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

Opinion
The Americans discover they are not welcome in Iraq

The war on Iraq continues to dominate the news pages of the Israeli press, with the Tel Aviv daily Yediot Ahronot highlighting the destruction in western Iraq of missile launchers that could have been used against Israel, and Maariv observing that the Americans "are beginning to realize that it's not going to be easy."
Maariv writes that, "After the pictures of the captured US soldiers, another humiliation: 32 Apache helicopters went out to attack the outskirts of Baghdad and encountered a wall of fire."
It reports that two helicopters were shot down and all the others returned riddled with bullet holes. "Again," Maariv says, "the Iraqis rejoiced: the fellaheen with old rifles defeated the most sophisticated helicopter gunships in the world."
"Washington saw it more as a heart transplant than as a war, to get rid of the tyrant of Baghdad and replace him with a substitute," Arab affairs analyst Amit Cohen writes in a front-page comment in Maariv. "The body was supposed to remain intact ­ the towns and villages and even the army. ?'The Iraqis who we've come to liberate won't hate us,' they thought in Washington. It looked good on paper."
But, Cohen says, "The landing on Middle Eastern ground has woken the Americans with a rude, painful shock: The army, the intelligence who brewed the concept, the administration that laid down the strategy, and the nation which has discovered to its surprise that whatever the end, the beginning is far more difficult than they were misled into believing."
Pointing out that, "Baghdad is functioning normally, as we see on TV people are milling around in the streets, the buses are running," Cohen remarks that, "The ?'shock and awe' bombing has been conducted in a way that has left routine life, electricity supplies, basic services untouched. As of today, the only ?'shock and awe' we've seen has been on the faces of the American POWs."
"Astonishingly," Cohen continues, "even the Iraqi military units, especially the Republican Guard divisions, have been spared the attrition of aerial bombardment. The Americans have preferred to bypass them on their headlong rush to Baghdad.
"The Americans apparently assumed that the Iraqi units would avoid engagement, and that ­ however odd this may sound ­ the troops would feel a certain sympathy toward the ?'liberating' invaders, or at least wouldn't resent their presence deeply. ?'After all, we've treated them nicely,' they seem to say. Moreover, the Americans planned to use the Iraqi military infrastructure after President Saddam Hussein has gone, so they don't want to ?'waste' it."
"But the Americans have apparently been mistaken," Cohen states. "The Iraqi Army and substantial civilian elements are fighting stubbornly, even in unexpected remote locations with Shiite populations. The intelligence erred in its assurances that the Shiites would welcome the liberators. The sight of the rejoicing fellaheen proudly celebrating the capture of an Apache helicopter shows how wrong the Americans were in their illusions about the civilian population. Instead of helping the crew escape, they captured them and handed them over to Saddam's security services."
"The Iraqis, apparently, are not in any hurry to free themselves of the tyrant's yoke," Cohen concludes.
In a separate analysis on an inside page, headlined, "He doesn't need us," Cohen discusses Saddam's intentions vis-a-vis Israel. "It was to be expected that he would try to stir up support among the Arabs by dragging us into the conflict. Israel has and will always arouse emotions on the Muslim street. Its presence in the war would sharpen the differences between good and bad in their eyes, and at last awaken Arab masses."
However, Cohen comments, "The way things are unfolding reduces Saddam's motivation to provoke us into getting involved. He entered the war believing that he could survive it. He is not naive. He knows the Iraqi Army is inferior to the forces he is facing and the resistance they are showing now can't last forever.
"What Saddam is hoping for is to evoke sympathy across the globe, to persuade world public opinion to stop President George W. Bush. After only five days, when newspapers in Philadelphia and New York are comparing Iraq to Vietnam, he knows he's on the right track. As long as this lasts, he'll do his best to prove that he's a good boy, that he plays fair. He'll want to be seen as leader of a people fighting to defend its home against an invader. Using long-range missiles or chemical weapons would be the biggest mistake he could make. Attacking Israel would be a last resort, and it won't happen as long as he thinks he's got the upper hand."
"However," Cohen warns, "the picture could change when he feels his back is to the wall."
In a front-page analysis, Yediot Ahronot military analyst Alex Fishman writes that it is too early for Israelis to put away their gas masks, following the discovery of surface-to-surface missile launchers in western Iraq.
He quotes a report by coalition special forces to the effect that they destroyed launchers in two sites close to the border with Syria. "For the time being," Fishman says, "it is not clear what exactly they destroyed. Was it launchers, as they claimed, or other components connected to the firing of missiles? The picture is hazy, but it shows that western Iraq is still not ?'clean.' Therefore, it makes sense to wait a bit before packing up the gas masks."
But despite the location of the launchers or missile launching components, Fishman reckons that "from an analysis of Saddam's speech on Monday, it seems we don't interest him just yet. He is totally focused on rallying the Iraqi spirit for a war of sacrifice against the invaders. Clearly, he believes he has a chance of somehow surviving this business. But, in the meantime, even though launching devices were found, he is not yet messing with us."
On Maariv's opinion page, an Arab-Israeli, Khamees Abul-Afia, calls on the Palestinians "not to repeat the error they made during the 1991 Gulf War when they mounted the roofs of their homes on both sides of the Green Line to cheer the Scuds passing overhead and chanted ?'Ya Saddam, ya habib, udrub, udrub Tel Aviv.' Most of all such behavior alienated many sympathetic left-wing Israelis, like Meretz leader Yossi Sarid."
"So far," Abul-Afia writes, "no Iraqi missiles have been launched at Israel, but the demonstrations against America and in support of Saddam have already begun and it would be easy to get carried away and express delight at a missile bombardment of Israel. The political frustration of the Palestinians and the conditions of their lives are unbearable, but this does not justify celebrating an attack on Israel. Such celebrations damaged the Palestinian cause in the past, and would be even more damaging in future."
"As for the Israelis," Abul-Afia continues, "they should not expect the Palestinians to shed tears or go into mourning if an attack does occur. The accumulations of resentment are too great. Nevertheless, although the Palestinians are entitled, like other peoples, to demonstrate against the invasion of Iraq, they must not let their emotions get the better of them. The Palestinians have scored too many own goals in the past and cannot afford to do so again."
In a piece on Maariv's opinion pages, veteran right-wing journalist Jay Bushinsky argues that neo-Nazis have been helping to finance Saddam Hussein and radical Islamic terror against the West.
"The struggle against liberal Western culture takes under its ideological wing Adolf Hitler and the Nazis as well as Osama bin Laden, Saddam Hussein and their followers," Bushinsky asserts. "The problem is that Al-Qaeda and Iraq have been strengthened by vast sums of money transferred at lightning speed, without any international intervention. These transfers enable the recipients to acquire huge amounts of lethal weaponry that could be used for mass killing."
Bushinsky points out that, "In a new book, Swiss journalist Johannes von Dohnanyi and his wife Germana reveal that in many cases illegal diamond trading goes on the rise just on the eve of mega-terror attacks," which, they say, "goes to show that this is one of the major sources of finance for the Islamic fundamentalist and radical right partnership."
Bushinsky adds that, "The Dohnanyi couple discovered that an investigation by the Swiss authorities into the links between Islamic financial institutions and international terror is getting nowhere. They attribute the standstill partly to Saudi Interior Minister Prince Nayef who, they claim, passed on a dire warning from Riyadh that thorough investigation of the books and operations of Arab financial institutions and Islamic organizations could be harmful to Swiss interests."
"According to the authors," Bushinsky continues, "the time has come for the Western media to disclose the frightening coexistence of extreme Islam and resurgent anti-Semitism, with one feeding off the other, financially and ideologically."
Ignoring it "is leading to a general weakening of the struggle against the radical right and Islamic fundamentalism, and allowing them to spread misguided and damaging notions about the divided Middle East in general and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in particular.

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.