Discussion Topic |
|
This thread has been locked |
bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, Ca.
|
|
|
Topic Author's Reply - Sep 1, 2007 - 02:23am PT
|
A.C., you're the only socialist I'll let belay me.....Mmmmkaaay!
|
|
sandstone conglomerate
climber
|
|
To qoute that paragon of bravery and draft deferments:"the insurgency is in its last throes....."
|
|
426
Sport climber
Buzzard Point, TN
|
|
"greeted as liberators"
What's good for TITAN is good for blackwater?
|
|
UncleDoug
Social climber
N. lake Tahoe
|
|
|
Sep 21, 2007 - 12:15pm PT
|
bluering=fattrad
|
|
bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, Ca.
|
|
|
Topic Author's Reply - Sep 21, 2007 - 12:29pm PT
|
Not quite Doug. Similar but not the same.
I intended this thread to provide good-news from Iraq that rarely gets heard from the MSM. All we get are civilian deaths, IEDS, and troop deaths. I simply wanted a forum for the progress being made...call it propaganda if you like.
|
|
healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
|
|
|
Sep 25, 2007 - 12:06pm PT
|
The first paragraph of the blog in the original post sums it up - that after years of misguided and incompetent civilian meddling in every aspect of this military operatation from the start, it is still a high drama and risky venture to simply drive a truck of food from one town to the next. Use any words you want, but that is losing by any definition.
Bluering: "It looks like we've started to embed Iraqi Army nco's into our units to give them some 'hands-on' officer training. Sounds like everybody's benefiting too!"
Iraqi army and police (not just nco's) should have been fully equipped and serving with US troops in mixed units from the day we decided to reconsititute both of those forces. This has been one of the biggest mistakes made during the 'war'.
Next war, civilians should stick to setting policy goals - let the military fight the war. And for that matter, the day troops deploy in numbers greater than 20k in any one conflict, interest rates and whosale prices should be frozen and a 15% national war VAT on all goods and services should go into effect until the conflict is formally declared resolved and troop levels are below 20k again. That would keep wars remarkably brief.
|
|
bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, Ca.
|
|
|
Topic Author's Reply - Sep 25, 2007 - 12:17pm PT
|
Healyje, good points. I agree for the most part. Hopefully lessons learned in this conflict won't be forgotten...or won't be needed in the future.
|
|
bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, Ca.
|
|
|
Topic Author's Reply - Sep 25, 2007 - 05:00pm PT
|
Interesting read, A.C., thanks for posting it.
|
|
bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, Ca.
|
|
|
Topic Author's Reply - Oct 9, 2007 - 11:32am PT
|
Today's good news from Iraq comes from the Telegraph in England;
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/10/08/wanbar308.xml
What I found interesting is that the one Sunni guys says that Shia Iraqi's are like brothers to the Sunni's but he draws a clear distinction that Iranian Shia are troublesome and not welcome. I find that to be promising for this country. The MSM would have you believe that all Sunni's and Shia in Iraq absolutely hate each other, which apparently isn't the case.
|
|
Matt
Trad climber
never ever pissing into the wind
|
|
nice pluck.
so lemme get this straight (having read that article)-
having overcome their own sectarian disagreements to once again live in peace as iraqis, and having seen the light and joined forces with the USofA to vanquish the AQ boogeyman who was to blame for everything, iraqis all now agree at least those that live in the heart of the suni insurgency?) that the real threat is, of course, IRAN...
...not that there is any reason to wonder about the slightest possibility of any neo-con propoganda sneaking into that story, but i wonder how the iraqis who actually live near iran, and who share commerce and religion on a wider scale with iran would feel about iran being the real threat to iraqi society?
|
|
the kid
Trad climber
fayetteville, wv
|
|
i am with Wootles on this one:
we have no "rights" to strip the planet of life in the name of $$ and consumption...
right or left, when the planet dies we DIE>>>
so no one benefits in the end with this "anything goes" mentality..
And another note:
Is it not fair to ask the question:
Is Bush and co going to be held accountable for misleading the nation and the world into an upprovoked war with Iraq?
IF dem president did this the right would be creaming bloody murder! So Fattrad- are you willing to PAY for THIS WAR THAT YOU WANTED, PROMOTED AND STILL PROMOTE? IF SO SEND THE CHECK TO:
Kurt Smith
PO box kiss my ass
super good trad climbing, WV 28888
and be sure to add a lot of 000000000000's to that check...
|
|
TGT
Social climber
So Cal
|
|
Bluering,
That wasn't very nice to post something that you know very well might result in outbursts of uncontroled cognitive dissonance.
|
|
TGT
Social climber
So Cal
|
|
An Open Offer to U.S. Senators
One of the biggest problems with the Iraq War is that politics has frequently triumphed over truth. For instance, we went into Iraq with shoddy intelligence (at best), no reconstruction plan, and perhaps half as many troops as were required. We refused to admit that an insurgency was growing, until the country collapsed into anarchy and civil war. Now the truth is that Iraq is showing real progress on many fronts: Al Qaeda is being defeated and violence is down and continuing to decrease. As a result, the militias have lost their reason for existence and are getting beaten back or co-opted. Shia, Sunni and Kurds are coming together -- although with various stresses -- under the national government. If progress continues at this rate, it is very possible that before 2008 is out, we can finally say "the war has ended." Yes, likely there still will be some American casualties, but if the violence continues to drop and the Iraqi government consolidates its gains, we will be able, in good conscience, to begin bringing more of our people home. I will be paying very close attention to the words of Lieutenant General Raymond Odierno, who is replacing General Petraeus as the overall commander in Iraq.
Whatever we do in Iraq from here forward, we must strive to make better decisions than those made between 2003 and 2006. And one way to achieve that is by making certain that our civilian leaders are fully informed. All three candidates for President are extremely intelligent, but that doesn't mean that all three are tracking the truth on the ground in Iraq. Anyone who wants to be President of the United States needs to see Iraq without the distorting lenses of the media or partisan politics. I would be honored to visit Iraq with Senator Obama, Senator Clinton, Senator McCain or any of their Senate colleagues.
I hereby offer to accompany any Senator to Iraq, whether they are pro-or anti-war, Democrat or Republican. I will make this offer personally to a few select Senators as well. Our conversations during the visit would be on- or off-record, as they wish. Touring Iraq with me, as well as briefings by U.S. officers and meetings with Iraqis, would provide an accurate and nuanced account of the progress and challenges ahead, so that the Senators might have a highly informed perspective on this most critical issue. Our civilian leaders need to make decisions based on the best information available. The only way to learn what is really going on in Iraq is to go there and listen to our ground commanders, who know what they are doing. Generals Petraeus and Odierno have years of experience in Iraq, and vast knowledge of our efforts there. But the young soldiers who have done multiple tours in Iraq also have unique and invaluable perspectives as well. These young soldiers have personally witnessed the trajectory of the war shift dramatically, and can articulate those changes in concrete and specific terms. It doesn’t matter if a soldier is only twenty-something. If he or she spent two or three years in the war, that person is likely to have valuable insights. The best way to understand what is really going on is to listen closely to a wide range of service members who have done multiple tours in Iraq. Some will be negative, some will be positive, but overall I am certain that the vast majority of multi-tour Iraq veterans will testify that there has been great progress, and now there is hope. Combat veterans don’t tolerate happy talk or wishful thinking. They’ll tell you the raw truth as they see it.
Whether any Senators take advantage of my offer, I do hope that the presidential candidates visit Iraq, not just for a photo opportunity, but to spend time with our commanders and combat veterans, who know the truth and are not afraid to speak it.
From M Yon's site.
Let the cognitive dissonance continue.
|
|
Doug Buchanan
Mountain climber
Fairbanks Alaska
|
|
War, the attempt to force the other guy to do as one says after one's reasoning failed for lack of sufficient reasoning, easily corrected by more reasoning process (asking and answering questions), is therefore the quest and process of ignorant people.
Enjoy the show. Entertainment is the only thing they have to offer humans, by design of self-induced ignorance within a species capable of easily learning how to resolve all contradictions.
Tell the idiot "attack the other guy" folks that their mind was designed to react against you if you attack them, and react with curiosity if you offer sufficiently considered reasoning, and they will remain clueless, by design of power-damaged minds who manifest the "attack the other guy" syndrome.
Therein, the demarcation in the same human mind design is its adoption of the perception that it can attack the other guy and achieve the results of reasoning. What would trigger or cause that illogical conclusion?
It is the adoption of any perception of institutional power over the other guy, most noticeably created by forming organizations, including governments, effecting the perception that those other guys must do as the organization dictates because the organization is the organization, greater than an individual. But notice that while organizational power was created, no additional knowledge or reasoning ability was created in any organization member or leader's mind.
Such are the controlling concepts of war and the minds of the obviously powerful news journalist's institution of news journalists, explaining why the truthful or untruthful reporting of wars is immaterial to the reason wars continue, as proven by the results.
No news journalist will report on the concept that the mind's perception of any power over the other guy, such as that of the news media, is the controlling source of wars among the idiots who perceive they can force the other guy while they react against the use of force against themselves.
Enjoy the show.
And laugh at those idiot National Park mountaineering rangers and Access Fund leaders who traded the priceless value of their previously questioning minds for the useless perception of Park Service power over the climbers who elsewhere ridicule rangers for their manifest ignorance.
DougBuchanan.com
|
|
bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, Ca.
|
|
|
Topic Author's Reply - Jun 8, 2008 - 03:13pm PT
|
Michael Yon simply kicks ass! He's somewhat biased, being a former Green Beret, but he seems to go out of his way to tell it like it is.
Modern reporters could learn something from that.
|
|
WandaFuca
Gym climber
San Fernando Lamas
|
|
The decrease in violence is only temporary.
The Sunnis got sick of the Al Qaeda fanaticism and so the Baathists and other insurgents were willing to work with the U.S., but now with Al Qaeda in retreat, they want police and army jobs. The Shia government will only give them a few as window dressing. The Sunni insurgency will return.
Corruption has not decreased; it has only gotten worse and more entrenched.
This war was never and will never be worth the cost in blood and treasure.
We need to get out as soon as possible.
Iraq thievery and the State Department
Joel Brinkley
Sunday, June 8, 2008
During the five years that the United States has occupied Iraq, the Bush administration has created a state with a number of notable features: A venal, dysfunctional government. A terrorist haven and training ground. A nation so violent and dangerous that 10 percent of the population has fled.
Add to that a new hallmark: nearly the most corrupt nation on Earth.
Only two states out of 180, Somalia and Burma, outrank Iraq in Transparency International's latest worldwide corruption index. They are tied for last place. But Iraq has plummeted through the rankings since 2004, when it was near the middle of the pack, and is now within a hair's width of crashing to the bottom.
Along the way, American officials say, Iraqi government officers, from Prime Minster Nouri al-Maliki on down, have embezzled not only uncounted billions of dollars from their own treasury - but also $18 billion in American aid.
That's about equal to the annual budget for the state of Colorado. Radhi al-Radhi, an Iraqi judge who provided that figure, was the state's chief anti-corruption official, until death threats forced him to flee last year. He called the theft among the largest in modern history.
In recent months, several American government reports have detailed the problem, and Congress has held hearings. The conclusion: Not only has the United States provided much of the money Iraqi officials have purloined, American officials have actually aided the theft.
The State Department, particularly, has seemed eager to obfuscate and cover up the thievery - afraid, it seems, of tarnishing the Iraqi government's reputation. Last summer, U.S. Embassy officials in Baghdad researched a 70-page internal but unclassified report that detailed the plundering of the nation's wealth. The pillage was so widespread, the report said, that it threatened the Iraqi government's very survival.
A few months later, when Congress requested a copy of the report, the State Department retroactively classified it and demanded that any officials called to testify would do so in a classified session. All this for corruption in a foreign government. Since when is that a state secret?
State Department officials have long suffered from what detractors call "client-itis" - too close identification with the nations they serve. But allowing that proclivity to hide larceny of this scale stretches client-itis verges on criminality.
Asked about this, over and over, the department has refused to explain its actions and instead falls back on bromides. "We are very concerned about corruption in Iraq," State Department deputy spokesman Tom Casey said last week.
At the same time, another State Department office with different political priorities issued the 2008 Human Rights Report a few weeks ago and said "large-scale corruption pervaded the government at all levels."
Certainly Saddam Hussein's Iraq was corrupt. Who can forget the $656 million in cash discovered behind a wall in one of his palaces? But the United States set up the new government with accountability in mind and, among other steps, mandated that one central office manage contracting for the entire government. The al-Maliki government repealed that law so that dozens of individual agencies could let contracts - freeing them to demand kickbacks. Various ministries also forbade corruption investigators from entering their buildings. That, plus the assassinations of 31 corruption investigators, convinced al-Radhi to flee. Among the recommendations he and others offered:
 Iraqi ministers should make annual income declarations. They have refused.
Oil terminals should be metered so a record can be kept of the barrels sold. The Oil Ministry objected.
The United Nations urged Iraq to implement the U.N. Convention against Corruption. Al-Maliki has demurred and instead appointed a new head of the anti-corruption office who, three weeks earlier, had been arrested and sent to jail on corruption charges. He was out on bail.
No one has yet documented theft by al-Maliki. But suspicions abound because he has worked aggressively to stymie corruption investigations. In fact, al-Radhi said al-Maliki issued a secret order saying he was not allowed to investigate the prime minister or anyone in his Cabinet.
James Mattil, a former State Department anti-corruption official, said he told the U.S. Embassy about all of this. Still, asked about it during a congressional hearing, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice professed ignorance, adding: "I will have to get back to you." Congress is still waiting.
|
|
|
SuperTopo on the Web
|
Let us know!