Ten suspects in the October 2000 bombing of the USS Cole have escaped from prison in Yemen. The 10 fugitives, including chief suspect Jamal al-Badawi, were jailed in the port city of Aden shortly after the destroyer was bombed, killing 17 American sailors. Officials would not say how the men escaped, but they said security forces were out in force in the city's streets in a major search operation. Photographs of the men were sent to police and intelligence agents and the houses of the escaped men's relatives were being searched. Al-Badawi allegedly helped buy the dinghy used by the two suicide bombers, who rammed the destroyer as it was refuelling in Aden. Officials said the men might have left Aden and headed to al-Qaida strongholds in the northern province of Shabwah. Yemen committed itself to joining the war on terrorism following the September 11 attacks in America and has allowed US forces to enter the country and train its military.
Posted by: Bulldog ||
04/11/2003 07:24 am ||
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Well, fairly typical of third world countries. Money talks and evil walks. This will, however, provide the Yemeni authorities with reason to do some further housecleaning, and it wouldn't surprise me to see them find most of these guys, and a bunch more, as they scour the city.
French investigators said today that the contents of bottles found at a Paris train station last month and believed to be the poison ricin actually consisted of ground wheat germ and barley. They said the grain was mistakenly identified as ricin because it consists of protein whose structure is similar to that of ricin. I don't know about this, although it certainly wouldn't be the first false alarm we've seen.
The grain was found in bottles discovered in a locker at the Gare de Lyon. After initial tests, the French authorities said the bottles contained small amounts of the deadly poison ricin. Later tests by the Defense Ministry proved this was not so, the Paris prosecutor's office said today.
The containers were found at the train station on March 17, together with two other vials of powder and a bottle of liquid.
A small quantity of ricin was found in London in January during an antiterrorist sweep in which six men were arrested.
But French officials were evidently still not entirely satisfied that the substances found were not in some way related to a planned terrorist attack. A senior Interior Ministry official was quoted by the daily Le Parisien as saying that the substances may have been "the product of an experiment" or the remains of an effort to produce a toxic weapon.
Posted by: Paul Moloney ||
04/11/2003 08:54 pm ||
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Belgium has criticized a a statement issued by the US ambassador in Brussels asking Belgium to review the status of Iraqi diplomats in the country. ''Parts of the communique is certainly not of the best taste. We were surprised by its tone,'' Belgian foreign ministry spokesman Patrick Herman told IRNA Friday. "Oh, how ucky!"
The US ambassador to Belgium, Stephen Brauer, in a statement on Thursday said he hoped that the ''Belgian government will take immediate measures to protect Iraqi property in Belgium .'' Meaning we don't want the present set of Baathist hacks to steal all the towels and silverware...
''The embassy of Iraq and its contents, as well as other Iraqi diplomatic properties, should be sequestered and protected," Brauer said, calling also for a review of the status of Iraqi diplomats in the county. "If the government immediately takes these measures, Belgium will show that it supports the Iraq of tomorrow, not the old regime,'' said the US ambassador. Makes sense to me, but...
''We wouldn't be rushing'' to take a decision, said the Belgian spokesman. That's a fairly forthright admission they support the old regime and to hell with the new one. Ptui.
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
04/11/2003 11:59 am ||
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Just like we were so eager in our 'rush to war'? Pathetic blustering surrender rats...
ISMIL, Turkey: It was not drugs, brawls or the usual teenage recklessness that landed Bayram A. in trouble, confronting him with the prospect of as many as five years in prison. It was a word. But by uttering it, when and where he did, Bayram tapped directly into some of Turkey's darkest anxieties. On a school day last November, his teachers in this remote, poor, densely Kurdish area of southeastern Turkey asked him to lead his classmates in the customary Turkish pledge of allegiance, which includes the line, "Happy is the one who calls himself a Turk." Bayram, then 15, balked. "I have a stomachache," he recalls telling the teachers. "I don't feel good." They insisted that he press ahead. So he did, and what they heard him say was this: "Happy is the one who calls himself a Kurd." The teachers not only sent him home from school for the day, but also summoned the police. Bayram now stands accused of "inciting hatred and enmity on the basis of religion, race, language or regional differences," The teacher was quoted as saying "how dare he try to incite hatred, only we are allowed to do that"
according to the indictment filed against him in State Security Court in Diyarbakir, about 30 miles west of here. Human rights advocates are not really surprised. "This case is just one example of violations that have gone on for 15 years," said Muharrem Erbey, an executive with the Human Rights Association in Diyarbakir. Mr. Erbey, who is also Bayram's lawyer, requested that Bayram's last name be withheld. It has not been published in Turkey, where the law protects minors from such exposure. Bayram's case provides a glimpse into the extreme vigilance of Turkish government officials against any possible flicker of Kurdish separatism, a watchfulness that continues to shape the country's response to the war in Iraq in potentially crucial ways.... The words had always felt wrong and phony to him probably because they are
and he said he realized on that day that he did not want to be the one proclaiming them from center stage. "It was a moment," he said, not elaborating on the thought. sorta like rosa parks refusing to give up her seat
Classmates gaped at what came out of his mouth, then giggled. A teacher loudly berated him, he recalled, saying that he was a disgraceful ingrate, like so many Kurdish children in Turkey. Word spread fast through the village. His father rushed to the school to ask the principal to be lenient. His mother wept.
Posted by: ----------<<<<-- ||
04/11/2003 09:26 am ||
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C'mon, Murat, here's a fat, juicy one for you. Let's hear it!
Posted by: Dar ||
04/11/2003 9:51 Comments ||
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#2
Yeah. Hey Murat! Oi, Murat! C'mover here, we want a comment please....
#3
Amazing. He says he is happy to be a Kurd. As far as I can tell, he didn't denigrate Turks by that innocuous statement. The teacher turns around, calls him an ingrate like so many other Kurds (ethnic slur), and the KID gets five years?
Ok, Murat, explain this, please....he didn't call for revolution, didn't say he loves the PKK, all he did was change a word.
Posted by: Former Russian Major ||
04/11/2003 11:25 Comments ||
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#5
Jim Crow's still alive in Turkey.I think Bush should now support the resolution in Congress acknowledging The Armenian Genocide.Clinton blocked it in 2000 so as not to annoy an important ally.Since Turkey isn't one anymore,why not go ahead?
Posted by: El Id ||
04/11/2003 13:01 Comments ||
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#6
Bayram now stands accused of "inciting hatred and enmity on the basis of religion, race, language or regional differences,"
Hey!
Only American lawmakers are allowed to ratify oppressive hate speech laws.
I'm suing!
#7
I am surprised by these posts regarding someone refusing to say the Turkish pledge. Suppose someone had tried the same stunt in the US. I know there wouldn't be penal time involved but wouldn't you be upset? The Turks have spent the past ten years dealing with a communist led Kurd insurgency. While I also like the Kurds, I'll have no truck with communists. If the US were dealing with the same sort insurgency would you still condemn the Turks?
Posted by: TJ Jackson ||
04/12/2003 0:06 Comments ||
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#8
We can all sympathize with the plight of the Kurds. Certainly more than the Palestinians. But they are not pure and angel-like either. There has been Kurdish terrorism too, although less recently. But I don't like the idea of balkanizing Mesopatamia and central Asia. Giving the Kurds cultural freedom and political integration into Turkey, Iraq and Iran is much more preferable. Nobody wins if the world is constantly breaking down into little Ethnic-a-stans. It's a recepie for un-ending war.
Posted by: Tokyo Taro ||
04/12/2003 1:37 Comments ||
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Tj,
If a teacher in the U.S. tried this crap,they would be firied.Jahova's Witness due not Pledge Alegience to the Flag,but they are not vilified,much less imprisioned.
"Happy is the one who calls himself an Apache."
Should my nieghbor's child have to put-up with a bigot for a teacher,should that child face
5-years in prision for being proud and happy at being an Apache.We (White America)virtually destroyed Native American culture,fortunaltly we had some wise leaders who put an end to this deplroable practice.
One of my favorite fishing spots is School House Point,Roosevelt Lake,Arizona.You know one of those reservation school's where children couldn't even talk among themselves in thier native lanquage.
The European Commission is examining contracts awarded by the US for reconstruction work in Iraq to find out whether they breach World Trade Organisation rules and discriminate unfairly against European companies. Fine, you do that. We'll be busy investigating contracts between EU members and Saddam. Something about an elf, know anything about that?
The move could throw up a new irritant at a time when relations between Washington and Brussels are already severely strained by the highly critical stance adopted by many European Union members towards the war in Iraq. It also comes as trade negotiators on both sides of the Atlantic struggle to overcome their differences over further trade liberalisation in the current WTO round as well as a growing number of bilateral trade disputes. The EU insists that the US abide by the WTO Agreement on Government Procurement, which states that, in principle, contracts awarded by national governments or their agencies must be open to businesses from abroad. However, a spokeswoman for Pascal Lamy, the EU trade commissioner, conceded that this rule did not apply to vast bulk of contracts signed by the US Agency for International Development, the State Department organisation that oversees US humanitarian aid projects, and which so far has been largely responsible for reconstruction contracts in Iraq. Contracts that touch upon issues related to "national security" or "national defence" are also not covered by the agreement. I see, you are complaining that we should abide by a rule which you admit does not apply.
This is because WTO members were given significant leeway in deciding what sectors and government agencies they would open to foreign competition. "We will be examining [the contracts] on a case-by-case basis. We have to examine whether each of them falls under the exceptions the WTO rules provide for," the spokeswoman said. However, the Commission stressed that it was keen to avoid formal proceedings against the US in front of the WTO: "The last thing we need now is a row at the WTO," she added. That's right, we're pissed at you already. Don't push your luck.
Officials also said that they were not aware of any complaints from European companies regarding the current tenders for reconstruction work. "We have not yet identified any particular problems. We hope that they respect the rules. But if they don't, there is the WTO," a Commission official said. Let's see, no one has complained, government contracts are not covered by your rules, and still you are threatening a investigation. Typical euro.
Posted by: Steve ||
04/11/2003 08:04 am ||
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What a Joke! The Eu always resorts to threats that it cannot back up! It always runs and cries to the WTO. The Belgians are a ridiculous group of wannabees. Great Britian will never be dictated to by a little fingerpointing country. How can they join that bunch of whiners. France just uses Brussels as it's mouthpiece for a greater francophone europe. the US needs to stand up to this abuse and put them in their place. Start putting every type grievence through the WTO from even the smallest infraction. France can't yell loud enough, so it gets Belgium to chime in. This is done to make it look as though all of europe is behind this type of action. When it is NOT!
Posted by: George ||
04/11/2003 8:30 Comments ||
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#2
The Coalition of the Willing will now be opposed by the Coalition of the Whining.
#4
We ought to look at de-Antwerping our container movements to the US and send them a message. No ranting, no raving, just start making a Plan B and they will come down about 10 dB.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
04/11/2003 10:22 Comments ||
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Belgium is mouthpiece of the European Union. The European Union is hostage to France and Germany. The thing to do is to stop doing business with the European Union, and establish one-on-one trade deals with individual countries. The EU won't last a week.
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
04/11/2003 11:07 Comments ||
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Could the EU please wait to start the trade war until after we finish mopping up in Iraq? Thanks.
I understand that Rotterdam has a fine port. It's looking better and better all the time.
Posted by: Former Russian Major ||
04/11/2003 11:30 Comments ||
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The EU insists that the US abide by the WTO Agreement on Government Procurement, which states that, in principle, contracts awarded by national governments or their agencies must be open to businesses from abroad.
Chipping away at our Constitution as hard as they can. I guess they want the whole world to be a failed Socialist welfare state under seige by Islamonazis.
Screw the EU.
Rot you bastards.
#9
Old Patriot, about 80 percent of EU trade is between EU members (excluding UK). Only about 10 percent of trade is with the U.S. Of course much of it is done between multinational companies. Daimler Chrysler producing in the US, Procter and Gamble in Germany. Boycott anyone? How?
The CEO of Hochtief, a big German construction company commented: We are absolutely international, we are German, American, French, Spanish etc. And we pay our taxes in the respective countries.
What do you mean by stopping trade deals with the EU? Jobs for more U.S. bureaucrats? The will just love being busy for the next year.
Btw the EU has not taken advantage of the WTO ruling about steel tariffs it won against the U.S.
Trade conflicts always hurt both sides. Might even hurt the U.S. more than the EU
On a funny note: 51 percent of Evian, the famous French mineral water, is owned by who?
#11
"On a funny note: 51 percent of Evian, the famous French mineral water, is owned by who?
Coca Cola "
So - instead of buying evian, i buy a domestic bottled water - all returns to labor are now US, and so are 100% of returns to capital rather than 51%. Boycotts still work in a global age, just more subtly.
#12
similarly i'll buy a German made Daimler chrysler over a German made Volkswagen, and a US made Daimler Chrysler or VW over those, but I'll probably actually buy a US manufactured Honda or Toyota (coalition of the willing) over any of the above (the Mexican parts dont bother me - they didnt support us, but they werent like Germany or France, and they need the money, and the North American economy is highly integrated)
#13
in any case, TGA, we wont be focusing on taking it out on Germany, which is probably close to electing a CDU govt anyway, we'll try to pry them loose from the axis of weasels. We'll punish France, and maybe Russia, and we can do that in many ways without violating WTO - eg we can press against France's sphere of influence in Africa.
#14
TGA,
What I'm saying is not to boycott goods produced WITHIN the European Union, but to refuse to do business with any European Union bureaucracy or anyone working through an EU bureaucracy. All US trade negotiations for country-to-country exchange should be with the individual country, not the European bureaucracy that Fance, Germany, and Belgium want to force on all of Europe. I'd also add to that the requirement that all payments to/from the United States be either in gold or in US dollars. Screw the Euro to the bloody wall, low enough to be an easy target.
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
04/11/2003 17:24 Comments ||
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#15
Schroeder's approval ratings... somewhere around 25 percent right now. Of course it's about the economy. But it also shows that Anti-Americanism doesn't get you very far in Germany. At least not for a longer time.
Old Patriot, if you want a democratic reform of the EU I'm the first to join you in that endeavour. You can't screw the Euro much though, as most of the Euro trade is between EU countries anyway. And Russia is thinking about a bigger role of the Euro as well.
When it comes to the economy the United States might be more vulnerable as you think. 6 trillions of debt, 600 bn of dollars foreign investment every year. Pissing too many countries of the world off might not be a very healthy idea.
Btw an European economy in good shape is good for the U.S. as well. And viceversa. If the EU and the U.S. start a serious trade conflict the world economy will plunge into depression, not recession. Won't help anyone.
#16
I have to agree with TGA on this.. wouldn't help anyone.
Indeed, the way the world economy is structured right now, a big trade war could kill more people than all the military wars of the past.
#17
As did the wonderful UN sanctions in Iraq. If there ever was a good reason to fight that war for it's the end of these sanctions that killed a thousand times more children than the war.
Sanctions don't work with dictators. Smart missiles do as it seems.
This is actually the reason why I came around from being anti war to pro war. The children killed during the bombings were a sad sight. But the silent mass murder stops now. And this is the real good news about it all.
#20
The U.S. GDP (2001) was about 10 trillion dollars, the "national debt clock" of today says 6,47 trillion dollars, so national debt is about 64% of the annual GDP. The Euro states are not allowed to have a debt of more than 60% of their national GDP (Germany has a bit more, about 62%).
So there doesn't seem to be a big difference.
But America's Total Debt - household, business, financial and government sectors - is 34 trillion or $119,442 per man, woman and child. 61% ($21 trillion) of this debt was created since 1990, a period primarily driven by debt instead of by productive activity. In Europe it's only a fraction of that.
A concerted financial action of Europe and the Arab states against the United States would lead to worldwide economical havoc. But the US depend on imports of capital a lot more than Europe, Arab countries trade more with Europe than with the US (oil - goods). So an all out trade war would be not only plain stupid it would make the US economy crumble while Europe may survive with a very bloody nose.
#21
TGA, you're making assumptions about a Government that can't be made. Do consider that we would not hesitate to make the world pay dearly for such a proposal.
Daily during the war, 11-year-old Adrien has trundled to the mail box, picked out his copy of France's popular newspaper for youngsters and read about the horrors of the conflict in Iraq. This week, he's found the news hard to stomach. Most disturbing, he says, was a photo Tuesday of a terrified Iraqi girl fleeing the fighting on her father's shoulders, with smoking tanks in the distance. "She looks so sad, I think she's crying," he said. "It's awful, I am against this war."
"Little Daily," aimed at children aged 7-10, is at the center of a debate in France about whether to expose or shield children from images of the fighting. When the United States and Britain invaded Iraq, "Little Daily" editor Francois Dufour dropped the usual stories about animals or nature. Instead, he set out to explain in simple language everything from weapons of mass destruction to the brutality of Saddam Hussein's dictatorship. "We have to show reality, war is terrible," he said in an interview this week. Children "will feel less in a bubble, it's an eye-opener on the world and the world is not a calm place."
From his newsroom at the back of a courtyard in central Paris, Dufour publishes four daily newspapers exclusively for youngsters from kindergarten to high school. Dufour says the paper is delivered daily to 200,000 homes but that readership through schools is closer to 2 million. His newspapers have run photos of American prisoners of war, blood on a hospital floor, injured civilians or plumes of smoke rising above Baghdad. "In Iraq, people are dying and suffering," read a headline this week, with a picture showing an Iraqi man in tears surrounded by the coffins of his dead relatives.
Dufour insists that his papers offer a balanced view of the war, free of editorial influence. But a cartoon in Wednesday's edition of "L'Actu" (The News), for kids aged 14 and above, had a distinct anti- American bent. It showed an American soldier firing four bullets through the stomach of an Iraqi civilian under the caption: "I am feeding Iraqis."
When this is over, perhaps Dufour can run a special historical series, focusing on the horrors of the last war France had on it's soil. Maybe he can draw some pictures of an American soldier firing four bullets through the stomach of a German soldier under the caption "I am liberating France." And he could have one that said "In France, people were dying and suffering."
Posted by: Bruce ||
04/11/2003 05:46 am ||
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These French cartoonists sure are gifted.
It's a shame how the left always targets kids, like perverts handing out sweets at the edge of a school playground. It takes decades for the indoctrination to rub off.
#2
Bulldog, you do have a way with words. You are right, of course, they do it in Australia, too.
The socialists have not just infiltrated the universities, in the last few years they've made great efforts to white-ant the schools.
They have been very busy organising their youth wing 'resistance' and encourage young activists to spread their ideology on the schoolground, organising the kids to go on protests etc.
When they're young, they're impressionable. They openly state not to bother trying to convert those over 30 because they can't be brainwashed as easily.
#3
Yeah. "Think of the children" really means let's expose them to all sorts of horrors and warp their psyche permanently so that we can influence them their entire lives.
#4
anon1: white-ant? Aussie slang? I'm curious - agree with all above however. Here in the U.S. the enviros go for the schools - save the whales (collect the whole set)
Posted by: Frank G ||
04/11/2003 7:50 Comments ||
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#5
Hi Frank! White-ant: to destructively and connivingly infiltrate like a termite through the wood of your house.
Posted by: Frank G ||
04/11/2003 9:10 Comments ||
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#7
Most disturbing, he says, was a photo Tuesday of a terrified Iraqi girl fleeing the fighting on her father's shoulders, with smoking tanks in the distance. "She looks so sad, I think she's crying," he said. "It's awful, I am against this war."
Ooooh, the image of a scared kid on someone's shoulders with burning tanks behind them is SOOOOOOO scary.
#8
I think the United States should demand equal time. Include the photos of US prisoners of war with "suspicious" gunshot wounds in the center of their forehead. Include a short article on how Jessica Lynch was provided "medical care" by the Iraqi military. Include the astounding joy of the people of Baghdad celebrating the destruction of Saddam's statue. Anything less would be tatamount to admitting that the entire "coverage" was a petulent propaganda display for no other purpose but to feed anti-American sentiment.
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
04/11/2003 9:27 Comments ||
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#9
Are you kidding? You're never going to see balance in any of the French media. I lived there for a year and I absolutely couldn't believe the unreasoning anti-Americanism that pervaded everything. This goes much farther than opposing the war in Iraq, as has been noted elsewhere. It amounts to a national inferiority complex. I hope to God they get shut completely out of the reconstruction in Iraq. And I wish American tourists would stop visiting France as well. Why go spend your money in a place populated by people who are inflated with totally unwarranted self-importance and who treat Americans with hostility and derision? France is a beautiful country. It's just too bad the French live there.
Posted by: Joe ||
04/11/2003 12:02 Comments ||
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#10
And did I mention that I hate the goddamn Frogs? Just wanted to make sure I got that in.
Posted by: Joe ||
04/11/2003 12:05 Comments ||
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#11
Joe,
There are still people in Normandy, Brittany, and Alsace that like and respect Americans. The rest of France would make a nice sewer. The people in Paris all believe they are the direct descendents of the Bourbons, and should continue to be treated as their ancestors were treated 300 years ago. That goes triple for anyone actually from the former French colonies.
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
04/11/2003 14:45 Comments ||
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#12
About 25 years ago, I went to Bastogne and to St. Lo to visit a couple places my Dad had been. (He was wounded at St. Lo.) I found the people in both areas very pleasant. I wonder how much things have changed in a quarter century...
Posted by: Fred ||
04/11/2003 15:29 Comments ||
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"Ummm... Lemme think. Which is more important to Mother Russia â G.W. Bush, who's alive and well and at the top of his game, or Sammy and his gunnies, who're dead or in hiding?... Igor, get my hat! I'm going to Texas!"
But the diplomatic tensions over the role of the UN are sure to be reignited. Gerhard Schröder announced yesterday that Germany would only take part in the reconstruction if the operation were carried out under UN auspices. His ultimatum highlighted the point that Germany's position remains more uncompromising than that of France. Mr Schröder's setting out of conditions will also alarm German industrialists hoping for lucrative contracts in the aftermath of the conflict.
Posted by: George ||
04/11/2003 04:34 am ||
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Mr Chirac now has to depend on spontaneous reconciliation with Britain and the US if France is to have a role in postwar reconstruction.
About as likely to occur as spontaneous generation...
Another influential MP, the party's leader in the Paris city council, Claude Coasguen, said Mr Chirac had "to act swiftly to lessen the impact of violent anti-American remarks and rethink a number of provocative statements made without reflection".
Looks like somebody missed a number of "good opportunities to keep quiet" then, eh?
Gerhard Schröder announced yesterday that Germany would only take part in the reconstruction if the operation were carried out under UN auspices.
That's OK Gerhard -- the coalition of the willing can handle it just fine without you.
Posted by: John Phares ||
04/11/2003 6:11 Comments ||
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#2
"Gerhard Schröder announced yesterday that Germany would only take part in the reconstruction if the operation were carried out under UN auspices."
"Mein Gott, Chancellor! It's now patently obvious we weren't defending anyone's interests except Saddam's and his thuggish cohort. We've got to do something to improve our image, and fast!"
"I know, let's cynically withold humanitarian aid for political reasons."
"What happens when the coalition don't accept our demands to hand over to the UN?"
"Uh, we'll cross that bridge when we come to it. Better not include any perishables in that aid though, just in case."
#5
"...with George Bush, whom the French president has not yet contacted."
Yeah, I don't call people who won't return my calls either. Good luck, Worm, you rate somewhere way below telemarketers and used car salesmen.
Posted by: Tom ||
04/11/2003 8:13 Comments ||
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#6
transfer all calls from Chiraq to the information officer at Arlington National Cemetary. He can plead his case there
Posted by: Frank G ||
04/11/2003 9:35 Comments ||
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#7
There are consequences to behavior. Can't say that enough. Dr. Foster Cline, a family friend and child psychiatrist specializing in early childhood problems, kept beating that into our head when we worked with his group in Colorado in the 1970's, trying to modify destructive behavior in children with severe attachment disorders. We followed his methods to alter not only behavior, but behavior patterns, hopefully for life, so these kids could function in the real world.
Looks like Jaques, Gerhard, and Vladimir need some of that kind of behavior modification therapy themselves. I'm sure that US foreign policy can be an adequate tool to achieve that objective.
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
04/11/2003 9:48 Comments ||
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#8
Chiraq, in waving the all-encompassing UNSC veto, left us no room for negotiation and accommodation. Since 9-11 President Bush has laid out his plan and has done what he says. The AOW has tried to sabotage everything we have done concerning Iraq. Mr Bush is a man of his word, and does not like to be stabbed in the back, especially when it comes to protecting our country (and Chiraq's own country, to boot). Bush said that the UN will have a vital role, which is a throw-away line. The UN will not be setting policy in Iraq's reconstruction---Bush's administration folks have made that clear. The game is over Chiraq, and the implications are very serious for you and your country and are becoming clearer as the days and weeks go by.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
04/11/2003 10:39 Comments ||
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#9
This whole episode just shows that FDR did make some mistakes - giving a defeated france a seat with the victors at the UN. france is joke trying for past glory - glory based on the blood of the weak. Bastards...
Posted by: Dan ||
04/11/2003 11:21 Comments ||
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#10
What the hell are they smoking over there?
Are the French going to start appeasing US for a change? A bit too late for that now, Jacques.
Posted by: Former Russian Major ||
04/11/2003 11:47 Comments ||
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#11
The thing to do is hurt their pride, which is, like a hemmorhoid on the French national anus, swollen and sensitive. It's a damn good thing I'm not in charge because I'd have their embassy here in DC cleared out and all their shit sitting out on the curb right now.
Posted by: Joe ||
04/11/2003 12:11 Comments ||
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#12
Damn, Joe, I was eating when I read about the "French national anus". Yecch! You ruined a perfectly good hamburger, buddy! ;)
Posted by: Former Russian Major ||
04/11/2003 12:20 Comments ||
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#13
Ah, Joe, your scatalogical references to France's pride are in poor taste (Har Har) but true. A pox, a proletarian pox upon the French body politic.....
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
04/11/2003 13:10 Comments ||
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#14
from the NYT (via Sullivan) (author is John Burns of course, NYT's only good correspondent who can get through the Raines fog)
"Among the attacks that had a strong political edge were those on the German Embassy and the French cultural center, both in east Baghdad. Few Iraqis were unaware, in the weeks preceding the war, that France and Germany were leading international efforts to force President Bush into accepting an extension of United Nations weapons inspections here, and to delay military action against Mr. Hussein. The French and German buildings were stripped of furniture, curtains, decorations, and anything else that could be carried away. At the French cultural center, where looters burst water pipes and flooded the ground floor, books were left floating in the reading rooms and corridors, and a photograph of Jacques Chirac, the French president, was smashed. French reporters said the French Embassy, also on the Tigris's east bank, appeared to have been spared because it remained under the protection of French military guards. The German Embassy was unprotected."
#15
Juppe and Barrot way missed an excellent opportunity to remain silent on this one.
Posted by: (lowercase) matt ||
04/11/2003 14:08 Comments ||
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#16
Mr Schröder's setting out of conditions will also alarm German industrialists hoping for lucrative contracts in the aftermath of the conflict.
We don't need you.
We never did.
The industrialists will vote you out, Herr Schroeder.
Mssr. Chiraq has forgotten that the world is NOT France and has succeeded in revealing what a truly pompous ass he is.
Putin is scared because he was too stupid to realize where this whole alliance was heading, and too weak to fend off the Commies who urged him on.
None of them are worth the salt in the lowliest American criminal's sweat.
Screw 'em.
EditedWell....DUH????? Ya think so???
Anti-war groups are quickly reshaping their tactics for a postwar era, but they fear the huge movement they forged over the last several months will inevitably lose steam as the fighting winds down in Iraq. Think they'll try to nudge us into Syria? "C'mon! We want to be RELEVANT again! We want to play SIXTIES again! It was over TOO FAST!!!"
"Everybody has paused for a moment," said Mary Ellen McNish, head of the American Friends Service Committee, a branch of the pacifist Quaker church. "We're trying to make sure we're doing the right thing at the right time." Read: We have no clue what to whine about next. None at all.
With near unanimity, anti-war organizers say they will carry through with demonstrations already arranged for the next few weeks, including a march to the White House and a rally in San Francisco on Saturday. Already booked the bands and it's not like any of us would be doing anything constructive that day anyways...
International Answer, which is organizing the events, will retool its message as "occupation isn't liberation," said Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, a member of the group's steering committee.
"We believe that the U.S. must withdraw from the Middle East," she said. The group draws support from the Free Palestine Alliance, some communists and socialists, as well as clergy, unions, academics and others. US Out Of America! Free Mumia! Free Info Man! No Blood for Statues! Help us out here, will ya??? As U.S. forces took control of Baghdad this week, anti-war activists said they were pleased the war they couldn't stop may be nearing its end. Privately, they also began a heavy round of e-mails, phone calls and meetings to take stock of their own strategy to preserve at least some of the momentum of the largest peace movement since Vietnam. Oh, God! I'll never get laid again!
The Rev. Bob Edgar, co-chairman of Win Without War and general secretary of the National Council of Churches, said organizers were hashing out "whether Win Without War should continue and what it should do." Tom Andrews, Win Without War's national director, said he believes the large coalition, which formed last fall to stop the war on Iraq, will survive with a wider agenda. United for Peace and Justice, another big newcomer to the peace movement, may start focusing more heavily on smaller regional events than on mass protests, spokesman Jason Kafoury said. God, it didn't even last long enough for me to score some good weed...
Sociologist Eric Swank of Morehead State University in Kentucky, who is studying the peace movement, said it has already begun to ebb. "There's a perception that the war has been fast in the last week or so, and that Baghdad has been conquered, and the American public can move on to another issue," he said. Better pay attention, folks. He's a sociologist!
For now, anti-war leaders say they will refocus on supporting a dominant U.N. role in rebuilding Iraq and greater American cooperation with that body. Many groups say they must stay active to guard against any Bush administration plan to attack Syria or Iran next, though Secretary of State Colin Powell was quoted as saying that won't happen. "The message that we're concentrating on now is that Iraq needs to be for the Iraqis and, as soon as possible, the United States should withdraw," said Sister Alice Gerdeman, a Roman Catholic nun who coordinates the Intercommunity Justice and Peace Center in Cincinnati. Some groups are retooling their messages to denounce what they view as excessive American militarism and to push for U.S. nuclear disarmament, promote domestic issues like better schools and health care, and organize to expel Bush and war-backing congressmen in next year's elections. In other words, ya know, "Screw America!" But that's always been our point when you think about it.
Peace Action expects to place newspaper ads this month with two other groups encouraging sympathizers to vote their convictions next year. "It may not be 100,000 people in the streets, but it's necessary to make sure this sort of thing doesn't happen again," said Peace Action spokesman Scott Lynch. Because if you're, like, against the war, and there is no war, then you, like, don't really need that many people out protesting against it. Like....wow.
Many organizers claim credit for delaying the war and forcing Bush to consult with Congress and the United Nations. However, they said their most abiding accomplishment could be a much broader base of support for peace and social justice causes â if they can rechannel the anti-war energy of recent months. They accomplished shit! All they did was show the world what a feeble bunch of ineffective losers they really were.
#1
Oh I hope I hope I hope I hope I hope PJ O'Rourke gets some space in Rolling Stone, or anywhere, in fact, to address this issue.
Hey! Maybe we can get Peace Action wound up to protest Kunicich's Peace University, which University would pretty much be a government institution. My gosh - the best possible fitting of protest to target ever made!
#5
I personally do not have a problem with the people in the "Peace Movement" that are consistant. The ones that oppose all violence and war. You the two or three that would of demonstrated against Saddam or Milosevich. As is they only time they care is if the US is involved
Posted by: Someone who did NOT vote for William Proxmire ||
04/11/2003 17:31 Comments ||
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PJ was last spotted in Iraq,reporting on the war.He doesn't write for Rolling Stone anymore,but contributes to The Atlantic Monthly,found at www.theatlantic.com (-I hope so too.But there's always Mark Steyn)
Posted by: El Id ||
04/11/2003 17:37 Comments ||
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#7
Highlarryous!
Bye-bye Sister Alice Gestapo. See ya Scott LynchIraqis.
It's also great to see the incredibly self-righteous American Friends Service Committee "paused." Maybe they'll take a moment to reflect on how they supported a mass murderer with their peace-at-any-price mentality.
The "peace movement" died on March 28. That was when the San Francisco cops found molotov cocktails in a backpack. After that, the demonstrators were never able to organize more than a few hundred die-hards here. And they'll protest ANYTHING in San Francisco.
Posted by: R. McLeod ||
04/12/2003 3:45 Comments ||
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Democrats and Republicans on Capitol Hill are rallying around military successes in Iraq and supporting the troops, but House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said it was still right to oppose granting the president the authority to use force to disarm Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. "I have absolutely no regret about my vote on this war," she told reporters at her weekly briefing yesterday, saying the same questions still remain: "The cost in human lives. The cost to our budget, probably $100 billion. We could have probably brought down that statue for a lot less. The cost to our economy. But the most important question at this time, now that we're toward the end of it, is what is the cost to the war on terrorism?" Swell, Nancy — denigrate the whole effort by implying that all it accomplished was to bring down a statue. Carp about the cost, and imply that it hurt the war on terrorism.
She and a majority of House Democrats last October voted against authorizing the president to use force to disarm Saddam's regime. In the Senate, a majority of Democrats voted for the war resolution. The measure passed both chambers comfortably, with almost every Republican supporting it. But Mrs. Pelosi, a dim-witted partisan hack California Democrat, has said she worries the Iraq campaign would divert attention from the broader war on terror and could spawn new terrorist attacks. Oh Look everyone -- a straw man, a straw boogieman -- EEEEEEK!
Meanwhile, House Republicans and Democrats held a rally to support the troops yesterday, and leaders of both parties praised the military's efficiency and professionalism. Mrs. Pelosi also praised the troops at the rally. But she didn't address the war itself at the event. Later, in her news conference, she told reporters she is not convinced the war in Iraq has made Americans safer. "That remains to be seen," she said. "I certainly would hope so, and I think we have to think in a very positive way about it, but we don't know." Don't hesitate to make a coherent point, Nancy, if you can find one.
That put her at odds with House Minority Whip Steny H. Hoyer, Maryland Democrat, who said to some U.S. troops present at the rally: "Your cause is noble and just. You are disarming a dangerous despot and ending his ruthless regime." He also said he believed the war was "strengthening the security of our nation, as well as the nations of the Middle East and the nations of the world."
As Mrs. Pelosi praised the troops, she also said their success was owed "in large measure" to former President Bill Clinton. "This best-trained, best-equipped, best-led force for peace in the history of the world was not invented in the last two years. This had a strong influence and strong support during the Clinton years," she said. Really, any coherent thought will do, Nancy, honest...
I'd hate to think of how many of my friends — good officers and good NCOs — said to hell with it and got out during the Clinton years...
Posted by: John Phares ||
04/11/2003 01:51 pm ||
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Sorry for the duplicate article -- Steve's wasn't posted when I started editing my version...
Posted by: John Phares ||
04/11/2003 14:18 Comments ||
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"This best-trained, best-equipped, best-led force for peace in the history of the world was not invented in the last two years. This had a strong influence and strong support during the Clinton years"
But i very much doubt that Pelosi was among dems supporting any pro-military initiatives during the Clinton administration. Who does she think she is, Sam Nunn?
#4
I think the "quagmire" thing would have really worked out better for her speechwriters.
Was that clanging sound the statue of Saddam falling or Nancy's hopes for 2004?
Posted by: Fred ||
04/11/2003 14:37 Comments ||
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"But i very much doubt that Pelosi was among dems supporting any pro-military initiatives during the Clinton administration"
Friggin' CLINTON wasn't among those who supported any pro-military initiatives during his administration. Clinton's military INDEED. Notice they want to give Clinton credit for our military, but not for our present economy. It's enough to send one into a Yosemite Sam-esque rant.
#9
Chuck, Chuck, Chuck...why must you dis Michael Jackson so?
Posted by: Michael ||
04/11/2003 15:03 Comments ||
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As Mrs. Pelosi praised the troops, she also said their success was owed "in large measure" to former President Bill Clinton. "This best-trained, best-equipped, best-led force for peace in the history of the world was not invented in the last two years. This had a strong influence and strong support during the Clinton years," she said.
I'm retired Air Force. Colorado Springs, where I live, is a military town: Army (Fort Carson), Air Force (Shriver AFB, Peterson AFB, USAF Academy, Cheyenne Mountain), and even a half-decent contingent of Navy and Marines (US Space Command, NORAD). There are also several tens of thousands of retirees here. There's a lot of names that pop up in discussions of the military, when military readiness is discussed, and when the military budget gets scrutiny. Clinton's name doesn't coincide with the word "support" very often.
The Clinton military budgets were forced on him by a Republican-controlled House, and enough support in the Senate to keep the budgets from being completely gutted. The equipment we're now using began showing up in line-item discussions in the early to mid 1980's, some even before. Today's military is hurting, physically, equipment-wise (especially in spare parts and certain emergency equipment), and in many other ways. Pay is still too low, expectations and demands too high for current troop strength, there's a shortage of theater air assets, and our combat reserves are often being used to meet daily operations requirements. A lot of people both in the US and overseas routinely put in a 70-hour work-week. The military Bush inherited is about half the size of the one Clinton inherited from Bush's father. The only reason our forces are so successful today is because the people in uniform are professionals, in spite of the actions of our political "leadership".
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
04/11/2003 15:03 Comments ||
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In fake news today, conclusive proof that House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi is a time-travelling idiot:
(UPI) The nation's Time Police discovered that House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi has risked ruining the very world we live in today in order to, as she puts it, "enoble and enable the past" with the leftist views of today's Democratic party. In history textbooks around the world, Mrs. Pelosi's speeches now appear where yesterday they did not.
From 1941: ""I have absolutely no regret about my vote on this war," she told reporters at her weekly briefing in Roosevelt's Washington, saying the same questions still remain: "The cost in human lives. The cost to our budget, probably $10 billion. We could probably bring down Hitler's uber soldiers - which everyone knows exist - for a lot less. The cost to our economy. But the most important question at this time, now that we're toward the end of it, is what is the cost to the war on Nazism?"
And from 1862: ""I have absolutely no regret about my vote on this war," she told reporters at her weekly briefing yesterday, saying the same questions still remain: "The cost in human lives. The cost to our budget, probably $100 million. We could probably bring down the South for a lot less. The cost to our economy. But the most important question at this time, now that we're toward the end of it, is what is the cost to preserving the Union and ending slavery?"
Extent documents, not quoted in the textbooks, reveal that even back then, people thought she was absolutely nuts.
#12
If this is Clinton's military, then this must also be Clinton's recession.
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
04/11/2003 15:58 Comments ||
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I wonder how much she'd bitch if all of the defense contractors in The Peoples Republic of California left the state?
Posted by: Someone who did NOT vote for William Proxmire ||
04/11/2003 17:42 Comments ||
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Whoa! Oh...pardon my dyslexia...I could have sworn that link was "Pelosi Craps About Iraq War". Sounds accurate enough.
Posted by: Rex Mundi ||
04/11/2003 17:56 Comments ||
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re: Someone who did NOT vote for William Proxmire
not much really the fools that support and elect her are not answerable to those of us in Orange County, San Diego County (my own), San Bernardino, etc. that support the military r/d and supply industries - big parts of our local employment as well as supporting our military in toto - they are good neighbors, good people and we like 'em. Northern California liberal bastions can go to hell, although some, like Bill Quick are like-minded with us libertarian-conservatives lol
Posted by: Frank G ||
04/11/2003 18:16 Comments ||
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#16
having Michael jackson as the new Democratic senate leader is exactly what every red blooded american Repuclican should strive for
#17
Clinton's military? Isn't that Monica dressed as a sailor?
Clinton's role in the past eight years was to stop the develop of every new weapons system; prevent the upgrade of improvement of anti-missile systems; cut the military by 50%; delayed the development of proposed systems. He was bomb happy running down stores of cruise missiles that he didn't replace. He advocated the early retirement of the B-1.
Pelosi been tutored by Baghdad Bob. Pelosi is about as knowledgable regarding the military as Barney Frank is in seducing women.
Posted by: TJ Jackson ||
04/12/2003 0:17 Comments ||
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Edited for brevity.
Wives of Camp Pendleton Marines involved in the war in Iraq have been receiving crank calls from individuals claiming to work for the Red Cross who regretfully, and falsely, inform them that their spouses had been killed in action.
In a statement, Camp Pendleton reminded military families that genuine casualty notifications are not made by telephone or by the Red Cross. "Individuals falsely identifying themselves as Red Cross representatives have made prank calls to Camp Pendleton spouses claiming that their loved ones overseas have been killed," the Marine Corps said in a brief statement. "The Marine Corps does not utilize the Red Cross for casualty notification. Marine Corps and Navy representatives conduct all casualty notifications in person for Camp Pendleton."
"I honestly can't even fathom someone with that mentality," a Marine wife named "Julia" told The San Diego Union-Tribune Thursday. "I can't even go there in my mind. I would assume that a young spouse could believe that kind of call and her world could be shattered," she added.
The Red Cross said last week that families of service members in Michigan, Delaware and Alabama had reported receiving similar calls following the outbreak of the war.
Posted by: Dar ||
04/11/2003 10:22 am ||
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Someone needs to dial "Star-6-9" next time a call like this occurs. Get the phone number at the other end and call it in -- not to the police, but to the Marine camp's CO.
Posted by: Steve White ||
04/11/2003 10:37 Comments ||
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This is not new behavior for the rabid anti-American left. My wife got two such calls while I was in Vietnam. Whoever is doing this needs to be caught, and turned over to the WIVES of military servicemembers. They will do more, and nastier, than anything the uniformed services would tolerate.
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
04/11/2003 11:11 Comments ||
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Sounds like a job for Caller ID...
Posted by: Fred ||
04/11/2003 11:16 Comments ||
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Sick! How could anyone do such a thing!? I think a good lawyer could help those who were hurt by these "pranks"â¦
#5
Fred: Indeed, someone should be able to trace one of these sick bastards. Then, retribution is off the record...and should occur deep inside an abondoned shipyard.
#7
What these people (I use that term loosely) are doing to these wives/husbands is wire fraud, right?
I say throw the book at 'em... prosecute them to the fullest extent of the law... A few weeks in the pokey (and... I mean that term literally) for a few of them will put a stop to all this BS...
#8
Here in Canada, after you get an abusive call you can let the operator know and they will send the trace directly to the police, but only if you intend to follow thru with your complaint.
I'm sure this technology exists everywhere and should be used in this case. If only to reveal who the a@@holes are.
#9
Here in America, you have to report 3 such calls to the phone company, who may or may not report it to the police, who may or may not elect to investigate. Even if they do, there are no circumstances whatsoever that the victim will be told the identity of the perpetrator. Well, the identity *might* come out after court proceedings, but it's kind of a long shot.
Just one of the sad situations that arise from our vaunted rights of free speech and privacy.
#11
During Vietnam those who oppose the war but support the troops used this tactic. The government should enact a law with a 10 year mandatory sentence for such a crime or a$50,000 fine, payable to the victim. Failing enactment, I'm all for some German villager violence out of Frankenstein.
Posted by: TJ Jackson ||
04/12/2003 0:48 Comments ||
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Link courtesy Damian Penny.
In the course of an excellent column on the liberation of Baghdad, Mark Steyn makes note of a connection between a certain French Canadian and a certain French oli company that seems to have affected Canadian foreign policy:
France, Germany, Russia, Belgium and Canada are not on the side of peace or morality or the Iraqi people. The pictures from the streets of Baghdad make that plain. But we are on the side of TotalFinaElf. Twice in recent columns, Diane Francis has mentioned, almost en passant, a curious little fact:
Meanwhile, Canada's Prime Minister has sided with the French and insulted our most important ally. He's become a dupe of Paris and damaged this country's reputation and bottom line as a result.
Posted by: Mike ||
04/11/2003 9:16 Comments ||
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the Diane Francis article was just mentioned on Paul Harvey radio with the whole: "Why is canada so against this war?" meme....
info moves fast, don't it?
Posted by: Frank G ||
04/11/2003 10:44 Comments ||
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#4
I sentence the Canadian PM to a lifetime of looping Celine Dion songs...
#5
Today reports float down from the north that Chretien is offering the RCMP (mounties) for policing duty in Iraq. Not immediately clear, but my impression is that it wont be conditional on a UNSC resolution. If true goes a long way toward healing this relationship.
#6
Liberalhawk has a good point. If we get help from the Canadians, and we can use it w/o strings attached, lets us it. The people of Canada have been supportive of us since 9-11. Mr Cretin is the 'roid® here and we can isolate him w/o isolating the Canadians. France, on the other hand, has no hope until the French umpyday Chiraq.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
04/11/2003 13:51 Comments ||
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#7
Alaska Paul, somehow that bit of piglatin came across to me as "Rump-pave", and immediately brought up some rather graphic - and hilarious - mental pictures. ROTFLMAO!
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
04/11/2003 15:11 Comments ||
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What's even funnier is how the liberal party in Ottawa treats Chretien like a god. He giveth your seat and if you don't adore the Liberal line, he can taketh away. The loser Don Boudria, MP, is the supreme Chretien worshiper. He literally cried when Chretien announced he was stepping down (in a year) and recently threw hissy fits when Chretien told them he did not want to extravagantly celebrate his 40th year in politics. Boudria wanted parades or something.
I'm starting to wish Mulroney was back in politics.
An anti-terrorism court in Pakistan Friday handed down death penalty to an activist of a banned group for multiple sectarian murders. The court in Karachi ordered Mohammad Faisal Pehlwan of the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi be hanged after he was found guilty of murdering Saleem Qadri, leader of the Sunni Tehreek group, and four others in May 2001. In addition to the death penalty, the convicted was fined 175,000 rupees (3017 dollars). The court officials say the money would be given to the relatives of those murdered. Police said Pehlwan was a member of the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, a group outlawed by President Pervez Musharraf in January last year for its involvement in sectarian violence. Qadri, his two relatives, driver and guard were killed in southern port city of Karachi in an ambush while they were going to a mosque for Friday prayers. Three people were injured in the attack. Defense lawyer Ashraf Mughal denounced the verdict and said Pehlwan was innocent and had nothing to do with the murders. He said he will challenge the verdict before a superior court.
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
04/11/2003 12:08 pm ||
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Ho-hum. Another Pak "expert"...
A noted Pakistani human right activist and chairman of Ansar Barni International Welfare Trust on Friday demanded trial of US forces for war crimes against innocent Iraqi men, women and children. He's probably not referring to the kiddies we let out of jail...
In an interview with "IRNA", Ansar Barni said that the US forces had committed heinous crimes against Iraqis, particularly women, and children and journalists and they should be tried in the International Court of Justice. In this connection, he emphasized that the international bodies on human rights should come forward and raise their voice against crimes against humanity during the Iraq war. He's talking about the Iraqis, right?
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
04/11/2003 11:46 am ||
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Good Gawd - where was Barni's (visual of a big purple dinosaur for some godawful reason, looking rather indignant, - sorry) concern for Iraqi men, women and children, when they were being tortured, murdered, oppressed, repressed, starved, etc. by the Butcher's regime? Human rights activist? Human Rights *Welfare Trust* Potato-Head. Where are those darn plastic glasses, maybe they could improve his vision ... ::mutter,mutter::
#3
just has to make you laugh when you hear a Pak whine about human rights violations by the americans.
Posted by: Dan ||
04/11/2003 13:43 Comments ||
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Pakland is another s--t hole we are eventually going to have to deal with, esp. with the combo of fundos and nuke-os. If the fundos get control of the country and the nuke-os, then it won't be much fun-oh. And this is the nightmare I keep having during the day-oh. I'm being humorous, but I really am serious about this.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
04/11/2003 14:11 Comments ||
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#5
I think we should show up at the International Court of "Justice" - the entire Coalition military, including reservists, National Guard, and the Retired reserve. Only we should bring our weapons and an "attitude". Maybe someone would get the "point".
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
04/11/2003 15:27 Comments ||
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An Indian party on Thursday said three weeks after the US-led war of occupation began in Iraq the people are still offering significant resistance in different parts of Iraq while the US has already started installing a set of puppet rulers in that country. According to a press release of Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) Liberation, US President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair are clearly pursuing an agenda of disintegration or balkanization of Iraq on the pattern of erstwhile Yugoslavia. The release said: "It is the most brazen display and execution of Orwellian doublespeak wherein freedom means colonization and reconstruction means balkanization, systematic destruction and disintegration." I guess if anybody knows something about Orwellian doublespeak it's a bunch of commies. Didja catch the part about "US-led war of occupation"? — "Arise, ye oppressed, and get your intifadah hats!"
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
04/11/2003 11:37 am ||
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A bit OT:
I was cruising the web a couple of weeks ago and came across one of the American Communist Youth web pages. I just stared at the pictures of all these kids with their slogans and such and the only thing that was going through my head was:
"How cute, they are just a bunch of cuties"
I wanted to go find a commie and pet him!
"C'mon Dad. I'll feed him, and, and, take him for walks, and clean up after him...."
#2
"No son, you can't bring one home ... they make an aweful mess. Especially when bludgeoned about the head and neck ::gasp:: did I say that out loud??"
A short piece from a long article:
The Hizbul Mujahideen (HM), one of the biggest militant groups operating in Kashmir, is in the throes of a violent churning. Within the span of a fortnight, two of its senior-most leaders, albeit belonging to rival factions, have been killed. Besides, fighting between the two factions is said to have assumed serious proportions in recent weeks. Last week, Indian security forces killed Saif-ul Islam, the "chief operations commander" of the HM in Indian-administered Kashmir. According to Indian sources, Saif-ul Islam, second in command to the Pakistan-based HM supremo Mohammed Yusuf Shah, alias Syed Salahuddin, was captured by Indian security forces on April 2. Indian sources say that Saif-ul Islam led the security forces to a HM hideout where he was killed in an exchange of fire between militants and the security forces. Separatists contend that Saif-ul Islam's death was the result of torture while in custody.
The rest of us don't care, as long as he stays dead...
Ten days earlier, Abdul Majid Dar, Saif-ul Islam's predecessor as "chief operations commander", was shot dead by unidentified gunmen in his home town, Sopore. A "moderate" within the HM who is believed to have been in favor of dialogue with the Indian government, Dar fell foul of the pro-Pakistan leadership of the HM when he announced a unilateral ceasefire in July 2000. He was slowly sidelined, then replaced by Saif-ul Islam (a Salahuddin loyalist) and finally expelled in May 2002. The developments led to a serious split in the HM, with a majority of the Kashmir-based commanders throwing their weight behind Dar. Pakistan's money and weapons, however, went to the Salahuddin faction. The rift between Dar and Salahuddin was more than a mere clash of personalities. They differed on strategy. Dar, the man who was active on the ground in Indian Kashmir, had come to believe that armed struggle was heading nowhere, that the mood in the Valley was pro-peace and that a negotiated settlement with India would prove more rewarding. This shift in strategy was unacceptable to Salahuddin and his mentor-benefactors in Pakistan's Inter-Intelligence Services (ISI). The "Don't give Peace a chance" crowd.
HM militants active in Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) are said to be deeply resentful of the way in which Salahuddin issues orders and controls the operations from the air conditioned safety of Muzaffarabad, the capital of "Azad" Kashmir (the part of Kashmir under Pakistan control) while they face the fire on the ground from the Indian security forces. They point to the fact that while hundreds of other Kashmiris have sacrificed their lives for the cause, Salahuddin's five sons are busy carving out careers for themselves in India - none of them joined the militancy. Over the past two years, the Dar-Salahuddin feud is said to have fueled much bloodletting within the HM. Besides, both factions have apparently provided the Indian forces with information regarding each other's hideouts. Much more betrayal and infighting, read the whole thing.
Posted by: Steve ||
04/11/2003 09:49 am ||
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Isn't it 'interesting' that whilst Pakistan claims to be supporting the indigenous kashmiri people, they also seem to be killing the Kashmiri people. Kashmiri Islam is completely different to the talibani Islam that Pakland is trying to push into the region. What the ISI keeps forgetting to mention is that the puppet Prime-Minister of Pakistani side of Kashmir must agree to accede Kashmir to Pakland. Any one that wants a kashmir independent of both India and Pakland is not even allowed to run for election by PakGov. Also when they keep talking about protecting their fellow muslims they forget to mention the genocide that the Pak army committed against the musims of Bangladesh (then east Pakland) in the 1970s.
This looks like a rehash of this episode, from three days ago. The Lunis and Marris seem to be the local equivalent of the Hatfields and McCoys, only with heavy weapons.
Seven mine workers were killed and four others injured when unidentified armed men ambushed their wagon near Chamalang, 350km from here, on Tuesday. Sources said 14 miners were on their way to Duki from Chamalang coalmine area in a private wagon. When they reached near Sarri area around 100km from Duki, unknown armed men opened fire on them with automatic weapons. Seven miners died on the spot while four others received bullet injuries. "There is a dispute over the ownership of coalmines in the Chamalang area between the Marri and the Luni tribes which caused the incident," the official sources said.
It was the second such incident in a week. Eight miners were killed and many others injured five days ago when a wagon was blown up in the Chamalang area after hitting a landmine. A strike was also observed in the Loralai township on Thursday against the killing. People marched through main roads and blocked streets. Later, they dispersed after being assured by the administration that action would be taken against the assailants Just another day in Pakistan's Wild West
Posted by: Paul Moloney ||
04/11/2003 06:00 am ||
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What do you expect when the loony Luni tribe is involved?
From Arab News. Their site is VERY slow â article edited for length.
Talal, who once dreamed of being a hero of the Arab resistance, had a rude awakening yesterday when he opened his eyes to the sight of the same US Marines he had been fighting for weeks watching over him. After a night under the stars on the front lawn of the Palestine Hotel in Baghdad, cordoned off by Marine tanks, the young Syrian lifted himself to rest on the palms of his hands, just returning their gaze. And that is all he could do after having regretfully handed back his gun on Wednesday at the sight of US troops in full battle gear rolling their mighty tanks and gigantic amphibious assault vehicles right into the heart of Baghdad. Be glad you still have a head to lift.
The skinny, but resilient Syrian is one of thousands of idiots Arabs who volunteered to commit suicide fight in Iraqi ranks against the US-British military coalition to topple President Saddam Hussein. âWe came here because of cheap rhetoric, and our own shots at the 72 virgins we all believed that we should rally to the defense of Baghdad, the fortress of the Arab and Muslim world standing strong against the American-Zionist imperialist expansion,â he said. Talal and the other idiots his former comrades-in-arms were still stunned by the way the Iraqi forces took their light arms from them yesterday, he said, and told them: âThe war is over, just go home.â âYour attack was quite pretty. It was, however, pointless.â
But today, the Arab fighters have no checkered headdresses, no rocket launchers in their hands, no fierce looks on their faces ,no brains in their empty little heads. All they have are the T-shirts they are wearing and impatience to find taxis to just go home. Yes. Do that.
In the meantime, they are staying for security reasons on the lawns of the Palestine Hotel, among reporters carrying out live stand-ups. âThe country is under no state security and we are afraid that people who hated the regime might attack us.â Reasonable fear.
âWe have already been robbed on the way from the south,â said another volunteer who did not wish to be identified. âIs this the way the Iraqis want to thank us? âŠâ An Iraqi driver working with foreign journalists who had overheard the conversation, broke in to ask the fighters: âAnd who told you to come here? You were only fighting for Saddam Hussein who brought the country to ruins and who let you down in the end. Thatâs all.â Thatâs right, mister. Iâm sure theyâd prefer to thank you with a bludgeon. Just to express the depths of their gratitude, you understand.
#1
Said the Arab volunteers: "He raped, he stole, he murdered and tortured, he lied, he cheated, he utterly rejected the Koran in his personal life; what was there not to trust? We just don't get it."
#2
Now all the outsiders can return home and spread the word.
Posted by: Scott L. ||
04/11/2003 16:34 Comments ||
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#3
I think that with all the desert out there . 1/5 of all the middle east sufferes from perminent sunburn. That combined with the cluelss relious fervour out there just makes for a bunch of dumb witted A-holes .
please excuse typing errors - its friday night and am reading terry pratchet and not the flippin Koran . eeek hope i havent taken salman rushdies place on the fatwah hitlist LOL:)
#4
I remember in grade school studying about Mesapotemia and cradle of western civilization, right where we are now fighting. The middle east might have been the cradle, but all the smart folks skedaddled out of the cradle and headed for more temperate climes, leaving a larger than normal proportion of Darwinian A-H's. Just a theory, a hypothesis.....
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
04/11/2003 17:46 Comments ||
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#5
"I went to Iraq and all I got was this lousy Kalashnikov!"
#7
Maybe (just maybe) some of the folks in the middle east might realize that the arab media is a little slanted towards anti-american propaganda for what ever reason(such as suporting a repressive government that will cut out their tongues if they don't report it in a "politicaly correct way")and that their overall best interest might be in supoorting a US sponsored regime?
Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's half-brother, Barzan al-Takriti, died this morning in a US bombing of his farm, in the region of Ramadi, west of Baghdad, a family friend told AFP. Barzan had been placed under house arrest by Saddam on March 5 in a villa of the Radwaniya presidential palace compound, in Jadriya, near Baghdad airport, the source said. When US troops entered Baghdad, he fled to his farm in Ramadi, about 100km away. "His family, living in Europe, told me he died as a martyr this morning," said the friend. "A number of his bodyguards were also killed," he added, indicating that Barzan was 52-53 years old. US Central Command said earlier yesterday Barzan had been targeted by air strikes in Ramadi with six JDAM "smart bombs". G'bye, Barzan. Say hello to Himmler for us.
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
04/11/2003 02:49 pm ||
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#1
In fake news from Hell today, a revelation from the tormented spirit of Barzan al-Takriti:
"Whoah! Turns out that Bush ain't the Great Satan after all . . . It's Jimmy Carter!" [rim shot]
BAGHDAD, April 11 â Trying to prevent looting and new suicide bombings, U.S. troops on Friday began enforcing a dusk-to-dawn curfew in the parts of Baghdad that they control. Looters have hit hospitals, colleges, libraries, homes and even robbed reporters. The murders of two Shiite clerics by a mob laid bare deep divides, while the deaths of two children at a checkpoint in Nasiriyah reflected the tension throughout Iraq.
THE U.S. MILITARY has said it would not become a police force, but it has taken on some of those duties. Describing it as an âawkwardâ period in Baghdad, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told reporters at the Pentagon that a dawn-to-dusk curfew had begun in U.S.-controlled areas of the city. Military sources told NBC News that 75 percent of the city was under U.S. control.
The curfew was instituted after President Bush vowed that âcoalition forces will help maintain law and order so that Iraqis can live in security.â NBCâs Chip Reid, reporting from Baghdad, said troops had been authorized to intervene when they see large-scale looting.
Lt. Col. Michael Belcher, a battalion commander, said his priorities were first to protect key structures, such as the power system, and second to safeguard humanitarian sites like hospitals and aid distribution centers. Commercial buildings are last, he said.
The curfew should also ease concerns of suicide bombings.
International aid officials criticized U.S. and British troops for failing to rein in looting mobs, saying they were obliged as an occupying force under international law to prevent chaos. âThe coalition forces seem to be completely unable to restrain looters or impose any sort of control on the mobs that now govern the streets,â said Veronique Taveau, a spokeswoman for the U.N. Office of the Humanitarian Coordinator for Iraq. âThis inaction by the occupying powers is in violation of the Geneva Conventions.â
In Baghdad, a U.S. Army brigade commander told reporters that troops were in âtransition to stabilization operations.â âWe have a lot of civil affairs guys in the town working with hospitals and trying to get water and power back on,â added Col. David Perkins.
#1
âThe coalition forces seem to be completely unable to restrain looters or impose any sort of control on the mobs that now govern the streets,â said Veronique Taveau, a spokeswoman for the U.N. Office of the Humanitarian Coordinator for Iraq. âThis inaction by the occupying powers is in violation of the Geneva Conventions.â
Ah-h-h-h, Shaddup!
Posted by: Steve White ||
04/11/2003 16:01 Comments ||
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#2
We didn't expect things to crumble so fast. It'll take a while to get the MP's in there.
Give it time.
And the looting seems (for the most part) admirably selective.
#3
let em loot . 30 years of that pri*** in charge is enough . they need a good ole bit of hands on capitalism to get the ball rolling !! . As for the hospitals being looted . i bet my bottom dollar/pound that most supplies had been shipped out by the regime to some ironic place like Basra b4 the war commenced only to be destroyed by the feyadeen --eer- stupid b4 the cowardly muppets left the city
#4
Q: Why were certain, but not all, hospitals looted?
A: Because ordinary Iraqis didn't have access to them. For them, they were symbols of the regime as well because only certain people, those with money, had access...
Posted by: R. McLeod ||
04/12/2003 3:20 Comments ||
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BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Crowds of desperate Iraqis stormed the headquarters of Saddam Hussein's military intelligence on Friday and hacked through concrete floors to hunt for relatives they believed were trapped in dungeons below.
Family and friends of detained Iraqis appealed for help from the U.S. military to rescue people they said were in underground jails, victims of Saddam's brutal security officers. Some said they could hear voices below the surface as they dug.
U.S. soldiers, who took Baghdad on Wednesday and are trying to restore order in the city, moved into the huge compound in the northwestern district of Kadhimiya with tanks and armoured vehicles and set charges to blast the ground.
But the thrill of anticipation of reaching fathers, brothers, friends -- some who had disappeared some 20 years ago -- turned into bitter disappointment and tears when U.S. soldiers said the cells were empty.
"They must be all dead, God rest their souls," said one sobbing woman who had been searching for her brother since 1980.
Before soldiers of the U.S. 3rd Infantry Division arrived, frantic relatives had gouged away at the concrete floor with tools and hauled debris away with bare hands. The search came to an abrupt halt when they hit steel encasing the prison vaults.
Entrances to the sprawling underground prison cell complex were known to have been sited in obscure places outside the military intelligence HQ, possibly inside normal-looking houses.
U.S. soldiers said it looked like the complex was used as an interrogation centre and the prisoners transferred elsewhere.
The General Headquarters of Iraqi military intelligence near the Kadhimiya mosque, a shrine for Shi'ite Muslims, was one of the most feared places in the Iraqi capital under Saddam's rule.
People roaming the complex spoke of seeing what they described as a torture chamber containing tanks which could be used for submersion or partial drowning.
Reports were difficult to verify because of growing chaos inside the complex before the arrival of the American soldiers.
The tense atmosphere reflected the anarchy gripping Baghdad following two days of looting since U.S tanks and troops took control of the centre of the city.
The angry crowd discovered a ledger with the name and rank of more than 200 senior Iraqi army officers -- all of Kurdish origin it said were jailed in 1994 as a "precaution".
Iraqis say thousands of people went missing during Saddam's 24-year rule, allegedly executed, tortured or shut away in jail.
U.S. Marines said on Wednesday they had found what appeared to be a torture centre in the town of Nassiriya, 375 km southeast of Baghdad.
Photographs of burned bodies and a iron rod possibly used to deliver electric shocks suggested the building could have been used by security agents to inflict pain.
For the full story, go to the link - it's pretty long so only a bit was copied here.
Saddam's regime has gone, but the future may not be as rosy as the victory and occupation was. According to the latest news from Iraq, the Iraqi traders have picked up gun to defend themselves against the armed looters. The UN has warned that Iraqis may flee their country because of chaos and disorder. Also in northern Iraq quarrel between the Kurds and Turkmen has flared up for the control of oil resources of the region. What follows is sum-up of some untoward developments in Iraq in post-occupation days.
Shopkeepers opened fire Friday on mobs of looters in the Iraqi capital, which has been marred by sporadic clashes with small pockets of pro-Saddam resistance since the collapse of the strongman's government. U.S. marines patrolled checkpoints throughout Baghdad, where no attacks against coalition troops were reported Friday morning. But shopkeepers in central Baghdad opened fire on looters for the first time since U.S. troops entered the city, and the widespread chaos left 25 people injured. "We want the law to rule and if the Americans don't defend us then we'll defend ourselves with our own weapons," said merchant Khazen Hussein.
Iraqi Kurds and Turkmens engaged in a fierce war of words Friday in Ankara, Turkish capital, after Kurdish fighters captured the strategic oil-rich Iraqi town of Kirkuk, claimed by both groups as their historic homeland. A leader of the Iraqi Turkmens, who have ethnic bonds with Turkey, accused Kurds of murder and looting in Kirkuk, while a Kurdish official said the charges were aimed at triggering a Turkish military intervention against them. Mustafa Ziya of the Iraqi Turkmen Front (ITC) said Kurds were burning and looting government offices, including those dealing with property registry, and attacking Turkmen interests "in order to annihilate the Turkmen existence." Ziya said he had received unconfirmed reports that some 50 people had been killed in the northern Iraqi town since Thursday, when U.S. troops and Kurdish fighters took control with little resistance. Kirkuk Governor Rizgarali Hamgam told AFP Friday the situation was spiralling out of the control of local Kurdish chiefs, adding that several people had been killed. But Bahroz Galali, the Ankara representative of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), whose fighters entered Kirkuk Thursday with U.S. special forces, rejected the Turkmen allegations as "wrong from A to Z and propaganda." Galali said "some quarters here are trying to create a pretext for the Turkish Army to intervene in northern Iraq." Ankara has threatened to intervene militarily if Kirkuk and the other key regional oil center Mosul fell to Kurdish control.
There's a video of the news briefing with pictures of the cards; it requires RealPlayer and a PC.
Decks of playing cards depicting the 55 most-wanted Iraqi leaders may help deal a knockout blow to Saddam Hussein's regime, which now controls just one major city â Saddam's hometown of Tikrit. The regime members shown on the cards "may be pursued, killed or captured," Brig. Gen. Vincent Brooks told reporters at a U.S. Central Command briefing in Qatar today. Saddam himself is on the ace of spades, and his son Qusai appears on the ace of clubs that Brooks showed to journalists. Iraq's information minister, Mohammed Saeed al Sahaf, is also featured. Three of clubs? Joker?
Al Sahaf was the spokesman of the Iraqi regime during the war, holding news conferences in Baghdad filled with colorful, wildly optimisitic predictions of victory, but has recently disappeared from public view. "There are jokers in this deck, there is no doubt about that," Brooks said. The cards also show Saddam's closest confidantes, half-brothers, and other high officials in his regime. These will appear on eBay shortly, and I want a set!
Posted by: Steve White ||
04/11/2003 01:48 pm ||
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#2
I'd like a set, too - overprinted with the international symbol of a circle with a bar across the middle, diagonally. Each diagonal bar should have the word "Deceased" printed on it, and be an accurate accounting of the prior Iraqi leadership.
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
04/11/2003 16:31 Comments ||
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Fierce fighting and air strikes have completely destroyed the ability of Iraq's regular army and Republican Guard to mount conventional fighting, and no major military forces remain in the country, the Pentagon said Friday. Though parts of forces and pockets of resistance remain, military officials were detecting no indications of any remaining command and control ability on the part of Saddam Hussein's forces, nor any communication between remnants of forces, a Defense Department official said. Looks like the Adnan Mechanized Division of the RG is gone.
The assessment follows the Pentagon's aggressive targeting Thursday of remaining Iraqi army units in the northern part of the country. "They are the last significant formations on the battlefield that we're aware of," Maj. Gen. Stanley McChrystal, vice director of the Pentagon's Joint Chiefs of Staff, told a Pentagon news conference Thursday. He said the Iraqi forces' capability has dropped significantly "both from casualties and from people just leaving the battlefield." Nobody wants to be the last guy to die for Saddam.
On Friday, officials said that Ba'ath Party officials had either fled or gone underground and that there were no clues on the whereabouts of Saddam, his sons or any other regime leadership. There was no obvious or significant force in Tikrit, Saddam's birthplace and the power base where some believed regime leaders might make a last stand. Wonder if the Tikritis will celebrate when we arrive?
Posted by: Steve White ||
04/11/2003 01:43 pm ||
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BAGHDAD, Iraq â U.S. Marines may have found weapons-grade plutonium in a massive underground facility discovered beneath Iraq's Al Tuwaitha nuclear complex, Fox News confirmed Friday. You don't say. Jack...Jerry...anti-sanity left? - any comments?
Coalition forces are investigating a stash of radioactive material found at the site south of Baghdad, an embedded reporter, Carl Prine of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, first told Fox News on Thursday.
U.S. defense officials on Friday confirmed that preliminary field tests did in fact indicate the material could be plutonium.
Now would be a good time for the uber-left to simply disband and try on their new Whigs
#1
Not all plutonium is A bomb grade. Some isotopes are unsuitable for building a good A-bomb. Also if the plutonium is entrained with other material (thorium, radium, etc.) it won't make a good A-bomb. However, any plutonium could be the basis of an effective radiological dispersion device.
UK forces in Basra have shot and killed five Iraqi bank robbers during looting in the city, according to reports. A British soldier was receiving treatment in a field hospital after being shot in the stomach when the robbers opened fire. The patrol from the Royal Scots Dragoon Guards initially thought the bank robbers were looters but the soldiers were then shot at, a UK military source told the Press Association.
The incident comes after International Development Secretary Clare Short called on the coalition forces to make a "massively bigger effort" to stop the looting and violence that is blighting the Iraqi cities of Baghdad and Basra. She said that under the Geneva Convention "an occupying power" has a duty to maintain law and order, make sure civilians are cared for and keep a civil administration ticking over.
But Ms Short, who had threatened to quit her post over the Iraq conflict before a change of heart, refused to say the war had been a "price worth paying". That prompted shadow foreign secretary Michael Ancram to urge the prime minister to sack her. He questioned how Ms Short could speak for the government this weekend at meetings of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund with her "repeatedly refusing to agree that the war in Iraq was justified".
Speaking on Radio 4's Today programme, Ms Short underlined her belief that the only way to get the IMF, the World Bank and other countries involved in reconstruction work was by the UN bringing in a legitimate, interim Iraqi government. She said there had been "a lot of muddle in this debate" about who should be in charge of Iraq.
Prime Minister Tony Blair and US President George Bush's have insisted that the UN has a "vital role" in Iraq but have not set out the details of how they see that role.
Ms Short said the International Committee of the Red Cross and the World Health Organisation had called on the coalition to prioritise the security of hospitals. "What the UN said is true, that the occupying powers, which is the US, UK and Australia, have a duty across the country to keep order, to keep basic humanitarianism in place for civilians and to keep the civil administration running," she said. "There must be a much bigger effort to stop all this looting and violence. We had looting in Basra, but it is a lot better in Basra now. "But we need a massively bigger effort. It should focus on hospitals - there were lots of injured people." Ms Short, whose department has received £200m from the Treasury to provide humanitarian relief, said it was a priority that US troops should bring order to Baghdad.
Mr Ancram argued that the British government should take action to restore order and security in Iraq, because it appeared there had been insufficient plans for proper policing after liberation. "It is not enough for Clare Short simply to wring her hands," he said. But Foreign Secretary Jack Straw insisted that British and American troops were "doing everything they can" to restore order in Iraq. He said the looting and disorder that had broken out in Baghdad and other cities was understandable because the Iraqi people were breaking free from terror.
#2
The last several posts display a very broad-based inability to think by people in many countries. The first priority is to fight the war. The second priority is to protect the war-fighters. IF there's time and enegry left, THEN you protect the civilian population, and after that, you protect the infrastructure. Infrastructure can always be replaced - it takes time and money, but isn't difficult. Replacing war-fighters and civilian population is more difficult, takes longer, and usually ends up costing more. The coalition forces have their priorities in the right order. The rest of the world can stick it in their hat and sit on it.
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
04/11/2003 16:38 Comments ||
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#3
My God, not the IMF! If we want a bankrupt, corrupt, state bordering on ruin and revolution ask for the IMF recommendations. Better Saddam than the IMF.
Posted by: TJ Jackson ||
04/12/2003 0:21 Comments ||
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U.S. soldiers stumbled Friday upon the personal weapons cache of President Saddam Hussein's son Odai, finding boxes of assault rifles and dozens of ceremonial firearms in an abandoned house. The infantry company was searching through a Baath Party enclave when they made the discovery of Odai Hussein's collection inside the home. Many of the weapons were apparently already looted; there were hundreds of Beretta 9mm pistol boxes, but no pistols. But not everything was gone. There were dozens of gold- and silver-plated military weapons, apparently presented as gifts to Odai. None of those were taken by looters. Yet
And there were boxes of Austrian-made Steyr assault rifles, including a dozen still in their packing crate. The boxes bore the address of a Jordanian military official. In Jordan, government officials scoffed at the idea that the discovered Steyr boxes could have been a supply of arms to Iraq after the imposition of U.N. sanctions in 1990. "Lies (scoff) All Lies!"
They should take something for that scoff...
"If there was something found, it could've been very old, much before 1990," said one official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. The serial numbers will tell when they were made, Steyer will have those if we already don't. Bet we do.
"In the Arab world, it's common to exchange gifts, and the boxes said to be found â which are apparently of a trivial quantity â are very much in line with that custom," the official told The Associated Press. One is a gift, dozens are a shipment.
Posted by: Steve ||
04/11/2003 10:13 am ||
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The U.S. military has issued a most-wanted list in the form of a deck of cards, and Saddam Hussein is the ace of spades in the pack of 55 top figures in his toppled regime. The cards, with pictures of the most-wanted figures, were distributed to thousands of U.S. troops in the field to help them find the senior members of the government. The names also were being put on posters and handbills for the Iraqi public, Brig. Gen. Vincent Brooks said. Brooks did not identify those in the deck, except to suggest they included Saddam and his minister of information, Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf, who boasted of battlefield successes right up to the time he disappeared Tuesday. "There are jokers in this deck, there is no doubt about that," Brooks said. He said the whereabouts of some of the most-wanted figures were unknown, while others might well be dead. "The population will probably confirm that for us," he said. "The key list has 55 individuals who may be pursued, killed or captured, and the list does not exclude leaders who may have already been killed or captured," Brooks said. "The intent here is to help the coalition gain information from the Iraqi people so that they also know exactly who it is we seek," he added. How long before this deck shows up on Ebay?
Posted by: Steve ||
04/11/2003 09:06 am ||
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#1
I was thinking that exact same thing, Steve. In a few months, we're gonna see all kinds of "souvenirs" on eBay.
Posted by: Dar ||
04/11/2003 9:14 Comments ||
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#2
"A few months"? This is the 21st century. Why not next week?
#3
Yeah, it's the 21st century, which is great for the transfer of information, but tangibles still need to be physically transported. I think the returning servicemen will have plenty of both legitimate souvenirs and smuggled loot to post when they get back.
Posted by: Dar ||
04/11/2003 9:48 Comments ||
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#4
I hope our GIs check all their loot for radioactivity.
E.F.L.
Tanks from a 1st Infantry Division task force were deployed to northern Iraq late Monday night â the first M1A1 Abrams to be airlifted directly into a combat zone. The 300-soldier Big Red One contingent will beef up the lightly armed paratroopers of the Italy-based 173rd Airborne Brigade, who jumped into northern Iraq on March 26. The paratroopers seized Bashur airfield in an area of northern Iraq controlled by allied Kurdish forces. Bashur is being used to bring in the heavier 1st ID combat units.
Sgt. 1st Class John Williamson and his crew of Abrams tankers knew they were about to make history as they loaded their 70-ton behemoth into the belly of a C-17 Globemaster at Ramstein on Monday afternoon.The crew and tank became the first combat-loaded Abrams delivered directly into a combat zone, said Lt. Col. Ken Riddle, task force commander. It was also the only tank on the ground for the first day. A sudden burst of foul weather shut the Bashur airfield down, causing follow-on flights to divert to other airfields outside Iraq or hold at Ramstein. By Tuesday morning, however, flights resumed.
Built around the Vilseck, Germany-based 1st Battalion, 63rd Armor Regiment, the task force is also the first combat deployment of U.S. Army Europeâs quick-reaction Immediate Ready Force. Bradley fighting vehicles, M-113 armored personnel carriers and other gear also are slated to be flown into the combat zone, Riddle said. In addition to Riddleâs tankers and battalion staff, the deployment also is lashing together several other 1st Infantry Division units, including:
Company B, 2nd Battalion, 2nd Infantry Regiment.
1st Battalion, 6th Field Artillery Regiment.
201st Forward Support Battalion.
A contingent of Fort Drum, N.Y., 10th Mountain Division soldiers also are preparing to deploy in the coming days. Mostly from Battery C, 2nd Battalion, 15th Field Artillery Regiment, their Humvee-towed 105 mm cannons were stashed at Ramstein, ready for loading. More armored vehicles are due to arrive in the coming days as more elements of the 173rd Airborne Brigade prepare to move south to fight Iraqi forces.
Posted by: Steve ||
04/11/2003 08:49 am ||
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Gotta ask: E.F.L.?
Posted by: Steve White ||
04/11/2003 10:46 Comments ||
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Edited For Length
Posted by: Frank G ||
04/11/2003 11:03 Comments ||
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#3
Sounds like the airlift situation is easing up a bit.
Severely edited for brevity--go to the article for full story.
Abdullah Alkhuzai has seen himself on American TV several times this week, and each time it makes him wince. There he is, at the age of 20, sitting on the desert ground in southern Iraq, hands tied behind his back, trying not to look at the dead bodies all around him and wondering if he will be next. The 1991 footage has been playing on network news as a macabre souvenir of the crumbling Baathist regime. It shows Ali Hassan al-Majid and his henchmen beating Shiite opponents of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein after the first Gulf War. Majid, a cousin of Saddam, was nicknamed "Chemical Ali" for his gassing of Kurdish civilians in 1988. The captors punch the bound men, kick and stomp them and, in some versions, put rifle barrels to their heads, all with the casual air of tormentors who have done this many times before.
Posted by: Dar ||
04/11/2003 08:53 am ||
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#1
anybody heard of Rodney King?
Posted by: robert ||
04/11/2003 9:26 Comments ||
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#2
I must not have seen the full version of the Rodney King video, as I missed the SUMMARY EXECUTIONS and PILES OF DEAD BODIES laying nearby.
#4
we must be careful about how we interpret what we see and read...mjh you are shoeboxing me into a point of view that i did not present. for me it has nothing to do with morality and everything to do with interpretation. we choose...not to get along.
Posted by: robert ||
04/11/2003 21:53 Comments ||
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E.F.L.
U.S. Marines in eastern Baghdad captured more than three dozen non-Iraqi fighters and killed at least 70 in two days of fighting, military sources told United Press International Friday. The captured fighters came from Syria, Jordan, Yemen and as far away as Algeria. Many of the foreign fighters were captured during fierce fighting around a mosque where senior Iraqi leaders, including Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, were said to be meeting, and from fighting to secure the al-Azimiyah palace. The Marines captured the 17-acre compound and its palace late Thursday after five hours of fighting. "They fired over 100 rocket-propelled grenades and thousands of rounds of small arms ammunition," said Col. Fred Padila, commander of 1st Battalion, 5th Marines. "It was very hairy." I'm beginning to think that the RPG should replace the AK-47 as the symbol of islamic wackos.
One Marine was killed and at least 35 wounded. Marines confirm 70 Iraqi-side fighters were killed, but some estimates put the total as high as 90. Some of the dead were wearing green Iraqi uniforms but many were dressed in all black or in civilian clothes. "These non-Iraq fighters are a problem, but a decreasing one," said a senior military officer, who spoke to UPI on condition of anonymity. "It is decreasing because we are killing them." Heh, heh, heh.
The United States has warned about Islamic fundamentalists and other anti-American fighters traveling into Iraq to fight U.S. troops. Military sources said many foreign nationals were recruited by Saddam's regime in the final days before the U.S.-led invasion last month. Syria is believed to be a point of entry. Some of the foreign nationals captured said they were duped, according to military sources. "I was duped, duped, I tell you!"
Some had only just arrived in Iraq and believed the government's propaganda that U.S. forces were not in the capital. He must have been a fan of the Baghdad Bob show.
After the fighting concluded around the palace late Thursday, UPI saw groups of captured fighters being loaded onto U.S. helicopters for transport to a different location and further interrogation. Despite being blindfolded and handcuffed some of the fighters had to be manhandled onto the aircraft. "Ouch!"
Special Marine teams are continuing to hunt down suspected foreign nationals often with the help of Iraqi civilians. At the presidential compound Thursday night, Marines had expected a counter attack by Iraqi fighters that didn't materialize. Two laser-guided bombs dropped earlier at a suspected assembly point for Iraqi fighters put an end to any action they were planning against the U.S. forces. 2000 pound bombs have a way of doing that.
Meanwhile, a number of Iraqis who were either captured by the Marines or surrendered have reported press-ganging by remnants of Saddam's Baath Party. "I was drafted! Honest!"
Posted by: Steve ||
04/11/2003 08:25 am ||
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#2
Anonymous, it's a old term applied originally (I think) to a naval 'conscription' practice whereby recruits were 'pressed' into service on board naval vessels against their will, by a gang of 'recruiting agents'. Nowadays the navy uses pension plans, reasonable wages and free access to lemons to tempt seamen, rather than coerce.
I probably had similar thought to you when I first heard the phrase "bum-rushing" from an American friend...
I think the reason that the muj's have been using so many RPGs is "Blackhawk Down." If you remember, Al Qaeda agents introduced the tactic of RPG swarm attacks in Somalia to effectively counter light American forces conducting heliborne hostage snatches. I think everyone here is familiar enough with Arab non-innovation in military matters to know that if something works once, they'll keep using it over and over until so many of them get killed that they stop. I interpret the continuation of RPG swarm attacks as a good sign. It means the Al Qaeda bright boys are too busy running (or are dead!) to gin up new tactics to counter ours. It's second order manifestation that our strategy in the WoT is working.
Edit for brevity.
There was a bit of unfinished business left over in Baghdad from the 1991 Gulf War. The U.S. Army has taken care of it. At the Al-Rashid Hotel, President Bush the elder â father of the current American chief executive who ordered this year's invasion of Iraq â is a doormat no more. U.S. soldiers visited the battered Al-Rashid on Thursday night wielding hammers and chisels, and dug out the intricate tile mosaic of the former president that was used for years as a state-sponsored insult. In its place, they laid a portrait of Saddam Hussein. "Everybody walked over it and wiped their feet on it," Lt. Col. Rick Schwartz, the battalion commander said. He left the Saddam portrait behind, on the ground for future use.
Taking shoes to the face is not exactly a compliment in any culture, but in the Arab world it's a particular slam. Pointing the soles of one's feet at someone is a grave insult. So the notion of thousands of Iraqi feet trudging over the patrician features of George Herbert Walker Bush was particularly appealing to Saddam's regime, humiliated by Bush during the 1991 Gulf War to free Kuwait from Iraqi invaders.
On Thursday night, the Army forces destroying the mosaic chipped away until it was unrecognizable. They left behind thousands of little pieces in the concrete of the floor â as ravaged as the hotel itself, which is now uninhabitable. "We did some remodeling," Schwartz said, referring to a battle that took place there when Iraqi snipers used the building to fire on U.S. forces. Now, as people in Baghdad rush through the streets yelling "Bush! Bush!" and thrusting thumbs in the air, at the al-Rashid Hotel a decade-long insult has been removed â by a military commanded by a son who waged a second war on Iraq and insisted it wasn't personal.
Posted by: Dar ||
04/11/2003 08:22 am ||
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#1
what a classic! while war is truly a serious and tragic thing, there have been some most amusing and gratifying moments. This is one of them.
#2
True story: I was a salesman at a community music-instrument store, and every Christmas season we'd get out a giant Santa Claus doormat. My boss was not amused when I told customers that it was an opportunity for them to get back at the bastard whose mythical existence obliged them to be buying soon-to-be-ignored guitars and drum sets in the first place. So I can understand the soles-of-the-shoes thing.
#3
The Truth is: the reticence of the Iraqi people to rebel quickly is attributable to Bush Sr, and his abandonment of the rebels in 91.
Some of my most graphic frustrating memories were from after the war, when we were enforcing the truce lines. The ROE didnât allow us to engage Iraqis unless they were pointing the weapons in our direction. So, consequently, we watched their troops shooting women and children and there wasnât a damn thing we could do. We were cursing (in Arabic), yelling all kinds of things just to get Saddam's thugs to point the weapons at us so we could take them down hard. But they didnât take the bait.
I still remember seeing a woman die while coming across the bridge to us from wounds she received, and our OP, despite orders to the contrary, went out and pulled her body the rest of the way, and then treating the 6 year old son she was carrying (soaked in her blood), for gunshot wounds to his legs from the bullets that had passed thru his mother.
Didnât hear about it in the papers did you? Nope - the friggen reporters left when they thought things were "over" - didnât want to tell the story of how that evil bastard was killing his own people, and we were forced by our own politicians to stand there and do nothing from only a mile away.
And not a damn thing we could do because Bush Sr was too damn timid to do the right thing - he was worried about "image" instead due to the killing of the bandits on the âhighway of deathâ. We had preparatory orders to march on Baghdad at the end of the war - and the Marines would have moved into Basra. But Bush Sr stopped things 24 hours too soon, and allowed that cursed regime to live and kill more of its people over the past decade.
I had nightmares about this one for a few years after coming home, and despite my "rough and tough" image, I'd wake up with tears on my face at times. Call it PTSD, or whatever, this dream started coming back when this war started. I will never forgive Bush Sr for not letting us do what we knew was right, when we had the time and tools there to do it.
In case you couldn't tell, Iâm not a big fan of Bush Sr. I voted for him, but only as a lesser of 2 evils. So yeah, it is OK that they got his face off the floor, but there are those non-Saddamites in Basra that might deservedly miss it.
Thank God that "Dubya" seems to have the moral backbone to stand up, and courage to do whatâs right, even if it is unpopular with the rest of the world (unlike his father).
#4
Oldspook, having not been there I can't say I suffered anywhere nearly the same impacts as you by any means, however, it wasn't invisible to the American public what we had done to those people, and I think it lead to a rather bland support among Republicans for Bush 1. Bush 2 seems to have a lot of his mother's spine and atitude, and for that I'm grateful. He says what he means, and finishes what he started, I like/respect that
Posted by: Frank G ||
04/11/2003 18:54 Comments ||
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THE 5th Corps of the Iraqi army has surrendered at Mosul, the US Central Command said today. A wise and popular choice
US forces on the ground were determining whether to treat the Iraqis as enemy prisoners of war or to let them return home, said Captain Frank Thorp, a Central Command spokesman. Oh those inhumane, genocidal US imperialists!
"We are confirming that the Iraqi 5th Corps in and around Mosul have agreed to a cease-fire. Right now we're in the process of deciding if they'll become (POWs) or go home or what their eventual outcome will be," he said. "They have made the very wise choice of living for the future of Iraq instead of dying for this Iraqi regime," he said.
Posted by: Anon1 ||
04/11/2003 08:17 am ||
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Disarm everyone. Talk to the grunts. Find the officers who waved guns to keep them from deserting, and keep them. Cut the grunts loose and any noncomms fingered. Keep the others a bit longer.
E.F.L.
Widespread looting has broken out in the main northern Iraqi city of Mosul, after the Iraqi army abandoned the city to US-backed Kurdish fighters. Television pictures showed people picking up banknotes from the street, and beds, furniture and even a roof-top air-conditioning unit being stripped from buildings and carried away. A central market was set on fire and pictures of the ousted Iraqi President, Saddam Hussein, were defaced. Kurdish fighters set up roadblocks, while columns of Iraqi soldiers were seen flooding out of the city. The US military says the entire 5th Corps of the Iraqi army has surrendered. US special forces are also said to have entered Mosul. The developments come a day after Kurdish fighters swept in unopposed to the other main city in the area, oil-rich Kirkuk.
The BBC's Malcolm Brabant says American control over Kirkuk and Mosul will open up more avenues from which to attack Tikrit, whose people are bound to Saddam Hussein by tribal ties and are expected to put up fierce resistance. He adds that the town can expect continued heavy air attacks for the next four or five days, while American reinforcements make their way to what could be the last battlefield of the war. Kurdish forces in Kirkuk had said they would hand over control to the Americans shortly, following their unexpected advance into the city on Thursday against strong US advice. Washington has moved quickly to reassure Turkey that the Kurds will not be allowed to control Kirkuk and its oil resources, or to declare an independent state in northern Iraq. Ankara is concerned that this could inspire separatist demands among its own sizeable Kurdish minority. On to Tikrit
Posted by: Steve ||
04/11/2003 07:50 am ||
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#1
from wednesday:
Next Steps:
1. Complete taking control of Baghdad. Reports that there is still resistance near University, in Mansour district.
Done. Continue to deal with isolated resistance, here and elsewhere.
2. Take Tikrit (task to 4th ID) then proceed to rest of Sunni heartland.
Now appears all resistice likely concentrated in Tikrit.
3. North. Kurds and Spec ops have closed on the cities, but for political reasons Kurds cant take cities. When sufficient armor arrives (at least 1 full brigade of 1st ID?) US forces move into Kirkuk. Then move into Mosul, link up with 4th ID, spec ops coming from west.
Kirkuk, Mosul taken. establish US troops in both cities, Kurds to withdraw. ASAP.
4. Complete establishing order in Basra, Nasariyah, Najaf, Karbala.
Strong progress in Basra - urgent problems in Najaf.
5. Begin establishing order in Baghdad.
Conflicting accounts of situation (ideologically driven?) Watch and act as appropriate. Troops putting priority on securing power and water facilities. Move quickly to hospitals and other public services. Securing commercial properties lower priority.
6. Restablish water and power in Basra, other southern cities.
Rummy indicates extensive progress. Continue.
7. Emergeny water supplies, medical supplies to Baghdad.
Red Cross out, but others bringing medical supplies from Jordan. Prioritize water.
8. Establish regional council of Iraqis for South - scheduled for Saturday. Center awaits pacification, north resolution of Turkish/Kurdish issues.
Council on Saturday must resolve Basra disagreement, integrate exiles and locals, establish guidelines for dealing with ex-baathists. Move quickly to deal with political situation in the center.
American troops who suggested they uncovered evidence of an active nuclear weapons program in Iraq unwittingly may have stumbled across known stocks of low-grade uranium, officials said Thursday. They said the U.S. troops may have broken U.N. seals meant to keep control of the radioactive material.
Leaders of a U.S. Marine Corps combat engineering unit claimed earlier this week to have found an underground network of laboratories, warehouses and bombproof offices beneath the closely monitored Tuwaitha nuclear research center just south of Baghdad. It's more than just a claim, they're sitting there.
The Marines said they discovered 14 buildings at the site which emitted unusually high levels of radiation, and that a search of one building revealed "many, many drums" containing highly radioactive material. If documented, such a discovery could bolster Bush administration claims that Saddam Hussein was trying to develop nuclear weaponry.
Lt. Cmdr. Charles Owens, a spokesman for the U.S. Central Command, said officials there have not heard anything through military channels about a Marine inspection at Tuwaitha.
The Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency, which has inspected the Tuwaitha nuclear complex at least two dozen times and maintains a thick dossier on the site, had no immediate comment. "Beats us. They had something underground? Whodathunk?"
But an expert familiar with U.N. nuclear inspections told The Associated Press that it was implausible to believe that U.S. forces had uncovered anything new at the site. Instead, the official said, the Marines apparently broke U.N. seals designed to ensure the materials aren't diverted for weapons use or end up in the wrong hands. Why exactly is it implausible -- because the IAEA says so?
"What happened apparently was that they broke IAEA seals, which is very unfortunate because those seals are integral to ensuring that nuclear material doesn't get diverted," the expert said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
The Army Times, meanwhile, reported that troops with the 101st Airborne Division have unearthed 11 shipping containers, filled with sophisticated lab equipment, buried at a chemical plant in Karbala. It said the equipment's value and evidence that some of it may have been smuggled into Iraq raised suspicions that the facility had been used to manufacture chemical weapons. I store lab equipment in barrels in the desert all the time. What's the big deal?
U.N. arms inspectors visited a facility in the immediate vicinity of the chemical plant Feb. 23, but did not find the buried equipment. Officials at the U.S. Central Command suggested that no conclusions should be drawn. Oh, no, don't draw a conclusion! Someone at CentCom is a master of understatement.
Several tons of low-grade uranium has been stored at Tuwaitha, Iraq's principle nuclear research center and a site that has been under IAEA safeguards for years, the official said. The Iraqis were allowed to keep the material because it was unfit for weapons use without costly and time-consuming enrichment.
The uranium was inspected by the U.N. nuclear agency twice a year and was kept under IAEA seal at least until early this week, when the Marines seized control of the site.
The U.N. nuclear agency's inspectors have visited Tuwaitha about two dozen times, including a dozen checks carried out since December, most recently on Feb. 6. It was among the first sites that IAEA inspectors sought out after the resumption of inspections on Nov. 27 after a nearly four-year break.
On at least one occasion, inspectors with special mountaineering training went underground there to have a look around, according to IAEA documents. David Kay, a former IAEA chief nuclear inspector, said Thursday that the teams he oversaw after the 1991 Gulf War never found an underground site at Tuwaitha despite persistent rumors.
"But underground facilities by definition are very hard to detect," he said. "'cause they're underground, you know. I'm an inspector, I know these things!"
"When you inspect a place so often, you get overconfident about what you know. It would have been very easy for the inspectors to explain away any excessive radiation at Tuwaitha. The Iraqis could have hidden something clandestine in plain sight."
IAEA Director-General Mohamed ElBaradei, clearly wary of any implication of inepitude coalition claims, said this week that any alleged discoveries of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq would have to be verified by U.N. inspectors "to generate the required credibility." We'll bring the stuff out and invite the press to take pictures. How's that for credibility?
Posted by: Steve White ||
04/11/2003 01:44 am ||
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The Iraqis were allowed to keep [several tons of low-grad uranium] because it was unfit for weapons use without costly and time-consuming enrichment.
And from yesterday's report on this we know that the underground complex, of which the IAEA seems to have been unaware, was adorned with warning signs of "Gas/Gaz". Uranium hexafluoride perhaps? High-spec coated aluminum tubes imported for "rockets"? I'll wager that there's a gas centrifuge enrichment program at some stage of development on site. It's a good thing the IAEA put stickers on all of that nuclear material so the Iraqis couldn't move it a few yards to the probable enrichment facility.
Posted by: B. ||
04/11/2003 2:56 Comments ||
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#2
lefties are trying to spin it was OK just low-grade uranium, knew all about it etc.
But low-grade uranium is NOT highly radioactive unless it has been greatly enriched... ie aluminium tubes.
#3
' "What happened apparently was that they broke IAEA seals, which is very unfortunate because those seals are integral to ensuring that nuclear material doesn't get diverted," the expert said, speaking on condition of anonymity.'
In the sense that wishing is integral to making it so? Was it even possible to underestimate the effectiveness of those morons?
SAS and MI6 teams were last night helping their US counterparts in the search for Saddam Hussein as US troops in Baghdad turned their attention from defeating his army to finding the leaders of his regime. Now he's toast.
Spy satellites, photo-reconnaissance aircraft, and Predator and Global Hawk unmanned aerial vehicles are scouring the area between Baghdad and Tikrit, the dictator's home town. Intercept operators are also scanning the airwaves for any sign of the encrypted communications equipment used by his lieutenants to communicate with other members of the Ba'ath party leadership. Those hunting for Saddam include a secret Pentagon unit known only as Gray Fox, which carries out covert intelligence operations and specialises in tracking down individuals. It has been used in the past in Lebanon against Hizbollah and provided the information that led to the arrest of Pablo Escobar, the Colombian drugs baron. Gray Fox has all the latest surveillance equipment, including communications monitoring equipment and low-flying signals intercept aircraft. Go get 'em.
Posted by: Anonymous ||
04/11/2003 01:36 am ||
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"Gray Fox"? There's got to be a good story behind that name.
Posted by: Dar ||
04/11/2003 8:09 Comments ||
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#2
Run, my foxes, run. Get a little of our own back.
#3
Dar,
Goes all the way back to the Revolutionary War. There was an American general in the south known as "the Gray Fox". Can't find an immediate link to his name, and my memory isn't good enough any more to dredge it up.
GRAY FOX was active in Vietnam, I know. The Army doesn't advertise it, and it's even more secret in many ways than Delta Force, but the two people I know who were members for a time were unbelievable. Soldier's soldiers, and significantly above average in intelligence, stamina, and training. My hat's off to them.
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
04/11/2003 10:41 Comments ||
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#4
Old Patriot, sure you're not thinking of Francis Marion the "Swamp Fox"? Active in South Carolina if memory serves.
#5
Dakotah, I know about Francis Marion, the Swamp Fox. The person I remember reading about (confirmed by my wife, who had Georgia History in school) was a colonial that took to the Georgia back country when Savannah was captured, and harassed the English throughout the Revolutionary War. Apparently he was an older man, with gray hair, thus the "Gray Fox". Army uses the name for people sent into an area for clandestine surveillance and monitoring.
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
04/11/2003 16:46 Comments ||
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The United States stepped up the military and psychological pressure on the Baathist stronghold of Tikrit yesterday as the hunt for Saddam Hussein and leading members of his regime began to focus on areas to the north and west of Baghdad.
In what looked to be a calculated propaganda move, the Pentagon issued a thinly disguised threat to deploy â for the first time in the war â the biggest non-nuclear bomb in its arsenal, the 21,000lb massive ordnance air burst. The warning came as Allied forces continued the aerial bomb- ardment of Tikrit and the Republican Guards protecting the town. Somehow I just knew this war wasn't going to end before we used the MOAB.
American commanders believe that some of the regime's members may have fled north to Tikrit or west to Syria. US intelligence â using human sources and surveillance devices â was said to be reporting that the leadership had virtually disappeared. Even the hitherto relentlessly visible Information Minister, Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf, has vanished. Personally I enjoyed Baghdad Bob's rants. I could listen to him on Fox and read KCNA at the same time -- a double dose!
Military sources at Central Command have suggested that the uniformity of the withdrawal, which extended even to the minders for foreign journalists in the Iraqi capital, implied that some form of central command and control was still operating. CIA analysts in Qatar and Langley, Virginia, are said to believe the likeliest explanation was an order issued in President Saddam's name. "Run for your lives! That's an order!"
The sources suggested that this was a more probable explanation than the death of the Iraqi dictator when the US dropped four 2,000lb bombs on a restaurant in Baghdad's Mansur district on Monday. Although President Saddam was reported to have entered the building shortly before the bombing, British intelligence sources have said that he escaped by minutes.
The mystery over President Saddam's whereabouts deepened when the Iraqi National Congress leader, Ahmed Chalabi, told CNN of unconfirmed reports indicating that the Iraqi President had taken refuge in the city of Baqubah, north-east of Baghdad. He said that his son Qusay had survived and "is occupying some houses in the Diyala area".
But US commanders have made clear throughout this week their close interest in Tikrit, President Saddam's birthplace and a town on the Tigris 90 miles north of Baghdad. On Wednesday Brigadier General Vince Brooks showed reporters video shots of the bombing of command and control facilities in the area. US special forces have also set up checkpoints on the main roads between Baghdad and Tikrit to prevent movement between the two cities.
Big Gen Brooks went on to say that Iraqi troops had been deployed to reinforce defences around the town, including the Adnan Mechanised Division of the elite Republican Guard.
General Richard Myers, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said ten or more Iraqi army divisions â as many as 80,000 troops â were between Baghdad and Kurdish- controlled northern Iraq. How many of them want to be the last guy to die for Saddam? How many of them will be there next week?
By contrast, Major-General Gene Renuart, director of operations at US Central Command, acknowledged that there were no "substantial" ground forces in the area. The US Fourth Infantry Division, which is disembarking in Kuwait, is known to be preparing to deploy there and forward units could arrive in the area as early as next week.
Meanwhile, US operations increased around al-Quaim, a town on the Euphrates close to the Syrian border and a likely crossing point for scumratswar criminalsthugsvermin regime members seeking to flee Iraq. General Renuart said Special Republican Guard units, paramilitary forces and some regular army units were still fighting in the area but had been weakened by air strikes and attacks by special forces aimed at stopping al-Quaim from being used to launch missiles on "Israel" "Iraq's neighbours". Can't imagine the Iraqi regular army guys wanting to die in such a Gawd-forsaken place.
Posted by: Steve White ||
04/11/2003 01:18 am ||
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#1
If you buy my thesis that the real reason behind this war is as an object lesson to dictators, despots and regimes that threaten their citizens, the west and their neighbours, then use of MOAB becomes a distinct possibility.
Here is the scenario! as the regime retreats to Tikrit it becomes a concentration of all those who supported, aided and benefited from the regime. I have read that the Americans think the gloves are off when it comes to Tikrit.
What is needed is a trigger. The inability to find the US prisoners of war looks like it could be it. POWs are a very emotional subject for the Americans. Any news about POWs being killed will necessitate a response.
Finally, there is a clear irony here. Perhaps the only real legacy Saddam Hussein will leave is the popularization of the term 'Mother of All....'. Whoever named MOAB showed considerable intelligence and wit by choosing the acronym and I happen to think the alternate name 'Mother of All Bombs' was intended and determined the official name.
The irony comes full circle when it used to destroy the remnants of the Saddam regime in Tikrit or even Saddam himself.
Posted by: Phil B ||
04/11/2003 5:03 Comments ||
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#2
Ha!
They most likely came up with the "Mother of all bombs" and then reverse engineered the "Massive Ordinance Air Blast" weapon...
#3
Tikrit is small enough -- tell all the inhabitants to come out with their hands up, and then we will MOAB the entire place several times over, and sew the ground with salt.
#4
It wold be a shame to carry that big "club" all the way around for 18 holes and not take it out of the bag.
I predict we will see to "true courage" of Saddams regime come forward in the last defense of Takrit... Women and children to the front.
Iraq's U.N. Ambassador Mohammed Al-Douri, the first Iraqi official to concede defeat in the U.S.-led war, is leaving for Baghdad soon, Arab diplomats said Thursday. Bon voyage!
The Iraqi envoy told some diplomats he expected to leave Friday night via Paris, but that his plans weren't finalized and he might remain in New York for a few more days. Wonder if he'll ask for asylum in Paris?
Al-Douri had declared ``the game is over'' on Wednesday and expressed hope that the Iraqi people will now be able to live in peace. On Thursday, he met privately with Secretary-General Kofi Annan. Afterward, he refused to answer questions from the media about that conversation, his future or the war. ``I am sorry - no answer,'' he said. ``No comment at all. This is my last word to you.'' Promises, promises!
Annan also wasn't commenting on the meeting in his 38th floor office overlooking the East River. ``We have nothing to say about that meeting,'' said Annan's spokesman, Fred Eckhard. ``It was requested by the ambassador, and we feel that anything to be said about what happened in that meeting should be said by the ambassador.'' "Frankly we didn't understand a word he was saying, and remember, we're the UN!"
Besieged by reporters, photographers and camera crews at his residence and at the United Nations, Al-Douri did manage to have several private conversations with ambassadors and diplomats in the Delegate's Lounge during his two hours at U.N. headquarters. ``I wished him good riddance luck and commented on his mustache, but I don't know what he said to the secretary-general and what will be his next steps,'' said hapless Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa who talked with Al-Douri before his own meeting with Annan. Al-Douri is expected to fly to Paris and then on to the Syrian capital, Damascus, en route to Baghdad to be reunited with his family, the Arab diplomats said. In an interview with The Associated Press on Wednesday night, Al-Douri said he will continue to work at the United Nations and had no intention of defecting. ``Defecting from who?'' he asked. ``I think the government has already defected. There is no more Iraqi government to be defected from.'' That's actually pretty droll.
Posted by: Steve White ||
04/11/2003 01:13 am ||
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You know it's time for sleep when you read the last sentence he said as "There is no more Iraqi government to be defecated [on]".
And why is it he has to go thru Syria when you have a perfectly good Jordan next door?
#2
Perhaps, RW, that's because there's going to be a, um, party meeting there. Personally I'd have a Global Hawk watching Al-Douri's every move in Syria.
Posted by: Steve White ||
04/11/2003 1:41 Comments ||
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#3
I think if he stops short on the street, he'll break some CIA guy's nose...
#5
Saw the ambassador give an interview on MBC (Arabic, London) today. Oh my. He said how much his heart was broken, then he started to CRY. Got himself back together and finished up by saying the Iraqis had to be patient. Yeah patient in putting him behind bars!
Posted by: michael ||
04/11/2003 21:38 Comments ||
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KIRKUK, Iraq (AP) - With stunning speed and barely a fight, Kirkuk and its oil fields changed hands Thursday. By sundown, Kurdish fighters roamed unchallenged through the streets, looters had emptied government buildings down to the bathroom fixtures and statues of Saddam Hussein lay broken in the dust.
Thousands of young Iraqi soldiers walked south from Kirkuk toward Baghdad Friday, telling CNN they were making their way home after being abandoned by their commanders. Such stalwart commanders. Mr. Galloway must be proud.
The men, some of them walking barefoot, trudged down a blacktop two-lane road through farmland, carrying bedrolls and wearing civilian clothes under a bright blue sky and amid flocks of sheep. One man said his military superiors had confiscated the soldiers' documents in an attempt to keep them from deserting earlier. He said the troops learned on Thursday while in Kirkuk of Saddam's apparent downfall. Bet that sapped morale. Not that Iraqi army morale was all that good to begin with.
At the same time, an endless stream of cars jammed roads into Kirkuk as Kurds flooded into the city they consider one of the capitals of their ethnic homelands but which many fled after 1991. Many of those returning wore suits and ties and other nice clothes as if headed to see long-lost relatives or friends. Jes' goin' home.
Kirkuk's fall - coupled with indications that Mosul, the largest city in the north, might quickly follow - brought the northern front within nearly 60 miles of the Iraqi president's hometown of Tikrit, the possible last refuge of his rule.
The capture of Kirkuk also left Iraq's No. 2 oil region almost fully intact. Coalition leaders had feared retreating Iraqi forces might set the fields ablaze, but only one well fire raged near Kirkuk. It was not known if it was caused by fighting or sabotage.
The United States had asked Kurdish forces not to enter Kirkuk, a senior Pentagon official said Thursday, amid U.S. concerns not to stoke Turkish fears over swelling Kurdish power. But when the peshmerga fighters went in anyway, some U.S. troops were sent to accompany them. "Hey Joe!"
"Yeah Willie?"
"We got orders to escort some Pes' Merg Gas inta town."
"Yeah, sure, but lemme put on some clean socks first."
"You ain't got no clean socks."
"Well lemme put on some dirty ones then!"
U.S. special operations forces were with the Kurds when they entered the city of 100,000 people, said Maj. Gen. Stanley McChrystal, vice director of the Pentagon's Joint Staff. They were soon joined by elements of the Army's 173rd Airborne Brigade.
Secretary of State Colin Powell said he promised Turkey the Kurds would pull out and be replaced by U.S. troops - easing Turkish fears that the Kurds could use Kirkuk as a step toward an independent state, perhaps inspiring separatists among Kurds in Turkey. Jalal Talabani, leader of one of the factions whose forces entered the city, told the Turkish television channel CNN-Turk that all Kurdish fighters would leave by the end of Friday. What a shame. Kinda like the Kurds getting back what they formerly had.
Mosul, Iraq's third largest city and the next prize in the north, appeared about to follow Kirkuk. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said small numbers of U.S. and Kurdish forces were entering Mosul and ``being welcomed by the people.''
Gen. Babakir Zibari, a Kurdish commander, said remnants of the Baath Party and Iraqi military commanders in Mosul have offered to surrender, but only on condition that they be granted amnesty, and if coalition bombing stops. "We surrender! We surrender! Stop killing us!"
Lt. Col. Robert Waltemeyer, commander of a U.S. special forces unit north of Mosul, said U.S. forces would meet Friday with Mosul leaders to establish secure zones. Unlike Kirkuk, Kurdish fighters will stay on Mosul's outskirts, he said.
The entry into Kirkuk marked an extraordinary day for Iraqi Kurds, a moment akin to the fall of the Iron Curtain.
After the 1991 Gulf War, the Kurdish lands were divided - part becoming autonomous under Western protection. Kirkuk and Mosul were left under Baghdad rule and many Kurds fled to north as Arab settlers moved in.
``We are one again. Finally, we are one,'' said Kareem Mohammad Kareem, a Kurd who joined crowds cheering the toppling of a statue of Saddam in Arab dress. ``I am 50 years old, but my life just started today.''
Kurdish fighters, aided by U.S. Special Forces, roared south in ragtag convoys: pickup trucks, private cars, military transport and some motorcycles. Kurds often stopped to grab Iraqi guns or claim jeeps or other equipment - even a garbage truck - left behind.
But there was almost no one left to fight.
``We expected to come into town fighting Iraqis,'' said a U.S. Special Forces soldier who could not give his name under military rules. ``They were gone.'' I can hear the disappointment.
Remaining troops and Saddam loyalists, including officials of his Baath Party, fled before coalition forces reached the outskirts. There were few signs of battle. The bodies of three Iraqi soldiers were scattered around Arafat Square, dominated by a statue of Saddam on a platform representing an oil well. A few hours later, men ripped a heavy chain from around the statue, looped it around the figure and hooked the chain to a commandeered fire truck. They cheered as it tumbled down with just a slight metallic creak.
``Liberty!'' yelled 18-year-old Tariq Abid Mohammad. ``Freedom. USA. Thank you, George Bush.'' You're welcome, pal.
Many families - Arabs as well as Kurds - stood outside their homes in disbelief and joy as the Kurdish fighters entered the city. One woman threw a handful of daisies. Nowrooz Ali cradled her 2-year-old daughter, Aya, as crowds used stones and bricks to smash a mural of Saddam.
At the local offices of the state oil company, people carted away chairs, carpets, air conditioners, ceiling fans and TV sets. At the main post office building, the bathrooms were stripped of their faucets. Outside, men used hammers and crowbars to try to open a safe they believed held dollars.
Cars were laden with the plunder: refrigerators, bookcases, chairs. Sometimes the vehicles themselves were the prize. A bus-size ambulance sped out of the city, apparently driven by looters. Are we sure they weren't Paleos?
Gas flowed for free at state-run service stations. A bank office was set ablaze. Kurdish leaders bedded down in stately homes abandoned by Baath Party figures.
In Ankara, Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul said his country had U.S. approval to send military observers to Kirkuk to make sure Kurdish fighters eventually withdraw from Kirkuk.
Turkey had said it could send troops into northern Iraq to protect its interests - a move that could put Washington in the middle of a potential Turkish-Kurdish conflict.
Barham Salih, one of the Kurdish leaders, said Kurds insist that all victims of ``ethnic cleansing'' in Kirkuk be allowed to return home. But he stressed the need to continue dialogue with Turkey and others to ``prevent any party from causing chaos.'' Barham clearly is a good listener.
``Kirkuk represents the climax of the suffering of the Kurdish people,'' he said. ``We want to make Kirkuk an example of coexistence.''
Many believe Saddam's remaining backers headed for Tikrit, about 65 miles southwest of Kirkuk. Coalition aircraft have hit the Republican Guard's Adnan Division in Tikrit and roadblocks tried to prevent Iraqi leaders from reaching the city to mount a last stand, U.S. officials said in Qatar.
In addition, remnants of Republican Guard divisions and regular army units have ``coalesced into composite forces'' throughout the north, including the area from Kirkuk to Mosul, said Capt. Frank Thorp, a Central Command spokesman.
A task force of about 300 soldiers from the 1st Infantry Division, based in Germany, was deployed to northern Iraq on Thursday to beef up the effort there.
Southeast of Kirkuk, on the Iranian border, Kurds also swept unopposed into the strategic city of Khaneqin. A small group of troops belonging to the Badr Brigades, an Iranian-based Shiite Iraqi opposition group, entered the city first, in the dark, followed by a force of up to 4,000 Kurds, witnesses and officials said.
Kurdish forces riding pickup trucks with mounted artillery were supported by U.S. special operations forces. Crowds welcomed the convoy with flowers and candy. I guess you can use a technical effectively.
``We were waiting for this day since 1991,'' said Salman Ajaf, a college student.
Posted by: Steve White ||
04/11/2003 12:55 am ||
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#1
It might be just rumours but these rumours do give a lot of question marks after the agreement talks in Belfast. There are a lot of rumours lately that the US has made some secret deals with France, Germany and Russia about the fate of Saddam. In short it is said that the quick capitulation of Baghdad and the absence of major Iraqi leading members are related to these agreements. Somehow it is very fishy, where are these guys especially the Iraqi minister of information Muhammed Said Al Sahaf who appeared regularly on the media from Baghdad and all the Iraqi troops vanishing into thin air? What made France, Germany and Russia suddenly turn to moderate their voice against the war in their fast U-turn? Well, I guess the backdoor deals back there in Belfast where effective.
Posted by: Murat ||
04/11/2003 4:09 Comments ||
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#2
Jeez, Murat, you don't suppose that the ass kicking we've given the Tikrit Thugocracy had any thing to do with the change of heart? Framany and Gerance realize that they are on the outside looking in, and not dollar one will be going their way for post war work.
The only back door deal job is the one that Turkey is going to get from Framany and Gerance, no EU membership, and the U.S. no longer considers Turkey a reliable partner in the region. You are SO SCREWED.
#3
Murat may be not far off the mark. I heard today (Maybe misinformation) that amnesty has been given to former gov't workers if they work in the new gov't.
Posted by: George ||
04/11/2003 7:35 Comments ||
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#4
George, sure, that makes some sense. The water dept., the garbage pickups, the post office, etc. all need to run. And some police were after real criminals (the ones Saddam let out a few months ago). No need to exclude every government employee just for having worked for the government.
#5
"I am XX years old, but my life just started today." -- Seems to be a common saying. Anyone with Middle East experience know if this is a common idiom?
Posted by: Dar ||
04/11/2003 8:15 Comments ||
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#6
Chuck, sure itâs not deniable that Tikrit got a lot of kicking, but does that explain vanishing troops into thin air, where are the prominent Baath Iraqis, I guess all of them where hit by a smart bomb leaving no trace of them.
You have a wrong notion on the word partner, you say partner and mean a lapdog. Not all of us want to play the blare of Bush (Tony Blare)
Posted by: Murat ||
04/11/2003 8:30 Comments ||
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#7
You crack me up, Murat.
"the US has made some secret deals with France, Germany and Russia about the fate of Saddam" -- yeah, bullet or noose, let's make a deal!
"the quick capitulation of Baghdad and the absence of major Iraqi leading members are related to these agreements" -- I suspect it had more to do with air supremacy, columns of tanks, and that choice of bullet or noose.
"What made France, Germany and Russia suddenly turn to moderate their voice against the war" -- perhaps the fact that the worst fears about the war have started to subside. No big terrorist attacks at home, no WMD use (at least yet), no longterm seige, etc. Oh yes, they also want a piece of the action now that it's clear to them that victory is at hand.
Really, Murat, your conspiracy theories amuse me. The truth is simply that everybody is now just looking out for their own interests -- just like they always were. Good luck on that EU thing!
Posted by: Tom ||
04/11/2003 8:36 Comments ||
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#8
Murat: "vanishing troops into thin air"?
Perhaps you are unfamiliar with the terms "bombs" as in "we dropped lots of big bombs on them" and "hiding" as in "gone AWOL and into hiding to save their own lives".
Posted by: Tom ||
04/11/2003 8:48 Comments ||
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#9
Never blame conspiracy when other factors better explain the situation. Thomas Sowell said that he doubts that the war has gone according to plan. He doubts the Army expected Baghdad to fall on the 21st day of the war. I do too, and I expect even CENTCOM is surprised. Pleased, but surprised.
The French, German, Russian and Chinese contracts are dead, and they know it. The war is all but won, and they are the ones left holding the bag. That is the explaination for the about face.
Posted by: Ben ||
04/11/2003 9:42 Comments ||
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#10
Murat: You have a wrong notion on the word sarcasm, you say sarcasm and mean irony.
Still no reply?
Posted by: michael ||
04/11/2003 10:48 Comments ||
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#11
Read somewhere yesterday (can't remember where, and can't find it) that someone had reported Iraqis on the beach at Latakia, in Syria. Sounds a bit far-fetched, but possible. Who knows what was actually in that Russian convoy? If true, I'm sure Latakia will be visited by our CIA and Delta Force in the very near future.
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
04/11/2003 11:01 Comments ||
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#12
Murat - your starting to sound like the belgians -did thier warnings have the desired affect? Must suck to be at the mercy of tiny belgian...lololol
Posted by: Dan ||
04/11/2003 11:11 Comments ||
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#13
Guys, pardon me for jumping in uninvited..after lurking here many days, reading, learning, and especially laughing at some of the comments..I have to ask a question about some of this Kirkuk commentary....to wit--Turkey doesnt want the Kurds in Kirkuk....I thought Kirkuk was a Kurdish area and homeland at one time....so, the Kurds cant come back into their "country" because the Turds..er, uh Turks dont want them to? Excuse me?
They--the Turks are afraid that the Kurds in Turkey will get the idea that they too can have a peaceful existence in their own homelands? With the human rights record of the Turks, seems like a reasonable thing for the Kurds to want out of there post haste....and the Turks dont want them to go where they would be free? Sorry, I must be missing something here....
Why cant the Kurds do some self-determining of their own, get their own lands back after being repressed by the Turks and get on with their lives? Is there a reason we are allowing the Turks to continue to control the Kurds?
Thanks for all your rational, seemingly educated, highly coherent comments and remarks---Murat excepted. Rock on!!!
#14
Murat is about as logical as his Turkish masters. Let's see... we'll prevent the Americans from invading in the north then we'll get our panties in a twist because the Americans can't control the Kurds. How many times do the Turks have to shoot themselves in the foot before they get it? Fer Pete's sake, if they stopped scheming and playing bazaar merchant and just started analyzing and planning, they might have come out ahead in this war.
PS Why do I think that between the peshmerga, the 173d, and the 1st AD elements, the Turkish divisions wouldn't get more than five mile into Kurdistan before they were stopped cold?
Oh My God - the Kurds took over on of their own cities, they are amred, fighting well - people are starting to take them seriously in the West as FRIENDS!
And they didnt go in and kill the Turks there - so they didnt give us Turks a pretext for stomping them and continuing our genocidal actions!
DAMN - fast - post a comment to distract people before they start saying how nice the Kurds are compared to the racist genocidal Turks and Kemalists!
Lets see whats the biggest flase rumor the Arab press is floating... Deal for Saddam - that ought to move them off the subject...
{/inside murats head}
Nice try Murat - you want to see a genocidal regime supporter - go look in the mirror.
#17
Excuse me for butting in here, but this is for Murat. You've said before that you won't respond to people insulting you. Fair enough, but why haven't you responded to the two questions I've posed here for you today in other sections? (Turkey joining up with Syria & Iran, and the kid getting 5 years for saying he's happy to be a Kurd)
Posted by: Former Russian Major ||
04/11/2003 16:37 Comments ||
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#18
Tex:
I don't have a link for this but I've read somewhere that the problem is that there are a lot of ethnic Turks in Iraq, especially around Kirkuk and Mosul. (They call them Turkomans or something like that, but they're basically Turks left over from when Iraq was part of the Turkish empire.)
Since Turkey oppresses their Kurds, it wouldn't be at all surprising if the Iraqi Kurds (whether still in Iraq or in an independent Kurdistan) decided to oppress their Turk(oman)s. As I undertand it, that's a lot of what the Turks in Turkey are worried about. They can't just annex the Turk(oman) areas, because they're little pockets a long way from the border, with most of the Kurds in between.
That means that partition wouldn't help much: the Kurds, Turk(oman)s, Shiite Arabs, and Sunni Arabs are all mixed up geographically. They're going to have to find some way to get along with each other.
Posted by: Dr. Weevil ||
04/11/2003 16:40 Comments ||
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#19
Maybe the TURKS are why the Air Force is moving MOAB weapons into Iraq? I don't think any Turkish general would be too happy to run across the Iraqi border, just to be smashed into a pancake. Seems the US HAS learned a thing or two about dealing with the Middle East.
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
04/11/2003 16:56 Comments ||
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#20
The reason the French, Germans and Russians have moderated their braying is that with Iraqi archieves about to fall in US hands they probably do not wish to irritate George more than they all ready have. It wouldn't be good PR to see all the double dealing and UN sanction violations they have been involved in. Even the French and German electorates might wake up from their stupor and get annoyed. Murat is dead wrong. There are only Cuba, North Korea or Libya that might offer safe haven to Saddam. The vanishing troops, well I guess if I had the choice better death and desertion I'd be shucking those nasty old uniforms right quick.
Posted by: TJ Jackson ||
04/12/2003 0:43 Comments ||
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. . . "That's a noise," grinned Ms. Amanpour, "that I simply must hear!"
She paused, and the prune put a hand to her ear
And she did hear a sound rising over the sand
It started in low . . . . . . then it rose to sound grand. . .
Posted by: Kanji ||
04/11/2003 01:06 pm ||
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#1
Thanks, Kanji, for the link - this is priceless!
Even though Saddam Hussein's regime has been toppled, there are still pockets of resistance -- not only in Iraq but in Paris, Berkeley, and in the editorial offices of the New York Times. These die- hards may hold out for years.
"Calling it like it is" isn't always popular, but it's good to know that a few people understand fully what the "war" was all about - for some people.
#1
I've always enjoyed his pieces in the newspapers. But I must say I've usually enjoyed Salim Mukawil too. A steady diet of one train of political thought leads to ossification of the brain. That does not mean I've always agreed or disagreed with either of the gentlemen.A well written op-ed piece is like a well deleivered sermon. Something that causes you to think and approach a problem with a reasoned attitude when your done reading the piece. As opposed to the usuall tripe that most op-ed writers turn out that seems to be more along the line of fear mongering IMHO.
Posted by: Someone who did NOT vote for William Proxmire ||
04/11/2003 19:26 Comments ||
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#2
Dear Someone:
Have you ever heard Salim on WLS (Chcago) on Sundays? His only answer to any criticism of Saddam was, "He is evil, but..."
I remember one of his columns and a rant he made on the same radio show that Saddam had invested huge sums to provide free education and health-care to his people. Tried to get to talk to him, but too late, to ask him how much free speech cost. This former Black Panther also spouts the same comment about Castro. Fortunately, his stint as periodic columnist for Chicago Trib is over. He's a whiner.
Posted by: michael ||
04/11/2003 20:23 Comments ||
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#3
Yes mike I've heard him and he usually was an excesively large bag of wind. But his comments about how some of these nations have placed greater emphesis on education Ithan we do I find troubling. The vast majority of our youth are educated in the public schools and the job they do is a disgrace. The answer is not money in my opinion but lack of political will. And as for Iraq, if the figures are to believed the population there has a higher literacy rate than the US. The reporters don't seem to have any trouble finding people who speak English. Yet try to find someone who speaks Arabic outside of the military,government foriegn service or a convienence store in Detriot. Or any other foriegn language for that matter amongst the native born citizens of this country.
Posted by: Someone who did NOT vote for William Proxmire ||
04/11/2003 20:53 Comments ||
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#4
Someone - It's not quite as simple as that. The U.S. is a big country, and there are lots of people who're born here, grow up, and die of old age without ever setting foot outside our borders. At one time or another I've spoken 11 different languages, including English, but that was because I spent 20 years in the Army in intelligence fields and I had an academic interest in linguistics as a field of study. I've forgotten 9.5 of the 11 - if you don't use them, you lose them.
People in the southwest and in Florida have an incentive to learn to speak Spanish and many do, though not a majority. People in New England have a moderate incentive to speak French. But someone living in Montana or Alabama will study a language purely as an academic exercise, and will lose it shortly after finishing the course.
In areas where there are significant foreign language population pockets, there are often multiple pockets. Montgomery County, near where I live, has Spanish, Portuguese, Vietnamese, Hmong, and several other neighborhoods. The common language remains English.
My opinion of the education system is that there's too much self-esteem and not enough memorization; too much opinion and not enough fact. Teachers who set out to "teach children to think" make me gag. If you stuff their little heads with facts the process of connecting them all together is real thought - valid conclusions are the result of factual analysis. If you stuff their heads with predigested opinions and allow them to gather facts at random you end up with mush. I'm surprised that the products of our schools turn out as well as so many do - though I understand why so many don't.
Posted by: Fred ||
04/11/2003 21:27 Comments ||
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#5
Fred - on the money - my kids 13 - 18 are not particularly liberal (surprise surprise!) but can think for themselves, because sometimes when they express an opinion, may be one I agree with..maybe not, I ask : why? why do you think that and not the opposite, or shades in between? Defending your beliefs can be a humbling experience if they're just kant you've been forcefed...kept me sane in college. But then again, I was living in a fraternity....so ...uh, nevermind
Posted by: Frank G ||
04/11/2003 22:59 Comments ||
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#7
What nonsense I'm seeing here. Almost everyone in the Middle East has a few words of English, that doesn't make you an English speaker. Since American movies, videos and music is popular the world over, everyone learns a few words. Wheerever I've been even the poorest taxi driver could say Coke or Rambo. I lived in Baghdad and the Iraqi hospital and medical system was a joke. In Baghdad the best hospital was staffed with Irish doctors and nurses and was reserved for the Baath party. Ordinary folks just died. Education system, more like the learn to love Saddam center of indoctrination. I am tired of idiots who believe sending more money on a failed US educational system will result in better schools. Does anyone believe spending more on Congress will give us better politicians?
Posted by: TJ Jackson ||
04/12/2003 0:55 Comments ||
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Kimmie mouths off - edited for length and the scary parts
SEOUL (Reuters) - North Korean leader Kim Jong-il visited an air base just hours after Iraq's leadership crumbled and told pilots he was confident they could "beat back the enemy," the North's media reported on Friday.
Kimmie came out of his hole! Wait⊠something about that just sounds offâŠ
Pyongyang says it will be Washington's next target once the war in Iraq is over, something the United States denies. A top Russian official said Moscow would reconsider its long-standing policy of opposing international sanctions against North Korea if Pyongyang developed nuclear arms. Russia would oppose sanctions as long as North Korea maintained common sense, Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Losyukov told the Interfax news agency.
*Gasp* Losyukov actually thinks North Korea is capable of common sense?!
In the United States, North Korea's deputy ambassador to the United Nations gave the North's first reaction to Saddam's fall. "The result of the Iraq war gives the DPRK a kind of determination and the will to take assured measures to defend its territory against possible U.S. attacks," Radio Free Asia quoted Han Song-ryul as saying on Thursday at a seminar in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
âYour victory scared the pee out of us, and we are embarrassed, so we feel the need to be stern and unreasonable!â
The radio station, which is funded by the U.S. Congress but not government-run, said Han had also told the seminar that, if Washington accepted its call for bilateral talks on its suspected nuclear weapons program, it could expect "many positive steps."
Back in North Korea, it was unclear what kind of planes were at the unit Kim visited. The choice of base was no coincidence. The Iraqi air force has played no role in the war in Iraq. "Seeing the pilots fully ready to cope with the moves of the enemy for aggression, he noted with great satisfaction that they are always maintaining a high degree of revolutionary vigilance and fully prepared to courageously beat back the enemy any time if he comes in attack," the official KCNA news agency said.
I think âjucheâ is Korean for run-on sentanceâŠ
North Korea's Radio Pyongyang, aimed at a domestic audience, unlike Han's comments, kept up its rhetoric against the United States, saying it "would not hesitate to push the entire Korean peninsula to nuclear disaster," Yonhap news agency reported.
Holy shnikeys â is Kimmie really nuts enough to push things that far?! I need a JDAM with his name on itâŠ
#1
Kim beats off the whole of the USAF !! omg that has to be messy .. ohh have i got the XXX rated film confused with the North Korean leader Kim Jong-il
#2
yes, the sawed-off little fucker really is nuts enough to send off a nuke. The old Soviet hierarchy may have been completely cynical in their approach to Stalinism-after-Stalin, but Kim Jong-be-illin' is basically a Pol Pot who loooooves missiles. On the tyranny/human rights issues, the DPRK lines up with Iraq quite nicely, but the resemblance ends there - Kimmie's zombies will fight without giving a fuck about the post-war consequence.
#6
There is a gang of submarines lurking around North Korea, ready to delete the Hermit Kingdom off the face of the planet on a moment's notice...should the need arise.
#7
The airfield was probably Sunan. ALL the hangars and support areas are inside a mountain, and only the runway is exposed. Fred, you need to update your database: North Korea has Mig-23 Flogger and Mig-29 Fulcrum aircraft, as well as SU-25 Frogfoot ground support aircraft similar to the US A-10 Warthog. North Korea's air defense system is also significantly stronger than Iraq's, and includes the SA-5 strategic surface-to-air missile system.
What's worse, the North Koreans are human moles. Anything that can be dug in and hidden has been. They have radar systems on elevators inside mountains, so they can be raised and lowered at will. The tunnels along the DMZ are just a small part of what these people seem to enjoy carving inside their mountains, and they have LOTS of mountains.
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
04/11/2003 18:35 Comments ||
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#8
The NKors are not happy unless they are burrowing.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
04/11/2003 19:36 Comments ||
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#9
Old Patriot makes an accurate assessment, however, Mentally Il Jong (I wish I had come up with that myself) needs one more thing to fly his planes - fuel.
One other passing thought. I wonder who taught who to think like a gopher - Iraq of Nkor?
Posted by: Douglas De Bono ||
04/11/2003 20:00 Comments ||
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#10
The last time we faced off with NKor our pilots scored about 20:1 kills against them.
The USAF isn;t stupid. They train against skilled professional pilots who are actively trying to teach them how to kill other pilots and how they can be killed by them.
Any type of showdown against NKor would be bloody, but ruthlessly pursued. I seriously doubt that NKor pilots have half the training and skill that USAF pilots do. However, there would be casualties on all sides and the going would not be easy by any account.
Those moles and underground bunkers would be dug out or rendered useless within days, if not hours, of any US action against NKor.
The biggest risk is that the NKors would go nuclear and blast Seoul off the map.
bah! Too much rational foreign commentary interspersed with the jewels. maintaining a high degree of revolutionary vigilance and fully prepared to courageously beat back Fairly good, but too little to salvage a lamentable performance.
In the United States, North Korea's deputy ambassador to the United Nations gave the North's first reaction to Saddam's fall. "The result of the Iraq war gives the DPRK a kind of determination and the will to take assured measures to defend its territory against possible U.S. attacks," This gentleman, though showing some promise, apparently has been rendered limp-wristed living too much among the decadent whores and pimps resident at the United Nations. Living in the midst of the opulently decadent Metropolis of New York City has robbed him of that subterraneously concealed desperation that finely hones the revolutionary fervor of Juche that comes from living in the Fatherland.
#14
Baghdad Bob landed a job advising Kimmy on dealing with the Western press.
Posted by: Mark ||
04/11/2003 22:22 Comments ||
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#15
My understanding is that the average NKorean pilot gets about 12 hours flying time a year. Not only that but the aircraft have limited fuel to prevent defections. Worried about the NK air force? I'd say they are in the same league as Iraq, perhaps less combat ready. Still they have a massive army, and their troops ar tough. Their weakness is lack of oil. One other problem, the ROKs are about the toughest troops on earth.
Posted by: TJ Jackson ||
04/12/2003 1:09 Comments ||
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I've added a "Syria-Lebanon" category, since that seems to be an area that'll be picking up steam in the coming weeks and months. "Middle East" will cover Israel-Paleostine-Jordan-Egypt.
I've been lumping Turkey with Europe. Somebody today put it under Central Asia, which probably covers the idea of "Greater Turkmenistan" better. Maybe change the title of the underused "Central Asia"? Any ideas?
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
04/11/2003 02:36 pm ||
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During Spanish Civil War, when loyalists still held Madrid, it was said the Francoists has four columns closing on the city, and a "fifth column" within in the city
#7
"Fifth Column" is for anti-Americans (and anti-British) - people like Michael Moore, most of the people who write for The Nation, Professor de Genova, that sort of people. By rights, Nancy Pelosi should be under Home Front, since she's a part of the government, even though a fairly fragrant part. Reverend Al fits under Fifth Column most of the time, Charlie Rangel under Home Front. Kind of a fine distinction sometimes...
Posted by: Fred ||
04/11/2003 15:02 Comments ||
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#9
I would advice some caution with that term. Free expression of opinion is a very American ideal, right. Calling everyone a "traitor" who doesn't agree with you is not.
Be careful where you tread. I know what I'm talking about.
#10
I think of the Fifth Column entries as people wearing American hats and anti-American underwear. Even though they get indignant when you question their "patriotism," they still hate us, and they'd still sell us down the river of revolution without a second thought, at least not until it was all over.
We do have free expression and we treasure it. That's why we can mouth off here. But so, too, did we have Alger Hiss and the Rosenbergs, and lots of people who didn't do what they did but thought what they thought and believed what they believed. So too did the FRG have 40 years worth of moles trying to undermine it.
It's a delicate balance, but calling a spade a spade is a different matter from burying it. My freedom of speech includes calling them names and making fun of them, just like their freedom of speech includes the liberty of denigrating things I believe in.
Posted by: Fred ||
04/11/2003 16:16 Comments ||
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#11
"would advice some caution with that term. Free expression of opinion is a very American ideal, right. Calling everyone a "traitor" who doesn't agree with you is not.
Be careful where you tread. I know what I'm talking about. "
Ive never posted anything under fifth column. I just wanted to point out its origins.
I think that the term may well fit for Stalinist groups such as ANSWER, or for some wahabist elements, but i agree it shouldnt be used for run of the mill idiots.
#12
I think that the term may well fit for Stalinist groups such as ANSWER, or for some wahabist elements, but i agree it shouldnt be used for run of the mill idiots.
Fifth columnists include such people as Vidkun Quisling, who betrayed Norway to the German Reich in 1940. I think that helps portray what the "Fifth Column" is all about - people willing or actively working to betray their country to another cause. I'd include people under that category who would subvert the sovereignty of the United States to the United Nations. Normal partisan politics don't belong under that category. As for the "run of the mill idiots", I'd recommend a new category - Looney Bin. A good example of posts that could go under that category are some of the ones referring to the political rantings of Jeanene Garofalo, Martin Sheen, Mike Farrell, or Michael Moore.
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
04/11/2003 17:07 Comments ||
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A 21-year-old British peace activist was shot Friday during fighting in the Gaza Strip, the second member of the Palestinian-backed International Solidarity Movement shot this month. Doctors declared him brain dead. Some days the story just writes itself, doesn't it?
The Briton was shot in the head Friday by Israeli soldiers, who opened fire near where the group was setting up a tent in the town of Rafah, said Khalil Abdullah, one of the activists.
The victim was standing between Israeli troops and Palestinian children at the time, said Abdullah, who witnessed the shooting. Of course there were children, and, er, puppies. Abdullah wouldn't lie.
The victim was pronounced brain dead shortly after arriving at the hospital in Rafah. Maybe it was a pre-existing condition?
The activists often act as human shields, placing themselves between Palestinians and Israelis. Not a good career choice. See: Iraq
Posted by: Steve ||
04/11/2003 02:31 pm ||
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#1
Another moronic martyr laid down on the dustbin of history.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
04/11/2003 14:54 Comments ||
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European Union and Iranian officials began the second round of political dialogue in Brussels Thursday morning. Issues like the fight against terrorism, non-proliferation, human rights and the Middle East conflict were discussed at the two-day meeting, IRNA reported. Ibrahim Rahimpour, director general of West European Desk in the Iranian Foreign Ministry, headed the Iranian delegation, while the political director in the Greek Foreign Ministry, Ilias Klis, led the EU side. The first round of the political dialogue was held in Tehran in December, spokesman for the Greek EU presidency, Roussos Koundouros, told IRNA. The spokesman said the aim of the political dialogue is to promote regular contacts between the EU and Iran on political issues.
Meanwhile, the third session of negotiations on a trade and cooperation agreement between the EU and Iran ended in Brussels Wednesday evening with both sides expressing satisfaction at the outcome of the two-day talks. Issues covered included cooperation against drug trafficking, money laundering, illegal migration, science and technology and cultural cooperation between the 15-member European bloc and the Islamic Republic or Iran.
#1
The Axis of Weasels meets the Axis of Evil. That is going to produce some wierd DNA helixes.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
04/11/2003 14:29 Comments ||
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#2
Oh my God! I can't believe what I'm reading. I can't believe what level the "axis of weasels" will stoop to. To expand anti-americanism the axis of weasels joins with the axis of evil. To make the "axis of evil-weasels".
Posted by: George ||
04/11/2003 15:13 Comments ||
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#3
The European masses will be in for another round of "shock and awe" after Iran goes.
The Movement of Iranian Students does not like the EU, they view the EU trading w/Iran as keeping the mad mullahs in power.
Maybe the citizens of the EU will finally look to the root causes of why they are hated.
One of the grimmest consequences for a president who wages war is coming face-to-face with men and women he sent into battle and who returned wounded. On Friday, President Bush and first lady Laura Bush went to Walter Reed Army Medical Center in northwest Washington to visit the bedsides of U.S. troops wounded during the war in Iraq. Later, they were heading to the National Naval Medical Center in nearby Bethesda, Md., spending a total of about three hours with hurt soldiers while battlefield successes multiplied and Saddam Hussein's regime appeared in tatters. Bush visited with 40 Army soldiers sent stateside for treatment at Walter Reed, and planned to honor a dozen with purple hearts. At the Naval Medical Center, the president was to visit 33 patients, award four Purple Hearts and stand witness as two wounded Marines become U.S. citizens. I think these are the same two Marines discussed here about a week ago. Good to see this happening, and so quickly.
White House press secretary Ari Fleischer said the president views the afternoon "as a time to honor men and women who have been injured so that Iraqi people could have freedom." As of Thursday, the Pentagon's count of Americans wounded in action in Iraq stood at 343. Another 105 have died, the Defense Department said, while 11 are missing and seven captured. There has been no tally of the Iraqi military's dead and wounded, either from the coalition or from the Iraqi government. Iraq has said that nearly 600 civilians have been killed and more than 4,000 wounded since the war began.
The visits have become emotionally wrenching rituals of Bush's presidency that visibly wear on him. "I know that every order I give can bring a cost," Bush said in a somber January address to soldiers at Ford Hood, Texas, while he was still contemplating war. Later in January, Bush went room-to-room at Walter Reed visiting five soldiers badly injured in Afghanistan, emerging with tears in his eyes. Two days after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the president and first lady went to Washington Hospital Center to see 11 military and civilian workers critically burned in the Pentagon attack. Separately, Mrs. Bush appeared at Walter Reed on her own to see soldiers injured in the same attack.
Posted by: Steve White ||
04/11/2003 01:55 pm ||
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Contrast this with the actions of former president Clinton.
God bless our President and our dedicated Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, and Marines, who know what is right and go out and do it.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
04/11/2003 14:33 Comments ||
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Also, contrast this with Senator H. Clinton, who purportedly attended nary a funeral of victims from 9/11. Sidenote: Our great Governor here, Bill Owens - Best Governor per NRO magazine, is making it a point to attend every funeral and memorial service for our Colorado servicemen who have given the ultimate sacrifice. God Bless our brave servicemen and pray and remember those who have died and their family members.
Japan's justice minister has warned that the cult which carried out the 1995 sarin gas attack on the Tokyo underground still poses a public threat. Mayumi Moriyama told a cabinet meeting that "there is still the danger that the group may engage in acts of indiscriminate mass murder" and called for "continued vigilance" of Aum Shinrikyo. Ms Moriyama was speaking after the release of an annual report on the group, as part of legislation aimed at monitoring the cult. Several members of Aum Shinrikyohave so far been sentenced for their roles in the cult's crimes. The founder of the group, Shoko Asahara, is still on trial. The latest report on the group, compiled by the Justice Ministry's Public Security Investigation Agency, said that Aum had about 650 live-in followers and some 1,000 outside believers, as of the end of last December. Aum went bankrupt in 1996, after the arrest of its top leaders. It has since changed its name to Aleph and claims to have renounced violence under its new leader, Fumihiro Joyu. But Ms Morayama told a news conference that under Mr Joyu's leadership, the group continues to worship Asahara's "dangerous" teachings. They may change their names, but these groups never change their beliefs.
The group maintains 28 offices and 120 apartments in 17 prefectures throughout Japan and has 300 members in Russia, the report on Aum said. The cult uses different names to offer yoga lessons and computer classes in order to finance its activities and recruit new members, the report added. On Thursday, the Tokyo District Court held the last questioning session for Asahara, as his trial, in its seventh year, neared its final stage. Asahara, whose real name is Chizuo Matsumoto, was reported to have remained silent during the hearing. Prosecutors are scheduled to close their case 24 April, and are expected to seek the death penalty. The 1995 sarin gas attack killed 12 people and left thousands ill. Japanese trials take forever, but the guilty verdict is never in doubt.
Posted by: Steve ||
04/11/2003 01:20 pm ||
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"Aleph" is a pretty dumbass name to pick to impress the Japanese. It's phonetically impronounceable in the language. It comes out sounding like "arehu" which sounds like a sneeze...
Posted by: Fred ||
04/11/2003 13:53 Comments ||
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Edited for the money quote:
US Secretary of State Colin Powell has said that the United States and its coalition partners will select leaders for a new interim Iraqi authority. Mr Powell said the US was "not unmindful" of the international community's work regarding humanitarian aid for Iraq. But he said coalition countries had invested more in the Iraqi conflict and had the right to take a leading role in the building a new authority. "The international community will have a role to play," Mr Powell said in an interview with the Los Angeles Times. "But... we believe that the coalition, having invested this political capital and life and treasure into this enterprise, are going to have a leading role for some time as we shape this process," he said. Mr Powell also said that the US and its coalition partners would not be willing to hand over political authority to the UN once Saddam Hussein's regime had been removed. "The suggestion... that now that the coalition has done all of this and liberated Iraq, thank you very much, step aside and the Security Council is now going to become responsible for everything, is incorrect," he said. "And they know it. And they were told it." Ouch, all the way in to the hilt, and twist!
Posted by: Steve ||
04/11/2003 01:07 pm ||
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Colin's baaacccckkkkk
Posted by: Frank G ||
04/11/2003 13:16 Comments ||
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Ah, and soon France and Belgium will be one...just like the sappy U2 song. Good-luck children.
#9
I haven't been a big fan of Colin Powell's before, but this makes up for all the slick-willie acting he did before. I'm glad he's finally taken off the silk gloves, and slapped on a pair of leather work gloves. He has some house-cleaning to do in his own department, but I think that will be easier now that he's proven to both President Bush and the American people he has THIS nation's interests at heart.
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
04/11/2003 15:42 Comments ||
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Alaska Paul -- I just have to ask, what's A.F.R.? Ok, just the first letter and the last one, I think I know what the middle one stands for. ;)
Posted by: Former Russian Major ||
04/11/2003 16:43 Comments ||
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Fred - the only thing I can think of is Colin has read Rantburg, rejected State Dept Euroweenie advice and adopted our wisdom. Inshallah!
Posted by: Frank G ||
04/11/2003 17:42 Comments ||
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He should have said of course we'll be delighted to have the UN help, once they've proved they could handle it by improving Kosovo. Until then, no dice.
Posted by: michael ||
04/11/2003 21:12 Comments ||
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Former Russian Major: A.F.R.abbrev. "All F***ing Right" intensified version of American idiom "All Right!" Usage: "All Right!" is an often spontaneous expression of pleasure and approval of an outcome or achievement, usually external to the speaker. "All Right" goes beyond approval of correctness or favorable outcome to imply that the result was achived by overcoming obstacles (internal or external), or despite the sacrifice of "doing what's right" as opposed to "what's convenient" or "what's popular." Also may include an appreciation of achievement against odds. Examples: 1. Your high score on an exam would probably not rate an "All Right!" from your friends unless it followed long, dedicated effort to learn the material or happened despite partying until dawn the night before and showing up drunk. 2. In (American) football, when an interception by the defense on the last play of the game results in a touchdown that turns a loss into a win.
Alaska Paul's use of "A.F.R." here expresses it all: Approval, Pleasure, feelings of Obstacles Overcome, admiration for Doing the Right Thing Despite Political Advantage, etc...
Posted by: Old Grouch ||
04/11/2003 22:13 Comments ||
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#15
Old Grouch -- better clear something up about my name on this board. I'm American, majored in Russian in college, hence the name.
I'll just change it now to "Baba Yaga". ;)
Thanks for the detailed explanation, though. I liked the first example, especially the "partying until dawn the night before and showing up drunk." Not that I've EVER done that. No. Never.
#16
Old Grouch---Could not have explained AFR better myself.
Alaska Paul, a.k.a. Pappa Pasha
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
04/12/2003 0:03 Comments ||
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Thanks guys! The outburst of pedantry resulted from an excess of spare time on a Friday night and Bulldog's earlier account of his confusion when he first encounterd the American expression "bum's rush." (Ask him about the different meanings of "knocked up" sometime.) Sometimes I feel our international readers may think we're talking in code! ;-)
Posted by: Old Grouch ||
04/12/2003 16:40 Comments ||
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Iran's envoy to Ankara said Friday that Iran, Turkey and Syria are to boost the trilateral cooperation to preserve the security and stability in the region. Oh, it's the Axis of Kurd-owners...
Speaking to a Turkish TV channel, Ambassador Firouz Dowlatabadi said the crisis in Iraq which is a neighbor of Iran, Turkey and Syria requires proper measures by the three states to prevent any action or event endangering the regional security and calm. "Cain't go lettin' them Kurds get uppity. Nex' thing y'know, they'll be sniffin' around our wimmin..."
The envoy said the three countries could not remain indifferent vis-a-vis the events taking place in neighboring Iraq since the situation there would influence the regional circumstances. He however said that the trilateral cooperation among Tehran, Ankara and Damascus should not be viewed as a regional pact. "Oh, certainly not! While Syria may be taking Iraq's place on the Axis of Evil, Turkey is reluctant to join..."
He went on to say that Iran-Turkey-Syria cooperation could encourage the international community to come to measures to protect security in the region and in the world. He termed as "unrealistic" the sensitivity shown by some media circles on trilateral cooperation of these countries.
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
04/11/2003 12:05 pm ||
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I saw the Syrian ambasador speaking on TV last night. He is a very rough copy of Bagdad Bob.
These guys preserving security and stability in the region?
I do not know whether to laugh or cry. All I know is Turkery seems to interested in getting a lot of dirt on its name.
Posted by: Michael ||
04/11/2003 12:26 Comments ||
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Why is Turkey throwing in with those losers? Murat, I'm not baiting you here, but please explain this. I just don't see how this could possibly be a good thing for your country.
Posted by: Former Russian Major ||
04/11/2003 12:44 Comments ||
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The Bush administration has grown fond of the Kurds, and that's bad news for TurkSyIran. Said it before, and I'll say it again....
#4
I think it has something to do with the Islamists winning the last election. No, wait! They're not like the other Islamists, right?
Posted by: Fred ||
04/11/2003 13:04 Comments ||
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Syria was actually a primary sponsor of the PKK until they were convinced by Turkish military pressure to ease off. Turkey is rightly concerned about a PKK resurgence during the interregnum following the fall of Saddam Hussein (and regardless of what you guys may think of the Kurds, the PKK is a bunch of Marxist nuts) and it may well be pressuring Syria and Iran not to try any funny business during the transition period.
Syria has generally sponsored Marxist Kurdish group, while Iran sponsors the nutty Islamic ones like Ansar al-Islam. This agreement is likely a setback for potential attempts by both sides to use the Kurds as pawns, IMO.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
04/11/2003 14:05 Comments ||
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Supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei on Friday said Iranians, like the Iraqis, are happy to see Saddam Hussein ousted, but they strongly condemn the killing of Iraqi civilians by the US-British troops. Ayatollah Khamenei, addressing thousands of storm troopers worshipers at Tehran weekly Friday prayers, said Iran's position was like that of the Iraqi people, and that the ouster of Saddam, as a most evil dictator, had been good news for the Islamic Republic. "We never helped either of the tyrants, and we are very happy that Saddam is toppled ... We were neutral during the crisis, as were the Iraqi people, and are happy as are the Iraqi nation," he told the worshipers at Tehran University compound. "Yeah, buddy! We didn't like that sucker one little bit. Not that we were able to do anything about him. It was just so much easier to beat up our own civilians than it was to fight The Fourth Largest Army in the World™, y'know?"
Ayatollah Khamenei also strongly condemned the killing of Iraqi civilians by US-British troops, stressing that the world would never forget such atrocities. He said the Islamic Republic sympathizes with the Iraqi nation for US crimes, adding that the US and Britain had violated the very basic right of the Iraqi people to live by attacking civilians. "Yeah. We wouldn't want to see anything similar happen in Iran..."
Ayatollah Khamenei criticized US plans to install a military government in Iraq, stressing that Iran considered those plans as an aggression against the dignity of Islam and the Muslim world. He also called the US-British ambitious plans to share Iraq's resources as a big mistake and a reactionary step toward the early decades of colonialism. "I mean, the Iraqis were incapable of governing themselves without using sharp instruments and explosives, but that's no reason for outsiders to come in and try to civilize them..."
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
04/11/2003 11:54 am ||
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Iran on Friday condemned the murder of prominent Shiite cleric Seyyed Abdul Majid al-Khoei who was stabbed to death in Najaf Thursday. "From the Islamic Republic of Iran's standpoint, resorting to violence in order to achieve political ends is condemned," Foreign Minister spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi said. Cheeze. Hand me a tissue, wouldja? Hot coffee hurts when it sprays out your nose...
Iraqi opposition sources here told IRNA Thursday that Khoei was knifed by assailants at the mausoleum of Imam Ali while he was saying his prayers. "The brave Iraqi people in the current sensitive juncture, while (maintaining) their unity, solidarity and vigilance, must not allow outside forces to impose their views on them by exploiting their disunity and conflicts," Asefi said. The official also voice sympathy with and offered condolences to Khoei's bereaved family. The attackers reportedly dragged the cleric out of the shrine and shot him with a gun before killing him with several strokes of knife. The identity of the assailants and their motives are not known yet.
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
04/11/2003 11:42 am ||
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"From the Islamic Republic of Iran's standpoint, resorting to violence in order to achieve political ends is condemned,"
Wow - I just had to explain to my boss why I fell out of my chair laughing.. Too rich.
Edited for brevity.
Russian lawmakers on Friday rejected a senior U.S. official's suggestion that Russia, France and Germany forgive debts to postwar Iraq to help the country restore its battered economy. U.S. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz told the Senate Armed Services Committee Thursday that he hoped the countries would consider writing off some or all of their debts to Iraq's new government. "I hope ... they will think about the very large debts that come from money that was lent to the dictator to buy weapons and to build palaces and to building instruments of repression," Wolfowitz said. "I think they ought to consider whether it might not be appropriate to forgive some or all of that debt so the new Iraqi government isn't burdened with it."
Gennady Seleznyov, speaker of Russia's lower house of parliament, criticized the U.S. call for debt forgiveness, saying it was up to Iraq, not the United States, to negotiate its obligations. "Iraq is not the 51st state of America," Seleznyov said in comments broadcast on Russia's Channel One. "All debt issues will be resolved only with the lawful government of Iraq."
Communist leader Gennady Zyuganov accused the U.S. of taking revenge on countries that did not support its position on Iraq. "The Americans acted in a barbaric way, unleashing aggression on Iraq, and they are behaving in the same boorish way against countries that opposed U.S. actions," Zyuganov said in a statement. Methinks there's a subtle difference between "not support" and "block every US and UK resolution while supplying Iraq with weapons and other banned goodies."
Posted by: Dar ||
04/11/2003 11:34 am ||
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Well, hell! Why should they forgive the debt - they've got to get paid for the weapons they sold Iraq somehow (as they are not likely to get much in the way of reconstruction dollars).
#2
This position taken in conjunction with those of the head of the Russian state owned oil company Lukoil, make it clear that money is Russia's only International concern. I wonder how well those GPS jammers are selling now?
Posted by: D Hyatt ||
04/11/2003 11:45 Comments ||
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He hasn't seen the actual "revenge" yet... This is just a not so subtle nudge that there are reasons why you should think twice before dissing your allies.
I would suggest that the Russians and any other nations with collection issues become familiar with the Keynsian economic concept known as "bad debt"
#4
"The Americans acted in a barbaric way, unleashing aggression on Iraq, and they are behaving in the same boorish way against countries that opposed U.S. actions," Zyuganov said in a statement. Wow, the hypocrisy of this statement is breathtakingly audacious. I think we have found a candidate to replace Iraq's Disinformation Minister in sheer chutzpah.
#6
"The Americans acted in a barbaric way, unleashing aggression on Iraq, and they are behaving in the same boorish way against countries that opposed U.S. actions"
Chechnya anyone?
Posted by: g wiz ||
04/11/2003 12:50 Comments ||
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This is beautiful. A Commie saying the new regime should honor the debts of the regime that was overthrown. They didn't do that after the Bolsheviks took over, so why should the Iraqis?
I think the Iraqis' response will be something along the lines of "Yobanny v rot'!"
Posted by: Former Russian Major ||
04/11/2003 12:53 Comments ||
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#8
The Russians watched their arms sales go down the toilet and worse yet they didn't get paid for the destroyed arms to begin with. I couldn't think of a better way to stop the military spending increases world wide.
#10
If it's up to Iraqi to 'negotiate its obligations', I have some simple suggestions for the Iraqi Interim Authority:
1) repudiate all debt on foreign arms purchased by Saddam.
2) repudiate all oil contracts with foreign countries signed by Saddam
3) notify all banks around the world that any funds put into those banks directly or indirectly by Saddam and his henchmen are the property of Iraq -- the Interim Authority then can file the necessary legal papers in each country's courts
4) state that those countries that contest #1-3 forfeit any opportunity to do business with Iraqi's oil industry in the future.
That would starch some shorts in Europe.
Posted by: Steve White ||
04/11/2003 14:09 Comments ||
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#11
how about we simply offset the Iraqi debt to Russia with Czarist debt previously uncollectible (might require revising some treaties, so what) the way you do this is transfer any legal claims to the Czarist debt to the new govt of Iraq. They then repudiate debt to Russia, declare that Czarist debt is now "paid".
#13
It gets better. The international law doctrine of "odious debt," under which Saddam's debts would be repudiated, was crafted by A FRENCH LAWYER shortly after WW1. See this link.
Posted by: Joe ||
04/11/2003 15:00 Comments ||
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#14
actually Joe, it was the discussion on your blog that gave me the idea of a direct offset. I assume that, unfortunately, acceptance of USSRs repudiation of Czarist debt was part of recognition agreements between USSR and western powers. thats why i suggested we gift Iraq with "such claim as we have" - theres a more legal term for that, i believe.
from reuters
"ST PETERSBURG, Russia (Reuters) - Russian President Vladimir Putin (news - web sites) said on Friday Moscow was ready to consider Washington's call for it to forgive Baghdad some $8-12 billion in debt.
"On the whole the proposal is understandable and legitimate. In any event, Russia has no objection to such a proposal," Putin told a news conference alongside Germany's Gerhard Schroeder and France's Jacques Chirac.
"I believe that we could begin to discuss the principles of this issue at the G8 summit in Evian. In any case, we are ready to do so," he said, referring to a June meeting of the Group of Eight leading industrial nations.
U.S. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz said on Thursday Russia, France and Germany could contribute to rebuilding Iraq (news - web sites) by writing off some or all of the loans they made to Iraq under President Saddam Hussein (news - web sites
E.F.L.
The U.S. Navy announced drastic cutbacks at its sprawling base in Puerto Rico on Thursday, saying half the employees will not be needed when it ends bombing exercises on nearby Vieques island. More than 2,300 employees at Roosevelt Roads Naval Station, including military and civilians, will be transferred elsewhere or lose their jobs, said Lt. Scott McIlnay, a spokesman for the Atlantic Fleet in Norfolk, Va. The base, which has about 4,800 employees, is one of the largest employers in Puerto Rico and injects an estimated $300 million into the economy each year. Military officials say they have less use for Roosevelt Roads, which administered the bombing range from the main island. "The base's primary function was the training at Vieques," McIlnay said. "We need to put our resources where our training is, and our training is moving." Say goodbye to your job base.
The Navy plans to withdraw from Vieques by May 1, turning over the island's eastern third to the U.S. Department of the Interior and moving training to spots in Florida and elsewhere on the U.S. mainland. Turn the range into a wildlife preserve, that'll fix those greedy developers who wanted the military out so they could build hotels and condos. Greenpeace will be happy.
Puerto Rico's government has applauded the end of the bombing exercises but urged the Navy not to close the base, saying it is vital economically to the island, where unemployment stands at 12 percent. Tough
Puerto Rican Sen. Kenneth McClintock said Thursday's announcement "means the virtual closure" of the base. An opposition legislator, he blamed Gov. Sila Calderon's pursuit of an end to the bombing exercises. Time to pay the piper, Sila.
Posted by: Steve ||
04/11/2003 10:25 am ||
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less filling and leaves a good aftertaste. I like it
Posted by: Frank G ||
04/11/2003 10:46 Comments ||
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Another case of action and consequences. People in this country have that lesson to learn, too. Like the Russians say, "Tough Schitskies" Sila. Explain that to your electorate.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
04/11/2003 10:52 Comments ||
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What! You mean we got what we asked for with our anti-military posturing? How dare the Navy do what we demanded! Yet more proof of the danger of militarism in the American Empire. The only reasonable compromise is to close the base as scheduled, but keep sending us the money. We can use it for anti-American education programs. See -- we are open to compromise.
Posted by: Steve ||
04/11/2003 12:16 Comments ||
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#5
We're leaving a military base after a local government asked us to go? In the distance.....I think I hear sphincters tightening in Germany, South Korea, Turkey......
Posted by: Former Russian Major ||
04/11/2003 12:29 Comments ||
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#6
Maybe Puerto Rico will finally fish or cut bait, that is become a state or go their own way.
I love the turning the land over the US Department of the interior. Let them fight the sierra club and greenpeace in order to develop.
#10
I just had this weird thought. We stay the course, clean up the middle east, everyone loves each other, Kimmie craters economically and N Korea comes back into the world, everybody takes personal responsibility, we buy the world a Coke, and then this big asteroid is discovered barrelling down toward earth....and the world, together, says a giant collective Oh S--t!...........I need a break.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
04/11/2003 18:36 Comments ||
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#11
Love it. Serves the damned morons right. Can't you hear the crying you can't cut those jobs. Then give the damn island independence.
Posted by: TJ Jackson ||
04/12/2003 1:01 Comments ||
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#12
G.W,McCintock:
"Somebody outta punch you in the nose!But I won't,I won't.The hell I won't!"
(Smack)Ow,you broke my nose.
Edited for content:
People's Exhibit 1 in the case for limiting U.N. control over the future of Iraq is the "Roland 2," France's best man-portable air defense weapon. Capitol Hill has been told that soldiers of the 3rd Infantry Division have found a stack of these weapons at a military depot attached to Baghdad International Airport. Some of them had "2002" manufacturing dates. How interesting, tell us more.
Germany's Der Stern reports that additional Rolands were found when U.S. and Kurdish forces overran the Ansar Al-Islam terrorist base in northeastern Iraq last week. According to the Pentagon, it was a Roland that destroyed a USAF A-10 aircraft on Tuesday. These weapons pose a significant threat to allied aircraft. It is also interesting, given the debate over whether the Saddam Hussein regime had connections to terrorists, that the Iraqi Army and the Ansar Al-Islam group were armed with the same weapon. Check the serial numbers and see if they come from the same production run. Bet the French have "lost" the records showing where they went.
Iraq has been under a U.N. Arms Embargo since 1990. Gee, isn't that about 12 years before these missiles were made?
In addition to the Rolands, allied forces are turning up a number of foreign weapons or other military gear, most of which violate the embargo. This is the flavor of an ever-growing list:
Russia: GPS jamming equipment, sea mines, night-vision goggles and the "Kornet" anti-tank missile. Russian arms magazines and marketing brochures brag about the Kornet's "thermobaric warhead". Moscow is a world leader in this technology. The "Kornet" is thought to have been the missile used on those destroyed M1A2 tanks.
China: Fiber optics for Saddam's command-and-control system and chemicals for his WMD projects. Linked his SAM sites, remember all those airstrikes on the fiber nodes before the war?
Germany: The Financial Times reports the Drager firm of Lubeck sold gas masks to Saddam's fedayeen terrorists. U.S. Marines found the masks with instructions in Arabic. Drager even has an English-language Web site that describes the firm. When British troops raided Chemical Ali's villa, they found he had left behind his "German gas mask," perhaps a Drager model.
France, Russia, China, and Germany. Now we know why they didn't want the UN to approve that resolution. They knew what we'd find.
Posted by: Steve ||
04/11/2003 09:22 am ||
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Let's keep 'em all. I suspect we'll want all the ordinance we can get our hands on after North Korea goes nuclear.
The above news prompts another question about expanding the list of nations comprising the current "Axis of Evil," but it's too depressing to ask.
#2
An idea. Let's return the hardware to the countries that provided it to Saddam's Iraq. In exchange, new Iraq will write off debt to those countries. One for one. Tit for tat. We could even do it under UN auspices. The people of New Iraq, I'm sure, will want to square their debts. They could pay off the debts with whole blood, but I think they need it right now.
#3
We should make them provide receipts and paperwork for the debts owed. Make it very public. How could Iraq owe you for that, clearly they were under sanctions at the time, you must be mistaken. How could Iraq owe you so much for those tanks, clearly they were of inferior quality, the sale should result in a breach of contract and forfieture of payment.
#4
I know it might take a rewriting of UN charter, but has anyone floated the idea of dumping France from the Security Council? I mean, WHY are they still there. Stalin's question about the Pope seems appropo here.
Possible replacement players could be: (we could have fun here)
-Japan (I know, no divisions either - but definite specific gravity)
-The Whole EU as one seat (GB must exit)
-India (imagine that - tooooo scary)
-Brasil (doesn't emerging Sud America rate a seat?)
-If it's just GNP you want, how 'bout Taiwan?
Posted by: Scott ||
04/11/2003 13:54 Comments ||
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#5
Brasil lists left and listing more each day, we don't need another one of those.
All Info Man- All The Time...
A member of Saddam Hussein's vanquished regime has sprung up as an unlikely hero in cyberspace on a Web site embraced by both supporters and foes of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. Television news junkies transfixed by daily briefings by Iraqi Minister of Information Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf are now logging onto a day-old Web site featuring his finest invective against U.S. and British "infidels." The site, (http:/www.WeLoveTheIraqiInformationMinister.com), is a "coalition effort of bloodthirsty hawks and ineffectual doves" united in their admiration for al-Sahaf and his pronouncements, such as: "I now inform you that you are too far from reality." That'll be Info Man's epitath.
Among al-Sahaf's now-famous declarations was: "There are no American infidels in Baghdad. Never!" Writer and former Greenpeace activist Kieran Mulvaney, a Briton living in Alaska, said he and friends got the idea for the site while watching cable news coverage of the three-week-old war. "I mentioned to one of my friends that the best part is watching this guy," Mulvaney told Reuters on Thursday. "He is so brazen that I could almost admire him." A Greenpeace guy with a sense of humor? The world has changed.
Mulvaney and his friends designed, built and put up the site in three days. Within hours of going live on the Internet, the site "has exploded," Mulvaney said. The same day, U.S. troops marched into Baghdad and al-Sahaf disappeared, or in the view of his new Web site, went on "administrative leave.I hope he is alive somewhere so he knows how famous he has become," Mulvaney said. "We've had all kinds of e-mail from literally all over the world. We even had a few e-mails from within the Pentagon saying, 'We really like this guy and we miss him."'
The site already is offering T-shirts and mugs bearing al-Sahaf's best-loved statements ("My feelings -- as usual -- we will slaughter them all!") and has selected actor and director Sydney Pollack to play the information minister in the Hollywood version of the war. In the meantime, Mulvaney said he will appeal for sightings of al-Sahaf, and there are plans to poll fans about what the beret-wearing minister should do after the war. One fan has advocated an urgent campaign to spare al-Sahaf if he is found: "He is too much of a global asset to be murdered/shot/stabbed or otherwise wasted." The tobacco companies, the oil companies, France, the UN... this guy could make millions.
Posted by: tu3031 ||
04/11/2003 08:28 am ||
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#1
I just wanna hear him say this line:
"I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky."
See if he can top the Master.
Posted by: Dar ||
04/11/2003 9:11 Comments ||
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#2
another classic, hilarious, award-winning moment in the war
#3
Well, this is all entertaining and fun---for a limited time. Let us not forget who Mr. al-Sahaf represented, and let us not forget the millions killed, maimed, and tortured under the Ba'athist Party. I am amused for a day or two with this guy, and then I think about what this regime did and I am not amused any more. Greenpeace Boy up here in Alaska better take a second look. This Iraq thing is a bloody, nasty miserable page in human history.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
04/11/2003 10:45 Comments ||
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#4
If anyone wants to check out the site, wait until tomorrow per the webmasters. They didn't think it would be this popular, and it overwhelmed the server.
Posted by: Former Russian Major ||
04/11/2003 11:16 Comments ||
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#5
"Ist dis Nazi land so good?
Vould you leave it if you could?
Ja! Did Nazi land ist good!
Ve vould leave it, if ve could!"
Nazis were kinda the definition of bad. What Spike Jones did to them is still hilarious. Poking fun at evil deflates it. I wish them great luck with their web site, even after Info Man has a neck three feet long.
Posted by: Fred ||
04/11/2003 15:00 Comments ||
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Looks like crack has come to North Korea.
Vishwanath, director general of the International Institute of the Juche Idea, on a visit to the DPRK in an interview with KCNA on Wednesday said that the cause of President Kim Il Sung will shine long thanks to leader Kim Jong Il who is identical with the president. The hearts of the world progressive people are turning toward the DPRK where the president lies in state for perpetuity in the run-up to the day of the sun, his birth anniversary, he noted, and went on: I think "Vishwanath" might be the Miss Cleo of North Korea...
The foundation of the Juche idea which will be everlasting with history is the greatest exploit Kim Il Sung performed for the era and humankind. The idea serves as a powerful mental weapon for humankind to shape its destiny independently and creatively. The Korean people could demonstrate the pride of a great people unanimously praised by the world as they were led by the president. The history of the sun will go on under the leadership of Kim Jong Il, the another distinguished great man. So when he dies, the sun goes out? Oh- oh...
Posted by: tu3031 ||
04/11/2003 08:06 am ||
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*lifts card* 9.5
Good show! Army First man had better get cracking!
Around 200 Iraqis have stormed their embassy in the Iranian capital and smashed photographs of Saddam Hussein. "No Saddam! No US puppet regime! We want freedom," the crowd chanted. Police say no Iraqi diplomats have been in the building since Thursday. Windows and furniture were also vandalised, and the only item spared seemed to be embassy documents, which people in the crowd were seen taking away. There are about 200,000 Iraqis living in Iran, many of them Shiite Muslims who fled after a failed Shiite uprising against Saddam in 1991. Tens of thousands of the Iraqis in Iran live in the capital.
Posted by: Bulldog ||
04/11/2003 05:26 am ||
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Puppet regime? God the conspiracy theories in the middle east never cease to amaze me! It's going to be hard enough to pull a functioning country out of this mess let alone a puppet regime. If it actually made it to puppet regime status that could be considered a success.
Posted by: George ||
04/11/2003 5:40 Comments ||
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#2
What is it with Embassies in that part of the world?
Posted by: Tokyo Taro ||
04/11/2003 5:46 Comments ||
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#3
At least it wasn't "Get Out, USA!" Also helps deter the Iranian authorities from breaking up the party before its over, before the documents have been spirited away. It dosn't sound too depressing to me, but maybe I'm being optimistic.
Posted by: Steve ||
04/11/2003 9:03 Comments ||
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#5
If you want a conspiracy, how about: these people were hired to get the documents out?
Posted by: Frank G ||
04/11/2003 9:38 Comments ||
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#6
The Good Cop -Bad Cop charade we played before the UN is over. The Axis of Weasel, Kofi , and the rest of the Incontinent Dog and Monkey Rodeo⢠folk of the UN are just now waking up to the folly of their empty posturing (though it looks like Frawnce and their Mini-me Belgiques are in full denial mode). Let them eat grass along with the NKORS.
Posted by: Rex Mundi ||
04/11/2003 13:49 Comments ||
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O.K., that's the motto of the New York Times, not CNN. But the following article raises some really big questions about decisions made by the news media as to what they choose to tell us. It's by Eason Jordan, a CNN executive.
Over the last dozen years I made 13 trips to Baghdad to lobby the government to keep CNN's Baghdad bureau open and to arrange interviews with Iraqi leaders. Each time I visited, I became more distressed by what I saw and heard -- awful things that could not be reported because doing so would have jeopardized the lives of Iraqis, particularly those on our Baghdad staff. For example, in the mid-1990's one of our Iraqi cameramen was abducted. For weeks he was beaten and subjected to electroshock torture in the basement of a secret police headquarters because he refused to confirm the government's ludicrous suspicion that I was the Central Intelligence Agency's Iraq station chief. CNN had been in Baghdad long enough to know that telling the world about the torture of one of its employees would almost certainly have gotten him killed and put his family and co-workers at grave risk. The rest of the article describes other things that some might call "news" that CNN knew, but didn't report. So you tell me. Did CNN look evil dead in the eye and flinch away, following the path of least resistance -- and continued access to a news source that was good for their ratings? Or did they act responsibly? I can't make up my mind.
Posted by: Patrick Phillips ||
04/11/2003 03:04 am ||
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One of the bastions of liberal western democracies is that we trust the press to tell us the truth. We may not like its bias, but we trust the facts as reported.
CNN was clearly wrong in not reporting this stuff, but having said that would the world have taken any real notice. There were lots of similar stories around for years and they hardly made the front page.
The stories only become front page in the context of the war. I hope one of the consequencies of this war is that CNN and others publish all the news and do not censor for moral, humanitarian or ratings reasons.
If I have one message for CNN and others is that not publishing is ALWAYS a win for the despots. Publishing is ALWAYS a win for free societies. This is a war between liberal, free societies and their enemies. Collateral damage is regrettable, but unavoidable.
Posted by: Phil B ||
04/11/2003 4:38 Comments ||
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After thinking this over a bit this AM, I have come to the conclusion that CNN actively collaborated with the Iraqi regime to retain access. It is also unlikely that this is an isolated event. They could have packed up and left, which would have led to the public questioning CNN as to why they had left. The story could hav been 'reluctantly' aired, and this would have then exposed the rest of the newsie cockroaches to the light of day as well. CNN would have looked good; with their tactics exposed, the Iraqi's practices could have been stopped, or at least been seriously curtailed; and some shred of integrity would have been retained by the newsies. Now they (CNN et al) show themselves to have no guts, no integrity, and no morals, this too-late, now-that-its-safe mea culpa notwithstanding.
Posted by: Whiskey Mike ||
04/11/2003 4:49 Comments ||
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If you consider a news organisation's role is to report news, you have to determine whether events like this are 'anecdotal' or 'representative'/'microcosmic'. I'd say, given the fact that this was standard MO for the regime, they had a definite duty to report these incidents, and to hell with the consequenses. To function within the state's terror apparatus like this, without acknowledging the fact to viewers, is collaboration and an extreme breach of the trust put in them to broadcast objectively. If you can't report without self-censorship, you shouldn't be reporting at all.
#5
Al-Jazeera may be the freest of the Arab media, but that's like saying Charles Manson was better than Ted Bundy because he had less victims. They have an agenda, and should never be allowed to pretend otherwise. CNN should hang their heads in shame. They can rationalize all they want but it was all about access. They didn't report news that would inflame against the regime - they're no different or better than Al-Jazeera. Go Fox
Posted by: Frank G ||
04/11/2003 7:43 Comments ||
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#6
You're praising FOX news for some reason but you're completely ignoring the fact that Rupert Murdoch has had a policy of, for example, not criticising China in any way which got him access to the lucrative Chinese market. Criticising CNN is fine but your 'Go Fox' is completely hypocritical.
I disagree on several points:
1.) Would the world have taken any notice? You imply no...but I sure as HELL would have. Iraq has been a topic of scrutiny for the past 12 YEARS, as UN resolutions and congressional bills can attest(given eight of those were pretty pathetic). There has been speculation as to the cruel and oppressive nature of the regime and CNN had proof of that cruelty and oppression, and they did not report it. For what good? For their f-ing ratings? I would say ratings do not come without credibility, and this revelation has completely destroyed CNN's credibility in my eyes.
2.) "There were lots of similar stories around for years and they hardly made the front page." Where? When? Is this just a sweeping generalization to bolster your argument or is this a fact. You present zero evidence.
3.) "This is a war between liberal, free societies and their enemies"-this I agree with. In this situation, however, CNN not reporting seems more like a collusion with the "enemy" to report facts only the enemy wants known. What good is it for CNN to retain access to Iraq, if they are only going to be allowed to release news that is complimentary to the regime!? That IS "liberal" in the moral equivalency, biased press sort of way, but not in the traditional sense.
I know Phil's just the messenger. But I am seriously pissed here. There is no justification for a "news" organization concealing the information that CNN concealed. I will never watch CNN again.
Oh, and rg117, out of curiousity...where is this policy of not criticising China in any way you attribute to Rupert Murdoch? Is this conjecture or is there proof out there somewhere I can reference.
#8
As the filing cabinates of Baghdad are opened and people talk, the bigs news will be bribery of Western politicians and journalists along with the related matter of WMC. Why do you think the French, Germans, Russians and others have been so frantic?
Posted by: George H. Beckwith ||
04/11/2003 8:34 Comments ||
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I am not sure either. To tell, then, would have gotten people killed, and that is bad. To maintain access required they lie now, but when the regime falls, leaves them in a position of witness. Those stories would get told, later, when it was safer to tell them. The stories would still get out, and CNN would have the information, would be able to bear witness.
Posted by: Ben ||
04/11/2003 8:56 Comments ||
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RG: I don't know that what you're saying is a fact, actually is any sort of fact - source? I seem to recall frank Fox reporting on China's poor record on SARS, The downing of our surveillance plane, crackdown on dissidents, lack of effort in restraining NKorea, and help in supplying Saddam, particularly fiber optic comm lines. Doesn't sound like censorship, does it?
I admit that not all aspects of Fox are as good as they could possibly be, but I prefer their news reporting to the leftist slant I get from Jennings, Rather, even Brokaw/MSNBC, and especially CNN
Posted by: Frank G ||
04/11/2003 9:17 Comments ||
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#11
btw - this is part and parcel of CNN's reporting from Havana - or have you seen any reporting by Lucia Newman on the Castro crackdown on counter-revolutionaries (i.e.: people who desire to live free from dictatorship - teachers, poets, businessmen,...)? I've seen none, but they do have a Havana bureau open, don't they? Wonder what stories had to be suppressed to keep it open?
Posted by: Frank G ||
04/11/2003 9:23 Comments ||
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#12
Ben,
Call me dense, but I don't see how CNN's actions saved any lives...who would have died/been more likely to die if CNN had broadcast this story and why?
I repeat, if CNN was not able to effectively report objective facts...then they should not have lobbied to maintain their presence in Baghdad. They should have pulled their reporting staff out en masse and publicized the reasons why they were doing so.
Frank G, amen on your last point there. One of the main reasons the anti-war crowd got any traction is that atrocities were not reported as they happened. The crackdown in Havana has been going on for several weeks now and there has not been any mention on CNN...
#13
[Murdoch Puts China Billions Over Books]
[Patten sues over scrapped book deal]
[Google Search]
I'm not defending CNN in anyway, they are a commercial enterprise and have conflicts of interest. But I do think that Fox is no better especially when I watch from here in the UK. They seem to have an attitude of "Bush is always right" and are the closest thing you have to a government mouthpiece.
You may not like the leftist slant from the other companies but most of us here don't like the rightist slant of Fox news. If all their reporters were replaced by Ariel Fleischer there would be as much varietly in content and opinion.
#15
Nothing that the cited CNN article mentioned should have come as a surprise to anyone who's been following commonly available news and information about Saddam's regime since 1990 or so. Of course any news organisation in a totalitarian society will have conflicts of interest. Dan Rather interviewed Saddam Hussein last month and lived to tell about it. He was criticized for throwing softball-questions to the Great Leader. All news coverage from officially approved sources in dictatorships is suspect, and has always been so. Think of that when news comes (or doesn't come) for places like the People's Republic of China, Cuba, N. Korea, Syria, etc, etc.
#16
leaving aside the journalistic ethics angle, there is the shear atrocity angle of this. Apparently this has now swayed Mikey Kaus, a fence-sitter, into the idea that human rights concerns alone may have justified the war. His editor at Slate, Michael Kinsley, continues to defend his anti-war stance - as far as he is concerned the legal and multilateralism questions havent changed (of course we'd win and i never fell for that quagmire stuff, he says) He omits discussion of the reaction of the iraqi people, either as justification, or in how it impacts the prudential questions.
Agreed, to anybody who pays serious attention to such issues, none of this is news.
But, it should not require that much work for people to stay informed. I as a citizen who wants to say informed shouldn't have to spend countless hours on the internet, using search engines and following link after link, or reading a series of books, to find what could have been trumpeted on page 1 of NYT or WaPo in 20 point type. This is not an effective use of the power of the big media.
Salman Pak should have been front page news when it originally broke months or years ago - where was it? That's just one example, I can come up with ten more.
Public opinion is a precious and powerful thing, and it is not served well by media decisions such as this. I know news outlets slant coverage to promote their interests, and always have, and while I don't like it, I can live with it. I can't however, live with the cynical opportunism shown here. If the news media have become nothing but ratings whores, fine, let us know that. What we have now is a huge betrayal of the public trust.
These days, I'm much better informed than I was in the 90s, due largely to the internet. Very few people get all their news this way. We can't let the fact that we internet news junkies are super-informed cloud the overall picture, which is that the mainstream media must do a better job at getting vital stories like this into the world at large. It isn't that hard, if you see your job as getting news out, instead of getting ratings.
Your actions define your choices.
Posted by: Jeff Brokaw ||
04/11/2003 12:01 Comments ||
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#18
reading this article I kept seeing that CNN saw brutal stuff and didn't report it. In response Iraqi officials seemed to think they were CIA even to the point of trying to get them killed. Cause and Effect. Somehow CNN just couldn't put that together?
#19
Re: filing cabinets full of goodies. I am sure that we will find some. I wonder how much big stuff we will find in the Iraqi ministries after we bombed them so thoroughly.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
04/11/2003 13:31 Comments ||
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#20
I agree 100%, Yank, on your "tourist" comment.
CNN -- The Collaborators' News Network.
Posted by: Dar ||
04/11/2003 14:30 Comments ||
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#21
Krauthammer was on Hume today. Same deal w/the Palis.
And go read instapundit. A bit from reader Sage McLaughlin:
"The really moral thing to do, obviously, would have been to pull out of Iraq years ago, instead of allowing Iraqis on CNN's payroll to be tortured so that they could maintain the status symbol of "access" to the regime. This is nothing more than an attempt to preempt the likely damage to CNN's reputation caused by the (accurate) perception that they have been complicit in Hussein's enslavement of the Iraqi people since at least 1991."
#22
Your average guy and gal (who don't, alas, read Rantburg) assume that if such horrors existed in Iraq, CNN and other news organizations reporting from there would certainly report it. The lack of such reports is interpreted as evidence that the horrors either did not exist or were hidden. Ditto for other regimes which currently inflict similar horrors, such as Cuba. By not reporting this, they aided and abetted it. If we (meaning the general public) knew about it and did nothing, shame on us. But in this case they conspired to hide it, so shame on them.
They wanted to look like they had global reach, by reporting from Baghdad directly. To do it, they made their reporting not only irrelevant but complicit in the atrocities that were committed in front of their eyes.
#23
Yes Kathy, you are right. The Arab world fell in love with CNN after GWI, and CNN hid these atrocities to protect its reputation with the Arab govts/pundits. "If it was on CNN, then it was true, if not, then it wasn't true"
Plus you can bet that all these CNN types were wined and dined by various Ministers of Information. Tough to give up the chauffered ride to and from the airport, as well as the swift kiss-ass imigration procedures. Gives you a big head.
WLS talk radio afternoon show (Not Rush, but Chicago local) had all the goods on this story. listeners were all over it too, but NPR only talked about anarchy in Baghdad.
BTW, it s true that many of these atrocities were already known in the small press and to us on Rantburg, but the other big boys, like Peter Jennings, just spiked them.
Posted by: michael ||
04/11/2003 20:44 Comments ||
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#24
before its revealed by other sources , cnn does what good p.r. people say you should do in the face of bad news--jump out in front and spin the story--unlike "good germans" cnn had the CHOICE to get out and split--what a fucking bullshit lackluster performance in assisting evil for profit--can these pricks be indicted in something other than the court of public opinion--will someone bring this before a belgium prosecutor please [sarcasm]
#25
The most appalling part of this miserable confession, is that Eason glides right past the two murders, that CNN has blood on its hands. In his own words:
"We also had to worry that our reporting might endanger Iraqis not on our payroll. I knew that CNN could not report that Saddam Hussein's eldest son, Uday, told me in 1995 that he intended to assassinate two of his brothers-in- law who had defected and also the man giving them asylum, King Hussein of Jordan. If we had gone with the story, I was sure he would have responded by killing the Iraqi translator who was the only other participant in the meeting. After all, secret police thugs brutalized even senior officials of the Information Ministry, just to keep them in line (one such official has long been missing all his fingernails).
Still, I felt I had a moral obligation to warn Jordan's monarch, and I did so the next day. King Hussein dismissed the threat as a madman's rant. A few months later Uday lured the brothers-in-law back to Baghdad; they were soon killed."
Posted by: Erik ||
04/12/2003 3:27 Comments ||
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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
