From: Tim May <tcmay@got.net>
Date: Fri, 20 Feb 1998 04:31:10 +0800
To: cypherpunks@Algebra.COM
Subject: No Real Debate Yet on the War
Message-ID: <v03102806b112432696c3@[207.167.93.63]>
MIME-Version: 1.0
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By the way, for those of you not living in the U.S., and who haven't been
here to see the way the debate (or lack of it) has been developing in the
U.S., let me make a few points:

* the preparations for a new war have been going on for several weeks

* Congress has taken no votes one way or the other about this imminent war

* Congress, in fact, is not in session, and has not been called back into
session to debate and discuss and ultimately vote on a Declaration of War
(or what passes for it these days, a "vote of moral support")

* the American public has shown a lukewarm response at best to the plans,
such as they understand them

* speaking of plans, the plans are very vague. The public does not know
what the goals of a war might be, what the endgame options are, how many
Americans are likely to die, what the likely counterpunch will be (hint:
think terrorist attacks), and just how the U.S. plans to fight a war
without clear goals and clear support.

* essentially no one thinks a bombing campaign will either kill Saddam, who
moves around a lot to highly secret locations (including houses of
peasants), or will destroy all of those small cannisters of anthrax and
sarin and the like...when asked, Albright and Cohen are vague and
dissembling.

* meanwhile, scare reports of terrorists in Las Vegas are making the
headlines...a perfect "give us some jimbells to scare the nation" scenario.
(With the usual scary stuff about his "survivalist" books, his membership
in Christian Identity, and his links to Aryan Nation. Throw him jail!)

In short, where is the debate about this upcoming war?

Is Congress now so ineffectual that its main power, the power to declare
war, is no longer "operative"?

Amazing.

--Tim May, posting before his own home gets raided for having supplied PGP
to Christian Identity and Aryan Nation.


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