US GENERAL ON IRAQ WITHDRAWAL

[Zlatko Waterman]

( Several top generals were questioned recently by Congress on their version of strategy and tactics in the Iraq War. They reached a consensus: current policies are ruinous; withdrawal is a strong option; the US cannot defeat the insurgency, etc. etc..

Of course, the irony of all these "high level military experts" and their analyses is that they correspond exactly with the analysis of the local peace activists, who, banjos and banners in hand, led me and others on peace marches before and during the war. The candlelight vigil I attended recently at the local County Government Center displayed banners and hosted speeches with identical content months ago.

Yet BUSHCO and its murderous, greedy oil-baron advisors and world hegemonic visionary kitchen cabinet has "stayed the course" and cost the lives of nearly 2,000 US soldiers, fourteen thousand wounded ( many serious, wheelchair-bound "wounded") and, by many accounts, nearly one hundred thousand Iraqi civilians.

And where are we? Just where the anti-war activists said we would be: a civil war is raging in Iraq; factional splits have disunified the populace; theocracy is evidently preferred to democracy-- the clergy and the Koran are not to be contradicted by civil law in the new "constitution", etc., etc..

Comparisons to Vietnam are NOT invidious, but plainly factual and comparisons between LBJ's rhetoric and BUSHCO's are RIGHT ON! Check it for yourself.

There were no weapons of mass destruction, the lie upon which this war was launched and my country was disgustingly corrupted by the Bush administration; but there were and are "weapons of mass distraction" in Bush's reiteration of the "9/1/1 threat"; there are "weapons of common sense obstruction" in daily lies about Katrina, Karl Rove, Halliburton, no-bid contracts, Abu Ghraib and the prosecution of low-level military subordinates, and the witholding by the BUSHCO cadre of 87 new, more shocking pictures and four videotapes of Abu Ghraib torture.

( link to Parapolitics blogstory. This article was reported both by CNN and Editor and Publisher. But the US media did not seize on the story or its significance.)

http://www.parapolitics.info/phorum/rea ... &i=45&t=45


( summary of other BUSHCO crimes here:)
http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2004/03/284027.shtml



As one columnist on AntiWar.com puts it: The Empire Has No Clothes.

General Odom, currently a Professor at Yale University, has an extraordinary resume:

http://www.hudson.org/learn/index.cfm?f ... d=OdomWill


Consider for a moment what depth of commitment to America's aims and goals such a man would have to sustain to have climbed as high as he did. Consider further that the opinions of such a man are not only formidably researched, but based on decades of experience with foreign and military matters concerning this country.

Now read his lucid, powerful argument against "staying the course."


( paste from AntiWar.com)

What's Wrong With Cutting and Running?

by Gen. (ret.) William E. Odom



If I were a journalist, I would list all the arguments that you hear against pulling U.S. troops out of Iraq, the horrible things that people say would happen, and then ask: Aren't they happening already? Would a pullout really make things worse? Maybe it would make things better.

Here are some of the arguments against pulling out:

We would leave behind a civil war.
We would lose credibility on the world stage.
It would embolden the insurgency and cripple the move toward democracy.
Iraq would become a haven for terrorists.
Iranian influence in Iraq would increase.
Unrest might spread in the region and/or draw in Iraq's neighbors.
Shi'ite-Sunni clashes would worsen.
We haven't fully trained the Iraqi military and police forces yet.
Talk of deadlines would undercut the morale of our troops.
But consider this:

1. On civil war. Iraqis are already fighting Iraqis. Insurgents have killed far more Iraqis than Americans. That's civil war. We created the civil war when we invaded; we can't prevent a civil war by staying.

For those who really worry about destabilizing the region, the sensible policy is not to stay the course in Iraq. It is rapid withdrawal, reestablishing strong relations with our allies in Europe, showing confidence in the UN Security Council, and trying to knit together a large coalition including the major states of Europe, Japan, South Korea, China, and India to back a strategy for stabilizing the area from the eastern Mediterranean to Afghanistan and Pakistan. Until the United States withdraws from Iraq and admits its strategic error, no such coalition can be formed.

Thus, those who fear leaving a mess are actually helping make things worse while preventing a new strategic approach with some promise of success.

2. On credibility. If we were Russia or some other insecure nation, we might have to worry about credibility. A hyperpower need not worry about credibility. That's one of the great advantages of being a hyperpower: When we have made a big strategic mistake, we can reverse it. And it may even enhance our credibility. Staying there damages our credibility more than leaving.

Ask the president if he really worries about U.S. credibility. Or, what will happen to our credibility if the course he is pursuing proves to be a major strategic disaster? Would it not be better for our long-term credibility to withdraw earlier than later in this event?

3. On the insurgency and democracy. There is no question the insurgents and other anti-American parties will take over the government once we leave. But that will happen no matter how long we stay. Any government capable of holding power in Iraq will be anti-American because the Iraqi people are increasingly becoming anti-American.

Also, the U.S. will not leave behind a liberal, constitutional democracy in Iraq no matter how long it stays. Holding elections is easy. It is impossible to make it a constitutional democracy in a hurry.

President Bush's statements about progress in Iraq are increasingly resembling LBJ's statements during the Vietnam War. For instance, Johnson's comments about the 1968 election are very similar to what Bush said in February 2005 after the election of a provisional parliament.

Ask the president: Why should we expect a different outcome in Iraq than in Vietnam?

Ask the president if he intends to leave a pro-American liberal regime in place. Because that's just impossible. Postwar Germany and Japan are not models for Iraq. Each had mature (at least a full generation old) constitutional orders by the end of the 19th century. They both endured as constitutional orders until the 1930s. Thus, General Clay and General MacArthur were merely reversing a decade and a half of totalitarianism – returning to nearly a century of liberal political change in Japan and a much longer period in Germany.

Imposing a liberal constitutional order in Iraq would be to accomplish something that has never been done before. Of all the world's political cultures, an Arab-Muslim one may be the most resistant to such a change of any in the world. Even the Muslim society in Turkey (an anti-Arab society) stands out for being the only example of a constitutional order in an Islamic society, and even it backslides occasionally.

4. On terrorists. Iraq is already a training ground for terrorists. In fact, the CIA has pointed out to the administration and Congress that Iraq is spawning so many terrorists that they are returning home to many other countries to further practice their skills there. The quicker a new dictator wins political power in Iraq and imposes order, the sooner the country will stop producing experienced terrorists.

Why not ask: "Mr. President, since you and the vice president insisted that Saddam's Iraq supported al-Qaeda – which we now know it did not – isn't your policy in Iraq today strengthening al-Qaeda's position in that country?"

5. On Iranian influence. Iranian leaders see U.S. policy in Iraq as being so much in Tehran's interests that they have been advising Iraqi Shi'ite leaders to do exactly what the Americans ask them to do. Elections will allow the Shi'ites to take power legally. Once in charge, they can settle scores with the Ba'athists and Sunnis. If U.S. policy in Iraq begins to undercut Iran's interests, then Tehran can use its growing influence among Iraqi Shi'ites to stir up trouble, possibly committing Shi'ite militias to an insurgency against U.S. forces there. The U.S. invasion has vastly increased Iran's influence in Iraq, not sealed it out.

Questions for the administration: "Why do the Iranians support our presence in Iraq today? Why do they tell the Shi'ite leaders to avoid a sectarian clash between Sunnis and Shi'ites? Given all the money and weapons they provide Shi'ite groups, why are they not stirring up more trouble for the U.S.? Will Iranian policy change once a Shi'ite majority has the reins of government? Would it not be better to pull out now rather than to continue our present course of weakening the Sunnis and Ba'athists, opening the way for a Shi'ite dictatorship?"

6. On Iraq's neighbors. The civil war we leave behind may well draw in Syria, Turkey, and Iran. But already today each of those states is deeply involved in support for or opposition to factions in the ongoing Iraqi civil war. The very act of invading Iraq almost ensured that violence would involve the larger region. And so it has and will continue, with or without U.S. forces in Iraq.

7. On Shi'ite-Sunni conflict. The U.S. presence is not preventing Shi'ite-Sunni conflict; it merely delays it. Iran is preventing it today, and it will probably encourage it once the Shi'ites dominate the new government, an outcome U.S. policy virtually ensures.

8. On training the Iraq military and police. The insurgents are fighting very effectively without U.S. or European military advisers to train them. Why don't the soldiers and police in the present Iraqi regime's service do their duty as well? Because they are uncertain about committing their lives to this regime. They are being asked to take a political stand, just as the insurgents are. Political consolidation, not military-technical consolidation, is the issue.

The issue is not military training; it is institutional loyalty. We trained the Vietnamese military effectively. Its generals took power and proved to be lousy politicians and poor fighters in the final showdown. In many battles over a decade or more, South Vietnamese military units fought very well, defeating VC and NVA units. But South Vietnam's political leaders lost the war.

Even if we were able to successfully train an Iraqi military and police force, the likely result, after all that, would be another military dictatorship. Experience around the world teaches us that military dictatorships arise when the military's institutional modernization gets ahead of political consolidation.

9. On not supporting our troops by debating an early pullout. Many U.S. officers in Iraq, especially at company and field grade levels, know that while they are winning every tactical battle, they are losing strategically. And according to the New York Times, they are beginning to voice complaints about Americans at home bearing none of the pains of the war. One can only guess about the enlisted ranks, but those on a second tour – probably the majority today – are probably anxious for an early pullout. It is also noteworthy that U.S. generals in Iraq are not bubbling over with optimistic reports the way they were during the first few years of the war in Vietnam. Their careful statements and caution probably reflect serious doubts that they do not, and should not, express publicly. The more important question is whether or not the repressive and vindictive behavior by the secretary of defense and his deputy against the senior military – especially the Army leadership, which is the critical component in the war – has made it impossible for field commanders to make the political leaders see the facts.

Most surprising to me is that no American political leader today has tried to unmask the absurdity of the administration's case that to question the strategic wisdom of the war is unpatriotic and a failure to support our troops. Most officers and probably most troops don't see it that way. They are angry at the deficiencies in materiel support they get from the Department of Defense, and especially about the irresponsibly long deployments they must now endure because Mr. Rumsfeld and his staff have refused to enlarge the ground forces to provide shorter tours. In the meantime, they know that the defense budget shovels money out the door to maritime forces, SDI, etc., while refusing to increase dramatically the size of the Army.

As I wrote several years ago, "the Pentagon's post-Cold War force structure is so maritime heavy and land force weak that it is firmly in charge of the porpoises and whales while leaving the land to tyrants." The Army, some of the Air Force, the National Guard, and the reserves are now the victims of this gross mismatch between military missions and force structure. Neither the Bush nor the Clinton administration has properly "supported the troops." The media could ask the president why he fails to support our troops by not firing his secretary of defense.


So why is almost nobody advocating a pullout? I can only speculate. We face a strange situation today where few if any voices among Democrats in Congress will mention early withdrawal from Iraq, and even the one or two who do will not make a comprehensive case for withdrawal now. Why are the Democrats failing the public on this issue today? The biggest reason is because they weren't willing to raise that issue during the campaign. Howard Dean alone took a clear and consistent stand on Iraq, and the rest of the Democratic Party trashed him for it. Most of those in Congress voted for the war and let that vote shackle them later on. Now they are scared to death that the White House will smear them with lack of patriotism if they suggest pulling out.

Journalists can ask all the questions they like, but none will prompt a more serious debate as long as no political leaders create the context and force the issues into the open.

I don't believe anyone will be able to sustain a strong case in the short run without going back to the fundamental misjudgment of invading Iraq in the first place. Once the enormity of that error is grasped, the case for pulling out becomes easy to see.

Look at John Kerry's utterly absurd position during the presidential campaign. He said, "It's the wrong war, in the wrong place, at the wrong time," but then went on to explain how he expected to win it anyway. Even the voter with no interest in foreign affairs was able to recognize it as an absurdity. If it was the wrong war at the wrong place and time, then it was never in our interests to fight. If that is true, what has changed to make it in our interests? Nothing, absolutely nothing.

The U.S. invasion of Iraq only serves the interests of:

1. Osama bin Laden (it made Iraq safe for al-Qaeda, positioned U.S. military personnel in places where al-Qaeda operatives can kill them occasionally, helps radicalize youth throughout the Arab and Muslim world, alienates America's most important and strongest allies – the Europeans – and squanders U.S. military resources that otherwise might be finishing off al-Qaeda in Pakistan.);

2. The Iranians (who were invaded by Saddam and who suffered massive casualties in an eight-year war with Iraq.);

3. And the extremists in both Palestinian and Israeli political circles (who don't really want a peace settlement without the utter destruction of the other side, and probably believe that bogging the United States down in a war in Iraq that will surely become a war with the rest of Arab world gives them the time and cover to wipe out the other side.)

The wisest course for journalists might be to begin sustained investigations of why leading Democrats have failed so miserably to challenge the U.S. occupation of Iraq. The first step, of course, is to establish as conventional wisdom the fact that the war was never in the U.S.' interests and has not become so. It is such an obvious case to make that I find it difficult to believe many pundits and political leaders have not already made it repeatedly.


Reprinted from Neiman Watchdog with the author's permission.

[hester_prynne]

Great articles Zlatko, I enjoyed reading them because they console me, in knowing that there are people out there who also see the game, and want to stop it.

Funny thing is, just this morning, as I was getting ready to go to work, I had the news on, and I heard some "official" saying that "we have to stay the course in Iraq or we will lose the war!, and America cannot lose wars......" It just galls me! Yeah, right, win the war. Meanwhile, the next story was about how gas prices are climbing still.

How many will die this winter, frozen in their homes?

If we don't get this administration out and charged with their crimes (as most people get charged when they commit blatent crimes), then we deserve exactly what we're getting for enabling them. This administration is all about enablement. It's the way they've been brought up. They fully expect to get away with their crimes. It's all they've ever known since childhood. They've never had the pleasure of growing up, and maturing.

I think it will take / is taking, a long time for people to wake up. It will take something crucial, like not having enough money for food, or not having enough available credit for weekly bingespending sessions at the home depot, for enough people to wake up and quit buying into this corrupt system. And by then it may be too late.

My worries now are day to day, and I don't buy anything at all unless I can pay for it in cash. Period. That's my budget and i'm stickin to it. Heh.
I really wish more people would do this. Then maybe some of these corporations running the country would have to remember that without customers, they have no business!

As it is, there is no respect in this country on a human level anymore. There are no deals or sales. Buying something like a house or car, is more like allowing yourself to be taken prisoner!
It's all about "what's in your wallet". If not cash, then credit it! Ugh.
I'll have none of that!
The amount of money I have could never define who I am, or who someone else is for that matter. Not in my book anyway. Bush doesn't hold a candle to me and you and many of us. He's a big nothing! He's an enabled joke with a connection. That is all.
And we are the ones who are allowing it.

Thanks again for your many inspiring and comforting links here in culture. You've no idea how much they help my troubled mind, and soothe my very saddened soul.

H

[Zlatko Waterman]

Dear Hester:


In 1968, when a "youth revolution" was more or less in progress all over the world and I was 23 years old and thought I had a few things figured out ( I didn't) I WAS fond of proclaiming one thing, from which I have never really retreated.

As long as the "business ethic" in the US ( profit motive, salesmanship, coercive advertising, continual "new" products, planned obsolescence, etc.) rules American culture, we are lost as a people.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planned_obsolescence

Around the heyday of Martin Luther King, a few years earlier, it appeared that, pretty universally, except in the old, old hardcore racist south ( and north), white people were "waking up" ( as you so nicely put it) to the oppression of their fellow American citizens who were black. When King, predictably ( he foresaw it himself) was killed by a sad, deranged pile of poop masquerading as human ( I read a biography of James Earl Ray-- a sad character to say the least) with a gun, the course of human tolerance in this country began to change. The assassination of Robert Kennedy brought another deflation of the "youth spirit."

It's not easy being young, particularly today. I spent a good deal of my life next to 18-24-year olds in my former job, and they are often in pain and not infrequently, a state of confusion. Their powerful drives and electric energy are often thwarted by a lack of understanding from society, which tends to see them only as targets for corporate products.

The digital age has sped this dehumanization up, of course. The insights and considered reasoning of General Odom ( believe me, I'm no fan of generals, but this man can see the difference between truth and lies) do not proceed from digital sources, but from human ones. There are citizens, even generals, who know the truth.

But they don't own the nukes. And they can't command billions of tax dollars to send King's "people of color" into a senseless battle--
at best a battle for oil and American strategic positioning.

I know many very fine artists, like you, who live virtually unrecognized, when untalented hacks ( we could each name many, many of them) are elevated to stardom.

One concludes, at age sixty, that a certain reticence to join the battle for the bucks has its drawbacks, of course.

But living for something other than Donald Rumsfeld's seven houses and fleet of luxury vehicles, Colin Powell's and Condaleeza Rice's betrayal of "their people"( ask Harry Belafonte-- it was his characterization . . .)

http://www.papillonsartpalace.com/harrBy.htm


and the Enron-faced white corporate world also has its rewards.

"God Bless the Child."

Thank you, as always, for your thoughtful and feeling comments.


Z(N)

[mnaz]

Excellent post, Zlatko.

The general is on-target with his assessment of the Iraq blunder. I don't know if the US-led invasion was initially popular with the Iraqis.... they were not "polled" before the invasion. It is possible, I suppose, that Saddam's ouster was initially popular with a decent majority of Iraqis. But a lot has happened since.

I have come to agree that "staying the course" to benefit the Iraqi people is deluded thinking. Our leaders propose that we stay long enough to head off civil war. Problem is, we are the civil war. Our endless occupation will only sustain the fighting.

I have come to agree that "defeating the insurgents" is deluded thinking (substitute "terrorists" for "insurgents", if you're writing the speech). Problem is, there isn't a finite number of insurgents. Our endless occupation likely creates more of them than we kill. And I agree that a growing percentage of the insurgency is "home-grown" resistance.

About the only thing I'll give the neo-cons credit for is their attempt to formulate policy which deals with our future energy needs, ten, twenty years hence. But they've gone about it the wrong way, through great deception, arrogant greed, and heavy-handed brutality. Where are the programs for alternate fuels? Where are the incentives for conservation?

The industrialized nations are energy junkies to an ever greater extent, and most of them have a great deal of over-consumption inertia built up. Their energy interests will increasingly clash with one another in the coming years. This is why the coalition between these nations, of which the general speaks, should become high priority, and soon. I'm sure that many would argue that nations like China could never be trusted in such an arrangement, but we have to try.

Anyway, good read, Zlatko. Thanks.

[Zlatko Waterman]

Dear mnaz:

"over-consumption inertia" is a well-crafted phrase, my friend, and neatly describes a major American problem.

Ironically, the Chinese are doing something about petro-consumption by pursuing just the sorts of energy policies and research we ought to be engaged in.

Latest fuel-economy regulations for Chinese cars stipulate far higher ( about double) requirements for gas mileage than the US.

Of course, the required sticker from the EPA on US cars which shows fuel economy and estimated cost is based on gasoline costing $1.20 per gallon.

An update is obviously in order . . .

I stated on this forum that we recently purchased a Hybrid car, a Honda Civic. As I said, we buy cars very infrequently, and this is our first in 18 years.

Our gas mileage hovers around 45 miles/gallon, but has gone as high as fifty and fifty-one. While the hybrid car is probably an intermediate step toward solar, electric and hydrogen fuel cell cars, it is a good step. We also get a tax credit incentive for owning a zero emissions vehicle.

I understand from an NPR program I heard that hybrid SUV's are on the way.

Terrific! A Hummer that gets 13 miles to the gallon instead of nine!

Thanks for your well-thought-out and carefully phrased comments.



--Z

[mnaz]

I've heard rumblings about so-called "bio-fuels" lately, as a possible alternative fuel, particularly in the last year. I read an interesting article about it last winter.... I'll see if I can find it, or track down similar information.

If I remember right, Brazil is now substantially converted to bio-fuels. The Brazilian government subsidized most of this conversion. It was quite a large investment (ongoing, perhaps) which is paying off nicely. But that's the thing. It is a large commitment to undertake, requiring strong, progressive leadership. It's hard to imagine such a concerted, substantial commitment coming from our current corporatist state, run by oil barons.

Regarding hybrids.... a few years ago, I heard some cretin in a bar refer them as "gay", and that no real man would drive one.... but that was a few years ago. Hybrids are in demand now. I read a Ford advertisement in the paper a couple weeks ago. I saw many slashed prices and incentives on Ford's over-developed fleet of gas guzzlers, but nothing like that for the only hybrid on the page, the Escape, a bare-bones mini-SUV, which was marked up to nearly $30,000..... (another form of corporate "gouging", perhaps?)

A hybrid Hummer?.......... I had a good laugh over that one...

[knip]

Having talked to many, probably close to 500, senior officers, NCOs, and NGOs who have deployed to and returned from iraq, one thing and one thing only is quite clear to me

those opposed to US involvement in iraq talk about all the iraqis who hate the americans and what they are doing

those in favour of it talk about all the iraqis who want the americans there


army generals and NCOs are no different than any other source of information...one must look at motive when making a personal assessment of the accuracy of the information

[mnaz]

True, that. But 2 and 3/4 years into this thing, doesn't the evidence point toward a substantial (and growing) resistance that is directly linked to the ongoing U.S. occupation? (Yes, I still call it an occupation).

Suppose that a substantial percentage of the insurgency is now "home-grown" resistance, not just foreign jihadists or al Qaeda terrorists. How can you "win" this type of war in which your attempts to do so merely perpetuate said war and (apparently) escalate your enemy's resistance? How do you persevere to "save" a group of people, a substantial percentage of which don't want you to "save" them?

[knip]

Let's look at this through the lens of what it was always purported be (this being the "war on terrorism"). This was always touted as something that was going to take 100 years. Doesn't it make sense that something that was to last 100 years would have ebbs and flows to it?

I fully realize this has the potential to open up 5724 other cans of worms, which wasn't my intent. If one looks at events with a snapshot perspective, one is bound to come to much different conclusions than one who looks at a huge slice of time. I think that is part of the problem with discussing these events.

I'm not sure the growing number of insurgents are home grown. If outside forces are influencing young men to become terrorists, is that home grown? If the growing insurgency consists mainly of Baathist Sunnis driving cars into Shi'ite mosques on the first day of Ramadhan, is that a US occupation issue or a Baathist attempt to cause civil war? If all western forces left, would civil war be expedited, drawn out, stopped? There are many, many ways to spin what is going on, to draw support for one's own agenda. I'm not saying that is what is going on here, but the more I read, the more I distrust people's motives.

[mtmynd]

knip - your words: "but the more I read, the more I distrust people's motives," is my sentiment exactly, altho we may differ as to who "people" are. that is how I see is the whole problem no matter who's side we choose. Lack of trust can ruin a good marriage.

[knip]

all i can do, on a personal level, is trust my gut, but only so long as i keep reading and trying to learn...otherwise the gut instinct has no base

[mnaz]

Let's look at this through the lens of what it was always purported be (this being the "war on terrorism"). This was always touted as something that was going to take 100 years. Doesn't it make sense that something that was to last 100 years would have ebbs and flows to it?

I fully realize this has the potential to open up 5724 other cans of worms, which wasn't my intent. If one looks at events with a snapshot perspective, one is bound to come to much different conclusions than one who looks at a huge slice of time. I think that is part of the problem with discussing these events.

I'm not sure the growing number of insurgents are home grown. If outside forces are influencing young men to become terrorists, is that home grown? If the growing insurgency consists mainly of Baathist Sunnis driving cars into Shi'ite mosques on the first day of Ramadhan, is that a US occupation issue or a Baathist attempt to cause civil war? If all western forces left, would civil war be expedited, drawn out, stopped? There are many, many ways to spin what is going on, to draw support for one's own agenda. I'm not saying that is what is going on here, but the more I read, the more I distrust people's motives.

The first part of your reply would make more sense if in fact the war in Iraq had anything meaningful to do with the "war on terror", which it doesn't. We know there were no ties to 9/11 and we know that there were no w.m.d., and even if there had been, potentially, weapons inspectors were already checking, before the war.

I have no huge problem with the "war on terror". But where is it?
Has the US beefed up its intelligence-gathering capabilities? Is the highly-touted and very expensive Homeland Security Dept. competent? Are we actually going after al Qaeda operatives.... "smoking them out of their caves"? These things, to me, constitute a (long-running) "war on terror". Invading a Muslim country which posed no serious threat and endlessly occupying it at great cost does not. If anything, it needlessly drains our resources and leaves us more vulnerable to other more legitimate potential threats.

As to the insurgency's makeup, point well-taken. I wish I had more information on this. But again, at this stage, why should the issue be framed in terms of "expediting" or "not expediting" civil war? It seems to me that major civil war already exists. We need a better justification to stay than this, IMO.

[stilltrucking]

I'm not sure the growing number of insurgents are home grown.

Knip all I know is what I hear on NPR and the BBC. What do you think happened to all the Iraqi army officers that were told to go home after we accomplished our mission in Iraq? From what I have heard they are leading the so-called insurgency. You distrust people’s motives? "In politics believe nothing until you hear the first denial. Bismarck."

on a unrelated note.

Production Cost and Environmental costs high
Even though costs have dropped, the oil sands process remains inefficient. Two tons of sand yield a single barrel -- 42 gallons -- of oil. On average, each barrel creates more greenhouse gas emissions than four cars do in a day.



The provincial government in Alberta says that Alberta's oil sands contain the biggest known reserve of oil in the world. An estimated 1.7 to 2.5 trillion barrels of oil are trapped in a complex mixture of sand, water and clay.

http://www.finfacts.com/irelandbusiness ... 3476.shtml

QUOTE
OVERESTIMATES OF ARAB OIL POWER are an important and harmful influence on policy toward the Middle East. The following myths, or outdated facts, support the world's misjudgment of the power of the Persian Gulf oil producers--especially Saudi Arabia, but also Iran, Iraq, and the Gulf states.
1) Most of the world's oil reserves are in the Middle East. Wrong. That is only true for "conventional" oil, the stuff that flows easily. When you count "unconventional" oil, Canada has larger reserves than Saudi Arabia. There is more unconventional oil than conventional oil, and most of it is in the western hemisphere--principally Canadian oil sands and Venezuelan heavy oil.

Technological developments over the last 10 years have reduced the cost of producing unconventional oil to below $15 a barrel, so that it is being produced profitably at the price at which oil has sold for almost all of the last 30 years. We'll see later why the much lower production cost of Gulf oil gives the Gulf countries less power than people think. Already a million barrels a day of unconventional oil is being produced, and it is just as good as the black goo pumped in the old-fashioned way.



http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/P ... 7mwkuu.asp

Z I say bring them home. Bring them home. Maybe when Iran has 900 nuclear weapons to match Israel's there will be a balance of terror in the Mideast. All this crap goes back to the colapse of the Ottoman Empire. So what would happen if the Caliphate was restored?

God save the young.

[knip]

i think if one looks at this not being a war on terrorism thing because the sales job used at the time was wmd, then one gets sucked into their game, which is taking focus away from the real issues...look at it from a campaign planning perspective: the bad guys are in afghanistan, if we go there and rout them, they're going to go somewhere else, so let's choke off all those routes out so we can catch them as they flee

that explains why i was there for 9 months stopping every boat in the persian gulf and indian ocean...that explains US-pak-india relations, that explains the war on iraq (regardless of what the US govt said at the time)...i think powell was a pawn, he certainly feels used these days

i could be dead wrong, of course, but i don't think so...i'm pretty certain governments don't always do things for the reasons they say they do them, though, and this is pretty universal, whether you're the US, france, or saudi arabia...so if they are habitual liars, what is the point of trying to find truth and reason in their lies and advertisements? why not try to find truth in what happened, is happening, and is going to happen?


as for your 'war on terror' questions, i don't think the US is particularly good at it...yet...personally, i don't think there's any choice, and i don't think it matters much who is in power....this thing will rage on regardless of who is in which country until the insanity runs its course....then we'll be into something else, i'm sure

[knip]

trucking, i liked your post, but i'm not sure who the myth site is directed at...frankly, anyone who didn't figure that stuff out a long time ago isn't paying much attention to the world around them

but there's a little slice the author misses...yes, alberta tarsands are swelling with the stuff...yes, offshore natural gas deposits are huge

none of those are yet developed enough to start to feed demand...the start up time is something like 5-10 years

a lot can go wrong in 5-10 years...especially when mandates only last 4