posted on November 14, 2003 07:45:48 AM new
A commentary, from the Washington Times, I agree with:
The unilateral unicorn - By Austin Bay
The first jab at the Bush administration from the "peace at any price" crowd the charge of "unilateralism" had a rather elastic definition, but then hooey always has a high rubber content.
Unilateral? The United States had spent 12 years providing the spine behind U.N. Security Council Resolution 687 (which ended Desert Storm and sanctioned Saddam). Mr. Bush also put Resolution 1444 through the Security Council as a last chance for Saddam to meet 687's requirements.
Before and after the Taliban collapse in Afghanistan, the Bush administration coordinated humanitarian aid with the United Nations and a host of organizations. Humanitarian cooperation across the spectrum of aid and development organizations is standard procedure for America, no matter who runs the White House. Frankly, the World Food Program and similar agencies would flop without extensive U.S. political, financial and logistical support. The Bush administration provides that support to these "multilateral" agencies.
So scotch "unilateral."
[i]Then came the "rush to war" hokum, a charge utterly ignoring the long war with Saddam that began Aug. 2, 1990, when Iraq invaded Kuwait. In retrospect, the U.S. reaction to Saddam's provocations in 1994 and 1996 was slow and inadequate.
Rush to war? In early 2003, leftist "human shields" rushed to Baghdad, to protect Iraqis from U.S. bombs. In November 2003, however, there's no peacenik rush to put their bodies between U.N. facilities and al Qaeda car bombers.
Once Operation Iraqi Freedom kicked off, the defeatist chant became "quagmire." The New York Times' R W Apple declared in late March (on the front page) that Central Command's attack was a "quagmire." Of course, CENTCOM pulled off one of the most successful military offensives in history.
Pundits dub the next tripe theme "The Imminent Lie." This hogwash maintains Mr. Bush "lied," alleging the president said Saddam was an imminent threat to attack with chemical, biological or nuclear weapons. Actually, in his 2003 State of the Union address, Mr. Bush said just the opposite, that we couldn't wait until the threat was imminent.
Now we've come to the long trial in Iraq. Dictatorships are the biggest cause of terrorism and the biggest cause of poverty on this planet. The Iraqi people have a truly blessed opportunity the chance to build a democracy in the politically dysfunctional Middle East. However, defeatist poohbahs chant, "No one told us the job would be tough."
Malarkey. Early on, defense and policy analysts publicly vetted post-Saddam challenges. In a recent column, I trotted out a quote from an article I wrote in the Weekly Standard's Dec. 9, 2002, issue. Forgive me, it must trot again:
"
U.S. and allied forces liberating Iraq will attempt more or less simultaneously to end combat operations, cork public passions, disarm Iraqi battalions, bury the dead, generate electricity, pump potable water, bring law out of embittering lawlessness, empty jails of political prisoners, pack jails with criminals, turn armed partisans into peaceful citizens, rearm local cops who were once enemy infantry, shoot terrorists, thwart chiselers, carpetbaggers and black marketeers, fix sewers, feed refugees, patch potholes, get trash trucks rolling, and accomplish all this under the lidless gaze of Peter Jennings and Al Jazeera."
Winning a war is difficult. Ask the World War II generation.
Every experienced strategist understands warfare is, at its most basic, a clash of human wills. The motive will of a man who spends years preparing to smash a jet into a skyscraper is large in big letters. His cohorts are betting America is a sitcom nation with a short attention span. We'll change channels, cut and run.
Mature Americans recognize everyone has a leadership role, especially in times of crisis. The cooperation and common trust demonstrated by Americans evacuating the World Trade Center not only saved thousands of lives, it was indicative of America's capacity for individual leadership.
Self-critique is one thing, the acid of self-doubt spurred by lies is something else. It's time for every American to be a leader, to bury these lies from unilateralism, to quagmire, to "no one told us" and get on with the hard business of winning the War on Terror.
[Austin Bay is a nationally syndicated columnist.]
FEARS were growing today that British troops could be sent to replace American soldiers in Iraq as President George W Bush tries to pull out United States servicemen in a bid to secure re-election next year.
Following talks in Washington, US Secretary of State Colin Powell said he wanted to see a local administration in place in Baghdad "as soon as possible".
And amid growing suggestions in Washington that the Bush administration wants to start pulling US troops out of the country within six months, Foreign Secretary Jack Straw acknowledged the UK was ready to send in more forces if necessary.
The discussions between the two men followed Mr Bush’s decision to call US civilian administrator Paul Bremer back to Washington for talks amid growing concern in the White House about the scale of US casualties.
And his aides believe US forces must be largely withdrawn before the presidential election in November next year to prevent a steady stream of "body bags" returning to the US and damaging his re-election chances.
With US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld estimating it could take two years to bring peace to Iraq, this has heightened fears that British soldiers could be used to replace Americans if the security situation deteriorates.
posted on November 14, 2003 02:40:36 PM new
How confusing...One day, we are "staying the course" and the next day we're "pulling out" while calling the war, "operation iron hammer".
posted on November 14, 2003 04:12:27 PM newHow confusing...One day, we are "staying the course" and the next day we're "pulling out" while calling the war, "operation iron hammer".
It's not confusing at all. All one needs to do is listen to our President and Rumsfeld to hear we're staying. When one gets their news from foreign new links, on what they THINK **might** be happening, one can expect to be confused.
posted on November 14, 2003 06:13:28 PM new
Another soldier has been killed by a bomb.
It doesn't surprise me that everything "foreign" is suspect to you, Linda but even news from Scotland? Have you accepted the New York Times yet?
How about checking news other than Fox and you will find the same information in this country...like MSNBC, for example.
Bush doesn't have a chance in hell of winning the election if this war continues. Many mainstream media soruces are reporting that Washington is now facing a dilemma - how to hand over political control as quickly as possible without being seen to cut and run.
In other words how to pullout as soon as possible but not in an irresponsible manner.
Remember, that was my advice? LOL
posted on November 14, 2003 06:30:10 PM new
Now don't go getting your panties all bunched up again. YOU'RE the one who said YOU were confused. I'm didn't.
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These are the people you want us to RUN from, helen. And you think they'll stop if we run home? I don't.
Taken from The Federalist - today....
Abu Salma Al-Hijazi, identified as an al-Qa'ida commander directly under Osama bin Laden, issued a new message this week during an interview from an undisclosed location.
Abu Salma said that "a huge and very courageous strike" will take place, possibly before the end of Ramadan (26 November), killing 100,000 "infidels" in an attack that will "amaze the world and turn al-Qa'ida into [an organization that] horrifies the world until the law of Allah is implemented...on His land. ... You wait and see that the balance of power between al-Qa'ida and its rivals will change, all of a sudden, Allah willing. ... There is no doubt that the demise of America and its collapse will lead to the collapse of these fragile regimes that depend on it... We will not stop until we establish the Islamic Caliphate and until Allah's law is implemented in His land."
We have, of course, heard such grandiose warnings before, but as The Federalist has warned repeatedly, al-Qa'ida's ultimate objective is to detonate a nuclear device in an East Coast urban center. Abu Salma's warning clearly comports with that objective -- underscoring again why it is so critical that we keep the warfront with Jihadistan offshore, and that our collective resolve remains undiminished.
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And I'd think after all the firings, admissions of copying the work of other, and the many many corrections that the NYTs continually has to admit....you'd be embarrased to even bring them up.
posted on November 14, 2003 06:45:00 PM new These are the people you want us to RUN from, helen. And you think they'll stop if we run home? I don't.
I suppose you're working on the "flypaper strategy". The idea that the deaths of our troops are a good thing because as long as the guerrillas are busy attacking them, they can’t come after us?
posted on November 15, 2003 01:15:35 PM new
The fifth helicopter crash occurred today
with 2 U.S. helicopters Colliding in midair
after coming under hostile fire from the
ground. At least 12 American soldiers aboard
were killed.
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Nov. 15 — Two American Black Hawk helicopters collided in midair and crashed Saturday evening in the northern city of Mosul, killing at least 12 of the American soldiers aboard and wounding nine others, officials said.
American officials said the collision occurred when one of the helicopters came under hostile fire from the ground and swerved upward to avoid it, driving its rotor into the second helicopter.
The Black Hawks, which were traveling after sunset, went down in a residential neighborhood of Hariya. A team of American soldiers sealed off the area.
posted on November 15, 2003 03:20:39 PM new
And add the 12 killed today.
Published on Friday, November 14, 2003 by Reuters
US War Dead in Iraq Exceeds Early Vietnam Years
by David Morgan
PHILADELPHIA - The U.S. death toll in Iraq has surpassed the number of American soldiers killed during the first three years of the Vietnam War, the brutal Cold War conflict that cast a shadow over U.S. affairs for more than a generation.
A Reuters analysis of Defense Department statistics showed on Thursday that the Vietnam War, which the Army says officially began on Dec. 11, 1961, produced a combined 392 fatal casualties from 1962 through 1964, when American troop levels in Indochina stood at just over 17,000.
By comparison, a roadside bomb attack that killed a soldier in Baghdad on Wednesday brought to 397 the tally of American dead in Iraq, where U.S. forces number about 130,000 troops -- the same number reached in Vietnam by October 1965.
The casualty count for Iraq apparently surpassed the Vietnam figure last Sunday, when a U.S. soldier killed in a rocket-propelled grenade attack south of Baghdad became the conflict's 393rd American casualty since Operation Iraqi Freedom began on March 20.
Larger still is the number of American casualties from the broader U.S. war on terrorism, which has produced 488 military deaths in Iraq, Afghanistan, the Philippines, Southwest Asia and other locations.
Statistics from battle zones outside Iraq show that 91 soldiers have died since Oct. 7, 2001, as part of Operation Enduring Freedom, which President Bush launched against Afghanistan's former Taliban regime after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington killed 3,000 people.
The Bush administration has rejected comparisons between Iraq and Vietnam, which traumatized Americans a generation ago with a sad procession of military body bags and television footage of grim wartime cruelty.
Recent opinion polls show public support for the president eroding as he heads toward the 2004 election, partly because of public concern over the deadly cycle of guerrilla attacks and suicide bombings in Iraq.
posted on November 15, 2003 04:06:52 PM new
In a major shift that comes amid mounting U.S. casualties from guerrilla attacks, the Bush administration has dropped its insistence
that the writing of a constitution and elections should take place before the United States relinquishes power to Iraqis.
Adila al-Mahmud was born in 1923. As I entered her tent to talk to her, she began to cry and begged me to get her out of the camp.
"I want to go home – to Palestine." She said she still recalls the day her family, friends and neighbours were thrown out of their own country in 1948.
"I remember it as if it were yesterday. Planes came and shot at our village, and many soldiers came and pushed us out. My village was called Jiba, but the Israelis made it impossible for us to live there – I don't know if it even exists anymore. But we didn't live in tents then."
"We would laugh if it weren't so terrible – America says it came here to rebuild Iraq, but since they arrived we've been living in tents."
posted on November 15, 2003 05:33:59 PM new
The people at the WSJ had you pegged, yesterday, helen.
[i]Quagmire in Reuterville
"The U.S. death toll in Iraq has surpassed the number of American soldiers killed during the first three years of the Vietnam War," Reuters reports. That would be the years 1961-64, "when American troop levels in Indochina stood at just over 17,000"--roughly a tenth as many as are in Iraq now. Three years after the Vietnam War "officially began," of course, LBJ was re-elected in a landslide; it wasn't for a few more years that it became clear Vietnam had become a quagmire. So this is an utterly meaningless comparison--but no doubt that won't stop the Democrats from using it.
posted on November 15, 2003 05:40:12 PM new
Anyone who calls that many deaths utterly meaningless, whether it's a comparison or not has the compassion of someone like you, linda...zero.
posted on November 17, 2003 01:39:51 PM new
Sorry, tomyou. "Dumbass" was voted out as having no impact anymore. Try to stay on top of things, will you!
WASHINGTON — Retired general Wesley Clark warned Sunday that the failure to capture Saddam Hussein was likely to undermine any new Iraqi government. And he said it was important to capture Saddam alive so he could be tried for war crimes.
Clark's comments, at a session with USA TODAY and Gannett News Service reporters and editors, came as the Bush administration was accelerating the turnover of civilian authority to Iraqis. Clark praised the decision as a move "in the right direction" but said no regime was likely to succeed if Saddam stayed on the lam.
"It's going to be very hard for the United States to turn the problem over to the Iraqis if Saddam is still there as the, we might say, illegitimate ruler," said Clark, a Democratic presidential contender. "It's going to make it very hard for an Iraqi government to survive." The Bush administration, under fire for a growing toll of U.S. casualties, agreed this weekend to turn over political control by July 1, regardless of Saddam's whereabouts.
Wesley Clark
