THE US, THE UN AND IRAQ, ELEVENTH THREAD

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Let me keep aloof sir.
there is not point to waste our energy and time to rewrite history.

The whole world knows that Sadam got ethical, emotiona, economic support from your country.

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If you flip over the rock of American foreign
policy of the past century, this is what crawls out ...

invasions ... bombings ... overthrowing
governments ... suppressing movements
for social change ... assassinating
political leaders ... perverting
elections ... manipulating labor unions ...
manufacturing "news" ... death squads ...
torture ... biological warfare ...
depleted uranium ... drug trafficking ...
mercenaries ...

It's not a pretty picture.

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Ramafuchs wrote:

If you flip over the rock of American foreign
policy of the past century, this is what crawls out ...

invasions ... bombings ... overthrowing
governments ... suppressing movements
for social change ... assassinating
political leaders ... perverting
elections ... manipulating labor unions ...
manufacturing "news" ... death squads ...
torture ... biological warfare ...
depleted uranium ... drug trafficking ...
mercenaries ...

It's not a pretty picture.

Yes, we have had our gangster elements screwing up some of our foreign policy. But how come you left out the good that burst out of American foreign policy over the last century (i.e., 1908 - 2008)? Surely you can allow yourself a modicum of objectivity to recognize that America has done much good for humanity over that time period.

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Ican
Excuse me please.
i am a critical person who try his level best to refurbish by critical viewss and not abanal flag-waving pathetic patriots.
I do admit the positive side of USA
Rama

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Every time we think about our struggling economy we should remember how much we are still spending on Bush's war of choice.

Report: Iraq contracts have cost at least $85B

Quote:

WASHINGTON - Military contracts in the Iraq theater have cost taxpayers at least $85 billion, and when it comes to providing security, they might not be any cheaper than using military personnel, according to a report released Tuesday.

The Congressional Budget Office report comes on the heels of increased scrutiny of contractors in the last year, some of whom have been investigated in connection with shooting deaths of Iraqis and the accidental electrocutions of U.S. troops.

The United States has relied more heavily on contractors in Iraq than in any other war to provide services ranging from food service to guarding diplomats. About 20 percent of funding for operations in Iraq has gone to contractors, the report said.

Currently, there are at least 190,000 contractors in Iraq and neighboring countries, a ratio of about one contractor per U.S. service member, the report says.

The study does not include monetary figures for 2008, so the total paid to contractors for work in the Iraq theater since the invasion of Iraq in 2003 is probably much higher. If spending for contractors continues at about the same rate, by the end of the year, an estimated $100 billion will have been paid to military contractors for operations in Iraq.

I bet those contractors hope we remain in Iraq or somewhere else so they can continue to get fat contracts. They probably have lobbyist in congress for that very reason.

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@revel,

It's the USA's war against terrorism!

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@revel,

Some 190,000 private personnel were working in the Iraq theater as of early this year, a new report says.
"One of the key questions surrounding the government's escalating use of military contractors is actually not whether they save the government client money or not.... Rather, the crucial question that should be asked at the onset of any potential outsourcing is simple: Should the task be done by a private company in the first place?" wrote Peter Singer, director of the 21st Century Defense Initiative at the Brookings Institution, in an analysis earlier this year
http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/0818/p02s01-usmi.html

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@Ramafuchs,

Building a free functioning economy is generally not something that government can do well. So definitely yes, "the task [should] be done by a private company," or by private companies.

Read Thomas Sowell's book, Basic Economics, and you might begin to understand the advantages of free market capitalism over central management socialism or communism.

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@ican711nm,

I beg to differ sir.
Would you please explain how it works?
For example the same person who is in charge of a Government is not able to work the economy nicely while the same person as CEO's in private sector make the economy vivid?

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@Ramafuchs,

It is a complex subject. Again, I recommend Thomas Sewell's 627 page book (including test questions and references to where in the book to find the answers), Basic Economics, Third Edition. But I will nevertheless attempt to give a simple explanation of how it works.

A central government manager whose effectiveness is measured by obedience and is not measured by profit, is not motivated to seek efficient use of resources in getting done what s/he is directed to do. S/He is instead motivated to seek greater control over what s/he does. Yet efficient use of resources is essential to achieving a viable economy. Increased control of resources independent of profit does not lead to a viable economy. It leads only to increasing dictatorial practices to maintain management survival. That, of course, leads to even more inefficient use of resources (e.g., Chavez in Venezuela).

Now it is also true that some companies in private economies will also fail to make efficient use of resources. However, thanks to competition, when such companies fail in doing that, those companies to which they lose will have used their resources more efficiently and consequently will prosper.

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@ican711nm,

Economics 101, ican, it is amazing that the simplest concepts are lost on some people that consider themselves intellectual geniuses.

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So, the American military commanders in Iraq now want to attack bases in Pakistan.

Nothing like destabilising another nuclear power to liven things up. (And, an ally with an unstable government)

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@McTag,

I heard Frank Gardner say this morning that al qaida has been more or less beaten in Iraq but is re grouping in Afghanistan/Pakistan and have friends in Algeria and Somalia and the Muslim populations of Europe. Expect american air strikes on Bradford soon.

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Quote:

A secret deal being negotiated in Baghdad would perpetuate the American military occupation of Iraq indefinitely, regardless of the outcome of the US presidential election in November.

The terms of the impending deal, details of which have been leaked to The Independent, are likely to have an explosive political effect in Iraq. Iraqi officials fear that the accord, under which US troops would occupy permanent bases, conduct military operations, arrest Iraqis and enjoy immunity from Iraqi law, will destabilise Iraq's position in the Middle East and lay the basis for unending conflict in their country.

But the accord also threatens to provoke a political crisis in the US. President Bush wants to push it through by the end of next month so he can declare a military victory and claim his 2003 invasion has been vindicated. But by perpetuating the US presence in Iraq, the long-term settlement would undercut pledges by the Democratic presidential nominee, Barack Obama, to withdraw US troops if he is elected president in November.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/revealed-secret-plan-to-keep-iraq-under-us-control-840512.html

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@Steve 41oo,

After I copied this from The Independent this morning, I noticed that BBB had started a fresh thread with it. Here goes anyway:

The Soviet general at Bagram now has his amanuensis in General David McKiernan, the senior US officer in Afghanistan, who proudly announced last month that US forces had killed "between 30 and 35 Taliban" in a raid on Azizabad near Herat. "In the light of emerging evidence pertaining (sic) to civilian casualties in the ... counter-insurgency operation," the luckless general now says, he feels it "prudent" – another big sic here – to review his original investigation. The evidence "pertaining", of course, is that the Americans probably killed 90 people in Azizabad, most of them women and children. We – let us be frank and own up to our role in the hapless Nato alliance in Afghanistan – have now slaughtered more than 500 Afghan civilians this year alone. These include a Nato missile attack on a wedding party in July when we splattered 47 of the guests all over the village of Deh Bala.

And Obama and McCain really think they're going to win in Afghanistan – before, I suppose, rushing their soldiers back to Iraq when the Baghdad government collapses. What the British couldn't do in the 19th century and what the Russians couldn't do at the end of the 20th century, we're going to achieve at the start of the 21 century, taking our terrible war into nuclear-armed Pakistan just for good measure. Fantasy again.

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@McTag,

Now come on Mac. You really don't think it's as simple as that. We all deplore these casualties, the military as well. Both sides.

What was it the British were trying to do in the 19th century and the Russians were also trying to do at the end of the 20th century and the Alliance is trying to do now? That question could be answered in a number of ways but there does seem some general long-term agreement that something should be done. You could certainly burn the midnight oil discussing it.

Casualties result. Are you saying nothing should be done and that we should pull out and leave them to it? And leave us to it in productive, isolationist heaven?

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@spendius,

Read all of Fisk's article in The Independent. What we are doing here is making the overall problem (islamic fundamentalism leading to violence) many times worse.
Too many murders, too many atrocities by the self-regarding "good guys" have been committed for us to have any moral authority left. We have none, and I would like to see the men responsible for that answer, and suffer, for their actions.

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Anytime we think of all the money we taxpayers are going to be out bailing out wall street we should remember all the waste we have wasted in Iraq.

Example:

Quote:

$13 Billion in Iraq Aid Wasted Or Stolen, Ex-Investigator Says

former Iraqi official estimated yesterday that more than $13 billion meant for reconstruction projects in Iraq was wasted or stolen through elaborate fraud schemes.

Salam Adhoob, a former chief investigator for Iraq's Commission on Public Integrity, told the Senate Democratic Policy Committee, an arm of the Democratic caucus, that an Iraqi auditing bureau "could not properly account for" the money.

While many of the projects audited "were not needed -- and many were never built," he said, "this very real fact remains: Billions of American dollars that paid for these projects are now gone."

He said a report that went to Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and other top Iraqi officials was never published because "nobody cares" about investigating such cases. Many investigators, he said, feared for their safety because 32 of his co-workers have been murdered.

Adhoob said he reported the abuses to the U.S. Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, an agency charged by Congress with helping to root out cases of waste, fraud and abuse in the nearly $50 billion U.S. reconstruction effort. SIGIR spokeswoman Kristine Belisle said her agency continues to "actively follow up" on Adhoob's information, but she would not discuss ongoing investigations.

Adhoob was one of three Iraqi men who testified before the Democratic panel yesterday. Abbas S. Mehdi, a former Iraqi official who held a cabinet-level post, told of widespread corruption. And an Iraqi American who for five years has been a senior adviser to Defense and State department officials in Iraq testified in silhouette by video from an undisclosed location because, he said, he feared for his safety. In a modified voice, he said Iraqi government officials worked with al-Qaeda terrorists at the Baiji refinery to steal oil to sell on the black market.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/22/AR2008092202053.html

Meanwhile while reduced, violence continues in Iraq basically unremarked.

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/ANW220121.htm

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@ican711nm,

Congress wrote:

Congress's Joint Resolution Oct. 16, 2002
Public Law 107-243 107th Congress Joint Resolution (H.J. Res. 114) To authorize the use of United States Armed Forces against Iraq.
...
[10th]Whereas members of al Qaida, an organization bearing responsibility for attacks on the United States, its citizens, and interests, including the attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, are known to be in Iraq;

[11th]Whereas Iraq continues to aid and harbor other international terrorist organizations, including organizations that threaten the lives and safety of United States citizens;
…

General Tommy Franks wrote:

American Soldier, by General Tommy Franks, 7/1/2004
"10" Regan Books, An Imprint of HarperCollins Publishers

page 483:
"The air picture changed once more. Now the icons were streaming toward two ridges an a steep valley in far northeastern Iraq, right on the border with Iran. These were the camps of the Ansar al-Isla terrorists, where al Qaeda leader Abu Musab Zarqawi had trained disciples in the use of chemical and biological weapons. But this strike was more than just another [Tomahawk Land Attack Missile] bashing. Soon Special Forces and [Special Mission Unit] operators, leading Kurdish Peshmerga fighters, would be storming the camps, collecting evidence, taking prisoners, and killing all those who resisted."

page 519:
"[The Marines] also encountered several hundred foreign fighters from Egypt, the Sudan, Syria, and Lybia who were being trained by the regime in a camp south of Baghdad. Those foreign volunteers fought with suicidal ferocity, but they did not fight well. The Marines killed them all."

Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, 09/08/2006, wrote:

Congressional Intelligence Report 09/08/2006
Postwar information indicates that the Intelligence Community accurately assessed that al-Qa'ida affiliate group Ansar al-Islam operated in Kurdish-controlled northeastern Iraq

With the Surge we finally solved the problem of curtailing the al-Qaeda growth in Iraq that began more than a year before we invaded Iraq. Now we must help the people of Iraq solve the problem of establishing and maintaining a stable, free and productive, self-governed state that can by itself continue to curtail al-Qaeda growth in Iraq.

Some perspective is required here. It took the American people 7 years (1776 to 1883) to win the revelutionary war. It took them another 6 years (1783 to 1789) to establish a Constitutional government. The American people had help from several other nations accomplishing all that in those 13 years.[/size]

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Some people see the surge as a success, but fail to acknowledge that the presence of al Qaeda increased after our invasion in 2003. DUH!

Some people also see the surge of $700 billion bailout as a "success," without admitting that "they" created the problem in the first place; the feds. Another DUH.

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THE US, THE UN AND IRAQ, ELEVENTH THREAD

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