On Sun, 28 Nov 2004 06:39:51 +0900, "John Yamamoto-Wilson"
<johndeletethis@rarebooksinjapan.com> wrote:

>MacHamish wrote:
>
>> I think the system I live under is just great.
>
>Well, it's the world's biggest economy, so that has to count for something.
>
>> You're probably going to argue that not everyone is prosperous and that's
>> just too horrid to contemplate.
>
>No, I don't believe the world owes anyone a living. I've never been to the
>US myself, but I know perfection is not of this world and I don't suppose
>the US is significantly less perfect than a lot of other places.
>
>> If the world were just a little less crazy
>
>Well, that's a big if!
>
>> I don't believe the Lancet's figure.
>
>I neither believe nor disbelieve any of the figures. 

But you were certainly quick to trot out the Lancet study.  :-)

>They are all estimates.
>Some may be closer to the truth, some may be further from it. Still, we are
>probably talking in terms of somewhere between 10,000 and 100,000 people,
>many of them victims, not of the invading forces, but of the instability
>arising from the invasion.

Let's tell it like it is.  The Coalition does the best they can -- better
than any army in the history of war -- to avoid civilian casualties.  The
insurgents and foreign fighters kill Iraqi civilians as a matter of strategy
and tactics.  There's no moral equivalence there.

>> its a damn shame that there are any figures at all to report
>
>Indeed, but they are the inevitable consequence of conflict, so if you
>support the conflict you are saddled with accepting responsibility for the
>figures.

You snipped the bit where I said I agree.  It's a shame this whole thing had
to happen, but in my view of things, the time to stand up to militant Islam
is now, not later.  I'm convinced that fewer lives will be lost in the
longer term by dealing with the problem now.  I don't think we have any
choice but to deal with it now.

>> I'm convinced Bush did exactly the right thing.  You have
>>  to be completely horrified by that, but that's where I'm
>> coming from.
>
>I'm not horrified at all. You'd already made it clear where you were coming
>from. If all wise people agreed then passage through life would be easy, but
>the plethora of isms and ologies have been spawned - many of them - by very
>gifted people who happen to differ. How can there be dialogue if Christians
>"have to be completely horrified" every time they hear a Muslim, or
>left-wingers "have to be completely horrified" every time a voice speaks out
>from the right? And if there cannot be dialogue, what else is left to us?
>Are we simply going to have to battle it out with our fists and WMDs, until
>there are no dissenting voices left to horrify us?

I've been through all of this about a hundred times.  I despair of
convincing anyone of my position who isn't already convinced.  Likewise, no
one has convinced me that my position is wrong, though many have tried.  In
fact, when I engage in these discussions with the other side, I become ever
more convinced that I'm right.  I've been called a Nazi, a redneck, a right
wing nutcase, and worse.  I've been told to "sit down and shut up".
Bizarrely, I've been accused of denying others their right to free speech by
exercising my own right to it.   I'll try dialogue one more time, and maybe
even more, but its almost a dead certainty that it will lead to nothing
except a lot of words and wasted time.  In fact, there's a good likelihood
that it will polarize us even deeper into our respective positions.  

>> I'm about up to here with this multilateral/unilateral business.  In the
>> first place, the US action is not unilateral.  There is a coalition.
>
>Of sorts. The amount of propaganda surrounding the second Gulf War is quite
>extraordinary. The US claimed "a coalition of the willing" consisting of 49
>countries. In reality, many of the countries named depend too heavily on US
>aid to be in a position to deny a statement of this kind, while others
>(notably Azerbaijan, Colombia , Uganda, Ukraine and Uzbekistan) are not
>stable democracies themselves, and scarcely in a postition to declare
>themselves "willing" to impose democracy on another country. A handful
>(Croatia, Slovenia, the Solomon Islands) embarrassed the US by publicly
>disavowing their supposed "willingness".
>
>In fact, only 19 of the 49 countries actually gave active military or
>political support. These were Australia, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Denmark,
>Hungary, Italy, Japan, Latvia, Lithuania, Netherlands, Philippines, Poland,
>Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Spain, Turkey, Ukraine and the United Kingdom.
>To these may be added Saudi Arabia, which apparently gave a fair bit of
>behind-the-scenes support, Kuwait and Taiwan (not named by the US for fear
>of offending China).

Bingo!!  That doesn't sound like unilateralism to me.  But have it your way.

>Amazingly, in none of these countries was the majority of citizens actually
>in favour of embarking on the war, making a total mockery of the democratic
>values that Iraq was shortly due to be blessed with.

I think you've got both a disingenuous assertion and a non-sequitur there.
To my knowledge, none of those countries held referendums on the matter, so
we don't really know whether the majority of citizens opposed their
countries' involvement or not.  I think you're extrapolating to reach that
conclusion based on the number of demonstrators who turned out, but, as many
as there were, they were still a small percentage of the population.
Whatever the case, it's an uprovable assertion that the majority of people
in those countries opposed the war.  In any case, we can't descend into mob
rule, either.

Furthermore, wouldn't you agree that democracy is a blessing no matter how
it's achieved?  Maybe what you really mean is that the people of Iraq are
incapable of democracy.  I hope not because that would be a condescending,
supercilious, and bigoted, colonialist attitude.  (I'm not accusing you of
that, John.  It's rhetorical on my part, but there are people who hold that
view.)

>In the end, only Britain (the US's main ally), Australia, Denmark, Poland
>and Spain (all playing only very minor roles) offered active military
>support, a very far cry from the 34 countries - most prominent of which were
>the United States, Britain, Egypt, France, and Saudi Arabia - who sent
>forces into the first Gulf War.

Yes, and I find the position of those countries that dropped out
indefensible in view of the fact that GW II is an extension and continuation
of GW I, arising out of Saddam's failure to comply with the terms of the
truce.

>The list of opposing countries was much greater. France, Germany, Russia and
>China were opposed from the start. 

Right, as they were selling him armaments and any other dual-use items he
asked for, in contravention of the sanctions they voted for in the initial
UN resolution.  Not to mention that they had been compromised by graft
through the Oil-for-Food scandal.  Not to mention the billions of dollars
Saddam owned them, particularly France and Russia.  Not to mention the side
deals for developing oil fields they had negotiated with Saddam.  It's
completely absurd, in my view, to attribute the actions of France, Germany,
Russia, and China to noble principles.  They were corrupted and stood to
benefit more by keeping Saddam in place, in spite of the danger he
represented to his own people, his neighbors, the Middle East, and the
world.

>The Arab League (which had condemned
>Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in 1991, and broadly supported the coalition
>against Iraq at that time) condemned it unanimously, 

I'm sorry, but I have a very low opinion of the League or Arab nations.

>as did all 52 members
>of the African Union. Specific condemnation of the war also came from
>Argentina, Austria, Belarus, Belgium, Canada, Chile, Croatia,  the Czech
>Republic, Greece, Indonesia, Liechtenstein, Malaysia, Mexico, Norway,
>Serbia, Sweden, Switzerland, Slovenia, the Vatican, Venezuela and Vietnam.
>Widespread popular protests and hints (sometimes heavy ones) of government
>disapproval were made in many other countries.
>
>(Main source for the above:
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Governments'_pre-war_positions_on_invasion_of_I
>raq)
>
>> Bush went to the UN and presented his case.
>> Certain members of the Security Council rebuffed him.
>
>Quite rightly, surely? The main reason he was giving - that Iraq possessed
>WMDs in defiance of the UN - would doubtless have swayed them *if it had
>been true*. But it was not true. 

At that time, before the invasion, every major intelligence agency in the
world believed that Saddam was concealing banned weapons.  Even that
cupcake, Hans Blix, said he fully expected to find them when the inspections
resumed.  Furthermore, Saddam acted as though he had them, which has now
been attributed to bluffing his neighbors to deter them from attacking Iraq.

It's a certain fact that Saddam had BW and CW before GW I.  He failed to
declare all of it, as required by the UN resolution (truce) following his
ouster from Kuwait.  The first team of inspectors had to dig it out the hard
way as he ran them around in circles, denied them access to certain
suspicious sites, and finally expelled them in 1998.  There was plenty of
evidence of the quantities he possessed, even after the inspectors had
destroyed some of it, in the documents provided by the unfortunate kamel
brothers, Saddam's sons-in-law, during their brief defection.

It's also a certain fact that Saddam was lobbying to have the sanctions
lifted, and that this was the true object of his largess in distributing
bribes to highly placed UN officials and key permanent members of the UN
Security Council.  How can anyone trust that he wouldn't reconstitute his
WMD programs the minute the world turned their attention elsewhere?  He
certainly had the technology and, in the sick inner workings of his mind,
the motivation.

Finally, the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.  In other
words, the fact that the WMD haven't been found doesn't prove that they
didn't -- and don't -- exist.  Where did the known quantities of BW and CW
go?  To me, it's incomprehensible that Saddam suddenly decided to comply
with the UN resolutions and destroyed them.  If he did, it was incumbent on
him to prove it to the world community with solid documentation.  I assume
you know that some sources such as DebkaFile have reported based on
information from their sources that he shipped the BW and CW to Syria where
they were subsequently buried in the Bekaa Valley.  I'm not saying it's
true, but it certainly should be evaluated rather than dismissed out of
hand.  Of course, it can't be investigated without Syria's cooperation, and
we know where Syria stands.

You'll probably put this down on the grounds that I'm clinging desperately
to a false justification.  If so, be my guest.  But maybe you'll see that
there is a certain relentless logic to it. 

>The secondary reason - that Saddam Hussein
>was linked to Al Qaeda - is unsubstantiated and in all likelihood equally
>hollow. 

Not so fast there.  There is some evidence of links between Saddam and Al
Qaeda.  But even if we disregard it because it's all so shrouded in
clandestine meetings, there is certainly plenty of incontrovertible evidence
that Saddam supported Islamic terrorism.  That's really the crux of the
matter as far as I'm concerned.  I don't think there is any doubt that
Saddam was bankrolling and sheltering anti-Western terrorists and that he
would have had no hesitation to use his terrorist connections to harm the
USA and its citizens.  After all, he has been linked to the first WTC
bombing in 1993, and he actually plotted to assassinate George Bush, the
elder, which is clearly an act of terroism that would have touched off a
major crisis had it not been interdicted.

>So now we're down to, "Well, he was a nasty piece of work, and
>Iraq's better off without him" - maybe so, but what business is that of the
>US or the UK? - and, "He was *thinking* of acquiring WMDs" - as if Bush were
>telepathic and thought was a crime.

As you've seen above, I easily fit into the school that says he was a nasty
piece of work and the world (not just Iraq) is better off without him.
Anyone who thinks otherwise is nuts as far as I'm concerned.  Anyone who
thinks Saddam was harmless should bone up on the activities of his two sons,
Uday and Qusay, who stood in line to take the throne at the end of Saddam's
days. 

>> France's veto was particularly galling, if you know what
>> I mean.
>
>Not really. I've never really understood the US response to France's
>position. France played a significant part in the first Gulf War and was the
>first to urge the US and other countries to do something about the situation
>in Kosovo. Its gallic (and to you galling) refusal to string along with the
>lie that Iraq had WMDs seems pretty reasonable to me.

I'll tell you what's galling about it.  It was a deliberate betrayal of
diplomacy.  In the lead-up to the Security Council vote on a final
resolution authorizing the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. de Villepin told
Colin Powell in their private meetings that France was ready to vote for the
resolution.  Then, in front of the assembly, with no prior warning or
discussion, de Villepin pulled the old switcharoo and announced that France
would veto the resolution if it came to a vote.  Of course, Chirac was
behind this.  The resolution didn't come up for a vote, and the US ended up
with un oeuf sur le visage thanks to a deliberate bit of haughty
maliciousness on Chirac's part.  Chirac has earned our enmity by continually
sticking his thumb in our eye.

>>  Where does Chirac get the authority to single handedly
>> determine US defense policy?
>
>I find that an incomprehensible response. Chirac does not and did not
>determine US defence policy. He had the authority to veto a UN resolution
>and he made it clear that, if push came to shove, he would do so. What's
>wrong with that?  The US has used its authority to veto US motions on any
>number of occasions (routinely - until a recent abstention - where any form
>of censure of Israel was concerned). It is part of taking one's place at the
>conference table to accept that sometimes you will put other people's noses
>out of joint and sometimes they will put your nose out of joint. Why does
>this provoke howls of outrage?

It all comes down to one single question.  If you believe that Saddam posed
a threat to stability in the Middle East and the world, as I do, then what
Chirac did was a betrayal and an obstruction in the road to solving the
problem of Saddam Hussein.  When you add Chirac's less than pure motives to
the equation, it becomes even more outrageous.

>> So, there was no UN Resolution beyond 1441 showing Saddam
>> Hussein that the UN, representing the world community, was
>> serious about enforcing its own resolutions.  It even made a sham
>> of 1441, which did, in fact, call for serious consequences if Saddam
>> continued to ignore the UN's demands.
>
>Oh, come on! How many UN resolutions have been made a sham of by the US,
>because they didn't fit with the US's agenda? 

I don't know.  You tell me.  Then tell me what was wrong with the US's
agenda.  If it comes down to supporting Israel, then tell me what's wrong
with supporting Israel.  Tell me also how many resolutions the UN has
propounded against Palestinian terrorism.  This is a whole other area of
debate.  Let's stick to one subject for now.

>And, anyway, it is highly
>doubtful that 1441 was made a sham of. Iraq agreed to the provisions of 1441
>on November 13th, 2002 (two days before the daedline), Hans Blix and Mohamed
>ElBaradei led weapons inspectors into Iraq later that month, Iraq filed a
>12,000-page weapons declaration the following month, on January 30th the
>weapons inspectors concluded that Iraq had not complied fully with the terms
>of the resolution, but on February 14th (St. Valentine's day!) they
>concluded that Iraq had cooperated pretty fully, with a few remaining doubts
>that needed more time to resolve. Pretty reasonable, I think, given that it
>is always harder to prove a negative (and, remember, it *was* a negative;
>the doubts were groundless).
>
>The US seized on these remaining doubts as a pretext to go to war. Britain
>went along with that. Given that the doubts proved groundless, isn't it to
>the credit of France and others that they dissented, rather than to their
>discredit?

Absolutely not.  This misses the point entirely.  The point was not some
petty legalisms over documents, or diplomatic niceties, or weapons
inspectors running around Iraq trying to find vials of deadly germs in
haystacks.  The point was regime change -- eliminating a dictator who was a
danger to his neighbors, a threat to the West, a friend to terrorists, and a
murderer of his own people.  The US's greatest mistake was to allow the
debate to be over WMD's instead of the vile nature of the regime.  Not that
it would have made much difference, but at least we wouldn't have all this
bullshit about the WMD not being found.

>> Of course, now we know what was going on behind the scenes
>> with the Oil-for-Food scandal.  I would submit to you that no
>> decision with a corrupted premise can be a correct decision.
>> France, China, and Russia were  bought agents of Saddam Hussein.
>
>Oh, come on again! Sure, there's a scandal here, but we're looking at "270
>former government officials, activists, journalists and UN officials from
>more than 46 countries charged of profiting from oil-for-food program"
>(http://www.aljazeera.com/cgi-bin/news_service/middle_east_full_story.asp?se
>rvice_id=5851). No one is suggesting that the governments of these countries
>were involved. The total amount of money is alleged to be $1.7 billion
>(http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A52682-2004Oct21.html), much
>of which (presumably) would never have left Iraq. Sure, the money Iraq
>dished out in kickbacks would keep you or me in luxury for the rest of our
>lives, but to suggest that it was sufficient to buy the loyalty of France,
>China and Russia is surely ludicrous.

I'm simply dumbfounded that you would attempt to make light of this scandal.
Saddam absconded with over $20 billion dollars that was meant to provide
food and medicine for the Iraqi people.  He doled out billions of it in
bribes to buy loyalty and support in high places, including the UN itself.
He spent it lavishly on building opulent palaces for himself.  He squirreled
some of it out of the country to Syria where it is financing the current
insurgency.  In the meantime, the leftist media was blaming the USA for the
sanctions that were alleged to be killing 500,000 Iraqi children every year.
It's my turn to say, "Oh, come on".  This Oil-for-Food business is the
biggest scandal and rip-off in the history of humankind.  The UN has lost
what little credibility it had under Kofi Annan's leadership.  Sorry to be
so blunt, but there's a fundamental absence of principle in your position
here.

>As for decisions based on corrupted premises, I'm sure you're right. I'm
>sure the extent and nature of US interest in oil made it impossible for it
>to make a correct and impartial decision over Iraq.

On the contrary.  Oil is certainly a component of the Iraq affair.  How
could it not be?   However, the claim that the US invaded Iraq to gain
control of its oil is pure leftist, anti-American nonsense.  Can you cite
evidence that the US now owns Iraq's oil?  You can't, because it isn't the
case.  Iraq's oil now belongs to Iraq.  It used to belong to Saddam Hussein.
I'll let you decide which situation is better for the people of Iraq.  If
the insurgents and jihadists don't throw a spanner into Iraq's democratic
future, the people of Iraq now stand a chance to benefit from the prosperity
that their own natural resource should have been providing for them all
along but for the vile, depraved nature of the Saddam Hussein regime.  Iraq
can now sell it's oil on the open market, at competitive prices, to whomever
wants to buy it.  It is available to everyone, not just the US oil refiners
and marketers.  How can that be anything other than a good thing?

>> the anti-war marchers where demonstrating by the
>> thousands in the all major cities of the west and it's
>> outlying locations around the world, including the
>> USA.  In all of those demonstrations, I never once
>> saw a sign criticizing the regime of Saddam Hussein
>> and calling for him to step down.
>
>Well, one knows that dictators aren't going to listen to that kind of plea.
>One directs one's pleas towards democratic leaders because they are supposed
>to listen to the voice of the people.

So, in other words, the leaders are supposed to follow a howling mob.
Sorry, but I'm not buying that silly argument.  

>> Virtually all of the more vocal demonstrators' anger
>> and invective was directed at Bush and Blair.  How
>> could Saddam not have believed that he had the world
>> community on his side?
>
>He'd have had to be pretty blind to believe that. The prevailing tone
>amongst the protestors (barring, perhaps, some Islamic ones) was, "We do not
>agree with the regime of Saddam Hussein in Iraq, but that does not mean that
>you can allow foreign powers and armies to invade Iraq, bomb its cities and
>kill innocent people there"
>(http://www.wsws.org/articles/2002/oct2002/demo-o28.shtml).

LOL.  You won't win any arguments with me by citing the World Socialist Web
Site as your authority.  Did you actually read this article?  It proves my
point that the groups that organized and directed the demonstrations were
pushing an anti-American, anti-capitalism, anti-freedom agenda based on
misrepresenting virtually everything about the situation.  Such as:

<quote>
In his speech to the rally, Str$(D??(Bbele emphasised the pursuit of material
resources, especially oil, as a predominant factor in the war drive in
Washington. He also condemned the sanctions carried out by the US and Great
Britain, which have resulted in nearly two million deaths in Iraq.
<end quote>

What utter nonsense and so typical of the hard left!!

>> That's the ultimate irony of the piece.  The leftists/
>> progressives/liberals were actually acting on behalf
>>of a regime that does all the horrible things  to its
>>  people that they would otherwise decry in a paroxysm
>>  of righteousness.
>
>No one (except, again, some Islamic protestors) was actively supporting
>Saddam. Disliking him and his regime is a quite different thing from
>accepting a US policy of "pre-emption", the logical extension of which is to
>wipe out everyone because one day they or their descendants may turn on you.

John, that's just completely spurious. 

>> This will completely floor you, but I think the demonstrators were
>> dupes, useful idiots, to a bunch of Marxists (see the first
>> paragraph of your reply).
>
>I'm not completely floored, since I believe a lot of political manoeuvring
>is based on the hijacking of decent sentiments, but I can't quite see why
>Marxists would be sticking up for Islamic dictatorships.

It only makes sense when you realize that Marxists hate freedom, democracy,
and capitalism, as represented by the USA, even more than they hate Islamic
dictatorships.  Go figure.   What else could it possibly be?

>> To sum it up, I think it's outrageous that we don't have UN
>> support and the complete cooperation and full participation
>> of every freedom loving nation in the world.
>
>Harsh as it may sound, my country (England) was subject to tyrannical
>despots like Henry VIII and it had to bend down and pick itself up by its
>bootstraps to get where it is today. It had to suffer the oppression of its
>rulers, go through a revolution, behead its king - the whole gamut
>(including, unfortunately, setting off to impose its power and its views
>around the world in a way not dissimilar to what the US is doing today). To
>imagine that you can save people from that kind of process by going in and
>imposing your values on them ("holding their feet to the fire" was Bush's
>latest phrase on this subject, I believe, spoken in the context of imposing
>democracy on the Palestinians) is simply wrong. You can disapprove - and
>there are plenty of countries the US has no intention of invading whose
>dictatorial governments I disapprove of heartily - and you can certainly
>boycott, embargo, etc., etc.. But the current state of the world is that you
>can't legitimately invade another country until that country takes military
>action outside its own borders or, alternatively, it becomes clear that the
>abuses within the country amount to genocide.

Hello!!  Saddam qualifies on both counts.  He invaded Iran and Kuwait, and
he supported terrorism against Israel which is tantamount to participating
in an invasion.  He committed genocide against the Kurds using poison gas.
He filled mass graves with 500,000 Iraqi bodies.  That's "genocide" by my
definition.  This is what I don't understand about the position of the
progressives and liberals who opposed the war.  Never mind the hard
leftists, the Marxists, and the anarchists.  I would expect it from them.
But how can these otherwise decent people who claim the moral high ground of
supporting human rights for all people not be in favor of the elimination of
Saddam Hussein, the worst butcher since Pol Pot?

While we're on the subject of English history (or British history, if you
will), do I dare invoke the ghost of Neville Chamberlain?  I think I should.
It illustrates what happens when appeasement and pacificism are applied
against the evil intentions of megalomaniacal dictators.

>The US can buck against that as much as it likes. In the end, though, if it
>doesn't want to accept this truth it will drag itself down and destroy
>itself.
>
>> Instead were niggled about unilateralism that isn't unilateralism.
>
>'Tis too! The US had the explicit condemnation of some 100 countries, and
>the active military support of only five, four of which only played a token
>part.
>
>> we should always act from sound principles, especially
>> when the rest of the world has gone off like a
>> bunch of lunatics.
>
>"The rest of the world" is an extremely varied and disparate range of
>humanity. It has no underlying cultural or political cohesion, nothing that
>would explain a spontaneous widespread reaction affecting millions of people
>across the globe. If substantial opposition to US policy is emerging from
>this broad base of humanity it would be wise to consider that it is just
>possible that if there is any lunacy at all it may actually be affecting the
>4% who happen to be American, rather than the 96% who are not.

I doubt it, and you're throwing up a false dichotomy here.  The "rest of the
world" needs to realize that the greatest threat to world peace and
stability today is militant Islam -- jihadists -- not George Bush and the
USA.  I think (and *hope*) there is a growing awareness of this fundamental
fact owing to the despicable tactics of the insurgents and jihadists in
Iraq, the train bombing in Spain, the murder of Theo Van Gogh in the
Netherlands, the hotel bombing in Bali, the Beslan school incident in
Russia, the insanity displayed by suicide bombers in a hurry to kill
infidels and get to their 72 houris in Paradise, the megalomania of Osama
bin Laden, and indeed the whole meme of a medieval death cult based in
bizarre superstitions that is driven by the admonitions of its holy book to
impose their belief system on others by force.  This is a global problem.
It really is a monumental clash of belief systems.   In my not very humble
opinion, the rest of the world, including the allegedly "peaceful and
loving" Muslims, needs to unite against this force rather than wasting its
psychic energies on hating the USA, George Bush, and Tony Blair.  If we
don't nip this now, history might very well be written in Arabic.  When you
look at Arab/Islamic history, values, and culture, there is only one
possible conclusion:  it isn't a good thing.

>> Sorry, but there are times when appeasing the world community
>> is the wrong thing to do.  This is one of those times.
>
>Well, the proof of that pudding will be in the eating. I'd like to think
>that 10 or 20 years down the road I might be able to agree with you or, at
>least, to feel that your ideas did not cause too much long-term damage,
>but - not having a crystal ball - I remain unpersuaded.

As do I.  The proof of the pudding will come in a hundred years when the
history of this affair is written. 

>> You've seen a little bit of where I'm coming from on these
>> matters, so you can safely and correctly extrapolate that I'm
>> so far on the other side of what you've written here that we
>> might as well end the discussion.
>
>As I stated somewhere near the beginning of this posting, if we are not to
>discuss, what are we to do?

OK, there's my end of the discussion at considerable length.

<snip to the end>

MacHamish M$(D??(Br