Is Iraq in a state of Civil War? - Page 2 - Tilted Forum Project Discussion Community

aceventura3 · 02-27-2006, 02:49 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by martinguerre

And congratualtions on Godwining yourself there.

What does that mean?

Charlatan · 02-27-2006, 05:47 PM

Quote:

Godwin's Law (also Godwin's Rule of Nazi Analogies) is an adage in Internet culture originated by Mike Godwin on Usenet in 1990 that states:

As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1.
There is a tradition in many Usenet newsgroups that once such a comparison is made, the thread in which the comment was posted is over and whoever mentioned the Nazis has automatically lost whatever debate was in progress.

It is considered poor form to raise arbitrarily such a comparison with the motive of ending the thread. There is a widely recognized codicil that any such deliberate invocation of Godwin's Law will be unsuccessful.

martinguerre · 02-27-2006, 06:16 PM

Ace...the point isn't strict legal liability. The instruction of history is best served not in a sense of calculable guilt, but in instructive caution for future actions.

We thought we understood the situation, and that we could arm one side of a conflict to our benifit. It turns out that this had drastic consequences, and Saddam's use of our bio weapons proves that.

Again, we thought we understood the situation, and applied models of reconstruction and liberation that didn't apply...backing Chalabi and Iraqi National Congress...and it turns out they were fronting for Iran the whole time. So far, the consequences have been quite serious, and not looking to improve.

Hopefully...somewhere down the line, we'll actually use good judgment.

As for the right to retaliate? It depends. Do we as Americans have the right to export violence at our judgment? Do other nations? What legitimates a war? I don't think there are hard and fast answers...but there is a point to seeing the working of the logic that legitimates terrorism, even if we remain in strict disagreement with the conclusions.

Mojo_PeiPei · 02-27-2006, 09:37 PM

Machiavelli for President please.

smooth · 02-28-2006, 03:55 AM

martinguerre,

I'm not sure how you lost your solid footing in discussing the construction of the Iraq state by foreign governments. But it's interesting that ijn your conversation with aceventura he was able to completely obliterate that crtiical point.

I find it interesting because he uses the "fact" that Saddam "gassed his own people" as if to create a higher level of moral indignation against a dictator killing people within the boundaries of his state. As if we should be more angry at someone killing "his own" than those not his own. But the simple fact remains that Saddam in no way thought of the Kurds as "his own." and they weren't

and his refusal to agree to this point, ignore it, misunderstand it, whathaveyou, leads him to think that a people ought to unite against the dictator for committing such a heinous act. but he doesn't seem to catch the notion that a people, comprised of various ethnic groups and in no way seeing themselves as ethnically united, would ever conceive or even desire to "unite" to overthrow such a dictator.

for to many, he (saddam) did no such wrong. and to others, he was representative of their wishes, but all of this within the context of foreign powers enabling him to exert control over the entire region held together by nothing other than brute (military) force--not some notion of nationhood. it simply doesn't make any sense to wonder whether the nation is fracturing into groups and bubbling into civil war, well primarily because of your first comment that there is no glue there. it's more profitable to wonder when iraq was not currently or under threat of civil war...

I just think you shouldn't have let that comment slide away so easily, becuase it manages a tremendous amount of explanation for what we are trying to decipher today; indeed, much of what many of us opposed to the invasion repeatedly pointed out as a must think about reality before action. and it's so obvious that there is just no way in any universe that intelligent masterminds of the sorts who articulated and maneuvered us into this predicament couldn't have foreseen it. especially given that a fair number of them were involved in the initial thick of it when many of us were still in baby jumpers.

but now it appears extremely rational to lean on the point that we have personal responsibility to the iraqis (as if there were a homogenous group in existence for us to cater to or ponder about), to a concept of liberty, to a way of life, to do anyting BUT up and leave, because we have been skillfully managed into a box. and this is what many of us meant when we labeled it a quagmire. much of the same as vietnam. but not in the way that many people probably conceive of either of these conflicts, because they seem them as such--conflicts. so quagmire to them means that the interactants can't move, can't escape, can't overcome. which is ludicrous to such a person, because they understand our military might to be so overwhelming that the prospect of its immobilty is laughable on its face. but I wonder if those people pop the political implications of the term quagmire into their equation. because then it becomes much more clear how someone might conceive of these "conflicts" as mainly political and resulting in quagmire. that is, all action can be framed as untenable. regardless of what is, how things exist are less relevent than how things can be made to appear. so now we sit on the brink of an episode and our political leaders call out to us that to leave is untenable, unthinkable, abrasive to our very fiber.

because if one thing resonates in this nation, it's the legal fiction of personal responsibilty. and this fiction may account for all sorts of deeds that ultimately run counter to our personal best interests, but dammit, it's responsibility. core to our legal system, central to our political consciousness, and paramount to the maintenance of capitalism. but I always saw this action as the maintenance of capitalism and so invite a number of people to make the requisite rendering of my musings into a facile argument that we trade blood for oil, so be it. but nonetheless, people in greater and higher positions in life, doing these kinds of analyses far longer than I may ever have the chance to do, and some in non-trivial high-level government positions, have already claimed that our 4th world war would be the front between global capitalism and non.

but yeah, I think you could dig your feet in a bit further on that point about the construction of an "iraqi state" by foreign powers and ride it for a bit more currency rather than get bogged down in some bizarre rationalizations that can only occur once that point is quietly swept under the proverbial rug.

martinguerre · 02-28-2006, 04:56 AM

well, in that case smooth...

He's all yours.

aceventura3 · 02-28-2006, 08:13 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by martinguerre

As for the right to retaliate? It depends. Do we as Americans have the right to export violence at our judgment? Do other nations? What legitimates a war? I don't think there are hard and fast answers...but there is a point to seeing the working of the logic that legitimates terrorism, even if we remain in strict disagreement with the conclusions.

Perhaps "right" is not the best word to use. But if someone is responsible for contributing to the harm of another, justice can be sought. Do people have a "right" to justice, I don't know. What I do know is people seek justice. The history of the human race suggests that if you are responsible in part for harming a group of people, odds are that they will "export violence".

So if we continue to perpetuate this thought that the US is responsible for the actions of people like Saddam in the middle east we will forever be at war.

aceventura3 · 02-28-2006, 08:39 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by smooth

I find it interesting because he uses the "fact" that Saddam "gassed his own people" as if to create a higher level of moral indignation against a dictator killing people within the boundaries of his state. As if we should be more angry at someone killing "his own" than those not his own. But the simple fact remains that Saddam in no way thought of the Kurds as "his own." and they weren't

I actually think that the Iraqi people, Arabs, Muslims had a greater responsibility to address Saddam than the US. My greater concern was his open threats to the lives and property of me and the ones I love. I do not profess any special moral indignation, my feeling are very primal on this issue.

Quote:

and his refusal to agree to this point, ignore it, misunderstand it, whathaveyou, leads him to think that a people ought to unite against the dictator for committing such a heinous act. but he doesn't seem to catch the notion that a people, comprised of various ethnic groups and in no way seeing themselves as ethnically united, would ever conceive or even desire to "unite" to overthrow such a dictator.

I know there are differences. I accept the history of war and conflict in the middle east. I would bet there have been alliances of "ethnic" groups in the past who have come together in the middle east for the purpose of overthrowing dictators. Given the long history of the area I think that would be a safe bet, don't you agree?

Quote:

for to many, he (saddam) did no such wrong. and to others, he was representative of their wishes, but all of this within the context of foreign powers enabling him to exert control over the entire region held together by nothing other than brute (military) force--not some notion of nationhood. it simply doesn't make any sense to wonder whether the nation is fracturing into groups and bubbling into civil war, well primarily because of your first comment that there is no glue there. it's more profitable to wonder when iraq was not currently or under threat of civil war...

This is a point I tend to agree with.

Quote:

but now it appears extremely rational to lean on the point that we have personal responsibility to the iraqis (as if there were a homogenous group in existence for us to cater to or ponder about), to a concept of liberty, to a way of life, to do anyting BUT up and leave, because we have been skillfully managed into a box.

Perhaps part of the problem is that there are Iraqis who believe that we have been "skillfully managed into a box", to them I say that I am willing to leave. I am willing to let them fight each other until the dust settles. I say it is time for them to step up and get their own house in order however they want to do it, and then follow the rules.

Willravel · 03-01-2006, 05:54 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by aceventura3

I apologize for not being able to let this issue go. But I have heard this argument and have never been able to understand it.

If the US is to take blame for Saddam's actions how do you allocate that blame, 50/50, 60/40, 30/70? And if the US is responsible in someway, do you think the people of Iraq, Arabs, Mulims are justified in seeking punishment or revenge against the US?

Revenge is never justifiable. We are to blame in at least some way for Saddam, and thus we should be heald responsible, BUT, terrorism is hardly a legal or moral tool. If we were to be brought to justice, then those who sold weapons to the Iranians and Iraqis during the Iraq/Iran war would be brought up on war crimes. If you're refering to the 3000 people who lost their lives on 9/11...there is no justification for such a horrific action.

roachboy · 03-01-2006, 06:16 PM

just checking: is there some kind of linkage being made between the evaluation of the situation and iraq--specifically on the question of how to interpret the events of the past week or so, since the bombing of the golden mosque--and one's position on the war in general?

how does this work exactly?

it would seem to me that going down this route would make all judgements about iraq non-falsifiable because there is no need for any information to be involved.
all the work is done a priori.
what would be the point of that?

host · 03-01-2006, 10:31 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by aceventura3

Perhaps "right" is not the best word to use. But if someone is responsible for contributing to the harm of another, justice can be sought. Do people have a "right" to justice, I don't know. What I do know is people seek justice. The history of the human race suggests that if you are responsible in part for harming a group of people, odds are that they will "export violence".

So if we continue to perpetuate this thought that the US is responsible for the actions of people like Saddam in the middle east we will forever be at war.

The volumes of evidence that you choose to overlook, in order to preserve your opinion, and the fact that your argument is in conflict with Bush's own definition of who is complicit, are indications that the U.S., under the leadership of GW Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld, was hardly the moral arbiter of who should be "targeted" and pre-empted.

I've posted all of this on threads of this forum since Sept., 2004, and I'll re-post my research until you or others who still attempt to advance your justification for what looks to me like illegal war of aggression, refute the reports that back my opinion...or stop your flawed defense of war criminals and their crimes.....

Quote:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/relea...0010920-8.html
...And we will pursue nations that provide aid or safe haven to terrorism. Every nation, in every region, now has a decision to make. Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists. (Applause.) From this day forward, any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism will be regarded by the United States as a hostile regime....

aceventura3, tell me why the U.S. was not responsible for "harboring or supporting terrorism", when it continued to supply Saddam with materials and military advice that could be used against Iraq's neighbors and the rest of the world, even after "he gassed his own people", using chemical and bilogical agents banned by international treaty (The U.S. even sold Saddam the crop dusting Bell helicopters and provided the training related to disperse the gas that was used on the Kurds)...and went right on signifigantly supporting and advising him until at least the day he invaded Kuwait. The excuse that he was supported because he countered our enemy, Iran, seems to wither when Reagan began secretly supplying Iran with anit-tank missles and militarily useful replacement parts, knowing that it would strengthen Iran's resistance to Saddam countering it's (Iran's) military power......

WTF....aceventura3...where can you possibly come up with a legitimate justification for the U.S. to avoid being determined to be a rogue nation, aligned with an "evil dictator", that supplied that dictator with banned weapons, and support and military advice, continued this after he "gassed his own people", while it played both ends against the middle by simultaneously and secretly supplying the dicatator's enemy with war material, thereby squandering it's justification for supporting the evil dicatator in the first place.....and then launched a pre-emptive war of aggression against the evil dicatator's country? Show us why it is not reasonable, especially now that the WMD excuse for war has been exposed, using Bush's own criteria of who is complicit in terrorism....to form an opinion that Bush himself is a war criminal and a terrorist. How could he be determined to be the opposite of that? How was the invasion of Iraq not an illegal war of aggression perpetrated by a rogue nation with the evidence of complicity that the U.S. had with the terrorist, evil dicatator of Iraq?

Quote:

http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showpos...7&postcount=49
....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!

Originally posted here:

Quote:

http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showpos...4&postcount=23
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.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp...&notFound=true
U.S. Had Key Role in Iraq Buildup
Trade in Chemical Arms Allowed Despite Their Use on Iranians, Kurds

By Michael Dobbs
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, December 30, 2002; Page A01

High on the Bush administration's list of justifications for war against Iraq are President Saddam Hussein's use of chemical weapons, nuclear and biological programs, and his contacts with international terrorists. What U.S. officials rarely acknowledge is that these offenses date back to a period when Hussein was seen in Washington as a valued ally.

Among the people instrumental in tilting U.S. policy toward Baghdad during the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war was Donald H. Rumsfeld, now defense secretary, whose December 1983 meeting with Hussein as a special presidential envoy paved the way for normalization of U.S.-Iraqi relations. Declassified documents show that Rumsfeld traveled to Baghdad at a time when Iraq was using chemical weapons on an "almost daily" basis in defiance of international conventions.

The story of U.S. involvement with Saddam Hussein in the years before his 1990 attack on Kuwait -- which included large-scale intelligence sharing, supply of cluster bombs through a Chilean front company, and facilitating Iraq's acquisition of chemical and biological precursors -- is a topical example of the underside of U.S. foreign policy. It is a world in which deals can be struck with dictators, human rights violations sometimes overlooked, and accommodations made with arms proliferators, all on the principle that the "enemy of my enemy is my friend."

Throughout the 1980s, Hussein's Iraq was the sworn enemy of Iran, then still in the throes of an Islamic revolution. U.S. officials saw Baghdad as a bulwark against militant Shiite extremism and the fall of pro-American states such as Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and even Jordan -- a Middle East version of the "domino theory" in Southeast Asia. That was enough to turn Hussein into a strategic partner and for U.S. diplomats in Baghdad to routinely refer to Iraqi forces as "the good guys," in contrast to the Iranians, who were depicted as "the bad guys."

A review of thousands of declassified government documents and interviews with former policymakers shows that U.S. intelligence and logistical support played a crucial role in shoring up Iraqi defenses against the "human wave" attacks by suicidal Iranian troops. The administrations of Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush authorized the sale to Iraq of numerous items that had both military and civilian applications, including poisonous chemicals and deadly biological viruses, such as anthrax and bubonic plague.

Opinions differ among Middle East experts and former government officials about the pre-Iraqi tilt, and whether Washington could have done more to stop the flow to Baghdad of technology for building weapons of mass destruction...............

Quote:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story...4314%2C00.html
When US turned a blind eye to poison gas

America knew Baghdad was using chemical weapons against the Kurds in 1988. So why, asks Dilip Hiro , has it taken 14 years to muster its outrage?

Sunday September 1, 2002
The Observer

When it comes to demonising Saddam Hussein, nothing captures the popular imagination in America better than the statement that 'he gassed his own people'. This is an allusion to the deployment of chemical weapons by Iraq's military in the Iraqi Kurdistan town of Halabja in March 1988 during the Iran-Iraq war, and then in the territory administered by the Tehran-backed Kurdish rebels after the ceasefire five months later.

As Iraq's use of poison gases in war and in peace was public knowledge, the question arises: what did the United States administration do about it then? Absolutely nothing. Indeed, so powerful was the grip of the pro-Baghdad lobby on the administration of Republican President Ronald Reagan that it got the White House to foil the Senate's attempt to penalise Iraq for its violation of the Geneva Protocol on Chemical Weapons to which it was a signatory.....

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http://www.ithaca.edu/politics/gagnon/talks/us-iraq.htm
Our History with Iraq*

Chip Gagnon, Assistant Prof., Dept of Politics, Ithaca College
Visiting Research Fellow, Peace Studies Program, Cornell University

Talk given at Teach-in on Iraq, Cornell University, October 22, 2002
2pm Willard Straight Hall

...............Ronald Reagan takes office in Jan 1981.

1982:

Spring of 1982 marked the beginning of tilt toward Iraq by Reagan. This tilt was formalized in a secret National Security Decision Directive issued in June 1982. While the US was officially neutral, this NSDD declared that the US would do whatever was necessary to prevent Iraq from losing its war against Iran.

Apparently without consulting Congress, Reagan also removed Iraq from the State Dept. list of terrorist sponors. This meant that Iraq was now eligible for US dual-use and military technology.

This shift marked the beginning of a very close relationship between the Reagan and Bush administrations and Saddam Hussein. The US over following years actively supported Iraq, supplying billions of dollars of credits, US military intelligence and advice, and ensuring that necessary weaponry got to Iraq.

1983:

The State Dept. once again reported that Iraq was continuing to support terrorist groups

- Iraq had also been using chemical weapons against Iranian troops since 1982; this use of chemical weapons increased in 1983. The State Dept. and the National Security Council were well aware of this.

- Overriding NSC concerns, the Secretaries of Commerce and State pressured the NSC to approve the sale to Iraq of Bell helicopters "for crop dusting" (these same helicopters were used to gas Iraqi Kurds in 1988).

In late 1983, Reagan secretly allowed Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Egypt, to transfer US weapons to Iraq; Reagan also asked the Italian prime minister to channel arms to Iraq

December 1983 was a particularly interesting month; it was the month that Donald Rumsfeld -- currently US Secretary of Defense and one of the most vocal proponents of attacking Iraq -- paid a visit to Saddam Hussein in Baghdad as Reagan's envoy.

Rumsfeld claims now that the meeting was about terrorism in Lebanon.

But State Dept. documents show that in fact, Rumsfeld was carrying a message from Reagan expressing his desire to have a closer and better relationship with Saddam Hussein.

Just a few months before Rumsfeld's visit, Iraq had used poison gas against Iranian troops. This fact was known to the US. Also known was that Iraq was building a chemical weapons infrastructure.

NBC and The New York Times have recently reported that Rumsfeld was a key player in the Reagan administration's strong support for Iraq, despite knowing of Iraq's use of chemical weapons. This relationship became so close that both Reagan and VP Bush personally delivered military advice to Saddam Hussein. [1]

1984

In March, the State Dept. reported that Iraq was using chemical weapons and nerve gas in the war against Iran; these facts were confirmed by European doctors who examined Iranian soldiers

The Washington Post (in an article in Dec.1986 by Bob Woodward) reported that in 1984 the CIA began secretly giving information to Iraqi intelligence to help them "calibrate" poison gas attacks against Iranian troops.

1985

The CIA established direct intelligence links with Baghdad, and began giving Iraq "data from sensitive US satellite reconnaissance photography" to help in the war.

This same year, the US House of Representatives passed a bill to put Iraq back on State Dept. supporters of terrorism list.

The Reagan administration -- in the person of Secretary of State George Schultz -- pressured the bill's sponsor to drop it the bill. The bill is dropped, and Iraq remains off the terrorist list.

Iraq labs send a letter to the Commerce Dept with details showing that Iraq was developing ballistic missiles.

Between 1985-1990 the Commerce Dept. approved the sale of many computers to Iraq's weapons lab. (The UN inspectors in 1991 found that: 40% of the equipment in Iraq's weapons lab were of US origin)

1985 is also a key year because the Reagan administration approved the export to Iraq of biological cultures that are precursors to bioweapons: anthrax, botulism, etc.; these cultures were "not attenuated or weakened, and were capable of reproduction."

There were over 70 shipments of such cultures between 1985-1988.

The Bush administration also authorized an additional 8 shipments of biological cultures that the Center for Disease Control classified as "having biological warfare significance."

This information comes from the Senate Banking Committee's report from 1994. The report stated that "these microorganisms exported by the US were identical to those the United Nations inspectors found and recovered from the Iraqi biological warfare program."

Senator Riegle, who headed the committee, noted that: "They seemed to give him anything he wanted. It's right out of a science fiction movie as to why we would send this kind of stuff to anybody." [2]

1988

The Reagan administration's Commerce Dept. approved exports to Iraq's SCUD missile program; it was these exports that allowed the extension of the SCUDs' range so that in 1991 they were able to reach Israel and US bases in Saudi Arabia.

In March, the Financial Times of London reported that Saddam had recently used chemical weapons against Kurds in Halabja, using US helicopters bought in 1983.

Two months later, an Asst. Secretary of State pushed for more US-Iraq economic cooperation.

In September of that year, Reagan prevented the Senate from putting sanctions on Iraq for its violation of the Geneva Protocol on Chemical Weapons.

The US also voted against a UN Security Council statement condemning Iraq's use of chemical weapons. [3]

1989

In March, the CIA director reported to Congress that Iraq was the largest chemical weapons producer in the world.

The State Dept reported that Iraq continued to develop chemical and biological weapons, as well as new missiles

The Bush administration that year approved dozens of export licenses for sophisticated dual-use equipment to Iraq's weapons ministry.

In October, international banks cut off all loans to Iraq. The Bush administration responded by issuing National Security Directive 26, which mandated closer links with Iraq, and included a $1 billion loan guarantee.

This loan guarantee freed up cash for Iraq to buy and develop WMDs.

This directive was suspended only on August 2, 1990, the day Iraq invaded Kuwait.

One US firm reportedly contacted the Commerce Dept. two times, concerned that its product could be used for nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles. Bush's Commerce Dept requested and received written guarantees from Iraq that the equipment was only for civilian use.

1990

Between July 18 and August 1 (the day before the invasion), the Bush Administration approved $4.8 million in advanced technology sales to Iraq's weapons ministry and to weapons labs that were known to have worked on biological, chemical and nuclear weapons.

So when US ambassador April Glaspie told Saddam the US did not have an official position on disputes between Arab countries, is it any wonder that he thought the US would look the other way when he invaded Kuwait? After this close and very supportive relationship with the Republican administrations throughout the 1980s?

We all know about the Gulf War. But I want to bring in one more piece of history here, from after the Gulf War.

Dick Cheney, before becoming Vice President, was CEO of Halliburton Corp. from 1995 until August 2000, when he retired with a $34 million retirement package.

According to the Financial Times of London, Halliburton in that time period sold $23.8 million of oil industry equipment and services to Iraq, to help rebuild its war-damaged oil production infrastructure. For political reasons, Halliburton used subsidiaries to hide this. [4]

More recently, the Washington Post on June 23, 2001, reported that figure was actually $73 million.

The head of the subsidiary said he is certain Cheney knew about these sales.

Halliburton did more business with Saddam Hussein than any other US company.

Asked about this by journalists by ABC News in August 2000, Cheney lied and said "I had a firm policy that I wouldn't do anything in Iraq, even arrangements that were supposedly legal." [5]

The US media never followed up on this. ..................

.............A story of men so obsessed with Iran that they made numerous incredibly bad judgements, consistently, time and time again, over the course of eight years.

What can we learn from that history?

I want to add to that history some things we are seeing now.

We're seeing more of this now in the ways in which the Administration is lying to us to try to convince us to go to war.

Back to 1990: Before the Gulf War, President Bush claimed that satellite photos showed 250,000 Iraqi troops massing on Iraq's border with Saudi Arabia, with 1500 tanks. The Christian Science Monitor reported on 9/6/02 that was not true. [6]

As the journalist who broke this story pointed out: "That Iraqi buildup was the whole justification for Bush sending in troops and it just didn't exist."

Now to the present again. George W. Bush in early September 2002, as part of his argument for the need to immediately attack Iraq, claimed that the International Atomic Energy Agency had issued a report in 1998 saying Iraq was 6 months from having nuclear weapons. The IAEA denied this, saying they had never issued any such report. The Bush White House then said that they had mispoken, and that the report was actually issued in 1991. Again, the IAEA denied this. [7]

A second such example of deception are Bush's claims of links between Saddam and Al Qaeda.

French intelligence agencies have been investigating these possible links for years (after an Algerian group carried out bombings in Paris in 1995). Again, the Financial Times reported earlier this month that this French investigation has produced zero evidence of any such link, not a trace. [8]

Finally, I will cite a report in the Houston Chronicle earlier this month, which reported that:

"A growing number of military officers, intelligence professionals and diplomats in [Bush's] own government privately have deep misgivings about the administration's double-time march toward war.

These officials charge that administration hawks have exaggerated evidence of the threat that Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein poses... They charge that the administration squelches dissenting views and that intelligence analysts are under intense pressure to produce reports supporting the White House's argument that Saddam poses such an immediate threat to the US that pre-emptive military action is necessary.

'Analysts at the working level in the intelligence community are feeling very strong pressure from the Pentagon to cook the intelligence books,' said one official, speaking on condition of anonymity.

A dozen other officials echoed his views in interviews. No one who was interviewed disagreed. ... [9]

So the history is one of lies, deception, and incredibly bad judgement that continues to this day.

Over the course of the 1980s, two Republican administrations, and individuals who are once again running US foreign policy, supplied Saddam Hussein with the means to wage brutal warfare against his neighbors and his own citizens; supplied him with the means to make nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons, with the means to build missile technology. (All of these weapons, as well as the facilities, research and otherwise, were destroyed or dismantled before UNSCOM was pulled out of Iraq in 1998.)

Where was their concern about Saddam Hussein then? Why are Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney only now suddenly worried about Saddam Hussein, when as recently as a couple of years ago the company Cheney headed was doing deals with him?

Based on this history, there is absolutely no reason to take this administration's word on anything related to Iraq. .................

roachboy · 03-02-2006, 06:27 AM

Quote:

Gangs 'kill freely' in Iraq chaos
Hundreds of bodies showing signs of torture or execution arrive at the Baghdad mortuary each month, a senior UN official has told the BBC.

John Pace, until recently UN human rights chief in Iraq, told the BBC News website that up to 75% of the corpses showed signs of extrajudicial death.

Mr Pace blamed an "endemic" breakdown of security for increasing violence.

"Anyone with a gun who is reasonably well organised can do whatever they want with impunity," he said.

Armed groups often threatened mortuary staff, aiming to stop autopsies and suppress evidence, Mr Pace said.

Iraq has seen a jump in apparently sectarian violence since the bombing last week of a Shia Muslim shrine in the city of Samarra.

But Mr Pace played down suggestions that Iraq was heading towards civil war, blaming a political vacuum and the collapse of law and order - rather than a generalised Shia-Sunni split - for the escalating violence.

'Chaotic'

Mr Pace described the Baghdad mortuary as a "barometer" of the situation in the city at any one time.

"The numbers at the morgue are symptomatic and indicative of the breakdown and lack of any protection of individual," he said.

Between 780 and 1,110 corpses had been brought in every month over the past year, Mr Pace said.

Two-thirds to three-quarters bore signs of death by deliberate gunshot or signs of torture before death, he added, describing daily life as "chaotic".

He confirmed that the head of Baghdad's mortuary had left his position temporarily amid fears for his security.

Despite threats, most staff continued to perform autopsies, Mr Pace said.

Failures

Mr Pace's comments came as Sunni officials said that dozens of Sunni preachers had been killed in a wave of violence since the bombing of Samarra's al-Askari shrine.

Elsewhere, talks on the formation of a new national government were delayed.

Fears have grown among Iraqis that Shia death squads are operating with semi-official government approval.

While highly critical of Shia militias such as the Badr brigade, linked to Interior Minister Bayan Jabr, Mr Pace said that Iraq's real problems stemmed from a lack of political authority, a breakdown of law and order and a weak judicial system.

"There is no deliberate intention to suppress information [about executions and killings]," he said.

"More likely it is considered as something [the government] would rather not admit to."

source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4765854.stm

well, there's chaos.
at what point does this tip over into something else?

Quote:

Iraq government talks in disarray
Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari has cancelled a meeting with senior political leaders, apparently to protest against a campaign to oust him.

Kurdish and Sunni Arab leaders are unhappy with Mr Jaafari, and have said they will not join a national unity government with him at its head.

This is the latest crisis to hit attempts to form a new government.

Iraq is undergoing one of its worst periods of violence, with 18 people killed in attacks on Thursday.

At least 400 people have been killed since 22 February, when one of Iraq's holiest Shia shrines at Samarra was bombed.

A senior UN official has blamed an "endemic" breakdown of security for the increasing bloodshed.

John Pace, until recently UN human rights chief in Iraq, told the BBC News website that 75% of the hundreds of bodies that arrived at the Baghdad mortuary each month showed signs of torture or execution.

Last month, an investigation was launched into claims by the US military that an Iraqi interior ministry "death squad" has been targeting Sunni Arab Iraqis.

In other developments:

Gunmen fire on the car of one of the leaders of Iraq's main Sunni Arab alliance, Sheikh Adnan al-Dulaimi, killing a bodyguard

At least nine members of the Iraqi security forces die in an attack on a checkpoint near the northern city of Tikrit

A bomb blast inside a minibus kills at least five people and wounds eight in Baghdad's Shia district of Sadr City

At least four people are killed and 11 wounded when a bomb explodes at a vegetable market in Zafaraniya, south-east Baghdad

'Regrettable'

Iraqi political leaders are coming under concerted pressure from world leaders, who believe the failure to form a new government is partly responsible for fuelling the violence.

The Kurdish and the Sunni groups think that he is not appropriate, and they cannot form a cabinet with him as he is not neutral
Mahmoud Uthman

Mr Jaafari had called the meeting to discuss ways to resolve disagreements and to counter the recent upsurge in sectarian bloodshed.

But the meeting was cancelled without the government giving a reason.

A member of one of his coalition partners, the Kurdistan Alliance, criticised the decision.

"The cancellation of this meeting is a regrettable thing, because such meetings are essential under the current situation," Mahmoud Uthman said.

Mr Uthman suggested the meeting was cancelled because the leaders of the main Kurdish, Sunni Arab and secular parties had asked the Shia-led United Iraqi Alliance to withdraw Mr Jaafari's nomination for the premiership.

"The Kurdish and the Sunni groups think that he is not appropriate, and they cannot form a cabinet with him as he is not neutral," he said.

Criticism

Mr Jaafari has been widely criticised for poor performance in government.

He has also come under fire for appointing Shia politicians to the main ministries in his government, and for allegedly not intervening to stop the interior ministry from operating secret death squads targeting Sunni Arabs.

But last month the United Iraqi Alliance, which won 128 out of 275 seats in December's parliamentary elections, voted to nominate Mr Jaafari for the premiership.

He beat his nearest rival, Adel Abdel Mahdi of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, by just one vote, largely due to the support of radical Shia cleric Moqtada Sadr.

The Kurdistan Alliance made it clear they opposed the UIA's choice, but they did not stop talks on forming a coalition government.

Mr Jaafari has called for the formation of a national unity government encompassing all of Iraq's ethnic, religious and political groups.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_depth/4765456.stm

the breakdown of attempts to form a more viable government in iraq cannot be good.

at this point, the administration apparently feels the need to generate some good-sounding news--so off cowboy george goes to india to sign a nuclear technology deal with india that will not get through congress. off the front page goes anything about iraq. so apparently the "information strategy" geared toward winning the "hearts and minds" of the american public is to ignore iraq to the greatest possible extent.
that'll help.

aceventura3 · 03-02-2006, 09:14 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by willravel

Revenge is never justifiable. We are to blame in at least some way for Saddam, and thus we should be heald responsible...

Consequences are justifiable, if we are to held responsible what should the consequences be in your mind?

I think going down this path is wrong and for us to feed this way of thinking adds confusion to what are very simple matters. Either Sadaam is responsible for his acts or he is not.

Willravel · 03-02-2006, 09:16 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by aceventura3

Consequences are justifiable, if we are to held responsible what should the consequences be in your mind?

I think going down this path is wrong and for us to feed this way of thinking adds confusion to what are very simple matters. Either Sadaam is responsible for his acts or he is not.

Saddam is responsible for his actions, and we are responsible for arming him and partially responsible for putting him into power. There's enough responsibility to go around.

roachboy · 03-02-2006, 09:20 AM

i'll repost because it seems germaine:

Quote:

just checking: is there some kind of linkage being made between the evaluation of the situation and iraq--specifically on the question of how to interpret the events of the past week or so, since the bombing of the golden mosque--and one's position on the war in general?

how does this work exactly?

it would seem to me that going down this route would make all judgements about iraq non-falsifiable because there is no need for any information to be involved.
all the work is done a priori.
what would be the point of that?

Charlatan · 03-02-2006, 09:23 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by aceventura3

Consequences are justifiable, if we are to held responsible what should the consequences be in your mind?

I'd be interested in hearing an answer to that question. What would the consquences be?

martinguerre · 03-02-2006, 09:31 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Charlatan

I'd be interested in hearing an answer to that question. What would the consquences be?

What consequences will we accept?

That's the real question. If we angered the rest of the world, and they decided to use the UN against us...we would use our security council veto, and overrule their attempt to impose consequence.

Nor would we accept a outright invasion...we'd fight it off.

But since we are unwilling to create a security enviroment that prevents assymetric attack...

That seems to be the consequence we're going to be facing. This isn't normative...it's just descriptive. I don't know that it's better to take other kinds of consequences, while at the same time, there is nothing positive about being subject to terror attacks. Yet, the changes necessary to prevent all such attacks are draconian and pyhrric.

We impose consquences through the means we have available....hegemony of the West, cultural and fiscal power, military technology.

They impose consequences with the powers they have...nationalist and religious rhetorics, civil uprising and the "arab street," resistance to your cultural forms, and in cases...assymetric attack.

What the consequences should be? I don't know that we can ask that question. What are the consequences either party has the power to inflict or prevent?

cyrnel · 03-02-2006, 09:36 AM

I've always thought our responsibility for introducing, arming, assisting, propping of a despot should include doing what we can to remove them and introduce stability. If we want to go back and correct actions that lead to the initial problem, sure, it deserves thought and action, again, to our ability. Neither should preclude the other. Should they?

aceventura3 · 03-02-2006, 10:05 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by host

The volumes of evidence that you choose to overlook, in order to preserve your opinion, and the fact that your argument is in conflict with Bush's own definition of who is complicit, are indications that the U.S., under the leadership of GW Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld, was hardly the moral arbiter of who should be "targeted" and pre-empted.

You read too much into the basis of my opinion. We obviously approach the evalution of complicated issues differently. My principles are the basis for my views. I do tend to ignore or discount information that is inconsistent with my principles (I am not suggesting my principles are better or worse than anyone elses, mine are mine and yours are yours). So before I can understand you or for you to understand me we have to understand each others guiding principles. That is why I ask general questions about responsibility, justice, consequences, etc.

On your other points in this quote. My position is mine, I don't always agree with Bush.

I am not concerned about the morality in pre-empted acts. I think power determines who the arbiter is, and pre-emptive acts and targets are determined by those with power or those seeking power. The fight for power is never ending. If one has power it will be lost unless defended. And if one has power one has to send a message (pre-emptive occationally) to those who want to take it.

Quote:

... what looks to me like illegal war of aggression, refute the reports that back my opinion...or stop your flawed defense of war criminals and their crimes.....

To understand my point of view you have to understand that those who hold power determine what is legal or illegal. Legality is a relative term. So based on my view in general terms it is not possible for the US to conduct an illegal war of aggression. You are correct, your facts won't change my mind. We are currently the world's leader, and we define what is legal or not. When people like Sadaam lead the world they will determine what is legal. In the meantime, anytime we respond militarily in my view I justify it as defending our power, defending our children's right to power in the future.
If you don't think you/we are in a constant fight for power, I don't know how to converse with you.

Quote:

aceventura3, tell me why the U.S. was not responsible for "harboring or supporting terrorism", when it continued to supply Saddam with materials and military advice that could be used against Iraq's neighbors and the rest of the world, even after "he gassed his own people", using chemical and bilogical agents banned by international treaty (The U.S. even sold Saddam the crop dusting Bell helicopters and provided the training related to disperse the gas that was used on the Kurds)...and went right on signifigantly supporting and advising him until at least the day he invaded Kuwait. The excuse that he was supported because he countered our enemy, Iran, seems to wither when Reagan began secretly supplying Iran with anit-tank missles and militarily useful replacement parts, knowing that it would strengthen Iran's resistance to Saddam countering it's (Iran's) military power......

On a general level we lead the world and we have to take responsibility of what happens on this planet. On a specific level each individual has to take responsibility for thier own actions. In my view we can be guilty of supporting Sadaam, but not be responsible for his actions.

On a general level, I think we spend to much energy trying to make everyone happy. So you get a guy like Sadaam who says if you help me do "a", I will be nice and I will help you do "b". Then by helping him do "a" you have also helped him do "c" which was counter to "b". We should have just said you help with "b", period.

Quote:

WTF....aceventura3...where can you possibly come up with a legitimate justification for the U.S. to avoid being determined to be a rogue nation,

If you think the US is a "rogue" nation, I would think you would be activly working to overthrow the government, or at least get the President and Congress out of office. Congress voted for the use of force, they are complicit as are many other countries. Also, didn't the UN authorize the use of force? Given all that perhaps a better question is: what is your definition of rogue nation?

aceventura3 · 03-02-2006, 10:14 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Charlatan

I'd be interested in hearing an answer to that question. What would the consquences be?

The consequences are the price we are paying today, the war in Iraq.

So for anyone who thinks we hold responsibility for Sadaam they then need to support the action to remove him. Or, their view is inconsistent. There has to be a consequence, Sadaam did evil things, we have a responsibility to fix it. We fixed it, and they are still not happy.

How do they reconcile this paradox?

roachboy · 03-02-2006, 10:49 AM

again, what does one's opinion of saddam hussein's regime have to do with the question of whether iraq is at this point slipping into civil war?
one of the folk who is pursuing this line of thinking in this thread MUST have some answer to this question.
it is not that hard.

cyrnel · 03-02-2006, 11:18 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by roachboy

again, what does one's opinion of saddam hussein's regime have to do with the question of whether iraq is at this point slipping into civil war?
one of the folk who is pursuing this line of thinking in this thread MUST have some answer to this question.
it is not that hard.

You'd have to start well before the last page of posts to find an answer, or the question.

Quote:

Originally Posted by martinguerre

How much money did we give him? How much poison gas did we hand over to a penny ante dictator?

The prohibition on re-writing history doesn't stop at 1991.

Sorry to pick on you Martin. That's the top of my buffer but I believe it was right there or just before when things went slightly astray.

host · 03-02-2006, 12:15 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by aceventura3

You read too much into the basis of my opinion. We obviously approach the evalution of complicated issues differently. My principles are the basis for my views. I do tend to ignore or discount information that is inconsistent with my principles (I am not suggesting my principles are better or worse than anyone elses, mine are mine and yours are yours). So before I can understand you or for you to understand me we have to understand each others guiding principles. That is why I ask general questions about responsibility, justice, consequences, etc......

.....To understand my point of view you have to understand that those who hold power determine what is legal or illegal. Legality is a relative term. So based on my view in general terms it is not possible for the US to conduct an illegal war of aggression. You are correct, your facts won't change my mind. We are currently the world's leader, and we define what is legal or not. When people like Sadaam lead the world they will determine what is legal. In the meantime, anytime we respond militarily in my view I justify it as defending our power, defending our children's right to power in the future.....

....If you don't think you/we are in a constant fight for power, I don't know how to converse with you..

Last I looked, "we" had defined what was "legal" and what was not.....

Quote:

http://www.roberthjackson.org/Man/theman2-6-12/
....President Truman approved the Jackson report, and Jackson entered into negotiations with European officials and devised the London Charter of August 8, 1945, which established the doctrinal underpinnings of Nuremberg, introducing the procedure and substance that was to govern the trials of the Nazi leaders.

Jackson drafted the original charges against the Nazis, outlining three categories of crimes for which the defeated Germans would be called to account. The first category included in the draft was the crime of aggressive war (Crimes Against Peace). Jackson considered this to be the most heinous international crime. He set as a priority that German aggression would be subject to prosecution, and he intended that the crime of aggression’s ambit be as broad as possible.

In Jackson's own words...at the Nuremberg trials:

Quote:

http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/imt/jack02.htm
Statement by Justice Jackson on War Trials Agreement; August 12, 1945

........We must make clear to the Germans that the wrong for which their fallen leaders are on trial is not that they lost the war, but that they started it. And we must not allow ourselves to be drawn into a trial of the causes of the war, for our position is that no grievances or policies will justify resort to aggressive war. It is utterly renounced and condemned as an instrument of policy.

I therefore want to make clear to the American people that we have taken an important step forward in this instrument in fixing individual responsibility of war-mongering, among whatever peoples, as an international crime.....

I guess that I didn't get the memo that revised the basis of the principle crime that "we" defined to legitimize the prosecution of the Nazi "aggressors".

Bush's "policies" have reduced the international reputation of the U.S. to that of a pariah, a "laughing stock", and the spectacle of being the sole Superpower that has lost it's ability to inspire or to lead. Your advocacy for policies that no long seperate "us" from "them" (the evil doers), seems to isolate "us" from our former allies, and encourage or reduce us to more war of aggression. In reducing "us", Bush has reduced himself, and the minimum standard of conduct for engaging with each other individually and in realtions among sovereign entities. What are we fighting to uphold? With the criteria of the new "ground rules" that Bushco launched, and you embrace, why even bother fighting, if there is nothing to "uphold"? How can there be any legitimacy for trying Milosevic or former general <a href="http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,2144,1921493,00.html">Ratko Mladic</a> for war crimes?
Weren't they simply making their own rules because they were more powerful than their former Muslim countrymen?

aceventura3 · 03-02-2006, 02:12 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by host

Last I looked, "we" had defined what was "legal" and what was not.....

Ain't that what I said. And...we can do it again...again...and again. I think you missed my point and I don't no how to make it any clearer.

Quote:

Bush's "policies" have reduced the international reputation of the U.S. to that of a pariah, a "laughing stock", and the spectacle of being the sole Superpower that has lost it's ability to inspire or to lead.

Why do I care who laughs? The rest of the world simply needs to follow the rules that we establish.

Quote:

Your advocacy for policies that no long seperate "us" from "them" (the evil doers), seems to isolate "us" from our former allies, and encourage or reduce us to more war of aggression.

When was the last time we were at peace? I say never. Given a constant state of "war" declared or not, there has not been "more aggression".

Quote:

What are we fighting to uphold?

Since Cane and Able there has been a constant fight for power. Without trying to be fancy with words we fight to maintain power in the world.

Quote:

Weren't they simply making their own rules because they were more powerful than their former Muslim countrymen?

Yes. And they declared war on the US because they want power. They want the power to control all women, power to control your religion, power to control your speach, power to controlyour life, etc. Don't you see that?

roachboy · 03-02-2006, 02:39 PM

cyrnel: i found the point when the slippage started in the thread---thanks.

===============

i asked about the relation between the justifications for the war at all (which i found totally unconvincing, which i still find totally unconvincing) and the question of whether the present situation is heading toward a civil war because i found the correlation little more than an attempt--backhanded or not (and i think it is, reading back through ace's various posts) to evacuate the question of what is happening and reduce all interpretation to a question of your a priori position on the war as a whole.

i think that you can see something of this in the logic of ace's posts: a wholesale avoidance of particular analysis--not to mention critique--of the specific actions of this administration---instead you get a superficial assessment that tracks the movement of ace's personal attitude toward the war as a whole--moving from support (grounded in arguments that for me have no currency) to advocating withdrawal--an advocacy couched in terms of a series of vague statements about the iraqis "stepping up" or some such emeril-like vagueness (at least when emeril says something like this, you can see what they actually men: he is throwing in more garlic).

i see the possibility of civil war in iraq as catastrophic.
it is a clear index of the wholesale incompetence of this administration--the situation i think plausible has already been outlined above---the conclusion to be drawn from it seems to me unavoidable--this invasion, illegitimate from the outset no matter what your feelings about saddam hussein might be (this has been done enough here--i am not entering any further into it) was undertaken with no coherent long-term plan. it appears to have been undertaken without any particular understanding of iraq either--the admission in the post article i cited on the first page of this thread that american commanders are only now figuring out that they are "operating in a context" seems to me almost unbelievable---it is---and i am not joking about this---one of the stupidest statements that i have ever read, from anyone.

thanks to the post-thatecherite practice of reactionary governments trying to head off dissent triggered by illegitimate, illegal military adventures by choking off as much coherent information about what is actually happening as possible (part of the right's conception of a coherent campaign for "hearts and minds"--which, judging from this, amounts to lie early and often)---it is difficult to work out the process whereby the americans found themselves played by all sides. a general outline is evident enough, however: various iraqi groups seem to have used the imperial arrogance of the military to their advantage to trigger a process that now finds the americans reduced to one faction amongst a number, with no meaningful claim to have stabilized anything militarily.
the americans were so committed to the superficial aspects of pseudo-democratization that they were willing to push forward elections that the sunni community in iraq was boycotting and so to create a provisional (puppet) government that had and has no hope of being able to make credible claims that it represents anything like a consensus or national interest that supercedes those of particular groups.

tracking a parallel sorry trajectory, the question of the size and readiness of the american proxy "iraqi security force" ended up sounding like some bizarre rerun of the story of the arvn in south vietnam....it quickly went from numerous and powerful and forward looking to small and ill-trained and incapable of coherent action.

so i can see why supporters of this administration would have every interest in trying to generate a style of argument that would make it difficult to look at the situation that actually seems to obtain on the ground and replace it with a priori style claims--if you see this situation as potentially the start of a civil war, it must be because you opposed the war. if you supported the war, then it is simply time for the iraqis to "step up" or whatever--at no point in this kind of argument would there be any trace of assessment of the seemingly overwhelming ineptness of this administration.

again, i do think that this was introduced into the thread in a backhanded manner across the series of ace's posts--i doubt that he meant it--but nonetheless it appears to be functioning here. it would be nice to see it stop.

martinguerre · 03-02-2006, 04:17 PM

roach, cyrenel

The reason why i went with that line of reasoning is to explore if Iraq is a concept that is durable enough to have currency to withstand internal strife.

My conclusion is that because of on-going western interferance and indeed, creation of the Iraqi state and nationality...it won't.

The rest, yes, is thread jack, but part of this debate was if America had the moral highground to be performing intervention in the first place, or if it was in the long line of outsider interlopers who impose unworkable "solutions" on to the "problem" of Shite, Sunni and Kurdish idenity.

aceventura3 · 03-02-2006, 05:37 PM

This was my first response to the question in this thread. It is a legit response and I stand by it.

Quote:

Originally Posted by aceventura3

I guess it depend on how you define civil war. If you use the traditional definition - two sides having a government, territory and an army, the answer is no. But there is clearly a fight for power between groups in the country.

I supported our preemtive strike against Iraq and removing Sadaam from power. I am now at the point of believing it is time to bring our troops home. Iraqis need to get their own house in order, they need to take a more active role in defining their future. They need to decide what they are willing to fight for - good people need to take a stand against those who promote death, destruction and terrorism. I am concerned that they will forever rely on our military if they know it is available and that they will alway have an excuse by blaming America for death and destruction of Iraqi against Iraqi - Muslim against Muslim.

I am accused of ignoring facts or not presenting facts. I have never disputed any facts presented here, and I thought we all knew the facts that lead us to our preemptive strike against Iraq. I do take issue on the materiality of some of those facts, and how those facts should affect the future. If it is out of place to discuss the materiality of facts and the affects. I am cool with that, I can debate that stuff elsewhere.

On another note - occasionally a discussion will drift, because of a need for fundemental understanding of specific points that relate to a more general question. If we are responsible for the acts of Sadaam, then we have a greater obligation to Iraq and the prevention of civil war than if we are not responsible for his actions. To me that is very material to the question in this thread.

roachboy · 03-02-2006, 05:44 PM

martin: but that---the status of this nation-state thing we call iraq, its history and viability--is/are an entirely different question(s) that are probably at the heart of this devolution of the past week.
that the americans find themselves--particularly in the fine company of the british--seen as yet another colonial power is also important.

neither of these questions really goes to the line that ace was pursuing (though i can see how they would fit into it...)

post away, sir. i do not have the sense that i am doing much more that trying to piece things together. i doubt anyone else does either. the more the merrier.

by the way, there is this article:
http://www.newsday.com/news/nationwo...orld-headlines

on the state of the iraqi securty forces

this to a curious hour long npr program on the question of civil war:
http://c.moreover.com/click/here.pl?...9900&w=2218086

and this about the political fight that is going on concerning the "provisional government" and its composition:

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

Aladdin Sane · 03-05-2006, 10:40 AM

Here's an eyewitness account of the Iraqi Civil War.

DUDE, WHERE'S MY CIVIL WAR?

March 5, 2006 -- BAGHDAD

I'M trying. I've been trying all week. The other day, I drove another 30 miles or so on the streets and alleys of Baghdad. I'm looking for the civil war that The New York Times declared. And I just can't find it.

Maybe actually being on the ground in Iraq prevents me from seeing it. Perhaps the view's clearer from Manhattan. It could be that my background as an intelligence officer didn't give me the right skills.

And riding around with the U.S. Army, looking at things first-hand, is certainly a technique to which The New York Times wouldn't stoop in such an hour of crisis.

Let me tell you what I saw anyway. Rolling with the "instant Infantry" gunners of the 1st Platoon of Bravo Battery, 4-320 Field Artillery, I saw children and teenagers in a Shia slum jumping up and down and cheering our troops as they drove by. Cheering our troops.

All day - and it was a long day - we drove through Shia and Sunni neighborhoods. Everywhere, the reception was warm. No violence. None.

And no hostility toward our troops. Iraqis went out of their way to tell us we were welcome.

Instead of a civil war, something very different happened because of the bombing of the Golden Mosque in Samarra. The fanatic attempt to stir up Sunni-vs.-Shia strife, and the subsequent spate of violent attacks, caused popular support for the U.S. presence to spike upward.

Think Abu Musab al-Zarqawi intended that?

In place of the civil war that elements in our media declared, I saw full streets, open shops, traffic jams, donkey carts, Muslim holiday flags - and children everywhere, waving as our Humvees passed. Even the clouds of dust we stirred up didn't deter them. And the presence of children in the streets is the best possible indicator of a low threat level.

Southeast Baghdad, at least, was happy to see our troops.

And we didn't just drive past them. First Lt. Clenn Frost, the platoon leader, took every opportunity to dismount and mingle with the people. Women brought their children out of their compound gates to say hello. A local sheik spontaneously invited us into his garden for colas and sesame biscuits.

It wasn't the Age of Aquarius. The people had serious concerns. And security was No. 1. They wanted the Americans to crack down harder on the foreign terrorists and to disarm the local militias. Iraqis don't like and don't support the militias, Shia or Sunni, which are nothing more than armed gangs.

Help's on the way, if slowly. The Iraqi Army has confounded its Western critics, performing extremely well last week. And the people trust their new army to an encouraging degree. The Iraqi police aren't all the way there yet, and the population doesn't yet have much confidence in them. But all of this takes time.

And even the police are making progress. We took a team of them with us so they could train beside our troops. We visited a Public Order Battalion - a gendarmerie outfit - that reeked of sloth and carelessness. But the regular Iraqi Police outfit down the road proved surprisingly enthusiastic and professional. It's just an uneven, difficult, frustrating process.

So what did I learn from a day in the dust and muck of Baghdad's less-desirable boroughs? As the long winter twilight faded into haze and the fires of the busy shawarma stands blazed in the fresh night, I felt that Iraq was headed, however awkwardly, in the right direction.

The country may still see a civil war one day. But not just yet, thanks. Violence continues. A roadside bomb was found in the next sector to the west. There will be more deaths, including some of our own troops. But Baghdad's vibrant life has not been killed. And the people of Iraq just might surprise us all.

So why were we told that Iraq was irreversibly in the throes of civil war when it wasn't remotely true? I think the answers are straightforward. First, of course, some parties in the West are anxious to believe the worst about Iraq. They've staked their reputations on Iraq's failure.

But there's no way we can let irresponsible journalists off the hook - or their parent organizations. Many journalists are, indeed, brave and conscientious; yet some in Baghdad - working for "prestigious" publications - aren't out on the city streets the way they pretend to be.

They're safe in their enclaves, protected by hired guns, complaining that it's too dangerous out on the streets. They're only in Baghdad for the byline, and they might as well let their Iraqi employees phone it in to the States. Whenever you see a column filed from Baghdad by a semi-celeb journalist with a "contribution" by a local Iraqi, it means this: The Iraqi went out and got the story, while the journalist stayed in his or her room.

And the Iraqi stringers have cracked the code: The Americans don't pay for good news. So they exaggerate the bad.

And some of them have agendas of their own.

A few days ago, a wild claim that the Baghdad morgue held 1,300 bodies was treated as Gospel truth. Yet Iraqis exaggerate madly and often have partisan interests. Did any Western reporter go to that morgue and count the bodies - a rough count would have done it - before telling the world the news?

I doubt it.

If reporters really care, it's easy to get out on the streets of Baghdad. The 506th Infantry Regiment - and other great military units - will take journalists on their patrols virtually anywhere in the city. Our troops are great to work with. (Of course, there's the danger of becoming infected with patriot- ism . . .)

I'm just afraid that some of our journalists don't want to know the truth anymore.

For me, though, memories of Baghdad will be the cannoneers of the 1st Platoon walking the dusty, reeking alleys of Baghdad. I'll recall 1st Lt. Frost conducting diplomacy with the locals and leading his men through a date-palm grove in a search for insurgent mortar sites.

I'll remember that lieutenant investigating the murder of a Sunni mullah during last week's disturbances, cracking down on black-marketers, checking up on sewer construction, reassuring citizens - and generally doing the job of a lieutenant-colonel in peacetime.

Oh, and I'll remember those "radical Shias" cheering our patrol as we passed by.

Ralph Peters is reporting from Forward Operating Base Loyalty, where he's been riding with the 506th Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division.

nezmot · 03-05-2006, 11:00 AM

Oh, well that's all right then.

host · 03-05-2006, 11:38 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Aladdin Sane

Here's an eyewitness account of the Iraqi Civil War.

Aladdin Sane, you posted, with just 9 words of your own (To my mind) misleading commentary, an "op-ed" piece by an openly partisan, former U.S. Military officer, turned columnist author:
Some of Ralph Peter's other "op-ed" commentary:

Quote:

http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles...e.asp?ID=14321
The Left’s Crimes of Silence
By Ralph Peters
FrontPageMagazine.com | July 21, 2004

......The silence of the Left in the face of uncomfortable truths is a hallowed tradition, of course, dating back to the earliest crimes of the Soviet Union. When the reality confronting the Left contradicts the theory, the theory must be preserved at any cost.........

The link (that you left out of your post), to the place where Ralph Peter's "column" can be found:
http://www.nypost.com/postopinion/op...ists/64677.htm
The above is a link to a "property", as FoxNews also is....of Ruppert Murdoch's "News Corp.". Ralph Peter's op-ed colum title is a "hook" to draw in the folks who disagree viscerally with Michael Moore, author of "Dude, Where's My Country"? Peter's title is hardly a legitimate beginning for a bona fide "eyewitness news report" from a correspondent reporting on war events....

I'll associate signs that I see that you were motivated to post an "op-ed" to back your opinion that there no trending to "civil war" in Iraq (A March 2nd, <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,186634,00.html">Foxnews Poll</a> reports that 81 percent of Americans polled, disagree with you and with Ralph Peters.) with what I observe as a conclusion that you share with the author of the quotes in the following box....that the MSM press reports are biased against accurate reporting about the integrity and accomplishments of Mr. Bush, and the actual "progress", and purity of motives for invasion and conduct of the U.S. authored, Iraq war. On other TFP Politics threads, my posts this week have been countered by folks who seem to share your lack of faith in traditional press news reporting....
here http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showthr...72#post2019672 and here http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showpos...5&postcount=67
..and they counter my points by posting "op-ed" pieces! Are there no prominent news reporters who camouflage their partisan bias better than Ralph Peters, who you can cite to make your argument?

Quote:

http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showthr...44#post1942044
.......99% of the sources everyone provides here are op-eds, and these days that means they are strongly partisan. Truthout.org, The New Republic, dailychaos.com are nothing more than mouthpieces for the Left - these organizations have no interest in espousing moderate, rational views. I have found very few sites that take a reasonable, moderate viewpoint, yet they do exist. In the case of this particular thread, one simply needed to cite the official Senate voting records to answer politicophile's question, not Liberal op-eds of those voting records.....

Believe it or not, the MSM is capable of filing news reports that omit details that would cast Mr. Bush and his regime in an unflattering light...3 examples of this can be viewed here:
http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showpos...8&postcount=64

The NY Post's sister News Corp. "property" displays the report below at the link displayed. The editors title the AP article with their own "new speak" label, because the term "Civil War" must be too naughty.

The article is a "news report"....and it describes Baghdad as a crodoned off kinda "fish bowl", with 58 new deaths from "sectarian violence in the 24 hours before a new emergency "curfew" was imposed on the metro area of 7 million.
Here is a quote from Ralph Peters:

Quote:

In place of the civil war that elements in our media declared, I saw full streets, open shops, traffic jams, donkey carts, Muslim holiday flags - and children everywhere, waving as our Humvees passed. Even the clouds of dust we stirred up didn't deter them. And the presence of children in the streets is the best possible indicator of a low threat level.

Compared to the AP reporting of the reasons that children were in the street;
a daytime curfew because of tense conditions and a climate of violence and murder, Ralph Peters fairytale would be an amusing read, if it wasn't so disturbingly intended to mislead......

Quote:

http://www.foxnews.com/printer_frien...186695,00.html
Forces Seal off Baghdad to Blunt Sectarian Violence

Friday, March 03, 2006

BAGHDAD, Iraq — Children played soccer on usually busy streets and families strolled to mosques for Friday prayers under the watchful eye of Iraqi security forces as a ban on private trucks and cars brought rare calm to the country's troubled capital.

The lull followed a night of violence during which gunmen stormed a power station and killed Shiite brick factory workers while they slept in separate attacks that killed at least 19 people in Baghdad's southeastern suburbs. The attacks raised the toll from Thursday's violence to 58.

The military also said U.S. forces detained 61 suspected insurgents in a series of raids northeast of Fallujah earlier this week.

Among those apprehended Monday were people believed to be funding and providing logistical support to suicide bombers and foreign fighters for Al Qaeda in Iraq, according to a U.S. military statement. A large amount of weapons and ammunition was also recovered and destroyed, it said.

The government imposed the 6 a.m.-4 p.m. vehicle ban Friday in a bid to avert large-scale attacks on the day Muslims congregate for the most important prayer service of the week.

Armed police and soldiers in bulletproof vests manned checkpoints as they sealed off the city of 7 million, preventing most cars and motorcycles from leaving their neighborhoods.

Militiamen loyal to radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr also were out in force in the teeming Shiite slum known as Sadr City, helping police check cars and patrol the area.

The collaboration was likely to raise alarm among Sunni Arabs, who accuse followers of the firebrand cleric of numerous attacks against them in recent days. U.S. officials have also been pressing for the disbanding of private militias.

Shiite and Sunni leaders used their sermons to appeal for calm after the Feb. 22 bombing of a golden-domed Shiite shrine in the mostly Sunni city of Samarra unleashed a wave of reprisal attacks against Sunni mosques and other sectarian violence that killed about 500 people nationwide.

"There is no difference between Sunni and Shiite," Sheik Hadi al-Shawki told Shiite worshippers in Amarah, about 180 miles southeast of Baghdad. "We have to unite and not let the terrorists divide us."

The escalating violence has threatened to complicate the U.S. administration's goal of withdrawing more troops this year.

But the top U.S. military commander in Iraq played down suggestions the country is headed for civil war, saying the crisis appears to have passed after days of bloodshed between religious sects. But he conceded that a major new terrorist attack would threaten stability anew.

"I think it's safe to say that a major attack, particularly on a religious site, would have a significant impact on the situation here coming in the next couple of days," Gen. George Casey said in a briefing from Baghdad with reporters at the Pentagon.

In Samarra, 60 miles north of Baghdad, thousands of Sunnis gathered in the Grand Mosque, spilling out into the streets and courtyard around the devastated Askariya shrine. Cleric Ahmed Hassan al-Taha accused U.S. forces and their allies of stoking the tension between the country's majority Shiites and minority Sunnis in Iraq.

"Iraqis were living in harmony until the occupiers and those who came with them arrived in this country. They are responsible for igniting sectarianism," al-Taha said in his sermon.

Hundreds took to the streets after services in the southern Shiite stronghold of Basra and marched to the Iraqi South Oil Co., threatening to disrupt exports unless the government provides better protection and greater support to local authorities and private militias.

The capital was largely quiet Friday after overnight violence that began as a series of mortar shells slammed into the Nahrawan power station, police Lt. Bilal Ali Majed said. Half an hour later, dozens of gunmen arrived and set fire to the generating facility. Security guards returned fire, and the Iraqi police and army sent in reinforcements, he said.

At least nine people were killed and three injured in the gunbattle, police Lt. Mohammed Kheyoun said. He identified the victims as guards and technicians at the facility but did not know if any attackers were killed or wounded.

In the adjacent Maamil suburb, gunmen killed 10 Shiite southerners employed at a brick factory as they slept in their shacks, said Maj. Falah al-Mohammedawi, an Interior Ministry official. Police believed the gunmen may have been part of the same group that attacked the power station, he said.

A mortar shell slammed into a market Friday in Mahmoudiya, south of Baghdad, killing one person and wounding another, police Capt. Rasheed al-Samaraie said. Police also found two more handcuffed, blindfolded, bullet-riddled bodies in Iskandariyah, Capt. Muthana Khalid said.

An extraordinary daytime curfew and vehicle restrictions last weekend helped curb the worst of the sectarian killing, but attacks continued this week.

Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari warned preachers not to incite hatred or violence in their sermons, threatening them with "severe measures."

"Our hope is that Friday sermons be sermons of unity," al-Jaafari said in a statement late Thursday. "The street is angry and they should know how to calm the people and reassure them that the government will do all it can to pass through this period."

Downtown Baghdad was largely deserted. Most shops and gas stations were closed, though small neighborhood groceries stayed open. Dozens of young boys turned parts of Baghdad's usually busy Saadoun Street into improvised soccer fields, looking clearly unhappy when the odd car disrupted their games.

The recent surge of violence has complicated negotiations for a new, broad-based government after December parliamentary elections. U.S. officials consider an inclusive government essential if they are to start withdrawing troops before the end of the year.

Sunni Arabs walked out of the talks last week, accusing the Shiite-led government and security forces of standing by as Sunni mosques were attacked. On Thursday, the main Sunni bloc joined Kurdish and secular parties in demanding that the dominant Shiite alliance withdraw its nomination of al-Jaafari for another term as prime minister, threatening the country with new political turmoil.

Al-Jaafari won the nomination by a single vote during an election Feb. 12 among Shiite lawmakers who won seats in the Dec. 15 parliamentary election. He defeated Vice President Adil Abdul-Mahdi in large part because of al-Sadr's support.

Now....with all the "op-eds" thrown at us by folks who object to seeing them, but who post them anyway....here's one that offered a question that impressed me....

Quote:

http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/Con...l=968350060724
Only Iraqis can answer the Big Question
Thomas L. Friedman says Americans willing to stay the course despite Bush team's failures — but not if it means baby-sitting a civil war
Mar. 5, 2006. 12:00 AM

Since the start of the Iraq war, it's been clear that "victory" rested on the answer to one Big Question: Was Iraq the way Iraq was because Saddam was the way Saddam was, or was Saddam the way Saddam was because Iraq was the way Iraq was — a country congenitally divided among Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds that can be held together only by an iron fist?............

roachboy · 03-07-2006, 10:33 AM

this is an interesting press clip concerning the problems that are posed for the bushpeople by the term "civil war"--and provides a good cross-section of folk who dismiss bush's strategy of denial as either effective or rational.

Quote:

A Civil Question

By Dan Froomkin
Special to washingtonpost.com
Tuesday, March 7, 2006; 12:15 PM

President Bush won't talk about the prospect of civil war in Iraq and what it would mean to the U.S. troop presence. But it's becoming increasingly clear that he needs to.

Prompted by a new Washington Post/ABC News poll showing that an overwhelming majority of Americans believe that fighting between Sunni and Shiite Muslims in Iraq will lead to civil war, I wrote in yesterday's column about how Bush waved off any talk of civil war in his interview last week with ABC News's Elizabeth Vargas .

But it seems like everyone else is talking about it but him -- even his top envoy to Iraq.

Borzou Daragahi writes in the Los Angeles Times: "In remarks that were among the frankest and bleakest public assessments of the Iraq situation by a high-level American official, U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad said the 'potential is there' for sectarian violence to become full-blown civil war.

" 'We have opened the Pandora's box and the question is, what is the way forward?' Khalilzad said. 'The way forward, in my view, is an effort to build bridges across [Iraq's] communities.' . . .

"Khalilzad said the U.S. has little choice but to maintain a strong presence in Iraq -- or risk a regional conflict in which Arabs side with Sunnis and Iranians back Shiites, in what could be a more encompassing version of the 1980s Iran-Iraq war, which left more than 1 million dead.

"The ambassador warned of a calamitous disruption in the production and transport of energy supplies in the Persian Gulf. He described a worst-case scenario in which religious extremists could take over sections of Iraq and begin to expand outward.

" 'That would make Taliban Afghanistan look like child's play.' "

Mariam Karouny writes for Reuters: "After two weeks teetering toward sectarian civil war, Iraq is seeing something of a lull.

"Yet behind upbeat rhetoric that the crisis is over and a national unity coalition is in the works, Iraqi leaders are talking ever more gloomily in private about the country breaking apart. . . .

"A senior Shi'ite politician close to the interim government said talk of an impending civil war was misplaced. 'It depends what you mean by civil war,' he said. 'But as far as I can see we are already in an undeclared civil war.' "

Indeed, the idea that Iraq is already in a state of civil war is taking on more and more credence.

Jake Tapper reported for ABC News on Sunday: "As Pentagon generals offered optimistic assessments that the sectarian violence in Iraq had dissipated this weekend, other military experts told ABC News that Sunni and Shiite groups in Iraq already are engaged in a civil war, and that the Iraqi government and U.S. military had better accept that fact and adapt accordingly.

" 'We're in a civil war now; it's just that not everybody's joined in,' said retired Army Maj. Gen. William L. Nash, a former military commander in Bosnia-Herzegovina. 'The failure to understand that the civil war is already taking place, just not necessarily at the maximum level, means that our counter measures are inadequate and therefore dangerous to our long-term interest.' . . .

"Anthony Cordesman, the Arleigh A. Burke chair in strategy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told ABC News, 'If you talk to U.S. intelligence officers and military people privately, they'd say we've been involved in low level civil war with very slowly increasing intensity since the transfer of power in June 2004.' "

Larry Diamond , the Stanford University scholar who briefly advised U.S. authorities in Iraq, writes in the New Republic: "Iraq is in the midst of a civil war. Indeed, by one common social science definition -- at least 1,000 dead (with at least 100 on each side) from internal hostilities in which one side tries violently to change the state or its policies -- Iraq's civil war began in the first year of the 'postwar' era and has been particularly bloody."

Paul Starobin wrote in a National Journal cover story in December: "An active, if not full-boil, civil war is already a reality. The principal combatants are drawn from the Sunni Arab and Shiite Arab communities, which together comprise about three-quarters of the Iraqi population of 26 million. In this picture, U.S.-led coalition forces tend to be viewed by 'rejectionist' Sunni Arabs as protectors of the Shiites, who dominate the new, U.S.-backed, Iraqi government and who operate militias with close ties to the new Iraqi regime."

And General William E. Odom , former director of the National Security Agency, wrote for NiemanWatchdog.org back in August: "Iraqis are already fighting Iraqis. Insurgents have killed far more Iraqis than Americans. That's civil war. We created the civil war when we invaded; we can't prevent a civil war by staying."

So what to do?

Thomas Beaumont writes in the Des Moines Register: "Sen. Tom Harkin said in Iowa Friday that Iraq has deteriorated into 'civil war,' declaring it no longer manageable by U.S. forces. . . .

"The senator, an opponent of the war, said the only solution to the surge of sectarian violence is to begin withdrawing U.S. forces."

By contrast, Diamond writes: "This is not a time for the United States to throw in the towel in Iraq. The consequences of all-out civil war -- which would now surely follow a precipitous U.S. withdrawal -- would be too disastrous for everyone except the extremists."

Damned if you do, damned if you don't -- that's not an enviable state of affairs for a commander in chief. Is Bush reassessing his plan? Does he have a contingency plan? Hasn't he learned the hard way that it's worth preparing for the worst?

source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...041100879.html

stevo · 03-07-2006, 01:22 PM

By now you should know that Bush doesn't govern by polls. even debunked ones. There is all this news about the potential civil war in iraq, but the people saying that are the people that want a civil war. The same people that want bush to look bad, the people that couldn't beat him in the polls want to beat him in the media. I found a couple good stories that you won't see on your cable news channels or in the Times.

Quote:

Infantry Patrol
March 6, 2006 -- CAMP LIBERTY, IRAQ
CAPT. Jeremy Gwinn's In fantrymen had a very good day. It started early, with Bravo Company's 2nd Platoon nabbing an insurgent tied to several assassinations. But as midnight approached there was still one mission to complete.

Acting on tips from local Iraqis, the soldiers of the 1st Battalion, 87th Infantry from Fort Drum had been rolling up a murder- and roadside-bombing-ring for weeks. In a violence-free raid, they'd just apprehended the elder member of a terror cell. Now the prisoner had to be transferred back to the headquarters compound for processing.

Capt. Gwinn spoke with me on a dark dirt road outside of the Abu Ghraib prison complex - where the detainee might or might not end up. Guarding the facility's outer perimeter is just one of the battalion's many missions. Bravo Company pulls that duty - and patrols a vast suburban sector, too.

Gwinn (of Lititz, Pa.) had plenty of experience to draw on. He'd already led his company through a year in Afghanistan. He has the aura and composure of a true combat leader.

One of his patrols had been hit with a roadside bomb an hour earlier. No injuries, no damage. Gwinn shrugged off the incident. "Most of the IEDs out here are ineffective," he said. "You don't hear much about that, though."

IT hadn't always been that way. After assuming control of their sector, 1-87 had cleaned up Dodge City.

The battalion has an elite reputation, earned the hard way. Its parent outfit, the 1st Brigade of the 10th Mountain Division, is the most-deployed brigade in the U.S. Army.

Covering a notoriously dangerous swath of western Baghdad and its suburbs, and working in partnership with Iraqi Army units, the brigade's losses over the last six months have been only six soldiers killed - one of whom died in a tragic accident while on leave in Texas.

A low casualty rate measures not only a unit's progress, but the quality of its leadership. The brigade's performance speaks for itself.

WE stood under a crescent moon, with the floodlights of Abu Ghraib glowing on the horizon. Black Sheep 6 - Capt. Gwinn - took a radio call. His 2nd Platoon was about to link up with us. I was hitching a ride on the tactical convoy delivering the prisoner to Camp Liberty.

First Lt. Scott Treadwell's men had made the collar early that morning, but they were still on duty late at night. The hours in Iraq are long, and the work remains dangerous enough. A few months ago, a serious IED had sheered off part of a Humvee along our route. There had been no severe injuries, but the driver of the wrecked vehicle didn't like the route much after that.

He was driving it again tonight.

As for prisoner mistreatment, it just doesn't happen in this Army, and it certainly doesn't happen in 1-87. The insurgent was blindfolded, flex-cuffed and given a well-protected seat - to keep him safe from roadside bombs that his own kind put in place.

THE ride into headquarters was another non-event. No civil war in sight. Just another jolting journey in a dusty Humvee, listening to soldier talk and the rasp of the radio. Our gunner stayed alert, though.

Instead of collapsing into sectarian strife, the brigade's area of operations had become quieter since the Samarra bombing. The people do not want any part of more violence.

The zone's big event had been a thousand-man demonstration by Sunnis and Shias together at the al-Rahman Mosque - to protest the media's overreaction to the flurry of attacks that followed the bombing of the Golden Mosque.

Forget the self-importance: Journalists are just fleas on the military dog. I was one more responsibility for 2nd Platoon's soldiers. Yet they were as gracious as they were weary. They treat us far better than most of us treat them.

OUR convoy took a jagged route through villages that were fast becoming suburbs, past ratty shanties and the odd row of up-market homes. Soon enough, we pulled into camp and the disciplined routine began. Our vehicles passed checkpoints, stopping to unload weapons. The base was still busy in the small hours. I had a bunk waiting for me. 2nd Platoon's soldiers had to get back on the road after their prisoner drop-off.

Inside the 1st Brigade's austere headquarters, a few staff officers and NCOs remained at work, monitoring reports from units in the field and preparing for the next day's ops. The relative calm let the ghosts slip in from the darkness with their tales of heroism and tragedy.

Like the City That Never Sleeps, 1st Brigade has endless tales to tell: How, during a firefight, Spec. Andrew Suchanek, a medic, shielded a wounded Iraqi policeman with his own body as he treated him, or any number of other anecdotes of valor under fire.

THERE have been tragedies, too. There are in every war and conflict. On Feb. 27, Staff Sgt. Dwayne P. Lewis, a "mountain of a man," fell in the line of duty. Grenada-born, Lewis loved three things: His family, lifting weights and the Army.

His scout element was moving through a rural yard at night. Fearing bandits, the Iraqi homeowner shot blindly into the darkness. A bullet pierced Lewis' throat. He "bled out" in three minutes. His comrades were still mourning him as I spent my too-short spell with the "Climb to Glory" Brigade.

AND then the vivid life al ways returns. Shortly after I showed up, the brigade presented me with a face that said, "I'm from New York City - you got a problem with that?" Staff Sgt. Adam T. Navarro, an Army Reservist serving in Iraq, is a member of New York's Finest in "real life." Born in Manhattan, raised in The Bronx and now a resident of Brentwood, Officer Navarro works in Queens.

He could serve as a symbol of NYC's heart and soul: A big-fisted bear with a great sense of humor, strong opinions and a fan not only of the Yankees, but of Yankee Stadium itself. (He's a Post fan, too. Back home, his morning ritual begins with the sports section.)

His police experience has been a great advantage in Iraq (as he puts it, "Never underestimate the value of a New York City cop"). A veteran of Bosnia, as well, he sees a common thread: No matter what the elites or the media say, "The poor are always happy to see U.S. troops."

He worries that the people back home aren't getting a true picture of Iraq. Navarro's a firm believer in the mission. "We just need to give it enough time," he insists.

Who am I to argue with a New York City cop?

Ralph Peters is with our troops in Iraq.

http://www.nypost.com/postopinion/opedcolumnists/60607.htm
And one that is a bit longer, but still presents a side that you don't see in the MSM

Quote:

February 24, 2006, 6:29 a.m.
Standoff in Iraq
The IED vs. Democracy.

The insurgency in Iraq has no military capability either to drive the United States military from Iraq or to stop the American training of Iraqi police and security forces — or, for that matter, to derail the formation of a new government. The United States air base at Balad is one of the busiest airports in the world. Camp Victory near Baghdad is impenetrable to serious attack. And even forward smaller bases at Kirkuk, Mosul, and Ramadi are entirely secure. Instead, the terrorists count on three alternate strategies:

First, through the use of improvised explosive devices (IED), assassinations, and suicide bombings, they hope to make the Iraqi hinterlands and suburbs appear so unstable and violent that the weary American public says “enough of these people” and calls home its troops before the country is stabilized. In such a quest, the terrorists have an invaluable ally in the global media, whose “if it bleeds, it leads” brand of journalism always favors the severed head in the street over the completion of yet another Iraqi school.

Second, the al Qaedists think they can attack enough Shiites and government forces to prompt a civil war. And indeed, in the world that we see on television, there is no such thing as a secular Iraq, an Iraqi who defines himself as an Iraqi, or a child born to a Shiite and Sunni. No, the country, we are told, is simply three factions that will be torn apart by targeted violence. Sunnis blow up holy places; Shiites retaliate; and both sides can then blame the Americans.

Third, barring options one and two, the enemy wishes to pay off criminals and thugs to create enough daily mayhem, theft, and crime to stop contractors from restoring infrastructure and thus delude the Iraqi public into believing that the peace would return if only the Americans just left.

One of the great lapses in world journalism is investigating what happened to the 100,000 criminals let out by Saddam Hussein on the eve of the war. Thus the terrorists have succeeded in making all the daily mayhem of a major city appear to be political violence — even though much of the problem is the theft, rape, and murder committed by criminals who have had a holiday since Saddam freed them.

We are at a standoff of sorts, as we cannot yet stop the fear of the IED, and they cannot halt the progress of democracy. The Americans are unsure whether their own continued massive use of force — GPS bombings or artillery strikes — will be wise in such a sensitive war of hearts and minds, and must be careful to avoid increased casualties that will erode entirely an already attenuated base of public support for remaining in Iraq at all. The terrorists are more frustrated that, so far, they cannot inflict the sort of damage on the Americans that will send them home or stop the political process entirely.

During this sort of waiting game in Iraq, the American military silently is training tens of thousands of Iraqis to do the daily patrols, protect construction projects, and assure the public that security is on the way, while an elected government reminds the people that they are at last in charge.

The IED and suicide bomber answer back that it is a death sentence to join the government, to join the American-sponsored police and army, and to join the rebuilding efforts of Iraq.

Who will win? The Americans I talked to this week in Iraq — in Baghdad, Balad, Kirkuk, and Taji — believe that a government will emerge that is seen as legitimate and will appear as authentic to the people. Soon, ten divisions of Iraqi soldiers, and over 100,000 police, should be able to crush the insurgency, with the help of a public tired of violence and assured that the future of Iraq is their own — not the Husseins’, the Americans’, or the terrorists’. The military has learned enough about the tactics of the enemy that it can lessen casualties, and nevertheless, through the use of Iraqi forces, secure more of the country with far less troops. Like it or not, the American presence in Iraq will not grow, and will probably lessen considerably in 2006, before reaching Korea-like levels and responsibilities in 2007.

The terrorists, whom I did not talk to, but whose bombs I heard, answer back that while they fear the Iraqization of their enemy and the progress of democracy, they can still kill enough Shiites, bomb enough mosques, and stop enough rebuilding to sink the country into sectarian war — or at least something like Lebanon of the 1980s or an Afghanistan under the Taliban.

It is an odd war, because the side that I think is losing garners all the press, whether by blowing up the great golden dome of the Askariya shrine in Samarra, or blowing up an American each day. Yet we hear nothing of the other side that is ever so slowly, shrewdly undermining the enemy.

The Iraqi military goes out now on about half the American patrols, as well as on thousands of their own. It is not the Fallujah brigade of early 2004 — rather, it is developing into the best trained and disciplined armed force in the Middle East. While progress in reestablishing the infrastructure necessary for increased electricity and oil production seems dismal, in fact, much has been finished that awaits only the completion of pipelines and transmission lines — the components most vulnerable to sabotage. It is the American plan, in a certain sense, to gradually expand the security inside the so-called international or green zone, block by block, to the other 6 million Iraqis outside, where sewers run in the streets and power from the grid is available less than 12 hours per day.

The nature of the debate has also changed at home. Gone is “my perfect war, your screwed-up peace” or “no-blood for oil” or even “Bush lied, thousands died.” And there is little finger-pointing any more that so-and-so disbanded the Iraqi army, or didn’t have enough troops, or didn’t supply enough body armor. Now it is simply a yes or no proposition: yes, we can pull it off with patience, or no, it is no longer worth the cost and the lives.

Most would agree that the Americans now know exactly what they are doing. They have a brilliant and savvy ambassador and a top diplomatic team. Their bases are expertly run and secured, where food, accommodations, and troop morale are excellent. Insufficient body armor and unarmored humvees are yesterday’s hysteria. Our generals — Casey, Chiarelli, Dempsey — are astute and understand the fine line between using too much force and not employing enough, and that the war cannot be won by force alone. American colonels are the best this county has produced, and they are proving it in Iraq under the most trying of conditions. Iraqi soldiers are treated with respect and given as much autonomy as their training allows.

Again, the question now is an existential one: Can the United States — or anyone — in the middle of a war against Islamic fascism, rebuild the most important country in the heart of the Middle East, after 30 years of utter oppression, three wars, and an Orwellian, totalitarian dictator warping of the minds of the populace? And can anyone navigate between a Zarqawi, a Sadr, and the Sunni rejectionists, much less the legions of Iranian agents, Saudi millionaires, and Syrian provocateurs who each day live to destroy what’s going on in Iraq?

The fate of a much wider war hinges on the answers to these questions, since it would be hard to imagine that bin Laden could continue be much of a force with a secure and democratic Iraq, anchoring ongoing liberalization in the Gulf, Lebanon, and Egypt, and threatening by example Iran and Syria. By the same token, it would be hard to see how we could stop jihadism from spreading when an army that is doing everything possible still could not stop Islamic fascism from taking over the ancestral home of the ancient caliphate.

Can-do Americans courageously go about their duty in Iraq — mostly unafraid that a culture of 2,000 years, the reality of geography, the sheer forces of language and religion, the propaganda of the state-run Arab media, and the cynicism of the liberal West are all stacked against them. Iraq may not have started out as the pivotal front in the war between democracy and fascism, but it has surely evolved into that. After visiting the country, I think we can and will win, but just as importantly, unlike in 2003-4, there does not seem to be much of anything we should be doing there that in fact we are not.

http://www.nationalreview.com/hanson...0602240629.asp

The argument being made is that there is not going to be a civil war becasue the Iraqis don't want one. They want an end to the violence and as time goes by the people of Iraq know who is their ally and who is their enemy.

roachboy · 03-07-2006, 03:31 PM

ground rule question: should we come to some kind of consensus about what this thing "civil war" is?

the first article that stevo posted above appears to be from one of those reporters whose politics, embedded/in bed with status combine in this piece with very narrow data and time frames to obviate what he might have to sayabout general matters---the equivalent of his viewpoint would be a story from celine set during world war 1---cant remember the book--two guys from opposing sides run into each other on a country road. should they shoot at each other or not?
it turns out that they dont.
the peters logic would be to reproduce this story in detail and to conclude from it that there is no war.
i dont see why anyone would find this compelling.

besides, the guy is a hardline conservative: look at this

http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles...e.asp?ID=14321

enough said.

at this point, there are two ways that could be taken: the one would be to simply dismiss the article, not because the details it provides are wrong or uninteresting--i may find them to be both, but that's just me, i guess.

what seems more potentially constructive is to ask whether the article in any meaningful way addresses the question of whether there is or is not a civil war. it seems to me pretty obvious that the question is one of a longer time-frame and not of isolated incidents--you could dissolve any war by focussing on a few guys wandering around doing stuff--the problems is a basic mistake of interpretation rooted in an inadequate understanding of the analytic object--if this piece is even about the possibility of civil war, it surely makes no interesting case.

but what kind of piece could make an interesting case---what are the criteria for evaluating whether an article is or is not addressing whether there is or is not a civil war?

====
the other piece is from one of those fine fellows at the hoover institution whose entire piece seems to be rooted in pentagon press releases and/or events as processed from a chair in palo alto. from the chair in palo alto, he presumes to know what iraqis do and do not want--as if they are of a single mind...

but who knows, maybe he is on a junket to iraq and actually talked to folk, toured some american military installations and attended some press pool meetings--the results, in this case, are functionally the same.

in it, you get problematic assertions--which are nothing more than that--first about the nature and activities of the "iraqi security forces"--which are not accompanied with even the slightest piece of analysis---none whatsoever---hanson merely repeats numbers of patrols as if that functioned as a clear index of anything--particularly given the information posted earlier about the problems with this force.

he argues that the americans are not in a position to be militarily defeated by the insurgency--which he refers to in the singular, for some reason. maybe he is right--assuming that what he understands by military defeat would be a more or less conventional war-type scenario in whcih the firepower of the americans would become determinant. but that scenario has been irrelevant from the first 3 days of this farce in iraq, and i suspect that even mr. hansen knows that, really. i am sure that conservative french journalists were saying the same thing about the maginot line in 1937 too.

he didnt speak to anyone from "the insurgency."
which--again---he seems to assume that it is one thing.
at this point, such assertions are preposterous. but whatever, the guy is from hoover and so one can expect little in the way of informed conceptual work--lots of emphasis on details, none at all on how they connect together or to larger arguments.
but hey, why bother with that when the press pool briefings provide arguments readymade?

anyway, it is obvious from reading the piece that he knows nothing about what is happening amongst iraqis.
he heard bombs.
i dont see anything even remotely compelling in his analysis.

what he does do--and this is the point at whcih i object to this piece even being posted--is to repeat the linkage between support of bushwar and the attempt to erase the possiblty of civil war, as if the two went together. this is the same argument that aceventura was running out earlier--though in his case, i still am not sure that it was intentional--but here it is. so to repeat: i find that linkage to be intellectual worthless. i dont see how anyone could possibly imagine that it leaves any room for actual thinking about what is happening in iraq right now--hanson wants to reduce the matter to the a priori. he supported the bushwar, so there is no civil war. there is no real need for any of the pretense of being in iraq--or, if he is there, any need for the infotainment that litters this article--he decided the answer to the question up front, and his article is geared toward conservatives who would tend to think in the same way.

it seems to me that we--if there is a we on this---need more, better and more complex information--not more one-dimensional political hack pieces that require the needless expenditure of time to dismantle.

cyrnel · 03-07-2006, 04:09 PM

Whatever use the phrase "Civil War" had before Iraq has been exhausted. When ex-generals, politicos, protesters and bloggers all scream or deny it without any real definition, it has become its own baggage.

Perhaps "Civility Challenged" would be less problematic?

tecoyah · 03-08-2006, 03:09 AM

*A civil war is a war in which the competing parties are segments of the same country or empire. Civil war is usually a high intensity stage in an unresolved political struggle for national control of state power. As in any war, the conflict may be over other matters such as religion, ethnicity, or distribution of wealth. Some civil wars are also categorized as revolutions when major societal restructuring is a possible outcome of the conflict. *

This is the most complete definition of Civil War I could find, without posting a freakin' Book. By this definition I would not yet place Iraq in the category, if only because the occupation is still the focus of the insurgency. If the United States leaves this role, I see no possible outcome short of an actual Civil War.

ktspktsp · 03-08-2006, 05:03 AM

From someone who's been through 10 years of civil war: this is a civil war. It's still comparatively low-level for now, but it is a civil war. This sucks sooooo much.

roachboy · 03-08-2006, 08:04 AM

thanks tec: that had the core relation that i think we should consider using when posting information---which i had assumed would be obvious--but if not, this is better:

civil war is a "high intensity" phase of ongoing factional conflict over political power.

so iraq is clearly in a scenario along an imaginary gradient running from factional conflict to civil war that would have to be quite close to civil war.

at the same time, it is usually the case that these questions of typolgy are only resolved ex post facto. its easier when you know the outcomes to figure out what the beginning moment was of the process that explains those outcomes. in real time, particularly n real time for us, who continue getting access to heavily controlled information about what is happening in iraq (that a filter is in place for a long time--that we have become accustomed to the actions of a filter, does not make the filter any less itself)

whence such ambiguity as there is concerning the present situation(s).

so from this, we could rule out articles that do not link information to the broader context of factional conflict as irrelevant.

the more complicated implication:

since the bush squad finds itself acting as a faction within this scenario and not in a position to shape it (so it appears), then it may follow that ideological claims in support of the bush squad's actions should be considered pronouncements from a faction within the civil war-like scenario, and not intepretations of the scenario as a whole.....

it would seem only consistent to do this.
what do you think?

anyway, the below is interesting

Quote:

US envoy to Iraq: 'We have opened the Pandora's box'

· 80% of Americans think civil war likely
· Rumsfeld accuses Tehran of fomenting conflict

Julian Borger in Washington and Ewen MacAskill
Wednesday March 8, 2006
The Guardian

The US ambassador to Baghdad conceded yesterday that the Iraq invasion had opened a Pandora's box of sectarian conflicts which could lead to a regional war and the rise of religious extremists who "would make Taliban Afghanistan look like child's play".

Zalmay Khalilzad broke with the Bush administration's generally upbeat orthodoxy to present a stark profile of a volatile situation in danger of sliding into chaos.

Mr Khalilzad told the Los Angeles Times Iraq had been pulled back from the brink of civil war after the February 22 bombing of a Shia shrine in Samarra. However, another similar incident would leave Iraq "really vulnerable" to that happening, he said. "We have opened the Pandora's box and the question is, what is the way forward?" He added that the best approach was to build bridges between religious and ethnic communities.

An opinion poll published by the Washington Post and ABC News yesterday suggested that most Americans agreed with Mr Khalilzad - with 80% saying civil war in Iraq was likely, and more than a third that it was very likely. More than half thought the US should start withdrawing its troops, although only one in six wanted all troops to be withdrawn immediately.

Hours after Mr Khalilzad made his remarks, the US defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld accused Iran of dispatching elements of its Revolutionary Guard to stir trouble inside Iraq. Mr Rumsfeld said: "They are currently putting people into Iraq to do things that are harmful to the future of Iraq and we know it. And it is something that they, I think, will look back on as having been an error in judgment." Mr Khalilzad's intervention comes in a week when the two top US generals in Iraq, John Abizaid and George Casey, are in Washington talking to the Pentagon and the White House about how many troops they will need to maintain stability in Iraq. With his remarks, Mr Khalilzad may have been lobbying Washington to keep as many American soldiers there as possible. The Bush administration is anxious to reduce the US military presence for political and military reasons.

Mr Rumsfeld said sectarian violence had been exaggerated by the media. When asked how that squared with Mr Khalilzad's view, he replied: "Well, he's there. He's an expert. And he said what he said. I happen to have not read it, but I am not going to try to disagree with it."

Nevertheless, it was clear yesterday that the Pentagon was anxious to limit the impact of Mr Khalilzad's remarks. "If you take it from a year ago to now, month to month, the attacks now are down compared to last year," said General Peter Pace, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff.

Mr Khalilzad suggested the situation was so dangerous that without a substantial US presence, a civil war could suck in other Arab countries on the side of the Sunnis and Iran on the side of the Shias, creating conditions for a regional conflict and disrupting global oil supplies. "That would make Taliban Afghanistan look like child's play," he said.

Last night Dick Cheney, the US vice-president, stepped up pressure on Iran over its nuclear ambitions. Mr Cheney told a meeting of the Israeli lobby group, Aipac, "We will not allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon." Mr Rumsfeld said there were 132,000 US troops in Iraq. Plans were in place to shrink the presence to about 100,000. Downing Street said yesterday no "strict timetable" had been laid down for British troops to withdraw. A Foreign Office spokesman said: "I do not think we would be quite as gloomy as Pandora's box and civil war." But if there were further big sectarian attacks, things could get very difficult, he said.

Violence continued yesterday, with 16 killed and no sign of a coalition government being formed. Ibrahim al-Jaafari, the Iraqi prime minister and compromise candidate of the Shia parties, said he would not be blackmailed into quitting.

A new video has been broadcast showing kidnapped British peace activist Norman Kember, 74, and two Canadian colleagues. The fourth, an American, was not shown. Bruce Kent, a friend of Mr Kember's, said: "My hopes have gone up considerably. I am very pleased that there is a picture of him only a week ago."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,,1725996,00.html

mr khalizad is part of the inner orbit of the cheney-rumsfeld faction:

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php...lmay_Khalilzad

it seems pretty clear that the administration has already lost control of the signifier "civil war" which, despite their best efforts, fok feel they can use independently of what the bushpeople tell them. that must irk those fine fellows.

it is pretty clear that rumsfeld said yesterday what most bush loyalists would say, with as much effect:
rumsfeld: the media exaggerates.
response--but your boy in iraq said otherwise.
rumsfeld: o. well, i dont know then. the media exagerrates.
later, cheney threatens iran.
and this morning, iran threatens back.
yay.

it is also clear that, no matter what you choose to call this, the bush squad is debating how to respond----and the options are quite stark.
the author of the article makes a good case when he points out that khalilzad is arguing for what would amount to a wholesale repetition of the errors johnson and nixon made in vietnam--trying to withdraw through escalation in a context that the plitical and military types seem unable to comprehend, and that for political reasons--and this complete with the hoary old domino effect argument.

can you say fiasco?

roachboy · 03-13-2006, 09:41 AM

this is a really interesting piece on the divisions within the american military command about how to think the situation into which they were racing in iraq at teh start of this war. the article frames it as a kind of foreshadowing of what was to come, and in that i think the author is right.

Quote:

Dash to Baghdad Left Top U.S. Generals Divided
By MICHAEL R. GORDON
and BERNARD E. TRAINOR

The war was barely a week old when Gen. Tommy R. Franks threatened to fire the Army's field commander.

From the first days of the invasion in March 2003, American forces had tangled with fanatical Saddam Fedayeen paramilitary fighters. Lt. Gen. William S. Wallace, who was leading the Army's V Corps toward Baghdad, had told two reporters that his soldiers needed to delay their advance on the Iraqi capital to suppress the Fedayeen threat in the rear.

Soon after, General Franks phoned Lt. Gen. David D. McKiernan, the commander of allied land forces, to warn that he might relieve General Wallace.

The firing was averted after General McKiernan flew to meet General Franks. But the episode revealed the deep disagreements within the United States high command about the Iraqi military threat and what would be required to defeat it.

The dispute, related by military officers in interviews, had lasting consequences. The unexpected tenacity of the Fedayeen in the battles for Nasiriya, Samawa, Najaf and other towns on the road to Baghdad was an early indication that the adversary was not merely Saddam Hussein's vaunted Republican Guard.

The paramilitary Fedayeen were numerous, well-armed, dispersed throughout the country, and seemingly determined to fight to the death. But while many officers in the field assessed the Fedayeen as a dogged foe, General Franks and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld saw them as little more than speed bumps on the way to Baghdad. Three years later, Iraq has yet to be subdued. Many of the issues that have haunted the Bush administration about the war ? the failure to foresee a potential insurgency and to send sufficient troops to stabilize the country after Saddam Hussein's government was toppled ? were foreshadowed early in the conflict. How some of the crucial decisions were made, the behind-the-scenes debate about them and early cautions about a sustained threat have not been previously known.

¶A United States Marines intelligence officer warned after the bloody battle at Nasiriya, the first major fight of the war, that the Fedayeen would continue to mount attacks after the fall of Baghdad since many of the enemy fighters were being bypassed in the race to the capital.

¶In an extraordinary improvisation, Ahmad Chalabi, the Iraqi exile leader who was a Pentagon favorite, was flown to southern Iraq with hundreds of his fighters as General Franks's command sought to put an "Iraqi face" on the invasion; the plan was set in motion without the knowledge of top administration officials, including Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and George J. Tenet, the director of central intelligence.

¶Instead of sending additional troops to impose order after the fall of Baghdad, Mr. Rumsfeld and General Franks canceled the deployment of the First Cavalry Division;

General McKiernan was unhappy with the decision, which was made at a time when ground forces were needed to deal with the chaos in Iraq.

This account of decision-making inside the American command is based on interviews with dozens of military officers and government officials over the last two years. Some asked to remain unidentified because they were speaking about delicate internal deliberations that they were not authorized to discuss publicly.

Early Resistance Wasn't Foreseen

As American-led forces prepared to invade Iraq in March 2003, American intelligence was not projecting a major fight in southern Iraq. C.I.A. officials told United States commanders that anti-Hussein tribes might secure a vital Euphrates River bridge and provide other support. Tough resistance was not expected until Army and Marine troops began to close in on Baghdad.

Almost from the start, however, the troops found themselves fighting the Fedayeen and Baath Party paramilitary forces. The Fedayeen had been formed in the mid-1990's to suppress any Shiite revolts. Equipped with rocket-propelled grenades and small arms, they wore civilian dress and were positioned in southern Iraq. The first marine to die in combat, in fact, was shot by a paramilitary fighter in a Toyota pickup truck.

After Nasiriya, Lt. Col. Joseph Apodaca, a Marine intelligence officer in that critical first battle, drafted a classified message concluding that the Fedayeen would continue to be a threat. Many had sought sanctuary in small towns that were bypassed in the rush to Baghdad. The colonel compared the Fedayeen attacks to insurgencies in Nicaragua, El Salvador and Colombia, and warned that unless American troops went after them in force, the enemy would continue their attacks after Baghdad fell, hampering efforts to stabilize Iraq.

At the land war headquarters, there was growing concern about the Fedayeen as well. On March 28, General McKiernan, the land war commander, flew to the Jalibah airfield to huddle with his Army and Marine commanders. General Wallace reported that his troops had managed to contain the Iraqi paramilitary forces but that the American hold on them was tenuous. His concern was that the Fedayeen were threatening the logistics needed to push to Baghdad. "I am not sure how many of the knuckleheads there are," he said, according to notes taken by a military aide.

Lt. Gen. James T. Conway, the top Marine field commander, was also impressed by the fighters' tenacity. Bypassed enemy units were attacking American supply lines.

General McKiernan concluded that the United States faced two "centers of gravity": the Republican Guard, concentrated near Baghdad, and the paramilitary Fedayeen. He decided to suspend the march to the capital for several days while continuing airstrikes and engaging the Fedayeen. Only then, he figured, would conditions be right for the final assault into Baghdad to remove Mr. Hussein from power. To provide more support, General McKiernan freed up his only reserve, troops from the 82nd Airborne Division.

When he returned to his headquarters in Kuwait, there was a furor in Washington over General Wallace's comments to the press.

"The enemy we're fighting is a bit different than the one we war-gamed against, because of these paramilitary forces," General Wallace had said to The New York Times and The Washington Post. "We knew they were here, but we did not know how they would fight." Asked whether the fighting increased the chances of a longer war than forecast by some military planners, he responded, "It's beginning to look that way."

Relying on Speed Over Manpower

To General Franks, those remarks apparently were tantamount to a vote of no-confidence in his war plan. It relied on speed, and he had told Mr. Rumsfeld that his forces might take Baghdad in just a few weeks. In Washington, General Wallace's comments were seized on by critics as evidence that Mr. Rumsfeld had not sent enough troops. More than a year earlier, he had ridiculed the initial war plan that called for at least 380,000 troops and had pushed the military's Central Command to use fewer soldiers and deploy them more quickly. At a Pentagon news conference, the defense secretary denied that he had any role in shaping the war plan. "It was not my plan," he said. "It was General Franks's plan, and it was a plan that evolved over a sustained period of time."

Privately, Mr. Rumsfeld hinted at his impatience with his generals. Newt Gingrich, the former Republican House speaker and a Rumsfeld adviser, forwarded a supportive memo from Col. Douglas Macgregor, who had long assailed the Army leadership as risk averse. In a blistering attack, Colonel Macgregor denounced the decision to suspend the advance. Replying to Mr. Gingrich, the secretary wrote: "Thanks for the Macgregor piece. Nobody up here is thinking like this."

General McKiernan, for his part, was stunned by the threat to fire General Wallace. "Talk about unhinging ourselves," he told Lt. Gen. John P. Abizaid, General Franks's deputy, according to military aides who later learned of the conversation.

At General Franks's headquarters in Qatar the next day, General McKiernan made the case against removing General Wallace, according to officers who learned about the episode. Gary Luck, a retired general and an adviser to General Franks, said General Wallace was not one to shrink from a fight. General Wallace survived, but the strategy debate was far from over.

General Franks did not respond to requests for comment for this article. An aide, Michael Hayes, a retired Army colonel, said that to his knowledge, the accounts of General Franks's threat to fire General Wallace and other conversations with his commanders were inaccurate, but he declined to address specifics.

Seeking an Iraqi Face for the War

Calculating the resistance would fade if the invasion had an Iraqi face, General Franks's command turned to an unlikely ally.

Ahmad Chalabi, the Iraqi exile leader who had been long been pushing for Saddam Hussein's ouster and was championed by some Pentagon officials, was based in northern Kurdistan with his fighters. An American colonel, Ted Seel, was assigned as a military liaison.

On March 27, he was asked to call General Abizaid's office. The general wanted to know how many fighters Mr. Chalabi had and if he would be willing to deploy them, according to Colonel Seel.

Mr. Chalabi said he could field as many as 1,000, but Colonel Seel thought 700 was more accurate. The United States Air Force could fly them in to the Tallil Air Base just south of Nasiriya.

Eager to reassure the White House that he had an Iraqi ally, General Franks told Mr. Bush in a videoconference that Iraqi freedom fighters would be joining the American-led forces. Franklin C. Miller, the senior National Security Council deputy for defense issues, was taken aback by the plan. Unlike a small group of Iraq exiles recruited by the Pentagon and trained in Hungary, these fighters had not been screened or trained by the American military.

He approached Mr. Tenet, the director of central intelligence. Who are these freedom fighters? he asked, according to an official who was present. Mr. Tenet said he had no idea.

When the airlift finally started in early April, about 570 fighters were ready. As the C-17's were being loaded, Mr. Chalabi wanted to go as well. General Abizaid objected, arguing in an exchange with Paul D. Wolfowitz, the deputy defense secretary, that the military command should not be taking sides in future Iraqi politics by flying a potential Iraqi leader to southern Iraq, but Mr. Wolfowitz did not yield. He said Mr. Chalabi's fighters did not want to go without their leader, according to officials familiar with the exchange. When General Abizaid awoke the next day, Mr. Chalabi was at Tallil. His fighters would never play a meaningful role in the war. They arrived without their arms and were not well supervised by the United States Special Forces. But Mr. Chalabi, now the deputy prime minister of Iraq, proved to be undeterred. After arriving at Tallil, he drove to Nasiriya and delivered a rousing speech. It was the beginning of his political comeback.

Harsh Criticism From a General

Determined to spur his ground war commanders to renew the push toward Baghdad, General Franks flew to General McKiernan's headquarters in Kuwait on March 31, where he delivered some harsh criticism.

Only the British and the Special Operations forces had been fighting, he complained, according to participants in the meeting. General Franks said he doubted that the Third Infantry Division had had a serious tank engagement and warned of the embarrassment that would follow if they failed. The resistance around Karbala on the Army's route to Baghdad was minor, he said, and easily crushed. He expressed frustration that neither General McKiernan nor the Marines had forced the destruction of Iraq's 10th and Sixth Army Divisions, units the Marines and General McKiernan viewed as severely weakened by airstrikes, far from the invasion route and posing little threat.

One of the most critical moments of the meeting came when General Franks indicated he did not want to be slowed by overly cautious generals concerned about holding casualties to a minimum, though no one had raised the issue of casualties. To dramatize his point, according to one participant, General Franks put his hand to his mouth and made a yawning motion.

After the session, General McKiernan approached Maj. Gen. Albert Whitley, his top British deputy. "That conversation never happened," General McKiernan said, according to military officials who learned of the exchange. By April 2, American forces were closing in on the capital. Even before the war, Mr. Rumsfeld saw the deployment of United States forces more in terms of what was needed to win the war than to secure the peace.

With the tide in the United States' favor, he began to raise the issue of canceling the deployment of the First Cavalry Division ? some 16,000 soldiers. General Franks eventually went along. Though the general insisted he was not pressured to agree, he later acknowledged that the defense secretary had put the issue on the table. "Don Rumsfeld did in fact make the decision to off-ramp the First Cavalry Division," General Franks said in an earlier interview with The New York Times.

General McKiernan, the senior United States general in Iraq at the time, was not happy about the decision but did not protest.

Three years later, with thousands of lives lost in the tumult of Iraq, senior officers say that canceling the division was a mistake, one that reduced the number of American forces just as the Fedayeen, former soldiers and Arab jihadists were beginning to organize in what would become an insurgency.

"The Baathist insurgency surprised us and we had not developed a comprehensive option for dealing with this possibility, one that would have included more military police, civil affairs units, interrogators, interpreters and Special Operations forces," said Gen. Jack Keane of the Army, who is now retired and served as the acting chief of staff during the summer of 2003.

"If we had planned for an insurgency, we probably would have deployed the First Cavalry Division and it would have assisted greatly with the initial occupation. "This was not just an intelligence community failure, but also our failure as senior military leaders."

source: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/13/in...rtner=homepage

the intertwining of ideology and perception appears here to be fundamental.
here we are still....

host · 03-13-2006, 12:28 PM

This report helps to calm my reaction to your posted nytimes article, roachboy:

Quote:

http://www.editorandpublisher.com/ea..._id=1002157326
John Burns, Back from Baghdad: U.S. Effort In Iraq Will Likely Fail

By E&P Staff

Published: March 10, 2006 12:15 AM ET

NEW YORK A day after returning to the U.S., after another long term as bureau chief in Baghdad, John F. Burns of The New York Times said on Bill Maher's live Friday night HBO program that he now feels, for the first time, that the American effort in Iraq will likely "fail."

Asked if a civil war was developing there, Burns said, "It's always been a civil war," adding that it's just a matter of extent. He said the current U.S. leaders there--military and diplomatic--were doing their best but sectarian differences would "probably" doom the enterprise.

Burns said that he and others underestimated this problem, feeling for a long time that toppling Saddam Hussein would almost inevitably lead to something much better. He called the Abu Ghraib abuse the worst of many mistakes the U.S. made but said that even without so many mistakes the sectarian conflict would have gotten out of hand.

Speaking from Cambridge, Mass., where he was speaking at a conference on the Vietnam war, Burns observed that he had been on the ground for 24 hours and, of all the people he had interacted with so far, "no one supports this war."....

.......Burns, a Pulitzer Prize winner, was one of the few Americans journalists who stayed in Baghdad during the U.S. attack on Iraq in March 2003, and has spent most of his time there since.

Can any supporters of the Bush Iraq policy offer an opinion as to why the "liberal" press....even John Burns own newspaper, has not covered the "story" that Burns; an expert who was not embedded during the invasion, a journalist who is an accomplished and respected authority on Iraq who has "spent most of his time there, not leaving, even during the invasion...has changed his mind. He now recongnizes that, even without the mistakes made by the US, "the sectarian conflict would have gotten out of hand"..

Wouldn't a "liberal press", lead with a story like this?

This is also a signifigant change:

Quote:

http://www.nationalreview.com/buckle...0602241451.asp
February 24, 2006, 2:51 p.m.
It Didn’t Work
William F. Buckley Jr.

.....One can't doubt that the American objective in Iraq has failed......

....Our mission has failed because Iraqi animosities have proved uncontainable by an invading army of 130,000 Americans. The great human reserves that call for civil life haven't proved strong enough. No doubt they are latently there, but they have not been able to contend against the ice men who move about in the shadows with bombs and grenades and pistols.

The Iraqis we hear about are first indignant, and then infuriated, that Americans aren't on the scene to protect them and to punish the aggressors....

......A problem for American policymakers — for President Bush, ultimately — is to cope with the postulates and decide how to proceed.

One of these postulates, from the beginning, was that the Iraqi people, whatever their tribal differences, would suspend internal divisions in order to get on with life in a political structure that guaranteed them religious freedom.

The accompanying postulate was that the invading American army would succeed in training Iraqi soldiers and policymkers to cope with insurgents bent on violence.

This last did not happen. And the administration has, now, to cope with failure. It can defend itself historically, standing by the inherent reasonableness of the postulates. After all, they govern our policies in Latin America, in Africa, and in much of Asia. The failure in Iraq does not force us to generalize that violence and antidemocratic movements always prevail. It does call on us to adjust to the question, What do we do when we see that the postulates do not prevail — in the absence of interventionist measures (we used these against Hirohito and Hitler) which we simply are not prepared to take? It is healthier for the disillusioned American to concede that in one theater in the Mideast, the postulates didn't work. The alternative would be to abandon the postulates. To do that would be to register a kind of philosophical despair. The killer insurgents are not entitled to blow up the shrine of American idealism.

Mr. Bush has a very difficult internal problem here because to make the kind of concession that is strategically appropriate requires a mitigation of policies he has several times affirmed in high-flown pronouncements. His challenge is to persuade himself that he can submit to a historical reality without forswearing basic commitments in foreign policy.

He will certainly face the current development as military leaders are expected to do: They are called upon to acknowledge a tactical setback, but to insist on the survival of strategic policies.

Yes, but within their own counsels, different plans have to be made. And the kernel here is the acknowledgment of defeat.

roachboy, from your nytimes article above...(bty...couldn't you just link to it, instead of posting it in it's entirety? I am aware that the article gets archived by nytimes in just 7 days, but who wants to read it, anyway? OP's and replies with lengthy, referenced content, posted on these threads, don't incite a flurry of responses. Folks avoid putting in the time that it would take to read your last post to "get up to speed" before posting an "informed" response, so they don't. I know that you know this....and that you and I are only "talking" to each other here...... For proof, just look at the "chit chat" on the threads that you have weighed in on to point out the "simplistic" flaws in their OP's.

Observe the "veteran" members who mostly confine their replies to brief, contentless "one liners" and "zingers". They continue to command the respect of about half the participants here, as they take their strategy right to the "edge", time after time. We might as well filter them out and do this in an exchange of PM's.)

I think that you'll agree that ironically, and quite sadly, the general who was quoted saying the following, in the article that you posted, is the fellow who is recognized by the misled majority as the "patriot", (back in 2004..) as the "supporter of our troops", while the film maker who put the narrated excerpt below in his film, has been the target of hostility that has run the gambit of accusations that he is on the "fringe" to "he's a traitor". Being right about the legality and the "fixing of intelligence to match the policy" to justify the invasion of Iraq will not be enough. Damn the facts, "they feel" that invading Iraq was "absolutely necessary", even though the reasons why, were continually "revised".

Quote:

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/13/in...13command.html

One of the most critical moments of the meeting came when General Franks indicated he did not want to be slowed by overly cautious generals concerned about holding casualties to a minimum, though no one had raised the issue of casualties. To dramatize his point, according to one participant, General Franks put his hand to his mouth and made a yawning motion.

After the session, General McKiernan approached Maj. Gen. Albert Whitley, his top British deputy. "That conversation never happened," General McKiernan said, according to military officials who learned of the exchange. By April 2, American forces were closing in on the capital. Even before the war, Mr. Rumsfeld saw the deployment of United States forces more in terms of what was needed to win the war than to secure the peace............

Quote:

http://www.eppc.org/printVersion/pri...asp?pubID=2195
I've always been amazed that the very people forced to live in the worst parts of town, go to the worst schools, and who have it the hardest are always the first to step up, to defend us. They serve so that we don't have to. They offer to give up their lives so that we can be free. It is, remarkably, their gift to us. And all they ask for in return is that we never send them into harm�s way unless it�s absolutely necessary. Will they ever trust us again?�

View Poll Results: Is Iraq in a state of Civil War?
Yes...there is no doubt	24	38.10%
No...its just random violence	3	4.76%
Maybe....its too soon to tell	24	38.10%
Its more complicated than that (please explain)	12	19.05%
Voters: 63. You may not vote on this poll

02-27-2006, 06:16 PM	#43 (permalink)
martinguerre whosoever Location: New England	Ace...the point isn't strict legal liability. The instruction of history is best served not in a sense of calculable guilt, but in instructive caution for future actions. We thought we understood the situation, and that we could arm one side of a conflict to our benifit. It turns out that this had drastic consequences, and Saddam's use of our bio weapons proves that. Again, we thought we understood the situation, and applied models of reconstruction and liberation that didn't apply...backing Chalabi and Iraqi National Congress...and it turns out they were fronting for Iran the whole time. So far, the consequences have been quite serious, and not looking to improve. Hopefully...somewhere down the line, we'll actually use good judgment. As for the right to retaliate? It depends. Do we as Americans have the right to export violence at our judgment? Do other nations? What legitimates a war? I don't think there are hard and fast answers...but there is a point to seeing the working of the logic that legitimates terrorism, even if we remain in strict disagreement with the conclusions. __________________ For God so loved creation, that God sent God's only Son that whosoever believed should not perish, but have everlasting life. -John 3:16

02-27-2006, 09:37 PM	#44 (permalink)
Mojo_PeiPei Kiss of Death Location: Perpetual wind and sorrow	Machiavelli for President please. __________________ To win a war you must serve no master but your ambition.

02-28-2006, 03:55 AM	#45 (permalink)
smooth Junkie Location: Right here	martinguerre, I'm not sure how you lost your solid footing in discussing the construction of the Iraq state by foreign governments. But it's interesting that ijn your conversation with aceventura he was able to completely obliterate that crtiical point. I find it interesting because he uses the "fact" that Saddam "gassed his own people" as if to create a higher level of moral indignation against a dictator killing people within the boundaries of his state. As if we should be more angry at someone killing "his own" than those not his own. But the simple fact remains that Saddam in no way thought of the Kurds as "his own." and they weren't and his refusal to agree to this point, ignore it, misunderstand it, whathaveyou, leads him to think that a people ought to unite against the dictator for committing such a heinous act. but he doesn't seem to catch the notion that a people, comprised of various ethnic groups and in no way seeing themselves as ethnically united, would ever conceive or even desire to "unite" to overthrow such a dictator. for to many, he (saddam) did no such wrong. and to others, he was representative of their wishes, but all of this within the context of foreign powers enabling him to exert control over the entire region held together by nothing other than brute (military) force--not some notion of nationhood. it simply doesn't make any sense to wonder whether the nation is fracturing into groups and bubbling into civil war, well primarily because of your first comment that there is no glue there. it's more profitable to wonder when iraq was not currently or under threat of civil war... I just think you shouldn't have let that comment slide away so easily, becuase it manages a tremendous amount of explanation for what we are trying to decipher today; indeed, much of what many of us opposed to the invasion repeatedly pointed out as a must think about reality before action. and it's so obvious that there is just no way in any universe that intelligent masterminds of the sorts who articulated and maneuvered us into this predicament couldn't have foreseen it. especially given that a fair number of them were involved in the initial thick of it when many of us were still in baby jumpers. but now it appears extremely rational to lean on the point that we have personal responsibility to the iraqis (as if there were a homogenous group in existence for us to cater to or ponder about), to a concept of liberty, to a way of life, to do anyting BUT up and leave, because we have been skillfully managed into a box. and this is what many of us meant when we labeled it a quagmire. much of the same as vietnam. but not in the way that many people probably conceive of either of these conflicts, because they seem them as such--conflicts. so quagmire to them means that the interactants can't move, can't escape, can't overcome. which is ludicrous to such a person, because they understand our military might to be so overwhelming that the prospect of its immobilty is laughable on its face. but I wonder if those people pop the political implications of the term quagmire into their equation. because then it becomes much more clear how someone might conceive of these "conflicts" as mainly political and resulting in quagmire. that is, all action can be framed as untenable. regardless of what is, how things exist are less relevent than how things can be made to appear. so now we sit on the brink of an episode and our political leaders call out to us that to leave is untenable, unthinkable, abrasive to our very fiber. because if one thing resonates in this nation, it's the legal fiction of personal responsibilty. and this fiction may account for all sorts of deeds that ultimately run counter to our personal best interests, but dammit, it's responsibility. core to our legal system, central to our political consciousness, and paramount to the maintenance of capitalism. but I always saw this action as the maintenance of capitalism and so invite a number of people to make the requisite rendering of my musings into a facile argument that we trade blood for oil, so be it. but nonetheless, people in greater and higher positions in life, doing these kinds of analyses far longer than I may ever have the chance to do, and some in non-trivial high-level government positions, have already claimed that our 4th world war would be the front between global capitalism and non. but yeah, I think you could dig your feet in a bit further on that point about the construction of an "iraqi state" by foreign powers and ride it for a bit more currency rather than get bogged down in some bizarre rationalizations that can only occur once that point is quietly swept under the proverbial rug. __________________ "The theory of a free press is that truth will emerge from free discussion, not that it will be presented perfectly and instantly in any one account." -- Walter Lippmann "You measure democracy by the freedom it gives its dissidents, not the freedom it gives its assimilated conformists." -- Abbie Hoffman

02-28-2006, 04:56 AM	#46 (permalink)
martinguerre whosoever Location: New England	well, in that case smooth... He's all yours. __________________ For God so loved creation, that God sent God's only Son that whosoever believed should not perish, but have everlasting life. -John 3:16

03-01-2006, 06:16 PM	#50 (permalink)
roachboy Super Moderator Location: essex ma	just checking: is there some kind of linkage being made between the evaluation of the situation and iraq--specifically on the question of how to interpret the events of the past week or so, since the bombing of the golden mosque--and one's position on the war in general? how does this work exactly? it would seem to me that going down this route would make all judgements about iraq non-falsifiable because there is no need for any information to be involved. all the work is done a priori. what would be the point of that? __________________ a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear it make you sick. -kamau brathwaite

03-02-2006, 09:36 AM	#58 (permalink)
cyrnel Adequate Location: In my angry-dome.	I've always thought our responsibility for introducing, arming, assisting, propping of a despot should include doing what we can to remove them and introduce stability. If we want to go back and correct actions that lead to the initial problem, sure, it deserves thought and action, again, to our ability. Neither should preclude the other. Should they? __________________ There are a vast number of people who are uninformed and heavily propagandized, but fundamentally decent. The propaganda that inundates them is effective when unchallenged, but much of it goes only skin deep. If they can be brought to raise questions and apply their decent instincts and basic intelligence, many people quickly escape the confines of the doctrinal system and are willing to do something to help others who are really suffering and oppressed." -Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media, p. 195

03-02-2006, 10:49 AM	#61 (permalink)
roachboy Super Moderator Location: essex ma	again, what does one's opinion of saddam hussein's regime have to do with the question of whether iraq is at this point slipping into civil war? one of the folk who is pursuing this line of thinking in this thread MUST have some answer to this question. it is not that hard. __________________ a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear it make you sick. -kamau brathwaite

03-02-2006, 02:39 PM	#65 (permalink)
roachboy Super Moderator Location: essex ma	cyrnel: i found the point when the slippage started in the thread---thanks. =============== i asked about the relation between the justifications for the war at all (which i found totally unconvincing, which i still find totally unconvincing) and the question of whether the present situation is heading toward a civil war because i found the correlation little more than an attempt--backhanded or not (and i think it is, reading back through ace's various posts) to evacuate the question of what is happening and reduce all interpretation to a question of your a priori position on the war as a whole. i think that you can see something of this in the logic of ace's posts: a wholesale avoidance of particular analysis--not to mention critique--of the specific actions of this administration---instead you get a superficial assessment that tracks the movement of ace's personal attitude toward the war as a whole--moving from support (grounded in arguments that for me have no currency) to advocating withdrawal--an advocacy couched in terms of a series of vague statements about the iraqis "stepping up" or some such emeril-like vagueness (at least when emeril says something like this, you can see what they actually men: he is throwing in more garlic). i see the possibility of civil war in iraq as catastrophic. it is a clear index of the wholesale incompetence of this administration--the situation i think plausible has already been outlined above---the conclusion to be drawn from it seems to me unavoidable--this invasion, illegitimate from the outset no matter what your feelings about saddam hussein might be (this has been done enough here--i am not entering any further into it) was undertaken with no coherent long-term plan. it appears to have been undertaken without any particular understanding of iraq either--the admission in the post article i cited on the first page of this thread that american commanders are only now figuring out that they are "operating in a context" seems to me almost unbelievable---it is---and i am not joking about this---one of the stupidest statements that i have ever read, from anyone. thanks to the post-thatecherite practice of reactionary governments trying to head off dissent triggered by illegitimate, illegal military adventures by choking off as much coherent information about what is actually happening as possible (part of the right's conception of a coherent campaign for "hearts and minds"--which, judging from this, amounts to lie early and often)---it is difficult to work out the process whereby the americans found themselves played by all sides. a general outline is evident enough, however: various iraqi groups seem to have used the imperial arrogance of the military to their advantage to trigger a process that now finds the americans reduced to one faction amongst a number, with no meaningful claim to have stabilized anything militarily. the americans were so committed to the superficial aspects of pseudo-democratization that they were willing to push forward elections that the sunni community in iraq was boycotting and so to create a provisional (puppet) government that had and has no hope of being able to make credible claims that it represents anything like a consensus or national interest that supercedes those of particular groups. tracking a parallel sorry trajectory, the question of the size and readiness of the american proxy "iraqi security force" ended up sounding like some bizarre rerun of the story of the arvn in south vietnam....it quickly went from numerous and powerful and forward looking to small and ill-trained and incapable of coherent action. so i can see why supporters of this administration would have every interest in trying to generate a style of argument that would make it difficult to look at the situation that actually seems to obtain on the ground and replace it with a priori style claims--if you see this situation as potentially the start of a civil war, it must be because you opposed the war. if you supported the war, then it is simply time for the iraqis to "step up" or whatever--at no point in this kind of argument would there be any trace of assessment of the seemingly overwhelming ineptness of this administration. again, i do think that this was introduced into the thread in a backhanded manner across the series of ace's posts--i doubt that he meant it--but nonetheless it appears to be functioning here. it would be nice to see it stop. __________________ a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear it make you sick. -kamau brathwaite

03-02-2006, 04:17 PM	#66 (permalink)
martinguerre whosoever Location: New England	roach, cyrenel The reason why i went with that line of reasoning is to explore if Iraq is a concept that is durable enough to have currency to withstand internal strife. My conclusion is that because of on-going western interferance and indeed, creation of the Iraqi state and nationality...it won't. The rest, yes, is thread jack, but part of this debate was if America had the moral highground to be performing intervention in the first place, or if it was in the long line of outsider interlopers who impose unworkable "solutions" on to the "problem" of Shite, Sunni and Kurdish idenity. __________________ For God so loved creation, that God sent God's only Son that whosoever believed should not perish, but have everlasting life. -John 3:16

03-02-2006, 05:44 PM	#68 (permalink)
roachboy Super Moderator Location: essex ma	martin: but that---the status of this nation-state thing we call iraq, its history and viability--is/are an entirely different question(s) that are probably at the heart of this devolution of the past week. that the americans find themselves--particularly in the fine company of the british--seen as yet another colonial power is also important. neither of these questions really goes to the line that ace was pursuing (though i can see how they would fit into it...) post away, sir. i do not have the sense that i am doing much more that trying to piece things together. i doubt anyone else does either. the more the merrier. by the way, there is this article: http://www.newsday.com/news/nationwo...orld-headlines on the state of the iraqi securty forces this to a curious hour long npr program on the question of civil war: http://c.moreover.com/click/here.pl?...9900&w=2218086 and this about the political fight that is going on concerning the "provisional government" and its composition: http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories...MPLATE=DEFAULT __________________ a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear it make you sick. -kamau brathwaite

03-05-2006, 10:40 AM	#69 (permalink)
Aladdin Sane Degenerate Location: San Marvelous	DUDE, WHERE'S MY CIVIL WAR? Here's an eyewitness account of the Iraqi Civil War. DUDE, WHERE'S MY CIVIL WAR? March 5, 2006 -- BAGHDAD I'M trying. I've been trying all week. The other day, I drove another 30 miles or so on the streets and alleys of Baghdad. I'm looking for the civil war that The New York Times declared. And I just can't find it. Maybe actually being on the ground in Iraq prevents me from seeing it. Perhaps the view's clearer from Manhattan. It could be that my background as an intelligence officer didn't give me the right skills. And riding around with the U.S. Army, looking at things first-hand, is certainly a technique to which The New York Times wouldn't stoop in such an hour of crisis. Let me tell you what I saw anyway. Rolling with the "instant Infantry" gunners of the 1st Platoon of Bravo Battery, 4-320 Field Artillery, I saw children and teenagers in a Shia slum jumping up and down and cheering our troops as they drove by. Cheering our troops. All day - and it was a long day - we drove through Shia and Sunni neighborhoods. Everywhere, the reception was warm. No violence. None. And no hostility toward our troops. Iraqis went out of their way to tell us we were welcome. Instead of a civil war, something very different happened because of the bombing of the Golden Mosque in Samarra. The fanatic attempt to stir up Sunni-vs.-Shia strife, and the subsequent spate of violent attacks, caused popular support for the U.S. presence to spike upward. Think Abu Musab al-Zarqawi intended that? In place of the civil war that elements in our media declared, I saw full streets, open shops, traffic jams, donkey carts, Muslim holiday flags - and children everywhere, waving as our Humvees passed. Even the clouds of dust we stirred up didn't deter them. And the presence of children in the streets is the best possible indicator of a low threat level. Southeast Baghdad, at least, was happy to see our troops. And we didn't just drive past them. First Lt. Clenn Frost, the platoon leader, took every opportunity to dismount and mingle with the people. Women brought their children out of their compound gates to say hello. A local sheik spontaneously invited us into his garden for colas and sesame biscuits. It wasn't the Age of Aquarius. The people had serious concerns. And security was No. 1. They wanted the Americans to crack down harder on the foreign terrorists and to disarm the local militias. Iraqis don't like and don't support the militias, Shia or Sunni, which are nothing more than armed gangs. Help's on the way, if slowly. The Iraqi Army has confounded its Western critics, performing extremely well last week. And the people trust their new army to an encouraging degree. The Iraqi police aren't all the way there yet, and the population doesn't yet have much confidence in them. But all of this takes time. And even the police are making progress. We took a team of them with us so they could train beside our troops. We visited a Public Order Battalion - a gendarmerie outfit - that reeked of sloth and carelessness. But the regular Iraqi Police outfit down the road proved surprisingly enthusiastic and professional. It's just an uneven, difficult, frustrating process. So what did I learn from a day in the dust and muck of Baghdad's less-desirable boroughs? As the long winter twilight faded into haze and the fires of the busy shawarma stands blazed in the fresh night, I felt that Iraq was headed, however awkwardly, in the right direction. The country may still see a civil war one day. But not just yet, thanks. Violence continues. A roadside bomb was found in the next sector to the west. There will be more deaths, including some of our own troops. But Baghdad's vibrant life has not been killed. And the people of Iraq just might surprise us all. So why were we told that Iraq was irreversibly in the throes of civil war when it wasn't remotely true? I think the answers are straightforward. First, of course, some parties in the West are anxious to believe the worst about Iraq. They've staked their reputations on Iraq's failure. But there's no way we can let irresponsible journalists off the hook - or their parent organizations. Many journalists are, indeed, brave and conscientious; yet some in Baghdad - working for "prestigious" publications - aren't out on the city streets the way they pretend to be. They're safe in their enclaves, protected by hired guns, complaining that it's too dangerous out on the streets. They're only in Baghdad for the byline, and they might as well let their Iraqi employees phone it in to the States. Whenever you see a column filed from Baghdad by a semi-celeb journalist with a "contribution" by a local Iraqi, it means this: The Iraqi went out and got the story, while the journalist stayed in his or her room. And the Iraqi stringers have cracked the code: The Americans don't pay for good news. So they exaggerate the bad. And some of them have agendas of their own. A few days ago, a wild claim that the Baghdad morgue held 1,300 bodies was treated as Gospel truth. Yet Iraqis exaggerate madly and often have partisan interests. Did any Western reporter go to that morgue and count the bodies - a rough count would have done it - before telling the world the news? I doubt it. If reporters really care, it's easy to get out on the streets of Baghdad. The 506th Infantry Regiment - and other great military units - will take journalists on their patrols virtually anywhere in the city. Our troops are great to work with. (Of course, there's the danger of becoming infected with patriot- ism . . .) I'm just afraid that some of our journalists don't want to know the truth anymore. For me, though, memories of Baghdad will be the cannoneers of the 1st Platoon walking the dusty, reeking alleys of Baghdad. I'll recall 1st Lt. Frost conducting diplomacy with the locals and leading his men through a date-palm grove in a search for insurgent mortar sites. I'll remember that lieutenant investigating the murder of a Sunni mullah during last week's disturbances, cracking down on black-marketers, checking up on sewer construction, reassuring citizens - and generally doing the job of a lieutenant-colonel in peacetime. Oh, and I'll remember those "radical Shias" cheering our patrol as we passed by. Ralph Peters is reporting from Forward Operating Base Loyalty, where he's been riding with the 506th Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division. __________________ Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

03-05-2006, 11:00 AM	#70 (permalink)
nezmot Registered User	Oh, well that's all right then.

03-07-2006, 03:31 PM	#74 (permalink)
roachboy Super Moderator Location: essex ma	ground rule question: should we come to some kind of consensus about what this thing "civil war" is? the first article that stevo posted above appears to be from one of those reporters whose politics, embedded/in bed with status combine in this piece with very narrow data and time frames to obviate what he might have to sayabout general matters---the equivalent of his viewpoint would be a story from celine set during world war 1---cant remember the book--two guys from opposing sides run into each other on a country road. should they shoot at each other or not? it turns out that they dont. the peters logic would be to reproduce this story in detail and to conclude from it that there is no war. i dont see why anyone would find this compelling. besides, the guy is a hardline conservative: look at this http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles...e.asp?ID=14321 enough said. at this point, there are two ways that could be taken: the one would be to simply dismiss the article, not because the details it provides are wrong or uninteresting--i may find them to be both, but that's just me, i guess. what seems more potentially constructive is to ask whether the article in any meaningful way addresses the question of whether there is or is not a civil war. it seems to me pretty obvious that the question is one of a longer time-frame and not of isolated incidents--you could dissolve any war by focussing on a few guys wandering around doing stuff--the problems is a basic mistake of interpretation rooted in an inadequate understanding of the analytic object--if this piece is even about the possibility of civil war, it surely makes no interesting case. but what kind of piece could make an interesting case---what are the criteria for evaluating whether an article is or is not addressing whether there is or is not a civil war? ==== the other piece is from one of those fine fellows at the hoover institution whose entire piece seems to be rooted in pentagon press releases and/or events as processed from a chair in palo alto. from the chair in palo alto, he presumes to know what iraqis do and do not want--as if they are of a single mind... but who knows, maybe he is on a junket to iraq and actually talked to folk, toured some american military installations and attended some press pool meetings--the results, in this case, are functionally the same. in it, you get problematic assertions--which are nothing more than that--first about the nature and activities of the "iraqi security forces"--which are not accompanied with even the slightest piece of analysis---none whatsoever---hanson merely repeats numbers of patrols as if that functioned as a clear index of anything--particularly given the information posted earlier about the problems with this force. he argues that the americans are not in a position to be militarily defeated by the insurgency--which he refers to in the singular, for some reason. maybe he is right--assuming that what he understands by military defeat would be a more or less conventional war-type scenario in whcih the firepower of the americans would become determinant. but that scenario has been irrelevant from the first 3 days of this farce in iraq, and i suspect that even mr. hansen knows that, really. i am sure that conservative french journalists were saying the same thing about the maginot line in 1937 too. he didnt speak to anyone from "the insurgency." which--again---he seems to assume that it is one thing. at this point, such assertions are preposterous. but whatever, the guy is from hoover and so one can expect little in the way of informed conceptual work--lots of emphasis on details, none at all on how they connect together or to larger arguments. but hey, why bother with that when the press pool briefings provide arguments readymade? anyway, it is obvious from reading the piece that he knows nothing about what is happening amongst iraqis. he heard bombs. i dont see anything even remotely compelling in his analysis. what he does do--and this is the point at whcih i object to this piece even being posted--is to repeat the linkage between support of bushwar and the attempt to erase the possiblty of civil war, as if the two went together. this is the same argument that aceventura was running out earlier--though in his case, i still am not sure that it was intentional--but here it is. so to repeat: i find that linkage to be intellectual worthless. i dont see how anyone could possibly imagine that it leaves any room for actual thinking about what is happening in iraq right now--hanson wants to reduce the matter to the a priori. he supported the bushwar, so there is no civil war. there is no real need for any of the pretense of being in iraq--or, if he is there, any need for the infotainment that litters this article--he decided the answer to the question up front, and his article is geared toward conservatives who would tend to think in the same way. it seems to me that we--if there is a we on this---need more, better and more complex information--not more one-dimensional political hack pieces that require the needless expenditure of time to dismantle. __________________ a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear it make you sick. -kamau brathwaite Last edited by roachboy; 03-07-2006 at 03:38 PM..

03-07-2006, 04:09 PM	#75 (permalink)
cyrnel Adequate Location: In my angry-dome.	Whatever use the phrase "Civil War" had before Iraq has been exhausted. When ex-generals, politicos, protesters and bloggers all scream or deny it without any real definition, it has become its own baggage. Perhaps "Civility Challenged" would be less problematic? __________________ There are a vast number of people who are uninformed and heavily propagandized, but fundamentally decent. The propaganda that inundates them is effective when unchallenged, but much of it goes only skin deep. If they can be brought to raise questions and apply their decent instincts and basic intelligence, many people quickly escape the confines of the doctrinal system and are willing to do something to help others who are really suffering and oppressed." -Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media, p. 195

03-08-2006, 03:09 AM	#76 (permalink)
tecoyah Illusionary	A civil war is a war in which the competing parties are segments of the same country or empire. Civil war is usually a high intensity stage in an unresolved political struggle for national control of state power. As in any war, the conflict may be over other matters such as religion, ethnicity, or distribution of wealth. Some civil wars are also categorized as revolutions when major societal restructuring is a possible outcome of the conflict. This is the most complete definition of Civil War I could find, without posting a freakin' Book. By this definition I would not yet place Iraq in the category, if only because the occupation is still the focus of the insurgency. If the United States leaves this role, I see no possible outcome short of an actual Civil War. __________________ Holding onto anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned. - Buddha

03-08-2006, 05:03 AM	#77 (permalink)
ktspktsp Addict Location: Reykjavik, Iceland	From someone who's been through 10 years of civil war: this is a civil war. It's still comparatively low-level for now, but it is a civil war. This sucks sooooo much.