American troops shot by Iraqi civil defense officers. Clearly they delayed on this because it lays bare so many of their false assumptions -- chiefly about their ability to distinguish democracy-minded freedom-loving Iraqis from jihadists. From AP:
The Pentagon waited nine months after completing an investigation into the deaths of two U.S. soldiers before notifying relatives the men were killed by Iraqi troops, the military acknowledged Wednesday.The June 2004 deaths of Army Spc. Patrick R. McCaffrey Sr., 34, of Tracy, and 2nd Lt. Andre D. Tyson, 33, of Riverside, were originally attributed to an ambush during a patrol near Balad, Iraq. The Army said this week a military investigation found the two had been shot by Iraqi civil defense officers. No possible motive has been divulged.
TIMES NEWSPAPER IN MEDIA CRUSADE AGAINST ISLAM AND MUSLIMS
Press Release dated 21st June 2006
http://www.alghurabaa.co.uk/
It has been well known that the Iraqi ranks are full of insurgents. Tough to do your job when at times your friend is really your foe.
God Bless those on the front lines.
Are they going to bring those Iraqi officers up on murder charges?
Does anyone know of any credible sources that have information about the extent of the Iraqi forces' infiltration? This is a really horrible prospect.
Everyone interested in this subject should read "War of Numbers" by Samuel Adams, about the Vietnam war, the most insightful book about the subject of why we lost that I have ever seen.
Ahmadinejad denounces discrimination against Islamic societies
Hamedan, June 22, IRNA
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Thursday that discrimination against Islamic groups or societies is poison which kills and obliterates all their achievements.
( SORRY LITTLE MAN ITS THE HEADCHOPPING THAT KILLS!) http://www.irna.ir/en/
which kills and obliterates all their achievements. posted by storagemanager
What islamic achievements?
Ahmadinejad Stresses Continued Nuclear Efforts by Iran
TEHRAN (Fars News Agency)- Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad Thursday stressed that his country will utilize all its potentials in a bid to benefit from peaceful nuclear technology, underlining that Iran may never submit to force.
Speaking to a fervent congregation of Nahavand residents in the western province of Hamedan on the second leg of his 15th visit to the different Iranian provinces, Ahmadinejad described Iranian nation as the flag bearer of justice and freedom in the world, reminding that under the present circumstances where the entire world is dominated by segregation, threat, poverty, bullying and imposition of desires and aspirations by some powers, moving on the path of divinity constitutes the only way to prosperity and welfare.
He reiterated that Iranians have never been cruel to any other nation nor will they be bullied in their rights by any power, adding that all the world nations, including Iran, are entitled to access the peaceful nuclear technology.
http://www.farsnews.com/English/
The American officers and men given the thankless task of training what are described as "Iraqi" recruits for "Iraqi" units of a new "Iraqi" army and a new "Iraqi" police force, are being asked to do the impossible. Oh, here and there one or two units may somehow be put together, shakily, that will include Sunni Arabs and Shi'a Arabs, and Kurds. One or two. And here and there some officer, even a former Sunni officer who served (but then was arrested and cashiered) in the time of Saddam Hussein, may appear, and may wish to create such a force, may not owe his secret or not-so-secret allegiance to his ethnic group, his religious sect, or even more strongly, to his tribe. But only here and there.
American generals need to stop being so submissive and refusing to tell the truth to the civilian leadership. Their criticisms should not be of the "if only Rumsfeld had sent more troops we could have gotten this new Iraq ship-shape and accomplished our 'mission'" nor of the "if only Bremer hadn't dissolved the Iraqi army" variety. These criticisms are largely irrelevant because they ignore the main points that, for now, and for nearly the past three years, have been made consistently at this website and seemingly, nowhere else:
1. Islam -- or "JIhad" in all of its intruments -- is the enemy.
2. Muslims in Iraq, to the extent that their Muslim identity trumps all else, as it tends to for Arabs (the Kurds are another matter, for they have suffered from the Arabs and from the Arab supremacist ideology of Islam, and they have been rescued from the Arabs by the Americans -- that has not been lost on them), will regard the Americans as Infidels. Those Americans can be endured, if from that endurance benefits -- money above all, but also the killng of one's local enemies by those Americans, and of course whatever training or military equipment can be inveigled out of them, the better to later deal not only with other "Iraqis" of different ethnic or sectarian groups, but also with the Americans and other Infidels.
3. The roots of Sunni contempt for Shi'a, and of Shi'a resentment of Sunni mistreatment, go back long before the Americans arrived, long before Saddam Hussein arrived, long before the state of modern Iraq was created. And the mistreatment of Shi'a by Sunni groups can be seen today in Pakistan, and in Saudi Arabia. Similarly, the mistreatment of non-Arab Muslims by Arab Muslims, in the case of Iraq the Kurds, predates the arrival of the Americans by about 1350 years.
This is important to emphasize, because as the Americans leave (whenever they leave) inevitably Iraq will descend into still greater primitiveness and violence. This primitiveness and violence will weaken the camp of Islam. It need not receive encouragement. It will take its own course. Many in Iraq, of course, will whine about how "everything was just fine" until the Americans came, the Sunnis and the Shi'a got along famously, the Arabs and the Kurds ditto. It is nonsense.
4. MIlitary units must possess cohesion. The members of any unit must have complete faith in one another ("Watch my back" confidence is indispensable). If they do not have that, if furthermore they are lacking in esprit de corps, are merely biding their time as "Iraqi" units until the Americans leave -- and most of them are -- then what the American officers, from General Petraeus on down, have been asked to do is impossible, and therefore cruel to them, to the officers and men of the American military. You can ask someone to pour water through sand on the beach and then collect it, and for a while someone may try to do so, if it ishis duty to obey and not to reason why.
But not forever. This has to stop. It is driving good younger officers out of the military. It is preventing people who would otherwise enlist in the civilian army from doing so. It is causing morale problems among those officers and men who do not mindlessly repeat phrases such as "we've got to complete our mission" or "if we leave now then all the others will have made the ultimate sacrifice in vain" etc. But what is the "mission"? How likely is it to be achieved, and at what cost? And if success as defined by the Administration were to be achieved, what in god's name does that do to weaken the camp of Islam -- what, compared to the almost certain decomposition of Iraq, and the continued and spreading distrust and hostility between Sunnis and Shi'a, and co-religionists on both sides using up money, men, materiel, as happened, more or less, during the Iran-Iraq War?
The "success" the officers and men are asked to achieve cannot be achieved. They cannot create an "Iraqi" military with mixed units, nor an "Iraqi" police force. Nor, despite Bush's invocation so far of the Framers of the Constitution (to which he likened the Iraqis and their constitutional efforts), to the Union and Abraham Lincoln (quoting the need to build an Iraq "of the people, by the people, for the people") and now, in Hungary, invoking the return to democracy, after Soviet rule, of the advanced, thoroughly Western Hungarians, defined partly by the historic opposition of Hungarians to the Ottoman Muslims who once ruled over them.
Bush hallucinates historically, and in other ways. Perhaps he is good for one thing -- dealing with Iran before he leaves office. Perhaps he is not even good for that, since he has gotten us stuck in tarbaby Iraq. But those who are alarmed not by "terror" alone but by all the instruments of Jihad, and unlike Bush are not greatly impressed with the division between so-called "moderate" and the other, presumably "immoderate" Muslims, should wish for a prompt American withdrawal, in order to win in Iraq.
It is the only way to derive benefits for the camp of Non-Muslims, and to weaken the camp of Islam. And that should be the point, rather than bringing toys and good things to eat to the boys and girls on the other side of the mountain.
Bush thinks he can, he thinks he can, he thinks he can. He can't. His "victory" makes no sense.
Just another P. C. and Muslim trick call those who fight Islam bigots. Islam is not a Person or a Race of People. Islam is not a country. Muslims are Arab, German, American or From Many many countrys..Islam is a way of life an Idea...You can call me a bigot all day long...FDR was not a Bigot for fighting Nazi Germany..Fighting Slavery..Does not make one a Bigot!
One would like Congressman Tancredo, or someone else of that ilk, to ask point-blank:
How many Marines, how many soldiers, have been killed or injured as a result of attacks conducted by, or participated in, by supposedly friendly "Iraqi" soldiers -- soldiers who were being trained by Americnas, or accompanying Americans on missions (but of course no American officer in his right mind now lets any Iraqi soldiers know any details about any mission they will be going out on with the Americans and for good reason), or otherwise working beside (as at checkpoints, such as the one Tucker and Menchaca were helping to man when they were attacked and abducted).
As this quite-unnecessary farce or tragedy continues, in which American soldiers risk their lives for people who at best dislike them, at most collaborate or cheer those who try to kill them, or even participate in such killing themselves, those soldiers are constantly given to believe, are made to force themselves to believe, that the "Iraqi people" are essentially wonderful, warmhearted, generous, and "gosh darn it, they really like us." Aside from the Christians (who, after all , make up a very disproportionate number of those who serve as cooks and servants and drivers for those in the Green Zone, and also make up a disproporionate number of the interpreters, and of the other professionals whom the Americans are most likely to have dealings with) and the Kurds (about whom similar obsrvations could be made). Yes, there are decent and semi-decent people in Iraq, But they are a very small part of the Arab population, and not, as Bush and his loyalists constantly imply, most of them.
The numbers matter. The belief-system matters. It makes all the difference.
"we shall prevail..."
-- from a posting above
In Iraq we have prevailed. We've done everything we needed to do. Let's play pretend: we now leave it up to the "good people of Iraq" who are now had two elections, a referendum on their brand-new Constitution, and three prime ministers -- secular Allawi (a Shi'a), religious al-Jaafari (a Shi'a) with ties to Iran, religious but without ties to Iran al-Maliki. We've spent or committed about $400 billion (Joseph Stigler estimates much more). We've removed Saddam Hussein, looked for major weaponry, destroyed what there was, disrupted major weapons projects.
And set in motion, though completely without anyting aforethought, the "victory" not as defined by Bush and Rice, or their loyalists, but as it should be defined:
"The creation of a situation which weakens the camp of Islam, and that serves to divide and demoralize that camp, and to hold up for inspection to Infidels who may need instruction, the aggreession and violence endemic to Muslim societies not held in check by a despot, enlightened (Ataturk, Shah of Iran) or unenlightened (Saddam Hussein, Mubarak, generals in Algeria, the money-washing-and-drying of the Al-Saud, the biggest skimmers off the top in history).
"Islamic achievements" = 1400 years of jihad warfare... thats just about it.
The Mohound is afraid that infidels wise up and take action against the headchopper cult...
...which makes it difficult to recruit new fans and to conquer and destruct infidel societies and the hated Joooozzzz...
Its not easy to be the Mohound, you know?
Then there is always the Mahdi pissing in his ears (or wait, its the Jinn) and the devil sleeping in his nose, well that's his problem...but the Mohound has his problems, you know. And all he wants is a little understanding....
Are they going to bring those Iraqi officers up on murder charges?
Posted by: freewoman
That is what is driving me nuts, prosecute our soldiers and who will fight in the end?
Stop, think, "can I shoot these people?" In the elapsed time, our soldier is dead...you don't have all the time in the world to make that life or death decision.
Saddam Husseins fate must be known and done with before the drawdown would be considered. To leave and have him escape, or be allowed to, would be the biggest joke on the U.S. ever.
Many state to get out of Iraq, I am sure the effort is being worked out. The information had by the U.S. may be driving the reason for the timetable we are given. And we may never know.
Getting out is also called "bring the troops home". Is the war over? The dems (mostly) talk as if this is true. Getting out of Iraq sounds good, but the war is far from over, and there is perhaps somthing underway that takes troops and forces at the ready in theater, time will tell.
Saddams fate, then onward from there.
"Saddam Husseins fate must be known and done with before the drawdown would be considered. To leave and have him escape, or be allowed to, would be the biggest joke on the U.S. ever."
-- from a posting above
The trial of Saddam Hussein could go on for a long time. American troops should not have to remain while the "Iraqis" dispense, in slow-motion, their own "Iraqi" justice. That's absurd. As absurd as waiting until the non-existent "Iraqi" police and the non-existent "Iraqi" army units, full of Kurds and Arabs, Sunnis and Shi'a, fighting side by side, putting down now some Sunnis, and now some Shi'a, and now some Arabs, and now some Kurds, with nary a problem in the unit, and everyone trusting everyone else with his life. Americans soldiers wait until this comes about, until this is achieved? Nonsense.
And if Saddam Hussein escaped, so what? Would he magically have an army? He would run to the Sunni lands, and what do you think would happen? Would the Kurds, would the Shi'a, simply roll over and play dead? Is that what would happen? Who cares, at this point? His power is gone, and even if he were to construct a mini-kingdom in Tikrit, what would that do? Nothing.
2.
"Getting out is also called "bring the troops home". Is the war over? The dems (mostly) talk as if this is true. Getting out of Iraq sounds good, but the war is far from over..."
-- from the same posting
No, the "war" is not "over" and it never will be, if that "war" is correctly defined. If it is defined idiotically as a "war on terror" which will be won when the non-Iraqi Sunni volunteers are crushed, that too will never end, for they are infinitely replenishable. And so too are the Shi'a "volunteers" bringing in better I.E.D.s from Iran; there is no end to their number.
The "war" if correctly defined has much more to do with the money weapon, Da'wa, and demographic conquest, but the Administration cannot see that, is locked into the idea that the word "war" must involve troops, and guns, and tanks, and so on. No, it mustn't always; sometimes, as in this case, that is a very small part of it.
The objective is to weaken Islam. Islam has not been weakened in Iraq. It has been strengthened, by the forces once held in check, not for anti-Islamic reasons but out of considerations of personal power, by Saddam Hussein. He was worried about the Shi'a, whom he knew perfectly well far outnumbered the Sunnis. He held them down. From his point of view, it made perfect sense. Now he is gone, and the Sunni despotism with him. We must weaken Islam and introducing New England Town Meetings in every hamlet from Umm Qasr in the south to Tel Afar in the north just won't do it. Letting the fissures, sectarian and ethnic, cause division among Muslims in and outside Iraq, and making sure that Infidels watch and comprehend the spectacle (buying time for education about Islam among the peoples of Western Europe) that will then unfold, and if things go right will no longer use up our men, materiel, money, and attention, but rather those men, that money, that materiel from Iran, Saudi Arabia, and similar unpleasant places.
Did you like the Iran-Iraq War? Of course you did. Would you like an approximation within Iraq?
The June 2004 deaths of Army Spc. Patrick R. McCaffrey Sr., 34, of Tracy, and 2nd Lt. Andre D. Tyson, 33, of Riverside, were originally attributed to an ambush during a patrol near Balad, Iraq. The Army said this week a military investigation found the two had been shot by Iraqi civil defense officers. No possible motive has been divulged.
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No possible motive, the murderers are islamic which is sufficinet for any mo to kill anyone......
and yet bush calls the cult of islam peaceful
I corresponded with a Christian Iraqi and he was a vile creature and hated us, saying we ruined his country and would laugh at soldiers dying in the streets. I had to finally quit communicating with him because he gave me migraine headaches and infuriated me. I've also had lots of soldier pen pals and they all concurred the Kurds were the only good, capable people there. One of them trained the Iraqi army and I was petrified every time he went on training missions with them for fear they would betray him. Other Iraqi's were hired to help clean bases and they used to leave nasty notes on the tables like Death to US. Another soldier was based in Ramadi and suffers from PTSD. He said they're horrible people, Iraq is filthy and they slaughter animals in the streets. With all the soldiers I corresponded with, none of them had anything good to say about the Iraqi people or their experience there.
Saddam's fate will have to be decided before the U.S. even start to get out. This is for the public, as well to give the U.S. the end to victory of his removal.
Could you see the president trying to explain to the U.S. how he got away, or escaped justice in any way? The world opinion alone would be in a fix, for many reasons.
Politics apply here, like it or not. And it will be done before the U.S. leaves.
To weaken (or worse) islam should be the goal. But that is not the reason we went into Iraq. we went to remove Saddam, find the WMD, two things that are being finished now.
I do not like war, but see it as somthing we will always have with us, it is part of human nature. When anothers ways are imposed on us, is when the sparks fly.
A good friend of mine just got back from Iraq. He's not the same, doesn't want to talk about it; I don't press him.
Interestingly, he was one of the 'political arm' of the national guard whose job it was to introduce democracy to the Iraqis. Suffice it to say, in two tours of duty lasting a year a piece, he never got a chance to 'work.' It was simply deemed too dangerous and he was kept safe in the green zone.
Think about that. Two years out of his life. No introduction of democracy . . . which is of course a farce. I gather he did see a lot of bloodied Americans and this has affected him.
McCain and crew make 'the beginning' of a valid point. "We won't quite till the job is done," he says. "To withdrawl now would be surrender."
Here is the classic 'cut and run' arguement. It is ridiculous. When we leave, the Jihadis will claim victory. But this is a certainty, like death and taxes, and it will happen in the morning(if we leave)or in twenty years. As Hugh points out, the supply of foreign Jiihadis is endless. We have to start fighting start. The mindless 'war on terror' talk is what got us into dodge in the first place. Five years after 9-11-01, we cannot define the enemy.
The trial of Saddam Hussein could go on for a long time. American troops should not have to remain while the "Iraqis" dispense, in slow-motion, their own "Iraqi" justice.
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If we leave iraq before the end of the sadam trial, sadam will be dragged into the street and stomped to death.