Nothing. The hope is that eventually the Iraqis will be able to stop it on their own through their police system instead of America. Slow process, but that kind of thing takes time.

We have killed a major terrorist leader in Iraq. We will continue to kill major terrorist leaders in Iraq. Five years from now we will likelly be killing major terrorist leaders in Iraq. Perhaps in ten years we can turn over the killing of major terrorist leaders in Iraq....to the Iraqis.

Or....we may be killing Iraqis who are Major Terrorist leaders in Iraq. This killing while an important boost politically....borders on irrelevant in the actual "War on Terrorism", and in fact may simply end up a recruiting tool for the bad guys. In my opinion we are fighting a war that cannot be won with Bombs, but hey....what do I know.

For the record all aid for the Russian-Afghan war was funded through the Pakistani ISI, America had no discretion as to how it was allotted. This is ofcourse due to the whole premise that the Mujahdeen movement would have been without merit it America "the Great Satan" had a direct hand in what was a conflict portrayed as an Islamic/Arab struggle.

Something that I wonder about is how the treatment of his body is viewed by the extremists or faithfully practicing Muslims even. From what I gather, there are certain ways that the body must be treated even including how long after death the burial should be. Is the autopsy something that is going to further fuel extremist hatred towards the US? Will moderate Muslims understand why the US is examining the remains so closely? Should the US even give two shits about any of these religious practices? Is this even anything to wonder about or is it the mainstream media’s influence on how I digest reports about things of this nature?

Or maybe he was so covered in dust, blood and other crud that they had to wash his face to ID him.

I’m not saying that the war is not being sanitized; I think it is, but some sanitization is needed.

The same thing was done with Saddam's sons. The washing wasn't necessary for the military to ID him, but it was needed for the public to be satisfied.

I was going to mention the Saddam family treatment.

It isn't easy to tell who's who with blood & grime everywhere. A mortician's makeup job would be my idea of sanitizing.

This guy would have been appropriate for a plywood casket propped outside the General Store.

Bodyhammer86. the statement above is a nice intro to this 1998 Mainstream media report:
To dismiss the possibility that 9/11 was the "Pearl Harbor" that PNAC said would be necessary to implement it's agenda, and that Zarqawi was entirely, or almost entirely, an American "creation" that debuted in Powell's Feb. 5, 2003, is difficult, and probably not in my best interest to do.
I can't tell when the government is telling me the truth. How can you, how is it that some of you show no doubt?

Isn't it curious, that, when they couldn't "catch" Zarqawi, he was reduced by the same folks who bring you this "bombing Op"....to a clownish, incompetent stooge? Which is it? Stooge or death of a bogey man signifigant enough to turn the tide of war?
Yeah, General Lynch, it does "make you wonder". I wonder how some of the folks who post here know what to embrace, or dispute, and how much of what they embrace is more about how they "feel" than about what the facts vs. the contradictions and later exposure of outright lies by their government officials should affect opinion.

Remember the "mobile bio weapons trailers"? They were described by Powell at the UN, in the same presentation where he rolled out the al Zarqawi / Al Qaeda connection.

Say....has anybody even wondered if this Zarqawi corpse has a leg missing, or not? Wasn't treatment of his leg, the reason that he was in Baghdad in 2002 for medical treatment. That was the story that our government fed us to link Saddam to Al Qaeda. Do any of these questions even matter, in a "breaking news" environment, like this one?
If it matters more to you that your expectations are "met" by government disclosures, than if the disclosures are actually true, what does this show you about your own POV...might it actually be that the result is your own, personal "Blowback", as a consequence of too much patriotic feeling, and not enough curiosity?

Both WaPo and NYT are reporting the above claim. Don't y'all hate it when the story changes?

NYT article hosted by TO

host,

for someone questioning eveyone's viewpoints, what about yours? you latch on to every single piece of dissenting information you can find, regardless of its source or validity. your "story" has not been proven by any means, and you assail others for believing a story that has much more evidence going for it. if it has a remote chance of making the us gov or pres. bush look bad, you're all for it. you come into every arguement from the same doorway, with the same slant, regardless of topic.

without a bit of objectivity, how can you expect to be taken seriously?

docbungle, I didn't make the Bush administrations record or reputation, they did.

I've got plenty of company....and frankly, I don't understand why you "raise the bar" so high as to what news reports I should post....how much of what Bush and Cheney have told us in their official statments, turned out to be "proven"? My statements and the links that I've posted on this forum are much more closer to the truth than the crap that has come out of their mouths, especially concerning issues of war and their efforts to uphold the protections specified to protect the rights of the people in the Consitution.
I think that your criticism of me is misplaced. Shooting the messenger is a poor substitute for challenging and questioning everything that our "leaders" disclose to us. Their record for truth telling and avoiding making deliberately misleading statements, sucks. How should I react to what they've done and what they've said. I'm concerned that I've not been nearly critical or questioning, enough, given their breach of trust in matters as serious as war and the handling of intelligence and classified information.

Have a look:

For myself, I don't like this bomb-suspects-from-the-sky business. As I mentioned on another forum - if this is allowed under the new Iraqi constitution, that's a problem.

I'm also wondering how many places they bombed until they got the right one?

<b>Why does former CBS News foreign correspondent, Tom Fenton, "hate" America?</b>

Maybe it has something to do with American's "knowing what they Know", despite the "facts". Walter Pincus of the WaPo is one of the most earnest and reliable, political news reporters of our era, and he sez:
The Washington Post article, excerpted above, was published on June 10. Please click on the link and read the entire text, then read it again. Then read the posts on this thread. I'm no Walter Pincus, not by a long shot. But I'll go to my grave, trying to be someone as far from Tom Fenton's description of an <b>American who is fed that "which fits what they already know"</b> , as I possibly can be.......

How about you? You've made a special effort, you're reading a thread on a politics forum. Make the extra effort and take the extra time to never accept what the government tells you, just because it seems to fit what you think that you know. Unless you question everything, you'll just be a repository for what they've told you, and you'll be able to repeat it all like a parrot, but you'll only "know" what the government wants you to "know".

So which American do you think that you more closely resemble, the one who Tom Fenton describes on page 20 in his book, or are you more like Ray McGovern, who had this "in person exchange" with Rumsfeld, last month:
In response to a segment in an earlier post, on page #1 on this thread:

The above probably is an accurate description of the attitude held by the Pentagon, and by the White House, too....but dammit....I'm not in the military and, neither are you, anymore, reconmike. Is it even "American" to quietly accept a situation like you described? A "right" has to be exercised, now and again, and maybe the response from the government will come in the form of tear gas, or a nightstick over the head, or even a rifle butt in the teeth, but if we don't bother to question them, and to speak our mind, then what did the soldiers who gave their lives at Iwo, or at Bastogne, fight and die to protect?

Is it unfair to use the words 'Al Qaida in Iraq" and 'Pentagon' interchangably, especially after the 'Military Plays Up Role of Zarqawi' article on the first page? How can we be sure that this new internet posting proclaiming the new leader of al qaida in Iraq is anything other than more BS from the Pentagon?

That's just it: we don't know. Al-Muhajer may not even exist. Al-Muhajer could be a short order cook who once was in the same area code as an al Qaeda member. The fact of the matter is that there is no more reason to trust these reports...which means we either wait for another terrorist attack or for absolutely nothing to happen by a ficticious terrorist. It's all a sick game. al-Zarqawi was a nobody until the Pentagon (or was it the DoD? I can't keep it all straight) alledged that he was the missing link between Iraq and the al Qaeda.

I don't know....so how can you know??? Time Magazine reports yesterday that a small Delta Force team of U.S. soldiers was close enough to determine that Zarqawi did not leave the house before they called in an airstrike. Today, Gen. Caldwell says that U.S. troops did not arrive until 28 minutes after the air strike, just 24 minutes before Zarqawi died.

The U.S. Army tells us that Zarqawi died of lung injuries, alleged "proof" that he was not "beaten to death", but is it "proof" that he was not beaten?

What can one say, except "Good Job"?

There will of course be another one, but if the Palestinians continue to self implode and Israel finishes its wall or *gasp* if they pull their collective heads out and actually negotiate peace with Israel, then we'll finally start on the road to a lasting peace.

Host,

Honestly, I'm not sure if it makes any difference to me whether he was beaten to death or bombed to death. I mean, they dropped the bomb on the house specifically because HE was there - so whether the killing was close range or by pushing a button, it almost amounts to an assassination... It seems to me that this matters more than the exact mechanism of his demise (if it matters at all). Really, I see this as a non-issue.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not a person that thinks the US has license to kill, imprison, and torture anyone we want, but I am rather apathetic about whether troops beat Zarqawi before he died, or even if they killed him by beating him. After all, they dropped a bomb on him, and that was intended to kill him. And for the record, whether Zarqawi was incompetent or not, and whether his mayhem was a construction of the DoD or not doesn't matter to me either. He was someone who either killed innocents well or poorly, and for that I think he was fair game.

I guess I'd just rather see us pursue questions that are a little more meaningful...

The only reasonable way I can interpret your quotes, save concluding they are outright contradictions (which isn't out of the realm of possibility, but the following is an alternate reading), is to understand that the second reference is to a small group of team members that the speaker did not include in his operatational definition of "coalition forces."

it's entirely reasonable, I think, to understand that there are "coalition forces" as an entity seperate or over and above smaller units (e.g., Delta Force, or whathaveyou) that may or may not be contained within that signifier when the person thinking about "coalition forces" is speaking.

Be they special forces or new privates out of basic training, I'd think the first Americans on the scene would realize "dead men tell no tales" and not beat the shit out of him. For the most part, our Marines and sodliers are better trained that what the media leads us to think.

Good. I can only hope. And he still got off lightly. his head should have been sawed off slowly. leaving the spine and arteries intact then plucked one by one all while being pissed on.

Just one.

ubertuber, If I was confident that the government had given us enough information to make realistic determinations about Zarqawi, or about anything else related to Iraq, or the unrelated "war on terr-urrrr", I would not react to this "news" the only way, under the circumstances, that I find myself reacting. I'm taking this tale in, as I would a "cartoon". I don't know what to believe, and I don't know how anyone else knows, either....not with this "history:
<b>With the above "history", as context...(How can we know where we are, if we don't know where we've been?) and the following denials, disclaimers, and revisions, how can a rational mind represent that any "conclusions" are even possible ?</b>
If I allowed myself to be "sucked in", I could react with wonderment over the fact that all possible efforts weren't undertaken to attempt to apprehend "Al Qaeda's #1" in Iraq, "alive"...for the wealth of intelligence that interrogating him might bring. I could react to the bombing death of a small child as "collateral damage", etc.

Instead, my sensibilities are still smarting from earlier disclosures that the NY Times reporter Judy Miller planted false WMD stories that were handed to her By Ahmed Chalabi, probably directed by PNAC. I recall the false certainty with which the Bush administration embellished the false "mobile biological weapons trailers" story, and the "Op" about the Zarqawi propaganda campaign that was fed to NY Times', Dexter Filkins, via selective leaks. That "Op" included a fake Zarqawi "letter".

I note that some folks here believe that the NY Times is "liberal", even after all of the disclosures that it's reporters and editors have been so "incurious" when it came time to publish what should have been suspected as blatant propaganda. I note that so many who post here, have their "minds made up", and I have to wonder....and post....over and over....how they can do that.
What do they "pick out", that they know to be "true"? Last week, the Haditha atrocities story and a deteriorating stock market dominated the news.

The....as if a switch was thrown, the government was able to shift attention, almost instantaneously...to the story that it wanted us to focus on....the still changing story of our military's "success" in "bombing" the bogey man that was created by our government's own propaganda.

The "timing" of the new "our military get's it's evil-doer" story, was just as convenient. a few days ago, as this scenario was, 2 years ago:
....and then....as now...almost as if he was paid to take the stage on cue, just 12 days after the Abu Ghraib controversy was reported, this convenient, and I'm sure....(I'm not....but too many of you are..) "story" came along..the "bogeyman, Zarqawi", to deflect attention away from U.S. war crimes du jour:
If the folks who really should read this post, have even gotten this far into it, I'm sure many of them are shaking their heads and muttering, ooohhhh...that "host", why does he hate American soooo much? My question is...why do you believe that our government's executive branch has so much, coincidental, fortuituous luck? Their christian god must have been smiling down on them when he gave them "Zarqawi"....a co-operative and unimginably "evil" adversary, who made attention on Abu Ghraib, "Vaporize" when he was incompetent enough to conveniently, personally behead Nick Berg, video tape the crime, and then post it online for the world to see, just at the right time to rehabilitate the reputation of our government. <b>If I can convince even one of you to be more curious....more skeptical....if it's even possible!</b>

Yeah.

God did it for the GOP.

And Zarqawi was "invented" to deflect attention from Abu Ghraib.

And Nick Berg...I don't even know what you're trying to say there. Are you implying Zarqawi was too competent to be bombed to death, because he was succesfull at beheadings and showing them on the internet? You said incompetent, but the entire sentence doesn't make any sense. You had to have mistyped something in there somewhere.

At least you are admitting "Z" is dead now? Or at least more than likely dead?

Although you have listed an impressive array of non-sequiturs regarding the entire event, and truthout.org is blowing their usual amount of hot air, this request to prove a negative is the icing on the cake.

Pray tell what "alleged proof" WOULD satisfy you? That a beating DIDN'T happen, I mean?

(Sigh)-- Just remembered that pointing out logical fallacies is a "personal attack."

docbungle, Powell, Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld raised Zarqawi in stature to the point that they announced that he was "worth" a $25 million bounty.

Do you find it believable, that Zarqawi, in the midst of the escalating negative publicity disclosing and condemning Abu Ghraib abuse and degradation of Iraqi prisoners, chose to personally behead Nick Berg, on video, then obligingly post the video file on a website for download by the media, claim credit for doing so, but wear a mask during the videotaping that entirely covered his head?
The timing of the beheading, which immediatley shifted focus of negative publicity away from the Bush admin., and the U.S. military, and turned all of it onto Zarqawi, personally, was what I meant by my "incompetent" reference.
None of it is very believable. It's just too convenient, and it is such a "poor" strategic decision by an adversary portrayed by our leaders as "cunning" enough to be worthy of a $25 million bounty, it makes the "story" that Zarqawi, the terrorist, "mastermind", conveniently "stepped in", at the most opportune moment for our leaders, to display his own "personal" brutality, and thus, justify and redeem our leaders for invading and occupying Iraq, and relegated Abu Ghraib from a human rights "scandal", to a minor transgression,
moved suddenly to the back page of most newspapers.

Here is some illuminating news reporting about Zarqawi, in chronological order:
Read the news reports in the quote boxes or at the links above, docbungle, then read Powell's entire Feb., 2003 presentation to the "world", (that I confined and abbreviated above, to "Zarqawi references") at the UN. Note that Powell's key assistant of 16 years, Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, later called Powell's speech that day, as I documented earlier in this thread, <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/meast/08/19/powell.un/">"the lowest point in my life".</a>

Then, please consider how interwined the Powell/Bush administration assertions about Zarqawi were with their argument that he was the "key" proof of a close ties and cooperation between Saddam's government and Al Qaeda. After Cheney's discredited assertions about Atta's Prague "meeting" with an Iraqi intelligenc official he denied what he was videotaped saying:
There...docbungle ! Now, if you've skimmed through all of this, you pretty much end up "not knowing", as much as I "don't know". It's all there, in chronological order....and it ends in the month of Oct., with BBC quoting Rumsfeld saying that Zarqawi, "never took an oath" to Bin Laden, and the asiatimes.com report, just ten days later, says the same. Lastly, the 9-11 Commission report footnote, disputes Powell's "proof" that Zarqaqi's “Ansar al-Islam:Al Qa’ida’s Ally in Northeastern Iraq,” was anything other than, "uncertain".
If you've read Powell's entire Feb., 5, 2003 presentation to the UN, it might be "fun" to pick out two things that he used to try to build a coalition in the UN to invade Iraq, that have stood up to time and scrutiny....just two.

I don't know what to "believe" as to whether Zarqawi actually existed as described by our leaders, whether he is/was "al-Qaida", whether he is alive or dead, whether he was beaten before he died, whether a "child" was killed in the house where he was allegedly bombed, or whether he even mattered, beyond being the subject of a long and contradictory, US government propaganda "Op". I do know that nobody else, outside of a small group close to our leaders and their trusted senior military and intelligence officers, know either. This is just another little exercise, brought to you by that "Bush hatin",
"America hatin" liber-ull, "host", intended to challenge you to think about what you really "can know" reliably, based on what actually is spewed out of this U.S. administration...or at least, what you have to ignore, in order to disagree with what I've tried to persuade you to examine.......

Host are you trying to move this to paranoia?

Half the threads in politics are paranoia. sorry. :confused:

Seaver, stevo.....

I won't settle for participating in a political forum where discussion degrades to a level where everyone regurgitates the opinions shaped entirely by the government's prevailing message, just because that version is repeated the most by our leaders.....I want a "balanced" view, even it causes me to be less
"sure" of what I "know". WTF is the sense of being "sure" of things that probably aren't true?

I'm trying to "raise the bar", by highlighting the "contradictions" in the news reporting that reaches us, versus what most of us "think" that we "know", and the results are an "eye opener", in their implications.

So too.....are both of your responses......

Host you dont want a "balanced view", dont even attempt to claim it. If it were balanced you wouldnt search for everything "good" that happens is a conspiracy, and everything "bad" is actually because of government action, and the blaming of the people who did do it is an attempt to fool us.

I wont settle for a conversation where theories are thrown out with little more evidence than stock prices or the fact that Bush's polls go up after Americans died on 9/11. I wont settle for conspiracy theories of voter fraud because your candidate lost, based on machines that weren't even used in the conflicted states. I wont settle for your conspiracy posts in politics where they lead to no discussion. You try to give us "eye openers" where it only leads to people giving a chuckle and ignoring your post.

http://www.oldmatador.com/apb/icon_potkettle.gif

Seaver, if something in here belongs in Paranoia, it will be moved to Paranoia. I'm not a mod, and neither are you or host. If you don't agree with something, then say so and explain why. I remember this old story about Einstien. He had come up with one of his brilliant theories, and germans scientists started a smear campaign against him saying that he was insane and a jewish sympathizer, etc...so Einstien simply responded, (paraphrased) "All you need to prove me wrong is one fact." My point? If you want to argue against someone, just present your argument. IMHO.

Interesting point.