Fw: [ANSWER]: Response to Bush and Powell's U.N. presentation

["Nello Margiotta" <animarg at tin.it>]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "A.N.S.W.E.R." <answer.general at action-mail.org>
To: <answer.general at action-mail.org>
Sent: Friday, February 07, 2003 12:56 AM
Subject: [ANSWER]: Response to Bush and Powell's U.N. presentation


> RESPONSE TO BUSH & POWELL'S U.N. PRESENTATION
> 
> George W. Bush went on national television this afternoon 
> to announce "the game is over," meaning that the other 
> U.N. countries had to make their decision about whether to 
> resist their own population's opposition to war, in order 
> to support his planned aggression against Iraq. Bush's 
> speech was part of a well-choreographed follow-up to the 
> presentation by Secretary of State Colin Powell yesterday 
> before the United Nations.
> 
> Bush is trying to convince the world  that war is 
> inevitable in order to break the will and spirit of the 
> vast multitude around the world who desire to stop this 
> war. Instead, our movement around the world will continue 
> to vigorously build mass opposition -- the only actual 
> political obstacle that can stop Bush, Cheney and the 
> Pentagon.
> 
> The following is a response released by the A.N.S.W.E.R. 
> Coalition after Powell's February 5 U.N. speech:
> 
> Colin Powell's presentation to the United Nations was an 
> example of Alice in Wonderland-type propaganda. Reality 
> has been turned upside down. At the very moment that Iraq, 
> hobbled by 12 years of devastating sanctions and ongoing 
> U.S. bombing, is surrounded by a heavily-armed invasion 
> force of more than 100,000 troops, fighter aircraft, 
> warships and high tech conventional missiles, and is 
> threatened with a nuclear strike, Powell argued that Iraq 
> poses a great threat to "peace."
> 
> The Pentagon has disclosed its plan to maintain peace by 
> carrying out an opening blitzkrieg on Iraq of more than 
> 3000 bombs and missiles in the first 48 hours. This plan 
> is titled "Shock and Awe" by the administration. 300 to 
> 400 Tomahawk cruise missiles will rip through Iraq on the 
> first day of a U.S. assault, which is more than the number 
> that were launched during the entire 40 days of the first 
> Gulf War. On the second day, another 300 to 400 cruise 
> missiles will be sent. "There will not be a safe place in 
> Baghdad," said one Pentagon official. "The sheer size of 
> this has never been seen before, never been contemplated 
> before," the official said. One of the authors of the 
> Shock and Awe plan stated the intent is, "So that you have 
> this simultaneous effect, rather like the nuclear weapons 
> at Hiroshima, not taking days or weeks but in minutes." 
> (CBS News January 27, 2003, New York Times, February 2, 
> 2003)
> 
> General Powell is routinely referred to in the media as 
> the moderate or "dove" inside the Bush administration. It 
> is important to remember that it is the same Colin Powell 
> who, at a press briefing shortly after the conclusion of 
> the 1991 Gulf War when asked his assessment of the number 
> of Iraqi soldiers and civilians killed, which had been put 
> at over 100,000, answered, "It's really not a number I'm 
> terribly interested in."
> 
> Is there justification for war? What Bush's war places in 
> jeopardy is enormous. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis may 
> be slaughtered. Tens of thousands of service members will 
> be sent to risk their lives. The economic cost, estimated 
> between $200 billion to $2 trillion will loot the U.S. 
> treasury and mortgage future generations, depleting funds 
> that could provide essential human needs such as 
> education, healthcare, childcare and jobs.
> 
> What circumstances could justify these certain risks and 
> losses? None that were presented by Powell. Laying out his 
> case, Powell presented no threat issued by Iraq against 
> the U.S. or anyone else. Powell's presentation had a 
> two-fold purpose. It was not merely to "make the case" for 
> war, it was also intended to redirect the attention of the 
> people of the U.S. away from the Bush administration's 
> real objectives in recolonizing the Middle East. Using 
> smoke and mirrors and misdirection, Powell engaged in 
> dramatic fear-mongering, even going so far as to reference 
> the anthrax attacks that originated in the U.S. from U.S. 
> stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction, to suggest that 
> bombing Iraq will make the U.S. safer.
> 
> During his entire presentation Powell never mentioned the 
> word "oil," and yet the whole world knows that Bush and 
> his corporate clients are already drawing up plans for the 
> seizure of Iraq's oil reserves. For public consumption the 
> talk is disarmament or democracy, but behind closed doors, 
> the administration is meeting with oil industry executives 
> to divide up Iraq's oil fields. (Wall Street Journal, 
> January 16, 2003) Far from democracy, Bush intends to 
> install a U.S. military dictatorship under General Tommy 
> Franks to rule Iraq. In his column of February 5th, Thomas 
> Friedman, Iraq invasion cheerleader, approvingly laid out 
> the future for Iraq, "Iraq will be controlled by the iron 
> fist of the U.S. Army and its allies, with an Iraqi 
> civilian 'advisory' administration gradually emerging 
> behind this iron fist to run daily life..."(New York 
> Times, February 5, 2003)
> 
> Powell has presented no threat, no plan, no capability. Is 
> there justification for waging a first strike war of 
> aggression, for bombarding the people of Iraq with massive 
> firepower? Who really poses the greatest threat to world 
> peace?
> 
> Powell's presentation was much about Iraq's hypothetical 
> and in any case much diminished weaponry, while the 
> Pentagon is preparing to launch a devastating attack on 
> Iraq using very real weapons of mass destruction -- 
> possibly including nuclear weapons. On the issue of 
> weapons of mass destruction, Powell asserts that the Iraqi 
> government may hope to possess nuclear weapons someday. It 
> has not been lost on the whole world though that in recent 
> weeks, the Bush administration has left open the option of 
> actually using nuclear weapons against Iraq in the coming 
> conflict and reserves for itself the right to carry out 
> first strike nuclear war against even non-nuclear 
> countries as part of a new military doctrine recently 
> announced by the Pentagon.
> 
> Powell claims that if the U.N. does not support U.S. 
> military aggression and conquest of Iraq, in violation of 
> its Charter, that it will lose its "relevancy." History 
> will remember with great irony Colin Powell's statement 
> that we must stop the leader who "has pursued his ambition 
> to dominate Iraq and the broader Middle East using the 
> only means he knows, intimidation, coercion and 
> annihilation of all those who might stand in his way."
> 
> The Bush Administration is not racing to deter an imminent 
> danger posed by Iraq. They are racing to prevent our 
> movement from becoming an insurmountable obstacle to war. 
> Let's all pledge to intensify our work in these crucial 
> coming days and weeks.
> 
> A report from the February 5 New York City protest in 
> response to Powell's speech can be found at:
> http://www.internationalanswer.org/news/update/020503undemo.html
> 
> --------------------------------------------
> 
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