The New York Times American troops have repeatedly clashed with Iraqis in Falluja. Allies to Retain Larger Iraq Force as Strife Persists By MICHAEL R. GORDON BAGHDAD, Iraq, May 28 — Faced with armed resistance that has killed four American soldiers this week, allied military commanders now plan to keep a larger force in Iraq than had been anticipated and to send war-hardened units to trouble spots outside Baghdad, senior American officials said today. Instead of sending home the Third Infantry Division, which led the charge on Baghdad, American officials are developing plans that call for most of its troops to extend their stay and be used to quell unrest and extend American control. Allied officials said that about 160,000 American and British troops were in Iraq and that most were likely to stay until security improves and other nations eased the burden by contributing troops. Tens of thousands of logistics and transportation troops in Kuwait also support the Iraq deployment. As a result, the total number of allied forces involved directly and indirectly in securing Iraq is 200,000 or more, American military officials estimate. Earlier this month, allied military officials said they were hoping to reduce American forces here at a faster rate, drawing the American presence in Iraq down to less than two divisions by the fall. more Treeman, let's here your version of the Rumsfeld spin on this. Doesn't look like the postwar scenario is going too smoothly. Sure looks like the start of quaqmire to me.
admit it...you were so happy typing the word "quagmire." you've been hoping for a chance to write that word for about 6 months now.
certainly didn't intend to "personalize" the debate...i was really just joking, glynch. don't take me that seriously.
Glynch is like France......irrelevant. DD Before anyone gets their panties in a wad, this was meant as an offensive joke...deal with it.
I would say that a few isolated guerilla attacks by die-hard Saddam supporters was to be expected. I'd have been shocked had we not seen at least some of this. Will it change anything? No. I would also say that Iran's manipulation of the Shiites in the south was also expected (and specifically predicted). Will it matter? Probably not. We are not going to let Iraq become Iran, period, although I'm sure that would be to your liking. Personally, I would tend to agree with MadMax: you've just been waiting to use the word "quagmire". There's nothing to it. Oh, here's something for you to chew on; since you and No Worries are always blaming the US for all those deaths "due to sanctions"... Saddam's parades of dead babies are exposed as a cynical charade (Filed: 25/05/2003) UN sanctions did not kill the hundreds of infants displayed over the years - it was neglect by the former regime, Iraqi doctors in Baghdad tell Charlotte Edwardes The "baby parades" were a staple of Saddam Hussein's propaganda machine for a decade. Convoys of taxis, with the tiny coffins of dead infants strapped to their roofs - allegedly killed by United Nations sanctions - were driven through the streets of Baghdad, past crowds of women screaming anti-Western slogans. The moving scenes were often filmed by visiting television crews and provided valuable ammunition to anti-sanctions activists such as George Galloway, the Labour MP, who blamed Western governments for the deaths of 500,000 Iraqi children. But The Telegraph can reveal that it was all a cynical charade. Iraqi doctors say they were told to collect dead babies who had died prematurely or from natural causes and to store them in cardboard boxes in refrigerated morgues for up to four weeks - until they had sufficient corpses for a parade. Many of the children died, they say, as a result of the Iraqi government's own neglect as it lavished funds on military programmes and Saddam's palaces in the knowledge that it could blame sanctions for the lack of medicines and equipment in hospitals and clinics. "We were not allowed to return the babies to their mothers for immediate burial, as is the Muslim tradition, but told they must be kept for what became known as 'the taxi parade'," said Dr Hussein al-Douri, the deputy director of the Ibn al-Baladi hospital in Saddam City, a Shia district in eastern Baghdad. "The mothers would be hysterical and sometimes threaten to kill us, but we knew that the real threat was from the government." Asked what would have happened if he had disobeyed the orders, Dr al-Douri replied: "They would have killed our families. This was an important event for the propaganda campaign." Dr al-Douri, who has worked for 10 years as a paediatrician, said the parades were orchestrated by officials from the ministries of health, information and intelligence. He said: "All 10 hospitals in Baghdad were involved in this and the quota for the parade was between 25 and 30 babies a month, which they would say had died in one day. "We had to tell the babies' families that it was a government order and that they would be paid to keep quiet. The reward was sometimes in money, the equivalent of $10 per baby, or in food: rice, sugar and oil." The government then ordered members of the Iraqi Women's Federation, an organisation funded by the regime, to line the streets of Baghdad and wail and beat themselves in mock grief. "They portrayed an image of mothers in mourning for their recently dead children," he said. "It was too dangerous not to follow the orders. We were very afraid. The families were afraid, too." Dr al-Douri showed The Telegraph the morgue where babies' bodies would be stored in cardboard boxes before being transferred to wooden coffins carrying their names and sometimes photographs. Dr Amer Abdul al-Jalil, the deputy resident at the hospital, said: "Sanctions did not kill these children - Saddam killed them. The internal sanctions by the Saddam regime were very effective. Those who died prematurely usually died because their mothers lived in impoverished areas neglected by the government. "The mortality rate was higher in areas such as Saddam City because there was no sewerage system. Infectious diseases were rampant. "Over the past 10 years, the government in Iraq poured money into the military and the construction of palaces for Saddam to the detriment of the health sector. Those babies or small children who died because they could not access the right drugs, died because Saddam's government failed to distribute the drugs. The poorer areas were most vulnerable." He added: "We feel terrible that this happened, but we were living under a regime and we had to keep silent. What could we do?" http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2003/05/25/wirq25.xml
Glynch is like France......irrelevant Dakota, occasionally you half way piss me off, but this one I found genuinely funny. Do you still drink French wine? Mexican salsa? Canadian bacon? German potato salad? Turkish coffee? Russian salad dressing? Swiss cheese? Irish whiskey? Chlean wine? Chinese noodles? Greek olives? etc. etc.
Huh? You know the only country we hate us France. Don't bring all those other nice nations into this.
You bet, I don't believe in boycotting the world economy at the expense of my palate. As for pissing you off....well.... DD
Robert McNamara, I mean Donald Rumsfeld, would never let that happen. He would simply reduce the boots on the ground so a more efficient force would take care of things - the same way it's *working* in Afghanistan. OTOH, the casualty rate supposedly isn't much different from our normal rate during peace time ( The Osprey alpha testing may have skewed this a bit... )
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/05/29/1054177674323.html Weird that this story gets one line in the US version of events. US gunfire kills three teens at wedding May 30 2003 US soldiers opened fire on a festive wedding parade earlier this week, killing three teenagers and wounding seven others after the celebrants fired weapons in the air. The shooting, on Monday night, was only one of a series of deadly incidents this week that have sharply increased tension between US troops and Iraqi civilians. The incident highlights a clash of cultures. It is a popular custom in Iraq to fire weapons in the air to celebrate weddings and other festive events. But the practice has been prohibited under a new weapons policy being enforced by US troops. Three teens remained in a "very critical" condition on Wednesday, and four other young people were in a stable condition, said Dr Abdul al Rahman, who helped treat many of the victims at Samarra General Hospital, a 90-minute drive north of Baghdad. A US Army official, who asked that he not be identified by name, said the incident was under investigation. He said he could provide no comment, other than to say: "Celebratory gunfire is dangerous." Dr Rahman said soldiers told the hospital staff the gunshots had provoked a deadly reaction. But one of the wounded, 17-year-old Abdul Salam Jassim, said US soldiers didn't open fire until several minutes after the celebratory shooting had occurred. Jassim suffered a gunshot wound to the abdomen that destroyed his colon, Dr Rahman said. In the hospital bed next to Jassim lay 12-year-old Mohammad Ahmed, with gunshot wounds to his abdomen, thighs and scrotum. "He's a child," Dr Rahman said. Following the shooting, the doctor said, several US soldiers with rifles walked into the hospital, seeking the names of those who had been wounded. The sight of armed soldiers, so soon after the shooting, so frightened people in the hospital that some of them fled. Dr Rahman said: "I was very surprised. I was very afraid." What added to the tension, he said, was that the soldiers seemed "very irritable". He and others complained that the American soldiers issued a 10 pm-to-5am. curfew one day after the shooting. The curfew, the Iraqis said, interfered with their evening prayers at Samarra's famous gold-covered mosque. As the sun set on Wednesday, 50-year-old Younis Hamid al Rifaai stood over the fresh grave of his 13-year-old son, Ahmed, one of the three teenagers who were killed. He said his son had wounds in his spine, stomach and lungs. The earthen mound over the boy's grave was still damp as Mr Al Rifaai and hundreds of men held their hands up and chanted Muslim prayers. The boy had been invited to join the wedding celebration convoy. Most of those killed and wounded were riding in a minivan and a truck filled with young people taking part in the convoy of vehicles cruising through downtown Samarra. As hundreds of men at the cemetery pressed in around Mr Al Rifaai, he told a reporter Samarra's people would not accept what he termed "aggression by US forces". He demanded an official investigation. When the gunshot victims arrived at the hospital on Monday night, it took at least 15 doctors to treat the patients, Dr Rahman said. "There is no reasonable cause for these deaths," he said. He and the father of the 13-year-old who died said they had the same message for US soldiers: "Enough." http://www.abc.net.au/news/justin/nat/newsnat-30may2003-23.htm US forces are also investigating the possibility they may have accidentally shot three men who had been shooting into the air to celebrate a wedding.
