No Real Debate Yet on the War

By the way, for those of you not living in the U.S., and who haven't been
here to see the way the debate (or lack of it) has been developing in the
U.S., let me make a few points:

* the preparations for a new war have been going on for several weeks

* Congress has taken no votes one way or the other about this imminent war

* Congress, in fact, is not in session, and has not been called back into
session to debate and discuss and ultimately vote on a Declaration of War
(or what passes for it these days, a "vote of moral support")

* the American public has shown a lukewarm response at best to the plans,
such as they understand them

* speaking of plans, the plans are very vague. The public does not know
what the goals of a war might be, what the endgame options are, how many
Americans are likely to die, what the likely counterpunch will be (hint:
think terrorist attacks), and just how the U.S. plans to fight a war
without clear goals and clear support.

* essentially no one thinks a bombing campaign will either kill Saddam, who
moves around a lot to highly secret locations (including houses of
peasants), or will destroy all of those small cannisters of anthrax and
sarin and the like...when asked, Albright and Cohen are vague and
dissembling.

* meanwhile, scare reports of terrorists in Las Vegas are making the
headlines...a perfect "give us some jimbells to scare the nation" scenario.
(With the usual scary stuff about his "survivalist" books, his membership
in Christian Identity, and his links to Aryan Nation. Throw him jail!)

In short, where is the debate about this upcoming war?

Is Congress now so ineffectual that its main power, the power to declare
war, is no longer "operative"?

Amazing.

--Tim May, posting before his own home gets raided for having supplied PGP
to Christian Identity and Aryan Nation.


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> * speaking of plans, the plans are very vague. The public does not know
> what the goals of a war might be, what the endgame options are, how many
> Americans are likely to die, what the likely counterpunch will be (hint:
> think terrorist attacks), and just how the U.S. plans to fight a war
> without clear goals and clear support.

Yes, it will be a great sight indeed to see Iraqi freedom-fighters 
bombing the hell out of soft targets in America, Britain, Australia 
and any other imperialist countries who like to consider themselves 
among the world police. 


> * essentially no one thinks a bombing campaign will either kill Saddam, who
> moves around a lot to highly secret locations (including houses of
> peasants), or will destroy all of those small cannisters of anthrax and
> sarin and the like...when asked, Albright and Cohen are vague and
> dissembling.

The same is true in the UK, a few days ago I saw a television 
interview (I rarely watch such rubbish but I sometimes like to laugh 
at the spin, but it also depresses me that most citizen-units swallow 
this crap) with some government minister who said that "We can attack 
strategic points along the production line without releasing any 
chemical agents", another lie. It is also a commonly held public 
misconception that there is such a thing as a "precision bombing 
campaign" (government spindoctor term) which most people believe 
implies a campaign where no-one is injured but we miraculously win 
a war without any casualties.  
The more American, British, Australian, French etc. troops that die 
in the Gulf War II (tm), the more the western world will realise that 
war involves losses and that we cannot go on policing the world.  

 
--                  
                            Paul Bradley 
                      paul@fatmans.demon.co.uk
       "Why should anyone want to live on rails?" - Stephen Fry

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----

In <89B3250098@ou20.csm.port.ac.uk>, on 02/20/98 
   at 09:27 AM, "Paul Bradley" <csm70830@port.ac.uk> said:

>The more American, British, Australian, French etc. troops that die  in
>the Gulf War II (tm), the more the western world will realise that  war
>involves losses and that we cannot go on policing the world.  

Well if the US was to really take the moral HighGround on this they would
be bombing France and Germany for supplying them with CBW supplies for
years.

Does anyone have a French body count from when Israel blew up the breader
reactor they were building in Iraq back in 1980? (I am sure it was far too
small).

- -- 
- ---------------------------------------------------------------
William H. Geiger III  http://users.invweb.net/~whgiii
Geiger Consulting    Cooking With Warp 4.0

Author of E-Secure - PGP Front End for MR/2 Ice
PGP & MR/2 the only way for secure e-mail.
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>>The more American, British, Australian, French etc. troops that die  in
>>the Gulf War II (tm), the more the western world will realise that  war
>>involves losses and that we cannot go on policing the world.  

As with the previous round of Desert Scam, very few invaders will die,
because the military objective is to cause mass destruction, not to 
conquer and hold.  And the press will focus on the invaders that die,
not on the tens or hundreds of thousands of Iraqis killed.

>Well if the US was to really take the moral HighGround on this they would
>be bombing France and Germany for supplying them with CBW supplies for
>years.

They'd also be focusing on the great job they've done eliminating the
entire US stock of CBW and nukes.  Oh, we haven't?  Well their weapons 
of mass destruction are Evil, and ours are Freedom Fighting Tools.
Actually the US and Former Soviet Union have substantially reduced the
nuclear forces, especially older missiles that are hard to maintain,
but the US refused for a long time to sign the CBW treaties,
and I'm not sure they ever did follow through and destroy their supplies.
				Thanks! 
					Bill
Bill Stewart, bill.stewart@pobox.com
PGP Fingerprint D454 E202 CBC8 40BF  3C85 B884 0ABE 4639