The Iraq War - Chapter 3

[Miulang]

In testimony before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence yesterday, the CIA said that our continued occupation of Iraq has become a breeding ground for terrorists.

"Islamic extremists are exploiting the Iraqi conflict to recruit new anti-U.S. jihadists," CIA Director Porter J. Goss told the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. "These jihadists who survive will leave Iraq experienced and focused on acts of urban terrorism," he said. "They represent a potential pool of contacts to build transnational terrorist cells, groups and networks in Saudi Arabia, Jordan and other countries."

Yeah, well, DUUUUUUUH.

Miulang

[subsailor]

Re: The Iraq War - Chapter 2

In testimony before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence yesterday, the CIA said that our continued occupation of Iraq has become a breeding ground for terrorists.

"Islamic extremists are exploiting the Iraqi conflict to recruit new anti-U.S. jihadists," CIA Director Porter J. Goss told the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. "These jihadists who survive will leave Iraq experienced and focused on acts of urban terrorism," he said. "They represent a potential pool of contacts to build transnational terrorist cells, groups and networks in Saudi Arabia, Jordan and other countries."

Yeah, well, DUUUUUUUH.

Miulang

Sometimes it seems the administration would tire of the smell...having their head so far up their rear ends and all.

I remember Bush once boasting about how much of al Qaeda we'd neutralized...funny, it seems AQ is getting bigger now, since we invaded Iraq. We've sure given them a recruiting theme to run with, and thousands of pissed off Iraqis who are now more than happy to join what they likely see as a "freedom fight".

[Miulang]

Re: The Iraq War - Chapter 3

We may never really know how many innocent civilians were killed by US forces in the battle of Fallujah. But here is a report from an Iraqi doctor who was part of an aid team that brought relief to the city after the battle. It's not a very pretty picture. Someone earlier in this thread told me that the US couldn't have be anywhere near as bad as Saddam in the genocide of his people, but it looks like what we did in the name of "routing terrorism" is pretty close to that.

"...On 12 November Eyad Naji Latif and eight members of his family-one of them a six month old child-gathered their belongings and walked in single file, as instructed, to the mosque.

When they reached the main road outside the mosque they heard a shout, but they could not understand what was being shouted. Eyad told me it could have been "now" in English. Then the firing began. US soldiers appeared on the roofs of surrounding houses and opened fire. Eyad's father was shot in the heart and his mother in the chest.

They died instantly. Two of Eyad's brothers were also hit, one in the chest and one in the neck. Two of the women were hit, one in the hand and one in the leg. Then the snipers killed the wife of one of Eyad's brothers. When she fell her five year old son ran to her and stood over her body. They shot him dead too. Survivors made desperate appeals to the troops to stop firing.

But Eyad told me that whenever one of them tried to raise a white flag they were shot. After several hours he tried to raise his arm with the flag. But they shot him in the arm. Finally he tried to raise his hand. So they shot him in the hand. ..."

And how will we justify scenes like the ones described above????

Miulang

[Miulang]

Re: The Iraq War - Chapter 3

This is really alarming and sickening. We're now getting reports that there was widespread abuse of prisoners in Afghanistan as well as in Iraq, and the photos that were taken of the abuse in Afghanistan apparently were destroyed after the disclosure of abuses at Abu Ghraib.

So now it can be said that Abu Ghraib was not an isolated incident, but one which was repeated in Afghanistan, Guantanamo Bay and probably at all other US detainee locations.

There was another report of one detainee dying while being suspended by his wrists in Iraq.

Shame on our government for allowing this kind of inhumane treatment of people who have not yet been charged with crimes!

Miulang

[Miulang]

Re: The Iraq War - Chapter 3

Do you call yourself a Christian? Do you believe in the American occupation of Iraq? Do you believe in killing innocent civilians because "they might be terrorists"?

"“Jesus says, ‘Blessed are the peacemakers,’ which means he does not say, ‘Blessed are the warmakers,’ which means, the warmakers are not blessed, which means warmakers are cursed, which means, if you want to follow the nonviolent Jesus you have to work for peace, which means, we all have to resist this horrific, evil war on the people of Iraq.” ...

"I see many people consciously siding with the culture of war, choosing the path of violence, supporting corporate greed, rampant militarism, and global domination. I see many others swept up in the raging current of patriotism. Since most of these people, beginning with the president, claim to be Christian, I am ashamed and appalled that they support war and systemic injustice, that they do it in the name of God, and that they feign fidelity to the nonviolent Jesus who gave his life resisting institutionalized injustice. "...


If you are a Christian, and you believe war is the only solution, does that make you a Pharisee?

Miulang

[Miulang]

Re: The Iraq War - Chapter 3

"...Sometimes it's hard to know who your friends are - even if they're helping you fight a war. President Bush, who hopes to coax more Iraq support from European allies next week, used to boast that some 50 nations had joined the United States in Operation Iraqi Freedom. Today, a public listing is nowhere to be found...."
The quote above is rather interesting because it was published in a newspaper in red state Mississippi.

It is true that the "coalition of the willing" is shrinking faster than the polar ice cap. Before long, most of our partners will have fulfilled their original commitments to us and will fold their tents and leave the desert.

I think it's rather telling that Dubya is now in Europe talking to some of our "partners", trying to smooth over the rifts his idiotic foreign policies over the last 5 years have wrought. Unfortunately, it's not going to be easy to win our friends back. What do we have to offer them, anyway?

Yup, ole "Mungo" Bush (that's another story for another time) has headed to the East to try to win friends. I really wonder why all of a sudden he's saying, "We will never attack Iraq. We will use diplomacy to settle the situation. No wait! You don't ever want your President to say 'never'".

Hmmm...methinks his solution to the Iran nuclear ramp up (with Russia hard by the side of the Iranians) is to let Israel "preemptively" attack Iran, and which point we will have no recourse but to assist the Israelis defend themselves. What a tidy package that will be.

Miulang

[Miulang]

Re: The Iraq War - Chapter 3

US Marines and Iraqi forces are on the eve of invading Ramadi, another Sunni stronghold. Ramadi has again fallen into the hands of the insurgents. We can fully expect the same kinds of scenes that were seen in Fallujah, where innocent civilians were put in harm's way and the town was totally destroyed.

I seriously doubt the Coalition forces will ever be able to fully eradicate the insurgency because as we level one town, the insurgent jihadists simply move on to capture another town.

Miulang

[subsailor]

Re: The Iraq War - Chapter 3

Just in case anyone was curious as to where current US policy for the Middle East (or foreign policy in general) comes from...a little research project from Progressive Blogger Union (here's my contribution).

Read 'em and weep...

[Miulang]

Re: The Iraq War - Chapter 3

Iyad Allawi is trying to cause trouble in Iraq. Now he's trying to put together a "coalition" to challenge Ibrahim al-Jaafari, the secular Shiite who was nominated to the office of Prime Minister by the United Iraqi Alliance, which won the most votes in the Jan. 30 national elections.

Allawi should just go away...go back whence he came from in exile. The country of Iraq needs more Iraqi residents to take control of their own government, not Westernized exiles who only care about serving their own best interests.


Miulang

[Miulang]

Re: The Iraq War - Chapter 3

Here's a little known fact:

"Mexico, which unlike its Central American neighbors was never a member of George Bush's "Coalition of the Willing", now has the largest contingent of any Latin nation fighting on the ground in Iraq--8000 Mexican and Mexican-descent troops who voluntarily joined the U.S. armed forces.

All Central American contingents save for Salvador, which also has a considerable number of security and construction personnel on the ground, have been withdrawn from Iraq by their governments...." and they have marched along side American soldiers since Pearl Harbor.


"...Just about half of the 110,000 Latinos (Puerto Ricans, Dominicans, Central Americans, Ecuadorians, Mexicans) in the U.S. military are of Mexican descent, and 22,000 out of the 37,000 non-citizens serving in anticipation of obtaining U.S. citizenship, are similarly of the Mexican persuasion--most of them smuggled into the U.S. as kids without legal documents.
Because Latino troop numbers (two thirds of all Latinos are Mexican) still do not match general population proportions, Mexican descent youth are pursued assiduously by high school recruiters--the U.S. Marine Corps is particularly aggressive and Mexicans now form 13% of that branch of service.

Because Marine units from Camp Pendleton in San Diego, which have high numbers of Mexican recruits, led the initial invasion of Iraq in March 2003 and later were brought back to level Fallujah in November, the casualty rates have come home painfully to Mexican communities on both sides of the border.

Of the first 1000 U.S. deaths recorded in Iraq, almost all of them the lowest-ranked, poorest-paid, and worst trained troops, 122 were Latinos, about 70 of them of Mexican descent. Their deaths in a war that most Mexicans strongly oppose have triggered complicated reactions north and south. ..."

So we have these highly patriotic Mexican citizens, many of them illegal aliens, enlisting in the Marines in particular, hoping that through their military service they will be able to obtain legal residency.

Isn't this kind of outsourcing our soldiers? These grunts are the ones who are first on the ground and first killed off.

If I was the Mexican government, I would be hopping mad and would be asking the US government for some kind of reparations. After all, is it any better to use young Mexican men as cannon fodder than our own sons (and daughters)? A life lost at a young age is a life wasted, regardless of nationality.

Miulang

[Miulang]

Re: The Iraq War - Chapter 3

How much money would we, the taxpayers, have saved if those no-bid contracts that Halliburton (via their subsidiary KBR) won for ancillary services in Iraq had gone out to competitive bidding? We've already paid out $6.6 billion since the occupation began, with another $3 billion scheduled to be paid when the work is done. This is on top of the $1 billion for work in Afghanistan. In 2005, we can expect to pay this company another $6 billion.

"...Halliburton's fortunes increased dramatically with the onset of the Iraq war. In 2003 alone it received contracts from the Defense Department worth $4.3 billion, more in one year than it won in Pentagon contracts over the previous five years combined, according to the Center for Public Integrity. The total worth of DOD contracts from 1998 to 2003 was $2.5 billion...."

What I don't understand is why this company is still allowed to do work for the government even after they have been found to be double charging the goverment for past work? If the Administration had been any other business, would they still be doing business with crooks?

Miulang

[kimo55]

Re: The Iraq War - Chapter 3

What I don't understand is why this company is still allowed to do work for the government even after they have been found to be double charging the goverment for past work? Miulang

One word:
Cheneyburton

[Miulang]

Re: The Iraq War - Chapter 3

War is hell--and expensive, too. The Army reported that it will cost $570 million dollars to replace equipment lost in battles in Afghanistan and Iraq. It will cost another $4 billion to replace and repair other combat equipment that has been damaged by the environmental conditions, and that's just for ARMY equipment. Lord knows how much it's going to cost to replace Marine equipment.

Lesee...$5 billion annually for at least the next 2 years...pretty staggering numbers. Not to mention the combat pay we pay our deserving troops. What other things could this nation do with $10 billion?

Miulang

[Miulang]

Re: The Iraq War - Chapter 3

You know who else is making lots of money over there? Private security contractors--most of them seasoned veterans--who can make around $500 a day compared to the average entry level soldier's $1200 a month.

Mercenaries (soldiers of fortune) have also been in demand, and they command high pay because they know their stuff and are mostly trained killers. I used to know a mercenary (he started out in the Marines) who used to go on these secret missions all over the world to "retrieve" politically sensitive individuals. He got kicked out of this country (lives in Victoria, BC now) for tax evasion (he got paid in cash...lots of it...and couldn't declare any of it because what he was doing was kind of illegal in the eyes of the government).

$30 billion of the defense budget for Iraq has gone to paying for private security forces, which is a pretty staggering amount. How many $1200/mo grunts could we have "hired" for that money?

Miulang

[waioli kai]

re: Halliburton US$

What I don't understand is why Halliburton is still allowed to do work for the government even after they have been found to be double charging the goverment for past work? Miulang

There is really no comparable U.S. or British company that has Halliburton's expertise in the oil field industry. Getting hydocarbons from inside Earth is now very high tech, machinery and supplies intensive. Halliburton (however fortunate or unfortunate it is) pretty much has a monopoly in its field of expertise, its material assets and the ability to operate on large scales under most of the worst of security and physical conditions. They could (if they have done so already) triple or quadruple their charges to the U.S. government and no doubt get away with it. Operation Iraqi Liberation is totally dependent on Halliburton, though, in Iraq and elsewhere, Halliburton is not so totally dependent on the managers of the militarUSt state's operation OIL.

Of course Halliburton is not the only horse in US's OIL crusade, and, its knight Dick Cheney would hardly drop off of OIL's line of offense by having his horse shot out from under him. There is no shortage of corporation horses just begging to be ridden by Cheney.