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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, Ca.
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Topic Author's Reply - Aug 14, 2007 - 04:37pm PT
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Matt, you say, "you'd best wise up and see the bigger picture, that iraq is not being culturally transformed"
I didn't know that was our goal. I thought it was remove Saddam, help a new government re-form, pacify the population, then bail when the army can defend herself from neighbors.
Pacification seems to be our last obstacle, and from what I see it appears to be getting better with Iraqi's on patrol with U.S. 'supervisors'.
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Karl Baba
Trad climber
Yosemite, Ca
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Aug 14, 2007 - 04:38pm PT
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That's the problem Bluering, we screwed it up there and there's no good way to fix it.
If it were up to me, I'd say let's
Allow Iraq to be carved up into three states. Kurdistan, Shiitehole, and Sunnivale. We withdraw our troops to Kurdistan and at least get to share control of their friendly oil. We make friends with Iran and allow them to play a peacekeeping role in Shiitehole since they are going to be influential anyway. That'll go way better than just threatening them and fighting them. Let the Saudis lend a hand with Sunnivale, they are in our pocket as much as possible anyway. There will be a huge exodus, and much violence in Sunnivale and possibly Shiithole but there will be anyway and it will be less under this plan.
We'll have to stand up to Turkey but something will work out. We will be apologizing to Iraq for screwing them up and taking a humbler approach to things, blaming Bush and crew for it, since they deserve that blame richly.
It's a crappy plan but it's better than any other plan I've heard.
Otherwise, we just pull out, let em fight it out, make friends with whoever wins (or bomb em again), and prevent anyone else from going in there. Either way, it's better than just staying the course and dying slowly as sitting ducks.
Peace
Karl
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WBraun
climber
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Aug 14, 2007 - 04:42pm PT
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Hawkeye
climber
State of Mine
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Aug 14, 2007 - 04:42pm PT
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i just wanted to know if the name shiitehole is trademarked. i can see their flag now.
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Matt
Trad climber
always on the lookout for ed's 5.10 OW van
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Aug 14, 2007 - 04:43pm PT
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maybe you could offer some ideas that you think would work better, instead of just saying we can't pull but what we're doing right now is obviously wrong.
i'll give you my preferences, which are no more ridiculous than your own:
impeach, convict, imprison, or even hang (for treason in a time of war) every actor in this administration who is responsible for war crimes (you can guess which i'd pick to start with, but my list is long and distinguished).
use THAT moral authority to begin tio right whatever wrongs have been done in our names and with our tax dollars.
seek international and regional concensus on how to divide iraq into multiple autonomous regions in a loose (i.e. in name only) federation, seek to guarantee equitable distribution of all (oil/water/influence) resources in exchange for fair treatment of minorities in each region, w/ transgressions leading directly to loss of oil revenue (which would be in part paid to residents, AK style). infuse significant $ into infrastructure, healthcare and education projects using domestic contractors, and do the same in iraq, seeking matching funds from international partners and allies.
catch osama bin laden
seek to irradicate the heroin trade in afganistan, using arial chemical spray if necesary, but preferably setting up a new agricultural economy based on low THC, industrial hemp production.
i could go on and on, because i don't get it all from faux/newscorp/bushco, but i ahave some work to do today too...
EDIT-
my plan is not that different from karl's plan, i just advocate justice and the raising of our constitution back up to where it once belonged, rather than in the gutter where it is now.
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Hawkeye
climber
State of Mine
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Aug 14, 2007 - 04:43pm PT
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werner, looks like an example of "one good deed deserves another", bush style.
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dirtbag
climber
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Aug 14, 2007 - 04:48pm PT
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Good one Werner!
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UncleDoug
Social climber
N. lake Tahoe
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Aug 14, 2007 - 05:00pm PT
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Matt,
Finally someone is speaking to the complete lack of "moral authority" "we" posses in this situation, which is what "we" need to "win" any conflict entrered into.
Also, it is VERY refreshing to see someone post complete, and lengthy, original thought rather than posting a link or two with one sentence of commentary to back up ones position.
Any one here can dig up a link to "support" their position. What realy speaks volumes is true logic that actualy makes sense to the average person.
People all over the world know what is right and logical, even those in the ME, and know when they are being given the mushroom treatment. Not recognizing this is at the root of the problem/s in the ME.
Keep it up Matt.
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, Ca.
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Topic Author's Reply - Aug 14, 2007 - 05:04pm PT
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Karl, I'm not totally opposed to the plan you laid out. The partition. But only if the current one doesn't show fruition by December.
Maybe that's the plan B Matt was referring to earlier. I'm sure it has/is being considered as an option.
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Matt
Trad climber
always on the lookout for ed's 5.10 OW van
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Aug 14, 2007 - 05:15pm PT
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yeah great- some idiot on the internet has it all figured out, too bad that nobody on TV will ever tell you the truth!
you want the truth?
the truth is that the only people who are now (supposedly) supporting the president or his horrible failure of a war are too stupid to think for themselves.
ASK YOURSELF TWO SIMPLE QUESTIONS
1) are we going to stay indefinately?
(of course 'yes' is a silly answer, but i'll humor you- if yes, how can we possibly do that? the answer is, we cannot and we will not)
so-
2) what happens when we leave and why do we think that will be any different than if we leave right now?
(in a sense this is a rhetorical question, but supporters of the war should quickly hear themselves essentially re-telling all the bold faced idealogical lies that we were all told on the front end of this conflict, exposing their lack of understanding of the complexity of the situation we now find ourselves in and illustrating the degree to which their entire thought process is/has been defined by well placed media sound bites, intentional phrasing and language constructions which tie support for the war (exclusively) to patriotism, and official RNC talking points- all of which if nothing else ought to provide the rest of us w/ a certain amount of entertainment, which is the very least that these idiots owe the rest of us)
EDIT
I'm sure it has/is being considered as an option
bullsh#t. no one in any position of power in our government or our military is in any way negotiating with any country in the ME (that would go against the "stay the course" mentality they are sheeple-ing so successfully to you people, and such an approach would take rounds and rounds of negotiating, just to get to where anyone could sit down and begin to discuss it. you think you are going to do that without iran at your table? iran of the nook-ya-leer enrichment iranians? of the 'dick cheney wants to attack the iranians? sure, they busy are working on that plan right down the hall there pal... (if only valerie plame or anyone who used to work w/ her could still tell them anything about what kinda nook capacity iran actually has, for shame!)
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Aug 14, 2007 - 05:16pm PT
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The only good solution to Iraq was figured out by Bush Sr. - don't invade. Once that mistake was made there was only one hope - go big and rebuild the place almost instantly. Instead of that the place was turned over to what amounts to a second invasion of carpetbaggers that made their post-Civil War counterparts look like good samaritans. That, combined with the disbanding of the security (army) and administrative (Bathists) apparatuses, doomed what small chance of success our efforts in Iraq had. And what has been lost in the interim is the goodwill, trust, and cooperation of the Iraqi people and those were the most valuable assets we had at the time of the invasion.
What to do now? Nothing has really changed - it's still a go big or don't bother situation - little inbetween is worth bothering with. The problem now is you'd need 6-700k troops to lock the place down and an unprecedented level of reconstruction resources to the tune of another 2-300k folks who could [honestly] put the place back together (i.e. better than we found it) in under three years. Had that been the plan all along you could have done the job with about slightly more than half those numbers. Given that isn't going to happen we have two choices: bail or partition - anything else is a delusional stall against the inevitable.
All the while China is laughing their asses off at us, buying Africa and S.A. outright, and sharpening their swords.
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Karl Baba
Trad climber
Yosemite, Ca
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Aug 14, 2007 - 05:18pm PT
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Here's another kind of report we aren't getting from Iraq. Wanna know how we've managed to surge as much as we have with no draft?
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/08/13/3138/
"If you think the U.S. has only 160,000 troops in Iraq, think again.
With almost no congressional oversight and even less public awareness, the Bush administration has more than doubled the size of the U.S. occupation through the use of private war companies.
There are now almost 200,000 private “contractors” deployed in Iraq by Washington. This means that U.S. military forces in Iraq are now outsized by a coalition of billing corporations whose actions go largely unmonitored and whose crimes are virtually unpunished......some in Congress estimate that up to 40 cents of every tax dollar spent on the war goes to corporate war contractors. At present, the United States spends about $2 billion a week on its Iraq operations
.........During the 1991 Gulf War, the ratio of troops to private contractors was about 60 to 1. Today, it is the contractors who outnumber U.S . forces in Iraq. As of July 2007, there were more than 630 war contracting companies working in Iraq for the United States. Composed of some 180,000 individual personnel drawn from more than 100 countries, the army of contractors surpasses the official U.S. military presence of 160,000 troops.
In all, the United States may have as many as 400,000 personnel occupying Iraq, not including allied nations’ militaries. The statistics on contractors do not account for all armed contractors
......... At present, an American or a British Special Forces veteran working for a private security company in Iraq can make $650 a day. At times the rate has reached $1,000 a day; the pay dwarfs many times over that of active duty troops operating in the war zone wearing a U.S. or U.K. flag on their shoulder instead of a corporate logo.
“We got [tens of thousands of] contractors over there, some of them making more than the Secretary of Defense,” House Defense Appropriations Subcommittee Chairman John Murtha (D-Penn.) recently remarked. “How in the hell do you justify that?”
.......In a revealing admission, Gen. David Petraeus, who is overseeing Bush’s troop “surge,” said earlier this year that he has, at times, been guarded in Iraq by “contract security.” At least three U.S. commanding generals, not including Petraeus, are currently being guarded in Iraq by hired guns........Privatized forces are also politically expedient for many governments. Their casualties go uncounted, their actions largely unmonitored and their crimes unpunished. Indeed, four years into the occupation, there is no effective system of oversight or accountability governing contractors and their operations, nor is there any effective law - military or civilian being applied to their activities. ......
On the Internet, numerous videos have spread virally, showing what appear to be foreign mercenaries using Iraqis as target practice, much to the embarrassment of the firms involved. Despite these incidents and the tens of thousands of contractors passing through Iraq, only two individuals have been ever indicted for crimes there. One was charged with stabbing a fellow contractor, while the other pled guilty to possessing child-pornography images on his computer at Abu Ghraib prison.
Dozens of American soldiers have been court-martialed - 64 on murder-related charges alone - but not a single armed contractor has been prosecuted for a crime against an Iraqi....
.in Iraq, more than 1,000 contractors working for the U.S. occupation have been killed with another 13,000 wounded. Most are not American citizens, and these numbers are not counted in the official death toll at a time when Americans are increasingly disturbed by casualties.....
....According to a recent report in Vanity Fair, the government pays contractors as much as the combined taxes paid by everyone in the United States with incomes under $100,000, meaning “more than 90 percent of all taxpayers might as well remit everything they owe directly to [contractors] rather than to the [government].”..
.This unprecedented funding of such enterprises, primarily by the U.S. and U.K. governments, means that powers once the exclusive realm of nations are now in the hands of private companies with loyalty only to profits, CEOs and, in the case of public companies, shareholders. And, of course, their client, whoever that may be. CIA-type services, special operations, covert actions and small-scale military and paramilitary forces are now on the world market in a way not seen in modern history. This could allow corporations or nations with cash to spend but no real military power to hire squadrons of heavily armed and well-trained commandos.
“It raises very important issues about state and about the very power of state. The one thing the people think of as being in the purview of the government - wholly run and owned by - is the use of military power,” says Rep. Jan Schakowsky. ....."
Soory for the paste but there a lot to think about. The war being waged isn't the we we think is being waged and there's a whole half of it that's under the radar and privatized.
Peace
Karl
I like Matt's plan
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TGT
Social climber
So Cal
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Aug 14, 2007 - 05:18pm PT
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The first book is meaningless. Of course we can bomb the crap and techno-war any country into the stone age but we can't "win"
I didn't know The Athenian navy had bombers.
Imagine that!
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, Ca.
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Topic Author's Reply - Aug 14, 2007 - 05:21pm PT
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Matt, if you're going to resort to calling me 'stupid' for not see the 'truth' the way you do, I see no reason to further our little chat.
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Karl Baba
Trad climber
Yosemite, Ca
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Aug 14, 2007 - 05:25pm PT
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HealyJ wrote
"All the while China is laughing their asses off at us, buying Africa and S.A. outright, and sharpening their swords."
Yup, all the fear about Islam is BS to justify the strategic play on resources. China is the real threat in the future and so much so that we can't talk about it.
They have a lot of money in the bank, hold our economy by the balls, and have more unemployed than we have employed.
Wanna know what a place comes to if you outlaw labor unions and don't enforce many environmental laws (right wing dream) Visit China and find out. A friend just got back and says it's a nightmare and we are on a collision course for resources and energy.
That's the elephant in the room.
Peace
karl
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Karl Baba
Trad climber
Yosemite, Ca
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Aug 14, 2007 - 05:28pm PT
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TGT wrote
"The first book is meaningless. Of course we can bomb the crap and techno-war any country into the stone age but we can't "win"
I didn't know The Athenian navy had bombers.
Imagine that! "
Imperialism is done differently these days TGT. Those guys knew they were conquering for the sake of empire and conquering. Those days are over, just like slavery is over.
Except that we have both in understated form still. You know what I'm saying. Tell us what YOU think we should do and tell us how it's realistic. Matt and I have ponied up.
Right now we are just doing "More of the same" and the results are such.
Peace
Karl
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Matt
Trad climber
always on the lookout for ed's 5.10 OW van
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Aug 14, 2007 - 05:39pm PT
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Matt, if you're going to resort to calling me 'stupid' for not see the 'truth' the way you do, I see no reason to further our little chat.
well then quit posting such stupid crap, you are making me turn blue (hey wait, is that your master plan? not gonna work pal)
on the plus side, it's not just you i am calling stupid, it's everyone who 'thinks' (cough) the same way you do. here's another example:
I didn't know that was our goal. I thought it was remove Saddam, help a new government re-form, pacify the population, then bail when the army can defend herself from neighbors.
Pacification seems to be our last obstacle, and from what I see it appears to be getting better with Iraqi's on patrol with U.S. 'supervisors'.
how can you not see that they have simply started calling it something else? help a government reform? so you are saying something successful has been done? HA! and 'pacification'? OMFG are you SERIOUS!
pacification?
that sounds like taking a piss or watering a plant or deflating a bike's tire, sure ,we are well on the way to 'pacification' by now... (i guess you missed the recent news stories about how we cannot locate 190k weapons that WE supplied, or that the italians broke up a HUGE weapons deal that the iraqi gov was making w/ rogue itiallian arms dealers, and behind our backs? sounds quite pacified to me too)
want more proof you are stupid?
I'm not totally opposed to the plan you laid out. The partition. But only if the current one doesn't show fruition by December
and who is going to define that for you/us?
do you realize how terrible it would have to be for DP to come before congress and say "f*#k this we need to send another 200k troops into iraq and bomb iran, or just get the hell out of there"?
so what exactly is going to get you to say that you are done w/ "stay the course"?
all they have done is painted a huge target which they cannot possibly miss, and then they have convinced YOU (yes you, but just because you are too damn st... st- stubborn, too stubborn, to open your blindfolded eyes!)...
...they have convinced you that hitting that target means something, and it means nothing, unless you plan to remain committed to a full on counter insurgency effort for another 10-20 years.
and why do you think that is even remotely possible when we can barely pay out enough slack to let these guys run it out until september?
you are right, you are not dumb, my bad, sorry.
but you're clueless
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426
Sport climber
Buzzard Point, TN
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Aug 14, 2007 - 05:42pm PT
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quick, no one look now, but we're bleeding out men and $$$$$ just like Osama wants us to....
(That's his playbook you know...he literally said it...
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, Ca.
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Topic Author's Reply - Aug 14, 2007 - 05:48pm PT
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Pacification, meaning they want to live normal lives instead of target U.S. troops. I'd say it's getting better when tribal leaders are cooperating with U.S./Iraqi patrols to point out 'foreigners' in their towns who are stirring up $hit.
When civilians drive up to U.S. bases and unload discovered weopons caches (this almost cause a firefight, they thought the guy was a suicide-bomber).
When civilians start saying that they're sick of troublemakers in their towns and give tips to police.
When Sunni leaders call upon everybody to recognize themselves as Iraqi's first and sunni/shia/kurd second.
This is all happening, and is progress from what was happening in the past.
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Aug 14, 2007 - 05:51pm PT
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Weschrist: "W is finishing the job."
You W's obviously think alike - this is exactly the delusional thinking that got us into this mess. It was also over the objections of the best career military, intel, and diplomatic minds of our times. H got it right and how anyone at this point in the whole fiasco could think this was the right decision is simply beyond me. I'm all for the appropriate and competent application of US might - this was neither.
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