The UN, US and Iraq IV

Oh, I do see what you mean. When strong doubts about finding (and suspecting the intelligence about) WMD first started emerging, there were any number of skeptical voices that said "and if they do find them, how do we know they won't have been planted?" I have wondered occasionally if that may not have been one of the reasons they haven't been found - that even this admin could see the implications of that.

I suspect that one of the things that may be happening now is that the whole Cheney-Rumsfeld-Wolfowitx-Perle scheme may have received the unwelcome scrutiny it was trying to avoid - certainly a lot of the military and the government are beginning to sound far less believing. And, considering the way world opinion has gone.....

Wolfowitz was forced to recant yesterday, or so I hear (no Times yet).

mamaj, When GWBush and Powell spoke to the nation (actually the world), they claimed they knew the locations of those WMDs. With that claim, I also thought Saddam had those WMDs. I would never have thought that our president and especially Colin Powell would lie to us about such an important matter. My reaction now is "get rid of those damn liars." They've done enough damage.

CI -- certainly not a criticism of you, but from the get-go many of us have doubted the administration and gotten a lot of flack from others who assume that the administration would not lie. But many of us learned in civics and history classes that it's our duty to ask questions and expect answers from elected officials.

I can't speak for others, but I applied the same questioning attitude to Clinton and to his predecessors. It's our job, for heaven's sake, to take responsibility for insisting on being informed, on being told the truth.

If anything comes out of four years of this administration, I very much hope that it will be a renewed attitude of responsibility on the part of everyone, not just the current opposition party, to demand answers from any and all administrations. We don't have kings and generals and tsars and sheikhs running our government. One is expected, as an elected president of the US, to be honest and open and informative. Anything less ranges from malfeasance to treason. We have yet to determine where Bush belongs on that scale.

I admit that I have lost all respect for those A2K'ers who continue to insist, blindly, that the administration "must" be doing the right thing when the lies have been demonstrated and documented. These folks need a fresh course in civics.

The one thing from which I draw most comfort is that the folks most vociferous in their condemnations of The Current Administration, and most strident in their predictions of its demise, is their track record.

timber, Huh?

They ain't been right yet, c.i., not about The Elections (since the early '90s, BTW), the Economy, The War, The "Arab Street", Environmental Catastrophe, the solidarity and economic strength of The EU, or anything else. I understand their fury ... frustration will do that to you. I almost feel sorry for them. Just almost, though.

Frustration is a matter of personal perspective. I guess the neocons don't have any.

I don't see much frustration evidenced by The Right ... I'll grant that.

timberlandko,

I really am not sure what opinion you are stating here, as you wrote:



Many of us are vociferous in our fear and outrage of the present administration... because it is obvious their lies, spin and arrogance (leaving the UN 'wouldbe' coalition -hanging and ran off to aggressive war w/ tony blair & co.) to try and convince the US citizenry we were in danger.
Using 9/11 as though Bin Laden operated right there out of Saddam's Iraq, and painting pictures of mass destruction in the USA as Saddam hit us with one of his "nukler missles", or started hitting the region over there with his biological weaponry.

It is false 'righteousness' that Americans should say, "Wal, um glad thayre fightin over yonder whar them feriners are insted a' here on my street. They's the terr'ists!" Or- a well educated store manager told me yesterday- same words: "I feel President Bush is doing a good thing in taking the fight over there. Let him get al quada and the others on their own turf" (gee, did I say he was EDUCATED?)

My heart hurts when Americans feel they are so much better than the rest of the world, that they must keep their door clean, but dumping the garbage in other folks country. And on top of that, they " crow " about it, as though they have done something intelligent. [And no one has proven any "Iraqi" or Hussiens govt., have performed terrorist actions against us- here in the USA- in the past]. They might now!

I see no difference in what GwBush's and Blair's government did, than what Saddam did to Kuwait.
Saddam Hussien, having been courted by the USA and assisted very much in the war with Iran, felt the US govt. respected him and his power among Muslims. Saddam's statement concerning the march into Kuwait, was the evil, immoral regime in Kuwait. So that justified him going there to correct it. Now, where is the difference?

OH!!! you say. george bush did not go to Iraq to make it a part of the USA, as Saddam did Kuwait.
He just wanted to relieve the peoples that are persecuted by Saddam.

This is VERY hard to believe.
Compare it to a household where a man is dominating his wife and abusing the children. Do we go in bombing and destroying the house, hoping the wife and children survive- just to get the man out. He (this abuser) was not bothering us, anyway- he was bothering the woman and children. So, in the process of bombing the man out, smoking guns, tear gas, bullets, etc etc. let us say 3 of 8 people survive. The mom, man and 3 children are killed. Could we honestly stand in front of the burned out place and announce how proud we are that we can rebuild this house for these three little children, who do not even know what they want?

The above analogy is what I see in Iraq, and it is not pretty.

How can you say we got it wrong timberlandko?
The moderately liberal (not necessarily LEFTIST) people voted and put their man in office in 2000- but that was handily changed with a lot of maneuvers- of which we are ALL familiar, and we have a 'court' appointed leader.

Usually I have little to say on the subject of this world's situations. But to say that no 'vociferous objector' has been right yet... kind of greased my wheels.
Thank you for the opportunity.

Here's a piece from Business Week which has some interesting stuff in it -- horrifying stuff to many of us. It may well have been posted before and I missed it. In case it hasn't, here's the link for those who are concerned about Iraq, Halliburton, KBR, and outsourcing in general and its possible consquences:

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/03_37/b3849012.htm

Tartar, Interesting article in BusinessWeek. Thx, c.i.

Thought crime abounds in Iraq ----- how long til it makes it's way to your city?

September 09, 2003
Kurds, CPA asking for trouble in Kirkuk

Hoo boy. The Kurds in Kirkuk, a flash-point for Turks, Turkoman, Arabs and Kurds alike, have received permission from the CPA to fly the Kurdish flag in the city.

The coalition forces announced that Kurds are free to fly the Kurdistan flag in Kirkuk, wherever they want and no one has the right to remove the Kurdistan flag or object this Kurdish right.

The Kurds have told the coalition forces that the Iraqi flag does not represent Kurds and Kurdistan and it has caused many atrocities to Kurds.

Is the CPA nuts? When the Kurds liberated Kirkuk, the Kurdish police who immediately set up shop in the city wore the old Iraqi police uniforms so they wouldn't give Turkey the wrong idea that the Kurds were about to bolt from Iraq and form an independent country. This was a wise move.

But this flag flying could be trouble. It's an expression of Kurdish nationalism and seems to indicate a frustration with the slow pace of the federalization plan the Kurds came up with last year.

A friend of mine thinks the Kurds should have their own country, the Arabs should get the rest of Iraq and, for good measure, Turkey should be dismantled (!) and the southeast ceded to the newly independent Kurdistan. While I think the Kurds certainly deserve their own state ?- God knows they've suffered through the decades ?- it's unclear whether they can they have it? I'd guess probably not. A Kurdish state would be too destabilizing to the region. Turkey is absolutely opposed to an independent Kurdistan, and worries that if Kurds controlled the oil revenue of the Kirkuk fields, they would have the means to make an independent state viable. Thus, a declaration of independence ?- possibly brought on by nationalism stoked by such symbolism as the flying the Kurdish flag over Kirkuk ?- could result in a massive and immediate invasion from both Turkey and Iran in order to keep order, and to secure the Kirkuk and Mosul oil fields.

How many Kurds would die for such a future? How many Turks? No doubt, many on both sides are willing to die for either Kurdistan or Turkey, but the Kurds should ask themselves whether an independent state would be worth death and destruction.

THe flag over Kirkuk could enrage the Turkoman, who claim Kirkuk as their city in the same way that Kurds say it is theirs. The will likely say they need protection, prompting Turkey to growl about the need for intervention. (The Turks are using the presence of the Turkoman in Kirkuk as an excuse to maintain their leverage with the Americans on the Kurdish issue.) Support the Kurds too much in their independence dream, the Turks are saying, and we'll use the plight of the Turkoman as a pretext to invade. Does the United States want to be caught in between the Turks and the Kurds? A NATO ally and a coalition member? When America is trying to convince Turkey to supply up to 10,000 troops to help pacify Baghdad? Is this some kind of brinkmanship the U.S. is playing with Turkey? Could the U.S. be using the Kurds to provoke the Turks, only to promise to reign them in if the Turks finally offer troops, betting Ankara won't really invade? If so, it's a dangerous bluff.

The status of Kirkuk is, to put it mildly, delicate. Letting the Kurds fly their flag, while seemingly a small gesture, could have large consequences.
Posted by Christopher at 04:42 PM | Forums | Comments (9) | Trackback (2)



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September 10, 2003
Update to Flag Flap

A knowledgeable friend who was in Kirkuk a few weeks ago wrote in to tell me that the Kurds ?- and other political parties such as the Turkoman Front ?- had been flying their flags since at least the beginning of August. Three days ago, when the Coalition Provisional Authority instructed the flags be taken down, Kurds pelted U.S. soldiers with stones. The CPA soon reversed itself, the reason for the previous entry.

As my friend wrote: "When I was there [in early August], the city was FILLED with Kurdish flags. It is truly unbelievable, and quite beautiful. Every single building had a Kurdistan flag flying. Many walls had Kurdish flags painted on them. Even the lightposts had Kurdish flags painted on them."

The flagrant flag flying was news to me. I had heard from friends in the area that the Iraqi flag (minus Saddam's post-1991 Arabic additions) had been flying since the early summer or so. In fact, when I was there in April on the day of Kirkuk's liberation, there were many old-style Iraqi flags being waved about ?- in addition to the political parties' flags. When did the Kurds and others begin putting up their own flags? I don't know.

Anyway, the decision to let the Kurds wave their banner high in Kirkuk seems to be a reverting to the status quo, although one that I still think is decidedly shaky. Regardless of the validity of the Kurds' claims on Kirkuk (and I think they're pretty damn valid), flaunting the Kurdish nature of the city in the face of Turkey and its Turkoman brethren is asking for trouble.

Anyway, this flag lag reveals a source of major frustration for me. My sources communicate too slowly to allow for timeliness. Trying to parse Kurdish and Arabic English-language media over the net is a bit of a fool's game. In short, there's no good way to cover Iraq from New York, and I have no way to get to Iraq any time soon.
Posted by Christopher at 04:23 PM | Forums | Comments (4) | Trackback (0)
Categories: Iraq | Kurds | Post-War | Turkey

*ahem*



Here We Go Again

so the US and the Brits cant find the WoMD, what to do? dont report anything and maybe the world will forget?
LONDON, Sept. 14 (Xinhuanet) -- Britain and the United States have decided to delay the publication of a full report on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction after inspectors found no evidence that any such weapons exist in the country, the British Sunday Times newspaper reported on Sunday.

　　Efforts by the Iraq Survey Group, an Anglo-American team of 1,400 scientists, military and intelligence experts, to scour Iraq for the past four months to uncover evidence of chemical and biological weapons have so far ended in failure, the paper said.

　　It has been expected that a progress report would be published Monday, the paper said, but some British lawmakers on the parliamentary security and intelligence committee have been told that this has been delayed and no new date set.

　　The paper also said British defense intelligence sources confirmed last week that the final report, due to be submitted by David Kay, the survey group's leader, to George Tenet, head of the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), had been delayed and may not necessarily even be published.

Well, from today's papers (btw: two more Iranian policemen died due to their injuries):

Of course "friendly fire" occurs. So does careless fire, frustrated fire, fire from soldiers who are exhausted and misused. The most telling issue for me in these incidents -- and there have been many by now -- is the Pentagon's immediate reaction: to blame others as quickly as possible, to cry foul, to delay giving an accurate report, and to (finally!) whisper the truth. As a citizen who hired them and who pays their salaries,I'd like to fire them -- I don't trust them and I know they don't respect their bosses. As one of their soldiers, I'd probably want to turn my "friendly" fire on them, not on the Iraqis.

Thanks for the link, and I agree with you, and the consequences part. We might be a superpower in all out destruction, but in a conflict similar to this, especially in the case of two or three simultaneous ones, we're certainly aren't.

I juist wanna say that yes, "Freindly Fire" incidents have happened ... they always have, always will. They're an unavoidable consequence of War. That's not to excuse them, just to recognize them for what they are; a phenomenon consistent with human fallibility. They are quite rare, in reality, as much is done to preclude their occurence, but stuff happens. As with most tragedies, a chain of events, of additive system failures, cascades into the fulfillment of conditions which bring about the tragedy. The safeguards fail, or the situation falls outside the scope of the established safeguards.

If fault is to be laid here, it falls mainly into two areas, as I see it. First, Combat Troops are ill-suited to maintaining civil order as that practice lies outside their training and mission.
Second, and as applicable to this particular case and almost all others which have occurred, a breakdown in communication established the condition which led to the incident. A group of individuals in several vehicles approached an American checkpoint at high speed, showing no intent of stopping. Firing broke out. Additional fire ensued, directed toward the American position from a nearby building. The American troops, consistent with their training, engaged in suppressive fire and eliminated the perceived opposition. Unfortunately, combat troops, unlike cops, do not have the luxury of asking questions before shooting. The nature of martial weaponry being what it is, the appropriate time to address a threat is immediately upon perceiving that threat ... war offers damned few second chances, and he who hesitates truly is lost. That's just the way it is. Had communication been better, the US troops could have been advised of the vehicle chase, and reacted appropriately to that situation. As it was, however, a body of vehicles approached the defensive perimiter with apparent hostile intent, failing to respond to demands to halt and submit to inspection. Numerous similar events have been hostile in nature. There is ongoing threat to American troops. The very fact there has been armed opposition is precisely why that checkpoint was there. That's not "Right", that's not "Just", that's just what happened, and perfectly understandable given the circumstances. The troops aren't "Trigger Happy" at all, as I see it; they merely perform their design function, which is to establish presence and eliminate threat. They aren't cops, they're combat troops. Their job is comnbat, and their perception of the world is centered on combat. That's the problem, as I see it. It is vital both to increase the indigenous civil law enforcement cadre, and to establish better communications between that civil authority and the combat troops sharing that environment. The two missions, the maintenance of civil authority and the suppression of organized military opposition, are inconsistent with one another, and untill that issue is addressed successfuly, similar failures can be expected.

A couple of weeks ago, I read an article containing a comment by Dominique Villepin, stating (paraphrasing) France may choose to abstain, rather than have another round of what happened last time. Of course, that was a while back, and things change quickly.

As my question to CI showed, I knew the news could have been updated differently.

I think it is bad form to lift someone's post from another thread, and use it in this manner.