www.byzcath.org Forums General Discussions Town Hall Tip of the hat to Mr. Bush

Administrator writes:
I am rather dismayed that Snoopy thinks that we are a country of people that routinely lies and invents evidence to frame innocent people like Saddam Hussein.

The facts of Venezuela and Colombia are not my invention but things which have appeared in various newspapers (in small articles which are generaly ignored) including the Jerusalem Post.

You mention the words WE, PEOPLE quoting my post as if I had said something I never said. My personal opinion regarding a particular situation does not mean at all the interpretation you have been giving to my posts on the war. You have labeled me as a person who supports Saddam Hussein and this is false. According to this interpretation of "you're with us or against us" I have attacked the American nation as a whole and this is NOT true.

Administrator expresses:
I do not respect those who impugn motives to President Bush that accuse him of having to invent evidence. Even most of his political enemies agree that he is honest and is acting from conviction.

I did not mean that President Bush was inventing evidences or that he acted with bad purposes, but that given the threat of terrorism this is a moment when every small thing will be magnified or seen as an enormous threat. The fact is that the evident proofs of the existence of mass destruction weapons were not shown to the public.

And it is always funny to see people from Mexico attack the U.S.

And especially since you guys down there want so much to be like America, even calling your country the "United States of Mexico" - PLEASE!

Actually both names "Mexican Republic" and "United States of Mexico" are used, as a federal system of States was adopted and with the influence of the American model of the XIX Century. I think that like any other nation in the world we want to be a succesful and free nation like the United States and all the possitive things the USA have brought for the benefits of the entire human race.

Don't you have your own issues of poverty, social injustice and political repression to deal with?

Umm I take this like a "war none of your business". This government has brought Mexico to the UN Security Council (even if the UN Council has no importance) and the international problems are now part of the social and political discussion.

I agree with you about this since I think we have more important things to worry about and being in the UN just added another problem. But the world has introduced us to the path of International problems, it was never our decision to be there!

I remember this incident in the Un Security Council, when the safe guard of the British Embassador interrupted the Mexican Embassador: "who cares about what Mexico says man stop talking we have important things to do".

This doesn't involve Mexico only, but all those nations that were involved in the UN SC's disaster, like Cameroun, Angola and Guinee. It was the developped world what have brought our countries into the IMF, the WB, the WTO and so on because "we have to be integrated with the world" and "to be active in the International economy" (I am not saying this is because of evil purposes), but now they tell us to be silent because it's not our business. This is what I find unfair.

Administrator writes:
I think it is rather shameful that there are nations who shrink from doing what is right simply because it will cost them lives and money or because doing what is right is unpopular.

I don't think it was shameful for nations like France and Germany when they refused to send soldiers to the war given the enormous human pain, death and destruction that the war would cost not only to the Iraqi civilians but to the soldiers of those countries that had nothing to do with the conflict and no reason to participate in a war which is not their war.

What makes me worried is that the Western press when it talks about the war they tell us about the super-weapons, the intelligent bombs, the daisy cuters, the anti-bunkers, the maps and so on like in a video game while human pain and death are scarcely mentioned.

Those nations that did not support the attack on Iraq, because of the serious social problems and poverty, had to refuse the aid of the West in order to avoid the extremely serious internal consequences that supporting the war would have had. If developped nations like Spain or Australia had to face troubles with protests and unestability, similar protests and political unestability would have been an unprecedented national disaster here.

Snoopy,

Thank you for your response. I would like to note to readers that some of your response quoted posts that were not mine. Only the ones labeled �Administrator� are mine.

Your previous post certainly sounded like you were accusing Bush of being willing to lie and manufacture false evidence to support his claims. I�m glad you clarified this.

France has sold armaments to Hussein during the past 5 years. Documents prove that even this past January France was selling Hussein armaments. There is also evidence that both France and Germany were selling Hussein chemicals that could have been used to make chemical weapons of mass destruction as recently as late last year. Additionally, France negotiated long-term cheap oil from Hussein in exchange for providing him with these chemicals and armaments. How can you ignore this evidence and claim that these countries are somehow acting only from noble purpose? It is far more likely that they did not want a war because it would cost them economically. Over the past 12 years neither France nor Germany has done anything concrete to either topple Hussein or force him to behave better. It is pretty clear that they put their own economic interests before the lives of the Iraqi citizens. They should be embarrassed.

I�ve see pictures each and every day for the past week of Iraqis who have been harmed. It is indeed horrible to watch, especially if they are civilians. The real solace is that fewer Iraqi civilians died during these last three weeks than would have died under Hussein. The monster was responsible for killing over 1.5 million of his own people. Why do the anti-war people keep forgetting this?

I don�t buy such reasoning. It seems that you are suggesting that it is morally acceptable to do the wrong thing because of the cost at home. There are numerous coalition countries who simply did not have the resources to participate in Operation Iraqi Freedom. That�s OK. They voiced their support and are helping where they can.

Admin

No, France and Germany did not. Multinational corporations based in France and Germany may have, as did a multinational corporation led at the time by the current Vice President of the United States.

Having said that, I am all in favor of greater social controls on corporate (mis)behavior towards consumers, their employees, the public, and world peace and justice. The U.S. Republican Party is not an aid to that end.

Kurt,

The evidence shows that the French and German governments knew about the sale of chemicals and armaments to Hussein by corporations within their respective countries but said or did nothing.

There is no evidence that the corporation led by the vice president sold armaments or chemical weapons to Hussein since the first Gulf War. It is odd that you accuse our current vice president for past actions yet forget to also accuse Chirac of his past actions (he is the one who negotiated the sale of a nuclear reactor to Hussein, which is something an oil rich nation did not need and could have given Hussein nuclear weapons if Israel had not destroyed it).

With all due respect to Kurt, there is no evidence that either major political party here in America is willing to create an environment to force corporations to behave better.

Admin

Dear Administrator,

And that certainly comes as no surprise!

We can all learn a thing or two from our First Nations peoples.

They would never trade with another tribe that would be their enemy or an enemy to their friends (the same thing).

This important economic value was stressed over and over again during their actual trading, as the Jesuit missionaries recorded with amazement in their diaries.

The Indians would constantly give each other free gifts, whose value sometimes exceeded the value of what was being traded, just to ensure that their friendship - the condition that had to be met to enable trade in the first place - was strong and vibrant.

Short-term, "value-neutral" approaches to international trade and commerce are really "short-sighted."

Nothing is ever politically-neutral, especially not trade in nuclear or other types of weapons of mass destruction.

Alex

There are no armament or chemical companies within the borders of either France or Germany. These are multinational corporations that know no flag and straddle many borders even when headquartered in one nation. Any information possibly available to the European governments was certainly known to the US government based on the way governments have access to such information.

I could get into a detailed discussion of the current U.S. Administration's policies towards the Securities and Exchange Commission, its authority and resources. Since the Enron situation, even most of their former allies have changed their tune. But I think this is a rather dry and off-topic discussion for this forum.

Currently, their is a very brave American Congressman named Frank Wolf, who is even a Republican. He is trying to stop companies listed on the New York Stock Exchange (again, there is no such thing as an American company) for aiding the government of Sudan from persecuting Christians. Sadly, Bush and the rest of the Republican Party have made him an outcast on this matter.

I don't quite understand your argument here Kurt, but maybe I should read the whole thread.

But when one makes a blanket statment that is as false as the one you make, I must respond. How can you be considered credible when you are so off here.

The US Government would have no knowledge of what Chemical Suppliers based in other countries are doing. A government only has access to what a company is doing within its own borders. A company that has sites in the US and France that is shipping chemicals to Iraq from France would not have to report this to the US government.

I found a list of 165 Chemical Suppliers in France and 340 Chemical Suppliers in Germany.

Go to the following website, http://www.chemindustry.com/popular/F/France.asp and you can select a country, a category, and a info filter.

I used Manufacturer, France, Chemical Suppliers the first time and Manufacturer, Germany, Chemical Suppliers the second time.


David

Kurt,

"Currently, their is a very brave American Congressman named Frank Wolf, who is even a Republican. He is trying to stop companies listed on the New York Stock Exchange (again, there is no such thing as an American company) for aiding the government of Sudan from persecuting Christians. Sadly, Bush and the rest of the Republican Party have made him an outcast on this matter."

I'm very interested in doing what I can to help stop support for the cursed government in Kartoum. What Congressman Wolf is doing is of great interest to me. Can you point me to some reports of his efforts? Furthermore, your comment about Wolf's efforts having made him an outcast sounds like the kinds of scatter gun charges we used to make when we were in college. Can you support this assertion? You may be correct, I just have never heard it before.

Dan Lauffer

So you are suggesting that the United States government is somehow more responsible than France and Germany for chemicals and/or armaments manufactured in France and Germany that were sold and shipped to Hussein? Sorry, your statement is illogical. The United States does have laws prohibiting the export of certain chemicals and technologies. I work in the computer field and I know that the laws regarding the export of computer technologies are enforced.

I have met Congressman Wolf (he was my representative before redistricting). His office is very responsive. Since you have provided no proof about your accusations against the administration I will contact his office to verify what you have stated. I will certainly offer my support in his efforts to get Sudan to stop persecution Christians (I have sent him letters on this in the past).

Here is a news article on Mr. Wolf:


Wolf Heightens World Awareness of Sudan

Earlier this week, we received a five-minute video from Rep. Frank Wolf, R-10th, documenting the terror that is such a part of daily living in war-ravaged southern Sudan. In those five minutes, we quickly learned why Mr. Wolf has gone to great lengths — he has visited Sudan four times — to make the United States, and the world, more aware of the plight of the Sudanese.

Simply stated, the Khartoum government, for the last 17 years, has been waging a genocidal war against its own citizenry — Christians and animists who seek only religious freedom and self-determination. Last year alone, Sudanese planes bombed civilian targets no less than 167 times.

The lives of these innocents represent a living hell. Those not killed in these frequent bombing raids face other terrors — starvation, AIDS, or slavery. Only today, largely through the efforts of men and women such as Mr. Wolf, is the world starting to take notice.

As Mr. Wolf points out, this pattern of repression and slaughter may only escalate, now that the Khartoum government has begun to reap the bounty of oil exportation, which started in 1999. The hard currency earned from this trade is financing the purchase of more weaponry with which to punish combatant and non-combatant alike in this ghastly war.

As the chairman of the House Appropriations subcommittee that funds the Securities and Exchange Commission, Mr. Wolf has taken oblique aim at Khartoum — by advocating fundamental changes in the way foreign nations and commercial interests do business in America. Through heightened transparency and discipline of U.S. market activity, Mr. Wolf hopes to curtail access to Wall Street currently enjoyed by firms engaged in the development and exploitation of Sudan's huge energy reserves. If successful, this novel approach, in theory, would restrict Sudan's ability to wage war.

Only through such efforts will the devastation of Sudan — where, Mr. Wolf points out, genocidal activities have claimed more lives than in Bosnia, Kosovo, Somalia, and Rwanda combined — become an international priority.

As Mr. Wolf says, Sudan is a “litmus test for those who care about human rights.” Sadly, the White House and many leaders of his own party oppose Mr. Wolf's activities saying the free market should not be interfered with.

President Bush must decide which is more important -- Wall Street or the Christian of Sudan. We hope he reconsiders.

Here is a story on the Sudan Peace Act. Unfortunately, the White House was successfull in eliminating the Section Nine. The remaining shell of this bill then passed with no teeth.


White House Accused of Blocking Sudan Peace Act
By Jeff Johnson
CNSNews.com Congressional Bureau Chief
June 06, 2002

Capitol Hill (CNSNews.com) - The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom says the civil war in Sudan is raging as strong as ever.

"The commission has found the government of Sudan to be the world's most violent abuser of the right to freedom of religion and belief," commission chairman Michael Young told members of the House International Relations Committee Wednesday.

"Religion is a major factor in Sudan's ongoing civil war, a conflict that has taken over two million lives and left four million homeless," he said.

In a Sept. 2001 speech, President Bush stated his position on the conflict: "For nearly two decades, the government of Sudan has waged a brutal and shameful war against its own people. This is not right, and this must stop."

But some members of Congress say Bush is thwarting what could be the most effective tool to stop the fighting.

Rep. Donald Payne said the White House is blocking a conference committee's consideration of the Sudan Peace Act (H.R. 2052).

"It was a message from the White House that said, 'Because of September the 11th, the view of Sudan has changed,'" Payne told his colleagues on the committee.

The dispute is over Section Nine of the Sudanese Peace Act, which directs the president to block companies from raising money in the U.S. or trading their stocks or bonds in U.S. financial markets if they are "engaged in the exploration, production, transportation (by pipeline or otherwise), or refining of petroleum, natural gas, or petroleum products in Sudan."

"For once, we thought we had something that could finally make the government of Sudan listen," Payne said. "We had capital market sanctions looming. But this tool has been denied us."

Walter Kansteiner, assistant secretary of state for Africa, admitted the administration has concerns about the proposed sanctions.

"Section Nine is of particular interest and concern to us. It involves political interference in capital markets," Kansteiner told the committee. "As the assistant secretary of state for Africa, I go all over Africa asking political leaders, African political leaders, 'Please divorce politics from your economic policy.'"

Rep. Tom Lantos (D-Calif.) interrupted Kansteiner.

"Are you living in this world? In the United States we have divorced politics from economics?" Lantos asked. "I can't accept the fact that you seriously are making such statements."

"Absolutely," Kansteiner responded.

"Well, then come back to this planet," Lantos interrupted again, "because economics and politics are not going to be divorced either in the Sudan or elsewhere."

"And when you start interfering directly in your capital markets, you're playing with fire," Kansteiner argued.

"Well, so far, we have played with human lives," Lantos replied, "millions of human lives."

Young said the administration must withdraw its opposition to at least the threat of sanctions if it is to have any influence over the Sudanese government in Khartoum.

"The only way to get Khartoum's attention is to curtail its oil revenues, the only asset that is keeping it from bankruptcy," Young argued. "Millions of lives depend on it."

A report prepared by former Sen. John Danforth, whom Bush appointed as a special envoy for peace in Sudan, supports the sanctions as well.

"Any peace process should address the oil issue in order to resolve a major cause of conflict and to serve as the basis for a just peace," Danforth said. "The fair allocation of oil resources could be the key to working out broader political issues if it were possible to find a monetary formula for sharing oil revenue between the central government and the people of the south."

Kansteiner pointed out that Danforth speaks for himself, and his recommendations are not binding on the administration.

Young said the Sudanese government is unlikely to agree to such an arrangement, in any event, without the threat of lost revenue that U.S. sanctions would cause.

Kurt,

Please post the link to the article you mentioned (I remind all posters that posting of copyrighted articles is illegal. Please post excerpts and a link). A similar story can be found in The Winchester Star, May 18, 2001 [winchesterstar.com] .

In the interest of balance I would ask him to provide information on why the White House opposed section 9 of this bill since the article quotes the president as calling for the government of Sudan to stop waging war on its own people.

A search of more recent news stories came up with:

Meanwhile, subcommittee Chairman Frank Wolf of Virginia raised concerns about reports that France was working with Libya - the new head of the U.N. Commission on Human Rights - to remove Sudan from the list of violators, an obscene notion considering the brutal repression of Christians in the south by the country's Muslim government. ( Insight Magazine, March 31, 2003 [insightmag.com] )

BTW, Kurt is not in Europe but posting from a computer at the National Treasury Employees Union National in Washington, DC. He has been previously banned from this Forum for causing trouble. He did not ask permission to reregister and has violated forum rules by reregistering. I ask Kurt to please contact me directly before posting again in any thread except this one.

Admin

Note on posting articles. We do have permission to post Vatican Information Service (VIS) articles and Zenit articles in full. The poster must always fully credit these sources. All other references should be excerpted and the URL to the full story provided.

Thanks for your comments.

Your previous post certainly sounded like you were accusing Bush of being willing to lie and manufacture false evidence to support his claims. I�m glad you clarified this.

What I meant is that as a result of the terrorist threat almost every small thing that seems strange is seen as an unequivocal proof of terrorist presence. These are the effects of terorism and the terrible attacks of 9/11, terrorists have created an environment of fear. In some coutries the authorities have not been able to control the environment of colective histeria (for example, a scottish nespaper that reported an epidemy of smallpox that was sent through mail and letters.)

France has sold armaments to Hussein during the past 5 years. Documents prove that even this past January France was selling Hussein armaments.

There are a lot of enterprises selling weapons of all kinds, some are French, Russian, German, Egyptian, Israeli, British, Chinese, American, and even Argentinian. I don't think that any of this countries can deny their responsability for most of the civil wars that have caused so much sorrow and death. It is also true that Russia, the USA and Western countries gave Saddam weapons and technology during the Iraq-Iran.

I don�t buy such reasoning. It seems that you are suggesting that it is morally acceptable to do the wrong thing because of the cost at home. There are numerous coalition countries who simply did not have the resources to participate in Operation Iraqi Freedom. That�s OK. They voiced their support and are helping where they can.

The problem is that not all people share the same views about what is absolutely good and what is not good in the case of Iraq. I disagree with the idea which claims that in the case of this war, there's an absolute good decided as a matter of infalibility and that those who opposed to it are absolutely and automatically wrong and opposing to do the right thing.

About the governments, I believe there's no perfect government, we're humans with a fallen nature, all the governments have interests to protect, some are nouble some are not so nouble. People like me who have grown up in countries different from the developped Western world have been forced by our experiences to always be suspicious of the governments because the recent free democratic regimes have been as dishonest as the past ones. Maybe this is why I was so scheptical about the reasons of this war.

Snoopy,

Thanks for your post.

I agree that after 9/11 it will be a long time before Americans stop jumping at everything strange that happens. This is perfectly normal � a person who has been robbed will automatically assume that every strange-looking character they come across is out to rob them. Eventually this will subside and things will return to normal (hopefully with new methods in place of routing out terrorists).

I also agree that many governments sold weapons of all kinds. The USA was wrong from selling such weapons to Iraq when they were fighting Iran. I do sometimes wonder about the logic of selling arms to the enemy of your enemy (Iraq was an enemy of Iran who was our enemy, especially after taking the hostages). In certain situations it seems justified (like siding with the Soviet Union during WWII to defeat Hitler) but it is never clear-cut and always comes at a price. My problem with France, Germany and Russia allowing and supporting the sale of chemicals and armaments to Hussein is that they did it solely for economic benefit. Hussein had a history of using such weapons on his own people. On top of this they blocked international efforts at calling Hussein to task for his deeds.

I disagree with your comment that there is no absolute good in the removal of Hussein. The people of Iraq are being liberated from a murderous tyrant and have a chance to develop a free, democratic nation (which would be a wonderful witness to the Middle East). The people of the United States and the West are freed from the terrorist threat coming from Hussein (let�s not forget his financing the development of nuclear weapons with Libya and North Korea). [In saying this I also will state again that I respect the opinion that the use of military force was not a just way to go about it, although I continue to disagree because I see this effort as clearly just.]

I do agree that there are no perfect governments. I always like what Winston Churchill stated. He said that democracy is the worst form of government � except for all the rest. I strongly disagree that the recent free democratic regimes have been as dishonest as all the past ones. Even though our governments are not perfect we are still free. I�ll take that over tyranny any day.

Admin