IRAQ IS A DISASTER [Archive] - THE WRITERS FORUM

metallix

04-06-2004, 08:50 PM

There Are No Words ...
Radiation in Iraq Equals 250,000 Nagasaki Bombs
by Bob Nichols
www.dissidentvoice.org (http://www.dissidentvoice.org)
March 27, 2004

As a writer I do not have a set of words to describe what 142 Degrees in the shade is like. I've seen 120 D. in Phoenix and 110 D in the spa's sauna I use. One hundred forty-two degrees leaves me speechless. Try to imagine 142 D temperature while wearing a helmet, long sleeve shirt, long pants, a bullet proof vest, boots, and carrying a 70 pound pack.

By contrast the Inuit of Alaska and Canada have thirty-seven words to precisely talk about different kinds of snow.

So, since the temperature is heating up in Iraq it seemed like a good time to float this story to different Internet sites and news publications. There was one story in 2003 of one 19 year old British soldier whose military job was to work in a British tank. In Iraq. In the summer. Word is, from London, that he forgot to drink enough water and he literally cooked in his tank.

But, this story is not about the temperature in Iraq. You can bet, though, the weather will be really important for those Americans unfortunate enough to still be in Iraq this summer.

This story is about American weapons built with Uranium components for the business end of things. Just about all American bullets, 120 mm tank shells, missiles, dumb bombs, smart bombs, 500 and 2,000 pound bombs, cruise missiles, and anything else engineered to help our side in the war of us against them has Uranium in it. Lots of Uranium.

In the case of a cruise missile, as much as 800 pounds of the stuff. This article is about how much radioactive uranium our guys, representing us, the citizens of the United States, let fly in Iraq. Turns out they used about 4,000,000 pounds of the stuff, give or take. That is a bunch.

Now, most people have no idea how much Four Million Pounds of anything is, much less of Uranium Dust (UD), which this stuff turns into when it is shot or exploded. Suffice it to say it is about equal to 1,333 cars that weigh three thousand pounds per car. That is a lot of cars; but, we can imagine what a parking lot with one thousand three hundred and thirty three cars is like. The point is: this was and is an industrial strength operation. It is still going on, too.

No sir-ee, putting Four Million Pounds of Radioactive Uranium Dust (RUD) on the ground in Iraq was a definitely "on-purpose" kind of thing. It was not "just an accident." We, the citizens of the United States, through our kids in the Army, did this on purpose.

When the uranium bullets, missiles, or bombs hit something or explode most of the radioactive uranium turns instantly to very, very small dust particles, too fine to even see. When US Troopers or Iraqis breathe even a tiny amount into their lungs, as little as One Gram, it is the same as getting an X-Ray every hour for the rest of their shortened life.

The uranium cannot be removed, there is no treatment, there is no cure. The uranium will long outlast the Veterans' and the Iraqis' bodies though; for, you see, it lasts virtually forever.

But, it gets worse. Seems an Admiral who is the former Chief of the Naval Staff of India wanted to know how much radiation this represented. He also wanted to express the amount in a figure that the world, especially the non American world, could easily understand.

The Admiral decided to figure out how many Nagasaki Atom Bombs it would take to deliver the equivalent of the total amount of radiation deployed in Iraq in 2003 in Four Million Pounds of uranium.

The Admiral also wanted to figure out how much radiation the United States Military Forces have deployed in the last Five American Wars, the so-called Five Nuclear Wars.

That is a simple enough task for somebody like the Naval Chief of Staff for a country that is a member of the Nuclear Club. Using the Nagasaki bomb for the measuring stick is a particularly gruesome twist, though. For those of you in the States who do not know it, the United States Military Forces dropped two nuclear Bombs on Japan at the close of World War II. The whole world remembers that.

One Atom Bomb was dropped by Americans on the city of Hiroshima, the other on the city of Nagasaki three days later. About 170,000 people were incinerated immediately. It was a really big deal.

It is a measuring stick that plays very well in the rest of the world; but, not very well on Fox News (Fair & Balanced) © or the rest of the Fox-like American media. The Department of Energy still lists the Hiroshima and Nagasaki detonations as "tests." The admiral released the data months ago at a scientific conference in India. This article is the first report of the data in the United States. It will first be released on the Internet.

The admiral in India calculated the number of radioactive atoms in the Nagasaki bomb and compared it with the number in the 4,000,000 pounds of uranium left in Iraq from the 2003 war. Now, believe me, it is a lot more complex than that; but, that is essentially what the experts in India did.

How many Nagasaki Nuclear Bombs equal the Radiation loosed in the 2003 Iraq war? Answer: About 250,000 Nuclear Bombs.

How many Nagasaki Nuclear Bombs equal the Radiation loosed in the last Five American Nuclear Wars? Answer: About 400,000 Nuclear Bombs.

Who would do something like this?

We would. The only people in the history of the world to engage in Nuclear Wars are Americans, citizens of the United States. Allegedly, the Germans and Japanese of WWII also wanted to engage in nuclear wars, except the American Military beat them to the draw, so to speak.

Respected academic scholars could debate forever whether or not Herr Hitler, Fuhrer of Germany, would have deployed uranium munitions in the Sudetenland if the weapons had been available. Certainly the Germans knew just as much about uranium wars as we did at the time. It seems doubtful that Adolph Hitler would have ordered the use of uranium munitions there because the Sudetenland was so close to the Fatherland, Nazi Germany.

An American General named Leslie Groves was in charge of the bomb making operation called The Manhattan Project. In 1943 The War Department knew exactly what uranium bullets and bombs were good for.

If the nuclear weapons did not detonate in Japan, the use of uranium bullets and bombs were the fall back position. It was not till Ronald Reagan was President in 1980 did the re-named Defense Department resurrect the deadly radioactive uranium bullets, bombs, and missiles. No wonder his popular nick-name was Ronnie Ray-Guns.

The American Military knew the symptoms of radiation poisoning in 1943 too; starting with the irritated sore throat through to an agonizing death from being cooked from the inside out.

President Bush promised to invade twelve countries in the 2003 State of the Union speech. I believe the man. For some reason, some misguided Americans do not believe him, or think he was "exaggerating." The rest of the world has every reason to believe him, though.

Not to worry, the President has plenty of raw material for radioactive uranium munitions left. There are more than 77,000 Tons stored at the 103 nuclear waste plants and the several Nuclear Weapons Labs in the US. Each one makes another 250 pounds of radioactive material a day for radioactive bullets, bombs, and missiles. Not to put too fine a point on it; but, that is enough for 40.5 more gloriously successful campaigns like the 2003 Nuclear War in Iraq.

Every year about this time the Southern winds leave a fine desert sand on the windshields of cars parked outside in Continental Europe and Britain. Soon this sand dust will carry a surprise. Thanks to the Americans. Thanks to us. We did this to the world. And, we wonder why they hate and despise us so.

These uranium weapons' indiscriminate killing effect gives a whole new meaning to the age old term: cannon fodder. In Iraq, what goes around, comes around. If not the uranium munitions themselves, the uranium dust will be in the bodies of our returning armed forces, time bombs slowly ticking away the lives of the gullible and the ignorant with their very own internal radiation source, the cannon fodder of the 21st Century American Nuclear Wars.

Put your ending to this article next.

A lot of people have done everything we can think of to stop these nuclear wars. Even more specifically to stop the use of uranium as a munition and shut down the nuclear power plants. We have tried and failed for years. Why don't you give it a try? Can't hurt anything! Write what steps you would take to turn this situation around. Contact me at: [email protected]

Bob Nichols writes in Oklahoma City and is the Editorial writer for DemoOkie.com. Bob Nichols is a contributing writer for LiberalSlant, Democratic Underground, OnlineJournal, AmericaHeldHostage, and other online dot com publications. Mr. Nichols is a frequent contributor to The Oklahoma Observer and other print publications. He lives and works in Oklahoma. He is a member of CASE -- Citizens' Action for Safe Energy, and President of the Carrie Dickerson Foundation. CASE has successfully killed two serious, well funded attempts to build Nuclear Power Plants in Oklahoma and several attempts to site what is now known as the "Yucca Mountain Reactor Dump" in Oklahoma. All these efforts to build nuclear facilities have failed. CASE won every time. Copyright 2004, Bob Nichols. All rights reserved. Permission for reposting is allowed provided the complete text and attribution are kept intact.

!@#$%

04-06-2004, 08:52 PM

Two more U.S. soldiers died Sunday, both in northern Iraq. Since the start of the war, 622 U.S. troops have died, 428 of them in hostile fire. Since President Bush announced the end of major combat in Iraq, 313 U.S. troops have been killed in hostile action.

Sources: Al-Sadr supporters take over Najaf
U.S. Marines move into Fallujah
Tuesday, April 6, 2004 Posted: 2:11 PM EDT (1811 GMT)

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- Supporters of maverick Muslim cleric Muqtada al-Sadr controlled government, religious and security buildings in the holy city of Najaf early Tuesday evening, according to a coalition source in southern Iraq.

The source said al-Sadr's followers controlled the governor's office, police stations and the Imam Ali mosque, one of Shia Muslim's holiest shrines.

Iraqi police were negotiating to regain their stations, the source said.

The source also said al-Sadr was busing followers into Najaf from Sadr City in Baghdad and that many members of his outlawed militia, Mehdi's Army, were from surrounding provinces.

Business people are closing their shops and either leaving the city or hoarding their wares in their homes, the source said.

Late Tuesday, U.S. Marines moved into Fallujah from several directions, coming under heavy fire from insurgents.

The move comes the day after U.S. Marines sealed off Fallujah in response to the killing and mutilation of four American civilian security contractors last week.

About 1,300 troops from the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, along with Iraqi armed forces, set up a cordon around the city Monday, said Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, a U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad. The operation has been dubbed Operation Vigilant Resolve.

Seven Marines have been killed since Saturday in the al Anbar province -- where Fallujah is located -- but the coalition has only confirmed one as a direct result of the Fallujah conflict.

Tuesday, Abrams tanks and infantry fighting vehicles led the Marine columns across a railway line north of the city into urban areas, where they were fired on by assault rifles and rocket-propelled grenades.

The tanks and mounted grenade launchers picked off rooftop snipers, destroying at least three houses in the process.

Earlier Tuesday, Marines patrolling the northern side of Fallujah came under fire. The Marines sent an Abrams tank and several Humvees to reinforce the patrol, along with helicopters.

One Marine was seriously wounded and evacuated to a combat hospital.

Also Tuesday, Marines detained six Iraqis carrying explosives near a command post north of Fallujah, a Marine officer said. The officer said the material was intended to make homemade bombs.

In Baghdad, firefights continued Tuesday, particularly in the Shiite area of Sadr City. Reports also indicated that Italian troops were battling al-Sadr supporters in Nasiriyah.

As the fighting flared, al-Sadr, who sparked the violent clashes between his supporters and U.S. troops, was planning to take refuge in Imam Ali mosque, according to a posting on his Web site.

Al-Sadr also called for a general strike, demanding that the coalition pull back its troops from populated areas and release prisoners taken into custody in recent demonstrations.

Twelve coalition soldiers -- 11 Americans and a Salvadoran -- and dozens of Iraqis have been killed in three days of battles in Baghdad and Najaf, while firefights have erupted in other cities and towns as well.

Seven Marines were killed in the same time period in al Anbar province, west of Baghdad, along with two more soldiers in northern Iraq.

Despite the rising death toll, Paul Bremer, the top U.S. civilian administrator in Iraq, said "there is no question we have control over the country."

...............................

the casualties may be 'militarily insignificant'
but if the people of the united states see that our soldiers are dying for a load of bullshit, a mission of vengeance, a war about oil, then maybe the casualties will become politically significant

as soon as bush's daughter's or kabar's daughter enters the war, i'll have more support for their actions..
wouldn't that show how commited they are to this 'mission' ??
yeah..
everyone who supports the war should send their children to fight it.
excellent.

heavyLox

04-06-2004, 09:05 PM

*****breaking news****
new uprising in al ramadi

us military spokes man says there have been significant US KIAs today in ramadi, details are scant... prepare for more.

<KEY3>

04-06-2004, 09:09 PM

http://www.debka.com/article.php?aid=821

from the update row:

22:20 Updating Iraq warfare: 22:00 Iraqi update: Coalition military compound in Ar Ramadi under fire by Shiite Sadrist militia forces. Significant casualties reported, including US Marines. DEBKAfile adds: This is first time radical Shiites come to aid of Sunni Baathists. Shiite centers present also in Sunni Triangle at Baquba, Balad, Samarra or Al Muqdaryah, from which Sadrist militiamen may have reached Ar Ramadi

21:30: Heavy fighting Tuesday night around Sunni Triangle town of Ramadi. US reports significant casualties including US Marines in Ramadi and Fallujah. Fresh fighting flares in Baghdad’s Shiite Sadr City district between US forces and radical Shiite Mehdi Army.

Marines backed by tanks, Cobra helicopters and AC-130 “Spectre” aerial gunships engage Sunni guerrillas in fierce fighting in Fallujah. Rumsfeld reports several arrests if men responsible for ambush of four US security guards last week. US have photographs of more targets. City cordoned off and access restricted to reporters.

Radical Iraqi Shiite militia lays down demands for ending uprising: coalition troops must withdraw from populated areas including Sunni Fallujah and Baghdad, release prisoners, reopen banned Shiite radical newspaper.

<KEY3>

04-06-2004, 09:11 PM

Originally posted by <KEY3>
This is first time radical Shiites come to aid of Sunni Baathists.

in case you missed that point.

adderall

04-06-2004, 09:15 PM

Originally posted by Weapon X
[img]http://img24.photobucket.com/albums/v72/Surge/lcpl.jpg'>

:lol: :lol:

now that image is a keeper!

!@#$%

04-06-2004, 09:42 PM

Originally posted by <KEY3>
in case you missed that point.

hmmmm
so you mean it seems like the country is banding together against the occupation?
who ever heard of such a thing?

timemachine

04-06-2004, 10:16 PM

im not an american. but io follow the news and shit and being a muslim i see that whole quagmier(sic?) over there like this: iraq is one of the oldest countries in the history of the entire world, and i think its kind of pretentious how the US gov't in all of their infinte wisdom and they're long hisotry upon this earth (what, like two-three hundred years?) think that they can tell people how to live their lives according to how americans live theyre lives. in theory, yes trhat would be perfect, except for the fact that islam rules every muslimjs life, and we will live our lives according to the great teachings of Mohammed (PBUH), not the great teachings of Bush.

i dunno thats just how i see it

tk

<KEY3>

04-06-2004, 10:26 PM

12 dead (http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=540&e=3&u=/ap/20040406/ap_on_re_mi_ea/us_iraq_deaths)

i just hope that one day all the people truly responsible
for sending fine young americans to ealry graves are
held accountable for their actions.

and I'm not talking about Iraqis.

Dick Quickwood

04-06-2004, 10:38 PM

Originally posted by timemachine
live their lives according to how americans live theyre lives. in theory, yes trhat would be perfect, except for the fact that islam rules every muslimjs life, and we will live our lives according to the great teachings of Mohammed (PBUH), not the great teachings of Bush.

excellent, now i will be able to come up with something when i want to refute "but look how they treat women, etc"

!@#$%

04-06-2004, 10:39 PM

Originally posted by timemachine
im not an american. but io follow the news and shit and being a muslim i see that whole quagmier(sic?) over there like this: iraq is one of the oldest countries in the history of the entire world

uuuuhhhhhh
no.

Iraq was formed by the allied powers post world war one
the persian and turkish empires had been drawn into the war by the allied and austrian/hungary powers (through lies, corruption, bluffing, ultimatums, etc)

the area of the world formerly known as Persia is ancient.
that is the "Cradle of Civilization"

if you want to read more about how the middle east was carved into the mess it is today, and how israel was formed
check out:

A Peace to End All Peace.

excellent book.

im not witty

04-06-2004, 10:40 PM

The American "civilian contractors" killed in Falluja Dahr Jamail, The NewStandard, 4 April 2004

Amman, Jordan - By now I imagine everyone has been properly inundated with the images of the scorched bodies of the 'American Civilians' (as properly parroted by the corporate media) in Falluja. In case I missed it before departing, I had one last chance to catch it on the countless televisions in JFK airport, then on the front page of the NY Times on the plane.

I thought it was interesting, because what accompanied this story was a strange little phenomenon I've seen many times in Iraq. The first bit of news released on the attack referred to the men killed as 'contractors', and even showed an Iraqi man handling the dog tags of one of them, and another man was holding a Department of Defense badge from another of the U.S. fighters the Iraqis had killed. The same report mentioned that a collection of weapons was in one of the vehicles as well.

Of course that was the last of that footage I saw. From then on, it was 'Americans killed by Iraqis!', or 'Contractors Killed', over and over ad nauseum.

Well, it turns out these 'Americans killed by Iraqis' just happened to be four mercenaries working for a N.C. Security Firm called Blackwater Security Consulting.

This subcontractor, along with countless others, is working to provide 'security' in Iraq. Check out their website: because they even provide training for SWAT teams and former special operations personnel.

I've been in Falluja when the entire city has been under collective punishment, which occurs nearly everytime someone attacks a U.S. patrol there. People are enraged, and rightly so. So when one of those white, shiny SUV's with the big black antenna drives by with guys with crew cuts in them wearing body armor holding guns (yes, it is THAT obvious and easy to see), what do you think might happen to them?

The other reason I bring this up is because of this: Last night I'm going through customs at the airport in Amman, and I find myself standing in line behind five men with crewcuts and their 'handler', a little bit older fellow from Turkey (I saw his passport). The men were all in their late 20s, to late 30s I'd say, and from their discussion had all been in Iraq before.

They wouldn't tell me who they were working for, but when they were lugging huge plastic boxes with locks on them off the baggage belt, then went and hopped into their nice, white SUV, it was pretty much a no-brainer.

Blackwater Security Consulting won a $35.7 million contract to train over 10,000 soldiers from several states in the U.S. in the art of 'force protection,' according to Mother Jones magazine. They also hire mercenaries from South Africa and other countries as well, and the pay in Iraq is $1,000 per day. Wonder how that makes our soldiers feel, who make barely over that each month?

So the residents of Falluja are about to be 'pacified' because some of the resistance fighters there killed what were most likely mercenaries who regularly attack and detain residents of Falluja. The fog of war grows thicker in Iraq, as the privatization contracts continue to be signed.

Dahr Jamail is an independent freelance journalist from Anchorage, Alaska. He came to Iraq to bear witness and report on the effects of the occupation on the Iraqi people because he feels that the US media has, in large part, failed to do so. Jamail is Baghdad correspondent for The NewStandard. You can help Dahr continue his crucial work in Iraq by making donations. For more information or to donate to Dahr, visit http://newstandardnews.net/iraqdispatches. The above text is ©2004 Dahr Jamail and The NewStandard. Reprinting for commercial purposes is strictly prohibited. Permission is readily granted for nonprofit purposes as long as (1) adequate credit is provided, (2) a link back to http://newstandardnews.net/iraqdispatches is prominently posted along with the text and (3) the journalist's bio at the end of the text is kept intact.

<KEY3>

04-06-2004, 10:42 PM

In a way yes....
Islam kept science alive durring the Christian Dark Ages.
However because they refuse to have any introspection based on the modern world instead of Muhammeds' techings, they are currently in their own 'dark age'.

no offence intended.

BROWNer

04-07-2004, 02:13 AM

fucked.

effyoo

04-07-2004, 02:30 AM

have you guys seen this: Executive order 13303 (http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/05/20030522-15.html)?

i can't really understand all the legalese, but from what i can gather, it protects the oil companies from prosecution when it comes to iraqi oil.

*heres a link that explains it all: http://www.earthrights.org/news/eo13303.shtml

excerpt:

Under this Order, an oil company complicit in human rights violations, or one that causes environmental damage, would be immune from lawsuits. The language of the Executive Order is so broad that it might as well have been written by lawyers for Halliburton, ExxonMobil and ChevronTexaco.

Poop Man Bob

04-07-2004, 04:23 AM

Originally posted by BROWNer
fucked.

Yessir.

Clashes in Iraq Threaten to Undermine Political Process (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A55888-2004Apr6.html)
"We've reached a moment of truth here with both Fallujah and Sadr," said a senior U.S. official involved in Iraq policy, referring to the Shiite Muslim cleric, Moqtada Sadr, whose militia began clashing with the Americans on Sunday. "We have to get both right, or there are serious questions about whether this political transition can go forward."

-------------------------------------------------

Murdoch's Sky News is reporting that 130 US soldiers have been killed in the uprising. (http://www.sky.com/skynews/article/0,,30000-1130577,00.html) It's not official, so, good God, I hope that's not correct.

villain

04-07-2004, 04:29 AM

(B) all Iraqi petroleum and petroleum products, and interests therein, and proceeds, obligations, or any financial instruments of any nature whatsoever arising from or related to the sale or marketing thereof, and interests therein, in which any foreign country or a national thereof has any interest, that are in the United States, that hereafter come within the United States, or that are or hereafter come within the possession or control of United States persons.

Whoa... that exec order is pretty scary.

As far as the Depleted Uranium (DU) in military equipment goes, I was only aware of heavy tank armor (a la abrams) and some types of tank shells having it. I could be wrong but this is all I have been made aware of. And yes we do use tactical nukes... I beleive it was G W Bush who worked out some kind of loophole in the Geneva convention for that one.

And as far as our troops dealing with the heat goes, I think it's pretty silly we are essentially using the same equipment (which shows you how cheap the military actually is.) just different colors. We try to stay cool by drinking lots of water, while the natives of the regions dress in layers, using the best insulator which is air in between the loose fitting layers.

It is looking like we are more and more unpopular in iraq the longer this drags out. Eventually threats of bombing (which I'm pretty sure would target civilians since there are no hard targets...) would be insufficient to contain the threat and we could see a massive popular uprising which would be yet another terrible mark on this administration and the face of the earth. It wouldn't be so hard to block all ingress and egress to the cities and turn them into killing pits. Our Air Force would be forced to kill our own troops as well. This could get ugly real quick. And bam there goes all our fucking ground forces practically. Then we are wide open for take over. And russia rises again. Haha... maybe I went a little too far on a tangent here...

villain

04-07-2004, 04:32 AM

Originally posted by Poop Man Bob
It's not official, so, good God, I hope that's not correct.

Daaaaaaaaaayyuuuuuuuuuuuuummm........

Shit is getting worse faster than I thought.

Poop Man Bob

04-07-2004, 04:35 AM

Damn, villian speaketh with knowledge (referring to the post about depleted uranium, etc.) Are you in the military?

villain

04-07-2004, 04:38 AM

Yessiree Bob... I'm in the army as a matter of fact.

villain

04-07-2004, 04:52 AM

It is hard to imagine the kind of bargaining power iraqis would have if they took our entire army hostage....

Poop Man Bob

04-07-2004, 04:53 AM

Most excellent. I might have asked previously, but I often forget who is and who isn't.

1) Are you going to have to ship out at any point in the near future?
2) What is the general atmosphere/feeling amongst the soldiers right now where you're at? [mainly regarding the war, obviously.]

PalestineOne

04-07-2004, 05:14 AM

well put timemachine, Islam literally translates into peace. Lets join forces my pork and alcohol boycotting brother from another mother.

KaBar2

04-07-2004, 08:12 AM

I've been trying to follow the news reports of the fighting in Iraq in between work, chores, etc. The reported 1,000 Marines surrounding Fallujah is peanuts. That's only about a regiment, so it's not the main force. They are probably there to prevent the jihadists from escaping. Within a couple of days, I predict that the Marines will bring in a much larger force of tanks and LAV's and split the city in half, or maybe in thirds. Then they will block the forces in one half, and hammer the shit out of the other half. Once they have eradicated the resistance in the first half, they will bring in fresh troops and hammer the other half.

"destroyed a couple of houses"! You gotta be shittin' me. They will probably level much of the entire city.

Marines, left to their own devices, are some of the most aggressive combat troops on earth. They do not usually move into an area unless they have fire support from either artillery or naval gunfire, and close air support, either by fixed wing aircraft, helicopter gunships, or both--in great supply. This fact saves a lot of young Marines' lives--if they run into a force larger than themselves, they call in a fire mission and let arty do the heavy lifting.

The Middle East lives by a code of vengance that suits Marines right down to the ground. If our enemies kill Americans, the Marine Corps will be more than happy to demonstrate why they have the reputation as America's elite fighting force. Usually, though, interference and meddling by the civilians in the Puzzle Palace keep the Marines from doing their job. However, in the case of Fallujah, I don't think that will be a problem.

I served in a National Guard tank unit after I left the Marine Corps. It has been many years, but the only depleted uranium projectiles I am aware of are all anti-armor rounds. The 105mm APDS round (armor-piercing, discarding sabot) was the only DU round I was trained to use. The reason they used DU is because depleted uranium is denser than steel armor plate. High explosive rounds don't do anything to a modern tank. The APDS round is shaped like a big dart, and when it hits an enemy tank, being made out of DU, it smashes right through the hull, instead of bouncing off. Even if it hits at an angle and does bounce off, it strikes with such force that "spalling" occurs inside the enemy tank--shrapnel shatters off the inside of the enemy tank hull, ricochetting around inside, killing or wounding the enemy tank crew.

The effectiveness of depleted uranium ADPS rounds can clearly be seen in film of the Gulf War. If our tanks hit the Soviet T-72's (the best tank the Soviets ever made, supposedly a rival to the M-1 Abrams) they went up like a roman candle. The converse was not true. If our tanks were hit, they usually survived it. Sometimes even several hits wouldn't do it.
To say that the DU rounds "turned into dust" is just stupid. Some dust and particles may have been created, but the DU rounds went crashing through solid steel, smashing the holy fuck out of solid cast steel tank hulls a foot thick, causing the T-72 to explode and burn.

The other uses for DU projectiles I've heard of are in the rapid-firing "chain guns" on some models of the LAV (like a machine-gun cannon) which are used mainly against enemy armored personnel carriers and light tanks, and in the cannon on the A-10 Warthog aircraft, which is usually employed against enemy tanks.

Using depleted uranium projectiles may not be the smartest thing they ever figured out, but they work like a champ. These projectiles are made from depleted reactor rods, or so I was told. Would I fool around with a tank that had been hit with one? Not a chance. Is Iraq littered with thousands of spent DU rounds? Absolutely. It might be a good idea, once the war is over, to pick them all up and dispose of them. Maybe Halliburton will take the contract.

TheoHuxtable

04-07-2004, 09:15 AM

Although I hate to see young Americans get sent to their early graves over a Bush-lie, and the fact that I'd hate to see a failed campaign, a part of me wants to see a failure in Iraq. A scenario where U.S. troops are withdrawn in defeat while Iraq is being overtaken by those who resisted the American occupation.

Why? So all these ignorant pompous usually-rich Americans who support the war from the comfort of their couch as well as Bush himself can look stupid and those of us with sense can say "see, I told you so, you fucking moron".

Why can't we be a nation like Swizerland and just stay out of everybody's business and just live in peace? I believe wars should only be initiated in an act of self-defense. "Pre-emption" is just a Bush term for another way to say "we'll attack anybody we want if we don't like you because we can."

TheoHuxtable

04-07-2004, 10:18 AM

Originally posted by Poop Man Bob

Murdoch's Sky News is reporting that 130 US soldiers have been killed in the uprising. (http://www.sky.com/skynews/article/0,,30000-1130577,00.html) It's not official, so, good God, I hope that's not correct. [/b]

This was probably incorrect and became inaccurate somewhere down the grapevine.

I read that in the recent uprising 130 PEOPLE were killed, 100 being Iraqis and 30 being coalition soldiers. From what I'm seeing on the news about half of those soldiers were U.S. troops and the rest were Spaniards, Brits, Ukranians, Salvadorians, etc...

From Yahoo! News:

"Coalition forces battled radical Shiite militiamen and Sunni insurgents across Iraq (news - web sites) in a crackdown that has left more than 100 Iraqis and 30 coalition soldiers dead over the past three days. "

SteveAustin

04-07-2004, 02:58 PM

shits about to get really bad....leave it to the US to unite the Shiites and Sunnis through there common hatred of us.

“You have not seen anything yet,” said Akram, the shopkeeper. “You will see a new style of resistance in the city. Well-organized. Advanced. They will be surprised. They won’t know what to do.”

He smiled, but refused to say more, except that the plan would involve children as young as 8 and men as old as 80, drawn from across the district.

I don't really like what this seems to be implying.

full article (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4679155/)

!@#$%

04-07-2004, 04:30 PM

we're blasting mosques during prayers.

completely fucked.
if that doesn't destroy us in the eyes of iraqis, i don't know what will

<KEY3>

04-07-2004, 04:35 PM

Originally posted by !@#$%

if that doesn't destroy us in the eyes of iraqis, i don't know what will

motar fire!

sorry

Poop Man Bob

04-07-2004, 06:05 PM

From Talking Points Memo (http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2004_04_04.php#002818):
Wow, that is a good line, and a very true one too. Courtesy of Atrios (http://www.atrios.blogspot.com/), comes this line (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A56304-2004Apr6.html) from Harold Meyerson's column today in the Post ...
The only unequivocally good policy option before the American people is to dump the president who got us into this mess, who had no trouble sending our young people to Iraq but who cannot steel himself to face the Sept. 11 commission alone.
We have backed ourselves into a very narrow and very bleak set of options here. What's astonishing is how blindly the White House seems to have stumbled into it.

I don't want to get into a silly conversation about who's 'responsible' for what's happening in the South or who 'caused' it in some deep sense. But we do seem to have triggered it -- by shutting down Sadr's newspaper and arresting his deputy.

One might argue that that was a proper strategy. Sometimes a looming crisis needs to be brought to a head. But if that's so, we seem to have done little to prepare for the reaction. Where's the White House's strategy? Where is it now, three days later?

All we seem to be hearing are hollow assertions of a vacant will.

From the White House's advocates we hear logic puzzles about appeasement in which the fall-out from the president's screw ups become the prime argument for continuing to support them.

At the critical moment the president has the toxic mix of the bulldog will of a Winston Churchill and the strategic insights and imagination of a Neville Chamberlain.

He has no plan. And will without policy just equals death.

The gap between the reality in Iraq and the White House's Potemkin village version of it is closing rapidly, like an upper and lower jaw about to shut tight. And the White House's penchant for denial is being squeezed between the two.

SteveAustin

04-07-2004, 06:18 PM

I'm finding it slightly funny that everyone is now comparing this war to Vietnam. All of the republican responses have been the same...something along the lines of we were losing 50-60 soldiers a day there compared to 4-12 in Iraq....so thats good. We were in Vietnam for 9 years, but we've only been in Iraq for a year.

For some reason I thought the comparison being drawn was based on the fact that the Vietnamese didn't want us there and neither do the Iraqis.

I really am getting tired of the lack of thought though. It seems like the answer to every question is the same...our military is stronger.

heavyLox

04-07-2004, 06:33 PM

Originally posted by TheoHuxtable

Why can't we be a nation like Swizerland and just stay out of everybody's business and just live in peace

Switzerland proved to be fairly duplicitous now didn't it? Concealing stolen moneys, preventing its citizens from helping and running under ground resistance for French Jews.

Remaining uninvolved is not the answer. It s the type of involvement we need to re-tool. The world is a global economy which relies on multiple factors at all time to become a Nation of Isolationists will only create more problems down the line. We need them ; they need us. its jsut WE decided they need us more. Which is crap.

The new world order will not function with one super power/ego. In time the EU will prove to be a force to be reconed with, providing its leaders can over come there nationalism and see Europe as a whole. Which doesnt seem close to happening, but it is moving ofrward.

But if you look at the BUSH family history, you should get a hint of where Bush wants the country to go. For christs sake, one of his greats (uncle, grandfather) was convicted of supplying the nazi party with goods during the War? WTF is that. We are fighting Islamic fundimentalism while Bush leads the US into the dark and scary hall of the christian right, also a fundimentalist movement. WTF?

Bush, I have questions and concerns with your preformance, motives and polocies, please get at me so we can pow-wow and build on it together; we need to straighten this out like last week.

BROWNer

04-07-2004, 06:50 PM

informative/interesting blog from raed farrar, an iraqi architect/democracy activist blogging from inside iraq: http://raedinthemiddle.blogspot.com/

!@#$%

04-07-2004, 07:10 PM

Originally posted by CILONE/SK
Normally I would agree with this, but they are firing at soldiers from within mosques and in the middle of crowds. They do this on purpose to sway peoples opinions against america when the soldiers blow the shit out of everything because they were attacked.

i understand the tactic.
it's a very effective one.
and we are being drawn in by it.
i don't have the answer for this one..
but i know that the mosques and crowds surrounding those who are aggressors seem to be okay with that..
i don't think a mosque compound would give haven to those guys if the mosque didn't support what they were doing..
it's just a bad sign..
not all the muslim clerics were against the occupation a few months ago.
there seems to be a consensus against the coalition forming.

....................
"In Iraq last April, freshly promoted Staff Sgt. Camilo Mejia led squads of Florida National Guard soldiers in the fight against insurgents in the deadly Sunni triangle. But Mejia became increasingly pained by his war experiences, and when he went on leave last fall, he decided not to come back. The staff sergeant - one of about 600 soldiers counted as AWOL by the Army during home leaves from Iraq - was eventually labeled a deserter."

from: http://thunderbay.indymedia.org/news/2004/03/12805.php

BROWNer

04-07-2004, 07:27 PM

that seems pretty harsh cilone...i wouldn't knock it
until you've walked in the dudes boots.

also, this thing about mosques and stuff.
yea, its a shit tactic, but what do you expect.
you can't expect people to play nice against
f-16's.

!@#$%

04-07-2004, 07:30 PM

yeah, deserting isn't such a good thing...
it's just interesting to me to watch all this shifting in opinions..
in Iraq, in the Armed Forces, in politics, etc..

i am always intrigued when a person changes his mind.
(and it seems like this guy changed his mind about the war, not that he got scared and quit)
i wish more people would change their minds.

maybe if dubya gets the steel toed boot
you won't have to go.

heavyLox

04-07-2004, 07:44 PM

Don Rumsfeld is such a SLIMIE bastard.

hes giving apress confrence right now.

I used to like him then i learned about him now I hate is word play, non direct ass.

timemachine

04-07-2004, 09:43 PM

word palestineone
no pork or alcohol for me
Allahu Akbar

tk

BROWNer

04-07-2004, 10:38 PM

Originally posted by heavyLox
Don Rumsfeld is such a SLIMIE bastard.

[img]http://img4.photobucket.com/albums/v29/Tesseract/rumskull.jpg'>

villain

04-07-2004, 11:29 PM

Cilone - don't hate on the man. Just think about how morally wrong this war is. It is fucked up in so many ways. If he doesn't want to get involved then that's on him. Shit he probably told his soldiers to fucking leave too. This war is bullshit. There is a code in the AR that states that we are NOT obligated to follow an UNLAWFUL order. This entire war is unlawful. Like !@#$% it's not because he is a coward, it's because his beleifs are in conflict with the boldfaced lies of bush.
And I don't know who's army YOU'RE in but the Army I'm in I do what I'm told and have it done YESTERDAY. They don't just hand out desk jobs. Especially with everyone deploying right and left. It has become highly coveted. You gotta be pregnant or sucking the right dick.

Kabar - You are stuck in the cold war man. We are not fighting a conventional war here. We will not win by using brute force. The only way we are going to win this is if we have popular support, which we don't and are losing more ground there every single fucking day.

Theo - While the swiss ain't so great they certainly have assumed a unique and beneficial position in the world. Being such a powerful international banking capital they do not even have to bother on such vain quests such as getting oil, they can just make money off the countries storing their loot. And no matter who in the world is making the money, they can be on the winning side and make money off their money.

HeavyLox brings up a good point about the EU becoming more integrated. I'm sure that Bush's new oil monopoly is going to expedite the process. Also interesting to note is that well over a year or two ago Russia, India, and China foresaw a growing threat from american unilateralism and formed their own sort of trilateral commission to counterbalance the topheaviness of the US.

Poop Man Bob - I may ship out soon. I really don't know. I am in absolute limbo.
Well from what I have gathered about the general disposition of soldiers I've talked to and reading statistics is that there is a slight majority of low morale. I think alot of us are sick of this. Especially National Guard and Reserve troops since they are not supposed to be 24/7 soldiers. (Unlike when Bush was in the Guard, the Guard of today are real soldiers.) Even active duty is fed up. Expect these numbers to rise as these conflicts drag on and violence escalates.... There is even some back room talk of dire fates and conspiracy theories but we really try not to dwell on that until it is proved that this administration is the stinkin rotten, fetid, shitspewing gateway to hell that it truly is.

Dick Quickwood

04-07-2004, 11:44 PM

[img]http://img7.photobucket.com/albums/v18/writer/blood_sucker.jpg'>

TheoHuxtable

04-07-2004, 11:46 PM

Originally posted by heavyLox
Switzerland proved to be fairly duplicitous now didn't it? Concealing stolen moneys, preventing its citizens from helping and running under ground resistance for French Jews.

Yeah I remember hearing about this a few years ago about how Switzerland were secretly aiding the Nazis during WWII even though they officially considered themselves "neutral".

On a side note, I always noticed that Switzerland, The Netherlands, and Scandinavian nations such as Denmark, Norway, Sweeden, and Finland have historically been "isolationist" countries. But they seem to be considerably peaceful both militarily and socially, and they also have strong economies. So to know that The Netherlands have troops operating in Iraq was also surprising.

Poop Man Bob

04-08-2004, 12:44 AM

Thanks for the info, villian. I wish you the best.

Some pictures:

http://graphics7.nytimes.com/images/2004/04/06/international/06rama_slide1.jpg'>
[i]A U.S. marine driving a Humvee with a smashed windshield after a gunfight in Ramadi, near Falluja, Iraq. The attack in Ramadi was on an American base at the governor's palace, and it involved several dozen insurgents armed with rocket-propelled grenades and automatic weapons.

http://graphics7.nytimes.com/images/2004/04/06/international/06rama_slide2.jpg'>
[i]An American marine carried the body of a comrade killed in the battle in Ramadi.

http://graphics7.nytimes.com/images/2004/04/06/international/06rama_slide3.jpg'>
[i]The bloodstained glasses of a U.S. marine were left behind.
[Good lord, that picture is tough. Ugh.]

http://graphics7.nytimes.com/images/2004/04/06/international/06rama_slide4.jpg'>
[i]Iraqis stood by a pool of blood and a pair of sandals where a man was killed as U.S. troops exchanged fire with Iraqi insurgents.

http://graphics7.nytimes.com/images/2004/04/06/international/06rama_slide5.jpg'>
[i]A U.S. marine took aim during the gunfight.

http://graphics7.nytimes.com/images/2004/04/06/international/06rama_slide6.jpg'>
[i]American marines guarded an Iraqi family in Ramadi, a Sunni stronghold, where other marines were killed in a three-day uprising.

http://graphics7.nytimes.com/images/2004/04/06/international/06rama_slide7.jpg'>
[i]U.S. marines took cover during the fight.

http://graphics7.nytimes.com/images/2004/04/06/international/06rama_slide8.jpg'>
[i]American forces came under fierce attack in the Sunni stronghold of Ramadi.

villain

04-08-2004, 01:08 AM

Thx poopster. Crazy flicks. I hope this shit is over before I get my reluctant ass sent over there.

I almost forgot to mention, about the radioactive metals... Last time I checked www.publiccitizen.org (http://www.publiccitizen.org) had an entire section on the recycling of radioactive metals into everyday materials like watches and hubcaps... Also plenty of information about irradiated foods as well... So the shit is more prevalent than people think...

Okay it's in this section:
http://www.publiccitizen.org/cmep/

TheoHuxtable

04-08-2004, 03:34 AM

Originally posted by Poop Man Bob

http://graphics7.nytimes.com/images/2004/04/06/international/06rama_slide8.jpg
American forces came under fierce attack in the Sunni stronghold of Ramadi.

You know, when I see images like this, I can't help but respect these men. When I see images like this I say to myself "Do you think these guys want to be here? Running through the deserts of Iraq waiting to kill or be killed? Some people back on the homefront and in Washington act like these men are simply expendeble. If they die then "oh well". Just numbers. Barcodes. These men would rather be at home watching football, chilling with their wife or girlfriend, playing basketball in the backyard with their son or seeing the look on his daughter's face when he buys her that tricycle. Not fighting thousands of miles away in some place he doesn't want to be over some Bush lie. Not fighting for the rich corporations."

Poop Man Bob

04-08-2004, 04:00 AM

Very, very well put, Theo.

BROWNer

04-08-2004, 05:10 AM

i read something the other day that said the pentagon has
officially changed the term 'body bag' to the much more
heart warming term 'transfer tube'. kind of catchy, no?

imported_Tesseract

04-08-2004, 01:17 PM

Originally posted by BROWNer
i read something the other day that said the pentagon has
officially changed the term 'body bag' to the much more
heart warming term 'transfer tube'. kind of catchy, no?

Its in the same lines of Donald reffering to WMD's as Weapons of Mass Murder on the 9/11 comittee....a whole new level of niftyness.

THEO, well said...why would someone enlist ?

TheoHuxtable

04-08-2004, 01:24 PM

Originally posted by CILONE/SK
Villian, that guy is a coward who let down everyone around him. It really doesn't matter if he thought the war is morally wrong, he still is in the army and needs to do his job. If he had feelings against the war then he should have told someone so that they didn't put him in a leadership postition with people relying on him. He screwed the all. If he went and talked to his commander and/or chaplin, they would never have put him in a leadership postition. They would have chaptered him out or let him file that objector status paperwork. If he filed that paperwork, he could have requested to serve his time in a desk job until his committment was up. But he took the cowards way out and just ran away from his responsibilities and left everyone relying on him screwed. I have been in the Army long enough to know that going awol is fucked up to everyone around you and there are other ways to serve within your beliefs. Cowards are the only ones who run.

Not exactly sure to whom you are referring to, but on a side note the media hasn't really touched too much light on the aspects of soldiers fleeing Iraq. Since the war began last March, many soldiers have gotten "free trips" back to U.S. bases in Germany or the U.S. over issues such as minor injuries, and "psychological" reasons. These numbers range in the thousands. Not sure on the exact number but I'd guess that by now it's roughly 5,000 soldiers who were afraid of combat and simply gave excuses to leave and get a free trip back home. Not saying that ALL of these people were lying or faking, I'm pretty sure many were legit. But this "I have psychological problems" bullshit as soon as you are sent into a combat zone is going to obviously raise suspicions. Like I said the media hasn't really put this aspect in the spotlight, as I've only read one article on this. CILONE do you know anything about this?

SteveAustin

04-08-2004, 01:51 PM

I'm gonna add one thing to that. A lot of kids will enlist in the military to get money for college. For some...that is the only way they can go to college. Up until 9/11 and Iraq...most would never have really thought that they would be shipped off somewhere to actually fight in a war.

SteveAustin

04-08-2004, 02:03 PM

CILONE...I completely agree. It used to be safe to kinda milk the military for nearly free college fund money. Bottom line is...if they say you go...you go. No amount of bitching or whining will change this. I just thought I'd throw that in there for Tesseract.

seeking

04-08-2004, 02:39 PM

i'm gonna use my completely detached civillian status to side with cilone on the whole AWOL subject.
i know everyone has their own right to chose, and obviously this guy did not believe in the war, but if he had men underneath him, and his awol status put them in any jeopardy of harm, then he made the wrong choice. if you're a foot soldier, or private, or whatever they're called, the 'pawn's' and you take off, that's one thing, but if you have people depending on you with their lives, then even if you don't believe in the war, you have to take care of them until you can get out of it the proper way. the army can not MAKE you fight, and if you believe so strongly that the war is unjust and that you wont fight in it, then anything they do to you should be acceptible to you, be it courtmashal or whatever.

i said this once before, and took a lot of flack for it, but i'll say it again anyway. i'm sure that war absolutely sucks ass, and is probably the most terrifying thing ever, but if there was a war that i believed in, i would probably join the army. i would honestly like to see how i reacted to those life or death situations. maybe it's because i havent, and i'd get out there and shit my pants and cry for mommy, but i'll never know unless i try, which i think i'd be willing to do (again, given a cause i believed in).

ok, thats all for now.

imported_Tesseract

04-08-2004, 02:50 PM

well said seeking,

CILONE, i cant judge what you said and i honestly respect it as well as feel for all those men risking their lifes everyday. Infact, in the lines of Theo's post it gets me even more pissed on goverments.
Anyway, around my parts we all serve either we like it or not, of course we got no war and we got no finacial/whatever benefits but i've seen people mature up from the army experience and put them out of the what i'll do with my life phase.
For me is a waste of time and if i had arguments on how my country deals with war and conflicts i wouldnt join for my life. I dont expect everyone to do the same and i dont look down on those who dont.

The sad part in all that is the army absorving kids that dont know what to do...i know it can be interesting but it also can very well be fatal..such a waste.
Thats the reason why the budget on education should flip with the budget of defence.

se_FOUR

04-08-2004, 03:02 PM

[img]http://forums.gamewinners.com/forums/images/smilies/rock.gif'>

TheoHuxtable

04-08-2004, 04:20 PM

Originally posted by Tesseract

THEO, well said...why would someone enlist ?

CILONE pretty much summed it up. Everyone has different reasons.

The most common reasons in my humble opinion:

-unsure of what they want to do with themselves after high school.

-want to serve their country.

-people saw the ads and movies and saw it as being an exciting adventure.

-wanted to see the world.

-needed money for college and/or wanted to attend college for free while in the military.

-family tradition (i.e. father & grandfather in military... etc.)

-some needed discipline. (i.e. their parents, peers, or themselves suggested it)

-in extreme cases, some were on the verge of homelessness and unemployment and the military was like their only way out. The military guarantees 2 paychecks a month, a roof over your head and food in your mouth, so it is a good deal.

-some had special sentences to either choose the military or prison.

I think MOST people aren't limited to just one reason. Me personally joined for a combination of everything except for the last two. I'm almost at my 4 year mark and I'm preparing to get out. I had my ups and downs here. I do appreciate the fact that the military caused me to do a lot of growing up. After high school due to my immaturity I was scared of the real world... after my time in the military I feel more responsible, disciplined, focused, wiser, etc... and therefore the "real world" doesn't seem that "scary" as I saw it in high school.

TheoHuxtable

04-08-2004, 04:25 PM

Originally posted by CILONE/SK
Theo about what? People going back home or the process to get out?

I'm talking about the thousands of people who chose to be cowards get out of Iraq due to "psychological" reasons or minor so-called "injuries". I read a story about it a few months ago.

Poop Man Bob

04-08-2004, 05:03 PM

More pictures from the NYTimes:

http://graphics7.nytimes.com/images/2004/04/08/international/IRAQ.slide1.jpg'>
RAMADI -[i] Navy medical corpsmen carried a wounded marine to an evacuation helicopter yesterday at their outpost in the Sunni-dominated town.

http://graphics7.nytimes.com/images/2004/04/08/international/IRAQ.slide2.jpg'>
[i]U.S. marines detained a hooded Iraqi who was put in a pit normally used by car mechanics. Heavy fighting continued in the area.

http://graphics7.nytimes.com/images/2004/04/08/international/IRAQ.slide3.jpg'>
BAGHDAD - [i]Followers of the radical cleric Moktada al-Sadr stood around the body of an Iraqi killed by Americans during fighting in Sadr City.

http://graphics7.nytimes.com/images/2004/04/08/international/IRAQ.slide4.jpg'>
[i]Bodies of Iraqis, unable to be buried in cemeteries, were taken to a mosque Wednesday during a Marine offensive in the town of Falluja.

http://graphics7.nytimes.com/images/2004/04/08/international/IRAQ.slide5.jpg'>
[i]Iraqi men dug through the ruins of a house in Falluja. The town has been the site of pitched battles between insurgents and American marines. American forces called in air support during the fighting, including a missile from a Super Cobra helicopter and a laser-guided bomb from an F-16 fighter jet.

http://graphics7.nytimes.com/images/2004/04/08/international/IRAQ.slide6.jpg'>
[i]Sunni insurgents guarded the streets of Falluja Wednesday.

http://graphics7.nytimes.com/images/2004/04/08/international/IRAQ.slide7.jpg'>
[i]A member of a guerrilla group in Baghdad's Sadr City kept watch.

Ban This

04-08-2004, 05:23 PM

just waiting for the next terrorist attack in our homeland....the good ol' usa.

seeking

04-08-2004, 06:09 PM

imagine if that was happening in pittsburg, or cleveland right now....
all those cats standing around in their city, watching it being blown to shit, watching their friends and family members being killed, 120 degree weather...meanwhile we sit here at our desks, on our computers, talking about as if it was some sort of intellectual or philosophical puzzle on the back of a crackjack box. i mean, no matter how much any of use care about what's going on, when i leave my desk and go to taco bell, or to the bakery to get my little strawberry tart, delicious desert item, i'm not thinking about it...i'm thinking about finding parking, and quarters for the meter.

just as i wrote that, a coworker came in with a broken crown, so she had to go to the dentist. i was elected to drive her. her whole world was falling apart because if she didnt get it fixed today, she'd have to wait till monday, and she'd have a jacked up tooth all weekend.
meanwhile probably a hundred people will die in iraq today, a thousand will be injured, and i'll be mad that i have to hang out with my girlfriend instead of installing the rear sway bar on my car.

i don't know if any of it makes sense, but none of it really matters anyway, so who cares.

nihilisticly yours,
seeks

Poop Man Bob

04-08-2004, 06:51 PM

The faces of American soldiers who have died in Iraq:

[img]http://www.thepoorman.net/images/the_war_president_big.jpg'>

heavyLox

04-08-2004, 07:09 PM

so the Iraqi resistance has taken to kidnapping now.

3 japanese hostages have been taken, 2 journalists, 1 aid worker.

7 koreans

1 briton

all in seperate 'nappings

iraqi police stations have been raoded by malitia. whom are now rolling around with iraqi police weapons and equipment, courtesy of the US.

Its nice to get shot at by weapons your people have provided.

TheoHuxtable

04-08-2004, 07:13 PM

Originally posted by Poop Man Bob
The faces of American soldiers who have died in Iraq:

[img]http://www.thepoorman.net/images/the_war_president_big.jpg'>

This would make for a great propaganda poster to wheat paste. Needs a caption. Something along the lines of Bush being guilty/responsible for the deaths of over 600 men & women of the US armed forces. That's not even counting the contractors, forces from other countries and countless Iraqis.

Poop Man Bob

04-08-2004, 07:14 PM

Originally posted by CILONE/SK
Thanks poop for making me feel good.

I assume that's sarcasm ... but you should know that wasn't my intention.

Poop Man Bob

04-08-2004, 07:15 PM

Originally posted by TheoHuxtable
This would make for a great propaganda poster to wheat paste. Needs a caption.

How about .. "Captain Quagmire: 'Bring It On'"

Poop Man Bob

04-08-2004, 07:16 PM

Ah .. sorry, man.

timemachine

04-08-2004, 07:28 PM

you know i look at that last picture of the hooded militant keeping watch over the iraqi streeets and i came to the realization that the people below him in the picture look so used to constantly being watched (whereas before it was saddam) that a masked man on a rooftop with an RPG or an AK does not even phase them. man those people have been through a lot

word

tk

!@#$%

04-08-2004, 07:40 PM

yeah, exactly what i was thinking.
if it was fundamentalist muslims running the world
instead of fundamentalist christians
and iraq invaded the u.s. because they weren't down with the way our leadership rolled..

you better believe that'd be me hooded the fuck down in the middle of Pratt st. holding an RPG and ready to defend my home and family with my life.

i mean WTF was the government thinking????

i saw the "iraqi" version of the news last night on ted koppel or some shit, basically a bunch of local iraqi tv news..
fucking carnage!
and the newscaster had the audacity to suggest that it was improper to refer to the coalition forces as an "occupying army" of course that's what we are!!

rumsfeld really should be strung the fuck up for having the gall to believe we would be greeted as liberators..
what a maroon.

villain

04-09-2004, 02:54 AM

Originally posted by CILONE/SK
Villian, that guy is a coward who let down everyone around him. It really doesn't matter if he thought the war is morally wrong, he still is in the army and needs to do his job. If he had feelings against the war then he should have told someone so that they didn't put him in a leadership postition with people relying on him. He screwed the all. If he went and talked to his commander and/or chaplin, they would never have put him in a leadership postition. They would have chaptered him out or let him file that objector status paperwork. If he filed that paperwork, he could have requested to serve his time in a desk job until his committment was up. But he took the cowards way out and just ran away from his responsibilities and left everyone relying on him screwed. I have been in the Army long enough to know that going awol is fucked up to everyone around you and there are other ways to serve within your beliefs. Cowards are the only ones who run.

Are you sure your in the army? Cause it doesn't sound like it to me. Didn't you read in the papers about the marine conscientious objector that was thrown in prison? You could tell your commander but more than likely your commander is going to fuck you over... you could tell your chaplain but more than likely your chaplain ain't going to do jack. I've seen this happen a million times. I can't believe your in the army saying these nicey nice PC things when we all know that's a bunch of bullshit that's just on paper.

villain

04-09-2004, 03:00 AM

Originally posted by SteveAustin
CILONE...I completely agree. It used to be safe to kinda milk the military for nearly free college fund money. Bottom line is...if they say you go...you go. No amount of bitching or whining will change this. I just thought I'd throw that in there for Tesseract.

He seems to understand the military better than cilone...

villain

04-09-2004, 03:07 AM

Originally posted by seeking
i'm gonna use my completely detached civillian status to side with cilone on the whole AWOL subject.
i know everyone has their own right to chose, and obviously this guy did not believe in the war, but if he had men underneath him, and his awol status put them in any jeopardy of harm, then he made the wrong choice. if you're a foot soldier, or private, or whatever they're called, the 'pawn's' and you take off, that's one thing, but if you have people depending on you with their lives, then even if you don't believe in the war, you have to take care of them until you can get out of it the proper way. the army can not MAKE you fight, and if you believe so strongly that the war is unjust and that you wont fight in it, then anything they do to you should be acceptible to you, be it courtmashal or whatever.

ok, thats all for now.

You guys are talking like all his men were lost and crying without big poppa platoon sergeant. The fact of the matter is we are all trained to assume command should the next person up in the change of command disappear or die or go on leave or whatever. The military is constantly changing. With the average time at a duty station with a unit at about 2 or 3 years, things change alot. We are used to change. Or at least we should be.

Don't get me wrong... I respect the soldiers who have stuck it out in iraq for whatever reasons. Our choices are not as plain as black and white.

villain

04-09-2004, 03:17 AM

Originally posted by TheoHuxtable
I'm talking about the thousands of people who chose to be cowards get out of Iraq due to "psychological" reasons or minor so-called "injuries". I read a story about it a few months ago.

Look man... I'm at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. The largest military hospital. We serve all branches of the military. I don't know who these thousands of people who are cowards are. Most everyone I've seen has serious, serious problems. People staring off into space, people not talking, people who will kill you if you bump into them, people who will kill you for no reason whatsoever, people spiralling into deep depressions.... Suicides. These are your psyche patients. You would not be saying this if you saw what I see.

villain

04-09-2004, 03:20 AM

Originally posted by CILONE/SK
I haven't read that much about it, but I can tell you that in my command there are a ton of people not trying to leave, because it is a nondeployable unit.

NOW I understand....

I'm assuming you are at a TRADOC post. That's the poster child of the army. Everyone knows the real army is not like that... YOU should know this. I guess you got used to that though.

Nothing is ever that simple. This stuff is hurting my head... so is this 9-11 condition stuff...

villain

04-09-2004, 03:38 AM

Originally posted by !@#$%

what a maroon.

Don't you mean moron? Or are you being offensive to maroons? (I hope not...I can respect maroons for going AWOL from the slave ships...)

Poop Man Bob

04-09-2004, 03:55 AM

Six posts in a row = rapid fire villian attack.

Ski Mask

04-09-2004, 04:44 AM

I think we are definately at the point where the footage being broadcast home from Iraq really starts to disturb the average american citizen. I mean, the bodies being hung from the bridge is disturbing, but the corpses were charred black, and it still seemed very detached. not human. its enough to rile everyone up, but there is still alot of emotional detachment. those are burnt corpses, but they are not people. but when you see stuff like the footage of the 3 japanese hostages they were showing today, its really fucking scary. that look of sheer terror. the underlying knowledge of everyone who sees it, that those 3 people have next to no chance of avoiding a very painfuly death. this is what breaks through. I'm very affraid of what comes now....

seeking

04-09-2004, 05:04 AM

villian,
i can dig it. my reply was just a statement in general, not exactly dealing with this situation (which i know nothing more than whats been said here). more than anything, i was just giving my perspective on how i look at things, and how i would (hope to) act if put in the same position. i'm a team player, and if that means taking an asswhooping with the team, then so be it. if it kept happening, i might get sick of being punched, and stop hanging out in those situations, but if im there, im going down with them.

one thing i find distressing, is that as the whole rest of the world reports about civil unrest, and the entire country basically being unhappy with our occupation of it, fox news will quote some random soldier as saying that things are much better for the people now, and all of a sudden it becomes fact. soldiers are commiting suicide at a ridiculusly alarming rate, there is incredible dissention among troups all over the country, but then one guy says that everyone is really happy to be making a difference, and that over shadows the figures and the facts. people are so fucking blind, its insane.

i really wish none of this was happening.

seeks/i said with, not 'on'.

KaBar2

04-09-2004, 09:18 AM

Because that caliber of person should never have been recruited to start with. By using these "college money" type recruiting campaigns, they just guarantee that a bunch of self-centered whiners will be persuaded to enlist. In my opinion, nobody should be permitted to enlist unless they want to BE A SOLDIER. If the main motivation behind the enlistee's action is anything other than a strong desire to serve in the armed forces, there is a very good chance he is going to be worthless in a war.

That's not to say that one shouldn't be motivated at all by the pay, or the training, or the benefits (the benefits that attracted me the most were the 30 days paid leave every year, starting from day one of my enlistment, and free medical and dental) but it's like letting someone join the Fire Department, and when a fire happens, the guy says, "Fight fires? Oh, fuck no! I might get burned up! Fuck that, I'm not fighting any fires--I just signed on to stay here in the firehouse and play pinochle, collect my paycheck and my retirement, and wear this cool hat. I don't do no firefighting."

The best soldiers in the past were always considered to be the average American draftee. Career soldiers were considered to be lazy and unambitious. Military service did not pay worth shit ($27 a month in WWII) and the benefits were lousy. Draftees, on the other hand, only served during emergencies, had lives to go back to, and wanted to get the war over with as quickly as possible. Any decent man would have been ashamed to dodge the draft. During WWII, they changed a lot of rules, passed new legislation, and during Vietnam they created the "All-Volunteer Army," which I thought was a splendid idea, because I had no intention of volunteering. With student deferments, 4F deferments, Reserve and National Guard deferments (yo, George) and hundreds of various MOS's that were non-combat related, you would have to be either really inept to actually get drafted into the infantry, or deliberately trying to serve as a rifleman, almost.

Three million guys served in Vietnam in eleven years of war. A casualty rate of 55,000 out of 3,000,000 is EXTREMELY LOW (1.8%.) Of course, it's 100% if it happens to YOU, but the Vietnam War was a very slow war, casualty-wise. WWII and Korea were much, much more intense.

It's easy for an old geezer like me to say "cowboy up!" but I would go to Iraq if they would let me serve with the Marines. I enlisted in the Marine Corps without any obligation to do so (AFTER the Vietnam War was over, of course--I had already "fulfilled my military obligation" by working as a conscientious objector in a hospital) I served in the Marine Reserves, and the National Guard after my USMC discharge, kind of trying to extend my chances of being sent to some conflict somewhere. I tried to get back in during the Gulf War, but they just laughed. "I'm sorry, Mr. Kabar, but you are just too old, sir."

My old unit, 2nd Battalion, 1st Marines (2/1--pronounced "Two-One"), is fighting outside of Fallujah right now, but even if I had stayed in for twenty years, I would have retired in 1997.

No war is a good war, really, but the campaign to topple Saddam Hussein was a hell of a lot more altruistic than the Vietnam War was, in my opinion.

BROWNer

04-09-2004, 10:23 AM

i'm really amazed some of you guys are throwing around the
word 'coward' about some dude
you've never met, from some fucking crazy ass warzone,
and actually hoping he gets jacked..

very interesting that the soldier who stands up for his own constitution gets
crapped on while the soldier who kills gets props.

TheoHuxtable

04-09-2004, 10:30 AM

Originally posted by BROWNer

very interesting that the soldier who stands up for his own constitution gets
crapped on while the soldier who kills gets props.

And why should the soldier who runs from a warzone get props? When he signed the contract he said under oath that he will protect the United States from all enemies foreign and domestic. Then when it's time to fight, he wants to boycott and shit.

I'm in the military and I don't support the Iraq war nor our intentions. But when I have a job to do then I have to do it. I'm not going to "sit out" and protest.

TheoHuxtable

04-09-2004, 10:45 AM

Looks like April has a good chance at breaking the record for being the deadliest month for U.S. troops in Iraq.

November 2003 had 82 U.S. military deaths

March 2004 had 50 U.S. military deaths

It's only April 9th and we're already at around 50 U.S. military deaths. Thanks to the uprising of al-Sadr's Shiite militia in southern Iraq as well as the U.S. retalliation for those mutilated bodies and the invasion of Fallujah and various other Sunni strongholds.

We always hear of numbers of coalition deaths -- I was wondering if anyone knew how many Iraqi enemies were killed? Saddam's conventional army at the start of the war, Saddam's Fedayeen militia, various guerilla/insurgent/militia factions, as well as the foreign Muslims who have crossed the borders into Iraq to engage in jihad.

And how many Taliban/al Qaeda were killed in Afghanistan.

I know it's somewhere in the thousands...

WeSt!

04-09-2004, 12:13 PM

Nothing short of a complete fuk up.How long untill bush deploys more troops back there or will he wait untill the election is out of the way to try save his ass?Its only going to get worse when the "AMERICAN" voted goverment is put in place early june.One of the most respected clerics is declareing all out upriseing if its not an irai voted goverment which clearly cant be voted in or organised in 2 months.Tip of the ice berg people.No dout.Fuck terrorism,but when do the western media report on collateral damage?Terrorism no?

!@#$%

04-09-2004, 02:29 PM

Originally posted by BROWNer
i'm really amazed some of you guys are throwing around the
word 'coward' about some dude
you've never met, from some fucking crazy ass warzone,
and actually hoping he gets jacked..

very interesting that the soldier who stands up for his own constitution gets
crapped on while the soldier who kills gets props.

is it any wonder, when we live in such a violence-hungry society?

the so-called 'christian-right' is behind this war..
how hypocritical, from the patrons of a man who said 'turn the other cheek'

the [unfounded] rightousness of the united states is apparent everywhere..

we bring democracy to every part of the world (except our military and our government)

Poop Man Bob

04-09-2004, 02:36 PM

4 Italians, 2 Americans taken hostage (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A63744-2004Apr9.html)
ABU GHRAIB, Iraq (Reuters) - Iraqi insurgents said they had seized four Italians and two Americans on the western outskirts of Baghdad on Friday.

A Reuters journalist saw two captive foreigners, said by the insurgents to be Italians, in a mosque in a village in the Abu Ghraib district. One was wounded in the shoulder. Both were weeping.

U.S. soldiers in a tank in the area near the village of al-Dhahab al-Abyad said they knew some Americans had been taken hostage, but had no details.

"That's why we are sealing off the road," said one soldier.

Insurgents told Reuters they had captured four Italians traveling in a four-wheel-drive vehicle with weapons in it. They said they had seized the Americans in a separate attack.

They took the journalist to a mosque, surrounded by about 40 fighters with rocket-propelled grenades and assault rifles, where they said all the hostages had been taken.

The two foreigners could be seen from a distance, but the fighters did not allow them to be filmed.

Poop Man Bob

04-09-2004, 02:43 PM

http://graphics7.nytimes.com/images/2004/04/09/international/shia.large1.jpg'>
[i]Iraqis aboard a truck loaded with medical and food supplies that was headed for Falluja celebrated Thursday while passing a burning American convoy that had been attacked earlier.

villain

04-09-2004, 04:29 PM

Originally posted by TheoHuxtable
When he signed the contract he said under oath that he will protect the United States from all enemies foreign and domestic.

Dubya is not exempt because he is our boss.

This reminds me of condoleeza rice's testimony. She was acting like they never in their lives expected a domestic attack on the US, even though it's happened several times before. She also tried to say the Presidential Daily Breifing was historical information and not about an immanent threat. So I guess the president gets a history lesson every day from all his advisors instead of the bleeding edge of up to date information... what a crock of shit. I was getting sick watching that.

Poop Man Bob

04-09-2004, 04:38 PM

Fuck. I just found out that a brother of one of my friends got killed two days ago. He was a marine serving in either Fallujah or Ramadi.

RIP Blake Wafford.

villain

04-09-2004, 04:57 PM

Originally posted by CILONE/SK
That conscientious objector shit does work, the only reason it doesn't work is when you pull it a few days before you deploy. In fact kabar said he did it back in the day and they put him in some hospital unit.

I don't mind talking about this, but villian doesn't know what he is talking about. If he doesn't like the Army, then maybe he is one of those guys who needs to get kicked in the head for joining the military for a fucked up reason.

Villian, I am a SFC and have been in 10 Years and the only reason I am in this unit is because I was in 2nd Brigade, 82d Airborne Division for so many years. This is my break from that and it is not TRADOC(they send people here for a break from hard duty, my replacement just got here and he was deployed over there for over a year) and in 3 months I am going overseas to another Airborne unit. I am very lucky that I got sent here before the war and only an iddiot would want to go to war. So stay in your hospital and give shots and whatever else you poogs do there and I will go to an Airborne unit and do what I told the Army I would do when I signed my contract.

As for people who go AWOL because they don't want to go to war, They are cowards. I will repeat:

"No matter if someone thinks that the government is doing the wrong thing and that they don't trust the president, It really doesn't matter, because one great thing about this war is that there is not one person in the military that was drafted and they all volunteered to be right where they are at. If they were so stupid to join the military and not realize that the whole purpose of the military is to fight a war, then they need a kick in their head."

With that said, since you are at walter reed and see the people who have problems, I have more respect for them because at least they didn't run and they attempted to do their job and fufill their commitment. The cowards that run and hide are not even comparable to those guys, they are cowards that want the Army to give them college money or whatever else and when the Army wants their part of the deal they run and hide, fucking bitches.

Kabar, I usually agree with you, but the military is a different place from when you were in and your are out of touch with todays military to include marines. It is a completely different place from when I joined ten years ago.

Well I'm very sorry to hear that you'll be sent over to that shithole, especially at a time like this. I might see you there. And I'm not a pogue. I went to airbourne school. I was willing to do all this for my country. I just didn't expect to be taken advantage of like this. I was on profile. I've been injured. I'm in psyche. I'm cleared for a return to duty. I can admire you guy's commitment and loyalty and sense of duty and all that but really I honestly don't think this administration deserves that. They are taking full advantage over our very lives...

I'm sure there are conscientious objectors who actually got it to work. I meant it's probably just a very special case... or maybe it's exemplary. What I'm saying is that it doesn't work very often... because if it did half our troops would be doing it no doubt.

I didn't join the military to fight just any war. Or war for special interests. I guess there's no such thing as a good war, but for sure we haven't had a good war since WWII. I guess that's why they called it "The Good War" and "The Greatest Generation". Because after that america decided to get involved in international affairs and everything got all kinds of fucked up. We haven't had a good war since I don't think. Perhaps Bosnia but that was only a police action. Which is also what afghanistan and even iraq could have been. But noooo... bush wanted all out fucking war. He wanted to prove to the world that he is a badass idiot. And now we are up shits creek. We've got al queda whom we've driven underground and failed to cooperate and coodinate with the warlords and bring peace and stability to the region. We've got iraq where we did shock and awe and proceeded to blow the living shit out of the infrastructure of iraq and stormed in our entire fucking army just to remove ONE FUCKING MAN!?! Oh and now they are fucking liberated iraqis but they are fucking starving and without power and security and so we've made ourselves more and more enemies because they realized we are full of shit and our leader is a fucking pogue! I have for one actually read the guerilla tactics FM and countless supplementaries and I can tell you for sure, and I reiterate, that you will not ever stop an insurgency force within your host nation unless you have popular support by providing for the basic needs, security and means of advancement for the average person. It says this in our handbook, the culmination of years of research and real world experience written by the best authors on the subject matter. And we have broken about every rule in there for a successful counter-insurgency operation. It's no wonder things are getting more fucked up! And I've thought of many ways the iraqis could now bring decisive defeat over us but I'm not even going to say it because they have kidnapped aid workers and stuff and that sucks goat balls. And there might be an al queda terrorist hiding under my bed so I'm afraid to even say it aloud. Why do people always kidnap priests and aid workers? Happens all over the world all the time. Noone ever does anything for them. It's just a really sad story in a small section in the back of the newspapers. This war fucking sucks in so many ways. And our leader is an idiot.

I WILL REITERATE! QUIT RADICALIZING IRAQIS. REESTABLISH RELATIONS OF TRUST AND COOPERATION.

Those four civilians who were killed were mercenaries for Blackwater Security according to reports I've read. Just about everyone has it twisted. So much propaganda.

metallix

04-09-2004, 05:38 PM

[img]http://italy.indymedia.org/uploads/fascism.jpg'>

metallix

04-09-2004, 05:40 PM

[img]http://www.stop-fascism.org/images/riot__senior.jpg'>

!@#$%

04-09-2004, 05:42 PM

the u.s. is apparently also employing ex-apartheid era south african mercenaries to train th enew iraqi security force..
that is also in violation of south africa's laws about mercenaries for hire.

wtf.

...and from www.thenation.com (http://www.thenation.com)

'a deserter speaks'

The young man across the table looks sad, but not as stressed as one might expect from a US Army deserter. Camilo Mejia served with a unit that crossed into Iraq just after the invasion and then, for five months, fought in the counterinsurgency war in the Sunni Triangle, where he says he was in firefights, killed people, almost got killed, helped torture prisoners and finally had his life saved by a small-scale mutiny. Now he is a declared conscientious objector who spent five months absent without leave, facing the wrath of US military justice.

In October, when he was home on furlough, Mejia decided to ditch the killing and chaos of Iraq. Although the military never officially charged Mejia with desertion, he spent the rest of the autumn and winter living like a fugitive, never using cell phones, credit cards or the Internet for fear of being busted. He was frequently on the move and survived on the good will of friends.

There are dozens of other soldiers who have refused to show up for their deployments, but the military doesn't pursue most of them and usually releases them from service without too much fuss. Most AWOL soldiers don't even get tracked down. However, if a soldier goes public to make a political point, the military response can be severe.

"This is an immoral, unjust and illegal war," says Mejia. "The whole thing is based on lies. There are no weapons of mass destruction, and there was no link with terrorism. It's about oil, reconstruction contracts and controlling the Middle East." Like many US troops, Mejia is a recent immigrant, but unlike many he is from a left-leaning bohemian family; his father is an internationally famous Nicaraguan musician, Carlos Mejia Godoy, and his mother was active with radical movements in the 1980s. Mejia, however, says he used to be apolitical. When he moved to the United States as a young adult, he joined the military "to become an American and know the culture."

Just before Mejia's eight years of service were up, he found himself in Iraq. "After the war people were cheering, but within a week or two they were asking when we were going to leave and getting angry. And then it became clear that nothing was getting reconstructed, people's lives weren't getting better. We had all these deadlines, for setting up the police, getting the power back on, whatever, and nothing ever got done, nothing changed or got better," Mejia explains. "And then the resistance started."

To make matters worse, Mejia found his officers to be glory-obsessed and intentionally reckless with the safety of their men. In particular, he says, they wanted the Army's much-coveted Combat Infantry Badge--an award bestowed only on those who have met and engaged the enemy. "To be a twenty-year career infantry officer and not have your CIB is like being a chef and having never cooked or being a fireman and never having put out a fire," Mejia says. "These guys were really hungry, and we were the bait."

In one attempt to draw enemy fire, Mejia's company--about 120 guys divided evenly into four platoons--was ordered to occupy key intersections in Ramadi, a notoriously violent Iraqi city, for several days running. "All the guys were really nervous. This was a total violation of standard operating procedure. They train you to keep moving, not sit in the open." Finally the enemy attacked, and a platoon in Mejia's company took casualties.

When the troops were ordered to perform the exact same maneuvers again, Mejia refused. "I told them, I quit." Luckily for him the four staff sergeants of the platoon that had taken casualties also refused to go out. Technically, refusing an order in a combat situation can be charged as mutiny. But in a tense meeting with their commanding officer, the staff sergeants negotiated a new plan of action that allowed the GIs to vary the timing and movement of their patrols. After these changes, Mejia agreed to go. "We went out two hours earlier than usual, and because of that we caught these young guys setting an IED (improvised explosive device) of three mortars wrapped together." If Mejia's squad had set out according the Commanding Officers' original plan, he believes that some of the guys in his squad would have been killed. For its part, the Florida National Guard claims that Mejia was a bad sergeant and that he was not aggressive enough in engaging what all admit is a highly elusive enemy.

Spc. Oliver Perez, who served with Mejia, disagrees. "I fought next to him in many battles. He is not a coward," said Perez, who has also said he will testify on Mejia's behalf if the Army proceeds with a court-martial.

During another assignment, Mejia's company ran a detention camp. "They didn't call it a POW camp because it didn't meet Red Cross standards," he explains. There, intelligence officers ordered Mejia's squad to psychologically torture three suspected resistance fighters. The hooded and bound prisoners were placed in isolation, intimidated with mock executions and forced to stay awake for days at a time. "We had one guy lose his mind. He was locked in a little metal closet that we'd bang with a sledgehammer every five minutes to keep him up. He started crying and begging to lie down." When asked how the prisoners were fed and given water, Mejia stares off into space for a moment, and then says, "I don't remember how we fed them."

This soft-spoken young man has plenty of other bad stories to tell. There's the time his squad killed a civilian who ran a checkpoint; the time they shot a demonstrator. There's the officer who forged orders so he could get his unit into combat, and the other officer who broke his own ankle to get out of combat. There is the father who wasn't allowed temporary leave even though his young daughter had been raped. And there is the GI who took shrapnel in the head and now can't talk, can't recognize his family and wakes up in the middle of the night confused and sobbing.

Given the politics of the military, it is unlikely that Mejia's serious allegations about the conduct of his superiors will be investigated, let alone prosecuted, while his own decision of conscience could be treated as a criminal matter. "I'd rather do the five to ten years in prison for desertion than kill a child by mistake," says Mejia. "When you are getting shot at, you shoot back. It doesn't matter if there are civilians around. Prison ends, but you never get over killing a kid."

So far this war has produced only a few AWOL convictions and one high-profile asylum case in Canada. Pfc. Jeremy Hinzman of the 82nd Airborne is seeking refuge north of the border on the grounds that he is a conscientious objector. Marine Reserve Lance Cpl. Stephen Funk also went AWOL and claimed conscientious objector status this past April. Funk was convicted of being away without leave, demoted, forfeited two-thirds of his pay, received a bad-conduct discharge and sent to the brig for six months. Mejia, who turned himself in at a press conference on March 15, faces five to ten years in prison. Currently Mejia is in Florida with the National Guard, awaiting administrative dismissal as a recognized conscientious objector or criminal prosecution as a deserter.

metallix

04-09-2004, 05:44 PM

[img]http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/graphics/2003/03/18/wioil18big.jpeg'>

metallix

04-09-2004, 05:45 PM

[img]http://www.uncoveror.com/Oil_Fields02.jpg'>

metallix

04-09-2004, 05:46 PM

[img]http://63.247.85.218/~uncover/escalade.jpg'>

!@#$%

04-09-2004, 05:52 PM

have you guys forgotten?
this is the same army who admitted a few years ago to testing nuclear waepons on OUR OWN TROOPS..
fucking unreal..
they have released documents about this due to the 'freedom of information act'

it was a really big scandal about ten years ago..

this is the same army that won't support it's vietnam vets (how many of these guys are deperate or homeless?!)

or even the first gulf war vets...
they deny that there is even such a thing as gulf-war-syndrome

the army doesn't give a fuck about anyone.
it is an institution designed for self-preservation at any expense.

desert!
desert!
dessert!
yumm!

villain

04-09-2004, 06:48 PM

Originally posted by CILONE/SK
I just can't understand why you are still in the Army, didn't you join in 2001 and you are already this bitter. Why are you in the psych ward?

Blackwater security is a cover for CIA shit.

I've always aged fast... I don't really want to talk about why I'm here because it was very traumatic and personal.

A cover... well it doesn't surprise me.

villain

04-09-2004, 06:53 PM

Originally posted by !@#$%
the u.s. is apparently also employing ex-apartheid era south african mercenaries to train th enew iraqi security force..
that is also in violation of south africa's laws about mercenaries for hire.

I've heard something about this....somewhere....

So far this war has produced only a few AWOL convictions and one high-profile asylum case in Canada. Pfc. Jeremy Hinzman of the 82nd Airborne is seeking refuge north of the border on the grounds that he is a conscientious objector. Marine Reserve Lance Cpl. Stephen Funk also went AWOL and claimed conscientious objector status this past April. Funk was convicted of being away without leave, demoted, forfeited two-thirds of his pay, received a bad-conduct discharge and sent to the brig for six months. Mejia, who turned himself in at a press conference on March 15, faces five to ten years in prison. Currently Mejia is in Florida with the National Guard, awaiting administrative dismissal as a recognized conscientious objector or criminal prosecution as a deserter.

I KNOW this is a crock of shit.... I spent two months in a Personell Control Facility in Fort Sill, the same time we were shredding those halliburton reciepts for the man that I mentioned in a past thread. While I was there we got at least 10 people for AWOL a week. It's true they don't really pursue you though.

villain

04-09-2004, 06:54 PM

Originally posted by CILONE/SK
email me

Okay yo... just gimme a moment...

villain

04-09-2004, 06:59 PM

Originally posted by !@#$%
have you guys forgotten?
this is the same army who admitted a few years ago to testing nuclear waepons on OUR OWN TROOPS..
fucking unreal..
they have released documents about this due to the 'freedom of information act'

it was a really big scandal about ten years ago..

this is the same army that won't support it's vietnam vets (how many of these guys are deperate or homeless?!)

or even the first gulf war vets...
they deny that there is even such a thing as gulf-war-syndrome

the army doesn't give a fuck about anyone.
it is an institution designed for self-preservation at any expense.

desert!
desert!
dessert!
yumm!

I also heard about some experiment they carried out on a ship... wtf? The troops didn't find out until like 20 years later.

They finally came out with what gulf war syndrome is about a week after gulf war 2 started. When the airforce bombed bunkers there they destroyed stockpiles of chemical weapons. When the troops marched in they were marched by these smoking bunkers unwittingly inhaling the chemicals. I have an almost complete list of all the locations that were bombed where chemical weapons were stored if anyone here is interested in that. I don't know if anyone here was in desert storm though.

And of course we've all heard of agent orange...

villain

04-09-2004, 07:22 PM

Yeah that's what I meant, I was in a PCF with Deserters, not AWOL soldiers. AWOLers get sent back to their units.

Cilone: It's not like you can take a course in being awol... how are you supposed to research it?!

villain

04-09-2004, 07:41 PM

[img]http://img27.photobucket.com/albums/v82/agentarcana/copingfinalpt1.jpg'>

This is part of the article in the army times about stress in the combat zone. Suicides as well. I know when I was at the hospital I broke up at least two fights and prevented one suicide.

villain

04-09-2004, 07:46 PM

Originally posted by CILONE/SK
Alright sucka, there isn't a course, but it took me less then 5 minutes to comes up with all the Army's gudelines for both conscientious obejection, AWOL, and desertion.

Check out the following regs:
AR 600-43 Conscientious Objection
AR 630-10 AWOL and Desertion

If these dumbass did a little research and didn't just run and hide like little bitches, they would be better off.

Where can I find the regs online? Do you know? I'm not a drill sergeant so I don't go carrying ARs around with me. I've been wondering about this for some time.

I heard that deserters can be executed in a time of war.

Ok if I can figure out how to check email on here....

Hmm... it says I have no private messages. I sent you an email a while ago. Did you get it?

villain

04-09-2004, 08:15 PM

Damn that would be phat.... Well I tried to email you... I clicked that button that says "email" on the bottom of the posts and the "click here to email cilone/sk"... Ok I'll give it a try again.

BROWNer

04-09-2004, 11:22 PM

obviously i won't see eye to eye with you on this guy
buggin' out. i can understand the principle to an extent,
my problem is where you can stand back and lash out
at somebody you don't know much about, in a situation
you don't know much about, and all the varying degrees
of complexity that situation entails. i would never
purport to understand how one becomes suicidal and
kills themselves, then turn around and call them a selfish
sucker or some shit. maybe a bad analogy, but both are
large, complex situations where your fighting for you
mind. for all you know, dude was
at his wits end...so should he just lose his own fucking
mind? without that you're a goner.

i'm also curious..
i'm aware of alot of people joining the army and whatnot,
who are very young and impressionable, some older still,
and realizing that the promises made to them by recruiters
was a crock of shit. some of them are even willing to get
shipped out to the front lines and that's what they signed
up for, and for some reason it doesn't happen and life
in the army becomes a depressing limbo that they are
not allowed to get out of...how does this work? how are
you not allowed to leave if you are truly miserable?
what are the circumstances for these scenarios?
also, cilone, you've been in for 10years, so you obviously
have a different view of things now, but how informed
were you when you joined? was it something you had
been surrounded by your whole life, or were you always
going to join???
i think your take on people getting recruited and not knowing
enough about it is perfect hindsight. most 18yr olds are not
mentally on point enough to have your perspective, usually
they would be at a point where they are not sure what to do,
and the army is an option for advancing themselves. i don't
know how many people join the army primarily to fight.
i'd be interested to see stats on that, i would think most
people join for the benefits. at the same time, you would
think people would be able to see that joining
the most active military in the world would almost certainly
entail combat during their time..

BROWNer

04-10-2004, 01:03 AM

the daily outrage from the nation (http://www.nation.com):

A "war-time president" wouldn't skip town just as the combat situation soured.

Which must by why George W. Bush has skipped town.

Yes, he's taken another unearned vacation down in Texas, where he's been showing off his expansive ranch to representatives of the National Rifle Association and other "sporting aficionados and conservation groups."

Now, why true sportsmen would have any interest in the anti-Teddy Roosevelt -- the President who's weakened protections on as much land as Roosevelt set aside, and whose shootin'-fish-in-a-barrel sidekick is Dick Cheney -- is beyond me.

But it's good to know that George W. Bush has found time for a 500th vacation day, even as the ever-rising American death toll in Iraq reaches 628. (For all of you shrill semantic hair-splitters out there who divide war zone sacrifices into those that count and those that don't, the toll of Americans killed in full-on combat action stands, at this writing, at 455. It's no doubt rising even as I type this.)

And yet Bring 'Em On Bush is taking it manfully in stride. As The Washington Post reports, "This is Bush's 33rd visit to his ranch since becoming president. He has spent all or part of 233 days on his Texas ranch since taking office ... Adding his 78 visits to Camp David and his five visits to Kennebunkport, Maine, Bush has spent all or part of 500 days in office at one of his three retreats, or more than 40 percent of his presidency."

That includes a month-long kick-back in August 2001 that was the longest presidential vacation in 32 years.

Forty percent of his presidency! That's the equivalent of taking paid leave off from Jan. 1 to May 24. Must be nice. But it sure does cast a harsh new light on this Administration's anti-weekend drive to scale back overtime pay.

WhiteOx

04-10-2004, 02:58 AM

HOW IS IRAQ A DISASTER??
BECAUSE LIVES AND FUNDS ARE STILL BEING POURED INTO IT WITH NO CLEAR RETURN AFTER THE WAR HAD ENDED?
THATS WHAT WARS ARE, NO ONE WOULD HAVE EXPECTED DIFFERENT, ITS THE IRREVERSIBLE PRICE YOU PAY FOR RIDDING A COUNTRY OF AN AUTHORITIRIAN REGIME, TO PULL OUT NOW WOULD MAKE THE SURVIVING IRAQIES HATE THE WEST EVEN MORE

WhiteOx

04-10-2004, 03:14 AM

Originally posted by !@#$%
yeah, exactly what i was thinking.
if it was fundamentalist muslims running the world
instead of fundamentalist christians
and iraq invaded the u.s. because they weren't down with the way our leadership rolled..

A) westerern governments are not run by fundementalist christians
B) the american govt. has no problems with countless non-cristian countries.
B) American invaded iraq to rid it of the rule of a war mongering, pysocitic, murderous, atrocity-committing dictator. not because they were fucking muslims

GROW UP YOU NARROW MIND SELFISH CHILDREN

villain

04-10-2004, 03:40 AM

Well BROWNer alot of people enlist at the ripe young age of 18 or even younger and are very impressionable and not sure what they are getting into. So you are right on that count.

Probably why alot of these kids who are anxious to go to a warzone is because there is the machismo factor. The only ones who are excited to go to a warzone are the ones who are most unfamiliar with war. Then again some of these kids are just nutbars... But hey that's great for the army. So the funny result is that the most experienced soldiers are the least excited to go. They have been there and realized that there is nothing glamorous in death and they don't have the adolescent attitude of having something to prove. Then again we have old soldiers who have become very efficient killers. Probably one of the most impressive displays of skill I have witnessed is this one time i was on a training exercise and me and my battle buddy were in the prone position facing the edge of a road as guards.... so this old sergeant comes up to check up with us and we give him the green... So we are doing our thing and then we look back like maybe a minute later and he is gone! Well the wierd thing is that there was 100m of deep water all behind us. We should have heard him sloshing around. He is a fucking ninja.
Now that is REAL AWESOME POWER! :dazed:

villain

04-10-2004, 03:45 AM

Originally posted by WhiteOx
A) westerern governments are not run by fundementalist christians
B) the american govt. has no problems with countless non-cristian countries.
B) American invaded iraq to rid it of the rule of a war mongering, pysocitic, murderous, atrocity-committing dictator. not because they were fucking muslims

GROW UP YOU NARROW MIND SELFISH CHILDREN

A) You obviously know nothing of the bush administration.
B) Because it is strategically or financially beneficial to us.
B?) Well thanks for the information oh wise one!

Aren't you from australia? Then what do you know about america? Or anything for that matter? Have you read anything in this thread or the countless other threads on these subjects at all?

SHUT THE FUCK UP YOU LAME LAYMAN HOLIER THAN THOU YOU KNOW JACK SHIT!

WhiteOx

04-10-2004, 04:15 AM

-no i wasnt bothered to read the whole thread, 100% one-sided preaching

villain

04-10-2004, 04:26 AM

One sided my ass... I never shut down anyone presenting facts. You have nothing to back your bold statements and on top of that you were rude and offensive which is another sign of not having a valid argument, thus resorting to violence. So I would suggest to you is that instead of picking fights with the wrong people where you (should) know you will lose why don't you go and find the truth for youself. These threads are riddled with facts. Your words flag and faulter... One sided preaching. I guess your one fucking post in here of absolute ignorant bullshit is supposed to outweigh hundreds of well thought out ideas. Just shut up.

TheoHuxtable

04-10-2004, 05:59 AM

Originally posted by CILONE/SK
I found out something really interesting that I should have known yesterday. The civilians that got killed and hung from that bridge were CIA. It makes me wonder that if these guys were doing missions over there, are they still technically civilians? It is easy for the media to say civilians were killed and make america think that innocent people died, but these guys were more then likely fucking up alot of shit over there.

Civilians are simply anybody that is non-military. Even if they work for the government. Postal workers, CIA, FBI, police officers, etc... Bush is in charge of the military but he's technically a civilian.

TheoHuxtable

04-10-2004, 06:04 AM

Originally posted by !@#$%
have you guys forgotten?
this is the same army who admitted a few years ago to testing nuclear waepons on OUR OWN TROOPS..

Nuclear or biological?

Poop Man Bob

04-10-2004, 06:04 AM

Originally posted by villain
One sided my ass... I never shut down anyone presenting facts. You have nothing to back your bold statements and on top of that you were rude and offensive which is another sign of not having a valid argument, thus resorting to violence. So I would suggest to you is that instead of picking fights with the wrong people where you (should) know you will lose why don't you go and find the truth for youself. These threads are riddled with facts. Your words flag and faulter... One sided preaching. I guess your one fucking post in here of absolute ignorant bullshit is supposed to outweigh hundreds of well thought out ideas. Just shut up.

I second this.

metallix

04-10-2004, 06:57 AM

Originally posted by WhiteOx
-no i wasnt bothered to read the whole thread, 100% one-sided preaching [img]http://www.design-concepts.co.uk/trails/images/ignorant.jpg'>

KaBar2

04-10-2004, 07:52 AM

The Sixties were a very polarized period in American history, somewhat like the period before the Civil War. The Vietnam War was the elephant in the living room, and everybody had to pick a side. I knew very, very few people my age who had not chosen one side or the other. By and large, everybody I knew was adamantly against the war, and I was too.

The first time I attempted to apply for conscientious objector status, I was 18, but still in high school. They turned me down, because a 2-S deferment outranked a C.O. deferment. I was very young, and passionately believed that war was morally wrong, etc., etc. I would have made an incredibly poor soldier at age 18. After I graduated from high school (1969) the anti-war movement was in full swing. Massive demonstrations, student strikes at colleges and universities, etc. Everywhere I looked I was getting messages from people my age that I was right. I became so radicalized, I became an anarchist.

When I was summoned to the Draft Board, I felt sure I would be sent to prison. Not knowing anything about prison, somehow I imagined being locked up all by myself in a cage, sort of like solitary confinement. The Draft Board people were all adults, of course, and knew a lot more about what I was doing than I did. I had written out my petition for C.O. status, bolstered it with arguments cribbed from my church, the Unitarian-Universalist Association (this is a real church--Emerson was a Unitarian and so was Thomas Jefferson) and had resolved to tell them that they could send me to Federal prison, but that I would NOT go to Vietnam.
Since I was a civilian, this was less of a problem than I imagined (the Draft Board wasn't any happier about sending young men off to Vietnam than I was about possibly being sent off) and they sent me to work for twenty-four consectutive months in a civilian rehabilitation hospital. We had some military patients, but they were mostly civilians, injured in car and motorcycle wrecks, victims of armed robbery gunshot wounds, etc.
Actually, I was very relieved that they sent me to the hospital. At age 18.

But when I got finished with my "alternative service" I was increasingly unhappy about it. Everybody had to choose a side. I started feeling like maybe I had chosen wrong.

So--before my 26th birthday (the cut-off age) I enlisted in the Marine Corps and insisted upon infantry. They sent me to Boot Camp, then to the U.S. Army Chemical & Ordnance School at Aberdeen Proving Grounds, MD, to be trained as a weapons repairman. I served in an infantry battalion as a company armorer and then a battalion armorer. I served in the Marine Reserves when I got out, then in the National Guard.
And then, in the Texas militia.

I guess I've done my military service, but somehow it still doesn't make up for choosing wrongly when it really counted. If they would let me, I'd go to Iraq.

I have several friends that are Vietnam veterans, and a neighbor that was a Vietnam War POW for six years. He was a Marine too, wounded and captured on a ground patrol outside the wire at Khe Sanh, at age eighteen. His high school sweetheart waited for him the whole six years, and they were married when he returned. Still are. They live down the street, nicest guy you ever met, except he's a Democrat, LOL.

TheoHuxtable

04-10-2004, 08:15 AM

Originally posted by KaBar2
The Sixties were a very polarized period in American history, somewhat like the period before the Civil War. The Vietnam War was the elephant in the living room, and everybody had to pick a side. I knew very, very few people my age who had not chosen one side or the other. By and large, everybody I knew was adamantly against the war, and I was too.

The first time I attempted to apply for conscientious objector status, I was 18, but still in high school. They turned me down, because a 2-S deferment outranked a C.O. deferment. I was very young, and passionately believed that war was morally wrong, etc., etc. I would have made an incredibly poor soldier at age 18. After I graduated from high school (1969) the anti-war movement was in full swing. Massive demonstrations, student strikes at colleges and universities, etc. Everywhere I looked I was getting messages from people my age that I was right. I became so radicalized, I became an anarchist.

When I was summoned to the Draft Board, I felt sure I would be sent to prison. Not knowing anything about prison, somehow I imagined being locked up all by myself in a cage, sort of like solitary confinement. The Draft Board people were all adults, of course, and knew a lot more about what I was doing than I did. I had written out my petition for C.O. status, bolstered it with arguments cribbed from my church, the Unitarian-Universalist Association (this is a real church--Emerson was a Unitarian and so was Thomas Jefferson) and has resolved to tell them that they could send me to Federal prison, but that I would NOT go to Vietnam.
Since I was a civilian, this was less of a problem than I imagined (the Draft Board wasn't any happier about sending young men off to Vietnam than I was about possibly being sent off) and they sent me to work for twenty-four consectutive months in a civilian rehabilitation hospital. We had some military patients, but they were mostly civilians, injured in car and motorcycle wrecks, victims of armed robbery gunshot wounds, etc.
Actually, I was very relieved that they sent me to the hospital. At age 18.

But when I got finished with my "alternative service" I was increasingly unhappy about it. Everybody had to choose a side. I started feeling like maybe I had chosen wrong.

So--before my 26th birthday (the cut-off age) I enlisted in the Marine Corps and insisted upon infantry. They sent me to Boot Camp, then to the U.S. Army Chemical & Ordnance School at Aberdeen Proving Grounds, MD, to be trained as a weapons repairman. I served in an infantry battalion as a company armorer and then a battalion armorer. I served in the Marine Reserves when I got out, then in the National Guard.
And then, in the Texas militia.

I guess I've done my military service, but somehow it still doesn't make up for choosing wrongly when it really counted. If they would let me, I'd go to Iraq.

I have several friends that are Vietnam veterans, and a neighbor that was a Vietnam War POW for six years. He was a Marine too, wounded and captured on a ground patrol outside the wire at Khe Sanh, at age eighteen. His high school sweetheart waited for him the whole six years, and they were married when he returned. Still are. They live down the street, nicest guy you ever met, except he's a Democrat, LOL.

Damn, interesting story KaBar. Also I can't believe you're only a few years younger than my dad. Which brings me to the question; what is your relation to graffiti culture? It seems like the culture would've just missed your generation, especially since you're from Houston since it took a while from graff to move from NY to other cities.

villain

04-10-2004, 03:12 PM

One thing I sincerely regret is not being in Afghanistan with my brother.....

:bawling:

TheoHuxtable

04-11-2004, 01:02 PM

U.S. Helicopter Shot Down in Baghdad
1 hour, 12 minutes ago

By LOURDES NAVARRO, Associated Press Writer

FALLUJAH, Iraq - Gunmen shot down a U.S. attack helicopter during fighting in western Baghdad on Sunday, and the fate of its two-member crew was unknown. Insurgents and Marines called a cease-fire in the besieged city of Fallujah, but the fragile peace was shaken by a gunbattle that wounded two Americans.

A pall of black smoke rose on Baghdad's western edge where a military spokesman said the AH-64 Apache helicopter was downed by ground fire in the morning. More helicopters circled overhead, while U.S. troops closed off the main highway — a key supply route into the capital.

"The condition of the (Apache's) crew is unknown," the spokesman said.

Heavy firing was heard, and tanks and Humvees moved into the area near the suburb of Abu Ghraib. Where masked gunmen have wreaked havoc in the suburb for the past three days, attacking fuel convoys and blowing up tanker trucks. Insurgents kidnapped an American civilian and killed a U.S. soldier in the area Friday.

The captors of the American hostage — Thomas Hammil, a Mississippi native who works for a U.S. contractor in Iraq (news - web sites) — threatened to kill and burn him unless U.S. troops end their assault on Fallujah by 6 a.m. Sunday. The deadline passed with no word on Hammil's fate.

Video footage aired on Arabic television Sunday showed the bodies of two dead Westerners — apparently a pair of Americans seen by APTN cameramen on Friday being dragged out of a car on the Abu Ghraib highway, in a different incident from Hammil's kidnapping.

The cameramen fled the scene Friday, and the fate of the two men was unknown. But one of the bodies in Sunday's footage resembled one of the Americans taken out of the car.

The new video showed the bodies surrounded by gunmen, who are heard on the tape saying the two are American intelligence officers. One of the bodies lay sprawled on the pavement, his face bloodied and his right leg drenched in blood. The other body had been rolled face down, his shirt lifted to reveal a bullet hole in his back. Both wore dark T-shirts and khaki pants often worn by private contractors.

Meanwhile, Fallujah — 35 miles west of Baghdad — saw occasional sniper fire, but was still the quietest it has been all week. Sunni insurgents and Marines agreed to a cease-fire starting early Sunday and due to last until the evening amid talks between Iraqi officials on how to end the violence.

Hundreds of U.S. reinforcements moved in place on the city edge, joining 1,200 Marines and nearly 900 Iraqi security forces already involved in the fighting. Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt warned that an all-out assault could resume if talks don't produce results.

The most serious break in Sunday's peace came when a sniper opened fire on U.S. patrol, wounding two Marines, commanders said. In the ensuing gunbattle, at least one insurgent was killed. After the firefight, the city was largely quiet again.

"They are not playing by the rules, sir," Marine Capt. Jason Smith radioed to his commander after taking fire in another incident in which the troops did not fire back.

U.S. forces have been instructed not to launch offensive attacks on the rebels, said Lt. Col. Brennan Byrne, commander of the 1st Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment, which is deployed in the city's south.

A guerrilla commander in Fallujah's al-Jolan neighborhood told Al-Jazeera television that his fighters would abide by the truce.

"I have ordered my fighters to adhere to the cease-fire," said the commander, identifying himself only by the nom de guerre Abu Muadh. "But I warn everyone: If the enemy breaks the cease-fire, we will respond."

He added that the truce was due to last until 10 p.m. (2 p.m. EDT), but that talks were ongoing in an attempt to extend it.

Sunday was the first that gunmen have said they were joining the halt in offensive operations that Marines have largely stuck to unilaterally since noon Friday.

U.S. commanders called the halt at the request of the U.S.-appointed Iraqi Governing Council, where many members have been angered by bloodshed from the Fallujah campaign launched April 5.

Councilmembers were holding a second day of negotiations with city representatives Sunday in an attempt to win the handover of Iraqis who killed and mutilated four American civilians on March 31 and of other militants.

"Were we not at this point observing (the halt) it could well have been that we would have had the entire the city by this point," Kimmitt said Saturday. He said fighters must "lay down their arms" and renounce their membership in extremist groups to fully end the insurgency that has made Fallujah its stronghold.

About a third of the city's population of 200,000 fled the city Friday and Saturday, streaming out in cars, though Marines turned back any military-age men trying to leave, Byrne said. During the lull, Marines distributed food to beleaguered residents near the area held by U.S. troops.

"Families are holed up in houses. They have been told to stay inside. But they are running out of water and food. We are trying to get rations to them," said Marine Capt. Jason Smith, 30, from Baton Rogue, La.

The week of fighting has been hard for Fallujah residents, with heavy battles involving tanks, AC-130 warplanes and helicopter gunships taking place around mosques and in residential neighborhood.

Hospital officials said Wednesday that more than 280 people have been killed, but no updated figures have been obtained since and many bodies have been buried at the city's main soccer field without even being taken to the hospital. At least five Marines have died in the fighting. Kimmett said 60 insurgents had been captured, including five foreign Arabs.

In southern Iraq, some 1.5 million Shiite pilgrims marked one of their holiest religious days, al-Arbaeen. In the city of Karbala, hundreds of Shiite militiamen — but no police — patrolled the street preparing for a possible U.S. assault against rebellious followers of radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.

U.S. commanders have suggested they will move against al-Sadr, whose militia has control of Karbala and two other cities, after the al-Arbaeen ceremonies, which mark the end of a 40-day mourning period for a 7th-century martyred Shiite saint.

In fighting across the country over the past week — including in Fallujah and in the uprising by al-Sadr's Shiite militia in the south — 47 American soldiers and more than 550 Iraqis have been killed. At least 649 U.S. soldiers have died in Iraq since the war began in March 2003.

In other violence:

_ Gunmen ambushed Iraqi police before dawn Sunday in the northern city of Kirkuk, sparking a battle joined by U.S. troops. Four attackers were killed, said Iraqi Col. Sarhad Qadir.

_ Insurgents attacked two Iraqi police patrols in Mosul on Saturday in fights that killed two Iraqi police, a gunman and two passers-by, according to the hospital.

_ Armed men clashed with U.S. soldiers in the Sunni neighborhood of al-Azamiyah in Baghdad on Saturday. Four Iraqis were killed.

Ski Mask

04-12-2004, 05:13 AM

the level of denial the administration is in right now is disgusting. did anyone catch bremer talking about how polls show most iraqis are still behind the occupation. THE POLL?? does anyone believe you could take an acurate poll of anything there right now? the only iraqis willing to talk to the pollsters would be wildly biased, I'd imagine. its just getting absurd.

KaBar2

04-12-2004, 06:55 AM

I wondered about those polls myself. How in the world would they conduct one? Almost certainly they would be forced to use Iraqi civilians to go out amongst the people and ask the polling questions at random to get an accurate statistical sample. I imagine that at least 1,000 or 1,500 respondents would be required, in order for it to have statistical validity.

My opinion still stands that the majority of Iraqis do not support the uprising. If they did, our casualties would be in the thousands, not less than one thousand. And their casualties would probably be in the tens of thousands, since the combat casualty ratio seems to be running about 10 Iraqis for every American.

Well, let me modify that statement. I think the majority of Iraqis are not participating in the uprising. They may be resentful and not in opposition to the fundamentalists, but not actually fighting, sort of like the way the white racist majority in the South supported the Ku Klux Klan in the '50s, but did not actually light any crosses themselves personally. The fundamentalist gunmen may enjoy the support of the average Iraqi, according to the Iraqi parable "I support my brother against my cousin, and my cousin against any stranger." (I like that saying--it has the ring of truth. Too bad we Americans are the "strangers.")

villain

04-13-2004, 12:36 AM

Shits not looking good. I've heard alot of stories about Falleuja on the news and what not and it's not looking good at all. About people being shot during the cease fire. Women, children and the elderly being shot. Who here gets al jazeera? I hear they are showing alot of that stuff. They are saying it is MOSTLY noncombatants killed. I heard that at least a battalion of the iraqi security force defected. One member of the iraqi governing council resigned... 4 more are threatening to.

And I know these are not the most surgical strikes in the world. I've already heard plenty of stories about our troops using .50 cals and tank rounds to take out snipers in buildings and about shooting iraqis in vehicles who are unarmed (though they didn't know it) who are trying to run a checkpoint. All kinds of stuff. It's not like our neighborhood swat team who is going to stake a place out and wait for the most opportune time to get their target, with the least civilian interference, and using special domestic equipments such as frangible ammunitions to prevent overpenetration and what not.

I remember in the beginning of the war there was no such thing as militias in iraq, there was the baathist party, and the republican guard, and the army.... since saddam was secular he had no need for fundamentalist militias because they were a threat to his power. Now they are everywhere. Seems that for every innocent killed there are 10 more radicals made. I'm afraid it may get to the point where a majority become militant, instead of just harboring militants and providing support structures which some are doing now. We need that support.

Let's not forget that back when we were on the other side of the fence gearing up for this war Saddam was doing gearing up of his own. He encouraged all his people to buy guns. Do you people remember this in the news? I think it's safe to say a large portion of the iraqi population is armed to the teeth. It's a good idea not to just go around pissing people off.

EDIT: Also British senior military officers are threatening to pull out.

effyoo

04-13-2004, 01:04 AM

Originally posted by villain
Saddam ....... encouraged all his people to buy guns. Do you people remember this in the news? I think it's safe to say a large portion of the iraqi population is armed to the teeth. It's a good idea not to just go around pissing people off.

I just read KaBar's post then read this, and it reminded me when he would say that its important to be armed because it might be the only hope if the government turns on the populace or gets overthrown.

Sort of proves his point, doesn't it?

villain

04-13-2004, 01:11 AM

Originally posted by effyoo
I just read KaBar's post then read this, and it reminded me when he would say that its important to be armed because it might be the only hope if the government turns on the populace or gets overthrown.

Sort of proves his point, doesn't it?

It does indeed. And I've always agreed with him on that. It's just that in this day and age the most powerful weapons are psychological. "Free yo mind, and yo ass will follow." 45% of our media now comes from the same company.

Go my little graffiti gremlins! Go forth with your guerilla art!

TheoHuxtable

04-13-2004, 11:51 AM

Originally posted by KaBar2

Well, let me modify that statement. I think the majority of Iraqis are not participating in the uprising. They may be resentful and not in opposition to the fundamentalists, but not actually fighting,

In any given conflict, isn't that how it usually is? The "majority" of the population is not going to be participating in fighting. The civilian population always outnumbers the conventional military and/or guerillas.

Poop Man Bob

04-13-2004, 03:55 PM

In today's Washington Post (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A6753-2004Apr12.html):

A Strategy for Iraq

By John F. Kerry

Tuesday, April 13, 2004; Page A19

To be successful in Iraq, and in any war for that matter, our use of force must be tied to a political objective more complete than the ouster of a regime. To date, that has not happened in Iraq. It is time it did.

In the past week the situation in Iraq has taken a dramatic turn for the worse. While we may have differed on how we went to war, Americans of all political persuasions are united in our determination to succeed. The extremists attacking our forces should know they will not succeed in dividing America, or in sapping American resolve, or in forcing the premature withdrawal of U.S. troops. Our country is committed to help the Iraqis build a stable, peaceful and pluralistic society. No matter who is elected president in November, we will persevere in that mission.

But to maximize our chances for success, and to minimize the risk of failure, we must make full use of the assets we have. If our military commanders request more troops, we should deploy them. Progress is not possible in Iraq if people lack the security to go about the business of daily life. Yet the military alone cannot win the peace in Iraq. We need a political strategy that will work.

Over the past year the Bush administration has advanced several plans for a transition to democratic rule in Iraq. Each of those plans, after proving to be unworkable, was abandoned. The administration has set a date (June 30) for returning authority to an Iraqi entity to run the country, but there is no agreement with the Iraqis on how it will be constituted to make it representative enough to have popular legitimacy. Because of the way the White House has run the war, we are left with the United States bearing most of the costs and risks associated with every aspect of the Iraqi transition. We have lost lives, time, momentum and credibility. And we are seeing increasing numbers of Iraqis lashing out at the United States to express their frustration over what the Bush administration has and hasn't done.

In recent weeks the administration -- in effect acknowledging the failure of its own efforts -- has turned to U.N. representative Lakhdar Brahimi to develop a formula for an interim Iraqi government that each of the major Iraqi factions can accept. It is vital that Brahimi accomplish this mission, but the odds are long, because tensions have been allowed to build and distrust among the various Iraqi groups runs deep. The United States can bolster Brahimi's limited leverage by saying in advance that we will support any plan he proposes that gains the support of Iraqi leaders. Moving forward, the administration must make the United Nations a full partner responsible for developing Iraq's transition to a new constitution and government. We also need to renew our effort to attract international support in the form of boots on the ground to create a climate of security in Iraq. We need more troops and more people who can train Iraqi troops and assist Iraqi police.

We should urge NATO to create a new out-of-area operation for Iraq under the lead of a U.S. commander. This would help us obtain more troops from major powers. The events of the past week will make foreign governments extremely reluctant to put their citizens at risk. That is why international acceptance of responsibility for stabilizing Iraq must be matched by international authority for managing the remainder of the Iraqi transition. The United Nations, not the United States, should be the primary civilian partner in working with Iraqi leaders to hold elections, restore government services, rebuild the economy, and re-create a sense of hope and optimism among the Iraqi people. The primary responsibility for security must remain with the U.S. military, preferably helped by NATO until we have an Iraqi security force fully prepared to take responsibility.

Finally, we must level with our citizens. Increasingly, the American people are confused about our goals in Iraq, particularly why we are going it almost alone. The president must rally the country around a clear and credible goal. The challenges are significant and the costs are high. But the stakes are too great to lose the support of the American people.

This morning, as we sit down to read newspapers in the comfort of our homes or offices, we have an obligation to think of our fighting men and women in Iraq who awake each morning to a shooting gallery in which it is exceedingly difficult to distinguish friend from foe, and the death of every innocent creates more enemies. We owe it to our soldiers and Marines to use absolutely every tool we can muster to help them succeed in their mission without exposing them to unnecessary risk. That is not a partisan proposal. It is a matter of national honor and trust.

villain

04-13-2004, 05:46 PM

Originally posted by TheoHuxtable
In any given conflict, isn't that how it usually is? The "majority" of the population is not going to be participating in fighting. The civilian population always outnumbers the conventional military and/or guerillas.

There are plenty of countries that REQUIRE thier citizens to serve in the military. Personally I think any arab nation has a great potential of becoming heavily militant. But hopefully in a good way.

KaBar2

04-15-2004, 06:28 AM

Yeah, one of those countries that REQUIRE universal military service or alternative civilian national service is SWITZERLAND. That whole country is one gigantic fortress, with mountains hollowed out for Air Force runways, a million hidden artillery positions in caves, interlocking mortar and machinegun positions at EVERY SINGLE CROSSROADS IN THE RURAL CANTONS, and every single male between the ages of 16 and 60 being members of the militia (what? What was that? THE MILITIA?) yes, that is correct. Every single able-bodied Swiss male must serve in the Army, and when his Army duty is over, in the militia, by Law. Every single male in the militia must keep a full set of military equipment and uniforms at home, along with his Government-issued fully automatic military rifle. Rifle marksmanship is the national pasttime in Switzerland, like baseball is here in the States.

Every new home built in Switzerland MUST have a BLAST SHELTER built underneath it, and this is subsidized by Government-supported loans. The entire fucking country is one huge warren of militia riflemen, each with his own family nuclear blast shelter.

Now WHY IN THE FUCK can't the United States be that smart?

WeSt!

04-17-2004, 03:07 PM

Lucky Switzerland dont have any oil.

villain

04-17-2004, 03:18 PM

Originally posted by WeSt!
Lucky Switzerland dont have any oil.

Haha...

Damn after reading what KaBar said about switzerland I want to see that place. Holy shit...

villain

04-17-2004, 07:53 PM

Lot's-0-linkage:
Bush:9-11:Harken:Halliburton:Enron:Khalid bin Mahfhouz:Amerada Hess Corportaion:

This web of intrigue thick. These tales of treachery, tragic.

http://artdeadlineslist.com/rlg/bush/

And if you go to the homepage it gives you a list of art contests and scholarships! BONUS!!!

T.T Boy

04-17-2004, 08:59 PM

Originally posted by KaBar2
Yeah, one of those countries that REQUIRE universal military service or alternative civilian national service is SWITZERLAND. That whole country is one gigantic fortress, with mountains hollowed out for Air Force runways, a million hidden artillery positions in caves, interlocking mortar and machinegun positions at EVERY SINGLE CROSSROADS IN THE RURAL CANTONS, and every single male between the ages of 16 and 60 being members of the militia (what? What was that? THE MILITIA?) yes, that is correct. Every single able-bodied Swiss male must serve in the Army, and when his Army duty is over, in the militia, by Law. Every single male in the militia must keep a full set of military equipment and uniforms at home, along with his Government-issued fully automatic military rifle. Rifle marksmanship is the national pasttime in Switzerland, like baseball is here in the States.

Every new home built in Switzerland MUST have a BLAST SHELTER built underneath it, and this is subsidized by Government-supported loans. The entire fucking country is one huge warren of militia riflemen, each with his own family nuclear blast shelter.

Now WHY IN THE FUCK can't the United States be that smart?

this is bullshit. well, alot of it is. ive been to rural switzerland a few times myself, to visit my family there, and they do not have nuclear blast shields, or is everyone in the militia, my cousin is 19 now and he has to do his service right away, hes been fighting to not go, but he has to. the mountains are not hollowed out, switzerland is not some sort of militia haven. the swiss guards are in the castles in the alps, but not to the extent your mentioning. actually, i dont think any of my family members there own any guns. and their farmers. the swiss have all the insurance they need, its called money. and they are not short in that. but just in case, ill do some investigating this summer when im there again. maybe i can cop a militia uniform or something.

villain

04-17-2004, 09:50 PM

From what I've read of german history they have always been pretty heavily fortified. While most nations and fiefdoms would have their castle and in case of invasion the people would retreat into the castle, in germany they often built castle wall extending out around farmland as well. Quite alot of walls there from what I gather. Minus the Berlin wall. I also heard that you cannot see the great wall of china from space. Pink Floyds the wall is interesting.

But of other interest the 9-11 commission may be quelled from within....

http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/CRG404A.html

Thank god for media transparancy....

http://www.mediatransparency.org/

Unfortunately John Kerry is getting no media attention and may not even want to be president. Or at least his wife doesn't want him to be.

Here's an article on DU and wartime contaminations by Scientific American ....
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?SID=mail&...05980A84189EEDF (http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?SID=mail&articleID=000254FC-AE57-1F57-905980A84189EEDF)

But for those who care, for those who decided to live outside of the matrix, for those who understand what the REAL matrix is, here's a bunch more links for you.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/links.html

And for dataminers, many many articles from many publications here:

http://www.findarticles.com/PI/index.jhtml

rumble

04-17-2004, 11:48 PM

As far as I know Switzerland like many other european nations don't have an army, but defensive forces. And the difference between the two is that a country like switzerland couldn't run a military operation far away on the other side or the planet since they lack aeroplanes, trucks, navy, troops etc to support an army that's been spread widely and far away... I'm sure there are people living on earth that would like the U.S. military to be like that too, but that's their fantasy. I'm sure they have a civil service alternative in switzerland, otherwise all these amnesty human rights organizations would freak about it all the time. Besides even russia recently arranged a civil service of their own. It's still quite brutal: lasts about three years, and something like every 5th recruit have the chance to get there!! (any russian here might want to correct these numbers)

Anyway first I thought Iraq would be a disaster. I could already see american marines struggling in the major cities house by house killing everything, getting killed themselves and rather secure those houses with a hand grenade than checking out for civilians. Gladly the Saddams royal army was a buch of chickens and everything went smoothly...Too bad it seemed to be too smooth, remember the promises of the first gulf war? Those memories sit tight in their brains, they were bullshitted. Now it seems like the few Iraqis, whatever their agenda turns out to be, have found out about the guerrilla tactics and now they're making roadside bombs and kalashnikov drive-bys just like the people in Chechnya have done for years already. it's all caught on video too, quite entertaining in a fucked-up kind of way: http://www.kavkazcenter.com/eng/video/

The tricky thing here is that you can start calling these guys terrorists and try to wipe them out. But they are tied to the ground and the people, they are Iraqis and they are basically just pissed-off civilians with guns as far as we know. You'd have to kill them all. I'm not sure if UN or any other organization/army would be able to pull this off, it's ethnical and religional... I hope it gets settled and at least not escalate everywhere in middle east

Ted Wakowski

04-17-2004, 11:50 PM

I rarely agree with the majority of what kabar has to offer on here, but he always seems to have a really well-informed, experienced perspective (or at least knows how to effectively present himself that way).

So, kabar, that being said, I'm curious of your opinion as to whether or not the U.S. government made the right decision by starting this war with Iraq in the first place. Do you think a different course of action could have been taken to achieve the same set of (ostensible?) goals -- one which might have left behind fewer casualties on both sides?

I ask you specifically because I think your response may prove enlightening.

As for myself:
Like most, I think it's good that Saddam is finished, and I'd be happy as an American if something ultimately positive could emerge from the war and its aftermath. But, seriously, I personally see very little indication from the Media (which, as a common citizen, is my only source of information on the subject, limited and slanted in either political direction as it may be) that the Iraq situation is good for the health of America or the Middle East. I mean, where is this whole thing REALLY going? As a nation, will we pull out of Iraq in a more secure or better overall standing than we enjoyed before the war? Iraq may, so it seems, at least compared to Saddam's day, but who the fuck knows what new kind of bubbling shitstorm a bunch of profit-mongering corporations can muster up in that region when left, somewhat unfetterred, to their own self-interested devices? And yes, anti-American sentiment might have continued to build its own momentum whether Iraq was invaded or not, but that idea is still merely speculative, and a concrete truth is that the Iraq invasion is clearly a motivational force encouraging the terrorist interest we are being made to fear right now in the U.S.. I sure as hell don't want to wake up here in New York to another attack killing thousands of people, knowing that the attack itself was more than likely inspired or influenced by some Washington assholes' idea of foreign policy; nor do I want to see more Middle-Eastern people slaughtered under some blurry pretense serving an ultimate purpose that's never really made clear to the average citizen.

This shit was all a big fairy tale until 9/11 happened. Recently we've seen Madrid. What the fuck is next? And 1.whatever percent of U.S. troops dying along with however many Iraqi people sounds like way too many when the objective seems so vague and everchanging.

As far as I can see, Iraq DOES look like a bit of a disaster, but I'm still too uninformed and lack the foresight to really know what's up. I guess you could say I'm confused ...

villain

04-18-2004, 12:16 AM

Originally posted by rumble

The tricky thing here is that you can start calling these guys terrorists and try to wipe them out. But they are tied to the ground and the people, they are Iraqis and they are basically just pissed-off civilians with guns as far as we know. You'd have to kill them all. I'm not sure if UN or any other organization/army would be able to pull this off, it's ethnical and religional... I hope it gets settled and at least not escalate everywhere in middle east

Exactly. The way things are looking it seems that there is a popular resistance forming against US troops. As the violence escalates it could trigger a global war of racism and theism. Thus Bush's "crusades" would be born ww3 would likely begin and we'd all be fucked.

BROWNer

04-18-2004, 12:21 AM

Originally posted by rumble
quite entertaining in a fucked-up kind of way: http://www.kavkazcenter.com/eng/video/

okay, that site is fucked up.
i just watched some dude film another dude holding a rocket
launcher and take out a russian helicopter.

TheoHuxtable

04-18-2004, 02:58 AM

Originally posted by villain
Haha...

Damn after reading what KaBar said about switzerland I want to see that place. Holy shit...

I usually respect what a lot of what KaBar has to say, but I think he's exaggerating about Switzerland. From Swiss people that I've known in school to what I've read, it actually seems on the contrary to what KaBar says -- Switzerland has always been known as a "neutral" nation with a small military. Plus the guy in this thread said he's visited family there and that it's nothing like that.
He's making it sound like it's the Soviet Union at the height of the Cold War.

Also I wouldn't exactly say it would be smart to make America like that. That would contradict our "freedom" culture to require every able-bodied male to serve in the military and have the entire country look like a fucking fortified encampment.

PalestineOne

04-26-2004, 02:55 AM

bump

villain

04-26-2004, 03:37 AM

yup, iraq is STILL a disaster....

Poop Man Bob

04-26-2004, 04:31 AM

http://www.juancole.com/2004_04_01_juancol...287521120764481 (http://www.juancole.com/2004_04_01_juancole_archive.html#10828752112076448 1)

This is rather disturbing.

metallix

04-26-2004, 04:34 AM

TheoHuxtable

04-26-2004, 05:28 AM

Originally posted by Poop Man Bob
http://www.juancole.com/2004_04_01_juancol...287521120764481 (http://www.juancole.com/2004_04_01_juancole_archive.html#10828752112076448 1)

This is rather disturbing.

Nothing surprising. I still can't believe the majority of Americans think Saddam Hussein had something to do with 9/11 and that he sponsored bin Laden's group. The fact is that bin Laden hated Saddam and considered Saddam an infidel along with the Americans. The only thing they had in common was that they both saw America as an adversary.

KaBar2

04-26-2004, 07:33 AM

Go look it up for yourself on the internet. In a way, I really LOVE the internet, it is an incredibly powerful tool for the good, but of course, it is just as powerful when used for bad.

Switzerland's canton system, representative republic and militia system PREDATES the United States, and was partially used as a model for the original militia system here. (We call our cantons "counties," like in Great Britain.) We certainly did not use the British model for everything---they were, at that time, our BITTER ENEMIES. One reason Americans prefer coffee over tea is that drinking tea was a British custom, and all things British were loathsome. We came very close (one vote, I understand) to adopting German as the national language. German is, of course, one of the three national languages of Switzerland, as well.

The difficulty we are having here is the politically correct image that Switzerland cultivates, and the military reality. You think the only reason the Nazis did not invade Switzerland is because they are supposedly neutral? Think again---Hitler could not have cared less about Switzerland's vaunted neutrality. What he was concerned about was the fact that every single male in the country was armed with an exceptionally accurate repeating rifle, the K31 straight-pull infantry rifle chambered in 7.5mm Swiss caliber (if memory serves, these are called "Schmidt-Rubin" rifles.) These rifles are still available as surplus on the market for as little as $125.
Switzerland's nuclear war survivability is very well known among survivalists. Every newly-constructed house must have a blast shelter built underneath it. The government helps finance them with very low-interest, long-term loans. The Swiss have numerous air fields built into the sides of mountains and carefully camouflaged. There are entire Army bases built inside of mountains. The average visitor would never see any of this, they go to great lengths to conceal it, nevertheless, it does exist.

PLEASE, read "The Swiss Report" in it's entireity. (It's kind of long, but very enlightening.)

http://www.visi.com/~contra_m/ab/swissrep.html

http://www.geocities.com/goodlordtom/neutrality.html

http://www.constitution.org/jw/mil-m.txt

HYDRO BILL

04-26-2004, 11:32 AM

Villain and Theo...
Why did you enlist? sorry if you have said it somewhere else but you both seem too clever. Why? Personally I would enlist to fight Bush sooner than Hussein.

TheoHuxtable

04-26-2004, 01:40 PM

Originally posted by HYDRO BILL
Villain and Theo...
Why did you enlist? sorry if you have said it somewhere else but you both seem too clever. Why? Personally I would enlist to fight Bush sooner than Hussein.

Somebody asked that question on page 3 of this thread. I copied and pasted the response below.

Also I don't think serving your country should be associated with having a lack of intelligence. Although I've met my fair share of ignorant morons here.

I don't like Bush nor do I support this war. I only partook in the initial stages "Operation Iraqi Freedom" (February 2003 - May 2003) when our carrier battlegroup was in the Persian Gulf launching cruise missles air sorties.

CILONE pretty much summed it up. Everyone has different reasons.

The most common reasons in my humble opinion:

-unsure of what they want to do with themselves after high school.

-want to serve their country.

-people saw the ads and movies and saw it as being an exciting adventure.

-wanted to see the world.

-needed money for college and/or wanted to attend college for free while in the military.

-family tradition (i.e. father & grandfather in military... etc.)

-some needed discipline. (i.e. their parents, peers, or themselves suggested it)

-in extreme cases, some were on the verge of homelessness and unemployment and the military was like their only way out. The military guarantees 2 paychecks a month, a roof over your head and food in your mouth, so it is a good deal.

-some had special sentences to either choose the military or prison.

I think MOST people aren't limited to just one reason. Me personally joined for a combination of everything except for the last two. I'm almost at my 4 year mark and I'm preparing to get out. I had my ups and downs here. I do appreciate the fact that the military caused me to do a lot of growing up. After high school due to my immaturity I was scared of the real world... after my time in the military I feel more responsible, disciplined, focused, wiser, etc... and therefore the "real world" doesn't seem that "scary" as I saw it in high school.

BROWNer

04-26-2004, 07:14 PM

you know what's pretty amazing?
how the bush campaign thugs are trying
to characterize kerry's vet status..
it's amazing.
i mean, if they think they are gonna rock
kerry at this game and he won't hit back
at some point, considering the shadiness
of bush's record...yikes.
either they have some serious dirt, or
they know the press is in their back pocket
on this..

*oh, looky here: http://abcnews.go.com/sections/Politics/In...s_040425-1.html (http://abcnews.go.com/sections/Politics/Investigation/kerry_vietnam_medals_040425-1.html)

BROWNer

04-26-2004, 07:17 PM

[img]http://www.cbc.ca/gfx/photos/iraqflag_cp_5757796.jpg'>
i like it. fresh colours.

dojafx

04-26-2004, 11:35 PM

new flag bad.
the old one was off the shelf

villain

04-26-2004, 11:41 PM

I hope this is not just a cosmetic change.

imported_El Mamerro

04-26-2004, 11:53 PM

World Net Daily, conservative newspaper, claims Saddam's WMD have been found. (http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=38213)

villain

04-27-2004, 12:48 AM

hmm... well the pesticides are a given (by our country most likely!). The mortar rounds again.... but i thought they were expired. There is a conspiracy theory surrounding the centrifuges that they may have been planted. I dunno... I'm not inclined to beleive it but i suppose it's possible. I've seen too much shit to just swallow all this in one gulp with no shuggah. S'pose it's possible. Maybe the WMD are the election gimmick cause they can't nab Osama.

BROWNer

04-27-2004, 02:31 AM

read the article..and.....who the fuck knows.
the conservative, opinion style slant drives me nuts though.

[img]http://www.globalsecurity.org/intell/world/iraq/images/iraq-flag.gif'>
this is quite fresh as well.
i believe the arabic scripting was added by maddass when he came to power..

PalestineOne

04-27-2004, 05:15 AM

is that thing really a new flag?

Fabo 2

04-27-2004, 07:26 AM

does anyone know what that says on the old flag?

TheoHuxtable

04-27-2004, 07:31 AM

Originally posted by can of worms
does anyone know what that says on the old flag?

From what I remember from Arabic class it says something like...

[img]http://www.globalsecurity.org/intell/world/iraq/images/iraq-flag.gif'>

Jame... no... I am... something... bitc... I think... looks like... what's that Rick...?.... Oh okay it says "I'm Rick James bitch."

KaBar2

04-27-2004, 07:44 AM

Saw it on CNN yesterday morning.

KaBar2

04-27-2004, 07:47 AM

All the old flag needed was a swastika, and it would have been perfect for a blitzkreig.

PalestineOne

04-30-2004, 08:58 AM

Allah hu Akbar

like the hobo said, it translates into "God is Great" which can be interpreted as meaning "God is The Greatest" "God is The Biggest" etc....

which is true and that was a hot flag, one of my favorites next to the Saudi Arabia flag, which is all green and says "La Illah Ha Illa Allah". which translates into, "There is no God but God". which is a central belief, meaning nothing else should be worshipped, idolized, etc....

ummm. another flag I like allot is the British flag, thats a hot fucking flag if you ask me, its very stylish. Jamaicas flag is also hot, but thats a given.

fuckit, Im making a new thread for this

SWIMS

05-02-2004, 08:07 PM

INTERNATIONAL CRISIS GROUP - NEW REPORT

Iraq's Transition: On a Knife Edge

Baghdad/Brussels, 27 April 2004: Fundamental change in Iraq is needed soon if the widening gap separating the occupation's governing institutions from the Iraqi people is to be narrowed and a spreading insurgency is to be overcome. 30 June will be an essential turning point, though it will not bring the full transfer of sovereignty that many Iraqis expect.

Iraq's Transition: On a Knife Edge,* the latest report by the International Crisis Group, recognises that the options available in Iraq today are few and bad, a measure of the staggering misjudgements that have plagued U.S. post-war management from the start. The broad plan sketched out by UN Special Adviser Lakhdar Brahimi, the apparent willingness of the U.S. to delegate at least some political responsibility to the UN, and the decision to loosen the de-Baathification decree are all steps in the right direction. Huge challenges remain, and although 30 June was initially an arbitrary deadline, it now represents a key opportunity to be seized, as long as it is defined properly.

"The fiction that 30 June will be about 'transferring sovereignty' should be given up", says Joost Hiltermann, Middle East Project Director for ICG. "As a legal matter, sovereignty is already vested in the Iraqi state and 'embodied' in its interim institutions, as provided by UNSCR 1511. But as a practical matter, the sovereign power exercised by the new Iraqi government will remain incomplete".

The answer is not to scrap the 30 June date, as some have suggested, but to redefine what will happen on that day, and the lead up to it, as a serious redistribution of power -- more substantial even than the present Brahimi plan proposes -- between the U.S., the UN and the new Iraqi institutions. Four interrelated steps are required.

First, political responsibility should be handed over to the UN, acting through a Special Representative empowered to break deadlocks within or between Iraqi institutions. Secondly, a Provisional Government of technocrats should be appointed by the UN Special Representative, marking a clear break in character and membership from the Interim Governing Council. Thirdly, to widen political participation, a National Conference of Iraqis should be convened to elect a Consultative Assembly, which would vote on the composition of the government and could block any decrees that it passes. Fourthly, security arrangements should be redefined by a Security Council Resolution which re-authorises the U.S.-led Multinational Force from 30 June 2004 until an elected government takes office and decides on its future, but which also requires joint approval from the U.S. command and the Iraqi Provisional Government for major offensive operations.

What Iraqis should be getting after 30 June, is more power -- and the space to create a more inclusive and cohesive polity -- but still necessarily incomplete sovereign power until proper general elections are held. To minimise the friction associated with such a transition, residual civilian powers should be exercised during the transitional period by the UN, not the U.S.

"With each false start and failed plan, realistic options for a successful and stable political transition have become narrower and less attractive", says Robert Malley, Middle East and North Africa Programme Director at ICG. "Getting it right this time is urgent and vital. There may not be any opportunities left".

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Contacts: Andrew Stroehlein (Brussels) 32 (0) 485 555 946
Jennifer Leonard (Washington) 1-202-785 1601
To contact ICG media please click here
*Read the report in full on our website: http://www.crisisweb.org/
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The International Crisis Group (ICG) is an independent, non-profit, multinational organisation, with over 100 staff members on five continents, working through field-based analysis and high-level advocacy to prevent and resolve deadly conflict.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Iraq's Transition: On a Knife Edge

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY AND RECOMMENDATIONS

The situation in Iraq is more precarious than at any time since the April 2003 ouster of the Baathist regime, largely reflecting the Coalition's inability to establish a legitimate and representative political transition process. The broad plan sketched out by UN Special Adviser Lakhdar Brahimi, the apparent willingness of the U.S. to delegate at least some political responsibility to the UN and the decision to loosen the de-Baathification decree are all steps in the right direction. But critical questions remain both unanswered and, in some cases, unasked.

The history of post-Saddam Iraq is one of successive, short-lived attempts by the U.S. to mould a political reality to its liking. With each false start and failed plan, realistic options for a successful and stable political transition have become narrower and less attractive. Getting it right this time is urgent and vital. There may not be many, or any, opportunities left.

In undertaking his mission, Brahimi inherited several stark and in some ways conflicting political constraints: the U.S. commitment to "transfer sovereignty" to an unspecified Iraqi body by 30 June 2004; the unrepresentative character of the existing Iraqi institution, the Interim Governing Council; the absence for the foreseeable future of a credible and reliable Iraqi security force and therefore the need for a continued U.S.-led force; strong objection by the most influential Shiite representative, Ayatollah Sistani, to endowing any non-elected government with genuine authority; and the practical impossibility of holding national, democratic elections before January 2005.

Added together, these factors lead to two clear conclusions: first, fundamental change is needed soon if the growing vacuum separating the occupation's governing institutions from the Iraqi people is to be narrowed; and secondly, whatever happens on 30 June will at best involve a delegation of something far less than full sovereign powers to a body falling far short of being representative.

The answer is not to scrap the 30 June date, as some have suggested, but to redefine what will happen on that day, and the lead up to it, as a serious redistribution of power -- more substantial even than the present Brahimi plan proposes -- between the U.S., the UN and the new Iraqi institutions. Four interrelated steps are required:

Political responsibility for the transition should be handed over to the UN, acting through an appropriately empowered Special Representative. Before 30 June 2004, that empowerment should involve the capacity to appoint a provisional government (subject to later rejection by the proposed Consultative Assembly: see further below). After 30 June, it should involve certain residual powers to supervise the political process; break a deadlock between Iraqi institutions; act as a check on Iraqi executive decisions that may exceed its limited mandate; or, in the event a very broad consensus exists among Iraqis, approve of amendments to the Temporary Administrative Law (TAL).
The UN, worried that it lacks the capacity and fearing that it would be setting itself up for failure, is manifestly reluctant to play this latter role. However, the post-30 June Iraqi provisional government clearly will not be exercising full authority; nor do Sistani and others want it to. The powers vested in the Special Representative would be those, and only those, needed to maximise stability and the prospects of national, democratic elections in January 2005. The UN would enjoy far greater legitimacy than the U.S. in fulfilling this role. Even so, such powers ought to be used extremely sparingly and cautiously. The real check on governmental decisions is likely to come from its multi-headed structure (president, vice-presidents and prime minister), and due deference should thus be accorded Iraqi governmental actions.

A provisional government of technocratic experts should be appointed by the UN Special Representative, marking a clear break in character and membership from the Interim Governing Council. This government would be essentially a caretaker one, charged with running day-to-day affairs, focusing on public order, economic reconstruction and public services, and preparing general elections with the UN Special Representative's advice and assistance. Many Iraqis fear that those in charge today will do everything they can to perpetuate their rule tomorrow and that unelected politicians will take decisions with long-lasting impact. Limiting to the degree possible the participation of partisan, political leaders in the provisional government, strictly confining its powers and providing UN oversight will help assuage those fears. In presenting the outlines of his plan, Brahimi endorsed this view, speaking of a caretaker government composed of people of competence and integrity.
To widen political participation, a National Conference of Iraqis should be convened, which would elect a Consultative Assembly. At a minimum, the Consultative Assembly should have the power to reject the composition of the new government and any decrees that it passes. Should the Assembly reject the government, the UN Special Representative would be tasked with proposing another; should the Assembly reject a government decree and, after resubmission in a modified form, reject it again, the Special Representative would step in as an arbiter to overcome the deadlock.
Since the ouster of the Baathist regime, Iraq has lacked any sense of political cohesion. As the U.S. has sought to micro-manage the political process, individual groups have at best struck separate agreements with the Coalition. The proposed National Convention could be an important first step toward creating a sense of collective ownership, and elaboration of a common political platform that eschews violence and commits participants to work for a democratic political system. Religious and tribal Sunni leaders as well as followers of Moqtada al-Sadr, who have felt excluded, will need to be brought in, regardless of their opposition to the occupation.

In Brahimi's proposal, both the National Conference and the Consultative Assembly it elected would come into being only after creation of the provisional government. This is cause for understandable concern among some Iraqis: hand-picking a government and depriving these bodies of any role in its establishment risks undermining their credibility even before they have begun. But Brahimi is justifiably worried that reversing the sequence may unduly delay establishment of a government and overly politicise it.

Security arrangements should be redefined by a Security Council resolution which re-authorises the U.S.-led multinational force from 30 June 2004 until an elected government takes office and decides on its future but requires joint approval from the U.S. command and the Iraqi provisional government for major offensive operations. While an international force presence is an indispensable necessity during the transition period, recent events in Fallujah and elsewhere have made clear that major offensive operations are potentially counterproductive unless undertaken with significant local support. If 30 June is to involve any power shift at all back to the Iraqis, and not be totally empty and cosmetic, some element of control over major security decisions must be involved. Clearly, operational matters involving force protection and responses dictated by immediate events must continue to remain the sole r esponsibility of the U.S. command. But where strategic choices are involved, and the multinational force is acting after deliberation, it is both possible and necessary that operations be jointly approved. And the only body capable in practice of giving that approval -- until general elections are held -- will be the provisional government.
The fiction that 30 June will be about 'transferring sovereignty' should be given up. As a legal matter, sovereignty is already vested in the Iraqi state and 'embodied' in its interim institutions, as provided by UN Security Council Resolution 1511. But as a practical matter, the sovereign power exercised by the new Iraqi government will remain incomplete, and to pretend otherwise could do lasting damage to the very notion of sovereignty in Iraqi eyes. What Iraqis should be getting after 30 June, is more such power -- and the space to create a more inclusive and cohesive polity -- but still necessarily incomplete sovereign power until proper general elections are held. To minimise the friction associated with this necessarily incomplete power transfer, residual civilian powers should be exercised during the transitional period by the UN, not the U.S.

So far, the Iraqi people have been virtual observers to a pas-de-deux between the Coalition Provisional Authority and the Interim Governing Council: if they are not truly involved in the process, they can hardly be expected to defend it. The fact that Iraqis who heretofore had not supported either Moqtada al-Sadr or the insurgents in the so-called Sunni Triangle joined or tacitly backed the April uprisings gives credence to the notion that as long as basic grievances are not addressed, and a far wider spectrum of Iraqis is not included in the political process, violence will increase rather than diminish.

The options available today are few and bad, a measure of the staggering misjudgements that have plagued U.S. post-war management from the start, and there is no guarantee that even these steps can stem Iraq's descent toward instability and civil war. Nor is there any guarantee that this approach will find takers. The Bush administration may resist yielding ultimate control over developments in Iraq just when its electoral fortunes may turn on them. With anger spreading and strong-arm military operations in Fallujah, Sadr City and elsewhere likely to generate tomorrow's even stronger-willed insurgency, the UN may baulk at getting dragged into what it once was kept out of, and a growing number of countries may be tempted to follow Spain and leave the Coalition rather than strengthen it.

But a U-turn from a stubborn administration, and engagement from a sceptical international community, may represent the last remaining chance of success.

RECOMMENDATIONS

To the United States, Other Coalition Members and the UN Security Council:

1. Agree as soon as possible to a new Security Council resolution that would vest primary authority and responsibility in a UN Special Representative to advise, assist and oversee the political transition, with powers as here defined.

2. Give the Special Representative, for the period prior to 30 June 2004, the powers to:

(a) appoint a provisional government to hold office until general elections, empowered to conduct day to day administration and, with the advice and assistance of the Special Representative, prepare those elections; and

(B) approve the Annex to the Transitional Administrative Law.

3. Give the Special Representative, for the period after 30 June, the powers to:

(a) convene a National Conference and oversee its election of a Consultative Assembly;

(B) propose a new provisional government in the event that the Consultative Assembly rejects the one initially appointed;

© break any deadlock within government institutions (should the Assembly reject a government decree and, after resubmission in modified form, reject it again);

(d) reject any decisions of the provisional government which exceed its caretaker mandate; and

(e) assist Iraqi authorities to organise elections in January 2005 (including elections to the National Assembly, and regional elections in Iraqi Kurdistan to the Kurdistan National Assembly, and local elections).

4. Renew authorisation for a multinational force led by the U.S., whose mandate would expire upon the establishment of an elected government but which could then remain should that government so request, and encourage member states to contribute to the multinational force and provide adequate security for a UN presence.

5. Limit the mandate of the multinational force by requiring it to consult with and have the approval of the provisional government for major offensive operations, while leaving to the military command sole responsibility for operational matters involving force protection and responses dictated by immediate events.

To the (Newly Appointed) United Nations Special Representative:

6. On or before 30 June 2004, after consultation with a broad range of Iraqis, appoint a provisional government whose members are non-partisan and technocratic, with choices made on the basis of competence rather than sectarian or ethnic affiliation, and avoiding as much as possible current members of the Interim Governing Council when appointing the prime minister, president, and vice presidents.

7. Oversee the convening of a broadly based and inclusive National Conference that would aim at including all components of Iraqi society that pledge to work together for the common goal of managing the transitional period until the general elections, building a democratic Iraq and forswearing violence; and that would elect a Consultative Assembly.

8. Consult broadly and transparently in the process of putting together the National Conference in coordination with a preparatory committee, taking into account the need to:

(a) include Iraqis who have been excluded and have expressed their opposition to the occupation, such as religious and tribal Sunni Arab leaders, former Baathists and the Shiite urban underclass to whom Moqtada al-Sadr appeals; and

(B) build on the fledgling local structures established by the Coalition Provisional Authority at the municipal and governorate levels and to give adequate weight to grass-roots forces, above all business and professional and trade associations, as well as other civil society representatives such as human rights and women's movements.

9. Make clear that the Transitional Administrative Law is an interim document governing the transitional period only; should members of the National Conference want to amend it, the UN Special Representative would make the final decision, taking into account the degree of consensus, the impact on Iraq's stability and the high presumption against amendment.

10. Facilitate the establishment of the Consultative Assembly elected by the National Conference, whose powers would include:

(a) endorsing the composition of the provisional government (should the vote be negative, the UN Special Representative would be charged with nominating an alternative government and submitting this for Assembly approval); and

(B) rejecting decrees of the caretaker government (should it vote against a decree, the government would have the opportunity to submit it in amended form; should it again be rejected, the UN Special Representative would break the deadlock as he or she sees fit).

To All Iraqi Political Actors:

11. Accept the Transitional Administrative Law as an explicitly interim document governing the transitional period only, and make a public pledge to abide by it during this period; contemplate amendments to it only if there is a broad consensus among all constituencies.

Baghdad/Brussels, 27 April 2004

__________________

PalestineOne

05-03-2004, 02:14 AM

^^^ damn you talk allot

8onus

05-03-2004, 02:47 AM

This is my take:

"GEORGE BUSH LIED ABOUT SADAM HAVING WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION"

SADAM lied, not bush, he told his generals(who were the ones feeding us our intelligence), that he had wepons of mass destruction to get their spirits up and keep them believing in him as a leader. that lie came back to our intelligence and in we went.

OH YEAH AND HERE'S WHAT REALLY TWISTS MY SACK: when people say that the US would not reveal the source of their intelligence because they had none and lied to get to iraq's oil....BULLSHIT!

1. anyone who know anything about intelligence knows that when you reveal the source, you LOOSE IT. and we needed those sources badly.

2. IT IS REDICULOUSLY CHEAPER TO BUY OIL, THAN TO START A WAR AND STEAL IT.

I passed by the anti war protest last march 2003, and most of the people there were just liberal volkswankers who wanted an opportunity to dump on bush, i dont like the bush either, but i wanted to fuck clap every mother fucker there.

villain

05-03-2004, 03:08 AM

Originally posted by 8onus

2. IT IS REDICULOUSLY CHEAPER TO BUY OIL, THAN TO START A WAR AND STEAL IT.

Wrong. It's expensive for the government. It's free for Bush and Halliburton. Bush doesn't give a fuck about the government and it's debt. This is like the most extreme republican shit i've probably ever seen in my life.

8onus

05-03-2004, 03:15 AM

guilty as fucking charged,

^^^that shit is ignorant, if you think bush would really do all this for halliburton and bp and all them, your conspiracy theory idea belongs in hollywood.

besides, bush is too dumb to pull that shit off.

bush is not a republican, but he likes to think he is.

villain

05-03-2004, 03:20 AM

Originally posted by 8onus
guilty as fucking charged,

^^^that shit is ignorant, if you think bush would really do all this for halliburton and bp and all them, your conspiracy theory idea belongs in hollywood.

besides, bush is too dumb to pull that shit off.

bush is not a republican, but he likes to think he is.

Bush might be dumb but not the people he's catering to and his elitist buddies. His dad was former chief of the CIA for crying out loud.

I'm sorry but you're argument is not well grounded. I have posted pages upon pages of facts to support my position and you are saying that 1) bush is not evil enough to do this and 2) bush is too dumb to do this. I'm sorry this will not hold up in my court.

8onus

05-03-2004, 03:43 AM

Originally posted by villain
Bush might be dumb but not the people he's catering to and his elitist buddies. His dad was former chief of the CIA for crying out loud.

I'm sorry but you're argument is not well grounded. I have posted pages upon pages of facts to support my position and you are saying that 1) bush is not evil enough to do this and 2) bush is too dumb to do this. I'm sorry this will not hold up in my court.

1. the newly set iragi oil board has NO us officials on it. no US control of the oil

2. there are no us board members beacuse the US failed to form an advisory to the baord,I THINK IF THIS WAR WAS ABOUT OIL, THEY WOULD HAVE BEEN RIGHT ON TOP OF THAT.

2. Royal dutch and Total have been givin the first contracts(which are still in negotiation), to the oil. THESE ARE NOT US COMPANIES
neither bush nor his administration have any connections to these companies either.
chenny was connected to halliburton and rice was connected to chevron, all competitors of these these companies.

3.HITLER was evil, bush is just a doushe.

you shoud read this:
"The connection between the war on Iraq and the desire for oil raises an important ideological consideration. Millions of college students are taught the Leninist idea that capitalist economies are inherently imperialistic. This is supposedly because exploitation exhausts capital values in the domestic economy, and hence capital owners must relentlessly seek to replenish their funds through grabbing foreign resources. It takes war to avoid the final crisis of capitalism, in this view.

College students might be forgiven for thinking there is some basis for this in the real world. In American history up to the present day, the onset of war tends to track the onset of economic doldrums. Might war be just the ticket to revive a moribund capitalist class? Recall that it was then-secretary of state James Baker who said the first Iraq war was all about "jobs, jobs, jobs." The line between the owners of capital and the warfare state has never been that clean in American history, and it has arguably never been as conspicuously blurred as it is today. "
-by lew rockwell

villain

05-03-2004, 04:00 AM

Originally posted by 8onus
1. the newly set iragi oil board has NO us officials on it. no US control of the oil

2. there are no us board members beacuse the US failed to form an advisory to the baord,I THINK IF THIS WAR WAS ABOUT OIL, THEY WOULD HAVE BEEN RIGHT ON TOP OF THAT.

2. Royal dutch and Total have been givin the first contracts(which are still in negotiation), to the oil. THESE ARE NOT US COMPANIES
neither bush nor his administration have any connections to these companies either.
chenny was connected to halliburton and rice was connected to chevron, all competitors of these these companies.

3.HITLER was evil, bush is just a doushe.

you shoud read this:
"The connection between the war on Iraq and the desire for oil raises an important ideological consideration. Millions of college students are taught the Leninist idea that capitalist economies are inherently imperialistic. This is supposedly because exploitation exhausts capital values in the domestic economy, and hence capital owners must relentlessly seek to replenish their funds through grabbing foreign resources. It takes war to avoid the final crisis of capitalism, in this view.

College students might be forgiven for thinking there is some basis for this in the real world. In American history up to the present day, the onset of war tends to track the onset of economic doldrums. Might war be just the ticket to revive a moribund capitalist class? Recall that it was then-secretary of state James Baker who said the first Iraq war was all about "jobs, jobs, jobs." The line between the owners of capital and the warfare state has never been that clean in American history, and it has arguably never been as conspicuously blurred as it is today. "
-by lew rockwell

Now you are bringing something to the table! However I don't know where you're resources are I'm going to take your word for it since I will probably hear more about this in the future. Why royal dutch and total? I don't know. Shouldn't the iraqi's decide who they are going to sell their oil to?

These quotes are from old articles but I'm trying to exemplify the complexity of the oil dealings. Surely it was never ALL going to Halliburton. And France had contracts with Iraq before we went to war. It could be make up time for all we know.

'The hidden stakes in the war against terrorism can be summed up in a single word: oil. The map of terrorist sanctuaries and targets in the Middle East and Central Asia is also, to an extraordinary degree, a map of the world's principal energy sources in the 21st century.... It is inevitable that the war against terrorism will be seen by many as a war on behalf of America's Chevron, Exxon, and Arco; France's TotalFinaElf; British Petroleum; Royal Dutch Shell and other multinational giants, which have hundreds of billions of dollars of investment in the region.''

"Among today’s transnational corporations, the modern day heirs of the colonial chartered corporations, the oil and gas giants are some of the most politically and economically powerful players in the world. The ancestor of the Royal-Dutch Shell group was 'Royal Dutch Company for the Exploitation of Petroleum Wells in the Netherlands East Indies'. With so much of the world’s economy dependent on oil, the colonial exploitation and genocide continues, on an unprecedented scale. The lyrics may have changed a little, but the tune remains much the same."

"BP and Shell will each send one very large tanker every month to Iraq to pick up their two million barrels. Among the other companies that have signed deals to buy the oil are ConocoPhillips, Valero Energy and Marathon Oil, Total of France, Sinochem of China and a company from the Mitsubishi group, which is buying for Japanese refineries."

This could also support my theory that power is shifting to europe.

villain

05-03-2004, 04:06 AM

According to this (http://www.iraqrevenuewatch.org/reports/041904.shtml) it could be because Bush and the Cronies are finally getting in trouble!

8onus

05-03-2004, 04:12 AM

Originally posted by villain
According to this (http://www.iraqrevenuewatch.org/reports/041904.shtml) it could be because Bush and the Cronies are finally getting in trouble!

haha, i love that first thing u posted there, i actually made a mistake, BP isn't a US company, and neither is shell.
i say fuck i raq i got too many close friends in FOULuja,

IT BOILS DOWN TO: iraq hates bush, the US hates bush, and the oil companies REALLY HATE BUSH, .....bad day for the bush.

i'm gonna go change my major now, fuck recording arts, ima be the next cochran.

SWIMS

05-03-2004, 04:20 AM

Originally posted by 8onus
This is my take:

2. IT IS REDICULOUSLY CHEAPER TO BUY OIL, THAN TO START A WAR AND STEAL IT.

Since the discovery of the vast oil fields in Iraq, euro/american interests have always acted to stop the develoment of the fields. Since the british occupation after ww1 the fields bacame an asset that could be held onto, much like the reserves in the US that are left idle, as long as the our (euro/american) influence in the region was strong enough to enforce this.During the cold war Russian and French contractors began assisting the development of the fields, especially in the south where british interests were extracting from the same field, only across the border in kuwait. This is one of the major problems today, the soviet hardware is obsolete requireing a complete re-construction of the industry. On a monetary level the cost of the war is a major factor in the taxapyers eyes, but politicaly the fields are now under our direct influence, which means 1) we have a monopoly on the reconstuction. 2) we control the level of production which can be used to satbilize our own oil economy and act to upset OPEC in a similar way that saddam did by overproducing and driving down the prices (althought kuwait got them back for that one).
Now we don't have to steal it because we own it. As our companies rebuild the oil economy, Iraqis get to pay off the debt we created for them. And we can controll how this happens, and no matter what UN or NATO army descends upon Baghdad we will still have a monopoly on our oil fields. We hedged a bet on hell of a game of war, and a forien force now controlls baghdad by military means again, and the fragile social construct that holds it all together is not being balanced, but is bieng wheighed to one side in favor of economic and political gains just as it has been for over 6 centuries. Civil War is brewing and anarchy is everpresent, but we have a monopoly on the oil so in our nations political culture were doin alright.
-The idea of peace in the middle east seems more distant than ever and our level of understanding for the region falls far below our level of involvment. The mass perception of the situation is so transparent that it is very hard to understand what is going on based on the information provided in the mass media and public conversation.
-Educate Yourself_
-http://www.iwpr.net/index.pl?iraq_ipm_index.html
+for your trip
-http://html.wnbc.com/sh/idi/news/iraq/maps/iraqmaps-baghdad.inc

villain

05-03-2004, 04:32 AM

^^^^^^^^^on point

8onus

05-03-2004, 04:42 AM

first off.
i don't need a god damn history lesson.

second. give me facts!!!
what you gave me links to were intitutions and media reports, who bend the truth like a mother fucker,

look beyond "msnbc" for once in your life.
go find me facts to back up you opinion which isn't quite clear to begin with.

fuck it i'll humor you.

1. we dont own those feilds. i raq owns them!

and since you dont seem to grasp this i will help.

THERE ARE SEPERATE BOARDS WITH IN THE COMMITY FOR THE RECONSTRUCTION, THE OIL BOARD HAS NO US OFFICIALS.
(didn't i already go over this when me and villian we're fighting? :confused: )

and since you wanna bring OPEC into this....you should check thier website.
http://www.opec.org/Member_Counrties/Iraq/HOD.htm

2. if you watched the press confrence a while ago, congress is passing a bill to GIVE I REPEAT GIVE 84 billion dollars to iraq for thier reconstruction so NO WE WONT BE MAKING THEM PAY FOR IT. and whats left they will be paying from thier oil revenue.
which will be very abundant.

3.GET EDUCATED? :lol: don't fuck with a goverment son on a mountain dew binge.
there....now You're educated.

8onus

05-03-2004, 05:02 AM

[img]http://www.comedycentral.com/gallery/chappellesshow/images/cs_seas2pics_11.jpg'>

PalestineOne

05-03-2004, 06:41 AM

^^^ thats Michael Jackson in his early 20s

BROWNer

05-03-2004, 12:25 PM

whoa! i guess the war really was about
liberating the iraqi's and bringing down saddam!

PalestineOne

05-03-2004, 01:12 PM

^^ and weapons of mass destruction, dont forget that

PalestineOne

05-03-2004, 01:12 PM

and 9/11 was Iraq too

villain

05-03-2004, 07:36 PM

Originally posted by 8onus
first off.
i don't need a god damn history lesson.

second. give me facts!!!
what you gave me links to were intitutions and media reports, who bend the truth like a mother fucker,

look beyond "msnbc" for once in your life.
go find me facts to back up you opinion which isn't quite clear to begin with.

fuck it i'll humor you.

1. we dont own those feilds. i raq owns them!

and since you dont seem to grasp this i will help.

THERE ARE SEPERATE BOARDS WITH IN THE COMMITY FOR THE RECONSTRUCTION, THE OIL BOARD HAS NO US OFFICIALS.
(didn't i already go over this when me and villian we're fighting? :confused: )

and since you wanna bring OPEC into this....you should check thier website.
http://www.opec.org/Member_Counrties/Iraq/HOD.htm

2. if you watched the press confrence a while ago, congress is passing a bill to GIVE I REPEAT GIVE 84 billion dollars to iraq for thier reconstruction so NO WE WONT BE MAKING THEM PAY FOR IT. and whats left they will be paying from thier oil revenue.
which will be very abundant.

3.GET EDUCATED? :lol: don't fuck with a goverment son on a mountain dew binge.
there....now You're educated.

Giving the US a clean break from Iraq is a great political move. I wonder who came up with this one? Carl Rove? I guess they must be trying to bring Bush's approval rating up. Especially after all this torture scandal.
So why are these companies (Royal Dutch and Total) bidding on Iraqi oil again?

And with the door open to companies such as Exxon Mobil Corp. of Irving, Texas, and Royal Dutch/Shell Group of London, the losers could be the French, Russian and Chinese oil companies that have either signed contracts or negotiated preliminary agreements to drill in Iraq.

That the three countries wield veto power in the U.N. Security Council is widely believed by industry experts and U.S. officials to be one reason their companies received favorable treatment in Baghdad, although Hussein's government also has negotiated with companies from at least two dozen other countries.

The company with perhaps the most at stake is Paris-based TotalFinaElf, which in recent years negotiated, but never signed, agreements to develop two of Iraq's largest oil fields, Majnoon and Nahr Bin Omar. The contracts, valued at $7 billion, could ultimately double Total's oil reserves and boost its production by 400,000 barrels a day.

Total CEO Thierry Desmarest declared last month that he was not about to cede the field to U.S. and British rivals. Desmarest acknowledged that France's opposition to a likely war could make Total's standing in Iraq "more complicated," but he expressed confidence the company could land new contracts if allowed to engage in good-faith negotiations.

Well it looks like according to this it's kissy make up time with Frenchy wenchy. And of course we are going to give Royal Dutch/Shell a cut because the British have helped us out with sooooo much. Troops and alleged yellow cake uranium purchases.... I guess some concessions were due to be made. And we are still going to be supervising the Iraqi government. We don't NEED iraqs oil. We just need to make sure it doesn't put us at a disadvantage. And why are you so offensive asshole? I have trouble reading past insults.

mental invalid

05-03-2004, 07:42 PM

bravo PR blunder on the flag georgie boy....

i mean can these people get a fucking clue already...

!@#$%

05-03-2004, 07:56 PM

misspellings take all the fire out of an argument
i just can't take you seriously if you can't spell "fields"

from FORBES (a BUSINESS magazine, not a POLITICAL one)

Financing problems deal another blow to Iraq oil
Reuters, 04.30.04, 8:24 AM ET

By Khaled Yacoub Oweis
BAGHDAD, April 30 (Reuters) - Iraq has lost the only short-term option to finance oil projects by scrapping a $1.4 billion borrowing plan, raising more doubt about its ability to sustain output, industry insiders said on Friday.
The occupied country has quietly rejected the debt offer from a U.S.-led banking consortium, which involved mortgaging oil exports, as consensus is lacking on how to invite foreign companies and political instability discourages investment.
"It was a good borrowing plan, based on technical needs and lacking the political interference we usually experience in Iraq," a well-connected Western oil executive told Reuters.
"They basically had no other option. Foreign investors will not come and invest in oil field development until there is an energy law they could rely on," he added.
Iraq needs to finance dozens of projects designed to help double production to five million barrels per day in the next five years. The plans include setting up a national oil company to run the sector as a new government works out how to invite foreign investment without compromising national ownership.
Iraq's oil revenue is under U.S. control and will remain so until a "representative" government is in place as stipulated by a U.N. resolution last year. Most of the oil revenue in the 2004 budget was spent on paying government salaries so far.
The oil sector has been facing production problems since the 1990 crippling economic embargo. Postwar looting and sabotage compounded the problem.
Private engineers say problems abound, including more wells becoming unusable from lack of maintenance and power to inject water. Crude oil pumping capacity is also weak.
The postwar oil ministry has unveiled a number of projects, including pipelines and new wells, but none has been implemented due to the absence of financing.
The tenders helped convince international companies to set up operations in Iraq. They now say lack of project funding and worsening security is making Iraq unattractive.
"Our frustration is growing. Oil officials are telling us to wait for a new government to see how these projects will be financed," said one oil services executive.
"The decision we have to make now is whether to pull out from Iraq, after opening here and waiting for a year for nothing," he added.
It remains unclear why the borrowing plan was scrapped after it won support from key politicians, including Ahmad Chalabi, who heads the Governing Council's finance committee
Although the consortium included a U.S. government agency, U.S. oil officials in Baghdad opposed the deal, saying it was too costly.
The plan's supporters said nationalist sentiment against selling state assets and lack of direct U.S. funding left Iraq with little choice except borrowing.
Council member Naseer al-Chaderji said the ministry had not put the borrowing plan to the full council and he was not aware of plans to do so.
The ministry's funding is separate from U.S. oil projects in Iraq. Most of the $2 billion the United States spent so far was for repairing oil infrastructure and importing oil products -- contracts that mostly went to Texas-based Halliburton (nyse: HAL - news - people).
Copyright 2004, Reuters News Service

.wake up.

SWIMS

05-03-2004, 08:31 PM

Originally posted by !@#$%-misspellings take all the fire out of an argument i just can't take you seriously if you can't spell "fields"

-I have a minor form of dyslexia and a pretty heavy LD that makes it hard for me explain my opinions in simple clear terms. Disregard the misspeling and poor WC and hear what I got to say.

:confused:
To 8onus, a history lesson is exactly what you need. The region was under the controll of the Ottomans from 16-20 century. During which time the modern state was formed under a system of patronage that allowed limited self government as long as it stayed in line with the foriegn rulers, who legitimized their power with the overwhelming military. Some of the most revered heros in Iraqi culture were the leaders of the revolutions against the Ottomans, and more recently the British. There is a thin net containing the limitless combination of factions and ideals that make up Iraqi society, and it has kept the region from descednding into the deepest levels of social anarchy. Manipulating this local identity, outside interests have influenced the ties to empower certian groups over others in favor of economic and political gains. A ruling class has kept itself established for almost 600 years, and in order to acheive our (american/british) our economic goals in the region we will continue to use the est. ruling class as a stabalizing force by supporting it's continued prominence in political, social, and economic matters.

villain

05-03-2004, 08:47 PM

Thanks for clarifying this y'all. I found it unlikely that things would all of a sudden be a bed of roses after june 30th. With what 6anus was posting (I don't know where his info came from) I had thought maybe Bush was trying to buy favor with the UN by honoring negotiations made during the sanctions. But it looks like Halliburton is going to continue soaking up emergency relief funds.

!@#$%

05-03-2004, 08:59 PM

Originally posted by SWIMS

-I have a minor form of dyslexia and a pretty heavy LD that makes it hard for me explain my opinions in simple clear terms. Disregard the misspeling and poor WC and hear what I got to say.
.

ok. point taken..i apologize.
that comment was directed at 8onus, so you know.

anyway, an excellent book on "the creation of the modern middle east" is

A Peace to End All Peace
[img]http://images.amazon.com/images/P/0805068848.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg'>

good book.

SWIMS

05-03-2004, 10:14 PM

some other sites on the Mid-East
-www.juancole.com-history prof. @ Michican, collection of articles
-http://www.riverbendblog.blogspot.com-blog on the subject, w/ many links
-www.dear_raed.blogspot.com-another forum

Books
- Said k. Aburish - Saddam Hussein politics of revenge - Chronicles his life in great detail, and explains the political/social climate. Very fact based w/o the heavy anti or pro bias that is found in most biographies.
- Inventing Iraq: The Failure of Nation Building and a History Denied by: Dodge Toby This book compares the present american efforts to the British mandate after WWI.
- Guests of the Sheik: An Ethnography of an Iraqi village by Elizabeth Fernea Woman lived in a rural southern Shiite village during the 50s while her husband did research. She lived entirly with the women and leaned their customs. This book taught me alot about traditional Islam, and the lives the women involved live.

-!@#$% are you a chef?

!@#$%

05-03-2004, 10:22 PM

no longer professionally
although i did it for about 7 years

Poop Man Bob

05-03-2004, 11:24 PM

Josh Marshall drops some knowledge, TPM (http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2004_05_02.php#002906) style:

One of the things I've found difficult about writing about Iraq in recent days is imputing some level of seriousness to the arguments of the president and his retainers who continue to press an optimistic view of what's happening in Iraq. From them, on any given day, you can still hear the argument that, notwithstanding some tough days, things are still getting better in Iraq and the key to success is sticking with it.

At the same time, I talk to, or have conversations related to me with, various foreign policy, intelligence and military experts, all of whom --- across the political spectrum --- seem to believe that things are about as bleak as they can be. On top of this, they they seem uniform in the belief -- sometimes based on inference, other times based on direct knowledge -- that the White House is fresh out of ideas about what to do, and basically hasn't any idea how to proceed.

Either the president knows the situation is that bad or he (and perhaps his advisors too) is just too out of touch to have any idea what's happening. Increasingly, I think that the president is just too small-minded and vainglorious a man to come to grips with the situation.

A strong president, a good president, would put his country before his pride and throw himself into saving the situation even if it meant admitting previous mistakes and ditching past policies and advisors. But I don't think this president has the character to do that.

Making a clean sweep, firing some of his most compromised advisors, admitting some past mistakes -- not for effect, but so that those mistakes could be more thoroughly and rapidly overcome -- might well doom the president politically. But I doubt there's any question they'd be in the best interests of the country.

This president seems either disinclined to or unable to do more than preside over a drift into disaster while putting on a game face.

(Kevin Drum has an excellent post today (http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2004_05/003829.php) on President Bush as the prototypical bad CEO -- Here's a snippet: "Bush styles himself a 'CEO president,' but the world is full to bursting with CEOs who have goals they would dearly love to attain but who lack either the skill or the fortitude to make them happen. They assign tasks to subordinates without making sure the subordinates are capable of doing them — but then consider the job done anyway because they've "delegated" it. They insist they want a realistic plan, but they're unwilling to do the hard work of creating one — all those market research reports are just a bunch of ivory tower nonsense anyway. They work hard — but only on subjects in their comfort zone.")

There's all this talk about what might be the best critique of the president's policies (politically and substantively), what the best alternative policies might be, and so forth. But all of that, I think, misses the point. This president is too compromised by his deceptions, his past lack of accountability and his acquiescence in failed policies, ever to correct the situation. Like C.S. Lewis's metaphor about the road to hell being easy to walk down, but the further walked, harder and harder to turn back upon, this president is just too far gone with misleading the public, covering up and indulging incompetence, and embracing venality ever to make a clean break and start retrieving the situation.

SWIMS

05-05-2004, 06:55 PM

I got a job last summer as a chef and have been learning while I go to school. Good peoples for the most part, I live in New Orleans now so the late night scedule has led to some interesting conversations.
-see the photos from the prison, fucked up, we (americans) seem to be repeatadly shooting ourselves in the foot. Warplanes bombing mosqes(sp?), prisoners being tortured, re-enstating Ba'athist generals. What the hell are we thinking. The piece below this does alot ion the the form of progressive thought on the subject, but it seems that things will continue on their downward spiroll until a new govt. is voted in.(sp. is all fucked up I just ended my may 5th celebebration.....)

seeking

05-05-2004, 07:25 PM

there are 56 billion reasons why bush would want to report finding chemical weapons, and ZERO reasons why he would not.
so then, even without any information to refute it, common sense dictates that the likelyhood of it being true, is running at very low levels.

if bush actually came out with proof that they did infact have a vast network of hidden labs, torture chambers and amo depots, his approval rating would instantly skyrocket. infact, the fact that it took us so long to find, could be spun into some maniacle tale about how intent saddam was on his evil doings. anyone can grow some poppy plants in their backyard and try to make opium, not everyone can dig a whole bunker under their house to create an opium factory, naw'mean.

so there, now that that's settled, let's go back to human pyramids and electroclash box dancing.

seeks/insha allah

Overtime

05-05-2004, 07:29 PM

this dosent make a new page...

Dick Quickwood

05-07-2004, 08:30 PM

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/latimests/20040507/ts_latimes/oregonattorneyarrestedoverpossibletietospainbombin gs&e=5]Oregon (http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/morefrom/story/headlines/*[url) attorney arrested in connection with Spain train bombing [/url]

what in the fuck is going on?

BROWNer

05-07-2004, 08:40 PM

your link flubbed..

RubbeRBand

05-07-2004, 08:53 PM

what's up ya'll
yo check it out they FBI fucked up the Oklahoma city bombing, Terry Nichols was not the only accomplice, we are talking major conspiracy here, the FBI is implicit in it.

and anybody heard Rumsfeld talk to Congress today? I wanna see clips, it's that same old shit though, this bush administration,

hey, let's just leave let's just die...

villain

05-07-2004, 09:06 PM

Originally posted by RubbeRBand
what's up ya'll
yo check it out they FBI fucked up the Oklahoma city bombing, Terry Nichols was not the only accomplice, we are talking major conspiracy here, the FBI is implicit in it.

and anybody heard Rumsfeld talk to Congress today? I wanna see clips, it's that same old shit though, this bush administration,

hey, let's just leave let's just die...

From what I heard of Rumsfeld's statement it sounds like he is blaming the people that exposed this. He has no honor.

HYDRO BILL

05-08-2004, 11:27 AM

I am in Japan so we are 16+ hours ahead. I watched most of it live and his lies were forcing him deeper and deeper. He was sweating and nervous, and it was all broadcast live on all 3 Iraqi television stations. My favorite moment was when he told the comittee he left the files behind that would help him clarify the chain of command. Why didn`t he just say his dog ate it?
I love Americans, I hate American politicians.

Nekro

05-08-2004, 03:08 PM

The idea behind making rumsfeld apologize is to set his ass up for the fall, then not fire him so bush can be a loyal guy.

Watch fox news in the morning, it's got all the inside information.

S@T@N

05-08-2004, 05:04 PM

Every part of Fox networks can suck me. I don't watch or believe anything
related to them.

TheoHuxtable

05-09-2004, 01:45 PM

Below is a firsthand sit rep (military for situation report) from the lap top of Marine 1Sgt Bill Skilles while his battalion was involved in last month's siege of Fallujah, Iraq's most hostile city towards coalition forces:

----------------------------------------------------------------------
FALLUJAH

first hand Sit Rep from the lap top of 1Sgt Bill Skiles in Fullujah. Echo Company, 2nd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment, is in the thick of combat against the bad guys. The 1Sgt speaks of "extreme prejudice and violent action!"
I'm back and here we go..Now for an update.....Currently Co. "E" 2/1 has 40 wounded and 3 KIA's.....wild huh?...mostly small shrapnel and eardrums, but had a Marine lose an arm and 1,a leg ...This place is too messed up to explain...We have been living in the northwest of Fallujah for 3 weeks now....Actually living in some homes we confiscated...across from us about 300 yards is the downtown area of Fallujah...We are shot at every night. We are mortared a lot as well...We always are firing back with our snipers and/or machine guns....It's almost surreal..We could be playing cards..we hear gunshots and booms..we keep playing....no big deal...Today, I have
to tell you about TODAY and our gun battle. We started receiving sniper fire from this Mosque/ tower...then some badguys threw grenades at our pos. on our roofs...Marines got wounded and Marines fought these $%^%$ close in. Frags were thrown and massive 5.56 was used in close prox. Anyway, my main job is causalities evacuation and accountability...So, hearing I have wounded, I jump in my hardened high back with my company corpsman and 4 security guys and rush to the scene...I've never been shot at so much in my life....During the medivac, AK's were firing at us 10 yards away....I would fire my M-16 with one hand while I was running back and forth....OH MY GOD>>> I think Carl Lewis would be proud of my speed getting these boys loaded up.Anyway, 8 wounded today, 1 died....I actually broke down and had the chaplain say a prayer while I hugged this guys head....He was a good Marine.....I am back in the rear tonight to rest my hurt back and rest my %^%$# brain....NEVER have I had so much blood around me....But you know what, PAYBACK is just around the %$#@# corner and I WILL not falter. I WILL get these boys ready to show no mercy and rid this town of this CANCER. Extreme prejudice and violence of action....I really have nothing intelligent to say...Just numb....I take these boys too personal sometimes.....We ARE the purple Heart Company..152 strength, 40 WIA, 3 KIA...1/3 of the company with 5 months to go...H@ll YEAH>>>>> God Bless our Corpsman and our Chaplains...They make a big difference out here....and God Bless Marine Corps fixed wing, Rotary gunships, artillery, mortars, machine guns and Iraqi body bags....
Out for now...
1st Sgt Bill Skiles

TheoHuxtable

05-17-2004, 08:25 AM

Bomb Kills Head of Iraq Governing Council

11 minutes ago

By CHRISTOPHER TORCHIA, Associated Press Writer

BAGHDAD, Iraq - The head of the Iraqi Governing Council was killed Monday in a car bombing near a U.S. checkpoint in central Baghdad, Iraqi officials said. The killing was the second of a member of the U.S.-appointed council since last year and dealt a blow to U.S. efforts to stabilize Iraq ahead of a handover of sovereignty on June 30.

Abdel-Zahraa Othman, also known as Izzadine Saleem, was among four Iraqis killed in the blast, according to Redha Jawad Taki, a member of the Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, a Shiite Muslim organization.

As the current council president, a rotating position, he was the highest-ranking Iraqi official killed during the U.S.-run occupation. His death occurred about six weeks before the United States plans to transfer power to Iraqis on June 30 and underscores the risks facing those perceived as owing their positions to the Americans.

Saleem, the name he went by most frequently, was a Shiite and leader of the Islamic Dawa Movement in the southern city of Basra. He was a writer, philosopher and political activist, who served as editor of several newspapers and magazines. The position of council head rotates monthly.

Six Iraqis and two U.S. soldiers were injured in the bombing near the coalition headquarters, which is called the Green Zone, U.S. Army Col. Mike Murray said. Three cars waiting in line to enter the headquarters were destroyed.

Smoke rose from the site of the blast on the west side of the Tigris River. Firefighters and about 10 ambulances raced to the scene.

Saleem was in a convoy of five vehicles, and the car carrying the bomb was adjacent to the council chief's car when it exploded, said witness Mohammed Laith. He said Saleem's driver and assistant were among those killed.

Coalition officials said they could not confirm Saleem's death, but released a statement that read: "Due to unforeseen and tragic events, the football game scheduled for Monday afternoon between the coalition press officers and Iraqi media will be postponed until further notice."

Saleem was the second member of the Governing Council to be assassinated since the group was established last July.

Aquila al-Hashimi, one of three women on the 25-member body, was mortally wounded Sept. 20 when gunmen in a pickup truck ambushed her car as she drove near her Baghdad home. She died five days later.

Meanwhile, fighting persisted the Shiite heartland in southern Iraq, where American jets bombed militia positions in the city of Nasiriyah early Monday after fighters loyal to radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr drove Italian forces out of a base there. Residents said seven fighters were killed in overnight battles.

An Italian soldier on Monday died of wounds suffered during an attack on the base of the Carabinieri paramilitary police the day before in Nasiriyah, the Defense Ministry in Rome said.

The Italian troops in Nasiriyah have been under attack for three days. At least nine others were injured in the clashes with armed supporters of the al-Sadr, who launched an uprising against the coalition last month and faces an arrest warrant in the killing of a rival moderate cleric last year.

The soldier was the 20th Italian to die in Iraq, after a suicide truck bomb in Nasiriyah killed 19 on Nov. 12.

Despite the overnight bombing, militiamen were in control of some government buildings in Nasiriyah, and some people were taking advantage of the chaos to loot cars, residents said.

The Italian troops evacuated their base on Sunday as it came under repeated attack. Portuguese police were called out to support the Italians, their first action since the force of 128 deployed to Nasiriyah in November, a Portuguese duty officer said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The Italians relocated to the nearby Tallil air base.

Also in Nasiriyah, a convoy transporting the Italian official in charge of the city, Barbara Contini, came under attack Sunday as it neared the headquarters of the Coalition Provisional Authority, Perrone said. Two Italian paramilitary police were wounded.

There were intermittent blasts and gunfire overnight in Najaf, another southern city where al-Sadr supporters and American forces have fought in recent days. The new U.S.-appointed governor of Najaf, Adnan al-Zurufi, said Monday that unidentified assailants killed his uncle, Kadhim Abbas al-Zurufi.

Amid the ongoing violence, the United States is looking to move some of its 37,000 U.S. troops stationed in South Korea to bolster forces in Iraq, South Korean and U.S. officials said.

"The U.S. government has told us that it needs to select some U.S. troops in South Korea and send them to Iraq to cope with the worsening situation in Iraq," said Kim Sook, head of the South Korean Foreign Ministry's North American Bureau.

A senior U.S. defense official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said any shift in troops from South Korea would be part of the next rotation of American troops in Iraq, set to begin late this summer.

Tapping into the U.S. military force in Korea would be an historic move by the Pentagon, underscoring the degree to which the military is stretched to provide enough forces for Iraq while meeting its other commitments

The coalition, which has fought al-Sadr's militiamen in Baghdad and several southern cities in the past week, is struggling to disband the cleric's army and sideline its radical leadership before handing power to a new Iraqi government.

imported_El Mamerro

06-08-2004, 10:24 PM

So, the new rage among my friends is investing in Iraqi dinars. On eBay.

I'm pretty much the only one not particularly convinced of the wisdom of their investments. Thoughts?

villain

06-08-2004, 10:37 PM

Eh... I dunno really. They are probably going to change all the money cause they don't want Saddams face on it and shit.... So it would become a collectors item I suppose.
As far as the actual value of the money??? Supposedly the economy will be growing so expect inflation.

heavyLox

06-08-2004, 10:38 PM

so i was gonna be a wise ass and say you misspelled diner, then i thought how dumb it would be to invest in iraqi dinars so i did a lil search.

still not sure how to invest in it. but ill find out.

this is what i found:

To suspicious minds, at least one of the reasons for the hostilities in Iraq was the fact that the U.S. dollar has become a second-fiddle currency to the Euro, at least when it comes to oil-producing countries accepting payment for petroleum. A stronger U.S. military presence in the Middle East supposedly would put a stop to that nonsense. But unlike the mid-and-late 1980s and 1990s, when the dollar was the de facto world currency, the dollar seems to have run out of steam.

American authorities, not surprisingly, have tried to put the best spin on this turn of events. Iraqis are patriotic, we hear, tending to gravitate toward national pride. Perhaps so, but it would seem that the reasons are deeper and more complex than just Iraqi patriotism. After all, if Iraqis truly believed that the dollar was the better deal for them, they would be more likely to swallow hard and accept the greenback. Devotion to a dead tyrant does not seem to be reason enough for people to risk their life savings.

The dinar rose because it still worked to facilitate exchange, and, without a central bank, it was suddenly protected from inflationary pressures. The dollar, meanwhile, was circulating in ever growing quantities, and the Federal Reserve always stands ready to print more.

And there's a larger issue too: the dollar's decline in Iraq is a microcosm of a larger but more troubling issue, one that the White House and the Federal Reserve System cannot spin away with its political happy talk or pretend does not exist. Both the U.S. economy and the dollar are in trouble, and their difficulties are intertwined with each other.
taken from: dollar or the dinar (http://www.mises.org/fullstory.asp?control=1217)

imported_El Mamerro

06-08-2004, 11:13 PM

By the way, I'm talking about newly minted dinars, not the ones with Saddam on them. Those are worthless now, being traded out of existence by citizens at a 1:1 ratio with the new ones. It kinda seems like that article talks about the fluctuations prior to the new currency, but I'm not sure.... don't know what to make of it.

It does however, suggest that shit is a lot more complex than what my friends (and online traders) claim as if it were super simple: The dinar was worth around $3.20 prior to the war, and now stands at about $0.001. When the economy gets back on track, the value should improve, so even if it goes up to a penny's worth, you gain a 1000% profit.

There's something unbelievably sketchy about the whole thing, and me not being properly educated in international finances, can't make odds or ends of it... but I'm skeptical.

villain

06-09-2004, 01:46 AM

Well still if you convert that back into american dollarinis you got .01$

imported_El Mamerro

06-09-2004, 04:37 AM

Yeah, but that's if you bought one dinar... roughly $100 is worth 100,000 dinars. An increase up to $0.01 per dinar gets you a thousand bucks.

BROWNer

06-09-2004, 07:00 PM

Ex-C.I.A. Aides Say Iraq Leader Helped Agency in 90's Attacks

By JOEL BRINKLEY

WASHINGTON, June 8 "New York Times" -- Iyad Allawi, now the designated prime minister of Iraq, ran an exile organization intent on deposing Saddam Hussein that sent agents into Baghdad in the early 1990's to plant bombs and sabotage government facilities under the direction of the C.I.A., several former intelligence officials say.

Dr. Allawi's group, the Iraqi National Accord, used car bombs and other explosive devices smuggled into Baghdad from northern Iraq, the officials said. Evaluations of the effectiveness of the bombing campaign varied, although the former officials interviewed agreed that it never threatened Saddam Hussein's rule._

No public records of the bombing campaign exist, and the former officials said their recollections were in many cases sketchy, and in some cases contradictory. They could not even recall exactly when it occurred, though the interviews made it clear it was between 1992 and 1995._

The Iraqi government at the time claimed that the bombs, including one it said exploded in a movie theater, resulted in many civilian casualties. But whether the bombings actually killed any civilians could not be confirmed because, as a former C.I.A. official said, the United States had no significant intelligence sources in Iraq then.

One former Central Intelligence Agency officer who was based in the region, Robert Baer, recalled that a bombing during that period "blew up a school bus; schoolchildren were killed." Mr. Baer, a critic of the Iraq war, said he did not recall which resistance group might have set off that bomb.

Other former intelligence officials said Dr. Allawi's organization was the only resistance group involved in bombings and sabotage at that time._

But one former senior intelligence official recalled that "bombs were going off to no great effect."

"I don't recall very much killing of anyone," the official said.

When Dr. Allawi was picked as interim prime minister last week, he said his first priority would be to improve the security situation by stopping bombings and other insurgent attacks in Iraq — an idea several former officials familiar with his past said they found "ironic."

"Send a thief to catch a thief," said Kenneth Pollack, who was an Iran-Iraq military analyst for the C.I.A. during the early 1990's and recalled the sabotage campaign.

Dr. Allawi declined to respond to repeated requests for comment, made Monday and Tuesday through his Washington representative, Patrick N. Theros. The former intelligence officials, while confirming C.I.A. involvement in the bombing campaign, would not say how, exactly, the agency had supported it.

An American intelligence officer who worked with Dr. Allawi in the early 1990's noted that "no one had any problem with sabotage in Baghdad back then," adding, "I don't think anyone could have known how things would turn out today."

Dr. Allawi was a favorite of the C.I.A. and other government agencies 10 years ago, largely because he served as a counterpoint to Ahmad Chalabi, a more prominent exile leader.

He "was highly regarded by those involved in Iraqi operations," Samuel R. Berger, who was national security adviser in the Clinton administration, said in an interview. "Unlike Chalabi, he was someone who was trusted by the regional governments. He was less flamboyant, less promotional."

The C.I.A. recruited Dr. Allawi in 1992, former intelligence officials said. At that time, the former senior intelligence official said, "what we were doing was dealing with anyone" in the Iraqi opposition "we could get our hands on." Mr. Chalabi began working with the agency in 1991, and the idea, the official added, was to "decrease the proportion of Chalabi's role in what we were doing by finding others to work with."

In 1991, Dr. Allawi was associated with a former Iraqi official, Salih Omar Ali al-Tikriti, whom the United States viewed as unsavory. He and Dr. Allawi founded the Iraqi National Accord in 1990. Both were former supporters of the Iraqi government.

Some intelligence officials have also suggested that Dr. Allawi, while he was still a member of the ruling Baath Party in the early 1970's, may have spied on Iraqi students studying in London. Mr. Tikriti was said to have supervised public hangings in Baghdad. The former officials said the C.I.A. would not work with Dr. Allawi until he severed his relationship with Mr. Tikriti, which he did in 1992._

Several intelligence officials said the agency's broad goal immediately after the Persian Gulf war in 1991 was to recruit opposition leaders who had senior contacts inside Iraq, something Dr. Allawi claimed. The Iraqi National Accord was made up of former senior Iraqi military and political leaders who had fled the country and were said to retain connections to colleagues inside the government.

"Iyad had contact with people the agency thought would be useful to us in the future," Mr. Pollack said. "He seemed to have ties to respected Sunni figures that no one else had." The Hussein government was dominated by Sunni Muslims.

The bombing and sabotage campaign, the former senior intelligence official said, "was a test more than anything else, to demonstrate capability."

Another former intelligence officer who was involved in Iraqi affairs recalled that the bombings "were an option we considered and used." Dr. Allawi's group was used, he added, "because Chalabi never had any sort of internal organization that could carry it out," adding, "We would never have asked him to carry out sabotage."

The varied assessments of the bombing campaign's effectiveness are understandable, the former senior intelligence official said, because "I would not attribute to the U.S. sufficient intelligence resources then so that we could perceive if an effective bombing campaign was under way."

Dr. Allawi is not believed to have ever spoken in public about the bombing campaign. But one Iraqi National Accord officer did. In 1996, Amneh al-Khadami, who described himself as the chief bomb maker for the Iraqi National Accord and as being based in Sulaimaniya, in northern Iraq, recorded a videotape in which he talked of the bombing campaign and complained that he was being shortchanged money and supplies. Two former intelligence officers confirmed the existence of the videotape._

Mr. Khadami said that "we blew up a car, and we were supposed to get $2,000" but got only $1,000, according to an account in the British newspaper The Independent in 1997. The newspaper had obtained a copy of the tape.

Mr. Khadami, it added, also said he worried that the C.I.A. might view him as "too much the terrorist."
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/09/politics/09ALLA.html

heavyLox

06-09-2004, 07:51 PM

wow the road keeps turn all which-a-way.

the plot thickens. Next i predict they discover the allawis is actually a white american whos been plastic surgeried(new word for the day) to look iraqi.

BROWNer

06-09-2004, 08:15 PM

Originally posted by heavyLox
the plot thickens.

indeed...
this is an interesting read as well: http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/...coup_detat.html (http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/060804_coup_detat.html)

villain

06-09-2004, 10:58 PM

^^^^ Good shit...

Blood might be thicker than water, but oil and scum float to the top.

DaDecorators

06-11-2004, 08:51 AM

its such a shame that young people believe in the fighting for governments and authorities that dont give a shit about weather they live or die....

that the governments are not interested is peace and life...instead they send all these peolpe to their deaths......Get busy Dying

one word..... Vietnam......

the things that have been written about in the past like 1984 and other science fiction are all slowley comming true....shit even things from the book of revelations are comming true....not that Im religious....

but check Imortal Technique real Hip-hop...on uncle Howie records

!@#$%

07-19-2004, 09:03 PM

aaahhh imperial America.
so this is what it must've been like to live in the Roman Empire..check it out guys, we invaded another country and burned it to the ground last week!
awesome!

"Bush said the CIA has found no sign of a direct connection between Iran and the suicide hijackings that killed nearly 3,000 people.

"We will continue to look and see if the Iranians were involved," he said."

oh fantastic.
they are gonna keep looking [until they find something, anythiing!!]

http://edition.cnn.com/2004/US/07/19/bush....iran/index.html (http://edition.cnn.com/2004/US/07/19/bush.iran/index.html)

as that awesome tina fey said on snl
'you here that nations? if there is no direct link , we will get you!'

TheoHuxtable

07-19-2004, 09:14 PM

That whole Iranian thing is bullshit, and I hope it won't be used as an excuse to go to war with them.

So the Iranian government willingly and knowingly gave al Qaeda safe passage when going to and from the training camps in Afghanistan... so the US says that they may have aided al Qaeda in conducting the 9/11 attacks.

But the Iranian government did not help plan the 9/11 attacks or even knew about it for that matter. Sure, it was wrong for them to give al Qaeda a safe passage -- but they pretty much aren't responsible for 9/11. Al Qaeda is. The only people truly giving them a safe haven were the Taliban.

!@#$%

07-19-2004, 09:25 PM

syria, palestine, we'll find reasons for all of them.

the most disgusting thing?
saudi arabia may have helped the attacks happen, even if only by spawning most of the hijackers..
of course, we won't be investigating any possible link there, they are bush family friends after all.

[img]http://smilies.jeeptalk.org/otn/puke/barf.gif'>

BROWNer

07-19-2004, 09:35 PM

well iran has certainly has a colorful terrorism record.
the really brutal thing about this whole war on terror
is the continual denial of the US govt to address the
insanely fucked up precarious situation in saudi arabia.
* !@#$ beat me to it.
anyhow..even if bush is out, the saudi's are still safe.

Poop Man Bob

07-19-2004, 09:58 PM

kill kill kill kill kill (http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=2026&ncid=2026&e=12&u=/latimests/20040718/ts_latimes/enemycontactkillemkillem)

!@#$%

07-19-2004, 10:08 PM

"Kill, kill, kill, kill, kill," Hall says. "It's like it pounds at my brain. I'll figure out how to deal with it when I get home."

Home is the wrong place for soldiers to deal with combat experiences, some experts say....."

christ that's horrific.
when i was watching farenheit9/11 i was wondering what was gonna happen to those soldiers who were listening to metal while in combat

we're gonna have thousands of killing machines roaming the streets

i cannot fucking believe people are deceived by that bullshit support our troops rhetoric when we treat our vets the way we do.

pathetic!!!

JHBSHSIJSKJDKDNNJCSSVBYTRFGDYSUDVBDS!!
i don't even have the words for it anymore.
:(

TheoHuxtab|e

09-08-2004, 06:25 AM

RIP. Also, RIP to all the other Coalition Forces from other countries as well as Iraqi civilians in this unnecessary war.

Insurgents Step Up Attacks on U.S. Troops
AP Says American Military Deaths in Iraq War Have Passed 1000
By HAMZA HENDAWI, AP

BAGHDAD, Iraq (Sept. 7) -- U.S. military deaths in the Iraq campaign passed the 1,000 milestone Tuesday, with more than 800 of them during the stubborn insurgency that flared after the Americans brought down Saddam Hussein and President Bush declared major combat over.

A spike in fighting with Sunni and Shiite insurgents killed eight Americans in the Baghdad area on Tuesday and Wednesday, pushing the count to 1,003. That number includes 1,000 U.S. troops and three civilians, two working for the U.S. Army and one for the Air Force. The tally was compiled by The Associated Press based on Pentagon records and AP reporting from Iraq.

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld cited progress on multiple fronts in the Bush administration's global war on terrorism and said U.S. enemies should not underestimate the willingness of the American people and its coalition allies to suffer casualties in Iraq and elsewhere.

''The progress has prompted a backlash, in effect, from those who hope that at some point we might conclude that the pain and the cost of this fight isn't worth it,'' Rumsfeld told a Pentagon news conference. ''Well, our enemies have underestimated our country, our coalition. They have failed to understand the character of our people. And they certainly misread our commander in chief.''

The Bush administration has long linked the Iraq conflict to the war on terrorism. The Sept. 11 Commission, however, concluded that Iraq and al-Qaida did not have a ''collaborative relationship'' before the 2001 attacks on New York and Washington, and some have questioned to what extent foreign terror groups are involved in the anti-U.S. insurgency in Iraq.

Democratic presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry issued a statement saying the United States joined the friends and families of those who died in mourning their loss.

''Today marks a tragic milestone in the war in Iraq. More than one thousand of Americas sons and daughters have made the ultimate sacrifice. Our nation honors their service and joins with their families and loved ones in mourning their loss,'' Kerry said.

''We must never forget the price they have paid. And we must meet our sacred obligation to all our troops to do all we can to make the right decisions in Iraq so that we can bring them home as soon as possible.''

The 1,003 figure includes deaths from hostile and non-hostile causes since the United States launched the Iraq campaign in March 2003 to topple Saddam's regime. The vast majority of U.S. deaths - all but 138 - came after Bush's May 1, 2003 declaration of an end to major combat operations. ''Mission Accomplished,'' read a banner on an aircraft carrier where Bush made the announcement.

The U.S. military has not reported overall Iraqi deaths. The Iraqi Health Ministry started counting the dead only in April when heavy fighting broke out in Fallujah and Najaf. However, conservative estimates by private groups place the Iraqi toll at at least 10,000 - or 10 times the number of U.S. military deaths.

''It is difficult to establish the right number of casualties,'' said Amnesty International's Middle East spokeswoman, Nicole Choueiry. She added that ''it was the job of the occupation power to keep track of the numbers but the Americans failed to do so.''

The grim milestone of 1,000 American military deaths was surpassed after a surge in fighting, which has killed 17 U.S. service members in the past four days. A soldier was killed early Wednesday in when a roadside bomb struck a convoy near Balad, 35 miles northeast of Baghdad. Two soldiers died in clashes Tuesday with militiamen loyal to rebel Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. Five other Americans died Tuesday in separate attacks, mostly in the Baghdad area. Seven Marines were killed Monday in a suicide car bombing north of Fallujah. Two soldiers were killed in a mortar attack Sunday.

West of the capital, U.S. warplanes swooped low over Fallujah on Tuesday in airstrikes after seven Marines and three Iraqi soldiers were killed the day before in a car-bombing near the Sunni insurgent-controlled city.

A group linked to Jordanian-born militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi - Tawhid and Jihad - posted a statement on a militant Web site claiming responsibility for the attack, describing it as ''a martyr operation ... that targeted American soldiers and their mercenary apostate collaborators from the Iraqi army.''

Fighting between U.S. soldiers and al-Sadr's militiamen erupted Tuesday when U.S. officials said the cleric's gunmen fired on Americans carrying out patrols in the Sadr City district of Baghdad. Two Americans died in the fighting, U.S. officials said.

A senior Iraqi Health Ministry official, Saad al-Amili, said 35 Iraqis were killed and 203 wounded in the Sadr City clashes. An al-Sadr spokesman, Sheik Raed al-Kadhimi, blamed ''intrusive'' American patrolling for provoking the fighting.

''Our fighters have no choice but to return fire and to face the U.S. forces and helicopters pounding our houses,'' al-Kadhimi said in a statement.

Late Tuesday, the militia announced a unilateral cease-fire but said it would fight back in self defense. It was unclear whether the statement had any meaning since the militia routinely defends its actions as legitimate self defense.

U.S. Army Capt. Brian O'Malley said he was unaware of the cease-fire offer but that the area was quiet in the early evening. ''We only fire when we are fired at, but we will not stop our patrols or withdraw from our positions,'' he said.

At the Pentagon, Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, blamed the spike in U.S. combat deaths on an insurgency that ''is becoming more sophisticated in its efforts to destabilize the country.''

''We are aggressively seeking and capturing those insurgents who are not willing to do so themselves, but are encouraging people to commit suicide attacks,'' Myers told reporters Tuesday. ''Make no mistake, we will continue to pursue those who seek to disrupt progress in Iraq.''

During the Sadr City fighting, U.S. warplanes flew over the sprawling neighborhood - home to some 2 million people. American tanks, their turrets spinning, deployed in key intersections. Ambulances with sirens wailing rushed the wounded to hospitals as plumes of heavy, black smoke rose over the mainly Shiite neighborhood.

U.S. forces appeared to be carrying out most - if not all - of the fighting. No Iraqi security forces were seen during the clashes, though U.S. spokesmen talked of ''multinational forces'' involved in the operations, a term that sometimes includes Iraqi troops.

Small groups of al-Sadr's al-Mahdi Army fighters pounded on the asphalt with hammers to plant mines and explosives in the streets. Fighters in their teens and early 20s trotted toward the clashes - rocket-propelled grenades in hand - as children scampered behind them.

Other militiamen, rifles in hand, gathered on street corners. Fighters using rocks and tires blocked roads leading to the area. By afternoon, most stores in the neighborhood were shuttered.

Elsewhere, a bomb exploded Tuesday near the convoy of the governor of the Baghdad region, killing two people. Gov. Ali al-Haidri escaped injury, Interior Ministry spokesman Col. Adnan Abdel Rahman said.

In another part of the capital, armed men in olive green uniforms stormed the office of an Italian aid group and seized two Italian women and two Iraqis. It was only the second known kidnapping of foreign women since a wave of hostage-takings began this year. A female Japanese aid worker was captured in Fallujah in April but was released a week later.

09-07-04 21:23 EDT