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

thanks.

Joe, good post. You write well.

I thought it was prime when during the presidential race the only people allowed in to Republican political rallies were Republican- no dissenting voice must be heard. No placards near the TV cameras. Un-American.

Plenty of people still think they live in a democracy, in the Land of the Free. To me, it seems less so with passing time, under this administration.

And then we have this parable.
**************************
A Not So Wonderful Life
December 19, 2004
By MAUREEN DOWD

EXTERIOR BRIDGE OVER POTOMAC RIVER - NIGHT

CLOSE SHOT - Rummy is standing by the railing, staring
morosely into the water. The snow is falling hard. Feeling
a tap on his shoulder, he wheels around and wrestles an old
man with wings into a headlock.

OLD MAN: Ouch! Tut, tut. When will you learn that force
doesn't solve everything?

RUMMY: Who the dickens are you?

OLD MAN: Clarence, Angel
First Class. I've been sent down to help you.

RUMMY, squinting: You're off your nut, you old fruitcake.
You can't help me. I was a matinee idol in this town, a
studmuffin. Now everyone's turned on me - Trent Lott, Chuck
Hagel and that dadburn McCain.

CLARENCE: No more self-pity, son. I'm going to show you
what the world would have been like if you'd never been
born.

Clarence, who can fly now, takes Rummy's hand and they soar
over the icy Potomac to the Pentagon. Beneath the glass on
the desk of the defense secretary is a list of members of
Congress and their phone numbers.

RUMMY: Who put that there?

CLARENCE: Sam Nunn. He's the
defense secretary. Sam consults with Congress. Never acts
arrogant or misleads them. He didn't banish the generals
who challenged him - he promoted 'em. And, of course, he
caught Osama back in '01. He threw 100,000 troops into
Afghanistan on 9/11 and sealed the borders. Our Special
Forces trapped the evildoer and his top lieutenants at Tora
Bora. You weren't at that cabinet meeting the day after
9/11, so nobody suggested going after Saddam. No American
troops died or were maimed in Iraq. No American soldiers
tortured Iraqis in Abu Ghraib. No Iraqi explosives fell
into the hands of terrorists. There's no office of
disinformation to twist perception abroad. We're not on the
cusp of an Iraq run by Muslim clerics tied to Iran. Here's
Sam. He's with the chairman of the Joint Chiefs.

GENERAL SHINSEKI: We got some good news today on the
National Guard, sir. Recruiting is up 40 percent. With the
money we saved killing that useless missile defense system,
we up-armored all our Humvees.

RUMMY, fists and jaw clenched: Grrrrrrr...I want to see
Wolfie!

CLARENCE: Sam never hired any of those wacko neocons.
Wolfowitz is a woolly headed professor at the Johns Hopkins
School of Advanced International Studies, and a consultant
to Ariel Sharon. Richard Perle was never in charge of the
Defense Policy Board, so he was unable to enrich himself
through government connections, or help Ahmad Chalabi con
the administration. Perle stayed an honest man, running a
chain of soufflé shops. His soufflés were so fluffy he
became known as the Prince of Lightness. Doug Feith never
worked here, either, so he never set up the Office of
Special Plans to spin tall tales about W.M.D. and Qaeda
ties to Saddam. And he never bungled the occupation because
there was no occupation. Without you to swoon over in a
book, neocon doyenne Midge Decter became a fallen woman,
like Violet.

RUMMY, dyspeptic: Holy mackerel! Take me to Dick!


CLARENCE: Dick and Lynne run a bait, tackle and
baton-twirling shop in Casper, Wyo. You didn't exist, so
you never gave him those jobs in the Nixon and Ford
administrations, and he never ran for Congress or worked
for Bush 41 or anointed himself 43's vice president. W.
chose Chuck Hagel as his running mate. So without you and
Dick there to dominate him, he was guided by his dad and
Brent Scowcroft, who kept Condi in line. Colin Powell was
never cut off at the knees and the U.N. and allies were
never bullied. There was never any crazy fever about Iraq
or unilateralism or "Old Europe." Here's Colin now, heading
for the Oval Office.

POWELL: Merry Christmas, Mr. President. With the help of
our allies around the world, we have won the war on terror.
And Saddam has been overthrown. Once Hans Blix exposed the
fact that Saddam had no weapons, the tyrant was a goner. No
Arab dictator can afford to be humilated by a Swedish
disarmament lawyer.

RUMMY: Goodness gracious, I've heard enough now. I'm going
home. Unless you're going to tell me my wife is an old
maid, because I wasn't around to marry her.

CLARENCE: Oh, no. Joyce lives across the street from your
old house on Kalorama Road. She's happily married to the
French ambassador.

"Auld Lang Syne" swells as we FADE OUT.


http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/19/opinion/19dowd.html?ex=1104461218&ei=1&en=944b0131ed3ad5e5

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

Well done, c.i. and Maureen. What a splendid story.

All together now-

"Should auld acquaintance be forgot
And never brought to mind,...."

Where's all of our US news reporters? Did they disappear too?
******************
Iraqi bombers target Shia cities

Officials have warned of more violence in the run up to the poll
Powerful car bomb blasts have killed and injured dozens of people in the Iraqi Shia cities of Najaf and Karbala.
In Najaf, at least 48 people died and 90 were injured when a bomb exploded near the Ali Iman shrine, doctors said.

A similar explosion at a crowded bus station in Karbala earlier left 13 dead and 30 injured, police sources said.

In Baghdad earlier in the day, three Iraqi election workers were shot dead. The violence comes six weeks before Iraq is due to hold elections.

The BBC's Caroline Hawley reports from Baghdad that the attacks appear to be co-ordinated.

I felt that I was hit by an electric shock. Then I saw my left leg on the ground

Khalid Jabar
And the aim of the bombers - believed to be Sunni insurgents - is to kill as many Shias as possible and try to stir up sectarian trouble ahead of the 30 January poll, our correspondent says.

US and Iraqi officials have said they expect the violence to increase in the run-up to the poll.

In other developments on Sunday:


Two mortar rounds strike the Um al-Tubou Sunni Muslim mosque in Baghdad, injuring four security guards and shattering windows

Iraqi insurgents issue a videotape showing 10 abducted Iraqis, whom they threaten to kill unless their US company leaves Iraq

Iraqi police detain 45 men who illegally entered from neighbouring Iran

The Turkish foreign ministry says five Turkish embassy guards and two Iraqi drivers were killed in Friday's attack on a diplomatic convoy in the northern city of Mosul.

Authorities 'targeted?'

"A car bomb exploded near us," Najaf provincial governor Adnan al-Zorfi, told the Associated Press news agency.

He said he was standing alongside the city's police chief as a funeral procession was passing by when a series of bombs detonated about 100m away at about 1425 (1145 GMT).


Najaf police chief Ghalib al-Jazaari believed the two men had been the targets of the attack, AP quoted him as saying.

A 15-year-old boy lost his left leg in the blast.

"I was working in the cafe when I heard a big explosion," Khalid Jabar told the AP.

"I felt that I was hit by an electric shock. Then I saw my left leg on the ground."



The attack in Karbala was a "suicide operation" outside an entrance to the main bus terminal, police there said.


Police spokesman Rahman Mashawi said: "This is a terrorist attack carried out by terrorist groups in order to destabilise the security in the city. We will take tougher security measures to prevent such actions in the future."

Witnesses said the car carrying the bomb tried to enter a police recruitment centre but when it found the street blocked off it ploughed into the bus terminal.


On fire

The Iraqi election workers were shot dead in Haifa Street, Baghdad - a focal point for Sunni militants who have vowed to disrupt the elections on 30 January.


The car in the Baghdad gun attack was set ablaze

That attack happened at around 0700 local time (0400 GMT), police sources said.

Reports say the gunmen fired on a car and then dragged out and shot the passengers, whom witnesses said were wearing civilian clothes.

A member of the Electoral Commission, Adyl Alami, said he believed the workers were deliberately targeted.

nice read today from both joe and the link from CI.

So much to read. Note: I got into trouble with another post concerning Dr Lee at Los Alamos, and was subsequently banned, but I just can't let this kind of racial discrimination go unchallenged. c.i.
*****************************************


Peter DaSilva for The New York Times
The prosecution of Airman Ahmad I. Al Halabi on charges of espionage and aiding the enemy while at the Guantánamo Bay detention center unraveled.

LOYALTIES AND SUSPICIONS
The Muslim Service


Peter DaSilva for The New York Times
Lt. Col. Bryan T. Wheeler was the Air Force's chief prosecutor on the case.


How Dubious Evidence Spurred Relentless Guantánamo Spy Hunt
By TIM GOLDEN

Published: December 19, 2004


apt. Theodore C. Polet Sr., an Army counterintelligence officer at the detention camp for terrorism suspects at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, had just begun investigating a report of suspicious behavior by a Muslim chaplain at the prison last year when he received what he thought was alarming new information.

The F.B.I. had found that a car belonging to the chaplain, Capt. James J. Yee, had been spotted twice outside the home of a Muslim activist in the Seattle area who, years earlier, had been a host for a visit from Omar Abdel Rahman, the militant Egyptian cleric convicted in a 1993 plot to blow up various New York landmarks.

Although it was unclear what the activist had done or whether Captain Yee even knew him, Captain Polet took the report to the Guantánamo commander, Maj. Gen. Geoffrey D. Miller, and laid it out in stark terms.

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"I said we had found something that connected Yee with a known terrorist supporter in Washington State, and at that point, he got very upset," Captain Polet said, noting that General Miller's ears turned red with anger. "This became far more serious than a basic security violation. The case was going to get bigger."

In fact, documents and interviews show that the case grew much bigger than has been publicly disclosed, spinning into a web of counterintelligence investigations that eventually involved more than a dozen suspects, a handful of military and civilian agencies and numerous agents in the United States and overseas.

Within less than a year, however, the investigations into espionage and aiding the enemy grew into a major source of embarrassment for the Pentagon, as the prosecutions of Captain Yee and another Muslim serviceman at the base, Airman Ahmad I. Al Halabi, unraveled dramatically.

Even now, Defense Department officials refuse to explain in detail how the investigations originated and what drove them forward in the face of questions about much of the evidence. Military officials involved in the case have defended their actions, emphasizing that some of the inquiries continue.

But confidential government documents, court files and interviews show that the investigations drew significantly on questionable evidence and disparate bits of information that, like the car report, linked Captain Yee tenuously to people suspected of being Muslim militants in the United States and abroad.

Officials familiar with the inquiries said they also fed on petty personal conflicts: antipathy between some Muslim and non-Muslim troops at Guantánamo, rivalries between Christian and Muslim translators, even the complaint of an old boss who saw Airman Al Halabi as a shirker.

The military's aggressive approach to the investigation was established at the outset by General Miller, the hard-charging Guantánamo commander. Along the way, some investigators and prosecutors suggested that the job of ferreting out spies at the base had put them, too, on the front lines of the fight against terrorism.

Perhaps the most aggressive was the lead Air Force investigator in the case of Airman Al Halabi, Lance R. Wega, a probationary agent who took over the inquiry after barely a month on the job. While he was later commended by superiors and rewarded with a $1,986 bonus, testimony showed that Agent Wega had mishandled important evidence.

Ultimately, Air Force prosecutors could not substantiate a vast majority of the charges they brought against Airman Al Halabi, a translator at Guantánamo, who had faced the death penalty. He pleaded guilty in September to four relatively minor charges of mishandling classified documents, taking two forbidden photographs of a guard tower and lying to investigators about the snapshots. He was sentenced to the 10 months imprisonment he had already served, and is appealing a bad-conduct discharge.

Captain Yee, 36, a West Point graduate from Springfield, N.J., was held for 76 days in solitary confinement, charged with six criminal counts of mishandling classified information and suspected of leading a ring of subversive Muslim servicemen. He was found guilty only of noncriminal charges of adultery and downloading Internet pornography. That conviction was set aside in April, and his punishment was waived.

Another Guantánamo interpreter, and sometime interrogator, Ahmed F. Mehalba, has been jailed since September 2003 on federal charges that he lied to investigators who found that at least two classified documents on a compact disc he had taken with him on a trip to visit relatives in Egypt. He has pleaded not guilty.

Coloring much of the episode, interviews and documents indicate, were simmering tensions over the military's treatment of the roughly 660 foreign men who were then held at Guantánamo without charge.

"Lots of the guards saw us as some sort of sympathizers with the detainees," Airman Al Halabi recalled in one of several interviews. "We heard it many times: 'detainee-lovers,' or 'sympathizers.' They called us 'sand niggers.' "

Airman Al Halabi, who came to the United States at 16 after growing up in poverty in his native Syria, has emphasized his loyalty as a naturalized American citizen. While insisting that he was careful not to share his views with anyone but close friends at Guantánamo, he said he was one of many servicemen and translators there who were uncomfortable with the way the detainees were treated.

Until I encounter sufficient evidence to show otherwise, I am assuming that all that follows is true and valid.

GCP = www.state.gov/secretary/rm/2003/17300pf.htm General Colin Powell to the UN, 2/5/2003, alleged the US administration advocated invading Iraq for the following five reasons:
1. Iraq has not disarmed as the UN demanded;
2. Saddam Hussein and his regime are concealing their efforts to produce ready-to-use WMD;
3. Iraq is harboring members of the al Qaeda confederation;
4. Three times in 2002 –2003, the US requested Saddam Hussein to remove Zarqawi, a leader of the AaI al Qaeda (i.e., Ansar an Islam al Qaeda) encamped in northern Iraq.
5. Saddam Hussein purposely perpetrates cruelty to his own citizens and neighbors.

CDR = www.cia.gov/cia/reports/iraq_wmd_2004/Comp_Report_Key_Findings.pdf Charles Duelfer's Report, 9/30/2004, alleged that Saddam Hussein intends to redevelop and reassemble WMD when UN sanctions on Iraq are lifted and/or become sufficiently ignored.

9-11CR = www.9-11commission.gov/report/index.htm The National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States Report, i.e., The 9-11 Commission Report, 8/21/2004, alleged the following:
1. Osama bin Laden in 1998 declared war on both civilian and military Americans with the objective of killing all of them wherever they be found;
2. President George Bush on 9/11/2001 declared to the National Security Council the United States would not just punish the perpetrators of terrorist attacks on Americans but also those who harbored them;
3. President Bush declared to the nation on TV the night of 9/11/2001 that we would make no distinction between the terrorists who committed terrorism against Americans and those who harbor them.
4. President Bush declared to Congress and to the nation on TV the night of 9/20/2001 that our enemy is a radical network of terrorists, and every government that supports them… Our war on terror begins with al Qaeda, but does not end there … Our war on terror will not end until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped, and defeated.
5. The al Qaeda are a confederation of multiple terrorist groups led by Osama bin Laden.
6. Osama bin Laden aided a group of Islamic extremists encamped in northern Iraq.
7. The Al Qaeda encamped in northern Iraq, suffered major defeats by Kurdish Forces in the late 1990s.
8. In 2001, the Al Qaeda remnant in northern Iraq, with Osama bin Laden’s help, re-formed into an organization called Ansar al Islam (AaI).
9. There is zero evidence that the Kurd’s again attacked the AaI al Qaeda in northern Iraq.
10. There is zero evidence that Saddam’s regime attacked the AaI al Qaeda in northern Iraq.
11. There is zero evidence that the US attacked the AaI al Qaeda in northern Iraq before 2003.
12. There is zero evidence that Saddam Hussein requested the Kurds to attack the AaI al Qaeda in northern Iraq.
13. There is zero evidence that Saddam Hussein requested the US to attack the AaI al Qaeda in northern Iraq.

GTF = General Tommy Franks in "American Soldier," 7/1/2004, alleged the following:
1. In 2003, the US attacked and defeated the AaI al Qaeda in northern Iraq.
2. Over 1,000 weapons and munitions dumps, some containing very high explosive materials, were found scattered throughout Iraq by the US in 2003 and 2004.
3. Thousands of buried, murdered Iraqi citizens were discovered throughout Iraq by the US in 2003 and 2004.

I conclude the following from the GCP, CDR, 9-11CR, and GTF evidence presented above:
1. Each one of the five reasons given in GCP for invading Iraq were sufficient reasons for invading Iraq.
2. Only one of those five GCP reasons, the WMD reason, proved invalid (4 out of 5; “not bad for government work”).
3. Al Qaeda were harbored in Iraq prior to our invasion with the knowledge, willingness, and tolerance of Saddam Hussein.
4. Saddam Hussein had to be removed from the governance of Iraq in the interest of the Iraqi people and the American people.

Until proven otherwise I will continue to operate with the understanding that the US acted illegally in the pre-emptive invasion of Iraq without a shred of justification. Furthermore, I believe that the US Government, under the direction of George Bush has consistently lied to the community at large.

Re-reading "General Colin Powell to the UN, 2/5/2003", I noticed that we should have known about that 'invalid point' long before, since Powell nearly mentioned it at all.

I bet that neither of your assertions here will ever be proven to a certainty to be right or wrong. I believe the same is true for my assrtions prceding yours. The more useful and practical question to answer is which of our assertions, yours or mine, are more probably correct or more probably wrong? I'm betting on mine!

this is actually a very good and interesting point that hasn't received a lot of deep discussion. we seem to get wrapped up in "forcing the deck" to provide the "facts" that support our own pov. so maybe we could spend a little time discussing not why we are "right", but instead why we "feel" the way we do, pro or con.

maybe by doing that, we will all learn

problem is your betting other peoples lives

no problem, mctag. after all they do say that america and england are two countries separated by a common language.

According to GTF, in the Epilogue, Powell "recently expressed disappointment that some of the intelligence on Iraq's WMD program was 'inaccurate and wrong and in some cases deliberatly misleading'.

Because Frank's book was published 7/1/2004, I'm guessing Powell made that statement early in 2004.

Interestingly, Franks completed that paragraph: "That of course is the nature of human intelligence. The issue is not whether the source of the intelligence information was telling the truth, but whether George Tenet, Colin Powell, and President George W. Bush believed that the information was true. I believe I did. I know I did. And I do not regret my role in disarming Iraq and removing its Baathist regime."

Gee, wouldn't it be some'tn if General Franks' family were killed by what somebody else believed to be 'true' killers.

Yes I am! I'm not only betting mine; I am not only betting the lives of those I love, I am betting the lives of those whose lives I would save.

Somone here once asked: "Where are we now that we have invaded Iraq?" I answered in return: "Where would we be now if we had not invaded Iraq?" You are willing to bet other people's lives that we who survive would be better off if we had not invaded Iraq. I think that a bad bet! So I am betting we who survive will be better off if we do what is necessary to deny as soon as we can would be terrorist murderers the unchecked opportunity to mass murder more.

I think we disagree over what's more probable not over what's certain. What do you think?

That's a valid point. There are four possibilities:
1. Frank's family dies because Franks allowed the true killers to live.
2. Frank's family dies because sombody else allowed the true killers to live.
3. Franks family lives because Franks killed the true killers.
4. Franks family lives because sombody else killed the true killers.

All I ask is that we all recognize that this debate here is about what those who are responsible for the security of our lives should do. It's a copout to look at this problem as if it were only a matter of whether this or that person is well intended. Intentions don't protect and save lives; actions do. Intentions don't make lives unsafe; actions do.

Elegantly put, cogently argued, and admirably brief.