bill

Bush's dishonestly justified war in Iraq is turning into a real Tar Baby. It
has cost over 300 American dead and many more injured so far. It has cost
American tax payers over $70 BILLION so far with cost of the occupation
running $4 Billion per month with no end in sight. And further exacerbating
the problem of the Federal governments massive $400+ annual deficits.

This is a terrible price to pay to conquer a country that was no credible
threat to the United States or it's European allies and was no serious
threat to Iraq's neighbors. When presidents lie it can get expensive.

The Economist 8/27/03

MORE than a week after a massive truck bomb devastated the United Nations
headquarters in Baghdad, killing more than 20 people, the attack continues
to have grave repercussions for efforts to rebuild Iraq. On Sunday August
24th, the International Committee of the Red Cross announced that it is
cutting back its operations in the country. The decision follows warnings
that the group could be targeted for attack. Its Baghdad staff, who help
distribute medicines to hospitals and care for injured combatants, will be
reduced to around 50. The organization said it would have to cut services
further if its staff remained vulnerable to attack. The pull-back is seen as
particularly worrying because the Red Cross is typically one of the last
humanitarian organisations to flee conflicts. Its vote of no confidence in
the security situation in Iraq is expected to cause other agencies still
active in the country to rethink their operations there.

Kofi Annan, the UN's secretary-general, has said that last week's atrocity
will not force his organisation to leave Iraq. But it is already clear that
the attack-the biggest ever to hit the UN-will cause fundamental changes to
the main international organisations in Iraq. The UN has been doling out
food aid, helping to fix electric lines and encouraging democracy; it cannot
continue to do all these things without improved security. The organisation
has temporarily suspended operations in Iraq and is expected to trim its
staff there. On Tuesday, the UN Security Council unanimously passed a
resolution that calls for attacks against UN and humanitarian workers in
conflict zones to be treated as war crimes. But the resolution will do
little to improve security in Iraq, where a number of humanitarian bodies
are reviewing their movements. This week Oxfam announced that it was pulling
its foreign workers out of Iraq. The World Bank and the International
Monetary Fund, which had small staffs based in the UN building, have put
their work on hold while their wounded are treated.

With attacks on non-military targets mounting-the UN atrocity followed big
attacks on water and oil pipelines in Iraq, and on the Jordanian embassy in
Baghdad-pressure is rising on America to improve security quickly. America
has around 140,000 troops in Iraq, and other countries have contributed some
20,000 more (around half of whom are from Britain). Calls to deploy more
troops are mounting from congressmen on both sides of the aisle. John
McCain, a Republican senator who was in Iraq at the time of the UN bombing,
said that "at least another division" (up to 20,000) was needed. Joseph
Biden, a prominent Senate Democrat, has put the number at up to 60,000 more
troops.

But the Bush administration continues to reject such calls. On Monday Donald
Rumsfeld, the defence secretary, told a veterans group in San Antonio that
America had enough troops currently on the ground in the view of his
military advisers. Still, in a tacit admission that more manpower would be
welcome, the administration is now considering proposing a new UN resolution
to encourage other countries to send more troops to Iraq. Up to now,
President George Bush has shied away from the UN, perceiving it as too slow
to act against Saddam Hussein. But he has found it difficult to persuade
other countries, including potential big contributors such as India, to
commit troops without a UN mandate. The trouble is, as France, Germany,
Russia and Mr Annan have all pointed out in recent days, such a resolution
is unlikely to pass unless America agrees to cede some decision-making
powers-including on military matters-to the UN.

After meeting America's secretary of state, Colin Powell, on Thursday, and
Britain's foreign secretary, Jack Straw, on Friday, Mr Annan acknowledged
that diplomats were discussing the possibility of agreeing a multinational
force to guard UN sites and staff, with a separate command structure but in
some way under the influence of the American military. However, the attack
on the UN headquarters may have cost America another contributor of troops:
Japan appears likely to delay sending soldiers to Iraq, fearing that the
security situation is too uncertain.

America is also trying another tack: encouraging Iraqis to play a bigger
part in security. With guerrillas determined to target pipelines, soldiers
and international organisations indiscriminately, local manpower would
clearly help. America is rushing to train Iraqis in ordinary policing tasks
in order to free American troops up for more specialised duties, such as
guarding the UN and hunting Saddam and his henchmen. Thousands of Iraqis
have also been dispatched to guard softer targets such as oil pipelines. But
even this brings problems of its own: militants have been targeting Iraqi
"collaborators".

They are also increasingly targeting high-profile Iraqis, presumably in an
effort to destabilise the country's internal politics. The latest sign of
this was the assassination attempt on Grand Ayatollah Seyed Mohammed Said
al-Hakim, a leading Shia Muslim cleric, in the Iraqi holy city of Najaf on
Sunday. The cleric survived the blast at his office with minor injuries, but
two of his bodyguards and a driver were killed. One Shia official said the
prime suspects for the attack were Saddam loyalists hoping to stir up
trouble between Shia and Sunni Muslims, but others think the attack may be
linked to a power struggle within the Shia community. Some Shias have
criticised Ayatollah Hakim for co-operating with America.

With the security situation worsening, difficult choices lie ahead for the
Bush administration. So far, Americans have broadly supported the
occupation, despite the near-daily deaths of soldiers at the hands of
guerrillas, the non-appearance of weapons of mass destruction and the high
price of occupation-$3.9 billion per month, plus reconstruction costs of
"several tens of billions", according to Paul Bremer, Iraq's top
administrator, in an interview with the Washington Post. But television
images of the wreckage of the UN building, and suggestions that rising
numbers of Islamist militants are slipping into Iraq from countries such as
Syria and Saudi Arabia, have served as a graphic reminder of Iraq's current
fragility. Whether America is up to the giant task of stabilising the
country remains to be seen.

Bill Mech
wmech@att.net

tonk911

The Upsurge in Terror is a Sign of the West's Success

Michael Gove
(read complete article at
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/newspaper/0,,1-792582,00.html )

The liberation of Iraq has created the potential for the country to
become a broadly free, fairly governed, and economically dynamic state
- an outcome deeply troubling to an unholy alliance of forces in the
region, from Syria through Saudi Arabia to Iran and al-Qaeda. In Iraq,
the aims of Syria's secular Baathist leader Bashar Assad and Islamic
fundamentalist Osama bin Laden coincide. Neither can countenance the
successful emergence of a free, pluralist state in Iraq. The effect on
existing tyrannies such as Syria and Saudi Arabia would be
dramatically percussive. And the disappearance of autocratic regimes
in the Middle East would, in turn, be the gravest blow bin Laden could
suffer. A similar desire drives Hamas and its allies, responsible for
the recent upsurge of violence against Israel. Just as a reformed Iraq
is poison to the autocrats in Damascus and the fundamentalists of
al-Qaeda, so a reformed Palestine would mean the end of Arafat's
kleptocracy and the chance of a proper reckoning with the
fundamentalists of Hamas. Only by clearing the democratic slum that
was the Arab world before 2001 can we hope to tackle terrorism at its
roots.
(London Times)

gaffo

this mentality is counter common sense.

"potential"............one slipping away with everyday.


In Iraq,


yep.


The effect on

???????? how do we know this? he's just pulling this out of his arse.


And the disappearance of autocratic regimes

silly...........if anything this invasion/occupation will only unbalence
the Saudi kingship even more...........and who will become the new king
after the civil war? - you guessed it bubba.


A similar desire drives Hamas and its allies, responsible for


nope Israel's troubles are not related to our own. And Hamas is a force
for independance from the Nazi policies of Isreal.


This Micheal Gove must be a NEO-ZIO-CON.