please stop bashing France

Franck wrote in message
...
15,000 French deaths due to hot weather

pathetic !! don't forget to speak about the 12000 people shot in the
US
street in 2002

further more you don't have any lecon concerning the medical
assistance !!!


I'm sure that means something in some language.

--

Scott
--------
"Interestingly, we started to lose this war only after the embedded
reporters pulled out. Back when we got the news directly from Iraq,
there was victory and optimism. Now that the news is filtered through
the mainstream media here in America, all we hear is death and
destruction and quagmire..." Ann Coulter
http://www.anncoulter.com/columns/2003/091703.htm

Chris Mark wrote in message
...
From: "Garrison Hilliard"

The French are even hated by themselves!

http://tinyurl.com/qm7a

Interesting article--and many of the other linked articles are quite
interesting, as well.

Here is an article by Clark S. Judge from a recent Policy Review that
may be of
interest. It takes a look at US influence in the world and the
reasons for
opposition to it from a very interesting angle. Title "Hegemony of the
Heart":

http://www.policyreview.org/DEC01/judge.html

A few quotes to give you a sense of it:

"The great battle of the twentieth century was between freedom and
totalitarianism - an entirely political conflict. The great battle of
the
twenty-first century may well be between the forces of creative
destruction and
those of destructive preservation - much more a social and cultural
conflict.
Americans will wonder, what have we done to be drawn into conflicts
like the
present one? The answer is simple: Our example is the hope of those
who are
striving and rising. We cannot escape this conflict by changing what
we do in
foreign policy or other arenas of action, because in this arena our
power
derives not from what we do but from who we are - and what we
represent to
these new classes and those who oppose them.
****
"Yet like it or not, the world will not let us go. It might be said
that in
country after country, those who are threatened on the top are seeking
to
combine with those who are frustrated on the bottom against those who
are
rising in the middle. We ask why they hate us, and the answer is that
"they" hate and fear so many people in their own countries for whom
America
has become an emblem - and so far as they feel the same tug that these
new
men and women feel, they hate themselves."


Chris Mark

Victor Davis Hanson makes a good point that what threatens the French
and the radical anti-Americans around the world is the eagerness of
their young to embrace what the US offers while considering their local
culture as dated.

--

Scott
--------
"Interestingly, we started to lose this war only after the embedded
reporters pulled out. Back when we got the news directly from Iraq,
there was victory and optimism. Now that the news is filtered through
the mainstream media here in America, all we hear is death and
destruction and quagmire..." Ann Coulter
http://www.anncoulter.com/columns/2003/091703.htm

U¿ytkownik "IO" napisa³ w wiadomo¶ci
Poland proud of . Polish armed forces are below the russia's one
Poland beat crap out of the Russians the last time we had an "official" war
(1920). I agree that Polish armed forces (including the air forces) are
substandard compared to the major NATO members.. Poland is on par with
Spain, I would think. It cannot be compared with DE, US, UK, FR or IT. Yet
in comparsion to the Eastern Europe there is nothing except Russia (of
course...) Ukraine and maybe Belarus that can match Poland. The Polish army
is changing fast. We have 48 F16bl52+ on order, which will be quite a
capable plane (with Pantera XR pod, Aim-9X, JSOW, JDAM to name the more
novel systems). Army has around 700 Patria AMV on order, which are the most
up to date wheeled infantry carriers on the market. We have just taken over
128 Leopard 2 A4 MTBs from Germany, and now there are talks of upgrading
them to the A5 or A6 standard. There are around 220 PT-91 Twardy MTBs in
line. Those are modifided T72Ms. More of the old T72 might get so called
NATO modification (including 120mm smoothbore gun). Medium range anti tank
will be handled by Israeli Spike systems.. I know that Javelin is better but
the price is outragous. Programs that might start sometime in near future
include a medium range UAV (Predator being the front runner of course)
medium and heavy lift helo (personally I love EH101 but I'm pretty sure we
will end up with UH-60L and hopefully some Chinooks)

To sum up, Poland might be a dwarf in comparsion to the UK or US but it is a
respectable force to be rekoned with in Eastern Europe.
take care
lekomin inc

lekomin inc wrote:

U¿ytkownik "IO" napisa³ w wiadomo¶ci
You are Polish? And are you proud of being Polish? Italian roads are full
of
Polish whores... The only good things that poland produces without the
help
of the germans...

you must be italian, eh? I am saddened by the fact that the nation that have
us lamborgini and ferrari is no competent in producing a good Formula 1
driver. Ferarri got the title with the help of... well of a german.
Secondly, according to durex poll, italians enjoy the least amount of sex a
year.
take care you kazzo
lekomin inc

why do Italian men grow mustaches?

redc1c4,
so they'll look more like their mothers. %-)
--
A Troop - 1st Squadron
404th Lemming Armored Cavalry

"Velox et Capillatus!"

Mike wrote in message
...



Why?
What are you doing so well the others couldn't?

And yet the weak Europeans run to the US to solve their problems. When
they can't cajole the US into adopting another of their pointless
programs the Europeans sulk away and give up. When the US announced it
would not implement Kyoto, only Romania had signed it. Afterwards they
rushed to sign it so they could whine that the US wasn't serious. In
two years the Europeans couldn't manage to sign Kyoto. The Europeans,
like most people, know that their actions are hardly important, so they
can adopt any feel-good policy they want.

--

Scott
--------
"Interestingly, we started to lose this war only after the embedded
reporters pulled out. Back when we got the news directly from Iraq,
there was victory and optimism. Now that the news is filtered through
the mainstream media here in America, all we hear is death and
destruction and quagmire..." Ann Coulter
http://www.anncoulter.com/columns/2003/091703.htm

Simon Robbins wrote in message
...


Is that before or after all the Americans realised their government
had lied
(or been so unbelievably badly informed) on the existance of WMDs?
Regardless of how well the removal of Saddam Hussein has gone, the
pretence
for war was to remove a clear and present chemical and/or biological
threat.
It's kind of clear there wasn't one, which was France's opinion all
along
(and the reason for the veto against the stated reason for war) and
now all
those offensive vetoing nations have been proved right. Isn't it time
Bush
made an apology to the French people for all the slurs his politicians
and
populace have so mistakenly made, live on international TV? :^)

Si

Since you seemed to miss the reasons the first time around you might
want to read this.

Why We Went to War
By Robert Kagan and William Kristol
The Weekly Standard | October 13, 2003


"When I left office, there was a substantial amount of biological and
chemical material unaccounted for. That is, at the end of the first Gulf
War, we knew what he had. We knew what was destroyed in all the
inspection processes and that was a lot. And then we bombed with the
British for four days in 1998. We might have gotten it all; we might
have gotten half of it; we might have gotten none of it. But we didn't
know. So I thought it was prudent for the president to go to the UN and
for the UN to say you got to let these inspectors in, and this time if
you don't cooperate the penalty could be regime change, not just
continued sanctions."
--Bill Clinton, July 22, 2003


FORMER PRESIDENT CLINTON is right about what he and the whole world knew
about Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction programs. And most of
what everyone knew about Saddam's weapons of mass destruction had
nothing to do with this or any other government's intelligence
collection and analysis. Had there never been a Central Intelligence
Agency--an idea we admit sounds more attractive all the time--the case
for war against Iraq would have been rock solid. Almost everything we
knew about Saddam's weapons programs and stockpiles, we knew because the
Iraqis themselves admitted it.

Here's a little history that seems to have been completely forgotten in
the frenzy of the past few months. Shortly after the first Gulf War in
1991, U.N. inspectors discovered the existence of a surprisingly
advanced Iraqi nuclear weapons program. In addition, by Iraq's own
admission and UN inspection efforts, Saddam's regime possessed thousands
of chemical weapons and tons of chemical weapon agents. Were it not for
the 1995 defection of senior Iraqi officials, the UN would never have
made the further discovery that Iraq had manufactured and equipped
weapons with the deadly chemical nerve agent VX and had an extensive
biological warfare program.

Here is what was known by 1998 based on Iraq's own admissions:

* That in the years immediately prior to the first Gulf War, Iraq
produced at least 3.9 tons of VX, a deadly nerve gas, and acquired 805
tons of precursor ingredients for the production of more VX.

* That Iraq had produced or imported some 4,000 tons of ingredients to
produce other types of poison gas.

* That Iraq had produced 8,500 liters of anthrax.

* That Iraq had produced 500 bombs fitted with parachutes for the
purpose of delivering poison gas or germ payloads.

* That Iraq had produced 550 artillery shells filled with mustard gas.

* That Iraq had produced or imported 107,500 casings for chemical
weapons.

* That Iraq had produced at least 157 aerial bombs filled with germ
agents.

* That Iraq had produced 25 missile warheads containing germ agents
(anthrax, aflatoxin, and botulinum).

Again, this list of weapons of mass destruction is not what the Iraqi
government was suspected of producing. (That would be a longer list,
including an Iraqi nuclear program that the German intelligence service
had concluded in 2001 might produce a bomb within three years.) It was
what the Iraqis admitted producing. And it is this list of weapons--not
any CIA analysis under either the Clinton or Bush administrations--that
has been at the heart of the Iraq crisis.

For in all the years after those admissions, the Iraqi government never
explained, or even tried to explain, to anyone's satisfaction, including
most recently, that of Hans Blix, what had become of the huge quantities
of deadly weapons it had produced. The Iraqi government repeatedly
insisted that most of the weapons had been "secretly" destroyed. When
asked to produce credible evidence of the destruction--the location of
destruction sites, fragments of destroyed weapons, some documentation of
the destruction, anything at all--the Iraqis refused. After 1995, the UN
weapons inspection process became a lengthy cat-and-mouse game, as
inspectors tried to cajole Iraqis to divulge information about the fate
of these admitted stockpiles of weapons. The inspectors fanned out
across the country looking for weapons caches, stashes of documents, and
people willing to talk. And sometimes, the inspectors uncovered
evidence. Both American and French testers found traces of nerve gas on
remnants of warheads, for instance. The Iraqis claimed the evidence had
been planted.

After 1996, and partly as a consequence of the documents they had
discovered and of Iraqi admissions, weapons inspectors must have started
getting closer to uncovering what the Iraqis were hiding. For at about
that time, inspectors' demands to visit certain facilities began to be
systematically blocked by Saddam. There was the famous confrontation
over the so-called "presidential palaces," actually vast complexes of
buildings and warehouses, that Saddam simply declared off-limits to
inspectors.

At the end of 1997, this limitation on the inspectors' freedom of
movement precipitated an international crisis. The Clinton
administration demanded that the inspectors be given full access to the
"palaces." The Iraqis refused. Instead, Saddam demanded the removal of
all Americans from the UN inspection team and an end to all U-2 flights
over Iraq, and even threatened to shoot the planes down. In case there
was any doubt that his aim was to conceal weapons programs that the
inspectors were getting close to discovering, Iraq at this time also
began moving equipment that could be used to manufacture weapons out of
the range of video cameras that had been installed by the UN inspection
team.

The New York Times reported at the time that the UN weapons inspectors
(not American intelligence) believed that Iraq possessed "the elements
of a deadly germ warfare arsenal and perhaps poison gases, as well as
the rudiments of a missile system" that could launch the warheads. But
because of Saddam's action at the end of 1997, the Times reported, the
UN inspection team could "no longer verify that Iraq is not making
weapons of mass destruction" and specifically could not monitor
"equipment that could grow seed stocks of biological agents in a matter
of hours." Saddam's precipitating of this crisis was a bold move, aimed
at splitting the UN Security Council and isolating the Clinton
administration. And it worked. The Clinton administration tried but
failed to get French and Russian support at the Security Council either
for military action or for a tightening of sanctions to force Saddam to
cease these activities and comply with his commitment to disarm. The
French and Russian position by 1997 was that the "books" should be
closed on Iraq's WMD programs, sanctions should be lifted, and relations
with Saddam should be normalized. That remained the French position for
the next five years.

It was in response to this crisis that we at this magazine began calling
for Saddam Hussein's ouster by means of a ground invasion. And in a
letter sent to President Clinton on January 26, 1998, we and a number of
other former government officials urged military action against Saddam
on the grounds that the situation had become untenable and perilous. As
a result of recent events, we wrote, the United States could


no longer depend on our partners in the Gulf War coalition to continue
to uphold the sanctions or to punish Saddam when he blocks or evades UN
inspections. Our ability to ensure that Saddam Hussein is not producing
weapons of mass destruction, therefore, has substantially diminished.
Even if full inspections were eventually to resume, which now seems
highly unlikely, experience has shown that it is difficult if not
impossible to monitor Iraq's chemical and biological weapons production.
The lengthy period during which the inspectors will have been unable to
enter many Iraqi facilities has made it even less likely that they will
be able to uncover all of Saddam's secrets. As a result, in the
not-too-distant future we will be unable to determine with any
reasonable level of confidence whether Iraq does or does not possess
such weapons. Such uncertainty will, by itself, have a seriously
destabilizing effect on the entire Middle East.

IN EARLY 1998, the Clinton administration, following this same logic,
prepared for war against Iraq. On February 17, President Clinton spoke
on the steps of the Pentagon to explain to the American people why war
was necessary. The speech is worth excerpting at length, because it was
then and remains today the fundamental case for the invasion of Iraq and
the removal of Saddam Hussein from power.

President Clinton declared that the great threat confronting the United
States and its allies was a lethal and "unholy axis" of international
terrorists and outlaw states. "They will be all the more lethal if we
allow them to build arsenals of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons
and the missiles to deliver them." There was, Clinton declared, "no more
clear example of this threat than Saddam Hussein's Iraq. His regime
threatens the safety of his people, the stability of his region and the
security of all the rest of us." Before the Gulf War of 1991, Clinton
noted, "Saddam had built up a terrible arsenal, and he had used it. Not
once, but many times in a decade-long war with Iran, he used chemical
weapons against combatants, against civilians, against a foreign
adversary and even against his own people." At the end of the Gulf War,
Saddam had promised to reveal all his programs and disarm within 15
days. But instead, he had spent "the better part of the past decade
trying to cheat on this solemn commitment." As Clinton explained:


Iraq repeatedly made false declarations about the weapons that it had
left in its possession after the Gulf War. When UNSCOM would then
uncover evidence that gave the lie to those declarations, Iraq would
simply amend the reports. For example, Iraq revised its nuclear
declarations four times within just 14 months, and it has submitted six
different biological warfare declarations, each of which has been
rejected by UNSCOM.
In 1995 Hussein Kamal, Saddam's son-in-law and the chief organizer of
Iraq's weapons of mass destruction program, defected to Jordan. He
revealed that Iraq was continuing to conceal weapons and missiles and
the capacity to build many more. Then and only then did Iraq admit to
developing numbers of weapons in significant quantities--and weapons
stocks. Previously it had vehemently denied the very thing it just
simply admitted once Saddam's son-in-law defected to Jordan and told the
truth.

Now listen to this: What did it admit? It admitted, among other things,
an offensive biological warfare capability, notably, 5,000 gallons of
botulinum, which causes botulism; 2,000 gallons of anthrax; 25
biological-filled Scud warheads; and 157 aerial bombs. And I might say
UNSCOM inspectors believe that Iraq has actually greatly understated its
production. . . .

Next, throughout this entire process, Iraqi agents have undermined and
undercut UNSCOM. They've harassed the inspectors, lied to them, disabled
monitoring cameras, literally spirited evidence out of the back doors of
suspect facilities as inspectors walked through the front door, and our
people were there observing it and had the pictures to prove it. . . .

Over the past few months, as [the weapons inspectors] 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. . . .

One of these presidential sites is about the size of Washington, D.C. .
.. .

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. . . .

Now, let's imagine the future. What if he fails to comply and we fail to
act, or we take some ambiguous third route, which gives him yet more
opportunities to develop this program of weapons of mass destruction and
continue to press for the release of the sanctions and continue to
ignore the solemn commitments that he made? Well, he will conclude that
the international community has lost its will. He will then conclude
that he can go right on and do more to rebuild an arsenal of devastating
destruction.

And some day, some way, I guarantee you he'll use the arsenal. . . . In
the next century, the community of nations may see more and more of the
very kind of threat Iraq poses now--a rogue state with weapons of mass
destruction, ready to use them or provide them to terrorists, drug
traffickers, or organized criminals who travel the world among us
unnoticed.

If we fail to respond today, Saddam, and all those who would follow in
his footsteps, will be emboldened tomorrow by the knowledge that they
can act with impunity, even in the face of a clear message from the
United Nations Security Council, and clear evidence of a weapons of mass
destruction program.

The Clinton administration did not in fact respond. War was averted by a
lame compromise worked out by UN Secretary General Kofi Annan. But
within a few months, Saddam was again obstructing UN inspectors, driving
a deeper wedge into the UN Security Council and attempting to put a
final end to the inspections process. He succeeded. At the end of 1998,
the Clinton administration launched Operation Desert Fox, a four-day
missile and bombing attack on Iraq that was aimed principally at known
and suspected facilities for producing weapons of mass destruction and
missiles. The effect of the bombings on Iraq's programs and stockpiles,
however, was unknown, as Clinton acknowledges. But one effect of
Operation Desert Fox was that Saddam expelled the UN inspectors
altogether. Beginning in December 1998 and for the next four years,
there were no UN inspectors in Iraq.

What did Saddam Hussein do during those four years of relative freedom?
To this day, no one knows for sure. The only means of learning Iraqi
activities during those years were intelligence, satellite photography,
electronic eavesdropping, and human sources. The last of these was in
short supply. And, as we now know, the ability to determine the extent
of Saddam's programs only by so-called technical means was severely
limited. American and foreign intelligence services pieced together what
little information they could, but they were trying to illuminate a dark
cave with a Bic lighter. Without a vast inspection team on the ground,
operating unfettered and over a long period of time, it was clear that
the great unanswered questions regarding Iraq--what happened to the old
stockpiles of weapons and what new programs Saddam was working on--could
never be answered.

The rest of the story, we assume, most people remember. The Bush
administration's threat of war beginning last summer led France and
Russia to reverse themselves and to start taking the Iraq weapons issue
seriously again. In UN Security Council Resolution 1441, the Security
Council agreed on a new round of inspections, during which Saddam was to
do finally what he had promised to do back in 1991 and ever since: make
a clean breast of all his programs, answer all the unanswered questions
about his admitted stockpiles of weapons, and fully disarm. Resolution
1441 demanded that, within 30 days, Iraq provide "a currently accurate,
full, and complete declaration of all aspects of its programmes to
develop chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons, ballistic missiles,
and other delivery systems such as unmanned aerial vehicles and
dispersal systems designed for use on aircraft, including any holdings
and precise locations of such weapons, components, sub-components,
stocks of agents, and related material and equipment, the locations and
work of its research, development and production facilities, as well as
all other chemical, biological, and nuclear programmes, including any
which it claims are for purposes not related to weapon production or
material."

Iraq did not comply with this demand within 30 days--or, for that
matter, within 90. In his March 6, 2003, report to the UN Security
Council, Hans Blix reported that the declared stocks of anthrax and VX
remained unaccounted for. In the last chance given to Iraq by Resolution
1441, Iraq had failed to provide answers. As Blix reported again in May
2003, "little progress was made in the solution of outstanding
issues....the long list of proscribed items unaccounted for and as such
resulting in unresolved disarmament issues was not shortened either by
the inspections or by Iraqi declarations and documentation."

We have retold this long story for one simple reason: This is why George
W. Bush and Tony Blair and Jose Maria Aznar led their governments and a
host of others to war to remove the Saddam Hussein regime in March 2003.
It was not, in the first instance, to democratize the Middle East,
although we have always believed and still believe that the building of
a democratic Iraq, if the United States succeeds in doing so, will have
a positive impact on the Arab world. It was not to increase the chances
of an Arab-Israeli peace, although we still believe that the removal of
a dangerous radical tyrant like Saddam Hussein may make that difficult
task somewhat easier. It was not because we believed Saddam Hussein had
ordered the September 11 attack, although we believe the links between
Saddam and al-Qaeda are becoming clearer every day (see Stephen F.
Hayes's article on page 33 of this issue). Nor did the United States and
its allies go to war because we believed that some quantity of
"yellowcake" was making its way from Niger to Iraq, or that Saddam was
minutes away from launching a nuclear weapon against Chicago. We never
believed the threat from Saddam was "imminent" in that sense.

The reason for war, in the first instance, was always the strategic
threat posed by Saddam because of his proven record of aggression and
barbarity, his admitted possession of weapons of mass destruction, and
the certain knowledge of his programs to build more. It was the threat
he posed to his region, to our allies, and to core U.S. interests that
justified going to war this past spring, just as it also would have
justified a Clinton administration decision to go to war in 1998. It was
why Bill Clinton, Madeleine Albright, William Cohen, and many other top
officials had concluded in the late 1990s that Saddam Hussein was an
intolerable menace to his neighbors, to American allies, and ultimately
to the United States itself, and therefore had eventually to be removed.
It was also why a large number of Democrats, including John Kerry and
General Wesley Clark, expressed support for the war last year, before
Howard Dean and his roaring left wing of the Democratic party made
support for "Bush's war" untenable for Democratic candidates.


NOTHING THAT HAS or has not been discovered in Iraq since the end of the
war changes this fundamental judgment. Those who always objected to the
rationale for the war want to use the failure so far to discover large
caches of weapons to re-litigate the question. Democrats fearful of
their party's left wing are using it to jump off the positions they held
last year. That's politics. But back in the real world, the fact that
David Kay's inspections teams have not yet found out what happened to
Saddam's admitted stockpiles is not surprising. UN weapons inspectors
did not find those caches of weapons in 12 years; Kay and his team have
had about four months. Yes, we wish Saddam had left his chemical
munitions and biological weapons neatly stacked up in a warehouse
somewhere marked on the outside with a big, yellow skull and crossbones.
We wish he had published his scientists' nuclear designs in the daily
paper. Or we wish we could find the "Dear Diary" entry where he explains
exactly what happened to all the weapons he built. But he did not leave
these helpful hints behind.

After Operation Iraqi Freedom, the U.S. military was led by an Iraqi to
a part of the desert where, lo and behold, a number of MiG fighter jets
had been buried under the sand. Note that the Americans did not discover
the jets themselves. Discovering chemical and biological munitions will
be somewhat harder. Kay recently reported to Congress that there are
approximately 130 Ammunition Storage Points scattered across Iraq, a
country the size of France. Many of the ammunition depots take up more
than 50 square miles. Together they hold 600,000 tons of artillery
shells, rockets, aviation bombs, and other ordinance. Under Saddam, UN
inspectors learned, the Iraqi military stored chemical ordnance at the
same ammunition depots where the conventional rounds were stored. Do you
know how many of the 130 Iraqi ammunition depots have been searched
since the end of the war? Ten. Only 120 to go.

Saddam Hussein had four years of unfettered activity in which to hide
and reconfigure his weapons programs. Our intelligence on this, as we
noted earlier, may have been lousy. David Kay's task has essentially
been to reconstruct a story we don't know. In fact, he's learned quite a
bit in a very short time. For instance, as Kay reported to Congress, his
team has uncovered "dozens of WMD-related program activities and
significant amounts of equipment that Iraq concealed from the UN during
the inspections that began in late 2002" (emphasis added). In addition,
based on admissions by Iraqi scientists and government officials, Kay
and his team have discovered:

* A clandestine network of laboratories and safehouses within the Iraqi
Intelligence Service that contained equipment suitable for research in
the production of chemical and biological weapons. This kind of
equipment was explicitly mentioned in Hans Blix's requests for
information, but was instead concealed from Blix throughout his
investigations.

* A prison laboratory complex, which may have been used in human testing
of biological weapons agents. Iraqi officials working to prepare for UN
inspections in 2002 and 2003 were explicitly ordered not to acknowledge
the existence of the prison complex.

* So-called "reference strains" of biological organisms, which can be
used to produce biological weapons. The strains were found in a
scientist's home.

* New research on agents applicable to biological weapons, including
Congo Crimean Hemorrhagic Fever, and continuing research on ricin and
aflatoxin--all of which was, again, concealed from Hans Blix despite his
specific request for any such information.

* Plans and advanced design work on new long-range missiles with ranges
up to at least 1,000 kilometers--well beyond the 150-kilometer limit
imposed on Iraq by the U.N. Security Council. These missiles would have
allowed Saddam to threaten targets from Ankara to Cairo.

In addition to these banned activities, which were occurring right under
the noses of the UN inspectors this past year, Kay and his team also
discovered a massive effort to destroy evidence of weapons programs, an
effort that began before the war and continued during it and even after
the war. In the "looting" that followed the fall of Baghdad, computer
hard drives were destroyed in government buildings--thus making the
computers of no monetary value to actual looters. Kay also found
documents burned or shredded. And people whom the Kay team tried to
interview were in some cases threatened with retaliation by Saddam
loyalists. Indeed, two of the scientists were subsequently shot. Others
involved in the weapons programs have refused to talk for fear of
eventual prosecution for war crimes.

Nevertheless, Kay has begun piecing together the story of what happened
to Saddam's weapons and how he may have shifted direction in the years
after 1998. It is possible that instead of building up large stockpiles
of weapons, Saddam decided the safer thing would be to advance his
covert programs for producing weapons but wait until the pressure was
off to produce the weapons themselves. By the time inspectors returned
to Iraq in 2002, Saddam was ready to be a little more forthcoming,
because he had rejiggered his program to withstand somewhat greater
scrutiny. Nevertheless, even then he could not let the inspectors see
everything. Undoubtedly he hoped that if he could get through that last
round, he would be home free, eventually without sanctions or further
inspections.

There are no doubt some Americans who believe that this would have been
an acceptable outcome. Or who believe that another six months of
inspections would have uncovered all that Saddam was hiding. Or that a
policy of "containment"--which included 200,000 troops on Iraq's borders
as an inducement to permit inspections--could have been sustained
indefinitely both at the UN Security Council and in Washington. We
believe the overwhelming lesson of our history with Saddam is that none
of these options would have succeeded. Had Saddam Hussein not been
removed this year, it would have been only a matter of time before this
president or some future president was compelled to take action against
him, and in more dangerous circumstances.

There are people who will never accept this logic, who prefer to
believe, or claim to believe, that the whole Iraq affair was, in the
words of Ted Kennedy, a "fraud" "made up in Texas" for political gain,
or who believe that it was the product of a vast conspiracy orchestrated
by a tiny little band of "neoconservatives." Some of the people
propagating this conspiratorial view of the Iraq war are now running for
the Democratic nomination for president; one of them is even a former
general who led the war against Slobodan Milosevic in 1999. We wish them
the best of luck selling their conspiracy theories to the American
people. But we trust Bill Clinton won't be stumping for them on this
particular issue.


--

Scott
--------
"Interestingly, we started to lose this war only after the embedded
reporters pulled out. Back when we got the news directly from Iraq,
there was victory and optimism. Now that the news is filtered through
the mainstream media here in America, all we hear is death and
destruction and quagmire..." Ann Coulter
http://www.anncoulter.com/columns/2003/091703.htm

U¿ytkownik "IO" napisa³ w wiadomo¶ci
You are Polish? And are you proud of being Polish? Italian roads are full
of
Polish whores... The only good things that poland produces without the
help
of the germans...

you must be italian, eh? I am saddened by the fact that the nation that have
us lamborgini and ferrari is no competent in producing a good Formula 1
driver. Ferarri got the title with the help of... well of a german.
Secondly, according to durex poll, italians enjoy the least amount of sex a
year.
take care you kazzo
lekomin inc

Uzytkownik "Stephen Harding" napisal w wiadomosci
Hey, you guys are "New Europe".

Chirac says you don't count!
I am Polish but my opinions about the French are biased. On one hand, we
"the Polish people" love Napoleon (the fastest way of euthanasia: telling a
Spanish person you love Napoleon), but on the other we trully hate somebody
telling us to shut up (remember the Letter of Eight, in support of the US
before Iraq? Poland was gangraped by France and Germany for signing it).
Thirdly, I am London School of Economics educated person and I adopted the
British way of saluting the French. The famous Two Finger Salut Longbow
(and I am not talking about the AH-64D :P) was a great weapon

take care
lekomin inc

U¿ytkownik "Mike" napisa³ w wiadomo¶ci
Chirac never said that,this is stupid!
What he said was when you belong to a family,
you talk to the other members before to act or engage that way.
That's all,and I'm afraid he was right.
and what family president Chirac contacted before critising the USA over
Iraq? I don't remember any French talking to the Spanish, Italians, the
Dutch or Poles? He is used to presenting the FRENCH point of view as the EU
point of view. And that drives me crazy.
take care
lekomin inc

U¿ytkownik "Pierre-Henri Baras" napisa³ w wiadomo¶ci
don't worry mate, we feel the same way about you!
no hard feelings after all you have the H bomb :PPP
and yet we (the 3 countries you mentionned) have 36% of the seats at the
European Parliament....you know the institution that's going to determine
the future of Poland in the EU...
you mean the Constitution? Honestly speaking im for the European integration
the the largest possible extent. I may live with laws written in Brussels, I
may live in the EU police and EU courts enforicng them, I may even live with
an EU army. EU Medical Insurance and Pension system. Those might be great
ideas. But I hate seeing EU being hijacked by the French and the Germans. I
don't like the Continental tax and pension systems. I think the British are
much better. I don't like overregulation and the state intervention for
example in defence industries.. I hate double standards in defence
contracts. EU should be about taking all the best ingridients and cooking
the best possible meal, that anybody can live on. Eating Foie Gras might not
be to everybody's taste
The same things apply to the foreign policy. Support the US. Good. Don't
support the US. Good. But make it a collegial decision and not a French one
on behalf of the EU.
You're so arrogant you could be French ;-)
hehehe ))
take care
lekomin inc
p.s. btw I look forward to the red EU passport after the 1st may 2004 I
just wonder i might be treated less friendly on the UK border then with a
Polish passport with brick-proof-let-him-in-in-any-case-British-visa in it,
which I have right now.