Those “facilities in northern Iraq” were in the American-protected no-fly zone. In other words, we had more control over them than Saddam did.

Steve Sailer wrote:

“Those ‘facilities in northern Iraq’ were in the American-protected no-fly zone. In other words, we had more control over them than Saddam did.”

Does Iraq do all of its law enforcement by air, or do they utilize any ground-based police and army forces? If those ground-based police forces investigated matters in northern Iraq, did they really fear being bombed by American and British planes? I know that we attacked anti-aircraft sites in the no-fly zone, but can it be documented that we randomly bombed or strafed police cars on patrol?

Pardon my sarcasm, but this old canard really needs an early retirement.

I also wonder about this story. Given the fact that so few weapons and weapons labs have been found, why wasn’t more made of these facilities when they were found? I remembered reading about an al Qaeda-associated camp in Northern Iraq being discovered after the war, but not about weapons labs or anything like that. I wrote an e-mail to Mark Alexander asking him for the source of his claims.

Hello Steve, small world.

From the article: “Last week’s assessment from Israel’s Mossad that Syrian strongman Bashar Assad allowed Saddam’s primitive nukes (possibly with cores for three) to transit through Syria to a protected site in Lebanon’s heavily fortified Bekaa Valley.”

I cannot imagine anyone talking about Saddam’s nukes with a straight face. The necessary material for a working nuke was never there. I suppose that there is an outside chance that he could be talking about “dirty nukes” (which aren’t nukes). Anyway I wrote an article about the dirty bomb some time back:
http://thrasymachus.blogspot.com/2003_01_12_thrasymachus_archive.html#87420481

Steve Sailer writes:

Those “facilities in northern Iraq” were in the American-protected no-fly zone. In other words, we had more control over them than Saddam did.

Has everyone in the world already forgotton the most shameful act of the Clinton administration?
Forget Monica Lewinsky, Paula Jones, Travel Gate and Clinton’s other various juvenile scandals. In the summer of 1996, after encouraging the Kurds to overthrow Saddam Hussein (part of Clinton’s $100 million dollar “overthrow” Saddam plan), Saddam sent his tanks and soldiers into northern Iraq and crushed the new Kurdish uprising. Clinton, like George Bush I before him in 1991, betrayed the Kurds and did nothing to help them. Not even a single airstrike against Saddam’s tanks. This in the area Steve Sailer says the USA “had more control than Saddam”.

I wonder how men like Bush I and Clinton can possibly justify themselves? In the view of today’s modern “soft” men I guess it isn’t much of a problem. Betrayal unto death. This sort of betrayal was a specialty of Stalin, who did it out of malice and cruelty. Bush I and Clinton did it out of cowardice and lack of honor.

After crushing the 1996 uprising, Saddam Hussein knew that he was in the clear again and had little to fear from Clinton. France and Russia immediately began to press hard for lifting the economic sanctions on Iraq at the UN.

Osama bin Laden and Khalid Sheik Muhammed then began planning the 9/11 and African Embassy attacks, feeling they had nothing to fear. It was at this time that Saddam began to coordinate strategies more closely with the OBL gang, ultimately leading to the establishment of Ansar Al Islam in northern Iraq by late 1998.

I encourage all of you to read the second volume of William Manchester’s biography of Churchill. Manchester presents a long and detailed section describing the British and French appeasement of Hitler in the 1930’s. The amazing fecklessness and cowardice that Britian and France displayed over a period of 6 years simply has to be read to be believed.
All of the statements and excuses used in the 1930’s are exactly the same as the ones being used today regarding Saddam and Iraq. And I mean exactly the same - right down to same words and phrases.

Eventually people, an Islamic fanatic gang will get hold of the atomic weapon and will have no fear of using it against us. That is - unless we continue to act pre-emptively against the Saddams and the Mullahs and the Mahdis and whatever else backward Islam can conjure up. Admittedly, I do not have much confidence that George Bush II is the man for this job.

So, it is likely that an atomic attack will first have to occur in one of our major cities before the full danger of the situation is regarded with the seriousness it deserves.

When that happens, what will the Steve Sailers and Howard Deans have to say then?

Speaking of Manchester, it is a terrible shame that he is unable to finish the third volume of that biography. It was hero-worship through and through, but still a wonderful series to read.

I read the first volume many years ago and it was magnificent. I couldn’t get into the second volume for the reason Thrasy mentions, it had become hagiographic—Manchester was turning the saga of “Churchill in the Wilderness” into a heroic cult. My main source for the years of appeasement was Churchill’s own Gathering Storm and Shirer’s book. But maybe one should look at Manchester volume II again. Is he still alive?

There is a made for tv movie called The Gathering Storm about Churchill in the 30s, starring Albert Finney. It’s worth renting. Some very fine things in it.

Thank you Bartelson for posting this important background information about Northern Iraq and Clinton’s slimy betrayal of the Kurds - which I had forgotten about. PC Roberts and other Paleos ingnore this facet in their eagerness to attack the neocons. The funny thing about the Paleo theory of the war being about ‘making the world safer for Israel (with American blood and treasure)’ is that Israel arguably faces a more serious threat now from the nearly Bekkaa valley than it did before the invasion of Iraq.

The Steve Sailers (in contrast to Howard Dean) have at least mentioned the dangers of the multiculturalist agenda of importing Muslims and other incompatible aliens from the third world into the US. The Bushites and Neocons, like Dean, simply refuse to acknowledge the real and arguably greater danger from this. Sadly, the Paleo crtics of the war have become so obsessed with the Israel issue cited above that they spend all of their energies attacking the war - which is at least defensible as being in the nation’s strategic interest of fighting terrorist organizations and the regimes that support them - instead of pounding the Bushites over their lax security on our Borders, destroying US sovereignty, and the important issue raised here of pandering to and appeasing our Islamic enemies.

William Manchester is still alive, I believe. But he suffered a stroke in 2000 and announced in 2001 that he was unable to continue with the third volume despite having made substantial progress on it.

Mark Alexander’s article is so beyond the pale, that it’s not possible to assign it to extraordinary ignorance.

It should be placed where it properly belongs, the long trail of lies.

http://www.harpers.org/online/revision_thing/?pg=1

The Ministry of Truth has nothing on these boys.

Everyone repeat after me:
I love Big Brother—‘s lies and his shills, especially when they reinforce my silly wrong opinions.

Abby is out of line. She doesn’t need to insult me or others, calling us “shills of Big Brother,” to make a point. If Mark Alexander’s article is wrong, then say so.

Actually, Mr. Auster, you set the precedent on unnecessarily insulting people without provocation.

White guy accuses me of “unnecessarily insulting people without provocation,” and thus of practicing a double standard when I told Abby not to do the same. If he were to give any examples to back up this charge, they would doubtless consist of my criticizing people for using insulting or flagrantly irrational arguments. It’s all too common today, when someone is told not to use an ad hominemn argument, to reply: “You just used an ad hominmen argument against me!”

In any case, if “white guy” wants to get into personal criticisms of me, he shouldn’t be hiding behind a pseudonym.

I was a bit taken aback by Lawrence Auster’s comment that I was out of line.

But on further reflection, I suppose I shouldn’t have been.

After all, when awhile back I called one of my sisters a paramour, she threw an absolute tizzy fit. Which was just about the same kind of tizzy fit one of my other sisters threw when I called her a pagan.

Of course my mother called me on both issues after my sisters went running to her and complaining about that awful sibling of theirs, but as I told my mother, I have no Idea what they’re all complaining about, if they don’t want to be a called a paramour or a pagan , well that’s easy enough, stop being one. After all if someone called me a Catholic, I’d just say ‘yup, that’s what I am all right.

btw, I didn’t call Lawrence Auster a shill, although he seems to have taken it that way.

Regarding Abby’s bizarre comments, let me note that this thread began with my quotation (without comment except to say that it was a “stunning” piece of information) of an article by Mark Alexander regarding the existence of terrorist facilities in Iraq. Abby then wrote, among other things: “The Ministry of Truth has nothing on these boys…. Everyone repeat after me: I love Big Brother’s lies and his shills …” Clearly as I’m the person who introduced the Alexander quote here, I’m among the shills of Big Brother.

If something incorrect is said by anybody, others are free to refute it with argument and evidence. To equate either a conservative columnist at TownHall.com or this website which quoted him with “Big Brother”—a totalitarian system where no disagreement with state lies is possible—is totally out of line and shows Abby’s fundamental immaturity.

Despite the fact that Abby is a long time poster and has participated in many discussions here, and despite the fact that she describes herself as a devout Catholic and mother, she has never dropped the semi-hostile, off-the-wall tone of someone dropping messages from the planet Mars. Since she considers the editor of this website a shill of Big Brother—though she now pretends to deny that she said that—I wonder why she should would even want to participate at VFR? She should either adopt a more civil and grown-up tone, or not post here any more.

Reply to Lawrence Auster,

It was common knowledge on the web many months ago that those terrorist facilities were not in territory controlled by Saddam Hussein, yet Mark Alexander explicitly states in his article that they were.

The likelihood of neither Alexander or any editor at Townhall not knowing the above is about as likely as the pro-abortion propagandists not knowing that fetuses are living human babies. And just as Planned Parenthood insists on their Big Lie, so likewise do I find it more credible that Alexander’s article was directed at pushing another big lie.

We are given the choice of both Alexander and the editors at Townhall being completely incompetent and without memory, or they are shills for the Bush administration. Which one is more likely?

And no, I didn’t call you a shill, in fact my comments were clearly directed towards Mark Alexander and Townhall, if I thought you were a shill, I would have said so plainly.

It’s also rather plain from your last comment that you would prefer it that I not post on this site, and so I’ll make this post my last.

So I thank you from the bottom of my heart for the pleasure I received from the opportunity of being a part of this blog and its discussions. It was lots of fun, and you were, all things considered, a very good host.

Abby: You might not have noticed the postings earlier in this thread that refuted the claim that Saddam did not control these areas of Iraq. Military and law enforcement were conducted by the central Iraqi government in these areas. Kurdish rebellion was put down brutally by Saddam in these very areas; he just could not use airplanes to do it. A no-fly zone does not mean “keep all police and military out”.

When I see false claims such as these, I assume that the poster is lacking this kind of information. Were I to adopt your immature approach to posting, I would instead be accusing you of being part of Saddam’s lying propaganda machine. Would that be a constructive approach to discussion? I think not.