THERE IS NO SECOND PLACE

Thanks a lot Harry (the traitor) Reid

Omar Fadhil is PJM’s Baghdad editor. His own blog is Iraq The Model

Out of Iraq? Why Are They Doing This?

PJM Barcelona

April 27, 2007 10:52 AM

How is the Iraq legislation just passed by the Democrats in Congress seen in Iraq? PJM Baghdad editor Omar Fadhil tells you.

Instead coming up with ideas to help the US Democrats are trying to stop the effort to stabilize Iraq and rescue the Middle East from a catastrophe.

I am an Iraqi. To me the possible consequences of this vote are terrifying. Just as we began to see signs of progress in my country the Democrats come and say, ‘Well, it’s not worth it.Time to leave’.

To the Democrats my life and the lives of twenty-five other million Iraqis are evidently not worth trying for. They shouldn’t expect us to be grateful for this.

For four years everybody made mistakes. The administration made mistakes and admitted them. My people and leaders made mistakes as well and we regret them.

But now, in the last two months, we have had a fresh start; a new strategy with new ideas and tactics. These were reached after studying previous mistakes and were designed to reverse the setbacks we witnessed in the course of this war.

This strategy, although its tools are not yet even fully deployed, is showing promising signs of progress.

General Petraeus said yesterday that things will get tougher before they get easier in Iraq. This is the sort of of fact-based, realistic assessment of the situation which politicians should listen to when they discuss the war thousands of miles away.

We must give this effort the chance it deserves. We should provide all the support necessary. We should heed constructive critique, not the empty rhetoric that the ‘war is lost.’

It is not lost. Quitting is not an option we can afford—not in America and definitely not in Iraq.

I said it before and I say it again; this war must be won. If it is not the world as you in the United States know it today (and as we here in Iraq dream for it to become) will exist only in books of history. The forces of extremism that we confront today are more determined, more resourceful, and more barbaric than the Nazi or the communists of the past. Add to that the weapons they can improvise or acquire through their unholy alliance with rogue regimes, combined with their fluid structure and mobility… well, they can be more deadly than any forces we have faced in the past. Much more.

The political game the Democrats are playing has gone farther than it should have. Before they took over the congress they were complaining that there had been no feasible plan for winning the war. Now that such plan exists and thousands of American soldiers are working hard with the millions of good Iraqis to make it work, they wish to turn their backs on it.

I understood that by winning a majority in the legislature the Democrats were supposed to guide America to victory by correcting the mistakes of the past. Obviously I was wrong; they have put all their efforts into making sure the exact opposite outcome happens.

Just look at this one example of how the terrorists are going to make benefit from the defeatism of democrats. Al-Jazeera, the unofficial mouthpiece of al-Qaeda posted this on the same day the House passed the wretched bill:

Dadullah said: “Thank God, he is alive, we get updated information about it. Thank God, he plans the operations in both Iraq and Afghanistan.

In no time al-Qaeda and all similarly extremist factions will start boasting about how America is fleeing Iraq under the heavy blows of the “Mujahideen” planned by OBL himself.

The Democrats just offered al-Qaeda victory on a silver plate. For free. An imaginary victory for sure, for now, but it can still be used by al-Qaeda to promote their ideology of death and attract more recruits.

“America’s will can be broken, America is not invincible,” they will say in a thousand ways. Is this the kind of message you want to send to the enemy?

Reconsider your position before it’s too late. For us and for yourselves.

How's the War Going? -- Osama Bin Laden, al-Qaeda's leader, is alive.

Source: Al Jazeera and agencies Taliban leader says Bin Laden alive

Saudi intelligence services had reported that Osama Bin Laden had died of typhoid [EPA]   Mullah Dadullah, a senior Taliban commander, has told Al Jazeera in an exclusive interview that Osama Bin Laden, al-Qaeda's leader, is alive.   Dadullah said Bin Laden planned and supervised the "suicide" operation which targeted Dick Cheney, the US vice-president, in Bargam air force base during his visit to Afghanistan in February. Dadullah said: "Thank God, he is alive, we get updated information about it. Thank God, he plans the operations in both Iraq and Afghanistan.   "You may remember the martyr operation inside the Bagram base which targeted a senior US official ... that operation was a result of his wise planning. "He planned that operation in details and guided us through it. The operation was a success."   The interview was conducted by Ahmed Zaidan, Al Jazeera's Islamabad bureau chief. The channel broadcast excerpts of the interview on Wednesday. Afterwards, asked for her reaction to Dadullah's assertion that Bin Laden ordered the Bagram attack, Dana Perino, the White House spokeswoman, said : "It's an interesting claim but I haven't seen any intelligence that would support that." About 14 people were killed, including one American and one South Korean soldier, in the February 27 suicide bombing, which the Taliban said targeted Cheney. A US official then said Cheney was about half a mile away on the base and was not in danger.   Afghan soldiers killed   Meanwhile, on the ground, at least seven Afghan soldiers were killed on Wednesday in a roadside bomb blast in southeastern Afghanistan, with an army commander linking the attack to Taliban fighters.   Your Views   "Nato should not have been there to begin with" mk, Old Forge, USA Send us your views And a district governor in the same province survived a suicide attack close to his vehicle.   A man detonated his explosives close to the vehicle of the official from Paktika, which is on the border with Pakistan.   The bomber was the only individual to die in the attack.   Elsewhere, police foiled a suicide attack on Wednesday when they seized a man in the province of Kabul with explosives strapped to his body, Zalmay Khan, deputy police chief, said.   Army casualties   Wednesday's troop fatalities occurred as they were travelling in an army vehicle along a dirt road in the Waza Haw district of the province of Paktika.   The Afghan soldiers were travelling in a 10-vehicle convoy, said the army's General Murad Ali.   The powerful blast destroyed their vehicle, leaving seven soldiers dead and one wounded.   Taliban fighters use roadside bombs and have launched suicide bombings at Afghan security forces and thousands of foreign troops in the country assisting them.   Despite a crackdown by Nato forces in Afghanistan's Helmand province, Taliban fighters maintain a strong presence in the region.   Fierce resistance   Nato's Operation Achilles is into its seventh week but is meeting fierce resistance from the Taliban.   Taliban fighters possess significant amounts of explosive for anti-tank bombs A team featuring James Bays, Al Jazeera's Afghanistan correspondent, met some Taliban fighters in Helmand province standing on top of a burnt-out Nato military vehicle.   A cameraman attached to Bays' team was taken to a separate area where the Taliban showed him a store-room of explosives, which were in the process of being converted into anti-tank bombs.   The Taliban fighters also said they possess anti-aircraft weaponry, although they did not permit Al Jazeera to film such equipment.   "Thanks to God we have good guns ... we are ready all the time to face them [Nato and Afghan government forces] in a battle," one Taliban fighter said.   Recent killings   On Tuesday, a police vehicle was ambushed by fighters in the province of Herat, killing four officers and wounding two, Noor Khan Nekzad, a spokesman for the provincial police chief, said.   Earlier this week, two separate roadside bombs killed eight Afghan intelligence agents, one soldier and one driver in the eastern province of Laghman.   And on Monday a roadside bomb killed two policemen in southern province of Zabul. On Sunday, fighters beheaded another intelligence agent in the neighbouring province of Ghazni.   Last week, a suicide bomber killed 10 policemen and wounded 40 others in the northern province of Kunduz.

A word about the war on Islamic Facism.

Second and third generation Muslims in Europe are out of place.  The most popular name given in the world is Mohamed.  But this Mohammad doesn't fit in to the Europe that he is living in.  The Europeans don't want him and he knows it.  He goes to the Mosque and the Imam ministers to this need and is making a jehadist in the process.

The United States counter terrorist operation is dismal.  We don't even have people that speak Arabic.  We don't hire people that are from the middle east.  We don't really trust the Arabs, example the Dudi port deal.

Al Quida loves theater, the spectacular symbol, and blood.  They are waiting for an event bigger than 911.  They can do attacks throughout the world on their own.  They are like an independent franchise.  But if they want to attack America they need to run it by Bin Laden. 

Al Quida is a function of the despair in the Muslim world.   Al Quida is a death cult .  That is all that Al Quida has to offer, death.  The warrior culture the spectacular symbolic event.  This is how they deal with the river of despair flowing through the Muslim world. 

As time goes by terror becomes less relevant.  The only way to peace is a reformation of the Muslim world.

A historical review. trying to find the truth. Comments welcome.

It's time to gather together people of like minds.  Who believe in a core of truths to face the major problems that confront us.  We are at an intersection of time with opportunity when we can make epoch change.

As our story opens Senator Ted Kennedy on June 22, 2005  says " we are in an intractable quagmire, there is no end in sight to describe the war."

Is he right or is Carl Rove right?  When he said "The reaction of liberals to 911 was to offer indictments, understanding and therapy the republicans wanted to prepare for war."

Senator Durbin can compare our troops to mass killers and he is praised, gets a pass from the press and does not give an apology.  But Senator Lott has an off handed comment that he does apologize for, at least five time, that it is not accepted and he is driven from the leadership by the press and Democrats.

This brings us to the point that there is a liberal bias in the main stream media?  The comparison between the treatment of Senator Lott and Senator Durbin seems to show there is.

Then there is the crowd from the left.  Karim Kadiri an American from Morocco originally.  This is what Karim believes"The concerns that I have to do with America teaching its citizens that they are born special, unique, in the greatest nation of all time etc… I find that whole argument ridiculous. Unfortunately the average American is as brainwashed on the matter as the teenager that straps a bomb on himself and tries to blow up a bus. The two firmly believe in their respective realities and yet they agree about the principal of US against them, in each case the US is the good and THEM is evil.", and most of the left.

Karim says and the left believes "What has been pulverized is America’s good image abroad. Bush destroyed that in a few short months.  He also destabilized the whole planet as I see it. As I mentioned instead of nipping the problem in the bud, we went to another country to fight and therefore giving birth (daily) to new terrorists around the world."

THE WAR

The war against terror is world wide and every person is at risk. We are fighting Islamic fascist who want to kill all infidels.We are fighting Islamic fascist who want to kill all infidels.  The Iraqi security forces are growing in number and taking on more responsibility for their own security.  The Iraqi people voted for the Constitution and the main street media has hardly said a word.  We are at war and in war THERE IS NO SECOND PLACE.  If we do not fight the war in Iraq we will fight the war in America. 

Who Caused 9-11?  19 religious young men under the influence of Al-Quida, who believe all infidels deserve to be killed because they are sinners?

There are 1.3 billion Muslims.  I think it is realistic to believe that 100,000 could be taught to become martyrs.   Who are the homicide bombers?  Who are the Islamic fascist?

This war will end only when the terrorist are all dead or they give up their idea that we must all be dead.  We are in Iraqi now and we must chase the terrorist to the ends of the earth.  There can be no place for them to hide.

By sept 17, 2005 we look at the Israeli front the war on terror and find out it may not be going so good.  The Palestinians are flooding into the Gaza Strip from Egypt.  If Al-Qaeda is setting up headquarters and training camps the Israelis will have every right to attack and defend themselves if attacked.

Some truths

No matter where you are born a person can want to be free and that is the American spirit.  America is a unique and special nation.  America was the first Republic with a Constitution that acknowledges that its citizens have rights.  To be an American gives you a duty to preserve these rights for the next generation.  I believe America stands for freedom that is why people have come here for two hundred years.

Conservatives believe in individual rights and responsibilities.  That we succeed by invention pushed by competition.

Hurricane Katrina showed the flaws of bureaucracy from the national government to the city government.

SECRET GOVERNMENT

It's here that we start to look for the secret government Sept. 22, 2005

Is Al-Quida controlled by the CIA?  Was the CIA and Mossad taking this act of terrorism on 9-11 to take away America's freedom through the Patriot Act?  This is possible and this is the core truth that we must find.  I feel that there is some group that is trying to control our lives, maybe the government, maybe large corporations or a combination of the two.  Whoever they are I don't think that their plan will work.  I don't believe that the military, which is part of the government, will turn on the citizen of our own country.  The same for the police forces.  However there was that sweep in my own home town that makes me wonder what is real.

Residents of a troubled Aurora neighborhood are divided over whether the city and police went too far last week when they launched a complicated 30-man operation into people’s homes, hoping to rid the area of gangsters, drug dealers and other scofflaws.

A police and city inspector sweep of the neighborhood July 14 has outraged some residents who say their rights were violated by random searches masked as city inspections.

“I open the door for the inspector and property manager, and all the sudden there are two police officers following them in the house,” said longtime area resident Vivian Morgan. “They all scatter to different rooms and start looking for who knows what. I’m a supporter of police trying to clean up this neighborhood, but what they’ve done isn’t right.”Several residents of Lansing and Lima streets between First and Bayaud avenues — an area police say is notorious for gang and criminal activity — said they were duped into letting police into their homes last week when officers accompanied city building inspectors.

Police defended the operation and said their actions were not only routine, but were an important part of improving the quality of life for residents. Officials said they were careful to explain the purpose of the action, and that residents have asked for police help in keeping criminals at bay.

..... About 20 Aurora police officers, 12 members of city’s code enforcement office and several members of the Aurora animal care division spent nearly five hours Wednesday going door-to-door to approximately 40 homes in the area, police said.

Throughout the day, police made 17 arrests in the neighborhood for a variety of court violations and crimes — including five felonies. Five warnings were also issued for pet violations, and city inspectors noted 76 code violations, which must now be remedied by landlords within 45 days, according to police. Violations included things such as unsafe appliances and homes.

The majority of the day’s arrests were in conjunction with warrants served by the Aurora Police Department Gang Unit following the inspections.
footnoot 1 The Aurora Daily Sun & Sentinel April 24, 2007

People at the State Department, the careerists at the State Department, are not all pro-American in the sense that they agree with the Bush administration policy. Here the elected president and vice president have been accused by a former State Department official, former chief of staff to Colin Powell, Larry Wilkerson, of hijacking foreign policy.  That's the attitude that exists in the State Department.  If you're in the State Department, you know, these presidents come and go, but you are the career diplomat and you know what's best. Many of those people are career libs with opposition to the Bush administration.

The CIA's war against the Bush administration, which has been fueled by one leak after another on the part of CIA officials. These leaks, all or most of which involved classified information, have appeared mainly in the Washington Post and the New York Times, and have then been repeated in pretty much every newspaper in America. When CIA leaks hurt the administration, these papers have gleefully passed them on. It was only when Scooter Libby mentioned the name of a non-covert CIA employee, Valerie Plame, that the Post, the Times, and other MSM outlets suddenly developed a faux concern about lapses in security.

Of course renegade intelligence officers can’t just hold press conferences and air their politically motivated opposition to administration policies, so they leak to willing and able journalists who hold similar political dispositions. See, it is exciting and something to brag about when you talk to a member of the Senior Intelligence Service and can attach your byline to an intelligence-related expose. These comrades with clearances are even willing to provide corroboration to their stories; usually like-minded pals who aren’t on active duty anymore, but who have lucrative consulting gigs from their pals who still run the secret show. No sense in talking to the Gerechts and Baers of the world who might provide a little balance, since they are probably disgruntled (and Republican) anyway.

One of the most underreported aspects of this scandal has been the hostility by a faction in the CIA toward the White House during the period following the discovery that weapons of mass destruction were not to be found in Iraq. This kind of bureaucratic infighting is usually too arcane a subject for most people to pay much attention to. However, in this case, there appears to be a measure of partisan politics on the part of CIA personnel thrown into the mix in addition to the very human impulse to shift blame for failure.

The Wall Street Journal commented on this conflict in an editorial on September 29, 2004 following a selective leak of a CIA report predicting post-war instability in Iraq. Not only was the leak a brazen attempt by the CIA to embarass the administration, but the fact that it came two days before the first debate between the President and Senator Kerry was evidence that this faction in the CIA was determined to affect the election.

The leaking of pre-war intelligence nuggets prior to the election in 2004 that showed the CIA in the best possible light by highlighting alternate analyses of Iraq WMD capabilities was a remarkable demonstration of partisanship by supposedly non-partisan bureaucrats. And while the partisanship was not necessarily due to any allegiance to the Democratic party on the part of the leakers, it did reveal a mind set that wished to establish a public record absolving the CIA of failure. The fact that the President would be hurt politically by the revelations was also a probable motive for the leaks.

Was Valerie Plame a part of this faction? In his column naming her as a CIA employee, Robert Novak describes her as an “operative on weapons of mass destruction.” Since most of the leaks coming from the CIA faction at war with the White House involved the analysis of the WMD threat from Iraq, it’s tempting to connect the dots and say that Plame was part of a group that wished to, at the very least, prove that the CIA was not as wrong about WMD in Iraq as some in the Administration were saying. At worst, Mrs. Wilson may have been a party to an effort to influence an election by trying to embarass the President.

And by connecting the dots between Mrs. Wilson and other agency rebels who sought to take down the President, doesn’t this open up a whole slew of questions about Mr. Wilson? The former ambassador has been portraying himself as a whistleblower. What if he was an errand boy instead? Wilson, by virtue of his former employment at the State Department could be the perfect front man for a propoganda campaign by his wife’s employer to shift blame for the WMD fiasco from the agency’s incompetence to the neoconservative hawks and their rush to war.

 

POLITICS OF PERSONAL DESTRUCTION

The Democrats present charges and remember it's the seriousness of the charges that count not the facts, and the press goes along as the willing lap dog.

When Attorney General Ed Meese resigned he was found innocent of wrongdoing but the media still portrayed him as an example of what news accounts called the "ethical insensitivity" of the Republican administration.

The Democrats go after Newt Gingrich even thought the charges are all false.  Remember it's the seriousness of the charges not the facts. Democrats filed 84 ethics charges against Speaker Gingrich. All of them were found to be without merit

The Democrats then go after the Republican in a position of power and try and destroy him, Tom Delay.  The strategery seems to be the same Ronnie Earl gets a grand jury to indict and Tom Delays career is ruined even though the charges are probably false.

CORE TRUTHS

Rush Limbaugh was right in his Wall Street Journal Opinion article, "We believe in individual liberty, limited government, capitalism, the rule of law, faith, a color-blind society and national security. We support school choice, enterprise zones, tax cuts, welfare reform, faith-based initiatives, political speech, homeowner rights and the war on terrorism. And at our core we embrace and celebrate the most magnificent governing document ever ratified by any nation--the U.S. Constitution. Along with the Declaration of Independence, which recognizes our God-given natural right to be free, it is the foundation on which our government is built and has enabled us to flourish as a people. "  I think he should add we are strong environmentalist.

There is a liberal bias in the main stream media.  As it turns out there is not a liberal bias but the main stream media is the democratic brain. They write something and the democrats try to implement it.

These  are the main issues to which answers need to be found.  Or that as conservatives we must have candidates to run on these issues and have answers to how they will be accomplished.

1.  Will aggressively pursue the war on terrorism.

2.  Nominate and confirm judges that will follow the constitution.
The Supreme Court is one of the most important issues of our day.   We can only hope that President Bush has not made the same mistakes that so many of the past Republican Presidents have made.  Perhaps he will get another chance to make a pick and he can get a true Constitutional conservative in there like  Luttig, McConnell or Jones.  The courts over the last 60 years have been participating in Judaical activism, making law not found in the Constitution.  The most recent example is the takings law, eating away at the fifth amendment.

3.  Close the borders and enforce the immigration laws.

4.  Repeal Article XVI of the Constitution and implement the Fair Tax.

The FairTax Plan is a nonpartisan national grassroots campaign to replace the federal income tax system with a progressive national retail sales tax. It provides a "prebate" to ensure no American pays federal taxes on spending up to the poverty level, dollar-for-dollar federal revenue replacement and, through companion legislation, repeal of the 16th Amendment. The FairTax eliminates the intrusive, inefficient IRS; The FairTax abolishes individual income-tax forms; The FairTax imposes no tax on small businesses or farms,The FairTax untaxes education;

5.   Vote for real cuts in spending, eliminate corporate welfare, be  fiscally conservative.

6.  Reform Social Security.

7.  Reform Medicare and Medicaid.

8.  Reform the education system with vouchers.

9. Continue to reform the welfare system to really help.

10. Reform the drug laws.  By legalizing, taxing and regulating we will take revenue out of the hands of terrorist.

For years the government fought the war on drugs.  What is the war on drugs?  An instrument to take away our freedoms.  The police forces around the country started taking money at airports if it was over ten thousand dollars.  The ticket agent that turned you in go a cut, the cops got a cut.  Then they took cars and houses.  But that was just the beginning soon the Environmental Protection Agency was taking property because you abused a wet lands, or bothered some mouse.  Now the Supreme Court says that the government can tale your property and give it to someone else, if they can realize a greater tax base.  This is not the America I grew up in.

11.  Eliminate earmarks.  On Sept. 20 2005  there was a vote in the Senate to take money out of the transportation bill, earmarked to Alaska, to help with the Katrina Hurricane and it was voted down 82 to 15. footnote  http://www.radioblogger.com/ There are two new difinitions The SWINE - Senators Who Ignore Needless Expenditures and Saws - Senators Against Wasteful Spending.  The list of the 82 will be under the SWINE.  The 15 will be under the SAWS.  This is the beginning to find those with like minds that deserve to be re-elected or find someone new.
ENTER THE LEFT

According to Andrew Sullivan "Of course the initial response of left-wing intellectuals to Sept. 11 was one jerk of the collective knee.  this was America"s  fault.  From Susan Sontag to Micheal Moore, from Noam Chomsky to Edward Said, there was no question that, however awful the attack on the World Trade Center, it was vital to keep attention fixed on the real culprit: the United States.  Of the massacre, a Rutgers professor summed up the consensus by informing her students that " we should be aware that, whatever its proximate course, its ultimate cause is the fascism of U.S. foreign policy over the past many decades."   this comes in Sept 2005
 

How's the War Going? - Baghdad

Omar Fadhil is PJM’s Baghdad editor; his own blog is Iraq The Model

Baghdad Dispatch: The Wall

PJM Barcelona

April 24, 2007  2:41 AM

The decision to build security walls around some Baghdad districts is getting a lot of attention in the local and world media. It’s creating many questions and even more rumors. Here’s some background straight from Baghdad, just as protests may be making both Iraqi and American officials reconsider the plan, according to some press reports.

First and foremost, I don’t know why “The Wall” is becoming such an issue now. Work to construct similar walls started weeks ago in the Amiriya and Ghazaliyah districts. The “news” went utterly unnoticed then.

But that’s not what matters. What does matter is effectiveness versus side-effects. Neither should be neglected.

Yesterday leaflets were distributed in the streets of Adhamiya (or Azamiya, English doesn’t have the exact sound anyway). The leaflets — printed and distributed by persons unknown — called on residents to protest the building of the wall. Knowing that the only organized entity capable of such quick response to events in Adhamiya are either the insurgents or al-Qaeda strongly indicates that they were behind the planned protest. More important still is that it indicates they see the wall as a threat to their movement and ability to carry out their actions.

From a tactical point of view these walls can be very useful in reducing the levels of violence in targeted areas. Militants will have to stay in their home areas to avoid passing through the controlled gates. This reduces their ability to transport weapons and munitions for storage or operations in other districts. Failing that they will have to relocate to a district where it would be easier for them to operate. In either case the capacity of the militants to sustain their current level of operations would be impaired.

Having walls and barriers that seal off an area also means that troops don’t have to worry watching the numerous routes that connect Baghdad’s interlacing districts that militants use to maneuver around security operations. By extension it means that unit commanders would have a higher percentage of their troops free to conduct real missions against the militants. This makes the “clear and hold” strategy much easier to implement and sustain.

The wall strategy is pretty much like trying to control or protect a small crowd of, say, 50 people. If they are milling about in the street you’ll probably need a dozen cops to control the situation. But if you move the small crowd to a hall with one door one cop can stand at the door and control the movement in and out of the hall, while two cops can sort out the good guys from the bad guys. The remaining nine cops can move on to take care of other situations at other locations.

On the other hand one of the risks that needs to be taken into consideration when adopting this tactic of gated communities is that the main gate could itself become a target for spectacular suicide attacks. In the case of Adhamiya, (population estimated at 500,000 +) or other districts with large populations, the gates are likely to see a lot of traffic every day. There will be inevitably long waiting lines. That alone could attract suicide bombers or mortar barrages.

There are definitely downsides that come from surrounding communities with walls, mostly psychological and social. It’s sad to watch the capital of your country become the only city in the world that resembles a compartmentalized fortress where you need tall concrete walls to slightly improve the margin of safety.

But this is war and we can’t afford living in denial of the seriousness of threats. Emotions must not be allowed to disrupt taking practical steps that can save lives. So while I understand where PM Maliki is coming from in his opposition to the wall I have to disagree with him. The other thing I don’t like about Maliki’s move is that he broke the promise he made when he announced the security plan: he said he would not allow political interference in the work of the military. So his opposition to this particular plan is purely political in nature with disregard to the facts on the ground, and an obvious result of pressure from some politicians around him. However from his tone I suspect that he will eventually change his mind and deal practically with the issue.

 

How's the War Going? - Iraq It's the New York Times take it thru a filter.

3 Suspects Talk After Iraqi Soldiers Do Dirty Work

By ALISSA J. RUBIN

Published: April 22, 2007

BAGHDAD, April 21 — Out here in what the soldiers call Baghdad’s wild west, sometimes the choices are all bad.

In one of the new joint American-Iraqi security stations in the capital this month, in the volatile Ghazaliya neighborhood, Capt. Darren Fowler was heaping praise on his Iraqi counterparts for helping capture three insurgent suspects who had provided information he believed would save American lives.

“The detainee gave us names from the highest to the lowest,” Captain Fowler told the Iraqi soldiers. “He showed us their safe houses, where they store weapons and I.E.D.’s and where they keep kidnap victims, how they get weapons, where weapons come from, how they place I.E.D.’s, attack us and go away. Because you detained this guy this is the first intelligence linking everything together. Good job. Very good job.”

The Iraqi officers beamed. What the Americans did not know and what the Iraqis had not told them was that before handing over the detainees to the Americans, the Iraqi soldiers had beaten one of them in front of the other two, the Iraqis said. The stripes on the detainee’s back, which appeared to be the product of a whipping with electrical cables, were later shown briefly to a photographer, who was not allowed to take a picture.

To the Iraqi soldiers, the treatment was normal and necessary. They were proud of their technique and proud to have helped the Americans.

“I prepared him for the Americans and let them take his confession,” Capt. Bassim Hassan said through an interpreter. “We know how to make them talk. We know their back streets. We beat them. I don’t beat them that much, but enough so he feels the pain and it makes him desperate.”

As American and Iraqi troops set up these outposts in dangerous neighborhoods to take on the insurgents block by block, they find themselves continually facing lethal attacks. In practice, the Americans and Iraqis seem to have different answers about what tactics are acceptable in response.

Beatings like this, which are usually hard to verify but appear to be widespread given the fears about the Iraqi security forces frequently expressed by ordinary Iraqis, present the Americans with a largely undiscussed dilemma.

The beaten detainee, according to Captain Fowler, not only led the Americans to safe houses believed to be used by Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia but also confessed to laying and detonating roadside bombs along a section of road heavily traveled by American patrols. Just a month ago, four soldiers from Captain Fowler’s regiment died on that road after the explosion of a large, deeply buried bomb, possibly made in the bomb factory that the Americans were able to dismantle because of the detainee’s information, Captain Fowler said.

But beating is strictly forbidden by the United States Army’s Field Manual, as well as American and Iraqi laws. When the Americans learned about the beating, they were quick to condemn it.

The use of torture by American soldiers and contractors at Abu Ghraib only compounded Iraqi hatred of Americans and further undermined American moral claims in Iraq. It also produced little valuable information. Most experts, including in the military, say they believe that coerced confessions are an unreliable way to learn about enemy operations because people being tortured will often say whatever they think it will take to stop the pain.

This joint security station in Ghazaliya opened on March 15, about a month after the latest increase in American troops began. The station, inhabited by about 70 soldiers of Company D of the Second Battalion, 12th Cavalry, and their Iraqi counterparts, is named for Specialist Robert Thrasher, a member of the unit killed by sniper fire on Feb. 11 when the company was scouting for a station site.

Thrasher, as the station is known, sits in the southern part of Ghazaliya, one of the roughest areas of western Baghdad. In the northern part, Shiite militias, led by the Mahdi Army, have been driving out Sunni Arabs through raids and assassinations. Sunnis have pushed Shiites out of the southern part.

Sewage pools in the streets. Water and electricity are almost nonexistent, and fewer than half the houses are occupied. The neighborhood graffiti broadcasts the presence of an active insurgency: “Long live Abu Hamza al-Muhajar,” reads one scrawl, referring to a local insurgent leader.The outpost’s location, along one of the main arms smuggling routes from Falluja, was chosen because it was next to a litter-filled lot that was a dumping ground for bodies. When they first arrived, the American soldiers found 30 bodies there, among them women and children.

Now it is rare to find more than one or two, said Captain Fowler, who keeps photos of every one on his computer as a reminder of how much worse it was before his company took up residence. He can also point to other signs of progress: children have begun to play outside again, and women walk to the market.

But the area remains far from calm. The radio in the joint operations room crackles all day long with reports of bomb explosions or newly sighted explosive devices that must be scouted by the soldiers. The distance to the next security station is barely half a mile, but it is so dangerous that the soldiers cannot walk there and do not like to drive more often than necessary.

Although one tenet of the Baghdad security plan is that soldiers should patrol on foot to get to know local residents, it was on just such a patrol that Specialist Thrasher died. Now, said Sgt. Trevis Good, 34, “foot patrols don’t exist; they are not something we do.” The company’s partner is the Third Battalion, Fourth Brigade, of the Iraqi Army’s 10th Division. The soldiers come from Amara, the largest town in rural Maysan Province in the far south, a mostly peaceful area where in a year of active duty they never had an injury, much less a fatality.

In just three weeks in Ghazaliya, the battalion has lost two officers and a soldier; 16 troops have been wounded. A few hundred Iraqi soldiers live in three attached houses just over a brick wall from the Americans. The houses, beefed up only by sandbags, lie outside the station’s fortified area. Visiting their quarters means crouching down and running behind vehicles until entering one of the houses.

The Iraqi soldiers have their own network of informants, and they picked up the detainee who was later beaten, Mustafa Subhi Jassam, after seeing him loitering around a main patrol route twice in the same day. The other two insurgent suspects were picked up separately.

After interrogating Mr. Jassam, a thin young man wearing a blue and red warm-up outfit, for much of the night, the Americans took him to point out one of the houses where the Qaeda militants made bombs. When the Americans arrived, a half-eaten lunch was on the table next to a couple of detonators and some blasting wire. The insurgents appeared to have been gnawing on chicken and flat bread while making fuses for I.E.D.’s, improvised explosive devices, the military’s term for the roadside bombs found here.

On the table and in bags on the floor were mountains of soap, which can be used in homemade explosives. Blasting wire lay in coils. Buried in the garden were two large antiaircraft guns known as Duskas, three propane tanks, and an oxygen tank that was partly cut in preparation for being turned into a huge bomb, probably similar to the one that killed the four soldiers. On the roof a large pile of homemade explosives was drying in the sun.

The Iraqi soldiers were ecstatic. They had delivered. They snapped photos of each other in front of the cache with the blasting cords in their mouths, grinning. The Americans were nervous. “One spark will blow this place up,” said First Lt. Michael Obal as an Iraqi soldier flicked a lighted cigarette butt within inches of one cache of explosives. “It’s highly unstable TNT.”

Later, the Americans plotted into their computers the location of each of the Qaeda safe houses that Mr. Jassam had pointed out. “He was singing like a songbird,” said First Lt. Sean Henley, 24.

After the prisoner was returned to the Iraqis, Captain Fowler was asked whether the Americans realized that the information was given only after the Iraqis had beaten Mr. Jassam. “They are not supposed to do that,” he said. “What I don’t see, I don’t know, and I can’t stop. The detainees are deathly afraid of being sent to the Iraqi justice system, because this is the kind of thing they do. But this is their culture.”

Later, Captain Fowler said that he thought Mr. Jassam had talked because he hoped to be released. The captain wanted him let go so that he could act as an informant. The Iraqi soldiers vetoed the idea.

Mr. Jassam is now being held in an Iraqi government detention center, widely rumored to be places where suspected insurgents are abused. Lieutenant Obal, the captain’s deputy, was distraught at the thought that the detainee had been beaten. “I don’t think that’s right,” he said. “We have intelligence teams, they have techniques for getting information, they don’t do things like that. It’s not civilization.”

About 30 yards away, on the other side of the wall, the Iraqi soldiers suggested that the Americans were being naïve. The insurgents are playing for keeps, they say, and force must be answered with force.

“If the Americans used this way, the way we use, nobody would shoot the Americans at all,” Captain Hassan said. “But they are easy with them, and they have made it easy for the terrorists.”

“I didn’t beat them all, I beat Mustafa in front of the others. We tell him we’re going to string him up.” He demonstrated, his arms spread wide. “And, I made the others see him,” he said.

Captain Hassan and his colleagues said they knew the Iraqi Army had rules against beatings, but “they tell us to do what we have to do,” he said.

“For me it’s a matter of conscience, not rules,” he said.

Captain Fowler’s proposal to release Mr. Jassam in the hope he would become an informant struck Captain Hassan as useless and quite possibly dangerous.

“It’s kind of not a good idea,” he said carefully, as if explaining something to a child. “He’ll never become an informant. Al Qaeda will know he’s been captured. He’ll go back to them and say, ‘The Americans wanted me to be an informer, but I will be loyal to you.’ He will be more afraid of Al Qaeda guys than of the Americans.”

But some detainees may have a simpler motivation: survival. The Iraqi soldiers say many of the insurgents are paid for their attacks, and they gain respect and protection from other militants.

Another officer in the Iraqi unit, Major Hussain, who would not give his full name, said the only way to lure such militants out of the insurgent life would be to offer them a comparable standard of living.

“Ziad, over there, wanted to come work with us,” Major Hussain said, indicating one of the insurgent suspects, Ziad Sabah Jasim, who became cooperative after witnessing the beating of Mr. Jassam. “He said, ‘Just let me join you,’ ”

“Most of them don’t believe in this insurgency,” he said. “They are young people. They are having to stay home without employment. They want food. They want money. They want to be able to marry. But there are no jobs. If you offered them jobs, most of them would not be working with Al Qaeda.”

The American soldiers would agree, but they also are clear that the only way to bring jobs is first to make the neighborhood secure. “You need a J.S.S. every kilometer or so,” Captain Fowler said. For now, there are nowhere near that many security stations on Baghdad’s west side.

 

The 527 Drive by media seems to be liberal all over the world. This is an epoch struggle in World War IV.

Source: Iraq the Model
Saturday, April 21, 2007

                 

              
                End the war: Right message sent to the wrong address.
       

What did the last wave of terror attacks and the many crimes committed against our people all this time reveal? If we look at how the media handles the situation we'll find something like this almost everywhere; Dozens killed, scores wounded in attacks suggest failure of security measures… It's as if the speaker here wants to only emphasize the defect in security measures in a way that honestly angers and disgusts me. When shall they realize, if ever, that we are dealing with brutal crimes against humanity, a genocide against the people of Iraq? Why don't people talk about the cruelty of the crimes and expose the obvious goals of the terrorists behind the crimes? Isn't it everyone's duty to expose the criminals, describe their sick ways and purposes and alert the world about the danger? Where are the media when terrorists use chlorine poisonous gas, acids, and ball bearings to kill and hurt more and more civilians in utter disregard to all written and unwritten laws, ethics and values? I understand it's the duty of the media to practice scrutiny over the work of governments but isn't it equally their duty to expose criminals and their evil deeds? It's frustrating to see the media turn a blind eye to the nature of the crimes and open fire on an honest endeavor to restore peace to a bleeding nation. I'm sure the terrorists are pleased by the coverage. Why not, when their crimes are being portrayed as successful breakthroughs against the efforts of Iraq and America it's likely motivating them to keep up the killing. Would it be "hate speech" to expose the terrorists for what they are? I think our hate for their crimes must not be hidden; there is no shame in hating those blood-thirsty monsters. Even more appalling I see and hear some people who think the solution is to end the war from our end and I can't find an argument more naïve than this—I've seen enough wars in my life that I can't remember a day when there was peace and I hate wars more than they can imagine. But we didn't start his war; it's the terrorists who started this war against life. Instead of telling us to stop fighting back, I'd like to see some people stand up and protest the crimes of the terrorists and tell them to stop the killing and destruction…turn the stop-the-war campaign against the terrorists, is that too much to ask for? Tell the criminals to stop killing us and stop attacking the people who are risking their lives fighting for liberty and equality. We're not asking the media and the stop-the-war crowd to carry arms and shoot the terrorists; we just want them to stop shooting at us.

                 Posted by Mohammed @ 20:53             

How's the War Goiong? - Somali

Source: Al Jazeera English

Deadly clashes erupt in Mogadishu

The streets of Mogadishu, the Somali capital, have seen fierce fighting over the past month   Fighting has erupted again the Somali capital Mogadishu, leaving at least 10 civilians dead and 15 more injured, Al Jazeera says. Heavy shelling could be heard around the city on Thursday as Ethiopian troops clashed with Somali groups opposed to the country’s interim government, agencies report. Witnesses told the AFP news agency that eight people were killed when a mortar landed in a bus station in the south of the city.   In another attack, a suicide car bomb exploded at an Ethiopian army base on the outskirts of Mogadishu, officials and witnesses said. Salad Ali Jelle, deputy defence minister, blamed Thursday's suicide car bombing on al-Qaeda members.   Contradictory accounts   The only casualties were people killed inside the car, Jelle said by phone, adding he did not know how many died.   A witness contradicted Jelle's account, saying he saw wounded Ethiopian soldiers at the scene.   Hundreds of Ethiopian soldiers live at the base, which is surrounded by a low wall and has an ungated entrance.   Your Views   "The situation is Somalia has gone from bad to worse after the intervention of Ethiopian troops" Abed, Kumasi, Ghana Send us your views The latest clashes come weeks after four days of ferocious fighting killed 1,000 people at the end of March, and a truce since then has failed to prevent sporadic clashes.   At least seven people also died on Wednesday in separate fighting.   The Ethiopian backed interim government has been attempting to maintain order in Mogadishu against resistance from fighters loyal to the Union of Islamic Courts and from the local Hawiye clan after their forces drove out the Islamic courts from large areas of the country that the conservative group controlled.   Also on Thursday, an Ethiopian military truck exploded on the outskirts of Mogadishu, possibly killing the soldiers on board, said a witness, who did not know what caused the explosion.   The truck was one of two carrying Ethiopian soldiers travelling on the main road to key southern Somalia towns. The explosion took place about 20km south of Mogadishu.

As conservatives we must see earmarks eliminated.

           

                      Keeping their Earmarks
By Robert D. Novak
Thursday, April 19, 2007

WASHINGTON -- The Senate's Democratic leaders have a political problem with earmarks. Ever since the infamous "Bridge to Nowhere" in Alaska captured the public's imagination last year, they have been on record against legislators stealthily slipping in their favorite spending projects. But most senators, from both parties, really want to keep earmarks. An ingenious effort to reconcile those conflicting political desires created a remarkable tableau in the U.S. Senate Tuesday.

First-term Republican Sen. Jim DeMint of South Carolina rose on the Senate floor shortly before noon to request unanimous consent for immediate enactment of a rule requiring full disclosure of earmarks. But the Democratic leadership was forewarned. Just before DeMint took the floor, the Appropriations Committee -- led by Sen. Robert Byrd, the Senate's king of pork -- issued its own flawed anti-earmark regulation. Then, Majority Whip Dick Durbin objected to passage of the DeMint rule on grounds that ethics should not be considered on a piecemeal basis.

   

       
                    
        U.S. President George W. Bush holds up a pile of papers that he said were wasteful special interest spending proposals that lawmakers often slip into legislation, during remarks about the economy at Micron Technology in Manassas, Virginia February 6, 2007. REUTERS/Jason Reed (UNITED STATES)

       

       

ON THE BLOG: Related Topics

The Back Scratching Congress

   

   

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The Evil of Earmarks and Some Congressional Courage

This Democratic scenario got rave reviews from most Republicans. Senators like to be on record against earmarks while still enjoying them. The problem is that DeMint and his fellow Republican first-termer, Sen. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, just won't let the issue rest. Amid thundering silence from the GOP leadership after Durbin's objection, Coburn declared on the Senate floor: "I would remind my colleagues that we don't have a higher favorable rating than the president at this time . . . and the reason we don't is the very reason we just saw. . . . It's a sad day in the Senate because we're playing games with the American public."

Shortly after the Democrats took power on Capitol Hill, the Senate on Jan. 16 approved, 98 to 0, the DeMint rule, requiring full disclosure of earmarks, as an amendment to the lobbying and ethics reform bill. DeMint rejoiced at "the intent on both sides of the aisle to make sure there is more disclosure." Byrd and Durbin, longtime purveyors of earmarks, seconded DeMint.

But the non-partisan Congressional Research Service (CRS) heard a different message from the new masters of Capitol Hill. CRS on Feb. 22 issued a directive that it "will no longer identify earmarks for individual programs, activities, entities or individuals." That deprived DeMint and Coburn of their primary source of intelligence. Furthermore, the ethics bill was bogged down in the House (which normally will pass anything the Democratic leadership wants). The DeMint rule was an amendment to nothing. Legislation was going through the congressional pipeline with undisclosed earmarks, as requests for earmark applications still did not require transparency.

Consequently, on April 12, DeMint brought up his rule for passage under unanimous consent. Freshman Sen. Bob Menendez, on duty for the Democratic leadership, objected. Menendez claimed, reporter John Stanton wrote in the Roll Call newspaper, "that despite numerous news stories and notifications from DeMint that he intended to seek the UC [unanimous consent], Democrats had not been given adequate time to review the proposed amendment."

DeMint announced he would try again Tuesday, and he was not alone. Besides Coburn, he was joined by second-termer Michael Enzi of Wyoming and first-termers Saxby Chambliss of Georgia and John Cornyn of Texas. That gang of five might be called the Senate Republican reform caucus.

In response, the Democrats prepared carefully. Eleven minutes before DeMint spoke, Byrd's Appropriations Committee announced "an unprecedented policy of transparency and accountability." Democrats were not relying on a freshman senator this time. Byrd was presiding as the Senate's president pro tem, and Majority Whip Durbin objected and insisted a full ethics bill must be passed. "It is not the right way to accomplish our goal," he said.

That leaves the door open for earmarks on authorization bills, like the "Bridge to Nowhere." "So," Coburn told the Senate after Durbin's objection, "we will play the same game but one step further back."

This is no Democrat-vs.-Republican partisan struggle. The word in the Republican cloakroom was that a GOP senator would derail the DeMint rule if the Democrats did not. The Republican leadership is not enthralled with DeMint and Coburn, and would like them to go away. They won't. They are determined to bring into the open who sponsors and who benefits from earmarks.

Political calculus 101

By Robert Novak

April 18, 2007
                    Washington, DC

'Blue Dogs': A piece of accepted wisdom from Election 2006 is that dramatic Democratic success stemmed partly from their openness to running moderate and conservative candidates wherever it made sense. During the campaign, the party's leaders and primary voters evinced a willingness to abandon ideological purity, leading to Senate pickups in Pennsylvania, Virginia and Montana, and a governor's mansion in Arkansas.

                   

1. Nowhere was the non-ideological Democratic strategy more successful than in last year's House races, which saw Democrats add 30 members to their caucus and elect Rep. Nancy Pelosi to the post of House speaker. But a closer look at what has happened in the first three and one-half months of this year's congressional session shows Republicans can rarely expect help from these moderate freshmen on important votes. There are exceptions, but most of the Blue Dogs are proving to be the same kind of "rubber stamps" that they criticized their Republican opponents for being during the 2006 election.
                           
                        
2. All of the freshman Democrats -- the supposed moderates, conservatives and liberals -- voted for the Iraq supplemental that sets a timetable for withdrawal. Even Rep. Harry Mitchell (D-Ariz.), who went to the House floor and expressed "disappointment" in his party leadership, bowed and voted "aye" when pressed. Most of them voted for the $400-billion tax hike in the Democratic budget blueprint, and several supported federal funding on scientific experiments that kill "unwanted" human embryos from fertility clinics.
                           
                        
3. All of the "moderate" freshmen came to the aid of Democratic union allies on the two significant labor votes this Congress. All opposed an amendment by Rep. Richard Baker (R-La.) intended to speed up the stalled reconstruction of the Gulf Coast after Hurricane Katrina by exempting federal contractors from "prevailing wage" laws. They also all backed the "Employee Free Choice Act," which would allow union lobbyists to take over workplaces through a system known as "card check."

   Congress

   Earmark Reform: After claiming the moral high ground on ethics and passing a bill almost unanimously that requires transparency in earmarks, the Senate's Democratic leaders have a political problem. How can they abide by their promises of earmark reform without having to abide by them?

4. Ever since the infamous "Bridge to Nowhere" in Alaska captured the public's imagination last year, Democrats have been on record against legislators' stealthily slipping in their favorite spending projects. But most senators, from both parties, really want to keep earmarks. An ingenious effort to reconcile those conflicting political desires created a remarkable tableau Tuesday in the U.S. Senate.
      
    
5. First-term Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) rose on the Senate floor shortly before noon to ask unanimous consent for immediate enactment of a rule requiring full disclosure of earmarks. But the Democratic leadership was forewarned. Eleven minutes before DeMint took the floor, Robert Byrd's (D-W.Va.) Appropriations Committee tried to pre-empt DeMint by announcing "an unprecedented policy of transparency and accountability." Byrd's reform would have no teeth, no enforcement mechanism to prevent earmarks from slipping through. Moreover, it would not affect any earmarks on direct spending bills, such as water and transportation bills. It would not have prevented the "Bridge to Nowhere."
      
    
6. The fact is, no one had anything except earmarks to lose by adopting DeMint's rule change. Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) objected to passage of the DeMint rule, offering the excuse that the ethics bill would somehow be slowed down if an important item like the DeMint rule were implemented on a piecemeal basis. In fact, senators covet their earmarks and fear passage of a rule change.
      
    
7. DeMint's insertion of the earmark rules into that bill was significant, but it remains useless until a bill actually passes both Houses. The ethics bill passed the Senate with the DeMint rule on January 16. DeMint rejoiced at "the intent on both sides of the aisle to make sure there is more disclosure." But the bill won't reach the House floor until this summer, and there is no guarantee that the earmark provision will survive conference. Meanwhile, a water bill is already moving, and hit has more then 800 earmark projects.
      
    
8. Senators of both parties like to be on record against earmarks while still enjoying them. The problem is that DeMint and his fellow Republican first-termer, Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.), just won't let the issue rest. Amid thundering silence from the GOP leadership after Durbin's objection, Coburn reminded the Senate that Congress does not have a higher favorable rating than the President. "The reason we don't," he added, "is the very reason we just saw."
      
    
9. The non-partisan Congressional Research Service (CRS) heard a new message from the new masters of Capitol Hill. CRS on February 22 issued a directive that it "will no longer identify earmarks for individual programs, activities, entities, or individuals." That deprives DeMint, Coburn, and other reformers of their primary source of intelligence on earmarks.
      
    
10. DeMint first attempted to bring up his rule change on April 12 under unanimous consent. Freshman Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.), on duty for the Democratic leadership, objected. Menendez claimed, reporter John Stanton wrote in the Roll Call newspaper, "that despite numerous news stories and notifications from DeMint that he intended to seek the UC [unanimous consent], Democrats had not been given adequate time to review the proposed amendment." DeMint announced he would try again Tuesday, and he was not alone. Besides Coburn, he was joined by Republican Senators Michael Enzi (Wyo.), Saxby Chambliss (Ga.) and John Cornyn (Tex.). That gang of five might be called the Senate Republican reform caucus.
       
     
11. That leaves the door open for earmarks on authorization bills, like the "Bridge to Nowhere." "So," Coburn told the Senate after Durbin's objection, "we will play the same game but one step further back."
       
     
12. This is no Democrat-vs.-Republican partisan struggle. The word in the Republican cloakroom was that a GOP senator would derail the DeMint rule if the Democrats did not. The Republican leadership is not enthralled with DeMint and Coburn, and would like them to go away. They won't. They are determined to reveal who sponsors and who benefits from earmarks.