Progress in Iraq

[Louis de la Ferte Ste Colombe]

Sure you can - what do you think Clinton was accused of? You might want to check on the defination of perjury. Here I will help you out since you seem to be unaware of the possiblity

I am well aware of the possibility, and thought of the same example.
Perjury is under oath. Had Clinton lied in front of the American people on TV, he would not have been charged... It's the same lie under oath that creates the possibility for perjury.
And there is a reason why perjury and lies are 2 different words. As far as I know, press conferences are not under oath, technically not a perjury. I don't think UK admnistration or US admnistration officials made any declaration about the war they could be charged with perjury.

Your getting warm - foolish incompetenet and wanting to believe the information on its face value without looking at other sources of information. Something many here are just of guilty of doing.

Looking yourself in a mirror?

I don't regret it at all - its called sacrasm. And many who opposed the war were not thinking about the current situation - they were only opposing it because they disagreed with the necessity of the conflict. Again hindsight is always 20/20.

And many who were opposing the war were thinking of the same situation. I remember writing about Algeria. I remember many ridiculising the notion of "welcoming with flowers".

There are reasons to disagree with the necesity of the conflict that can be that the conflict itself creates the condition for failure.

Looks like a case of people who were wrong are pissed at people who were right and calling for hindsight judgement.

So you would of supported allowing the sanctions to end, for Saddam to rebuild his WMD programs, and to continue to terrorize his own people?

You would of allowed his regime to remain unaccountable for the cease fire conditions that he violated - to include the returning and accounting of several thousand Kuwaiti citizens that were taken from their homes by Iraqi forces? And so many more little things that so many would just like to ignore.

How very noble of you.


(and yes I am being sacrastic once again)

Yes I would. I live in a world where many other atrocities are tolerated, and noone cares. See Chechnya, Darfour, Cuba, China/ Tibet, Rwanda before, etc, etc... Saddam was not the only one to torture its own people.

There are many wrongdoings. And sometimes fixing them just makes things worse. Is war the solution to make all that stop? Or is war triggering its own set of atrocities?
There are cases where I got no doubt I prefer war. There are cases where I wish we had declared war.
In our world, Irak was not the most pressing one.
Don't you know of any other options?

It's "sarcastic". Something that bitter people enjoy when they got nothing to do other than belittle others.

What is sad is.... Your personal motivations are not that far from many French lefty loonies that were supporting Saddam removal... Saddam or many other tyran. Time for fear to change side.
But they had a lot of doubts about that war, and the way UK and US admnistrations were doing it.
The cause might be juste, but it may not be worth a fight. The fight itself will corrupt the cause... In that case, and as much as it sucked for Koweitiis and Iraqiis, it was not worth it.
In 1991, it was worth it. Because violations were more severe, and because internation law was trampled. I was quite angry when we stopped short of removing Saddam back then.

There is something called "overfixing one's mistake"; blundering even more by trying to fix the initial problem. That's right where you are.

Louis,

[Redleg]

I am well aware of the possibility, and thought of the same example.
Perjury is under oath. Had Clinton lied in front of the American people on TV, he would not have been charged... It's the same lie under oath that creates the possibility for perjury.
And there is a reason why perjury and lies are 2 different words. As far as I know, press conferences are not under oath, technically not a perjury. I don't think UK admnistration or US admnistration officials made any declaration about the war they could be charged with perjury.

LOL looks like you didn't like the answer now does it. You claim that lies was not a crime - perjury shows that you are incorrect.

Looking yourself in a mirror?

Or was it your comments?

And many who were opposing the war were thinking of the same situation. I remember writing about Algeria. I remember many ridiculising the notion of "welcoming with flowers".

Yes indeed hindsight - no matter how you try to gloss it over.

There are reasons to disagree with the necesity of the conflict that can be that the conflict itself creates the condition for failure.

Maybe so - but that was not the initial arguement spewed forth by the anti-war crowd.

Looks like a case of people who were wrong are pissed at people who were right and calling for hindsight judgement.

Not at all - who's pissed not I - hindsight is just what it is hindsight

Yes I would. I live in a world where many other atrocities are tolerated, and noone cares. See Chechnya, Darfour, Cuba, China/ Tibet, Rwanda before, etc, etc... Saddam was not the only one to torture its own people.

So you would excuse them all. Again how very noble of you.

There are many wrongdoings. And sometimes fixing them just makes things worse. Is war the solution to make all that stop? Or is war triggering its own set of atrocities?

War is sometimes necessary - are you attempting to say Saddam honored every ceasefire condition?

There are cases where I got no doubt I prefer war. There are cases where I wish we had declared war.
In our world, Irak was not the most pressing one.
Don't you know of any other options?

14 years of faild diplomacy accounts for nothing it seems.

It's "sarcastic". Something that bitter people enjoy when they got nothing to do other than belittle others.

Yep and why I am using it in this arguement - because of your comments and more to the point Tribesman's. Sarcasm is what many here like to use - as a legimate form of arguement. Now it seems you don't like it for the same reason I don't like it as a form of arguement. However as long as some wish to use it as a legimate form of discussion - I will always use it back to counter their sarcasm arguement.

What is sad is.... Your personal motivations are not that far from many French lefty loonies that were supporting Saddam removal... Saddam or many other tyran. Time for fear to change side.

LOL - now that is funny - do you know what my personal motivations are? I doubt it very seriousily that you do.

But they had a lot of doubts about that war, and the way UK and US admnistrations were doing it.
The cause might be juste, but it may not be worth a fight. The fight itself will corrupt the cause... In that case, and as much as it sucked for Koweitiis and Iraqiis, it was not worth it.
In 1991, it was worth it. Because violations were more severe, and because internation law was trampled. I was quite angry when we stopped short of removing Saddam back then.

There is something called "overfixing one's mistake"; blundering even more by trying to fix the initial problem. That's right where you are.

Louis,

Then I would say that you should of responded this way in your first post - verus the comments that you initially made - then maybe I would not have been sarcastic.

[Aurelian]

About progress in Iraq:

I don't see any. Progress would be a weakening insurgency, a reasonable Iraqi government that had Shia, Sunnis and Kurds cooperating, and a new constitution that had some hope of being acceptable to the factions involved.

The constitution that will be up for a vote in the next couple of weeks was drafted in such a way that the Sunnis feel that their chief interests were ignored and violated. They had very little representation in the drafting process, and the Sunni delegates that were allowed to participate were soon shut out of the process because they raised objections.

The chief Sunni fear is that the constitution will allow power in Iraq to devolve to regional units. The Kurds and Shia will form regional units in the North and South, leaving a Sunni zone in the middle of the country. All of the oil wealth is in the non-Sunni parts of the country. Under the current constitutional plan, the Shia and Kurdish regional governments might very well keep their region's oil wealth for local use... rather than having it controlled and redistributed on a federal level. That would leave the Sunni area as a poor and landlocked zone within a Shia majority-controlled federal government.

It has to be remembered that not only are the Sunni the formerly dominant group in Iraq, but that they have been targeted by de-Baathification measures, and have taken the brunt of US counter-insurgency actions. They feel persecuted, and the new constitution has done nothing to calm their fears about their position in a new Iraq.

The Sunni are likely to come out in force against the constitution... but the government just moved the goalposts so that instead of being able to defeat the constitution with a 2/3 vote in three provinces, they now need 2/3 of registered voters in three provinces. That last minute rules change alone might be enough to ensure that the Sunnis don't accept the results of the referendum.

As if that wasn't bad enough, the Kurdish president of Iraq recently called on the Shia prime minister to resign. That represents a break between the Kurdish and Shiite tribal chiefs. The primary issue dividing them seems to be the status of Kirkuk - a rich oil center that the Kurds want, but that is divided between Kurdish and Shia Arab inhabitants.

The bottom line is that there are too many fault lines in Iraqi politics at the moment, and that those fault lines seem to be hardening and widening. US soldiers can run around expending ammunition and lives, but it is the political process that has to work before the situation will calm down.

As in most things, the current US leadership doesn't seem to have any clear idea of how to manage the situation. They've been pushing the Iraqi government hard, first for the elections in January, and then for a constitution and referendum; but the political foundations weren't in place to give those events the positive outcomes that they should have had. Instead, the slap-dash process excluded and alienated the Sunnis that are the foundation of the insurgency - and may have split the various Shia and Kurdish factions.

This is not to say that the country will necessarily erupt into full scale civil war. However, many analysts believe that Iraq is already undergoing a low intensity civil war as insurgents and death squads begin to target rival ethnic groups and leaders. Widespread political violence of that kind could make Iraq truly ungovernable.



By the way, here's a link to a very detailed and useful policy briefing on Iraq's constitutional process: http://www.crisisgroup.org/home/getf...d&tid=3703&l=1

[Redleg]

Some progress is going on - regardless of the nay saying of some and the politicial failures that are evident.


http://www.defenselink.mil/news/Oct2...1001_2904.html

This is the first joint mission, planned and led by the 2nd Public Order Brigade. The Iraqis are out front," said Army Maj. Rick Ackerman of the Special Police Transition Team. "There was no American intervention - 3rd Squadron, 7th Cavalry provided an outer cordon and the Special Police Transition Team provided a liaison between coalition forces and the Public Order Brigade."

A site that has several different monthes of press releases and stories on the reconstruction effort

http://www.defendamerica.mil/iraq/rebuilding.html

[Louis de la Ferte Ste Colombe]

While talking about the constitution process...

There is progress of some sort... http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/mid...st/4309164.stm

At least it'll get voted... by absentees

Louis,

[Kraxis]

I'm sort of undecided about the progress. When you look at it with a fair and unbiased viewpoint it does look rather bad.

But when I think about it it seems to be at least changing, for the better or worse I don't know.

First the insurgets attacked the US forces directly. That was apparently not very effective as they stopped that in any large capacity quite fast.
Then they moved onto assasinations and abductions (not the 'nice' ones for money, but those we end up seeing on Al-Jazeera) as their main forms of attacks. That has been declining too. It seems the attacks are now concentrated on the new Iraqi police and military in the forms of recruits or transports, and attacks on congregations of Shia (take note of the big bully's words that he will drive them to war with attacks).

It looks like that every time the insurgets try another 'headline' strategy, one that involves lots of publicity and scaryness. And now it seemslike they have finally given in totally and are just targeting what they can with any effect. It is still visible and disruptive, but hopefully it is an indicator of a weakening position for them, or at least a beginning loss of belief in eventual victory.

[Tribesman]

A site that has several different monthes of press releases and stories on the reconstruction effort

Very good Red , my first posts say that they seem to be making up contradictory statements about the numbers and training abilities of Iraqi recruits , and you provide a link that contains (amongs other things) statements about the numbers and training of Iraqi recruits . .
Some nice releases there on reconstruction , and there has been some progress , but some of those releases (especially concerning schools and healthcare) are exactly the same as were released 2 years ago i.e. plans to carry out X amount of work .
You will notice if you visit the POC site that they talk of money spent , projects approved for start up and already commenced, yet remain silent on the proportion of "money spent" that has dissappeared , and "projects approved" that they no longer have money for , or "already commenced" where the work hasn't commenced because the contractor did a bunk with the money or the lack of security has prevented actual commencement. You have to read the US general auditor report for that .

BTW I do like the release about the police getting radios for some of their police cars .....wow police cars with radios , what a novel concept , welcome to the 21st century

(take note of the big bully's words that he will drive them to war with attacks).

That is one of the more worrying developments Kraxis , though I think the changes in the voting rules will do just as much to sideline any moderate voices amongst the Sunni Arabs and push the extremists to the fore .

[Louis de la Ferte Ste Colombe]

LOL looks like you didn't like the answer now does it. You claim that lies was not a crime - perjury shows that you are incorrect.

Errr.... Perjury is perjury, and that's a crime. Lie is a lie. Noone is going to prosecute you for a lie, unless it's under oath. Then it's perjury. You don't see a difference?

The original point was that since noone convicted US administration officials of lying, then they had not lyed.
My answer was that, since US administration is not talking under oath, it's not a crime to lie, they can't be prosecuted for that.

Saying that there is no lie, because there is no conviction is a serious misunderstanding. It's odd: I suspect you know that, so I wonder why you make obviously wrong statement.

If all the press conferences were under oath, then yes, it would be a lot of fun, and I guess we would see a lot more prosecution

the whole hindsight thing- Maybe so - but that was not the initial arguement spewed forth by the anti-war crowd.[

Had you been listening back then... I guess it was easier to believe that all war opponents were fitting the stereotypes you built for them.

The danger with caricaturing the people you oppose is that you end up believing the caricature, and not the actual arguments.

So you would excuse them all. Again how very noble of you.

I would certainly not excuse them all. The underlying point that you have so obviously missed is that this nobility seems to be very conveniently targetted.
We get noble in Iraq, but not with Russia or China. That's a very convenient kind of nobility. Noble with the weak, bargaining with the strong. Hypocrisy?

Would I allow those dictatorship to exist? Short of other acceptable alternatives, yes. War is rarely an acceptable alternative.
Do I excuse them? No.

War is sometimes necessary - are you attempting to say Saddam honored every ceasefire condition?

War is sometimes necessary. I don't think it was necessary in that case, even if Saddam was a treacherous bastard. The current situation is an expensive price to pay to punish someone who was not honoring all and every ceasefire conditions.

Louis,

[Adrian II]

Saying that there is no lie because there is no conviction is a serious misunderstanding.

There has always been a lingering suspicion that the 'intelligence failures' with regard to Saddam's WMD, his ties to Al Qaida, etcetera were intentional lies. This is because such 'mistakes' were mainly promulgated by neoconservatives. Part of the creed of their founder Leo Strauss (+1973) is that democracies are inherently unable to produce and pursue a strategic vision of the world, and that democratic leaders and civil servants are required to lie from time to time if they want to pursue such a vision anyway. This was deemed an important strategem in the struggle with the Soviet Union, which the first generation neocons (Albert Wohlstetter, Irving Kristol, Norman Podhoretz, Richard Perle) claimed to have settled in the West's favour.

An important part of the vision of the 2nd generation, post-1989 neocons (Bill Kristol, Donald Rumsfeld, Douglas Feith, Zalmay Khalilzad) was a regime-change in Iraq in order to remove the linch-pin from the Arab anti-Israel front. They had a vision in which a democratic, pro-American Iraq would take the lead both in a reconciliation with Israel and in democratic reform throughout the region.

I would not be surprised if it turns out that they have used their influence to spread - how shall I put it? - intentional mistakes about Saddams' activities in order to convince a wider public of the need to invade Saddam's country. I also strongly suspect that some of their economic 'expectations' - such as that Iraq would pay for its own reconstruction out of its oil revenues, and that the post-Iraq world would be awash with Iraqi oil - were intended to convince the 'oil-wing' of the Republican party to support the war.

[Tribesman]

Good news , they have gone back to the old method of vote counting which should make some Sunni Arabs happy .
Bad news , that means the vote on the constitution may well end in rejection .

[Geoffrey S]

There has always been a lingering suspicion that the 'intelligence failures' with regard to Saddam's WMD, his ties to Al Qaida, etcetera were intentional lies.

Not the least because thus far any evidence to show the truth behind such claims is conveniently lacking, both before the war and (more suspiciously) after.

[Louis de la Ferte Ste Colombe]

Not the least because thus far any evidence to show the truth behind such claims is conveniently lacking, both before the war and (more suspiciously) after.

Conveniently

You mean it's a conspiracy from anti war crowd?

Louis,

[Geoffrey S]

Conveniently

You mean it's a conspiracy from anti war crowd?

Not quite. Evidence is conveniently lacking after the war to prove the claims that WMDs were present in Iraq and the like, despite supposed clear evidence before the war.

I'm not really certain how to phrase it. Basically the US hasn't had to provide evidence to support their claims before the war, which is convenient for the Bush administartion; they made claims about Iraq, started a war after which they were supposed to find evidence to support those claims, and didn't find (or at least show) evidence to back up the earlier statements. Convenient for the Bush administration, don't you say?

Edit: why do people post before me?

[Redleg]

There has always been a lingering suspicion that the 'intelligence failures' with regard to Saddam's WMD, his ties to Al Qaida, etcetera were intentional lies. This is because such 'mistakes' were mainly promulgated by neoconservatives. Part of the creed of their founder Leo Strauss (+1973) is that democracies are inherently unable to produce and pursue a strategic vision of the world, and that democratic leaders and civil servants are required to lie from time to time if they want to pursue such a vision anyway. This was deemed an important strategem in the struggle with the Soviet Union, which the first generation neocons (Albert Wohlstetter, Irving Kristol, Norman Podhoretz, Richard Perle) claimed to have settled in the West's favour.

suspicion is just that - its not proof nor does it support a claim of its an intentional lie.

An important part of the vision of the 2nd generation, post-1989 neocons (Bill Kristol, Donald Rumsfeld, Douglas Feith, Zalmay Khalilzad) was a regime-change in Iraq in order to remove the linch-pin from the Arab anti-Israel front. They had a vision in which a democratic, pro-American Iraq would take the lead both in a reconciliation with Israel and in democratic reform throughout the region.

The horror of it all - again it does not prove a lie.

I would not be surprised if it turns out that they have used their influence to spread - how shall I put it? - intentional mistakes about Saddams' activities in order to convince a wider public of the need to invade Saddam's country. I also strongly suspect that some of their economic 'expectations' - such as that Iraq would pay for its own reconstruction out of its oil revenues, and that the post-Iraq world would be awash with Iraqi oil - were intended to convince the 'oil-wing' of the Republican party to support the war.

Again does that fit into claiming that President Bush told a lie. It doesn't unless your attempting to say he told them to do it.

[Adrian II]

suspicion is just that - its not proof nor does it support a claim of its an intentional lie

Nor did I claim that. I merely explained what I think is the root of the suspicions with regard to these gentlemen.

[Redleg]

Errr.... Perjury is perjury, and that's a crime. Lie is a lie. Noone is going to prosecute you for a lie, unless it's under oath. Then it's perjury. You don't see a difference?

The original point was that since noone convicted US administration officials of lying, then they had not lyed.
My answer was that, since US administration is not talking under oath, it's not a crime to lie, they can't be prosecuted for that.

You stated you could not be prosecuted for a lie - that is incorrect you can.

Saying that there is no lie, because there is no conviction is a serious misunderstanding. It's odd: I suspect you know that, so I wonder why you make obviously wrong statement.

That is not what I stated - I said there is no evidence of a lie, just misinformed, incorrect, or proven to be wrong. Provide evidence of a lie - before making accusations of it.

If all the press conferences were under oath, then yes, it would be a lot of fun, and I guess we would see a lot more prosecution

Again you would have to prove that they lied - a hard thing to do.

Had you been listening back then... I guess it was easier to believe that all war opponents were fitting the stereotypes you built for them.

I listened to them - and like I stated already the majority stated what I said they did.

The danger with caricaturing the people you oppose is that you end up believing the caricature, and not the actual arguments.

Well when its done in an arguement by one side - I believe its perfectly acceptable to do it back. If one doesn't like it being done in return - one should not attempt to do so themselves.

I would certainly not excuse them all. The underlying point that you have so obviously missed is that this nobility seems to be very conveniently targetted.
We get noble in Iraq, but not with Russia or China. That's a very convenient kind of nobility. Noble with the weak, bargaining with the strong. Hypocrisy?

And in this you would be incorrect. Iraq was a consistent issue since 1991. A war was fought in 1991 where Iraq promised to abide by a cease fire - which it failed to do. China and Russia are not under the same conditions - neither is North Korea, they have yet to violate the conditions of thier cease fire with the United States and South Korea. It seems your now attempting to lump them all together. Each nation mentioned have seperate situations then that of Iraq. Again Iraq failed to abide by a cease fire signed by both warring parties. No other nation falls within that same situation no matter how much some would like to try to make it so.

Would I allow those dictatorship to exist? Short of other acceptable alternatives, yes. War is rarely an acceptable alternative.

War is the last resort. Just like it was with Iraq. 12 years of failed diplomacy is often overlook in the anti-war crowd. Care to guess how many times 1st Cavarly Division deployed in the 90's to Kuwait to provide security and threat to Iraq? I will give you a guess its more then one.

Do I excuse them? No.

Well that is a good thing then.

War is sometimes necessary. I don't think it was necessary in that case, even if Saddam was a treacherous bastard. The current situation is an expensive price to pay to punish someone who was not honoring all and every ceasefire conditions.

Louis,

Again we differ in opinion.