- ARThe Iraq War
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This page contains the comments about the War with Iraq. To add your own comments, write to discussion@norfolknet.com.
4/8 10:47pm Being a liberator is a dirty job, but someone has to do it. Massacre? What massacre? Remember, this is a noble cause, and we're the good guys. Mr. Bush said so. An old man, disoriented and alone, kept faltering forward with his cane after three warning shots. Finally, U.S. weapons burst and he fell dead.- ARA Marine machine gunner at the front lines lay sprawled behind his tripod, left foot jiggling as he watched the road. (AP)
4/8 4:54pm AR, You raise an important point (as you often do). One has to wonder what the difference between Iraq and Afghanistan is. We toppled the regime in both through use of overwhelming force. They are both Muslim countries. In Afghanistan, The US is passing the rebuilding off to the underfunded United Nations Development Program (UNDP)-- which just kicked off their efforts (April 6 Press Briefing. Not only is the US providing limited help, but at present, when the UN is trying to disarm the militias as their first step toward a stable Afghan future, the United States is paying some factions to keep their militias going to help in the US "war against terror." One could argue that Afghanistan will be much more in need of our help than Iraq is. Iraq is rich in natural resources and has, despite great hardships in the past 12 years, U.S.-style expressways, hospitals, universities, and shopping centers. Afghanistan has none of this. Into the 1980's, Iraq's health care system was considered the best in the Arab world well in to the 1980's and stores were filled with luxury goods. Afghanistan never had this in recent memory. So why are we eager to pass off Afghanistan reconstruction to the UN, but not Iraq? -DAF
4/8 10:22am The Iraqis can only hope to be treated better than the Afghanis. The U.S. is focused on its national goal of hunting for Osama bin Laden, but in spite of the promise to help the Afghanisn rebuild their society, the people feel abandoned. No real rebuilding has taken place, and the situation is being allowed to drift back toward chaos. The power of warlords is on the rise, and the Taliban is making a resurgence. "It's like I am seeing the same movie twice and no one is trying to fix the problem," said Ahmed Wali Karzai, the brother of Afghanistan's president and his representative in southern Kandahar. "What was promised to Afghans with the collapse of the Taliban was a new life of hope and change. But what was delivered? Nothing. Everyone is back in business."- ARFrom safe havens in neighboring Pakistan, aided by militant Muslim groups there, the Taliban launched their revival to coincide with the war in Iraq and capitalize on Muslim anger over the U.S. invasion, say Afghan officials.
International workers in Kandahar don't feel safe anymore and some have been moved from the Kandahar region to safer areas, said John Oerum, southwest security officer for the United Nations. [...] The Red Cross, with 150 foreign workers in Afghanistan, have suspended operations indefinitely.
Today most Afghans say their National Army seems a distant dream while the U.S.-led coalition continues to feed and finance warlords for their help in hunting for Taliban and al-Qaida fighters. (AP)
4/7 12:42pm What do folks think about this Chalabi fellow being installed as the PM of Iraq? -DAF
4/6 11:24pm The suggested reason why colonel Joe Dowdy was relieved from duty is for not thinking that a two-bit tin-pot dictator was worth getting his guys killed over. His superiors disagreed. From the iraqwar.ru war updates: Commander of the 1st Expeditionary Marine Squadron colonel Joe Dowdy was deposed yesterday morning. As was revealed, the colonel was deposed "...for utmost hesitation and loss of the initiative during the storm of An-Nasiriya...". [...] The "guilt" of the colonel was in his refusing to enter the town for almost 3 days and trying to suppress Iraqi resistance with artillery and aviation, trying to avoid losses. As a result, the command additionally had to move the 15th squadron of colonel Tomas Worldhouser there, who had to storm the ferriages for almost 6 days, with about 20 of his soldiers killed, 130 wounded and 4 missing. The 1st Expeditionary Squadron lost no men at An-Nasiriya[.]- AR
4/6 11:23pm As expected, the war on Iraq is creating more terrorists than Hussein would even have been able to create. Recruiting at Al-Qaida is up since the conflict began. al-Qaida had a hard time recruiting after the war in Afghanistan ended and the organization was left scattered. Arrests of some top figures also hurt the network. "But now it is much easier. The war in Iraq has made every angry Muslim man with nothing to do want to join anything that's against America," he said. In the last two weeks, al-Qaida Web site has shown gruesome photos of dead children, accompanied by captions indicating they were killed by U.S. troops[.] (AP)It would be bitterly ironic if after defeating Al Qaeda, the US adventure in Iraq were to revitalize it again.- AR
4/6 11:18pm Although the war was billed as a quick little liberation sprint, once the shooting stops, troops may end up staying in Iraq for a while. Ahmad Chalabi was quoted by the BBC (radio) as saying that it might take up to two years to ratify a new constitution, and that US troops should stay during the interim. Paul Wolfowitz declared on TV that setting up a new Iraq civil government will take longer than six months. They will also stay while searching for banned weapons. "They could take as long as a year just to confirm to everybody's satisfaction that we have found all the weapons of mass destruction, or at least confirmed there aren't any more left,"- AR"Victory, in this case, is really defined by the long-term goal of setting up a democratic government in Iraq," Donnelly said. "It'll be wonderful when the fighting's over and when Baghdad falls. But let's keep our eye on the ball and remember what our larger purpose is." (AP)
4/7 12:08am Found the quotes on-line; Chalabi, Wolfowitz - AR
4/6 11:14pm Liberation must not lead to a loss of order and normalcy, else the population may perceive the liberator as the cause of the upheaval. There is a lot of anger toward Westerners in Umm Qasr, triggered by bitter disappointment at their "liberation". They feel they have been given false expectations and are scared by the breakdown in social order in the town. (Guar)- AR
4/6 11:13pm PFD: Re: "American officials ... would never give out the right information" - they're more confusing than that. A good example is from the first Gulf War: Patriot anti-missile missiles are 90% effective. 70-80% effective. 50%. Less than 10%. As it happens, in that case, the last figure seems to be the correct one. - AR
4/5 6:03pm PFD - eh? Damned if we do kill civilians in hundreds, damned if we...don't? You lost me. I never said we should leave "everything" to the UN or the International Criminal Court. Look, our troops are in there. Saddam Hussein's regime is soon to be finished off. I think we could have achieved this and the destruction of WMD's without this war. You disagree. OK. But now that we are there, the job must be finished. We agree on that. But how? Do we do it in a way that limits the loss of all human life or do we do it with the "knock-out punch" the Marine Commander spoke of today -- a punch that will take many, many innocent civilian lives. I'm not making this up -- Reuters: "We have to go in forcefully, and when we go in forcefully it just creates a lot of collateral damage." As an American, are you not embarassed by the fact that UK soldiers view our men and women as "cowboys with no regard for human life" and British military commanders are critical of US troops' heavy-handed style with civilians? I am. - DAF
4/5 3:00pm DAF, If we do anything, we're bad. If we do nothing, we're bad. If we give information, we're bad. If we hold out information, we're bad. If we help, we're bad. If we do not help, we're bad. If we do not turn away, we're bad. If we do turn away, guess what, we're bad. So I guess no matter what, we're bad. I guess we should just leave everything to the U.N. and the International courts. AR, since American officials admitted that the white powder was explosives, it must be a lie right, since they would never give out the right information? - PFD
4/5 11:48am PFD, The "moral core" is the place we draw upon when we take actions. The Iraqi man drew on it when he risked his life to save a stranger. The soldier on the bridge who retrieved the wounded woman also drew on this core. If you chose to take my celebration of their actions as an impugning of you personally, I can't help that. I have no idea what is inside you. I tell you that if you do not speak out against the unnecessary death of civilians then you are not drawing on a moral core. You are turning away. In Rwanda, we turned away. In the Sudan today, we turn away. In Aghanistan, out of anger with the Taliban and A Qaeda, we turned away. Civilian deaths are caused in our name in Afghanistan -- see for yourself. We turn away. - DAF
4/5 11:47am White powder! White powder! They found white powder! Those of us who recall that far back are thinking that perhaps they've found some more of Manuel Noriega's tamale flour. (The found bricks of white powder when raiding his residence, and the hype then was that it could be cocaine. The retraction was in small print, of course. The other item they aired to try and discredit him was that he wore red underpants.) American officials have admitted that the thousands of boxes of white powder they seized north of Baghdad are explosives.I'm eagerly waiting to learn the color of Saddam Hussein's briefs.The US military and various media outlets had suggested that they may have made the first discovery of chemical weapons in Iraq. [article]
- AR
4/5 11:46am Is it live, or is it Memorex? Saddam Hussein made his first televised appearance since the war started which contains credible proof that he is still alive and in Baghdad. Or does it? He refers to the peasant that ``shot down the Apache helicopter with an old rifle,'' an incident that did occur early on in the conflict. My first cynical thought upon reading the story was that this was a brilliant ruse. It goes something like this. Pick an incident that is memorable, but likely to happen. Such as an airplane crashing, or a helicopter being captured. Pick someone to honor and reward for their heroic efforts in bringing about this event. Then tape a message referring to the incident, and wait ... for the incident to happen! Oh, all right, maybe not, but it was an interesting thought. - AR
4/5 11:45am The former "ambassador" to Iraq (actually chief-of-mission, but equivalent) thinks the this war is a ``terrible, bloody miscalculation.'' Or not, depending on what your goals are and what you're willing to sacrifice, but he says: The notion that Islamists hate us because of our freedom or "because Britney Spears has a bellybutton" is "terribly stupid," Peck believes.- ARMost Americans don't want to face the fact that we've been killing Iraqis for 12 years, through sanctions and bombing, and that we're constantly in the world's face.
The idea that attacking Iraq will end terrorism is a little hard to square with the fact that we've called up 25,000 reservists to protect the homeland, and Colin Powell has asked for $6 billion to turn every American embassy into a fortress, all to coincide with the beginning of the war.
"I hope to the depths of my being I am wrong," Peck said. "But I'm afraid we will pay a terrible, bloody price for this miscalculation in Iraq."
4/5 11:40am Donald Rumsfeld is not above inventing "proof" to make a case, even if said proof is later discovered to be false. Like Iraq's Nigerian uranium connection. Or now, Syria's shipment of armaments to Iraq (AP): The CIA has no credible evidence that the government of Syria has had a role in the shipment of night-vision goggles and other military equipment to Iraq, according to an administration official familiar with U.S. intelligence in the region.Unfortunately, Rumsfeld has the ear of the President of the United States.Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld last Friday suggested that Syria was responsible for the shipment to Iraq of defense-related goods, including the goggles, and warned that the United States considered "such trafficking as hostile acts and would hold the Syrian government accountable."
"It's not a new phenomenon," he said, "and it's not clear it has the Syrian government's imprimatur." At the same time, he said, military goods also have been shipped into Iraq, in violation of UN sanctions, from border countries much more aligned with the U.S. government, including Turkey and Jordan.
"An official making a threat is not what is dangerous," Assad said. "What is dangerous is the lack of foresight by that official."
[T]he "lack of public discussion about the role of Israel" in Washington's policy-making was "the proverbial elephant in the room: Everybody sees it, no one mentions it. - Michael Kinsley, SlateUPI has a fascinating article on the logistics that make a major undertaking like this war possible.
It is one thing to marvel at the way the Vth Corps post office in Kuwait delivers 100 tons of incoming mail a day, quite another to see the massed ranks of PCs in the giant hangars at Camp Doha, with GIs e-mailing home and surfing the WebThe U.S. may end up not capturing or finding Saddam Hussein, but that's not important, according to Colin Powell. This is certainly a change. (Times)
But Washington appeared nervous that the coalition may fail to find the elusive Iraqi leader. Colin Powell, the Secretary of State, said that Saddam's fate was unimportant. "Whether he is there at the end or not, and is found or not, is almost irrelevant."His comments were part of a concerted change of tack by the Bush Administration as it tried to play down Saddam's fate.
Under the Geneva Conventions, an occupying power can only deal with day-to-day administrative operations unless the U.N. Security Council decides otherwise, said Mark Malloch Brown, administrator of the United Nations Development Program. [...]Hopefully, this will also slow down efforts to privatize the oil [Guar], the "natural resouces of the people of Iraq" that we're so busy defending.An occupier cannot change the constitution or make long-term legal commitments -- such as the kind of 10- to 20-year contracts and concessions that oil developers need, he said. [AP]
The Pentagon is seeking to replace the state department people, who include several ambassadors, with a bunch of neo-conservative hawks - most notably James Woolsey, a former CIA director.AndSeveral major Iraqi opposition groups, such as the Kurdistan Democratic party and the Iraqi National Accord, say they have been excluded from discussions about the interim government. A KDP official yesterday described the US plans as "not workable at all".
Although Britain has been consulted, it also seems unhappy about US plans to establish neo-colonial rule, even if it's supposed to be temporary. [Guar]
He said that the Pentagon had ruled that Mr Rumsfeld should personally approve appointments to the temporary US-British administration, "and there are many people who question his authority to take that decision, including, I assume, the Secretary of State".Note to PFD: Apologies for the figthing words in Brian Whitaker's, the Guardian author's, piece. I don't pick the articles for the language, but for the content. And I may be harping on the role of Rumsfeld in all this, but it's really frightening how a small clique is able to manipulate the goverment.Meanwhile, General Powell and Mr Blair are trying to secure a prominent role for the United Nations in an attempt to avoid further alienating US allies in Europe. [Times]
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