Nation building is a b**** ain’t it? Doesn’t look good for the handover before the deadline of June 30 (or before the elections; which Jr desperately needs). Now with more violence, the possibility of the US plan being scrapped and the UN failing to broker a blueprint for elections, what’s next? ----------------------------------------------------------------- Official: Early Iraq Elections Unlikely 4 minutes ago By JIM KRANE, Associated Press Writer BAGHDAD, Iraq - A U.N. official said Friday it was unlikely elections could be held before a U.S.-set June 30 deadline for handing power to the Iraqis, and several Iraqi leaders said there was growing support for scrapping the U.S. blueprint for establishing a new government. Some members of the U.S.-picked Governing Council were pushing an alternative to the U.S. plan that would call for transferring sovereignty to an expanded council on June 30. The council would then arrange elections before the end of the year. Doubts about the complex U.S. plan were expressed Friday to Brahimi during a meeting with the 25-member Iraqi Governing Council. Brahimi arrived Sunday to try to break an impasse between the Shiite Muslim clergy and the U.S.-led occupation authority on how to establish a new Iraqi government. Under the American formula, 18 regional caucuses would pick a new legislature, which in turn would choose a provisional government to take power June 30 and serve until elections in 2005. The U.S. plan, announced Nov. 15, lost ground when Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Husseini al-Sistani demanded legislative elections before June 30. Al-Sistani called the caucuses method "illegitimate." Many top Iraqis also opposed the caucus system because it gave the United States too much influence over the process, an official close to the discussions with the U.N. said. Opposition to the U.S. plan among the Governing Council is significant because it was a signatory of the Nov. 15 agreement, along with the U.S.-led occupation authority. ------------------------- UN fails to broker Iraq election deal http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tm...d=1106&e=2&u=/ft/20040212/bs_ft/1075982497530
Why is this considered good news or vindicating to you? Oh yeah, I forgot -- you are a liberal. You want to see our troops fail.
So this begs the question: Can a Commander-in-Chief fail in his military duties *without* troops failing to one degree or another? A very tough question for liberals to answer. If no more American troops die in Iraq, would that be considered a failure? Doubtful. Put the pieces together.
Of course! Jr failed to put together a cohesive and complete plan for Iraq, but our military conducted themselves brilliantly in their execution of "operation bait and switch"..er..."Iraqi freedom" And now our brave men and women are just fighting for their lives until they can come home. And for what?
So we saved Iraqis from Saddam so they could take up arms and kill each other instead. If we were serious about bringing those responsible for mass graves we'd start with Reagan and start a war crimes trial against him for the Latin American right wing death squads he created and supported. http://news.yahoo.com/fc?tmpl=fc&cid=34&in=world&cat=iraq Iraq May Be Slipping Into Civil War Mon Feb 16, 7:56 AM ET By HAMZA HENDAWI, Associated Press Writer BAGHDAD, Iraq - Sunni politicians speak angrily of U.S. bias toward their Shiite rivals. Kurds are more outspoken in demanding self rule — if not independence. And someone — perhaps al-Qaida, perhaps Saddam Hussein (news - web sites) loyalists — killed more than 100 people in recent suicide bombings. Rivalry and resentment among Iraq (news - web sites)'s ethnic and religious groups have become much more pronounced since Saddam's ouster in April. And those tensions are rising as various groups jockey for position with the approaching June 30 deadline for Iraqis to retake power The fault lines are emerging for a possible civil war. Veteran U.N. envoy Lakhdar Brahimi, who just finished a visit to the country, pointedly warned Iraqi leaders they face "very serious dangers" if they do not put the interests of the nation ahead of those of their clans, tribes, ethnic groups and religious communities . . .
Iraq terror ties prior to Gulf War 2 - non existant according to evidence uncovered by Army in past couple of months. http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascity/news/world/7962679.htm Posted on Sun, Feb. 15, 2004 Memo raises questions about war's role in opening Iraq to terror BY CHRISTINE SPOLAR Chicago Tribune BAGHDAD, Iraq - (KRT) - The discovery of a memo by terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi calling for incitement of civil war inside Iraq raises questions again about whether Saddam Hussein, as the Bush administration claimed, once plotted with al-Qaida. But al-Zarqawi's memo - trumpeted by the Americans as a "blueprint for terror" - should also sound alarms about whether the U.S.-led war opened Iraq to global terror by making it unstable, insecure and ripe for exploitation. Counterterrorism experts are still mulling over the al-Zarqawi find, and its credibility has not been fully proven. But the memo, 17 pages of an Arabic missive found on a compact disc held by a known courier of al-Qaida, adds luster to al-Zarqawi's reputation as a dangerous and highly motivated operator in international terror and a senior ally and collaborator with al-Qaida. His boastful screed lends credence to the notion that terror attacks are now coordinated in Iraq and that al-Zarqawi, since the U.S. invasion, has helped carry out such attacks and sees Iraq as fertile ground for terrorist growth. There is nothing in the memo, however, that confirms or bolsters some key pre-war White House claims: that al-Zarqawi was operating in the north as a leader of an al-Qaida affiliate known as Ansar al-Islam, that he had set up a camp to produce deadly poisons, and that, with Saddam's blessing and cooperation, he had moved people, money and supplies in and out of Iraq for months. That al-Zarqawi passed up a chance, in his 17-page appeal for support, to publicize previous adventures in Iraq seems a curious omission by a terrorist intent on fomenting rage against the majority Shiite Muslim population in Iraq as well as kidnappings and killings of Americans inside Iraq. Al-Zarqawi has been a nimble, destructive point man among radical Islamists for years. Al-Zarqawi, 37, is a round-faced Jordanian whose real name is Fadel Nazzal al-Khalayleh and, like al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden, he is a veteran of the Afghan war against the Soviets in the 1980s. . . .
You know what I finally have an answer for the whole if you don't support Bush then you don't our troops bullsh*t. Bush F*CKING LIED to put MY Countries troops, MY FAMILY, FRIENDS, and NEIGHBORS, in harms way in IRAQ. He is playing GI JOE with real soldiers because he couldn't sack up and go to fight himself. Bush ALREADY FAILED our troops by putting them in harms way. Now if that FACT does NOT piss you off, then YOU do not support our troops. Put those pieces together, you f*cking parrot.
IMO, I think it would have been better for this administration if found Saddam dead rather than alive. Having him alive will not do Iraq much good. I have a bad feeling that if he is taken to court what he could say or reveal could divide Iraq even further. Something in me tells me we are in for some drama - unless US special forces find a way to murder him soon. I do not like country's like Iraq comprised of multiple powerful ethnic groups who rarely like themselves - maybe a breakup is what I would to avoid or end the tension (but the huge oil presence in the Tikrit area would continue to be a stumbling block) That said - anyone who actually believe the June 30 power hand over schedule will be honored is either naive or out of touch with reality. It is will be nice if more people here in the US would adventure into what foreign TVs or newpapers covering this issue have to say in order to get a clearer picture of what is going on outside the US especially the middle east and Iraq. My heart goes out to our service men in the volatile middle east for their dedication and loyalty.
Amen, and also to all the well-intentioned Iraqis hoping for a peaceful future. Caught a news bit this weekend about a Baptist minister who was killed on an Iraqi highway this weekend. He and some others had been planning to open a Baptist church. This from CNN... "John Kelly, 49, pastor of the Curtis Corner Baptist Church in Wakefield, Rhode Island, died Saturday when a gunman opened fire on a taxi in which he and three other American ministers were riding south of Baghdad Saturday. The three pastors received only minor wounds. Friends believe Kelly was targeted for assassination because he was helping to start a Baptist church in Iraq, but they vow his mission will continue. " I'm very sorry, but what is going on in your head if you put your life on the line to go open a Baptist Church in the middle of angry Islamic peoples who have had their religion shackled under Saddam for decades? "Yes, yes, I understand that you want to restart the ritual of cutting your head and parading around as you bleed all over your nice white T-shirt, but I want you to put that sword down and listen to me as I tell you your religion is just all wrong... No, wait, I don't want my head to be cut. You don't understand." RIP. Hope he didn't have a family.
Early elections unlikely but we put ourselves in between a rock and a hard place. How long did we prepare the Germans and Japanese for elections we did not have a direct hand in? IIRC about seven years for the Japanese and ten for the Germans. Funny that they kept using those as examples before the war. We also have occupied those countries for approximately 60 years and counting. . . . "There are no good options for us," one American involved in the political transition said. "Every choice has deep flaws." . . . http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A46176-2004Feb16.html
This is a really good story on the wounded. Too long except for excerpts. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/15/magazine/15VETS.html?pagewanted=1 . . . For every broken body in this room, there are hundreds more confined to hospital beds across the country and hundreds more again who, by choice or by circumstance, are gutting out the effects of their injuries without the help of peers or mental-health counselors. It has been suggested that the wounded are the hidden casualties of the Iraq war, stranded somewhere between our grief for the dead and a wartime patriotism best stirred by the belief that our troops are both productive and healthy. Thanks to the lifesaving properties of body armor and largely impenetrable Kevlar helmets, combined with highly advanced battlefield medicine, more soldiers are surviving explosions and gunfire than in previous wars. The downside of this is that the injury rate in Iraq is high: an average of nine soldiers have been injured per day. The pace shows little sign of slowing, which means it's possible we will bring home another 1,500 wounded before the start of summer. Some military experts worry that in the next four months -- as the U.S. rotates roughly 110,000 new troops into Iraq, many of them reservists and National Guardsmen with less combat training than the full-time soldiers they are replacing -- injury rates could climb even higher. The government's reports on the wounded can be confusing. In early February, the Department of Defense Web site listed 2,600 soldiers as wounded in action in Iraq and another 403 as injured in ''nonhostile'' incidents like helicopter or motor-vehicle accidents. Meanwhile, the Army Surgeon General's office said that only 804 soldiers have been evacuated with battle wounds and that over 2,800 have been injured accidentally. In addition, the Surgeon General's office reported that another 5,184 soldiers have been evacuated from the theater for other medical reasons, which could include anything from kidney stones to nervous breakdowns. To date, 569 of these have qualified as psychiatric casualties. . . .
And this is part of the reason we are getting casualties in the first place. Unfunded mandates from the Bushies. http://slate.msn.com/id/2095705/ Hummer Bummer Why is the White House underfunding armored Humvees? By Eric Umansky Posted Wednesday, Feb. 18, 2004, at 3:43 PM PT No budget for armor? You've read the story countless times: An American convoy in Baghdad or Fallujah or Tikrit is attacked; a GI is killed and others are wounded. Nearly all those convoys include the all-purpose Humvee, which, it is becoming clear, lacks sufficient armor. Many feature no more than canvas roofs and doors. "We're kind of sitting ducks in the vehicles we have," one lieutenant colonel told Newsday. The Army has acknowledged that it miscalculated the intensity of the guerrilla war in Iraq and subsequently goofed on the number of armored Humvees it needed. "We do not have as many armored Humvees as we would like," the Army's vice chief of staff testified before Congress in late September. So how is the White House proposing to deal with this? By underfunding the program to armor Humvees. . . .
This is just too funny. Now we are teaching Iraqis a bit of *capitalism* - the benefits of knowing a Bushie. http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/nation/ny-uschal083671397feb15,0,735950.story Start-up Company With Connections U.S. gives $400M in work to contractor with ties to Pentagon favorite on Iraqi Governing Council By Knut Royce WASHINGTON BUREAU; Tom Frank contributed to this article from Baghdad. February 15, 2004 Washington - U.S. authorities in Iraq have awarded more than $400 million in contracts to a start-up company that has extensive family and, according to court documents, business ties to Ahmed Chalabi, the Pentagon favorite on the Iraqi Governing Council. The most recent contract, for $327 million to supply equipment for the Iraqi Armed Forces, was awarded last month and drew an immediate challenge from a losing contester, who said the winning bid was so low that it questions the "credibility" of that bid. But it is an $80-million contract, awarded by the Coalition Provisional Authority last summer to provide security for Iraq's vital oil infrastructure, that has become a controversial lightning rod within the Iraqi Provisional Government and the security industry. Soon after this security contract was issued, the company started recruiting many of its guards from the ranks of Chalabi's former militia, the Iraqi Free Forces, raising allegations from other Iraqi officials that he was creating a private army. Chalabi, 59, scion of one of Iraq's most politically powerful and wealthy families until the monarchy was toppled in 1958, had been living in exile in London when the U.S. invaded Iraq. The chief architect of the umbrella organization for the resistance, the Iraqi National Congress, Chalabi is viewed by many Iraqis as America's hand-picked choice to rule Iraq. A key beneficiary of both the oil security contract and last week's Iraq army procurement contract is Nour USA Ltd., which was incorporated in the United States last May. The security contract technically was awarded to Erinys Iraq, a security company also newly formed after the invasion, but bankrolled at its inception by Nour. A Nour's founder was a Chalabi friend and business associate, Abul Huda Farouki. Within days of the award last August, Nour became a joint venture partner with Erinys and the contract was amended to include Nour. . . .
February 19, 2004 NEWS ANALYSIS: THE TRANSFER U.S. Presidential Politics and Self-Rule for Iraqis By STEVEN R. WEISMAN WASHINGTON, Feb. 18 — In the Bush administration, it is considered heresy to suggest postponing the planned return of sovereignty to Iraq. Turning over control by June 30, administration officials say, is crucial to assuaging Iraqi distress over living under American occupation. Yet in recent weeks, diplomats and even some in the administration have begun to worry that the date reflects more concern for American politics than Iraqi democracy. Their fear is that an untested government taking power on June 30 may not be strong enough to withstand the pressures bearing down on it. "When we went into Iraq, our plan was to have a government, build a structure and write a constitution that would be a source of longterm stability," said an administration official. "Now that's out the window." Many in the administration say that while they have no proof that the urgency to install a government is politically motivated, it feels to them like part of a White House plan to permit President Bush to run for re-election while taking credit for establishing self-rule in Iraq. "I can make all kinds of arguments about why we need to establish democracy in Iraq on an urgent basis," said another administration official. "But when you hear from on high that this is what we must do, and there can be no questioning of it, it sounds like politics." This week, the administration is in the odd position of insisting on Iraqi self-rule by June 30, while awaiting a recommendation from the United Nations secretary general, Kofi Annan, on how the interim government should be chosen and the form it should take. Mr. Annan's special envoy, Lakhdar Brahimi, went to Iraq to meet with Iraqi leaders, including Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, to work out some sort of consensus on the shape of an interim government. The United States wants that government to rule while elections are held later in the year or in 2005 for a constitution-writing legislature. Eventually, elections are to be held to ratify the constitution and establish a permanent Iraqi government. Administration officials say that Mr. Brahimi was told that one option he must not accept is postponement of the June 30 date for the transfer of power. "It is holy writ," said an administration official. Yet many experts, including some in the administration, also say they are worried that such a rapid transition entails enormous risks. What happens, some worry, if a major crisis were to occur, resulting from an assassination or bomb explosion in which many Iraqis die? What happens, moreover, if by accident American forces — which are still likely to retain wide autonomy and authority over security throughout the country — kill a large number of Iraqi citizens? Would a shaky Iraqi government lacking in perceived legitimacy survive a blow like that? It makes no sense, many experts say, to set a fixed date to hand over sovereignty before having any idea of what sort of government will be given power on that date. "This is entirely a schedule dictated by Karl Rove," said an Arab diplomat who maintains close contacts with the administration, referring to the White House's political director. "Anyone who thinks otherwise is naïve." One of the paradoxes of the situation is that France, Germany and other European countries were among those who last year pressed for an early transfer of power to an interim Iraqi government and for the United Nations to take over the political process of moving to a permanent democracy. Now these countries are likely to insist that if the United States hands over power early, it must fulfill the other side of the bargain by agreeing to a central role for the United Nations. Last year, the administration insisted that there should be no rush to transfer sovereignty to Iraq, citing the need to get a constitution written first. That plan changed on Nov. 15, when L. Paul Bremer III, the American administrator in Baghdad, set the June 30 date. Administration officials bridle at the suggestion that politics have played a role in Mr. Bremer's announcement. "All these people who think that not moving the deadline helps Bush politically are just wrong," one official said. "I can't understand why everybody thinks that if the handover is as messy as some say, that would be advantageous to the president." According to administration officials, the early date was chosen by Mr. Bremer last fall because of his frustrations at not persuading the American-picked Iraqi Governing Council to agree on a procedure to write a new constitution. The deadline, he is said to have reasoned, would light a fire under the council. Mr. Bremer, an aide said, telephoned Condoleezza Rice in the fall, reaching her at a Washington Redskins football game on a Sunday, and she urged him to come back to confer with President Bush on changing the date. "Arbitrary deadlines in Middle East diplomacy are a bad idea, especially when they correspond, however coincidentally, to our electoral schedule," said Noah Feldman, a law professor at New York University, who has advised the Iraqi Governing Council on writing its constitution. "It's not as if the Iraqis don't have television," Mr. Feldman added. "Everybody in Iraq believes that these deadlines are chosen by American electoral politics. Regardless of whether the June 30 deadline originated in Baghdad or Washington, it clearly reflected a coordinated administration policy to jump-start the process. That's an extremely high risk strategy." http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/19/politics/19DIPL.html?pagewanted=print&position=
