FEBRUARY 14, 2003 : (SOUTH AFRICA WILL SEND ITS EXPERTS TO IRAQ; IRAQ ACCEPTS) South Africa will send experts in dismantling weapons of mass destruction to Iraq as part of Pretoria's bid to avert war, President Thabo Mbeki said in his state of the nation address today. The intervention follows a visit to Baghdad by Aziz Pahad, the Deputy Foreign Affairs Minister, and comes ahead of today's crucial report-back by United Nations weapons inspectors to the Security Council in New York. Addressing a special joint sitting of Parliament, Mbeki said it was hoped the UN report-back "will not serve as a signal to some that the time has come to unleash the fury of war".
"As we speak, a number of our citizens are preparing to travel to Iraq. These are the experts who led our country's programme to destroy our nuclear, chemical and biological weapons of mass destruction, as well as the missiles for the delivery of these weapons in conditions of combat." The work they had done had resulted in South Africa becoming an international example of best practice in disarmament, he said. South Africa voluntarily disarmed its weapons of mass destruction in the 1990s. Pretoria had proposed to Iraq and to Kofi Annan, the UN Secretary-General that these experts share South Africa's experience with Baghdad, Mbeki said.
"I am pleased to inform the Honourable Members that Iraq has accepted our offer, which we have already discussed with the leadership of the weapons inspectors. "We trust that this intervention will help to ensure the necessary proper co-operation between the United Nations' inspectors and Iraq, so that the issue of weapons of mass destruction is addressed satisfactorily, without resort to war."
Mbeki thanked the Iraqi government for its positive response, as well as its recent decisions to allow U2 and other aerial surveillance flights, to encourage its citizens to co-operate with inspectors without the presence of officials, and to adopt legislation prohibiting the production of weapons of mass destruction. - "SA to send its nuclear experts to Iraq: Mbeki," http://www.sabcnews.com/politics/government/0,1009,52970,00.html., February 14, 2003, 11:15
FEBRUARY 13, 2003 : (WILSON PUBLISHES "REPUBLIC OR EMPIRE?" IN THE MARCH 3, 2003 ISSUE OF "THE NATION"- IT WAS POSTED TO THE WEB EARLIER - See DAVID CORN) .... I would add this anti-war column written by one Joseph Wilson in The Nation: Republic or Empire? , Issue date of The Nation is March 3, but note, web posted on February 13, 2003.
This dovetails with your post-SOTU/pre-NY Times no mention of any concern regarding the representations made by President Bush in his speech in reference to uranium and Africa. Also, I'm sure you see that Wilson writing in The Nation means it is no surprise that it is David Corn that starts the drumbeat about the "outing" of Plame.------114 posted on 10/02/2003 2:34 PM PDT by cyncooper
FEBRUARY 13, 2003? is this the Feb 13 article?: (PREWAR : WILSON WRITES IN AN ARTICLE IN 'THE NATION' BASHES PRESIDENT BUSH) Joseph C. Wilson IV, the man accusing the White House of a vendetta against him and his wife, is an ex-diplomat turned Democratic partisan. President Bush, he wrote in an article in the far-left Nation magazine that was published before the Iraq war began, is not interested in democracy in the Middle East but "this new American imperialism."
"The new imperialists will not rest until governments that ape our world view are implanted throughout the region, a breathtakingly ambitious undertaking, smacking of hubris in the extreme." - "Wilson, wife have tight ties to Democrats. " By Rowan Scarborough, THE WASHINGTON TIMES, 2 Oct 03
FEBRUARY 2003 : (FATHER JEAN-MARIE BENJAMIN HELPS ORGANIZE THE VISIT OF IRAQI DEPUTY PRIME MINISTER TARIQ AZIZ TO THE VATICAN FOR TALKS WITH POPE JOHN PAUL II & SENIOR VATICAN OFFFICIALS) Meanwhile, the Iraqi Foreign Minister Tareq Aziz, a Catholic, was in Rome to meet with the Pope, and he went to Assisi, where he prayed at the tomb of St Francis, and left a message in the visitors book in the form of a prayer for peace. His visit to Italy was organised by Father Jean-Marie Benjamin who, as well as being a songwriter, has had a long involvement with the Iraqi people. Over the past ten years hes been a frequent visitor to Baghdad, in fact he was among the first to break the UN embargo by smuggling medicine into the country. And hes written several books on the impact of the UN sanctions. - "A priest for peace," Wednesday 19/2/2003 , The Religion Report, Radio National, http://www.abc.net.au/rn/talks/8.30/relrpt/stories/s787908.htm.
FEBRUARY 19, 2003 : (INTERVIEW OF FATHER JEAN-MARIE BENJAMIN INCLUDES BENJAMIN'S PROTEST SONG "MR. PRESIDENT") Well that protest song, Mr President, is getting lots of airplay on Italian radio at the moment. It was written by a very busy French priest living in Italy, Father Jean-Marie Benjamin. And it includes lines like Hey Mr President, weve understood it all, that were all slaves of Wall Street.
(* My note: The irony is that Father Benjamin's name turns up later as a recipient of Itaqi oil voucher bribes. )
FEBRUARY 22, 2003 Saturday : (VATICAN :) On Saturday, Feb. 22, British Prime Minister Tony Blair will arrive for a private tet-a-tet with John Paul II. --- "And tonights guest is
Vatican plays host to an uneasy world," Vatican Correspondent, John Allen, http://www.nationalcatholicreporter.org/word/word0221.htm as retrieved on Jun 28, 2004
FEBRUARY 22, 2003 : (NIGER DELTA : REPORT : HAZARDOUS RADIOACTIVE MATERIALS MISSING IN NIGER DELTA) - "Hazardous Radioactive Matterials Missing in Niger Delta," AllAfrica.com, Feb 22, 2003
FEBRUARY 22, 2003 : (RICHARD PERLE INTERVIEW; PERLE SLAMS THE FRENCH) A leading adviser to President Bush last night [February 22, 2003] launched a savage attack on President Chirac's diplomatic campaign to block war with Iraq, saying that it was merely the product of French commercial interests masquerading as a moral case for peace. In an exclusive interview with The Observer, Richard Perle, chairman of the Pentagon's Defence Policy Board and a central figure in the circle of hawks around Bush, went well beyond US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's recent criticism of 'old Europe', warning that war without the further approval of the UN Security Council was now imminent. 'I'm rather pessimistic that we will get French support for a second resolution authorising war,' Perle said. 'I think they will exercise their veto, and in other ways obstruct unified action by the Security Council: they're lobbying furiously now.'
Perle agreed that support for war in Britain and America would rise if there were a second resolution, and that the UN was 'a symbol of international legitimacy'. But in words that will serve only to deepen the transatlantic rift over Iraq, he added: 'These five countries, the permanent members of the Security Council, are not a judicial body. They're not expected to make moral or legal judgments, but to advance the respective interests of their countries. 'So if the French ambassador gets up and expresses the position of the government of France, what you are hearing is the moral authority of Jacques Chirac, whatever that may mean. 'What you're hearing is what the French President perceives to be in the interests of France. And the French President has found his own way of dealing with Saddam Hussein. It would be counter to French interests to destroy that cosy relationship, and replace it with a hostile one. 'So how much legitimacy attaches to a French veto? At some point, people are going to have to start asking themselves that question.'
In Perle's view, the French position against regime change in Iraq is fatally undermined by its multi-billion-dollar oil interests negotiated since the last Gulf war: 'There's certainly a large French commercial interest in Iraq, and there are contracts that a new government in Iraq may not choose to uphold, partly because they're so unfavourable to the people of Iraq. Saddam has been prepared to do deals to keep himself in power at the expense of the people. 'My understanding of the largest of these deals, which is the French Total-Fina-Elf contract to develop certain oil properties in Iraq, is that it is both very large and very unfavourable to the Iraqis.' Perle added that he found the claim that America wished to topple Saddam for the sake of its own oil interests bizarre.
'The US interest is to buy oil cheaply on the world market. And the best way to increase the supply of Iraqi oil, and so cut prices, would have been to abandon sanctions in 1991 and urge the expansion of Iraqi exploration and development. 'When you consider that there is now a prospect that the oilfields may be destroyed by Saddam, if what we really wanted was more oil, not only should we not be supporting Saddam's removal, we should be working with him.'
Perle denied claims widely reported on both sides of the Atlantic that the Bush administration intends to rule Iraq directly through a military governor for an extended period, and that it envisages no role for the Iraqi opposition. He was scathing about the 'conventional wisdom' among the foreign policy and intelligence establishment, which holds that the Iraqi opposition groups are hopelessly divided and the country far too fractious for meaningful democracy. 'This is a trivial observation and a misleading one, both by CIA officials and MI6,' Perle said. 'They're simply wrong about this. They don't understand the opposition. They say they're divided. Are they more divided than the Labour Party? I rather doubt it. Are they more divided than the Tories? I certainly doubt that.'
His own long-term dealings with Ahmad Chalabi, leader of the Iraqi National Congress, and key figures in the main Kurdish groups, had convinced him and other leading US policymakers that 'Iraq is a very good candidate for democratic reform'.
'It won't be Westminster overnight, but the great democracies of the world didn't achieve the full, rich structure of democratic governance overnight. The Iraqis have a decent chance of succeeding under the leadership that has developed in the diaspora caused by Saddam's seizure of power.'
Reports claiming that a US military governor would keep most of Saddam's Baath Party officials in place and run the country on existing administrative structures were inaccurate and absurd, Perle said. 'The idea that the US would simply issue orders to the same mob that served under Saddam is ridiculous. This is not simply about switching one mafia family for another. American policy after Saddam's removal will be to assist the Iraqis to move as quickly as physically and practically possible into positions of power.'
As Assistant Defence Secretary under President Ronald Reagan, Perle was one of the key architects of the 1980s aggressive policy towards the Soviet Union, which Reagan dubbed an 'evil empire' and did much to undermine. He said he found it dismaying that many in Europe now found it 'politically incorrect' to describe regimes such as Iraq and North Korea as evil now:
'What we discovered from the victims of the Soviet empire, once they were free to speak, was that they agreed with us: evil was exactly the word they chose. I suspect that's the word that would be chosen by most of those forced to live in North Korea under Kim Jong Il, under the Iranian mullahs and Saddam Hussein.'
Your research is amazing.