The UN, US and Iraq IV

September 4, 2003

Another president began a war promising a "chance to test our weapons, to try our energy and ideas and imagination for the many battles yet to come." He said that as conditions change, "we will be prepared to modify our strategy." The heralded modifications never came, nor did an end to the war. President Lyndon Johnson's war on poverty turned out to be a bigger quagmire than Vietnam. Would that the Democrats would give the war in Iraq as much time to succeed as they are willing to give the "War on Poverty," now entering its 40th year.

Instead of poor people with hope and possibility, we now have a permanent underclass of aspiring criminals knifing one another between having illegitimate children and collecting welfare checks. It is an ironclad law of economics that if you want more of something, subsidize it; if you want less of something, tax it. But liberals were shocked and bewildered to discover that when they subsidized illegitimacy, they got more of it.

The War on Poverty took a crisis-level illegitimacy rate among blacks in the mid-1960s (22 percent) and tripled it to 69 percent. It transformed a negligible illegitimacy rate among whites (2 percent) to emergency proportions (22.5 percent) - higher than the black illegitimacy rate when Daniel Patrick Moynihan heralded the War on Poverty with his alarmist report on black families, "The Negro Family: The Case for National Action." (Demonstrating the sort of on-the job-training that has so impressed Hollywood elites, the state with the second highest rate of white illegitimacy is Howard Dean's Vermont.) Overall, the illegitimacy rate has skyrocketed from about 8 percent to 33.8 percent.

If George Bush's war on terrorism were to go as well as the Democrats' war on poverty, in a few decades we could have four times as many angry Muslims worldwide plotting terrorist violence against Americans.

Or how about an "exit strategy" for New York City's war on high rents? Rent control was introduced as a temporary wartime measure during World War II. Sixty years later, the Germans have been subdued - but government bureaucrats in New York are still setting rents, leading to the surplus of affordable housing for which the city is duly famous. The anointed live in lush five-bedroom apartments in marquee buildings for $350 a month while newcomers are forced to bid up the few units in what's left of the housing market, paying thousands of dollars per month to live in rat-infested tenements.

Justice Sandra Day O'Connor recently upheld a 25-year failed experiment in race discrimination for college admissions. She breezily announced a pull-out date of 2028. Liberals admired O'Connor's Solomon-like resolution of a festering national problem and did not concern themselves with the absence of an "exit strategy."

But George Bush - with the widespread support of the American people and the U.S. Congress - acts to take out a lunatic supporting Islamic terrorism, and within six months, all the Democratic presidential candidates are clamoring for an "exit strategy." Bush should promise the Democrats that there will be peace and democracy in Iraq long before the Democrats conceive of an exit strategy to the war on poverty, the war on high rents, and the war on white kids applying to Michigan Law School.

The party of diversity is in lockstep in supporting all those idiotic programs. They're working just great. But our servicemen come under attack while clearing out a swamp of murderous fanatics who seek the death of all Americans and the Democrats have had enough.

To be fair, encouraging Democrats to come up with new ideas is fraught with danger. One Democrat who has recently demonstrated her out-of-the-box thinking is Mattie Hunter, a Democratic state senator in Illinois. (You knew she was a Democrat when the New York Times neglected to provide a party affiliation.) After a fired employee returned to the auto supply warehouse in Hunter's district to gun down six of his former colleagues, she demanded an investigation into ... the circumstances of the gunman's firing. "How did they do it?" she said. "Did they just say, 'We're going to fire you'? Was it done professionally? In today's day, everyone is under a lot of pressure. When someone loses their job, it's a shock and tragedy in itself."

Perhaps Hunter could propose a War on Firing Employees. In 50 years, 69 percent of all employees will be shooting up their workplaces, but the Democrats will urge patience in working out the bugs.

Liberals are hopping mad about the war with Iraq. Showing the nuance and complexity of thought liberals pride themselves on, they are excitedly restating all the arguments they made before the war - arguments which were soundly rejected by the American people, the U.S. Congress and the Bush administration.

Re the suicide bombings of yesterday

Quote:

A fifth car bomb failed to explode when the driver was shot and captured by security guards. US military officials said he was found to be carrying a Syrian passport.

Is it just me, or does anyone else find it surprising that suicide bombers wander around carrying their passports with them ?

Iran brushes aside US plea on al-Qaida

Wednesday 29 October 2003, 15:11 Makka Time, 12:11 GMT


Al-Qaida leader Sulayman Abu Gaith is believed to be in Iranian custody




Iran has said it will not share its intelligence on al-Qaida with the US and that it needs to see "practical steps" before considering resuming dialogue with Washington.



"We don't have any relations or links with the US or its security services. So there is no reason to cooperate with them by giving them information," government spokesman Abd Allah Ramazanzadeh told reporters on Wednesday in the capital Tehran.



The United States has demanded Iran should turn over detained senior members of al-Qaida, but Iran has said the men - whose names have not been disclosed - could be tried in Iranian courts.



Ramazanzadeh told reporters that Iran may "never" reveal the identities of its detainees and later clarified that "we have no programme to announcing their names". "It depends on our national interests," he added.



Extradition



Iran last week identified to the UN Security Council more than 200 suspected al-Qaida members it said had already been extradited to their countries of origin.




Armitage raised the possibility of
the US talking to Iran


But the identity of those still being held had been the subject of intense speculation -diplomatic sources and Arab press reports had pointed to the possible presence in Iran of the movement's spokesman Sulayman Abu Gaith and its number three, Saif al-Adl, as well as Usama bin Ladin's son and heir to the network, Saad.



Iran has acknowledged that a number of top al-Qaida figures have been detained in Tehran, but has refused to give any hints as to their identities.



Ramazanzadeh also responded to comments by US Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, who on Tuesday said Washington may hold limited talks with Iran - included into an "axis of evil" by US President George Bush.



"We are expecting practical steps by the US. You can't threaten from one side and block our assets... and then request discussions," Ramazanzadeh said.



Practical steps



"We have to see practical steps," he emphasised. "The discussion here is what the US will do in practice in order to gain our trust."



First and foremost, Ramazanzadeh said the US "should stop accusing us".



"You can't threaten from one side and block our assets... and then request discussions"

Abd Allah Ramzanzadeh
spokesman, Iranian government


"They have levelled false accusations against us one too many times. They have to put a stop to it," he said, even though he asserted that Iran's "being or not being in an axis of evil has no meaning to us."



He also repeated the demand that the US should release Iranian assets that were frozen after the 1979 Islamic revolution.



"These are practical actions in order to gain Iranian trust and so we have a justification to initiate" talks, Ramazanzadeh said.



Iran and the US cut diplomatic ties in 1980, following the hostage taking at the US embassy in Tehran.



In recent months, Washington has accused Iran of harbouring and not arresting al-Qaida operatives, undermining the Middle East peace process and meddling in post-war Iraq.

Reuters October 28, 2003

ANALYSIS-Hidden foes confuse, torment U.S. in Iraq

In-Depth Coverage
By Alistair Lyon and Mark Trevelyan

BAGHDAD/BERLIN, Oct 28 (Reuters) - Guerrillas in Iraq seem to have a deadly answer to every claim by U.S. military officials that they are in despair and on the run.

Sunday's bold rocketing of a Baghdad hotel that just missed the U.S. deputy defence secretary and a string of suicide bombings the next day were only the latest in what the generals dismiss as the violent acts of doomed men.

But their varying assessments of their enemy suggest an occupying army reeling from the scale of attacks in Iraq and struggling to narrow a bewildering range of suspects.

Saddam Hussein loyalists, Syria, Iran, al Qaeda and its associate Ansar al-Islam -- all, in recent weeks, have been implicated by U.S. officials in the relentless violence.

Confusingly, U.S. comments have alternately highlighted and minimised the role of foreign fighters in attacks on U.S. forces, the United Nations, the Red Cross, foreign missions, Iraqi police and others close to the occupation.

In the latest example, U.S. Brigadier General Mark Hertling said coordinated suicide bombings that killed 35 people and wounded 230 on Monday "certainly...have a mode of operation of foreign fighters". He pointed to the capture of an assailant said to hold a Syrian passport.

The same day, Major General Raymond Odierno, commander of the 4th Infantry Division, took a seemingly different tack, saying the Iraqi resistance contained only a "very, very small percentage of foreign fighters".

Sebestyen Gorka, fellow of the Terrorism Research Center in Virginia, said the mixed messages partly reflected crossed wires between the State Department, Pentagon, military commanders, special forces and newly created regional authorities in Iraq.

"There are far too many chiefs, basically. The lines of communication and command are confused and overlapping...It's a mess," he said.

But the 130,000 U.S. troops in Iraq may also act as a magnet to factions across the Middle East who hate America for its support of Israel and invasion of Iraq and who now have the opportunity to wage a jihad, or holy struggle, against it.

BEDROCK OF HOSTILITY
As if to underline the general hatred of U.S. policy in the region, Lebanon's Druze leader Walid Jumblatt voiced regret that the Baghdad hotel attack had failed to kill Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz.

"There is a super-abundance of external actors, including Syria, including Iran, including al Qaeda, who have both the means and the motive to use proxies in Iraq to bedevil America," said John Pike, head of think-tank GlobalSecurity.org.

But the Iraq invasion also gives Iran and Syria a strong interest in avoiding U.S. wrath, which might temper any temptation to stir trouble for the occupiers next door.

Asked about U.S. charges of cross-border subversion, Sir Jeremy Greenstock, Britain's special envoy to Iraq, said Syria and Iran had been "quite cooperative", while urging them to support U.S.-led efforts more openly.

Gorka said virtually any group had the means to carry out low-level attacks on U.S. or foreign targets in a region where Kalashnikovs, rocket-propelled grenades and explosives are widely and cheaply available.

But suicide bombings are more typical of al Qaeda, or like-minded "fellow travellers", than of the hard men who once propped up Saddam Hussein's Baathist regime.

Toby Dodge, author of a new book called Inventing Iraq, said foreign militants could well pose a future threat, but derided the idea that they already had organised networks in place capable of orchestrating bombing campaigns.

"Without a shadow of a doubt, the resistance and the bombings are all homegrown," he said.

Whatever their identity, the attackers have shown themselves able to strike effectively at short notice.

An October 14 suicide bombing outside the Turkish embassy in Baghdad came a week after parliament in Ankara had approved sending peacekeepers to Iraq.

Sunday's attack on the Rashid Hotel, where Wolfowitz was staying, proved the guerrillas can mount opportunist strikes on even the most heavily protected targets.

"It's quite an impressive display of operational capability, but it's not as if they had to do everything from zero. They have in place individuals, weapons and the motivation to execute things when they do get that target of opportunity," Gorka said.



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© Copyright 2003, Reuters

But George Bush - with the widespread support of the American people and the U.S. Congress - acts to take out a lunatic supporting Islamic terrorism

The question is not Why Saddam? The question is Why ONLY Saddam ? Why not Arafat, Syria, Iran, Saudi, Egypt, Pakistan etc etc etc

Or maybe they are next in the line ?

McGentrix, If Saddam's support of terrorism in Israel was the aim of this administration, it hasn't stopped any suicide bombers in Israel - or haven't you noticed? Sort of a very weak argument. The terrorism is in Iraq and Afghanistan, so exactly what terrorist activity did the Bush administration accomplish in stopping? .

I am glad to know that the belief that the military is ALWAYS wrong still lingers in some peoples hearts...