In article <et80201pcqbgbdh86k40ldk95okc5ecgan@4ax.com>, David Patrick says...

On Mon, 02 Feb 2004 04:21:31 GMT, * <nospam@plz.com> wrote:

Patrick Wintour and Ewen MacAskill
Thursday November 14, 2002
The Guardian 

President George Bush is seen by a third of Britons as a bigger threat to
world safety than Saddam Hussein, according to a new poll conducted by a
senior US Republican and due to be broadcast today. 

I'm not surprised. At least we know Bush really has massive stockpiles
of WMD.


David Patrick

Hey Patty, you may even have half-a-brain,
but not much over a half!!

Bad Posture � Bush�s New Nukes and Far-Fling Bases Take the War into a Dangerous
New Phase by Doug Ireland from In These Times 4/15/02

George W. Bush and his administration are more dangerous than anyone could
possibly have imagined before he took office. This is the conclusion correctly
drawn by most of the world's democracies after the tardy revelations about the
Pentagon's Nuclear Posture Review�secretly approved in January but only recently
leaked to the Los	Angeles Times by frightened congressional sources�which
reverses the long-standing unofficial U.S. doctrine of "no first use" of nuclear
weapons. "It's a cause for serious fear," editorialized Le Monae, wnlte London�s
largest-circulation daily, the Mirror bannered the headline, "Let�s Nuke 'Em
All."	 

The new policy contemplates the use of nuclear weapons in circumstances never
before approved, including the failure of conventional weapons to destroy
military targets, in response to chemical or biological attacks, or in "the
event of surprising military developments"� a perilously open-ended definition.
Even if one sets aside the ethical problems posed by the new doctrine, the move
is pure folly that accelerates the dangers of nuclear proliferation.

The doctrine calls for developing a new generation of so-called tactical
mini-nukes�which would have to be tested, of course, violating nuclear testing
bans signed by the United States. But Bush wouldn't have to wait: The
"low-yield" B61 - 11 nuclear bomb, designed to penetrate underground bunkers, is
already in the U.S. arsenal and has been deployed in Europe since 1997. (Of
course, "mini-nuke" is a highly misleading vocable: Hitting Saddam Hussein's
presidential bunker in Bagdad with the B61-11, for example, "could cause upwards
of 20,000 deaths," according to the Physicians for Social Responsibility.)

At the sub-cabinet level, where real decisions get made and options for
political leaders are skewed one way or another, the Bush administration is
crammed with proponents of the use of tactical nukes. They include: Stephen
Hadley, Bush's deputy national security adviser; Robert Joseph, a member of the
National Security Council; Stephen Cambone, now a senior Pentagon policy
planner; and William Schneider, another Bush defense counselor. These four
co-authored a report published last year by the National Institute for Public
Policy� a conservative think tank funded in part by the military-industrial
conglomerate��declaring that "nuclear weapons can�be used in counterforce
attacks that are intended to neutralize enemy military capabilities."  

No less than the head of the U. S. Defense Threat Reduction Agency, Stephen
Younger---��responsible for ""counter-proliferation" programs��expressed his
enthusiasm for small, precision-guided, low-yield nukes in a paper he wrote last
year title "Nuclear Weapons in the 21st Century."  And Secretary of State Colin
Powell, whose flacks have been assiduously portraying him to the gullible
Washington press corps as dovish, called the Nuclear Posture Review "prudent
military planning."

The Bush doctrine has not only changed nuclear weaponry from a tool of
deterrence to just another option for war-fighting. It has extended the* threat
to non-nuclear countries (in further violation of U.S. commitments)�including,
by name, four Islamic ones. But neither Libya nor Syria have nuke programs.
Despite their best efforts, Western  intelligence agencies have been unable to
uncover any credible evidence that Iraq has restarted its deliverable nuke
program, effectively dismantled by U.N. inspectors during the '9Os. And Iran's
nuclear program is stalled and years away from developing usable weapons.
Moreover, the new doctrine for the first time proposes the use of nukes to
defend against any attack on a roster of U.S. allies, including Israel�which has
its own substantial nuclear arsenal of at least 300 deliverable war. heads. Yet
from the supine Democratic Party leadership, one has heard not a peep of protest
against Bush's new nuclear strategy.

At the same time, in the six months since September 11, the Bush administration
has moved to develop new bases in a wide swath of the world and put U.S. forces
into action in a greater array of countries than at any time since World War II.
Anyone who thinks these new bases will be eliminated once the "war on terrorism"
is over is dreaming.

Bush has established military bases�which will have combat aircraft and at least
3,000 personnel�in the countries of oil-rich Central Asia, including the brutal
authoritarian regimes in Uzbekistan, Kyrgystan and Tajikistan. In Georgia�where
Edward Shevardnaze long ago abandoned his image as a "democratic reformer" to
pursue an authoritarian course built on a cult of personality�Bush has given
enough military aid to triple the country's military budget, sending in 200
military advisers and dozens of Huey helicopters (which will be used not simply
against supposed al-Qaeda forces, but against recalcitrant Chechen and Abkhazian
minorities). These bases will only stimulate paranoia in the powerful military
establishments in Moscow and Beijing, spurring their demands for more resources
and weapons�especially in light of the Nuclear Posture Review.

In the Philippines�where, on the island of Basilan, a Manila=directed army of
more than 7,000 soldiers has been unable to eliminate less than 100 illumines of
the Abu Sayyaf guerrillas because the local population supports them�Bush has
sent in 660 U.S. troops, 30,000 machine guns and $100 million in military aid,
which works out to more than a million bucks for each rebel.

The United States has also sent 100 military advisers to Yemen to help in combat
against local tribes, and special forces are going into Sudan to prepare an
attack in Somalia. Add to this our existing bases in Turkey, Saudi Arabia and
Kuwait�as well as our new bases and troop concentrations in Afghanistan and
Pakistan and huge naval patrols in the Red Sea and the Arab Gulf�and it's no
wonder that the world views Washington's new forward strategy as part of an
imperial design at the service of U.S. dominated globalization.

Given all of the above, Bush's declaration�"god bless our coalition"�with the
flags of 179 nations as his photo-op background when the White House marked the
six-month anniversary of the September 11 attacks, masks the degree to which his
"simplistic, unilateralist" policies (as French foreign minister Hubert Vedrine
put it) have spooked the "war on terrorism" alliance. That, of course, includes
his widely reviled "axis of evil" speech.

Consider Bush's attempt to rally support for a new war on Iraq. In Europe, only
the fascist-allied Silvio Berlusconi of Italy and arch-conservative Jose Maria
Aznar of Spain unequivocally support it. Tony Blair faces a rare Labor Party
revolt against his solidarity with Bush on Iraq even wlthn his own cabinet.  And
as Dick Cheney emerged from his bunker for a tour of a dozen nations, including
the Middle East, to prepare them for new attacks on Iraq, Jonathan Freedland in
the Guardian summed up the position neatly:

There is none of the Arab support that made the 1990-91 Gulf War viable.... The
Saudis, nominal joint commanders last time, are begging America to stay away
now. Kuwait will not allow itself to be used as a base for U.S. troops. Turkey
fears any attempt to stir the Kurds against Baghdad will only energize Turkish
Kurds against Ankara. Nor are Shias in southern Iraq likely to join the American
effort: They feel betrayed by Bush's father, who called on them to revolt, only
to abandon them to their fate. Their backers in Iran are not exactly on side
with the Bushies either, not since they were lumped into the axis of evil.

Finally, there's Afghanistan. Declarations of "victory" over the Taliban and
al-Qaeda were premature, as the offensive against their regrouped forces in
Gardez and Shah-I-Kot in the east made clear. The Pentagon's own numbers tell
the story: When the ground campaign began in Afghanistan on October 7, it
estimated opposition forces at 35,000 men; but now it admits it has yet to
account for 20,000 of them. They're not in Cuba nor in the caves. They've faded
into hospitable Pashtun villages or exfiltrated through the mountains to
Pakistan (not counting those buddies the Pakistani intelligence services flew
out of harm's way under the noses of U.S. forces).

The government of Hamid Karzai�hand-picked by the CIA as the interim head of
state�is virtually powerless outside Kabul (and his control is shaky
there�witness the recent assassination of one of his ministers). And just as the
Pentagon was declaring the campaign in Gardez nearly over, Karzai's government
waned that "large numbers" of Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters were regrouping
across southern Afghanistan in the provinces of Wardak, Ghasni, Khost and
Paktia. Karzai ordered 1,000 troops to these Pashtun areas�all Tajiks loyal to
the Northen Alliance (as were the 1,000 soldiers Karzai previously sent to
Gardez with U.S. military approval� provoking outrage among Pashtun commanders
there).

The nefarious consequences of the war in Afghanistan predicted by those of us
who opposed it have come true. Warlordism has returned in force, ethnic
cleansing of Pashtuns has been reported in the north and east, opium cultivation
has aggressively rebounded. Control of drug crops is one reason for internecine
armed combat among the erstwhile, purchased U.S. "allies" at the regional level,
as the country spins closer and closer to full-scale civil war.

America's military campaign continues to kill Afghan civilians.  French
commanders in Afghanistan have refused to send their Mirage fighter planes on
many U.S. requested missions because they feared murky American targeting would
cause even more civilian casualties�like the March 6 raid in which even the
Pentagon admitted women and children were killed.  Food aid is being sidetracked
by local warlords and turned into a racket�only those villages that pay get
food. Malnutrition is stunting the growth and killing untold numbers of Afghan
children. And remember Laura Bush's pleas for support of the war to help Afghan
women?  Karzai's women's minister, Dr. Sima Samar, complains that not a single
dollar of the aid for women's programs (particularly education) promised by the
United States and Britain has yet materialized.

One could go on, but even from these brief summaries it is clear that the
militarization of the campaign against terrorism has brought with it new dangers
and new slaughters of the innocent. The long war has only heightened global
insecurity, not diminished it. And there's worse to come.