Want to win the war on terror? Stop engaging in it!

Politics International Politics
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[quote=“Huang Guang Chen”]Jesus!! Awoke a giant!

CS, I think traitor’s a tad harsh. Anyway, a circle-jerk’s no fun. I need the presence of yin to fill my yang. :laughing:

Again, quite oblivious to the actual machinations, though I have seen several references. I’d certainly hope it wasn’t the cause for so much wise commentary dropping off the radar.

HG[/quote]

Yeah, first I heard about it, and hope it’s not true.

Having been blown out of the water more than once by fredsmith, CS, TC, Tigerman etc., I’d hate to see it lose its salt.

Though I do recall when the IP was basically a War Of All Against spook…

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Apologies… should have been on Feedback Forum… just made my first visit there after two years here (’:oops:’)

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No problem comrade. Here, loosen your trousers and step into the circle. Let me offer you a nice warm hand.

HG

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[quote=“porcelainprincess”][quote=“spook”]
I think the real reason they’ve gone AWOL is because of the old saying that “time tells all” and time wasn’t on the side of neoconservatives.

It’s virtually impossible in a free-speech, open society for propaganda to compete with the truth though so their ill-tempered exit from the public stage was inevitable.[/quote]
Don’t kid yourself. Aside from Comrade Stalin, whose politics are just to the right of Ghengis Khan, the rightwingers have mostly stopped posting here. You lefties like to congratulate yourself on the self-imposed exile of Fred Smith, but you’re fooling yourself if you think you “won” the polemical war. Mr. Stalin is kinda right on one score, even if the tone is off-putting and not appropriate…the IP forum has turned into a lefty “circle-jerk.”

I’m certainly not going to take up a position as a standard-bearer for Fred Smith, because I disagree with him on a lot of issues, but for all my griping about what an imbecile Bush is (and make no mistake…the man is seriously demented), I’m still a centrist who has to admit that the evidence is clear that the current administration has been fundamentally right on two scores: the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

I’ve looked at all of the evidence from both sides of the political spectrum, and honestly cannot be convinced that they were anything but unavoidable.

Ah, Mr. bin Laden is a “counterpart” of the neo-cons. Erm…okay. You see, this is where you lefties lose me, and indeed, put off rational people who might otherwise by inclined to listen to what you have to say. The hysterical posturing mixed in with Chomsky-ite casuistry do nothing to further your cause. And yes, before you counter with “but what about Comrade Stalin’s “traitors” remark?”, I’ll be the first to say that his abrasive posturing is a big turn-off as well.[/quote]

“So…all you and American traitors, Canadians, Australians, and Brits can once again join in your happy little circle-jerk.”

“Denouncing President Pervez Musharraf as a traitor, the voice said: ‘I call on Muslims in Pakistan to get rid of their government which is working for Americans.’”
– Ayman al-Zawahiri, al-Qaida’s second-in-command

You don’t see a certain symmetry here? What sort of extremism would motivate someone to label someone who simply disagrees with them a “traitor”?

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[quote=“spook”]“So…all you and American traitors, Canadians, Australians, and Brits can once again join in your happy little circle-jerk.”

“Denouncing President Pervez Musharraf as a traitor, the voice said: ‘I call on Muslims in Pakistan to get rid of their government which is working for Americans.’”
– Ayman al-Zawahiri, al-Qaida’s second-in-command

You don’t see a certain symmetry here? What sort of extremism would motivate someone to label someone who simply disagrees with them a “traitor”?[/quote]
Symmetry with Comrade Stalin-slash-Ghengis Khan wannabe, yes. Symmetry with the much derided “neo-cons” in Washington, no. Symmetry with the most persuasive arguments for the wars coming from Hitchens and such-like, definitely not.

There are reasonable arguments to be made on both sides. I think the Ann Coulter-ish nutbars who sling around the term “traitor” are rightly slagged. But you don’t do yourself justice when you equate the reasonable voices with the addle-brained extremists.

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Speaking of the neocon voices of forumosa, whatever happened to Cold Front? He used to be the best of 'em all, then just up and vanished.

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Dunno. I asked the same thing in another thread recently, didn’t get an answer.

HG

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Ok, then in more recent news, why did Fred Smith go into “self-imposed exile?”

And is no one interested in the interview that was originally the topic of this thread? Personally, I thought it was a pretty damning expose. I mean, this isn’t some hippy living in a commune, this is a former British ambassador, airing Bush-regime ties to a monstrous dictator who routinely employs torture against dissenters and excuses this by calling them “terrorists”?!?

This news doesn’t seem to have raised an eyebrow… except in Britain, where they’re not letting him publish the book.

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I’m suprised too. It’s like it’s the final nail in the Bushies coffin and we lefties are feeling sheepish about driving it in.

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Well, in all fairness it must be noted that the US did finally pressure Uzbekistan on human rights to the point that the Uzbeki gov’t evicted the US from the important K2 airbase

[quote]The eviction notice came four days before a senior State Department official was to arrive in Tashkent for talks with the government of President Islam Karimov. The relationship has been increasingly tense since bloody protests in the province of Andijan in May, the worst unrest since Uzbekistan gained independence from the Soviet Union.

Undersecretary of State R. Nicholas Burns was going to pressure Tashkent to allow an international investigation into the Andijan protests, which human rights groups and three U.S. senators who met with eyewitnesses said killed about 500 people. Burns was also going to warn the government, one of the most authoritarian in the Islamic world, to open up politically – or risk the kind of upheavals witnessed recently in Ukraine, Georgia and Kyrgyzstan, U.S. officials said.

Karimov has balked at an international probe. As U.S. pressure mounted, he cut off U.S. night flights and some cargo flights, forcing Washington to move search-and-rescue operations and some cargo flights to Bagram air base in Afghanistan and Manas air base in Kyrgyzstan. As relations soured, the Bush administration was preparing for a further cutoff, U.S. officials said.

The United States was given the notice just hours after 439 Uzbek political refugees were flown out of neighboring Kyrgyzstan – over Uzbek objections – by the United Nations. The refugees fled after the May unrest, which Uzbek officials charged was the work of terrorists. The Bush administration had been pressuring Kyrgyzstan not to force the refugees to return to Uzbekistan.

Uzbekistan has been widely viewed as an important test for the Bush administration – and whether the anti-terrorism efforts or promotion of democracy takes priority. “We all knew basically that if we really wanted to keep access to the base, the way to do it was to shut up about democracy and turn a blind eye to the refugees,” said the senior official, on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitive diplomacy. “We could have saved the base if we had wanted.”[/quote]

washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/co … 005/07/29/

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The odd fact is that I’m a conservative. I voted for President Bush his first term and sat out the last election rather than vote for Kerry because I don’t share any of his principles. I believe in virtually everything President Bush professes. I can’t think of a single issue his various supporters here at Forumosa have espoused that I don’t also believe in. If I’m different from them in principle on any score it’s that I’m a bit more libertarian.

I was a contented Republican until the aftermath of 911 when a strange sickness seemed to overtake the Republican Party and a vast gap opened up between what its leadership said and what it did. That’s about the only thing I have in common with “lefties” – a deep disillusionment over the betrayal of supposed principles. Other than that though, lefties will soon be disappointed if they expect more common ground with me.

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Well, at least you can THINK and form your own opinions.

Because I want to think there is a reason we are at war, I ones asked a conservative why they supported it. I mentioned that Iraq should not be the main focus of the war on terror, and that the main reason for the war was a lie

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Sorry Vay.

[quote]Bush-regime ties to a monstrous dictator who routinely employs torture against dissenters and excuses this by calling them “terrorists”?!?[/quote] that sounds like situation normal to me. Before terrorists of course it was allied “freedom fighters” offing “communists.” It’s an age old trick.

Spook, I’m quite amazed you were a former pro-Bush voter. you must have mentioned it before but I missed it. I wonder how many anti-Bush republicans are around these days? All I see is the vast majority of Americans circling the wagons and falling into step with Bush to a wartime my country right or wrong beat.

Gaijinian:

No, but Saddam was an arsehole and will get what he’s long overdue. I was against the war at the outset, but now it’s done I can’t see anyway of the situation being resolved without a continued US presence. For this reason I flinch when I hear US liberals talk about a pullout of Iraq.

Sorry, there was a system, however fetid, in place before the US and others went in, there really is nothing in place as yet so they’d better damned well stay and fix it.

Agree with the apparent dishonesty of the US regime at present and I’m afraid it makes a victory in the war on terror all the more difficult. I do believe, however, that there will by necessity be a wake up at some point and pragmatism will determine better policy. Governments and the military are notoriously slow in adjusting to new enemies and tactics.

HG

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Saw the following blurb on a pin in NYC the other day:

“We’re making enemies faster than we can kill them.”

:blush:

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Here’s Murray’s response to that claim:

[quote]the sad thing, or the ironic thing, I suppose is the way to put it, is that ultimately the policy didn’t work, because having given probably about $1 billion over a three-year period and having even supported the Uzbek government at the time of the Andijan massacre, when the rest of the world was expressing outrage. The Uzbeks eventually cut a deal with Gazprom of Russia, and the United States then got kicked out of Uzbekistan very unceremoniously. They didn’t leave.

[b]The Bush administration is trying now to put the best possible gloss on it, and say,

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Rather than start a new thread, which after a beautiful morning coffee turned into some note-taking, and watching a short BBC flick online, I thought maybe a new thread title “War on [strike]Terror[/strike] Torture: #1 political enemy” still didn’t have the gusto the subject requires. A little searching and I found this thread in the archives.

Vay - I hadn’t read that Goodman interview before, thanks.
9 pages formatted to smaller font in Word.
Took 2 days days to digest.

Have you heard of Ikram Yakubov, who defected from Uzbekistan THIS YEAR?

The guy is only 28 years old, former ‘intelligence officer’ in Uzbek’s KGB. He claims he was forced to fabricate evidence against innocent people and witnessed people being tortured, and lends direct credibility to the notion that U.S. CIA kidnappings (renditions) willingly utilized such notorious techniques.

Enhanced interrogations as Cheney would have us call it. Since the US did in fact declare its ‘close ally’ in the ‘war on terror’ we’re supposed to call it something more G-Rated than horrific torture of the most heinous kind?

Yakubov says he knew the Karimov regime blamed a series of bombings in Tashkent and Bukhara on political opponents. Yakubov wrote a report on what BBC journalist calls a classic flase flag operation to create fear in the population (why BBC narrator describes the false flag as . . . c l a s s i c . . . I wonder). This landed Yakubov in the torture seat himself, not once, but twice, and the second one required a 5 hour surgical operation afterwards to mend physical injuries. Most people would look for escape if your conscience lands you such terrible circumstances.

The mini-documentary is heart-tugging to watch, at least for me.
news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/n … 195906.stm

They have a clip or two from Shahida Tulaganova, author of “My Fake Passports and Me”
She’s a trip.

This thread started with reference to the 2002-04 British Ambassador to Uzbekistan, Craig Murray, who did get his story published, and has recently spoken out publicly about War on Terror torture…‘How a Torture Protest Killed a Career’.

Here are some excerpts.[quote=“Craig Murray”]Certainly it wasn’t the only occasion when we came across evidence of people being boiled alive. That was the most extreme form of torture, I suppose, but immersion in boiling liquid of a limb was quite common.

Mutilation of the genitals was common. Suffocation was common, usually by putting a gas mask on people and blocking the air vents until they suffocated. Rape was common, rape with objects, rape with bottles, anal rape, homosexual rape, heterosexual rape, and mutilation of children in front of their parents.
…
I sent my deputy, a lady called Karen Moran, to see the CIA head of station and say to him, “My ambassador is worried your intelligence might be coming from torture. Is there anything he’s missing?”

ANSWER:… “Yes, it probably is coming from torture, but we don’t see that as a problem in the context of the war on terror.”
…
Just as almost everything you see about Afghanistan is a cover for the fact that the actual motive is the pipeline they wish to build over Afghanistan to bring out Uzbek and Turkmen natural gas which together is valued at up to $10 trillion, which they want to bring over Afghanistan and down to the Arabian Sea to make it available for export.

And we are living in a world where people, a small number of people, with incredible political clout and huge amounts of money, are prepared to see millions die for their personal economic gain and where, even worse, most people in bureaucracies are prepared to go along with it for their own much smaller economic gain, all within this psychological mirage which is so much of the war on terror.[/quote]
[url=http://tw.forumosa.com/t/torture-never-works-or-does-it/53386/25 of torture[/url] by medical doctors has been linked elsewhere, and is also relevant to this topic.

By the way, [color=red]Murray mentions that his book did get published, and begins after this letter…[/color]

…facsimile of a letter from Enron, from Kenneth Lay, chairman of Enron, to the honorable George W. Bush, governor of the state of Texas. It was written on April 3, 1997, sometime before Bush became president. “Dear George, you will be meeting with Ambassador Sadyq Safaev, Uzbekistan’s Ambassador to the United States on April 8th. … Enron has established an office in Tashkent and we are negotiating a $2 billion joint venture with Neftegas of Uzbekistan … to develop Uzbekistan’s natural gas and transport it to markets in Europe … This project can bring significant economic opportunities to Texas.”

Strange, Enron + Big Oil + Bush1&2/Cheney/Rove/Kissinger/Thomas E. White alliances and gains (and legalities) still unsettled publicly.

Anyone know when the Enron’s gains ended exactly?

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Funny that… such all-powerful people controlling the destinies of “millions” and yet… unable to build one simple pipeline across Afghanistan… Not when the Taliban were there (despite negotiations to do the same) … and so despite these negotiations… one invades to … er control less of the country to make it even harder to build said pipeline? hmmmm and since oil and gas supplies are fungible… and since China is buying so much oil from overseas… would it not make sense for the US and others to encourage the construction of a pipeline from China to Central Asia to reduce demand and thus increase the supply of Persian Gulf oil to US allies in Japan and Western Europe? hmmmm difficult… as to the Enron letter… companies from Hallmark to Mars to Tupperware send these to elected officials on a daily basis to make their (like voters’ concerns) known to elected officials… where’s the “gotcha” moment in that? But I fully understand that including Bush Cheney in a sentence with oil interests (particularly if there are pre-election connections to Texas which ALSO HAS OIL) along with anything relating to the Middle East, terrorism or our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is an immediate connection of FACTS (do you see? do you get it? don’t you see how they control the world?) that obviates the need for sense or further discussion. Gotcha! Er… but what was the point of all of this “discussion” again? I hope that my question does not obviate the need to provide sense… further to … the discussion… er… about… Bush? No… er Afghanistan and er… the pipeline that would um connect … the Arabian Sea … to the um trillions of dollars of er… in Uzbekistan… where the British diplomat … and torture… people boiled alive… but surely not in oil… as this would mean that it was no longer available to be sold… to the Chinese… NO to the Afghans… NO to be made available to the pipeline despite not being built interests… which are mostly Texan and have connections with Bush and Cheney… er yes! Eureka!

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[quote=“fred smith”]Funny …Eureka![/quote]Sorry, what’s your point?
Seems like you want to say there’s no point to examining something?

I’m interested, but er um eh lips op urp bub lic like what do you say about Murray or Yakubov?

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Wow. Another handshake photo. Who would have thought that after Rumsfeld and Saddam that these would still have any credibility or life…

Anyway, dying to hear when that pipeline across Afghanistan is going to be built… such powerful people… taking soooooo looong to get around to using their evil connections… When will it be built WHEN?

Love to hear more ABOUT that.

Love Fred

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You mean Bush2 & Jack Abramoff pictures? I hear ya. Embarrassing. And they wear our flag on their lapels.

So the setbacks in pipeline construction and control somehow explain something relevant to motives? Are you sure you’re dying to discuss this weak position further?

The War on Terror leveraging torture you believe is a false accusation pitted against a now flailing political party who once had the world’s support in the aftermath of 9/11?