The 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.
"When the war started, the American military drew up a list of 19 top weapons sites. By May 11th, all but two had been searched and found to contain no weapons of mass destruction. Officials in Washington, meanwhile, continue to insist that the search has barely begun. They were probably not best pleased when, on May 13th, the International Institute for Strategic Studies, a think-tank that had helped set the pro-war agenda, accepted that banned weapons were unlikely to be found in large quantities. "The absence of chemical weapons was a big surprise," said Gary Samore, an Iraq expert at the IISS." (Economist)Thank goodness we're the "good guys"..."The United States used a new kind of missile for the first time in Iraq that can destroy the contents of the first floor of a building while leaving the rest of the structure intact, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld told Congress on Wednesday. Rumsfeld said the new Hellfire missile uses a thermobaric warhead -- which detonates an explosive "mist" to create a crushing blast wave. " (CBS)
"At least nine Iraqi children were killed after an unexploded rocket detonated in southern Iraq." (Economist)
Amnesty International is investigating claims that British and American troops tortured prisoners of war in Iraq with night-long beatings and, in at least one case, electric shocks, the group said Friday.Sometimes, it's hard to tell who the good guys are. I go by the kevlar vests.The human rights organization gathered statements from 20 former detainees who said they had been kicked and beaten by soldiers while being interrogated, Amnesty researcher Said Boumedouha told a news conference in London.
Some of the men said they were blindfolded or hooded and were kicked and beaten throughout the night, sometimes with weapons, according to Boumedouha. Coalition soldiers had interrogated them with the help of Kuwaiti interpreters, he said. (AP)
Renegade Democratic Texas legislators hunted by state police made their stand against a Republican congressional redistricting plan and holed up in a hotel across the border in Oklahoma on Tuesday.Fugitives, on the run with the state police after them... should be an easy refresher course. For a more advanced lesson, we'll teach them about hanging chads.The walkout by more than 50 Texas House Democrats effectively shut down the Legislature on Monday by denying Republicans a quorum of 100[.]
Texas police, including the famed Texas Rangers, were powerless to do anything other than offer to escort the legislators back to Austin. The Democrats rejected that idea.
House Speaker Tom Craddick ordered police on Monday to track down the runaway legislators and return them to the House floor, forcibly if needed. But Craddick's order holds no legal force outside of Texas, since the legislators are not technically accused of a crime. (Reuters)
10. "We've only looked through 99% of the country"- DAF
9. "We spent entire budget making those playing cards"
8. "Containers are labeled in some crazy language"
7. "They must have been stolen by some of them evil X-Men mutants"
6. "Did I say Iraq has weapons of mass destruction? I meant they have goats"
5. "How are we supposed to find weapons of mass destruction when we can't even find Cheney?"
4. "Still screwed up because of Daylight Savings Time"
3. "When you're trying to find something, it's always in the last place you look, am I right, people?"
2. "Let's face it -- I ain't exactly a genius"
1. "Geraldo took them"
The group directing all known U.S. search efforts for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq is winding down operations without finding proof that President Saddam Hussein kept clandestine stocks of outlawed arms, according to participants.So we rushed in to stop a tyrant from using his "proven" weapons of mass destruction, only to discover that it was all just a large misunderstanding, heh heh heh. Oops... Sorry about that, Chief!Leaders of Task Force 75's diverse staff -- biologists, chemists, arms treaty enforcers, nuclear operators, computer and document experts, and special forces troops -- arrived with high hopes of early success. They said they expected to find what Secretary of State Colin L. Powell described at the U.N. Security Council on Feb. 5 -- hundreds of tons of biological and chemical agents, missiles and rockets to deliver the agents, and evidence of an ongoing program to build a nuclear bomb.
Scores of fruitless missions broke that confidence, many task force members said in interviews.
Army Col. Robert Smith, who leads the site assessment teams from the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, said task force leaders no longer "think we're going to find chemical rounds sitting next to a gun." He added, "That's what we came here for, but we're past that."
[Task force members] consistently found targets identified by Washington to be inaccurate, looted and burned, or both.
Task Force 75's experience, and its impending dissolution after seven weeks in action, square poorly with assertions in Washington that the search has barely begun.
[H]ere on the front lines of the search, the focus is on a smaller number of high-priority sites, and the results are uniformly disappointing, participants said.
"We came to bear country, we came loaded for bear and we found out the bear wasn't here."
Actually, as someone with a grandfather who was slated to be in the invasion of mainland Japan which was averted by the "nuking" of Hiroshima, I am somewhat favorably inclined to that position.So, it appears you are saying that mass killing of innocent civilians is OK, if it helps us win the war. Do you think Mr. Osama Bin Laden might make the exact same argument?
And, frankly, someone was going to usher in the nuclear age, aren't you glad it was a country without designs using aggression to achieve world domination? We only use aggression after all other options have been played out (I will give you the benefit of the doubt that you are not one of those delusional folks who believe another 12 or 15 UN resolutions, and 10 or 20 years of sanctions would've benefited the people of Iraq as much as two Army divisions and the Marine Expeditionary force did).Well, it might have been a good idea for no one to usher in the nuclear age. As far as the U.S. not having designs to use aggression to achieve world domination, I would have agreed with you on that one until a short time ago. Now, I'm not so sure. Certainly, despite our rhetoric, we don't seem inclined to let the Iraqis run their country, as we seem determined to foist our choice of leaders upon them. And with the rhetoric turning toward Syria, well, I'm not so sure about world domination but I feel quite sure that Mr. Rumsfeld is thinking about domination of the Middle East.
"We all became friends with her, we liked her so much," Houssona said. "Especially because we all speak a little English, we were able to assure her the whole time that there was no danger, that she would go home soon."Almost two days before the ``daring rescue,'' the Iraqi military and intelligence units left Nasiriya. That night, the medical staff tried to smuggle their friend back to the U.S. side, only to be chased away in a hail of bullets. The next night, U.S. special forces cut power, blasted through locked doors, and raided the hospital.[T]hey all made a point of giving Lynch the best of everything, he added. Despite a scarcity of food, extra juice and cookie were scavenged for their American guest.
Three days after the raid, the doctors had a visit from one of their U.S. military counterparts. He came, they say, to thank them for the superb surgery.Everyone needs mythic heroes -- some to hate the enemy more, others to restore their faith in humanity."He was an older doctor with gray hair and he wore a military uniform," Raazk said.
"I told him he was very welcome, that it was our pleasure. And then I told him: `You do realize you could have just knocked on the door and we would have wheeled Jessica down to you, don't you?'
UPI's report, published Friday afternoon, quoted unidentified administration officials as saying that a combination of Pentagon hawks and senior Israeli officials had been pressing the United States to expand the ground war to Syria. The officials spoke to UPI on condition of anonymity.The administration is denying it all, of course.In response to Halevy's entreaties for action, these sources said, Rice repeated an assertion that the White House did not want any further military campaigns for the rest of Bush's first term, according to the sources. They said Rumsfeld objected, and, at one point, turned to Rove and asked his opinion. Rove said the president agreed with Rice, and the meeting came to an end, the sources said.
Another source with close knowledge of the matter told UPI: "The hawks didn't understand the emphasis had all changed: Everything was focused, not on the war any more, but on the president's re-election." (UPI)
[Rumsfeld] said there is little chance that the weapons -- whose alleged existence provided the main basis for war -- will be found independently, or that top officials will provide useful information. (AP 1)This raises the delicate question of mow much ``proof'' we really had before attacking. We knew what, we knew where -- well, we're now in control of the country, we're free to go and act on the information that we had. Or, if the weapons are so well hidden that even our on-the-ground inspections can't find them, how could they have detected them before the war from all the way in Washington? ``Proof,'' Mr. Rumsfeld? Mr. Powell?Some now say that instead of finding weapons stockpiles, they might find nothing more than documents and other evidence that the program once existed and was either destroyed or abandoned.
Before the war, administration officials did not just say Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, they also said they knew where some of them were.
Pentagon officials said just days before the war that they had intelligence that chemical weapons had been distributed to some Iraqi military units. None has been found.
"If the Iraqis did not use them ... to defend an invasion of their own country, when were they ever going to use them, and how were they a threat to the United States?" asked Cato Institute's Pena. "That's the question that has to be asked and is being glossed over." (AP 2)
WASHINGTON (AP) - High-ranking Iraqi prisoners are uniformly denying Saddam Hussein's government had any weapons of mass destruction before the war, U.S. officials familiar with their interrogations said Tuesday.- ARThe Bush administration has cited intelligence pointing to prohibited Iraqi weapons programs as a justification for war.
Officials now say the weapons are either well hidden or were destroyed in the run-up to the war. There is no firm evidence they were moved to other countries, they say. (AP)
Increasing reports are emerging from Afghanistan of battles between anti-foreign forces and Afghan militias and US troops, with a number of casualties on both sides. The main characteristic of the guerrilla attacks has been what appears to be, for the first time, a consolidated strategy.- ARFor instance, the attack that was mainly initiated along the border of South Waziristan Agency. The Shakin area came under fierce fire several times. Then sporadic attacks erupted in Argon, Zabul and Gazni. Once US forces were engaged in these attacks, the attackers suddenly changed tactics and briefly occupied Zabul ...
This is exactly the same strategy that the Taliban adopted in 1994 prior to taking full control of the country. (A.Times)
America's announcement of its intention to withdraw its military bases from Saudi Arabia answers Osama bin Laden's most persistent demand.- ARMore than any other cause it was the presence of "crusader" forces in the land of Islam's holiest sites - Mecca and Medina - that turned bin Laden from Afghan jihadi into an international terrorist. (Teleg)
The agency awarding Iraq reconstruction contracts deleted its requirement for a security clearance after realizing it awarded a project to a company that lacked one, an internal report says. (AP)I guess that tells us which came first -- the contracts, or the requirements. Let's hear it for the competitive bidding process!
A second U.S. soldier said the clash began when some of the protesters started throwing rocks at the soldiers and others started chanting. (CNN)They throw rocks, we shoot. Are we seeing visions of an American Palestine?"There were a lot of people who were armed and who were throwing rocks. How is a U.S. soldier to tell the difference between a rock and a grenade?" (Reuters)
A U.S. cease-fire with the Mujahedeen Khalq allows the terrorist group to keep its weapons to defend itself[.]Isn't this how we helped Hussein into power in the first place? Wheeling and dealing. Supporting dubious causes and organizations. Propping up questionable powers. Been there, done that.But the cease-fire represents a conundrum of sorts for the United States, which has classified the Mujahedeen Khalq as a terrorist organization. The United States went to war against Iraq in part to dismantle what it said were terrorist networks supported by Saddam's regime.
When asked how the United States could make deals with groups classified as terrorists, the official said the cease-fire was a battlefield agreement that coalition commanders were entitled to negotiate. (AP)
After the invasion of Kuwait in 1990, he [Abu Hattem] switched to guerrilla tactics, seeking a haven in the marshes.- ARHe said the most difficult fighting was the year after the first Gulf war. Between February 28 and May 23, he was confronted by the Hamurabi division of the Republican Guard hunting him with helicopter gunships. "We had 43 killed and 413 wounded but they failed to establish control over the marshes. Saddam then began draining the marshes. With the marshes dry, we no longer had natural cover but it was still possible to fight." (Guar)
Blair presented Parliament with a "dossier" on September 24 last year. It said that "Intelligence has established beyond doubt . . . that Saddam has continued to produce chemical and biological weapons".Well, search away, fellas, else Saddam will make a liar out of you. Not that that's saying much, but you know what I mean.The most dramatic claim of the dossier, much publicised, was that Saddam's "military planning allows for some of the WMD (weapons of mass destruction) to be ready within 45 minutes of an order to use them".
"If we know Saddam has weapons of mass destruction -- and we do -- does it make any sense for the world to wait to confront him?" - George Bush, October 7, 2002
"His (Saddam Hussein's) regime has large, unaccounted-for stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons and he has an active programme to acquire and develop nuclear weapons" - Donald Rumsfeld, January 20, 2003 (Times)
Broad categories of foreigners who arrive in this country illegally can be detained indefinitely without consideration of their individual circumstances if immigration officials say their release would endanger national security, according to a ruling by Attorney General John D. Ashcroft.Sounds reasonable, right? If they're a danger, they have to be held, no? But wait, it gets better -- their mere presence endangers national security, and therefore they're all dangerous! I agree it's crazy, but I'm not making this up:The order means that groups of asylum seekers and other aliens -- in this instance Haitians -- can be locked up without hearings and without recourse to release on bond.
[T]he attorney general said his decision was based on the danger that the release of Joseph and other Oct. 29 immigrants "would tend to encourage further surges of mass migration from Haiti by sea, with attendant strains on national and homeland security resources."So the mere fact of arriving in this country without papers is already a crime grave enough to warrant being thrown in prison without a hearing, without bail, without even a hearing date.Ashcroft said such migrations have "heavily taxed Coast Guard capacity and capabilities," limiting its responsiveness in other mission areas." (P ost)
[Powell's the only one who pushed for U.N. involvement. Do not assume the man's in control of his official actions; if his boss tells him to present to the UN, he has to. His options are greatly limited. I actually feel sorry for the guy - Wm.]
"Saddam was an unjust ruler, but maybe one day we could have got rid of him, and not had these foreigners come into our country."In a sign of growing distrust, one of America's closer allies in the Iraqi opposition, Jalal Talabani, leader of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, told Dubai's al-Arabiyah television yesterday that the US had no political role in Iraq. "We do not accept a foreigner heading an Iraqi government."
The only opposition leader who openly backs the presence of American troops is Ahmad Chalabi. (Guar 1) (Guar 2)
- AR
An air strike which American spokesmen were confident had killed Saddam Hussein in a Baghdad restaurant missed its target and hit nearby homes, killing at least eight people.
American officials claimed that the restaurant had been "pulverised" and that, if Saddam had been inside at the time, he would not have escaped.
In fact, all four bombs missed. A black banner draped on the rubble behind the restaurant, the wreckage of the destroyed homes, mourns the deaths of four members of one family.
About 20 yards from the crater, the al-Sa'ah restaurant was open for lunch yesterday. Its windows had been blown out and its customers had to eat outside, but the building appeared to have suffered no serious structural damage. (Tele)
The United States is planning to establish up to four long-term military bases in Iraq. The proposal would transform America's ability to project its power in the Middle East.- ARFuture arrangements depend largely on who takes over as leader of Iraq. [...]
"There will be some kind of a long-term defence relationship with a new Iraq, similar to Afghanistan," a senior Bush administration official said. (Tele)
Iraq's national museum is identified as a 'prime target for looters' and should be the second top priority for securing by coalition troops after the national bank, says a memo[.]- ARGeneral Jay Garner, the head of ORHA, is said to be 'livid'. 'We asked for just a few soldiers at each building or, if they feared snipers, then just one or two tanks,' said one ORHA official. 'The tanks were doing nothing once they got inside the city, yet the generals refused to deploy them, and look what happened.'
More than two weeks after the March memo was sent, ORHA was told it had not even been read.
Martin Sullivan, the chair of President Bush's Advisory Committee on Cultural Property, has already resigned over the issue, saying it was 'inexcusable' that the museum should not have had the same priority as the Iraqi Oil Ministry. (Guar)
"Iraq probably has no weapons of mass destruction in the commonly understood sense of the term."- ARSuch doubts were echoed yesterday by a three-star Iraqi general who told the Guardian in Baghdad that the country had purged itself completely of weapons of mass destruction after the 1991 Gulf war.
"We were led to believe that the Iraqis could fire them within 45 minutes. If that was the case where have they vanished to? We were told there was hard evidence."
David Hinchliffe, chairman of the Commons health committee, said: "For many of us who talked to ministers there was an implication that more was known. Therefore a lot of people are anxious to establish the truth."
[T]he military action was taken under UN resolutions calling for Iraq to disarm. "If by the turn of the year there is no WMD then the basis on which this was executed was illegal." (Guar)
But lifting the sanctions is linked to U.N. certification that Iraq's weapons of mass destruction have been destroyed -- and that issue is part of a broader debate on what the U.N. role will be in postwar Iraq.- ARA key resolution in April 1991 called for the destruction of all Iraqi nuclear, chemical and biological weapons, and missiles with a range of more than 93 miles. The resolution set up a U.N. inspections commission to oversee the process. It stated that sanctions can be lifted only when the council has agreed that Iraq has completed disarmament. (AP)
Or perhaps you were thinking of these? [Bush scandals]; [conflict of interest]; [bribery]; [influence peddling].
[Umm, yes, there is that - but I distinguish between lies and White House coffee hours and Lincoln bedroom rentals and abridging constitutional protections that safeguard me and mine. I expect no better than the former, but when my rights are harmed, it becomes personal - Wm.]
[If you promise that after 5 years our Constitution will be restored to its former position of honor in the executive branch, I'll enjoy them, too. Otherwise, it's just another spin of the fluff cycle - Wm.]
[DAF called himself the designated wet blanket... I'm not listening to you, long live freedom of speech? :-) - Wm.]
Muslim Shiite clerics have in the past week moved swiftly to fill the power void created by Saddam Hussein's ouster -- appointing governors, imposing curfews, offering protection, jobs, health care and giving financial assistance to the needy.- ARIn some respects, they have replaced Saddam as Iraq's new leadership. Ominously, they distrust the Americans who rid them of Saddam's tyranny and have little faith in the opposition leaders now returning to Iraq from years in exile. They also question whether Western democratic values are suited for their country.
And, they seem unwilling to surrender authority to a central government they don't like. (AP)
Mosul police were trying to prevent looters from stealing money from the city's nearby central bank.1000 rounds is a lot of shooting. In military parlance, they ``hosed'' the crowd. Good thing them boys got our support, heh hehHe said police had fired a number of times into the air to scatter the looters and that US soldiers opened fire, believing they were under attack.
"I heard three shots from the bank," he said. "Then the Americans opened fire. They sprayed the area. They must have fired 1,000 rounds. But they didn't seem to fire at the bank, they fired in the direction of the crowd by the governor's office." (Guar)
[PC, you're a merciless tease :-) Apropos Damascus, is anyone else constantly reminded of all the Bob Hope/Bing Crosby movies -- you know, Road to Zanzibar, Road to Baghdad, Road to Damascus? So, do Rumsfeld and Myers sing? :-) - Wm.]
- Syria harbors terrorists (Hizbullah the most active of these) to a greater degree than Iraq ever did.
- UN Security Council Resolution 661 provided that no state was to trade in Iraqi oil -- Syria has been in noncompliance with that resolution -- just as Iraq was in violation of 1441.
- Syria suppresses dissent by imprisoning democracy advocates -- just like Iraq. See the Human Rights Watch site for more details.
- Like Iraq in Kuwait in 1991, Syria is occupying Lebanon -- ostensibly a sovereign state.
However, President George Bush, who faces re-election next year with two perilous nation-building projects, in Afghanistan and Iraq, on his hands, is said to have cut off discussion among his advisers about the possibility of taking the "war on terror" to Syria.- ARThe Bush administration is nevertheless determined to use its military ascendancy in the region to exert diplomatic and economic pressure on Damascus and resolve what Washington sees as longstanding problems, including the threat to Israel[.]
Instead, the administration expects that the loss of income from smuggling arms and oil to and from Iraq will make Damascus vulnerable to economic pressure.
- "There is no doubt that the Muslims' power irritates the infidels and spreads envy in the hearts of the enemies of Islam - Christians, Jews and others...a malicious Crusader-Jewish alliance striving to eliminate Islam from all continents. (Geography of the Muslim World, Grade 8 (1994) pg 32)
- "The abundance of the suicide cases in Western societies is surely because of their distance for the true divine source. (Islamic Jurisprudence, Grade 10, (2001) p.19)
- "Now it [Palestine] is occupied by the Jews, a people of treachery and betrayal, who have gathered there from every place: from Poland, Spain, America and elsewhere. Their end, by God's will, is perdition. (Dictation, Grade 8 pt 1 (2000) p. 24)
- "All Muslims stand together for the realization of their common goals, such as: Purification of Jerusalem from the filth of Zionism and the liberation of Palestine. (Geography of the Muslim World , Grade 8, [1994] p. 37)
- Jihad in God's cause is the path to victory and to strength in this world, as well as to attaining Paradise in the hereafter. ([Qur'an ] Commentary, Grade 9 (2000) p. 90)
[Politicians tend to invoke, and seem to have always done so - as Mark Twain mocked in The War Prayer, ``O Lord our God, help us to tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells.'' Uncomfortably on target even today - Wm.]
"The President frequently confides to individuals and friendly audiences that he is guided by God's hand. But if God guided him into an invasion of Iraq, He sent a different message to the Pope, the Conference of Catholic Bishops, the mainline Protestant National Council of Churches and many distinguished rabbis--all of whom believe the invasion and bombardment of Iraq is against God's will."DAF: Just read your comments on religion & politics/government after finishing the George McGovern article in The Nation (Full text at: thenation.com). I thought you'd appreciate his insight - from someone who experienced war. (For the charter members of The Institute and those in support of the invasion, no need to point out how liberal, etc., both McGovern and The Nation are. I don't expect that anything there will change your opinions.)
"As a World War II bomber pilot, I was always troubled by the title of a then-popular book, God Is My Co-pilot. My co-pilot was Bill Rounds of Wichita, Kansas, who was anything but godly, but he was a skillful pilot, and he helped me bring our B-24 Liberator through thirty-five combat missions over the most heavily defended targets in Europe. I give thanks to God for our survival, but somehow I could never quite picture God sitting at the controls of a bomber or squinting through a bombsight deciding which of his creatures should survive and which should die. It did not simplify matters theologically when Sam Adams, my navigator--and easily the godliest man on my ten-member crew--was killed in action early in the war. He was planning to become a clergyman at war's end.- TMBOf course, my dear mother went to her grave believing that her prayers brought her son safely home. Maybe they did. But how could I explain that to the mother of my close friend, Eddie Kendall, who prayed with equal fervor for her son's safe return? Eddie was torn in half by a blast of shrapnel during the Battle of the Bulge--dead at age 19, during the opening days of the battle--the best baseball player and pheasant hunter I knew.
I most certainly do not see God at work in the slaughter and destruction now unfolding in Iraq or in the war plans now being developed for additional American invasions of other lands. The hand of the Devil? Perhaps. But how can I suggest that a fellow Methodist with a good Methodist wife is getting guidance from the Devil? I don't want to get too self-righteous about all of this. After all, I have passed the 80 mark, so I don't want to set the bar of acceptable behavior too high lest I fail to meet the standard for a passing grade on Judgment Day. I've already got a long list of strikes against me. So President Bush, forgive me if I've been too tough on you. But I must tell you, Mr. President, you are the greatest threat to American troops. Only you can put our young people in harm's way in a needless war. Only you can weaken America's good name and influence in world affairs."
[11:46am Thank you for the wonderful article -- it's full of great quotes and wisdom, and is a heartening read in these sorry times. Unfortunately, human lifetimes are too short to remember even recent history; those kids fighting in Iraq are already two generations removed from Vietnam. - Wm.]
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