Josh Marshall: Spain Opens the Books on Bush?

[Tandalayo_Scheisskopf]

My ability to bring you the full details on this are, to put it charitably, limited by my inability to accurately translate Spanish. But it seems someone in the Spanish government has leaked to El Pais transcripts of conversations between President Bush and then Spanish Prime Minister Aznar just before the outbreak of the Iraq War. The gist seems to be that Bush was rather candid about the fact that the efforts to find a peaceful solution to the crisis were a sham and that the war was a done deal.

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/054196.php

Link to the original story in El Pais. Could we get those who speak and read Spanish to translate this story?

http://tinyurl.com/2e5xds

[Gregorian]

1. Here's a Google translation of the webpage.

http://translate.google.com/translate?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.elpais.com%2Farticulo%2Finternacional%2FBush%2Faviso%2FAznar%2Festaria%2FBagdad%2Fmarzo%2Fresolucion%2FONU%2Felpepuint%2F20070925elpepuint_17%2FTes&langpair=es%7Cen&hl=en&safe=off&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&prev=%2Flanguage_tools

[Old and In the Way]

2. Just read that and was going to link it when I saw your post - war crimes anyone?

It was obvious to me that there was never any doubt that he was going to start a war without cause or effort to find a diplomatic solution. Glad to see that other governments are finally exposing the boy-king's warcrimes.

[billbuckhead]

3. It's official, Bush is a war criminal

Support a war criminal and you are a war criminal.

[chill_wind]

4. A massive amount of evidence, yet nothing happens in the face of it, despite each new disclosure

and the band played on.

k&R.

[Igel]

5. Here are bits.

I'm intercalating paragraphs because I'm tired and in short order will be going to bed. No point posting stuff I'm not translating. And I'll probably look at this in the morning with a bit of horror. "Why did I translate X like *that*?!"

Cuatro semanas antes de la invasión de Irak, que se produjo en la noche del 19 al 20 de marzo de 2003, George W. Bush mantenía en público su exigencia a Sadam Hussein en los siguientes términos: desarme o guerra. A puerta cerrada, Bush reconocía que la guerra era inevitable. Durante una larga conversación privada con el entonces presidente español, José María Aznar, celebrada el sábado 22 de febrero de 2003 en el rancho de Crawford, Tejas, Bush dejó claro que había llegado el momento de deshacerse de Sadam. "Quedan dos semanas. En dos semanas estaremos militarmente listos. Estaremos en Bagdad a finales de marzo", le dijo a Aznar.

Four weeks before the Iraq invasion, which took place overnight from the 19th to the 20th of March 2003, GWB had been publicly maintaining his demand for SH in the following terms: Disarm or face war. Behind closed doors, Bush admitted that war was inevitable. During a long private conversation with the then Spanish president Jose Maria Aznar, held 22/2/03 at the ranch in Crawford, Tx, Bush made clear that the time to be rid of Saddam had arrived. "There are two weeks left. In two weeks we'll be ready militarily. We'll be in Baghdad at the end of March," he told Aznar.


Dentro de este plan, Bush había terminado por aceptar, el 31 de enero de 2003 -tras una entrevista con el primer ministro británico, Tony Blair-, introducir una última maniobra diplomática: la propuesta de una segunda resolución del Consejo de Seguridad de Naciones Unidas. Su objetivo: abrir la puerta legal a la guerra unilateral que EE UU se aprestaba a desencadenar con más de 200.000 soldados preparados en la región para atacar.

As part of this plan, Bush had concluded by accepting, on 31/1/03--after a meeting with the British PM Tony Blair--one last diplomatic ploy: Proposing a second resolution to the UN Sec. Council. It's goal: To provide a legal cover for the unilateral war that the US was rushing to unleash with more than 200k soldiers in the region ready to attack.


It continues. 2/3 through it discusses Blix's expectations and conclusion that if the degree of Iraqi openness to unannounced spot inspections continued and increased, they'd make short work of the process.

I've been told that Korean shows finer granularity in the expression and distinguishing of deontic and epistemic modalities than English. "War is inevitable" ... which modality is intended? The distinction is no more clear in El Pais' translation of *'s English than it was when the original English was reported in the American press. I was hoping for more. Shucks.