Baghdad but was eventually overpowered by crew.
She shares the view of Washington's hawks that most Middle Eastern Muslims would welcome democracy and better relations with the U.S. She has also argued that advancing women's rights is a first step towards rooting out terrorism.
Even in Europe some understand that the crisis in the UNSC is not recent nor is it the fault of Bush the Cowboy.
Arend-Jan Boekestijn, professor of international relations at Utrecht University, rejects this argument. He told Newsline's Jane Murphy that the UN's prestige has already been undermined by its inability to implement previous resolutions.
AJB: "Surely there will be a problem of course, because the United Nations would be in a much stronger position if the resolution is adopted, but I think there is another problem: there have already been 17 resolutions in the last 12 years regarding Iraq, and if the UN is not able to implement them, it means the international order is already damaged by the behaviour of the United Nations itself. I agree that the UN is undermined by this whole new situation, but I don't think you could argue that this is the fault of America or Britain."
RN: "But then again, France would argue that in fact those resolutions are now being implemented, that we are seeing progress in that the reports from the UN weapons inspectors are saying that Iraq is now disarming …"
AJB: "But the problem is weapons inspections will never work. It is perfectly possibly, even if you have Iraq full of weapons inspectors, that somebody is trying to construct new weapons. This is a very difficult problem. I don't think Iraq at the moment poses a real threat for the world. I don't think that there is a significant link between Baghdad and al-Qaeda, but I still support Mr Blair's decision for the simple reason that if we let him go now and withdraw the soldiers, or choose not to attack and continue the weapons inspections, I think the problem will remain, because the only way to disarm a nation that doesn't want to disarm, is regime change."
"But if the UN Security Council doesn't vote in favour of military action and one or two countries go ahead, doesn't that go to the heart of the whole reason for having a United Nations? Why have it if individual countries are going to play world cop?"
"That's not true, because we have a resolution, 1441, which says that Saddam has to prove himself, he has to draw up a full list of all his weapons, and if he fails to do that, he'll face the severest of consequences, that's the wording of resolution 1441. Now, he simply hasn't produced any complete lists, even Dr Blix says there are problems here …"
RN: "But there is still time, there is still room to use as much diplomatic pressure as possible … "
"But history teaches us that you can only disarm governments that really have the intention to disarm."
RN: "But just looking at the position of the United Nations and its legitimacy: opinion polling around the world show that people in general are against this war, unless it has the backing of the UN, a United Nations mandate. So, people clearly feel that it's important that this goes through the United Nations."
"Yes, but then people must also acknowledge that over the last twelve years, the UN has produced 17 resolutions that haven't been implemented. That's strange, because it means the organisation is powerless. I'm not going to argue here that we should abolish the United Nations, but I only want to say that there is a limit to international justice and that's because we don't have a world government."
The former Japanese Ambassador to the US in an interview.
Of course, war is evil. But when it comes to international relations, if you stick to the position that using force to solve disputes is an absolute evil, you may find it impossible to keep peace and order.
The French argument for continuing inspections is not convincing. They have no answer on what to do after four months of inspections. President Saddam Hussein of Iraq is hopeful that if the two camps remain divided, international opinion will split further. He expects that if the United States is isolated, it will be impossible to use military force against his country.
Within the Bush administration, officials initially talked of bypassing the United Nations. This was because they viewed the world body as ``doing more harm than good.'' But Japan has insisted that America should work through the U.N. In the end, President George W. Bush decided to work with the United Nations. This presidential decision led to the U.N. adoption of Resolution 1441.
Supposing that Japan were a member of the U.N. Security Council, it should vote for the new draft resolution (proposed by the United States and Britain). This support for the draft resolution could induce Iraq to change its attitude at the last minute, though there is little chance for that. I think there is no choice but to take military action if Iraq does not change its policy in the next two weeks.
In that case, the United States will resort to coercive action anyway, contending that the United Nations has abdicated its responsibility for the elimination of weapons of mass destruction. Japan should in principle support the U.S. position.
The U.N. Security Council plays an important role. But to say that nothing can be done without its approval is dangerous. The council is not a body designed to dispense justice. A proposal gets through the council on a majority vote only when more than half of the members with conflicting agendas find that passing it is in their interests.
Therefore, there is no guarantee that a just and correct argument prevails all the time as many Japanese seem to think. What will they do when the North Korean threat is taken up by the council in the future?
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