Re: "smoked salmon socialists"

"Jeffraham Prestonian" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> "Rubystars" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote
>
> > Bullshit. Saddam posed a direct threat to his neighbors, he financed
> > terrorists in the region, and that is a direct threat to our interests
as
> > well. He was working on a nuclear program several times in the past and
he
> > was going to do it again, that was a direct threat to us.
>
> That's why, just two years prior to the invasion,
> Colin Powell was telling Egyptian press:
>
> "We will always try to consult with our friends in the
> region so that they are not surprised and do everything
> we can to explain the purpose of our responses. We
> had a good discussion, the Foreign Minister and I and
> the President and I, had a good discussion about the
> nature of the sanctions -- the fact that the sanctions
> exist -- not for the purpose of hurting the Iraqi people,
> but for the purpose of keeping in check Saddam
> Hussein's ambitions toward developing weapons of
> mass destruction. We should constantly be reviewing
> our policies, constantly be looking at those sanctions
> to make sure that they are directed toward that
> purpose. That purpose is every bit as important now
> as it was ten years ago when we began it. And frankly
> they have worked. He has not developed any
> significant capability with respect to weapons of mass
> destruction. He is unable to project conventional
> power against his neighbors. So in effect, our policies
> have strengthened the security of the neighbors of
> Iraq, and these are policies that we are going to keep
> in place, but we are always willing to review them to
> make sure that they are being carried out in a way
> that does not affect the Iraqi people but does affect
> the Iraqi regime's ambitions and the ability to acquire
> weapons of mass destruction, and we had a good
> conversation on this issue."
> --Secretary of State Colin Powell, 02/24/2001

U.S. companies helped illegally suppy Iraq's weapons to begin with . . .

"A German newspaper has obtained portions of Iraq's top secret weapons
report that reveals at least 24 U.S. corporations as well as four agencies
of the U.S. government illegally helped Iraq build its biological, chemical
and nuclear weapons programs.
Some of the corporations include Hewlett Packard, DuPont, Honeywell,
Rockwell, Tectronics, Bechtel, International Computer Systems, Unisys,
Sperry and TI Coating.

The Berlin-based paper Die Tageszeitung also reports the U.S. Department of
Energy delivered essential non-fissile parts for Baghdad's nuclear weapons
program in the 1980s. The Departments of Agriculture, Commerce and Defense
also provided assistance.

According to the paper, only one country had more business ties to Iraq than
the U.S. That was Germany. As many as 80 German companies are also listed in
Iraq's report. And the paper reported that some German companies continued
to do business with Iraq until last year.

The list of companies who worked with Iraq was supposed to be top secret.
Iraq produced only two identical copies of its 12,000-page report for
international review. One went to the International Atomic Energy Agency and
one went to the United Nations. The Bush Administration quickly took control
of the UN version, and made unedited copies for the other permanent members
of the Security Council, Britain, France, Russia and China. The U.S. then
made edited copies, which deleted all reference to nuclear weapons
production and all mentions of international corporations. This was the
report that the world was supposed to see.

But the German paper obtained several hundred pages of unedited text and
began publishing articles based on the leaked documents yesterday. We're
joined right now from Geneva by Andreas Zumach, the journalist who broke the
story for Die Tageszeitung."

http://tinyurl.com/xju1

Part II: http://tinyurl.com/xju3