THE US, THE UN AND THE IRAQIS THEMSELVES, V. 7.0

Are you changing the sites and joining the anti-war fraction now, Bill?

Honestly, Bill, I'm rather sure that I knew about her and her organisation years before you had even an idea what it be.

Ican,

http://www.able2know.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=39029

The idea is getting torn up by people as being 'unworkable' and the such. Care to lend me a hand?

Cycloptichorn

As a Frenchman, I welcome President Bush's reelection as the best chance for the promotion of free and open societies worldwide, and the best choice to weaken international terrorism. Even if most of my fellow countrymen do not or do not want to understand it, it is clear that Mr. Bush's leadership is crucial to deal with the three main international issues that challenge the democratic world.

First challenge: Building a democratic Iraq. Whatever the diplomatic postures of the Western democracies were before the intervention in Iraq, there is no other choice today than supporting the creation of a free and open society there. It means helping Prime Minister Iyad Allawi's government and support as much as possible the organization of free elections next January.

The majority of Iraqis are waiting for those elections, and they believe more in the establishment of a democracy in their country than most Western public opinion. If Iraqis were rejecting the democratic process, the streets of Baghdad would be occupied by huge demonstrations, and the whole country would unite against the coalition forces. But that is far from the case. This is why terrorists are frightened by the coming elections since the voices of the silent Iraqi majority will roar against them and promote democracy as in Afghanistan.

Second challenge: The Israeli-Palestinian peace process. It is an important key, maybe "the" key, to settle democracy in the Middle East. The partisans of change who want to rebuild the Middle East on the core values of freedom, democracy and modernity need the peace process to succeed to give them a vision and a path to go through. But despotic elements who prefer chaos to peace are financing Palestinian terrorism.

Yes, Saddam's toppling should have been preceded by the settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian struggle. But this has not been possible, since there were no Palestinian leaders who wanted to stop terrorist groups and were willing to bring peace in the Promised Land. Yassir Arafat, symbol "par excellence" of the Palestinian struggle, never wanted peace and sabotaged every peace overture and trained his sights on the destruction of Israel. He fundamentally was a terrorist.

Mr. Arafat's exit from politics will allow the head of the Palestinian Authority to be renewed and maybe even create a much-needed opportunity to implement a peace process that works. In this matter, let's hope the United States and the European Union will unite their strength to seize the coming new deal and work together to find a solution.

Third challenge: Building a democratic covenant to face the world's new threats. Those threats are quite clearly defined: International terrorism, the spread of weapons of mass destruction and nuclear weapons proliferation. This makes our world dangerous, and that's why Mr. Bush's re election is so important: It is sending a signal that terrorists and rogue states will not be let loose.

Yet, the reality of the danger is still controversial among the countries of the European Union, if we consider that France, through the voice of its former minister of foreign affairs, Dominique de Villepin, does not acknowledge that fighting terrorism means war.

If some European countries vividly criticized American unilateralism, then a trans-Atlantic dialog must start aiming at creating a strong democratic multilateralism. No doubt that Mr. Bush's reelection will give the American diplomacy a new impetus to rebuild a new Western covenant.

In the light of those challenges, the four coming years will be crucial for the free world. We needed a strong and committed America: Let's hope that Mr. Bush's leadership will create the necessary conditions to meet those challenges.

McTag wrote:

A military which will attack a weaker enemy with massive force.

You'd have us meet them with equal and split the casualties and successes equally?

A military which will used bombers against civilians.

A military which will call in air strikes against vehicles, against unarmed groups of pedestrians, against wedding parties even.

A military which uses artillery barrages on a town containing civilians.

A military which will bring down buildings, irrespective of who may be underneath them.

So, War is hell. Shame, that all the participants do not dress themselves properly or observe the niceties others would impose on them.

Incorrect, because the tactic is to fire heavy ordnance fron a distance, or use air strikes, increasing risk of civilian casualty, rather than put GIs at risk. Iraqi citizens being less important than US GIs.

I suppose they could go back to their nice fortified camp, freshen up and change into a clean uniform every few days, like the invaders can.

Actually none of the warring factions there have much regard for civilians casualties, but we should, I think.

[Wearing a scarf or armband signifying a combatant would work fine. Clothes changing or bathing wouldn't be any help.
.

ican711nm wrote:

[Wearing a scarf or armband signifying a combatant would work fine. Clothes changing or bathing wouldn't be any help.
.

Yeah and it would seem that being about 3 feet tall, or 5 feet tall wearing womens clothing isn't distinguishable enough either!

Thats right coz I seen footage of suicide bombers on trampolines jumping up and down trying to get high enough to blow themselves up beside US war planes.

gav wrote:

Thats right coz I seen footage of suicide bombers on trampolines jumping up and down trying to get high enough to blow themselves up beside US war planes.

That's truly amazing. I was totally unaware that our troops or warplanes killed any suicide-healthy, suicide-wounded, or corpse bombers while they were airborne. Those Iraqi insurgents have really gone high-tech in trampoline technology. I guess they've found our US Marines too paranoid lately for them to bomb on the ground as many marines as they would like. Next thing you know they'll be able to attack, as soon as they arrive, our aircraft carriers in the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. Oh whoa is us, maybe it won't be long now before they start bringing down our satellite communication facilities.

BTW watch your boats, coz they know how to build a mean raft - and they're good swimmers!!

A "harboring relationship" is, by definition, a "collaborative operational relationship."

Similar meetings between Iraqi officials and Bin Ladin or his aides may have occurred in 1999 during a period of some reported strains with the Taliban. According to the reporting, Iraqi officials offered Bin Ladin a safe haven in Iraq. Bin Ladin declined, apparently judging that his circumstances in Afghanistan remained more favorable than the Iraqi alternative. The reports describe friendly contacts and indicate some common themes in both sides' hatred of the United States. But to date we have seen no evidence that these or the earlier contacts ever developed into a collaborative operational relationship. Nor have we seen evidence indicating that Iraq cooperated with al Qaeda in developing or carrying out any attacks against the United States.76

To protect his own ties with Iraq, Turabi reportedly brokered an agreement that Bin Ladin would stop supporting activities against Saddam. Bin Ladin apparently honored this pledge, at least for a time, although he continued to aid a group of Islamist extremists operating in part of Iraq (Kurdistan) outside of Baghdad's control. In the late 1990s, these extremist groups suffered major defeats by Kurdish forces. In 2001, with Bin Ladin's help they re-formed into an organization called Ansar al Islam. There are indications that by then the Iraqi regime tolerated and may even have helped Ansar al Islam against the common Kurdish enemy.54

I see you've ignored the fact that I brought up about Powell's speech which renders your assumption that Saddam was willingly and knowingly harboring Zarqawi illogical. But then again, it goes without saying.

But what I want to bring to your attention today is the potentially much more sinister nexus between Iraq and the al-Qaida terrorist network, a nexus that combines classic terrorist organizations and modern methods of murder. Iraq today harbors a deadly terrorist network headed by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi an associate and collaborator of Usama bin Laden and his al-Qaida lieutenants.
...
Now let me add one other fact. We asked a friendly security service to approach Baghdad about extraditing Zarqawi and providing information about him and his close associates. This service contacted Iraqi officials twice and we passed details that should have made it easy to find Zarqawi. The network remains in Baghdad. Zarqawi still remains at large, to come and go.

... But where to find that consensus leader?

Many in Washington considered Amad Chalabi a likely choice. Chalabi had risen to prominence after Congress passed, and President Clinton signed, the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998. This legislation declared that it would be the "policy of the United States to seek to remove the Saddam Hussein regime from power in Iraq and to replace it with a democratic government." The Act directed the President to designate one or more suitable Iraq opposition organizations to receive assistance. Chalabi's umbrella Iraqi National Congress, led mainly by anti-Saddam exiles, was designated such a group.

THROUGHOUT OUR PLANNING OF 1003V, WE DISCUSSED PHASE IV--"The Day After." A postwar Iraq might be modeled on post--World War II Japan or Germany.
...
There was no question Phase IV would be a crucial period. Having won the war, we would have to secure the peace. And securing the peace would not be easy in a country that had been raped and massacred for more than three decades under Saddam Hussein. There were deep divisions among Sunnis and Shias, Kurds and Arabs, haves and have-nots; the region's traditional tribal rivalries would be hard to overcome. It would take time--perhaps years. And the costs would be high, certainly in money and conceivably in lives.
...
Key to all this, of course, would be security. But security would not be possible in Iraq without immediate reconstruction and civic action.

As someone who has lived for long periods overseas outside the U.S. Embassy bubble, the present spate of self-flagellation in the legacy media about the unpopularity of America alternately amuses and infuriates.

No one can deny Western Europeans who share so many of our values are unhappy with the U.S. In a world which sees itself having solved more than a thousand years of internecine wars – two of them almost fatal to their civilization – many, maybe most, Europeans want to believe peace and stability is a commodity always bought with reason and compromise. That is an old, almost fatal European disease; we only have to think back to the two decades leading to World War II when leadership thought it could buy peace that way. In time, the Europeans will come to their senses –either through intelligence or alas! through the kind of catastrophe which almost saddled them with a Hitler/Stalin-dominated continent. That may be coming sooner than expected with an Iran equipped with WMD-armed missiles with a Europen range.

But in the vast spaces between Casablanca and Zamboanga, another issue presents itself, There billions of people live in conditions where the idea of France’s 30-hour week is incomprehensible. Although occasionally staged by agit-prop technicians, European signboards using four-letter words to insult Americans are meaningless. Their daily lives of scrabble preclude such luxuries – and better to avoid the batons of thugs who enforce the dicktat of whatever tyrant is temporarily in control.

To talk about public opinion polls in that environment is even more ludicrous than exit polls which so recently almost tripped up an American election. Nor, frankly, is a group of public luminaries’ report – who helped formulate American policy which gave us 9/11 – throw much light. Their admonitions to get to fundamentals as a palliative for anti-American sentiment are unimpeachable. Except, of course, it is a bit like suggesting the way to prevent a mugging in progress is to do an instant psychoanalysis of the attacker to find out where his childhood temptation to violence began. There, are, indeed, remarkable examples of where poverty and corrupt government has given way to improved living standards, political and social enlightenment. But one must remind these advocates of “basic reform” it took 54,246 American lives, two and a half million South Koreans deaths, and perhaps 1.5 million martyred North Korean and Chinese soldiers, to lay the groundwork for the process in South Korea.

But if the political scientists’ claptrap “scientific” pollsters go astray in examining the level of “anti-Americanism”, anecdotal attempts by our intrepid media adventurers is even more ludicrous. It brings to mind adventures in the mid-1950s. I was investigating economic development prospects as Prime Minister Nehru and his trusty band borrowed foreign Communist apparatchiks set India on the Soviet planning path. I grabbed a taxi, a Hindi-Urdu interpreter, and went for a spin on one of the few highways leading out of the capital. At an unpredetermined spot, we descended, walked several miles into a village where we were, typical of most villagers around the world, welcomed. For several hours we discussed local problems. I didn’t learn much. But I did discover no one could identify Mohandas Gandhi, the leader of the greatest mass reform movement in the 20th century, and although they said they recognized the name; they had never heard of Nehru.

An intrepid young [I give her the benefit of the doubt] lady at The Los Angeles Times reports her interviews with America-returned young people in Lahore. Her piece recounts how, after their marvelous U.S. academic experience, they are now upset with what they see as a changed America. I have no doubt these scion of one of the most corrupt feudal elite in the Afro-Asian world do resent our support of a military dictatorship. But whatever else it is doing, is helping to drain the swamp of terrorists, internal and external. Her reference to a former politician who was a “friend of the U.S.” is idiotic were it not so damaging to any concept of what is going on in the country. Nor does she seem to know the lady, a frequent guest in Georgetown salons with the same sort of ignorance, triple face-lifts and all, comes from a family notorious as the worst landlords in the Sindh and who as prime minister presided over the swap of Pakistani nuclear technology for North Korean missiles.

In fact, it is a jungle out there. The Bush Administration, after 9/11 took the only option it had: to defend the U.S. against a wily group of nihilistic adventurers using Islamicist fanaticism to inflict as much hurt as they could on Americans everywhere. The fact pursuit of that goal takes forthright military options will not be approved in the hypocritical quarters of a UN which has Muammar Qadaffi’s Libya as chairman of its human rights commission, and gets billions in payoffs from a jerry-built attempt to sanction weapons sales to a monster like Sadaam Hussein. The use of American power to destroy a corrupt status quo which for more than half a century has bred such monsters will not win phony public opinion polls conducted by interested parties.