Re: [Gnu-arch-users] [OT] facism gaining ground in US

[Pierce T . Wetter III]

On Jul 19, 2004, at 5:00 PM, Roman Zippel wrote:

> Hi,
>
> On Mon, 19 Jul 2004, Michael Poole wrote:
>
> > If we wanted Iraqi oil, it would have been enormously cheaper and
> > quicker to abet the corrupt UN oil-for-food program or just drop the
> > sanctions entirely.
>
> It was quite well known that the iraqi people suffered from it and I 
> can't
> really remember that the US had any interest in doing something about
> this.

 We did, there were several discussions about it, and led in part to
our frustration with the UN. Whether or not Osama had links to Saddam,
he was definitely using the sanctions as a recruiting drive. One of the
driving forces behind the oil-for-food program was Madeline Albright, in
part to help relieve the humanitarian problems brought on by the 
sanctions.

 One thing to remember in all US foreign policy discussions. We have
approximately 1,000,000 ex-Iraqi citizens living in the US. That
really confuses our foreign policy quite a bit

>  It was quite symptomatic that the US armee protected the iraq oil
> ministry and did at first nothing about the general looting.

 The original impression as I remember was that of people striking back
against their oppressors, so I think the US army was just caught flat 
footed.
It wasn't necessarily policy. Always put things down to stupidity 
before evil.


> > Please clarify: Do you know Pierce well enough to make assumptions
> > about what he doesn't know rather than responding to what he actually
> > said?  (I ask sincerely, because I don't want to accuse you of
> > hypocrisy with no basis.)  I did not and do not want to answer for
> > him, since he seems more than capable of answering for himself.
>
> Well, my assumptions are based on what he write so far. One example: He
> displays the prison torture cases as few individual cases, only a few
> soldiers need to be prosecuted and everything is well. Not a word about
> what made this possible. Nothing about the role of the CIA in it. He 
> only
> seems to know about physical torture...
> Everything is very shallow.

 Fair enough that its shallow, but so are _your_ arguments. Its the 
nature of the medium, that email discussions are a bit shallow. I never 
said the prison torture cases are just a few individuals, I just 
pointed out that they came to light not because some crusading reporter 
uncovered them, but because the Army was prosecuting them.

 The reason I brought that point up is because all people are 
imperfect, and must be judged by the totality of their actions. If 
prisons are to be judged by the abuses of the guards, every single 
country in the world would have to shut
down their prisons. The difference is one of intent, that its much 
worse to intend prisoner abuse then it is to have it happen and then 
prosecute those involved. That doesn't mean we can just ignore what 
happened, but it doesn't mean we have been proven outright villains 
either.

 In another message I talked about how I thought that Rumsfeld hadn't 
intended what had happened to happen, but that he more some 
responsibility for trying to draw a distinctions where none exists.

> I may be wrong about him, but I would be
> really surprised.

 You're skeptical about me, so you post these short little responses 
about
complicated issues, and then accuse me of being shallow in my analysis.

 Er, ok.

 Pierce