How is it going in Iraq a month after the transfer of "sovereignity"?

Yep. Fisk sure does know what's going on.

Robert Fisk, August 30, 2003:

For what is happening, in the Sunni heartland around Baghdad and now in the burgeoning Shia nation to the south, is not just the back-draft of an invasion or even a growing guerrilla war against occupation. It is the start of a civil war in Iraq that will consume the entire nation if its new rulers do not abandon their neo-conservative fantasies and implore the world to share the future of the country with them.

Robert Fisk, March 2, 2004:

"Odd, isn't it? There never has been a civil war in Iraq. I have never heard a single word of animosity between Sunnis and Shias in Iraq. Al-Qa'ida has never uttered a threat against Shias - even though al-Qa'ida is a Sunni-only organisation. Yet for weeks, the American occupation authorities have been warning us about civil war, have even produced a letter said to have been written by an al-Qa'ida operative, advocating a Sunni-Shia conflict. Normally sane journalists have enthusiastically taken up this theme. Civil war. Somehow I don't believe it."

Or on the note about Allawi's popularity, we should also mention how popular Mr Fisk is among the locals. Strange that he might also receive some of this hospitality in this country as well!

"He got out of the vehicle and was attempting to push it to the side of the road when a group of 40 to 50 people gathered. 'At first they were reasonably friendly but then a little kid threw a stone at me. More stones followed and then I find myself being punched and beaten in the face. My glasses were smashed and my spare glasses were ripped away from me. I was covered in blood and couldn't see anything. I was obviously frightened.'

...and it's 'sovereignty.'

 

given the question posed in the thread title...

and the poster who started the thread...

i'm sure the answer must be...

"FANTASTIC!!!"

 

Sorry, don't know how to post a link.

Local soldiers: Media doing bad job telling good Iraq news

Monday, July 19, 2004

By MARIJA B. VADER

The Daily Sentinel

The news coming out of the war in Iraq so frustrated Shannon Erman that he called the television stations to complain.

The Palisade resident called stations in Grand Junction, as well as those in California when he was there, to tell them not all the news coming out of Iraq was negative.

“Every day you hear about soldiers getting car bombed and ambushed, but they never show the positive side,” said Erman. “Every time four or five Marines die, two more schools are being finished.”

Erman recently completed a four-year tour in the U.S. Marine Corps. He was part of the original invasion of Iraq and also served in the Philippines.

When only negative news comes from Iraq, it affects the morale of the troops, Erman said.

“Where we get most of our strength is the civilians here,” Erman said. “It’s cool to hear my mom write about what’s going on in Grand Junction in support of the troops.”

Lance Cpl. Ben Dible, 22, of Grand Junction agreed.

Dible, who was home on leave last weeknfrom the U.S. Marine Corps, also was part of the original invasion, working with mortar shells and standing guard during the transport of the troops.

“Almost everywhere we went, people came out to us smiling and waving,” said Dible, estimating between 90 and 95 percent of Iraqis were happy that Americans are there. “I don’t think most of the American people know they want us over there.”

Dible experienced first-hand the remaining 5 to 10 percent of Iraqis who don’t care for the American occupation. He said his unit was fired upon at least every other day. During one firestorm, he and a commander were progressing on foot when a rocket-propelled grenade sliced the air between them.

“We got real close to the dirt,” Dible said. “Then we got up and kept running.”

Americans take for granted freedoms here, Dible said. His Iraqi experiences have given him newfound gratitude for what this country gives him.

“You take any Iraqi family and move them to America, they’ll be overwhelmed at what we can do ... like going camping,” Dible said. “Like the right to vote, the right to decide who your leader is. Like the right for friendly demonstrations.

“If Saddam was still in power, friendly demonstrations wouldn’t last too long.”

 

More good News !!!!

http://www.usnews.com/usnews/opinion/baroneweb/mb_030726.htm

 

God forbid! Don't post the good news! What are you trying to do? Show and tell the truth?!?

 

btw,...at this moment in the thread, the liberals ARE'NT salivating as much to their chagrin...

 

Sorry guys, I don't get psyched about a soldier building a school for somebody's kid when that somebody turns around and builds a bomb to kill that soldier. Crazy, I know, but....

Anyway, back to the point of the thread, GL it is inaccurate to describe Allawi as just a CIA agent. He was actually an ex-Baathist hitman and one of Saddam's murderers, who pretty much appointed himself PM, over the objections of Lakdhar Brahimini, who was supposed to pick the PM, and enjoys popular support around 3 % or so of Iraqis. I thnk Saddam, today, enjoys a better approval rating.

 

So now all 25,000,000 Iraqis are building bombs to kill our soldiers ?

I for one am happy that someone child is getting a school.

 

I just wish it was someone in America and not halfway around the world.

 

“Every time four or five Marines die, two more schools are being finished.”


This honestly strikes you as good news?

 

Accounting and Accountability
By PAUL KRUGMAN

Accountability is important. The nation will be ill served if officials who didn't do all they could to prevent a terrorist attack, or led the nation into an unnecessary war, manage to shift the blame to someone else.

But those weren't the only big mistakes of the last few years. Will anyone be held accountable for the mishandling of postwar Iraq?

Last month we learned that the United States, while it has spent vast sums on the war in Iraq, has so far provided almost no aid. Of $18.4 billion in reconstruction funds approved by Congress, only $400 million has been disbursed.

Almost all of the money spent by the Coalition Provisional Authority, which ran Iraq until late June, came from Iraqi sources, mainly oil revenues. This revelation helps explain one puzzle: the sluggish pace of reconstruction, which has yet to restore many essential services to prewar levels.

But it creates another puzzle: given that the authority was spending Iraq's money, why wasn't it more careful in its accounting?

When a foreign power takes control of an oil-rich nation's resources, it inevitably faces suspicion about its motives. Fairly or not, the locals are all too ready to believe that the invaders came to steal their oil.

The way to deal with such suspicion is to let in as much sunlight as possible by appointing financial officials with strong reputations for independence, keeping meticulous books, and welcoming and cooperating with international audits.

What actually happened was just the opposite. Every important official with responsibility for Iraqi finances was a Bush administration loyalist. The occupying authority dragged its feet on an international audit, which didn't even begin until April 2004.

When KPMG auditors hired by an international advisory board finally got to work, they found that no effort had been made to keep an accurate record of oil sales, and that accounting for the $20 billion Development Fund for Iraq consisted of "spreadsheets and pivot tables maintained by a single accountant."

The auditors also faced a lack of cooperation. They were denied access to Iraqi ministries, which were reputed to be the locus of epic corruption on the part of Iraqis with connections to the occupiers. They were also denied access to reports concerning what they delicately describe as "sole-source contracts."

Translation: they were stonewalled when they tried to find out what Halliburton did with $1.4 billion.

By obstructing international auditors, by the way, the U.S. wasn't just fueling suspicion about the misappropriation of Iraqi oil money - it was also breaking its word. After Saddam's fall, the U.N. gave the U.S. the right to disburse Iraqi oil-for-food revenues, but only on the condition that this be accompanied by international auditing and oversight.

A digression: yes, oil-for-food is the U.N.-administered program from which Saddam undoubtedly siphoned off billions. But we expect America to be held to a higher standard.

There are also allegations that Saddam's revenue diversion was aided by corrupt U.N. officials. I think we should wait and see what Paul Volcker, the genuinely independent head of the U.N. inquiry - the sort of person the U.S. occupation should have employed - has to say. Meanwhile, it's worth noting that these accusations are entirely based on documents that are purported to be in the possession of none other than Ahmad Chalabi, who has himself been accused of corruption.

And there are a few curious side stories. On the day the U.S. raided Mr. Chalabi's offices, a British associate of Mr. Chalabi who had been promising to come out with a devastating report told London's Daily Telegraph that a remarkably effective hacker attack had destroyed all his computer files, including the backup copies.

After the United States's falling-out with Mr. Chalabi, the oil-for-food investigation was taken out of the hands of Mr. Chalabi's allies. But the new head of the investigation was assassinated on July 1.

Meanwhile, the war, fed by the failure of reconstruction, goes on. The transfer doesn't seem to have made any difference: more American soldiers were killed in the first three weeks of July than in all of June, even though Knight-Ridder reports that the U.S. military has stopped patrolling in much of Anbar Province, the heart of the insurgency.

And while the U.S. has yet to disburse any significant amount of aid, the Government Accountability Office says that war costs for this fiscal year alone will run $12.3 billion above Pentagon projections.

Will anyone be held accountable?


http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/23/opinion/23krug.html?hp=&pagewanted=print&position=

 

No, five Marines die = bad news.

Two more schools being finished = good news.

 

Someone's child in America...............?

As fas as I know, our children have schools here.

 

Yes, we have schools here, but they are overcrowded to the point of absurdity, underfunded to the point that teachers actually have a tax exemption for school supplies they buy themselves, and seem to be the one thing that gets cut year after year. I would be interested to see if there has been a correlation between the rates at which the rich in this country have had their taxes reduced and the rates at which school funding has dropped over the past 50 years.

It is just maddening that some people seem to think it is fine to spend $100-200 billion on a war halfway around the world, but balk when it comes to other things like school funding or Social Security.

 

Sort of humorous? Damn, glynch. I thought we went way back.

As accurate as Fisk? Are you kidding? Has the whole Middle East gone up in flames? Have we seen more 9/11's? The answer is no. I don't think my predictions, which were that the ME would NOT blow up, that governments there would NOT fall, was completely accurate.

If you're going to reiterate my positions at least reflect them correctly. I never said the threat was imminent, but inevitable. Look up the difference and get back to me. Yes, I did think there were WMDs in Iraq, but as opposed to you at least I admit when I'm wrong. Which of us fits the definition of dogmatic, me or you?

I'd love that we removed a genocidal dictator. I know you are not. As for my musings about Muslims, none of it is 'general,' but rather specific. Ironically, it sounds a lot like this:

"Q: And what about Islamic fundamentalism itself?

Fisk: The Muslim world has not begun to ask about the bin Ladens, and the Mullah Omars, and the Mohamed Attas. There hasn't been a single sociological inquiry, not one serious discourse about how these people came to be what they are. When are Muslims in the Middle East and in the subcontinent going to ask these questions? How could believers, people who regard themselves as true Muslims, get on those planes, quoting the words of God delivered through the Prophet to themselves, knowing they were going to kill innocent people? They saw the other passengers on the plane. They could see the woman with her little daughter. They saw people making phone calls to their wives or their husbands. They knew who they were killing. These guys got on airplanes with kids and women and innocent people on board, knowing that they were going to vaporize them. And they came on board allegedly rereading quotations from the Koran. There is a problem here. And I don't think that problem has got anywhere near being addressed in the Muslim world. Whatever the political injustices are that created an environment that brought this about, it was not Americans who flew those planes into those buildings. And we should remember that. The crimes against humanity were perpetrated by people who were Arab Muslims. And I haven't seen anyone address that issue out here. And they should."

In addition, yes I do have problems with Islam. Specifically the oppression of women. I know you think its ok for their culture to commit atrocities like female genital mutilation, but I do not.

Yes, when you call one person the outright dependable authority on a subject, and I show him saying two completely different things about the same subject, that does in fact impact his credibility.

 

Wasn't Robert Fisk the first Whitewater Special Prosecutor?

 

Saddam was a realizing threat, no doubt...The thing is he acted with several checkmarks of suspicious activities which logically conclude he was a threat...To excuse him of acting and being a madman with destructive weapons at his disposal is ignorant...It's ignorant.

Had he not personally killed with diabolical glee...

Had he not used sarin upon his people killing thousands and thousands of the country folk...

Had he not intimidated and abused the every citizen...

Had he not supported acts of terror with monetary methods and through open rhetoric...

Had he not invaded a weaker neighbor without first acting civil...

Had he cooperated before the multiple, international warnings and procedures were throughly exhausted...

The point is he had the WMD weapons, somehow they got minimized to the point that they were partially destroyed against his will, or corroded, and partially lost...Who knows, they might still be in Saddam's secret bunker somewhere...and I don't doubt for a minute his eventual goal would be to build them up again based on his wicked fascination of weapons and abuse...

A definite threat based on examining his acts and what they have demonstrated and not someone who glynch would profess as trust-worthy and rationale, and O, btw, the world is much safer...