The US, UN & Iraq II

Has Fox yet identified Chirac as 999?

That would be 666, I do believe.

Dag - Can you name for me a specific item Fox covered or discussed where they did not consult people on both sides?

AUSTRALIAN PHILOSOPHYQuality of Life

An American businessman was at the pier in Esperance when a small 12 foot dingy with just one fisherman docked. Inside the small boat were several large tuna. The Yank complemented the Aussie on the quality of his catch and asked how long it took to catch them.
The Aussie replied , "Not long mate, Mate – only sunk a six pack of stubbies".
The American then asked "Why didn’t you stay out longer and catch more fish?"
The Aussie said he had enough to support his family’s daily needs.
The American then asked, "But what do you do with the rest of your time?"
The Australian fisherman said, "I sleep late, fish a little, play with my children, have few billies and an afternoon snooze with my wife, stroll down to the Pub each evening where I sink a few beers and have a chinwag with my mates. I have a full and busy life mate, don’t you worry about that."
The American scoffed, "I am a Harvard MBA and could help you. You should spend more time fishing and with the proceeds, buy a bigger boat, with the proceeds from the bigger boat you could buy several boats, eventually you would have a fleet of fishing boats. Instead of selling your catch to a middleman you would sell directly to the processor, eventually opening your own cannery. You would control the product , processing and distribution. You need to leave this small town and move to FreeMANTLE, then Sydney, and eventually NYC where you will run your expanding enterprise."
The Aussie fisherman asked, "Jeez how long is all this gonna take?"
The American replied, "15 to 20 years."
"And what then?"
The American laughed and said, "That’s the best part. When the time is right you would announce an IPO and sell your company stock to the public to become filthy rich, you would make millions.""
"Millions eh? Then what?"
The American said, "Then you would retire. Move to a small coastal town where you sleep late, fish a little, play with your kids, take siesta with your wife, stroll to the village in the evenings where you could sip wine and play your guitar with your amigos."

Send this to whoever you like, if you don't wanna don't, nothing magical happens to you unless you are a magician anyway.

Can you give the source for this? I neither could find such on the Fox website nor the UN one.

heard some reports on Al-Jazeera. This is what i make of it. The uprise wasn't so much against Saddam but more a desperate way to break out of their situation. You must remember most of the people in Basra dont have water. Its hot as hell and there are sandstorms. One day without water and i bet you'd do anything for that refreshing drop of water. The uprise was no mass event. Some people desperate for water stormed the area's in the city where there still was water.

Why dont the UK troops call it a cease fire in the city and send some truckloads in? If this situation contunue i fear the people of Basra wont welcome the UK troops as their liberators. How hard is it to drop some aid in that city?

The civilian casualty rate is rising in Bagdhad. Parents who have lost children, children who have lost parents and siblings, are not going to welcome the invading force as liberators. The bombing will eventually stop, but this war will continue for generations.

Latest news is that in an air raid a crowded market place was hit. Killing many and wounding even more.

"Iraqis think Saddam is America's man," says a computer programmer from Basra named Saad, who now lives in Florida and asked that his last name not be revealed in order to protect family back home. "These people are not going to forget what has happened to them. In their eyes, it is genocide. And people do not forget genocide."


http://www.motherjones.com/magazine/ND01/iraq.html

This war got off to a bad start even before it began. It was clearly predicated on the assumption that the regime would be destroyed by a limited number of precision strikes, followed by a popular uprising.. This has not happened.

For all the coalition's "shock and awe", "full spectrum dominance" and "integrated synergies", the Iraqis have some well armed and determined divisions, irregular fighters (otherwise known as civilians with AK47s and their own sporadic version of "shock and awe" which we know as wind and sand. I don't know if Rumsfeld Cheney Wolfovitz et al. (who must have a combined IQ of over 300) recognised that sand might be a problem in the desert, but it doesn't seem to have stopped them rushing ahead in a precipitous fashion over extending supply lines and exposing them to attack.

Before the war started, the strenuous efforts at the UN to gain it's legal imprimatur failed. The decapitation plan failed. The attempt to get leading figures of the regime to defect failed. (That Bush was lied to by senior members of the regime, and regards that behaviour as a war crime is irrelevant). The most sophisticated mail shot in history ("millions of leaflets") has failed to win the battle for hearts and minds. No matter how unfair we believe it to be, the fact is the Iraqis object to their homeland being invaded. They don't like us. They mistrust us. And they fail to appreciate our humanity in only killing a few of them when we could kill lots.

Last night we tried to counter their propaganda by destroying their TV studios in Baghdad. But the evil Saddam has another studio and transmitter. (And broadcast a 'Carry On' film, who says the Ba'athist regime has no sense of humour or irony?).

I say this in all seriousness. If Saddam holds out for another 2 weeks, the coalition forces will be staring defeat in the face. At best they might go on to achieve a Pyrrhic victory, at worse a UN negotiated cease-fire and ignominious withdrawal.

This whole high risk strategy is on the point of smacking Bush in the face. That, I'm sure, is why Blair finds it necessary to rush over to Washington this afternoon.

Steve, did u saw Rummy at that press conference yesterday? I think he made the same analysis as you just did.

Another battle lost in the war for winning "the hearts" of the Iraqi people

'Many casualties' in Baghdad market

Are there still reports of Jordanian Iraqi exiles returning to Iraq to fight the "coalition"?

Frolic

No I didn't see Rummy at that press conference. I make a point of not listening to Rumsfeld if possible. I find it hard to believe that he came to the same conclusions as me, but more to the point, I wouldn't trust him even if he did!

Thats an interesting way to phrase a refusal to pay for the bills of post-war reconstruction, if you didnt the want the war in the first place.

I haven't read about this yet, but i can well understand the sentiment: first the US goes off on a war against the explicit wishes of the UN security council, and then they want the UN to foot the bill for cleaning up afterwards? My instinct would be to go for the diplomatic equivalent of giving the finger as well.

Still, I do hope that in the end, once they made their point, they won't act on instinct and get involved in the reconstruction after all - if not for humanitarian reasons alone at least because you might not want to trust the US to do it on its own.

Steve wrote

< find it hard to believe that he came to the same conclusions as me, but more to the point, I wouldn't trust him even if he did! >

In the search for the "truth" that all participants on this forum conduct it is amazing that most people here can't distinguish the truth from fantasy. Just confirmation that most of us only want to hear "facts" that support our position. In other words can you "handle the truth"?

Ah, FOX ....

on a day that international media (deducing from a selection of Mexican, Dutch and German frontpage headlines) collectively report on the war "slowing down" or "stumbling" on "tougher resistance" as ""Allied troops go around embattled cities" and "sensitive losses US" make the commanders "count with longer war", FOX reports:

"BEARING DOWN ON BAGHDAD" (with a frontpage picture of a U.S. pilot flashing a victory sign).

the only fair and balanced news source, indeed.

(See
this thread)

This, of course, is not new money. It's from the "Oil for Food" fund arising from the sale of Iraqi oil and held for disbursement by the UN. In other words, Iraqi money, derived from Iraqi oil, suddenly sequestered by the the UN, and so far as I know, neither more nor less than would have been used in any case.

Nimb

On the contrary ---- we want the UN to demonstrate some relevancy. The only UN efforts that have ever been productive is in peace keeping and humanitarian aid. If the Russians, Germany and France are successful in blocking this effort---the UN is finished and we should withdraw our financial aid completely.