THE US, THE UN AND IRAQ VI

Hoo boy .... this is rich .......... some military guy on cnn just said that recruiting Iraqis to defeat and disarm the insurgents was maybe the best way to go .... yehh ... give the guy they filmed with the car battery hooked up to his balls an m16 .... hell why not

Here's another reason why going to war without understanding the consequences of starting a war is so stupid. This was taken from another forum on A2K: "Iraqi Prison Photos Mar U.S. Image

By Paul Majendie

LONDON (Reuters) - Photos of U.S. soldiers abusing Iraqi prisoners drew international condemnation on Friday, prompting the stark conclusion that the U.S. campaign to win the hearts and minds of Iraqis is a lost cause."

This is also what happened in Vietnam.

The linked piece from the NYRB is extraordinarily worthwhile.



http://www.nybooks.com/articles/17103

It just makes me wonder when the republicans are going to admit that starting a war in Iraq was a mistake. After 1,000 dead Americans? After our treasury is spent on Iraq? I don't see a bright future anywhere in sight. Maybe some Bush supporters can enlighten me about bringing American-style democracy to Iraq.

And yet another news release. White House: Abuse of Iraqis Won't Be Tolerated

1 hour, 20 minutes ago Add Top Stories - Reuters to My Yahoo!


By Adam Entous

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The White House denounced abuse by U.S. troops of Iraqi prisoners as "despicable" and called for disciplinary action against those responsible on Friday after photographs depicting the acts were published and broadcast around the world.

The photos showed U.S. troops smiling, posing, laughing or giving the thumbs-up sign as naked, male Iraqi prisoners were stacked in a pyramid or positioned to simulate sex acts with one another.
********
A nice way to bring American-style democracy to Iraq - don't you agree?

I didn't question the definition of rebuff; I merely posted Merriam-Webster's definition for comparison with your own dictionary's definition of rebuff.

I also posted Merriam-Webster's definition of rebut.

All that's needed to complete the comparison is for you to post your own dictionary's definition of rebut. Then we will be done with this topic. No need for either of us to go to the publisher of the other's dictionary.

From Dream to Nightmare
April 30, 2004
By BOB HERBERT

At least 10 more American soldiers died yesterday in George
W. Bush's senseless war in Iraq.

They died for a pipe dream, which the American Heritage
Dictionary defines as a fantastic notion or a vain hope.
"Pipe dream" originally referred to the fantasies induced
by smoking a pipe of opium. The folks who led us into this
hideous madness in Iraq, against the wishes of most of the
world, sure seem to have been smoking something.

President Bush and his hyperhawk vice president, Dick
Cheney, were busy yesterday lip-syncing their way through
an appearance before the commission investigating the Sept.
11 attacks. If you want a hint of how much trouble the U.S.
is in, consider that these two gentlemen are still clinging
to the hope that weapons of mass destruction will be found
in Iraq.

Reality was the first casualty of Iraq. This was a war that
would be won on the cheap, we were told, with few American
casualties. The costs of reconstruction would be more than
covered by Iraqi oil revenues. The Iraqi people, giddy with
their first taste of freedom, would toss petals in the path
of their liberators. And democracy, successfully rooted in
Iraq, would soon spread like the flowers of spring
throughout the Middle East.

Oh, they must have been passing the pipe around.

My
problem with the warrior fantasies emerging from the
comfort zones of Washington and Crawford, Tex., is that
they are being put to the test in the flaming reality of
combat in Iraq, not by the fantasizers but by brave and
patriotic men and women who deserve so much more from the
country they are willing to defend with their lives.

There is nothing new about this. It seemed to take forever
for American leaders to realize that they were lost in a
pipe dream in Vietnam. A key government spokesman during a
crucial period of that conflict was Barry Zorthian, the
public information officer for American forces in Vietnam
from 1964 to 1968. In a book published last year,
"Patriots: The Vietnam War Remembered From All Sides," Mr.
Zorthian is quoted as saying:

"We probably could have gotten the deal we ended up with in
1973 as early as 1969. And between 1969 and 1972 we almost
doubled our losses. It's easy to second-guess but I've
never been convinced that those last 25,000 casualties were
justified."

The sad truth about Iraq is that one year after President
Bush gaudily proclaimed victory with his "Top Gun" moment
aboard the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln, we don't know
what we're doing in Iraq. We don't know where we're
heading. We don't know how many troops it will take to get
us there. And we don't know how to get out.

Flower petals strewn in our path? Forget about that. The
needle on the hate-America meter in Iraq is buried deep in
the bright red danger zone. Even humanitarian aid groups
have had to hustle American and other non-Iraqi workers out
of the country because of fears that they would be
kidnapped, shot or bombed.

A USA Today/CNN/Gallup Poll found that only a third of
Iraqis believe the U.S.-led occupation is doing more good
than harm. The poll was taken in late March and early
April, and it's a safe bet that if the results have changed
at all in the past few weeks, they've only gotten worse.

There is nothing surprising about the poll's findings. The
U.S. primed Iraq with a "shock and awe" bombing campaign,
then invaded, and is attempting to impose our concept of
democracy at the point of a gun.

Why would anybody think that would work?

Since then we've
destroyed countless homes and legitimate businesses and
killed or maimed thousands of innocent Iraqi civilians,
including many women and children. That was a lousy
strategy for winning hearts and minds in Vietnam and it's a
lousy strategy now.

Equally unsurprising is the erosion of support for the war
among Americans. There's no upside. Casualties are mounting
daily and so are the financial costs, which have never been
honestly acknowledged or budgeted.

Mr. Bush has enmeshed us in a war that we can't win and
that we don't know how to end. Each loss of a life in this
tragic exercise is a reminder of lessons never learned from
history. And the most fundamental of those lessons is that
fantasy must always genuflect before reality.

E-mail: [email protected]


http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/30/opinion/30HERB.html?ex=1084331785&ei=1&en=9640c08729d6f206

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

If you can't handle "rebuff," why should I be interested in anything you say?

Hey, look what one of my friends sent me, and it also speaks to Bush's "nose."
**************
In Front of Your Nose
April 30, 2004
By PAUL KRUGMAN

"We are all capable of believing things which we know to be
untrue, and then, when we are finally proved wrong,
impudently twisting the facts so as to show that we were
right. Intellectually, it is possible to carry on this
process for an indefinite time: the only check on it is
that sooner or later a false belief bumps up against solid
reality, usually on a battlefield." That's from George
Orwell's 1946 essay "In Front of Your Nose." It seems
especially relevant right now, as we survey the wreckage of
America's Iraq adventure.

Tomorrow a year will have passed since George Bush's
"Mission Accomplished" carrier landing. Throughout that
year - right up to the surge in violence this month -
administration officials assured us that things were going
well in Iraq. Living standards, they said, were steadily
improving. The resistance, they insisted, consisted of a
handful of dead-enders aided by a few foreign infiltrators
- and each lull in attacks brought pronouncements that the
campaign against the insurgents had turned the corner.

So they lied to us; what else is new? But there's more at
stake here than the administration's credibility. The
official story line portrayed a virtuous circle of
nation-building, one that could eventually lead to a
democratic Iraq, allied with the U.S. In fact, we seem to
be faced with a vicious circle, in which a deteriorating
security situation undermines reconstruction, and the lack
of material progress adds to popular discontent. Can this
situation be saved?

Even among harsh critics of the administration's Iraq
policy, the usual view is that we have to finish the job.
You've heard the arguments: We broke it; we bought it. We
can't cut and run. We have to stay the course.

I understand the appeal of those arguments. But I'm worried
about the arithmetic.

All the information I've been able to get my hands on
indicates that the security situation in Iraq is really,
really bad. It's not a good sign when, a year into an
occupation, the occupying army sends for more tanks.
Western civilians have retreated to armed enclaves. U.S.
forces are strong enough to defend those enclaves, and
probably strong enough to keep essential supplies flowing.
But we don't have remotely enough troops to turn the
vicious circle around. The Iraqi forces that were supposed
to fill the security gap collapsed - or turned against us -
at the first sign of trouble.

And all of the proposals one hears for resolving this ugly
situation seem to be either impractical or far behind the
curve.

Some say we should send more troops. But the U.S. military
doesn't have more troops to send, unless it resorts to
extreme measures, like withdrawing a large part of the
forces currently in South Korea. Did I mention that North
Korea is building nuclear weapons, and may already have
eight?

Others say we should seek more support from other
countries. There may once have been a time - say, last
summer - when the U.S. could have struck a deal: by ceding
a lot of authority to the U.N., we might have been able to
persuade countries with large armies, like India, to
contribute large numbers of peacekeeping troops. But it's
hard to imagine that anyone will now send significant
forces into the Iraqi cauldron.

Some pin their hopes on a political solution: they believe
that violence will subside if the U.N. is allowed to
appoint a caretaker government that Iraqis don't view as a
U.S. puppet.

Let's hope they're right. But bear in mind that right now
the U.S. is still planning to hand over "sovereignty" to a
body, yet to be named, that will have hardly any power at
all. For practical purposes, the U.S. ambassador will be
running the country. Americans may believe that everything
will change on June 30, but Iraqis are unlikely to be
fooled. And by the way, much of the Arab world believes
that we've been committing war crimes in Falluja.

I don't have a plan for Iraq. I strongly suspect, however,
that all the plans you hear now are irrelevant. If
America's leaders hadn't made so many bad decisions, they
might have had a chance to shape Iraq to their liking. But
that window closed many months ago.

E-mail: [email protected]

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/30/opinion/30KRUG.html?ex=1084331049&ei=1&en=02606430b0352921

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

Actually, that window closed when the US attacked Iraq without international support - IMHO.

This administration also wants to hide the fact that our people are getting killed in Iraq. Dumbing down the American Public seems relatively easy.
*********************************


Dear MoveOn member,
Tonight, ABC's Nightline is doing something beautiful and courageous.
The entire show will consist of a reading of the names of each soldier
who has fallen in Iraq, while his or her photograph shows on the
screen.

But ABC affiliate stations around the country will be prohibited from
airing the special. That's because they're owned by Sinclair
Broadcasting Group, a company whose executives have given tens of
thousands to Republicans and whose right-wing allies tout it as "the
next Fox." [1]

In a statement released earlier this week, the company said that to
honor the men and women who died in this way would be a political act
that is "contrary to the public interest." Censoring images of the
fallen serves the right-wing ideologues who pushed the war in Iraq,
but it certainly doesn't serve our country to hide those who were
killed.

In order to highlight this censorship and let other media outlets know
that it's not OK, we're asking you to write a letter to the editor of
your local paper. It doesn't actually take very long -- you can do it
in ten minutes or less.

We've added some tips and talking points below. Once you've written,
please let us know at:

http://www.moveon.org/sinclair.html?id=2761-1999855-IwsIOzGXR.RSynSLyY6abg

Military families have called on Sinclair to air the special tonight.
Jane Bright of Military Families Speak Out is the mother of Sgt. Evan
Ashcraft, who died July 24, 2003, near Mosul, Iraq. She said: "The
Sinclair Broadcast Group is trying to undermine the lives of our
soldiers killed in Iraq. By censoring Nightline they want to hide the
toll the war on Iraq is having on thousands of soldiers and their
families, like mine." [2]

According to ABC News, "The Nightline broadcast is an _expression of
respect which simply seeks to honor those who have laid down their
lives for this country."

Yet Sinclair refuses to distinguish between public mourning and a
statement against the war: "Despite the denials by a spokeswoman for
the show the action appears to be motivated by a political agenda
designed to undermine the efforts of the United States in Iraq." [3]

Take a few minutes to write a letter to the editor to make sure the
word gets out. Tips and talking points are below.

Nightline is also certain to get lots of nasty right-wing hate mail
about this broadcast. Show them the overwhelming support for this sort
of recognition of the young men and women killed in Iraq with a quick
note at:

http://www.moveon.org/r?494

Finally, you can call on Sinclair to honor our troops and run the Nightline special at:

David D. Smith, CEO
Sinclair Broadcast Group
(410) 568-1500 x1504

NEED FOR A CHANGE IN PERSPECTIVE

I think you need to improve your perspective on this whole topic. You need not access my 35 year set of Britannica Year books to do that. I have found for both of us the following web site which is far richer with historical information than is my small home library:

www.britannica.com

You can explore this site for free for 72 hours. If you choose to subscribe, it will cost you less than $65 per year. That price is approximately the same as I pay for a single yearbook. This web site appears to me to be quite a bargain.

WHY I POSTED THE 1998 ARTICLE I COPIED FROM THE BRITANNICA SITE

There were five reasons.

First, I wanted to you to read a different analysis than you appeared to have read to date.

Second, I wanted you to realize that the fear of the potential threat of Saddam's State to the welfare of the human race was pervasive long before Bush began to run for the presidency, let alone before Bush was inaugurated.

Third, I wanted you to understand that this fear of Saddam's State existed widely both in and outside the US.

Fourth, the pervasive consensus (e.g., in the middle east, in Europe, in the UN, and in the US), right up to the start of the Bush administration, was that replacing Saddam's State with a functioning republic was going to be extremely difficult and far more dangerous than attempting to contain Saddam's State.

Fifth, this pervasive consensus persisted after Bush was inaugurated right up to 9/11/2001 even though Bush et al began to question this consensus again prior to 9/11/2001.

MY OPINION

I think it legitimate to continually question any policy (e.g., containment, regime change) when there is a broad consensus that the regime to be contained or changed is extremely dangerous and a potential threat to the welfare of the human race.

I think that trying to contain Saddam's sponsorship of terrorist groups (e.g., distribution of money, weapons and ordinance) was no more likely than trying to contain a cancer infecting a human. Cancer must be exterminated not contained if the infected person is to survive for a normal lifetime. Unfortunately, it is apparently inevitably that curing a cancer will exterminate healthy cells as well as cancerous ones.

Terrorism is a cultural cancer infecting the human race and may not be contained. It can only be ended by extermination. However, unfortunately that extermination will cost the lives of innocent humans as well as guilty humans.

RECTIFICATION OF SERIOUS MISTAKES

The Bush Administration has made numerous mistakes. This administration appears to be experimenting with different alternative tactics without clear understanding of which tactics will work or not work. But based on the posted article, previous administrations behaved the same way. That's why I repeatedly ask of the members of this forum:
What do you think will work; What do you think ought to be done?

If you think you possess such knowledge, then you owe it to your country and to the human race to publicize such knowledge.

From personal eyesight, ican, I know that Steve has got the britannica cd-rom.

From personal experiences I know that he has easily access to even better history knowledge, 24 hours a day, 7 days per week, 12 months a year ... :wink:

It is already known to us that our people are getting killed in Iraq, Afghanistan, and in other places. We get daily reports about those deaths. Many of us have read or observed the reactions of their families.

If ABC and its affiliates want to dramatize those deaths, then they should at least reflect on the possible consequences for those of our troops who are still in harm's way. Regardless, they have the right to dramatize those deaths. The question is, is it the right thing to do?

EXCELLENT!

I wish he would make that more obvious.

ican's quote, " then they should at least reflect on the possible consequences for those of our troops who are still in harm's way." Are you serious? They're the ones seeing their buddies getting killed. They ALREADY KNOW they're getting killed. You don't memorialize a person by keeping it out of the public's view. If that were so, Kennedy, Gandhi, and Martin Luther King, Jr's deaths would have been kept secret.

You have hereby revealed your interest in what I have to say by asking your question. :wink:

Can you handle this rebuttal?

I would like to assure you that I continue to be interested in your dictionary's definition of rebuttal.

You think they're better off with ABC rubbing it in?



So you think that what ABC is doing is memorializing that which has been kept out of the public view?

www,m-w.com


www,m-w.com

One year ago:

"Major combat operations in Iraq have ended."


In case you missed it:

Audio slideshow

He was wrong! Dummy that Bush is, he thought regime change was the bigger part of the problem. I recall lot's of media yowling up to that point about how accomplishing even that much would cost thousands of coalition lives. They were wrong, too, dummies that they are!

I infer that you think that continuation of our prior containment tactics, until obtaining UN security council support, would have been the better approach. Perhaps you are right. Then again, perhaps continuation of that tactic has a greater risk. Perhaps more terrorist murders of American and European innocents would have occurred than deaths of coalition military personal did and will occur. Terrorists have shown that they can murder innocents everywhere far easier and quicker than they can kill coalition soldiers in Iraq.

Another damn tradeoff for us simplistic dummies to contemplate.