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Author Topic: Remembering 9-11
Michelle
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Babbler # 560

posted 11 September 2003 07:38 AM      Profile for Michelle   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Good morning.

I just wanted to start a thread that hopefully will not seem too sappy or sentimental. Two years ago today I watched the morning news in fascination as the first crash smoked from the World Trade Centre. That fascination turned to horror as the second plane crashed into the other tower. I stupidly thought, through my shock, "Wow, what are the odds..." until the anchor, sounding shocked as well, stated, "It's an attack." I shook my head and realized, wow, it IS an attack.

Then I posted that thought to babble in a thread that Judy MacDonald started, just before leaving for school. It was a surreal day.

The thread archives from that day on babble always hit me like a ton of bricks when I read them. As soon as the "best of babble" forum was made, I knew I had to archive those threads there. So here they are:

Plane crashes into World Trade Centre

Massive Attack

Massive Attack II

News of September 11 and its Aftermath

Ramifications of Massive Attack

The Day After

Retaliate - Against Whom?

World War Declared?

The Big Speech

How to justify a military action

Anti-globalization protesters = mass-murdering terrorists

[ 11 September 2003: Message edited by: Michelle ]


From: I've got a fever, and the only prescription is more cowbell. | Registered: May 2001  |  IP: Logged
skdadl
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 478

posted 11 September 2003 01:13 PM      Profile for skdadl     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
I remember, Michelle. I read your post, "It's an attack," and ran downstairs to the TV, where I spent most of the rest of the day.

Some people may feel guilty, I think, for the intensity of their reactions to that day. Others die elsewhere, guilty or innocent, often worse deaths, in much greater numbers, and we barely notice here in high-comfortland.

On the weekend, I read someone who spoke wisely about the shock of the simultaneity of 11 September: the horror that viewers had of watching others die, of the deaths and our learning of them happening at the same time.

I remember especially seeing several clear shots of all those people standing or sitting at the windows while I was watching in safety and thinking, oh my God, you are whole and healthy but you are not going to get out of there.

That's why we can't forget. Of course we must question ourselves about our numbness to others, the others whose deaths we haven't watched (often because CNN doesn't want us to). But if you're human, it is a blow to stare at another living human facing peril and to think, I can't save you. And we couldn't.


From: gone | Registered: May 2001  |  IP: Logged
ronb
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Babbler # 2116

posted 11 September 2003 01:36 PM      Profile for ronb     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Denis Johnson's brief piece in the September 24/2001 New Yorker - the same issue that had Sontag's acidly prescient and loudly deounced piece - affected deeply enough to search ot out now. Aside from my deep personal concern for friends who live and work in NYC, Johnson authoritatively sums up a powerful fragment of my initial reaction.

quote:
On Thursday, as I write in New York City, which I happened to be visiting at the time of the attack, the wind has shifted, and a sour electrical smoke travels up the canyons between the tall buildings. I have now seen two days of war in the biggest city in America. But imagine a succession of such days stretching into years—years in which explosions bring down all the great buildings, until the last one goes, or until bothering to bring the last one down is just a waste of ammunition. Imagine the people who have already seen years like these turn into decades—imagine their brief lifetimes made up only of days like these we've just seen in New York.


The rest is here... as is Sontag's piece.

Sadly, the opportunity to judo this horrific attack back at its perpetrators by fostering a sense of solidarity and a desire to extend a helping hand to the world's most horribly oppressed was immediately sacrificed for political expediency and economic gain. Heaping tragedy on tragedy.


From: gone | Registered: Jan 2002  |  IP: Logged
Zatamon
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Babbler # 3912

posted 11 September 2003 07:03 PM      Profile for Zatamon        Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
There is an excellent article by Eric Margolis about 9-11, American response and it's consequences. Best summary I have yet seen.Click here.
From: "The right crowd" | Registered: Mar 2003  |  IP: Logged
skdadl
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Babbler # 478

posted 11 September 2003 10:01 PM      Profile for skdadl     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Thank you, Francis.

Margolis always takes a lot of flak here, and yet he has seemed to me over the last several years to be one of the most brutally honest commentators on the War on Scary Concept. He actually knows Afghanistan and the Middle East, and he is clearly brimming over with contempt for the pretty-boy/girl "journalists" who get sent out at the last minute by the USian networks to cover the latest flare-up. (It's not me who thinks they're flare-ups: it's the USian networks. That's how they treat them.)

He doesn't spare anyone there, does he? Good. That is as it should be.

I was amazed by his closing reference to the hijacked plane he was on in 1993. That was news to me -- I'd love to hear the story.


From: gone | Registered: May 2001  |  IP: Logged
Trinitty
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posted 12 September 2003 12:10 AM      Profile for Trinitty     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
That was quite the morning. It's odd reading my words from two years ago.

I just remember first hearing that there was a "fire at the WTC". turning on Newsorld, learning soon that it was a plane, then watching the second plane hit, and Mark Kelly saying "Oh my God!" on the air.

I remember praying that they were empty planes.

Like most people I spent the rest of the day sitting on our couch, watching.

Take care everyone.


From: Europa | Registered: Jun 2001  |  IP: Logged
Michelle
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Babbler # 560

posted 12 September 2003 12:17 AM      Profile for Michelle   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
That's exactly what I was watching - Mark Kelly on Newsworld.
From: I've got a fever, and the only prescription is more cowbell. | Registered: May 2001  |  IP: Logged
Trinitty
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posted 12 September 2003 12:29 AM      Profile for Trinitty     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Thanks for starting this thread and linking all of those original ones, Michelle.

I've been thinking about what happened all day, and how our world is different now as a result. I keep wondering what else we are going to see emerge "as a result" of 9/11. Two wars and the errosion of civil liberties are bad enough, I can't imagine a few more years down the line.

I remember watching Peter Mansbridge take over on the CBC main station once I got home, and after the second tower fell, he said "there isn't really anything TO say, is there?" And he was just silent for several minutes, all we saw was the footage, and all we heard was the sounds from New York.

Thanks again.


From: Europa | Registered: Jun 2001  |  IP: Logged
drgoodword
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posted 12 September 2003 05:07 AM      Profile for drgoodword   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Originally posted by Francis Mont:
There is an excellent article by Eric Margolis about 9-11, American response and it's consequences. Best summary I have yet seen.Click here.

Excellent big-picture overview. Should be required reading for kiowa, SHH, et al. (And Margolis is no "ivory-tower" intellectual, kiowa.)

From the Margolis article:

quote:
Declaring "war on terrorism" made no more sense than declaring war on evil.

Few Americans understand their nation became a modern imperial power after World War II, or that it had recreated in the Mideast a modern version of the British Empire - the American Raj. Most were simply unaware, or uncaring, that their governments had been overthrowing regimes, assassinating foreign leaders, promoting dictatorships and waging undeclared wars on foreign nations since the late 1940s.

Fewer understood the U.S. was de facto ruler of Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt, Jordan, the Gulf states, and overlord of Saudi Arabia and Turkey. Washington kept highly repressive feudal or military dictatorships in power in all these nations that advanced Washington's strategic interests and brutally crushed all opponents. Most Americans were unaware that Israel was fighting Palestinians with U.S.-supplied arms, financed by U.S. taxpayers, or that in the eyes of most Mideasterners, and all extremists, Israel and the United States had become indistinguishable.



From: Toronto | Registered: Oct 2002  |  IP: Logged
beluga2
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posted 12 September 2003 05:32 AM      Profile for beluga2     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
I just read over a couple of those old threads. Took me right back to that insane day, even though I wasn't on Babble yet at the time. I wish I had been -- it might've helped me get thru it a bit better. I could've had a outlet in which to vent, at least, instead of spending the day staggering around aimlessly in a paralyzed fog.

I found out when I was woken up out of a sound sleep by a phone call from my mother. I was still dazed, so it took a while for what she was saying to penetrate. Once I finally twigged, I hung up and staggered across the room toward my radio. (I was in the process of moving at the time, so my TV was disconnected.)

I still remember the two things I said to myself as I crossed the room: "Holy fuck! Somebody finally managed to do it!", and "Brown people are going to die because of this."

Then I turned on the radio just in time to hear them announce that the first tower had collapsed. At which point I just went totally numb. I spent the rest of the day trying to get my head around all the horrible consequences that would inevitably follow from this outrageous atrocity.

Sadly, everything I feared has since come true, and then some.


From: vancouvergrad, BCSSR | Registered: Mar 2003  |  IP: Logged
Zatamon
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posted 12 September 2003 09:37 AM      Profile for Zatamon        Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Excellent article in the Philadelphia Daily News about 20 Unanswered Questions regarding 9/11. I will list the questions here and you can read the detailed explanations at this link.

1. What did National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice tell President Bush about al Qaeda threats against the United States in a still-secret briefing on Aug. 6, 2001?

2. Why did Attorney General John Ashcroft and some Pentagon officials cancel commercial-airline trips before Sept. 11?

3. Who made a small fortune "shorting" airline and insurance stocks before Sept. 11?

4. Are all 19 people identified by the government as participants in the Sept. 11 attacks really the hijackers?

5. Did any of the hijackers smuggle guns on board as reported in calls from both Flight 11 and Flight 93?

6. Why did the NORAD air defense network fail to intercept the four hijacked jets?

7. Why did President Bush continue reading a story to Florida grade-schoolers for nearly a half-hour during the worst attack on America in its history?

8. How did Flight 93 crash in western Pennsylvania?

9. Was Zacarias Moussaoui really "the 20th hijacker"?

10. Where are the planes' "black boxes"?

11. Why were Donald Rumsfeld and other U.S. officials so quick to link Saddam Hussein to the attacks?

12.Why did 7 World Trade Center collapse?

13. Why did the Bush administration lie about dangerously high levels of toxins and hazardous particles after the WTC collapse?

14. Where is Dick Cheney's undisclosed location?

15. What happened to the more than $1 billion that Americans donated after the attack?

16. What was the role of Pakistan's spy agency in the Sept. 11 attacks and the subsequent murder of U.S. journalist Daniel Pearl?

17. Who killed five Americans with anthrax?

18. What happened to the probe into C-4 explosives found in a Philadelphia bus terminal in fall 2001?

19. What is in the 28 blacked-out pages of the congressional Sept. 11 report?

20. Where is Osama bin Laden?

[ 12 September 2003: Message edited by: Francis Mont ]


From: "The right crowd" | Registered: Mar 2003  |  IP: Logged
Rebecca West
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posted 12 September 2003 11:08 AM      Profile for Rebecca West     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Originally posted by beluga2:
I still remember the two things I said to myself as I crossed the room ... "Brown people are going to die because of this."
Sadly, everything I feared has since come true, and then some.

That was one of the first things to occur to me as well. Sometimes, I really hate being right.

From: London , Ontario - homogeneous maximus | Registered: Nov 2001  |  IP: Logged
madman
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Babbler # 4436

posted 12 September 2003 11:44 AM      Profile for madman        Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Just finished reading some of the postings made
immediately after 9/11. I have come to the conclusion that many of those whom posted that day are fucked in the head. How could anyone congratulate those who committed this atrocity.

From: Republic of western Canada | Registered: Sep 2003  |  IP: Logged
skdadl
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Babbler # 478

posted 12 September 2003 11:49 AM      Profile for skdadl     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
I don't remember that, madman. Can you give us the evidence?
From: gone | Registered: May 2001  |  IP: Logged
Zatamon
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posted 12 September 2003 12:08 PM      Profile for Zatamon        Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
My evidence - Click

PS. About 9-11. Not what skdadl asked for but fits the theme of the thread. Click on the photos to get to the 'evidence'.

[ 12 September 2003: Message edited by: Francis Mont ]


From: "The right crowd" | Registered: Mar 2003  |  IP: Logged
DrConway
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Babbler # 490

posted 12 September 2003 08:38 PM      Profile for DrConway     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
I remember getting out of bed on a very normal Tuesday, about.. oh, 8 AM.

I sat down in front of the computer, and flipped on the monitor. The traffic on IRC was *unusually* heavy for a morning, and before long I realized something of what was going on. I tried to hit CNN and MSNBC's websites, neither of which responded ASAP (which had never happened before, so I knew something was really wrong). Eventually I managed to see footage via the CNN website that showed the actual collapse of one of the WTC towers. I think I blurted out "holy shit", or something to that effect.

I realized right then and there that a lot of people were going to instinctively demand that Arabs and other Middle Eastern peoples be made to suffer for that.


From: You shall not side with the great against the powerless. | Registered: May 2001  |  IP: Logged
Michelle
Moderator
Babbler # 560

posted 12 September 2003 08:43 PM      Profile for Michelle   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Originally posted by skdadl:
I don't remember that, madman. Can you give us the evidence?

Actually, he's right. I re-read the threads yesterday, and several people did. Stile did, and so did another person, can't remember the name now.

By Stile:

quote:
Congratulations to the terrorists for a bold, courageous, and brilliantly planned strike.

The US has finally gotten a taste of its own medicine.

So, rich, white-bread America, after 100 years of fucking over the planet, maybe a little justice has finally been served today.


By JJRosso:

quote:
Stiles (and a few others who have the courage to refute the Empire's brainwashing) got it absolutely correct. All the people who disagree are directly or indirectly supporting US imperialism and neo-fascism all over the world -- the cause of terrorist acts against the United States.

To be fair, JJRosso qualified this statement in a subsequent post but that doesn't make his original endorsement of stile's post any less offensive.

However, I think madman is exaggerating when he says "many" of the posters. Only a couple of babblers were spewing this kind of tripe, and many other babblers called them to task for it.

[ 12 September 2003: Message edited by: Michelle ]


From: I've got a fever, and the only prescription is more cowbell. | Registered: May 2001  |  IP: Logged
skdadl
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 478

posted 12 September 2003 10:29 PM      Profile for skdadl     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
stile ... JJR ... where are they now?

And as you say, Michelle, in my memory, any time anyone posted anything that could even vaguely be construed as anti-USian, he was called on it right away. That, after all, would be grounds for banning from babble.

One of the worst things that has happened on babble since 11 September is that a number of people with most narrow agenda have tried, in their first few appearances, exactly what madman is trying here: to slag the entire board by making it sound as though many many babblers stereotype and overgeneralize in the way that -- well, in the way that madman does.

Smarten up, wiseguys. We have great moderators. Further, babblers usually moderate themselves so well that the prejudice and dishonesty of a post like madman's gets taken apart long before a moderator has to step in.


From: gone | Registered: May 2001  |  IP: Logged
SHH
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Babbler # 1527

posted 13 September 2003 05:26 PM      Profile for SHH     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Excellent big-picture overview. Should be required reading for kiowa, SHH, et al. (And Margolis is no "ivory-tower" intellectual, kiowa.)

I read the Margolis article and found nothing new or smart...just the opposite actually. From the article...a little Fisking...

quote:
Nor America's casual indifference to the death of 500,000 Iraqi children caused by a cruel U.S.-imposed embargo.
I thought it was the UN. Maybe I’m wrong. I also recall several articles from the Guardian where Iraqi doctors, now free from Saddam’s torture goons, openly claimed – if it were not already astoundingly obvious – that it was Let’s-Build-Another-Palace Saddam who was responsible for those deaths.

quote:
Two years after the Sept. 11 suicide attacks on the United States, this earthshaking event remains clouded by mystery and misunderstanding.
A mystery that he’s now going to explain with great wisdom and a remarkable, if not curious, amount of certainty.

quote:
A tape that surfaced in late 2001 purporting to show Osama bin Laden gleefully chortling over the attacks, was seen by many in the Arab and Muslim world as a crude fake.
And the point is? As I read on I learn that there’s no ‘proof’ of ‘his guilt’ yet, well, they’ll do it again if you piss them off!

quote:
President George Bush was widely regarded pre-9/11 as a hapless, rather comical figure enmeshed in the Enron scandal.
Is that a fact. See, this kind of insularity of thought and opinion pretty much makes you a fool in the bigger arena. Whether I agree that Bush is a ‘hapless, rather comical figure’ is irrelevant. But the notion that this is, well, just fact is real comedy to a significant many. Failure to realize that fact will put you at a serious strategic disadvantage.

quote:
This, however, was not a real war, but rather a police action against disparate bands of violent anti-American extremists determined to drive U.S. political and economic influence from their lands, and aid the struggle in Palestine.
I’m fairly sure that the Palestinian issue was a recent addition to the al-Qaeda hate list. Almost an afterthought really.

quote:
The attacks of 9/11 might have been averted by proper coordination between FBI and CIA, and if Bush's astoundingly inept national security staff had done its job.

...the faux-macho Bush administration was asleep while on guard; it refuses to accept responsibility for its dereliction of duty;..


What crap. All credible sources suggest the 9/11 attacks were in planning well before Bush even took office. “Dereliction of duty”...”astoundingly inept national security staff”...am I supposed to take this bilge seriously? Eighteen months into managing one of the largest organizations in the world and it’s all Bush’s fault. The previous guy, running things for almost a decade before, I’m sure, deserves no blame. And these powerful institutions, FBI, CIA...I’m sure they change over-night. Sheesh.

Sorry, drgoodword, I can’t take this guy seriously.

Hey madman, I think skdadl just ripped you a new one. Feel good? I personally love a good skdadl spankin’ now and then. It’s good for the soul.


From: Ex-Silicon Valley to State Saguaro | Registered: Oct 2001  |  IP: Logged
audra trower williams
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 2

posted 13 September 2003 06:23 PM      Profile for audra trower williams   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Two years ago, this was happening to me.

I talked to Richard on the phone just today.


From: And I'm a look you in the eye for every bar of the chorus | Registered: Apr 2001  |  IP: Logged
Zatamon
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 3912

posted 13 September 2003 06:51 PM      Profile for Zatamon        Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Originally posted by SHH:
I read the Margolis article and found nothing new or smart...just the opposite actually.
You would...

[ 13 September 2003: Message edited by: Francis Mont ]


From: "The right crowd" | Registered: Mar 2003  |  IP: Logged
Hinterland
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posted 13 September 2003 08:12 PM      Profile for Hinterland        Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Actually, I find Shh's reaction to Margolis' article as predictable as he himself accuses Margolis of being (..you know, nothing new or smart). No one knows the truth, least of all Shh in my estimation, but he's motivated enough to post what he believes to be a refutation. Motivated by a propagandist nationalism, most likely...and that, for most Canadians, is as old as the hills.
From: Québec/Ontario | Registered: Apr 2003  |  IP: Logged
DrConway
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Babbler # 490

posted 14 September 2003 12:25 AM      Profile for DrConway     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
SHH, you know as well as I do that up till September 10, 2001, George W. Bush was indeed widely regarded as, at best, a second-rate, illegitimate President battling an energized Democrat opposition which was poised to regain both houses of the US Congress in 2002.

By that standard, September 11th was, for Dubya, getting all his Christmasses at once. It allowed him to bend back, if not shatter, the wall of opposition that faced him in the Senate, and allowed him to take advantage of the natural tendency to forgive the leader his follies and rally about the flag in times of perceived crisis.


From: You shall not side with the great against the powerless. | Registered: May 2001  |  IP: Logged
SHH
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posted 14 September 2003 03:51 AM      Profile for SHH     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
SHH, you know as well as I do that up till September 10, 2001, George W. Bush was indeed widely regarded as, at best, a second-rate, illegitimate President battling an energized Democrat opposition which was poised to regain both houses of the US Congress in 2002.
Doc, while I may personally be 100% convinced that Bush is 80% fuckwit, that doesn’t, either in fact or in the minds of those that think the opposite, make it so. Margolis should know that. To say such, as though it were near fact, is just transparent pandering to a known mind-set; right or not. If you’re attempting to write a serious professional analysis piece, the first thing to do is to leave your own BS at the door. I don’t know much of Margolis, but if that’s a representative sample, I’m unimpressed.

As to Francis and Hinter.........that’s it? Why did you even bother? I made 'bout half-a-dozen direct points....when you get the nerve, lemme know.

[ 14 September 2003: Message edited by: SHH ]


From: Ex-Silicon Valley to State Saguaro | Registered: Oct 2001  |  IP: Logged
beluga2
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posted 14 September 2003 05:13 AM      Profile for beluga2     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
I thought it was the UN.

It was the UN. Under intense US-UK pressure. Which is the reason why the Iraq-sanctions regime resulted in a stream of resignations by high-placed UN officials unprecedented in the history of the organization (Halliday, von Sponeck, et al). Officials who just couldn't stomach the UN itself being used as an extremely effective "weapon of mass destruction".

quote:
I also recall several articles from the Guardian where Iraqi doctors, now free from Saddam’s torture goons, openly claimed – if it were not already astoundingly obvious – that it was Let’s-Build-Another-Palace Saddam who was responsible for those deaths.

Those whose minds are not stunted by black-or-white thinking, SHH, have long maintained that there is no contradiction or incompatibility between Saddam's responsibility and that of the US/UN. Of course Saddam squandered resources on himself; what the fuck would anyone expect from such a Stalinist tyrant? The instigators of the sanctions must have known this; they must have known that the brunt of the suffering would fall on the Iraqi people, not on Saddam or his inner circle, and further that the sanctions would actually strengthen Saddam by undermining his civilian opposition.

This leaves only two possibilities: (A) US planners are brain-dead morons; or (B) the sanctions were intended to buttress Saddam and suppress the Iraqi people. We won't know for sure until the internal documentary record is declassified 2 or 3 decades from now, but I strongly lean towards the latter scenario. The sanctions represented a de facto collaboration between the US and Saddam, to indefinitely preserve the status quo at the end of the first Gulf War.

Why would the US do this? Because they feared the consequences should the Iraqi people overthrow Saddam themselves. The US could not be guaranteed to control the outcome; who knows what would have happened? Civil war? Breakup of Iraq? A Shi'ite fundamentalist regime? Far better to leave Saddam in power until he could be dealt with by the US, or so I imagine the thinking went.

Ironically, it looks like the Shrubniks, thru their insane invasion, may have inadvertently brought about just the chaotic outcome that the US earlier feared.

The rest of your "half-a-dozen direct points" don't make much sense as far as I can see, so I'll pass.

One small quibble with Margolis' article; on 9/11, Bush wasn't a "rather comical figure enmeshed in the Enron scandal", 'cause the Enron scandal hadn't happened yet; the share price didn't go into free-fall until mid-October, and the company didn't declare bankruptcy until December 2, 2001.

[ 14 September 2003: Message edited by: beluga2 ]


From: vancouvergrad, BCSSR | Registered: Mar 2003  |  IP: Logged
Zatamon
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 3912

posted 14 September 2003 09:35 AM      Profile for Zatamon        Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Originally posted by SHH:
As to Francis and Hinter.........that’s it? Why did you even bother? I made 'bout half-a-dozen direct points....when you get the nerve, lemme know.
SHH, see my advice to kiowa on the "So Much For Iraqi Security Self-Responsibility: US Troops Kill A Dozen Iraqi Police" thread. What I said about soldiers and brainwashing doesn't apply to you, but the recommended thinking process does. And with that comment I am done arguing with you -- past experience suggests it would be a futile exercise.

From: "The right crowd" | Registered: Mar 2003  |  IP: Logged
skdadl
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 478

posted 14 September 2003 09:48 AM      Profile for skdadl     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
I’m fairly sure that the Palestinian issue was a recent addition to the al-Qaeda hate list. Almost an afterthought really.

This is untrue.

Every pronouncement from Osama that I've ever heard mentions Palestine (maybe not this last one?); and way back in the eighties, among the imported zealots in Afghanistan (funded by the U.S.), Palestine was already known to be an issue.


From: gone | Registered: May 2001  |  IP: Logged
SHH
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posted 14 September 2003 03:27 PM      Profile for SHH     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Skdadl, I distinctly remember several news reports, (I think sometime shortly before the US strikes against Afghanistan began), that took note of the fact that OBL’s most recent Al-Jazeera release mentioned the Palestinians. I recall this because, at the time, it got quite a bit of discussion since, according to those making the observation, in the past OBL hadn’t made the Palestinian issue a priority. Some were suggesting that his attempt to piggyback onto the Palestinian cause was a sign of desperation or a shift in political tactics. I don’t know if it’s true, but I do recall those reports and comments.

I also recall that several Palestinian leaders didn’t much appreciate OBL’s support. Specifically, I recall Palestinian Foreign Minister Farouk Qaddumi strongly denouncing OBL by saying, in effect, we don’t know him...he’s never helped us...he’s never participated in our struggle for rights...we denounce the attacks...

quote:
Those whose minds are not stunted by black-or-white thinking, SHH, have long maintained that there is no contradiction or incompatibility between Saddam's responsibility and that of the US/UN.
Even if I accept this, Beluga2, it doesn’t explain the stunted and black-and-white thinking of Margolis who made no mention of the UN or Saddam when he flatly wrote: “...death of 500,000 Iraqi children caused by a cruel U.S.-imposed embargo.”

Sanctions in general have long been a source of contention with some camps finding them an effective tool and others disagreeing. Your theory, however, doesn’t account for the fact that prior to the 9/11 attacks, Powell was actively trying to get the sanctions modified or lifted. “Smart sanctions”, I think he called them. This was motivated by a recognition that they weren’t working; indeed, they were backfiring politically.

But thanks for noting the Margolis Enron error. I had meant to mention that not only was the timing off, but the entire suggestion, as I’ve argued before, that Bush had anything to with the Enron scandal, is unsupportable. That Margolis just states this as another one of his facts, leaves me rather skeptical of his abilities and/or intentions.


From: Ex-Silicon Valley to State Saguaro | Registered: Oct 2001  |  IP: Logged
skdadl
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posted 14 September 2003 03:38 PM      Profile for skdadl     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Well, SHH, what I recall is watching, over and over again, among journalists who were in Afghanistan fifteen years earlier (ie: in the mid- to late eighties), a lot of head-scratching about what the CIA thought they were doing, funding a bunch of Saudis and Yemenis who utterly detested Americans, Europeans, and Jews and were willing to kill any they saw at any time, even though those infidels were travelling with the mujahadeen and covering their fight against the Soviets.

The Afghan fighters used to have to protect Western journalists from the fundamentalists that the CIA had imported!

The USian presence in KSA was an issue to those guys back then. Palestine was an issue to those guys back then. And still, the CIA kept paying them.

Are USians ever gonna grow up, SHH?

[ 14 September 2003: Message edited by: skdadl ]


From: gone | Registered: May 2001  |  IP: Logged
Hinterland
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posted 14 September 2003 03:49 PM      Profile for Hinterland        Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Shh, I want to take you seriously, but if you're going to be emphatic about an issue, you have to post something verifiable. Maybe "smart sanctions" is supported by fact, but I'm lacking in energy, not nerve. The "I seem to recall" statements in your post are pretty much dismissable without further research.

Having said that, I've always thought Margolis had a bit of an axe to grind with American journalism (he is an American by birth); I remember when he was on the CBC during the first few days of the invasion, when he lambasted the Washington press corps. With good reason, as it turns out.

[ 14 September 2003: Message edited by: Hinterland ]


From: Québec/Ontario | Registered: Apr 2003  |  IP: Logged
SHH
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posted 14 September 2003 04:23 PM      Profile for SHH     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Here's a piece discussing OBLs attempt to link-up with the Palestinian struggle.

If your question wasn’t rhetorical, skdadl, I’d have to ask: Grow and be like who? I will say though, that it grieves me deeply that our public schools have degraded so, that history and civ are given such short attention, and that the sports page takes priority over all others. I don’t see any of that changing soon.


From: Ex-Silicon Valley to State Saguaro | Registered: Oct 2001  |  IP: Logged
skdadl
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posted 14 September 2003 04:29 PM      Profile for skdadl     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
SHH, growing up means learning to take responsibility for what you have done.

Osama bin Laden is a creation of U.S. intelligence agencies, staffed by bright young men with good haircuts who are in fact incurably stupid about everyone in the world who isn't a bright young American male with a good haircut.

Is this horrible truth ever going to break through to anyone south of the border???


From: gone | Registered: May 2001  |  IP: Logged
SHH
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posted 14 September 2003 04:52 PM      Profile for SHH     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
The "I seem to recall" statements in your post are pretty much dismissable without further research.
So leeme ask you Hinterland, do you categorically dismiss all assertions made on the basis of recollection, unless properly linked, or just my specific recollections because you find them the mistaken product of a mind swamped in ‘propagandist nationalism’?

Here's a piece on the Palestinian leaders trying to distance themselves from OBL.

Smart Sanctions.

Have I missed anything?

Whoops, here's a piece on sanctions, Baby Parades and Iraqi doctors.

[ 14 September 2003: Message edited by: SHH ]


From: Ex-Silicon Valley to State Saguaro | Registered: Oct 2001  |  IP: Logged
skdadl
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posted 14 September 2003 05:01 PM      Profile for skdadl     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
SHH, it is hardly surprising that Palestinian leaders would wish to distance themselves from Osama bin Laden.

His American handlers wish to distance themselves from Osama bin Laden!!!

In case you haven't noticed, SHH, just about everyone in the world except the Pakistani intelligence agencies wish to distance themselves from Osama bin Laden!

That still does not address the issue of (1) what drove him (and European/USian colonialism in the Middle East is and always has been part of it, or at least that's what he has always used on his followers, now multiplying like mad); or (2) who funded and nurtured the bleeding murderous maniac in the first place!!!


From: gone | Registered: May 2001  |  IP: Logged
skdadl
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posted 14 September 2003 05:03 PM      Profile for skdadl     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
SHH, I cannot believe it.

You are just the most perfect manifestation of the imperviousness of American males with good haircuts.

Graham Greene wrote a novel about you guys, back in the 1950s. Read it some time. It is called The Quiet American.

You are going to get us all killed, SHH.


From: gone | Registered: May 2001  |  IP: Logged
Hinterland
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posted 14 September 2003 05:11 PM      Profile for Hinterland        Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
...just my specific recollections because you find them the mistaken product of a mind swamped in ‘propagandist nationalism’?

Yes, in fact I think most people would dismiss such recollections for exactly that reason. I remember a tour of East Berlin I took with an official of the DDR government, and at everything she said, I rolled my eyes so far back into my head I needed surgery afterwards.

...but, I see you're now providing links. Good.


From: Québec/Ontario | Registered: Apr 2003  |  IP: Logged
SHH
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posted 14 September 2003 06:03 PM      Profile for SHH     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
I’m a little uncertain as to what exactly we’re disagreeing about. Margolis distinctly linked the Palestinian cause with OBL/al-Qaeda with no qualifiers. I challenged that statement by suggesting the link was a little more dubious and complicated. Actually, unless my Google has a ‘propagandist nationalism’ filter in place, there’s not a whole lot of evidence there’s a direct link at all.

Recall, I was urged to read Margolis so I could get my head around the real picture. So I read of “cruel US embargos” and OBL for Palestine, and of “Bush's astoundingly inept national security staff”, and how the “Bush administration was asleep while on guard; it refuses to accept responsibility for its dereliction of duty;..”...enmeshed in Enron...blah, blah, blah... It’s like Molly Ivins without the humor.

skdadl: What point of yours is it that my imperviousness is preventing me from absorbing? That the US, in its zealous hyper-vigilance against the Great Red Menace, often did nasty things; bumbled a lot; and created some monsters in the process? And that one of these monsters has come back to bite? Okay, let’s just say it’s all true. Now what? Where does that leave us?


From: Ex-Silicon Valley to State Saguaro | Registered: Oct 2001  |  IP: Logged
SHH
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posted 14 September 2003 06:36 PM      Profile for SHH     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
The Quiet American. I chuckled skdadl, I really did. That was as much about a ‘hot’ war, as a cold one. Regardless, notice that I'm not going to disagree. Yet.
From: Ex-Silicon Valley to State Saguaro | Registered: Oct 2001  |  IP: Logged
Hinterland
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posted 14 September 2003 07:43 PM      Profile for Hinterland        Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
unless my Google has a ‘propagandist nationalism’ filter in place

It probably does...I see no other explanation, unless you had the time to check the 44,000 hits you get on Google with the terms Palestine, Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda. Anyway, I'm done discussing anything with you. A big, fat, waste of time.


From: Québec/Ontario | Registered: Apr 2003  |  IP: Logged
Trinitty
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posted 14 September 2003 10:47 PM      Profile for Trinitty     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
The Palestinian/Israeli issue is a fundamental one in the Muslem world. Of course that's a reason used by OBL.

OBL has mentioned it numerous times over the years, though, that's not his "main cause".

He seems most pissed off by the occupation/use of Saudi Arabia by the Americans in the first Gulf War, he took it as an affront to Islam, and a personal/national assault. The rest of his nuttbags are also pissed off over the CIA dropping their support of them after propping them up for so long to fight the Soviets.


From: Europa | Registered: Jun 2001  |  IP: Logged
SHH
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posted 14 September 2003 11:15 PM      Profile for SHH     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Anyway, I'm done discussing anything with you. A big, fat, waste of time.
Just as I don’t recall ever having an argument with the insufferably pompous FMont, I don’t recall ever having any discussion with you, Hinterland. Oh well...

From: Ex-Silicon Valley to State Saguaro | Registered: Oct 2001  |  IP: Logged
krishna
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posted 15 September 2003 12:50 PM      Profile for krishna   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Originally posted by Trinitty:
The Palestinian/Israeli issue is a fundamental one in the Muslem world....

It is a fundamental issue in anyone's agenda, if Martin Luther King Jr's statement about injustice contains any truth.


From: Ottawa and Rideau rivers area | Registered: Aug 2001  |  IP: Logged
Willowdale Wizard
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posted 15 September 2003 01:07 PM      Profile for Willowdale Wizard   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
for nearly three years in london, i worked as a news monitor (listening to radio/watching TV, typing up summaries of BBC, CNN, CNBC, etc),

so it happened to be my turn to be doing "live" logging, watching cable news (Sky TV in Britain), when news came in of the first plane hitting the twin towers.

it was very odd. all the comments by TV anchors were "well, maybe sun got in the pilot's eyes, he got lost coming up the hudson",

but that all changed when the 2nd plane hit.

i had the opportunity to go back in our "tape library" and see BBC, ITV, CNN, Sky and CNBC reactions a few days later, and they were all very quick to grasp that it was an attack.

only one commentator, on Sky, voiced concern of possible structural collapse.

so, that was from 945am eastern until 1030am eastern (my shift was 630am-230pm london time), and i left work.

i took a bus into central london (tottenham court road, if that helps anyone) where a number of TV/stereo cheapie shops are. at each of them, there were crowds of 50-100 people clustered in front of shop windows and sitting on the floors inside.

it was only then that i learnt that the twin towers had fallen, that the pentagon was attacked, and they were still repeating the rumour about the car bomb at state.

of course, it then became part of my job to watch the war on terror unfold through radio and TV news.

on the one hand, and it happened with all major news items, there was a strange thrill. the bbc flew their top radio and TV presenters to halifax, then overland to new york. "good morning, i'm julian worricker in battery park, and it's 6am, and breakfast is live from new york city." and goose bumps went up on your arm.

on the other hand, my firm, god damn them, didn't even bother to offer any sort of counselling for me and my co-workers, and we had to listen to "3000 people dead", "tissue collected in smoking wreckage" each and every hour for weeks.


From: england (hometown of toronto) | Registered: Jan 2003  |  IP: Logged
SHH
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 1527

posted 15 September 2003 10:22 PM      Profile for SHH     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
The Falling Man.
From: Ex-Silicon Valley to State Saguaro | Registered: Oct 2001  |  IP: Logged

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