THE US, THE UN AND IRAQ VI

Does it mean an "escalation"?
I hope it is after a different concept.

Oh no - this war will never end. What a can of worms.

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/story.jsp?story=515270

I've posted this link elsewhere.

It shows that the Bush administration knew in advance about the 9-11 attacks, and knew aircraft were going to be used.

So, it seems likely that they were not simply incompetent. It seems more likely that they let it happen. One reason for that would be, they knew there would be no public resistance to their plan to attack and occupy Iraq, after the US mainland was attacked.

A tit for tat? hmmmm......

McTag, From your article ".......senior government lawyers will try to gag Mrs Edmonds, claiming that disclosure of her evidence "would cause serious damage to the national security and foreign policy interests of the United States"." Once again, we see this administration attempting to squash important information from the world. As if the 9-11 commission is doing their 'work.' ha ha ha......they should talk to Mrs Edmonds.

Why is it never tat for tit? And since you broached the subject ..... just what the hell is a tit or a tat for that matter?
Enquiring minds

What I interpreted as tit for tat: " One reason for that would be, they knew there would be no public resistance to their plan to attack and occupy Iraq, after the US mainland was attacked."

Some interesting background .........

From Raed in the middle

Monday, April 26, 2004
Did everyone enjoy the new super achievement of our great governing council?
We have a pale new flag!
Whoaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
And guess what... the new flag has an interesting collage too: a sign for Muslims, a sign for Kurds, a sign for the two rivers and a sign for me smiling :*)

The GC is doing its best now (in cooperation with the CPA) to announce new plans for building the next Iraqi government (the post June 30th one) before the UN announces any clear plan. It seems that the Bush distraction are not very happy with what the UN may say, the unleashed they puppy today…

Anyway…
Back to Syasa (politics)…

The situation of Falluja and Najaf isn't getting any better, but I still believe that the real crisis is the Najaf one; Falluja is a smaller conflict for sure.

The deep disagreement between AsSadr and the SCIRI is kind of historical, the older generation of both Sadr and Hakim were not the best friends ever, Mohammad Mohammad Sadiq AsSadr (the one assassinated in the late 90s, the father of Muqtada) used to criticize the general policy of SCIRI at his time, and some underground rumors accuses the Ayato Allah AlHakim (the one assassinated last year, the brother of the Current GC member AlHakim) of helping in a way or another in killing the old Sadr. When the American administration approved the return of Badr Militias (The SCIRI militias) from Iran after the end of this war, small conflicts started in the Shia areas that maybe was one of the reasons for the establishment of the Mahdi Armi (AsSadr militias). At that time the only militias in Iraq were Badr and the FIF (Chalabi's militias), and both were approved and backed up by the American Army…

AsSadr and SCIRI are the two main Shia parties controlling the southern region of Iraq now, but the party and militias of AsSadr are much more popular, I can say that the real center of AsSadr is Amara (northern to Basra) where no one can notice a single evidence that SCIRI has any activities there, they have a real isolated small office and a mosque that they prey in, but when we speak about the main center of SCIRI we are speaking about Najaf, Najaf is the Holy-City of Shia, The Imam Ali is buried there, (Karbala is the second holy-city where AlHusien and AlAbbas are buried), AsSadr took AlKufa (which is a small town attached to AnNajaf) as his center, the main mosque of AlKufa was the one his father used to give his last Friday Prayer speech before his murder, it is an important Islamic symbol too. The thing I'm trying to say is that AsSadr is active and powerful even in the central city of the SCIRI.

The last Friday prayed speech (which is the most important political indication) witnessed the first in-public criticism of the policy of AsSadr, the SCIRI spokesman indirectly announced the beginning of the new Shia-Shia conflict. From the SCIRI position, I think they find themselves committed to criticizing any anti-occupation movement, because they are the main player in the GC.

There is something that I used to say one year ago, and I'm still repeating it… The "real" war in Iraq didn't happen yet. I still think the American administration is underestimating what can a person like AsSadr do, and starting a Shia-Shia conflict will only increase the size of explosion.

Source

Lawyers try to gag FBI worker over 9/11
By Andrew Buncombe in Washington
26 April 2004




www.m-w.com

Well, it's always funny to make cheap jokes about other person's surnames - I know that as well.

Curious-er and curious-er said Steve.

I've said before that I was listening to the radio interview Bush made from a school moments after the second plane hit, and I just said out loud (with no evidence, just his tone of voice)...he knew!

Nothing since has re assured me that Bush was surprised and shocked as I was at that moment, which he should have been of course, unless he did indeed have some forwarning.

But the implications of that simple conclusion are staggering. (And please note Mr NSA man, I'm not saying Bush did it or did indeed have forwarning, just recounting truthfully my initial reaction).

Now to American efforts to keep the peace in Fallujah today. Advance 200 metres into two houses. Stay quiet for 4 hours until surrounded. Wait to be attacked with rpg and assault weapons. Call in airstrike and tanks. Retreat with 1 dead and 8 wounded.

Meanwhile hundreds more British troops are to be sent and deployed to hot spots like Najaf.

When Blair signed up for this caper, he must have thought that despite the illegal and immoral nature of it all, at least we would be on the winning side. But just as Stormin Norman Schwarzkopf predicted (as reasons for not pressing on to Baghdad in 1991), America is stuck like a mammoth in a tar pit. Thanks George, I am beginning to warm to your incompetent administration.

What a joke! The author of this piece of yellow journalism predicts action by the administration, and CI is treating it like the administration has already done it! ROFLMAO! Talk about your blind partisan hatred!

The Independent yellow journalism? ROFLMAO! ROFLMAO! ROFLMAO!

Any report claiming that the US knew about 9/11 ahead of time and chose to allow it to happen isn't worth the paper on which it is printed. If you choose to consider everything published in the Independent to be as lacking in quality and substance as was this rubbish, then I'm certainly not in any position to argue the point, though I was referring only to this specific story, and was making no claims about the quality of the publication in which it appeared. Since you seem to have some experience of it, I'll leave that to you.

I looked very carefully. It was black and white. And read. not yellow.

Suppose Bush did have forwarning of an attack (and he was given a PDB entitled "Bin Laden determined to attack mainland United States" on 6th August, so even if he only read the title...or perhaps Condi sat on his lap and read it to him...), just suppose he did know something big was likely to happen, how does that scenario fit or not fit with the known events of 911 itself, starting with the unprecedented near simultaneous hijacking of 4 planes?

Why, after the twin towers were struck, was a third plane allowed to fly virtually over Andrews Airforce base (Mission statement "to protect the District of Columbia) and slam into the Pentagon? Why didn't those F16s get up there and do their job. Military aircraft had been scrambled a total of 67 times in the previous 2 years to investigate aircraft deviating from their flight plan. Remember Payne Stewart, the golfer? Why the inaction on 911?

We are entitled to ask these questions, and to get truthful answers.

I think you know these answers, but choose not to accept them because you can appear more contrite and obstinate pretending not to know them.

No you are wrong there McG. I genuinely don't know the answers. I sincerely hope that my suspicions about the lead up to 911 and how the terrible events of that day have influenced American foreign policy are unfounded. But nothing since then has made me feel any easier.

The scale of the "cock up" if that was what it was, on 911 was so comprehensive that it beggars belief.

A. He didn't know.

B. The flight plan was for Dulles Airport and was not altered until the last moment. Far too late for any real response.

Borrowed from another A2K forum.
*********
Published on Saturday, April 24, 2004 by the lndependent/UK
US Admits It Will Still Control Iraq After Transfer
by Rupert Cornwell in Washington

The US has made clear that the transfer of sovereignty to a provisional Iraqi government on 30 June will be a limited affair, and that ultimate authority will reside at a gigantic new US embassy in Baghdad and with the military occupation force.

In sometimes heated hearings on Capitol Hill this week, senior Bush administration officials admitted they did not know who would be in the new government, precisely what powers it would exercise, nor the exact shape of the new Security Council resolution that Washington is seeking at the United Nations.

Marc Grossman, Under-Secretary of State for political affairs, said the government would put "a very important Iraqi face" on many aspects of the country's life. But the US military, not the Iraqi security forces, would be in charge of all security matters.

Asked what would happen if the temporary government acted at variance with US foreign policy - such as by seeking closer ties with Iran - Mr Grossman implied that would not be tolerated. "That is why we want to have an American ambassador in Iraq," he noted cryptically.

The limitations can only complicate US efforts to win a fresh resolution at the UN, whose special envoy Lakhdar Brahimi has been finalising the new government. Its main task will be to prepare for elections next year, but some Security Council members may now balk at conferring UN legitimacyon a new Iraqi government whose powers are so limited.

The admissions by Mr Grossman come as pressure is intensifying on the Pentagon to bolster the US occupying force, and amid evidence that the costs of the occupation are rising even faster than the administration predicted. General Richard Myers, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told Congress that military costs this year would run $4.7bn (£2.7bn) ahead of estimates.

In a speech to the Council of Foreign Relations, Senator John McCain of Arizona, President Bush's unsuccessful rival for the 2000 Republican presidential nomination, demanded the Pentagon send a division, roughly 15,000 men, to Iraq to reinforce the 135,000 US contingent there.

The President had to make clear the size of the commitment needed to prevail in Iraq, said Mr McCain, a strong supporter of the March 2003 invasion. "He needs to be perfectly frank: bringing peace and democracy to Iraq is an enormous endeavour that will be very expensive, difficult and long."

But more troops, coupled with what from 1 July will be the largest US embassy worldwide, with some 3,000 staff, will only underline how Washington will stay in charge, whatever nominal sovereignty is handed over to Iraqis. Joe Biden, the senior Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations committee, said: "On 1 July, Iraqis will wake up and there's going to be 160,000 troops and a US ambassador pulling the strings. How does that take the American face off the occupation?"

*Muqtada Sadr, the radical Shia cleric, yesterday said he could unleash suicide bombers if US forces attacked the holy Shia city of Najaf, and called on the nation to unite to expel Iraq's occupiers. US troops are poised just outside Najaf and have vowed to kill or capture Sadr and destroy his Army of Mehdi militia, which has clashed with foreign forces across southern and central Iraq.

© Copyright 2004 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd

The Congress has approved funds to attack Afghanistan.

It has not yet approved any funds to attack Iraq.

Are we going to have a vote anytime soon?

Or, put another way, when will this renegade and disastrous administration be reined in and dumped by the electorate?