News from the Colonies - America's War in Iraq

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I have the freedom to choose my poison. If the poison is too bitter for enough of us, we can occupy the Capitol. Nothing can stop, but the power of the people, and the power of the people (I first heard this in High school) Don't .. Stop. Don't stop
Believing


Imagine.
 
"I just wonder if democracy does bring the greatest freedom."

YOu mean maximum individual freedom? It likely does, even now. You are still restricted in so many ways, but less than under almost any other form of gvt.
 
School supplies a challenge in Iraq

"Getting supplies to Iraqi students a major challenge (Seattle Times)
The smiling children swarmed the theater at Al Farouq Secondary School and grabbed at the stacks of navy shoulder bags. A gift from the U.S. government, the bags were stocked with goodies such as notebooks, rulers, geometry sets and a real treat — premium-quality No. 2 pencils, something that had been hard to come by under the previous regime.

It was a small but important victory for the U.S.-led occupation.

Delivery of the student kits is one of the more visible projects in the Bush administration's grand plan for rebuilding Iraq. Unlike more long-term efforts such as creating democratic councils, training nurses and rebuilding water systems, the bags being handed out to 1.5 million schoolchildren nationwide are a tangible sign of how the new government is making people's lives better.
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The article isn't all good news, but I figured to present this part in order to accommodate those who feel news of people dying is unfairly given priority over "good news".

I've found USAID's April, 2003 press release on the initial contract award to CAII ($1m, 12 months), but I couldn't come up with the $63m contract award.

Not a problem. We'll find it if anyone needs it.

But the concern of the CAII situation is that, once again, the process is more complicated than expected because of the security situation.

Apparently, nobody figured the Iraqi reaction to Turkish license plates moving through Iraq.

However, school supplies are arriving. 58,000 chalkboards being distributed; USAID is trying to supply 1.5 million Iraqi students with basic school supplies, including the all-important pencil that works.

But Turkish troops ... Turkish truck convoys ... in Iraq ... did nobody realize this might not be a good idea until the Iraqis let them know?

All in all, it's still relatively good news amid the rest of it.
 
It's better than nothing, Canute

What? It's Number Two pencils!

Seriously, Canute, it's better than nothing. The schools are the front line against enemy recruitment. If children are at school, they're tougher to prey on. Only marginally, but we need to educate this generation as soon as possible or else they might just pick up a rifle and make our soldiers' lives (or even ours at home) that much worse. I mean, look at Africa--some of the wars are being fought mainly by children.

And besides, faulty estimations of Iraq, security, and so forth, are so common that they're not news anymore. Despite the glaring incompetence of the Bush administration's status quo, small progress is being made.

And that's enough to hope on, for now.
 
Re: It's better than nothing, Canute

Originally posted by tiassa
What? It's Number Two pencils!

Seriously, Canute, it's better than nothing. The schools are the front line against enemy recruitment. If children are at school, they're tougher to prey on.
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Not if you've got 3 million pencils to give away. ;)
 
US Troops Arrest Iraqi For Criticizing Them

You know, they hate us for our freedoms.
American soldiers handcuffed and firmly wrapped masking tape around an Iraqi man's mouth as they arrested him today for speaking out against occupation troops.

Asked why the man had been arrested and put into the back of a Humvee vehicle on Tahrir Square, the commanding officer told Reuters at the scene: "This man has been detained for making anti-coalition statements." (Full text here)
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Free speech? That duct tape sure comes in mighty handy...

:m: Peace.
 
A war afoot? What's that?

US general estimate 5000 Iraqi guerillas (The Age)

If anyone is left doubting that it's still a war, would an estimate of 5,000 insurgents be enough to convince you?

Not that many remain who are fooled. After all, as Bush himself once said, "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me ... you can't get fooled again."

(That still cracks me up. Seriously, it's right there with Quayle's "happy camper" line, or the one about "bondage between a mother and child.")

But as the Vietnam rhetoric stirs its ugly head again ... I don't know. On the one hand, the thought of Bush's "fool" line has me laughing too hard to deal entirely seriously at the time, but a sobering reflection, unfortunately comes with the seemingly conflicting messages coming from the military:
But in an indication of the confusion in US military intelligence, he rejected a claim by one of his senior officers on the ground, Major-General Charles Swannack, that Saddam Hussein had planned the guerilla insurgency before the war.

On Thursday, General Swannack told The Washington Post: "I believe Saddam Hussein always intended to fight an insurgency should Iraq fall."

General Swannack, responsible for operations in the so-called Sunni triangle between Baghdad, Tikrit and Ramadi, said: "That's why you see so many of these arms caches out there in significant numbers all over the country. They were planning... an insurgency."

General Abizaid dismissed this analysis, saying: "I think Saddam Hussein is one of the most incompetent military leaders in the history of the world. To give him any credit, to think that somehow or other he planned this, is absolutely beyond my comprehension."
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You know, I'm starting to like Abizaid. Richard Perle leaves me laughing with his mouth, but when Abizaid shoots off, it's not nearly as funny. Remember that General Abizaid was one of the first to officially call the Iraqi resistance "guerillas", in contravention of administration rhetoric.

And, hell ... somebody had to say it. Nonetheless, we should not underestimate a man who held a nation so tightly for so long. To the other:
General Abizaid took issue with reports that the CIA had found growing numbers of Iraqis believed the US could be driven out of the country.

"It is clear that they all understand that they cannot militarily defeat the United States of America," he said. "Any CIA person I have spoken to, and I've spoken to all of them, they also know that we can't be defeated militarily."
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Obviously. But they can screw Bush politically. Make it ugly enough, and they can win without a decisive, or even remotely implied military victory.

- Wilkinson, Marian. "US generals estimate 5000 Iraqi guerillas." The Age, November 15, 2003. see http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/11/14/1068674382287.html
 
Anti-occupation combattants in Iraq are certainly far more numerous than 5,000. What is little understood in situations like this is that resisting an occupation is typically not an overtly full-time occupation: Even some of those who take money from the occupiers by day will kill them by night.

It is easy to imagine 1 in 20 individuals resisting now and henceforth in such a longsuffering, armed, militant, deteriorating and insulted country. The neocons are easily up against 1 in 20 (more than 1 million individuals) willing to fight and die against American occupation forces in Iraq. These will not fight simultaneously in a coordinated offensive, will not congregate in suspicious rally points, will not fit any particular profile, will not share the same post-occupation objectives, and will not stop resisting until the last American occupiers go home.

Meanwhile Bushevik propagandists will continue to label resistance as dead-enders, Baathist remnants, insurgents, terrorists, etc to perpetuate the lie that this is not colonialism, and this colonialist advenure has not already been rejected by Iraq and the world.
 
The story so far ...?

Anti-occupation combattants in Iraq are certainly far more numerous than 5,000.
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I missed this on publication day:


Horsey on Iraq: "Translating Donald Rumsfeld's Prounouncements." October 24, 2003

And, of course, the subject I'd rather leave to the commentators until it becomes more obvious than a suggestion: Horsey on Iraq: "It's the 1960s All Over Again."

Steve Benson, of the Arizona Republichttp://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/opinions/benson/, checks in as well: Benson on Iraq: "Iraqnam"

How long 'til the flowers and LSD? "What we really need right now ...."
 
the harder, the better

Keys said he sought out the prime minister at a reception afterwards.
"I said that the blood of my son is on your hands. 'You are responsible. How do you react to that?'" Keys said.
"He looked white. I have to be fair to the man. He didn't dodge the question. He did say that he was responsible for the deaths, that he was trying to make Iraq a better place."
"I said: 'All you've done is kick the lid off a hornets' nest.'"

http://www.reuters.co.uk/newsPackageArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=405012

real people, real lives. something these armchair warriors fail to understand.
hmm. of course! collateral damage! they do understand
 
Are there any Americans here who can report what they are hearing and seeing on their media about Bush's visit to London? I'm wondering how much you hear about over there.
 
Vietnam

I think it's way too early to be talking about Vietnam comparisons in Iraq, but something must be mentioned about the similarities between the insurgents and Viet Cong. Soldiers who served in the early years of the Vietnam war would tell stories about how all of the villagers came out to work in their black pajamas and if we got lucky there would be one who might speak a little broken English. They never knew who was sympathetic to the VC and who wasn't . The army was paying these peasants to help clear the land and quite often after the locals were trucked away at the end of the day the soldiers supervising the work would walk the fields and find large arrows carved into the soil that pointed in the direction of the LZ's. Right under their noses they couldn't distinguish VC from innocent villager. Sounds similar to some of the stories we hear from Iraq.
 
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"Right under their noses they couldn't distinguish VC from innocent villager. Sounds similar..." -to old food in the fridge: Eventually everyone wants it gone.

These similarities are very simple to understand: Unwarranted foreign military presence only becomes increasingly unpopular with time- always, and without exception.

It is also very simple to understand that leadership that acts in ignorance of history and human nature also becomes progressively putrid until removal, however unpleasant the necessary extraction may be.
 
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