I’ve been thinking about an answer for such a question for more than a year now. Since May 2005, when Ibrahim al-Jafari, leader of the Dawa party, was seated as the first “elected” Prime Minister in Iraq after the invasion in 2003. If you go back to the archives, you will find that it is then when the civil war started in Iraq.
Jafari permitted the criminal militias in Iraq to merge into the security forces, mainly to disguise in Iraqi police uniforms. Without going into his intentions or who was behind convincing or forcing him to issue it, the decision was the turnaround in Iraq’s future.
What should be done now?
Well, first lets see what is going on now: More than a 100 Iraqis get killed everyday. The cause of their death mainly is a direct shot in the head or the chest. Hundreds of Iraqis are being kidnapped weekly; men in black and men in police uniforms break into houses and arrest people. No one knows who they are. They just take their victims and disappear. The police or Iraqi army stand just a few blocks away from the kidnapping scene, either to point out the houses they “unknown” attackers should break into, or to basically do nothing but watch the whole play.
Also, Iraq lacks the basic needs of normal life: More than 600,000 Iraqis have died since 2003,most of whom were killed by violent actions; in more than half of the country there is no electricity, no water, no medicines in hospitals and clinics, no educational system; professors left Iraq; the youth fled and are fleeing the country fearing for their life; parents don’t send their children to schools fearing kidnappings and retaliatory killings; Iraqis wait for each other to make a mistake to have an excuse to kill each other; they started to hate each other and cant even accept living with each other; more than 9000 Iraqis have been displaced weekly since February, when a revered Shiite mosque was bombed down in Samarra north of Baghdad; people are in house-arrest because if they left their houses they could be killed; more than 1.5 million Iraqis are sheltering in neighboring countries plus 4 million already left during the 1990s; Iraq now is a three-province Kurdish semi-state, four-province Sunni semi-state, and a nine-province Shiite semi-state and a sectarian-ravaged Baghdad; no reconstruction is going in Iraq now whatsoever [except for Kurdistan, which is reconstructing since 1991!]; a five-year-old now knows if he/she is a Sunni or a Shiite, a Kurd or Arab and a Muslim or a Christian and knows that if they are one, they should hate all the others; the U.S. forces and Iraqi government always announced arresting “terrorists” but what happened to those who were arrested afterwards? No one knows. Any justice applied? I have no idea!
The government is doing nothing but fuel the violence!
We have given the Iraqi politicians more than enough time to resolve the problem, if they wanted to, but they’ve failed. And the current politicians leading the government will always fail. We have given each political groups enough power to Vito and decision made by others, which has made it impossible for any decision to be made AT ALL. Sine this government was seated earlier this year, have you ever heard of an Iraqi government’s decision that was made and the Iraqis actually benefited from? How could they decide if the Shiites Vito any Sunni proposal and vise versa? How could they when the Kurds cannot accept any Arab decision? We have given everyone enough power to destroy the country, and actually not allowing any repairs to be made. All this came under the umbrella of “Democracy.”
The Iraqis have been asking the government to rid the country off the militias that are killing Iraqis everywhere. Just when Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki tiptoed in that way and actually started to press the militias to stop the killings, under the U.S. pressure that he would be replaced if not, Bush calls Maliki and tells him that the U.S. has no deadline for quelling the violence!!!! The next day, Maliki had a press conference in which he announced that he would slow down on pressing militias to stop killing and might deal with the issue “end of this year or early next year.” Also, he postponed to “further notice” the meeting of Iraq prominent figures, tribal leaders, politicians, religious leaders and other people who were supposed to sit down and have a treaty to prevent and Iraqi bloodshed to show the Iraqis a model they should follow.
With all of this happening, I still hear people stupidly calling Ahmed Chalabi a “thief” and Iyad Allawi a “Baathist.” Now, all the Iraqi politicians were breastfed by angels, but those two?
Now, what should be done?
The answer is:
TAKE Abdul Aziz al-Hakim [leader of the Supreme Council for the Islamic revolution in Iraq], his son, Ammar, Hadi al-Amiri [leader of Badr troops], Muqtada al-Sadr[you know him], Ibrahim al-Jafari [leader of Dawa party] Nouri al-Maliki [PM], Muwaffaq al-Rubaie [he hold the title National security Advisor, but in fact he is no one] Masoud Barzani[leader of the Kurdish Kurdistan Democratic Party], Harith al-Dhari [leader of the Muslim Scholars Association, a Sunni group that has very suspicious links to the insurgents], his son, Muthanna Harith al-Dhari, Khalaf al-Elayan[leader of the National Dialogue Council, a Sunni group], Adnan al-Dulaimi [leader of the Iraqi Accordance Front, the biggest Sunni group in the parliament] and put them all in house arrest for further notice.
Those people I mentioned above are the reason why Iraq is the way it is now. They are the reason why the civil war started in Iraq. They are the ones that should be tried with Saddam Hussein for crimes against the Iraqis!
THEN, very carefully select ONE man to be the leader of Iraq for one year ONLY. And very carefully select the elite of the Iraqi educated people to head the ministries during that year. With no mention of sectarian backgrounds at all.
THEN, announce that this is the new government, like it or not! Because that is the way Iraqis understand for now.
THEN, sit with Iraq’s tribal leaders. Iraq is a tribal community. Everyone undermined this fact for a long time. All tribal leaders should sit on one table with the government and be told that “here is the money you are after. Take it and protect your areas against violence. Any violence.” Iraq will be stabilized when its tribal leaders were given enough money [because they are greedy] and if they were convinced that they are important and have a big role to play!
THEN, bring those “terrorists” who wee arrested in the past three years and execute them publicly in al-Tahreer square in central Baghdad. This way, Iraqis will see that fate of those who dare to insult the Iraqi blood and dare to kill and commit crimes of Iraq’s soil.
THEN, start reconstructing the country, first thing should be infrastructure, something that Iraqis could see and feel the progress with.
THEN, which is a year later; remember those we put in house arrest? Execute them in public. They are responsible for more than 600,000 Iraqi deaths. At least let the Iraqis witness justice in some of the country’s leaders, who spent decades planning its destruction.
THEN, tell the Iraqis that there will be elections to choose a new government. I bet they will choose the same government that led them through the last year!
Feeh!
At 11:39 PM, 
At 12:17 AM,
Thanks 24. full agreement on including the tribes, even paying them off. It seems like they'll get their hands on $$ thru corruption anyway, or money will be wasted on security or re-reconstruction if they are not part of the process. So, letting them run some projects might work out. Then again, they might just use the money to buy more arms for their tribe.
For the house cleaning, it seems a little unlikely that the US will go "Falluja" on the gov't at this point- that requires flushing the entire power structure which would be sure to get violent with Badr & Mehdi, plus the Iraqi army's loyalties would rupture. Then, it involves setting up an openly "puppet" regime, complete with heavy-handed enforcement. I guess I just assume the US would have to lead in this role, because there's no other group that could try it. Maybe this would unite Iraqis in opposing us, but otherwise I don't think either of our countries could tolerate it?
As a less drastic measure, the leaders you name could put a deadline on themselves. Something like: "Give us your support for six more months and if things don't start improving we'll step aside". If this were coupled with local support, ie from the neighborhood mosques and tribes, would it have a chance?
Your solution is grim, and I’m not quite sure I’d do it like that, but … let’s face it … your facts are correct. This sectarianism and division in Iraqi society is what is tearing the country apart. Personally I lay this at the feet of the US, which began the whole story by classing Iraqis by sect and which rammed through the useless political setup which gives each group veto power. But whatever.
The way forward is dialogue and reconciliation between the parties. A multilateral solution.
A single strongman?
Why not just let Hussein go, in that case? He’d know what to do. Let’s face the facts – whoever is put in that position will have to resort, at this stage, to the methods of Saddam Hussein to get the country under control again, and that will not be a pretty sight. Although it is indicative of the depths of despair of Iraqis that there is support for this idea, and not just from you.
The tribes are a very good place to start.
Recognition that resistance to foreign invasion is legitimate and a duty is a second principle that should be adopted.
Those that set bombs specifically aimed at killing innocent Iraqis? I agree that a sound scourging followed by swift public hanging is a good option.
The problem with your plan is – who would pick the strongman?
The only power able to do so right now is the US, and wallah, my friend, perhaps you should do some research on previous US-supported strongmen – like Somoza, Duvalier, the Shah of Iran, Pinochet, Hussein, Suharto, Diem – to see just what sort of people they were. I do not wish them upon my worst enemy.
The Iraqi people are the key, and I don’t know if this is even possible, but a systematic rebuilding of ties between you all must begin. Starting with neighbours, then streets, then neighbourhoods. Somehow - and this is late in the day, I know – a solution must be found that can solve the problems from the ground up. The problem is of course, that outsiders that are using the rifts in Iraqi society to their advantage don’t want a united Iraq to stand against foreign influence.
I fear greatly that the outside powers like Iran and the US that play political football with the heads of Iraqis are not going to give up their prize so easily.
At 7:00 AM, 
24 Steps to Liberty
RhusLancia,
my solution will speed violence, but will not increase it. i know how it works in iraq, first people will kill each other in the street, which they are doing anyway. but then they will realize that those who are committing crimes are being hanged in a public place in bagdhad and every big city in the country. that is enough to stop them. that is how they behaved well in the last 7000 years!
Bruno,
I am not going to discuss what you offered of bringing Hussein back because i only have time to reason with people, not to argue!
ONE man is the only solution for iraq's mess now. and this man is already there. i dont want to name people, but we've seen one man handling the situation well some time in the last three years. according to numbers, his was the golden age.
At 7:07 AM, Treasure of Baghdad
Sorry, I had to re-post it. There were some spelling mistakes...
"TAKE Abdul Aziz al-Hakim [leader of the Supreme Council for the Islamic revolution in Iraq], his son, Ammar, Hadi al-Amiri [leader .... "
Althought it won't happen, but YES YES YES and YES!!
"THEN, bring those “terrorists” who wee arrested in the past three years and execute them publicly in al-Tahreer square in central Baghdad."
Another YES!
Good Job! But I think this is far from going to happen. I know you are suggesting it and I know you are speaking what is in the minds of the people but this government and parliament is backed up by the US.
Do you remember when were together covering the announcement of the government in the parliament? Do you remember how Khalilzad came hand-in-hand with Adnan al-Dulaimi?
Do you remember the picture of Hakim shaking hands with Bush in the White House?
[24] "I am not going to discuss what you offered of bringing Hussein back because i only have time to reason with people, not to argue!"
LOL!
Agreed.
My "offer" is not really a serious suggestion, but merely to put the situation in context.
I honestly and frankly do not see any one man (Hussein included) being able to quell the violence through unilateral measures except for through the measures of Hussein circa 1991.
Of course that means major bloodshed, something which I think everybody wants to avoid.
A solution worked out from the inclusion and compromise of all parties is the only way. I really believe this.
At 8:20 AM, 24 Steps to Liberty
Bruno,
Parties will not compromise. They will NEVER compromise because their leaders left Iraq 40 years ago with hearts full of hatred against each other and against Iraqis. NOW they came back with that hatred, even more, and are taking revenge.
YES, we need a solution like the one Saddam Hussein had in 1991! Do we have any other choice?
Why do you sound shocked by what I said? Because the solution involves killing Iraqis in a brutal way? Well, what is going in Iraq now? Is it killing them in a nice way, and that is what we only permit? And what do you think happened to those who killed Americans in the past? They are rotten bodies in Guantanamo. Iraqi life is precious too, you know!
We need the 1991 crackdown on insurgents and militias and everyone allowed killing my people. It will happen sooner or later!
At 10:33 AM,
Okay fellas, here's my plan.
First, let's retire this polite fiction of the "Iraqi." There are no Iraqis. The land between and along the Tigris and Euphrates belong to TRIBES.
1. Bulldoze Baghdad completely.
2. Let the land return to its original tribal divisions.
3. There will be two large, loose areas, Kurdistan and a Sunni and Shia Arabostan, but within each area let the tribes vie for dominance.
4. If any of the tribes want oil, they'll have to fight for it, just like the old days.
5. And, finally, let us -- the international community -- just forget about the people along the Tigris and Euphrates. They offer nothing to contemporary civilization. They've been a pain in the ass for its neighbors and others for too long already.
How's that?
I'll post some other plans later. This is just a start.
*
well, boys will be boys. i can't believe you all agree w/the public excecution thing, but maybe i'm just a wimp.
yes i agree one person at the helm is a good idea.
i think one of the most important aspects of anu choices, for them to be successful, is for them to come from iraqis themselves.
We have given each political groups enough power to Vito and decision made by others, which has made it impossible for any decision to be made AT ALL
really? w/independence? were iraqis ever given the option of agreeing to the original constitution of their choice? or were they arguing about a constitution imposed and pressured on them? i wonder what might have happened had the stipulaton to create autonomous regions not been an option. if the overiding feature was to agree to a strong national government. if iraqis had to get along instead of fighting over who got the most?
the tribes of course is an excellent idea. a government working w/tribal leaders. the spoils ofthe country not bound by international requirements to privatize the resources. there would be enough for everyone.
face it. having a huge backing like an invader supporting one or more parties to the exclusion of othrs will make it impossible to have any kind of equality.
are iraqis willing and able to work out anything amoungst themselves w/out these 2 elephants, the oil requirements, the divisions jeff is creaming for? have they ever had the options?
could the us be an asset to iraqis without imposing these requirements thru their ambassador? how much influence do americans have at this meeting of the minds? can you ever believe they will have the interests of oil off the table? what about making sure iraq remains one strong central powerful country in the heart of the ME? what about the new improved ME w/several less powerful states?
as long as some people are operating in the best interest of america, and not iraq, you will alway ALWAYS have the best and the brightest w/the best intentions of iraq pitted against those who seek fortune and solution thru bending to the will of the empire.
there are solutions that are best for america and iraq. there are no solutions best for iraq and the oil conglomerate/global elite.
iraq needs to make a choice. who do you align with. the best of america, or the worst, because they don't exist together.
Hey there 24!
I don’t agree on the execution part. But totally agree on that ALL current Iraqis in government should be put in prison and then be sent to the ICC with Saddam, Bush, Blair and their teams to get the punishment and rot in prison for life.
As we have been saying now for over a year, there are sadly no good solutions left in Iraq only less bad.
sorry nadia, i hadn't seen your question earlier.
america as it is supposed to be, the one our founding fathers spoke of doesn't exist today.
eisenhower spoke of beware of the military industrial complex. the same people running our government are also emmersed in defense contracting. they make billions from wars, therefore it is in their intterest, and not the interest of americans that our foriegn policies are formed and implemented.
america would have to go thru huge reformations to get these powers that be, the corporate interest out of power. until then, this is who is controlling iraq, this is who iraq deals with. not the america of our dreams that supports free people.
nadia this is what i mean by the best of america
What American federalists feared most, in fact, was that dissolution of the existing, weak, national union would be followed by the creation of just such a system of regional confederacies (most scenarios foresaw a Southern, a Mid-Atlantic and a New England bloc of states.) They glumly predicted that these blocs would end up perpetually at war with each other -- like the rival alliances of petty city states in ancient Greece or Renaissance Italy. Even worse, they would be ripe for the plucking by imperial powers bent on reestablishing their dominion in the New World. As Alexander Hamilton put it in Federalist No. 6:
"A man must be far gone in Utopian speculations who can seriously doubt that, if these States should either be wholly disunited, or only united in partial confederacies, the subdivisions into which they might be thrown would have frequent and violent contests with each other. . . To look for a continuation of harmony between a number of independent, unconnected sovereignties is the same neighborhood, would be to disregard the uniform course of human events, and to set at defiance the accumulated experience of the ages."
one more thing nadia (sorry everyone)
i am not very fluent in this stuff but things started going seriously downhill when coporations gained 'personhood' (constitutional ammendment)giving corporations the same legal rights as people. if you google corporate personhood, you can read up on it.
Annie,
Why do I get the feeling that you've never lived in or even visited a country outside the US? I've lived in Europe twice and also in Asia and if you had done the same you would realize what a great country the US is.
Every culture is different, of course, and has its good and bad aspects, but I've found that anti-American citizens like you usually have never been anywhere else and view your own country through very murky glasses indeed.
In the world the rest of us live in -- and not your fantasy universe -- the United States of America is a great place to live, raise our children, reach for our dreams, whether that be working on a cure for cancer (as one of my college friends is doing as we speak), publishing novels (as several friends have done), working for NASA (like one of my cousins), or someone like my sister who is now vice-president for a major Fortune 500 company although she grew up in a small Midwestern town. We love our country because it has provided so much for us.
Well? Have you ever lived outside the US? Have you lived in any other countries to allow you to really compare one culture from another?
*
jefferey, that is an interesting way to critic my opinion.
i love my country, so much so it pains me what's happened to it. most recently the gutting of habeas corpus.
i have traveled for several months in various countries thruout the years. when my son was little every year we traveled for 2 months. i have traveled extensively in america also. i have never traveled to , russia, africa, the middle east or several countries in south america. but i am still young and will get there. one of the most radical countries i traveled in was china in '81.
i will be traveling overseas in again in december. i really liked the royal chitwan, tikal, and kyoto.
anti-American citizens like you
actually jeffery, it is i who am a true american, not you.
Annie,
You need to take a walk with me through Shanghai today. Pudong will blow your mind and all your ideas of a "radical" China. Today the Chinese have returned to their true passion, capitalism and making money to give their children a better life. It's fantastic to see a revitalized China. You pull out the Little Red Book today and you'll get laughed at.
*
i would love to go to Shanghai today, my friend just got back from a shoot there said it was fabulous. it was very dire when i was there, very. still a fascinating time to see china. there were literally no older people i saw that didn't show physical signs of the cultural revolution. they were unaccustomed to seeing foriegners in '81. the contrast to hong kong was startling. i am a capitalist btw.
anyway, this is getting very OT.
Annie,
Okay, sounds good. Listen, there's even a Starbuck's in the middle of Shanghai. The latte is on me.
The last time I was in Shanghai I stayed in Nanshi, the old quarter of the city, and in the morning I would have "doujiang" (steamed soy milk with sugar in the bottom) and "youtiao" (long twisted fried bread, which you may recall, being the favorite breakfast food there).
*
24 Steps,
I am in no position to judge what you have written here, but I understand your desire that people be held accountable for the terrible tragedies that Iraqis have suffered. I would like to see that as well, starting with Bush and his administration (however, for them I would propose impeachment and possible trial for crimes against humanity)!
What you said about the tribal leaders was interesting. I have heard many times that the structure of Iraqi society is very much based on tribal affiliation. I am wondering if Iraq would be in better shape today if all the tribal leaders had been brought together to form a Parliment or Congress. These leaders already have the respect of the members of their tribes. They must all be very practiced politicians from years of dealing with the issues within their tribes. Could it be that they would be better able to strike bargains and compromises with each other than the current elected "representatives" of the Iraqi people? It just seems like such a fundamental mistake for the U.S. to have attempted to impose a Western style government on Iraq. It is obviously not working and it is not benefiting the Iraqi people!
At 11:28 PM,
"i am not very fluent in this stuff but things started going seriously downhill when coporations gained 'personhood' (constitutional ammendment)giving corporations the same legal rights as people."
oh my god. what a moron...annie, please brush up on your corporate law before making such naive, uneducated comments about the role of corporations in the world.
And stop saying you "love America." If you cared about this country, you would not implicitly support the deaths of American soldiers, threats posed by terrorism, the former Saddam regime, the tyrannies in Iran and Syria that have threatened our country repeatedly.
Again, you are doing everything within your control (albeit you are way too insignificant to actually change anything) to bring chaos and anarchy to Iraq, and insecurity to the US. You are a complete wash.
la di da.. kryptomania... AGAIN. there are soo many bizarro claims in your speel i will narrow it down to responding to justa couple..
If you cared about this country, you would not implicitly support...... the tyrannies in Iran and Syria that have threatened our country repeatedly.
please expain yourself w/actual quotes .
brush up on your corporate law before making such naive, uneducated comments about the role of corporations in the world.
i believe you mean comment., that being, i presume the downhill comment. unless you are contesting
A.i'm not very fluent in this stuff
B.corporations gained 'personhood' (constitutional ammendment) giving corporations the same legal rights as people.
yawn, didn't we request a replacement?
linclon.. calling lincoln..
At 12:59 AM,
active duty troops in Iraq shows a huge disconnect between the Commander in Chief and his troops in battle.
An overwhelming majority, 72% of American troops serving in Iraq think the U.S. should exit the country within the year. Among Reserves 90% favor withdrawal compared to 83% of the National Guard, 70% of the Army, and 58% of the Marines. Moreover, about three-quarters of National Guard and Reserve units favor withdrawal within 6 months.
[24] “They will NEVER compromise because their leaders left Iraq 40 years ago with hearts full of hatred against each other and against Iraqis. NOW they came back with that hatred, even more, and are taking revenge.”
Look, that’s true. What is also obvious is that as long as the Iraqi exiles and the US are engaged in their merry dance of trying to covertly stab each other in the back while currying favour with each other … the situation will never stabilise. I believe that a lot of these sectarian parties benefit greatly from the violence, which forces people to flock to them for protection.
My personal belief is that Iraqis must be allowed to rebuild their society from the ground up, and to hell with top-down solutions like these exile parties. Street by street, neighbourhood by neighbourhood, city by city.
Perhaps I’m naïve in believing that this approach would work, but I believe that Iraqis have had a taste of hell and that all except the maddest will be willing to reconcile, particularly if they have lived next to each other for a hundred years without these troubles.
[24] “YES, we need a solution like the one Saddam Hussein had in 1991! Do we have any other choice?”
Alright.
Who would be THE man to crack down?
What if the Americans decide SCIRI, Hakim and the Badr Brigade are their golden boys? Heck, they’ve been working together for long enough already. Iraq will be turned into a sea of corpses. And then … when all the opposition is finished off, what will happen is that SCIRI will turn on the Americans, and another decade of war will ensue.
At the moment I read the fight in Iraq primarily as a fight between nationalist Iraqis and the US and as a fight between sectarian factions, one side of which has been armed and trained by the US. If the nationalists are beaten, the fight will turn into a proxy struggle between Iran and the US … fought on Iraqi soil using Iraqis as cannon fodder.
I’m sorry, but I can’t even contemplate such a disaster.
[24] “We need the 1991 crackdown on insurgents and militias and everyone allowed killing my people. It will happen sooner or later!”
Be careful what you wish for.
The people with the POWER to implement such a measure will put THEIR interests before the interests of the Iraqi people. In fact, if certain powerful foreign entities had taken the interests of the Iraqi people into account in the first place, we wouldn’t be staring at such a mess right now. The crackdown you hope for might well be the prelude to the perpetual slavery of the Iraqi people – those that survive.
Don’t misunderstand me – I fully understand WHY your despair has driven you to endorsing this solution.
All I’m saying is, things probably will not work out as you hope they will.
On Jeffrey -
I love the way Jeffrey managed to (as usual) twist the thread onto the really important topics – that is, himself. 24 talking about the future of Iraq? Good thing J is here to remind us that latte in Shanghai is where the action is at. Wassa matter jeff, did all the rats finally desert your sinking ship of a blog? Have you nobody else to pester?
On Kryptonite –
At 5:41 AM, Original_Jeff
Observations:
Prior to 2003, Iraq had a ruling minority that used brutality and mass-murder to retain its power.
Iraq now has a fractured coalition that is a majority that is ruling by brutality and mass murder.
The former regime and its co-conspirators did not accept their removal from power and began attacking the multinational forces and the government.
Instead of using the power of the government in a fair and balanced manner to respond, the new-majority formed lawless militias. These militias began violence on an unprecedented scale. The militias kill mostly innocents but get some of the deserving along the way.
The question is this:
- Would the Sunnis and former regime have accepted a Shiite-led government that was fair, honest, and truly liberal-democratic?
- It seems like Ayad Allawi was really the better choice for Iraq than what the Iraqi people chose. He seemed to have understood that you had to be fair to everyone in order for this country to work.
- It is with supreme irony that this all seems to be about OIL. Americans don't want to steal the oil; we just want to make sure it is not controlled by terrorists. Iraqis, on the other hand, really do want to steal the oil!
- The people of the USA do not have the stomach to kill all the current leaders and start over. There is no evidence that starting over would actually work any better than the first time.
- I do believe that Iraq's oil money should be evenly divided among all Iraqi citizens. In fact, that may be just the thing to do. The USA should redirect all oil money to the people of Iraq. It should hire three international accounting firms to establish bank accounts--with electronic deposit of funds--for all Iraqi citizens. The oil would be sold. 5% would be given the government and 95% would be given to the Iraqi people.
- Then the Iraqi government would have to go out and collect property taxes, sales taxes, and service fees just like any other government. It is amazing how this will change the dynamic. No longer will people think the "government has all the money" because it won't! Sure makes government a lot less like stealing and corruption. Maybe you'd actually have to be a decent government.
There are other thoughts and solutions proposed on this web page.
http://fallbackbelmont.blogspot.com/2006/10/showing-his-colors.html
Bruno,
Yesterday's Iraqi Bloggers Central post asks:
Who are the Most Beautiful Women in the Middle East?
The entry contains many, many HOT females.
WARNING: A stiffness may arise in one's midsection from viewing these photographs.
*
Here's an article on the new CUNY Graduate School of Journalism, where Zeyad (and I think 24) is studying right now. It would be nice if they wrote about their experiences about living in the US and going to university here.
*
BT's friend Jackie Spinner and her sister Jenny, an assistant professor at St. Joseph's University in Philly, where BT now studies, were instrumental in getting him into the States. Here's an interview with them when they were doing promo for their book.
I wonder if BT has kept in touch with them.
*
At 9:45 AM, 24 Steps to Liberty
Jeffrey,
I don’t know why you have to mention everyone's place in your comments! Why do you want to know if BT has kept in touch with the Spinners? It’s so irrelevant!
And for the record, I am not in NY. And stop looking for me and all of us. That doesn’t change the fact that we are now in the States and are still pissing you off!
Feeh
24,
Oh yeah, that F-1 visa in your pocket is temporary. Soon enough you'll be going back to Dear Old Arabo-Iraq. Enjoy your time right now living with the good people of the United States, who have come from every corner of the world to live and prosper together under the rule of law and within a 225-year-old representative democracy.
Let's hope you get your wish and Saddam is reinstated as Dictator of Iraqi-Arabostan (no, Kurds won't be participating this time in another season of Arab Tribal Killing Time).
Heh heh.
*
24, thank you for asking such an important question and sharing your (sometimes quite daring) views w/us. quite a worthy topic for a post, sorry for my drifting OT earlier
OJ,
Americans don't want to steal the oil; we just want to make sure it is not controlled by terrorists. Iraqis, on the other hand, really do want to steal the oil!
you can't steal what already belongs to you. if americans 'just' wanted to 'make sure' it was not controlled by terrorists there are far better ways than controlling it thru contracts w/companies affiliated w/those in the US administration.
The USA should redirect all oil money to the people of Iraq. It should hire three international accounting firms to establish bank accounts--with electronic deposit of funds--for all Iraqi citizens.
the US should direct? the US should get their bloody paws off the oil. it is not the US who should be making any decisions about iraq's resources. you discuss iraqis as tho they are children.
The oil would be sold.
incredible! ya think?
5% would be given the government and 95% would be given to the Iraqi people.
and what about getting the oil out of the ground? what about the $$$ difference between the oil in the ground and the final amount distributed by the overlording empire..don't you mean 95% of the remaining 5% thats leftover after the iraqi slaves pay off the oil conglomerates for 'producing' the operation and the debt incurred upfront from said 'production'.
refresh your memory
jeffery, 24 has written a valuable post that we could be discussing? this is you, earlier...
I'll post some other plans later. This is just a start.
are these attacks on 24 and ultimate efforts at exposing their privacy and discussing their personal situations your way of saying you have nothing to add to the conversation? do you not think "what should be done" is a worthy topic? everyone else seems to be discussing it lately in and outside the blogisphere, whay can't we here. you are acting like the textbook example of a TROLL. you are rude and off topic. have some respect. our host ask ask you to stay OT. you should put up or shut up.
Annie,
First of all, where the Iraqi bloggers are currently living IS important. BT, a practicing Muslim, is attending a Jesuit/Catholic university. He has been welcomed, I am sure, to St. Joseph's and considered just another student.
Zeyad is going to classes on 40th St. in Manhattan, just north of where the Twin Towers were brought down by Muslim Arab fanatics. Both of them go to classes without the fear of reprisals. Why? We have a long tradition of tolerance. But how about a Jesuit in the Middle East with a Bible? In SA, for example, the border security will REMOVE the Bible from his suitcase. No Bibles are allowed inside the KSA.
Iraq has been a bloody mess for at least the last 100 years. Today is just another chapter. And it's all Iraqi-on-Iraqi tribal bloodletting. It's nothing new, if you've taken even the most cursory look at Iraqi history.
Myself, after killing Uday and Qusay, I would have pulled Saddam out of his spiderhole, snapped a few humiliating photos for kicks, and then put a bullet through his head. The NEXT DAY I would have pulled all Coalition Forces out of Iraq and let the Iraqis figure out their own future by themselves. I think some of the Iraqi bloggers would have been fine with this, judging by their recent calls for a return to the Good Old Days under the Tyrant Saddam.
*
At 11:53 AM, 24 Steps to Liberty
Jefferey,
I really don’t like to argue with you, because as I always said, I only REASON with people. But I have to say something here:
My F-1 visa will expire in two years. I intend to go back to Iraq, my country, which taught the world how to use pens and write. I don’t think I'd want to stay more than that because this lovely and hospitable country, the United States, has its own people that care so much and try to always help it. Iraq on the other hand, because of the situation it is living and will be living in for a while, has very few people who are willing to stay inside and try to help and I am one of them. Not that it is any of you business, but believe me I will only come to the States in the future to meet my good friends and people, who showed me nothing but hospitality and were nothing but nice and friendly to me. You should be proud of your country, because I am proud to have the chance to live in it for a while and make friends with your countrymen and women. Don’t spill it by irrelevant comments and talk-off-your-ass sentences.
But, again, you are free to comment any time and in any way you like because this is one gift the Americans gave me more than three years ago: Freedom of Speech.
so in other words the future plans for iraq you were going to share w/us are what you would of done 3 years ago and that you think our host presence in this country is somehow relevant to those plans.
yeah, i get it jeffrey. i think i will be bypassing further opportunities to respond to your gibberish.
24,
That was a very good reply. Listen, I hope that Arabs in Iraq stop killing each other and I hope that when you return you are able to live a successful and prosperous life.
Of all the Iraqi bloggers, only the ITM brothers have consistently argued that Iraqis are capable of building a civil society where tribalism doesn't dominate and where representative democracy can take hold. After blogging about Iraq for almost three years now, I'm not sure if they are right. There is a significant portion of Arabs along the Tigris and Euphrates who obviously take great pleasure -- every day -- in killing other Iraqis who happen to belong to a different tribe or sect.
I was willing to believe the ITM brothers when they said that these people were a minority that would eventually be defeated. Today, I don't know. I tend to agree more with you and Zeyad and BT, who seem to think the Iraqi mentality will never accept democracy and that only the old tribal strong-man leader is possible for the people living along those ancient rivers.
This is, I believe, an essential question for Iraqis and Iraqi-watchers.
What do you think?
*
At 12:59 PM, 24 Steps to Liberty
Jeffrey,
I don’t know about what the ITM guys think and don’t wish to spend precious minutes of my time discussing their dreamy views.
I am a journalist and I am more about the facts than dreams!
I never said Iraqis will never learn or accept democracy. They will, but not now because it takes time to learn. The learning process is not digitalized yet! By the way, it took your grandfathers ages to stop killing each other and settle down in one United States of America.
And Iraqis will invent and choose their own style of democracy, not the western one. What makes you sure that your democracy is the best for the world? Have you tried other kinds of democracy? Have you tried the Iraqi democracy that existed in the 1950s and 1960s? How can you, and your kind of people, be so confident that the American style of democracy is the only one that would work the best for people?
24,
To tell the truth, I had no idea if ANY kind of democracy would work with Iraqis. I admit that I was heartened by the huge turnouts in the multiple votes over the last couple years. But it seems that the Sunni Baathists, aided by foreign terrorists, and Shias such as Muqty and the roving Shia death-squads are locked in a nasty, terminal turf-war.
Listen, I do not believe in ONE style of democracy for all countries. I don't even believe in democracy for all countries. But when your form of governance -- whatever it is -- threatens and then kills its neighbors (Iran, Kuwait, Kurds), then you have to expect violence in return.
I guess I wonder today if "Iraq" is a viable concept. If it is, then I hope you build some form of governance -- and I don't care if it's democratic -- that will reduce the internal violence and bring peace and respect for the rule of law that generally allows people and their families to prosper.
*
24,
One more thing. All of us Iraqi-blogger watchers have been waiting for the day when all you guys would actually debate each other vigorously about the issues at hand.
Believe me, many times I have tried to pit two Iraqi bloggers against each other and see if we could get a decent dialogue going. It's rarely worked. Once or twice I got someone like Hammorabi Sam to snipe at the Palestinian/Iraqi Raed Jarrar. But that's about it.
But then in the last few weeks a few sparks flew when Konfused Kid went strong upside the heads of the ITM brothers. Finally! But now everything is quiet again and you have adopted your usual guarded language when speaking of those personae non grata of the Iraqi blogosphere, the ITM brothers.
Well, are you guys ever going to exchange ideas on the future of Iraq on your blogs?
Now that you're in the US, you should have realized that Americans like their dialectic amped up and in stereo.
*
At 1:38 PM, 24 Steps to Liberty
Yes Jeffrey, that’s right. I carefully choose my words, not only when I critique other bloggers, but always. The point is to be convincing, and you cannot convince people when you disrespect them.
We do need to discuss Iraq’s future. In fact, I’d love to have one session in which we, Iraqi bloggers in the U.S., sit and publicly discuss Iraq’s issues. That would need someone to sponsor the event, and I don’t have this someone!
24,
Hey, you've already started a good discussion with your latest blog entry on "what should be done." I'd just like to see more Iraqi bloggers come here to your comments page to respond. This is a fine place for a debate.
I'm not a big fan of "respect," but every now and then I guess it's okay. (Heh heh.)
*
24,
I think you'll find a lot to think about from this blog entry on Maliki and recent events in Iraq by Richard Fernandez over at Belmont Club.
Showing His Colors.
*
Very interesting plan, but I wonder who should implement all those measures.
The execution part is something else. Last week was the 60th anniversary of Nazi leaders being hanged in Nuremberg. I can't say I regret it.
Somehow I don't think that the actual Iraqis' crimes are comparable. On the other hand the hanging was a clear sign for the future.
At 12:52 AM,
How can you, and your kind of people, be so confident that the American style of democracy is the only one that would work the best for people?
it never even occurred to me that our country wasn't an 'ideal ' democracy until much later in life. i suppose it's because of the exceptionalism here in america we are all raised with.
personally i find the electoral college to be unfair and descriminating. certain states end up having much more influence and whole elections can be swung by messing w/just one state as seen in florida and then ohio.
i also think it is unfair that a state like montana with a much smaller population has as many votes in the senate as california or new york. also the latest fad of changing the districts to manipulate the outcome of elections is weird.
texas went thru this strange redistricting during an off year. it has voting district that are long thin and narrow isolating areas for the benifit of certain parties. in this way the power of the whole state was changed.
also, lobbiests have so much influence, much more than regular citizens it seems so unfair. there are many thing about our democracy that i think could make it more representative of the people.
besides when you have a president adding signing statements to all the bills passed so that the bill does not go back to congress to see if it gets vetoed or approved, the president essentially becomes above the law, or excluded from what the outcome of the senate is, in effect he does become a king. any expansion of the powers of the excecutive branch makes us less and less a democracy. certainly the changes that have occurred during the current administration have subverted our democracy.
i think every society should find what is right for it. personally, the idea of tribes is not abhorent to me in the least. it seems quite natural. a westerner hears the term tribe and thinks of some wild people somewhere but i think more of extended families that look out for one another. obviously the integrity of the family extends thruout all its members therefor it inspires people to carry on the good name.
i think it goes against nature to sever these kinds of ties and loyalties. it is a basic instinct of our species for natural protection and love.
the home i was raised in and the one my son was raised in was not a democracy. we didn't have equal say.
when people are happy, safe, and secure then it is reasonable to start thinking of democracies.
imagine for example you were sick w/no health insurance, couldn't afford your medicine, or your childs doctor bills for an operation, would democracy matter to you.
if the country you lived in had so much foriegn debt that no matter how much you worked you could never get ahead, would a democracy matter to you? there are people who become slaves of the system even in democracies.
my biggest gripe w/our democracy is that even tho i vote on a paper absentee ballot most people don't, this new hava law requires states to vote on paperless computer machines that are easily hackable. this has been demonstrated and proven, in otherwords milions of americans don't believe we live in a democracy whether we do or not. for example, if 70% of the country want to leave iraq how come we are there?
i think we live in an illusion of democracy a handfull of people really run. we still have the spirit of america but it's eroding under the pressure of what feels increasingly like a dictatorship.
personally, i'd rather live in a dictatorship that didn't invade other countries and occasionally torture people than a democracy that did. right now i think america is run by a dictator who tortures people.
At 2:07 AM,
24
Very interesting.
I am not sure if americans could implement it. With the anti-war movement strong in USA there would be much opposition to, in fact, setting puppet government.
Could you explain why Barzani is on the list.
Also if Barzani will go to prison I am afraid that half of Kurdistan will get in arms and start fighting.
ps. I hope it will go through. It seems I had some trouble with my internet connection.
At 2:19 AM,
'Stability First': Newspeak for rape of Iraq
The real, not virtual, future of Iraq will be decided in December. The whole point is a new oil law - which is in fact a debt-for-oil program concocted and imposed by the International Monetary Fund (IMF). This is the point of the US invasion - a return on investment on the hundreds reds of billions of dollars of US taxpayers' money spent. It's not war as politics by other means; it's war as free-market opening by other means - full US access to the epicenter of the energy wars and the perfect geostrategic location for "taming", in the near future, both Russia and China.
Very few observers have detailed what's at stake. In US corporate media the silence is stratospheric.
US Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman duly landed in Baghdad this past summer, insisting that Iraqis must "pass a hydrocarbon law under which foreign companies can invest"...
The draft hydrocarbon law was reviewed by the IMF, reviewed by Bodman and reviewed by Big Oil executives. It was not and it will not be reviewed by Iraqi civil society: that was left to the fractious Iraqi parliament - which can be largely bought for a fistful of dinars. The Bush administration needs somebody to sign the law....
At 5:28 AM,
Hello 24,
I have been reading your posts for several weeks , and i really like to express my admiration to your writings , they reflect my own perspectives.
I read your last post, and yes, i agree with everything u said ( except excuting all the leaders , not that i support them , but despise them to the utmost) .
As for the rest, I believe its the only thing that WORKS at least now!
good luck in your study , and keep posting good stuff
God bless you brother.
An Iraqi Citizen
[24] “And Iraqis will invent and choose their own style of democracy, not the western one.”
Damn straight. And even if your version of democracy is very similar to a Western sort, the fact remains that having a foreign country with seriously large vested interests trying to “create” such a democracy will not result in a true democracy, but merely a puppet regime that dances to the foreign tune. Look at the way Maliki, the supposed democratically elected Iraqi President, is getting on the American’s nerves lately.
And all of a sudden there’s all this talk of coups and justifications for such an action.
The truth is, the Americans don’t care if Iraq is DEMOCRATIC or a DICTATORSHIP, so long as they can control Iraq and its resources.
[24] “Yes Jeffrey, that’s right. I carefully choose my words, not only when I critique other bloggers, but always. The point is to be convincing, and you cannot convince people when you disrespect them.”
Precisely. There are many times when I want to smack somebody upside the head with a verbal 2x4, but realise that a rational, calm tone is best. Of course, heh-heh, SOME people simply ASK for it … :)
Jeffrey –
From Jeff’s link:
[Belmont club] “The rivalry could shatter the unity of the Shiite community at a time when many of its members feel threatened by the Sunni Arab-led insurgency and are alarmed by what they see as a gradual shift of U.S. support away from them and toward Sunnis.” //end
Seems I was right when I predicted a year or so ago that this was going to happen.
My prediction was based on the realpolitik that the US cannot afford to leave Iran alone in the Middle East, because the Iraqi invasion had handed to Iran the Iraqi people on a platter, through it’s proxies like SCIRI and Da’wa. In the event of a US strike on Iran (which has been the Neocon intention all along) the US would be facing in Iraq the unwelcome prospect of a dual Sunni – Shia uprising which might well prove to be the nail in the coffin. Logic and the rumblings from the ground suggested to me that the US would re-align itself with the “sunnis” and use them as a shield against Shia wrath in such an event. This is now happening.
This is just complete bullshit, but to be expected.
The US is setting Iraqis up for another huge bloodbath on the scale of 1991, and at the end of the day Iraqis will be where they started: under perpetual occupation. The US needs to leave ASAP. It’s not stopping the fighting and indeed, is on its way to setting up an even worse situation.
Bruno,
We do agree on something. I also want Coalition forces out NOW -- and I mean today, if possible. In fact, as I said yesterday, I would have left Iraq completely the day after we pulled Stumble-Bum Saddam out of his spiderhole
However, I would have had our special forces first shoot him in the head, spraying a little gray matter on Iraqi soil for kicks, and then put him up on a gurney like Uday and Qusay for all to see, allowing all to marvel -- and dictators to cringe -- at the bloody end to another tyrant.
*
At 12:18 PM,
As I wrote before, a very interesting post and a very interesting solution to Iraq problems.
Lets look at the implementation of this plan.
It seems that 24 wants US to implement this plan.
Forget the latest part of his post, and the analysis of who is is really guilty of the present situation.Why don't I start with the middle part, arresting and creating puppet government.
Arresting all people mentioned by 24 will show Iraqis and the world that their darkest suspicion were right. Americans from the beginning wanted the government under their sole control. All talk about democracy was sham. They wanted oil and have imperial ambition.
Arresting these people would also cause general insurrection, Iraqis will stop fighting among themselves and start, at last, fighting americans. It does not matter that the government of Maliki was inefficient and corrupt, it was, after all, iraqi-chosen government, not american chosen government. The arrest of As Sadr will finally get all his followers to fight against americans, same with followers of al Hakim and others. If incursion of americans into Sadr city got sadr people mad, what would be their anger and furry at arresting As Sadr? Of course they are all guilty of present situation but that is not a perception of majority of Iraqis, and certainly that would not be perception of Iraqis after their arrest. After their arrest they would be heroes.
The arrest of Barzani will also include Kurds in that general insurrection. Kurds would sit on the side and look at fight in Iraq proper, however arrest of Barzani will get them going, they will start to fight and from allies american will start to be perceived as enemies.
The 24 proposal looks very reasonable, and his analysis is quite right, but people feelings and perception are never reasonable. If they were, the people of Iraq would cooperate with each other not fight with each other.
By the way, it's very funny to me how pissed off the Iraqi-Arab bloggers are at the Kurds because they are prospering and living in peace as the Arabs focus on killing each other. The peace in Kurdistan proves without a doubt that the discord has nothing to do with being "Iraqi" but everything to do with being, at bottom, a bloody-minded tribal Arab, which is attested again and again throughout their sliced-head history.
Mention the Kurds and the Arabs go apoplectic. "Saddam and Chemical Ali should have finished those f*ckers off when they had the chance," they mumble to one another.
*
Here in the States people in my extended family come from every continent on the planet, including one brother-in-law from Nigeria and another who is African-American. Let's ask Bruno if anyone in his family is married to any dark-skinned fellow citizens.
BRUNO, you see, is from SOUTH AFRICA, folks. And his name is BRUNO. Say no more. Let's ask him a little about his country's history, a country that we in the US, along with many others, SANCTIONED because of its BRUTAL APARTHEID.
Bruno is a phony, people, still angry at AMERICA because we pushed Bruno and the other Boers to lose power in "their own country."
Cut the shit, Bruno. Get over it. The US was one of many countries that forced your country to change for the better. It's OVER.
*
Hey, I missed this one, a very good report that includes interviews with Zeyad and Ali Fadhil here in NYC.
From "On the Media": Scroll down to "Iraq's New Journalism" and click on Listen Now.
It's very good and you get to hear both Ali and Zeyad's voices. It's about ten minutes long.
*
I've always considered Ghaith Abdul-Ahad, Salam Pax's friend, the best of the new crop of Iraqi journalists. Although this latest article isn't his best, it offers all of us something to think about.
Ghaith reporting from Amara.
*
At 5:41 PM,
Where did this whole "western style democracy" come from? There is no "western style", there is just democracy, which of course incorporates the cultures, traditions and propensities of people within the geographic boundaries of the country, but nonetheless manifests certain standards of transparency, public participation in government, rule of law and so forth...Is the "democratic peoples republic of korea" a democracy, because it uses that word? I imagine that Bruno and the others think so, since it is not of a "western" sort. Just more rubbish from the buffoons who seek to discredit any US efforts to change iraq for the better.
And yes, Jeffrey, we all know Bruno is another freakin' America hating white South African. Its still fun to listen to his ramblings, though. He provides a great stimulus for those of us who are entertained by the America-haters' lunacy.
At 10:12 PM,
Oh and I would like to add something to my post @12:18 PM
I would think that the result would be different if the people who would be doing arrest will have nothing to do with americans. But they would have to have not a single common point with americans.
However I still don't understand what Barzani have to do with what is happening in Iraq right now. True, Barzani is Kurdish nationalist but he did not start the fighting between different Iraqi factions, and he speaks for majority, or at least for half of the Kurds.
Also what do you propose to do with kurds, after arrest of Barzani, fight with peshmerga? Disarm peshmerga? Fight with your iraqi army kurdish insurection (because that's what you will probably get after arrest of Mr. Barzani)? Or do you want to join forces with Turks and together fight kurdish insurgency?
Just curious.
While some of the Iraqi bloggers seem to secretly hope for more deaths to Iraqis (because, in their twisted way of thinking they think it makes the Coalition forces look bad), this week in Baghdad has been quiet.
For the people of Baghdad, death took something of a holiday this week. By Thursday, U.S. and Iraqi military commanders were staring at murder rates that had fallen by half since Monday. On Thursday, Baghdad logged only one man killed by one bomb, the government said. It made for marveling.
I myself would love to see the numbers stay that low.
*
At 9:01 AM, 24 Steps to Liberty
Ok Jeffrey, i am going to ask you once more and for the last time to be polite on my blog. if you want to comment, don't talk about others. just say what you have to say and that's it. we are not interested in what you think about iraqi bloggers. thats not whay i have a blog! plus, whatever the iraqi bloggers say, they should be respected. at least for the horrible life they lead and the danger the have to endure, but they never stopped blogging.
i think the readers will support me when i ban you from commenting on this blog if you keep saying stupid stuff.
At 4:11 PM,
Too bad about what's happened to your comment section 24.
I think your post holds important questions that needs further discussion.
I can understand why someone dropping by might be discouraged from posting.
This is a perfect example of how trolls take over a comment section and divert otherwise valuable dialogue.
What's up, 24. I responded honestly to each of the paragraphs of your proposal for the future of Iraq and you delete it? Why have a blog if your are afraid of others being critical of your ideas? And I even AGREED with some of your points.
Please explain. It could be that this "freedom of speech" thing really is too new for you to grasp. Old behavior is hard to change, they say.
*
24,
Let me summarize my critique of your proposal.
1. If, as you suggest, Coalition forces round up and jail all of the Iraqi leaders and politicians that you list, then -- as Ella correctly argued, in my opinion -- you and all the other Iraqis and Iraqi bloggers will charge the US and UK and the other coalition partners of interfering in Iraqi sovereign matters and label the actions as just another example of western hegemonic practices.
2. You then argue that a single leader should be chosen by, I guess, the Coalition forces to become Iraq's newly imposed leader. In my view, Maliki, whether you like him or not, was in fact chosen in a British-style parliamentary procedure. Again, if the Coalition forces simply arrested Maliki and put your candidate -- you have more than once intimated that this would be Allawi -- then once again it would constitute an imposition of a unelected leader and we would be charged with heavy-handed hegemonic tactics in a sovereign country in the Middle East.
3. Your enthusiasm for public executions tells me and probably many other Iraq-watchers that normal democratic procedures are somewhat alien even to young, educated Iraqis. You may argue that public executions are simply a part of Iraqi-style "democracy." You might be right.
I teach writing for a living, BT, and I have multiple ways of engaging in the issues of the day. Don't underestimate that. The marketplace of ideas can be a very rough neighborhood. Sometimes your ideas will wither before the scrutiny of the majority.
Your plan of an imposition of a unelected leader and his elite and then the public execution of Hakim and the others is not, to my mind, a serious proposal.
*
If, as you suggest, Coalition forces round up and jail all of the Iraqi leaders and politicians that you list, then -
You then argue that a single leader should be chosen by, I guess, the Coalition forces to become Iraq's newly imposed leader.
since no one seems interested in engaging you know who he seems to be in the middle of a running argument w/a strawman.
Annie,
Read 24's proposal carefully. He wants guys like Hakim and Barzani arrested and then, judging by his past blogs, he wants them to put Allawi in charge.
Got it?
My argument is that whether Iraqis like it or not Maliki did get a majority vote in Iraq's parliament -- following the British model and NOT the American model, mind you -- and is thus entitled to lead until the next election. If they don't like what he's doing, then Iraqis -- if they want to follow how representative democracy works -- need to vote him out in the next election.
*
At 11:21 AM, 24 Steps to Liberty
I did not mention the coalition forces in my entry. The proposal is Iraqi and the enforcement should be Iraqi. Should the Iraqis need help to implement it, that’s to be decided then.
I never mentioned Allawi in the proposal. And FYI, Iraq has million potential leaders. Iraq never lacked good leadership in its history. But nations make mistakes.
You and Ella, stop quoting me for things I’ve never said. And quite frankly, if you keep doing this, you are OUT
You and Ella, stop quoting me for things I�ve never said.
beware of the strawman.
And quite frankly, if you keep doing this, you are OUT
of all the things i have learned from you Omar, and i say this from great respect, and i include many many iraqi bloggers in sentiment (not including BT, Maraj, who although hold these traits are nonetheless much less forgiving) is your ability to trust, to allow, to not offend, to be very gracious and seemingly bend over backwards to be fair, civil, and curtious. many times i truly wonder what is going thru your mind . your ability to be patient and thoughtful, this is something that is wholly lacking in civil discourse in this country. it demonstrates to me an upbringing of decent manners, again i use the words patience, that i certainly do not possess.
the absence in our culture of this atribute has gone unnoticed within but certainly not from without and is continually demonstrated by our 'dear leader'.
propaganda 101. fight the strawman. an example
when you have no legs to stand on, fight an illusion. it wastes time, diverts attention from the issues, and confuses idiots.
i am afraid your inability or perhaps civil upbringing or unawareness or possible naivete have landed you in a position of perhaps enabling this TROLL to invade , divert, and subvert your comment section.
frankly i envy your patience and civility. if the world could only be so forgiving. but alas, i'm afraid you have been played a fool. nonetheless, let this be a lesson for us all. who amoung us has shown the ultimate fairness? who has proven above all others a willingness to harbor the least of us? who has demonstrated more an ability to negotiate, well.. it is you dear Omar. you, the IRAQI, child of islam, muslim, of the same breethan we are to believe is uncapable of ruling their own counrty!
are we to believe arabs, muslims, iraqis, sunnis, shites, are incapable of ruling themselves and are instead bettter off following the barbasic lessons of the great western minds as demonstrated by the likes of cheney, bush, baker, related to... jeffery!!?
jeffery who is incapable of arguing any point w/out his strawman? his illusion of propaganda that only the stupid could agree? really . you have done enough, allowed enough, excused enough, BE DONE W/HIM! no one is going to accuse you of abolishing freedom of speech. and if they do, so what!? this is your blog. the whole point of a person like jeffery is to AVOID truth, for it leads to an obviousness that he and his ilk do not want to acknowledge, cannot, are paid not, under no circumstance can afford any light shed.
you have more decency in your afterthoughts than the majority of americans i have ever met and this includes myself. i would have banned this troll (and his sidekicks) for using my domain as a hosting agent lond ago. ask yourself, what kind of person truly is obsessed enough w/iraq to want to degrade you? we need you. you are our future you are iraqs future. don't waste your time w/people who evade and subvert truth and reconciliation.
OFF W/THEIR HEADS (joke)
ban them or they will never leave.
ps, i want to ask you some questions and continue the discussion of your post but cannot /will not while this stink is in the room.
[ella] “It seems that 24 wants US to implement this plan. […] Arresting these people would also cause general insurrection, Iraqis will stop fighting among themselves and start, at last, fighting americans.”
By God, Ella, you’ve got a point! I had my serious reservations about this proposal, but if that is what it takes to get Iraqis united and the Americans OUT, then I’m all for it!
Crafty ol’ 24, eh? :)
[jeffrey] “BRUNO, you see, is from SOUTH AFRICA, folks. And his name is BRUNO. Say no more.”
OH NO! My SECRET is out!
Please, Jeffrey, don’t tell them about my horns and tail. I’ll do anything.
Do you want a piece of cheese?
[24] “i think the readers will support me when i ban you”
24, there was an incident way back when Jeffrey just started his hole of a blog, when a very diplomatic Iraqi went over, and with much humour and wit, tried to correct the impressions of the rabid audience there. Jeff came back from lectures (yes, he teaches, which just gives one an idea of the standards of education at certain institutions) and was outraged at the way the Iraqi was stealing his thunder. He threatened the innocuous Iraqi with banning unless he begged to stay on and unless he “made a case” as to why he should not be banned. The Iraqi of course, told him to get knotted and left. So it’s not as if J is any stranger to throwing his (virtual) weight around. Nuke him if you want, I say.
BTW, I agree with Annie. You show much patience and civility even when under pressure. Which is why I believe that a diplomat like yourself calling for a “strongman solution” truly is indicative of the nadir of despair that Iraqis have reached.
I truly hope for a solution to Iraq’s violence that is less extreme than this. Peace be with you and your family, 24.
At 7:24 AM,
Can we add Bush to those to be tried for the 600,000 dead in Iraq? He's as culpable as the others, as he initiated it, put imbeciles in charge, traded blood for money and sells Iraq cheap to his favorite corporations.
Can't support the corporal punishment.
For the arrogant hubris of Bush, years of humiliation as people spit on him in public, will do well...that and a big-ass fine the wipes out all the money he and Cheney made from this bloodshed, including all bs contributions to the Republican party bought with the blood of innocent Iraqis.
Shukran Eyouni Inti 24. i have copied down my first arabic phrase and i plan on using it to show my appreciation to all my new iraqi friends i am meeting on these blogs.
the questions i wanted to ask you will have to wait because i have a very monday morning brain at the moment w/much work to attend to.
i would like to call everyones attention to a little glitch in the system. it appears (shocking i know) that quite a few (cough)weapons could have ended up in the wrong hands!!
The American military did not even take the elementary step of recording the serial numbers of nearly half a million weapons provided to Iraqis, the inspector general found, making it impossible to track or identify any that might be in the wrong hands.
although the article doesn't say the obvious, do you think perhaps the americans are providing the means by which iraqis are able to carry on a civil war? oh horrors, how could this be? one could almost imagine their intentions were not pure. unfortunately this is not an abbott and costello comedy but a terrible tragedy.
At 10:06 AM, Lynnette in Minnesota
24,
You and Jeffrey had an interesting discussion going on earlier regarding Iraqis opinions on the future of Iraq. A debate of this sort would be good. Similar to Kid's on the Lancet study.
...if you want to comment, don't talk about others. just say what you have to say and that's it. we are not interested in what you think about iraqi bloggers. 24 to Jeffrey
24, Iraqis seem to talk about respecting others quite a bit. This, like tolerance, is a two way street. When you insult family it is difficult at times not to respond in kind.
Annie,
I think you shouldn't blame democracy if the one candidate that you supported didn't succeed. You're not the only one to experience that democracy takes a long breath and you can't take over the Democrats just by running around and playing a litte Hippie game.
This is not how democracy works and there will always be people like you who jump in after more than 40 years doing nothing at all and expect to convince the whole Nation in one single blow.
The traditional voters of Democrats didn't take you for serious, why don't you respect it? If you're convinced, then go on fighting and arguing in your own country.
You couldn't convince voters in one single American state, now you're an expert in democracy and tell Iraqis, it doesn't work. Don't you think you should tell your readers the true story?
You're infuriated because you've suffered a personal defeat. Now you prefer living in a dictatorship - what a ridicule. You're safe and sound, you've had the chance to become involved, to move things towards what you're thinking. But as soon as the wind starts flowing in the opposite direction, you quit.
I know people like you by heart. The only thing they wouldn't answer is why people should follow somebody who didn't care for politics for years and who aren't even informed. In a well developed democracy you can't argue like "I have friends from Cuba who told me such and such".
You can have a different view, that's not my point. Just be frank and tell the whole truth. And please argue on a basis that is a little bit more stable than a handful of friends that everybody can invent in the www.
At 12:07 PM,
There's a new Newsweek article by Fareed Zakaria out, and I think it's worth reading here. Just excerpting his bullet points:
* Battle Al Qaeda
* Secure Kurdistan
* Prevent a bloodbath
* Draw down troops and ramp up advisers
That seems fairly reasonable, in my opinion.
On the Jeffrey issue, inasmuch as we're taking a vote: I don't remember his original post being that rude, really, but then it wasn't directed at me. In any case, he toned it down and gave you the respect you deserve in subsequent posts and came back on-topic, too. I hope you keep your blog open but of course it's your blog. Maybe my opinion here doesn't count because we're roughly on the same payroll (wink wink).
And now on a tangent: I asked this of BT earlier and you may have seen it, but I'll ask you anyway. Do you have any friends or family in the Iraqi Army or Police? I'm also trying to find some (english) blogs from them like we have the American milbloggers, but I can't find any. Just looking to fill in a missing piece of the puzzle.
At 1:31 PM,
I did not mention the coalition forces in my entry. The proposal is Iraqi and the enforcement should be Iraqi. Should the Iraqis need help to implement it, that’s to be decided then..............You and Ella, stop quoting me for things I’ve never said. .
24
Why don't you read what I wrote. I wrote
It seems that 24 wants US to implement this plan.
You mentioned nobody, neither iraqi nor americans, in implementation of your plan, everybody can interpret what you wrote their way.
Iraq has million potential leaders.
I am glad, name some.
And you did not explain why did you named Barzani as one of the bad guys? Did he incite the fighting between shia and sunni groups? Did he provide them with arms? If he did not do that why do you compare him with al Hakim whose forces murder shiat and sunni, with As Sadr, who in contrast to Hakim wants only americans out of Iraq but whose Mahdi Army also murder indiscriminately, and to sunni militia who murder shiat.
lyn When you insult family it is difficult at times not to respond in kind.
???? and this is supposed to apply here?
katrin you can't take over the Democrats just by running around and playing a litte Hippie game.
jump in after more than 40 years doing nothing at all and expect to convince the whole Nation in one single blow.
as soon as the wind starts flowing in the opposite direction, you quit.
I know people like you by heart.
perfect examples of a strawmen. naturally we have no supporting links or quotes to back up this bs.
I wrote
It seems that 24 wants US to implement this plan.
You mentioned nobody, neither iraqi nor americans, in implementation of your plan, everybody can interpret what you wrote their way.
sure ella,right. anyone can interpret however they want and say it seems 24 wants what he very clearly never stated. this is called arguing the strawman. you begin by making an assumption that doesn't hold water and then argue it instead off the merits of the plan.
my opinion here doesn't count because we're roughly on the same payroll
you said it rhus.
4 little duckies all in a row.
24, i like your plan. one problem. you didn't mention the US. the reason this is a problem is because they are there, as occupiers. i understand some people want them to stay even tho the majority doesn't.
what i'm wondering is at what point do they leave? if (a big if) they were assisting in improving the situation that would be one thing. so for the sake of fairness, lets pretend they do help. this is a big pretend because all evidence would lead one to the understanding that alQ is in iraq because of the US. if the US went to afghanistan, maybe they would go fight them there. either way, regardless of the intentions of the US, as long as they are supporting certain iraqis, no matter who they are, others are going to resent this. the idea that american is going to pack up and leave when every thing settles down is dreaming. occuptaions don't just pick up and leave. maybe in 50 years or something. as long as it is srtategically advantageous to remain, as it certainly is for the US, they won't go.
* Draw down troops and ramp up advisers
That seems fairly reasonable, in my opinion.
yeah accept all i keep reading about is how the US is going to put in more troops, and whatever advise they have given thus far has failed miserably so why should anyone take advise from these guys?
so the americans are still there, and what if they don't leave? what are the chances of iraqis joining forces and asking them to leave, or making them leave? what if this dictator wants them out. the only dictator america would support would be one taking their advise. what if the advise they give (like signing that horrible oil deal) is bad for iraq? what if everyone knows it's bad for iraq and rises up against this dictator? what if the only kind of dictator that would have whats best for iraq, is also against americas plans for iraq. why would any iraqi sign a long term agreement that would put control of iraqi resource in the power of outside entities? does UAE do this? does SA? does iran?
how can we look at iraq as a whole, either now or in the future without finding out what role the US is going to play. because they are there, and they are very interested in inserting their say where it does not belong.
what about all the private contractors america brings in to reap the $$$ from iraqis who could be getting the work. also those private contractors cannot be arrested. what about the mercenaries from blackwater and such. who controls them? what if they don't listen to your dictator? what if america allows them to stay and they continue to kill people. what if they only listen to americans.
those educated elites you mentioned. what if the only ones allowed to head the departments were ones the americans got along with and supported? what would be the difference between the ones that are in place already? i think you are either going to have to have an independent dictator (americans out) or a puppet government like you have now.
this is a catch 22
At 4:49 PM, 24 Steps to Liberty
Ella,
Thanks for reminding me. I am sorry, I just forgot you asked the question about Barzani. I am busy these days with school.
Anyway: Barzani runs Asayish. Have you heard of them? They are the equivalent of Saddamh Hussein’s Mukhabarat and special forces, equivalent of Badr troops and Mehdi Army. What they do now is kidnap Arabs and Turkumens from Kirkuk and the cities around it and make them disappear in dozens of prisons inside Kurdistan. Many of them were tortured, and others were killed. The plan is to cleans Kirkuk and the surroundings of Arabs and to terrify the others so when the referendum over Kirkuk is due next year_ in which people are supposed to decide whether to be part of Kurdistan or stay as it is now _ very few Arabs and Turkumens are left to vote down the Kurdish plan _ to have Kirkuk as the capital of Kurdistan.
This is not what I am saying, although even if I say it, it would be based on facts. But it is documented. Try to google the names Anthony Shadid and Steve Fainaru [they are reporters from The Washington Post] they’ve written series of stories about that subject.
This was the reason why I put Barzani in the list. He killed Iraqis!
Annie,
I did not mention the U.S. in the proposal because, as I said, if the Iraqis wanted help, they can ask them. It should be an Iraqi imposed laws, not American.
Now, to all:
What struck me is how you all said that you somehow agreed with my proposal, but one part: the execution. Why?
You know, when I wrote the entry, I expected such thing. Because, in general, we, as human beings, tend to pretend that we are very soft and nice and support humanity. But have you thought of what the people in the list have done in Iraq? They killed scores of Iraqis and they do every day. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have been killed, and more will as time goes.
Have you heard of the Death Sentence? It is the maximum sentence for those who kill others with the intention and the will to kill. Doesn’t it apply in the U.S.? I know it does. Maybe not in every state, but it does.
Now, why were you offended by me stating the obvious? If they were submitted to a fair trial, don’t you think the Iraqis would want them to be executed for what they’ve done? Why most of the Iraqis now want Saddam Hussein to be executed? It is because he’s done the same as the men in my list.
Why people victimized by Hitler wanted him to be killed? It is because he’s done the same as the men in my list.
Lets be rational here and don’t pretend that we are angels. What I said is what the Iraqis want. And that is what should be done. Is not it democracy?
At 5:13 PM, Original_Jeff
I hope the next time we try "nation building" we are smart enough to build in *very* short terms of office for the first few governments. For example, we should have forced Iraq to have another parliamentary election in 1 year, then four 2-year terms, then finally followed by longer 4-5 year terms. That way, the people would have had more chances to correct mistakes....
Perhaps this would avoid intelligent people like 24 steps from recommending these politicians be shot in the public square.
What struck me is how you all said that you somehow agreed with my proposal, but one part: the execution. Why?
there are many countries that do not have capital punishment, america not being one of them. to speak from my truth, ideally this is clearly the most civilized, it does not bring us down to any obcene level. but i am speaking truthfully here, and if someone had killed my child, my country, of course i am not so evolved i could really come from this place although it is really grotesque, uncivilized. still it comes from revenge, an eye for an eye. besides people can grow, evolve. nevertheless that is not the part i objected to in your proposal.
the part i found repulsive is the idea of public execution. this is something that is not part of my culture. if it was, would i choose to go. i'll admit, it would be tempting w/someone like cheney. a slow death. but i would rather read about it (i cannot watch death even on tv, i close my eyes). the bloodlust, the very strange adventure into the bizarre witness, especially if children were allowed. i do not believe it is civil. very primitive, not healthy. perhaps it is the woman in me. i leave these things to others. this is not a fight i choose because it is for the victims, the survivors to decide. but my basic human instinct tells me that public executions are barbaric. they feed on a certain weirdness i do not support/ condone. yet if they truly deter death then i consider differently i suppose. still, i seek the ideal, an ideal of civil man does not incude execution, much less public. again i stipulate, i am speaking not as a direct victim, as a flesh and blood person, my enemies, of course i would desire nothing less. here in america, the victims can view execution. i suppose in iraq the victims would be so many a pubic one may suffice. still it is abhorent to me. a crowd.. how weird. there are ceratin decisions men are better at, i am not fully anti sexist in this regard. men have a closer link to base behavior. but i ask,is it more civil?
At 9:19 PM, 24 Steps to Liberty
YES. Now I remember. In the U.S., victims or their families can witness the execution of the criminals. I totally forgot about that. Thanks Annie.
To all those who objected public execution: It only means the victims witnessing the death sentence being implemented. It happens in your country. Why cannot it be done in mine? Is this like “Iran cannot have nuclear weapons, but Israel can?”
Don’t be smart asses with me. Just because a Muslim, Arab, Iraqi suggested it doesn’t mean it is wring. What if one of you suggested that, wouldn’t you applaud it?
Just a few days ago, the ugly American wrote an ugly post calling Iraqis “unworthy” to be helped. No one objected. If I had said Americans are “unworthy” to be listened to, would you be silent?
Enough double standards. It makes me sick to only read newspapers and see how different they treat certain countries. I don’t want to be disappointed with the people too!
24
Our justice system is 225 years old and within our criminal justice courts, before someone is sentenced to receive capital punishment, a lengthy amount of litigation occurs. First of all, there is a trial by jury system and then the possibility of appeals. If the conviction stands, however, then indeed the prisoner is killed by lethal injection. These events are PRIVATE, never public. Usually family members of both the prisoner and those whose life he has taken are allowed to witness the injection and the last moments of the prisoner's life.
However, it is also true that in some countries PUBLIC executions are not uncommon. As a young girl in China, my wife witnessed public executions of criminals in which all the surrounding schools brought their students to watch the event. It was kind of like a class trip, a special occasion.
I don't need to tell you that Iraq's justice system has been for years under the control of whoever was ruling Iraq at the time. It was not independent of the executive branch. You may recall that when Saddam seized power he held his famous meeting at which those whom he believed had plotted against him were led from the room and shot. And that was only the beginning. I've seen that video several times, the one with Saddam smoking a cigar on the stage as individuals are dragged from the room to be shot -- and there in the front row you can see Tariq Aziz sitting and smiling.
Listen, you live in the US now. Look around you. American values and the values of the tribal society you come from are very, very different. In many of the most basic areas of life, we don't understand each other because our experiences and values are so different. For us, the idea of holding a public execution of a politician in, say, Central Park, is simply unthinkable.
One thing I've learned over the last almost four years is that Iraq is a country whose people have been brutalized by its tribal past and present and by its inability to recognize that living under a dictator's boot is unusual. Saddam was NOT an abberation. Saddam, in my view, was a pure product of Arab tribal mentality. The last thirty years of Iraq have been the story of tribal Sunnis from around Tikrit taking control in the old, time-honored way of ruthless killing to get what one wants. Just take a look at the deck of cards. You had undecuated tribesmen running ministries about which they knew nothing. Some were simple illiterate thugs who were loyal to Saddam. And these were the people who also controlled the court system.
It will take years, maybe decades, for the Iraqi justice system to recover. Maybe it never will.
I understand your anger against those whom you think are ruining your country. But in most viable forms of democratic governance the rule of law is essential. And that means you need to PROVE any charges you lay against someone. So Barzani would need to be, first of all, charged with very specific crimes and then given his day in court.
But Iraqis, of course, may decide that in their sytle of government the leaders may circumvent such niceties as evidence and trials and simply conduct public executions on hearsay evidence and in the name of political expediency. If that is so, then, by all means, go ahead. Build a scaffold NOW and start daily hangings, starting with the list you have given in this blog entry.
And speaking of public executions, in a few days Saddam's verdict is due and then the government has thirty days to hang him. You should be happy that at least one hanging of a murderous beast is going to occur in Iraq before the end of your first semester here in the US.
*
If I had said Americans are “unworthy” to be listened to, would you be silent?
no i would not, becaue in our country we do not listen to outside opinion, even within our country we deem another party as unworthy. the fact remains, it is totally understandable to reject outside opinion regarding national policy.
i thought i made my position clear regarding capital punishment. i will repeat, 'boys will be boys'. meaning you guys have more stomach, more guts for these idiosyncrasies. (altho death is never such).
to be honest, such things as the form of death is often a huge measure of civility. look at bush. when he was governor he ruled over more execution than any other. texas, the worst. yet so much is made about a beheading. you see, westerners cannot stomach the form. they see more horror in one beheading them thousands of 'disappeared' in their name.
much policy is formed surrounding death form in the US. so much so that entire campaigns are determined around abortion, death of an embrio. something akin to a pollywog. more attention and more worthy than an entire generation of iraqis!
so, if your plan could proceed i would not stand in the way of these public excecutions, but still i have no stomach. this is not an american vs iraqi idea. most woman would find this repulsive, unless of course she was a direct victim. this is a base human reaction. but, for that very reason, it might work as you say. personally, i truly think this is an example of the sexes being different. a man has more guts for these matters.i just wouldn't go. but i choose my battles, this is not one that i put on my list. i also do not choose, in my homeland to protest, for who can really judge the pain of the victim. that being said, i still think the most civil of us, does not air their dirty linen in public. executions are the dirtiest linen.
Iraq has million potential leaders.
I am glad, name some.
perhaps you Omar, you cerainly have the courage,brains and stomach for it! why write about it when you can lead?
another ting that occurs to me. i have read in some arab coutries, i am not ceratin which, i jeard that the victims family has a determining factor in the decision of the outcome of punishment. i find this understandable. i gives the family of the accused a way of repenting or offering of something. i also accept in this way that a tribe can impose a sentence that is foriegn to western consideration. that said, things like stoning and such are so primitve it sets my mind ajar, and leads to an image of a totally absurd weird foriegn reality that is not part of the 21st century.
What I said is what the Iraqis want. And that is what should be done. Is not it democracy?
It is democracy if you legitimize that the Iraqis really want what you say. How is the strong leader to be implemented?
A referendum?
New elections?
The trial: who will name the judges? Will they be independent?
There's a country that has was in a horrifying civil war and was able to establish democracy in the tranquility of media fixation upon Iraq. I want to draw your attention there because of two interesting features.
One is that supporters of the former despot are integrated in the current government.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ellen_Johnson-Sirleaf
The second is that the trial against Charles Taylor will not take place in Liberia.
http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/forumy/2006/04/trying-charles-taylor-justice-here.php
There are a lot of people who would like to see him executed and the reasons are manyfold. But his supporters would rise if he were back on Liberian territory. I think it's wise to let the country build up its future and let others deal with the past.
Taylor Johnson will be sentenced, however he will not be executed. The UN don't have death penalty. There might be some of his followers put before trial, but I doubt it. For the simple reason that you cannot clean up an entire country without risking another civil war.
sidenote: Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf's key to success is her close cooperation with the United Nations and, yes, the US.
Madtom has posted a very interesting video-interview in which Majed Jarrar admits he worked for the Baathist Minister of Information before the war. Scroll down and click the hyperlink to the video-footage.
*
At 12:34 AM,
24, I appreciate the courage of your plan, for not sugar coating it and whatnot. I hesitate to think about what it means on the ground, though. After all, there are plenty of groups in Iraq right now that are trying to purge the other groups. I'm fairly sure that the Mujahideen Snuff Film Council would love to oblige the execution request, if only they had the chance. And, in the Newsweek article I linked to above, they noted that Maliki's claim to be able to pacify Iraq in six months would mean a masacre of Sunnis... a'la "the olde days" but with reversed players. Your plan might require yet another group to form and begin purging if the Americans don't do it. Not that I want Americans to do it either- there's enough purging already!
At 12:47 AM,
24, you didn't include Talabani in your list. Did you forget him, or is he OK in your book? I was just reading this and was reminded:
US must stay until Iraq forces ready-Iraqi leader
"Now, why were you offended by me stating the obvious? If they were submitted to a fair trial,"
Sorry Omar but I must have missed this part. I must have missed it in your post that you wanted them to have a fair trial. I thougth you wanted them killied strait away. Sorry for the misunderstanding.
However Omar I am a survivor of a terrible crime. One of the criminals is dead the other I have no idea but I do know that the person is still in Iraq. Would I want the person executed for the crime? No, never. Does it mean I want no justice? No. But for me to heal my own wounds I feel it is better to sit down and be able to have the chance and talk to the person and ask them why?
And then hoping they understand how they have damage a lot of things when it comes to my self image. I need to say a lot of things to that person both anger and hurt.
Regret and understanding is what I am hoping for, I want to give them the chance to give me that which I do deserve. When my healing could start that’s when I hope their way to either become a better person starts or they are left in prison for ever, its up to them. We all have different parts in our person. The person who did what they did to me is one part of them; they still have other parts that should not be punished in my view. A good mother, father, brother or sister those parts I want to give my support too. For me execution feels as if I on my turn commits a crime against people who only saw that persons good actions. I can not live with that. It is not my right to take another persons life and I don’t want to have that right either. Prison is a very good option with the important part that they are helped/forced to learn how to become a better person.
People should be put on trial. Especially Iraqis who the people in the GZ call terrorists. I don’t trust their definition of terror one bit as I never trusted Saddam way of seeing threats in people and killing them for that.
Put people on trial and let’s take it from there. If there is a referendum and Iraqis want death sentence I will vote against it and I will respect the wishes of the majority.
The death sentence has been in the US for a long time and still crimes are big over there. Is it 2 million people in prisons? That is a proof that it’s a failed way of combating crime. On news two days ago they talked about rape victims in Denmark meeting their rapist (who was serving a sentence in prison) in a controlled environment. The outcome was good for both parties. That is good.
[anon] “Can we add Bush to those to be tried for the 600,000 dead in Iraq? He's as culpable as the others, as he initiated it, put imbeciles in charge, traded blood for money and sells Iraq cheap to his favorite corporations.”
Come now, just because he initiated an illegal aggressive war under false pretences that has resulted in about 665000 Iraqis being killed isn’t enough to make him a criminal. Well, not in the eyes of his brainwashed supporters, at least, and as long as he commands a large following he’s safe. Perhaps we’ll get lucky and he dies of some tropical fungal disease, because otherwise I can’t see him get punished. Might makes right as usual.
Katrin –
Interesting personal analysis of Annie … which of course is complete conjecture and invention. I like the way that your fertile imagination manages to spin all sorts of scenarios about another person that you have never met and that completely manage to DIVERT THE TOPIC of discussion from the problems in Iraq to a psychiatric discussion of Annie’s political “problems”. Your effort is a failure.
[Ella] “And you did not explain why did you named Barzani as one of the bad guys?”
LOL! Perhaps you should read a bit of the background of this man and other Kurdish “leaders”. They are nothing more than glorified warlords that worked with Saddam, Iran and the US when the situation suited them. He and his peers have much Iraqi blood, Kurdish and Arab, on their hands.
[24] “What struck me is how you all said that you somehow agreed with my proposal, but one part: the execution.”
Scroll back. I do agree. Whether or not executions actually prevent killings and crime is to me immaterial – the point is that if some bastard kills me, I’d want him to lose his life as well. Here is SA there is a growing groundswell of opinion that wants the death penalty reintroduced.
[24] “Just a few days ago, the ugly American wrote an ugly post calling Iraqis “unworthy” to be helped. No one objected.”
You don’t say?
I wonder what SORTS of people frequent his webspace!
24, you must realize that he and his ilk bear Iraqis no great love. Their “support”, if one can call it that, stems from the need to validate their foreign policy for domestic political reasons. The truth is that now that - through a mixture of their own incompetence, arrogance and Iraqi reluctance to be enslaved – their designs on Iraq have failed, and they are looking to blame everybody except for themselves.
That means: blaming (perversely) those that opposed the invasion of Iraq for the failure of the invasion, and blaming Iraqis for their failures on the ground.
How quickly their ‘concern’ for Iraqis has turned to contempt!
FYI Jeffrey --
[majed] "And just a quick side note, few months before the war, I remember I was suspended for three days, along with 5 other students from my high school (which was around 1200 students), because we were the only ‘not-Ba’thists’ students; joining the Ba’ath was not a political orientation, it was a life necessity. In Saddam’s Iraq, You can’t continue studies in university, you can’t work in the government, you can’t teach, you’ll face lots of harassment from mokhabarat everywhere, if you were not a Ba’thist, for most people who joined it, it did not exceed a matter of a ‘comrade meeting’ every couple of weeks.]"
Please go and eat your feces in private and not in public; frankly it's both pathetic and nauseating the way your obsession with defaming the Jarrars derails every discussion.
We aren't interested in sharing your morbid meals, thanks.
At 5:25 AM, Original_Jeff
With one exception, I no longer support the death penalty because there have been too many cases where a person has been sentenced to death only to have later DNA evidence prove that they are innocent of the crime. I believe there have been dozens and dozens of such instances.
The only exception--the only case where I approve of the death penalty--is if our prison system would literally be incapable of holding criminals adequately. In other words, suppose that an insurgent group began to gain favor in the USA and these people had enough support that their violent thugs were able to "break out" of prison. In that case, I would support the death penalty.
Actually, I would prefer that we still just store such people in Guantanamo or some other physically isolated, fully defendable location. Or, perhaps we could hire another country to store these people.
I am concerned right now that our supermax prison in Colorado is not sufficiently staffed to repel an attack by 20-30 terrorist insurgents.
Nadia,
Do you think the family members and friends -- like 24 -- of those young men who were killed in 24's video want to sit and ask the people responsible why they did it and listen to their particular emotional issues that led them to such an act?
24,
Would you sit and talk with the people who killed your friends?
*
At 8:19 AM, Lynnette in Minnesota
Annie,
???? and this is supposed to apply here?
It applies everywhere, dear. But I can understand why you would not see that.
24,
In Minnesota we do not have the death penalty. But I support it. It is the public aspect of your statement that I do not agree with. It lends itself to ghoulishness. And I would say this if it were an issue in my country as well.
Oh, and I was a bit shocked at your post because you have always seemed, well.....nice. Not a hardnosed type of person.
Jeffrey's comment at 11:12 p.m. was very good, btw. I may support the death penalty, but it must be an act of justice, not revenge.
Jeffrey,
I sense your hope slipping away. Strangely enough I found a little yesterday when I was surfing blogs I don't always frequent. If you haven't read EL DELILAH's post of October 22, you should. It was interesting.
???? and this is supposed to apply here?
It applies everywhere, dear. But I can understand why you would not see that.
sorry lyn, still the context of when you stated it has me confused. it was after you copied 24's coment regarding respecting the privacy of iraqi bloggers and staying on topic. you respondided mentioning you noticed iraqis talk about respecting others and tolerance. then When you insult family it is difficult at times not to respond in kind.
i was just wondering if an iraqi blogger had insulted someones family, or 24 had insulted someone, or how it related? or perhaps what you said had no relation to 24's request and the placement of your comment was coincidental, but that would make sense either because then why copy his statment?
and by all means tell me why you can understand why i would not see that. these unsubstansiated personal confectures are becoming amusing from you and katrin.
it is rude to address someone in a term of endearment while insulting them, as you did in your statement.
you can put lipstick on a pig, but at night they still sleep in the trough w/the other pigs. those glossed over insults? own them, i appreciate it everytime you and katrin show me what you are made of.
oh my, i really piled on the typos and misspellings in that last one didn't i. sorry everyone. ah, those were conjectures i was referring to.yikes.
interesting article
We could lead the Mideast to peace, but only if we stop refusing to do the right thing
By Lt. Gen. WILLIAM E. ODOM (Ret.) is a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and a professor at Yale University.
Nadia,
It's a simple question. Do you think it would be a good idea for 24 to sit down and talk to those who killed his friends in the hope of reaching "closure"?
And, for the record, I have ceased all sarcastic, vituperative rebuttals at the request of the blog administrator.
Just as Descartes did around 400 years ago in Holland (sound familiar?), I too have sat in a overheated room similar to the one in which he penned his incisive replies to the British empiricists.
At the end of one of his lines of ratiocination, he concluded that dogs do not possess souls. However, I am sitll undecided on this matter.
*
At 10:38 AM, Lynnette in Minnesota
i was just wondering if an iraqi blogger had insulted someones family, Annie
You just don't get it at all do you?
Why do you think Jeffrey flies off the handle over Baghdad Treasure's comments? Or the Jarrar's postings?
Why do you think I do?
We are AT WAR! These people have gone out of their way to post and make comments denigrating our troops. In effect encouraging a process that puts them in danger. We have a lot of really good people working very hard to try to bring some stability to Iraq. And to paint them all with the same brush because of events like Abu Ghraib is beyond contemptible. That would be like my saying all Iraqis are like Saddam.
I guess you don't get that because you don't understand that supporting the troops is not just something you say to feel good.
But enough of this now.
we are not interested in what you think about iraqi bloggers 24 to Jeffrey
24 has spoken.
Annie,
double standards? Annie is allowed to defame, others have to shut up. Not very democratic.
My offer: you stop spreading your lies about me or others being paid and I won't go on telling the truth about you. Instead we'll discuss Iraq' future.
How about this for a starter?
At 12:16 PM,
And to paint them all with the same brush because of events like Abu Ghraib is beyond contemptible.
well, i would like to apologize if anyone got this impression from me.
That would be like my saying all Iraqis are like Saddam.
yes, it would. my problen w/the occupation iraq i directly hold the administration responsible. bush and cheney and the neocon/zionists that thought up this little escapade and lied to the american public and the world. and in this way your analogy works quite perfectly lynn.so thank you for stating it so succinctly.
thank you also for explaining the meaning of your earlier statement because i did not understand. it seems there is quite the tendency to become personal instead of arguing about the issues. this was my interpretation of OT comments about the other bloggers,not the positions taken.
I won't go on telling the truth about you.
no end in site
We are AT WAR!
don't scream at me, go scream at the people who got us into this mess. scream at people who chose war. who still choose war.iraq never attacked us or threatened us or were a security risk for us. creating a 'new' middle east is a long arduous process that is headed towards drastic failure and with the exception of a a narrow percentage of americans and their israeli mini me's everyone can see the writing quite clearly on the wall. so don't go acting all 'poor us'. americans are primarily suffering thru their pocketbooks, the people who are taking the brunt of this disaster are primarily iraqi's w/the exception being our military who did not sign up voluntarily to operate an offense or illegal war. if you want to stick up for soldiers try listening to them i posted the poll here the otherday. they overwhelmingly think we should exit iraq. if you want to stick up for them, figure out a way to have them do exactly what they signed up for.
do not pretend that you or war supporters have some mantle of rightness regarding who does and does not support troops. this is the same garbage people say about murtha. this is the same garbage that is ready to slam bunk and insult any retired military who doesn't tow the line of a bunch of triggerhappy oil men who have never worn a uniform.
if we are going to remain in iraq, which it looks like we are since $$$ rules i would like to think we could at least have some alternative to the horrible rumbsfeld.
its disgusting.
and when you finish moaning about what our volunteers are required to excecute because of their criminal leaders take a moment to consider the victims of this war that didn't volunteer. the ones who don't have the luxury LUXURY LUXURAY to think about the war while they drive their kids to school on safe roads, or go to work of the cafe without wondering which of their neighbors or family will be abducted today because genocide is not going on in our country. and try considering for one little minute taking some MORAL RESPONSIBILITY for who started this mass murder. and don't go hooting some stupid horn about 9/11, that dead horse has nothing to do w/iraq.
and i can't help face the absurdity about even fantasizing about the appropriate ways iraq can heal itself and pick up the pieces when they are saddled w/an occupation being controlled by a bunch of money grabbing oil barrons.
yeah, we're at war, and who's fault is that? osama's??? we have created a breeding ground for terrorists in iraq. i for one am very very sorry.
At 5:39 PM,
The US defence department is setting up a special unit aimed at influencing 24-hour news outlets and websites around the world to counter what it considers derogatory publicity, according to a memo.
The Pentagon plans to focus more of its resources on so-called new media, such as the internet and web logs, or blogs under the scheme.
It would also include new workers to book civilian and military guests on television and radio shows.
In a memo obtained by The Associated Press, Dorrance Smith, assistant secretary of defence for public affairs, said news teams of people will "develop messages" for the 24-hour news cycle and "correct the record".
"President Bush has also said recently that "terrorists" were trying to influence public opinion in the US, and called their efforts the "war of ideas".
Dick Cheney, the US vice president and one of the main architects of the war in Iraq, said Iraqi anti-US fighters had increased their attacks and were checking the internet to monitor American public opinion.
"It's my belief that they're very sensitive of the fact that we've got an election scheduled and they can get on the websites like anybody else," Cheney told Fox News on Monday."
At 7:41 PM,
I did read the four articles you mentioned.
First of all your accusation that Asayish are equivalent of Mukhabarat, Mahdi Army and Badr troops are really far off. Asayish are legal forces of KRG under control of interior ministry. Neither Mahdi Army nor Badr troops are legally under control of government of Iraq. Mukhabarat was Sadam intelligence service however I have not heard that Asayish dissapeared thousands of arabs and turkmens in Kurdistan.
Secondly, the articles and your post did not take under account arrests of Arabs and Turkmens who cooperated with Sadam Hussain. You (or the articles you mentioned) talk about dozens of prisons to where Arabs and Turkmens dissapeared, however the article also state Kurds as sayingit is a question of space, they have no place to put them and here it is safe as well as there is a interview with one of the people released from prison about him being questioned by Kurds on his knowlege and possible involvement of genocide in Halabja.
True, some 100 people, as of today's date, are missing but equating Asayish to Sadam Mukhabkarat and Mahdi Army is a little bit too much.
Thirdly the articles talk about PUK and KDP, one of them saystwo largest Kurdish political parties, the KDP and PUK, agreed to release the detainees The PUK leader is Talabani, KDP is Barzani. Therefore accusing Barzani and not Talabani is somewhat partisan. Furthermore if there should be an accussation of anyone, the interior minister who is resposible for Asayish is Karim Sinjari and the minister responsible for Peshmerga was till 2006 Hamid Afandi. You should therefore accuse them of crimes not Barzani. Accusing Barzani of being the person who is guilty of dissapearing people is similar to accusing Allawi or Maliki of being guilty of crimes commited by Interior Ministry's death squads.
Fourthly neither you nor the article mentioned the help in the form of weapons from Turkey and Iraqi proper to some of Kurdistan turkmens and arabs living in Mosul and Kirkuk.
Fifthly (?) Most of the people accusing Kurds of dissapearing hundreds of people are turkmens (ex. Abdel-Rahman) or iraqi arabs (ex. Jabbouri, who works now in Iraqi Interior Ministry) who in Kirkuk or Mosul have their own vested interest in blowing up disappearances out of proportion.
I am not saying that disappearances did not happened, I am saying that there was less of them than you and the articles are saying.
Further thoughts on the four articles may be read on
this blog.
At 3:11 AM,
One of the first things you notice about Annie is that she's got the gift of gab. The words come in an urgent flow, a gushing stream that seems to pour out of her without pause for breath or self-editing.
...
"We are the majority. Most Americans are good," Annie said with a touch of defiance. "I do take this election very personally."
...
Earlier that night, when the bad numbers are still rolling in, Annie asks me how I intend to end my story. Before I can formulate a response, she answers her own question, saying that I'm no doubt looking for tearful scenes to tie everything up with an emotional bang. "Well, I'm a big girl. I'm not going to fall on my knees and cry for your story," she says. Then she looks me full in the face and laughs a surprisingly genuine laugh. "I'm not going to give you the satisfaction."
...
One More Reason Dean Lost Iowa: Before Monday's caucuses, one of Howard Dean's strengths was thought to be his army of volunteers, who streamed into Iowa to help him. After reading this description of the Deaniacs from one of Seattle's alternative newspapers, I suspect they may have hurt him more than they helped him. The volunteers included many people who were, well let's not say weird, but certainly different. Many were seeking personal fulfillment, rather than the usual political goals. Here, for example, is Annie, who is a little bit of a hippie and a little bit of a businesswoman.
To boil down Robbins' story, the Dean campaign has become for her far more than a simple political struggle--it is also, at least so far, a potent talisman to ward off despair. The former Vermont governor must win, she says, for the good of the country and, not incidentally, for the sake of her own emotional equilibrium. She relates that in the run-up to the Iraq war last spring, she grew increasingly fretful. "I couldn't sleep," she says. "I started getting this feeling in my chest of doom. I was smoking all the time, staying inside watching the news, getting all strung out.
Like others, she decided to cure her problems by joining the Dean campaign.
Now suppose that you were a typical Iowa Democrat, a retired railroad worker, for example, and this woman came to your door, dressed in Seattle style and wearing the orange cap that the Dean campaign used to identify its workers. Would she make you more or less likely to vote for Dean? Less, I suspect.
http://www.seanet.com/~jimxc/Politics/January2004_3.html
http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/Content?oid=16920
Baghdad is under siege
Sunni insurgents have cut the roads linking the city to the rest of Iraq. The country is being partitioned as militiamen fight bloody battles for control of towns and villages north and south of the capital.
As American and British political leaders argue over responsibility for the crisis in Iraq, the country has taken another lurch towards disintegration.
Well-armed Sunni tribes now largely surround Baghdad and are fighting Shia militias to complete the encirclement.
The Sunni insurgents seem to be following a plan to control all the approaches to Baghdad. They have long held the highway leading west to the Jordanian border and east into Diyala province. Now they seem to be systematically taking over routes leading north and south.
n some isolated neighbourhoods in Baghdad, food shortages are becoming severe. Shops are open for only a few hours a day. "People have been living off water melon and bread for the past few weeks," said one Iraqi from the capital. The city itself has broken up into a dozen or more hostile districts, the majority of which are controlled by the main Shia militia, the Mehdi Army.
The scale of killing is already as bad as Bosnia at the height of the Balkans conflict. An apocalyptic scenario could well emerge - with slaughter on a massive scale. As America prepares its exit strategy, the fear in Iraq is of a genocidal conflict between the Sunni minority and the Shias in which an entire society implodes. Individual atrocities often obscure the bigger picture where:
* upwards of 1,000 Iraqis are dying violently every week;
* Shia fighters have taken over much of Baghdad; the Sunni encircle the capital;
* the Iraqi Red Crescent says 1.5 million people have fled their homes within the country;
Amid all this, Dick Cheney, the US Vice-President, has sought to turn the fiasco of Iraq into a vote-winner with his claim that the Iraqi insurgents have upped their attacks on US forces in a bid to influence the mid-term elections. There is little evidence to support this. In fact, the number of American dead has risen steadily this year from 353 in January to 847 in September and will be close to one thousand in October.
Another ominous development is that Iraqi tribes that often used to have both Sunni and Shia members are now splitting along sectarian lines.
Mr Maliki has recently criticised the US for the failure of its security policy in Iraq and resisted American pressure to eliminate the militias. Although President Bush and Tony Blair publicly handed back sovereignty to Iraq in June 2004, Mr Maliki said: "I am now Prime Minister and overall commander of the armed forces yet I cannot move a single company without Coalition [US and British] approval."
In reality the militias are growing stronger by the day because the Shia and Sunni communities feel threatened and do not trust the army and police to defend them. US forces have been moving against the Mehdi Army, which follows the nationalist cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, but he is an essential prop to Mr Maliki's government. Almost all the main players in Iraqi politics maintain their own militias. The impotence of US forces to prevent civil war is underlined by the fact that the intense fighting between Sunni and Shia around Balad, north of Baghdad, has raged for a month
The US is firmly committed to centralized national control over the development of new oil fields. In this, they have the support of Sunni Arab political forces along with nationalist Shiite forces in Southern Iraq, including those loyal to Moqtada al-Sadr.
The threat of partition, however, is being used to pressure these Sunni and Shiite forces to embrace particular oil policies that will be very unpopular with Iraqi nationalists, even as they are sought after by international oil majors.
The oil majors and the US are pressing for generous contract terms for foreign oil investment and use the threat of extremely generous regional contract terms on offer in the Kurdish north to extract similar concessions from Iraqi nationalists.
Most observers believe that the involvement of BearingPoint, as well as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) - as a condition of cancelling 30% of Iraq’s $39bn debt to the Paris Club of creditors - in drafting of the petroleum law is likely to result in handing over control of the development of Iraq’s oil fields to foreign oil companies. This policy, although supported by many in the government - namely Vice President Adel Abdul Mahdi and Oil Minister Shahristani, who see a major role for foreign oil companies in Iraq’s oil industry - is understood to be strongly opposed by the majority of Iraqi people and by the oil industry trade unions. It could be seen as confirming the belief that the war was about oil after all.
[...]
There is no way that the oil majors would support the actual partition of Iraq. This is a bluff. And they will have to weigh the popular backlash–in the context of ongoing insurgencies–to an oil regime that appears to strip Iraqis of national treasure.
A June 2, 2004 analysis from the World Market Research Centre captures the idea:
[The] most important task… is the establishment of a new state-owned Iraqi national oil company (NOC) to oversee the existing functional companies (without ruffling too many oil industry feathers) and to set in place a framework by which INOC can most effectively co-operate with private investors, without antagonising the Iraqi nationalist constituency. This will be the issue on which [the Oil] ministry performance will be assessed and the one that will be most integral to shaping Iraq’s oil and gas future in the coming years.
How much more will the US and the oil majors risk further antagonising the Iraqi nationalist constituency in the hope of leveraging more lucrative oil deals?
interesting when personal fortunes determine defense contracts, isn't it?
A major Kurdish diaspora group is calling for the head of a former American general recently dispatched to Turkey. The general, Joseph Ralston, has been accused of using his new role as ‘special envoy’ to the Turkish government to ensure that American defense giant Lockheed Martin – of which Ralston is a board member – will get to continue supplying the Turkish military with fighter planes.
On 26 October, the Kurdish National Congress of North America issued a press release demanding “the immediate resignation” of the former USAF General Ralston as the Bush administration’s point man on the Turkish campaign against Kurdish guerrillas in the country’s southeast.
Two months earlier, with little fanfare, the State Department had announced Ralston’s appointment to a position that does indeed seem curiously unique- “Special Envoy for Countering the Kurdistan Worker’s Party (PKK).” Although there are scores of simmering conflicts in countries around the globe, there are not so many to which Washington sends an official military advisor to oversee the fighting.
Indeed, as the Kurdish group discloses, “Ralston’s appointment came at a time when Turkey was finalizing the sale of 30 new Lockheed Martin F-16 aircraft (approx. $3 billion) and as Turkey was due to make a decision on the $10 billion purchase of the new Lockheed Martin F-35 JSF aircraft. The sale for the F-16’s was approved by Congress in mid-October and Turkey’s decision in favor of the F-35 JSF was announced on October 25, shortly after Ralston’s recent stay in Ankara, ostensibly to counter the PKK.”
very juicy gossip you guys like juicy gossip, right?
Ralston's main role appears to be ensuring that the conflict continues, and ensuring that the his company, Lockheed Martin, continues to make money. As luck would have it, when Ralston was in Turkey, Lockheed managed to sign two deals for Lockheed fighter jets worth $13 billion.
Bloggers have been following the Ralston/Lockheed/Turkey story for the last month and trying to bring some attention to Ralston's conflict-of-interest.
The Kurdish lobby group’s press release has captured the attention of the relevant damage-control companies. Mizgin Yilmaz, a Kurdish activist who carried the press release on her blog, Rastî provided Balkanalysis.com with the following tidbit: “we had a forty-minute visit from a company called Public Strategies, Inc, first for five minutes and another twenty minutes later, for a little over thirty minutes.” PSI did not immediately respond to our request for information regarding its current relationship with Ralston or Lockheed Martin.
i wonder if this has anything to do w/rapid response new ace propaganda team the pentagon is building a new wing for. nah, that would be mixing gov't w/private industry
At 8:21 AM, Lynnette in Minnesota
24,
If I thought you were one of the Iraqi bloggers who seems to relish any misstep of our forces I would not be commenting here at all.
Just as you are trying to tell us how Iraqis feel, I too want to share some of my feelings with you. Hence my comment to you at 10:06 a.m.
In my comment to Annie at 10:38 a.m. I was trying to steer her back on topic. She has a serious case of diarrhea of the fingers.
Back to the death penalty. I can understand people like Original Jeff being concerned about innocent people being put to death. I certainly have that concern as well. But I do think that in the case of someone like a Ted Bundy type of criminal the death penalty is warranted. That was a clear cut case. As is, I think, Saddam.
At 5:26 PM,
"Bush said that he was "worried that rival forms of extremists will battle for power, obviously creating incredible damage if they do so; that they will topple modern governments, that they will be in a position to use oil as a tool to blackmail the West."
"People say, 'What do you mean by that?'" The president continued. "I say, 'If they control oil resources, then they pull oil off the market in order to run the price up, and they will do so unless we abandon Israel, for example, or unless we abandon allies.'"
[lynnette] “These people have gone out of their way to post and make comments denigrating our troops.”
For the life of me I CAN’T IMAGINE WHY anybody would want to denigrate your wonderful troops:
“There has never been an American army as violent and murderous as the one in Iraq”
By Martin Lukacs - The McGill Daily - October 30th, 2006
“ Hersh described video footage depicting U.S. atrocities in Iraq, which he had viewed, but not yet published a story about. He described one video in which American soldiers massacre a group of people playing soccer. “Three U.S. armed vehicles, eight soldiers in each, are driving through a village, passing candy out to kids,” he began. “Suddenly the first vehicle explodes, and there are soldiers screaming. Sixteen soldiers come out of the other vehicles, and they do what they’re told to do, which is look for running people.” “Never mind that the bomb was detonated by remote control,” Hersh continued. “[The soldiers] open up fire; [the] cameras show it was a soccer game.” “About ten minutes later, [the soldiers] begin dragging bodies together, and they drop weapons there. It was reported as 20 or 30 insurgents killed that day,” he said. If Americans knew the full extent of U.S. criminal conduct, they would receive returning Iraqi veterans as they did Vietnam veterans, Hersh said.” //end excerpt
[lynnette] “That would be like my saying all Iraqis are like Saddam.”
Fair enough, you’ve not sunk to that level … yet. Leave it to Jeffrey to make such comments, OK?
[annie] “my problen w/the occupation iraq i directly hold the administration responsible”
To a large extent this is true. When any soldiers are Occupying and they get (naturally) shot at, they historically have gotten out of hand. I don’t excuse this behavior. But I DO SAY that the leaders that PUT THEM THERE are just as culpable, if not MORE culpable, than the troops that pull the trigger. If the Neocons want war so badly let THEM patrol Iraq on foot and enforce their own stupid ideas. God, I’d pay money to see THAT video.
[anon] “Annie, You talk too much....”
Wassa matter? Allergic to the TRUTH?
Go to ITM. I hear it’s entirely free of that irritating ingredient.
[jeffery] "Bruno has already begun his third iteration of his ONE idea: Americans are evil. It's old and cold."
Oh, sorry Jeff. Let's not talk about what American troops are up to in Iraq. You're right, that's so passe'. Maybe if we ignore reality for long enough, it'll go away. Or, better yet, we could invent our own reality as per the Neocon dreams.
We could invent crowds of Iraqis showering confetti on the US heroes, waving Ol Glories.
You any good at Photoshop?
HERE are some cheering Iraqis for you:
http://www.madison.com/toolbox/
\index.php?action=mail2friend2&ref=
wsj&storyURL=%2Fwsj%2Fhome%2Fcolumn%
2Findex.php%3Fntid%3D105680%26ntpid%3D2
"So Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki ordered the checkpoints removed and the Americans complied.
We then saw on our television newscasts images of American trucks pulling away from the checkpoints while thousands of Iraqis cheered and fired weapons in the air.
It was all very depressing.
[...]
I have a feeling that the eventual way we will exit Iraq is that an Iraqi government will tell us to leave - and, as he does so, he will have a backdrop of cheering Iraqi citizens." //end
At 7:54 AM,
Bruno: "So Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki ordered the checkpoints removed and the Americans complied."
Maliki probably felt he needed to assert his independence from the Americans and win some fans on the street more than he needed to confront al-Sadr at this time. al-Sadr could have scored major points for himself (with the MNF and in their face) as a credible political force if he secured the Iraqi-American soldier's release in response.
Bruno,
Our troops did have time to send a postcard yesterday.
I love our troops. I love Americans. It's a great country and I'm sorry that you live as a dying minority in a country that you Boers used to run like the Baath in Iraq. Hey, maybe you could join TAI and the "brave Iraqi resistance"? Boer, Baath -- close enough, right?
Listen, I get to feed Bruno at least ONE snark-sandwich a week, right?
*
Bruno,
You haven't figured out how to LINK yet?
Here's how:
left-pointing angle bracket/letter a/one space/href/equals sign/quotation marks/http etc/quotation marks/right-pointing angle bracket/TITLE OF YOUR CHOICE/left-pointing angle bracket/forward slash/letter a/right-pointing angle bracket.
You could also right-click, click View Page Source and scroll down to the entry you want and cut and paste the entire link from there.
It's been a few years, Bruno. It's time to get up to speed with the big kids.
*
Here's the Biden-Gelb proposal for Iraq:
The plan would maintain a unified Iraq by decentralizing it and giving Kurds, Shiites and Sunnis breathing room in their own regions - as provided for in the Iraqi constitution. The central government would be responsible for common interests, like border security and the distribution of oil revenues. We would secure support from the Sunnis - who have no oil -- by guaranteeing them a proportionate share (about 20 percent) of oil revenues. We would increase economic aid, ask the oil-rich Arab Gulf states to fund it and tie all assistance to the protection of minority rights and the creation of a jobs program. We would convene a regional conference to enlist the support of Iraq's neighbors and create a Contact Group of the major powers to enforce their commitments. And we would ask our military to draw up plans to responsibly withdraw most U.S. forces from Iraq by the end of 2007 - enough time for the political settlement to take hold.
Any comments?
*
At 9:41 AM,
Bruno quoting Lukacs who also quoted Hersh "There has never been an American army as violent and murderous as the one in Iraq”
Bruno, congratulations. I think you do then agree with what Al Qaeda said in August.
You know they couldn’t care less about your safety and well being and that the only thing that upsets your leaders when American forces suffer casualties is the damage these casualties do to their popularity and the popularity of the wars they started which is why they cover up these casualties as much as they can. And here we challenge investigative journalists like Seymour Hersh to reveal the extent of this coverup and let Americans and the rest of the world see for themselves the extent of the cowardice of the current regime.
just give us something new to discuss.
i am interested in this
How US intellectual fads mirror, in a dream-like way, the military "strategy"
A lot of problems that the Americans painted in Sunni-Shiite sectarian colors were fundamentally political and not religious-sectarian. There was never chronic Shiite-Sunni violence until the Americans arrived and triggered it. It is true that some Sunni individuals have fallen into the trap of revenge. But by and large, the Sunni community has been responsible, and will continue to be so. The US justification of troop-presence based on guarding against a Sunni backlash is as divisive and spurious, he says, as was the original decision to help Shiite groups go after the resistance.
congrats anon , congratulations. I think you do then agree with what Al Qaeda said in August mirrors what the famous neocon/zionist Michael Ledeen said @ AEI Breakfast earlier on March 27, 2003
"I think the level of casualties is secondary. I mean, it may sound like an odd thing to say, but all the great scholars who have studied American character have come to the conclusion that we are a warlike people and that we love war . . . What we hate is not casualties but losing. And if the war goes well and if the American public has the conviction that we're being well-led and that our people are fighting well and that we're winning, I don't think casualties are going to be the issue."
At 5:37 PM,
Annie
It seems you have a lot of time.
To give you something to do during a long autumn nights("fall" in americaneese) you may read this
think i'll pass on opening your link ella, i don't trust you. i worked 7 hrs today (not online). i have as much time as you do, probably a little more because i have always slept only 6 hrs. i think you and your cohorts may may be a little preoccupied w/my life for some bizarre reason.
jeffery, why would iraq trust any american plan for its country at this point? i wouldn't. james baker??? yeah right.
At 11:22 PM,
[rhus] “Maliki probably felt he needed to assert his independence from the Americans and win some fans on the street more than he needed to confront al-Sadr at this time.”
Probably? I’d say his credibility is pretty much nil on the ground in Iraq. What I read is that the Americans finished their operation, and saw little harm in giving Maliki a desperately needed “street cred” boost. But what is more important is the base Iraqi reaction: wild celebration at retreating American troops. Now, is that REALLY a surprise?
[Jeffrey] “Boer, Baath -- close enough, right?”
Mmmm … hey, a juicy worm! But, wait – there’s a hook in it! Think I’ll pass, thanks.
The Biden-Gelb plan sounds reasonable, except for that it would invariably end up in the creation of three de facto states at war with each other. The sectarian divides are too large. The truth is that there must be genuine dialogue between the players in Iraq, and that simply won’t happen until the US stops sponsoring one side of the factions against the others.
The reality is that there is little difference between Sunni and Shia Iraqis, and that differences have been exacerbated on purpose. The US brought the Badr Brigade into Iraq and used it as a paramilitary group from which to swell the ranks of the fledgling IP and IA. Many of the US trained “elite” units like the Wolf Brigade are either headed by Badrists or filled with Badrists. These groups then directly tapped into the poor Shia areas and recruited from them. It is no wonder that the virulent sectarian hatred is so rampant.
The US cannot impose solutions on Iraq because nobody trusts you.
Personally the best thing that could happen is an impartial outside arbiter being brought in and sponsoring genuine dialogue between all the Iraqi groups, while US troops are confined to barracks. A commitment to withdrawal must be tabled, contingent to a successful political dialogue between the parties. Given that Iraqis hate you like the plague by now, that should be sufficient inducement to a speedy resolution.
This BS “divide and conquer” approach the US has taken will only result in more bloodshed.
“And here we challenge investigative journalists like Seymour Hersh to reveal the extent of this coverup and let Americans and the rest of the world see for themselves the extent of the cowardice of the current regime.”
I do indeed agree with that statement. That does not mean that I also agree with the aims and objectives of Al Qaeda. Frankly, US Army = Al Qaeda. You’re as bad as each other. You BOTH need to leave Iraq, together with the Iranian revolutionaries that you flew in.
At 6:13 AM,
Bruno: "What I read is that the Americans finished their operation, and saw little harm in giving Maliki a desperately needed “street cred” boost. But what is more important is the base Iraqi reaction: wild celebration at retreating American troops. Now, is that REALLY a surprise"
Do you mean "read" as in "red" - that you read a report that the operation was finished? Or "read" as in "reed" - that you interpret the meaning of the event as you state? Just because I don't think the operation was finished (the Iraqi-american soldier is still missing).
I am not surprised that Iraqis, especially in Sadr City, would cheer at a US withdrawal. The US presence is an easily identifiable phenonemon, and so many have excused the crimes of others due to the US presence. Opponents of the US invasion quickly glance over the 100 or so Iraqis murdered each day (equals 1000 per Lancet) to focus on US crimes. "it's terrible. but have you heard of Haditha?" This report just today talks about the US killing 13 people with an array of explosives, suicide vests, and other weapons with them. Also a motorcycle bomb in the newly liberated Sadr City, the number of academics murdered, the number of doctors murdered, the number of Iraqis murdered. Which one is Hersh going to make up a story about in a speech in Candada? "Thirteen soccer players murdered by US troops as they asked for candy!"
(the Iraqi-american soldier is still missing).
how convenient. this is the pretext for which we are sweeping neighborhoods? a plan that has been in the works since last spring? does anyone question that this could be another facade? really? how can anyone believe anything we are told anymore?
urging people to "embrace" strategic communications, which it describes as "the most powerful weapon in the world." And the company Web page offers some decidedly creepy asides. "The [ops center] can override all national radio and TV broadcasts in time of crisis," it says, alluding to work the company has done in an unspecified Asian country.
The government's use of deception in the service of national security is not new. During World War II, for example, Allied forces conducted a massive misinformation campaign, called Operation Fortitude, designed to hide plans for the Normandy invasion. More recent efforts have met with controversy, however. In 2002, the Pentagon shuttered its brand new Office of Strategic Influence after public outcry over its purported plans to spread deceptive information to the foreign press.
lets see, maliki calls the white house nervous about being overthrown. hadley goes to iraq, meets w/mailiki and the us ambassador. maliki criticizes US! an american soldier gets kidnapped, caldwell throws a big press confenence spewing about how we are there at iraqs invitation. the us raids neighborhoods to 'search for a missing officer and we may have to make another raid' maliki is handily ready to order (ha) the US out of the neighborhood! maliki's reputation is restored (somewhat0 the nobel americans are searching for their man, the 'insurgents' are bad and lots of iraqi's die.
now, how does anyone think it would have gone over if the US just decided to start doing sweeps?
caldwell, A transition is not always a pleasant thing to watch as it happens. But when common goals are achieved, speed bumps and differences of opinion along the way are soon forgotten. Every great work of art goes through messy phases while it is in transition. A lump of clay can become a sculpture; blobs of paint become paintings which inspire.
I'd like to take a few minutes to make sure that the people of Iraq have a complete understanding of why Iraqi security forces and coalition forces have engaged in some particular security operations over the last nine days here in Baghdad.
there , doesn't that sound nice?
"Slide and chart,please."
just because they say it, doesn't make it so.
ps, ella, you're a bore w/your personal references.
At 4:22 PM,
Annie: "just because they say it, doesn't make it so."
Just because they say it, doesn't make it not so.
Remember the outcry when it was revealed that the MNF was paying to have true, but positive, stories planted in Iraqi press?
On the other hand, the insurgency can post self-disproving lies and it's just hunky-dory. It must be true if a terrorist says it, right? Remember the explosions at the Falcon weapons dump? Do you know the insurgents claimed 300 US killed, and even published lists of the casualties' names and units? It was all false, except for the part about the dump blowing up. Or how about the one where a single sniper, Jubasquatch, "only shoots once, never misses, only targets Americans" and is single handedly responsible for something like a third of all MNF shooting casualties in Iraq? Must be true- he said so.
Just because they say it, doesn't make it not so.
who said it did? i'm not clear what you are arguing? that both sides do it or something? or that nothing they say is ever not true? is this your incredible revelation? enlighten me. no don't bother.
hey, i got a joke for you.. about haggard..
"Look, if a hotel kept sending you to the same male prostitute for three years every time you just wanted a massage, you'd be tempted to buy crystal meth, too."
sometimes you just have to use your common sense to figure out whats true and what isn't. when all the little duckies line up in a row.... it is probably staged.
this has all the makings of hollywood just like the jessica lynch story,, oh yeah, that was 'helped along'. or say just like pat tillman,, oh yeah that was 'altered'.. (bummer about the burnt uniform) lets get this straight we have an iraqi american married and his wife who's iraqi lives in baghdad and he's kidnapped which makes for a definitely justifiable explanation why we should be sweeping neighborhoods right now and in the future. and thats why there were so many deaths last month.
Remember the outcry when it was revealed that the MNF was paying to have true , but positive, stories planted in Iraqi press?
no, not at all, care to provide a link. i read about the false one but w/so many horrendous events going on in iraq who could bother wasting their time on such a non story. i'm curious to read it tho. can you find it? what blog or msm was it carried on. it must have been on lots of them itheir was a big outcry.
At 8:07 PM,
Annie: "who said it did? i'm not clear what you are arguing? that both sides do it or something? or that nothing they say is ever not true? is this your incredible revelation? enlighten me. no don't bother."
One can only be enlighted if you seek it. I'm saying you must be open to the possibility that they tell the truth sometimes.
Me: "Remember the outcry when it was revealed that the MNF was paying to have true , but positive, stories planted in Iraqi press?"
Annie: "no, not at all, care to provide a link. i read about the false one but w/so many horrendous events going on in iraq who could bother wasting their time on such a non story. i'm curious to read it tho. can you find it? what blog or msm was it carried on. it must have been on lots of them itheir was a big outcry."
Oh sheeesh. Here's a bunch of links about the story breaking.
Here's a typical example
And, finally:
Here's the barely covered results of the investigation
Excerpt from the last:
""Psychological operations are a central part of information operations and contribute to achieving the ... commander's objectives," the summary said. They are aimed at conveying "selected, truthful information to foreign audiences to influence their emotions ... reasoning, and ultimately, the behavior of governments" and other entities, it said."
here's from the first link at the top. there is nothing in the story that implies the stories are true. only that they procude upbeat stories.
One form of information operations -- psychological warfare -- can use doctored or false information to deceive or damage the enemy or to bolster support for American efforts.
from the second
program may have veered into a gray area where government contractors paid to have articles placed in Iraqi newspapers without explaining that the material came from the U.S. military and that Iraqi journalists were paid to write positive accounts.
" plant stories in Iraqi media under the guise of independent journalism."
the program violated standard journalistic practices.
intent on undermining an enemy by fooling, confusing or refuting him.
the us military is not supposed to be creating its own coverage. thats not balanced. everyone knows its against the law to write propaganda in the us. but it can easily be done outside the country and then get picked up here. your initial statement said the articles were true. truth is you see it and truth as i see it are very different. if they were interested in truth the wouldn't have placed dan senor at the cpa, someone who cut his chops w/carlyle in pr as the media don. there has been so much stuff written abut rendon/linclon i hardly think your description is appropriate. even if some commander says its true. believe me, i isn't. not all of it anyway. we might as well live in russia. a free press is a free democracy. really, you know that. shame on you.
I'm saying you must be open to the possibility that they tell the truth sometimes.
and i'm telling you again
you..Just because they say it, doesn't make it not so.
me .. who said it did?
quit arguing a straw man.
i never ever said they never told the truth, not ever. so why don't you try addr3essing the point. rather than your choice, which would be me in an indefensable position. which i am not. you on the othe hand are defending crime.
The Smith-Mundt Act of 1948 (22 U.S.C. � 1461), forbids the domestic dissemination of U.S. government authored or developed propaganda or �official news� deliberately designed to influence public opinion or policy. The law singles out materials that serve �a solely partisan purpose.� In the past, the GAO has found that administration agencies violated this and other federal restrictions when they disseminated editorials and newspaper articles written by the government or its contractors without disclosing the conflict of interest.
A September 30, 2005 report by the GAO found the White House violated federal law by buying favorable news coverage from Williams in advance of the 2004 elections. These revelations may just be the tip of the iceberg.
read on
At 10:56 PM,
Annie, Iraq is a war zone and you and the Insurgents/Terrorists/le Resistance/etc. are all too eager to troll the 'net and latch on to anything you can find to secure a defeat for the MNF and the elected Iraqi gov't. Go to any Reuters story and count how many times they use "underscores" or "underlines" or similar words to relate some news event to the "failure" that is Iraq, in their view. The US military is absolutely justified in releasing their own information to counter your/their propaganda.
You say your position is indefensible, but then you try to defend it anyway. The first link was a Google list of all the stories that come up when you search on the words "paid", "positive", and "Iraq". The second link was an example of the results from the WaPo coverage. They were predominantly written when the story "broke" and so they talk about how naughty it is, grey areas, violation of journalistic practices, and on and on and on. The third article was the result of the investigation, hardly covered at all, that said the program was legal and the stories were true.
The third article was the result of the investigation, hardly covered at all, that said the program was legal and the stories were true.
oh, you mean the third link that doesn't open? investigated by whom??? our ethic committe. our incredible oversite committies that are so very abundant w/this republican controlled congress.you're a bore w/your justification of military newspeak in place of investigative REAL journalism
what should be done?? seems someones wheels are turning..
Negroponte proposes putting Saddam-era intelligence officials back to work under the new US strategy
The Bush administration is in the process of changing sides in the Iraqi struggle, but it is an embarrassing process, and as you would expect, the smoke-machines are going full blast.
At 5:34 PM,
Annie: "oh, you mean the third link that doesn't open?"
Yep, that's the one! I misspelled "href" as "hrf". Sometimes typos matter! Here it is again:
third link
Enjoy!
rhus!you crack me up. this is classic. lol. truely.
"A U.S. military propaganda program used in the Iraq war was legal under the rules for psychological operations, a Pentagon investigation has concluded."
oh rhus, the pentagon investigated! wow, do i ever feel relieved.
"We concluded that (commanders in Iraq) complied with applicable laws and regulations in their use of a contractor to conduct psychological operations and their use of newspapers as a way to disseminate information," the executive summary says.
ha ha ha ha . so instead of the news iraqis are getting a psycological operation? oh yeah, i'm feeling all warm inside now.
Kennedy said the report showed that the Pentagon can't account for millions of dollars paid to the Lincoln Group and that contracting rules were not followed. "Broader policy questions remain about whether the administration's manipulation of the news in Iraq contradicts our goal of a free and independent press there," he said.
ya think?
The inspector general looked at three contracts, valued at $37.3 million and awarded to the Washington-based Lincoln Group for services from October 2004 through last month.
note that figure is only the amount they 'looked at', not the total amount of awards. nor does it claim to include the work done for the unaccounted for money.
The contractor not only placed articles to influence Iraqis but worked to "respond rapidly to counter anti-coalition propaganda," the summary said.
(!!! hey guys, you got in the paper! take a bow)
ok, hold your breath.. read slowly..
They are aimed at conveying "selected, truthful information to foreign audiences to influence their emotions ... reasoning, and ultimately, the behavior of governments" and other entities, it said.
did you hear that rhus. they are "aimed at conveying." nothing in the article said anyone determined the stories printed were true. only that they were legal. not by our own standards of course, because it would have been illegal in this country, but outside the country then to be picked up, its not illegal. still i think its unethical. to say the least.
hey, its all a matter of interigity and what standards you have for a free society. but don't be surprised when people get their tailfeathers ruffled over your psyc operation being floated as truth. some people make a living out of manipulating truth, will never make it honorable, or truthful.
nice try. let the reader be the judge. hey, another thing you might want to consider, where are they all? notice how they (you) disquise themselves. if it was all on the up and up why don't they identify themselves, when they are rapidly responding?
At 8:41 AM,
Annie: "nothing in the article said anyone determined the stories printed were true."
Try reading your very own excerpt again, Annie:
"They are aimed at conveying "selected, truthful information to foreign audiences to influence their emotions ... reasoning, and ultimately, the behavior of governments" and other entities, it said."
Did you see the part about being truthful? Look closely.
I believe our forces have every right to counter your and our enemies' propaganda in Iraq. If they have to pay to do it, so be it. And, the Pentagon effort to set the record straight on the stream of articles that are released against them causes me to say "it's about time!"
the Pentagon effort to set the record straight
if the pentagon had any intention of setting the record straight they wouldn't have held their own investigation of the process they promoted and funded!
yeah i saw the except. "aiming to convey" is legaleese for 'we never said it was truth'
you can aim at a target all day long and miss it terribly. no where in the article did it say that the stories they paid to have promoted and published were true. and believe me, if it had been in the report it would have been in the headline!
I think MSNBC has got it slightly confused. The Lincoln Group was one of three companies also offered -- also contracted for up to $100 million for a contract with the Psychological Operations Joint Task Force, I think it’s called, down in Florida. And that $100 million was dependent on pictures they made, ideas they came up with and could then sell to the military. That contract, with Lincoln Group at least, has been canceled,
uh oh, they got caught.
And one particular article about the Badr Brigade, which is a Shiite militia, I'm sure you know, which General Casey was very keen to push, basically applauded the Badr Brigade for not retaliating against attacks on the Shia in Baghdad. And he was very keen to get it pushed out, and two newspapers in a row refused to publish it, because it was too inflammatory in a political sense. So that was a very interesting experience, having this senior, senior general getting involved in the nitty-gritty and wanting one particular story to go out, only to discover that no Iraqi newspapers in their right mind were willing to publish it for however much money we offered.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, Willem Marx, I want to thank you very much for joining us.
"Misinformation Intern: My Summer as a Military Propagandist in Iraq."
If they have to pay to do it, so be it. And, the Pentagon effort to set the record straight
thats rich! to the tune of 10 million a month! the pentagon is NOT setting the record straight. the PTB are involved in a PSYCO OPS operaation to create the illusion of wellbeing, because reality is FU. da!
you can scream it from the rooftops, it ain't flying.truth is truth, you promote pipedreams w/fiction.
At 5:29 PM,
Annie: "the pentagon is NOT setting the record straight."
Here's an example of the DoD's For the Record, in which they set the record straight on the "Rummy Must Go" article. Many more examples linked on the side there.
I can wrap this particular discussion pretty quick.
Q: Can the military respond to opposing stories & propaganda?
A (Annie): No.
A (RhusLancia): Yes.
Can the military respond to opposing stories & propaganda?
annie ...of course they can, and they get a 10 million dollar a month budget w/a ace PR psyops team to do it !
does it mean they are setting the record straight? hell no. you cannot legitamately investigate yourself. the rethigs just slipped a bill in to congress to close the oversite into raq condstruction funds abuse. no oversite, billions missing. go read
Iraq Watchdog Office Faces 2007 Closure . don't give me any BS about fake news meaning anything other than it is , which is THE OPPOSITE of setting the record straight.
give it up. your wrong. i've said plenty here to copy. so don't put words into my mouth i didn't say. or quote me inaccuratly
question, why does the military feel a need to manipulate and frame the truth? why aren't facts on the ground, the way they really are, good for the public? just because you like getting you news fabricated by a pr company doesn't mean we have to like it. a free press is one of the cornerstones of a free democratic society, why does the military hate democracy and a free press? maybe the truth is scary and threatening to you.
boo truth hurts, learn to take it like a man
At 10:58 PM,
Annie: "...of course they can, and they get a 10 million dollar a month budget w/a ace PR psyops team to do it !"
So if they spent less money it would be ok? how much would make it all right in your book? Incidently, as to oversight, go here and read the first posting: usajobs. This falls into the "policing their own" category for you to reject it, but there it is. Maybe if Saddam was hired to oversee the spending it would be OK? Oh nevermind, he's otherwise engaged.
Annie: "question, why does the military feel a need to manipulate and frame the truth? why aren't facts on the ground, the way they really are, good for the public?"
Because the military won't be defeated on the ground in Iraq. You know that. If they are defeated, it will be because they failed to counter the "truths" and cleverly manipulated "facts on the ground" from anti-Us and anti-Iraqi propaganda.
So if they spent less money it would be ok?
straw man. i never said that.
how much would make it all right in your book?
0
screw psyops infowarfare, it failing miserably
Maybe if Saddam was hired to oversee the spending it would be OK?
strawman, is that all you've got?
the military won't be defeated on the ground in Iraq
then why don't you try winning the war on the ground instead of using the crutch of lies? fave it, get rid of rummy, iraq is failing, we are failing, the entire operation is being handled by losers, criminals, and puppets. is this the best we've got to offer iraq. pleeease. they would do better w/out our 'help' if thats the case. nothing is better there since we invaded.
here, view some realuty...
iraq for sale
At 12:12 AM,
Annie, i'm just trying to figure out your position. you say it's ok for them to counter the "anti" propaganda, but mention the budget to do so as if it were a bad thing in and of itself.
you also said you cannot "legitimately investigate yourself" as a lead in to the recent stories of the "Office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction" being closed.
first: why would it be OK for the OSIGIR to investigate? aren't they also a US gov't agency? (= "legitimately investigating yourself")
second: the story I read about it said it was set up as temporary anyway. The office, which began work in January 2004, was supposed to be temporary from the start, lasting until much of the $18 billion initially allocated for reconstruction was spent.
third: even if they close, there is no effort to proceed in Iraq without oversight, as the link I offered you should demonstrate.
fourth: I am not saying they should close. It seems they are doing good work in pursuing accountability there. So heck, keep 'em open as far as I'm concerned.
Annie: "then why don't you try winning the war on the ground instead of using the crutch of lies?"
They are trying to win the war on the ground, but the crutch of your lies can't be ignored.
you say it's ok for them to counter the "anti" propaganda
maybe if you copied and pasted you wouldn't make these stupid errors. here's what i said..
Can the military respond to opposing stories & propaganda?
annie ...of course they can, and they get a 10 million dollar a month budget w/a ace PR psyops team to do it !
should they? hell no. that's why i alloted $0 .
your lies can't be ignored.
i travel in truth, but you're right, you can't hide from it.
The NYT article by James Glanz appeared Friday, and has not seen the light of local media. Mirroring it was an article in the Washington Post which noted that although the Pentagon has spent about $250 billion in Iraq, "the Defense Department's inspector general's office has only two investigators and a half-dozen auditors working there. As recently as last year, it had none."
In other words, the Office of the Special Inspector General was the only significant oversight in town. Now it's gone.
Need any more proof of the connection between corporate corruption and the Republican power structure?
Thirteen out of fourteen projects by one contractor, Parsons Corp, had significant problems. One contract was to build 142 health clinics. "Only six have opened. Yet Parsons will not have to return any of its profit, nor is it likely to face any kind of formal punishment."
Here and elsewhere, contractors fall into a legal Twilight Zone where they can rip us off and place soldiers and civilians at risk with little fear of retribution. The Post reports that a 2000 law that was intended to hold contractors responsible for crimes in war zones "has never been tested." Several civil cases, including one where Halliburton truck drivers charged that the company knowingly sent them into a raging battle, have been thrown out because, as the judge ruled, the Army, not Halliburton, is ultimately in charge in wartime.
Incredible.
i think we should have congresional oversite which will never happen. there is no oversite in the gop senate. the dod lost 2 trillion dollars rummy anounced 9/10/01.
i am totally bore w/this no brainer converstaion. some people is making billions off the death of iraqis and american soldiers. they make more the longer the conflict continues. i will not be commenting further on this topic on this thread. its like beating a dead horse.
At 5:43 AM,
Annie: "maybe if you copied and pasted you wouldn't make these stupid errors. here's what i said..
Can the military respond to opposing stories & propaganda?
annie ...of course they can, and they get a 10 million dollar a month budget w/a ace PR psyops team to do it !
should they? hell no.
Maybe if you were paying attention we could have ended the thread six posts ago!
Once more, slowly now:
Q: Can the military respond to opposing stories & propaganda?
A (Annie): No.
A (RhusLancia): Yes.
Can the military respond to opposing stories & propaganda?
ok, i cannot let this pass. it is total bs that this is all that is happening this 'responding' strategic influences creates scenarios to illuminate and distract. and they are also not limited to 'opposing' only stories that are false or propaganda. they also 'oppose' stories that are THE TRUTH but show them in a bad light.
so don't pretend a program that was established before the war started to trump for the 'wonderful occupation image' REGARDLESS of what was transpiring or going to transpire was formulated to counter only propaganda. their (your) job is to counter any info that may be damaging to your image.
can and should are very different words.
"should the military promote a positive image thru the media even if it includes using fabricated information, propaganda, falsehoods, lies or deception either as a responsive tactic or an initial tactic at a time of war as a regular continuos form of warfare abroad or at home not limited to isolated emergency events but as a viable weapon against the enemy especially if truth could be harmful to their image if they believe it promotes their goals?"
At 11:08 AM,
Annie: "can and should are very different words."
The answer is yes in both cases. Is it permissible and legal for the military to counter false or misleading stories in a time of war? Yes!
Annie: ""should the military promote a positive image thru the media "
Yes!
Annie, cont: "... even if it includes using fabricated information, propaganda, falsehoods, lies ..."
It doesn't include those things. Maybe "propaganda", but that too is permissable.
At 1:39 PM,
Your ideas make a LOT of sense. Unfortunately I think you underestimat the extent of American corruption or the degree of their desire to control the world. The Americans (I'm American) don't want Iraq to be peaceful and stable, and they certainly don't want a strong, stable government there that can stand up to them. They want it to be chaotic since that makes it easier for them to implement their policies of divide and conquer. Nobody should be fooled: the Americans very definitely want to conquer and dominate the world. What's happened in Iraq hasn't changed that goal at all, but just caused disagreement about the way to do that. But they definitely don't want peace. Not most of them anyway. At least that's my impression. They won't leave your country until they're thrown out by superior military forces.
But they definitely don't want peace. Not most of them anyway
anon, their is a vast difference between the will of the people and the nocon/zionist agenda. i will agree one definitely doesn't want peace (unless it is a peace between a master and slave), the other, the masses want peace some of us are ignorant and believe the lies fed to us will lead to us. please don't lump us all togethere w/the masters of war.
It doesn't include those things.
yes, it most certainly does.
the revolt of the occupied against the occupiers is the closest thing there is to pure patriotism; the nature of the ideologies involved is largely irrelevant -- camille rougeron
from edward herman's 1992 book, beyond hypocrisy: decoding the news in an age of propaganda ,
One of the most potent weapons of the western establishment designed to justify beating up smaller countries is the need for defense against "terrorism." ... terrorism is a fuzzy notion that can be employed with great indignation against selected enemies while ignoring, supporting, and carrying out similar actions by ourselves and allies. This can be accomplished only if a cooperative media will not look closely, ask questions, and challenge double standards and propagandistic usage. And the U.S. mass media have been more than cooperative.
...
An important element of word manipulation is the confinement fo "terrorism" to acts of violence and intimidation carried out by individuals and small groups. Dictionary definitions have always extended the reach of the word to governments, and in years gone by, terrorism was associated primarily with governments. This was based on the quantity and quality of violence carried out by state and non-state actors, as only states use systematic torture as a method of intimidation, and the scale of their acts of violence makes the terrorism of individuals and small groups look relatively insignificant. The concepts of "retail" and "wholesale" terrorism capture the fact that individual and rebel group violence is on a small (retail) scale, whereas state violence is on a large (wholesale) scale.
The shift to using "terrorism" only for small-scale violence was a highly political choice of word use, corresponding to an identifiable political agenda. In 1981 President Reagan and Secretary of State Alexander Haig announced that they were shifting U.S. priorities from "human rights" to "terrorism." ... The point of the newly invigorated concern over retail terrorism was partly to divert attention from the now "constructively engaged" state terrorists, who were unleashed to invade and kill on a large scale in Lebanon, South Africa, and Central America, and partly to justify other Reagan era policies (rearmament, the upward redistribution of income, etc.), which required a patriotic, confused and thereby more manageable public. The media went along with these new priorities and the related system of doublespeak and propaganda about terrorism without noticeable dissent.
Confining "terrorism" to the acts of retail terrorists is sometimes rationalized on the ground that they attack innocent civilians, whereas state terrorists are presumably more discriminating. While this stance is made plausible by airline hijackings and airport bombings, it is a false generalization. Retail terrorists are often highly selective, and state terrorists frequently engage in deliberate intimidation by murder of large civilian populations.
...
Another important doublespeak device for rationalizing one's own and friendly terrorism is to describe it as "retaliation" and "counter-terror." The trick here is arbitrary word assignment: that is, any violence engaged in by ourselves or our friends is ipso facto retaliation and counter-terrorism; whatever the enemy does is terrorism, irrespective of facts. Of course, the enemy always says that his violence was provoked by prior acts of ours or our clients, that he designates as terrorist, but the enemy claims are never allowed; our claims and those of our allies are never questioned.
what should be done?
24, i thought it only realistic to view the
ARMED FORCES JOURNAL to view the future map the occupiers have in store for the new middle east.the title is called 'blood borders' in the right hand corner of the page w/a little map. if you click on the previous or next buttons you may view the maps expanded, both before and after. at the bottom of the page one may view the 'winners' and 'losers'. note how palestine doesn't exist other than a small area saying 'undetermined'.
here is another valuable link. please scrool to the bottom, don't miss 'dirty little secret' link.
THEN, sit with Iraq’s tribal leaders. Iraq is a tribal community. Everyone undermined this fact for a long time. All tribal leaders should sit on one table with the government and be told that “here is the money you are after. Take it and protect your areas against violence.
I like this idea because this solves the problem of violence at a lower level. I wonder if it could be reduced to even a lower level.
I'm guessing that it would probably be impossible to disarm even a fraction of the terrorists in Iraq at this point so I wonder if the current policy isn't counterproductive. Wouldn't it be better to arm everyone instead of disarming the general public leaving the terrorists armed? Would that work? I guess what I'm asking is whether a well armed local neighborhood would band together and collectively fight off any intrusions.
In my opinion, the government has failed so any solution that could transfer power from the government to the people would probably help.