US Weapons Inspectors: "No WMD in Iraq"

[lvwhitebir]

please go and explain to the family of Staff Sgt. Richard L. Morgan Jr. of St. Clairsville, Ohio that the world is better a better place with (sic.) Saddam Hussein. Staff Sgt. Morgan was killed in Iraq on October 5, 2004; approximately 10 months after Hussein was captured.

Please... no one likes it when people get killed. But they joined the military willingly; they weren't drafted, they knew what was at stake. So, are we supposed to only let the troops that want to fight over go? It's sad that they were killed, but they were killed doing EXACTLY what they signed up for, going into a battle when told to. They don't get a say in what conflict they go into.

To me, this kind of post says that you don't support the war (which is your right) AND that you don't support the troops. All you care is that when there's a conflict and someone dies that we shouldn't be there.

WhiteBirch

 

[lvwhitebir]

Let's go one step further, if you will indulge me.

Please define ... 'ties' ... as in the sentence 'the ties to Al-Qaeda AFTER 9/11'
Also, please define ... 'practical co-operation' .... as in the sentence 'there is no evidence that these contacts led to ...'

Since I didn't write the document, I can't define any of that. I also don't wish to try. Most of the sentences I quoted came directly for the intelligence provided to the British government. I would guess that the same type of intelligence came to the American government.

And, let me ask you if you will agree that we now know that Iraq had no Chemical Weapons, no Biological Weapons, and no Nuclear Weapons at the time these meetings were to said to have taken place?

I would not agree with that statement. We knew he had weapons going into the first Gulf war. We don't know what happened to a lot of it after that. All we know is that we don't believe the weapons are there now. They may have been destroyed or they may have been taken out of the country at any time after 1991.

WhiteBirch

 

[michaeledward]

Since I didn't write the document, I can't define any of that. I also don't wish to try. Most of the sentences I quoted came directly for the intelligence provided to the British government. I would guess that the same type of intelligence came to the American government.

I would not agree with that statement. We knew he had weapons going into the first Gulf war. We don't know what happened to a lot of it after that. All we know is that we don't believe the weapons are there now. They may have been destroyed or they may have been taken out of the country at any time after 1991.

Please review the activites of UNSCOM, the United Nations Special Commission. You will find that we do know quite a bit about what happened to any Chemical & Biological weapons after the cessation of the 1991 hostilities.

Seems to me that you must join Kane over there in the Contortionist booth.

Thanks for playing.

Thanks also for pointing out how badly I typed that response up there ... wow, I was way off .... but you knew what I meant, didn't you.

Mike

 

[lvwhitebir]

Not if the police told you that they took away the shotgun in 1994, AND that they checked the house today, and didn't find any shotgun.

So, under the circumstances, do you firebomb your neighbors house?

I think your logic is off. There aren't any police to say they took away the shotgun. All there is are police sitting outside the house saying they searched and found nothing until they got kicked out. Every time they tried to search, though, the neighbor denied them entry into several rooms.

They have found no evidence of the gun, but can't say for sure that it isn't there.

So, knowing you have a court order for the owner to hand over the gun or evidence that he got rid of it, and he's stalled for 12 years, do you just say 'well, we'll keep trying' or do you go in and put him in jail? Especially knowing what he would like to do with the gun if given the chance.

Finally, it wasn't a firebomb. The house is still there. We're trying to help them rebuild. Unfortunately there's still a terrific power struggle for who wants to be in charge and we're caught in the middle. We can't leave and let them duke it out. All we can do is try to get a hold of the situation and get them to make a more rational decision.

WhiteBirch

 

[Flatlander]

To me, this kind of post says that you don't support the war (which is your right) AND that you don't support the troops.

Oh, I don't know about that. If that's the way Mike's post reads to you, well, I think you are taking it both a little extremely, and out of the context of Mike's other work here. I'm pretty sure that michaeledward supports the US forces, and is grateful that they will do the job they are called to do. Further, his concern over their deaths does in fact speak to me that he regards their sacrifices very seriously. It is possible to be unsupportive of this invasion, yet respect the men and women who do the job. :asian:

I can say this because I feel the same way. As I am most certain you know, it is a dirty, rotten job. I work with just one other person, a young man whom I hired just over a year ago. He became injured in Iraq, and was honorably discharged as a result of those injuries. I have heard some of the stories that he is comfortable enough to discuss with me - we are close friends. I hold these soldiers in the highest regard, and cannot begrudge them the work they must do.

 

[lvwhitebir]

Please review the activites of UNSCOM, the United Nations Special Commission. You will find that we do know quite a bit about what happened to any Chemical & Biological weapons after the cessation of the 1991 hostilities.

If they knew what happened to it, resolution 1441 would have been met AND closed AND there would have been no need for the inspectors to go in any more. So it seems to me that they didn't know where it all was...

CNN 4/24/1998
As described in the latest report, the criteria is threefold: "full declaration by Iraq, verification by the Commission, and destruction, removal or rendering harmless under international supervision."

Butler argued that while Iraq may claim to have fully declared all of its weapons, its "consistent refusal" to provide UNSCOM with needed information and materials to back up the claims fails to satisfy the second step -- verification. That makes the destruction of all of Iraq's prohibited weapons programs impossible, the report said.
...
In contrast, Butler's UNSCOM report said the group had made "virtually no progress" over the last six months in determining whether Iraq is holding long-range missiles and chemical and biological weapons.

CNN 9/9/2002
Even so, in those seven years, the inspection teams were never sure of their accounting. While they were in Iraq, Saddam admitted to just a fraction of his missile and chemical stores and falsely denied the existence of a biological program. After Saddam finally quit cooperating in 1998 and the U.S. and Britain bombarded Iraq for four days, the inspectors were gone for good, immensely disturbed by what they had not found. Yet they knew, based on discrepancies in Iraqi documents they had seized, that Iraq still hid 6,000 chemical bombs. They discounted Iraq's contention that it had destroyed all of the 3.9 tons of deadly VX nerve poison that it admitted to having produced or the 500 tons of precursor chemicals to make more. They suspected Iraq retained 550 artillery shells filled with mustard gas.
...
Saddam's biological-weapons program was the deepest black hole. Despite more than 30 searches for various unconventional arms, inspectors did not even know of its existence until mid-1995, when Saddam's defecting son-in-law Hussein Kamal revealed that secret labs buried in Iraq's security, not military, apparatus were cooking up deadly germs. Iraq subsequently admitted it made batches of anthrax bacteria, carcinogenic aflatoxin, agricultural toxins and the paralyzing poison botulinum. Iraqi officials reported they had loaded 191 bombs, including 25 missile warheads, with the poisons for use in the Gulf War. They said they destroyed them after the conflict, but they presented no proof, and Western officials don't believe them.

CNN 1/31/2003
Blix told the council Monday that Iraq has not fully accounted for its stocks of chemical and biological weapons and has not fully accepted its obligation to disarm under U.N. Resolution 1441.

CNN 3/14/2003
The United Nations has been waiting for months for Iraq to provide information that could prove what happened to chemical and biological weapons it possessed in the 1990s.

As much as 1,000 tons of VX are unaccounted for. Iraq also cannot account for as much as 2,245 gallons [8,500 liters] of anthrax.
...

Iraqi Air Force documents found by inspectors in 1998 show that Iraq dropped more than 13,000 chemical bombs during the Iraq-Iran War that lasted from 1983-1988. Iraq previously claimed that 19,500 bombs were used, which could mean that 3,500 bombs -- with more than 1,000 tons of VX -- are unaccounted for.

Hmmm... there's a lot the UN felt was still missing, even in 2003!

Seems to me that you must join Kane over there in the Contortionist booth.

Wow. You're resorting to name calling which is the sign of a weak position. I guess you're not so sure of yourself.

Thanks also for pointing out how badly I typed that response up there ... wow, I was way off .... but you knew what I meant, didn't you.

Yep I did, it was only a couple letters but it did change the meaning of that sentence quite a bit. I wanted to make sure it was read correctly for my comments.

WhiteBirch

 

[lvwhitebir]

It is possible to be unsupportive of this invasion, yet respect the men and women who do the job.

I agree. But to pull out the argument to say that just because people were killed it wasn't worth it is a lousy argument. It's like saying aborting is wrong and parading a dead fetus around a kindergarten class to prove your point. I'm sure everyone wanted to make this completely bloodless. But conflicts like this rarely are.

WhiteBirch

 

[michaeledward]

If they knew what happened to it, resolution 1441 would have been met AND closed AND there would have been no need for the inspectors to go in any more. So it seems to me that they didn't know where it all was... Hmmm... there's a lot the UN felt was still missing, even in 2003!

Wow. You're resorting to name calling which is the sign of a weak position. I guess you're not so sure of yourself.

So, the inspectors say, they can't say for sure what happened to all of the ChemBio stocks. My argument was that the inspectors knew what happened to an awful lot of the ChemBio stocks. There is, of course, a difference between saying "we can't find any" and "they don't have any".

The name calling is not happening out a position of weakness, at all. More, it comes about from fatigue. Any reading of the news over the past month shows that all of the reasons given by the Bush administration to justify the invasion are being disproven, over and over and over again. Many people think that 'Bush is a Strong Leader', and therefore continue to ignore the reports that say he was wrong.

When you are lost, how much further down the road will you drive, before you finally stop and ask directions?

Kane said, "the world is a better place without Saddam Hussein" and used it as the justification for the invasion, and loss of blood and treasure. I guess I would have to ask, how do we know that statement to be true? With each innocent death in Iraq, like when US Airstrikes kill 20 in Fallujah on September 16 & 17, those inclined to join a jihad organization increase. It may very well be that 20 years from now, we will know for certain that the world is not a better place with out Saddam. But, we certainly can't know now.

 

[Feisty Mouse]

I agree. But to pull out the argument to say that just because people were killed it wasn't worth it is a lousy argument. It's like saying aborting is wrong and parading a dead fetus around a kindergarten class to prove your point. I'm sure everyone wanted to make this completely bloodless. But conflicts like this rarely are.

WhiteBirch

I don't think it's quite like parading a dead fetus around a kid's classroom. I think part of the anger that so many Americans are feeling are from people who support our troops - and want them not to be deployed for unnecessary missions. michaeledward was listing the names of people who were killed in Iraq *after* Saddam was captured. If we went in for WMD - not there. If we went in just to get Saddam - he's been outsed and captured. What are we doing there now? We're doing a pretty lousy job of nation-building (as we've done so throughout our recent history). The only thing we seem to be doing successfully is getting Halliburton to some oil fields.

I understand that stabilizing Iraq will be very difficult. Then why did we go in there in the first place? Not for stablity, but ostensibly because of WMD. (Which, again, brings up North Korea, Iran, etc. - why aren't we invading *everyone* with WMD?)

 

[Tkang_TKD]

Please... no one likes it when people get killed. But they joined the military willingly; they weren't drafted, they knew what was at stake. So, are we supposed to only let the troops that want to fight over go? It's sad that they were killed, but they were killed doing EXACTLY what they signed up for, going into a battle when told to. They don't get a say in what conflict they go into.

You are exactly right here. That is why those of us that don't agree with the war still go fight it. It's not our choice, and we absolutely will not refuse an order of the CinC, irregardless of whether we agree with it or not.

To me, this kind of post says that you don't support the war (which is your right) AND that you don't support the troops. All you care is that when there's a conflict and someone dies that we shouldn't be there.

WhiteBirch

I would say that's a little bit extreme. I do not support the invasion of Iraq in any way, shape or form. I do however support my fellow troops in the extreme, and find their deaths to be cheapened by having to have died for a cause that was faulty at best. Believe it or not, you can support the troops without supporting the war. Many of us on active duty do just that every day.

 

[Makalakumu]

Truthfully, I think that not everyone was saying that we had been supplying Saddam with the materials to make the Weapons of Mass Destruction. I know I have seen that claim thrown about, but in my research, I haven't been able to find any definite links.

Take a look at the book House of Bush House of Saud by Craig Unger. The WMD thread can be traced through Don Rumsfeld of all people.

Here are a couple of other interesting sources by the way...

Saddams origins, the Iran/Iraq war, origin of Saddams weapons, and gas attacks.

http://www.polyconomics.com/searchbase/02-18-98.html

The First Gulf War

http://www.polyconomics.com/searchbase/02-19-98.html

Did Saddam Gas his own people?

http://www.polyconomics.com/searchbase/11-18-98.html

Enjoy...

upnorthkyosa

 

[Phoenix44]

Take a look at the book House of Bush House of Saud by Craig Unger.

Ya know, I've read every book on current events I could get my hands on. I subscribe to every indie newspaper and website I can. I've seen every documentary I had time for, and then some.

But the only book I could not finish was House of Bush/House of Saud. The revelations about the relationship between the two dynasties, and the political implications, were so nauseating that I became physically ill, and put the book away after the first 75 pages.

upnorthkyosa, you're a better man than I am.

 

[Tgace]

http://www.mwarrior.com/TerrorWar.htm

The Real Story about the WMD?

By Larry Elder

© 2004 Laurence A. Elder

"Week after week after week after week," said Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., about President Bush's rationale for going to war with Iraq, "we were told lie after lie after lie after lie." Were we?

Jordan recently seized 20 tons of chemicals trucked in by confessed al-Qaida members who brought the stuff in from Syria. The chemicals included VX, Sarin and 70 others. But the media seems curiously incurious about whether one could reasonably trace this stuff back to Iraq. Had the terrorists released a "toxic cloud," Jordanian officials say 80,000 would have died!

So, I interviewed terrorism expert John Loftus, who once held some of the highest security clearances in the world. Loftus, a former Army officer, served as a Justice Department prosecutor. He investigated CIA cases of Nazi war criminals for the U.S. attorney general. Author of several books, Loftus once received a Pulitzer Prize nomination.

John Loftus: There's a lot of reason to think (the source of the chemicals) might be Iraq. We captured Iraqi members of al-Qaida, who've been trained in Iraq, planned for the mission in Iraq, and now they're in Jordan with nerve gas. That's not the kind of thing you buy in a grocery store. You have to have obtained it from someplace.

Larry Elder: They couldn't have obtained it from Syria?

Loftus: Syria does have the ability to produce certain kinds of nerve gasses, but in small quantities. The large stockpiles were known to be in Iraq. The best U.S. and allied intelligence say that in the 10 weeks before the Iraq war, Saddam's Russian adviser told him to get rid of all the nerve gas. It would be useless against U.S. troops; the rubber suits were immune to it. So they shipped it across the border to Syria and Lebanon and buried it.

Now, in the last few weeks, there's a controversy that Syria has been trying to get rid of this stuff. They're selling it to al-Qaida is one supposition. We know the Sudanese government demanded that the Syrian government empty its warehouse in Khartoum where they've been hiding illegal missiles along with components of weapons of mass destruction.

But there's no doubt these guys confessed on Jordanian television that they received the training for this mission in Iraq ... And from the description it appears this is the form of nerve gas known as VX. It's very rare, and very tough to manufacture ... one of the most destructive chemical mass-production weapons that you can use ... They wanted to build three clouds, a mile across, of toxic gas. A whole witch's brew of nasty chemicals that were going to go into this poison cloud, and this would have gone over shopping malls, hospitals ...

Elder: You said that the Russians told Saddam, "There is going to be an invasion. Get rid of your chemical and biological weapons."

Loftus: Sure. It would only bring the United Nations down on their heads if they were shown to really have weapons of mass destruction. It's not generally known, but the CIA has found 41 different material breaches where Saddam did have a weapons of mass destruction program of various types. It was completely illegal. But no one could find the stockpiles. And the liberal press seems to be focusing on that.

Elder: It seems to me that this is a huge, huge story.

Loftus: It's embarrassing to the (press). They've staked their reputations that this stuff wasn't there. And now all of a sudden we have al-Qaida agents from Iraq showing up with weapons of mass destruction.

Elder: David Kay said, in an interim report, that there was a possibility that WMD components were shipped to Syria.

Loftus: A possibility? We had a Syrian journalist who defected to Paris in January. The guy is dying of cancer, and he said, "Look, my friends in Syrian intelligence told me exactly where the stuff is buried." He named three sites in Syria, and the Israelis have confirmed the three sites. They know where the stuff is, but the problem is that the United States can't just go around invading Arab countries ... We know from Israeli and defectors' intelligence that the son of the Syrian defense minister was paid 50 million bucks to bring the stuff across the border and bury it.

Elder: Why would al-Qaida attack Jordan?

Loftus: Jordan is an ally of the United States. It's at peace with Israel. And Jordan has a long history of trying to prosecute terrorists ... There are a lot of reasons ... They want to make an example of them. They want to terrorize as many of the Arab states as possible. This is sort of a political dream for the president. The worst nightmare is al-Qaida gets weapons of mass destruction from Iraq. And it looks like it's coming true.

A Syria /Iraq /al-Qaida /WMD connection? Why, this calls for a congressional investigation.

 

[michaeledward]

And another story to spin the facts. Duelfer's report says Iraq has not tried to make any Weapons of Mass Destruction since the 1991 war. All stocks they had were destroyed.

We know this because we have interrogated all of those Iraqi scientists that were invovled in the programs.

Tgace ... you are beginning to sound like Sean Hannity, a shill for Bush.

Are there Weapons of Mass Destruction in the world. You bet. But they were not in Iraq according to the definative sources.

 

[hardheadjarhead]

The statement above saying that Syria can only produce nerve gas in small amounts doesn't wash with this article from the somewhat conservative Washington Times:

http://www.washtimes.com/national/20030916-113346-3232r.htm

"Syria has one of the most advanced chemical weapons programs in the Arab world that includes the nerve agent sarin and the more deadly nerve gas known as VX, Mr. Bolton said."

So Syria could have indeed produced the VX in question. None of the articles mention how much VX was seized, whether it was tons or quarts.

TGace's rather speculative article by Elder seems to be another example of the Right scrambling to find justification for the war. Perhaps the article is an attempt to justify an upcoming invasion of Syria.

A Janes Defense article on the seizure of WMD's...

http://www.janes.com/security/international_security/news/fr/fr040728_1_n.shtml

http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/meast/04/26/jordan.terror/

Regards,


Steve

 

[Cryozombie]

Question guys...

Why are news reports, articles, fact-finding reports etc... presented by "The Right" all Flase, biased, spun, made-up, wrong, etc...

while all of them from the left are 100% accurate and fact carved into stone and unquestionable?

 

[rmcrobertson]

Gee, tgrace, would this be THE Larry Elder, the Clarence Thomas of conservative talk radio? And would this be the same John Loftus who wrote:

What Congress Does Not Know about Enron and 9/11
May 31, 2002 For Immediate Release
By Atty. John J. Loftus*
http://www.john-loftus.com/

A captured Al Qaida document reveals that US energy companies were secretly negotiating with the Taliban to build a pipeline. The document was obtained by the FBI but was not allowed to be shared with other agencies in order to protect Enron. Multiple sources confirm that American law enforcement agencies were deliberately kept in the dark and systematically prevented from connecting the dots before 9/11 in order to aid Enron’s secret and immoral Taliban negotiations.

The suppressed Al Qaida document tends to support recent claims of a cover-up made by several mid-level intelligence and law enforcement figures. Their ongoing terrorist investigations appear to have been hindered during the same sensitive time period while the Enron Corporation was still negotiating with the Taliban. An inadvertent result of the Taliban pipeline cover-up was that the Taliban’s friends in Al Qaida were able to complete their last eight months of preparations for 9/11 while the Enron secrecy block was still in force.

Although the latest order to block investigations allegedly resulted from Enron’s January 2002 appeal to Vice President Dick Cheney, it appears that there were at least three previous block orders, each building upon the other, stretching back for decades and involving both Republican and Democratic administrations.


Gosh, I wouldn't think that there would be much there to really militate for supporting a Bush/Cheney ticket, what with the Enron stuff and all.

 

[michaeledward]

Question guys...

Why are news reports, articles, fact-finding reports etc... presented by "The Right" all Flase, biased, spun, made-up, wrong, etc...

while all of them from the left are 100% accurate and fact carved into stone and unquestionable?

Technopunk. They are not all false, biased, spun, made-up, wrong, etc.

However, The United States Government has just spent 20 months, 200 Billion Dollars, and more than 1000 American Soldiers lives to 'Dis-arm' Iraq of their Weapons of Mass Destruction. The official report from the Iraqi Survey Group, the organization to determine the status of Iraq's Weapons and Weapons programs, has just handed in their final report. That report says, there weren't any Weapons. Sorry.

Now, when David Kay, the original leader of the Iraqi Survey Group quit the job in January because there weren't any weapons, one might argue that the job has not yet been completed. So, just because David Kay hasn't found any weapons, doesn't mean there aren't any weapons; we need to finish the job.

Well, now we have finished the job. We are told that the lost blood and money is Ok, because Saddam Hussein had the 'intent to rebuild his weapons programs' and he was 'gaming the inspectors'. Well, I have the intent to win the lottery. Having the intent does not make something so.


Technopunk, I want to further state that I am not too concerned about what Tgace thinks or posts on this board. The way I read it, Tgace is firmly set in his convictions, just as I am in mine. I don't expect logic and facts to change his mind. He is as anti-democrat as I am anti-republican. That's OK.

I am concerned about the lurkers on this board. There are people who read these threads without ever posting. Every post in the Study is viewed between 9 and 10 times. I don't want some silent, undecided, to read Tgace's post and accept it as truthful.

Sometimes, Tgace just likes to kick up the dust, to piss off rmcroberson and me. That's fine too ... but so far, 1073 American soldiers have died over the weapons of mass destruction that don't exist, and didn't exist. And I think anyone who is eligable to vote on November 2, 2004 should clearly have that in mind at polling time.

That's Why! Thanks for letting me rant. Mike

 

[Tgace]

More for those of you who make your political decisions based on what some guy you never met posts on the internet....

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=36463

OPERATION IRAQI FREEDOM
Report: Syria hiding Iraqi WMD
Sources say relative of President Assad smuggled arms to 3 places

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Posted: January 6, 2004
1:00 a.m. Eastern



© 2004 WorldNetDaily.com

A relative of Syrian President Bashar Assad is hiding Iraqi weapons of mass destruction in three locations in Syria, according to intelligence sources cited by an exiled opposition party.

The weapons were smuggled in large wooden crates and barrels by Zu Alhema al-Shaleesh, known for moving arms into Iraq in violation of U.N. resolutions and for sending recruits to fight coalition forces, said the U.S.-based Reform Party of Syria.

The party, based in Potomac, Md., regards itself as a secular body comprised of Syrians who want to see the country embrace "real democratic and economic reforms."

One weapons-cache location identified by the sources is a mountain tunnel near the village of al-Baidah in northwest Syria, the report said. The tunnel is known to house a branch of the Assad regime's national security apparatus.

Two other arms supplies are reported to be in west-central Syria. One is hidden at a factory operated by the Syrian Air Force, near the village of Tal Snan, between the cities of Hama and Salmiyeh. The third location is tunnels beneath the small town of Shinshar, which belongs to the 661 battalion of the Syrian Air Force.

The nephew of Zu Alhema al-Shaleesh, Assef al-Shaleesh, runs Al Bashair Trading Co., a front for the Assad family involved prior to the war in oil smuggling from Iraq and arms smuggling into the country. Al-Bashair has offices in Damascus, Beirut and Baghdad.

In an exclusive interview yesterday with the London Telegraph, Assad came close to admitting his country possessed stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction.

Assad told the London paper Syria rejects American and British demands for concessions on weapons of mass destruction, insisting Damascus is entitled to defend itself by acquiring its own chemical and biological deterrent.

He said Israel must agree to abandon its undeclared nuclear arsenal in order for Syria to consider any deal with the U.S.

Last week, the Los Angeles Times reported Al Bashair Trading Co. participated in the smuggling of millions of dollars worth of sophisticated arms and equipment to Saddam Hussein for three years prior to the Iraqi leader's overthrow.

Al Bashair executives met with North Korean firms before the war began, according to the Los Angeles daily. The paper's three-month investigation included the translation of 800 signed contracts found in the Al Bashair Trading Co. office shortly before U.S. troops entered Baghdad.

Just prior to the U.S.-led effort to oust Hussein, SES International Corp. signed at least 50 contracts to supply weapons and gear to Iraq, the Times said, including 1,000 heavy machine guns and up to 20 million rounds for assault rifles.

Not all the weapons were delivered, but some may still be in use by terrorists battling the U.S. occupation forces, the newspaper said.

At least one shipment of arms was completed with the help of the Syrian government in violation of a U.N. arms embargo.

SES International Corp. denied any wrongdoing, while Syria's foreign ministry refused to comment to the Times.

 

[rmcrobertson]

Well, you're right...an extremeply reliable source, what with Sean Hannity's clenched-jaw stalwart Defender of America photo on one side, and this article by somebody named, "Vox Day," who claims to be a member of the SFWA and a, "Christian conservative," on the other:


------------------------------------------------------------------------

------------------------------------------------------------------------
Corporations are not capitalism
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Posted: October 11, 2004
1:00 a.m. Eastern

©*2004*WorldNetDaily.com


One of the most widely believed myths in America today is the belief that corporations are an inherent part of capitalism. Concomitant with this is the idea that big corporations and big government have an intrinsically hostile relationship and that the stock market is a free market.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

Capitalism was already well entrenched and the Industrial Revolution was complete when the U.S. Supreme Court radically altered the concept of the corporate charter in 1886 by ruling that the Southern Pacific Railroad was a "natural person" under the U.S. Constitution. Prior to this time, corporations were strictly controlled by state law, which is why the word "limited" still occurs in corporate language.


The Supreme Court had tried once before to expand corporate power by stripping sovereignty from the state of New Hampshire in 1819. In response, many states wrote laws to ensure that they would retain their sovereignty – 19 "even amended their constitutions to make corporate charters subject to alteration or revocation by their legislatures".

The 1886 ruling trumped these efforts, fulfilling Thomas Jefferson's prescient fears. In a letter to George Logan written on Nov. 12, 1816, he wrote:


"I hope we shall take warning from the example and crush in it's birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws our country."


But these monied corporations did more than challenge our government, they corrupted it entirely and established a symbiotic relationship with it. This symbiotic relationship is openly anti-capitalistic, as undying corporations take advantage of laws originally written to protect the entrepeneurs who are the genuine engine of technological progress and economic growth, and use them to sustain their unnatural, parasitic life.

For example, Disney successfully lobbied Congress in 1998 to extend the period of copyright law for 20 years, increasing it to the life of the author plus 70 years. This is obviously of no benefit to a deceased author or his children, but it does prevent Mickey Mouse from entering the public domain while remaining technically within the constitutional dictates that copyrights be granted for a "limited time."

Corporations also use the government to protect their pool of investment money in the stock market. Due to the massive regulation of this anti-capitalist and unfree market, entrepreneurs needing to raise large sums of capital to challenge established corporate competitors are forced to submit to the predatory regime of the investment banks. In a genuinely free market, the owners of small, but growing businesses could simply sell their public shares over the Internet to anyone who wished to invest.

Indeed, with today's high-speed communications technology and digital money, there is no more need for Wall Street than there is for Congress. Eliminating both and replacing them with electronic systems – Free and Open Source, of course – would result in the realization of significantly more pure and efficient strains of capitalism and democracy alike.

One need only look at the various socialist and communist states around the world and the friendly relations that giant Western multinationals have with them to realize there is no fundamental link between capitalism and corporations. Gozprom, LUKoil and 400 other Soviet corporations were operating inside and outside the USSR prior to 1989, while Communist China not only permits corporations, but owns several that are listed on the Global Fortune 500. Some of them, such as PetroChina and Sinopec, are even traded on the Hong Kong and New York stock markets.

In fact, it is not the Chinese government, but the People's Liberation Army that owns the International Trust and Investment Corporation, which among other things has more than 200 Canadian corporations and is the largest "private" operator of shipping container terminals.

Not everything to which the idiot Left is hostile is necessarily good. It is impossible to assert that the age of untrammeled corporatism has been friendly to individual liberty or prosperity, especially when real wages have been falling for three decades – they are 14 percent lower than they were in 1972.

The genius of human invention and the undeniable blessings of capitalism do not stem from artificial structures at law, they come only from the mind of the individual. Conservatives would do well to remember that the next time that the corporations go to their comrades in Congress, demanding more violations of human freedom and more restrictions on individual liberty in order to sustain their vampirish unlives.


OOOOH, sounds like Marx to me. Incidentally, the suggestion that corporations only appeared in the 19th century is of counse utterly wrong; they were concomittant with the rise of capitalism, dating back at least as far as entities like the East India Trading Company and the various trading corporations of the 17th century and before.