From: owner-fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org (fegmaniax-digest) To: fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org Subject: fegmaniax-digest V12 #68 Reply-To: fegmaniax@smoe.org Sender: owner-fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk fegmaniax-digest Tuesday, February 25 2003 Volume 12 : Number 068 Today's Subjects: ----------------- Re: Sublime/ridiculous [The Great Quail ] Having said all that... [The Great Quail ] october ["Kenneth Johnson" ] Re: REAP [Tom Clark ] Re: boo yah [Ken Ostrander ] Re: The complicity of France (was: anti-war movement) [Marcy Tanter ] Re: REAP [Michael R Godwin ] Re: boo yah [Sebastian Hagedorn ] Re: The complicity of France (was: anti-war movement) [Jeffrey with 2 Fs ] Everything's Broken ["Rex.Broome" ] RE: The complicity of France (was: anti-war movement) ["Jason Brown \(Ech] OT war/politics "into the morass" ["Kenneth Johnson" Subject: Re: Sublime/ridiculous Barbara furthers with, > Replying to Quail: I'm sure you have very good reasons for America > waging war on Iraq, but the nefarious past of France will not be one of > them. Half of the world is made up of women and I would guess 98% of us > are anti-war. This wins the award for the most senseless thing said about the current crises I have yet to read. If you have a real point to make, I invite you to make it, rather than deliberately misread my comments about France, followed up by an imaginary statistic. - --Quail ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 25 Feb 2003 11:38:04 -0500 From: The Great Quail Subject: Having said all that... ...this is still pretty funny: http://www.coxar.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/ - --Quail ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 25 Feb 2003 08:55:12 -0800 From: "Kenneth Johnson" Subject: october sorry if this has been brought up already, but.. could it be you & oblivion? "leaves on your ouija board..." Kenneth ************************************ ************************************* _________________________________________________________________ MSN 8 with e-mail virus protection service: 2 months FREE* http://join.msn.com/?page=features/virus ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 25 Feb 2003 08:57:52 -0800 From: Tom Clark Subject: Re: REAP on 2/25/03 6:11 AM, Perry Amberson at perryamberson@yahoo.com wrote: > http://www.undercover.com.au/20030225_howieepstein.html > Also: http://apnews.myway.com//article/20030225/D7PDOHT00.html That's really unfortunate. What really surprised me was that Carlene Carter took the rap for the heroin bust in '01. She should've stayed with Nick. And yet Jeff Lynne still walks the earth, - -tc ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 25 Feb 2003 12:12:07 -0500 From: Ken Ostrander Subject: Re: boo yah >Here's a cheat sheet for you: >Norah Jones, Norah Jones, Norah Jones, Rod Stewart & Harvey Fierstein, Robin >Williams, Norah Jones, Bee Gees medley by 'N Sync, Norah Jones, still photo >of Flaming Lips accepting for best rock instrumental, Norah Jones, "All the >people who died last year" montage, Springsteen-Costello-Grohl-Van Zandt >performing "London Calling", Norah Jones. every year the grammys piss me off by giving one artist everything. never mind that norah's big single bores me to tears. never mind that vince guaraldi should be suing jessie harris. isn't it really based on sales and hype? the crowd calling out "bruuuuuuce!!!" as the envelope for album of the year was being opened said it all. the clash tribute was the highlight for me, despite little steven's role. the music usually makes up for the predictability of the award recipients. i hate to admit that the n'sync bee gees medley was very good as well. i enjoyed coldplay's performance (even chris martin's gyrations), though that was my wife's least favorite song on the album. paul simon looked like death. does he hate art that much? i was very happy to see and hear all of the anti war rhetoric. >> ken "moving to florida" the kenster > >Is this official now? No offense to present or future residents, but there >are way too many episodes of "Cops" filmed in Florida for my liking. it is official. i put my notice in yesterday. hence "boo yah". i've been at sloan school since september of ninety four and all i have to show for it is years of email correspondence and websurfing at work. that reminds me, my kenster email will be disappearing as well. i still have to figure out what my last day will be (going to try and milk my sick and personal time) here at mit; but we are planning on hitting the road by april first. america's moving adventure. we'll be in the orlando area; but we want to stay as far from the empire of the rat as possible. since we could get a comparable apartment down there for roughly half of what we're paying now for rent, we'll probably find a nicer area in which to live. i'd venture to say that we won't be seeing too many cops episodes being filmed. > i'd like to see quebec become it's own independent state. >Really? Why? quebec has its own culture and language. french-speaking quebecois are discriminated against and generally oppressed within a larger, english-speaking canada. this question has been going on for more than a hundred years. since the brits originally took over. >> aren't there several different resolutions? that should divy up the vote. > >They've already taken the issue to the people of Quebec. > >The vote was "no". Twice. from what i understand the votes have been very very close. doesn't sound like a mandate to me. didn't most of the no votes come from primarily english speaking montreal and most of the yes votes from the french speaking areas? and didn't premiers outside quebec state before the vote that the wouldn't deal with quebec in the event of a yes vote? ken "bruce springstreet?" the kenster ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 25 Feb 2003 11:20:32 -0600 From: Marcy Tanter Subject: Re: The complicity of France (was: anti-war movement) At 11:12 AM 2/25/2003 -0500, The Great Quail wrote: Marcy writes, > The political/economic ties not withstanding, I don't think it's a > disrespect for facts to consider that there are more than > political/economic ties involved here. You seem to locate the sole reason for France's reluctance on their acknowledgement of the horrors of war. I pointed out that for a nation concerned with such horror, it's awfully odd that they'd supply so many arms to belligerent nations. Did I say that? I don't think I did. In fact, I think I acknowledged the political/economic ties. You are focusing solely on the government's reluctance to go to war whereas my scope is larger--it's not only the gov't, it's also people who have no ties to Iraq at all who don't want to go. And for the record, I seem to recall that the US has supplied arms to other nations--I'm not sure how we can define "belligerent" since just about any nation, including our own, could be defined that way at certain times. >The point is that George Bush and his cronies have > no reason whatsoever to just ravage Iraq. False, false, false. There are several reasons, and I'll give them: 1. Saddam's dictatorship is responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of people, and that's not counting the dead Iranians and Kuwaitis. Very true, by all accounts. But how does that give us the right to wage war on the country of Iraq? Supply arms to those in Iraq who want to rise up against him and depose him? Absolutely. I'd support that in a heartbeat, but I have not yet heard anyone make the case that we've been asked to come in and go to war. Are we the world's policeman? if we are, then let's be realistic and say that. 2. In the last decade of sanctions/containment/inspections, Iraq has consistently flouted the UN regulations. He is allowed to do this because as the post-Gulf War years ticked away, the P-5 members of the security council grew less concerned with Iraq -- except, of course, unless its oil was concerned. Especially your beloved France -- who flagrantly betrayed the US when they abstained from voting for renewed inspections at the last second in 1999. Why did they do this? Because Iraq threatened to award oil contracts to Russia instead of France. The fact is, Iraq has been playing a long, long game of stalling and blocking inspections, to think that suddenly "four more months" is any different from the last decade of stalling tactics is simply naove. Saddam knows that unless we roll in the tanks and planes, he has all the time he needs to acquire whatever weapons he can, from VX nerve gas to nuclear materials. So failure to comply with inspections is a legitimate reason for war, yes. No it's not. Failure to comply is grounds for blockades, boycotts, etc. but it's not grounds to kill innocent people. 3. There are other reasons for war that are more in terms of national self-interest than merely the oil. It is a FACT that Saddam is trying to procure nuclear weaponry. It is a FACT that his Ba'th regime has expansionist tendencies. It is a FACT that he has threatened, post-Gulf War, to nuke Tel Aviv. You figure it out. Oil isn't the only issue--I merely brought it up as one of the issues. But these are still not reasons to go to war. Pakistan and India threatened each other with nukes not so long ago. We didn't wage war on either of them. Deposing Hussein (why do people call him Saddam?) is not the same as waging war on the nation. Let's get rid of him and his cronies. If journalists are able to find him for interviews, surely our special forces could find him without having to conduct a war. First of all, Marcy, the terrorism-war against us has already started. In case you might have missed it, the Islamic Jihad has been attacking us for years now. You think these maniacal barbarians are really waiting to see whether or not we topple the secularist Ba'th regime? But nevertheless, I still find your moral reasoning shaky here. So, we are never to wage war if it means that our civilians might be put in jeopardy? We might as well throw in the towel right now and hide our heads in the sand. This is part of the problem right here, Quail. It's the attitude that this is only just about us. It's not just about us, it's about us, the British, the Spanish, the Italians, the Australians, etc. etc. Repercussions would not just be felt by us, they'd be felt by people around the world, most of whom who would have had nothing to do with it. You're talking about potentially thousands of people, probably more, whose lives could be endangered beyond what goes on in Iraq, by people who have nothing to do with the Iraqies. Marcy, no offense, but I feel it is *you* who are living in the comfort of an easy chair. I have been reading account after account of Saddam's misrule. Would a war kill innocent people? Yes. Would it kill American soldiers? Yes. Would it cost billions of dollars? Yes. Would the reconstruction place an immense burden on the United States? Yes. But when it comes down to it, I feel that, historically speaking, it is the right decision to make. A new Iraq could create a lot of positive change in that region, and a new, democratically-structured Iraq would certainly murder less of its citizenry than a Ba'thist Iraq. Not to mention the fact that, once Saddam gets nuclear weapons, the stakes change dramatically. You want to live in a world where Iraq has the bomb? Oh, wait, I forget -- you are more afraid of the United States nuking Canada. Thanks for purposely missing my point about Canada. There has been no evidence presented that Iraq has the means or even half the means to make nuclear weapons. I listened to Colin Powell's speech to the UN and most of what he presented was circumstantial and some of it was actually explained by the inspectors, so I'm not convinced his obtaining nukes is that immediate. The dictatorship is another issue. I think that his regime is definitely one that needs to be destroyed both because of what he's doing to the Iraqie people and because of what he may do to them in the future. But waging a war that is more likely to end the lives of innocents than to depose Hussein is something I cannot support. We have to evolve beyond giving the finger to the rest of the world and doing what we want without support--we don't live on this planet alone and we can't act as if we do. I'm not saying nothing should be done about Hussein, I'm saying that going to war is wrong. The Kuwaitis asked for our help last time, who's asking us this time? This is the real world, and tyranny, murder, war, and misrule are part of it. While the tragedy of a single dead innocent is itself a universe of horror, these emotional aspects cannot be used *solely* to guide international policy. The people under Saddam suffer horribly. We can change this. While I may not be happy about some of the context, the oil, the Bushies, the double-dealing with Israel and the Saudis, I still feel that things will only get worse in the future if we do not act soon. What makes you so sure that a war will change what's going on there? Did we change things last time? Oh that's right, we allowed Hussein to stay in power because he asked us to. The Iraqie people do suffer horribly and I support doing something to help them, but I don't support a war. Lots of those people we want to help will be the ones who wind up dead. The rulers of the regime may wind up happily alive, just like last time and just like Bin Ladin. We still have yet to catch him and isn't Afghanistan a smaller country than Iraq? >Most of the people saying we have to have this so-called war aren't > even involved in the fight, they're not on the front lines, not in the > gov't, not sending their own kids/brothers/husbands/wives/fathers to be > killed. That's the way of the world, Marcy. Especially given that our armed forced are voluntary. So, Quail, when do you ship out? Marcy ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 25 Feb 2003 12:28:17 -0500 From: "Stewart C. Russell" Subject: Re: REAP Tom Clark wrote: > > And yet Jeff Lynne still walks the earth, but if there had been no Jeff Lynne, Jason Lyttle probably wouldn't have have made Grandaddy what they are. Mind you, this kind of counteracts something I was going to say in another thread about "... nor must we ever do evil, that good may come of it". I'll get me coat ... Stewart ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 25 Feb 2003 17:29:49 +0000 (GMT) From: Michael R Godwin Subject: Re: REAP > on 2/25/03 6:11 AM, Perry Amberson at perryamberson@yahoo.com wrote: > > http://www.undercover.com.au/20030225_howieepstein.html On Tue, 25 Feb 2003, Tom Clark wrote: > Also: > http://apnews.myway.com//article/20030225/D7PDOHT00.html > That's really unfortunate. What really surprised me was that Carlene Carter > took the rap for the heroin bust in '01. She should've stayed with Nick. What happened with Nick and Carlene? All I remember is that they had a row after Carlene duetted with Dave Edmunds on "Baby Ride Easy", and I never heard of her again. Is that when they split up? I see that after the bust, Carlene was released "into the custody of her daughter, Tiffany Lowe". How old was Tiffany in 2001? 16? Somewhere I've got some nice photos of Carlene the last time she performed here at Bath University. I thought it was about 5 years ago, but I suppose it must have been nearer 20... - - MRG ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 25 Feb 2003 18:34:23 +0100 From: Sebastian Hagedorn Subject: Re: boo yah - --On Dienstag, 25. Februar 2003 12:12 Uhr -0500 Ken Ostrander wrote: > paul simon looked like death. does he hate art that much? Sorry, we don't get the Grammys. What happened? Did they perform together? Did they get some kind of lifetime achievement award? - -- Sebastian Hagedorn PGP key ID: 0x4D105B45 Ehrenfeldg|rtel 156 50823 Kvln http://www.spinfo.uni-koeln.de/~hgd/ ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 25 Feb 2003 12:10:17 -0600 From: Jeffrey with 2 Fs Jeffrey Subject: Re: The complicity of France (was: anti-war movement) Quoting The Great Quail : > I am not apologizing for more politics, because those who are sick are > free > to delete -- the thread is pretty clearly marked. You probably shouldn't apologize for that - but both you and Marcy are phrasing your arguments in an unnecessarily personalized fashion, and although an apology isn't necessary, stopping it probably is. Anyway... > 1. Saddam's dictatorship is responsible for the deaths of tens of > thousands > of people, and that's not counting the dead Iranians and > Kuwaitis....Liberating a country from an > unpopular > and murderous dictatorship is always a reason for war, and in my > opinion, > one of the best ones. This seems to be a compelling argument, but the problems it raises are quite significant, and no one in the US administration seems even to be thinking about them. Such interventions clearly chip away at notions of national sovereignty, and if carried out only by a single nation, or a small group of nations, open the door to massive international stability, since any nation can construct a case that another nation has a murderous dictatorship or is some way violating the human rights of its population. In other words, *if* the presence of a murderous dictatorship is positive grounds for intervention, the UN or similar representative international body is the only ethical vehicle for such intervention - not a particular nation, and particularly not a grossly self-interested nation like the US (I mean self-interested in the current situation: i.e., geopolitical control over vital resources.) And none of the above suggests that war - particularly saturation bombing - is the best strategy of intervention even in such cases. > 2. In the last decade of sanctions/containment/inspections, Iraq has > consistently flouted the UN regulations. He is allowed to do this because > as.... Saddam knows that unless we roll in the tanks and > planes, > he has all the time he needs to acquire whatever weapons he can, from VX > nerve gas to nuclear materials. So failure to comply with inspections is > a > legitimate reason for war, yes. Again wit' da UN. > 3. There are other reasons for war that are more in terms of national > self-interest than merely the oil. It is a FACT that Saddam is trying to > procure nuclear weaponry. It is a FACT that his Ba'th regime has > expansionist tendencies. It is a FACT that he has threatened, post-Gulf > War, > to nuke Tel Aviv. You figure it out. The history of Saddam suggests that Saddam is most interested in Saddam; that he's unlikely to propel himself toward personal or national suicide ("nation" defined here as his cronies). However, an all-out attack would likely trigger a corresponding all-or-nothing response. *If* Saddam has WMDs of any sort, he's *most* likely to use them in response to war. (Note, too, that proliferation of WMDs breeds the same: even the US acquired its first nukes out of fear that Hitler would get there first. The Soviets acquired theirs to defend against the US; China theirs to defend against both of the above...and on it goes, in a nuclear daisy chain. Nations *with* WMDs - esp. under administrations that are actively threatening to use them - cannot be surprised when nations so threatened wish to acquire same to defend themselves.) > Again -- IF WE HAVE VIABLE PLANS FOR A > RECONSTRUCTION. And we don't, and are very unlikely to do so...and even if we did, it's highly questionable that we *could* do so or that it would be successful. > You > want > to live in a world where Iraq has the bomb? No. I'd prefer to live in a world where the US doesn't have the bomb either - and perhaps the best way to ultimately ensure that (as Tom Lehrer put it) Alabama doesn't have the bomb is to work toward multilateral disarmament. The continuing presence of nukes is not stabilizing; quite the opposite. > >Most of the people saying we have to have this so-called war aren't > > even involved in the fight, they're not on the front lines, not in the > > gov't, not sending their own kids/brothers/husbands/wives/fathers to > be > > killed. > > That's the way of the world, Marcy. Especially given that our armed > forced > are voluntary. Which raises another problem, not so far addressed here: our armed forces lack the will, manpower, and resources to administrate a hypothetical transitional Iraqi state: http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20030303&s=vest ..Jeff J e f f r e y N o r m a n The Architectural Dance Society www.uwm.edu/~jenor/ADS.html :: sex, drugs, revolt, Eskimos, atheism ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 25 Feb 2003 13:35:53 -0500 From: "Rex.Broome" Subject: Everything's Broken My car, my computer at home, and until just now, my e-mail at work. Web access still down. Annoying couple of days. ______ Ken: >>i have to say that i've always liked _blonde on blonde_. probably because >>zimmerman reminds me of tom baker. I never realized it before, but thay may be part of its charm for me, too. While I was in the record store (where my daughter pogo'ed to the Buzzcocks), one of the clerks who looked eerily like a pubescent Tom Baker was trying on a scarf over his t-shirt. The whole staff seemed to be helping him with some kind of ad-hoc outfit. I told him it looked like he was going for a Doctor Who look. He looked at me blankly and asked it it made him look gay, because he was trying to see how gay he could look. Didn't know what to make of that, so I went back to singing "What Do I Get" to my daughter. ______ JeffD: >>And was once chosen for abuse by Dave Kendall -- back >>in his "doing record reviews in the orange shadows days" Ah, there's a memory. He was like any number of aliens that used to torment Captain Kirk on his viewscreen back in the '60's-- no time to finish the puppet, so throw a lot of psychedelic shit on there to cover up the fact that its mouth doesn't move. Or cop to the fact that it's a puppet operated by Ron Howard's brother, much like Dave Kendall. ____ Eb: >>I never noticed before that if you let your mouse rest on a link >>within a band's AllMusic discography, a thumbnail of the album cover >>often appears onscreen. I think that just started. It was the next major revamp after they switched all their "buy now" links from CDNow to Barnes & Noble. Those guys have interesting priorities, eh? _____ Steve T, then Tom C: > Coldplay's performance with the New York Philharmonic was pretty > amazing too. >>Am I supposed to like these guys? Innaresting question. I have no idea who you're supposed to like anymore. Coldplay got so huge so fast... I seem to remember them as the second-tier Travis, who were themselves kinda that year's user-friendly, warmfuzzy version of Radiohead, yeah? Now Coldplay is constantly referenced as "the next U2". Which kind of makes sense, since they seem rather humorless and have become really popular without being representative of a popular genre, kinda like U2. Seems like they are a rare instance of a wildly popular "standard bearer for modern rock"-type band which at least superficially resembles a type of music that I generally like. But the band itself doesn't do much for me either way. __________ Took my daughters to the doctor for some shots today. Older one didn't flinch. In fact, as she looked at the needle sticking into her right thigh, she gleefully exclaimed, "Oh, wow!"... Should that worry me? Rex "Don't Worry, I Had Already Crossed Courtney Love Off My List of Potential Babysitters" Broome ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 25 Feb 2003 11:27:20 -0800 From: "Jason Brown \(Echo Services Inc\)" Subject: RE: The complicity of France (was: anti-war movement) Quail Wrote: 1. Saddam's dictatorship is responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of people, and that's not counting the dead Iranians and Kuwaitis. Then Marcy Wrote: Very true, by all accounts. But how does that give us the right to wage war on the country of Iraq? Supply arms to those in Iraq who want to rise up against him and depose him? Absolutely. I'd support that in a heartbeat, but I have not yet heard anyone make the case that we've been asked to come in and go to war. Are we the world's policeman? if we are, then let's be realistic and say that Now I write: I believe we have already been maing efforts to do that doing that since 1996. The problem is that all serious resistance was crushed in after the Gulf War. And sending weapons do no one in particular does no good. The only successful resistance effort to Saddam as been in the north where the Kurds have lived in relative freedom thanks to the US enforced No-Fly zone. And weather or not the US should be the world's policeman is beside the point if the UN endorses this war the likelihood of which is increasing due to Saddam's own actions like refusing to cooperate with inspectors and refusing to destroy UN banned missles. If anyone has the right to be the world policeman it is the UN. Right? Quail wrote: 2. In the last decade of sanctions/containment/inspections, Iraq has consistently flouted the UN regulations. He is allowed to do this because as the post-Gulf War years ticked away, the P-5 members of the security council grew less concerned with Iraq -- except, of course, unless its oil was concerned. Especially your beloved France -- who flagrantly betrayed the US when they abstained from voting for renewed inspections at the last second in 1999. Why did they do this? Because Iraq threatened to award oil contracts to Russia instead of France. The fact is, Iraq has been playing a long, long game of stalling and blocking inspections, to think that suddenly "four more months" is any different from the last decade of stalling tactics is simply naove. Saddam knows that unless we roll in the tanks and planes, he has all the time he needs to acquire whatever weapons he can, from VX nerve gas to nuclear materials. So failure to comply with inspections is a legitimate reason for war, yes. Then Marcy wrote: No it's not. Failure to comply is grounds for blockades, boycotts, etc. but it's not grounds to kill innocent people. Now I write: You are advocating a policy that has already been used for the past 12 years and clearly hasn't worked. The only thing that it has caused is the killing of innocent people. Absent the use of biological, chemical or nuclear weapons fewer people will die in a wear than will die over another decade of sanctions. I think there is a moral imperative to resolve this situation as quickly as possible. Either remove Saddam and the B'ath now or give up completely and let them remain in power and end the sanctions. To continue the programs of the last decade is the worst possible outcome and only hurts innocent iraqis. Quial Wrote 3. There are other reasons for war that are more in terms of national self-interest than merely the oil. It is a FACT that Saddam is trying to procure nuclear weaponry. It is a FACT that his Ba'th regime has expansionist tendencies. It is a FACT that he has threatened, post-Gulf War, to nuke Tel Aviv. You figure it out. Then Marcy wrote: Oil isn't the only issue--I merely brought it up as one of the issues. But these are still not reasons to go to war. Pakistan and India threatened each other with nukes not so long ago. We didn't wage war on either of them. Deposing Hussein (why do people call him Saddam?) is not the same as waging war on the nation. Let's get rid of him and his cronies. If journalists are able to find him for interviews, surely our special forces could find him without having to conduct a war. Now I write: The fact that Iraq does not yet have nukes makes it a much more actionable situation. If they had nukes you'd end up in a situation similar to that with North Korea, where there is no possible resolution other than paying the blackmail or seriously risking a nuclear war. Correct me if I am wrong but no two countries with nuclear weapons have gone to all out war. All that has happened is proxy wars like in the cold war or skirmishes as was the case last year between India and Pakistan. Nuclear weapons hamstring conventional military action because of the mutual threat of the total annihilation of cities. People call him saddam because in 1991 there was need to differentiate between referring to him and referring Jordan's King Hussein. Journalists don't find him. They are taken to him there is a big difference. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 25 Feb 2003 11:49:47 -0800 From: "Kenneth Johnson" Subject: OT war/politics "into the morass" No one has been able to convince me that this war is necessary. I dont care how attractive or winnable it seems. The classic ideologue only wants to only see the side of the argument that leads to the conclusion they so magnanimously hand down. (BTW- pro-war/anti-bushies: How does it feel to be complicit with the administration you purport to despise?) Are we so shortsighted by this easy means of redressing this serious situation, that we cant give equal weight to the opposite peace precedents? Just because war is the simple, expeditious answer does not mean it is the right one. In this case the peaceful solutions are working. War is evil (no excuses, no exceptions) and should be discouraged, not touted and glorified as the only option each time troubles rear up. I realize this is may seem extremely idealistic. But within the framework of reality, when alternatives like diplomacy are working, it also has a certain reasonable sense. If Saddam has weapons or weapons programs, war will not deter their use, they will encourage it. A pre-emptive war by American forces will lead directly to the use of the weapons it seeks to prevent and contain. Sanctions and inspections are working. So they are taking a little longer than a good old-fashioned bombing raid. So what? Whats the rush to war? We are not running out of time. Time is our ally and the healing balm. More time to solve the situation peacefully is only anathema to those who seek war for immediate economic and personal gain. Iraq has been and can be contained without it. The Iraqi citizens are not thrilled about their options should war be waged on them. Lets empower them to decide their own fate without using force that will decimate them. The UN or some similar body should approach the council of Arab nations with a peaceful proposal to do away with Hussein. The Arab neighbors understand by now the alternative to leaving him in power, which is to let the raving lunatic American regime off its UN leash. Marcy has a great idea, lets take all those fat, pompous, armchair war mongers and give them each a rifle and maybe some ammo and a gas-mask then ship their ass to Iraq. Well see how far their shrill pop-culture poli-sci ravings take them in the desert of despond. If they are not fit, then their children, (as opposed to the children of the poor and disenfranchised), should be sacrificed to support their fervor. Relocate /transfer all the pro-war citizens to the Gulf or any other area ravaged by our necessary" wars, and let them rebuild homes and care for the wounded and dislocated. They want war? Let em have it! Lets have each fat-cat apologist host a refugee family. No room in your guesthouse? Let a small family camp in the SUV. Not so attractive now eh? Can anyone seriously suggest that there is no alternative to perpetual war? If this is true, allow me to be cynical and say, let the nukes fly, because thats what perpetual war means: mass-suicide. This is the perfect opportunity to set a new precedent instead of charging down the same old tried and true path of mutual annihilation. War will do nothing better that a peaceful regime change and further inspector-assisted cleaning up of the weapons cache wont. In fact it will only make things worse, how can a sane logical or reasonable mind see it otherwise? Kenneth p.s. With regards to global terrorism, there are no guarantees, but a peaceful diplomatic US that seeks to reconcile the hatred we participate in with other like extremists might be a less attractive target. I say might because all bets are off with the spoiled oil brats like Osama and Georgie boy pointing guns and terrorizing the world. We dont need a war. We need an impeachment. If we had a peaceful, populist, progressive government that took pains to reconcile the evil in our global politics/policies maybe fewer madmen would want to attack the US. Oops there I go being idealistic again. : o We have crazy megalomaniacs all over the globe of all colors and stripes threatening world peace. If we depose them all and allow peaceful democracy to flourish that would be ideal for sure. We all know that is not about to happen, but it would be nice. While Im at it, Ill throw in the mad Utopian dream of a cosmopolitan world with no nationalism or class hatred too. K ************************************ "May we remember, as we log on, that half the world's people have never used a telephone, and recall, as we chatter, that most of those around us have no chance to speak or move as they choose. May we recall taht more tahn half a million beings live without food, and that as many children live amidst poverty and war." -- Pico Iyer ************************************* _________________________________________________________________ The new MSN 8: advanced junk mail protection and 2 months FREE* http://join.msn.com/?page=features/junkmail ------------------------------ End of fegmaniax-digest V12 #68 *******************************