How Do We Win in Iraq?

Well, I haven't seen Steve forward any conspiracy theories concerning the attacks on 9/11, but perhaps I missed them.

So, I need a show of hands. All those who think the United States government deliberately flew American Airlines and United Airlines passenger planes into the World Trade Center towers and the Pentagon, signify by typing "aye".

At least I'll know how many A2K loonies I'm dealing with LOL.

English.

Campbell's full presentation is here.

http://www.dti.gov.uk/energy/developep/the_assoc_for_the_study_peak_oil.pdf


regarding 9/11. I dont think there is any mileage in trying to apportion blame to an inside job. The facts speak for themselves. There were warnings and they were not taken seriously. Whether through incompetence or design is beyond my pay grade. But one thing is for sure, the tragedy of 9/11 has been exploited to justify American military intervention around the world. That it co incides with American geopolitical interests regarding oil....well lets say for the sake of decency that it is coincidental.

Interesting, Steve. Just so I'm sure I understand you, you think the government of the United States of America knew beforehand that several passenger jets would be hijacked and flown into the World Trade Center towers (killing thousands), the Pentagon, and possibly the White House and KNOWING this, they did nothing to prevent it because they wanted control of the oil in the Middle East.

This is what you're thinking?

JustWonders
There are people who still believe the earth is flat so why is it surprising that there are those that believe in the conspiracy theory, the US staged 9/11. There are others that believe that Israelis were in the planes that struck the towers and pentagon.
After all who could believe that the peace loving Moslems would commit such a dastardly act?

No I'm not saying that. I'm saying I dont know. But I do know there were warnings that were ignored, intelligence failures if you like (ref your own 911 commisssion report), and I do know the tragedy has been exploited in furtherance of American foreign policy. The actual details of who did what where and when I dont know, neither do you, and we probably never will know. In a way it doesnt matter. 3000 people were killed thats what matters.

I don't know why I'm always so surprised when I hear this nonsense. I just always am. Surprised.

Hard to believe people have nothing better to do than making this stuff up. Maybe they need interesting hobbies. Or therapy LOL.

I think the first step is to change the definition of "win"

Then bring the troops home

In this case, "win" is not an option; we've already lost too much for too little.

All that's left is "degree of loss."

Absolutely agree, c.i.

Too much like Vietnam.

I never said it was an inside job. Those are your words. I DID say it was allowed to happen. Maybe that is the same thing. Check out www.lewrockwell.com as I have suggested before. The articles are written by Charley Reese who is about 70 yrs old, and has been a journalist for 49 years. He's an interesting guy and very perceptive. At least have a balanced view before you put your blinders on

so what do you think English? Bin Laden surprise? Or US govt tactic?

As to 'How do we win the war in Iraq?" You don't.
It's another fiasco like Vietnam.
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Published on Tuesday, November 1, 2005 by Reuters
Experts Say US is Losing War on Terror
by David Morgan

WASHINGTON - U.S. terrorism experts Daniel Benjamin and Steven Simon have reached a stark conclusion about the war on terrorism: the United States is losing.

(Bush) has given them an excellent American target in Iraq but in the process has energized the jihad and given militants the kind of urban warfare experience that will raise the future threat to the United States exponentially.

Steven Simon, a Rand Corp. analyst who teaches at Georgetown University
Despite an early victory over the Taliban and al Qaeda in Afghanistan, the two former Clinton administration officials say President George W. Bush's policies have created a new haven for terrorism in Iraq that escalates the potential for Islamic violence against Europe and the United States.

America's badly damaged image in the Muslim world could take more than a generation to set right. And Bush's mounting political woes at home have undermined the chance for any bold U.S. initiatives to address the grim social realities that feed Islamic radicalism, they say.

"It's been fairly disastrous," said Benjamin, who worked as a director for counterterrorism at the National Security Council from 1994 to 1999.

"We have had some very important successes getting individual terrorists. But I think the broader story is really quite awful. We have done a lot to fuel the fires, and we have done a lot to encourage people to hate us," he added in an interview.

Benjamin and Simon, a former State Department official who was also at the NSC, are co-authors of a new book titled: "The Next Attack: The Failure of the War on Terror and a Strategy for Getting it Right" (Times Books).

Following on from their 2002 book, "The Age of Sacred Terror" (Random House), Benjamin and Simon list what they call U.S. missteps since the September 11, 2001, attacks on America.

The Bush administration presents the war on terrorism as a difficult but largely successful struggle that has seen the gutting of al Qaeda's pre-September 11 leadership and prevented new attacks in the United States over the past four years.

Bush said last month the United States and its allies had disrupted plans for 10 al Qaeda attacks since September 11, including one against West Coast targets with hijacked planes.

The White House describes Iraq as a central front in the war on terrorism and says the building of democracy there will confound militant aims and help to propel the entire Middle East region toward democracy.

Benjamin and Simon's criticism of the Bush administration in Iraq follows a path similar to those of other critics, including former U.S. national security adviser Brent Scowcroft and former White House counterterrorism chief Richard Clarke.

"We may be attacked by terrorists who receive their training in Iraq, or attacked by terrorists who were inspired, organized and trained by people who were in Iraq," said Simon, a Rand Corp. analyst who teaches at Georgetown University.

"(Bush) has given them an excellent American target in Iraq but in the process has energized the jihad and given militants the kind of urban warfare experience that will raise the future threat to the United States exponentially."

For Benjamin and Simon, the war on terrorism has cost taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars and failed to counter a deadly global movement responsible for attacks in London, Madrid, Bali, Indonesia, and Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt.

And not even al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, they say, could have dreamed the United States would stumble so badly in the court of Muslim public opinion.

"Everyone says there's a war of ideas out there, and I agree. The sad fact is that we're on the wrong side," said Benjamin, now a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

U.S. fortunes could improve, the authors say, if Washington took a number of politically challenging steps, like bolstering public diplomacy with trade pacts aimed at expanding middle-class influence in countries such as Pakistan.

Washington also needs to do more to ease regional tensions that feed Muslim grievances across the globe, from Thailand and the Philippines to Chechnya and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In a Muslim world of 1.2 billion people, as many as three-in-four hold negative views of the United States.

Because anti-U.S. rhetoric often appeals strongly to impressionable youth, Benjamin and Simon believe many of today's young Muslims will harbor grievances against the United States for the rest of their lives.

The authors believe there is little prospect for fundamental improvement in U.S. policy under Bush "There are resource constraints, there are constraints in the realm of trade, there are political constraints," said Simon.

"These are not the kinds of circumstances that favor bold new policies that require spending political capital that it turns out the White House just doesn't have," he added.

Copyright 2005 Reuters

Steve,
Probably a bit of both. bin Laden's family was flown out of the US right after the attack on 9/11. Why? Because of the Carlyle Group connection?

Odd... There hasn't been a single terrorist attack on US soil since the war began...Democratic elections have taken place in, what, 6 Middle Eastern countries that have never had them before? Iraq has a new government and has voted to approve a new constitution.

Caving into terrorist demands will not lead to peace. It will lead to more demands. I don't know about you, but I am quite happy not being Muslim. Not to say there is anything wrong with being Muslim, I just don't think it's the path I choose to follow.

Milwaukee Paper Apologizes for Accepting 'Cooked' WMD Evidence



editorandpublisher

hummmmm, 'Cooked' WMD Evidence'

Guess we'll just have to wait and see how well this new constitution fares.....I think it's going to open a big can of worms.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Iraq Winners Allied With Iran Are the Opposite of
U.S. Vision

By Robin Wright
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, February 14, 2005; Page A08
When the Bush administration decided to invade Iraq two years ago, it envisioned a quick handover to handpicked allies in a secular government that would be the antithesis of Iran's theocracy -- potentially even a foil to Tehran's regional ambitions.

But, in one of the greatest ironies of the U.S. intervention, Iraqis instead went to the polls and elected a government with a strong religious base -- and very close ties to the Islamic republic next door. It is the last thing the administration expected from its costly Iraq policy -- $300 billion and counting, U.S. and regional analysts say.

Yesterday, the White House heralded the election and credited the U.S. role. In a statement, President Bush praised Iraqis "for defying terrorist threats and setting their country on the path of democracy and freedom. And I congratulate every candidate who stood for election and those who will take office once the results are certified."

Yet the top two winning parties -- which together won more than 70 percent of the vote and are expected to name Iraq's new prime minister and president -- are Iran's closest allies in Iraq.

Thousands of members of the United Iraqi Alliance, a Shiite-dominated slate that won almost half of the 8.5 million votes and will name the prime minister, spent decades in exile in Iran. Most of the militia members in its largest faction were trained in Shiite-dominated Iran.

And the winning Kurdish alliance, whose co-leader Jalal Talabani is the top nominee for president, has roots in a province abutting Iran, which long served as its economic and political lifeline.

"This is a government that will have very good relations with Iran. The Kurdish victory reinforces this conclusion. Talabani is very close to Tehran," said Juan Cole, a University of Michigan expert on Iraq. "In terms of regional geopolitics, this is not the outcome that the United States was hoping for."

Added Rami Khouri, Arab analyst and editor of Beirut's Daily Star: "The idea that the United States would get a quick, stable, prosperous, pro-American and pro-Israel Iraq has not happened. Most of the neoconservative assumptions about what would happen have proven false."

The results have long-term implications. For decades, both Republican and Democratic administrations played Baghdad and Tehran off each other to ensure neither became a regional giant threatening or dominant over U.S. allies, notably Saudi Arabia and the oil-rich Gulf sheikdoms.

But now, Cole said, Iraq and Iran are likely to take similar positions on many issues, from oil prices to U.S. policy on Iran. "If the United States had decided three years ago to bomb Iran, it would have produced joy in Baghdad," he added. "Now it might produce strong protests from Baghdad."

Conversely, the Iraqi secular democrats backed most strongly by the Bush administration lost big. During his State of the Union address last year, Bush invited Adnan Pachachi, a longtime Sunni politician and then-president of the Iraqi Governing Council, to sit with first lady Laura Bush. Pachachi's party fared so poorly in the election that it won no seats in the national assembly.

And current Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, backed by the CIA during his years in exile and handpicked by U.S. and U.N. officials to lead the interim government, came in third. He addressed a joint session of Congress in September, a rare honor reserved for heads of state of the closest U.S. allies. But now, U.S. hopes that Allawi will tally enough votes to vie as a compromise candidate and continue his leadership are unrealistic, analysts say.

"The big losers in this election are the liberals," said Stanford University's Larry Diamond, who was an adviser to the U.S. occupation government. "The fact that three-quarters of the national assembly seats have gone to just two [out of 111] slates is a worrisome trend. Unless the ruling coalition reaches out to broaden itself to include all groups, the insurgency will continue -- and may gain ground."

Adel Abdul Mahdi, who is a leading contender to be prime minister, reiterated yesterday that the new government does not want to emulate Iran. "We don't want either a Shiite government or an Islamic government," he said on CNN's "Late Edition." "Now we are working for a democratic government. This is our choice."

And a senior State Department official said yesterday that the 48 percent vote won by the Shiite slate deprives it of an outright majority. "If it had been higher, the slate would be seen with a lot more trepidation," he said on the condition of anonymity because of department rules.

U.S. and regional analysts agree that Iraq is not likely to become an Iranian surrogate. Iraq's Arabs and Iran's Persians have a long and rocky history. During the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war, Iraq's Shiite troops did not defect to Iran.

"There's the assumption that the new government will be close to Iran or influenced by Iran. That's a strong and reasonable assumption," Khouri said. "But I don't think anyone knows -- including Grand Ayatollah [Ali] Sistani -- where the fault line is between Shiite religious identity and Iraqi national identity."

Iranian-born Sistani is now Iraq's top cleric -- and the leader who pressed for elections when Washington favored a caucus system to pick a government. His aides have also rejected Iran's theocracy as a model, although the Shiite slate is expected to press for Islamic law to be incorporated in the new constitution.

For now, the United States appears prepared to accept the results -- in large part because it has no choice.

But the results were announced at a time when the United States faces mounting tensions with Iran over its alleged nuclear weapons ambitions, support for extremism and human rights violations. On her first trip abroad this month, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Iran's behavior was "something to be loathed" and charged that the "unelected mullahs" are not good for Iran or the region.

One of the biggest questions, analysts say, is whether Iraq's democratic election will make it easier -- or harder -- to pressure Iran.

Iran might be surrounded by US forces but they are in the driving seat. They can turn the trouble for USUK forces in Iraq up or down at will. No wonder they are pressing ahead with their nuclear programme. Rocketing oil revenues and USUK weakness have never made a better time for Iran's clerical regime....and all thanks to GW Bush. On another thread someone asks if Bush is really a Christian. I think he's really a sh1'1te.

That's what they said about Afghanistan.

According to Bob Woodward, in his book-"Bush at War" P. 313--Rumsfeld comments to reporters at his November 27th -2001 briefing.

quote:
"Rumsfeld took the position that this outcome( victory in Afghanistan) had been certain all along. "I think that what was taking place in the earlier phases was exactly as planned" The suggestions that things had not gone well initially were uninformed."It looked like nothing was happening. Indeed, it looked like we were in a"--AND HE ASKED THE PRESS TO JOIN IN--"ALL TOGETHER NOW, QUAGMIRE"

Reporters chuckled softly."

End of quote

Posted from another thread-sorry if it does not correspond to above message. Thought someone might appreciate reading this.....

And I'm just CERTAIN that this type of behaviour will end terrorism, don't you think? One should always fight violence with violence. It just makes sense. Geez, if something like this doesn't make Americans hang their collective heads in shame then something is very wrong in the land of so called freedom.
Ignoring Geneva Conventions is a very serious offense. Not allowing the Red Cross inside these prisons is curious and suspicious. Freedom in America? Not any more. How are you, America, different from the Germany who had prison camps? Gulags? When one of you ends up in one of these prisons for peacefully protesting the war, maybe then you'll wake up, rather than being lulled by the corporation controlled media and the maniac Bush who think this is necessary. What a load of crappola.

Some Kind of Manly
Bush administration, dead to morality, says torture is the American way

by Molly Ivins

Austin, Texas -- I can't get over this feeling of unreality, that I am actually sitting here writing about our country having a gulag of secret prisons in which it tortures people. I have loved America all my life, even though I have often disagreed with the government. But this seems to me so preposterous, so monstrous. My mind is a little bent and my heart is a little broken this morning.

Maybe I should try to get a grip -- after all, it's just this one administration that I had more cause than most to realize was full of inadequate people going in. And even at that, it seems to be mostly Vice President Cheney. And after all, we were badly frightened by 9-11, which was a horrible event. "Only" nine senators voted against the prohibition of "cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment of persons under custody or control the United States." Nine out of 100. Should we be proud? Should we cry?

"We do not torture," said our pitifully inarticulate president, straining through emphasis and repetition to erase the obvious.

A string of prisons in Eastern Europe in which suspects are held and tortured indefinitely, without trial, without lawyers, without the right to confront their accusers, without knowing the evidence or the charges against them, if any. Forever. It's "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich." Another secret prison in the midst of a military camp on an island run by an infamous dictator. Prisoner without a name, cell without a number.

Who are we? What have we become? The shining city on a hill, the beacon and bastion of refuge and freedom, a country born amidst the most magnificent ideals of freedom and justice, the greatest political heritage ever given to any people anywhere.

I am baffled by these "arguments": But we're talking about really awful people, cries the harassed press secretary. People like X and Y and Z (after a time, one forgets all the names of the No. 2's after bin Laden we have captured). The SS and the Gestapo and the KVD weren't all that nice, either.

Then I hear the familiar tinniness of the fake machismo I know so well from George W. Bush and all the other frat boys who never went to Vietnam and never got over the guilt.

"Sometimes you gotta play rough," said Dick Cheney. No ****, Dick? Now why don't you tell that to John McCain?

I have known George W. Bush since we were both in high school -- we have dozens of mutual friends. I have written two books about him and so have interviewed many dozens more who know him well in one way or another. Spare me the tough talk. He didn't play football -- he was a cheerleader. "He is really competitive," said one friend. "You wouldn't believe how tough he is on a tennis court!" Just cut the macho crap -- I don't want to hear it.

If you are dead to all sense of morality (please let me not go off on the stinking sanctimony of this crowd), let us still reason together on the famous American common ground of practicality. Torture. Does. Not. Work.

Torture does not work. Ask the United States military. Ask the Israelis.

There seems to be some fantastic scenario floating around -- if Osama bin Laden had an atomic bomb hidden in a locker at Grand Central Station, and it was due to go off in 12 hours, and we had him in prison ... I seem to have missed some important television program on this theme. I am told it was fiction, but it must have been really scary -- it certainly seems to have unbalanced the minds of some of our fellow citizens.

Torture does not work. It is not productive. It does not yield important, timely information. That is in the movies. This is reality.

I grew up with all this pathetic Texas tough: Everybody here knows you can't make an omelet without breaking eggs; and this ain't beanbag; and I'll knock your jaw so far back, you'll scratch your throat with your front teeth; and I'm gonna cloud up and rain all over you; and I'm gonna open me a can of whup-ass ...

And that'll show 'em, won't it? Take some miserable human being alone and helpless in a cell, completely under your control, and torture him. Boy, that is some kind of manly, ain't it?

"The CIA is holding an unknown number of prisoners in secret detention centers abroad. In violation of the Geneva Conventions, it has refused to register those detainees with the International Red Cross or to allow visits by its inspectors. Its prisoners have 'disappeared,' like the victims of some dictatorships." -- The Washington Post.

Why did we bother to beat the Soviet Union if we were just going to become it? Shame. Shame. Shame. Read more in the Molly Ivins archive.

Couldn't have said it better myself.