||
|| ----- Original Message -----
|| From: "Hakki Alacakaptan" <nucleus at superonline.com>
||
|| > Chip,
|| >
|| > It's tiresome replying to people who don't read what you
|| write. The stuff in
|| > the Bush book is common knowledge and is from official transcripts.
||
|| ==============
||
|| Chip:
||
|| I have read the book by LaRouche network activists Webster G.
|| Tarpley & Anton
|| Chaitkin, "Bush: The Unauthorized Biography." It is not, as you
|| claim, "common
|| knowledge and is from official transcripts." It takes a large
|| volume of facts
|| and spins them into a paranoid froth of conjecture and
|| conspiracism. How they
|| could take a mountain of hard evidence about wrongdoing by the
|| Bush family and
|| reduce it into a septic molehill of gossip and hyperbolic
|| speculation was really
|| quite a feat.
Although I agree with the last sentence, it has nothing to do with the document I referred to. I specifically referred to Chapter 24, which is a separate file and contains a pretty solid analysis of Bush's imperialistic strategy. I'll provide corroboration of the material regarding Iraq in a sec. Just let me say that trying to pin the entire body of totally unrelated laroucheite output on me is an dirt-cheap trick and I will disregard it, because there's something very sick going on here:
Bush's war on Iraq and the subsequent sanctions is a litany of war crimes and crimes against humanity, one for which former US Attorney General Ramsey Clarke campaigned to have the coalition leaders prosecuted. The US's covert and military actions against Iraq since 1958 are a textbook case of imperialist aggression. Chip Berlet is no idiot; he is perfectly aware of all this. However, Chip has a reputation to protect: He is the invincible conspiracy-buster! Never mind that what Hakki says is true, he must be destroyed. This is not only a betrayal of principles, but it shows a total contempt for the list, assuming that everyone else's perception of history is piped in by CNN, making Hakki fair game.
Well, if by Chip’s logic, I’m a Lerouchite, then by extension, Chip has to be a supporter of genocide, right?
Now the specifics:
From: "Hakki Alacakaptan" <nucleus at superonline.com> To: <lbo-talk at lists.panix.com> Subject: RE: Chelsea heckles anti-war rally Date: Sun, 11 Nov 2001 09:28:03 +0200
( ) Growing increasingly desperate, Saddam send his crack Hammurabi division to the border and it was photographed up by a US intelligence satellite on July 16, 1990. The US Ambassador then paid Saddam a visit on July 25, while troop buildup continued, and told him: "We have no opinion on the Arab-Arab conflict, like your border disagreement with Kuwait." (...)"I have direct instructions from the president to seek better relations with Iraq." I'll quote the rest from George Bush: The Unauthorized Biography by Webster G. Tarpley & Anton Chaitkin, Ch. 24 , available at www.tarpley.net :
"According to the Iraqi transcript of this meeting, Glaspie stressed that this had always been the US position: "I was in the American embassy in Kuwait during the late 1960's. The instruction we had during this period was that we should express no opinion on this issue and the issue is not associated with America." [fn 32] Saddam Hussein illustrated Iraq's economic grievances and need of economic assistance for postwar reconstruction, points for which Ms. Glaspie expressed full US official comprehension. Shortly after this, April Glaspie left Kuwait to take her summer vacation, another signal of elaborate US government disinterest in the Kuwait-Iraq crisis." ( )
Corroboration from: Ramsey Clarke,The Fire This Time, Thunder's Mouth Press ,1992, http://www.pcug.co.uk/~whip/usa/usd.htm ---------------------------------------- On July 24, 1990, the Pentagon announced that six U.S. warships were beginning"short-notice" maneuvers-Schwarzkopf's "combined exercises"-with UAE forces in the southern Gulf. The July 25 Wall Street Journal reported that the move was directly related to the tensions between Iraq and Kuwait. 82 The Journal article was one of the few reports in this country that contradicted Bush administration statements that it was not concerned about Iraq. Nothing more would be written until after August 2.
On July 25-the day after the United States announced Gulf exercises with the UAE, while Iraqi troops were massing on the Kuwaiti border, and as General Schwarzkopf readied CENTCOM for war against Iraq-Saddam Hussein summoned Ambassador Glaspie to his office in what seems to have been a final attempt to clarify Washington's position on his dispute with Kuwait.
Glaspie assured him: "We have no opinion on Arab-Arab conflicts, like your border disagreement with Kuwait.... [Secretary of State] James Baker has directed our official spokesmen to emphasize this instruction." 83
She was expressing official policy. On July 24, she had received a cable from the State Department explicitly directing her to reiterate that the United States had "no position" on "Arab-Arab" conflicts.84
After the war, on March 21, 1991, Glaspie denied this version of her meeting with Hussein. She testifled to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that she had repeatedly warned Hussein that the United States would not tolerate Iraq's use of violence to settle the dispute with Kuwait. She said Hussein must have been too "stupid" to understand how the United States would react.85
But in July 1991, Glaspie's cables to the State Department describing the meeting were flnally released to the Senate. The cables showed that her Senate testimony was largely fabricated, and that the version released by Iraq was accurate.8 On July 12, 1991, Committee Chairman Senator Claiborne Pell wrote an angry letter to Secretary of State James Baker demanding an explanation for the in consistencies between Glaspie's testimony and the cable. Senator Alan Cranston charged that Glaspie had deliberately misled Congress about her role in the Gulf War. ---------------------------------------- That’s what I mean by _substance_, as opposed to quoting a random bunch of twaddle in a desperate smear attempt. The _substance_ is that the US plotted a war against Iraq and provoked Iraq into furnishing the pretext. The point of this list is to dicuss such substantive statements, and not to toss slurs back and forth for self-advertisement.
< CHIP: deleted expose of laroucheite garbage somehow implying that I endorse it >
Next: Libya’s involvement (or not) in the bombing of a Berlin disco.
I’ll leave that for next time. No hurry, there's ample backside to kick.
Hakki