Hitchens tells it like it is.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,92982,00.html
[quote]
Vanity Fair’s Christopher Hitchens on What It’s Really Like in Iraq
JOHN GIBSON, HOST: A lot of recent reports on Iraq seem to consist of two stories
Paul Gigot said the same sort of thing in the WSJ on Monday:
opinionjournal.com/editorial … =110003805
Bravo Porcelain Princess:
I could not agree more. I have consistently criticized the media for one-sided reporting on this conflict. Iraq and Afghanistan before it are not perfect but no where near as bad as all the newspapers were screaming they were going to be.
Is progress diffiult? yes. Is Iraq better off now than before. Yes. Was it partly about oil? probably. Is the region more secure? Yes. So I think that given another two years or so, that Iraq may start to see some true beginnings of a chance (not a gurantee) at liberal democracy, a society based on rule of law, and a growing economy and standard of living. It’s worth the risk in my book. Iran and Syria next? Hmmm but will not rule it out. Let’s keep the pressure on and see if the US can get results.
[quote=“fred smith”]Bravo Porcelain Princess:
I could not agree more. I have consistently criticized the media for one-sided reporting on this conflict. Iraq and Afghanistan before it are not perfect but no where near as bad as all the newspapers were screaming they were going to be.
Is progress diffiult? yes. Is Iraq better off now than before. Yes. Was it partly about oil? probably. Is the region more secure? Yes. So I think that given another two years or so, that Iraq may start to see some true beginnings of a chance (not a gurantee) at liberal democracy, a society based on rule of law, and a growing economy and standard of living. It’s worth the risk in my book. Iran and Syria next? Hmmm but will not rule it out. Let’s keep the pressure on and see if the US can get results.[/quote]
It’s too early to say what the shape of Iraq will look like. only that the Baathists aren’t in power.
But as for Afghanistan, seems to be a reversion to pre-Taliban days of Warlordism, and Opium trade. And outside Kabul, women’s rights haven’t changed much (eg the burka).
Funny thing, is Syria has just as many human rights abuses, a dictatorship and family running things, and probably has more ties to terrorists organizations (historically speaking). Call me cynical, but does no one care about freeing the Syrians and bringing the fist of Humanitariansm down on Assad because they aren’t the 2nd biggest oil-producing country after Saudi Arabia???
Is it a coincidence that the US is in tight with Saudi Arabia, the 1st largest oil-producer, (known for its ties to terrorism, but little pressure on the Sauds) and now runs the 2nd largest in the world? With these 2 countries, they don’t need to worry about OPEC. The humanitarian effort, as nice as it is, is just that, a few PR points and a “just cause” to show the world.
It’s going to take more than Iraq and Afghanistan to convince me.
Fellow “Right” ists?
Wanna take a poll? How many of you would support cleaning house in Syria despite the fact that it does not have any oil. After all it too has invaded a country, which it has historical “claims” to: Lebanon. I would wait and see what kind of changes take place but hmmm the way the Middle East looks now (what with Iran surrounded) and Syria surrounded and Libya surrounded. I would say they are the ones that may finally start having to effect some attitude adjustment. If it works without weapons good. If not, I say put them on the table. Still no effect, then well they cannot complain about efforts to destabilize them when they are busy conducting similar operations in other countries. No?
From: nationaljournal.com/about/njweek … 725nj1.htm
[quote]Pre-emption. After 9/11, Bush dynamited the very foundation of Cold War diplomacy when he repudiated the doctrine of containment. “After September 11, the doctrine of containment just doesn’t hold any water, as far as I’m concerned,” he said earlier this year, with typical bluntness. “We must deal with threats before they hurt the American people again.” Not content to act pre-emptively in Iraq, he went so far as to announce a doctrine of pre-emption, thus speaking loudly while carrying a big stick. Bush was well aware that he was knocking over furniture and shocking the world. He didn’t mind. He seemed to feel that the world needed a paradigm change and that quiet incrementalism was not going to produce one.
The Middle East. Beginning with a speech on June 24 of last year, Bush likewise upended five decades of Middle East policy. Since the 1940s, the United States had refrained from calling for a Palestinian state and had accepted Arab authoritarianism as a given. Bush not only reversed both policies but yoked the two reversals together by conditioning Palestinian independence on Palestinian democratization. “Throwing out the rule book,” is how Daniel Pipes, a prominent Middle East scholar, described Bush’s actions, in a recent New York Post article. “It could well be the most surprising and daring step of his presidency,” wrote Pipes – a step, he added, that did not emerge from the usual process of consensus-building in Washington but that instead “reflects the president’s personal vision.”
Underlying all of Bush’s foreign-policy departures is a little-noted shift that may be the most fundamental of the bunch. Unlike foreign-policy realists (including his father), Bush does not believe that states should be regarded as legitimate just because they are stable and can be dealt with. And unlike internationalists (including his predecessor), he does not believe that states should be regarded as legitimate just because they are internationally recognized. He believes that legitimacy comes only from popular sovereignty and civilized behavior.
President Reagan horrified realists and internationalists alike by declaring that the Soviet Union was not a legitimate state. He would deal with the Soviet regime but never accept it. He aimed at regime change. Realists argued that Reagan’s naivete would destabilize the world order, and internationalists feared that it would threaten hard-won human-rights agreements, but Reagan insisted – perhaps not so naively – that only freedom could produce stability and protect human rights.
Bush embraces Reagan’s notion and extends it worldwide. He will deal with Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, or Kim Jong Il’s North Korea, or Yasir Arafat’s Palestinian Authority, or Charles Taylor’s Liberia, if he must, but he will not accept such a regime as entitled to exist and, one way or another, he will try to change it. Against such regimes, the use of force may be impractical or unwise, but it is certainly not illegitimate. Indeed, for Bush, the real puzzle is why anyone would object, in principle, to the toppling of a regime such as Saddam Hussein’s, or why anyone would regard the United Nations, which no one ever voted for, as morally relevant.
And so Bush, like Reagan but more so, does not accept the world as he finds it. He regards the existing world order as unacceptably dangerous. The existing world order, returning the compliment, regards him the same way.
[/quote]
freddie my main man…(Three Kings?).
Go ahead and start a poll thread.
And since I know someone will want to bring this up [again], I’m not saying that the US inherently should/ought/has responsibility to make the world safe (the Middle East political situations ie the lack of ‘western democracy’ and basically family dynasties is just a throwback to the old ways, and I’m not blaming the US for that, just noting their ‘hypocritical’ support of such regimes, notwithstanding modern geopolitics)
But since the US has now clearly made itself out to be a savior and bulwark against EVIL and the US is GOOD, and GOD speaks to BUSH to do RIGHT and GOOD, then hell yes, I will criticize based on the US government’s own assertions of its RIGHTEOUSNESS.
How do you know he is telling it like it is and all those other journalists, by implication, are telling it like it isn’t. Have you been to Iraq recently? Or would you just like it to be that way?
From: nationalreview.com/hanson/hanson072503.asp
[quote]Postscript.
These are still perilous times. But if anyone on September 12, 2001, had predicted that 22 months later there would still be no repeat of 9/11; that bin Laden would be either quiet, dead, or in hiding; that al Qaeda would be dispersed, the Taliban gone, and the likes of a Mr. Karzai in Kabul; that Saddam Hussein would be out of power, his sons dead, and an Iraqi national council emerging in his place; that [US] troops would be leaving Saudi Arabia, Arafat ostracized, and Sharon seeking negotiations; that new Middle East agreements under discussion
Kenny (intentional):
I can solve your logical problem in one statement. Foreign policy does not have to be uniform or consistent. Ever-changing world situations, perceptions of threats and such mean no policy can be one size fits all. Therefore how the US treats Syria does not have to be consistent with Iraq or Iran or Yemen or Bahrain or… You get the point. I see your view and understand but it is too limited of focus.
Yes, the US can be very hypocritical. Ask anyone in Latin America, the area where these policies have had the most negative effects but then also realize that in Latin America, well most of the problems are homegrown and if the US was involved, it was often at the request of various parties (which other domestic parties may have disagreed with).
So… what to do? That’s what elections are for. You don’t like this president and his policies, vote someone else in, but for those who hated Carter and Clinton realize that they too had to wait four or more years to effect those changes. If that is a major issue for you, vote your conscious. But until then realize that the Right and the U.S. policy in Iraq are totally correct and the best thing that you can do as a patriot is to suspend disbelief and doubt and put yourself completely in their trustworthy hands.
Capish?
freddie
[quote=“fred smith”]Kenny (intentional):
I can solve your logical problem in one statement. Foreign policy does not have to be uniform or consistent. Ever-changing world situations, perceptions of threats and such mean no policy can be one size fits all. Therefore how the US treats Syria does not have to be consistent with Iraq or Iran or Yemen or Bahrain or… You get the point. I see your view and understand but it is too limited of focus.
Yes, the US can be very hypocritical. Ask anyone in Latin America, the area where these policies have had the most negative effects but then also realize that in Latin America, well most of the problems are homegrown and if the US was involved, it was often at the request of various parties (which other domestic parties may have disagreed with).
So… what to do? That’s what elections are for. You don’t like this president and his policies, vote someone else in, but for those who hated Carter and Clinton realize that they too had to wait four or more years to effect those changes. If that is a major issue for you, vote your conscious. But until then realize that the Right and the U.S. policy in Iraq are totally correct and the best thing that you can do as a patriot is to suspend disbelief and doubt and put yourself completely in their trustworthy hands.
Capish?
freddie[/quote]
Capiche? no capisci. yes, I get your point. I am sometimes too idealistic too demanding. but as for being a patriot and putting myself in their trustworthy hands, dat sum ironie. Give me a green card, and then we’ll talk. 
and what’s with realizing that the Right is totally correct. So anytime, my presidential candidate whom I voted for loses, I must bow absolutely to the winner and his party without even conscientious objection for four years?
Regarding Syria, it is already modifying its behavior as a result of the “object lesson” next door. Syria is apparently partially pulling its troops out of Lebanon, and Assad refused to let Saddam’s sons take refuge within Syria.
(Speaking of which, I’m surprised that nobody yet has posted anything screaming about Odai and Qusay being killed. At least not that I’ve seen in any of the usual threads.)
There is a saying, “we only shoot the ones we can’t reform”. I would suggest that this applies to all three of the current members of the Axis of Evil – I’d say they’re now Iran, Syria, and North Korea. “Reform” doesn’t have to mean active intervention; it can be passive waiting (hoping for North Korea to collapse) or cheerleading (as with Bush’s cheering on of the Iranian student protests).
North Korea may well step over the line soon and end up getting hammered, but meanwhile, it’s a waiting game.
[quote]
The Kingness of Mad George
B. Rehak, July 29, 2003
The Founding Fathers wanted this democracy to last forever because they understood that mere empires come and go.
To that end, they established an intricate system of historic checks and balances to make sure the sort of tyranny they’d just fought to defeat never rose up again. They gave us the Constitution and the Bill of Rights to guarantee our freedoms.
Americans would never have a king, but instead a popularly elected President, and they’d always be free to openly express their opinions, especially about the government and its policies. The people would be the master of their own rulers. It was a unique experiment in liberty which evolved and endured for more than two centuries, until one day in November 2000.
The Founding Fathers never figured on the Imperial Presidency of George W. Bush, and his court-appointed “Government of the neo-cons, by the neo-cons, and for the neo-cons.” A self-righteous minority of ruthless profiteering ideological extremists was never supposed to dominate all three independent branches of the American Democracy. It’s in your old high school civics book. Look it up.
While we were all busy with the breathless search for the elusive Iraqi A-Bomb, Mr. Bush and his handlers have apparently secretly passed the ‘Freedom of Disinformation Act,’ under which the Republican-controlled Senate and House have finally issued their long-delayed and heavily rewritten version of the ‘9/11 Report,’ laying blame on EVERYONE but the White House. Imagine that.
Imagine also that 28 key pages in that report related to Saudi Arabia were blacked out. Mr. Bush’s people apparently thought that redaction was the better part of valor, considering that the bin Laden and Bush families and the Saudi Oil Princes all go back so profitably for decades. The Presidency is temporary, but big oil money is eternal.
Do you like political intrigue?
Take a moment now to envision the Republican response if a DEMOCRATIC President who allowed 3,000 Americans to be murdered and never caught the man behind the plot after promising to do so, issued a softball report carefully produced by a totally Democratic Congress with key clues to the actual people responsible missing — especially those that might impact his own long-time business and political associates.
Are you envisioning?
Now envision that back on September 12, 2001, the day after the mass murder, that Democratic President had reportedly allowed a private jet to collect the closest relatives of the key man behind the murderous attack so they could leave the country ahead of any untidy FBI questioning. Imagine that same Democratic President had then tried to block an outside independent probe of the worst U.S. terrorist event in history demanded by the attack’s own victims and their families.
Are you following this so far?
Now imagine that to divert attention from his botched domestic economy and his failed quest for the killer of those 3,000 Americans that this Democratic President instead invented reasons to attack a whole different country and got us stuck in a pointless holy war there costing a billion dollars and seven dead U.S. soldiers a week.
Got the picture? Can you see it?
It’s a good thing the Republicans were totally in charge when all this actually happened. If it had been Mr. Clinton, we’d have never heard the end of it. Can you imagine the bleating on neo-fascist Talk Radio across the land? Can you see Rush Limbaugh’s head explode? Ann Coulter would go postal. Can you hear the calls for impeachment? Fox News would brand it treason, with good purpose. Matt Drudge would be up all night dishing online dirt about the idiot Democrats who’d foolishly allowed 9/11 to happen, covered it up, and then created Saigon on the Tigress. Bill O’Reilly would have kittens, and cable news ratings would go through the roof.
Actually, few folks seem upset. Can you really imagine the American people are so stupid they’d buy all this without question? The Republicans are banking on it.
The regents behind ‘King George the 43rd’ realize that voter apathy and ignorance have become increasingly critical to their neo-conservative re-election game plan. A majority of Americans polled even mistakenly think that Saddam Hussein was behind the 9/11 attacks. The Bush folks must figure that as national policy, stupidity works. That includes the man currently serving as President.
It’s not just that the Emperor Bush has no clothes, he has no clue…
If we leave it to the enfeebled Democratic Party, Mr. Bush and his handlers will probably get away with all this, but thankfully there are good people in Washington ready to act. The Republican monolith, which had seemed invincible, is starting to show some cracks. The Cheney-Halliburton Administration is quietly running scared. This is due to a growing revolt in the single constituency that the Bush folks can’t dominate: their own Republican Congress. The neo-cons apparently thought they’d bought it, but it appears now they only leased it.
On November 2, 2004 (66 weeks from today) all the members of the U.S. House and one third of the U.S. Senate have to stand for re-election, and they represent the ONE group that will dump Mr. Bush if they sense he’s spoiling their chances to keep power. As a national Republican candidate in 2000, Mr. Bush had very short coat tails.
If you seek political change in this country, here’s the key. The REPUBLICANS are the only people who can effectively defeat George W. Bush. The Nixon years ended with a coverup, but the Bush years began with one, and it apparently continues to this day.
When this is all sorted out, the original crimes will doubtless pale in comparison to the misdeeds of those trying now to rewrite reality into a winning patriotic saga. When it starts to go bad all the ‘good’ Republicans will book. The smart money never goes down with the ship. Never.
Consider the following. Over the weekend, two key conservatives went public as they calculated the diminishing electoral potential of the Cheney-Halliburton Administration.
Richard Shelby, Alabama’s senior U.S. Senator and Chairman of the powerful Senate Banking Committee, is a top Republican investigating intelligence failures before 9/11. He’s openly criticized White House pressure to censure the 9/11 report. Mr. Shelby said he’ll dig into the financial connections between governments and terrorist groups. You can reach him at shelby.senate.gov/.
Even more telling were the words of Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Richard Lugar of Indiana on NPR Saturday, who said the White House knows there’s a big price tag for rebuilding Iraq, “But they do not wish to discuss that.” Lugar supported the war but now admits U.S. post-war planning was inadequate, and he estimates the rebuilding alone might cost $30 billion. You can reach Senator Lugar at lugar.senate.gov/.
These two men are hardly lefties, and their public shift away from Mr. Bush is something of a sea change in conservative willingness to distance the President’s actions from those of other Republicans. Interesting.
Meanwhile, the “father” of the stalled Iraq war, U.S. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz was all over TV on Sunday defending the invasion as a prime example of how the Administration must be prepared to act on “murky intelligence” in the war on terrorism. Odd that many inside the CIA reportedly think the Bush people as a lot more ‘murky’ than the Intel, which was apparently extensively ‘refined’ until it ‘made’ the case for war. More than 200 American kids have thus far died for ‘murky.’
Also, there’s one other place the dreaded Iraqi WMD is missing, from Mr. Bush’s new speeches.
Rising to Mr. Bush’s defense is Ed Gillespie, the new GOP chairman who reportedly told the 165-member Republican National Committee that the Democrats are feeding Americans “a steady diet of protest and pessimism” in absence of real solutions to the economy and Iraq, according to Reuters. If you’re the parents of a U.S. soldier who was killed in Iraq or one of the over 3,000,000 people who’ve lost their jobs in the 919 days of the Bush reign, perhaps you are getting a little pessimistic.
This brings us to Admiral John M. Poindexter, Ronald Reagan’s former national security adviser, a principal in the Iran-Contra Affair, and the resurrected head of something called the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), which is reportedly setting up an online futures trading market, where speculators could bet on forecasting terrorist attacks, assassinations and coups. In response to growing howls of laughter, the White House has since apparently altered the Web site at policyanalysismarket.org. Mr. Bush sought $8 million through 2005 for the project. This is a REAL story, although we must admit that the Admiral’s adventures always sound like something written for ‘The Onion,’ or ‘The Daily Show.’
[After a firestorm of outrage, the “Policy Analysis Market” was scrapped today.]
Finally, there are press reports today that indicate Al-Qaeda, those same great folks who helped bring you 9/11, and whom Mr. Bush never quite found time to actually defeat on his way to Iraq, are openly planning more high flying mischief. Maybe THEY have the WMD.
Let’s face it. It’s becoming very clear that Dick Cheney and his ilk are really running the show. To be charitable, Mr. Bush, were he the son of anyone other than ‘George Herbert Walker Bush’, of Midland, Texas, who got him a legacy admission to Yale, would be lucky to rise to middle management at Wal-Mart.
As more of the blood of our brave, believing, faithful kids irrigates the fields of Babylon, a lot of folks are starting to ask some very untidy questions. We’ve sent our best young people to fight and die for oil in Iraq, while many of their young families at home subsisted on food stamps, and got screwed out of a child income tax credit that Mr. Bush gladly gave other Americans.
We now have the best Government corporate money can buy, and that’s the problem. The people behind Enron and WorldCom and Halliburton are encamped along the Potomac and fully in charge. It’s good the folks who fought for and set up this country are all dead. An hour watching America today as reported by Fox News would kill them anyhow.
If any of this bothers you, the solution is available 66 weeks from now. Get organized. The people who don’t care and never bother to vote must be made to care and be motivated to go to the polls. If we give the neo-cons four more years, the Canadians will have to fortify the border to keep all of the impoverished refugees out.
This is no longer about liberal or conservative, or party, or ideology. If the American people want a country to come home to, they’d better take it back for themselves.
Our favorite observer of the Bush Imperial Presidency is the great Roman Historian Publius Cornelius Tacitus (55-120 AD). He had an eye for this sort of thing and two thousand years hasn’t dimmed his vision. He said, “In stirring up tumult and strife, the worst men can do the most, but peace and quiet cannot be established without virtue.”
If you think the search for the WMD is tough, try finding virtue in any of this. [/quote]
You will probably criticize it as some crazy piece of nothing. Some parts are interesting. Some parts like the living conditions of families whose members serve in the military, but have to live on food stamps are astounding.
How do you know he is telling it like it is and all those other journalists, by implication, are telling it like it isn’t. Have you been to Iraq recently? Or would you just like it to be that way?[/quote]
Rebuilding schools, rebuilding hospitals, refurbishing Mosul University, opening soccer stadiums, helping people connect to the Internet, returning power back to Baghdad, etc…lies, all?
I think it’s clear that journalists look for the negative angles and play them up because they make better copy. Either that or they jump to absurd conclusions based upon little evidence (and lots of partisan bullshit). Remember Robert Fisk’s “the Americans are nowhere near the airport?”
Why don’t you tell us how you would like it? Oh yeah, sorry about Uday and Qusay. 
Is this ‘telling it like it is’, too?
[color=blue]"Col. David Hogg, commander of the 2nd Brigade of the 4th Infantry Division, said tougher methods are being used to gather the intelligence. On Wednesday night, he said, his troops picked up the wife and daughter of an Iraqi lieutenant general. They left a note: ‘If you want your family released, turn yourself in.’ Such tactics are justified, he said, because, ‘It’s an intelligence operation with detainees, and these people have info.’ They would have been released in due course, he added later.
The tactic worked. On Friday, Hogg said, the lieutenant general appeared at the front gate of the U.S. base and surrendered."[/color]
CNN
Those are the kind of tactics I use to force my students to speak English.
I hope they torture the shit out of the people they catch. It works. It saves lifes.
Goddamn… but you’re one hard motherfucker, aren’t you!
Not particularly young, nor hard. I absolutely hated my time in the army and jumped out a loophole straight after training.
For some reason I was especially appalled by the details in the Fisk article I linked to and even more so by the mad republican gloating that’s been dripping of these pages of late.
Actually the point I failed to make was my suspicion that the far better logistical support the US military enjoys is in part responsible for the awfully ill-disciplined shooting habits of its soldiers. Both of which are a strong feature in any conflict involving the US.
HG
[quote=“Huang Guang Chen”]
An aside. I was once in the Australian military and all the NCOs were Aus Viet vets. “Righto boys, I’ll tell ya the basic US rifle man’s position. You hold the rifle at full arms length above ya’ head, preferrably behind a high wall or tank (!), turn your assault rifle to full auto and spray in the general direction of all that you fear.” That was in 1980! I guess some things don’t change http://www.iraqwar.ru/Iraq-read_article.php?articleId=13712&lang=en Pity us in the Oz army, we’re told to never put a rifle on auto and taught to fire automatic weapons one shot at a time, “how many of those bloody bullets you reckon you can lug with out hope of re-supply knowing fuil well that you might actualy need them for a week or more?” [/quote]
I’m not going to turn this into a “my army is better than yours” rant. One of my best friends is former Australian SAS. But, that said. The regular Austalian ground forces in Vietnam consisted of only a couple of battalions and were located mainly just outside of Saigon. With only a few exceptions did they ever operate with US forces (I think the 1 RAR worked with the US 173d Airborne). Part of the rivalry (from the Australian side) was envy. The Australians were both underpaid and underequipped. The SAS had new fully automatic American M-16s (referred to as Armalites) while the regular troops had to make do with heavy, old, beatup semi-automatic FN-FALs which are next to useless in a firefight. A Soviet-made AK-47 has a rate of fire of approximately 600 rounds per minute. The M-16, 750 rpm. The FN-FAL? Only 20 rmp.
Regular Australian forces were used mostly for security in their AO. SAS served mostly in the northern provinces in an advisory and/or training role with the South Vietnamese.
Fortunately for the Australians they were seldom used (nor were they meant to be used) in full scale combat operations. Proof? Between 1962 and 1972, Australian forces (including RAAF and RAAN) suffered a total of only 423 combat deaths. The US was losing that many per week in 1968. The only large battle Australian forces were ever involved in was at Long Tan in 1966. This was between 108 men of D Company 6 Battalion ATF and two regiments (with one battalion reinforcing) of Viet Cong…not NVA. The Australians lost 18 men. The VC lost over 500 (not bad Oz!).
A former British paratrooper who was here for a “fun jump” down in Pingtung told me “We used to watch films of American troops in Vietnam firing their weapons over their heads at the enemy and we laughed. Then when I was at Goose Green (Falklands War) I did the same. It wasn’t so funny.”
BTW, the 2 US Delta troops (Randy Shugart and Gary Gordon) who volunteered to protect the downed helicopter crew in Mogadishu (“Blackhawk Down”) killed over 500 Somali troops before being overrun.