Hope in Iraq

[Ocean Breeze]

jeez james!!! Does your desire for TORTURE never end??? :roll: :wink:

 

[neocon-hunter]

I wouldn't call Afghanistan stabilized NJ. It is still a big mess and the US and compny only have very little secured, but at least the poppy market is stabilized to feed the demand in America.

 

[Ocean Breeze]

Re: RE: Hope in Iraq

I wouldn't call Afghanistan stabilized NJ. It is still a big mess and the US and compny only have very little secured, but at least the poppy market is stabilized to feed the demand in America.

Afganistan is far from stablized. Just because it has receded from the news.......does not mean all is copesthetic. The "leadership" etc all live behind /or IN heavily secured zones.......and that is the only way they can function. The poppy yield is successful and the drug lords continue to intimidate and "rule".

So not sure what the US achieved in Afganistan.... and every now and then , it still erupts with killings...
Unfinished business.....

 

[no1important]

UN condemns Iraq charter change

The United Nations has criticised changes to Iraq's electoral law that make it harder for Iraqis to reject the draft constitution.

 

[PoisonPete2]

...thats the problem we can't leave the country as it seems it is already descending to civil war. This is the time they need international support because we don't want the worng people to kill their way into power....... and yess the Sunni minority are revolting because they won't have to power they had under Saddam Hussein.....

...one only has to look at history to see that leaving a country in the grips of insurgency and war will end up negatively....... the taliban in afghanistan would be an example.

.....its a mess over there but we need to make sure we are there long enough to avoid these worst possible scenarios....because it is the smart thing to do...... if we just leave then it could become a problem not only for the US but also the world....... and another war might be ineveitable... which would be a shame......

Answer - Don't make out like the U.S. is a good and generous nation to stay on in Iraq. it is way past time for the U.S. to be out of Iraq. They should be quickly replaced by U.N. mandated forces to take the taint of the American occupation from the land. International support is precisely what is needed, and the Arab League must be central to the reconstruction. Of course, being the aggressor, the United States must pay all war reparations. The Americans caused the mess over there and should not use the mess as an excuse to stay.

 

[Gary]

I doubt the US can ever make Iraq stable enough to leave it without it falling into chaos, which is almost the situation now anyways. As poor an option as it sounds Iraq was probably better off before with Saddam in control, the US certainly was better off before they went in.
Saddam Hussien was one of the most brutal dictators of the 20th century but at least he was contained, now it's just a huge mess.

 

[Vanni Fucci]

US Policymakers Despair of Iraqi Army

As Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, commented, "It doesn't feel like progress when we hear today that there is only one Iraqi battalion fully capable."

 

[mrmom2]

Poison said

.S. to be out of Iraq. They should be quickly replaced by U.N. mandated forces to take the taint of the American occupation from the land. International support is precisely what is needed, and the Arab League must be central to the reconstruction

Reconstruction and there milatary should be front and center for peace keeping operations .Its the only way things will be stabilized over there :wink:

 

[Ocean Breeze]

Re: RE: Hope in Iraq

I doubt the US can ever make Iraq stable enough to leave it without it falling into chaos, which is almost the situation now anyways. As poor an option as it sounds Iraq was probably better off before with Saddam in control, the US certainly was better off before they went in.
Saddam Hussien was one of the most brutal dictators of the 20th century but at least he was contained, now it's just a huge mess.

Good points......... Not sure the USR ever really planned on "leaving " Iraq. Therein lies the rub. Seems the Iraqis know this.....(and have the visual of the massive military bases construction)..... and over lording presence of the US everywhere they turn.

What makes this even more tragic is the lies. Bush stated emphatically at one time. that he was not into regime changes, and that it was illegal......etc blah blah........and yet that is exactly what he orchestrated in order to impose a US puppet regime in place with the US pulling the strings from behind or overtly.

Whatever SH may have been........ Iraq was at least stable. And the pressure on SH and HIS goons was such that he couldn't do much without inspectors, and /or the world knowing. So, yes, he was contained. But that wasn't good enough for the bush regime......(or bad enough....as it turns out). Bush just HAD to invade.......LIE a thousand LIES to do it , continue to lie , and the result is anything than what the US media might report.

Iraq had become the madman's (bush) OBSESSION. (or at least one of them ). .......and when something becomes an obsession.....all objectivity and rationality is lost. one then lies, cheats or whatever to fullfill the obsession. (or fill that obsessive 'need')

(IMHO)----or my humble basic assessment .

 

[Andygal]

Yeah, SH was a horrible horrible person, but at least things were STABLE under him. Now the Iraqi people have no stability at all, is that better then SH?

 

[Ocean Breeze]

Re: RE: Hope in Iraq

Yeah, SH was a horrible horrible person, but at least things were STABLE under him. Now the Iraqi people have no stability at all, is that better then SH?

not only that.........currently Iraqis have no security at all. We get no reports as to how they manage their day to day lives......do their grocery shopping. get to their jobs .....if they still have them........ and how they handle the losses of their loved ones that are killed daily by the fecking US bombs and now the so called "insurgents"..........( which are a result of the invasion in the first place. )

btw: where the feck are those massive amounts of WMD that posed SUCH A DANGER to the US and the world at large??? More important how can bush continue to appear in public , continue to lie/spin ,defend with a straight face..........when his main reason for this invasion blew up in his face.........One can only conclude that he really has no conscience. It is not "politics" it is "pathology".

 

[Just the Facts]

Re: RE: Hope in Iraq

btw: where the feck are those massive amounts of WMD that posed SUCH A DANGER to the US and the world at large???

Syria

8)

 

[Ocean Breeze]

Re: RE: Hope in Iraq

btw: where the feck are those massive amounts of WMD that posed SUCH A DANGER to the US and the world at large???

Syria

8)

Cute!! :wink: the mobile (and illusive) WMD....... which travel to whichever country bush gets an obsession to attack. (picture bush in "Indian" war dance gear doing the war dance , ie. his new promotional.) Could not be more "convenient".. :wink:

 

[Twila]

My answer to the location of WMD is in the good old US of A. Right where they've always been.

 

[Ocean Breeze]

Did someone say "hope" ??? Not sure they want to live on "hope" as much as some stability, peace and normalacy

Death Squads And Diplomacy
Robert Dreyfuss
October 05, 2005


Robert Dreyfuss is a freelance writer based in Alexandria, Va., who specializes in politics and national security issues. He is a contributing editor at The Nation, a contributing writer at Mother Jones, a senior correspondent for The American Prospect, and a frequent contributor to Rolling Stone. His book, Devil's Game: How the United States Helped Unleash Fundamentalist Islam, will be published by Henry Holt/Metropolitan Books in the fall.

A flurry of Arab diplomacy over the last few days is unfolding in a rear-guard effort to prevent the crisis in Iraq from exploding into what Saudi Foreign Minister Saud Al Faisal warned last month could be a regional civil war involving not only Iraq, but all of its neighbors.

The main, and well-deserved, target of Saud’s ire was the increasingly authoritarian and brutal rule of the main Iraqi Shiite parties, especially the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), whose Badr Brigade militia are terrorizing Iraq’s secular, urban Shiite population and carrying out death-squad attacks against Sunnis. The attacks against the Sunnis are aimed not only at the Iraqi armed resistance but at secular, nationalist Sunni leaders and activists.

Last week, I reported on the fear of Shiite militias and death squads as reported by Aiham Al Sammarae, an Iraqi oppositionist and former minister under the interim government in 2004 who is trying to broker a deal with the Iraqi resistance. Since then, other reports have surfaced concerning the extensive violence carried out by paramilitary forces tied to SCIRI and to Al Dawa, SCIRI’s partner in the Shiite religious bloc in Iraq. By now it is clear that if Tony Soprano lived in Iraq, he’d be a member of the Shiite militia. Consider the following report from CBS News:

CBS News correspondent Lara Logan reports there is a secret, ruthless cleansing of the country's towns and cities. Bodies—blindfolded, bound and executed—just appear, like the rotting corpses of 36 Sunni men that turned up in a dry riverbed south of Baghdad.

CBS News traced 16 of those men to a single street in a Baghdad suburb, where family members showed CBS News how the killers forced their way into their homes in the middle of the night and dragged away their sons and fathers.

"My uncles were tortured, they even poured acid on them," a young boy told CBS News.

Clutching photographs of the murdered men, the women and children left behind came together to grieve.

One woman said as her husband was marched away she sent her son after him with his slippers, but his abductor sent the child back with a chilling message: No need for slippers—he will come back dead.

They were targeted for one reason alone: all were Sunnis.

Or this, from the Chicago Tribune :

In the dead of night, bands of armed men in Iraqi commando uniforms stormed Baghdad's Hurriyah neighborhood in late August, breaking down doors with sledgehammers and grenades.

If the family inside was Shiite, the gunmen moved on to another house, witnesses said. If the family was Sunni, the gunmen tore through the building, demolishing furniture and manhandling those inside. More than 70 young Sunni Arab men were whisked away.

Countless atrocities, too, have been perpetrated by Sunni gangs and by terrorists associated with Abu Musab Al Zarqawi. But the killings by the Shiite militias are far more chilling because they have an entirely different quality: They are carried out by gunmen tied to the U.S.-supported regime in Baghdad. They don’t draw criticism from U.S. officials, and most American media reports continue to portray the Shiites as victims and the Sunnis as aggressors.

Still, it is the ferocity of the Shiite fanaticism governing Iraq today, and the ruling circle’s ever-closer ties to Iran, that prompted Prince Saud to warn of a regional civil war sparked by the Shiites. He brought that message to Washington last week, talking to senators and to the Washington press corps. He then flew back to the Middle East to attend a meeting of Arab foreign ministers, including Iraq’s Foreign Minister Hossein Zebari. We’ll come to the Arab League meeting shortly, but first some background:

After Saud’s criticism of Iraq’s Shiite crazies, one of them—Iraqi interior minister Bayan Jabor—lashed out at Saudi Arabia. “This Iraq,” said Jabor, who as interior minister is directly responsible for the Shiite hit squads, “is the cradle of civilization that taught humanity reading and writing, and some Bedouin riding a camel wants to teach us!” He went on to lambaste Saudi Arabia and threaten to provoke an uprising of Shiites who predominate in Saudi Arabia’s oil-rich Eastern Province. “There are more than four million Shiites in the kingdom who are considered second-class citizens,” he sniffed.

Later, at the Arab League foreign ministers’ meeting, two important things happened. First, the Iraqi foreign minister, Zebari, a Kurd, abjectly apologized for Jabor’s calling Saud a Bedouin. More important, the League decided to launch an Iraqi peace initiative. The secretary-general of the Arab League is going to Baghdad on a mission to find common ground among Iraq’s warring factions, including the Iraqi Sunni-led resistance. And the League is putting together a plan to convene a conference led by Iraq’s Arab neighbors along with all Iraqi factions, in an effort to prevent civil war and stabilize the country. It’s a very important step, one that probably does not have much more than token support from the Bush administration, which is stuck on its stay-the-course fantasy of a victory strategy. But important people in Washington believe that Jordan and Saudi Arabia, both Sunni kingdoms, are the best mediators between the United States and the Iraqi opposition.

In that context, U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Zalmay Khalilzad managed to find his way down to Saudi Arabia this weekend to talk to Saudi Arabia’s crown prince about Iraq. Iraq—and its Shiite fundamentalist ruling clique—may be too far gone to be salvaged. Perhaps civil war is inevitable. But if the United States would get out of Iraq, give the Arab League and the UN a chance to manage things there, and take part in Arab-led talks with the Sunnis, catastrophe might be averted. It’s not likely, but at this point we need straws to grasp at.

(trying to imagine what history will say (some years in the future)......about the USR/Iraq -Middle East "intercourse". If Bush was so obsesessed about leaving a "mark" or "statement" with his presidency..........he has no worries... as he has suceeded. (in a negative way)

 

[Ocean Breeze]

Re: RE: Hope in Iraq

My answer to the location of WMD is in the good old US of A. Right where they've always been.

absolutely Twinks :wink: ........and can be easily located in washington. They have taken the design of the male aggressor humanoid. and can be spotted on the Telee now and then.( far too often for anyone's good health :wink:

 

[Just the Facts]

Re: RE: Hope in Iraq

Cute!! :wink: the mobile (and illusive) WMD.......

Yup, some in Iran, too. No doubt. In the same hangar as his pre-1991 air force. :salute:

 

[Jo Canadian]

 

[ElPolaco]

Re: RE: Hope in Iraq

....My question to you guys is what if the majority of Shiite and Kurdish people support the constitution but the Sunni keep slaughtering these people? will you then support staying and helping the Majority??????

...or another question; if the u.s. succeeds in setting up a pro-iranian shiite state, will the u.s. then decide to support the insurgents? It seems like u.s. imperialism changes sides in the middle east about as much as they change underwear.

 

[Ocean Breeze]

Permanent US OCCUPATION of /in Iraq

http://www.globalpolicy.org/security/issues/iraq/occupation/bases/2005/0929permanentoccupation.htm


.......the USR......has no intentions of leaving Iraq. It will remain there ......in one form or another. .....long after the active duty troops come home......if they do.