Iraq - the war & after

aEwkVS ftltyfekwvje, [url=http://hvycqwgzfelz.com/]hvycqwgzfelz[/url], [link=http://xpelgjvbzfeu.com/]xpelgjvbzfeu[/link], http://qelrafyrtdgv.com/

Fascinating article, even more amazing that its found in the NY Times, in which the times author notes Iraqis turning away from the empty future offered by their religious leaders towards a more promising future offered by their American liberators. Note that it is the NY Times that is describing American forces as "liberators" which is a significant change in tone. Could it be the Times recognizes the success of the surge and doesn't want to be caught on the side of the pessimists proclaiming its failure?

Special Issue of Turkish Islamic Weekly BARAN on the Occasion of the Martyrdom Anniversary of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein The Weekly BARAN, Turkish Islamic periodical belonging to the most significant Islamic revolutionary movement (IBDA) in Turkey, presents a detailed special issue one year after the martyrdom of the former legitimate president of Iraq, Saddam Hussein. Here is an an article titled “Allah’s Will is Saddam” from that special issue of the weekly BARAN. For the front page of BARAN: http://www.barandergisi.com/kapak.html For the website of BARAN: http://www.barandergisi.com

We were wining the war in Iraq in till all the anti war protesters and left wing media started Brainwashing the American people. You cant go a day with out hearing on the news about Americans dying in Iraq. All the people in the war are volunteers!!! Who enjoy the war!!! Ask any one in the military if they agree with the war and 99% will say yes. Most people in the military consider the ones that go to Iraq lucky. The whole Anti war movement was all to get democrats in power and it worked Even though most of the democrats voted for the war like JOHN Cary, Hillary Clinton The biggest problem we Face in the United states in illegal Immigration NOT THE WAR ! The democrats keep comparing the Iraq war with Vietnam war. Even though Vietnam war was a DEMACRATS WAR led by Lyndon B Johnson , Soon ending in defeat thanks to all the same anti war people and poor democrat military leadership.

2002: UN SPEECH Events can turn in one of two ways. If we fail to act in the face of danger, the people of Iraq will continue to live in brutal submission. The regime will have new power to bully and dominate and conquer its neighbors, condemning the Middle East to more years of bloodshed and fear. The regime will remain unstable -- the region will remain unstable, with little hope of freedom and isolated from the progress of our times. With every step the Iraqi regime takes toward gaining and deploying the most terrible weapons, our own options to confront that regime will narrow. And if an emboldened regime were to supply these weapons to terrorists allies, then the attacks of September 11 would be a prelude to far greater horrors.

Started a new era in Veteran Business http://www.chooseaveteran.com

The US invaded Iraq in 2003. Four years later countless civilians and fighters are dead, including 3,000 US soldiers. According to a recent UN report the number of civilians killed averaged 94 per day in 2006. The country seems close to civil war, largely due to sectarian fighting, and there is evidence of interference from Iraq's neighbours that threatens to expand the boundaries of the conflict. Bush is now planning to send more troops. Is this going to work? What are the US hoping to achieve? What are the alternatives? What happens next? Message was edited by: me_9

It seems to me that there are several major problems with the idea of splitting Iraq into three regions,

Hello everyone, I thought I would try this forum as I am totally confused at the reasons why we went to war in Iraq. I would like to know those reasons whether they were pre-war or created "post-war" if I may use that phrase. I need to know so that I can analyse those reasons and respond to them. So far, in the news I simply here one reason and another. So, if any politicians or anyone who supported the war are reading this, please list in an orderly manner, the reasons for going to war. In the absence of those reasons, I will try to extract some reasons from the verbal diahorreah put forward by pro-war people, and respond to them. Please feel free to contribute.

I find it interesting that most people I have listened to (both in the media and in person) who have discussed the issue of "responsibility" for the war in Iraq usually try to nail it down to one or two main culprits, if you will. For example, the Bush administration centers the blame almost exclusively on Saddam and/or Islamic militants; the Democrats blame Bush; the Iraqi insurgents say that they are only responding to US provocation, aggression, imperialism, etc. I am utterly puzzled, however, by the fact that no one, not even many purporting to write historical accounts of the war, is stepping back to look at the issue of war responsibility objectively, like historians should. I have read a great deal of military history, and one thing that I have noted in my study of the subject is that discussions of war responsibility usually undergo something akin to the Hegelian thesis-antithesis-synthesis dialectic. The most obvious case would be World War I. Most histories written during or shortly after the war placed the blame solely upon the Central Powers. During the revisionist era, the pendulum swung back the other way, with many historians placing the blame upon the Allies. To overgeneralize somewhat, most historians are now of the opinion that each Power should bear some share of the blame for the outbreak of war in 1914; the debate now is largely over how large a share each respective Power should be apportioned. One can find similar historiographical trends regarding just about any other conflict. Is there not some plausibility to the idea that maybe everybody involved in the war in Iraq should bear some share of the responsibility? Is it not possible that the US, Saddam, and the Islamic militants alike all stand guilty of contributing to the outbreak of war, at least to some degree? I am not suggesting that we oversimplify the issue, that we just say, "Well, everybody's at fault here," leave it at that, and move on. I am simply postulating that, when one examines the origins of the conflict from as objective a viewpoint as possible, putting party loyalties and patriotism temporarily on the back burner, it is foolish to try to argue that one person/group or the other is exclusively to blame. In my opinion, this almost sounds too obvious an historiographical conclusion to draw, yet I have not heard anyone else say the same thing. Anybody else have any thoughts on the matter, either in agreement or disagreement? This is, of course, my tentative view of the matter; I would like to hear the arguments of others, as well.

In our super high-tech media obsessed world, images are beginning to mean everything

As a young refugee in Europe, I came to France speaking five languages, of which German was the only one many people spoke in Paris. The price of that was submission to incredible brutality from the Jesuit teachers and fellow French students. How is it that they take out their rage against the "salo Boche" on a poor Romanian kid who happens to speak only one language in common with them, German? I never quite grasped the one sidedness: tears for one side, hate for the other, that I confronted as a refugee trekking across Europe. But it wasn't all bad. Teachers, professors, intellectuals and most clergy

Above all, Gareth Porter is an ingenious analyst who makes you think and one comes to feel a sense of the complexities of a region far better from his righting than most others. His article: "The Third Option in Iraq: A Responsible Exit Strategy," [MIDDLE EAST POLICY JOURNAL, Winter 2005] screams at you, amongst other things, why we need him so much in higher pedagogia. But I'm afraid that though he and I share a common goal-- US exit from Iraq-- his rolling exit strategy I do not think would succeed. The main reason is the tremendous variety of starting points for suicide bombers, despite their common end point. This variety

Mr. Bush's latest speech on the Iraq War causes one to wonder if what he tried to do was explain or excuse. Each of his Iraq War speeches strikes one as another attempt at damage control without specifying useful information about what to expect. There never is any sum-up that enables one to understand where we've been and plans telling us now where we're going. It's all: everything is fine, now we're alright [???], right on course...what course? More confusing, Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney seem to be pulling in opposite directions. Mr. Bush admits that terrible errors were made, but they are not his, he insists, they were made by the CIA. Meanwhile, Mr. Cheney, either insists, "I never said that," or repeats the same line that Bush had attributed to bad intelligence. Mr. Cheney's tone intimates that Mr. Bush doesn't know what he's talking about, everything was true then and is true now, as true now as "...in the beginning"!

Poor Joe Wilson, nobody seems to remember that the way he got involved in debate over the Bush Iraq policy was at the beginning of 2003, when he sought to transmit to Mideast affairs aficionados what Poppy Bush wrote to him: my son is not a moron, he will not invade Iraq. It should be kept in mind that Washingtonians are a high-strung lot. They worry a lot about current events-- together, whatever their partisanship. Thus, whether scholars, think-tankers, bureaucrats, politicians-- especially retired officials who hang-out in government buildings-- they all desperately seek info that will reassure them that all

To explore another article on Iraq and generalized oil dividends for all, please see: http://www.cesj.org/thirdway/paradigmpapers/iraq-nationbuilding.htm A NEW MODEL OF NATION-BUILDING FOR CITIZENS OF IRAQ I don't intend to endorse the above statement of a "democratic economy" but I do think it is a thoughtful approach. The author is linked to the Basic Income Canada group. I do endorse BI as a basic economic building block for a real Commom-wealth. A.Z.

Given the untimely death of Robin Cook recently, I thought it only fitting to post his 2003 resignation speech on this forum. His decision to resign from his post as Foreign Secretary is probably one of only a few examples of a principled act by a such high-ranking politician. "This is the first time for 20 years that I have addressed the House from the back benches. I must confess that I had forgotten how much better the view is from here. None of those 20 years were more enjoyable or more rewarding than the past two, in which I have had the immense privilege of serving this House as Leader of the House, which were made all the more enjoyable, Mr Speaker, by the opportunity of working closely with you.

Despite the waning of media and public interest, the daily violence in Iraq sadly continues. A lull in attacks by the insurgency after the elections seemed to indicate that a "corner had been turned". However, that does not seem quite so certain now... U.S. death toll in Iraq surges amid rebel violence WASHINGTON, May 31 (Reuters) - The death toll for American troops in Iraq rose in May to the highest level since January, with the U.S. military saying on Tuesday insurgents have doubled their number of daily attacks since April. This latest spree of violence by insurgents, who rose up after the American-led invasion in 2003 toppled President Saddam Hussein, put a dramatic end to a period when attacks on U.S. forces had waned after the historic Jan. 30 elections.

During the duration Oil For Food programme, it is well known that Iraq was earning additinal oil revenues through smuggling significant quantities of oil to neighbouring Turkey and Jordan, in contravention of the sanctions regime. Estimates of the additional revenues generated from this vary between around US$6bn and US$15bn. My question is, does anyone know of any serious account of how this money was spent? Did it end up in Saddam and co's personal coffers? Was any of it used by for legitimate or humanitarian puroposes by the Iraqi government? Any help would be appreciated.

Given the recent allegations of abuse in Guantanamo, Iraq and Afghanistan by the US and UK, this Guardian report sheds some light on the background to all this. The report draws on two recently published books, "Torture and Truth" by US journalist Mark Danner, and "The Torture Papers", a collection of memos and reports edited by US lawyers Karen Greenberg and Joshua Dratel. Aside from describing some of the techniques used, the report gives a glimpse of the decision-making process that led to the current "abuses". In October 2002 the commander of the interrogation teams at Guantánamo, Lt-Col Jerald Phifer, pleads to be allowed to inflict more suffering on the prisoners there. "The current guidelines ... limit the ability of interrogators to counter advanced resistance," he writes. He asks for his people to be able to force prisoners to stand for up to four hours, put prisoners in solitary for 30 days or more, hood them, interrogate them continuously for up to 20 hours, subject them to sensory deprivation, take away their Korans, strip them naked, forcibly shave them, frighten them with dogs, deceive them into thinking they or members of their family are about to be killed or savagely tortured, "expose them" to cold temperatures or cold water, grab them, poke them, push them, and use the "waterboarding" technique, which involves covering the prisoner's mouth and nose with a cloth and pouring water into it so it forces itself down his throat and makes him believe he is about to drown. Phifer's memo makes it plain that a torture school exists in the US. "Any of these techniques that require more than light grabbing, poking, or pushing, will be administered only by individuals specifically trained in their safe application," he writes.