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

Hilary has a 'Bush' attack

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Current Interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi told the NYT on Tuesday that he had heard that Iran had lobbied its Iraqi allies against allowing him to continue as prime minister. Allawi professes puzzlement at this stance. Uh, Iyad, it might be because you let your defense minister, Hazem Shaalan, say that Iran is Iraq's number one enemy! You could see how a thing like that might annoy Tehran a little bit. Not that Iran really has a veto-- pretending that it does may be an attempt to smear the United Iraqi Alliance as themselves puppets of Iran. Allawi also admits to the strategy I suggested Tuesday morning, of attempting to become prime minister by allying with the Kurds and then trying to detach 60 or so members of the UIA.

Al-Hayat, however, suggests that two can play that game. It says that of the 40 deputies in Allawi's Iraqiyah list, 9 are thinking of bolting and joining the UIA. They include two persons who tilt toward the Sadr Movement, and 7 other members led by Husain Ali Shaalan.

It should be remembered that Allawi would need two thirds of the parliament, or about 182 MPs, to form a government. The UIA can prevent him from succeeding even if only 94 of its 140 deputies stand firm (and this conclusion assumes that Allawi could attact the allegiance not only of 46 UIA deputies but of all of the small parties such as the Sadrist Cadres and Chosen, the Turkmen National Front, the Islamic Action Council, and the Kurdish Islamic Bloc). I'd say Allawi's task is simply impossible.

Allawi does not count on the moral authority of Grand Ayatollah Sistani, which is what enabled the UIA to be cobbled together. Sistani probably could send envoys to most UIA deputies and argue them out of supporting Allawi. And I suspect that he would do so if he felt it necessary.

Al-Hayat quotes a member of the UIA who says that the delegates who supported Chalabi would not support Allawi, and that the UIA rejects even a cabinet post for him; and that he should just get used to leading a small opposition faction in the parliament.

Persons close to Allawi, in contrast, told the newspaper that the current prime minister remained confident that he could seduce enought UIA members away from their party to form a government.

Gilbert Achcar informs me that the distribution of some of the seats for the religious parties in the United Iraqi Alliance was given in al-Hayat, and kindly provides the figures mentioned:

Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq: 18 seats
Islamic Da'wa Party: 15 seats
Islamic Da'wa Party-Iraq organisation: 9 seats
Islamic Virtue Party: 9 seats
Shia Islamic Council: 13 seats
Faili Kurds: 4 seats
Al-Sadr's Current: 21 seats

This list accounts for only 81 of the 140 seats, though. It demonstrates that the religious parties were seriously shortchanged in the formation of the United Iraqi Alliance list.

What's next? If Jaafari can put together a 2/3s majority in parliament, he can have the president and two vice-presidents elected. They in turn will forma presidency council that will appoint a prime minister. He and they will then jointly appoint the cabinet ministers. The final government will need a 51 percent vote of confidence in parliament. (Some commentators are saying that it needs 2/3s approval the way the initial government did, but this is not true. A simple majority can confirm the government in power). Andrew Arato reminds us of the following passages of the interim constitution.

' Article 36.

(A) The National Assembly shall elect a President of the State and two Deputies. They shall form the Presidency Council, the function of which will be to represent the sovereignty of Iraq and oversee the higher affairs of the country. The election of the Presidency Council shall take place on the basis of a single list and by a two-thirds majority of the members' votes.

Article 38.

(A) The Presidency Council shall name a Prime Minister unanimously, as well as the members of the Council of Ministers upon the recommendation of the Prime Minister. The Prime Minister and Council of Ministers shall then seek to obtain a vote of confidence by simple majority from the National Assembly prior to commencing their work as a government. The Presidency Council must agree on a candidate for the post of Prime Minister within two weeks. In the event that it fails to do so, the responsibility of naming the Prime Minister reverts to the National Assembly. In that event, the National Assembly must confirm the nomination by a two-thirds majority. '

Wed, Feb 23, 2005 0:28

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As I said before, the "honourable war" is a crime, followed by a cover-up.

Revealed: the rush to war

Richard Norton-Taylor
Wednesday February 23, 2005
The Guardian

A US tank moves into position near Iraq's western border. Photograph: Adam Butler/AP

The attorney general, Lord Goldsmith, warned less than two weeks before the invasion of Iraq that military action could be ruled illegal.
The government was so concerned that it might be prosecuted it set up a team of lawyers to prepare for legal action in an international court.
And a parliamentary answer issued days before the war in the name of Lord Goldsmith - but presented by ministers as his official opinion before the crucial Commons vote - was drawn up in Downing Street, not in the attorney general's chambers.
The full picture of how the government manipulated the legal justification for war, and political pressure placed on its most senior law officer, is revealed in the Guardian today.
It appears that Lord Goldsmith never wrote an unequivocal formal legal opinion that the invasion was lawful, as demanded by Lord Boyce, chief of defence staff at the time.
The Guardian can also disclose that in her letter of resignation in protest against the war, Elizabeth Wilmshurst, deputy legal adviser at the Foreign Office, described the planned invasion of Iraq as a "crime of aggression".
She said she could not agree to military action in circumstances she described as "so detrimental to the international order and the rule of law".
Her uncompromising comments, and disclosures about Lord Goldsmith's relations with ministers in the run-up to war, appear in a book by Philippe Sands, a QC in Cherie Booth's Matrix chambers and professor of international law at University College London.
Exclusive extracts of his book Lawless World are published in today's Guardian.
Lord Goldsmith warned Tony Blair in a document on March 7 2003 that the use of force against Iraq could be illegal. It would be safer to have a second UN resolution explicitly sanctioning military action.
"So concerned was the government about the possibility of such a case that it took steps to put together a legal team to prepare for possible international litigation," writes Mr Sands.
The government has refused to publish the March 7 document. It was circulated to only a very few senior ministers. All Lord Goldsmith gave the cab inet was a later oral presentation of a parliamentary answer issued under his name on March 17.
This appears contrary to the official ministerial code, which states that the complete text of opinions by the government's law officers should be seen by the full cabinet.
On March 13 2003, Lord Goldsmith told Lord Falconer, then a Home Office minister, and Baroness Morgan, Mr Blair's director of political and government relations, that he believed an invasion would, after all, be legal without a new UN security council resolution, according to Mr Sands.
On March 17, in response to a question from Baroness Ramsay, a Labour peer, Lord Goldsmith stated that it was "plain" Iraq continued to be in material breach of UN resolution 1441.
"Plain to whom?' asks Mr Sands. It is clear, he says, that Lord Goldsmith's answer was "neither a summary nor a precis of any of the earlier advices which the attorney general had provided".
He adds: "The March 17 statement does not seem to have been accompanied by a formal and complete legal opinion or advice in the usual sense, whether written by the attorney general, or independently by a barrister retained by him".
Separately, the Guardian has learned that Lord Goldsmith told the inquiry into the use of intelligence in the run-up to war that his meeting with Lord Falconer and Baroness Morgan was an informal one. He did not know whether it was officially minuted.
Lord Goldsmith also made clear he did not draw up the March 17 written parliamentary answer. They "set out my view", he told the Butler inquiry, referring to Lord Falconer and Baroness Morgan.
Yet the following day, March 18, that answer was described in the Commons order paper as the attorney general's "opinion". During the debate, influential Labour backbenchers and the Conservative frontbench said it was an important factor behind their decision to vote for war.
Robin Cook, the former foreign secretary and leader of the Commons, yesterday described the Guardian's disclosure as alarming. "It dramatically reveals the extent to which the legal opinion on the war was the product of a political process." he said.
The case for seeing the attorney general's original advice was now overwhelming, Mr Cook added. "What was served up to parliament as the view of the attorney general turned out to be the view of two of the closest aides of the prime minister," he said.
Sir Menzies Campbell, the Liberal Democrat foreign affairs spokesman, said the government's position had been seriously undermined. "The substance of the attorney general's advice, and the process by which it was partially published, simply do not stand up to scrutiny," he said.
Sir Menzies added: "The issue is all the more serious since the government motion passed by the House of Commons on March 18 2003, endorsing military action against Iraq, was expressly based on that advice."
He continued: "The public interest, which the government claims justifies non-publication of the whole of the advice, can only be served now by the fullest disclosure."

(...more...)

http://www.guardian.co.uk/guardianpolitics/story/0,3605,1423216,00.html

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cicerone imposter wrote:

Dontcha already know? Only ican knows the truth. We're all misinformed by our media.

I know it makes you wonder if Ican and others live in Baghdad or something that gives them such superior knowledge that is free from having to depend on the report from others who could be biased. Of course that would be assuming that they could never be biased. I don't know why we just don't shut down the press and everyone in the world listen to ican.

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revel, That article of yours on Bush's uncle profting from this war is too complex for most Americans to understand. Most think Bush's social security revision to private accounts will really make them rich beyond their wildest dreams. If they have understood that all workers were allowed to invest $3,000 in IRAs before Bush's plan to begin investing $1,000 in 2009, they'd understand not all those people who invested $3,000 a year are wealthy beyond their means to retire in total comfort. Wink

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If we are truly the spreader of peace and democracy, why are we ignoring "this?"
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Go to this link for pictures. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/23/opinion/23kristof.html?th

By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

Published: February 23, 2005

Genocide in Darfur
A closer look at the four photos from a secret archive gathered by African Union monitors.

A Promise Unkept: Nicholas D. Kristof in Darfur
Through October 2004, the genocide in Sudan had killed 100,000, but little had been done to stop the crisis.

Photos don't normally appear on this page. But it's time for all of us to look squarely at the victims of our indifference.

These are just four photos in a secret archive of thousands of photos and reports that document the genocide under way in Darfur. The materials were gathered by African Union monitors, who are just about the only people able to travel widely in that part of Sudan.

This African Union archive is classified, but it was shared with me by someone who believes that Americans will be stirred if they can see the consequences of their complacency.

The photo at the upper left was taken in the village of Hamada on Jan. 15, right after a Sudanese government-backed militia, the janjaweed, attacked it and killed 107 people. One of them was this little boy. I'm not showing the photo of his older brother, about 5 years old, who lay beside him because the brother had been beaten so badly that nothing was left of his face. And alongside the two boys was the corpse of their mother.

The photo to the right shows the corpse of a man with an injured leg who was apparently unable to run away when the janjaweed militia attacked.

At the lower left is a man who fled barefoot and almost made it to this bush before he was shot dead.

Last is the skeleton of a man or woman whose wrists are still bound. The attackers pulled the person's clothes down to the knees, presumably so the victim could be sexually abused before being killed. If the victim was a man, he was probably castrated; if a woman, she was probably raped.

There are thousands more of these photos. Many of them show attacks on children and are too horrific for a newspaper.

One wrenching photo in the archive shows the manacled hands of a teenager from the girls' school in Suleia who was burned alive. It's been common for the Sudanese militias to gang-rape teenage girls and then mutilate or kill them.

Another photo shows the body of a young girl, perhaps 10 years old, staring up from the ground where she was killed. Still another shows a man who was castrated and shot in the head.

This archive, including scores of reports by the monitors on the scene, underscores that this slaughter is waged by and with the support of the Sudanese government as it tries to clear the area of non-Arabs. Many of the photos show men in Sudanese Army uniforms pillaging and burning African villages. I hope the African Union will open its archive to demonstrate publicly just what is going on in Darfur.

The archive also includes an extraordinary document seized from a janjaweed official that apparently outlines genocidal policies. Dated last August, the document calls for the "execution of all directives from the president of the republic" and is directed to regional commanders and security officials.

"Change the demography of Darfur and make it void of African tribes," the document urges. It encourages "killing, burning villages and farms, terrorizing people, confiscating property from members of African tribes and forcing them from Darfur."

It's worth being skeptical of any document because forgeries are possible. But the African Union believes this document to be authentic. I also consulted a variety of experts on Sudan and shared it with some of them, and the consensus was that it appears to be real.

Certainly there's no doubt about the slaughter, although the numbers are fuzzy. A figure of 70,000 is sometimes stated as an estimated death toll, but that is simply a U.N. estimate for the deaths in one seven-month period from nonviolent causes. It's hard to know the total mortality over two years of genocide, partly because the Sudanese government is blocking a U.N. team from going to Darfur and making such an estimate. But independent estimates exceed 220,000 - and the number is rising by about 10,000 per month.

So what can stop this genocide? At one level the answer is technical: sanctions against Sudan, a no-fly zone, a freeze of Sudanese officials' assets, prosecution of the killers by the International Criminal Court, a team effort by African and Arab countries to pressure Sudan, and an international force of African troops with financing and logistical support from the West.

But that's the narrow answer. What will really stop this genocide is indignation. Senator Paul Simon, who died in 2003, said after the Rwandan genocide, "If every member of the House and Senate had received 100 letters from people back home saying we have to do something about Rwanda, when the crisis was first developing, then I think the response would have been different."

The same is true this time. Web sites like www.darfurgenocide.org and www.savedarfur.org are trying to galvanize Americans, but the response has been pathetic.

I'm sorry for inflicting these horrific photos on you. But the real obscenity isn't in printing pictures of dead babies - it's in our passivity, which allows these people to be slaughtered.

During past genocides against Armenians, Jews and Cambodians, it was possible to claim that we didn't fully know what was going on. This time, President Bush, Congress and the European Parliament have already declared genocide to be under way. And we have photos.

This time, we have no excuse.

E-mail: [email protected]

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C.I.,

The same reason every other country is "ignoring" it?

Perhaps you should be asking why the EU is ignoring it? We have our hands in enough pies right now, they seem to have extra hands available...

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I don't know; we ignored the world community in our preemptive attack of Iraq to bring them peace and democracy. Besides, Bush keeps repeating that his goal is to bring democracy to the world. Doesn't say anything about getting help from the EU.

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[Revel, my subsequent edits are in blue--if you like, I'll add more as I think of them.]

revel wrote:

Other than CBS and the unfortunate Rather episode, what news organizations has been caught lying and what was the content of the lie and the evidence of the proof of the lie?

There are too many for me to remember them all. Here are just a few that come to mind at the moment:

2005: CNN claimed US troops were targeting reporters in Iraq.

[2005: ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, NYT, WP, BG, and LAT claimed the Iraqis are dictating to Bush the design of the future Iraqi government.]

2004-2005: ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, NYT, WP, BG, and LAT claimed before the Iraqi election that a majority of Iraqis did not want a democratic government, when of course they did and do.

[2004: ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, NYT, WP, BG, and LAT claimed Bush was dictating the design of the future Iraqi government.]

2004: ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, NYT, WP, BG, and LAT claimed that US troops killed more than 100 thousand Iraqi civilians, when it was less than 15 thousand.

2004: ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN claimed that exit polls showed that Bush lost the election, when Bush actually won the election.

2004: ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, NYT, WP, BG, and LAT claimed that since Saddam's regime didn't control that part of northern Iraq controlled by al Qaeda, Saddam's regime couldn't attempt to seize that control from al Qaeda after the US asked Saddam to extradite those al Qaeda leaders, when of course he could at least attempt to if he were to choose to.

2003: ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, NYT, WP, BG, and LAT claimed that George Bush was contemplating invasion of Iraq before he was elected, when it was Bill Clinton who disclosed to Bush in a two hour briefing in 2000 after Bush's election, among other things, that Clinton was contemplating such an invasion.

2000: ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN claimed Republicans prevented Black Floridian voters from voting, when it was Democrat poll operators who did that because those voters were not properly registered.

2000: ABC claimed the Florida Polls were closed, when the West Florida heavily Republican polls weren't closed.

1990?-2003: CNN agreed not to report Saddam's atrocities in order to retain Saddam's permission to remain in Iraq.

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No, C.I., we ignored the world community in our preemptive strike of Iraq to assure a final count of the WMD's Saddam had, to assure the continued safety of the US and to bring Iraq under full acceptance of the many UNSC resolutions. Peace and democracy is just a fringe benefit.

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These are the facts of Iraq:

1. The Iraqi people risked their lives to establish a democracy of their own design;

2. The Iraqi people want the US to help end Iraqi dependence on US troops for securing Iraqi democracy;

3. The US is eager for the Iraqi government to ask the US to remove its troops from Iraq;

4. When the Iraqi government tells the US to remove its troops from Iraq, the US will remove its troops from Iraq.

The Iraqi people will establish a democratic government that:

1. Is the Iraqis' own design;

2. Doesn't murder civilians in Iraq;

3. Prevents murderers of civilians in other countries from locating in Iraq.

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ican711nm wrote:

These are the facts of Iraq:

1. The Iraqi people risked their lives to establish a democracy of their own design;

2. The Iraqi people want the US to help end Iraqi dependence on US troops for securing Iraqi democracy;

3. The US is eager for the Iraqi government to ask the US to remove its troops from Iraq;

4. When the Iraqi government tells the US to remove its troops from Iraq, the US will remove its troops from Iraq.

The Iraqi people will establish a democratic government that:

1. Is the Iraqis' own design;

2. Doesn't murder civilians in Iraq;

3. Prevents murderers of civilians in other countries from locating in Iraq.

Are these verifiable facts or 'Ican facts?
Can't just say it you know.

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A major British daily newspaper (The Guardian) has today in a leading article (the front page) accused, with evidence, the British Prime Minister (Tony Blair) of misleading the country and lying even to his own cabinet colleagues about advice he received from senior counsel (The Attorney General) that an attack on Iraq would be legal. Despite what he had said, about receiving a written judgement, he received no such thing.

The conclusion must be, that he knew the proposed action was illegal, so the judgement was hushed up and then mis-represented.

And the reaction so far has been- well, you tell me. Has there been any discernable reaction?

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Please provide actual links to the articles themselves, thanks. It is hard to argue something based on summaries shaded by an individules outlook of it.

For instance on the Iraqi cvillian deaths thing, the news reports could have said something like, "according to...." which would make it different than just saying, "there were 100 thousand deaths..."

Likewise a similar way of wording could have been the case with the florida story.

Do you seriously believe that CNN and others delibertly set out and lied about the exit polls being closed in 2000? More than likely they were honestly mistaken.

Paul O'neil said in his book that from the beginning the bush administration was after Iraq.

What article said that most of the Iraqis did not want the elections? I believe most of them were saying that they didn't see how they could have held them considering the violence. That was a perfectly reasonable way of looking at the situation.

As for that last about CNN having some kind of deal with Saddam Hussien? That is pretty crazy.

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There are some who, uh, feel like that, you know, the conditions are such that they can attack us there. My answer is: bring 'em on. We got the force necessary to deal with the security situation."
- George W. Bush, July 2, 2003

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The Iraqi people will establish a democratic government that:

1. Is the Iraqis' own design;

2. Doesn't murder civilians in Iraq;

3. Prevents murderers of civilians in other countries from locating in Iraq.

Did God die and leave you in charge, ican? As far as I know, God is the only one who is purported to have ominiscience.

As for No. 3, why would you think Iraq could accomplish this when the US has not been able to do so in this country?

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Op/Ed - The Nation
The Nation
The Business of Jihad

Tue Feb 22, 5:10 PM ET

Add to My Yahoo! Op/Ed - The Nation

David Enders

Ali Hussein is Syrian. He used to live in a state-subsidized apartment complex on Baghdad's Haifa Street, which was occupied mostly by Palestinians before the US invasion. When the government fell in April 2003, angry Baghdadis evicted the foreigners from the apartments and other properties they had been allowed to stay in by a government order that had frozen their rent at 1970s levels. Now Ali, 35, lives on the other side of the Tigris River on Rashid Street, where he has owned a factory since he moved to Baghdad almost two decades ago. His factory, he says, was attacked by looters during the postinvasion chaos, and it was then that he decided to send his family back to Syria and to join the jihad against US troops and, eventually, their Iraqi allies.
The January 30 elections to form a new government make no difference to Ali. As far as he's concerned, anyone participating in them is a carpetbagger, an allusion to exiled politicians whom he expects to be the regime's most prominent figures. "We don't want the Americans to be in Iraq (news - web sites). They are occupiers, and so is anyone who came in with the Americans." Ali is blase when I ask why the resistance was not effective during the elections. "We could not do that much during the elections because they put Iraqis in the polling stations--old women, old men. Those were foreigners who attacked those places," he says, referring to the suicide bombers who hit the stations (though at least one attacker was an Iraqi police officer). He doesn't need to point out that Baghdad was in a state of lockdown that day that made nonpedestrian movement impossible. I ask Ali about his nationality. "I feel as though I am Iraqi," he says. "I have been here almost twenty years, and I do not want to go back to Syria."

Haifa Street, the central Baghdad neighborhood where Ali commands a group of "about 120 mujahedeen," as he puts it, has become synonymous with death. It is a hardscrabble area, where the British had an embassy for nearly eighty years before they were driven into the Green Zone soon after the current occupation settled in. American and Iraqi troops battle fighters on Haifa Street almost daily, with police caught in the crossfire. The foreign press corps doesn't go anywhere close unless they are embedded with US troops.

Ali (not his real name) tries to appear calm, though he is clearly concerned, his eyes darting apprehensively around my hotel room. It always surprises me how nervous fighters are when I meet them--they assume that if I'm with the US military, I've got unseen backup somewhere. But the man who has set up the meeting is someone we both trust, and he knows that if anything goes awry, things will be very bad for his family. These are the grounds on which we've decided to meet. I try to put Ali at ease, but he makes me nervous. Hiba, the translator I work with, is downright frightened. It's not hard to understand why--without prompting, Ali launches into tales of murder and mayhem.

"We have boys as young as 13 fighting with us," Ali says. "Some of them we use to tell us where American troops are, others we give grenades and they throw them at Humvees and Bradleys. We recently killed a man who owned a uniform company because he was making uniforms for the Iraqi army. We kidnapped a cousin of Mowaffak al-Rubaie [national security adviser for Iyad Allawi's provisional government] and killed him.... There are so many stories of operations. Four days ago we killed four police officers. We warned them three times to quit. We have agents in the government, in the police."

Ali's group is extremely fluid, and in contact with fighters in other parts of the capital and all over the country. "Recently we had ten men arrested. Six of them didn't admit to anything and were released, but four of them admitted to the police that they were mujahedeen, and told them the name of our leader," Ali said. "Now we are afraid they are working for the Americans, so the men who were working with them will either not work for a while or will move to other cities."

The previous day I had breakfast at the home of some of Ali's contacts in a northern neighborhood of the city, ironically on a busy street frequently patrolled by US armor. A front room in the house serves as a receiving area, a sort of terminal for fighters moving from one zone to another. The brothers who own the house, Abu Qurar and Abu Saif (both noms de guerre), nominally Shiite, became part of Baghdad's nouveau riche when they heisted a bank during the postinvasion looting. They are go-betweens for Sabah Baldawi, a sort of robber baron who became legendary in the 1990s for his raucous parties and for providing substandard feed to Saddam Hussein (news - web sites)'s son Uday's racehorces to improve the winning chances of his own thoroughbreds. Before the regime fell, Baldawi fled to Syria with millions, though he has made frequent trips between Damascus and Baghdad with a handful of passports.

"See? The borders are open," says Abu Qurar, the elder brother, laughing as he displays a poker hand of brand-new Iraqi passports, each with a different name. I compare his fake ones to Hiba's real one. There is no discernible difference. The brothers are beholden to Baldawi, who they say exerts pressure on the local underworld, kidnapping family members of gangsters who don't obey him. Though they claim Baldawi supports the insurgency because of his ideological opposition to the occupation, they soon lapse into talk of daring criminal exploits. Abu Saif says that when he was arrested a few months back, Baldawi spent $100,000 to free him.

In Haifa Street, Ali's men are the law. "We don't let people play cards, we don't let people drink," he says. "We warn the person, and then break his legs or kill him if he doesn't stop." His comment is emblematic of the arbitrary application of Islamic law within the insurgency. I ask why they don't also apply Islamic law in cases of theft, knowing that much of the money funding the insurgency comes from criminal acts. Ali shrugs off the question. "Drinking and gambling lead to desperation," he says.

Ali's mujahedeen group spans borders and sects, absorbing fighters who come from outside to join the jihad, but its core, he says, is "Iraqis, especially Sunnis, but we have Shiites." Ali's status and ideology are murky; he claims his group follows the qaeda (base), the teachings of Osama bin Laden (news - web sites), but he brings this up only when pressed. More frequently, he talks about "the Big Man." I ask him about Baldawi, and for the first time during our interview, he cracks a smile. He won't admit that Baldawi is the Big Man, but he begins speaking with admiration. "He used to be brave, even during Saddam's time. He wasn't even religious--he was a rich man who helped poor people," Ali says. "It was after the regime fell down that he found religion."

Then I ask about money. "We don't pay people to carry out attacks, but if they need money, we give it to them," Ali says. The massive roundups carried out by the US and Iraqi armies, often based on worthless intelligence, are the best recruiting tool he has. "If men are sent to prison, we take care of their family, whether or not they are members of the resistance," Ali says. "Many men join us when they get out even if they weren't with us before."

Baldawi was arrested on February 19 in Baghdad by Iraqi police, and injured in the process. It is certain, however, that many more of Iraq's criminal class are ready to take his place. With the roundups by the US and Iraqi armies showing no sign of abating and dissatisfaction with the occupation remaining strong, it seems there will be recruits for some time to come.

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Quote, "No, C.I., we ignored the world community in our preemptive strike of Iraq to assure a final count of the WMD's Saddam had, ..." What in hell do you think the UN weapon's inspectors were doing when the US chased them out to act out our aggression?

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Gelisgesti wrote:

ican711nm wrote:
These are the facts of Iraq:

1. The Iraqi people risked their lives to establish a democracy of their own design;

2. The Iraqi people want the US to help end Iraqi dependence on US troops for securing Iraqi democracy;

3. The US is eager for the Iraqi government to ask the US to remove its troops from Iraq;

4. When the Iraqi government tells the US to remove its troops from Iraq, the US will remove its troops from Iraq.

The Iraqi people will establish a democratic government that:

1. Is the Iraqis' own design;

2. Doesn't murder civilians in Iraq;

3. Prevents murderers of civilians in other countries from locating in Iraq.

Are these verifiable facts or 'Ican facts?
Can't just say it you know.

Why the double standard? You "just say it" in most of your posts. You verify little or nothing. In fact, you cannot verify that one can't in this forum "just say it," because its been done repeatedly by the left leaning folks here as well as the right leaning folks.

In the case of my post, my first two facts have already been verified by actual Iraqis actions and statements. In the case of the second two facts, the Bush administration has stated these so often that I think them so highly probable as to be sure things. He cannot reverse himself on these points and still be credible to the majority of the voters in our country.

My three predictions, are verifiable or refutable by future events. I thnk predictions 1 and 2 are sure things. Prediction 3 depends on how resolute the Iraqi government turns out to be. If they fail to fulfill prediction 3, the Bush administration or any subsequent one should re-invade Iraq to make it true.

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

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