Big Brother's Bogus Fabrications

New York Times
Turks Reject U.S. Criticism of Opposition to Iraq War

Officials in Turkey today rejected criticism by Paul D. Wolfowitz, the United States deputy defense secretary, suggesting that the country had made a mistake by not opening its doors to the American military during the Iraq war.

"Turkey, from the very beginning, never made any mistakes, and has taken all the necessary steps in all sincerity," Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said.

Mr. Wolfowitz, in an interview broadcast on Tuesday on CNN-Turk, strongly criticized Turkey for not joining the Bush administration's campaign to topple Saddam Hussein. Just before the American bombing began, the Turkish Parliament rejected Pentagon requests to base troops in Turkey as part of a northern offensive on Iraq.

"Let's have a Turkey that steps up and says, `We made a mistake. We should have known how bad things were in Iraq, but we know now. Let's figure out how we can be as helpful as possible to the Americans,' " Mr. Wolfowitz said. "I'd like to see a different sort of attitude than I have yet detected."

Let's have a United States of America that doesn't presume to go around dictating to every other country on this planet what they should or shouldn't allow on their own soil. You wouldn't for one second tolerate another country coming in and presuming to tell you that the United States must allow them to use our country as a base of attack for their own peculiar plans for war on another country, Mr. Wolfowitless. I'd like to see a very different sort of attitude from the fascist bullying you bunch are so adept at.

Mr. Wolfowitz singled out the Turkish military for criticism, saying it had lacked leadership at a critical foreign policy moment.

"I think for whatever reason, they did not play the strong leadership role that we would have expected," Mr. Wolfowitz said in the interview, held on Monday in Washington.

The Turkish public strongly opposed the war, fearing that the military action against a Muslim neighbor would destabilize the region.

Mr. Wolfowitz suggested today that relations between the United States and Turkey would improve if officials in Ankara followed Washington's line in its relations with Iran and Syria. American officials have been concerned by recent diplomatic overtures between Turkey and its neighbors, including a trip to Syria by the Turkish foreign minister, Abdullah Gul, and a visit to Turkey by Iran's first vice president, Muhammad Reza Aref.

Turkey did allow the United States to use its airspace after the war in Iraq began but the parliamentary vote in Ankara frustrated American officials and sent American military planners back to the drawing board.
 
Yes A_ooiioo_a hii, it is good, as the saying goes, to be eternally vigilent.

But ........................... too many people cry out 'wolf' (conspiracy) without providing the hard evidence.

If conspiracy theorists have indeed got anything to contribute they are, in their zeal to convince others, doing their cause a big disfavour by being critical on those occasions where that isn't warranted.

No wonder Bush's prayer at night contains the following :

"I'm Just a Man Whose Intentions Are Good. Oh Lord, Please Don't Let Me be Misunderstood."

freealways
 
Quote from a_ooiioo_a hii:
Mr. Wolfowitz suggested today that relations between the United States and Turkey would improve if officials in Ankara followed Washington's line in its relations with Iran and Syria.
More...
another question might be: why is the assistant secretary of defense doing interviews to outline US diplomatic policy and recommend strategy to foreign states?
 
Of all the winners and losers in the war, Turkey stands out as one of the biggest losers. Despite decades of diplomatic and military support from the US, Turkey backstabbed us the one time we needed something from them and compounded it by also trying to hold us up for ransom.

Because of their stupidity and treachery, they are quite likely to have an ugly Kurdish insurgency to deal with.
 
>>Because of their stupidity and treachery, they are quite likely to have an ugly Kurdish insurgency to deal with.<<

AAintheBelt, any country is entitled to look at things from their particular perspective. Clearly they saw the threat of Kurdish problems greater than any threat from the status quo with the Saddam regime.

freealways
 
>>another question might be: why is the assistant secretary of defense doing interviews to outline US diplomatic policy and recommend strategy to foreign states?<<

Now what is wrong with that Madison ? What is wrong with a dialog outlining one's point of view. You are making it sounds like an act of great stupidity, if not an act of treason, was committed.

The moment one comes out with such unreasonable attacks
people immediately start to discount and/or ignore everything else one may say (including any legitimate condemnations one may have).

freealways
 
Quote from freealways:

too many people cry out 'wolf' (conspiracy) without providing the hard evidence.


No wonder Bush's prayer at night contains the following :

"I'm Just a Man Whose Intentions Are Good. Oh Lord, Please Don't Let Me be Misunderstood."
More...
For the most part in this thread I have not provided opinions of my own, but merely presented the original News items themselves as the evidence for anyone else to peruse and reach your own conclusions over. In bold black I have occasionally inserted brief commentary of my own on select quotes or details that I find particularly incriminating, and that I felt shouldn't go without notice.

Does Bush really pray to Eric Burden & The Animals?

I'd prefer if his prayer were: "We gotta get out of this place, if it's the last thing we ever do."

I don't think Bush's intentions are good. And what he actually says is that he doesn't want "to be misunderestimated".

Um, Bush is a moron. He has no business running a laundromat, let alone a country, let alone the United States. Yet he presumes, like the Fisherman's Wife, to run the entire World, not even content with running the United States.
 
Quote from Madison:


another question might be: why is the assistant secretary of defense doing interviews to outline US diplomatic policy and recommend strategy to foreign states?
More...
Because the current US administration has no diplomatic policy other than warfare and the thuggish threat of more warfare.
 
New York Times
In Reversal, Plan for Iraq Self-Rule Has Been Put Off

In an abrupt reversal, the United States and Britain have indefinitely put off their plan to allow Iraqi opposition forces to form a national assembly and an interim government by the end of the month.

Instead, top American and British diplomats leading reconstruction efforts here told exile leaders in a meeting tonight that allied officials would remain in charge of Iraq for an indefinite period, said Iraqis who attended the meeting. It was conducted by L. Paul Bremer, the new civilian administrator here.

Mr. Bremer, who was accompanied by John Sawers, a British diplomat representing Prime Minister Tony Blair, told the Iraqi political figures that the allies preferred to revert to the concept of creating an "interim authority" — not a provisional government — so that Iraqis could assist them by creating a constitution for Iraq, revamping the educational system and devising a plan for future democratic elections.

"It's quite clear that you cannot transfer all powers onto some interim body, because it will not have the strength or the resources to carry those responsibilities out," The Associated Press quoted Mr. Sawers as saying. "There was agreement that we should aim to have a national conference as soon as we reasonably could do so."

One Iraqi who attended the meeting said Iraqi opposition leaders expressed strong disappointment over the reversal.

The decision comes at a time when Washington and London have been taking new steps to restore law and order in Iraq, cope with the devastation of civilian institutions and halt the looting and violent crime.

These conditions have emboldened former opposition figures to move rapidly into the political vacuum in Iraq, and former members of Saddam Hussein's government and the Baath Party to blame the allies for fomenting collapse, unemployment and suffering among the population.

In a step calculated to combat any resurgence of Baath Party influence here, Mr. Bremer today issued an order banning up to 30,000 top-ranking members "from future employment in the public sector."

"By this means, the coalition provisional authority will ensure that representative government in Iraq is not threatened by Baathist elements returning to power and that those in positions of authority in the future are acceptable to the people of Iraq," Mr. Bremer said in a statement.

Today's decision to extend allied control indefinitely over the governing of Iraq was conveyed to Iraqi political figures as the United States and Britain worked assiduously at the United Nations to win broad international consensus for a resolution to lift economic sanctions on Iraq, in order to begin selling oil to finance reconstruction*.
Or to finance Halliburton, NYSE: HAL
*Reconstruction provided by . . . Halliburton. Well, golllllllly!

In seeking support, the allies are facing demands for a greater United Nations role in shaping postwar Iraq, including a setting of the terms by which an "interim authority" would make the transition to democratically elected government.

"They want broader support because they are desperate to get the oil pumping," said an Iraqi who attended the meeting. Mr. Sawers, who is Britain's outgoing ambassador to Egypt, spoke of the need to complete the "tactical" measures of re-establishing legal and social institutions before vesting a government with sovereign control.

The Iraqi who attended the meeting added that the decision also appeared to reflect apprehensions in the Bush administration, and more intensely in London, that the former Iraqi opposition forces are still a disparate group and that the Kurdish leaders as well have yet to coalesce into a ruling body.

The fear is that a divided or weak interim government will not be able to withstand the intense and at times conflicting ethnic and religious pressures that have tended to divide Iraq instead of cementing it together.

"I don't think they trust this group to function as a political leadership," said the Iraqi political figure who attended. "And for us it is very difficult to participate in something that we have no control over. We don't want to be part of the blame committee when something goes wrong."

Opposition leaders were "very respectful" to Mr. Bremer and Mr. Sawers, a participant said, "but I think everyone was also pretty forceful about the need to have full sovereignty for the Iraqis." A question they kept posing, he added, was, "Do you want to run this place, or should we?"

No date was set for creating an interim authority, and no details about its powers and functions were discussed in the meeting, the Iraqis said. Mr. Bremer said he would meet with the opposition leaders for further discussions in two weeks.

"They retracted what they said before," an Iraqi political figure said. The provisional government idea is gone, he said. As for the idea of convening a national assembly to select a government, he said, "there is no such thing anymore."

Today's decision was a disappointment for the former opposition forces and their supporters in the Pentagon and the Congress, where officials had been pressing for an early turnover of sovereign power to a government formed by the opposition groups.

On April 28, the United States and Britain sponsored a political gathering of about 300 Iraqis and supported their call for a national conference to meet by the end of May to select a transitional government. Zalmay Khalilzad, who has served as President Bush's envoy to the Iraqi opposition, was a co-chairman of the April meeting, but did not return to Iraq for tonight's meeting.

On May 5, Jay Garner, the civilian administrator who preceded Mr. Bremer, said the core of a new Iraqi government would emerge this month. "Next week, or by the second weekend in May, you'll see the beginning of a nucleus of a temporary Iraqi government, a government with an Iraqi face on it that is totally dealing with the coalition," General Garner said during a visit to Basra.

At that time, he said he expected such a government to include figures like Ahmad Chalabi of the Iraqi National Congress, Ayad Allawi of the Iraqi National Accord, the Kurdish leaders Massoud Barzani and Jalal Talabani, and Abdul Aziz al-Hakim of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq.

Since then, the group of former exiles and their Kurdish allies has expanded their leadership council to include another Sunni Muslim leader and another Shiite Muslim leader.

The Iraqi figures were also surprised by the reversal since it appeared in recent weeks that Pentagon officials had persuaded the White House that the best course was to turn over power as quickly as possible to opposition forces.

But as the breadth of systemic breakdown in Iraq has become more visible, a counterargument has grown — that the failure of the opposition to make the transition to a viable government would reflect poorly on the allied victory over Mr. Hussein and add to instability.

General Garner attended tonight's meeting but spoke very little, participants said. He was accompanied by Ryan Crocker, a deputy assistant secretary of state.

Attending from the Pentagon was Walter Slocombe, who has been given the assignment to examine the growing problem of how to get under control the military forces that each of the main opposition leaders now controls in Iraq. He is said to be working on a plan to meld them into a national security force, a task that would require Kurdish leaders to give up control over their armies.

The opposition leaders were also asked to meet on Tuesday with Lt. Gen. John Abazaid, deputy to Gen. Tommy Franks, the overall American commander in the Middle East and South Asia, to discuss how the opposition groups can contribute to improving security.

All of the Iraqi figures were pleased with Mr. Bremer's decision on dismantling the Baath Party. Nonetheless, Mr. Bremer reserved the right to himself to make exceptions to the ban in cases where the knowledge and expertise of a former Baath official might be essential to government functions, where the person's prior membership in the party was deemed nonthreatening and where a renunciation of Baath principles had been secured.

Someone needs to take a Baath real Baad, it smells like Shiite to me.
 
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