US Invasion of Iraq-Updates
- Thread starter Ocean Breeze
- Start date
mog: thanks so much for doing the photo for me. :thumbleft:
(I have not figured out how yet..........and if I post the link , it does not bring up the appropriate page.....ergo I post a quote from the page...)
(I have not figured out how yet..........and if I post the link , it does not bring up the appropriate page.....ergo I post a quote from the page...)
just go to http://www.imageshack.us/
browse for the pic you want in yout computer and then the page will give you different options for forums, websites, etc.
Try it.
browse for the pic you want in yout computer and then the page will give you different options for forums, websites, etc.
Try it.
http://www.cnn.com/2005/POLITICS/06/23/cheney.interview/index.html
Cheney "predicts" Iraq invasion will be a hugh success. :roll:
(for the Iraqis sake.........sure hope he is right)
Cheney "predicts" Iraq invasion will be a hugh success. :roll:
(for the Iraqis sake.........sure hope he is right)
http://www.tompaine.com/articles/20050624/the_war_before_the_war.php
the "war" before the war... :twisted:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/4617875.stm
Iraqi leader meets with Bush
bush:"
Is this an admission that the US is in Iraq to stay??? :wink:
( "enemy" as in the one created by Bush??? :roll:
the "war" before the war... :twisted:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/4617875.stm
Iraqi leader meets with Bush
bush:"
Is this an admission that the US is in Iraq to stay??? :wink:
( "enemy" as in the one created by Bush??? :roll:
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article9260.htm
not much is said about the children in Iraq , is there??
not much is said about the children in Iraq , is there??
http://www.progresoweekly.com/index.php?progreso=Max_Castro&otherweek
from delusion.to denial. to gaining some awareness, to depression.
from delusion.to denial. to gaining some awareness, to depression.
The Associated Press
Saturday, June 25, 2005; 9:21 AM
BAGHDAD, Iraq -- A suicide car bomber blew himself up Saturday outside an Iraqi police officer's home north of Baghdad, killing at least six people and wounding at least a dozen, police said.
The suicide bomber, accompanied by another five cars loaded with heavily armed insurgents, slammed into a wall outside the home of Lt. Muthana al-Shaker _ a member of a special forces unit _ in Samarra, 60 miles north of Baghdad, said Lt. Qassim Mohammed of the Samarra police.
All those killed were on the street when the attack occurred. Al-Shaker was not injured, Mohammed said.
Two insurgents were killed when a roadside bomb they were planting outside al-Shaker's house after the attack blew up, he said. That bomb was intended to kill police and emergency services members when they arrived at the scene, Mohammed added.
Saturday, June 25, 2005; 9:21 AM
BAGHDAD, Iraq -- A suicide car bomber blew himself up Saturday outside an Iraqi police officer's home north of Baghdad, killing at least six people and wounding at least a dozen, police said.
The suicide bomber, accompanied by another five cars loaded with heavily armed insurgents, slammed into a wall outside the home of Lt. Muthana al-Shaker _ a member of a special forces unit _ in Samarra, 60 miles north of Baghdad, said Lt. Qassim Mohammed of the Samarra police.
All those killed were on the street when the attack occurred. Al-Shaker was not injured, Mohammed said.
Two insurgents were killed when a roadside bomb they were planting outside al-Shaker's house after the attack blew up, he said. That bomb was intended to kill police and emergency services members when they arrived at the scene, Mohammed added.
How true this is. Does ANYONE know bush's motives (REAL ....not the ones he spins for the public) for this invasion???
Don't know about anyone else........but this is the recurring question , many (including YT) keep asking. And all "we" hear are simplistic platitudes. and feeble attempts to "reassure" the nation/world.......that the bush regime is "Making progress"
but progress in what.......and to what end??? Considering the fact that bush has lied about everything so far........ where does it leave the Iraqis ??? Is bush aiming for an Iraqi version of the US????? Fiction/reality has become blurred .
THE FANTASTICAL WORLD OF STUDLEY MCMUFFIN
By Sheila Samples
Is there a single psychologist or phychiatrist in this country -- in any country -- who would be willing to put his or her credibility on the line and say that George W. Bush is not a bloodthirsty lunatic, a liar and a fool?
I thought not.
I am finding it more and more difficult to hear what he is saying. Each time Bush opens his mouth, he seems to be attempting to channel a loon, but unfortunately, its weird cries are all but drowned out by the maniacal barking of a hyena. That would be fine if he were out in the Texas boonies with the rest of the loons and hyenas rather than illegally occupying the chair reserved for our elected head of state -- arguably the most powerful man in the world.
How long are we going to allow this war criminal to keep killing innocent men, women and children while wiping his brow and complaining how much work -- hard work -- it is? How long, America? Until they're all dead under the weight of our liberation?
In his Saturday radio address, Bush boasted that he and his puppet Iraqi Prime Minister Jaafari not only "discussed" their strong partnership but reveled in the dramatic progress all his hard work in Iraq has made over the past year. A mouse in the corner might confide that Bush told Jaafari, "Do as I say or die, punk." A mouse might say that the progress of which Bush is so proud was nothing more than his chortling over his success at ravaging a nation and its people in order to turn over all its resources to Dick Cheney's Halliburton and a few other lucky US corporate contractors.
Do you listen to him, America? Do you hear him? Do you believe him when he says that the blood of your children, mingled with the blood of Iraqi children, is but a "grim reminder that the enemies of freedom in Iraq are ruthless killers with no regard for human life"? Well, I believe him. Was ever there a more grim reminder of a ruthless killer with no regard for human life than his smirking self?
Tuesday, Bush says, is the first anniversary of the "moment" Iraqis reclaimed their free and sovereign nation. Hoo-boy. If we are to believe him -- in a single instant -- Iraqi people were free, and they had the purple fingers to prove it. Just another "mission accomplished" moment, eh, Scoob? How many more of these bloody photo-op moments are we going to take -- can we take -- in the name of all that is decent? How many, before we finally grab rails, sacks of feathers and buckets of tar, and take off in a dead run for Pennsylvania Avenue?
Just wondering...
Bush says he will give a major speech Tuesday evening on what he calls his "two-track strategy for victory." He will tell us yet once again about his important mission and his firm resolve to perform fantastical, historical, hysterical feats.
Will Bush be The President, addressing such a vital matter while surrounded by the somber trappings of the oval office? Doubtful, because the last time Bush tried that, he became so diminished he disappeared beneath the desk. Karl Rove had to drag in a ladder just so Bush could climb back up in the chair.
Will Bush be the Commander-in-Chief, speaking to us from the dignified podium of Congress? Yeah, like that's going to happen, given the gloomy, increasingly pissed-off mood of Congress. You never know when the "moos" will turn to Boos...
Or will Bush once again be the courageous and fearless Studley McMuffin, all decked out in an Air Force flight jacket, giving yet another campaign speech from a raised platform before a hand-picked military audience with orders to screech "Hoo-AHHHH!" each time Bush stops to take a breath, or when tasered by Karl Rove and Donald Rumsfeld from off-camera -- whichever comes first?
I just report. You decide.
Bush will say the "military track" of his strategy is to defeat the terrorists. He will tell us once again that democracy is on the march and is "taking root" everywhere. Soon, it will cover all of Iraq, sweeping across that nation like Johnson Grass across the west Texas plains.
His "political track," he says, is "to continue helping Iraqis build the institutions of a stable democracy." What the hell does that mean? How can Iraqis build anything? Bush has taken their oil, their money, their businesses, their jobs, their water and electricity and their humanity from them. He has kicked down their doors and dragged their men off to prison while imposing curfews on the women, children and elderly who remain.
Bush will tell us his mission is difficult, and we can "expect more tough fighting in the weeks and months ahead." But, as always, he is resolved and confident. His will remains unbroken -- unbreakable. Even as grieving parents in Iraq and the United States bury the body parts of their children, they can be proud of Bush for working so hard to defy, and defeat, evil throughout the world and replace it with the freedoms of corporate democracy.
Oh, America, how long will we sit and listen to the jangled loon-and-hyena cacophony gushing out of this destructive administration -- the robotic cheers erupting from a condemned military?
We have work to do. Stopping the world of Studley McMuffin and kicking off the "ruthless killers with no regard for human life" who are in control of us will be work. Hard, hard work.
But we must be up and about our country's business, no matter how hard it is. Our country's business is life; therefore, we have no choice. The alternative is not -- nor should it ever be -- an option on our table.
---
Sheila Samples is an Oklahoma freelance writer and a former civilian US Army Public Information Officer. She is a regular contributor for a variety of Internet sites. Contact her at: rsamples@sirinet.net. © 2005 Sheila Samples
By Sheila Samples
Is there a single psychologist or phychiatrist in this country -- in any country -- who would be willing to put his or her credibility on the line and say that George W. Bush is not a bloodthirsty lunatic, a liar and a fool?
I thought not.
I am finding it more and more difficult to hear what he is saying. Each time Bush opens his mouth, he seems to be attempting to channel a loon, but unfortunately, its weird cries are all but drowned out by the maniacal barking of a hyena. That would be fine if he were out in the Texas boonies with the rest of the loons and hyenas rather than illegally occupying the chair reserved for our elected head of state -- arguably the most powerful man in the world.
How long are we going to allow this war criminal to keep killing innocent men, women and children while wiping his brow and complaining how much work -- hard work -- it is? How long, America? Until they're all dead under the weight of our liberation?
In his Saturday radio address, Bush boasted that he and his puppet Iraqi Prime Minister Jaafari not only "discussed" their strong partnership but reveled in the dramatic progress all his hard work in Iraq has made over the past year. A mouse in the corner might confide that Bush told Jaafari, "Do as I say or die, punk." A mouse might say that the progress of which Bush is so proud was nothing more than his chortling over his success at ravaging a nation and its people in order to turn over all its resources to Dick Cheney's Halliburton and a few other lucky US corporate contractors.
Do you listen to him, America? Do you hear him? Do you believe him when he says that the blood of your children, mingled with the blood of Iraqi children, is but a "grim reminder that the enemies of freedom in Iraq are ruthless killers with no regard for human life"? Well, I believe him. Was ever there a more grim reminder of a ruthless killer with no regard for human life than his smirking self?
Tuesday, Bush says, is the first anniversary of the "moment" Iraqis reclaimed their free and sovereign nation. Hoo-boy. If we are to believe him -- in a single instant -- Iraqi people were free, and they had the purple fingers to prove it. Just another "mission accomplished" moment, eh, Scoob? How many more of these bloody photo-op moments are we going to take -- can we take -- in the name of all that is decent? How many, before we finally grab rails, sacks of feathers and buckets of tar, and take off in a dead run for Pennsylvania Avenue?
Just wondering...
Bush says he will give a major speech Tuesday evening on what he calls his "two-track strategy for victory." He will tell us yet once again about his important mission and his firm resolve to perform fantastical, historical, hysterical feats.
Will Bush be The President, addressing such a vital matter while surrounded by the somber trappings of the oval office? Doubtful, because the last time Bush tried that, he became so diminished he disappeared beneath the desk. Karl Rove had to drag in a ladder just so Bush could climb back up in the chair.
Will Bush be the Commander-in-Chief, speaking to us from the dignified podium of Congress? Yeah, like that's going to happen, given the gloomy, increasingly pissed-off mood of Congress. You never know when the "moos" will turn to Boos...
Or will Bush once again be the courageous and fearless Studley McMuffin, all decked out in an Air Force flight jacket, giving yet another campaign speech from a raised platform before a hand-picked military audience with orders to screech "Hoo-AHHHH!" each time Bush stops to take a breath, or when tasered by Karl Rove and Donald Rumsfeld from off-camera -- whichever comes first?
I just report. You decide.
Bush will say the "military track" of his strategy is to defeat the terrorists. He will tell us once again that democracy is on the march and is "taking root" everywhere. Soon, it will cover all of Iraq, sweeping across that nation like Johnson Grass across the west Texas plains.
His "political track," he says, is "to continue helping Iraqis build the institutions of a stable democracy." What the hell does that mean? How can Iraqis build anything? Bush has taken their oil, their money, their businesses, their jobs, their water and electricity and their humanity from them. He has kicked down their doors and dragged their men off to prison while imposing curfews on the women, children and elderly who remain.
Bush will tell us his mission is difficult, and we can "expect more tough fighting in the weeks and months ahead." But, as always, he is resolved and confident. His will remains unbroken -- unbreakable. Even as grieving parents in Iraq and the United States bury the body parts of their children, they can be proud of Bush for working so hard to defy, and defeat, evil throughout the world and replace it with the freedoms of corporate democracy.
Oh, America, how long will we sit and listen to the jangled loon-and-hyena cacophony gushing out of this destructive administration -- the robotic cheers erupting from a condemned military?
We have work to do. Stopping the world of Studley McMuffin and kicking off the "ruthless killers with no regard for human life" who are in control of us will be work. Hard, hard work.
But we must be up and about our country's business, no matter how hard it is. Our country's business is life; therefore, we have no choice. The alternative is not -- nor should it ever be -- an option on our table.
---
Sheila Samples is an Oklahoma freelance writer and a former civilian US Army Public Information Officer. She is a regular contributor for a variety of Internet sites. Contact her at: rsamples@sirinet.net. © 2005 Sheila Samples
In Iraq, an Echo of Algiers
By George F. Will
Post
Thursday, April 28, 2005; A23
On Sunday night Iraqi insurgents bombed the Al Riadhy ice cream parlor in Baghdad, bringing to mind a movie that was much on the minds of some U.S. military leaders on the eve of the war with Iraq. The 1965 Italian movie "The Battle of Algiers" depicted France's military struggle in the second half of the 1950s to subdue the Algerian uprising against French governance of that country. One particularly horrifying scene showed the placing and then the explosion of three terrorist bombs in crowded businesses, one of them a shop where, in a riveting cinematic moment, a small child was enjoying an ice cream cone.
The differences between the Algerian insurgency and today's Iraqi insurgency are, of course, profound. In the former, North Africans were rising in the name of self-determination against rule by Europeans. Since the Jan. 30 elections, Iraqi insurgents have been fighting an Iraqi government, albeit an embryonic on e with a dangerously protracted gestation period.
Still, a nagging question is whether, in Iraq as in Algeria, time is on the side of the insurgents. In Algeria, French counterinsurgency measures were skillful, ruthless and, by late 1958, successful. Briefly. In 1962 France retreated from Algeria.
The Algerian insurgency was fueled by the most potent "ism" of a century of isms -- nationalism. In contrast, one of the strange, almost surreal, aspects of the Iraqi insurgency is its lack of ideological content. Most of the insurgents are "FREs" -- former regime elements -- who simply want to return to power.
Unlike most of the violent cadres of the 20th century, the insurgency does not have a fighting faith; it does not bother to have an ideology to justify its claim to power. But it seems to have an idea, which points purely to tactics. The pedigree of the idea can be traced to a 17th-century Englishman.
Thomas Hobbes was born in 1588, the year Protestant England defeated the armada of Catholic Spain. He lived 91 years, through the sectarian strife of England's Civil War and the regicide of Charles I. Hobbes wanted tranquility. His project was to establish the philosophic foundations of government that could guarantee safety.
He said that without government -- in what Hobbes called the "state of nature" -- even sociability itself was problematic because life was "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short." To escape such horrors, people would make a rational, if stark, social contract. They would consent to surrender their natural rights to empower a severely strong government that would at least release them from fear of violent death.
Actually, his rationale for strong, even absolutist, government led to consensual and limited government. This was because he postulated natural rights and because the idea of contracting rebuked the idea of the divine right of kings. Power, even if absolute, was to arise from consenting people. Hobbes died in 1679, the year of the Habeas Corpus Act, a milestone on the road to limited government.
Iraq's insurgents are degenerate Hobbesians -- Hobbes's subtlety reduced to the ruthless cunning of one idea: By promiscuously dispensing death, thereby creating the chaos of a Hobbesian state of nature, the insurgents hope to delegitimize the Iraqi government for its failure to provide the primary social good: freedom from fear of violent death.
To create chaos, the insurgents are applying -- again, unwittingly -- another borrowed insight, this one from an American thinker who died last year. Daniel Boorstin, historian and librarian of Congress, understood the special strength of small numbers -- indeed, the veto power of a sufficiently ruthless minority -- given society's dependence on "flow technology."
Through most of human history, Boorstin wrote, "in order to do damage to other people, it was necessary for you to set things in motion -- to throw a rock or wield a club." But in modern societies, where "the economy and the technology are in motion," you do damage by stopping things -- oil deliveries, electricity distribution, garbage collection, water purification, etc.
Iraq is more urbanized than Wisconsin. Baghdad, where about one in five Iraqis live, is a social organism about the size of Chicago. The insurgency cannot hope to defeat the U.S. military but can believe that it does not need to.
The basis of the insurgency's hope -- desperate and implausible but not completely delusional -- is also the basis of American hopefulness: Iraq now has an Iraqi government. Another Iraqi government -- nasty and brutish -- will come, in time, if today's evolving government seems incapable of preventing Iraqi life from being nasty, brutish and, often, short.
georgewill@washpost.com
By George F. Will
Post
Thursday, April 28, 2005; A23
On Sunday night Iraqi insurgents bombed the Al Riadhy ice cream parlor in Baghdad, bringing to mind a movie that was much on the minds of some U.S. military leaders on the eve of the war with Iraq. The 1965 Italian movie "The Battle of Algiers" depicted France's military struggle in the second half of the 1950s to subdue the Algerian uprising against French governance of that country. One particularly horrifying scene showed the placing and then the explosion of three terrorist bombs in crowded businesses, one of them a shop where, in a riveting cinematic moment, a small child was enjoying an ice cream cone.
The differences between the Algerian insurgency and today's Iraqi insurgency are, of course, profound. In the former, North Africans were rising in the name of self-determination against rule by Europeans. Since the Jan. 30 elections, Iraqi insurgents have been fighting an Iraqi government, albeit an embryonic on e with a dangerously protracted gestation period.
Still, a nagging question is whether, in Iraq as in Algeria, time is on the side of the insurgents. In Algeria, French counterinsurgency measures were skillful, ruthless and, by late 1958, successful. Briefly. In 1962 France retreated from Algeria.
The Algerian insurgency was fueled by the most potent "ism" of a century of isms -- nationalism. In contrast, one of the strange, almost surreal, aspects of the Iraqi insurgency is its lack of ideological content. Most of the insurgents are "FREs" -- former regime elements -- who simply want to return to power.
Unlike most of the violent cadres of the 20th century, the insurgency does not have a fighting faith; it does not bother to have an ideology to justify its claim to power. But it seems to have an idea, which points purely to tactics. The pedigree of the idea can be traced to a 17th-century Englishman.
Thomas Hobbes was born in 1588, the year Protestant England defeated the armada of Catholic Spain. He lived 91 years, through the sectarian strife of England's Civil War and the regicide of Charles I. Hobbes wanted tranquility. His project was to establish the philosophic foundations of government that could guarantee safety.
He said that without government -- in what Hobbes called the "state of nature" -- even sociability itself was problematic because life was "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short." To escape such horrors, people would make a rational, if stark, social contract. They would consent to surrender their natural rights to empower a severely strong government that would at least release them from fear of violent death.
Actually, his rationale for strong, even absolutist, government led to consensual and limited government. This was because he postulated natural rights and because the idea of contracting rebuked the idea of the divine right of kings. Power, even if absolute, was to arise from consenting people. Hobbes died in 1679, the year of the Habeas Corpus Act, a milestone on the road to limited government.
Iraq's insurgents are degenerate Hobbesians -- Hobbes's subtlety reduced to the ruthless cunning of one idea: By promiscuously dispensing death, thereby creating the chaos of a Hobbesian state of nature, the insurgents hope to delegitimize the Iraqi government for its failure to provide the primary social good: freedom from fear of violent death.
To create chaos, the insurgents are applying -- again, unwittingly -- another borrowed insight, this one from an American thinker who died last year. Daniel Boorstin, historian and librarian of Congress, understood the special strength of small numbers -- indeed, the veto power of a sufficiently ruthless minority -- given society's dependence on "flow technology."
Through most of human history, Boorstin wrote, "in order to do damage to other people, it was necessary for you to set things in motion -- to throw a rock or wield a club." But in modern societies, where "the economy and the technology are in motion," you do damage by stopping things -- oil deliveries, electricity distribution, garbage collection, water purification, etc.
Iraq is more urbanized than Wisconsin. Baghdad, where about one in five Iraqis live, is a social organism about the size of Chicago. The insurgency cannot hope to defeat the U.S. military but can believe that it does not need to.
The basis of the insurgency's hope -- desperate and implausible but not completely delusional -- is also the basis of American hopefulness: Iraq now has an Iraqi government. Another Iraqi government -- nasty and brutish -- will come, in time, if today's evolving government seems incapable of preventing Iraqi life from being nasty, brutish and, often, short.
georgewill@washpost.com