story.news.yahoo.com 18 minutes ago Add Op/Ed - William F. Buckley to My Yahoo! By William F. Buckley Jr.

The finality of the long -- seemingly endless -- period of indecision, fractured alliances, ambivalent allies and fruitless diplomacy had an unusual touch. The president flew two-thirds of the way across the Atlantic to meet with the leaders of the diminished ranks of our allies.

The trip doesn't take much more air time than a flight to Denver, but there was operatic grace in seeking out a remote island, one of an archipelago as beautiful as any on Earth, and touching down with the prime ministers of Great Britain, Spain and Portugal, where the language spoken is foreign, and where an Atlantic U.S. Air Force base serves as a promontory of U.S. vigilance for the world Columbus left, to discover the new world.

The mother country of the Azores endured a left-wing coup in 1974. A few years later, the governor of the islands disclosed, with not much discretion, that if the military continued in power in Portugal, the Azores would declare their loyalty to Lisbon ended and make out for themselves. The Azores had been a colony for about 500 years.

We learn that the leave-taking of President Bush (news - web sites) was especially moving. He treated the natives who came to see him off in his majestic carrier, an airplane with more bodies on board than Columbus brought on his ship, to a special show of fraternity, not visibly different from his intensive exchanges with the firefighters in New York. And we know what he was thinking as, after nightfall, he boarded the plane with the honor guard, because the next day he would express himself. In New York, three days after Sept. 11, a fresh chapter opened for America; at the air base in Terceira, it moved forward to the next stage. We would be going to war.

We learned that on Air Force One there were two speechwriters there to help him craft the address he would give 24 hours later. Mr. Bush spoke the language of going to war so very different from such as was spoken during the first centuries of the Azores' sentient life on Earth. When the islands were discovered, there was no human life there. Before the colonizers settled down to being a metropolitan district of Portugal, they were fought for, and dominated intermittently, by the Spanish. When they went to war in those days, the missions were outspoken. The rulers wished for glory, foreign possessions and wealth.

Nothing of the kind preoccupied Mr. Bush in the missions he described on Monday night. Lenin preached to faithful Marxist ears that colonialism was the chief and vital enterprise of the bourgeois world, motivating policy and life. Revisionists have carefully argued, in recent years, that the overhead of colonialism often exceeded its fruits, challenging a central postulate of Marx-Lenin. It is not widely held that we are moving against Iraq (news - web sites) for material reasons, and it is plain that our motives are hardly material, unless one classifies as a material motive the determination to safeguard one's freedom and security.

In his speech the president was airborne with confidence in his mission and in the reasons for it. His exposure to the Azores might have made him more cautious when he spoke of the prospects for Iraq after liberation. Portugal, climbing out from monarchy soon after the turn of the century, moved toward an autocracy that lasted for 35 years, after which was the military coup, reaching an institutionalized democracy only in the late '70s.

President Bush spoke directly, using the personal pronoun, to the people whose country he would invade. The military campaign "will be directed against the lawless men who rule your country and not against you. As our coalition takes away their power, we will deliver the food and medicine you need. We will tear down the apparatus of terror."

And then? "We will help you to build a new Iraq that is prosperous and free." And at the close, "Unlike Saddam Hussein (news - web sites), we believe the Iraqi people are deserving and capable of human liberty. And when the dictator has departed, they can set an example to all the Middle East of a vital and peaceful and self-governing nation."

Mr. Bush would have done better to speak more modestly about expectations. Sitting down on vast oil reserves does not bring prosperity or freedom, as we are quickly reminded merely by citing Venezuela, Nigeria and Saudi Arabia. What Mr. Bush proposes to do is to unseat Saddam Hussein and to eliminate his investments in aggressive weaponry. We can devoutly hope that internecine tribal antagonisms will be subsumed in the fresh air of a despot removed, and that the restoration of freedom will be productive.

But these concomitant developments can't be either foreseen by the United States or implemented by us. What Mr. Bush can accomplish is the removal of a regime and its infrastructure. The Iraqi people will have to take it from there.

www.abs-cbnnews.com

He claimed he wanted to avoid a repetition of the appeasement at Munich, and so he gave the world the kind of ultimatum that led inexorably to the guns of August. Instead of being the leader of the free world, he sounded like an Austrian emperor demanding capitulation from the Serbs who had assassinated an Austrian archduke.

But no one really tried to kill his Dad. George W. Bush has been acting truer to the traditions of the “old Europe” his secretary of defense claims to despise than the leader of the New World.

Never has America embarked on such naked aggression, on such brazen imperialist behavior, without even the tiniest fig leaf of morality. In the past century of American world power, one cannot find a case where America acted as it does now.

In 1898 America went to war with Spain to avenge the (accidental) explosion of the USS Maine, claiming at the same time to be liberating the oppressed Cuban people -- only to establish one brutal native regime after another until Fidel Castro came along. Castro may well be the next leader to be deposed -- but only after Hugo Chavez, because Venezuela, like Iraq, has vast reserves of oil which a US president needs to buy a way out of the worst deficit in US history and secure his reelection.

The United States did the same in the Philippines, only to annex a country which had already liberated itself. It invaded Mexico to get Pancho Villa before he became the Mexican masses’ first real president. It invaded Nicaragua when a civil war threatened its interests there, and supported a terrorist campaign to the same end. So in Haiti.

But all the world’s great powers were doing it too: Great Britain, way ahead of the wolf pack, could pretend to be more restrained. But France, Germany, Italy, and Japan, coming late to the table, left all manners and morals behind.

World War I, like World War II, was fought to prevent another world power from commanding the resources of the world outside the continental US. In Korea and Vietnam, the US may have been genuinely misled that the world was on the brink of communist conquest. Yet it faked an attack on a US Navy vessel to justify dropping more bombs on a very poor and very small country than on Nazi-occupied Europe. The US at least fought the first Gulf War to repel an invasion, though US diplomats appear to have encouraged it. Saddam was then America’s favorite mass murderer against Iran.

The catalog of American involvement in international conflicts is spelled out to show where America may be holding fast to its usual economic ambitions and yet gravely departing from the mantle of moral ascendancy with which it has hitherto cloaked its actions.

It holds no such mantle today; it can invoke no credible casus belli; this is not, by any means, America’s finest hour. On the contrary, George W. Bush’s tendentious speech Tuesday morning represents the nadir of international law since Hitler said somewhat the same thing about his invasion of Russia. But Germany at least had the guts to come up against the biggest country in the world. In oil-rich Iraq, the US will be swatting a fly with a cannon. We would be surprised if the US suffered a single casualty outside of friendly fire.

For all that the US President offered only a glib, even petulant, nod toward international opinion; a potent force for good that America helped create during World War II but which it curtly ignored when it became clear that neither bribes nor threats could sway world opinion in America’s favor.

America is going into this war publicly announcing it is even prepared to violate one of the central tenets of its traditional military strategy: the annihilation of the economic strength of its enemy before striking at its armies.

There will be no bombing of the industrial heartland as in Nazi Germany; no strangulation of raw materials as in Imperial Japan; no Agent Orange and carpet-bombing as in Vietnam: all carried out to bring the enemy economically to its knees. Instead there will be a mad dash -- like Hitler’s tanks for the oil fields of Russia. To break the Arab grip on the world’s oil and give it back to Standard Oil in A World Restored, to borrow from Kissinger.

This war is about trading blood for oil. But only Iraqi blood, because the United States and Great Britain will be striking very hard from very vast and therefore totally safe distances -- before taking over the country and milking it dry. For the US fully intends to make the Iraqis pay for the destruction and reconstruction of their country -- the more of one, the more of the other -- to the greater profit of Richard Cheney’s companies.

Bush said it himself in a speech of magisterial simplicity. A speech that very nearly convinced the world, friend and foe, of the sincerity of American motives. That is, if he had not said -- addressing the Iraqi people directly -- for them to steer clear of US troops who may shoot them on sight while urging everyone to secure Iraqi oil.

That’s right. The Iraqi people must take their chances. You can’t pump blood into a Ford Expedition. But Iraqi oil wells should not be put at risk. Bush was just shy of asking the Iraqi people to form a wall of flesh around the oil wells to protect them from a possible scorched-earth policy by Saddam Hussein.

He could have ended with a plea for Iraqi flesh not to get in the way of American bullets. He could have spelled out how a combatant had only to raise his arms to be spared. But no. He saved the best for oil.

When the trenches filled with burning oil have burned themselves out; when some Iraqi puppet has been selected to pose like a blinking Hirohito next to a general who will be no MacArthur but just a security guard of Halliburton; when the same children trotted out to wave at Saddam Hussein do the same for gum-chewing G.I.’s., and the world is told that freedom has come to Iraq and this is shown by mustachioed Iraqi politicians giving American proconsuls the kiss of peace -- then, yes, the world will know that America has brought one conflict to a swift and successful conclusion and started a conflagration throughout the region.

The Americans point to Germany and Japan as examples of how liberation and freedom can be imposed on those who do not want it. Yet they forget that these same people, particularly the Germans, have learned the meaning of freedom and democracy so well they will not, for any price, consent to a war that owes more to the imperialist and racist history of a European legacy successfully exported to America but which they have outgrown, than the brave new world that exists only in Bush’s imagination.

Please send your comments or feedback to newsfeedback@abs-cbn.com

www.thestate.com Posted on Tue, Mar. 18, 2003

"Basically, (President George W. Bush's message) was short and to the point. I was surprised that nothing was said about a heightened security alert."

Carl Thompson, 25, of Columbia. He's a graduate of USC and working at Damon's Clubhouse.

"I thought that George Bush, as expected, was very simple and to the point. .‘.‘. I was surprised he didn't mention France and Germany .‘.‘. I guess that's not really relevant now. We're going to war."

Rod Dobson, 40, of Columbia

"America has been very patient. I don't think anybody wants to see us have to go to war. .‘.‘. Over the years, we haven't been able to keep our freedom by backing down. The longer we wait, the more of an opportunity we're giving Saddam to terrorize us."

Heather Riddle, 24, Northeast Richland

"I wasn't expecting it to happen so soon. Whatever is better for the world is what I want. I just want world peace."

Oscar Cabrices, 19, a USC chemistry student from Venezuela, one of 25 students watching at the Russell House University Union.

"President Bush drew a vivid picture for Saddam tonight. .‘.‘. I think (Bush) has no other option under the circumstances."

Johnny Deal, 41, Camden

"I support my president. I think everyone should stand behind the president."

Margie Cone, 59, of Columbia, a homemaker.

"I was pretty much prepared for what he was going to say. I think if they go over there and quickly find what they're looking for, that would change everyone's minds."

David McQuillan, 53, of Columbia, a map librarian at USC, was at Damon's. He had been listening to the speech on the four-hour ride from Raleigh to Columbia.

"As president, (Bush's) first responsibility is to protect American citizens, and by doing this, he'll achieve that goal."

Kyle Gunn, 35, Columbia

"I think it (the case) was made long before the speech. It's about time they finally decided to just do it. I was glad to see they set a deadline."

Tina McGrory, 40, Irmo-area housewife, mother of a 12-year-old girl "

"We can't let a bully get away with this."

Barbara McQuillan, 57, a paralegal, from Columbia. She thinks war started on Sept. 11, 2001.

"The most important thing (about the speech) was that he gave Saddam 48 hours to leave Iraq. .‘.‘. at 8:16 (p.m.) when (Bush) finished his speech, protests should end. (The) American people need to come together and stand behind men and women in uniform regardless of what they feel. We all need to come together at this moment until this is over."

Larry Ware, 62, of Chapin, retired from the Michigan Army National Guard as a brigadier general, Desert Storm veteran

"America should be more cooperative with the world. I pray that the world is much more safe after this. Nobody in the world wants Saddam Hussein (in power). But, the whole world should be behind it (if we head to war). In the Gulf War, everybody was behind it. But somewhere down the line we, as Americans, have failed in our diplomacy."

Dr. Syed Hassan, 50, college professor, who l Ives In The Irmo Area

"I don't think we have any choice but to do this. Sept. 11 was the Pearl Harbor of this war. To not act knowing everything we know would be suicide."

John Cone, 61, of Columbia, executive director of the S.C. Home Builders Association.

"I think (Bush made the case for war), how many lines in the sand can you draw? Of course, I had hoped we would have avoided it, but you have to do what you have to do."

John Kerce, 53-year-old business owner from Lexington, who has a 21-year-old son on the USS Constellation

"He (Bush) had a lot of valid points. Saddam had multiple opportunities to disarm. They've had long enough, it's time to go in. It was a fair, a good choice that he is giving Saddam. I don't think he'll leave."

Paul Sadler, 20-year-old personal trainer at the YMCA, from the Irmo area

"It was pretty much what I thought he was going to say. I back the president 100 percent. I think the case has been made for a long time. Saddam has had a chance to come clean, but he blew it. It's time for us to act and do what needs to be done ."

Capt. Todd Helms, 38, of West Columbia, headquarters commander for the Army Reserve's 310th Personnel Group. He's been mobilized since Feb. 10 and is expecting to be shipped out any day. He is the father of three.

"It's sad. I was sitting there crying. When he said 48 hours, that's when it hit."

Kathryn Helms, 37, of West Columbia, wife of Capt. Todd Helms

"I'm just really glad that he's setting a date instead of keeping putting them off and giving Saddam more time to get ready .‘.‘. .If we're going to have to go to war, I'd rather do it sooner than later. It's already been a month and a half already; I'm just ready for him to come home and get it all over with."

Rachel Morris, 22, of Greenville, wife of Richard Allen Morris Jr., a corporal with the Marines Corps 2nd Light Armor Reconnaissance, who deployed to Kuwait Feb. 7. Mother of a 4-month-old and 19-month-old.

www.euobserver.com

Around one quarter of a million US and UK troops are poised to attack Iraq following the 48 hour ultimatum issued by US President George Bush. (Photo: Notat) US President, George Bush, has given Saddam Hussein and his sons 48 hours to leave Iraq or face war. In a televised address at 2am Central European Time, Mr Bush signalled that diplomacy over Iraq was finally dead.

The address followed a traumatic day at the United Nations in New York and dramatic events in London which saw the resignation of the leader of the House of Commons, Robin Cook, over the Prime Minister, Tony Blair’s readiness for war.

Saddam Hussein responded last night that he would not be leaving Baghdad. No less than 250,000 UK and US troops are poised to invade.

Military conflict imminent President Bush told America, Iraq and the world that his ultimatum to Saddam Hussein followed "decades of deceit and cruelty" and 12 years of diplomatic haggling.

Iraq would never disarm as long as Saddam Hussein holds power, he said. "The danger is clear: using chemical, biological or, one day, nuclear weapons, obtained with the help of Iraq, terrorists could fulfil their stated ambitions and kill thousands or hundreds of thousands of innocent people in our country or any other."

The President warned that the refusal of Mr Hussein to leave Iraq "will result in military conflict, commenced at a time of our choosing."

France to blame America and the UK both firmly placed the failure of the UN Security Council to reach a compromise position over Iraq on French shoulders.

According to Mr Bush, the failure of the Security Council to live up to its responsibilities forced the US to rise to its own.

"Some permanent members of the Security Council have publicly announced they will veto any resolution that compels disarmament of Iraq. These governments share our assessment of the danger but not our resolve to meet it," he said.

This view had been stressed earlier in the evening when UK Ambassador to the UN, Jeremy Greenstock, dropped the bombshell that consensus in the Security Council would not be possible.

This was due to one country’s resolve to veto any ultimatum "no matter what the circumstances", he said, with a scarcely veiled criticism that France had been ready to reject the latest compromise from the UK, US and Spain before even Baghdad itself.

France and Germany unmoved A statement from the office of the French President, Jacques Chirac, accused Mr Bush of taking a "unilateral decision" that was "contrary to the will of the UN Security Council," reports the BBC.

Germany was still insisting last night that more time should be given to UN weapons inspectors to do their job.

But Tony Blair’s pledge to back the US conflict with Iraq means troubled times ahead politically for the British Prime Minister.

Following cabinet member, Robin Cook’s dramatic resignation yesterday, Mr Blair faces a crucial debate in the House of Commons today when he will ask MPs to support "all means necessary" to deal with Iraq.

Although the backing of Conservative MPs is likely to secure the vote, the dissent of a majority of Labour MPs would inflict an embarrassing defeat on the Prime Minister.

According to the Greek Presidency, the UK and Spain are to blame for the failure to achieve a common EU foreign and security policy over Iraq.

The Presidency achieved a common position twice but "some countries" chose to side with America, outside of the EU framework, said Greek Spokesman, Panos Beglitis, in Athens on Monday.

The Spring Summit, scheduled for Thursday and Friday this week, is still set to go ahead. However, it is likely to address the issues of humanitarian aid for Iraq and the EU’s relationship with the Arab world, rather than the foreseen discussions on economic development in Europe.

Press Articles BBC Financial Times Le Monde Sueddeutsche Zeitung Gazeta Wyborcza

Speech Bush address to the nation

Written by Nicola Smith Edited by Andrew Beatty

ToogoodReports.com By Burt Prelutsky Toogood Reports [Wednesday, March 12, 2003; 12:01 a.m. EST]

Like Truman, Bush came to the White House greatly under-estimated, even by those who voted for him. I was one of them. People made fun of his speechmaking ability, his leadership potential, even his intelligence. Leaders in his own party compared him unfavorably to his Democrat predecessor.

Truman got to be president mainly because the smarter Democrats didn't want Henry Wallace to be the ailing FDR's vice-president a second time. Of course, Truman's enemies couldn't make that same claim in 1948, when he pulled off the biggest upset in presidential history, knocking off Thomas Dewey.

For his part, we were told, Bush got the job because the electorate in Florida didn't know how to cast their ballots, and because the U.S. Supreme Court was part of a vast right-wing conspiracy. (Funny how the Democrats never point out that Al Gore is one of the few presidential candidates who have failed to carry his home state. If Tennessee had voted for its least favorite son, it wouldn't have mattered what happened in Florida!)

The Democrats, still licking their wounds from 2000, haven't yet gotten around to explaining how this political nonentity managed to lead his party to victory in the 2002 elections without any help from Justice Rehnquist and his judicial cohorts.

What Bush and Truman have in common, besides their less than dazzling oratorical skills, are honesty, principles and a respect for the Office. Truman had a sign on his desk stating that The Buck Stops Here. Bush might as well have one of his own.

Bush speaks of an Axis of Evil, and he names names. For his part, Truman waged the Cold War because he recognized that evil exists in the world, and you either combat it or you become its accessory. And for men of honor, the latter course is never an option.

In Truman's day, the appeasers claimed that the Soviet Union was not a danger to America or the world. They claimed that Joseph Stalin was, at worst, a tinhorn dictator ruling a backward nation; at best, a heroic leader who had helped defeat the Nazis. When he gobbled up all of Eastern Europe, enslaving hundreds of millions of people, they defended him. Stalin needed a buffer; after all, mother Russia had been invaded by Napoleon and Hitler. They pointed out that Germany had slaughtered millions of Russians, while ignoring the brutal fact that for a quarter of a century, Stalin had done the exact same thing with never a peep heard from the American left.

Now the children and grandchildren of these people cast Bush, not Saddam Hussein, in the role of villain. It doesn't matter to them that Iraq has invaded Iran and Kuwait and launched missiles at Israel, just as it doesn't faze them that Hussein gassed Kurds by the tens of thousands, and has amassed weapons of mass destruction. These people are so estranged from truth and logic that they will, on the one hand, emphatically insist that Hussein possesses no such weaponry, and then wring their hands in fear that he will unleash these non-existent chemicals if we invade Iraq.

These four-flushers will praise the likes of France and Russia as representing the conscience of mankind, while accusing Bush of being beholden to the oil interests — all the while ignoring the fact that it's France and Russia that have billion dollar oil deals with Hussein. Obviously, if Bush were out to gain control of Arab oil, he would go to war against such pushovers as Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. If we merely wanted Iraqi oil, we'd buy it, the same way we get the stuff from Mexico, Venezuela and the rest of the Middle East. Hussein would be only too happy to sell it to us. No, if it were really about oil, the way the pinheads insist it is in their childish chants and slogans, would George Bush so openly side with Israel, the one country in that part of the world that is bereft of oil? Because Bush's detractors lack principles themselves, they can never acknowledge the virtue in others. Because they despise America, they regard patriotism as villainy. Because they indulge in double-talk, they abhor plain-speaking. They claim that North Korea has become suddenly hostile and dangerous because Bush dared to call them evil, disregarding the fact that he called them evil because they had broken their nuclear treaty within a few months of brokering the agreement with the previous administration.

The hypocrisy of the left is boundless. They demanded that Bush get congressional backing before invading Iraq. He did. They then demanded he take the matter up with the Security Council. He did. Then they demanded that he do it all over again. In the meantime, they insist that he not rush to war. If this is their idea of rushing, one has to wonder what they regard as slow and steady.

The left insists that U.N. inspectors be given more time to play hide-and-seek with Hussein. The inspectors were never supposed to find anything; their sole mission was to confirm that Hussein had disposed of his gases and chemical plague agents. Obviously he never did, so confirmation was out of the question. But, then, why would he? Why should he? All he had to do to get so-called world opinion behind him was claim that he only kicked the original arms inspectors out of Iraq because they were spying. Boys and girls, that is what inspectors do.

No matter how patient Bush is, no matter how much he kowtows to the U.N., it's not enough for these people. But you notice they never said a discouraging word when Clinton dropped bombs in Serbia, Somalia and the Sudan. There was no outcry that he was being imperialistic, that he was trying to take over the world. Martin Sheen and Susan Sarandon didn't demand that he go hat-in-hand to the United Nations. I don't recall liberals moaning about collateral damage, just as I don't recall any of these aging hippies offering themselves up as human shields.

George W. Bush's being in the White House embarrasses these folks, but Bill Clinton, the man who turned the Oval Office into the Oral Office, him they'd enshrine on Mount Rushmore.

To show you how foolish and out of sync with the American people those on the left truly are, you have merely to consider that they call Bush a Texas cowboy, just as they used to call Truman a Missouri haberdasher — and that's their idea of an insult!

To comment on this article or express your opinion directly to the author, you are invited to e-mail Burt at BurtPrelutsky@aol.com .

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