The Iraq War

[pzarquon]

Re: The Iraq War

Aaron, that was the same article linked above. Not that it doesn't deserve to be read twice!

[Konaguy]

Re: The Iraq War

Aaron, that was the same article linked above. Not that it doesn't deserve to be read twice!

Thats what I get for not reading the recent posts in the thread

[Miulang]

Re: The Iraq War

Another interesting point to ponder: since the armed forces vote predominantly Republican, and since they must obey their Commander-in-Chief, what's going to happen if Kerry wins? Will there be mass defections among the ranks? Or will the soldiers who openly state they are Republican suck in their guts and follow orders from a (heaven forfend!) Democratic Commander-in-Chief?

My guess is that duty is duty, and honor is honor and they would pledge their allegiance to whoever the President was, no matter what political party is in power.

Miulang

[Linkmeister]

Re: The Iraq War

I don't feel like cutting and pasting the entire post, so I'll just suggest you go over here and follow the link provided to find out just what other bits of incompetence and knavery the current Administration got up to post-Saddam.

Since I posted that at my place (that's where that link takes you) Josh Marshall has done some
further reporting on the subject of nuclear munitions disappearing due to Administration negligence.

[Miulang]

Re: The Iraq War

Since I posted that at my place (that's where that link takes you) Josh Marshall has done some
further reporting on the subject of nuclear munitions disappearing due to Administration negligence.

Yeah, and didja hear the latest one about munitions being stolen from under our watch (not newkleer stuff, just regular explosives)? Seems that they can prove that what's been swiped from under our noses is also what's being used by the terrorists to kill Iraqis and soldiers! Hello, is anyone home???

Miulang

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories...MPLATE=DEFAULT

[Linkmeister]

Re: The Iraq War

Yeah, and didja hear the latest one about munitions being stolen from under our watch (not newkleer stuff, just regular explosives)? Seems that they can prove that what's been swiped from under our noses is also what's being used by the terrorists to kill Iraqis and soldiers! Hello, is anyone home???

Miulang

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories...MPLATE=DEFAULT

Ahem. Click my links, you lazy buggah!

[Miulang]

Re: The Iraq War

Sorry, eh? Actually, I'm 3 hours ahead of you guys and knew about this story around 5:15 this morning. Only found the corroborating evidence afta you wen go post da link, anden

Miulang

[Linkmeister]

Re: The Iraq War

Sorry, eh? Actually, I'm 3 hours ahead of you guys and knew about this story around 5:15 this morning. Only found the corroborating evidence afta you wen go post da link, anden

Miulang

Grins. I posted my story at 1:40pm yesterday afternoon, and Josh Marshall was obviously earlier, since I linked to him.

Top that!

Seriously, this is about as gross an example on incompetence as I can imagine. The pretext for war was to find WMDs; so we leave a huge pile of RDX and HMX lying around unguarded, even though the IAEA knew about and told us about said pile? The stuff ain't nuclear, but it's the same material used for terrorist bombs all over the world, for cryin' out loud!

[mcnabbmcnow]

Did Russia move the WMD's from Iraq?

http://www.washingtontimes.com/natio...2637-6257r.htm

Very interesting article. Did the Russians work hand in hand with Iraq in moving deadly weapons to Syria? If this is true, Kerry's rush to judgement condemning Bush about the weapons could majorly backfire.

Russia tied to Iraq's missing arms
By Bill Gertz
THE WASHINGTON TIMES

Russian special forces troops moved many of Saddam Hussein's weapons and related goods out of Iraq and into Syria in the weeks before the March 2003 U.S. military operation, The Washington Times has learned.

John A. Shaw, the deputy undersecretary of defense for international technology security, said in an interview that he believes the Russian troops, working with Iraqi intelligence, "almost certainly" removed the high-explosive material that went missing from the Al-Qaqaa facility, south of Baghdad.

[craigwatanabe]

Re: The Iraq War

Okay...so if the Russians could move high explosives out of Iraq right under our noses, what can be said of (I know this is a long shot) WMD?

It is a bit suspect that Saddam could use WMD to take out the Kurds with chemical warfare but we can't seem to find any trace of it's plants anymore. Where did those facilities go? And we do know they had to exist in order to wipe out entire Kurdish villages. Now we're finding out the Russians helped move out all these explosives into Syria? What else is over there?

Don't be surprized if President Bush pulls out his trump card days before the election with hard evidence of WMD.

Even that would be hard for Kerry to overcome. I hope for Kerry he has a backup plan in case it happens because it sure wouldn't look good for him and for Bush, I think that's the only thing that'll save him and guarantee another four years.

Eh Miulang!!! You stay so busy on dis board you no write back to me you buggah! I wen send the beans to you already! Maybe I should have the Russians send the papayas to you. If they can give the US the slip with explosives, I'm sure they can do the same with papayas and the ag inspectors. So sorry if you like papayas you going have to come visit my homestead in Kea'au.

[Miulang]

Re: The Iraq War

Eh Miulang!!! You stay so busy on dis board you no write back to me you buggah! I wen send the beans to you already! Maybe I should have the Russians send the papayas to you. If they can give the US the slip with explosives, I'm sure they can do the same with papayas and the ag inspectors. So sorry if you like papayas you going have to come visit my homestead in Kea'au.

Eh Craig! No get all huhu! I wen get da coffee and da odda kine stuffs Friday. Sorry took me so long to get back to you, but I was "incommunicado" from work, da phone and da computer since Wednesday afternoon until today.

While I was in flat in bed, though, I was able to watch TV the other day (nothing else to do) but sleep with the cats) and saw some of that Pentagon press conference that supposedly explained what happened to that missing 380 tons of munitions. Even in my delirium, I could see that the Maj. who was speaking (I think he was in charge of securing the area in which the dump was a part) really wanted to tell the truth, but the black suited DOD mouthpiece next to him was ready to pounce on him if he said the wrong thing. The outcome of the whole press conference was that some of the munitions that was blown up under this guy's command might have been part of the missing shipment, although interestingly, he said he didn't remember seeing those IAEA tags that identified the armaments as having been itemized by the IAEA. And even if part of the blown up munitions were from that missing storage, the Maj. said only about 250 tons were detonated. So where's the other 130 tons? And that DOD mouthpiece assured the reporters that the Defense Department was investigating the matter more fully.

Yeah, and the answer will be delivered to us sometime in 2005. In the meantime 8 soldiers were blown up yesterday by a roadside bomb outside of Fallujah, and the US is getting ready to mount a full attack on that city. Too bad al-Zaqawi is far far away from there now. All they'll blow up is more innocent women and children.

Miulang

[Linkmeister]

Re: The Iraq War

Josh Marshall has been all over the munitions story, if you're interested.

[Miulang]

Re: The Iraq War

This is currently posted on Salon.com, but you can't get to it unless you are a subscriber or yawn through some advertising, so begging your indulgence, below is the latest from Gen. Colin Powell. What he told his friends and that which is being reported by Newsweek and Salon.com will definitely be discredited by The Bush Administration, because Colin Powell is on his way out of the Administration. There will no longer be at least one dissenting voice in that Cabinet to try to bring reason to this madness. To Gen. Powell, I say: "Thank you for serving your country the best you could, under the most trying of circumstances." If he ever came back to run for public office, regardless of which Party who chose to run for, I would back him implicitly. He is a man of honor, courage, high integrity and someone who, like Hawaii's own Gen. Eric Shinseki, tried to tell people to start asking questions before it was too late. And if he is right, and with the battle of Fallujah planned to start sometime in the next couple of days, we will see whether his prophecy rings true. If he is correct, then we will never know who our "friends" and our "enemies" are as our troops head off to certain slaughter. It's bad enough when you know who the enemy is, but when the people you trained to be "friends" start firing at you, too, what are you supposed to do?

Miulang

Colin Powell believes U.S. is losing Iraq war


Secretary of State Colin Powell has privately confided to friends in recent weeks that the Iraqi insurgents are winning the war, according to Newsweek. The insurgents have succeeded in infiltrating Iraqi forces "from top to bottom," a senior Iraqi official tells Newsweek in tomorrow’s issue of the magazine, "from decision making to the lower levels."

This is a particularly troubling development for the U.S. military, as it prepares to launch an all-out assault on the insurgent strongholds of Fallujah and Ramadi, since U.S. Marines were counting on the newly trained Iraqi forces to assist in the assault. Newsweek reports that "American military trainers have been frantically trying to assemble sufficient Iraqi troops" to fight alongside them and that they are "praying that the soldiers perform better than last April, when two battalions of poorly trained Iraqi Army soldiers refused to fight."

If the Fallujah offensive fails, Newsweek grimly predicts, "then the American president will find himself in a deepening quagmire on Inauguration Day."

-- David Talbot

[08:55 PST, Oct. 31, 2004]

[Miulang]

Re: The Iraq War

For anyone who cares, here is the complete article in tomorrow's Newsweek which references Gen. Colin Powell's concerns above:

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/6370591/site/newsweek/

Miulang

[waioli kai]

USraeli War in Iraq

USraeli wars in the Middle East, Iraq in particular, are the result of an immorally exaggerated pro-Israeli U.S. foreign policy. Only the Sharon Netanyahu militant zionist faction of Israel in Palestine and AIPAC of US is in love with the USraeli war in Iraq more than Cheney and US "neocons", together of course with their candidate/president/cheerleader Bush and the various Dr. Strangeloves of the USraeli military financial complex.

Kerry's Israel related foreign policy (? and what US foreign policy is not Israel related? dominated?) stance and rhetoric before this 2004 campaign and during the campaign has been consistent to the point of being indistinguishable from that of the BushCheney cabal.

If it were not so important, it would be hilarious that the US media* oblige the USraeli war phenomenon/machine to downplay the importance in the consciousness, subconsciousness of the USraeli created plight of the Palestinians in the minds of anti-Usraeli militants and civilian non-militants.

Did not the civilians of Falluja feel something in common with the arab civilians of Gaza even before ghwBush's war on Iraq in the 1990's, not to mention what is happening for some time now, and, we are promUSed, that worse is to come soon? How does all the krap wBush et. al gush about "Freedom" apply to Palestine? Why should Arabs, Moslems, Islamic peoples not educated in the self-righteousness of US believe that there is something to be gained by submitting to US style and definition of "Freedom"?