Iraq 3 Years Later: Everything Is Going According To Plan

[blueturk]

Uncle Dick says he was right about the insurgency being in it's "death throes", but the media just made him look like he was wrong. Rummy compares this war to World War II and The Cold War (but interestingly, not Vietnam). And Dubya runs back in the (White) house when questioned. Special guest star: George Casey as Shemp!


Iraq, 3 years later: Dispute on definition

By David E. Sanger and Thom Shanker The New York Times

MONDAY, MARCH 20, 2006
WASHINGTON On the third anniversary of a war that the Bush administration had expected would be long over by now, senior officials took to the airwaves to argue that despite the escalating violence their strategy is working, and to dispute the assessment of Iraq's former prime minister, Ayad Allawi, that a civil war has started.

Displaying a carefully calibrated mix of optimism about the prospects of eventual victory and caution about how long American troops would be required to remain in the country, the officials who marked the day - including President George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld - sounded Sunday much as they did two years ago, on the first anniversary of the invasion.

At that time, the rebuilding effort had just begun, the fierceness of the insurgency was far lower, and the U.S. occupation had suppressed, temporarily, the sectarian violence that scars Iraq today.

Cheney, in an interview on CBS's Face the Nation, was challenged on his statement three years ago that "we will be greeted as liberators" and his assertion 10 months ago that the insurgency was in its "last throes." He insisted that in both cases his facts were right, but that the news media had created a different perception with vivid imagery of killing.

"I think it has less to do with the statements we've made, which I think were basically accurate and reflect reality, than it does with the fact that there's a constant sort of perception, if you will, that's created because what's newsworthy is the car bomb in Baghdad," he said.

As for an Iraqi civil war, Cheney said that terrorists had made "a serious effort" to foment a civil war, but added that "I don't think they've been successful."

Rumsfeld dismissed the calls for withdrawal from Iraq - which some conservatives have now joined - by comparing the current battle to the two great struggles of his generation: World War II and the Cold War. "Turning our backs on postwar Iraq today would be the modern equivalent of handing postwar Germany back to the Nazis," he wrote in an op-ed published in The Washington Post. "It would be as great a disgrace as if we had asked the liberated nations of Eastern Europe to return to Soviet domination."

Bush gave a short statement when he returned to the White House from Camp David, urging Iraq to form a unity government, but when reporters began asking him about the administration's assessments of progress he swiftly turned to enter the White House residence with his wife, Laura.

Bush's unwillingess to engage in questions about the gap between his expectations three years ago and the realities of Iraq today seemed to underscore the enormous challenge that the White House faces in explaining the war at a time when only about 34 percent of Americans say they approve of the job he is doing. He is hoping to put a floor under eroding support for his Iraq strategy with two more speeches on the subject this week - on Monday in Cleveland and Wednesday in West Virginia - but his aides acknowledge that the images of Shiites fighting Sunnis has done more to undercut the core of support for the war than any other event.

Bush's message of progress was challenged Sunday by the country's former interim prime minister, Allawi, one of the Iraqi leaders whom Bush once described as exactly the kind of unifying leader the country needed.

"It is unfortunate that we are in civil war," Allawi said on the BBC. "We are losing each day as an average 50 to 60 people through the country, if not more."

"If this is not civil war," he concluded, "then God knows what civil war is."

Allawi's assessment was directly contradicted by General George Casey Jr., the senior U.S. commander in Iraq, who said, "We're a long way from civil war." Casey acknowledged that U.S. armed forces would have to maintain substantial numbers in Iraq for "a couple more years," but insisted that "over 2006, we will continue to see a gradual reduction in coalition forces."

That is a quite different assessment than the one the White House and the Pentagon were making the night the war began three years ago with a bombing raid on Baghdad that included a site where American intelligence agencies believed, falsely, where Saddam Hussein was ensconced.

At that time, the Pentagon expected a short conflict. Its classified plans called for the withdrawal of the majority of American troops by the fall of 2003. Today there are about 133,000 still there, and officials say it will be difficult, though possible, to bring that figure to around 100,000 by the end of the year.

Rumsfeld, whose refusal to send larger numbers of troops into Iraq after the initial invasion has now made him a lightening rod for critics who say he allowed the insurgency to flower, insisted Sunday that the rebels - not the American-led coalition - were failing in Iraq.

"The terrorists seem to recognize that they are losing in Iraq," Rumsfeld wrote, words that were repeated by Cheney. "I believe that history will show that to be the case." And like Cheney, he insisted the problem was the imagery created by a 24-hour news cycle, rather than the realities of round- the-clock killing. "Fortunately, history is not made up of daily headlines, blogs on Web sites or the latest sensational attack," Rumsfeld wrote. "History is a bigger picture, and it takes some time and perspective to measure accurately."

The military was represented on the Sunday TV talk shows this year by Casey, who predicted that the U.S. armed forces would have to maintain substantial numbers in Iraq for "a couple more years."

"It depends how you define major American presence," Casey said on NBC's "Meet the Press." "I see a couple more years of this, with a gradually reducing coalition presence here in Iraq as, as I said, as the Iraqi security forces step forward." And in an interview on "Fox News Sunday," Casey said "that over 2006, we will continue to see a gradual reduction in coalition forces."

"Is there terrorist violence in Iraq? Yes, there is," Casey said on CNN's "Late Edition."

"Is there terrorist violence in Iraq designed to foment sectarian strife? Yes, there is. But we're a long way from civil war."

http://www.iht.com/bin/print_ipub.php?file=/articles/2006/03/19/news/iraq.php

[Terry]

Seems resonable to suppose that anti-US sentiment was a large part of the reason why 9/11 happened.

Also seems reasonable to conclude that this sentiment resulted from years of America injecting itself into conflicts in Afghanistan, Israel and other Middle East nations.

I wonder how invading Iraq is going to counteract those sentiments...

Oh, right. It isn't.

And what did Iraq even have to do with 9/11 and Osama?

Nothing.

And now plans for Iran are on the table...

GW Bush and his whole cabinet are not taking this country where I think it should be going. Just draining money and resources that would be better off being put towards our infrastructure. Things like universal health care, revamping social security and using the tone of the presidency to help foster a business environment where responsibility and accountability are considered values, rather than continuing the longtime trend of giving tax breaks to wealthy CEOs who ship American jobs and manufacturing interests overseas...

This administration is a disgrace and makes me ashamned to be an American.

[Cathedral]

My neighbors son just left to go back this afternoon...he volunteered to go back at that.
He's already done 3 tours in Iraq and the last time he was sent home because he was wounded.
He healed up, was told his men were returning, he said they weren't going back without him and off he went today.

He was wounded by IED shrapnel 3 months ago, his second wounding, and they sent him stateside.

I dunno, i think he's crazy and really pushing his luck this time. I just got a bad vibe from him when he shook my hand this afternoon.

He'll be in my prayers along with all our troops.

I think it's time to either double up on the troops and stop being "soft" on these fuckers or get the hell out completely.

The world thinks we're pussies playing by the rules, they know what we won't do...we need to remind the world why have the reputation we do and play it by their rules.
We are still the only country that ever used an atomic bomb and the fact is...Peace is only preserved by Superior Firepower.

PTSF, Baby!

[Nitro Express]

Haliburton is rolling in money so I guess the plan did work. Rumsfeld, Bush, and Chenney will leave office with more money in their offshore accounts in Switzerland and Monacco and dissapear, while a new president deals with the mess.

A Mexican president couldn't have done it better.

[Nickdfresh]

Link (http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-walk20mar20,0,3254219,full.story)

DISPATCH FROM BAGHDAD
With Each Mile, the Divisions Deepen
By Borzou Daragahi
Times Staff Writer

March 20, 2006

BAGHDAD — In quiet moments, especially once the sunlight has begun to fade, a passerby can almost imagine the former glory of Karadat Mariam, once Baghdad's most upscale neighborhood. Palm trees shade broad avenues. Hedge groves shield stately villas. Young men and women in gym shorts jog along sidewalks.

But such moments pass quickly. A low-flying Black Hawk helicopter roars overhead or a convoy of Humvees pushes through the 15-foot blast walls and tangles of barbed wire that surround you here in the Green Zone, the country's fortress-like administrative center.

Within this surreal landscape, in mansions once occupied by former President Saddam Hussein and his deputies, U.S. officials and Iraqi politicians desperately try to build a new Iraq, making heartfelt speeches and discussing law and governance as if this were a coherent country.

But step outside, across the 14th of July Bridge, through Baghdad's neighborhoods to the outskirts and beyond, through provincial farmlands and out to Iraq's borders of mountain and desert, and another universe opens.

Cold War-like checkpoints and concrete barriers, bursts of machine-gun fire and close encounters with mysterious bands of armed men punctuate the lives of millions of ordinary Iraqis. House by house, neighborhood by neighborhood, province by province — a tour of the streets and roads of Iraq is lined with guideposts pointing to the country's potential disintegration.

Although Iraq has seen a flowering of long-suppressed Shiite faith, a surge in religious hatred has sharpened the rift between the two main Muslim sects in key cities and rural enclaves. Iraqis are now more free to speak their minds and organize politically, but ethnic rivalries among Kurds, Arabs and Turkmens in the north fester, even as the war between U.S.-led forces and Sunni-dominated guerrillas in the west continues.

Three years after the military invasion to oust Hussein, the country's landscape betrays its fault lines, like land heaved up by shifting tectonic plates.

The streets and sidewalks directly outside the Green Zone are magnets for car bombs and roadside explosives targeting the authorities who venture out. Despite Baghdad's dangers, it's safer to melt into the disorder of the densely packed neighborhoods of the city.

The smell of burning kebabs and raw sewage engulf the air of the Karada district as you head north from the city center. Grizzled middle-age merchants emerge from shops, working prayer beads and greeting one another. Women in head scarves, daughters in hand, browse clothing shops. Karada is among the city's safest districts, the domain of moderate middle-class Shiite Muslims who are the great winners of the invasion three years ago. Yet even here, perils persist. Shrapnel from car bombs scars mosques and office buildings. Shopkeepers place roadblocks in front of their stores to prevent customers from parking, lest a vehicle explode. The roads are dominated by vehicle convoys of mysterious armed men. Some wear makeshift camouflage uniforms and drive vehicles with official-looking insignias.

Others, wielding guns and wearing ski masks, drive around without any indication of whether they represent the forces of law and order, the private militia of a political or religious leader or some more sinister group. They drive pickup trucks with mounted machine guns. They spray gunfire over vehicles to clear traffic. They wheel the nozzles of their AK-47s toward anyone who gets too close.

Beyond the relatively safe middle-class central neighborhoods, violent divisions are tearing the country apart. Neighborhoods such as Dora, Sadiya and Ghazaliya, once quiet districts of single-family homes on the city's western and southern peripheries where children could play ball in the streets and walk to and from school without fear, have become battlegrounds between Shiites and Sunnis.

Even inside Iraq's spotless new schoolhouses, the freshly painted and refurbished pride of U.S. reconstruction efforts, Shiite children have begun to sit on one side of the class, Sunni children on the other.

"My daughter came home and asked me, 'Daddy, what sect do we belong to?' " said Shafiq Mahdi Jabouri, a Baghdad educator who belongs to a tribe with both Shiite and Sunni branches. "I was shocked. Sect used to be a joke in Iraq. Now it's a dividing line."

Shiite families living in predominantly Sunni neighborhoods have been threatened. Letters and leaflets are distributed demanding they get out. Chilling graffiti is scrawled on houses. Families hurriedly sell their homes at bargain prices and move elsewhere.

Sunnis living in Shiite neighborhoods have been "disappeared" — abducted in the dead of night from their homes by uniformed men purporting to belong to the security forces. Their bullet-ridden bodies turn up several days later, discovered by schoolchildren playing near railroad tracks or empty lots, or never at all.

Militias and neighborhood watch groups are armed with the AK-47s that are as common in Iraqi households as ashtrays. Mosque preachers call neighbors to arms with frantic cries of "God is great!"



The detritus of three years of war appear on the city's outskirts as the urban sprawl peters out into countryside. Burnt husks of trucks and skeletal remains of car bombs litter the road. Buildings are pockmarked with gunfire. Electrical towers felled by saboteurs lie ailing on the farmland.

Sunni-led insurgents, adopting a classic guerrilla strategy, have turned all critical highways leading in and out of the capital into kill zones, in effect cutting off the central government's ability to apply its authority on the provinces.

Travelers almost always encounter some roadside horror: Emergency workers load police officers bloodied in a bomb attack. A blown-up oil pipeline spouts an apocalyptic torrent of fire hundreds of feet into the sky. Masked gunmen stage impromptu checkpoints demanding identification cards, pulling out those from the wrong tribe or named after a Shiite imam and shooting them.

To the west along the highways to Syria and Jordan, the insurgency in Al Anbar province continues to rage, a conflict between Sunni Arab fighters and Americans that has turned lively riverside cities into battle-scarred ghost towns. Sparsely populated Al Anbar has claimed more than a third of the 2,300 U.S. military personnel who've died in Iraq.

In towns such as Ramadi, the tension is palpable. U.S. Marine snipers occupy rooftop positions keeping "eyes" on alleyways and streets. Men wearing black ski masks appear behind the broken windows of abandoned buildings across the streets, firing their AK-47s at the troops. From the mosques, clerics routinely call for jihad against the Americans.

But Iraq's next front may be unfolding elsewhere, away from the gaze of authorities, just beyond Baghdad's outskirts, in tiny hamlets crisscrossed by collapsing, disease-infested agricultural canals and dirt roads.

Here, in a large crescent of farmland north, east and south of the capital, insurgent violence aimed at security forces and Americans has melded with centuries-old tensions between Shiite and Sunni.

Hussein and previous Sunni rulers back to the Ottoman era encouraged Sunni tribesman loyal to the central government to settle among Shiites, forming a protective barrier against potential invaders from Shiite-dominated Iran. As a result, sets of Sunni households lie next to sets of Shiite households. These mixed areas, where sectarian tensions are overlain with indecipherable layers of tribal codes and rivalries, have slowly become a powder keg.

"We are even afraid of each other," said Samir Abdel Qadir, a 37-year-old Sunni merchant from Baqubah.

Caches of bodies turn up. Bombs detonate aside makeshift mosques and markets in dirt-poor villages. This year, in one particularly gruesome attack, a suicide bomber targeted a funeral near Baqubah, killing as many as 36 people. In tiny country hamlets along dirt roads, houses have emptied, and occasionally caravans of Shiite families can be seen heading to Shiite areas out of fear for their lives.

"There was never any division between Sunnis or Shiites," said Kamil Naji, a 42-year-old from Taji. "Now, it's becoming a way of life."

Along marshy river deltas of the country's long-repressed Shiite south, a new cultural identity is being born. More so than any other part of the country, the south has been radically transformed.

The very landscape, the sights and sounds have changed. In the shrine cities of Najaf and Karbala, home to important Shiite places of learning, the number of religious students increased tenfold, as young clerics and scholars from Iran, South Asia, Lebanon and elsewhere come to study.

Where portraits of the mustachioed dictator once hung, now are those of turbaned and bearded ayatollahs. Numerous satellite channels have sprung up. Music praising the imams rings out from the markets.

U.S. officials have hailed the Shiite resurgence as a blossoming of a religion suppressed under Hussein. Shiites practice rituals that were long banned or discouraged, and through their raucous blend of religious ceremony and activism inject vitality into an ossified political culture.

But the Shiites' rise has created other problems. Clerics have steered the region away from Baghdad's authority. Cities such as Amarah, Diwaniya, Kut and Nasiriya have become oriented toward Iran and Persian Gulf states rather than to Iraq's traditional allies.

Organized Shiite militiamen quickly took over in the security vacuum after the collapse of the Hussein's regime, and they've never really given up power.

"Many new faces appear who are worse than Saddam," said Kamil Salman, 32, who owns a publishing house in Najaf. "Saddam wanted to stay forever. The recent ones know they will go soon, which makes them worse and more greedy than Saddam."

An airport is being built in Najaf, presumably to bring pilgrims to Karbala and Najaf, but also among the first steps in the creation of a southern oil-rich federal region under the banner of Shiite Islam.

Shiites bring their dead to the ancient cemetery in Najaf, which by some estimates has grown 40% larger since the war began, pushing out two square miles into the desert, filled mostly with thousands of civilians killed by car bombs and bullets. With each death grows the desire to break away from lack of electricity, poor medical care and corruption that have taken hold under the post-Hussein government.

Stretching along the bountiful foothills of the Zagros Mountains in the north, Kurdistan looms literally and figuratively above Iraq. Even before the war the great outdoor bazaars of Sulaymaniya and Irbil buzzed with activity. Its universities sparkled with intellectual life. Its press rumbled with democratic yearning. And its restless public increasingly demanded a full separation from Iraq.

The war unleashed the region's economic potential. Construction cranes have sprouted. Two new airports send passengers across Iraq and abroad.

But the war also encouraged Kurds' separatist stirrings; a referendum conducted in January 2005 showed that 99% of Kurds don't identify with Iraq. As far as the rest of country is concerned, Kurdish ambition is focused primarily on one thing: oil-rich Kirkuk, which is claimed by Kurds, Arabs, Turkmens as well as a sizable Christian minority.

Some have pointed to the scattered boasts of the Kurds' armed militiamen as evidence of the Kurdish designs on the city. But it is highly unlikely that the international community, which has so long supported the Kurdish cause, would tolerate an outright military lunge for Kirkuk.

In reality, the annexation has already quietly begun.

The Kurds dominate the police force, the city council. They clean the streets. They direct traffic. By some measures, tens of thousands of Kurds displaced under the previous regime have begun swarming the city and its surrounding villages, and little by little they've pushed Arabs and Turkmens out.

"Everything is divided among four nations," said Mohammad Farid, a 24-year-old recent university graduate.

*
Times staff writers Louise Roug and Raheem Salman, special correspondent Asmaa Waguih and special correspondents in Baqubah, Basra, Kirkuk, Najaf and Taji contributed to this report.

_______________________


Iraq's Factions Agree to Form Security Council
The 19 members would have broad authority to set military, economic and oil policies. With 9 seats, Shiites would be able to wield veto power.
By Richard Boudreaux, Times Staff Writer
March 20, 2006

BAGHDAD — Iraqi officials agreed Sunday to set up a council that would give each of the country's main political factions a voice in making security and economic policies for a new government.

The accord, announced after nearly a week of negotiations, was aimed at deflating rising sectarian tensions and represented the first breakthrough in the U.S.-guided effort to form a unity government after parliamentary elections Dec. 15.

President Bush applauded the deal, which came as the third anniversary of the U.S.-led invasion focused public attention on the troubled effort to stabilize Iraq and start bringing home 133,000 troops after toppling President Saddam Hussein.

"I encourage the Iraqi leaders to continue to work hard to get this government up and running," Bush told reporters in Washington.

The 19-member national security council would include the Iraqi president and prime minister and hold more power than the Cabinet, which is yet to be formed. It is expected to set policies governing the army and police, the counter-insurgency campaign in Sunni Muslim Arab areas and the disarmament of Shiite Muslim militias accused of sectarian killings.

The council also will oversee economic matters such as the budget and the allocation of oil revenues.

As outlined by participants in the talks, the council would represent political parties in rough proportion to their electoral strength — with nine members from the Shiite alliance that fell just short of a majority in the 275-member parliament, four each from the Kurdish and Sunni blocs, and two from secular parties.

Leaders of those factions took the unusual step of agreeing to form the council before what was expected to be a more contentious discussion of who would hold the positions of president and prime minister and head the Cabinet ministries controlling the army and police.

A council with powers beyond those of the Cabinet is not mentioned in the constitution ratified by voters in October. It was proposed in January by Kurdish leaders to check the power of the Shiite alliance, which is entitled to nominate the prime minister and is expected to dominate the Cabinet.

Shiite negotiators had resisted the idea of a broad policymaking council as unconstitutional. But other political blocs contended that it would help stem Iraq's sectarian bloodshed and avert all-out civil war; they won quiet backing for the proposal from U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad, who has been deeply involved in the talks from the start.

"We think that the salvation of Iraq at this time lies in showing a lot of flexibility in establishing new political bodies that include all the components of the Iraqi people," Tariq Hashemi, leader of the main Sunni party, said Sunday at a news conference.

At least 34 Iraqis were killed or found dead Sunday in the continuing violence, which has soared since the Feb. 22 bombing of a Shiite shrine in the predominantly Sunni city of Samarra. Worried that the power vacuum was fostering the violence, interim President Jalal Talabani, a Kurd, summoned political leaders last week to try to speed up efforts to form a government. Iraq has been run for nearly 11 months by an interim leadership formed from the transitional assembly elected in January 2005.

After the December election left no party with a parliamentary majority, all factions agreed, under U.S. pressure, to work toward a broadly representative government — one that might undermine the insurgency by including Sunnis in the Cabinet.

But the effort got bogged down a month ago after the Shiite bloc nominated interim Prime Minister Ibrahim Jafari, a religious conservative with close ties to Iran's theocratic leadership, to continue in his post for a full four-year term.

The other political groups, supported by the more secular Talabani, pledged to block Jafari's ratification, which requires a two-thirds vote in the parliament. The rival blocs have demanded that the Shiites offer a less divisive candidate, but the Shiites have balked.

In an effort to break the deadlock, Talabani last week shifted the focus of the talks to the proposed council.

Shiite negotiators succeeded in limiting some of the council's proposed authority. Its policies will require approval by 13 members, allowing the nine Shiite members a chance to thwart any decision if they stick together.

Hussein Shahristani, a Shiite negotiator, said leaders agreed that the council's decisions on the Cabinet would be binding "as long as they do not contradict the constitutional prerogatives of the president or prime minister." That formula, other politicians countered, might lead to conflicts.

"In reality, the authority of the council is uncertain," said Dhafir Ani, a spokesman for the main Sunni bloc. "It hasn't been settled."

Iraqi politicians said the formation of the council in effect added ground rules to replace the ad hoc manner in which decisions had been made in the last year, when party leaders brokered deals behind closed doors and presented them to the parliament. This time, Sunni parties would be better represented.

As political leaders wrangled in Baghdad's fortified Green Zone, violence continued outside. Iraqi sources and Western news agencies reported the discovery Sunday of 17 bodies of men tortured or shot to death in Baghdad alone, 11 of them flushed by city sewers into the tanks of water-purification plants.

Police said three civilians were killed in crossfire when insurgents attacked U.S. and Iraqi forces guarding the provincial governor's office in Ramadi, a Sunni city 60 miles west of Baghdad.

Other deaths included civilians and Iraqi policemen killed in Mosul, Baqubah, Basra and Baghdad.

In Duluiya, a Sunni town about 55 miles north of the capital, Iraqi officials said American troops killed a teacher, his wife, their 13-year-old son and four other people during clashes set off before dawn by a rocket-propelled grenade ambush on their armored patrol.

Maj. Tim Keefe, a U.S. military spokesman, contested the account from police officials and the deputy governor, saying the 3rd Heavy Brigade Combat Team of the 4th Infantry Division had killed seven "attacking terrorists."

Keefe said two U.S. soldiers were wounded in the clash, which occurred south of Samarra. More than 1,500 airborne U.S. and Iraqi troops staged a fourth day of raids in suspected insurgent bases north of Samarra, but the patrol in Duluiya was not part of that operation, Keefe said.

Police officials said the teacher and his family were shot when American soldiers raided their home after the ambush. An 18-year-old boy from another family was killed after he left home "to see what was going on," according to a Reuters reporter in the town.

Deputy Gov. Abdullah Hussein said in a telephone interview from Tikrit that two of the seven killed were insurgents.

After the clash, Reuters reported, American troops handed out leaflets saying they did not regard Sunnis as their enemy and wanted to withdraw from Iraq as soon as the country's newly formed government and army were able to stand on their own.

Link (http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-iraq20mar20,0,436169,full.story)
*
Times staff writers Zainab Hussein and Raheem Salman and special correspondent Asmaa Waguih contributed to this report.

[Terry]

Originally posted by Cathedral
My neighbors son just left to go back this afternoon...he volunteered to go back at that.
He's already done 3 tours in Iraq and the last time he was sent home because he was wounded.
He healed up, was told his men were returning, he said they weren't going back without him and off he went today.

He was wounded by IED shrapnel 3 months ago, his second wounding, and they sent him stateside.

I dunno, i think he's crazy and really pushing his luck this time. I just got a bad vibe from him when he shook my hand this afternoon.

He'll be in my prayers along with all our troops.

I think it's time to either double up on the troops and stop being "soft" on these fuckers or get the hell out completely.

The world thinks we're pussies playing by the rules, they know what we won't do...we need to remind the world why have the reputation we do and play it by their rules.
We are still the only country that ever used an atomic bomb and the fact is...Peace is only preserved by Superior Firepower.

PTSF, Baby!


Takes balls and discipline to go into the Armed Forces. Feel for these soldiers, 'specially as Rummy didn't put in enough adequate numbers to begin with, combined with the lack of armour, etc....and as for blame there is enough to around for both parties, far as I'm concerned...

Man, you either unleash the tiger and do it with overwhelming force or you don't fucking bother.

Thought even the chickenhawks would have learned that much from 'Nam. Fuck, their one time Sec.of State WROTE the Powell Doctrine!!

Pity he didn't speak up and put his job on the line...too respectful of the presidency to tell GW what he felt, I suppose...

Just a clusterfuck all the way around.

[bueno bob]

Originally posted by Terry
Just a clusterfuck all the way around.

There's no arguing that, no matter what side of the fence you're sitting on.

[Warham]

This war isn't the same as Vietnam.

I hate those parallels.

[Seshmeister]

Originally posted by Cathedral
The world thinks we're pussies playing by the rules, they know what we won't do...we need to remind the world why have the reputation we do and play it by their rules.


Wow you need to get out more.

The world thinks you have become scum in the last few years because your government has NOT been playing by the rules.

[Seshmeister]

Originally posted by Terry
Takes balls and discipline to go into the Armed Forces.

Not always. You get your fare share of people in poor economic circumstances either through stupidity, laziness or bad luck, find it to be their only legal option to better themselves.

You also get the people that like the thought of getting to blow people and stuff up legally(well at least as far as the US is concerned) or to bully people. Especially when you have to start scraping the dregs of the barrel when recruitment rates are falling...

[blueturk]

Originally posted by Warham
This war isn't the same as Vietnam.

I hate those parallels.

You're right. As badly planned as Vietnam was, we had one objective: to help the South Vietnamese fight the communist-led Viet Cong and hopefully foil communism in that country.

Why exactly are we in Iraq ? Because they had WMD's? To topple Hussein? To spread democracy? Because Iraq is a terrorist hotbed? Because Saddam plotted to kill Bush Sr.? Oil? What mission was accomplished? So many questions, and no straight answers....

[Cathedral]

Originally posted by Terry
Takes balls and discipline to go into the Armed Forces. Feel for these soldiers, 'specially as Rummy didn't put in enough adequate numbers to begin with, combined with the lack of armour, etc....and as for blame there is enough to around for both parties, far as I'm concerned...

Man, you either unleash the tiger and do it with overwhelming force or you don't fucking bother.

Thought even the chickenhawks would have learned that much from 'Nam. Fuck, their one time Sec.of State WROTE the Powell Doctrine!!

Pity he didn't speak up and put his job on the line...too respectful of the presidency to tell GW what he felt, I suppose...

Just a clusterfuck all the way around.

Sadly, your post is 110% accurate.
We will continue to repeat mistakes as long arrogance prevails over cooler heads and stubborness gets the last word.

[Cathedral]

Originally posted by Seshmeister
Wow you need to get out more.

The world thinks you have become scum in the last few years because your government has NOT been playing by the rules.


LOL, I get out more than the everage Rothonian, that's a fact.

All of this sentiment didn't start in 2000, Sesh. it has been brewing for 6 decades because everyone wants to kill the top dog so they can be the top dog. We have done more for the entire world and got shit on by those same people we supported since day 1.

And it never kept us from supporting them again after the fact, that's history.

But what I was referring to that you seemed to have ignored is my point that the Insurgents use the innocent as shields and they do NOT adhere to the Geneva Convention in their tactic s of war.
They know, by reading the GC, what we will and will not do in war.
We strive to protect mosques and temples, holy places and such and they use them to shoot at us and store their weapons.
they have a diagram of how we wage war and how we don't for fear the world will see us as barbarians.

It's funny that you don't have a problem with them beheading civilians over there to help the Iraqi's, but agree that we have become "scum" by being "soft" on the enemy, and we are.

Untie the hands of our Generals and let them call the shots like they were trained to do and this war would have a very different and more positive face at this 3 year anniversary than it currently does.

This whole war has not been waged in the capacity we have done so in the past. it lacks the intensity and the overwhelming might we are capable of.
This lack of intensity has cost more lives than any IED has.

Cars come barnstorming check pints and our boys open fire only to be chastised for the innocent lives killed inside it.
yet the next one that does that the soldiers give the benefit of the doubt and end up in a coffin.
But if it were you or me that car was charging, we would have done the same if it did not stop as commanded.

Hindsight is 20/20, and ignorance is bliss and people use that to distance themselves from what they don't like while trying to embrace what they do.....you cannot have it both ways, war is ugly even when the stories are victorious, problem is, distortions carry more weight than reality when selling a story.

[Cathedral]

Originally posted by Seshmeister
Not always. You get your fare share of people in poor economic circumstances either through stupidity, laziness or bad luck, find it to be their only legal option to better themselves.

You also get the people that like the thought of getting to blow people and stuff up legally(well at least as far as the US is concerned) or to bully people. Especially when you have to start scraping the dregs of the barrel when recruitment rates are falling...

Here's an example of a news story that sold without much foundation in reality.
Our only problem is that the number of troops from the beginning was estimated too low.
A tragic mistake, but a mistake none the less.

[Cathedral]

Originally posted by blueturk
You're right. As badly planned as Vietnam was, we had one objective: to help the South Vietnamese fight the communist-led Viet Cong and hopefully foil communism in that country.

Why exactly are we in Iraq ? Because they had WMD's? To topple Hussein? To spread democracy? Because Iraq is a terrorist hotbed? Because Saddam plotted to kill Bush Sr.? Oil? What mission was accomplished? So many questions, and no straight answers....

Faulty intel, Supposedly, Yes, Yes, Yes, Possible, Economically speaking - Yes, Regime Change was accomplished...

There are answers, just a lack of ears willing to hear them.

[Terry]

Originally posted by Seshmeister
Not always. You get your fare share of people in poor economic circumstances either through stupidity, laziness or bad luck, find it to be their only legal option to better themselves.

You also get the people that like the thought of getting to blow people and stuff up legally(well at least as far as the US is concerned) or to bully people. Especially when you have to start scraping the dregs of the barrel when recruitment rates are falling...

Perhaps I should have amended that to "It takes balls and discipline to be successful in the Armed Forces and do it with honor"...or something along those lines.

Still, even if a soldier goes into the military because it might be their only legal chance to better themselves, poor or not, I say it still takes guts to make that final step, 'specially when you know you might end up being meat for the grinder.

Far as soldiers who want to blow up and bully other people, well, better to have them in the forces where they might do some good than running around with civilians.

[Nickdfresh]

On Her 10th Trip to the War-Torn Region, ABC News' Martha Raddatz Reflects on Iraq and the Battles Ahead
By MARTHA RADDATZ

BAGHDAD, Iraq, March 20, 2006 — - As I sit here at Camp Victory, the main military headquarters for U.S. and coalition forces in Iraq, I am reminded how premature that declaration of victory was after the invasion.

This is my 10th trip to Iraq, and compared to the first one, it is far more dangerous and the future is still unclear. I began making regular visits to Iraq in October 2003, embedding with U.S. troops each time. On that first trip, I flew in with Central Command Cmdr. Gen. John Abizaid. I remember him huddled with his staff on a C17 talking about the hot spots throughout the Sunni Triangle: Baghdad, Samarra, Ramadi. Abizaid was worried about the threat of foreign fighters crossing the borders from Syria, as well.

And today? Those places remain a problem and in many cases are far worse.

On average, there are 75 significant attacks in Iraq every day, and in the last three years, about 700 of those have been carried out by suicide bombers.

Growing Number of U.S. Troops -- and Tours of Duty Only Growing
But the question most people want answered is this: When can American troops come home?

Late in 2004, I met a young Army specialist named Tanner. I told him that the facilities at Camp Victory had vastly improved since the early days when all the soldiers were living in tents. Soldiers had moved into hardened buildings or trailers with hot showers.

Hot meals were served at a massive and modern dining facility. I told Tanner that he should consider himself lucky. He didn't.

"Ma'am," he said. "I wish we were still living in tents, because when I look around at all this building we have done, I know it means I will probably have to come back someday."

And he is probably right.

The troops that were in the initial invasion just finished a second one-year tour, and many Marines are now on their third or fourth. Last year when I was here, Lt. Gen. John Vines who was then the No. 2 commander in Iraq said that he hoped by June of this year, the 120,000 U.S. troops then in Iraq could be reduced by around 50,000.

Since then, the numbers have grown. Today, there are 130,000 U.S. troops in Iraq, and June is only two months away.

More Than a Security Problem
I have heard President Bush say time and time again that as soon as the Iraqi security forces stand up, U.S. forces can stand down.

I spent the morning with two battalions or about 1,600 Iraqi Army soldiers this morning in Sadr City, the massive Shiite slum that in 2004 was the scene of massive firefights with the Mahdi militia of radical cleric Moqtada al Sadr. Two months ago, the Iraqis took over from the Americans in this sector, although they still have teams of American trainers embedded with them. They were a ragtag-looking bunch, but all risking their lives to serve their country, given they had become the No. 1 target of insurgents.

The Iraqi soldiers all complained they did not have enough weapons, or equipment or even food.

"My soldier has AK-47s," an Iraqi colonel said. "But my enemy has the capacity to defeat my soldiers."

One of the Iraqi interpreters whom I had met before when the Americans were in charge said he thought the Iraqi soldiers were capable of running missions and conducting the occasional raid in Sadr City. But he also added they would "not stand a chance with the Mahdi militia." I asked what he thought would happen if the Americans left in a year, and the interpreter said, "It would be a disaster."

That reminds me of something else from my first trip to Baghdad in the fall of 2003. Abizaid said then, as he has said so often since, that the military could not solve this, that it must be a political solution.

With the Iraqis still unable to form a government, that goal seems every bit as true now as it did back then.

Copyright © 2006 ABC News (http://abcnews.go.com/International/IraqCoverage/story?id=1745407&page=1) Internet Ventures

[Seshmeister]

Originally posted by Cathedral
But what I was referring to that you seemed to have ignored is my point that the Insurgents use the innocent as shields and they do NOT adhere to the Geneva Convention in their tactic s of war.
They know, by reading the GC, what we will and will not do in war.
We strive to protect mosques and temples, holy places and such and they use them to shoot at us and store their weapons.
they have a diagram of how we wage war and how we don't for fear the world will see us as barbarians.


You think they should fight a 10 second long pitched battle?:)

[Seshmeister]

Originally posted by Cathedral

It's funny that you don't have a problem with them beheading civilians over there to help the Iraqi's, but agree that we have become "scum" by being "soft" on the enemy, and we are.



Who said that ever?

I'm sure you'll find a post somewhere of me calling them scum.

I'm just disappointed with the attitude that we should lower ourselves to their level especially when all it does is create martyrs.

You know the whole treat prisoners fairly and don't torture people came out of self interest until the US regressed recently.

Look at the Russian front. You start killing and torturing prisoners and you end up having to kill everyone which is a lot more difficult.

[Cathedral]

Originally posted by Seshmeister
Who said that ever?

I'm sure you'll find a post somewhere of me calling them scum.

I'm just disappointed with the attitude that we should lower ourselves to their level especially when all it does is create martyrs.

You know the whole treat prisoners fairly and don't torture people came out of self interest until the US regressed recently.

Look at the Russian front. You start killing and torturing prisoners and you end up having to kill everyone which is a lot more difficult.

Agreed, finally, lol.

Look man, for the record i'd like to point out that I think our last 60 years of foreign policy has been one of a power trip.
We've had the power to do so much good in the world but all we seemed to have done is support dictatorships and communism, which in turn has created a serious backlash from the citizens of those countries that now they ae able to use our old technology, as well as new, to get back at us.
I see why we have terrorists, i know why they hate us, and it has nothing to do with Democrats or Republicans. it's our government as a whole that has been a party to their oppression.

I've seen enough independant reports, the one's on PBS, that no other major networks would or ever will cover.
I've heard the turth directly from the people, and it is a stark contrast from anything i have ever seen posted on this site by anyone.

Don't ask a suit why, ask the people who suffered, who dodged the bombs, who buried their infants or had to teach them to walk again with missing limbs.

We got off course, but it happened decades ago.