An article by Nat Hentoff, not known for conservative views or a fan of the government and the Administration, titled "Why I Didn't March This Time" in the Village Voice: http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0314/hentoff.php

Doreen: according to an article in USA Today, Bush may believe he's on a mission from God: "Bush believes he was called by God to lead the nation at this time, says Commerce Secretary Don Evans, a close friend who talks with Bush every day." Full article although it doesn't expand on that: http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2003-04-01-bush-cover_x.htm

paxx: Go on and feed their ignorance. I didn't see you correct yvonne2222 when she said that we were pumping oil, and that the company doing it was the U.S. vice-president's. You wouldn't chime in on that because it furthers your argument, whether it is true or not.

If I came out here and openly *lied*, you guys would be all over me with a almanac full of facts. That is what it always comes down to. We can list our reasons why this war is just, and the opposing position relies facts like: "He was gonna disarm sooner or later", "the US has ulterior motives", "The US is making war because the grand poobah of some super secret organization told them to."

Motives in this case are concrete, but not on the side of war.

There is no oil pumping in Iraq, and the company she is talking about was passed over to help in *rebuilding*, not even pumping oil. The UN is in charge of oil sold by the Iraqis. I'm supposed to hand over the argument to people who either can't, or won't bother to, do a google search before they run off their mouth. I'm giving her the benefit of the doubt and won't accuse her of purposely misleading people. I just figure she, herself, is mislead.

"Halliburton, the company once headed by the US vice-president, Dick Cheney, has failed to make the shortlist for an American government contract to rebuild Iraq, it emerged today"

That is according to the "The Guardian" not noted for going soft on the US of late.

Now how's that paxx. She can lie to make her points, and all you can say about mine is that I am kidding myself? "War is bad" is simply not good enough, and beyond that those for 'peace' seem to be equipped with supposition and outright lies.

We have several previous conflicts that the UN stood and watched to prove that that sort of peace is in no way humane.

If anyone, either for this conflict or not, really has any interest
in learning more about why the Middle East really hates the West and
the USA specifically, you need to watch this documantary that ran on
Discovery Times channel this afternoon "Search for the Roots of 9/11"

I mean, gah, she says the US is stealing oil from Iraq through a company once headed by the Vice President, and I say the largest Frence oil company has a 60 billion dollar deal with Saddam Hussein himself. She makes an utterly false statement, I state a fact. The response? "Don't kid yourself Bakerstreet"

jeeez...

No not utterly false, the corporation the Vice President was CEO of is in fact in Iraq and working in the oil fields. I don't kno wthat they are in control, but they do have a division which is the best Oil Well Hellcats in the world, which is admitted by every nation. So, not utterly wrong, but uninformed...

In Feb '73 a group of Khmer Rouge rebels, accompanied by their America-hating foreign journalist mouthpiece, entered a small village NNE of Takeo, Cambodia. A Cambodian and American Red Cross team had just given the village children their annual innoculations against disease and departed. The KR assembled the village, gave them a two hour political diatribe about the virtues of Communism and the unspeakable evil of cooperating with the government, and then chopped arms off all of the 17 childen who had been innoculated, searing the stumps with a flaming torch so that the children wouldn't bleed to death. Six days later this "journalist" filed a story with his parent pulp rag, complete with a picture of one of the little girls with her arm gone, describing how an American AC-130 gunship had heartlessly and callously strafed the village without provocation, killed many villagers, and shot the poor little girl's arm off.

"Truth is the first casualty of war."

this journalist was european, and i'm sure the people who read his article were fully confident that they were getting truth.

IPlural : i need some sort of proof of that, please. I can find nothing that says Halliburton is working in Iraq, and a lot that says they either withdrew or lost their bid. Now this is twice it has been said with no reference material. Please, back it up with something other than supposition.

Regardless, she said that an american company was pumping oil out of Iraq. That is the kind of meanless crap that is being spouted all over the world, and which even the well-meaning, intelligent people who are against the war refuse to correct because it furthers their cause.

Bakerstreet, I didn't have to reply to Yvonne; I didn't want to take away that pleasure from you.

No seriously, I had no idea what she was talking about. Had no idea if it was true or not, so I had nothing to say about it.

bakerstreet
Unfortunately the view that the Europeans get about us is very anti-american, and never puts us in a good light. My mother in law is there and she tells me what their television is saying to them, and never during any incident war or other wise does it ever resemble whats actually happening here. She usually calls in a panic, and I have to calm her fears.

It was good news [out of the US] that they'd rescued the 19 year old marine from the hospital....that was the info via the US media that Aus received.
News from Aus correspondents was a little more detailed. 9 [or 11, can't remember which] bodies were also recovered, possibly her fellow soldiers, yet to be confirmed. Also, she'll 'survive' but apparently has a broken arm, 2 broken legs and GSWs.
Just wondering whether the US info was watered down to be more 'palatable'...

That is the info we got too Jafo
But not many more details than that.
They are questioning if her injuries came before or after she was captured of course.

ALso
that she had received a few gunshots as well.

Jafo: i think they are saying very little about the 11 other bodies until they the forensics information comes back. They haven't said much about the 4 they dug up last week either. It seems to be bittersweet for the families of the other POWs though, I really hate what they must be going through, waiting to see who it was in the morgue and buried outside the hospital.

bakerstreet:
Seems they only pulled out of having the WHOLE package for the civilian contract
to rebuild the whole of Iraq, and just stuck with the smaller contract in the oil fields.

link to whole story at bottom...

"
Earlier this week, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers handed Halliburton subsidiary KBR -- formerly known as Kellogg Brown & Root -- an exclusive contract to deal with the oil well fires in Iraq.

Halliburton has since hired two oil well firefighting firms, Boots & Coots International Well Control and Houston's Wild Well Control, as subcontractors.

The Army Corps of Engineers contract is only an interim deal to handle emergency work. A more lucrative contract to repair Iraq's deteriorated oil fields will be awarded later after competitive bidding.

Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., has estimated the value of that contract at perhaps "tens of millions of dollars." But the value of that project is not expected to be anywhere near the size of the infrastructure reconstruction project.

Indeed, one source speculated a contract for oil well emergency work was a "sop" for having a real chance to win the large reconstruction contract.

The oil well fires contract was signed on March 8 but was not announced until March 24.

"We were under restrictions not to talk about it at the time," it was awarded, Army Corps spokesman Scott Saunders said.

Halliburton faced no competition for the oilfield contract. In November, the Pentagon, fearing a conflagration similar to Kuwait 12 years ago, had hired the firm to draw up a plan to deal with any oilfield fires. That report, which was classified, put it in place to execute the plan.

The company said it was chosen because it was "the only contractor that could commence implementing the complex contingency plan on extremely short notice."

KBR also was the only contractor that saw the report.

That practice, of a contractor writing a classified report and then getting the job of implementing the plan, is not unusual, noted P.J. Singer, a fellow at the Brookings Institution and author of the upcoming book Corporate Warriors: The Rise of the Privatized Military Industry.

"It's happened before," Singer said. "It's a practice across the industry. It's not a Halliburton thing."

While Halliburton's contract may be limited, the award has raised hackles from West Texas to the south side of the Capitol.

"This entire deal stinks," said Bob Grace, who helped put out oil well fires in Kuwait after the Persian Gulf War.

Grace, president of the Amarillo-based petroleum engineering firm GSM, complained that "there were no other companies considered. It is a `fox-in-the-henhouse' deal. There was plenty of time to consider all who are in this business of oil well firefighting. I will be interested to learn how much of a premium the taxpayers are being charged as a result of no bidding or consideration of others."

The Halliburton contract is what's known as a "cost-plus" contract. That means the company will be compensated for its costs and then receive an additional 2 percent to 5 percent on top of that.

Waxman has written Lt. Gen. Robert Flowers at the Corps of Engineers, asking him to explain more about the Halliburton contract by the end of next week.
"

http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/business/1842006
http://www.buzzle.com/editorials/3-31-2003-38385.asp
http://asia.news.yahoo.com/020804/ap/d7l6mmmg0.html

just a little info bit: the girl just arrived at Ramstein, and will now be brought to the military hospital in Landstuhl (Germany).

I found it rather repugnant that the female English reporter at her parents home today asked if they
had been informed she had been wounded. When the father said they had not, the reporter proceeded
to grill them on what they had been told and then also eluded to her captors and what they feared
her captors might have done to her other than her being held and medical treatment.

The news media can be extremely crass and ignorant on exactly what is news and what is plain dirty
speculation for sensationalism.

IPlural: hrm. Seems then that they aren't working yet? Senator Waxman will no doubt be very efficient in looking into things. I'm not at all that sure that this is handled well, but there is nothing here to suggest the Iraqi people have in any way been effected by it.

I can understand that preparing for flaming oil wells could be a problem with operational security. One of the big 'surprises' we keep hearing about is that we started the ground invasion before we started the main Air assault. *If* Halliburton's subcontractors are already on the ground, the issue might have been that their plans might have given an idea about where we intended to go in Iraq and when we intended to go there. dunno. IF they aren't already on the ground, then they may not go if there is an issue with the contract.

Regardless, capping flaming oil wells and stealing Iraqi oil are very, very different things. One protects the resources of the Iraqi people and prevents the environmental problems that would result from millions of barrells of burning oil. The other is just someone spouting propaganda to make their point.

I'm sure there are enough politians in Washington D.C. to hang those responsible for any malpheasance out to dry. I wonder if anyone in the French government is up-in-arms about French businessmen making contracts with Saddam Hussein? I doubt it.

i've worked 7 "cost Plus" contracts for the government - didn't get rich on any of them.

security frequently forces the government to pass sensitive info to only one company - so they know precisely whom to crucify if the info winds up being leaked.

how do they know who exactly spilt the beans though?

so what excatly are they saying over there? In Europe? In Arab nations?

I try my best to read the stuff out of www.worldnews.com but I would like to here a specific story like the army entering a town and how th people greated them.

apparently on the verge of entering Baghdad

Wincustomize is a great community!
Let's not bring pollitical satanism into it. Please, leave the war at the door.

????


I think that we should poke our artistic heads out of the water (or ground) and speak on issues. I learned allot in this thread.



I have an idea, why don't we do a letter reporting of our own. Someone get US/UK/AU news, and someone get French/German and someone els get Arab.

It has to be the same story.
I think it should be how the troops are treated when they go into a Iraq town.

Talk about 3 ways to tell one story.
Maybe the truth changes from region to region.