reply to Marky 3/21

[The Jerkin Josh]

Marky, Marky, Marky,

Time to take us back to the left margin.

Are you saying I am a bad person because I dislike someone who has consistently lied to me?
Do you think God can save the Kurds now that the Turks have decided to do a little "liberating" of their own.

I know you care deeply about the Iraqi's, Kurd's, Bangaladeshi's(???) etc. but yours is a commitment that few others in this country share.

be well,
jt



nyncboy@mail.skyrunner.net

[Uncle Moish]

Josh Babes,

G-d forbit anyone should ever think of you as a bad person.

EVERYONE who knows you recognize you as a wonderful person.

Nobody ought ever think evil of anyone who disliked someone in the political realm [for many, many reasons].

I furthermore KNOW you would never hurt Iraqis, Kurds, or your fellow Americans just because of your animus.

ALL I AM [now] SAYING [besides "Give Peace a Chance" when there was a possibility of not DIScouraging Saddaam from disarming] is that in your zeal to find fault with our Commander in Chief your writings do not reflect the great human concern which I KNOW to be part and parcel of your entire persona.

Meanwhile, let's hope this all ends speedily and with a formulation employing minimal suffering and through which all mankind will thrive.

Uncle Markie



mark@lgpltd.com

[Uncle Neil]

Josh,

When Hitler was exterminating Jews, gypsies and others, 70% of the American public was opposed to getting involved. The question is not how many share Mark's commitment to the causes you mention, but whether such causes are moral and just. When I read about American and British troops hesitating because Iraqi troops shoot from behind innocent civilians or fake surrender, when I hear the Iraqi government threaten to use the weapons of mass destruction they (and the French) claimed they did not have, when I hear about scuds, which supposedly were destroyed, being fired and when I read about executed allied soldiers being shown on TV, I know where I stand. If America wanted to wipe out Baghdad, we have the firepower to do it. But like with 911, we as a society adhere to limits that some in the world do not.... Let's not forget what the Iraqis (and for a short time in '91, the Kuwaiti's) have had to endure while we in America worried about what time Seinfeld was on or who would make it to the Final Four...(Mark, that is a college basketball tournament)



neilbrier@yahoo.com

[DDD]

Neil -

Agreed. Persons (and armies of persons) who have moral scruples are always at a short-term disadvantage against those with none.

DDD


[url=http://theonion.com]http://theonion.com[/url]
ddavis@copyright.com

[The Jerkin Josh]

Neil,

So which is it going to be...liberating the poor oppressed Iraqi's, or annihiliating the sly and treacherous Iraqi's, you can't have it both ways.

Unless you are America, who has nullified, unsigned, withdrew or completely disregarded numerous international treaties and organizations and then whines about the Geneva convention. This is the height of hypocrisy.

Oh, and I know you know this already, but you can't really believe everything you get from the liberal media.

....and furthermore, I will be in NYC from April 11-17 for Grandma Phoebe's 100th (She of Paragon Park fame) and I would like to see you and Marky and any other Greens or Gray so we can duke it out in person.

Maybe we can all go to Marky's and "kasher" his house for Passover. (Is that the right term?)

jt


nyncboy@mail.skyrunner.net

[Uncle Neil]

Josh,

Maybe we should have taken your advice in the 1930's and 1940's and not killed so many innocent Germans so a few Jews could survive.... The new technology has led to far fewer innocent civilians being killed. If the Allies really did not care about innocents, this war would already be long over. According to your logic, as I understand it, we should not attack when the Iraqi thugs use civilians as shields but rather back off and let them continue to practice genocide??? War is hell, no question about it, but allowing genocide is, in my humble opinion, even worse.

Any of Phoebe's friends single??? Looking forward to seeing you in April! May go see the Last Poets with Mr. and Mrs. Lurie this weekend!

Unc.



neilbrier@yahoo.com

[DDD]

Uncle Neil, a few thoughts about 'history'.

The comparison to Germany in the 30's is problematic (in the 40's, the US was attacked by an ally of Germany, and Germany declared war on the US). Many in the US, more in the UK possibly, wanted to stop Nazism but there was a problem of national sovereignty (until Munich 1938; the European war started a year later). The calculus of hindsight produces a different result.

Similarly, but with another valence, the US and others invaded the new-born Soviet Union in 1919+. The US and its allies then did not recognize (with some reason) the legitimacy of Lenin's regime. However, had they succeeded, Stalin would never have ruled, perhaps no conquest of eastern europe, no cold war...

I'm no fan of dictators, and there is every good reason to 'take out' Saddam himself, were the opportunity afforded; I guess I would volunteer but I'd make a crappy Rambo. ;-)

Had the Nazi aggression been stopped at Munich - a la Gulf War, 1991 - the worst might have never come. Now, that can never be known, everything else is 'alternative history'.

Back to the present: Some Iraqis are apparently fighting the allied forces less out of fear of Saddam than out of fear of re-colonialization.
The ghost of Woodrow Wilson -- 'self-determination of peoples' -- still walks the earth, for good AND ill.

DDD



[url=http://theonion.com]http://theonion.com[/url]
ddavis@copyright.com

[The Jerkin Josh]

Neil,
I don't think I was giving any advice, and I thought I had already debunked any comparison between these two bad guys.

For anyone who has any illusions that this war is to save the Iraqi's, I urge you to check out the following article that was in the Village Voice this week.

jt

NOTE: There was an error in the link below...it has been corrected

Gary


[url=http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0314/ridgewar3.php]http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0314/ridgewar3.php[/url]
nyncboy@mail.skyrunner.net

[Uncle Neil]

Josh,

That is a very interesting webstie, but am not sure what the "webcam babes" web site has to do with the morality of stopping Saddam Hussein????? Though it did take my mind off the war.....



neilbrier@yahoo.com

[The Jerkin Josh]

Following is the article that I was referring to...
rather than the "BABES"

James Ridgeway's War Log
Rumsfeld's Dealings With Saddam
Were Trips to Iraq Meant to Secure Pipeline Deal?
March 28th, 2003 2:30 PM

WASHINGTON, D.C.?Now that Richard Perle has surrendered his role as Chairman of the Defense Advisory Board (thanks to Seymour Hersh's reporting in The New Yorker), will anyone in the spastic Congress have the guts to inquire into Donald Rumsfeld's curious role in the '80s as a go-between for Saddam and top officials in the Reagan administration trying to negotiate an oil pipeline project? A key foreign policy adviser for Bush, Perle gave up his Chairmanship yesterday in the wake of allegations that his involvement with a telecom company created a conflict of interest. Perle has denied the charges.

Under Jimmy Carter the U.S. applied sanctions to Iraq because of its human rights violations. Reagan removed the sanctions shortly after he became president. In the early 1980s, as Saddam was gassing the Kurds, Rumsfeld, acting as a special envoy for Reagan, turned up on the dictator's doorstep in Baghdad, and talked about how the U.S. needed Iraq and vice versa. Rumsfeld promised Saddam that the U.S. would support his rule, negotiating cheap loans and providing equipment of various sorts. He never raised the issue of poison gas. In fact, when the UN undertook consideration of an Iranian resolution condemning the use of gas, the U.S. worked against it.

Reagan was later condemned for cynical realpolitik diplomacy intended to set Iraq against religious fanatics in Iran, who were threatening to export their revolution across the Middle East. But it turns out cynical politics may not have been the only factor at play in explaining Rumsfeld's trips to court Saddam in Baghdad. Researchers at the Institute for Policy Studies have been combing documents from the period, and they recently discovered Rumsfeld was errand boy, and perhaps participant, in a behind-the-scenes oil deal which would make Perle, in his current predicament, look like a piker.

It worked like this: George Schultz was Reagan's secretary of state. Reagan had recruited him from the uppermost ranks of the Bechtel Corp, the huge international engineering and construction company. The documents suggest that behind the scenes Schultz was pushing an oil pipeline from Iraq across Jordan to the port of Aqaba. Bechtel would construct it. According to IPS, documents show that Schultz prepped Rumsfeld for his meetings with Saddam. At the time, Saddam was gassing the Kurds, and if the U.S. were to come down against him on that score, then the pipeline most certainly would go down the drain. Beginning with Rumsfeld, Reagan top officials hoping to make the deal kissed Saddam's ass, sidestepping the poison-gas issue, and snuggling up with the man they now say is a vile dictator. In the end, Saddam turned down the pipeline.

From then on, the U.S. government primly rewrote the history of our earlier dealings with Saddam so much that Rumsfeld and the other Bush cronies can say this second Persian Gulf war has nothing to do with oil. They say it is meant solely to remove the dictator and save the Iraqi people from the horrors of weapons of mass destruction, gas being the main one, even though the U.S. never cared about poison gas when it stoop to make money off an oil pipeline. And guess what? Bechtel is one of the few companies asked to play a key role in the reconstruction of Iraq after the war.



nyncboy@mail.skyrunner.net

[Uncle Neil]

I found the babe web site more interesting....know any others????



neilbrier@yahoo.com