US AIRSTRIKE KILLS AT LEAST 18 CHILDREN

[knip]

not really...perhaps it was at the start, but i'm more concerned with the present and what happens to iraqis...folks can scoff at that if they like but i don't really care...i appreciate the civility with which you've approached the discussion, mnaz...my point is this is not currently an occupation...it is nation-building/peace enforcement at this point, regardless of whatever one perceives as the motive...and based on the nation-building/peace enforcement doctrine and experience, my gut tells me leaving would be disastrous for iraqis


folks may insert whatever cute remark they like in this spot concerning what is and what isn't disastrous for iraqis


but based on what i know about these types of oeprations...leaving would cause a hell of a lot more killing and slaughter than might be caused by collateral damage at this moment...and when this type of killing and slaughter occurs, it occurs faster than the world can react (ergo 800,000 fucking dead, dismembered, mutilated, raped in rwanda) i believe this in my gut, my soul, my heart...and no amoutn of snidery and agneda-shaping rhetoric (not pointed at you, mnaz) is likely to change my opinion on this

[mnaz]

not really...perhaps it was at the start, but i'm more concerned with the present and what happens to iraqis...folks can scoff at that if they like but i don't really care...i appreciate the civility with which you've approached the discussion, mnaz...my point is this is not currently an occupation...it is nation-building/peace enforcement at this point, regardless of whatever one perceives as the motive...and based on the nation-building/peace enforcement doctrine and experience, my gut tells me leaving would be disastrous for iraqis

but based on what i know about these types of oeprations...leaving would cause a hell of a lot more killing and slaughter than might be caused by collateral damage at this moment...and when this type of killing and slaughter occurs, it occurs faster than the world can react (ergo 800,000 fucking dead, dismembered, mutilated, raped in rwanda) i believe this in my gut, my soul, my heart...and no amoutn of snidery and agneda-shaping rhetoric (not pointed at you, mnaz) is likely to change my opinion on this

I respect your position, but I'm a little uncomfortable with, "i'm more concerned with the present and what happens to iraqis... folks can scoff at that all they like but i really don't care". Nobody here would 'scoff' at that. We only disagree on the means to that end.

A couple of comments:
I disagree that motive is irrelevant, if motive, or suspicions thereof, may in fact be a major contributing factor to the resistance. And when it comes to U.S. boots on foreign soil, perception is everything. If it looks and smells like an occupation, then it's an occupation.

I propose a phased drawdown, declared as part of an overall withdrawal plan, with assurances given that the U.S. will not seek a permanent military presence. This is not the "cold-turkey" withdrawal you seem to imply in your remarks. I think you are overstating the potential for disastrous carnage (with all due respect).

[knip]

i'm all for a phased withdrawl...just as soon as iraq is able to run its own security


i agree i may be a tad paranoid...i'm feeling kind of shellshocked...i may need to retire again for a while

[mnaz]

i'm all for a phased withdrawl...just as soon as iraq is able to run its own security

Therein lies the 'Catch-22'. We can't withdraw until Iraq can run its security, but if we don't withdraw, Iraq will not be able to run its security....

Or so it seems to me, the longer we pursue this thing...

Anyways..

[knip]

to run their security, they need trained forces

[jimboloco]

How about stopping the airstrikes for starters? How uncivil do you think it is to drop munitions flying at high speeds.

I am challenging you Knip, , challenging what I see as intransigence and lame excuses.

Is that uncivil? Surely dead little Iraqi girlies are most uncivilly bemoaned, excuse me.

So there is a point where you have got to be less insulated and more sensitive to the hell of this war; also less sensitive to bittersweet teatime conversation. I disagree completely with your premise that there will be mass casualties after our withdrawal, by the way. Americans may be the ones to suffer mass casualties because our healthcare system is too profit oriented in its structure to allow for budgeting and logistics to plan ahead and ensure adequate supplies of vaccines. As a Canadian, Knip, you may well indeed have the last laugh after all us Yankee Doodle dandies have croaked from mad bird flu, while you remain, up there, well inoculated from the horror of it all, if you get my drift.
Has nada to do with my perceptions of you as a good person and a creative individual, and so on.

If you look at the flow of monetary funds into the entire Iraq picture, a paltry percentage goes to the development of the Iraqi defense forces anyhow. Most of it goes into the capital-intensive American contractors who support the war.

Veterans for Peace, Inc. (VFP) is a non-profit 501(c)(3) educational and humanitarian organization dedicated to the abolishment of war.
STATEMENT OF PURPOSE

We, having dutifully served our nation, do hereby affirm our greater responsibility to serve the cause of world peace. To this end we will work, with others

(a) Toward increasing public awareness of the costs of war.
(b) To restrain our government from intervening, overtly and covertly, in the internal affairs of other nations
(c) To end the arms race and to reduce and eventually eliminate nuclear weapons
(d) To seek justice for veterans and victims of war
(e) To abolish war as an instrument of national policy.

To achieve these goals, members of Veterans For Peace pledge to use non-violent means and to maintain an organization that is both democratic and open with the understanding that all members are trusted to act in the best interests of the group for the larger purpose of world peace.

We urge all people who share this vision to join us.

There will be no easy exit and there will be violence regardless. The lies and manipulations which are apparant to anybody, unless they continue to delude themselves, got us in there. We continue to sacrifice young people for this experiment in invasion and OCCUPATION.

folks may insert whatever cute remark they like in this spot concerning what is and what isn't disastrous for iraqis
(insert:""To believe that you're going to go into this country, and that they're just going to go and embrace us and you have no plan — I mean I knew it was stupid and all I do is watch CNN and touch myself," said Lewis Black, on The Daily Show.)

Got to finish my brush clearing job out in the yard. I have to work tomorrow and am praying for this foul mood to lift.
I am thankful to all of you for this little forum. That's all, folks!

[knip]

There will be no easy exit and there will be violence regardless. The lies and manipulations which are apparant to anybody, unless they continue to delude themselves, got us in there. We continue to sacrifice young people for this experiment in invasion and OCCUPATION.

ya see, there's the rub...when you tell me my opinions are delusions, and that you are right and i am wrong, no matter what isay...well, see? that isn't conversation


you're challenging nothing

[whimsicaldeb]

I don't think your opinions are delusional ... in fact I agree with much of what you say; I just don't always take the time to write out that I do so.

i'm all for a phased withdrawl...just as soon as iraq is able to run its own security

I agree ...
The challenge now, is actually doing this. Making it so.

There is much distrust of Bush, his agenda's ~ and rightfully so. Distrust shared by us with the Iraqies - which strange as it sounds gives us much in common.

I understand needing to take a time out, and stepping away for awhile. I do that myself as needed. Before you go on your next R&R I want to say ...

thank you knip

[knip]

thanks whim

The challenge now, is actually doing this. Making it so.

i have less confidence in the american military's ability to do this part all that well

[mnaz]

Training Iraqi security and a phased drawdown aren't mutually exclusive. Why do we need the full complement of 160,000 troops to train Iraqi security?

Make it conditional. Declare a withdrawal over time, subject to.... Monitor events, and continue with Iraqi security efforts. Hell, I don't know. I'm thinking outside the box, here, pardon the cliche. Our current approach, it ain't working.

Actually it may be moot at this point. The US rushed the draft constitution, and the Sunnis got a raw deal. Last I heard, it passed, which will only inflame Sunni resistance. Perhaps it doesn't matter what we do.... we're pretty much screwed for quite a long while.

Oh, never mind....

I give up.

[mtmynd]

mnaz -

Oh, never mind....

I give up.

I think many of us 'early warners' are reaching that conclusion. It's time for those that can make a difference to finally speak out.

I see cracks in BushCo and hope I can simply sit on the sidelines now and observe karma in action. I'm 'bushed' from bitching about the whole frigging thing.

[knip]

It's time for those that can make a difference to finally speak out.

i'm trying...i'm trying

[hester_prynne]

What a depressing thread this has become.
Not to mention boring. (No offense to anyone).

I imagine this thread is alot like what it must be like when our illustrious senators and congressmen meet to discuss burning, life threatening issues of the day regarding the people they serve.
(I can only wonder if they've even finished the discussion around who the people they serve are...... )

Yes, I imagine our elected servants go on and on and on, in polite, overly (and nauseatingly), civilized, meaningless conversations, despite the fact that there's a fucking elephant in the next room that is glaringly bashing in and destroying everything around them.


Oh well, it's a job right?
A damn good paying one too.....
I yi yi.
H

[knip]

yawn


politics as an entertainment form?


now THAT is boring

[jimboloco]

ya see, there's the rub...when you tell me my opinions are delusions, and that you are right and i am wrong, no matter what isay...well, see? that isn't conversation
you're challenging nothing

delusions, yes i guess so,
after all this is a bittersweet teatime party.
excuse me, i am challenging your essential premise that this war is valid and that a continuing occupation is also valid. Am trying to reach you on a basic level, but you are too disinterested in sharing my grief or despair.



Scott Ritter was a US Marine, also a weapons inspector in Iraq during the 90's, avoved against this war. Some recent thoughts, which you might find to be of more value than my somewhat redundant flailings.

SCOTT RITTER: Well, first of all, the reason that we're there. They think that this was an accident, that this was a noble cause, that people like the president, like Bill Clinton before him, like their respective administrations, journalists like Judith Miller just honestly got it wrong. And I don't think – you know, here we are today in Iraq and it's a disaster. I don't think anybody's going to debate that statement. Some people say though, ‘We're working towards a continuation of this noble objective. We got rid of Saddam Hussein. That's a good thing. And now we're going to try to build on that good.’ I'm not going to debate whether or not getting rid of Saddam Hussein is a good thing or not. But, you know, if you embrace the notion that the ends justify the means, that's about as un-American a notion as you can possibly get into. We're talking about solving a problem. We have yet to define the problem. The problem isn't just what's happening in Iraq but it's the whole process that took place in the United States leading up to the war, this dishonest process of deliberately deceiving the American public. And it's not just George W. Bush. For eight years of the Clinton administration, that administration said the same things. The C.I.A. knew, since 1992, that significant aspects of the Iraqi weapons programs had been completely eliminated, but this was never about disarmament

AMY GOODMAN: How did they know this?

SCOTT RITTER: They knew it, (a) because of their own access to intelligence information and (b) because of the work of the weapons inspectors. In October of 1992, I personally confronted the C.I.A. on the reality that we had accounted for all of Iraq's ballistic missile programs. That same year they had an Iraqi defector who had laid out the totality of the Iraqi biological weapons program and had acknowledged that all of the weapons had been destroyed. The C.I.A. knew this. But, see, the policy wasn't disarmament. The policy was regime change. Disarmament was only useful in so far as it facilitated regime change. That's what people need to understand, that this was not about getting rid of weapons that threatened international peace and security. This has been about, since 1991, solving a domestic political embarrassment. That is the continued survival of Saddam Hussein, a man who in March 1990 was labeled as a true friend of the American people and then in October 1990 in a dramatic flip-flop was called the Middle East equivalent of Adolph Hitler.

JUAN GONZALES: You were involved for quite a long time with UNSCOM. At what point did you, as you were working for the United Nations, reach the conclusion that regime change really was the intent of the program that – well, the United States intent behind the program that you were involved with?

SCOTT RITTER: It wasn't a matter of reaching a conclusion. When I joined in September of 1991, that was already the stated policy of the United States government. I outlined this in the book. The fact that in April, 1991, the United States helps draft and then votes in favor of a Chapter 7 resolution 687 that creates the weapons inspections, call upon Iraq to disarm and in Paragraph 14 says if Iraq complies, economic sanctions will be lifted. This is the law. A few months later, the president, George Herbert Walker Bush and the Secretary of State say economic sanctions will never be lifted against Iraq, even if they comply with their obligation to disarm, until which time Saddam Hussein is removed from power. It's the stated policy of the United States government. What we weren't quite aware of is just to what extreme they would go in undermining the credibility and integrity of the United Nations inspection process to achieve this objective.

AMY GOODMAN: Something that has been repeated over and over again is that Saddam Hussein kicked out the U.N. weapons inspectors. Can you tell us what happened?

SCOTT RITTER: Well, there are several periods of time, but the most dramatic is the December 1998 period right before Bill Clinton got on national TV, talked about the threat of W.M.D. and said he is launching an air campaign, 72 hours of bombardment called Operation Desert Fox. No, Saddam did not kick the inspectors out. Actually, what was happening at that point in time is that the Iraqi government was complying with every single requirement set forth by the Security Counsel and the inspectors. They were cooperating with the inspectors, giving the inspectors access in accordance to something called the ‘modalities of sensitive site inspections.’

Public perception is that the Iraqis were confrontational and blocking the work of the inspectors. In 98% of the inspections, the Iraqis did everything we asked them to because it dealt with disarmament. However when we got into issues of sensitivity, such as coming close to presidential security installations, Iraqis raised a flag and said, “Time out. We got a C.I.A. out there that's trying to kill our president and we're not very happy about giving you access to the most sensitive installations and the most sensitive personalities in Iraq.” So we had these modalities, where we agreed that if we came to a site and the Iraqis called it ‘sensitive,’ we go in with four people.

In 1998, the inspection team went to a site. It was the Baath Party headquarters, like going to Republican Party headquarters or Democratic Party headquarters. The Iraqis said, “You can't come in – you can come in. Come on in.” The inspectors said, “The modalities no longer apply.” The Iraqis said, “If you don't agree to the modalities, we can't support letting you in,” and the Iraqis wouldn't allow the inspections to take place.

Bill Clinton said, “This proves the Iraqis are not cooperating,” and he ordered the inspectors out. But you know the United States government ordered the inspectors to withdraw from the modalities without conferring with the Security Council. It took Iraqis by surprise. Iraqis were saying, “We're playing by the rules, why aren’t you? If you're not going play by the rules, then it’s a game that we don't want to participate in.” Bill Clinton ordered the inspectors out. Saddam didn't kick them out.

JUAN GONZALEZ: Your point that this kind of deception occurred under both Democrats and Republicans would at least suggest that what's happened in Iraq is not just a question of a bunch – of a cabal of zealots in the White House right now that are conducting this – that are hijacking policy but that there are deeper interests involved in the United States and the kind of policy that we've had in Iraq. You get into some of that in the book. Could you talk about that a little bit?

SCOTT RITTER: Well, I don't want to sound – I'm not somebody who’s into conspiracy theories, and I'm not somebody who’s out there saying this is about global oil. The tragedy of Iraq is that it’s about domestic American politics. This is a president, George Herbert Walker Bush, who in 1990, traps himself rhetorically by linking Saddam Hussein to Adolph Hitler. Once you do that, once you speak of a Nuremburg-like retribution, you can't negotiate your way out of that problem. Now it's either deliver Saddam Hussein's head on a platter or you failed. He tried to during the Gulf War. I was part of a team that was targeting Saddam. We didn't succeed.

Now the C.I.A. says, “Don't worry, Saddam will be gone in six months. All you have to do is contain him, put these sanctions in place and keep him bottled up and he'll collapse.” Six months later Saddam Hussein is still there. His continued survival became a political embarrassment that had to be dealt with.

This was inherited by Bill Clinton. The irony is that Bill Clinton – and I'm very critical of Bill Clinton, but you know, in the period between his election in 1992 and his being sworn in, his administration reached out to the Iraqis in saying, “Look, this is a ridiculous policy, let's figure out how we can get sanctions lifted and get you back into the family of nations.” But when politicians in Congress, both Democrat and Republican, found out about this, they said, “You can't do this. We have told our constituents this man is Hitler, and we can't negotiate with the devil.”

We were trapped by this policy. And this cabal we speak of, the neoconservatives, they may not have originated this policy but they exploited eight years of Clinton administration's ineffective policy of dealing with Saddam. Saddam's survival for eight years empowered the neoconservatives to use regime change as a rallying cry for the Republican Party. [break]
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl? ... /21/144258

and of course you can sound off as well, it is that your conclusions are based upon a sincere wish that it ain't all that bad afterall, i guess, intransigence, yet we shall all see how this is played out. I don't think that you feel deeply enough. I don't think that you understand the level of manipulation and deceipt, not the ramifications for us as Americans.

Most of all, as you conntinue to justify the continued occupation, stating it is not an occupation, what is that? There is nowhere to go with this.

Have a cup of tea.

Politics as entertainment, yes the nomination of whatz her face for the supreme court, all of it most entertaining and a convenient distraction for the prez.

Ah that tea is a bit bitter, yet somehow salubrious.

, I imagine our elected servants go on and on and on, in polite, overly (and nauseatingly), civilized, meaningless conversations, despite the fact that there's a fucking elephant in the next room that is glaringly bashing in and destroying everything around them.

an elephant in the next room, a tea party
bittersweet fruits at best