The Iraq Thread 2

[Albert Schweitzer 10]

Quote[/b] ]This Neo-conservative ideoligy embodies the though that the U.S should project it's power in the World to establish a more peacefull and democratic world.

Define "neo-conservative". What's the difference between a "conservative" and a "neo-conservative"?

lol neo-conservative. Well that is like dark light, straight corner, round box, and dry water!

[Baron von Beer 0]

That sounds good! *Runs to pour a glass of powdered water*

[Apollo 0]

Quote[/b] ]Define "neo-conservative". What's the difference between a "conservative" and a "neo-conservative"?

Just hit the word in google and sit back.

Wikipedia encyclopedia: (adviced read)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoconservatism_(United_States)

others ,pro and con.

http://www.pbs.org/thinktank/show_1017.html

http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content....mlw.asp

http://www.amconmag.com/06_16_03/buchanan.html

here's a little neocon quiz for ya

http://www.csmonitor.com/specials/neocon/quiz/neoconQuiz.html

With other words ,the Neocons are those who push Bush around as their puppet.   (j/k)

but i cannot understand that people from the U.S don't know about neoconservatism ,i mean these are the people who greatly influence youre coutry's foreign policy.

This is afcourse 1 ideoligy ,there are also modern ideoligy's in Europe for ex. proppagated by a number of fillosofers and political thinkers that influence the European foreign policy.Their ideoligy often goes against this neoconservatism and has led to a serries of very interresting top level debate's.

[toadlife 3]

Yeah, I think it's very funny that you don't know the difference between Kosovo and Bosnia

About 150km?

[denoir 0]

There were substantial forces deployed then as well. Peacekeeping was the "name", military intervention was laregely the method. (Again, large scale airstrikes, etc). This by NATO (including large numbers of US) aircraft. I still don't see how this equates to the US doing "nothing". Nothing being done would have meant that the US would have at the least, gave no mention to what was going on, or at the most, sent maybee a letter saying "Sorry about your luck, hope things take a turn for the better".  However, CVN battlegroups, combat aircraft, and ground units were sent instead. Still a far cry from nothing.

No, no, no. There were no large scale air strikes in Bosnia. There were no carrier battlegroups. As I said, you are confusing Bosnia with Kosovo.

Apart from good work on the diplomacy side, the US did not do anything at all in Bosnia. You had a few (very few compared to other countries) peace keepers on the ground and you provided logistics and humanitarian aid from Aviano.

You had some very very small scale military air operations. Mostly it was a half-assed enforcement of a no-fly zone. IIRC somwhere about 200 missions overall were flown over Bosnia. This can be compared to 600 missions/DAY in Kosovo. All the military operations (apart from the humanitarian work and normal peace keeping) were on very small scale. This thanks to the impotence of the world to make a stand (EU and America included).

It was first in Kosovo that the international community finally took a stand. Too bad it ended up the way it did, but at least the intent was good. And despite it being a complete and utter failure, I still fully support the decision to go to war in Kosovo. As opposed to Iraq, it was motivated by humanitarian principles, as opposed to self-interest.

Quote[/b] ]

About 150km?

It's Europe you know - we live on a small area. 150 km can make all the difference in the world  

[toadlife 3]

Quote[/b] ]

About 150km?

It's Europe you know - we live on a small area. 150 km can make all the difference in the world

Yeah. My wife and I drive that far to go shopping, and to the movies.

[Apollo 0]

Im just quoting a piece from the Wikipedia enceclopedia ,a great resource btw.

The comeback of neoconservatism under George W. Bush

Many critics charged that the neoconservatives lost their raison d'étre following the collapse of the Soviet Union. During the 1990s, neoconservatives were once again in the opposition side of the foreign policy establishment, railing against the post-Cold War foreign policy of George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton, which reduced military expenditures and was, in their view, insufficiently idealistic. They accused it of lacking "moral clarity" and the conviction to unilaterally pursue US strategic interests abroad. In the writings of Paul Wolfowitz, Norman Podhoretz, Elliott Abrams, Richard Perle, Jeane Kirkpatrick, Max Boot, William Kristol, Robert Kagan, William Bennett, Peter Rodman, and others influential in forging the foreign policy doctrines of the Bush administration, the history of appeasement with Hitler at Munich in 1938 and the Cold War's policies of Détente and containment (rather than rollback) with the Soviet Union and the PRC, which they consider tantamount to appeasement at Munich, are constant themes. Also particularly galvanizing to the movement was George H.W. Bush and Colin Powell's decision to leave Saddam Hussein in power and what they viewed as a betrayal of the Iraqi Kurds.

Early in the George W. Bush administration, neoconservatives were particularly upset by Bush's non-confrontational policy toward the PRC and Russia and what they perceived as Bush's insufficient support of Israel, and most neoconservatives perceived Bush's foreign policies to be not substantially different from the policies of Clinton. Following the September 11th attacks on the World Trade Center and The Pentagon, however, the influence of neoconservatism in the Bush administration appears to have increased. In contrast with earlier writings which emphasized the danger from a strong Russia and the PRC, the focus of neoconservatives shifted from Communism to the Middle East and global terrorism.

Richard Perle

In his well-publicized piece "The Case for American Empire" in the conservative Weekly Standard, Max Boot argued that "The most realistic response to terrorism is for America to embrace its imperial role." He countered sentiments that the "United States must become a kinder, gentler nation, must eschew quixotic missions abroad, must become, in Pat Buchanan's phrase, 'a republic, not an empire'," arguing that "In fact this analysis is exactly backward: The September 11 attack was a result of insufficient American involvement and ambition; the solution is to be more expansive in our goals and more assertive in their implementation."

Neoconservatives won a landmark victory with the Bush Doctrine after September 11th. Thomas Donnelly, a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), an influential conservative thinktank in Washington that has been under neoconservative influence since the election of Reagan, argued in his AEI piece "The Underpinnings of the Bush doctrine" that "the fundamental premise of the Bush Doctrine is true: The United States possesses the means"?economic, military, diplomatic"?to realize its expansive geopolitical purposes. Further, and especially in light of the domestic political reaction to the attacks of September 11, the victory in Afghanistan and the remarkable skill demonstrated by President Bush in focusing national attention, it is equally true that Americans possess the requisite political willpower to pursue an expansive strategy."

The Bush Doctrine, a radical departure from previous US foreign policy, is a proclamation of the right of the United States to wage pre-emptive war, regardless of international law, should it be threatened by terrorists or rogue states. The legitimacy of this doctrine, though questioned by many in the US and especially abroad can be seen as a change from focusing on the doctrine of deterrence (in the Cold War through Mutually Assured Destruction) as the primary means of self-defense. There is some opinion that preemptive strikes have long been a part of international practice and indeed of American practice, as exemplified, for example, by the unilateral US blockade and boarding of Cuban shipping during the Cuban Missile Crisis. The doctrine also states that the United States "will be strong enough to dissuade potential adversaries from pursuing a military build-up in hopes of surpassing, or equaling, the power of the United States." This is designed to create a deterrence to countries that seek to use military might to oppose the United States' policy.

In contrast to more conventional foreign policy experts who argued that Iraq could be restrained by enforcing No-Fly Zones and by a policy of inspection by United Nations inspectors to restrict his ability to possess chemical or nuclear weapons, neoconservatives attacked this policy direction as appeasement of Saddam Hussein on the grounds that the policy was ineffectual. Proponents of war sought to compare their war to Churchill's war against Hitler, with speakers like United States Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld comparing Saddam to Hitler, while comparing the toleration shown to Saddam to the 1930s appeasement of Hitler. Prior to the 2003 war in Iraq, Bush compared Saddam Hussein to Stalin and Hitler and harked to the theme of "appeasement." Like the Nazis and the Communists, Bush said, "the terrorists seek to end lives and control all life." But the visage of evil conjured up by Bush during his European trip was not that of Bin Laden, who still lives and threatens, but that of Saddam Hussein. Iraq's dictator was singled out as the "great evil" who "by his search for terrible weapons, by his ties to terrorist groups, threatens the security of every free nation, including the free nations of Europe."

Paul Wolfowitz

However, these sweeping comparisons have been questioned due to the initial support of Iraq by the United States and a history of legitimate conflict with Kuwait. The 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran threatened to divert Iraq from the secular nationalism of the Sunni-dominated Ba'athist regime. In addition, Iraqi Shiites, many of whom were sympathetic to Iran's Ayatollah, accounted for the majority of Iraq's population. The pretext for the bloody, protracted Iran-Iraq War was a territorial dispute, but most attribute the war as an attempt by Saddam, supported by both the US and the USSR, to have Iraq form a bulwark against the expansionism of radical Iranian-style revolution. The war with Iran left Iraq bankrupt. No country would lend it money except the United States and borrowing money from the US made Iraq its client state. Iraq had also borrowed a tremendous amount of money from other Arab states, including Kuwait, during the 1980s to fight its war with Iran. Saddam Hussein felt that the war had been fought for the benefit of the other Gulf Arab states as much as for Iraq, and so all debts should be forgiven. Kuwait, however, did not forgive its debt and further provoked Saddam by slant drilling oil out of wells that Iraq considered within its disputed border with Kuwait. In 1990 Saddam Hussein complained to the United States State Department about Kuwaiti slant drilling. This had continued for years, but now Iraq needed oil money to pay off its war debts and avert an economic crisis. Saddam ordered troops to the Iraq-Kuwait border, creating alarm over the prospect of an invasion. After talks with April Glaspie, the United States ambassador to Iraq, assured him that the US considered the Iraq-Kuwait dispute an internal Arab matter, Saddam sent his troops into Kuwait. Thus, the actual historical record would seem to cast doubts on the view among neoconservatives that Saddam's wars have been tantamount to Hitler's. However, the grain of truth coming with the idea was that Saddam promoted his invasion of Kuwait as an Arab reunification, similar to the abolition of the artificial internal border of Germany, that had been approved by the U.S. at just that time. Glaspie had not rejected that comparison.

Neoconservative foreign policy pundits, however, emphasize an abstract evil in their polemics, de-emphasizing the complexities of autocratic governance in the Developing World. Today, the most prominent supporters of the hawkish stance inside the administration are Vice President Dick Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, and Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz. Neoconservatives perhaps are closer to the mainstream of the Republican Party today since the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon than any competing faction, especially considering the nature of the Bush Doctrine and the preemptive war against Iraq.

However, at the same time, there have been limits in the power of neoconservatives in the Bush administration. The Secretary of State Colin Powell is largely seen as being an opponent of neoconservative ideas, and while the neoconservative notion of tough and decisive action has been apparent in U.S. policy toward the Middle East, it has not been seen in U.S. policy toward Communist China and Russia or in the handling of the North Korean nuclear crisis.

Neoconservatism has been influential in conservative agenda in the United States, emphasizing desires to increase defense spending significantly, the agenda to challenge regimes hostile to US interests and values, desires to push free-market reforms abroad, and the general support for a policy of militarism to ensure that the United States remain the world's sole superpower.

[denoir 0]

Quote[/b] ]

About 150km?

It's Europe you know - we live on a small area. 150 km can make all the difference in the world  

Yeah. My wife and I drive that far to go shopping, and to the movies.

I go off 150 km to the east and I'm in Estonia

I go off 150 km to the north-east and I'm in Finland.

I go off 150 km to the south-east and I'm in Latvia.

(well, their territorial water at least)

[Apollo 0]

Yeah well same goes for 70% of Europe.As belgian 3 most important European country's are within 150km reach ,wich has it's advantages.But thats is OT.

[Chill 0]

here is some statistics:

http://brookings.org/fp/saban/iraq/index.pdf

[turms 0]

here is some statistics:

http://brookings.org/fp/saban/iraq/index.pdf

Quote[/b] ]NOTE: The estimate of civilians in Baghdad that has been killed by U.S. troops since May is a very rough one and

no information has been made available by Human Rights Watch since September. The Associated Press reports that

3,240 civilians were killed in Iraq between March 20 and April 20, but adds that since only 50% of Iraqi hospitals

were surveyed, the real number is believed to be much higher.

From the article.

Quote[/b] ]NOTE: Due to the lack of detailed and comprehensive data on Iraqi civilians killed in attacks by insurgents we are

unable to create a similar table for this category at present.

and that. Note the document talking about civilians in Bagdad only. By that report we cant estimate the civilian losses in iraq.

[Chill 0]

This is why:

http://www.truthout.org/docs_03/121103F.shtml

[CosmicCastaway 0]

Baghdad tanker blast kills many

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/3326499.stm

Quote[/b] ]The blast came hours after US President George W Bush appeared to call for the execution of Saddam Hussein, captured by American troops on Saturday.

and on a slightly lighter note:

Christmas brought to Iraq by force

http://www.theonion.com/3949/top_story.html

Quote[/b] ]"Why am I supposed to feel joy for the world?" said 34-year-old Baghdad mechanic Hassan al-Ajili as he stood in line for his mandatory visit with Santa. "My country is still at war. I need an American identification card to get anywhere in my own city. Now, for some reason, men with machine guns have placed two rows of jingling antlered pigs on the roof of our house. This is insane."

The onion strikes again!

[miles teg 1]

On a not-so-funny note.   I just wanted to post a link of a video showing how US troops conduct crowd control.  

As usual, there is nothing mentioned about any investigation into this incident.   Note the tracer fire smacking into the crowd.  Those are real bullets folks...and remember between each tracer round is 3 to 5 regular bullets that you don't see(normal US Army SOP is to put one tracer round every fifth round in a magazine or belt, although sometimes this is modified).

http://customwire.ap.org/dynamic....trators

Chris G.

aka-Miles Teg<GD>

[Ex-RoNiN 0]

On a not-so-funny note. I just wanted to post a link of a video showing how US troops conduct crowd control.

As usual, there is nothing mentioned about any investigation into this incident. Note the tracer fire smacking into the crowd. Those are real bullets folks...and remember between each tracer round is 3 to 5 regular bullets that you don't see(normal US Army SOP is to put one tracer round every fifth round in a magazine or belt, although sometimes this is modified).

http://customwire.ap.org/dynamic....trators

Chris G.

aka-Miles Teg<GD>

Is that from last night when they fired into the pro-Saddam crowd?

If yes, I was under the impression that it was Baghdad police that was firing into the crowd?

[Albert Schweitzer 10]

Quote[/b] ]

About 150km?

It's Europe you know - we live on a small area. 150 km can make all the difference in the world  

Yeah. My wife and I drive that far to go shopping, and to the movies.

I go off 150 km to the east and I'm in Estonia

I go off 150 km to the north-east and I'm in Finland.

I go off 150 km to the south-east and I'm in Latvia.

(well, their territorial water at least)

No matter in which direction I walk from here, 150 Km and I am surrounded by sharks and tuna! Lol, greetings from Malta.

[Col. Kurtz 0]

Is that from last night when they fired into the pro-Saddam crowd?

If yes, I was under the impression that it was Baghdad police that was firing into the crowd?

The BBC story I saw stated it was US Forces, the video clip afterwards was of Iraqi police engaged in a gunbattle.

[toadlife 3]

I'm sure it was a mixture of US forces and Iraqi police randomly firing their weapons into that crowd of innocents.

I'm also sure the U.S. forces were just firing their guns off at random since we all know that U.S. soldiers enjoy killing innocent people for fun.

[Longinius 1]

Quote[/b] ]I'm sure it was a mixture of US forces and Iraqi police randomly firing their weapons into that crowd of innocents.

You do know that US soldiers have fired on unarmed Iraqi demonstraters before, right? Why couldnt it happen again?

In this case, I have no clue, I dont know anything about it. But it wouldnt be surprising if it was true.

[Jacko 0]

I'm sure it was a mixture of US forces and Iraqi police randomly firing their weapons into that crowd of innocents.

I'm also sure the U.S. forces were just firing their guns off at random since we all know that U.S. soldiers enjoy killing innocent people for fun.  

I guess you didn't see the video

Because yes they where shooting into the crowd, you could see the bullets fly.

Didn't they show it in the U.S.?  

[Tovarish 0]

I'm sure it was a mixture of US forces and Iraqi police randomly firing their weapons into that crowd of innocents.

I'm also sure the U.S. forces were just firing their guns off at random since we all know that U.S. soldiers enjoy killing innocent people for fun.  

I've already posted this before but...

Hearts and minds

Quote[/b] ]...

I asked my escort, Army Spec. Jack Craig, a military police officer from Minnesota, how he correlated the "strike first" directive with the U.S. military's current policy of attempting to win the "hearts and minds" of the local population.

"Actually, I see 'hearts and minds' as a tactical doctrine. To me, it means that's where we should aim first," said Craig. "Shoot them in the body or in the head, but just make sure you shoot them first."

From his humourless expression, I presumed that he wasn't joking.

...

"We have two major factors affecting the ability for some of our troops to understand restraint," said Eddie Calis, the civilian security adviser at the U.S. airbase at Kirkuk, in northern Iraq.

"One problem is that a lot of our soldiers are s--t-scared and want to get out of here alive, no matter what that entails. The second and much less widespread issue is that of misplaced patriotism," said Calis.

He cited as an example one of the soldiers stationed at the Kirkuk airfield who will soon be rotated back to America, and who feels that he has yet to fulfil his national duty.

"Every day he complains that he has not yet had the opportunity to kill an Iraqi, and do his bit for the war," explained Calis. "On several recent occasions he has initiated provocation deliberately with local drivers at the gate, and I only hope that (this soldier) will be sent home before he fulfils his quest at the cost of an innocent life."

[denoir 0]

Quote[/b] ]

"One problem is that a lot of our soldiers are s--t-scared and want to get out of here alive, no matter what that entails."

It's not so much fear for the individual soldiers but more an institutional trauma from the vietnam war. The safety of the soldiers comes first. And this is accomplished by overwhealming use of force. And it works perfectly in war. I'd hate to be on the recieving end of a US military assault. Unfortunately it sucks to be a civilian as well since when it comes to the safety of the soldiers, they will kill pretty much indiscriminantly. If there is a chance of enemy activity in a house, it will be leveled, regardless of the possibity of civilians living in it. Good tactics for the US forces, bad for the enemy and the neutral parties. Good in war, terrible for peace-keeping.

I had a good chance to observe this on many occasions in Kosovo. Basically for this reason COMKFOR kept the US forces away from all peace-keeping duties and let them focus on the joint logistics operations.

My team there was responsible for collecting data about Serb military installations before and after the war (part of a NATO post-conflict evaluation of "Operation Allied Force"). We did a lot of traveling in the country, interviewing people near former military sites. Most of the time we were unarmed and more often than not we had an armed escort. It was usually provided by the forces of the sector. We never had so much trouble as when we operated for almost a month near Gnjilane (MBE, US sector). The problem was that if we went anywhere near a suspected hotspot, the US commander refused to give us an escort. On at least five separate occasions we got help from the Russians in the end and as many from the British. Most of the times they had to travel all across Kosovo to get to us. Not the mention the numerous times we went in without any escort at all. And this because the US commander did not want to risk the safety of his men.

When we got US escort, it was an equal disaster. A typical mission for us would be to go into some small town and talk to a couple of persons who we knew used to work at or near pre-war military installations.

What we needed in terms of escort was at most a light apc and a few soldiers. And the apc was only need in very few situations, so normal cars worked more than adequatly.

What we got instead were typically 10+ HMMWVs, advance and rear guard included. Helicopter air support and fighter support on request. At least 4-5 APC's and one or two IFV:s. And a platoon of infantry. Artillery support on stand-by.

As you can imagine, this was not at all beneficial for the completion of the mission. We want to talk to some guys who don't particularly like us to start with (for invading their country). And now we have soldiers securing all the houses, setting up a heavy MG in the village square, pushing locals around. You have a a blackhawk overhead, making a lot of noise and a guy using a megaphone informing people to stay calm and cooperate. The obvious effect was that half of the inhabitants of the village were scared shitless and the other half was pissed off beyond belief. To top it all off the soldiers drag the people we wanted to talk to out of their houses using force. These were normal civilians that had done nothing wrong at all. And you can guess how many felt that they wanted to tell us anything after being treated like that.

The US military provided very valuable support both to the civilians through humanitarian relief and to the rest of KFOR via excellent logisitics. They were however never popular with anybody as they treated all the civilians as potential hostiles and very often refused to participate in joint operations and when they did they used excessive force. Most of the time they locked themselves up in the over-secure camp bondsteel.

The US military is one of the most impressive war machines that I have seen and one of the worst peace-keeping forces that I have seen. Should I ever again participate in an international peace-keeping mission, I would want to be stationed as far as possible from US troops.

So I'm not at all surprised seeing pictures of US soldiers firing into a crowd of demonstrators. The Kosovars were much more friendly to the US troops than the Iraqis are and what they did to the Kosovars wasn't pretty.

[EiZei 0]

Quote[/b] ]

What we got instead were typically 10+ HMMWVs, advance and rear guard included. Helicopter air support and fighter support on request. At least 4-5 APC's and one or two IFV:s. And a platoon of infantry. Artillery support on stand-by.

As you can imagine, this was not at all beneficial for the completion of the mission. We want to talk to some guys who don't particularly like us to start with (for invading their country). And now we have soldiers securing all the houses, setting up a heavy MG in the village square, pushing locals around. You have a a blackhawk overhead, making a lot of noise and a guy using a megaphone informing people to stay calm and cooperate. The obvious effect was that half of the inhabitants of the village were scared shitless and the other half was pissed off beyond belief. To top it all off the soldiers drag the people we wanted to talk to out of their houses using force. These were normal civilians that had done nothing wrong at all. And you can guess how many felt that they wanted to tell us anything after being treated like that.

That sounds something like out of a parody.

[TexMex Leprechaun 0]

Quote[/b] ]They were however never popular with anybody as they treated all the civilians as potential hostiles and very often refused to participate in joint operations and when they did they used excessive force. Most of the time they locked themselves up in the over-secure camp bondsteel.

You have to treat people in a war zone like hostiles, for the sake of your own protection. Whats wrong with using more force than is needed? This makes it harder for the enemy to sucessfully attack you, and will cuase them high casulties if they do try. Plus it might make attackers think twice about doing something. Maybe there is a different thought process in Europe,I do not know, but in America we look out for our soldiers, and they come first.

[Crazysheep 1]

Quote[/b] ]They were however never popular with anybody as they treated all the civilians as potential hostiles and very often refused to participate in joint operations and when they did they used excessive force. Most of the time they locked themselves up in the over-secure camp bondsteel.

You have to treat people in a war zone like hostiles, for the sake of your own protection. Whats wrong with using more force than is needed? This makes it harder for the enemy to sucessfully attack you, and will cuase them high casulties if they do try. Plus it might make attackers think twice about doing something. Maybe there is a different thought process in Europe,I do not know, but in America we look out for our soldiers, and they come first.

*points to Denoirs post*