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

I can't help myself I'm sure it's genetic.

I'm not sure even chocolate would improve some attitudes, Ican

YES, WE'RE A FLAWED PEOPLE, BUT .............

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.

At least. he's consistent!

Amnesty International reports that the women of Iraq have suffered substantial setbacks in their rights since the US invasion, and live in a condition of dire insecurity.

The suggestion by some that the guarantee of 1/3 of seats in the Iraqi parliament to women might make up for the situation described by Amnesty is of course absurd. Iraq is not the first country to have such a quota. It was put into effect in Pakistan by Gen. Pervez Musharraf. The move was meant to weaken Muslim fundamentalists, on the theory that women members of parliament would object to extreme patriarchy on the Khomeini or Taliban model. In fact, the Jama'at-i Islami, the main fundamentalist party in Pakistan, was perfectly capable of finding women to represent it in parliament. (US readers should remember Phyllis Schlafly!) Moreover, the 1/3 of MPs who are women can fairly easily be outvoted by the men.

If the Republican Party in the US is so proud of putting in such a quota for Iraq, they should think seriously about applying it in the United States Congress.


' . . . there are larger disparities between the Congress and the general citizenry in term of sex and race. In the House, there are currently 372 men and 63 women. In the Senate, there are 14 women and 86 men. '



Might not the US be a better country if there were 33 women senators and more like 120 congresswomen? If your answer is that it wouldn't matter, then you cannot very well insist that it does matter in Iraq. If you think it would be important, then if you support it in Iraq you should support it in the United States.
Sat, Feb 26, 2005 0:17

February 26, 2005
5 G.I.'s Killed and 9 Injured Across Iraq in 24 Hours
By JOHN F. BURNS

AGHDAD, Iraq, Feb. 25 - The United States military command on Friday announced the deaths of five American soldiers and the wounding of at least nine others. The day's biggest attack, a roadside bomb blast in a town outside Baghdad, struck a patrol on what was to be one of the last combat missions for some members of the First Cavalry Division before they returned home.

The bombing, in Tarmiya, 30 miles north of Baghdad on the Tigris, killed three soldiers and wounded nine. Witnesses said the soldiers had dismounted from a convoy of Humvees and had begun a foot patrol when the bomb detonated. Tarmiya is in the heart of the so-called Sunni Triangle, which has been hit by a new wave of insurgent attacks since the Jan. 30 elections.

The bomb appeared to have been hidden among palm trees beside the road, according to an Associated Press account quoting local residents. The account described about a dozen American soldiers lying "on blood-spattered ground" after the attack, and said American and Iraqi forces quickly sealed off the area. The dead and wounded were flown to an American field hospital in Baghdad aboard Black Hawk helicopters.

In addition to the victims from the bomb, the command said that one marine was killed Thursday in combat operations in Anbar Province, a main stronghold of the insurgency, and that a soldier died in Baghdad on Friday from "nonbattle injuries" that it did not describe. Insurgent attacks also killed at least 15 Iraqis in different incidents, mostly in the Sunni Triangle.

[On Saturday, the military said another United States marine had been killed Friday in Anbar Province during military operations, Reuters reported.]

A command spokesman said the patrol attacked in Tarmiya was a mixed group comprising soldiers of the First Cavalry Division and the Third Infantry Division, which are in the midst of a handover of military operations in Baghdad and outlying districts. The cavalry division, based in Fort Hood, Tex., has already begun sending some of its soldiers home as part of an annual rotation in which most of the 155,000 American troops now in Iraq will be replaced by new units by April. The Third Infantry Division, based in Fort Stewart, Ga., has returned for its second tour, after leading the American drive north from Kuwait and capturing Baghdad in April 2003.

At the moment the patrol was bombed, the two top officers in the Baghdad handover, Maj. Gen. Peter W. Chiarelli of the cavalry division, and Maj. Gen. William G. Webster of the infantry division, who will formally assume command in Baghdad on Sunday, were holding a joint news conference in Baghdad's heavily protected Green Zone.

General Chiarelli said the "hardest part" of going home was the fact that more than 160 of his men had been killed, along with more than 1,200 wounded. He said the division's casualties in the month since the elections were among the lowest since the division arrived here last year, then added, "But that could change very, very quickly."

General Webster said about 50 percent of the Third Infantry Division's soldiers were on their second tour in Iraq, but they accepted the importance of the mission, even if "combat is a cup that soldiers would just as soon let pass, especially on the second and third time around."

But both officers said they believed American and Iraqi forces were gaining the upper hand on the insurgents, partly because of the experience American troops have gained in two years of combat, and partly because of the buildup of Iraqi Army units, with about 50,000 soldiers deployed, about 6,000 of them in Baghdad."The enemy will not likely cease his efforts, despite the foolhardiness of his venture," said General Chiarelli, a 54-year-old native of Seattle. "But he will be defeated."

Postelection maneuvering over a transitional government to take Iraq through the rest of the year on Friday showed new signs of heading for a deadlock.Among the new elements was a demand from Kurdish leaders who control a key bloc in the national assembly that any group wanting their backing would first have to commit to declaring the oil-rich northern city of Kirkuk to be part of Iraqi Kurdistan. The demand seemed likely to be resisted by both the United Iraqi Alliance, the country's largest coalition of Shiite parties, and by the Iraqi List, the group led by the interim prime minister, Ayad Allawi, who has emerged as the alliance's main rival for power.

Another new element was the wavering of a voting bloc of about 30 elected alliance members who follow Ahmad Chalabi, a onetime Pentagon favorite who declared himself a candidate for prime minister after the elections. But he withdrew this week, throwing his support to Ibrahim al-Jaafari, an Islamist who leads Dawa, one of the alliance's two dominant religious parties. Now, Mr. Chalabi's aides say, secularists in his group, the Shiite Council, as well as other backers who were placed on the alliance's election list by the rebel Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr, are demanding that Mr. Chalabi renounce his support for Mr. Jaafari and leave the alliance. If he does, he could become a wild card in the power struggle, and potentially even an ally for Dr. Allawi, a longtime rival.

The bomb attack on the American soldiers came on a day that caught the war's crosscurrents as it approaches the end of its second year. The five dead soldiers made it one of the worst 24-hour periods in weeks for the American command.

Among the victims in other attacks were two women and a child killed by a bomb that exploded just after an American military convoy passed them in Baiji, 130 miles north of Baghdad. A driver for an American-backed television station in Baghdad was shot as he drove a reporter through an area of intense insurgent activity about 50 miles south of Baghdad.

Two members of the Iraqi security forces were killed: one a soldier who was shot in Nibai, about 40 miles north of Baghdad, and the other a policeman who was returning to his home in Baquba, also about 40 miles north of the capital. And three Iraqis in an outer district of Baghdad died when insurgents set off a bomb, then fired into onlookers.

But the loss was accompanied by what Iraq's interim government said was a breakthrough in the hunt for the terrorist group led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian named by Osama bin Laden late last year as Al Qaeda's chief representative in Iraq. An announcement said American and Iraqi forces had seized two aides of Mr. Zarqawi last Sunday during a raid in Anah, a town on the Euphrates River about 200 miles northwest of Baghdad, close to the Syrian border. Anah lies on a stretch of the river where the First Marine Division began an offensive on Sunday that it described as aimed at "criminals and terrorists who have attempted to destabilize Anbar Province."

The two aides were identified as Abu Qutaybah, who is said to have been responsible for determining "who, when and how terrorist network leaders would meet" with Mr. Zarqawi, and Abu Uthman, who the announcement said had "occasionally acted" as Mr. Zarqawi's driver.

The government also said Iraqi soldiers had captured the leader of a Qaeda-linked cell responsible for a string of beheadings across Iraq. In a statement released late on Thursday, it said that the man, whom it identified as Muhammad Najam Ibrahim, had been seized in Baquba. It gave no date for the arrest, and no details of the killings that the man was alleged to have carried out.

ican711nm wrote:

YES, WE'RE A FLAWED PEOPLE, BUT .............

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.

You keep this in a seperate file, so you can post it over and over again, don't you?