Yes, we know Malik. It is on the news. We also know that the war is necessary and needs to be intensified.
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Originally posted by Malik73: *
**Nearly 10,000 U.S. troops have been killed, wounded, injured or become ill enough to require evacuation from Iraq since the war began, the equivalent of almost one Army division, according to the Pentagon.*
I would how many American networks have actually given this story prime coverage?
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Dow Jones is nearing 10,000 too...coincidence or conspiracy?
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*Originally posted by underthedome: *
Dow Jones is nearing 10,000 too...coincidence or conspiracy?
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Ah back to comparing gains on the US stock market to the killings of Iraqi's by US occupation soldiers. Then you have the gall to lecture others. Tsk tsk...
Was that the comparison?
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*Originally posted by underthedome: *
Was that the comparison?
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You are hardly innocent of making these comparisons are you? In fact you are famous for them now.
Malik the thread is on U.S. soldiers, having you been skipping reading class your comprehension seems fuzzier than normal.
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*Originally posted by underthedome: *
Malik the thread is on U.S. soldiers...
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Yes, 10,000 Iraqi civilians killed by US troops, who themselves have had 10,000 casualties of one sort or another. And here you are making comparisons to the US stock market again, not to mention losing your temper again.
Look why dont the AmeriKKKans just go home now one wants them in Iraq even there own public!
There getting shot up just so that Bush and buddies can make a fat profit!
All them GI Joes is it worth it you earning peanuts and dying for the bank of Bush!
Can’t beat them join them, US has invted Taliban 3 times to spare its ass in Afghanistan and give it a face saver to get the hell out. How much you want to bet US will do exactly the same in Iraq but will get the same royal treatment it recieved at the hands of Talibs. Ah yes just sit tight and watch the show and spin after spin before US realizes it has been raped. In vietnam it took US 10 years to realize it is being raped in Iraq it will be sooner.
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/EL03Ak02.html
More power to the Ba’athists
By B Raman
Bloody November in Iraq, which saw 100 deaths of coalition troops - 81 of them Americans - and of an unestimated, but reportedly large number of Iraqi civilians who had nothing to do with either Saddam Hussein, al-Qaeda or the International Islamic Front (IIF), at the hands of the foreign troops, is a forewarning of more bloody months to come.
Before the US-led invasion, Iraq had no jihadi terrorists. Some Palestinians belonging to outfits such as the Abu Nidal Organization and members of the anti-Iran Mujahideen-e-Khalq, to whom Saddam had given shelter, were terrorists, but not of the jihadi kind.
Since the occupation of Iraq, the country is swarming with jihadis - more indigenous (about 6,000) than foreign (about 320) - who have been waging a two-front jihad against the occupation troops - the jihad of the indigenous resistance fighters, who are not terrorists, and that of the foreign mujahideen, who are. The Iraqi resistance fighters have been attacking American troops and their Iraqi collaborators. The foreign mujahideen have been targeting nationals of countries that have been collaborating with the US and international organizations. There is so far no evidence of a common mastermind guiding the activities of the indigenous and the external.
The jihad of the indigenous fighters has been targeted and well planned, avoiding innocent Iraqi civilian casualties. They are well organized and seem to have better intelligence than the American troops. If the US version that the Iraqi attack on an American escort party at Samarra on November 30 was because that party was escorting a vehicle carrying large quantities of newly-printed currency notes is correct, the fact that the Iraqi fighters had advance knowledge of this would show the kind of moles they have in the setup of the occupational forces.
The large civilian casualties, as during the fighting at Samarra, have been more due to over-reaction by US troops than due to any indiscriminate firing by the indigenous jihadis. Such over-reactions, though regrettable, are unavoidable when the jihadis operate from the midst of civilian-inhabited areas. Fortunately, the indigenous jihadis have until now refrained from using too many explosive devices, which indiscriminately kill civilians.
The jihad of the foreign mujahideen has been ruthless with indiscriminate use of explosive devices and suicide bombers. As many Iraqi civilians have died at the hands of these foreign jihadis as at the hands of the American troops.
The IIF, which was formed by Osama bin Laden in 1998 and whose activities are now coordinated by the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LET) of Pakistan, has advised the pro-bin Laden jihadi terrorist organizations all over the world to give priority to the dispatch of volunteers and funds to confront the Americans in Iraq, even at the risk of a slowdown of the jihad being waged by them in their own countries.
There are clear indications of a stepping-up of fund collection, particularly in Pakistan. During the recent observance of Id, to mark the end of fasting for the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, not only jihadi terrorist organizations allied to al-Qaeda in the IIF, but also the Islamic fundamentalist parties - which are members of the pro-bin Laden and pro-Taliban coalition called the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA) - collected funds all over Pakistan, ostensibly to support the jihadis in India’s Jammu and Kashmir and Iraq and for the families of the “martyrs” who sacrificed their lives during the jihad.
The Pakistani authorities did not stop the fund collection, which was made even in army cantonments. The response was good, but it is difficult to estimate how much was collected, how much of it would go to financing the jihad and how much to the personal bank accounts of the religious leaders. Even assuming that a substantial percentage of the collections would be misappropriated, the balance should still be sufficient to keep the jihad in Iraq going for months.
The response to the call for foreign volunteers to go to Iraq has not been that encouraging. There has been a reshuffling, with Arab nationals of Chechen origin being shifted from Chechnya and Pakistan to Jordan and Saudi Arabia, and some Pakistanis and Arabs, including Yemeni-Balochis, also being similarly shifted. While the jihad-hardened veterans of the jihads of the 1980s and 1990s are willing to go and fight the Americans in Iraq, very few post-2001 new recruits are prepared to go to Iraq. They prefer to fight the American troops in Afghanistan by joining the Taliban and Gulbuddin Hekmatyar’s Hizb-e-Islami.
As a result, the number of foreign jihadis active against the US troops in Iraq has remained at about 320 for some weeks now. Media reports of hundreds of jihadis being recruited in different countries and sent to Iraq are not corroborated by ground intelligence.
US troops continue to be handicapped by the scarcity of precise intelligence about the nature of the enemy, its motivation and capability. As a result, they have been literally hitting out in the dark, not knowing whether those targeted by them are friends or foes. This is another reason for the large civilian casualties.
The Iraqi Governing Council, to which the US proposes to transfer provisional authority by June, is a farce, with very little visibility and credibility in the country. Its members are viewed by the Iraqi population as American quislings. One cannot win a war with the help of quislings.
It is in India’s interest that the US prevail over the jihadi terrorists and is able to exit Iraq with its honor and dignity intact. If the US gets beaten and battered in Iraq by these jihadis, it would be even more difficult to deal with them in the rest of the world than it is today.
To be able to do so, the US has no other alternative but to dump these quislings, rehabilitate the intellectuals and the ruling elite of the former ruling Ba’ath Party and seek their leadership and cooperation in its efforts to defeat the jihadi terrorists and reconstruct the Iraqi civil society that it has destroyed.
Re-Ba’athification of Iraq is the only solution to the dilemma confronting the US and other occupying powers. There is no other viable option.
B Raman is Additional Secretary (ret), Cabinet Secretariat, Government of India, and presently director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai; former member of the National Security Advisory Board of the Government of India. E-Mail: [email protected]. He was also head of the counter-terrorism division of the Research & Analysis Wing, India’s external intelligence agency, from 1988 to August, 1994.
As much as I disagree with the reasons for them being there, I feel sad for the American soldiers also. Most of them are yuong kids who really have no idea of why they are there in the first place.
The blood of each soldier is on Bush's hands and I doubt all the oil of Iraq will wash tht away.
B Raman has some interesting information about Pakistan's involvement.