Banned
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Ustwo
I agree they are a small minority, but we are still talking about millions of people. Take a look at the signs at a war protest or an anti-Bush rally. Even wanting the troops out is in indirect support of the terrorists. What do you think would happen if we just pulled out tomarrow? Reguardless of it being right or wrong, we made the mess, we have to clean it up.
I agree with your assesment.
Yes this is part of the problem. After the invasion I was reading the Arab press quite a lot and their reaction to it was as if they themselves were invaded and had lost as baddly as Saddam had. They honestly seemed to believe Bagdad Bob, and they were angry that they had been lied to. Even though they didn't 'like' Saddam they admired him for the percieved streangth of Iraq, and when that was brushed aside like a mosquito, it made them all feel impotent.
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I think that it would save lives of American military and Iraqi civilians if we
"pulled out "tomorrow". The track record of the Bush administration is too similar to Baghdad Bob's for my liking, when it comes to accurate disclosure of the military situation in Iraq. Rumsfeld claims in a briefing linked below that trained Iraqi security forces now number 165,000. I advocate declaring "mission accomplshed", one more time, and then pull out.
Ustwo, earlier in this thread, I presented a well documented argument that details the complicity, support, and by the continuing relationship, (with no protest from the executive branch of the infamous gassing of the Kurds), the tacit approval of Saddam's regime by the Reagan and the Bush '41 administrations, until late 1990.
See:
http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showpos...6&postcount=30
http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showpos...0&postcount=32
The argument that Saddam was supported by the U.S. for reasons having to do with a strategy of supporting Iraq to blunt the larger threat of Iran, rings hollow and empty when one counts the anti-tank missles delivered at the direction of U.S. to Iran during the same period, in direct contravention of the President's publicly stated prohibition of negotiating or supporting terrorist states, and Iran in particular, and in spite of vehement advice to desist by close advisors to President Reagan. See: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/reagan/...e/index_5.html A reader can also observe in the timeline at the above link that other military support was provided by the U.S. to Iran in it's war with Iraq at the same time that the policy of aiding Saddam was justified as a way to counter Iran!
So now, "we have to clean it up", in your words. This sounds like the last refuge of justification for the continued occupation of a country that the administration declared so many times, posed an imminent danger to the U.S., and to it's own neighbors because of it's WMD programs. We were also told by President Bush and officials of his government that we were fignting them in Iraq, so that we wouldn't have to fight them here. This seems to be as dubious a claim as all of the others that turned out to be misleading and unreliable. Our own military provides us in it's briefings with little or no evidence that they are engaging "foreign fighters" in any signifigant or measurable numbers:
Quote:
http://www.defenselink.mil/transcrip...0510-2721.html
Presenter: Pentagon Spokesman Lawrence DiRita and Director of Operations, J-3, Lt. Gen. James T. Conway Tuesday, May 10, 2005 2:37 p.m. EDT
Defense Department Regular Briefing
Q Can I follow up on that? Can you say whether or not you've seen any evidence of some of these foreign fighters, as you've described them, crossing back over the border? And are the Syrians in any way involved in this or in any way cooperating?
GEN. CONWAY: I don't think I used the term foreign fighters. I don't think we know that yet. Certainly it's in proximity to the border. There is a major crossing site there, Husaybah, and again, there's smugglers' routes both north and south of that location. So it's not unrealistic to expect that there could be foreign fighters engaged.
At this point, we simply don't know if the there is movement across the border associated with this, because the preponderance of our forces are engaged in this fight.
http://www.defenselink.mil/transcrip...0505-2683.html
Presenter: Lawrence Di Rita, Pentagon Spokesman; and Lieutenant General James T. Conway, Director, Operations, Joint Staff Thursday, May 5, 2005 2:40 p.m. EDT
Defense Department Regular Briefing
Q General, talking about Zarqawi and his tactics, you say that that letter was encouraging to you. Yet there seem to be more and more suicide bombers -- three today. Seems to be an increase recently.
Is that a finite number? Where are these people coming from? It was thought that Iraqis really wouldn't be suicide bombers. Obviously, he's recruiting from somewhere..........
GEN. CONWAY: It gets to the issue that the intelligence people are asking themselves, and we're looking at the forensics. Are all of these people foreign fighters, such as we have seen at least be the tendency in the past? Is there some possibility that Iraqis are being forced into that condition by virtue of the fact that someone has got their family, you know, 20 miles away? We do have some indication that we're seeing more remote detonation of some of the suicide bombers than we've had in past. So we're asking ourselves: What's all that mean? And we don't have the answers yet.
Q Going -- going back to that end, is there any sense of -- you were over in Fallujah for a while. Is there any sense what -- what's coming across the Syrian border? Is there -- is there an influx of foreign fighters coming in now, or is there just a pool of foreign fighters that have been in Iraq for a while, sleepers or whatever, that we're seeing?
GEN. CONWAY: I don't think we know the answer to that for sure. We have tried to gauge the percent of the insurgency that is represented by foreign fighters. We do know that some of the insurgent websites have called this the jihad superbowl, if you will, and now is the time to come fight and try to kick the Americans out of the region. How much people are responding to that we're just not certain at this point, but we continue to seek that answer.
http://www.defenselink.mil/transcrip...ecdef2401.html
Presenter: Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld and Steve Inskeep Tuesday, March 29, 2005
Secretary Rumsfeld Interview with National Public Radio’s Steve Inskeep for “Morning Edition”
How are some ways that you are measuring progress in defeating insurgents in Iraq?
RUMSFELD: Well, we've got literally dozens of ways we do it. We have a room here, the Iraq Room where we track a whole series of metrics. Some of them are inputs and some of them are outputs, results, and obviously the inputs are easier to do and less important, and the outputs are vastly more important and more difficult to do......
......RUMSFELD: I don't know what the number is, I don't have it in front of me. But we track a number of reports of intimidation, attempts at intimidation or assassination of government officials, for example. We track the extent to which people are supplying intelligence to our people so that they can go in and actually track down and capture or kill insurgents. We try to desegregate the people we've captured and look at what they are. Are they foreign fighters, Jihadist types? Are they criminals who were paid money to go do something like that? Are they former regime elements, Ba'athists? And we try to keep track of what those numbers are in terms of detainees and people that are processed in that way.
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Quote:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlates...050801,00.html
Sporadic Attacks Kill Eight in Iraq
Friday June 3, 2005 9:46 PM
AP Photo BAG120
By PATRICK QUINN
Associated Press Writer
...............The new bloodshed raised the death toll since the new Shiite-led government was announced April 28 to least 830 people, not counting insurgents.
In the past 18 months, 12,000 Iraqi civilians have been killed, including more than 10,000 Shiites, Interior Minister Bayan Jabr said, citing figures from a research center. But he said he analyzed the figures on the basis of areas where victims lived, not data stating the branch of Islam they belonged to. .................
..........Jabr has claimed the government offensive seeking to root out kidnappers and other militants in Baghdad had scored big gains, saying this week's sweep by Iraqi soldiers and police, known as ``Operation Lightning,'' captured 700 suspected insurgents and killed 28 militants.
The campaign is the biggest Iraqi offensive since Saddam Hussein's fall two years ago. Iraqi officials have said the operation, which began Sunday, involves 40,000 soldiers and police, though not all man positions at any one time. Before the offensive, authorities controlled only eight of Baghdad's 23 entrances. ........
.............Army Col. Mark Milley, who commands the 2nd Brigade, 10th Mountain Division, said intelligence indicated insurgents were using Baghdad's southern districts to stage attacks in the capital...............
.............Milley said 84 suspects were detained Friday, while a ``half a dozen suspected al-Qaida cell members'' and several other ``foreign fighters'' from Sudan, Syria, Egypt and Jordan had been captured since the operation began..............
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Above are three recent DOD briefings where several high ranking generals and Rumsfeld himself offer little in the way of admissions or facts to support a contention that the U.S. is engaged in a fight against "foreign fighters" in any signifigant numbers. 26 months into this occupation, Rumsfeld's comments in the third segment are most disingenuous; acting as if it just occurred to military intelligence to ascertain if the armed opposition in Iraq "Are they foreign fighters, Jihadist types?"
In the June 3rd news report, the Iraqi interior minister passes along firgures of 12,000 Iraqi civilian dead, in the last 18 months,casualties of the continuing
insurgency.
Here's the "news" from the other country that the U.S. has recently liberated, Afghanistan. The U.S. military presence there pre-dates Iraq by more than a year. Will another year of 140,000 U.S. troops in Iraq bring this kind of progress?
Quote:
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/htm...anwomen30.html
Monday, May 30, 2005 - Page updated at 12:00 a.m.
Afghan women still abused and persecuted, report finds
By DANIEL COONEY
The Associated Press
KABUL, Afghanistan — Afghan women are in constant risk of abduction, rape and forced marriage, and the government is doing little to address their plight, the human-rights group Amnesty International said in a report released today, 3 ½ years after the ouster of the hard-line Taliban regime.
A spokeswoman for the Afghan Women's Affairs Ministry, Nooria Haqnagar, acknowledged that abuse was still rife and said, "In some remote areas, men deal with women like animals."
In its report, Amnesty called on the government and the international community to do more to improve women's lives.
"Throughout the country, few women are exempt from violence or safe from the threat of it," the London-based organization said in its report.......
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Quote:
http://travel.state.gov/travel/cis_p...w/tw_2121.html
This information is current as of today, Sun Jun 05 2005 05:34:36 GMT-0400 (Eastern Standard Time).
AFGHANISTAN Travel Warning
November 15, 2004
Travel in all areas of Afghanistan, including the capital Kabul, is unsafe due to military operations, landmines, banditry, armed rivalry among political and tribal groups, and the possibility of terrorist attacks, including attacks using vehicular or other Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs ), and kidnapping. The security environment remains volatile and unpredictable.
Family members of official Americans assigned to the U.S. Embassy in Kabul are not allowed to reside in Afghanistan. In addition, unofficial travel to Afghanistan by U.S. Government employees and their family members requires prior approval by the Department of State.
http://travel.state.gov/travel/cis_p.../cis_1056.html
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Ustwo, 3-1/2 years after intiating military action in Afghanistan, our own State Dept. still does not deem that country's capital, specifically, the presumed secure areas where the U.S. maintains it's diplomatic mission, to be safe enough to permit the family members of diplomats to reside with them.
Unofficial travel to any part of Afghanistan (even to Kabul), by U.S. citizens is still deemed from a personal security standpoint, to be out of the question.
Is this the picture of present day Afghanistan that you, or most Americans, have planted in your head, as a result of listening to Bush admin. pronouncements of U.S. success and improvements there, at least in the capital, Kabul?
It cannot be demonstrated that the Bush administration can or will accurately disclose to the American people why we invaded Iraq, why we are there now in a larger military presence than during the invasion, or even, tell us whether we are battling foreign fighters in any signifigant numbers. I've documented the seldom discussed fact that the "liberation" of Afghanistan is vastly overrated.
I want our troops out of Iraq now, Ustwo, and in saying that, I am not supporting "terrorists". I am reacting to the reality that our U.S. administration has lost the trust of the small portion of it's citizenry that is actually informed about the circumstances of the debacles resulting from our post 9/11 military "adventures" in Afghansitan and in Iraq.
You are free to counter the details that I offer on this thread, point by point.
I do not see you doing that.
Last edited by host; 06-05-2005 at 08:45 AM..
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