Once again I hope we all stop and refelct on how amazing this list is. This discussion is some of the best I have heard in the entire campaign.
-----Original Message-----
From: Tony Tedesco [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: Monday, November 01, 2004 1:11 PM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: [AsburyPark] Re: 3 Political Films screening in AP this Friday
france is officially challenging the Duelfer report. pretty adamantly
too..here is a link concerning that..while it is clear that the oil
for food program is clearly corrupt, the duelfer report may be
erroneous. but in my opinion it doesnt matter if its 8% or 80%, its
another example of human nature and money..it is also not just the
germans and the french (funny how 'old europe' is so prominently
fingered)..the Al-Mada (Iraqi news)report that sparked this
investigation listed 270 persons from more than 46 countries involved
in this scandal..the UN has consistently had shady dealings,
including distributing corrupted health vaccines that in effect
sterilized women in thrid world countries..not once , not twice, but
three times that they were actually reprimamded for..anyway, thats a
whole other mess..
http://news.yahoo.com/news?
tmpl=story&u=/ap/20041025/ap_on_re_eu/france_oil_for_food_investigatio
n_2
sorry for the long links..i am unsure how to format long links to
correctly appear in final post. any help on this would be
appreciated..
as for the lost battles issue, it is always hard with situations like
those in iraq to define a win or a loss..here is a opinion piece from
Sidney Blumenthal that was posted on salon.com (i have pasted the
piece, as you need to go through some sign up, etc to view it on
salon) that addresses the general notion of victory vs. defeat in
iraq. within he quotes a few retired high level military personnel.
===================================================================
Iraq "War is Lost"
The "war is lost"
Military experts say they see no exit from the Iraq debacle -- and
that the war is helping al-Qaida.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
By Sidney Blumenthal
Sept. 16, 2004 | "Bring them on!" President Bush challenged the early
Iraqi insurgency in July of last year. Since then 812 American
soldiers have been killed and 6,290 wounded, according to the
Pentagon. Almost every day in campaign speeches, Bush speaks with
bravado about how we are "winning" in Iraq. "Our strategy is
succeeding," he boasted to the National Guard convention on Tuesday.
But according to the U.S. military's leading strategists and
prominent retired generals, Bush's war is already lost.
Retired Gen. William Odom, former head of the National Security
Agency, told me: "Bush hasn't found the WMD. Al-Qaida, it's worse --
he's lost on that front. That he's going to achieve a democracy
there? That goal is lost, too. It's lost." He added: "Right now, the
course we're on, we're achieving [Osama] bin Laden's ends."
Retired Gen. Joseph Hoare the former Marine commander and head of the
U.S. Central Command, told me: "The idea that this is going to go the
way these guys planned is ludicrous. There are no good options. We're
conducting a campaign as though it were being conducted in Iowa, no
sense of the realities on the ground. It's so unrealistic for anyone
who knows that part of the world. The priorities are just all wrong."
"I see no ray of light on the horizon at all," said Jeffrey Record,
professor of strategy at the Air War College. "The worst case has
become true. There's no analogy whatsoever between the situation in
Iraq and the advantages we had after World War II in Germany and
Japan."
"I don't think that you can kill the insurgency," said W. Andrew
Terrill, professor at the Army War College's Strategic Studies
Institute, the top expert on Iraq there. According to Terrill, the
anti-U.S. insurgency, centered in the Sunni triangle, and holding
several key cities and towns, including Fallujah, is expanding and
becoming more capable as a direct consequence of U.S. policy. "We
have a growing, maturing insurgency group," he told me. "We see
larger and more coordinated military attacks. They are getting better
and they can self-regenerate. The idea there are X number of
insurgents and when they're all dead we can get out is wrong. The
insurgency has shown an ability to regenerate itself because there
are people willing to fill the ranks of those who are killed. The
political culture is more hostile to the U.S. presence. The longer we
stay, the more they are confirmed in that view."
After the killing of four U.S. contractors in Fallujah, the U.S.
Marines besieged the city for three weeks in April -- the watershed
event for the insurgency. "I think the president ordered the attack
on Fallujah," said Gen. Hoare. "I asked a three-star Marine general
who gave the order to go to Fallujah and he wouldn't tell me. I came
to the conclusion that the order came directly from the White House."
Then, just as suddenly, the order was rescinded, and Islamist
radicals gained control, using the city as a base, al-Qaida ("base"
in Arabic) indeed.
"If you are a Muslim and the community is under occupation by a non-
Islamic power, it becomes a religious requirement to resist that
occupation," Terrill explained. "Most Iraqis consider us occupiers,
not liberators." He describes the religious imagery common now in
Fallujah and the Sunni triangle: "There's talk of angels and the
prophet Mohammed coming down from heaven to lead the fighting, talk
of martyrs whose bodies are glowing and emanating wonderful scents."
"I see no exit," said Record. "We've been down that road before. It's
called Vietnamization. The idea we're going to have an Iraqi force
trained to defeat an enemy we can't defeat stretches the imagination.
They will be tainted by their very association with the foreign
occupier. In fact, we had more time and money in state building in
Vietnam than in Iraq."
"This is far graver than Vietnam," said Gen. Odom. "There wasn't as
much at stake strategically, though in both cases we mindlessly went
ahead with a war that was not constructive for U.S. aims. But now
we're in a region far more volatile and we're in much worse shape
with our allies."
Terrill believes that any sustained U.S. military offensive against
the no-go areas of the Sunni triangle "could become so controversial
that members of the Iraqi government would feel compelled to resign."
Thus an attempted military solution would destroy the slightest
remaining political legitimacy. "If we leave and there's no civil
war, that's a victory."
Gen. Hoare believes from the information he has received that "a
decision has been made" to attack Fallujah "after the first Tuesday
in November. That's the cynical part of it -- after the election. The
signs are all there." He compares any such planned attack with late
Syrian dictator Hafez al-Assad's razing of the rebel city of
Hama. "You could flatten it," said Hoare. "U.S. military forces would
prevail, casualties would be high, there would be inconclusive
results with respect to the bad guys, their leadership would escape,
and civilians would be caught in the middle. I hate that
phrase 'collateral damage.' And they talked about dancing in the
street, a beacon for democracy."
Gen. Odom remarked that the tension between the Bush administration
and senior military officers over Iraq is worse than any he has ever
seen with any previous U.S. government, including during
Vietnam. "I've never seen it so bad between the Office of the
Secretary of Defense and the military. There's a significant majority
believing this is a disaster. The two parties whose interests have
been advanced have been the Iranians and al-Qaida. Bin Laden could
argue with some cogency that our going into Iraq was the equivalent
of the Germans in Stalingrad. They defeated themselves by pouring
more in there. Tragic."
http://www.salon.com/opinion/blumenthal/2004/09/16/iraq_war/index.html
=====================================================================
--- In [EMAIL PROTECTED], "jerseyjohn99" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
wrote:
>
> From the Duelfer Report (the same report which said Saddam did NOT
> possess WMD).
>
> http://www2.cia.gov/iraqs_wmd_vol1.pdf
>
> pp 138-180 gives a detailed account with actual figures which would
> even impress your former teaching colleague.
>
> The Oil For Food program was clearly corrupted so that Saddam could
> acquire hard currency. From 1996 to 2002, more than $11 billion was
> diverted from the Oil For Food program. $11 billion skimmed from a
> program which brought $14 billion is a payday any New Jersey
> politician would be impressed with.
>
> Regarding the Al Qaeda claims, I haven't seen any member rolls to
> see what the American impact was. However, Captain Caveman himself,
> in his stump speech for Kerry Friday, said "over 15,000 of our
> people have been killed and tens of thousands injured".
>
> http://tinyurl.com/5529i
>
> Now that I have cited proof for you, can you cite one primary
source
> on Iraq which says we have been defeated in any battles? (sorry,
> your propaganda films don't count as primary sources)
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