Archive for January, 2007
Boy I wish I were a ‘Clean’ African American
Joe Biden, on the first official day of his hunt for the White House has managed to go far in his quest to drive away any Black voters. Either that, or I just need a bath and no one has been kind enough to tell me. Guess my grasp of English as a spoken language could use some work too… course, I’ve always considered myself at least decent-looking, maybe I should check the mirror more often, but since I’m probably not all that bright, I doubt I’d know what to do about it anyway… Full CNN article after the jump.
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BREAKING NEWS!! Obama went to school with Muslims!.
In a staggering development, it has been revealed by Insight Magazine that Barak Obama went to a predominately muslim school as a youth and may have spent years in close proximity to people of other religions. This new news, although it has previously disclosed by Barak Obama in his book, was not previously reported by members of Fox News and therefore was not previously significant. As the Fox News commentators and right-wing talk show hosts put it, “We’re just expressing our opinion when we say that attending a school with muslims is the same thing as attending a Terrorist training camp, which of course means that Mr Osama, - We mean, Obama, is really a terrorist and probably keeps a suicide bomb in his suitcase. We’re not saying that he does, but if he doesn’t then he shouldn’t have any problem with forced cavity searches at random. After all, anyone who loves this country would do whatever we want them to.”. As one right-wing talk show host put it, “I’m not saying he’s a terrorist, I’m just saying that it’s mighty suspicious that he was born with a non-protestant name and isn’t white.”
This reporter feels that allowing these radicals to run for office should be banned by a constitutional amendment, if the Founding Fathers had wanted us to be tolerant of other religions, surely they would have mentioned it somewhere in the Constitution.
(bootnote. this is called sarcasm.)
US targeted and attacked.
KARBALA, Iraq (CNN) — Attackers who killed five U.S. troops at a government building in Karbala posed as U.S. military officials to get past Iraqi guards, a Karbala police spokesman said.
The attack happened Saturday as the U.S. military convened a meeting to discuss security for Ashura, the upcoming Shiite pilgrimage to Karbala.
According to police spokesman Abdul Rahman al-Mishawi, about 30 gunmen traveling in a convoy of at least seven SUVs with tinted windows — similar to the vehicles used by top U.S. military officials — drove up to the Karbala Provincial Joint Coordination Center wearing uniforms similar to those worn by the U.S. military.
About a dozen U.S. troops were inside the compound at the time, al-Mishawi said.
Around 5:45 p.m., the gunmen cleared an Iraqi police checkpoint outside the center by flashing fake identification badges and speaking some English, al-Mishawi said.
Al-Mishawi said it is standard procedure for U.S. troops not to jointly man the checkpoint. He said U.S. personnel insist on passing without going through a security screening. (WTF?)
The attackers went through three checkpoints to enter the center, he said.
The first U.S. casualty in the attack was a soldier sitting in a Humvee outside a meeting of U.S. and Iraqi security officials.
The assailants targeted only U.S. soldiers, al-Mishawi said, adding that not a single Iraqi soldier or police officer was killed.
Several of the SUVs used in the attack were found late Saturday in neighboring Babil province, along with two of the suspected gunmen, an official in Baghdad said. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the gunmen were wounded and detained by the Americans, but the U.S. military said the two were found dead. (you mean Renditioned and as good as dead?)
When asked why Iraqi police did not intervene to stop the gunmen from fleeing, al-Mishawi said “they assumed it was American-on-American violence and wanted to stay out of it.”
Al-Mishawi said Monday that “the Americans have shut down the provincial government compound and everyone is being interrogated from the police chief, officers, down to the average policemen.”
The Karbala deaths made Saturday one of the deadliest days for the U.S. military since the war began almost four years ago, with 25 troops killed. Twelve of those troops died in a military helicopter crash.
Ashura commemorates the martyrdom of Hussein, the grandson of the Prophet Mohammed. It attracts millions of pilgrims.
Karbala has has two of the holiest shrines for Shiites — the Imam Hussein and Imam Abu Fadhel al-Abbas.
In Baghdad on Monday, at least 75 people were killed and 160 wounded in a pair of nearly simultaneous car bombings in a used clothing market.
Hopewatch ‘08 - Bill Richardson
Hopewatch ‘08 - Sam Brownback
Hopewatch ‘08 - Hillary Clinton
Hopewatch ‘08 - Barak Obama
Al-Maliki to Bush “Stop Meddling and Arm Us Already!”
Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki said on Wednesday, Iraq needed more weapons, not more advice, from the Bush administration. “I can strongly say that we could have been in a better situation right now regarding the equipment we have and the weapons we have,” Maliki said through a translator in an interview with reporters from Western media. “And if that would have happened, it would have greatly decreased the level of our losses and the losses of the Multi-National Forces as well.”
Maliki said those troops could soon leave if the U.S. provided the Iraqi security forces with more weapons and equipment. “If we succeed in implementing the agreement between us to speed up the equipping and providing weapons to our military forces,” he said, “I think that within three to six months our need for the American troops will dramatically go down.”
Somehow, to my jaded ear, this sounds like another way of saying, “Give us enough guns and room, and within 6 months, I guarantee you that there won’t be a single Sunni still breathing in our glorious country!”.
Sounding like Bush, (Whoda thunk others would emulate us to oour detriment?) Al-Maliki said that by wavering in its support for the Iraqi government, the Administration was emboldening terrorists, that insurgents might take such comments as a sign “that they have defeated the American Administration..”.
Responding to Bush’s comment that the Saddam execution showed that his government “has still got some maturation to do,” Maliki said “..It seems that the pressure has gotten to [such] a great extent that [it] led to the President giving this statement.” Translation: We do things OUR way here, the same way you do things YOUR way there.
It does look like we have accomplished our mission in Iraq finally, the new government appears hell-bent on shaping the country in a new form, albeit Sunni-free, and now only requires that we give them more shiny new toys to kill with and let them get down to the killing part. Possibly, they are dissatisfied with the pace the sectarian cleansing is taking at the hands of the Sadr army, seeing how the US Government keeps slowing them down and all…
Let’s keep in mind that the conflict between Shi’a and Sunni in Iraq predate Saddaam by a long ways, that was the way Great Britan structured it initially. The following excerpt is from the Wikipedia article on Saddam:
Saddam saw himself as a social revolutionary and a modernizer, following the Nasser model. To the consternation of Islamic conservatives, his government gave women added freedoms and offered them high-level government and industry jobs. Saddam also created a Western-style legal system, making Iraq the only country in the Persian Gulf region not ruled according to traditional Islamic law (Sharia). Saddam abolished the Sharia law courts, except for personal injury claims.
Domestic conflict impeded Saddam’s modernizing projects. Iraqi society is divided along lines of language, religion and ethnicity; Saddam’s government rested on the support of the 20% minority of largely working class, peasant, and lower middle class Sunnis, continuing a pattern that dates back at least to the British mandate authority’s reliance on them as administrators.
The Shi’a majority were long a source of opposition to the government’s secular policies, and the Ba’ath Party was increasingly concerned about potential Sh’ia Islamist influence following the Iranian Revolution of 1979. The Kurds of northern Iraq (who are Sunni Muslims but not Arabs) were also permanently hostile to the Ba’athist party’s pan-Arabism. To maintain his regime Saddam tended either to provide them with benefits so as to co-opt them into the regime, or to take repressive measures against them. The major instruments for accomplishing this control were the paramilitary and police organizations. Beginning in 1974, Taha Yassin Ramadan, a close associate of Saddam, commanded the People’s Army, which was responsible for internal security. As the Ba’ath Party’s paramilitary, the People’s Army acted as a counterweight against any coup attempts by the regular armed forces. In addition to the People’s Army, the Department of General Intelligence (Mukhabarat) was the most notorious arm of the state security system, feared for its use of torture and assassination. It was commanded by Barzan Ibrahim al-Tikriti, Saddam’s younger half-brother. Since 1982, foreign observers believed that this department operated both at home and abroad in their mission to seek out and eliminate Saddam’s perceived opponents.[citation needed]
Saddam justified Iraqi nationalism by claiming a unique role of Iraq in the history of the Arab world. As president, Saddam made frequent references to the Abbasid period, when Baghdad was the political, cultural, and economic capital of the Arab world. He also promoted Iraq’s pre-Islamic role as Mesopotamia, the ancient cradle of civilization, alluding to such historical figures as Nebuchadrezzar II and Hammurabi. He devoted resources to archaeological explorations. In effect, Saddam sought to combine pan-Arabism and Iraqi nationalism, by promoting the vision of an Arab world united and led by Iraq.
As a sign of his consolidation of power, Saddam’s personality cult pervaded Iraqi society. Thousands of portraits, posters, statues and murals were erected in his honor all over Iraq. His face could be seen on the sides of office buildings, schools, airports, and shops, as well as on Iraqi currency. Saddam’s personality cult reflected his efforts to appeal to the various elements in Iraqi society. He appeared in the costumes of the Bedouin, the traditional clothes of the Iraqi peasant (which he wore during his childhood), and even Kurdish clothing, but also appeared in Western suits, projecting the image of an urbane and modern leader. Sometimes he would also be portrayed as a devout Muslim, wearing full headdress and robe, praying toward Mecca.
Pick a way already!
It might possibly be time for us as a Nation to sit back and think long and hard about what actions we as a country should take when we decide to invade another country. There are three approaches that can be taken, and unfortunately, we have historically chosen the wrong one.
The first choice is to invade, get rid of the leaders, and leave. Have some faith that the people remaining will be able to sort out amongst themselves how the country should be run. Remember that they will surely recall what happened to the last person in charge and that we could always come back and wipe their leaders out again.
The second, is to invade the country, make it a protectorate, and install the Government of your choosing. leave no doubt in the minds of the people that although they may have a Government that appears th be representative of them, they are still under U.S. control.
Third, invade a coutry, try to form a govermnet more to your liking, and then prop that Goverment up long enough to take hold on it’s own.
These three methods seem pretty straightforward, but all 3 have their failings. In the first instance, nothing gauarnttes that the Government eventually established won’t have a legitimate grudge against you and it probably won’t be your best friend in the years to come. Additionally, the World Community will accuse you of being irresponsible for knocking down a nation and just walking away. In the second, you will have a long-term comittment, your troops will be tied up for years to come, and the occupied lands may very well never stop fighting you, bleeding your forces to death, one soldier at a time. In the last case, you comittment is open-ended, the general population will not accept their leaders as long as those leaders were chosen by you, the invading force, and assuming you left a large-enough power vaccum, there may well be some rather large factions vying for back-room control of the public government.
That third case, of course what we face in Iraq today. As evil as Sadaam was, let’s remember that WE were the ones who helped install him in office, and that he DID manage to keep the different factions within Iraq from killing each other. With him gone, all the pent up factional differences are boiling over, and a stronger hand that we are willing to use is needed to quell the violence. The majority of iraqi’s are of course glad that Sadaam is dead, but at the same time, each different group now wants to be the ones in charge, and additionally wants to kill off the other opposing groups. We exasperbate the situation by trying to “help” the iraqi population through jobs, stubbornly blind to the fact that as we “help” them, we mark them as collborators, targets for the forces vying for control. We are making refugees at an alarming rate. More people are trying to leave Iraq NOW than ever did under Sadaam. The economy is in a shambles that may take another 12-15 years to recover from, the Government has already shown that the constitutuion is is based upon is subject to change at the will of it’s leaders, and quite frankly, who can blame them? As we stand on the World Stage as an example to the Iraqi government, we have a President who attaches “signing statements” to virtually every bill he signs that say in effect, Whatever this paper says holds true except when I decide it doesn’t. We target the groups who are at this time being killed in droves by the “Insurgency”, ignoring the fact that this is actually the government allowing hired thugs to do the things they cannot officially condone, but want done anyway. we have to make a decision, stay for good or leave now. There will never be a time when Iraq will magically wake up one morning and say, “I see it clearly now, I must love my neighbor as myself, I pledge this moment to stop killing people of other factions, I WILL be good”. Either prop them up as a true puppet government, and hold the city with an iron fist, or let them go. If they crash and burn, they were given every opportunity we had to give.
A New Way Forward = A Old Way Backward
Somehow, We really don’t know how, President Bush has STILL not realized that the Iraq policy is not developing in the way he had initially hoped. Bush has gone so far as to acknowledge that the only way to keep Iraq from falling into all-out anarchy (As opposed to the current state-directed anarchy) is our presence. But instead of simply solidifying our owb position, Bush wants to throw even more logwood on the fire. Exactly how many more of our servicemen and women have to come home in Coffins before our venerable President realizes that while it’s possible to fight terrorISTS, it’s not really possible to fight terrorISM. terrorism is an idea, it’s a concept, it’s a belief, it can’t be fought. stick to hunting specific targets who have committed some actual crime, and stay away from fighing some concept. Additionally, let iraq do what iraq wants to do, if thee want to kyll each other, let them. At this point it’s no longer a matter of if rather a matter just of When.
