Moslimexecutive gedoogt terroristische aanslagen in Madrid?

[filosoof]

Oorspronkelijk geplaatst door Rudi Dierick

Beste Andev; het is zelfs NIEt juist. Waar Filosoof die cijfers vandaan haalt is me een levensgroot raadsel. Het Britse 'Muslim News' schat het op slechts 20.000! Datzelfde islamitische tijdschrijft vermeldt wel een schatting van véle honderduizenden doden door het geweld en de terreur van Saddam.
Kortom, zooals u ook zei: zeg niets slechts van de moslims
(of de toorn van allerhande dwazen wordt ontstoken).

"zeg niets slechts van de moslims " zeg je, maar je citeert zelf het "islamitische tijdschrijft Muslim News" als bron

Verder wéét je toch dat als je een militair embargo oplegt aan een dictoriaal bestuurd land, dat de zwaksten het ergst getroffen zullen zijn (in elk ander land trouwens ook!) Schreef ik ooit dat Saddam een doetje was?

He was a bastard, but he was our bastard

volgens de CIA

cijfer niet juist? maar 20.000
Hier is mijn bron, het onverkort interview, met verdere follow up en kritiek: (de eerste link is nu dood, maar het artikel werd elders overgeenomen, en ik voeg er dus andere url's bij
"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

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 [size=4]a report by the UN's World Health Organisation (sic), which had estimated half a million deaths.[/size] 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



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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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[filosoof]

Bestudeer die verklaringen van Madeleine Albright maar eens goed: ze is géén moslima en ze stelt het cijfer van de WHO nooit in vraag, geen enkele maal! Normaal, ze kende dat WHO-rapport.... en de US-administratie had er geen problemen mee.... Enkel James Rubin probeert nog iets te verdedigen...
Als je dus met jouw "Muslim News" bovenkomt citeer je waarschijnlijk enkel pure desinformatie...