THE US, THE UN AND IRAQ, ELEVENTH THREAD

Joe(death of Dadullah)Nation, We all know this is only a temporary vacuum in the leadership; they'll have a replacement before we can say "Dadullah is dead."

So much for diplomacy between the US and Iran.


Iranian president leads anti-U.S. rally
By JIM KRANE, Associated Press Writer
28 minutes ago



DUBAI, United Arab Emirates - Iran's president led a raucous anti-American rally on Sunday in this tightly controlled U.S. ally in the Persian Gulf, a day after a low-key visit by Vice President Dick Cheney aimed at countering Tehran's influence in the region.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told a cheering crowd that America was to blame for creating instability and robbing the region of its wealth.

"We are telling you to leave the region. This is for your benefit and the benefit of your nation," Ahmadinejad shouted to the crowd of thousands at a soccer stadium. "The nations of the region can no longer take you forcing yourself on them. The nations of the region know better how to create peace and security."

Ahmadinejad's visit was the first by an Iranian head of state to this Sunni-led Arab country since its independence in 1971 and his rally was remarkable in a country where political parties are banned and power is held solely by tribal families.

Cheney's quiet visit Saturday to the Emirates, which hosts three American military bases, was part of a tour of the region to try to curb Iran's growing influence. On Friday, from an aircraft carrier in the Persian Gulf, Cheney warned Iran that the U.S. and its allies will keep it from restricting sea traffic as well as from developing nuclear weapons.

I'm sorry to repost this, but it seems my questions have gone unnoticed, although C_I did use the link i provided.


Sorry i couldnt read the 120 pages of posts and articles

smthg struck me on p.117 tho, one article said :

many Sunnis are increasingly hostile to al-Qa'ida in Iraq. At the same time, the Sunni community as a whole continues to support armed resistance to the US-led occupation.

Which made me think about this article i had seen

http://www.worldpublicopinion.org/pipa/articles/brmiddleeastnafricara/248.php?nid=&id=&pnt=248&lb=brme


Do you guys know who performs these bombings (suicide or not) we often hear about? AQ, or armed resistants ?

If the latter, how can we associate random killing of innocent civilians with armed resistance?

--------------------

heres what a republican poster on another forum had to say about the Iraq war :

Is it possible that the war in Iraq might be lost one day? Yes, thanks to the Democrats and the Liberal media not George W. Bush.

Who wanted this war to end the day we started getting into hard times? Who wants to cut and run and who had to bribe others in the house to a deadline by adding 25 billion with a "B" in pork to get support and who is now trying to peace meal funds to a war that our troops are in right now?[/ii]

Who, in ur opinion,would be to blame for a US defeat, or pullout without pacification of Iraq?


Thanks a lot.

In a civil war, it's sunnis against sunnis, shias against sunnis, and kurds against shias and sunnis. There are others from Syria, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Egypt that freely come through the borders of Iraq to reak havoc in addition to all the internal problems. The US ain't gonna stop the violence with 30,000 more troops; that's insane to think they can. They're all crazy.

Yes, i'm aware hat all "sides" are part of the violence, but i was asking about a specific aspect of the violence in Iraq, which are (suicidal or not) terrorist attacks against civilians.

from what i understood, Iraqi sunnis and Iraqi shiis tend to form militias to protect their neighborhoods and sometimes to try to gain control of one, but the random killings of civilians are said to be done mostly by foreign terrorist groups like Al Qaeda for example.

Here's a quote from a blogger that pretty much sums up what i mean :

I've been hammering away on this issue by repeatedly emphasizing the fact that what al Qaeda is doing is not an example of sectarian violence and, therefore, is not part of the civil war between Shiites and Sunnis. Yes, al Qaeda consists of Sunnis, but, no, they are not killing Shiites out of a sense of revenge or in an effort to defeat them in a civil war. Instead, they are killing Shiite civilians to goad vengeful Shiite militias into once again murdering Sunnis in large numbers. That is, they are trying to re-ignite (not participating in) the civil war that has decreased in intensity since the troop surge began. If they succeed in re-igniting that civil war, they know that Americans will become predictably demoralized and start saying things like "this war is lost." They also know that the Sunnis of the Anbar Province will have no choice but to turn to al Qaeda for protection from the enraged Shiite militias. That's their nefarious and unbelievably effective plan.

http://engram-backtalk.blogspot.com/2007/05/democrats-are-lying-about-war-in-iraq.html

So I'd like to have the opinion of some ppl here, as i see many are better informed than me.

Thanks

If AQ is thinking the Sunnis will turn to them for protection they are as far out of touch with reality as our president. Currently the Sunnis are fighting AQ. They don't like them. They didn't like them under Saddam Hussein.

Bush's rhetoric about AQ taking over Iraq is something only the ignorant and stupid will believe. AQ has a very small population in Iraq and the idea they will defeat the Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds is stupid beyond belief. What they want to achieve, and they are doing it very well, is to create instability and chaos. They want to bring Iran into the conflict and try to get America to attack her. This will create more conflict and instability.

So far Bush has shown an admirable talent to do whatever it takes to make AQ stronger and to create more hatred for America among the Muslims. This, in turn, creates more terrorist. More terrorist give the neocons a better excuse to continue our occupation of Iraq and possibly expand it into Iran. In this manner we will have a permanent presence in the oilfields and a way to insure we have control over "our" oil in the Middle East.

Hmm, I see. But then whats the strategic interest for AQ in increased chaos and violence? Surely they have something material to gain from it, what is it?




Well apparently the idea is not that they seek to defeat everybody, but rather to sow chaos so that Iraqi Sunnis have no choice but turn to them for protection, which is at least plausible, whether they like them or not, and thus create an alliance, even if said alliance would be purely military.

The Sunnis don't need AQ for protection. They have Saudi Arabia. SA has already threaten to send troops into Iraq to support the Sunnis if we leave.

SA is very fearful of the union of the Iraqi and Iranian Shiites. They see this as a greater threat than AQ. When Saddam Hussein was in power he kept the lid on the Shiites and was a counterbalance to Iran. Bush's invasion of Iraq changed that and bought about the union of the two Shiite populations.

All AQ has to do is ferment war between the two groups and sit back and watch the whole Middle East explode. Once chaos is created only the Gods know what the outcome will be. AQ have nothing to lose and everything to gain.

You see how Bush played into the terrorist hands? He isn't fighting terrorism, he's creating it.

The more I consider all this violence between Sunni and Shiite, its beginning to make sense. I am so ignorant of the Sunni/Shiite situation in general that it is taking me awhile for it to make sense to me. I don't understand it all. But I read a little about the differences between Sunni and Shiite the other day (for the first time I am ashamed to say) and it seems the majority of the world's Muslims are Sunni including the Saudis and Bin Laden. I thought most of this violence was just the Sunni being upset because they are in the minority and are basically squeezed out in the political process. I think that is still a major part of it, but apparently it goes deeper than that.

Q. What's the Difference Between Shia and Sunni Muslims?


It seems the Sunni the world over have had an interest in Iraq since the Shiite came to power and that is why they are funding the Sunni to fight the Shiite. The Shiite has an interest in keeping the US in Iraq to help them fight the Sunni. Only they were mostly fighting Al Sadre (spell?) instead of Sunni since the surge began until just most recently. Probably why the Iraqi Parliament finally wants us out.

This cannot be won by US. How in the world can we tell who the enemy is when it seems everyone is fighting and creating violence to the destruction of Iraq?

I know I am probably not saying anything of value since probably everyone has been aware of these things way before now.

Iraqi political feuding has paralyzed Bush's strategy
Iraqi political feuding has paralyzed Bush's strategy
By Jonathan S. Landay and Nancy Youssef
McClatchy Newspapers
5/14/07

Four months after President Bush launched his new Iraq strategy, the U.S. troop buildup there is proceeding apace, but feuding among Iraqi politicians and power brokers threatens to block the political reforms on which the success of the plan depends.

U.S. officials warn that the longer the impasse persists over laws on provincial elections and the distribution of Iraq's oil wealth among Shiite Muslims, Kurds and Sunnis, the greater the risk that the surge of 30,000 more U.S. troops into Baghdad, which is intended to provide a security umbrella for political reforms, will be for naught.

Until the political feuding ends, "we are just maintaining the status quo," said a U.S. military official who requested anonymity because he wasn't authorized to speak publicly.

Some U.S. and Iraqi politicians already are predicting that the Iraqi parliament won't pass any key legislation by September, when Gen. David Petraeus, the top American commander in Iraq, is supposed to assess the success of the surge.

"To me, the success of the surge is measured by whether it will produce a political settlement," Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, told McClatchy Newspapers. "There is no evidence that I can see that the surge is producing or will produce a political solution."

Indeed, some U.S. military officials are worried that Iraqi political feuding could demoralize the American troops who are fighting to buy Iraqis time to resolve these key issues.

"It is a huge irritant," the military official said. "What psychological effect does (a stalemate) have on our troops?"

Bush, his top lieutenants and their Republican allies in Congress insist that it?'s too early to judge the new strategy, which the president dubbed "The New Way Forward" in a Jan. 10 televised address to the nation.

"The job now is to persevere in every area of operations," Vice President Dick Cheney told the crew of the USS John C. Stennis when he visited the aircraft carrier in the Persian Gulf on Friday.

Yet Bush seemed to concede on Thursday that the national reconciliation plan was in trouble when he announced his readiness to negotiate with Democratic lawmakers on including benchmarks for Iraqi leaders in a war-financing bill.

"I think he has acknowledged implicitly that it takes pressure on the Iraqis," said Levin, who advocates starting an American withdrawal within four months to push the Iraqis to act. "They don't need breathing space, they need pressure."

Cheney's Middle East trip also reflected the administration's urgency. While in Baghdad, he pressed Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki for progress on the key bills and called for Iraqi lawmakers to cancel plans to take a two-month summer break beginning June 1.

On Sunday, Deputy Prime Minister Barham Salih told CNN that the parliament would continue to meet in July, and that its summer break "will be condensed into one month or two weeks."

In addition to laws on oil distribution and provincial elections, the administration has pressed Maliki for legislation that would allow tens of thousands of low-ranking members of the late Saddam Hussein's outlawed Baath Party to return to the government jobs they were purged from after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion.

The government has missed multiple self-imposed deadlines for approving the measures.

For the laws to pass, Iraq's majority Shiites and minority Sunnis and Kurds would have to make major concessions, likely at each group's political peril. So far, none has been willing.

"Each group looks at it as how much power will they gain and how much they will lose," said Mahmoud Othman, a Kurdish legislator who doesn't think the parliament will meet Bush's benchmarks. "Everybody is defending their own section, their own interests. The national interest of Iraq comes second, unfortunately." For example, the government was supposed to hold elections for provincial councils next month, but it's failed to agree on an election law. The elections are intended to rectify the results of provincial polls held in 2005, which were skewed by a Sunni boycott. But the political dynamics have shifted. Those who won, such as the Shiite-dominated, Iran-backed Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, could now lose seats in southern Iraq to followers of radical anti-U.S. cleric Muqtada al Sadr.

Sunni leaders fear they could lose to popular tribal sheiks, said Vali Nasr, an expert on Shiism at the Council on Foreign Relations.

In addition, Nasr said that electing new young leaders wouldn't resolve the immediate problems.

"The idea that elections will produce leaders you want to work with applies if you are working in a peaceful environment," Nasr said. "Unless the insurgents are running for office and come to the polls, it doesn't matter."

Bush's strategy got a boost in February, when al Maliki's cabinet approved a draft oil law to regulate the exploitation of the world's third-largest proven petroleum reserves, which produce 95 percent of the government's revenues.

The draft law is aimed at assuaging Sunni fears that they'll be deprived of oil revenues. Iraq's oil supplies are in the Shiite-dominated south and around the Kurd-controlled northern city of Kirkuk. There are no confirmed reserves in Sunni-dominated western areas.

But the draft law's submission to the legislature has been held up by Kurdish leaders' objections to a Shiite plan that would restore the state-run Iraqi National Oil Company's monopoly on exploration and production, experts said.

Kurdish leaders are demanding that foreign oil companies be allowed into Iraq, and they see the proposal for central government control as eroding their autonomy. Bush's insistence that the Iraqi government address the purge of low-ranking Baathists has sparked several pieces of draft legislation. But most parties aren't in a rush to change the law and share power with a largely Sunni faction.

A senior State Department official, who requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue, said officials in Washington and Baghdad are working hard to resolve the impasse _ or least prevent things from getting worse.

"We are trying to make sure a bad situation doesn't deteriorate any further. And that has become an accomplishment," he said.
-----------------------------------------

(Leila Fadel contributed from Baghdad.)

Well, good luck Iraq! They're going on a two month vacation this summer, and their government has not made progress on any of the important issues to settle the violence. Only Bush and Petraeus have faith something will happen - while our soldiers get killed and maimed, and we spend two billion for every week we're there. What a waste!

If you'd like a good article on the differece between the Shiite and Sunnis and how it fits into the Iraq debacle today read this.

http://www.truthdig.com/dig/item/20070323_calling_out_idiot_america/

xingu, Thanks for the link; it shows how uninformed I am about the "details" of the problems in Iraq, but I have a pretty good "feel" for the general problems between the sects and outside influence. As the article points out, our government representatives are ignorant on these important issues, and they're the ones screwing up the works even more. It's scary!

What do you think about this pentagon action to deny our soldiers access to websites?

US blocks soldiers from websites
By Rob Watson
BBC defence and security correspondent

The US military is to block troops from using YouTube and MySpace and 11 other popular websites for sharing photos, video clips and messages.
The decision could stop thousands of soldiers from communicating with friends and loved ones.

For many US soldiers serving overseas YouTube and other similar websites are a popular way of keeping in touch.

But according to US reports, the Pentagon has decided to block access to such sites for technical reasons.

Security concerns

It says accessing and sending video across the internet takes up a lot of bandwidth and slows down the military's computer system.

And not surprisingly perhaps, there are also security concerns.


The cyberspace battle space was not one that we were particularly operating well in
Lt Col Christopher Garver, US Army


The block on accessing such websites will not affect those soldiers with their own personal computers - though of course they are few and far between in places like Iraq and Afghanistan.

There is a certain irony to the Pentagon's reported decision.

It only recently started posting its own videos on YouTube showing soldiers in action in Iraq in a move designed to reach out to a younger audience and to show the successes of the US military.

Story from BBC NEWS:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/12/world/middleeast/12oil.html?ex=1336622400&en=034ced4a02a3dcd3&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

Nice, this is the sort of thing which is just awesome.

Maybe if the Bush administration believed in overseeing their own endeavor with any sort of attention to such matters, things in Iraq wouldn't have gone the way they have...

Cycloptichorn

Bush is not capable of doing the right thing no matter how many expert advisers he has. If he doesn't like what's said by the expert, he just gets rid of them to find somebody that agrees with him.

OVERSIGHT?????

That's a dirty word with this administration. That's tantamount to treason.

reading further from the report cited by ican and
dated " JUNE , 28 , 2006 " :



my question is a simple one :
what improvements have taken place in iraq between "JUNE 28 2006" and today , "MAY 14 , 2007" ?
hbg