THE US, THE UN AND IRAQ, TENTH THREAD.

Soldier traitorology...

Quote:

Dearden has indeed joined the most significant movement of organized and dissident GIs seen in America since 1969, when 1,366 active-duty service members signed a full-page ad in the New York Times calling for an end to the Vietnam War. The Appeal for Redress, surfacing only in late October, has taken anti-Iraq War sentiment that's been simmering within the ranks and surfaced it as a mainstream plea backed by the enormous moral authority of active-duty personnel. It's an undeniable barometer of rising military dissent and provides a strong argument that the best way to support the troops is to recognize their demand to be withdrawn from Iraq. While clearly inspired by the GI movement of the Vietnam era, it takes a much different tack. Instead of attacking or confronting the military, as the resistance movement of the 1960s often did, the Appeal works within the military's legal framework.

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20070108/cooper

The Appeal was posted as a simple three-sentence statement on a website managed by a Navy seaman:

As a patriotic American proud to serve the nation in uniform, I respectfully urge my political leaders in Congress to support the prompt withdrawal of all American military forces and bases from Iraq. Staying in Iraq will not work and is not worth the price. It is time for U.S. troops to come home.

WASHINGTON, Dec 27 (Reuters) - Just weeks after pledging a new approach in the Iraq war in the wake of his party's defeat in congressional elections, U.S. President George W. Bush seems to be digging in his heels against any major change of course.

Bush is spending the holiday week in consultations at his Texas ranch preparing for one of the most fateful moments of his presidency, a policy speech early in the new year charting what he has called "a new way forward" in Iraq.

Even as he gives the impression of seriously considering a range of ideas on how to handle an increasingly unpopular war that has killed nearly 3,000 U.S. troops and tens of thousands of Iraqis, Bush has made clear some options are off-limits.

He has brushed aside a proposal from a bipartisan panel to ask U.S. foes Iran and Syria for help in stabilizing Iraq and, instead of talking about a U.S. troop reduction, he is said to be looking closely at a temporary increase.

That has critics predicting that Bush, who prides himself in sticking to decisions, will announce little real change.

"He is now caught between admitting the war was a mistake and his policy has failed, or trying to tough it out," said Joseph Cirincione, a foreign policy analyst at the Center for American Progress, a liberal Washington think tank.

"It looks like the president would rather let the whole operation go down in flames than admit he was wrong."

Instead of embracing the group's call for a pullback of most U.S. combat forces by early 2008, Bush is considering a surge of up to 30,000 troops, mostly to help secure Baghdad.

While the idea has the backing of Sen. John McCain, a likely 2008 Republican presidential contender, it is opposed by a key Democratic presidential hopeful, Sen. Joseph Biden, the incoming chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

"We've already broken Iraq. We're about to break the United States military," Biden told reporters. He is planning hearings starting on Jan. 9 to examine Bush's Iraq policy.

White House spokesman Scott Stanzel said the president was making sure all options were given the "due consideration they need". There is speculation Bush might go on television by the middle of next week to set the agenda before Congress returns.

Even if Bush continues to balk at major strategy changes, he is starting to alter his rhetoric.

Before the elections, he insisted the United States was "absolutely" winning in Iraq. In a Washington Post interview last week, he offered a murkier view.

"O faithful people, I bid you farewell as my soul goes to God the compassionate," he wrote. "Long live Iraq. Long live Iraq. Long live Palestine. Long live jihad and the mujahideen. God is greatest."

Yesterday, Iraq's highest court turned down his appeal against a death sentence in connection with a mass killing of Shia Muslims in 1982. Following the unsuccessful appeal, Iraqi law requires his hanging within 30 days.

It is understood that Saddam wrote the letter after being sentenced in November but its release was delayed until after his appeal by the US authorities holding him at Camp Cropper, a military prison near Baghdad airport.

In the letter, Saddam depicts himself as a potential martyr: "Here I offer myself in sacrifice. If God almighty wishes, it [my soul] will take me where he orders to be with the martyrs. If my soul goes down this path [of martyrdom] it will face God in serenity ...

"You have known your brother and leader as you have known your own family. He has not bowed down to the tyrants and remained a sword against them," Saddam wrote.

"Oh great people, I call on you preserve the values that enabled you to be worthy of carrying out shouldering the faith and to be the light of civilisation.

"Your unity stands against falling into servitude."

He added: "Oh brave, pious Iraqis in the heroic resistance. Oh sons of the one nation, direct your enmity towards the invaders. Do not let them divide you ... Long live jihad [holy war] and the mujahideen against the invaders."

...

ican711nm wrote:

This is xingu's Pseudology.

...
It's not "Pseudology". Colin Powell stated, before the UN, that Saddam had no control over the region Zarkawi was in. Is he a liar about this as well?

Quote:

Those helping to run this camp are Zarqawi lieutenants operating in northern Kurdish areas outside Saddam Hussein's controlled Iraq.

Colin Powell before the UN Feb 6, 2003
http://www.cnn.com/2003/US/02/05/sprj.irq.powell.transcript.09/index.html

The phrase "outside Saddam Hussein's controlled Iraq" does not mean outside the area in which Saddam's regime had the power, and did exercise the power to go, when it wanted to go there. That phrase merely states the fact that Saddam's regime did not possess the power to govern in that area.

Quote:

http://www.state.gov/secretary/former/powell/remarks/2003/17300.htm

Remarks to the United Nations Security Council

Secretary Colin L. Powell
New York City
February 5, 2003

...

But what I want to bring to your attention today is the potentially much more sinister nexus between Iraq and the al-Qaida terrorist network, a nexus that combines classic terrorist organizations and modern methods of murder. Iraq today harbors a deadly terrorist network headed by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi an associate and collaborator of Usama bin Laden and his al-Qaida lieutenants.

...

When our coalition ousted the Taliban, the Zarqawi network helped establish another poison and explosive training center camp, and this camp is located in northeastern Iraq. You see a picture of this camp.

...

Those helping to run this camp are Zarqawi lieutenants operating in northern Kurdish areas outside Saddam Hussein's controlled Iraq. But Baghdad has an agent in the most senior levels of the radical organization Ansar al-Islam that controls this corner of Iraq. In 2000, this agent offered al-Qaida safe haven in the region.

After we swept al-Qaida from Afghanistan, some of those members accepted this safe haven. They remain there today.

...

Now let me add one other fact. We asked a friendly security service to approach Baghdad about extraditing Zarqawi and providing information about him and his close associates. This service contacted Iraqi officials twice and we passed details that should have made it easy to find Zarqawi. The network remains in Baghdad. Zarqawi still remains at large, to come and go.



...

We know members of both organizations met repeatedly and have met at least eight times at very senior levels since the early 1990s. In 1996, a foreign security service tells us that bin Laden met with a senior Iraqi intelligence official in Khartoum and later met the director of the Iraqi intelligence service.

Saddam became more interested as he saw al-Qaida's appalling attacks. A detained al-Qaida member tells us that Saddam was more willing to assist al-Qaida after the 1998 bombings of our embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. Saddam was also impressed by al-Qaida's attacks on the USS Cole in Yemen in October 2000.

...

I should mention that "Irbil" is not in the same area as Al Qaeda's camp. Also the conditions that existed in 1996 are not the same conditions that existed in 2002. Saddam could not "extradite" Zarkawi because he didn't have the authority to send any of his troops into the area.

This little paragraph is nothing but more of your pseudology. Irbil is in northeastern Iraq less than 80 air miles west of the border of Iraq with Iran--the same area where al-Qaeda camps were located. From 1992 to 2003, Irbil was in the Kurdish autonomous zone, "outside Saddam Hussein's controlled Iraq." Nonetheless, Saddam's regime invaded Irbil in the Kurdish autonomous zone in 1996. Clearly, the phrase "outside Saddam Hussein's controlled Iraq" did not mean outside that area of Iraq which Saddam Hussein's regime was unable to enter and did enter. It meant only outside that area of Iraq which Saddam Hussein's regime was able to govern.

Your problem ican is you don't want facts to interfere with your ideology.
Like Bush, your in a state of denial.

This last statement of yours is obviously your blatant confessional of your effort to attribute your problem, xingu, to those with whom you disagree. Your problem, xingu, "is you don't want facts to interfere with your ideology. Like Bush, [you're] in a state of denial."

ican, in yet another attempt to confound the issue in order to fit his ideology wrote:

Saddam invaded Irbil in the Kurd's so-called autonomous region in northern Iraq in 1996. He chose not to do it again when the USA twice requested Saddam in 2002 and once February 5, 2003 to extradite the leadership of al-Qaeda in northern Iraq. When the USA invaded Iraq in March 20, 2003, our special forces helped the Kurds invade al-Qaeda in northern Iraq.

Saddam entered Irbil only under the solicitation of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) which was in a struggle for control of northern Iraq with the PUK. In late August of 1996 the KDP, with the help of Saddam's forces, took control of Irbil and most of the region. Massoud Barzani, the leader of the KDP and present President of the Autonomous Kurdish Government in Iraq, took control of the area after the KDP with the expressly solicited assistance of Saddam's forces.

http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/iraq/irbil.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massoud_Barzani

http://www.state.gov/secretary/former/powell/remarks/2003/17300.htm

Remarks to the United Nations Security Council

Secretary Colin L. Powell
New York City
February 5, 2003

...

Now let me add one other fact. We asked a friendly security service to approach Baghdad about extraditing Zarqawi and providing information about him and his close associates. This service contacted Iraqi officials twice and we passed details that should have made it easy to find Zarqawi. The network remains in Baghdad. Zarqawi still remains at large, to come and go.

Looks like a tiny modification of "more of the same". Send in more troops and keep doing what you've been doing.

Well then, surely you will agree that the US asking to extradite the leadership of the al-Qaeda in Iraq constitutes a solicitation by the US to extradite the leadership of the al-Qaeda in Iraq.

Surely, that US solicitation was sufficient for Saddam to enter the Kurdish autonomous zone: an area "outside Saddam Hussein's controlled Iraq."

But Saddam chose not to accomodate that US solicitation, which clearly gave Saddam adequate permission to invade the al-Qaeda camps in northeastern Iraq.

Therefore, Saddam could have extradited the leadership of al-Qaeda from northeastern Iraq without being penalized by the US (or the rest of the Coalition) if Saddam had wanted to.

I'm afraid we will continue our overt defensive strategy. If that turns out to be the case, then I will start urging we use those extra troops we are going to send to Iraq to help us leave Iraq with fewer military casualties.

The phrase "outside Saddam Hussein's controlled Iraq" does not mean outside the area in which Saddam's regime had the power, and did exercise the power to go, when it wanted to go there. That phrase merely states the fact that Saddam's regime did not possess the power to govern in that area.

Anat- Today, Saddam Hussein has no control over northern Iraq. How do you describe the structure in the region that exists today?

Talabani- We say primarily that we are Iraqis but we are not under the control of the Iraqi regime. We have our own parliament. We have our regional parliament. And, we want to continue our existence within the framework of the Iraqi state. We want a democratic and united Iraq. In such a framework Kurds would have their rights anyhow. Turkomans and the Assyrians would have their rights. We want such a federation.

ican wrote:

Well then, surely you will agree that the US asking to extradite the leadership of the al-Qaeda in Iraq constitutes a solicitation by the US to extradite the leadership of the al-Qaeda in Iraq.

This statement, taken at face value, I would agree with. This statement, taken against the details and reality of the situation that existed before the US invasion and occupation of Iraq, I would not agree with.

What "details and reality of the situation that existed before the US invasion and occupation of Iraq"? Absent a specification of such and an argument by you to support the relevance of such, you have made here a zero content argument.

Quote:

Surely, that US solicitation was sufficient for Saddam to enter the Kurdish autonomous zone: an area "outside Saddam Hussein's controlled Iraq."

This is purely conjecture.

Absent an argument to show why you think "This is purely conjecture", this argument stands as merely your opinion.

Quote:

But Saddam chose not to accomodate that US solicitation, which clearly gave Saddam adequate permission to invade the al-Qaeda camps in northeastern Iraq.

This staement is based on the previous conjecture.

Absent arguent to support your contention, this too stands as merely your opinion.

Quote:

Therefore, Saddam could have extradited the leadership of al-Qaeda from northeastern Iraq without being penalized by the US (or the rest of the Coalition) if Saddam had wanted to.

This conclusion is based on the previous statement which itself is based on the conjecture previous to itself.

Absent argument to support your conjectures that my arguments are conjectures or are suported by conjectures, this too stands as merely your opinion.

Given that this statement and conclusion are based entirely on a conjecture, there is absolutely nothing upon which to agree with them or the conjecture itself.

Absent argument to support your conjectures that my arguments are conjectures or are suported by conjectures, this too stands as merely your opinion.

One question arises as a result of this claim made by the US administration. Why would the US ask Saddam to extradite the leadership of "al-Qaeda in Iraq" if the Kurds themselves were about to strike at the "al-Qaeda" camps in northern Iraq? Why didn't the US save a lot of needless headaches dealing with Saddam, and instead ask the Kurds to extradite the leadership of "al-Qaeda in Iraq," and assist them in the endeavor?

What's most likely closer to the truth, especially in light of all of the falsities spewed by the US in it's pre-war propaganda, is that the US merely claimed it sought assistance from Saddam to enter an area he didn't control in order to extradite the "leadership of al-Qaeda in Iraq," and that Saddam didn't comply in order to further sell its war propaganda to the US public.

But then again, I didn't give much credence to what the US administration had to spew about Iraq in its war propaganda, and I certainly give it much less credence now.

An alternate explanation is that the US asked Saddam to extradite the leadership of "al-Qaeda in Iraq to avoid war with Iraq by testing Saddam's willingness/resolve to not host al-Qaeda.

Also you asked: "Why didn't the US save a lot of needless headaches dealing with Saddam, and instead ask the Kurds to extradite the leadership of "al-Qaeda in Iraq," and assist them in the endeavor?" The US did do that as part of our invasion of Iraq.

However, the US also wanted to do what it thought necessary at the time to prevent Iraq serving as host to al-Qaeda in future.

Anat- Today, Saddam Hussein has no control over northern Iraq. How do you describe the structure in the region that exists today?

Talabani- We say primarily that we are Iraqis but we are not under the control of the Iraqi regime. We have our own parliament. We have our regional parliament. And, we want to continue our existence within the framework of the Iraqi state. We want a democratic and united Iraq. In such a framework Kurds would have their rights anyhow. Turkomans and the Assyrians would have their rights. We want such a federation.

...
It would have been the Kurds responsibility to expel Zarkawi, not Saddam Hussein.

At the end of the 1990s the Kurd's invaded and defeated the then al-Qaeda supported residents of northeastern Iraq. In December 2001, the new al-Qaeda supported residents began arriving in northeastern Iraq. In the 15 months December 2001 to March 2003, the Kurds chose not to launch a 2nd effort to rid northeastern Iraq of al-Qaeda until they had the help of the US. In March 2003, the Kurds with the help of US special forces again defeated al-Qaeda in northeastern Iraq.

The US and the Kurds correctly reasoned that unless Saddam's regime were removed, al-Qaeda would come back a 3rd time after the US left Iraq. However, the cost of the US establishing a regime to replace Saddam's has proven unacceptably high, and so far unsuccessful. It is reasonable to argue that based on the results of US efforts to date, it would have been a better strategy to invade Iraq for the sole purpose of defeating new al-Qaeda based there whenever they are detected, but then leave each time, leaving Saddam's regime alone to murder thousands of its own people each month.

BTW, if we're so uptight about countries giving refuge to Al Qaeda, why aren't we attacking Pakistan?

I think because of our invasions and efforts to pacify Afghanistan and Iraq, we currently lack the capability to attack Pakistan and successfully remove al-Qaeda based there.

Why aren't we attacking Saudi Arabia for giving aid to the Sunnis in Iraq, the Sunnis that are killing our soldiers?

I think because of our invasions and efforts to pacify Afghanistan and Iraq, we currently lack the capability to attack Saudi Arabia and successfully remove al-Qaeda based there.

The reality of the situation in Iraq at the time the US administration was building its case for war was that Saddam was not in control of the area within which "al-Qaeda in Iraq" operated.
...