Senator Alleges White House Wrote Allawi's Speech 1281
Jeremiah Cornelius writes "In a letter to the White House, a leading US Senate Democrat, Diane Feinstein, expressed 'profound dismay' that the White House allegedly wrote a large portion of Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi's speech to Congress last week. 'His speech gave me hope that reconstruction efforts were proceeding in most of the country and that elections could be held on schedule. To learn that this was not an independent view, but one that was massaged by your campaign operatives, jaundices the speech and reduces the credibility of his remarks.'"
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Ahh (Score:5, Interesting)
To sum up, worked-for-caesar.
Debate (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Ahh (Score:5, Interesting)
Kerry dominated Bush in today's debate (Score:2, Interesting)
I wish Kerry had mentioned this fact in today's debate... that Allawi's speech was influenced by the Bush election (not *re-election, mind you) campaign.
Re:Ahh (Score:1, Interesting)
I think you're making a mistake if you're viewing the Iraq war as a war the United States waged against Iraq. I prefer to think of it as a war that the Bush Administration and the Iraqi "insurgents" are jointly waging against the American and Iraqi people.
daily show (Score:5, Interesting)
Puppeteer? (Score:3, Interesting)
But Kerry didn't call him a puppet in the debate.. Bush broght it up. Bush's subcouncious seems to have gotten in his way a few times tonight.
Re:Let's face it... (Score:3, Interesting)
Iraq is now a mismanaged mess that didn't need to be. With full the support of other countries we would not have to stretch ourselves so thin to help Iraq rebuild... of course that was never going to happen with the Bush administration.
Re:Ahh (Score:5, Interesting)
slashdot askew (Score:2, Interesting)
How about a story on how the Dems are sponsoring a Bill to Bring Back the Draft in both the House and Senate so that Kerry can go out on the stump and say
"See there, they are bringing back the draft"
http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascity/news/pol
There's you a conspiracy Cowboy, you wanna talk some RatherGate next?
WTF is a Prime Minister? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Is anyone really surprised by this? (Score:3, Interesting)
does anyone think Bush and Kerry will have a real debate?
Actually, tonight's debate was oddly substantial. Kerry stuck to short, cogent, fact-based criticisms of Bush foreign policy, and Bush spent almost all of his time on the defensive. That's not a position he's good at, by the way. Karl Rove has trained W. to take the stance of aggressor, regardless of the facts on the ground.
Not that any of this is terribly surprising. People tend to forget that Kerry was captain of the debate team at Yale, and also gave some of the best Congressional testimony regarding the Vietnam war. The president, on the other hand, has never been particularly quick on his feet. See if you can dig up some of the joint press conferences with Tony Blair during the Iraq War. The president has NEVER been a good extemporaneous speaker, and he looks even worse when he stands next to a professional.
Short version: Kerry wanted a real debate, so he forced one. Regardless of format.
Re:Let's face it... (Score:3, Interesting)
It would have been better if he'd used anyone elses writting staff, but using Bush's confuses the line.
allawi on wikipedia (Score:3, Interesting)
The article on Allawi [wikipedia.org] over at wikipedia is quite informative, though it raises more questions than it answers... there are a lot of wild theories and accusations out there, hard to know which are true. At the very least, he's led an interesting life. Since he's worked so closely with the CIA, MI6, and the Baath party in his earlier years, and seems to have a (possibly undeserved) reputation as some kind of hitman/thug/loose cannon, I wouldn't blame an Iraqi for not trusting him.
Does anyone have a link to the washington post article that Feinstein is quoting? This [washingtonpost.com] is close, but not it.
-jim
Re:Is this news? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Is this news? (Score:5, Interesting)
If the White House wrote Allawi's speech, that would be one thing. If the Bush campaign wrote it, that would be quite another. But the Bush campaign has never been shy about using the power of the White House to get an upper hand in their campaigning, and this is nothing out of the ordinary for them. They're in a position to do it, but they're not supposed to do it. Apparently they see nothing wrong with it. Recall the terror alert they issued within hours of Kerry's DNC speech. Could have been a real terror alert, so they have plausible deniability and Kerry can't say anything. Now we have the Bush campaign quietly putting phrases directly into Allawi's mouth, and Kerry can't criticize this Pollyanna nonsense without "undercutting a valuable ally". (Like ahemcoughFrancecoughcoughGermanyahem never mind.)
Relying on plausible deniability is OK if you only do it once in a while. But as these terribly convenient events pile up, the probability of the null hypothesis (i.e. that these are all just coincidences, and nobody is abusing his presidential powers) gets smaller and smaller. The electorate starts dividing into people with a healthy level of cynicism and people who are essentially hero worshippers.
Re:I'm amazed (Score:2, Interesting)
I think our populace is much smarter than previous ones, personally. Never before Iraq has such a war been protested before it even began, in the western world.
Re:Ahh (Score:1, Interesting)
Comment removed (Score:2, Interesting)
News for nerds. (Score:1, Interesting)
It's not skewed to the left. It's skewed to the middle, and the middle is skewing to Kerry.
Not because Kerry is a great guy, but because Bush is SO bad, and has screwed us over SO much, that we can't even consider voting for a 3rd party anymore.
Bush vs. Clinton, I could see picking either side based on your values. Clinton vs. Dole, I could see picking either side based on your values. Bush vs. Gore, I could see picking either side based on your values.
But now we know better. If you support Bush, it's because you will support whoever is the Republican candidate NO MATTER WHAT. You just can not rationally support Bush. Everything he has done is wrong.
A monkey can stay the course, and they're much cheper.
Comment removed (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Puppet Show? (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm not convinced that the Japanese really benefitted from the boom, either. Sure, some made a lot of money, but the general standard of living isn't great, their history is kinda funky (there's a belief in Japan that they won WWII, for example) and the suicide rate is remarkably high.
On the whole, Japan isn't much different (socially) than it was 50-100 years ago. Technologically, they're equal to - or better than - the US. Expecially in nuclear reactor technology (which they're working on and we aren't). On the whole, I don't consider that a safe mix.
Actually, I don't consider it safe at all, when ANY country is out-of-sync when it comes to education, society, technology and art. To me, those are the four key things. I honestly do not believe it is possible for a society to break down, while those four key properties are in balance. Likewise, I do not believe it is possible for a society to function, if any two of those properties become severely disjoint.
Yeah, yeah, I'm one of these overly simplistic idealists that believes that world peace is possible. To that, I'd argue that history proves me right. I'll happily collect some references on that, if anyone's really interested.
Anyways, my point is that if you can bring those four key aspects back into step, something like terrorism becomes impossible. Terrorism requires three things to be true:
Educate the populace, and the populace is no longer vulnerable to the unknown and fear - two very potent weapons. Add technology - hey, it can be strictly defensive! - and the populace is at much lower risk from either side.
Once the people are taken out of the equation, the two sides have nothing much to fight about. The vast majority of the fighting is just to control the masses - it has nothing to do with achieving any tactical or strategic objective.
The biggest reason the US and the Iraqi "insurgents" are fighting in densely populated areas is that they are putting on a show. A show that may very well knock 'em dead. Literally. But it is all for show. You don't see the US attempting to evacuate the worst-affected areas, do you? No. Even though that would make their job a lot easier.
For a start, if there's no civilians around, then anyone remaining there is not going to be civilian. Simple, isn't it?
Also, it's easier to repair things like generators, if you can use all available energy to do the rebuilding, rather than to use it on cooking food, boiling water, etc.
So, why has there been no attempt? It's a choice, leaving them there, so what's the big advantage? Well, the biggest advantage to the US is that it provides political ammunition against the insurgents. I'm not convinced that human lives need to be treated that way, but hey, I'm not the President.
This isn't a war that is likely to finish any time soon. The Irish Question took hundreds of years, from the beginning of the most recent occupation to the point where some work on settlements has been made. And the Irish have generally been a lot more mature about the whole thing.
Keep putting the innocents in the middle, and this could easily take three or four hundred years to settle down. The only possibility I see is to balance the Iraqi society (as outlined above) and keep the innocents as much out of it as possible. Achieve that, and it would be possible to see Iraq restabilize sometime in the next year or two.
That's a lot sooner than 400 years from now.
The Bush administration is habitually dishonest. (Score:3, Interesting)
I recommend a new book, The Family: The Real Story of the Bush Dynasty [amazon.com]. Don't expect any author to be perfect. However, this book is an excellent overview of the Bush family, and the best book by this author. Here is a quote which shows just one more fact about the chronic lying of George Herbert Walker Bush and his son George W. Bush:
"The official family tree provided by the Bush archivists does not include the two mentally retarded daughters of John M. Walker, and lists only two of James Smith Bush's wives, not all four of them; one of Ray Walker's two wives is omitted, and George Herbert Walker III is listed with only two, instead of three, wives."
Note that the author of that book has never lost a lawsuit, for any of her writings. As you would expect from a major publishing house like Doubleday: "Before publication, each book is vetted by several sets of lawyers; facts and sources are checked and rechecked and sources documented."
--
Before, Saddam was killing. Now, the U.S. Gov. is killing and destabilizing, and you pay. Improvement?
Re:I'm amazed (Score:4, Interesting)
In fact, I think as kids get older and are in high school they should have a lot more choices about which subjects to study, within certain guidelines, but that doesn't change my position that a strong core of every child's education should include reading Plato, Ovid, and Virgil, at least in sampler form at the later elementary or junior high school level, and in complete form in high school. Additionally, Gibbon's "The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire", probably in one of the abridged forms, and some of the other excellent historical analyses of the Roman era should be read by every American schoolchild by the time they graduate from high school.
I had a very modest exposure to the classics and ancient Greek and Roman history in high school, and that was at a top private school. At the public schools I went to in elementary and junior high school, forget about it. Two of the best classes I took in college were "The Rome of Augustus" and "Alexander the Great". I remember thinking that a lot of the material is pretty accessible, and so relevant to modern life, I was amazed that more of it isn't taught at a younger age in the US.
Instead, we read great literature like "Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit" and lots of crappy books I can't really remember. Every year we had to read some damned politically correct book on how oppressed black people were 100 years ago, or how oppressed gay people are now (that trend came when I was in high school). I got it after the first 10 times. Anyway, not saying there shouldn't be modern literature or modern history in the curriculum, but it seems with the death of latin as a commonly taught subject, the educational profession also decided to kill off all the excellent, very interesting and critically important parts of ancient literature and history that are key to understanding what a democracy is, what a republic is, how the originators of these governmental forms perceived them, and how much they questioned the assumptions underlying their governments and the behavior of their fellow citizens, how often they were deluded or tricked by their leaders, and the many missteps they made in running their own society, of which their writers were often acutely aware.
Okay, I'm ranting again, but I can't stress how important this is. Most Americans would say they believe in Western liberal democracy, but as often as not they don't really understand what it is and where it came from. Our President talks of bringing freedom to the world, but I have a feeling he's never read any of the works I'm describing either (he may have read a certain book by Macchiavelli however, or at least some of his aides clearly have).
Re:Is this news? (Score:2, Interesting)
There is no hint George W. Bush was gay. (Score:5, Interesting)
The record seems to show that George W. Bush became a cheerleader [celebrity-pics.net] because he wanted to be close to the campus leaders, who were, at the time, athletes. Since he did not excel at athletics, being a cheerleader was the only way he could be one of the student leaders. The captain of the cheerleaders was part of the social group that included the captains of the teams.
George W. Bush was an obnoxious alcoholic then. The culture of alcoholics is very different from the male gay culture. There is no hint George W. Bush was gay. He was interested in partying, and being close to the student leaders was a way to be involved in the parties. Two of his arrests came from stunts that seem like something a drunk person would do. The third arrest was for drunk driving.
I can cite numerous authorities for this. For example, see George W. Bush: Living the Bush Legacy [cnn.com].
--
24 wars [hevanet.com] since WW2: Creating fear so rich [hevanet.com] people [hevanet.com] can profit.
Re:Is this news? (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Letters from Iraq (Score:5, Interesting)
AN UPDATE ON INSPECTION
"The nerve agent VX is one of the most toxic ever developed.
Iraq has declared that it only produced VX on a pilot scale, just a few tonnes and that the quality was poor and the product unstable. Consequently, it was said, that the agent was never weaponised. Iraq said that the small quantity of agent remaining after the Gulf War was unilaterally destroyed in the summer of 1991.
(2003 report)
UNMOVIC, however, has information that conflicts with this account. There are indications that Iraq had worked on the problem of purity and stabilization and that more had been achieved than has been declared. Indeed, even one of the documents provided by Iraq indicates that the purity of the agent, at least in laboratory production, was higher than declared.
There are also indications that the agent was weaponised. In addition, there are questions to be answered concerning the fate of the VX precursor chemicals, which Iraq states were lost during bombing in the Gulf War or were unilaterally destroyed by Iraq.
I would now like to turn to the so-called "Air Force document" that I have discussed with the Council before. This document was originally found by an UNSCOM inspector in a safe in Iraqi Air Force Headquarters in 1998 and taken from her by Iraqi minders. It gives an account of the expenditure of bombs, including chemical bombs, by Iraq in the Iraq-Iran War. I am encouraged by the fact that Iraq has now provided this document to UNMOVIC.
The document indicates that 13,000 chemical bombs were dropped by the Iraqi Air Force between 1983 and 1988, while Iraq has declared that 19,500 bombs were consumed during this period. Thus, there is a discrepancy of 6,500 bombs. The amount of chemical agent in these bombs would be in the order of about 1,000 tonnes. In the absence of evidence to the contrary, we must assume that these quantities are now unaccounted for.
The discovery of a number of 122 mm chemical rocket warheads in a bunker at a storage depot 170 km southwest of Baghdad was much publicized. This was a relatively new bunker and therefore the rockets must have been moved there in the past few years, at a time when Iraq should not have had such munitions.
The investigation of these rockets is still proceeding. Iraq states that they were overlooked from 1991 from a batch of some 2,000 that were stored there during the Gulf War. This could be the case. They could also be the tip of a submerged iceberg. The discovery of a few rockets does not resolve but rather points to the issue of several thousands of chemical rockets that are unaccounted for.
The finding of the rockets shows that Iraq needs to make more effort to ensure that its declaration is currently accurate. During my recent discussions in Baghdad, Iraq declared that it would make new efforts in this regard and had set up a committee of investigation. Since then it has reported that it has found a further 4 chemical rockets at a storage depot in Al Taji.
I might further mention that inspectors have found at another site a laboratory quantity of thiodiglycol, a mustard gas precursor.
Whilst I am addressing chemical issues, I should mention a matter, which I reported on 19 December 2002, concerning equipment at a civilian chemical plant at Al Fallujah. Iraq has declared that it had repaired chemical processing equipment previously destroyed under UNSCOM supervision, and had installed it at Fallujah for the production of chlorine and phenols. We have inspected this equipment and are conducting a detailed technical evaluation of it. On completion, we will decide whether this and other equipment that has been recovered by Iraq should be destroyed.
Biological weapons
I have mentioned the issue of anthrax to the Council on previous occasions and I come back to it as it is an important one.
Iraq has declared that it produced about 8,500 litres of this biological warfare agent, which i
Re:daily show (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm not sure if anyone else has been watching this unfolding, as I have, but the relationship between Ted Coppel and John Stewart is really quite facinating.
Back during the Democratic convention, Stewart was featured in a Nightline interview, and he discussed the issue of the press no longer trying to get to the facts, but rather just allowing the two sides to go through their talking points, even with blatantly incorrect facts. Before the interview, Coppel made a comment about how uncomfortable he was with so many people getting informed by the Daily Show, but he obviously agreed, at least to some extent, by the end of the interview.
They got a chance to meet again during the Republican convention, and largely the same thing happened. Stewart talked about how the media is not doing it's job and loosing the public, and Coppel wasn't taking anything too much too heart.
Each time after these two meet, both their shows change significantly. Coppel just simply gets tougher mainly, but also does a (light) story on the subject. Stewart throws in a few references in his own show, such as the reporter who keeps talking about the confirmed facts as "one side of the story", and explaining that "unbiased" means giving equal time for each side to offer it's spin to the public.
I've been watching both shows for quite some time, and they've been completely seperate for the entire time. Then they meet, and become instant allies if you will, and there is an immediate and distinct change to both of them each time.
It's really facinating, mainly because Coppel is perhaps the most trusted news reporter since Cronkite, and he is actually realizing there is substance to the issue. A big change from the status quo, where the media is blissfully wrapped up in itself, and paying no attention to anything unless it comes from another reporter. It's the ultimate in incestuous relationships, and the public is the one who looses out.
what's going on (Score:4, Interesting)
Who, in your opinion, *does* know what's going on in Iraq? Allawi, their new leader, whose speeches are written for him by the White House who chose him for his past CIA work? You?
Report from Iraq. By on who actually is there! (Score:5, Interesting)
9/30/2004
Farnaz Fassihi, a Wall Street Journal correspondent in Iraq, confirmed that a widely-redistributed letter she emailed to friends about the nightmarish situation in Iraq was indeed written by her. Too bad the WSJ doesn't allow this reporter to write these kinds of stories for the paper.
=====
Being a foreign correspondent in Baghdad these days is like being under virtual house arrest. Forget about the reasons that lured me to this job: a chance to see the world, explore the exotic, meet new people in far away lands, discover their ways and tell stories that could make a difference.
Little by little, day-by-day, being based in Iraq has defied all those reasons. I am house bound. I leave when I have a very good reason to and a scheduled interview. I avoid going to people's homes and never walk in the streets. I can't go grocery shopping any more, can't eat in restaurants, can't strike a conversation with strangers, can't look for stories, can't drive in any thing but a full armored car, can't go to scenes of breaking news stories, can't be stuck in traffic, can't speak English outside, can't take a road trip, can't say I'm an American, can't linger at checkpoints, can't be curious about what people are saying, doing, feeling. And can't and can't.
There has been one too many close calls, including a car bomb so near our house that it blew out all the windows. So now my most pressing concern every day is not to write a kick-ass story but to stay alive and make sure our Iraqi employees stay alive. In Baghdad I am a security personnel first, a reporter second.
It's hard to pinpoint when the turning point exactly began. Was it April when the Fallujah fell out of the grasp of the Americans? Was it when Moqtada and Jish Mahdi declared war on the U.S. military? Was it when Sadr City, home to ten percent of Iraq's population, became a nightly battlefield for the Americans? Or was it when the insurgency began spreading from isolated pockets in the Sunni triangle to include most of Iraq? Despite President Bush's rosy assessments, Iraq remains a disaster. If under Saddam it was a potential threat, under the Americans it has been transformed to imminent and active threat, a foreign policy failure bound to haunt the United States for decades to come.
Iraqis like to call this mess the situation. ÊWhen asked how are things? they reply: the situation is very bad.
What they mean by situation is this: the Iraqi government doesn't control most Iraqi cities, there are several car bombs going off each day around the country killing and injuring scores of innocent people, the country's roads are becoming impassable and littered by hundreds of landmines and explosive devices aimed to kill American soldiers, there are assassinations, kidnappings and beheadings. The situation, basically, means a raging barbaric guerilla war.
In four days, 110 people died and over 300 got injured in Baghdad alone. The numbers are so shocking that the ministry of health, which was attempting an exercise of public transparency by releasing the numbers-- has now stopped disclosing them.
Insurgents now attack Americans 87 times a day.
A friend drove thru the Shiite slum of Sadr City yesterday. He said young men were openly placing improvised explosive devices into the ground. They melt a shallow hole into the asphalt, dig the explosive, cover it with dirt and put an old tire or plastic can over it to signal to the locals this is booby-trap
Re:BS Alert! (Score:3, Interesting)
Weren't you watching the debate?
Bush kept attacking Kerry on the basis that Kerry is critical of Bush's own war policy and is therefore unfit to be president.
Re:Puppet Show? (Score:5, Interesting)
That worked because we nuked two of their cities and threatened (even though we were fresh out of nukes) to continue.
When your only choice is to accept or be annihilated, you'll find people generally accept. In Japan the people were united behind Hirohito. Beating him was seen in the eyes of the Japanese as beating the Japanese. In Iraq, the people aren't so tied to Saddam. So beating Saddam is not equal to beating the Iraqi people.
In Iraq they don't face instant and inevitable annihilation, so they aren't as likely to fall in line. That doesn't even take into consideration the cultural differences between Iraq and Japan which determines a sort of national characteristic where in Japan is one of following the rules and in Iraq is not quite so uniform.
Re:Nice moderating there (Score:5, Interesting)
The media can legally lie, this has been the case for decades. So if you're a business, and your primary goal is to make profit, and it isn't always most profitable to tell the truth, and there's no financial harm in telling a lie, why not lie? Also, why try to do investigative journalism to find out the truth? If you do the hard research and find out the truth, you can get one story out of it, maybe two. If you don't do the research, you can report a new story every time someone involved in the story makes a comment about it. Perfect example of this: swift boat vets, with research you can validate or invalidate their claims, but no one in the mainstream media tried to do that because it would kill the story. So most news outlets tend to have stories biased in all directions, which is why the same news sources (CNN) get called biased to the right and biased to the left at the very same time. It's because they are biased in both directions, since their allegiance is not to politics, but to profitability.
The name of the game is drawing viewers to draw advertisers. In order to not scare away viewers, you can't tell them what they don't want to hear. What americans don't want to hear is that Iraq is a failed venture, so the failings in Iraq get downplayed and underreported. How often have you heard people complain the news is too negative, and how often have you heard them complain the news is too positive? People don't like to hear bad things about themselves or their country, so in order to keep them tuned to your station, you try to keep from telling them that. Also, advertisers. You can't take extreme positions, even if they're true, on issues because it will scare away advertisers. So the media tends to line stories in so much vagueness and he-said-she-said's that no advertiser can object to it, which doesn't exactly serve the truth either.
This is made worse by a republican message machine which is decades ahead of the democrat one. You have the conservative talk radio network, the white house which blocks access to reporters who ask the tough questions, the centralised talking points distribution network on the republican side, which dupes people into thinking a story has legitimacy because "everyone" is saying it, and on and on. This is why you can credibly argue a right wing bias in the media. It's not that the media sets out to be biased, it's that the republicans have tailored their PR to exploit the biases that are built into the media as it stands.
So, what to do about it? Number one is lots of media watchdog groups which inform the media of everything they report wrong from all sides of the political spectrum. That exists now. Number two is to bring back the illegality of lying in the press. No journalist in an official press capacity should ever be allowed to knowingly report a lie as fact. How to do this, I'm not exactly clear on. Maybe allowing people to sue for journalistic malpractice, like how you can sue your doctor for medical malpractice. But it still needs to be done. Number three is to get more variation in the media by bringing back reasonable ownership limits. I'm not advocating breaking up the media empires that exist, I'm just saying no one should be allowed to buy new outlets beyond a certain rather low marketshare, which over time will make the media market diversify again as media outlets get sold by the major media empires. And as long as I'm in fantasy land, number four would be to teach everyone a class on logic in high school, explaining what logical fallacies [datanation.com] are, and how to recognize them, and explaining how to verify a claim you hear through logic, instead of through fallacy. But like I said, that would be fantasy land.
Re:Nice moderating there (Score:5, Interesting)
Some of what he said and filmed was very interesting indeed.
Sadir city for example he explained as being an extremely poor run down area under Saddam which contrary to the hopes of it's inhabitants remained just as poor an area under the Americans, no running water and no sign of anyone doing anything to improve or rebuild it. This area is now used a recruiting ground for the Medhi army where given the situation of the people there is proving very fertile. It is these people who travelled to the Mosque in Najaf ( or where ever it was ) . When they are back home in Sadr city it is a virtual no go zone for Americans.
He was also out on the street during some general demonstrations which became increasingly frightening as he was targetted by the crowd as a westerner and before long had a dozen people surrounding him holding guns and knives and someone shouting at him holding a live grenade and threatening to pull the pin. He was rescued by some local shopkeepers who waded into the crowd with a gun and took him into there shop which they then shut up and told him to sit there and wait it out. The interesting bit is what he said about his rescuers, essentially he let it out he'd met them before but on that occasion it was during an interview he'd obtained with the insurgent forces i.e. the people who rescued him were deeply involved in a lot of the terrorism going on in the area.
The other interesting thing was that a lot of the insurgents he interviewed were fanatically religious but some of the other leaders he intervied showed no sign of religious fanaticism at all and appeared to have a very practical outlook.
I think the overwhelming sense I got from that documentary is that Iraq is not a simple problem, various people are all involved in fighting; Americans, religious groups, 'the resistance' and no one is really involved in actually rebuilding much or improving anything. The Americans can't because they are too busy concentrating on their own security and the Iraqis aren't because they either have no resources or they are too busy planting roadside bombs.
The really worrying thing is the sheer amount of Iraq which is now effectively out of the Americans control and controlled by the resistance or lunatic religious groups. At the end of day the general Iraqi population are happy to be free from Saddam but very unhappy about the destruction of their country and the security situation.
Re:Al Lorentz (Score:2, Interesting)
You got modded -1, Flamebait for asking for evidence of that parent's claims. Nice. It's good to see that only a Troll or someone looking to incite a flame war would actually look for proof of a claim before accepting it as truth. Remember this the next time Gartner or Microsoft come out with a negative press release about Lunix.
Only trolls want proof!
A Different Letter from Iraq (Score:4, Interesting)
Letter from Iraq
September 28th, 2004
[Editor's note: The letter which follows has reached mevia a number of American military officers. They tell me that it has privately circulated widely in military circles, and is generally regarded as credible by knowledgeable people. The version which appears below has had many corroborating details removed, to avoid compromising possibly sensitive military information.
The author must remain anonymous. Thus, no guarantee of its provenance can be made. Nevertheless, the argument made by The Major is compelling enough that American Thinker readers deserve to see it. Caveat lector.]
I'm a Major in the United States Military, in Iraq. The analysts and pundits, who don't see what I see on a daily basis, have no factual basis to talk about the situation - especially if they have yet to set foot in Iraq. The media filters out most events, through a sieve of their latent prejudices - personal, political, and professional.*
The US media recently buzzed with the news of an intelligence report that is very negative about the prospects for Iraq's future. CNN's website said, "[The]National Intelligence Estimate was sent to the White House in July with a classified warning predicting the best case for Iraq was 'tenuous stability' and the worst case was civil war."
That report, along with the car bombings and kidnappings in Baghdad in the past couple days, were portrayed in the media as more proof of absolute chaos and the intransigence of the insurgency. From where I sit, at the Operational Headquarters in Baghdad, that just isn't the case. The public is being misled about what is happening.
The media types who think this "National Intelligence Estimate" is the last word on the situation either don't know, or don't want to know the realities of the process behind it. It was delivered to the White House in July. That means that the information that was used to derive the intelligence in the immediate aftermath of the April battle for Fallujah, and other events was gathered in the Spring.
The report doesn't cover what has happened in July or August, let alone September. The naysayers will point to the recent battles in Najaf and draw parallels between that and what happened in Fallujah in April. They aren't even close.
The bad guys did us a HUGE favor by gathering together in one place and trying to make a stand. It allowed us to focus on them and defeat them. Make no mistake, Al Sadr's troops were thoroughly smashed. The estimated enemy killed in action is huge. Before the battles, the residents of the city were afraid to walk the streets. Al Sadr's enforcers would seize people and bring them to his Islamic court where sentence was passed for religious or other violations. Long before the battles, people were looking for their lost loved ones who had been taken to "court" and never seen again.
Now Najafians can and do walk their streets in safety. Commerce has returned and the city is being rebuilt. Iraqi security forces and US troops are welcomed and smiled upon. That city was liberated again. It was not like Fallujah - the bad guys lost and are in hiding or dead.
You may not have even heard about the city of Samarra. Two weeks ago, that Sunni Triangle city was a "No-go" area for US troops. But guess what? The locals got sick of living in fear from the insurgents and foreign fighters that were there and let them know they weren't welcome. They stopped hosting them in their houses and the mayor of the town brokered a deal with the US commander to return Iraqi government sovereignty to the city without a fight. The people saw what was on the horizon and decided they didn't want their city looking like Fallujah in April or Najaf in August.
Boom, boom, just like that two major "hot spots" cool down in rapid succession. Does that mean that those towns are completely pacified? No. What it does mean is that we are lea
How to solve Iraq (Score:5, Interesting)
1) Arrange to slack Mr. Allawi's protection just enough that he can be killed (I'm not suggesting that we do it, just that we let it happen). He knew the risks when he went in, and he will be dying for the cause he claims to advocate.
2) Have GW make an appearance on Al J the next day BEFORE he speaks to the US press (very important).
3) He says that the US mourns Allawi. Make it clear that he's one of "ours".
4) Admit that western forces cannot control Iraq's "strong spirit and determination." It's important to not be negative toward the Iraqi's. They need to feel like they have the power to make the next move or OUR next move won't work.
5) Point to the most anti-western, pro-Islam, fundamentalist we can find who has a large base of followers, but is generally not a terrorist so much as an honest freedom fighter for Iraq, the way I hope GW would be if the US were occupied by a foreign force. Someone who won't just bomb the crap out the Kurds and set up his own rape rooms, but everyone knows isn't going to be our friend.
6) Make the offer. US troops will withdraw, entirely with no conditions, in a two week period the moment he takes over the Iraqi government.
7) Walk away and never explain. If someone asks about Iraq, you have to look at your shoes and say, "it's a shame... it's just a shame."
If we do that, and do it soon, we win. Iraq will be no more anti-western than when we stared (that would be impossible). They will have no more or less love for Israel (that too would be impossible). The problems in the region will not have been solved. However, someone with the political clout to re-build Iraq without being attacked by guerilla bombings every day will be able to establish order. It will be slow and painful. There will be abuses, but it will work because he will appear to have "kicked out the Americans". In the end we will have removed the largest source of instability in the region (which we created) and accomplished our goal of removing S.H.
If our twin goals are to liberate the Iraqis and reduce the threat of terrorism world-wide, this is, IMHO, the strongest step we can make.
Re:Allawi (Score:4, Interesting)
So is Osama Bin Laden.