THE US, THE UN AND IRAQ, TENTH THREAD.

Thanks to Geroge W Bush, the moron.

mm, What makes you think I'm going to answer any of your moronic questions?

xingu,
What trumps everything about Maliki and his politics is he was freely elected by the people of Iraq.

He was elected in an open,fair election.
But even still,some dems in Congress wanted to deny him his right of free speech.

Do you condone that?

No military conflict in modern times has divided Americans on partisan lines more than the war in Iraq, scholars and pollsters say ?- not even Vietnam. And those divisions are likely to intensify in what is expected to be a contentious fall election campaign.

The latest New York Times/CBS News poll shows what one expert describes as a continuing "chasm" between the way Republicans and Democrats see the war. Three-fourths of the Republicans, for example, said the United States did the right thing in taking military action against Iraq, while just 24 percent of the Democrats did. Independents split down the middle.

"The present divisions are quite without precedent," said Ole R. Holsti, a professor of political science at Duke University and the author of "Public Opinion and American Foreign Policy."

cicerone imposter wrote:

mm, What makes you think I'm going to answer any of your moronic questions?

I dont expect you to.
Your silence speaks volumes.

Of course,your silence does show that you do support the idea of denying the right to speak to anyone you disagree with.

You claim to support the constitution,and yet you support denyiong a person their rights.

You are a hypocrite.

Rumsfeld on Thursday extended the tours of some 3,500 members of the 172nd Stryker Brigade Combat Team, based at Fort Wainwright in Alaska. The unit, which has been serving in northern Iraq, was scheduled to be leaving now, but instead the troops will stay for up to four more months and many may go to Baghdad.

...
So ican, do I care what Maliki thinks about Hezbollah? Yes, I do. What disturbs me is that our American soldiers in Iraq are not dying to defend America; they're not dying to defeat Al Qaeda, the terrorist group responsible for 9/11; they're dying for Iran, a country Bush says is our enemy. They're dying for Iran because the government of Iraq is a predominantly Shiite government that is very close to Iran (both Dawa and SCIRI), much closer to Iran then it will ever be to America. Maliki's comments about Hezbollah is a sign of how close the Iraqi government is to Iran and Hezbollah. Americans are dying to keep Dawa's like Maliki in power in Iraq.

Now do you see my point here.
YES! You think Maliki, among others, not only is sympathetic to Iran's influence in Iraq, Maliki is serving Iran's influence in Iraq.

Think about the crescent of enemies extending from Pakistan to Lebanon. Think about how George Bush's foreign policy has made the situation worse, not better.
I'll grant that the enemies of America and the enemies of the rest of non-eitm humanity, that I collectively label eitm, are harbored in Pakistan, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and Palestine. What I will not grant is that the current situation is worse than it was before we invaded Afghanistan and Iraq. The BA (i.e., Bushadmin) invaded Afghanistan and Iraq to improve what had already become a rotten situation. The BA has not yet given us cause for optimism that they will ultimately improve that rotten situation. However, the BA has given us cause to believe the Afghanistani and Iraqi people want democratic governments instead of totalitarian governents.

The question before all of us, not just the BA, is what must we do to improve the current rotten situation?

Do you think the answer is simply to replace the BA? If so, then please say with whom/what shall we replace it and why you think that will help?

Do you think the answer is add more US troops? If so, then please say how many and why you think that will help.

Do you think the US should withdraw its troops? If so, then please say why you think that will help.

Do you think the US should replace its troops with the troops of another country or organization? If so, then please say who/what should replace them and why you think that will help.

Do you think the US should do something else? If so, then please say what that something else is and why you think that will help.

Merely observing, in effect, that Bush is no damn good serves no useful purpose unless you have an idea about what Bush should do to cease being no damn good, or an idea about who or what would be better than no damn good.

Diplomatic Failure in the Secret Society
By Gary Hart
07.23.2006

The U.S. is now confronted with two basic options in the Middle East: the neoconservatives can continue to hope that an increasingly unlikely miracle will permit us to use Iraq as our military and political base from which to dominate the region, or we can attempt the kind of sophisticated diplomacy that mature great powers have carried out over the centuries.

But we cannot do both.

The diplomatic, as opposed to warlike, stance requires statecraft conducted by statesmen. ...

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - Iraq's top Shiite cleric demanded an immediate cease-fire in Lebanon, warning Sunday that the Muslim world will ``not forgive'' nations that stand in the way of stopping the fighting.

Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani issued the call following the Israeli airstrike that killed at least 56 Lebanese, mostly women and children, in the village of Qana. It was the deadliest attack in nearly three weeks of fighting.

``Islamic nations will not forgive the entities that hinder a cease-fire,'' al-Sistani said in a clear reference to the United States.

``It is not possible to stand helpless in front of this Israeli aggression on Lebanon,'' he added. ``If an immediate cease-fire in this Israeli aggression is not imposed, dire consequences will befall the region.''

The BA (i.e., Bushadmin) invaded Afghanistan and Iraq to improve what had already become a rotten situation.

However, the BA has given us cause to believe the Afghanistani and Iraqi people want democratic governments instead of totalitarian governents.

But, ironically, instead of quelling extremism, the military occupation has fueled it. Radical Islamic clerics throughout Pakistan's semiautonomous tribal belt now preach the hard-line gospel, day and night. Their fiery jihadist sermons exhort people to live by the harsh code of Islamic Sharia?-or else. In Wana, the capital of the South Waziristan tribal agency, extremists recently used dynamite to blow up a radio station for playing music. If these radicals sound like Pakistan's equivalent of Mullah Mohammed Omar's ousted Taliban regime, they are. The tribal militants call themselves "Pakistani Taliban," or members of a newly coined and loosely knit entity, the Islamic Emirate of Waziristan. They openly recruit young men to fight with the Taliban in Afghanistan and run their own Islamic kangaroo courts that, on occasion, stage public executions. The local police simply stay out of the way. "Fearing for their lives, no one dares to challenge them," says Afrasiab Khattak, former chairman of the independent Human Rights Commission of Pakistan.

The question before all of us, not just the BA, is what must we do to improve the current rotten situation?

Osama Jadaan al Dulaimi, a tribal leader in the western town of Karabilah, a town near the Syrian border that was hit with bombs or missiles on at least 17 days between October 2005 and February 2006, said the bombings had created enemies.

"The people of Karabilah hate the foreigners who crossed the border and entered their areas and got into a fight with the Americans," al Dulaimi said. "The residents now also hate the American occupiers who demolished their houses with bombs and killed their families ... and now the people of Karabilah want to join the resistance against the Americans for what they did."

The U.S. military has said repeatedly that it uses precise munitions and targets insurgent locations that are verified by various intelligence sources.

Lt. Col. Barry Johnson, a top U.S. military spokesman in Iraq, said that the airstrikes reflected U.S. soldiers' ability to target more sharply insurgents across Iraq.

"This is one more tool that they have pulled out ... as they have been able to better refine their tactics and procedures," Johnson said. "Airpower has always been available. I don't see a ramping-up; I see a refinement" of intelligence that allows for more airstrikes.

Johnson also disputed the idea that the bombings exact a political cost.

Do you think the answer is simply to replace the BA? If so, then please say with whom/what shall we replace it and why you think that will help?

The United States has spent more than a quarter of a trillion dollars during its three years in Iraq, and more than $50 billion of it has gone to private contractors hired to guard bases, drive trucks, feed and shelter the troops and rebuild the country.

It is dangerous work, but much of the $50 billion, which is more than the annual budget of the Department of Homeland Security, has been handed out to companies in Iraq with little or no oversight.

Billions of dollars are unaccounted for, and there are widespread allegations of waste, fraud and war profiteering. As 60 Minutes correspondent Steve Kroft first reported in February, only one case, the subject of a civil lawsuit, has been unsealed. It involves a company called Custer Battles, and provides a window into the chaos of those early days in Iraq.

Do you think the US should do something else? If so, then please say what that something else is and why you think that will help.

As the cost of the war in Iraq climbs past $300 billion, and there are estimates that suggest the total financial cost will far exceed $1 trillion, there is another cost that is less measurable but no less significant: that is the stress on the military itself and the consequences for our fighting men and women, for innocent Iraqis, and the capacity of our Armed Forces far into the future.

The Pentagon has announced that the Army has met its recruiting goals for the 13th consecutive month, but we are seeing an erosion in the quality of recruits in our Armed Forces as more and more young Americans who disagree with what we are doing in Iraq have chosen to stay away. In order to meet recruiting targets, the Army has relaxed restrictions against high school dropouts and have started letting in more applicants who score in the lowest third on the Armed Forces aptitude test, a group known as category 4 recruits. Since the mid 1980s, category 4 recruits were kept, as a matter of policy, to less than 2 percent of all recruits. But by the end of 2005, the percentage of recruits who fell under this lowest category has reached double digits.

In my district, not only has the Army lowered its standards but recruiters have been pushed to violate the remaining standards in order to meet these recruiting targets. We have had two examples of where autistic young men have been recruited into the Army despite the regulations. As I have discussed on the floor of the House how outrageous this was, indeed, one of these young men did not even know that there was a war going on in Iraq. This all has terrible consequences for our efforts against the global war on terror.

This weekend's papers were full of articles and editorials about the role that our lowered recruiting standards may have played in the recent spate of reports of service members being accused of atrocities in Iraq. What does this tell us about our efforts to eliminate the insurgency and win the hearts and minds of people in the Middle East?

Iraq's human development indicators are among the lowest in the Middle East, according to the World Bank. Back in the 1970s and 1980s, Iraq led the Middle East in development of infrastructure, social services, and health care. Yet after years of successive wars and sanctions, many Iraqis today do not have access to basic staples like potable water and electricity. A shortage of hospitals and health-care facilities has added to their hardships. Current health statistics on Iraq are difficult to find, but a UNICEF report said Iraq's mortality rate for children under five rose from 5 percent in 1990 to 12.5 percent in 2004.

Of 142 health clinics slated for construction with $180 million in U.S. funds, only six have been built so far, according to a recent report by the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (SIGIR), a U.S.-funded independent oversight office. Water access also remains limited. Only around 8 million Iraqis?-one-quarter of the population?-have access to potable water, compared to nearly 13 million before the war. Of the 136 water and sanitation projects originally planned by the U.S. government, just forty-nine are expected to be completed. Finally, a recent report by the New York Times claims that "black oil," a byproduct of oil refineries, is polluting the Tigris River and contaminating water supplies in northern Iraq.

Whereas the Vietnam War was a Maoist people's war, Iraq is a communal civil war. This can be seen in the pattern of violence in Iraq, which is strongly correlated with communal affiliation. The four provinces that make up the country's Sunni heartland account for fully 85 percent of all insurgent attacks; Iraq's other 14 provinces, where almost 60 percent of the Iraqi population lives, account for only 15 percent of the violence. The overwhelming majority of the insurgents in Iraq are indigenous Sunnis, and the small minority who are non-Iraqi members of al Qaeda or its affiliates are able to operate only because Iraqi Sunnis provide them with safe houses, intelligence, and supplies. Much of the violence is aimed at the Iraqi police and military, which recruit disproportionately from among Shiites and Kurds. And most suicide car bombings are directed at Shiite neighborhoods, especially in ethnically mixed areas such as Baghdad, Diyala, or northern Babil, where Sunni bombers have relatively easy access to non-Sunni targets.

If the war in Iraq were chiefly a class-based or nationalist war, the violence would run along national, class, or ideological lines. It does not. Many commentators consider the insurgents to be nationalists opposing the U.S. occupation. Yet there is almost no antioccupation violence in Shiite or Kurdish provinces; only in the Sunni Triangle are some Sunni "nationalists" raising arms against U.S. troops, whom they see as defenders of a Shiite- and Kurdish-dominated government. Defense of sect and ethnic group, not resistance to foreign occupation, accounts for most of the anti-American violence. Class and ideology do not matter much either: little of the violence pits poor Shiites or poor Sunnis against their richer brethren, and there is little evidence that theocrats are killing secularists of their own ethnic group. Nor has the type of ideological battle typical of a nationalist war emerged in Iraq. This should come as no surprise: the insurgents are not competing for Shiite hearts and minds; they are fighting for Sunni self-interest, and hardly need a manifesto to rally supporters.