[flyeater]

but that's true of all special intrest polls Wino. Not just conservative. As to "considered impartial" it depends on who is considering.

[Ciberblade]

I live near a base that have had soldiers return from the troubled region recently. The word from them (patrols in Baghdad) was that the majority of every-day people are pleased with the U.S. for removing sadamn, and concerned over the future of their country.

I am told stories of people coming out of homes just to greet them (some bringing gifts). I am also told the sad stories...but why must everybody focus on negativity?

[flyeater]

War tends to be a negative thing. Since I can only assume that the present administration didn't just fall off the turnip truck, they know that good news doesn't get reported. I can't understand how these folks didn't see it coming. There was ample warning that we could face the very situation that we're now in. You can rationalize all you want but it comes down to failed policy. They took a gamble, now we get to pay for it. None more so then our military forces.
What really burns my biscuits is the no win situation we're in. Regardless of what happens in the next five years we have to foot the bill. Trying to disguise the cost of it by pushing through smaller, more numerous, funding requests as if no one would notice is juvenile & deceitful. Don't expect Iraq to ever pay it back. Those "lending" the money certainly don't have the permission of the Iraqi taxpayer. Would that be taxation without representation?
Once Iraq attains self determination they're gonna stick us. If you think fuel prices are high now imagine what would happen if an Islamic hardliner is elected there. Which is very likely considering their Shiite population. Oil is the most powerful weapon of that region. The Saudi's know it & use it to great effect.
Let's not forget the global "big picture". China has started to do some new saber rattling in regards to Taiwan. The Chinese aren't stupid. They know we're straining to fill the need for military personnel over a long period of time in Iraq. Don't discount that as some "unpossible" scenario. MacArthur made just such an error that resulted in fifty-four years of stalemate & the Vietnam war. Forget the Iron Curtain. The DMZ on the thirty-eight parallel predates it by more then ten years. We almost got our back sides handed to us because the Chinese knew Europe was our first priority.
Tell me what's the difference between defense cuts & not raising enough money to support it? Semantics?
Failed policy on a Presidential level. Perhaps Kerry can't do better, something that you have no credible knowledge on but he'd damn sure know he better dot his Is and cross his Ts.
Bush got one thing right Monday night, it's going to get worse. Bush will lose to Bush. He can't escape Daddy's shadow. The more he struggles the more it sucks him in.

[slickoe]

Wasn't it MacArthur who said never fight a war on the Asian land mass?

[slickoe]

Originally Posted by ciberblade

I live near a base that have had soldiers return from the troubled region recently. The word from them (patrols in Baghdad) was that the majority of every-day people are pleased with the U.S. for removing sadamn, and concerned over the future of their country.

I am told stories of people coming out of homes just to greet them (some bringing gifts). I am also told the sad stories...but why must everybody focus on negativity?

Did those people say whether they want to be occupied by hundreds of thousands of foreign troops indefinitely?

[Ciberblade]

Originally Posted by slickoe

Did those people say whether they want to be occupied by hundreds of thousands of foreign troops indefinitely?

Did anybody say that they were going to be occupied by hundreds of thousands of troops indefinitely? Making kind of a large assumption wouldn't you say?

[flyeater]

Did anybody say that they were going to be occupied by hundreds of thousands of troops indefinitely? Making kind of a large assumption wouldn't you say?

While I would agree with that statement in general you have no knowledge to the contrary. Bush is getting heat over not giving specifics. Remember the grief Clinton got over the 50,000 NATO troops in Kosovo & the 60,000 in Bosnia? Total US military personnel was approximately 22,000.

"If NATO intervenes on the ground in Kosovo, the U.S. can provide intelligence and communications support, but it should avoid committing American combat troops to another open-ended Balkan deployment." -James H. Anderson, Jr, The Heritage Foundation

"The claim that our expedition into Kosovo is to guard a "peace settlement" is another Clinton lie because there is no peace to keep, there is no hope that our involvement can eliminate the causes of the conflict, and there are even questions about who is at fault in the civil war. Clinton's Kosovo war will, like Bosnia, become an open-ended, permanent, costly U.S. project, and it will probably degenerate into a Somalia-type fiasco."
"U.S. troops in Kosovo will be at grave risk from terrorist attacks by Islamic radicals connected to Saudi renegade Osama bin Laden, who has declared a worldwide war on Americans. Fanatics bent on jihad against the "Great Satan" United States could hardly ask for a more tempting target than several thousand Americans deployed so close to their bases in northern Albania."
"We should not underestimate the deceit and deviousness of Clinton's plans to "move on" by getting headlines for aggressive presidential actions to replace coverage of his impeachment trial." -Phyllis Schlafly

"President Clinton is more concerned about winning re-election than being honest with Americans," -Representative Curt Weldon

"I have no confidence in the Clinton-brokered peace deal and I will oppose sending American troops into Bosnia," - Phil Gramm

"Our forces are not border guards, they’re not peacekeeping forces,"
"It is wrong to pass a Senate resolution endorsing the president’s wrong decision . . . and it’s bound to be considered by voters," -Lamar Alexander

I wonder what these folks would have to say at the moment.

[LANMaster]

Originally Posted by slickoe

Wasn't it MacArthur who said never fight a war on the Asian land mass?

Yeah, right before he promised to return to the Phillipines, right?

Yah, I know (not on the Asian land mass) but close enough.

[LANMaster]

Originally Posted by slickoe

Did those people say whether they want to be occupied by hundreds of thousands of foreign troops indefinitely?

Deliberate mischaracterization of the Iraqi occupation.

We will stay for as long as the legitimately elected Iraqi Government wishes for us to stay.

Those elections are slated for January, 2005.

Thankfully troop movements will not be a political football for you to kick around.

[plschwartz]

LAN
Morning
1. Perhaps MacAuthur said that after his experience on Iwo and okinowa, both of which were cut off from resupply. On the continent the enemy would have the interior lines of communication.
2. You said:We will stay for as long as the legitimately elected Iraqi Government wishes for us to stay. This is exactly what the rest of the world wants and we refuse to say. Welcome to the rest of the world

[DNeurococo]

I heard Joe Wilson [Niger/yellowcake/Valerie Plame] on the radio last night. Very interesting. He was talking about Chalabi. There are two schools of thought: 1) Chalabi was just an opportunist crook who was offered money by Iran and took it. 2) Chalabi was part of a sophisticated plot by Iranian Intelligence to get the U.S. to oust their enemy Saddam while Iran sat back and watched.

Wilson says that, judging by the way this incident is being investigated, theory #2 seems to be in fashion.

[LANMaster]

Originally Posted by plschwartz

LAN
Morning
1. Perhaps MacAuthur said that after his experience on Iwo and okinowa, both of which were cut off from resupply. On the continent the enemy would have the interior lines of communication.
2. You said:We will stay for as long as the legitimately elected Iraqi Government wishes for us to stay. This is exactly what the rest of the world wants and we refuse to say. Welcome to the rest of the world

Paul, Did you not listen to the President's speech?

"we refuse to say"

Huh? I thought we said it rather clearly.

Welcome to fact.

.... and good moring to you too, my friend.

[DNeurococo]

Pentagon adviser Richard N. Perle and Ahmad Chalabi enthusiastically slam the CIA for ignoring the Iraqi National Congress. "The I.N.C. has been without question the single most important source of intelligence about Saddam Hussein. … What the agency has learned in recent months has come largely through the I.N.C.'s efforts despite indifference of the C.I.A."

[plschwartz]

LAN
I believe that I am not alone in finding that Bush says nothing without enough qualification to amount to saying nothing though as grandly as he can. But Powell in his disagreement with Blair says otherwise Though the below is about control now the same arguement was used for final withdrawal.

Folgers sugar and coffeemate???

Powell at odds with the British
By Roy Eccleston and Rodney Dalton
27may04

US Secretary of State Colin Powell appeared yesterday to contradict British assurances that a new Iraqi government to be appointed on June 30 would have the final say over military operations in the country.

President George W.Bush insisted in a major speech on Tuesday that Iraqis would have "full sovereignty" from July 1, but a new UN Security Council resolution proposed by the US and Britain is vague about whether the US-led foreign troops could override Iraqi concerns.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair said the interim Iraqi government would have "final political control" over foreign troops.

But questioned on Tuesday, Mr Powell said the US's 138,000 troops would answer to their own commander in Iraq.

The US would "take into account whatever they (Iraqis) might say at a political and military level", he said.

"Ultimately, however, if it comes down to the United States armed forces protecting themselves or in some way accomplishing their mission in a way that might not be in total consonance with what the Iraqi interim government might want to do, US forces remain under US command and will do what is necessary to protect themselves," he said.

The difference of opinion came as Mr Bush called French President Jacques Chirac, one of the war's strongest critics, to build support for the resolution.

Mr Bush said the US and France shared "the same goal: a free and stable and peaceful Iraq" but Mr Chirac said the resolution needed more work.

"What President Chirac and others have said is they want to make sure that the transfer of sovereignty to the interim government is a real transfer," Mr Bush said.

Russia, which also opposed the war, wants to see the make-up of the interim government before swinging its support behind the resolution.

Mr Powell said he hoped to see a list of names for the new Iraqi government from UN envoy Lakhdar Brahimi by early next week - just a month before it is due to assume power.

UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan held a private meeting yesterday with security council members to brief them on Mr Brahimi's progress before further negotiations on the resolution today.

The new government - a president, two vice-presidents, a prime minister and 26 ministers - will run Iraq until elections are held by the end of January 2005.

The White House discounted a news agency report that it is considering speeding up Iraqi self-rule by bringing forward elections from late December or January to the northern autumn.

Calls for an earlier election have been coming from Republican and Democrat critics who say the US must move as quickly as possible to an elected government, because it is the only body that Iraqis will see as legitimate and worth fighting for.

privacy © The Australian

[LANMaster]

Originally Posted by DNeurococo

I heard Joe Wilson [Niger/yellowcake/Valerie Plame] on the radio last night. Very interesting. He was talking about Chalabi. There are two schools of thought: 1) Chalabi was just an opportunist crook who was offered money by Iran and took it. 2) Chalabi was part of a sophisticated plot by Iranian Intelligence to get the U.S. to oust their enemy Saddam while Iran sat back and watched.

Wilson says that, judging by the way this incident is being investigated, theory #2 seems to be in fashion.

I suspect a combination of the two, which I will call the #3 possibility;

Chalabi was a crook, and had been for some time, acting in the US as the head of the INC (Iraqi National Congress) in exile during almost all 25 years of the Hussein regime, if my info is correct.
The US began funding the INC after the 91 gulf war so that Chalabi could organize a resistance movement to Hussein.
Chalabi liked the money flow and the expensive suits and Chauffering around at US taxpayer expense. But in order to get more and more taxpayer money, Chalabi had to show he (and the INC) was worth more and more to the US. So I suspect that he decided that providing sources to people who would give the US intelligence. Well, I think the US intel people got just what they wanted from Chalabi, but it turns out that Chalabi may have encouraged some embellishment on the intel (my opinion) and the Administration was glad to accept intel which verified their beliefs.
I'd bet that Chalabi's relationship with Iran began breifly after '91 in an effort to increase ripe conditions for the toppling of Saddam.

Iran's only benefit from Chalabi would be intelligence which the US chose to share with him. What intel, we can only speculate. I'm sure if it was anything really important, we'll never hear about it. So it may appear to the media that the case on Chalabi was trumped up, simply because the true intelligence will not be released for security reasons.

Which begs the question, why would the US share vital info with Chalabi in the first place?

Was Chalabi also embellishing his intel to the Iranians?

Could we have used (and did we possibly use) Chalabi to our benefit by feeding him false intel in the hopes that he would share it with the Iranians?

Many unanswered querstions for which we will likely never know the answers.