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Topic: 1.f3 e5 2.g4 Qh4# Spasibo Blunderov (Read 1174 times) |
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Hermit
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1.f3 e5 2.g4 Qh4# Spasibo Blunderov
« on: 2006-04-23 16:25:50 » |
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Quote from: Blunderov on 2006-04-23 14:13:18 | [Blunderov] Odom draws a distinction between Democracy and Constitutionalism. And Albright considers the Iraq fiasco to be the biggest blunder in US history. |
Blunderov has posted two articles in the "Serious Business" forums under the topic "Re:The Iraq Blunder." One, short, refers to Madam Madeleine Albright who seems to have developed amnesia about her role in Clinton's massive abuse of process, Iraq and elsewhere - a role which, at least in part, was responsible for enabling the current debacle. While smarter than the smirking chimp (not difficult), I don't see her as any better.
The other article is a different matter entirely. The post of "NSA DIRECTOR ODOM DISSECTS IRAQ BLUNDERS" is much much longer and well worth reading. It is report on a speech by Former National Security Agency Director Lt. General William Odom, where he provides a masterly summary of the USA's awkward position (spreadeagled over a barrel) and other's perception of her (stupid bully shooting nukes at her own feet while ignoring the fall-out on others), by somebody who really knows what he is talking about*. It carries my unreserved recommendation. If you want to grasp what is happening in the world today, or to discuss Iraq and the Middle East rationally, you need to read it.
Thank you Blunderov for yet another gem.
Hermit
*I know that he knows what he is talking about as he is saying very much the same things as I do.... <wicked grin>
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With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion. - Steven Weinberg, 1999
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Blunderov
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"We think in generalities, we live in details"
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Re:1.f3 e5 2.g4 Qh4# Spasibo Blunderov
« Reply #1 on: 2006-04-24 02:59:00 » |
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Quote from: Hermit on 2006-04-23 16:25:50 Thank you Blunderov for yet another gem.
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мое удовольствие *
Best Regards
Blunderov
* http://babelfish.altavista.com/tr
PPS Oops. It doesn't look as if the server is too happy with Cyrillic script. To reiterate; "my pleasure".
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Blunderov
Archon
Gender:
Posts: 3160
Reputation: 8.66
Rate Blunderov
"We think in generalities, we live in details"
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Re:1.f3 e5 2.g4 Qh4# Spasibo Blunderov
« Reply #2 on: 2006-04-24 07:03:52 » |
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[Blunderov] The chess metaphor seems to be gaining ground. Aah, that blunder moment when the scales fall horridly away from the recoiling eyes! It's very special.
Best regards.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/0,2106,3645977a1861,00.html
What's Dubya's mad mistake got to do with fuel?
23 April 2006
By FRANK HADEN
Paying $85 to fill my car's tank the other day, I upset the attendant by vilifying President Bush. "What's he got to do with it?" he demanded, identifying himself as one of the dwindling band who still believe unseating Saddam Hussein was worth the catastrophe that has followed.
The same people laughed at me years ago when I told them control of Middle East oil was the real reason America invaded Iraq, but they are not laughing now.
Dismayed as we are at the doubling of petrol prices in a couple of years, we are still a long way from the peak of rocketing pump figures. We are heading for $2 a litre, the least misery we can expect from the rise of Iran as the leading opponent to America's desperate attempts to call the shots in the oil war.
Thanks to Bush and his arch-collaborator, Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Iran now poses a far bigger threat to world oil price stability than Iraq ever could or did.
The spectacle of New Zealanders scraping the last dusty pennies out of their purses to finance a run out to the beach highlights last weekend's jailing of Kiwi Dr Malcolm Kendall-Smith, dismissed from the Royal Air Force for refusing to return to service in Iraq. We have every reason to be proud that Kendall-Smith stood up to be counted in this emergency.
The American generals who seek the resignation of Rumsfeld as a scapegoat for the calamitous attack on Iraq also deserve our congratulations. It took a lot of guts for the six to fly in the face of protocol and "the American way" to pin the blame where it belongs.
Rumsfeld was Dubya's collaborator in the mad pursuit of non-existent nuclear and chemical weapons that destroyed Iraq as the region's only counter to Iranian ambitions. That's why I cursed them both at the petrol station.
The United States spent freely on building Iraq into an ally against the much bigger Iran in the contest for control of Middle East oil. When Saddam obediently went to war with Iran, the United States supplied his army.
With this background, common sense should have told Bush and Rumsfeld they were committing America's biggest strategic blunder in recent times by invading Iraq and reducing it to a backward state crippled by religion-based civil war, no longer capable of being a bulwark against Iran or anyone else.
They underestimated the predictable results of toppling Saddam's secular regime, which had kept the Iran-oriented Shia majority out of the seats of power.
Now that America has brought an end to strong government in Baghdad, resurgent Iran has grabbed its chance to take over as the key, not only to the cost of petrol that provoked my anger on the service station forecourt, but to all Middle East power manoeuvres.
The suicide bomb killing of nine people in Tel Aviv on Tuesday was clearly prompted by Iran's enthusiastic support for Palestine's Hamas government. Israel's response will raise the stakes further, giving a new dimension to volatile Iranian president Ahmadinejad's firm policy declaration soon after he shoehorned himself into power that Israel must be wiped off the map.
It's like a game of chess. By clumsily removing a powerful piece from the Middle East board, Bush and Rumsfeld handed Ahmadinejad an unoccupied square into which he has now moved his queen. The Iranian leader has gained immeasurably from the Iraq election results, which have turned millions of southern Iraqis into de facto Iranian agents.
Iran endorses the reasonable view that a terrorist is simply a bomber who hasn't got an aeroplane. After all, a child splattered against a wall by a bomb dropped from a plane is just as much a victim of an atrocity as one killed in a suicide attack. Iran is not in a position to supply jihadists with aircraft to deliver their bombs, but it will support them as they infiltrate the citadels of the unbelievers.
Bush and Rumfeld should pause from their Easter religious observances and note the military parading in explosives-packed uniforms of Iran's thousands of trained suicide bombers, equal to a whole army in terms of destructive capacity. It dwarfs anything al Qaeda could ever put into contention.
Meanwhile Iran is pushing ahead with its unconcealed plans to refine uranium to weapons-grade levels, announcing a few days ago that is resuming work with P-2 centrifuges. These are tall, small-diameter, ultra-high-speed machines that Pakistan used in its nuclear weapons programme, and will quadruple Iran's enrichment capacity.
Such is the leashed tiger that Bush and Rumsfeld are now ludicrously threatening with air strikes if it doesn't stop planning a nuclear capability.
As the world's fourth biggest oil producer behind Saudi Arabia, Russia and the United States, Iran is proud of its power, and isn't lying down in the face of such unrealistic threats.
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