thoughtful article: troops out, but how?

[movie zombie]

"Last week''s Cairo conference of the various political players in Iraq, brokered by the Arab League, was critical in the way that Kurdish, Sunni and Shiite leaders compromised to reach a joint communiqué. To win over the Sunnis, it demanded "the withdrawal of foreign forces in accordance with a timetable" and noted that "resistance is a legitimate right for all people" while stressing that "terrorism does not represent legitimate resistance."

http://www.upi.com/InternationalIntelligence/view.php?StoryID=20051129-020954-3606r

peace, movie zombie

 

[rubydick]

MZ,

As always, you are spot on with the tough questions. So how does America extricate itself from this monstrous position? The same way we got in. Let's shock-and-awe all concerned by simply leaving.

Boom! What have we wrought? Less dead Americans, less targets, and we cut Osama off at the knees. No longer can he argue that Yankees are occupying Muslim land.

By the way, just where is Osama?

While I did not watch his speech today (exceeded my pain threshold), it sorta, kinda nags me. What happened to "Wanted: Dead or Alive"? Come again? Come BushCo one and all. Explain, please. Only the denial squad still believes this guy.

If you've changed your mind, we welcome you. I am an addict. I once supported Clinton. Now I know better. I am a sinner. Fellow addicts, redemption awaits all sinners who confess their sins...

 

[movie zombie]

while i thought clinton got beat up unfairly re sex, his politics bugged me no end. there''s a reason the republican''s hated him: he was always one step in front of them.

what''s interesting about the article is that the US can claim a victory and get out in that we''ve accomplished our mission: however, where are those WMD?! even this article plays into the lie.

and the other interesting thing is that after cairo, it is obvious that we are not wanted there yet bush continues to push for more americans to die.

like you, i can''t listen to the man [my mother says she refuses to call him a man because he''s a poor excuse for one and at 81 i''m not going to argue with her....besides, i agree with her...surprise surprise] but i heard snipets during the radio news and read some reports online. the headlines read like he outlined a plan when in fact he did not.

yes, shock and awe the world by getting the hell out of iraq and since this is all supposed to be about 9/11 and protecting americans from terrorists, let''s get those saudis while we''re at it.

peace, movie zombie

 

[fire&ice]

Date: 12/1/2005 1:07:54 AM
Author: Richard Hughes
MZ,

and we cut Osama off at the knees. No longer can he argue that Yankees are occupying Muslim land.

That would be a resounding "No". His beef LONG BEFORE invading Iraq II was that we occupied part of Mecca - Muslim land. We still do. His position or the position of his followers won''t change.

 

[widget]

Well...my views are shifting...I''ve always thought a ''shock and awe withdrawal'' was not an option because it would lead to collapse and civil war.

I heard this morning (albeit third hand on Imus

) that some think we could stay there for ten years and the place would still fall apart ten minutes after we left.

Quel mess.

Thanks, Bush&Co...

widget

 

[strmrdr]

history history history.
todays study question how long did it take to stabilize and rebuild Japan after WW2?
How many were killed in attacks by those that refused to surrender?

My question is why should we rebuild it at all.
Cant think of one good reason....

 

[AGBF]

Date: 12/1/2005 7:51:33 PM
Author: strmrdr
My question is why should we rebuild it at all.

Cant think of one good reason....

Not much brainpower being used then, Storm. The reason is REALLY easy: because we knocked it down (and for no good reason).

Deb

 

[MINE!!]

Withdraw... just like that .. just leave.. then the Demmys will be huffing about all the humantarian problems. People being killed for supported the US. Tortured for practicing their freedom to vote.

Kinda like they were after we just "up and left" after the first Gulf War.

Nope.. doesn''t sound good to me.

 

[strmrdr]

Date: 12/1/2005 11:56:17 PM
Author: AGBF

Date: 12/1/2005 7:51:33 PM

Author: strmrdr

My question is why should we rebuild it at all.


Cant think of one good reason....

Not much brainpower being used then, Storm. The reason is REALLY easy: because we knocked it down (and for no good reason).


Deb

lol ironic statements do not play well on the net.

Which is it should we withdraw tomorrow or rebuild?
Cant have it both ways.

The real reason we went in is we didnt do it the first time like we should have.
All the rest are just excuses.

Have an answer to my question about Japan yet?

 

[strmrdr]

Date: 12/2/2005 8:40:23 AM
Author: MINE!!
Withdraw... just like that .. just leave.. then the Demmys will be huffing about all the humantarian problems. People being killed for supported the US. Tortured for practicing their freedom to vote.

Kinda like they were after we just ''up and left'' after the first Gulf War.


Nope.. doesn''t sound good to me.

agreed

 

[movie zombie]

Date: 12/2/2005 10:04:54 AM
Author: strmrdr

Date: 12/2/2005 8:40:23 AM
Author: MINE!!
Withdraw... just like that .. just leave.. then the Demmys will be huffing about all the humantarian problems. People being killed for supported the US. Tortured for practicing their freedom to vote.

Kinda like they were after we just ''up and left'' after the first Gulf War.


Nope.. doesn''t sound good to me.

agreed

i don''t buy the "tortured for practicing their freedom to vote'' idea as to why we must stay in iraq.

iraqis are currently being tortured by US military and US contractors as well as their own trained forces. what is the rational for this torture? its seems as if the iraqi people are damned no matter if we are there or not.

peace, movie zombie

 

[MINE!!]

Date: 12/3/2005 3:01:21 AM
Author: movie zombie

Date: 12/2/2005 10:04:54 AM

Author: strmrdr

Date: 12/2/2005 8:40:23 AM

Author: MINE!!

Withdraw... just like that .. just leave.. then the Demmys will be huffing about all the humantarian problems. People being killed for supported the US. Tortured for practicing their freedom to vote.

Kinda like they were after we just ''up and left'' after the first Gulf War.



Nope.. doesn''t sound good to me.

agreed

i don''t buy the ''tortured for practicing their freedom to vote'' idea as to why we must stay in iraq.


iraqis are currently being tortured by US military and US contractors as well as their own trained forces. what is the rational for this torture? its seems as if the iraqi people are damned no matter if we are there or not.


peace, movie zombie

Maybe you should cough up a little to buy this..

Yeah we should defintely just pull out.. things were much better before we arrived...

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Men and women were tortured for days and babies left to die in an interrogation facility which featured a meat grinder for human flesh, the first prosecution witness to face Saddam Hussein told the court on Monday.

After weeks of delay and legal arguments over security and the legitimacy of the court, the trial of Saddam and seven co- defendants on charges of crimes against humanity heard confusing but graphic witness evidence of torture and summary execution.


"I swear by God I walked by a room and on my left I saw a grinder with blood coming out of it and human hair underneath," said 38-year-old Ahmed Hassan, who said he had been kept in room 63 at the Hakmiya intelligence headquarters in Baghdad.


Hassan, the first witness to face Saddam in court, said he was 15 when Saddam visited the village in July 1982 and Shi''ite militants tried to assassinate him.


Speaking technically as an individual plaintiff alongside the state, which is pressing charges of crimes against humanity, Hassan said he and his family were among hundreds of people rounded up in a security operation run by Barzan Ibrahim al-Tikriti after an attempt on Saddam''s life in the village.


Barzan, one of Saddam''s three younger half-brothers and the former head of the feared Mukhabarat intelligence service, is one of Saddam''s seven co-accused in the case relating to the killings of 148 mostly Shi''ite Muslim men from Dujail.


"Barzan was present. He had red cowboy boots and blue jeans and a sniper rifle," Hassan, a stockily built worker with a round face and a graying beard, told the heavily fortified court in central Baghdad.


He said Saddam, from the Sunni Arab minority, asked a 15-year-old boy if he knew who he was. "He said ''Saddam''. Then Saddam hit him in the head with an ash tray," Hassan said.


Hassan risked reprisals by letting his face appear on television as he gave evidence.


Toward the end of his testimony he stood facing Saddam as the former president challenged his testimony. Hassan held Saddam''s gaze as Saddam asked how he could possibly remember the names and birth dates of people he said were killed, responding that he had memorized them as they were read out by guards.


With Barzan constantly interjecting from the dock and calling the testimony lies, Hassan said he was among hundreds of people taken from the Shi''ite village to the Hakmiya intelligence headquarters, run by Barzan.


He said it was while he was climbing the stairs there that he saw the meat grinder. "No one escaped torture," he said.


"They would put a mask on my eyes and because I was young it would fall down. I saw women being tortured," he said.


"My brother was given electric shocks while my 77-year-old father watched," Hassan said. "They told us, ''why don''t you confess, you will be executed anyway''," he said.


"One man was shot in the leg with two bullets... Some people were crippled because they had their arms and legs broken."


He said they were held in Hakmiya for 70 days. While they were there a woman told a guard that her infant baby needed milk or he would die.


"He died and the guard threw him from the window," Hassan told the court. "Pregnant women gave birth in the prison. Their babies died."


Saddam and his co-defendants have all pleaded not guilty to the charges. They could be sentenced to death if found guilty.

 

[movie zombie]

Mine, no one denies saddam''s torture. but now its US/us.

peace, movie zombie

 

[MINE!!]

Yet, I do not understand the rational for ''up and leaving''

''dammed if they do and damned if they don''t'' is not a good enough reason for us to abandon them either.

 

[movie zombie]

back to the quote in my first post starting this thread, Mine: they don''t want us there. it is their country. we said they had WMD and they didn''t. that was the basis for this war, not the right to vote. they had torture and they still have torture.

when we withdraw our on ground troops, we''ll still be there: the plan is to support the iraqi''s we''ve trained by continuing bomb dropping which means more civilian deaths and to do this for about another 10 years. military people have already stated this.....as well as telling congress we have to get our troops out as we''re not wanted there and the ''insurgency'' is getting worse.

so the next big lie will be we''re out of iraq [but we''re not] and iraqi civilians will continue to die in a war they didn''t start and certainly don''t want now. and the american people will think all is well because the bombings won''t be in the news.....and americans will continue to wonder why we aren''t respected.

for iraqi''s it means about a decade of destruction by the US [yes, it was UN sanctions but at the urging of the US while we bombed them pretty much every day of the sanctions]: first sanctions then this war. a generation of iraqis is coming of age and they will not know anything but the death and destruction they''ve grown up with. it is hard to think that this generation will think america/americans brought them anything but pain.

i finally saw THE FOG OF WAR last night: the documentary re macnamera. he made an interesting statement: we entered into vietnam thinking we were fighting the cold war; but the vietnamese knew they were fighting a civil war. the gulf of tonkin incident was fabricated and used to get us into vietnam much as bush and co. knew saddam had nothing to do with 9/11 and yet his administration took the war on terrorism there anyway. rather than finding themselves involved in a civil war, bush and co. set the stage for one to begin.

it is not only the iraqi people who are damned if they do and damned if they don''t: it is also we the american people.

peace, movie zombie

ps another interesting thing about the documentary is that kennedy was going to get us out of vietnam when the president of vietnam was murdered in a military coup. while kennedy and co. had had problems with him, they could not accept the removal of a head of state of a foreign country by its military and thus we ended up further entrenched rather than out of vietnam. my, how times have changed. we not only tolerate it [chile and hoping for venezuela] but we condone it and commit preemptive strike to affect it.

 

[MINE!!]

MZ.. what about the people who want us there.. the people who do not want us to leave? See there is more than just the side you see. There are those not on the left wing political bandwagon that accept the fact that there are people there who do not want the United States to go.

Interesting the things you sayabout vietnam. I once read a very GOOD non partisan book on the Vietnam war. I hate reading liberal bull and sometimes have just as much problem with the conservative stuff as well. But this one was pretty good.. straightforward non partisan, historical information on the Vietnam war. I was more impressed with this book than the bleeding heart lefty redition, hippie pot smoking tree huggers, or the do or die right. I will try to find the name for you. Yet I will say it may not appeal to those looking for some sort of soapbox.

 

[movie zombie]

Mine, our US generals and Murtha certainly aren''t on the ''left wing political bandwagon'' and they do accept the fact that we must get out of iraq because they know first hand that the people want us out. yes, there are going to be individuals that want us there just like there are individuals here who want us there. but the majority there and the majority here want us out.

peace, movie zombie

 

[MINE!!]

I agree there are probably a good deal of people that want us out so that they can institute a civil war..

I think it is irresponsible to think this country should just leave. It is quite ridiculous actually. Regardless of your beliefs about why the US went to iraq in the first place, people need to stop and think about what is happening there and the ramifications about what will happen should we just pull out. I just don''t understand the blindfold. People look for immediate results...LOL... there are NO immediate results and it is naive to beleive that this is going to solve anything.

 

[movie zombie]

Date: 12/6/2005 9:42:11 PM
Author: MINE!!
I agree there are probably a good deal of people that want us out so that they can institute a civil war..

I think it is irresponsible to think this country should just leave. It is quite ridiculous actually. Regardless of your beliefs about why the US went to iraq in the first place, people need to stop and think about what is happening there and the ramifications about what will happen should we just pull out. I just don''t understand the blindfold. People look for immediate results...LOL... there are NO immediate results and it is naive to beleive that this is going to solve anything.

Mine, civil war is a fact of life in iraq and we are there: civil war is happening whether its reported here or not.....that''s what has the generals spooked. unfortunately, we have unleashed the dogs of war and those hounds are already running....and we can''t call them back....

LOL is right: no one but this administration was looking for immediate results. how they thought they could march in and be greeted as saviors and everything would be ok is beyond me. freedom does not equal military occupation by a foreign power.

yes, regardless of anyones''s beliefs about why the US went into iraq in the first place the question is now how do we get out.

peace, movie zombie

 

[MINE!!]

Date: 12/6/2005 9:54:56 PM


Mine, civil war is a fact of life in iraq and we are there: civil war is happening whether its reported here or not.....that's what has the generals spooked. unfortunately, we have unleashed the dogs of war and those hounds are already running....and we can't call them back....


~I appreciate the poetry, but the fact that we have 'let the hounds loose' is crap. The hounds were loose already. I just don;t get it... I listen to you people talk about how much you care about the Iraqis and how mean we are to them and how we have done such bad things to them and you people are the first to say.. LEAVE THEM!!! Civil War is a fact of Life in Iraq!! It is just the way things are.. just as in Serbia or the Killing feilds.. why stop it.. it is just the way it is!! (note my sarcasm here) Let them do it... People are so busy trying to prove who is right and win your little battle of 'we are the ones who knows what is best' that you are willing to put these people on a sacrifical plate... just as you claim that this adminstration has already done.. Yes LOL>.. you are just as much part of the evil as we all are.~

LOL is right: no one but this administration was looking for immediate results. how they thought they could march in and be greeted as saviors and everything would be ok is beyond me. freedom does not equal military occupation by a foreign power.

~nor does it mean sacrificing those who do not want to oppressed so that you can say you saved them~


yes, regardless of anyones's beliefs about why the US went into iraq in the first place the question is now how do we get out.

~at least we agree on this.~


peace, movie zombie

 

[valeria101]

Date: 12/6/2005 10:04:50 PM
Author: MINE!!

Date: 12/6/2005 9:54:56 PM


yes, regardless of anyone's beliefs about why the US went into Iraq in the first place the question is now how do we get out.

Key foreign policy issue of the next US elections?


This may fit this thread... there has been allot of public opinion research in Iraq, and most not by the usual international organizations. Some of the findings point out that religious intolerance is vastly stronger in urban areas - i.e. where US presence is effectively enforced.

... and this makes me disagree that longer occupation may stabilize the country. Besides, it should be relatively understandable - as said above, 'resistance is a legitimate right for all people' it may come very naturally, but it is not obvious in which way.

 

[movie zombie]

i''m not counting on the next elections. the democrats certainly have not shown leadership when they should have to keep us out of this mess. there is plenty of blame to go around.

peace, movie zombie