Bush geeft grote misrekening toe

Descartes Jr · 30 januari 2004, 17:41

HBVL : 30/01 Bush geeft grote misrekening toe

Het Amerikaanse begrotingstekort gaat de vijfhonderd miljard dollar overschrijden. De kosten voor de jongste hervormingen in de ziekteverzekering gaan een derde hoger liggen dan het Witte Huis had gedacht, zo heeft de New York Times (NYT) gemeld. De regering heeft door nieuwe cijfers te noemen zelf al de onderschatting van de hervormingen in Medicare toegegeven. President George Bush maakt maandag (plaatselijke tijd) de begroting 2005 bekend. Functionarissen binnen de Amerikaanse regering en binnen het Congres zeggen dat het federale deficiet voor het eerst de 500 miljard dollar gaat overschrijden. Het tekort voor het fiscale jaar 2003 is 375 miljard dollar en zou voor dit jaar 477 miljard dollar bedragen, een record.

Antoon, gelezen ? The best president ever ...

... Inderdaad, hij heeft het record gehaald !

Max · 30 januari 2004, 22:30

Citaat:

Oorspronkelijk geplaatst door Descartes Jr

HBVL : 30/01 Bush geeft grote misrekening toe

Het Amerikaanse begrotingstekort gaat de vijfhonderd miljard dollar overschrijden. De kosten voor de jongste hervormingen in de ziekteverzekering gaan een derde hoger liggen dan het Witte Huis had gedacht, zo heeft de New York Times (NYT) gemeld. De regering heeft door nieuwe cijfers te noemen zelf al de onderschatting van de hervormingen in Medicare toegegeven. President George Bush maakt maandag (plaatselijke tijd) de begroting 2005 bekend. Functionarissen binnen de Amerikaanse regering en binnen het Congres zeggen dat het federale deficiet voor het eerst de 500 miljard dollar gaat overschrijden. Het tekort voor het fiscale jaar 2003 is 375 miljard dollar en zou voor dit jaar 477 miljard dollar bedragen, een record.

Antoon, gelezen ? The best president ever ...

... Inderdaad, hij heeft het record gehaald !

Maar Mr Descartes , dat zijn investeringen! Kijk maar naar de groei die dat veroorzaakt , dat kan toch niet slecht zijn! Op naar het volgend record in de volgende legislatuur.

TomB · 30 januari 2004, 22:53

Dat record is echter wel relatief. Als je de tekorten uit de Reaganjaren even adjusteert voor inflatie kom je boven de Bushtekorten uit.

Nu ga ik ook nog eens even die titel anders schrijven:
Bush spendeert 500 miljard dollar meer aan ziektezorg dit jaar.

Strookt dat dan nog met het idee dat Bush de sociale zekerheid aan het afbouwen is in de VS?

lyot · 31 januari 2004, 16:54

komaan Tom B, je weet toch ook dat de afbouw van sociale zekerheid een van de punten is waar Bush & Co voor staan..

TomB · 31 januari 2004, 19:21

Citaat:

Oorspronkelijk geplaatst door lyot

komaan Tom B, je weet toch ook dat de afbouw van sociale zekerheid een van de punten is waar Bush & Co voor staan..

En daarom gaat Bush 500 miljard meer uitgeven aan Medicare.

FYI, medicare is de ziekteverzekering van de staat waarop je als niet prive-verzekerde Amerikaan kan terugvallen.

Descartes Jr · 31 januari 2004, 23:25

Citaat:

Oorspronkelijk geplaatst door TomB

Citaat:

Oorspronkelijk geplaatst door lyot

komaan Tom B, je weet toch ook dat de afbouw van sociale zekerheid een van de punten is waar Bush & Co voor staan..

En daarom gaat Bush 500 miljard meer uitgeven aan Medicare.

FYI, medicare is de ziekteverzekering van de staat waarop je als niet prive-verzekerde Amerikaan kan terugvallen.

TomB, effe verduidelijken (wat die 500 Miljard US$ betreft) :

http://www.cdi.org/news/mrp/global-graph.pdf[/quote]

filosoof · 1 februari 2004, 13:39

De grote vergissing:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/front.htm
A Flawed Argument In the Case for War

By Glenn Kessler and Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, February 1, 2004; Page A01

The information was so startling that CIA Director George J. Tenet, accompanied by Vice President Cheney, marched up to Capitol Hill to brief the four top Senate and House leaders the day after Labor Day 2002. The administration was gearing up to present its case against Iraq at the United Nations, and lawmakers were eager for any evidence that would prove Saddam Hussein was a grave threat.

In the briefing, Tenet and Cheney presented what one participant described as a "smoking gun": New intelligence showed Iraq had developed unmanned airborne vehicles (UAVs) that could deliver chemical or biological agents. In addition, Iraq had sought software that would allow it to produce sophisticated mapping of eastern U.S. cities. President Bush hinted at the evidence in a speech on Oct. 7, 2002.

And a year ago, when Secretary of State Colin L. Powell made a lengthy presentation before the U.N. Security Council, he echoed the concern: "Iraq could use these small UAVs, which have a wingspan of only a few meters, to deliver biological agents to its neighbors or, if transported, to other countries, including the United States."

Since Powell's speech, however, investigations by U.S. weapons inspectors have determined that the UAVs, or drones, were not designed to spread deadly toxins but to fly unarmed reconnaissance missions.

The story of the UAVs -- just one part of the vast array of claims made by the Bush administration about Iraq's alleged weapons programs -- is emblematic of how U.S. intelligence on Iraq was often wrong, even when officials made efforts to cull the strongest material from a torrent of information.

In preparing for his U.N. speech on Feb. 5, Powell had prided himself on spending long hours at the CIA, quizzing analysts who had developed the material and making certain the information had not just one source but was developed from a combination of human, signal and satellite intelligence. He even refused to include a reference to the mapping software that had spurred the congressional meeting, believing that it was not credible.

But in the end, much of that effort appeared to be for naught. David Kay, the chief U.S. inspector who recently resigned, has spent the past week telling reporters and Congress that there appear to be no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Only fragments of Powell's presentation have been confirmed despite months of searching.

"It looks terrible," said Joseph Cirincione, director of the nonproliferation project at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "None of his core assertions about Saddam's growing arsenal of weapons of mass destruction turned out to be true."

State Department spokesman Richard A. Boucher said it is too early to draw such conclusions. "Certainly some of the elements we know are subject to debate, disagreement," he said. "But until we know what the real, full extent of the program was, it's hard. You don't have anything to compare what the intelligence was at the time to what the final answers are."

But many experts say the UAV question has long been settled. The drone aircraft uncovered in Iraq has glass viewing ports, with a bracket for mounting some type of camera. As first reported by the Associated Press in August, there was little room to carry the chemical and biological spraying devices described by Powell when he sat in the hushed chamber of the Security Council.

Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) told Kay last week that he voted for a resolution authorizing the use of force against Iraq precisely because of the administration's UAV evidence.

"I was told not only that [Hussein had weapons of mass destruction] and that he had the means to deliver them through unmanned aerial vehicles, but that he had the capability of transporting those UAVs outside of Iraq and threatening the homeland here in America, specifically by putting them on ships off the eastern seaboard," Nelson said. "I thought there was an imminent threat."

Kay responded that the UAV program was active, but the Iraqis did not have "the existing deployment capability at that point for any sort of systematic military attack."

A year ago, the CIA analysts thought they had the evidence. Powell, whose home in McLean is a half-mile from CIA headquarters, had issued clear guidance to his aides before they spent several days, often past midnight, sitting around the large wooden, oval-shaped table in Tenet's conference room: He wanted 10 to 15 "absolutely solid" pieces of evidence, "not a hundred pieces," Powell said, according to aides. "I want it airtight, or I'm not going to use it."

At one point, aides said, Powell looked up and said: "I want it solid, I want it new. Give me that. If you don't have it, don't give it to me."

The CIA originally drafted a speech for a U.N. presentation, which then went to the White House. But what ultimately emerged -- after Cheney's office had been tasked to assemble the material for the speech -- was much different from the CIA draft.

I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Cheney's chief of staff, deputy national security adviser Stephen J. Hadley and other National Security Council staffers had produced draft language for Powell -- 45 pages on weapons of mass destruction, 38 pages on alleged links to terrorism and 16 pages on Iraq's human rights abuses. But when Powell's staff and intelligence analysts gathered at CIA headquarters in Virginia to go through the material, controversy immediately erupted over some of the charges, officials said. Because the White House had changed so much from the CIA draft, they had to go over it "page by page," one official said.

The UAVs were a major source of controversy, officials said. For many senior officials, this was the subject of some of the best evidence they had. "The UAV program, to me, that was more serious because that was a direct threat to our military," a high ranking national security official said later. "Those UAVs could get up and spread chemical or, worse, biological weapons."

Indeed, the proposed narrative for Powell went something like this, according to an official involved in the preparation of Powell's speech: Hussein had his procurement agents, who are virtually all over the world, try to acquire software that would give him sophisticated mapping of the eastern United States, allowing him to program a missile with a high degree of accuracy.

But the whole scenario "fell apart like a toothpick house" once Powell and his aides asked for the sourcing on the information, the official said. Upon closer inspection, several officials said, it turned out that Iraq had not sought the software, but that an Australian firm had offered it. The software, meanwhile, apparently produced maps not much better than those sold at gasoline stations.
"The vendor, in the interest of making further sales, suggested this to the Iraqis, and there was no confirmation that we could find that the Iraqis had actually purchased the software," the official said. "We were getting ready to put in the secretary's statement that they were getting ready to bomb the eastern United States!"

Within one day, officials said, Powell's task force had largely abandoned the 45-page document on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction produced by Cheney's office and the NSC, using instead a classified National Intelligence Estimate assembled by the CIA in October.

The NIE, according to declassified portions made public last year, firmly stated that "Baghdad's UAV could threaten Iraq's neighbors, U.S. forces in the Persian Gulf and if brought close to, or into, the United States, the U.S. homeland."

But the NIE included a dissent to this conclusion that, after the war, would be considered correct: The Air Force intelligence arm, the expert on UAVs in the U.S. government, strongly argued that the primary role of these aircraft was reconnaissance, "although CBW delivery is an inherent capability." Air Force officials have said this last phrase was added during negotiations in crafting the NIE, though they viewed the possibility as highly unlikely because the drones would be inefficient delivery vehicles.

Powell and his team stuck with the consensus position of the other intelligence agencies -- some of which were relying on information from Iraqi expatriates and defectors to bolster their case on the drones -- because a decision had been made that his speech should reflect the best judgment of the intelligence community.

The NIE, in fact, has a number of important dissents from agencies intimately familiar with the subject at hand. One issue -- on whether aluminum tubes sought by Iraq were intended for rockets or uranium enrichment -- was so controversial that Powell himself weighed in and inserted the qualifiers. But that did not happen with the UAVs, officials said.

The Air Force "position was perfectly logical," one State Department official said. "Some of the drones may have been reconnaissance, maybe all of them. But the weight of the intelligence community was that these were delivery vehicles. Given the history of Iraq's interest in UAV development, we couldn't discount it."

"There was a very strong dominant view on UAVs," another official said, "and that's what we went with."

Staff writer Barton Gellman contributed to this report.
© 2004 The Washington Post Company

filosoof · 1 februari 2004, 13:51

Citaat:

Oorspronkelijk geplaatst door Descartes Jr

Citaat:

Oorspronkelijk geplaatst door TomB

En daarom gaat Bush 500 miljard meer uitgeven aan Medicare.

FYI, medicare is de ziekteverzekering van de staat waarop je als niet prive-verzekerde Amerikaan kan terugvallen.

TomB, effe verduidelijken (wat die 500 Miljard US$ betreft) :

http://www.cdi.org/news/mrp/global-graph.pdf

[/quote]

Advanced Search Thursday, April 03, 2003

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/...in546834.shtml
A QUESTION OF MONEY

Clinton And Dole On 60 Minutes

CBS

CBS News Video

Former President Bill Clinton and former Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole tee off on President Bush's post-war plans to win the peace.

Mar 30, 2003 7:53 pm US/Eastern
(CBS) In the latest in a series of two-minute debates for the CBS News magazine 60 Minutes, former President Bill Clinton and former Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole consider domestic spending—on Iraq after the war and in the U.S. now. Following is a transcript of their March 30 debate.

PRESIDENT CLINTON: Universal health care. Rebuilding the nation's schools. Repair of the road and rail networks. Sounds like a Democratic domestic agenda, right? Actually, it's the Bush administration's plan for the re-construction of Iraq. Now, I'm all for rebuilding Iraq when Saddam's gone. But it's ironic that Republicans don't have plans to stop the rise of Americans without health care. They're not funding the "leave-no-child-behind" education bill. They want to cut 500,000 kids out of after-school programs. They've already eliminated school-repair funding and the program to put 100,000 more teachers in our schools. Let's invest in Iraq and America. We can't be strong abroad if we're not strong at home.

SENATOR DOLE: As far as I am concerned, Mr. President, the one who should be worried about his health care is Saddam Hussein. It amazes me that at the very time the country is uniting behind our troops overseas, you are suggesting ways to divide us at home. You can't have it both ways. This week, you say President Bush is not spending enough on domestic programs. Next week you'll be all over him on the deficit. There will be plenty of time this year to debate Medicare reform, tax cuts, and our energy strategy that your friends in Congress continue to block. For the moment though, our country's focus should be on Iraq, not Amtrak, on POWs, not HMOs. The education Americans care about most right now is how fast we can educate Iraqi soldiers to say ‘I surrender.’ Hey, maybe there is a role for the French after all.

PRESIDENT CLINTON: Senator, unlike some of your Republican friends during Kosovo, I support our troops in Iraq and our President. But your party is for better schools for Iraqi children and kicking half a million poor American children out of after-school programs. They even want to eliminate the program to put more police on the streets, our first responders in the war against terror. Debate on domestic issues isn't divisive. It's democracy.

SENATOR DOLE: Democracy is about choices, and playing politics now is the wrong choice. Mr. President, this is a real war. We have troops on the ground. While we're talking, they're fighting. They need our patience and our prayers.

(MMIII, Viacom Internet Services Inc. , All Rights Reserved)
niet veel commentaar nodig hierbij, hé?
resultaat:
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javascript:history.back();http://www.cbsnews.com/http://www.cbsnews.com/

Bush Submits $2.23 Trillion Budget
WASHINGTON, Feb. 3, 2003

President Bush sent Congress a $2.23 trillion spending plan Monday that would accelerate tax cuts to bolster the weak economy, overhaul some of the government's biggest social programs and shower billions of additional dollars on defense and homeland security.

Even though hundreds of other government programs would be squeezed, the president projects the deficit will still hit record highs of $304 billion this year and $307 billion in 2004. Over the next five years, deficits would total $1.08 trillion.

CBS News White House Correspondent Mark Knoller reports that Mr. Bush blames the recession and the Sept. 11 terror attacks for the red ink.

White House Spokesman Ari Fleischer said the president is determined to lead the nation into economic growth and a reduction of the deficits.

Mr. Bush's budget plan for fiscal 2004 that begins Oct. 1 will set off months of heated debate in Congress. Democrats attacked the tax cuts as a boon for the wealthy that will do little to help the economy but will rob Social Security of the money needed for baby boomers' retirements.

"Instead of offering the nation a plan for long-term economic prosperity, the Mr. Bush budget burdens us, and our children, with trillions of dollars of new debt," said Sen. Kent Conrad D-N.D.

"His plan will push up interest rates, retard economic growth and create massive problems for the soon-to-be retiring baby boom generation," said Conrad, the Senate Budget Committee's top Democrat.

The president blamed the deficits "on a recession and a war we did not choose." He said his budget would impose "spending discipline" through such efforts as reshaping the government's big health care programs, Medicare and Medicaid, along more conservative lines.

"The budget for 2004 meets the challenges posed by three national priorities — winning the war against terrorism, securing the homeland and generating long-term economic growth," Mr. Bush said in his budget message to Congress.

Mr. Bush sent Congress a 5-inch stack of books, weighing 13 1/2 pounds, spelling out his proposal. The five separate documents, featuring a bright blue line drawing of the White House, included one extra book this year analyzing the efficiency of hundreds of federal programs, part of a Mr. Bush management initiative.

The budget was released two days after the Columbia space shuttle disaster. In the NASA section, prepared before the accident, the administration proposed a 23.9 percent increase in spending on the shuttle next year, to $3.97 billion. That would follow a 1.9 percent cut in the shuttle program for this year, when the administration anticipated spending $3.21 billion.

In its management assessment of NASA, the administration said of the shuttle program: "Shuttle operations are well managed but investments to improve the shuttle suffer from inadequate planning and poor cost management."

Mr. Bush's $670 billion economic stimulus tax cuts include eliminating the double taxation of stock dividends, plus making permanent his 2001 tax cuts that are now set to expire after 2010. Taken together, all the new tax cuts Mr. Bush is proposing would add up to $1.3 trillion over the next decade, on top of the $1.35 trillion tax reduction passed in 2001.

Democrats have vowed to fight the new tax reductions, saying the country can't afford them when the nation is preparing for possible war with Iraq.

The defense budget would increase by a sizable 4.2 percent. However, that does not include money for a war with Iraq. The proposed increase, combined with an even bigger 11 percent boost in the current year, is the biggest defense buildup since President Reagan's in the 1980s.

The $15.3 billion boost in defense spending represents half of the $30 billion the president's budget is seeking in new money for the operation of all federal agencies. These increases do not include automatic spending for the government's huge benefit programs such as Social Security and Medicare, which account for two-thirds of the entire federal budget.

The $2.23 trillion total spending for next year reflects a 4.2 percent increase. The budget proposal projects that revenues will rise by 4.7 percent to $1.92 trillion. That would leave a deficit of $304 billion for 2004.

The president also sets aside a large increase for the government's newest agency, the Department of Homeland Defense, created just 10 days ago, which would see its spending rise to $23.9 billion in 2004, an increase of 8 percent over the amount expected to be spent this year.

Other favored initiatives in the president's budget include education for disabled students, aid to school districts serving large numbers of poor students and a global AIDS initiative, veterans health care and assistance for U.S. allies in the fight against terrorism.

Outside of the favored programs, hundreds of other government agencies would be forced to make do with increases of around 2 percent, essentially in line with expected inflation.

"One conclusion is inescapable: The federal government must restrain the growth in any spending not directly associated with the physical security of the nation," Mr. Bush's budget book states.

CBS News Correspondent Bob Fuss reports that the new budget arrives as Congress is still struggling with the old one. Emergency measures have funded the government since October and there is no quick end in sight for the budget fights.

The Senate passed a huge budget bill last month, but it shifts things around to provide more money for drought relief, education and homeland defense and it's not clear if the House will go along. And they can't really do much with this new budget, until the old one is finished.

©MMIII, The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

illwill · 1 februari 2004, 18:02

Mooie cijfers zijn dat, maar waar smost de Belgische regering zijn geld dan aan op? naar militaire dingen zal het niet gaan.
Het is gewoon een rage om tegen Bush en Blair te zijn deze dagen. Triestig is het. Saddam heeft meer dan 500.000 mensen afgeslacht zonder reden en wanneer iemand ervoor wil zorgen dat deze bruut verdwijnt gaat men hier in europe precies toch kant kiezen voor deze bruut. Indien men achter hitler zou gegaan zijn, had men dan ook zo een kritiek geuit tegen alle leiders die dit idee zouden steunen?
Ik ben heel blij dat de US kwa militaire middelen de grootste is ter wereld, ik zou echt niet willen weten wat er gebeurt wanneer Oosterse landen deze macht zouden hebben. Rara wat zou Saddam hebben gadaan denk je?
Wees echt maar blij dat het zo is, anders zat je nu niet achter je pceetje dit bericht te lezen, dan zat je oftwel onder de grond oftwel aan een of ander front het land te beschermen!

Tavek · 1 februari 2004, 18:05

Citaat:

Oorspronkelijk geplaatst door illwill

Mooie cijfers zijn dat, maar waar smost de Belgische regering zijn geld dan aan op? naar militaire dingen zal het niet gaan.
Het is gewoon een rage om tegen Bush en Blair te zijn deze dagen. Triestig is het. Saddam heeft meer dan 500.000 mensen afgeslacht zonder reden en wanneer iemand ervoor wil zorgen dat deze bruut verdwijnt gaat men hier in europe precies toch kant kiezen voor deze bruut. Indien men achter hitler zou gegaan zijn, had men dan ook zo een kritiek geuit tegen alle leiders die dit idee zouden steunen?
Ik ben heel blij dat de US kwa militaire middelen de grootste is ter wereld, ik zou echt niet willen weten wat er gebeurt wanneer Oosterse landen deze macht zouden hebben. Rara wat zou Saddam hebben gadaan denk je?
Wees echt maar blij dat het zo is, anders zat je nu niet achter je pceetje dit bericht te lezen, dan zat je oftwel onder de grond oftwel aan een of ander front het land te beschermen!

Ik had liever een multipolaire wereld, waar meerdere machtscentra zijn die ongeveer even veel invloed hebben. De VS nuttigt alleen zijn eigen belangen, europa kan hun gestolen worden.....het gevoel is natuurlijk wederzijds vanaf nu.

illwill · 1 februari 2004, 18:16

Citaat:

Oorspronkelijk geplaatst door Tavek

Citaat:

Oorspronkelijk geplaatst door illwill

Mooie cijfers zijn dat, maar waar smost de Belgische regering zijn geld dan aan op? naar militaire dingen zal het niet gaan.
Het is gewoon een rage om tegen Bush en Blair te zijn deze dagen. Triestig is het. Saddam heeft meer dan 500.000 mensen afgeslacht zonder reden en wanneer iemand ervoor wil zorgen dat deze bruut verdwijnt gaat men hier in europe precies toch kant kiezen voor deze bruut. Indien men achter hitler zou gegaan zijn, had men dan ook zo een kritiek geuit tegen alle leiders die dit idee zouden steunen?
Ik ben heel blij dat de US kwa militaire middelen de grootste is ter wereld, ik zou echt niet willen weten wat er gebeurt wanneer Oosterse landen deze macht zouden hebben. Rara wat zou Saddam hebben gadaan denk je?
Wees echt maar blij dat het zo is, anders zat je nu niet achter je pceetje dit bericht te lezen, dan zat je oftwel onder de grond oftwel aan een of ander front het land te beschermen!

Ik had liever een multipolaire wereld, waar meerdere machtscentra zijn die ongeveer even veel invloed hebben. De VS nuttigt alleen zijn eigen belangen, europa kan hun gestolen worden.....het gevoel is natuurlijk wederzijds vanaf nu.

Laat me niet lachen, vanaf nu! lol
Dit is altijd zo geweest. Indien je een leider bent van een land doe je wat het beste is voor je eigen land. Anders ga je maar op de verkiezingslijst staan voor dat land waar je meer voor wil doen.
Men zei altijd dat het om de olie te doen was, awel waar is dat verhaal gebleven? Nu is het enkel te doen over de wapens. Voor mijn part hebben ze hierover allemaal gelogen, maar Saddam is gelukkig weg. Trouwens waarom beschuldigd niemand Frankrijk? Zij haddden verschillende contracten liggen voor miljoenen waardoor zij wel eens enkel tegen een oorlog zouden kunnen geweest zijn omwille van deze miljoene contracten.
Geef jij liever de macht terug aan Saddam, ook al zou de US enkel zijn binnengevallen voor de olie? Wat is het ergste, iemand die zonder reden 500.000 mensen afslacht, of iemand die deze man wil verdrijven maar in ruil misschien wat centen wil meepikken om dit te doen?

filosoof · 1 februari 2004, 18:52

Citaat:

Oorspronkelijk geplaatst door illwill

Mooie cijfers zijn dat, maar waar smost de Belgische regering zijn geld dan aan op? naar militaire dingen zal het niet gaan.
Het is gewoon een rage om tegen Bush en Blair te zijn deze dagen. Triestig is het. Saddam heeft meer dan 500.000 mensen afgeslacht zonder reden en wanneer iemand ervoor wil zorgen dat deze bruut verdwijnt gaat men hier in europe precies toch kant kiezen voor deze bruut. Indien men achter hitler zou gegaan zijn, had men dan ook zo een kritiek geuit tegen alle leiders die dit idee zouden steunen?
Ik ben heel blij dat de US kwa militaire middelen de grootste is ter wereld, ik zou echt niet willen weten wat er gebeurt wanneer Oosterse landen deze macht zouden hebben. Rara wat zou Saddam hebben gadaan denk je?
Wees echt maar blij dat het zo is, anders zat je nu niet achter je pceetje dit bericht te lezen, dan zat je oftwel onder de grond oftwel aan een of ander front het land te beschermen!

Illwill,

500.000 mensen afgeslacht? Laat dat nu toch hetzelfde cijfer zijn dat Madeleine Albright toegeeft als aantal kinderen gestorven tgv. de US blokkade van Irak (die ook geneesmiddelen etc. betrof)méér kinderen dan er in Hiroshima gestorven zijn.. . En véél spijt drukte ze er nauwelijks over uit):

"I THINK THIS IS A VERY HARD CHOICE, BUT THE PRICE - WE THINK THE PRICE IS WORTH IT."
http://home.attbi.com/~dhamre/docAlb.htm
http://flag.blackened.net/pipermail/...er/000346.html
http://sf.indymedia.org/news/2004/01/1671005.php
http://www.rationalenquirer.org/comm...es/000017.html

The following exchange occurred in a "60 Minutes" segment, "Punishing Saddam" (airdate May 12, 1996):
CBS Reporter Lesley Stahl (speaking of post-war sanctions against Iraq):
"We have heard that a half million children have died. I mean, that's more children than died in Hiroshima. And - and you know, is the price worth it?"

Madeleine Albright (at that time, US Ambassador to the UN):
"I think this is a very hard choice, but the price - we think the price is worth it."

Stahl won both an Emmy and a duPont-Columbia journalism award for this report, but Albright's comment went virtually unremarked in the U.S. (though it received considerable attention in the Middle East).

Within six months, Madeleine Albright was unanimously approved by the Senate as U.S. Secretary of State.

http://home.attbi.com/~dhamre/docAlb.htm

u n c o v e r I r a q . c o m

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

a l b r i g h t: " w o r t h i t "
The following exchange occurred in a "60 Minutes" segment, "Punishing Saddam" (airdate May 12, 1996):

CBS Reporter Lesley Stahl (speaking of post-war sanctions against Iraq):
"We have heard that a half million children have died. I mean, that's more children than died in Hiroshima. And - and you know, is the price worth it?"

Madeleine Albright (at that time, US Ambassador to the UN):
"I think this is a very hard choice, but the price - we think the price is worth it."

Stahl won both an Emmy and a duPont-Columbia journalism award for this report, but Albright's comment went virtually unremarked in the U.S. (though it received considerable attention in the Middle East).

Within six months, Madeleine Albright was unanimously approved by the Senate as U.S. Secretary of State.

Yes, she said it. The Albright interview clips
Seeing is believing. This exchange is made available under the terms below in standard Internet multimedia formats. The clips are unedited, save for the addition of titling. Each clip is roughly 20-seconds long, and has been tested on IE4/IE5 and Netscape 4.5 (Windows 95/98/NT/2K, only). You can play these files directly by clicking on the links. To download a copy to your local system, right-click the link and choose "Save target as ..." (IE) or "Save link as ..." (Netscape).
>> Albright.avi: Color video and sound. 1.2MB
>> WorthIt.wav: Audio only. 195KB

Videotapes of the entire segment can be purchased from CBS News (which retains the copyright) at 1-800-848-3256. The report is not for the faint of heart; the child above died minutes after he was filmed.

The interview continues
It's important to note this wasn't an ambush interview. Albright came well-prepared, even showing visual aids at one point. As you'll hear on the recording, Albright utters "... worth it" with a rising inflection. She continues speaking, her voice obscured by Stahl's voiceover. Albright - probably realizing her statement was impolitic - adds the following justification.

Albright attempts to justify her comment
On tape, Albright's rationale was edited to follow the statement of a lawyer specializing in human rights. The lawyer stated that sanctioning Iraq's civilian population to change its leadership was not moral, to which Albright responded:

ALBRIGHT: It is a moral question, but the moral question is even a larger one. Don't we owe to the American people and to the American military and to the other countries in the region that this man (Saddam Hussein) not be a threat?

STAHL: Even with the starvation?

ALBRIGHT: I think, Leslie … it is hard for me to say this because I am a humane person, but my first responsibility is making sure that United States forces do not have to go and re-fight the Gulf War.

The second Stahl/Albright exchange has now been converted to AVI format.

>> Albright2.avi: Color video and sound. 1.8MB
How is war to be fought?
The morality of war concerns not just when to fight, but how. The protection of non-combatants during hostilities has been recognized for over a millenium, since the Council of Le Puy in 975. It is the core of all convention and law governing behavior during war.

Albright turns this on its head. She justifies civilian starvation because it may reduce the risk of military casualties.

Dr. Albright's conversational tone here is striking, verging on a plea for understanding from Leslie Stahl. 'This is not an easy job', she seems to say, 'and I'm not faced with morally unambiguous or easy choices.' This is true, of course. The decision to commit troops to combat is grevious, both morally and (here's the rub) politically.

Albright acknowledges that committing troops to battle presents a moral danger, as does endangering Iraq's civilian population by embargo. What goes unsaid is that the domestic political cost to win support for military action would have been enormous. Not so for the embargo -- especially if the results weren't reported.

To engage Iraq militarily would have been difficult, politically and morally. To contain Iraq by embargo was far, far, far less difficult politically, but morally untenable. Here the course is set: expedience trumps morality; real politik bests military and national honor.

Consider American reaction if Albright's statements had been uttered by, say, Slobodan Milosevic ("Please understand, I had to besiege the Kosovar Albanians to avoid risking our Serbian troops. The 500,000 infant deaths are tragic, but my duty was clear."). One imagines the uproar echoing to The Hague.

An instinctive disavowal
In May 1998, Albright made the following comments before the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. Note Albright's immediate, instinctive disavowal of her earlier remark:

Q: One very brief question on a related thing in the region. Two years ago, on "60 Minutes," you said that the price of half a million Iraqi children dying as a result of the sanctions, largely, was, quote, "worth it." Do you regret making that statement, which got substantial play in the Arab world, though not much here?
SEC. ALBRIGHT: Let me just say this; I have said -- I do not actually remember saying that specifically --
Q: I've seen it.
SEC. ALBRIGHT: Well then, I guess I said it. Let me just say this: I believe that the fact that Iraqi children are dying is not the fault of the United States, but of Saddam Hussein. And I think it is ridiculous for the United States to be blamed for the dictatorial and cruel, barbaric ways that Saddam Hussein treats his people ... So you can't lay that guilt trip on me. I mean I think it is Saddam --
Q: You don't think the U.S. has any culpability --
Moderator: I think she's addressed that.
SEC. ALBRIGHT: Yeah.

A more recent follow-up was reported by journalist John Pilger in The Guardian (UK), April 3, 2000.

In Washington, I interviewed James Rubin, an under secretary of state who speaks for Madeleine Albright. ... When I questioned Rubin about (Albright's "worth it" comment), he claimed Albright's words were taken out of context. He then questioned the "methodology" of a report by the UN's World Health Organisation (sic), which had estimated half a million deaths. Advising me against being "too idealistic", he said: "In making policy, one has to choose between two bad choices . . . and unfortunately the effect of sanctions has been more than we would have hoped." He referred me to the "real world" where "real choices have to be made". In mitigation, he said, "Our sense is that prior to sanctions, there was serious poverty and health problems in Iraq." The opposite was true, as Unicef's data on Iraq before 1990, makes clear.

Out of context?
If by "out of context" Rubin means there's a deeper background that would add complexity to Albright's comment, then he's right ... but only in the humdrum sense in which this is always true of interviews.
But if Rubin is questioning the report's accuracy, he is utterly disingenuous: the report was not questioned at the time it aired, nor later when it won an Emmy and duPont award. Further, the State Department has always been fully aware of sanctions' civilian impact, as current attempts to re-target sanctions confirm.

Even when talking with Pilger, Rubin didn't press the issue, instead offering "out of context" as the most casual of slurs before veering onto the next defense. Rubin undercuts, rather than challenges; concealment remains the desired outcome.

Blowback
As this is being written, lawyers for a defendent in the embassy bombing trial (Mohamed al-'Owhali) have played Albright's interview in court, seeking to explain their client's motivation (the tragic fulfillment of Chalmers Johnson's Blowback).

Scores of State Department employees were killed and horribly injured by the bombings, and in view of this fact then surely -- if Albright's statement was taken out of context -- surely the State Department would raise an objection here?

But of course, they don't. As the NY Times reported (June 5, 2001):

The ("60 Minutes") program also includes an interview with Secretary of State (sic) Madeleine K. Albright, who is confronted with the estimate that 500,000 children had died since the imposition of sanctions in Iraq, and is asked whether the price was worth it. "I think this is a very hard choice, but the price, we think the price is worth it," she replied. A spokeswoman for the former secretary of state said that "it would be inappropriate for Secretary Albright to comment on this while the trial is still going on."
[Update: The "Blowback" defense carried the day, and the death penalty was not applied. A transcript of the closing argument is available on this site.]

Defamation and sound-bite journalism
At the time she spoke, Albright was not a policy-maker. She was loyally, if ineptly, defending policies made by her superiors, policies which pre-dated the administration in which she served. Would it have been personally unfair to Albright to further publicize these remarks?

The answer, of course, is "no". To even raise this question is to confuse protecting a bureaucrat's career with the security and reputation of the country they serve, while ignoring millions affected by the policies. Hints of this confusion -- conflating private political ambitions with national interests -- swirl frequently through America's Iraq policies and media coverage.

In her "60 Minutes" interview, Albright not only defended the civilian cost of the embargo, but justified this course because it lessened the risk of military involvement (and by extension, lessened the political cost to her administration). Albright made these comments in an interview for which she prepared, at a time when she was mere months from becoming chief foreign policy officer for the most powerful country on earth.

Publicizing these comments and the discussion thereby provoked would have been in the noblest traditions of American journalism.

This is being written five years after Albright's interview. The policies Albright defended are now discredited, and understanding is growing of America's role in hundreds of thousands of senseless deaths. It's a tragedy Albright's remark wasn't reported in 1996, and this story pursued.

- Commentary by Drew Hamre
June, 2001

Photos and multimedia material on this page Copyright CBS News, 1996.
The Pilger material is Copyright by The Guardian, 2000
The bombing trial report is Copyright The New York Times, 2001

http://www.irvinereview.org/guest1.htm

Irvine Review
The voice of reason at UC Irvine

Return to Irvinereview.org Homepage.

ALBRIGHT'S BLUNDER
By Douglas E. Hill

Critics of UN sanctions against Iraq often claim that the sanctions have killed half a million Iraqi children, and offer as evidence Madeleine Albright's admission of this on “60 Minutes.” Yet Albright’s response proved nothing other than her incompetence as a diplomat by answering, rather than challenging, a loaded question. Diverse speakers and writers at UCI, including Najeeb Kahn in the New University (1999), Dr. Mark LeVine (Cross Cultural Center, October 24, 2002), and a speaker introducing a video on Iraq sanctions (in the Crystal Cove auditorium) have all cited her remarks. Given the frequency that opponents of sanctions cite her remarks, she has gotten surprisingly little criticism from sanctions supporters and others who suspect that Iraqi government policies have something to do with child mortality there. Here's the quote, from when Leslie Stahl interviewed then US Ambassador to the UN Madeleine Albright on "60 Minutes" on 12 May 1996:

Leslie Stahl: "We have heard that a half million children have died (as a result of sanctions against Iraq). I mean, that is more children than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price worth it?"

Madeleine Albright: "I think this is a very hard choice, but the price, we think the price is worth it."

Stahl said, "we have heard." She did not say, "we have data," or even better, offer an outline of the data that allegedly shows this. It should not be surprising that in a totalitarian society like Iraq, learning the rate of mortality of its children, and the causes of that rate, is quite difficult. (Determining such causes is a difficult job for epidemiologists even in a free society.) In fact, this is a topic of no small controversy. David Cortright wrote in The Nation last year:

... [T]he 1999 report "Morbidity and Mortality Among Iraqi Children," by Columbia University's Richard Garfield, ... estimated the most likely number of excess deaths among children under five years of age from 1990 through March 1998 to be 227,000. Garfield's analysis showed child mortality rates double those of the previous decade.

(These numbers indicate a longer period with less than half of the numbers that Stahl cited.) Thus no one argues that there is problem of excess child mortality in Iraq, but the numbers and cause are a matter of controversy. But note what Stahl did: she did not ask Albright how many children had died, or what the cause was. She used an old interrogation trick: she asked a loaded question. This is a question, which like “do you use a club when you beat your wife?” incriminates you whether you answer yes or no. She asked if the price was worth it.

And Albright walked right into this trap. She did not dispute the numbers, or the cause. She just said, essentially, "yes" to a loaded question. If a lawyer is representing you, he had better not answer a loaded question in such an incriminating matter (and he had better not let you answer one either). But as an Ambassador, Albright was representing all Americans. A diplomat worth her salt would have known this. But apparently Albright did not.

It is a scandal that her response did not prevent Albright from becoming Secretary of State, and thus in charge of American diplomacy. It showed incompetent diplomacy for her to answer in the manner she did, even if the numbers and cause implied by the data in the loaded question were true. But while the numbers are in question, the facts do not support the sanctions as a primary cause. When Albright was Secretary, her own State Department refuted that UN imposed sanctions could be a cause of these casualties, when it wrote in a document released 13 September 1999 (and updated 24 March 2000):

Sanctions are not intended to harm the people of Iraq. That is why the sanctions regime has always specifically exempted food and medicine. The Iraqi regime has always been free to import as much of these goods as possible. It refuses to do so, even though it claims it wants to relieve the suffering of the people of Iraq.

Thus a stupid reply from Albright cannot be used to claim that the sanctions are the cause when a careful study from her department disputes this. A later report from the State department, of 26 January 2001, also supports the claim that it is Iraqi government behavior that is so hurting its citizens:

During this period [June to December, 2000], US$7.8 billion were available to Iraq for purchases during this period, yet Iraq submitted purchase applications worth only US$4.26 billion - barely 54 percent of the amount available for purchases to help the humanitarian needs of the Iraqi people. In key sectors of the Iraqi economy, Saddam's regime's disregard for the welfare of the Iraqi people is made plain.

As to what could be causing the increase in mortality, Cortright in The Nation cites a UNICEF study by Mohamed Ali and Iqbal Shah that seem to show that it is not in fact the sanctions that are primarily responsible for the increase in child mortality:

In south-central Iraq [under Iraqi government control], child mortality rates rose from 56 per 1,000 births for the period 1984-89 to 131 per 1,000 for the period 1994-99. In the autonomous Kurdish region in the north [subject to the same sanctions] … child mortality rates actually fell during the same period, from 80 per 1,000 births to 72 per 1,000.

Thus despite the sanctions, the mortality rate is higher only in the areas under Iraqi government control, suggesting that it is that government, rather than the sanctions, which bears primary responsibility. If the numbers are as grave has a quarter- to a half-a-million dead children, then there is a strong humanitarian argument to liberate Iraq from the tyranny holding Iraqi children hostage like this. And it is unfortunate that an American diplomat who was to become U.S. Secretary of State would aid those who wish to blame the U.S. by conceding that UN sanctions are responsible when the evidence does not support this.

Douglas E. Hill is a graduate student at UCI in Logic & Philosophy of Science, is vice-president of Students for Science & Skepticism, and hosts "Campus Talk UCI" Mondays 4-5 pm on KUCI 88.9 fm. This article is copyright © 2002 by Douglas E. Hill.

Return to Irvinereview.org.
Copyright © 2002 The Irvine Review Foundation

Zowel de US als het UK hebben nu moeten toegeven dat de Mass Destruction Weapons, die als excuus voor de oorlog dienden niet (meer) bestonden op het ogenblik dat de oorlog begonnen werd...
Ze zijn er ooit wel geweest:

HOW DID IRAQ GET ITS WEAPONS? WE SOLD THEM
By Neil Mackay and Felicity Arbuthnot
http://www.sundayherald.com/27572

THE US and Britain sold Saddam Hussein the technology and materials Iraq needed to develop nuclear, chemical and biological weapons of mass destruction.
Reports by the US Senate's committee on banking, housing and urban affairs which oversees American exports policy reveal that the US, under the successive administrations of Ronald Reagan and George Bush Snr, sold materials including anthrax, VX nerve gas, West Nile fever germs and botulism to Iraq right up until March 1992, as well as germs similar to tuberculosis and pneumonia. Other bacteria sold included brucella melitensis, which damages major organs, and clostridium perfringens, which causes gas gangrene.
Classified US Defence Department documents also seen by the Sunday Herald show that Britain sold Iraq the drug pralidoxine, an antidote to nerve gas, in March 1992, after the end of the Gulf war. Pralidoxine can be reverse engineered to create nerve gas.
The Senate committee's reports on US Chemical and Biological Warfare-Related Dual-Use Exports to Iraq , undertaken in 1992 in the wake of the Gulf war, give the date and destination of all US exports. The reports show, for example, that on May 2, 1986, two batches of bacillus anthracis the micro-organism that causes anthrax were shipped to the Iraqi Ministry of Higher Education, along with two batches of the bacterium clostridium botulinum, the agent that causes deadly botulism poisoning.
One batch each of salmonella and E coli were shipped to the Iraqi State Company for Drug Industries on August 31, 1987. Other shipments went from the US to the Iraq Atomic Energy Commission on July 11, 1988; the Department of Biology at the University of Basrah in November 1989; the Department of Microbiology at Baghdad University in June 1985; the Ministry of Health in April 1985 and Officers' City, a military complex in Baghdad, in March and April 1986.
The shipments to Iraq went on even after Saddam Hussein ordered the gassing of the Kurdish town of Halabja, in which at least 5000 men, women and children died. The atrocity, which shocked the world, took placeÊin March 1988, but a month later the components and materials of weapons of mass destruction were continuing to arrive in Baghdad from the US.
The Senate report also makes clear that: The United States provided the government of Iraq with dual use' licensed materials which assisted in the development of Iraqi chemical, biological and missile-system programmes.
This assistance, according to the report, included chemical warfare-agent precursors, chemical warfare-agent production facility plans and technical drawings, chemical warfare filling equipment, biological warfare-related materials, missile fabrication equipment and missile system guidance equipment.
Donald Riegle, then chairman of the committee, said: UN inspectors had identified many United States manufactured items that had been exported from the United States to Iraq under licences issued by the Department of Commerce, and [established] that these items were used to further Iraq's chemical and nuclear weapons development and its missile delivery system development programmes.
Riegle added that, between January 1985 and August 1990, the Òexecutive branch of our government approved 771 different export licences for sale of dual-use technology to Iraq. I think that is a devastating record.
It is thought the information contained in the Senate committee reports is likely to make up much of the evidence of proof that Bush and Blair will reveal in the coming days to justify the US and Britain going to war with Iraq. It is unlikely, however, that the two leaders will admit it was the Western powers that armed Saddam with these weapons of mass destruction.
However, Bush and Blair will also have to prove that Saddam still has chemical, biological and nuclear capabilities. This looks like a difficult case to clinch in view of the fact that Scott Ritter, the UN's former chief weapons inspector in Iraq, says the United Nations destroyed most of Iraq's wea pons of massdestruction and doubts that Saddam could have rebuilt his stocks by now.
According to Ritter, between 90% and 95% of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction were des troyed by the UN. He believes the remainder were probably used or destroyed during Òthe ravages of the Gulf War.
Ritter has described himself as a card-carrying Republican who voted for George W Bush. Nevertheless, he has called the president a liar over his claims that Saddam Hussein is a threat to America.
http://www.sundayherald.com/27572

Ritter has also alleged that the manufacture of chemical and biological weapons emits certain gases, which would have been detected by satellite. We have seen none of this, he insists. If Iraq was producing weapons today, we would have definitive proof.
He also dismisses claims that Iraq may have a nuclear weapons capacity or be on the verge of attaining one, saying that gamma-particle atomic radiation from the radioactive materials in the warheads would also have been detected by western surveillance.
The UN's former co-ordinator in Iraq and former UN under-secretary general, Count Hans von Sponeck, has also told the Sunday Herald that he believes the West is lying about Iraq's weapons programme.
Von Sponeck visited the Al-Dora and Faluja factories near Baghdad in 1999 after they were comprehensively trashed on the orders of UN inspectors, on the grounds that they were suspected of being chemical weapons plants. He returned to the site late in July this year, with a German TV crew, and said both plants were still wrecked.
ÒWe filmed the evidence of the dishonesty of the claims that they were producing chemical and biological weapons, von Sponeck has told the Sunday Herald.They are indeed in the same destroyed state which we witnessed in 1999. There was no trace of any resumed activity at all.
08 September 2002
javascript:history.back()javascript:history.back() javascript:history.back()back to previous page

Ik denk écht niet dat die "smeerlap" Saddam Hoessein ooit levend een internationaal tribunaal zal halen...
Ronald Reagan en George Bush Snr ook niet, trouwens...
Tiens, West Nile fever, was daar geen onverklaarbare outbreak van in NYC, enkele jaren geleden?

http://www.coxar.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/

illwill · 1 februari 2004, 19:26

Euhm, geneesmiddelen waren er al bijna niet in Iraq voor de gewone bevolking, ziekenhuizen die al voor de inval vol lagen met zieke en gefolterde mensen die tijdens de oorlog sterven wil niet zeggen dat het meteen de schuld is van de US. Bij die 500.000 afgeslachte mensen van die chemische bombardementen zijn nog niet de geexecuteerde en inderdaad ook gestorve mensen geteld door een gebrek aan geneesmiddelen.

Maar goed, stel dat er evenveel mensen gestorven zijn door alles wat saddam heeft gedaan en door de inval om saddam niet de kans te geven om dit te blijven doen, is dan de US nog meer schuldig? Moet je mij toch eens uitleggen, zoniet, waarom heeft men dan iets gedaan tegen de Duitsers en hitler vroeger?
Waarom kom jij niet op straat om tegen de Engelsen en de Amerikananen te protesteren dat er zoveel doden zijn gevallen bij het bestrijden van de duitsers?

filosoof · 1 februari 2004, 19:33

Citaat:

Oorspronkelijk geplaatst door filosoof

Citaat:

Oorspronkelijk geplaatst door illwill

Mooie cijfers zijn dat, maar waar smost de Belgische regering zijn geld dan aan op? naar militaire dingen zal het niet gaan.
Het is gewoon een rage om tegen Bush en Blair te zijn deze dagen. Triestig is het. Saddam heeft meer dan 500.000 mensen afgeslacht zonder reden en wanneer iemand ervoor wil zorgen dat deze bruut verdwijnt gaat men hier in europe precies toch kant kiezen voor deze bruut. Indien men achter hitler zou gegaan zijn, had men dan ook zo een kritiek geuit tegen alle leiders die dit idee zouden steunen?
Ik ben heel blij dat de US kwa militaire middelen de grootste is ter wereld, ik zou echt niet willen weten wat er gebeurt wanneer Oosterse landen deze macht zouden hebben. Rara wat zou Saddam hebben gadaan denk je?
Wees echt maar blij dat het zo is, anders zat je nu niet achter je pceetje dit bericht te lezen, dan zat je oftwel onder de grond oftwel aan een of ander front het land te beschermen!

Illwill,

500.000 mensen afgeslacht? Laat dat nu toch hetzelfde cijfer zijn dat Madeleine Albright toegeeft als aantal kinderen gestorven tgv. de US blokkade van Irak (die ook geneesmiddelen etc. betrof)méér kinderen dan er in Hiroshima gestorven zijn.. . En véél spijt drukte ze er nauwelijks over uit):

"I THINK THIS IS A VERY HARD CHOICE, BUT THE PRICE - WE THINK THE PRICE IS WORTH IT."
http://home.attbi.com/~dhamre/docAlb.htm
http://flag.blackened.net/pipermail/...er/000346.html
http://sf.indymedia.org/news/2004/01/1671005.php
http://www.rationalenquirer.org/comm...es/000017.html

The following exchange occurred in a "60 Minutes" segment, "Punishing Saddam" (airdate May 12, 1996):
CBS Reporter Lesley Stahl (speaking of post-war sanctions against Iraq):
"We have heard that a half million children have died. I mean, that's more children than died in Hiroshima. And - and you know, is the price worth it?"

Madeleine Albright (at that time, US Ambassador to the UN):
"I think this is a very hard choice, but the price - we think the price is worth it."

Stahl won both an Emmy and a duPont-Columbia journalism award for this report, but Albright's comment went virtually unremarked in the U.S. (though it received considerable attention in the Middle East).

Within six months, Madeleine Albright was unanimously approved by the Senate as U.S. Secretary of State.

http://home.attbi.com/~dhamre/docAlb.htm

u n c o v e r I r a q . c o m

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

a l b r i g h t: " w o r t h i t "
The following exchange occurred in a "60 Minutes" segment, "Punishing Saddam" (airdate May 12, 1996):

CBS Reporter Lesley Stahl (speaking of post-war sanctions against Iraq):
"We have heard that a half million children have died. I mean, that's more children than died in Hiroshima. And - and you know, is the price worth it?"

Madeleine Albright (at that time, US Ambassador to the UN):
"I think this is a very hard choice, but the price - we think the price is worth it."

Stahl won both an Emmy and a duPont-Columbia journalism award for this report, but Albright's comment went virtually unremarked in the U.S. (though it received considerable attention in the Middle East).

Within six months, Madeleine Albright was unanimously approved by the Senate as U.S. Secretary of State.

Yes, she said it. The Albright interview clips
Seeing is believing. This exchange is made available under the terms below in standard Internet multimedia formats. The clips are unedited, save for the addition of titling. Each clip is roughly 20-seconds long, and has been tested on IE4/IE5 and Netscape 4.5 (Windows 95/98/NT/2K, only). You can play these files directly by clicking on the links. To download a copy to your local system, right-click the link and choose "Save target as ..." (IE) or "Save link as ..." (Netscape).
>> Albright.avi: Color video and sound. 1.2MB
>> WorthIt.wav: Audio only. 195KB

Videotapes of the entire segment can be purchased from CBS News (which retains the copyright) at 1-800-848-3256. The report is not for the faint of heart; the child above died minutes after he was filmed.

The interview continues
It's important to note this wasn't an ambush interview. Albright came well-prepared, even showing visual aids at one point. As you'll hear on the recording, Albright utters "... worth it" with a rising inflection. She continues speaking, her voice obscured by Stahl's voiceover. Albright - probably realizing her statement was impolitic - adds the following justification.

Albright attempts to justify her comment
On tape, Albright's rationale was edited to follow the statement of a lawyer specializing in human rights. The lawyer stated that sanctioning Iraq's civilian population to change its leadership was not moral, to which Albright responded:

ALBRIGHT: It is a moral question, but the moral question is even a larger one. Don't we owe to the American people and to the American military and to the other countries in the region that this man (Saddam Hussein) not be a threat?

STAHL: Even with the starvation?

ALBRIGHT: I think, Leslie … it is hard for me to say this because I am a humane person, but my first responsibility is making sure that United States forces do not have to go and re-fight the Gulf War.

The second Stahl/Albright exchange has now been converted to AVI format.

>> Albright2.avi: Color video and sound. 1.8MB
How is war to be fought?
The morality of war concerns not just when to fight, but how. The protection of non-combatants during hostilities has been recognized for over a millenium, since the Council of Le Puy in 975. It is the core of all convention and law governing behavior during war.

Albright turns this on its head. She justifies civilian starvation because it may reduce the risk of military casualties.

Dr. Albright's conversational tone here is striking, verging on a plea for understanding from Leslie Stahl. 'This is not an easy job', she seems to say, 'and I'm not faced with morally unambiguous or easy choices.' This is true, of course. The decision to commit troops to combat is grevious, both morally and (here's the rub) politically.

Albright acknowledges that committing troops to battle presents a moral danger, as does endangering Iraq's civilian population by embargo. What goes unsaid is that the domestic political cost to win support for military action would have been enormous. Not so for the embargo -- especially if the results weren't reported.

To engage Iraq militarily would have been difficult, politically and morally. To contain Iraq by embargo was far, far, far less difficult politically, but morally untenable. Here the course is set: expedience trumps morality; real politik bests military and national honor.

Consider American reaction if Albright's statements had been uttered by, say, Slobodan Milosevic ("Please understand, I had to besiege the Kosovar Albanians to avoid risking our Serbian troops. The 500,000 infant deaths are tragic, but my duty was clear."). One imagines the uproar echoing to The Hague.

An instinctive disavowal
In May 1998, Albright made the following comments before the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. Note Albright's immediate, instinctive disavowal of her earlier remark:

Q: One very brief question on a related thing in the region. Two years ago, on "60 Minutes," you said that the price of half a million Iraqi children dying as a result of the sanctions, largely, was, quote, "worth it." Do you regret making that statement, which got substantial play in the Arab world, though not much here?
SEC. ALBRIGHT: Let me just say this; I have said -- I do not actually remember saying that specifically --
Q: I've seen it.
SEC. ALBRIGHT: Well then, I guess I said it. Let me just say this: I believe that the fact that Iraqi children are dying is not the fault of the United States, but of Saddam Hussein. And I think it is ridiculous for the United States to be blamed for the dictatorial and cruel, barbaric ways that Saddam Hussein treats his people ... So you can't lay that guilt trip on me. I mean I think it is Saddam --
Q: You don't think the U.S. has any culpability --
Moderator: I think she's addressed that.
SEC. ALBRIGHT: Yeah.

A more recent follow-up was reported by journalist John Pilger in The Guardian (UK), April 3, 2000.

In Washington, I interviewed James Rubin, an under secretary of state who speaks for Madeleine Albright. ... When I questioned Rubin about (Albright's "worth it" comment), he claimed Albright's words were taken out of context. He then questioned the "methodology" of a report by the UN's World Health Organisation (sic), which had estimated half a million deaths. Advising me against being "too idealistic", he said: "In making policy, one has to choose between two bad choices . . . and unfortunately the effect of sanctions has been more than we would have hoped." He referred me to the "real world" where "real choices have to be made". In mitigation, he said, "Our sense is that prior to sanctions, there was serious poverty and health problems in Iraq." The opposite was true, as Unicef's data on Iraq before 1990, makes clear.

Out of context?
If by "out of context" Rubin means there's a deeper background that would add complexity to Albright's comment, then he's right ... but only in the humdrum sense in which this is always true of interviews.
But if Rubin is questioning the report's accuracy, he is utterly disingenuous: the report was not questioned at the time it aired, nor later when it won an Emmy and duPont award. Further, the State Department has always been fully aware of sanctions' civilian impact, as current attempts to re-target sanctions confirm.

Even when talking with Pilger, Rubin didn't press the issue, instead offering "out of context" as the most casual of slurs before veering onto the next defense. Rubin undercuts, rather than challenges; concealment remains the desired outcome.

Blowback
As this is being written, lawyers for a defendent in the embassy bombing trial (Mohamed al-'Owhali) have played Albright's interview in court, seeking to explain their client's motivation (the tragic fulfillment of Chalmers Johnson's Blowback).

Scores of State Department employees were killed and horribly injured by the bombings, and in view of this fact then surely -- if Albright's statement was taken out of context -- surely the State Department would raise an objection here?

But of course, they don't. As the NY Times reported (June 5, 2001):

The ("60 Minutes") program also includes an interview with Secretary of State (sic) Madeleine K. Albright, who is confronted with the estimate that 500,000 children had died since the imposition of sanctions in Iraq, and is asked whether the price was worth it. "I think this is a very hard choice, but the price, we think the price is worth it," she replied. A spokeswoman for the former secretary of state said that "it would be inappropriate for Secretary Albright to comment on this while the trial is still going on."
[Update: The "Blowback" defense carried the day, and the death penalty was not applied. A transcript of the closing argument is available on this site.]

Defamation and sound-bite journalism
At the time she spoke, Albright was not a policy-maker. She was loyally, if ineptly, defending policies made by her superiors, policies which pre-dated the administration in which she served. Would it have been personally unfair to Albright to further publicize these remarks?

The answer, of course, is "no". To even raise this question is to confuse protecting a bureaucrat's career with the security and reputation of the country they serve, while ignoring millions affected by the policies. Hints of this confusion -- conflating private political ambitions with national interests -- swirl frequently through America's Iraq policies and media coverage.

In her "60 Minutes" interview, Albright not only defended the civilian cost of the embargo, but justified this course because it lessened the risk of military involvement (and by extension, lessened the political cost to her administration). Albright made these comments in an interview for which she prepared, at a time when she was mere months from becoming chief foreign policy officer for the most powerful country on earth.

Publicizing these comments and the discussion thereby provoked would have been in the noblest traditions of American journalism.

This is being written five years after Albright's interview. The policies Albright defended are now discredited, and understanding is growing of America's role in hundreds of thousands of senseless deaths. It's a tragedy Albright's remark wasn't reported in 1996, and this story pursued.

- Commentary by Drew Hamre
June, 2001

Photos and multimedia material on this page Copyright CBS News, 1996.
The Pilger material is Copyright by The Guardian, 2000
The bombing trial report is Copyright The New York Times, 2001

http://www.irvinereview.org/guest1.htm

Irvine Review
The voice of reason at UC Irvine

Return to Irvinereview.org Homepage.

ALBRIGHT'S BLUNDER
By Douglas E. Hill

Critics of UN sanctions against Iraq often claim that the sanctions have killed half a million Iraqi children, and offer as evidence Madeleine Albright's admission of this on “60 Minutes.” Yet Albright’s response proved nothing other than her incompetence as a diplomat by answering, rather than challenging, a loaded question. Diverse speakers and writers at UCI, including Najeeb Kahn in the New University (1999), Dr. Mark LeVine (Cross Cultural Center, October 24, 2002), and a speaker introducing a video on Iraq sanctions (in the Crystal Cove auditorium) have all cited her remarks. Given the frequency that opponents of sanctions cite her remarks, she has gotten surprisingly little criticism from sanctions supporters and others who suspect that Iraqi government policies have something to do with child mortality there. Here's the quote, from when Leslie Stahl interviewed then US Ambassador to the UN Madeleine Albright on "60 Minutes" on 12 May 1996:

Leslie Stahl: "We have heard that a half million children have died (as a result of sanctions against Iraq). I mean, that is more children than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price worth it?"

Madeleine Albright: "I think this is a very hard choice, but the price, we think the price is worth it."

Stahl said, "we have heard." She did not say, "we have data," or even better, offer an outline of the data that allegedly shows this. It should not be surprising that in a totalitarian society like Iraq, learning the rate of mortality of its children, and the causes of that rate, is quite difficult. (Determining such causes is a difficult job for epidemiologists even in a free society.) In fact, this is a topic of no small controversy. David Cortright wrote in The Nation last year:

... [T]he 1999 report "Morbidity and Mortality Among Iraqi Children," by Columbia University's Richard Garfield, ... estimated the most likely number of excess deaths among children under five years of age from 1990 through March 1998 to be 227,000. Garfield's analysis showed child mortality rates double those of the previous decade.

(These numbers indicate a longer period with less than half of the numbers that Stahl cited.) Thus no one argues that there is problem of excess child mortality in Iraq, but the numbers and cause are a matter of controversy. But note what Stahl did: she did not ask Albright how many children had died, or what the cause was. She used an old interrogation trick: she asked a loaded question. This is a question, which like “do you use a club when you beat your wife?” incriminates you whether you answer yes or no. She asked if the price was worth it.

And Albright walked right into this trap. She did not dispute the numbers, or the cause. She just said, essentially, "yes" to a loaded question. If a lawyer is representing you, he had better not answer a loaded question in such an incriminating matter (and he had better not let you answer one either). But as an Ambassador, Albright was representing all Americans. A diplomat worth her salt would have known this. But apparently Albright did not.

It is a scandal that her response did not prevent Albright from becoming Secretary of State, and thus in charge of American diplomacy. It showed incompetent diplomacy for her to answer in the manner she did, even if the numbers and cause implied by the data in the loaded question were true. But while the numbers are in question, the facts do not support the sanctions as a primary cause. When Albright was Secretary, her own State Department refuted that UN imposed sanctions could be a cause of these casualties, when it wrote in a document released 13 September 1999 (and updated 24 March 2000):

Sanctions are not intended to harm the people of Iraq. That is why the sanctions regime has always specifically exempted food and medicine. The Iraqi regime has always been free to import as much of these goods as possible. It refuses to do so, even though it claims it wants to relieve the suffering of the people of Iraq.

Thus a stupid reply from Albright cannot be used to claim that the sanctions are the cause when a careful study from her department disputes this. A later report from the State department, of 26 January 2001, also supports the claim that it is Iraqi government behavior that is so hurting its citizens:

During this period [June to December, 2000], US$7.8 billion were available to Iraq for purchases during this period, yet Iraq submitted purchase applications worth only US$4.26 billion - barely 54 percent of the amount available for purchases to help the humanitarian needs of the Iraqi people. In key sectors of the Iraqi economy, Saddam's regime's disregard for the welfare of the Iraqi people is made plain.

As to what could be causing the increase in mortality, Cortright in The Nation cites a UNICEF study by Mohamed Ali and Iqbal Shah that seem to show that it is not in fact the sanctions that are primarily responsible for the increase in child mortality:

In south-central Iraq [under Iraqi government control], child mortality rates rose from 56 per 1,000 births for the period 1984-89 to 131 per 1,000 for the period 1994-99. In the autonomous Kurdish region in the north [subject to the same sanctions] … child mortality rates actually fell during the same period, from 80 per 1,000 births to 72 per 1,000.

Thus despite the sanctions, the mortality rate is higher only in the areas under Iraqi government control, suggesting that it is that government, rather than the sanctions, which bears primary responsibility. If the numbers are as grave has a quarter- to a half-a-million dead children, then there is a strong humanitarian argument to liberate Iraq from the tyranny holding Iraqi children hostage like this. And it is unfortunate that an American diplomat who was to become U.S. Secretary of State would aid those who wish to blame the U.S. by conceding that UN sanctions are responsible when the evidence does not support this.

Douglas E. Hill is a graduate student at UCI in Logic & Philosophy of Science, is vice-president of Students for Science & Skepticism, and hosts "Campus Talk UCI" Mondays 4-5 pm on KUCI 88.9 fm. This article is copyright © 2002 by Douglas E. Hill.

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Copyright © 2002 The Irvine Review Foundation

Zowel de US als het UK hebben nu moeten toegeven dat de Mass Destruction Weapons, die als excuus voor de oorlog dienden niet (meer) bestonden op het ogenblik dat de oorlog begonnen werd...
Ze zijn er ooit wel geweest:

HOW DID IRAQ GET ITS WEAPONS? WE SOLD THEM
By Neil Mackay and Felicity Arbuthnot
http://www.sundayherald.com/27572

THE US and Britain sold Saddam Hussein the technology and materials Iraq needed to develop nuclear, chemical and biological weapons of mass destruction.
Reports by the US Senate's committee on banking, housing and urban affairs which oversees American exports policy reveal that the US, under the successive administrations of Ronald Reagan and George Bush Snr, sold materials including anthrax, VX nerve gas, West Nile fever germs and botulism to Iraq right up until March 1992, as well as germs similar to tuberculosis and pneumonia. Other bacteria sold included brucella melitensis, which damages major organs, and clostridium perfringens, which causes gas gangrene.
Classified US Defence Department documents also seen by the Sunday Herald show that Britain sold Iraq the drug pralidoxine, an antidote to nerve gas, in March 1992, after the end of the Gulf war. Pralidoxine can be reverse engineered to create nerve gas.
The Senate committee's reports on US Chemical and Biological Warfare-Related Dual-Use Exports to Iraq , undertaken in 1992 in the wake of the Gulf war, give the date and destination of all US exports. The reports show, for example, that on May 2, 1986, two batches of bacillus anthracis the micro-organism that causes anthrax were shipped to the Iraqi Ministry of Higher Education, along with two batches of the bacterium clostridium botulinum, the agent that causes deadly botulism poisoning.
One batch each of salmonella and E coli were shipped to the Iraqi State Company for Drug Industries on August 31, 1987. Other shipments went from the US to the Iraq Atomic Energy Commission on July 11, 1988; the Department of Biology at the University of Basrah in November 1989; the Department of Microbiology at Baghdad University in June 1985; the Ministry of Health in April 1985 and Officers' City, a military complex in Baghdad, in March and April 1986.
The shipments to Iraq went on even after Saddam Hussein ordered the gassing of the Kurdish town of Halabja, in which at least 5000 men, women and children died. The atrocity, which shocked the world, took placeÊin March 1988, but a month later the components and materials of weapons of mass destruction were continuing to arrive in Baghdad from the US. The Senate report also makes clear that: The United States provided the government of Iraq with dual use' licensed materials which assisted in the development of Iraqi chemical, biological and missile-system programmes.
This assistance, according to the report, included chemical warfare-agent precursors, chemical warfare-agent production facility plans and technical drawings, chemical warfare filling equipment, biological warfare-related materials, missile fabrication equipment and missile system guidance equipment.
Donald Riegle, then chairman of the committee, said: UN inspectors had identified many United States manufactured items that had been exported from the United States to Iraq under licences issued by the Department of Commerce, and [established] that these items were used to further Iraq's chemical and nuclear weapons development and its missile delivery system development programmes.
Riegle added that, between January 1985 and August 1990, the Òexecutive branch of our government approved 771 different export licences for sale of dual-use technology to Iraq. I think that is a devastating record.
It is thought the information contained in the Senate committee reports is likely to make up much of the evidence of proof that Bush and Blair will reveal in the coming days to justify the US and Britain going to war with Iraq. It is unlikely, however, that the two leaders will admit it was the Western powers that armed Saddam with these weapons of mass destruction.
However, Bush and Blair will also have to prove that Saddam still has chemical, biological and nuclear capabilities. This looks like a difficult case to clinch in view of the fact that Scott Ritter, the UN's former chief weapons inspector in Iraq, says the United Nations destroyed most of Iraq's wea pons of massdestruction and doubts that Saddam could have rebuilt his stocks by now.
According to Ritter, between 90% and 95% of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction were des troyed by the UN. He believes the remainder were probably used or destroyed during Òthe ravages of the Gulf War.
Ritter has described himself as a card-carrying Republican who voted for George W Bush. Nevertheless, he has called the president a liar over his claims that Saddam Hussein is a threat to America.
http://www.sundayherald.com/27572

Ritter has also alleged that the manufacture of chemical and biological weapons emits certain gases, which would have been detected by satellite. We have seen none of this, he insists. If Iraq was producing weapons today, we would have definitive proof.
He also dismisses claims that Iraq may have a nuclear weapons capacity or be on the verge of attaining one, saying that gamma-particle atomic radiation from the radioactive materials in the warheads would also have been detected by western surveillance.
The UN's former co-ordinator in Iraq and former UN under-secretary general, Count Hans von Sponeck, has also told the Sunday Herald that he believes the West is lying about Iraq's weapons programme.
Von Sponeck visited the Al-Dora and Faluja factories near Baghdad in 1999 after they were comprehensively trashed on the orders of UN inspectors, on the grounds that they were suspected of being chemical weapons plants. He returned to the site late in July this year, with a German TV crew, and said both plants were still wrecked.
ÒWe filmed the evidence of the dishonesty of the claims that they were producing chemical and biological weapons, von Sponeck has told the Sunday Herald.They are indeed in the same destroyed state which we witnessed in 1999. There was no trace of any resumed activity at all.
08 September 2002
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Ik denk écht niet dat die "smeerlap" Saddam Hoessein ooit levend een internationaal tribunaal zal halen...
Ronald Reagan en George Bush Snr ook niet, trouwens...
Tiens, West Nile fever, was daar geen onverklaarbare outbreak van in NYC, enkele jaren geleden?

http://www.coxar.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/

illwill · 1 februari 2004, 19:37

en om op dat artikel terug te reageren. Het is altijd spijtig dat er onschuldige doden moeten vallen tijdens een oorlog, maar je kunt enkel zekerheid geven aan mensen dat er geen doden meer vallen onder de handen van saddam wanneer je hem verwijdert. Trouwens wat voor reactie en opschudding zou er wel niet geweest zijn indien deze Albright had gezegt dat dit alles het niet zou waard geweest zijn?

Stel de Us had niets gedaan, Saddam blijft al de volgende jaren gewoon verderdoen met mensen te folteren en vermoorden, al het geld bleef naar paleizen gaan en maar een heel klein deel terug naar de bevolking. Hoeveel jaren kan niemand zeggen en hoeveel doden ook niemand. Maar wat je wel kan zeggen is dat het er meer zouden worden dan degene die er nu gevallen zijn. Indien niet, wie denk je dat de macht zou krijgen na Saddam? Net dezelfde manier van regeren blijft aanhouden, en nog meer doden zouden vallen, en folteringen blijven ook doorgaan.
Maar jij denkt nog altijd dat de US de echte moordenaar is? Komaan é.
Je zou op de eerste rij staan smeken dat de US iets zou doen wanneer in Belgie zulk leider aan de macht zou zijn.

filosoof · 1 februari 2004, 19:44

Citaat:

Oorspronkelijk geplaatst door illwill

en om op dat artikel terug te reageren. Het is altijd spijtig dat er onschuldige doden moeten vallen tijdens een oorlog, maar je kunt enkel zekerheid geven aan mensen dat er geen doden meer vallen onder de handen van saddam wanneer je hem verwijdert. Trouwens wat voor reactie en opschudding zou er wel niet geweest zijn indien deze Albright had gezegt dat dit alles het niet zou waard geweest zijn?

Stel de Us had niets gedaan, Saddam blijft al de volgende jaren gewoon verderdoen met mensen te folteren en vermoorden, al het geld bleef naar paleizen gaan en maar een heel klein deel terug naar de bevolking. Hoeveel jaren kan niemand zeggen en hoeveel doden ook niemand. Maar wat je wel kan zeggen is dat het er meer zouden worden dan degene die er nu gevallen zijn. Indien niet, wie denk je dat de macht zou krijgen na Saddam? Net dezelfde manier van regeren blijft aanhouden, en nog meer doden zouden vallen, en folteringen blijven ook doorgaan.
Maar jij denkt nog altijd dat de US de echte moordenaar is? Komaan é.
Je zou op de eerste rij staan smeken dat de US iets zou doen wanneer in Belgie zulk leider aan de macht zou zijn.

Illwill,
Wie bracht en hield Saddam aan de macht, denk jij?

filosoof · 1 februari 2004, 19:49

Citaat:

Oorspronkelijk geplaatst door filosoof

Citaat:

Oorspronkelijk geplaatst door illwill

en om op dat artikel terug te reageren. Het is altijd spijtig dat er onschuldige doden moeten vallen tijdens een oorlog, maar je kunt enkel zekerheid geven aan mensen dat er geen doden meer vallen onder de handen van saddam wanneer je hem verwijdert. Trouwens wat voor reactie en opschudding zou er wel niet geweest zijn indien deze Albright had gezegt dat dit alles het niet zou waard geweest zijn?

Stel de Us had niets gedaan, Saddam blijft al de volgende jaren gewoon verderdoen met mensen te folteren en vermoorden, al het geld bleef naar paleizen gaan en maar een heel klein deel terug naar de bevolking. Hoeveel jaren kan niemand zeggen en hoeveel doden ook niemand. Maar wat je wel kan zeggen is dat het er meer zouden worden dan degene die er nu gevallen zijn. Indien niet, wie denk je dat de macht zou krijgen na Saddam? Net dezelfde manier van regeren blijft aanhouden, en nog meer doden zouden vallen, en folteringen blijven ook doorgaan.
Maar jij denkt nog altijd dat de US de echte moordenaar is? Komaan é.
Je zou op de eerste rij staan smeken dat de US iets zou doen wanneer in Belgie zulk leider aan de macht zou zijn.

Illwill,
De échte moordenaar is degene die Saddam aan de macht bracht en hield, die na het vergassen van een koerdisch dorp binnen de 14 dagen een nieuwe voorraad oorlogsgas leverde aan Saddam......
Heb je gezien welke biologische wapens de US aan Saddam leverden?

We verwijten aan Saddam (terecht) 500.000 doden (als dat cijfer juist is!), maar de 500.000 dode kinderen, d�*t stoort ons niet?

Wie bracht en hield Saddam aan de macht, denk jij?

http://www.ddh.nl/pipermail/wereldcr...er/003148.html
http://www.muslimedia.com/archives/f...s98/saddam.htm
How west helped Saddam gain power and decimate the Iraqi elite
By Mohamoud A Shaikh

Iraqis have always suspected that the 1963 military coup that set Saddam Husain on the road to absolute power had been masterminded by the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). New evidence just published reveals that the agency not only engineered the putsch but also supplied the list of people to be eliminated once power was secured - a monstrous stratagem that led to the decimation of Iraq's professional class.

The overthrow of president Abdul Karim Kassim on February 8, 1963 was not, of course, the first intervention in the region by the agency, but it was the bloodiest - far bloodier than the coup it orchestrated in 1953 to restore the shah of Iran to power. Just how gory, and how deep the CIA's involvement in it, is demonstrated in a new book by Said Aburish, a writer on Arab political affairs.

The book, A Brutal Friendship: The West and the Arab Elite (1997), sets out the details not only of how the CIA closely controlled the planning stages but also how it played a central role in the subsequent purge of suspected leftists after the coup.

The author reckons that 5,000 were killed, giving the names of 600 of them - including many doctors, lawyers, teachers and professors who formed Iraq's educated elite. The massacre was carried out on the basis of death lists provided by the CIA.

The lists were compiled in CIA stations throughout the Middle East with the assistance of Iraqi exiles like Saddam, who was based in Egypt. An Egyptian intelligence officer, who obtained a good deal of his information from Saddam, helped the Cairo CIA station draw up its list. According to Aburish, however, the American agent who produced the longest list was William McHale, who operated under the cover of a news correspondent for the Beirut bureau of Time magazine.

The butchery began as soon as the lists reached Baghdad. No-one was spared. Even pregnant women and elderly men were killed. Some were tortured in front of their children. According to the author, Saddam who 'had rushed back to Iraq from exile in Cairo to join the victors, was personally involved in the torture of leftists in the separate detention centres for fellaheen [peasants] and the Muthaqafeen or educated classes.'

King Hussain of Jordan, who maintained close links with the CIA, says the death lists were relayed by radio to Baghdad from Kuwait, the foreign base for the Iraqi coup. According to him, a secret radio broadcast was made from Kuwait on the day of the coup, February 8, 'that relayed to those carrying out the coup the names and addresses of communists there, so they could be seized and executed.'

The CIA's royal collaborator also gives an insight into how closely the Ba'athist party and American intelligence operators worked together during the planning stages. 'Many meetings were held between the Ba'ath party and American intelligence - the most critical ones in Kuwait,' he says.

At the time the Ba'ath party was a small nationalist movement with only 850 members. But the CIA decided to use it because of its close relations with the army. One of its members tried to assassinate Kassim as early as 1959. Saddam, then 22, was wounded in the leg, later fleeing the country.

According to Aburish, the Ba'ath party leaders - in return for CIA support - agreed to 'undertake a cleansing programme to get rid of the communists and their leftist allies.' Hani Fkaiki, a Ba'ath party leader, says that the party's contact man who orchestrated the coup was William Lakeland, the US assistant military attache in Baghdad.

One of the coup leaders, colonel Saleh Mahdi Ammash, former Iraqi assistant military attache in Washington, was in fact arrested for being in touch with Lakeland in Baghdad. His arrest caused the conspirators to move earlier than they had planned.

Aburish's book shows that the Ba'ath leaders did not deny plotting with the CIA ro overthrow Kassim. When Syrian Ba'ath party officials demanded to know why they were in cahoots with the US agency, the Iraqis tried to justify it in terms of ideology comparing their collusion to 'Lenin arriving in a German train to carry out his revolution.' Ali Saleh, the minister of interior of the regime which had replaced Kassim, said: 'We came to power on a CIA train.'

It should not come as a surprise that the Americans were so eager to overthrow Kassim or so willing to cause such a blood bath to achieve their objective. At the height of the cold war, they were causing similar mayhem in Latin America and Indo-China overthrowing any leaders that dared show the slighest degree of independence.

Kassim was a prime target for US aggression and arrogance. After taking power in 1958, he took Iraq out of the Baghdad Pact, the US-backed anti-Soviet alliance in the Middle East, and in 1961 he dared nationalise part of the concession of the British-controlled Iraq Petroleum company and resurrected a long-standing Iraqi claim to Kuwait ( the regime which succeeded him immediately dropped the claim to Kuwait).

But the cold war does not by itself explain Uncle Sam's propensity to violence. When president George Bush bombed Iraq to smithereens, killing thousands of civilians, the cold war was over. Clinton cannot cite the cold war for insisting that the brutal regime of sanctions imposed on the country should stay.

In fact the brutal, blood-stained nature of Uncle Sam goes back all the way to the so-called 'Founding Fathers,' who made no attempt to conceal it. As long ago as 1818, John Quincy Adams hailed the 'salutary efficacy' of terror in dealing with 'mingled hordes of lawless Indians and negroes.' He was defending Andrew Jackson's frenzied operations in Florida which virtually wiped out the indigenous population and left the Spanish province under US control. Thomas Jefferson and his colleagues were not above professing to be impressed by the wisdom of his words.

Muslimedia: August 16-31, 1997

Dat is geen fantasie, dat is geschiedenis, nu....
tik gewoon eens de woorden <SADDAM>, <CIA> en <coup> in, in Google...

filosoof · 1 februari 2004, 20:09

Citaat:

Oorspronkelijk geplaatst door illwill

Euhm, geneesmiddelen waren er al bijna niet in Iraq voor de gewone bevolking, ziekenhuizen die al voor de inval vol lagen met zieke en gefolterde mensen die tijdens de oorlog sterven wil niet zeggen dat het meteen de schuld is van de US. Bij die 500.000 afgeslachte mensen van die chemische bombardementen zijn nog niet de geexecuteerde en inderdaad ook gestorve mensen geteld door een gebrek aan geneesmiddelen.

Maar goed, stel dat er evenveel mensen gestorven zijn door alles wat saddam heeft gedaan en door de inval om saddam niet de kans te geven om dit te blijven doen, is dan de US nog meer schuldig? Moet je mij toch eens uitleggen, zoniet, waarom heeft men dan iets gedaan tegen de Duitsers en hitler vroeger?
Waarom kom jij niet op straat om tegen de Engelsen en de Amerikananen te protesteren dat er zoveel doden zijn gevallen bij het bestrijden van de duitsers?

Het gaat hier niet over 500.000 tegenstanders van Saddam, gestorven bij gebrek aan geneesmiddelen, maar om 500.000 kinderen.... destorven tgv de blokkade, toegegeven door Madeleine Allbright...
(niet direct een linkse journalist!) méér dan er kinderen stierven in Hiroshima!!

circe · 1 februari 2004, 20:12

Iedereen weet dat de blokkade daar niets mee te maken had.

In het koerdische noorden hadden de koerden zelf controle over de gelden van de toegestane quota en daar waren geen half miljoen couveusekinderen die stierven.

Het was het regime van Saddam zelf die de gelden van de VN verduisterden.

lyot · 1 februari 2004, 20:27

de blokkade had perverse effecten voor de bevolking. UIteindelijk werd die blokkade door de VN beslist en in stand gehouden. Gedeelde verantwoordelijkheid me dunkt...Je kan niet alles afschuiven op Saddam..Gegeven de effecten was die blokkade dus verkeerd.

30 januari 2004, 22:53	#3
TomB Perm. Vertegenwoordiger VN Geregistreerd: 6 januari 2003 Locatie: US Berichten: 14.572	Dat record is echter wel relatief. Als je de tekorten uit de Reaganjaren even adjusteert voor inflatie kom je boven de Bushtekorten uit. Nu ga ik ook nog eens even die titel anders schrijven: Bush spendeert 500 miljard dollar meer aan ziektezorg dit jaar. Strookt dat dan nog met het idee dat Bush de sociale zekerheid aan het afbouwen is in de VS? __________________ In het begin was er niets, wat ontplofte.

31 januari 2004, 16:54	#4
lyot Parlementsvoorzitter Geregistreerd: 3 september 2003 Berichten: 2.493	komaan Tom B, je weet toch ook dat de afbouw van sociale zekerheid een van de punten is waar Bush & Co voor staan.. __________________ It's deep how you can be so shallow

1 februari 2004, 20:12	#19
circe Secretaris-Generaal VN Geregistreerd: 22 december 2002 Locatie: Antwerpen Berichten: 49.144	Iedereen weet dat de blokkade daar niets mee te maken had. In het koerdische noorden hadden de koerden zelf controle over de gelden van de toegestane quota en daar waren geen half miljoen couveusekinderen die stierven. Het was het regime van Saddam zelf die de gelden van de VN verduisterden. __________________ Waarom islam"fobie"? Betaalt U ook mee de religieuze halal taks die het terrorisme financiert? Kijk hoeveel er verdiend wordt met halal certificatie van dingen die totaal niet hoeven gecertificeerd te worden. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YVPngzSE94o

1 februari 2004, 20:27	#20
lyot Parlementsvoorzitter Geregistreerd: 3 september 2003 Berichten: 2.493	de blokkade had perverse effecten voor de bevolking. UIteindelijk werd die blokkade door de VN beslist en in stand gehouden. Gedeelde verantwoordelijkheid me dunkt...Je kan niet alles afschuiven op Saddam..Gegeven de effecten was die blokkade dus verkeerd. __________________ It's deep how you can be so shallow

30 januari 2004, 17:41	#1
Descartes Jr Banneling Geregistreerd: 24 november 2002 Locatie: Vielsalm Berichten: 9.794	HBVL : 30/01 Bush geeft grote misrekening toe Het Amerikaanse begrotingstekort gaat de vijfhonderd miljard dollar overschrijden. De kosten voor de jongste hervormingen in de ziekteverzekering gaan een derde hoger liggen dan het Witte Huis had gedacht, zo heeft de New York Times (NYT) gemeld. De regering heeft door nieuwe cijfers te noemen zelf al de onderschatting van de hervormingen in Medicare toegegeven. President George Bush maakt maandag (plaatselijke tijd) de begroting 2005 bekend. Functionarissen binnen de Amerikaanse regering en binnen het Congres zeggen dat het federale deficiet voor het eerst de 500 miljard dollar gaat overschrijden. Het tekort voor het fiscale jaar 2003 is 375 miljard dollar en zou voor dit jaar 477 miljard dollar bedragen, een record. Antoon, gelezen ? The best president ever ... ... Inderdaad, hij heeft het record gehaald !

1 februari 2004, 13:39	#7
filosoof Banneling Geregistreerd: 22 mei 2003 Locatie: Brussel Berichten: 49.496	De grote vergissing: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/front.htm A Flawed Argument In the Case for War By Glenn Kessler and Walter Pincus Washington Post Staff Writers Sunday, February 1, 2004; Page A01 The information was so startling that CIA Director George J. Tenet, accompanied by Vice President Cheney, marched up to Capitol Hill to brief the four top Senate and House leaders the day after Labor Day 2002. The administration was gearing up to present its case against Iraq at the United Nations, and lawmakers were eager for any evidence that would prove Saddam Hussein was a grave threat. In the briefing, Tenet and Cheney presented what one participant described as a "smoking gun": New intelligence showed Iraq had developed unmanned airborne vehicles (UAVs) that could deliver chemical or biological agents. In addition, Iraq had sought software that would allow it to produce sophisticated mapping of eastern U.S. cities. President Bush hinted at the evidence in a speech on Oct. 7, 2002. And a year ago, when Secretary of State Colin L. Powell made a lengthy presentation before the U.N. Security Council, he echoed the concern: "Iraq could use these small UAVs, which have a wingspan of only a few meters, to deliver biological agents to its neighbors or, if transported, to other countries, including the United States." Since Powell's speech, however, investigations by U.S. weapons inspectors have determined that the UAVs, or drones, were not designed to spread deadly toxins but to fly unarmed reconnaissance missions. The story of the UAVs -- just one part of the vast array of claims made by the Bush administration about Iraq's alleged weapons programs -- is emblematic of how U.S. intelligence on Iraq was often wrong, even when officials made efforts to cull the strongest material from a torrent of information. In preparing for his U.N. speech on Feb. 5, Powell had prided himself on spending long hours at the CIA, quizzing analysts who had developed the material and making certain the information had not just one source but was developed from a combination of human, signal and satellite intelligence. He even refused to include a reference to the mapping software that had spurred the congressional meeting, believing that it was not credible. But in the end, much of that effort appeared to be for naught. David Kay, the chief U.S. inspector who recently resigned, has spent the past week telling reporters and Congress that there appear to be no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Only fragments of Powell's presentation have been confirmed despite months of searching. "It looks terrible," said Joseph Cirincione, director of the nonproliferation project at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "None of his core assertions about Saddam's growing arsenal of weapons of mass destruction turned out to be true." State Department spokesman Richard A. Boucher said it is too early to draw such conclusions. "Certainly some of the elements we know are subject to debate, disagreement," he said. "But until we know what the real, full extent of the program was, it's hard. You don't have anything to compare what the intelligence was at the time to what the final answers are." But many experts say the UAV question has long been settled. The drone aircraft uncovered in Iraq has glass viewing ports, with a bracket for mounting some type of camera. As first reported by the Associated Press in August, there was little room to carry the chemical and biological spraying devices described by Powell when he sat in the hushed chamber of the Security Council. Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) told Kay last week that he voted for a resolution authorizing the use of force against Iraq precisely because of the administration's UAV evidence. "I was told not only that [Hussein had weapons of mass destruction] and that he had the means to deliver them through unmanned aerial vehicles, but that he had the capability of transporting those UAVs outside of Iraq and threatening the homeland here in America, specifically by putting them on ships off the eastern seaboard," Nelson said. "I thought there was an imminent threat." Kay responded that the UAV program was active, but the Iraqis did not have "the existing deployment capability at that point for any sort of systematic military attack." A year ago, the CIA analysts thought they had the evidence. Powell, whose home in McLean is a half-mile from CIA headquarters, had issued clear guidance to his aides before they spent several days, often past midnight, sitting around the large wooden, oval-shaped table in Tenet's conference room: He wanted 10 to 15 "absolutely solid" pieces of evidence, "not a hundred pieces," Powell said, according to aides. "I want it airtight, or I'm not going to use it." At one point, aides said, Powell looked up and said: "I want it solid, I want it new. Give me that. If you don't have it, don't give it to me." The CIA originally drafted a speech for a U.N. presentation, which then went to the White House. But what ultimately emerged -- after Cheney's office had been tasked to assemble the material for the speech -- was much different from the CIA draft. I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Cheney's chief of staff, deputy national security adviser Stephen J. Hadley and other National Security Council staffers had produced draft language for Powell -- 45 pages on weapons of mass destruction, 38 pages on alleged links to terrorism and 16 pages on Iraq's human rights abuses. But when Powell's staff and intelligence analysts gathered at CIA headquarters in Virginia to go through the material, controversy immediately erupted over some of the charges, officials said. Because the White House had changed so much from the CIA draft, they had to go over it "page by page," one official said. The UAVs were a major source of controversy, officials said. For many senior officials, this was the subject of some of the best evidence they had. "The UAV program, to me, that was more serious because that was a direct threat to our military," a high ranking national security official said later. "Those UAVs could get up and spread chemical or, worse, biological weapons." Indeed, the proposed narrative for Powell went something like this, according to an official involved in the preparation of Powell's speech: Hussein had his procurement agents, who are virtually all over the world, try to acquire software that would give him sophisticated mapping of the eastern United States, allowing him to program a missile with a high degree of accuracy. But the whole scenario "fell apart like a toothpick house" once Powell and his aides asked for the sourcing on the information, the official said. Upon closer inspection, several officials said, it turned out that Iraq had not sought the software, but that an Australian firm had offered it. The software, meanwhile, apparently produced maps not much better than those sold at gasoline stations. "The vendor, in the interest of making further sales, suggested this to the Iraqis, and there was no confirmation that we could find that the Iraqis had actually purchased the software," the official said. "We were getting ready to put in the secretary's statement that they were getting ready to bomb the eastern United States!" Within one day, officials said, Powell's task force had largely abandoned the 45-page document on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction produced by Cheney's office and the NSC, using instead a classified National Intelligence Estimate assembled by the CIA in October. The NIE, according to declassified portions made public last year, firmly stated that "Baghdad's UAV could threaten Iraq's neighbors, U.S. forces in the Persian Gulf and if brought close to, or into, the United States, the U.S. homeland." But the NIE included a dissent to this conclusion that, after the war, would be considered correct: The Air Force intelligence arm, the expert on UAVs in the U.S. government, strongly argued that the primary role of these aircraft was reconnaissance, "although CBW delivery is an inherent capability." Air Force officials have said this last phrase was added during negotiations in crafting the NIE, though they viewed the possibility as highly unlikely because the drones would be inefficient delivery vehicles. Powell and his team stuck with the consensus position of the other intelligence agencies -- some of which were relying on information from Iraqi expatriates and defectors to bolster their case on the drones -- because a decision had been made that his speech should reflect the best judgment of the intelligence community. The NIE, in fact, has a number of important dissents from agencies intimately familiar with the subject at hand. One issue -- on whether aluminum tubes sought by Iraq were intended for rockets or uranium enrichment -- was so controversial that Powell himself weighed in and inserted the qualifiers. But that did not happen with the UAVs, officials said. The Air Force "position was perfectly logical," one State Department official said. "Some of the drones may have been reconnaissance, maybe all of them. But the weight of the intelligence community was that these were delivery vehicles. Given the history of Iraq's interest in UAV development, we couldn't discount it." "There was a very strong dominant view on UAVs," another official said, "and that's what we went with." Staff writer Barton Gellman contributed to this report. © 2004 The Washington Post Company

1 februari 2004, 18:02	#9
illwill Secretaris-Generaal VN Geregistreerd: 20 september 2003 Locatie: Brussel Berichten: 23.102	Mooie cijfers zijn dat, maar waar smost de Belgische regering zijn geld dan aan op? naar militaire dingen zal het niet gaan. Het is gewoon een rage om tegen Bush en Blair te zijn deze dagen. Triestig is het. Saddam heeft meer dan 500.000 mensen afgeslacht zonder reden en wanneer iemand ervoor wil zorgen dat deze bruut verdwijnt gaat men hier in europe precies toch kant kiezen voor deze bruut. Indien men achter hitler zou gegaan zijn, had men dan ook zo een kritiek geuit tegen alle leiders die dit idee zouden steunen? Ik ben heel blij dat de US kwa militaire middelen de grootste is ter wereld, ik zou echt niet willen weten wat er gebeurt wanneer Oosterse landen deze macht zouden hebben. Rara wat zou Saddam hebben gadaan denk je? Wees echt maar blij dat het zo is, anders zat je nu niet achter je pceetje dit bericht te lezen, dan zat je oftwel onder de grond oftwel aan een of ander front het land te beschermen!

1 februari 2004, 19:26	#13
illwill Secretaris-Generaal VN Geregistreerd: 20 september 2003 Locatie: Brussel Berichten: 23.102	Euhm, geneesmiddelen waren er al bijna niet in Iraq voor de gewone bevolking, ziekenhuizen die al voor de inval vol lagen met zieke en gefolterde mensen die tijdens de oorlog sterven wil niet zeggen dat het meteen de schuld is van de US. Bij die 500.000 afgeslachte mensen van die chemische bombardementen zijn nog niet de geexecuteerde en inderdaad ook gestorve mensen geteld door een gebrek aan geneesmiddelen. Maar goed, stel dat er evenveel mensen gestorven zijn door alles wat saddam heeft gedaan en door de inval om saddam niet de kans te geven om dit te blijven doen, is dan de US nog meer schuldig? Moet je mij toch eens uitleggen, zoniet, waarom heeft men dan iets gedaan tegen de Duitsers en hitler vroeger? Waarom kom jij niet op straat om tegen de Engelsen en de Amerikananen te protesteren dat er zoveel doden zijn gevallen bij het bestrijden van de duitsers?

1 februari 2004, 19:37	#15
illwill Secretaris-Generaal VN Geregistreerd: 20 september 2003 Locatie: Brussel Berichten: 23.102	en om op dat artikel terug te reageren. Het is altijd spijtig dat er onschuldige doden moeten vallen tijdens een oorlog, maar je kunt enkel zekerheid geven aan mensen dat er geen doden meer vallen onder de handen van saddam wanneer je hem verwijdert. Trouwens wat voor reactie en opschudding zou er wel niet geweest zijn indien deze Albright had gezegt dat dit alles het niet zou waard geweest zijn? Stel de Us had niets gedaan, Saddam blijft al de volgende jaren gewoon verderdoen met mensen te folteren en vermoorden, al het geld bleef naar paleizen gaan en maar een heel klein deel terug naar de bevolking. Hoeveel jaren kan niemand zeggen en hoeveel doden ook niemand. Maar wat je wel kan zeggen is dat het er meer zouden worden dan degene die er nu gevallen zijn. Indien niet, wie denk je dat de macht zou krijgen na Saddam? Net dezelfde manier van regeren blijft aanhouden, en nog meer doden zouden vallen, en folteringen blijven ook doorgaan. Maar jij denkt nog altijd dat de US de echte moordenaar is? Komaan é. Je zou op de eerste rij staan smeken dat de US iets zou doen wanneer in Belgie zulk leider aan de macht zou zijn.