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Banned
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Originally Posted by Ustwo
dc I have only so many hours in the day. I say my peace and sometimes respond but if I responded to every liberal who decided I was wrong about something on this forum it would be a full time job and fruitless. As a habit I've ignored some posts as by not reading so I don't feel the need to respond. Since I know I'm pissing into the wind here anyways, I don't feel too bad about it either.....
.......Sadly I don't think the problem can be solved. The politics board seems to have attracted some rather vocal members of the far to ultrafar left, people who really have no bearing on politics in the US. It is impossible to have a real conversation with them as their points of reference are to far out for there to be a dialog. It would be like trying to have a conversation on the finer points of evolution with a creationist. There is no middle ground.
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Ustwo, consider that, compared to your posted POV, the reactions in the last two quote boxes in this post is quite a bit closer to what a reasonable person might think after reading what is REPORTED between this point in this post, and the two quoted "considerations" of the troops. I read that the troops are "fighting to preserve our rights and to keep us safe", in Afghanistan and in Iraq. I know I have less rights and there is no evidence that combat in either country has contributed to "our safety" here in our "homeland". In fact, the record supports the opposite conclusion.
We don't want harm to come to them, we just cannot support, in view of the record, their decisions to be part of what has and is still happening. They volunteered to do this, and, at least since then end of 2003, they had the potential to be aware of what they have been volunteering to do:
The 9/11 attacks, if you accept the government's official accounts, took place because 19 airline hijackers, 15 of them from Saudi Arabia, were able to breech airport security and then muscle their way into the cockpits of 4 large airline passenger jets....
Quote:
http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/sept_11/cr_036.htm
September 11, 2001 : Attack on America
Congressional Record Senate Airline Safety; October 31, 2001
AIRLINE SAFETY -- (Senate - October 31, 2001)
[Page: S11280]
---
Mr. HOLLINGS. Madam President, we are fiddling while Rome burns. The headline in this morning's Washington Post, ``Airport Security Crackdown Ordered,'' particularly galls this Senator. I have been with the FAA since its creation. I have been on the Commerce Committee for right at 35 years. I worked with the old Civil Aeronautics Board. We tried our best to get this entity in ship shape over many years.
It was only the year before last that we finally got the monies that should have gone to airport safety and improvement to go to airport safety and improvement.
We had, in 1988, Pan Am 103. We had extensive hearings. And what did we come up with? What we came up with is exactly what they write in the editorial here, that what we really need is more training and more supervision--``help wanted.'' And then we had further hijackings.
We had the TWA Flight 800 in 1996, and we had further hearings. We had the Gore commission. What did they recommend? The same old, same old of more training and more supervision, more oversight. Got to get stern about this. Crackdowns.
Last year, we passed the FAA authorization bill. And what did we call for? We called for more supervision, more training, and then 5,000 people were killed. And we have folks over on the House side, most respectfully, who do not understand that we have lost these 5,000. Terrorists came along with cardboard knives and committed mass murder, and everything else like that, but they say don't worry about what happened on 9-11.
What happened just this last week? Last week, a man boarded a plane with a pistol down in New Orleans. The individual remembered he had the gun and said: Oh, my heavens. Then he turned it over to the airline crew, or otherwise. And the same airline security firm that was fined last year in Philadelphia for hiring criminals is still hiring criminals.
The Senate reacted. We got together. We had hearings. We had the airline pilots, the airline crews, the assistants, the airline executives--everyone connected--and they endorsed the approach of federalization; that this was a public safety role, need and responsibility. This coalition determined resolutely that we could not toy with this anymore after that tremendous loss on 9-11 and continue to play games with more oversight and more supervision and more training.
And ordering crackdowns: Can you imagine that, ordering a crackdown 7 weeks afterwards? Why not that afternoon, that night, or the next morning? A crackdown? Oh, no, they had to think of the airlines first, while the airlines themselves are begging for safety because they realize that ensuring passenger safety is essential to reviving the industry. The Senate passed our bill 100-zip; every Republican, every Democrat voted for it. Our measure is, more than anything, an airline stimulus bill.
Americans are not going to get on these planes as long as there is fear, and we have the insecurity that we have. They are not going to get on the planes as long as they have U.S. Air Force planes flying over them ready to shoot them down.
With our bill that stops immediately. Once you secure that cockpit door, not to be opened in flight, there is no reason for hijackings because you can't.
All you can do is start a fight in the cabin, knowing that the order to the pilot is to land at the nearest airport where law enforcement is going to be there and you are going to prison. That is the Israeli El Al approach. We outlined it. We provided the diagram for the El Al plan that I still have. If I had time this morning, I would show it. It is a perimeter defense. In 30 years El Al has not had a hijacking.
Don't talk to me about European private airport security. Sure, European security personnel is better paid because all the European folks are supported for retirement and health care. These minimum wage folks have no retirement, no health care, no security, no anything. And the security firms are worried that they may quit. They all are quitting. That has been the experience at the Hartsfield airport in Atlanta. There has been over 400-percent turnover there. They don't stay there longer than 3 months.
Yet the opposition to real airport security has stories going around. The reason I came to the floor is to again bring attention to the commonsensical, thorough, and bipartisan fashion with which the Senate approached airline security. They are still talking about the Democratic bill on the House side. You can't get it any more bipartisan unless we are going to let the pages vote. Maybe we ought to do that. I mean, can't we get the truth to the American people that we are ready, willing, able, and glad to pay for it, $2.50 per flight? The polls show people would be willing to pay $25 added to a ticket, glad to do it. But we can take care of it with $2.50 so there is no question about being paid for.
The fundamentals of safety have to be hammered home to our colleagues on the House side. We are not playing games anymore. Noone wants to contract out the FBI. I wonder what the President wants? We were told a month ago that the President would go along with our bill. We felt absolutely secure. But they have some political machinations going on over there with Mr. ARMEY and Mr. DELAY. And Mr. ARMEY says: I don't want them all to join a union. Well, they all can join the unions under the private contractor. In fact, a third of them have. The reason the other two-thirds have not, is they can't read the application in order to join. They are refugees and immigrants. The application is in English. Go ahead to the airports. I go through there regularly, almost every week. They just cannot speak the language. That is no fault of their own. They are getting what jobs they can. But we can't do this with Americans' and the airline travelers' safety at risk.
We would not contract out the Capitol Police or the Border Patrol or the Secret Service or the FBI or defense. What is the matter with the Government? You just heard about a bill--all the defense workers at the Charleston naval shipyard, all the ``navalees'' belong to a union. You just heard the majority leader talk about laying down to conservative interests. I am not talking pro-union or anti-union. I am saying federal public safety officers cannot strike and they can be fired. This particular Senator supported President Reagan when he had to take that approach with the airline pilots. But we fiddle while Rome burns.
Would we ever not just contract out? Would we ever give our safety to foreign corporations? Can you imagine taking the defense and contracting it out, or the FBI, to the Swedish company or the Secret Service to the Netherlands company? These are the firms responsible for airline security now. The airlines get the lowest bidder, and they couldn't care less.
That English company, they were fined for hiring criminals
and falsifying their background checks. And since the time of the court fines, they have continued to hire criminals and not give the background checks. Yet they say: Well, let's see what they want. Let's get flexibility. You aren't going to have flexibility with the FBI or Secret Service or the Capitol Police. There is not flexibility. It is safety. That is what they have to understand over there, that we are not going to give it to the foreign companies.
We are not going to have the momentary safety checks or the European system. We are going to have the El Al, the Israeli system that has worked, proof positive, for 30 years. Once you secure that cockpit and they know there can't be a hijacking, you can take all these F-15s and F-16s and National Guard reserves that are flying all night long over Washington and New York and wherever and say: Save the money and save the time. Let them go back to their work. There is not going to be a hijacking. There is not going to be a plane shot down. If there is an attempted hijacking, it is down to the first landing and on to jail. That is where they are headed. They know that. So our terrorist adversaries will find some other way, like the mail and anthrax, but not the airlines.
[Page: S11281]
Security has to be comprehensive. Under El Al, they check thoroughly and rotate the screeners from the boarding gates, to the tarmac and to cleaning out the aisles.....
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And this is what it costs because industry lobbyists bought congress in the name of the greedy agenda of airline execs, instead of emulating Israeli airline security experience of nearly 30 years:
<a href="http://appropriations.house.gov/pdf/WarFundingFactSheet11-20-07.pdf">$66.8 billion</a>
<a href="http://209.85.165.104/search?q=cache:bP6f4YxuicEJ:www.cbo.gov/ftpdoc.cfm%3Findex%3D7506%26type%3D1+war+appropriations+since+2002&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=us">Estimated Appropriations Provided for Iraq and the War on
Terrorism, 2001-2006
(Billions of dollars, by fiscal year)
</a>
Quote:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...122601542.html
<h3>Wars Cost $15 Billion a Month, GOP Senator Says</h3>
By Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, December 27, 2007; Page A07
.....His remarks came in support of adding $70 billion to the omnibus fiscal 2008 spending legislation to pay for the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts, as well as counterterrorism activities, for the six months from Oct. 1, 2007, through March 31 of next year.
While most of the public focus has been on the political fight over troop levels, the Congressional Research Service (CRS) reported this month that the Bush administration's request for the 2008 fiscal year of $189.3 billion for Defense Department operations in Iraq, Afghanistan and worldwide counterterrorism activities was 20 percent higher than for fiscal 2007 and 60 percent higher than for fiscal 2006. .....
...."Stevens is being realistic," said Gordon Adams, who served as the senior national security official at the Office of Management and Budget from 1993 to 1997, in the Clinton administration.
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Pointing out that Bush's request comes out to $15.8 billion per month, Adams said: "Iraq, Afghanistan, and the war on terror are not getting cheaper. . . . This will go down some, as the surge comes home, but not as much as people think."
He added: "More and more of these so-called emergency funds are being used to repair and buy new military hardware," because "the Pentagon is worried that defense budgets will start to go down next year."
The CRS reports that a good part of the increased spending is not only for replacing lost equipment but "more often to upgrade and replace 'stressed' equipment and enhance force protection." It noted that a recent Congressional Budget Office study "found that more than 40% of the Army's spending for repair and replacement of war-worn equipment" was "spent to upgrade systems to increase capability, to buy equipment to eliminate longstanding shortfalls in inventory" and to convert new combat units to more flexible organizational structures.
Stevens made it clear that the $70 billion in the omnibus bill for the wars will cover only costs for the six months ending March 31, when Congress will again have to wrestle with a supplemental spending bill to pay for the wars. By then, Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, and Ryan C. Crocker, the U.S. ambassador, will have presented Congress with their update on the situation in Iraq.
Last Friday, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said that he hopes troop levels, which drive costs, could continue to go down in 2008. But he warned that they would continue only "if conditions on the ground" permit sustaining "the gains we have already made."
One indication of how fast costs are rising is that operations and maintenance costs for all of fiscal 2007 were $72 billion, and the entire fiscal year 2008 request was $81 billion, according to the CRS.....
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Spending since 2001 on Iraq war and the rest of "war on terror" will reach $600 billion, in addition to a rise in annual military spending to nearly $500 billion annually. It was $250 billion in year ending 9/30/00.
The expenditures for the war do not include more than $100 billion that the VA will require to provide medical care and benefits for wounded troops.
...and the president's family and cronies make a mint off of the war spending:
(Documented in the lower portion of the post): http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showpos...08&postcount=8
Consider that, with the exception of Bush's uncle, his brother, father, and numerous cronies began to make huge amounts from war related opportunities, by late in 2003. Four years have passed since most of the details reported at the above link.
Bush administration approved, human rights violations and a vigorous coverup that dumped the consequences on enlisted military personnel have been well publicized:
Quote:
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/galloway/story/17167.html
Commentary: Re-open investigation of Abu Ghraib
By Joseph L. Galloway | McClatchy Newspapers
* Posted on Wednesday, June 20, 2007
We were reminded again this week that in this administration, no good deed goes unpunished, and that no scandal is so great that it can’t be hidden until it’s forgotten.
The sad spectacle that transpired inside the crumbling walls of Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq came roaring back to life with Seymour Hersh’s on-target article in The New Yorker magazine telling the story of an honest general who investigated and reported on events that shocked the world.
Maj. Gen. Anthony Taguba, U.S. Army retired, was an accidental choice to conduct one of 17 Pentagon investigations of the prisoner abuses at Abu Ghraib. He was grabbed because he wore two stars, and they needed someone of that rank to probe a case that involved a one-star general.
The trouble was that Tony Taguba was honest and thorough and reported in detail, early and often, to his superiors on the evidence he was uncovering - film and photos of abuses far worse than those the public saw. There was sexual abuse of female prisoners by their American military guards and forced sex acts between a father and his young son.
He wasn't authorized to investigate any higher up the chain of command than the hapless Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski, and so he didn't.
But when his report was completed, Taguba had a hard time getting anyone in the Pentagon - where the powers that be were determined to push responsibility down to a staff sergeant and even lower ranking guards - to read it....
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The flawed post invasion planning, in both Afghanistan and Iraq, and lack of justification for invading two sovereign nations which never attacked the US, has resulted in tragic loss of life to 4000 US troops, with 12 times as many injured, huge numbers of foreign civilian casualties, and as close to the opposite of what our elected officials claimed to be achieving, as it is possible to measure, at this point:
Quote:
http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/12/...24military.php
Billions in aid to Pakistan was wasted, officials assert
By DAVID ROHDE, CARLOTTA GALL, ERIC SCHMITT AND DAVID E. SANGER
The money the U.S. spent to bolster the Pakistani military effort against militants has been diverted to help finance weapons systems designed to counter India, not Al Qaeda or the Taliban, officials said....
http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/004964.php
State Dept Document from 2005 Shows Fraud in Blackwater's Iraq Contract
By Spencer Ackerman - December 21, 2007, 11:40AM
....Yet despite its own internal watchdog's finding of fraudulence in Blackwater's Iraq contract, months later, the State Department re-signed a deal with the company to provide security for U.S. diplomats.
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Quote:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...121802262.html
<h3>All Iraqi Groups Blame U.S. Invasion for Discord, Study Shows</h3>
By Karen DeYoung
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, December 19, 2007; Page A14
Iraqis of all sectarian and ethnic groups believe that the U.S. military invasion is the primary root of the violent differences among them, and see the departure of "occupying forces" as the key to national reconciliation, according to focus groups conducted for the U.S. military last month.
That is good news, according to a military analysis of the results. At the very least, analysts optimistically [propagandistically] concluded, <h3>the findings indicate that Iraqis hold some "shared beliefs"</h3> that may eventually allow them to surmount the divisions that have led to a civil war.... <h3>[Did Stephen Colbert write that?]</h3>....
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Quote:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/25/wa.../25policy.html U.S. Scales Back Political Goals for Iraqi Unity
By STEVEN LEE MYERS and ALISSA J. RUBIN
Published: November 25, 2007
WASHINGTON, Nov. 24 — With American military successes outpacing political gains in Iraq, the Bush administration has lowered its expectation of quickly achieving major steps toward unifying the country, including passage of a long-stymied plan to share oil revenues and holding regional elections....
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Quote:
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationwo...,5019026.story
Iraq's bid to pass bills dead for year Parliament suspends its session, but may extend it into January to take up legislation deemed crucial by the U.S.
From the Associated Press
December 7, 2007
BAGHDAD -- Iraqi legislators suspended parliamentary sessions Thursday until Dec. 30 because of Muslim religious holidays, ending efforts to pass U.S.-backed legislation aimed at achieving national reconciliation this year.
The Sunni speaker of parliament announced the decision after days of debate over a draft bill that would allow thousands of former members of Saddam Hussein's Baath Party to return to government jobs. The measure is among the 18 benchmarks set by the United States to encourage reconciliation.
Speaker Mahmoud Mashhadani said many lawmakers would be making the pilgrimage to Mecca, Saudi Arabia, which culminates with Eid al-Adha, or the feast of sacrifice. Others were expected to leave the capital to spend the festival with their families elsewhere in Iraq or abroad. The holiday begins around Dec. 20.
Dec. 30 is one day before the end of the current term for parliament. Lawmakers normally would take a recess for two months at that time, but they were expected to extend the term by a month so they could meet in January to pass a budget and other important measures, a senior U.S. official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject....
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Quote:
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationwo...,4503892.story
The U.S. troop buildup has brought down violence, but that has failed to spark cooperation among politicians. If anything, the country appears more balkanized into ethnic and sectarian enclaves.
By Ned Parker, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
December 10, 2007 .....
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Quote:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/30/wo.../30afghan.html
Foreign Fighters of Harsher Bent Bolster Taliban
By DAVID ROHDE
Published: October 30, 2007
GARDEZ, Afghanistan — Afghan police officers working a highway checkpoint near here noticed something odd recently about a passenger in a red pickup truck. Though covered head to toe in a burqa, the traditional veil worn by Afghan women, she was unusually tall. When the police asked her questions, she refused to answer.
When the veil was eventually removed, the police found not a woman at all, but Andre Vladimirovich Bataloff, a 27-year-old man from Siberia with a flowing red beard, pasty skin and piercing blue eyes. Inside the truck was 1,000 pounds of explosives.
Afghan and American officials say the Siberian intended to be a suicide bomber, one of several hundred foreign militants who have gravitated to the region to fight alongside the Taliban this year, the largest influx since 2001.
The foreign fighters are not only bolstering the ranks of the insurgency. They are more violent, uncontrollable and extreme than even their locally bred allies, officials on both sides of the Afghan-Pakistan border warn.
They are also helping to change the face of the Taliban from a movement of hard-line Afghan religious students into a loose network that now includes a growing number of foreign militants as well as disgruntled Afghans and drug traffickers.
Foreign fighters are coming from Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Chechnya, various Arab countries and perhaps also Turkey and western China, Afghan and American officials say.
Their growing numbers point to the worsening problem of lawlessness in Pakistan’s tribal areas, which they use as a base to train alongside militants from Al Qaeda who have carried out terrorist attacks in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Europe, according to Western diplomats.
“We’ve seen an unprecedented level of reports of foreign-fighter involvement,” said Maj. Gen. Bernard S. Champoux, deputy commander for security of the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force. “They’ll threaten people if they don’t provide meals and support.”
In interviews in southern and eastern Afghanistan, local officials and village elders also reported having seen more foreigners fighting alongside the Taliban than in any year since the American-led invasion in 2001.
In Afghanistan, the foreigners serve as mid-level commanders, and train and finance local fighters, according to Western analysts. In Pakistan’s tribal areas, they train suicide bombers, create roadside-bomb factories and have vastly increased the number of high-quality Taliban fund-raising and recruiting videos posted online.
Gauging the exact number of Taliban and foreign fighters in Afghanistan is difficult, Western officials and analysts say. At any given time, the Taliban can field up to 10,000 fighters, they said, but only 2,000 to 3,000 are highly motivated, full-time insurgents.
The rest are part-time fighters, young Afghan men who have been alienated by government corruption, who are angry at civilian deaths caused by American bombing raids, or who are simply in search of cash, they said. Five to 10 percent of full-time insurgents — roughly 100 to 300 combatants — are believed to be foreigners.
Western diplomats say recent offers from the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, to negotiate with the Taliban are an effort to split local Taliban moderates and Afghans who might be brought back into the fold from the foreign extremists.
But that effort may face an increasing challenge as foreigners replace dozens of midlevel and senior Taliban who, Western officials say, have been killed by NATO and American forces.
At the same time, Western officials said the reliance on foreigners showed that the Taliban are running out of midlevel Afghan commanders. “That’s a sure-fire sign of desperation,” General Champoux said.
Seth Jones, an analyst with the Rand Corporation, was less sanguine, however, calling the arrival of more foreigners a dangerous development. The tactics the foreigners have introduced, he said, are increasing Afghan and Western casualty rates.
“They play an incredibly important part in the insurgency,” Mr. Jones said. “They act as a force multiplier in improving their ability to kill Afghan and NATO forces.”
Western officials said the foreigners are also increasingly financing younger Taliban leaders in Pakistan’s tribal areas who have closer ties to Al Qaeda, like Sirajuddin Haqqani and Anwar ul-Haq Mujahed. The influence of older, more traditional Taliban leaders based in Quetta, Pakistan, is diminishing.
“We see more and more resources going to their fellow travelers,” said Christopher Alexander, the deputy special representative for the United Nations in Afghanistan. “The new Taliban commanders are younger and younger.”
In the southern provinces of Oruzgan, Kandahar and Helmand, Afghan villagers recently described two distinct groups of Taliban fighters. They said “local Taliban” allowed some development projects. But “foreign Taliban” — usually from Pakistan — threatened to kill anyone who cooperated with the Afghan government or foreign aid groups.....
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Quote:
http://www.publicintegrity.org/WOWII/
Baghdad Bonanza
The Top 100 Private Contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan
By Bill Buzenberg
KBR, Inc., the global engineering and construction giant, won more than $16 billion in U.S. government contracts for work in Iraq and Afghanistan from 2004 to 2006—far more than any other company, according to a new analysis by the Center for Public Integrity. In fact, the total dollar value of contracts that went to KBR—which used to be known as Kellogg, Brown, and Root and until April 2007 was a subsidiary of Halliburton—was nearly nine times greater than those awarded to DynCorp International, a private security firm that is No. 2 on the Center's list of the top 100 recipients of Iraq and Afghanistan reconstruction funds.
Another private security company, Blackwater USA, whose employees recently killed as many as 17 Iraqi civilians in what the Iraqi government alleges was an unprovoked attack, is 12th on the list of companies and joint ventures, with $485 million in contracts. (On November 14, the New York Times reported that FBI investigators have concluded that 14 of the 17 shootings were unjustified and violated deadly-force rules in effect for security contractors in Iraq, and that Justice Department prosecutors are weighing whether to seek indictments.) First Kuwaiti General Trading & Contracting, which immediately precedes Blackwater on the Top 100, came under fire in July after a pair of whistleblowers told a House committee that the company essentially "kidnapped" low-paid foreign laborers brought in to help build the new U.S. embassy in Baghdad. First Kuwaiti and the U.S. State Department denied the charges.
Other key findings from the Center's analysis:
<h3>• Over the three years studied, more than $20 billion in contracts went to foreign companies whose identities—at least so far—are impossible to determine.</h3>
• Nearly a third of the companies and joint ventures on the Top 100 are based outside the United States. These foreign contractors, along with the $20 billion in contracts awarded to the unidentified companies, account for about 45 percent of all funds obligated to the Top 100....
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<h3>Consider that the US now has 26,000 troops in Afghanistan, plus much smaller forces fielded by NATO allies, and remember that in 2001, US "victory" over the Taleban government in all of Afghanistan was accomplished with several Special Forces "A" teams, a rag tag indigenous rebel army, which was nearly eliminated by the Taleban just before 9/11, and by the US air power available to the "A" teams coordination.</h3>
Consider that US administration threats against Iran and it's nuclear threat and involvement in Iraqi resistance was intentionally exaggerated:
Quote:
http://dni.gov/press_releases/20070202_release.pdf
Prospects for Iraq’s Stability: A Challenging Road Ahead
January 2007
...Iraq’s neighbors influence, and are influenced by, events within Iraq, but the involvement of these outside actors is not likely to be a major driver of violence or the prospects for stability because of the self-sustaining character of Iraq’s internal sectarian dynamics. Nonetheless, Iranian lethal support for select groups of Iraqi Shia militants clearly intensifies the conflict in Iraq.....
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Quote:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...021201537.html By Karen DeYoung
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, February 13, 2007; Page A18
Marine Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said yesterday that he has no information indicating Iran's government is directing the supply of lethal weapons to Shiite insurgent groups in Iraq.
"We know that the explosively formed projectiles are manufactured in Iran," Pace told Voice of America during a visit to Australia. "What I would not say is that the Iranian government, per se, knows about this."
Special Report
America at War
Washington Post coverage of the U.S. military and its operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.
"It is clear that Iranians are involved, and it's clear that materials from Iran are involved," he continued, "but I would not say by what I know that the Iranian government clearly knows or is complicit."....
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Quote:
http://web.archive.org/web/200707181...97,print.story
Saudis' role in Iraq insurgency outlined Sunni extremists from Saudi Arabia make up half the foreign fighters in Iraq, many suicide bombers, a U.S. official says.
By Ned Parker
Times Staff Writer
July 15, 2007
BAGHDAD — Although Bush administration officials have frequently lashed out at Syria and Iran, accusing it of helping insurgents and militias here, the largest number of foreign fighters and suicide bombers in Iraq come from a third neighbor, Saudi Arabia, according to a senior U.S. military officer and Iraqi lawmakers....
About 45% of all foreign militants targeting U.S. troops and Iraqi civilians and security forces are from Saudi Arabia; 15% are from Syria and Lebanon; and 10% are from North Africa, according to official U.S. military figures made available to The Times by the senior officer. Nearly half of the 135 foreigners in U.S. detention facilities in Iraq are Saudis, he said.
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Consider the waste, corruption, and lack of progress achieved in two avoidable invasions and occupations "of choice", versus unmet needs of our own domestic population:
Quote:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/24/us...gewanted=print
December 24, 2007
In Kentucky’s Teeth, Toll of Poverty and Neglect
By IAN URBINA
BARBOURVILLE, Ky. — In the 18 years he has been visiting nursing homes, seeing patients in his private practice and, more recently, driving his mobile dental clinic through Appalachian hills and hollows, Dr. Edwin E. Smith has seen the extremes of neglect.
He has seen the shame of a 14-year-old girl who would not lift her head because she had lost most of her teeth from malnutrition, and the do-it-yourself pride of an elderly mountain man who, unable to afford a dentist, pulled his own infected teeth with a pair of pliers.
He has seen the brutal result of angry husbands hitting their wives and the end game of pill-poppers who crack healthy teeth, one by one, to get dentists to prescribe pain medications.
But mostly he has seen everyday people who are too busy putting food on the table to worry about oral hygiene. Many of them savor their sweets, drink well water without fluoride and long ago started ruining their teeth by chewing tobacco and smoking.
Dr. Smith has a rare window on a state with the highest proportion of adults under 65 without teeth, where about half the population does not have dental insurance. He struggles to counter the effects of the drastic shortage of dentists in rural areas and oral hygiene habits that have been slow to change.
“The level of need is hard to believe until you see it up close,” said Dr. Smith, who runs a free dental clinic at a high school in one of Kentucky’s poorest counties. He also provides free care to about half of the patients who visit his private practice in Barbourville.
Kentucky is among the worst states nationally in the proportion of low-income residents served by free or subsidized dental clinics, and less than a fourth of the state’s dentists regularly take Medicaid, according to 2005 federal data.
Until August 2006, when the system was revamped, the state’s Medicaid reimbursement rate was also one of the lowest in the country. Experts say this contributed to the shortage of dentists in poorer and more rural areas.
The state dental director, Dr. Julie Watts McKee, said that last year, Medicaid reimbursement for children’s dental services was raised by about 30 percent.
But even with this increase, which was paid for by cutting orthodontic benefits, reimbursement fees remain about 50 percent below market rate, said Dr. Ken Rich, the state’s dental director for Medicaid. And for adults, Dr. Rich said, they are about 65 percent below market rate.
“Not much has changed over the years here, really,” said Glen D. Anderson, who for two decades has made dentures in Corbin, Ky. He sells a pair of dentures for $400 that many dentists sell for more than $1,200. Like his brother, father and grandfather, he makes them without a license.
“Bootleggers exist here for a reason,” Mr. Anderson said. “People need teeth, but they can’t afford to go to dentists for dentures.”....
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Consider "the troops"....since as far back as late in 2003, did they sign enlistment contracts in the midst of an information embargo, or did they know what they were likely to be doing, and the ethics and motivations of who would be commanding them? Are they responsible individual adults? Is it not possible to be ambivalent about them, and their "service", under the circumstances I have just outlined and documented, while neither "supporting them in their decision to participate in this ongoing clusterfuck, nor wishing them harm, and NOT be LABELLED "Far Left", or a "Traitor", or "unAmerican"?
Quote:
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/015663.php
By Steve Benen 07.21.07
Aside from the tragedy of the war itself, one of the more disconcerting elements of the ongoing political debate is just how little progress we've seen in nearly five years. Vapid arguments that were absurd in 2003 are still used routinely. Offensive talking points that were discredited before the invasion even began still appear in major news outlets.
Take, for example, the <a href="http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/013/901rhkhq.asp">latest diatribe</a> from William Kristol.
<i>"With the ongoing progress of the surge, and the obvious fact that the vast majority of the troops want to fight and win the war, the "support-the-troops-but-oppose-what-they're-doing" position has become increasingly untenable. How can you say with a straight face that you support the troops while advancing legislation that would undercut their mission and strengthen their enemies? You can't. [...]
Having turned against a war that some of them supported, the left is now turning against the troops they claim still to support.... [The troops] are our best and bravest, fighting for all of us against a brutal enemy in a difficult and frustrating war. They are the 9/11 generation. The left slanders them. We support them."</i>
The point of Kristol's piece was to denounce The New Republic and The Nation for pieces that cast some U.S. troops in an unflattering light, but instead of just questioning the articles themselves, Kristol feels justified in rehashing the notion that to disapprove of a war is necessarily to condemn those fighting it. It's an "argument" -- I use the word loosely -- that has a child-like sophistication.
It's apparently impossible for Kristol to conceive of the failure of the so-called surge, or realize that the only thing "strengthening" our enemies is <a href="http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2003714521_alqaida20.html">the status quo.</a><h3>[1]</h3>
Indeed, to see the world as Kristol does, most Americans, a majority of both chambers of Congress, a considerable number of veterans, and even a growing number of Republican lawmakers, all stand in opposition to the men and women in uniform because they believe the president's policy is a mistake. All deserve to have their patriotism questioned because they have the audacity to see conditions as they are, not as Dick Cheney wills them to be.
But taking a step back, and simply looking at this as a matter of rhetoric, this notion of support-the-troops, support-the-mission was transparently ridiculous years ago, and Kristol, had he the ability, should be embarrassed to be repeating it now. Why is conservative discourse stuck in 2003?
<h3>[1] Iraq a "big moneymaker" for al-Qaida, says CIA</h3>
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/htm...alqaida20.html
By Greg Miller
Los Angeles Times
WASHINGTON — A major CIA effort launched last year to hunt down Osama bin Laden has produced no significant leads, but has helped track an alarming increase in the movement of al-Qaida operatives and money into Pakistan's tribal territories, according to senior U.S. intelligence officials.
In one of the most troubling trends, U.S. officials said al-Qaida's command base in Pakistan increasingly is being funded by cash from Iraq, where the terrorist network's operatives are raising substantial sums from donations to the insurgency as well as kidnappings of wealthy Iraqis and other criminal activity.
The influx of money has bolstered al-Qaida's leadership ranks at a time when the core command is regrouping. The trend also signals a reversal in the traditional flow of al-Qaida funds, with the leadership surviving to a large extent on money from its most profitable franchise, rather than distributing funds from headquarters to distant cells.
Al-Qaida's efforts were aided, intelligence officials said, by Pakistan's withdrawal in September of tens of thousands of troops from tribal areas along the Afghanistan border where bin Laden and his top deputy, Ayman al-Zawahri, are believed to be hiding.
Little more than a year ago, al-Qaida's core command was thought to be in a financial crunch. But U.S. officials said cash shipped from Iraq has eased those troubles.
"Iraq is a big moneymaker for them," a senior U.S. counterterrorism official said....
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Quote:
http://www.sharpsand.net/2007/07/21/...rt-the-troops/
I Do Not “Support the Troops”
Posted on July 21, 2007
The phrase is a cliché & buried in the cliché are a pair of pernicious ideas: 1) That individual soldiers are without moral, existential, responsibility for their acts; 2) that to <a href="http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/015663.php">argue the Iraq war is wrong</a>, misguided, ill-conceived, badly managed, stupid, indecent, horrifying, & damaging to US interests is to somehow wish harm to “the troops.” Each “troop” is a <a href="http://www.thenation.com/doc/20070730/editors">moral agent</a> & though we make certain allowances for individuals acting under military orders, one of the benchmarks of civilization is that we hold soldiers to a moral standard of responsibility. (Unless we secretly wish the “troops” to carry out our atavistic fantasies of violence, in which case we will exempt them from morality; that is, we will turn them into beasts.) I hate the war & I understand those fighting it to be participating in an immoral undertaking; that does not mean I wish them harmed. On the contrary, I wish that they <a href="http://www.thenation.com/doc/20070730/hedges">would come to their moral senses</a>. The cliché “support the troops” is simply the most obvious node in a self-congratulatory web of patriotic discourse threatening what the patriots claim to believe in. And it is a very successful discourse, since even opponents of the war must kneel at the alter of the sanctified “troops.” So, neighbor, take your magnetized Support the Troops ribbon & shove it up your ass. I hear that magnetism has magical properties. Maybe that will do some good against the cancer growing on your conscience.
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This is how it "works" here. "Ustwo" makes "everybody knows" statements, that turn out not to be what he believes that everyone "knows" or "should" conclude. "Host", labelled and consigned by Ustwo to a slot in the "far left" category, responds with a thoroughly and reliably documented (ALMOST all sources are from government and major news linked pages.) "presentation" that a reasonable person could identify with, that is nearly the mirror opposite of what Ustwo believes is "centrist".
Last edited by host; 12-27-2007 at 02:01 AM..
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