Told You So
by Charley Reese
Every day that passes, Americans will be less welcomed in Iraq, and I wouldn't take lightly the warning of an Iraqi cleric who said, "You should leave before we force you out."
An army that won't fight is one thing. Twenty million people willing to stab you in the back, cut your throat or toss a grenade in your soup are quite another. Our Army is trained and equipped to fight set battles against other armies. It is not trained to cope with a hostile civilian population. It will not do well, and if we insist on staying, the Iraqis will force us out, just as the Lebanese forced the Israeli army out.
And remember, life isn't a TV show. The plot won't unfold rapidly. Slowly and gradually our victory over Saddam will turn to dust, and all those snazzy plans of the arrogant neoconservatives for a new, enlightened Middle East will turn to ashes. The Middle East is full of the ruins of superpowers.
I wrote the above three paragraphs in early May 2003, shortly after U.S. forces entered Baghdad. Just wanted to remind you that I wasn't in the crowd that jumped on the bandwagon for war, as well as point out that what has happened in the past three years was easily foreseeable, even by a country boy turned journalist with no official sources.
If you want to go back even further, to 2001, you'll find that in August 2001, I warned that Americans could expect a terrorist attack inside the United States. Again, no official sources. I just used the one commodity most missing in Washington, D.C. - common sense.
You don't inject yourself into somebody else's war without getting shot at sooner or later. As it happened, we got shot sooner, just a few weeks after I wrote that August column.
Nor do you need a degree from an Ivy League university to understand that people don't like to be occupied by a foreign army. All foreign armies that have occupied other people's countries have used the excuse that they came to liberate the people. Nobody believes that anymore.
Now President Bush has let the cat out of the bag. After all this jabber about listening to the officers on the ground, he said the other day at a press conference that "future presidents" will likely make the decision to bring the troops home from Iraq. So he's talking at least four years, if not eight. If they're really going to stay until Iraq develops into a Western-style democracy, try 30 years.
But they won't stay anywhere near that long. The American people's patience with foreign wars - provided the casualties aren't too heavy and there is no cost to those at home - is about five years. The president has about two years left before he will have to brand whatever corrupt authoritarian regime that emerges in Iraq as "a great victory." A man who lies us into war will not hesitate to lie us out of one.
Then Americans will have to face the costs. After all the thousands of America's finest have been buried, after all those artificial limbs have been attached, all those mutilated faces reconstructed, all those blind given Seeing Eye dogs, all those mental cases put on a drug regimen, all those billions of dollars added to the $8 trillion American debt, then comes the question, the important question everybody is ignoring right now: What will we have bought for this terrible price? Another corrupt dictatorship in a still-unstable Middle East.
We had that before the war. Our corrupt political leaders just didn't like their corrupt political leader, so they decided on "regime change." We certainly will not have purchased a safer America. At the end of this sorry episode, America will be weaker and more hated than it is today.
What we are witnessing is the beginning of the end of Euro-American domination of the planet. When the emperors start being idiots, the empire is on the way to the ash heap of history. If you have any grandchildren, you might suggest that they study Chinese.
Anonymouse wrote:Told You So
by Charley Reese
What we are witnessing is the beginning of the end of Euro-American domination of the planet. When the emperors start being idiots, the empire is on the way to the ash heap of history. If you have any grandchildren, you might suggest that they study Chinese.
or, we could get our shite together and quit acting like knuckleheads.
i like the idea of being dominated even less than the idea of dominating everyone else.
Anonymouse wrote:
Told You So
...
Hey there Iraqis! Listen up! Do a majority of you want America's and the rest of the Coalition's troops to leave Iraq ASAP?
If yes, then form a government; any damn government; and pass a resolution ordering America and the rest of the Coalition to leave Iraq. It's simple to do! Here's a sample of such a resolution.
When your Iraqi legislature adopts it, the world will say the Iraq Legislature wrote:Whereas, America and the rest of the Coalition are making Iraqi lives miserable by remaining in Iraq; we hereby order America and the rest of the Coalition to remove all their troops and leave Iraq as soon as possible, but no later than three months from the date of this resolution.
No President of America, not even George Bush, could get away with ignoring such a resolution. For one thing, the Republicans in the Congress wouldn't stand for it. The Congress would impeach Bush pronto if he dared ignore such a resolution.
Why doesn't the Iraqi government do this already, if a majority of the Iraqi truly people want us to leave?
Is it possible that the
LIEbral opinion-news media are mis-characterizing what the Iraqi people actually want? Surely they wouldn't do that ........... would they? Hmmmm ...........
Brought to you by the American Committees on Foreign Relations ACFR NewsGroup No. 686, Friday, March 24.
Quote:Willful Ignorance
What we do, and don't, know about the Madrid train bombings and al Qaeda.
by Dan Darling
Daily Standard
03/22/2006 12:00:00 AM
Therefore we say that to force the Spanish government to withdraw from Iraq the resistance has to [be] measured by painful strikes against their forces and accompanying this a informative campaign clarifying the truth of the situation inside Iraq, and we must absolutely gain from the approaching date of general elections in Spain in the third month of the coming year. We believe that the Spanish government will not endure two or three attacks as a maximum limit because it will be forced to withdraw afterwards due to the popular pressure on it, for if its forces remain after these strikes it is almost certain the Socialist forces will win the elections, as one of the main goals of the Socialist party will be the withdrawal of the Spanish troops . . . the dominoes will fall quickly, although the basic problem will remain of toppling the first piece.
-Iraq al-Jihad, circa August 2003
"MADRID TRAIN BOMBINGS PROBE FINDS NO AL-QAEDA LINK" was the headline of a widely-circulated Associated Press story two weeks ago. Citing a "Spanish intelligence chief" and a "Western official intimately involved in counterterrorism measures in Spain," the AP reported that "A two-year probe into the Madrid train bombings concludes the Islamic terrorists who carried out the blasts were homegrown radicals acting on their own rather than at the behest of Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network." While acknowledging that the masterminds behind the attack were "likely motivated by bin Laden's October 2003 call for attacks on European countries
that supported the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq" and that "the plotters had links to other Muslim radicals in western Europe," the AP cited the Spanish intelligence chief as saying that there were "no telephone calls between the Madrid bombers and al Qaeda and no money transfers" and "no evidence they were in contact with the al Qaeda leader's inner circle."
Such a view is by no means new. Indeed, in June 2005 Dateline NBC reported that "Madrid is cited as the key turning point in the evolution of Islamic terror. Initially, Spanish and U.S. counterterrorism officials sought links between al-Qaeda (or, as the CIA now describes it, 'al-Qaeda Central'). But quickly they realized there weren't any. . . . It required no central direction from the mountains of Pakistan, simply a charismatic leader with links to men trained in the war in Afghanistan against the Soviet Union."
SUCH A VIEW is no doubt attractive, but there are serious problems with it. As the March 11 Commission (an independent Spanish investigation into the attacks parallel to the U.S. 9/11 Commission) noted, there were numerous connections between the masterminds of the 3/11 attacks, al Qaeda, and a number of known al Qaeda associate groups including Ansar al-Islam, the Moroccan Islamic Combatant Group (and its offshoot Salafi Jihad), and Abu Musab Zarqawi's al Qaeda in Iraq (then al-Tawhid wal Jihad). There is also the al Qaeda strategy document Iraq al-Jihad, which appears to lay out in detail plans for attacks in Spain several months prior to the country's elections.
According to the Norwegian Defense Research Establishment (FFI)'s report on the motivations of Islamist terrorism in Europe, "The researchers from the FFI consider it likely that the terrorists behind the Madrid massacre were familiar with the contents of this strategy document" as well as that "the evidence leaves few doubts that the attacks in Madrid were carried out by al-Qaeda affiliates in Spain."
Most importantly, the March 11 Commission identified former Egyptian army explosives expert Rabei Osman Sayed Ahmed as one of the planners of the Madrid bombings. According to an arrest warrant issued by Spanish judge Juan del Olmo, Ahmed is "a suspected member of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad" who "took over leadership of a group of followers of extremist Islamist ideology, supporters of the Jihad and of Osama bin Laden" while living in Madrid. Now on trial in Milan for international terrorism, Ahmed was wiretapped by Italian authorities telling an associate that "The Madrid attack is my project and those who died as martyrs are my dearest friends."
Given that Egyptian Islamic Jihad is currently headed by al Qaeda second-in-command Ayman al-Zawahiri, one would think that such a statement from one of its members, to say nothing of various statements from senior Spanish and Italian law enforcement and judicial officials, would settle the issue of al Qaeda involvement in the Madrid train bombings once and for all.
(Moreover, a key piece of the Spanish intelligence chief's claims, that no money transfers occurred between al Qaeda and the masterminds of the Madrid
bombings, may also be in doubt. Both El Mundo and Corriere della Sera reported in September 2004 that Ahmed stated in a conversation wiretapped by Italian authorities that during his time in Madrid he was being financed by Sheikh Salman al-Awdah, a radical Saudi cleric who has been described as a "friend" of Osama bin Laden and been praised by the al Qaeda leader for his support in a number of al Qaeda propaganda videos.)
THE SPANISH INTELLIGENCE CHIEF'S CLAIM that there was no al Qaeda link to the Madrid bombings might be better understood within the context of Spanish domestic politics. After all, if the goal of the attacks was to topple the Popular Party government in order to bring about a Spanish withdrawal from Iraq, it would seem that al Qaeda was successful both in achieving the desired results and reading the Spanish political scene--which the Zapatero government might, understandably, be loathe to admit.
What is alarming is that U.S. counterterrorism officials have apparently also missed these tell-tale signs of al Qaeda involvement in connection with a major terrorist attack in a European capital. Although this might not be very surprising: According to a May 2004 article in U.S. News & World Report, when asked about Iraq al-Jihad "Analysts at the Central Intelligence Agency also found the article unremarkable, 'a document like any number of other documents,' says one intelligence official."
Perhaps it was, but it was almost certainly a document whose online publication and dissemination had tragic consequences for the Spanish people.
ANY NUMBER OF INVESTIGATIONS into U.S. intelligence failures prior to 9/11 have revealed key gaps in the understanding of al Qaeda. As the FFI report on Islamist terrorism in Europe makes clear, there are no strict organizational division between al Qaeda and its various allies and associate groups, thus making the overlap between them fluid and difficult for investigators to track.
To rule out an al Qaeda link to the Madrid bombers at this stage would seem counterintuitive in light of the information currently available from any number of credible sources. For instance, Judge Juan del Olmo, who is heading up the official Spanish investigation into the attacks, has said that the Madrid bombings were "were carried out by a local cell linked to a international terrorist network . . . of Islamic fanatics which planted the bombs had links stretching through France, Belgium, Italy, Morocco and to Iraq." Is it that much to ask that the U.S. intelligence community be at least as informed as members of the Spanish judiciary?
Dan Darling is a counterterrorism consultant for the Manhattan Institute Center for Policing Terrorism.
Quote:Why doesn't the Iraqi government do this already, if a majority of the Iraqi truly people want us to leave?
Is it possible that the LIEbral opinion-news media are mis-characterizing what the Iraqi people actually want? Surely they wouldn't do that ........... would they? Hmmmm ...........
Right now they have no government but when the did, they didn't listen to the people just like our leaders don't always listen to us
The "LIEbral" should be against the rules, but in any case, it has gone past tired.
NY Times to report on secret memo of Bush, Blair meeting before Iraq war
RAW STORY
Published: Sunday March 26, 2006
The New York Times is planning an article on a secret memo from January 2003 that "sheds light on the buildup and decision-making process before the invasion of Iraq," RAW STORY has learned.
The article, written by Don Van Natta Jr., most likely addresses the Jan. 31, 2003 memorandum which was leaked to a British author and referenced in February of this year. It is unknown whether or not The New York Times was able to obtain a copy of the secret memo, and it remains possible that the Times has acquired a different memo.
According to an article on the memo published by the Guardian in February, "Mr Bush made it clear the US intended to invade whether or not there was a second UN resolution and even if UN inspectors found no evidence of a banned Iraqi weapons programme."
"The diplomatic strategy had to be arranged around the military planning", The Guardian reported that Bush told Blair. The prime minister is said to have raised no objection. He is quoted as saying he was "solidly with the president and ready to do whatever it took to disarm Saddam".
The memo is also said to reveal that President Bush suggested "flying U2 reconnaissance aircraft planes with fighter cover over Iraq, painted in UN colours," in order to provoke Saddam to shoot on them, therefore putting Iraq in breach of United Nations resolutions.
The memo was first obtained by Philippe Sands, a professor of international law at a British university, who wrote about it in an updated edition of his book, Lawless World.
DEVELOPING...
Can this be used to indict the president for starting a war on false justifications?
revel wrote:The "LIEbral" should be against the rules, but in any case, it has gone past tired.
hahahahaha!! boy.. am i glad we're on the same side !
March 27, 2006
In an Election Year, a Shift in Public Opinion on the War
By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK and ADAM NAGOURNEY
ALBUQUERQUE, March 25 ?- Neil Mondragon watched with approval at an auto repair shop recently as Representative Heather A. Wilson, a New Mexico Republican visiting her district, dropped into the pit and drained the oil from a car.
Afterward, Mr. Mondragon recalled how he had backed Ms. Wilson, a supporter of the Iraq war, in her race for Congress two years ago. He, too, supported the war.
But now, Mr. Mondragon said, it is time to bring the troops home. And he is leaning toward voting for Ms. Wilson's opponent, Patricia Madrid, who has called for pulling the troops out of Iraq by the end of the year.
"The way I see the situation is, we have done what we had to," said Mr. Mondragon, 27, whose brother fought in the war and returned with post-traumatic stress disorder. "I don't see the point of having so many guys over there right now. We can't just stay there and baby-sit forever."
Mr. Mondragon is far from alone in reassessing his view of the war that has come to define George W. Bush's presidency.
Mr. Bush is pressing ahead with an intensified effort to shore up support for the war, but an increasingly skeptical and pessimistic public is putting pressure on Congress about the wisdom behind it, testing the political support for the White House's determination to remain in Iraq.
The results have been on display over the past week as members of Congress returned home and heard first-hand what public opinion polls have been indicating.
"We have been there now for three years, and we have suffered more losses than I think most people thought we would see," Representative Steve Chabot, an Ohio Republican from a relatively conservative district near Cincinnati, said in an interview on Friday. "You may have the president or others now who say we always knew this would be a long slog, but I think most people did not expect it to be as hard as it has been."
In Connecticut, Representative Christopher Shays, a Republican who is one of the Democrats' top targets this year in the midterm elections, has distanced himself from the White House even as he has emphasized his support for the war, saying the administration has made "huge mistakes" by allowing looting, disbanding the Iraqi army and failing to have enough troops on the ground
Senator Mike DeWine, an Ohio Republican who is also facing a tough re-election challenge, said that "people are not optimistic about what they see."
Even Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, a Florida Republican who has made her support for the war a centerpiece of her campaign, said the public seemed "to be losing patience" with the war.
Interviews with voters, elected officials and candidates around the country suggest a deepening and hardening opposition to the war. Historians and analysts said this might mark a turning point in public perception.
"I'm less optimistic because I see the fatalities every day," said Angela Kirby, 32, a lawyer from St. Louis who initially supported the war. "And the longer it goes on, the less optimistic I am."
Here in New Mexico, Dollie Shoun, 67, said she had gone from being an ardent supporter of the war and the president to a fierce critic of both.
"There has been too many deaths, and it is time for them to come back home," Ms. Shoun said. Speaking of Mr. Bush, she added: "I was very much for him, but I don't trust him at this point in time."
Polls have found that support for the war and expectations about its outcome have reached their lowest level since the invasion. A Pew Research Center poll this week found that 66 percent of respondents said the United States was losing ground in preventing a civil war in Iraq, a jump of 18 percent since January.
The Pew poll also found that 49 percent now believed that the United States would succeed in Iraq, compared with 60 percent last July. A CBS News poll completed two weeks ago found that a majority (54 percent) believed Iraq would never become a stable democracy.
Richard B. Wirthlin, who was the pollster for President Ronald Reagan, says he sees the beginning of a decisive turn in public opinion against the war. "It is hard for me to imagine any set of circumstances that would lead to an enhancement of the public support that we have seen," he said. "It is more likely to go down, and the question is how far and how fast."
Even more problematic for the administration, pollsters have found, is that Americans who have soured on the war include many independent voters and some self-described Republicans.
William Kristol, editor of the conservative Weekly Standard, argued that views on the war remained fluid and that the White House could still rally support for the effort if Americans "are convinced we can win."
A perception of progress on the ground could help turn public opinion back toward Mr. Bush's way, some analysts said. As it is, a significant number of Americans, including a majority of Republicans, want Mr. Bush to continue the war.
"Bush is right in being optimistic," said Susan Knapp, 64, a Florida Republican. "I listened to the news this morning and there are people who think he's out of touch with reality, but in fact I think he knows better than most of us about what is going on, and he does know the situation."
And in interviews, some respondents said they agreed with Mr. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney that journalists were exaggerating the bad news. "I have quite a few friends who have served over there and they come back with a different story than the media portrays," said Jerry Brown, a Republican in Fairfield County, Conn.
For Mr. Bush today, as it was for Presidents Lyndon B. Johnson and Richard M. Nixon decades ago, the question is how long can he continue fighting an unpopular war without it crippling his presidency by eroding trust in his judgment and credibility.
"Once the public loses confidence in a president's leadership at a time of war, once they don't trust him anymore, once his credibility is sharply diminished, how does he get it back?" said Robert Dallek, a historian who has written biographies of Johnson and Nixon.
The anxiety about the war could be seen in contested districts around the country. In recent weeks, Representative Wilson of New Mexico has been sharply critical of the administration on issues like domestic surveillance and its public projections about the war. Ms. Wilson said she worried that public opinion could turn decisively against the war in Iraq as it did during the Vietnam War. "Wasn't it Kissinger who said the acid test of foreign policy is public support?" she said.
In Connecticut, Diane Farrell, a Democrat challenging Mr. Shays, said she had consistently run into voters who drew comparisons between Iraq and Vietnam.
"People are throwing up their hands between the civil unrest, the number of deaths and the cost to taxpayers," Ms. Farrell said. "People feel worn out by the war, and they don't see an end. "
At the Capitol recently, Senator John W. Warner, a Virginia Republican who was the secretary of the Navy during part of the Vietnam War, was introduced to a visiting Iraqi. Mr. Warner proceeded to lecture her about the need for Iraqis to form a new government, and fast.
"The American people have a mind of their own," he told her, recalling how he watched during the Vietnam War as public opinion turned against the conflict ?- and inevitably Congress followed. In a later conversation, Mr. Warner said that such a moment had not been reached yet, but he warned that he sensed a "certain degree of impatience" in the country and around the world.
David D. Kirkpatrick reported from Albuquerque, N.M., for this article, and Adam Nagourney from Washington. Reporting was contributed by Coke Ellington in Alabama, Ellen F. Harris in St. Louis, Stacey Stowe in Connecticut, and Andrea Zarate in Miami.
March 27, 2006
Military
Shiite Fighters Clash With G.I.'s and Iraqi Forces
By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN
BAGHDAD, Iraq, March 26 ?- American and Iraqi government forces clashed with Shiite militiamen in Baghdad on Sunday night in the most serious confrontation in months, and Iraqi security officials said 17 people had been killed in a mosque, including its 80-year-old imam.
The American military, clearly worried about exacerbating a combustible situation that many Iraqis are already describing as civil war, denied that American forces had entered the mosque. But it said in a statement that 16 insurgents had been killed and 15 captured in a nearby combat operation against a terrorist cell.
The differing versions of what happened seemed to raise a broader question about who is in control of Iraq's security at a time when Iraqi politicians still have not formed a unified government, sectarian tensions are higher than ever and mutilated bodies keep surfacing on the streets. On Sunday, Iraqi authorities found 10 bodies in Baghdad and said they were investigating a report that 30 men were beheaded near Baquba.
American officials are now saying that Shiite militias are the No. 1 problem in Iraq, more dangerous than the Sunni-led insurgents who for nearly the past three years have been branded the gravest security threat.
Shiite militias have been accused of running death squads that kidnap and brutalize Sunni men, and on Sunday the American militay said the cell its forces raided had kidnapped Iraq civilians.
But the deadly clash could reopen an old wound. The Iraqis who were killed had apparently worked for Moktada al-Sadr, a young radical Shiite cleric with ties to Iran who has led several bloody rebellions against American forces.
Mr. Sadr has recently become much more politically aggressive and he is considered a pivotal force in the maneuvering over the delayed formation of a new government.
Earlier on Sunday, a mortar shell nearly hit Mr. Sadr's home in the southern holy city of Najaf. Immediately he accused the Americans of trying to kill him.
American officials have been more overt in the past week than ever in blaming Mr. Sadr's militia for a wave of sectarian bloodshed that seems to have no end.
On Sunday night, American and Iraqi Army forces surrounded a mosque in northeast Baghdad used by Mr. Sadr's troops as a headquarters, Iraqi officials said. Helicopters buzzed overhead as a fleet of heavily armed Humvees sealed off the exits, witnesses said, and when soldiers tried to enter the mosque, shooting erupted, and a heavy-caliber gun battle raged for the next hour.
The Interior Ministry said 17 people had been killed, including the mosque's 80-year-old imam and other civilians.
Sheik Yousif al-Nasiri, an aide to Mr. Sadr, said that 25 people had been killed and that American troops had shot the mosque guards and then burst inside and killed civilians.
It's still not a civiL war.
The number of deaths increases steadily: now it is said, US forces killed at least 22 people and wounded eight - in an incident most likely to lead to increased tensions with not only the the Shia community.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/27/international/europe/27memo.html?th&emc=th
So. Bush and Blair lied about the justification for war.
What else did they lie about? Almost everything else.
The invasion of Iraq is a crime.
Quote from above attributed article:
Quote:American officials are now saying that Shiite militias are the No. 1 problem in Iraq, more dangerous than the Sunni-led insurgents who for nearly the past three years have been branded the gravest security threat.
So now, both parties to this 'non-civil' situation have their military arms at the ready, and very active.
Do people have to declare it a civil war, in words, for it to be a civil war?
And bushco go around spinning and twirling in their 'perception is everything' attempts.
Have we sided with the Sunni's then?
Full article can be found at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/27/international/europe/27memo.html?th=&emc=th&pagewanted=print
"March 27, 2006
Leaders
Bush Was Set on Path to War, Memo by British Adviser Says
By DON VAN NATTA Jr.
LONDON ?- In the weeks before the United States-led invasion of Iraq, as the United States and Britain pressed for a second United Nations resolution condemning Iraq, President Bush's public ultimatum to Saddam Hussein was blunt: Disarm or face war.
But behind closed doors, the president was certain that war was inevitable. During a private two-hour meeting in the Oval Office on Jan. 31, 2003, he made clear to Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain that he was determined to invade Iraq without the second resolution, or even if international arms inspectors failed to find unconventional weapons, said a confidential memo about the meeting written by Mr. Blair's top foreign policy adviser and reviewed by The New York Times."
I find this remarkable in the light of what happens just now .... and from the very beginning onwards:
Quote:Bush predicted that it was "unlikely there would be internecine warfare between the different religious and ethnic groups." Blair agreed with that assessment.
Can there be any more doubt that Bush was determined to go to war, despite any weapons of mass destruction found?
Sheesh.
Cycloptichorn
