Showing posts with label iraq. Show all posts
Showing posts with label iraq. Show all posts

January 22, 2007

How US Incompentence has created a civil war

It's been almost 4 years since the US invansion, and the Bush Administration has told us many incompetent lies about why we are still in Iraq. The excuses sounded so believable at the time (at least to Bush supporters): "we are fighting there so we don't have to fight them here",
" Saddan Hussein's trial we'll move Iraq forward", "national elections will free Iraquis", etc. Not even the capture of the No. 2 Al-Qaeda guy has yielded positive results. We are in a mess. A mess, nonetheless created by the same Administration that has vowed that this war is still winneable.

The truth is that the US is fighting a war on terror and the Iraquis are fighting a civil war. How can the US expect the Iraqui government to actually remedy the situation when the situation is not emendable by this Iraqui government. Iraq is so divided and the situation is so stark that the Kurds have been called in to manage troops deployments and to help secure Shiite dominated areas.

Even the manner in which Saddam's execution has been reverbated simply shows the state of affairs in Iraq's civil war-torn society.

The first consideration for the Bush team should have been the fact that the expectations for the Iraqui government to disarm militias were not realistic. The present Shiite administration is hanging on a threat, their leverage with the ongoing conflict is poor and their motives are unclear.

And now a surge of 21,000 troops has been called for by Bush. But the truth is logistically, this is a poor number, because even if Badghad shows signs of relative calm, other cities or towns will pick up the tab.

More poor policies ahead... will keep you posted.

September 06, 2006

Bush confesses....

Bush has finally admitted to the existence of CIA secret prisons abroad, after 5 years of silence. According to him, these detention centers have deterred possible attacks on US soil. Please! The intelligence we have gathered from having these detention centers is so inconsequential that most of our efforts to extract better and more sophisticated intelligence are currently being diverted by overstepping our timeline in Iraq. After Bush leaves office, we will be left with no diplomatic influence in the world, a poor and battered military, no significant breakthroughs in intelligence gathering and so indebted that our intelligence infrastructure will resemble Russia’s in the 1990’s. We have wasted precious resources with the war in Iraq, our counterparts fighting the war on terror seem to be in the right track when it comes to intelligence gathering, like Britain. Wake up Bush, let’s stop fighting this useless war and concentrate all of our brains and pockets finding better intelligence solutions to fighting terrorism, because guess what? Acts of terror are here to stay.

June 20, 2006

Iraq War: donkey vs. elephant

There were 39 combat related killings in Iraq in January.
In the fair city of Detroit there were 35 murders in the month of January. That's just one American city, about as deadly as the entire war-torn country of Iraq.

When some claim that President Bush shouldn't have started this war, state the following:

a. FDR led us into World War II.
Because we were attacked by Japan and we launched an attack on them (well deserved, because they were killing massive Chinese and other Asian too), before FDR, republican presidents had led this country into an isolationist retrieve and so we emerged , thanks to WWII and FDR, as the respected leader in the WORLD that we are today. That was a conscientious decision from a very good foreign policy maker president. (the only one so far)

b. Germany never attacked us; Japan did.
>From 1941-1945, 450,000 lives were lost ...
an average of 112,500 per year.
First imagine the world today with a Germanized Europe, then let's talk

c. Truman finished that war and started one in Korea.
North Korea never attacked us..
>From 1950-1953, 55,000 lives were lost ...
an average of 18,334 per year.

Yes Truman did start a war (that had an end) as ANY other president would have (especially a Republican one);at the time, we were making foreign policy decisions that were compatible with the democratic ideals of this country, the war was a tool to stop the spread of communism, something the RIGHT has always been scared of.

d John F. Kennedy started the Vietnam conflict in 1962.
Vietnam never attacked us.

You are wrong, the decision to liberate South Vietman was already in the table thanks to Eisenhower (the Republican President), Kennedy had no choice especially when it was being pressured by the right to stop COMMUNISM (you know the thing that the RIGHT is most afraid of).

e. Johnson turned Vietnam into a quagmire.
>From 1965-1975, 58,000 lives were lost ..
an average of 5,800 per year.

Vietnam was a mess since the start, whether a republican or democrat as president. It was an open-ended military and ideological war, just like Iraq is today.

f. Clinton went to war in Bosnia without UN or French consent.
Bosnia never attacked us.
He was offered Osama bin Laden's head on a platter three
times by Sudan and did nothing. Osama has attacked us on
multiple occasions.

Have you looked at Bosnia today? or Serbia and Croatia? I believe they are democratic or at least close to that. Bosnia, Serbia and Croatia today are European Union candidates. Besides we went in not to "force the establishment of a democracy" but to STOP the beginning of genocide (ethnic cleansing), like the one going one in Darfur today. Democracy came as a by product of having NATO and the UN presence. The problem with the Iraq war is that it never should have been fought as part of the global fight against terror. There were very little terrorists in Iraq; today is a lair of terrorists thanks to the US invansion.

g. In the years since terrorists attacked us , President Bush
has liberated two countries, crushed the Taliban, crippled
al-Qaida, put nuclear inspectors in Libya, Iran, and, North
Korea without firing a shot, and captured a terrorist who
slaughtered 300,000 of his own people.

The most problable and intelligent reason to assume there has not been another terrorist attack is not because we are safer today, is probably due to the fact that the enemy is in recharge (has no funds at this time), that means that they can take as long as they need to inflict pain again, that is what they do best, it has nothing to do with our intelligence and leadership abilities and everybody knows that. In regards to those other "accomplishments" that Bush has realized they are very ill founded. Liberating a country does not mean winning the war on terror, his actions have ignited the war on terror to the point that terrorism will now be part of the US foregin policy agenda for many years to come.

The Democrats are complaining about how long the war is taking.

Democrats and republicans alike are complaining about the bad administration and the mishandling of the war, not how many years is taking. It will take as much as it is needed, because we cannot afford to lose it, yet we desperately need new policies.

But it took less time to take Iraq than it took Janet Reno to take the Branch Davidian compound.

A very bad choice of analogy that deserves no comment.

That was a 51-day operation..

We've been looking for evidence for chemical weapons in Iraq for less time than it took Hillary Clinton to find the Rose Law Firm billing records.

Another bad one too. It has nothing to do with national security. Republicans made this war a national security issue and look where we are today.

It took less time for the 3rd Infantry Division and the Marines to destroy the Medina Republican Guard than it took Ted Kennedy to call the police after his Oldsmobile sank at Chappaquiddick.

Seriously these are not in any way comparable choices. But I will comment that the brilliance of Rumsfeld was to disband the Republican Guard and leave them their arms and now we are fighting them as insurgents. That was a TERRIBLE mistake, that one is costing lives.

It took less time to take Iraq than it took to count the votes in Florida!!!!

So you mean we have Iraq in our hands now?

Our Commander-In-Chief is doing a GREAT JOB!
The Military morale is high!

Sure he is doing the best he can do. I mean we are talking about a guy that quits everything when it goes bad (his oil company, his baseball team, his national guard service). But some will say he is sticking to his guns, not changing course is what is hurting our military and our pockets.


The biased media hopes we are too ignorant to realize the facts

We have already realized what this administration is made of. thank you.

But Wait . Bring it on

There's more!
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On torture

Last week we learned in dismay that two American soldiers had been kidnapped by the insurgency at a security checkpoint in Iraq. It is the first time the insurgency has succeeded in kidnapping American troops. It is a scary situation. Why? As this war drags on, so does our military and ideological confidence (this is as much a military as an ideological war). Since this administration has been accused of torture, and as we continue to knock on doors of countries were it is legal and acceptable (outsourcing torture), we have exacerbated this issue to the point of no return.

Before we were accused of torturing enemy combatants, we could protest the abuse of our soldiers and contractors in captivity and be supported by our allies. Unfortunately, this is not the case today. Thanks to the Bush-Cheney torture policy, our two soldiers have no considerable protection and we have no justification to evoke the Geneva Convention, after it has been chewed up by this administration. This is why torture is always wrong, no matter the circumstances. Generations of American troops have cemented the idea that torture was unthinkable. No longer. This is just one of the many things gone wrong on this war.

June 18, 2006

Voters beware: House Republicans on the hunt again

Republicans in the House have officially unleashed their divisive political stunts at the near-sight of Congressional elections. Last Friday, the House voted 256-153 to reject a timetable for the pullout of US troops in Iraq (as if there are no other pressing issues facing our nation like immigration reform, education, state of emergency medical facilities, and high gasoline prices to name a few), fiercely igniting an ongoing debate about the mismanagement of the war in Iraq and the open-ended commitment and resources this Administration is blindly banking on. According to the Associated Press, "the Republican-led House has approved a non-binding resolution that praises US troops, labels the Iraq war part of the larger global fight against terrorism and says an "arbitrary date for the withdrawal or redeployment" of troops is not in the national interest".

The surreptitious move in this strategic political stunt is to rally republican support for the President's failed Iraq policy and to mold it into a cheap political slogan for the coming elections, using it to engage votes in a platform that suggests that if you are not for the support of the troops and the fight against terrorism then you must be unpatriotic and a traitor. Voters beware: Republicans want to make you believe that opposing the war is not on our national interest, but what we are REALLY saying is this: let's have a comprehensive review of policies and consider redeployment. A change in direction is in the best interest of the US and Iraq. Like the USA Today stated on Friday's Our View: the (House) debate is a cynical display of election-year politics that turns troops into political pawns.
I couldn't agree more.
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