[Grovenet] A Keystone Kops comedy ? ? ? ?
Ron D'Eau Claire
rondec at easystreet.com
Wed Feb 14 11:38:30 PST 2007
Every cop I have known personally has opined that the more guns there are in
the hands of people on the street, the more people use guns.
I think the same is true internationally. A century ago Maxim really thought
he had such a horrible weapon of mass destruction when he developed the
machine gun that no wars would ever be fought again. Instead his weapon
killed millions in WWI and WWII and, in its hand-held form as assault
rifles, continues to kill every day today on US city streets and the streets
of cities all around the world.
I think the message is clear: there is no weapon that will stop the use of
weapons and any weapon will, in time, fall into the hands of those who would
use it against us. I think that's a large part of what's behind the strong
bi-partisan support in not seeing nuclear weapons proliferate. We can't stop
proliferation, but we can slow it down, and so we're buying time before we
reach a "critical mass" of nuclear weapons distribution that puts them in
the hands of those who would use them against us. But it's only been
delayed.
I can't applaud our efforts at making a peaceful, or even a healthy, world
out there. If it were a "Keystone Cops" film, it's be a huge laugh. But it's
not. Millions of people have died trying and failing to secure "peace".
Following our present course, eventually American cities will feel the
impact of nuclear bombs.
As you observed, Katie, many of the more portable weapons went to fight drug
smuggling. The rest of that story is that while many of those weapons are
now in the hands of our enemies, the growing, processing, smuggling and sale
drugs to addicts is still one of the most lucrative and successful
businesses in the world, exceeding the size of the total economies of some
whole countries. We Americans lead the way in keeping the drug trade
lucrative through our inability to enforce the laws against drugs. We are -
unwittingly perhaps - supporting those outlaw businesses and their efforts
to grow the drug business. It's never been my experience that doing
something that doesn't work helps one find a better way. Indeed, it tends to
blind us to the need to rethink what we're doing.
War is just like our myopic, ineffective approach to drugs. We keep doing
the same thing believing we have no choice. The "war-to-win-peace" fantasy
is another vicious cycle we've had to live with since antiquity. Iraq is
just the latest example.
In each case the intent is wonderful, laudable and civilized but totally
ineffective in achieving our goals. So why do we keep doing what we can see
doesn't work?
I think the answer lies in our emotions, especially fear and anger. One who
would instill fear in another never has their best interests in mind. Fear
is the means by which thinking humans become unthinking cattle, easily
manipulated by those who use fear but who are not afraid. Anger is a
mindless explosion of energy that might give us the strength to beat off an
attack, but it robs us of the ability to think of the consequences of our
choices.
There's a lot of truth in the old saying, "Never make a decision when you're
upset!"
I believe that's one of the highest responsibilities of a civilized
community: it allows those who have been pushed into an emotional state to
scream out as they need to, but the community refuses to allow them to act
out their instinctive responses. We know that their choices are likely
inappropriate and damaging. The community members who are not emotionally
involved make the decisions that are best for the individual and the
community. Those are the so-called "cooler heads" every functioning
community looks to in times of crisis, whether that community is a family or
an entire country.
And there is no betrayal so great as someone who would use that trust to
manipulate those who are caught up in their emotions for their own selfish
ends. I think that's what happened to us in the USA after 9/11; I believe
that there were those in positions of power who took advantage of the
situation to herd the American people into their choice of action for their
personal gains. The President may have been one of them, or he may have been
one of the afraid who was herded along. I don't know.
It was a time when we trusted "cooler heads" in our government and we were
betrayed.
One way to avoid giving those who would use our emotions against us is to
avoid allowing our emotions control us.
Ron D'Eau Claire
-----Original Message-----
From: grovenet-bounces at rdrop.com [mailto:grovenet-bounces at rdrop.com] On
Behalf Of allnutt
Sent: Wednesday, February 14, 2007 9:43 AM
To: Forest Grove local interests list
Subject: Re: [Grovenet] A Keystone Kops comedy ? ? ? ?
I'm picking up on your tag line about being mad as hell here.....
You may find some comfort in the Dixie Chicks getting the Grammy award for
their comeback song "Not Ready to Make Nice". One of the lyrics is 'I'm
still mad as hell and I don't have time to go round and round and round."
They were mad as hell back at the very beginning of the war, which as we now
know was the proper thing to be in 2003. Plus it is a good album. If you
want to pick it up or down load it from iTunes it is a fun song to play
loud.
As to the high tech weapons being sold '03-'04 to fight drug smugglers
winding up arming insurgents in Iraq in '07 it is maddening to find yet
another instance of deadly devices generating profits and then winding up
hurting unintended victims. Austria makes a big lot of money but the guns
wind up going from Iran to Iraq.
Super deadly IEDs circumstantially indicate that Iran has a hand in the
violence in Iraq but we decimated one or more sections of our CIA presence
in Iran when Valerie Plame was outed (accidentally of course!) so we don't
have as many resources to know how far up the chain of command in Iran the
plot goes. And the powers at the top are now comfortable openly disagreeing
with Bush about what the circumstantial evidence says about the Iranian
government. I take that as a hopeful sign even if the sequence of events can
be viewed as a keystone kop movie.
But overall I'm not sure that people are being truthful when they say it may
be disturbing that arms are freely traded between nations. Land mines have
been very profitable for companies here in the US that make them and they
have crossed many borders over the years when we sell them to country A and
they wind up being used in country B. Countless arms and ammunition that was
transferred from our troops in Afghanistan to trainees in Iraq have gone
missing as well, but it hasn't been widely reported by our administration.
Why in the world would be surprised that weapons profitably made in Austria
and sold to Iran are now showing up in Iraq? Who knows where the literal
tons of explosives are that were taken right under our noses when we failed
to guard the ammunition sites in the early part of the Iraq invasion? Would
Bush be surprised to learn that some of that has gone to Lebanon,
Afghanistan, Syria, or even (shock!) Iran and then perhaps back into Iraq
again?
He would claim that it is enough reason to invade Iran but in reality it was
merely the natural flow of ammunition between groups that operate on the
free trade of weapons and money theory. (Part of the NAFTA, CAFTA, SHAFT
YA! philosophy.) It isn't surprising and if Bush is disturbed or shocked or
surprised by any of it, it just means he is more of an idiot than he
initially appears to be.
Katie
----- Original Message -----
From: Bob Browning
To: Grovenet
Sent: Tuesday, February 13, 2007 12:44 PM
Subject: [Grovenet] A Keystone Kops comedy ? ? ? ?
The following would almost look like a Keystone Kops comedy if it weren't
for the thousands of American dead and the tens of thousands of others
killed and for the hundreds of thousands injured and maimed for life!!
bob "I'm really starting to get mad as hell!!" browning
Pace questions whether Iran arming Iraq
By CHRIS BRUMMITT, Associated Press Writer1 hour, 24 minutes ago
The top U.S. military officer said Tuesday the discovery that roadside
bombs in Iraq contained material made in Iran does not necessarily mean the
Iranian government was involved in supplying insurgents.
The comments by Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff,
called into question assertions by three senior U.S. military officials in
Baghdad on Sunday who said the highest levels of Iranian government were
responsible for arming Shiite militants in Iraq with the bombs, blamed for
the deaths of more than 170 troops in the U.S.-led coalition.
White House spokesman Tony Snow said Monday he was confident the
weaponry was coming with the approval of the Iranian government.
Pace told reporters in the Indonesian capital, Jakarta, that U.S. forces
hunting militant networks in Iraq that produced roadside bombs had arrested
Iranians and some of the materials used in the devices were made in Iran.
"That does not translate that the Iranian government per se, for sure,
is directly involved in doing this," Pace said. "What it does say is that
things made in Iran are being used in Iraq to kill coalition soldiers."
On Monday, Pace said he had no firm knowledge that the Iranian
government had sanctioned the arming of the insurgents.
"It is clear that Iranians are involved, and it's clear that materials
from Iran are involved, but I would not say by what I know that the Iranian
government clearly knows or is complicit," Pace told the Voice of America.
Iran denied it gave sophisticated weapons to militants to attack U.S.
forces.
"Such accusations cannot be relied upon or be presented as evidence. The
United States has a long history in fabricating evidence. Such charges are
unacceptable," Foreign Ministry spokesman Mohammad Ali Hosseini told
reporters in Tehran.
In Washington, Defense Department spokesman Bryan Whitman said Tuesday
that he could not explain the apparent contradiction and referred questions
to Pace's office and to American forces in Baghdad.
A military official on Pace's staff said the general stands by his
comments. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not
authorized to speak on the record.
Asked if Pace had vetted the information that went into Sunday's
briefing, the official said Pace was aware of what was going to be presented
in Baghdad, but that the comment about involvement at the highest levels of
Iranian government was not included in the material Pace was given.
The Joint Chiefs chairman is the senior military adviser to the
president, but he commands no troops and is not in the chain of command that
runs from the president to the secretary of defense to commanders in the
field.
The U.S. accusations against Iran have also drawn in an Austrian arms
company.
Britain's Daily Telegraph newspaper reported Tuesday that American
troops have recovered more than 100 "Steyr .50 HS" rifles in Iraq, part of
an Austrian consignment of 800 such weapons delivered to Iran over American
protests that they could be given to insurgents.
The Austrian government approved the sale of the rifles, made by
precision weapons maker Steyr Mannlicher GmbH, after it concluded in 2004
that they would be used to fight narcotics smugglers.
"We checked the proposal very thoroughly," Austrian Foreign Ministry
spokeswoman Astrid Harz said, noting that the situation in Iraq and the
region in 2003-2004 was very different than it is now.
"What happened to the weapons then is the responsibility of the
Iranians," Harz said.
Franz Holzschuh, Steyr's CEO, said the company had not officially been
contacted by anyone to verify the serial numbers on the rifles. He said
there was a possibility the weapons were reproductions and that there were
"thousands" of these in circulation.
"Fact is, we never delivered to Iraq," he said.
U.S. officials could not confirm the validity of the report, said
William Wanlund, spokesman for the U.S. Embassy in Vienna, Austria.
"Obviously, if the reports are true, it would be profoundly disturbing,"
he said.
___
Associated Press writers Pauline Jelinek in Washington, Raphael G.
Satter in London and Veronika Oleksyn in Vienna, Austria, contributed to
this report.
Copyright C 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
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