France Says Time to Help Iraq End Violence

Tue Nov 23, 5:09 AM ET
SHARM EL-SHEIKH, Egypt (Reuters) - France told an international conference on Iraq Tuesday it was time to put aside differences over the U.S.-led invasion and help the country put an end to violence.
"We all know what positions our different countries held in the period that led to the current situation developing. But today we must turn to the future. France, and Europe, are ready to do so," French Foreign Minister Michel Barnier said.
"We have a collective duty to put an end to instability in Iraq," he said in a speech prepared for delivery at the conference in the Egyptian Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh. An official English translation was obtained by Reuters.
France and Germany were the most prominent critics of the U.S.-led invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein last year, and have refused to send forces there to help restore peace.
Barnier said the conference should call on the U.S.-backed Iraqi interim government to hold a meeting of Iraqi political groups as soon as possible before the elections.
"Such a meeting would ensure high voter turn out across Iraq," he said. France had wanted Iraqi political forces, including those not represented in the U.S.-backed government, to meet on the sidelines of the Sharm el-Sheikh conference. But that idea was rejected by Baghdad.

"They're not bad guys"

MSNBC.com
'Hardball with Chris Matthews' for Nov. 13

Read the transcript to the 7 p.m. ET show
Updated: 10:19 a.m. ET Nov. 16, 2004
Guest: Michael Ware, Richard Perle

MATTHEWS: Welcome back to HARDBALL. We‘re talking about the U.S. Marines‘ investigation today into what may be the illegal killing of a wounded, unarmed insurgent during combat operations in Fallujah. Joining me right now is MSNBC‘s military analyst and retired U.S. Army Colonel Ken Allard.
Colonel, it‘s a tough one. What did you make of the pictures? You‘ve seen the raw footage.
COL. KEN ALLARD (RET)., U.S. ARMY: Yeah. Chris, I‘ve got to tell you, if I were that kid‘s defense counsel, I would realize that I had a very, very tough case in front of me, and I would try—literally try and pull out every possible stop, and every possible advantage that I could. Including self-defense.

MATTHEWS: Well, let me ask you about this. If this were the other side, and we were watching an enemy soldier, a rival—I mean, they‘re not bad guys, especially—just people that disagree with it. They‘re in fact the insurgents fighting us in their country.
If we saw one of them do what we saw our guy do to that guy, would we consider that worthy of a war crimes charge?

ALLARD: We probably would. I mean, what you have to remember about all these things is the fact that if what you‘re seeing is enough to inflame the senses, that is precisely the reason why we think of those things in terms of war crimes. And it is also why we tell our soldiers, look, the reason why we have you observe the laws of land warfare is because it makes peace so much easier.

MATTHEWS: The thing is, I guess, I don‘t want to get into the exculpatory mood or the indictive role. That‘s not my role. It is simply to report what we know so far and what its implications are.
Colonel, that fellow was apparently alive, clearly alive at the time the trooper went in there. He wasn‘t some dead guy with—covered up or clouded up with, what do you call it, explosives that were going to blow when the guy was touched. He wasn‘t booby-trapped. Was there any justification for killing him, then?

ALLARD: You would have to say probably not. But I just have to tell you, if you are one of those Marines that we‘ve seen so often going into Fallujah, imagine the incredible tension and imagine the incredible danger. You have got AK-47‘s and RPGs in front of you, and you have got TV cameras right behind you. You cannot imagine a more daunting situation. But all that having been said, that is exactly what these kids are trained for. And you simply have to judge this whole case on the merits.

MATTHEWS: And he knew the cameramen—he knew the cameramen were there. He knew that he was being observed. So whatever he did, he thought he was justified in doing it, it seems to me, that‘s a fair assumption.
Let me ask you about what the rules of engagement are. Watching the battlefield casualties, you don‘t read a lot about wounded Iraqi prisoners. Do we take prisoners? Do we take wounded prisoners? Obviously we‘re sending our troops up to Germany to get fixed up, if we can. They‘re getting the best medical treatment in the world, and they deserve it. What kind of treatment normally goes to the losers? To the other side, the wounded?

ALLARD: One of the things that we do with our kids, is they are trained—yes, indeed, we do take prisoners. Yes, indeed, we are responsible for evacuating them and making sure they receive competent medical care. It is one of the laws of land warfare. It is one of the points of honor of the U.S. force that we take care of the enemy‘s wounded as well as our own, even if that means that you are taking chances you would not otherwise want to take, even if it means you‘re putting yourself in harm‘s way to do that. That‘s what we do.

MATTHEWS: But we don‘t send them up to Germany for the best medical care in the West, do we? Like we do our own guys?

ALLARD: I think we try and treat most of those guys in country. We have a very elaborate military evacuation system, but I think most of those people are probably treated in that theater.

MATTHEWS: So what—it‘s not one of those things when on the offensive, you take no prisoners? It‘s not? There are times when that does occur, though, right?

ALLARD: Well, in the heat of battle, Chris, I‘m not going to say that there are not some very, very tough decisions that those soldiers have to make. I...

MATTHEWS: I mean, you can‘t take prisoners when you‘re fighting in a mosque and fighting against the enemy that all—potentially all around you. You can‘t very much start putting the stretchers up, can you?

ALLARD: No. In fact, one of the things that we do not do is, we do not demand that those kids put themselves deliberately in danger.
It is a very, very tough line that you have to always be prepared to defend. But I just have to tell you that what we always try and do is to stress the humanitarian values, consonant with the mission they‘re on. The mission that they‘re on is to kill insurgents.

MATTHEWS: OK, thank you very much, Colonel Ken Allard.

ALLARD: You bet.

A liberal mind in action

TO BEGIN WITH, THE PRESIDENT IS A FOOL
Thu Oct 28, 8:00 PM ET

Op/Ed - Richard Reeves
By Richard Reeves

NEW YORK -- John Kerry is winning the presidential election -- as far as I can tell. I have already voted absentee and I voted for the Democrat. I voted for him because I have children and grandchildren, too, and I love my country too much to watch George W. Bush try to figure it out for four more years.

Biased? Of course. That's why I write this column: to share my bias. I am always amazed when I get letters, many of them, accusing me of being a "liberal" or, a lot worse, an "elitist." Yes, I am. Hello!

I also think that being president of the United States is an elite job. Don't you? What are we talking about here?

Yes, I am disappointed with the way Sen. Kerry has presented himself and his bias. But I am frightened by the thought of a Bush second term. I'll stick with my analysis of the man from Massachusetts as a rather humorless straight-A student. If you teach (and I do), Kerry is of a type, a smart guy who gets it all down, synthesizes it beautifully, and then tries to give you back what he thinks you want. The defining moment of his campaign, I thought, was his acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention. It was an A paper without a single original thought. I counted 15 lifts from archived presidential speeches, most of them by John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan.

My gripe with President Bush, who has risen above his Yale, Harvard and oil resume to become a man of the people, is that he is an incompetent man of the people. He's smart enough for an elite job, but he has lousy judgment, no sense of history and the dogmatic ways of the insecure. He is a fool, quoting Webster's first definition: "A person lacking judgment and prudence."
I find myself in absolute agreement with Kimberly Parmer, a lady from western Michigan presented in The New York Times last week as the last undecided voter, who said it was hard to make up her mind because "One is too polished; the other one, I think to be honest, I don't know how he ever got to be president."

Well, the Supreme Court picked him. Maybe they thought he was his father.
Kimberly Parmer then went on to say something both silly and profound: "If you actually look at him, and he stands next to Kerry, you kind of just feel sorry for him."

I can see that, though I tend to feel sorry for the rest of us. There are two Americas facing off against each other in this election, not rich and poor, but past and future.

A lot of Americans, mostly white males of a certain age, look to this George Bush and see themselves. This campaign, I would argue, is one of the last convulsions of angry, real American men, who fear losing the country they know (or imagine), fighting to hold back the time and tide of the new, the un-white and un-Christian, and those girlie men, too, who sooner or later will make a different America. Bush has the "Father Knows Best" vote, from men who have lost their personal power and hate what they see happening all around them. Kerry, often blowing in the wind, is "the times they are a-changin'" candidate.

Which one will prevail? I think Kerry will hold the one-vote lead I gave him. But this is a wild-card election. For the first time in a while no one is quite sure who will actually come out and vote this Tuesday. It would do wonders for the tired blood of American politics if there was a big turnout, but that could help or destroy either side. It could also shake up the Congress, which could use some shaking. The narrowly partisan and ideological meanness some Republican leaders have brought to the debate in Washington -- I'm really thinking of that other angry Texan, House Majority Leader Tom DeLay -- is about the worst I've ever seen.

So the last question is, "Who votes?" I already have. You should too. Perhaps you will feel driven to neutralize my vote. Good luck. I certainly hope the best man wins. ..this I agree with you...the BEST MAN WON..

Confessions of a Liberal

Op/Ed - Ted Rall


CONFESSIONS OF A CULTURAL ELITIST

Tue Nov 9, 8:03 PM ET Op/Ed - Ted Rall


By UNIVERSAL PRESS SYNDICATE/TED RALL

Win or Lose, Kerry Voters Are Smarter Than Bush Voters

NEW YORK--Democratic hand wringing is surrealy out of hand. No one is criticizing the morally incongruous Kerry for running against a war he voted for while insisting that he would have voted for it again. Party leaders have yet to consider that NAFTA, signed into law under Clinton, may have cost them high-unemployment Ohio. No, Indiana Senator Evan Bayh, darling of the "centrist" Democratic Leadership Council, blames something else: the perception "in the heartland" that Democrats are a "bicoastal cultural elite that is condescending at best and contemptuous at worst to the values that Americans hold in their daily lives."


Firstly, living in the sticks doesn't make you more American. Rural, urban or suburban--they're irrelevant. San Francisco's predominantly gay Castro district is every bit as red, white and blue as the Texas panhandle. But if militant Christianist Republicans from inland backwaters believe that secular liberal Democrats from the big coastal cities look upon them with disdain, there's a reason. We do, and all the more so after this election.


I spent my childhood in fly-over country, in a decidedly Republican town in southwest Ohio. It was a decent place to grow up, with well-funded public schools and only the occasional marauding serial killer to worry about. The only ethnic restaurant sold something called "Mandarin Chinese," Midwestese for cold noodles slathered with sugary sauce. The county had three major employers: the Air Force, Mead Paper, and National Cash Register--and NCR was constantly laying people off. Folks were nice, but depressingly closed-minded. "Well," they'd grimace when confronted with a new musical genre or fashion trend, "that's different." My suburb was racially insular, culturally bland and intellectually unstimulating. Its people were knee-jerk conformists. Faced with the prospect of spending my life underemployed, bored and soused, I did what anyone with a bit of ambition would do. I went to college in a big city and stayed there.


Mine is a common story. Every day in America, hundreds of our most talented young men and women flee the suburbs and rural communities for big cities, especially those on the West and East Coasts. Their youthful vigor fuels these metropolises--the cultural capitals of the blue states. These oases of liberal thinking--New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, Portland, Boston--are homes to our best-educated people, most vibrant popular culture and most innovative and productive businesses. There are exceptions--some smart people move from cities to the countryside--but the best and brightest gravitate to places where liberalism rules.


Maps showing Kerry's blue states appended to the "United States of Canada" separated from Bush's red "Jesusland" are circulating by email. Though there is a religious component to the election results, the biggest red-blue divide is intellectual. "How can 59,054,087 people be so DUMB?" asked the headline of the Daily Mirror in Great Britain, and the underlying assumption is undeniable. By any objective standard, you had to be spectacularly stupid to support Bush.


72 percent who cast votes for George W. Bush, according to a University of Maryland's Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA) and Knowledge Networks poll, believe that Iraq (news - web sites) had weapons of mass destruction or active WMD programs. 75 percent think that a Saddam-Al Qaeda link has been proven, and 20 percent say Saddam ordered 9/11. Of course, none of this was true.


Kerry voters were less than half as idiotic: 26 percent of Democrats bought into Bush-Cheney's WMD lies, and 30 percent into Saddam-Al Qaeda.


Would Bush's supporters have voted for him even if they had known he was a serial liar? Perhaps their hatred of homosexuals and slutty abortion vixens would have prompted them to make the same choice--an idiotic perversion of priorities. As things stand, they cast their ballots relying on assumptions that were demonstrably false.


Educational achievement doesn't necessarily equal intelligence. After all, Bush holds a Harvard MBA. Still, it bears noting that Democrats are better educated than Republicans. You are 25 percent more likely to hold a college degree if you live in the Democratic northeast than in the red state south. Blue state voters are 25 percent more likely, therefore, to understand the historical and cultural ramifications of Bush's brand of bull-in-a-china-shop foreign policy.


Inland Americans face a bigger challenge than coastal "cultural elitists" when it comes to finding high-quality news coverage. The best newspapers, which routinely win prizes for their in-depth local and national reporting and staffers overseas, line the coasts. So do the cable TV networks with the broadest offerings and most independent radio stations. Bush Country makes do with Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity syndicated on one cookie-cutter AM outlet after another. Citizens of the blue states read lackluster dailies stuffed with generic stories cut and pasted from wire services. Given their dismal access to high-quality media, it's a minor miracle that 40 percent of Mississippians turned out for Kerry.


So our guy lost the election. Why shouldn't those of us on the coasts feel superior? We eat better, travel more, dress better, watch cooler movies, earn better salaries, meet more interesting people, listen to better music and know more about what's going on in the world. If you voted for Bush, we accept that we have to share the country with you. We're adjusting to the possibility that there may be more of you than there are of us. But don't demand our respect. You lost it on November 2.