THE US, THE UN AND IRAQ, TENTH THREAD.

There are a lot of assumptions being made on here and in the newspapers about what the objectives of the war are.

If it is assumed that the objectives are X, Y, and Z and those are not seen to be being met a judgement of failure is only possible if the original assumption is true.

And there is a possibility that they are not true.

What are the possibilities if the war was not taking place or if it is terminated at this stage or in the near future.

What effect would $200 or $300 per barrel of oil have on the West for example? What effect on technology in the middle-east would such a revenue allow access to? What would such a price do for Russian or Chinese or Japanese policies. Where would Turkey sit? And Isreal? Would the Gulf States need to be defended. Similar questions could fill up this entire thread.

The Guardian, which led the opposition to Sir Anthony Eden's middle-east policy, is, as it was then, talking out of one side of its mouth. It, and its followers, seem to think everything would continue as now if we pulled out.

I don't know the answers to any of these questions and neither does The Guardian. Massive Government agencies are in being to provide the best answers we can arrive at and they have the best information available and the capacity, we hope, to draw the right conclusions.

Is opposition to the war giving encouragement to the enemy and thus making it more difficult to prosecute. Even that might be part of the policy. Who knows. We certainly don't.

Anyone who has taken the trouble to read the memoirs of past leaders and high officials will know that these matters constitute a wilderness of mirrors and shadows which even those in charge of policy have some difficulty in penetrating. The rest of us have no chance. None.

To think so is mere entertainment.

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spendi

You often remind me of a delicate and artistic arrangement of crystal on a large tablecloth. Some past experience with a slick magician, I am supposing, has led you to the consideration that no one else but you (the arrangement of crystal) will be quicker than yourself in whipping away that tablecloth.

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I'm afraid Bernie that you cannot compare rolling destiny to such an arrangement as you posit. It is flip and superficial. I am just as much in the dark as you are. The difference is that I know it.

But you have provided no answer to the points I raise and I presume from your post that you don't think them invalid or, at the least, worthy of consideration.

I don't think a large military undertaking has ever been mounted before by a feminised society but I am aware that a significant fall in living standards and the financial fall-out from it would have an effect on the ladies which might make even Mr Bush's hair stand on end. What you might, amidst your luxury and comforts, consider rabid right wing rhetoric would look like a scented powder-puff to ladies at bay.

Would you deny that the analysis seen on here would cause Mr Kissinger to guffaw?

Some of it has been provided by strategic thinkers who are dissatisfied that some people called Spoony and Ola have been voted off the amateur ballroom dancing bookends to the adverts competition by phone-in viewers (£1 a vote maybe) on the grounds that Ola is sexy whilst the lights burn endlessly in the departments of state in both our countries manned and womaned by thousands of the best brains we can find and educated to the best of our abilities.

The dining table you mention might have been better described as one on which a particulary self-indulgent orgy of gluttony had taken place and any attempt to whip the tablecloth away would, due to the adhesive nature of dried slops, have overturned the table without affecting the general aesthetic appearence of the room or disturbing the comatose topers in the positions they had collapsed into.

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"Adhesive dried slops". Apparently, we share the same level of table manners.

Quote:

Massive Government agencies are in being to provide the best answers we can arrive at and they have the best information available and the capacity, we hope, to draw the right conclusions.

Utter hogpoop, this. At least as a statement of universal truth or even probability. You temper it with "we hope" but I don't consider that hope does the trick at all. These people need watching because of self interest, because they want their big pay cheques to continue coming in to get their kids to Oxford and Harvard and because their cousins and school chums count on them to improve their place in that heirarchy which allows access to Bentley's and to young ladies in the back of those Bentleys.

You possibly caught the item (it was a Guardian or Independent piece) yesterday where it was revealed that the top chappies at MI5 flew to Washington on Sept 12 in order to (at least in part) convince the US that it ought not to attack Iraq. This supports your idea that such institutions can have good information. Can have. The Bush people have proved a different matter altogether. And, on reflection, I rather doubt Tony would now consider your notion above anything other than suffering the sort of romanticism which ambitious people count upon to get their ways and priviledges.

There's a great irony in some of your arguments, spendi. You can be as independent-minded and as original in thought and as perceptive as anyone on this board. But there seems to be this level where you just forfeit the principles and rationale for your wonderful individuality. How can one not say that our real ability to affect change even in something so minimal as regional politics is greatly delusional, or temporary, or not much relevant to the tilt of the universe. On the other hand, as that universe spreads out from some untraceable origin point inside my noggin, I'm quite happy to play whatever game is available to me while that universe remains visible.

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Bernie wrote-

Quote:

Utter hogpoop, this. At least as a statement of universal truth or even probability. You temper it with "we hope" but I don't consider that hope does the trick at all. These people need watching because of self interest, because they want their big pay cheques to continue coming in to get their kids to Oxford and Harvard and because their cousins and school chums count on them to improve their place in that heirarchy which allows access to Bentley's and to young ladies in the back of those Bentleys.

That's human nature old boy. There is no alternative. Not only do they need watching but they are watched and very carefully. Nobody at the top level is going to allow the sort of corrupt activities you casually describe, to the applause of those who didn't do their homework, to ruin their reputation overmuch, make them look fools and possibly wreck their careers. They may be more lax if they don't have an electorate to worry about. Media is not so free of similar jollies.

It is the only sort of system we have and there are very dedicated and concientious people in it and the moreso the higher you go. They have to work with the circumstances as they are not as they would like them to be.

The stable and pro-Western Iraqi government fell in a disgusting bloodbath in the aftermath of the Suez disaster. Where would we be now had that been carried through successfully. Nobody really knows but we wouldn't be where we are now. Nasser's victory fired them all up and it was exactly the sort of Guardian bleating that handed it to him. How would that have broken Mr Eden's heart and health if he had been the cynical opportunist you suggest. Iran went walkabout as well.

We are in for the long haul is my take on it.

The public want the cheap oil and they don't want what it takes to get it. Did you see the Putin strut last week? He has Europe by the shorts. It is an American foundation principle to charge what the traffic will bear.

The reason for helping "school chums" up is because they have had a decent education in the ways of the world. The key positions have fearsome examinations and interviews and they are ruthlessly winnowed on their way up the ladders. It's a conceit to think otherwise.

The rest can play their games because they simply don't count. They ought to be grateful for the chance. The Guardian is playing games. It is only scribblings on the backside of ads anyway. It seeks profits.

You can affect things by fighting your way upwards. It's the toughest sport there is and your constitution recognises that 8 years is as much as a man can be expected to take.

9/11 changed everything. The old road aged in half an hour.

What a signal to Saudi dissidents an Iraq pull-out would be. It doesn't bear thinking about and Mr Bush and Mr Blair have to think about it.

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Bernie wrote-

Quote:

Utter hogpoop, this. At least as a statement of universal truth or even probability. You temper it with "we hope" but I don't consider that hope does the trick at all. These people need watching because of self interest, because they want their big pay cheques to continue coming in to get their kids to Oxford and Harvard and because their cousins and school chums count on them to improve their place in that heirarchy which allows access to Bentley's and to young ladies in the back of those Bentleys.

That's human nature old boy. There is no alternative. Not only do they need watching but they are watched and very carefully. Nobody at the top level is going to allow the sort of corrupt activities you casually describe, to the applause of those who didn't do their homework, to ruin their reputation overmuch, make them look fools and possibly wreck their careers. They may be more lax if they don't have an electorate to worry about. Media is not so free of similar jollies.

It is the only sort of system we have and there are very dedicated and concientious people in it and the moreso the higher you go. They have to work with the circumstances as they are not as they would like them to be.

The stable and pro-Western Iraqi government fell in a disgusting bloodbath in the aftermath of the Suez disaster. Where would we be now had that been carried through successfully. Nobody really knows but we wouldn't be where we are now. Nasser's victory fired them all up and it was exactly the sort of Guardian bleating that handed it to him. How would that have broken Mr Eden's heart and health if he had been the cynical opportunist you suggest. Iran went walkabout as well.

We are in for the long haul is my take on it.

The public want the cheap oil and they don't want what it takes to get it. Did you see the Putin strut last week? He has Europe by the shorts. It is an American foundation principle to charge what the traffic will bear.

The reason for helping "school chums" up is because they have had a decent education in the ways of the world. The key positions have fearsome examinations and interviews and they are ruthlessly winnowed on their way up the ladders. It's a conceit to think otherwise.

The rest can play their games because they simply don't count. They ought to be grateful for the chance. The Guardian is playing games. It is only scribblings on the backside of ads anyway. It seeks profits.

You can affect things by fighting your way upwards. It's the toughest sport there is and your constitution recognises that 8 years is as much as a man can be expected to take.

9/11 changed everything. The old road aged in half an hour.

What a signal to Saudi dissidents an Iraq pull-out would be. It doesn't bear thinking about and Mr Bush and Mr Blair have to think about it.

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Cycloptichorn wrote:

Something that just occured to me, Ican.

Many times you have mentioned that a prime reason we were justified in attacking Iraq was the elimination of an AQ training camp which could produce thousands of soldiers to fight against us.

My question to you, now, is: given the level of insurgent activity, the number of average attacks per day, and the general huge level of violence and unrest in Iraq, don't you believe that we've created a situation in which AQ has trained hundreds, if not thousands, of soldiers to fight against us?

YES!

If that's so, how can we have said to have accomplished our objective? How much more would we have accomplished by simply bombing the camp in Iraq in the first place?

We cannot say we have accomplished our objective in Iraq!

We would not have accomplished our objective if we simply bombed the camp in Iraq in the first place, because at best we would have only temporarily checked the infiltration of al-Qaeda into Iraq from Afghanistan.

Look at Afghanistan. Clinton bombed with missles the al-Qaeda camp in Afghanistan and Bush invaded Afghanistan. Yet we cannot say we accomplished our objective in Afghanistan either.

Our objectives must be met for the sake of all of us. For the sake of all of us, our tactics for accomplishing those objectives must be changed to those known to have worked in the past.

Cycloptichorn

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Iraq is falling into complete chaos by the minute, and this includes the democratically-elected government. The US presence is largely irrelevant to make things better. As recently reported, we gave the government $800 M for arms, and virtually all of this was ripped off, with the miscreants fleeing the country. If all this doesn't call for a completely new US approach, what does?

IRAQ
Heads in the Sand

At an event on Capitol Hill today with Sen. Jack Reed (D-RI), the Center for American Progress Action Fund released its third quarterly "report card" this year on the Bush administration's handling of Iraq. The analysis, written by senior fellows Brian Katulis and Lawrence Korb, evaluates the progress towards the goals identified in the administration's "National Strategy for Victory in Iraq" and "finds Iraq on the brink of collapse, with growing violence, increased sectarian tensions and divisions in the Iraqi national government, and few significant advances in Iraq's economic reconstruction. All indicators point to the utter failure of President Bush's strategy for Iraq." This evaluation tracks with a growing chorus of concerns coming from allies of Bush. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) said yesterday, "We're on the verge of chaos, and the current plan is not working." Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA) added that the administration has to "face the fact" that Iraq is now in a civil war. Put on the defensive, White House Counselor Dan Bartlett countered with a media blitz yesterday morning. "We know there is a sense of urgency," he said, adding that the administration did not have its "heads in the sand" on Iraq. Yet, that's the undeniable impression that the White House has created. While the administration continues to assert that there have been great successes in Iraq, a recent poll finds only 19 percent of Americans believe the U.S. is winning.
--AmericanProgressAction

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ican711nm wrote:

Cycloptichorn wrote:
Something that just occured to me, Ican.

Many times you have mentioned that a prime reason we were justified in attacking Iraq was the elimination of an AQ training camp which could produce thousands of soldiers to fight against us.

My question to you, now, is: given the level of insurgent activity, the number of average attacks per day, and the general huge level of violence and unrest in Iraq, don't you believe that we've created a situation in which AQ has trained hundreds, if not thousands, of soldiers to fight against us?

YES!

If that's so, how can we have said to have accomplished our objective? How much more would we have accomplished by simply bombing the camp in Iraq in the first place?

We cannot say we have accomplished our objective in Iraq!

We would not have accomplished our objective if we simply bombed the camp in Iraq in the first place, because at best we would have only temporarily checked the infiltration of al-Qaeda into Iraq from Afghanistan.

Look at Afghanistan. Clinton bombed with missles the al-Qaeda camp in Afghanistan and Bush invaded Afghanistan. Yet we cannot say we accomplished our objective in Afghanistan either.

Our objectives must be met for the sake of all of us. For the sake of all of us, our tactics for accomplishing those objectives must be changed to those known to have worked in the past.

My point is that we not only have we not met our objective, our attempts to meet our objective have made the situation decidedly worse for us and better for the enemy; we are actually assisting them in meeting their objectives. And we don't have any plan for changing this, at all.

Other than your allusion to the mass murder of civilians, that is. I am afraid that is what it will come to, in the end.

Cycloptichorn

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I understand and agree that our presence (our as in the coalition) in Iraq really don't seem to make a difference in turing the tide of violence that is Iraq today, in fact intelligence has told us that our presence makes it worse.

However, just try to imagine if you can, the image of the US leaving Iraq while it is in such a disaster of our own making. Imagine the headlines around the world. I imagine that is one reason we are staying the course; it sure isn't because we are keeping anybody from being killed.

If Iraqis are going to rescue their country, they are going to have to do it on their own because the US is so hated by Iraqis that we do more harm than good; they don't like us and more than half want us dead.

Maybe Iraqis feel that while we are still there they are still basically under US occupation, they have no reason to work towards a better Iraq thereby handing George Bush his Victory. If we left, maybe they feel they are working for themselves rather than washington.

*just mussing some thoughts*

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Making it worse? Imagine the bloodshed if the US pulls out and leaves the militias and terrorists to have their way with the civilians in Iraq... The only reason Iraq has a chance to survive the a-holes vying for power is BEACAUSE the US is there keeping the government in control.

It's the terrorists and Islamic fundamentalists making things worse, not the US. I know many either can't or won't understand that, but it's the truth.

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What you seem to consistently overlook is that ALL the predictions made by the administration about the conduct of the war AND the securing of the peace were proved wrong. You don't know the "truth" about what will happen if we leave anymore than anyone else.

I watched General Casey this morning during a press briefing, and he makes no sense at all. Why will it take 18 months to begin standing down, instead of moving troops out on a one-to-one replacement schedule?

If the only ones who can "stand-up" on their own, out of the supposedly 3-4 hundred thousand Iraqis we've trained, are 4 security guards at a car check point, then we ought to bring home 4 MPs who don't need to be there. That's the way it should work - not an endless murky promise of "standing down when they stand up". It's such bullshyt.

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Cycloptichorn wrote:

...

ican711nm wrote:

...
Our objectives must be met for the sake of all of us. For the sake of all of us, our tactics for accomplishing those objectives must be changed to those known to have worked in the past.
[/color][/size]

My point is that we not only have we not met our objective, our attempts to meet our objective have made the situation decidedly worse for us and better for the enemy; we are actually assisting them in meeting their objectives. And we don't have any plan for changing this, at all.

Other than your allusion to the mass murder of civilians, that is. I am afraid that is what it will come to, in the end.

Cycloptichorn

I understood and understand your point. Nevertheless, I disagree with what I perceive to be your conclusion: Because we are failing to achieve our objectives, and are causing things to get worse there, we should withdraw from Iraq and Afghanistan. While I agree with your assertion that we are failing to achieve our objectives, and are causing things to get worse there, I do not agree that we should withdraw from Iraq and Afghanistan. I only agree that we must change our tactics.

Possibly you do not understand my point: our three objectives must be met for the sake of all of us. For the sake of all of us, our tactics for accomplishing those three objectives must be changed to those known to have worked in the past.

Failure to achieve our three objectives in Afghanistan and Iraq is terribly unacceptable. Failure after failure is never an acceptable excuse for quitting trying to solve problems that must be solved.

Had we not persisted failure after failure to finally achieve success throughout WWII, the results would have been terribly unacceptable.

Even in the case of very difficult problems whose solutions were merely desireable and not necessary, we humans achieved success in solving them only when we persisted failure after failure until we were finally successful. Edison, the Wright Brothers, Goddard and the NASA people are four examples that quickly come to my mind in addition to my own actual experiences.

You wrote, "Other than your allusion to the mass murder of civilians." That is your characterization, not mine. I advocate that we kill the deliberate killers of non-combatants even when the accompanying killing of non-combatants is known to be unavoidable. I advocate that tactic, because I think that tactic essential for obtaining a net saving of the lives of non-combatants. I think that net saving would be far greater than what would be saved if we do not choose that tactic.

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Advocate wrote:

Ican, the Iraqis are not stupid by a longshot. They know that we are making the situation worse. Just think of the 650.000 killed.

Advocate, the Iraqis are not stupid, period. They know the alleged 655,000 Iraqis killed by violence in Iraq is bunk. That number has now been also shown by many others to be nothing more than the normal death rate of Iraqis plus about 50,000 to 60,000 killed by violence.

Quote:

655,000 War Dead?
A bogus study on Iraq casualties.
BY STEVEN E. MOORE
Opinion Journal
Wednesday, October 18, 2006 12:01 a.m. EDT

After doing survey research in Iraq for nearly two years, I was surprised to read that a study by a group from Johns Hopkins University claims that 655,000 Iraqis have died as a result of the war. Don't get me wrong, there have been far too many deaths in Iraq by anyone's measure; some of them have been friends of mine. But the Johns Hopkins tally is wildly at odds with any numbers I have seen in that country. Survey results frequently have a margin of error of plus or minus 3% or 5%--not 1200%.

The group--associated with the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health--employed cluster sampling for in-person interviews, which is the methodology that I and most researchers use in developing countries. Here, in the U.S., opinion surveys often use telephone polls, selecting individuals at random. But for a country lacking in telephone penetration, door-to-door interviews are required: Neighborhoods are selected at random, and then individuals are selected at random in "clusters" within each neighborhood for door-to-door interviews. Without cluster sampling, the expense and time associated with travel would make in-person interviewing virtually impossible.

However, the key to the validity of cluster sampling is to use enough cluster points. In their 2006 report, "Mortality after the 2003 invasion of Iraq: a cross-sectional sample survey," the Johns Hopkins team says it used 47 cluster points for their sample of 1,849 interviews. This is astonishing: I wouldn't survey a junior high school, no less an entire country, using only 47 cluster points.

Neither would anyone else. For its 2004 survey of Iraq, the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) used 2,200 cluster points of 10 interviews each for a total sample of 21,688. True, interviews are expensive and not everyone has the U.N.'s bank account. However, even for a similarly sized sample, that is an extraordinarily small number of cluster points. A 2005 survey conducted by ABC News, Time magazine, the BBC, NHK and Der Spiegel used 135 cluster points with a sample size of 1,711--almost three times that of the Johns Hopkins team for 93% of the sample size.

What happens when you don't use enough cluster points in a survey? You get crazy results when compared to a known quantity, or a survey with more cluster points. There was a perfect example of this two years ago. The UNDP's survey, in April and May 2004, estimated between 18,000 and 29,000 Iraqi civilian deaths due to the war. This survey was conducted four months prior to another, earlier study by the Johns Hopkins team, which used 33 cluster points and estimated between 69,000 and 155,000 civilian deaths--four to five times as high as the UNDP survey, which used 66 times the cluster points.

The 2004 survey by the Johns Hopkins group was itself methodologically suspect--and the one they just published even more so.

Curious about the kind of people who would have the chutzpah to claim to a national audience that this kind of research was methodologically sound, I contacted Johns Hopkins University and was referred to Les Roberts, one of the primary authors of the study. Dr. Roberts defended his 47 cluster points, saying that this was standard. I'm not sure whose standards these are.

Appendix A of the Johns Hopkins survey, for example, cites several other studies of mortality in war zones, and uses the citations to validate the group's use of cluster sampling. One study is by the International Rescue Committee in the Democratic Republic of Congo, which used 750 cluster points. Harvard's School of Public Health, in a 1992 survey of Iraq, used 271 cluster points. Another study in Kosovo cites the use of 50 cluster points, but this was for a population of just 1.6 million, compared to Iraq's 27 million.

When I pointed out these numbers to Dr. Roberts, he said that the appendices were written by a student and should be ignored. Which led me to wonder what other sections of the survey should be ignored.

With so few cluster points, it is highly unlikely the Johns Hopkins survey is representative of the population in Iraq. However, there is a definitive method of establishing if it is. Recording the gender, age, education and other demographic characteristics of the respondents allows a researcher to compare his survey results to a known demographic instrument, such as a census.

Dr. Roberts said that his team's surveyors did not ask demographic questions. I was so surprised to hear this that I emailed him later in the day to ask a second time if his team asked demographic questions and compared the results to the 1997 Iraqi census. Dr. Roberts replied that he had not even looked at the Iraqi census.

And so, while the gender and the age of the deceased were recorded in the 2006 Johns Hopkins study, nobody, according to Dr. Roberts, recorded demographic information for the living survey respondents. This would be the first survey I have looked at in my 15 years of looking that did not ask demographic questions of its respondents. But don't take my word for it--try using Google to find a survey that does not ask demographic questions.

Without demographic information to assure a representative sample, there is no way anyone can prove--or disprove--that the Johns Hopkins estimate of Iraqi civilian deaths is accurate.

Public-policy decisions based on this survey will impact millions of Iraqis and hundreds of thousands of Americans. It's important that voters and policy makers have accurate information. When the question matters this much, it is worth taking the time to get the answer right.

Moore, a political consultant with Gorton Moore International, trained Iraqi researchers for the International Republican Institute from 2003 to 2004 and conducted survey research for the Coalition Forces from 2005 to 2006.

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Wow, only 60,000 and not 600,000 dead. They're bound to forgive us and forget all about it then. A little misunderstanding, was all. Rolling Eyes

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McGentrix wrote:

Making it worse? Imagine the bloodshed if the US pulls out and leaves the militias and terrorists to have their way with the civilians in Iraq... The only reason Iraq has a chance to survive the a-holes vying for power is BEACAUSE the US is there keeping the government in control.

It's the terrorists and Islamic fundamentalists making things worse, not the US. I know many either can't or won't understand that, but it's the truth.

Who do you think is responsible for the picture of pending doom you forcast for Iraq.

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Ican, regarding the number of Iraqi deaths, you are taking the word of a Republican hack over Johns Hopkins University. Want to buy a bridge?

Revel, you are worried about how we will look abroad. Take my word for it, we look terrible now, and it can't get much worse. The world hates Bush and his minions.

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au1929 wrote:

McGentrix wrote:
Making it worse? Imagine the bloodshed if the US pulls out and leaves the militias and terrorists to have their way with the civilians in Iraq... The only reason Iraq has a chance to survive the a-holes vying for power is BEACAUSE the US is there keeping the government in control.

It's the terrorists and Islamic fundamentalists making things worse, not the US. I know many either can't or won't understand that, but it's the truth.

Who do you think is responsible for the picture of pending doom you forcast for Iraq.

Obviously you didn't actually read the post you quoted or you would already know the answer and wouldn't have to ask stupid questions.

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Maybe he did read it, but discarded this part:

Quote:

It's the terrorists and Islamic fundamentalists making things worse, not the US. I know many either can't or won't understand that, but it's the truth.

Because it's bullsh*t. You don't have any special insight on the situation that others don't. Your 'truth' is anything but.

Cycloptichorn

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Cycloptichorn wrote:

Maybe he did read it, but discarded this part:

Quote:
It's the terrorists and Islamic fundamentalists making things worse, not the US. I know many either can't or won't understand that, but it's the truth.

Because it's bullsh*t. You don't have any special insight on the situation that others don't. Your 'truth' is anything but.

Cycloptichorn

So, are you a "can't" or "won't"? I am betting on "won't".

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THE US, THE UN AND IRAQ, TENTH THREAD.

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