THE US, THE UN AND IRAQ, TENTH THREAD.

Can you name a time, place and which last US President has went into a sovereign nation under the cover of darkness without letting the leaders of the nation know he was coming?

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Can you name a time, place and which last US President has went into a sovereign nation under the cover of darkness without letting the leaders of the nation know he was coming?

Hey MM, do you think he did that every time he went to Russia?

"He, he, I going to sneak in there without telling Putin, he, he."

xingu wrote:

Quote:

Can you name a time, place and which last US President has went into a sovereign nation under the cover of darkness without letting the leaders of the nation know he was coming?

Hey MM, do you think he did that every time he went to Russia?

"He, he, I going to sneak in there without telling Putin, he, he."

What a silly thing to discuss. It's like listening in on a discussion amongst 7 year olds.

'Beginning of end' for al-Qaida in Iraq

Iraq's national security adviser today said an intelligence haul from Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's final hideout would mark "the beginning of the end" for al-Qaida in the country.
Mouwafak al-Rubaie said documents and computer drives - including a thumb-sized device found on the terror leader's body - would give Iraqi security forces enough information to dismantle the organisation.

The claim came as the Pentagon announced that US combat deaths in Iraq since the invasion of the country in 2003 had reached 2,500.

Speaking at a news conference today, Mr Rubaie said large numbers of US-led troops would leave by the end of this year, with the "majority" going by the end of 2007. "Maybe the last soldier will leave Iraq by mid 2008," he added.

He said the intelligence haul had followed the US air strike on a house north of Baghdad in which Zarqawi was killed, and in further raids on insurgent locations.

"We believe this is the beginning of the end of al-Qaida in Iraq," Mr Rubaie said. He said the documents showed the organisation was in "pretty bad shape" politically and in terms of training, weapons and media.

"Now we have the upper hand," he added. "We feel that we know their locations, the names of their leaders, their whereabouts, their movements, through the documents we found during the last few days."

Mr Rubaie said a thumbdrive - a pocket-sized device for storing computer files - was found along with a laptop and other documents in the debris of the house destroyed in the air strike.

When asked how he could be sure the information was authentic, he said: "There is nothing more authentic than finding a thumbdrive in his [Zarqawi's] pocket.

He said documents found after the air strike revealed al-Qaida wanted to trigger a war between the US and Iran. A document released to the press purported to show plans to stir up tensions between the countries in the hope of triggering armed conflict.

The document - whose authenticity could not be independently verified - said: "In general, and despite the current bleak situation, we think that the best suggestions in order to get out of this crisis is to entangle the American forces into another war against another country or with another of our enemy force, that is to try and inflame the situation between American and Iraq or between America and the Shia in general."

Analysts said the language differed from the vocabulary normally used in al-Qaida statements posted on the internet. It does not, for example, refer to the US as "crusaders" or use the term "rejectionists" when referring to Shias.

The document has also aroused scepticism because it appeared precisely tailored to suggest situations the US military and Iraqi government say they are hoping for.

"The situation and conditions of the resistance in Iraq have reached a point that requires a review of the events and of the work being done inside Iraq," the document said.

"Such a study is needed in order to show the best means to accomplish the required goals, especially that the forces of the National Guard have succeeded in forming an enormous shield protecting the American forces and have reduced substantially the losses that were solely suffered by the American forces."

Mr Rubaie said insurgents had not realised how powerful Iraqi security forces had become, adding that the government "is on the attack now" and aimed to "destroy al-Qaida and to finish this terrorist organisation in Iraq".

He said the documents showed "al-Qaida is using everyone as a pawn to play in this war game, in this game of killing Iraqi people and destroying this country". They revealed "how their central strategy is to divide and destroy", he added. Meanwhile, government forces today fanned out across Baghdad for a second successive day, setting up checkpoints in a security crackdown that also includes a ban on carrying private weapons and a new curfew.

The operation - called Forward Together - involves 75,000 Iraqi army and police personnel, backed by US troops.

Gunmen killed one engineer and kidnapped another and a detergent worker was shot dead as he headed to work in western Baghdad, police said, but no major violence was reported in the capital.

Elsewhere, gunmen stormed a Sunni mosque near Tikrit, killing four people and wounding 15, including a fundamentalist Sunni cleric who had spoken out against the killing of Iraqis in the insurgency.

Signs of progress

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'Beginning of end' for al-Qaida in Iraq

Iraq's national security adviser today said an intelligence haul from Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's final hideout would mark "the beginning of the end" for al-Qaida in the country.
Mouwafak al-Rubaie said documents and computer drives - including a thumb-sized device found on the terror leader's body - would give Iraqi security forces enough information to dismantle the organisation.
...
He said documents found after the air strike revealed al-Qaida wanted to trigger a war between the US and Iran. A document released to the press purported to show plans to stir up tensions between the countries in the hope of triggering armed conflict.
...
He said the documents showed "al-Qaida is using everyone as a pawn to play in this war game, in this game of killing Iraqi people and destroying this country". They revealed "how their central strategy is to divide and destroy", he added.
...

Pretty soon maybe we won't have an excuse not to leave.

Let's see... Iraq is a sovereign nation now, got a government and everything. Right?

So, for five hundred A2K points, name another sovereign nation that the US President can fly into unannounced, under cover of darkness, for a surprise meeting with that nation's leader.

Take your time.

Joe(Knock, knock. Who is it?)Nation

Iraq Amnesty Plan May Cover Attacks On U.S. Military
Leader Also Backs Talks With Resistance
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/14/AR2006061402432_pf.html "Asked about clemency for those who attacked U.S. troops, he said: "That's an area where we can see a green line. There's some sort of preliminary understanding between us and the MNF-I," the U.S.-led Multi-National Force-Iraq, "that there is a patriotic feeling among the Iraqi youth and the belief that those attacks are legitimate acts of resistance and defending their homeland. These people will be pardoned definitely, I believe."

By Ellen Knickmeyer and Jonathan Finer
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, June 15, 2006; A01

BAGHDAD, June 14 -- Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki on Wednesday proposed a limited amnesty to help end the Sunni Arab insurgency as part of a national reconciliation plan that Maliki said would be released within days. The plan is likely to include pardons for those who had attacked only U.S. troops, a top adviser said.

Maliki's declaration of openness to talks with some members of Sunni armed factions, and the prospect of pardons, are concessions that previous, interim governments had avoided. The statements marked the first time a leader from Iraq's governing Shiite religious parties has publicly embraced national reconciliation, welcomed dialogue with armed groups and proposed a limited amnesty.

Reconciliation could include an amnesty for those "who weren't involved in the shedding of Iraqi blood," Maliki told reporters at a Baghdad news conference. "Also, it includes talks with the armed men who opposed the political process and now want to turn back to political activity."
...
"The government has in mind somehow to do reconciliation, and one way to do it is to offer an amnesty, but not a sort of unconditional amnesty," Kadhimi said in a telephone interview. "We can see if somehow those who are so-called resistance can be accepted if they have not been involved in any kind of criminal behavior, such as killing innocent people or damaging infrastructure, and even infrastructure if it is minor will be pardoned."

The reconciliation effort pioneered by South Africa after the collapse of apartheid might be a model, Kadhimi said. "One way was to admit what you have done and you will be forgiven, and maybe parts of this can be considered. Because once we see people coming forward to admit what they have done, and it's within the areas the government has the right to pardon, it could happen."

Asked about clemency for those who attacked U.S. troops, he said: "That's an area where we can see a green line. There's some sort of preliminary understanding between us and the MNF-I," the U.S.-led Multi-National Force-Iraq, "that there is a patriotic feeling among the Iraqi youth and the belief that those attacks are legitimate acts of resistance and defending their homeland. These people will be pardoned definitely, I believe."

Asked about pardons for those who had attacked Iraqi forces, he said: "This needs to be carefully studied or designed so maybe the family of those individuals killed have a right to make a claim at the court, because that is a public right. Or maybe the government can compensate them."

U.S. diplomatic officials have said previously that they were encouraging dialogue among Iraq's many rival factions, but none has confirmed U.S. backing for an amnesty offer.

No, I'm accusing him of supporting torture and murder through a third-party, based upon his statements.

While I am quite sure a professional would be more proficient at torture than an amateur, it doesn't make morally justified in any way, and therefore to say that you are 'glad' that certain people are good at torture is as morally reprehensible as committing torturous acts oneself. It is simply easier to justify when it isn't oneself who is called upon to do the act, but that doesn't make it right at all.

The ends justify the means

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

"The ends justify the means" is a phrase encompassing two beliefs:

Morally wrong actions are sometimes necessary to achieve morally right outcomes.
Actions can only be considered morally right or wrong by virtue of the morality of the outcome.
Conversely, people who believe that the consequences of an immoral action are greater than those of the expected outcome will often say that the ends do not justify the means.

The premise is that Morally wrong actions are sometimes necessary to achieve morally right outcomes

The implication is that good ends justify questionable means. Though such a view is implicit in consequentialist moral theories such as utilitarianism, and almost all persons would be willing to commit small moral transgressions in the service of a greater good, the phrase is most often used to denote the much stronger view that any action in the service of an important enough cause is justified. This view is found in many radical political ideologies, and the atrocities committed by some Jacobins, communists, fascists, Takfiris and others are often attributed to a form of moral blindness in which a powerful ultimate goal becomes an excuse to ignore ordinary moral considerations.

In some applications at least, this argument is related to the question of serving the greater good in which the means is detrimental to an individual or a small (i.e., minority) group while appearing to benefit the majority or the vaguely defined society. For example, faced with a bomb hidden in a metropolitan area, it could be considered morally justifiable to torture the person who knows where it is (assuming that under torture he would truthfully reveal information which saved the citizens). Given the belief that torture is wrong, one could consider it moral to commit that wrong in the interests of saving thousands of lives. As is often, but certainly not always, the case with this dilemma, this is a Lesser of two evils principle situation.

Utilitarian use of the ends justify the means must consider the ends to include all outcomes from the means, not just the goal outcomes; in the above dilemma, assuming the existence of perfect intelligence on this question, the ends would include one or more definitely tortured suspects, the possible saving of a thousand civilian lives, the likely future resentment of the various suspects, their families, and the groups that identify with them, the possible appreciation of the saved civilians, their families and groups, the psychological effects on the immediate torturers, their superiors and supporters, the erosion of respect for human rights and dignity among all those who try to justify or even know of this use of torture, plus other un-anticipated side-effects that could last as long as the memory of this event.

Few people will use the ends justify the means to describe their own views; instead, the phrase is often used to cast suspicion on the actions or motivations of others.

Some free-market libertarians, following Robert Nozick, characterize their views using the reversed slogan the means justify the ends.

This phrase the ends justify the means is closely associated with Machiavelli and The Prince, credited with helping to advance the colonial and modern forms of imperialism. Though it should be noted, Machiavelli never wrote the phrase. A more literal translation is "One must consider the final result." (See List of famous misquotations) Also, most experts agree that Machiavelli wasn't necessarily advocating such an outlook in The Prince.

Most religions do not endorse the utilitarian philosophy. For example, the golden rule, held by Jesus, and the Hindu doctrine of karma would both discourage actions based on a purely utilitarian justification. The rationale behind this is the doctrine that all will come to light (all will be known, discovered) in the end and that good begets good, and also the doctrine stating that this life on earth is not the primary life.

The Pentagon has stopped releasing its assessment of the number of Iraqi army units deemed capable of battling insurgents without U.S. military help.

U.S. officials had been releasing a tally every three months of Iraqi military units that were sufficiently trained to operate by themselves, without the aid of U.S. firepower, logistics or transportation.

The decision to stop making the information public came after reports showed a steady decline in the number of qualified Iraqi units. That number now is classified, said Air Force Lt. Gen. Victor Renuart, director of strategic plans and policy for the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

The fielding of independent Iraqi units, which will eventually take over from the 130,000 or so U.S. service members in Iraq, is a critical indicator of when U.S. forces can begin to pull out. President George W. Bush has said that U.S. forces will hand off increasing responsibility to the Iraqis "as more capable Iraqi police and soldiers come online."

A key measure of that capability is the Pentagon's four-tiered system for rating Iraqi units:


Level 1: Capable of conducting attacks without U.S. involvement.


Level 2: Capable of leading a fight against insurgents while being supported by U.S. troops.


Level 3: Capable of fighting side-by-side with U.S. forces.


Level 4: Least prepared to fight are "units being formed."

Last June, the Pentagon said three Iraqi battalions were ready to fight by themselves. By last fall, that number had dropped to one. By February, that number had fallen to zero, meaning there were no Iraqi units capable of taking on the insurgency without help.

Top 11 Things That Anti-War Protesters Would Have Said At the Normandy Invasion on D-Day (Had There Been Anti-War Protesters At Normandy)


11. No blood for French Wine!

10. It's been two and a half years since Pearl Harbor and they still haven't brought Admiral Nagumo to justice.

9. In 62 years, the date will be 6/6/6. A coincidence? I think not.

8. All this death and destruction is because the neo-cons are in the pocket of Israel.

7. The soldiers are still on the beach, this invasion is a quagmire.

6. Sure the holocaust is evil, but so was slavery.

5. We are attacked by Japan and then attack France? Roosevelt is worse than the Kaiser!

4. Why bring democracy to Europe by force and not to Korea or Vietnam? I blame racism.

3. This war doesn't attack the root causes of Nazism.

2. I support the troops, but invading Germany does not guarantee that in 56 years we won't have a President who's worse than Hitler.

1. I don't see Roosevelt or Churchill storming the beaches -- they're Chicken Hawks!

Friday, June 16, 2006

At least 27 killed in Iraq violence

BAGHDAD: At least 27 people were killed and several others injured, as violence continued across Iraq on Thursday.

Three successive roadside bombs targeting Iraqi army patrols killed five soldiers and injured six others in the northern town of Tal Afar on Thursday, police said. Four soldiers were killed when the first roadside bomb hit their vehicle. A second bomb went off as soldiers on foot rushed to the site. The third bomb hit an Iraqi army vehicle nearby. Gunmen stormed a Sunni mosque near Tikrit, killing four people and wounding 15, police said.

At least 18 more people were killed in other violence-related incidents across the country. In Baquba, gunmen killed 10 people, including two brothers, police said. Police found seven bullet-riddled bodies across Baghdad. A policeman was also shot dead by armed men.

Also, US and Iraqi forces detained a senior Shia official after raiding his home in Kerbala early on Thursday, Iraqi officials said. The US military said it could not confirm the reported arrest of Akeel al-Zubaidi, head of the provincial council in Kerbala.

The Iraqi group "Imam Ali Brigade" said it abducted Turkish "technical expert" Hasan Eskinutlu and his translator north of Baghdad and demanded the withdrawal of Ankara's ambassador from Iraq, Al-Jazeera television reported on Thursday, showing footage of the alleged hostage. The group gave Ankara a week to meet its demands, the channel said.

The Pentagon said on Thursday the number of US military deaths in Iraq had reached 2,500. In addition, the Pentagon said 18,490 troops have been wounded in the war. Meanwhile, 450 detainees were released as part of a reconciliation bid ordered by Prime Minister Maliki. Also, the US military released pictures of Abu Ayyub al-Masri, alias Sheikh Abu Hamza al-Mohajer, successor of slain Al Qaeda in Iraq leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. agencies

BAGHDAD -- Iraq's prison system is overrun with Shiite Muslim militiamen who have freed fellow militia members convicted of major crimes and executed Sunni Arab inmates, the country's deputy justice minister said in an interview this week.

"We cannot control the prisons. It's as simple as that," said the deputy minister, Pusho Ibrahim Ali Daza Yei, an ethnic Kurd. "Our jails are infiltrated by the militias from top to bottom, from Basra to Baghdad."

As a result, Yei has asked U.S. authorities to suspend plans to transfer prisons and detainees from American to Iraqi control. "Our ministry is unprepared at this time to take over the facilities, especially those in areas where Shiite militias exist," he said in a letter to U.S. Army Maj. Gen. John D. Gardner, the official in charge of American detention facilities.

U.S. officials said months ago that they planned to turn over Baghdad's Abu Ghraib prison and three other American-run facilities to the Iraqi government, but the handoff has been repeatedly pushed back. Gardner has said he will not authorize the transfers until he is convinced that standards of inmate treatment and security match those maintained in U.S.-run facilities.

"We will not transfer the facilities and legal custody of the detainees until each respective facility and the Iraqi Corrections system have demonstrated the ability to maintain the required standards, especially in the areas of care and custody," Gardner said in a written response to questions. "We fully recognize that there are significant challenges that must be overcome but believe that we will be able to address these as we move through 2006 into 2007."

He said Abu Ghraib would be transferred to Iraqi control "in the next few months."

Gardner said the eventual transfer of prisons to Iraqi control would proceed gradually, preceded by several weeks of training for Iraqi guards, conducted by U.S. corrections officers and military police. The Iraqis would then work under the supervision of American guards for at least six months. A U.S. transition team would then be left in place for an additional period before the prison was handed over.

While allegations of abuse at U.S.-run prisons have waned since the 2004 Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal, Iraqi facilities have drawn increased scrutiny since a U.S. Army raid exposed torture of dozens of detainees -- most of them Sunnis -- at a secret Interior Ministry facility in the Baghdad neighborhood of Jadriyah.

The prison was widely alleged to have been operated by a special police unit staffed largely by members of the Badr Organization, a Shiite militia with ties to Iraq's largest Shiite political party. The government investigated the facility but never announced the results.

Yei said that because of mounting concern over detention centers run by Iraq's Interior and Defense ministries, where militias retain heavy influence, the police and army have agreed to turn over all their prisoners to the Justice Ministry by the end of the month.

As of early June, there were 7,426 inmates housed in Justice Ministry facilities, Yei said. The Interior Ministry had an additional 1,797 prisoners and the Defense Ministry a smaller number. More than 15,000 inmates were being held in five U.S. prisons in Iraq.

But while a U.N. human rights report issued last month stressed that the Defense and Interior ministries have legal authority to hold inmates only a brief time, Sunni Arabs charge that Sunnis are regularly imprisoned in the centers for months or even more than a year.

"The police are not supposed to be holding them beyond the time it takes to conduct an investigation," Yei said. "As long as the Interior Ministry doesn't hide anything, they will all be handed to us this month."

Already, the transfer plan is meeting resistance. The provincial council in Wasit province, south of Baghdad, ordered police there not to transfer detainees to a Justice Ministry facility, according to Muhammed Hasan al-Attabi, a provincial government spokesman.

A major general with Iraq's Interior Ministry, speaking on condition he not be named, said the transfer was already underway and would be completed on schedule. He denied that militias ran roughshod over the prisons. "All the detention centers in Baghdad and southern Iraq are under our control, except for some centers in Basra, maybe two or three there, which are run by militia officers," he said.

In an interview this week, Deputy Prime Minister Salam al-Zobaie, the top Sunni Arab in Iraq's new government, showed photographs taken from one recent inspection of an Interior Ministry detention center. An inmate in one of the photos held out his misshapen, limp hands for the camera. The man's hands had been broken in a beating, Zobaie said. Other inmates showed massive, dark bruises on their skin; one bore a large, open infected sore.

Inmates in another photo clustered around chains hung from the middle of one of the crowded cells. The chains were used to hoist prisoners by their bound hands, Zobaie said. The practice, noted frequently in inspection reports of Interior Ministry detention centers, often results in the dislocation of prisoners' shoulders.

Ninety percent of the men crowded into Interior Ministry detention centers are Sunni Arabs, Zobaie said. He called treatment in the Interior Ministry prisons "inhumane" and indicated it still was less than certain whether the Defense and Interior ministries would follow through on their agreement to turn over the inmates to the Justice Ministry. "Hopefully, they will," he said.

Yei gave several detailed accounts of abuses by militias, the names of which he declined to provide, saying only that "there are two, everyone knows them." U.S. officials recently said they consider the militias to be as grave a threat to Iraq's security as the Sunni-led insurgency.

On Aug. 13, 2004, he said, militia members freed 552 prisoners in the southern city of Hilla during a militia-led attack. A week later, 122 inmates escaped from the main prison in Amarah, also in the south, with the help of guards who were also militia members.

On Jan. 13, 2005, he said, 38 prisoners escaped during an attack on a convoy carrying them to Baghdad's Abu Ghraib. Eight were eventually rearrested. A month later, seven prisoners escaped while being transferred to the Badoush prison in the northern city of Mosul.

On June 14, 2005, seven prisoners escaped from Abu Ghraib in an incident still under investigation.

Last December, militia members entered the maximum-security prison in the Kadhimiyah section of Baghdad, a mostly Shiite neighborhood, freeing one militia member on death row and four others serving life sentences. At the same prison, on Feb. 28, guards and militia members freed two men who were to be executed that week.

And in the once-tranquil southern city of Basra, where militia violence has surged in recent months to the point that the Iraqi government declared a state of emergency in late May, militia members in early March took 12 foreign-born prisoners -- Egyptian, Saudi and Sudanese -- from their cells and shot them dead them by the facilities' main gate.

Yei's account adds to a growing list of alleged abuses in Iraq's overburdened prison system, long criticized by Sunni leaders who say Sunni prisoners are commonly mistreated.

Visits to detention centers in southern Iraq in recent months indicated they are often badly overcrowded and unsanitary. At the Tesfirat prison in Najaf last October, 122 prisoners were packed into cells designed for a maximum of 60, according to Lt. Jassim Juwad, the prison officer in charge. A prison maintained by police commandos in Hilla and designed for 150 inmates housed 400 as recently as April. Inmates at both locations had been incarcerated for up to 18 months without trial.

On Saturday, a group of parliament members paid a surprise visit to a detention facility run by the Interior Ministry in Baqubah, north of Baghdad. "We have found terrible violations of the law," said Muhammed al-Dayni, a Sunni parliament member who said as many as 120 detainees were packed into a 35-by-20-foot cell. "They told us that they've been raped," Dayni said. "Their families were called in and tortured to force the detainees to testify against other people."

"The detention facilities of the ministries of Defense and Interior are places for the most brutal human rights abuse," he added.

Despite broad U.S. efforts to encourage the Iraqi government to improve conditions in prisons, the problem of militia control could prove particularly intractable. Shiite militias such as the Badr Organization and the Mahdi Army, loyal to cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, are backed by dozens of members of parliament whose political parties run the armed groups.

"You can't even talk to the militias, because they are the government," Yei said. "They have ministers on their side."

IRAQ: Local NGO warns of rising cases of sexual abuse
14 Jun 2006 12:18:07 GMT
Source: IRIN

BAGHDAD, 14 June (IRIN) - There has been a massive increase in reported cases of sexual abuse in Iraq since the days of Saddam Hussein's regime, according to the Women's Rights Association (WRA), a local NGO.

The WRA recently conducted an in-depth study into the sexual abuse of women after receiving continued allegations of such maltreatment since December 2005. While fewer than five cases were reported per year in the Hussein's era, nearly 60 women have been raped in Baghdad since February, while another 80 were abused in other ways, according to the NGO.

"We've observed an increase in the number of women being sexually abused and raped in the past four months, especially in the capital," said Mayada Zuhair, spokeswoman for the WRA, adding that this is causing panic among women who have to walk alone.

Activists say the main reasons for the increase is the marginalisation of the population, lack of security and the negative psychological effects associated with war. According to Zuhair, women of all ages face abuse, while there are also cases of men and boys being raped by unidentified gangs. "Given the current insecurity, these incidents could increase if the government doesn't take urgent measures to stop these gangs," she said.

The Ministry of Interior has issued notices warning women not to go out alone. "This is a Muslim county and any attack on a woman's modesty is also an attack on our religious beliefs," said senior ministry official Salah Ali. "These gangs will pay for the pain they've caused." Ali added that several rape cases were currently being investigated and urged women to report any abuse.

In mosques, both Sunni and Shi'ite leaders have used their weekly sermons to spread awareness of this issue and have advised their largely male congregations to keep women safe at home rather than allowing them go out to work.

"These incidents of abuse just prove what we have been saying for so long," said Sheikh Salah Muzidin, an imam at a central mosque in Baghdad. "That it is the Islamic duty of women to stay in their homes, looking after their children and husbands rather than searching for work - especially with the current lack of security in the country."