BREAKING: Powell: U.S. 'Cannot Accept Result' of Ukraine Election

Fox News ^ | November 24, 2004

[FreeReign]

The are four major forces that would like to see the US fall (economically and militarily): Islamists, the EU, Russia and China. Of those four,I trust the Russians and the Chinese the most.

Agreed except I now trust the EU more than I trust Russia and I didn't feel that way 6 months ago.

In time, with current trends, I think most will feel that way too unless Russia cleans up its act.

[Atlantic Friend]

Heck, we've got bad apples like everybody else, man. I wish we could have an impeachment procedure like you do, and that we had the same knack at avoiding the rise of a ruling class.

There are many things I sincerely admire in the American system, and in the American people, you know. And since I'm a bit of a History buff, I can't shake the feeling our two Republics are intertwined, because we more or less have been each other's midwife when you come to think about it.

So, you were in the Peace Corps or something like that ?Which African countries did you work in, BTW ?

[Porterville]

I don't think he has a choice. The ME want to fracture and destroy Russia and China. What good is it for Putin to support them further? Maybe he is just gaming them to give hime leverage in future decisions. Didn't I read something about Russia sending troops to Iraq?

Russia Agrees to Send Troops to Iraq — Weekly
Created: 17.11.2004 11:13 MSK (GMT +3), Updated: 15:17 MSK
MosNews

http://www.mosnews.com/news/2004/11/17/iraq.shtml

[jimbo123]

From the same link.

Russian Special Forces Smuggled Saddam’s Weapons from Iraq to Syria — Newspaper

http://www.mosnews.com/news/2004/10/28/iraqweapons.shtml

[FreeReign]

Didn't I read something about Russia sending troops to Iraq?

Interesting link, but the source is murky.

www.mosnews.com:Russia has agreed to send a small number of troops to Iraq to protect oil wells and support the U.S.-led military campaign there, an aide in the Bush administration has said. The Russian Kommersant-Vlast magazine spoke with the aide on conditions of anonymity, and he said that he had heard the information at a recent meeting in the White House.

The Russian Kommersant-Vlast magazine uses an anonymous source. This still needs to be verified.

[Porterville]

I feel bad that France is selling it sole because of political corruption on the top levels. I can't believe Chirac thinks he can empower the UN and the control the UN as well as forcing the hand of others in the EU. And I can't believe that the nation that stopped the Islamic waves of Spain in the 8th century.

It just bugs me that the socialist are selling out Western Europe and the folks in Antwerp really bug me because they are shrouded in the media, but they levy so much suspicion.

[DoughtyOne]

It will be interesting to see this play out.

[eluminate]

yes doughty I suspect there will be two republics of Ukraine afterwords with the eastern one joining Russia after 2005 march/april (thats when Russia joins wto)

[theFIRMbss]

>The are four major forces that would like to see the US fall (economically and militarily): Islamists, the EU, Russia and China

That's a woefully
incomplete list. The fifth force
that wants us to fall

is more powerful
than those four put together
(and, in fact, may be

the driving power
behind those) -- That fifth force is
our domestic Left!

The businessmen and
rich US families that give
cash, resources and

credibility
to the "forces" you mentioned.
Without our own Left,

those other four would
collapse, or be blunt targets
for global freedom.

[dimk]

This thread is a depressing read. I am Ukrainian by birth and reading drivel of some of the people is just sad. People in Kyiv are fighting for simple thing freedom, freedom from corrupted criminal regime. There is no excuse in supporting corrupted criminals, none.

I liked Bush and and his administration before, fact that they took stand now is a huge. My mother was a democrat supporter, this simple statement from foreign secretary turned her around.

Russia is over. Russians are trying desperately to keep messing up other people lives instead of looking into their own country and fixing it. Once Kuchma is gone and Yuschenko is in power maybe Russians will realize that they don't have to live under regime like Putin's or maybe they will still live with their blinds on. Who knows.

[jb6]

Go back and read any of the news from 2000. Even Iran was getting ready to invade Afghanistan and was shelling them, after the Taliban killed 9 of their diplomats.

[jb6]

Russia threatens to bomb Afghan terror camps

The United States has made common cause with an assortment of dubious regimes around the world to wage the war on drugs. Perhaps the most shocking example was Washington's decision in May 2001 to financially reward Afghanistan's infamous Taliban government for its edict ordering a halt to the cultivation of opium poppies.

2000-2001: US gives Taliban-ruled Afghanistan $245 million in "aid."

In May 2001, US narcotics experts visited Taliban-controlled Afghanistan for the first time. They found the Taliban had followed through on Mullah Omar’s edict outlawing opium-poppy cultivation. In 2000, Afghanistan produced 75% of the world’s opium crop. The Taliban, which since coming to power had used the money from the opium to purchase weapons, had apparently stopped the poppy crop-all in less than a year and with the help of their harsh punishments for farmers found in violation of the ban. The Bush administration found this so satisfying that they immediately pledged an additional $43 million worth of aid to Afghanistan.

As the State Department reported on October 15, 2001:

"The United States has been the single largest donor of humanitarian aid for Afghans for the past several years. In 2000, the United States contributed a total of $113 million in humanitarian aid to Afghans, both inside Afghanistan and in refugee camps in neighboring countries. In 2001, the aid level has already exceeded $184, accounting for some 300,000 tons of American food sent to Afghanistan this year."

That’s almost $300 million in two years with the stated aim of feeding the starving Afghani people.

To put this in perspective, Bangladesh-population 133 million (compared to Afghanistan’s 28 million people)-an equally impoverished country facing similar catastrophic famines, received $100 million from the US in 2001. And that’s humanitarian and economic aid combined, whereas the significantly higher amount of aid given to Afghanistan ($6.57 per capita in Afghanistan, compared to $.75 for each Bangladeshi) is only humanitarian. Both these countries fall under the same watchful eye of the State Department’s Bureau of South Asian Affairs.

Of course, Bangladesh has a government that is already fairly open for foreign investment, and, until the United States replaced the Taliban with a government led by an oil industry insider, Afghanistan was led by a repressive regime totally isolated from the rest of the world. Perhaps that isolation is the reason the United States takes such pride in the help they’ve provided to Afghanistan. By helping them, we were isolated, too!

"- - In 1999 the United States contributed over $70 million in assistance to the Afghan people. This year's total of over $100 million covers food, housing, health and education programs, de-mining and refugee assistance. Of every two dollars of global assistance to Afghans, half is food aid; and of every ten dollars, nine dollars is a United States contribution."

That’s right! No other country could even come close to our generosity. And no other country was so eager to do business with the Taliban. All this from the United States and its leaders who have spent the last ten years blocking humanitarian aid to Iraq because of fears that Saddam Hussein might be redirecting the aid to feed his family and elite guard. So why did we trust the repressive Taliban not to redirect their humanitarian aid, while we continually tried to keep the Iraqi people from receiving aid? Because we’ve been waiting for years to build a pipeline from Turkmenistan through Afghanistan into Pakistan and India. That’s why the Taliban visited Texas in 1997 when George Bush was governor, and that’s why US oil companies continued to meet with the Taliban to negotiate this pipeline deal through the late ‘90s.

Then, on February 5, 2001, there was a headline in the London Times: "Taleban offers US deal to deport bin Laden." The article began:

The Taleban authorities will consider exiling Osama bin Laden, the Saudi-born terrorist believed to be behind the World Trade Centre bombing, to a third country if they receive assurances that the West will recognise them as Afghanistan's legitimate government.

Senior Taleban leaders said their main fear was that the US and other Western countries would continue to ostracise their administration even if bin Laden left Afghanistan. "We hope the new American Administration will be more flexible and engage with us," Abdul Wakil Muttawakil, the Foreign Minister, told The Times. He has written to President Bush. The rigid Islamic rulers are being squeezed hard by United Nations sanctions.

The announcement came six days after the Bush Administration announced the formation of the energy task force headed by Dick Cheney to determine the administration’s energy policy. Three months later, the United States pledges $43 million in humanitarian aid. Almost two years later, we still have no idea what Cheney and Ken Lay and their oil industry buddies discussed in their task force meetings.

Meanwhile, the opium has never really stopped. Yes, the Taliban stopped poppy cultivation, but that didn’t affect them because they maintained huge stockpiles which they continued to sell until the US chased them out of the country-or really, out of power. Now, under Hamid Karzai, the poppy production is booming again, and hundreds of kilos are being produced each week.

But there is a bright side to all this: There’s a deal to build a pipeline through Afghanistan!

UPDATE: Afghanistan is again the world's leading heroin supplier.

[Paridel]

Thanks, that needed to be said!

We have a good friend who is a Ukraine Army officer and he predicted that this would happen.

I pray for him, his wife and his little girl, and their country.

[Huber]

To add to California Patriot's points, it means that Putin has consolidated power in Russia, is squelching any opposition through arrest and intimidation, has supported a puppet who is doing the same in Belarus and is now supporting another puppet in the Ukraine. The Ukraine was known as the "bread basket" of the old Soviet Union. The Ukraine represents to Moscow a warm water port and increased strategic access to the Mediterranean, the Bosphorus and the Middle East. If left unchecked, Russian expansionism is likely to continue with former Soviet "Republics" such as Kazakstan, Armenia, Azerbajan, etc. clearly in the scope. It means Russian control of possibly the largest piece of the world's oil reserves. It also means a threat to other pro-Western miracle economies in the Baltic states (Lithuania, Estonia, and Latvia.)

It means, a tipping point. Russian expansion is building momentum. The momentum can be broken and the progress of democracy in Eastern Europe can continue, or we can resume a cold war with the only difference being that the Russian ecomomy is no longer hampered by delusions of Communist 5 year plans and instead is driven by a Fascist oligarchy which is less efficient than a Western style free-market but a heck of a lot more efficient than Communism! If Russia is stopped here because the costs of overcoming resistance are clear, Putin is likely to calm down for a while. If not, Islamofacists may begin to seem like nothing more than a nuisance in perspective.

Hope this helps to answer your question.