>From: "F J BERNAL" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>To: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
>SIRIUS: The Strategic Issues Research Institute
>Benjamin C. Works, Director
>202 257-0157; www.siri-us.com;
>E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>- --Speak the Truth and Shame the Devil--
>
>STRATEGIC ISSUES TODAY
>
>
>SIT-REP 9-7: Sept. 7, 2000
>
>Iraq, Yugoslavia: Rumors of Wars
>
>
>Sterling, Virginia -- No, SIRIUS has not curled up its toes. It has
>re-deployed to the Washington, DC area ("the Emerald City of Oz")
>where we can keep a close eye on developments across the board.
>
>I used to use an alternate motto for the institute: "Outside the
>Beltway, but in the Loop." As of this weekend that will no longer be
>true as SIRIUS will be locating itself in Arlington, Virginia --inside
>the Beltway and just down the street from the Pentagon. Within
>another week or so, SIRIUS should be up and running and back at
>100%,
>but may be off line for a few days as the local phone company is
>recovering from a major strike, affecting the pace of new
>installations.
>
>To the point(s).
>
>Clitnon's Legacy, Iraq & Yugoslavia --Rumors of War:
>
>Ye shall hear of wars and rumors of wars; see that ye be not troubled;
>for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet. St
>Matthew 24: 6-7
>
>Many have been rumoring about potential last minute warlike actions by
>the Clinton Administration; maybe Yugoslavia, maybe Iraq; but I do not
>have the feeling in my guts that Mr. Clinton wants an uncontrolled
>bombing campaign at the last minute. On the other hand, Saddam Hussein
>may be trying to strain the system in his own inconvenient way.
>
>Today, Mr. Clinton is trying to talk the Saudis into lowering oil
>prices --it has crossed over $35 per barrel today (a barrel equals 42
>gallons or about 160 liters). Mr. Clinton's team has been trying to
>lower oil prices since the Spring; instead prices continue to climb
>and Mr. Clinton's present initiative is too late to drive prices down
>before Winter. But since both George W. Bush and Dick Cheney have
>experience in oil and oil-related industries, the high prices do not
>advantage the Republican ticket, since Al Gore's campaign can
>characterize the GOP's leaders as pawns for "big oil."
>
>The point is, if the US finds it has to bomb Iraq now, oil prices will
>tend to rise further, something Mr. Clinton wants to avoid since it
>might throw the stock market (back near its all-time highs) and the US
>economy into a tailspin and possible recession. If any world leader is
>prepared to discommode Mr. Clinton at the last minute, it is Saddam.
>My advice, keep your gas tank filled.
>
>Mr. Clinton wants a high-profile peace deal for his legacy, but
>Israeli-Palestinian peace seems out of reach. It appears that both
>sides may be ready to wait for a new administration.
>
>Analysis:
>
>It is only about 60 days until the US election --and only about 17
>until the Yugoslavian Presidential Election-- and our Mr. Clinton, the
>world's preeminent narcissist, is desperately seeking a big coup for
>his "legacy" before he leaves office on Jan. 20th next year, about 134
>days from now.
>
>In the past few weeks and in more recent days, various correspondents,
>other analysts and I have picked up many threads of the possible
>"legacy" initiatives Mr. Clinton may attempt to complete in the waning
>days of his leadership. War or peace? An "October surprise?"
>
>I think in terms of the rational objective vs. the political
>subjective; of the relative power of perception over reality: Mr.
>Clinton's demonstrated forte has been to muster perception to
>overwhelm reality and now, Mr. Gore is offering more of the same
>- --four years more, if he wins.
>
>Of course, "inductive reasoning" is the practice of fitting selected
>facts to a theory that is born of personal prejudice. In its extreme
>practice, inductive reasoning is the basis for demonization campaigns
>and for conspiracy theory. Numbers can usually be found to demonstrate
>a statistical correlation that is held up as proof; though
>"correlation does not equal causation." The allure of inductive
>reasoning is that "everything fits" and that it uses sophistry and
>rhetorical techniques to seduce its audience into accepting its
>proffered truths. It appeals to ignorance, egoism and emotion.
>
>Deductive reasoning --the "scientific method" is slower as it requires
>that one gathers all the available facts and then test theories. It
>demands that statistical support show that the numbers demonstrate
>causation, not mere correlation (coincidence). Deductive reasoning is
>good for policy but bad for politics as its slowness is not responsive
>to the "news cycle."
>
>So what, you ask? These principles are important to keep in our minds
>precisely because propaganda is based on inductive reasoning and
>because we have seen it used repeatedly to justify interventions and
>military assaults repeatedly in the last eight years. On the domestic
>side, the same holds true; inductive reasoning is the basis for the
>"divide and rule" politics of the majority of Democratic politicians,
>the party's hard core.
>
>I have taken this opportunity to install a list of the "Fallacies in
>Logic" at the website, in order that readers may download and peruse
>the roster of tricks politicians and propagandists have used since the
>time of Sophocles and Plato, to bamboozle the electorate, to divide
>and rule. Please look in the "Archives" section for
>"Fallacies_in_Logic.html." It is almost a complete guide and may get
>future updates.
>
>As to Rumors of war:
>
>Here are the possibilities, all mentioned somewhere in the press,
>being pursued at this writing:
>
>· Of course, there has been much speculation that the US and its
>collaborating partners in NATO may launch another attack on
>Yugoslavia, but that seems unlikely for reasons outlined further
>below. · An air attack on Iraq, which has been played to CNN this
>week. · The arrest of Bosnian Serb leader, Radovan Karadzic, an
>indicted war crimes suspect · A peace deal between Israel and the
>Palestinians --stalled out. · A peace deal between Turkey and Greece
>over Cyprus --not very earth-shaking.
>
>As a bonus, Mr. Clinton has been building a resume for his daughter
>Chelsea while pursuing the elusive prize for his legacy. The First
>Daughter sat in on the Camp David negotiations and has traveled with
>her father, dispensing the Pax Americana, and is presently conferring
>her maidenly smile upon the gathering of world leaders at the annual
>United Nations General Assembly love fest.
>
>After eight years of his encouraging civil wars in the Balkans,
>Central Africa, East Timor and elsewhere, I find it the height of
>temerity that Mr. Clinton now chooses to warn the UN meeting of the
>forthcoming dangers of civil war, but that is the topic of his present
>sermonizing.
>
>It appears though, that peacemakers are looking for a better
>sponsorship and more time, rather than rushing through a hasty deal
>only to satisfy Mr. Clinton's self-esteem needs. In Israel-Palestine,
>they know what the benefits package contains and that the package will
>still be there come January and a new administration.
>
>That said, in the last few days there have been more suggestions
>leaking into the media about Iraq, than about another "splendid little
>war" with Yugoslavia. Though Mme. Albright and her team expended much
>effort in the last year at trying to arrange the secession of
>Montenegro, that effort seems to be on hold. Though Britain's Tony
>Blair supports the conspiracy, the rest of Europe appears to have
>become more alarmed about the Albanian killers and drug dealers than
>about the Serbs.
>
>There is also the prospect that Mr. Milosevic may actually lose his
>bid to be directly elected as President of Yugoslavia on Sept. 24, and
>a NATO-sparked crisis in front of that election makes insufficient
>political sense. If he wins, the first step from the West will be
>renew sanctions and to declare the election is rigged --probably true,
>since he is running about 20 points behind his principal challenger,
>Vojislav Kostunica.
>
>On the other hand, Mr. Kostunica may well win despite the fact that
>the president of Montenegro Milo Djukanovic, opposition party leader
>Vuk Draskovic, and Kosovo's UN viceroy Bernard Kouchner are all trying
>to sabotage the race. Draskovic has put up his own candidate,
>Djukanovic has called for a boycott and Kouchner, calling the election
>"undemocratic," is not taking steps to make sure that a fair election
>takes place among the hundred thousand or so non-Albanians left in
>Kosovo. Further, he has ensured that any Albanian loyalists in Kosovo
>will not be able to vote --maintaining the false impression that all
>Albanians are secessionists.
>
>In fact, Mr. Milosevic's proposal to have a vote in Kosovo is more
>democratic than Mr. Kouchner's UN sponsored elections, set for
>October. That is because the UN has done nothing to register Serb,
>Roma, Turk and Albanian refugees in Serbia or Montenegro. Mr. Kouchner
>is deliberately depriving some 200,000 Kosovo citizens of their right
>to vote, but since he represents the UN, his elections will be
>"democratic." This is how the UN-sponsored New World Order is to
>work. We have seen this trick pulled in Bosnia, too.
>
>At the same time, every bit of US and NATO interference in the
>Yugoslav election process can be interpreted as an effort to sabotage
>the chances of the opposition and to assure the election of Mr.
>Milosevic. For instance, in August Mme. Albright's State Department
>opened an office in Hungary to support opposition parties and the move
>was so naked --in terms of interfering in a domestic election-- that
>everybody got angry, including the politicians the US said it was
>intending to support. No politician wanted to be viewed as a stooge
>of the US or be seen as a traitor by the electorate.
>
>Frankly, it appears that much of Europe has stopped believing in the
>American proposition that millennial progress can be made by carving
>up Yugoslavia through encouraging inter-ethnic violence in the name of
>"democracy" and "human rights." But their governments are also
>complicit in the conspiracy. At the same time, Mr. Clinton has found
>that Russia's President Putin is far less pliant than Mr. Yeltsin.
>Russia and China may have quietly put a hold on further aggression
>against Yugoslavia.
>
>Meanwhile, Global trade and investment is taking up increasing
>attention --and concern. The European Union's members and other heads
>of state have begun to absorb the power of America's "new" economic
>juggernaut, fueled by its lead in "information technology," the
>internet and the effects of computerization on worker productivity.
>Political "Globalism" is fine to the anti-nationalists at the UN, but
>a free-enterprise fueled global boom that cannot be ruled by politics
>or taxed to benefit subsidized clients is not something that
>politicians want. Our would-be masters are worried.
>
>As to grabbing Mr. Karadzic, I do not anticipate that. He has
>prepared his "scorched earth" defense, one expects, and if major Serb
>political figures go on trial, the Hague Court would also have to look
>seriously at the executive behavior of the Croat and Muslim
>leaderships as well. That would expose just how much covering up of
>anti-Serb crimes has been going on these last 9 years. That would not
>be convenient to a Clinton legacy.
>
>Iraq:
>
>At the same time, US and British military aircraft over the so-called
>northern and southern "No Flight Zones," have been raining bombs down
>on Iraq every few days since December 1998. This has become a
>21-month-old forgotten little air war in which Mr. Clinton's
>administration meant to establish its dominance, but instead,
>demonstrated the relative impotence of unsupported air power to deter
>or discipline a resolute opponent. The campaign has also seen the
>"innovation" of bombs filled with concrete, instead of explosive, in
>order to reduce the chance of innocents being killed --"collateral
>damage."
>
>Last week the Germans swore they had determined that Saddam was
>fiddling with missile building again and there was an announcement
>that the US might send a Patriot missile battery to help protect
>Israel from a surprise attack out of Iraq --meant to destabilize
>peace talks. The story died out, as it just has no credibility. Then
>yesterday (Sept. 6th) I caught a little story on CNN suggesting that
>if Saddam lunged at his Kurdish population "protected" by the northern
>no flight zone, the US and Britain would wage a 3-day punitive
>campaign of concerted Tomahawk missile and aircraft strikes against
>targets throughout Iraq. That story is of interest as the US would
>have to send in the Tomahawks and oil prices would rise. It was a
>similar campaign in December 1998 that initiated this long-running
>farce.
>
>Saddam has refused to allow a new UN weapons inspection regime to pick
>up where arms inspectors left off in November 1998. Now there are
>rumors of his suffering from lymphatic cancer. Such rumors generally
>spark some unrest in Iraq, which may be another part of the reason for
>warning him against attacking the Kurds and threatening a new
>punitive
>bombing campaign.
>
>
>© Copyright 2000 by Benjamin C. Works --SIRIUS www.SIRI-
>US.com
>Newsgroup members are entitled to e-mail or re-post this report, in
>whole or in part, so long as this copyright notice is included.
>
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