THE US, THE UN AND IRAQ, ELEVENTH THREAD

Cycloptichorn wrote:

Ican,

What if the number never drops down to 30 a day?

Cycloptichorn

The USA will have a permanent job!

Ask me that question again in 26 years!

What if hateful invidious collectivists /I] never wise up?

ican711nm wrote:

Cycloptichorn wrote:

Ican,

What if the number never drops down to 30 a day?

Cycloptichorn

The USA will have a permanent job!

Ask me that question again in 26 years!

What if hateful invidious collectivists /I] never wise up?

I think that most Americans would disagree that it is our job, permanently, to provide security for other countries.


Cycloptichorn

ican711nm wrote:

Cycloptichorn wrote:

Ican,

What if the number never drops down to 30 a day?

Cycloptichorn

The USA will have a permanent job!

Ask me that question again in 26 years!

What if hateful invidious collectivists never wise up?

I think that most Americans would disagree that it is our job, permanently, to provide security for other countries.

Do you really think I'm hateful? Invidious?

Cycloptichorn

Cycloptichorn wrote:

ican711nm wrote:

Cycloptichorn wrote:

Ican,

What if the number never drops down to 30 a day?

Cycloptichorn

The USA will have a permanent job!

Ask me that question again in 26 years!

What if hateful invidious collectivists never wise up?

I think that most Americans would disagree that it is our job, permanently, to provide security for other countries.

Do you really think I'm hateful? Invidious?

Cycloptichorn

Like I said, ask me that question again in 26 years. I expect that moments before you actually do that, you will yourself recognize that the answer to that question is irrelevant.

Do you really think I was talking about you when I asked: What if hateful invidious collectivists never wise up?

...

By your standards, nothing is proof of anything. What would you consider to in fact be proof?
...
Cycloptichorn

...

Well, you were talking to me, surely you understand that it's difficult to tell the difference.

Cycloptichorn

ican711nm wrote:

Cycloptichorn wrote:

Ican,

What if the number never drops down to 30 a day?

Cycloptichorn

The USA will have a permanent job!

Ask me that question again in 26 years!

What if hateful invidious collectivists /I] never wise up?

I think that most Americans would disagree that it is our job, permanently, to provide security for other countries.

Do you really think I'm hateful? Invidious?

Cycloptichorn

Cycloptichorn wrote:

ican711nm wrote:

Cycloptichorn wrote:

Ican,

What if the number never drops down to 30 a day?

Cycloptichorn

The USA will have a permanent job!

Ask me that question again in 26 years!

What if hateful invidious collectivists never wise up?

I think that most Americans would disagree that it is our job, permanently, to provide security for other countries.

Do you really think I'm hateful? Invidious?

Cycloptichorn

I have to disagree with this statement.
If you are correct, we would not be a part of NATO, where we provide the bulk of the men and equipment.
We would not have troops and bases in Japan or anywhere else we have them.
We provided security for Europe during the cold war, we still provide security for South Korea, and it could be said that, thru SAC and NORAD, we provide security for the whole western hemisphere.

Should we stop all of those operations?
Should we withdraw from all of the treaties we have signed?

Are you so positive that most Americans agree with you?
I dont think so.

Study: 1 Out of 4 Homeless Are Veterans

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: November 7, 2007
Filed at 11:25 p.m. ET

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Veterans make up one in four homeless people in the United States, though they are only 11 percent of the general adult population, according to a report to be released Thursday.

Ain't this enough to make you cry?

Quote:

Study: 1 Out of 4 Homeless Are Veterans

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: November 7, 2007
Filed at 11:25 p.m. ET

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Veterans make up one in four homeless people in the United States, though they are only 11 percent of the general adult population, according to a report to be released Thursday.

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Homeless-Veterans.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

At what will soon be a total tab of $576 billion, the Iraq war is second in cost only to World War II. According to CNN's report, every minute troops are deployed in Iraq, the American public pays $200,000 to keep them there. Since the money is not allocated by Congress as part of the regular budget, there is little oversight of how it is spent and Billions of dollars remain unaccounted for in Iraq as the costs continue to mount.

"There's even funding that the Congressional Research Service and the Congressional Budget Office identify that they don't have any idea where the funding went," Says Travis Sharp of the Arms Control and Non-Proliferation Center. "They don't know if it went for weapons systems, they don't know if it was operating costs in Iraq and Afghanistan."

Additionally, the current conflict is the first in American history not to be paid for in real time. President Roosevelt raised funds for the Second World War by selling war bonds and Americans paid higher taxes throughout the Vietnam era. The Bush administration, however, is well known for its propensity to cut taxes and increase spending.

"Americans have not paid higher taxes to pay for this war, in fact we've had a tax cut, nor have we seen a reduction in domestic spending" Says Robert Hormats of Goldman Sachs, author of The Price of Liberty, a new book examining the history of American military funding. "We've in effected shifted the cost of this war to future generations."

Though 65% of the American public now opposes United States involvement in Iraq according to CNN's poll, Congress still shows no signs of significantly reducing its military or domestic spending and President Bush has stated time and again his opposition to raising taxes.

The following video is from CNN's Your World Today, broadcast on November 2, 2007.

"Every company will be subject to such examination, and any company that does not follow the law will lose its license," the minister, Jawad al-Bolani, said of the planned raids. "They are called security companies. They are not called violate-the-law companies..."

Within Baghdad's relatively safe and heavily guarded Green Zone, there have been early indications of a battle over who controls Iraqi streets. Private security guards say that Iraqi police officers have already descended on Western compounds and stopped vehicles driven by Westerners to check for weapons violations in recent weeks.

Any extension of those measures into the rest of the country, known as the Red Zone, could quickly turn into armed confrontation. Westerners are wary of Interior Ministry checkpoints, some of which have been fake, as well as of ministry units, which are sometimes militia-controlled and have been implicated in sectarian killings. Western convoys routinely have to choose between the risk of stopping and the risk of accelerating past what appear to be official Iraqi forces.

And because Western convoys run by private security companies are often protecting senior American civilian and military officials, the Iraqi government's struggle with the companies has in some cases become a sort of proxy tug-of-war with the United States.

Eight people who responded to the shootings -- including media network and Justice Ministry guards and an Iraqi army commander -- and five network officials in the compound said none of the slain guards had fired on the Justice Ministry, where a U.S. diplomat was in a meeting. An Iraqi police report described the shootings as "an act of terrorism" and said Blackwater "caused the incident." The media network concluded that the guards were killed "without any provocation."

The U.S. government reached a different conclusion. Based on information from the Blackwater guards, who said they were fired upon, the State Department determined that the security team's actions "fell within approved rules governing the use of force," according to an official from the department's Bureau of Diplomatic Security. Neither U.S. Embassy officials nor Blackwater representatives interviewed witnesses or returned to the network, less than a quarter-mile from Baghdad's Green Zone, to investigate.

The incident shows how American officials responsible for overseeing the security company conducted only a cursory investigation when Blackwater guards opened fire.

http://www.iraqbodycount.org/database/
A Month by Month, Daily Average of IBC's Count of Violent Deaths in Iraq, After April 30, 2007:
______________________________________________________________________________

May = 3,755 / 31 = ………………... 121 per day

…………….. Surge fully operational in June ……………..

June = 2,386 / 30 = …………......… 80 per day.
July = 2,077 / 31 = ………….......... 67 per day.
August = 2,084 / 31 = ……...…..... 67 per day.
September = 1,333 / 30 = ………... 44 per day.
October = 1049 / 25 = ……………...... 42 per day.* {1049 = 83,175 - 82,126}
November = ----? / 30 = ----? per day.**
December= ----? / 31 = ----? per day.**

… *Data currently available for only first 25 days of this month.
… **Data not yet available.
_____________________________________________________________________________

As of September 30, 2007, Total Iraq Violent Deaths since January 1, 2003 = 82,126
_____________________________________________________________________________

Daily Average Violent Deaths in Iraq--PRE and POST January 1, 2003:

PRE = 1/1/1979 - 12/31/2002 = 1,229,210/ 8,766 days = 140 per day;

POST = 1/1/2003 - 10/25/2007 = 83,175/1,759 days = …... 47 per day;

PRE / POST = 140/47 = 2.97.
_____________________________________________________________________________

We must win and succeed in Iraq, because we Americans will suffer significant losses of our freedoms, if we do not win and succeed in Iraq.

The USA wins and succeeds in Iraq when the daily rate of violent deaths in Iraq decreases below 30, remains less than 30, while we are removing our troops, and remains less than 30 for at least a year after we have completed our departure.

http://www.icasualties.org
MILITARY FATALITIES IN IRAQ BY MONTH
November 9, 2007
Month .... Totals ……. US ….. UK …. OCC …. DA
11-2007 ...... 15 ……….. 14 ……. 1 …….. 0 ……. 2
10-2007 ...... 40 ……….. 38 …... 1 …….. 1 ……. 1
9-2007 ........ 69 ……….. 65 ……. 2 …….. 2 ……. 2
8-2007 ........ 88 ……….. 84 ……. 4 …….. 0 ……. 3
7-2007 ........ 87 ……….. 78 ……. 8 …….. 1 ……. 3
6-2007 ….... 108 ………. 101 ……. 7 …….. 0 ……. 4
5-2007 ....... 131 ……… 126 ….. 3 …….. 2 ……. 4
4-2007 ....... 117 …….. 104 …… 12 …….. 1 ……. 4
3-2007 ........ 82 ……….. 81 ….… 1 ……… 0 ……. 3
2-2007 ........ 84 ……….. 81 ….… 3 ……… 1 ……. 3
1-2007 ........ 86 ……….. 83 ….… 3 ……… 0 ……. 3

...

3-2003 ….... 92 ....... 65 ….... 27 …….... 0 ……. 3 …
Total ....... 4162 …... 3858 …. 171 ..... 133 …… 2

US=United States
UK=United Kingdom
OCC=Other Coalition Countries
DA=Daily Average (for the month)

Judges vs. Jihadis: Courts are of limited use in the fight against terror.
By DAVID B. RIVKIN JR. and LEE A. CASEY
November 8, 2007; Page A23 Wall Street Journal

Advocates of a "law enforcement" approach to fighting transnational terror claimed vindication last week when 21 of 28 accused terrorists were convicted in Madrid. Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero described the Oct. 31 verdicts as "justice" and urged Spain to "look to the future." It is, of course, the future that is at issue.

Spain has every right to celebrate the capture, trial and conviction of these 21 individuals either implicated in helping to organize the March 11, 2004, train bombings in Madrid that killed 191 people, or otherwise associated with terrorism. Yet there is little reason to believe that the verdicts will have any measurable deterrent effect on jihadists, who remain determined to strike at the West's civilian populations whenever opportunity allows. Prevention remains key to defeating this threat.


Here, the justice system will be of limited utility because -- whether organized under the Civil Law (like Spain and most of Europe) or the Common Law (like the U.S.) -- it is not designed to anticipate and stop criminal behavior before it takes place. At least since the Enlightenment, Western judicial institutions have focused on dealing with society's deviants, rather than on meeting the threat of foreign attack, and have sought to prevent criminal behavior by inculcating a dread -- in the form of an individual's respect for, rather than terror of, the law.

As the great Italian legal scholar and reformer Beccaria wrote in the 1760s, to prevent crime, "make sure that men fear the laws and only the laws." Where respect fails, of course, there also is fear of punishment under the law -- deterrence. The system breaks down, however, when the criminals neither have respect for the law nor fear its potential punishments.

This is exactly the situation in which the West now finds itself. The followers of violent jihad do not respect the laws of democratic governments, but claim a superior legitimacy in the form of their own interpretation of Islam's Quran and Shariah law. Many of them also do not fear punishment. If proof of this were needed, it can be found both in the very nature of al Qaeda's Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the U.S. by suicidal operatives, and the self-immolation of the seven ringleaders who masterminded the 2004 attacks on Madrid. When Spanish police closed in on their safe house outside that city, these men blew up the house -- and themselves.

To be sure, since 9/11 a number of European countries -- some experienced in fighting home-grown terror movements such as the IRA in Britain and the ETA in Spain -- have made their judicial systems more capable of meeting the challenge. Britain, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Spain have all adopted new or expanded counterterrorism legislation. They've all taken one or more of the following actions: establishing or broadening the offense of terrorism to include membership in a terrorist organization; approving sometimes long pretrial detention for terror suspects; banning organizations with terrorist connections; and legalizing the use of deportation and expulsion of suspected terrorist suspects in some cases.

However, although Europe has had some notable successes in preventing terror plots -- largely through the use of national intelligence agencies -- the record of convictions has been less promising. As the U.S. State Department diplomatically concluded in its 2006 "Country Reports on Terrorism" with respect to Germany: "German laws and traditional procedures, as well as the courts' longstanding and expansive view of civil liberties, sometimes limited the success of cases prosecutors brought to trial."

Even the successful Spanish prosecutions did not include one of the individuals -- now jailed on terror charges in Italy -- believed by the government to have orchestrated the Madrid attacks. Rabei Osman, an Egyptian, was acquitted. Many March 11 victims were not satisfied with the outcome.

This, ultimately, is the problem. The criminal justice system is not infinitely elastic. It can be changed only so much before it becomes unrecognizable. Although the Civil Law system is marginally better suited than the Common Law system for antiterror prosecutions -- permitting more closed proceedings and less technically demanding evidentiary standards -- both are built upon the assumption that it is better to let the guilty go free than to convict the innocent.

That is an appropriate balance when a society is dealing with its own reprobates. It is not so obviously correct when the threat is a foreign movement whose purpose is to cause death and destruction on a grand scale.

If further proof were needed of the judicial system's inability to bear the primary burden of meeting (and defeating) transnational terror, it could be found in the scenes last Wednesday in Madrid. When the judge's decisions were handed down, the courthouse was surrounded by security forces -- including helicopters buzzing protectively around the building. Courts do not make good fortresses.

It's likely that these very limitations, at least in part, prompted the Bush administration to eschew a policing response to the 9/11 attacks, and to declare a war against terror. The result has been one of the sharpest trans-Atlantic divisions in postwar history, a division that probably will not end anytime soon. Regardless of whether the next American president is a Democrat or Republican, he or she is likely to continue the war on terror in practice, if not in rhetoric.

Only the law of armed conflict permits the flexibility needed to disrupt al Qaeda's operations on an international level. Had the Bush administration followed a law-enforcement path, and sought the judicial assistance of Afghanistan's Taliban, Osama bin Laden would still be secure in his bases and training facilities, far more capable of planning and executing future attacks.

Al Qaeda and its allies believe that they are at war with the West and have acted on that belief. Even with the best intentions, the West cannot prevail by ignoring this stark and unbending fact.

Messrs. Rivkin and Casey served in the Justice Department under Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, and were members of the U.N. Sub-Commission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights from 2004-2006.

I wonder what it is that makes Al Qaida think it's at war with the west?

I wonder what it is that makes Al Qaida think it's at war with the west?

Oh well; don't ya know AQ is at war the US because they hate our "freedoms." ...

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/terrorism/international/fatwa_1996.html
Osama Bin Laden "Declaration of War Against the Americans Occupying the Land of the Two Holy Places"-1996.

I say to you ... These youths [love] death as you love life.
…Those youths know that their rewards in fighting you, the USA, is double than their rewards in fighting some one else not from the people of the book. They have no intention except to enter paradise by killing you. An infidel, and enemy of God like you, cannot be in the same hell with his righteous executioner.

… Few days ago the news agencies had reported that the Defence Secretary of the Crusading Americans had said that "the explosion at Riyadh and Al-Khobar had taught him one lesson: that is not to withdraw when attacked by coward terrorists".

We say to the Defence Secretary that his talk can induce a grieving mother to laughter! and shows the fears that had enshrined you all. Where was this false courage of yours when the explosion in Beirut took place on 1983 AD (1403 A.H). You were turned into scattered pits and pieces at that time; 241 mainly marines solders were killed. And where was this courage of yours when two explosions made you to leave Aden in lees than twenty four hours!

But your most disgraceful case was in Somalia; where- after vigorous propaganda about the power of the USA and its post cold war leadership of the new world order- you moved tens of thousands of international force, including twenty eight thousands American solders into Somalia. However, when tens of your solders were killed in minor battles and one American Pilot was dragged in the streets of Mogadishu you left the area carrying disappointment, humiliation, defeat and your dead with you. Clinton appeared in front of the whole world threatening and promising revenge , but these threats were merely a preparation for withdrawal. You have been disgraced by Allah and you withdrew; the extent of your impotence and weaknesses became very clear. It was a pleasure for the "heart" of every Muslim and a remedy to the "chests" of believing nations to see you defeated in the three Islamic cities of Beirut , Aden and Mogadishu.

http://www.ict.org.il/articles/fatwah.htm
Osama Bin Laden: Text of Fatwah Urging Jihad Against Americans-1998
… On that basis, and in compliance with Allah's order, we issue the following fatwa to all Muslims:
The ruling to kill the Americans and their allies -- civilians and military -- is an individual duty for every Muslim who can do it in any country in which it is possible to do it, in order to liberate the al-Aqsa Mosque and the holy mosque [Mecca] from their grip, and in order for their armies to move out of all the lands of Islam, defeated and unable to threaten any Muslim. This is in accordance with the words of Almighty Allah, "and fight the pagans all together as they fight you all together," and "fight them until there is no more tumult or oppression, and there prevail justice and faith in Allah."

http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/msg00035.html
Al-Qaida Statement Warning Muslims Against Associating With The Crusaders And Idols - 2004; Translation By JUS; Jun 09, 2004 from the Al-Qaida Organization of the Arab Gulf; 19 Rabbi Al-Akhir 1425

… No Muslim should risk his life as he may inadvertently be killed if he associates with the Crusaders, whom we have no choice but to kill.

… Everything related to them such as complexes, bases, means of transportation, especially Western and American Airlines, will be our main and direct targets in our forthcoming operations on our path of Jihad that we, with Allah's Power, will not turn away from.

Here again is some evidence that al-Qaeda declared war on America, and al-Qaeda's true objectives are to get Americans to leave all the lands of Islam, defeated and unable to threaten any Muslim, and follow up our departure with many more 9/11 equivalents or worse.

Yes, if there were several divisions of arab armies stationed at places in the USA and habitually killed its citizens, would they be

A) popular, or

B) unpopular

?

ican posted :

Quote:

Here again is some evidence that al-Qaeda declared war on America, and al-Qaeda's true objectives are to get Americans to leave all the lands of Islam, defeated and unable to threaten any Muslim, and follow up our departure with many more 9/11 equivalents or worse.

i wonder if ican could tell us for how many centuries various western forces - not just military ! - have made it their BUSINESS to hang around various muslim countries ?
i wonder how the united states would react if various foreign forces would be situated in canada , mexico , various central american countries and support dictatorial governments in those countries ?
my - uneducated - guess is that the U.S. would do everything to get rid of those forces pronto !
if i'm not mistaken , the U.S. found it convenient to support a dictatorial government in cuba for a very long time until it was ejected by castro and the cuban people(not that i want to discuss castro's foibles here) .
hbg