More chlorine gas attacks, though larger than before. By Sameer N. Yacoub for Associated Press:
BAGHDAD - Three suicide bombers driving chlorine-laden trucks struck in the Sunni insurgent stronghold of Anbar province, killing two policemen and forcing about 350 Iraqi civilians and six U.S. troops exposed to the gas to seek treatment, the military said Saturday.
The attacks came after back-to-back bombings last month released chlorine gas, prompting the U.S. military to warn that insurgents are adopting new tactics in a campaign to spread panic.
Just after 4 p.m. Friday, a driver detonated explosives in a pickup truck northeast of Ramadi, wounding one U.S. service member and one Iraqi civilian, the military said in a statement.
That was followed by a similar explosion involving a dump truck south of Fallujah in Amiriyah that killed two policemen and left as many as 100 local citizens showing signs of chlorine exposure, with symptoms ranging from minor skin and lung irritations to vomiting, the military said.
Less than 10 miles away, another suicide bomber detonated a dump truck containing a 200-gallon chlorine tank rigged with explosives at 7:13 p.m., also south of Fallujah in the Albu Issa tribal region, the military said. U.S. forces responded to the attack and found about 250 local civilians, including seven children, suffering from symptoms related to chlorine exposure, according to the statement.
At least their toy WMD's are not working very well in murdering people.
The US needs though to keep a lid on chlorine as making it under American control and only available through them.
This is a very bad sign. Not even Hitler would allow the use of gas as a weapon during World War 2, even when the Russians were closing in on Berlin.
"U.S. military to warn that insurgents are adopting new tactics in a campaign to spread panic."
What isn't "new" is their desire to spread panic. The rules-of-war do not apply to terrorists, and they will use whatever means they can to terrorize. This is only the tip of the iceberg of what's to come -- of what their evil minds can conjure up.
I don't think the Iraqi people can't be too bothered by this, or they would have taken measures to stop it a long time ago.
After all, those murderers come from within their own communities.
"This is only the tip of the iceberg of what's to come -- of what their evil minds can conjure up".-Champ
I'm afraid you're right. The silence of Muslims re the use of gas is telling. Even Hitler would not permit that. They will use gas elsewhere. They do not care about the ultimate consequences to themselves in this.
Hitler didn’t use gas because it is effected by wind direction and therefore practically useless as a part of Blitzkrieg. It is also worth mentioning that Hitler was himself poisoned by gas and may have decided not to use it to save German cities from being smothered in it by the allies.
But of course if you’re a Muslim looking to kill lots of other Muslims then you won't be worried about killing your own side. You’re expecting to meet your quota of virgins in hell and how your victims die is meaningless as long as you get the result.
The upshot is the allied armies will be forced to prepare for gas and IED’s on the streets and we can’t do a damn thing in response other than prepare for Gas! Gas! Gas!
There's a slogan in here somewhere...
Global Jihad: Making Hitler Look Moderate
Poison gas was used in the Yemen by Nasser, and would have been used by him in the Six-Day War had that the Arabs not had to scream for a ceasefire soon enough. Of course, if they do use poison gas against Israel, they know what will happen to them. Wherever they can get away with it, as in Iraq (where American soldiers are inhibited, even as they risk their lives for a foolish goal, set by foolish men ignorant of Islam, ignorant apparently of anything outside of the theatrum belli of Iraq, and even there so misunderstanding things, as to squander the lives of better people than they are, because they cannot even conceive of how removing American troops will accomplish exactly what needs to be accomplished -- to divide and demoralize the Camp of Islam. They're just too stubborn, too dumb, and too unimaginative. Bush, and those who remain loyal to Bush out of -- loyalty.
It disgusts. It is madness. Una follia. American policy is now a runaway train, with a madman in the engine car, who will not stop, will not listen to anyone except himself. It is the most incredible situation in American history.
And that others do not see it as such, or do not attack the policy for the right reasons -- for god's sake, isn't there a single person in Congress to stand up and say I want to defeat or weaken the forces of Jihad (yes, leave "Islam" out of it for now, if you must) and the way to do that is clearly to remove the troops. Is that so hard to do? And then to read out a list of all the things that should and could be done, to make sure that this is perceived, in a month or two, not as a retreat but as part of a much more determined and ruthless campaign against all the instruments of Jihad.
Within a year of the invasion, that is, after Saddam Hussein, his sons, and almost all of the people in that game of fifty-two pick-up had been killed or seized, and after the country had been scoured for weaponry, the continued presence of American troops made no sense. It made no sense to ignore the fact that the Sunnis were now exposed as constituting a mere 19% of the population, and without Saddam Hussein or some other Sunni despot equally ruthless, they would not be able to hold onto the power they had possessed during the entire history of modern Iraq, which began with a revolt by the Shi'a tribes, and is now ending, with a revolt by the Shi'a, though now many of them are now urban dwellers and their tribal loyalties may have lessened. This is the main point: the inevitability of Sunni-Shi'a conflict. It did not depend on any act by the Americans after the regime fell: the collapse of the regime itself guaranteed that power would pass to the Shi'a from the Sunnis. It might pass as a result of armed conflict; it might pass, as it apparently has, through the purple-thumbed voting -- with the Shi'a enthusiastically participating because they knew that they outnumbered the Sunni Arabs by more than 3-1, and the Sunnis hardly participating at all, because they knew they would lose, and the Kurds of course voting, to protect their interests in a national government of whose existence they are not particularly fond, for the very same day a referendum was held in the Kurdish north and 98% of those voting voted for an independent Kurdistan. And the government that resulted is, to the extent it can be, of, by, and for the Shi'a Arabs, and no matter what cosmetic changes are made, what phony "oil bill" is passed that may outwardly satisfy the Americans, just as soon as those Americans leave the Shi'a militia will go at it, and get their revenge, and they will be even more likely, having been held back by the Americans, to engage in the kind of warfare that is the only kind that gets the attention, and possibly some cooperation, from the Sunni Arabs. It won't be the kid-gloves treatment of the Americans in Iraq, nor the scrupulous Israelis. It will be Muslim on Muslim, and from outside Iraq, others will supply money, men, weaponry, to their co-religionists, and within Muslim lands -- Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait, Yemen, Pakistan being the main ones where there are significant Shi'a communities -- all kinds of spill-over effects will only increase the domestic unrest and headaches for regimes that, until now, have managed to export to the Infidel world, the Western world, all of the refusal to compromise, the aggression and the hostility to which Islam naturally gives rise, and which those growing up in societies suffused with Islam exhibit, will be on view: a very nice Demonstration Project for the Infidels of the world.
Iraq, Iraq? Suppose the crazy goals of Bush could be obtained, with another $750 billion being spent -- or even another $250 billion (and what if that money had been spent, or were now spent, on energy projects, so as to deprive the Muslims of the "money weapon"?). So what? Why would a functioning Iraq be a Good Thing for us? How would a Shi'a-run state linked economically and politically and religiouslly to Iran, conceivably serve as a "model" (that Light Unto the Muslim Nations -- that "light" I have made light of here many times before) for Sunni Arab states? They will be permanentlly enraged that the most important place in Islamic history, the Land of the Two Rivers, for five hundred years (roughly 750-1250) the site of the Abbasid Caliphate and the center of what they see as High Islamic Civilization, will now be in the hands of those "Rafidite dogs" the Shi'a, and what is more, Shi'a who thing that happens in Iraq, for example, makes the islamization of Western Europe any less likely. Nothing that happens in Iraq will keep the Arab and Muslim states from acquiring another ten trillion dollars in the next 30 years, as they -- though it was not senseless, if indeed there were reasonable grounds to suspect Saddam Hussein had or was soon to acquire weapons of mass destruction, to invade so as to destroy or seize that weaponry, or disrupt those putative projects. et some Arabs scream with delight -- they'll soon enough come to realize that extricating American forces from Tarbaby Iraq does not represent an American defeat but rather, at long last, intelligent recognition that this is not a "war on terrorism" but a war of self-defense against the world-wide Jihad and its many instruments, that the theatre of Iraq, or even the larger MIddle East, is not the main theatre, that there is no one particular place where "terrorists" will gather (as in an Iraq after the Americans pull out), because they can gather in Pakistan, or in Saudi Arabia, or for that matter in Madrid or London or Falls Church, Virginia, if they feel like it, and the very idea of taking over, and holding, at incredible cost -- $750 billion in past, present, and committed future expenses -- an entire country, is worse than senseless.
How exactly, in a country riven by civil conflict, where the Sunni Arabs -- the ones likely to be more favorable to Al Qaeda for example -- will be devoting all of their energies to attacking, or repulsing the attacks of, Shi'a Arabs, and where both kinds of Arabs in the north will be attacking, or repulsing the attacks of, the Kurds who will see the Sunni-Shi'a conflict as the perfect opportunity to make the most of these conditions to make their move for independence, a move that should be supported by the Americans if they were to realize that an independent Kurdistan would cause great problems to both Iran and Syria, and even to Islam more generally, for the spectacle of a non-Arab Muslim people throwing off the Arab yoke would or could inspire other non-Arab Muslims, such as Berbers in North Africa, and even Berbers in France, to recognize Islam for what it is: a vehicle for Arab imperialism, linguist, cultural, economic, and political.
Will this be recognized? Is there anyone in Congress who will state this kind of opposition to the war? Who will show up the Bush Administration not for its being too ruthless, or too tough, but for being too ingorant, too inhibited, too un-ruthless, too uncomprehending of all the things that it should be trying to accomplish, instead of the things that it is trying to accomplish in Iraq, which is to say a stable, unified country.
There are two things wrong with the Administration's goal of a stable, unified country:
1. It is impossible of achievement.
2. It is exactly the wrong goal.
Other than those two reasons -- it's just fine.
It would not surprise me one bit if some of these suicide bombers were palestinians.
India's natural allies are the United States, Israel, Australia, Thailand, and Japan.
No politician can stand before the people and say they want to pull out of Iraq so that the Muslims will slaughter each other. It is not only political suicide but it is also strategic suicide because the day we admit we want those monsters to kill each other will be the day they stop doing it. (Or at least try to).
The truth is until the Iranians are dealt with it would be folly to move out of Iraq.
"The truth is until the Iranians are dealt with it would be folly to move out of Iraq."
-- from a posting above
You have it exactly backwards. Tarbaby Iraq makes it far less likely the United States will intelligently deal with Iran. At this point, with the various Iranian agents going back and forth, it is clear that the American troops are hostages -- or rather, that American policy is being held hostage to Iran which could retaliate against those troops, that are in the midst of 27 million Muslims, and in no condition to conduct a war against Iran from Iraqi soil. And this is something Iran knows very well.
Furthermore, even if the American government tries to use economic sanctions to get the Islamic Republic of Iran to finally stop its nuclear project, those sanctions will not work because Iran has greatly increased its trade -- by 30% in the last year -- with Iraq. It is all that American money that has been poured into Iraq that is used, in turn, to buy Iranian goods and helping to keep Iran sufficiently prosperous so that it can afford to ride out -- or thinks it can -- sanctions.
In other words, the American presence in Iraq makes it far less likely that the Americans will be able to stop Iran's rush to manufacture nuclear weapons for two reasons:
1) A policy that must necessarily end in attacks -- not an "invasion" of Iran -- on Iran's nuclear facilities is now inhibited, even held hostage, by the fact of about 150,000 American soldiers, surrounded by Muslims who do not wish them well and many of whom are either indifferent, or positively delighted, when those Americans are attacked and wounded or killed, and if the Sunni Arabs have to date been the most dangerous, the Shi'a Arabs would, if Shi'a Iran is attacked, not think twice about attacking the Americans in their midst. And the American officers and men know this, and so does the Pentagon, and so must even that remarkably ignorant man, George Bush.
2) If plans for attacking Iran are inhibited by the American presence, as it is currently configured (if all those soldiers were in the desert, or in Kurdistan, and not spread out through the streets of Baghdad, that would be better though still not nearly as good as removing them altogether), then that leaves economic sanctions. And as noted above, economic sanctions will not work if the Bush Administration keeps up this cockamamie idea of pouring still more American money into Iraq, for what is politely called "reconstruction" (it should be called "construction" for there wasn't much to begin with).
In other words, while the Iraq policy makes at this point no sense, and hasn't made any sense since the beginning of 2004, when the country had been scoured for weapons, and represents a squandering of men, money, and materiel on exactly the wrong goal, it is even worse than that.
Why? Because remaining in Iraq is not helping deal with Iran, but positively getting directly in the way.
This colossal error, this stupidity, cannot ever be forgiven. And those who refuse to attack it -- for the right reasons-- will not be forgiven either.
As for your notion that if we talk openly about the Sunnis and Shi'a attacking each other then they will promptly stop -- for god's sake, get real.
"No politician can stand before the people and say they want to pull out of Iraq so that the Muslims will slaughter each other. "
-- from the same posting dealt with above
I don't expect any politician to say that, so baldly. I never did. I expect them to say something like "We have done quite enough for the Iraqis. We freed them from a monstrous regime. That regime was in power for 35 years, and that regime attacked two of its neighbors -- one Shi'a, Iran, and one Sunni, Kuwait. That regime ordered the mass slaughter of both Kurds and Shi'a Muslims. That regime was prepared to continue for another 35 years, and Saddam Hussein and his sons and his collaborators were moral monsters, and they are now permanently removed from the scene. We brought an experiment in democratic elections, and should the people in Iraq wish to repeat the experiment, if they wish to entrust their destiny to the expressed will of the people -- that is, themselves -- we will be satisfied, but of course it is their decision.
So far we have lost more than 3,200 men. We have had nearly 25,000 men wounded, many with wounds that will require us to take care of them for their lives. We have spent, or will spend once the committed costs of taking care of those wounded for their lives, and of replacing the equipment,that, from the stores of both the regular army and the National Guard, have been used up at such a terrific rate, including not only trucks and Humvees and helicopters and planes that have been damaged in war, but have suffered because the desert conditions degrade such equipment at a terrifically accelerated rate. We have done all this, and we have spent tens of billions of our own money on Iraq. We have gone around the world and obtained nearly $100 billion in debt cancellation from the countries of the West, and we still await a promise by the Arab creditors that they, too, will cancel the debts incurreed by Iraq under that monstrous regime of Saddam Hussein.
We have done all we could, and much more. We have remained in Iraq now, for more than four years. We have, that is, been at war -- on behalf of the people of Iraq, in order to liberate them from a despot and so that they could get unused to the habit of submitting to despotism, and begin to experience some notion of democracy -- longer than we were at war during the Revolutionary War, or the Civil War, or World War I, or World War II, or the war in Korea. It is now time -- some would say it is long past time -- for the people in Iraq to decide if they are indeed the people in Iraq, or if they are -- the "Iraqi people."
We cannot stay to make that decision for them. We cannot stay to fight the battles of this side against that side, or that side against this side. That would be a terrible thing to expect us to do. We will not do it.
I now declare that American forces will be withdrawinig from Iraq, starting May 1, 2007, and that withdrawal does not depend on what the Iraqi government tells us it wants. We will do what the American people tell us they want, rather, and it has told us, in any number of ways, that it wants us out of Iraq.
Our country is a democracy. Democracy is not defined only by the election results. Between elections, those who have been elected have a duty to take the pulse of the nation. Only a madman could ignore the fact that 3/4 of this nation wants our troops out of Iraq and many of those people want those troops out today, or yesterday. The opinion polls show that this is not close, not nearly. Those against remaining in Iraq outnumber those who have not declared themselves against by a margin of nearly 3 to 1. That is simply too great to ignore, and if it were to be ignored, this country would no longer seem to be a democracy, but akin, rather, to a runaway train, with a mad engineer who refuses to stop as the passengers pull the cords and scream at the top of their lungs."
Something like that will do nicely, thank you.
It has a virtue, the little speech I just composed above. Unlikme the utter nonsense we have heard about "bringing freedom" to "ordinary moms and dads" in the Middle East, unlike the misguided phrase "war on terror," unlike the cheapness of those warnings about those who, opposed to the war, have been stupidly described as merely wanting to "cut and run," unlike those who now use this idiotic phrase --"if we don't fight them over there, they will follow us home" -(can anyone say that phrase and not be an idiot?), there are many people in this country who are fully aware of the menace of Islam, of the Jihad, fully aware of the weapons of Jihad that might be fought better, in a more sensible and effective way, if we were out of Iraq and allowed the fissures, sectarian and ethnic, to take their natural course, within Iraq, and among Iraq's Muslim neighbors, so as to concentrate on many other things: ending the Jizyah of foreign aid to all Muslim states, meeting with NATO allies to discuss the security threats that arise from a growing Muslim populualtion in Western Europe, encouraging widespread publicity given to the St. Petersburg Declaration and beaming into Muslim lands the words and ideas of Ibn Warraq, Ali Sina, Wafa Sultan, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, and all the others who so terrify the fake "moderate" Muslims because unlike them, the people who took part in the St. Petersburg deliberations are the real, and not the phony, thing. And then there is the possibility of seizing southern Sudan and Darfur, until such time as a referendum on independence can he held (how hard would it be to destroy the Sudanese airforce, and all of those helicopters that support the Janjaweed? How many American soldiers would it take to seize and hold that area, and thereby to send a signal to black African Christians that they will not be abandoned, and that the slow march of Islam down from Egypt through Sudan with Ethiopia as the big prize ("Christian" Ethiopia), a country that Egypt wishes to islamize and insure that it never gets to divert the headwaters of the NIle -- how many men? A few thousand, greeted by grateful black Africans? and what would the govenment of Egypt, what would the Arab League, do then? Declare it has a divine right to kill black Africans, either because they are non-Muslim as in the southern Sudan, or because they are non-Arabs, as in Darfur?
And finally, there is Iran. And Iran must be dealt with, and can only be dealt with, with the American troops out of Iraq, and with Iraq itself in a state of confusion. The Iranian government wants the Americans to stay. It wants them there, and it wants to be able to keep them tied down there, and subject to low-level but constant assault. This fits Iranian policy. That5 some argue otherwise, and think the American presence somoehow scares Iran, shows how silly they are about the usefulness of those forces, their mobility, their relative freedom from attack.
Iran must be dealt with from afar. Offshore, way offshore, and from the sky. It can be done, and must.
"if we talk openly about the Sunnis and Shi'a attacking each other then they will promptly stop"
They are even fighting in Dearborn.
http://wordpress.com/tag/dearborn/feed/
I just ran across this from one of those "cut-and-run liberals" that loyalists of the crazed Iraq policy like to denounce because, as they repeat in their zombie-like way, "if we don't fight them over there we'll have to fight them over here." Why? Because, you see, "they'll follow us home." Exactly how, on which particular airline and flight, or on what tramp steamer, they will "follow us home" is unclear, and also unclear is why those who talk about the need to keep "them" from "following us home" never discuss "those" (of "them") who are already well-ensconced both in North America and in the countries of Western Europe, and what is the conceivable connection between bringing peace, stablity, prosperity, unity, and toys and good things to eat to the boys and girls on the other side of the Muslim mountain (the one that wouldn't come to Muhammad, so he went to it), in the place called the Land of the Two Rivers, or Iraq.
Here is what that cut-and-runner wrote:
"...the number [of voters] displaying acquiescence, let alone enthusiasm, for more of the same[in Iraq]is approaching zero. Giuliani, while ferocious in his determination to defeat terrorists, distances himself from the Bush administration's optimistic predictions.
I think there is a sense in the land that the Iraqi people are not doing their part. It's true that Mr. al-Maliki has several times insisted on sharing the security burden more rigorously. And it is true that the Iraqi people are suffering mortally. The people who get killed every day by those insurgents are here and there an American soldier, an average of three per day. Mostly, though, the people who are getting killed are Iraqis. An estimated 1.8 million Iraqis have left their homes and fled the country, exiled by the war. One cannot count that less than a major sacrifice.
Yet Americans feel that the Iraqis' sacrifice is disproportionately low, and the single reason for this is that it is also Iraqis who are causing the tribulation in which American soldiers are being wounded and killed. And there is no strategic plan, issuing from the White House, that apportions the sacrifice being made to goals being accomplished. There is no sense of the sun rising every day on freshly liberated soil."
He doesn't get to my point, the point about how sectarian and ethnic fissures are not to be worried about but welcomed, and the details of how, and why, and where that would help us that have been posted here, several hundred times, over the past three years.
But he does reveal, this crazed far left-wing cut-and-runner, who apparently is williing to let them "win" over there, and then "follow us home over here," that he thinks the Iraq War is now folly.
The name of this far-left commentator?
William F. Buckley, Jr. of the Upper East Side, and Gstaad.
Hamburgers, Morons & Islam:
http://www.opinionjournal.com/taste/?id=110006868
Radical clerics & Yvonne Ridley on the way to Australia:
http://sheikyermami.com/2007/03/18/radical-cleric-to-speak-in-australia-are-there-any-other-ones/
If the Stratigic Goal of American Foreign Policy is to confront Iran. then Leaving Iraq is the worst move we could ever possibly do.
Bombing Iran is as good as a declaration of war, and there is no Military Commander I have ever listened to that ever suggested a war could be won through Air Power alone. Especially if no other Country will allow us overflight rights.
Alot of talking Heads like to ramble on about hitting Irans Nuclear Sites. However, trying to hit an estimated 1,000 locations from Bases in Montana, North Dakota,and Okinawa, is just a Dream.
I have a question about the origin of the stuff the terrorists are using. First, there are those newer "IED" that appear to be sophisticated shaped charges that could be a spin-off from nuclear weapons technology. It took shaped ("lens") charges to make the plutonium bomb work. Now, who in that area has that kind of technology?
Next, where does one get industrial quantities of chlorine? It comes from an industrial source such as plastic manufacture or disinfectants. So, it is either being diverted inside Iraq (traitors) or imported from somewhere else (an act of aggression). In both cases, "Iran" comes to mind.