Are We Safer Today?

Chuckster if you are not an Abuzz troll you're the closest thing going.

My name is not Frankie, and it is the trait of an ignorant and uncouth lout to address a stranger with snide familiarity in a public place.

McGentrix


This isn't Iowa and Kansas and Nebraska. The Iranians would love LOVE to have a Sh'ia state/county/caliphate whatever right next door, the Saudis however would be less enthused as would all of the Emirates. (They were just fine with Saddam's suppression of the Shi'a because it continues in their own countries to today.)

Meanwhile, the Sunni are USED to power and at not likely to seek equality with their lesser (heretical) cousins.

And the Kurds? NOBODY wants them. Turkey doesn't want them because they want about a third of Turkey as their own, Iran doesn't want them either because, because, well, might as well say it, they are not Islamic and Iran is not going to back the creation of any non-Islamic nation-state butted up against them. Really, can you blame them?

What you have is sectarian violence and hatred that makes the troubles in Northern Ireland look like a water balloon fight. These people hate each other and have for centuries. Their temporary united front against the occupation by the US is exactly that --- temporary. If you thought Lebannon's conflict amongst the Christian Phalanges and the Muslim Brotherhoods and the Palestinian insurgents was a mess, take a look through my telescope to the future.

Yes, that is Iraq in flames, no, it is not Kansas.


And none of this, remember, has anything to do with fighting the war against the the Terrorists.


Joe

Joe
I agree with all that you have said except the religion of the Kurds . Sa you can see they are Moslim

Kurds are overwhelmingly Muslim and are typically members of the Sunni sect, along with most Turks and a minority of Iraqi Arabs. (The other major sect of Islam is the Shi'a; the Iranians are mostly Shi'a, as are the majority of Iraqi Arabs.)

Kurds have always been among the more liberal Muslims. Kurdish women, for example, have never covered their faces and have never worn the abbaye or chador, the all-covering garments worn by some Arab and Iranian women. They have worked outside the home: Traditionally, they worked the fields; in modern times, they have attended school and university and held jobs outside the home.

Iraq was thought up by Winston Churchill and Gertrude Bell for reason that made sense only to the British in the early 20th century. I think it might be time to divide the country into three semiautonomous entities united in some form of federation. Something like the United Arab Emirates.

So much for the 9/11 Commission Report, the money spent on it and the safety of citizens. The GOP appears to still think they know better, although the failure happened on their watch and with the same basic set-up as we have had all along.


House GOP to Reject 9/11 Recommendation

Fri Sep 17, 2:04 PM ET Add Top Stories - AP to My Yahoo!

By JESSE J. HOLLAND, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON - House Republicans plan to follow President Bush's lead and reject the Sept. 11 commission's recommendation to strip the Pentagon of control over its spy shops in favor of a new national intelligence director with hiring, firing and spending control.

The White House gave Congress legislative language Thursday that detailed its ideas about a national intelligence director. The House's majority Republicans will use the administration version as their starting point, said Stuart Roy, spokesman for House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas.

"The administration's viewpoint will be the driving force ... in the House bill," Roy said Friday. "It may not be 100 percent the way they sent it, but it will certainly move in that direction."

Senate leaders want a stronger intelligence director.

"The administration's bill is not as comprehensive as the proposal we have already announced, but it nevertheless helps to maintain momentum toward getting comprehensive intelligence reform accomplished this year," Sens. Susan Collins, R-Maine, and Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn., the Senate Governmental Affairs chairwoman and ranking Democrat, said in a statement.


The Sept. 11 commission recommended creation of a national intelligence director to control almost all the nation's 15 intelligence agencies, saying the agencies did not work together properly to stop the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on New York City and Washington. They also endorsed giving that position full budgetary control and hiring and firing powers to make sure the spy agencies listen to the director's orders.


Officials in the White House, the House and Senate have said the military should maintain control of intelligence agencies that provide the Pentagon exclusively with information. That would leave the intelligence director control over only nonmilitary intelligence.


The proposed White House bill says the national intelligence director would "serve as the head of the United States Intelligence Community and act as the principal adviser to the president."


The intelligence director would control agencies under the National Foreign Intelligence Program but would only "participate" in setting military agency budgets.

The director also would lack complete control over the nonmilitary agencies, holding only "guidance for developing the NFIP budgets," the White House bill proposes.


The legislation also says the director would have to get White House approval to transfer money. The intelligence director would "have the authority to transfer or reprogram NFIP funds among appropriations available for the NFIP, as necessary, with the approval of the director of the Office of Management and Budget," the bill said,


The new director will be able to control hiring only in the lower levels of the intelligence community, but the White House legislation would keep control of presidential appointments. "Any recommendation to the president to nominate or appoint an individual to that position shall be accompanied by the recommendation of the national intelligence director," the legislation says.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=514&e=6&u=/ap/20040917/ap_on_go_co/congress_intelligence

Thanks Au, I don't know what I was thinking about when I said the Kurds weren't Islamic - I can't even think of a decent excuse now.


Now everybody go read Squinney's post above.

Joe