- WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President
George W. Bush is swamping domestic skepticism about a U.S. invasion of
Iraq, partly because opposition to a war is fragmented and unorganized
and lacks a leader of national stature, lawmakers and analysts say.
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- In recent weeks, serious arguments against Bush's policy
of removing Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein from power using force if necessary
have come come from religious leaders, academics, retired military leaders,
former Republican administration statesmen and some current and former
lawmakers.
-
- But the objections are uncoordinated and most have failed
to capture much media attention. They may get more of an airing this week
as the Senate debates a resolution to authorize Bush to use force against
Iraq which is expected to pass easily.
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- "The executive branch has enormous advantages in
conducting foreign policy, particularly when it can control its internal
divisions, which the Bush administration has managed to do," said
Steven Walt, dean of the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University,
who opposes military action against Iraq.
-
- "The administration can speak with one voice. They
also control one house of Congress and can impose discipline on most Republicans.
By contrast, the opposition is divided and lacks an obvious leader,"
he said.
-
- Walt was one of 33 academics, many of them seen as conservative,
who were so desperate to gain some attention that they bought a full-page
advertisement in The New York Times last week to register their opposition
to an invasion of Iraq. But he conceded there seemed little hope of slowing
the momentum towards war.
-
- Last week, 100 leading Christian ethicists issued a statement
against an invasion, saying it could not be morally justified under the
doctrine of a just war. The call received little media attention and the
White House did not find it necessary to respond.
-
- Public opinion polls show around 60 percent of Americans
support a war against Iraq, but the number falls to below 50 percent when
subsidiary questions are asked.
-
- For instance, in one poll released Monday by Zogby International
found that only 41 percent would support a war if it meant sustaining hundreds
of U.S. casualties and only 40 percent supported going to war without United
Nations backing and international support.
-
- Richard Herrmann, a political scientist at Ohio State
University, said that in historic terms, such figures were relatively high.
In some previous recent U.S. military interventions, public support ran
below 50 percent.
-
- "The public is usually in no rush to go to war unless
we are attacked. It's not a popular option. But Bush has managed to sell
this sufficiently as the next step in his war against terrorism,"
Herrmann said.
-
- Karlyn Bowman, who studies public opinion for the conservative
American Enterprise Institute, said Bush enjoyed more than enough public
support to move ahead with an invasion if he made that decision.
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- 'RESERVOIR OF SUPPORT'
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- "His handling of the Sept. 11 attacks has created
a reservoir of public trust so that he has a lot of latitude in whatever
action he may take," she said.
-
- Last week, former Vice President Al Gore, who narrowly
lost the disputed 2000 presidential election to Bush, and Massachusetts
Sen. Edward Kennedy, came out against the war in hard-hitting speeches.
But neither managed to galvanize the opposition or claim a position as
leader of an anti-war movement. And having spoken once, setting down their
views for the record, neither man followed up with subsequent speeches.
-
- Rep. Sam Farr, a California Democrat, said he was bombarded
with questions from constituents in his home district around the coastal
town of Monterey, the biggest one being, "Where the hell is the opposition?
Where's the debate?"
-
- Farr told Reuters Bush had cleverly laid out his case
for invading Iraq during the summer congressional recess when no-one was
available to contradict him. Now, with mid-term elections looming, many
lawmakers are scared to stake out an anti-war position for fear of being
labeled as unpatriotic by their opponents.
-
- Democratic lawmakers report that letters and telephone
calls from constituents are running heavily against an invasion. Washington
Democrat Sen. Patty Murray's office reported receiving over 5,000 letters
and telephone calls last week on Iraq of which about 100 supported an attack.
-
- Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer's office has received almost
35,000 letters, e-mails and telephone calls in the past two weeks, 99 percent
of them against the war.
-
- Some Republican senators, including North Carolina's
Jesse Helmes, Virginia's John Warner and Nebraska's Charles Hagel, also
report their mailbags running substantially against military action.
-
- Said Farr: "The more the public is given a full
set of facts, the less supportive they are of the president.
-
- "The trouble is, the media has begun to shape the
debate, referring to those of us who oppose an invasion as 'dissenting
Democrats', as if you don't support the President, you're on the wrong
side of the argument."
- _____
- (Note - The story above came out hours after the following
SenderBerl email --ed)
-
- The Enemy Within
-
- Commentary
- By Joseph Ehrlich
- Senderberl@aol.com
- 10-1-2
-
- Our E-mail this morning: 10/1/2002 7:31:06 AM Eastern
-
- SenderBerl: Last night we saw Casper Weinberger openly
deny the story below (US being the supplier to Iraq of WNV and other toxins)
as untrue while he was there to discuss McDermott's outrageous innuendo
against the President. Let us tell you one thing which stands out more
than anything else: the total lack of appropriate follow up discussion
on the President's released National Security Strategy and discussion on
Senator Kennedy's remarks on September 27, 2002.
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- It was our understanding years ago that there are covert
laws based on national security interests which permits government censure.
Since the President has declared a state of war it activates emergency
powers which we believe include government censure over media coverage
and discussions. However, it is further our opinion that aside from these
putative covert laws unknown to Americans which operate on a material basis
to manipulate American thinking and action, the media bends over backwards
to get weak spokesmen for the case against an attack on Iraq.
-
- The material issues and concerns we raise, hardly one
really gets mentioned or discussed. Further this censureship and limitation
of discussion center about, in Senator Kennedy's instance, remarks of a
United States Senator. So if there are Executive Orders or covert emergency
laws limiting discussion of released government mandates and remarks of
federal representatives, those in the new world order group have in fact
sewn a web around this country and a silent coup seems to have taken place
with a shadow government which can be fairly perceived to be anti-American,
operating under the mask of patriotism and national security interests.
-
- We have literally proven to you that Israel has a caretaker
government operating under a new world order mandate which permitted us
to tell you from day 1 that the entire set of episodes of terrorism in
Israel was staging for a true design to ultimately undermine those countries
out of line with the new world order agenda (do what the new world order
interests did to Israel) and worse those who affiliated themselves with
China (we heard that President Bush wants to intervene in Nepal militarily).
-
- Thus, we ask you today to think hard why America can
tolerate a lack of discussion concerning the National Security Strategy,
mandating the need to find appropriate comment in the overseas press (and
that has been limited as well cf. Princes Diana) about what amounts to
a dictatorial decree to take over the world.
-
- What we proffered in Recapturing America has unraveled
as not only accurate but in a true sense of the word has been openly ratified
by President Bush who does not hold back from now openly pursuing a course
of world domination and control.
-
- The American people were conditioned to remain passive
without moral outrage when Clinton demeaned the office of the Presidency.
Just as the American people were deliberately conditioned to prepare them
to hold inflated stocks for the long term when the rug was to be pulled
from stocks some market darlings falling from 200 or 300 dollars to $1
or $2. American people are perceived and used as sheep and fools for the
new world order group. They do as they please and thus the elitists laugh
in proving themselves repeatedly correct in taking back the United States
from those foolish revolutionaries who disdained and despised the European
aristocracy. Listen to the words, put your ears to the ground, because
the sound of the carriages of the royals are coming around the bend to
trample those remaining fundamental precepts platforming this country and
Republic.
-
- Wake up America. We see you can't recapture it but at
least don't act as the sheep ready for tomorrow's shearing. This country's
founding fathers must be rolling in their graves in disgust and shame for
what they are witnessing taking place.
-
- Joseph Ehrlich
- Sender, Berl & Sons Inc.
- October 1, 2002
-
- US Gave Germs To Iraq In The 80's
-
- AOL News
- 10-1-2
-
- WASHINGTON -- Iraq's bioweapons program that President
Bush wants to eradicate got its start with help from Uncle Sam two decades
ago, according to government records getting new scrutiny in light of the
discussion of war against Iraq.
-
- The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention sent samples
directly to several Iraqi sites that U.N. weapons inspectors determined
were part of Saddam Hussein's biological weapons program, CDC and congressional
records from the early 1990s show. Iraq had ordered the samples, claiming
it needed them for legitimate medical research.
-
- The CDC and a biological sample company, the American
Type Culture Collection, sent strains of all the germs Iraq used to make
weapons, including anthrax, the bacteria that make botulinum toxin and
the germs that cause gas gangrene, the records show. Iraq also got samples
of other deadly pathogens, including the West Nile virus.
-
- The transfers came in the 1980s, when the United States
supported Iraq in its war against Iran. They were detailed in a 1994 Senate
Banking Committee report and a 1995 follow-up letter from the CDC to the
Senate.
-
- The exports were legal at the time and approved under
a program administered by the Commerce Department.
-
- ''I don't think it would be accurate to say the United
States government deliberately provided seed stocks to the Iraqis' biological
weapons programs,'' said Jonathan Tucker, a former U.N. biological weapons
inspector.
-
- ''But they did deliver samples that Iraq said had a legitimate
public health purpose, which I think was naive to believe, even at the
time.''
-
- The disclosures put the United States in the uncomfortable
position of possibly having provided the key ingredients of the weapons
America is considering waging war to destroy, said Sen. Robert Byrd, D-W.Va.
Byrd entered the documents into the Congressional Record this month.
-
- Byrd asked Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld about
the germ transfers at a recent Senate Armed Services Committee hearing.
Byrd noted that Rumsfeld met Saddam in 1983, when Rumsfeld was President
Reagan's Middle East envoy.
-
- ''Are we, in fact, now facing the possibility of reaping
what we have sown?'' Byrd asked Rumsfeld after reading parts of a Newsweek
article on the transfers.
-
- ''I have never heard anything like what you've read,
I have no knowledge of it whatsoever, and I doubt it,'' Rumsfeld said.
He later said he would ask the Defense Department and other government
agencies to search their records for evidence of the transfers.
-
- Invoices included in the documents read like shopping
lists for biological weapons programs. One 1986 shipment from the Virginia-based
American Type Culture Collection included three strains of anthrax, six
strains of the bacteria that make botulinum toxin and three strains of
the bacteria that cause gas gangrene. Iraq later admitted to the United
Nations that it had made weapons out of all three.
-
- The company sent the bacteria to the University of Baghdad,
which U.N. inspectors concluded had been used as a front to acquire samples
for Iraq's biological weapons program.
-
- The CDC, meanwhile, sent shipments of germs to the Iraqi
Atomic Energy Commission and other agencies involved in Iraq's weapons
of mass destruction programs. It sent samples in 1986 of botulinum toxin
and botulinum toxoid - used to make vaccines against botulinum toxin -
directly to the Iraqi chemical and biological weapons complex at al-Muthanna,
the records show.
-
- Botulinum toxin is the paralyzing poison that causes
botulism. Having a vaccine to the toxin would be useful for anyone working
with it, such as biological weapons researchers or soldiers who might be
exposed to the deadly poison, Tucker said.
-
- The CDC also sent samples of a strain of West Nile virus
to an Iraqi microbiologist at a university in the southern city of Basra
in 1985, the records show.
-
- AP-NY-10-01-02 0445EDT
-
- SenderBerl: Never underestimate the depth of plotting
of the new world order crew. We have shown you that they moved to tie in
a relationship between West Nile and Cuba. Now, we have one with Iraq.
All to serve as a platform should the mosquito and West Nile openly operate
as the delivery system for major bioterrorism. What the world lacks are
leaderships of character and integrity with a genuine nexus to religious
precepts wanting to restore a true relationship in countries aligned with
monotheism to G-d. Otherwise, we have what we have seen to be the case
and a future different than the one we have enjoyed from past generations
who thought and acted diametrically opposite to the leaderships in office
and control today.
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