Thread: Iraq News

^ Which had absolutely nothing to do with Iraq

Originally Posted by Jet Gorgon

was still mourning my friends and all those who passed at the World Trade Centre.

Condolences, but what does that have to do with the invasion of Iraq?

Oh, now I get it. A group of Pakistani and Saudi terrorists, working for an Afghani based terrorist organisation largely funded by Saudi Arabian money and originally sponsored by the US State Department commits an atrocity in the USA. Logical answer - invade Iraq.

^ Well, they do have OUR oil under THEIR ground.
And they sort of look similar.
Isn't that enough?

Originally Posted by Texpat

Shall I repeat it for the 50th time?

Regieme change/liberation of Iraq was in the works since at least 1999. It had nothing to do with al Qaida or OBL or 9-11.

You mean...... , all that talk about WMDs was just BS as a cover for good old USA to free the good people of Iraqi ? How noble of them.

Actually it was the good people of the US, UK, Australia, France and others.

Originally Posted by Texpat

France

^revisionist history taken to new depths.

and btw, a book was recently published by a chilean govt. official that detailed the extortion and bribery that the US was engaged in pre-invasion.

Originally Posted by raycarey

^revisionist history taken to new depths.

and btw, a book was recently published by a chilean govt. official that detailed the extortion and bribery that the US was engaged in pre-invasion.

Oh yeah?
Wasn't aware the Coalition of the Willing had any Chilenos in Iraq?

Originally Posted by Boon Mee

Oh yeah?

yeah.



Amazon.com: A Solitary War: A Diplomat's Chronicle of the Iraq War and Its Lessons: Heraldo Munoz,Kofi Annan: Books

Still the question goes, Where are the WMDs?

Watch:

Heh...for all you Nattering Nabobs of you-know-what...

"Intel report shows security in Iraq improving."

Intel report shows security in Iraq improving - USATODAY.com

And yes, in 99 the French were interested in regime change. They had been enforcing the southern no-fly-zone for nine years at that point along with the Brits and US. Of course when push came to shove, two years later, they had to file their nails or pick grapes or something equally important.

Originally Posted by Texpat

Of course when push came to shove, two years later, they had to file their nails or pick grapes or something equally important.

Erm, no.
It's all well documented stuff, but it is hardly "Iraq News".

Here's a new article on who the Americans are now supporting:

Sacrificed to the Surge | Newsweek International | Newsweek.com

3 more US soldiers down in Baghdad today. Gotta find the link.

The Yanks (and the rest of the UN nations for that matter), boxed themselves into a corner by putting sanctions on Saddam after Gulf War 1. That froze up Iraq's huge reserves of cheap to recover oil. And with "peak oil" predicted in the next few years, the US in particular needed to get those big cheap Iraqi oil reserves flowing for export (preferably under the control of US and UK companies). And Saddam was signing contracts for developing the Iraqi oil reserves with the Chinese and Russians just prior to the US led invasion. So the Yanks had to move fast to get their snouts in the Iraqi oil trough and cut the Chinese and Russians out of the equation. That's why they invented the scare tactic ploy about WMDs. And that's why they moved in so fast when the UN inspectors under Hans Blicks found no evidence of WMDs. In fact the UN had to evacuate their weapons inspectors ahead of the invasion (which was not sanctioned by the UN).

Anyway, they declared Saddam's contracts with the Chinese and Russians null and void and they bumped off Hussein and plonked in a new democratic government which they hoped would be more compliant with the interests of the USA.

But the new Iraqi government didn't hand over control of the oil fields to foreign companies from US. Instead, they took the democracy thing a bit more seriously than anticipated and nationalized the oil resources and even worse for the Yanks, decided to go with OPEC.

So the Iraq war has been a disaster for the USA in more ways than one. Oil production in Iraq is only just creeping above pre war levels and the instability caused by the war (combined with increasing world demand) has driven up the price of oil to record levels.

The best the Yanks can do now is to try and salvage what they can out of this mess and get some kind of a stable government back in Iraq to get the oil flowing.

Originally Posted by Bugs

In that I think the US needs to either shit or get off the pot. Meaning they need to truly dedicate the full resources that can be mustered to what needs to be done – take real control of the country. Or they need to pack up and go home.

It's up to the Shiites, Sunnis, and Kurds. And the factions within the Shiites.

Iraq was a nation state that was created by western powers and Cheney predicted the downward spiral in a 1994 interview that is on YouTube. The interview is easy to find.

If the US and allies went into Iraq during the first Gulf War (which it was not authorized to do) the problems in Iraq now, would have been problems then.

Ignorance + arrogance = Fiasco.

Here are the transcripts and report from the U.S. Senate Foreign Relation Committee:

Hearing: IRAQ AFTER THE SURGE: POLITICAL PROSPECTS -- U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations

Here is an excerpt. Note that this excerpt quoted below is only from Mr. Rosen. The report is lengthy. Click the link for additional info:

Nir Rosen wrote: Today Iraq does not exist. It has no government. It is like Somalia, different fiefdoms controlled by warlords and their militias.


Nir Rosen wrote: In 2007, when most reasonable observers were calling for a reduction of American troops and an eventual withdrawal, the Bush administration decided to increase the troops instead. The immediate impact was nothing, and since it began nearly a million Iraqis fled their homes, mostly from Baghdad, and Baghdad became a Shiite city. So one of the main reason less people are being killed is because there are less people to kill. This is a key to understanding the drop in violence. Shiites were cleansed from Sunni areas and Sunnis were cleansed from Shiite areas. Militias consolidated their control over fiefdoms.


Nir Rosen wrote: The Americans armed both sides in the civil war. David Kilcullen, the influential Australian counter insurgency advisor, defined it as “balancing competing armed interest groups.”


Nir Rosen wrote: This tactic worked best in the Anbar province and has partially worked in Baghdad, though many Iraqis fear that al Qaeda has imposed its own ceasefire and is lying low to avoid its enemies. In the very violent Diyala and Mosul provinces the Anbar model has so far not succeeded. Like the Mahdi Army, the Sunni militias hope to wait for the Americans to reduce their troop levels before they resume fighting Shiite militias. Joining these American backed militias has given them territory in Baghdad and elsewhere that they now control. These Sunni militias also have political goals and are attempting to unite to become a larger movement that will be able to regain Sunni territory and effectively fight the Shiite militias and the Shiite dominated government, which they call an “Iranian Occupation.”


Nir Rosen wrote: The Americans think they have purchased Sunni loyalty, but in fact it is the Sunnis who have bought the Americans, describing it as a temporary ceasefire with the American occupation so that they can regroup to fight the “Iranian occupation,” which is how they refer to the Shiite dominated government and security forces.


Nir Rosen wrote: Sunni militiamen were promised that twenty percent of them would be integrated into the Iraqi Security Forces. This has not happened. Instead they clash regularly with Iraqi Security Forces and are rejected by the Government of Iraq. Often the Americans are late in paying them as well. They increasingly feel humiliated and threaten to resume fighting.


Nir Rosen wrote: The Iraqi security forces are divided in their loyalties and hence the Iraqi Army units that fought in the south were recruited from areas where they were more likely to be loyal to the Iraqi Supreme Islamic Council, formerly the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, and its Badr militia.


Nir Rosen wrote: Muqtada’s Sadrist movement is the most popular movement in Iraq today and his militia is the most powerful one. The one bright spot in the recent increase in violence between Shiite militias is that it marks the end of the Sunni Shiite civil war. There will no longer be a Shiite bloc united in fighting Sunnis as there was in the past, when Badr and the Mahdi Army collaborated to expel and kill Sunnis. Now we may start to see cross sectarian alliances between militias.


Nir Rosen wrote: Iraq remains an extremely unstable and failed state, with many years of bloodshed left before an equilibrium is attained. There is no reconciliation occurring between the two warring communities, and Shiites will not allow the territorial gains they made to be chipped away by Sunnis returning to their homes, or Sunni militias being empowered.


Nir Rosen wrote: In 2006 the conflict in Iraq stopped being a war of national liberation against the American occupation and became chiefly a war between Iraqis for control of Iraq. They proper standard for judging Iraq is the quality of life for Iraqis, and sadly, for most Iraqis, life was better under Saddam.


Nir Rosen wrote: The Americans are supposed to hand over Iraqi prisoners to Iraqi authorities, since it’s theoretically a sovereign country, but international human rights officials are loath to press the issue because conditions in Iraqi prisons are at least as bad as they were under Saddam. One US officer told me that six years is a life sentence in an Iraqi prison today, because that is your estimated life span there. In the women’s prison in Kadhmiya prisoners are routinely raped.


Nir Rosen wrote: Conditions in Iraqi prisons got much worse during the surge because the Iraqi system could not cope with the massive influx. Those prisoners whom the Americans hand over to the Iraqis may be the lucky ones, but even those Iraqis in American detention do not know why they are being held, and they are not visited by defense lawyers.


Nir Rosen wrote: Lawyers don’t see their clients before trials, and there are no witnesses. Iraqi judges are prepared to convict on very little evidence. But even if Iraqi courts find Iraqi prisoners innocent, the Americans sometimes continue to hold them after acquittal. These are called “on hold” cases, and there are currently about 500 of them.


Nir Rosen wrote: “We call it the Rafah Crossing,” he laughed, referring to the one gates to besieged Gaza that another occupying army occasionally allows open. Iraqi National Police loyal to the Mahdi Army had once regularly attacked Amriya and Sunnis caught in their checkpoints which we drove through anxiously would not long ago have been found in the city morgue. Shiite flags these policemen had recently put up all around western Baghdad were viewed as a provocation by the residents of Amriya. Our car lined up behind dozens of others which had been registered with the local Iraqi army unit and were allowed to enter and exit the imprisoned neighborhood. It often took two or three hours to finally get past the American soldiers, Iraqi soldiers and the “Thuwar,” or revolutionaries, as the Sunni militia sanctioned by the Americans to patrol Amriya was called. When it was our turn we exited the vehicle for Iraqi soldiers to search it as an American soldier led his dog around the car to sniff it and I was patted down by one of the Sunni militiamen. Not knowing I was American, he reassured me. “Just let the dog and the dog that is with him finish with your car and you can go,” he laughed.


Nir Rosen wrote: Mahdi Army provided what services they had, and as Mahdi Army men gave me a tour and I filmed them on the main intersection and by the walls that kept them in, somebody alerted the Iraqi Army and its soldiers came in looking for me. Mahdi Army men smuggled me out through a small exit in the concrete walls, handing me over to Iraqi National Police for protection from the Iraqi Army. “They are from our group,” meaning from the Mahdi Army, the Shiite militiamen assured me when they handed me over to their comrades in the police.


Nir Rosen wrote: I met Iraqi National Police officers who complained to me that all their men were loyal to the Mahdi Army and their commanders were loyal to the Mahdi Army or the Badr militia. If they were suspected of disloyalty to the Shiite militias their own men informed on them and the Mahdi Army threatened them with the knowledge of their superior officers.

Here's another point on how ineffective foreign occupations are, IMO:

Massive desertions, even by high ranking officers in the Iraq army the Americans are supporting:

More Than 1,000 in Iraq’s Forces Quit Basra Fight

STEPHEN FARRELL and JAMES GLANZ
Published: April 4, 2008

BAGHDAD — More than 1,000 Iraqi soldiers and policemen either refused to fight or simply abandoned their posts during the inconclusive assault against Shiite militias in Basra last week, a senior Iraqi government official said Thursday. Iraqi military officials said the group included dozens of officers, including at least two senior field commanders in the battle.

The desertions in the heat of a major battle cast fresh doubt on the effectiveness of the American-trained Iraqi security forces

Link: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/04/wo...in&oref=slogin

Another note in regard to the casualty numbers I have found the coverage by the press in regard to the 5 year anniversary and passing the 4,000 dead mark to lack perspective - IMHO. Certainly the post by Boon Mee comparing deaths in the Clinton years and deaths during the Iraq war was not very meaningful and the comparison was not meaningful and not on the level. But the comparison of the Uraq war and various major battles that the Us has been involved in while not a direct comparison I feel is a relavent and meaningful set of numbers. Showing that the number of deaths to date over the entire 5 years in Iraq pales in compaison to individual battle deaths of the past. Thus giving an indication of just how relatively small the number of deaths have been in this current campaign. When the death toll over a five year campaign is smaller than the individual battles of earlier conflicts there is some perspective to be gained - even when factoring in the majority of the time in Iraq has been occupation rather than direct conflict.