The Washington Post has obtained a cable outlining the worsening situation in the imperial-style occupation of Iraq.
Link to .pdf of the US Embassy cable:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/opinions/graphics/iraqdocs_061606.pdf
some articles re: the cable:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/16/AR2006061601768_pf.html
http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1002690071
You can bet the usual GOP bloggers are already going nuts over this one, claiming that the cable must be a fake.
Why?
Because it is inconvenient.
Yep! Yet another nail in the ‘Its getting better and was worth it’ brigades coffin. Problem is, they will soon be moving on to pastures new, be it Iran or even North Korea, should they dare to fire a rocket into the sea!! I don’t like the North Korean’s govt one little bit but you have to hand it to them. They worked the US out very early and knew that to survive, they needed the bomb, so they got it! The US only bombs nations that can’t hurt it and sadly we go along for the ride! :fume:
Here’s a couple of links re the same US Ambassador’s note and the fact that the Japanese are now getting out. Always were wise those Japanese.
news.independent.co.uk/world/mid … 090904.ece
What is with these guys?
Well, considering that most of the Third World is without power, i would take that off the big bad we f**ed up list. No country in Africa, or very few, have regular power. Ditto for many in the Middle East and India and elsewhere. Power outages are a regular fact of life. That is why most places have their own generators so this is not as bad as it sounds. When the regular power goes off, the private generators go one. Get it? Anyway, more gloom and doom. So what else is new? Yawn.
Umm, cos they had power before? Although Sodom’s demons may make it appear in your mind like the horrors of Kigali, things were a broom or two ahead of the vast slab of sub-Saharan Africa, erh, until your lot fucked it up. However, I don’t have a problem with that, as long as the old ‘fuck it fix it’ adage is applied. Right now I see the Americans eagerly looking for a means to split.
HG
Good to know that 3-1/4 years after we started the Iraq war, Fred’s now happy if the place resembles a third-world shithole. He’ll soon be telling us how good it is that sectarian fighting in Iraq at least doesn’t have child soldiers chopping the limbs off random villagers… until, of course, the day that it does.
Of course no mention of the fact that if the insurgents would lay down their arms most, if not all of these problems would go away in short order.
That’s a damned good idea, why don’t you go and tell 'em?
HG
Who was it again who let that genie out of the box? 
[quote=“games”][quote=“TainanCowboy”]Of course no mention of the fact that if the insurgents would lay down their arms most, if not all of these problems would go away in short order.[/quote]Who was it again who let that genie out of the box? [/quote]games -
[quote]“Terrorists” kill top Saddam lawyer: state TV
Wed Jun 21, 3:06 AM ET,
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - One of Saddam Hussein’s chief defense lawyers, Khamis al-Obaidi, has been killed by “terrorists,” Iraqiya state television said on Wednesday. It gave no details.
news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060621/wl_ … awyer_dc_1[/quote]
Just in. Even Reuters is calling them by their correct name. Terrorists.
additional:
[quote]AFP via translation -
A lawyer of Saddam Hussein killed
BAGHDAD - One of lawyers of Iraqi president deposed Saddam Hussein, Khamis Al-Obeidi, was killed by “terrorists”, announced Wednesday public television Iraqia.
“the lawyer Khamis Al-Obeidi was assassinated by terrorists”, indicated Iraqia, without giving more precise details.
A source of safety indicated to AFP that "the body of the lawyer Khamis Al-Obeidi was found with 10H00 (06H00 GMT) in the roundabout Sabah Al-Khayyat in the Our district", in the North-East of Baghdad.[/quote]and:[quote]Agence France-Presse -
Saddam lawyer killed in Iraq
One of ousted Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein’s defense lawyers, Khamis al-Obeidi, was killed in Baghdad, an interior ministry official said Wednesday.
“The police found the corpse of Obeidi tossed in the ‘Good Morning’ roundabout in the Ur neighborhood” of Baghdad’s mainly Sunni Adhamiyah district, the official said.
But when AFP tried to contact Obeidi on his mobile phone following a report on state television about his killing, a man who identified himself as the lawyer's aide said he was "alive."
Obeidi is the third defense lawyer for Saddam to be killed since his trial for crimes against humanity opened in October. [/quote]
You are absolutely right TC, they are terrorists and they deserve to be wiped out. However, indications are that your chocolate soldiers have had their time in the sun and are itching to crawl home to their mummies. Seems your voting class, cos that’s what they really are, have shot their bolt . . . again. Bring on the iraqisation and chaos, who knows, just like the Vietnamese they may herald a reasonable emerging, emerging stock market in thirty years time.
HG
[quote=“TainanCowboy”][quote]“Terrorists” kill top Saddam lawyer: state TV
Wed Jun 21, 3:06 AM ET,
Baghdad (Reuters) - One of Saddam Hussein’s chief defense lawyers, Khamis al-Obaidi, has been killed by “terrorists,” Iraqiya state television said on Wednesday. It gave no details.
news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060621/wl_ … awyer_dc_1[/quote]
Just in. Even Reuters is calling them by their correct name. Terrorists.[/quote]
I believe this story you cited does not have Reuters calling the killer(s) terrorists, but has Rueters reporting that Iraqiya state TV described the killer(s) as “terrorists.”
I actually think Reuters would recognize that saying that “terrorists” killed someone could leave some wondering whether Abu So And So or Dick and Rummy were the killers.
Um, no cuz only Baghdad had power? um? so now the power is being distributed to the whole country, um? so get it um?
There are so many generators in Baghdad now that many of these places have power even without regular supply from the government grid. Um. Get it?
Iraq was a shambolic mess before we arrived. This is not a question of “you broke it, you bought it.” It is more of a this place is fed as in Afghanistan fed and we are going in to try to fix it. Think Haiti with an evil dictator, er one with aspirations of regional power.
sb – Where did you find that picture of Ron Jeremy?
fred – Iraq under Saddam was no particularly pleasant place (particularly if one fell afoul of the Baathists), but it was leagues ahead of Afghanistan. You really should travel to the region sometime, and I heartily recommend that you read more about these countries. Wikipedia might be a good way to start, but you really have to build up from that.
TC: I seriously doubt Saddam’s lawyers were under a lot of danger before 2003. Not that he needed any at that point, but still. I am under the impression not a whole lot G.I.s got killed in Iraq by Islamist terrorists either before 2003.
And here the exchange the U.S. got after Iraq II and the genie I see unleashed:
Iraq before: tinpot dictator keeping Iran and Shi’a terrorists at bay at gunpoint. Serving the double-function of giving Islamists some nasty secular trouble right in the Middle East AND being the boogey-man to put blame on why the “pooooooooor” Iraqis suffer so much and can’t get their ass off the ground.
Iraq today: U.S. soldiers getting shot by Islamist terrorists while trying to carry out yet another multi-million dollar 3rd world “infrastucture program” to help these “poooooooor” Iraqis AND the U.S. being ever more the scapegoat for the Middle East not getting its ass off the ground.
I hope you do not mind I go on and doubt the wisdom of that exchange. Sorry, but I liked your idea in that other thread of keeping the wars few and covert ops up a lot better.
Saddam was probably what the area deserved … and who was so clever to remove him? To what gain again? 
Churchill might have said: “Seems we killed the wrong pig.”
I think Churchill would have lots to say about Iraq and the WOT.
[quote=“Joseph Loconte”][url=http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=NzhjZWRjNjg2OTVjMjQxNmZmZjg2NmI5ZmQyZDQxM2U=]…Historians will argue about the Bush administration’s prosecution of this war. But, based on how the conflict is being portrayed by many of our nation’s political leaders, some things could be said about the realism and vision required to prevail in this struggle — and where this leadership is mostly likely to be found.
Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi, for example, spent a good deal of her time … denouncing the decision to remove Saddam Hussein. …most Democrats still seem to invest far more energy decrying the rationale for the Iraq invasion than thinking strategically about the way forward.
Compare this to Churchill’s governing philosophy during a season of intense political strife. As Martin Gilbert recounts in his gem of a book, Winston Churchill’s War Leadership, the new prime minister resolved to forget the past. Even those associated with the disastrous policy of appeasement toward Hitler found a place in Churchill’s administration: The achievement of national unity against the enemy was all important…
Democrats insist on keeping open this quarrel between past and present, and their posturing has deepened the nation’s political divisions…
Perhaps the most insidious domestic enemy that confronted Churchill in wartime was the spirit of defeatism. There was lots of it in the early days of the war, when Britain stood alone against the Nazi juggernaut. There were proposals to sue for peace with Hitler, fears of a successful German invasion of England, and military blunders that cost thousands of British lives. Churchill never lost heart. “The prime minister expects all His Majesty’s Servants in high places to set an example of steadiness and resolution,” he said. “They should check and rebuke expressions of loose and ill-digested opinion in their circles.”
The loose and ill-digested opinions about the Iraq war could fill volumes. No matter what the sign of progress in the country — fair elections, a liberal constitution, a representative government — some detractors seem seized by an almost pathological gloom…
The answer to defeatism, of course, is not a policy of denial. The administration is right to describe Iraq as “the central front in the war on terror.” …
Churchill’s first wartime speech to the British people as prime minister was shocking for its sobriety: “I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears, and sweat.” He later warned the House of Commons: “Death and sorrow will be the companions of our journey, hardship our garment, constancy and valor our only shield.” And, while England rejoiced over the escape of thousands of British troops from a German onslaught at Dunkirk, Churchill injected his usual dose of realism: “Wars are not won by evacuations.”
The strength of a great leader, Martin Gilbert suggests, is his ability to frame the horrific realities of war within a larger moral vision…
…
For all his faults, President Bush sees correctly what is now at stake in Iraq: The forces of decency and democracy against the macabre vision of al Qaeda and Islamic fascism. His determination to stay the course is grounded in a set of moral and democratic ideals…
As the debate in Congress makes painfully clear, too many war critics still fail to admit the blackness of the threat — the hideous inhumanity of radical Islam — that confronts us in Iraq and elsewhere in the Muslim world. Without this moral realism, detractors have allowed their qualms about the conflict to degenerate into fatalism and defeatism. No surprise, then, that they now lack the resolve to carry on.[/url][/quote]
Oh yes, I of course forgot. Saddam was just one step away from overrunning the U.S…
My bad. 
Any particular reason why this paragraph does not mention Saddam at all? After all, he was the guy removed from Iraq, not al Qaeda and Islamic fascism. Someone could get the idea that the problems the article mentions are in Iraq now because Saddam was removed.
What’s that for? You now want to rail on Bush and make him look stupid because of his “mission accomplished” stunt? Shame on you, you traitor :raspberry:
Let’s look at the statement again, this time carefully:
[quote=“Joseph Loconte”] For all his faults, President Bush sees correctly what is [color=red]
now
[/color] at stake in Iraq: The forces of decency and democracy against the macabre vision of al Qaeda and Islamic fascism. … [/quote]
See?
You might want to read the article before commenting on the same. By responding as you did, you have actually illustrated one point made by the author.
[quote=“Tigerman”]Let’s look at the statement again, this time carefully:
[quote=“Joseph Loconte”] For all his faults, President Bush sees correctly what is [color=red]
now
[/color] at stake in Iraq: The forces of decency and democracy against the macabre vision of al Qaeda and Islamic fascism. … [/quote]
See?[/quote]
Already an idea whom to blame for that? Defeatist liberal media maybe?
Be fast with that one before someone gets the idea that the problems the article mentions are in Iraq now because Saddam was removed and Iraq II backfired regarding the WoT. Would suck as Saddam was right on the central front of that war “as everyone knows”. Versions only vary on whose side.
On a side note: you sure you want to lecture me on reading comprehension? My post WAS referring to the problems right now. Didn’t you maybe just want to say: “Sorry, but I plainly do not like being told removing Saddam was maybe not the best of moves in our WoT and that G.W. Bush does not exactly measure up to Churchill and that Saddam is a nobody compared to Hitler and the 3rd Reich”?
No problem with that. Each to his own. You then go on telling how invading Iraq and removing Saddam helped with the WoT efforts? TC already expressed different ideas on that in another thread, but I am too happy to hear your oppinion on that too.