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THE US, UN AND IRAQ V

 
 
Sofia
 
  1  
Reply Fri 28 Nov, 2003 10:06 pm
I don't think you risk your life in such a way for Public Relations, or another four years.

It was the most dangerous place in the world for Bush. Sometimes, the cynical answer doesn't fit.

Try to actually imagine the burden of responsibility for ordering young people into danger. Doesn't anyone think he went because he felt he should?
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Tartarin
 
  1  
Reply Fri 28 Nov, 2003 10:08 pm
Not me.
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dyslexia
 
  1  
Reply Fri 28 Nov, 2003 10:10 pm
for as long as I can remember I have never believed any president has ever done anything solely on the basis that it was something he "should do." the only possible exception I can think of would be Truman and the ABomb and I believe that was the wrong decision.
0 Replies
 
PDiddie
 
  1  
Reply Fri 28 Nov, 2003 10:18 pm
Sofia wrote:
I don't think you risk your life in such a way or Public Relations, or another four years.

It was the most dangerous place in the world for Bush. Sometimes, the cynical answer doesn't fit.

Try to actually imagine the burden of responsibility for ordering young people into danger. Doesn't anyone think he went because he felt he should?


Why is it so inherently unsafe for Bush that he has to fly in under darkness without anyone except a handful of top aides and Secret Service and military personnel in the know, then hide out at the airport for a couple of hours with 600 troops, but Hillary Clinton and Jack Reed can drive around the city and meet with American troops, international officials and Iraqi leaders?

Do the Iraqis who were supposed to greet our soldiers with cheers and rose petals just like Hillary Clinton better than George W. Bush?

Or is Hillary just better able to defend herself?

The reason Bush went to Iraq was because he was afraid he'd be shown up by Hillary Clinton.

And even then he would only skulk in and out after dark.

He's a craven coward.
0 Replies
 
Gelisgesti
 
  1  
Reply Fri 28 Nov, 2003 10:20 pm
Sofia wrote:
I don't think you risk your life in such a way or Public Relations, or another four years.

It was the most dangerous place in the world for Bush. Sometimes, the cynical answer doesn't fit.

Try to actually imagine the burden of responsibility for ordering young people into danger. Doesn't anyone think he went because he felt he should?


Where would the 'safest place' in the world be for the man voted the most 'dangerous' most 'hated' man in the world?
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cicerone imposter
 
  1  
Reply Fri 28 Nov, 2003 10:28 pm
timber's quote, " no matter who may be inconvenienced" Wow! You're all heart.
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hobitbob
 
  1  
Reply Sat 29 Nov, 2003 12:58 am
Sofia wrote:
I don't think you risk your life in such a way for Public Relations, or another four years.

You mean risking one's life by hiding in a hangar for two hours, and not going out to meet anyone?

Quote:
It was the most dangerous place in the world for Bush. Sometimes, the cynical answer doesn't fit.

The most dangerous place for Bush would seem to be anywhere he would have to face the families of those whose death he has ordered.

Quote:
Try to actually imagine the burden of responsibility for ordering young people into danger. Doesn't anyone think he went because he felt he should?

I thing Bush, if he thinks at all about ordering people to their deaths, does so with a song in his heart.
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timberlandko
 
  1  
Reply Sat 29 Nov, 2003 01:27 am
The press release opens with a preamble and a statement, lays out 10 arguments in support of that statement, offers a conclusion, and declares a course of action. There's been plenty of emotion here, but no one has addressed any of the specifics of the statement. Why?
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Walter Hinteler
 
  1  
Reply Sat 29 Nov, 2003 01:39 am
Quote:
Ahmed Kheiri, 24, saw the visit as a campaign tactic.

"He came for the sake of the elections," Kheiri said. "He never thought of the Iraqi people. He doesn't care about us. It was a personal visit for his own sake."

Iraqi politicians
[...]
Another member of the Governing Council, Mahmoud Othman, said the trip meant little.

"We cannot consider Bush's arrival at Baghdad International Airport yesterday a visit to Iraq," he said. "He did not meet with ordinary Iraqis. Bush was only trying to boost the morale of his troops."
[...]
"The way he made the trip shows he's afraid of Iraqis," said Mohammed Kamel, 40, a former soldier who now drives a taxi. "He should be; we're a fierce people."

While U.S. troops called the trip courageous, some Iraqis saw it as cowardly.

"The way he made the trip shows he's afraid of Iraqis," said Mohammed Kamel, 40, a former soldier who now drives a taxi. "He should be; we're a fierce people."
source: TimesReporter

Certainly I would expect the commander-in-chief to visit his troops - had more thought about christmas.

And perhaps some more 'contact' with Iraquis as well could have done better.
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pistoff
 
  1  
Reply Sat 29 Nov, 2003 03:59 am
An answer.
The speech was busllshite from a nutcase.

Since GW got his instructions from God then all that died, were wounded &/or maimed were by the will of God, right? Same for all of those that will suffer &/or die there and Afghanisitan from now on. GW surely cannot be blamed.

btw Timberlake is a poster boy on this board for the Neo cons.
0 Replies
 
Gelisgesti
 
  1  
Reply Sat 29 Nov, 2003 06:21 am
Quote:


Boston Globe November 23, 2003
Army Reserve battling an exodus
War is seen as drain on ranks

In-Depth Coverage

By Robert Schlesinger, Globe Staff

WASHINGTON -- The US Army Reserve fell short of its reenlistment goals this fiscal year, underscoring Pentagon fears that the protracted conflict in Iraq could cause a crippling exodus from the armed services.

The Army Reserve has missed its retention goal by 6.7 percent, the second shortfall since fiscal 1997. It was largely the result of a larger than expected exodus of career reservists, a loss of valuable skills because such staff members are responsible for training junior officers and operating complex weapons systems.

"The Army has invested an enormous amount of money in training these people, and they're very hard to replace," said John Pike of globalsecurity.org, an independent research group in Washington.

With extended deployments and increasingly deadly attacks by Iraqi guerrillas, Defense Department officials are scrambling to combat a broader downturn in retention and recruitment that they fear is on the horizon.

The US Army, the primary service deployed in Iraq, is offering reenlistment bonuses of $5,000 for soldiers serving there. The Army National Guard is extending an official thank-you to members by arranging services to honor returning soldiers. The Massachusetts National Guard is offering rewards ranging from plaques to NASCAR tickets to members who lure recruits. And throughout the branches, recruitment advertising is up and programs are being launched to make the military seem more family-friendly.

The Army also is resorting to a policy called "stop loss" that allows the Pentagon to indefinitely keep soldiers from leaving the service once their time has expired. The policy, used during war, is designed to prevent staffing shortfalls in key sectors.

As the military ponders unpalatable measures -- further Reserve or Guard call-ups, back-to-back tours of duty -- to fill the global obligations, any personnel shortfalls could prove disastrous. "It's a slippery slope in the sense that there's kind of a snowball effect," said Andrew F. Krepinevich, executive director of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, a Washington think tank that focuses on defense issues. "It's very difficult to work your way out of, very difficult to put Humpty Dumpty back together again once you break the force."

While Pentagon officials have insisted that recruiting and retention figures are mostly at or above expected levels, thanks in part to a soft economy that offers little competition, signs of trouble are emerging. Recruiting for the Massachusetts National Guard, a backup to the professional Army and Air Force, was down 30 percent this year. Nationwide, the Army National Guard has fallen 13 percent short of its recruiting goal, although that deficit was offset by fewer than expected troops leaving the service.

Perhaps the most troubling statistic is the drop in retention for the Army Reserve, first disclosed by Army Chief of Staff General Peter Schoomaker on Wednesday in testimony before Congress. The drop was due to the Reserve falling 9.3 percent short of its retention goal among career soldiers.

"They've got a fair amount of experience with these things and generally manage to fine-tune them so that they pretty much have in place all of the various incentives and bonuses . . . that they'll pretty much come in on their number. So if they were off by 6 percent, that's significant," Pike said.

It was the second time in the past seven years that the Reserve has fallen below its intended reenlistment figure, according to Steve Stromvall, an Army Reserve spokesman. In the 12 months that concluded at the end of September 2001, the Reserves was 1 percent short of its number. That the shortfall was entirely among career soldiers is important because they areconsidered the Army's backbone. "They're critically important," said Cindy Williams, a specialist on military personnel issues with MIT's Security Studies Program. "That's where the leadership is going to come from in the next decade."

They are people like Staff Sergeant Scott Durst, a 15-year veteran of the Army Reserve who extended his enlistment after a tour in Bosnia but will not sign on for another tour after Iraq, though it will means he loses the opportunity for retirement benefits. "Not even a chance, no," said his wife Nancy Durst, a high school art teacher. "He didn't sign up to be a Reserve to be doing active-duty orders every year."

She added that her husband, a member of the 94th Military Police Company, has spent too much time away from their home in southern Maine and their two teenage daughters.

"I fear there will be a negative impact on retention of these Guard and Reserve personnel," said Senator Susan Collins, a Republican of Maine who sits on the personnel subcommittee of the Senate Armed Services Committee. "There's an old saying in the Army that they enlist the soldier but reenlist the family, and the new one-year `boots on the ground' policy for service in Iraq has really upset a lot of the families with whom I've talked."

According to internal Pentagon surveys conducted last spring and summer, the overall percentage of troops intending to reenlist remained steady from last year, at 58 percent. But among those serving in Iraq, only 54 percent who were surveyed agreed, while 46 percent said they did not want to reenlist.

Michael O'Hanlon, a defense specialist at the Washington-based Brookings Institution, called the figures "at the threshold of tolerable. In and of themselves they're not catastrophic, but the problem is they could get worse because as people increasingly confirm the reality of returning to Iraq another time these numbers can be expected to drop further. If you wait too long to address the trends, then it's too late."

In 2003, the Army's retention goal was 67 percent.

Like the recruiting shortfall in the Guard, the unexpected drop in the Reserve's 2003 retention was offset by stronger than expected recruiting.

The Army, which oversees the bulk of troops in Iraq, is not the only branch of the armed services facing hardships in recruitment and retention because of the Iraq war.

Air Force Major Joe Allegretti, chief of the Defense Department's Joint Recruiting Advertising Program, cited a poll of youths conducted from April through June in which half said the war in Iraq made them less likely to join the military, and only one-third said it made them more likely to join.

Sergeant Major James Vales, senior Army counselor in charge of overseeing active-duty retention policy, said his shop of 740 career counselors has been answering concerns from members of Congress and Army leaders about trying to prevent a talent drain.

"We have some things in the works to kind of offset any problems that we may see in retention," Vales said, citing options ranging from family-friendly policies like support groups and child care to his most important tool: cash. "Most of [the effort] is increasing our retention bonus dollars. . . . The biggest thing soldiers respond to is monetary incentives."

Reserve and Guard leaders are working to improve relations with stateside families by setting up support networks, including "marriage enhancement seminars" run through the Army Reserve's chaplaincy and designed to address such issues as long separations during deployments.

Guard leaders also have sent teams into Iraq to work on the problem. Several soldiers spread between Iraq and Kuwait try to act as trouble-shooters for unhappy Guard members, checking back twice weekly with Guard headquarters in the United States, said Colonel Frank Grass, the Guard's chief of operations.

And thanks to "stop loss," members of the Guard and Reserve cannot leave the military until 90 days after they have been deactivated.

Robert Schlesinger can be reached at [email protected].

© Copyright 2003 Globe Newspaper Company.


SOURCE
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Tartarin
 
  1  
Reply Sat 29 Nov, 2003 07:54 am
Re: An answer.
pistoff wrote:
btw Timberlake is a poster boy on this board for the Neo cons.


Pist, We need substantiation for this claim. And illustration would do just fine. Thanks.
0 Replies
 
blatham
 
  1  
Reply Sat 29 Nov, 2003 09:57 am
timber

Re cohen's statement...you really ought to read the NY Review piece I linked above. Cohen's claim, right up top, that no other reasonable conclusion might have been reached is a typical misrepresentation. No one else, other than Bush's people and Blair's people reached that conclusion, for goodness sake.

Re Kay's report compared to Powell's claim at the UN...
Quote:
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Tartarin
 
  1  
Reply Sat 29 Nov, 2003 11:04 am
In Bush's radio statement today, he spoke of his ability to give "a report from the front lines." If a couple of hours in a hangar surrounded by men whose lives were being risked to provide him with this photo op are the "front lines," then Timber is "manning the Canadian border."
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Gelisgesti
 
  1  
Reply Sat 29 Nov, 2003 12:07 pm
Quote:
Criticized U.S. Power Transfer Plan In Iraq Under Review

Saturday, November 29 2003 @ 12:04 PM Eastern Standard Time
Contributed by: Admin
Views: 16

BAGHDAD, November 29 - Iraqi U.S.-installed interim governing council held key talks Saturday, November 29, on demands from the powerful Shiite religious hierarchy for immediate elections that have undermined the credibility of American plans for power transfer in the occupied oil-rich Arab country.

The Shiites are not the only party against the agreement - put forward by the U.S.-led occupation authority and approved by its handpicked council on November 15.

Iraqi Sunnis, political parties and even some members of the Governing Council itself voiced their rejection of the blueprint.

A sharp criticism by the leading Shiite scholar, Grand Ayatollah Ali Al-Sistani, was followed by young Shiite firebrand scholar Muqtada Al-Sadr.

Al-Sadr, in his Friday prayer sermon, attacked the agreement as well as the flying visit to Baghdad by U.S. President George Bush, asserting it was "rejected both legally and practically."

He echoed the demands of Sistani, who stressed that the agreement - stipulating the formation of a provisional government to supervise the drafting of a new constitution to be followed by general elections - be preceded by "elections based on the so-called Rational List."

The Rational List was established by the former regime of deposed President Saddam Hussein and the U.N. oil-for-food authority, containing names of all Iraqi citizens who were getting foodstuff and other essential commodities according to the U.N.-brokered program, concluded in 1996.

A number of Sunni scholars, in their Friday prayer sermons, also lashed out at the agreement, describing it as "an attempt to extend the U.S.-British occupation of Iraq."

Along with the Shiite and Sunni scholars, at least 5 Iraqi nationalist and democratic parties, issued a statement copy of which was obtained by IOL, charging that the accord was concluded "without consulting Iraq's political, social, religious and other civilian community forces."

"The accord did not include any article expressing respect for the Islamic identity of the majority of the Iraqi people. There is an absence of any note on the federal and decentralization goals, particularly the situation in Iraqi Kurdistan," the statement said.

It was signed by leaders of the Iraqi National Coalition Movement, the National Independence Party, Arab National Democratic Movement, Iraqi Democratic Federation, Iraqi Unified Democratic Gathering and a number of other parties.

Even the Iraqi Communist Party (ICP, represented in the Governing Council by its Secretary General Hamid Majid Mousa), issued a statement describing the accord as: "An attempt to extend the occupation and not the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq."

"The accord envisages the division of Iraq into 9 semi-independent states, free from any civil rights, thus returning Iraq to a situation similar to that which followed the Mongol (Hulago) invasion of Iraq in the dark ages," the ICP statement said.

Another member of the 25-person Council, Mowafaq Al-Rube'i, said he had not seen the contents of the accord: "prepared by U.S. Civil Administrator of Iraq Paul Bremer and five members of the council led by Jalal Talabani, during a recent visit to the U.S."

Council Member Abdel Aziz al-Hakim, leader of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), also said he did not see the contents of the accord, describing it as: "Mere ideas waiting for discussion by the Governing Council!"

In its first comments on Sistani's statement, the National Reconciliation Movement led by Council Member Ayad Allawi, expressed doubt that "elections suggested by the Grand Ayatollah could take place within 6 months."


SOURCE
0 Replies
 
Tartarin
 
  1  
Reply Sat 29 Nov, 2003 12:43 pm
Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times "offered prizes (Iraqi 250-dinar notes with Saddam's picture) and invited readers to send in entries" in a contest to name the war. There were thousand of entries and some came up with suggestions like "'The War of Bush's Flight Suit.' Harold Kramer of Massachusetts singlehandedly came up with 'Rummy's Retreat,' 'Cheney's Chaos,' 'Perle's Predicament,' 'Powell's Problem' and 'Rice's Regret.'"

Quote:
Others came up with "King George's New Colony," "The War of the Roves" and "The War That Cried Wolfowitz."

Donn Blodgett of Vermont urged "Coup d'États Unis," and Linda Kolker of Georgia recommended "The Charge of the Right Brigade."

Honorable mention in this contest goes to "Operation Unscramble Eggs," by Russell Schindler of New York; "Desert Storm und Drang," by Robert Proctor of Connecticut; "The 'Raq," by Jeff Schramm of Missouri; "A'bombin'nation," by Kent Moore of North Carolina; "Tigris by the Tail," by Paul Reeves of New Mexico; "War of Mass Deception," by Scott Dacko of New York; and "Iraq: A Hard Place," by Chris Walters of Texas.

The five winners, each of whom gets a 250-dinar note left over from my last Iraq trip, are: Brad Corsello of New York for "Dubya Dubya III"; Richard Sanders for "Rolling Blunder"; John Fell of California for "Desert Slog," Will Hutchinson of Vermont for "Mess in Potamia"; and Willard Oriol of New York for "Blood, Baath and Beyond."
0 Replies
 
PDiddie
 
  1  
Reply Sat 29 Nov, 2003 01:06 pm
My favorites are Dubya Dubya III, Iraqnophobia, and Chickenhawk Down.
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Sofia
 
  1  
Reply Sat 29 Nov, 2003 01:41 pm
The rhetoric from the left has reached a shrill, fever pitch... Guess George must've scored bigger than I thought. Laughing
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blatham
 
  1  
Reply Sat 29 Nov, 2003 03:29 pm
sofia

You have, and I suspect some aunt or other had it too, the 'magic eye' - the power to peer into any corner and see precisely what you wish might be there.
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Tartarin
 
  1  
Reply Sat 29 Nov, 2003 04:12 pm
I take 15% credibility off every post which employs smilies. They seem to belong to the era of poodle skirts and "gals." And when "the boys" use them? Well, boys will be boys.... forever, it seems.
0 Replies
 
 

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