revel wrote:I await with breathless anticipation the bloody details. Finally some shock and awe, huh?
hope you're being sarcastic
revel wrote:I await with breathless anticipation the bloody details. Finally some shock and awe, huh?
Can't figure out any good reason for this. Sincere
or sarcastic.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Glad to report it's an air assault, rather than strike, which means a much reduced likelihood of civilian casualties.
Many, many blackhawks. Surgical deployment. They are saying it's an operation that looks like, and is executed just like Black Hawk Down. Hope it has a much better result.
Many caches of weapons are reported. FOX news reporter in the Pentagon says he can't say yet if high value targets prompted this assault.
Snood, sarcastic. Should have made it clear.
Three years into this and we are still having to use this much force. With any kind of military action, there is always the risk of civilian casualties. Not only that, but who really knows if the people who are being targeted are "insurgents." I think of all the pre war statements about how quickly it was going to over with and we were going to be greeted as liberators. I guess I just don't see this military action as the positive considering we shouldn't even be there in the first place. The way they go about on TV, you would think it was some kind of ball game or something rather than real lives at stake.
What I don't understand is how this administration keeps telling the American People that "progress" is being made in Iraq while a civil war is in progress. If this is not a civil war, what does a civil war look like? Who defines civil wars? Am I missing something? Please clarify for me, because I seem to be in the minority to believe we have already failed in Iraq with all the lives being lost and the treasury we are expending for a lost cause.
And the worst thing is, the drumbeats for a war with Iran beat louder and louder every day.
Cycloptichorn
Americans still don't realize it, but that's the best way to destroy America. China and Japan already own our money, Americans are up to our eyeballs in debt, the US currency is floating all over this planet like monopoly money, and this government still has the balls to talk about a war in Iran. Production of war machines has no consumer value; it only feeds inflation with more money being spent that we don't have. Inflation, anyone? Better start spending whatever money you have saved, because tomorrow, it's not going to have any value.
It's simply a matter of macro-economics.
Something to read:
Reports From the Future of Iraq Project
Source: State Department (via The Memory Hole)
"Over 1,200 Pages of Previously Unavailable Reports From State Dept Planning for Post-Saddam Iraq."
Quote:>>> Starting in October 2001, about a year and a half before the US and its allies invaded Iraq, the State Department spearheaded an effort called the Future of Iraq Project. Dozens of Iraqi exiles and international experts were brought together to figure out how to create a new Iraq should Saddam Hussein somehow be taken out of power.
Within the project, seventeen working groups covered such areas as the justice system, local government, agriculture, media, education, and oil. The various working groups began meeting in July 2002 and continued through March/April 2003. Twelve of the groups released reports. The project cost $5 million.
The project's observations and recommendations were almost wholly ignored by the administration during its pre-war planning for the occupation. Soon after the invasion, though, CD-ROMs of the reports were sent to the staff of the Coalition Provisional Authority.
Among other things, the working groups foresaw the widespread looting in the aftermath of invasion and warned against quickly disbanding the Iraqi Army.
The project's reports have never been made available to the public. In October 2003, "Congressional officials" allowed two New York Times reporters to view the reports, but they were not allowed to take them. Upon reading this, I immediately filed a Freedom of Information Act request for the reports, which was granted in February 2006. Eight of the reports were released in their entirety, while the rest were redacted to some degree. I have scanned them and created a PDF file of each report, all of which are posted to the left.
Walter, Not surprising; this administration has been successful in ignoring the most important information on most things they subsequently take action for all the wrong reasons and fail. Everybody that understands anything about Bushco is his incompetence. He's a tyrant with no brains.
That certainly is encouraging news, eh?
Cynics here have said the military activity north of Baghdad is to boost flagging war ratings in the USA.
Do you think it is? Or have you any reliable information yet about the objectives?
There is sectarian killings going on daily that the American military nor the Iraq police will or can control. Conclusion: Iraq is in a civil war.
But don't tell the Americans, because we are making "progress."
McTag wrote:Cynics here have said the military activity north of Baghdad is to boost flagging war ratings in the USA.
Do you think it is? Or have you any reliable information yet about the objectives?
That was my very first thought! Every time they need a boost, they throw a few bodies ti the fascist mob.
Anon
http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=2842
Here's a look at Iraq War Pollyannas back in 2002, crowing about the success of the war and calling Dems idiots for predicting Civil War and failure.
Cycloptichorn
No. Actually, the righties kept mentioning the fact that Iraq had two successful "democratic" elections with the highest turnout, and it was only a matter of time when their government would be telling our military to leave. This, while our government continued to construct permanent bases in Iraq, and the largest American embassy in the world. Some people are just blind and ignorant.
Cycloptichorn wrote:http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=2842
Here's a look at Iraq War Pollyannas back in 2002, crowing about the success of the war and calling Dems idiots for predicting Civil War and failure.
Cycloptichorn
I would love to carve each statement onto a 1X8 plank, and shove it up each respective rightwingers butt!!
Anon
That's not the only problem with this president and congress.
March 16, 2006
Senate Votes to Raise U.S. Debt Limit to Nearly $9 Trillion "years of Republican mismanagement" have driven the nation deep into the red.
"Any objective analysis of our country's fiscal history would have to conclude this administration and this rubberstamping Republican Congress are the most fiscally irresponsible in the history of our country," Mr. Reid said. "In fact, no other president or Congress even comes close."
Senator Charles E. Grassley, the Iowa Republican who heads the Senate Finance Committee, said before the vote that an increase in the debt limit to $8.97 trillion was essential to preserve "the full faith and credit of the federal government," and that spending for the Iraq war and for antiterrorism measures had helped to push up spending.
But the vote, essential or not, put Republicans in the embarrassing position of calling officially for more debt, and it let Democrats speak out for fiscal restraint. Only three Republican senators, Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, John Ensign of Nevada and Conrad Burns of Montana, voted against raising the debt limit.
"We don't have too little money in the government," Mr. Coburn said on Wednesday. "What we have is not enough will to cut the spending or reform the programs."
Lawmakers bemoan the overall debt and annual deficits, but few show much enthusiasm for casting tough votes to cut into them, especially in an election year. It was quite the contrary in the House and Senate on Wednesday as efforts to offset new spending were blocked and more dollars were directed to popular causes.
CI
It just goes to show you that they don't give a **** that they're blowing the national treasury, because it's being done to achieve the right wing agenda.
If we were spending the money helping our own people, ralther than conquering and killing Iraqis, they would be having a bloody fit!
Anon
cicerone imposter wrote:YOu can do that on your own dollar and risk to life and limb.
Yes, of course! Also, I can try to persuade others that securing the liberty of all innocents throughout the world is in each individuals self-interest.
Drawing everyone's attention to this very interesting article:
Quote:Saddam's Delusions: The View from the Inside
By Kevin Woods, James Lacey, and Williamson Murray
From
Foreign Affairs, May/June 2006
Summary: A special, double-length article from the upcoming May/June issue of Foreign Affairs, presenting key excerpts from the recently declassified book-length report of the USJFCOM Iraqi Perspectives Project.
Kevin Woods is a defense analyst in Washington, D.C. James Lacey is a military analyst for the U.S. Joint Forces Command. Williamson Murray is Class of 1957 Distinguished Visiting Professor of History at the U.S. Naval Academy. Along with Mark Stout and Michael Pease, they were the principal participants in the USJFCOM Iraqi Perspectives Project.
EDITOR'S NOTE: The fall of Baghdad in April 2003 opened one of the most secretive and brutal governments in history to outside scrutiny. For the first time since the end of World War II, American analysts did not have to guess what had happened on the other side of a conflict but could actually read the defeated enemy's documents and interrogate its leading figures. To make the most of this unique opportunity, the U.S. Joint Forces Command (USJFCOM) commissioned a comprehensive study of the inner workings and behavior of Saddam Hussein's regime based on previously inaccessible primary sources. Drawing on interviews with dozens of captured senior Iraqi military and political leaders and hundreds of thousands of official Iraqi documents (hundreds of them fully translated), this two-year project has changed our understanding of the war from the ground up. The study was partially declassified in late February; its key findings are presented here.
...
And here is a
link to the website where the US has posted unclassified documents it has captured in Iraq.
