And that could be a great thing. It would utterly finish off the GOP (in it's current form). It might keep Hillary out, and get Obama or Jim Webb in, the cycle after.Originally Posted by Marx & Lennon
And I might get a whole lot of collectible currency, just as my family did in 1865, and with about the same consequences.
For non-commercial use, etc. Bolding is mine.
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/20...20/texas_iraq/
"Indeed, it can be difficult to pinpoint where people's feelings about the war, and the president, collide and diverge. "Support for Bush was always less about his stated political beliefs than the idea that he was their guy, a native son," says James Henson, a University of Texas public policy professor who helped direct the Lyceum poll. "I used to ask Democrats who voted for him why, and they'd say, 'He's from Texas.' There's a strong sense of cultural identity here -- a cliché about Texas that has a lot of truth to it. But finding people now who say they voted for Bush, at least in Austin, is like trying to find people who voted for Nixon in his 1972 landslide a few years after the fact," Henson says. "No one wants to talk about it," he adds. "The criticism here is much more muted than in the rest of the country.""
"This part of Texas is not a great place to be if you're having doubts about the war, she says. "People tiptoe around it." But, she adds, "I feel I can help people here who are struggling with what they went through in Iraq. I think it's important for soldiers at Fort Hood to have someone to talk to who's been there. It's difficult when you think you go for some good reason -- defending freedom, 9/11, helping the Iraqi people -- and it turns out to not be the great cause that you thought."
Hello, Chris.
Last edited by Pink Splice; 09-20-2007 at 12:34 PM.
I think what the Bush supporters have failed to grasp is the constant grinding down of the Iraq occupation -- just look how the goal post has been lowered and lowered. Things may look good to them now (in reality, things are pretty bad), but the likelihood of it getting worst is pretty damn high.
More specifically, has any one given a moment’s thought to what will likely be happening in the last 6 months leading up to the Nov. 8 elections?
The 30K drawdown of troop to get us back to pre-Surge levels has nothing to do with Bush making some decision; it has to do with inevitable manpower/rotation logistics that cannot be reversed or altered - Gates outlined this situation months ago in his confirmation hearing. The drawdown is coming no matter what and everybody knows it.
At the same time, the Brits are leaving southern Iraq even faster. These southern areas are both our supply lines and our exit means from Iraq. And how many Blackwater-like messes will occur between now and then to reduce the private armies running around providing security.
Reducing troop levels in a hostile environment has been shown historically to be an army's most vulnerable moment. Is there any doubt that the insurgency won't be trying its best to make this as difficult for us as possible?
And what planning has been done for the drawdown? Sure there have been some changes since Rummy, Pace and the other idiots have moved on, but the biggest moron of all is still ‘in charge’ -- you know the same guy who put us in there without any plans.
Some folks are thinking about this drawdown -
http://www.comw.org/pda/0512exitplans.html
- but if you delve into these folks’ thoughts and opinions, it becomes quickly clear how difficult the process will be and how little has actually been done to prepare for it.
Bottom line -- we could be headed for a disaster next summer. Just months before the election, it could be the blow to the Republican Party that may take a decade or two to recover from. They would deserve it; not only for all the senseless death and maiming of our kids but for their sheer lack of any vision beyond their myopic focus on the latest challenge to Bush's attempt to save face.
Glad to see them go down in flames but what a horrible price to pay.
"The Devil enters the prompter's box and the play is ready to start" - R. Service
“It’s not tax money. The banks have accounts with the Fed … so, to lend to a bank, we simply use the computer to mark up the size of the account that they have with the Fed. It’s much more akin to printing money.” - B.Bernanke
"Keep your filthy hands off my guns while I decide what you can & can't do with your uterus" - Sarah Silverman
If you meet a magic pony on the road, kill it. - Playwrite
That's a very possible scenario. Here, sadly, is another:
As the unsurge gets into high gear, a nutcase (pick the faction you like for this sort of thing) gets through security and kills Ryan Crocker ... or GEN Petraeus ... or PM Maliki. Meanwhile, attacks rage everywhere at once, with two or three hundred Americans dead.Bush will dust off his cloak of Stars and Stripes, stand in front of a picture of the mayhem, and the spiel will be about God and honor and avenging their deaths. If the perpetrator can be tagged as Iranian (true or not), we're Off To The Races - Part III.
I assume nothing.
Marx: Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies.
Lennon: You either get tired fighting for peace, or you die.
-- a 4T in the makin, and so many of us going along for the ride with smiles on our faces. Pitiful.
"The Devil enters the prompter's box and the play is ready to start" - R. Service
“It’s not tax money. The banks have accounts with the Fed … so, to lend to a bank, we simply use the computer to mark up the size of the account that they have with the Fed. It’s much more akin to printing money.” - B.Bernanke
"Keep your filthy hands off my guns while I decide what you can & can't do with your uterus" - Sarah Silverman
If you meet a magic pony on the road, kill it. - Playwrite
I think these hypothetical scenarios prove Bush sucks.
Somebody needs to get Blackwater out of Iraq. They're horrible security. They might even kill you in order to save you.
Thank you for providing me with that opening.Somebody needs to get Blackwater out of Iraq. They're horrible security. They might even kill you in order to save you.
Blackwater smuggling weapons into Iraq:
http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/meast/....ap/index.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Federal prosecutors are investigating whether employees of the private security firm Blackwater USA illegally smuggled weapons into Iraq that may have been sold on the black market and ended up in the hands of a U.S.-designated terrorist organization, officials said Friday.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070921/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq
BAGHDAD - The slayings of two associates of Iraq's top Shiite cleric raised fears Friday of a worsening Shiite power struggle in the country's oil-rich south, prompting some clerics to go into hiding or abandon their robes and turbans for their own safety.
Did you ever explain on these forums how you reconciled military service with some of your other stated political/philosophical views. I'm seeing references to "recovering" anarchist associated with your name, and I find that mystifying.
This is not criticism, by the way. I am genuinely curious. I've contemplated enlisting on more than one occasion (no, really -- I have my reasons), but each time rejected the idea due to the ethical conflict it sparked in me.
If you did, and I missed it, could you point me to it? If you didn't, and don't care to, that's cool. I'm just interested to see what line(s) of thought brought you to that decision.
You cannot step twice into the same river, for fresh waters are ever flowing in upon you. -- Heraclitus
It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society. -- Jiddu Krishnamurti
Do I contradict myself? Very well, then, I contradict myself. I am large; I contain multitudes." -- Walt Whitman
Arkham's Asylum
Counting on Romantic Idealism
Caliph Numbers or in the Shia sections the Numerate Imamate.
And I can get you to come out and play, anytime.
Blackwater Caught On Tape:
http://edition.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/me....ap/index.html
And Maliki to have a little chat with Bush on Monday.
Generating the ATO as we speak:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/new...512097.ece?123
"THE United States Air Force has set up a highly confidential strategic planning group tasked with “fighting the next war” as tensions rise with Iran.
Project Checkmate, a successor to the group that planned the 1991 Gulf War’s air campaign, was quietly reestablished at the Pentagon in June.
It reports directly to General Michael Moseley, the US Air Force chief, and consists of 20-30 top air force officers and defence and cyberspace experts with ready access to the White House, the CIA and other intelligence agencies.
Detailed contingency planning for a possible attack on Iran has been carried out for more than two years by Centcom (US central command), according to defence sources."
ATO= Air Tasking Order.
Excellent. That stuff will be worth something on EBay, someday.
For non commercial use, etc:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/24/wo...hp&oref=slogin
Graft in U.S. Army Contracts Spread From Kuwait Base
By GINGER THOMPSON and ERIC SCHMITT
Published: September 24, 2007
People in this northwest corner of Louisiana think of him as an unlikely success story, a man who started with nothing to become a major in the Army. He and his 17 siblings grew up without electricity and running water. His parents earned barely enough to keep everyone fed.
Yet even after he made it out of Castor, his ties to these backwoods remained strong. The congregation at New Friendship Baptist Church celebrated his last promotion with a parade. At his sons’ baptism, he told fellow worshipers that he hoped to instill in his children the values he had wrested from hardship.
Less than 24 hours later Major Cockerham was behind bars, accused of orchestrating the largest single bribery scheme against the military since the start of the Iraq war. According to the authorities, the 41-year-old officer, with his wife and a sister, used an elaborate network of offshore bank accounts and safe deposit boxes to hide nearly $10 million in bribes from companies seeking military contracts.
The accusations against Major Cockerham are tied to a crisis of corruption inside the behemoth bureaucracy that sustains America’s troops. Pentagon officials are investigating some $6 billion in military contracts, most covering supplies as varied as bottled water, tents and latrines for troops in Kuwait, Iraq and Afghanistan.
The inquiries have resulted in charges against at least 29 civilians and soldiers, more than 75 other criminal investigations and the suicides of at least two officers. They have prompted the Pentagon, the largest purchasing agency in the world, to overhaul its war-zone procurement system.
Much of the scrutiny has focused on the contracting office where Major Cockerham worked at Camp Arifjan in Kuwait, a world away from Castor in more than miles. Until the buildup to the war in Iraq, it was a tiny outpost with a staff of 7 to 12 people who awarded about $150 million a year in contracts, according to Bryon J. Young, a retired Army colonel and the current director of the Army Contracting Agency.
But when tens of thousands of soldiers began pouring through Kuwait, Mr. Young said in an interview, his agency was forced to entrust nearly $4 billion over the next four years to what he described as a B team of civilians and military officers with limited contracting experience. It was a setting flush with money, he said, but lacking the safeguards to prevent contracting officials from taking it.
Pages of the affidavits in United States District Court in San Antonio involving Major Cockerham read like scenes from a spy novel. They allege that unidentified businesspeople carried hundreds of thousands of dollars in shopping bags, delivering the money to Mrs. Cockerham as she played courier in the Middle East with her three small children, while her husband kept coded records of a mounting fortune.
A criminal complaint filed with the court says that during a December 2006 search of their home at Fort Sam Houston, Tex., Major Cockerham and his wife admitted taking $1 million in bribes. The investigation continued, and when the couple were arrested some seven months later on charges of accepting $9.6 million in bribes, they pleaded not guilty.
Major Cockerham’s lawyer, Jimmy Parks, in denying the charges, said his client did not have the authority to pull off such a conspiracy.
An Officer’s Suicide
Although a Justice Department official said it was too early to know if the suspects in the corruption investigation operated independently or in a network, public records indicate that several served overlapping tours. At least two officers who worked at Camp Arifjan when Major Cockerham was there committed suicide after learning they would face bribery charges. One, Maj. Gloria D. Davis of Missouri, shot herself in December 2006, a day after admitting she took at least $225,000 in bribes, government officials said.
“It is particularly disturbing that while so many of our military personnel are fighting and dying in Iraq, a few have apparently taken the opportunity to unlawfully enrich themselves,” Charles W. Beardall, chief criminal investigator for the Pentagon inspector general, said in a statement. “Their greed is unconscionable, especially in the midst of our soldiers’ heroic actions.”
The charges against Major Cockerham have hit hard in this town of 200 people, where residents have vivid recollections of him as little John Lee, a quiet, polite boy who was so worn out from milking cows before school that he had a hard time staying awake in class.
Major Cockerham’s wife, Melissa. Court records allege that unidentified businesspeople carried bags of cash to Mrs. Cockerham, while she served as a courier in the Middle East with her three children in tow and her husband kept coded records.
“He’s a country boy, just like the rest of us,” said Mark Plunkett, who played high school basketball with John Lee. “You throw a suitcase with a million dollars in front of us, who knows what we would do?”
Chris Guin, who considers himself one of Major Cockerham’s best friends, shook his head. “That don’t sound like John Lee,” he said. “I think he’s being railroaded.”
While others from Castor have achieved more than Major Cockerham, few started with his disadvantages. From outside the family’s run-down four-room house, it is hard to see where he got the nerve to dream. Growing up, the boys slept in one room, the girls in another, said his brother Charles. They lived on grits in the morning and corn bread at night. For water, he said, the children hauled buckets from a nearby stream.
Charles Cockerham said his father, John Lee Sr., who worked at the local sawmill, did not finish high school, but encouraged his children to do so. His mother, Clara, who worked as a teacher until her brood got too big, was even more emphatic about education.
“He used to come to my house after school and stick his head in my encyclopedias,” said Verba Egans, who is so close to Major Cockerham that he calls her Mom. She added, “It was never easy for him, but he worked hard because he was determined to make something of himself.”
The Army as a Way Out
Like many poor young people from rural towns across America, John Cockerham saw the Army as the best way to advancement. He joined right out of high school in 1984 and married a fellow soldier, Melissa Jordan, while stationed at Fort Knox, Ky. Later, he went to Northeastern Louisiana University on an R.O.T.C. scholarship, graduating in 1993 with an Army commission.
Over the next decade, according to family and military records, he served in Haiti and Germany, and earned a master’s in business from Webster University in 2004. In June of that year, he was assigned to Camp Arifjan, one of the Pentagon’s busiest supply centers.
The camp, a $200 million logistics hub, stands like an island in the middle of the desert south of Kuwait City. Major Cockerham worked in a prefabricated two-story building with about 20 other military people and civilians, committing millions of dollars on the phone or with a few strokes on his computer in his cubicle.
Military officials said a major assigned to award such large contracts for the Army Contracting Agency should have at least 10 years of experience in “broad acquisition,” a minimum of four years of direct contracting experience and annual ethics training. But the procurement workload from the Iraq war grew so big so fast that the Pentagon was forced to rush people with virtually no training or experience into some of its most complicated contracting jobs, Army officials said.
“From what I understand, John didn’t get the courses he should have had for his assignment until his assignment was over,” said Mr. Parks, Major Cockerham’s lawyer.
Oversight was virtually nonexistent by design. There were no auditors at Camp Arifjan, and contracts worth more than $500,000 were the only ones requiring review in Washington. Most contracts were written for about $100,000. It was also common for contracting officers to use “blanket purchase agreements,” allowing them to open a line of credit with a company with little more than a promissory note, much like a customer at a small-town grocery store.
Ideally, Army officials said, the purchasing cycle would be divided among at least three contracting officers. One would take an order for supplies from a unit commander and seek bids from companies to fill the order. Another would award the contract, and a third would oversee delivery of the goods. That system, officials said, would allow each contracting officer to serve as a check on the others.
At Camp Arifjan, a single contracting officer handled all three parts of the process, giving the officers broad discretion and creating opportunities for unit commanders to join conspiracies by inflating their troops’ needs. What resulted, said Mr. Young, the Army Contracting Agency director, was “a web of deceit.”
Court records do not make clear how far authorities believe the web spun beyond Major Cockerham. The Gulf Group, a Kuwait-based business, has sued the Army, claiming that its contracts were canceled for no reason. Major Cockerham and Major Davis were listed on the contract and cancellation documents. “My hunch is that my clients’ contracts were canceled because we would not play ball,” said Iliaura Hands, a lawyer for the Gulf Groups, “and another company, with a lot more money, did.”
The accusations against Major Cockerham depict a corrupt family enterprise. The criminal complaint filed in Texas says he arranged for representatives of companies awarded contracts to deliver payments to his wife or his sister Carolyn Blake.
Ms. Blake moved to Kuwait because Major Cockerham told her she could make more money there than she was making as a teacher in Dallas, according to the court papers. Mrs. Cockerham, who lived at the couple’s home at Fort Sam Houston, made at least two trips to Kuwait and Dubai, once taking her 7-year-old sons and 3-year-old daughter.
The company representatives would show up at her hotel room with bags of cash, then accompany her to put the money in safe deposit boxes, the records assert.
There is little evidence the couple went on buying binges. Investigators have seized $175,000 from an account believed linked to them. During the December 2006 search of their home, court documents said, the couple confessed to accepting $1 million in bribes. However, investigators reported finding handwritten ledgers with coded entries for amounts from $13,600 to $2 million stashed in offshore bank accounts. The court records allege that the major accepted bribes from eight companies, which are not named in the documents.
A Letter From Prison
At church services in Castor on Sept. 9, Mrs. Egans told congregants of New Friendship Baptist Church that she had gotten a letter from Major Cockerham, who is in custody in a federal prison in San Antonio, Tex., with his wife. (Their children are staying with Melissa Cockerham’s relatives in Kentucky.) He wrote that his wife was busy with a new singing ministry for the other women in the prison and that he had preached two sermons to the men.
He thanked Mrs. Egans for reading the names of his sons when they were baptized, just as she had done at his own baptism more than 30 years earlier. He offered no explanation of the charges against him, nor did he express any sadness.
“We are at such peace, with such zeal for the Lord,” Major Cockerham wrote, “that we know this is exactly where we are supposed to be for this short time.”
How many good deeds will need to be done to fix this misbegotten war? Chris?
Simple brilliant! Just frickin fabulous for winning hearts and minds -
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...l?hpid=topnews
U.S. Aims To Lure Insurgents With 'Bait'
- Snipers Describe Classified Program"Baiting is putting an object out there that we know they will use, with the intention of destroying the enemy," Capt. Matthew P. Didier, the leader of an elite sniper scout platoon attached to the 1st Battalion of the 501st Infantry Regiment, said in a sworn statement. "Basically, we would put an item out there and watch it. If someone found the item, picked it up and attempted to leave with the item, we would engage the individual as I saw this as a sign they would use the item against U.S. Forces."
Apparently coming to light as a 'planting evidence' method -Eugene Fidell, president of the National Institute of Military Justice, said such a baiting program should be examined "quite meticulously" because it raises troubling possibilities, such as what happens when civilians pick up the items.
"In a country that is awash in armaments and magazines and implements of war, if every time somebody picked up something that was potentially useful as a weapon, you might as well ask every Iraqi to walk around with a target on his back," Fidell said.
"We don't discuss specific methods targeting enemy combatants," said Paul Boyce, an Army spokesman. "The accused are charged with murder and wrongfully placing weapons on the remains of Iraqi nationals. There are no classified programs that authorize the murder of local nationals and the use of 'drop weapons' to make killings appear legally justified."Yes sir, our shining light on the hill just keep burning brighter!Within months of the program's introduction, three snipers in Didier's platoon were charged with murder for allegedly using those items and others to make shootings seem legitimate. Though it does not appear that the three alleged shootings were specifically part of the classified program, defense attorneys argue that the program may have opened the door to the soldiers' actions because it blurred the legal lines of killing in a complex war zone.
James D. Culp, a civilian attorney for one of the snipers, Sgt. Evan Vela, said the soldiers became "battle-fatigued pawns in a newfangled concept of 'baiting' warfare that, like an onion, perhaps looked good on the surface, but started stinking to high hell the minute the layers were pulled back and scrutinized."
"The Devil enters the prompter's box and the play is ready to start" - R. Service
“It’s not tax money. The banks have accounts with the Fed … so, to lend to a bank, we simply use the computer to mark up the size of the account that they have with the Fed. It’s much more akin to printing money.” - B.Bernanke
"Keep your filthy hands off my guns while I decide what you can & can't do with your uterus" - Sarah Silverman
If you meet a magic pony on the road, kill it. - Playwrite
It looks like someone has been watching "Mad Max" for ideas on tactics.
Your local general nuisance
"I am not an alter ego. I am an unaltered id!"
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/usiraqmi...jZxdIls7IDW7oF
The AP/Yahoo version.
James D Glick: Damn! They revealed methods!
I'm sure the Iraqi people will remember our good deeds long after the memory of thier kids getting shot for picking up a piece of det cord has faded.
I have a question for you as a citizen who was once a soldier. What do you think should be done about Iraq?
************************************************** ******
I would point out that no living Americans have any experience in winning a major war. The last time the US actually won a major war was in 1945 and the men who ran that war are all dead.
The US has fought three major wars since 1945; one was lost; the other two are ongoing. Naturally all US troops were withdrawn from the theatre of the war we lost (Vietnam). Naturally, US troops remain in-theatre in the two that are still going on.
Both of these latter wars saw a relatively brief period of hostilities which was ended by a cease fire as opposed to a peace treaty. In one (Korea) the cease fire has held for more than 50 years, yet the potential for a resumption of conflict remains. Large numbers of US ground and naval forces remain in the Western Pacific against this possibility.
The other of these ongoing wars (Iraq) began 17 years ago. Like Korea it too ended in essentially a cease fire. The conditions of the cease fire were almost immediately violated and the war resumed, first in the air (100,000+ sorties into Iraq between 1991 and 2003) and economically (embargo) and then, when the first two failed to achieve their objectives, a full scale ground invasion.
The war officially ended in 2003, (the Iraq government was totally defeated and their army disbanded). Effectively it continued on in the form of a stubborn insurgency.
I can only conclude that the 2003 offensive intended to win the war has been unsuccessful. Its been more than four years since it was launched (less time than was needed to fight every war this nation has ever won).
The Vietnam precedent says if we withdraw out troops we will lose this war, but all the troops will come home. (I submit that US citizens suffered no consequence from losing this war, I lived through it and remain prosperous and freedom--my country was never conquered by the Communists.
The Korean example shows that if we chose not to lose we can stay for 50+ years. And all that time we will likely continue to lose ~800 troops every year.
************************************************** *****
I supported the 2003 offensive. I believed that the Iraq war was alienating Saudi religious conservatives, culminating in the attack by al Qaeda on New York and Washington in 2001. I thought that a powerful final thrust could end the war--ending the embargo and bringing the troops home from the Mideast (both of which were cited as cassus belli in the 1998 al Qaeda declaration of war against the US).
The offensive failed and no followup policy has been forthcoming. I have to conclude that the men running this campaign either do not want to win or don't know how to. In either case I can not countenance a continuation of a Korea-like endless war in which we spend gobs of money and our people get killed. So I started supporting withdrawal in 2004, because by losing the war at least we would stop the excessive spending and the loss of US soldiers.
http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/meast/...ain/index.html
BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- A suicide bombing in Iraq's volatile Diyala province ripped through a "reconciliation meeting" on Monday night attended by Sunni and Shiite militia leaders -- a brazen attack that killed and wounded dozens and fractured an effort to foster amity between the rival sects.
Iraq's Interior Ministry and the U.S. military counted 24 dead and 37 wounded.
For non-commercial use, etc.
http://www.mediainfo.com/eandp/news/..._id=1003646639
Scoop for Spanish Daily: Transcript of Private 2003 Bush Talk Promising Iraq Invasion
By E&P Staff
Published: September 26, 2007 8:00 AM ET
NEW YORK El Pais, the highest-circulation daily in Spain, today published what it said was the transcript of a private talk between President George W. Bush and Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar on February 22, 2003, concerning the coming U.S. invasion of Iraq. It took place at the ranch in Crawford, Texas.
The conversation took place on the President's ranch in Crawford, Texas. The source for the leak was said to be someone in the Spanish government.
Bush purportedly said he planned to invade Iraq inf March "if there was a United Nations Security Council resolution or not....We have to get rid of Saddam. We will be in Baghdad at the end of March."
He said the U.S. takeover would happen without widespread destruction.
Aznar pleaded for patience and replied that it was vital to get a U.N. resolution, noting that public opinion in Spain was strongly against the war.
El Pais, based in Madrid, has a reported circulation of just over 2 million. The transcript tops its front page today, but the headline focuses on Aznar's claim that he was trying to change 200 years of politics in Spain.
While awaiting a full translation, here are excerpts from the rough translation provided by Google.
*
BUSH: Saddam Husein will not change and will continue playing. The moment has arrived for undoing of him. It is thus. I, as for me, will from now on try to use the possible subtlest rhetoric, while we looked for the approval of the resolution....Saddam Hussein is not being disarmed. We must take to him right now. We have shown an incredible degree of patience until now. They are left two weeks. In two weeks we will be militarily ready. I believe that we will obtain the second resolution.... We will be in Bagdad at the end of March. A 15% of possibilities that exist then Saddam Hussein is dead or has gone away...
We would like to act with the mandate of the United Nations. If we acted militarily we will do it with high accuracy and focusing much our objectives. We will decimate the loyal troops and the regular army quickly will know which it is.... We are developing a package of humanitarian aid very hard. We can win without destruction. We are raising Iraq already post Sadam, and I believe that there are good bases for a future better. Iraq relatively hard has a good bureaucracy and a civil society. It would be possible to be organized in a federation. Meanwhile we are doing all the possible one to take care of the necessities political of our friends and allies.
AZNAR: It is very important to count on a resolution. ... The next Wednesday [16 of February] I see myself with Chirac. The resolution already will have begun to circulate.
BUSH: It seems to me very well. Chirac knows the reality perfectly. Their intelligence services have explained it. The Arabs are transmitting him to Chirac a very clear message: Sadam Hussein must go away. The problem is that Chirac is created Mister Arab and in fact the life is making them impossible. But I do not want to have no rivalry with Chirac....
This is as the Chinese torture of the water. We must end it.
AZNAR: I agree, but it would be good for counting on the maximum number of possible people. Then a little patience.
BUSH: My patience is exhausted. I do not think to go beyond half of March.
[Saddam] is a thief, a terrorist, a criminal military. Compared with Saddam, Milosevic would be a Mother Teresa. When we enter we are going to discover many more crimes and we will take to the Court the International to him of Justice of Is It. Saddam Hussein thinks that already it has escaped. Think that France and Germany have stopped the process of their responsibilities....
AZNAR: In fact the greater success would be to gain the game without shooting a single shot and entering Bagdad.
BUSH: For me it would be the perfect solution. I do not want the war. I know what they are, the wars. I know the destruction and the death that bring with himself. I am the one that she has to console to the mothers and the widows of deads. By all means, for us that would be the best solution...
AZNAR: We needed that you help us with our public opinion....
BUSH: When within years History judges us I do not want that people ask themselves so that Bush, or Aznar, or Blair did not face their responsibilities. In the end, which people wants is to enjoy freedom. ..
AZNAR: The only thing which it worries to me about you is your optimism.
BUSH: I am optimistic because I believe that I am in the certain thing. I am peacefully with me same.
E&P Staff
Original Spanish:
http://www.elpais.com/articulo/espan...lpepinac_1/Tes
