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

I see what you are saying, Ican, but the crux of the problem to me and, I feel, many others, is not the larger possibilty of whether we can bring democracy to Iraq, but the simple fact that we were lied to, and grandly. I cannot abide such poor leadership; either gigantic liars or gigantic fools, either way they must go.
I too cannot abide such poor leadership. I differ from you in that I look at George W. Bush in both the present context and in the past contexts of the such poor leadership of his predecessors.

I want much better leadership. Where can I find it? After I find it how can I promote it?

Too many people look at the lousy job that's been done over the last 30 years and conclude that we can solve the problem of lousy leadership by giving government more to do to make our lives easier. That's just plain stupid! I think it's long past time for all of us--center, left, right, up, down, front, and rear--to not only question the wisdom of giving government more to do to make our lives easier, but also to reduce what government does to make our lives easier..

I just don't trust the 9/11 commission report. Why? Because it's just another gov't document, edited, redacted, and hidden from view, protested by the Gov't at first and then only grudingly co-operated with. Parts of it were (are?) classified. They found out nothing even resembling the truth as far as I am concerned.
The only thing going for the 9/11 Commission Report is that it was produced by a single collective of competitive incompetents who investigated other incompetents. All the other stuff published on the same subject is more incompetent.

Accordingly, one cannot trust the Bush admin. to operate the WoT properly. They are either liars or incompetent. Therefore, one cannot trust them to do the right things in Iraq, in Afghanistan, and in 'other' countries. Cycloptichorn
As things stand at present, Bush&Adm is the best we're going to have for the next almost 4 years. Our choice is to either continue to support the obstruction of the incompetent bunch we have by a more incompetent bunch, or to do what we can to help the incompetent bunch we have do a less incompetent job.

I like the second choice better than the first, because I bet the first choice has zero chance of making things less worse, while the second choice has at least a finite chance of making things less worse.

February 10, 2005
BUSH ADMINISTRATION SUPRESSED 9/11 AVIATION REPORT CONTAINING MANY WARNINGS
In the months before the Sept. 11 attacks, federal aviation officials reviewed dozens of intelligence reports that warned about Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda, some of which specifically discussed airline hijackings and suicide operations, according to a previously undisclosed report from the 9/11 commission.

The Bush administration has blocked the public release of the full, classified version of the report for more than five months, officials said, much to the frustration of former commission members who say it provides a critical understanding of the failures of the civil aviation system. The administration provided both the classified report and a declassified, 120-page version to the National Archives two weeks ago and, even with heavy redactions in some areas, the declassified version provides the firmest evidence to date about the warnings that aviation officials received concerning the threat of an attack on airliners and the failure to take steps to deter it.

On our way to implement a democracy in Iraq, we forgot something very important.
********

Children 'starving' in new Iraq

More and more children in Iraq do not have enough food to eat
Increasing numbers of children in Iraq do not have enough food to eat and more than a quarter are chronically undernourished, a UN report says.

...

Some 17,000 children die every day from hunger-related diseases, the report claims, which it says is a scandal in a world which is richer than ever before.

"The silent daily massacre by hunger is a form of murder," Mr Ziegler said. "It must be battled and eliminated."

Not the 9/11 report part too?

I didn't really start to research/read the report until after I read about the Bush dept. suppressing the important parts:

...

It cannot be trusted as a referrence which one bases argument off of, in my opinion; just another cover-over report that manages to not lay blame upon anyone, really.... Cycloptichorn

The "Peak Oil" fantasy has been exposed as pseudo science and a fraud on another thread. The Euro bit is a delusion contrary to the facts. The imputed motives for the United States don't survive even brief scrutiny.

However, if, after all that, you wish to believe this fable, go ahead. Certainly it shouldn't be at all unfamiliar to an inhabitant of Great Britain..

Not the 9/11 report part too?

I didn't really start to research/read the report until after I read about the Bush dept. suppressing the important parts:

Quote:

February 10, 2005
BUSH ADMINISTRATION SUPRESSED 9/11 AVIATION REPORT CONTAINING MANY WARNINGS
In the months before the Sept. 11 attacks, federal aviation officials reviewed dozens of intelligence reports that warned about Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda, some of which specifically discussed airline hijackings and suicide operations, according to a previously undisclosed report from the 9/11 commission.

The Bush administration has blocked the public release of the full, classified version of the report for more than five months, officials said, much to the frustration of former commission members who say it provides a critical understanding of the failures of the civil aviation system. The administration provided both the classified report and a declassified, 120-page version to the National Archives two weeks ago and, even with heavy redactions in some areas, the declassified version provides the firmest evidence to date about the warnings that aviation officials received concerning the threat of an attack on airliners and the failure to take steps to deter it.

http://americaforsale.org/mt/archives/000172.php

I mean, how many parts are still being held back? You don't even know. I picked up a copy and spent a long two weeks slogging through it, and while there is useful information on what went wrong, there is little truth as to who was responsible, who knew what beforehand, and what information was ignored. It cannot be trusted as a referrence which one bases argument off of, in my opinion; just another cover-over report that manages to not lay blame upon anyone, really....

Cycloptichorn

Iraq war is blamed for starvation

Rory Carroll in Baghdad
Thursday March 31, 2005
The Guardian

Acute malnutrition among Iraqi children aged under five nearly doubled last year because of chaos caused by the US-led occupation, a United Nations expert said yesterday.

Jean Ziegler, the UN Human Rights Commission's special expert on the right to food, said more than a quarter of Iraqi children do not have enough to eat and 7.7% are acutely malnourished - a jump from 4% recorded in the immediate aftermath of the US-led invasion.

Reporting to the commission's headquarters in Geneva, the Swiss professor claimed the situation was "a result of the war led by coalition forces".

If confirmed, the estimates would be an indictment of an occupation which was supposed to improve the lives of a population crushed by Saddam Hussein.

Billions of dollars-worth of aid flowed into Iraq from the fall of Saddam Hussein regime's in April 2003. But the regime's collapse and widespread violence destroyed jobs and made aid distribution difficult.

Prof Ziegler based some of his analysis on a US study in October 2004 which estimated that up to 100,000 extra Iraqis, mostly women and children, had died since the invasion than would have been expected to before the war.

"Most died as a result of the violence, but many others died as a result of the increasingly difficult living conditions, reflected in increasing child mortality levels," he said.

UPI is rightly anxious at the failure of Iraq's politicians to form a government. The mood in the street is turning ugly. Quotes:


' Iraqi voters aren't happy.They don't care that some of the biggest political changes ever to happen in their lifetime are going on in their country. All they know is that the electricity still is off for hours every day, the water doesn't always flow out of the faucets, there are still long gas queues at the stations, and the situation still seems pretty lawless in the streets. "We're very disappointed," said Hathem Hassan Thani, 31, a political science graduate student at Baghdad University."Some personalities are trying to make the political operation fail, and they don't want to give positions to the Sunni Muslims."



and here is the really alarming one:


The Iraqi people are very itchy.The street is very nervous," said Saad Jawar Qindeel, a spokesman for the Supreme Council of Islamic Revolution in Iraq, one of two dominant religious-based parties that won the United Iraqi Alliance ticket."There's a lot of talk of people ready to protest."



Despite all the talk of draw-downs and tipping points, the guerrillas are in fact inflicting substantial attrition on our Abrams tanks. The guerrillas in Afghanistan had their biggest successes against the Soviets when they learned out to take out the Soviet tanks, so this news is pretty scarey.

Likewise, that the Americans have had to double the number of arrestees in the Iraqi prisons in the past five months is another bad sign. (Prisoners are now 10,400). It looks as thought he guerrillas are growing in sophistication and are succeeding in recruiting increased numbers of Iraqis.
Tue, Mar 29, 2005 23:27
4. Car Bomb Targeting Shiites Kills 7, Wounds 9 T...
Car Bomb Targeting Shiites Kills 7, Wounds 9

The war in Iraq is the most important problem facing the US in the eyes of the American public, according to a recent poll. Iraq is more important than the economy, terrorism or social security. You'd think the US media and the Democratic Party could take a hint and foreground Iraq. But they are letting it fade . . .

At least 18 persons were wounded by a car bombing in the northern oil city of Kirkuk early on Tuesday.

Shiite pilgrims were targeted by a suicide bomber on Monday. Reuters reports: "Police in Iskandariya, south of Baghdad, said the car bomber struck on a road leading toward Kerbala, a sacred Shi'ite city where this week hundreds of thousands of pilgrims will mark Arbain, an annual mourning ceremony." The bomb killed 7 and wounded 9.

Another suicide bomber on a bicycle blew up a police car and killed two policemen, also on the road from Baghdad to Karbala.

In southwest Baghad, guerrillas killed a police colonel. In Najaf, US troops at a checkpoint accidentally shot down a high police officer.

Some 8 corpses of police officers were found dead in southern Tikrit, according to al-Jazeerah.

The violence on Monday had a dangerous undertone of sectarian strife.

Ghazi al-Yawir withdrew his name from consideration as speaker of the Iraqi parliament, setting off a scramble to find a Sunni Arab alternative.

Negotiations drag on about who gets what cabinet post, but no new government is in sight as the parliament plans a second largely ceremonial meeting on Tuesday.

The parliament's main task is to draft a new Iraqi constitution by an August 15 deadline, wich it very obviously will not meet.

Robert Worth reports that Shaikh Hareth al-Dhari of the Association of Muslim Scholars continues to reject Sunni Arab participation in the government as long as the US does not set a precise timetable for withdrawal from the country.

The Telegraph raises similar issues, but seems to me to answer them more pessimistically: "If Mr Pachachi is right, the development could signal a turning point in Iraq's insurgency, which is dominated by Sunni Arabs. But Sunni scholars were quick to deny a change of heart. "The elections have changed nothing," said Omar Ghalib, a member of the scholars. "It was an American rather than an Iraqi process." He reiterated a demand for a two-year timetable for the withdrawal of American troops as a condition for not calling for a fresh boycott ahead of the December polls. '
Mon, Mar 28, 2005 23:35
5. Fl

...When we invaded Iraq the terrorists had long since vacated those camps and infiltrated the rest of the country ...

Yes, this "silent daily massacre" is a form of murder. It must be stopped. The Baathist-AQs Alliance must be stopped, because it is they who are causing this "silent daily massacre" by sabotaging the efforts of the US and Iraq to make things better.

Would this be the result of 'compassionate Conservatism' or 'leave no child behind'?

No, this is obviously the result of the alliance between the subversive, deposed Baathist terrorists and the subversive al Qaeda terrorists. The chaos is not US caused. It is Baathist-al-Qaeda caused.

Right, right, everything is the fault of the bad evil mens and none of it ours.

What ever happened to the concept of personal responsibility? It has vanished.

Yeah, 25 percent of Iraqi children are starving, and the right would have us believe it's the Baathist's causing it. When we invaded Iraq for whatever reasons, it's now our responsibility for the whole shet'n kabootle whether we want it or not - in other words, it's our responsibility. Many on the right don't understand one thing about responsibility.