THE US, THE UN AND IRAQ, ELEVENTH THREAD

And I don't suppose Hussein's defiance of all of those resolutions through the years matter either?

Oh well, forget it, but if Iraq turns out to be successful, thanks for all your help in enforcing the U.N. resolutions, Germany, France, etc. I see now that Nicolas Sarkozy seems to get it anyway.

Bush is not comparable to Napoleon at all. Napoleon conquered, while Bush simply reacted to an aggressor nation that threatened his neighbors and us, plus was a ruthless dictator over his own people. So Bush has not conquered Iraq at all, but instead has liberated the Iraqis from a brutal dictator so that they can gain freedom to govern their own country, and has removed a regional and world threat in the name of Saddam Hussein. And Bush has not done anything without the full support of a duly elected Congress.

Congress's Joint Resolution Oct. 16, 2002
Public Law 107-243 107th Congress Joint Resolution (H.J. Res. 114) To authorize the use of United States Armed Forces against Iraq.
...
[10th]Whereas members of al Qaida, an organization bearing responsibility for attacks on the United States, its citizens, and interests, including the attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, are known to be in Iraq
…

Congressional Intelligence Report 09/08/2006
Postwar information indicates that the Intelligence Community accurately assessed that al-Qa'ida affiliate group Ansar al-Islam operated in Kurdish-controlled northeastern Iraq

Ansar-al-Islam
Ansar al-Islam was formed in December 2001.
...
Ansar al-Islam comprised about 300 armed men, many of these veterans from the Afghan war, and a proportion being neither Kurd nor Arab. Ansar al-Islam is alleged to be connected to al-Qaeda, and provided an entry point for Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and other Afghan veterans to enter Iraq.

Speech to UN February 5, 2003
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.
...

American Soldier, page 519, by General Tommy Franks, 7/1/2004
"10" Regan Books, An Imprint of HarperCollins Publishers
... a steep valley in far northeastern Iraq, right on the border with Iran. These were the camps of the Ansar al-Isla terrorists, where al Qaeda leader Abu Musab Zarqawi had trained disciples in the use of chemical and biological weapons

Oh well, forget it, but if Iraq turns out to be successful, thanks for all your help in enforcing the U.N. resolutions, Germany, France, etc. I see now that Nicolas Sarkozy seems to get it anyway.

Ican, all that Ansar al-Islam stuff has been gone over so many times but here along with other assertions again:

Quote:

OCTOBER 7, 2002: Bush Misled Us Into War


Three years ago today, President Bush visited Cincinnati to deliver a major address outlining the reasons for war, just as Congress was considering whether to vote in favor of giving Bush the authorization to attack Iraq. On October 7, 2002, Bush made a number of misleading and exaggerated statements about the Iraqi threat.

...

links at the source

That tiny little terrorist operation which operated independently of OBL and AQ in the northern part of Iraq outside of Saddam Hussien control and in the control of the US any time it wanted and passed up; was not justification for an invasion and occupation of Iraq when you consider that most of the AQ operatives from right after the fall of taliban (which is now back in operation)went on to Pakistan and other places. Nor was the fact that Saddam Hussein was an evil dictator who abused and oppressed his own people when you consider that other nations did the same at the time of the invasion. There was no need to stir up all that trouble at the UN in the first place and taking our eyes off the ball at Afghanistan and AQ and once having gone to the UN there were certainly no need to cut the inspections short just because the results were not what we wanted which turned out to be true. Moreover, the administration knew their information was faulty (links have been left in the past as well as some of the above information) and they just didn't care because they wanted to go to war.

McClellan stepped down from the position in May of 2006, and has since penned a book that will finally allow him to do what he never could as press secretary: tell all.

Public Affairs, who will be publishing the book, has posted this excerpt, which gives one a helping of insight into how McClellan views his years of service:

Quote:

The most powerful leader in the world had called upon me to speak on his behalf and help restore credibility he lost amid the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. So I stood at the White house briefing room podium in front of the glare of the klieg lights for the better part of two weeks and publicly exonerated two of the senior-most aides in the White House: Karl Rove and Scooter Libby.

There was one problem. It was not true.

I had unknowingly passed along false information. And five of the highest ranking officials in the administration were involved in my doing so: Rove, Libby, the vice President, the President's chief of staff, and the president himself.

Hey ican, use a little common sense.

AQ was outside of Saddam's control. It was within Bush's control. He didn't take them out. He wasn't interested in taking them out because he wanted to use them for political purposes. That small AQ group that could have been destroyed by Bush is not a justifiable reason or excuse to invade Iraq.

...

It's true the USA could have limited the USA's invasion to the AQ part of northeastern Iraq. However, it is likely AQ would have re-entered northeastern Iraq when the USA removed its troops from there. By removing Saddam's government and replacing it with an elected constitutional democratic government, it was expected that when the USA left Iraq, that elected government would prevent AQ from again obtaining sanctuary in Iraq.

ican wrote:

It's true the USA could have limited the USA's invasion to the AQ part of northeastern Iraq. However, it is likely AQ would have re-entered northeastern Iraq when the USA removed its troops from there. By removing Saddam's government and replacing it with an elected constitutional democratic government, it was expected that when the USA left Iraq, that elected government would prevent AQ from again obtaining sanctuary in Iraq.

What a pile of crap. We could have bombed them into a pile of dust and if they came back we could continue to bomb them into a pile of dust. They were in the no fly zone and we flew over that territory on a daily basis, by both chopper and fighters.

Your trying to find some justification for our invasion of Iraq and there is none. This excuse you are coming up with is pathetic.

Congress's Joint Resolution September 14, 2001

SEC. 2. AUTHORIZATION FOR USE OF UNITED STATES ARMED FORCES.
...
(a) IN GENERAL- That the President is authorized to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations or persons.

Congress's Joint Resolution Oct. 16, 2002

Public Law 107-243 107th Congress Joint Resolution (H.J. Res. 114) To authorize the use of United States Armed Forces against Iraq.
...
[10th]Whereas members of al Qaida, an organization bearing responsibility for attacks on the United States, its citizens, and interests, including the attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, are known to be in Iraq;

[11th]Whereas Iraq continues to aid and harbor other international terrorist organizations, including organizations that threaten the lives and safety of United States citizens;
...

BAGHDAD (AP) -- A bomb exploded in a pet market in central Baghdad on Friday, killing at least 13 people and wounding dozens, Iraqi police said, shattering the festive atmosphere as people strolled past the animal stalls.

Hours later, a suicide car bomber struck a police checkpoint in the northern city of Mosul, killing another 13 people, including three policemen and 10 civilians, police Brig. Gen. Mohammed al-Wakaa said. The 1:30 p.m. explosion also left 10 cars charred.

Former Iraq Commander Backs Democrats on Pullout

By Josh White
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, November 22, 2007; Page A23

Retired Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, who commanded U.S. troops in Iraq from 2003 to 2004, is scheduled to speak on behalf of the Democratic Party this weekend in support of a House war funding bill that would require President Bush to bring the bulk of U.S. troops home from Iraq by the end of next year.

Sanchez, who has spoken out against the Bush administration's handling of the war and has assailed current war strategy as doomed to fail, plans to argue that the United States cannot win in Iraq with the military alone and that it is prudent to bring troops home to bolster national security.

Warsaw - Poland will withdraw all its troops from Iraq by the end of 2008, new Prime Minister Donald Tusk said in his first address to the Polish parliament on Friday.

'We will conduct this operation keeping in mind that our commitment to our ally, the United States, has been lived up to and exceeded,' he said.

'The specific logistics and date will come from consultations with our allies, including our main ally, the United States. But 2008 is the last year of the polish military mission in Iraq,' he added.

According to the new government programme of Tusk's People's Platform (PO) and its coalition partner, the Polish Peasants' Party (PSL), the country would also refrain from signing the European Union's Charter of Fundamental Rights because it did not want to jeopardize the ratification of the EU Reform Treaty in Poland.

http://www.nypost.com/seven/08152007/postopinion/editorials/good_news_from_iraq_editorials_.htm
August 15, 2007 -- News out of Iraq continues to be encouraging: High-profile attacks have fallen nearly 50 percent since the start of the troop surge, USA Today reported this week.
Gen. David Petraeus, commanding the war in Iraq, says hundreds of al Qaeda fighters were killed or captured in just the past month alone.
Tips about the enemy are up fourfold over the last year - to some 23,000 a month.
"Tribes and people are starting to stand up and fight back," said Brig. Gen. Mick Bednarek, deputy commander of the U.S. division north of Baghdad, in the USA Today report. "They are turning against al Qaeda."
It's a sign of the preliminary success of a number of operations now under way, as troop strength has finally reached the maximum planned by the surge.
To think that just a month ago, Democrats were trying to pull the plug on Iraq.
Maybe they feared exactly what is happening: The tide in Iraq seems to be turning in America's favor - and that spells bad news for the Dems, who've pinned their own political fates on the White House failing in the war.
Democrats aren't the only ones who have suddenly gone mum: Little by way of saber-rattling has been heard from the mullahs' motor-mouth in Iran, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
The shifts, in rhetoric and on the ground, could portend, well . . . anything.
The enemy may be laying low, figuring they can't bear - at the moment, anyway - the high cost of additional attacks and confrontations.
Or they may be re-arming for a major offensive.
Surely they've by no means ended their violence completely, even temporarily: Yesterday, suicide bombers killed at least 175 people and wounded 200.
But Coalition forces aren't letting up, either: This week, they launched a third major campaign, Operation Phantom Strike, aimed at disrupting al Qaeda and Iranian-backed operations.
The verdict is still out on Iraq. Far-left Democrats may yet force a premature pullout.
But Americans can hope for the best. There's no reason to cut this war short.

http://current.com/items/87682501_good_news_from_iraq
Last year, I blogged here that we should forget about all the benchmarks that attempt to measure whether the situation in Iraq is improving or deteriorating. We will know, I wrote, that things are getting better if the Iraqis themselves feel it is so and the millions who fled the country begin to return. Today, the BBC reports that Iraqi authorities estimate that 1,000 people a day are now making there way back home. This is the latest in a sudden string of "good news" stories coming out of Iraq. Last week, my hometown newspaper, Newsday, ran a two-page feature that began with this: "Since the last soldiers of the 'surge' deployed last May, Baghdad has undergone a remarkable transformation. No longer do the streets empty at dusk. Liquor stores and cinemas have reopened for business. Some shops stay open until late into the evening. Children play in parks, young women stay out after dark, restaurants are filled with families, and old men sit at sidewalk cafes playing backgammon and smoking sheesha pipes." And yesterday, the New York Times reported that a sense of normalcy was returning to Baghdad. "The security improvements in most neighborhoods are real. Days now pass without a car bomb, after a high of 44 in the city in February...As a result, for the first time in nearly two years, people are moving with freedom around much of this city." Most stories credit the "surge", particularly the US's alliance with local Sunni tribal leaders to get rid of Al Qaeda types in Baghdad and the Al Anbar province. We don't want to get ahead of ourselves here, especially since there are many great challenges to achieving peace in the country as a whole. But we can hope that these reports are a sign of shift toward better days for the Iraqi people. Inshallah.

http://newsblaze.com/iraqgoodnews.html
In early 2005, with the media only reporting the bad things happening in Iraq and none of the good, NewsBlaze started the "Support Our Troops" section, to show the other side of the story, with soldiers in Iraq sending stories.
Travel back in time, day by day, to see the stories about Iraqis receiving clean running water where none was before, schools opening, health improvements and local economies improving. Also stories of Sunnis and Shia'a, living tens of miles apart who had never spoken to each other, working together to improve their own security, coached and encouraged by American heroes.
There are stories of Iraqis helping the soldiers to find bombs, insurgents and weapons caches and stories of Iraqi soldiers, grateful for the opportunity to be trained how to serve their country and learning to think for themselves rather than always being told what to do and where to go, as they were under Saddam.
Support Our Troops by reading their stories and discover the truth that's been hidden for too long.
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