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wootles
climber
Gamma Quadrant
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"Are you calling for global socialism?"
Fattrad, Absolutely not. We just need to learn to base our economy on something other than oil. That, unfortunately, will be the task of our politicians and business leaders. It is inevitable that this will happen, one way or another. The other option is extinction.
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John Moosie
climber
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Bluering, You seem to be concerned that this discusion is not going the way you want it to, but perhaps you should look at what you are trying to say. If all you are saying is that this guy is giving us information that the general media isn't, such as humanizing our troops, then I am with you.
But that doesn't seem to be all you are saying. You are also using this blog to defend your position that the U.S. has to stay in Iraq because now we owe it to them and according to this blog we are doing some good.
The question becomes " How much good? ". Not enough in my opinion and as Karl points out, to right the wrong of going in there, we will have to hold them down and keep a gun to their head while thousands of them die every month. And as Fatty points out, possibly for 20 years.
Now look at similar situations. Did afghanistan submit to Russia? No. Even after 20 years. Would we submit after 20 years if we were held hostage? Not likely.
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, Ca.
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Topic Author's Reply - Aug 8, 2007 - 02:39pm PT
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Mossie, did you read the "Bread and a Circus" story from the blog. If you did you'd see that in that particular case, Shia's were holding up food shipments to a Sunni town. The U.S. troops had to essentially insist that, one way or another, the food was going to get there and cooperation was needed. AFter a heated arguement the food was finally delivered. I would suspect that this is probably happening in alot of places around the Sunni Triangle. The U.S. troops and Iraqi army is there to mediate these disagreements, with force if necessary.
The major obstacles now are getting the different sects to learn to live with one another and develop a kind of, "We're Iraqi's, not Sunni or Shia". Sure, there are terrorists there that just want to kill, but overall I'd say that most Iraqi's just want to live their lives in peace.
Saddam was able to keep the peace with the heel of a boot, so to speak. Through shear oppression and violence towards dissent. That country has never had the freedoms that we enjoy and they're just learning how to live freely. Now if they can get the 'law and order' part of freedom down, they'll be set.
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Karl Baba
Trad climber
Yosemite, Ca
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Non-Muslims promoting a certain brand of religion to Muslims just promotes the opposite. It would be the same for any religion anywhere. The only reason radicals are there is because we invaded and now occupy. Iraq was one of the most secular states in the ME and one of the most moderate in Islamic practice before we arrived.
So fatty is just toting a party line about enforcing moderation. They are fighting for power against each other, not about radical Islam.
Chaos is inevitable. 1 million died in the post colonial partition of India. The shifting of power between the old Sunni Dicatator Saddam and the new Shiite Majority power will create conflict and Iraq also suffers from the unnatural borders of it's colonial past.
The breakup of Yugoslavia wasn't even a picnic either.
Every wrong comes back and create hell later.
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, Ca.
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Topic Author's Reply - Aug 8, 2007 - 02:57pm PT
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"Non-Muslims promoting a certain brand of religion to Muslims just promotes the opposite."
What? We're not promoting a religion, we're not that stupid, Karl. That would have been wrong on many levels.
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, Ca.
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Topic Author's Reply - Aug 8, 2007 - 03:17pm PT
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O.k., so what's your point?
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Hawkeye
climber
State of Mine
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not his point, but perhaps appropriate....
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Karl Baba
Trad climber
Yosemite, Ca
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""Non-Muslims promoting a certain brand of religion to Muslims just promotes the opposite."
What? We're not promoting a religion, we're not that stupid, Karl. That would have been wrong on many levels. "
I was responding to Fatty's post saying that moderating Islam is the new improved reason we have to spend trillions of dollars and thousands of lives in a formerly secular country
Peace
Karl
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John Moosie
climber
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Bluering, it has never been a stable country without an iron fist on it. Do you want to be that iron fist for the next 20 years or maybe 100 years? Because no one knows how long it might take to teach them to get along. 20 years is a number Fatty throws out. Not long ago he was saying 30 years. But no one really knows and we haven't met even one of our benchmarks, so 20 years is probably a pipe dream. It might never happen if they don't face their own problems. And if we stayed there 20 years and it was still a mess, then what? Thousands of Iraqis are dying every month. Do you realize that? Thousands every month. When we leave it will probably get much worse until another hamfisted dictator finds power and then it could be even worse. Likely, after a civil war, the country will be divided up. I don't know into how many parts because these people do not want to be together.
We did not do them a favor. They will not have freedom until they have the will to fight and sacrifice for it themselves, plus they are going to need a ghandi or a lincoln and still many will die. Look how many died in our civil war. We can not stop that. Even if we stay, civil war will reign.
Why should our young die for that? Oil is the real reason we are there. Not humanitarian reasons, otherwise there are plenty of other places we could have and perhaps should have gone into but didn't, because they did not have oil.
Think about our civil war. If there had been a country strong enough to stop our civil war by invading us, do you think that would have been a good idea. Look at how many died during our civil war. There wasn't a country powerful enough, but do you really think that that would have been good for us, to have someone step in and stop our civil war if there had been a country powerful enough? You could use the same arguements that you are using now. It would save lives. But would it have really? I doubt it.
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, Ca.
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Topic Author's Reply - Aug 8, 2007 - 06:14pm PT
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TGT posted this Iraq report on the Clash of Civilizations thread;
8/7 07
Late update
"BAGHDAD — Fed up with violent and indiscriminate terror tactics, a group of more than 80 residents of the Adhamiyah district, on the east side of the Iraqi capital, banded together Sunday to oust suspected terrorists from a local mosque.
The uprising led to a string of events over the next 12 hours that ultimately resulted in the arrest of 44 suspected terrorists and the capture of three weapons caches.
The initial takeover of the Abu Hanifa Mosque occurred at about 2 p.m., apparently triggered by news that terrorists had murdered two relatives of a prominent local sheik. As the news spread, angry residents joined the sheik to storm the mosque, long believed to be a sanctuary for terrorists operating in the area, and ousted the suspected terrorists inside from the building.
Iraqi Army troops from 1st Battalion, 1st Brigade, 11th Infantry Division, responded quickly to control the situation and secure the area around the mosque. Residents led them to several individuals among those ousted from the mosque who were suspected of being involved in terrorist activities. Thirteen suspects eventually were detained.
After order was restored, the Iraqi Army received a tip about a weapons cache hidden near the mosque. At about 7 p.m., Iraqi forces returned to the Abu Hanifa Mosque and uncovered a massive illegal weapons cache in an outside courtyard. The cache contained several already-assembled improvised explosive devices, dynamite, mortars, rockets, landmines, bomb-making materials, and various weapons.
Shortly after midnight, acting on information volunteered by Adhamiyah residents, Iraqi and U.S. Army forces from 3rd Squadron, 7th Cavalry Regiment, 3rd Infantry Division, attached to the 82nd Airborne Division's 2nd Brigade Combat Team, mounted a combined cordon-and-search operation of the Al Assaf Mosque, in the nearby Maghrib neighborhood. Iraqi Soldiers entered and cleared the mosque and who took three suspects into custody.
Immediately afterward, Iraqi and U.S. forces returned to the Abu Hanifa Mosque area to investigate reports of additional weapons caches. Iraqi Soldiers again entered the building to search the mosque compound and the cemetery behind it.
They discovered two more weapons caches, which contained two IEDs, 16 mortars, two hand grenades, a sniper rifle, remote detonation devices, radios and more than a dozen weapons. Twenty-eight suspects were taken into custody.
"I think this was a turning point," said U.S. Army Lt. Col. Jeff Broadwater, commander of 3rd Battalion, 7th Cavalry. "The people of Adhamiyah have made their stand, and they've showed by their actions that terrorists are not going to be able to come into their backyard and engage in violent acts any longer."
Looks to me like there is some hope afterall.
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Karl Baba
Trad climber
Yosemite, Ca
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Could you point out that hope? Are less Americans dying?
There are instances of more Sunnis cooperating with Americans because if we leave, they'll be the minority with no one to protect them. That doesn't mean much.
We can take the place of Saddam for 1 year or 30 years but it goes further to hell when we leave and is in moderate but American-killing hell while we're there.
Which is better?
Peace
Karl
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TGT
Social climber
So Cal
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I didn't cross post because the whack jobs are taking this thread way off topic.
I've followed Yon's work for better than four years now. My kid was in the sandbox for 300 days a year for three years with a wide exposure at many levels to what is going on there. Yon's take is about as accurate as you are going to find. He also has an ability to get around the country and past samplings are from the Kurdish areas and Afghanistan. Since he isn't linked to a commercial news org. with an editor deciding his assignments and has good connections he seems to be able to wander around pretty much anywhere he wants to. The old posts are well worth a couple of hours, although that may provoke an extreme case of cognitive dissonance in some.
Most of what is in the MSM is written from barstools in Bahrain or the green zone with second hand reports from local stringers that know that they don't get paid long if their stories don't match the preconceptions of the editors writing the checks in the states. The reaction of those that have been there and have the green shirt to the MSM reporting is an almost universal,
FTF???
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, Ca.
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Topic Author's Reply - Aug 8, 2007 - 07:28pm PT
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Crowley, if you're gonna hijack my thread, can you find better crap than that. Maybe some negative, bodycount reports or something.
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, Ca.
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Topic Author's Reply - Aug 8, 2007 - 07:36pm PT
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It was funny, just the tired 'ol Bushco stuff, that's all.
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Karl Baba
Trad climber
Yosemite, Ca
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So TGT, having digested Yon's reports. What do YOU think about Iraq. How could it come out OK? How many lives, soldiers (Draft?) and money would it take to achieve our goals there and what are those goals? Is it worth it?
The failures of the MSM go both ways. Far more than 3-4 thousand Americans have died there. We aren't even counting the contractors.
Peace
karl
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, Ca.
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Topic Author's Reply - Aug 8, 2007 - 08:00pm PT
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So, there's not enough negative reporting? Not daily reports about civilians getting blown up at markets trying to go about their lives? Not enough reporting about people walking into mosques to blow people up?
You're right, we need more daily dody counts, that'll make everyone feel better incuding the troops who get satellite feeds of MSM.
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Karl Baba
Trad climber
Yosemite, Ca
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Crowley Edit:
The Bloody Failure of ‘The Surge’: A Special Report
by Patrick Cockburn
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/08/07/3029/
....."The surge is now joining a host of discredited formula for success and fake turning-points that the US (with the UK tripping along behind) has promoted in Iraq over the past 52 months. In December 2003, there was the capture of Saddam Hussein. Six months later, in June 2004, there was the return of sovereignty to Iraq. “Let freedom reign,” said Bush in a highly publicised response. And yet the present Iraqi Prime Minister, Nouri al-Maliki, claims he cannot move a company of soldiers without American permission.
In 2005, there were two elections that were both won handsomely by Shia and Kurdish parties. “Despite endless threats from the killers in their midst,” exulted Bush, “nearly 12 million Iraqi citizens came out to vote in a show of hope and solidarity that we should never forget.”
In fact, he himself forgot this almost immediately. A year later, the US forced out the first democratically elected Shia prime minister, Ibrahim al-Jaafari, with the then US Ambassador in Baghdad, Zilmay Khalilzad, saying that Bush “doesn’t want, doesn’t support, and doesn’t accept that Jaafari should form the next government”.
Fresh US initiatives in Iraq seemed to succeed each other about every six months. Just as it was becoming evident in the US that the surge was not going anywhere very fast, there came good news from Anbar province in western Iraq. The Sunni tribes were rising against al-Qa’ida, which had overplayed its hand by setting up an umbrella organisation for insurgents called the Islamic State of Iraq. In Sunni areas, it was killing rubbish collectors on the grounds that they worked for the government, shooting women in the face because they were not wearing veils, and trying to draft one young man from each family into its forces. Sunni tribal militiamen backed by the US fought al-Qa’ida in insurgent strongholds such as Ramadi, and attacks on American troops there fell away dramatically.
The US administration could portray this as a fresh turning-point. It had always pretended that the insurrection in Iraq was conducted largely by al-Qa’ida. In reality, Anthony H Cordesman, an Iraqi specialist at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, points out that al-Qa’ida’s attacks make up only 15 per cent of the total in Iraq, although they launch 80 to 90 per cent of the suicide bombings.
As with many a development in Iraq portrayed as a sign of progress by the White House, the recruitment of Sunni tribal militias by the US is not quite what it seems. In practice, it is a tactic fraught with dangers. In areas where they operate, police are finding more and more bodies, according to the Interior Ministry. Victims often appear to have been killed solely because they were Shia. The gunmen from the tribes are under American command, and this weakens the authority of the Iraqi government, army and police - institutions that the US is supposedly seeking to foster."........
1.4 Million Iraqis Push Syria to Edge
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/08/08/3055/
."DAMASCUS, Syria - The flood of more than 1.4 million Iraqi refugees, with as many as 10,000 pouring over the border each week, is pushing Syria to the edge, most observers say......."
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Matt
Trad climber
always on the lookout for ed's 5.10 OW van
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who remembers when gW smugly announced that the profitable reconstruction contracts were not going to be open to contractors from countries that were not participating in the "coalition of the willing"?
that was back when "they" still thought we'd b transforming the region w/ our beacon of democracy and freedom, if i recall correctly. and now, all these years later, the country is not even secure enough for meaningful reconstruction to be accomplished.
from way back when, right through this very day, nothing "they" have told us has turned out to be even close to accurate, so when george bush now says something is the case in iraq, that this has happened or that will happen soon, there is absolutely no reason whatsoever to believe him.
all of you who still parrott the gW line just sound ridiculous, how can you not see that?
and so what if a force level that we cannot sustain has more positive impact than one we can sustain? (quiz: do you understand the previous sentence and it's implications?). it's either over now or it's over in some period of time, but either way it will be over, and the competing interests there will still be in conflict with eachother.
and as far as having any lasting impact w/ our military's efforts, one of the few trends than we can count on in this onflict is that when we concentrate on one area, the trouble flares up elsewhere, so net gain = 0, unless you are an iraqi living in iraq, in which case it's more likely a negative number.
it's not that the military cannot or does not have a positive impact in certain cases, but they are policing, rather than transforming, to deny that is just silly.
we are accomplishing nothing, unless you value the recruiting tool we represent for AQ and the like, and the links in this thread DO NOT refute that fact.
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Patrick Sawyer
climber
Originally California now Ireland
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TGT, I'd like to know if you are referring to me as a 'whack' job for my posts in this thread.
What is so whacky about opposing a war that is killing US and allied troops, innocent Iraqi people, costing the US an arm and a leg - literally and figuratively - and exacerbating tensions in the Middle East and with our international friends, and encouraging more terrorism.
I’d think somebody would be whacky if they wanted American troops and others to die, if they wanted to see billions of taxpayers’ money wasted and if they wanted to create more terrorism.
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TGT
Social climber
So Cal
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No, even though I find your arguments hoplessly unrealistic in some respects.
You do participate in the discussion not just post off topic doctored photos and non germane C&P jobs.
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