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

Yes. She says it was intentional--her buddies, the terrorists, tipped her off to it.

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McTag--

or anybody, I guess.

If you know someone is your friend--and another is your enemy-- both of them see a murder in which you are the suspect--which one do you hope is called as a witness?

Either innocently--her perception may color what happened--or on purpose, she may see herself in a position to hurt the US, and is more than happy to do it.

I only know that in either case, I do not trust her to be accurate. She is proven biased against the US.

It is absurd to even remotely consider that there was any kind of order given by anyone in the US military to shoot this Italian reporter. This is only created by the ENEMY of freedom. Anyone who cannot see that is either stupid or dumb. Just consider the logistics of such a supposition. First off the American military did not know where the terrorists were holding her so we could not know where she would emerge from. What city in Iraq were the terrorists holding her? So did Rhumsfeld send country wide alert to every soldier that she would be coming and that they were to kill her in cold blood? Why didn't they finish the job if that was the order?

This is pure fantasy created by Bush haters... Is it fun being part of the problem? If there was an indication as to what check point she was going to show up... but that is not the case. If it was we would have her captors in custody too. It is only simple logic. Do you think the military is so tight lipped that they would not talk if they were given general orders to kill in cold blood a particular person? Had they not killed the Italian officer the Americans could have interviewed him and possibly discovered where the the captors were staked out. On that same idiotic logic then Saddam would be dead too... Actually why even take prisoners? We have many of them in Cuba. Why didn't we just kill them all too? This is the mentality of the terrorists not the coalition. How easily confused the liberals can become. This is thinking in a box... to conform to a warped view of reality.

Which is strange. Because, if you advocat hearing both sides, you would equally have to assume that the other side is very likely to be biased in favor of the US. Because, after all, they were US soldiers. And their perception or their veracity regarding the events that transpired would be understandably questionable to the everybody else.

Do you disagree?

It would surprise me if we actually "ordered the hit on this journalist."

It would surprise me if "those running this war are thugs and killers, thieves and crooks."

It does not surprise me that you would not be surprised. In fact I'd bet on it.

It also does not surprise me that you see great evil where there is little evil, and little evil where there is great evil.

Weird. I have to agree. I don't think the hit was ordered. I think the killing of civilians is just happening on a regular basis. Which might be understandable, given the situation, but not cannot be justified. Nevertheless. It would surprise me.

re "those running this war"... Don't know who is... Bush? Rumsfeld? The military? Don't know.

'bout evil: little evil, every day, tends to sum up...

Thanks for the explanation ican

So we're back to the old evil doer thing again.

What a comfortable little world you must inhabit.

Many non-embedded journalists have been killed. How many embedded?

it's the riiing we knows it and we wants it..... gollom....gollom .....

Revel, I responded to this:


Prisoners were abused by some in the US military, and in all probability prisoners will continue to be abused by some in the US military. I think that does not imply our invasion of Iraq was not the right thing to do. I inferred from what you have written that you think it does imply our invasion of Iraq was not the right thing to do.

Many of these abused prisoners are known themselves to be abusers of (e.g., murderers of) both Iragi soldiers, policemen, and civilians, and members of the US military. Many of these abusers know what the US military must learn in order to stop the associates of these prisoners from continuing to be abusers of (e.g., murderers of) both Iragi soldiers, policemen, and civilians, and members of the US military.

I inferred from what you wrote as quoted again above, that you think that such prisoners ought not be abused in order to learn what we must learn in order to stop their associates from abusing.

I think otherwise.

I inferred from your earlier posts as well as the one quoted again above that you think that our continuing abuse of such prisoners negates any valid justification for our invasion of Iraq, and based on this you expect we are being led by an evil administration toward our sure downfall.

I think otherwise.

So I posted the following:


I hope my several inferences from your posts about what you think about these matters are wrong. If you tell me they are wrong, I will be happy to apologize.

How many journalists have been killed?
How many non-embedded journalists have been killed?
Subtract the latter from the former and you shall have your answer!


It's the same uncomfortable and large world we both inhabit. Perhaps I see the difficulties with which humans are faced and what is required to reduce them, quite differently than you. Please enlighten me about the way you see them.

No. I agree. It would be nice if there had been an unbiased witness--or better yet FILM of what happened. Likely, finding an unbiased person in Baghdad is like finding one in Washington these days....or here.

I would add--it's not strange--it's human nature.

The zealots will buy this woman's 'story' for about a week, making a lot of noise about it, to no avail. It will go the way the story of the tank that supposedly 'deliberately' targeted the hotel full of journalists during the taking of Baghdad <eyeroll>.

The bottom line is if we'd wanted to kill her, she'd be dead. She isn't.

This was either an accident or a set-up.

OE writes


In order to believe the woman's story, you also have to believe that the soldiers to a man (or woman--not sure who all was there) all agreed with murdering unarmed civilians and all concocted and are sticking with the same manufactured story. You also have to assume they knew this woman was coming, had advance information on her ETA and the vehicle they should expect, and they hated her sufficiently to open fire. And you have to further assume that they did not hate more those who have opened fire on and killed, wounded, maimed their fellow solders as much as they have not presumed to kill them when unarmed and defenselsss.

Until there is reason not to do so, I will believe the solders were acting prudently and properly in their presumed self defense just as I'm going to give the cop the benefit of the doubt in similar circumstances every time.

http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/world/11067375.htm

Posted on Sun, Mar. 06, 2005



Kurdish towns benefit from Iraq insurgency

By SCHEHEREZADE FARAMARZI
Associated Press

SULAYMANIYAH, Iraq - The contrast between Iraq's Kurdish provinces and the insurgency-wracked cities to the south is evident in the 100 or so laborers gathered at the main square of this Kurdish town, looking for work.

They are among many Iraqi Arabs who have come from unemployment-stricken Baghdad and other cities to earn $10 for eight hours of work in a relatively safe environment. That they are Arabs among historically hostile Kurds suggests that ethnic coexistence is not dead in the new Iraq.

What draws the laborers, some as young as 14, as well as legions of investors, is a Kurdish economy that is flourishing on investment and capital that has been driven out of the insurgency areas.

"We expect terrorism to continue for another year or two," said Mohammed Karim, director of the Board for Promoting Investment in Sulaymaniyah. "We don't hope for this to happen, but if it does continue, the economy of the north will continue to flourish."

He said foreign investment, Iraqi capital and laborers continue to flow in.

In contrast to the rest of the country, hotels, offices, villas and high-rise apartment buildings are going up at a frenzied pace. An international airport is up and running in Irbil - its first flight took Muslim pilgrims to Saudi Arabia - and Sulaymaniyah's airport is to open this spring.

Sulaymaniyah, a city believed to have more than half a million people, has big plans for a free-trade zone with offices, hotels and motels for foreign investors.

The advantage for Iraq's three Kurdish provinces is their 13 years of semi-autonomy under Western protection, during which time they have gained political and diplomatic savvy, economic knowhow and a semblance of democracy.

The two main Kurdish groups - the Kurdistan Democratic Party and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan - ran their territories under their own governments under a joint parliament.

The Kurds, allies in the U.S.-led invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein, won enormous influence in postwar Baghdad and received the second-biggest vote total in the Jan. 30 election. Their two parties also have decided to merge into one power-sharing administration based in Irbil.

"For Kurds, it's only been getting better," Kurdish columnist Hiwa Osman said.

The PUK administration in Sulaymaniyah offers free land leases for big projects and the right to take all profits out of the country.

Its Board for Promoting Investment, set up 10 months ago to provide investors with security and guide them through red tape, has overseen the signing of 59 projects worth $500 million, Karim said.

Thirty of those projects are in the service sector, eight in industry, six in agriculture and four in housing construction. More than 2,000 apartment and office building projects are being undertaken by investors from the United Arab Emirates, Karim said.

Land prices have quadrupled, and most factories have been rented to foreigners, including British and Dutch companies, said Shilan Khaneqa, the board's head of public relations.

Kurds are returning from exile, and Arabs are moving in from the rest of Iraq, many of them professionals seeking escape from being targeted for kidnapping and murder.

The result: "We have a housing crisis," Khaneqa said.

The industrial projects include a cement factory managed by Lebanon's GRD company and financed by European banks, with a production capacity of 4,000 tons a day.

American investors are building an electricity generator that will boost output in northern Iraq by two-thirds of the current amount.

To the west, Turkey is the gateway for Kurdistani exports to Europe. To reach the rest of Iraq, traders turn east, shipping goods such as marble and fruit through Iran to bypass the insurgency areas.

"Because of the security situation, business in Baghdad is dead, so we provide them with goods," Karim said.

The Kurdish provinces still have a long way to go. Despite the present boom, roads and basic services are poor, and corruption pervades senior levels of government.

But to the laborers waiting for prospective employers at Misgowtif Gawra Square, a job in Kurdistan is better than staying home.

"There's no work in Baghdad because the situation is no good there," said Dhafar Qassem, 26.

If there is a plot anywhere I am beginning to smell one between the Kurds and the insurgency and possibly even foreign investors; or at least some mutual benefiting tolerance.

What's the nature of the plot you are beginning to smell? In other words, what is it "you smell" the Kurd's giving the Baathist insurgency and al Qaeda in return for the Baathist insurgency's and al Qaeda's tolerance of the Kurds?

Saddam's Baathist Regime mass murdered Kurds. The Kurds defeated the al Qaeda based in northern Iraq at the end of the 1990s. Al Qaeda was re-established in northern Iraq in 2001.

Maybe the Kurd's are less tolerant of the Baathist and al Qaeda insurgents than are the Sunnis in the Bagdad area. In other words, the Kurd's fight back and the Sunnis don't fight back.

That's just it, they do not have to fight back and they're thriving because they're cities are not destroyed with bombs from the insurgents as opposed to the rest of Iraq. I am just finding curious; so far, is all.

Many Actions Tied to Delay in Armor for Troops in Iraq
By MICHAEL MOSS

Published: March 7, 2005


he war in Iraq was hardly a month old in April 2003 when an Army general in charge of equipping soldiers with protective gear threw the brakes on buying bulletproof vests.

The general, Richard A. Cody, who led a Pentagon group called the Army Strategic Planning Board, had been told by supply chiefs that the combat troops already had all the armor they needed, according to Army officials and records from the board's meetings. Some 50,000 other American soldiers, who were not on the front lines of battle, could do without.


In the following weeks, as Iraqi snipers and suicide bombers stepped up deadly attacks, often directed at those very soldiers behind the front lines, General Cody realized the Army's mistake and did an about-face. On May 15, 2003, he ordered the budget office to buy all the bulletproof vests it could, according to an Army report. He would give one to every soldier, "regardless of duty position."

But the delays were only beginning. The initial misstep, as well as other previously undisclosed problems, show that the Pentagon's difficulties in shielding troops and their vehicles with armor have been far more extensive and intractable than officials have acknowledged, according to government officials, contractors and Defense Department records.

In the case of body armor, the Pentagon gave a contract for thousands of the ceramic plate inserts that make the vests bulletproof to a former Army researcher who had never mass-produced anything. He struggled for a year, then gave up entirely. At the same time, in shipping plates from other companies, the Army's equipment manager effectively reduced the armor's priority to the status of socks, a confidential report by the Army's inspector general shows. Some 10,000 plates were lost along the way, and the rest arrived late.

In all, with additional paperwork delays, the Defense Department took 167 days just to start getting the bulletproof vests to soldiers in Iraq once General Cody placed the order. But for thousands of soldiers, it took weeks and even months more, records show, at a time when the Iraqi insurgency was intensifying and American casualties were mounting.

By contrast, when the United States' allies in Iraq also realized they needed more bulletproof vests, they bypassed the Pentagon and ordered directly from a manufacturer in Michigan. They began getting armor in just 12 days.

The issue of whether American troops were adequately protected received wide attention in December, when an Army National Guard member complained to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld that troops were scrounging for armor to fortify their Humvees and other vehicles. The Pentagon has maintained that it has moved steadfastly to protect all its troops in Iraq.

But an examination of the issues involving the protective shielding and other critical equipment shows how a supply problem seen as an emergency on the ground in Iraq was treated as a routine procurement matter back in Washington.

While all soldiers eventually received plates for their vests, the Army is still scrambling to find new materials to better protect the 10,000 Humvees in Iraq that were not built for combat conditions. They are re-enforced by simple steel plates that cannot withstand the increasingly potent explosives being used by the insurgents, according to contractors who are working to develop more sophisticated armor for the Army.

Army generals say a more effective answer to the threat of explosives may lie in electronic instruments that have proven successful in blocking the detonation of homemade bombs, called improvised explosive devices, or I.E.D.'s. They have caused about a quarter of the more than 1,500 American deaths in Iraq, including those of two National Guard members from New York City just last week.

Such an electronic countermeasure was used at the start of the war to shield Iraqi oil fields from possible sabotage. But some members of Congress and security experts say shortsighted planning and piecemeal buying on the part of the Army has resulted in too few of the devices being used to protect the troops.

Rummy's comments when asked about armour plating of vehicles and personnel. Quote, "As you know, you go to war with the Army you have. They're not the Army you might want or wish to have at a later time."

We now understand why; failure to plan at the top.