Iraq - Still, In Fact, Going On

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
this story is just unbelievable

British Man Held for Fraud in Iraq Bomb Detectors

not that a war profiteer swindled the Iraqi govt. I mean, no surprise there. no, it's what he was swindling them with. selling overpriced, substandard equipment is a time-honored war profiteer tradition but usually they have to least pretend that what they're selling isn't worthless garbage. to wit:

The ADE 651 is a hand-held wand with no batteries or internal electronic components, ostensibly powered by the static electricity of the user, who needs to walk in place to charge it...The Times of London quoted Mr. McCormick in November as saying that the device’s technology was similar to that of dowsing or divining rods [me, aside: there is no "technology" of dowsing rods. they're just Y-shaped branches FFS! it's pseudoscientific, spurious nonsense that's failed badly in every study ever done on it. anyway...] used to find water. “We have been dealing with doubters for 10 years,” he said. “One of the problems we have is that the machine does look primitive. We are working on a new model that has flashing lights...Shortly after the arrest on Friday, the BBC reported that it had arranged a lab test of the device and found that its bomb-detection component was an electronic merchandise tag of the sort used to prevent shoplifting.

yes, flashing lights should fix things right up. what a wanker. I really hope dude goes to prison for a good long while. not even for the $85 million he prised out of the Iraqi govt so much as the hundreds of Iraqi injuries & deaths he's at least partially responsible for with his placebo bomb "detectors".
 
D

droid

Guest
'Well'?

If by that you mean he betrayed no sign of remorse or compassion for his victims and continued to lie through his teeth despite overwhelming evidence of his crimes - then I agree.

Monbiots bounty idea is a good one. He should change it to 'dead or alive' though.
 

craner

Beast of Burden
Anyone interested in the details of WMD should read this book by the way:

41XZ7WklYuL._SL500_AA240_.jpg
 

sufi

lala
A history of the Iraq war, told entirely in lies
By Sam Smith


All text is verbatim from senior Bush Administration officials and advisers. In places, tenses have been changed for clarity.

Once again, we were defending both ourselves and the safety and survival of civilization itself. September 11 signaled the arrival of an entirely different era. We faced perils we had never thought about, perils we had never seen before. For decades, terrorists had waged war against this country. Now, under the leadership of President Bush, America would wage war against them. It was a struggle between good and it was a struggle between evil.

It was absolutely clear that the number-one threat facing America was from Saddam Hussein. We know that Iraq and Al Qaeda had high-level contacts that went back a decade. We learned that Iraq had trained Al Qaeda members in bomb making and deadly gases. The regime had long-standing and continuing ties to terrorist organizations. Iraq and Al Qaeda had discussed safe-haven opportunities in Iraq. Iraqi officials denied accusations of ties with Al Qaeda. These denials simply were not credible. You couldn't distinguish between Al Qaeda and Saddam when you talked about the war on terror.
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
I wasn't sure what thread to put this in, but this seems as good a place as any.

Blackwater Founder in Deal to Sell Company

I didn't realize this was happening, admittedly I haven't been paying very much attention to current events politics recently, maybe other people were already up on it. well, I knew Blackwater/Xe was having serious problems, and everyone probably remembers the shootings in Nisour Square back in 2007, but I had no idea that Blackwater execs were under federal indictment for weapons charges and rather bizarre ones too - it seems they illegally bought AK-47s and then gave them to the King of Jordan as gifts in the hopes procuring Jordanian business (I'm wondering, why would King Abdullah be impressed by AK -47s? the most common assault rifle in the world? anyway). I also didn't know about the various allegations of weapons smuggling, though that's no surprise. or Blackwater involvement in secret CIA assassination programs or top AQ players, which is surprising, not that the CIA has secret assassination programs (well, of course) but that they'd outsource them to f**king mercenaries. I mean, of all the thing you wouldn't outsource, that'd have to be at the top of my list.

I don't really know where I'm going with this other than to say that the mercenary business ca. the end of 2010 is a very strange one, now that it's all gone corporate, where you can just rebrand and auction things off to investors and keep right on plugging, like any other Fortune 500 joint, just with guns and helicopters and a bad reputation for itchy trigger fingers. it almost makes one long for the days when mercenaries were crazed Welsh SAS veterans with names like Mad Mike who inspired pulpy novels by hack European writers. I guess it's kinda like the transition from individual robber barons like Vanderbilt or Rockefeller, to the utter impersonality of corporate boardrooms and faceless gray suits, the whole transition from mercenary to "private military company". I mean it's not surprising that mercenaries are on the ascendant, second oldest profession and all that, but all this bid for corporate respectability is just...it leaves a bad taste in the mouth you know?
 

baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
I'm sure he's said something dodgy at some time or another, cos everyone has, but Desmond Tutu always seems incredibly spot on whenever I've read what he has to say. The type of guy who would make an excellent president.

I know someone who worked at the ICC, and it sounds like a complete shambles on top of everything else. Apparently Americans ascend the ranks faster than anyone else, despite/because of the US's refusal to ratify the appropriate statute.
 

craner

Beast of Burden
Condoleezza Rice, in her terrific speech at the Republican National Convention last week, noted that "the promise of the Arab spring is engulfed in uncertainty, internal strife, and hostile neighbors are challenging the young, fragile democracy of Iraq," which was more to the point than Tutu's irrelevant blather.
 

baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
Pointing out that the ICC only puts on trial people from less powerful countries can't be described as irrelevant blather. It's simple fact.

Desmond Tutu speaks like a sane person. Condoleeza Rice is clearly mad.
 
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craner

Beast of Burden
The thing with the ICC I don't understand is this (among many other things, I must say) -- when a case is brought or made or sought, and based on the amount of people killed by an action or decision, is it based on:

* the amount of people killed with intention, as in genocide cases where the bodycount is factored into a deliberate policy of extermination, or

* the amount of people killed without intention, as the result of a policy the aim of which does not factor in a bodycount and, in fact, seeks at the outset the minimise the number who die?

In the case of Blair and Bush, surely any violations of article 147 of the Fourth Geneva Convention would be due to actions or decisions committed or sanctioned by those under their ultimate command, but not due to any executive decision or policy plan as such? In the case of water-boarding, liability would presumably go quite high up, without necessarily implicating Bush or Blair, but would not constititute much of a case as nobody died as a result of it?

Also, could violations of the laws or customs of war or crimes against humanity be brought against Bush and Blair in the case of Iraq, who did not sanction or defend any qualifying actions that occurred due to their decision to invade?

I suspect that if you brought a case against Bush and Blair it would be thin, unlike, say, Milosevic or Charles Taylor.

I don't think we have any lawyers in Dissensus, and the only forensic-minded personage I can rely on answering me is...Vimothy!
 
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