----- Original Message ----- From: "Gary Denton" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Killer Bs Discussion" <[email protected]> Sent: Sunday, November 27, 2005 6:27 PM Subject: Re: Bitter Fruit
>The people pushing this war don't care much about the American economy >as a whole - their biggest friends are in the defense-and oil related >industries. This is a profiteers war. So, if I understand your point correctly, Bush went to war so that a few key industries could make about 10 billion per year in profit for a couple of years? He was not only wrong, but happily sacrificed thousands of lives, hundreds of thousands of dollars, much of the military readyness of the US, just so a few key friends could make, compared to the 11+ US ecconomy, chump change? In particular, if you compare the profits from this war to the chance of getting further tax cuts through, dosen't it seem like an inefficient way to get money to the wealthy? Further, I did a bit of research on Clinton's views. A speach he gave in early '98 is given at: http://www.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/1998/02/17/transcripts/clinton.iraq/ Let me quote a bit that seems relevant: <quote> Despite Iraq's deceptions, UNSCOM has nevertheless done a remarkable job. Its inspectors the eyes and ears of the civilized world have uncovered and destroyed more weapons of mass destruction capacity than was destroyed during the Gulf War. This includes nearly 40,000 chemical weapons, more than 100,000 gallons of chemical weapons agents, 48 operational missiles, 30 warheads specifically fitted for chemical and biological weapons, and a massive biological weapons facility at Al Hakam equipped to produce anthrax and other deadly agents. Over the past few months, as they have come closer and closer to rooting out Iraq's remaining nuclear capacity, Saddam has undertaken yet another gambit to thwart their ambitions. By imposing debilitating conditions on the inspectors and declaring key sites which have still not been inspected off limits, including, I might add, one palace in Baghdad more than 2,600 acres large by comparison, when you hear all this business about presidential sites reflect our sovereignty, why do you want to come into a residence, the White House complex is 18 acres. So you'll have some feel for this. One of these presidential sites is about the size of Washington, D.C. That's about how many acres did you tell me it was? 40,000 acres. We're not talking about a few rooms here with delicate personal matters involved. It is obvious that there is an attempt here, based on the whole history of this operation since 1991, to protect whatever remains of his capacity to produce weapons of mass destruction, the missiles to deliver them, and the feed stocks necessary to produce them. The UNSCOM inspectors believe that Iraq still has stockpiles of chemical and biological munitions, a small force of Scud-type missiles, and the capacity to restart quickly its production program and build many, many more weapons. <end quote> This seems to raise the spector of strong military action being necessary. We know Clinton warned the inspectors about plans to bomb suspected WMD sites later that year. We also know that he considered stronger action, including a war. My question is whether you think he was making a good faith assessment in this speach, or whether he was under the sway of the profiters too, or whether he was wagging the dog? Dan M. _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
